This jaw-dropping crime just proved that no one is safe in Joe Biden’s woke America
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Roughly three years ago America erupted into chaos and violence following the death of George Floyd.
Even worse Democrat lawmakers across the nation took major steps to make it easier than ever to commit crimes without facing any serious punishment.
But now this jaw-dropping crime just proved that no one is safe in Joe Biden’s woke America.
Out-of-control crime is everyday life in Democrat-controlled communities
All across America, crime is spiraling after control, especially in Democrat-controlled communities.
The San Francisco Bay area is the epicenter of this crime boom, with homeless camps and human waste lining the streets.
This is especially true in Oakland, California, which is seeing a mass exodus of businesses, residents, and even sports teams after years of woke pro-crime policies.
However, a recent attack on an Alameda County judge is sending shockwaves across the nation.
At around 9:00 A.M. last Thursday morning, Alameda County Judge Kevin Murphy was robbed at gunpoint by a group of masked criminals.
The thieves stole his Rolex, car keys, and wallet, among other belongings, according to the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office.
A spokesman for the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office released a statement saying, “Fortunately, the judge was not injured. The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office is working with the Oakland Police Department to gather leads and evidence.”
As it stands, police have not arrested any suspects in connection to this armed robbery.
A number of attacks this past week alone prove that not only are judges not safe in California, but Marines are not safe either.
Last weekend, a mob of teenagers in San Clemente, California were arrested after mercilessly beating three U.S. Marines after those heroes asked them to stop lighting off illegal fireworks.
These brutal attacks and robberies show that even judges and Marines are not safe from the Democrat-fueled crime wave plaguing the state of California, and much of the nation.
The sad truth is that crimes like this are the new normal in California, and other parts of America that suffer under Democrat control.
Following the death of George Floyd in 2020, many Democrat-controlled communities, such as Oakland, adjusted their criminal justice system to favor criminals, making it harder than ever for police officers to apprehend criminals.
Even in rare instances that police officers are able to get their guy, California courts controlled by woke left-wing radical activists posing as judges are notoriously lenient, often releasing career criminals after laughably short sentences.
Democrats are destroying their communities with woke insanity
At the end of the day, the corrupt Democrats running the city of Oakland are causing severe damage to the community they claim to represent with their woke pro-crime policies.
Businesses are fleeing the city in droves, and many people no longer have safe places to shop and dine due to Democrats’ policies.
Oakland, CA is a shell of its former self, especially now that the Oakland Athletics are scheduled to leave the city any time now.
The truth is no sane person wants to visit, work, or live in the city of Oakland, OR IN ANY OTHER DEMOCRAT CONTROLLED CITY IN AMERICA FOR THAT MATTER!!!!
Archbishop Cordileone vs. Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence
By strongly condemning the growing anti-Catholicism around us, Archbishop Cordileone also rebukes the tepid response of many Catholic leaders and ordinary Catholics to this evil.
Pentecostal fire still burns brightly in San Francisco.
It blazes from the episcopal throne of Archbishop Cordileone, most recently in his exceptional editorial in the Wall Street Journal. He trumpets a sanguine defense of the Church, so unusual for his kind. But it is not the first time he has broken ranks with the greater number of his episcopal confreres (the Pelosi affair comes to mind).
Not to put too fine a point on it, but with studied prudence and a marked fidelity to the duty of a Successor to the Apostles he has governed the See of San Francisco with the steadiness of St. Cyprian or St. Denis. With the Apostolic persistence of St. Athanasius, the meticulous scholarship of Aquinas, and the sonority of Bossuet he boldly inserts the voice of Mother Church into the ears of a diseased secularism.
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In that bracing editorial for the Wall Street Journal, he calmly called to task the Los Angeles Dodgers’ recent decision to give a “community hero” award to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, who are, in the Archbishop’s words, “a group that perversely dresses up as nuns while encouraging lewd and sacrilegious behavior.” Cordileone names this appalling gesture for what it is: “the latest example of mainstreaming derision of the Catholic Faith.”
These are the kinds of episcopal words that make Catholic hearts race. His temperate, albeit firm, tone sunders the decades-long inertia that seems to have entrapped much of Catholic officialdom. Cordileone’s words are like Kafka’s axe, when the existentialist novelist wrote in another context, “the purpose of the novel is to take an axe to the frozen sea inside us.” Cordileone wields not the novel’s axe but the Church’s.
San Francisco’s archbishop precedes those words by reciting a long list of anti-Catholic bigotry in America’s past, among them:
In 1834, a frenzied mob attacked and burned to the ground a convent of Ursuline nuns outside of Boston. The act was the culmination of years of anti-Catholic preaching and aggression toward the Church’s property. None of the firemen present intervened, and some reportedly joined the riot.
Later that century, the Know Nothing party emerged to suppress the rights of German and Irish Catholic immigrants, fearful of a Catholic conspiracy to take over the country.
Not long after that, the Ku Klux Klan began to terrorize black Americans, Catholics, and Jews. In 1921, an enraged Klansman fatally shot Fr. James Coyle after the priest celebrated the wedding of the gunman’s Catholic-convert daughter to a Puerto Rican man. The killer was acquitted at trial by a Klan-filled jury at a trial presided over by a Klansman judge.
The archbishop then reminds his audience that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops reports that “at least 260 incidents”—attacks on Church property—“have occurred across 43 states and the District of Columbia since May 2020.” He continues,
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Catholics in the San Francisco area have weathered our share of attacks in October 2020, protesters trespassed on to the property of Mission San Rafael carrying paint, tools and rope with the intention of desecrating and destroying a beloved statue of Saint Junipero Serra. Five perpetrators were later charged with felony vandalism.
