4:07 PM (google translated version of this article below)
An article with the message of hope for the Catholics Church in Berlin, amid the orders of not being able to gather for Mass due to the COVID-19 Virus. .
State lawyer Hillgruber: Action against worship bans “more than justified.
“Berlin Institute St. Philipp Neri is taking action against total ban on public services. Bonn lawyer Christian Hillgruber is in favor of easing the general ban on worship. He recalled that religious freedom “was created and directed like hardly any other fundamental right to practice together”.
Therefore, unlike material supplies, exemptions would have to be permitted for trade fairs and church services to a limited extent, especially during the Easter period. The professor of public law at the University of Bonn said this on Mondin the daily maiFundamental right to exercise religious freedom collectively Hillgruber commented on the decision of the Berlin Institute St. Philipp Neri to obtain an injunction against the State of Berlin in order to be allowed to hold Easter services with the faithful.
The approach taken by the St. Philipp Neri Institute to take provisional legal protection against the absolute ban on publicly available services and fairs in Berlin is “more than understandable; the request seems to me to be fully justified, ”said Hillgruber.
Worship is a systemically important service There is also something like a basic spiritual care that cannot be satisfied by the transfer of services from deserted churches. “Communion can only be experienced in real life,” says the lawyer. If the right to freedom of religion were discontinued when considering the protective measures against the corona epidemic, a total ban on religious services that “affects the freedom of worship at its core could actually hardly be constitutional and last longer.”
Hillgruber therefore suggests that a limited number of believers can be admitted depending on the size of the church building. As with other “systemically relevant services”, the requirements of health protection could be met by distance and other organizational measures.
The institute wants to guarantee a minimum distance between the believers and the registration of a maximum of 50 participants. The decision of the Berlin Administrative Court is expected in the next few days. (DT / ska) The St. Philipp Neri Institute takes legal action against the total ban on public services and receives support from well-known constitutional lawyers. So read the upcoming issue of the daily mail. here .
Locals in Wuhan, where the Chinese coronavirus pandemic originated, have heard screams coming from funeral home furnaces, and some treated in hospitals say they saw workers put living coronavirus patients in body bags, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported on Monday.
RFA noted that it could not independently verify that the Chinese Communist Party was burning coronavirus patients alive, nor has the Communist Party confirmed or denied the rumors. Yet the rumors persist that, to make room for new patients in Wuhan’s overcrowded hospitals, medical staff chose older patients less likely to survive the infection and shipped them to incinerators while they were still alive and conscious.
RFA quoted a source “close to the funeral industry” identified only as Ma who said that he had heard reports of “people restrained and forced into body bags when they were still moving.”
“Some people are saying that … there are video clips of screams coming from funeral homes, from inside the furnaces … which tells us that some people were taken to the funeral homes while they were still alive,” Ma added.
Ma also noted the existence of video testimony from an anonymous older woman who had been treated at a Wuhan hospital, presumably for Chinese coronavirus.
“One old lady was saying that they put one guy into … a body bag when he wasn’t even dead yet, and took him off to the crematorium because there was no way of saving him,” Ma told RFA.
Video of an older woman speaking anonymously to a camera began circulating on social media in February in which she said she witnessed a patient next to her at a Wuhan hospital stuffed into a body bag while still alive.
“He’s not dead, his feet and hands are still moving,” the woman says, “[They] wrapped him in a plastic body bag and zipped it up.”
According to New Tang Dynasty, a broadcaster affiliated with the persecuted Chinese Falun Gong movement, the woman spoke with a Wuhan accent, suggesting she was a native of the central Chinese city.
The Taiwanese outlet Taiwan Newstraced the origin of the video to a Chinese student group called “Youth Production,” who reportedly uploaded the video on February 24. Taiwan News noted that the woman claimed to have suffered from coronavirus symptoms but, as she was in her 60s, she did not suffer severe symptoms, unlike the man taken away, who she estimated was in his 70s.
“She said that the man was weak but was still breathing when medical workers ‘bound his head’ and then his hands and feet, which were ‘still moving,’” Taiwan News reported, noting that she also lamented that the hospital where she received care had no other treatments available for coronavirus patients besides oxygen. In the West, doctors have begun experimenting with several drug mixtures, one of which — a combination of antibiotics and hydroxychloroquine, a drug used to treat lupus and malaria — has generated optimism in American hospitals.
The woman said she felt older patients at the hospital were treated “like dead dogs.”
Neither Taiwan News nor RFA could independently confirm the reports of Wuhan residents being burned alive.
The Chinese Communist Party claims that, as of Tuesday, it has documented 82,718 cases of coronavirus nationwide and 3,335 deaths across the country. The vast majority of these, 3,212 deaths, were recorded in Hubei province. Wuhan is the capital of Hubei.
Multiple reports citing sources in Wuhan’s seven funeral homes dispute this claim, estimating that the real death toll in the city is as much as ten times higher than China’s official nationwide death toll. Reports of hundreds of bodies cremated in some funeral homes began surfacing in February, at the height of the epidemic in the city. Government officials did not allow residents to pick up the remains of their relatives until late March, however, as the strict lockdown that saw government officials welding Wuhan residents in their homes was still ongoing.
