Is Everybody Happy?:Gays, African-Americans, Civil Rights and the State of Psychological Health In America

Homosexuality has been a particular enemy of mine since it has become a politicized movement.
For psychiatric survivors and the general state of health care in America the legitimization of homosexuality is just another way of sweeping psychological disorders under the rug by sweeping it over the rug and embroidering it into the carpet. The number one fact of American psychological health is that by legitimizing homosexuality we are lowering the medical baseline of psychological health.

When I think of homosexuality deriving a great deal of it's legitimacy through a false fetal heredity of the civil rights movement I am compelled to examine this justification by comparing their existence to not just the struggle for civil rights by African-Americans but even to examine what fidelity between the two 'people' could possibly exist. Did AA strike, unbeknown to them, some Faustian bargain with the queers years before? Was it a three way helping hand where homosexuals help AA in the south and women later in the east only to be supported at this date for their own gay agenda? For some insight into the psychological composition of homosexuals check out Michael Swift cathartic Gay Manifesto.


Then let us ask ourselves what would make African-American and liberal heterosexual Euro-Americans make a covenant with the homosexual crowd and their agenda? Let's look first at the African-Americans.

First there was the idea that by not allowing gays marital rights that would be equivalent to keeping Blacks and Whites from marrying which was the basic reason for most of the segregation that took place. According to Earl Ofari Hutchinson writing in Black America Today.com

"The taboo was based on a deep-seated belief by many whites that blacks are socially, and genetically unfit to share a classroom and a marital bedroom with whites."

Albeit that was written in 2003 and indeed many may have a different view between these two movememts today. However, in that opinion piece Hutchinson does not elaborate as to why Caucasins percieved AA men as "unfit", let us ofcourse stay our hand in terms of Caucasin men finding AA women acceptable to sleep with if not to openly marry because we are well aware of our historical facts that indeed they did. Why then would the Caucasins shun their former slaves and believe them to "socially and genetically" unfit. Could it have any thing to do with the fact that it was indeed the Caucasians who controlled the breeding process of many slaves? It is a documented fact that African slaves were not able to conduct their social habits under slavery and therefore the possibility of sleeping with a known relative was genuine. This was one of the many themes that Spike Lee picked up on in his film "Bamboozled" (2000)starring Damion Waynes, Savion Glover and Tommy Davidson. In this case being the perpetrators of such a moral offense can it be said that knowledge of their actions speak to their own defense?

Then ofcourse there was the Bible verse that forbade the mixing of seeds.

Deuteronomy 22:9: "Thou shalt not sow thy vineyard with divers seeds: lest the fruit of thy seed which thou hast sown, and the fruit of thy vineyard, be defiled."

There are several lines in the Bible similar to these which would indeed suggest that intercultural marriages were forbidden by God, however, in many instances it was not so much a matter of 'race' as it was of a husband being converted to a pagan or idolatrous religion. Nevertheless there does appear to be ample evidence that intercultural marriages were forbidden by God through the Bible. This is of course the same Bible that homosexuals either completely ignore or claim are simply misread by Jews and Christians alike for millenniums. The Rainbow Alliance website linked above declares that Mark 7:18 is how Jesus speaks to homosexual acts. It reads

18 And he saith to them: So are you also without knowledge? understand you not that every thing from without, entering into a man cannot defile him:

Here is how the Rainbow Alliance explains the application of that same verse.

"A lot has been said about what Jesus did or did not have to say about homosexuality. Jesus Christ is the core of Christianity. Yet today many people seem to consider homosexuality to be the single most important issue before Christians. Catholics claim that being homosexual is not a sin, but homosexual acts ARE sinful. Others use the words of the Bible to deny gays basic human rights, such as the right to marry. Or they use the Bible to justify abusing and even murdering gays. It is hard to believe that Jesus would have been completely silent about something so important. Yet the claim is that, somehow, he was.

That claim is wrong. Jesus DID speak of homosexual acts. Specifically he said:

"There is NOTHING from without a man, that entering into him can defile him"

Those are the words of Jesus Christ, from Mark 7."

There is clearly some degree of bastardization in the interpretation or better said perversion. Whereas Jesus was talking about the supernatural state of the soul, his words have been construed here to include the human penis. Which leads me to my second hypothesis.

There has been a kinship between the two people on their appreciation for concreteness and immediacy. There has been a lot of use of the word "external" many in the corporate world use it to describe unforeseen consequences of their actions as in "externalities". Psychologist have a term called 'external validity", my term here is best explained as carnality.

"5 Thus saith the Lord: Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord."
Jeremiah 17:5

Well within the parameters of AA men and homosexuals is this sense that the flesh is invincible, that by the flesh alone against the various elements and other men, men can abide. This is of course the tell tale sign of that most infectious and perniciously pervasive sin of pride.

African American men and homosexuals both have a reputation to be full of pride. In fact in Ezekial 16:49 we find,

49 Behold this was the iniquity of Sodom thy sister, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance, and the idleness of her, and of her daughters: and they did not put forth their hand to the needy, and to the poor. 50 And they were lifted up, and committed abominations before me: and I took them away as thou hast seen.

