Unveiling the Light

All that’s needed for evil to thrive is the inaction of human kind. This is hardly an original truism but it is evident now more than ever. In the name of global warming junk science and “not in my back yard” selfish politics, this nation has failed to take action to take care of its energy needs. As a result, not just this nation but the entire world is entering an era of great suffering. According to the World Food Program, this world has entered into its first global food crisis since World War II. What was once caused by nearly a decade of world war, has now been matched by extreme environmentalist and liberal politics which think if we bury our head in the sand the need for oil will go away.

For decades now we have failed to drill for new oil sources, even in those places which we know hold large deposits. We have failed to build new nuclear plants even as countries such as France have safely integrated such plants throughout their energy system and in the final irony; we have diverted thousands of acres of farm production to raising crops not for food but to turn into ethanol. The result could have been predicted by any freshman economics major. Rising fuel and food prices are now causing a world wide crisis and millions if not tens of millions have their very lives threatened.

According to the Associated Press; ‘Josette Sheeran, executive director of the U.N.'s food aid organization, ‘projects providing meals to children in Kenya, Cambodia and to poor families in Tajikistan have already been hit. There have also been reports of rice riots in Caribbean island nations. Twenty million humans are at risk and the problem could get much worse. As the crisis spreads, developed nations will be hard pressed to provide food for the poor of the world and the cost will rise dramatically.’ Decades of economic growth among the poorest of nations is now threatened and as a result, so is world peace. Prosperous growing nations that give hope to their people tend to remain peaceful. When the people are hurting, starving and dieing, you can expect national conflicts to follow.

So while Americans deny the reality of needing oil to power cars, deny the relative safety of nuclear power and deny the irresponsibility of diverting food from crops to fuel, the world at large becomes desperate and the needs of the poor are neglected. People are beginning to die so that we can feel good about ourselves. $4.00 a gallon gasoline is inconvenient for us but it is the difference between life and death for the needy. We need common sense solutions not politically motivated reactions. I hate that millions will die because we refuse to look at the issue seriously and refuse to take on our responsibility.

There is no problem with wanting clean energy sources but they have to be developed first. Until they are developed we continue to need oil. We won’t drill and pump it ourselves so we send billions to terrorists to ship it across the world to us. And millions will starve to death. We were afraid for the eggs of the bald eagles and, without proof, eliminated DDT not just from our nation but demanded that it be denied world wide. As a result millions have died and continued to die from malaria. Our response … “Lets send them nets!” How many want to walk around work and through town wearing a net in terribly hot weather? If we had allowed DDT to be produced and used in third world countries millions of people would still be alive today. If we had taken on the need to provide for our oil needs, millions of people would not be facing starvation today. Our failure to act responsibly has unleashed evil upon the world.

Posted by Fr Steven Foppiano at 07:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have been pleasantly surprised at the reception given to Pope Benedict 16th and the tone of this visit. I think the entire Church and the world wondered at how this pope would be accepted as he followed Pope John Paul II and his charismatic and popular 25 years of service. We can all rest easy now. This pope has shown that he has his own gifts. Benedict has proven to be earnest, straight talking and charismatic in his own right. He is just what we need at this time.

It is certainly nice to heat Pope Benedict talk so honestly about the affect of the abuse scandal on the Church and the chastising he gave the U.S. bishops was well deserved. What is even better though is the high regard and high expectations he expressed regarding the American Church. He acknowledged the American Catholic Church’s contribution to the Catholic effort to ease poverty and bring hope to the world and its contributions to this nation as well. As he pointed out, we are not a quiet church content to stand in the background while the secular world moves forward. We demand to be part of the secular world and to be able to live out our faith as good citizens. We do not see the faith we worship and the lives we live to be unconnected.

I think many, within and outside the Church have been pleasantly surprised at the enthusiastic reception this Pope received. From the largest gathering ever at the White House to the very large stadiums filled with the faithful to join in the Mass with their Pope, this was a welcome celebration of the Catholic faith and should give hope to Christians of all denominations. The Pope recognized the challenges we face but had enthusiastic hope that we would not only face these challenges but would overcome them and thrive in living out our faith. The naysayers were few and not well seen while the many enthusiastic faithful were clearly visible and loudly heard.

For me and many Catholics this was a welcome shot in the arm. The recent scandals have made us timid in proclaiming our faith. Now perhaps we can begin the healing and move on to the task at hand. We can get back to proclaiming the Gospel of our Lord in how we live out our lives and to seeking to influence the direction this country moves in the future. For too long our heads have been bowed due to the actions of a few and the castigation of many who also need to look to their own house. Now we can regain our mission to serve Christ and to truly be the Body of Christ in the world. Let the Kingdom of God reign wherever we are gathered.

Thank you Pope Benedict. May God bless you and protect you on your journey.

Father Steven Foppiano

Posted by Fr Steven Foppiano at 12:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The United States gets accused of many evils and usually these charges are false. The fact is that being the biggest, most powerful, and most affluent in the world brings out jealously and rivalries in others and most would love to see us fall. Unfortunately there is one area in which we are very guilty lately and it brings forth the only time I can think of that, to my great surprise and horror, I find myself in agreement with, of all people, Fidel Castro.

