Showing posts with label Marxism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marxism. Show all posts

Sunday, October 9, 2011

The Passion of Cardinal Mindszenty

Cardinal Mindszenty -- a Priceless Grain of Wheat

Munich (kath.net/KIN) Father Werenfried van Straaten, founder of  the worldwide Catholic assistance organization "Kirche in Not" [Church in Need] preached free of charge on the occasion of the 55th anniversary of the year about the popular resistance against the Soviet occupation of Hungary  began on 23. October 1956.  This talk was related to the fate of the Hungarian József Cardinal Mindszenty and his example for today.

Father Werenfried knew Mindszenty personally and visited him during the uprising on the 30th of October 1956.  The talk is only available now in a CD recorded on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of +Mindszenty's death in 1985 and praised him as a "priceless Hungarian grain of wheat".

The former Primate of Hungary is said to have "taken a cross on himself such as hardly any other Cardinal had to endure", said Father Werenfried.  After his incarceration by the Communist Regime on the 26th of December 1948, he was tortured for a week.  "On nights he was beaten with a rubber truncheon and by day he was prevented from sleeping", said Werenfried.  "So he was destroyed as a man, and appeared through the peep-hole in the door as one dead."

After his release +Mindszenty finally, as Werenfried criticized, became an "was sacrificed as an object of exchange in Ostpolitik to the illusion of the diplomats ."  "He had to leave his fatherland and was maltreated exactly as God's own son, who took the form of a slave and was obedient even unto death on the Cross."  That a "spiritual giant like Cardinal Mindszenty" was subject to this obedience, is a sign of his great holiness, stressed Father Werenfried and appealed to his listeners, never to be sparing, when it so happens, to help persecuted and oppressed Christians:

"We, who bear the smallest part of the cross of Christ, remain poor for eternity, if we don't take the greatest part of the love, that which the persecuted Christians need, to take as our charge.  While our brothers are washed in blood and tears, we will be tested in love.  If we are not eager in our superabundance and not heroic in our love, then we must tremble in our eternity."

To awaken this love in men, is the mission of the organization "Kirche in Not", said Father Werenfried, and warned therefore, that the persecution of the Church worldwide is a "symptom of a spiritual battle not unleashed by men".  With a view to the situation of the Church in the West he declared:

"For decades, the Faith has only been preached reluctantly and every has been done, to undercut God's Commandments.  People have ceased in the battle against evil and aligned themselves with perversions, which the fallen man feel enamored of."

Werenfried criticized further, that the defensive system of our society is disconnected by this false pacifism.  "The result of this infection is death", insisted Werenfield and said, "the less one believes in the Devil, the more dangerous he becomes."

Die Audio-CD "Kardinal Mindszenty - ein kostbares Weizenkorn" kann unentgeltlich auf www.kirche-in-not.de/shop bestellt werden. [You can order the German CD free of charge at that link]


Link to kath.net...


Deutschland:
www.kirche-in-not.de

Kirche in Not
Lorenzonistr. 62
81545 München
Deutschland

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Alleged Assassin of Marxist Prelate Found?

Edit: Beatifying this man is a real loser. He wasn't so much a "voice for the poor" as the kath.net article states, he was an agent of Soviet Foreign policy in Central America.


Bodyguard of a high Military official is supposed to have shot the Archbishop of San Salvador during Mass.

San Salvador (kath.net/KAP) There has been a sudden turn in the 1980 case of the murdered Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Arnulfo Romero. According to media reports there has been a revelation about the identity of the suspected perpetrator after more than three decades.

According to the newspaper "Colatino" it was the act of a a former member of the Army. Marino Samayoa Acosta, then a Non-Commissioned Officer of the National Guard, is supposed to have shot +Romero in 1980 with a precision rifle during Mass.

As the newspaper reported, the son of the politician and Colonel Arturo Armando Molina, tapped his father's bodyguard to do the job -- he was President from 1972 to 1977. Samayoa is said to have been the best shot in his unit.


Link to original...

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Dali Lama Admits He's a Marxist

Usually what we hear from the Dalai Lama is an insistant yet soothing voice for compassion and peace.
So Tsering Namgyal, a journalist based in Minneapolis, was jolted by the Dalai Lama's talk to 150 Chinese students this month at the University of Minnesota. Writing at Religion Dispatches, he says:
Midway through the conversation, His Holiness, much to their surprise, told them "as far as socio-political beliefs are concerned, I consider myself a Marxist ... But not a Leninist," he clarified.
After all, China is constantly pressing to legitimize its takeover of Tibet in world opinion. Meanwhile, the Buddhist spiritual leader is the global symbol of Tibetan opposition and what the opposition considers the obliteration of its independence and religious culture.