AA men are notoriously known for putting on a lot of pump and circumstance when they feel slighted or even when they are simply doing well, they compete with one another as to who has the best of what, at least in a characterized dramatization. Homosexuals by the same measure seek to get married not because of whatever benefits that marriage may offer, legally as well as emotionally but because marriage is a social climb, the "gold standard" of social cache, says Nathanal Rauch a senior writer for National Journal magazine and author of books on public policy who was in favor of gay marriage at a debate held at the University of Colorado in Boulder, January 2010. Maggie Galagher author and social commenter as well as the president of National Organization for Marriage in her own recent publication "The Case For Marriage" is not merely in favor of marriage being exclusive to heterosexuals but contest the idea that people in same sex union can ever be considered married at all. Mrs. Gallagher bases her position on the truth about the dilemma.


Gallagher and Rauch debate same-sex 'marriage' in Boulder :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)

It becomes clear from analyzing Rauches position in the debate that homosexuals are merely exhibiting a symptomatic trait of their disorder, a need to satiate their pride. Very simply, they want to have access to be in societies "gold standard". Pride is therefore the nexus between AA men in particular and homosexuals, pride is the nexus between any man and homosexuals, homosexuality can very well be said to be the manifestation of it.

Before I go any further let me make clear that this is not a diatribe of malice directed at either AA people or homosexuals. It is in fact an examination of AA people in relations to their civil rights and homosexuals political agenda for the United States. In the United States the toll of Antebellum slavery was indeed devastating to the familiar system of the AA people, families were separated under a chattel slavery and sold through the diaspora of the capitalist system.
There were forced breeding practices which are akin to the eugenic theories that were taking ground in America. Practices that have indeed shaped humans before, although through God and nature not another man. Sickle cell shaped red blood cells for instance, found in many West Africans proved as a mutations to the red blood cell that served to defend against malaria.
A boon which made them 'black gold' to their slavers though. Although this were in itself a troubling and difficult passage for the AA people in fact most are today as American citizens wealthier and to an extent healthier than their counter parts in Africa.

Homosexuality was not born out of a legal right to vote as legal citizens of a nation who were completely denied this 'right' for years,homosexuality on the other hand was simply removed from the Diagnostical Statistical Manuel of Psychiatric Disorders. The perception of this disorder has been ameliorated to the general public. However, unrecorded disorders are still disorders. It would be at this time that an analogy is in order however, it is even more important to note that analogies are themselves misinterpreted everyday by homosexuals which gives concern as to whether this is a debate that can resolved by reason at all, clearly the interpretation of Mark 7:18 above is evidence of that. We are living in a "say anything" era where the value of the words spoken and their logical operations are ignored under some foregone conclusion that ideology is insignificant and we should all solve for comfort, social status, prestige and wealth.

In a recent debate on the legitimization of gay 'marriages' as posted in the Catholic News Agency
I wrote:

"Mrs.Gallahger is correct in postulating that homosexuals can not marry simply on the grounds that they cannot form marriages. Homosexuals attempting marriage is like trying to suck a psychological ice cube through a straw, it cannot be, not because the ice is being discriminated against by other quantities of water. It is because the ice cube has to change state in order to get through the straw as a defacto aspect of reality. The current state of a homosexuals is that they have calcified their souls in pride, even to the point where because they are universally superior to everyone they need not submit to even the most obvious rules of nature.

They have jettisoned the entire gauntlet of human psychological development and thrown hundreds of years of moral as well as religious values over their shoulders but still expect to be welcomed under the tent as equals. The primary problem stems from ignoring that homosexuality is a psychological disorder originating from this psychological immaturity the result of inpatients, or a willingness to admit emotional suffering. Under no way ought heterosexuals be compared to them. That would consent to the psychotic perception that men and women are the same, that what a man does sexually with a woman can find it's equivalence with what a man does with another man.
Let us be clear it is precisely the inability of one to distinguish between two distinct objects or situations the very evidence of psychosis."

Homosexuality as a legitmate state of psychological health is itself the problem. When we come to our senses and realize that we are debating with people who won't take 'no' for an answer and realize that as a sign of psychosis we will all be better off.

Love Divine All Loves Excelling

Great hymnal music is not easy to find. Here is an excellent rendition of one of my favorite songs, "Love Divine, All Love Excelling." I went to one Protestant site NetHymnal which had all of the hymns they were familiar with or wished to present at their site. However, I did not find this song with this tune. I could be mistaken as the music was really MIDI recording, all songs sounded as if they were played on a keyboard or synthesiser. I went to the World Library Publications, the publishing company which publishes the missal that my parish uses but they would only sell the sheet music, not present the lyrics or provide a demonstration of the hymn.

So I am indebted to DJMichaelAngelo for his excellent performance.

U.N. 'Climate Change' Plan Would Likely Shift Trillions to Form New World Economy - United Nations - FOXNews.com

U.N. 'Climate Change' Plan Would Likely Shift Trillions to Form New World Economy - United Nations - FOXNews.com

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Redemptive Suffering of Mother Teresa

In reading Mother Teresa Come Be My Light The Private Writings of the "Saint Of Calcutta" by Brian Kolodlejchuk, M.C. Doubleday 2007 I could only wonder about suffering and how to determine when one is suffering for Christ in this form of redemptive suffering or when is suffering justifiable due to character flaws.