Fidel warned the world that the new U.S. policy of promoting the use of ethanol would cause millions to starve. He is right. Already we have seen great increases in domestic food prices and overseas there have had riots in some countries as the price of rice and wheat rise precipitously. We have been for some time the great food basket of the world. Now, not only do we divert tens of thousands of acres of food production to the making of fuel, but we do so while paying farmers to leave much of their good farmland unused. Congress blew it. They failed to understand the basics of economics. Increase demand for a product and restrict supply and not only will prices go up but when it comes to food, the poor suffer the most.

Since congress decided to subsidize the making of ethanol to the tune of well over one dollar per gallon of our tax money, while making its use mandatory for domestic fuel, it is responsible for the suffering we see throughout the world. Any economist could have told them their actions would result in steep price increases and shortages. What’s worse is the wide spread effect of their action. They probably only thought about the price of corn going up because they failed to anticipate that grain and other crops would be diverted causing shortages in crops across the board, that feed for cattle and milk cows would go up thus causing the price of meat, milk and cheese to rise, and that many petroleum products would be devoured to produce this corn that would be turned into a substitute for oil. In effect, Congress failed to think out its policy. Instead it is debating steroid use in pro baseball as of this is a national crisis while ignoring the real crisis of $4.00 per gallon fuel prices and people going hungry because of their actions and inactions.

What makes this doubly sad is that the so called solution found in ethanol products is no solution at all. It is estimated that if every inch of farmland in the United States was changed over to produce ethanol, we would meet less than 10 percent of our national consumption. The fact is that our farmland should be used to making food, not fuel. The ironic part is that we have fuel sources. We have oil in Alaska, Nebraska and off shore that we refuse to drill for because we fear damage to the environment, damage that is always overestimated. Go to Alaska where the Exxon tanker spill was declared a disaster of mega proportions and you cannot see any lasting effects. Go to San Francisco Bay and try to find evidence of our most recent spill. You can’t. Such damage tends to be transitory and falls far short of the disaster stories we see on TV and are warned about.

Our failure to drill for our own oil is counter productive anyway. We fear what a pipeline in Alaska might do, even though we have already had experience in such pipelines and no damage to nature occurred; but we ignore the danger of supertankers carrying oil thousands of miles across our oceans and to our coastlines. We also ignore the obvious danger we create as we pay the most radical elements of the world for needed oil when much of that money ends up funding terrorist activities meant to kill Americans.

A smart policy would be to push the development of real alternative fuels but to realize that their coming onto the market in large quantities is decades away. The alternatives we have now in wind and solar power are good but very limited. In the meantime, we need oil and it makes no sense to transport that oil thousands of miles over the ocean and to buy it from our enemies when we can pay our own American brothers and sisters to find and drill for it right here on our own lands.

A good and smart policy would allow farmers to go back to growing food, would quit paying farmers to leave land fallow, would take full advantage of the oil we have in our own country and would fund the development of alternative fuels. If we let the industry drill for oil where we know it is, in the Midwest, in Alaska and off our coasts, if we build some nuclear plants and if we quit programs that divert food crops to fuel alternatives and keep good farmland from being used, we could afford to fund a great deal more research into alternative fuels. We could cut the price of food down, cut by two thirds the price of oil, and afford to have a reasonable fuel tax of say 25 cents to fund research and development.

We should also realize that big oil is quite happy with the current policies. They have failed to build a new refinery in decades because that allows them to restrict supply and keep prices up. They don’t mind shortage of supplies because they profit when oil prices shoot up. During all of our shortages oil profits only go up, as does the revenue of the government which collects a percentage off the top. We could go in and create more competition by some anti trust moves to separate the distribution of fuel from the refinery and drilling processes. Break up the big oil companies and let competition reign. It is amazing what happens when we allow capitalism to work and quite distressing as to how fouled up things can get, like now, when the government tries to control everything.

Let’s tell congress to get off its duff and give us some real energy legislation. Either that or we should vote them all out. I for one do not believe gas should be anywhere near $4.00 per gallon and I deplore that our policies will lead to the poor starving. All the while our government and big oil; as well the big farm corporations that receive most of the government handouts, all grow richer while our budgets get stretched. We deserve better government than this. Unfortunately it is the government we have given ourselves. You know something is wrong when I agree with Fidel Castro. That in itself is proof that our government had turned the world upside down.

Let’s get back to sensible decisions based on real economics. Then we can work to make this a better world. Right now we are doing more harm than good and that is a sin.

Posted by Fr Steven Foppiano at 02:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, just like Constantinople was, as was prophesized by our Prophet Muhammad. Today, Rome is the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital, which has declared its hostility to Islam, and has planted the brothers of apes and pigs in Palestine in order to prevent the reawakening of Islam – this capital of theirs will be an advanced post for the Islamic conquests, which will spread through Europe in its entirety, and then will turn to the two Americas, and even Eastern Europe.”

