Day: December 13, 2023

Pope Francis: ‘Demasculinize the Church’~Is a masculine vitality in Christianity truly “a great sin”?

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REPUBLISHED, SEE: https://www.frontpagemag.com/pope-francis-demasculinize-the-church/?


Controversial Pope Francis, whose left-wing leanings are alarming to more traditional and conservative Catholics, recently received members of the International Theological Commission (ITC) at the Vatican, where he sparked a new controversy by informing the gathered theologians that the Catholic Church is “female” and needs to be “demasculinized.”

The ITC was established by Pope Paul VI within the then-Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1969 to assist the Vatican in examining crucial doctrinal issues. It consists at any given time of 30 theologians who serve a five-year term on the Commission. Women have served on the panel since 2004, but never more than two at a time until 2014 when Pope Francis named a record five women to the ITC. In the current membership of the Commission, five again are women.

Among the Pope’s comments to the theologians was a condemnation of the scarcity of women among them. “We must progress on this!” Francis passionately declared. “Women have a different capacity for theological reflection than we men. At the next meeting of the [Council of Cardinals], we will reflect on the female dimension of the Church.”

Fair enough so far. Women often do have a different capacity for theological reflection – reading the great female mystics in history from Hildegard von Bingen to Julian of Norwich to Teresa of Avila demonstrates that – and there is room for debate in the Church about the ministerial role of women. But then the Pope went off the rails. “The Church is female,” he stated, “and if we do not understand what a woman is, what the theology of a woman is, we will never understand what the Church is.”

I humbly submit that the Pope, who is considered by Catholics to be infallible when speaking ex cathedra on matters of doctrine, is wrong on this point. While the Church is believed to be referred to in the Bible as “the bride” of Jesus Christ, this is a theological metaphor about their relationship. It does not make the Church “female,” and certainly not in the way he went on to explicate.

“One of our great sins,” Francis continued, “has been masculinizing the Church. And this is not resolved through ministerial means, that’s another thing. It is resolved through the mystical, the real way.”

It’s unclear how the Church being vitalized with a masculine energy is a sin at all, much less a “great” one, although the West generally speaking is suffused with the assumption, cultivated through decades of relentless feminist messaging, that masculinity is “toxic” and that thousands of years of so-called “patriarchy” have prevented women from stepping up and fixing the mess men have purportedly made of the world. In his comments to the ITC, Pope Francis seems to be pandering to this childish idea.

(Speaking of which, Hollywood funnyman Will Ferrell unintentionally humiliated himself with a virtue-signaling display in his opening remarks for the recent Women in Entertainment Gala. “Isn’t it just time for women to run the planet?” the Saturday Night Live alumnus asked, which predictably drew vigorous applause. “[W]e men, we’ve been running the show since, what, 10,000 B.C., something like that? And we’re not doing so good. So please, can you guys just take over, can you? I think it’s time.” In reality, women increasingly are running the planet – and how’s that been working out for us? Our own epically incompetent Vice President Kamala Harris, Germany’s Angela Merkel, New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, the three Ivy League university presidents who recently refused before Congress to take a stand against campus antisemitism, to name just a few – has their sex, broadly speaking, shown any greater capability than men for visionary leadership, for “fixing” the world? We are all, men and women, subject to the same flaws and limitations of human nature.)

Back to the Pope: he concluded by pleading with the members of the International Theological Commission, “This is a task I ask of you, please: demasculinize the Church.”

Demasculinize the Church? How is this notion different in substance from Will Ferrell’s begging for women to take over running the planet? Both men seem to see masculinity as some kind of obstacle to human flourishing and excellence, and see simply replacing men with women as the solution.

Contrary to the Pope’s apparent fear, Catholicism today – and Christianity in general – does not exactly suffer from a surfeit of masculinity. The Church already has been demasculinized, and the result is a foundational institution of Western civilization being in dangerous, accelerating decline.

The New Emangelization Project, dedicated to inspiring Catholic men to greater involvement in the faith, warns that the Church has a significant “Man Crisis”:

About 11 million adult men in the U.S. were raised Catholic but left the faith and men are under-represented in the Church versus their share of the total population (46% of parishioners are male versus 49% of the population).

