A Pope, an Empress, an Archbishop & Queen Nancy

OK, I am sure I have your attention. & some of you are wondering where I am heading. Well hold on because you are about to see how history is repeating itself.

Our story begins with Pope St. Silverius. 20 June was his feast day & I came across his story in Butler's Lives of the Saints on that day.

Pope Silverius

A little background on Pope Silverius before I get to his story. His father was Pope St. Hormisdas. Back then men who were married could be ordained priests. Silverius had followed his father in the ministry. At the time of his election, 8 June 536, he was only a subdeacon. There was some possible political intrigue involving his election. But nothing like what happened later when Silverius got on the wrong side of the Empress Theodora.

Empress Theodora 

While in Constantinople, Silverius's predecessor, Pope St. Agapiyus I had brought about the deposition of the then patriarch of Constantinople, Anthimus I.* He was a Miaphysite (a form of the monophysite heresy). The heresy denied that Jesus had 2 seperate natures, man & God, in one person.
In doing so, he got on the wrong side of Empress Thodora who was a monophysite & supporter of Anthimus. After Silverius' election, the empress wrote him a letter. In it she ordered Silverius to acknowledge Anthimus as the Bishop of Constantinople or come to Constantinople & reexamine the case. Silverius wrote a short letter to Theodora saying he neither could or would obey her unjust demands. Doing so, he said, would betray the cause of the Catholic faith.
Theodora then resolved to have him deposed. I won't go into the whole sordid story here I will say that she wrote a letter to General Belisarius ordering him to get rid of Silverius. He made false accusations including a fake letter that was supposedly written by Silverius to the king of the Goths. It accused him of inviting the king to take over Rome. As I said, it was a fake, as were all the other charges.  But he was deposed in a very shameful way. All I will add is that the new pope whom she contrived to get elected, Vigilus, didn't play along & upheld  the Catholic faith as well.
Why did Pope St. Silverius' story draw my attention? Simple, because of how Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone was drawing the ire of Nancy Pelosi, among others for speaking on 19 June 2014 at a National Orginization for Marriage event in Washington DC. He was accused of  participating in an anti-LGBT event & that some of those participating were hate groups.

Queen (aka Pope) Nancy

Like the empress, Pelosi wrote Archbishop Cordileone telling him that what he was doing was wrong. She repeated the anti-LGBT charges & even misused Pope Francis's quote, "Who am I to judge?" to get him to support her heretical stand in support of so-called "gay-marriage."  I say misused becase she, like her friends in the liberal main stream media, ignored the rest of the statement where the Pope talked about the person trying to follow Jesus. In saying that, the Pope was talking about someone who was trying to live a celebate & chaste life, not someone who was openly living in sin by having sex outside of marriage between one man & one woman. In fact, defending marriage is something the Pope has spoken loud & clear about, both as Pope & as Cardinal in Argentina.
Pelosi has a long record of promoting stands that counter authentic Catholic teachings while claiming her heresies, like abortion is a sacrament & sacred are authentincly Catholic.

