The President in His own Words

The President in His own Words

In pursuit of the truth - http://www.cinopsbegoneblogspot.com - Sunday, June 29, 2014

Excerpts from an article by Stanley Renshon in Commentary, July - August 2014, "In Search of Greatness, Obama's place in history

    "In 1958, a Gallup poll found that 73% off the public believed you could trust the federal government to do what's right "most" or "all of the time:, by 2006, that figure had fallen to 28%.... Obama contributed to still greater decline in the public's trust of Washington. Add to this a string of unresolved scandals including the IRS's political targeting and the broad and secret surveillance of private data, and it's no wonder that a 2013 Gallup poll shows that Americans who trusted the government to do what's right "most" or "all of the time" had fallen to 19 percent....

    "I want to transform this country." In his first inaugural address, he called on his fellow citizens to help "remake America"* - not change it, mind you, but remake it.

    Asked on Meet the Press about his wanting to be a great president, Obama replied, "When I think about great presidents, I think about those who transform how we think about ourselves as a country in fundamental ways so that, at the end of their tenure. we have looked and said to ours -that's who we are." He went on: "They transformed the culture and not simply promoted one or two particular issues." ...

    One of the presidents senior aides told a reporter for the Washington Post, "He's playing chess in a town full of checker players." Another, Valerie Jarrett, said, "He knows exactly how smart he is ... He knows how perceptive he id," and what's more. "I think that he has never been challenged intellectually." During Obama's first campaign some of his aides referred to him as the "Black Jesus." ...

His chief political adviser David Axelrod said of his working with Obama: "It's like you are carrying this priceless porcelain vase through a crowd of people and you don't want to be the guy who drops it and breaks it. Having advisers think of you in terms that parallel God's son or as a rate and priceless piece of porcelain has its problems, especially if you are charged with making momentous decisions...

Obama's ability to get honest advice has been made harder still by his own self-regard. It is not hyperbole to say that he considers himself his own best, most knowledgeable adviser.... Obama ... "foreign policy is the area I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton or Senator McCain."...

Asked after the presidential campaign about the best advice he had received while running, he replied, "Well, I have to say it was the advice that I gave myself." In July of 2007, he told a group of fundraisers, " I'm the best retail politician in America."...

In early 2007, when Obama interviewed his campaign's future political director, Patrick Gaspard, he told him, "I think that I am a better speechwriter than my speech writers. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy writers." ..."

George H. Kubeck

Those of us who prayed and counseled at the abortion  sites for years have also an  insightful understanding of the mind of President Obama. He thinks  differently from any of our previous  presidents or American leaders. The secularists call him the first black president even though his Mom is white and his Dad was born in Africa. For a Black President to have a love affair with  Planned Parenthood is incomprehensible. He is deliberately blind to the reality of Black Racism which kills 1000 babies each day via abortion. That's 365,000 each year. Stop the Genocide! Sadly, President Obama doesn't seem to care. The authentic Black American neurosurgeon Ben Carson does not have the gall and self-deception to change the definition of life, marriage or family.

    

Obamaism and the U.S. Catholic Church # 1

 Obamaism and the U.S. Catholic Church # 1

In pursuit of the truth - http://www.cinopsbegoneblogspot.com  -Wed. June 25, 2014

Preface: By Obamaism, I would include the gospel of Saul Alinsky. How was it possible for many in the Church to be duped by citizen Barack Obama? Today, Barack Obama owes his election to the so-called Catholic vote in 2008 and 2012. However in truth, a majority of practicing Catholic did not vote  for him. However, the bottom line is that voters who called themselves Catholic voted for Obama. I wish a Russell Shaw or George Weigel would write a book on Obama's shameful and nefarious influence. There is fundamentally nothing authentically Catholic about Obamaism.

Here is an article which bears on this topic from lifesitenews.com.

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/bishop-schneider-church-faces-great-crisis-as-shes-tem...

Bishop Schneider: Church faces 'great crisis' as she's tempted to conform to the 'new paganism.'

