Godless Society Makes Us Fodder for Parasites

"Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years. Almost our whole education has been directed to silencing this shy, persistent, inner voice; almost all our modem philosophies have been devised to convince us that the good of man is to be found on this earth." - C. S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory"

As we approach the end of the second decade of the new millennium, under the banner of progress, evolution, humanism, etc., the ongoing and multidimensional systematic war on mankind and his Creator is accelerating.  But we've become so deeply entrenched in the efficiency/profit-before-people material-carnal world--which has reversed spiritual and moral structures making spiritual and/or theological discernment almost impossible--that we've become blinded as a people, despite all the evidence of this continuous war on our pocketbooks, on our quality of our lives, on our psyches, and most importantly, on our souls.

Be honest with yourself for one moment and take an unflinching look at social reality. You will see overwhelming evidence of "spiritual wickedness in high places."

Just consider all of the declared wars on everything from drugs to cancer to terror to poverty, etc. Despite the trillions of dollars spent on battling diseases and in search of cures, disease rates--cancer, diabetes, autoimmune, etc.-- continue to skyrocket. Despite the trillions of dollars invested in health and medical care, our population may live longer but is sicker than ever. Despite the trillions of dollars poured into the "war on drugs", drug abuse rates are exploding, while drug cartels proliferate. Despite the trillions of dollars channeled into the "war on terror" and invested in greater technocratic surveillance, defense, security, and surveillance to keep us safe, fear levels are at a record high as there seems to be a proliferation of terror plots and terror cells, not to mention the all-powerful "lone gunman" around every corner, who is able to take down vast multitudes in mere seconds no matter how great the obstacles in his way.

If that doesn't convince you, consider the exploding cost of higher education and outrageous student debt as permanent full-time positions are eliminated in favor of temporary part-time work that can't possibly support a family, let alone pay off these permanent student loans. $80,000 to work at Starbucks pouring coffee is an outrage!  Just consider the ever-growing wealth and power of the ruling class as the middle class shrinks into oblivion.

In the October 2000 issue of The American Journal for Public Health Stephen J. Kunitz, MD, PhD, published an article entitled Public Health Then and Now: Globalization States, and the Health of Indigenous Peoples which, in a nutshell, stated that wherever the globalist managerial model is imposed, there is a marked deterioration both in public health, and in the environment itself.

These are just a few examples that demonstrate the results of the stage-managed, mob-manipulated, black-is-white war on us by a shadowy clique of power brokers.

Pathology of culture sprinting to its own demise.  

It's so easy to get caught up in our everyday routines, problems, issues, which, oddly enough, seem to accelerate at the same rate as the technology that is supposed to not only simplify life, but improve health and quality of life. This may sound extreme to the many who have yet to open their eyes to the depth of depravity that surrounds us, however, it is this exponential growth in technology that has enabled an elaborately choreographed escape from reality from which there may be no return.   While it's easy to forget or ignore the depth of the depravity that surrounds us, warping and desensitizing our perspective and distracting us from eternal matters.

Driven by our desires and passions, where no price is too high to pay for happiness and satisfaction, we are blinded to our true spiritual condition. Reality has been replaced with spectacle and cult-of-personality issues of the most trivial banalities.  We have been convinced to please ourselves and the world system instead of living to please God. Has there ever been a culture in recorded history that is as self-absorbed and adept at wasting time as ours? But how did we get to this point?

Parasitic and Predatory Class

Getting through life as a parasite is all about making the most out of the living conditions that you've been dealt, however, what's even better is when the parasite/predator can steer, cultivate and even create a cozy oasis for their parasitic and predaceous lifestyle, and cozy it is for an infinitesimally small part of our population: the parasitic and predaceous power elite.

Given the exponential growth in technology under their control over the last few decades, not to mention their increasing power, wealth, and resources, and ever-growing success in eliminating God, creating these optimal conditions are easier than ever before. And so it is more important than ever to learn more about the these highly adaptive, cunning, diligent parasites and symbionts with an exterior of surprising normality, that live on/in us and the effects that they have on their largely unaware and even fawning and celebrity-obsessed host society. Yes, we've come to worship our parasites.