Read further, here...

Friday, April 29, 2011

Madame Nhu, First Lady of Vietnam, RIP

Editor: She was the brave and sharp witted First Lady of Vietnam. She was a devoted Catholic who deserves our prayers. We'll try to write a better obituary here for her than what she'll get from the Marxist New York Times. So it almost goes without saying that she has been unjustly maligned by the media for more than fifty years. She is almost universally referred to by enlightened and culturally sensitive leftists as "Dragon Lady", although she was herself a woman of high birth, being of the Imperial Family of Vietnam, and great intelligence. Her life has been bitter and tragic as she has lived in exile for most of it, owing to her country being stolen by Bolshevik thieves and the incompetent bungling of the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. Her brother-in-law was the most Catholic, courageous and interesting President of the Republic of Vietnam, Ngô Đình Diệm. Like many other Catholic leaders, he was assassinated, leaving the Communists reportedly shocked that the Americans could be so stupid.

She has little love or sympathy for the United States, which is understandable considering the way she was treated by our local Marxists in the press corp. As an interesting aside, it was her comments about Buddhist monks incinerating themselves, and her witty remark that indicted the Monks of hypocrisy, which they used to portray her ever after as "The Dragon Lady". Indeed, the way her sharp remarks were portrayed in the American press, she sounded vain, stupid and quite frankly, redolent of certain stereotypes held by the protestant mind-set in the United States about Asians. Her treatment by these journalistic Quislings reminds us of another brilliant Catholic Lady who suffered a like treatment from similar journalistic types almost two centuries earlier in 1789.



H/t: Tom

A nice profile of her by Mad Monarchist.

"The Dragon Lady" as she came to be called, was also a passionate anti-communist and was determined that women should play a leading role in defending their country from Communist infiltration. She formed a corps of women warriors and there is a famous photograph of her at their training ground, firing a .38 pistol for the first time. That event sums up a great deal of her character. Having never used a firearm before she was startled by the noise of the first shot. Laughing it off, she vowed that she would not flinch again and fired the remaining five rounds as though she were an expert. She also fostered a renewal of commemorations for the Trung Sisters, the heroic co-Queens of early Viet Nam who fought against Chinese occupation.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Friday, February 25, 2011

Two German Attorneys Charge Benedict With Crimes Against Humanity in World Court

Once again invoking the rare instance of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, they have an agenda to promote.  It's the only institution left in the world which is standing against their dictatorship of relativism. 
TWO GERMAN lawyers have initiated charges against Pope Benedict XVI at the International Criminal Court, alleging crimes against humanity.

Christian Sailer and Gert-Joachim Hetzel, based at Marktheidenfeld in the Pope’s home state of Bavaria, last week submitted a 16,500-word document to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court at the Hague, Dr Luis Moreno Ocampo.

Their charges concern “three worldwide crimes which until now have not been denounced . . . (as) the traditional reverence toward ‘ecclesiastical authority’ has clouded the sense of right and wrong”.

Read further...

Monday, December 27, 2010

USCCB Promotes Socialist Causes: Often Silent about Catholic Ones

Editor:  The USCCB is good good at undermining things, making useless pronouncments, creating the conditions of the decline and obsolescence of the Catholic Church in America.  Their agendas are out of the Marxist playbook: disarmament, false ecumenism, updating, diversity, "peace and justice" stuff and so on and so forth.  The only thing the USCCB can be counted on doing is attacking the Catholic Church, so Tom Roesser, thanks to Tom at AQ.

How’s the USCCB Doing? Lobbying for the DREAM Act but Not a Word Against DADT. Parse-Parse. What Else Is New?


         The only time in the New Testament when the apostles of Christ…later to become the first bishops… turned collegial came at Gethsemane after the chief priests and Pharisees arrived to arrest Jesus. The four gospels agree and say the same thing:
       “they all fled.”   [Hat tip: Michael Voris].
         Of course that was before the intercession of the Holy Spirit.  After the coming of the Holy Spirit most of them held so courageously for the Church they  went on to martyrdom.   Since then things have been, oh, so-so.   For example when England turned Protestant with a vengeance (sufficient enough to behead Thomas More) all the bishops fled…accepting the clerical domination of the King instead of the Pope,  except one—St.  John Fisher. 

Read further, here...

