I sometimes put on my Cassandra cap and want people that things can happen in the wink of an eye. “Be prepared!”, I cry.
Washington, IL.
Tornados happen.
Whole neighborhoods are gone.
So… again… prayers for all the people affected by the horrible storms and remember groups like Team Rubicon.
BTW… a friend contributed to Team Rubicon and got a phone call back with thanks for the contribution.
There is an alarming piece at CharismaNews which confirms what we have known all along.
Remember… it’s not really “Obamacare”… though his name, and party, are inseparable from this millstone. It’s really the AFFORDABLE Care Act.
How is that “AFFORDABLE” part working for you so far?
Obama Administration Puts a Price Tag on Your Religious Freedom
Can you put a price on religious liberty? [Aren’t dhimmis suppose to pay a fine?]
Apparently the Obama administration has.
If you value your faith; if you are one of the millions of Americans who believe that abortion pills cause the destruction of innocent, God-given human life; if you are an employer who believes that being forced to pay for others’ abortion pills is morally reprehensible, the Obama administration wants you to pay a dramatically steep price for your religious liberty.
The penalty for failure to abide by the Obamacare HHS abortion-pill mandate is an astounding $36,500 a year.
Refusal to violate your faith will cost you.
The HHS mandate requires that all employer health insurance plans cover abortion pills—that the employer must, under penalty of law, pay for the abortion pills of its employees.
According to federal law, the penalty for failure to provide this coverage is “$100 for each day in the noncompliance period with respect to each individual to whom such failure relate.”
That’s $100 a day, per employee, per year.
Needless to say, this is a penalty that adds up quickly.
For example, a business with 100 employees would face a fine of $3.65 million dollars a year for refusing to violate one’s faith.
To put this in perspective, consider this. A violation of Obamacare’s employer mandate, which requires all employers of more that 50 employees to provide health insurance for those employees, is limited under federal law to $2,000 per employee and excludes the first 30 employees from the calculation.
So in the same example as above, if the employer chose not to provide any insurance for his or her 100 employees, the fine would be $140,000 a year.
So the same company would be fined $3.65 million for providing insurance but refusing to violate its faith by paying for abortion pills, but would only be fined $140,000 for providing no insurance at all. In fact, because the administration has now delayed the employer mandate until 2015 while seeking to enforce the HHS mandate now, an employer could refuse to provide any insurance to any employee and not face even a dime in penalties. Yet failure to provide abortion-pill coverage will cost an employer dearly.
It shows you exactly where the Obama administration’s priorities are. By its own regulations, it is clear that ensuring abortion pills for all is far more valuable to the administration than religious liberty or even universal health care coverage.
It is also important to take this out of the abstract. One of our clients, the Kortes, a family that runs a very small business but that is strongly committed to running their business in compliance with their faith, face over $700,000 in fines a year, something that would absolutely cripple any business.
Thankfully, this past Friday, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a preliminary injunction preventing the HHS mandate from forcing our clients to pay these fines or violate their faith as their case continues. This has been the same result thus far in all seven of our lawsuits against the mandate.
But unfortunately, this is not the case for everyone. Businesses all across America are facing these Orwellian penalties for standing for their faith.
[…]
Read the rest there.
Can anyone afford the “Affordable” Care Act?
Yes. He has a point.
The great 20th century liturgist Klaus Gamber said that the single most damaging thing done after and in the name of the Council, was the “turning around” of altars.
From the Canadian Catholic Register:
‘Spiritual Marines’ head to Tacloban to bless bodies after typhoon
MANILA, Philippines – After days of watching televised scenes of dead bodies scattered around Tacloban, Order of Augustinian Recollect members organized a group of priests and a brother to bless bodies of people who died while fleeing the flood brought on by Typhoon Haiyan.
“‘Spiritual Marines’ will be in Tacloban (Nov. 14) to bless the dead, comfort the sorrowing and bring hope to people affected” by Haiyan, Recollect Brother Tagoy Jakosalem told Catholic News Service Nov. 13. He spoke by phone from Cebu where he and five priests were awaiting a ferry that would take them to western Leyte Island.[…]
Read the rest there.
Fr. Z kudos.
