Punditry

NEW YORK — As the spiritual adviser to Brooklyn drug dealers, Mercedes Osario allegedly was paid to warn if police were in their future.

Prosecutors claim her mystical powers failed. Miserably.

Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes on Tuesday announced a 133-count indictment against 15 people, including Osario and members of a drug crew that used its own fleet of cars to make cocaine deliveries to regular customers.

Osario, 53, was charged with misdemeanor weapons possession, which carries a maximum one-year prison term. A woman answering the phone at her home on Tuesday said, “She doesn’t know anything about this,” but she declined further comment.

Authorities portrayed Osario as a practitioner of the Afro-Caribbean Santeria faith and “business adviser” to the gang. Santeria blends African spiritual beliefs with Roman Catholic traditions.

Osario was put on the gang payroll “to foresee the future,” said chief gang prosecutor Deanna Rodriguez.

The crew, Rodriguez said, would inquire, “We’re going to do this drug transaction. Is it the right time?”
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Maybe with a reference from her former gang she could get a job as John Kerry’s “religion outreach director.” After all Kerry’s recent addition of Maria Vanderslice in this job is not much different. Christopher at Catholic Kerry Watch has the details on Maria Vanderslice and maybe she is what Democrats might consider as religious outreach.

Ultimately, I can’t separate my Christianity from my values or my values from my politics. For me, being engaged in politics is an expression of my deepest held religious beliefs — it is about actualizing a collective commitment to protect the integrity of God’s creation, it’s about meeting the needs of the “least of these,” and about our nation being a generous and trustworthy leader in the world. There are certainly positions taken by leading Democrats with which many Christians won’t agree — and many Christians are appalled by what they see as the exploitation of religion for political gain on the part of the Republican Party.

“it is about actualizing a collective commitment to protect the integrity of God’s creation.” I just love progressive-ecological-mumbo-jumbo-speech.

SPRINGFIELD — At a time when the cash-strapped Illinois Department of Human Services can’t pay its bills on time, the agency hosted a $78,000 conference to promote “spirituality and ritual” as drug-abuse treatments.

The two-day program this month at the Hyatt Regency Oak Brook was funded through a $70 million federal grant and designed to help drug-treatment groups reach out to communities of color, the agency said.

But the June 2-3 conference has drawn bipartisan fire for being held in a mostly white suburb far from the areas it was designed to reach and for its unusual theme when other human service programs face the possibility of major cuts.

“It’s bad enough that we now have to scratch and claw for the money to help real people meet their basic needs,” said state Sen. Jeff Schoenberg (D-Evanston). “These funds would have been far better spent supplementing the state’s existing commitment to hospice care for the terminally ill and their loved ones.

“I resent the department wasting precious federal dollars on some touchy-feely, new-age, hot-tub conference,” the senator continued.

I think the Senator nailed it.

A brochure sent to members of the General Assembly said the conference would begin with a Native American prayer, include an “African water ritual,” and involve singing, dancing, Korean drumming and more.

“We will rejoice in music and dance and the healing powers it brings to our communities,” the brochure read. “We will be serenaded by a Latina jazz singer and stirred by the youth of Culture Clash performing a traditional Cuban warrior dance.”

Tracey Scruggs, a DHS spokeswoman, defended the program. She said it did not involve the use of precious state funds, enabled attendees to earn credit toward counseling and teaching certificates, and trained people to “incorporate spirituality and rituals to promote health and healing in the communities we serve.”

As if wasting $78,000 worth of Federal money is alright. Of course this is indicative of the general attitude with Federal funds. Less thought is given to how to spend that money. The most thought is giving to making sure you spend all of it.

If your going through drug treatment and some counselor starts doing a Cuban warrior dance what is your first thought? Is this really encouraging you to stop avoiding reality or to perhaps to find stronger drugs?

Senator John Kerry wasted no time to subvert and use the death of President Reagan to start hawking stem-cell research. In his weekly radio address:

Yesterday, we said goodbye to President Ronald Reagan.

For his children and his friends, and most of all, for his courageous wife Nancy, this painful goodbye began almost ten years ago, with the diagnosis of a disease that took Ronald Reagan away before it took his life.