When the funeral homes opened to distributed ashes two weekends ago, witnesses estimated that some funeral homes were distributing as many as 5,000 sets of remains a day. Estimates as to the number of sets of remains distributed last week in Wuhan range from 30,000 to 46,000 people.
“There are suspicions that many people died in their homes without being diagnosed and, at first, there were no kits to do the test,” an unnamed resident said in a report last week. “Nobody in Wuhan believes the official numbers. The real one, only they know.”
Ma, the funeral home source speaking to RFA in its report on Monday, said that Wuhan was cremating so many bodies at some point that some incinerators broke down, resulting in cremators placing multiple bodies in one incinerator at a time to keep up with the sheer amount of remains. The result has been several reported incidents of people receiving urns with ashes featuring items they do not recognize that clearly did not belong to their loved ones.
“A resident of Wuhan’s Jiang’an district surnamed Liu said she had found a man’s belt clasp in the urn she was given, supposedly containing her mother’s ashes,” RFA noted. “And a resident of Hongshan district said he had found the remains of ceramic dental crown, denture or implant in the urn labeled with his father’s name, even though his father had never had such a thing fitted.”
PURGING HEBRAIC ELEMENTS FROM CATHOLIC WORSHIPBy W. Patrick Cunningham | July/August 2000W. Patrick Cunningham recently celebrated his 25th year of writing on contemporary liturgical matters. His article “The Language of the Body & the Mass” appeared in the February 1999 NOR.
A quiz for Catholics: What language are we speaking when we say “Amen” and “Alleluia”? (A) English. (B) Greek. (C) Latin. (D) Hebrew. The answer is (D). As St. Paul taught long ago, the gentile followers of Christ have been grafted onto the Hebraic root (see Rom. 11). Christ is the vine and we are the branches, and the vine has roots in the rich soil of the Judaic covenant and Israelite history. In one of the most inspired phrases of the 20th century, Pope Pius XI, in the course of condemning anti-Semitism, said that Christians are “spiritual Semites.” We should not be surprised, then, if much of the language and culture of Catholic worship and belief are borrowed or developed from their Hebrew antecedents. Yet, Catholics find themselves in danger of forgetting their Semitic roots. We must, then, renew our understanding of what it means to be spiritual Semites, children of Abraham.
All three of the monotheistic faiths coming out of the Near East attribute their spiritual heritage to Abraham, the prototypical Semite. He is not only honored as the original patriarch of the covenant with God in human history; he is also held up as the model follower of God, a paladin of faith ready to give unconditionally to his God, ready to obey even the command to offer his own son in sacrifice (Gen. 22).
The pious Israelite is instructed (in Deut. 26) that when presenting his offering to the priest for sacrifice, he is to declare his radical dependence on the mercy of God, and to acknowledge his spiritual identification with Abraham: “My father [Abraham] was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt and sojourned there….” The worshiper was to retell the Egyptian bondage and the free and generous redemption his ancestors had at the hand of God, as well as the gift of the land from which the offerings were taken.
Nowhere is the spirit of “self-sufficiency” celebrated or even alluded to. All that one has and is are gifts of God, and all that one offers to God is far less than what He is owed. This is the spirit of Abraham and this is the heritage he passes on to his spiritual heirs, a willingness to be taught and led by God. This is the core principle of being a “spiritual Semite.” There is a direct line in the covenant from Abraham of Canaan to Mary of Nazareth, whose only direct command in the Gospels is “Do whatever He tells you” (Jn. 2:5), and whose characteristic response to God’s will is summed up in “Be it done to me according to Your word” (Lk. 1:38). A “spiritual Semite” comes from that lineage.
Both word and worship in Christian culture come from Hebrew antecedents. But with the recent and seemingly endless changes in the words and actions of Catholic worship, Catholics are not hearing about, and not acknowledging in weekly worship, their Jewish roots. The liturgical changes, both obvious and subtle, are everywhere in liturgical texts, scriptural translations, and worship movement and art, and they must have an effect on the religious attitude of the ordinary Catholic. Do your fellow Catholics in the pews know that they are called to be spiritual Semites?
Consider the changes in the language of the Canticle of Zechariah (Lk. 1:68-79) as they appear in Morning Prayer. Thirty years ago Catholics prayed “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who has visited and wrought redemption for His people, and has raised up for us a horn of salvation in the house of His servant, David.” Today Catholics pray a version that omits the horn and says instead, “He has come to His people and set them free. He has raised up for us a mighty savior, born of the house of His servant David.” That’s a nice sentiment, but it loses some important elements that specifically connect this prayer by Zechariah (who was a Jewish priest and the father of John the Baptist) with prayers and commentaries in the Old Testament (as St. Luke knew them in the Septuagint).
The theme of a divine visitation, for example, is an echo in Zechariah’s prayer, but the new wording mutes it into a bland “He has come.” Additionally, the word “horn” (keras, in the Greek of Luke and of the Septuagint), is an essential connector to the Old Testament. This is its only appearance in the New Testament, but it is quite frequent in the Old Testament, appearing 51 times, especially in the prophetic and historical books. “Horn” is specifically Messianic, referring either to the horn of anointing used with priests or the Davidic kings, or to the horn of power, the horn of the strong bull. The specific term “horn of salvation” also appears in 2 Samuel 22 and Psalm 18. To excise this expression from the Gospel is to snip one thread of Christianity’s connection with the Israel of history.