[…]

Only about 1/3 of Catholic men (36%) say they attend Mass on a weekly basis. One third of Catholic men (32%) are not formally members of a parish. A large portion (42%) of Catholic men attend Mass “a few times per year” or “seldom or never.” Almost half of Catholic men do not engage in a routine of prayer; praying only “occasionally or sometimes” or “seldom or never.”

[…]

The “face” of the Church is feminine; men are underrepresented in the pews (only 37% of regular mass attendees are men). Further, a Notre Dame study shows that 70-90% of catechesis, service, bible study activities are led by women, causing the authors to suggest that “young males…assume that serious religious studies are a women’s business,” resulting in greater numbers of younger men being disengaged.

Christianity, which has always been burdened by the perception that it is a feminized religion – is today in desperate need of exactly the opposite of what Pope Francis called for: it urgently needs courageous, bold, manly leadership to steer the faith away from its ongoing capitulation to our neo-pagan pop culture, away from the degrading influence of “prosperity gospel” hucksters and hipster pastors in skinny jeans, and away from subversion by gender ideologues who are determined to “queer” the faith and replace God the Father with “God is Trans.”

Francis’ feminist position comes as no surprise. After all, he is the Progressive, globalist, open-borders pope who berates Western countries to overcome their “fear” of “foreigners” and take in ever more “refugees” from cultures incompatible with Western values; he denounces capitalism, nationalism, and populism while promoting the big-government Green economy scam; he has taken measures to restrict celebration of the traditional Latin Mass; he insists on whitewashing jihad and has even been praised as a “defender of Islam” by the Grand Imam of Al Azhar University; and he has opened the door for greater acceptance of the LGBTQ agenda. Now he calls for his own already-flaccid Church to emasculate itself, driving Christianity even further into cultural obsolescence, especially in contrast to the perceived hypermasculinity of Islam, which is the world’s fastest-growing religion at least in part because it offers men an alternative that affirms, albeit to a misogynistic extreme, their masculine nature.

Francis’ call to “demasculinize” the Church is, at best, a foolish and irresponsible position for a Pope to take at this critical point in its decline; at worst, it is a deliberate subversion of the spiritual institution that powered our glorious civilization, an institution rendered increasingly impotent in a post-Christian West.

Hamas-linked CAIR operative reinstated to Maryland hate crimes commission

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REPUBLISHED, SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/12/hamas-linked-cair-operative-reinstated-to-maryland-hate-crimes-commission

This shows yet again that the concept of “hate crimes” itself is subjective. To any supporter of Israel, Zainab Chaudry is clearly engaging in hate speech. But to her fellow supporters of Hamas, what she is saying is entirely justified. This is why “hate crimes” should not be a legal category, as they invariably empower one perspective at the expense of another in areas where the state should allow for the free expression of differing points of view.

“Islamist Suspended from, then Reinstated to Maryland Hate Crimes Commission,” by Susannah Johnston, Focus On Western Islamism, December 8, 2023:

Two weeks after Maryland’s attorney general suspended the staffer of an Islamist organization from the state’s hate crimes commission for promoting hatred of Israel on the internet, he reinstated her on the grounds that he lacked the legal authority to suspend her in the first place. The episode highlights the inherent incompatibility of including an Islamist organization on any commission tasked with fighting hate.

The incident began when Zainab Chaudry, director of the Maryland branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), responded to Hamas’s October 7 massacre by publicly likening Israel to the Nazis, referred to Hamas attackers as “freedom fighters,” and wrote on her Facebook, “I will never be able to understand how the world summoned up rage for 40 fake Israeli babies while completely turning a blind eye to 3,000 real Palestinian babies.”

In response, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown suspended Chaudry from Maryland’s Commission on Hate Crimes Response and Prevention on November 21, saying that her presence risked “disrupting the work and mission of the Commission.”

Brown then reinstated her on December 6. Oddly, the law establishing the commission, which Governor Wes Moore approved in May, required the appointment of a staffer from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to serve alongside 19 other stakeholder organizations voted by Maryland legislators to represent targets of hate.

