Credit Michael Sanchez – fair use.

Owing to personal interest, GNN is partial to stories of rare bird sightings, and news from Oregon recently broke the story of a ‘mega-rare’ bird never seen before in either the state or the country.

It wasn’t made by a birder, but rather an ordinary talented photographer named Michael Sanchez, who was on the beach one morning near Hug Point Falls when he saw a blue and chestnut bird hopping along the rocks.

“I happened to look behind me toward the ocean and saw this cute little bird standing on the sand,” Sanchez told KOIN 6. “The sun wasn’t fully up yet, so to my eyes, it looked like a little black bird. It posed for me for a minute or two, and then it flew up to the rocks. It stayed there for another moment or so, and then it flew away toward the east. I didn’t think much more of it than that.”

Continued below.

If I buy an expensive Car for a friend, how much money can I charge the friend I am giving the Car to, and still declare the Car "A Free Gift"?

COMMENTARY: The upsurge in canonizations in recent decades is a reflection of the reality that another age of persecution is now underway.
The body of Pope St. Pius V in his tomb in Santa Maria Maggiore. (photo: CC BY 2.0 / Public Domain)

For centuries after Pope St. Pius V, who died in 1572 and whose feast day was April 30, Catholics may well have thought that he was the last of a dwindling tribe, the canonized pope.

That has changed dramatically in recent decades. Indeed, April 27 marked the 10th anniversary of the twin papal canonizations of St. John XXIII and St. John Paul II. The canonizations have returned because the age of persecution has returned. Pope Francis marked another anniversary recently that underscored that fact, two centuries since the death of Pope Pius VII.

Continued below.

COMMENTARY: Pedophilia is baked into the Sexual Revolution.

Editor's Note: Read with care as comments made by TV host Bill Maher are graphic and offensive to some.



If you haven’t seen talk show host Bill Maher’s recent monologue calling out the pedophilia problem in Hollywood, you really should take the eight and a half minutes to do so.

I’m glad someone finally said the sexual exploitation of children is wrong, and that Hollywood’s complicity and hypocrisy are appalling. However, the problem is deeper than Maher thinks. In my opinion, pedophilia is baked into the core principles of the sexual revolution. The potential for full-on acceptance of pedophilia has been latent from the very beginning of this ideology.

Continued below.

Hey is anyone here familiar with Kali Linux? It is a version of Linux loaded with hundreds of hacking tools, it is free and available for download on the internet. If you download this and install it and play around with it and get good with it that is your ticket into the information security field! There are online courses out there that will teach you how to use Kali, if you want to learn ethical hacking those would be just the ticket!

Estee Williams faced her TikTok followers and detractors head-on with full makeup, coiffed blonde waves, and a floral-printed puff sleeve peasant top cinched at the center with a tidy bow. She felt obligated to clarify a few things about what it really meant to be a “tradwife”—a portmanteau denoting “traditional wife”: “So the man goes outside the house, works, provides for the family. The woman stays home, and she’s the homemaker. She takes care of the home and the children if there are any.”

But Williams’ definition moved beyond the idyllic character of June Cleaver or even the Victorian-era presumptions of separate spheres. “Tradwives also believe,” she insisted, “that they should submit to their husbands and serve their husbands and family.” Williams was quick to defend her position against potential critics, noting that she did not believe women were inferior to men, but that they had an equally important but different role.

Tradwives have not escaped the notice of journalists and social commentators who track their popular rise on various social media platforms. Some analyses of the tradwife trend reference the 1950s, while other commentators focus on influencers like Hannah Neeleman of Ballerina Farm fame, who perform the role of 19th-century homesteaders (despite Neeleman’s occlusion of her husband’s inherited wealth). But the ideology behind the fad has much deeper—and more insidious—roots in American history.

Continued below.

(OSV News) — A former Methodist minister has sought a blessing on her same-sex union from a priest at a parish within the Archdiocese of Chicago, months after the Vatican issued a document on the possibility of giving spontaneous, non-liturgical pastoral blessings to couples in irregular situations.

