More Canadian Anglicans break away to join the Roman Catholic Church

I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel:
Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. Galatians 1:6-7

As reported by Sheila Dabu Nonato of Postmedia News, April 18, 2012:

Pockets of breakaway Anglican groups in Canada, including their married priests, are joining the Roman Catholic Church in ceremonies across the country.

Conservative Anglicans say their beliefs are more in line with Rome than with increasingly liberal teachings of some of their own bishops regarding hot-button issues, such as female priests and same-sex marriage.

Deborah Gyapong, an Ottawa-based freelance journalist who reports for Catholic and evangelical newspapers, was one of about 40 Anglicans recently welcomed at a rite of reception in Ottawa on Sunday, part of several Anglican parishes across the country that will be entering into "full communion" with the Catholic Church.

There will be about 100 new members in Canada. They will become part of the Canadian Deanery of St. John the Baptist of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter under Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson, a former Anglican bishop who is a married Catholic priest based in Houston.

Meanwhile, dozens of Anglicans will join from parishes in Oshawa, Ont., Kingston, Ont., Montreal, Edmonton, Vancouver and the Tynendinaga Mohawk Territory in southeastern Ontario, in the coming weeks. Groups recently have joined from Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont., Calgary and former Anglicans in Toronto.

Gyapong said it's been a "difficult" journey to join the Catholic Church because of some "internal splits," but adds she is overjoyed and "grateful we're finally home."
"People talk about us as disgruntled, disaffected. We love the Catholic Church. We love Pope Benedict. We were rooting for him long before the conclave," she said.

Gyapong is a member of the Traditional Anglican Church that sought formal unity with Rome in 2007, with two requests: that they are able to keep their Anglican liturgy and married clergy. Two years later, Pope Benedict signed a papal document opening the door to Anglicans who wished to join the Catholic Church.

About 700 people packed Ottawa's St. Patrick's Basilica to witness the ceremony on Sunday.
In Victoria, 22 Anglicans joined the Catholic Church in a recent ceremony attended by about 600 people at St. Andrew's Cathedral.

Ottawa Archbishop Terence Prendergast celebrated the "Anglican Use Liturgy" approved for use in the Catholic Church, the first Roman Catholic archbishop outside of the United States to celebrate the liturgy.

Prendergast told Postmedia News he hopes this will move Christians "towards greater unity," instead of "hardening" people's positions on Christian unity because they oppose these developments.

He stressed that it was not about "poaching" churchgoers, but acting upon the request of Anglicans who want to join the Catholic Church.

Prendergast explained that married Anglican clergy who are applying to become Catholic priests can remain married, but the move will not affect the celibacy rule affecting Catholic clergy.

Ms. Gyapong had reported on the April 15, 2012 event beforehand in Canadian Catholic News, April 6, 2012:

OTTAWA - On the Octave Sunday of Easter, two bishops of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada (ACCC) — Bishop Peter Wilkinson in Victoria and Bishop Carl Reid in Ottawa — will lead their clergy and people into the Catholic Church.

Other congregations and fellowships across the country, part of the ACCC’s temporary Pro-Diocese of Our Lady of Walsingham, will follow on April 22 or dates soon to be announced. They will become Ordinariate parishes-in-waiting in their respective Roman Catholic dioceses, including groups in Edmonton, Oshawa, Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, Montreal and possibly Vancouver.

Victoria Bishop Richard Gagnon and Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast will receive the groups at special Masses. Afterwards, the bishops will provide spiritual oversight and priests to celebrate the Anglican Use liturgy for the new Catholics until their own priests are ordained and the parishes can join the American Ordinariate.
These parishes will join two previously received into the Catholic Church to eventually form the Canadian Deanery of St. John the Baptist of the American Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. It was established on Jan. 1, 2012 with Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson, a former Episcopalian bishop and married Catholic priest, as Ordinary.

Prendergast described the move as “among the first fruits” of the response to Anglicanorum coetibus, Pope Benedict XVI’s Apostolic Constitution that offered a way for Anglicans to become Catholic while retaining some aspects of their tradition, including their liturgy.

“While the Apostolic Constitution left open the possibility of an Ordinariate in Canada, this linking of Anglicans in Canada to the United States Ordinariate as a Deanery attached to it is a good step for now,” said Prendergast.

The decision to enter the Catholic Church now began as a meeting between Gagnon, Wilkinson and some Catholic and ACCC clergy late last year.

“We’ve been met with nothing but kindness,” said Wilkinson. “Catholic bishops have stepped up to the plate across the country and cared for us.”

Never licensed as an Anglican priest in Canada because he was too “catholic,” Wilkinson founded the ACCC in 1977 and Reid assisted as a lay person in building the new church.

In the past two years, the worldwide Traditional Anglican Communion and the ACCC both experienced pressures that disintegrated them. In Canada, many parishes have split, sometimes more than once, or abandoned the ACCC altogether. This is a sad result for Wilkinson who believes the TAC played a key role in the Holy Father’s response in the Apostolic Constitution.

“I still believe that it was the TAC’s letter that we took to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that began the process because we had taken doctrine off the table and made the Catechism of the Catholic Church our statement of faith,” he said.

Gagnon will receive Wilkinson, five priests, two religious sisters of the Servants of the Sacred Cross, a nun and several dozen lay people at the 5 p.m. service in his cathedral that “will contain music that is generally no longer heard at our Masses in Canada but is common to their tradition — and still possible within ours,” according to the diocesan bulletin.

In Ottawa, Prendergast will receive the Ottawa group as the first Roman Catholic archbishop anywhere to celebrate the Anglican Use liturgy approved for use in the Catholic Church.

“It is quite a reverent liturgy, more formal than even our newly retranslated Roman Missal, but quite accessible,” he said. It has “affinities with the Extraordinary Form of the Mass that I knew and served as a boy and more recently have celebrated on several occasions for the parish entrusted to the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter here in Ottawa.

“How this gift will be shared with the wider Church remains to be seen. Clearly, just as members of the Anglican Communion who are now being received individually and as groups will be free to attend Mass and receive Communion at other Roman Catholic parish churches in their neighbourhoods, so their Roman Catholic friends will, from time to time, attend this liturgical usage and communicate.”

He has also kept the Anglican Bishop of Ottawa John Chapman informed of the developments.

Toronto Cardinal Thomas Collins, the episcopal delegate for the Apostolic Constitution in Canada, has been involved in every step. Prendergast realized that in addition to consulting with Collins and Gagnon, he should also consult Steenson, who is based in Houston, Texas.

“I found him a delightful person, a real leader with clear ideas and principles who knows Canada a good bit already,” Prendergast said. “He is looking forward to a visit to Ottawa when time permits.”

In March, Steenson visited with Wilkinson and Gagnon in Victoria and stopped in Calgary to visit the parish-in-waiting of St. John the Evangelist, the only Ordinariate-bound parish from the Anglican Church of Canada. This parish was received into the Calgary diocese last Dec. 18.

On Jan. 1, Hamilton Bishop Douglas Crosby received members of an ACCC group based in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont.

Afterward, Ms. Gyapong filed this report on April 19, 2012:

OTTAWA - Bishops in Ottawa and Victoria received two groups from the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada (ACCC) into the Roman Catholic Church April 15, including two former ACCC bishops and about a half dozen clergy.

"Today, the Body of Christ is a little more healed, a little more unified," Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast told more than 700 people who packed St. Patrick's Basilica. "Today, after half a millennium, separated brethren are separated no more. We are brethren, rejoicing at the same banquet table. Hallelujah."
In Victoria, an estimated 600 people packed St. Andrew's Cathedral, where Bishop Richard Gagnon welcomed the former metropolitan bishop of the ACCC, Peter Wilkinson.

The two groups received on Divine Mercy Sunday will soon become part of the Canadian Deanery of St. John the Baptist of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter under Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson, who was named the Ordinary when the American Ordinariate was erected Jan. 1. Steenson, a former Episcopal (Anglican) bishop, is a married Catholic priest who teaches theology at the University of St. Thomas and St. Mary's Seminary in Houston.

"I am overjoyed to be a part of your journey today and to welcome members of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church," Prendergast said in his homily.

Prendergast celebrated the Anglican Use Liturgy using the Book of Divine Worship approved for use in the Catholic Church. He was the first Roman Catholic archbishop outside of the United States to celebrate this liturgy.

"I commend the courage and fortitude of our brothers and sisters of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada. Your journey has not been easy," Prendergast said. "I commend your humility and your sacrifice. You have suffered much. I commend your tradition and your zeal. You will bless and strengthen the Roman Catholic Church by your presence.

"You are not just favoured guests. This is your home," he said. "We love you. I love you. May our public witness of unity draw many from the edges of faith into God's Kingdom, no longer subject to judgment but to Divine Mercy."

About 30 were welcomed in the rite of reception in Ottawa, while other members of the former ACCC were received beforehand or will be soon. In Victoria, about 22 were received.

More groups will be received from the ACCC in the coming weeks. On April 22, Toronto Auxiliary Bishop Vincent Nguyen will receive an ACCC parish from Oshawa, Ont., and Kingston Archbishop Brendan O'Brien will receive an ACCC group from the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory.

An ACCC group from Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont., was received on Jan. 1 by Hamilton Bishop Douglas Crosby. ACCC groups in Vancouver, Edmonton, Montreal and Sydney also hope to be received soon.

A former Anglican Church of Canada parish in Calgary, St. John the Evangelist, was received on Dec. 18. Steenson visited the Calgary Ordinariate group on April 15 and baptized the daughter of former Anglican priest Lee Kenyon and his wife Elizabeth. Kenyon will be ordained soon as a Catholic priest.

There is also a Toronto Ordinariate group composed of former Anglicans. Toronto Cardinal Thomas Collins received four former Anglicans into the Catholic Church on Dec. 18.

