#when the pope refuses to bless same sex marriage

[homomenhommes]

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more …

c.500 – Today the Christian church honours the feast day of St Galla (d.550), a Roman nun of the turn of the 6th century. What makes her of particular interest to gay people today, is her intimate friendship and devoted attention to her colleague, the nun Benedicta. This devotion was so intense, that according to legend, in answer to prayer, they were permitted to die together, so as to avoid being separated even for a moment of eternity.

In his Dialogues, Pope Saint Gregory the Great speaks of a holy woman of Rome named Galla, who had been married for less than a year when her husband died. Refusing to remarry, the young widow resolved to devote the rest of her life to God. To protect her beauty againt men's attention, it is said she disguised herself as a man and God gave her a beard.

Joining with a community of women living near St. Peter's Basilica, caring for the poor and sick, this wealthy and pious woman founded a convent and a hospital. She is reputed to have once healed a young deaf and mute girl by blessing some water, and having the girl drink from it.

As she lay stricken with breast cancer, Galla kept two candles burning each night at the foot of her bed, for Gregory explains, "She hated darkness, being a friend of light, physical as well as spiritual light."

It was between these two candles that one night the Apostle Saint Peter appeared in a vision to Galla. The dying woman asked him: "Have my sins been forgiven?"

Smiling, Peter nodded yes and answered, "They are forgiven. Come."

But Saint Galla now requested, "I beg you to let Sister Benedicta come with me."

Peter told her, "Sister Benedicta will follow you in thirty days." Three days later, Galla died, and a month later, Benedicta.

Their story (or myth) is an important reminder that for all the modern Church's opposition to homosexuality, the record shows that same-sex couples and queer saints, nuns, priests, bishops, and popes have always been present, throughout Church history.

1984 – Odin Biron is an American actor living in Moscow and Minneapolis. While not well-known in the United States, he is best-known in Russia for playing the character Dr Phil Richards in the popular medical sitcom, Interns.

Born in Duluth, Minnesota, Biron grew up nearby in rural Minnesota, moving to Ann Arbor, Michigan, with his mother after his parents' divorce. While studying at the University of Michigan, he studied at the Moscow Art Theatre on student exchange and was, unusually, invited to stay and join the incoming Russian class. In one of his final student roles, he won an award for his portrayal of Hamlet in a production that toured to New York's Baryshnikov Arts Center.

Landing a role in Interns, a top-rated Russian medical sitcom, in 2006 raised Biron's profile substantially and he has spoken about being recognised in nightclubs and avoiding "celebrity events" as a result. In a country where a large majority of the population view the United States "badly" or "very badly", Biron is one of a few Americans in the public eye, yet the success of Interns has led to Biron being considered a heartthrob and very popular.

Biron came out to his parents as a teenager and made no big secret of his homosexuality, but Russia is very socially conservative on LGBT rights, with hostility towards legal recognition of same-sex marriage and support for laws discriminating against LGBT people. His character on Interns was raised by two gay fathers, though the treatment of the issue of sexuality on the show has been described as reinforcing the Soviet idea that homosexuality is a product of Western moral decay, rather than being used to promote more liberal values.

It is very common for LGBT performers in Russia to avoid coming out, with an unspoken don't ask, don't tell arrangement between the entertainment industry and the mainstream press. After the passage of 2013's Russian LGBT propaganda law, Biron's Interns co-star and former Orthodox priest Ivan Okhlobystin made international news with genocidally homophobic remarks made in a December 2013 talk in Novosibirsk, leading Biron to consider leaving the show and Russian TV altogether. As a result, he came out in an interview with New York magazine in early 2015, to mixed reactions, reported in the Russian press accompanied by mentions of Okhlobystin's remarks. After an initial reaction leaving Biron with "a sense of physical danger, political danger", he initially left Russia. He returned later without any apparent negative effect on his career, though his friendship with Okhlobystin had become untenable after the former priest's reaction describing him as a "pervert" and a "sodomite".

Biron lived in Moscow with his boyfriend, a Kazakh film director. In an interview with Minnesota's Star Tribune in May 2015, however, he mentioned that he was back in the United States permanently and, as well as acting, was pursuing a Le Cordon Bleu culinary degree.

1840 – John Addington Symonds (d.1893) was an English poet and literary critic. Although he married and had a family, he was an early advocate of male love (homosexuality), which he believed could include pederastic as well as egalitarian relationships. He referred to it as l'amour de l'impossible (love of the impossible). A cultural historian, he was known for his work on the Renaissance, as well as numerous biographies about writers and artists. He also wrote much poetry inspired by his homosexual affairs.

John Symonds was born at Bristol, England in 1840. Considered delicate, the younger Symonds did not take part in games after age 14 at Harrow School, and he showed no particular promise as a scholar.

In January 1858 Symonds received a letter from his friend Alfred Pretor, telling of Pretor's affair with their headmaster, Charles John Vaughan. Symonds was shocked and disgusted, feelings complicated by his growing awareness of his own homosexuality. He did not mention the incident for more than a year until, in 1859 and a student at Oxford University, he told the story to John Conington, the Latin professor. Conington encouraged Symonds to tell his father about his friend's affair, and the senior Symonds forced Vaughan to resign from Harrow. Pretor was angered by the younger man's part and never spoke to Symonds again.

In the fall of 1858, Symonds went to Balliol College, Oxford. In spring of that same year, he fell in love with Willie Dyer, a Bristol choirboy three years younger. They engaged in a chaste love affair that lasted a year, until broken up by the senior Symonds. The friendship continued for several years afterward, until at least 1864. Dyer became organist and choirmaster of St Nicholas' Church, Bristol.

In 1862, an accusation of misconduct caused a nervous breakdown and a rest trip to Switzerland where he met his wife to be, whom he married in 1864.

In 1868, Symonds met and fell in love with Norman Moor, a youth about to go up to Oxford, who became his pupil. Their affair, erotic and sensual but kept short of coitus, lasted four years. According to Symonds' diary of 28 January 1870, "I stripped him naked and fed sight, touch and mouth on these things." The relationship occupied a good part of his time. (On one occasion he left his family and travelled to Italy and Switzerland with Moor.) It also inspired his most productive period of writing poetry, published in 1880 as New and Old: A Volume of Verse.

While the taboos of Victorian England prevented Symonds from speaking openly about homosexuality, his works published for a general audience contained strong implications and some of the first direct references to male-male sexual love in English literature. For example, in "The Meeting of David and Jonathan", from 1878, Jonathan takes David "In his arms of strength / [and] in that kiss / Soul into soul was knit and bliss to bliss".

The same year, his translations of Michelangelo's sonnets to the painter's beloved Tommaso Cavalieri restore the male pronouns which had been made female by previous editors. By the end of his life, Symonds' homosexuality had become an open secret in Victorian literary and cultural circles.

Simultaneously to these widely available works, Symonds was writing, privately publishing and distributing more candid writings about homosexuality. As well as a large number of poems written throughout the 1860s and 1870s, Symonds wrote one of the first essays in defense of homosexuality in the English language, A Problem in Greek Ethics, in 1883. A follow-up essay from 1891, A Problem in Modern Ethics, includes proposals for reforming anti-homosexual legislation.

1924 – On this date the Chilean writer Jose Donoso was born (d.1996). He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent some years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States (Iowa) and Spain. After 1973, he claimed his exile was a form of protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Donoso was the author of a number of remarkable stories and novels, which contributed greatly to the Latin American literary boom and the foundation of the literary movement known as Magical Realism. His best known works include the novels Coronación, El lugar sin límites (The Place Without Limits) and El obsceno pájaro de la noche (The Obscene Bird of Night). His works deal with a number of themes, including sexuality and psychology, and are often darkly humorous. He is also considered an innovative stylist.

After his death his personal papers at the Iowa Writers' Workshop revealed an active sex life and the fact of Donoso's homosexuality. It came as a shock to some in Latin America's intelligentsia that one of the great writers of the 20th century was in fact Gay.

1513 – Spanish conquistador Vasco Nunez de Balboa discovered what he claimed was a colony of cross-dressing males in present day Panama. It was reported that he massacred them.

1659 – Richard Berry is banished from Plymouth Colony, after his third arrest on various homosexual sex charges.

1969 – The Washington Blade publishes its first issue. At that time it was called The Gay Blade and contained hard hitting journalism and gay activism.

[adorabledonutunicorn]

When the Pope refuses to bless same-sex marriage

It feels like heartbreak It feels like betrayal That the religion and rules Which ensue us time and time again Play the game to cast us out Of the promised land

For only the God of Ages Knows the tale as old as time, Where our darkened hearts find A place to let the light in

Yet if we are the warriors who fight On the wrong side, For who then is left with salvation?

We know not purity of clear-cut clarity, We only know pain, anguish, and shame instead

But when those who hold authority Answer from “Authority,” We cry out never-ending Who was the veil torn for?

