OMG Catholics sell historic church to Muslims for half the price of a house in Buffalo > Have they no fear of God?

 

In my not so humble opinion, the Catholic Church well deserves to die. The number of lives they destroyed through child sex abuse and through high rates of gay priests and bishops, and bishops who enabled pedo priests to float around the country, if not the world, and practice their perversion, has nothing to do with genuine Christianity. 

But to build great cathedrals and churches at the expense of hard-working Catholics and then give them to an ideology that has proven itself the enemy of Christ for 1400 years, is just insane. Do they think God will endorse this madness?

Dying Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo,

New York Sells Historic Churches

to Muslims for Mosques

Aug 13, 2024 1:30 pm By Jules Gomes

Sacred steeples sold to sound a different call as bishop redefines evangelism

The diocese of Buffalo, New York, which is in the process of shutting down approximately half of its churches, has sold another historic sanctuary at a bargain-basement price.

The scandal-plagued diocese, which has been buried under an avalanche of clerical sex abuse lawsuits, has traded its historic Gothic St. Ann’s Church and Shrine for $250,000 to Buffalo’s Muslim community, for conversion into a mosque and an Islamic Center.

CATHOLIC BACKLASH

Catholics reacted with outrage after well-known Catholic priest, Fr. Ronald Vierling, drew attention to the sale on Monday. Vierling’s post on the social media platform X has attracted over 10 million views at the time of writing.

“No anger should be directed against the Islamic community,” wrote Vierling. “No doubt the changing demographics of the area and the inability to financially support the complex made the continuance of St. Ann as a viable parish impossible.”

“This scenario is being played out in once large, urban dioceses across the country,” the priest warned.

“Terrible. I know a dozen Catholics who would have pulled together to buy the building instead of letting it get sold off,” Catholic award-winning radio show host David J. Reilly replied, adding: “Sometimes the diocese chooses to not sell to certain groups like the SSPX & FSSP.”

“Muslims get a church for $250k but I can’t buy a house in a decent neighborhood for less than $500k,” a Catholic lamented.

Saint Ann’s Church, built by German immigrants in 1886, had fallen into disrepair and was decommissioned in 2013. Bishop Richard J. Malone – who in 2019 resigned as head of the diocese over allegations of sex abuse cover-up – had slated the building for demolition, as the diocese had estimated repairs could cost at least $12 million. Malone, however, changed his mind and said that the new plan was to put the property up for sale.

The Downtown Islamic Center, which purchased the property from the diocese through its affiliate Buffalo Crescent Holdings, said it would spend the millions of dollars necessary to renovate the historic structure.

“We’re looking to put several million dollars into this in the next year, in the church alone,” Talha Bakth, president of the Downtown Islamic Center, told the Buffalo News. “The space will be able to be used for worship within a year or two.”

Buffalo Crescent Holdings is also purchasing a former rectory at the complex that had been converted to apartments in a separate transaction, the media added.

QUEEN OF PEACE CHURCH CONVERTED TO JAMI MASJID

In 2007, the diocese sold the Queen of Peace Church for $300,000 to the Muslim Society of Buffalo, which converted the building into the Jami Masjid (mosque).

Since Islam prohibits the depiction of a human or living being in sacred iconography, Muslim volunteers painted all the Catholic murals sky blue, removed statues at the altar, and replaced the church’s well-preserved stained-glass windows with plain, frosted glass.

The main altar was removed entirely and replaced by a carpeted space for reading. The church’s former apse, the area behind the main altar where the choir would sing, has been screened off as a prayer space for women.

Today, the Jami Masjid has Turkish carpets instead of pews and Arabic calligraphy adorns the Gothic brackets. The orientation of prayer has changed so the imam stands along the eastern wall of the building, so that when worshippers can face Mecca when they offer their prayers and bow.

ST. AGNES CHURCH CONVERTED TO BUDDHIST SHRINE

In 2009, the Buffalo diocese sold St. Agnes Church to the International Sangha Bhiksu Buddhist Association for conversion to a Buddhist temple and meditation center. The historic church, which was consecrated on December 9, 1883, had served German and Italian immigrants for over a century.

The church closed its doors on October 21, 2007, and remained empty for two years before Vietnamese monk Thich Minh Tuyen bought it in 2009 for $250,000. It reopened in 2012 as a Buddhist temple after the iconography, including the crucifix and images of the Stations of the Cross, was removed.

