Sudden Saints

People- especially Americans- want things quick. We drink instant coffee, we eat instant rice, we take our film to one-hour processing centers. Now the Vatican II Catholic Church is offering us instant saints.

The road to canonization used to be a long and arduous one. It also used to be a very selective process. Now, not so much- on either count.

Case in point- "Mother" Theresa. Long celebrated as a great human being and all around good egg, she was "fast tracked" to sainthood by John Paul II, who apparently never met a person who wasn't a saint. The universalist JP II canonized more saints (470+) than his predecessors combined.

The problem is, Mother Theresa was a fraud. That's right- she was not the "saint" she portrayed herself to be in public, and she had no business rising to the level of "Saint." As the following articles illustrate, she fudged (lied about) the number of people she was helping, adopted many hindu traditions into her catholicism, and lived high off the hog while surrounded by those suffering in the worst poverty and squalor. All that's needed now are allegations of sexual misconduct and she would be a perfect candidate for being a Bishop in the post-Vatican II new age cult masquerading as a Church.

I'm posting two articles here- the first, by Michael Parenti (this may well be the only issue we are in substantive agreement on), and the second by the Fathers at Traditio, a traditional Roman Catholic site which (rightly) denounces everything associated with the 2nd Vatican Council.
___________________________

From Global Research:

Mother Teresa, John Paul II, and the Fast-Track Saints
by Michael Parenti
Global Research, October 24, 2007

During his 26-year papacy, John Paul II elevated 483 individuals to sainthood, more saints than all previous popes combined, it is reported. One personage he beatified but did not live long enough to canonize was Mother Teresa, the Roman Catholic nun of Albanian origin who had been wined and dined by the world’s rich and famous while hailed as a champion of the poor. The darling of the corporate media and western officialdom, and an object of celebrity adoration, Teresa was for many years the most revered woman on earth, showered with kudos and awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her “humanitarian work” and “spiritual inspiration.”

What usually went unreported were the vast sums she received from wealthy contributors, including a million dollars from convicted savings & loan swindler Charles Keating, on whose behalf she sent a personal plea for clemency to the presiding judge. She was asked by the prosecutor in that case to return Keating’s gift because it was money he had stolen. She never did. She also accepted substantial sums given by the brutal Duvalier dictatorship that regularly stole from the Haitian public treasury.

Mother Teresa’s “hospitals” for the indigent in India and elsewhere turned out to be hardly more than human warehouses in which seriously ill persons lay on mats, sometimes fifty to sixty in a room without benefit of adequate medical attention. Their ailments usually went undiagnosed. The food was nutritionally lacking and sanitary conditions were deplorable. There were few medical personnel on the premises, mostly untrained nuns and brothers.

When tending to her own ailments, however, Teresa checked into some of the costliest hospitals and recovery care units in the world for state-of-the-art treatment.

Teresa journeyed the globe to wage campaigns against divorce, abortion, and birth control. At her Nobel award ceremony, she announced that “the greatest destroyer of peace is abortion.” And she once suggested that AIDS might be a just retribution for improper sexual conduct.

Teresa emitted a continual flow of promotional misinformation about herself. She claimed that her mission in Calcutta fed over a thousand people daily. On other occasions she jumped the number to 4000, 7000, and 9000. Actually her soup kitchens fed not more than 150 people (six days a week), and this included her retinue of nuns, novices, and brothers. She claimed that her school in the Calcutta slum contained five thousand children when it actually enrolled less than one hundred.

Teresa claimed to have 102 family assistance centers in Calcutta, but longtime Calcutta resident, Aroup Chatterjee, who did an extensive on-the-scene investigation of her mission, could not find a single such center.

As one of her devotees explained, “Mother Teresa is among those who least worry about statistics. She has repeatedly expressed that what matters is not how much work is accomplished but how much love is put into the work.” Was Teresa really unconcerned about statistics? Quite the contrary, her numerical inaccuracies went consistently and self-servingly in only one direction, greatly exaggerating her accomplishments.

