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The Democratic Republic of the United States

Our President and those with him, along with at least some section of our militaryYes, yes, support our military, but when will they support their constitutional duty. They should have “eliminated” the Chinese interrogators rather than take orders from them. have turned our country into a communist stooge state. From ABC News: Report: U.S. Soldiers Did ‘Dirty Work’ for Chinese Interrogators. Alleges Guantanamo Personnel Softened Up Detainees at Request of Chinese Intelligence.

U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo Bay allegedly softened up detainees at the request of Chinese intelligence officials who had come to the island facility to interrogate the men — or they allowed the Chinese to dole out the treatment themselves, according to claims in a new government report.

Buried in a Department of Justice report released Tuesday are new allegations about a 2002 arrangement between the United States and China, which allowed Chinese intelligence to visit Guantanamo and interrogate Chinese Uighurs held there…

Didn’t we stand in opposition to communism not too long ago (at least outwardly)? Didn’t we call small countries and some people communist stooges? Now it’s just a business deal I guess. We have become communist stooges.

And on the Uighurs (from Wikipedia):

Following 9/11, China voiced its support for the United States of America in the war on terror. The Chinese government has often referred to Uyghur nationalists as “terrorists” and received more global support for their own “war on terror” since 9/11. Human rights organizations have become concerned that this “war on terror” is being used by the Chinese government as a pretext to repress ethnic Uyghurs. Uyghur exile groups also claim that the Chinese government is suppressing Uyghur culture and religion, and responding to demands for independence with human rights violations. These include mass abortions of Uyghur children and forced termination of marriages between Uyghur people. Uyghur children who are born unauthorized are denied food and shelter by the government.

The war on terror being used as a pretext? Who’d have thought…

Christian Witness, PNCC, Political,

Amen Fr. Jordan

From the NY Times: Tending to a Flock in Hard Hats

The Rev. Brian Jordan had just loped to the end of a long run on a Saturday afternoon, savoring one of those rare times a priest could be considered off duty, when he checked the message on his cellphone. The voice belonged to an old contact in Local 14 of the operating engineers’ union. His words were succinct and specific: —There’s been an accident at 51st and Second. Can you help us?—

Within minutes, Father Jordan covered his running gear with the brown habit and capuche he wore as a Franciscan and drove from the Rockaway beachfront back to Midtown Manhattan. The scene he found there on March 15 was a chaos of rubble, crushed cars, rescue crews, ambulances, gawkers and, at the center, a collapsed building and a buckled construction crane.

Father Jordan looked past all of it, searching for the men in hard hats —” his parish, his flock. Some were crying, some were hugging, some were kicking at the ground. A couple recognized the priest from the months they had spent at ground zero in Lower Manhattan.

On this day, as on those days, Father Jordan picked his way into the ruins. Four construction workers were known to be dead, and the bodies of two more workers would be found days later (along with the body of a woman who had been visiting from South Florida). Their surviving comrades lifted off their hard hats as the priest sprinkled holy water amid the wreckage and prayed that God would grant the souls of the departed eternal rest.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, Father Jordan has ministered to the building trades, which has meant both celebrating acts of material creation and mourning those killed in this dangerous work. The six workers’ deaths on March 15 were the most he had dealt with on a single day since Sept. 11, and came amid an especially tragic 12 months, with 26 fatalities on New York work sites.

On April 28, Father Jordan officiated at a Mass for Workers’ Memorial Day in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. In most years, safer years, the annual event had been easily accommodated in the priest’s home church, St. Francis of Assisi on West 31st Street. Regardless of the setting, Father Jordan has preached a consistent message.

—Union construction workers have sacred instruments,— he said in his homily at St. Patrick’s. —No, not just their tools, machinery and computerized systems that they are trained and responsible for. These sacred instruments are their hands.—

—As a surgeon has sacred hands while performing a medical operation, as a priest has sacred hands while celebrating the Eucharist, so are union construction workers with their sacred and skillful hands— doing godly work by building hospitals, schools, family homes. —I am not stretching the imagery of sacredness,— he continued. —I am simply stating a fact.—

Father Jordan, 52, grew up in the Cypress Hills section of Brooklyn, the son of a bakery-truck driver who was the shop steward in his Teamsters’ local. —My father used the term ‘solidarity’ when I was a kid,— Father Jordan recalled in an interview. —He’d say, ‘When we go to church, we pray together. When we do a job, we work together. When we stand up for something, we stand together.’ So I had that concept from a young age.—

Still, Father Jordan entered Siena College near Albany with the goal of becoming a lawyer. It was the Rev. Mychal F. Judge, then an assistant to the college president, who recruited the undergraduate with this sales pitch: —Don’t be an unhappy lawyer. Be a happy priest.—

During seminary, through ordination in 1983 and in his initial parishes in the Bronx, Boston and suburban Washington, Father Jordan counted Father Judge as his mentor. In particular, he learned from the example Father Judge set in his role as chaplain to the New York City Fire Department.