By Hilary White, London, June 12, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com)

    The Catholic Church is living through a 'great crisis' of belief and practice, facing 'new paganism' comparable to the first centuries of the Church, and in which many priests and bishops are actively collaborating. Bishop Anthanasius Schneider, auxiliary bishop of Astana in Kazakhistan, said in an interview during a trip to the U.K.The bishop said the crisis has particularly manifested itself in the erosion of belief in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, which he says has a 'causal connection' to the denial of the Church's teachings on sex & marriage.

"This is the deepest evil," says Schneider, "man, or the clergy, putting themselves in the center when they change the revealed truth of God, for instance, concerning the Sixth commandment and human sexuality."The bishop's interview was conducted by Sarah Atkinson and published June 6 in the Catholic Herald. Atkinson is also editor of Mass of Ages, the magazine published by the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales, which published the full transcript.

"We are living in an un-Christian society, in a new paganism," Schneider told Atkinson. "The temptation today is for the clergy is to adapt to the new world to the new paganism, to be collaborators. We are in a similar situation to the first centuries, when the majority of society was pagan, and Christianity was discriminated against."

He warned that Christians will likely be faced with the choice of apostasy, offered to those in the early Church, to pinch "one grain of incense into a fire in front of the statue of the emperor." This ultimation may even be supported from within the Church. It seems possible that Catholics who remain faithful "may, for a time, be persecuted or discriminated even on behalf of those who [have] power in the exterior structure of the Church," he said...

In our times, he said, clergy and bishops are not being asked to pinch incense to the emperor, but "to collaborate with the pagan world today in the dissolution of the Sixth commandment and in the revision of the way God created man and women." These clergy, he said, would be "traitors of the Faith, they are participating ultimately in pagan sacrifice."...

"When these things continue, I think, there will be an interior split in the Church of those who are faithful to the faith of their baptism and the integrity of the Catholic faith." This split, he said, will be between those who remain faithful "to the unchangeable Catholic truth" and those "who are assuming the spirit of this world and there will be a clear spirit, I think." ...

Bishop Schneider had particularly strong words for the prelates supporting the proposal of Cardinal Walter Kasper to admit divorced and remarried Catholics to Communion "after a period of penance." These he said, "operate with a false concept of mercy." He compared it to a doctor prescribing sugar for a diabetic "although he knows it will kill him. But the soul is more important than the body.... "The real crisis of the Church is anthropocentrism, forgetting the "Christocentrism." It comes 'when we place ourselves, including priests, as the center and when God is put in the corner and this is happening also materially." "Our first duty as human beings is to adore God, not us, but Him, unfortunately the liturgical practice of the last 40 years has been very anthropocentric," he said. ...

"The gates of hell, i.e. heresy," he said, will ultimately be defeated by the "Supreme Magisterium" of the Church  which "will surely issue an unequivocal doctrinal statement, rejecting any collaboration with the neo-pagan ideas of changing e.g. the Sixth Commandment of God, the meaning of sexuality and of family. Those who have opposed the true teaching of the Church, he added, would then leave and would not longer call themselves Catholic...."   George H. Kubeck

A Solid Commencement Address

A Solid Commencement Address

In pursuit of the truth - http://www.cinopsbegoneblogspot.com - Trinity Sunday, June 15, 2014

By George Weigel delivered to the Class of 2014 of the University of Dallas, Excerpts:

"Here you have learned that "tradition" is neither a synonym for dullness nor the enemy of human progress, for here you have learned that "tradition," as the great Chesterton noted, is "the democracy of the dead," the willingness to think that those that came before us - Homer and Virgil, Augustine and Aquinas, Dante and Milton and Shakespeare - may have important things to teach us.

Here, you have learned that the tradition of the West is built on the three pillars of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome: biblical religion which teaches us that life is a pilgrimage in which we are called to follow the God of Israel and the Church on the path He is taking through history: the Greek faith in reason's ability to get at the truth of things that are embedded in the world around us; the Roman conviction that the rule of law is superior to the rule of brute force.