All these facts have been reported and, for the most part, forgotten. Little known was that on May 25th, the Marin County district attorney’s office decided to resolve the case through “an innovative restorative justice solution” reducing the charges to a misdemeanor if the defendants were willing to say “I am sorry” and pay an unspecified sum toward restitution. The archbishop concludes, “worse yet, officers from the San Rafael Police Department saw the crime in real time and decided to “‘observe the demonstration and not intervene’ for fear of escalation.”
With rare clarity of mind and even rarer common sense for these times, Cordileone summarizes,
history teaches that when we don’t treat religiously or racially motivated crime seriously, we will see more and more worse aggression. Already we are witnessing what such laxity has wrought across America. Transgender activists on social media have threatened heinous violence against Christian “transphobes” who don’t subscribe to their ideology.
Bravo, Archbishop Cordileone!
He brings to mind the stirring words of St. John Chrysostom:
Let us then come back from that altar like lions breathing out fire, thus becoming terrifying to the devil, and remaining mindful of our Head and of the love which He has shown us.
One wonders why similar outrage was not expressed by ordinary Catholics across the country. If such acts were committed against Muslims or Jews there would have been howls of indignation. And rightly so. Why have Catholics been mute to such attacks on their Holy Religion? Could it be that they no longer consider their Religion holy? Could it be that a half-century of diluting Catholic identity has taken its toll? Could we be harvesting the fruits of decades of pulpits and Catholic schools teaching that nothing defines Catholics except a treacly “God loves you” catechesis?
Moreover, our once mighty Catholic university/college system has been transformed into a reliable feed for the Woke Left. Their classrooms have been turned over to a steady diet of anti-Catholic grievance at best and hearty draughts of transgressive Catholic theology at worst. Such students would have no reason to defend their religion. Likely, we would find them leaping upon the bandwagon that Archbishop Cordileone deftly decries.
Aside from all of this, there is the scandalous silence of a good part of the American hierarchy to such anti-Catholic bigotry. Catholics have long been taught to obey their leaders. I suppose they do.
What is a Catholic to think when so many of their leaders have been mired in hopeless deadlock over such an obvious issue as entrance of pro-abort politicians to the Holy Eucharist. Or the muddled problem of admitting divorced and remarried Catholics to Holy Communion? Or the generally deafening quiet on the burning issue of transgenderism and the nature of Christian Marriage between a man and woman?
Catholics are not fools. They learn by silence, or near silence. No surprise that many Catholics reading Archbishop Cordileone’s intellectually coherent words might believe them to be harsh or overwrought. Such remarks are déclassé to the newly-minted Catholics of a redressed religion of accommodation rather than doctrine.
An example of this attenuated Catholicism is the one that Cordileone cites in his editorial. Of course, he reports the incident with exquisite charity and cultivated Romanitas. With all that, he does report it. To the disgrace of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ award to the anti-Catholic group, the Archbishop of Los Angeles “has asked us to respond to the outrage in a deeply Christian fashion: namely, ridding any resentment in our hearts and reaching out to our communities’ Catholic sisters.” Now, now. Isn’t that kind of pusillanimity tantamount to watching an old lady being mugged and responding by taking out your rosary? We love the Rosary, but the situation calls for much more.
Cordileone responds to such a thin response with a thoroughly measured priestliness, “That’s important, but faithful Catholics would also do well to warn their political leaders from becoming modern Know Nothings.”
A perfect riposte.
It is time for trumpets, not whispers. The time for détente has ended.
Cordileone has set the match to the rotting timbers of a post-Vatican II “kneeling before the world.”
Other lit matches must follow.
Fr. John A. PerriconeFr. John A. Perricone, Ph.D., is an adjunct professor of philosophy at Iona College in New Rochelle, New York. His articles have appeared in St. John’s Law Review, The Latin Mass, New Oxford Review and The Journal of Catholic Legal Studies. He can be reached at frjohn1765@icloud.com.
Bishop Gracida’s 100th birthday is June 9 at the end of this week. This email from him reminds me of why we bonded so quickly when I called him early in 2015 and asked for his advice on how to fight the wing of medicine who were pushing palliative care. It was the Jacobian Third Path way to euthanasia — the subtle wing.
The phone call was followed by a mini-workshop here in Raleigh sponsored by LifeTree in the summer where he was the guest of honor. We called it a brainstorming session. His presentation on the Feast of St. Benedict was titled the “Cultural Virus of Proportionalism.”
I am reminded by this email below that Bishop Gracida was one of the first bishops who did not buy into the argument that it was morally licit to withhold and withdraw food and water from vegetative patients. Even the Vatican was slow to clarify the truth with their arguments about extraordinary and ordinary care. It wasn’t until later in John Paul II’s Pontificate that he specifically identified hydration and nutrition as ordinary care. By that time the palliative care movement had become almost mainstream. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation had spent 5 years at 5 major medical centers preparing the way for palliative care using their SUPPORT Study of the mid-80s and George Soros entered the list of societal change agents in the early 90s with his Project on Death in America.
In this email we are told that Bishop Gracida did not waver one inch in standing for the truth about food and water. He tells us that in 1991 he and one other bishop in Texas went on record as disagreeing with the other Bishops of Texas who gave their approval to withdrawing food and water from certain patients. In the early 1990s Bishop Gracida stood the moral high ground against the subtle euthanasia movement!