Tax-Exempt Foundations as a Mechanism for Cultural Revolution

First, let's take a look at a very public modern day example of one of these parasites and their most effective tool, the foundation, which functions as a sort of shadow government: The Rockefellers

In 1708, Johann Peter Rockefeller emigrated from Rhineland Germany to New Jersey.  One of his descendants, William Avery Rockefeller, born in 1810 in Granger New York, known as Doc, was a traveling salesman and horse thief who sold crude oil door to door as a cure for snake bites, impotence and warts. At the age of 40, when he was already married with six children, Wiliam waa accused of raping a 15-year old girl and fled to Cleveland Ohio to avoid prosecution. At the age of 45, he abandoned his wife and six children and married a 20-year old without divorcing his wife. One of those six children, master-strategist and monopolizer John D. Rockefeller, became the robber-baron billionaire of Standard Oil. However, the Rockefellers did not stop with oil.

“I would rather earn one percent off one-hundred people's efforts than one-hundred percent off my own efforts." -- John D. Rockefeller

The Rockefeller initial foray into the field of eugenics was The Eugenics Record Office in Cold Springs Habor, NY, established in 1910, but it was, three years later, the incorporation of the Rockefeller Foundation that bought its pervasive global influence in so many areas of life it's impossible to list them all.  For instance, they created the Institutional Health Commission and American Hygeine Association to direct the scientific study of biological and social factors that influence human sexual conduct.   It's amazing how easily people have been duped into unwittingly thinking political, philanthropic organizations and political movements were created to help humanity.

“Rene Wormser, Reese’s legal assistant throughout the [Reece Committees } hearings documented in a book published in 1957 [Foundations: Their Power and Influence] not only the dangers posed by foundations to the institutions of the republic but also the influence of those foundations and their political allies bringing to bear on the nations cultural institutions. The great foundations--Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie--were for the most part founded as a result of the New Deal as an attempt to prevent the flow of family money into the coffers of federal government under the tax policies instituted by Roosevelt. Created from the wealth of the nation’s major capitalists the foundation soon applied the techniques of the cartel and the trust to the flow of information and the reconfiguration of culture.  The foundations would put up money which would serve as venture capital in the politics of change. Foundations like those run by Rockefeller brothers would fund projects like Kinsey sex surveys which would've otherwise been impossible to support given the constraints of democratically elected government or the simple satisfying of market forces. Foundations would fund research which they found congenial and almost invariable involve instigating social change away from a position of congruity with the moral law. They involve more often than not, as the Kinsey studies did, the substitution of “scientific” data for moral principles and then when the project received a modicum of public acceptance foundations would turn the funding of the projects over to the government. This was by and large the mechanism of cultural revolution in this country. The foundations would fund the undermining of some law, generally having to do with sex, the family, morals or religion. The courts would remove any legal roadblocks and the press would proselytize whatever the social change entailed. Given widespread dissemination to the “scientific” surveys which foundations funded and eventually the government would set up programs based on  what the foundations proposed funded by government money. -- Dr. E. Michael Jones, "John Cardinal Krol and the Cultural Revolution."

Killing God is Essential

Since the time of the Enlightenment, there has been an attempt to erase man’s natural orientation toward the eternal, toward God, and unfortunately, it’s been quite successful.  That is, thanks to the wealthy and powerful ruling elite throughout the ages, who have covertly orchestrated a system that corrupts our environment, corrupts our thinking and emotions and finally, steal our souls. Believe it or not, it is the so-called "philanthropic" foundation that is one of their greatest tools. These foundations, cloaked in altruistic concern for human welfare and advancement, not only shelter the wealth of the powerful, they function to distort reality and to steer and create a culture that will fulfill their agenda to manipulate and control the fate of mankind. This parasitic ruling class-- culture creators--with the help of their "righteous" foundations using their network of tendrils that can squeeze through the nooks and crannies of the host's body (society at large) have worked very hard to steward the narcissism and moral decline of the modern world that is so necessary to the kind of vampiric spirituality--the antithesis of Christianity--that this class embraces.

