In this week's edition of The Catholic Free Press, Fr. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D, who serves as Director of Education at The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, writes, "..His [President Obama's] stem cell decision also manifests a troubling shift toward a more widespread and systemic form of oppression within our society. The President is offering Americans the prospect of using the powers of science to oppress, or more accurately, to suppress the youngest members of the human family to serve the interests of older and more wealthy members. He is offering Americans the prospect of reducing fellow human beings to cogs and commodities in the assembly line of the medico-business industrial complex. Many Americans, however, seem only vaguely aware of what has transpired in the President's decision. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas once commented on the way that oppression can subtly arise in our midst: 'As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.' Some would suggest that perhaps the darkness is already upon us. But a few moments of twilight may still remain, in which Americans can turn back the moral darkness that threatens our society and our future." (The Obama stem cell darkness, CFP, April 10, 2009 edition, p. 5).
Readers of this Blog know that I have been warning of the encroaching darkness for some time. Some have dismissed my warnings as "alarmist." No doubt others will also accuse Fr. Pacholczyk of being an alarmist. Many Americans have been desensitized to the darkness and have come to accept new values without even realizing it. Such people believe that we still live in a democracy. But we do not.
In his Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II reminded us that:
"Authentic democracy is possible only in a State ruled by law, and on the basis of a correct conception of the human person. It requires that the necessary conditions be present for the advancement both of the individual through education and formation in true ideals, and of the "subjectivity" of society through the creation of structures of participation and shared responsibility. Nowadays there is a tendency to claim that agnosticism and sceptical relativism are the philosophy and the basic attitude which correspond to democratic forms of political life. Those who are convinced that they know the truth and firmly adhere to it are considered unreliable from a democratic point of view, since they do not accept that truth is determined by the majority, or that it is subject to variation according to different political trends. It must be observed in this regard that if there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power. As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism.
Nor does the Church close her eyes to the danger of fanaticism or fundamentalism among those who, in the name of an ideology which purports to be scientific or religious, claim the right to impose on others their own concept of what is true and good. Christian truth is not of this kind. Since it is not an ideology, the Christian faith does not presume to imprison changing socio-political realities in a rigid schema, and it recognizes that human life is realized in history in conditions that are diverse and imperfect. Furthermore, in constantly reaffirming the transcendent dignity of the person, the Church's method is always that of respect for freedom.
But freedom attains its full development only by accepting the truth. In a world without truth, freedom loses its foundation and man is exposed to the violence of passion and to manipulation, both open and hidden. The Christian upholds freedom and serves it, constantly offering to others the truth which he has known (cf. Jn 8:31-32), in accordance with the missionary nature of his vocation. While paying heed to every fragment of truth which he encounters in the life experience and in the culture of individuals and of nations, he will not fail to affirm in dialogue with others all that his faith and the correct use of reason have enabled him to understand." (No. 46).
The English psychiatrist William Sargent explained that, "It is not the mentally ill but ordinary normal people who are most susceptible to 'brainwashing.'" And in her book The Nazis and the Occult, Dusty Sklar notes how, "Hitler's early speeches were so mesmerizing that even people who were repelled by his ideas felt themselves being swept along. The playwright Eugene Ionesco mentions in his autobiography that he received the inspiration for Rhinoceros when he felt himself pulled into the Nazi orbit at a mass rally and had to struggle to keep from developing 'rhinoceritis.' We 'catch' ideas, too, because we want to be like others, particularly when we want not to be our despised selves. If we're satisfied, we don't need to conform, but if we're not, we imitate people whom we admire for having greater judgment, taste, or good fortune than we do....Through conformity, the person who feels inferior is in no danger of being exposed. He's indistinguishable from the others. No one can single him out and examine his unique being. Conformity, in turn, sets him up to be further canceled out as an individual, to have no life apart from his collective purpose. This gives a movement tremendous power over the individual. Even intelligent people are not immune from the desire to conform. Heinrich Hildebrandt, a schoolteacher who was anxious to hide his liberal past, joined the Nazi party, and to his own disgust, found himself 'proud to be wearing the insignia. It showed I belonged, and the pleasure of belonging, so soon after feeling excluded, isolated, is very great...I belonged to the new nobility..'" (The Nazis and the Occult, pp. 157, 158).