Sin may infinitely overflow in the cup From which we ourselves pour, However it seems that We Will never find the answer. It is as if there is only one question that ever remains: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!?"

[ef-1]

unpopular opinion i guess, lewis has some audacity going to muslim countries and preaching equal rights for lgbt+ communities but then not keeping the same energy for the country that he calls home and the religion that he belongs to. different religion, same policies. like keep that energy for all cultures and religions don’t just pick out one.

Hi, happy thursday.

I want to start by saying that I was and will continue to be vocal about the way people regard inequality beyond europe and the west.

Often when people attempt to criticize inequality in the middle-east (and asia at large) it veers into islamaphobic or just outright racist territory. I've seen that happen here on tumblr lol, from people asking why we're racing in the slums (in response to racing in singapore) to people saying f1 should scrap races in the middle east all together because "it's a european sport and they don't understand it"

I honestly think it's normal for POC to be defensive when so much criticism is just thinly veiled racism.

And I know that even the most well intentioned activism can harbour notes of white/western saviour-ness about it.

However that is NOT Lewis. Lewis HAS been consistent. I don't for a second think Lewis is doing all of this to virtue signal to the west or something.

Lewis, a catholic man who met the pope: called out the vatican's refusal to bless same sex marriage:

His advocacy for lgbtq+ rights was never limited to the the middle east either:

He has kept the same energy.

[techcrunchappcom]

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/fiasco-over-popes-cut-civil-union-quote-intensifies-impact-world-news/

Fiasco over pope's cut civil union quote intensifies impact | World News

ROME (AP) — The world premiere of a documentary on Pope Francis was supposed to have been a bright spot for a papacy locked down by a pandemic and besieged by a corruption scandal, recalling Francis’ glory days traveling the world to bless the oppressed.

But the red carpet rollout of “Francesco” has been anything but bright, with evidence that the Vatican censored the pope last year by deleting his endorsement of same-sex civil unions from an interview, only to have the footage resurface in the new film.

Aside from the firestorm the remarks created, the “Francesco” fiasco has highlighted the Vatican’s often self-inflicted communications wounds and Francis’ willingness to push his own agenda, even at the expense of fueling pushback from conservative Catholics.

That pushback was swift and came from predictable corners: Cardinal Raymond Burke, Francis’ frequent nemesis on matters of doctrine, said the pope’s comments were devoid of any “magisterial weight.” But in a statement, Burke expressed concern that such personal opinions coming from the pope “generate great bewilderment and cause confusion and error among Catholic faithful.”

The kerfuffle began Wednesday with the world premiere of “Francesco,” a feature-length film on Francis and the issues he cares most about: climate change, refugees and social inequality. Midway through, Francis delivers the bombshell quote that gays deserve to be part of the family and that he supported civil unions, or a “ley de convivencia civil” as he said in Spanish — to give them legal protections.

Christopher Lamb of Britain’s The Tablet magazine, noted Friday that in some countries, the rights of gays are a life and death matter, and that Francis was merely positioning the church to defend LGBT Catholics from perhaps deadly discrimination.

“The pope is willing to ‘break a few plates’ to ensure he communicates this Gospel-based message of compassion,” he tweeted.

But the contents of the pope’s words were almost lost in the controversy that ensued over their origin.

At first, film director Evgeny Afineevsky claimed Francis made them directly to him. Then one of Francis’ media advisers said they came from a 2019 interview with Mexican broadcaster Televisa, and were old news as a result.

Televisa confirmed the origin of the quotes, but said they never aired. A source in Mexico said the Vatican, which used its own cameras to shoot the interview and provided raw footage to Televisa afterward, had deleted the civil union quote in question. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

The Vatican has refused to comment and imposed something of a media blackout on the matter. None of the Vatican’s in-house media has reported on the cut quote, and on Friday the Il Fatto Quotidiano daily quoted an email from a staffer in the Vatican’s communications ministry to other staff saying there wouldn’t be any comment, but that “talks are underway to deal with the current media crisis.”

It wasn’t the first time that the Vatican’s communications office has gone into crisis over apparently manipulated images. In 2018, Francis fired the first head of the office, Monsignor Dario Vigano, after he mischaracterized a private letter from retired Pope Benedict XVI, then had a photo of it digitally manipulated and sent out to the media.

In both cases, journalists, who must play by Vatican rules in accepting handout footage of events covered exclusively by Vatican cameras, were misled into assuming the Holy See would abide by traditional journalistic ethics and provide them with unaltered images.

Coincidentally, it was Vigano who first entertained a pitch for a documentary on Francis by Afineevsky, who was nominated for an Oscar for his 2015 documentary “Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom,” which opened the Venice Film Festival that year.

In an Oct. 14 interview with The Associated Press, Afineevsky said he had asked the head of the Venice festival, Alberto Barbera, to help him make inroads with the Vatican, and that Barbera had provided an email of introduction to Vigano in late 2017.

Afineevsky said Vigano, a known movie buff, was already familiar with his work and was open to the idea.

“But he said, ‘Go. Start. Do it. I’m not promising you anything. We will see,’” Afineevsky said.

After Vigano was ousted, his replacement, Paolo Ruffini, kept the line of communications open, as well as the doors to the Vatican television archives.

Afineevsky had free range, and used them to tell the heart-lifting story of Francis’ seven-year papacy, largely through the eyes of the people he impacted. Coming out in the midst of a Vatican corruption scandal dominating Italian headlines for months, the film provided a nostalgic profile of a once globe-trotting papacy that in some ways ended with COVID-19.

About midway through the film, Afineevsky recounts the story of Andrea Rubera, a married gay Catholic who wrote Francis asking for his advice about bringing into the church his three young children with his husband.

It was an anguished question, given the Catholic Church teaches that gay people must be treated with dignity and respect but that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered.” The church also holds that marriage is an indissoluble union between man and woman, and that as a result, gay marriage is unacceptable.

In the end, Rubera recounts how Francis urged him to approach his parish transparently and bring the children up in the faith, which he did. After the anecdote ends, the film cuts to Francis’ civil union comments in the Televisa interview.

While it wasn’t clear in the documentary, Francis was merely recounting his position when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires: Then, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio endorsed extending legal civil union protections to gay couples as an alternative to moves to approve same-sex marriage, which he firmly opposed.

As Francis’ biographer Austen Ivereigh recounts in “The Great Reformer,” Bergoglio had ministered to many gay Catholics in Argentina. “He knew their stories of rejection by their families,” Ivereigh wrote, and told gay activists that “he favored gay rights as well as legal recognition for civil unions, which gay couples could also access.”

The hitch for the pope is a 2003 document from the Vatican’s doctrine office, which states the church’s respect for gay people “cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.”

That document was issued after Rome criticized Bergoglio for refusing to speak up strongly when Buenos Aires extended civil union protections to gay couples within the capital region in 2002, Ivereigh wrote.

As pope, Francis had never come out publicly in favor of legal protections for civil unions, and no pontiff before him had, either.

In fact the closest Francis had come before — a 2014 interview with Corriere della Sera in which he spoke in general terms about the need to evaluate such legislation — was followed by a clarification the next day by a Vatican media liaison.

The Rev. James Martin, one of the leading priestly advocates for LGBT Catholics, said the controversy over the pope’s comments would in the end be helpful.

“The intrigue over the video’s origin, and the explosive reaction to the pope’s ongoing support for LGBT people, make the pope’s words look more dangerous, and therefore more powerful,” he said.

[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

A Reluctant Reprise (Post 95) 7-1-15

I had planned a special essay that I was looking forward to writing.  The idea came to me almost as soon as I queued up last week’s message into the send firing line at Constant Contact.  I was very excited as I often worry through the weekend about whether I will discover an appropriate subject for my editorial rant in time to distill it into coherence by Tuesday evening.  Some weeks the writing goes better than other weeks. I was hoping things would flow along swimmingly and I would be able to have everything wrapped up by Sunday afternoon. My hopeful plan seemed to obliterate itself in spectacular fashion during my usual Friday afternoon promenade through my Facebook account.  It seemed that either a third of my Facebook friends had either developed a contagious hankering for Skittles or something was up in the Gay Community.

Evidently, the Supreme Court decision came in like a tsunami wave that peaked high enough that it reached the great bastion of news ignorance on which I have currently perched my psyche.  At first I planned to ignore the issue in my column because I have already covered the topic recently, but the young priest at the parish where the Stephen, Nick, Natalie and I attend mass, addressed the issue very well on Sunday at the Life Teen Mass which we frequent.  They also are covering the topic in some fireside talks that the teens attend on Thursday with a sizable group of seminarians that are currently in the pipeline from Saint Mary’s Parish in Hudson, Ohio who will one day pepper the pulpits throughout the Diocese of Cleveland.  The Life Teen group does a lot with Steubenville; this is definitely not the lukewarm flock that Pam and I used to visit on our trips back home from Fort Wayne a decade ago.

