Post: #1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQinrYY4j8Y





Anti-lobbyist rhetoric lost among festivities
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008.../?page=all 8/26/2008
The lobbying of Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son, Hunter, is also drawing scrutiny as Republicans target his work. Hunter Biden, 38, is a longtime federal lobbyist for a variety of interests, including the Jesuit university located in his father’s hometown, Scranton, Pa.

According to federal disclosures, Hunter Biden has been earning about $80,000 a year since 2006 to lobby for the University of Scranton.





Jesuit University [of Scranton] Defies Bishop
http://realcatholictv.blogspot.com/2012/...01-16.html 1/16/2012
A Jesuit University in Pennsylvania is refusing to obey its Bishop … ignoring orders to cancel the speaking engagement of a pro-abortion politician.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIlt9cSVhDA
[RealCatholicTV was founded by Michael Voris and is funded by Opus Dei member Marc Brammer]





Jesuits Rebuke Ryan [written by Knight of Malta Michael Novak]
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/3...hael-novak 6/11/2012
In six succinct paragraphs, some leading Jesuits and other professors and staff members at Georgetown University upbraided Congressman Paul Ryan, one of the more serious Catholics in the Congress, for “misrepresenting Catholic social thought.”

[The National Review was founded by Knight of Malta William Buckley, Jr.]





Catholic scholar Michael Novak goes to bat for Republican budget in Congress
http://www.speroforum.com/a/STEYFPZMRW56...n-Congress 6/25/2012
Michael Novak, a scholar in residence at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC, defended Republican Rep. Paul Ryan from attacks by Georgetown University professors and priests in an address at the Catholic Information Center. The CIC is operated by Opus Dei.





[Jesuit-run] Catholic law school hires pro-abortion dean
http://www.speroforum.com/a/FKSMSLGFAL22...n-abortion 8/19/2012
St. Louis University Law School, a Catholic school founded and run by the Jesuits order, hired an active abortion supporter to run its law school. The Cardinal Newman Society, a Catholic watchdog that also ranks educational institutions on their orthodoxy, is speaking out about the university's decision.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epsPUM57Pz0
[Spero News was founded by Opus Dei member Robert Duncan]





Their Will Be Done
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1983...ll-be-done 1983
The American section of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta has about 1,000 members including 300 "dames." They represent the vanguard of American Catholicism, the point at which the Vatican and the U.S. ruling elite intersect. "The Knights of Malta comprise what is perhaps the most exclusive club on earth," Stephen Birmingharn, the social historian, has written. "They are more than the Catholic aristocracy...[they] can pick up a telephone and chat with the pope."

And who are the American Knights? Mother Jones managed to obtain part of the secret membership list.
[...]
William Buckley, Jr., a former CIA operative and the editor of the National Review, is a member, as is his brother James, a former senator from New York and now undersecretary of state for security assistance.

The American section of the SMOM is one of the main channels of communication between the CIA and the Vatican.
[...]
In recent years, Opus Dei has emerged internationally as one of the most powerful and politically committed of the Catholic lay groups. Detractors have likened the organization to a "saintly Mafia," for its members control a large number of banks and financial institutions, including Rumasa, the largest conglomerate in Spain's private sector. In the latter stages of the Franco regime, ten out of 19 cabinet officers belonged to or were closely allied with Opus Dei. Despite the active political role the order plays wherever it exists, Father Malcolm Kennedy, an American spokesperson for Opus Dei, insists it is "inconceivable...that Opus Dei leaders in any country would try to influence political decisions."

The tentacles of "Octopus Dei," as it is sometimes called, stretch all the way to the U.S., where David Kennedy, former chairman of Continental Illinois Bank and treasury secretary under Richard Nixon, is said to be a "conspicuous friend" of the conservative religious order, despite the fact that he is a Mormon. Continental Illinois owns shares of an Opus Dei bank in Barcelona.

Opus Dei also controls a wide range of media assets (600 newspapers, 52 radio and TV stations, 12 film companies and 38 news agencies) and sponsors educational and social programs in various countries. These efforts have been endorsed by members of the American section of the SMOM such as William Simon (Citicorp) and Francis X. Stankard (Chase Manhattan Bank), who have spoken at Opus Dei seminars and other functions of the group.
[...]
The decision to upgrade the status of Opus Dei appears to be part of an over-all strategy to counter the influence of Jesuits and other progressive clerics active in the liberation theology movement. Pope John Paul II's feud with the Jesuits came to a head in October 1981, when he suspended the order's constitution and replaced its ailing superior general, Father Pedro Arrupe, with a Jesuit of his own choosing. Many Jesuits have caused turmoil in the 'Vatican by questioning papal pronouncements on birth control, priestly celibacy, the barring of women from the priesthood and, most significantly, clerical involvement in politics. Because it is predominantly a lay organization, Opus Dei is exempt from these rules.

Post: #2

Biden/Ryan clash over abortion, HHS birth control mandate in VP debate
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/biden-r...-vp-debate 10/11/2012
Vice President Joe Biden and Congressman Paul Ryan went head-to-head on the issue of abortion during tonight’s vice presidential debate - the first and only of the 2012 election season, and the first VP debate in U.S. history to feature two Catholics - giving very different answers.