Over the many years that her mission was in Calcutta, there were about a dozen floods and numerous cholera epidemics in or near the city, with thousands perishing. Various relief agencies responded to each disaster, but Teresa and her crew were nowhere in sight, except briefly on one occasion.

When someone asked Teresa how people without money or power can make the world a better place, she replied, “They should smile more,” a response that charmed some listeners. During a press conference in Washington DC, when asked “Do you teach the poor to endure their lot?” she said “I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.”

But she herself lived lavishly well, enjoying luxurious accommodations in her travels abroad. It seems to have gone unnoticed that as a world celebrity she spent most of her time away from Calcutta, with protracted stays at opulent residences in Europe and the United States, jetting from Rome to London to New York in private planes.

Mother Teresa is a paramount example of the kind of acceptably conservative icon propagated by an elite-dominated culture, a “saint” who uttered not a critical word against social injustice, and maintained cozy relations with the rich, corrupt, and powerful.

She claimed to be above politics when in fact she was pronouncedly hostile toward any kind of progressive reform. Teresa was a friend of Ronald Reagan, and a close friend of rightwing British media tycoon Malcolm Muggerridge. She was an admiring guest of the Haitian dictator “Baby Doc” Duvalier, and had the support and admiration of a number of Central and South American dictators.

Teresa was Pope John Paul II’s kind of saint. After her death in 1997, he waved the five-year waiting period usually observed before beginning the beatification process that leads to sainthood. In 2003, in record time Mother Teresa was beatified, the final step before canonization.

But in 2007 her canonization confronted a bump in the road, it having been disclosed that along with her various other contradictions Teresa was not a citadel of spiritual joy and unswerving faith. Her diaries, investigated by Catholic authorities in Calcutta, revealed that she had been racked with doubts: “I feel that God does not want me, that God is not God and that he does not really exist.” People think “my faith, my hope and my love are overflowing and that my intimacy with God and union with his will fill my heart. If only they knew,” she wrote, “Heaven means nothing.”

Through many tormented sleepless nights she shed thoughts like this: “I am told God loves me-and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul.” Il Messeggero, Rome’s popular daily newspaper, commented: “The real Mother Teresa was one who for one year had visions and who for the next 50 had doubts—up until her death.”

Another example of fast-track sainthood, pushed by Pope John Paul II, occurred in 1992 when he swiftly beatified the reactionary Msgr. José María Escrivá de Balaguer, supporter of fascist regimes in Spain and elsewhere, and founder of Opus Dei, a powerful secretive ultra-conservative movement “feared by many as a sinister sect within the Catholic Church.” Escrivá’s beatification came only seventeen years after his death, a record run until Mother Teresa came along.

In accordance with his own political agenda, John Paul used a church institution, sainthood, to bestow special sanctity upon ultra-conservatives such as Escrivá and Teresa—and implicitly on all that they represented. Another of the ultra-conservatives whom John Paul made into a saint, bizarrely enough, was the last of the Hapsburg rulers of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Emperor Karl, who reigned during World War I.

John Paul also beatified Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac, the leading Croatian cleric who welcomed the Nazi and fascist Ustashi takeover of Croatia during World War II. Stepinac sat in the Ustashi parliament, appeared at numerous public events with top ranking Nazis and Ustashi, and openly supported the Croatian fascist regime.

In John Paul’s celestial pantheon, reactionaries had a better chance at canonization than reformers. Consider his treatment of Archbishop Oscar Romero who spoke against the injustices and oppressions suffered by the impoverished populace of El Salvador and for this was assassinated by a right-wing death squad. John Paul never denounced the killing or its perpetrators, calling it only “tragic.” In fact, just weeks before Romero was murdered, high-ranking officials of the Arena party, the legal arm of the death squads, sent a well-received delegation to the Vatican to complain of Romero’s public statements on behalf of the poor.

Romero was thought by many poor Salvadorans to be something of a saint, but John Paul attempted to ban any discussion of his beatification for fifty years. Popular pressure from El Salvador caused the Vatican to cut the delay to twenty-five years. In either case, Romero was consigned to the slow track.

