Catholic Church in Oregon Allows Buddhist Monks to Lead ‘Meditation’ Before the Altar
TUALATIN, Oregon (LifeSiteNews) — Tibetan Buddhist monks instructed Catholics in their religious practices and led them in non-Christian chants at a Catholic church in Oregon.
On June 26, 2024, five Buddhist monks were invited to Resurrection Catholic Parish in Tualatin, Oregon. According to the parish pastor, Father Bill Moisant, the monks, whom he does not name, came from the Gaden Shartse Monastery in southern India and are followers of the Dalai Lama. Photographs show that two of them gave a small group of primarily elderly Catholics a presentation on Buddhist “meditation” and led a prayer session in the nave of the church.
Resurrection #Catholic Parish in Tualatin, #Oregon, recently hosted #Buddhist monks leading meditation in the #church, right in front of the sanctuary and the tabernacle. Faithful #Catholics are rightly scandalized by this gross insult to Our Lord and His Church. pic.twitter.com/8lS2OswRnG
— LifeSiteNews (@LifeSite) July 5, 2024
A concerned parishioner who attended the event and provided LifeSiteNews with photographs and video footage decried that the Buddhist monks carried out their instruction, chants, and prayers in the sanctuary before the altar and near the tabernacle. He also lamented the false characterization of Christ expressed in the course of the event and an apparent disrespect for the sufferings of Christ.
“Our Lord was compared to Buddha as a great teacher, a theologically inaccurate and offensive statement,” he told LifeSiteNews via email.
“The presentation emphasized Buddhist meditation techniques to escape suffering, seemingly ignoring Christ’s suffering and death on the Cross.”
READ: Catholic church in Portland hosts Tibetan Buddhist monks for talk on non-Christian meditation
Resurrection Catholic Parish hosts Buddhist monks to instruct parishioners in Buddhist practices. Credit: Concerned parishioner
The witness reported that parishioners engaged with the monks without expressing concerns about conflicts between Buddhist practices and the Catholic faith. He was similarly concerned that that session ended with a Buddhist prayer and offering of intentions, which he felt was a “further blurring” of “the lines between Catholic and Buddhist practices.”
“This was much more than an interfaith dialogue, this was a non-Catholic prayer session in a Catholic Church,” the parishioner continued. “It’s a matter of both location and substance.”
“When the Q&A sessions came, parishioners were asking more questions on how to conduct this in their daily lives.”
Fr. Moisant highlighted the event in the parish newsletter, saying that the monks had come “to familiarize us with their faith and to teach various forms of meditation.”
“Through meditation and a vigorous way of life, the monks are striving to attain a sense of peace, compassion, humility, joy and love with all people and to live in harmony with the environment,” he continued. “These are qualities which are familiar to Catholics, since that is what Jesus teaches us in the Gospel.”
“I pray for the continued fruitfulness of their teaching,” he concluded.
However, contrary to Fr. Moisant’s remarks, Jesus does not merely teach His disciples “to attain a sense of peace, compassion, humility, joy and love with all people and to live in harmony with the environment” but came to redeem mankind from sin and reconcile us to God through Himself, calling everyone “to that conversion without which one cannot enter the kingdom” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 545).
Canon law expressly forbids the use of Catholic churches for “anything not consonant with the holiness of the place” (Cans. 1210), which necessarily includes hosting Buddhists to instruct Catholics in non-Christian practices.
Credit: Concerned parishioner
Traditional Catholic meditational practices flourished before the liturgical revolution that followed the Second Vatican Council, and the Most Holy Rosary is still widely used by Catholics to meditate upon the Life, Passion, and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Reciting or singing litanies, such as the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary, also has rich meditational properties. In recent decades, Catholic laypeople have been invited to return to Lectio Divina, a practice common to monastics, which is the contemplative and prayerful reading of Scripture.
In his essay “Comparing Christianity & Buddhism,” Peter Kreeft shows how the detached Buddhist conception of compassion is utterly unlike the warm and personal Christian concept of brotherly love. Meanwhile, suffering, for the Buddhist, is something unredeemable that must be escaped, whereas Christians can find meaning in suffering, thanks to the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross.
According to its online schedule, Resurrection Catholic Parish also hosts “Gentle Yoga for Everyone” classes, despite yoga’s incompatibility with Catholicism.
Alex Jones Talks Big Picture In Must-Watch Analysis
Supreme Court Ruling Downgraded January 6 From ‘Insurrection’ to Trespassing, says Legal Expert
Supporters of Donald Trump who’ stormed’ the United States Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, are not guilty of committing insurrection after the Supreme Court effectively downgraded the accusations to mere trespassing.
The highest court in the land decided in Fischer v. U.S. that the “Department of Justice had taken too broad a view of [18 U.S.C.] 1512(c)(2), a law that prohibits destruction of evidence but was not intended for protests,” meaning those pushing the insurrection narrative no longer have a leg on which to stand.