“Myah always wanted to get married at the chapel of her Alma mater, so I surprised her with a blessing of our marriage!” wrote Kelli Knight, who posted a brief video and photographs of the blessing April 22 on her Instagram account, citygrrl76.

Video of same-sex union blessing​

The video pictured Knight, who spent 14 years as pastor of several Chicago-area United Methodist congregations, with a woman addressed in the clip as Myah and Vincentian Father Joseph S. Williams, pastor of St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Chicago.


The parish, administered by the Vincentian Congregation of the Mission-Western Province and adjacent to DePaul University, was established by the Vincentians in 1898 and serves the university community.

In a May 1 phone call with OSV News, Father Williams confirmed that he is the priest in the video, and that the blessing — which he said he administered by appointment at the request of Knight a month prior — took place at St. Vincent de Paul.

OSV News has sent a link to the video to the Archdiocese of Chicago for comment, along with a message to Knight via her Instagram account, and is awaiting a reply to both inquiries.

Elements of the ceremony​

In the video, Knight is dressed in an off-the-shoulder, champagne-colored sequined gown, while Myah is dressed in a black suit with a matching fedora and a white tie, with both women wearing floral wrist corsages. The clip looked to be filmed using a cellphone on a tripod set before the altar, with the camera facing the empty church. Father Williams, dressed in a white alb and an ivory stole, helps the pair to adjust their position in the camera frame before beginning the blessing.

As the two women face each other holding hands, Father Williams says, “This is going to be very short, very brief,” and then reads from a printed text — which he told OSV News he had written himself — in a liturgical binder typically used at Mass for announcements.

Blessing details​

Continued below.

On Wednesday, May 1, Pope Francis addressed an international audience in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican and reiterated the importance of faith in the Christian life as well as the need to continually pray for “real peace” for the whole world.

The Holy Father also deplored war profiteering, decrying the actions of those “making money off death” through huge investments in the production of weapons.

Speaking to thousands of people gathered inside Vatican City on an overcast morning on the feast day of St. Joseph the Worker, the Holy Father spoke about the three theological virtues, beginning with faith, as part of his ongoing catechesis series on vices and virtues.

Continued below.

Delegates voted 692-51 at their General Conference — the first such legislative gathering in five years.

The church also decided to forbid punishing clergy who either perform or refuse to perform same sex marriages.

Likewise, local churches can decide to either host or forbid SSM in their buildings, without fear of penalty from supervisors.

Later, they may vote on changing the church's "Social Principles", presumably to be more open to homosexuality than the current version.

Over the past few years, a quarter of congregations have left the UMC since, it appears, the writing was on the wall.

Both Roman Catholic dioceses in Virginia are urging Gov. Glenn Youngkin to veto bills that would establish a “right to contraception” and require health insurance companies to provide coverage for contraception — but do not contain any religious exemptions or parental rights protections.

“Taken together, these bills would end lives and undercut parental rights,” Jeff Caruso, the executive director of the Virginia Catholic Conference, which represents the Diocese of Richmond and the Diocese of Arlington, told CNA.

“They also completely disregard the fundamental rights of entities with sincerely and deeply held religious or moral objections to covering or providing abortion-inducing drugs, sterilizations, and contraceptives,” Caruso said. “We urge Gov. Youngkin to protect life, liberty, and parental rights by vetoing these extremely harmful bills.”

One of the bills, supported by most Democratic lawmakers and opposed by most Republicans, would require that all health insurance plans in the commonwealth include coverage for every contraceptive that has received approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Continued below

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined a request from the porn industry to block a Texas age-verification rule, allowing the law to stand and temporarily derailing the efforts of porn creators to see the new safety measure scuttled.

The court said in an unsigned order without comment that it was denying a request from the Free Speech Coalition to issue a stay on the law. The Free Speech Coalition includes a porn trade association and several pornography creators.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has defended the law, HB 1181, since its passage last summer. The measure requires porn websites to institute “reasonable age-verification methods” to ensure minors are not accessing explicit sexual content on their sites.

The attorney general has sued multiple pornography companies in order to enforce the age-verification law. He argued earlier this year that pornography sites “are on the run because Texas has a law that aims to prevent them from showing harmful, obscene material to children.”

