Why Saint Mary's Church in Orange, Massachusetts is not attracting young people

Bishop Joseph F. Maguire, former Bishop of the Springfield Massachusetts Diocese, was known to be part of the cover-up of sexual abuse within the Diocese.  See here.

Saint Mary's Church in Orange, Massachusetts, the same Church that welcomed prayers for Keith Sullivan, a Youth Minister accused of sexual abuse - see here - (while offering no such prayers for the alleged victim) is now advertising a Memorial Mass for the now deceased Bishop Maguire.

This comes as no surprise as the Church, under Father Shaun O'Connor, has promoted the views of Father Jonathan Morris, a priest who distorted the Church's teaching regarding homosexuality, while banning me from its Facebook page for defending the Magisterial teaching of the Church.

And while Keith Sullivan, arrested by the Nashua Police Department for sexual abuse and kidnapping was welcome at Saint Mary's, apparently Catholics faithful to orthodoxy are not.  This explains why the Church is disintegrating.  One lay person, involved in parish ministry, was overheard saying (to a friend just prior to Mass), that there aren't many kids at CCD and that "young people aren't going to Mass."

Should this really come as a surprise?

Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D., in his classic work devoted to the interior life entitled Divine Intimacy, explains that, "Devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel indicates a strong call to the interior life, which, in a very special way, is Mary's life.  The Blessed Virgin wants us to resemble her in heart and mind much more than in externals.  If we penetrate into Mary's soul, we see that grace produced in her a very rich interior life: a life of recollection, prayer, uninterrupted giving of herself to God, and of constant contact and intimate union with Him.  Mary's soul is a sanctuary reserved for God alone where no creature has ever left an imprint; here reign love and zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of men.  Those who wish to live truly devoted to Our Lady of Mount Carmel, must follow Mary into the depths of the interior life...Every interior soul, even if living amid the tumult of the world, must strive to reach this peace, this interior silence, which alone makes continual contact with God possible.  It is our passions and attachments that make noise within us, that disturb our peace of mind and interrupt our intimate converse with God.  Only the soul that is wholly detached and in complete control of its passions can, like Mary, be a solitary, silent 'garden' where God will find His delights.  This is the grace we ask of Our Lady today when we choose her to be the Queen and mistress of our interior life." (Divine Intimacy, pp. 1147-1148).

When a soul is occupied with inordinate attachments to self or creatures or the vain and passing things of this world, it is unable to love God with all its strength and finds itself divided between God and self, between God and creatures, between God and the transitory things of this dying world.  But we are commanded, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with all thy strength and with all thy mind." (Luke 10: 27).

It is these inordinate attachments to self or creatures which lead to dissent and ultimately polarization within the Church.  The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in its Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian, tells us that, "The Church 'is like a sacrament, a sign and instrument, that is, of communion with God and of unity among all men' (Lumen Gentium, 1).  Consequently, to pursue concord and communion is to enhance the force of her witness and credibility.  To succumb to the temptation of dissent, on the other hand, is to allow the 'leaven of infidelity to the Holy Spirit' to start to work." (No. 40).

This leaven of infidelity has, for many years now, crippled many within the Church.  The dissent which has been embraced within the Church has led to polarization.  Why?  Because faithful Catholics who do not [and indeed cannot] accept the dissenting view are duty bound to resist it for the sake of the Church's authentic peace, a peace which Pope John XXIII said, "is not completely untroubled and serene; it is active, not calm and motionless.  In short, this is a peace that is ever at war.  It wars with every sort of error, including that which falsely wears the face of truth; it struggles against the enticements of vice, against those enemies of the soul, of whatever description, who can weaken, blemish, or destroy our innocence or Catholic faith." (Ad Petri cathedram).

There has been much dissent and subsequent polarization within the Diocese of Springfield (as in others) because the leadership (and here we are being most generous in our terms) of the local Church has failed to inspire the faithful (and its own priests first and foremost) to strip themselves of all that is not of God.  While St. John of the Cross assures us that, "The soul has only one will, and if it occupies itself or encumbers itself with anything, it will not remain free, solitary, and pure, as is required for divine transformation," the Springfield Diocese has encouraged an atmosphere of self-will, self-assertion, self-affirmation and self-promotion.  Forgotten is the warning of the Holy Spirit that "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." (James 4: 6).

We (all of us) must become more Mary-like in heart and mind and not just in externals.  "In every deliberate sin," as Dr. Germain Grisez reminds us, such as dissent from Church teaching or deliberate non-assent, "freedom of self-determination is exercised contrary to what is known to be truly right and good.  In sinning, sinners tend to regard moral truths legalistically, as if they were mere rules blocking them from doing as they please.  Thus, deliberate sin seems to be self-affirming.  Affirming the self and rejecting the limits which deny some forbidden fruit, sinners try to be autonomous, as only God really can be."

Faith demands the renunciation of the sinful self which authentic devotion to Mary necessarily involves.  Pride must give way to humility.  Only then can one find the truth which sets one free (John 8: 32). 

Why is it that the Saint Michael Prayer has been abandoned by so many?

Michael Brown, over at Spirit Daily, notes:

"While priests abusing Catholic young was already headed upward — a path begun in the early 1950s — it exploded immediately after 1965, the year the Church, transforming itself after Vatican II, removed the Prayer to the Archangel Michael from Mass, Catholicism’s most potent shield against the enemy.

The prayer’s liturgical placement had been initiated with Pope Leo XIII, who sometime between 1884 and 1886 had a legendary mystical experience during which it was indicated to him that the devil would have enhanced powers to attack the Mother Church of Christianity.

Soon after, the first little upward blips of reported abuse were recorded...

The practice of reciting the prayer and the other ones instituted by the holy Pope Leo after Mass was officially suppressed in 1964 — ironically, on September 26, just days before the archangel’s feast day — by an Instruction Inter oecumenici which came into effect on March 7, 1965.

Removing the obligation to recite this prayer (along with the three Hail Marys, the Hail Holy Queen, and the prayer for the Church) after Low Mass did not mean forbidding its use either privately or publicly, but it was all but lost to the Church-at-large. Forms of Low Mass itself ended in 1970.

The prayer is still not widely recited at Mass today, though Saint Pope John Paul II urged the faithful to keep praying it in 1994 — immediately after an upsurge in abuse reports but as such cases headed on a sharply downward trend, soon leveling off. Last October Pope Francis, in the midst of new headlines about abuse, generated by a Pennsylvania grand jury report and the scandal of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, similarly petitioned all faithful to recite it."

In 2014, I addressed this specific issue. See here.  I wrote, in part, "Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich warned that the faithful, 'must pray above all for the Church of Darkness to leave Rome..'  Venerable Emmerich was a true mystic and was shown the dark forces which are constantly attempting to undermine the Church in Rome [the Magisterium] and that the ultimate goal of ecclesiastical masonry was to infiltrate the highest levels of the Church in preparation for the entrance of the Man of Sin upon the world stage.