An hour and twenty minutes into a debate that focused primarily on the economy and foreign policy in the Middle East, moderator Martha Raddatz asked the pair to explain how their Catholic faith has influenced their views on abortion.
[...]
On the issue of the HHS mandate and its attack on religious liberty, Biden simply flat-out denied that the mandate would force Catholic institutions to pay for contraception.

No Catholic institution “has to either refer for contraception, none has to pay for contraception, none has to be a vehicle to get contraception in any insurance policy they provide, that is a fact,” he declared in a remark that drew a strong rebuke from one of the country’s top pro-life organizations.





Atlanta archdiocese joins suit against HHS mandate; still no Jesuit colleges among plaintiffs
http://www.catholicculture.org/news/head...ryid=15859 10/10/2012
The Atlanta archdiocese has joined in a lawsuit challenging the contraceptive mandate in the Obama administration’s health-care policy. “We are undertaking this action because the stakes are so incredibly high,” said Archbishop Wilton Gregory.

In a related development, the Cardinal Newman Society observed that among the dozens of religious institutions that have filed suit against the mandate, Catholic colleges and universities are outnumbered by other Christian institutions. The prominence of Evangelical Protestant colleges among those challenging the mandate belies the widespread impression that this is a “Catholic issue,” the Cardinal Newman Society observes. But it also raises a question: Why are so many Catholic colleges and universities not joining in the legal challenge. “Not one of the 28 Jesuit colleges and universities in the U.S. has joined in a lawsuit against HHS,” the group notes.





Order of Malta hosts presentation on HHS and religious liberty
http://catholicnewsherald.com/viewpoints...us-liberty 2/16/2012
The Order of Malta is not backing down in its defense of religious liberty and the Catholic faith.

That was evident on Feb. 11, as the Charlotte Chapter of the Order of Malta hosted a forum on religious liberty in the Haid Theatre at Belmont Abbey College, actively living its charism to "defend the Catholic, the Apostolic, the Roman Faith against the enemies of religion."

More than 100 people attended the event. It was hosted in light of recent attempts by the Obama Administration to seek compromise between Catholic leaders and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on its recent mandate to include contraception in all health insurance plans over religious organizations' objections.





Rick Santorum [Knight of Malta]
http://twitter.com/RickSantorum/status/2...0214768640
@RickSantorum
Watch @ericmetaxas talk about religious freedom & why it's critical we fight HHS mandate youtu.be/3uJwDkLJOlc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uJwDkLJOlc
Eric Metaxas - The HHS Mandate and Religious Liberty
On March 15, 2012, the Catholic Information Center in Washington DC hosted Eric Metaxas to discuss his best-selling book "Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy."

Full event footage can be viewed here: http://youtu.be/UlPIIQ3CcGM

Visit www.cicdc.org for more information.

[Catholic Information Center is ran by Opus Dei]

Post: #3

Rick Santorum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Santorum
Rick Santorum traveled in 2002 to Rome [with Opus Dei priest C. John McCloskey, former director of the Catholic Information Center] to speak at a centenary celebration of the birth of Saint Josemaría Escrivá, founder of Opus Dei. He and his wife were invested as Knight and Dame of Magistral Grace of the Knights of Malta in a ceremony at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York on November 12, 2004.





Santorum vs. JFK [written by Jesuit Raymond A. Schroth]
http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?entry_id=4859 1/12/2012
In principle, as a Catholic Democrat, I’ve always rejoiced in the presence of Catholics in public life. I remember as child a delegation coming to our house in Trenton to ask my father, a World War I hero and the editorial writer for the Trenton Times, to run for office. But, though an eloquent public speaker, he lacked the politician’s temperament—event though I learned later that his father had served in the New Jersey Assembly in the 19th century. But my brother Dave ran for city council and rose to becoming a Superior Court judge. The turning point for my generation was the John Kennedy campaign, and some of us in the Jesuit seminary in 1960 were jealous that one of JFK’s speech writers was our age, while we were stuck in a remote Westchester cloister where we had to watch the Kennedy-Nixon debates in secret.

In spite of his language crafted to reassure both an audience of Protestant ministers and a nation of fellow Catholics, his Houston address was a sort of Magna Charta for the Catholic in public life. He proclaimed the primacy of the individual conscience, which has always been Catholic teaching, especially in Vatican II—which was still on the horizon in 1960—and, once elected, he was photographed every Sunday leaving church with that old Sunday Missal in his grip.

Since then, until recently, a candidate’s Catholicism has not been an issue, unless a local bishop proclaims that the Catholic candidate who does not buy the bishop’s stand on birth control, same-sex marriage, stem-cell research, or abortion is anathema, banned from the communion rail—and sometimes you too, if you vote for him/her.

Onto this stage walks Rick Santorum, whom Bob Casey knocked out of the senate in 2006. Santorum, to a greater degree than other Catholic candidates, has constructed his image around an altar boy youth, his coal miner father, his big family of seven children, plus the loss of a son born prematurely in 1996. On the other hand a series of New York Times reports fills in the portrait of the anti-big government Santorum, both of whose parents worked for the federal government at a hospital, with stories on the millionaire lobbyist and the political brawler, the hot-headed name caller, the “bully who was not the potent enough force to be a bully” and became known as “Senator Slash.” (Read one of the Times' stories here.) And now the more thoughtful conservative who has cooled down.