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ESV Genesis 4:

8 Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.

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LXX used the lexeme G615-ἀποκτείνω.

Exodus 20:

13 You shall not murder.

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LXX:

Οὐ φονεύσεις [G5407].

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Is aborting a baby murder?

The Didache, also known as "The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," was written in the 1st century AD. Its authors thought so, Didache 2:

2 ου φονευσεις, ου μοιχευσεις, ου παιδοφθορησεις, ου πορνευσεις, ου κλεψεις, ου μαγευσεις, ου φαρμακευσεις, ου φονευσεις τεκνον εν φθορα ουδε γεννηθεν αποκτενεις.
not you will murder, not you will do adultery, not you will do child sex, not you will do illicit sex, not you will steal, not you will do magic, not you will do sorcery, not you will murder child to destruction neither newly begotten in the womb you will kill.

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Lightfoot:

Thou shalt do no murder, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not corrupt boys, thou shalt not commit fornication, {thou shalt not steal,} thou shalt not deal in magic, thou shalt do no sorcery, thou shalt not murder a child by abortion nor kill them when born.

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The Christians of Didache, around the time of the apostles, believed that the artificial destruction of a fetus/child inside or outside the womb was murder and killing.

See also When does soul life begin in the womb?.

Her husband has suddenly fell very ill. They are calling hospice in. Please pray for her and her husband at this difficult time.

Thank you!

Psalm 90:

2 Even from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

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God is self-existent, Wiki:

Aseity (from Latin ā "from" and sē "self", plus -ity) is the property by which a being exists of and from itself. It refers to the Christian belief that God does not depend on any cause other than himself for his existence, realization, or end, and has within himself his own reason of existence. This represents God as absolutely independent and self-existent by nature.

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Before God created anything, God was self-sufficient. He did not need anything or anyone.

God created space-time and everything in it. Take the air away, I die. I need to breathe to stay alive. God cannot die due to lack of air because he existed before he created air. God's existence does not depend on anything in his creation, not even space-time. God existed outside of time. God is timeless.

John 1:

3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.

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Godhead divinity was an entirely self-sufficient reality before he created anything, including space-time.

TURIN, Italy (OSV News) — For the rector of the world’s second largest church after St. Peter’s Basilica — the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Aparecidain Brazil — May 11 will be a day of celebrating the inauguration of the southern facade’s mosaics, all created by Father Marko Rupnik.

But alleged victims of the disgraced former Jesuit and many faithful are not in celebratory mood. Amid a heated debate on what should be done with Father Rupnik’s mosaics across the globe, OSV News asked whether the art can be separated from the alleged acts of abuse by the Slovenian priest-artist and what should be done with his mosaics decorating iconic churches across the globe.

Allegations againt Father Rupnik​

In December 2022, Rome’s Jesuit headquarters, following media reports concerning alleged abuse by Father Rupnik, admitted the preliminary investigation found allegations credible as early as in 2019, and in 2020 he was excommunicated for “absolution of an accomplice,” referring to when a priest has sex with someone and then absolves the person in confession. The excommunication was lifted after only a few weeks, on the grounds that Father Rupnik had repented — which he never did, sources told OSV News.


Jesuits admitted under media pressure in December 2022 that, at the time, restrictions had already been in place (including a ban on celebrating Mass in public or leading spiritual exercises). The fact had never been made public before. The Jesuits announced additional restrictions after December 2022 sexual abuse claims.

In 2023, the Jesuits banned Slovenian-born Father Rupnik from continuing his artistic work — before announcing his dismissal from the order in June 2023, effective in July. But the works on the south facade’s colonnades went on in Aparecida, despite a 150-page dossier of credible accusations against Father Rupnik, believed to involve between 20 and 40 women.

Alleged victims of Father Rupnik told OSV News the planned inauguration of the newest Aparecida facade on May 11 appears to be a provocation for them, especially when elsewhere the discussion of dismantling the disgraced artist’s works is ongoing in Church circles.

Impact on artistic legacy​

Continued below.

