ABC’s religious department twisting the truth again.

Priest denies making claims about mary MacKillop's excommunication

Clare Rawlinson and James Madden  The Australian October 07, 2010

THE priest who spent 25 years lobbying for Mary MacKillop's canonisation has angrily dismissed recent media reports.

The reports said the soon-to-be saint was excommunicated from the Catholic Church for exposing acts of child sex abuse by a South Australian clergyman.

Paul Gardiner, chaplain of the Mary MacKillop Penola Centre, said the claims, published on ABC Online and in Fairfax newspapers last month, were false, and he feared the misleading coverage was an attempt to take a swipe at the church and distract the public in the lead-up to MacKillop's canonisation on October 17.

ABC Online and Fairfax both reported that MacKillop's ousting from the church in 1871 was prompted by her exposure of a Kapunda priest's abuse of local children. The claims were based on remarks made by Father Gardiner in a documentary made for ABC TV's Compass program.

But both Father Gardiner and the program's executive producer deny ever making such an inference. "Early in 1870, the scandal occurred and the Sisters of Saint Joseph reported it to Father Tenison Woods, but Mary was in Queensland and no one was worried about her," Father Gardiner told The Australian.

Father Gardiner, considered the nation's foremost authority on the history of MacKillop, said his words had been twisted to suit the "ill will" of media outlets.

Continue reading Priest denies making claims about MacKillop's excommunication | The Australian

Pope Benedict wanted to be a librarian

August 2010, Telegraph.

His predecessor, Pope John Paul II, declined his request to spend his last years as the archivist of the Vatican Secret Archives and as a librarian of the Vatican Library, according to the incumbent librarian and archivist Cardinal Raffaele Farina.

Speaking in Inside the Vatican magazine, Cardinal Farina recalled when he was appointed prefect of the Vatican Library in May 1997 he had a brief meeting with Cardinal Ratzinger in which he was asked his own opinion of the future pope joining the team.

At the time the future Pope Benedict was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Pope’s doctrinal enforcer.

But he found his job “burdensome” and wanted to retire to academic study of ancient documents for the rest of his life.

He asked the Pope if he could step down from his role when he turned 70 on April 16, 1997, a move which would have permanently removed him from Vatican politics and from the eyes of the world.

Continue reading - Pope Benedict wanted to be a librarian - Telegraph

Primacy of Truth over Power. St. Thomas More, Man for This [and All] Seasons

By Deacon Keith Fournier 22nd July 2010 Catholic Online (http://www.catholic.org/)
The England of the sixteenth century was in the midst of a serious crisis of politics, culture and faith, not unlike the times in which we now live

Thomas More showed heroic courage in the face of a State which had lost its soul. He Never wavered in his fidelity to the Truth. He would not betray the truth or compromise it on the altar of public opinion for political opportunism. Thomas More was brought to trial for his fidelity to the Truth. As is often the case with persecution against Christians, it was framed as a charge against the "positive law".

Continue reading at Catholic Online

Also from EWTN Live:
Sir Thomas More - Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J. with Dr. Samuel Gregg

An Interview with Archbishop Basil Georges Casmoussa, Archbishop of Mosul for the Syrian Catholic Church in Iraq.

Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) News - Interview on 19/7/2010.

Since the first century Christians have been present in Iraq and have contributed actively to the cultural development of the Arab world. Today Christians make up only 3% of the Iraqi population. Rev. Basil Georges Casmoussa is the Archbishop of Mosul for the Syrian Catholic Church. In 2005 he was abducted at gunpoint only to be released 24 hours later unharmed.

Continue reading - An Interview with the Archbishop Basil Georges Casmoussa

Anti-Catholic junk history

 
Mary, Queen of Scots
1542-1587

Britain remains marinated in anti-Catholic mythology as a consequence of centuries of relentless propaganda by establishment interest groups.

It seems the phenomenon of Protestant propagandist misrepresentation of English history is inescapable this week. First, the Orangemen paraded inaccurate images of the Battle of the Boyne; now the London Dungeon is in trouble over its advertisements featuring "Bloody Mary" Tudor – Queen Mary I – on the London Underground. The complaint against the Dungeon is not that it perpetuated a sectarian myth but that it terrified children by juxtaposing a normal portrait of the Queen alongside one of her transforming into a flesh-eating zombie.
Continue reading at Catholic Education Resource Center.

Vatican, China OK new bishop as relations warm

 The Associated Press: Vatican, China OK new bishop as relations warm

15 July 2010

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican and the Chinese government have approved the consecration of a new bishop for Taizhou in a sign of warming ties.

The Vatican said Wednesday 75-year-old Msgr. Antonio Xu Jiwei was named bishop over the weekend in a ceremony presided over by four other bishops who similarly are in communion with Rome and are recognized by China's official church.

China forced its Roman Catholics to cut ties with the Vatican in 1951. Worship is allowed only in state-backed churches, but millions of Chinese belong to unofficial congregations loyal to Rome.

Pope Benedict XVI has prioritized improving relations with Beijing and reconciling the two churches. In recent years a compromise has been reached under which both Beijing and Rome agree on bishop candidates.

'Hitler's Pope' saved thousands of Jewish lives - Telegraph

By Simon Caldwell - 06 Jul 2010

Pope Pius, who was labelled “Hitler’s Pope” because of his silence during the Holocaust, may have arranged the exodus of about 200,000 Jews from Germany just three weeks after Kristallnacht, when thousands of Jews were rounded up and sent to concentration camps.
The claim was made by Dr Michael Hesemann, a German historian carrying out research in the Vatican archives for the Pave the Way Foundation, a US-based inter-faith group.
He said that Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli – the future Pius XII – wrote to Catholic archbishops around the world to urge them to apply for visas for “non-Aryan Catholics” and Jewish converts to Christianity who wanted to leave Germany.