While there is a federal insurrection statute found in 18 U.S.C. 2383, very few, if any, J6ers were ever charged under it. The most serious charge they faced was obstructing an official proceeding by destroying or hiding documents meant for use in the proceeding, this under Section 1512(c)(2).
“Unless the defendants could be shown to have interfered with the delivery of documents to Congress, they could not be prosecuted under the statute – as hundreds of people, including former President Donald Trump, have been,” one report explains.
According to constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley, who wrote a lengthy op-ed piece for The Hill, the SCOTUS ruling will have a massive impact on the hundreds of court cases currently in motion pertaining to January 6.
“The Fischer opinion will bring an end to a minority of cases that were based entirely on the charge under 1512(c)(2),” Turley writes. “The section had been enacted after the Enron scandal in 2001 with the collapse of an energy company accused of corporate fraud. It was designed to allow criminal charges for the destruction of evidence in the form of documents and records.”
“The Justice Department chose to interpret that provision to broadly include any obstruction of any legal proceeding, and then used it in hundreds of Jan. 6 cases. At least a quarter of the prosecutions included this charge. Most also included other charges, including trespass and unlawful entry. A small number involved serious offenses like violence against officers and an even smaller number involved charges for ‘seditious conspiracy.’”
(Related: The January 6 victims who were brutalized by law enforcement are suing Eric Waldo, described as the “highest ranking officer on J6.”)
Biden’s DOJ engaged in political witch hunt against J6ers
Turley is convinced the decision proves that Biden’s DOJ pursued wrongful prosecutions with its obstruction charges. DOJ official Michael Sherwin basically admitted this in a television interview when he said that his agency “wanted to ensure that there was shock and awe.”
“It worked because we saw through media posts that people were afraid to come back to D.C. because they’re, like, ‘If we go there, we’re gonna get charged,’” Sherwin added. “We wanted to take out those individuals that essentially were thumbing their noses at the public for what they did.”
The ruling also affects Special Counsel Jack Smith’s four-charge crusade against Donald Trump and his involvement in the January 6 fiasco. With the backing of Judge Tanya Chutkan, Smith is accusing the former president of:
1) Obstruction of an official proceeding
2) Conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding
3) Conspiracy to defraud the United States
4) Conspiracy against rights
Based on the SCOTUS decision, at least half of the indictments against Trump will be dropped as Smith pursues a superseding indictment.
“The Capitol security people invited the mob inside,” one commenter noted about the suspicious false flag nature of the J6 incident. “They had cameras set up to capture the fake insurrection as well.”
“The whole thing was staged by Pelosi, Schiff, Schumer and AOC. FBI agents led the mob and directed most of the activity.”
More related news can be found at Tyranny.news.
Alex Jones Talks Big Picture In Must-Watch Analysis
Israel says Doctors Without Borders Staffers are Terrorists Who Deserve to be Killed
A medic of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders, was killed in a recent airstrike in Gaza. Amid the public backlash, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) claimed that the MSF staff was a “terrorist” working for Palestinian Islamic Jihad so he deserved what happened to him.
In fact, the IDF has released photos claiming to be proof that Fadi al-Wadiya, who was killed in an airstrike on Tuesday, was a “significant operative” in the Islamic Jihad group in Gaza.
Fadi Al-Wadiya served as an operative for the militant group for more than 15 years and helped build rockets used against Israeli cities, IDF spokesman Avichay Adraee said. He added that Al-Wadiya was the armed group’s “expert in the fields of electronics and chemistry.”
“A physiotherapist by day, a jihad operative by night,” Adraee said, arguing that the case is “a reminder of how terrorist organizations in Gaza use international aid organizations as a human shield.”
Fadi was a 33-year-old physiotherapist and father of three. He joined MSF in 2018. Our thoughts are with his family and loved ones.
Fadi’s loss marks the sixth killing of an MSF staff member in Gaza since 7 October 2023. pic.twitter.com/F98B3j7Qe8— MSF International (@MSF) June 25, 2024
MSF has already rejected the claims, saying Al-Wadiya was killed when riding a bicycle to the clinic where he worked. “Killing a healthcare worker while on his way to provide vital medical care to wounded victims of the endless massacres across Gaza is beyond shocking; it is cynical and abhorrent,” said Caroline Seguin, MSF operations manager for Palestine.
“Fadi was executed by an Israeli strike and no proof of any wrongdoing on his part has been shared with MSF. Only an independent investigation will be able to establish the facts,” the aid group’s statement also included when it was released on Wednesday. The organization said five other people, including three children, were killed by the same airstrike. Al-Wadiya was the sixth member of MSF and one of more than 500 health workers killed by the Israeli forces since the fighting erupted in Gaza eight months ago, the organization said.