Hence, today, it is no coincidence that the vampire, a blasphemous mockery of Jesus Christ, has been transformed into a hero through books, movies, and television. Both Christ and Dracula deal with blood and eternal life, however, whereas Christ shed his blood so that his followers could have eternal life, Dracula shed his follower's blood so that he could have eternal life. Vampirism is a reworking of Christianity according to the canons of social Darwinism which the ruling class believes in 100%. In a reversal of Christian order that the vampire creates, man achieves immortality through immorality, and by affecting others through lust. Christianity exalts love. Vampirism, Darwin's survival of the fittest pushed to its extreme, exalts the hunger of desire.

Social Justice Without God

Now that God has become marginalized, an afterthought, incorporated into nature, undefined, etc., our new "gods" need a positive face and that face is "social justice". Every issue, every agenda of these new gods is cloaked in social justice, because every agenda no matter how dehumanizing, no matter how unjust can be made to appear humanitarian, to appear like social justice, especially given the rapid-fire technological development in our Orwellian era, where war is peace, love is hate, and so on. For instance, when wars on: terror, poverty, cancer, drugs, you name it only results in more terror, poverty, cancer, drugs, you name it, they continue on ad infinitum. In other words, nothing ever gets resolved in these wars, except more of whatever they're trying to eliminate. Yet, we as a people continue to support these wars not only with our tax money but oftentimes, with either our willful ignorance or all-out defense of these so-called wars that exacerbate the problem.

Exploited class made involuntary fodder for parasites.

Like fungi that infect and zombify insects, and parasitic nematodes that turn an insect's innards into a soupy baby food for the next generation of killer worms, the parasitic class and their allies have not only drained our resources, they have, with their constant propaganda, indoctrinating institutions, smart technology, and enormous arsenal of psychological, physical, and spiritual toxins--chemicals, GMOs, vaccines, pharmaceuticals, industrial pollution, electrosmog, etc. -- at their disposal, infected, zombified us, casting their spells from which there might be no return because we forget our reason for being.

There's a good reason for being so imposing (ruling class) upon their host (us), as the more space they take up, the more "eggs" they can produce.  Just consider tech and social media companies who hire attention engineers who borrow principles from Las Vegas Casino gambling to make their products as addictive as possible.

The corrupting results of misplaced human ambition that ignores one’s true aptitudes who have misjudged their abilities Commerce, however necessary, however lucrative, as it deprives the manners, corrupts the language...

Remember, the powers that have ruled the worldly system/rule the worldly system know the bible inside and out, especially Adam and Eve in the Garden and Jesus in the Wilderness. They learned from the tactics of the Evil One. They learned the pattern of temptation and the mechanism of sin. They learned from the serpent who played word games with Eve while Adam stood by and watched, who warped the Word of God by misquoting the command not to eat the forbidden fruit, and who outright lied about the command and intention of God in that command--health-and-wealth prosperity gospel, anyone? They learned how to purposefully mishandle the Word of God, and how to woo us by sweet-sounding words that camouflage their true intent. They learned how to peddle false promises and entice through sin's slick suggestions. And most importantly, those who rule us understand the fallen nature of man, how sin so easily entangles us...they understand the flesh and spirit battle that rage in our bodies.  

So how does one stay clean even though they are living in the same invested environment? It's not easy, seemingly impossible, but in my humble opinion, the answer to that is Jesus Christ, who promised us eternal salvation if we would just choose Him.

