Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Protectress of the Unborn



This is an excellent article from from http://www.sancta.org/

Human life is and has always been at the center of the great struggle between good and evil, between light and darkness. The struggle between the "culture of life" and the "culture of death".
Only Satan can delight in the death of the living: for death came into the world as a result of the devil's envy (cf. Wis 2:24). He who is "a murderer from the beginning", is also "a liar and the father of lies" (Jn 8:44). By deceiving man he leads him to projects of sin and death, even in many ocassions making them appear as goals and fruits of life.

Since the beginning of human history one of the many devil's deceptions has been the instigation of ritual killings of men, women and children in human sacrifices offered to different pagan 'gods' and 'godesses' (devils). Being the ones of innocent children the most deplorable of all.

We read in the Book of Leviticus how the Lord tells Moses about the serious crime of offering children to be immolated to Molech, referring to the Canaanite custom of sacrificing children to the god Molech. The little victims were first slain and then cremated. (Leviticus 20,1-5 and 18,21).

In the Americas, five centuries ago, cruel human sacrificing rituals were performed on a scale never approached, even remotely, by another peoples. Never before or after in human history a more open, long running, ritualized and institutionalized public showcase of the Culture of Death has been manifested.

No one will ever know how many were killed this way. Estimates start from 20,000 to 50,000 a year in several sources. Recently, Woodrow Borah, possibly the leading authority on the demography of Mexico at the time of the conquest, has revised the estimated number of persons sacrificed in central Mexico in the fifteenth century to 250,000 per year.

Chests were cut open and the hearts taken out. Aztec codex illustration.
Many methods were used. The victims had their hearts cut out or were decapitated, shot full of arrows, clawed, sliced to death, stoned, crushed, skinned, buried alive or tossed from the tops of temples.

Perhaps the most popular of the public rituals was taking the victims to the tops of the Aztec pyramids where they were laid on top of a flat stone. There, the priests cut open thir chests and their hearts were ripped out. The bodies were then thrown down the steps of the pyramid.

After the bodies tumbled down the stairs, the priests removed the limbs, cooked and ate them. Specially hands and thighs were considered the best delicacies. The heads were placed in skull racks for public exhibition.
The two chief gods of the Aztec pantheon to which most of the sacrifices were made were Huitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca. Their priests painted their bodies black; their never-cut hair was all caked and matted with dried blood. They filed their teeth to sharp points.

After killed the victim was cooked and eaten. Aztec codex illustration.
The climax of these ritual killings came in 1487 for the dedication of the new and richly decorated with serpents temple of Huitzilopochtli, in Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City), when in a single ceremony that lasted four days and four nights, with the constant beating of giant drums made of snakeskin, the Aztec ruler and demon worshiper Tlacaellel presided the sacrifice of more than 80,000 men.

Children were said to be frequent victims, in part because they were considered pure and unspoiled.

In 2002, Mexican government archaeologist Juan Alberto Roman Berrelleza announced the results of forensic testing on the bones of 42 children, mostly boys around age 6, sacrificed at Mexico City's Templo Mayor, the Aztec's main religious site, during a drought. All shared one feature: serious cavities, abscesses or bone infections painful enough to make them cry. "It was considered a good omen if they cried a lot at the time of sacrifice,'' which was probably done by slitting their throats, Roman Berrelleza said.

The early Mexican historian Ixtlilxochitl estimated that one out of every five children in Mexico were sacrificed.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, Coatlaxopeuh, crushed this serpent in 1531.

Today we too find ourselves in the midst of an even more enormous and dramatic conflict between good and evil, death and life, the "culture of death" and the "culture of life".

Our Lady protecting the children from the snares of the devil.
John Paul II stated at Denver, on the occasion of the Eighth World Youth Day, "with time the threats against life have not grown weaker. They are taking on vast proportions. They are not only threats coming from the outside, from the forces of nature or the 'Cains who kill the Abels'; no, they are scientifically and systematically programmed threats. The twentieth century will have been an era of massive attacks on life, an endless series of wars and a continual taking of innocent human life. False prophets and false teachers have had the greatest success".

In our days millions of unborn children are killed every year around the globe, in procedures that in some places are not only legal but also officially supported and financed. In many cases the procedures follow the same rules as the sacrifices to the ancient god Molech: the slain and then cremation of the little children.

Just in the United States of America, right next to the land where Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared, more than a million children are killed every year. 32 million abortions were executed in the country just during the first 20 years after abortion was legalized in 1973.

These killings, which dwarf the numbers of the sacrifices of the Aztecs, are not longer executed under the sun in open air, on the top of a pyramid for all the people in town to see and hear, but hidden from anybody except the few personnel of the abortion providers, in facilities that can be found in many cases in shopping centers.

Like during the Aztec times, a variety of methods are used to kill. Like by vacuum aspirations or MVA; dilation and suctions curettage or D&C; saline amniocentesis, or salt poisoning abortions; D&E; "brain suction" or "D&X" methods, etc.

Picture from Priests for Life.
By the D&E method, a pliers-like instrument is used because the baby’s bones are calcified, as is the skull. The practicionist inserts the instrument up into the uterus, seizes a leg or other part of the baby's body, and, with a twisting motion tears it from the body and takes it out of the uterus. This is repeated until all body parts are removed. The spine must be snapped, and the skull crushed to remove them. The nurse’s job is to reassemble the body parts, to be sure that all are removed.

In the "D&X" method, used during the 2nd or 3rd trimester of pregnancy, the baby's legs are located and grasped with forceps.

Then the legs are pulled and the baby is delivered up to the head. With the head still intact in the vagina (the head at this stage is too large to pass through the cervix), the practitioner then inserts blunt surgical scissors into the base of the fetal skull and spreads the tips apart. A suction catheter is then inserted into the skull and the brain is sucked out. The skull collapses until the baby’s head can pass through the cervix.