Each of those pillars is under assault throughout the western world today. In the 19th century, what Henry de Lubac called "atheistic humanism" jettisoned the God of the Bible and declared that western high culture would hence-forth be a God-free zone. In the 20th century, the deconstruction of humanities in an aggressively secular academy led, not to liberated minds, but to minds chained in the prison of uncertainty, skepticism, irony and cynicism, in the 21st century, and a result of what happened in the 19th and 20th centuries, the "dictatorship of relativism" prophetically analyzed by Benedict XVI now threatens the rule of law from Anchorage to Kiev and all points in between.

So you the class of 2014, have your work cut out for you. and the work is nothing less than the exhilarating, challenging and sometimes dangerous task of giving the West a new birth of freedom lived for the common  good in solidarity with other pilgrims through history....

"I think there are two reasons why John Paul II was a magnet for the young. The first was his transparent honesty.There was no falseness in the man,  no hedging, none of the ambiguity that is often a postmodern mask hiding deep confusion. He did not ask young people to do anything he had not done. He did not ask young people to bear any burden he had not borne. He simply asked them to let him, and the Church, accompany them on the pathways of life, in moments of failure as moments of success, so that those pathways might eventually become a pilgrim's progress toward sanctity.

And the second reason why John Paul was a magnet for the young was his challenge. Unlike 21-century popular culture, John Paul II did not pander to young people. He challenged young people, because he knew, from his experiences with his young friends in Cracow, that young people want to be summoned to live lives of heroism - that young adulthood is a time to dream great dreams, to imagine how things ought to be, and to bend heroic efforts to fixing what is broken in our own lives and in society....

John Paul said the same thing to millions of young people in Rome, Buenos Aires, Compostela, Czestochowa, Denver, Paris, Toronto: Never ever settle for anything less the spiritual and moral grandeur that the grace of God makes possible in your lives. Never settle for less than that. You will fail as we all do, but that is no reason to lower the bar of expectation. Get up, dust yourself off, seek forgiveness and reconciliation, and try again. But never, ever settle for anything less than the spiritual and moral greatness that is available to you, and of which you are capable by God's grace. Don't ever settle for less than that.

If the generation of which this Class of 2014 is a part is going to meet the challenge of giving America and the West, a new birth of freedom, it will do so because it becomes a generation of saints: well-educated, thoughtful and articulate saints, compassionate and merciful saints; saints for the new millennium who refuse to surrender to the tyranny of low expectations, personal and public saints in the image of the young Pole who never imagined himself pope, but whom the Church and the world know as Pope St. John Paul II.

He is now more than an image to ponder, an example to emulate. He is your powerful intercessor. And St. John Paul II will not fail to support you as you go out, today, from this great university to the ends of the earth, contemporary witness to the ancient and enduring truths you have made your own here. Godspeed on your journey."

George H. Kubeck

The Priesthood

The Priesthood

In pursuit of the truth - http://www.cinopsbegoneblogsport.com - Friday, June 13, 2014

WE HAVE EXCERPTS FROM THE CLASSIC BOOK BY JOSEPH CARDINAL RATZINGER, CO-WORKER OF THE TRUTH, MEDITATIONS FOR EVERY DAY,  IGNATIOUS 1992 IGNATIUS PRESS, SAN FRANCISCO

  What exactly is ordination? ... "Are you prepared to unite yourself daily more  closely with Christ, our High  Priest, and to become with him a sacrificial offering for the glory of God and  the salvation of mankind?" Although it is not expressly stated, the  concept of the eucharistic ministry as the center of the priest's existence is at the root of this question....

  The first and main requirement is that the priest  make himself the servant of the God who is greater than he is, that he learn to transcend himself and for which we are all waiting; for whether we know it or not, we all long to transcend the works of our own spirit, our own hands, and to receive the festive gift. This last question: "Are prepared to become a sacrificial offering ...?" means "Are you prepared to let yourself be drawn into this mystery and so drink the festive wine of Jesus Christ, the wine of the Godhead...?"  Meditation for June 8.

