Click on the link and despite what you see on the screen, listen.
My son Jeremy tuned me into this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyvwODEjmXw
Friday, May 22, 2015
Monday, May 18, 2015
"Mountaintops made flat were for ancient UFOs": Another Argument of the "Ancient Aliens" Show Begins to Bite the Dust
For some time now, Giorgio Tsoukalos ("the guy with all the hair") and his associates on the "Ancient Aliens" program on cable have shaken up the Christian world by arguing very dramatically and successfully that almost all traditional religious motifs in virtually every ancient culture arose from the way backwards humans on earth perceived the entities, vehicles and cultures of visitors from outer space in ancient times.
Previously, I have argued that their analysis is slowly falling apart. Giant statues on Easter Island have been very comfortably explained. I argued that interlocking stone walls in the southern hemisphere within the various Polynesian cultures and in the pacific Rim nations exhibit a characteristic which stone structures constructed by man would exhibit -- large stones on the bottom, small stones on top. Ancient Egyptian portraits show Egyptians laboriously dragging stone into place while another Egyptian lubricates the ground with water just ahead of the stone -- no pi-meson particle beam guns were needed for cutting stone; no Higgs boson anti-gravity ray was needed to levitate the cut stone.
Now, another argument is starting to suffer -- flat top mountains in the Andes as UFO landing places.
For months now, the "Ancient Aliens" folks have been arguing, "The tops of mountains in various south-of-the-border nations have been flattened. Who would do that? Why do that except as a landing platform for ancient flying machines?"
It turns out that there is a reason to engage in mountain-top-flattening which dates from early times ...
Look! Flat mountain tops! For rice paddies!
UFO enthusiasts would answer, "Oh! Come on! Rice paddies? In the Andes? There were no Asian rice-consuming cultures in the ancient Andes!"
Not so clear. Arguments that there is good evidence that the Jomon people of ancient Japan settled the west coast of South America have been around for decades. So have arguments that the ancient Maya had a heavy admixture of ancient Chinese.
"But the Jomon people didn't eat rice!" the UFO enthusiasts would respond.
Welllll, near the end, when the Yayoi period cultures began to supplant the Jomon around 300 A.D. They did.
UFO enthusiasts would respond, "But there's no water in the Andes for rice!"
The answer to that is, "Climates change." The Anasazi, to the north, were driven out of their homes by radical climate change. The great grain-growing cultures of the ancient Sahara in Africa were driven out of their homes by radical climate changes.
There are mountain-rice-paddy-type structures at various places in the Andes Mountain ...
steep+anden.+McKay+Savage,+CC+BY+21.0.+Wikim.+Comm.jpg)
Perhaps the bowl-like structure in the bottom photo is a last-ditch effort to gather water for rice in water-gathering paddies.
No matter what, isn't there a little too much evidence here to favor the "Ancient Aliens" explanation for flat-top mountains?
Previously, I have argued that their analysis is slowly falling apart. Giant statues on Easter Island have been very comfortably explained. I argued that interlocking stone walls in the southern hemisphere within the various Polynesian cultures and in the pacific Rim nations exhibit a characteristic which stone structures constructed by man would exhibit -- large stones on the bottom, small stones on top. Ancient Egyptian portraits show Egyptians laboriously dragging stone into place while another Egyptian lubricates the ground with water just ahead of the stone -- no pi-meson particle beam guns were needed for cutting stone; no Higgs boson anti-gravity ray was needed to levitate the cut stone.
Now, another argument is starting to suffer -- flat top mountains in the Andes as UFO landing places.
For months now, the "Ancient Aliens" folks have been arguing, "The tops of mountains in various south-of-the-border nations have been flattened. Who would do that? Why do that except as a landing platform for ancient flying machines?"
It turns out that there is a reason to engage in mountain-top-flattening which dates from early times ...
UFO enthusiasts would answer, "Oh! Come on! Rice paddies? In the Andes? There were no Asian rice-consuming cultures in the ancient Andes!"
Not so clear. Arguments that there is good evidence that the Jomon people of ancient Japan settled the west coast of South America have been around for decades. So have arguments that the ancient Maya had a heavy admixture of ancient Chinese.
"But the Jomon people didn't eat rice!" the UFO enthusiasts would respond.
Welllll, near the end, when the Yayoi period cultures began to supplant the Jomon around 300 A.D. They did.
UFO enthusiasts would respond, "But there's no water in the Andes for rice!"
The answer to that is, "Climates change." The Anasazi, to the north, were driven out of their homes by radical climate change. The great grain-growing cultures of the ancient Sahara in Africa were driven out of their homes by radical climate changes.