The little bodies of the victims are then thrown in dumpsters, incinerated, or sent to be used for research which, under the pretext of scientific or medical progress, in fact reduces human life to the level of simple "biological material" to be freely disposed of.

May the Woman clothed with the sun, in the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Protectress of the Unborn, with her message of Love and Compassion crush the serpent again.

Monday, January 26, 2009

PELOSI ON KIDS: THEY’RE AN ECONOMIC DRAIN




She does not deserve to be called Catholic.

The Catholic League:

January 26, 2009
Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that it was necessary to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on family planning services in order to stimulate the economy. Pelosi maintained that “contraception will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.”
Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented as follows:
“Looks like the Democrats have abortion and contraception on the brain. Last week, President Barack Obama lifted restrictions on federal funds being used to promote and perform abortions overseas. Now we have Pelosi arguing that the way to balance the budget is not by cutting expenditures, but by cutting kids. Her comment matches up well with what Obama said during the presidential campaign about comprehensive sex education: speaking of his own daughters, he said that ‘if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.’ (My emphasis.)
“We have reached a new low when high-ranking public office holders in the federal government cast children as the enemy. But at least it explains their enthusiasm for abortion-on-demand.”

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Friday, January 23, 2009

Patriarch Youssif III Younan of Antioch



VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI has formally accepted the election of a new head of the Syrian Catholic Church.Bishop Joseph Younan, 64, who was appointed to head the Newark-based Syrian-rite diocese in the United States and Canada in 1995, was elected as the new patriarch of Antioch in a synod held in Rome Jan. 18-20. He took the name Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan.As is customary for the patriarchs of the Eastern churches in union with Rome, the newly elected head of the church requested communion with the pope, who granted it with a congratulatory letter, the Vatican said Jan. 23.The new patriarch, who speaks Arabic, English, French, Italian and German, was born in Syria. He was ordained in 1971 and, after attending school in Rome, served as a priest for several years in Lebanon. The ancient see of Antioch has its headquarters in Beirut, Lebanon.In 1986, he was sent to the United States, where he ministered in Syrian Catholic communities. In 1995, Pope John Paul II named him the bishop of the first U.S. Syrian-rite diocese, Our Lady of Deliverance of Newark of the Syrians.He succeeds Syrian Patriarch Ignace Pierre VIII Abdel-Ahad of Antioch, who retired in 2008.The Syrian Catholic Church has archdioceses in Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Sudan, and there are approximately 150,000 Syrian Catholics around the world in places such as the Holy Land, Turkey, Venezuela, the United States and Canada.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Stephanos II Ghattas

1920-2009
May he be in God's hands.

Monday, January 19, 2009

The Eastern Catholic Churches

Bishop celebrating Divine Liturgy in Greek-Catholic church in Prešov, eastern Slovakia.


The Eastern Catholic Churches are a group of churches in communion with the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI. These churches make up 21 of the 22 rites that make up the Holy Catholic Church. They are not well known in America but they have beautiful traditions and customs. Understanding the subject is quite difficult.
I found the offical websites of these churches:

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Icon of the Week



The Black Madonna of Częstochowa

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Home Altar







I made some improvements to my home altar. I got a new statue of Saint Anthony of Padua. I got some candels and two Icons.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Lent

Should one drape the processional cross during lent?

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

José Sánchez del Río



When we hear of Saints we think of adults but there have also been Catholic youth who have been canonized. St Maria Goretti and St Dominic Savio are some of the best examples. However there is a young Mexican martyr who is on the way of becoming a Saint his name is Jose Sanchez del Rio. Here is his story.

Sanchez del Rio was born on March 28, 1913, and died on February 10, 1928.
His martyrdom was witnessed by two boyhood friends. One of them, Father Marcial Maciel, who went on to found the Legionnaires of Christ, revealed in his book, My Life is Christ, that Sanchez del Rio was “captured by government forces,” who demanded he “renounce his faith in Christ, under threat of death. Jose refused to accept apostasy.”
“Consequently they cut the bottom of his feet and obliged him to walk around the town toward the cemetery,” Father Macial wrote. “He cried and moaned with pain, but he did not give in. At times they stopped him and said, ‘if you shout ‘Death to Christ the King’ we will spare your life.’ Jose Luis finally died shouting ‘Long live Christ the King’ while his assassins fired upon him.”

Monday, January 12, 2009

Cardinal Pio Laghi

Rest in peace Cardinal Pio Laghi

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Icon of the Week


The Theotokos of Vladimir

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Pictures of your Church


This is the sanctuary of Saint Marys.

One of the statues that greet vistors when you step in.

How do your parishes look like guys?

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Made in China

Don't buy religious stuff made in china

I found out in American Papist's blog that a woman tried to bite the Pope during Midnight Mass. I included the video.

Unusual icon


I found an unsual icon of the Seventy Disciples.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Dia de Los Santos Reyes Magos (Epiphany)






Today is Epiphany or as know in Mexico the Feast of Three Kings. On this day Mexicans eat the Rosca de Reyes ,a type of cake. Inside the rosca is a baby Jesus who ever finds the baby has to throw a party on February 2 , the feast of the Presentation. In Mexico this is know as el dia de la candelaria. During this day people dress thier baby Jesus with outfits.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Relic


The cause for the canonization of the late John Paul II is giving away free second class relics. Just email them at postulazione.segreteria@vicariatusurbis.org with your address. However it does take some time to get . I got mine 3 or 4 weeks ago.

Friday, January 2, 2009

Tridentine Mass



Whos feen to this kind of mass?

John Paul II Relics

If anyone wants a relic of the late Holy Father John Paul II you can get one at