The Buddhist occupants also added three 2,000-pound sitting Buddhas shipped from Canada, and six standing Buddhas, that cluster around a shrine in the narthex. The monks also replaced six pews with carpets for worshippers, but left the remaining pews intact for those who cannot sit on the floor.

The new owners also hung Buddhist banners alongside the intact stained glass windows, intending to combine Buddhist iconography with the existing Catholic themes.

‘CHURCHES ARE NOT POKER CHIPS’

Attorney Brody Hale, co-founder and president of the St. Stephen Protomartyr Project, which works to preserve Catholic churches for sacred use, lamented the sale and conversion of churches into non-Christian places of worship.

“A church as defined by canon law is a sacred edifice,” he told FrontPage Magazine. “Churches as sacred buildings have fundamentally more protections under canon law than parishes.”

“This is not what churches are supposed to be used for according to canon law. Churches are not poker chips a bishop can use to cash out when he’s in a bind,” Hale stated.

MILLIONS SPENT ON CLERICAL SEX ABUSE SCANDALS

Earlier in May, the Buffalo diocese announced plans to merge approximately 34% of the 160 parishes across Western New York and reduce places of worship by 38%.

Bishop Michael Fisher said the mergers were due to financial pressures brought about by the filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2020, after scores of clerical sex abuse lawsuits were filed under the Child Victims Act; as well as a priest shortage, aging congregations, and declining Mass attendance.

The consolidation would bring the number of parishes from 160 to a projected 106, and the number of worship centers from 196 to a projected 121.

Last year, the Buffalo diocese offered $100 million, in addition to any insurance funds, to settle 891 clerical sex abuse cases. The diocese said it would sell its 795 Main Street headquarters, the former Christ the King Seminary campus, and other “non-essential” property to cover half the settlement.

More than $15 million has already been paid to attorneys for the diocese in its bankruptcy and the state Attorney General’s investigation.

DIOCESE FAILS TO EVANGELIZE THE LOST

Interestingly, the diocesan website has a drop-down menu titled “How We Evangelize” on its opening page, but the word “evangelization” seems to be re-defined with no mention of any attempts to reach people of other faiths or no faith.

Instead, the subcategories under the menu lists buzz phrases such as “Cultural Diversity,” “Catholic Education,” and the controversial “Catholic Charities,” with events like a diocesan “Multicultural Mass” and an annual “Cultural Diversity Celebration Dinner.”

Vatican Doctors Pope's Remarks on ‘Psychiatric Help’ for Gay Children, Says He Did Not Mean It

Well, so much for infallibility!

Pope Francis © Gonzalo Fuentes / Reuters

Pope Francis told a reporter that parents should seek psychiatric help if their children had homosexual tendencies. The Vatican says he did not mean it and removed those words from the official transcript, however.

Then what did he mean?

The comment in question was reportedly made as the pontiff was flying back to Rome from Ireland on Sunday. While the Pope has earlier implied that there is nothing wrong with being gay, this time he said that “a lot that can be done through psychiatry” no later than in childhood and added that ignoring such a child is “error of fatherhood or motherhood.”

“When it shows itself from childhood, there is a lot that can be done through psychiatry, to see how things are. It is something else if it shows itself after 20 years,” Pope Francis told reporters, as cited by multiple outlets.

However, that reference was not included in a transcript published by the Holy See Press Office on Monday.

The Vatican did not deny the alteration, saying that the quote had been erased to avoid confusion. 

Now, I'm really confused!

“When the Pope referred to 'psychiatry', it is clear that he was doing it to highlight an example of 'things that can be done'. But with that word he didn't mean to say that it [homosexuality] was a 'mental illness',” a Vatican spokeswoman told AFP.

Ah! That's much better... He didn't mean to say what he said. But if he wasn't calling homosexuality a mental illness, then he was at least calling it a sin. You cannot call it anything less than a sin and believe in the God of the Bible, for He made it very clear and unambiguous. Yet, the church has had a great deal of tolerance for gays in the priesthood with many advancing to Bishops and Archbishops and, at least some, to Cardinals. Sin is progressive - nothing good could possibly have resulted from the Catholic embrace of an abomination inside the priesthood.

Last week, Pope Francis was accused of inaction over sexual abuse claims against a prominent US priest, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, which the pontiff allegedly knew about. The claim was made by former Vatican ambassador to the US, Carlo Maria Vigano, who even called for the pope’ resignation. 