There are mountain-rice-paddy-type structures at various places in the Andes Mountain ...
No matter what, isn't there a little too much evidence here to favor the "Ancient Aliens" explanation for flat-top mountains?
Friday, May 15, 2015
The Terrible Train Crash at Frankford Junction
There is enough solid material inside of the get-the-story-out-fast-before-anyone-can-scoop-us narratives in the web and media to enable us to get a pretty good handle on what happened with Amtrak #188 last Tuesday night. My tentative conclusions, with questions and observations, follow.
The engineer on Amtrak #188, Brandon Bostian, 32 yoa, seems to have been mature, well-balanced, well-liked, and enthusiastic about his work as an Amtrak engineer.
Whether he was at the beginning of his shift, near the end of his shift, or how long his shift was, is not yet known.
Whether anyone was in the engine with him is not yet known. There appears to have been a central aisle from one end of the engine to the other. Whether the controls in the rear of the engine could be locked-out or had been locked-out in the front by Bostian is not known. Whether the doors to the engine could be locked and whether Bostian had locked them is not known. Whether the business class car just behind the engine had access to the engine door is not known -- although one surmises that preserving such access may have been customary.
The engine was an essentially-brand-new Cities Sprinter ACS-64 electric engine built by Siemens Corporation. Behind that were 7 cars.
There are a few ways to slow the train down -- by electrical resisitance within the engine wheels, by engine brakes, and by brakes within each vehicle in the 1-engine-followed-by-7-car passenger train. The latter means of braking was probably the safest. It would distribute the braking momentum transfer into the rails and railroad ties beneath over the length of the train.
The tracks appear to have been somewhat unitized, if you look at aerial photos of the tracks before the accident, aerial photos of the tracks just after the accident, and photos of new track being carted-in by truck to replace the destroyed truck. A simple question; When track units are installed, how are they anchored to the railroad right-of-way -- or do they just "float," on trap rock or dirt? In other words, could a heavy, suddenly-braking engine or train literally yank a section of track off its bed? Is there an amazing secret defect in the track design, generated, for instance, by some moron's desire to economize a little too much in the face of Amtrak's ever-shrinking federal subsidies and the really bad economy since 2007? Is there an Amtrak executive who is hiding the fact of an unwise purchase of a new type of track?
At Frankford Junction, the tracks were banked for speed, being higher on the outside side of the curb by 5" per width of track. That's a pretty good embankment. Any calculation of listing by the train toward the outside of the curve due to centrifugal force in turning has to overcome a pre-existing listing and centripital pulling toward the inside of the curve, first, due to that track-embankment-generated listing.
News reports showing a railroad "expert" claiming that the train could jump track if the train's speed exceeded the speed limit by as little as 5 mph have to be wildly "over-conservative" and so dead false.
When I was a young man, the Metroliners used to "blow through" that banked turn at a frightening speed -- well over 50 mph. I remember see that little trash-bearing wake of air trapped by the slipstream behind the passing Metroliners headed into that banked curve.
So, the 50 mph speed limit for what appears to be brand new well-banked track (see next paragraph) is interesting.
News accounts describe the curve at Frankford Junction as "a sharp turn." Panoramic news source pictures from ground level, such as this one ...
... make it look like a sharp turn.
In fact, it is a very gentle turn. See Google Maps, Earth Image, at ...
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0013838,-75.0944874,161m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en
At the moment of departure, #188 had 238 passengers and 5 crew. The ages of those passengers seem importance. For example, were there any kids in the first passenger car -- the Business Class car -- just behind the engine? Did a kid cross from the Business Class car to the engine -- even with a parent's permission -- to allow him or her to experience the thrill of being in the engine?
#188 left 30th Street Station at exactly 9:09 p.m., according to Amtrak's schedule. Bostian moved the train north out of the station up the tracks on the west bank of the Schuyhkill River, past the west side of the Philadelphia Zoo, and then eastward across the Schuylkill River over the old stone arch Connecting Railway Bridge, to the Northeast Corridor tracks running diagonally, northeast across North Philadelphia, to North Philadelphia Station at Broad Street and West Glenwood Avenue, between Lehigh and Allegheny Avenues.
The train apparently did not stop at North Philadelphia Station. Did someone at North Philadelphia Station make improper entry into the engine from the platform between the engine and the Business Class car as the train slowed? Is this possible?
The train continued northeast across North Philadelphia, and swung rightwards, behind St. Christopher's Hospital at Front Street between Eire and Tioga, so that it traveling east, toward Frankford Junction and the Frankford Junction curve.
