Friday, July 09, 2004

Crackdown on sex fiends

"Within the past year, federal agents have rounded up 3,247 sex offenders as part of a sweeping Department of Homeland Security crackdown targeting pedophiles, international sex tourists and Internet predators, officials said yesterday."

"Ficke urged anyone with information about child predators within the United States or U.S. residents who travel abroad to have sex with minors to call 1-866-DHS-2ICE."


Thursday, July 08, 2004

Discourage Dissent

This letter was printed in the paper of my Diocese, The Long Island Catholic:

"Editor: The June 30 edition of your paper included a Catholic News Service report on a recent meeting of the Catholic Common Ground Initiative at Catholic University of America. John Allen, Catholic correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, spoke. He reportedly advised that Catholics should begin dialogue among themselves on such issues as women priests and birth control, saying also that “such conversations are not going to start with the Vatican.”

Those remarks encourage dissent from authoritative teachings of the magisterium of our Church and are especially harmful at this time. We’re in a crisis augmented in large measure by dissenters who confused both priests and laity. When the American bishops met with the Pope as misdeeds of prelates and priests were recounted daily in the media, our Holy Father advised them to “return to your dioceses, confront dissent, and teach the full Catholic teaching on morality, especially sexual morality.”

Keep in mind also the teaching of Vatican II in “Lumen Gentium,” the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, that “the faithful … are obliged to submit to their bishops’ decision made in the name of Christ, in matters of faith and morals and to adhere to it with a ready and respectful allegiance of mind. This loyal submission of the will and intellect must be given in a special way to the teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff, even when he does not speak ex cathedra.”

After all we’ve been through, let’s stop tolerating those spreading dissent and confusion."


Denis Dillon
Rockville Centre


Is this the same Denis Dillon who is the Nassau County District Attorney?

Wednesday, July 07, 2004

From East London skinhead
to internationally-known Catholic author


"Twenty years ago he was a radical activist, a skinhead, and the editor of two hate-filled, extremist magazines. Today, Joseph Pearce is the author of several critically acclaimed, best-selling biographies of great nineteenth- and twentieth-century Christian authors. He is also the co-founder and co-editor of an international magazine dedicated to reclaiming Catholic culture, and is writer-in-residence and assistant professor of theology at Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida."

Joseph Pearce is one of my favorite authors and his conversion story is wonderful. I have all his books except for the latest one on Oscar Wilde, which I will purchase soon.
Bizarre

"Now, a Brooklyn pastor, his wife and a church deacon are going to trial, charged with conducting a bizarre ritual that called for slicing up the deacon's wife's feet and setting them on fire."