There is a moment after you get the call from a doctor that you or a loved one must face a disease like Alzheimer’s where you decide that it can’t mean the end – that you won’t let it. So in our own way, we become researchers and scientists. We become advocates and friends, and we reach for a cure that cannot – that must not – be too far away.
Some call this denial. But I’m sure that Nancy Reagan – the wife of an eternal optimist – calls it hope.

She told the world that Alzheimer’s had taken her own husband to a distant place, and then she stood up to help find a breakthrough that someday will spare other husbands, wives, children and parents from the same kind of heartache.

Millions share this hope, and it is because of their commitment that stem cell research has brought us closer to finding ways to treat Alzheimer’s and many other diseases.

In a recent article by a stem-cell researcher we heard the opposite.

“I think the chance of doing repairs to Alzheimer’s brains by putting in stem cells is small,” said stem cell researcher Michael Shelanski, co-director of the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York, echoing many other experts. “I personally think we’re going to get other therapies for Alzheimer’s a lot sooner.”

Today, more than 100 million Americans have illnesses that one day could be cured or treated with stem-cell therapy. Stem cells could replace damaged heart cells or cells destroyed by cancer, offering a new lease on life to those suffering from diseases that once came with a certain death sentence. Stem cells have the power to slow the loss of a grandmother’s memory, calm the hand of an uncle with Parkinson’s, save a child from a lifetime of daily insulin shots, or permanently lift a best friend from his wheelchair.

Chances are that you love someone with such a disease. You may be that someone. So what can we do to make sure that doctors and scientists keep learning, keep discovering, and keep researching stem cells so that the incredible potential for discovery becomes a reality in people’s lives?

We must lift the barriers that stand in the way of science and push the boundaries of medical exploration so that researchers can find the cures that are there, if only they are allowed to look. We can do this while providing strict ethical oversight.

His whole radio address is deeply dishonest. Not one time does he make the necessary distinction between embryonic and adult stem- cells. There are zero barriers for working with adult stem-cells. Researches are not prohibited in any way by using the more promising research into adult stem-cells. Currently there is only a federal ban on scientists from doing research on embryonic stem-cells other then those lines that already exist. Unfortunately there are hardly any limits on research on embryonic stem-cells by private researchers. The barriers he wants lifted are the ones currently protecting human life. He uses the words “allowed to look” and reality translates that to embryo farms where humans are experimented on and die in the process of “looking.”

We must make the funding of stem cell research a priority in our universities and our medical community. And we must secure more funding for it at agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

Above all, we must look to the future not with fear, but with the hope and the faith that advances in medicine will advance our best values. America has always been a land of discovery – of distant horizons and unconquered frontiers. But progress has always brought with it ethical concerns that this time we have gone too far. Believe it or not, there was a time when some questioned the morality of heart transplants. Not too long ago, we heard the same kind of arguments against the biotechnology research that now saves stroke victims and those with leukemia.

To compare heart transplants to the use of embryonic stem-cells is a ridiculous example. Sure some people initially had problems with the idea of organ transplants, but the Catholic Church has no problem with transplants in most circumstances. The only problem arises when organs are harvested prior to a person dying. Because of the short time-period some organs can be used doctors are tempted to remove organs prior to death. For embryonic stem-cells they take live human embryos and then destroy (murder) them when they remove the stem-cells. This is the moral equivalent of harvesting organs from healthy children. There is no difference between raising children for the purposes of an organ harvest and taking human embryos and harvesting them for stem-cells. Unfortunately this is what we have come to expect from John “My faith is important to me” Kerry.

I know there are ethical issues, but people of goodwill and good sense can resolve them. For I also know the fear that most Americans feel at some point – the fear of a diagnosis that may take our life or sentence us to a diminished life.

This is part of modern alchemist word-smithing. Transform the word morality to ethics and before long you can easily dismiss any qualms.