The Catholic liturgical connection with the traditional synagogue service is strongest in the Liturgy of the Word. In fact, the structure of this first part of Mass is derived from Jewish worship: prayers, readings, Psalms, and a commentary. Even here we find that liturgical revisionists have cut several Hebrew roots when constructing or translating the Novus Ordo Mass. At the beginning of the pre-reform Mass, the priest recited parts of Psalm 43 (introibo ad altare Dei) with acolytes and congregation. Before the reading of the Gospel, the priest or deacon bowed and prayed the Munda cor meum, an invocation that recalled the vision of Isaiah (Isa. 6), and the cleansing of his lips with a burning coal. Both prayers were eliminated in the new Missal of Paul VI. In the realm of translation, a small but notorious example of de-Semitizing the texts is the awkward wording of the response to the priest’s Dominus vobiscum: The richly pithy et cum spiritu tuo (“and with your spirit”), which evokes the whole patrimony of spirit (ruah in Hebrew; pneuma in Greek) from the Old Testament, is rendered “and also with you.” This displays a poor understanding of the Latin and its Hebrew and Greek antecedents and is deplorable English to boot.
In the Liturgy of the Eucharist, at the great acclamation (the “Sanctus”) that begins the Eucharistic Prayer, the assembly echoes the words of the angels in Isaiah’s heavenly vision (Isa. 6), when the vision of the Lord on His throne was accompanied by smoke filling the temple and six-winged Seraphim chanted to one another in praise of the Lord God “Sabaoth.” The Hebrew word “Sabaoth” has a wealth of meanings: power, angels, hosts of Heaven, battling armies. To translate it is to risk denaturing it. Neither the translators of the Septuagint nor the early Christian writers dared do so. Even St. Paul, who was not shy about adapting and interpreting things Jewish for his mostly gentile readers, left Sabaoth alone. He simply transliterated the Hebrew into Greek (Rom. 9:29). So did James in his Epistle (5:4). The habit of preserving the Hebrew and its wealth of meaning continued in Justin Martyr (2nd Apology, 32, et al.), Origen (Contra Celsus, 5), and Archelaus (Contra Manes, 10). In the Latin Mass we sang “Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth.” But today’s English rendering is “Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might.” By eliminating this ancient and numinous appellation, we have lost an important connection with our Semitic — and Catholic — heritage.
The preface that introduces the Sanctus has also been stripped of the Hebrew names of the creatures in whose prayers of praise we join. The Latin Mass (old and new) joins our hymn of praise to that of the “angels and archangels, Cherubim and Seraphim.” These are, of course, specific instances of the Semitic elohim who are envisioned surrounding and serving the Lord. But in our new translations these celestial attendants are lumped together simply as undifferentiated “angels” and quickly passed over. Their Hebraic specificity, like so much other richness from the Old Testament, vanishes in the current liturgical vernacular.
The Eucharistic Prayers (of which there are 10 approved for use in the U.S.) have suffered from the same process. Prayer I, the ancient Roman Canon, still contains multiple Old Testament references, as well as a number of sacred genealogies, first of the patriarchs Abel, Abraham, and Melchizedek, second of the New Testament saints, particularly the bishops of Rome. Genealogies, as any Bible scholar knows, are the backbone of all the priestly books of the Old Testament, such as Leviticus, Numbers, and Chronicles. Prayer I retains this Hebraic character, but it is the least used of the Eucharistic Prayers.
Old Testament references, Psalm phrases, and similar genealogies are some of the common characteristics of ancient Eucharistic prayers. For instance, in the Liturgy of St. James, we find the phrase “as Thou didst accept the gifts of Abel, the sacrifices of Noah, the priestly offices of Moses and Aaron, the peace-offerings of Samuel, the repentance of David, the incense of Zacharias.” In the Novus Ordo, however, standard Eucharistic Prayers II through IV, and the Eucharistic Prayers for children’s liturgies and for Reconciliation liturgies, all lack such references. Furthermore, they feature an alarming reduction in the number of allusions to the Old Testament and in the use of Old Testament language. There is a striking restriction in the use of sacrificial language between the “old canons” and the new, and that of course is a serious weakening of our Semitic roots.
One might object here that, in fact, Hebrew elements have been added to the new rite. It is true that the reformers and translators have given us a new rite at the Preparation of Gifts which includes two berekah prayers borrowed from the Jewish Seder (“Blessed are You, Lord, God of all creation…”). But considering all the eliminated Hebrew elements of the Mass, this prayer is by no means an even exchange, either in quality or quantity. Most liturgical commentators have agreed that these prayers look like an offering prayer (“the bread we offer You”), and that such language is out of place before the Consecration of the Mass since, after all, it is the Body and Blood of Christ that is the sacrificial offering of the Mass. Furthermore, these prayers are designed to be said quietly by the presiding priest; often the congregation or choir sing. Thus, we are made to eliminate most of the traditional, Hebrew-based elements of the Eucharistic Prayer, and to accept a nontraditional and out-of-place “preparation” prayer stolen from the Passover celebration and most often recited sotto voce. Not much of a trade.