Mother Teresa it turns out suffered from what many of us would simply call depression since around 1947 to the near the end of her life in 2003. What is redemptive suffering and how do we know when we are apart of Christ's suffering? What is the difference between Catholics and Protestants on this matter? As we as Catholics become a part of the body of Christ must we share in his suffering of humanity as found in 1 Colossians 1:24.

Fr. Riccardo explains redemptive suffering perfectly in this 2008 speech. I have placed the link above and below. The continuation of suffering and how it serves the purpose of God and all those serving God.

After listening to this and several writings of both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI I think it bares mentioning that not only is Catholicism a mystery religion which says a lot in itself concerning understanding the faith but also the faith, the religion is not easy to understand particularly on face value as a matter of course. It is important to give Christianity its due respect as we would any study or science or any body of knowledge.

In this speech he brings to light the difference between the Protestant view that any man can pick up the Bible and because it is written in his vernacular will immediately absorb it with total comprehension and go on to do God's will. Ironically the Church was doing the people justice by being the intermediaries between laymen and the Bible. That is to say that certainly many more will injure themselves through their private interpretation of passages in the Bible than those the guided through Magisterial interpretation. Few people pick up a legal texts and start reading hoping to prepare themselves for trial, we misunderstand the type of text we are dealing with when we think that the Bible is just a collection of literary passages which can be read easily.

Fr. Riccardo also express the difference between Catholic teaching of the Bible and the Protestant "prosperity gospel". In few other areas of the faith is the distinction made between apostolic succession and faith alone via the Bible study than around this understanding of redemptive suffering. In fact Colossians 1:24 if I am not mistaken has no Biblical explanation. The Bible does not explain it self pretty much anywhere nor would that actually make sense.

Fr. Riccardo explains that Christ did not die for us and from here on in we are 'saved'. Where we are on the front steps of paradise and serve God merely out of gratitude. Instead he explains we share in the suffering of Christ as as Christians and through this we increase in our faith as we pray for others.

Sonitus Sanctus: Free Catholic MP3 Links: Redemptive Suffering - Fr. Riccardo

The More Things Change...

Barack Obama this week stated that he was not going to raise taxes on the wealthy, something that he made as a campaign promise while on the electoral trail. It seems that this is the second campaign promise which he decline to implement. The first was of course his statement that he was going to remove the troops from Iraq and bring them back home. Well, unless Afghanistan has been recently annexed to the United States it appears he has changed his policy again.

On December 1st the Supreme Court will finally ask President Elect Obama to show the world his birth certificate. It appears that you can get this far in the run for President with out doing this at the outset. People that have to get their drivers license have to cough up their birth certificate but not Presidential candidates like Mr. Obama. He may very well not be our next president after all. For more on this please check out the weblog of Dr. Kate. My only compunction that I have with President Obama is his Christian stance at least to the extent that it seem has no respect for the religion. Yet the legal implications of his place of birth is a firestorm that the main stream media is avoiding.

http://www.texasdarlin.wordpress.com/the-trojan-candidate/
I have also posted a Politico Pastachios internet radio blogcast of this subject below, it is a very interesting show.

Frankly I viewed the birth certificate posted at www.fightsmears.com and it seems legitimate to me. You can get see it directly at the following link. http://fightthesmears.com/articles/5/birthcertificate

This is claimed to be a forgery by a Dr. Polarik. Unfortunately, this testimony is as suspicious as they claim Barack's Obama's certificate appears, you decide.

This radioblogtalk radio station (privately run) debates the issue, you decide.


Barack Obama says that he is a Christian and as such he probably would be willing to renounce his dad as a burn in hell apostate who renounced the faith only to accept Islam. Michael Jackson recently converted to Islam for Jehovah Witness. It seems interesting that Michael Jackson was asked to take an Arabic/Islamic name as did Barack's dad but that the faithful Christian Barack Hussein Obama is willing to keep the name not only of his apostate dad but that of the supposed Shiite mayrter who founded the religion.

I would like to ask the lawyer Mr. Barack Obama exactly how obscure is chapter one of Romans, Romans (1:27) where it clearly states from St. Paul the apostle to the gentiles that homosexuality is perverse and grounds for Gods punishment? It seems strange that since both he and his wife are attorneys that there would any obscure passages in any text especially in a text that has enumerated each and every chapter and verse.

The Rich Are Different Than You And I, They Have The Government In Their Pocket

It is quite amazing how the banking industry is getting it self bailed out with tax payers money when in fact their entire ploy was to but Americans in debt and sit back and collect interest while we work all day to pay off these debts. They even went so far as to raise their rates for all their services including ATM fees. Citibank's ATM fees used to be as much as $3.00 which was just unbelievable, up until recently their share price per stock was just a little over $3.00 and that seemed like poetic justice.

One of the things that become clear is that all through out the time that their economic philosophy was being pursued for the last three to five years these bankers were living 'high off the hog' even though their service was no good. They lived well beyond their means in terms of what it is that they actually produced. Yet, although they came up with nothing but a failing way of doing business they still get their financial compensation. That leads me to suspect that we really live is a class structured society, the rich get richer while the poor get poorer because despite the fact that they have failed they get all their money back plus profits. I cannot understand how the banking industry gets this pass and even the auto industry is ignored under the same argument.