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone

But rather than give in to her, like Pope Sliverius, Archbishop Cordileone refuses to back down from upholding authentic Catholic teachings on marriage & said as much. He said that the event is simply affirming "marriage as the conjugal union of a husband and wife." He added  "Rest assured that if the point of this event were to single out a group of individuals and target them for hatred, I would not be there." He went & he spoke clearly, calling on those to love their opponants, a message repeated by others, just the opposite of what those attacking this event claimed it was.
That they make this claim is no surprise. Those supporting "gay rights" including that to marry, have long painted the Catholic Church's teaching on homosexual acts as hateful. They ignore the fact that the Church has always taught that any sexual act outside of marriage, including adultry, fornication & mastubation, are sinful as well.
1 of Pelosi's media supporters, SFGate, did an attack piece on the Archbishop dated 18 June. In it they said that they were suprised that the Archbishop was still going to speak at the event. Like so often in the past, those groups, like Family Research Council were painted as hatefilled because they spoke the truth about what the real LGBT agenda. In doing so, they ignored groups like NAMBLA that do push for legalizing pedophilia. I won't go into all their false charges made. 
Up to the end of the hit piece, they totally ignore that all he is doing is upholding authentic Catholic teaching. But if they did acknowledge it then they couldn't justify their claims that the Archbishop's actions were puzzling.
So when they finally get to what the Church teaches, they basically tell the Archbishop to shut up. The article says "Cordileone is flying across the country as the only announced representative of the Catholic Church to participate in an event that surely has little support in San Francisco. If the archbishop would like to take on gang violence or homelessness - the church-affiliated St. Vincent de Paul homeless shelter is one of the largest in the city - that would be fine.
But the fact is that this marriage crusade is his issue, not San Francisco's. There may be a place where his views would represent the community. This isn't it."
Yes, you read right, because they disagree with Church teaching on marriage they demand he not speak out on it. Let's just do the nice social justice things. Of course, without any mention of Jesus. 
They want 1 of the Church's shepherds to conform to their agenda & not go out & seek the lost sheep like Jesus did. Archbishop Cordeleone's responsibility is NOT to represent the views of the community. He is to call people to repentance, just like Jesus. That is what he is doing & they don't like it.
But it gets even worse. What do they say in the final line of the article? "Time for Cordileone to move on from San Francisco." In short they are working to drive him out, just like the empress used her minions to drive out Pope St. Silverious.

SFGate had better accept the fact that they won't get their way. He will not leave unless the Pope needs him more elsewhere. He will stay & keep speaking out. Given how things are going, he made come under physical attack including an attempt or 2 on his life. 

Archbishop Cordileone is clearly following in the steps of many brave Bishops, like Blessed Cardinal von Galen, & Pope Silverius. He has made it clear he will not be silent, no matter what those opposing him try.

Empress Theodora didn't get her way. Neither will Pelosi & her gang.

Finally, please pray for Archbishop Cordileone,# especially that God will protect him & continue to give him the strength & courage he needs to be a faithful shepherd.

________________

* As a sidenote, this removal of the patriarch of Constantinople by the Pope took place in the 6th Century. Clearly even then the Pope was recognized as more than just the 1st among equals. He had some authority over other Bishops that they didn't have over him.

# Cordileone is Italiano for heart of the lion. Clearly the Archbishop is living up to his name by showing courage in the face of these attacks.

Planned Parenthood of the Heartland - The Facts Belie Their Claims

1 thing that is absolutely certain about Planned Parenthood of the Heartland (PPH) is that they lie &/or obfuscate things to make them look like they are providing much needed services rather that being the abortion giant they are.

1 of those lies has been the need for their "clinics" in smaller communities to provide needed health care in rural areas. They said that the attacks on "telemed abortions" was an attack on the health care of those women's because banning them would cause them to have to close the smaller centers. Yet over the last few years, with "telemed abortions" still available, they have closed about 11 sites, mostly rural. Despite their claim there is a shifting need of services, the reality is that the sites are losing money & eating into profits.. They just announced the closing of 2 more rural sites.

The Des Moines Register brought up the Iowa Board of Medicine decision about "telemed abortions. It said "Planned Parenthood supporters say the decision was an attempt to limit rural women's access to a safe and legal method of abortion." 

It seems to me that PPH is the one limiting the access not the state or those of us who are Pro-life.

Also, the same PPH that said women need & want those services said about the latest closings " "The decision to close the health centers was based on an effort to eliminate inefficiency in resources - shifting the staff and equipment required for certain services from health centers where request for those services was low to areas where our patients are more densely located and availing themselves of our services," So much for the need they claim is there. If there truly was a need they would be expanding in rural areas not closing them.

This raises an interesting question: "What happened to the money they raised in a capital fund drive they were having?" Part of the money was supposed to expand into new rural areas where there was the so-called need for their services. As Jill June said on the Breaking New Ground website "we will break new ground with state-of-the-art health centers across our affiliate, including rural communities where there is a desperate need for our services."  
Speaking of so-called need, in Dubuque when they opened they operated a 40 hour schedule. That shrunk over the next couple of years. Now, at their new site, allegedly state-of-the-art, the still are not open full time. It only operates about 15 hours a week. & 2 of the 3 days it is open are the days they do "telemed abortions".
The reality is, the need they claim exists is only a cover to gain sympathy for their continued offering of telemed abortions in those areas where they can make huge profits off of it.
The last time anything was said about the campaign was in the 2012 Annual Report when they claimed to have raised $9.05 million of the $11.5 million goal. Yet the latest (2013) report says nothing about the drive or how the money has been used. It is as if it no longer exists. Additionally, the campaign website shows no update from the 2012 amount.

