The assault at Camp Lennox in Otis, Massachusetts: Why is the media downplaying the male-on-male component?

By now most of you have heard about the rapes which took place at an athletic camp in Western Massachusetts.  The Associated Press reports that, "Prosecutors say the assaults occurred Aug. 25 at Camp Lenox in Otis, where Somerville High School was holding an annual team-building retreat. Authorities say the three juniors assaulted the freshmen in a cabin.

Massachusetts state police detectives arrested 17-year-old Galileo Mondol and two 16-year-old boys Friday. Mondol faces numerous charges, including aggravated rape of a child, assault with intent to rape a child, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. The juveniles face similar charges. Their names were not released."

Interestingly, almost every newspaper and television account have neglected to mention that this was a case of male-on-male sexual assault.  Now why is that? Because the same liberal mainstream media which has bought into the radical homosexual agenda will often do everything possible to suppress inconvenient facts which would prove harmful to their agenda.  See here for example.  I discussed this in a recent post.

This explains why the mainstream media has no problem exposing incidents of heterosexual rape in the military but virtually ignores the fact that the number of homosexual assaults in the military has been three times greater.  See here.

Read the statistical data which I have provided here and ask yourself why the mainstream media refuses to consider the evidence.

 

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Professor Massimo Introvigne: U.S. may be on path toward anti-Christian violence

Professor Massimo Introvigne, Chairman of the newly created Observatory on Religious Liberty, a joint-creation of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the City of Rome, the purpose of which is to monitor religious freedom around the world, has expressed his concern that the United States is on the path to anti-Christian violence.

As reported by the Catholic News Agency here, "The inaugural meeting was held at Rome’s Foreign Press Association June 28. It heard Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore make the case that religious liberty in the United States is currently imperiled by the prevailing culture as well as by legislation such as the recent Department of Health & Human Services mandate.


Introvigne stressed that he did not want to create a 'false impression' that he was equating 'the bloody persecution of Christians' as presently occurs in some African and Asian countries with 'discriminatory legislation in the United States or Europe.'

However, the 57-year-old sociologist suggested that there was a 'three stage process' which could lead to anti-Christian violence in the West if action to protect religious liberty was not taken.

'It starts with intolerance which is a cultural phenomenon,' he explained 'and then if intolerance becomes so widespread and popular, some politicians will act upon it and introduce discriminatory legislation.'

It is in this 'climate of discrimination,' he said, that people can decide to take the law into their own hands and use violence to further suppress Christianity."

This isn't news to readers of this Blog.  For many years I have been issuing the same warning.  As I noted here:

Professor James Hitchcock, in his excellent work entitled 'Catholicism and Modernity' (New York:Seabury Press, 1979, p. 86), explains the role of the media in this entire process: "The media's alleged commitment to 'pluralism' is at base a kind of hoax. The banner of pluralism is raised in order to win toleration for new ideas as yet unacceptable to the majority. Once toleration has been achieved, public opinion is systematically manipulated first to enforce a status of equality between the old and the new, then to assert the superiority of the new over the old. A final stage is often the total discrediting, even sometimes the banning, of what had previously been orthodox."


This is the path Barack Obama and his secular socialist machine have put us on.  And the HHS Mandate is merely the beginning of a process which will lead to oppression and physical violence.  It was Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas who warned of the way in which oppression can subtly arise in our midst: "As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression.  In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."

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On reverence in prayer and toward others...

Recently I was approached just prior to Holy Mass and asked to lead a public Rosary.  I agreed.  And in the middle of reciting a decade, I was interrupted by another parishioner who began to lead the prayer.  I simply followed along silently for the rest of the Rosary.  What is so disturbing about this is not that I was cut off (I'm quite content with praying the Rosary quietly, something I do every day and before every Holy Mass).