As stated above, the "terrible" curve at Frankford Junction is a leftward turn toward the Northeast at the rate of about 3.3 degrees per 100 feet (so that in the 1200 feet between the point of intersection with Frankford Avenue and the point of intersection with the line through Wheatsheaf Lane, the track has turned about 40 degrees north northeast). If you plug that into the formula for achieving balancing speed -- the speed along a track banked for speed where the train is in equipoise, falling neither toward the inside of the curve nor toward the outside of the curve ...
The engineer on Amtrak #188, Brandon Bostian, 32 yoa, seems to have been mature, well-balanced, well-liked, and enthusiastic about his work as an Amtrak engineer.
Whether he was at the beginning of his shift, near the end of his shift, or how long his shift was, is not yet known.
Whether anyone was in the engine with him is not yet known. There appears to have been a central aisle from one end of the engine to the other. Whether the controls in the rear of the engine could be locked-out or had been locked-out in the front by Bostian is not known. Whether the doors to the engine could be locked and whether Bostian had locked them is not known. Whether the business class car just behind the engine had access to the engine door is not known -- although one surmises that preserving such access may have been customary.
The engine was an essentially-brand-new Cities Sprinter ACS-64 electric engine built by Siemens Corporation. Behind that were 7 cars.
There are a few ways to slow the train down -- by electrical resisitance within the engine wheels, by engine brakes, and by brakes within each vehicle in the 1-engine-followed-by-7-car passenger train. The latter means of braking was probably the safest. It would distribute the braking momentum transfer into the rails and railroad ties beneath over the length of the train.
The tracks appear to have been somewhat unitized, if you look at aerial photos of the tracks before the accident, aerial photos of the tracks just after the accident, and photos of new track being carted-in by truck to replace the destroyed truck. A simple question; When track units are installed, how are they anchored to the railroad right-of-way -- or do they just "float," on trap rock or dirt? In other words, could a heavy, suddenly-braking engine or train literally yank a section of track off its bed? Is there an amazing secret defect in the track design, generated, for instance, by some moron's desire to economize a little too much in the face of Amtrak's ever-shrinking federal subsidies and the really bad economy since 2007? Is there an Amtrak executive who is hiding the fact of an unwise purchase of a new type of track?
At Frankford Junction, the tracks were banked for speed, being higher on the outside side of the curb by 5" per width of track. That's a pretty good embankment. Any calculation of listing by the train toward the outside of the curve due to centrifugal force in turning has to overcome a pre-existing listing and centripital pulling toward the inside of the curve, first, due to that track-embankment-generated listing.
News reports showing a railroad "expert" claiming that the train could jump track if the train's speed exceeded the speed limit by as little as 5 mph have to be wildly "over-conservative" and so dead false.
When I was a young man, the Metroliners used to "blow through" that banked turn at a frightening speed -- well over 50 mph. I remember see that little trash-bearing wake of air trapped by the slipstream behind the passing Metroliners headed into that banked curve.
So, the 50 mph speed limit for what appears to be brand new well-banked track (see next paragraph) is interesting.
... make it look like a sharp turn.
In fact, it is a very gentle turn. See Google Maps, Earth Image, at ...
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0013838,-75.0944874,161m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en
At the moment of departure, #188 had 238 passengers and 5 crew. The ages of those passengers seem importance. For example, were there any kids in the first passenger car -- the Business Class car -- just behind the engine? Did a kid cross from the Business Class car to the engine -- even with a parent's permission -- to allow him or her to experience the thrill of being in the engine?
#188 left 30th Street Station at exactly 9:09 p.m., according to Amtrak's schedule. Bostian moved the train north out of the station up the tracks on the west bank of the Schuyhkill River, past the west side of the Philadelphia Zoo, and then eastward across the Schuylkill River over the old stone arch Connecting Railway Bridge, to the Northeast Corridor tracks running diagonally, northeast across North Philadelphia, to North Philadelphia Station at Broad Street and West Glenwood Avenue, between Lehigh and Allegheny Avenues.
The train apparently did not stop at North Philadelphia Station. Did someone at North Philadelphia Station make improper entry into the engine from the platform between the engine and the Business Class car as the train slowed? Is this possible?
The train continued northeast across North Philadelphia, and swung rightwards, behind St. Christopher's Hospital at Front Street between Eire and Tioga, so that it traveling east, toward Frankford Junction and the Frankford Junction curve.