“Consequently a necessary step for most of us in the work of renouncing This World is to become aware of it as an engineered control system. Thus the act of investigating the structure and exposing the agendas of the New World Order, for those dedicated to the spiritual path and also called to this work, can be of direct service to the contemplative life. . . . If we can witness the darkness of This World with apatheia, with detachment and equanimity, then we will have accomplished the greater part of the work of ‘shadow-integration’; we will be led, God willing, to the point of supreme nausea where we can vomit the World, along with the Ego, its master and slave, out of our souls forever.” --Charles Upton, Vectors of the Counter-Initiation: The Course and Destiny of Inverted Spirituality, p. 330

Links/Sources:

Ten Things I Wish Jesus Never Said

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Mother Teresa: Saint or Saint of the Media?

To be frank, I never was a fan of Christopher Hitchens, therefore, I never took his criticisms of Mother Teresa (born Anjeze Gonxhe Bojaxhiu) seriously, and I'm still not sure if his criticisms are valid. But I want to make sure I'm not allowing my dislike for Hitchens as an excuse to dismiss his accusations completely. After all, to Catholics and non-Catholics alike, Mother Teresa is a modern day icon of altruism, and selflessness in a world where all the focus is on the self, so her sacred personage represents an all-important light in what seems like a never-ending "Dark Night". Nevertheless, there is no justification for failing to get to the truth of the matter.

Through exposure of her private writings, it has come to the attention of many that Mother Theresa, like many Saints before her, did not feel the presence of God, that she experienced Christ "neither in her heart or in the Eucharist," yet despite this, she never stopped serving Christ. While the media played her doubts up as a failure, or hypocrisy on her part, many people of faith would call her continued devotion in the midst of "agonizing doubts" and torment, a sign of the highest level of faith that there is. To be sure, millions of people around the world can relate to her struggle.

However, one question remains. What kind of treatment did the sick and the dying receive in Mother Teresa's facilities considering the vast sums of money collected through her foundation, which included large sums from the Nobel Peace committee as well as numerous institutions and organizations, both religious and secular, not to mention, wealthy individuals?

Serge Larivee and Genevieve Chenard of the University of Montreal and Carole Senechal of the University of Ottawa reviewed more than 280 documents, representing 96% of the published work on Mother Teresa and the Order of the Missionaries of Charity that she founded. The investigators reported that physicians who visited her facilities “observed a significant lack of hygiene, even unfit conditions, as well as a shortage of actual care, inadequate food, and no painkillers.”

Be that as it may, there is nothing like personal first-hand observation. One man, a witness of Mother Teresa and the sisters in her order posted the following comment which may shed some more light on to this issue.

“I have personally witnessed and testify to the selfless and unmatched love Missionaries of Charity have displayed working with mentally disabled orphan children in Armenia. In 1988 Armenia's northern part was rocked by a strong earthquake leaving more than 20,000 dead. Within weeks Mother Teresa traveled to Armenia establishing a care center near the city of Spitak, which for many years operated in mobile homes. In 2003 I visited there after an American friend (Ph.D in Music) visited them and recommended me to visit as well. I was struck by the unparallelled love and care these young sisters were giving to more than 40 mentally disabled orphan kids. I would go against my consciousness to say anything less than great about these sister. To this day I remember the true, selfless love and enthusiasm they were putting in their care for these children. I knew I was not that strong, as probably the author of this book, to do the same.

These sisters, who came from different parts of the world, explained that they do this without seeking any reward in this world. Their eyes were toward the Kingdom of Heaven and toward the true love of Jesus, two concepts so foreign to the overwhelming majority of people, including those who are called to serve Him.

As Serge Larivée and his colleagues point out, even if Mother Teresa did not live up to the image portrayed in the media, there have been and continue to be positive effects that can be attributed to the image of Mother Teresa:

“If the extraordinary image of Mother Teresa conveyed in the collective imagination has encouraged humanitarian initiatives that are genuinely engaged with those crushed by poverty, we can only rejoice. It is likely that she has inspired many humanitarian workers whose actions have truly relieved the suffering of the destitute and addressed the causes of poverty and isolation without being extolled by the media. Nevertheless, the media coverage of Mother Theresa could have been a little more rigorous."

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The Resignation of the Pope and the New World Order.