Here is a super cool photo from Astronomy Pic of the Day:
No, this isn’t the Enterprise escaping from the collapsing anomaly by reversing the polarity and ejecting the core and… you know….
What’s up with this?
APOTD Explanation:
In a flash, the visible spectrum of the Sun changed from absorption to emission on November 3rd, during the brief total phase of a solar eclipse. That fleeting moment is captured by telephoto lens and diffraction grating in this well-timed image from clearing skies over Gabon in equatorial Africa. With overwhelming light from the Sun’s disk blocked by the Moon, the normally dominant absorption spectrum of the solar photosphere is hidden. What remains, spread by the diffraction grating into the spectrum of colors to the right of the eclipsed Sun, are individual eclipse images at each wavelength of light emitted by atoms along the thin arc of the solar chromosphere. [That is too cool.] The brightest images, or strongest chromospheric emission lines, are due to Hydrogen atoms that produce the red hydrogen alpha emission at the far right and blue hydrogen beta emission to the left. In between, the bright yellow emission image is caused by atoms of Helium, an element only first discovered in the flash spectrum of the Sun.
I posted HERE about the whereabouts of Sr. Simone Campbell, who helped the Obama Regime pass the so-called AFFORDABLE Care Act.
Millions of people are losing the insurance because of Obama and … well… her! Since she is so concerned that people have “affordable” health care, where is she now? I haven’t heard anything from her about the problems people are now facing. Have you?
The suddenly camera-shy Sr. Simone has finally been located!
She will be appearing in PORTLAND, OR this weekend. HERE She will be at the Episcopal Cathedral, not the Catholic Cathedral.
Readers near Portland could go to her events and ask her what she thinks about all the people losing their health care because of what she did with her friends.
Do you remember when I burst out in my own nutty melt-down about the fact that the interview by the atheist Eugenio Scalfari with Pope Francis, during which Scalfari neither made a recording or notes, was posted on the Vatican website as if it were an official speech of Supreme Pontiff (like to something from his official Magisterium).
It seems that the interview has been removed.
Vatican spokesman says Scalfari “interview” with pope, with imprecise quotations, has been removed from Vatican website
— Catholic News Svc (@CatholicNewsSvc) November 15, 2013
Fr. Z’s Blog says: WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?!?
Click for my post.
I still have to ask: Who thought it was a good idea to put it on the Vatican website in the first place?
UPDATE:
Vatican Insider has this. HERE
Molte polemiche e discussioni aveva provocato anche un’affermazione – peraltro del tutto compatibile con il Catechismo della Chiesa Cattolica – riguardante il primato della coscienza. Lombardi ha comunque smentito che la decisione di togliere l’intervista dal sito sia stata presa su richiesta del Prefetto dell’ex Sant’Uffizio, Gerhard Ludwig Müller.
From Protect The Pope comes this useful clarification:
Fr Flannery’s heretical views on the Eucharist and Priesthood are the reason why CDF intervened – Cardinal Lavada explains
BY DEACON NICK DONNELLY, ON NOVEMBER 15TH, 2013
Cardinal Levada, the former Prefect of the CDF, has explained to The Irish Catholic newspaper that the reason why he intervened to censure and restrict the Redemptorist Fr Tony Flannery was because his writings on the Eucharist and Priesthood were heretical. Cardinal Levada spoke out to refute the falsehood being spread in the media by Fr Flannery that he had been disciplined because of his support for married priests. [It is not heresy to suggest that priests should be married. Marriage and priesthood do not exclude each other. Flannery’s problems were far worse and merited the intervention of the doctrinal congregation.]
Cardinal Levada explained:
‘He [Fr Flannery] likes to say ‘because I’m for married priests’. This is not the case: he wrote two articles in Reality magazine in which he questioned, undermined, the teaching of the Church on the Eucharist and on the priesthood. If you hold these positions you are formally in heresy [in the Catholic Church]. For Martin Luther, or the Protestant reformers, they were key issues and they denied these doctrines of the Church,” the cardinal said.
[…]
Cardinal Levada also challenged those dissenters like Fr Flannery who criticise the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith:
‘Dr Levada also said that “there are many critics of the congregation who are essentially critics of the faith, of Jesus, of God.