No, what is disturbing is the attitude of irreverence which this reveals.  Dietrich von Hildebrand explains that, "Reverence in its primitive form is not only the basis of every religion, and, above all, of the receptiveness to the Lumen Christi, to the word of God; but it is also a constitutive element of faith, hope, and love of God.  Complete, fully ripened reverence is a component of a true relationship with God and specifically with the God of Revelation." 

In addition, reverence is the basis of all true personality.  Again Dr. Hildebrand explains: "The significance of reverence for the full personality can easily be grasped.  The greatest natural endowment, the greatest latitude of talents and capacities can never lead to true personality if reverence is lacking.  For the latter is the basis of the second essential component of personality, the perceiving of values, an organic contact with the world of values, and - most ultimate of all - the dying to oneself, the preparation of inner room for Christ.  The man without reverence is necessarily flat and limited.  This lack is an essential mark of stupidity.  Even he whose mind is obdurate and helpless, but who possesses reverence, does not manifest that offensive, tactlessly persistent stupidity of which it is said that 'even the gods struggle against it in vain.'" (Liturgy and Personality, pp. 50-51).

Because lack of reverence may have two roots, Dr. Hildebrand notes that, "..there are two different types of men who lack reverence: the arrogant person and the senseless, blunt one.  The root of the first is to be found in pride.  The man who lacks reverence because of pride and arrogance approaches everything with conceit and presumption, imagines that he knows everything, that he sees through everything.  He is interested in the world only insofar as it serves his self-glorification, insofar as it enhances his own importance...He thinks himself always greater than that which is not himself.  The world holds no mystery for him.  He treats everything tactlessly, with easy familiarity, and everything seems to him to be at his disposal.  To his insolent, conceited gaze, to his despotic approach, the world is sealed, silent, stripped of all mystery, deprived of all depth, flat and limited to one dimension.  He stands in desolate emptiness, blind to all the values and secrets of being, circling endlessly around himself...

There is however another form of irreverence, one which is born of concupiscence.  The concupiscent man is interested in the world only as a means of procuring pleasure for himself.  His is a dominating position in the face of being - not because he wills domination as such but because he wants to use being   for his pleasure.  He, too, circles around in the narrowness of his own self.  He does not face the world with arrogance and conceit but with a blunt stupidity.  Stubbornly imprisoned in his own self, he violates being, and seeing it only from the outside, he thus misses its true meaning.  To this type of irreverent man the world also refuses to disclose its breadth, height, and depth, its richness of values and mysteries." (Liturgy and Personality, pp. 49-50).

And so, this parishioner approached the most holy mysteries of the Rosary with irreverence.  The need to be "in control," to dominate the prayer in effect, undermined any reverence for objective value.  St. Louis de Montfort assures us that, "A single Hail Mary said properly [in other words, with reverence] is worth more than a hundred and fifty said badly." (The Secret of the Rosary, Forty-first Rose).

In his Forty-fourth Rose, St. Montfort explains that one fault, "commonly committed in saying the Rosary is to have no intention other than that of getting it over with as quickly as possible.  This is because so many look upon the Rosary as a burden, which weighs heavily upon them when it has not been said...It is sad to see how most people say the Rosary.  They say it astonishingly fast, slipping over part of the words.  We could not possibly expect anyone, even the most important person, to think that a slipshod address of this kind was a compliment, and yet we imagine that Jesus and Mary will be honored by it!"  In his Forty-fifth Rose, St. Montfort says simply, "I would like to add that the Rosary ought to be said reverently.."

All around us, we are witnessing a world which has succumbed to pride and arrogance.  The result is that so many desire to control everyone and every thing around them - including conversation (tell me with a straight face that you haven't experienced this).  This is characteristic of the irreverent man.  As Catholic Christians, we are called to put on the new man.  The Catholic formed by the Liturgy and by the authentic spirit of the Rosary will be reverent toward his neighbor.  He will not treat his neighbor as an obstacle to be smashed down or dominated.  Not if he expects his prayer to have any value.  Not if he expects his prayers to be answered.