Theories abound now that the first pope, in six hundred years is resigning his office. One of these theories includes the "Prophecy of the Popes" which is attributed to St. Malachy, an Irish archbishop who was canonized a saint in 1190, In his predication, dated 1139, Malachy prophesied that there would be 112 more popes, and Benedict is supposedly the 111th pope. The Prophecy offers brief descriptions about each pope, and some of them align with reality in some way. For example, Benedict is apparently denoted as the "Glory of the Olive," and the Olivetans are affiliated with Benedictine Order. The prophecy stops at the 112th pope ending with a cryptic warning the last pope being a false prophet.

What does this have to do with a new world order? Well, regardless of your belief system, you have to admit the global impact of this event. The Holy See has existed for almost two-thousand years, whereas Vatican City came into existence in 1929, giving the Catholic Church two distinct identities, and the power to switch from one, the leader of a global religion to the other, the head of state, a state that has diplomatic relations with 170 countries. This is important because a one world government needs a one world religion, and the Vatican, over the last fifty plus years started to incorporate the concept of pantheistic monism, the belief that everything is united, and within this belief system there is no room for the individual, perfect for a collectivist New World Order. Believe it or not, this worldview that claims an alien savior, replacing Jesus Christ with a cosmic christ--think Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a mystical Dawinist--is making inroads all over the Christian map.

Remember, collectivism is that concept where individuals are considered discardable, and/or disposable...that the group is more important and the ultimate group, of course, is the state. The state is the all-important unit of society and citizens exist to serve the state.

So, this could possibly mark the end of an old order, and the beginning of a "New World Order." Pope Benedict did profess his belief in a World Political Authority, or New World Order which is ironic, indeed, since the New World Order seems to promote international God-less Common Law Courts.

The late Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, an American prelate who headed the Vatican bank at the time, was charged as an accessory to fraudulent bankruptcy in the scandal, but Italy's Constitutional Court eventually backed the Vatican in ruling that under Vatican-Italian treaties Marcinkus had immunity from Italian prosecution. Marcinkus long asserted his innocence and died in 2006..

In Samuel Zane Batten  book, “The New World Order”, published in 1919, he speaks of the “old order passes from view” and the “new world rises upon our vision.”  Under the cloak of Christianity, he speaks of a new world rising and advocates social control over all the people and all of the resources. He declares a “world patriotism” must be created and it must be a religious faith. “The only alternative is World Federation...with a world parliament, and international court, and an international police force.” In other words, he promotes a World Federation with a World Parliament, and International Court and a global police force.

In Batten’s work, some of its goals are as follows:

• Community: the danger an loss in crime and degeneracy. The determination to make community life safe, sanitary, wholesome, and moral.
• Industrial: the disappearance of class distinctions, and the solidarity of all interests in the economic process.
• National: the conception of the nation’s welfare as the supreme concern with the policy that everything shall contribute to this end, and every person must do some useful work.
• International: the creation of an international mind with a world consciousness and a world patriotism. The destruction of every arbitrary power that can separately and of its single choice disturb the peace of the world.

Keep in mind, Samuel Zane Batten’s book arrived decades before the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderberg Group. It arrived decades before H. G. Wells’ “The New World Order” and decades before Carroll Quigley’s “Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time.” Moreover, over the last hundred years, more than a few people in positions of power have spoken of this New World Order.

Here are a few:

“These are some of the reasons pressing us to lead vigorously toward the true building of New World Order.” -- Nelson Rockefeller

"The world that maybe some people dreamt of back at that conference back in Bournemouth, when it looked as if history would end that liberal democracy would triumph, that free market economics would slowly progress and we would have a New World Order." -- David Cameron, Oxford graduate, Downing Street banker, UK party conservative

“And together they helped to create… were the principle leaders …a New World Order and a winning strategy in the Cold War.-- John Kerry, Massachusetts senator, Chairman of the Senate committee, United Nations lawyer, and now Secretary of State

“We are part of a New World Order and as the recently departed Admiral J. Crowe once said, it’s long on new and short on order.-- Michael Mullen, Chief of Naval Operations, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and NATO commander.