Liturgists and liturgical translators often defend their elimination of the Hebraic elements of worship by appealing to the principles of “simplicity and transparency.” The parts of worship, it is said, should be easy to understand and relate to. Heavy Hebraic allusions and language supposedly impede the objective of making the meaning of our liturgical words and actions utterly transparent to the worshiper.
There are numerous problems with that notion. First, because by definition the sacramental celebration is a celebration of mystery, simplifying the words and actions may give the worshiper the wrong idea. Simplification tends to become elimination: as when, at the incarnatus passage of the Creed, we substituted at most Masses a bow for the genuflection; we ended up with nobody doing either. When we pulled out the altar rails and communion cloths and started giving the Body of Christ in the hand, instead of increasing the reverence and intimacy experienced in the Eucharist, we ended up with well over half of all Catholics not believing in the substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharistic species.
Second, sacramental signs and both liturgical and scriptural language are not uni-dimensional. They can have multiple meanings on one level (such as the word Sabaoth discussed earlier). They can also have multiple levels of meaning. Consider, for instance, the Song of Songs. On a literal level, it is erotic poetry, mostly suggestive (e.g., 2:6, 16), but occasionally overt (4:5-6). Yet the Fathers of the Church ignored that obvious level of meaning, considering the Song as an account of the relationship between Christ and the Church, or between Christ and the soul. Nobody has suggested that this canticle be made transparent by translating it so that only the basic level is understood.
We saw earlier that when we say “Amen” we are speaking in transliterated Hebrew. The Commission on the Liturgy has not yet translated that traditional response into “Right on,” “You said it,” or “Yo!,” but it has not escaped unscathed. The good Semitic pronunciation is “Ah-men,” and Catholics said it that way until the 1960s, when they went to see Sidney Poitier in Lilies of the Field and came out singing its catchy theme song, “Amen…see the baby, Amen, wrapped in the manger…” we have largely mispronounced it ever since.
More importantly, “Amen” on the lips of Jesus is a most powerful word. In all four Gospels, Jesus precedes His most important sayings with the phrase “Amen (amen) I say to you.” This Hebrew expression was simply transliterated into Greek and Latin. St. Augustine (Tractate 41 on John) insisted that this was not only intentional but preserved an important meaning, for the use of this formula gives the statement that follows it the character of an oath. Thus the sayings that Jesus introduced with this phrase are so vital as to assume a kind of identity with Jesus Himself. The expression occurs four times in John 6, during the discourse on the Eucharist. In both John’s Gospel and the Synoptics, it almost always appears when Jesus is speaking on His own authority, teaching something distinctive and outside the Pharisaic tradition. But in the recent English renderings, including those used at Mass, the formal Hebraism “Amen, amen I say to you” has been translated in to the pompous “I solemnly assure you” or the confusing “In truth, I tell you.” The latter translation raises in the hearer’s mind the curious possibility that sometimes Jesus said things that were not said “in truth.” I doubt that was intended. But these are lame translations — weak, clumsy, and decidedly nontransparent substitutes for the forthright Hebrew.
Another instance of de-Hebraizing that has devastated the innate beauty of liturgy is the practical abandonment in Catholic parishes of Gregorian chant, which is ancient Christian song built upon a provably Semitic musical foundation. In modern Catholic worship the many, many instances of de-Hebraizing amount to a troubling pattern. It is clear that the practice of Catholic common prayer is incrementally becoming less Semitic, even a-Semitic, and that in our public speech and gestures we are becoming the opposite of what Pius XI pronounced us to be. Are we becoming, perhaps, spiritual anti-Semites? For we seem to be in the midst of what can only be called a liturgical pogrom, unprecedented in Church history.
The plain fact is that the Hebrew-ness of the Catholic religion is a critical element of it, and when we excise those Hebrew elements from our prayers and actions, we sever the roots that feed our religion. This has been a perennial temptation. One of the earliest heresies, Marcionism, was the total rejection of the Semitic roots of Christianity. Marcion, who led various communities into repudiating the entire Old Testament, was excommunicated in Rome in 144.
And properly so, for the Christian attitude is fundamentally Semitic. Abraham, believing God, became what in the natural order he could not be, the friend of God and father of a chosen nation. The Church celebrates such transformations sacramentally: The matter of each sacrament has a natural meaning, intimately connected with the natural properties of the matter. Thus water has a cleansing and purifying function of itself; bread, likewise, is nourishing as bread. But the sacramental matter responds to the creative and transforming Word of God, so that its existence is recreated, transformed into what it was not. Thus the water of Baptism can, by the power of God’s Spirit, become a means of giving supernatural life, and of purging sin, both actual and original. Thus also can bread and wine, by the power of God, become what it was not — the true Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, itself having a new existence and substance, and itself having supernatural power to heal and to incorporate the recipient more intimately into Christ. Thus we, like Abraham, become what in the natural order we could not be, “other Christs.” All creation, then, by responding to God’s Word and to the power of the Holy Spirit, can be transformed into the image of God, but only if that transformation is entirely docile to divine power, and conformable to the divine plan. This is the essence of the “spiritual Semite.”