As stated above, the "terrible" curve at Frankford Junction is a leftward turn toward the Northeast at the rate of about 3.3 degrees per 100 feet (so that in the 1200 feet between the point of intersection with Frankford Avenue and the point of intersection with the line through Wheatsheaf Lane, the track has turned about 40 degrees north northeast). If you plug that into the formula for achieving balancing speed -- the speed along a track banked for speed where the train is in equipoise, falling neither toward the inside of the curve nor toward the outside of the curve ...
... where "Vmax" is mph, "Ea" is the number of inches the outside rail is higher than the inside rail, and "d" is the number of degrees turned per 100 feet, you get 58 mph.
Now, clearly, if the train can lean in toward the inside of the curve without derailing and falling inward, at 1 mph, where the tracks are so seriously banked that it has to go 58 mph before it reaches equipoise, it would seem to be able to rather easily take the curb at even 116 mph -- twice 58 mph -- without derailing outwards, toward the outside of the curve.
Bostian seems to have had #188 cruising along at roughly 70 mph as he began to close in on the Frankford Junction curve, where the posted speed limit is an inexplicable 50 mph (where, again, 58 mph is equipoise, given the grade).
Instead of slowing down to the posted speed limit, after that, #188 inexplicably increased its speed, so that it reached a maximum of 107 mph before it reached the curb.
Why?
Was Bostian fatigued, so that he forgot that he had not even passed Frankford Junction yet, and thought that he was on the straightaway northeast of Frankford Junction along the Delaware?
Did he actually begin braking the train, so that momentum spilled his water bottle into the apparatus, short-circuiting the accelerator slide and generating a sudden increase toward maximum speed?
Did a water bottle left by someone on the controls at the other end of the engine do this?
Unknown to all, did a vandal tossing a rock "get lucky" and pierce the windows next to the controls and slam the accelerator slide to the "maximum speed" position? In other words, was Bostian shocked and puzzled by the velocity increase?
Did a child or malicious teenager from the North Philadelphia platform or from the Business Class car tamper with controls?
Who knows?
That is the question of all questions.
In judging this question, remember four (4) words -- the "Toyota Unintended Acceleration Problem."
In other words, was Bostian;'s Cities Sprinter ACS-64 electric engine merely the first one to do this, with fatal results.
This is not an idle question.
Here's another angle worthy of investigation: One problem with today's nuclear power plants is the layering of safety systems upon the basic mechanism, and the layering of second layer safety systems upon the first -- generating a mechanism so frighteningly complex that no human being is safe around them. With that in mind ...
Is it possible that the federal government's own Positive Train Control System mandate interface mechanism somehow caused the problem?
In any event, just as #188 was entering the Frankford Junction curve, Bostian threw on the brakes.
Now, again, I believe that, contrary to all media reports and executive speculation within Amtrak and the National Transportation Safety Board, in my opinion #188 could have easily taken the curb.
However, when Bostian threw on the brakes -- something every human being in his position, including every Amtrak executive, every National Transportation Safety Board investigator, Mayor Wilson Good and the District Attorney, and everyone else who has opened his mouth in angry criticism, would have done in this case -- the passengers felt a terrible vibration.
That would have been the brake-frozen wheels vibrating their way down the curb.
I believe that the vibration is what derailed the train. Suddenly, the net effect of all of those wheels bbbbbbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrpppppppppping their way down the track, so that, on the average, the train was somewhat "airborne" during every second of breaking, markedly decreasing each railroad vehicle's right wheels' flanges on the inside surface of the outside rail, at 104 mph -- the train's last known speed before departing from the railways over the outward side of the curve -- contributed heavily to the derailment.
I would also be interested in the relative integrity of the brake pads in the cars behind the engine.
The engine was effectively brand new -- with new brakes.
If the railroad cars behind it only had older brakes that only held "half as good," their would have been a "ramming" effect by the momentum in the rear cars. Just as you can't push a length of rope into a mouse hole, the cars in the rear aren't going to happily slow down for the engine if the engine stops better than they do.
They are going to want to pile-up against the engine's rear.
I believe that that contributed very heavily to the derailment -- and that that is why the first passenger car behind the engine was bent into the shape of a giant horse shoe.
Perhaps it was the passenger cars slamming the engine from behind because of their inferior brakes that pushed the violently vibrating engine off the tracks.
So, Bostian threw on the brakes.
#188 began bbbbbbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrpppppppppping its way down the track, into the curb.
The cars begin the Business Class car, the first passenger car, rammed it hard and bent it into a horseshoe shape.
As this was occurring, the engine derailed, and simply proceeded in a straight line from the point of derailment.
The cars behind the Business Class car cast the Business Class car to the left, making those cars bounce right well off the track as the train continue forward from momentum.
And then it all ground to a halt.
We should not pre-judge Bostian.