John Paul’s successor, Benedict XVI, waved the five-year waiting period in order to put John Paul II himself instantly on a super-fast track to canonization, running neck and neck with Teresa. As of 2005 there already were reports of possible miracles attributed to the recently departed Polish pontiff.

One such account was offered by Cardinal Francesco Marchisano. When lunching with John Paul, the cardinal indicated that because of an ailment he could not use his voice. The pope “caressed my throat, like a brother, like the father that he was. After that I did seven months of therapy, and I was able to speak again.” Marchisano thinks that the pontiff might have had a hand in his cure: “It could be,” he said. Un miracolo! Viva il papa!

© Copyright Michael Parenti, commondreams.org, 2007
-------------------------------------------
From Traditio:

A New Book Reveals that Teresa of Calcutta Had a Crisis of Faith for Over Fifty Years
Her Troubling Correspondence with a Traditional Priest
Arguing against the Catholic and Apostolic Church Has Also Been Revealed
The Canonization Process Has Been Corrupted in Newchurch into Conanization

According to a report in the August 24, 2007, Daily Telegraph, Newvatican is rushing to destruction in the Newchurch "conanization" of Teresa of Calcutta later this year. So much troubling information about this woman is already surfacing, within just ten years after her death in 1997, that any thought of conanization should be postponed indefinitely while a complete and honest investigation is conducted over a period of centuries. Just some of the troubling information that has come to light in just the last ten years:

Teresa injected Hindu "inculturation" into her teaching of supposedly Roman Catholic Faith

Teresa's "miracle" is denied by the subject's own doctors, who were barred by Newvatican from testifying that the supposed "cure" was a completely ordinary remission of cancer produced by anticarcinogenic drugs

Teresa had a crisis of faith for over fifty years

A new publication of her letters over 66 years, entitled Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, has revealed that for the last fifty years of her life, she had a deep crisis of faith in God. It is not yet clear whether this collection of letters includes her revealing correspondence with the late Fr. Dr. Rama Coomaraswamy. In this correspondence, Teresa takes the traditional priest to task for insisting on celebrating only the true Mass and confirms that Teresa, far from being traditional, was a rapid defender of the Novus Ordo.

Such serious doubts cannot morally be rushed through by Newchurch to create a phony papier-mache "saint" to make the post-Vatican II crowd happy. Newchurch will simply end up with more egg on its face that it has now. The traditional process of canonization, steeped in caution and careful investigation over centuries, was trashed in 1983 by JPII, himself under suspicion for rushed conanization, who vitiated practically every one of the traditional checks and balances put in place by the Church.

As a result of the corruption of the traditional canonization process and the now-rampant factual errors being made, all Newchurch conanizations must be rejected until a traditional pope or council can sort each case out at some point in the future, when the Church is returned to Tradition. St. Thomas Aquinas, the Universal Doctor of the Church, a most wise and foresightful theologian, indicates that in such cases of gross factual errors, one can doubt the authenticity of canonizations. And Teresa of Calcutta is certainly a case in point.

Faithful Catholics in SF Want Their Church Back

Spin as he might, Bill O'Reilly will never convince congregants at Most Holy Redeemer parish in San Francisco that Archbishop Neiderauer simply "made a mistake" when he gave communion to two transsexuals from the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

As I've said- and many others as well- Bill has granted absolution to the Archbishop when absolution was not warranted. The Diocese (and the Archbishop) have been "gay friendly" for quite a while now- something O'Reilly would have known if he had bothered to do even cursory research.

If you're going to fight in the culture war, Bill, you'll need to recognize the wolf in sheep's clothing. Do your homework next time.
_________________________________

From WorldNetDaily:

Catholics want Vatican to clean church
Holy Redeemer members tired of drag queen bingo, sexfests
Posted: October 25, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

The recent highly publicized photos and video of San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer serving Communion to two flamboyantly dressed members of the anti-Catholic "Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence" was no happenstance.

And soon the shocking images will be on their way to the Vatican for any Catholic leaders who have not yet seen them.