Anyway, not saying something about the Supreme Court Decision in a column that is intended to cover the gamut of Catholic Family Life this week would seem to be an act of willful incompetence.  I address it here without having done a great deal of research into the juris prudence either for or against. I am sure that a convincing secular argument has been built in both the affirming and dissenting opinions. Neither Constitutional arguments before or against make a hill of garbanzo beans to me.  My perspective exists only through the prism of a world in which God exists and of which He is the Creator.  I have come to know that the God truly Is, and so He is the standard by which I try to fashion my own opinions.

There is much that isn’t clear to me:  why people are same-sex attracted, what the spiritual consequences are for engaging in homosexual acts or any other mortal sin, and how any of us can overcome our sinfulness and make it into heaven to begin with.  I do know that there is a Way to salvation and that His name is Jesus; all of that has been told to us.  How any one of us, or how I, in particular, will get my golden ticket punched, hopefully, is very mysterious to me.  I want to make it to heaven, yet I do not want to change my identity.  

I am sure thoughtful Catholic men and women, who self-identify themselves as gay, contemplate a similar line of reasoning. Is the sinful part of our personality a necessary ingredient to our identify?  If I extinguish my rage against my brother, am I still Stephen? If I subordinate my lust for women and override that desire with my love of Jesus, is that immolation enough or must I burn away that impurity entirely in a living sacrifice like a wasting illness here on Earth to avoid purgation after death?  A mortal sin is a mortal sin after all.  I pity professed gay persons their attachment to the flesh, while I worry about my own impurity which I must deal with in my limited remaining time in the Pilgrim Church.

The resolution of this divisive issues seems much easier for true atheists.  Those who deny that there is a creator ought to gladly travel the crocket path through the secular wickets as Judge Kennedy has lain them out from societal acceptance of contraception through abortion to Same-Sex Marriage just as the last four or five Popes told us that the ball would be tapped progressively.  Polygamy is the next wicket and some truly disgusting ones will soon follow.  By then we will have grown used to the current innovation as we have each and every previous wicket.  Our morality is the proverbial frog in the pot being gently heated to the boil.

Logically, if we are all just the decedents of once green slimy smears that crawled out of the primordial ooze as a statistical happenstance, then the path of debasing our culture is really as good a road as any other. Trumping piety with niceness makes sense unless the rules of the game include God as the Creator.  In a world where One Being has created all of us and the whole shooting match, it doesn’t make much sense to vote, arrive at consensus or parse the penumbras of preceding juris prudence.  God does exist, and that is a supremely vexing quandary for those of us who would like to create Him in their own image.  He is real and He is no relation to Gumby.  Our opinion of Him matters only in that it controls our actions which determine whether we cooperate with our salvation. He is beyond our comprehension, but luckily we are not beyond His love.

Anyway, a good portion of Americans have decided to defy what can logically be known about God in the interest of being nice.  The majority of Supreme Court Justices have jumped on the rainbow bandwagon headed for a pride celebration.  Several are likely to be well-meaning atheists; others are misguided Catholics.  How does this change our lives?  In the short-term very little.  Soon there will probably soon be same-sex Catholic couples suing The Church for refusing to Sacrementalize their unions.  Photographers, wedding cake bakers and pizza joints will continue to be targeted.  One of my priest friends went rainbow on Facebook, so I assume that there will be clandestine Catholic gay marriages.  The polygamists, pedophiles and pan-sexuals (I’m not sure what that is, but I understand that Miley Cyrus is one) are certainly warming up in the litigation bullpen.  Cable News will surely be feasting on rare societal meat throughout this whole lolling off-cycle summer.

I don’t plan to talk much about this issue to anyone, because to have a sober conversation about anything requires the conversants to discuss the same subject.  Two drunk people can have an extended dicourse or debate about two entirely different topics and coherence or rationality need not really be part of the entire transaction.  They may even resolve their deranged discussion amicably. 

When I talk about marriage, I only have an interest in discussing the sacramental kind that Pam and I shared, a union that I believe was spiritually blessed by God.  By the estimation of any rational Christian the Supreme Court decision can have no impact whatsoever on the sacramental nature of a marriage, regardless of any perceived rights of the parties seeking to enter a covenantal relationship with each other.  God’s blessing cannot be legislated, dictated or fabricated.  

When marriage is of a non-sacramental variety, it is truly a superficial construct not worth discussing or debating.  If we closely observe, most of the ersatz unions that imitate sacramental marriage rupture, dissolve or whither around us.  Only the Living Water of Jesus is sufficient to germinate and cultivate the healthy and lasting relationships that are so sought after in our progressively loveless but nice culture.

[blogwonderwebsites]

Business The Pope probably should resign

Business The Pope probably should resign Business The Pope probably should resign http://www.nature-business.com/business-the-pope-probably-should-resign/

Business

Jill Filipovic is a journalist based in New York and Nairobi, Kenya, and the author of the book “The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness.” Follow her on Twitter. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author. View more opinion articles on CNN.

(CNN)As long-simmering tensions in the Catholic Church again boil to the surface over allegations of child sex crimes, a prominent — and controversial — archbishop is calling for the Pope’s resignation. Is the church confronting a coup, or is it finally facing a reckoning?

It’s both.

Of course, the church needs to be held accountable for the scandal — up to its highest leader. But there is little evidence that the new calls to oust Pope Francis are being made in good faith over genuine concern for children abused over decades — or the culture of male impunity that enabled it.

No, this current wave of outrage is led by the conservative clergy, via a recent 11-page later from Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò — the former top

Vatican

diplomat in the United States, who Francis chose to replace. Viganò alleges that a “homosexual current” led to the sexual abuse scandal and that Francis covered for a cardinal he knew was a “sexual predator.” The Pope’s response: “I will not say a single word on this.”

It is important to note here that Viganò and other doctrinally conservative Catholics don’t like the Pope’s more progressive doctrine: things like caring for the poor, speaking out for immigrants, and easing up on the animosity toward gays and divorced women. In fact, those same conservatives have defended and even promoted the very aspects of the Catholic Church that allowed sex abuse and

other appalling treatment

of children to thrive: lionizing male power, subordinating women, and stigmatizing homosexuality.

Now they’re

using new sex abuse allegations as ammunition

against a pope they believe is too permissive.

It’s a drama in which there is no one to root for.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro told NBC’s “Today” show Tuesday that the Vatican knew about the sex abuse allegations in churches across his state, though he did not say when the Vatican learned of the allegations. Whether Pope Francis was personally aware is less clear, but as the leader and figurehead of the church, the responsibility ultimately lies with him — as it did with his predecessor and the man before him, both of whom faced no consequences.

It is long past due that the head of this institution answers not just for the priests who spent decades abusing thousands of children, but for the institution itself spending millions to fight accusers and cover its own tracks.

But removing this Pope in exchange for someone who will please more traditional Catholics is hardly the answer. This abuse, and the system that covered it up and perpetuated it, did not exist in a vacuum. It is a direct outcome of the church’s patriarchal structure and its fundamental bigotry.

After all, despite this Pope’s designation as a “liberal,” he still oversees an institution that discriminates against women so blatantly and unapologetically that, were it not a religious organization, it would run afoul of American anti-discrimination laws.

No institution, and no person, deserves the designation “progressive” if they treat women like second-class citizens, refusing to allow us to occupy the same positions as men, and putting us in a kind of separate and unequal category of human being.

I was raised more twice-a-year-Christian than Catholic, but much of my extended family is (or was at one point) Catholic. Had I been raised in the church, as my mother was, this built-in misogyny would have been enough to push me to leave long ago. I cannot reconcile feminist and progressive values with an institution that treats women with this kind of contempt masquerading as devotion.

Indeed,

this impacted my own family

: When my grandmother, a survivor of domestic abuse, finally left her marriage and found herself a single mother of five young children in the 1950s, the church turned its back on her. My grandfather, on the other hand, remained enough in its good graces that, years later, he was able to get his marriage conveniently annulled so he could remarry with the church’s blessing.

The church’s misogyny has led to some of its worst abuses. Sex abuse of altar boys rightly made headlines, but girls were sexually assaulted and raped, too. And boys were abused in large part because of the fact that ingrained Church sexism gave priests easier access to boys than girls — until

relatively recently, girls couldn’t be altar servers

. The all-male church power structure meant that priests got more alone time with young boys, and the church’s own misogyny and homophobia compounded the shame and silence that so many abused boys carried into adulthood.

Catholic patriarchy didn’t just beget priests who sexually assaulted children. Around the world, the church branded unmarried women immoral, treating them like social contaminants and hiding them away in shame. Some of the children of unmarried women wound up in orphanages, and suffered greatly — beaten, starved, mutilated. Some of them died, allegedly at the hands of neglectful or abusive nuns.

And still today, the church opposes the rights of women to decide when and whether to have children — even contraception is forbidden. Women’s bodies aren’t theirs; they are vessels for male prerogatives. Is it any surprise that an institution in which this view of women is deeply ingrained is also an institution in which sexual assault — a crime in which one person believes they have total authority over another’s body — flourishes with little consequence?

