'Arrivederci, Roma'

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Will popular democracy bring down the New World Order?

A fair question. For Western peoples are growing increasingly reluctant to accept the sacrifices that the elites are imposing upon them to preserve that New World Order.

Political support for TARP, to rescue the financial system after the Lehman Brothers collapse, is being held against any Republican candidate who backed it. Germans and Northern Europeans are balking at any more bailouts of Club Med deadbeats.

Newspaper: HHS Leadership Overruled Staff in Denying Funding to Bishops’ Agency

The sweet irony in this story is that if one had taken a stroll through the parking lot of the corrupt, liberal, staff-run United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2008, one would have seen many more bumper stickers for Barack Hussein Obama than for John McCain.  Unfortunately, they will be useful idiots in the next election cycle too.

From Catholic World News

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius

In declining to renew a grant to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services to aid victims of human trafficking, the leadership of the US Department of Health and Human Services [HHS] overruled its own staff, according to The Washington Post.

“Political appointees at HHS stepped in to award the new grants to the bishops’ competitors, overriding an independent review board and career staffers who had recommended that the bishops be funded again, according to federal officials and internal HHS documents,” the Post reported, adding:

The decision not to fund the bishops this time has caused controversy inside HHS. A number of career officials refused to sign documents connected to the grant, feeling that the process was unfair and politicized, individuals familiar with the matter said. Their concerns have been reported to the HHS inspector general’s office … The applications of [two grant winners] were scored significantly below the Catholic bishops by the review panel, the individuals familiar with the matter said …

HHS political appointees this spring became involved in reshaping the request for proposals, adding a “strong preference” for applicants offering referrals for family planning and the “full range” of “gynecological and obstetric care.’’ That would include abortions and birth control …

Some HHS staffers objected to the involvement of the secretary’s office, saying the goal was to exclude the Catholic bishops, individuals familiar with the matter said.

HHS political appointees this spring became involved in reshaping the request for proposals, adding a “strong preference” for applicants offering referrals for family planning and the “full range” of “gynecological and obstetric care.’’ That would include abortions and birth control …

Some HHS staffers objected to the involvement of the secretary’s office, saying the goal was to exclude the Catholic bishops, individuals familiar with the matter said.

“It was so clearly and blatantly trying to come up with a certain outcome,’’ said one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak to the media. “That’s very distasteful to people.’’

Additional sources for this story
Some links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• Battle flare between White House, Catholic groups (Washington Post)
• Sister Mary Ann Walsh: HHS Exec Rivals Nixon With Line: 'I am Not Trying to Get Anyone Off the Hook (USCCB Media Blog)
• USCCB spokesman: anti-trafficking grant recipients lack experience (CWN, 10/14)
• HHS won’t renew trafficking-victim grant to US bishops’ agency (CWN, 10/12)

Do We Need Year-Round Public School?

From NewsWithViews

By Lee Duigon

I don’t have television in my home, but when I’m in a doctor’s waiting room, I have no choice: television has me.

So there I was, waiting, with the doctor’s TV set too loud to ignore, trying to decide which of its offerings was worse—the in-depth analysis of Kim Kardashian’s divorce after two months of marriage, or retired TV noozie Tom Brokaw babbling away about how America’s kids need year-round public schooling.

As brain-rottingly loathsome as the Kardashian material was, Brokaw’s earnest prattle is the more toxic to our culture.

Consider the damage done by a mere nine months a year of public schooling. Don’t be fooled by public education’s miserable failure to teach reading, writing, history, mathematics, science, critical thinking, and other such fripperies. Public education succeeds brilliantly in turning children into teat-sucking, leftist, de-Christianized duds.

The Commemoration of all the Faithful Departed (All Souls)

"On this day is observed the commemoration of the faithful departed, in which our common and pious Mother the Church, immediately after having endeavored to celebrate by worthy praise all her children who already rejoice in heaven, strives to aid by her powerful intercession with Christ, her Lord and Spouse, all those who still groan in purgatory, so that they may join as soon as possible the inhabitants of the heavenly city."

— Roman Martyrology

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

The 'Christian Socialist' Clergymen Praising the Occupy Protests are more Socialist than Christian. What about Saving Souls?

From The Telegraph

ByTim Stanley

The Occupy movement has attracted the support of religious figures on both sides of the Atlantic. We might welcome the fact that priests and pastors are engaging with the debate over how to build a more humane and equitable economy. But there is a danger that these men and women are lending the legitimacy of their faith to an illegitimate cause. And the rhetoric of some of these latter-day Christian socialists is starting to sound more socialist than Christian.

The Solemnity of All Saints

From Catholic Culture

During the year the Church celebrates one by one the feasts of the saints. Today she joins them all in one festival. In addition to those whose names she knows, she recalls in a magnificent vision all the others "of all nations and tribes standing before the throne and in sight of the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands, proclaiming Him who redeemed them in His Blood."

The feast of All Saints should inspire us with tremendous hope. Among the saints in heaven are some whom we have known. All lived on earth lives like our own. They were baptized, marked with the sign of faith, they were faithful to Christ's teaching and they have gone before us to the heavenly home whence they call on us to follow them. The Gospel of the Beatitudes, read today, while it shows their happiness, shows, too, the road that they followed; there is no other that will lead us whither they have gone.

"The Commemoration of All Saints" was first celebrated in the East. The feast is found in the West on different dates in the eighth century. The Roman Martyrology mentions that this date is a claim of fame for Gregory IV (827-844) and that he extended this observance to the whole of Christendom; it seems certain, however, that Gregory III (731-741) preceded him in this. At Rome, on the other hand, on May 13, there was the annual commemoration of the consecration of the basilica of St. Maria ad Martyres (or St. Mary and All Martyrs). This was the former Pantheon, the temple of Agrippa, dedicated to all the gods of paganism, to which Boniface IV had translated many relics from the catacombs. Gregory VII transferred the anniversary of this dedication to November 1.

St. Matthew's Choir - Litany of the Saints

The Coming Church-State Wars

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Appearing the other night on the Catholic network EWTN, I was asked by Raymond Arroyo what should be done about Muslim students at Catholic University demanding that the school provide them with prayer rooms, from which crucifixes and all other Catholic symbols that they found offensive had been removed.

After a nanosecond I replied, “Kick ‘em out!”

Let them go to George Washington, the university on the other side of town.