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Chinese bishops deported to attend Patriotic Assembly

CHINA – VATICAN

by W. Zhicheng - Z. Yuan
The gathering, incompatible with the faith of Catholics, aims to elect the Presidents of the Patriotic Association and the Council of Bishops. Some bishops have gone into hiding to avoid having to participate, while others have been taken against their will. The bishop of Hengshui, seized and torn from the safe cover of the faithful, dragged to Beijing.

Beijing (AsiaNews) - AsiaNews sources say that dozens of bishops of the official Church have been forcibly deported to the capital to ensure their participation at the Assembly of representatives of Chinese Catholics, which the pope considers incompatible with Catholic faith.

The Assembly opened today in Beijing on a low profileand is being shrouded in secrecy: it is impossible to contact anyone and not even Xinhua is reporting on the event. The meeting should lead to the election of the national president of the Patriotic Association and president of the council of Chinese bishops, two bodies that are unacceptable to the Catholic Church because they aim to build a separate Church, detached from the pope. "It's just an election of a new round of leadership," said Liu Bainian, vice president and chairman of the PA Assembly. In fact, the gathering is the "sovereign body" of the official Chinese church in which bishops are a minority among Catholics and government representatives. Ecclesial decisions are made on the basis of rigged elections. Ahead of today's meeting, Liu Bainian had sent all participants clear indications of what to do and what to vote.

Monday, October 4, 2010

"Catholic" Charities Gets 66% From Government


Catholic Charities rakes in more than 3.83 Billion, and they spend more than that.

We always thought Catholic Charities was a bad idea. No wonder the Bishops like this hush money. Don't talk about the Catholic Faith too much, or at all if you can help it, and we'll keep you on the gravy train, they seem to say.



Read rest of article at Forbes...

Thursday, February 4, 2010

WIRE: Backdoor taxes to hit middle class...

« on: Today at 08:34:58 AM »

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100201/bs_nm/us_budget_backdoortaxes

By Terri Cullen Terri Cullen – Mon Feb 1, 4:09 pm ET

NEW YORK (Reuters.com) --The Obama administration's plan to cut more than $1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade relies heavily on so-called backdoor tax increases that will result in a bigger tax bill for middle-class families.

In the 2010 budget tabled by President Barack Obama on Monday, the White House wants to let billions of dollars in tax breaks expire by the end of the year -- effectively a tax hike by stealth.

While the administration is focusing its proposal on eliminating tax breaks for individuals who earn $250,000 a year or more, middle-class families will face a slew of these backdoor increases.

The targeted tax provisions were enacted under the Bush administration's Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001. Among other things, the law lowered individual tax rates, slashed taxes on capital gains and dividends, and steadily scaled back the estate tax to zero in 2010.

If the provisions are allowed to expire on December 31, the top-tier personal income tax rate will rise to 39.6 percent from 35 percent. But lower-income families will pay more as well: the 25 percent tax bracket will revert back to 28 percent; the 28 percent bracket will increase to 31 percent; and the 33 percent bracket will increase to 36 percent. The special 10 percent bracket is eliminated.

Investors will pay more on their earnings next year as well, with the tax on dividends jumping to 39.6 percent from 15 percent and the capital-gains tax increasing to 20 percent from 15 percent. The estate tax is eliminated this year, but it will return in 2011 -- though there has been talk about reinstating the death tax sooner.

Millions of middle-class households already may be facing higher taxes in 2010 because Congress has failed to extend tax breaks that expired on January 1, most notably a "patch" that limited the impact of the alternative minimum tax. The AMT, initially designed to prevent the very rich from avoiding income taxes, was never indexed for inflation. Now the tax is affecting millions of middle-income households, but lawmakers have been reluctant to repeal it because it has become a key source of revenue.

Without annual legislation to renew the patch this year, the AMT could affect an estimated 25 million taxpayers with incomes as low as $33,750 (or $45,000 for joint filers). Even if the patch is extended to last year's levels, the tax will hit American families that can hardly be considered wealthy -- the AMT exemption for 2009 was $46,700 for singles and $70,950 for married couples filing jointly.

Middle-class families also will find fewer tax breaks available to them in 2010 if other popular tax provisions are allowed to expire. Among them:

* Taxpayers who itemize will lose the option to deduct state sales-tax payments instead of state and local income taxes;

* The $250 teacher tax credit for classroom supplies;

* The tax deduction for up to $4,000 of college tuition and expenses;

* Individuals who don't itemize will no longer be able to increase their standard deduction by up to $1,000 for property taxes paid;

* The first $2,400 of unemployment benefits are taxable, in 2009 that amount was tax-free.

h/t: Michael Savage

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Beatify Archbishop Romero Now!


