God Loved the Antichrist Just as Much as His Mother (and other half-baked urban legends and poppycock)

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The National Catholic Register ran a few sympathy for the devil articles yesterday that leave me a little perplexed about where EWTN is going with their newly-acquired publication.

I was actually shocked to read this doozy, called "The Shocking Truth God Loves Osama Bin Laden Too".

God loves murderers as much as he loves the rest of us, even as much as he loves the people whom they hurt. What does that say about our God? What does it mean for us, given that we are called to love as God loves?!

This most difficult of truths has come to mind again as I see Osama bin Laden’s image splashed all over the media, and hear the reports that he is now dead. God loves that man as much as he loved Mother Teresa? God loves that man as much as he loves the people on Flight 93? As much as he loves each of the other victims of 9/11? As much as he loves me? It’s true.

Saints preserve us!

Am I reading this right? Does this say that Mother Teresa and Osama Bin Laden are equitable recipients of God's love?

Dogs, sorcerers, unchaste, murderers, and servers of idols, and every one that loveth and maketh a lie are not to be left, as Scripture dictates, outside of the Kingdom?

The past few weeks of reading over there would leave one of the opinion that while God loves Bin Laden, it's Michael Voris who is on the highway to hell.

What madness.

Here's something well-written and succinct that puts things into the proper perspective:

But Proverbs 24:17 is indeed instructive; it is a call to humility and a recognition of the thin line between giving thanks for deliverance from evil and giving into the sort of pride that is itself the root of sin. Yes, we should rejoice in justice, but be soberly circumspect when it comes to the killing of those who are evil. God desires that all men be saved (1 Tim. 2:4), but he also judges justly and "will render to every man according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are factious and do not obey the truth, but obey wickedness, there will be wrath and fury" (Rom. 2:6-8).

Of course God loves sinners, even unrepentant ones! But, the idea that He loves the children whose father is the devil the same as he loves His Saints is crackpot theology. Christ called some of these characters He came across in His days "dogs", "evildoers" and "swine" and warned the Apostles not to give pearls to them.

Scripture tells us that St. John was the disciple whom Jesus loved, the beloved disciple.

Did He not love the other eleven, or does this tell you that even among his most cherished faithful servants God does not love equally? Where do you suppose this put's Bin Laden, Hitler, David Duke?

Osama spent his life hunting Christ and His followers to annihilate them. Does that ring an identity bell with anyone who has read Scripture? Neutralizing the enmity which Scripture explains is Divinely placed is not something I would expect to read at a publication belonging to Mother Angelica. Is there an editor there that reviews the theological content or has the thing become a loose cannon?

There isn't a shred of evidence Bin Laden repented of his life's work of lying and murdering Christ. Can somebody please tell this teeny tiny blogger what the National Catholic Register is doing by suggesting Osama Bin Laden's life may have earned him a reward in Paradise?

It is a mockery of the theology of salvation.

The last paragraph or two of the Bible enumerates the public unrepented sin that leaves us outside of Christ's Church. You cannot simultaneously claim you leave judgments to God when you are out in the public square trying to trump those judgments.

Pleased to meet you

Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah

But what's confusing you

Is just the nature of my game

Just as every cop is a criminal

And all the sinners saints

As heads is tails

Just call me lucifer

Cause Im in need of some restraint

So if you meet me

Have some courtesy

Have some sympathy, and some taste

Use all your well-learned politesse

Or I'll lay your soul to waste,

Praying for souls, even the most hardened sinner is the duty of every Catholic. Mucking the theology of salvation along with it, is its antithesis.

EWTN's New Baby

The National Catholic Register

Is this not spectacular?

People who blog have a lot of different gigs.  This will not come as a surprise to long-time readers, but I fall into the category of activists who use their blog as a tool, rather than a journalist.   Like any activist, I've periodically cc'd Catholic journalists, bloggers, newspaper - a) because they should know what's going on and b) knowing the controversy is newsworthy, you hope to get the information out there so that scandals against Christ's Church, souls, children, Sacraments - so worthy of having their sanctity protected - will benefit from having the light shine on it.

I really have been a defender of the Legion, not Maciel, but the innocent order of priests who are (or want to be) faithful to Christ that were sucked into the vacuum.   For so many years faithful candidates to the priesthood were denied admission to seminaries because, after all, if you're going to be hopping into bed with your brother seminarians, the last thing you want around are people who are there to purify themselves, learn the authentic faith and be trained in the discipline of celibacy.    For the last...God only knows how long...to this day, faithful priests have to fly under the radar to keep their assignments, remain a pastor, avoid being labeled as mentally disturbed when you complain about the sex, drinking, drugs, stealing and spiritual abuse of the flock.    The Legion was a refuge from this diocesan  skullduggery and I defended, hoped and prayed for reform post-Maciel.

That all ended a few years back when I could no longer avoid the reality that the Legion was using their newspaper to give shelter and cover up the corruption of Bishops.  I don't mean to implicate any of the fine journalists all of whom I deeply respect - or even Fr. Owen as these decisions I'm sure took place far above his head.  I'm just saying that my respect for the order was scandalized when I realized that even if a Bishop literally got involved in the abortion mill business the Legion would use their newspaper to provide the Bishop a place to write FAQs that avoided the substance of allegations and covered up the trail of scandal with smoke and mirrors. 

You've got to go a long way to lose my respect.   I'm usually the last one standing in the room giving you the benefit of the doubt.  There is something seriously wrong with the Legion. 

I'm delighted the Register is going to be under EWTN.  Wow - what great news for the journalists.  What great news for all of us.