When Kennedy is sworn in as a member of the House Democratic conference, it will temporarily shave the chamber’s Republican majority to one seat, leaving a small margin for error for party-line agenda items. House Republicans hold 217 seats and Democrats, with Kennedy, will have 213 seats, leaving vacant five seats.

[If I understand the math correctly, the Speaker doesn't vote, so now it's 216 to 213. So if one R defects and votes against the team, it's 215-214. One more and the D's have it.]

Five West Virginia middle schoolers who protested a transgender athlete’s participation in a track and field competition have been barred from future meets — prompting the state attorney general to ask the US Supreme Court to weigh in on transgender student-athlete bans for a second time.

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey filed a lawsuit against the Harrison County Board of Education on the dissenting students’ behalf after they were blocked from upcoming meets following their protests at the April 18 shot put competition, West Virginia Watch reported.

Five girls from Lincoln Middle School stepped up to the circle for their turn before refusing to throw in the event, which was won by Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 13-year-old girl who takes puberty-blocking medication and estrogen hormone therapy.

Continued below.

ucla-moves-to-shut-down-pro-palestinian-encampment-as-unlawful
I am interested in discussion about these topics:

1 What is protected in the American "freedom of speech"
2 How is one American freedom, limited by other American freedoms?
3 How does this co-limitation of values, parallel the way in which
formal Moral-Ethical models are created?
4 Why are demonstrators breaking the rules of the college campuses,
as well as the criminal laws of the states in which the colleges are situated?
5 What does this embrace of violence and breaking the law, have to do with
a moral demonstration?
6 Why did classic demonstrators in America, such as Martin Luther King Jr,
demand that those who demonstrated, were peaceful?
7 What seem to be the underlying principles, among the "electronic screen"
generations, that seem to lead to a pathway from peaceful freedom of speech,
to violent and lawless rioting (such as we saw at the Capital Building, on January
6th)?
8 What is the proper Christian position, on demonstrating?
9 Define what you mean, by "demonstrating".
10 Where does moral-ethical responsibility for expressing your "freedom
of speech", kick in?
---------- ----------

(I have started to address these topics, in a couple other threads.
But, Americans do not, in general, seem to think that the underlying
topics of Epistemology and moral-ethical ought, seem to be relevant
to them. Perhaps this thread, will join these topics together, in the
mind of some of the younger generations in America.

My daughter has not been thriving at the public school. She was referred out to counseling with a licensed social worker. Anyhow, her public school has pretty well given up on her.

I went to her last appointment and spoke to the social worker about the local Catholic school. It is widely regarded as the best school in the county. But this social worker was keen to tell me, "They don't just teach the Catholic faith!" I'm sure she thought this would be encouraging to me, as an Anglican priest, but it was not. If I'm sending the girl to a Catholic school, I expect her to receive Catholic teaching. It is my experience that any attempt to teach something you're not is not accurate.

A man arrested earlier this month in St. Peter’s Square while carrying three 8-inch knives is a former convict and fugitive from the law in New York state.

Moises Tejada, 54, is on the Most Wanted Fugitives list of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision because, authorities there say, he violated the terms of parole from state prison on kidnapping and robbery convictions.

Tejada twice immobilized real estate agents and stole from them while posing as a home buyer, according to New York state authorities.

More recently, he was arrested on Wednesday, April 10, the same day Pope Francis gave a general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. The man attracted the attention of authorities, who found the knives, Reuters reported.

Continued below.

Exodus 21:

6 then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall be his slave forever [H5769]

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Strong's Hebrew: 5769. עוֹלָם (olam or olam) — 438 Occurrences

He would be his slave for a finite amount of time, the rest of his life. This meant a long duration, as far as could be seen.

Exodus 30:

17 The LORD said to Moses, 18“You shall also make a basin of bronze, with its stand of bronze, for washing. You shall put it between the tent of meeting and the altar, and you shall put water in it, ... 21 They shall wash their hands and their feet, so that they may not die. It shall be a statute forever [H5769] to them, even to him and to his offspring throughout their generations.”

