Insights on the Catholic Laity and Theologians*

Insights on the Catholic Laity and Theologians *

“The Church, it is said, has been given the ministry of shepherd; she proclaims the Gospel for the faithful, but does not teach for theologians. But such a distinction between proclamation and teaching is profoundly contrary to nature of the biblical word.

“The Church has brought about the emancipation of simple souls and has promised even to them the ability to be philosophers in the true sense of the word, that is, to comprehend what is essential to human nature as well as, or even better than those who are learned.

“Jesus’ words about the lack of understanding the wise and intelligent and the depth of understanding among infants and children (Mt 11:25) are particularly apposite in this context: they establish Christianity as a religion for the people, as a faith in which there is no class distinction.

“And in fact what is proclaimed in the homily is binding; that its nature. It does not propose this or that recreational activity or a kind of religious entertainment. Its purpose is to tell man what he is and what he must do to be himself. But how can the teaching of the Church be binding if it is not binding on theologians?

“The essence of the Church’s teaching ministry consists precisely in the fact that the proclamation of the Faith is the valid touchstone for theology as well. This proclamation is the object of the reflection of theology.

“The faith of simple souls is far from being a kind of watered –down theology for the laity, so-called “popular Platonism”; the relationship is exactly the opposite: proclamation is the standard for theology, not theology for proclamation.

“It is indeed correct that the Church in her ministry as shepherd is authorized to proclaim the Gospel, not to teach theology as a science. But the ministry of proclamation is likewise the ministry of theology.”
George H. Kubeck *Cardinal Ratzinger, “Co-Workers of the Truth”, Jan. 29th, - Cinops be gone, Sunday, 1-30-11

P.S. Recently, a “Spirituality in Higher Education” in-depth survey was conducted among Catholic college students by the Higher Education Research Institute. It revealed some startling results.

1.) 71% of Catholic seniors believe same-sex couples should legally be able to marry. 2.) 57% of Catholic seniors believe that abortion should be legal. 3.) 49% of Catholic seniors believe if two unmarried people really like each other; it’s okay to have sexual relations, even if they’re barely acquainted. 4.) It’s no wonder then that only half of Catholic seniors say they attend Mass only “infrequently” and 22 % attend not at all…

The above same-sex marriage beliefs drive me up the wall. I don’t think that these Catholic seniors are the children of practicing Catholics. The parents have been ripped off by the Catholic colleges. Who can you trust anymore? I don’t want to ramble on about the CINOP in the U.S.A. and Canada. The CINOP is a horrendous scandal. In Canada in 2005, it was the CINOP [Liberal] who passed same-sex marriage laws? In our November elections about 30 CINOPs were voted out of office. Let’s continue to educate parishioners on marriage and vote another 30 or more out of office in 2012. We can all hold our heads high and proud to be Catholic.

The President's Address to the Nation*

The President’s Address to the Nation *
In pursuit of the truth – www.cinopsbegone.com – Thursday, January 27, 2011

Sadly, and in several ways the talk was meaningless to this pro-life and tea party activist. First of all, let’s thank President Obama for at least one positive change since he came to office in 2008. We are now definitely a right of center and pro-life nation. We are divided with 40% conservative, 20% liberal, and 40% independent or undecided. However, communication power rests with the 20%.

I wonder if President Obama took a peek on EWTN (Television) on Monday at the March for Life rallies in Washington, D.C. or the one in San Francisco on Saturday. Many young folks were there.

The President has created by his radical policies among ordinary folks a reasonable mindset of common sense, natural law, truth and the Constitution. President Obama must realize that the truth is the most powerful weapon for all Americans. Is this truth or politically correct truth? The challenge we have is this double standard politically correct news media and their agendas, past and present. They did not report the rallies in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Why put us in the Twilight Zone?

For PC News, pro-life activity is not newsworthy and is to be ignored. In fact, that’s in their template. There exists only advocacy journalism for the culture of death agenda in America. That is dishonest and not fair. It is not journalism! Are pro-lifers or tea party members second-class citizens?

What do I mean by the culture of death agenda? 1) Their sincere belief in abortion on demand. 2) Same-Sex Marriage, Repeal of DADT and promote the Gay Agenda: 3) Embryonic Stem-Cell Research: 4) Removing the conscience clause from health care workers. Also it is wrong that tea party supporters in the public arena are fair game to be attacked and smeared. We salute these smeared persons and give them a badge of honor. This pc news media is really insulting you and me.

