Trust in American media has disintegrated

 

From Liberty Nation News:

This past week brought some sobering news for journalists from America’s legacy media. A recent Reuters poll conducted in January and February of this year revealed a truth at once startling and unsurprising: The United States ranks dead last of 46 countries in trust in media. A mere 29% of Americans surveyed said they trust the news. Adding insult to injury, the U.S. Fourth Estate was handily dispatched by countries such as Finland, Kenya, and Canada, which enjoyed approval ratings of 65%, 61%, and 45%, respectively.

Ouch.

The decline of journalism these numbers represent is a writ large crisis of integrity in American media. The New York Times had a brief but ultimately disingenuous moment of institutional self-reflection after Donald Trump’s stunning 2016 defeat of Hillary Clinton. The Times seemed to admit that it had been swept up in reporting from the myopia of an elite coastal city and failed to consider the many millions throughout the country who felt increasingly disenfranchised from the American Dream and snidely disparaged by the Grey Lady and her ilk in the media. That hollow and performative attempt at journalistic self-searching lasted a week – tops.

With the patina of objectivity set aflame, The NYT leaned into its leftward tilt until the base partisanship was only too obvious. Then, the paper began sacrificing basic journalistic principles to privilege – uber alles – the new narrative. And what was that agenda? It was to harangue, hobble, discredit, and ultimately defeat Trump by any means necessary – accuracy and truth be damned.

The new marching orders throughout the largely left-leaning American media were to apply maximum pressure to the new administration. With that raison d’etre, the press worked in lockstep to saddle Trump with unfavorable exposure. According to a Harvard study, 93% of coverage of Trump throughout all of the media was negative. Meanwhile, his many considerable successes were either downplayed, ably spun to reflect poorly on him, or ignored.

But once you make your deal with the devil, there is always a day when the bill comes due. With everyday Americans now using air quotes around the word “journalism” when referring to formerly unimpeachable sources of information, the chickens have come home to roost. The people have been awakened rudely from their slumbering daydreams of an America in which the press endeavors to tell them the truth.

Is it any wonder?

We were told by CNN, MSNBC, and most major newspapers throughout the country that Trump had colluded with Russia and with Vladimir Putin to win the most seismic election of our lifetimes. For over two agonizing years, the country was rent asunder and divided by a false assertion steeped in prevarication and deceit. Even though the media ran cover for them, we learned how politicized our intelligence agencies were – how arrogant and willing to weaponize federal power to achieve their ends.

The American media told us that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was guilty of sexual assault as a young man – a 36-year-old claim made by Christine Blasey Ford, who could not remember the year it occurred, the home at which the party she attended was held, how she got there, or how she got home. Memory is tricky, so she can be afforded the benefit of the doubt. But the assumptions of guilt and the overall savagery of the press coverage of Justice Kavanaugh cannot be forgiven.

We were told by the Fourth Estate that Trump kept immigrant children at the border in cages – the very enclosures Obama had used during his time in office. We were told that Trump had cleared Lafayette Park using tear gas for a photo opportunity – an utter falsehood proven to be so by an exhaustive, year-long watchdog report.

Our legacy media told us that riots following George Floyd’s murder – which caused an estimated two billion dollars in damage and resulted in 18 additional deaths – were “peaceful protests.” Yet, these same institutions worked like a well-trained cheerleading squad to brand the unconscionable January 6 Capitol riots an armed “insurrection” – one that occasioned the death of Officer Brian Sicknick, whom The New York Times informed us was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher by MAGA protestors. Both “facts” were false.

In the days leading up to the 2020 election, the mainstream media told us that the recovery of Hunter Biden’s laptop, replete with highly salacious photos and evidence of illegal activity, was Russian disinformation. Twitter blocked the New York Post from sharing the bombshell story of the year – one a very substantial number of voters later polled said would’ve swayed their decision on Election Day had they known about it.

The United States media mocked anyone who suggested that SARS-CoV-2 may have leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan – while its social media handmaids canceled, censored, or deplatformed these same “heretics” for claiming something so outrageous. Nevertheless, the lab-leak postulate has now satisfied Ockham’s Razor to quickly become consensus theory – even though proving it will likely be impossible after gifting China a whole year and a half to cover its tracks.