Could this explain why the longer version of Pope Leo XIII's exorcism prayer has been largely abandoned in our own time?  For this longer version of the prayer was clearly intended to invoke God's protection against those same dark forces which intend to seduce Rome and to corrupt it from within so that it will be in eclipse.  The longer version of Pope Leo XIII's prayer is as follows:

O Glorious Archangel St. Michael, Prince of the heavenly host, be our defense in the terrible warfare which we carry on against principalities and Powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, spirits of evil. Come to the aid of man, whom God created immortal, made in his own image and likeness, and redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil.


Fight this day the battle of the Lord, together with the holy angels, as already thou hast fought the leader of the proud angels, Lucifer, and his apostate host, who were powerless to resist thee, nor was there place for them any longer in Heaven. That cruel, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil or Satan, who seduces the whole world, was cast into the abyss with his angels. Behold, this primeval enemy and slayer of men has taken courage. Transformed into an angel of light, he wanders about with all the multitude of wicked spirits, invading the earth in order to blot out the name of God and of his Christ, to seize upon, slay and cast into eternal perdition souls destined for the crown of eternal glory. This wicked dragon pours out, as a most impure flood, the venom of his malice on men of depraved mind and corrupt heart, the spirit of lying, of impiety, of blasphemy, and the pestilent breath of impurity, and of every vice and iniquity.

These most crafty enemies have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on her most sacred possessions. In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety, with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck, the sheep may be scattered.

Arise then, O invincible Prince, bring help against the attacks of the lost spirits to the people of God, and give them the victory. They venerate thee as their protector and Patron; in thee holy Church glories as her defense against the malicious power of hell; to thee has God entrusted the souls of men to be established in heavenly beatitude. Oh, pray to the God of peace that He may put Satan under our feet, so far conquered that he may no longer be able to hold men in captivity and harm the Church. Offer our prayers in the sight of the most High, so that they may quickly conciliate the mercies of the Lord; and beating down the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, do thou again make him captive in the abyss, that he may no longer seduce the nations. Amen.

Behold the Cross of the Lord; be scattered ye hostile powers.

The Lion of the tribe of Judah has conquered, the root of David.

Let thy mercies be upon us, O Lord.

As we have hoped in thee.

O Lord, hear my prayer.

And let my cry come unto thee.

Let us pray.

O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we call upon thy holy name, and as suppliants we implore thy clemency, that by the intercession of Mary, ever Virgin immaculate and our Mother, and of the glorious Archangel St. Michael, thou wouldst deign to help us against Satan and all other unclean spirits, who wander about the world for the injury of the human race and the ruin of souls.

Amen.

Are dark forces behind the neglect of this prayer?  At La Salette, Melanie Calvat was told that "Rome will lose the faith and become the seat of the Antichrist.  For now is the time of all times, the end of all ends.  The Church will be in eclipse, the world will be in dismay...Now is the time; the abyss is opening.  Here is the king of kings of darkness, here is the Beast with his subjects, calling himself the savior of the world."  Pope Leo XIII, a great champion of marian spirituality and the Holy Rosary, was concerned enough about certain forces which have an "iniquitous design" to strike the Pastor [the Pope] and to scatter the sheep that he composed this beautiful prayer.

Why then has it been largely abandoned in our post-conciliar Church?"

At Saint Mary's Parish in Orange, Massachusetts, the Pastor, Father Shaun O'Connor, has eliminated the Saint Michael Prayer after Mass after the prayer was said after Mass for years.

No explanation has ever been given.

Tom Brady doesn't get it...why we stand for the National Anthem

Father George Rutler on taking a knee during the National Anthem here.

"As a former NFL player, I am one American who will have nothing to do with any NFL Team that cannot find the corporate courage to stand for the millions of courageous past great Americans whose sacrifice gave meaning to our flag and national anthem and to the millions upon millions who still dream to come to its free shores."

Burgess Owens

From Cornell Law School: Standing for the National Anthem, here.

Francis: Why didn't you refer Simon Cazal to an exorcist?

Francis just told priests "to not hesitate to call on the services of an exorcist."

A good confessor, he said, has to be very discerning, particularly when he has to deal with "real spiritual disorders." Francis made his remarks at a Vatican training seminar on the art of hearing believers recount their sins.

Francis said that disorders could have their roots in all manner of circumstances, including supernatural ones. In such circumstances the confessor "must not hesitate to refer to exorcists... chosen with great care and prudence."

In the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's Letter to Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, Cardinal Ratzinger summarized the biblical teaching on homosexuality and explained why the Church's teaching on this subject follows necessarily from her teaching on the nature and purpose of sexuality:

"The Church, obedient to the Lord who founded her and gave to her the sacramental life, celebrates the divine plan of the loving and life-giving union of men and women in the Sacrament of Marriage. It is only in the marital relationship that the use of the sexual faculty can be morally good. A person engaging in homosexual behavior therefore acts immorally. To choose someone of the same sex for one's sexual activity is to annul the rich symbolism and meaning, not to mention the goals, of the Creator's sexual design. Homosexual activity is not a complementary union, able to transmit life; and so it thwarts the call to a life of that form of self-giving which the Gospel says is the essence of Christian living. This does not mean that homosexual persons are not often generous and giving of themselves; but when they engage in homosexual activity they confirm within themselves a disordered sexual inclination which is essentially self-indulgent. As in every moral disorder, homosexual activity prevents one's own fulfillment and happiness by acting contrary to the creative wisdom of God. The Church, in rejecting erroneous opinions regarding homosexuality, does not limit but rather defends personal freedom and dignity realistically and authentically understood."

Homosexual activity is both self-indulgent and narcissistic. Gianfrancesco Zuanazzi, Professor of Psychology and Psychopathology for the John Paul II Institute for Studies at the Pontifical Lateran University, explains that, "The homosexual condition is difficult, sometimes tragic, and not only because of the obstacles it can still encounter in society and the injustices of which it can be the victim, but also because of its narcissistic quality. This quality is expressed in the continual attempts at 'self-recovery' and in searching for the 'better self' or the 'missing self' in another person. The homosexual approach is really one of identification and possession. According to Miller, it is easier for two homosexuals to regard each other as narcissistic extensions of themselves than to be involved in a mutual exchange. Socarides says without hesitation that in a homosexual relationship each partner plays his role, ignoring the complementarity of a sexual union, as if the act were consummated in "splendid isolation" from the other individual, simply as a stratagem for portraying a one-sided emotional conflict. Every homosexual encounter is primarily concerned with disarming the partner by means of seduction, prayer, power, prestige, effeminacy or masculinity, in order to derive satisfaction then from the loser.