With this in mind, we can see why certain modes of liturgical expression and theological thought are not likely to promote spiritual growth or ecclesiastical health. The translators and writers who practice a kind of practical Marcionism in preparing Catholic texts, the Catholic priest who departs from canonical liturgical form to “make it up as he goes along,” the reformers who insist on extreme horizontalism in liturgy — such people place themselves outside the lineage of Abraham our father and Mary our mother. And they seem to want to take the rest of us Catholics with them.
“Community” is a buzzword, but it is also a reality. What we must not forget is that our community stretches back to include Abraham and his descendants. We are involved in something far bigger, older, and deeper than ourselves, and bigger, older, and deeper even than our parish communities. The parish church anchors its reality in the meeting tent of Moses and David, in the temple of worship of Jesus’ day. When we enter into our common prayer, our Eucharist, we are in the Holy of Holies surrounded by a cloud of witnesses (Heb. 12:1). God is our loving Father, as Jesus taught, and the Son of God is not only our Lord but also our friend. And so, too, is God our friend. Yet true friendship with God must develop along lines of God’s choosing, not of our choosing. And those lines are laid out in the stories, songs, and prayers of His chosen people as set down for us by the divinely inspired Jewish writers.
Let the whole church say “Amen! Alleluia!”
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on “Community” is a buzzword, but it is also a reality. What we must not forget is that our community stretches back to include Abraham and his descendants. We are involved in something far bigger, older, and deeper than ourselves, and bigger, older, and deeper even than our parish communities. The parish church anchors its reality in the meeting tent of Moses and David, in the temple of worship of Jesus’ day. When we enter into our common prayer, our Eucharist, we are in the Holy of Holies surrounded by a cloud of witnesses (Heb. 12:1). God is our loving Father, as Jesus taught, and the Son of God is not only our Lord but also our friend. And so, too, is God our friend. Yet true friendship with God must develop along lines of God’s choosing, not of our choosing. And those lines are laid out in the stories, songs, and prayers of His chosen people as set down for us by the divinely inspired Jewish writing.”
Pat Buchanan— Kissinger’s Call for a New World OrderInboxxSMattacchione <silvio@silviosfarm.com>8:24 AM (44 minutes ago)to meFrom: Linda Muller <lindamuller=buchanan.org@send.aweber.com> On Behalf Of Linda Muller Sent: Tuesday, April 07, 2020 1:49 AM To: Subject: [BRIGADE] PJB: Kissinger’s Call for a New World Order Kissinger’s Call for a New World OrderBy Patrick J. Buchanan Share Pat’s Columns:Tuesday – April 7, 2020 “The ingredients Kissinger considers essential for establishing that new world order appear, like ventilators, to be in short supply.”
Among the works that first brought Henry Kissinger to academic acclaim was “A World Restored,” his 1950s book about how the greatest diplomats of Europe met at the Congress of Vienna to restore order to a continent shattered by the Napoleonic Wars.
The balance-of-power peace these men achieved lasted — with the significant exception of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 — for the full century, from 1815 to 1914.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal Friday, Kissinger declared that it is now an imperative that the world’s leaders, even as they deal with the raging pandemic, begin to make the “transition to the post-coronavirus order.”
“Failure to do so could set the world on fire.”
Yet, the ingredients Kissinger considers essential for establishing that new world order appear, like ventilators, to be in short supply.
“Sustaining public trust,” asserts Kissinger, “is crucial … to international peace and stability.”
But how do we trust again our adversary China, after its criminal cover-up of the menace and magnitude of the virus unleashed in Wuhan?
How do we trust again this regime that was, until recently, blaming the coronavirus on U.S. Army troops visiting Wuhan?
Observing governments thrashing about in the crisis, the phrase that comes to mind is not “public trust” as much as “every nation for itself.” Have something to say about this column? Visit Gab – The social network that champions free speech – Comment without Censorship! Or visit Pat’s FaceBook page and post your comments…. On Monday, The Wall Street Journal described Europe’s recent behavior thus:
“EU countries unilaterally shut borders and hoarded vital medical gear, leaving people stranded far from home, grocery stores struggling to stock shelves and hospitals desperate to save critically ill patients.
“When Italy and Spain, reeling from some of the world’s most deadly outbreaks, urged their richer and healthier Northern neighbors to help, Dutch politicians brushed off the appeals as new signs of southerners’ mismanagement.”
Last week, the EU’s Court of Justice ruled that Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic broke EU law by refusing to relocate refugees during the migrant crisis in 2015. The three nations offered no apologies.
Last month, Greece used force to stop Syrian refugees from entering its territory. According to Human Rights Watch, Greek troops and armed men at the Greece-Turkey land border sexually assaulted, robbed and stripped asylum seekers and migrants, driving them back into Turkey. The EU has stayed largely silent.
When Donald Trump’s issued his Jan. 31 travel ban on those who had recently been in China, candidate Joe Biden denounced Trump for “hysterical xenophobia and fearmongering.”
Biden now thinks Trump did the right thing.
Even lifetime liberals can put ideology on the shelf when the voice of the people is loud and clear enough.
We must “struggle to heal the wounds to the world economy,” said Kissinger.
Yet, the crisis has revealed that a prominent feature of this global economy is that China controls the production of medicines essential to keeping Americans alive. Do we want to continue that dependency?