“I’m not trying to overstate the case, but, I think we represent a challenge to a highly-secularised mentality,” he said. [Absolutely. And Pope Francis will continue to rely on the CDF. Keep in mind also that the CDF’s process by which a theologian’s questionable notions are examined evolves in many stages and involves many theologians. Card. Ratzinger refined the process out of justice to the errant theologian and out of intellectual humility. Theologians who are examined by the CDF are given the opportunity to explain or defend their writings and, if they can’t, to amend. And the process takes quite a while.]
It is understood that the particular remarks that aroused concern in the Vatican were in a 2010 article in which Fr Flannery wrote: “I no longer believe that the priesthood, as we currently have it in the Church, originated with Jesus. [Yep. That’s heresy.]
“More likely that sometime after Jesus, a select and privileged group within the community who had abrogated power and authority to themselves, interpreted the occasion of the Last Supper in a manner that suited their own agenda”.
Examples of Fr Flannery’s heresy:
In 2009 Fr Flannery wrote:
“The second basic change would be to break the inherent connection, long part of traditional Catholic teaching, between sexual activity and marriage. To continue to hold that sex outside marriage is always sinful is in my view a mistake……. we break the rigid connection between sexual activity and marriage, allowing for appropriate sexual relationships between people who are not married when the quality of the relationship merits it. ” [Yep. That’s heresy. And it probably aims at condoning, if not promoting, homosexual acts.]
[…]
Fr Flannery maintains the contradictory position of both expressing his rejection of the Church’s teaching on the priesthood, while at the same time assuming leadership of the Association of Catholic Priests, [aka The Ass. of Catholic Priests] presuming to speak on behalf of the Catholic priests of Ireland:
[…]
You can read the rest of Flannery’s B as in B, S as in S over there. It is illuminating. It is helpful to review his errors, because his heresy leads others into errors. One heretical book can do a lot of damage.
This is the reason why the CDF conducted a doctrinal examination of the LCWR. The CDF and US Archbishops Sartain and Blair are less interested in whether sisters wear habits or live in community. Those are matters for the Congregation for Religious. The CDF wants to know what sort of formation the sisters are being offered, what ideas shape their religious lives. Books will play a role in how the sisters are formed. The works of others sisters, such as those of Margaret Farley or of Sandra Schneiders or other bizzaro-world theologians are favorites of LCWR types. They can twist the minds and souls of women religious, and those they influence, into seriously weird pretzels. In turn, then perhaps these de-formed sisters will go out to work in schools or hospitals and in their actions reflect the weird teachings they imbibed.
This is why the CDF is and will be important for Pope Francis. Even as he puts a kinder face on the Church (which the MSM is lapping up), he knows that the Faith must be defended. Now more than ever the Faith must be defended! Liberals think they have the big mo, right now. Perhaps they even think that now that Pope Fluffy is finally here, they think they have license to be “prophetic” (code language for “licensed to dissent” against what they term the “official” or “hierarchical” Church).
Let us not forget what Francis said in The Big Interview™ about, for example, homosexuality. HERE
Let us also not forget that former-Father Greg Reynolds is still excommunicated.
Again, I ask you – dear readers – do you have a plan? Do you have some kind of plan, even a slim one, if your area floods or there is a freight train wreck with some lethal chemical or there is a fire or… whatever? Will you know how to get your family together and get to safety? Will you be able to keep them fed and warm and safe from harm?
Yes, I am trying to unsettle you, even scare you a little.
Even something as simple as this could get you started toward a better plan.
I am reading a heartrending story from Reuters about the aftermath of the super typhoon that devastated the Philippines. Excerpts:
(Reuters) – Desperation gripped Philippine islands devastated by Typhoon Haiyan as looting turned deadly on Wednesday and survivors panicked over shortages of food, water and medicine, some digging up underground water pipes and smashing them open.
Five days after one of the strongest storms ever recorded slammed into cities and towns in the central Philippines, anger and frustration boiled over on Wednesday as essential supplies dwindled. Some survivors scrawled signs reading “Help us”.
[…]
Some areas appeared to teeter near anarchy amid widespread looting of shops and warehouses for food, water and supplies.
There were reports of gunfire between security forces and armed men near a mass grave in worst-hit Tacloban in Leyte province, but city administrator Tecson John Lim denied the clash based on information he had received from the army.