Homosexual, like heterosexual, relationships exhibit forms of uplifting tenderness or mere genital expression, but whatever the approach, it always seems that the subjects use each other to fulfil themselves and, at the same time, to defend themselves from one another in a reciprocal way. Even if at the present time, dominated by the fear of AIDS, a couple's relations are not exceptional, as a rule they are unstable, unfaithful, strewn with jealousy and bitterness, marked by possessive love and demands that will never be satisfied. Very often homosexual relationships do not bind the two parties, but reveal that typical self-isolation which is an expression of complete autoerotism. The absence of complementarity, which stems from the radical difference between masculine and feminine identification, prevents the genuine dynamic of a couple. 'There is always something false", Marcel Eck notes, "and deeply painful in these loves which cannot experience reciprocity'. The problem of being, the title of a work by Jean Cocteau, who wrote from direct experience, is precisely the problem of being together.

Hans Giese rightly stresses that the 'foreground' of the homosexual syndrome comes from 'clinging to the self'. The move towards the other is not completed, while the move towards one's own sex is shorter, less costly, simpler; but, since one fears the risk of failure, to take this step involves a new risk, that of egotism. Bergler also maintains that the dominant note is always emotional detachment from the other and the focusing of interest on mere sexual gratification. Kardiner notes that the majority of these experiences are due to casual encounters and are 'one-night stands', i.e., the essential element is the value the experience has for the imagination and not the lasting human relationship. This easily leads to the desire for arousal for its own sake, to repetition and finally to anonymity, the discovery of the other not being worth the effort. Then the body is truly reduced to something corporeal: Pier Paolo Pasolini's posthumous work Petrolio exemplifies this eventuality as amply as it does monotonously. In short, for the homosexual there is the proximate danger of failing into such anonymous, repetitive and ever more demanding sexual behaviour that it becomes a kind of addiction. But this promiscuity or 'tricking', which is so frequent in the gay world, is sometimes praised by those involved as the best of relationships."  See here.

Francis has met on a number of occasions with homosexual activists who are hell bent on seeing the Church change her teaching with regard to homosexual acts.  One of these, Simon Cazal, a sodomite who lives with another man in a pretend "gay marriage," and who asserts that there is no contradiction in being a Catholic while engaging in homosexual sex, met with Francis and nothing was said about his disorder.  One has to wonder why Francis didn't refer Mr. Cazal to an exorcist.

As if we don't already know.  See here.

One has to wonder if Francis would have referred this individual to an exorcist.

Pope Saint John Paul II's authentic mercy versus the counterfeit mercy of Francis...see here

Why does Francis have such sympathy for Judas?

The Amateur Brain Surgeon notes how Francis's sympathy for Judas contradicts the Church's Tradition.

Back in 2012, Pope Benedict XVI said that a lack of sincerity in life is “the mark of the devil” as witnessed in the decision of Judas Iscariot to continue following Jesus Christ even after he had ceased to believe in him.

Pope Benedict stressed that, “The problem is that Judas did not go away, and his most serious fault was falsehood, which is the mark of the devil. This is why Jesus said to the Twelve: ‘One of you is a devil’..." See here.

So why does Francis have sympathy for the one Jesus refers to as a devil? Because he is betraying the Church himself.

Father Vincent Miceli, S.J., explains the vice of treason:

"The vice that destroys the justice and order of any society is called treason.  Treason is a special, unnatural hatred of God as the author of one's being; it is also hatred of one family which gives birth and nourishment to the person; it is hatred of one's fatherland which endows it's subjects with citizenship in a social milieu that guarantees human dignity, liberty and peace.  Treason is the ultimate ingratitude.  Judas hated Jesus, his benevolent savior and sold him into the hands of his enemies.  The betrayal of Judas created chaos in the community of the twelve...There is a satanic, despicable dimension in the character of every traitor."

Isn't this why Francis is anxious to pardon Judas and make excuses for him?  Because he himself is a traitor?

Related reading here.

Why no similar statement from the Vatican after Pope Francis' meeting with a sodomite?

Writing for The New York Times, Jim Yardley notes that the Vatican issued a statement indicating that Pope Francis’ Meeting with Kim Davis wasn’t an endorsement of her views.

One has to wonder why no such statement was issued by the Vatican after Francis met with radical homosexual activist Simon Cazal who agitated for the Church to change her teaching relative to the sin that cries to Heaven for vengeance.

Why is the Coliseum, with the lift for introducing wild animals into it, being rebuilt now?

The Termite Nations have dispensed with God and His Commandments in their quest for unbridled hedonism. We are being prepared for the Reign of Antichrist. The Rev. P. Huchede, in his work entitled "History of Antichrist," explains the religious preparation, both intellectual and moral, for the Reign of Antichrist which will arrive after economic collapse: "But how shall he deprive the world of Christianity and have himself adored as God? Alas, it is only too true that the minds and hearts of men are admirably disposed for revolution and consequently ready to accept and bear the cruel yoke of such a tyrant. Revolution as the word itself implies means a subversion, but a subversion of all that is true, good, beautiful, and grand in the universe. It is the subversion of religion, representing its dogmas as myths and its moral teachings as tyranical. It is the subversion of authority. Licentiousness under the name of liberty becomes the order of the day; each one is invested with the right to govern himself. It is the subversion of reason: and do we not find leading minds in some of the most enlightened nations denying the principle of contradiction and maintaining the absolute identity of all beings? Revolution is therefore essentially destructive, and it becomes cosmopolitan by the action of secret societies scattered throughout the world. Is it not true to say that the 'mystery of iniquity' is prepared in secret revolutionary dens? But it does not suffice to destroy; it is absolutely necessary to build up again. The world cannot subsist long in a vacuum. It must have a religion; it must have a philosophy; it must have an authority. Revolution will furnish all these. Instead of the reasonable and supernatural religion of Jesus Christ, Revolution will preach Pantheism. The God-humanity will impart the theurgic spirit and thus lead men to adore the demon as the author of universal emancipation...

What frightful immorality must follow in the train of this shameless prostitution of religion! Never has the threefold concupiscence made greater ravage among mankind. And this is the religion sought and hoped for as the cherished boon of the aspirations of our modern free thinkers. To our Christian philosophy, the honor of humanity's revolution will substitute a babel of extravagant and absurd ideas. Instead of a mild and efficient authority consecrated alike by Church and state, despotism and anarchy will rise up and contend for the shreds of religious liberty and human policy...if the state of perversion continue for a while longer, he [Antichrist] will find the world prepared to receive and serve him." (Rev. P. Huchede, History of Antichrist, pp. 13-14, Tan Books).

The spirit of Antichrist is intensifying and hostility toward Christians (and the Catholic Church in particular) is spreading like a cancer.  Father Bernard Maria Clausi. O.F.M. (d. 1849), speaking of the coming chastisement, says that before the Triumph of the Church, "terrible will be the persecution of the wicked against the just.."  See here.


And this persecution is beginning to intensify.  Soon it will become bloody. For the Lucifer State will not tolerate dissent.  Already preparation is underway for killing those who refuse to accept the Satanic programme.  See here.

Why is the Coliseum being rebuilt now? Why is it so important to rebuild the lifts for introducing wild animals into the Coliseum?

