Charles Chaput – I love FOX NEWS and Franco too?

Culture warrior Charles Chaput got into full Burkite (Ray Burke) cult propaganda mood and attacked the Media at the recent World Youth Day in Madrid – namely CNN, MSNBC and The New York Times as being “untrustworthy” in reporting religious stories.  (They are not as pure as FOX NEWS which is fair and balanced towards Tea-Vangelism and Fascism???)

God, what a hypocrite!  The Media gave the buggers in that church a free, don’t report it in the press, pass for decades until the media changed and it was no longer as simple as in the past to threaten to pull advertising from the press by businesses owned by Catholics, like in the long standing silence of the NYT and Cardinal Spellman’s openly gay life style and non-stop party with all the chorus boys on Broadway.  Christ, we heard about that all the way in Philly about Franny boy without any newspapers reporting it.

Charlie boy better get his attitude in check and his history facts in order before he takes over in the most historic city in the U.S., Philadelphia.

It is a good thing the cathedral there is built like a fortress, no windows on ground level and parapets along the roof to reflect the age in which it was built in the period of the “Know-Nothing” politics and riots of the 1840s.

I doubt that the builders ever imagined that somebody as hateful and ignorant as Archbishop Chaput would be defending the fort and defending Medieval superstition and ignorance over knowledge and tolerance in the twenty first century.

World Youth Day and Religious Freedom

I want to start by sharing a story. 

Once upon a time, a student at one of the world’s oldest universities took a break from her studies to visit the Catholic chapel on campus. As she sat there in silence—praying for a sick relative or trying to settle her nerves before a test—the chapel suddenly filled with noise. A mob of about seventy fellow students charged in chanting anti-Christian slogans. They shouted obscenities against the Church and insults about the Pope.

Two females in the mob climbed on top of the altar. Then, according to the student who was trying to pray, the women stripped off their shirts and boasted about their homosexual tendencies. The young Catholic student, and several others, left the chapel in fear.

People tend to think of Spain as a Catholic country. But this example of anti-Catholic bigotry happened right here, in this beautiful city, at the Complutense University of Madrid. And it didn’t happen in the 1930s, or even in the 1960s. It happened earlier this year—in March 2011. So today is a good time to talk about religious freedom. And Madrid is a good place to do it.

Once upon a time Spain had free elections and the right wing did not like freedom so they took power and ignited the Spanish Civil War to preserve the wealthy status quo and the church.  Half a million people died.  Small price to pay for "religious freedom" and fascist dictatorship bringing stability to the nation for another forty years. 

Complutense University in Madrid was on the front line of fighting for much of that civil war. In the end the Fascists under Franco and the Catholic Church won.  Priests were put back on the state payroll. Ain't nothing as sweet as Franco style, state sponsored, corporate welfare. 

On the devastated land in the middle of campus, Franco did some rebuilding…


Complutense University of Madrid

… It was eventually decided, however, that the area should be restored and rehabilitated as a symbol of the new regime, albeit with some alterations - chief amongst them the new plans for a monumental main building with a Sistine Chapel-type interior, and a large church. While those two particular plans never came to fruition, the direct involvement of Franco in the rebuilding of the University meant that, though the original plans were largely followed, chapels were now incorporated into each of the buildings. Today, this creates a curiously contradictory situation, whereby one has certain buildings, such as the School of Philosophy, with streamlined architecture that epitomizes the liberal spirit of the 1920s and borrows heavily from Weimar Germany, and yet features a first-floor chapel which, fitted into a highly art-deco setting, seems implausible as a place of serious spiritual reflection.

Franco's influence on-campus was not limited to the imposition of his Catholic ideals. As a result of the war, as could be expected, the staff was purged of all liberals and Republican sympathizers, and replaced with members of the Falangist movement. What's more, the University charters were altered to compel all students to reside either in government-sanctioned dormitories or personal family homes. The dormitories staffed with members of the falangist movement, the regime aspired to be able to oversee all aspects of the student's lives, hoping to mold them into devotees of the "nationalist movement".

If a bunch of secular students in a supposedly secular university want to protest injustices generated by the RC church in one of General Franco’s personally ordered five state chapels on campus, built on blood soaked land,  maybe these symbols of fascism are a good place to start.

Charles talks about “Religious Freedom” but it always seems to come down to being free to impose Catholic Sharia Law aka Humanae Vitae etc. on the subjugated population.  Can’t you keep your members in line?  Can’t they refuse to have an abortion without outlawing abortion for everybody else on the planet – oh fan of Franco?

Was it disrespectful what these protestors did in this state chapel?  Yes.

Anti-Christian?  Absolutely not!     


(The protest in one of Franco's Blood Chapels, Capillas de Sangre, "Stasi" HQ on campus was the result of a recent attack on students and faculty on campus by ultra-catholic thugs who seem to have disappeared into the woodwork afterwards.  The university and the civil authorities did not investigate or seem to care.  They, the civil authorities, pressed charges against four protesters for violation of sacred territory, a strange concept to me in America where secular universities are just that and not privileged remnants of dictator regimes and their largess to the RC church.)

But Charles seems more concerned with tits being exposed in public and lesbians’ natural right to exist than he is really concerned with just another chapel, paid for by the state.  If the RC church had to pay rent and electricity on campus, that space would have been turned in a Starbucks a long time ago.

Philadelphia is a Quaker city and can remember when one of a few legal  Roman catholic churches in the whole English speaking world existed down a dark alley in the colonial town and only on the say so of the Quaker founders and by their charter and mega capacity of tolerance.

Archbishop Chaput, you are coming to Philadelphia with the wrong mindset and attitude.  That your worldview is 1957 Kansas when you entered the junior seminary at age 13 is perhaps not a worldview needed in this desperately needing humanity over dogma global culture.

I give you eighteen months before you become such an embarrassment to even the Vatican with your unproductive zeal and empty sound bites (tinkling cymbal, sounding brass) that they are forced to hand out a "promotion" to Rome and hide you appoint you as Cardinal Burke’s assistant.

Have a nice day.