 
In his autobiographical reflection, the French theologian Marc Oraison relates in a thought-provoking manner how he found this way from doctor to priest.... For him, becoming a priest did not mean bidding farewell to all he had hoped to accomplish as a doctor, but it was only in the priesthood that he saw the definitive and complete answer to death: the Resurrection. To make present Christ's Resurrection and our own - can be accomplished only through the power of the priestly ministry.... For that reason the innermost power center of the priestly ministry is and will always be to celebrate the Eucharist of the Lord, to ratify among us, in the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, his death and the victory of love... Meditation for June 9.

  The great and always necessary role of the priest consists in this: that, in a world fragmented by specialization and therefore sick and suffering and disintegrated, the priest continues to be someone  who is there for everyone, who holds humanity together from within.... despite all the training necessitated by his priesthood, he is, in the last analysis, not just one specialist among many but a servant of all humans, who guides us over the  rough places of life into God's merciful love, in the unity of the  body of Christ. Meditation for June 10.

  He (the priest) strengthens others in their faith, but he also always receives faith from them.... Faith and prayer belong inseparably together. The time a priest spends in prayer and in hearing the word of God is never at the expense of his pastoral duties to the souls confided to his care. People can tell if the words and actions of their pastor have their origin in his prayer or only at his writing table...  Meditation June 12

  "And you priests have really only one task: to present Jesus to all people in such a way that they see him and learn to love him. Then everything that faith teaches will be self-evident." I remember then that Saint Paul, in his Letter to the Galations, described his activity as apostle and priest in the  following words: "I depicted Christ clearly before your eyes." (cf. Gal 3:1) Meditation June 13

George H. Kubeck

Addendum - Sunday, June 15, 2014
"The priestly ministry is a ministry of reconciliation.... It is the priest's role to make God's gifts present to us and to associate us with these gifts in such a way that, as the Canon of the Mass puts it, we ourselves become a gift together with him. It is he who is permitted to offer the sacrifice of Jesus Christ in which the things of this world become a glorification of God and new life arises from this sacrifice. He is called not only to speak of God, but to speak with him for all of us and to open to us the highest of all possibilities of human speech - that our words become a conversation with the living God...." Meditation June 14, 2014

Progressivism: A False Liberalism: Un-American

Progressivism: A False Liberalism: Un-American

In pursuit of the truth - http://www.cinopsbegoneblogspot.com  Saturday, June 7, 2014

Liberal's Triumph: A Disaster by Carl Gethmann, Reading, Pennsylvania

Letter to the Editor in New Oxford Review, June 2014

    "Having read Christopher Ferrara's book Liberty, the God that Failed, as well as Christopher Zehnder's review of it (Jan.-Feb.), and Ferra and Zehnder's exchange in the letter section (April), I think Mr. Zehnder has missed the most important point made by Mr. Ferrara in his book: that liberalism's triumph constitutes its failure.

    It has substituted its own definition of freedom for Catholicism's definition of freedom. Liberalism's "freedom" has resulted in a level of governmental and bureaucratic control of society undreamed of by any past dictatorship.

    Disagree with liberalism's "freedom" and you will be fined, jailed, lose your job or business, and be portrayed in the media as a yahoo, a fundamentalist, and a bigot, and told that you are "not welcome" in certain municipalities (as supporters of traditional marriage were by a New York City councilman this April).

    Religion is increasingly banned from the public square, just a Locke and Madison desired. [I question this of Locke and Madison]. For the first time in history, we are witnessing the construction of a society that aims to be completely free of religion.

    Yes, as Mr. Zehnder says, liberalism has successfully achieved its aims, but even he admits that it is a disaster. And that is why liberty is "the God that failed." which is the overriding point of Mr. Ferrara's book."

George H. Kubeck

    

The most dangerous and corrupt entity in America is the mainstream media. They are not interested in pursuing the truth but a personal political and social agenda. Honest journalism is dead. This makes possible a false liberalism.