But political physics suggests the pendulum is swinging back – proof that there is an equal and opposite reaction to every action. CNN is hemorrhaging viewership with its marquee talent Jake Tapper having lost a staggering 75% of his audience since January. A court ruling determined that MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow’s “statements cannot reasonably be interpreted as allegations of fact.”

Facebook may have sidestepped a congressional anti-trust effort brought by the attorneys general of 48 states, but the stinging rebuke may only embolden Congress to act with rare bipartisanship to limit the metastasizing power of these self-appointed gods of Silicon Valley. And Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey may have reached the limits of his power after kicking the President of the United States off his platform – while simultaneously providing safe haven for Ayatollah Khomeini and Louis Farrakhan.

Given these many hypocrisies, is it in the least a surprise that the goodwill and trust of the American public for the media is at an all-time low?

________________________________________

In Man Against Mass Society, Gabriel Marcel writes, "In spite of everything that can be said to the contrary, is not the real and deep purpose of propaganda after all that of reducing men to a condition in which they lose all capacity for individual reaction? In other words, whether the men in control of propaganda intend this or not, is it not of the very nature of propaganda to degrade those whose attitudes it seeks to shape? And is it possible to be unaware of the fact that propaganda presupposes, in these men in control, a fundamental contempt for the rest of the human race? If we really attach any value at all to what a man is in himself, to his authentic nature, how can we assume the responsibility of passing him through the flattening-out machinery of propaganda?

What we ought to enquire into, however, is the nature of this contempt. There are, of course, fine shades of distinction that analysis ought to bring out: but is there any essential difference between the attitude of someone like Goebbels, for instance, and that of a chief of Communist propaganda? In both cases we are faced with a radical and cynical refusal to recognize the competence of individual judgment, an impatience with what appears, from this point of view, the intolerable presumptuousness of the individual. It is also broadly noteworthy that even the sense of truth cannot fail gradually and unconsciously to be destroyed in those who assume the task of manipulating opinion. It would require a very uncommon degree of simple-mindedness in a professional propagandist for him to remain very long convinced that his truth was the whole truth. Such simple-mindedness is only conceivable in a fanatic." (pp. 50-51).

We witness such a fanaticism in Rudolf Hess, who became deputy leader of the Third Reich, and who said: "It was granted to me for many years of my life to live and work under the greatest son whom my nation has produced in the thousand years of its history. Even if I could I would not expunge this period from my existence. I regret nothing. If I were standing once more at the beginning I should act once again as I did then, even if I knew that at the end I should be burnt at the stake. No matter what men do, I shall one day stand before the judgment seat of the Almighty. I shall answer to him, and I know that he will acquit me."

For such a fanatic, the State is beyond criticism. Its realm is utterly sacred. And even if one should have convictions which run counter to those of the State, these must be subordinated to the State. Hermann Goring expressed this belief when he said, "I have no conscience! Adolf Hitler is my conscience!" and "It is not I who live, but the Fuhrer who lives in me."

As Dusty Sklar notes, "In the suggestible state, the proselyte may attribute divine powers to his leader and accept dogmas which he might have rejected in a more normal state [see here for example]. Some of the men closest to Hitler, for example, acknowledged that they believed in his divinity. Himmler's masseur, Felix Kersten, relates that he once answered the phone and heard Hitler's voice before passing the phone on to Himmler, who exclaimed" 'You have been listening to the voice of the Fuhrer, you're a very lucky man.' Himmler told Kersten that Hitler's commands came 'from a world transcending this one.' and that they should be 'saved' by 'a figure of the greatest brilliance' which had 'become incarnate' in Hitler's person." (The Nazis and the Occult, p. 157).

Even intelligent people are not immune from the desire to conform. As Sklar notes, "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. Obedience itself is a kind of imitation. 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...Hoffer [Eric Hoffer] observes: 'Above all, he [the true believer] must never feel alone. Though stranded on a desert island, he must still feel that he is under the eyes of the group. To be cast out from the group should be equivalent to being cut off from life. This is undoubtedly a primitive state of being, and its most perfect examples are found among primitive tribes. Mass movements strive to approximate this primitive perfection, and we are not imagining things when the anti-individual bias of contemporary mass movements strikes us as a throwback to the primitive.'" (Dusty Sklar, The Nazis and the Occult, citing Eric Hoffer, p. 158).

What is a Christian to do when faced with a mass movement which seeks to subjugate the individual to the collective? A movement which "refuses to recognize the competence of individual judgment" and to enslave all in a prison of absolute conformity to the State? The Christian must prepare himself or herself by relinquishing the fear of public opinion and to pray for the Holy Spirit's gift of Fortitude.