(Related: American doctors stranded in Gaza urge Biden administration to end support for Israeli genocide.)
Back in February, Israel already attacked a shelter belonging to MSF in the Gaza Strip, killing at least two people. “Tonight Israeli forces conducted an operation in Al Mawasi, Khan Younis, Gaza, where a shelter hosting MSF staff and their families was shelled,” MSF posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“While details are still emerging, ambulance crews have now reached the site, where at least two family members of our colleagues have been killed and six people wounded. We are horrified by what has taken place,” it added.
Two healthcare workers are killed in Gaza every day, a British charity reveals
According to the British charity Medical Aid for Palestinians, 500 healthcare workers have been murdered haplessly in Gaza since Israel’s genocidal attacks began in the enclave.
Israel retaliated following the Hamas militant group’s massacre of more than 1,000 people and the taking of Israeli hostages on Oct. 7. The IDF has been waging a military campaign in Gaza which has so far killed more than 37,000 people.
“As of 25 June, 500 healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza since Israel’s military assault began in October. This equates to an average of two healthcare workers killed every day, with one in every 40 healthcare workers, or 2.5 percent of Gaza’s healthcare workforce, now dead,” the charity said in a statement Wednesday. “More healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza since October than were reported killed in all conflicts globally in 2021 and 2022 combined,” the statement added.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Human Rights Office released a statement on Tuesday saying that the killings have occurred against the backdrop of systematic attacks on hospitals and other medical facilities in violation of the laws of war.
Israel has been in disagreement with the UN for months after the organization’s Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in October that Hamas’ attack “did not happen in a vacuum.” The international organization accused Israel of carrying out “56 years of suffocating occupation.” Due to this, Israel demanded Guterres’ ouster back in January.
Attacking hospitals is considered a war crime by the International Criminal Court, but they can lose their protected status under international law if used for military purposes. Israel has justified attacks on healthcare facilities based on sometimes-disputed claims that Hamas is using them for various military reasons.
Tanya Haj-Hassan, a medical doctor who volunteered in a hospital in March, told the charity: “Palestinian healthcare workers have told me that when they leave the hospital, civilians give them civilian clothing because wearing scrubs is putting a target sticker on their back.”
Bookmark WWIII.news to follow stories about the ongoing conflict between Israel and Middle Eastern nations.
Alex Jones Talks Big Picture In Must-Watch Analysis
Illegal Migrants Look Forward To Crossing Channel “As Soon As Possible” After Labour Win
Illegal immigrants in northern France have been celebrating Labour’s ‘landslide’ victory saying that they will cross the Channel at the “first chance” they get. Welcoming the new government some of the migrants said they would […]
The post Illegal Migrants Look Forward To Crossing Channel “As Soon As Possible” After Labour Win appeared first on The People’s Voice.
The Tranny Narrative is Getting More Insane: Media Now Touts ‘Nonbinary Transgender’ Olympian
(LifeSiteNews) — There have been a lot of truly delusional headlines over the past decade as the press herded itself into line with the transgender movement’s ever-changing language diktats. From solemnly using phrases such as “her penis” to obediently using Orwellian terms such as “gender-affirming surgery,” the propagandists did their part for the revolution – and only recently did the mainstream media allow any factchecking of the transgender movement’s claims. Reading anything in the press about the transgender movement requires a translator at this point (is that a he? A she? What’s a “transwoman”? etc.).
But this July 3 headline from the New York Times is truly a masterpiece of stupidity and self-parody: “Nikki Hiltz, transgender, nonbinary runner, qualifies for Olympics: ‘This is bigger than just me.’” 29-year-old Hiltz is a female athlete who identifies as both transgender and nonbinary, and the media has decided to enthusiastically report this as fact while also using Hiltz’s preferred pronouns, “they/them.” The Daily Mail, TIME, Toronto Star, New York Post, and a slew of other papers all referred to Hiltz as a “nonbinary transgender” athlete in their headlines.
Let’s break this down, shall we? According to the queer studies scholars themselves, nonbinary means identifying as neither male nor female (thus the whole “they/them” thing). Transgender, on the other hand, refers to males who identify as females or females who identify as males – people who feel that they have been “born in the wrong body.” By these very definitions, someone could not be both “nonbinary” and “transgender.” If Hiltz was “transgender,” she would identify as a male. But she identifies as both of those things, and nobody is interested in pointing out that this just isn’t a thing. The press is too busy celebrating this new milestone in LGBT history and gushing about how this Olympic announcement came right on the heels of “Pride Month.”