"I am the gentleman responsible for the filming of the whole thing," Anthony Gonzales, chief of the St. Joseph's Men Society, told WND shortly after the first round of publicity over the photos and video. "I sent one of my men to film this."


Gonzales said he knew the archbishop was going to the parish in the heart of the homosexual street fair to "be part of the celebration of their lifestyle, and we were waiting to see what he was going to do and how he was going to do it."

And the reason?

"We can't even take our children to Mass anymore. We can't even go to our churches," he said. "We finally got to the point, and said, 'Hey, look, we can't take this anymore.'

"We want the Roman Catholic faithful to return, and are sick and tired of having to deal with men who are faithless, who are our leaders," Gonzales said. "They come into positions of power because of other homosexuals, or at least are promoting them into positions of power.

"We want to keep the fires burning. This guy has to know he can't continue to get away with his actions. He's played dumb before," he said. "He says, 'I guess I made a mistake.' So he always makes these mistakes!

"He says he didn't recognize two gay men dressed in drag coming up to receive Communion in clown makeup!" Gonzales exclaimed.

The incident was publicized with the men's group video on the Catholic blogsite Quamdiu Domine.

The archbishop, in a diocese newspaper editorial, apologized for serving the two "Sisters," explaining he didn't recognize who they were.

He described the Oct. 7 event as routine.

"The congregation was devout, and the liturgy was celebrated with reverence. I noticed no demonstration, no protest, no disruption of the Eucharist," he wrote.

"At Communion time, toward the end of the line, two strangely dressed persons came to receive Communion. As I recall one of them wore a large flowered hat or garland. I did not recognize either of them as wearing mock religious garb," he said.

"Afterward it was made clear to me that these two people were members of the organization 'Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,' who have long made a practice of mocking the Catholic Church in general and religious women in particular," he said.

"Although I had often seen photographs of members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, I had never encountered them in person until October 7th. I did not recognize who these people were when they approached me. After the event, I realized that they were members of this particular organization and that giving them Holy Communion had been a mistake. I apologize to the Catholics of the Archdiocese of San Francisco and to Catholics at large for doing so," he said.

But Gonzales and several other activists who contacted WND said such "incidents" long have been occurring at the church, and it's likely that the archbishop knew about them. So now is time for action, they told WND.

"We are going to be submitting all of this information to Rome, getting it into the right hands," Gonzales said. "I believe that he is constantly a proponent of homosexuals."

Archdiocese spokesman Maurice Healy told WND that Niederauer does not know the membership of that particular church.

"There's a lot of people who are upset. I think we're equally upset," he said. But the archbishop has a policy of reaching out to "those people."

Gonzales disagreed.

"They don't reach out to that community to call for repentance and healing and their reconciliation with Christ. They say, 'This is your lifestyle and we are here to give you approbation.'"

Gonzales, a theologian, said a compilation of documentation will be forwarded to Rome within the next few days.

"We're also composing a letter to Neiderauer asking him to excommunicate the group, Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, so that this mistake cannot happen again. And we're asking him to excommunicate (San Francisco Mayor)Gavin Newsom and (U.S. House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi for not adhering to Catholic doctrine on same-sex relationships and abortion."

The incident with the "Sisters" was just the final straw, Gonzales said. He said just last fall the pastor of Holy Redeemer gave the "Sisters" permission to run a bingo operation at the church hall. Healy said the archdiocese wasn't aware of what was going on, and when it found out, it ordered it stopped.

But other activists told WND they have been notifying the church archdiocese of their objections to such issues regularly. One such case was a recent "Drag Queen Calendar Nite" at the church. Those who objected notified the church office of their concerns before the event but apparently were ignored since it was held anyway.

"I had hoped that after the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence's obscene and perverted monthly bingo nights (supplying male sex toys for prizes) had been stopped that this type of activity was no longer going to be a problem there. Obviously not," one wrote in an e-mail to the church.

On the Catholic Blog, participants listed some of the documentation being prepared for Rome's attention.

The information includes a video advertisement for the "Sisters' Revival Bingo," where one winner boasts of getting "more gay porn than most young boys have" and organizers boast of "spanking" participants.