The President is lucky. He fits into the PC Agenda and they are rooting for him. This PC news media reminds me of Pravda in Russia during the Cold War. Most Russians did not believe in the commie line propaganda of truth from Pravda. The same is happening in America with PC Journalism. Fortunately, there exists honest journalism that competes with them.

The President wants to change and transform America so that we become like Europeans. He needs to check on Google “Prager University” video on The American Trinity. Also, he is seriously handicapped coming from Chicago where there is a collapse of Catholic identity and values. Can you imagine Rahm Emmanuel elected mayor? Our President’s association with Catholic-in-name-only politicians [CINOP] like Daley and Durbin has screwed up his mind.

Bill O’Reilly from Fox News is going to interview the President. Here are some questions. What are your core American values? Which one of the Founding Fathers is closest to your thinking? In what areas do you disagree with Founding Father Alexander Hamilton?

George H. Kubeck *when President Obama spoke to Congress there is a sign embedded above him on the wall which the politically correct media never shows for Presidents: It reads – “In God We Trust.”

Walk for Life - West Coast - 2011- San Francisco

Walk for Life – West Coast – 2011 – San Francisco – Sat. Jan. 22, 2011

Theme: Women deserve better than abortion!

Founders: Delores and Eva Muntean- They had gone to the March for Life in Washington, D.C. in 2000. – “Let’s do something in San Francisco.” There is a higher abortion rate than births in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. It takes a lot of planning for a March for Life. There are a lot of volunteers. A professional planner is putting together a manual* of how to organize a Walk for Life in your area. There are about 200 buses coming in. Also, a 33-man sailing ship will accompany us on our walk. There were about 50 thousand participants in this San Francisco Walk for Life. Educate and stop the move in society towards the acceptance of abortion. Science is on your side.

EWTN Coverage: Doug Kirk, Father Mark, Doug Barry: www.WalkforLifeWC.com and www.ewtn.com/prolife the whole month of January is devoted to life issues.

Selected Notes: “Mary and Michael travel in a motor home. Missing the forgiveness of themselves and to accept that forgiveness. Abortion is not a quick fix. They are not alone. They can be forgiven. Michael wants to wake up the sleeping Catholics.

This group of young people flew in from Utah. It was sponsored by the Knights of Columbus. They were members of Blessed Sacrament Church and St. Peter and Paul. “Amazing how many people are here. Still have to educate others.”

This is a wonderful peaceful protest. Stand up for what the gospel teaches. Serving the gifts we are given. Kids remember your habits. Have eternal values. Be a man in step with Christ.

His eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke: “We need a strong witness to give courage to others. Have encountered many young people at the March for Life and they have given their lives to Christ as a priest or consecrated religious.

Be sure to watch “Blood Money” at 6 P.M. It gives a true picture of what abortion is all about. Abortion is the leading cause of death in the world. 2/3rds of abortion would not occur if the father was opposed to the abortion.

The interview with Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone: We have a video series teaching the different aspects of marriage. Marriage is for the benefit of children, procreation and unity. We want a society that is in the best interests of children.
With Father Frank Pavone: “Silent No More Campaign” – Signs: “I Regret My Abortion.” – “I Regret Lost Fatherhood.”

Speaker Abby Johnson and her book www.UnPlannedBook.com we must be willing and able to get uncomfortable for life. Organizer David B. “40 Days for Life” emphasizing prayer and the ones working in the abortion sites… Kathleen Eaton founder of Birth Choice – These are fully licensed medical clinics. They have a prospective of pro-life, abstinence, faith and family. Doctors and nurses are at Birth Choice. “We do pre-natal care.” We are taking over from Planned Parenthood in the communities. Expansion from 5 to 8 clinics in California. By God, God will use us. Please pray for Birth Choice…

George H. Kubeck *it would be wise to plan ahead for a small March for Life in each U.S.A. diocese. 1/26/11

The Wisdom of Ronald Reagan*

The Wisdom of President Ronald Reagan*
In pursuit of the truth – www.cinopsbegone.com – Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Let’s focus on common sense and natural law

Ronald Reagan on Government
“Man is not free unless government is limited.” – We have long since discovered that nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program.” – “Government tends not to solve problems, only rearrange them.” – It is rather to make it [government] work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it’ foster productivity not stifle it.”

Ronald Reagan on Deficits
“We don’t have a trillion-dollar-debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar-debt because we spend too much.” – “Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.”

Ronald Reagan on Communism (Marxist Socialism)
“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” – “ I believe that communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages even now are being written.” – “Communism only works in Heaven, where they don’t need it, and in Hell where they already have it.”