Granted, language has been transitioning so swiftly and new genders evolving with such frequency that perhaps these terms mean entirely different things already, and the dictionaries just haven’t been edited yet to reflect our new social delusions. As the New York Times reported:
Hiltz wrote a piece for Runner’s World in 2021 explaining how the sport helped them express their gender identity and find descriptive terms that felt authentic. ‘I’m transgender, I don’t identify with the sex I was assigned at birth, I currently describe my gender as non-binary, and I prefer they/them pronouns,’ they wrote.
Predictably, Hiltz is primarily using her platform to discuss her various queer identities. “I definitely pour a lot of myself and a lot of my time and energy into the queer community and being an advocate,” Hiltz said in an interview last year. “But I do that because I get so much in return. I feel like every time I meet another nonbinary person in the queer community, they provide me with more representation. They always say that I’m doing that for them, but I think representation is a two-way street and I definitely feel empowered.”
“I’m so privileged,” Hiltz added last week. “I have an incredible support system. My family has always been accepting of me, when I came out about my sexuality, and then when I came out with my gender identity [in 2021]. I just know so many queer people don’t have that love and support.” Despite all that, she is competing… in women’s sports, despite being a “nonbinary transgender” athlete, or whatever.
But despite this near-universal celebration and public acceptance of identity claims from the fifth estate, trans activists still pretend that they are the victims of enormous persecution.
The Advocate, for example – and I’m not making this up – published a column this week titled, “The transgender community is facing a silent genocide in the U.K.” Why? Because despite the press, the progressive politicians, academia, and the entertainment industry all marching in lockstep to the transgender movement’s tune, the public is still staunchly opposed to sex change surgeries for kids. The “genocide,” it turns out, is perpetrated by those who are opposed to the medical experiments on kids – not the ones who support sterilizing confused children. Nothing means anything anymore.
Covid Would Have Eventually Declined on its Own – But Opportunistic Governments & Vaccine Makers Convinced the Public Otherwise
During the pandemic, the world was convinced it needed masks, vaccines, lockdowns and other measures to protect humanity, but like most viruses, COVID-19 was always destined to decline on its own as it ran out of vulnerable people to infect.
It’s a simple but powerful concept that was explained in detail by Dr. John Snow in the 1850s. The British surgeon is considered a founder of epidemiology, and his investigations into a London outbreak of cholera are considered a significant turning point in the medical field’s understanding of how contagious diseases work. He found that when a virus runs out of susceptible hosts, its circulation will decline sharply in a question of weeks or even days.
In fact, there are a couple of reasons the COVID-19 situation was going to improve on its own. While there will always be residual areas of susceptibility, the normal trend is for a virus’s spread to decline sharply after an initially strong presence. Although there are exceptions, viruses typically become less harmful as they adapt to a new host. Many viruses find it much easier to continue to replicate in their host than to find new hosts. From their perspective, it doesn’t really matter if they cause you to actually be infected with the disease; they just want you to carry it and transmit the virus, and to do that, you need to be alive.
This is one reason viruses tend to weaken over time. It is especially true of COVID-19, which relies on people interacting to be passed from person to person as it is transmitted through respiratory droplets. Then there’s the fact that as more people overcome the virus, they build immunity to it, and it runs out of people to infect.
In other words, outbreaks can and do naturally run their course – a fact that governments around the world conveniently ignored in their quest to control people with restrictive measures in the name of “flattening the curve.” In fact, a lot of biological facts were ignored by those who sought to profit and control people during the pandemic.
Pandemic decisions were driven by politics and profits, not medicine
Many of the decisions made during the height of the pandemic were driven by politics, not medicine, and recently exposed documents from the German equivalent of the CDC show how health authorities there intentionally lied to the public so the government would not cut off their funding.
The German health authority RKI reluctantly released documents in response to a court order that show what happened there. Among the shocking revelations in the 2,515-page tranche of documents was that the experts knew about the deadly thrombosis side effect of the AstraZeneca jab as early as January 2021 but failed to inform the public.
They similarly “forgot” to tell people they found no evidence the shots reduced the transmission of the disease, instead deciding to play on people’s emotions and insist that getting the shot would protect elderly loved ones and help the population achieve herd immunity – even though it’s impossible to do so when vaccines don’t reduce transmission.
The German government also closed schools despite experts recommending against it and implemented mask mandates despite knowing they were ineffective outside hospitals.
Sound familiar? Americans were subject to similar restrictions, and we’re only scratching the surface on how much authorities knew about the inefficacy of these measures and when they knew it. We’re also learning so much more about how poorly researched the COVID-19 jabs were that they essentially forced on much of the population, cutting corners and giving drug makers immunity from lawsuits related to side effects as they raked in billions of dollars in profits.
None of this control would have been possible if they had been honest with people about how viruses work, and Big Pharma would have never made record-breaking profits if the companies and governments had been transparent with people about how mRNA vaccines do not stop the spread of the virus and cause serious side effects.