So it was almost eerily appropriate that on the day Father Judge died at ground zero while tending to the fallen, Father Jordan arrived there with his holy water, beginning 10 months of praying for the dead and the living alike.

—Caring for people, making time for people, not worrying about your own needs,— Father Jordan said of his mentor’s example. —He always said, ‘Time is a gift from God. What you receive as a gift, give as a gift.’ He said that to me 30 years ago. Still makes sense.—

In acting on Father Judge’s advice, Father Jordan has worked extensively among immigrants as well as construction workers. Increasingly, he has seen the lines blur between his two specialties as immigrants have moved into the building trades. Father Jordan’s role requires a series of balancing acts: being on good terms with labor unions as well as contractors, visiting union workers as well as nonunion worksites, empathizing with illegal immigrants while hearing out rank-and-file members convinced that those same immigrants are driving down wages. On one point, though, Father Jordan has been repeatedly, publicly assertive: he believes that nonunion contractors do not provide the high level of training that construction unions do and that, as a result, nonunion workers face a greater risk of injury or death…

Because of the work I do in my non-clerical profession I know of what he speaks – and I have seen it first hand. The abuse of workers (also see here, here, and here) is rampant and is keyed in to one thing – improving the bottom line. I have often said that the abuses that take place, especially those aimed at the immigrant worker community, equal the horrors seen in the the manufacturing environment in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.

The Polish National Catholic Church (PNCC) is the church of these workers. It was founded by the hard working coal miners of Pennsylvania, as well as those who worked in manufacturing in Chicago and Buffalo. Their struggle for fair wages, education, health and safety protections, and the elimination of child labor was championed by Bishop Hodur.

On November 30, 1919 Bishop Hodur gave an address at a reception for Maciej Leszczyński held in Scranton’s town hall. Mr. Leszczyński was in the United States as a delegate to the International Conference of WorkersSee the History of the ILO, specifically: The ILO has made signal contributions to the world of work from its early days. The first International Labour Conference held in Washington in October 1919 adopted six International Labour Conventions, which dealt with hours of work in industry, unemployment, maternity protection, night work for women, minimum age and night work for young persons in industry.. Those in attendance at the event included congressman John Farr and District President John T. Dempsey of the United Mine Workers. At the reception Bishop Hodur said:

One of the greatest achievements of modem civilization is respect and honor for human labor. In the past, labor was undervalued, work was shameful, and what goes with that, working people were mistreated and abused. There was kowtowing and bowing before those who did not need to work hard, and those who did work hard and with their toil created wealth and fed others were regarded as half-free or slaves. Even the greatest of the ancient thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle regarded this economic system as just and the only one recommended, in which a minority rules and possesses full rights of citizenship and the majority works and produces. This majority of people had no rights, it was not free. And such a system lasted whole ages.

Truly Jesus Christ came on earth as the greatest teacher of humankind, the spiritual regenerator, and he condemned a social order based on cruelty and injustice…

Not until the beginning of the nineteenth century were the commandments of Christ the Lord remembered, His teaching about the worthiness and value of labor…

And from that time, that is, more or less from the middle of the last century, begins the organization of workers on a larger scale in the name of the rights of man, in the name of the value and worthiness of labor. Everything that workers did in the name of their slogans was good.

And today one may say boldly that the cause of labor is the most important one, and that progress, the development and happiness of the whole nation, of all mankind, depends on its just resolution. Workers today have more privileges than they have ever had.

In this reasonable and just struggle for rights, bread for the family and education for children, for common control of the wealth created by the worker, our holy Church stands before the worker like a pillar of fire, and the hand of Christ blesses him in his work.

Perspective, Political

Freedom to eat

From the AP: Chicago overturns ban on foie gras in restaurants

CHICAGO (AP) —” Dining on foie gras —” a delicacy made of duck and goose liver —” will soon be legal again in Chicago.