Ronald Reagan on Liberty
“I have always believed that America is strongest and freest and happiest when it is truest to the wisdom of its founders.” – “Individual liberty depends on keeping government under control.”

Ronald Reagan on America’s Youth
“… Always remember that you are Americans, and it is your birthright to dream great dreams in this sweet and blessed land, truly the greatest, freest, strongest nation on earth.” – “Each year, after my election in 1980, we hosted Young America’s Foundation at the White House. Together we accomplished much of what has been known as the Reagan Revolution. [In 2006, Young America Foundation opened the Reagan Ranch Center in downtown Santa Barbara, California.]”

Ronald Reagan on Inspiration and Families
“If we ever forget that we are ‘One Nation under God,’ then we will be nation gone under.” – “There is no institution more vital to our nation’s survival than the American family.”- “… As long as we remember our first principles and believe in ourselves, the future will always be ours.”

George H. Kubeck *Reagan Ranch – 2011 Calendar – Celebrating Ronald Reagan’s 100th Birthday

A Notre Dame Witness for Life

A Notre Dame Witness for Life

William McGurn is a columnist at the Wall Street Journal and an alumnus of Notre Dame University. These are extracts of his address he gave at Notre Dame on April 23, 2009.

Good evening.

“It is an honor to be with you on this campus. It is a joy to be here under the auspices of Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture – and the Notre Dame Fund for the Protection of Human Life… The precipitate cause of our gathering tonight is the honor and platform our university has extended to a President whose policies reflect clear convictions about unborn life. These convictions are not in doubt. In July 2007, the candidate spelled them out in a forceful address to a Planned Parenthood convention in our nation’s capital.

“Before that audience, he declared that woman’s “fundamental right” to an abortion was at stake in the coming election. He spoke about how he had “put Roe at the center” of his “lesson plan on reproductive freedom” when he was a professor – and how he would put it at the center of his agenda as president. He invoked his record in the Illinois state senate, where he fought restrictions on abortion, famously including one on partial-birth abortion.

He said that the “first thing” he wanted to do as President was to “sign a Freedom of Choice Act.” And he ended by assuring his audience that “on this fundamental issue,” he, like they, would never yield.

“These were his promises as a candidate. His actions as President – his key appointments, his judicial nominees, his lifting of restrictions on federal funding for abortion providers overseas, the green light given to the destruction of human embryos for research, his targeting of “conscience clause” protection for health care workers – all these actions are fully consistent with his promises. It is precisely this terrible consistency that makes it so dispiriting to see our university extend to this man her most public platform and an honorary doctorate of laws…

“So tonight our hearts carry a great sadness… We come to affirm the sacredness of life. This witness is the only reason for a University of Notre Dame. We believe that there are self-evident truths about the dignity of each human life… For most of her life, Notre Dame has served as a symbol of a Catholic community struggling to find acceptance in America – a yearning to make our own contributions to this great experiment in ordered liberty…

“At a time when we told to “engage” and hold “dialogue,” their timidity [the Notre Dame brand of leadership] thunders across this campus… The discord that this year’s commencement has unleashed – between Notre Dame and the bishops, between members of the Notre Dame community, between Notre Dame and thousandths of discouraged Catholic faithful – all this derives from an approach that for decades has treated abortion as one issue on a political scorecard…

“Maximum determination. Ladies and gentlemen, the unborn child’s right to life represents the defining civil-rights issue of our day – and it ought to be the defining civil-rights issue on this campus… Imagine the that Notre Dame might provide on a fall afternoon, if millions of Americans who had sat down to watch a football game suddenly found themselves face to face with a Notre Dame professor or student standing up to say, “I fight for the unborn.” George H. Kubeck, Jan. 22/11

George F. Will on the Role of the 112th Congress*

George F. Will on the Role of the 112th Congress*
In pursuit of the truth – www.cinopsbegone.com – Friday, January 21, 2011

“The 112th Congress must begin the process of restoring the national regime and civic culture the founders bequeath. This will require reviving the rule of law, reasserting the relevance of the Constitution, and affirming the reality of American exceptionalism...