No institution can totally immunize itself from abuse, but it can either foster or discourage the conditions for it. The church fostered them. And so, yes, the Pope should pay a price — probably with his job. But so should every other male authority figure in the church who has worked to uphold unfettered patriarchal power and to keep women in positions of subservience.

Which means, of course, that the entire church must radically reform — and if it doesn’t, decent Catholics must decide that keeping with their faith demands abandoning this noxious institution.

Read More | Jill Filipovic,

Business The Pope probably should resign, in 2018-09-03 00:44:08

[dalewood]

New Post has been published on Its just life!

New Post has been published on http://bit.ly/2lTj9ry

Muslim - "We Are Going to Burn You Alive!"

Muslim – “We Are Going to Burn You Alive!” Muslim Persecution of Christians, June 2017

by Raymond Ibrahim November 5, 2017 at 5:00 am

Muslim, Islam and Christianity – A thought provoking article by Raymond Ibrahim, the most gentle of religeons and at the same time the most vicious, the UK and most of the western world give total freedom of religeon but that is not reciprocated whereas Islam only accepts one religeon. Are we seeing our very way of life and belief systems being over run or are we over reacting, join in the debate at the end of this article, all views on either side of the debate are essential to get a balance!

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11299/muslim-persecution-christians-june

“They defend freedom of worship in the West in order to ban it in their homeland. They fight to build mosques in someone else’s homeland whilst destroying churches and synagogues where they have power.” — Kamel Abderrahmani, Arab journalist, Algeria.

“ISIS publicly caged and burned alive 19 Yazidi girls for refusing to have sex with ISIS fighters, according to local activists. Yazidi leaders last year showed Fox News photographs of the Islamic jihadists burning babies to death on a slab of sheet metal, photos that show tiny, roasted bodies side by side as flames engulfed them.” — ISIS in Iraq, Fox News, June 14.

The Erdogan government seized at least 50 Syriac churches, monasteries, and Christian cemeteries, many of which were still active, in Mardin province, and declared them “state property.” — Turkey.

A presidential order replaced Christian education with Islamic Studies in secondary schools. While the subject, “Christian Religious Knowledge,” no longer exists, Islamic, Arab, and French studies have been introduced in the new curriculum…. The Christian Association of Nigeria further denounced this move “to force Islamic studies down the throats of non-adherents of the religion,” as being an “agenda deliberately crafted towards Islamization.” — Nigeria.

Jesuit Father Henri Boulad, an Islamic scholar of the Egyptian Greek Melkite rite, pulled no punches in an interview concerning the motives of Islamic terror and Western responses to it. “Islam is an open-ended declaration of war against non-Muslims” and those who carry out acts of violence and intolerance are only doing what their creed requires, said the priest. The interview continues:

Those who fail to recognize the real threat posed by Islam are naïve and ignorant of history, he said, and unfortunately many in the Church fall into this category.

Citing a letter he wrote last August to Pope Francis, Father Boulad said that “on the pretext of openness, tolerance and Christian charity — the Catholic Church has fallen into the trap of the liberal left ideology which is destroying the West.”

“Anything that does not espouse this ideology is immediately stigmatized in the name of ‘political correctness,'” he said.

The priest went so far as to chastise Pope Francis himself—a fellow Jesuit—suggesting that he has fallen into this trap as well.

“Many think that a certain number of your positions are aligned with this ideology and that, from complacency, you go from concessions to concessions and compromises in compromises at the expense of the truth,” the priest wrote to Francis.

Christians in the West and in the East, he wrote the Pope, “are expecting something from you other than vague and harmless declarations that may obscure reality.”

“It is high time to emerge from a shameful and embarrassed silence in the face of this Islamism that attacks the West and the rest of the world. A systematically conciliatory attitude is interpreted by the majority of Muslims as a sign of fear and weakness,” he said.

“If Jesus said to us: Blessed are the peacemakers, he did not say to us: Blessed are the pacifists. Peace is peace at any cost, at any price. Such an attitude is a pure and simple betrayal of truth,” he said.

The priest also stated his belief that the West is in an ethical and moral debacle, and its defense of Islam is a denial of truth.

“By defending at all costs Islam and seeking to exonerate it from the horrors committed every day in its name, one ends up betraying the truth,” he wrote.

June’s roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes, but is not limited to, the following:

Muslim Attacks on and Desecration of Christian Churches

Philippines: On June 21 in the village of Malagakit, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) — which earlier pledged allegiance to the Islamic State — vandalized a Catholic church. Describing the desecration as “wicked,” the chief police inspector said the “crucifix and images of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ were destroyed while the sacred hosts were thrown all over the floor.” Cardinal Quevedo, who condemned the sacrilege in the strongest terms possible, challenged the leaders of the BIFF to punish its men who desecrated the chapel: “If the BIFF wants to have an image as a respecter of all religions, it must punish its members who perpetrated the odious desecration and educate all its members in strictly respecting other religions,” the prelate said. “Last month, terrorist gunmen also desecrated St. Mary’s Cathedral in Marawi, some 150 kilometers from Cotabato,” the report noted. “The gunmen were seen on a video [here] destroying religious images and burning the cathedral.”

Egypt: An Islamic terror cell consisting of six members, two of whom were described as “suicide bombers,” planning on bombing yet another Coptic Christian church in Alexandria, was exposed and arrested by police before they could launch their attack. According to a statement from the Egyptian Interior Ministry, “one attacker had planned to detonate an explosive vest inside the church and the other to blow himself up when police arrived to the scene.” Several similar, recent attacks on Christian churches in Egypt had left about 100 churchgoers dead and hundreds severely wounded.

Separately, authorities raided a church-owned building being used by the local Coptic Christian community for worship. After police removed furniture, Christian iconography and other items from the building, they chained down the doors to prevent Christians from entering the building. Christians had for some time tried to have the building legally recognized as a church, only to face a backlash from both local Muslims and authorities. According to a local Christian:

“During the early hours of Friday, June 16, we [Christians] were surprised to find the furniture, rugs, icons, pictures, and worship utensils … had been thrown outside and the building closed down with seals and chains. We took the belongings into our homes. We don’t know why the police did that.”

When dozens of church leaders met with the local governor insisting that they needed a place to worship, he told them the building they were using had been found to be in a state of disrepair and needed to be demolished.

Algeria: On June 9, the state oversaw the demolition of the Catholic church located in Sidi Moussa, 15 miles from Algiers. According to Kamel Abderrahmani, an Arab journalist who covered the incident:

“Algerian authorities found a very shallow argument to justify this anti-Christian act. According to the authorities concerned, the church was listed in the red category by the technical inspection services. The legitimate question that arises from this is, since the building was deemed in danger of collapse, why was it not restored and listed as part of the national heritage? The statement of the mayor was of unprecedented clarity. He had announced the construction of a mosque and a Quranic school on the same site. Such statements caused outrage, as many saw the demolition as an act of vandalism.”

Kamel also noted how the Algerian government had demolished other churches on other pretexts, and concluded by calling Muslim governments and activists “hypocrites”:

“If the mayor of Paris or Rome had destroyed a mosque to build a church, what would have happened? Sunni Muslims would have shouted scandal and Islamophobia! This question shows the hypocrisy of Islamists and their double standards. They defend freedom of worship in the West in order to ban it in their homeland. They fight to build mosques in someone else’s homeland whilst destroying churches and synagogues where they have power.”

Iraq: In June 2015, when Mosul was under the Islamic State’s control, the group had announced it was converting St. Ephrem Church into a “mosque of the mujahedeen.” The cross from the dome was broken off, and all Christian symbols were purged from within the house of worship. Now, months after Mosul was liberated, the occupied church was exposed as being used as a sex-slave chamber where approximately 200 Yazidi girls and women were abused by the Islamic State. A report recounts “ISIS’ depravity towards Yazidi women and girls. On the floor of the iconic house of worship lie tiny pieces of pink and yellow underwear and flower headbands belonging to the very young Yazidi sex slaves the barbaric terrorist group took captive.” The June 14 report also notes:

“Last week, according to local activists, ISIS publicly caged and burned alive 19 Yazidi girls for refusing to have sex with ISIS fighters, according to local activists. Yazidi leaders last year showed Fox News photographs of the Islamic jihadists burning babies to death on a slab of sheet metal, photos that show tiny, roasted bodies side by side as flames engulfed them….The butchered Christian building and its Yazidi remnants serve as chilling reminders of the genocide experienced by the two religious minorities.”

Spain: A Muslim man stormed a Christian church during a marriage ceremony, and started shouting “Allahu Akbar” — “Allah is greatest.” He “tried to throw liturgical objects around him to attack the priest and churchgoers,” according to a report. A number of wedding attendants managed to apprehend the 22-year-old Moroccan and hand him over to police, who reportedly charged him with “disturbing public order, crime against religious feelings and threats.” Police also investigated the church for potential explosives before permitting the wedding ceremony to resume. According to the officiating priest, the incident began when a “group of young troublemakers” started making offensive noises at the back of the church.