It was the Cure of Ars [St. Jean Vianney, patron saint of parish priests] who said: "Do not try to please everybody. Try to please God, the angels, and the saints - they are your public." To which he added: "If you are afraid of other people's opinion, you should not have become a Christian."

There is always a price to be paid for following Jesus. Those committed to their Christian faith must expect a certain amount of unpopularity. God knows I live with this unpopularity every day. So be it. What difference does this make? It was St. Gerard Majella who asked, "Who except God can give you peace? Has the world ever been able to satisfy the heart?" To which I would add: look closely at the photograph at the top of this post. Think of the masses who succumbed to Hitler's propaganda of a "thousand year Reich" which would transform the world. Were these throngs of people any happier at the end of the war? Did the world satisfy their hearts? Were these people not left with the bitter and empty taste of defeat?

What is the absolute worse the world can do to us? Why do we fear the world so much? We must recall the words of Blessed Miguel Pro, S.J., as he faced his firing squad: Viva Christo Rey! Long live Christ the King! For, as St. Paul of the Cross has told us, "The aversions that you experience, the ridicule, the scorn, the jokes, etc., should be received with great gratitude toward God. These serve as the pyre of love on which the victim of love is burned..."

The soul that gives itself completely to God can expect to be persecuted. Even killed. But what of it? We should remember the words of Jesus: "I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body but after that can do no more. I shall show you whom to fear. Be afraid of the one who after killing has the power to cast into Gehenna; yes, I tell you, be afraid of that one. Are not five sparrows sold for two small coins? Yet not one of them has escaped the notice of God. Even the hairs of your head have all been counted. Do not be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows." (Luke 12: 4-7).

The leftist "mainstream media": Silencing the truth about the health hazards of homosexual sex

 

Mass Resistance reports:

The book-burning culture of the Left is continuing its march.

As everyone knows, Amazon has achieved a virtual monopoly on the book industry. It has vast powers to decide what books people can read – and what they can’t read.

After 3½  years of publishing our groundbreaking 600-page book, The Health Hazards of Homosexuality: What the Medical and Psychological Research Reveals, Amazon has suddenly notified us that it has banned it from being printed or sold on its site. Amazon is also refusing to allow us to print any more copies for our own use and has even blocked us from accessing our account records. The book was printed (and also posted as an eBook) through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing subsidiary.

Why this book is important

The mainstreaming and normalization of homosexuality has created a public health crisis affecting us all. This book documents in detail the enormous public health problems – both medical and psychological – associated with homosexual behavior.

The book took several years to compile. It brought together information from the federal Centers for Disease Control, major medical professional groups, and other mainstream medical sources, as well as LGBT medical and advocacy groups – all documented in 1,800 endnotes with up-to-date links. In today’s society, this is critical information everyone should know, especially given what’s being pushed on young children in schools across the country. Read more about it here, including reviews and excerpts from the book.

Although the scourge of political correctness has taken over much of the medical establishment, the book has gotten rave reviews from the conservative medical community. Some of those include:

Michelle A. Cretella, MD, Executive Director of the American College of Pediatricians, called the book a "tour de force" and added: “This book is the single most comprehensive collection of scientific data from authoritative scientific sources on this topic. Our youth have the distinction of being among the most lied-to generation. For this reason alone, this book should be required reading for all health professionals, educators, legislators, graduate students, and parents."

Paul A. Church, MD, urologist, former Assistant Clinical Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School: “It is an excellent go-to reference for those seeking accurate, truthful information on the health risks of certain sexual behaviors. I recommend this book highly."

A prominent cardiologist: “I think this book should be on the shelves of medical school bookstores as it is one of the most comprehensive tomes on the subject that I have seen.”

The book has sold throughout the United States, Canada, the UK, and around the world. We have been approached by people in Hong Kong who want to re-publish it in Chinese and in Egypt who want to re-publish it in Arabic.

Mainstream media linked the book to Pres. Trump!

Of course, the national LGBT movement and their allies in the media despise this book – though they have never been able to claim that the information is incorrect.