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It pointed to an indefinite future. However, the temple was destroyed over 2000 years ago. This statute is not working today. Perhaps H5769 meant something like perpetual:

occurring repeatedly; so frequent as to seem endless and uninterrupted.

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Solomon dedicated the brand new temple in 1K 8:

13 "I have indeed built you an exalted house, a place for you to dwell in forever [H5769].”

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The physical temple was destroyed. Now, God dwells in believers. H5769-forever carried both the physical and spiritual aspects.

Genesis 21:

33 Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba and called there on the name of the LORD, the Everlasting (H5769) God.

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It is the same word here, but now it seems to mean infinite time.

H5769-forever could mean

1. until a fixed time in the near future
2. until an indefinite time in the far future
3. the physical aspect continued onto its spiritual aspect
4. truly never-ending forever.

There was another Hebrew word, H5704, which often was translated as "forever". Gen 13:

15 for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever.

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Strong's Hebrew: 5704. עַד (ad) — 1260 Occurrences

But then, the same word was translated as "till" in Genesis 3:

19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till [H5704] you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

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H5769-forever and H5704-forever are ambiguous. They did not always mean physical time going on to infinity. The ancient Hebrew concepts of time and eternity differed from modern Western concepts. These were common words with a wide range of flexible meanings.

See also

• Forever vs eternal

In what world is rapidly declining numbers a sign that we should just continue doing exactly what we are doing? Better yet, let’s punish those “conservatives” who seem to be bucking the trend by growing the Church so we can keep doing what we’re doing…but more.

This is our strategy. They may not say it outright but that’s what the Church is currently doing. This is Fail Theater writ large on a global stage.

With the numbers of priests of the top dozen religious orders declining precipitously, we are told that we should double down on what we’re doing. Some may call that insanity. Catholics call it synodality.

Gloria TV: Catholic-Hierarchy.org published charts showing the number of priests and members of the top dozen religious orders since the 1960s.

The Jesuits were the first order of the top dozen to have lost more than half of their members from their high point in 1966 (1966: 36,038; 2011: 17,908 members). They are currently at 14,195 members, down 61% from the all time high. There is no change in the trends since Francis, a Jesuit, became Pope.

Regarding the number of their members, two orders reached that sad milestone in 2016: the Franciscans (now down 55%) and the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (now down 54%); and two in 2022: Redemptorists (down 51%) and Vincentians/Lazarists (down 52%).

Continued below.

I hope MTG is able to get a vote on record. Not stopping the border disaster means children continue to be sex trafficked every day and Americans continue to die of fentanyl overdose each day.

Mt 15:

21 Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon.

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That's a deliberate move. Jesus was in a gentile country.

22 And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.” 23 But he did not answer her a word.

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Jesus was testing her.

And his disciples came and begged him, saying, “Send her away, for she is crying out after us.” 24He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 25 But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.”

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She humbled herself before Jesus. She passed the first obstacle. Now comes the second:

26 And he answered, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

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Strong's Greek: 2952. κυνάριον (kunarion) — 4 Occurrences

BDAG:

little dog, dog Mt 15:26f; Mk 7:27f house-dogs that eat the scraps

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International Standard Version:

He replied, "It's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the puppies."

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Jews were the children. Gentiles were dogs. However, Jesus used the diminutive form of the word, which means house-dogs and not street-dogs. Jesus continued to test her.

Did Jesus call her a dog?

She did not react to "dogs" negatively and thereby failed the test. She agreed with the terminology.

27 She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

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She did not dispute the metaphor but extended it to include herself and her daughter. She passed the test. She was humble and had faith, even though she was not a Jew.

28 Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

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Jesus praised her, and she had a happy outcome.

Lambano:

Hey, this unnamed woman won an argument with Jesus! How many people can say that?

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Why did Jesus call the Gentile woman a dog or house dog?

To test her Gentile faith.

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Appendix
There is another Greek word for "dog" in Philippians 3:

2 Watch out for those dogs, those evildoers, those mutilators of the flesh.

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Strong's Greek: 2965. κύων (kuón) — 5 Occurrences

BDAG:

① dog
② a cultically impure person
③ an infamous pers.