The desire to conform and not to be perceived as being "different" or "countercultural," can be a very powerful force. Many Catholics (and other Christians) voted for President Barack Obama knowing full well that he supports abortion through all nine months of pregnancy right up to so-called partial-birth abortion - which is actually infanticide - as well as his support for Embryonic Stem Cell Research (ESCR) and the radical homosexual agenda.
A democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism. Prophetic words indeed. It's twilight. Darkness is falling. Will we pray and work to turn back the darkness? Or will we give into it?
The choice is ours. But perhaps not for much longer.
Related reading here.
11 comments:
Mr. Melanson, your warnings have been nothing less than prophetic as well. As night falls over the world, the only light will come from Christ Jesus and His Blessed Mother. I don't see things turning around. Too many are asleep.
Dr. Leo Alexander, Chief U.S. Medical Consultant at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials confirmed that, "Whatever proportions these crimes finally assumed, it became evident to all who investigated them that they had started from small beginnings." Dr. Alexander referred to "a subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitude of physicians."
These physicians came to accept the notion that there is such a thing as a life not worthy to be lived.
Besides being utterly immoral, ESCR is a threat to us all. A position paper prepared by Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas and released on July 1, 1999, makes this clear, "The prospect of government-sponsored experiments to manipulate and destroy human embryos should make us all lie awake at night. That some individuals would be destroyed in the name of medical science constitutes a threat to us all."
ESCR is all the more insidious since such research is pure barbarism disguised and cloaked by utilitarian rhetoric and promises of a "greater good" to be achieved by rejecting the human dignity of the early unborn child.
For those who still care:
Breaking: Catholic Georgetown Gives Platform for Obama Speech Today
By Kathleen Gilbert
WASHINGTON, D.C., April 14, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Amid a continuing firestorm of scandal caused by the University of Notre Dame's invitation of President Obama to speak and receive an honorary degree at graduation, Georgetown University will be hosting the President at 11:30 a.m. today for a speech on the economy, according to yesterday's White House press release.
The speech will take place in Gaston Hall, although only those with a ticket or RSVP may attend.
Pro-life advocates decrying the President's virulently pro-abortion record are planning to gather at the entrance to Georgetown University at 37th and O Street to protest during the event.
To contact Georgetown University:
John J. DeGioia, Ph.D.
Office of the President
phone: (202) 687-4134
fax: (202) 687-6660
Edward Quinn, Secretary of the University
phone: (202) 687-4134
fax: (202) 687-6660
email: quinne@georgetown.edu
In Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II spoke of a "culture of death" which is "actively fostered by powerful cultural, economic, and political currents which encourage an idea of society excessively concerned with efficiency." It is thus possible, he continues, "to speak of a war of the powerful against the weak" which unleashes a "conspiracy against life."
President Obama, by giving the green light to ESCR, has declared war against the weak and vulnerable. His executive order of March 9, 2009 represents yet another act of violence against human life.
Anyone who had place any hope in the medical profession to maintian any sort of Christian ethic is sadly mistaken. I am not a doctor, but rather a nurse practitioner so I work side by side with MD's within "their" profession and I'll tell you, almost all are asleep and completely in line with the culture of death. Although few actually perform abortions, the majority will refer for them, prescribe contraception, etc. Just more sheep who have lost sight of their Shepherd. We are quite far down the slippery slope. With any repeal of "conscience clauses" then will come the night.
BTW, even with the advent of so called "mandatory services" such as contraception, abortion, etc NO ONE can actually be forced to do anything. I cannot be forced to write any prescription - I can lost my job, my license, perhaps even be jailed, even put to death, but I cannot be forced to do as they say. A better term may be coerced, but forced? Never...
White House set to reverse health care conscience
By Saundra Young
CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Obama administration plans to reverse a regulation from late in the Bush administration allowing health-care workers to refuse to provide services based on moral objections, an official said Friday.
The rule protects the rights of health care providers who refuse to participate in certain procedures.
The Provider Refusal Rule was proposed by the Bush White House in August and enacted on January 20, the day President Barack Obama took office.
It expanded on a 30-year-old law establishing a "conscience clause" for "health-care professionals who don't want to perform abortions."
Under the rule, workers in health-care settings -- from doctors to janitors -- can refuse to provide services, information or advice to patients on subjects such as contraception, family planning, blood transfusions and even vaccine counseling if they are morally against it.