In the past few years, I have seen cancer and stroke take my own parents. Last year, because of the remarkable medical advances we have made, I was cured of prostate cancer. Now everywhere I go in America, people come up to me and tell me about their struggle with illness or the bravery of family members who faces it. They share their worries, but they also believe that this is a country of the future, a can-do country.

The medical discoveries that come from stem cell are crucial next steps in humanity’s uphill climb. And part of this nation’s greatness lies in the fact that we have led the world in great medical discoveries, with our breakthroughs and our beliefs going hand-in-hand.

If we pursue the limitless potential of our science – and trust that we can use it wisely – we will save millions of lives and earn the gratitude of future generations.

Except the generation of lives offered on the altars of unrestrained science. It is hard to find gratitude at the sharp end of a scalpel coming to kill you.

That John Kerry takes this position unfortunately does not put him in the minority. Recently a letter signed by 56 or 57 senators (reporting varied) asked President Bush to ease stem-cell research restrictions. We have come to expect the abortion-as-sacrament political party to ignore life at conception. Senators Trent Lott , Orrin G. Hatch, Kay Bailey Hutchison and 10 other Republicans also signed this letter. This is consistent for Hatch but previously pro-life Senators like Trent Lott and Kay Bailey Hutchison and other should be ashamed of themselves.

Update: Mark Shea has an editorial in the Dallas Morning News on using Reagan’s death to advance embryonic stem-cell research.

Over at Disputations in Tom’s fine post on Torture I had left a comment where I called justifying torture a form of relativism for conservatives. Often the ticking nuclear bomb scenario is used to justify torture. This is just relativism where you justify an evil act because of another evil act. In reply to my comment JCECIL3 said:

When Jeff Miller and I agree on something, those Catholics who disagree with us need to examine themselves.

I stand with Tom and Jeff above and all others who see it as extraordinarily clear that the Gospel and the Church do not condone torture under any circumstances.

I am about as liberal as Catholic bloggers get, and Jeff is pretty darn conservative. When you have both poles in the church calling something into question, along with Tom’s fine quotation from an Ecumenical Council, it’s time to admit you are not thinking with the Church.

We agree on this because I don’t approach things via a conservative lens. Hopefully I see everything through a Catholic lens. Prior to entering the Church I would have had no problem with torture or the death-penalty used in almost all cases of murder. I try to take seriously what the Church teaches and where I have difficulties or personal preferences I research to find out why I am wrong (knowing that I am wrong). This has helped me to not only to understand these teaching, but also to fully accept them. There are too many that come to the Church with their own preferences and agendas and then start by arguing why the Church is wrong. You should be able to read through the Catechism without crossing out whole paragraphs with a black marker or adding your own paragraphs.

Steve on his blog on Homosexual Marriage in the Church said:

Personally, I think the first homosexual marriage in the Catholic church will be done by a female priest. Which means, don’t look for it any time soon.

I agree with him. Of course since there will never be women priests, consequently they will also be no homosexual marriage accepted by the Church. Steve justifies this by saying the Church has been wrong in the past. I would be curious to know what he believes has been taught consistently through tradition and in scripture that we now deny? There have been issues that for a time were not settled in Church, but later were. Those who had contrary opinions prior to a subject being settled did no wrong. Those afterward who dissent do. Homosexual marriage in no way could be classed as development of doctrine. This would be a denial of one to be replace with another. The current view on the death penalty is an example of development of doctrine. We still don’t see the death penalty in itself is not intrinsically evil but that If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means. This is clearly a deeper understanding of the death penalty and not a negation of it.

I just don’t understand Progressive ecclesiology. If you believe that the Holy Spirit has been leading the Catholic Church and at the same time for 2000 years it has wrongly condemned homosexual acts and homosexual marriage. Maybe Progressives think the Holy Spirit should be fired for such mismanagement. This subject is not just some minor point, If homosexual activity was truly a good than the constant teaching of the Church would be a lie. If we can’t trust the Church on a matter so important then how can we trust what it has said on anything? The divinity of Christ, the Trinity, our redemptive salvation could all be errors in this topsy-turvy theology of the Church. They mention that there are only five verses in the Bible that deal with homosexuality. Of course they don’t mention the number of scripture examples of committed homosexual couples, which is exactly zero. How about the number of Church fathers who condoned homosexuality? Exactly zero again. So if we just totally ignore scripture, tradition and the magisterium then hey why not endorse homosexuality. What is the point of being Catholic if you can’t know for sure if a teaching of the faith is true or not. This is closer to Gnosticism where only some people can attain to the secret knowledge of what the truth is.