Beatify Archbishop Romero Now!

Not too much enthusiasm for +Romero, but this painting showing affinities to Diego Rivera's Mexican Muralism Style is telling. The enemies within the Church can use a Saint to give their cause of Liberation Theology a boost. Archbishop Romero, like the USCCB back in the 70s was trying to tell landowners how to dispose of their property; never mind that the land schemes envisioned by the +Romero and the Government and reformers actually put people out of work and made the El Salvadoran agricultural less efficient.

Friday, January 29, 2010

Bishop Hubbard is Promoting Needle Exchange

Surely you might recall this Neo-Marxist Bishop's recent support for the Nicaraguan "martyrs", Illegal immigration, supporting our enemies by promoting "No Nukes" and the mysterious death of one of his priests after said priest signed a document denying the allegations he made against Bishop Hubbard.

Now he's engaging in other policies that have done so much to make Holland the wonderful place it is today, needle exchange.

[Catholic Culture] Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany, who serves as chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace, has approved a proposal by diocesan Catholic Charities to distribute free needles to drug abusers in the hope of preventing the spread of AIDS.

“I understand there will be questions, but this is common sense,” said Sister Maureen Joyce, CEO of Catholic Charities. “I strongly believe in this. It will save lives.”

“From a theological standpoint, we're not being faithful to our mission if we don't reach out to people addicted to drugs, too,” Sister Joyce added.

An $83,000 van filled with syringes will be parked in two neighborhoods and serve as the focal point of Catholic Charities’ needle distribution efforts.


Read some more, please....

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Dealer to Junkies: "Don't Abandon Health Care"

Unelected Bishops aren't satisfied with soft-socialism, they're still bent on the ineffective the highly centralized and failed economic practices of 1848-1992. Despite the best efforts of their DNC masters, the USCCB has failed to push the Socialist agenda yet again. The problem is, however, is that they are using the spiritual capital of the Catholic Church in the United States to push the socialist agendas of others who are not friendly to the Catholic Church. Still, these bemitred denizens of heterodoxy at the USCCB are not willing to give up so easily, they are haranguing their socialist colleagues for yet another go at the freedom and liberty not only of Holy Mother Church, but also the American taxpayer.

January 27, 2010


Months after threatening to oppose the health care overhaul over abortion – and one week after the election of a 41st Republican senator cost the Democrats their filibuster-proof majority, casting passage into doubt – Catholic bishops now are urging Congress against dropping the project.

“The health care debate, with all its political and ideological conflict, seems to have lost its central moral focus and policy priority, which is to ensure that affordable, quality, life-giving care is available to all,” Cardinal Daniel DiDinardo and bishops William F. Murphy and John Wester, writing on behalf of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, say in a letter sent to members of Congress this week. “Now is not the time to abandon this task, but rather to set aside partisan divisions and special interest pressures to find ways to enact genuine reform. Although political contexts have changed, the moral and policy failure that leaves tens of millions of our sisters and brothers without access to health care still remains.”

The bishops have advocated consistently for broadening access to health care, but oppose abortion. In November, the conference took an active role in lobbying for an amendment to the House version of the health care overhaul to prohibit taxpayer subsidies for insurance plans that cover the procedure.




Related Articles:



Catholic Bishops Pursuing Liberal Policy Advocating Socialized Medicine.


More USCCB advocating Socialism

USCCB Media Blog

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Vietnam and Vatican discuss Diplomatic Ties

(February 20, 2009) The Holy See and Vietnam have laid a “good basis” for establishing diplomatic relations during annual meetings this week, although no target has been set, a Vatican envoy said on Thursday. The meeting was held in a “very frank and open atmosphere,” Monsignor Pietro Parolin, the Vatican under-secretary for Relation with States told reporters after meeting with Nguyen The Doanh, head of Vietnam's religious affairs commission. Tensions have existed between the Vietnamese government and religious organizations for years. Communist authorities closely monitor religious groups and insist on approving most church appointments. But recently, relations between Hanoi and the Holy See have begun to thaw. Talks between the government and Vatican have been held since 1990, but the latest round marked the first meeting of a working group studying the renewal of diplomatic ties. “We have already set up good basis for further progress,” Msgr. Parolin said, adding that it was impossible to say how long the process would take. “The outcome will be diplomatic relations,” he added. He also told reporters he hoped the Pope might come to Vietnam this year, although no plans had been made for a visit. The working group held its first sessions on Monday and Tuesday, when Msgr. Parolin met Vice Foreign Minister Nguyen Quoc Cuong. Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung said this week's meeting was an “important step” in the development of relations between Vietnam and the Vatican. Msgr. Parolin's delegation is scheduled to visit two dioceses in northern Vietnam later this week before returning to Rome on Sunday. Vietnam has one of Asia's largest Catholic populations, with more than 6 million followers.