“Suddenly, someone started to shout and charged at the altar. A lot of people, including the bride’s mother, were crying, and there were people who had already jumped out of the pews because we did not know whether this person came alone or not, or if he was armed.”

Turkey: The Erdogan government seized at least 50 Syriac churches, monasteries, and Christian cemeteries, many of which were still active, in Mardin province, and declared them “state property.” According to the report, “The Syriacs have appealed to the Court for the cancellation of the decision.” The Chairman of Mor Gabriel Monastery Foundation — a 1,600 year-old monastery that was still in use and also seized — said, “We started to file lawsuits and in the meantime our enquiries continued.”

The Syriac Orthodox Mor Gabriel Monastery is one of at least 50 Syriac churches, monasteries, and Christian cemeteries in Mardin province, Turkey that were recently seized by the Turkish government and declared “state property.” (Image source: Nevit Dilmen/Wikimedia Commons)

The Muslim Slaughter of Christians

Pakistan: A Chinese Christian couple—Lee Zing Yang, 24, and his wife Meng Lisi, 26 — were abducted in Quetta and executed on the accusation that they were preaching Christ to Muslims; the Islamic State claimed responsibility for their killing and released “video footage showing the bloodied body of the Chinese man, Lee Zing Yang, taking his last breaths,” says a report. The Pakistani government cited the murdered couple’s “misuse of the terms of a business visa” as playing a major role in their deaths: “instead of engaging in any business activity they went to Quetta and under the garb of learning Urdu language … were actually engaged in preaching.”

Kenya: Armed Muslims connected to neighboring Somalia’s Islamic terrorist group, Al Shabaab, walked into an elementary school compound in Garissa and shot a Christian teacher to death. When a Muslim teacher interfered with their attempts to abduct another Christian teacher, “Al Shabaab got angry,” reported another anonymous teacher, “and told the teacher, ‘We are going to teach you a lesson for protecting the infidels,’ and immediately the two were carried away to unknown destination”—but not before the Somali militants proceeded to “beat Muslims of Somali descent at the school for housing Kenyan Christians.”

Philippines: More news and revelations concerning the jihadi uprising that began in late May in the Islamic City of Marawi appeared in June. The eight or nine Christians originally reported as being tied together and shot dead, execution style, had apparently first been ordered to recite the Islamic confession of faith, which they refused to do, an act leading to their execution. “Their bodies were reportedly thrown into the ditch, and a signboard was placed beside them reading ‘Munafik,’ which means traitor or liar,” said a report. “The assailants also asked Police Senior Inspector Freddie Solar to recite the Muslim creed, and as a non-Muslim [Christian] he too declined and was killed.” Seventeen others were found ritually decapitated or butchered by the Islamic State-affiliated militants. A priest and 13 parishioners from the St. Mary Cathedral were also kidnapped; the priest “appeared in a propaganda video on Tuesday (May 30) pleading for his life.”

Egypt: More eyewitness details concerning the Islamic State massacre of 29 Christian pilgrims traveling to a Coptic monastery in the Egyptian desert in May 2017 emerged. One ten-year old boy, who witnessed the slaughter of his father, recounted:

“We [he and his 14-year-old brother] saw dead people, just dumped on the ground. They asked my father for identification then told him to recite the Muslim profession of faith. He refused, said he was Christian. They shot him and everyone else with us in the car…. Every time they shot someone they would yell God is great [Allahu Akbar].”

Although President Sisi had depicted the terrorists as “foreigners,” the ten-year-old said that the fifteen assailants “had Egyptian accents like us and they were all masked except for two of them … They looked like us and did not have beards.” The same report states that, a month after the massacre, the Egyptian government had failed to provide adequate security for the residents of Dayr Jarnous, a Christian village that was home to seven of those killed, “and has done nothing to help the victims’ families.”

Muslim Attacks on Christian Religious Freedom

Pakistan: A new blasphemy case was registered against yet another Christian. After Mohammad Irfan refused to pay a repair bill to Ishfaq Masih, a Christian who fixed his bicycle, the Muslim denounced the Christian of blaspheming against Islamic prophet Muhammad, leading to the Christian’s arrest. According to Masih’s cousin:

“During the argument, Irfan said that he obeys only one master, Prophet Muhammad, to which Ishfaq said that he was a Christian and his faith ends at Christ. Upon hearing this, Irfan raised a clamor that Ishfaq had blasphemed against Muhammad. Soon a mob gathered at the spot, and someone called the police, who took Ishfaq into custody.”

Mohammad Irfan also rallied a number of other Muslims — including Mohammad Irfan, Mohammad Nawaz, Mohammad Naveed, and Mohammad Tahir — who claimed that they “heard Ishfaq Masih say derogatory words against the Muslim prophet.” According to the Christian’s lawyer, only one of the four “witnesses” was even present during the altercation.

“Irfan had gathered the other men, including the complainant Mohammad Ishfaq, and they then concocted the allegation against Ishfaq Masih and got him arrested…. The FIR [First Information Report] is quite weak, as it does not contain any specific blasphemous words that my client may have allegedly said…. It also shows that the police did not even bother to investigate the charge before registering a case against the poor man. This is the routine practice of the police in blasphemy cases, and it’s a shame that nothing is being done to stop it.”

Separately, after a Christian couple was slaughtered for preaching Christ among Muslims (see Slaughter section), a South Korean Christian was arrested for allegedly also engaging in “illegal preaching activities.” Authorities revoked his visa and ordered him to leave the Muslim nation.

Philippines: A Muslim teacher in the Muslim majority island of Mindanao forced Jen-Jen, a young Christian schoolgirl apparently of Islamic origins, to say Islamic prayers in class or else fail the class. According to the report:

“Despite being uncomfortable, Jen-Jen learned the words of the prayer to recite to the teacher. But rather than asking Jen-Jen to say the words in an oral test, the teacher later announced students would be required to go to a mosque and pray the prayer aloud.”

When the girl and another Christian classmate told the teacher that praying in a mosque contradicts their faith in Christ, the Muslim teacher “ignored the request and told them to turn away from Christ,” adding: “You must comply or else you will fail in this subject. You should revert to your Islamic faith.” The girl was then “forced to complete the long walk to the mosque while wearing a traditional Muslim dress and veil covering, despite burning up with a fever.”

“The schoolgirl got so sick, however, that she lost consciousness and blacked out. Even as she came back to, the teacher refused to excuse her from listening to the entirety of the Muslim imam’s message. Since the day at the Mosque, Jen-Jen has been pressured to conform to many other Muslim practices, such as fasting during the month of Ramadan…. [O]ther students have also teased and bullied Jen-Jen because of her faith, sometimes bombarding her as she walked to and from school and pushing her or insulting her.”

Malaysia: The Centre for Human Rights Research and Advocacy — the statement of purpose of which is to define and promote “Human rights from the Muslim perspective” — asserted that all forms of Christian evangelicalism should be banned. According to the CEO of the Centre, Azril Mohd Amin, “It is a fact that the groups that are spreading Christian propaganda to Malaysians, especially Muslims, will keep up their efforts as they believe that there is no effective law that can stop them.” Jo-Anna Henley Rampas, a leading member of a more progressive and inclusive party, responded by saying this move is “reflective of the erosion of religious freedom in the country” thanks to the “federal government’s failure to instil proper understanding, tolerance and harmony among citizens.”

Muslim Contempt for and Abuse of Christians

Pakistan: A Christian sanitary worker died after pious Muslim doctors who were fasting for Ramadan refused to touch the “unclean” infidel’s body. Thirty-year-old Irfan Masih had fallen unconscious along with three other sanitary staff while cleaning a manhole on June 1. He was rushed to a governmental hospital where the doctors refused to treat him; he died hours later. “The doctors refused to treat him because they were fasting and said my son was napaak [unclean],” said the mother of the deceased. A few weeks later, a court, responding to complaints from hospital officials accusing the family and friends of Irfan of terrorizing the hospital, ordered police to register a complaint against them. “The hospital has levied a false charge against us in order to save themselves,” explained a cousin of the deceased, who also works in sanitation.

“The doctors were responsible for Irfan’s death, because he would have been alive today had they not refused to treat him immediately. Our outburst against the doctors was natural, but we did not damage or steal anything from the hospital. It is a lie, and even the police know it.”

A senior police official admitted that “we believe that the hospital is making frivolous accusation against these people….. The hospital is ostensibly trying to pressure the family to withdraw their case.”

