I'll say it again, why would Deacon Paul Mello associate himself with Unitarians in Petersham?

In a previous post I documented how Deacon Paul Mello of Our Lady Immaculate Parish in Athol, Massachusetts participated in an "interfaith service" with  Unitarian Universalists who promote abortion, homosexuality, same-sex "marriage" and paganism.  The minister of the Unitarian church which Deacon Mello apparently has no problem with, M. Lara Hoke, has announced at her Blog that she will be participating in an event with the anti-Catholic, anti-life group CodePink. See here.

When the Respect Life Ministry of the Diocese of Oakland, California purchased pro-life advertisements which were placed in trains and buses, radical "abortion rights" activists demanded that the ads be removed.  In an article published by the Priests for Life website, and which may be found here, Deacon Keith Fournier wrote, "I remember an immensely popular game show entitled “To Tell the Truth.” It began its long television tenure in 1969 and my mother loved to watch it. For those unfamiliar with the show, there were three contestants who attempted to deceive a four member panel of celebrities as to their true identity. One of them was the actual person associated with the events which were told to the contestants in a sworn affidavit read on the air. It recounted the story of the real person. Some of the stories were humorous, others inspirational and still others quite serious. All of the stories gripped the viewers and the celebrity panelists who would then attempt, through a series of questions, to find the truth by exposing the liars. After the questions, the panelists would vote as to whom they believed was telling the truth and the viewers at home, long before the potential for actual audience participation, would also make their own choice. Finally, the real person would stand. Usually, it was quite a surprise to both the celebrity panelists as well as the viewers.


I was reminded of the show this morning when I read a newspaper report out of California indicating that “abortion rights” activists were defacing advertisements appearing in trains and buses that contained messages they did not like. The Respect Life Ministry of the Oakland Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church paid for the ads. They are tasteful, true and extremely effective. They all ask the question 'Abortion: Have we gone too far?' My readers can find these excellent ads at an equally effective web site developed by the “Second Look Project”. (www.secondlookproject.org/)

A vocal and angry group of activists, many associated with an organization called 'Code Pink', have besieged the Bay Area Rapid Transit demanding that the ads be removed. Hundreds of the ads have been ripped down and/or defaced with profanity; including direct, blatant anti-Catholic slurs. In some instances they have been covered over with propaganda espousing abortion on demand as a 'right.' Proponents of abortion on demand, throughout all nine months of pregnancy, who call such feticide a 'choice' and who want it protected as a 'right' by the police power of the State do not like to hear this truth. Worse yet, they now want to conceal it from the public. These ads simply tell the truth, free of emotionally charged rhetoric. They present facts - scientific, medical, sociological and statistical truth...

Opponents of this advertising campaign insist that the ads are 'misleading.' I simply ask my readers to go to the web site and view them. You will find that they are factual, dispassionate and - most importantly - they are true. That is why they are being opposed with such a fury. Some opponents insisted that the Transit officials should have rejected the ads. In the words of Suzanne Joi , a member of 'Code Pink' which promotes itself as being in favor of social justice and anti-war stated: 'At the very least they should have made sure both sides were represented… I think every woman has noticed them…I couldn't believe BART would allow something like this. Why are they doing this?''

The Transit authorities distributed a passenger bulletin before the first of the year detailing their advertising policy. They are now being pressured to reconsider this policy by those who do not want passengers to read these ads - because they do not like their content. In effect, these folks are the new censors of a new cultural revolution. Claiming to be tolerant, they are anything but. They do not want those who disagree with them to have the Right to Free Speech, a right guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Do they fear the implications of the truth? I believe they do...

One more note on this particular group. Though, at least in my opinion, they rightly opposed the War in Iraq, they promote the great lie of our age - that children in the womb are property to be used or discarded at whim. In so doing they actually promote a war on the womb while claiming to be peacemakers. By opposing these advertisements in California they have sent a signal. They support, aid and abet another war, one that is being waged on women and children. Make no mistake that is precisely what unrestricted abortion on demand - through all nine months, with no restrictions - truly is. This war has turned mothers into battlefields. Women are being lied to and deluded by those who are the ministers of propaganda in a new cultural revolution, those who promote the use of familiar weapons of modern warfare as 'surgical strikes' and 'chemical warfare' on pre-born children...