His most developed statement is “A Charge to Revive the Role of Faith in the Public Square,” a talk delivered at the University of St. Thomas in Houston in 2010, the 50th anniversary of JFK’s address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. He confesses that as a boy his grandparents displayed pictures of Jess, Pope Paul VI and John F. Kennedy. Then he goes on to reject the Kennedy vision, accusing Kennedy of constructing another “threatening wall” that “sealed off informed moral wisdom into a realm of national beliefs that have no legitimate role in political discourse.” That day, says Santorum, Kennedy “chose to expel faith.” He goes on to explain the First Amendment, insisting that freedom of religion is not just one of the freedoms but the one on which freedom of speech, press, and assembly depend. Kennedy, says Santorum, is closer to “Ataturk than to James Madison.”

I don’t know where Santorum was in 1960, but he was two years old. I was surrounded by Jesuit scholastics in philosophy studies. We knew the speech had been written with the advise of Catholic theologians and that Kennedy knew the proper role of conscience, as well as religion, in making public decisions.

Meanwhile the issues which challenge Catholic conscience have grown, particularly in social justice, since the 1960s; and many, if not most, Catholics see the relationship between life issues as both more intimate and complex than those Kennedy faced. A study by Catholic Democrats shows that Santorum has among the worst voting records in the U.S. Congress on social justice and the family, though Santorum describes himself as “pro family.” In November 2011 he questioned the value of lower income children qualifying for Medicaid, food stamps, and housing assistance. “Why do these kids feel they are entitled to so much?...Suffering, if you’re a Christian, is part of life and it’s not a bad thing.” He favors massive tax cuts for the wealthy, wants to abolish public service unions, and denies humans are responsible for climate change. While the bishops have condemned torture in all its forms, in the televised debate Santorum endorsed water-boarding and “enhanced interrogation techniques.” He has long been pro-death penalty, but now says he’s thinking it over.

Raymond A. Schroth, S.J.

[America Magazine is ran by Jesuits]





Rick Santorum - Opus Dei Member?
http://www.tytnetwork.com/ 3/21/2012
Is 2012 Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum a members of the controversial Catholic group Opus Dei? The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks down a report on the topic from Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/r...litics_pop
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Vo-2o1OCKw





Rick Santorum has embraced Spanish priest behind devout Catholic group Opus Dei
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/r...litics_pop 3/16/2012
In January 2002, prominent Catholics from around the world gathered in Rome to celebrate the Spanish priest who founded one of the church’s most conservative and devout groups, Opus Dei.

The event drew cardinals, bishops and other powerful Vatican officials. And among those invited to speak was a future presidential candidate: Rick Santorum, whose faith had become so essential to his politics that on federal documents he listed the trip, paid for by an Opus Dei foundation, as part of his official duties as a U.S. senator from Pennsylvania.

In a speech at the gathering, Santorum embraced the ideas of Opus Dei founder Josemaria Escriva, who had urged ordinary Catholics to bring an almost priestly devotion to Catholic principles in every realm of life and work.

During Senate debates about abortion, Santorum told the audience in Rome, he hears Escriva telling him that “it is not true that there is opposition between being a good Catholic and serving civil society faithfully.” In his public fight to uphold “absolute truths,” Santorum said, “blessed Josemaria guides my way.”
[...]
Santorum has for years attended a church with a number of Opus Dei followers and other affiliations with the group, and he has sent two of his sons to a school run by Opus Dei members. Among his family friends is the Rev. C. John McCloskey, an Opus Dei priest who is a spiritual mentor to many prominent Washington conservatives. McCloskey traveled to Rome with Santorum, led him on a retreat with the group and baptized one of his children.





Breaking The Opus Dei Code: the secretive Catholic group's name means 'Work Of God,' but in Washington, D.C., that divine task has a decidedly political bent.
http://www.au.org/church-state/may-2006-...s-dei-code 2006
From the outside, the non-descript bookstore at 15th and K Streets in the heart of Washington, D.C., looks like any other shop selling religious literature and goods.

A small sign in the window reads "Catholic Information Center." Visitors are advised that mass and confession are offered daily. Inside, one can pick up titles like How to Raise Good Catholic Children, Celibacy in the Early Church and A Catholic Homeschool Treasury.

But off in one corner is a special section of books dealing with the life and philosophy of Roman Catholic priest (turned saint) Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer and the controversial organization he founded: Opus Dei.

Far from being just another religious bookstore, the Catholic Information Center is, in fact, a prominent American outpost for Opus Dei, an organization much in the news lately. The center, within walking distance of the White House, serves as a rallying point for ultra-conservative Catholics eager for a voice in the secular halls of government power.

Opus Dei, Latin for "work of God," has, according to media reports, at least 3,000 members in the United States--but its influence, critics say, has been more substantial than its numbers would indicate. In 2002, an Opus Dei priest, the Rev. C. John McCloskey III, former director of the Catholic Information Center, converted U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) from evangelical Protestantism to Catholicism. Brownback's conversion was shepherded by U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), a conservative Catholic and Opus Dei booster.