Egypt: Suzan Ashraf Rawy, a 22-year-old Christian woman, was reportedly kidnapped on the morning of June 5 while walking to the Coptic Orthodox church where she worked. “When she did not return home that evening, her mother called the church,” an area Christian leader said. “That is when she discovered Suzan did not arrive at the church in the morning. It is expected that she has been abducted.” She is the third Christian woman in the area of Al Khosous, a predominantly Christian town on the outskirts of Cairo, to disappear since May 30, when a Copt accidentally shot and killed a Muslim bystander during a quarrel with someone else. “Since then, the Muslims started to wage revenge attacks on the Christian community living there, especially the women,” the Christian leader said. According to the report:

“Two other young Coptic Christian women disappeared without a trace after the May 30 incident. The families of the women suspected to have been kidnapped have received no communication from alleged kidnappers, the sources said. Area Muslims have long disfigured Christian women for not wearing veils by throwing acid on them, but there has been a surge in such attacks in the past few weeks, sources said…. Fear has seized Coptic Christians in the area, with women afraid to leave their homes. One of the church women’s meetings, which Rawy attended, has been suspended until further notice out of fear for the safety of the participants.”

Bangladesh: Three Muslim men sexually assaulted a 20-year-old Catholic girl in the village of Madarpur on June 18. Her loud cries drew the attention of village locals who came to her rescue, prompting the rapists to flee. After her parents filed a complaint, they began to receive threatening messages to withdraw it or else. “Last year her family was involved in a land dispute,” adds the report. “The violence – a premeditated attack – was also witnessed by the police, deployed by the Muslims who wanted to expropriate the land. The young woman, along with her parents, was forced to leave the house and live in a slum.”

Pakistan: The home of a journalist who extensively covers the plight of religious minorities in the Muslim nation was vandalized. When Rana Tanveer, chief reporter of The Express Tribune, went to the police, they failed to register a formal complaint. Days later, an unidentified vehicle intentionally ran over Tanveer, while he was riding his motorcycle in Lahore on Friday, June 9. According to the report:

“Tanveer underwent surgery for a fracture in his pelvic bone on Saturday. His recovery may take months and he has expressed fears for his safety as well as that of his family…. Tanveer says that his work on exposing the poor treatment meted out to the country’s religious minorities like the Ahmadis and the Christians has made him a target of extremists.”

Sudan: A court in El Gedaref fined a number of Christians for selling food and tea during Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting: “This is a clear discrimination against Christians and contrary to the slogans of religious coexistence launched by the Sudan Government for the international community,” contended one defense layer. About a dozen people were each fined $2,000 Sudanese dollars ($298 USD).

Iraq: “[T]roubling issues related to discrimination and even violence targeting ethnic and religious minorities” are widespread in Kurdish-ruled territories, one report found, adding:

“Christian citizens of the KRI [Kurdish Region of Iraq] have issued complaints and held protests against Kurdish residents for attacking and seizing their land and villages in the provinces of Dohuk and Erbil…. Some Assyrian Christians accuse Kurdish government and party officials of taking lands for personal use or financial gain. These Christians believe they are specifically targeted as part of a policy to Kurdify historically Christian areas…. Minorities continue to fear growing extremism in the majority population, which they believe could threaten them in the long term.”

Most Kurds are Sunni Muslims.

Nigeria: A presidential order replaced Christian education with Islamic Studies in secondary schools. While the subject, “Christian Religious Knowledge” no longer exists, Islamic, Arab, and French studies have been introduced in the new curriculum. The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), which protested the new changes in front of the presidential palace, currently filled by a Muslim, described the change as “a time-bomb, obnoxious, divisive and ungodly…. To us in CAN, its introduction is an ill-wind that blows nobody any good for so many reasons.” According to the report, “The end result [of these changes] is that a Christian student will be left with no option than to settle for Islamic Arabic Studies since French teachers are more or less non-existent in secondary schools,” all of which “will deprive pupils of moral trainings which CRK [Christian Religious Knowledge] offers.” The Christian Association of Nigeria further denounced this move “to force Islamic studies down the throats of non-adherents of the religion,” as being an “agenda deliberately crafted towards Islamization.”

Separately, a Christian priest and his companions who were abducted by Islamic militants in April told of their experiences in June, when they were released. Fr. Sam Okwuidegbe identified his “kidnappers as Fulani herdsmen, an Islamic radical group that has killed thousands of people in Nigeria, including many Christians, in the past couple of decades” notes the report. That he was unable to recall any phone numbers for the Islamic terrorists to call to negotiate a ransom for his release “triggered a series of beatings,” says Fr. Sam.

“they huddled me up, hands and feet tied to the back with a rope like a goat before a kill. They removed my cassock, then my shirt, threw me into the dirt on the ground, and began to beat me with the back of their guns, they’d kick me hard on my sides, slap across my face, push and pull me hard across the ground … one of them said ‘We are going to burn you alive!'”

Another man in captivity did manage to recall a phone number, a ransom was set, and the men were eventually released.

Due to the ongoing bleeding of Nigeria’s Christian population — increasingly at the hands of Muslim Fulani herdsmen and not just the Islamic terror group, Boko Haram — a number of leading Nigerian churches issued a statement calling on the government “not to abdicate its responsibility of protecting all Nigerian citizens.” According to the communique:

“We are worried that the murderous activities of Fulani herdsmen have continued unabated and unchecked. The recurring and orchestrated killings of Christians in Southern Kaduna, mass killings in parts of Benue State and others across the country have increased suspicion that the so-called herdsmen are an extension of terrorist groups carrying out an evil agenda of ethnic and religious cleansing. Characteristically, these mindless attacks are often unprovoked.”

Earlier in January, Bishop Diamond Emuobor, chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, said that, because Christians are facing increasing dangers at the hands of extremists, so “Christians should defend themselves and he who has no sword, should sell his coat and buy one to defend himself. We are all human beings, nobody should catch you like a snail and slaughter because you believe in Jesus Christ.”

About this Series

While not all, or even most, Muslims are involved, persecution of Christians by Muslims is growing. The report posits that such Muslim persecution is not random but rather systematic, and takes place irrespective of language, ethnicity, or location.

Raymond Ibrahim is the author ofCrucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians(published by Regnery with Gatestone Institute, April 2013).

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Interesting reading

Slavery in Islam

Mehdi Hasan: How Islamic is Islamic State?

Muslims and Islam: Key findings in the U.S. and around the world

Islam, Understanding the Religion and its Role in the World

[johnchiarello]

Sunday

SUNDAY 6-11-17

Crisis in Corpus Christi Texas- Police Chief Mike Markle- we have questions

Ezekiel 43:2

And, behold, the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east: and his voice was like a noise of many waters: and the earth shined with his glory.

 Isaiah 26:9

With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early: for when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.

 Sandra Watts- 117th District Court https://youtu.be/bD5eVAXYvxU

http://wp.me/a4V5qQ-BK

.Tom Greenwell

.Bishop

.Racial bias in the courts

.DNA

.Biblical evidence primarily based on testimony

.no biblical basis for the berating of the accused from the bench

.Michael Morton- his son learned to hate him- why?

8 I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I.9 But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.

 Obey the Word of God Chief Mike Markle https://youtu.be/xDlI4Vg_BlM

http://wp.me/a4V5qQ-BL

.Addiction

.Priesthood

.Corpus Christi Police chief accused of rape [4 chiefs ago]

.Meth

.Disorder in the mind

. ‘He quotes Shakespeare!

.King David and his men

.3 days ‘clean’ - from what?

Habakkuk 2:2 [Full Chapter]

And the Lord answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.

 Open letter to Police Chief Mike Markle https://youtu.be/wzPBIcnGOfE

http://wp.me/a4V5qQ-BM

.CCPD

.Chief Markle

.I have a question for you chief

Luke 17:21

Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

 More questions for Police Chief Mike Markle https://youtu.be/enAVWjYZ-3c

http://wp.me/a4V5qQ-BN

.Gun

.forced to do what- at the barrel of a gun

.Corruption within the Corpus Christi Police department

. San Diego- Texas

Revelation 3:21

To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.

 Request for Chief Mike Markle- Code Enforcement https://youtu.be/q9Dd9uPrxTU

http://wp.me/a4V5qQ-BO

.My trip to code Enforcement

.The mattress

.Tommy Nichols

.Why did you lie to my kids?

.CCPD

.Internal affairs

Revelation 11:5 And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed.

 Making a public record for the Corpus Christi Police Department- https://youtu.be/I_rFapYcWC0

http://wp.me/a4V5qQ-BP

.Planted a Xanax on Jesse

.918 West Lakeside- Corpus Christi TX.

.CCPD

Hebrews 13:4

Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.

 The Pope knows- https://youtu.be/h9Y_Jhf4tu8

http://wp.me/a4V5qQ-BQ

.Holy See- Vatican city

.Even the Pope has questions now!

.Mike Markle

. ‘Sorry about that’ Huh?

.Mark Skurka

.Mark Gonzalez

.Bishop Mulvey

22 But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,

 Nice block off Laguna- https://youtu.be/5HpTfx5mhJ4

http://wp.me/a4V5qQ-BR

.Beautiful day in the neighborhood

.Don’s Pier

.Stewart street

. ‘Mexican restaurant and massage parlor- the bigger the better’ [true story]

Matthew 21:42

Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?