"We recognize and understand that some providers have objections to providing abortions, according to an official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The official declined to be identified because the policy change had not been announced. "We want to ensure that current law protects them.
"But we do not want to impose new limitations on services that would allow providers to refuse to provide to women and their families services like family planning and contraception that would actually help prevent the need for an abortion in the first place."
Many health-care organizations, including the American Medical Association, believe health-care providers have an obligation to their patients to advise them of the options despite their own beliefs. Critics of the current rule argue there are already laws on the books protecting health-care professionals when it comes to refusing care for personal reasons.
Dr. Suzanne T. Poppema, board chair of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, praised Obama "for placing good health care above ideological demands."
"Physicians across the country were outraged when the Bush administration, in its final days, limited women's access to reproductive health care," she said. "Hundreds of doctors protested these midnight regulations and urged President Obama to repeal them quickly. We are thrilled that President Obama took the first steps today to ensure that our patients' health is once again protected."
But Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said, "Protecting the right of all health-care providers to make professional judgments based on moral convictions and ethical standards is foundational to federal law and is necessary to ensure that access to health care is not diminished, which will occur if health-care workers are forced out of their jobs because of their ethical stances.
"President's Obama's intention to change the language of these protections would result in the government becoming the conscience and not the individual. It is a person's right to exercise their moral judgment, not the government's to decide it for them."
An announcement reversing the current rule is expected early next week, the HHS official said. Any final action would have to be taken after a 30-day public comment period.
Nazi and Stalinist Genocides were Inspired by Atheism: German Bishop Who Compared Abortion to Nazism
By Hilary White
AUGSBURG, Germany, April 14, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Secularists in Germany are furious at the assertion that the Nazi and Stalinist ideologies were developments of atheism, reports Germany's The Local newspaper. Linking Stalinist communism and National Socialism through their mutual rejection of Judeo-Christian concepts of right and wrong, Bishop Walter Mixa of Augsburg said this weekend that atheism created the genocidal regimes of the 20th century.
Bishop Mixa also drew criticism earlier this year when he compared the number of abortions in recent decades to the Nazi's attempt to exterminate the Jews.
In his Easter Sunday sermon, Bishop Mixa said, "Where God is denied, or opposed, soon Man and his dignity will also be denied and disregarded."
Mixa, who serves as the military bishop in Germany, added, "In the last century, the godless regimes of Nazism and Communism, with their penal camps, their secret police and their mass murder, proved in a terrible way the inhumanity of atheism in practice."
But humanist and atheist groups in Germany have objected to the sermon, calling it "historically inaccurate." Rudolf Ladwig, chairman of the International Association of the Confessionless and Atheists said Mixa's sermon was part of a "long-term strategy of the church to wrongly unburden the history of its own institution with regards to fascism," reports The Local.
A spokesman for the Giordano-Bruno Foundation, reiterated the claim that the National Socialism of Adolph Hitler was based on Catholic anti-Semitism. Michael Schmidt-Salomon told Spiegel Online, "The majority of the Nazi elite can be shown to have classified themselves as Christian."
However, Bishop Mixa is not the first to have made the connection between National Socialism and anti-Christian atheism. In the early 1940s, under the Nazi regime itself, Archbishop Clemens August von Galen, the bishop of Münster, infuriated the Nazi regime by denouncing it as a godless ideology opposed to Christianity.
Archbishop von Galen, who would become known to history as the Lion of Münster and who was beatified in 2005 by Pope Benedict XVI, campaigned against the atheistic racialist theories of National Socialism, the euthanasia programs and the Nazi efforts to halt religious instruction in Catholic schools.
In 1941, von Galen began publicly to attack the regime from his cathedral pulpit. In his sermons, he blasted the Nazi regime for its closing of Catholic institutions and deporting and jailing of clergy, for the desecration of Catholic churches, closing of convents and monasteries, and the deportation and euthanasia of mentally ill people.
Von Galen also opposed Stalinist communism for its persecution of Christians since the 1918 revolution, during which virtually all Catholic bishops were killed or imprisoned.
Currently, the movement to reinstate legal euthanasia in Germany and throughout Europe for the mentally ill and physically disabled is being spearheaded and funded by secularist atheist organisations and individuals. As of the beginning of 2009, some form of legal euthanasia have been reinstated in Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
The international academic and scientific world is also seeing a revival of the eugenic theories that formed a significant part of the Nazi ideologies, particularly in the fields associated with genetics and artificial procreation, cloning technologies and in vitro fertilisation. Some prominent atheists in these fields have openly called for the implementation of eugenic policies using modern technologies, including, most prominently, James Watson, the Nobel Prize winning molecular biologist who co-discovered DNA.