In an article Steve links to from a typical suit-and-tie Jesuit says:

The experiences of homosexual persons also call for respectful consideration. These experiences include relationships of commitment and love, but also stigma and prejudice and even violence at the hands of persons and institutions.

What about the experiences and commitment of those who abandon there families and marry someone else. Should those adulterers also have our respectful consideration? After all there are currently in a loving relationship. How about the experience of those in incestuous relationships? Is everything fine as long as there is commitment?

I think the term Progressive is mistaken. More accurately the movement should be called Dismissives. Homosexuality a grave disorder. Dismiss it. Abortion morally wrong? Dismiss it. Contraception? Dismiss it. Submission to church teachings? Dismiss it. Of course if homosexual acts were moral then contraception immediately becomes moral to. To progress in the Church you must build upon the foundation of what already exists, not rip it away to install your own.

*Steve and some other of St. Blog’s self-identifying Progressives are pro-life, yet the majority of those who use this label for themselves are not.

Even though Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry has canceled all public campaign events this week in honor of the death former President Ronald Reagan, the senator’s wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, is continuing her campaign appearances.
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Well this is consistent. Previously Kerry’s reply in asking if he owned an SUV he said no, and then when requestioned said ‘The family has it, I don’t have it.'” So on his no campaigning pledge he can now say “The family is campaigning, I am not.”

Here is one of just another confused column on conscience and Communion. It goes on to pervert Catholic teaching on Conscience by dishonestly citing the example of some saints.

The Church is attempting to override the right of every individual to consider what is before him and then to operate according to the dictates of his own good conscience. The Church is mandating blind obedience which, even in the Middle Ages, was found objectionable by some of the Church’s most prominent and revered saints, including the woman who would not yield to her inquisitors on matters of conscience, Joan of Arc.

The Renaissance martyr Thomas More spoke of matters of conscience, too, saying: “In things touching conscience, every true and good subject is more bound to have respect to his said conscience and to his soul than to any other thing in all the world.”

More, who understood clearly what it was to safeguard one’s moral integrity, was accused of treason for not siding with his king. He was harshly sentenced: “Sir Thomas More, you are to be drawn on a hurdle through the City of London to Tyburn, there to be hanged till you be half dead, after that cut down yet alive, your bowels to be taken out of your body and burned before you, your privy parts cut off, your head cut off, your body to be divided in four parts, and your head and body to be set at such places as the King shall assign.”

The sentence was commuted and More was, instead, simply beheaded. To this day, he is revered for his insistence on honoring one’s own conscience, no matter the price.

In the spirit of a whole parade of Christian saints and martyrs, including Joan of Arc and Thomas More, Catholics must insist on their right to say to their Church, “Not sorry. I must honor my conscience. I must vote my conscience. I alone know what my relationship to my God is.”

St. Joan of Arc’s conscience was formed and in accordance with Church Teaching. Those who questioned her were acting contrary to Church teaching. In fact they were acting more out of allegiance to England then to Rome. Sound familiar? The same goes in the case of St. Thomas More. He would not deny the papacy and did deny King Henry VIII sovereignty over the Church. His conscience was also formed and in accordance with Church teaching. To use the example of these two great martyrs as an argument to go on being unfaithful to the Church and to continue to receive Communion is an insult to their witness. Thomas More is the antithesis of the modern Catholic politician who places political concerns over their faith. No surprise that she gets this wrong since she appears to support both abortion and gay marriage.

These relativistic arguments always break down into absurdity. The columnist has no problem judging the actions of the Bishops who support a communion ban. She infers that they are wrong to do so. If they are acting on their conscience according to her belief then how can she at the same time criticize them?