Catholic Information Center
http://cicdc.org/video/ 6/1/2012
A video highlighting various aspects of the Catholic Information Center.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhfYAisbzAM

Post: #4

Post: #5

Seems entirely possible.. even the public faces of the two institutions are really horrible, the private faces must be something else again. Used to pass by a statue of Escrivá every day, made a point to throw a rock at it every time.

Post: #6

Hmmmm... and then Six of the Justices of SCOTUS are Roman Catholics.

Does this not bother anyone?

Post: #7

Opus Dei In US Government: The Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court And Their Faith
http://www.mgr.org/OpusDeiInUSGovernment.html 2/10/2010
After a fairly thorough literature search we have found that the following Justices are Catholic and conservative, however, rumors of their active Opus Dei membership cannot be confirmed. There are some family and parish associations with Opus Dei, but nothing else can be ascertained through what is published in what is accepted as legitimate publications.

Samuel Anthony Alito
No immediate or remote OD tie found.

Anthony McLeod Kennedy
Of this group, he is the most centrist; he has voted in both “liberal” and “conservative” directions. No immediate or remote OD tie found.

John Glover Roberts
Roberts’ “children reportedly attend an Opus Dei school in Maryland.”

Antonin Gregory Scalia
John Allen, author of a friendly book on Opus Dei, was told that Scalia is not a member, despite rumors to the contrary. Scalia “attends St. Catherine of Siena Church in Falls Church, Virginia, St. Catherine's has a strong Opus Dei presence, complete with Sunday morning Latin Mass. It is the Washington, DC parish for many Opus Dei members and cooperators, such as former Senator Rick Santorum. … Furthermore, his aforementioned son Paul has been reported to be a priest in the Order of the Holy Cross, Opus Dei's priestly order as well as being affiliated with Fr. Frank Pavone's Priests for Life.

Clarence Thomas
Allen was also told that Thomas is not a member, despite rumors to the contrary. Thomas’ conversion/return to the Roman Catholic Church was handled by the Opus Dei "priest to the political stars" C. John McCloskey, with the assistance from Paul Scalia (another OD priest, and son of Justice Scalia).





Obama nominates New York Latina to Supreme Court
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories...902392.htm 5/26/2009
President Barack Obama has nominated federal appeals court Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court; if she is confirmed, the New York native of Puerto Rican descent would become the first Hispanic to serve on the high court.
[...]
Jesuit Father Joseph O'Hare, the retired president of Fordham University who served with Sotomayor on a New York City campaign finance review council, said when he knew her beginning in the late 1980s she was indeed a practicing Catholic. He said he has no reason to think that has changed. They have stayed in touch intermittently, and he said she gave his name as a reference for her FBI background check.





Sotomayor Would Be Sixth Catholic Justice, but the Pigeonholing Ends There
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/us/pol...2&emc=eta1 5/30/2009
If Judge Sonia Sotomayor is confirmed for a seat on the Supreme Court, she will be the sixth of the nine justices who are Roman Catholic — a stunning robed portrait in a country where Catholics were once targets of discrimination and suspicion.

Four of the Catholics on the court are reported to be committed attenders of Mass, and they make up the court’s solid conservative bloc — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. The fifth Catholic, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, often votes with them.
[...]
The court’s liberal wing is made up of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, who are Jewish, and John Paul Stevens, a Protestant.

The Rev. Joseph A. O’Hare, a Jesuit priest and the former president of Fordham University, who came to know Judge Sotomayor when they both served on the New York City Campaign Finance Board in the 1980s, said: “I just don’t think Sonia would fit in with Roberts, exactly, and certainly not Scalia. I think they’re very different Catholics.”

Post: #8

Supreme Court makeup not a top campaign issue
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/polit...e/1653413/ 10/24/2012
Vice President Biden raised the court as an issue in his debate with Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin earlier this month. "The next president will get one or two Supreme Court nominees. That's how close Roe v. Wade is," Biden said, referring to the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide. "Just ask yourself: With Robert Bork being the chief adviser on the court for Mr. Romney, who do you think he's likely to appoint?"





Supreme Court Moments in History: Senate Rejects Robert Bork Nomination
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ 1987
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dASehKzE9yE





The Opus Dei Code
http://www.time.com/time/europe/mediakit...87,00.html 4/20/2006
After Years of Keeping Mum, Opus Dei Is Willing to Publicly Deny the Membership of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, almost-Justice Robert Bork, Senators Rick Santorum and Sam Brownback, Columnist Robert Novak and Former FBI Head Louis Freeh, Yet TIME Explains How Opus Dei May Still Exert Power in American Politics.
[...]
Some have said that Opus' true secret is its clout in international politics. Poland's new conservative regime includes an Opus minister and several Opus officials, according to one of the group's Warsaw directors; membership there is rumored to be a political stepping stone. For years, Catholics in Washington have kept informal count of possible high-profile Opus people, including Justice Antonin Scalia and almost-Justice Robert Bork, Senators Rick Santorum and Sam Brownback, columnist Robert Novak and former FBI head Louis Freeh. The tally was not totally arbitrary: Freeh's child attended an Opus Dei school, and his brother was a numerary for a while; Scalia's wife has attended Opus events, and the Justice is close to an Opus priest; and Brownback, Bork and Novak converted to Catholicism under one's wing. Several have denied the rumors ("I can't stress enough that he is not a member," says Santorum's communications chief.) But a bonus of Opus' new candor campaign is that it now states freely that not one of the powerful Washingtonians belongs, TIME reports.