URL: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/apr/09041405.html
The Obama Administration is beginning to persecute pro-lifers by portraying us as violent extremists:
Obama Administration Tells Local Police Pro-Life Advocates May Engage in Violence, Extremism
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
April 14, 2009
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Just months into his administration, President Barack Obama is already targeting pro-life advocates as the Obama administration has released a document that claims pro-life people may engage in violence or extremism. The new document comes on the heels of one in Missouri that caused a national uproar.
In the new document, the Department of Homeland Security warned law officials about a supposed rise in "rightwing extremist activity," saying the poor economy and presence of a black president could spark problems.
According to the Washington Times, a footnote attached to the nine-page report from the Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis say the activities of pro-life advocates is included in "rightwing extremism in the United States.”
"It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single-issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration," the warning says.
The White House, sensing political backlash, is already distancing itself from the report.
White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said, "The President is focused not on politics but rather taking the steps necessary to protect all Americans from the threat of violence and terrorism regardless of its origins.”
"He also believes those who serve represent the best of this country, and he will continue to ensure that our veterans receive the respect and benefits they have earned,” Shapiro added.
The Obama administration sent the document to police and sheriff's departments across the country on April 7 under the headline, "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment."
The Times indicates the report says the Obama administration could be monitoring the activities of pro-life advocates.
It says the federal government "will be working with its state and local partners over the next several months" to gather information on "rightwing extremist activity in the United States” even though the Obama administration does not have "specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence."
Concerns that the federal government might target pro-life advocates aren’t pie-in-the-sky myths as two pro-life people have already felt the persecution.
In February, an Oklahoma man with a homemade pro-life sign on his vehicle was pulled over and harassed by police for allegedly making a threat against the president.
Chip Harrison said he was driving to work when a police officer followed him for several miles and eventually signaled him to pull over.
The officer mistook the sign, which read "Abort Obama, not the unborn," as threatening.
And in October, a pro-life woman who received an unsolicited phone call from the Barack Obama campaign complained about his pro-abortion position. The call earned her a visit from the Secret Service, who were apparently given erroneous information from the campaign volunteer that she made a death threat.
"Christianity in Europe Coming to an End": Vienna Cardinal
By Hilary White
VIENNA, April 14, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna has warned that Christianity in Europe is dying out. Christoph Cardinal Schönborn said at St. Stephen's Cathedral on Easter Sunday, "The time of Christianity in Europe is coming to an end. A Christianity, which achieved such great things like this cathedral or the wonderful music we will hear today."
Cardinal Schönborn's Easter homily follows comments he made earlier in which he criticised Austrian Church leaders for their failure to accept and promote the watershed 1968 papal encyclical Humanae Vitae that reiterated the Church's teaching against artificial birth control.
In March last year, the cardinal said that many bishops are "frightened of the press and of being misunderstood by the faithful." The result is that contraception has become widely accepted and Europe is "about to die out."
In this Sunday's homily, the cardinal addressed the obsession of the secular media with the Church's teachings on sexuality, saying that it has been the subject of a "massive preconception" that the Church is opposed to sexual happiness and freedom.
"The Church can help people acquire the right attitude towards sex, which is not an isolated thing of all-consuming importance. The quality of the entire relationship is what is important in a male-female partnership," he said.
The decline of the Catholic Church in Austria mirrors that of the rest of Europe since the advent of the 1960s "sexual revolution." While official Vatican statistics say that 72.7 percent of Austrians are Catholic, a 2005 European Social Survey found that just 63.9 percent of Austrians actually describe themselves as such and almost 30 percent say they have no religious affiliation at all. Weekly Mass attendance among Catholics in the country hovers around 10 percent and, between 1985 and 2002, the number of priests in Austria dropped by almost one-quarter.
I have to admit I found this post startling at first. But when I re-read it, I found myself agreeing with it. It does seem like our culture is asleep and unable to recognize the ramifications of recent events. I think this moral blindness is the result of the loss of the sense of sin. Shouldn't pastors be promoting the Sacrament of Penance as a remedy to this dilemna?
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