In 2017, when we sold the book at our table at the Family Research Council’s national Values Voter Summit in Washington, DC (where President Trump spoke), the liberal mainstream media went ballistic. NBC News linked the book to Trump. USA Today, Yahoo News, and the Huffington Post fumed about it. In the UK, The Independent and The Guardian newspapers covered our book’s appearance! But at the Values Voter event itself, the book was a big hit!"

The health consequences of homosexual behavior here.

"The chief function of propaganda is to convince the masses, who slowness of understanding needs to be given time in order that they may absorb information; and only constant repetition will finally succeed in imprinting an idea on their mind.........the slogan must of course be illustrated in many ways and from several angles, but in the end one must always return to the assertion of the same formula. The one will be rewarded by the surprising and almost incredible results that such a personal policy secures."

Adolf Hitler from "Mein Kampf"

As one website explains:

"Once they succeeded in ending democracy and turning Germany into a one-party dictatorship, the Nazis orchestrated a massive propaganda campaign to win the loyalty and cooperation of Germans. The Nazi Propaganda Ministry, directed by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, took control of all forms of communication in Germany: newspapers, magazines, books, public meetings, and rallies, art, music, movies, and radio. Viewpoints in any way threatening to Nazi beliefs or to the regime were censored or eliminated from all media.

During the spring of 1933, Nazi student organizations, professors, and librarians made up long lists of books they thought should not be read by Germans. Then, on the night of May 10, 1933, Nazis raided libraries and bookstores across Germany. They marched by torchlight in nighttime parades, sang chants, and threw books into huge bonfires. On that night more than 25,000 books were burned. Some were works of Jewish writers, including Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. Most of the books were by non-Jewish writers, including such famous Americans as Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, and Sinclair Lewis, whose ideas the Nazis viewed as different from their own and therefore not to be read.

The Nazi censors also burned the books of Helen Keller, who had overcome her deafness and blindness to become a respected writer; told of the book burnings, she responded: "Tyranny cannot defeat the power of ideas." Hundreds of thousands of people in the United States protested the book burnings, a clear violation of freedom of speech, in public rallies in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and St. Louis.

Schools also played an important role in spreading Nazi ideas. While some books were removed from classrooms by censors, other textbooks, newly written, were brought in to teach students blind obedience to the party, love for Hitler, and antisemitism. After-school meetings of the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls trained children to be faithful to the Nazi party. In school and out, young people celebrated such occasions as Adolf Hitler's birthday and the anniversary of his taking power."

Today, censorship is beginning to be used against Christians to silence moral opposition to abortion and homosexuality.  Today's censors do not have to gather up thousands of books, march by torchlight in nighttme parades and throw books into huge bonfires.  They have merely to strike a few keys from the comfort of their offices.

Inflated in their rebellion against the God-Man, the Sons of Satan, those committed toward the atheistic program of attacking the Church from without and undermining it from within in preparation for the Man-God, will continue to intensify their persecution of craftiness and subversion until it reaches its culmination in an explosion of hate-filled rage which will bear much blood and death. Father Livio Fanzaga, writing about the Antichrist, says that, "Catholicism alone will resist him. How then do we destroy this superstition which alone obstructs the world's self-revelation? How do we destroy this superstition which divides mankind and which prevents man from being truly brotherly and free? The true Antichrist is revealed in the replies to these questions. Here is perceived his profound being as the man of iniquity. He will not tolerate the idea of men who adore any god other than himself. His intolerance obliges him to make an exception to his pacifism and his philosophy of non-violence. He is the greatest pacifist in the history of the human race, but because peace and justice really reign on earth he will make an exception to kill and destroy the great superstition of Catholicism, once and for all time..." (Wrath of God: The Days of the Antichrist, p. 124).

On September 15, 1992, Our Lady told Father Gobbi of the Marian Movement of Priests that, "..It is the hour of my great sorrow for the Church, my dearly beloved Daughter.  How grievously the Church is suffering in these times, as she carries her great cross and climbs the bloodstained Calvary of her passion and her bloody immolation!  Never before, as today, has the Church been made so utterly like my Son Jesus.  She is like Him in solitude and abandonment; she is like Him in denial and betrayal; she is like Him in contempt and condemnation; she is like Him in her crucifixion and in her agony.  This is the hour of my great sorrow for the Church, because the hour of her redemptive passion has come.  It is the gour of my great sorrow for humanity, so ill and so reduced to slavery by the spirits of evil.  The diabolical powers are ruling the earth and producing everywhere the wicked fruits of their dark reign.  And thus this humanity has again become pagan, after almost two thousand years of its redemption and of the first announcement of the Gospel of salvation.  Faithlessness and impiety again cover it; sins wound it; evil poisons it; pride rules it; impurity seduces it; egoism and hatred enchain it; Satan reduces it more and more to slavery and reigns over you with his diabolical power...This is the hour of my great sorrow for all of you, my poor children, because the time of your great suffering has come.  Take refuge in me.  Hasten to the sure refuge of my Immaculate Heart, because we must live together through the hour of the greatest trial, which has now come for you, for the Church and for all humanity."