“Walter Isaacson wrote a wonderful book about some of the wise men who helped shape the New World Order following the Second World War.-- Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense, author of the Wolfowitz Doctrine, and 10th President of the World Bank

“As we devise a way forward in Iraq, I urge the international community to embrace its responsibility for creating that New World Order, a New World Order based on collective action.” -- Steny Hoyer, Maryland Congressman, House Majority Leader,

“The Transatlantic Partnership was never just the foundation of security, it was the foundation of our way of life. It was forged in experience of the most bitter and anguished kind. Out of it came a new Europe, a New World Order, a new consensus on how life should and could be lived.” -- Tony Blair, former leader of the Labor Party, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and Senior Adviser to JP Morgan

“... and just like that it was gone. It was a New World Order. That’s what President H. Bush said. Harvard historian Francis Fukuyama pronounced…the end of history.” -- Tony Blair, former leader of the Labor Party, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and Senior Adviser to JP Morgan Chase -- Wesley Clark, Rhodes Scholar, West Point Valedictorian, Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO

“The New World Order which now has been called by some the New World Disorder and by some of a more liberal persuasion the taking over of the world by the Council of Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and the U.N. to put us all into slavery. –Brent Scowcroft

“Looking at the subtitle this morning, Are We Ready For the New World Order? Gives me something of the shudders, that phrase New World Order I’m afraid I’m partly responsible for resurrecting. To me, what that symbolized was perhaps a fundamental change in the character, character of our response to national security issues.” -- Brent Scowcroft, former Vice Chairman of Kissinger and Assoc. and former National Security Adviser under both Ford and Bush Sr.

“Delegates to international organizations, public officials, gentlemen of the press, teachers and educators: All of you must realize you have your part to play in the construction of a New World Order." -- Pope Paul VI

“I mean, we’re talking a New World Order at Georgetown, and we’d like to be very much a part of it and continue to live." – Peter Krogh, Dean, School of Foreign Services.

“This is a world that is likely to be dominated in the near future, and perhaps longer by the gulf War and New World Order, which is the buzz word of the moment. --Maurice East, Dean, George Washington School of International Affairs

“So the secret of a New World Order…and at that point it’s just a slogan but it does have some historical background in terms that orders have succeeded each other over time the secret of this is to learn how to use coalitions. We are effective in the United Nations.” – Joseph Nye, Harvard University

“I find the new term, New World Order very revolting, and not only historically but politically today. I think Hodding is absolutely right and the actions of the administration just after the annunciation of the New World Order put the lie to the fact there is any real substance behind what they say is New World Order. The first act of the New World Order was a.) to make war and then b.) was to sell arms all over again.” -- Rep. Lawrence Smith, D-FL

George H.W. Bush would campaign for a New Wolrd Order like no other president before him. He would openly discuss it in his State of the Union address.

“What is at stake is more than one small country. It is a big idea: a New World Order where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind“

“With few exceptions, the world now stands as one. A year-and-a-half ago, in Germany I said that our goal was a Europe whole and free. Tonight, Germany is united. Europe has become whole and free…The world can therefore seize this opportunity to fulfill the long held promise of a New World Order. We can find meaning and reward by serving some higher purpose than ourselves. A shining purpose: the illumination of a thousand points of light.”

George H.W. Bush would actually declare the birth of the New World Order at a commencement speech at Maxwell Air Force Base.

“And that’s why I wanted to speak to you today about the new world taking shape around us, about the prospects of a New World Order now within our reach. In the coming weeks, I’ll be talking in some detail about the possibility of a New World Order emerging after the Cold War, but today I want to discuss another aspect of that Order…You see, as the Cold War drew to an end, we saw the possibilities of a New Order in which nations work together. It refers to new ways of working with other nations to deter aggression and to achieve stability. As old threats recede, new threats emerg. The quest for the New World Order is in part a challenge to keep the dangers of disorder at bay. We must build on the successes of Desert Storm to give new shape and momentum to this New World Order. Only when this transformation is complete will we be able to take full measure of the opportunities presented by this new and involving World Order."