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Candidate Christie's "Big Tax Cut Plan" Flirts with National Financial Calamity
In New Hampshire, presidential hopeful New Jersey Governor Christie tried to attract flies to his fly paper with promises of more across-the-board tax cuts, even as he criticized President Obama's handling of the economy.
Massive deficit-generating tax cuts was Governor Christie's plan for recovery, despite the fact that the National Debt has exploded like a nuclear bomb since President Obama took over -- from $10 trillion to $18 trillion -- and continues rushing skyward, up, up, up, up up ...
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
...even at the present moment, and interest payable on the dept is about one-half trillion dollars per year, a debt burden that chokes the life out of our economy and keeps millions jobless the same way that $50,000 worth of credit card debt can destroy a home's budget.
To put it another way, Dr. Christie's prescription for the "drunk drivers" behind the wheel today is, "MORE ALCOHOL!"
Massive deficit-generating tax cuts was Governor Christie's plan for recovery, despite the fact that the National Debt has exploded like a nuclear bomb since President Obama took over -- from $10 trillion to $18 trillion -- and continues rushing skyward, up, up, up, up up ...
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
...even at the present moment, and interest payable on the dept is about one-half trillion dollars per year, a debt burden that chokes the life out of our economy and keeps millions jobless the same way that $50,000 worth of credit card debt can destroy a home's budget.
To put it another way, Dr. Christie's prescription for the "drunk drivers" behind the wheel today is, "MORE ALCOHOL!"
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
What This Magazine Is; Articles Welcome !
I have to say, for the sake of God's holy Church, that this online magazine is NOT, repeat NOT, a publication of the Roman Catholic Church.
It is merely my own opinion.
And who am I ? I am a 62 year old South Jersey man who attended Catholic grade school, Catholic high school, Catholic college, and secular law school, and then spent 30 years practicing law in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. I attended weekly Mass at a Catholic Church, go to Catholic confession, go to weekly Catholic Bible study, function as a speaker in a Catholic speakers' program, and occasionally address Catholic CCD students on Catholic theology. I have also written about a dozen published articles in a Catholic magazine on various religious topics -- mostly, about the Bible. The perspective is Catholic.
Despite all of that, would today's Church officials agree that I am "Catholic"? I don't know, for a particular reason.
One of the things I do, here, is go after the Church, energetically, if I see a weakness.
For example, so many bishops nationwide wrote letters of recommendation transferring priests out of their dioceses for so many priests concerning whom they had thick files verifying statutory rape of one boy or young man after another, again and again and again and again, that there was an appearance of hiding the crime (Obstruction of Justice) and pimping for gay "johns" by helping them prey on the young sheep in their own flocks (Solicitation), while we stupid Catholics, with our heads in the ground like dumb ostriches, financed the whole endeavor. So, I have gone after that set-up, repeatedly.
I am certain that I am not well-liked for writing things like, "Are our bishops actually knowingly engaged in homosexual pimping ???" or, "Come on, John Jay Institute !!! Right after admitting that 70% of the priests accused of 'doing' boys and young men, only, actually said, 'I do it with male adults, too !' you write, 'The Church does not have a 'homosexual problem!' What liars !"
I have also been absolutely clear about the direct relationship between Benedict XVI and the priestly sex abuse problem, and the indirect relationship between Pope Francis and the priestly sex abuse problem.
I have also gone after the Church for not going all of the way on the Adam-and-Eve teaching -- for not simply admitting, "The Adam and Eve story is not history, at all. It is divinely-inspired myth teaching religious truth."
I have also criticized a piece of theology about Mary about which the Church is very quiet. Whereas Mary really was always a virgin, the Church includes within the Perpetual Virginity doctrine a bizarre teaching that Jesus was not born in the technical sense -- that God, instead, had Him come out of Mary's womb "like a beam of sunlight through glass." This doctrine is called, "Virginity in Partu," "virginity even in the act of birthing Jesus." As we would put it in our day and age, "Jesus beamed-down out of Mary."
Priests and theologian can jump up and down in protest and angrily deny that the Church uses the words "beaming down," but in essence it teaches exactly that.
This rather strikingly Gnostic -- and, in my opinion, absolutely heretical -- teaching not only converts Jesus into something that is un-Biblical and fundamentally different than us, it also seems to create a deadly conflict with the hypostatic union doctrine -- that Jesus, at all points in His life, was "always God and always Man." He can't have been "always Man" during the point in time when He was engage in passing through the wall of Mary's womb "like a beam of sunlight through glass" and then coming in for a landing on the ground.