Pope Francis: This is why there cannot be any authentic dialogue with Islam

In his Encyclical Letter Ecclesiam Suam, Pope Paul VI told us that, "The Church must enter into dialogue with the world in which it lives. It has something to say, a message to give, a communication to make." (No. 65).

The Holy Father goes on to say that, "Dialogue, therefore, is a recognized method of the apostolate. It is a way of making spiritual contact. It should however have the following characteristics:

1) Clarity before all else; the dialogue demands that what is said should be intelligible. We can think of it as a kind of thought transfusion. It is an invitation to the exercise and development of the highest spiritual and mental powers a man possesses. This fact alone would suffice to make such dialogue rank among the greatest manifestations of human activity and culture. In order to satisfy this first requirement, all of us who feel the spur of the apostolate should examine closely the kind of speech we use. Is it easy to understand? Can it be grasped by ordinary people? Is it current idiom?

2) Our dialogue must be accompanied by that meekness which Christ bade us learn from Himself: "Learn of me, for I am meek and humble of heart." It would indeed be a disgrace if our dialogue were marked by arrogance, the use of bared words or offensive bitterness. What gives it its authority is the fact that it affirms the truth, shares with others the gifts of charity, is itself an example of virtue, avoids peremptory language, makes no demands. It is peaceful, has no use for extreme methods, is patient under contradiction and inclines towards generosity. 

3) Confidence is also necessary; confidence not only in the power of one's own words, but also in the good will of both parties to the dialogue. Hence dialogue promotes intimacy and friendship on both sides. It unites them in a mutual adherence to the Good, and thus excludes all self-seeking.

4) Finally, the prudence of a teacher who is most careful to make allowances for the psychological and moral circumstances of his hearer, particularly if he is a child, unprepared, suspicious or hostile. The person who speaks is always at pains to learn the sensitivities of his audience, and if reason demands it, he adapts himself and the manner of his presentation to the susceptibilities and the degree of intelligence of his hearers....In a dialogue conducted with this kind of foresight, truth is wedded to charity and understanding to love." (Nos. 81, 82).

As faithful Catholics, we must recognize and embrace these characteristics of authentic dialogue, even when our partners in dialogue refuse to accept these principles. For we will often encounter those who have succumbed to relativism or who do not possess a love of objective truth. For such people, the purpose of dialogue is not to attain truth but rather to achieve personal victory and to triumph at any cost. As Dr. Montague Brown explains in his wonderful book "The One-Minute Philosopher" (Sophia Institute Books): "An argument (emotional, not rational) is a disorderly confrontation based on an unwillingness to learn from one another. Desire for victory takes precedence over love of truth, with the result that agreement becomes impossible....in an argument, I simply want my position to be the right one and you to agree with me. I am, indeed, looking for agreement, but on my terms, not in terms of objective truth." (p. 33). An authentic dialogue (which such people are not really interested in) is, "..an orderly confrontation based on a mutual willingness to learn from one another. It involves the presentation of evidence by each party and then a good-faith attempt of the participants in the discussion to come to agreement...In a discussion [or dialogue], I do not primarily want to disagree: I want to know the truth.." (The One-Minute Philosopher, p. 32).

It was Pope John Paul II, in his Encyclical Letter Ut Unum Sint, No. 36, who said, "There must be charity toward one's partner in dialogue, and humility with regard to the truth which comes to light and which might require a review of assertions and attitudes."

In order for dialogue to be authentic, all parties involved must be charitable toward others in the dialogue and possess humility with regard to the demands of truth.

As Franklin Graham just said on Facebook, "..followers of Islam are raping, butchering, and beheading Christians, Jews, and anyone who doesn't submit to their Sharia Islamic law." Clearly one cannot dialogue with such people.  Anyone who believes differently is simply not in touch with reality.

Those who attempt to argue, as Pope Francis has, that there is nothing inherently violent about Islam, are being dishonest.  As this website correctly notes, "The strangest and most untrue thing that can be said about Islam is that it is a Religion of Peace.  If every standard by which the West is judged and condemned (slavery, imperialism, intolerance, misogyny, sexual repression, warfare...) were applied equally to Islam, the verdict would be devastating.  Islam never gives up what it conquers, be it religion, culture, language or life.  Neither does it make apologies or any real effort at moral progress.  It is the least open to dialogue and the most self-absorbed.  It is convinced of its own perfection, yet brutally shuns self-examination and represses criticism.

This is what makes the Quran's verses of violence so dangerous.  They are given the weight of divine command.  While Muslim terrorists take them as literally as anything else in their holy book, and understand that Islam is incomplete without Jihad, moderates offer little to contradict them - outside of opinion.  Indeed, what do they have?  Speaking of peace and love may win over the ignorant, but when every twelfth verse of Islam's holiest book either speaks to Allah's hatred for non-Muslims or calls for their death, forced conversion, or subjugation, it's little wonder that sympathy for terrorism runs as deeply as it does in the broader community - even if most Muslims personally prefer not to interpret their religion in this way."

Why can't Leominster, Massachusetts honor this veteran?

Thomas DiGeronimo, webmaster over at the Leominster High website, see here, posted the following on Facebook:

David Hill, LHS '66 grad, died in Viet Nam in '69. His Mom wants to know why the city of Leominster can't name a street after him, when some people get parks named after them. Leominster gave out ribbons for servicemen who fought in WWI, WWII, and even Korea. but not for Viet Nam Veterans.
Leominster Veterans Service has dropped the ball."

What message does this send to veterans, their families and friends, and the wider community? That veterans of the conflict in Viet Nam are second-class citizens?

Just a Common Soldier
(A Soldier Died Today)
By A. Lawrence Vaincourt


He was getting old and paunchy and his hair was falling fast,
And he sat around the Legion, telling stories of the past.

Of a war that he had fought in and the deeds that he had done,
In his exploits with his buddies; they were heroes, every one.

And tho’ sometimes, to his neighbors, his tales became a joke,
All his Legion buddies listened, for they knew whereof he spoke.

But we’ll hear his tales no longer for old Bill has passed away,
And the world’s a little poorer, for a soldier died today.

He will not be mourned by many, just his children and his wife,
For he lived an ordinary and quite uneventful life.

Held a job and raised a family, quietly going his own way,
And the world won’t note his passing, though a soldier died today.

When politicians leave this earth, their bodies lie in state,
While thousands note their passing and proclaim that they were great.

Papers tell their whole life stories, from the time that they were young,
But the passing of a soldier goes unnoticed and unsung.

Is the greatest contribution to the welfare of our land
A guy who breaks his promises and cons his fellow man?

Or the ordinary fellow who, in times of war and strife,
Goes off to serve his Country and offers up his life?

A politician’s stipend and the style in which he lives
Are sometimes disproportionate to the service that he gives.

While the ordinary soldier, who offered up his all,
Is paid off with a medal and perhaps, a pension small.