Do we live in a society where the wealthy are maintained as such regardless of the financial reality? Aren't we just supporting the same class of people despite the fact that they should be coming down due to their greed and false philosophical beliefs? I have often compared this to the use of drugs in national sports. If the player is truly drug tested and found guilty of using an illegal substance he would be benched for a while giving the oppurtunity for another athlete take his place and show what he could do. We tend to find that there are a lot of great players just waiting for their shot instead of just a few 'superstar' athletes the whole team is suppose to depend on.

Take for example the World Trade Towers Tragedy, the man that owned the towers was compensated through his insurance not once but twice as the attacks were registered as two separate acts. However, the homeowners of hurricane Katrina had to wrestle their insurance companies as to whether their home collapse due to rain or wind.

Clearly we live in a double standard and clearly we are not a government of the people, for the people by the people. Nor apparently are we a nation of laws, since the deregulation of the credit market was virtually unsupervised, not to mention Enron, Global Crossings, and these other huge corporations that went without any supervision to the detriment of their customers and shareholders and to the chagrin of the American people in the face of America's detractors like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

Nothing of the American philosophy is working and it is due truly to the secular way of life. As long as the American people keep going left of Christianity this kind of debacle will maintain. There are good reasons for saying so. Without that kind of Christian consciousness and an awareness of God the American people get very self centered. They began to act in a way that shows no regard for their fellow man and the 'big picture'. The economic crisis we face today is based on greed and stupidity. I enjoy listening to all the brain child Harvard educated economist talk their nuance, cryptic, thoughts over the radio like alchemists and astrologers. People who the entire country revere and hold as austere and venerable Sherpas to the great financial summit. They were all suppose to be so smart, whoops, it was the very simple and down to earth common sense speaking Paul Krugman who won the Noble Prize for Economics in the midst of all this. Remember the title of his book, "The Great Unraveling"? Most of the guest and the commentator on Bloombergs "On The Money" hosted by Tom Keen could not mask how little they esteemed his school of economics when he won. These people like their pristine ideas more than they like to deal with reality. Economics is about as real as a social science gets and yet all their 'animal spirits' and cauldrons of derivatives seem to obscure the bread and butter functioning of a real economy. In fact half the time when intellectuals on this show use the word "economy" they are rarely if ever referring to labor, production or wages but to theories and philosophies. When they do discuss wages it is always another abstract factor that should be kept as low as possible to maximize profits. None, to my knowledge predicated the current financial catastrophe.

What does it mean to have three separate markets crumble at the same time, the housing, the credit and automobile? It means that maybe we should get Christ back into our lives and live more under His tutelage because I can tell just from spending some time in the American arena people are at the height of arrogance these days. People believe that they can pursue any end whether it be true or not because they do not know the difference between the truth and a marketing campaign. Americans' today are beyond haughty but are surprised when the entire system doesn't work. I remember financial crisis, everyone was walking around looking into the faces of every passer by to conjure up a sense hope, the buzz word every where you went was 'confidence, confidence'. It was both sad and crazy when you expect the country to sit on a two legged stool and have 'confidence'.

Do you remember the crazy amount of credit cards offers that you got in the mail. Most of the credit card offers we all got were treated as junk mail, since when is any financial offer to be treated as junk mail? College students were given charge cards and credit cards the minute they stepped through the door of the institution, which is pretty cruel considering they were already taken on a huge financial burden namely their tuition.

The solution to everything in America now in order to make the absurd legal, is to simply rewrite the laws and definitions. The new laws and guidelines like exempting homosexuality from the DSM are rooted in no valid philosophical reasoning. How come depression, schizophrenia, dissociate personalities and sociopaths all be diagnosable psychiatric conditions but two men engaging in the absurd anti-conducive, anti-productive behavior of ejaculating into the anus of another man be seen as normal? If the definition of crazy is performing the same behavior over again and expecting a different result certainly the nilhism of a homosexual partnership which can produce nothing falls into this catagory. Perform the same action and expect a different result, you are going to get nowwhere. Two men sleeping with each other, you are going to produce nothing, going nowhere.

Why do we even take a homosexual at his word that he is fine, we wouldn't for a smiling depressive person or a socio-path? Someone who is gay, whose main diagnosable symptom is that he consistently out of pride refuse to admit that he is suffering? This notion that with a stroke of pen anything can be made sane, rationale or valid is evience in the banking deregulation and the legitimazation of homosexuality of the two most likely share the same ideological or philosophical root.

What Does This Have To Do With National Security?

I have alwasy been a proponet of the idea that education should be under the banner of NSA, that's right a matter of national security. It is possible to inculcate into the general population false beliefs or to lull them into passivity. When in fact 'The Price Of Democracy Is Vigalence'.

How could Barack Obama not have to produce a birth certificate as a prerequisite for even entering the presidential race, how was he able to serve in the Senate all these years without one? I firmly believe that this is a matter of national security, people have to do their jobs. Yet we have become a such a conscised, 'the end justifies the means' society. More concerned with keeping our jobs than doing our jobs, so afraid to suffer and for many that means suffering lower profit margins rather than going without food, that I would not be surprised if there is a national conspiracy being conducted by the Democratic party and supported by all 'the good people' so that we can just put this entire subject of the Barack Obama birth certificate behind us and get on to the more pressing issue of eating the good foods that we love in a fat and prosperous economy, regardless of how fraudulent and tenuous it is, or for that matter our democracy.