The City Council on Wednesday repealed its two-year-old ban on the gourmet dish, drawing dissent from animal rights activists who consider foie gras cruel because the birds are force-fed to make their livers bigger.

But there were no worries in chef Didier Durand’s restaurant, Cyrano’s Bistrot.

“All of us are so excited,” Durand told reporters as he held his pet duck, Nicolai, named after French President Nicolas Sarkozy. “People miss it. They used to go to the suburbs to get foie gras and stopped going to specifically French restaurants.”

Durand was one of a coalition of restaurateurs who started Chicago Chefs for Choice, a movement to overturn the ban, which went into effect in August 2006. He said Wednesday that he would begin serving foie gras again as soon as the repeal goes into effect later this month.

“You might disagree with serving foie gras, but you don’t do a ban and forbid everybody to have foie gras,” Durand said. His restaurant was one of many across the city that held foie gras dinners in the days before the ban took effect…

Amen chef, Amen! The government looses control over one more aspect of our lives. If you don’t like it, don’t eat it. Protest against it. Use your mind and your wits to convince others of your argument, but don’t put me in prison because I disagree with your perspective.

Perspective, Political

Who is a conservative?

An interesting post from Albany Catholic: Is Obama the True Conservative?

We at Albany Catholic do not endorse candidates. We do however, like to keep our readers well-informed. With that in mind, we pass along the following item. The March 24, 2008 issue of The American Conservative had an interesting article entitled The conservative case for Barack Obama by Andrew J. Bacevich

Young Fogey… any thoughts on the Bacevich article?

Christian Witness, PNCC, Political

National Day of Prayer event

A special thank you to a very good friend, Mr. Walter Lasinski, for offering the idea of holding a National Day of Prayer event.

We held the event as a prayer service following Holy Mass for the Solemnity of the Ascension. We used the Annual Call to Repentance format offered at the National Day of Prayer website, and added a few patriotic hymns, the Pledge, and a blessing after the communal prayer. I found it inspiring and prayerful.

Perspective, Political, ,

A nuclear wait a minute here

From the Scotsman (as well as other sources): Clinton: I’ll obliterate Iran if it launches nuclear attack on Israel

THE Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton warned Tehran yesterday that if she were in the White House, the United States could “totally obliterate” Iran in retaliation for a nuclear strike against Israel.

On the day of a crucial vote in her nomination battle with fellow Democrat Barack Obama, the New York senator said she wanted to make clear to Tehran what she was prepared to do as president in the hope that the warning would deter any Iranian nuclear attack against the Jewish state. “I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran (if it attacks Israel],” she told ABC’s Good Morning America programme.

“In the next ten years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them,” she said…

This is really really sick, coming from a person who wishes to be the President of the United States.

This issue first emerged during the last Democratic debate, and I thought it was sick when Ms. Clinton said it then. Now this?

The person elected as President usually tasks a rather reticent approach toward such issues. They make general statements, things like, “We will consider our options,” or “We will defend our allies,” etc. Even our current president, while engaging in a lot of rhetoric that is unfortunate, doesn’t promise actions like this.

For my part, let Israel take care of itself. Israel has nuclear weapons, and tons of military hardware provided by this country. Why should we get involved. Are we, as a county, so bent on defending a foreign land that we would initiate a nuclear holocaust on their behalf?

A 2006 census pegs Iran’s population at over 70 million, with about 10.5 million being age 15 or under. We would kill them all, either in direct nuclear hits or in the radioactive aftermath? Really? The United States would do this? This is what we want from our leaders?

Beyond the obvious meaning of obliterate, we would irradiate the Middle East – Saudi Arabia, Turkey, much of the Persian Gulf, Pakistan (they have nukes too), Armenia, and he former Soviet Republics. Do we think that Russia and Pakistan and India would say, “Ok, you’ve irradiated our populations and now they are going to die horrible deaths, but we won’t do anything about it?”

That radioactive cloud won’t stay there either. We better lay in a big supply of iodine because our sons and daughters, right here in North America, will be dying in their 20’s from bone cancer and leukemia.

Our politics are sick and sad if our leaders can casually say that they will obliterate a country – and no one calls them to account for saying it. I lived through enough of the Cold War to know that living under the specter of a nuclear holocaust was no fun. Living in Western New York meant we were target one in a dual nuclear hit. As a former member of CAP I used to take part in radioactivity monitoring exercises – to prepare for the day. In reality I would have been dead – and even as a child I knew that. No child should have to live like that.