The Rainbow Sash Movement has just been notified that Cardinal McCarrick of the Archdiocese of Washington, DC has agreed to host a “Listening Session” on the weekend of the National Council of Catholic Bishops meeting in November. According to Joe Murray, spokesperson for the Rainbow Sash Movement, “I have been in direct communication with the Cardinal’s representative since January 2004,” trying to develop this “Listening Session,” and I am thankful to God for this opportunity.

A Listening Session is an ancient practice of the Catholic Church. The goal is to listen to the faithful, thereby trying to determine the parishioners’ pastoral needs. In Catholic Teaching this is referred to as a “Sense of the Faithful.” One of the roles of a Bishop is to listen to the “Sense of the Faithful”, and to respond accordingly. Murray further stated, “From my vantage point, we do a lot better to prefer persuasion over mandate; dialog over dictate.”
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A Listening Session is an ancient practice of the Catholic Church? I would be curious as to what they might cite as an historical example. Since this is just a press release from the rainbow sash movement it is hard to determine what Cardinal McCarrick has actually agreed to and the bounds of what are to be discussed. This movement believes that the Church needs to accept and say that homosexual actions are moral so there isn’t really anything for the Cardinal to listen to. There can be no dialog on this subject other than how best the Church can teach the message of personal holiness and chasity to those with same-sex attraction; a message that applies to all of us.

Update: One of the commenters mentioned something that I should have picked up. It is rather silly that a group that is unfaithful to church teachings would invoke “Sense of the Faithful” or to pull from my limited Latin lexicon “Sensus Fidelium.” Yet in Church history there have been many such groups advocating the change of some doctrine to their understanding. From the Judaizers through the Arians and Albigensian to modernism which seeks to subvert Church teaching on the truth of human sexuality. They will always be around and they will never prevail.

A reader sent me a link to the following article. This article here entails a a story where half the Catholics at one church have signed a petition opposing Bishop Sheridan supposed ban on Holy Communion. What I thought was funny is that they are from “Rogue Valley”, how appropriate. It contains the usual misunderstanding of not only Church teaching but also what Bishop Sheridan actually said. Again people are failing to distinguish between private and public sin.

“The implication of it (Sheridan’s edict) is that, if you can’t vote for a pro-choice Catholic (Democratic candidate John Kerry), you have to vote for (President) Bush because he’s pro-life before you’re born – but after that, you’re anybody’s target,” Sack said. “Killing born children and their parents seems to be fine with him. I don’t know how you can call him pro-life when he’s put 10,000 Iraqi civilians in their graves.”

Notice the helpful way the reporter helped us out by adding (Sheridan’s edict) to inform us about what the person was referring to. The word edict was used multiple times in this article. Funny how this word is never used in reference to when a judge uses the law for their own end. This must be part of the style sheet reporters use to always substitute statement with edict when a Bishop writes something they disagree with.

“I signed it because I don’t feel the Eucharist is a bargaining tool,” said Jeanne Ellen Podolske, Our Shepherd’s director of liturgy. “His (Sheridan’s) actions are not consistent with what scripture and the church tells me. The state of the world now is so complex that you can’t reduce it to one issue.”

What a surprise that a Church liturgist is ignorant of what the Church and the scripture says. For example canon 915 says: “Those … who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin, are not to be admitted to holy communion.” The Vatican specifically interpreted manifest grave sin to refer to objectively grave sin, not (only) to those subjectively guilty of grave sin.

Jesus said in Matthew 18 “and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” Jesus also separated the sheep from the goats. Both groups believed in Jesus but those who did not obey him were denied eternal communion with him.

St. Paul said “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself.”

And this “can’t reduce it to one issue” is just getting old. If someone robs you at the point of a gun you don’t ask them what their opinion on welfare is. You are only concerned with their non pro-life view of wanting to kill you. To the Baby in the womb there is but one issue that ultimately concerns them. To those being experimented on in the lab there is only one issue that concerns them.

A report issued on May 18 by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) provides a strategy for undermining Catholic Church teaching on sexual morality and family life. The plan involves partnering with Catholic clergy and lay organizations that may secretly dissent from Church teaching. By choosing to work with such groups, UNFPA can appear to be in accord with the Church, even as it promotes such things as the legalization of abortion and the provision of contraceptives to adolescents.