Truely Religion: St. Bartholomew Day Massacre

What then are we to say about the modern way of life? What are we to say about the desires of so many of us that are content to live without God in our lives? The things that we say and the means by which we address them. I like so many of us, know a significant number of people who are openly gay, remorseless and not confounded in any way by their lifestyle, many of whom say they are Catholic. I am told of Catholics who have children out of wedlock and go anyway to have them baptised by the priest who when asks of the woman's husband has no problem telling him "Oh father, we don't live like that anymore." There are thoose who maintain that this perception of modern conveniences are more than convienent but paramount. Leading one to believe that not only is it okay to have children out of wedlock but to have children through artificial insemination is fine as well, not knowing their biological father is fine and abortion when necessary is fine. What has become of us? We have cultivated our desire to stay away from God through these means but then maintain to others that we maintain a 'spirituality' about us. I listen to a radio station that plays Gospel music every weekday mornings but on weekend mornings they play the pop love songs. On weekday mornings there is gospel but in the afternoon filthy talk from a investigative talk show host who tries to unravel all the sordid details of the wayward. These kind of compromises nod in the direction of God but ultimately escape any obligation to His word, this seems to be the way that we live today.


One thing I can say about God that perhaps the Protestants will disagree, He certainly works in mysterious ways. Or perhaps they seem mysterious because we have lost sight of the fact that He does not work for us, we work for Him and to His own means. The fact that I pray and pay tithes does not preclude me from being a fool, which almost through vocation I am. Today being wise is equated with keeping your income, saving money, never having to spend any of your own. I know people who work in the computer industry who do not feel even a pinch of obligation in paying for software created through the hard work and intellect of others, they go through all kind of means to 'get it for free' because they are so smart. Not as smart as the guy who can actually wrote the code and produce something every one else becomes dependant on but they are clever and wise because they got it without paying for it. However, were they to go to work and not get paid for their time I am sure they would feel cheated or sold a record that everyone was dancing to but did not recieve royalties I am certain would upset them. However here I am being a fool and a 'punk' for mentioning something like software piracy because everyone does it and if you are not a punk all these things contract and metabolize away deep within the unconscious mind, the body and therefore you never have to confront what you are doing or admit that what you are doing is stealing. These people are not religious in the first place and so as they read this they cry out "Jesus Christ!" in exasperation of my idiocy. Why they call on Christ and not Buddha or some other divine figure would seem self incriminating but at length I do not know. Except for the fact that, as they say they are not religious all these actions immaterial as they are simply 'go away' getting absorbed again into the depth of the unconscious never to come to light again.

I have difficulty with the sense that other people should know 'better'. So I walk around like a moral whipping terrorist chastising people for taking the name of the Lord in vain and telling people that they ought to simply do their job instead of cutting corners. My only problem is ofcourse that I personally find it impossible to have faith and feel good at the same time and so I cannot adequately persuade other people who are secularist to live the way I do as a Christian. The Catholic faith has a utilizes a profound logical that perhaps one should trust as a matter of faith, but it cannot keep me from destroying myself. I live with people who are not Christians and when I look around it is only the Christian who appear to be suffering. I remember a Pastor of a Baptist church who said on the podium but in no unveiled manner directed at me, that I would be a homosexual if it were not for the fear of God. Yes, I probably would have a 'gay affair', I would do a lot of things if it were not forbidden in the Bible. I am sure a young girl would be a fascinating tryst to have as well, perhaps some boys. I am sure I would smoke marijuana until the cows come home and they don't here in New York and drink (a lot more) if I could afford to lose any more brain cells. I would screw like a bastard (given the oppurtunity), I would eat until I died in my own fat, I would kill anyone I could get my hands on who I felt had it coming. In other words I would be a Muslim, oh wait, they can't drink.

Living with faith is tough and often disquieting, in fact I would like not to do it. That is the reality of the matter that if I had my choice as I am sure millions of other Christians may attest I would rather live with complete assurance on a finite number of 'sure' things but we do not have any 'sure' things, not any of us. We are told to put our trust in money yet it seems obvious that anything I have to save cannot in anyway provide security for me nevertheless that is exactly what we call it, insurance, security and trusts. We stare at the Dow Jones as barometer of our confidence in the system that man devised. This doesn't seem to make anyone suspicious or weary at all.

Two things as Catholics that differentiate us from Protestants(and their prosperity gospel) and that distinguish us from the Jehovah Witnesses(with their anti-Trintarian stance). One is that we as Catholics keep a crucifix, neither Protestants or Jehovah Witnesses use the crucifix in their rendition of Christianity. The Protestants take Christ down from the cross with the notion that he has risen but if that is the case why venerate an instrument of capital punishment and horrendous torture? The Jehovah Witnesses do not put Christ on a cross because they say it is historically inaccurate and that the cross is a curse. Well it is a curse and that is because He has become a curse for us(Galatians 3:13), as far as keeping him on the cross He is the serpent(Homosapian) raised up to be a healing for us(John 3:14).