Islamic school kicked out of Toronto public school property amid accusations of anti-Jewish course material

As reported by Canadian Press, May 16, 2012 (links inserted by blogger):

TORONTO - The Toronto District School Board has forbidden a controversial Islamic school from operating out of one of its properties.

The board revoked the permit for the East End Madrassah, a Sunday school for Muslim children, citing an ongoing police investigation into alleged anti-Semitic course material.

East End Madrassah came under fire earlier this month after Jewish groups objected to material posted on its website.

A curriculum document compared Judaism with Nazism and said that "treacherous jews" had killed Islam's Prophet.

TDSB spokeswoman Shari Schwartz-Maltz says East End Madrassah will have to find a new meeting place until the police investigation is complete, adding the board has also requested a meeting with school officials to ensure their teachings are in line with the board's policies.

Schwartz-Maltz says East End Madrassah complied willingly and was quick to apologize for the controversy.

"We've had a relationship with the organization for about 30 years, and in that 30 years we've had no complaints whatsoever," she said.

Jewish groups praised the board's decision, calling it an excellent first step.

David Spiro, Toronto co-chair of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, said he hopes the TDSB will eventually sever all ties with the school.

"Given the presence of anti-Semitic passages in the curriculum, and the dubious activism of its religious leadership, it is clear that the Madrassah has disqualified itself as a partner with the School Board on any level," Spiro said in a statement.

Madrassah issued a written apology for the controversial passages on its website, which it said should never have been included in its curriculum.

The offending material was removed immediately after the organization received a complaint on May 3, it said.

"Our curriculum is not intended to promote hatred towards any individual or group of people, rather the children are taught to respect and value other faiths, beliefs and to uphold Canada’s basic values of decency and tolerance," Madrassah said in the statement issued earlier this month.

"We unreservedly apologize to the Jewish community for the unintentional offence that the item has caused."

Police have announced they are probing an official complaint against Madrassah filed by the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which initially discovered the contentious curriculum content.

Ontario Premier DaltonMcGuinty threw his support behind the investigation, saying there was no room for hatred or intolerance in the province's schools.

Ontario public school district bans distribution of Gideon Bibles

As reported by Colin Perkel of Canadian Press, April 17, 2012 (links inserted by blogger):

CHESLEY, Ont. - Public school trustees defied vitriol, threats and impassioned pleas by finalizing a ban Tuesday on the free handouts of Gideon Bibles.

The 8-3 vote at the Bluewater District board barring distribution of any non-instructional religious materials ended months of fractious and emotionally charged debate over the ending of the decades-old practice.

The decision, which follows in the footsteps of several other public school boards in Canada, was made on legal advice that allowing the distribution could violate human-rights legislation.

Bill Donovan, of Owen Sound, Ont., a father with one child in the Bluewater system, opposed the distribution because it "undermines the secular nature" of public schools.

"I feel most pleased, though, that the decision derived from the law of the land, administered by an elected board, in a secular fashion," Donovan said.

"It bolsters my faith in the admirable society we have here in Ontario and Canada."

Vociferous opponents of the ban had accused trustees of betraying their Canadian and Christian heritage.

Several trustees received threats and hate mail, much of it anti-immigrant.

As a result, the board took security precautions for the evening vote, which went off without incident.

Before the vote, one speaker, Bevan Lougheed, told the board that he wished on behalf of the Christian community to "explicitly condemn" expressions of hate.

"We just want to be consulted before you change a practice important to our heritage," Lougheed said.

Another public speaker said allowing the Bible giveaway amounted to discrimination.

The local chapter of Gideons International in Canada and some church elders had previously distanced themselves from the more extreme views espoused by ban opponents.

Still, the invective unnerved members of the board, which has more than 18,000 students in 53 schools in Ontario's Bruce and Grey counties.

Trustees stressed the ban applies only to non-instructional religious materials.

"Multi-faith content in the public elementary and secondary school curriculum for educational purposes will continue," board chairwoman Jan Johnstone said earlier.

"Bibles and other religious texts will continue to be available in our libraries."

Some parents have said they might take their children out of the public school system in light of the ban.

Gideons International in Canada, which has been offering the free Bible to Grade 5 students, said the organization would take a ban with "complete acceptance."

Johnstone rejected as out of order a proposed "compromise" amendment that would have sent the ban motion out for system-wide consultation before a final vote.

Another trustee, holding a Gideon Bible she once received, called it a sad day.

"The system was not broken," said Marilyn McComb, who spoke passionately against the ban. "We spent five months debating a problem that was not a problem."

Once again, in the name of "tolerance," secularist liberals start banning books. I agree with those who condemn invective against the ruling that may reflect an unchristian temper, but I agree with the objections to the ban. I don't know what human rights legislation could be violated by the free distribution of Bibles, since children aren't required to read or believe the content. For those who say that if schools allow the distribution of Bibles they may also have to allow the distribution of Qur'ans and other books regarded as sacred, I'm all in favour of it. The best way to find out what religions teach is by reading the wrtings they regard as authoritative.

Secularist organization calls for inquiry into prevalence of exorcisms in Canada

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. Matthew 7:21-23

As reported by Ashley Wills of CKOM, April 17, 2012 (links inserted by blogger):

SASKATOON - An organization which promotes scientific, critical and skeptical thinking is calling for an inquiry to learn just how prevalent exorcisms are in Canada after a news report last week said a Saskatoon church is actively seeking an exorcist.

In some severe cases, believing you are possessed by a demon is an actual symptom of mental illness, said Justin Trottier with the Centre for Inquiry.

"There isn't a lot evidence to suggest that these claims for demonic possession are anything more than an association with known medical and psychiatric illnesses," Trottier said.

"We can't have unlicensed and unregulated individuals performing what essentially amounts to medical or psychiatric treatment."

Last week, there were reports that Saskatoon's Roman Catholic Diocese was searching for an exorcist after a priest was called to a home by a woman who said her uncle showed signs of being possessed by the devil.

Blessings were offered until his behaviour returned to normal, but church officials said no formal exorcism took place.

"In Jesus's ministry, there were exorcisms and so it's not something we can lightly dismiss," Bishop Don Bolan with the Saskatoon Roman Catholic Diocese said Tuesday.

"But the headline that the bishop of Saskatoon is looking for an exorcist is a vast oversimplification."

The church recognizes the importance of psychology and medicine to assist those struggling with mental illness, said Bolan, adding that prayer and spiritual support are part of the healing process.

"We are seeking as a diocese to determine how to pastorally respond to people in all kinds of situations of mental distress," he said, but looking for a priest trained in performing exorcisms isn't a priority.

"I've been a priest for nearly 21 years and I have never been a part of an exorcism, never heard a direct report of an exorcism," Bolan said.

It's important to not sidestep psychiatry and go straight into a spiritual practice, said David Nelson, executive director of the Saskatchewan branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association.

"There are mental illnesses that I would jump to — and I think professionals and most of our culture would jump to first — as opposed to a demonic possession," he said.

He said, however, there are rare circumstances where an exorcism might be helpful as an additional intervention, depending on the type of mental illness or psychiatric problem.

"In the context of a person's religion or their culture, it might be demonstrated that some sort of intervention, like an exorcism may be some help with that."

A recent survey the CMHA conducted about Canadians understanding of what mental illnesses are and what they are not revealed there is not enough being done to educate the public about various illnesses and what causes them, Nelson said.

"We found that there's still a tremendous amount of what you might just call plain old fashioned ignorance about the cause and the mythologies and the level of problem that mental illnesses are."

New Jersey man implants four magnets in his wrist in order to wear an iPod Nano without straps

Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the LORD. Leviticus 19:28

As reported by Jeff Saginor of Digital Trends, May 10, 2012:

The pantheon of bodily devotion to tech just got a new hero: Meet Dave Hurban. He’s the guy that embedded 4 magnets in his left wrist in order to attach an iPod Nano to his body. The project is called iDermal, and Hurban can now simply rest an iPod on his arm and be on his merry way — that is, until Apple inevitably redesigns the diminutive music player, which is now on its sixth iteration. We got in touch with Dave and asked him a few questions about the whole procedure, including why he did it — it may not surprise you to find that as an experienced body piercer, Hurban is more interested in living in the moment and doing cool things than whether Apple will change its iconic design anytime soon.

Hurban explained that the technique he used to get the four magnets under his skin to hold the iPod in place is actually a fairly typical one in the world of body piercing. “Those magnets are actually called micro-dermal anchors,” Dave explained, “and in body piercing they are very common. The tops are actually just 5 millimeter magnetic tops.” If you check out the admittedly cringe-worthy video of the process that the design firm Kaleidoscope Kreative shot, you can witness Hurban planting those very anchors, with a look of placid concentration on his face. “I took the ends of magnets and actually adhered them to the back of the iPod, and that’s how they click into my skin.”

When asked about how much the whole thing hurt, Dave explained, “It actually wasn’t as bad as I thought. It definitely is not the worst piercing I’ve ever done to myself. I was actually just very determined to do the piercing correctly.” We did not dare ask about his most painful piercing.

The true test of success in this case, however, is if the iPod actually stays put and does what it’s supposed to — there’s not much point of a Borg-like human/iPod arm if the thing keeps falling off. Thankfully, Hurban claims that he can swing his arm back and forth and the music player won’t budge. “I can go for a run and it won’t come off. I’ve already taken it to the gym and jogged with it on.” And when he wears the iPod in public, he gets his fair share of stunned responses. “When people see this, it’s like they’ve seen something that no one else has done, ever, it’s just such a crazy concept. And it almost takes them a little bit of time to grasp. I actually am the inventor of the strapless watch.”

