Class Warfare Makes For Rotten Economics

Class warfare may make for really good politics (if you're a Marxist), but it makes for rotten economics. - Rep. Paul Ryan

"Nice" is not Christianity. "Nice" is not what Christ commands.

Philosophical Grounding For Moral Relativism

What Luther unleashed and the British Monarchy exported, was the philosophical grounding for modern relativism. The Reformation should be called the revolt and the Enlightenment should be called the great darkening. Prior to Luther's revolt, the worldview was that God is the origin and the end of man's existence, and the Church is the necessary conduit between God and man. 

Whatever indifference or disregard one has for God this side of death is dramatically elevated to an intense hatred...a bitter, foul disgust, in being in the Divine Presence after death. So, they flee from Him and rapidly join themselves to the society of the damned forever. Where, with full knowledge, they realize that for all eternity, their lot is damnation and never ending misery. This is their choice, not God's. 

Animals That Formerly Were Self-Sufficient Are Now Showing Signs of Belonging to The Democratic Party

This is a very sad story about a bear. Everyone should heed the warnings not to feed wildlife because they become dependent and don't forage for themselves any longer. It is such a tragedy to see what has been done to our country's wildlife! The photo below captures a disturbing trend that is beginning to affect U.S. wildlife.

Animals that formerly were self-sufficient are now showing signs of belonging to the Democratic Party.  They have apparently learned to just sit and wait for the government to step in and provide for their care and sustenance. This photo is of a black bear in Montana turned Democrat. He's nicknamed Bearack Acorn Obearma. It is believed that he has become a campground organizer.

Pelosi Attacks Motherhood And Children On Mother's Day

Retrieved from LifeNews.com

While millions of Americans thank their mothers on Mother’s Day for the gift of life — especially those born after the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision allowing unlimited abortion — former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democrats are trashing a pro-life bill.

Pelosi sent out a fundraising email seeking donations to pay for advertising criticism Republican lawmakers for voting for a bill this past week that would eliminate virtually all taxpayer funding of abortions across all governmental programs and agencies.

Titling the email, “the Republican War on Women,” Pelosi writes:

Your actions today can make a difference for many of the women in your life — whether it is for a friend, your sister, your wife, your daughter, or yourself — all I ask is that you act.

This week, Republicans voted unanimously on an extremist anti-choice bill that would deny millions of women access to reproductive health care. For the first time ever, restrictions would be placed on how women with private insurance choose to spend their private dollars on health insurance.

We cannot sit silent in the face of this extremist agenda.

My strategists tell me that we are $53,241 short of our new goal of $200,000 for our Rapid Response campaign to hold House Republicans accountable for their divisive and radical agenda.

Contribute $3 or more right now so we can get hard-hitting Rapid Response ads up holding Republican extremists in Congress accountable for their radical assault on women’s health care and reproductive freedom.

House Republicans should be working to help put Americans back to work, not waging an outrageous war against millions of women and their private health decisions.

Let us never allow the health of American women to come under attack. Let us stand together to expand care, not limit it.

The bill in question, that the House approved Wednesday on a 251-175 vote with Republicans voting 235-0 for the bill and Democrats voting 175-16 against it, does nothing to take away health care access or options for women. The legislation combines several policies that must be enacted every year in Congressional battles and puts them into law where they will not be in jeopardy of being overturned every time Congress changes hands from pro-life lawmakers to those who support abortions.

As we reported at LifeNews:

Congressman Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican who is the lead sponsor of the bill, informed the House that a study by the Guttmacher Institute, the pro-abortion former research apparatus of Planned Parenthood, released a study noting that one-quarter of women who otherwise would have had abortions chose to give birth when taxpayer dollars were not available to pay for abortions of their children.

Smith spoke on the House floor today about what he said was growing public opinion against abortion. He also praised women who regret having terminated their pregnancies and speak out against abortions.

“For decades, a patchwork of short-term policies have prevented abortion funding in many programs authorized by Congress, but it is time for a single, government-wide permanent protection against taxpayer funding for elective abortion,” Smith said. “Abortion is lethal violence against children and exploitation of women. This legislation would establish a comprehensive policy prohibiting public funding for elective abortion in all federal programs.”

A majority of Americans object to the use of taxpayer money for funding abortion, according to numerous polls — including a survey CNN conducted in early April showing Americans oppose public funding of abortion by a margin of 61% to 35%.