It is time to tell the truth.

It is time to sound the Code Red on Code Pink."

Amen Deacon Keith!  And it's time for Deacon Paul Mello to distance himself from Unitarian Universalists who are supportive of the Culture of Death and the radical homosexual agenda.

Related reading: Unitarian Universalists have ridiculed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Church teaching on homosexuality, referring to it as "archaic."

More on Deacon Paul Mello and the Unitarian Universalists in Petersham...

In a previous post, I noted how Deacon Paul Mello of Our Lady Immaculate Parish in Athol, Massachusetts took part in an "Interfaith Thanksgiving Service" held at a Unitarian Universalist church in Petersham which is led by M. Lara Hoke, a Unitarian Universalist minister who promotes the LGBT agenda and who lives with another woman whom she refers to as her "wife."

Lara Hoke authors a Blog which has a link to a Unitarian Universalist Pagan website.  This pagan website explains that, "Some Pagans believe in the Goddesses and Gods of the old religions and others do not. Many Pagans understand deity as immanent, in everything, and believe revelation is found in nature instead of written in scriptures. Some believe in an afterlife and that their actions in this life will determine their place in the next. Others believe only in this life and that their actions here are all that matters. Still others believe in reincarnation. Some Pagans believe in an active Spirit World while others do not. Because Paganism is a non-creedal religion such divergent beliefs can exist together under one religious name – just like in Unitarian Universalism! Many modern Pagans find their beliefs are very much in harmony with Unitarian Universalist Principle..."  I'll bet.  See here for full text.

Pope Benedict XVI has warned that, "There is..a consciously antirationalist response to the experience that 'everything is relative,' a complex reality that is lumped together under the title of New Age. The way out of the dilemma of relativism is now sought, not in a new encounter of the 'I' with the 'Thou' or the 'We,' but in overcoming subjective consciousness, in a re-entry into the dance of the cosmos through ecstasy. As in the case of Gnosis in the ancient world, this way believes itself to be fully in tune with all the teachings and the claims of science, making use of scientific knowledge of every kind (biology, psychology, sociology, physics). At the same time, however, it offers against this background a a completely antirationalist pattern of religion, a modern 'mysticism': the absolute is, not something to be believed in, but something to be experienced. God is not a person distinct from the world; rather, he is the spiritual energy that is at work throughout the universe. Religion means bringing my self into tune with the cosmic whole, the transcending of all divisions...Objectifying reason, New Age thinking tells us, closes our way to the mystery of reality; existing as the self shuts us out from the fullness of cosmic reality; it destroys the harmony of the whole and is the real reason for our being unredeemed. Redemption lies in breaking down the limits of the self, in plunging into the fullness of life and all that is living, in going back home to the universe....The gods are returning. They have become more credible than God. Aboriginal rites must be renewed in which the self is initiated into the mysteries of the universe and freed from its own self. There are many reasons for the renewal of pre-Christian religions and cults that is being widely undertaken today. If there is no truth shared by everyone, a truth that is valid simply because it is true, then Christianity is merely a foreign import, a form of spiritual imperialism, which needs to be shaken off just as much as political imperialism. If what takes place in the sacraments is not the encounter with the one living God of all men, then they are empty rituals that mean nothing and give us nothing and, at best, allow us to sense the numinous element that is actively present in all religions. It then seems to make better sense to seek after what was originally our own than to permit alien and antiquated things to be imposed on us. But above all, if the 'rational intoxication' of the Christian mystery cannot make us intoxicated with God, then we just have to conjure up the real, concrete intoxication of effective ecstasies, the passionate power of which catches us up and turns us, at least for a moment, into gods..." (Truth and Tolerance, pp. 126-128).
What is a Catholic Deacon from Our Lady Immaculate Parish in Athol doing at an "Interfaith Service" held by Unitarian Universalists who identify with paganism?  This is not ecumenism.  It is syncretism: the misguided notion that religious unity can be achieved by ignoring the differences between faiths on the assumption that all creeds are essentially one and the same.