It’s so easy to forget them for it was so long ago,
That the old Bills of our Country went to battle, but we know

It was not the politicians, with their compromise and ploys,
Who won for us the freedom that our Country now enjoys.

Should you find yourself in danger, with your enemies at hand,
Would you want a politician with his ever-shifting stand?

Or would you prefer a soldier, who has sworn to defend
His home, his kin and Country and would fight until the end?

He was just a common soldier and his ranks are growing thin,
But his presence should remind us we may need his like again.

For when countries are in conflict, then we find the soldier’s part
Is to clean up all the troubles that the politicians start.

If we cannot do him honor while he’s here to hear the praise,
Then at least let’s give him homage at the ending of his days.

Perhaps just a simple headline in a paper that would say,
Our Country is in mourning, for a soldier died today.

Contact Mayor Dean J. Mazzarella to express your concerns and ask him why the City of Leominster cannot honor its native son with a street named after him.

Mayor Mazzarella:

Phone: 1-978-534-7500

Email: dmazzarella@leominster-ma.gov

Or his Mayoral Aide Michelle Nadeau at:

mnadeau@leominster-ma.gov

Let Leominster Veterans "Services" know how you feel on Facebook

Why is the UN censoring pro-life speech?

“They promise..freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption…” (2 Peter 2:19).




Wendy Wright, reporting for C-FAM, notes how, "Youth attending a UN conference on women’s issues this week say UN security officers confiscated their backpacks after discovering pro-life literature.

The confiscated materials were petitions to 'Stop Sexualizing Children,' and were connected to a UN approved workshop led this week by Dr. Miriam Grossman, a child psychiatrist and author of 'You're Teaching My Child What? A Physician Exposes the Lies of Sex Education and How They Harm Your Child.'

The offending flyer announced a project called the 'Girls Coalition to Protect the Health and Innocence of Children,' which is an ad hoc group that sponsored the Grossman event. At the panel, girls from China, Spain and Mexico launched a petition calling on UN agencies to 'Stop Sexualizing Children.' They charge the UN’s promotion of 'comprehensive sexuality education' is harmful to children.

The young people insist they were not leafleting, which is forbidden on UN property, though it is routinely ignored. The young students left UN grounds to make more copies. Upon their return they were stopped by UN security.

One of the students, Kalli Lawrence, said that the guards noticed the group’s distinctive green backpacks and then ordered the students to hand them over. 'The guards had this confused, angry look on their faces,' she reported, 'and they started telling all the security guards, "don’t let any of these yellow papers go through, just take them all and keep them."'

The green backpacks and literature were stored in lockers at a security checkpoint. Students and their teachers were allowed to retrieve some of the backpacks as they left UN property. According to teacher Jody Dunn, some of the backpacks were not returned, those that contained a pro-life documentary called '180'. Dunn then insisted and those backpacks were returned also.

Pro-lifers have long felt the sting of selective enforcement of UN rules. Kali Lawrence said, 'They didn’t stop anyone else that we could see passing out flyers.'

Upon questioning by the Friday Fax, the security officer in charge at the time said guards don’t 'target' items. He went on to say they were not allowed to discuss policies or procedures.

Observers speculate that someone connected to Commission organizers complained to UN security. At the Cairo conference on Population and Development in 1994, without any evidence, former US Senator Timothy Wirth told UN security that a certain pro-lifer was a violent threat. The person was detained and deported.

Alliance Defense Fund attorney Piero Tozzi told the Friday Fax, 'The UN cannot censor speech it does not agree with. Both the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression and the Human Rights Committee have recently emphasized the need to protect this fundamental freedom. Why then is speech by respectful, clean cut kids on a topic vital to keeping young people healthy being censored at the UN?'

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom . . . to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." (See article here).

Why is speech by respectful, clean cut kids being censored at the UN?  Because, the United Nations has succumbed to demonic ideology.  If you doubt this for even one moment, consider that the same UN permits professor (and Catholic priest) Michael O'Flaherty, a radical homosexual activist, to promote the Yogyakarta Principles, a blueprint for usurping parental rights while indoctrinating children in gender-bending ideology.  See my past post here.

Satan does not want us to live in peace and harmony. His intention is to make a physical and spiritual wreckage of all God’s creation. To this end he enlists men in that attempt by their lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes and pride of life. He is especially anxious to seduce the young and to corrupt them so thoroughly that they come to resemble more and more the devils they then follow.

The Catholic Church teaches that, “Educating children for chastity strives to achieve three objectives: (a) to maintain in the family a positive atmosphere of love, virtue, and respect for the gifts of God, in particular the gift of life; (b) to help children to understand the value of sexuality and chastity in stages, sustaining their growth through enlightening word, example, and prayer; (c) to help them understand and discover their own vocation to marriage or to consecrated virginity for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven in harmony with and respecting their attitudes and inclinations and the gifts of the Spirit.” (The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality (Guidelines for Education Within the Family), issued by the Pontifical Council for the Family, No. 3).

This requires self-control, which is why chastity is so important: “One cannot give what one does not possess. If the person is not master of self – through the virtues and, in a concrete way, through chastity – he or she lacks that self-possession which makes self-giving possible. Chastity is the spiritual power which frees love from selfishness and aggression.” (The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality, No. 16).

Satan knows this. And so he wages a battle against chastity through sex-education which radically separates sex from the very idea of the covenanted love of man and woman, a sex education and propaganda which the group POPE (Parents for Orthodoxy in Parochial Education) referred to as, “the spiritual, emotional rape of our children through various and devious methods of mind manipulation” (“Do Sex-Education Programs Corrupt Youth? The Wanderer, April 17, 1969).

Just as Pope John Paul II created a World Youth Day to instill Gospel values in our young people, the Evil One has enlisted men to create a World Youth Conference in which Gospel values are subverted. As Terrence McKeegan, J.D., reported for C-FAM back in 2010, "...at the World Youth Conference, organized primarily by the Mexican government and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the main event for most of [the] estimated 5,000 ‘participants’ was the Interactive Global Forum, a massive expo with hundreds of booths and exhibits. A tour of the booths revealed what passes for ‘age-appropriate’ sexual education in some UN circles. Because the venue for the World Youth Conference had considerably more exhibit space than most UN conferences, it was a unique opportunity for organizations focusing on youth to put their best face forward. In the expo hall, there were dozens of booths with pornographic or sexually explicit materials or presentations.

At the International Planned Parenthood Federation (the largest provider of abortion services in the world) booth, their table featured the sexually explicit brochure: 'Healthy, Happy, and Hot', which garnered headlines last March due to its distribution at a Girl Scouts side event at the UN Commission on the Status of Women.
At a booth by an organization named 'RECREA,' there was a table with a bowl of condoms and a wooden phallus. The walls of the exhibit booth were covered with pornographic and sexually suggestive photos. Nearby there were two glass cases featuring rubber models of male and female genitalia, as well as a bright assortment of condoms.