“The eclipse of Congress by the executive branch and other agencies is Congress’ fault. It is the result of lazy legislating and lax oversight. Too many “laws’ actually are little more than pious sentiments endorsing social goals- environmental, educational, etc. – the meanings of which are later defined by executive branch rule-making…

“Conservative senators passing through the Capitol reception room should ponder the portrait of Ohio’s Robert Taft (d. 1953) who was conservativism when it stressed congressional supremacy. America was born in recoil against an overbearing executive’s “repeated injuries and usurpations” (Declaration of Independence); modern conservatism was born in reaction against executive aggrandizement, first by Franklin Roosevelt, and then by his acolyte Lyndon Johnson…

“Today, conservatives should curl up with a good book by a founding editor of National Review – James Burnham’s “Congress and the American Tradition”… The idea of American exceptionalism is obnoxious to progressives, who, evidently unaware of the idea’s long pedigree (it traces to Alexis de Tocqueville) and the rich scholarship concerning the idea, assume it is a crude strain of patriotism. America, Tocqueville said, is unique because it was born – free of a feudal past, free from an entrenched aristocracy and established religion.

“The American Revolution was political, not a social revolution; it was about emancipating individuals for the pursuit of happiness, not about the state allocating wealth and opportunity… Americans are exceptionally committed to limited government because they are exceptionally confident of social mobility through personal striving…

“Two years into Barack Obama’s presidency, we now know what he meant about “hope” and “change” – he and other progressives hope to change our national character. [Personally, I find this absolutely disgusting.] Three weeks into his presidency, Newsweek, unhinged by adoration of him, and allowing its wishes to father its thoughts, announced that “we are all socialists now” and that America “is moving toward a modern European state.” The electorate emphatically disagreed created the 112th Congress, with its exceptionally important agenda.”

George H. Kubeck *A classic analysis in the Opinion Column, Orange County Register, Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2011

P.S. I recall the cold war with Russia and we had these useful idiots among us. They were the members of the front organizations for Communist Russia. They were pushing any destructive idea which would undermine our country. (Like unilateral disarmament)

Today we have Newsweek magazine spouting off socialist Pravda propaganda. They are financed by the aristocracy of filthy rich progressives. One bought Newsweek with 15 million dollars in debt. Now he is offering readers a yearly subscription of $20. It would be wise also to check out the financial status of the New York Times. “AS FOR PRESIDENT OBAMA – DO YOU TRUST HIM?”

Archbishop Charles Chaput's Dire Predictions - Part I

Archbishop Charles Chaput’s Dire Predictions – Part I

In pursuit of the truth – www.cinopsbegone.com – Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2011

“Systematic Discrimination Against Church Now Seems Inevitable”* A society where faith is prevented from vigorous public expression is a society that has fashioned the state into an idol. And when the state becomes an idol, men and women become the sacrifice offering. We face an aggressive secular political vision and a consumerist economic model that result – in practice, if not in explicit intent – in a new kind of state-encouraged atheism.

To put in another way: The Enlightenment-derived worldview that gave rise to the great murder ideologies of the last century remains very much alive. Its language is softer, its intentions seem kinder, and its face is friendlier. But its underlying impulse hasn’t changed – i.e. the dream of building a society apart from God; a world of men and women might live wholly sufficient unto themselves, satisfying their needs and desires through their own ingenuity.

This vision presumes a frankly “post-Christian” world ruled by rationality, technology and good social engineering. Religion has a place in this worldview, but only as an individual lifestyle accessory. People are free to worship and believe whatever they want, so long as they keep their belief to themselves and do not presume to intrude their religious idiosyncrasies on the workings of government, the economy, or culture…

In the United States, a nation that is still 80% Christian with a high degree of religious practice, now government agencies now increasingly seek to dictate how Church ministries should operate, and to forced them into practices that would destroy their Catholic identity. Efforts have been made to discourage or criminalize the expression of certain Catholic beliefs as “hate speech.” Our courts and legislatures now routinely take actions that undermine marriage and family, and seek to scrub our public life of Christian symbolism and signs of influence…

The West is now steadily moving in the direction of that new “inhuman humanism.” And if the Church is to respond faithfully, WE NEED TO DRAW UPON THE LESSONS THAT THE CHURCHES LEARNED UNDER TOTALITARIANISM. A CATHOLICISM OF RESISTENCE MUST BE BASED ON TRUST IN CHRIST’S WORDS: “THE TRUTH WILL MAKE YOU FREE.”…

Living the truth also means telling the truth and calling things by their right names. And that means exposing the lies by which some men try to force others to live. Our societies are Christian by birth, and their survival depends on the endurance of Christian values. Our core principles and political institutions are based in large measure, on the morality of the Gospel and the Christian vision of man and government…

George H. Kubeck, * http://lifesitenews.comIdn/printerfriendly.html?articleid=10082503 this is the address to the 15th symposium for the Canon Law Association of Slovakia on Tuesday- Spisske, Podhradie, Slovakia, Aug. 25, 2010, (LifeSiteNews.com)

P.S. Truth is our most powerful weapon. Action follows.