The Church also regrets its own correct Biblical theology on contraception, to a point that ironically indirectly advances the pro-abortion movement.
When, to try to "stop the bleeding" by exposing the Church on such things, I am clear in writing about such things, it can't be that I am well-liked among any Church administrators aware of how I write. So, would Church administrators say that I am "Catholic"? I think I am. But I think that some of them would deny it.
And so, I am chronically afraid that one of these days I am going to be told, "Stop using the word 'Catholic' in your website title, or be excommunicated."
In any event, I really do look for proposed articles in my e-mail. They can be on nearly any subject of general interest, or relevant to politics or religion. I love humor and history. If you have an idea for an article, or an article, itself, e-mail me at
No compensation for the articles -- sorry -- and I become the owner of all copyright rights, to avoid controversy.
It is merely my own opinion.
And who am I ? I am a 62 year old South Jersey man who attended Catholic grade school, Catholic high school, Catholic college, and secular law school, and then spent 30 years practicing law in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. I attended weekly Mass at a Catholic Church, go to Catholic confession, go to weekly Catholic Bible study, function as a speaker in a Catholic speakers' program, and occasionally address Catholic CCD students on Catholic theology. I have also written about a dozen published articles in a Catholic magazine on various religious topics -- mostly, about the Bible. The perspective is Catholic.
Despite all of that, would today's Church officials agree that I am "Catholic"? I don't know, for a particular reason.
One of the things I do, here, is go after the Church, energetically, if I see a weakness.
For example, so many bishops nationwide wrote letters of recommendation transferring priests out of their dioceses for so many priests concerning whom they had thick files verifying statutory rape of one boy or young man after another, again and again and again and again, that there was an appearance of hiding the crime (Obstruction of Justice) and pimping for gay "johns" by helping them prey on the young sheep in their own flocks (Solicitation), while we stupid Catholics, with our heads in the ground like dumb ostriches, financed the whole endeavor. So, I have gone after that set-up, repeatedly.
I am certain that I am not well-liked for writing things like, "Are our bishops actually knowingly engaged in homosexual pimping ???" or, "Come on, John Jay Institute !!! Right after admitting that 70% of the priests accused of 'doing' boys and young men, only, actually said, 'I do it with male adults, too !' you write, 'The Church does not have a 'homosexual problem!' What liars !"
I have also been absolutely clear about the direct relationship between Benedict XVI and the priestly sex abuse problem, and the indirect relationship between Pope Francis and the priestly sex abuse problem.
I have also gone after the Church for not going all of the way on the Adam-and-Eve teaching -- for not simply admitting, "The Adam and Eve story is not history, at all. It is divinely-inspired myth teaching religious truth."
I have also criticized a piece of theology about Mary about which the Church is very quiet. Whereas Mary really was always a virgin, the Church includes within the Perpetual Virginity doctrine a bizarre teaching that Jesus was not born in the technical sense -- that God, instead, had Him come out of Mary's womb "like a beam of sunlight through glass." This doctrine is called, "Virginity in Partu," "virginity even in the act of birthing Jesus." As we would put it in our day and age, "Jesus beamed-down out of Mary."
Priests and theologian can jump up and down in protest and angrily deny that the Church uses the words "beaming down," but in essence it teaches exactly that.
This rather strikingly Gnostic -- and, in my opinion, absolutely heretical -- teaching not only converts Jesus into something that is un-Biblical and fundamentally different than us, it also seems to create a deadly conflict with the hypostatic union doctrine -- that Jesus, at all points in His life, was "always God and always Man." He can't have been "always Man" during the point in time when He was engage in passing through the wall of Mary's womb "like a beam of sunlight through glass" and then coming in for a landing on the ground.
The Church also regrets its own correct Biblical theology on contraception, to a point that ironically indirectly advances the pro-abortion movement.
When, to try to "stop the bleeding" by exposing the Church on such things, I am clear in writing about such things, it can't be that I am well-liked among any Church administrators aware of how I write. So, would Church administrators say that I am "Catholic"? I think I am. But I think that some of them would deny it.
And so, I am chronically afraid that one of these days I am going to be told, "Stop using the word 'Catholic' in your website title, or be excommunicated."
In any event, I really do look for proposed articles in my e-mail. They can be on nearly any subject of general interest, or relevant to politics or religion. I love humor and history. If you have an idea for an article, or an article, itself, e-mail me at
peter.j.dawson.nj.us@gmail.com
No compensation for the articles -- sorry -- and I become the owner of all copyright rights, to avoid controversy.