When asked about the capricious nature of Apple product cycles — hey isn’t the Nano due for an upgrade just about…now? — Hurban is characteristically Zen: “I did it because I’m living in the now. I did it because it’s cool now. Even if they do come out with a new iPod, the fact that I did this when this iPod was out, that’s what matters.” Hurban disregards any negative reaction to the piercing, such as some of the comments on his YouTube video documenting the procedure, explaining that the idea was for a strapless watch, the iPod is an infinitely cool gadget, and nothing is going to change that. “To be honest, if they come up with a new one, and it’s bigger or smaller, I probably won’t change it.” Hurban wasn’t making a grand statement about the human reliance on technology in modern society, about how we are all on our phones and Mp3 players so often that they might as well be embedded in us. He also wasn’t trying to sell us something using the jaded cynicism of a viral publicity stunt. According to Hurban, “the ultimate reasoning was that I just thought it would be cool.”

Canada to phase out SIN cards to prevent identity theft

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads...
...And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand,
The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb...
...And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. Revelation 13:16; 14:9-10; 20:4

For non-Canadian readers, SIN is an acronym for Social Insurance Number. As reported by Meagan Fitzpatrick of CBC News, May 15, 2012:

Social Insurance Number cards are going to be a thing of the past starting in 2014 in an effort to cut costs and to reduce the risk of identity theft.

The measures to phase out the plastic cards are contained in the federal government's massive budget implementation bill and were discussed as part of a Senate committee's study of the bill on Tuesday morning.

An official from Service Canada said cancelling the cards will save the government about $1.5 million annually. Peter Boyd said Canadians will be advised of their SIN via letter, adding that because the plastic cards have no security features, it is "not prudent" to use them for identification.

Social insurance numbers are required by Canadians to work and to access government programs and services. There is no fee to get a SIN card but it costs $10 to replace one.

"It costs an awful lot to produce. People still will be getting a social insurance number, they just won't be getting the card," Human Resources Minister Diane Finley said Tuesday in an interview with Evan Solomon on CBC's Power & Politics. "One of the things we found was it's a piece that's used frequently for identity theft."

"You won't have to worry about losing your card anymore," said Finley.

The government currently advises people not to carry their SIN card because of the risk of it getting stolen or lost.

Finley's office said Canadians should always keep their SIN private "as it can be a source of identity theft or fraud if not kept safe."

"Along with better protecting Canadians' personal information, this responsible approach will also save taxpayers' hard-earned money by not producing physical cards and replacements," Finley's spokeswoman Alyson Queen said in an email.

Yes, a mark in the right hand or forehead is much more difficult to lose, steal, or counterfeit. It's only a matter of time...

Tel Aviv voted "best gay city"

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. Leviticus 18:22

And Judah did evil in the sight of the Lord, and they provoked him to jealousy with their sins which they had committed, above all that their fathers had done.
For they also built them high places, and images, and groves, on every high hill, and under every green tree.
And there were also sodomites in the land: and they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the Lord cast out before the children of Israel. I Kings 14:22-24

And in the twentieth year of Jeroboam king of Israel reigned Asa over Judah.
And forty and one years reigned he in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Maachah, the daughter of Abishalom.
And Asa did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, as did David his father.
And he took away the sodomites out of the land, and removed all the idols that his fathers had made. I Kings 15:9-12

Jehoshaphat was thirty and five years old when he began to reign; and he reigned twenty and five years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Azubah the daughter of Shilhi.
And he walked in all the ways of Asa his father; he turned not aside from it, doing that which was right in the eyes of the Lord...
...And the remnant of the sodomites, which remained in the days of his father Asa, he took out of the land. I Kings 22:42-43a, 46

Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty and one years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Jedidah, the daughter of Adaiah of Boscath.
And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the way of David his father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left...
...And he put down the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah, and in the places round about Jerusalem; them also that burned incense unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven.
And he brought out the grove from the house of the Lord, without Jerusalem, unto the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the children of the people.
And he brake down the houses of the sodomites, that were by the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the grove. II Kings 22:1-2; 23:5-7

Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. Romans 1:24-32

The reader will note from the passages in I and II Kings cited above the association between sodomy and idolatry. Mister, we could use men like Asa, Jehoshaphat, and Josiah again.

If I were offered free trips (the only kind I can afford) to various cities in the world, Tel Aviv would definitely not be on my list. On the whole, I'd rather be in St. Petersburg, which recently passed a law criminalizing "public action aimed at propagandising sodomy, lesbianism, bisexualism, and transgenderism among minors"..

As reported by Ynet News, January 11, 2012:

Tel Aviv has been named the Best Gay City of 2011 in an international American Airlines competition selecting the most popular destinations among LGTB tourists.

The Israeli metropolis won 43% of the votes, leaving New York City behind in the second place with only 14% of the votes.

The top 10 cities also included Toronto, Sao Paulo, Madrid, London, New Orleans and Mexico City. Voting was held last month on the company's website.

The competition included additional categories, including Best Nightlife (won by New York City), Best Pride (San Francisco) and Best Sand & Sun (Sydney).

Tel Aviv, which was marked as a favorite even before the voting concluded, was described during the competition as "the gay capital of the Middle East, exotic and welcoming, with a Mediterranean c'est la vie attitude."

Shai Doitsh, brand manager of the Tel Aviv Gay Vibe tourism campaign, told Ynet shortly after learning of the results: "This makes us very proud.

"This is the peak of six years of activity and further proof that the decision made by the Tourism Ministry and Tel Aviv Municipality to invest in gay tourism and put their faith in the program we built was the right decision.

"This is an excellent start for the coming year of activity, in which we will continue to innovate and surprise, and mainly bring thousands of tourists to Israel," he added.

It's not to the credit of Israel that support for the practice of sodomy is seen as a good thing, as expressed in this nonsensical column by Giulio Meotti in Ynet News, May 15, 2012:

Israel’s ambassador to the US Michael Oren has been severely criticized for having boasted the Jewish State’s record on gays at the recent Philadelphia Equality Forum. Western gay activists and militant leftists were furious because Mr. Oren got it right: Israel is not a country that treats homosexuals the way the Palestinian Authority and the Arab world do.

Tel Aviv is a not only a holy emerald city for gays; it’s the only place in the Middle East where gays are free to walk hand-in-hand and kiss in public.

A few days ago, Iran hanged four gays from cranes in public squares (and this after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad previously said that “homosexuality does not exist in Iran.”) Saudi Arabia beheads homosexuals, the Taliban put homosexuals to death by collapsing a wall on them, in Gaza Hamas refers to gays as “perverts and mentally sick” and in the Islamic-oriented West Bank “immoral behaviors” are a good reason for torture.

Islamic law prescribes five separate forms of death for homosexuals. To these, the Palestinian Authority added several of its own. As Yossi Klein Halevi reported a few years ago in The New Republic, in Tulkarem a Palestinian homosexual was forced to stand in sewage up to his neck, his head covered by a sack filled with feces, and then he was thrown into a cell infested with insects. During the interrogation, police stripped him and forced him to sit on a Coke bottle.

Israel has been in the forefront of granting protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation. Some 300 gay Palestinians fled to Israel in the last 20 years.

Gay men are sort of a “canary in a coal mine” for what is happening to other minority groups in the entire Middle East. In that sense, Palestinian gays in Israel share the same fate of the Rwandan and Darfur genocide survivors and the Bahais in Haifa, where they fled from the Iranian tyranny.

The story of gay Palestinians sheltered by Israel is a phenomenon totally silenced by the Western gay community. That’s why last year Spanish gay leaders could ban the Israeli delegation from the largest gay pride festival in Europe.


‘Army of gays’

Last November, the New York Times ran an op-ed by lesbian Jewish playwright Sarah Schulman, who denounced “the co-opting of white gay people by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim political forces in Western Europe and Israel.” Veteran feminist Phyllis Chesler called it “the Palestinization of gay activism.” These days, the loudest chants of “From the River to the Sea - Palestine will be free” are coming not only from Palestinian loudspeakers, but also from the mouths of Western gay militants.

Like human rights organizations, gay activism seems to hold Arabs to a lower standard. However, there have been some liberals who spoke the truth. In a speech at the University of California, Berkeley, Alan Dershowitz said: “I support Israel because I support gay rights.” A progressive congressman, Barney Frank from Massachusetts, also worked to grant asylum for 40 Palestinian gays.

Even before the Intifada, ritual murders of gays were common practice in Palestinian areas. But only with the Intifada has violence against gays skyrocketed and become politicized. The murders were carried out by masked men from the refugee camps who saw themselves as “guardians of the Intifada.”

Meanwhile, in Israel a soldier is a soldier, regardless of sexual orientation. In 1993 then Chief of Staff Ehud Barak, the most decorated soldier in Israel’s history, commented that “homosexuality is not a limitation to security.” Abu Odai, a coordinator of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, said that Israel will be defeated because it has “an army of gays.”

The Jewish State has made it a source of strength and homosexual soldiers are everywhere, at the checkpoints, in the trenches against Hezbollah and in the cyber-intelligence units. The film Yossi & Jagger recounts a love affair between two army officers who don’t sway or smile effeminately; they are just two men who discover that they love each other and guard a frontier outpost against those who behead gays.

One would be hard-pressed to find a country that oppresses its gays and treats its Jews well, or vice versa. From Nazi Germany to the Middle East, societies that persecute Jews will get to homosexuals eventually. Gays are the clearest proof possible that Israel is the only free oasis in the desert of fear.

Orthodox Jewish rabbis disagree with each other while criticizing Orthodoxy

As the old saying, goes, where you have two Jews, you'll get three opinions. According to Lawrence Grossman in Jewish Ideas Daily, May 15, 2012:

Either/Orthodoxy

Belying the regimented connotation of the word "orthodox," Orthodox Judaism is by far the most diverse stream of Judaism, encompassing such incompatible types as rationalists and mystics, West Bank settlers and peaceniks, college professors and obscurantists, feminists and male chauvinists.