Says Kissinger: “The world’s democracies need to defend and sustain their Enlightenment values… (and) safeguard the principles of the liberal world order.”
But did not March 2020 prove the superior wisdom of Alexander Hamilton: “Every nation ought to endeavour to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply.”
Today, borders are everywhere being strengthened as nations compete ferociously for N95 masks and ventilators. Authoritarian rulers are seizing broader powers. The claims of family, faith, tribe, nation and country seem ascendant over all.
“The founding legend of modern government,” writes Kissinger, “is a walled city … strong enough to protect the people from an external enemy. … This pandemic has produced … a revival of the walled city in an age where prosperity depends on global trade and movement of people.”
Kissinger calls the concept of the walled city an “anachronism,” a “legend.”
But is the idea of the nation-state, whose principal duty is the defense of the health, safety and security of the unique people who created it, the “legend”?
Or is the real legend, the myth, the idea of some New World Order of countries traveling and trading happily with one another in a federation of the world?
In this coronavirus crisis, we can see clearly now, no longer as through a glass darkly.
As in most wars, it is to the men of action not the men of words to whom the people turn — to governors, not legislators or members of Congress, who are taking action, as states outbid one another for critical medical equipment.
As for Donald Trump, suddenly, the elites are berating him for being insufficiently dictatorial.
Trump, they rail, did not move swiftly enough to invoke the Defense Production Act. He failed to use its authority to dictate to U.S. companies what they must produce. He did not shut down the country quickly enough. He failed to issue orders soon enough to governors who delayed shutting down their states.
People are dying, it is now said, because Trump did not immediately become the autocrat that progressives were denouncing him for being during the impeachment hearings two months ago.
While it was still nighttime in Rome, on Tuesday April 7 the Australian high court unanimously ruled for the acquittal of Cardinal George Pell and his immediate return to freedom. The photo shows him as he leaves the maximum security prison in Barwon, near Melbourne. He will therefore be able to celebrate his first Mass after 14 months of incarceration.
The seven high court judges explained their decision on the basis of the “reasonable possibility that the offending had not taken place, such that there ought to have been a reasonable doubt as to the applicant’s guilt.”
Cardinal Pell has always maintained his innocence and has now said that “the only basis for justice is truth, because justice means truth for all.”
The ruling puts an end to seven years of legal action, set in motion in 2014 by a police investigation in Victoria and accelerated in 2017 by the emergence of charges that were later partly dropped, concerning events from decades before. Pell left Rome for Melbourne and in 2018 was tried and sentenced to six years in prison, on the basis of the accusation of a single person whose identity has never been made public and against whom the cardinal says he harbors no resentment.
Confirmed on appeal by two judges against one, the sentence has now been definitively reversed by the high court.
Cardinal Pell being driven away this morning from the Barwon Prison in Lara, facing his first day of freedom
Dear friends,
This morning in the High Court of Australia released its unanimous decision by a vote of 7-0, that Cardinal George Pell was to be acquitted of all five charges resulting in criminal convictions for sexual abuse of two minors in late 1996 & early 1997 at St Patrick’s Cathedral, when he was archbishop of Melbourne.
The main concern of the judges was that the jury should have acquitted him of the charges on the basis of the exculpatory evidence that indicated that these were not “beyone reasonable doubt”, a principle enshrined in our system of criminal law. In the cardinal’s appeal to the Court of Appeals the majority verdict indicated that because one of the complainants was a “credible witness”, (the other had passed away) the jury could have rendered a guilty verdict purely on this basis. This thesis was rejected by the High Court.
Here is a link which which gives the explanation for their decision at length.
This evening the Vatican issued its first official statement since the news of the acquittal was announced. It said,
“The Holy See, which has always expressed confidence in the Australian judicial authority, welcomes the High Court’s unanimous decision concerning Cardinal George Pell, acquitting him of the accusations of abuse of minors and overturning his sentence.
Entrusting his case to the court’s justice, Cardinal Pell has always maintained his innocence, and has waited for the truth to be ascertained.
At the same time, the Holy See reaffirms its commitment to preventing and pursuing all cases of abuse against minors.”
While I have not heard this mentioned anywhere, I believe the canonical trial that was supposed to be commenced in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, if the Australian judicial system maintained a guilty verdict after the exhaustion of all appeals, will not take place now.
What has particularly surprised me has been the unanimous decison of the High Court to acquit Cardinal Pell, and the fact that liberal judges voted with the more conservative ones to overturn the criminal convictions. I thought it would be a split decision, if he was to be as fortunate as this.
As I remarked on my Facebook page today, (I must confess this is not original, someone else said it), “with Con Petropoulous (played by Eric Bana in The Castle) I say, “This decision has restored my faith in the Australian Legal System”Praised be Jesus & Mary. I am aware of the incredible bouquet of prayers, Masses offered and fasting that have happened world wide, for the intention of today’s result.
Today, the High Court granted special leave to appeal against a decision of the Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court of Victoria and unanimously allowed the appeal. The High Court found that the jury, acting rationally on the whole of the evidence, ought to have entertained a doubt as to the applicant’s guilt with respect to each of the offences for which he was convicted, and ordered that the convictions be quashed and that verdicts of acquittal be entered in their place.