The report, entitled “Working from Within: Culturally Sensitive Approaches in UNFPA Programming,” is a 32-page examination of UNFPA’s efforts in nine countries to change laws and establish what it calls reproductive rights and health – an ambiguous phrase that is used throughout the report and is never defined but in UN parlance includes abortion. In its section on Brazil readers are told that one lesson to emerge from UNFPA’s work in the country was that the Catholic Church was not a monolith and that essential to fighting Church teaching was identifying dissenting Catholics. “Within the Catholic Church, certain progressive branches exist, including the Communidades Eclesiais de Base, whose Catholic clergy understand the harsh realities of the country’s poor and are ardent advocates on their behalf.”

In the report, UNFPA touts a collaboration it began in the early 1990s with Pastoral da Crianca, a Catholic nongovernmental organization that promotes maternal and infant health through a network of 150,000 volunteers. Both groups sought to promote the spacing of pregnancies, though Pastoral did so by teaching Church approved natural family planning, while UNFPA promoted contraception. The report calls the strategy “selective collaboration” with the Catholic Church, which it defines as “identifying and working together in those areas where objectives coincide, while respecting the boundaries inherent in each partner’s mandate.”

But it becomes clear that in reality UNFPA does not respect such boundaries. The case study reveals that UNFPA, with UNICEF, funded a radio program sponsored by Pastoral as well as other “materials dealing with various aspects of family planning.” The report brags that “although the emphasis was on birth spacing through natural methods, modern methods of contraception were also introduced. Pastoral da Crianca provided all of this information to their volunteers, who, in turn, conveyed it to their clients during home visits.”

Besides using Pastoral’s vast volunteer network to help spread its message, UNFPA benefited from the relationship in another significant way: It gave them credibility. “For UNFPA, working with Pastoral lent a certain legitimacy to its efforts and facilitated its involvement with grass-roots communities.” Following the visit of Pope John Paul II to Brazil during the Jubilee Year of 2000, Pastoral terminated its relationship with UNFPA.
[Source]

This is the same tactic Margaret Sanger used. For her “Negro Project” she got liberal black pastors to preach the message of birth control. That the UNFPA can publish a report like this just shows you what the culture of the UN is like. Could you imagine the outcry if a Vatican document was uncovered that planned to subvert UN programs to promote the moral views of the Catholic Church? This document should provoke anger by all, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

…Believing Washington is too slow to act, the Zuckers are spearheading the initiative to have California put up $3 billion in state funds for stem cell research � far more than the federal government spends, reports CBS News Correspondent Bill Whitaker.

Backers say it will make California a Mecca for revolutionary research that already has helped a paralyzed lab rat to walk and promises cures for heart disease, MS, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s too.

Becoming a Mecca is no big deal. A run down city where once a year people trample each other is not exactly an ideal.

With Ronald Reagan suffering Alzheimer’s, Nancy Reagan recently spoke out in support of the legislation.

“I just don’t see how we can turn our backs on this,” the former first lady said.

But a wide network of Christian and anti-abortion groups truly believes stopping stem cell research is a moral imperative.

“Church teaching is that we value life from conception to natural death. That includes embryos. We oppose the killing for their parts,” says Carol Hogan of the Catholic Conference of Bishops.

Right now, clinics often discard the embryos, byproducts of in-vitro fertilization.

“Should we be throwing them out as medical waste or should we be using them to create cures? For our family that isn’t a difficult decision,” says Katie’s father Jerry Zucker.
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I bet some industrious Nazi thought the same thing. “There being slaughtered anyway, shouldn’t we use their remains for candles or something? What do you think Dr. Mengele?” “Why I agree entirely.”

It is amazing how much faith people put in embryonic stem-cells. These people would be ripe suckers for the old medicine shows. The new medicine show though is much classier. Those in lab coats fighting to get funding are willing to jump on the embryonic stem-cell bandwagon.

Update: $3 billion stem cell bond measure qualifies for ballot