Link to original...


Link to related story about Vietnamese government oppressing Catholics, as usual.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

The Lion of Belgium Meets the Jackals


Today, there has been increased criticism of Archbishop Léonard from the Belgian State, rather like the criticism levelled against Fr. Wagner in Linz and one of Holy Father's other appointments in Basque Country Bishop Blasquez in 1995, and more recently in December of 2009.

Sure enough, he's being also criticized by the faculty of Louvain, criticized rather accurately through the years as a center of dissent:

Léonard has beene a controversial figure in Belgium for his critical stands on homosexuality, same-sex marriage and condom use. He has been an outspoken opponent of abortion and euthanasia, both of which are legal in Belgium, and criticised the Catholic universities of Leuven and Louvain for their research into assisted reproduction and embryonic stem cells.


Of course, their allies in the Socialist party were also eager to put in their conerns as well:

The Socialist Party said it “insists that Archbishop Léonard respects democratic decisions taken by the institutions of our country. For the Socialist Party, the rights and duties that people take on democratically take precedence over religious traditions and commandments, without any exception.”

Catholic Culture says this about the demographics of Belgium. We predict the current languishing of the vocations under the leadership of outgoing Cardinal Daneels will become a thing of the past under the new Archbishop's administration.

The nation of 7.8 million is 73% Catholic. It has 3,928 parishes, 6,489 priests, 11,771 sisters, and 201 seminarians. The ratio of seminarians to Catholics makes Belgium one of the world's most "vocation-poor" nations.

Related Articles:

Red Basques Attack Episcopal Pick

Progressive Priests Reject Pope's Pick in Spain

Friday, January 15, 2010

American Bishops Ask Obama to Grant Hatians Temporary Citizenship

The magnanimity of the American Bishops offers yet another opportunity to expand the welfare state even beyond the boarders of our country.

In a letter President Barack Obama on January 15, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, asked the White House to designate the country of Haiti for Temporary Protected Status (TPS).

“It is clear that Haiti merits an immediate designation of TPS after suffering the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake of January 12, one of the worst in Haitian history,” Cardinal George said in the letter.

TPS permits nationals of a designated nation living in the United States to reside here legally and qualify for work authorization. TPS designation is based upon determination that armed conflict, political unrest, environmental disaster, or other extraordinary and temporary conditions exist in a nation and that the return of that country’s nationals would further destabilize the nation and potentially bring harm to those returned.

Read further...

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Sandro Magister Deals with Copenhagen Treaty with Style

At last these journalists are asking people who know what they're talking about instead of going to the usual baddies like Fr. McBrien, Bishop Gumbleton or Sister Joan Chittister.

eurofoot

Pope Benedict XVI has denounced the failure of world leaders to agree to a new climate change treaty in Copenhagen last month, saying that world peace depends on safeguarding God’s creation. He also criticised the “economic and political resistance” to fighting environmental degradation.

The statement came in an annual speech to ambassadors in which the pontiff reflects on issues the Vatican wants to highlight.

So what will the Vatican’s foreign policy be in 2010?

Paulo Alberto from Euronews talked to Alessandro Magister, a specialist on Vatican affairs, in Rome.

Paulo Alberto: So what has come out of this meeting? What will the Vatican’s foreign policy be in 2010?

Alessandro Magister: This year, the main issue is the environment, safeguarding “the creation”. But listen carefully because the Vatican has a unique take on this. As Benedict XVI said in his speech to the diplomats, the support that the Catholic Church wants to offer towards the global effort to save the environment is very particular. In the view of Benedict XVI, this is to understand and to demonstrate that there is an unbreakable link between “ecology” and “nature” and between “ecology” and “human beings”.

Paulo Alberto: From this idea, the Pope has outlined a number of problems; terrorism for instance. Is the church trying to affirm its commitment to peace via ecology?

Alessandro Magister: No, pacifism has no connection with the church’s activities in the world. Being pacifist concerns individuals, not a complex organisation like a State or a Church. As far as the Church’s doctrine goes, the State is obliged to protect the weak, those who have been victimised, even if it takes force to do so.