On 11 December 2018, following a trial by jury in the County Court of Victoria, the applicant, who was Archbishop of Melbourne at the time of the alleged offending, was convicted of one charge of sexual penetration of a child under 16 years and four charges of committing an act of indecency with or in the presence of a child under the age of 16 years. This was the second trial of these charges, the jury at the first trial having been unable to agree on its verdicts. The prosecution case, as it was left to the jury, alleged that the offending occurred on two separate occasions, the first on 15 or 22 December 1996 and the second on 23 February 1997. The incidents were alleged to have occurred in and near the priests’ sacristy at St Patrick’s Cathedral in East Melbourne, following the celebration of Sunday solemn Mass. The victims of the alleged offending were two Cathedral choirboys aged 13 years at the time of the events.
The applicant sought leave to appeal against his convictions before the Court of Appeal. On 21 August 2019 the Court of Appeal granted leave on a single ground, which contended that the verdicts were unreasonable or could not be supported by the evidence, and dismissed the appeal. The Court of Appeal viewed video-recordings of a number of witnesses’ testimony, including that of the complainant. The majority, Ferguson CJ and Maxwell P, assessed the complainant to be a compelling witness. Their Honours went on to consider the evidence of a number of “opportunity witnesses”, who had described the movements of the applicant and others following the conclusion of Sunday solemn Mass in a way that was inconsistent with the complainant’s account. Their Honours found that no witness could say with certainty that these routines and practices were never departed from and concluded that the jury had not been compelled to entertain a reasonable doubt as to the applicant’s guilt. Weinberg JA dissented, concluding that, by reason of the unchallenged evidence of the opportunity witnesses, the jury, acting rationally on the whole of the evidence, ought to have had a reasonable doubt.
On 17 September 2019, the applicant applied to the High Court for special leave to appeal from the Court of Appeal’s decision on two grounds. On 13 November 2019, Gordon and Edelman JJ referred the application for special leave to a Full Court of the High Court for argument as on an appeal. The application was heard by the High Court on 11 and 12 March 2020.
The High Court considered that, while the Court of Appeal majority assessed the evidence of the opportunity witnesses as leaving open the possibility that the complainant’s account was correct, their Honours’ analysis failed to engage with the question of whether there remained a reasonable possibility that the offending had not taken place, such that there ought to have been a reasonable doubt as to the applicant’s guilt. The unchallenged evidence of the opportunity witnesses was
inconsistent with the complainant’s account, and described: (i) the applicant’s practice of greeting congregants on or near the Cathedral steps after Sunday solemn Mass; (ii) the established and historical Catholic church practice that required that the applicant, as an archbishop, always be accompanied when robed in the Cathedral; and (iii) the continuous traffic in and out of the priests’ sacristy for ten to 15 minutes after the conclusion of the procession that ended Sunday solemn Mass.
The Court held that, on the assumption that the jury had assessed the complainant’s evidence as thoroughly credible and reliable, the evidence of the opportunity witnesses nonetheless required the jury, acting rationally, to have entertained a reasonable doubt as to the applicant’s guilt in relation to the offences involved in both alleged incidents. With respect to each of the applicant’s convictions, there was, consistently with the words the Court used in Chidiac v The Queen (1991) 171 CLR 432 at 444 and M v The Queen (1994) 181 CLR 487 at 494, “a significant possibility that an innocent person has been convicted because the evidence did not establish guilt to the requisite standard of proof”.
• This statement is not intended to be a substitute for the reasons of the High Court or to be used in any later consideration of the Court’s reasons.
The coronavirus traveled all over the world from Wuhan China, but it did not reach Beijing or Shanghai or other major cities in China. Can anyone explain how is that possible?
There are so many questions, after all, where it all started, in China, the Chinese stock market did not collapse, but the American and European markets did, and when those markets collapsed, the Chinese bought a lot.
All roads lead back to China
1. They created a virus for which they already had an antidote.
2. They purposely spread the virus for financial gain.
3. There is a clear demonstration of efficiency to such an extent that they built hospitals in a few days. To build so many hospitals they had to be prepared with organized projects, for example, with the ordering of equipment, the hiring of labor, the water and sewerage network, the prefabricated building materials and the storage in an impressive volume. Everything happened so fast that everyone was speechless.
4. They caused chaos in the world, beginning with Europe and the rest of the western worlds.
5. Quickly decimating the economies of dozens of countries.
6. Stop production and manufacturing lines in factories and primary production in dozens of countries.
7. Causing the stock markets to crash and then they bought stocks, bonds and companies at bargain prices.
8. They then quickly gained control of the epidemic in their country. After all, they were ready and he was never really out of control.
9. In all this, they managed to lower the price of basic products, including the price of oil.
10. Now they are going back to mass production while the rest of the world is stopped.
Also note how quickly Chinese unions activated to “hoard” purchases of bus cargo to regional shopping centers across Australia, stripping our shelves of toilet paper and staple foods.
It happened before most of us knew what was happening, even before we knew what the Coronavirus was.
Matthew Moore The Gospel is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes……….Romans 1:16. In the twilight of life, we will be judged on our love………. St. John of the Cross, Sayings of Light and Love #60“… rustic simplicity is a better soil for the good life than is sophisticated rottenness.” L. Strauss, What is Political Philosophy?