At the Fundacion Collectivo de Mujeres Jovenes booth,which was staffed by two middle-aged men, the presentation largely consisted of a collection of thong underwear hung up around the booth, as well as a 'snakes and ladders' floor game with puffy dice." 

Did you catch the name of that "game"?  Snakes and ladders.  Who is the serpent?

To sum up: Pro-Life literature is taboo at the UN.  But not wooden phalluses, condoms, pornographic and sexually suggestive photos.

This is the essence of the new anti-Christian sex education in preparation for the Moloch State. As George Kendall explains in Witness for the Truth, this sex education "radically separates sex from the very idea of the covenanted love of man and woman. Sex becomes merely a self-centered appetite to be satisfied and not a gift of self to another. As a result, what this kind of education produces is the lonely, autonomous individual. This is the ultimate in alienation. The autonomous individual is alienated even from his own body, which becomes to him only a thing, too - a thing to be used as a means to his autonomous pleasure. The end result is depersonalization which, if it lasts into eternity without being healed, means eternal loss.

Few have put it as eloquently as Randy Engel did: 'Is it any wonder that the state must wage war against the family? For the state requires not individuals who dream, and think, and pray, but rather what has come to be called 'the mass man' - rootless, unaffirmed, a reactor - a mere reed blowing in the wind - a thing to be manipulated, to be used, to be disposed of, but never, never, to be loved, for the giant has no heart. And since the modern state has no heart, that which men previously have done out of love, must now be done out of fear, and hatred, and brute force.' So clearly, centemporary sex education, 'Catholic' or otherwise, is a profound attack on human dignity and on the human person.." (Witness for the Truth, pp. 399-400. citing Randy Engel "The Family Under Siege," Wanderer, March 6, 1980).


And now I would add, satanic. The United Nations, spiritual headquarters for the Termite Nations of the West, is advancing the concept of the Moloch State which claims total jurisdiction over man. The Moloch State will serve as a demon-state which rejects God's Commandments and His plan for the human family. This demon-state (and make no mistake about it, our leaders increasingly have recourse to demons) denies that there is any transcendent, higher-than-human voice or authority that cares for man. R.J. Rushdoony explains that:

"The Moloch State simply represents the supreme effort of man to command the future, to predestine the world, and to be as God. Lesser efforts, divination, spirit-questing, magic and witchcraft are equally anathema to God. All represent efforts to have the future on other than God's terms, to have a future apart from and in defiance of God. They are assertions that the world is not of God but of brute factuality, and that man can somehow master the world and the future by going directly to the raw materials thereof."

Enter the Man of Sin.

John 5: 43.

Why should those who produce The Catholic Free Press be surprised that government is now mandating contraception?

In an editorial entitled, "Stop the erosion of religious liberty," The Catholic Free Press, official newspaper of the Diocese of Worcester, Massachusetts, laments that, "The Obama administration has embarked on a systematic effort to erode religious liberty to the point of non-existence by attempting to restrict it solely to freedom of worship.  Through administrative policies and mandates, religious liberty and freedom of conscience in the United States is under attack, as witnessed by the most recent 'accommodation.'..The Obama administration has been chipping away at the right of religious institutions to abide by their beliefs when those beliefs oppose the secularist agenda, particularly in the arena of morality.  This was clearly evident in the decision not to renew a federal grant by the Department of Health and Human Services to the bishops'  Migration and Refugee Services for its human trafficking program because it would not provide the full range of reproductive services, including abortion and contraception, to human trafficking victims and unaccompanied refugee minors...President Obama made the decision to impose the Department of Health and Human Services' Interim Final Rules on Preventive Services, requiring all private health plans, including those of Catholic hospitals, charities and schools, to provide coverage of prescription contraceptives, including abortion-inducing drugs, and sterilization for women.  The so-called "religious employer" exemption that was put forth with these rules is so narrowly defined that it is meaningless.  Unless a religious institution employs and serves only individuals of the same religious tradition, it does not qualify for the exemption.  Therefore, Catholic hospitals and schools who serve people of all faiths, precisely because of their Catholic mission, do not qualify for the exemption.  The recent 'accommodation' offered in response to the outcry that resulted from this mandate, which was unquestionably a direct assault on the Roman Catholic Church's religious liberty, does not lessen the concerns initially raised...We cannot lose sight of the fact that the 'accommodation' does not alter the Obama administration's mandate promoting contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs as a matter of government policy.  It is particularly troubling that the attitude toward human life identifies pregnancy as a disease, posing a threat to one's health.."

How did we get to where we are in the United States?  In the words of Archbishop Charles Chaput, spoken in 2009, "40 years of American Catholic complacency and poor formation are bearing exactly the fruit we should have expected...We can't talk about following St. Paul and converting our culture until we sober up and get honest about what we've allowed ourselves to become. We need to stop lying to each other..."


Once a people appeal to conscience in order to condone sin, it is only a matter of time before such sin is openly mandated.  Long before contraception was being mandated by the government, there were those in the Church - including throughout the Diocese of Worcester - who were unleashing the leaven of infidelity by neglecting to preach against sin or by appealing to a dissenting notion of the primacy of conscience.

Richard Blanchard was documenting this infidelity (within the Worcester Diocese) at the same time I was writing against it in the pages of The Catholic Free Press more than twenty years ago.  For example, in his newsletter "Just The Facts," No. 6, (1993), Richard noted how a Couple-to-Couple team was teaching CCD students preparing for Confirmation in Leominster, Massachusetts (St. Leo's Parish) that, "If your conscience convinces you that birth control is right, even if the Church says its wrong, you can practice birth control and not be sinning."  And then Richard explains: "This has been taught for over 20 years and still is being taught in this diocese [Worcester].  The basis for this teaching is dissent and a dissenting concept of the primacy of conscience which is nothing less than situation ethics."

In the same newsletter, Richard Blanchard noted that, "During the episcopate of Timothy J. Harrington...dissent and disobedience has flourished and taken deep roots....in September of 1984 Sister Anna Kane was appointed Vicar of Religious and Director of the then Office of Women, at the same time she became a member of Bishop Harrington's administrative cabinet.  She became very militant against Humanae Vitae.  Under the administration of Fr. Piermarini, (now Msgr), the religious education department employed Dr. Vincent Forde, Bernard Cooke and Alice Laffey as instructors of the Education in Ministry Program, also known as the Master Catechist Program which has for its goal, master certification for CCD teaching.  All [of these instructors] openly strong advocates against the teaching on birth control in Humanae Vitae."

Within the pages of The Catholic Free Press, Humanae Vitae was openly mocked.  For example, in his "Essay in Theology" column entitled "Humanae Vitae; a troubling silence (CFP, August 13, 1993), dissident priest Father Richard P. McBrien referred to the Church as "a dysfunctional family" because it will not change its teaching on the sinfullness of artificial contraception to appease those who just cannot or will not accept it.