Speaking of the 2013 report, it gives a very minimal look at what their income/expenses where. Not that any past year has been that detailed. To maybe be a bit clearer minimal means only 1 pie chart for expenses, a minimal listing of income sources with no major details & no pie chart for revenue like they have in the past.
1 of those details is where they brag about providing $8,235,442 in uncompensated charity care . But when you look at the income they list for patient services v the expenses for health services the numbers do not add up.
On page 5 of the 2013 report the refer to the uncompensated amount as coming from health care services. On page 10 they list $22,693,241 for Health Services under expenses. Under income they list $17,219,377 for patient services. Since they have no details, I assume that amount would include cash, insurance, & medicaid. Now let's do the math. When you subtract the income from expenses you come up with $5,473,864 that was uncompensated. That is $2,761,578 less than the $8.25 million they claim. or 33.5% of the total amount they claim.
The only other place you might possibly put uncompensated services in expenses is Advocacy & Education. Just 1 problem there. It comes to $1,980,873. Even if you count 100% of that number as uncompensated care (very doubtful) you still end up about $.7 million short. Like I said the numbers don't add up.
Since we are on the subject of numbers, lets look at a few of the stats they give about the services they provide.
1 of those is the claim that abortions are only 2% of the services they provide. Is that true? Well, again that depends on how you play with the numbers.
They list contraceptive services at 146,775. Since they count each monthly prescription of the pill, 71% of the contraceptive services, that number is already inflated.
Add the fact that the same person who has an abortion also has had some of the other services, like birth control 1st, abortion may technically be 2%, but if you look at it as the percentage of people served you get another number
They claim to have served 72,948 people, male & female. They also say they provided 6367 abortions. That means that 8.7% of those they served had abortions. But even that may be inflated. That depends on whether they list each person only once, or the same person separately for each visit. Given their track record, I suspect the latter. So the number of those having abortions may be an even higher percentage, maybe even up to 50% based on what the average cost of an abortion is.
Since PPH doesn't list how much it made from abortions we have no idea what the actual income from them was or how much more than 2 of 8.5% it actually is. But I suspect it is much higher, maybe even up to 40% of their income.
Now let's look at the number of prescriptions for the pill, 104,210, omitting the other long range contraceptives & the morning after pill. That averages out to 8684 prescriptions a month. Now let's add that number to the other forms of contraception that aren't distributed monthly & you have approximately 51249 women served. I feel safe saying women as condoms are not listed at all.
Let's make 1 other assumption, everyone of the women who had an abortion also came to PPH for birth control we see that 12.4% of those who got cheap, low profit, birth control, mostly the low estrogen pill, came back for a more expensive, highly profitable abortion when it failed.
There is 1 last statistic I would like to look at, the tenure of the medical staff. The average tenure is 6.7 years. Given how long most of the sites have been open, at least 5 years, that makes for a pretty high turnover IMHO. & a lot less experience than PPH tries to make it sound like.

I could go on & on, but you get the idea. PPH isn't exactly as honest & forthcoming as they pretend to be.

Before I go, I would like to mention 1 more thing. On 21 June 2013 Jill June announced she would be leaving as president of PPH on 30 June 2014. The reason given for the early announcement was to give PPH plenty of time to find a "strong & dedicated successor." As of this date (8 June 2014) no announcement has been forthcoming as to who that person is. Given that June is making over $274,000 annually, it can't be poor pay that is the problem. So maybe they have found someone & don't want to give those of us on the Pro-life side any advance notice that will enable us to prepare for how that person will operate.
I will make 1 prediction, you can be sure that person will be just as adept at lying & deception as Jill June is.