Orthodoxy's internal critics, too, come in different varieties. Recently, two Orthodox rabbis have leveled serious charges against their religious community, one attacking its theology, the other its primary educational thrust. In important respects they contradict each other.

Norman Solomon is a distinguished British academician, recently retired from the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, who whimsically claims to belong to the "skeptical Orthodox." His latest book, Torah from Heaven, certainly exudes skepticism. It argues that the central assumption of classical Judaism—the divine origin of Torah—has become so clearly unbelievable in its literal sense that the only way to keep intellectually honest Jews from abandoning Orthodoxy is to reinterpret the doctrine not as fact but as foundational myth. Solomon, tongue firmly in cheek, tries to reassure the faithful by pointing out that myths are not necessarily false. But he clearly thinks this one is.

Solomon painstakingly traces the development of the notion of Torah from Heaven as it mushroomed to include not only the divinity of the Five Books of Moses and the somewhat lesser holiness of the rest of the Hebrew Bible, but also a divinely inspired Oral Torah, eventually written down in the Talmud, that explains and elucidates scripture, and rabbinic decrees and interpretations through the generations that are also alleged to embody God's will. Solomon then surveys the ancient and medieval critiques of the doctrine, which either denied the Oral Law (Sadducees and Karaites) or superseded or replaced both it and the Bible with a new revelation (Christians and Muslims).

The rabbis dealt with problems of internal contradictions, anthropomorphisms, and apparent moral blemishes in the Torah through what Solomon calls a "reconciling hermeneutic." Familiar to students of the Talmud, this mode of analysis employs ingenious interpretations of words and phrases and clever juxtaposition of texts to untangle difficulties. The method was sufficient to satisfy the pre-modern Jewish mind. But the challenges raised over the last 400 years to the divinity of Torah can no longer be so easily countered, writes Solomon, since we now understand "the relationship between revelation and other sources of knowledge"—archeology, history, anthropology, comparative religion, literary analysis, evolutionary biology. These disciplines throw into doubt not only the veracity of what is related in the Bible and the authority of the rabbis' Oral Torah but the textual integrity of scripture itself.

Solomon deftly catalogs the strategies that Orthodox thinkers have adopted to fend off these threats to tradition. Some—the currently popular ArtScroll publishing project, for example—simply close their eyes to any view that veers from the regnant Orthodox line, even if antecedents for it can be found in rabbinic literature. Others accept elements of modern thought and try to fit them into the traditional framework, reconciling the Big Bang, for example, with the Bible's Creation narrative. Another alternative, a favorite of the philosophically-minded, elevates Torah to a Kantian conceptual world immune from evaluation by earthbound criteria.

Solomon does not find any of this convincing: Torah from Heaven, he claims, "cannot be upheld by the serious historian, scientist, or philosopher." But how many Jews outside Solomon's academic ivory tower practice these rarefied professions? Does Solomon's alternative, appropriating the doctrine as myth, an "interpretation of history through faith," work any better? It is hard to imagine Orthodox Jews continuing their demanding regimen—of prayer, ritual, study, and raising their children to these tasks as well—for the sake of an Orthopraxy built upon myth.

Gidon Rothstein, a Yeshiva University-ordained rabbi and Harvard Ph.D., thinks Orthodoxy's problem lies elsewhere. He claims that We're Missing the Point—the title of his new book—by conveying Orthodoxy primarily as a system of commanded behaviors. While Norman Solomon came of age in the mid-20th century, when important elements of Orthodox Judaism sought to address intellectual challenges such as modern biblical scholarship, Rothstein is a generation younger, and his concern is how to square Orthodoxy with the currently treasured value of individual autonomy.

Flying in the face of the common assumption that Judaism is a religion of requirements and religious acts, Rothstein claims to find biblical proof that God originally intended to impose very few commands upon humanity, allowing men and women to devise their individual paths to emulate Him. Only after human beings' repeated failure to find God on their own did He impose an elaborate system of mitzvot on one model people, the Jews. And even now, Rothstein asserts, a Jew is supposed to view those commandments only as a bare-bones framework for developing a relationship with God that is primarily personal and spiritual—as he calls it, in the hackneyed vernacular of contemporary spirituality, a "personal journey."

The relationship that Rothstein advocates is based on the very same theological tenet that Solomon finds unbelievable: the idea that God revealed Himself to the Israelites and gave them the Torah. Blissfully ignorant of or indifferent to the thorny problems that the doctrine has encountered over the last few centuries, Rothstein calls this the "unequivocal core" of Judaism.

These two books are incommensurate: Solomon's is judicious and erudite, Rothstein's disorganized and somewhat bombastic. Yet their critiques of Orthodoxy, taken together, themselves invite a critical question: If Orthodox Judaism's core theological claim is weak, and if its commandment-centered approach to religion is so at odds with human autonomy, why is it so much more vibrant and successful than the liberal streams of Judaism, which suffer from neither deficiency?

Sodomites and lesbians to be ordained as Masorti (Conservative) rabbis in Israel

Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. Romans 1:24-32

It isn't only apostate "Christian" churches that are catering to the activist sodomite agenda. As reported by Jewish Telegraphic Agency, April 19, 2012:

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Gay and lesbian students will be ordained as Conservative rabbis in Israel.

The Board of Trustees of the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary voted Thursday night to accept gay and lesbian students for ordination beginning with the 2012-13 academic year. The Conservative movement in Israel is known as Masorti.

A seminary statement said the decision comes following a "long process."

“The Schechter Rabbinical Seminary views the serious process leading to this decision as an example of confronting social dilemmas within the framework of tradition and halachah,” or Jewish law, Hanan Alexander, chair of the seminary's Board of Trustees, said in the statement. “This decision highlights the institution’s commitment to uphold halachah in a pluralist and changing world.”

Students are ordained by a beit din, or rabbinical court, made up of three members of the Rabbinic Advisory Committee of the seminary, all of whom are members of the Rabbinical Assembly of the Masorti/Conservative movement. The beit din members are chosen by the candidate and subject to the approval of the seminary's dean. They have different opinions regarding the ordination of gay and lesbian students, according to the seminary.

"This unique mechanism is an expression of halachic pluralism, one of the founding principles of SRS," the seminary said in its statement. "The Seminary is a religious institution of the Masorti/Conservative Movement, bound by Halacha, whose inclusive approach allows for a variety of Halachic opinions."

One little joke about the Holocaust, and they're all over you

For in many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body.
Behold, we put bits in the horses' mouths, that they may obey us; and we turn about their whole body.
Behold also the ships, which though they be so great, and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small helm, whithersoever the governor listeth.
Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!
And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.
For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind:
But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. James 3:2-8

The justly-fired railroad employee responsible for the following incident apparently didn't understand that neither Jews nor Gentiles find anything humourous in the genocide of Jews by Nazis in World War II. From Belgium--which, like Trudeaupia (formerly Canada)--arrogates to itself the right to pass judgement on other countries, comes this item, as reported by Maayana Miskin of Arutz Sheva, May 4, 2012:

Passengers on a train in Belgium got a shock this week as the following announcement came over the speaker, “Welcome to the train to Auschwitz. The Jews are asked to get off at Buchenwald.”

More than 55,000 were murdered at the Buchenwald concentration camp during the Holocaust.

A railroad employee who heard the announcement ran to the room with the microphone, but found it empty. A short time later a second employee took to the sound system to apologize for the “unsuccessful joke.”

The Belgian national railroad, SNCB, denounced the incident, which took place on the Brussels-Namur line.

The employee has been found and fired, SNCB officials stated.

European Jewish Congress President Dr. Moshe Kantor recently warned that anti-Israel sentiment in Europe could lead to a “tsunami of hate” being unleashed against European Jews. The European Jewish Parliament has reported a “surge in anti-Semitism” as well.

A recent Anti-Defamation League (ADL) poll found “disturbingly high” levels of anti-Semitism among European respondents.

May 29, 2012 update: Here's another one, as reported by Jewish Telegraphic Agency, May 29, 2012:

ROME (JTA) – A crude joke about the Holocaust has cost a public health official in the town of Pavia his job, according to Italian media reports.

Giuseppe Imbalzano, 59, submitted his resignation Monday after a meeting with Pavia’s public health service director, according to reports.

At a meeting last week with local and regional officials, Imbalzano reportedly told a joke that asked the difference between Jews and cakes. The punch line stated, “When you put cakes in the oven they don’t scream.”

Imbalzano told the newspaper Il Giorno that he had not meant any harm.

“It was a silly joke that didn’t have any offensive spirit,” he said. “I never would have imagined that such nonsense would have stirred up such a storm.”

Imbalzano said others at the meeting smiled at the joke.

Israeli archaeologist claims new find supports biblical accounts of David and Solomon in Jerusalem

As reported by Ryan Jones of Israel Today, May 15, 2012:

A Hebrew University archeologist says finds at a new dig site near Jerusalem are backing up the biblical narrative of an Israelite kingdom centered on Jerusalem in 1000 BC, around the time of King David and his son, King Solomon.

Professor Yosef Garfinkel has been digging at Khirbet Qeiyafa near the Jerusalem suburb of Beit Shemesh since 2007. Carbon dating of unearthed olive pits has put the period of activity at Khirbet Qeiyafa at 1020 BC - 980 BC, almost exactly the period of time the Bible says David and Solomon were active in the region. The dating, together with the uniqueness of the finds, has made Khirbet Qeiyafa one of the most important biblical archeological digs.