However, the pope refused to comment on the allegations, calling on the public to “judge for yourselves.” 

The Catholic Church has recently found itself in the epicenter of the sex abuse scandal and had to acknowledge that priests were really involved in it, after a Pennsylvania grand jury published a report that found 300 “predator priests” had abused children for decades.

And, rest assured, Pennsylvania is no different than any other state in America or any other country in the world with regard to pedophile priests. In Australia they have determined that 8% of the country's priests were pedophiles, although in some orders the percentage was in the 20s and even 40s. 

It seems the percentage of Pennsylvania priests were likely very much in the range of 8% or more. If that holds true for the whole world, then you are looking at more than 33,000 current priests as pedophiles. Most of those pedophiles would be gay, although many gay priests may not be pedophiles, which just means that there are considerably more than 33,000 gay priests in the world, perhaps several times that. 

Is it any wonder the Bible refers to the Catholic Church as the Whore of Babylon?

Ex-Vatican Official: Francis Ignored McCarrick Abuse Allegations, Calls for Resignation

By Daniel Uria

(UPI) -- A former Vatican official said Sunday that Pope Francis was aware of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick' sexual abuses as early as 2013.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a former papal ambassador to the United States under Pope Benedict XVI, released a letter, published in Italian by The National Catholic Register and in English by LifeSiteNews, stating Francis ignored McCarrick's record of sexual abuse and failed to punish him.

In the letter, Viganò also called on Francis to resign for the good of the church.

"In this extremely dramatic moment for the universal Church, he must acknowledge his mistakes and, in keeping with the proclaimed principle of zero tolerance, Pope Francis must be the first to set a good example for cardinals and bishops who covered up McCarrick's abuses and resign along with all of them," Viganò wrote.

McCarrick, 88, resigned last month after he was barred from publicly practicing ministry amid allegations he abused a teenage altar boy in the early 1970s while he served as a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, which an Archdiocesan Review Board later determined were "credible and substantiated."

Viganò wrote that two other church officials had reports in 2000 and 2006 respectively detailing McCarrick's sexual abuse including that he "shared his bed with seminarians" whom he would invite five at a time to his beach house on the weekends. Viganò added he recommended McCarrick be disciplined in 2006, but was ignored.

He said Benedict eventually "imposed on Cardinal McCarrick sanctions similar to those now imposed on him by Pope Francis" in 2009 or 2010, expelling him from the seminary where he lived, and forbidding him from participating in public Masses, meetings and other religious activities.

Viganò went on to describe a meeting with Francis in 2013 in which the Pope asked "What is Cardinal McCarrick like?" Viganò said he told the Pope of McCarrick record of sexual abuse "with complete frankness," but Francis "did not make the slightest comment" about the allegations, "as if he had already known the matter for some time."

The release of Viganò's letter came as Francis celebrated a Mass at Dublin's Phoenix Park at the end of his two-day trip to Ireland.

At the Mass on Sunday, Francis asked for forgiveness for abuses of power and sexual abuse in Ireland by church leaders.

"In a special way we apologize for all the abuses committed by institutions run by male and female religious and other members of the church. And we ask for forgiveness for the crimes so many minors were subjected to," he said.

He added that "some members of the hierarchy didn't own up to these painful situations and kept silence."

Francis also sought forgiveness for the church's history of separating unmarried mothers from their children and called for them to reunite.

"For all those times when it was said to many single mothers who tried to look for their children who had been estranged from them, or to the children who were looking for their mothers, that it was a mortal sin," he said. ""This is not a mortal sin. It is the Fourth Commandment! We ask for forgiveness."

Earlier Sunday the pope prayed at a shrine in the village of Knock where he prayed the Virgin Mary to heal those who were abused within the church.

For all the good that does! The Bible tells us to pray to God the Father through Jesus Christ the Son. Nowhere in the Bible does it suggest we pray to Mary. Mary was blessed above all women for bearing God's Son, but Jesus Himself never venerated Mary, nor did any of the disciples. Why Catholics have decided she is virtual Deity is just one of the ways the Catholic church is severely off-track, the consequences of which seem to always fall upon children.

"None of us can fail to be moved by the stories of young people who suffered abuse, were robbed of their innocence, who were taken from their mothers, and left scarred by painful memories," he said. "This open wound challenges us to be firm and decisive in the pursuit of truth and justice. I beg the Lord's forgiveness for these sins and for the scandal and betrayal felt by so many others in God's family."