THANK YOU, BISHOP GRACIDA!! May God bless and and may the angels surround him on his important day.
SIXTH DAY: Please Join The Catholic Monitor St. Joseph Novena to Celebrate Bishop Gracida’s 100th Birthday that will be on June 9
SIXTH DAY
PATRON OF FAMILIES
Saint Joseph, I venerate you as the gentle head of the Holy Family. [https://americaneedsfatima.org/prayers/novena-prayers-to-saint-joseph]]
Let us for nine days enter St. Joseph’s workshop for nine days as Jesus did and pray for Bishop Rene Henry Gracida in celebration of his 100th birthday on June 9. “When you invoke St. Joseph, you don’t have to speak much. You know your Father in Heaven knows what you need; well, so does His friend St. Joseph.” “Tell him, ‘If you were in my place and Bishop Gracida’s place, St. Joseph, what would you do? Well, pray for this in Bishop Gracida’s behalf.’” – This prayer is adapted from a St. Andre Bessette prayer. Also, say the Hail Joseph prayer:
Hail Joseph the just, Wisdom is with you; blessed are you among all men and blessed is Jesus, the fruit of Mary, your faithful spouse. Holy Joseph, worthy foster-father of Jesus Christ, pray for us sinners and obtain divine Wisdom for us from God, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. – St. Louis Marie de MontfortSHARE
SIXTH DAY: Please Join The Catholic Monitor St. Joseph Novena to Celebrate Bishop Gracida’s 100th Birthday that will be on June 9
SIXTH DAY
PATRON OF FAMILIES
Saint Joseph, I venerate you as the gentle head of the Holy Family. [https://americaneedsfatima.org/prayers/novena-prayers-to-saint-joseph]]
Let us for nine days enter St. Joseph’s workshop for nine days as Jesus did and pray for Bishop Rene Henry Gracida in celebration of his 100th birthday on June 9. “When you invoke St. Joseph, you don’t have to speak much. You know your Father in Heaven knows what you need; well, so does His friend St. Joseph.” “Tell him, ‘If you were in my place and Bishop Gracida’s place, St. Joseph, what would you do? Well, pray for this in Bishop Gracida’s behalf.’” – This prayer is adapted from a St. Andre Bessette prayer. Also, say the Hail Joseph prayer:
Hail Joseph the just, Wisdom is with you; blessed are you among all men and blessed is Jesus, the fruit of Mary, your faithful spouse. Holy Joseph, worthy foster-father of Jesus Christ, pray for us sinners and obtain divine Wisdom for us from God, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. – St. Louis Marie de MontfortSHARE
Bishop Gracida: “Ratzinger, many years ago had written that national episcopal conferences are dangerous… I had ample opportunity to see Cardinal Ratzinger’s observation validated”
Bishop [Gracida] Excommunicates 2 In Texas for Abortion Stance
Bishop Rene Henry Gracida’s 100th birthday is coming up on June 9 so I am reading his autobiography in preparation for the great day.
Bishop Gracida revealed that “Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, many years ago had written that national episcopal conferences are dangerous… I had ample opportunity to see Cardinal Ratzinger’s observation validated“:
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, many years ago had written that national episcopal conferences are dangerous. He wrote that sometimes the bureaucracy or staff of a conference would come to have too much influence over the bishops and the bishops, like sheep, would be led to their slaughter. What the Cardinal wrote about national episcopal conferences was true also of the Texas Catholic Conference. The staff of the Conference had always been liberal. The first Executive Director of the Texas Catholic Conference was Monsignor John McCarthy, later Bishop of Austin. There is probably not a more liberal bishop in Texas than Bishop John McCarthy. The Conference was connected for years to Saint Edwards University in Austin, a very liberal University in the most liberal city in the State of Texas.
During all my years as a member of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops/United States Catholic Conference I had ample opportunity to see Cardinal Ratzinger’s observation validated. Also, in the Texas Catholic Conference I had ample opportunity to observe that it is only on rare occasions that the body of bishops will reject a proposal or opinion of the Conference’s staff. I doubt very much that any bishop-member of the TCC had actually read SB303, despite many Catholic patient advocates, legislators, and pro-life activists writing to them about the specific dangers of the nuanced language in SB303. I had plowed through it and Kassi Dee Marks, and appellate attorney did a detailed analysis of SB303 which she shared with me. I suspect that following the usual procedure the bishops would have received and accepted the analysis of SB303 prepared by the staff of The Texas Catholic Conference. Perhaps that reliance on staff would be acceptable in many matters, but not in the matters of life or death.
I along with other pro-life activists had a good working relationship with Governor Rick Perry. We explained to him in clear legal and moral theology terms the dangerous provisions in SB303. He listened, did his own analysis consulted with his staff, and expressed his opposition to key legislators who were instrumental in stopping the legislation in the House. SB303 passed the State Senate and was set for a hearing in the House late in the 2013 Legislative Session. During this saga, the Bishop of Austin, speaking for the bishops of Texas visited the Governor and asked him not to veto the bill. Governor Perry, knowing that I was totally opposed to the bill asked Bishop Vasquez, “Are all the bishops of Texas in favor of SB303?” Bishop Vasquez replied, “All except one old retired guy.” This old, retired guy is grateful to Governor Perry for help in stopping the passage of SB303. The next session of the Texas Legislature will be in the Spring of 2015 and “this old retired guy” will again join with the pro-life activists (if I am still alive) in opposing the revived version of that anti-life, anti-patient bad legislation.