Less than a year after working Khirbet Qeiyafa, Garfinkel unveiled what is believed to be the oldest Hebrew inscription found to date. At the time, Garfinkel said the inscription proved that vibrant, centralized and literate Hebrew kingdom existed in the area 3,000 years ago, just as the Bible says it did.

Last week, Garfinkel shared his latest find - two ancient models of shrines that very closely resemble the biblical description of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. The models would have presumably been used in religious rites.

Garfinkel also says it is now clear that Khirbet Qeiyafa was a walled town, which means it must have been part of a centralized larger kingdom.

Perhaps most importantly, Garfinkel says the site is completely devoid of pagan idols and imagery, and contains no pig bones, despite being well endowed with the bones of sheep, goats and cattle. Together this means the site must be Israelite remains, as the Israelites were the only local people forbidden from eating swine or engaging in pagan rituals.

All of this evidence combined is important because it counters the claims of some archeologists that the Bible is full of myths, which until now the have based on the lack of evidence for a large and centralized Israelite kingdom around 1000 BC.

"For the first time in history we have actual objects from the time of David, which can be related to monuments described in the Bible," Garfinkel said in a press release. "Various suggestions that completely deny the biblical tradition regarding King David and argue that he was a mythological figure, or just a leader of a small tribe, are now shown to be wrong."

Still, not everyone is convinced, and many Israeli archeologist and professors continue to label the Bible as national folklore. Garfinkel hopes that continued work at Khirbet Qeiyafa and other sites will eventually lay bare the truth.

Islamist groups condemn Egypt's Grand Mufti for visiting the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem

As reported by Jewish Telegraphic Agency, April 19, 2012:

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Islamist groups including the Muslim Brotherhood condemned a visit to the Al-Aksa Mosque by Egypt's grand mufti, one of the country's highest religious authorities.

Sheik Ali Goma, accompanied by Ghazi bin Muhammad, chief adviser to Jordan's King Abdullah II for religious and cultural affairs, visited the mosque located on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on Wednesday. It was Goma's first visit to the shrine.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement with close ties to Hamas that won nearly half the seats in the new Egyptian parliament, was among the groups that said the visit lent legitimacy to Israel's control of Jerusalem. Goma countered on Thursday via Twitter that he entered Jerusalem from the West Bank via Jordan and not through Israel.

Some extremists, including members of the Salafi Party, have called for Goma's dismissal.

Egyptian religious officials have refused to visit Jerusalem in protest of what it calls Israel's occupation of eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The visit "is seen as an effort to encourage Muslims who are able to visit Al-Aksa Mosque, one of Islam’s three holiest sites, and Islam’s first Qiblah [direction of prayer]," according to a statement issued Wednesday from Jordan's Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs.

The Eurpean surveillance society expands to Sweden

As reported by Aron Lamm in The Epoch Times, March 21, 2012 (updated March 22, 2012):

After a divisive vote in Parliament on Wednesday, Sweden became one of the last countries in the European Union to comply with the highly controversial EU Data Retention Directive.

The Data Retention Directive relates to the retention of telecommunications data for law enforcement purposes, and has sparked considerable controversy across the EU. It states that governments of member countries must store data about all emails, phone calls, and text messages sent or received in that country for a specified period of time.

The heated debate preceding the vote in the Swedish Parliament is typical of the division the directive has caused across the EU.

Social Democrat lawmaker Elin Lundgren argued that law enforcement in a modern world needs this kind of access to be able to solve crimes more easily. In reply, Socialist member Jens Holm suggested sarcastically that according to this kind of reasoning, perhaps every citizen should have a chip implanted in their necks for ultimate ease of surveillance.

The problem of privacy versus security is only one aspect of the debate in the still reticent member countries, however.

Since the EU directive was issued in 2006, following the very serious terrorist attacks in Madrid of 2004, any state that had not implemented the directive by adopting national legislation by Sept. 15, 2007, can be sued by the European Commission and fined for every day of noncompliance.

In the case of Sweden, that bill is currently at about $1 million. Many argue that state money could be better spent, rather than paying fines while fighting what is perceived as a done deal.

Sweden’s then Social Democratic government was one of the driving forces behind the directive, but there has been division all along, and much criticism from the point of view of personal privacy. Parties and individual members of Parliament in the current center-right government were initially against the directive, and in the case of one party, several MPs decided to vote against their party line or abstain, something extremely unusual in the Swedish Parliament.

But while Sweden now grudgingly joins the ranks of the already compliant countries, others are still resisting.

In Germany, the Czech Republic, and Romania, the national laws adopted to implement the directive in their current form have been declared unconstitutional by their respective constitutional courts. Other countries, like Hungary and Ireland, have implemented it, but the decisions have been challenged and may end up annulled.

The Data Retention Directive does not allow for storing actual content, only details such as IP address and time of use. The data can only be accessed by police and security services by court order, and allows for data to be retained for a period of at least 6 months, but no more that 24 months. The time of retention is decided by national legislation.

Sweden opted for the minimum period of six months. The head of the National Bureau of Investigation of the Swedish police, Klas Friberg, told Swedish news agency TT that the currently adopted legislation will in fact make it more difficult to fight serious crimes, because of the new six month time limit on retention is too short. Currently, it is possible under Swedish law to retrieve data older than that, he said. The law will take effect on May 1.

British abortion doctor alleges that practice of sex-selection abortion is widespread

As reported by Clare Newell and Holly Watt in the Daily Telegraph (London), February 24, 2012:

A former medical director of the country’s largest abortion provider said it was “well known” that women were terminating pregnancies because of the gender of the child and that he had been asked by women to arrange the procedure for this reason.

Dr Vincent Argent, who previously worked for the British Pregnancy Advisory Service and is now a GP and consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist, said he had “no doubt” that women were terminating pregnancies because of the sex of the baby and that he believed the practice was “fairly widespread”. This week The Daily Telegraph disclosed that women were being offered illegal abortions by doctors on the basis of the gender of the foetus.

Dr Argent said there were “an awful lot of covert abortions for sex selection going on” where women would have a scan or blood test to find out the sex, then ask for a termination without telling the doctor the real reason.

However, he said there were also “ones where the patient actually says that it is the reason she wants the termination of the pregnancy”. He confirmed that he had been asked to arrange abortions for this reason but had told the patients it was unethical and he could not help them. There is nothing to suggest that the terminations Dr Argent described were arranged at BPAS clinics.

Dr Argent also disclosed that he believed that some colleagues had arranged terminations relating to the sex of the foetus and they felt it was reasonable to do so.

“I’ve had a consultant colleague in the North who expressed a view — that consultant was from an ethnic minority … He didn’t think it was ethically wrong because he thought that the cultural reason why some communities may prefer to have four male babies is as good a reason as the, if you like, the Anglo-Saxon cultural view, 'Well I’m pregnant, I just don’t want it anyway.’  ”

Dr Argent said his colleague equated sex-selection terminations with abortions that he considered were carried out “on demand” at many clinics.

The Telegraph this week exposed three doctors who offered terminations after being told by a woman that she was unhappy with the gender. One doctor at the Calthorpe clinic in Birmingham admitted that the abortion was like “female infanticide” before agreeing to falsify the paperwork. Another consultant at Pall Mall Medical in Manchester was filmed telling a pregnant woman who said she wanted to abort a female foetus: “I don’t ask questions. If you want a termination, you want a termination”.

The Metropolitan Police began an investigation following the disclosures.

However, Dr Argent said the law on sex selective abortions was unclear and suggested that it was not illegal “because it doesn’t say that in the Act”. “It is certainly considered to be unethical by the General Medical Council. But there has never been a legal test case which has actually said it’s illegal,” he said.

Dr Argent said aborting a baby due to its gender was “more common among some ethnic communities” but that it “happens in all communities”.

He said previously that GPs routinely flouted the law by signing abortion consent forms without seeing patients. In some cases, they rubber-stamped the forms after the procedure.

Blogger Vox Day offered this commentary:

One of the remarkable shared idiocies of the left and right alike is their staunch refusal to understand that immigrants from foreign cultures will not only retain many of their traditions from their former societies, but will view Western traditions through their own cultural lens and will therefore tend to expand Western customs in various ways not always anticipated...

...Of course, they are absolutely right. If abortion is morally and legally acceptable, it is acceptable for any reason. In fact, there is no moral or legal reason why people shouldn't offer financial incentive to encourage undesirable populations to obtain abortions. The federal government could even require abortions of all minority populations for those choosing to apply for welfare payments and there would be no logical or moral reason to oppose any such policy.

The disappearance of children with Down's Syndrome is largely the result of abortion and pre-natal testing. So, we can anticipate that the more immigration that takes place into the West, the more the male-female ratios will come to resemble those in India and China.

HT: Vox Popoli

Calgary Herald blasts United Church of Canada for advocating a boycott of Israel

The following editorial generally gets it right on the United Church of Canada 's advocacy of a boycott of Israel, but adopts the predictable and fashionable pro-sodomite position, and fails to make the connection between the UCC's decades of apostasy and its anti-Israel views. It was in the seminaries of Germany in the latter half of the 19th century that the "Documentary Hypothesis"--the first five books of the Bible weren't written by Moses under the inspiration of God, but consisted of myths invented by Hebrews to explain their origins, cobbled together by one or more "redactors" (editors). The logical conclusion of this view is that the Jews aren't really God's chosen people--they just think they are. It is therefore no coincidence that the country that spread this false hypothesis ended up producing the genocide of millions of Jews several decades later.

The United Church of Canada's view of the Bible is based on this 19th-century liberalism and its 20th-century New Testament equivalent, "Form Criticism" (which says that the Gospels weren't based on eyewitness accounts but were written much later by others masquerading as 1st-century authors). For example, the Sunday school curriculum issued by the UCC in 1964 upheld the view that the first 11 chapters of Genesis were merely mythical and not to be taken as literal history; it was said that this liberal view had been the unofficial position of the UCC for at least 25 years before that. The United Church of Canada's increasingly anti-biblical positions have merely been extensions of the earlier liberalism. As Dave Breese once noted: "Liberal religion isn't somethng good that used to be better, but is one of the most evil things imaginable...once you depart from the faith, you don't just take one step down, but you drop into the dark abyss."