The bill will also mitigate concerns about abortion funding in the various loopholes in the Obamacare national health care bill that various pro-life organizations warned about during debate on the law. The legislation did not contain language banning funding of abortions in its provisions and the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act would fix that problem.

Papa Benedict XVI on Socialism

By Rev. Robert A. Sirico posted in Crisis Magazine

One doesn’t usually expect a thorough-going reconstruction of the history of socialism in the late 19th century from the pope, but Benedict XVI delivered to us a wonderful — and oh-so-needed — reminder of what socialism was (and is), and why it went wrong. One can’t but marvel at his intellectual power: He has discerned the essential problem that has evaded vast numbers of academics for 100 years.

What’s more, he has done this in a time when socialism as an ideology seems to have been unfazed by the collapse of the communist experiment. Visit the philosophy and English departments on most college campuses, and you will still find intellectuals waxing eloquent on the glories of socialist theory. Students are still encouraged to imagine that it could work.

What about the Soviet Union? We are told that this wasn’t really socialism. And what about Nazism — the German word for national socialism? Oh, that’s not socialism either. What about the growing impoverishment in once-rich countries with social democratic governments? The failure of micro-socialism in the United States, where entire communities have lived on government subsidies and are plagued with frightening levels of social pathology? They say that this is not socialism either.

Large swaths of American academia are in denial. So too are major parts of the American and European clerical class, which is still under the impression that socialism represents a gospel ideal that has yet to be tried. One suspects that the entire history of the 20th century passed them by, for they have learned nothing from the poverty, despotism, and vast suffering wrought by the socialist ideology.

Not Benedict. He wants to talk about it. It fits his message of hope precisely. Are we to discover our hope in salvation from God or from some material transformation?

The passages occur in his great encyclical Spe Salvi (“in hope we are saved”). He addresses this core Christian virtue and explains what hope is and what it is not, what salvation is and is not.

History is strewn with intellectuals who imagined that they could save the world — and created hell on earth as a result. The pope counts the socialists among them, and Karl Marx in particular. Here was an intellectual who imagined that salvation could occur without God, and that something approximating the Kingdom of God on earth could be created by adjusting the material conditions of man.

History, in Marx’s view, was nothing but the crashes and grinding of these material forces. There was no such thing as a fixed human nature. There was certainly no God who is the author of history. There are no permanent themes that follow along moral lines. Rather, we are all merely pushed around by large and impersonal forces. But it is possible to wrest these forces within our control, to our advantage, provided we take the right steps.

And what are these steps, in Marx’s view? The expropriated working classes must take back what is rightfully theirs from the exploiting capitalist classes. Call it mass thievery, if you like — the point is to gain power over the production forces of society. This is where history is headed anyway, said Marx; we only need to give it a shove in the right direction to achieve the bliss of socialism. How will it work? Well, Marx never thought much about that. Why should he? The large and impersonal forces of history would hammer that out. It was only his job to describe the great events that lead to the revolutionary environment. What follows after is not really a matter of bourgeois science; we must simply accept on faith that somehow, somewhere, sometime, socialism will begin to work brilliantly.

Bizarre? It’s not so strange. We can look to the ancient world and see that many of the greatest intellectuals imagined that there would come a time when the problems of economics — scarcity, ownership, calculation, money — would vanish and utopia would appear. You might say that this is a longing for the Garden of Eden, but it neglects a critical fact: Human nature is the same now as it always was. There will always be a need to advance beyond a state of nature. The economic problem is intractable. Simply asserting that the new world will magically appear begs critical issues, such as how we are to feed, clothe, and house people.

Benedict sums the problem up neatly:

Together with the victory of the revolution, though, Marx’s fundamental error also became evident. He showed precisely how to overthrow the existing order, but he did not say how matters should proceed thereafter. He simply presumed that with the expropriation of the ruling class, with the fall of political power and the socialization of means of production, the new Jerusalem would be realized. Then, indeed, all contradictions would be resolved, man and the world would finally sort themselves out. Then everything would be able to proceed by itself along the right path, because everything would belong to everyone and all would desire the best for one another.

Socialism included no plan for the post-revolutionary world. Once economists discovered this central flaw, they seized on it and pointed out that socialism had no system in mind for solving the core economic problem of allocating scare resources among unlimited needs, and certainly no system for creating the new wealth that would be needed to sustain a rising population.