Also assembled was documentation from Americans for Truth about the church's repeated sponsorship of booths and other entries in the various San Francisco "gay" festivals, such as the recent Folsom Street Fair, on which WND reported.

Niederauer also said he's pleased the activists cited his opinion that the "gay"-themed "Brokeback Mountain" is "very powerful" and his endorsement of a plan to have Catholic adoption agencies refer babies for adoption by homosexuals.

The activists also cite X-rated YouTube videos that feature the same "Sisters" who organized the drag queen event. One of the less offensive has one of the bingo organizers, named "Heklina," singing about "taking a young handsome boy out for luncheon…"

One activist who requested anonymity wrote: "The [archbishop] issued an apology, but, if he's sincere about it, he'll issue a press release to publicly excommunicate the organization and the members, so that no priest or pastor in his diocese has any trouble deciding what to do."

Allyson Smith, an analyst for Americans for Truth, noted the Catholic Church believes Communion involves the actual "body and blood of Jesus Christ," and such participation by the "twisted 'sisters'" is offensive to many.

Her opinions were echoed abundantly on a response section to the California Catholic News story about the situation:

"May God have mercy on his soul."

"We need to bulldoze to the ground every Catholic Church in S.F. and send these left handed Catholics to the Masonic lodge where they truly belong. Let Satan put up with them."

"Blasphemy."

"You could say the Archbishop has a 'wide stance' toward perversion-enthusiasts in the church."

Catholic Professor Says Archbishop was Right

A Jesuit Professor defended the actions of Archbishop Niederauer by stating that he behaved properly in serving the Eucharist to two transvestites dressed as nuns. In other words, I was right- it was no accident. So to all of you who sent me nasty emails, and you all and O'Reilly can spin things any way you want, but that won't change the facts. The pro-gay Archbishop knew exactly what he was doing.

I've italicized the pertinent portions below, but posted the entire article because it shows that many in the Catholic laity have drank the poison of the post-Vatican II Catholic Church. Apparently, they don't know their Archbishop very well, do they?
________________________________
From this morning's San Francisco Chronicle:

Archbishop apologizes for giving Communion to gays dressed as nuns
Julian Guthrie, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 17, 2007

(10-16) 21:58 PDT San Francisco -- It was a typical Sunday Mass until two men in heavy makeup and nuns' habits received Holy Communion from San Francisco's top Catholic official.

On Oct. 7, Archbishop George Niederauer delivered the Eucharist to members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence - an activist group whose motto is "go forth and sin some more" - prompting cries of outrage from conservatives across the country and Catholics in San Francisco.

In response to a request for comment, Niederauer released a letter of apology addressed to "Catholics of the Archdiocese of San Francisco and to Catholics at large" in which he said he did not realize his mistake until after the Mass at Most Holy Redeemer Church in the Castro district.

"At Communion time, toward the end of the line, two strangely dressed persons came to receive Communion," Niederauer wrote. "As I recall, one of them wore a large flowered hat or garland."

Niederauer said that although he was familiar with the group because its actions had been condemned by his predecessors, he had never encountered any of the group's members until that Sunday.

"These two people have long made a practice of mocking the Catholic Church in general and religious women in particular. Someone who dresses in a mock religious habit to attend Mass does so to make a point (that) was intended as a provocative gesture," he said in the letter, which will be published in this Friday's issue of Catholic San Francisco, a diocesan newspaper.

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, founded in San Francisco in 1979, are known for their white face paint, outrageous costumes, theatrics and support of the gay community. They adopt names such as Sister Chastity Boner and Sister Constance Craving of the Holey Desire and have mottos such as, "It is not wise to say no to free drinks, cheap jewelry, discount cosmetics or pretty boys."

Sister Barbi Mitzvah, who serves as "Board Chairnun" and "Sexytary," said Tuesday that the group is "not offering a comment.

"These people are always after us," Sister Mitzvah said, referring to conservative pundits and Catholic leaders.