These are the days that have been foretold to us through Scripture, countless Saints, and numerous Marian apparitions. If we are not aware, it is because of our own ignorance and lack of desire to understand what our Faith is truly about. The Corona virus fear that has gripped the entire world is without a doubt a demonic plot to control the minds and hearts of the people of this world. But why is the Church and so many of the lay faithful going along with the world? We are not called to live as people in the world live. We are Christians and we are called to live as Christ lived.
We do not look to the world for answers or for hope in times of crisis. We should be picking up our rosary and bible and looking towards God for answers. If we aren’t doing that it means we are putting our faith in the world by absorbing the messages that are being given to us through the secular media, which is always atheistic and anti-God. The world can not tell us anything that will help us save our souls. It despises us because we are followers of Christ. We know Satan is the ruler of this world and yet we look to the world for information. This is a classic example of insanity! The Father of Lies runs the world and we want to listen to him and his minions? No, we should open our bibles and let God speak to us here and now.
God’s word is alive and eternal. The Truth never changes and what was written 2,000 years ago under the guidance of the Holy Spirit (God) is full Truth. In fact, you will learn more about the reality of things today by reading that living word of God than you could ever learn through the news and media reports that come from the world every second of every day. It is sheer chaos and hysteria being spread by the world and the Devil. There is NO truth in them! We need to regain our senses and understand that God is in control of all things and figure out what His plan for us is in this current moment. He is not asking us to be afraid of a virus that can infect our bodies. He is more concerned with the spiritual virus, that is Sin, that is infecting our minds, hearts, souls and the Church!
This is all the more reason that we should not be accepting the closing of the masses by our Bishop(s)! If they had even an ounce of supernatural Faith they would not agree to go along with this diabolical agenda of the world and would resist until the point of death. We the laity must protest this horrific abuse with all our might. We must write emails, plan protests, rally outside of our churches, depose unfaithful clergy, whatever it takes! It amazes me that so many Catholics on social media are celebrating this atrocity as a prudent decision by the Church. The Catholic Church is not what you think it is. It is not just the hierarchy who get to make decisions and the rest of us just blindly accept it even to our own eternal detriment. This is not using our God given intellect and will.
We do not follow faithless men. We, the Church of light who are called to be the salt of the earth for the rest of humanity, must retain our zeal! If we have lost that, then we are no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot (cf. Matthew 5:13-16).
I am sick to my stomach watching these unnatural men who run the Church telling us, the faithful, what we must do. They use your ignorance of the Faith and of your rights as Christians, to lie to get you to agree to things that no Christians in the history of the world would ever have agreed to. The true Church does not take its marching orders from the State (Satan). It takes its orders from Christ and those who are in communion with Him. This means those who are in a state of Grace and who reside in the Truth.
We must despise all forms of lying in our own lives if we ever wish to be able to see the Truth as it clearly is. The sin of lying obstructs us from being able to see when others are lying to us. The current hierarchy of the Church is filled with immoral men who can lie with an unsettling ease that is impossible to detect unless you have trained your eyes and ears to only seek truth. Christ is the truth we must seek right now and always if we are ever going to be able to live as he has called us to live in this world.
Fear of God is the only respectable form of fear. If we are afraid, because the world has caused it in us, then we are not exhibiting true faith. If you tell me I cannot receive the most precious and holy Eucharist because of fear of contracting a cold virus then you are doing the devil’s work and you have cut yourself off from the true vine that gives life. Please understand that your Church is being ripped away from you and if you’re ok watching mass on television and not receiving the most blessed Sacrament than I feel sorry for you. If this is not ok with you than let us, the militant Church, do something about it right now.
Stay away from people who are not followers of the Lord! Can someone who is good get along with someone who is evil? Are light and darkness the same? Is Christ a friend of Satan? Can people who follow the Lord have anything in common with those who don’t? Do idols belong in the temple of God? We are the temple of the living God (2 Corinthians 6:14-16).
“Who’s going to save our Church? It’s not our bishops, it’s not our priests and it is not the religious. It is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes and the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that the priests act like priests, your bishops act like bishops, and the religious act like religious.” – Archbishop Fulton Sheen
“Anyway, they are no more than false apostles and dishonest workers. They only pretend to be apostles of Christ. And it is no wonder. Even Satan tries to make himself look like an angel of light. So why does it seem strange for Satan’s servants to pretend to do what is right? Someday they will get exactly what they deserve.” 2 Corinthians 11:13-15
“For the shepherds are stupid, and do not inquire of the Lord; therefore they have not prospered, and all their flock is scattered.” Jeremiah 10:21
“It is an easy matter for many to be shut up in the hands of a few: and there is no difference in the sight of the God of heaven to deliver with a great multitude, or with a small company: For the success of war is not in the multitude of the army, but strength cometh from heaven. They come against us with an insolent multitude, and with pride, to destroy us, and our wives, and our children, and to take our spoils. But we will fight for our lives and our laws: And the Lord himself will overthrow them before our face: but as for you, fear them not.”1 (Maccabees) 3:18-22
InboxxSMattacchione <silvio@silviosfarm.com>8:24 AM (44 minutes ago)
ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP 
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