From the Calgary Herald, May 6, 2012:

The United Church of Canada was in the vanguard in advocating for the legalization of same-sex marriage in this country. It was in the forefront of equality for women and ordained its first woman reverend in 1936. It is committed to freedom of religion - church belief is that a variety of paths lead to God, including non-Christian religions.

This progressive, egalitarian spirit makes it hard to fathom why a faction within the church is calling for a boycott of Israel - the only country in the Middle East where gays are not persecuted and killed because of their sexual orientation, where women are considered men's equals, and where Christians are free to worship without fear of their churches being firebombed.

In August, a general council meeting will vote on a boycott of Israeli-made products - the fourth such poisoned proposal since 2006.

Yet, just this past Sunday, 27 people died in northern Nigeria, when terrorists bombed three church services. Anglican Bishop Timothy Yahaya of Nigeria's Taraba State said terrorists have killed 300 Christians in the past three weeks. The terrorist group, Boko Haram, has stated that Christians must convert to Islam or face death. Where is the United Church's denunciation of Christian persecution?

In Iran, Pastor Farshid Fathi, a 33-year-old convert to Christianity, was sentenced to six years in prison last month for the crime of "having more than one Bible, or distributing Bibles; having Christian literature was part of the crime," according to a friend of Fathi's who spoke with the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Syrian Christians have been kidnapped, raped and murdered during the uprising against President Bashar Assad. Meanwhile, the anti-Israel fanatics in the United Church of Canada have their misguided, moralistic fingers pointed at Israel, a democracy trying to defend itself from its genocidal neighbours, who want it wiped from the Middle Eastern map.

Equally disturbing is the way the United Church's report on the boycott proposal waters down the Holocaust as "the denial of human dignity to Jews." The deaths of six million people make that the epitome of profane understatement. Shame on the United Church for all of this. And shame on the United Methodist Church which is also calling for a boycott of "products made by Israeli companies operating in occupied Palestinian territories."

Past United Church proposals have included severing financial investments in Israeli firms, boycotting Israel's cultural and academic institutions, and most recently, boycotting six Canadian firms with business ties to Israel. Two of these proposals weren't voted upon and one - the cultural and academic boycott - was thought to be extremist.

"Throughout the Middle East there are millions of Christians in grave danger by repressive regimes, but there are no calls for boycotts of those countries. This is just idiocy," says Shimon Fogel, head of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.

Indeed, it is idiocy. Like the other United Church proposals, this one deserves to be left by the side of the road. It does no honour to the church, which should be focusing its efforts on the true oppressors in that part of the world - those who do not hesitate to bomb churches, kill Christians and trample on the human rights of gays and women.

A very thin book: The Courage of Stephen Harper

What they say: "Mr. Harper, who has courted the vote of the social right, has given the more socially conservative members of his caucus wide latitude to express their opinions on such issues."

What they really mean: "They'll never be anything more than just opinions as long as Mr. Harper has any say." He's quite happy to have people think he's a Christian (although his biographical entry in the Canadian Parliamentary Guide has never mentioned any religious affiliation--in contrast to the entries of most MPs and Senators) and get the support of Christians (especially pastors), but he'll never do anything about the issues that are--or should be--most important to Christians.

As reported by Gloria Galloway in The Globe and Mail (Toronto), April 26, 2012 (updated May 10, 2012):

A motion by a backbench Conservative MP that aims to reopen the debate on abortion has been denounced by members of the opposition as well as senior members of his own party, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Stephen Woodworth, an Ontario Tory, wants the House of Commons to establish a committee to examine the section of the Criminal Code that declares babies to be human at the moment they have fully emerged from the birth canal.

In an impassioned speech to the House on Thursday evening, Mr. Woodworth said those who believe that a fetus becomes human at the moment of birth should have the courage of their convictions and be willing to expose them to an examination of the evidence.

But “most Canadians know that our existing definition dishonestly misrepresents the reality of who is a human being,” he said. “When you consider a child before birth, do you see a new human life with a beating heart and 10 human fingers? Or do you see the child as an object and an obstacle, even a parasite?”

Mr. Woodworth does not deny that his motion is an attempt to criminalize abortion. Canada has no laws to govern the procedure, and if a fetus is declared to be a human being, abortion foes could argue that killing it before birth would be tantamount to homicide.

Several other Conservatives agree with Mr. Woodworth’s efforts, but at this point, his motion would seem doomed to failure. Not only did the New Democrats and the Liberals oppose it, Mr. Harper and Conservative Whip Gordon O’Connor rejected it.

Mr. Harper said during the spring election campaign that a Conservative government would not bring forward legislation to restrict access to abortion and that any such legislation would be defeated. On Thursday he told the House that he considered the motion “unfortunate” and he would vote against it.

Mr. O’Connor delivered an even more blunt attack.

“I do not want women to go back to the previous era where some were forced to obtain abortions from illegal and medically dangerous sources. This should never happen in a civilized society,” he said. “I cannot understand why those who are adamantly opposed to abortion want to impose their belief on others by way of the Criminal Code.”

Mr. O’Connor’s statements followed indignant outcries from the opposition benches. François Boivin, a New Democrat from Quebec, said the motion frightened her to death. “Make no mistake about it,” she said, “this is a full-frontal assault on a woman’s right to choose.”

Hedy Fry, the Liberal health critic, asked if Mr. Woodworth would incarcerate women who wanted to have abortions to ensure that they carried their pregnancies to term. She accused the Prime Minister of allowing his MPs to do “through the back door” what he publicly opposes.

Mr. Harper, who has courted the vote of the social right, has given the more socially conservative members of his caucus wide latitude to express their opinions on such issues.

Israeli soldier attends synagogue wearing a T-shirt--with the Lord's Prayer printed on it

"Paul Harvey...Good day!"

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. Matthew 6:9-13

As reported by Itmar Marilus in Ynet News, April 15, 2012:

Barak Tamir, a religious IDF officer, recently discovered that he might soon need to look for a 'kosher' stamp on his clothes and not just his food. Tamir, who purchased a T-Shirt from Israeli fashion brand Castro, found out after the fact that his shirt included a reprint of The Lord's Prayer, a well known Christian prayer.

Tamir purchased the shirt a few days before the Passover holiday and decided to wear his new purchase to holiday services at his local synagogue. Towards the end of the prayer service, an older man, who was sitting behind him, turned to him and asked him to stay at the synagogue after services to chat.

Later, the man asked Tamir if he knew what the inscription on his shirt meant and claimed that he believed it was a Christian prayer. When the holiday was over Tamir looked into the matter and was astonished to discover that indeed, the inscription was that of The Lord's Prayer from the New Testament.

"Personally I have no problem with anybody who chooses to wear whatever shirt they feel like wearing," Tamir wrote on his Facebook page.

"I do however have a problem with an Israeli brand which, through subliminal messaging, plants Christian messages in its clothing and makes people walk around with shirts with these inscriptions without them wishing to do so. A shirt that at first seems innocent becomes a shirt with a message," he added.

"I'm not even talking about the discomfort I felt when I realized what the shirt was about, and it is possible that I should have read the inscription in detail before I bought it, but the main question is why does an Israeli company choose to promote a clothing line using a Christian prayer?"

Castro allowed Tamir to exchange the shirt and added: "Castro designers draw their inspiration from various and diverse cultural content. The print on the shirt is the creation of the designer which was done as part of a gothic inspiration and not at all in its religious context."

Poll shows Canada's increasing drift into secularism

A dirty little secret of pollsters is that most of the people they contact refuse to talk to them (70%, according to Ipsos-Reid a decade or so ago). Keeping that in mind, I suspect that while Canadians tend to live their daily lives as if God isn't important, an increasing percentage would be inclined to describe themselves with the term that's currently popular on dating sites: "Spiritual but not religious."

As reported by Randy Boswell of Postmedia News, April 7, 2012:

A nationwide survey conducted ahead of the Easter weekend has found that a majority of Canadians do not consider religion important to them, though two-thirds of the population say they believe in God.

Just 42 per cent of those polled agreed with the statement "religion is an important part of my life," with women (46 per cent) more likely to value religious activity than men (37 per cent) by a clear margin.

The online survey of 1,522 people, commissioned by the Montreal-based Association for Canadian Studies, also showed relatively low levels of trust in religious leaders, with 48 per cent of respondents attributing the trait of trustworthiness to clergy.

By contrast, 67 per cent of those surveyed said they trusted "people who are religious" in general and even more respondents - 73 per cent - expressed trust in "people who are not religious."

There were significant regional differences in the results, with Canadians from Manitoba and Saskatchewan most likely to consider religion important to their lives (54 per cent) and most likely to express a belief in God (79 per cent).

Respondents from Quebec, meanwhile, were least likely to agree that religion is important to them (33 per cent) and least likely to say God exists (62 per cent), though British Columbia residents also expressed the same relatively low level of belief in God (62 per cent).

Religion was deemed important to 47 per cent of those from Atlantic Canada, 45 per cent of Ontarians, 43 per cent of respondents from Alberta and just 37 per cent of British Columbians.

Belief in God was expressed by 71 per cent of women and 64 per cent of men. Seventy per cent of respondents in both Ontario and Atlantic Canada said they believe God exists, while agreement on the question was slightly lower in Alberta (67 per cent).

ACS executive director Jack Jedwab, writing in an overview of the findings, highlighted a significant generational divide over religion in Canada: "Younger Canadians appear far less convinced about the existence of God than does the oldest cohort."