The group did not identify the two members who took the wafers. One of the men, however, sent an e-mail to the church after the Mass and gave the name "Sister Delta Goodhand."

Conservative Fox news commentator Bill O'Reilly, who has disparaged "San Francisco values," called the latest flap another example of how the city is run by "far-left secular progressives who despise the military, traditional values and religion."

On his Friday news show, O'Reilly called San Francisco "a disgrace on every level."

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom dismissed O'Reilly's comments.

"This debate really is about San Francisco values. The Bill O'Reillys of the world are threatened by San Francisco because we value diversity, universal health care and civil rights for all. They will exploit any controversy to attack our values."

Some local Catholics, however, said they were hurt by what they said was a mockery of their most holy ritual.

"It's been all the news in Catholic circles," said Bill May, chairman of the San Francisco-based Catholics for the Common Good. "Catholics are hurt, frustrated and a bit angry because nobody is standing up and saying this is not right. This is a desecration of the Eucharist. They were there to make a statement and embarrass the archbishop and, in doing so, they desecrated what is most sacred and dear to every Catholic in the world."

Holy Communion is a centuries-old tradition in which the celebrant receives from a priest the consecrated bread and wine representing the "Body of Christ" and the "Blood of Christ." It is to be taken reverentially, as it is considered the source of Christian life.

"The general sacramental principle is that you don't deny the sacrament to someone who requests it," said the Rev. Jim Bretzke, professor of moral theology at University of San Francisco, a Jesuit Catholic university. "The second principle is that you cannot give communion to someone who has been excommunicated."

He said such people are designated "manifest public sinners" in canon law.

"This is someone who violates in a serious way one of the Ten Commandments or one of the important laws of the Church," he said. "While I can see Bill O'Reilly and others might be offended, the sisters do not meet the criteria the church has for denying Communion. Over-accessorizing and poor taste in makeup is not an excommunicable offense."

Bretzke added, "Even if these people were bizarrely dressed, the archbishop was following clear pastoral and canonical principles in giving them Communion. The default is, you give Holy Communion to one who presents himself."

Matt Dorsey, who works in the city attorney's office and is a parishioner at Most Holy Redeemer, attended the Oct. 7 Mass. He said the service was held on the day of the Castro Street Fair, so many parishioners were casually dressed.

"The Sisters have done a lot of great work for social justice," Dorsey said. "I think it's deeply offensive to see this incident politicized this way. It's not about religion. It's about the culture war."

On a lighter note, he said he couldn't help but notice the Sisters as soon as they entered the sanctuary.

"I was there in jeans and T-shirt," he said. "I have to give the Sisters credit for taking far more time getting ready than I did."

Dorsey said he was impressed by an e-mail sent to the general mailbox of Most Holy Redeemer after the Mass.

Sister Delta Goodhand, one of the two who received communion from Niederauer, wrote: "Just a quick note to recognize the wonderful mass yesterday at your Church. Your entire congregation was so welcoming and it was great to be able to participate. You are a wonderfully inclusive Church."

The Spin Continues

Last night on the O'Reilly Factor, Bill continued to spin the San Francisco Transvestite Communion story. He and Ralph Reed both talked about how this was an attack on Christianity and Catholicism by radicals homosexuals, and that the Catholic Church wasn't complicit in the blasphemy. Neither O'Reilly nor Reed could understand why the Archdiocese has been basically silent since the event. The answer is simple, gentlemen. This is a pro-gay Archbishop in a pro-gay diocese in what is becoming a pro-gay American Catholic Church. They not going to condemn that which they have been helping to orchestrate.

You can watch the dialogue between O'Reilly and the former head of the Christian Coalition at Christian Crisis on the Fox News website.

O'Reilly Defends San Fran Archbishop

Before proceeding, let me tell you all that I am not a Catholic, and please forgive the length of this post, but the spin job provided by Bill "no spin zone" O'Reilly in defending a pro-gay bishop requires this lengthy rebuttal.

