usmjam/catholic

From the page: "Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is providing few details about his recent decision to convert to Roman Catholicism. Gingrich previously had identified as a Baptist, but two Saturdays ago in Washington, DC, the former House Speaker was officially confirmed into the Catholic Church.
 
Gingrich, whose third wife Calista is a Catholic, recently criticized the University of Notre Dame for inviting President Obama to speak at its commencement, saying Obama's "policies are so anti-Catholic values." In an interview with OneNewsNow, Gingrich was reluctant to explain why he "swam the Tiber."
 
"I haven't talked about this much in public, and I'm not going to for at least six months or a year, but I will say that I found myself deeply comforted, and a deep sense of belonging and of finding a peace in my soul in a way that I just found very, very powerful," he explains.

Other high-profile Catholic converts from the political realm include Sam Brownback, Bobby Jindal, Jeb Bush, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair."

From the page: "My friends make it sound as if Mardi Gras is intrinsically Catholic and although there may be some truth to the fact that the feast is related to Catholicism by association, the festivities are everything but Christian in nature. In fact, history places the origin of carnival festivities back to pagan spring fertility rites during pre-Christian times."

From the page: "Reviving 'cafeteria Catholics'JEFFREY BROWN: In terms of other things, aside from this scandal, where there the disconnectedness shows up between American practices and the teachings of the church, does the church look at this as a kind of pick-and-choose?

Is that how American Catholics think about their religion, pick and choose what we want from the teachings? And how does the church respond? What does the pope say?

DAVID GIBSON: That we're all cafeteria Catholics, essentially, you know, and that has been kind of the label that's been applied to Catholics in the United States. And I think it's fair enough.

It's kind of a pejorative label, but I think people, also, from left to right, to use those kinds of crude labels, I think people do pick and choose to a great degree the teachings that they want to emphasize.

They'll listen. The pope is going to come again and he's going to give a very broad-ranging message on the wide-ranging teachings and traditions of the church. And people are going to hear, to a degree, what they want to hear or what resonates with them.

And they're going to disregard what they don't want to hear, be it on immigration and the death penalty, be it on abortion, euthanasia, stem cell, et cetera.

That's always been a difficulty for the Vatican; it's a difficulty for any religious leader, frankly. You're always coming and presenting a very high ideal and a wide-ranging tradition and one that goes very deeply. And that's just always a tension, frankly, that's going to be there.

And I think we have to understand that, that there's -- you know, we're always talking about the tensions between Rome and the American church. And they exist. And there are bad tensions and there are good tensions."-----------------------------------------------------------Read all the analysis, wrapups and commentaries about the Papal visit to America. Its all about what the people want vs. what the hierarchy wants vs what each one wants the other to want, etc

Nowhere is there anything except scant mention of what God has already told us plainly and clearly in His holy word what He wants of us. Pray for them, may God have mercy.

From the page: "Benedict vows to stop paedophiles

Pope's visit a big deal in America

April 16, 2008Edition 1

From a presidential welcome, to two masses at baseball stadiums, to a stop for prayer at Ground Zero, the site of the September 11 2001 attacks in New York, Pope Benedict will get a heavy dose of the American experience in his first pilgrimage to the United States.Benedict departed for Washington yesterday, with President George Bush planning to make the unusual gesture of greeting him when his Alitalia jetliner touches down at Andrews Air Force Base, the first time the president has greeted a foreign leader there.

The pope turns 81 today, although he seems spry and aides say he is in good health.

A visit by the leader of the world's one billion Catholics is clearly a big deal, despite the American tradition of separation of church and state.

A crowd of about 12 000, larger than the gathering for Queen Elizabeth II, is expected today at the White House for the pope's official visit.

While the pope and Bush differ on major issues, including the Iraq war, capital punishment and the US embargo against Cuba, they do find common ground in opposing abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research.

Speaking on board the plane to Washington, the pope said he was "deeply ashamed" over sexual abuse of children by priests and vowed to do everything possible to stop paedophiles entering the priesthood.

"We will absolutely exclude paedophiles from the sacred ministry," he said."

And they expected him to say otherwise?

From the page: "Learn what is involved in the concordats signed with various nations around the world. Learn how these types of agreements paved the way for the Inquisition of the middle ages. Find out how this applies today.

See the horrors of the Inquisition during the middle ages which put 50,000,000 people to death. The POPES wrote down the details of how torture was to be implemented. It stopped short of pulling off limbs and causing death, but so severe was the Vatican law, that none of the inquisitors in the different nations of Europe, were allowed to change the rules without express permission from the Vatican itself. They decreed how men, women and children from the age of 12 upwards, were to be tortured. In March 2000 the Pope asked for forgiveness for the part the members of the church played in the inquisition. Yet, it wasn't the members of the church who did these things, it was the PAPACY itself and the POPES in particular. 75 popes in a row gave authority. The apology was a mock apology.

Look at a more contemporary situation that happened in Croatia, under Anton Pavolich, during WWII, in which the Catholic Ustasha put to death hundreds of thousands of people who would not convert to Catholicism.

"It is difficult for the world to believe that a whole people could be doomed to extermination by a government and religious hierarchy of the twentieth century, just because it happened to belong to another ethnic and racial group and had inherited the Christianity of Byzantium rather than that of Rome." -Edmond Paris in the book "Convert or Die"

Learn about the Knights of Columbus and the Jesuits. Uncover the smokescreens.

Read the Jesuit Oath of Induction (link below). This is definitely not Christian.

Jesus said to us:

"...yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service." John 16:2"