Screwball Stories at the National Catholic Reporter

When religious leaders are making a mockery out of Catholic teaching, this week's scripture readings focusing on the Pharisees are some of the favorites in their bag of tricks.

This is how it usually goes:

While going through puberty and young adulthood, Johnnie goes to St. Susannah's, listens to Fr. J and learns that the Pope is wrapped too tight, the teachings of the Church on human sexuality, contraception and whatever have you are antiquated.  This is usually in spite of the fact that somebody, their mother, father, grandparents, teachers in school - somebody has constantly taught Johnnie truth from lies, right from wrong and planted the seeds.  But Fr. J, he's the man, he's a priest - what do you know Mom!

Johnnie keeps going to Church and listening to Fr. J talk about how when Jesus died on the Cross, He saved us all!

That's right.  There's no such thing as Hell.  You don't have to pay attention to anything the Church teaches.     Each of us makes up our own mind about whether something is good or bad, sin or virtue.  When Christ said He had to return to Heaven so the Paraclete could come and guide us, He was talking about you and I.

One Sunday morning when the alarm went off at 7 am, Johnnie didn't feel like getting up and going to Church.   He rolled out of bed, dragged himself into the powder room to brush his teeth and he looked at the paraclete in the mirror and said, "What am I DOING?  I am already saved!", and he crawled back into bed.

After ten years of having difficulty weathering the storms in his life, he finds himself so miserable he starts to pray and goes back to Church.   There's a solid priest who teaches him that when you love your family and friends you do things to please them - even when you don't understand why they want you to, or you don't feel like doing it -- and the same goes for God.  The lights to the teachings of the Church go on.

Then something funny happens.   He goes back to visit Fr. J and spends time explaining his enthusiasm and love for God.  One day, about a week after teaching his 10th grade CCD class at Fr. J's at parish about Humanae Vitae and the moral theology of the Roman Catholic Church, he gets called into Fr. J's office.  Johnnie learns parishioners are upset with him.  Who is he to talk after all the immoral things he did in his life.  He's a hypocrite.  A zealot.    A pharisee who cleans the cup on the outside but inside he's filthy.   Johnnie gets the boot from Fr. J's parish.

When somebody wants to debunk Church teaching, they reach back into your past to find something scandalous you did to our Lord to make you look disingenuous.

Christ called people "pharisees" who teach truth and virtue people who clean their own cup on the outside but inside they're filthy.

But Christ was not talking about people who, after a conversion, uses the Sacraments to keep their souls in a state of grace and teaches truth and virtue.

I rarely read the National Catholic Reporter because seeing people scandalized is a near occasion of sin for me.  I loathe what they are doing to Christ and to His people.  I get dispirited.  But this week, there are two stories that are really screwball, even for them.

One was a story written by Michael Sean Winters about Fr. Rober Sirico of EWTN.  I never knew Fr. Sirico's history but apparently he was a protestant minister who belonged to a gay Church and performed gay marriages.

Like the rest of us who had a conversion, Fr. Sirico obviously surrendered this life at the foot of the cross when he flew to the Sacraments.  

 I have spoken about this numerous times in various settings. The concomitant development of my thoughts and spiritual life led to the abandonment of the left-wing ideas I held in that period and to my formal return to the Church. From that time some 35 years ago to the present I have faithfully believed in and practiced that faith.

Winters goes on to excoriate Fr. Sirico here.    I'll save you the agony and wading through the sewer of Winters mind and tell you his complaint.  Fr. Sirico is sanctimonious.

And of course, Michael Sean Winters implies Fr. Sirico is gay.

But, the kicker for me in this story is that the National Catholic Reporter is a gay newspaper.   What is a gay staff writing for a gay newspaper doing throwing somebody who used to do gay marriages under the bus?

Is Winters the staff homophobe?

Fr Sirico states his love for Christ eloquently:

As I have pondered these matters, I have come to one simple conclusion, and that is that I love the truth more than my freedom; indeed, that I love the truth more than myself, because it is only in the embrace of that Truth, Who is also the Way and the Life, that my own life will ever have any meaning or peace. I fully understand that for some people it is a difficult thing to say ‘yes’ to something that appears and even deeply feels, like a denial of one’s own self. Yet, that is precisely what Jesus asks of us. To say yes to the Cross is to say yes to the Risen One. As one prelate of the Second Vatican Council (Cardinal Journet) said, under different but for him no less arduous circumstances, “When one tears something dear away from us, and when this is demanded of us in the name of obedience – for a future which is yet hidden from us – one must say yes, one must be content in saying yes, one must be content even to feel suffering…But it is with happiness one suffers, for he has something to give to God.   

How tragic is the bitterness of doing a smear campaign, even somebody who understands, is empathetic, who once even performed gay marriages -  by virtue of the fact that the person turns their life over to Christ and the Catholic Church, NCR will do a smear campaign?

This is so low that I find it hard to believe that even the spiritually deprived readers of NCR will not find this despicable.

Tom Roberts has the second story -

It is obvious that Roberts is wild at the appointment of Archbishop Burke to cardinal-designate and goes on the attack.

Roberts gripes that AB Burke advocates for a standard of proof before removing a priest from his ministry for an allegation of sexual abuse.  That's a pretty legal standard in civil law and canon law.   AB Burke serves truth, justice and Christ.

Of course, people like Cardinal O'Malley and Tom Roberts trample the rights of accused and innocent priests - violating their civil and canonical rights--but they will get the reward they deserve on their day of judgment.  Good luck with that.

I don't think AB Burke wants to be among that group and so he serves truth, justice and Christ.

The National Catholic Reporter is swimming in slime.   It is an ugly sight.