Father C. John McCloskey reflects on lessons learned from 30 years of priesthood
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/f...riesthood/ 8/8/2011
He is one of the most popular and recognizable priests in the U.S. and beyond – and this month Father C. John McCloskey chalks up three decades in the priesthood.
[...]
Fr. McCloskey’s road to the priesthood, though, certainly wasn't a conventional clerical tale. A graduate in economics from Columbia University in New York he worked for Citibank and Merrill Lynch on Wall Street before being ordained a priest of Opus Dei in 1981.

Since then he’s gone on to become a best-selling author and popular religious commentator on both television and radio, most notably with EWTN.

He is perhaps best known, though, for guiding into the Catholic Church such notable figures as Robert Novak, Judge Robert Bork, Senator Sam Brownback, General Josiah Bunting and Dr. Bernard Nathanson, one of the founders of NARAL Pro-Choice America, who died earlier this year.

“(Those conversions) had nothing to do with me. I’m just an instrument. It’s God who gives the grace. I’m just an instrument who hangs in there till they say ‘yes’” he humbly asserted at an anniversary party held in his honor last month in his hometown of Washington D.C.





Fr. C. John McCloskey - 30 Years as a Priest
http://youtu.be/zZkPs5ySABw 7/22/2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZkPs5ySABw

Post: #9

America is run by Rome. Rome moved to what is known as the Vatican, that is why the Vatican is a Nation, because Rome has to be connected to its Law, because it is a Nation.

America is run by Rome.

The false front was the Queen.

At the Treaty of Versailles, the Queen handed everything "formally" back over to Rome.

1776 took place, at the hand of the queen. Do tell, freedom loving People coming over here to run away from being killed, then kill ones like them that were already living here?

Sure.

It was merely Colonial expansion.

The real choice of and for true freedom comes soon.

For everyone.

Or, the dark ages come again.

Make the choice, and stop being luke warm.

Post: #10

High-ranking members of US military part of ‘Knights of Malta,’ ‘Opus Dei,’ reporter claims
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/21/hi...er-claims/ 1/21/2011
Veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh has broken some massive stories in his day, but uncovering secret societies within the highest echelons of America’s military would probably be the biggest of his career.

Well, get ready for the media storm, because that’s essentially what Hersh told an audience in Doha, Qatar recently, according to a report published earlier this week by Foreign Policy.

Speaking at a campus operated by [Jesuit-run] Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, Hersh said he was working on a new book that details “how eight or nine neoconservative, radicals if you will, overthrew the American government.”
[...]
He further claimed that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Vice Admiral William McRaven and others in the JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command] were members of the “Knights of Malta” and “Opus Dei,” two little known Catholic orders.

“They do see what they’re doing — and this is not an atypical attitude among some military — it’s a crusade, literally,”





Who Are the Knights of Malta -- and What Do They Want?
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/20..._they_want 1/19/2011
In a speech in Doha on Monday, veteran New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh alleged that the U.S. military's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) had been infiltrated by Christian fanatics who see themselves as modern-day Crusaders and aim to "change mosques into cathedrals." In particular, he alleged that former JSOC head Gen. Stanley McChrystal -- later U.S. commander in Afghanistan -- and his successor, Vice Adm. William McRaven, as well as many other senior leaders of the command, are "are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta."
[...]
According to journalist Jeremy Scahill's book Blackwater, Joseph Schmitz, a former executive at the company who also served as inspector general for the U.S. Department of Defense, boasted of his membership in the Knights in his official biography. The defense contractor now known as Xe's chief executive, Erik Prince, reportedly espoused Christian supremacist beliefs, and its contractors in Iraq used codes and insignia based on the order's medieval compatriots, the Knights of the Templar.





Holy Blackwater
http://youtu.be/SKMRJK_YMAs 8/7/2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKMRJK_YMAs





Malta ‘is Blackwater’s operational base’ – MEP report
http://www.independent.com.mt/news.asp?newsitemid=59033 10/14/2007
A European Parliament working document drawn up by Giovanni Claudio Fava has claimed “Malta is the operational base of Blackwater, the organiser of private military militia which are increasingly taking on more and more roles which used to be undertaken by US forces in Iraq and elsewhere”.
[...]
In 2004, Cofer Black passed from CIA to the State Department and thence became Blackwater’s vice-president. While still in the CIA, Black was in charge of the “special extraditions” organising the secret transfer of prisoners from Iraq or Afghanistan to countries less rigid against the practice of torture, such as Poland, Romania, Egypt, and so on.

These planes, which travelled between Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Afghanistan often made stopovers in many European countries such as the UK, Italy, France, Germany and Malta many times without the countries themselves being informed what was going on.





Leading GOP Candidate Romney Taps Blackwater’s Cofer Black as Campaign Adviser
http://www.democracynow.org/2007/5/23/le...lackwaters 5/23/2007
Leading Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has tapped Blackwater executive Cofer Black as a senior campaign advisor.