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While in prayer today...

I was pondering the strange rumblings which are being heard around the world and in particular the United States.  In prayer this word comes to me:


"Go, my people, enter your chambers, and close the doors behind you;

Hide yourselves for a brief moment, until the wrath is past. See, the LORD goes forth from his place, to punish the wickedness of the earth’s inhabitants; The earth will reveal the blood shed upon it, and no longer conceal the slain." (Isaiah 26: 20).

The earth will soon reveal the blood of the little children slain in the womb. You hear rumbling. I tell you it is the Blood of Abel crying out to the Lord.

Hide yourselves until His wrath has past.

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More on Clark University and its definition of heterosexism...

Some of those students who attend Clark University have suggested that Clark University, through its definition of "heterosexism," is merely trying to protect a certain segment of the school's population from "harassment."  This is, of course, ludicrous.  Even a cursory read of Clark's definition   will reveal that much more is intended here.

Lest there be any doubt about where Clark University stands, let's look at the definition of "heterosexism" provided by Clark University's homosexual propagandist-in-residence.  In an article co-authored with JuliAnna Smith of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, we read from Dr. Abbie Goldberg that heterosexism is, "an ideological system that denies, denigrates, and stigmatizes any nonheterosexual form of behavior, identity, relationship, or community."

Got that?  Any moral opposition to the homosexual lifestyle is, then, deemed heterosexism, a form of discrimination.  Goldberg and her co-propagandist for the radical homosexual agenda continue: "At the societal level, institutionalized heterosexism takes the form of antigay legislation such as laws preventing same-sex couples from marrying or adopting children." (See here for full article).

In other words, the Catechism of the Catholic Church is "heterosexist" because it insists that homosexual acts are "intrinsically disordered," "contrary to the natural law," and "under no circumstances can they be approved." (CCC, 2357).  And, according to Goldberg and associate, any institution which opposes same-sex "marriage," such as the Catholic Church, is guilty of "institutionalized heterosexism."

The U.S. Bishops, see here, teach us that: "The natural structure of human sexuality makes man and woman complementary partners for the transmission of human life. Only a union of male and female can express the sexual complementarity willed by God for marriage. The permanent and exclusive commitment of marriage is the necessary context for the expression of sexual love intended by God both to serve the transmission of human life and to build up the bond between husband and wife (see CCC, nos. 1639-1640).

In marriage, husband and wife give themselves totally to each other in their masculinity and femininity (see CCC, no. 1643). They are equal as human beings but different as man and woman, fulfilling each other through this natural difference. This unique complementarity makes possible the conjugal bond that is the core of marriage.

Why is a same-sex union not equivalent to a marriage?

For several reasons a same-sex union contradicts the nature of marriage: It is not based on the natural complementarity of male and female; it cannot cooperate with God to create new life; and the natural purpose of sexual union cannot be achieved by a same-sex union. Persons in same-sex unions cannot enter into a true conjugal union. Therefore, it is wrong to equate their relationship to a marriage.

Goldberg's definition of "heterosexism" is nothing less than an assault on Catholic moral teaching.  As Pope John Paul II said, in his Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor, "In teaching the existence of intrinsically evil acts, the Church accepts the teaching of Sacred Scripture.  The Apostle Paul emphatically states, 'Do not be deceived: neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the Kingdom of God.'" (Veritatis Splendor, No. 81, citing 1 Corinthians 6: 9-10).

Dr. Goldberg's definition of "heterosexism," which has obviously been fully embraced by Clark University, takes no account of the Natural Law and is merely an exercise in chronological snobbery or what the French philosopher Jacques Maritain referred to as"chronolatry" in his work "Le paysan de la Garonne" - The Peasant of the Garonne. Maritain defines chronolatry as the idolatry of what is newest or latest in time. This is the characteristic flaw of today's "progressive" who looks upon the wisdom of the ages and dismisses it as nothing more than "theories" which belong to the past.

