Catholics, Jews, Politics, Muslims and Murder

“Anti-Catholic bigotry is alive in the U.S. Senate” read the headline of a January, 2019 article by Michael Gerson in the Washington Post. It’s getting tougher to be Catholic here or nearly anywhere else. Gerson citied tough questioning of US District Court Judge Brian Buescher when he was up for ratification in the US Senate last year. Senators Kamala Harris and Maize Hirono believed his membership in the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic mens’ organization, disqualified him because the Catholic Church considers abortion sinful and homosexual acts “intrinsically disordered.”

Senator Dick Durbin’s questions of Buescher went to the Catholic Church’s position on so-called “transgenders” who believe they’re “assigned” a gender at birth. Catholic teaching asserts there are only two unalterable biological sexes. The professed Catholic Senator Durbin was recently denied the Eucharist which the Catholic Church believes is the body of Christ and the essence of Catholicism. Bishop Thomas John Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois made that ruling because Durbin violates Catholic teaching by his support of abortion. Former VP Joe Biden was also denied the Eucharist by Bishop Joseph Francis Martino of Scranton, PA for the same reason.

When conservative Catholic US Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett was up for confirmation, US Senator Dianne Feinstein said: “When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you,” and voted against her. Should there be another vacancy on the Supreme Court, many expect Judge Barrett to be Trump’s nominee. She was runner-up to Brett Kavanaugh, another conservative Catholic, last year.

Osama E. El Hannouny

It’s getting difficult to be a Christian, especially a Catholic Christian, in the early 21st century as these four stories reported in just the past two weeks attest:

*Illinois: (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — “Charges have been upgraded against a man [Osama E. El Hannouny] who allegedly slashed tires of multiple vehicles at churches in Palos Hills… because he didn’t like Christians. The charges against him were upgraded Thursday to 14 counts of hate crime, police said. He allegedly admitted to slashing tires of 19 vehicles at two churches because he didn’t like Christians.”

*According to breitbart.com: “Christian sites in Europe suffered a record number of attacks in the year 2019, with some 3,000 Christian churches, schools, cemeteries, and monuments vandalized, looted, or defaced.” Most were Catholic Churches. Most perpetrators arrested so far have been Muslims.

*ROME (ChurchMilitant.com) - “Hundreds of Christmas cribs have been smashed, burned and vandalized across Italy in a binge of violence unparalleled in recent memory. Statues of the Baby Jesus and the Holy Family have been beheaded, stolen or hanged — in one shocking incident even impaled on an iron pole in a public square.”

*Nigeria (Morning Star News) “Armed Muslim Fulani herdsmen killed 13 Christians in Plateau state, Nigeria on Wednesday (Jan. 8), the same day four students were kidnapped from a Catholic seminary in Kaduna state.” Over 6000 Nigerian Catholics were killed in 2018, thousands more in 2019. 

Five years ago, I interviewed Father Innocent Okozi who was then my parish priest in Fryeburg, Maine. I asked about the situation in his native Nigeria and he confirmed all the reports I had been reading about the murder of Catholics and other Christians in his country. Soon, I’ll be interviewing his successor priest in Fryeburg, Father Peter Shaba, also a Nigerian native, for his perspective.

Up to 100 bodies have been found in a mass grave near the Nigerian town of Damasak, after troops from Chad and Nigeria liberated the locality from Boko Haram militants.

One of my Jewish friends sent me another link last week about murders of Christians around the world. As the descendant of several Holocaust victims, he asked me where was the outrage among Christians? Murders of Christians get some media attention, but not nearly as much as there would be if the stories were about Christians murdering Muslims. My friend and I are watching closely as both anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish violence accelerates on several continents.

More Christian victims of Boko Haram

Of the four US Senators I quoted in the opening paragraphs above, Hirono is Buddhist. Harris seems unsure: “I grew up going to a black Baptist Church and a Hindu temple,” she said. Her husband is Jewish, so we must assume she has yet to choose. Feinstein’s 2000 campaign website said she was Jewish, but seems largely secular now. Durbin is ostensibly Catholic but his bishop has doubts.

In closing, I should point out that of the nine members of the US Supreme Court, six are Roman Catholics and the other three are Jews. All three Jews are reliably liberal votes and all but one of the Catholics are reliable conservative votes. Sotomayor is the odd one out. She was born to a single mother in the Bronx and attended a Catholic high school, but evidence of her alleged Catholicism is thin. She officiated a wedding for two women, and I suspect Senator Feinstein would never say about Sotomayor that: “The dogma lives largely within [her].”

What Have We Become?