The second concerns prosperity here on earth, with the Protestants similar to the Jews when they do well or prosper it is because God has caused them to prosper. Yet even though the reach into the Old Testament regarding these matters often and trust only scriputre originally written in Hebrew many of them solemenly believe that the Jews are going to hell as anti-christs. It is one thing to go through the Old Testament through to the New Testament but when you justify your behavior based on the Old Testament when it is convient it seems a bit venial. I remember the Protestant Pastor Creflo Dollar say over the radio one morning,"I thank God for the faithful but we also need the able." He seems possessed of that "can do" spirit where faith is only a wonderful but abstract addendum, so much for through 'faith alone'. So many people believe that Christianity is an idelogoy, something of the mind whihc is another reason for keeping Christ on the Cross, a clear reminder that it is not. Wait here, allow me to digress a little and compose a short list of the worldly saying that are anti-Christian.

• "Seeing is believing"
• "No news is good news"(The Gospel is the 'Good News')
• "In the flesh" (Romans 8:8)
• "I don't want to set the world on fire..." (The Inkspots ca.1940 Jazz Ensemble)(Luke 12:49)

St. James tells us that faith without works is dead(James 2;21) and so the heritical teachings of Martin Luther of "Fide Sola" or faith alone cannot be correct it is almost as if he did not read James at all. Further, when we consult the Bible what else are we consulting, yes the Holy Word of God but it is through the Apostles and the Prophets, if one is willing to abide by what they wrote as authoritative then why would one not be subject to their oral authority and that of their successors? Further how can you believe that fatih comes from hearing and hearing by the Word of God but profess the Bible to be paramount and the people inspired to write it? Because in fact you would not trust what you heard but rather would insist to read it yourself, that is the essence of scripture, that it is read. Subsequently you only trust yourself as the pastor mearly reiterates what you have already investigated. I find it hard to believe that if even Isaiah was standing before them without a Bible they would take him seriously. Further, why would one accept the word of the previous more so than the current if they be truly a believer? Is it because the authority lays far away in the distant past and thus one can appear to be obedient just so long as they are not confronted by any one person in particular to be obedient to? Are we to suppose that Judas Iscariot is a greater apostle than Matthias who replaced him(Acts 1:25), is the Gospel of St. John false because it was written in Greek and not Hebrew?

The fact that at least Old Testament writings must be written in Hebrew and not Greek is a litmus test for many Protestants as to the validity and the authenticity of the scripture is striking considering that the Jews themselves given the scripture they had were confounded by elements of the faith around them such as Jesus the Christ coming form Nazerath, scripture did not help them even identify Christ in their midst. Jesus is ironically the central player in a faith that could not be identified when He arrived by even some of the most learned theological scholars of the day. The Jews had scripture and still did not accept Jesus so why now follow the Jews, they did not recognize the Messiah in the first place or denied Him. The Jehovah Witnesses as well who decry St. Augustine as not a good enough student of ancient Greek(through his own admission) to interpret the Bible to the height of its potential accuracy. Yet they print out Bibles in which their own interpreters remain anonymous under the guise that they did not want to seem presumptuous, in what way, to whom, who whether God or man would mistakenly give them credit for writing the Bible?

In any case it is a convenince which makes it impossible to take up any discrepancies with their version of the Bible. My dad God rest his soul used to say "This world is world of convenince" and he could not be more right. When I am looking for the convenience, when I am conducting my actions as to how convenient one thing is over another to decide what action I am going to take then I can indeed admit the use of this basis of decision making that I am living in the world and not in the word. When we have these glaring discrepancies from not only the faith but from common honesty then we can also assure ourselves that we are acting falsely. Not only is this a hard and incriminating realization it is a challenge and a struggle to live correctly, according to the Word of God and not to our own legitimizing and rationales. We say things, myself included that are false to ourselves and to others, we behave, myself included, especially piously towards those things that affect us not and less so for those things that affect us directly. The Catholic Church is clearly against abortion, homosexuality on the other hand well that takes time, that takes council. The Protestants talk of praising God but poverty itself is an anathema to their practice, seldom do they go without or see any virtue in 'selling their possessions' and only then following Jesus.

It is interesting, the Santa Clausification of Christ of which Cornell West speaks, his attenuation to the way in which we water down the gospel to make it 'comfortable' was created by Thomas Nast a fierce anti-Catholic. It is hardly possible that St. Nicholas of himself would have become the central figure of Christmas were it not for Nast's characterization of the man. Protestants are not the only ones engaged in distorting the Word of God, diluting it to ineffectiveness so to speak. To soothe parishoners even priest fail to remember certain passages like when Christ says that he has come to cast fire on the earth, that he comes with a sword and not peace, or even Matthew 15:26 when Jesus told the Canaanite woman that it was not right to throw the children's bread to the dogs, I have heard Catholic priest claim,"Oh, He was just kidding. It was a joke." imagine that.

Yet still we must know that Santa Claus was a real person in fact the uncanonized St. Nicholas who was known to give gifts to those that came in contact with him was actually well remembered figure by Pope John Paul II. The actual Santa Clausification or fictionalization of this real person was carried out by political cartoonist Thomas Nast as well through the poet and Columbia University professor Clement Clarke Moore who was attributed to be the author of the originally anomalously published, "A Visit From St. Nicholas" or "The Night Before Christmas".