It may take a village to raise a child, but only one crazed leader to obliterate the village.

Current Events, Perspective, Political

Interesting quotes

On the Bishop of Rome’s visit:

“Clearly, they like the pope, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to do everything he tells them,” said Father Thomas Reese of Georgetown’s Woodstock Theological Center. “People ultimately are going to do what they think is right.”

As quoted in the Bloomberg article: Benedict to Confront Skeptics, Scandal in U.S. Trip. I guess that in Fr. Reese’s book Roman Catholics in the U.S. are really Protestants with funny rituals?

On Bush being a closet Catholic:

You can’t be Catholic and un-Catholic at the same time.

From a comment on Bush a “Closet Catholic”? at Pro Ecclesia * Pro Familia * Pro Civitate. I would only differ in saying that yes you can – when you sin.

Christian Witness, Perspective, Political,

George Bush – Convert, Heretic, Both?

I ran across a rather interesting (in the sad sense) point of view expressed in a blog post at Good Jesuit, Bad Jesuit called George W. Bush’s Warm Embrace Of The Catholic ChurchIt also links to an article from the Deacon’s Bench. The comments below that article are of note.. It delivers the typical neocon Roman Catholic fringe thinking you find in certain R.C. blog circles. These folks are typical Bush supporters, or people who believe that politics and politicians are our saviors. What is unfortunate is that they fail to see they they are supporting a president who has told their Church and its leader, the Bishop of Rome (large picture attached to the post – I guess he’s giving Mr. Bush a blessing?) to go jump in the Tiber.

The Bishop of Rome has elucidated – very clearly – that the things Mr. Bush is engaged in are improper and sinful. Mr. Bush chose to ignore the Bishop of Rome on issues surrounding Iraq and the Just War doctrine. He chose to tell the Bishop of Rome’s delegation to get lost. He has ignored Rome on torture and other issues as well.

Perhaps Mr. Bush would be a perfect fit for the “American Catholic Church.” He certainly holds to the Americanist Heresy, condemned by Leo XIII in Testem Benevolentiae. He refuses to subjugate himself (as many Roman Catholics in the U.S. do) to the authority and teaching of the Church, preferring rather his own “enlightened” point-of-view. Just a recap of Rome’s teaching on the issueSee also: Pope John Paul II calls War a Defeat for Humanity: Neoconservative Iraq Just War Theories Rejected:

The basis of these opinions is that, to make converts, the Church should adapt herself to our advanced civilization and relax her ancient rigour as regards not only the rule of life but also the deposit of faith, and should pass over or minimize certain points of doctrine, or even give them a meaning which the Church has never held. On this the Vatican Council is clear; faith is not a doctrine for speculation like a philosophical theory, to be relinquished or in any manner suppressed under any specious pretext whatsoever; such a process would alienate Catholics from the Church, instead of bringing converts. In the words of the council the Church must constantly adhere to the same doctrine in the same sense and in the same way; but the rule of Christian life admits of modifications according to diversity of time, place, or national custom, only such changes are not to depend on the will of private individuals but on the judgment of the Church.

So when Mr. Fromm writes:

If George Bush becomes a Catholic it will be a great day, if not then I will have lived under a President who prays to Jesus Christ and does his best to live his life as a Christian first and politician second.

…he should remember that an embrace of the Roman Catholic Church requires that the person doing so hold to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, on war, abortion, torture, the death penalty, truth, contraception, and on… An embrace of Christianity entails a whole set of life choices that go against everything the world teaches.

In other words Mr. Bush is about as Roman Catholic as ____________? Well, at a minimum, an Americanist heretic.

The real fact is that there is no single issue by which we must decide. None of the politicians who are on road to the White House are Catholic or truly Christian in any sense of the word, especially in the sense of faithful citizenship. None are for true freedom. None will desist from government intervention in our lives at home or from interventions overseas. Those who promise an end to abortion do nothing to actually stop abortion. As the Young Fogey might point out, they simply fan the flames of controversy, doing nothing in reality, but perpetuating their agenda and power above all else.

The answer is always found in the deposit of faith. I believe my Church to be correct on every issue because it teaches the true faith. That trumps politics, my country, the world, and especially my personal desires. Is it easy to be a Christian in the face of the world? No. It only happens when we take our desires, our needs out of the picture – focusing them and aligning them with Jesus Christ’s way. With that we bear witness to our faith and win true converts.

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