 Gun- https://youtu.be/Y9FogF1Outg

http://wp.me/a4V5qQ-BS

.Shooting Range [Loud- can’t hear much talk]

Zechariah 12:3

And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.

Psalm 102:20

To hear the groaning of the prisoner; to loose those that are appointed to death;

  NEW [Past posts- verses below]

 I covered many things that I tried to document before- but the many complaints from the homeless have gone unnoticed.

1- Many of the homeless have complained for years about abuse by the Corpus Christi Police department.

And some of the abuse was sexual in nature.

We ask for chief Markle to investigate whether or not the homeless were made to perform oral sex on any Police officers in your department.

The accusations were made about officer Tommy Nichols- now- I do not mean to denigrate him- but because you seem to allow abuse to go on- and these stories have been around for years.

Investigate it- either his name will be cleared once and for all- or not.

All you have to do is a real investigation- many of the homeless [and others] have complained for years- lets get to the bottom of it.

2- I taught a bible study at 918 West Lake side for many years- helping Angel Hanley who manages the apartments for officer Tommy Nichols.

Her ex husband Jesse [There are 2 Jesse’s- she knows which one I am referring to- make sure Tommy does not intimidate her] has told me that officer Tommy Nichols admitted- in front of witnesses- that he planted a Xanax pill on Jesse- and Jesse did 2 years in prison.

I related this account many times-

The way Tommy Nichols admitted to doing it was Jesse said ‘do you remember me’ Tommy said ‘no’.

Jesse said ýou planted a Xanax on me and I did 2 years’-  Tommy replied ‘sorry about that’.

Now- this is one of hundreds of complaints I heard while working with the street guys in my ministry over 20 years.

Is this true or not?

There are lots of other cases- all we ask is for you to investigate it.

‘Why use actual names’?

An investigation never gets done- unless names are used.

So many of these stories have been around for many years.

But I can verify that Tommy Nichols did try to run me off the Oso bridge after I emailed chief Simpson years ago- simply saying ‘I think I might have a problem with one of your cops’.

Tommy did follow me all over town- waiting for me when I came out of stores- AA meetings- etc.

I realized he does engage in harassment and official oppression.

That made me see that the guys were telling the truth.

Many of the cases you hear me repeat [Crow- Jesse] are because these are the few that have other witnesses who can verify them.

The CCPD themselves told Crow ‘we promise Tommy will never lay a hand on you again’ they knew full well about the targeted assault on Crow.

The ‘Jesse case’ was one where Tommy admitted to planting a Xanax- by saying ‘sorry about that’.

But there must literately be thousands of these cases.

Mark Gonzales has the ability to pull up records- to see how many cases were settled- things like that.

So that's why I try and highlight the few cases I know about- that are not just hearsay.

Ok- that's it for now.

 LAST NOTE- I try to wrap things up before doing the final post [It’s 6:30pm].

Few things-

‘John- we have heard this before- why go thru it again’.

Mark Gonzales is the new D.A. of Nueces county- if per chance he hears some of this- then maybe something will get done.

In some of the legal cases I talked about- the people- once sent off to prison- have no voice.

Some who are still on the streets- also have no voice.

Many people in society are intimidated to speak out- and when official oppression comes against them- from the men in Blue- it’s scary.

We should never be afraid to shine the light- ever.

On the last video- the audio is not good.

Maybe fate- did I finally cross the line- you know- that line CCPD has been looking for.

Yes- in society there are laws.

You never make a threat to a cop- Roger from the streets did indeed threaten Tommy Nichols once- just words mind you-

Roger did 4 years in prison- Tommy refused to drop the charges.

Yes- Tommy Nichols- you know- the cop who has assaulted many- made actual verbal threats- and carried them out.

Yes- CCPD has a very high standard- but it only applies to the victims of their abuse.

So maybe- just maybe- fate allowed no one to hear the last video.

‘John- don’t be stupid- they can enhance it’

Hmm?

Well- you know I never like to waste a video- at least some one will hear it-

Get to work boys!

Ok- that's it for today

God bless all.

  I also taught some from the book of Samuel- and other subjects- below are my past teachings that relate-

PAST POSTS- [Here are some of my past teachings- posts- that relate to today’s post- ‘Sunday- Crisis in C.C. TX’].

https://ccoutreach87.com/1st-2nd-samuel/

https://ccoutreach87.com/1st-2nd-corinthians/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/06/08/wednesday-6-7-17/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/06/09/thursday-6-8-17/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/06/09/friday-6-9-17/

https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/06/10/saturday-6-10-17/

https://ccoutreach87.com/christian-recovery-from-addiction-long-version/

https://ccoutreach87.com/hebrews-updated-2015/

 (905)SAMUEL 21- David is fleeing from Saul and he goes to the priest at Nob. The priest wonders what’s up. David tells him he is on a special assignment from the king and he and his men need food. The priest tells him the only food available is the consecrated bread that is only for God and the priesthood. David convinces the priest to let them eat and David asks ‘do you have any weapons here’. The priest says ‘I have the sword you used to kill the giant’ David says ‘great, that will work just fine’. Jesus used this story to describe himself and the disciples [Mark 2]. One day Jesus and the disciples were going thru the grain fields and the disciples picked the grain and ate it on the Sabbath. The Pharisees said ‘your disciples are breaking Gods law by picking it on the Sabbath’. Now, to be honest they were breaking the over extended ideas that the religious Pharisees came up with thru their legalism. But Jesus still used this example as a defense. He says ‘have you not read what David and his men did? They ate the ceremonial showbread that was not lawful, only the priests could eat it’. David and his men are a symbol of Jesus and his men. While it is true that the bread was only lawful for the priests, David is a king/priest who gets away with doing ‘priestly things’ because of his picture of Christ. Scripture says he put on an ephod [priestly garment] which only priests could do. David functioned before the open Ark in Jerusalem. He did things that other kings were punished for [Saul, Uzziah]. Jesus in essence was saying to the Pharisees ‘I am the new priest/king from which all future law and worship will be measured by. Me and my followers are not under the law, the law serves us’! In Christ we are free from the guilt of the law, we live above legalism and follow the master. David and his men were acting like priests and kings contrary to the economy of their day. David was a type of Jesus whose future priestly ministry would ‘out trump’ the law.

 [more on Abiathar]

(914)SAMUEL 30- David returns from the battle lines and finds out his town was sacked by the Amalekites. They took everything and spared the lives of the women and children. David’s men see the disaster and cry bitterly. They have a deacon board meeting and contemplate stoning him to death. Things were bad, David encourages himself in the Lord. He asks the Lord ‘should I go after them and try and recover our families’? The Lord says ‘go, you will recover all’. David pursues and gets his people back and kills the enemy. Four hundred young men escape. The same amount of men that went with David, 200 stayed behind out of weakness. Why did the 400 Amalekites flee? It’s possible that the Lord used these 400 survivors to spread the word about David’s fierceness. This battle was pumped up, David showed no mercy! After they return, the 400 man army of David despises the 200 who stayed behind and say ‘we will give you your families, but no goods!’ They treated them as lesser men. David would have none of it and says ‘we can’t withhold the things the Lord has freely given us [freely you have received, freely give- Jesus] but we will treat everyone alike’. I see the New Testament ministry of giving and sharing as a community here. What happened in this chapter? David experienced a tremendous possible loss this day. His men were at the lowest point of ‘the ministry’. All seemed lost, they even feared the loss of their families. The Lord does restore to David that which seemed gone for good, and David’s men regroup. All this happens at the next to the last chapter of Samuel. In the next chapter Saul dies and David becomes king. Everything seemed hopeless right before the greatest victory of all! David was soon to enter into his prophetic destiny in God. There is a theme in scripture that goes like this ‘right before, and right after great victories there are great trials’ geez, that means there are always trials! Yes, to a degree this is true. I also want you to have a biblical perspective on what it means to ‘recover all’. The church went thru a stage where we learned all the verses on ‘the enemy must repay 7 fold’ and other themes on ‘all the years the locust hath eaten will be restored’. I like and have used these themes in my own life over the years to claim victory. But I want you to see from an eternal perspective. The theme of the New Testament is one of eternal rewards. Not so much focused on ‘what we get here and now’ but on us having a ‘better reward in heaven’ [Hebrews]. Those of you who have lost loved ones, finances [we just had a tremendous stock market crash 10-08]. What if I were to tell you ‘you are not really much worse off than those who haven’t lost all’. In a few short years all our loved ones will be gone. We will have lost control over all of our wealth and riches. We will all be gone [in the natural!]. But yet there awaits a real future resurrection where we will all get our loved ones back. Where we will reap eternal rewards for a life well lived. In the eternal perspective we do ‘recover all’, all isn’t lost! I want to encourage you today to believe God to restore some things in the here and now. Yes, God can bless you and restore to you wealth and health and family and many good things. And for those who have lost some of these things permanently, God will restore to you real soon.