As a result of 40 years of poor catechesis - or none at all - and outright complacency throughout the Catholic Church in America,  too many people today (including sadly, many Catholics) have come to view conscience as a sort of fortress built so as to shelter them from the exacting demands of truth. In the words of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, "In the Psalms we meet from time to time the prayer that God should free man from his hidden sins. The Psalmist sees as his greatest danger the fact that he no longer recognizes them as sins and thus falls into them in apparently good conscience. Not being able to have a guilty conscience is a sickness...And thus one cannot aprove the maxim that everyone may always do what his conscience allows him to do: In that case the person without a conscience would be permitted to do anything. In truth it is his fault that his conscience is so broken that he no longer sees what he as a man should see. In other words, included in the concept of conscience is an obligation, namely, the obligation to care for it, to form it and educate it. Conscience has a right to respect and obedience in the measure in which the person himself respects it and gives it the care which its dignity deserves. The right of conscience is the obligation of the formation of conscience. Just as we try to develop our use of language and we try to rule our use of rules, so must we also seek the true measure of conscience so that finally the inner word of conscience can arrive at its validity.

For us this means that the Church's magisterium bears the responsibility for correct formation. It makes an appeal, one can say, to the inner vibrations its word causes in the process of the maturing of conscience. It is thus an oversimplification to put a statement of the magisterium in opposition to conscience. In such a case I must ask myself much more. What is it in me that contradicts this word of the magisterium? Is it perhaps only my comfort? My obstinacy? Or is it an estrangement through some way of life that allows me something which the magisterium forbids and that appears to me to be better motivated or more suitable simply because society considers it reasonable? It is only in the context of this kind of struggle that the conscience can be trained, and the magisterium has the right to expect that the conscience will be open to it in a manner befitting the seriousness of the matter. If I believe that the Church has its origins in the Lord, then the teaching office in the Church has a right to expect that it, as it authentically develops, will be accepted as a priority factor in the formation of conscience." (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Keynote Address of the Fourth Bishops' Workshop of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, on "Moral Theology Today: Certitudes and Doubts," February 1984).

In the same address, Cardinal Ratzinger explains that, "Conscience is understood by many as a sort of deification of subjectivity, a rock of bronze on which even the magisterium is shattered....Conscience appears finally as subjectivity raised to the ultimate standard."

And subjectivity raised to the ultimate standard gives rise to dictatorship. For, as Pope John Paul II reminded us in Centesimus Annus, "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."

Why should those who produce The Catholic Free Press be surprised that government is now mandating contraception?  The Church in the United States is only reaping what it has sown.

Father John Unni does not preach chastity...here's why

Jim Jones led his flock to a kind of insanity.  Father John Unni is doing the same.  The People's Temple became a People's Tomb.  St. Cecilia's is becoming a Moloch Church with a utopian "Gospel" which advances rebellion and licentiousness.


In my last post I noted how Father John Unni has urged parishioners at St. Cecilia's Parish in Boston to "shed the burden of shame."  It is most significant that Father Unni does not preach on the importance of chastity.  The virtue of chastity liberates a person from the tyranny of concupiscence which in turn strengthens his or her will for the battles of life.  Saint Thomas Aquinas explains that, "When the lower powers are strongly moved towards their objects, the result is that the higher powers are hindered and disordered in their acts.  Now the effect of the vice of lust is that the lower appetite, namely the concupiscible, is most vehemently intent on its object, to wit, the object of pleasure, on account of the vehemence of the pleasure.  Consequently the higher powers, namely the reason and the will, are most grievously disordered by lust." (Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 153, a. 5).

You might be scratching your head and saying "huh?"  Joseph Pieper, in his excellent work "The Four Cardinal Virtues," puts it nicely:

"An unchaste man wants above all something for himself; he is distracted by an objective "interest"; his constantly strained will-to-pleasure prevents him from confronting reality with that selfless detachment which alone makes genuine knowledge possible.  St. Thomas here uses the comparison of a lion who, at the sight of a stag, is unable to perceive anything but the anticipated meal.  In an unchaste heart, attention is not merely fixed upon a certain track, but the 'window' of the soul has lost its 'transparency,' that is, its capacity for perceiving existence, as if a selfish interestedness had covered it, as it were, with a film of dust...

This kind of interest is altogether selfish, The abandonment of an unchaste heart to the sensual world has nothing in common with the genuine dedication of a searcher for truth to the reality of being, of a lover to his beloved.  Unchastity does not dedicate itself, it offers itself.  It is selfishly intent upon the 'prize,' upon the reward of illicit lust.  'Chaste,' says St. Augustine, 'is the heart that loves God without looking for reward.'  One further comment: For anyone whose function it is to lead and counsel young people, it is this selfishness which characterizes the inner nature of unchastity (as intemperance)." (The Four Cardinal Virtues, p. 161).

Lust destroys peace of mind and causes spiritual blindness.  It enslaves.  Chastity liberates us from concupiscence and makes us more noble.  By refusing to preach chastity, Father Unni is delivering up souls to a sensual world which results in darkness of intellect and will.  He is encouraging the souls entrusted to his spiritual care to live with total disregard for chastity.  And this in opposition to St. Paul's warning that, "..this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from unchastity; that each one of you know how to take a wife for himself in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like heathens who do not know God; that no man transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we solemnly forewarned you.  For God has not called us for uncleanness, but in holiness." (1 Thessalonians 4: 3-7).

Father Unni wants his flock to shed any feelings of shame and to embrace a total disregard for chastity.  The book of Sirach includes the prayer of the just man who wants to live a chaste life:

"O Lord, Father and God of my life, do not give me haughty eyes, and remove from me evil desire.  Let neither gluttony nor lust overcome me, and do not surrender me to a shameless soul." (Sirach 23: 4-6). 

Notice the wording here: "Do not surrender me to a shameless soul."  This is the exact opposite of what Father Unni preaches as he urges his flock to "shed the burden of shame."

The spirit of Christ and the spirit of Antichrist.  The City of God and the City of Satan.

Which do you choose?

Why are health care professionals suddenly asking patients about gun ownership?

Our Founding Fathers knew full well that politicians could not be trusted and that power corrupts.  They knew as well that governments were always capable of becoming a threat to liberty.  This is why they passed a Bill of Rights consisting of ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution.  The Second Amendment reads, "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

While the Founding Fathers wanted to preserve the ability of the citizenry to defend themselves against tyranny, there are those who would like to undermine this ability by advancing the notion that gun control is a "public health issue" and that crime is a "disease."  As a result, patients are increasingly being questioned by health care professionals about their gun ownership.  In an excellent article entitled "Doctors to Ask Patients About Gun Ownership," Dr. Miguel A. Faria writes, "In what is described as an effort to curb handgun violence, a group called Doctors Against Handgun Injury, a spin off of the AMA and organized medicine, is calling for sweeping changes in the patient-doctor relationship that would allow physicians, including psychiatrists, to pry into their patients' gun ownership.