The above quotation is from prominent Hamas cleric and member of the Palestinian parliament, Yunis al-Astal, as aired on Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV and translated by Mimri TV. This occurs as former President Jimmy Carter made his unauthorized and ill conceived visit to “talk” with Hamas. According to WorldNet Daily, at the same time a top political adviser to Hamas called Carter a "noble person." WorldNet Daily also reported that in an interview with Hamas political advisor Ahmed Yousuf, Yousuf said he believed Carter’s meeting with Hamas could hoist the group’s public image and that he believed Carter “knows what is needed to achieve peace.” What would that be, a declaration of surrender?

Meanwhile Hamas continues to fire rockets into Israel, killing civilians, continues to hold three Israeli soldiers hostage, and continues to send suicide bombers across the border. This is also the group that killed over 200 marines at the bombing of the marine barracks in Beirut and is now telling women and children that it is their duty as Muslims to wear bombs to kill Jews.

Jimmy Carter started the whole mid-east crisis with his handling of the Iranian takeover of the U.S. embassy which drug out into a hostage situation that lasted nearly a year and a half, disgraced the United States for its perceived impotence and ultimately cost Carter his second term of the Presidency. The American people became fed up with his antics and overwhelmingly elected Ronald Reagan who explicitly quit calling those held in Iran “hostages” and began using the term “prisoners of war.” The Iranians got the idea. On Carter’s last day of being President and just hours before Ronald Reagan became President, all hostages were unconditionally released. Carter’s ineptitude had kept them in captivity and their nation ridiculed for 444 days. It demonstrated to the radical Muslims just what was possible when the U.S. failed to act on its principals and its leadership lacked the courage of this nation’s convictions.

Today we are in a post 9-11 world with 3,000 civilian casualties, 4,000 soldiers killed, fighting directly in two Muslim countries against those who would love to see us destroyed and are fighting indirectly the very nation Carter ushered into power, post revolutionary Iran. The radicals in that world are threatening to destroy the center of the world’s largest Christian Church as a launching point towards taking over all of Western Europe and the Americas. Westerners are regularly kidnapped and publicly decapitated, tortured and maimed by these extremists, women and children are being used by Hamas to kill innocent civilians with bombs, and this group regularly launches missiles into Israel in the hopes of killing any Jews. All of this and the man who started it all decided to jump back into the fray in an unauthorized “diplomatic” attempt to bring peace.

Jimmy Carter has already shown that he had little love for the Jewish state of Israel and has held it to be responsible for the lack of peace in the Middle East. He has even very wrongly referred to its government as one of apartheid. He is perhaps the only one to have used this term for the government of Israel as it is so far from the truth. There is no separation between Arab and European Jews, or other Jewish citizens of other faiths. Now he is embracing a very radical group of Muslims who have openly declared their hate not only for Jews and Americans but who have now set their sights on destroying the Catholic Church.

Jimmy Carter is a dangerous and delusional man with a large mean streak. Who else would use the funeral of the wife of Martin Luther King to blast the President of the United States who was seated behind him and who had and continued to treat Carter politely despite the surprise personal attack? When he ran for reelection the American people had come to realize how dangerous he was and overwhelmingly kicked him out of office. Maybe we can take a quick vote and not let him back in when he returns from the Middle East.

We would be well served if this were possible but would be guilty of great sin against the rest of the world. Unfortunately Jimmy Carter is our problem and it is a great embarrassment that we must claim him as a former leader. We should pay no attention to this latest adventure of his. It is the work of a small man with narrow thoughts and dangerous inclinations of self grandeur. Yes, I know he has done much for Habitat for Humanity and other charities but he has done far more harm in other areas. Also others have pointed out that his service to these charities comes with demands for first class airfare, hotels, and staff. It is not all altruism.

Jimmy Carter is a disgrace. He coddles murderers, works against the legitimate authorities and complicates foreign policy, all for the sake of his own overdeveloped sense of importance. He says the State Department never warned him against the trip but fails to mention that he never checked with it or the administration before announcing his plans. The President; elected by the people, in consultation with the elected Senate and to a lesser extent the elected House of Representatives, is the only lelgitimate authority in foreign agreements and negotiations for this country. The State Department reports to our elected President and the President works through the State Department. Carter does not fit into this constitutional equation. He has no authority; legally, morally or otherwise. He once did, but proved himself to be incompetent in foreign matters as our president and was fired. He has only grown worse with time.

He may think he is serving the Gospel but I see no sign of the humility of Jesus in him and certainly none of the wisdom. I do see signs of a narrow minded man, despondent at his own defeats and desperate to win back some credibility, no matter what it might cost his nation, victims of terrorism, and the nation of Israel. It is a sad matter that we have to continue to endure his antics. He should receive zero support and much condemnation. Hopefully he will return to Plains, Georgia. I pray he is a better Sunday school teacher then he is a diplomat. At least there the damage he can do is contained and localized.

Posted by Fr Steven Foppiano at 05:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)