Mitt Romney Campaign Defends Cofer Black
http://youtu.be/HGr2_LapvnY 11/25/2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGr2_LapvnY

Post: #11

Mae Brussell - Opus Dei, Knights of Malta & Vatican Death Squads - (12-24-84)
http://youtu.be/9Fejc-IW_KQ 12/24/1984
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Fejc-IW_KQ





Death Squad Was After The Jesuits In 1977, The White Warriors Union - A Right-wing Group - Ordered All Jesuits Out Of The Country Under Threat Of Death. [written by Phillip Berryman]
http://articles.philly.com/1989-11-20/ne...eath-squad 11/20/1989
My wife's message was brief: The residence of the Jesuits in San Salvador had been bombed by heavily armed men. Six Jesuits, the cook and her daughter killed. I stared at the machine - stunned, outraged, disbelieving.

Disbelief lasted only a few seconds, however. After all, in 1980 I heard Archbishop Oscar Romero in his sermon warn soldiers not to kill unarmed peasants, even under orders. "No human command is above God's law: 'Thou shalt not kill.' " The next day he was shot dead while saying Mass. Father Ignacio Ellacuria, one of those killed Thursday, was with Archbishop Romero that morning nine years ago.

Father Ellacuria and other Jesuits in El Salvador have been living on borrowed time since June 1977, when a death squad called the White Warriors Union ordered all of them to leave the country within a month or be eliminated, one by one. This was shortly after two priests had been murdered (one of them a Jesuit named Rutilio Grande, as seen in the film Romero).

The White Warriors Union, reputedly directed by Roberto D'Aubuisson, then active in the army's intelligence service, denounced "Jesuit guerrillaism." The bizarre 30-day countdown drew international media attention to El Salvador. As the attention-filled days and nights passed, the Jesuits held their ground. None was killed then, although over the next two or three years 10 priests were murdered.

What was the Jesuits' "crime"? The landholders, business people and the armed forces were blaming the Jesuits for growing militancy among peasants, workers and students. The logic seems to be that poor people don't think for themselves, so that when they begin to demand their rights, there must be ''brains" behind them - intellectuals, church people and especially Jesuits. Reports from San Salvador indicated that, in fact, four of the Jesuits were found with their brains blown out.





El Salvador: Twenty years since radical [Jesuit] priests murdered
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/42824 11/14/2009
At about 2am on November 16, 1989, Salvadoran soldiers burst into the home of six Jesuit priests teaching at the University of Central America. They proceeded to slaughter them. Father Ignacio Ellacuria was the main target, according to evidence gathered after the 1992 peace accords that ended the long civil war in El Salvador. Since the 1980 assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, Ellacuria had been the Catholic church's most outspoken defender of the poor, offending the Salvadorian military. "He had been hated by them since the very beginning of the war", Father Tim McMahon, who had worked in El Salvador with the priests, told the November 6 Kansas City Catholic Key newspaper. "He picked up the role of Romero, and kept demanding a just peace", he said. "They couldn't shut him up or disprove him, so he had to be wiped out."

The other priests, Ignacio Martin-Baro, Segundo Montes, Amando Lopez, Juan Ramon Moreno and Joaquin Lopez y Lopez, were all murdered to eliminate witnesses. Their housekeeper, Julia Elba Ramos, and her 15-year-old daughter Celina, who had chosen to stay that night at the priests' residence for safety, were killed in their beds. It is estimated that more than 75,000 people died in the liberation struggle in El Salvador, which was characterised by extreme brutality committed by military death squads. "The real cause of the civil war was unbridled selfishness and greed, and brutal oppression", McMahon said. "Entire villages had been massacred and wiped from the face of the earth. Thousands of ordinary folks had been killed. Finally, when the military ordered the murders of six priests, the world got shocked."

The Jesuits were renowned for teaching at the university during the week and then spending their weekends ministering in the countryside to the poor. They were popular for advancing the radical ideas of liberation theology.





Their Kingdom Come: Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei
http://books.google.com/books?id=9UA4LV2XMQQC 1997
[Opus Dei founder Josemaria] Escriva de Balaguer rejected liberation theology and his campaign to suppress it became the first major battleground between the Jesuits and Opus Dei.





Their Will Be Done
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1983...ll-be-done 1983
Liberation theology came to life in the form of thousands of grassroots Christian communities that sprang up throughout Latin America, where nine out of ten people are Catholic, and eight out of ten are destitute. Within these groups, religion became less a ritualistic phenomenon and more an inspiration to clergy and laity attempting to remove the yoke of oppression from the poor. Some priests even began to align themselves with the left-wing guerrillas engaged in armed struggle against U.S.-backed regimes. "The Christian base communities are the greatest threat to military dictatorships throughout Latin America," said Maryknoll Sister Ita Ford in late 1980, three weeks before she, two other American nuns and Jean Donovan, a lay missionary worker, were brutally murdered in El Salvador.

The CIA was quick to recognize the "subversive" potential of liberation theology and mounted an extensive campaign to undermine the new movement. The agency's strategy, formulated during the late 1960s and early '70s, when Richard Helms was director, was to exploit the polarization between the activist clergy and those who still identified with the established order (the holdovers from the Cold War era, when missionaries were routinely employed as agents and informants). Toward this end, as Penny Lernoux documents in her book Cry of the People, the CIA used right-wing Catholic organizations in Latin America to harass outspoken prelates and political reformers. The agency also trained and financed police agencies responsible for the torture and murder of bishops, priests and nuns, some of them U.S. citizens.