That disclosure being out of the way, Bill O'Reilly's defense of Archbishop George Niederauer of San Francisco is one of the most ridiculous spin jobs I have ever come across. The apparently blind Archbishop served the Eucharist to two outlandishly attired transvestites, and Pope Bill granted him absolution, placing all the blame for the communion fiasco on the crossdressers.

I'm going to insert O'Reilly's "Talking Points" memo from Friday, October 12th, here- in it's entirety, so that I can't be accused of taking anything out of context. More of my diatribe will continue afterwards.
__________________________________
From Fox News:

Another Unbelievable Outrage in San Francisco
Monday , October 15, 2007

By Bill O'Reilly

Another outrage in San Francisco and this one is very hard to believe. As you may know, San Francisco is run by far left secular-progressives who despise the military, traditional values and religion. Not everybody in San Francisco feels that way, but certainly the power structure does. Time and again, we have brought you stories of outrageous behavior on the part of militant people living in that city.

Now, things have reached critical mass, no pun intended. Last Sunday, at the Catholic Church of the Most Holy Redeemer, Archbishop George Niederauer was celebrating mass. As part of that ritual, holy communion is given to Catholics by the celebrants. Two gay militants in bizarre dress took communion from the archbishop in an attempt to mock the mass and the man. — The people who did this are members of a militant homosexual group that runs around San Francisco dressed as nuns.

All city officials are aware of the group because in the past they have publicly demeaned Christianity. The Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, has refused to comment.

The District Attorney, Kamala Harris, says she is waiting for a complaint to be filed.

The Catholic Church says it will do its own investigation and doesn't want the police involved at this point. The archbishop has apologized, saying he's embarrassed and sorry he gave communion to people committing sacrilege.

But it really is not the archbishop's fault. — He is an elderly man who was taken by surprise. The fault here lies with the leadership of San Francisco. Mayor Newsom has consistently avoided criticizing behavior that is harmful. He hides under his desk and attacks messengers like me:

VOICE OF GAVIN NEWSOM (D), MAYOR, SAN FRANCISCO: Guys like Bill O'Reilly attack this city and use it as a way to attack Nancy Pelosi and "San Francisco values", it makes me sick to my stomach. How dare you attack this city because of a few exceptions, not the rule, in terms of where our elected officials are with relationship to the military.

Now that comment came after I criticized Newsom for refusing to allow the Marines to film a commercial on city streets. By the way, the comment had nothing to do with Nancy Pelosi.

Again, we've invited Mayor Newsom on the program, we've asked for a statement about the Catholic situation but the mayor is consistent. He condones terrible behavior by refusing to confront it.

Incredibly, the San Francisco media has blacked out the story, refused to report it; with the exception of KNEW Radio. If a mosque had been attacked like this, if a synagogue had been defiled, this would have been page one not only in the San Francisco Chronicle but in every liberal newspaper in the country. Instead, there is no reporting on a violation of a church service by those militants.

"Talking Points" believes all Americans should take a very hard look at what is happening in San Francisco. Certainly the 65 million American Catholics should be deeply offended by the city's behavior.

Enough is enough. Desecrating a Catholic Mass or any other religious service is unacceptable in the United States of America.

And that's "The Memo."
_____________________________________
Ok, back to me again. There you have O'Reilly's insane defense- it's all the fault of the gays and secular progressives in San Francisco... the poor Archbishop was hoodwinked- Bill flat-out states it was "not the Archbishop's fault."

What the Archbishop did was no accident, and O'Reilly should certainly have done his homework before opening his mouth to defend him. For proof I offer the following article which clearly demonstrates Niederauer tolerance and acceptance of gays- even gays in the clergy.

O'Reilly, if you're going to masquerade as a "culture warrior," you better realize that the Catholic leadership in San Francisco is every bit as "socially progressive" as Newsom and the other political leaders.

___________________________________
From The San Francisco Chronicle, December 16, 2005:

A NEW ARCHBISHOP FOR S.F.: VIEWS
Tolerant statements toward gays
Homosexuals can minister as priests, Niederauer says
Wyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, December 16, 2005

San Francisco's incoming Catholic archbishop, George Niederauer, has spoken boldly in support of gay priests and has praised gay parishioners, leaders of gay Catholic organizations said Thursday.