The Athol Daily News publishes an offensive anti-Christian cartoon...

The Athol Daily News, a local newspaper which is published and written by leftist ideologues, today published a political cartoon from Kevin Siers of The Charlotte Observer showing Roy Moore reading the Scripture where Jesus says, “Suffer the little children to come unto me."

The implication of this cartoon is obvious. For this same cartoon shows Moore asserting that, "The media are just trying to destroy those who follow God's Word."

If indeed Roy Moore has accosted underage females (something not yet established), this anti-Christian cartoon is insinuating that he receives his marching orders from Christ Jesus.

When "comedian" George Carlin used this same Scripture in a blasphemous way, the Catholic League addressed that instance of Catholic bashing.  See here.

It is perhaps unrealistic to expect the far-left propagandists at The Athol Daily News to strive for anything even remotely resembling objectivity.  Like most fanatics, nothing will produce the slightest crack in their wall of conviction.

It would be nice if they could at least refrain from insulting Christians and their deeply-held beliefs.

I won't be holding my breath.

Francis: I don't believe in judging...unless you're Donald Trump

From Fox News:

During an interview published on Saturday, Pope Francis said he would wait and see what a new President Donald Trump does before judging. The Pope was interviewed on Friday at the Vatican by the Spanish newspaper El Pais.

Francis went on to tell the interviewer that he doesn’t like “judging people early. We’ll see what Trump does.”

I thought Francis said, "Who am I to judge"?  Oh yeah, that only applies to homosexual persons, socialist genocidal maniacs and leftist-leaning politicians such as Barack Obama who embrace the pro-abortion Culture of death.

Bizarre!


The partisan ideologue who judges selectively.  See here.

Is Barack Obama "non-Christiano" for his support of abortion?  No word from Francis.

What Pope Francis describes as the "conscience of humanity" is actually a sickness

Elizabeth Yore over at Pewsitter notes how Pope Francis referred to anti-Catholic, pro-abortion, pro-sodomy leftist mayors as "the conscience of humanity" See here.

There is a famous hymn written by Martin Luther which begins, "A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing.." For all too many people today (including sadly, many Catholics) the conscience has become a "mighty fortress" built so as to shelter one 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."

A broken conscience, an ill-formed conscience, becomes a mighty fortress which shuts the truth out. Have we built an interior castle, as did St. Teresa of Avila, which remains open to the demands of truth and the promptings of the Holy Spirit? Or has our conscience become a mighty fortress built to prevent our encounter with truth?
Suggested reading: Catechism of the Catholic Church Nos. 1783-1785.

Photo courtesy of Mass Resistance and showing Boston Mayor Marty Walsh celebrating homosexuality.  And Pope Francis says that he and other leftist mayors are OUR CONSCIENCE.

Don't Ask, Don't Care....About God's Commandments

In an article written for the Institute for Policy Studies, the same extreme-left organization which recognized Father J. Bryan Hehir of the Boston Archdiocese as one of the "cornerstones" of its Washington School where the dissident priest taught a course on liberation theology entitled "Matthew, Marx, Luke and John" which focused on Nicaragua, William A. Collins writes:

"The glacial progress toward equality for gay Americans offers some revealing looks at our society. One is the weakening hold of religion, Roman Catholicism in particular. Until recently, church bias against homosexuals was plainly understood, unspoken, unchallenged, and accepted.

No longer. That underlying bulwark of morality is now widely perceived as bigotry. For example, at Jesuit-run Marquette University a great uproar ensued when the school revoked a deanship offered to a lesbian professor. In other days not only would there never have been an offer, but she probably would never have become a professor. And surely faculty and students would never have raised such a howl.
Other religions are in turmoil too. Episcopalians are breaking into separate churches over the issue, and while northern Methodists lean toward allowing gay clergy, Southerners control the votes. Lutherans are similarly divided. Mormons of course remain officially opposed, but church fathers (there are no church mothers) recently supported an anti-discrimination ordinance to protect gays in Salt Lake City. Black churches, however, fear that homosexuality threatens the basic family, and in Africa churches have succeeded in making same-sex relationships a serious felony.