I suspect that part of the problem of the liberalism of the staff of The Texas Catholic Conference lies in its proximity to the Capitol of Texas. There is much that is positive in that proximity and much that is negative. One of the negatives is that the staff of the Texas Catholic Conference, especially its Executive Director, is subject to lobbying by special moneyed interests such as The Texas Hospital Association, The Texas Medical Association, big pharma and others who have a financial interest in the outcome of legislative battles over specific legislative proposals. Proposals that sometimes verge on being immoral.[http://extraordinarybishop.blogspot.com/2014/09/here-is-series-of-posts-by-bishop-rene.html]
Pray an Our Father now for reparation for the sins committed because of Francis’s Amoris Laetitia.
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.
Francis Notes:
– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:
“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.” (The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)
– If Francis betrays Benedict XVI & the”Roman Rite Communities” like he betrayed the Chinese Catholics we must respond like St. Athanasius, the Saintly English Bishop Robert Grosseteste & “Eminent Canonists and Theologians” by “Resist[ing]” him: https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/12/if-francis-betrays-benedict-xvi.html
– LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:
The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”
– On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:
“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”
– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:
“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.
What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: “Anitfa ‘Agent Provocateurs‘”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1]
Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God’s Will and to do it.
Pray an Our Father now for America.
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
THIRD DAY: Please Join The Catholic Monitor St. Joseph Novena to Celebrate Bishop Gracida’s 100th Birthday that will be on June 9
THIRD DAY
MAN CHOSEN BY THE BLESSED TRINITY
The Holy Trinity & the Holy Family
Saint Joseph, you were the man chosen by God the Father. He selected you to be His representative on earth, hence He granted you all the graces and blessings you needed to be His worthy representative.
Let us for nine days enter St. Joseph’s workshop for nine days as Jesus did and pray for Bishop Rene Henry Gracida in celebration of his 100th birthday on June 9. “When you invoke St. Joseph, you don’t have to speak much. You know your Father in Heaven knows what you need; well, so does His friend St. Joseph.” “Tell him, ‘If you were in my place and Bishop Gracida’s place, St. Joseph, what would you do? Well, pray for this in Bishop Gracida’s behalf.’” – This prayer is adapted from a St. Andre Bessette prayer. Also, say the Hail Joseph prayer:
Hail Joseph the just, Wisdom is with you; blessed are you among all men and blessed is Jesus, the fruit of Mary, your faithful spouse. Holy Joseph, worthy foster-father of Jesus Christ, pray for us sinners and obtain divine Wisdom for us from God, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. – St. Louis Marie de Montfor
“Army of One” Pro-Life Bishop Gracida: “In 1991 I became estranged from the majority of the my fellow bishops in Texas over a moral question…because of the heterodox nature of the moral reasoning behind the [Texas Bishop’s] Statement”
Bishop [Gracida] Excommunicates 2 In Texas for Abortion Stance
Jul 24, 2021 — The phrase “army of one” alludes to a singular individual being just as effective as an entire army.
Bishop Rene Henry Gracida’s 100th birthday is coming up on June 9 so I am reading his autobiography in preparation for the great day.
Bishop Gracida says “in 1991 I became estranged from the majority of the my fellow bishops in Texas over a moral question…because of the heterodox nature of the moral reasoning behind the [Texas Bishop’s] Statement”:
In addition to all the grief lawsuits caused me in 1991 I became estranged from the majority of the my fellow bishops in Texas over a moral question. Archbishop Joseph Fiorenza, Bishop of Galveston-Houston, invited the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Boston to establish a branch office in Houston. The branch office was opened and Father Albert S. Moraczewski, O.P. (the founding President of the NCBC) was appointed its director. He probably suggested to Archbishop Fiorenza that the Office should make a big splash in the news in order to announce its creation. Accordingly he set to work writing a statement on the withdrawal of nutrition and hydration from comatose patients. I had acquired a reputation as being theologically conservative among the bishops of Texas by that time. I received in the mail, from the Archbishop’s office, a document identified as “Draft No. 8″ of the Statement of the Bishops of Texas on the Withdrawal of Nutrition and Hydration From Comatose Patients.” I had not received any of the preceding seven drafts. I read the Statement and was angry, not only because I had been kept out of the loop as the Statement was being developed, but because of the heterodox nature of the moral reasoning behind the Statement. The Statement called for the withdrawal of of nutrition and hydration, not just from terminally ill or dying patients but from all PVS patients, i.e. from all patients in a permanent vegetative state. The problem was that there have been too many cases where a ‘permanent” vegetative state proved to be a temporary vegetative state and if nutrition and hydration had been pulled from those patients it would have killed them.
I wrote a strong critique of Draft No. 8 and sent it to all the bishops of Texas. No one replied to my critique. Shortly after that we had a meeting of the Province and Draft No. 8 was adopted as a Statement of the Bishops of Texas, but not by all the bishops of Texas, Bishop Bernard Ganter and I voted against the adoption of the Statement. Shortly after that the newspaper of the Diocese of Dallas, the editor of which I had fired as the editor of the newspaper of the Diocese of Corpus Christi because of his extreme liberal editing of the paper, published a big expose of me as having dissented from a teaching of the Bishops of Texas, no mention was made of Bishop Ganter’s vote against the adoption of the Statement. The Dallas Diocesan papers story was picked up by NC News Service and spread all across the United States and I acquired a reputation as a dissenter. I did not want people to think of me in the same way they thought of the dissenters from Humanae Vitae, so I wrote a detailed dissent from the Statement and published it in my own Diocesan paper. Naturally, my published dissent was ignored by the media.