Continue reading ‘Hitler's Pope’ saved thousands of Jewish lives – Telegraph

___________________________

The term ‘Hitler’s Pope’ comes from John Cornwell’s anti-Pope Pius XII book ‘Hitler’s Pope’ published in 1999. At the time certain media outlets (ABC) heavily promoted the book. Since then much of Cornwell’s book has been debunked. Ken Woodward, writing in Newsweek, stated that Hitler's Pope has "errors of fact and ignorance of context [that] appear on almost every page.

On a positive note, Cornwell has now changed his position on Pope Pius XII. In his book The Pontiff in Winter (2004), p. 193, Cornwell says:

“ I would now argue, in the light of the debates and evidence following 'Hitler's Pope', that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by the Germans.”

However it has been asked that given Cornwell has changed his position on Pope Pius XII why has he not withdrawn his book, or at least altered its hateful title?

Of course there’s plenty of money to be made in promoting lies and hate against the Catholic Church just ask Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.

Image courtesy of Ambrosius007

Book Review: The Borgias and Their enemies

Father Steve at Word on Fire reviews Christopher Hibbert's The Borgias and Their Enemies, taking a closer look into the lives of the notorious family of Pope Alexander VI.

The scandalous pontificate of Alexander VI represents a nadir of the papacy. Many might prefer that this notorious pope and his family disappear from historical reckoning, but the memory of the Borgias continues to be remarkably persistent.  Showtime will release a dramatic interpretation of Alexander VI and his intrigues in 2011, testimony to the enduring cultural fascination for Borgias. News of this upcoming series might stir some consternation among the Catholic faithful. Alexander VI has been used for centuries as a source for the opposition to the claims of the Church in regards to the papacy. He has become a symbol of the potential abuses of power, particularly within the Church.

Continue reading at Fr. Robert Barron's Word On Fire Blog - Books: Borgias Behaving Badly

Catholic faithful to celebrate witness of 120 Chinese Martyrs :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)

CNA STAFF, Jul 4, 2010 / 05:03 am (CNA).

On Friday, July 9, the Church will celebrate the feast of the 120 Martyrs of China. Religious persecution has a long history in China, especially persecution of Christians, thousands of whom have died for their faith in the last millennium.
On October 1, 2000, Pope John Paul II canonized 120 men, women, and children who gave their lives for the faith in China between the years 1648 and 1930. The martyrs include 87 native Chinese and 33 foreign missionaries. The majority were killed during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900.

Continue reading at Catholic News Agency

"Agora" more anti-Catholic propaganda?

Fr Barron from "Word on Fire" comments on the movie "Agora".
Did Carl Sagan misrepresent the truth about Hypatia?



Wikipedia entry on Hypatia.

Review by self declared Irish - Australian atheist bastard Tim O'Neill.

Why do film makers have to distort the history of Christianity?

By Michael Cook, MercatorNet, 24th June 2010

Is it a sign of exhausted creativity that anti-Christian film makers are exhuming Enlightenment myths? In the arthouses this summer are two films recycling tattered canards which have been mouldering in history books for centuries, repeatedly refuted and repeatedly revived.
Pope Joan (Die Päpstin) is a German production about a female Pope who — supposedly – was elected in 853. Mediaeval legends about the Popess are sketchy, but what legend leaves out, the imagination of the director, Sönke Wortmann, fills in. …

The other film, Agora, is a Spanish blockbuster by Alejandro Amenábar which takes place in Alexandria in 415. Its heroine is Hypatia, a young unmarried and virginal woman of genius who teaches philosophy and astronomy in the Agora, the ancient world’s version of a university.
Hypatia is a pagan, one of a declining minority in a city torn by feuds between Jews and fundamentalist Christians led by the scheming Patriarch Cyril. It is a tough time for lovers of the truth, especially when Christians destroy Alexandria’s rich library. When Hypatia refuses to recant her belief that the earth revolves around the Sun and then refuses to become a Christian, the mob seizes her. To spare her the agony of being stoned, one of her admirers euthanases her. (Amenábar also directed The Sea Inside, an award-winning film about euthanasia.)

Read more at MercatorNet.com


Wikipedia entry on Pope Joan

Wikipedia entry on Hypatia

American lawsuit against Vatican misconstrues nature of the Church, canonists say :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)

CNA STAFF, May 27, 2010 / 12:40 am (CNA).- Two canon lawyers have weighed in on an attempt to sue the Vatican for sexual abuse by a priest, saying it misconstrues the nature of the Catholic Church and the relationship between the Pope and other Catholic bishops. It is based on the misperception of the Church as a “monolithic” structure, one said

Continue reading at Catholic News Agency (CNA)

"Heretical" Copernicus Reburied as a Hero - CBS News - (WTF)

Yes the Main Stream Media Gets it Wrong Again (sort of).
Phil Lawler at Catholic Culture disentangles the deceit.
The truth about Copernicus can be found, even in the AP story, by those readers who persist beyond the first few sentences. After the unusual ceremony honoring the great astronomer, an honor guard took the coffin and "lowered it back into the same spot where part of his skull and other bones were found in 2005." The mortal remains of Nicolaus Copernicus now lie exactly where they had lain for most of the past 500 years: in a place of honor, in a Catholic cathedral.
More on Copernicus at Wikipedia