Eight people were crushed to death when looters raided rice stockpiles in a government warehouse in the town of Alangalang, causing a wall to collapse, local authorities said.
[…]
Warehouses owned by food and drinks company Universal Robina Corp and drug company United Laboratories were ransacked in the storm-hit town of Palo in Leyte, along with a rice mill in Jaro, said Alfred Li, head of the Leyte Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
[…]
“The looting is not criminality. It is self-preservation,” Lim told Reuters.
Some survivors in Tacloban dug up water pipes in their desperate need for water.
“We don’t know if it’s safe. We need to boil it. But at least we have something,” said Christopher Dorano, 38.
“There have been a lot of people who have died here.”
[…]
Secretary Mar Roxas denied law and order were breaking down. “It is wrong to say there is lawlessness in the city,” he told reporters.
The NYT writes about the predictable rise in diseases:
The aftermath of the Philippines typhoon is now threatening the country with outbreaks of debilitating and potentially fatal diseases, including some thought to have been nearly eradicated, because of a collapse in sanitation, shortages of fresh water and the inability of emergency health teams to respond quickly in the week since the storm struck, doctors and medical officials said Thursday.
Illnesses including cholera, hepatitis, malaria, dengue fever, typhoid fever, bacterial dysentery and others that thrive in tropical, fetid environments, where sewage and water supplies intermingle, could form what doctors fear is the disaster’s second wave. They predicted that leptospirosis, a parasitic disease endemic to the Philippines, could surge. And some said they would not be surprised to see a return of polio. The Philippines is part of an area of the western Pacific declared polio-free by the World Health Organization nearly 14 years ago.
Medical aid groups on the ground in Tacloban, the city of 220,000 that was flattened when the storm made landfall a week ago and that only began to bury its dead on Thursday, have already expressed alarm over the risk of widespread tetanus infections among survivors wounded by shards of corrugated metal and splintered wood.
Some aid groups have already reported exhausting their initial supplies of vaccine to thwart tetanus, a potentially fatal bacterial infection that can cause painful muscle contractions, the inability to swallow and the locking of the jaw. “The population is at increased risk of tetanus as well as outbreaks of acute respiratory infections, measles, leptospirosis and typhoid fever,” the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the main international conduit for distributing relief to the Philippines, said on its website. The basic health infrastructures “are severely damaged in the worst affected areas and medical supplies are low.”
[…]
The USS George Washington carrier group has arrived with aid.
But… my Jesus, mercy!
Reliance on God is necessary. Ultimately we put no trust in any creature. However, we must help ourselves, always. We live by grace and by elbow grease.
When the Jews rebuilt the defensive walls of Jerusalem, they wore their swords while they worked. They were vigilant. When there was to be a 7 year famine, Joseph told the people to store grain. When in the infant Church, during the reign of Claudius, the Spirit inspired Ag’abus to foretell a famine, the disciples sent relief to the brethren in Judea through the work of Paul and Barnabas.
If any one does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own family, he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. – 1 Timothy 5:8
There are good organizations to which you can donate and help to send aid. Among them, I like Team Rubicon. You might have your own suggestions.
Reminder…
By the way… that’s Joplin, Missouri in 2011, not the Philippines.
Yes, it can happen to you.
Even as I write, my chamber is still perfumed with Hoppes Bore Cleaning Solvent: I cleaned my non-liturgical Beretta (9mm PX4 Storm) and my Springfield XD-S (.45 ACP – just back from its factory recall) after sending a couple hundred rounds down range at some dangerous and nefarious paper that needed to be stopped.
I have been following for some days now the bizzaro-world situation of two students at Jesuit-run Gonzaga University in Spokane.
A homeless man shows up at the door of the campus-housing residence of two Gonzaga students. They offer him a blanket and food. He demands money, displays his ankle tracker bracelet, and tries to force the door. One of the students, who has a concealed carry license, came to the aid of his roommate with his drawn Glock 10mm (I’ll bet a G20). The aggressor promptly departed.
It turns out that the would-be-intruder is a six-time convicted felon. His crimes have included riot with a deadly weapon, possession of a controlled substance and unlawful imprisonment. (Sounds like a “house-invader” to me.)