Nonetheless, the revolution happened:

Thus, having accomplished the revolution, Lenin must have realized that the writings of the master gave no indication as to how to proceed. True, Marx had spoken of the interim phase of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a necessity which in time would automatically become redundant. This ‘intermediate phase” we know all too well, and we also know how it then developed, not ushering in a perfect world, but leaving behind a trail of appalling destruction. Marx . . . omitted to work out how this new world would be organized — which should, of course, have been unnecessary.

The “appalling destruction” referred to here is a reference to war that occurred soon after the revolution. Millions died in famine and wholesale slaughter. It became clear to Lenin that he had to back away, lest there be no one left to rule. That he did — and just in time, with the New Economic Policy. But the dictatorship continued. So too did the poverty relative to capitalist nations.

So why did Marx never explain how socialism would work?

His silence on this matter follows logically from his chosen approach. His error lay deeper. He forgot that man always remains man. He forgot man and he forgot man’s freedom. He forgot that freedom always remains also freedom for evil. He thought that once the economy had been put right, everything would automatically be put right. His real error is materialism: man, in fact, is not merely the product of economic conditions, and it is not possible to redeem him purely from the outside by creating a favourable economic environment.

And so the pope has put the problems of economics exactly in the right light: the practical issue that needs to be settled within the framework of a sound morality and understanding of human nature. Socialism fails for a precise and practical reason: It has no system for pricing factors of production to make economic calculation possible. Prices come from the exchange of the very private property with which socialism dispenses.

And yet the moral problem with socialism is more profound: It exalts theft as an ethic and overlooks the human right of freedom.

Would that every Catholic interested in economics would read this encyclical. Some are getting the message already: The Catholic Church in Venezuela worked against Hugo Chavez’s dangerous plan for nationalization and regimentation of economic life. Someday, the world will come to learn the lessons that the history of socialism has taught. In the meantime, Benedict XVI is proving to be a wonderful teacher.

He Who Lives In Sin Takes Up The Habits And The Appearance Of The Beasts

He who lives in sin takes up the habits and the appearance of the beasts. The beast, which has not reason, knows nothing but its appetites. So the man who makes himself like the beasts loses his reason, and lets himself be guided by the inclinations of his body. He takes his pleasure in good eating and drinking, and in enjoying the vanities of the world, which pass away like the wind. I pity the poor wretches who run after that wind; they gain very little, they five a great deal for very little profit -- they five their eternity for the miserable smoke of the world. - St. Jean-Marie Vianney

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

Sin is The Executioner of The Good God And The Assassin of The Soul

Sin is the executioner of the good God, and the assassin of the soul. It snatches us away from Heaven to precipitate us into Hell. And we love it! What folly! If we thought seriously about it, we should have such a lively horror of sin that we could not commit it. O my children, how ungrateful we are! The good God wishes to make us happy; that is very certain; He gave us His Law for no other end. The Law of God is great; it is broad. King David said that he found his delight in it, and that it was a treasure more precious to him than the greatest riches. He said also that he walked at large, because he had sought after the Commandments of the Lord. The good God wishes, then, to make us happy, and we do not wish to be so. We turn away from Him, and give ourselves to the devil! We fly from our Friend, and we seek after our murderer! We commit sin; we plunge ourselves into the mire. Once sunk in this mire, we know not how to get out. If our fortune were in the case, we should soon find out how to get out of the difficulty; but because it only concerns our soul, we stay where we are. - St. Jean-Marie Vianney

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

The Happiness You Have A Right To Enjoy Has A Name And A Face: It Is Jesus of Nazareth, Hidden in The Eucharist

"Dear young people, the happiness you are seeking, the happiness you have a right to enjoy has a name and a face: it is Jesus of Nazareth, hidden in the Eucharist. Only he gives the fullness of life to humanity!" - Pope Benedict XVI

Sickening Ties

Below are key excerpts from an article I found on the Soros-"Liberal Catholic" funding and other sickening ties...Many Catholics are still being duped. Either they "aren't interested in politics" or they are full blown Democrats. Either way, I think they should be informed as to who is funding the lies being propagated in the Church. The corruption needs to be brought to everyone's attention.

It has now been revealed that George Soros, the billionaire hedge fund operator and well-known atheist, has been pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into “progressive” Catholic groups that are significant players in the national debates over health care and immigration.