Then there's our military. The Commander-in-Chief, Defense Secretary and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs have now called for repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. But the individual service chiefs aren't so sure. Naturally all this internal tension gives gay-intolerant politicians room to maneuver. So with such rampant indecision still on the loose, Defense Secretary Robert Gates is simply changing procedures making it much harder to enforce the law that ejects gays from the service.

Social tolerance seems to be advancing quite nicely without us in other countries. Most Western militaries think we're kidding about banning gays. They never could understand Americans anyway. And now several Catholic countries are loosening up their wedding rules. Portugal lately became the sixth European nation to sanctify gay marriage, and Argentina just broke the ice in South America by court decree. It seems that its constitution, like many of our own state constitutions, contains an inconvenient "equal rights" clause. Mexico City has actually voted to allow same-sex marriage. More sleepless nights in the Vatican.

Back here at home, these social battles rage on. California, which includes many progressive-voting communities, actually approved a gay marriage ban in 2008. Citing the Constitution's guarantee of equal rights, a federal district court recently overturned the ban, but that decision doesn't alter the population's basic sentiment. The final outcome will probably be decided by our Supreme Court, which is dominated by a conservative majority.

Meanwhile, most lawmakers still seem convinced that in their hearts the "silent majority" of voters oppose gay rights. Whether these public passions stem from fear of sin or "otherness," or real concern for "family values" is hard to measure. What can be measured is that this icy grip on a big chunk of our population is gradually thawing and that automatic hard line opponents of equality are now faced with meaningful political opposition."


It says much that Father J. Bryan Hehir, a Roman Catholic priest who is supposed to adhere to the Church's teaching, would associate himself with a leftist movement which advances the radical homosexual agenda while mocking the Vatican.  And make no mistake about it, from the very beginning IPS has been advancing the homosexual agenda.  At its website, the organization freely acknowledges that Rita Mae Brown wrote her "path-breaking lesbian coming-of-age novel Rubyfruit Jungle while serving on the staff of IPS in the 1970s.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in its document entitled "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons," recalls the distinction between homosexual tendencies and homosexual practices:

"Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder." (No. 3).  And while condemning crimes and other hateful acts against homosexual persons, the Letter explains that these crimes cannot serve as a pretext to justify homosexuality.

And, in its document entitled "Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons," the CDF emphasizes that, "Sacred Scripture condemns homosexual acts 'as a serious depravity....This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.'  This same moral judgment is found in many Christian writers of the first centuries 'and is unanimously accepted by Catholic Tradition.'" (No. 4).

The real question is: is this same moral judgment accepted by Father J. Bryan Hehir?  If so, what do we make of this?

William Collins, like others who have bought into homosexual agitprop, is attempting to paint Christian opposition toward homosexuality (and especially the perennial teaching of the Church founded by Jesus Christ) as bigotry and intolerance. As I said in a previous post: "..the same radical homosexual activists who continually cry for more "tolerance" are anything but tolerant. This is a spiritual war. The homosexual movement is not a civil rights movement. It is an attempt at moral revolution. An attempt to change people's view of homosexuality.


Writing in the Chicago Free Press, even homosexual activist Paul Varnell admitted this. He wrote, "The fundamental controverted issue about homosexuality is not discrimination, hate crimes or domestic partnerships, but the morality of homosexuality. Even if gays obtain non-discrimination laws, hate crimes law and domestic partnership benefits, those can do little to counter the underlying moral condemnation which will continue to fester beneath the law and generate hostility, fuel hate crimes, support conversion therapies, encourage gay youth suicide and inhibit the full social acceptance that is our goal. On the other hand, if we convince people that homosexuality is fully moral, then all their inclination to discriminate, engage in gay-bashing or oppose gay marriage disappears. Gay youths and adults could readily accept themselves. So the gay movement, whether we acknowledge it or not, is not a civil rights movement, not even a sexual liberation movement, but a moral revolution aimed at changing people's view of homosexuality." (Paul Varnell, "Defending Our Morality," Chicago Free Press, Aug 16, 2000, See here).

Related reading here

And here