Paulo Alberto: So the Church is not pacifist?

Alessandro Magister: No, absolutely not! Even John Paul II – and everyone remembers how opposed he was to the war in Iraq – even he defined himself as a non-pacifist. He said, very clearly, “I am not a pacifist.” Remember that John Paul II asked for the use of force in situations like the ex-Yugoslavia, torn apart by civil and ethnic wars, and in Rwanda.

Paulo Alberto: Thank you.

Copyright © 2010 euronews

Tags: Benedict XVI, Copenhagen Climate conference

Thursday, January 7, 2010

US Bishops Seeking Immigration Reform in '10

More Immigration "Reform" being pushed by the usual suspects at the USCCB.


WASHINGTON, D.C., JAN. 6, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The U.S. bishops are seeking legislation to reform immigration policy in 2010, saying migration should be a choice, not a necessity.

The bishops' conference announced today the beginning of a postcard campaign and two Web sites to help build momentum in the effort to bring reform to immigration laws this year.

Bishop John Wester of Salt Lake City, Utah, chairman of the bishops' Committee on Migration, and Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany, New York, chairman of the bishops' International Policy Committee, made the announcement. The campaign comes as National Migration Week is under way through Saturday, focused on "Renewing Hope, Seeking Justice."

"It is our view, and that of others, that the American public, including the Catholic and other faith communities, want a humane and comprehensive solution to the problems which beset our immigration system, and they want Congress to address this issue,” said Bishop Wester.

Read further...

h/t Saint Paul TODAY, here.

USCCB, Immigration Reform, a failure of Imagination.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Bishop Yao Liang, 87, Imprisoned in China for Loyalty to the Vatican, Dies

This is another great article by the usually very Marxist New York Times. The new owner of the paper, or the largest shareholder, who kept the paper from bankruptcy might be pro-immigration, but he might also pushign this paper to be more favoreable to the Church as well. This article owns that the Chicoms are persecuting the Catholic Church and it owns the heroic resistance of a saintly Bishop. Here's a life worth celebrating.

Published: January 5, 2010

BEIJING — Leo Yao Liang, a Roman Catholic bishop who spent 28 years in Chinese prisons during Mao’s rule for his refusal to renounce his allegiance to the Vatican, died on Dec. 30 in Xiwanzi, a town in north China’s Hebei Province.

Bishop Yao was 87 and had been ill with a severe cold for about two weeks before his death, according to Song Feng, the president of the Catholic Association of Xiwanzi Church.

The Cardinal Kung Foundation, which is based in Connecticut and advocates religious freedom for Catholics in China, stated on its Web site that the report of Bishop Yao’s death had apparently been delayed because Chinese authorities sought to withhold the news.

Short and stout, with a shock of white hair and a booming voice, Bishop Yao presided almost up to his death over daily open-air Masses that drew hundreds of worshipers, and Sunday Masses that often attracted a thousand people. [!] The Chinese authorities forbade him to carry out his administrative duties as bishop but did not overtly interfere with his clerical activities.

China’s government does not recognize the Roman Catholic Church or its bishops. Instead, it promotes a government-affiliated faith, the Patriotic Catholic Association. But millions of Chinese are believed to remain loyal to the Vatican and attend so-called underground churches like those that Bishop Yao led. There are reported to be 15,000 Catholic worshipers in Xiwanzi diocese, where he was secretly made an auxiliary bishop in 2002.

For years after his release from prison in 1984, Mr. Song said, Bishop Yao urged his parishioners to follow a course of quiet but steadfast opposition both to the Patriotic Catholic Association and to government restrictions on their right to worship. But after Pope Benedict XVI made improved relations between the Vatican and Beijing a priority, he said, Bishop Yao began working to repair relations with the government.

The mourners at his weeklong funeral, which concludes with his burial on Wednesday, have included a number of local government officials, Mr. Song said.

Yao Liang was born in Hebei in 1923 and became a priest in 1946, according to the Kung Foundation. But after the Communist Party took power in 1949, Catholicism was outlawed, and Bishop Yao’s religious work became more and more circumscribed. In 1956 the government sent him to a labor camp, and in 1958 he was sentenced to prison for life after refusing to abandon his allegiance to the Vatican.

Bishop Yao said little about his 28 years of imprisonment.

“Only sometimes he would complain to close friends about the unspeakable experience,” Mr. Song said. “He personally witnessed people being killed by the P.L.A.” — the People’s Liberation Army — “when he was taken to prison, and he was very traumatized.”