Clark University is indeed suffering an intellectual crisis.  A crisis which has resulted in institutionalized arrogance.

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Steve Jobs on dogma...

Our Lady told Father Gobbi on July 4, 1986 that, "In the darkness which has come down upon the world and is spreading throughout the Church, how many minds are becoming obscured by errors and dried up by the ever widening spread of doubts; how many intellects are being contaminated with error which leads many to become lost and to stray from the way of the true faith....If you look to my Immaculate Heart and allow yourselves to be penetrated by the ray of my light, your minds will obtain the gift of divine wisdom and will be drawn by the beauty of the truth which Jesus has revealed to you."

I am struck by how many people - Catholics included - are eulogizing Steve Jobs at the moment.  Many revere the inventor and innovator as some sort of "Tech God."  There are endless testimonials for this man.  Many of my friends on Facebook have been singing his praises.

I don't pretend to know everything about Steve Jobs.  And I have no interest in speaking ill of him.  But there is something which concerns me about his thought.  And it is this: Mr. Jobs has been widely quoted as having said: "Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."  See here. These words have received much play in the liberal mainstream media. 


Now here we encounter a problem.  If Mr. Jobs had simply said, "Don't be trapped by other people's ideology," or "Think outside the box," or "Don't let others define who you are or what your goals are," I wouln't be concerned.  But he specifically used the word "dogma," which primarily refers to religious doctrine. In his book entitled The Electronic Christian, Archbishop Fulton John Sheen so eloquently warned that, "The modern man must decide for himself whether he is going to have a religion with thought or a religion without it. He already knows that thoughtless policies lead to the ruin of society, and he may begin to suspect that thoughtless religion ends in confusion worse confounded.

The problem is simple. The modern man has two maps before him: one the map of sentimental religion, the other the map of dogmatic religion. The first is very simple. It has been constructed only in the last few years by a topographer who has just gone into the business of map making and is extremely adverse to explicit directions. He believes that each man should find his own way and not have his liberty taken away by dogmatic directions. The other map is much more complicated and full of dogmatic detail. It has been made by topographers who have been over every inch of the road for centuries and know each detour and each pitfall. It has explicit directions and dogmas such as, 'Do not take this road - it is swampy,' or 'Follow this road; although rough and rocky at first, it leads to a smooth road on a mountaintop.'


The simple map is very easy to read, but those who are guided by it are generally lost in a swamp of mushy sentimentalism. The other map takes a little more scrutiny, but it is simpler in the end, for it takes you up through the rocky road of the world's scorn to the everlasting hills where is seated the original Map Maker, the only One who ever has associated rest with learning: 'Learn of Me...and you shall find rest for your souls.'

Every new coherent doctrine and dogma add to the pabulum for thought; it is an extra bit of garden upon which we can intellectually browse; it is new food into which we can put our teeth and thence absorb nourishment; it is the discovery of a new intellectual planet that adds fullness and spaciousness to our mental world. And simply because it is solid and weighty, because it is dogmatic and not gaseous and foggy like a sentiment, it is intellectually invigorating, for it is with weights that the best drill is done, and not with feathers.

It is the very nature of a man to generate children of his brain in the shape of thoughts, and as he piles up thought on thought, truth on truth, doctrine on doctrine, conviction on conviction, and dogma on dogma, a very coherent and orderly fashion, so as to produce a system complex as a body and yet one and harmonious, the more and more human he becomes. When, however, in response to false cries for progress, he lops off dogmas, breaks with the memory of his forefathers, denies intellectual parentage, pleads for a religion without dogmas, substitutes mistiness for mystery, mistakes sentiment for sediment, he is sinking back slowly, surely, and inevitably into the senselessness of stones and into the irresponsible unconsciousness of weeds. Grass is broad-minded. Cabbages have heads - but no dogmas." (pp. 74-75).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that, "The Church's Magisterium exercises the authority it holds from Christ to the fullest extent when it defines dogmas, that is, when it proposes, in a form obliging the Christian people to an irrevocable adherence of faith, truths contained in divine Revelation or also when it proposes, in a definitive way, truths having a necessary connection with these." (CCC, 88).