In the past, the medical community strenuously fought against any invasion of patient privacy by the government or other third-parties. For example, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) had, in the past and for obvious reasons, been a bulwark in the defense of patient privacy and medical record confidentiality.

Suddenly, events have taken a nefarious course.

The APA has regrettably joined Doctors Against Handgun Injury, the gun prohibitionist coalition.

This coalition --- which also includes the American Medical Association (AMA) and, not surprisingly, the strident (i.e., when it comes to gun control) American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and ten other medical organizations reportedly comprising 600,000 doctors --- has called for a variety of patient privacy-invading measures in the name of gun safety.

Don't be fooled by their innocuous-sounding name and publically stated objectives.

Through a revealing article published in the New York Observer on March 15, 2001, much information has come to light about the gun control campaign of Doctors Against Handgun Injury. They are promoting more stringent gun control measures, what they call "upstream intervention" --- that is, using regular checkups to ask patients about firearm ownership and gun storage in their homes.


Ostensibly, the report states: "To promote public safety, health professionals and health systems should ask about firearm ownership when taking a medical history or engaging in preventive counseling. Patients should be provided with information about the risks of having a firearm in the home, as well as methods to reduce the risk, should they continue to choose to keep them."

The AMA and organized medicine led by the new activist president Dr. Richard Corlin in his inauguration speech on June 20, 2001, dedicated the AMA to battling gun ownership as a public health epidemic. "[Gun violence] is a battle that we cannot not take on." Dr. Corlin said that he had decided to fight gun violence against all odds and despite the risks. "People have told me that this is a dangerous path to follow. That I am crazy to do it. That I am putting our organization in jeopardy. They say we'll lose members." Indeed, Dr. Corlin has put his own personal agenda and self-aggrandizement at the expense of all physicians and the AMA, the organization that claims to represent all of us.

Moreover, he said the AMA will attack gun violence the way it has attacked other public health concerns: "What we don't know about violence and guns is literally killing us," he exclaimed. He blamed "the gun lobby" for the loss of the $2.6 million in federal funding for gun [control] research which was stripped from the CDC budget in 1996 because of biased, politicized, result-oriented research conducted by the public health establishment.

Thus, Dr. Corlin called for increased public spending to allow the government to collect data on gun violence. In other words, he made calls to resurrect the specter of the shoddy research conducted by the NCIPC of the CDC. He parroted the litany: "Gunfire kills ten children a day in America," ignoring the fact that automobile accidents, swimming pools, matches, football and bicycle injuries kill far more children. Are we going to ban them too?

Dr. Corlin continued: "If this was a virus or a defective car seat or an undercooked hamburger that was killing our children, there would be a massive uproar within a week. Instead our capacity to feel a sense of national shame has been diminished by the pervasiveness and numbing effect of all this violence." And then he concluded, "Our goal is to cure an epidemic. If removing the scourge of gun violence isn't bettering the public health --- what is?"

Here Dr. Corlin propounds the erroneous notion that gun control is a public health issue and that crime is a disease, an epidemic --- rather than a major facet of criminology. He forgets that guns and bullets are inanimate objects not constrained by Koch's Postulates of Pathogenicity that prove that a microorganism is responsible for a particular disease.

Conveniently, Dr. Corlin also ignores the benefits of firearms in our society. For example, as many as 75 lives are protected by a gun for every one life lost to a gun; medical costs saved by guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens are fifteen times greater than costs incurred by criminal uses of firearms. Guns also prevent injuries to good people and protect billions of dollars of property every year.

And while Dr. Corlin preached the gospel of gun control, the AMA's spin off organization, Doctors Against Handgun Injury, called for physicians to spy on their patients. This is a regrettable and ill-conceived effort, and a violation of the Oath and tradition of Hippocrates.

This policy constitutes a breach in medical ethics, a boundary violation in reference to abuse of the patient-doctor relationship, and an egregious invasion of privacy.

A boundary violation takes place when a physician breaches the patient's trust and uses his authority to advance a political agenda.

As Dr. Timothy Wheeler explained in an article in the Medical Sentinel, "A patient who seeks medical or psychiatric treatment is often in a uniquely dependent, anxious, vulnerable, and exploitable state.

"In seeking help, patients assume positions of relative powerlessness in which they expose their dignity, and reveal intimacies of body or mind, or both. Thus, compromised, the patient relies heavily on the physician to act only in the patient's interest and not the physician's."

From time immemorial, patient privacy and confidentiality have been ethical concepts that, up until now, were fundamental to all physicians and to the patient-doctor relationship.


The Oath of Hippocrates, in fact, states: "Whatever, in connection with my professional practice or not in connection with it, I may see or hear in the lives of men, I will not divulge, as reckoning that all such should be kept secret. While I continue to keep this oath unviolated, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and the practice of the art, respected by all men at all times, but should I trespass and violate this oath, may the reverse be my lot."


For psychiatrists, who of necessity should be able to obtain very personal and confidential information for their patients' mental health evaluation and treatment, trust is paramount.

Understandably, psychiatrists have claimed a patient-doctor privilege similar to the attorney-client privilege that lawyers legally enjoy and which is a notch above what physicians now possess in patient-doctor confidentiality. This new policy makes a mockery of that claim.

With good reason this push by organized medicine has been received by patients with great concern and trepidation.

With this new incursion into gun politics by the medical profession, it's easy to see why patients may be more reluctant and less candid than ever with their physicians, which may, in turn, be detrimental to their medical care.


With good reason, patients may now perceive that their doctors, in asking them about guns in their homes, are acting more as an arm of the government prying into their personal lives than as their advocates in health care.

It will be easy to discern that physicians involved in this intrusion of privacy are placing the so-called good of society and the public relations goals of their professional organizations above their ethical obligation to their patients as required by the Oath of Hippocrates.



A Historic Precedent


In the momentous article "Medical Science Under Dictator-ship," Dr. Leo Alexander, the chief U.S. medical consultant at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, examined "the process by which the German medical profession became a willing and unquestioning collaborator with the Nazis." He noted the early changes in medical attitudes that predisposed German physicians to first collect data on their patients to conduct what today we call "cost-effective analysis," and then to use the latter information as a vehicle to commit medical genocide under the auspices of the totalitarianism of National Socialism.

Dr. Alexander warns us that "from small beginnings" the values of an entire society may be subverted, leading to the horrors of a police state.

The "small beginnings" in Nazi Germany that Dr. Alexander referred to first led the physicians to collect data from their patients and then violate their patients' privacy and medical record confidentiality by supplying the information to the state." (Full article with citations here).

Why are health care professionals across the United States suddenly asking about gun ownership?  Is the Department of Homeland Security another driving force behind this development?  If a patient acknowledges gun ownership, is this information provided to various government agencies including the DHS? 

I'm not a paranoid individual.  But I do maintain a healthy distrust of government.  You should too.  For as Lord Acton said so eloquently, "Power corrupts.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely." 

Related reading: Americans discerning a chilling loss of rights.

Related reading: America in twilight.