His 1984 release came as the Chinese government relaxed many of the restrictions of the Mao era. While many Catholic priests were still persecuted and Catholicism was strongly discouraged, worshipers were tacitly allowed to congregate at underground churches.

Mr. Song said that Bishop Yao was assigned by the government to be the pastor at a remote rural church in a mountainous area 25 miles from Xiwanzi. In 1997 he came to Xiwanzi, a town of about 7,000 people about 160 miles north of Beijing, close to the border with inner Mongolia.

Even at an advanced age, his problems with the government did not end. In 2006 the authorities ordered Mr. Yao to spend two and a half years in isolation from outsiders, studying Chinese religious laws, after he was held responsible for two conflicts between the government and underground churches.

Bishop Yao was directly involved in the first incident, in which worshipers built a new Catholic church and staffed it with priests not certified by the government, Mr. Song said. But he had no role in the second, in which angry Catholics laid siege to local government offices for three days during a dispute with a Patriotic Catholic organization.

Bishop Yao’s death, not quite a year after he was released from detention, leaves mainland China with 94 Vatican-approved bishops. The authorities are reported to have stepped up security for his burial in the Xiwanzi church graveyard, a ceremony that is expected to attract thousands despite record snows in the area.

Remembering a Lasallian Missionary to Central America

Brother James Miller gave his life for God, and now the Roman Catholic Church has begun the process to make the Saint Mary's University graduate a saint.

Earlier this year, he was designated a "servant of God" and a martyr for the faith - beginning a journey that could end in canonization, the Roman Catholic process of sainthood. He is the only SMU graduate to be considered for the designation.

Miller was born prematurely - weighing barely 4 pounds - in 1944 in Stevens Point, Wis. But he grew up to tower over people, standing at 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighing more than 200 pounds. He was a farm kid with a knack for language and boisterous guffaw that could startle some.

Miller's religious studies at SMU in the mid-1960s culminated in his career teaching indigenous Latin American Indians. Many of his contemporaries in the Lasallian order describe a man perfectly suited for life in Central America - an agrarian background and fluency in Spanish and English. But most importantly, Miller felt especially strongly about educating the Indians in the classroom and in the field, where he taught agriculture.

It was there, outside a Guatemalan school where Miller was repairing a wall in 1982, three assassins took his life.

Passion for education

Miller found his passion in 1974 when he was assigned to Nicaragua.

His work there included expanding a school for indigenous tribes, doubling the faculty and the student body to 800 people.

Though not necessarily sympathetic to the political aims of the Somoza family that controlled Nicaragua, Miller maintained a close alliance with the regime because he saw it as a way to expand the school, said Brother Francis Carr, a classmate and fellow Lasallian brother. But, as unrest wracked the country, many local residents took Miller's cordial relationship with the Somoza government as tacit support.

As the Sandinista revolution spread throughout Nicaragua and the rural countryside, Miller started receiving threats. In fact, the Sandinistas rebels put Miller on a list of people to be "dealt with" when they came into power.[That's a good list to be on]

Miller fell further out of favor as he and other teachers tried to keep students out of military service.

The rebel war drew closer to his school in Puerto Cabezas, and machine gun fire could often be heard outside. Realizing the threats, Miller advanced a planned vacation to Wisconsin in which he’d help celebrate the centennial of his home parish.

“Under the pretext of being the companion of an aged nun, he was able to fly to Managua on a Red Cross plane and obtain a flight to the United States,” wrote Brother Theodore Drahmann in

his book, “Hermano Santiago: The Life and Times of Brother James Miller.”

Miller was worried his departure would be seen as fleeing out of fear and wrote to several people emphatically telling them of his return.

“Keep the Institute going, all of you,” he wrote. “Students, teachers and workers have the responsibility to care for the school. I will be back in one month. Remember that building the new structure was hard; now that we have it, maintain it, keep it pretty. I will see you later.”

Shortly after he left, the Somoza government fell to the Sandinistas, and the religious superiors of the Lasallian order decided Miller would not return to Nicaragua.

Trip back home, then a new assignment

Miller spent a frustrating year and a half in America, first in Wisconsin and later in the Twin Cities.

“I’m bored up here,” he wrote. “I hate snow, even the little we’ve gotten this year. I guess it’s no secret that I am anxious to return to Latin America. I just don’t function to my best potential up here anymore,” Miller wrote to Brother Martin Spellman.

In January 1981, Miller learned he would be assigned to Huehuetenango, Guatemala.