In 1975, the Bolivian Interior Ministry -- a publicly acknowledged subsidiary of the CIA -- drew up a master plan for persecuting progressive clergy. The scheme, dubbed the "Banzer Plan" -- after Hugo Banzer, Bolivia's right-wing dictator (who retained Klaus Barbie as his security advisor) -- was adopted by ten Latin American governments. The plan involved compiling dossiers on church activists; censoring and shutting down progressive Catholic media outlets; planting Communist literature on church premises; and arresting or expelling undesirable foreign priests and nuns. The CIA also funded anti-Marxist religious groups that engaged in a wide range of covert operations, from bombing churches to overthrowing constitutionally elected governments.
[...]
Under [CIA director William] Casey, the CIA has continued its attack on progressive elements within the church. Casey is also a member of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.

Of all the groups that are engaged in the U.S.-sponsored campaign against liberation theology, none has played a more significant role than Opus Dei.
[...]
The decision to upgrade the status of Opus Dei appears to be part of an over-all strategy to counter the influence of Jesuits and other progressive clerics active in the liberation theology movement.





Romney’s Death Squad Ties: Bain Launched with Millions from Oligarchs Behind Salvadoran Atrocities
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/8/10/ro...n_launched 8/10/2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjXNh_T7kCg





U.S.-Funded War in El Salvador Casts Shadow over Romney/Ryan Campaign
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/08/1171...n-campaign 8/16/2012
Amidst reports that Mitt Romney launched Bain Capital with funds from investors tied to 1980s Salvadoran death squads, his new running mate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is getting foreign policy briefings from a man who actively covered-up some of the worst atrocities committed by those same death squads. The GOP's vice-presidential candidate also earned his political stripes working under neoconservative Republicans who funneled billions in U.S. aid to those military hitmen. Though the war in El Salvador was just one chapter in history, Romney and Ryan's relationship with that war may provide a snapshot into their worldview.

Between 1979 and 1992, an estimated 75,000 people were killed in the conflict in El Salvador and countless others were "disappeared" or displaced, an astonishing number for a country the size of Massachusetts. A United Nations Truth Commission estimated that the right-wing, military-led government was responsible for 85 percent of the violence while the left-wing insurgency fighting against vast economic and political inequality, including farmers, teachers, priests and union activists, was responsible for only 5 percent. Much of the violence was attributable to clandestine military or paramilitary death squads, which committed countless assassinations and acts of brutal violence against suspected political dissidents.

Recent reports suggest that some of the same members of the Salvadoran oligarchy that backed the death squads gave Romney the startup funds for Bain Capital.

Last week, the Huffington Post's Ryan Grim and Cole Stangler reported on how Romney went to Miami in 1983, at the height of El Salvador's civil war, to raise $9 million from Salvadoran expatriate families to start Bain Capital. This seed money amounted to 40 percent of Bain's startup funds. Although Romney claimed that he had vetted the backgrounds of the investors, some of their families had been identified by the U.S. ambassador and others as closely tied to either death squads or death squad leader and ARENA Party founder Roberto D'Aubuisson (known as "Blowtorch Bob" for his use of blowtorches to torture political prisoners).

D'Aubuisson was later found responsible for ordering the assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, a prominent advocate for the poor and critic of the Salvadoran government (who the Vatican has now placed in the process of canonization to become a saint). In the United States, though, the Reagan administration foreign policy team would actively deny d'Aubuisson's involvement in the assassination, as well as the Salvadoran government's involvement in other human rights atrocities, so as to justify a heavy flow of military aid to the country's government as part of Reagan's Cold War-era policy to suppress any chance of another Cuba emerging in Latin America. A key player in those official denials was Elliot Abrams, an Assistant Secretary of State under President Ronald Reagan who still boasts that he "supervised U.S. policy in Latin America and the Caribbean."

In recent months, Abrams has been advising Romney's Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan on foreign policy.

Of the Romero assassination, Abrams told the Washington Post in 1993 that "anybody who thinks you're going to find a cable that says that Roberto D'Aubuisson murdered the archbishop is a fool." But as the Post noted in that same article, the U.S. Embassy sent at least two such cables to Washington fingering d'Aubuisson -- the December 21, 1981 cable, for example, describes: "A meeting, chaired by Maj. Roberto D'Aubuisson, during which the murder of Archbishop Romero was planned. During the meeting, some of the participants drew lots for the privilege of killing the archbishop."





Obama visits grave of assassinated Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador
http://www.romereports.com/palio/obama-v...-3750.html 3/23/2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXijjCAw9R8





El Salvador angry at Opus Dei bishop
http://archive.catholicherald.co.uk/arti...dei-bishop 5/5/1995
Last week's Appointment of an arch-conservative Opus Dei bishop w the archbishopric of San Salvador has been greeted with anger and disbelief throughout the Salvadoran church.

Spanish-born Fernando Sienz Lacalle, 62, who has declared that "liberation theology no longer has a place in El Salvador" is a bizarre choice for a notoriously liberal archdiocese.