Shortly thereafter I attended a meeting of the NCCB Prolife Activities Committee, of which I was one of seven bishop members, and I moved that the Committee should issue a statement contradicting the stand taken by the bishops of Texas. The Committee approved my motion and Cardinal O’Connor appointed me and Bishop Donald L. Trautman of Eirie, Pennsylvania to write the statement. We did and submitted it at the next meeting of the Committee. Cardinal O’Connor felt that we should consult with the Holy See before issuing the statement so he sent it to Cardinal Ratzinger at the CDF in Rome. Cardinal Ratzinger wrote back that we should publish the statement but that we could not say that he approved it since the Holy See had not yet formally studied the subject. We published it. The bishops of Pennsylvnia and the Bishops of Florida soon issued their own statements that mirrored what I had written and fourteen years later, in 2004, Pope John Paul II in an address to the Pontifical Commission of Life said basically the same thing that I had said in my dissent from the Statement of the bishops of Texas. It was a Pyrrhic victory for me however; my relations with most of the bishops of Texas plummeted. The bishops of Texas have never retracted their Statement and I doubt that they will ever forgive me for my dissent. My relations with them only got worse as the 1990’s progressed, as you will see!
On a positive note. If I may be allowed to boast, I will boast about a legal victory. This time as President of the Kenedy Foundation. In 1985 Gary Mauro, the Land Commissioner of the State of Texas awarded petroleum leases on 35,000 acres of land belonging to the Kenedy Foundation. Those acres bordered the inter-coastal canal and had been subject to flooding during hurricanes. Mauro claimed that they were tidal flats and belonged to the State of Texas. The Kenedy Foundation filed suit to prevent him from collecting royalties from the oil companies and denying his claim that the land was tidal. The lawsuit dragged on for six years through the district court, the apellate court and on to the Texas Supreme Court. All the courts upheld Mauro’s claim even though we showed that the tides in the Laguna Madre were less than 12 inches, not enough to cover the land. If Mauro’s victory in the courts had been allowed to stand the property rights of all owners of coastal property from Brownsville to the Louisiana border would have been in jeopardy. We appealed to the Texas Supreme Court for a rehearing of the case and we won; the Court said that the decision of the Court in 1954 in the Case of Humble Oil v Texas (the Gardner decision) was decisive and the land belonged to the Foundation. The foundation collected over $5,000,000 in royalties that had been held in escrow by the courts.
Bishop Drury had applied to the Federal Communications Commission for a permit for the Diocese to own and operatea low-power FM station in Corpus Christi. He retired before the FCC acted on his application. The permit was granted after I became Bishop of Corpus Christi and I built a telecommunications center to house the FM station which I named KLUX, incorporating the Latin word lux which means “light”; I wanted the station to be Christ’s light on the world. We also created TV production facilities and began to tape programs to be shown on public television and commercial stations. I applied for another permit to build a low-power FM station in Laredo while Laredo was still part of the Diocese. I named the station in Laredo KHOY, hoy being the Spanish word for “today.” We also built a TV production facility in Laredo equal to the one in Corpus Christi. Both stations have become powerful means of evangelization in South Texas and, in the case of KHOY in Mexico. KLUX has been linked to the world on the intenet and now can be listened to any place on earth.
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John Cardinal O’Connor, Archbishop of New York
My becoming persona non grata with my brother bishops in Texas was to get even worse, it that were possible. The Board of Directors of the John G. and Marie Stella Memorial Foundation was made up of seven individuals with myself as President and Chairman, the Board was elected by the Members of the Foundation who were also members of the Board of Directors. The three other individuals of the Board reflected the same religious affiliations as the Members of the Foundation. The Court decision in 1963 that settled Brother Leo’s first lawsuit against the Foundation stipulated that from then on the group of Members of the Foundation would be 2/3 Catholic and 1/3 non-catholic, i.e. four Catholics and two non-catholics. The Board of Directors had the same religious proportions.
The Board of Directors made all the decisions about the operations of the Foundation. I was elected President of the Foundation and Chairman of the Board of Directors from 1984 until 1997. The Board of Directors was made up professional people, doctors, lawyers, engineers, bankers, hospital administrators and government officials. While I provided leadership for the Board of Directors the Directors were not my puppets. They frequently rejected my ideas for the activities on the ranch that might provide additional income for the Foundation other than oil and gas. I never voted on the awarding of grants; I would speak in favor or against but I would never vote.
The Foundation gave away tens of millions of dollars in grants. Fifteen per cent of the grants had to be to non-religious entities by order of the Court in its 1963 decision. The Foundation gave millions of dollars in grants to all the dioceses of Texas with the exception of the two largest, richest dioceses, Dallas and Houston. It was inevitable that, human nature being what it is, some of the bishops felt that they should receive more. That may have motivated some to launch an attack on me or some of their motivation may have stemmed from their anger over the nutrition and hydration scandal; only God knows! Here is what happened.
In 1992 Bishop Leroy Matthieson, Bishop of Amarillo gave an interview to the Diocesan newspaper of the Diocese of Tyler. In the interview he accused me of abusing my power as President of the Foundation. In short order Bishop Joseph Delaney of Fort Worth and Bishop John McCarthy jumped on Bishop Mattieson’s bandwagon and began to make public statements that were quoted in the media accusing me of abusing my authority as President of the Foundation. They persuaded Archbishop Flores to visit the Attorney General of Texas and to convey their concerns. Archbishop visited the Attorney General, Dan Morales, and he filed suit in the District Court in Travis County that had jurisdiction over charitable foundations asking the court to remove me from the Board of the Kenedy Foundation and to reorganize the Foundation’s governance.