"The New World Order is really a tool for addressing a new world of possibilities. This Order gains its mission and shape, not just from shared interests, but from shared ideals.”

Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. – Romans 1:22-23

Links:

Prosecutors: Vatican bank defying laundering laws

The Vatican bank was famously implicated in a scandal over the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano in the 1980s in one of Italy's largest fraud cases.

Roberto Calvi, the head of Banco Ambrosiano, was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982 in circumstances that still remain mysterious.

London investigators first ruled that Calvi committed suicide, but his family pressed for further investigation. Eventually murder charges were filed against five defendants, including a major Mafia figure, and they were tried in Rome and acquitted in 2007.

Banco Ambrosiano collapsed following the disappearance of $1.3 billion in loans the bank had made to several dummy companies in Latin America. The Vatican had provided letters of credit for the loans.

While denying any wrongdoing, the Vatican bank agreed to pay $250 million to Ambrosiano's creditors.

The late Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, an American prelate who headed the Vatican bank at the time, was charged as an accessory to fraudulent bankruptcy in the scandal, but Italy's Constitutional Court eventually backed the Vatican in ruling that under Vatican-Italian treaties Marcinkus had immunity from Italian prosecution. Marcinkus long asserted his innocence and died in 2006.

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Reconsidering the Death Penalty in a Time of Economic Crisis

Update: A new study has revealed that ending the death penalty could save the US millions.

Even when executions are not carried out, the death penalty costs the US hundreds of millions of dollars a year, further depleting budgets in the midst of economic crisis.

Capital punishment is rated as one of the least effective crime deterrents, is very costly, and irreversible in a court system enveloped in error. Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center and author of the report "Smart on Crime: Reconsidering the Death Penalty in a Time of Economic Crisis", said, in just one death penalty trial

"the state may pay one million dollars more than for a non-death penalty trial. But only one in every three capital trials may result in a death sentence, so the true cost of that death sentence is three million dollars," the study's author said.

"Further down the road, only one in ten of the death sentences handed down may result in an execution. Hence, the cost to the state to reach that one execution is 30 million dollars,"

That is, if the people we murder for murdering, actually did murder someone. We can never be 100% sure, 100% of the time, that when "we" flick the switch, or inject the lethal cocktail, that the person on the other end is indeed guilty.

However, the death penalty only applies to certain people for the most part. In fact, some murderers are compensated and anyone who protests their life snuffing practices, such as the seven peace activists back in late 2007 - Steve Baggarly, Beth Brockman, Mark Colville, Peter DeMott, Mary Grace, Laura Marks and Bill Streit - members of Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker movement get arrested at the headquarters of Blackwater USA for simulating the shooting of Iraqi civilians, resisting arrest, trespassing and destruction of property.

American politicians campaign using their tough stance on crime, declaring death-row inmates as "cold-blooded killers" who deserve to die. Yet our government is responsible for more death and violence than any one of these death-row inmates could possibly bring about... paid for by our tax dollars.

We may not have pulled the trigger, nevertheless, just because we close our eyes to the atrocities that take place in our name, all over the world, does not mean our hands remain without blood. How can we condone and champion taking another person's life in the name of justice when our own hands are still dripping with the blood of innocent people?

Kenneth Boyd's -- the 1,000th prisoner to be put to death in the US since the death penalty was reinstated -- final words were “God bless everyone in here.”

Kenneth Boyd's last words should remind Christians, especially, that when we ritualistically murder other people, we are not doing Jesus Christ's work, we are murdering Jesus Christ all over again thus exposing the cold-blooded murderer in all of us.

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Leading Church Bodies in the US.

Quickly glancing at this map, the Catholics especially and the Baptists seem to dominate the Continental US.
As the Hispanic population continues to grow, I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see this map turn even bluer.

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