A press release from AG Brown’s office states that he does not have the authority to remove or suspend members of the commission. “Upon further review, it was determined that the law establishing the Commission directs the Attorney General to appoint members to a 4-year fixed term but does not provide the Attorney General the authority to remove a Commissioner before the expiration of their term nor the authority to suspend a Commissioner during their term of service.”

CAIR, the organization which Chaudry belongs to, is a notorious purveyor of anti-Israel hatred. The organization has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, and its leaders regularly defend Hamas, a designated terrorist organization regarded as the Palestinian branch of the MB. In 2008, federal prosecutors listed CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation prosecution after they determined that HLF had funneled millions to Hamas.  In 1994, the organization’s National Director, Nihad Awad, publicly stated, “I am in support of the Hamas movement.” The Hamas Charter calls for obliterating Israel….

Biden hits Netanyahu for not wanting ‘two-state solution,’ says he must ‘strengthen and change’ Israeli government

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REPUBLISHED, SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/12/biden-hits-netanyahu-for-not-wanting-two-state-solution-says-he-must-strengthen-and-change-israeli-government

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As I’ve predicted many times, Biden is moving toward abandoning Israel in order to appease his far-Left pro-jihad base. A two-state solution would work exactly the same way the Gaza withdrawal of 2005 worked: it will be trumpeted as heralding a new age of peace, but then the new state will just become a new jihad base for more attacks against what is left of Israel.

As I’ve predicted many times, Biden is moving toward abandoning Israel in order to appease his far-Left pro-jihad base. A two-state solution would work exactly the same way the Gaza withdrawal of 2005 worked: it will be trumpeted as heralding a new age of peace, but then the new state will just become a new jihad base for more attacks against what is left of Israel.

 

American Muslims for Palestine Director: A ‘Jewish Person’ is ‘Enemy Number One’

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REPUBLISHED, SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/12/american-muslims-for-palestine-director-a-jewish-person-is-enemy-number-one

AMP’s co-founder also created Students for Justice in Palestine.

The Biden administration was forced to condemn CAIR after its boss, Nihad Awad, who had a history of supporting Hamas, attended the American Muslims for Palestine conference and bragged about how happy he was about the Oct 7 attacks.

Awad claims that his remarks were taken “out of context.”

Now here’s Taher Herzallah, Outreach and Grassroots Organizing Director for AMP, talking about how Jewish people are the enemy. “Anybody who has any relationship or any support or identifies himself as a Jewish person or as a Christian Zionist then we shall not be their friend, I will tell you they are enemy number one and our community needs to recognize that.”

I’m guessing this one will also be described as “taken out of context.”

The AMP conference included Awad, Herzallah, and Hatem Bazian, the co-founder of Students for Justice in Palestine, as well as AMP, who pretty much single-handedly made antisemitism the norm on college campuses.

Also present were Lena Masri, CAIR’s Civil Rights Director, and Fatima Mohammed: whose deranged CUNY Law grad speech went viral.

See if you can spot the pattern here.

Taher Herzallah is just quoting the Koran.

“O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are friends with one another. He among you who taketh them for friends is one of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk.”

(Koran 5:51)

So this hatred of Jews or Christians didn’t emerge on Oct 7 or 1967, 1948 or during any recent period. It was always there. It’s just more out in the open now.

Congress Tightens Up Reporting Requirements on Foreign Funding of Universities

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REPUBLISHED, SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/12/congress-tightens-up-reporting-requirements-on-foreign-funding-of-universities

The scandal of certain foreign governments funding programs at American universities that further the interests of their often unsavory regimes is at long last being addressed by Congress. The House has just passed a bill — which will soon be voted on in the Senate — to tighten the reporting requirements for major foreign gifts (above $250,000) and to require greater oversight by universities of the programs being funded. More on this legislation, which is sure to become law, can be found here: “U.S. House Approves Reporting on Foreign Funds to Universities; Includes Key MEF Priorities,” Middle East Forum, December 8, 2023:

American universities will no longer be able to count on a complacent federal bureaucracy and weak legislation to avoid disclosing foreign gifts and contracts, if a House vote two days ago becomes law.