On the surface, it would appear that Soros would be opposed to many positions of the Catholic Church. A major financial backer of the ACLU, Soros supports such causes as drug legalization, the rights of “sex workers” and felons, euthanasia, radical feminism, abortion rights, and homosexual rights. He does all of this in the name of promoting an “open society.”

But a review of the records of his Open Society Institute finds that a group calling itself Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (CACG) has received $200,000 from them over the last several years.

James Todd of Pewsitter.com, which represents traditional Catholics, calls such groups “CINOs,” or Catholics In Name Only. He explains, “This group and several others have sprung up recently—I suspect purposely organized and funded—to counterbalance the growing influence of the faithful Catholics AND to try to deceive and mislead the middle of the road Catholics that have determined the last 13 Presidential elections.”

An AIM investigation also finds, however, that Soros money has gone into the Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC), an organization established by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops back in 1988. It has received at least $530,000 from the Open Society Institute.


But the Soros-funded Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good has high-level connections of its own. The Treasurer-Secretary is Francis Xavier Doyle, a former top official of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the Executive director is Victoria Kovari, a former organizer for the Gamaliel Foundation, the same group that helped launch Barack Obama’s career as a community organizer in Chicago. The chairman is Alfred M. Rotondaro, a senior fellow at another Soros-funded group, the Center for American Progress.

Although CACG describes itself as “a lay Catholic organization that works to promote the common good and the broad spectrum of Catholic social teaching,” Frank Walker of the conservative Pewsitter website labels it a religious and political Trojan Horse designed to mislead Catholics and produce votes for the Democratic Party.

One purpose of the Soros money, Walker says, is to play down the importance of the abortion issue to Catholics and even make abortion rights a “respectable” Catholic position.

Walker notes that “The CACG is run and advised by powerful Democrats. Their board, staff, and advisory committee include top fundraisers and strategists as well as major labor union representation.” He adds, “Catholic Church Leadership from the Sisters of Mercy, the Jesuit order, the government-funded Catholic Charities and Catholic Relief Services are also represented at CACG. Catholic academia has a strong presence.”

Indeed, the CACG advisory council includes figures from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), AFL-CIO, Catholic University of America, Georgetown University, and Boston College.

In addition to health care reform, other big issues for CACG are “immigration reform” and “worker justice.” The latter links to a group promoting a bill, the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for unions to gain members.

The SEIU representative on the CACG board is Tom Chabolla, who serves as assistant to SEIU President Andy Stern. Before joining SEIU, he was associate director of programs for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), the agency of the Bishops that funded ACORN to the tune of $7.3 million over the last decade. Funding of ACORN—but not of groups like Gamaliel—has been suspended by the Bishops.

Abortion In Washington: 911 Audio Confirms: Planned Parenthood Ambulance Was For Botched Abortion

Planned Parenthood can talk all they want about how they're supposedly here to "protect women", but as long as their patients keep leaving out the back door on gurneys and being evacuated via ambulance, it's going to be increasingly ridiculous.


Abortion In Washington: 911 Audio Confirms: Planned Parenthood Ambulance was for botched abortion: "We just got hold of the 911 call from the March 18 story which we broke. Our reporter and several 40 Days for Life witnesses saw a woman...


click here to continue reading.

Discovering The Beauty of The Church

Fr. Robert Barron, of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, has a plan to reach out to reach out to young adults and anyone who wants to know just what Catholicism is. He travels the world to retrace the global story of Catholicism, and as we see at a screening of an episode of “The Catholicism Project” at Epiphany Church, he also helps some young adults rediscover their faith.


Click here for the video.

Our Blessed Lady Will Carry The Muslims The Rest of The Way to Her Divine Son

I believe that the blessed Virgin chose to be known as "Our Lady of Fatima" as a pledge and a sign of hope to the Muslim people, and as an assurance that they, who show her so much respect, will one day accept her divine Son too.


Missionaries in the future will, more and more, see that their apostolate among the Muslims will be successful in the measure that they preach Our Lady of Fatima. Mary is the advent of Christ, bringing Christ to the people before Christ himself is born. In an apologetic endeavor, it is always best to start with that which people already accept. Because the Muslims have a devotion to Mary, our missionaries should be satisfied merely to expand and to develop that devotion, with the full realization that Our Blessed Lady will carry the Muslims the rest of the way to her divine Son.


- Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen


Read the whole article here.