The assignment in Huehuetenango wasn’t so unlike the assignment in Nicaragua. He taught and worked on a farm that helped support an Indian school. And he helped Mayan Indians study their own culture and trained them to be teachers so they could go back to the villages and educate. But there was another reason for the education: to keep the Indians from being conscripted into the army.

“The brothers (at the school) were all about the kids, and if the government got in the way of the kids, they’d stick their noses in it,” Carr said. “And the government saw that, and it didn’t like it.”

This caught the attention of the already embattled government, which was trying to stave off insurgents. The Christian brothers and the school were seen with suspicion. Rumors began to circulate that the school was sympathetic to — even harboring — some guerrilla fighters.

Those rumors weren’t true and were probably started by the army to arouse public sentiment against the school, Spellman said. Anyone not openly supportive of the government was believed to be working against it. Yet Spellman also said that unlike his time in Nicaragua, Miller refrained from entering the political fray and instead focused more on the agricultural and teaching aspects of the job.

Still, Miller acknowledged the risky political situation.

“The level of violence here is reaching appalling proportions, (murders, torture, kidnappings, threats) and the Church is being persecuted because of its option for the poor,” Miller wrote. “Aware of the many difficulties and risks, we continue to work with faith and hope and trust in God’s providence.”

As violence spread throughout the country, Spellman and other Roman Catholic religious workers were told by credible sources that someone in a religious order — somewhere in Guatemala — would be killed. But Spellman never thought the assassination would reach remote Huehuetenango.

And nobody thought it would be the big guy from Wisconsin.

“While all the other brothers were talking about the political situation, Brother James was asking about mops and buckets for the kids,” Spellman said. “He was apolitical, really.”

Gunned down, with no justice for his death

Accounts of Miller’s death differ, but this much is clear: On Feb. 13, 1982, Miller was repairing a wall on the 100-year-old school building. He sent a young boy who was helping him inside to get a tool or some other object as he continued to work, according to interviews in Drahmann’s book. Several children looked on from a second-story window when three men stepped forward, pulled guns at point-blank range and fired.

Miller was probably dead before he hit the ground. People standing on the street saw the three men run toward the military base in town.

Calls from the American Consulate and Roman Catholic Church to investigate the murder poured in to Guatemala City. Two months after Miller’s death, the Guatemalan government expressed regret the case had dragged on for so long. Miller was one of thousands of missing or murdered people in a country ripped apart by bloodshed and political upheaval.

The Guatemalan government eventually concluded that “subversive criminal elements” had probably murdered Miller. The government then closed the case, without naming the murderers and without justice.

Spellman is still shocked and angered by Miller’s death.

“It was a senseless murder,” he said. “It was done by a goon squad.”

Spellman said it was possible to learn who committed the murders, but doing so only endangered more religious workers and residents. So, it became a simple equation: Risk more lives for the justice of one, or pass on the opportunity to close a murder.

“We had to explain to the Miller family there wouldn’t be justice for his death,” Spellman said. “Mrs. Miller (James’ mother) was strong, and she understood.”

Today, nearly three decades after Miller’s death, Spellman doesn’t doubt it was a case of mistaken identity.

Years later, a close friend of his with ties to the military confided to the brothers that Miller was misidentified.

“He said the priest we killed was by mistake,” Spellman said. “Brother James would have been the last one (to be assassinated), but to them, we all looked the same.”

Hermano Santiago’s case moves forward

Carr, the Lasallian brother, believes the push to have Miller canonized has come late because the political climate in Guatemala had been so unstable. But now the bishops of Guatemala have pressed forward with the man they call “Hermano Santiago.”

Carr is quick to point out there were other lay members who also died in Guatemala teaching the faith.

“We wanted the others to be part of the movement toward canonization,” Carr said. “But that part isn’t moving (through the process). This isn’t just about Jim Miller.

“For those of us who knew him, he was ordinary like us,” Carr said. “But if you die for something you believe in, that’s something altogether different.”

The Vatican will continue to examine Miller’s case. For example, because he was a martyr, officials will look for just one miracle, instead of the customary two usually required for canonization.

“I suppose if we knew any saint, they wouldn’t always be the easiest people to live around,” Spellman said. “And you know, they weren’t born with halos on their heads.

“But he died in the order [that should be odor of sanctity] of sanctity, and not a lot of people realized his piety,” he said. “His letters are full of asking people for prayers. That impresses me a great deal.”

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h/t to the comrades at: Stella Borealis