San Salvador's former archbishops, including the slain Archbishop Oscar Romero, have always enjoyed a prickly relationship with the Vatican through their advocacy of an "option for the poor" theology. With some justification, many progressives now feel that Rome is wreaking her revenge.

Jesuit Fr Rodolfo Cardenal, the vice rector of San Salvador's Central American University, said that the selection of Sienz, an "absent and silent figure" would "rupture the tradition of an archdiocese and archbishopric that has...been theologically and pastorally committed to the poor".

The Jesuit professor's words were echoed by a US missionary, who described the appointment as "a stroke for the rich and the military". Many allude to Sienz's apparently close relationship with the military.





Jesuit: Liberation theology will endure and grow
http://ncronline.org/news/jesuit-liberat...e-and-grow 6/7/2012
There is a general view in the church today that liberation theology, which shone so brightly for a while after the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), is dead. The declaration against it issued by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1984, it is thought, killed it off. But the reality is different. Certainly this movement as a force around which to organize in favor of the poor is less prominent today. But its inspiration is still very much alive.

Such is the message of this interview given recently in Munich by the rector of the Jesuit community there, Fr. Martin Maier, former editor in chief of the celebrated monthly magazine Stimmen der Zeit.

Maier was in El Salvador in 1989 when six Jesuits and two women were murdered by army assassins at the University of Central America. The murdered men had been a team developing and applying the insights of liberation theology. Maier remained in El Salvador for two years, and ever since has returned regularly. He has a close friendship and intellectual partnership with Fr. Jon Sobrino, the leading Jesuit liberation theologian, and is one of the many influenced by the witness of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, who found the face of Jesus in the face of the poor.
[...]
NCR: "Does liberation theology still have life in it?"

Maier: "Inevitably the early enthusiasm has faded. But that was inevitable. The hopes and promises were also somewhat exaggerated. There were other pressures, too. There was persecution of the part of the church in Latin America that took up this theology. In part this hostility came from military dictatorships in cooperation with the administrations in the United States. ... And there was opposition within the church from very conservative bishops. It is obvious that during past decades many bishops were appointed to fight against liberation theology and the spread of the base communities. One of the prominent opponents is Cardinal [Juan Luis] Cipriani, archbishop of Lima, a member of Opus Dei. Romero’s second successor in San Salvador, [Archbishop Fernando] Sáenz Lacalle, also a member of Opus Dei, is another opponent."

Post: #12

Chomsky on the War on Terror and Liberation Theology
http://youtu.be/LPp3Hykjl6s 3/18/2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPp3Hykjl6s





Glenn Beck - Liberation Theology
http://youtu.be/W1Jh_Q1q0ZU 7/13/2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1Jh_Q1q0ZU





Glenn Beck and Liberation Theology [written by Jesuit James Martin]
http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entr...ry_id=3224 8/29/2010
On Sunday, after his colossal “Restoring Honor” rally in Washington, D.C., Glenn Beck took aim at one of his favorite targets, Barack Obama, but in a novel way. Beck regrets saying a few months ago that President Obama was a “racist.” What he should have said instead, he now realizes, was that he didn’t agree with Obama’s “theology.” And what is Obama’s theology, according to Beck? Liberation theology, of all things.

Here’s Beck’s definition:

Quote:"I think that it is much more of a theological question that he is a guy who understands the world through liberation theology, which is oppressor and victim….That is a direct opposite of what the gospel is talking about…It's Marxism disguised as religion"

[...]
I have no idea if President Obama subscribes to liberation theology. But I do. And for me, it’s somewhat personal. Between 1992 and 1994, I worked with East African refugees in Nairobi, Kenya, and participated in Catholic parishes who tried to help poor parishioners (i.e., all the parishioners) reflect on their own struggles through lens of the Gospel. And those Gospel passages that spoke of liberation for the poor were a lifeline to me and to those with whom I worked. Oh, and it’s not only Jesus. His mother had something to say about all that, too. “He has filled the hungry with good things,” says Mary in the Gospel of Luke, “and sent the rich away empty.” And more: "He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly."

Liberation theology has also animated some of the great Christian witnesses of our age. Several of my brother Jesuits (and their companions), some of whom wrote and taught liberation theology, were assassinated at the University of Central America in 1989, by elements of the Salvadoran military.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REJOTaxjQME

Post: #13

Holy smokes that is a lot of info. Have you ever learned that simplicity is beautiful?

Try distilling your info into bite-sized morsels that are easier to digest.

Still, I hope the Jesuits win this one. Or do I?

Post: #14

Thank you for a great thread!

Post: #15

Strategos  Wrote:

Holy smokes that is a lot of info. Have you ever learned that simplicity is beautiful?

Try distilling your info into bite-sized morsels that are easier to digest.

Still, I hope the Jesuits win this one. Or do I?

The Jesuits founded the place, the District of Columbia. They have caused all the problems since day 01, including the Civil War to take over the states.

This country has a foundation principle, that on one hand says no established religion, while on the other hand prohibits any restrictions on religion, such as the Jesuits, as was the case before the First Amendment.

This is why all the elections are RIGGED.

What we have are Catholic VPs with Freemason Templar Knights Obama and Romney.

Obama - Muslim Freemason Templar

Romney - Mormon Freemason Templar