How critical is dogma to one's faith life? Again the Catechism explains, "There is an organic connection between our spiritual life and the dogmas. Dogmas are lights along the path of faith; they illuminate it and make it secure. Conversely, if our life is upright, our intellect and heart will be open to welcome the light shed by the dogmas of faith." (CCC, 89).

There are many voices out there which seek to paint the Church as "rigid," "reactionary," "tradition-bound," "out-of-date," and "archaic" because she refuses to abandon divine Revelation in order to accommodate "modern man."  But the words of the Catechism are our sure guide: "if our life is upright, our intellect and heart will be open to welcome the light shed by the dogmas of faith."  And if our lives are not upright...

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What is going on at Saint Joseph's Parish in Fitchburg?

The Sentinel & Enterprise is reporting that, "Residents living near St. Joseph Church on Woodland Street expressed shock Tuesday after hearing that a priest who had served at the parish has been charged with possessing child pornography and stealing from the church.  The Rev. Lowe Dongor received a summons to Fitchburg District Court on Friday and was arraigned Monday on charges of larceny over $250, larceny from a building, and having child pornography in his possession."

The article goes on to explain that Fr. Dongor, age 35, "..was put on leave in July, at which time he was assigned to reside at the Holy Name of Jesus House of Studies in Worcester, which houses college-age men who are thinking about entering the priesthood."  Isn't that nice.  Images depicting young girls, approximately 10 to 11 years of age, in various stages of nudity, were found on Fr. Dongor's computers.  "In addition," the Sentinel & Enterprise reports, "many of the pictures depicted a chest and genitals prominently displayed."

So what does the Diocese do?  It houses Fr. Dongor at a house of studies which serves as the home for young men who are discerning a priestly vocation. 

According to the Sentinel & Enterprise, "Deacon Jim Couture declined to comment on the matter."  This doesn't exactly surprise me.  This is the same deacon who has promoted the work of Father John Powell, S.J. in the past.  See here.

What is going on at St. Joseph's Parish in Fitchburg?

I'm beginning to understand why the "leadership" at St. Joseph's Parish didn't want me around and excluded me from participation in parish ministry.

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"When conscience, this bright lamp of the soul, calls 'evil good and good evil,' it is already on the path to the most alarming corruption and the darkest moral blindness."

In his Encyclical Leter Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), Pope John Paul II reminds us that, "The eclipse of the sense of God and of man inevitably leads to a practical materialism, which breeds individualism, utilitarianism and hedonism. Here too we see the permanent validity of the words of the Apostle: 'And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct' (Rom 1:28). The values of being are replaced by those of having. The only goal which counts is the pursuit of one's own material well-being. The so-called 'quality of life' is interpreted primarily or exclusively as economic efficiency, inordinate consumerism, physical beauty and pleasure, to the neglect of the more profound dimensions-interpersonal, spiritual and religious-of existence.


In such a context suffering, an inescapable burden of human existence but also a factor of possible personal growth, is 'censored', rejected as useless, indeed opposed as an evil, always and in every way to be avoided. When it cannot be avoided and the prospect of even some future well-being vanishes, then life appears to have lost all meaning and the temptation grows in man to claim the right to suppress it.

Within this same cultural climate, the body is no longer perceived as a properly personal reality, a sign and place of relations with others, with God and with the world. It is reduced to pure materiality: it is simply a complex of organs, functions and energies to be used according to the sole criteria of pleasure and efficiency. Consequently, sexuality too is depersonalized and exploited: from being the sign, place and language of love, that is, of the gift of self and acceptance of another, in all the other's richness as a person, it increasingly becomes the occasion and instrument for self-assertion and the selfish satisfaction of personal desires and instincts. Thus the original import of human sexuality is distorted and falsified, and the two meanings, unitive and procreative, inherent in the very nature of the conjugal act, are artificially separated..." (No. 23).