The appearance of an attorney from the Attorney General’s office at the office of the Foundation demanding that all of the files of the Foundation be turned over to the Attorney General sent shock waves through the staff and Board of the Foundation. In addition to our Foundation attorney the Board retained the services of former Judge Jorge Rangel to defend the Board and the battle was joined.
The three bishops I named above continued to slander me in the media. Concerned about my good name and reputation and also conscious of the scandal they were giving to the Catholics of the United States I asked John Cardinal O’Connor to help by getting Rome to stop the three bishops from making their slanderous remarks about me in the media. It was the biggest mistake I ever made in my life!
I had know John O’Connor ever since I was Auxiliary Bishop in Miami and he was Chief of Chaplains to the United States Military. We met in 1972 when I celebrated a confirmation in Key West and again at Homestead Air Force Base. We hit it off since I was ex-military myself. Then over the years we worked together on committees of the N.C.C.B. We had served together on a special committee consisting of himself as Chairman and Cardinals James Hickey and Joseph Bernardin with Bishop Sean O’Malley and myself, charged by the President of the N.C.C.B with visiting Nicaragua, Guatamala, Honduras and El Salvador to gather information of the Church’s struggle with revolutionary forces. I had worked closely with him on the N.C.C.B. Committee for Prolife Activities. I counted on our friendship to persuade him to do as I asked.
It was a mistake because I forgot that during the decades when Brother Leo and Peter Grace had tried to gain control of the Foundation they had appealed for help, first to Cardinal Spellman and later to Cardinal Krol. Both Cardinals, far from trying to help Brother Leo and Peter Grace tried to gain control of the Foundation themselves. I should have remembered that. The love of money and the power that it gains was too much for Cardinal O’Connor to resist. He asked the Congregation of Bishops to appoint a special commission to investigate the Kenedy Foundation and Cardinal Gantin, Prefect of the Congregation of Bishops appointed Cardinal O’Connor chairman of the Special Commission with Cardinal Bernard Law, Archbishop of Boston and Bishop Raymond Burke, Bishop of La Crosse.
When the Attorney General of Texas, Dan Morales, filled suit against me and the Board of Directors of the Kenedy Foundation I recognized that anything could happen and I did not want the Diocese of Corpus Christi to be vacant for any period of time after I retired since that meant that there would not be a Bishop of Corpus Christi as a member of the Foundation and a member of its Board of Directors. So I decided that I would ask Rome for a Coadjutor Bishop to assist me in the last few years until I turned 75 and had to send my resignation to the Pope. Coadjutor Bishops usually do not have any power in the diocese until the Ordinary dies or retires. They only have the right to succeed the Ordinary and become Ordinary in his place. Until the Ordinary dies or retires the Coadjutor functions in the same way an Auxiliary Bishop would function.
So now I made the second biggest mistake of my life. I approached the Apostolic Nuncio and told him of my desire to have a Coadjutor with right of succession in place when I retired so that the Diocese Foundation relationship would not be jeopardized. He asked me if I had anyone in mind. I told him that while I was Chairman of the Hispanic Affairs Committee of the N.C.C.B. I was impressed with the Auxiliary Bishop of Boston, Bishop Roberto Gonzalez. The Nuncio told me to speak with Cardinal Law and see if he was willing to let Bishop Roberto go from Boston. I did, he agreed and I informed the Nuncio; Bishop Roberto was appoint my Coadjutor shortly thereafter without any special powers, only the right to succeed me. I say that the appointment of Bishop Roberto was a mistake because after Cardinal Gantin appointed the Commission Cardinal Law and Cardinal O’Connor had, in Bishop Roberto, an agent in my Chancery and he did betray my trust.
Cardinal O’Connor called a meeting of all the bishops of Texas to be held at the Marriott Hotel at DFW Airport. We all went. The Cardinal O’Connor, Cardinal Law and Bishop Burke listened as each bishop in turn expressed his opinion. Then Cardinal O’Connor adjourned the meeting and everyone departed. Some weeks later Cardinal O’Connor sent a letter to me and to the Board of Directors in which he proposed that the Board be replaced by a new Board made up of the Bishops of Texas. The Reaction of the Board was immediate and very negative.
Sarita Kenedy East had created a Foundation to be run by laity. The only cleric she named to be on her Foundation was her Bishop, Bishop Garriga of Corpus Christi. All her life, up until she came under the evil influence of Brother Leo, she bestowed her generous giving on people and institutions in South Texas, primarily Catholic but occasionally non-catholic. Under Brother Leo’s influence she gave generously to the Trappist Order, but never to Dioceses other than the Diocese of Corpus Christi. Cardinal O’Connor’s proposal was so foreign to the desires of Sarita that I told him he was violating a fundamental rule in the Church that the wishes of a donor were to be respected. He replied, “No one knows what she thought” which was absurd because we had documentary evidence of what she thought.
To my disgust my new Coadjutor, Bishop Roberto Gonzalez began to actively conspire with his mentor, Cardinal Law and Cardinal O’Connor. Years later in speaking with Cardinal Raymond Burke I learned from him that after the meeting in the Marriott Hotel at DFW Airport, Cardinal O’Connor never consulted him about the Diocese of Corpus Christi/Kenedy Foundation case. O’Connor was acting just as Spellman and Krol had acted years before in trying to gain control of the foundation.