But what of the True Church?

When we look at the lives of the Saints like that of St. Bartholomew we see terrible suffering. It is quite a difficult thing to look at the lives of the saint's and see something for ourselves that we want. However, In Catholicism there is a great premium but on martyrdom (which the Protestants do not have but would like for the purpose of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.) Yet when a Catholic looks at how other Catholics can sometimes interpret the faith they would have one imagine that Catholicism is a wonderful and divine history of love. Just to look at the many wars of religion that have existed between the Protestants and the Catholics though luckily not here in the United States (which is in part as a religious safe haven it had come into existence the way we know it today) we can see that to actually be a practicing Catholic one cannot live in an Ivory tower of pollyannish purity. The St. Bartholomew Day's massacre of 1572 was more than a week long of horrible butchery much like the Rwanda tragedy between the Hutu and the Tutsi in 1994, where Calvinist Huguenots at least 2000 in Paris and another 3000 in the French Provinces were slaughtered by the Catholics for fear that they would do it to them. To which the then Pope, Pope Gregory XVIII had cast commemorative coins to celebrate, calling the murder of the Huguenot Admiral Coligny an act of divine retribution, he commissioned art work from the painter Giorgio Vasari to paint three murals which hung in the Sala Regin, and order a Te Deum to be sung and thereafter designated September 11th 1572 as a joint commemoration of the battle of Lepanto and the massacre of the Huguenots.

St. Bartholomew himself of course died a martyr, he was flayed alive and then crucified, reportedly upside down.

Then there is of course the sex scandal that took place in the Catholic Church. It is not to condemn the Church that I publish this here but to note the challenge to the faithful that exist when one tries to reminisce on the Church as a pure and unblemished white cotton fabric which it is not. The children who were preyed upon lived with this terrible knowledge about the Church for years in silence. It is only fitting that we share this sense of shame for the Church with them and the reality is that the only thing that was lost or should have been soiled was this notion that many Catholics would like to have that the Catholic Church is in fact pristine and spotless. As soon as we do away with that we can see these children as psychological martyrs every bit as grotesque to us as the visible Crucifixion of Christ on the cross.

Which of us are free from the truth? We all know to be humble and subservient to our superiors but how difficult is it to practice our faith really? We could look at Christ on the Cross or St. Bartholomew, or any of the martyred saints. Do we really practice in full knowledge or in a blissful ignorance? I am sure that in all of this I will be painted the devil and the 'good' Catholics who serve at the mass every day will be the saints because none of this is usually in their minds and still yet they would prefer not to know. Also make no mistake I am not advocating a moral relativism or suggesting that you should by any means eat from this tree, the Church is right in what it teaches and obedience is superior to any knowledge of good and evil. In fact I am sure it a blessing really the things we do not know and in fact choose to forget, yet let it be known that every Sunday just like the last supper of Christ, where we brake bread with Jesus we brake bread with Judas as well.

Tale of two America's:The One You Think You Know and The One You Are Desperately Avoiding

There is the practice of trying to discern the truth in all things that I know I practice and has been a recurrent theme in my life as it is a matter of my nature to do so. It is for the benefit of man and a component of his necessities that he cling to God for the same self evaluation of his own behavior. How else will he know if he is decieving himself with out the aid of the truth and the stability of the Other?

Pride and self-deception runs amok in the United States. When we look at the fiscial fiascos of Enron and World Com, Arther Anderson. When we look at Bear Sterns, Wachovia, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. When we look at the atom bomb, the subsequent American policy of mutually assured destruction. The nuclear non-proliferation treaty, to the current missle shield controversy which has set the Russians to saber rattling again with the prospect of a second cold war however improbable. All on the unfounded fears of Albert Einstien who prompted FDR to build the bomb in the first place. A tough decision which perhaps both men felt an uncontested obligation to make save ofcourse if they had a trust in God. There is still the reality of how much better off the world would be without nuclear weapons, actually only used in Nagasaki and Hiroshima and at the end of World War II. How much wiser we would be if we had never developed them now seems clear. There is the catastrophic failure on August 1, 2007 of the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge. Catastrophic failures often lead to cascading failures, the question is, 'Exactly what link on the chain of American ethical responsibilty does the collapse of this bridge reside'. It started with someone taking a bribe but where will it end? The child sex abuse scandal of the Catholic Church in America. The absurdity of homosexual marriages and the absurd denial until now of the future liabitly to our enviornment of simply dumping tons of carbon into the air from combustion engines and factories, year after year. What were we telling ourselves, that it was just all disappearing somewhere in the stratosphere? What were we doing mass producing both cars and lawyers? Cars are going to dump carbon into the atmosphere and lawyers need someone to sue in order to make a living. Where was our science, reason and rationale in these places? Where was our wisdom?

All of these epsidoes in American history have places where they could have been stopped had someone with character acted accordingly. The American Catholic Bishop who could have stopped the pedophile priest, not pass him on to another unsuspecting parish, why could this action not have been taken? A Federal Reserve that stand up to congress, A CIA that stands up to the President of the United States and an FDA that stands up to the pharmacutical companies that they are dependant on or fold all together to at least expose the fallacy that they have any power at all when it comes to the guarenting the safety of pharmacuticals.