Only 30 per cent of those aged 18 to 24 agreed religion is important to their life, while respondents aged 65 and older were most likely (56 per cent) to consider religion a force in their life. An expressed belief in God was lowest (56 per cent) among the youngest group of respondents and highest (79 per cent) among the oldest.

Jedwab said he was not surprised that less than half of the Canadian population considered religion important to their lives, noting that the result is consistent with previous polling on the subject that shows a clear contrast between Canadians' ambivalence toward formal religion and Americans' stronger commitment to religious activity.

"We're not as engaged religiously," he told Postmedia News.

"Our population is more spiritual, if you like, than actually religious in an organized fashion."

The survey, carried out by the firm Leger Marketing during the week of March 26, is considered accurate to within 2.9 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

25 years ago: PTL gives Jim Bakker the left foot of disfellowship

On April 28, 1987, Rev. Jerry Falwell, who had replaced Rev. Jim Bakker as chairman of the PTL organization when Mr. Bakker had resigned in March because of a sex scandal, announced that the PTL board of directors had cut off all income to Mr. Bakker and his wife Tammy Faye; had obtained the resignation of Rev. Richard Dortch, PTL president and a longtime associate of Mr. Bakker; and stopped payments from a $265,000 fund established for Jessica Hahn, the church secretary with whom Mr. Bakker had had sex in 1980. Mr. Falwell said that PTL was $50 million in debt.

Researcher into psychopathy fits the profile

And he said unto them, Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself: Luke 4:23a

From an article title Psychopaths Among Us by Georgie Binks, that appeared in the September 2011 issue of the Canadian edition of Reader's Digest:

Professor James H. Fallon of the University of California believes he has singled out what he calls the “recipe for disaster”: a certain mix of high-risk “warrior” genes that, when mixed with an abusive upbringing, create a killer. Fallon has spent nearly two decades analyzing the brains of murderers, and his findings have strengthened the theory that while psychopathy may be hard-wired, its more extreme manifestations don’t come alive unless the right conditions are present.

Fallon’s research into psychopathy has a personal dimension. Five years ago he collected the brain scans and DNA samples of himself, his wife, his children and three brothers in a bid to determine the family’s risk for Alzheimer’s. When he recently looked at the data again, he made an astounding discovery. He was the only person in his family who shared many of the same traits as the cold-blooded murderers he was studying: the same aggression-and violence-related genes, the same altered, low-emotional engagement brain activity. “I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding!’ The pattern was just like that of a natural-born killer.”

After his discovery, Fallon learned that several of his ancestors were murderers. (He is also related to the notorious Lizzie Borden, who was acquitted of killing her father and stepmother with an axe, but who is widely believed to be guilty.) But that wasn’t the only troubling thing he uncovered. “Some psychiatrists I’ve known for years, as well as my mother, recently admitted to thinking there was something wrong with me,” he says. “In fact, I do have anti-social traits. I’ve taken the Psychopathy Checklist and I’m just at the border of being a psychopath.”

Thinking back on his life, Fallon concedes he has an overwhelming need to win, and muses that, in both his professional and personal life, he’s always managed to get exactly what he wanted. The clincher? “Most people think I’m personable and engaging, but I don’t have much sympathy for others. I might think I do, but I don’t. Somebody close to me will die and I won’t go to their funeral.”

Fallon isn’t a danger to the public (he claims his “charmed” childhood may have saved him), but his story does underscore how widespread psychopathic tendencies are, and how, in some cases, drive, ambition and intelligence might be integrated into a successful career and law-abiding life. Luckily, Fallon has the ability to analyze his own actions and thoughts. Few psychopaths, however, boast such self-knowledge. “Psychopaths look at the world as though everybody is psychopathic,” Porter explains. “They see it as dog eat dog. By preying on others, they’re protecting themselves.”

Jewish film festival rejects documentary on sexual abuse Baltimore's Orthodox Jewish community

As reported by Ynet News, April 9, 2012:

Producer Scott Rosenfelt is threatening to take legal action against the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival after its director, Hilary Helstein, called his film a "witch hunt," JTA reported.

Rosenfelt, whose credits include blockbusters such as "Home Alone" and "Mystic Pizza," submitted "Standing Silent" – a film about sexual abuse in Baltimore's Orthodox community – to the festival, and was rejected.

The film is slated to be screened at several Jewish film festivals across the United States.

According to the report, after viewing the film, Helstein sent an email to other Jewish film festival directors in which she said that while the film was well made, her festival's team chose to reject it over its subject matter.

"Our committee felt… the film was a 'witch hunt.' We all show different things and each community has a different level of tolerance,” she wrote.

"Our committee felt that a community that reveres its rabbis, this was not something they wanted to show. I just wanted to put a warning sticker on this one so that you are aware."


Tainted considerations?

Rosenfelt slammed the correspondence as "the most unprofessional act" he has seen in his career.

"The idea that a festival director would go behind the back of a filmmaker and do this gives me great pause to ever recommend your festival to anyone," the JTA quoted Rosenfelt's email to Helstein.

"As you know, I've produced films… so I know a couple of people in the business. I plan on letting EVERYONE I know to stay away from you and your festival, because you are clearly not someone who supports filmmakers."

He further called her "a disgrace to Judaism, and not only that, a disgrace to all humanity."

Rosenfelt further told the JTA that Helstein "was complicit in the kind of silence surrounding sexual abuse that his film aims to combat."

The report said Helstein refused to comment, but quoted John Fishel, the festival's chairman, as saying that the decision not to screen "Standing Silent" was made by a small group of volunteers on the selection committee, who "did not feel the film was appropriate to screen and worried that it would provoke controversy that would overshadow the film itself."

Fishel further denied that Helstein was overly-influenced by the festival's small and conservative donor base.

"I would reject that as an unfair characterization of both Hilary and the festival," he said. "I think that they do a great job. I think that it’s getting better and better every year."

Israel's chief rabbis sell leavened bread to Muslim

As reported by Ynet News, April 2, 2012:

Friday night marks the start of the Jewish holiday of Passover. The week-long holiday commemorates the Biblical exodus from Egypt. In light of the upcoming holiday, Israel will see one of the largest trade deals the country has ever known.

For the past 15 years, Jaaber Hussein, a Muslim Arab-Israeli, has been purchasing all of the state's chametz (leavened bread) as part of an agreement with Israel's chief rabbis.

This symbolic deal enables the state to honor religious decrees without wastefully destroying massive quantities of food. The deal is estimated at $150 billion. The chametz is acquired from state companies, the prison service and the national stock of emergency supplies.

Hussein, a department head at the Ramada Renaissance Hotel in Jerusalem will entrust the State of Israel with a NIS 100,000 (approximately $26,955) check, making him the "king of chametz."

Hussein explained that his annual meeting with Rabbi Ovadia Yosef to execute the deal "a great honor."

"I get telephone calls from people in the territories and in east Jerusalem, asking me to help them, to please give them some of my bread to eat," he told Israel Radio. "I have to explain that I 'own' it but it's not here with me in my house."

The Jewish law allows the sale of chametz to a non-Jew, who's the technical owner of the household for the duration of the holiday, after which it's bought back. In practice, the congregation appoints their rabbi as an agent who sells the communal chametz to a trusted non-Jew.

Jewish woman in Connecticut ordered to remove mezuzah from her doorframe--or else

It isn't just Christians whose freedom is under attack in the United States. As reported by Ynet News on March 31, 2012:

A Jewish woman from Connecticut was told by her condominium complex' management company that she must remove a mezuzah (a small parchment scroll rolled up in a case that is attached to Jewish homes' doors) from her doorframe or face a $50 fine per day, a local newspaper reported on Friday.

Barbara Cadranel, 60, said she feels violated by incident. "I'm bullied and I'm saddened," she told the Hartford Courant. "It's changed my whole existence here."

Following the incident, Cadranel, an internationally-acclaimed harpsichordist, contacted the Connecticut Regional Office of the Anti-Defamation League, telling them that she had been approached by the California Condo Association and asked to remove the mezuzah. Cadranel was told that if she fails to comply she could face fines of $50 per day.

ADL's Connecticut Regional Director Gary Jones told Fox News on Friday that disputes between condo owners and condominium associations over the mezuzah "are pretty rare."

"The obligation to place a mezuzah on the doorframe or doorpost is a right in the Bible. Jewish people everywhere, including those in condominiums, post a mezuzah as a reminder of their religious obligations," he said.

'Not a decorative choice'

Cadranel, who travels often as part of her job, "doesn't have a real home," Jones said.

"For the first time in a while, she's had a place to call home," he added, "So it's very disconcerting to her that this would be an issue.

"It's not a decorative choice, or a choice at all when a condo association or anyone says that a mezuzah can’t be put on a doorpost or doorframe. Basically, they are telling the Jewish person that he or she cannot live there," he said.

Jones noted that the condominium association's act was in violation of the Federal Fair Housing Act. Some states, he noted, even legislated special laws protecting Jewish residents who affix mezuzahs on their doors. The contract signed by Cadranel, on the other hand, allows condo owners to place Christian symbols such as crosses or Christmas decorations on doors, but forbids the display of other symbols such as mezuzahs.

The association's attorney said in response that Cadranel was aware of the bylaws when she purchased the condo, the Courant reported.

"The declaration expressly prohibits unit owners from hanging or displaying anything on the outside windows or outside walls of any building, and also prohibits any sign from being affixed to or placed upon the exterior walls … without prior consent of the association's board of directors," the attorney said in response.