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Nazi Bean-Counters in Auschwitz Versus Jewish V-1 and V-2 Rocket Builders
At this point, the argument of 93 year old former SS Auschwitz guard and bean counter Oskar Groenig, on trial in Germany, is, "Look, morally, I am defenseless. I am guilty. But am I guilty under the law?"
Anybody who reads my blog, here, knows that I am extremely favorable to Jewish people and to Israel. I am more sympathetic to Israel than is my Jewish wife.
So, it is with good motives that i ask, "How do we judge Oskar Groenig?"
It is not a simple question, if one is to be fair.
Nazi V-1 and V-2 rockets slammed into England, during WWII, killing tens of thousands of innocents, including babies.
Who actually built those V-1 and V-2 rockets?
Well, a lot of the time, Jews!
The Nazis forced Jewish slaves in work camps and death camps to build deadly rockets for them.
Most of the Jewish forced labor rocket builders died, in the effort, or when the factories were closed, and the Nazis very consistently hid the evidence by simply murdering their Jewish labor.
But some of the rocket-building Jews survived.
So, are those Jewish rocket builders "guilty under the law" of murdering British babies?
Before you answer that question for yourself, ask the 72 year old orphan of parents killed by a falling V-1 or V-2 how he or she feels about the criminal culpability of rocket-making Jewish slaves.
In the end, what rocket-making Jewish slaves did is prefer the immediate death or maiming of Allied innocents over their own immediate death, torture or maiming.
If a gunman tied up me and my wife, and said, "Pete, I'm going to shoot one of you -- either you or your wife, right now. I'll shoot whomever you tell me to shoot." And I bought time for myself by saying, "Please, shoot my wife first," how many in my audience here would regard that as non-inculpatory -- as grounds for declaring me "innocent"?
The Prosecutor in Groenig's case might answer, "Well, Groenig was free to refuse to cooperate. The Jews in the rocket factories had guns at their heads!"
Is that distinction valid?
Read this paragraph from the Holocaust Encyclopedia ...
Anti-Nazi politicians and union workers either fled Germany or faced long-term confinement in a concentration camp. Ernst Thälmann, leader of the German Communist party since 1925 and one-time candidate for the German presidency, for example, had been arrested after the fire that destroyed German parliament building in 1933. He spent more than 11 years in the camps. The SS killed him in Buchenwald concentration camp on August 18, 1944, during an air raid on a nearby factory....
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007656
So, opposing Hitler's terror machine from inside wasn't like risking Obama Administration wrath by voting Republican instead of Democrat.
The bottom line is, Groenig's question is not so simple.
Anybody who reads my blog, here, knows that I am extremely favorable to Jewish people and to Israel. I am more sympathetic to Israel than is my Jewish wife.
So, it is with good motives that i ask, "How do we judge Oskar Groenig?"
It is not a simple question, if one is to be fair.
Nazi V-1 and V-2 rockets slammed into England, during WWII, killing tens of thousands of innocents, including babies.
Who actually built those V-1 and V-2 rockets?
Well, a lot of the time, Jews!
The Nazis forced Jewish slaves in work camps and death camps to build deadly rockets for them.
Most of the Jewish forced labor rocket builders died, in the effort, or when the factories were closed, and the Nazis very consistently hid the evidence by simply murdering their Jewish labor.
But some of the rocket-building Jews survived.
So, are those Jewish rocket builders "guilty under the law" of murdering British babies?
Before you answer that question for yourself, ask the 72 year old orphan of parents killed by a falling V-1 or V-2 how he or she feels about the criminal culpability of rocket-making Jewish slaves.
In the end, what rocket-making Jewish slaves did is prefer the immediate death or maiming of Allied innocents over their own immediate death, torture or maiming.
If a gunman tied up me and my wife, and said, "Pete, I'm going to shoot one of you -- either you or your wife, right now. I'll shoot whomever you tell me to shoot." And I bought time for myself by saying, "Please, shoot my wife first," how many in my audience here would regard that as non-inculpatory -- as grounds for declaring me "innocent"?
The Prosecutor in Groenig's case might answer, "Well, Groenig was free to refuse to cooperate. The Jews in the rocket factories had guns at their heads!"
Is that distinction valid?
Read this paragraph from the Holocaust Encyclopedia ...
Anti-Nazi politicians and union workers either fled Germany or faced long-term confinement in a concentration camp. Ernst Thälmann, leader of the German Communist party since 1925 and one-time candidate for the German presidency, for example, had been arrested after the fire that destroyed German parliament building in 1933. He spent more than 11 years in the camps. The SS killed him in Buchenwald concentration camp on August 18, 1944, during an air raid on a nearby factory....