 VERSES-

1Samuel 21:1 Then came David to Nob to Ahimelech the priest: and Ahimelech was afraid at the meeting of David, and said unto him, Why art thou alone, and no man with thee?

1Samuel 21:2 And David said unto Ahimelech the priest, The king hath commanded me a business, and hath said unto me, Let no man know any thing of the business whereabout I send thee, and what I have commanded thee: and I have appointed my servants to such and such a place.

1Samuel 21:3 Now therefore what is under thine hand? give me five loaves of bread in mine hand, or what there is present.

1Samuel 21:4 And the priest answered David, and said, There is no common bread under mine hand, but there is hallowed bread; if the young men have kept themselves at least from women.

1Samuel 21:5 And David answered the priest, and said unto him, Of a truth women have been kept from us about these three days, since I came out, and the vessels of the young men are holy, and the bread is in a manner common, yea, though it were sanctified this day in the vessel.

1Samuel 21:6 So the priest gave him hallowed bread: for there was no bread there but the shewbread, that was taken from before the LORD, to put hot bread in the day when it was taken away.

1Samuel 21:7 Now a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before the LORD; and his name was Doeg, an Edomite, the chiefest of the herdmen that belonged to Saul.

1Samuel 21:8 And David said unto Ahimelech, And is there not here under thine hand spear or sword? for I have neither brought my sword nor my weapons with me, because the king's business required haste.

1Samuel 21:9 And the priest said, The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom thou slewest in the valley of Elah, behold, it is here wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod: if thou wilt take that, take it: for there is no other save that here. And David said, There is none like that; give it me.

1Samuel 21:10 And David arose and fled that day for fear of Saul, and went to Achish the king of Gath.

1Samuel 21:11 And the servants of Achish said unto him, Is not this David the king of the land? did they not sing one to another of him in dances, saying, Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands?

1Samuel 21:12 And David laid up these words in his heart, and was sore afraid of Achish the king of Gath.

1Samuel 21:13 And he changed his behaviour before them, and feigned himself mad in their hands, and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down upon his beard.

1Samuel 21:14 Then said Achish unto his servants, Lo, ye see the man is mad: wherefore then have ye brought him to me?

1Samuel 21:15 Have I need of mad men, that ye have brought this fellow to play the mad man in my presence? shall this fellow come into my house?

  www.corpuschristioutreachministries.blogspot.com

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 Note- Please do me a favor, those who read/like the posts- re-post them on other sites as well as the site you read them on- Thanks- John.#

[techcrunchappcom]

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/francis-becomes-1st-pope-to-endorse-same-sex-civil-unions-news-sports-jobs/

Francis becomes 1st pope to endorse same-sex civil unions | News, Sports, Jobs

Pope Francis, center, makes the sign of the cross during his weekly general audience in the Paul VI hall at the Vatican, Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2020. Pope Francis endorsed same-sex civil unions for the first time as pope while being interviewed for the feature-length documentary “Francesco,” which premiered Wednesday at the Rome Film Festival. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press ROME (AP) — Pope Francis endorsed same-sex civil unions for the first time as pontiff while being interviewed for the feature-length documentary “Francesco,” which premiered Wednesday at the Rome Film Festival. The papal thumbs-up came midway through the film that delves into issues Francis cares about most, including the environment, poverty, migration, racial and income inequality, and the people most affected by discrimination. “Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children of God,” Francis said in one of his sit-down interviews for the film. “You can’t kick someone out of a family, nor make their life miserable for this. What we have to have is a civil union law; that way they are legally covered.” While serving as archbishop of Buenos Aires, Francis endorsed civil unions for gay couples as an alternative to same-sex marriages. However, he had never come out publicly in favor of civil unions as pope. The Jesuit priest who has been at the forefront in seeking to build bridges with gays in the church, the Rev. James Martin, praised the pope’s comments as “a major step forward in the church’s support for LGBT people.” “The Pope’s speaking positively about civil unions also sends a strong message to places where the church has opposed such laws,” Martin said in a statement. Catholic Church teaching holds that gays must be treated with dignity and respect but that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered.” A 2003 document from the Vatican’s doctrine office stated that the church’s respect for gays “cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.” That document was signed by the then-prefect of the office, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI and Francis’ predecessor. One of the main characters in the documentary is Juan Carlos Cruz, the Chilean survivor of clergy sexual abuse whom Francis initially discredited during a 2018 visit to Chile. Cruz, who is gay, said that during his first meetings with the pope in May 2018 after they patched things up, Francis assured him that God made Cruz gay. Cruz tells his own story in snippets throughout the film, chronicling both Francis’ evolution on understanding sexual abuse as well as to document the pope’s views on gay people. Director Evgeny Afineevsky had remarkable access to cardinals, the Vatican television archives and the pope himself. He said he negotiated his way in through persistence, and deliveries of Argentine mate tea and Alfajores cookies that he got to the pope via some well-connected Argentines in Rome. “Listen, when you are in the Vatican, the only way to achieve something is to break the rule and then to say, ‘I’m sorry,’” Afineevsky said in an interview ahead of the premiere. The director worked official and unofficial channels starting in early 2018, and ended up so close to Francis by the end of the project that he showed the pope the movie on his iPad in August. The two recently exchanged Yom Kippur greetings; Afineevsky is a Russian-born Jew now based in Los Angeles. On Wednesday, Afineevsky’s 48th birthday, the director said Francis presented him with a birthday cake during a private meeting at the Vatican. But “Francesco” is more than a biopic about the pope. Wim Wenders did that in the 2018 film “Pope Francis: A Man of His Word,” which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. “Francesco,” is more a visual survey of the world’s crises and tragedies, with audio from the pope providing possible ways to solve them. Afineevsky, who was nominated for an Oscar for his 2015 documentary “Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom,” traveled the world to film his pope movie: The settings include Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh where Myanmar’s Rohingya sought refuge; the U.S.-Mexico border; and Francis’ native Argentina. “The film tells the story of the pope by reversing the cameras,” said Vatican communications director Paolo Ruffini, who was one of Afineevsky’s closest Vatican-based collaborators on the film. Ruffini said that when Afineevsky first approached him about a documentary, he tried to tamp down his hopes for interviewing the pope. “I told him it wasn’t going to be easy,” he said. But Ruffini gave him some advice: names of people who had been impacted by the pope, even after just a brief meeting. Afineevsky found them: the refugees Francis met with on some of his foreign trips, prisoners he blessed, and some of the gays to whom he has ministered. “I told him that many of those encounters had certainly been filmed by the Vatican cameras, and that there he would find a veritable gold mine of stories that told a story,” Ruffini said. “He would be able to tell story of the pope through the eyes of all and not just his own.” Francis’ outreach to gays dates to his first foreign trip in 2013, when he uttered the now-famous words “Who am I to judge,” when asked during an airborne news conference returning home from Rio de Janiero about a purportedly gay priest. Since then, he has ministered to gays and transsexual prostitutes, and welcomed people in gay partnerships into his inner circle. One of them was his former student, Yayo Grassi, who along with his partner visited Francis at the Vatican’s Washington D.C. embassy during the pope’s 2015 visit to the U.S. The Vatican publicized that encounter, making video and photos of it available, after Francis was ambushed during that same visit by his then-ambassador, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who invited the anti-gay marriage activist Kim Davis to meet with the pope. News of the Davis audience made headlines at the time and was viewed by conservatives as a papal stamp of approval for Davis, who was jailed for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses. The Vatican, however, vigorously sought to downplay it, with the Vatican spokesman saying the meeting by no means indicated Francis’ support for her or her position on gay marriage. However, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was fervently opposed to gay marriage when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires. Then, he launched what gay activists remember as a “war of God” against Argentina’s move to approve same-sex marriage. The pope’s authorized biographer, Sergio Rubin, said at the time of his 2013 election that Bergoglio was politically wise enough to know the church couldn’t win a straight-on fight against gay marriage. Instead, Rubin said, Bergoglio urged his fellow bishops to lobby for gay civil unions instead. It wasn’t until Bergoglio’s proposal was shot down by the conservative bishops’ conference that Bergoglio publicly declared his opposition, and the church lost the issue altogether. Francis, in the new documentary, confirms Rubin’s account of what transpired. Of his belief in the need for legislation to protect gays living in civil relationships, he said: “I stood up for that.” Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, an organization of LGBT Catholics, praised Francis’ comments as a “historic” shift for a church that has long seen as persecuting gays. “At the same time, we urge Pope Francis to apply the same kind of reasoning to recognize and bless these same unions of love and support within the Catholic Church, too,” he said in a statement. However, more conservative commentators sought to play down Francis’ words and said that while secular civil unions are one thing, a church blessing of them is quite another. In a tweet, conservative U.S. author and commentator Ryan Anderson noted that he and some of his colleagues had gone on record a decade ago saying they would support federal civil unions for any two adults who commit to sharing domestic responsibilities. Such an arrangement, Anderson said, would leave churches the option of refusing to recognize these unions as marriage.

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