The Defending Education Transparency and Ending Rogue Regimes Engaging in Nefarious Transactions Act – the DETERRENT Act (H.R. 5933) – passed the U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday in a bipartisan vote of 246 to 170. Introduced by Rep. Michelle Steel (R-CA) and co-sponsored by Education and Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and 25 other members, the bill significantly strengthens key provision of Section 117 of the Higher Education Act.

For decades, many universities have ignored requirements to report foreign gifts or contracts of over $250,000. Legislation lacked the teeth to hold academe accountable, allowing parts of the education bureaucracy to ignore violations of the law. Even if universities complied, they did not need to disclose the purposes for which the funds would be used – a loophole that allowed foreign states such as Qatar and China quietly to fund potentially disreputable projects or individuals….

Particularly worrisome are the large sums provided by rich Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, to fund a vast expansion of Middle Eastern Studies, and Islamic Studies Departments, providing for greater numbers of faculty with endowed chairs; these faculty members not surprisingly turn out to share the world views of the states that fund them, including their anti-Israel animus and deep sympathy for the “Palestinians.” Saudi Arabia, and individual Saudis, provide large sums not just to endow individual chairs, but also to set up entire centers for Islamic studies, whose members are not unbiased scholars, but promoters and defenders of Islam. One example is the infamous apologist for Islam, John Esposito, who was the founding director of the Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown, which got its start with a $20 million gift from Prince Alwaleed himself. Qatar, which has supported Hamas for decades, including providing refuge for the leaders of its political wing, has funded chairs in Islamic law, as has Saudi Arabia. The amounts provided by Arab states to American universities has been staggering. Qatar has given American universities $4.3 billion over 35 years, between 1986 and 2021, according to a 2021 report by the Executive Director of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, Dr. Mitchell Bard. By December 2023, that amount has risen above $4.5 billion. That buys a lot of goodwill in American universities, and a desire on the part of both faculty members and administrators to please such a funder, in the hope that such sums will continue to roll in from deep-pocketed Doha.

Overall, between 1986 and 2021, American colleges and universities received nearly $8.5 billion from all Arab sources.” That buys the Arabs many friends on campuses, which may help explain why universities have been so lax in policing the antisemitic and anti-Israel student groups that have convulsed so many schools in the last year, and especially after October 7, when the IDF entered Gaza to ensure that Hamas never again poses a military threat to Israel.

The public, the media, and the political class will now see just where all that Arab money is going to in our universities, and for what purposes. How much influence have the Arab states bought, in supporting programs on Middle Eastern Studies and on Islam, that furthers pro-Arab and anti-Israel views? How have faculty members been chosen for these programs? Is there a politically correct test that is being quietly imposed so that, for example, no one sympathetic to Israel will be hired by a Middle East Studies department? Are students taking courses in departments subsidized by Arab money being instructed, or indoctrinated? Thanks to the new requirements for universities to report all foreign money received, and how it will be spent, it will be much harder to hide from the government, and the public, what these vast sums from Arab governments and individuals are meant, and largely have managed until now, to accomplish.

Mahmoud Abbas Blames America For ‘Deaths of Children in Gaza’

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REPUBLISHED, SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/12/mahmoud-abbas-blames-america-for-deaths-of-children-in-gaza; 

After the Americans vetoed the UN Security Council resolution that would have called for an immediate “humanitarian ceasefire,” thus giving Hamas time to regroup and rearm (from weapons stocks hidden in schools, apartment buildings, mosques, and in tunnels), Mahmoud Abbas went on the attack. He condemned the U.S. for having made possible, by exercising its veto, for more “children in Gaza” to be killed. More on Abbas’ ranting denunciation can be found here: “PA President Abbas Blames U.S. for Gaza ‘Children’s Tragedy’ After UN Veto,” i24 News, December 9, 2023:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the United States on Saturday, attributing responsibility for the tragic loss of children’s lives in Gaza to the U.S. after it vetoed a UN Security Council resolution advocating for a ceasefire in the region.

In a statement from Abbas’s office, the president criticized the American stance as aggressive and in violation of humanitarian values, directly holding the U.S. accountable for the bloodshed of Palestinian civilians, including children, women, and the elderly in Gaza, due to its unwavering support for Israel.