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007656
So, opposing Hitler's terror machine from inside wasn't like risking Obama Administration wrath by voting Republican instead of Democrat.
The bottom line is, Groenig's question is not so simple.
Saturday, April 11, 2015
The St. Laurentius Case: The Ongoing Sale of Our Catholic Heritage by Church Officials
I am sick-to-death of American Catholic Church administrators treating the faithful like mushrooms to bleed as many contributions out of them as they can, as they sell-off every beautiful, paid-off, well-located church property they can as they ask the faithful to drive farther and farther every week to go to Mass or confession in still-mortgaged little shoeboxes of glass and aluminum and sheetrock.
We can all see where it is headed -- 20 years from now, our children will be asked to drive to the only Catholic Church left in New Jersey, Sacred Heart in Newark, to go to Mass each Sunday.
Years ago, about 3 times per week I used to stop at a quiet little chapel on Burnt Mill Road in Cherry Hill, Holy Rosary Church, to pray before the Eucharist.
What is that location, now ?
There is a sign outside saying
In its haste to wipe out as much of our Catholic heritage as possible, the Philadelphia Archdiocese has de-consecrated this beautiful masterpiece of God-honoring Catholic art, telling Catholics there, "Drive farther and farther every week to go to Mass or confession in still-mortgaged little shoeboxes of glass and aluminum and sheetrock. St. Laurentius costs too much to keep-up."
One wonders if that is true at all. They -- Catholic administrators -- have lied to us so much in recent decades, mostly by silence, while they pretend that there is nothing bad to talk about. I have a feeling that "too much to keep-up" means, "Look, we have to maximize our return when we sell Church properties, to pay for multi-zillion dollar lawsuits against the Church in the priest cases, now that we are such a bad risk that insurance companies won't insure us. So, we really can't afford to sell more-modern church buildings, because of the mortgages on them. Selling one of them is the financial equivalent of giving it away ! Why bother ? So, we have to sell as many unmortgaged old, beautiful church buildings on commercially-valuable streetcorners as we can, even if it means wiping-out the congregations there and annihilating Catholic heritage more effectively than a nuclear explosion."
In other words, I wonder if, even if a source of maintenance funding enabling the Catholic building to remain there for free turned-up, would the Archdiocese say, "Oh ! How wonderful ! Now we get to keep it open for the Catholics in Fishtown !"
I doubt it !
Don't be surprised, Catholic sisters and brothers in Fishtown, if you wake up one morning and there is a sign in the front of St. Laurentius reading,
We can all see where it is headed -- 20 years from now, our children will be asked to drive to the only Catholic Church left in New Jersey, Sacred Heart in Newark, to go to Mass each Sunday.
Years ago, about 3 times per week I used to stop at a quiet little chapel on Burnt Mill Road in Cherry Hill, Holy Rosary Church, to pray before the Eucharist.
What is that location, now ?
There is a sign outside saying
"SWAMINARAYAN MANDIR"
Yup ! It's Hindu !
I don't think that the Hindu congregation, there, is currently active. But, the sign is still there, as I write.
Which brings us to St. Laurentius, in the Fishtown section of Philadelphia ...
In its haste to wipe out as much of our Catholic heritage as possible, the Philadelphia Archdiocese has de-consecrated this beautiful masterpiece of God-honoring Catholic art, telling Catholics there, "Drive farther and farther every week to go to Mass or confession in still-mortgaged little shoeboxes of glass and aluminum and sheetrock. St. Laurentius costs too much to keep-up."
One wonders if that is true at all. They -- Catholic administrators -- have lied to us so much in recent decades, mostly by silence, while they pretend that there is nothing bad to talk about. I have a feeling that "too much to keep-up" means, "Look, we have to maximize our return when we sell Church properties, to pay for multi-zillion dollar lawsuits against the Church in the priest cases, now that we are such a bad risk that insurance companies won't insure us. So, we really can't afford to sell more-modern church buildings, because of the mortgages on them. Selling one of them is the financial equivalent of giving it away ! Why bother ? So, we have to sell as many unmortgaged old, beautiful church buildings on commercially-valuable streetcorners as we can, even if it means wiping-out the congregations there and annihilating Catholic heritage more effectively than a nuclear explosion."
In other words, I wonder if, even if a source of maintenance funding enabling the Catholic building to remain there for free turned-up, would the Archdiocese say, "Oh ! How wonderful ! Now we get to keep it open for the Catholics in Fishtown !"
I doubt it !
Don't be surprised, Catholic sisters and brothers in Fishtown, if you wake up one morning and there is a sign in the front of St. Laurentius reading,
"SWAMINARAYAN MANDIR"
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