Women working at his Houston abortion clinic saw Doctor Douglas Karpen kill babies by “twisting their heads off their necks with his own bare hands.” Sometimes he stabbed a surgical instrument into their heads or snipped their spinal cords just as Dr. Kermit Gosnell of Philadelphia did, and this happened every morning according to one of the witnesses. “Sometimes he couldn't get the fetus out... he would yank pieces – piece by piece – when they were oversize,” [Karpen’s ex-assistant Deborah] Edge explained. “And I'm talking about the whole floor dirty. I'm talking about me drenched in blood.” The women took pictures surreptitiously with their cell phones.

These are Doctor Karpen's assistants quoted above

Philadelphia’s Dr. Kermit Gosnell is serving three life terms in Pennsylvania for his crimes, but what happened to Houston’s Dr. Karpen? Nothing. A grand jury shepherded by Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson refused to indict him. What about the testimony of four eyewitnesses? What about the photos they took with their cell phones? We don’t know if any of that was shown to the grand jury by Ms. Anderson because according to a statement from Anderson's office: “Texas law forbids this office from disclosing the proceedings of the grand jury, including the names of the witnesses who testified, the documents they subpoenaed, and any speculation into why the grand jury chose [not to indict Dr.] Karpen.”

So, we don’t know what Ms. Anderson showed the grand jury or didn’t show them. We don’t know what she said or didn’t say to the people on that jury either. Thirty years ago New York Judge Sol Wachtler observed that district attorneys have so much control over grand juries that they could convince them to indict a ham sandwich. Evidently, they can also persuade grand juries there’s no such thing as a ham sandwich. Did Dr. Karpen get away with murder? It sure looks like it. As Dr. Kermit Gosnell sits in his Pennsylvania prison cell, does he wish he had moved his clinic to Houston?

Doctor Kermit Gosnell enters prison in Pennsylvania

All that occurred in 2013. Fast forward to January, 2016 and District Attorney Devon Anderson was investigating Planned Parenthood for selling baby parts from its abortion clinics. You’ve all seen or heard about the infamous videos that came out last year, right? Well, “Surprise-surprise!” as Gomer Pyle would say. Ms. Anderson’s grand jury not only absolved Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing, it actually indicted the two people who exposed their horrors! They were charged with misdemeanors for “buying” baby parts and a felony for making a fake ID!

Not tough with abortionists though

This is truly a bizarre story. DA Anderson claims to be a pro-life Republican who just applies the law regardless of her personal beliefs. Well, she is a Republican, but is she pro-life? One of the fellow prosecutors she hired is a board member of Planned Parenthood. She got at least $25,000 from Attorney Chip Lewis for her re-election campaign in late 2014 and guess who Chip Lewis represents? None other than butcher abortionist Dr. Karpen! And who are Chip Lewis’s other clients? They include the wealthy accused serial killer Robert Durst, who appears to keep him on retainer to handle his Houston legal troubles while he faces murder charges across the country. Lewis also donated at least $12,000 to Anderson’s late husband, which went to her after his death.

Chip Lewis, Robert Durst, Devon Anderson

What are some of the Houston legal troubles transgender millionaire and accused serial killer Robert Durst has? Well, according to Houston oil and gas executive Don Hooper, Durst was arrested for urinating on some candy a his local CVS store. Chip Lewis handled it and “Devon Anderson’s office reduced the charge to a fine-only class C charge.” Why didn't Anderson hold him and notify officials in two other states who wanted to prosecute him for murder? God knows.

Drag queen gave makeup tips to Durst

The more I looked into this story, the worse it got. I felt soiled and stunned by what I was learning. When Robert Durst was on trial for the murder of Morris Black in 2003, he admitted to dismembering Black’s body and dumping it in Galveston Bay. He claimed Black pulled a gun on him and while he and Black struggled, it went off into Black’s face, but authorities never found Black’s head, so “Prosecutors were unable to present sufficient forensic evidence to dispute Durst's account of the struggle.” Durst was acquitted!

No wonder Republicans are in wholesale rebellion. The failure of “leadership” in Congress to defund Planned Parenthood was the final straw for millions of conservatives. We have a president who vows to shut down the entire federal government if Congress doesn’t give them $550 million. We have a Congress too timid to confront him, and we have a “pro-life” Republican in Houston who not only protects notorious baby killer Doctor Douglas Karpen, she prosecutes those who expose the butchers at Planned Parenthood.

What evidence did Anderson's grand jury see?

We refuse even to look at the evil in our midst and we prosecute those who would force us to look. What have we become? 

Discussion of this begins at 22:00

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