My plan for the reorganization of the Foundation Board to meet the criticisms of the bishops of Texas was for the Board to be expanded to thirteen members. It would be composed of nine members who were laity from South Texas, plus the Bishop of Corpus Christi, and one other Bishop selected by the bishops at the provincial meeting and finally two other lay persons from elsewhere in the State of Texas. The Board of Directors voted approval of my plan and so I instructed our attorney, Jorge Rangel to begin negotiations with the Attorney General for the acceptance of our plan.
While Jorge Rangel was negotiating with the Attorney General’s office, Cardinal O’Connor send me a fax which read, “I am on my way to JFK Airport to fly to Rome to meet with Cardinal Gantin, Prefect of the Congregation of Bishops, you must fax a letter to me immediately so that I get it before my flight leaves telling me that you accept my plan for the reorganization of the Foundation.” I was furious! I immediately faxed a letter to him at his Chancery office knowing that they would read it to him at the Airport over the telephone; I wrote to the Cardinal, “How dare you order me about like a servant. I am a successor of the Apostles just as you are! I will never accept your plan.” My anger at him was mitigated months later when I learned that he was suffering from a brain tumor which caused his death. No bishop in his right mind have sent that fax to me.
The Foundation was saved by the United States Justice Department launching an investigation into the conduct of Attorney General Dan Morales. He was indicted and convicted of accepting bribes and was sentenced to a prison term in a Federal Penitentiary. With Dan Morales, the tool of Bishops McCarthy, Delaney and Mathieson, in prison our attorney Jorge Rangel had no difficulty in persuading the Deputy Attorney General to accept the Board’s plan of reorganization. The Office of the Attorney General dropped the lawsuit that had been filed in Austin.
So ended the drama started by Bishops Mathieson, McCarthy and Delaney. But my troubles with the bishops of Texas did not end, they would never end. We, they, had crossed the Rubicon.
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Braunvieh Bull similar to my bulls, Cornerstone Amigo and Ambassador
Dan Morales’ lawsuit was settled but my troubles were not over. I had a Coadjutor Bishop, Bishop Roberto Gonzalez, who did not understand that he was no different from an auxiliary bishop except that he had the right to succeed me when I retired. He was constantly trying to usurp my authority. For example, when I went on vacation he fired several of the chancery employees. He did not have the power to hire or fire anyone and when I returned from vacation I had to rehire the people he had fired. I began to worry about what he would do to the Diocese after I retired and he succeeded me, my worries proved to be well founded
I had bought some land in the Hill Country and created Camp Corpus Christi as a place for young Catholics with or without their families could go for a vacation. Some of the poorer families never took vacations because they could not afford to do so. Every summer we had a week at the Camp devoted to all the altar boys in the Diocese. I would go to the Camp and spend the week with the altar boys. It was a great experience for me and it was a valuable means of promoting vocations to the priesthood.
In the first summer Bishop Roberto was in the Diocese I suggested to him that he should go spend the week with the altar boys at Camp Corpus Christi. He agreed to do so. When he came back after the week I asked him, “How was the week?” He replied, “It was the worst week of my life!”
I was close to celebrating my 74th birthday and I realized that in just one more year I would be 75 years old and on my 75th Birthday I would be required to submit to the Pope a letter of resignation. The more I thought about it the more I questioned why I should wait a year to do it. I was mentally and physically exhausted from the Kenedy lawsuit, the attacks by the bishops, other ‘slip and fall’ lawsuits and now the daily problems created for me by my Coadjutor. I decided that I would ask the Pope to let me retire a year early. I wrote to Pope John Paul II and asked him for permission to retire. He granted me permission and so on April Fools Day, April 1, 1997, I retired.
My worst fears about Bishop Roberto were soon realized. He closed Camp Corpus Christi and began closing different chancery offices such as the Office of Evangelization, the Office of Pro-life Activities and others. It was a disaster. Many of the programs that I had started that were successful were now shut down. Some people were comparing him to Attila the Hun laying waste the countryside. Thank God the Diocese of Corpus Christi was spared further damage when, after just two years as Ordinary, Pope John Paul II promoted Bishop Roberto to be the Archbishop of San Juan, Puerto Rico. This is not the place to recount all that happened in San Juan after he became its Archbishop. Suffice it to say that he has been the subject of an Apostolic Visitation and has been asked by the Holy See to resign.[http://extraordinarybishop.blogspot.com/2014/09/here-is-series-of-posts-by-bishop-rene.html]
Pray an Our Father now for reparation for the sins committed because of Francis’s Amoris Laetitia.
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.
Francis Notes:
– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:
“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.” (The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)
– If Francis betrays Benedict XVI & the”Roman Rite Communities” like he betrayed the Chinese Catholics we must respond like St. Athanasius, the Saintly English Bishop Robert Grosseteste & “Eminent Canonists and Theologians” by “Resist[ing]” him: https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/12/if-francis-betrays-benedict-xvi.html
– LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:
The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”
– On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:
“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”
– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:
“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.
What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: “Anitfa ‘Agent Provocateurs‘”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1]
Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God’s Will and to do it.
Pray an Our Father now for America.