30 years ago: Attack on Dome of the Rock prompts anti-Israel protests

On April 11, 1982, Alan Harry Goodman, who had moved from Baltimore, Maryland to Israel and had become an Israeli soldier, shot his way into the Dome of the Rock—the Islamic shrine on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount—and killed at least 2 Arabs and wounded at least 30 with automatic rifle fire. Israeli police and border guards stormed the shrine and captured Mr. Goodman, but anti-Israel demonstrations took place over the next few days. On April 14, at least 15 Islamic nations in Africa and Asia joined in a general strike to protest the attack. King Khalid of Saudi Arabia had called for a strike against Israel to protest Mr. Goodman’s attack. Businesses, airports, and banks were closed.

30 years ago: Billy Graham's disgraceful performance in Moscow

On May 7, 1982, American evangelist Billy Graham arrived in Moscow to begin a six-day visit. Two days later, he spoke at an Orthodox cathedral and the city’s only Baptist church. From May 10-14, the World Conference of Religious Workers for Saving the Sacred Gift of Life from Nuclear Catastrophe, sponsored by the Russian Orthodox Church, took place, with Mr. Graham as the star attraction. U.S. Vice-President George Bush had asked Mr. Graham not to attend the conference, arguing that the Soviet Union would use his appearance as a propaganda ploy to undermine the peace efforts of the U.S. administration of President Ronald Reagan--which is exactly what happened.

If Christians in the U.S.S.R. were hoping and expecting that Billy Graham would speak up on their behalf to the Soviet authorities, they were naive and mistaken. Mr. Graham's visit to Moscow in 1982 was in keeping with his practice of many years of appearing with "Christian" leaders from behind the Iron Curtain and promoting their legitimacy. Carl McIntire had written a number of lengthy, fact-filled letters to Mr. Graham pointing out that these religious leaders were in fact agents of their Communist governments and were in no way Christian, but Mr. Graham consistently refused to heed the warnings. Mr. Graham's 1982 visit to Moscow was therefore not unusual; what was unusual was the amount of publicity it attracted.

Billy Graham's performance in Moscow was so disgraceful that even secular newspapers in the United States, not normally known for supporting the Christian faith or criticizing the U.S.S.R., blasted him for his cowardice and gullibility. My favourite editorial, which adequately summed things up, was from a Canadian newspaper, the Winnipeg Free Press, on May 15, 1982:

Another Useful Idiot

It has been some time since the world witnessed a spectacle such as that which took place in Moscow this week: 450 churchmen from 97 countries attending a conference on world peace sponsored officially by the Russian Orthodox Church and, by their presence and their silence, throwing their weight behind the Kremlin’s claim that there is no religious persecution in the Soviet Union.

In preparation for this religious gathering, the secret police rounded up Christian activists. Some were released after stern warnings to stay away from Moscow and the delegates during the conference. Some were detained and at least one was sent to an insane asylum run by the KGB. During the conference, one dissenter who has already served six years in a labor camp for religious activities was arrested again and, during a sermon delivered by Evangelist Billy Graham, a woman was seized by the KGB for raising a banner that read: “We have more than 150 prisoners for the work of the Gospel.”

If it had not been for Mr. Graham’s presence, the conference would have passed with little notice. His attendance, however, assured world-wide news coverage for what was essentially a propaganda exercise by the Soviet government through the instrument of the Russian Orthodox Church, which, in its official existence, functions as little more than a messenger of the Kremlin.

It is perhaps fitting, then, that Mr. Graham should also have been the star performer. It would have been far better, however, had he stayed home. As it was, he did not even have the grace to remain silent.

When informed of the arrest of the woman during his sermon, his reaction was: “Detained?…We detain people in the United States when we catch them doing things wrong.” When he visited six Pentecostalists who have been living in the U.S. embassy for four years protesting religious persecution and the refusal of the government to give them exit visas, Mr. Graham would not even have his picture taken with them and asked them not to discuss his visit until he had left the country.

The nadir of his performance came when he remarked that, “There are differences between religion as it is practised here and in the United States. But that doesn’t mean there is no freedom of religion,” and that during his six days in Moscow he had experienced nothing but religious liberty.

Maundering such as this has seldom been heard since the stream of useful idiots who passed through the Soviet Union in the 1930s returned to the West singing the praises of Stalin’s utopia. Even now it would merely be sad and pathetic if it were not for the terrible reality of life for Christians and Jews in the Soviet Union: the petty persecutions experienced in everyday life, the daily horror of the prisons, labor camps and psychiatric hospitals where thousands of them are imprisoned. For them, the freedom enjoyed in the West is only a distant dream, but it is a dream that, as many political and religious dissidents have said, sustains their courage and their faith. It is impossible to imagine the new depths of despair that they will feel when Mr. Graham’s comments spread through the hundreds of little hells that make up the Gulag Archipelago.

Unfortunately, Billy Graham never repented of his performance in Moscow in 1982 or gave evidence of learning anything from it. On a 1988 visit to China--a country whose Communist regime has murdered more Christians than the number of Jews murdered in Germany by Adolf Hitler--he spent his time in the company of representatives of the state-approved churches and passed on the opportunity to support the house churches where most real Christians were to be found. As reported by Edward A. Gargan in The New York Times on April 17, 1988:

When asked in the interview about Chinese Christians who were imprisoned for their beliefs, Mr. Graham declined to criticize Government policy. ''The situation is so much better than it was 10 years ago,'' he said. ''I think of it more positively than negatively. I think religious freedom will grow.''

In his discussions with Chinese officials, Mr. Graham said he would only raise the problem of imprisoned Christians ''indirectly.''

''I talked about human rights,'' he said, explaining why he preferred not to criticize the Government directly. ''There are some things I think I can accomplish in a private way.''

Since persecution of Christians in China has continued since Billy Graham's visit in 1988, it's hard to see what, if anything, he accomplished, privately or publicly. Visits by Mr. Graham to North Korea in 1992 and 1994 resulted in statements from him similar to those made in Moscow and Beijing.

50 years ago: Leading Canadian Roman Catholic theologian promotes unity with Protestants

On April 4, 1962, Reverend Gregory Baum was in Edmonton to speak on the subject of unity between Roman Catholics and Protestants. As reported in The Edmonton Journal of April 5, 1962:

Sweeping changes in the attitude of the Catholic Church during the last few decades were outlined Wednesday in the Jubilee Auditorium by Rev. Gregory Baum, professor of theology at St. Michael's College, Toronto.

Father Baum said he hopes the changes in thought will be clearly defined at the second Vatican Council in Rome in October. Father Baum is the only Canadian representative on the council.

He said it would be "absurd" for anyone to imagine Christian unity in the next 50 years. He said such an event would be "a miracle."

Even if Christian unity is never achieved, it is worth striving for, he said.

Some obstacles the Catholic Church presents to unity are unchangeable. These are its creed, sacramental system, and hierarchical structure.

He said the Catholics can learn from intelligent criticism by Protestants.

Father Baum said changes in Catholic attitude have taken place in four subjects: humanitarianism, scientific development, Jews and Protestants.

He said recent popes have endorsed both humanitarian movements to help people and scientific development to discover "God's hidden scriptures."

Father Baum, who was born of Jewish parents in Berlin, said Catholics have in the past scorned Jews with legends.

While Catholics believe there is "only one church," they consider baptized Protestants to be "separate Christians."

He said it is time for Catholics to stop "slandering, joking about and harboring disrespect for Protestants."

He urged Catholics to remove this "emotional reaction" against Protestants."

30 years ago: The New Age Movement gains momentum as the Great Invocation receives mass circulation in newspapers

And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?
And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.
For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. Matthew 24:3-5

Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters,
not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter —asserting that the day of the Lord has already come.
Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness[a] is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.
He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.
Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things?
And now you know what is holding him back, so that he may be revealed at the proper time.
For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way.
And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming.
The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie,
and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.
For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie
and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness. II Thessalonians 2:1-12 (NIV)

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; I Timothy 4:1

On April 25, 1982, a prayer known as The Great Invocation was published in many newspapers, a signal that the New Age Movement was gaining momentum. The Great Invocation states:

From the point of Light within the Mind of God
Let light stream forth into the minds of men
Let Light descend on Earth.

From the point of Love within the Heart of God
Let love stream forth into the hearts of men.
May Christ return to Earth.

From the centre where the Will of God is known
Let purpose guide the little wills of men-
The purpose which the Masters know and serve.


From the centre which we call the race of men
Let the Plan of Love and Light work out
And may it seal the door where evil dwells.


Let Light and Love and Power restore the Plan on Earth.

The "Christ" of the Great Invocation is not the Lord Jesus Christ. Rather,

The Christ is the Head of the spiritual Hierarchy of our planet: "The Master of all Masters and the teacher alike of angels and of men". The Christ belongs to all humanity, and not alone to the churches and religious faiths of the world. The Christ works for all people, irrespective of their religious faith. He does not belong to the Christian world any more than to the Buddhist, Jewish, Moslem or Hindu faiths. In fact, the name Christ is used in the Hierarchy as the title of an office and not in any way limited in the least to religious action but is concerned with all seven departments of hier-archical work of which religion is only one, the others being government, education, science, philosophy, psychology, and culture and the arts.

A veteran promoter of a New Age Christ--under the name Maitreya, the World Teacher--is Benjamin Creme, whose organization is known as Share International. The perceptive reader who goes to this site will notice the counterfeit of the true Christ. For more, search Constance Cumbey's blog My Perspective.

What the Great Invocation refers to as "the Masters" seem to be what the Bible refers to as demons ("devils" in the King James Version), while the New Age view of "Christ" sounds suspiciously like a fulfillment of the prophecies mentioned in the scriptural passages cited above. The "seven departments of hier-archical work" bear striking similarity to the "7 Mountains of Culture" on which Dominionist "Christians" are focusing their attention. In both movements, the focus is on Earth rather than on Heaven--a similarity which this blogger regards as very suspicious.