Intentions of the Holy Father for April

Ecology and Justice. That governments may foster the protection of creation and the just distribution of natural resources.
Hope for the Sick. That the Risen Lord may fill with hope the hearts of those who are being tested by pain and sickness.

An Unlikely Alliance to Overthrow the West: More Signs of the Times

CNSNews.com has two pieces that struck me.

The first piece reports on comments made by Harry Knox, who serves on President Barack Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. In the National Prayer Hour during which the accompanying video is recorded, Knox calls evil (in this case, the distribution of contraception) good, and good (Pope Benedict XVI) evil (for opposing the distribution of those sinful little population control devices) (Isaiah 5:20).  Notably, this event is the American Prayer Hour, not intended to call upon God Almight for his help with some issue or another, but to affirm on their own "inclusive values" and to call on Uganda to stop being mean by doing things like outlawing sodomy.  The Pope's reason - aside from the religious - for disapproving of the use of contraception to fight the spread of HIV is that is just doesn't work.  Even though Pope Benedict XVI has, on this issue, the backing of findings of
researchers at notoriously flim-flam, conservative institutions like Harvard, Knox reasserts his claim that the Pope and the Church are hurting poor people in the name of Jesus.  Knox, unlike the Church, cares very much for (heterosexual and juvenile) HIV patients in Africa and Asia.  He does all sorts of things to help them, like run orphanages for HIV-infected children, has cooperated with all sorts of federal programs to prevent the spread of AIDS at home and abroad, has been conducting vigorous propaganda campaigns in Africa against risky behavior, and provide about 25% of the world's AIDS patients with their primary care.

Oh, wait.  My mistake.  It's the Catholic Church that does those things for AIDS patients.

The second piece reports on a Dutch legislator being prosecuted for "discrimination and incitement to hatred" for claiming that the Koran has been linked to extremist violence.  I know what you're thinking: what an outlandish claim.  I know.  Aside from the backwardness of prohibiting free speech, the Dutch prosecutor doesn't seem to think that the actual truth of the statements made should be relevant to their prosecution.  The whole bit makes me think of the final book in C. S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia, in which some treacherous Narnians sell their people out to a foreign, despotic people from southern deserts, in the hope of personal gain.  The Dutch legislator being prosecuted has asked to call for his defense Mohammed Bouyeri, a "Dutchman" of Moroccan extraction convicted of shooting and stabbing to death Theo Van Gogh for making a documentary that claimed unpleasant things about Islam.  Bouyeri stuck a note to van Gogh's chest using the knife with which he murdered the filmmaker.  In the note, he also threatened to murder Dutch legislator Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a nationalized Somali woman who uses her new Dutch nationality and legislative voice to campaign against the abuse of women in peaceful Islamic countries like Iran and her native Somalia.  Surprisingly, the Dutch prosecutor and judges in the case is nervous about calling Bouyeri to the stand.



I am concluding that the powers that be hate Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church, and the West they built up so much that any enemy of His will suffice as an ally.  It does not matter to them what lies they tell or whom they invite to come be their new caliph.  This whole democracy thing is passe, anyway, right?  Time to progress to something better.

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