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.SHARE
FIFTH DAY: Please Join The Catholic Monitor St. Joseph Novena to Celebrate Bishop Gracida’s 100th Birthday that will be on June 9
FIFTH DAY
PATRON OF THE CHURCH
Saint Joseph, God has appointed you patron of the Catholic Church because you were the head of the Holy Family, the starting-point of the Church.[https://americaneedsfatima.org/prayers/novena-prayers-to-saint-joseph]]
Let us for nine days enter St. Joseph’s workshop for nine days as Jesus did and pray for Bishop Rene Henry Gracida in celebration of his 100th birthday on June 9. “When you invoke St. Joseph, you don’t have to speak much. You know your Father in Heaven knows what you need; well, so does His friend St. Joseph.” “Tell him, ‘If you were in my place and Bishop Gracida’s place, St. Joseph, what would you do? Well, pray for this in Bishop Gracida’s behalf.’” – This prayer is adapted from a St. Andre Bessette prayer. Also, say the Hail Joseph prayer:
Hail Joseph the just, Wisdom is with you; blessed are you among all men and blessed is Jesus, the fruit of Mary, your faithful spouse. Holy Joseph, worthy foster-father of Jesus Christ, pray for us sinners and obtain divine Wisdom for us from God, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. – St. Louis Marie de Montfort
The House passed a budget deal Friday which raises the debt ceiling in exchange for certain budgetary concessions from the White House. This agreement has been greeted with mixed reviews. The moderates in both parties cheered Kevin McCarthy for his leadership on this deal, but the more extreme in both parties think it’s a travesty. The rightwing Republicans said that McCarthy did not get enough cuts in spending while the leftwing Democrats claim that Biden agreed to too many spending cuts. Many conservatives believe that McCarthy could have gotten more out of this deal than he did, but are taking heart that at least, he did not agree to a flat raise of the debt ceiling without any concessions.
In reality, it doesn’t really matter what the budget deal they agreed on actually looks like, it is not going to solve our problems. It is not even a first step in solving our problems. Just the idea that we are going to raise the debt ceiling at all when we already have repeatedly raised the debt ceiling over and over again in the last 40 years to accrue $31.5 trillion of debt, is a travesty. When you have $31.5 trillion of debt, does it matter if you increase that debt by $4 trillion or $6 trillion over the next 5 years? Does that mean anything? Of course not. If you’re already drowning in a pool, does it matter if the hose is turned on or not?
The fact that we have $31.5 trillion of debt, very few politicians in Washington, and no one in the mainstream media cares. They all are cheering that raising the debt ceiling proves that our country is too far gone to fix. We are now in a slow decline until we crash and burn. This is going to be the new normal – trillion-dollar deficits every year coupled with phony promises and empty talking points of fiscal responsibility until our whole financial system collapses. And we can’t solely blame the Democrats. Remember, the Republicans did not reduce the deficit very much in Trump’s first two years when he had a Republican controlled House and Senate. And Republicans did not reduce the deficit in any of the years when George W. Bush was President and he had a Republican House and Senate. They all love the gravy train. Republicans had to repay their millionaire and billionaire donors as much as the Democrats did.
In reality, nothing substantive will ever be accomplished on the debt or the deficit, because the United States citizens as a whole will never elect politicians who are fiscally responsible enough to do so because the American people are not fiscally responsible. The problem is not simply that the politicians are addicted to deficit spending which they are. Our citizenry is also addicted to deficit spending. Americans are currently carrying $930.6 billion in credit card debt alone. If we want something, we go and buy it whether we have the money or not, and the politicians in Washington are doing the same. That is the American mentality these days.
So, we will never legitimately cut our deficit or our debt. Never, because the goal of the federal government over the last 50 years has been to create dependency on the federal government, of which it has done a masterful job. The American people are dependent on the government; we enjoy the gravy train of government spending as much as the politicians. So, nothing will ever happen to rein in our fiscal irresponsibility. We are caught in a death spiral that is too scary from which to pull ourselves out. The politicians fear that they will lose elections if they cut spending, and the voters fear they will lose government benefits if they vote for politicians who will cut spending. The American people want all the goodies that the government provides without raising taxes and without incurring debt. We are living in La La Land. We hate the government when they come for our tax dollars; we hate the government when it accrues $31.5 trillion of debt, but we love the government when it is doling out benefits.
One may argue, “There are important things that the government needs to spend on that I support, I just don’t like the wasteful spending.” That’s absolutely correct, and everyone agrees on that. The problem is that not every one of the 150 million people who voted in the last election will agree on which government spending is vital and which is wasteful. So, everyone votes for the politicians who will support the spending they believe is important, and the politician who agrees to give everything to everybody is the one for whom the most people will vote, and the one who will likely get elected.
As Alexander Fraser Tytler said in the 18th century,
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence:
· From bondage to spiritual faith;
· From spiritual faith to great courage;
· From courage to liberty;
· From liberty to abundance;
· From abundance to selfishness;
· From selfishness to apathy;
· From apathy to dependence;
· From dependence back into bondage.â€
We are in the dependency stage right now, and we are staring bondage in the face. And no one cares because freedom and true liberty are much too hard. When the Israelites were wandering in the desert after being freed from slavery, they begged Moses to bring them back to Egypt because the safety and security of bondage were less frightening than the unknowns and uncertainty of freedom. During Covid, most Americans chose the security of the authoritarian rule of the government over the uncertainty of freedom. We allowed the government to lock us in our homes, put masks on our faces, and shut down our schools, businesses, and churches because freedom was much too scary. We allowed the government to censor us on social media because freedom of speech is too scary.
To reduce spending the way we need to get our fiscal house in order requires drastic cuts in government spending that too many of us are too dependent on. So, we will continue to vote for leaders who will continue to promise to give us the things we need because true freedom and liberty are much too hard. And at some point, in the future, we will get the dictatorship we deserve, the dictatorship for which we will have voted.
Saint Joseph, I venerate you as the gentle head of the Holy Family. [https://americaneedsfatima.org/prayers/novena-prayers-to-saint-joseph]]
ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP 
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