Edwin Blacks 2004 book entitled "War on the Weak" explored an agency that did stand up. At the turn of the twentith century pockets of eugenist in America petitioned the United States Census Bureau to recategorize certain human beings then catorgorized in the 1880s by the US Census Bureau as "the defective, the dependent and the deliquent" . With the 'defectives' being the mentally ill, the elderly and infirm representing the 'dependent' and prisoners representing the 'deliquent'. The Eugenics Record Office in 1916 at this time headed by none other than Alexander Grahm Bell, was granted access to the Census Bureaus records and procedures when Harry Laughlin a ERA executive proposed to create a survey of those in state custodial and chariable care. He was given the title "special agent of the Bureau of the Census" for the purpose and wanted to recatagorize these people as 'socially inadequate'. 'Socially inadequate" people by Laughlins definition were those who "entail a drag upon those members of the community who have sufficient insight, initiative, competenc, physicl strength and social instincts to enable them to live effective lives..."

The Census Bureau to its credit refused to classify people in this way and albeit standing up to the then popular but non governmental agency of the Eugenics Record Office was no doubt a lot easier than what pressures the Federal Reserve, the CIA and the FDA have to face, it is still to their credit that they did not submit under pressure. For instance think of the creep between being a catagorized as a 'defective' to someone being catagorized as 'socially inadequate', i.e. unfit to live amongst society. What about in today's political climate where one can be classified as a criminal and go to prison or a 'military combatant' and go to Guantanmo or a hidden CIA prison in another country. There is currently the reclassifications of homosexuals as well adjusted oppossed to psychologically ill by the American Psychological Association or Pluto no longer being classified as a planet. Ones life and status and value can change according to a new principal of accounting.

It has to strike the reader of the potential creep between being classifed as 'socially inadequate' by the United States Census Bureau and the role of mass sterialization, which is what the Eugenics Record Office wanted to do, or mass termination, which is what the Nazi party in the early 1940's in fact did do, as the Germans took the American Eugenics program for themselves and took it a step further. However, the U.S. Census Bureau said no and that in it self was a significant act.

A Tale of Two Women

Most of us are familiar with the famous poem written by Emma Lazarus inscribed on the Statue of Liberty entitled "The New Colossus", "..."Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

However how many of us are familiar with the words of another famous woman, Margret Sanger, negative euginst and founder of Planned Parenthood abortion clinics.
"The emergency problem of segregation and sterilization must be faced immediately. Every feeble-minded girl or woman of the hereditary type, especially of the moron class, should be segregated during the reproductive period. Otherwise, she is almost certain to bear imbecile children, who in trun are just as certain to breed other defectives. The male defectives are no less dangerous. Segregation carried out for one or two generations would give us only partial control of the problem. Moreover, when we realize that each feeble-minded person is a potential source of an endless progeny of defect, we prefer the policy of immediate sterialization, of making sure that parenthood is absolutely prohibited to the feeble-minded."*

The first is written by a poet, the second by a social activist who founded Planned Parenthood. There is this reality, that when today we speak of 'birth-control' it was then regarded as a method of controling specific populations of people, controlling the people who in fact wanted to have children, through involuntarily sterilization. Margret Sanger proposals smacks eerily of concentration camps. It is a demand for control that human beings do not ordinarily have, it is the control of others when perhaps with a complete lack of 'self-control' and certainly with no control on those like Sanger from a God above. They renounce God and try to control life on earth themselves.

The notion that America is a great 'melting' pot is also not a part of actual American philosophy that term was coined by British playwright Israel Zangwill in the early twentith century.*

The America that many of us believes in is mostly fabled stories concocted by playwrights and poets. The actual American sentiment is found in people like Margert Sanger and Harry Laughlin not Emma Lazarus and Israel Zangwill.

Some of the things that we endevor upon to make 'this world a better place' are extremely negative and misguided. In our pride where we think that we are doing good in the world we are doing terrible mischief. We have to admit God first and foremost in our lives to prevent the ever recurring delusion that we are greater than all others or Him for that matter. Today we sit here and bask in the dew of foolishness with the looming possiblity that whole sections of the United States may eventually be uninhabitable due to torrential winds and flooding a result of global warming. We live with a credit crisis lead by the fiscially elite most of whom went to our best schools but with a 'say anything' policy that eventually leads to a $200 bilion dollar burden on the American tax payer even when we are told that there may not be any funding for social security. We have bridges that collapse because someone is not doing their job or taking a bribe, bridges to nowhere but again stemming from public funds and wars which are at best inconclusive not only as to how, when or 'if' they end with a debatable victory and no spoils of war but also exactly how and why they started in the first place,and with whom. Most Americans probably couldn't tell you in a sound bite why, five, six years after it started why we went to war with Iraq to anyone's satisfaction including their own. Blow back and surprises which baffle the day to day citizen seem to fall from behind a veil of intrigue of special intrests groups and self created organizations who march on coining a mission for themselves and think that they are serving mankind when in fact they are only serving their pride.