The deaths of civilians is a regrettable fact of modern war. But Israel does everything it can to minimize civilian casualties. It dropped 1.5 million leaflets In northern Gaza, urging residents to move southward beyond the Wadi Gaza, because the north would soon become a battlefield. The IDF also tries to warn Palestinians to leave, or move away from, civilian structures that the IDF is about to target because they contain vast stores of weapons, command-and-control centers, and Hamas fighters. The IDF text messages, telephones, leaflets, and uses the “knock-on-the-roof” technique to notify civilians of the impending attack. That is why the IDF has such a low noncombatant-to-combatant ratio — much lower than that of the American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is not Israel, nor the U.S, by vetoing that “ceasefire,” that are causing the civilian casualties in Gaza. It is Hamas that puts so much of its weaponry, rocket launchers, and fighters, in and among civilians. Hamas uses them as human shields; it wants Palestinian civilians to be killed as much as Israel wants them not to be killed. Dead Palestinian babies,women, and the elderly are grist for Hamas’ propaganda mill.

The U.S. veto, which thwarted efforts led by UN chief Antonio Guterres and Arab nations towards an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, drew criticism.

American envoy Robert Wood dismissed the resolution as detached from reality and unlikely to effect change on the ground.

While Israel welcomed the veto, the resolution’s sponsor, the United Arab Emirates, expressed deep disappointment over the outcome….

It is Israel that should be expressing its “deep disappointment” with the UAE, which it had been drawing ever closer to since the Abraham Accords that led to normalization of ties between the Jewish state and the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco. By pushing for this resolution, the UAE is in effect trying to help Hamas be in a position to regroup, rearm, and continue to fight against the rapid IDF onslaught. That’s not what Israel expected of its fellow member of the Abraham Accords.

When Mahmoud Abbas supports Hamas atrocities — instead of deploring, he has praised its attack on October 7 — he surely deserves to be seen in a new light in Washington. And he has the gall to denounce his American benefactor for causing the “tragedy” of the deaths of children in Gaza. Isn’t it past time for the Bidenites to realize that the corrupt and despotic Abbas, now in the 18th year of his four-year term as President of the Palestinian Authority, is not a “partner for peace” with Israel, nor is he a friend to the United States, despite Washington propping him, and the people he rules over, with billions of dollars in aid?

Let this latest attack by Abbas, essentially blaming America for the deaths of Palestinian babies, prove sufficient to end American aid to Ramallah. Since Biden took office, Washington has given almost one billion dollars in aid to the Palestinian Authority. Turn off that tap. Let Abbas instead go hat in hand to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait, none of whose leaders, despite their fabulous wealth, has been a notable benefactor of the Palestinians. In 2022, for example, Saudi Arabia gave UNRWA only $27.7 million; in 2023, its last check to UNRWA was for the derisory sum of $2 million. Since 2016, the Saudis have also been cutting aid to the Palestinian Authority; that aid has gone from $174 million in 2019 to 0 in 2021, and remains at that level. Kuwait’s last donation to UNRWA was for a paltry $2 million. During the Israel-Hamas war, the UAE has provided $20 million to UNRWA for humanitarian aid to Gaza, but nothing like the hundreds of millions that are needed now, nor the tens of billions that will be needed for the reconstruction of the Strip. There is no reason to think Abbas’ implorings will have any effect on his stony-hearted “Arab brothers.”

Ending American aid for this Hamas-praising despot who has taken nearly a billion dollars from Washington since the beginning of 2021, may help to topple Abbas, whose colossal theft of aid money, and mismanagement of what he hasn’t stolen, have brought such impoverishment to the Palestinians in the West Bank. His removal may lead to better leadership of the Palestinian Authority, with such possible successors as Mohammad Dahlan, now living in forced exile in the UAE. Despite all the money it has given Ramallah, the United States has not managed to achieve better behavior from Mahmoud Abbas. Why not try cutting him, and the PA, off without a cent? That should make a deep impression on whoever succeeds the ranting rais in Ramallah.