Anyway, the two students quite properly called the police. The police said they did the right thing. However, campus security shows up at 2 a.m, broke in, woke them, and (probably illegally) confiscated the handgun and a shotgun that was also in the residence.
What does Gonzaga U do then?
They throw a nutty and punish the students.
They have a hearing and find the students guilty of having weapons on school property. The school leases the building the students live in. They say the students put others in danger by their possession of weapons. I don’t think they meant convicted felons trying to forcibly enter student’s dwellings.
An alert reader sent me a link to a piece posted on the online Gonzaga Bulletin. It is written by Fr. Patrick Hartin, a professor at Gonzaga.
Here is the piece (edited):
After reading the Bulletin Friday morning, I’m convinced that I’m living in Alice’s Wonderland! Instead, it’s no “Wonderland” – more like Dante’s “Hell”!
Let me explain. The real world, Oct. 24, 2013, at 10:15 p.m.: Two students, Erik Fagan and Daniel McIntosh, are victims of an intruder trying to gain access to their apartment.
They acted, as would any true GU student; they acknowledged the intruder’s humanity by offering him a blanket and some food. That’s not what the intruder wanted. Instead, he intimidated them by revealing he had been in prison six times and showed them his ankle bracelet. [Which itself is a kind of threat.]
To protect themselves and others in the neighborhood, the students defended themselves by pulling out a gun (one with a legal permit). Then the students called the police (as any law-abiding GU student would), informing them they had a legal gun with a permit. The police congratulated them on their whole mature behavior and response to this incident. There, the incident should have ended (if we were in the real world).
But, we enter GU’s “Wonderland” or Dante’s “Hell.” 2:00 a.m. next morning: GU’s campus security breaks into the students’ apartment and their bedrooms and seizes their weapons. (The campus security officers do not even know how to handle a gun – the two students’ lives are in danger again.) [LOL] The campus police report that students appeared to be drunk. Well, wake me up at 2:00 a.m. and see how I react! In the real world, we would celebrate that these students are safe and alive, that no one was killed and that no students were raped. [Not sure where the “rape” part comes in but, hey! Who know what Washington state home-invading felons are into?]
Tragically, in GU’s “Wonderland,” these young gentlemen are turned from victims into criminals. Hauled before the university’s disciplinary committee, threatened with expulsion (because they had a gun to protect themselves), they are sentenced “to probation.” Instead of a medal (the real world), punishment is their reward (GU’s “Wonderland”). Curioser and Curioser (Alice in Wonderland, Ch. 2)!
There has not been any statement from the administration with a scintilla of concern or compassion extended to these remarkable students. The administration changed the subject of discussion: “Let’s re-examine GU’s policy on guns.” [I say: Be more like Wyoming Catholic College!]
What about the cura personalis that is the bedrock of GU’s ethos? We could have been mourning “Two funerals and a rape” this weekend. Instead, the heroes who avoided such a catastrophe are punished as villains. What a far cry from our Jesuit ethos! [Luke 22:36!]
In the Catholic tradition, to which I ascribe, every person has a right to defend him or herself and to use appropriate means to save their lives. Apparently not here in GU’s “Wonderland.” As one of the students said afterward, “I would rather be expelled and still be alive, than dead.”
[…]
The students living in the Logan Neighborhood are living in one of the most dangerous areas in Spokane. Surely, more needs to be done to provide security for them; maybe then students may find that they do not need guns to protect themselves at night.
Finally, before any new gun policy is enacted, let me suggest that GU’s administrators move out of “Wonderland” and spend a week living in the Logan Neighborhood. Then, perhaps we could draw up a policy for the real world.
Fr. Z kudos to Fr. Hartin.
Gonzaga U’s reaction was complete B as in B, S as in S, of course. This is the usual, liberal let’s blame the victims mentality.
In any event, I am glad the student with the Glock had his head screwed on in the right direction and that everyone is still on their feet.
If I ever get to Spokane, I’d like to buy Father, and those two students, a beer.
And for the readership, please donate to Fr. Z’s…
UPDATE:
As a commentator reminds us, Gonzaga also didn’t want to allow students to form a Knights of Columbus Council! Remember that? HERE
UPDATE:
I saw this and had to add it, for some levity.
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
A Daily Prayer for Priests
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