Many in the church hierarchy have blamed the international clergy sex abuse scandal on gay priests, and the Vatican's recent instruction on gays in the priesthood stated new rules on gay clergy were "made more urgent by the current situation."

Niederauer disputed those ideas in an interview with his diocesan newspaper in Utah.

"Some who are seriously mistaken have named sexual orientation as the cause of the recent scandal regarding the sexual abuse of minors by priests," Niederauer said in the interview with the Intermountain Catholic News, which was published Monday.

His reference to "sexual orientation" stands in contrast to the Vatican instruction's description of "persons with deep-seated homosexual tendencies."

Niederauer said gay men committed to Christ and the church can effectively minister as priests, and he said sexual orientation was "a structure of human personality." In contrast, the Vatican instruction states that men "who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called 'gay culture' " are unfit for priesthood.

"I don't think there are any ifs, ands or buts that the Vatican is trying to blame the sex abuse crisis on gay priests, and this man says that is 'seriously mistaken,' " said Sam Sinnett, national president of DignityUSA, an organization in Washington, D.C., of gay and lesbian Catholics.

"Very few bishops have come out and said clearly that this is not about sexual orientation," Sinnett said. He added that, if the statements reflected the bishop's thinking, his appointment in San Francisco would be "more than a small step forward for gay and lesbian Catholics."

As archbishop, Niederauer will have a central role in determining who is ordained in San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo, the counties included in the San Francisco diocese.

In 10 years as bishop of the Diocese of Salt Lake City, Niederauer rarely had to address gay and lesbian issues in the church. DignityUSA, which has chapters in 24 states, isn't active in Utah.

In 2004, however, Niederauer publicly opposed a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage that appeared on the Utah state ballot, even though he opposed same-sex marriage.

Many Protestant leaders and the powerful Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints supported the ban. But Niederauer said he was troubled that the amendment banned any union beside marriage. He also saw the ban as unnecessary because same-sex marriages already were prohibited by Utah law.

Niederauer also helped form the "Coalition of Concerned Religious Leaders," a group of Utah clergy who urged tolerance for gays and lesbians after the state legislature in 1996 banned gay student clubs when students at one school expressed interest in starting such a club.

Before he was assigned to Utah, Niederauer spent his career in Southern California, including a stint at a parish in West Hollywood, which has a large gay population. In a 2003 interview with the (Salt Lake City) Deseret News about his work in West Hollywood, he was enthusiastic.

"I don't have to take a back seat to anyone in the church in my admiration for the people I met," Niederauer said. He added, "They were as wonderful and gifted and generous and compassionate as any you meet."

Francis DeBernardo, who leads New Ways Ministry, a national advocacy group for gay and lesbian Catholics, and met with Niederauer in Salt Lake City, said the bishop was genuinely interested in reaching out to the gay and lesbian community.

"With his pastoral experience in an overwhelmingly gay Catholic parish in West Hollywood, and his political experience dealing with extremism from anti-gay forces in Utah, I think that Bishop Niederauer is one of the best candidates to lead the heavily gay-populated Catholic community of San Francisco," DeBernardo said.

Niederauer's predecessor, Archbishop William Levada, received mixed reviews from gay and lesbian Catholics. Levada spoke several times at the Most Holy Redeemer Church, a largely gay parish in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood, and appointed gays and lesbians to important positions in the diocese.

But on Levada's watch, the diocese stopped its ministry specifically for gay and lesbian Catholics and left that work to local parishes, said the Rev. Jim Schexnayder, who founded the Berkeley-based National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries. Schexnayder said he hoped Niederauer would revive that ministry.

"There's a great need obviously in San Francisco, with so many gay and lesbian Catholics who would greatly benefit from a public pastoral outreach," Schexnayder said.
__________________________
There you have it. The gay community in SF was thrilled when Niederauer was appointed to replace Levada, and now you know why.

So much for the "no spin" zone, eh, Bill? Guess the spin started with you- but the spin stops here.