Proponents of absolute sexual permissiveness and the Culture of Sodomy are most anxious to paint a sexual morality in accordance with the Natural Law and the moral teaching of the Catholic Church as "harmful" and even "dangerous."  The Church and pro-family individuals and groups must be demonized as being backward, as being unbalanced freaks who are comparable to Nazis or racists.  As "ignorant and irrelevant." See here.

Should this surprise us?  It is the inevitable result of embracing a theology from Hell.  Because so many today follow the doctrines of demons, "A large part of contemporary society looks sadly like that humanity which Paul describes in his Letter to the Romans. It is composed 'of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth' (1:18): having denied God and believing that they can build the earthly city without him, 'they became futile in their thinking' so that 'their senseless minds were darkened' (1:21); 'claiming to be wise, they became fools' (1:22), carrying out works deserving of death, and 'they not only do them but approve those who practise them' (1:32). When conscience, this bright lamp of the soul (cf. Mt 6:22-23), calls 'evil good and good evil' (Is 5:20), it is already on the path to the most alarming corruption and the darkest moral blindness." (Evangelium Vitae, No. 24).


And so it can be seen that we are already on the path toward the most alarming corruption and the darkest moral blindness.  The path we are on leads directly to the City of Satan and the Reign of Antichrist. 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.

How blind our sin-sick society has become.  Recently, officials of the Archdiocese of Boston accused Catholics faithful to the Magisterium of "harming the community."  But the same officials do not accuse Governor Deval Patrick, or any of those who have promoted Barbara Lenk's nomination to the Massachusetts SJC, of harming the community or the Common Good.

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Representative Steve Vaillancourt has blood on his hands

In a Blog post which may be found here, Republican Steve Vaillancourt from Manchester has defended the inappropriate comments made by Representative D.J. Bettencourt late last week on Facebook in which he referred to Bishop John McCormack as a "pedophile pimp."  Vaillancourt writes, "This pedophile enabler has blood (and perhaps other bodily fluids) both figuratively and perhaps literally on his hands...The Bishop has disgraced the Catholic Church."

It is most ironic that Rep. Vaillancourt would accuse anyone of having blood on their hands.  For Mr. Vaillancourt supports abortion within the first trimester of pregnancy.  See here.  And as Father Frank Pavone, Director of Priests for Life, has reminded us so often, "abortion itself is the worst form of child abuse."   If you doubt this for even a moment, view the photos at the Priests for Life website of aborted first trimester babies here.

I'm not a defender of Bishop McCormack.  For years I have said that he failed to protect children.  For years I opposed his toleration of the dissent group VOTF within the Diocese of Manchester.  I actually wrote him several times over the years expressing my concerns.  But always while maintaining respect for his priestly office, for his office as Bishop.  But for someone like Steve Vaillancourt who is supportive of the worst form of child abuse - the murder of innocents through abortion - to condemn another for having blood on their hands is, well, nothing less than blatant hypocrisy.

Has Bishop John McCormack disgraced the Catholic Church?  By no means.  He has disgraced himself alone.  New Hampshire Catholics are not responsible for the moral failings of Bishop McCormack.  Each of us is responsible for his own sins before God.  D.J. Bettencourt understands this deep down.  Which is why, in a conciliatory letter to Bishop McCormack, he wrote (in part): "My comments were in no way intended as an attack on the Catholic Church, or on the position which you hold...I came of age in the faith during the height of the sexual abuse scandal and when many were walking away from the Church.  I remained.  I stayed in the belief that the Christian faith and our Church were more than the few individuals who betrayed one of the greatest trusts a man can be given - that of a priest."

Rep. Vaillancourt has blood on his hands.  If he wants to see clearly enough to render judgments, he should first remove the plank from his own eye.

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