Posted on 03/11/2013 4:27:45 PM PDT by Main Street
What do the Aryan Nations, the Ku Klux Klan and the home of Spokane’s Singing Nuns have in common?
They’re all on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s map of “hate groups” in the Northwest.
Mount St. Michael, home to a Latin Rite or Tridentine Catholic church, school and convent north of Spokane, has been listed since 2006 by the law center as a radical traditional Catholic group and accused of anti-Semitic activities.
Last week, the law center released the annual update of its “hate map” of groups around the country, which includes an interactive, easy-to-use online graphic. Mount St. Michael is one of 16 organizations mapped for Washington, sharing the state listing with a potpourri of neo-Nazi, Klan, Christian Identity, black separatist, white nationalist and racist skinhead groups.
The Alabama-based watchdog organization defends the St. Michael listing, but it surprised one of its local allies and prompted one longtime critic to say the center was showing its political bias.
The Rev. Casimir Puskorius, pastor of Mount St. Michael, calls the listing “very unfair” and contends it’s a result of a liberal organization taking issue with the teachings of a conservative Christian group.
“We considered suing them, some years ago, but they have more resources than us,” Puskorius said.
The law center has a long history of taking on groups like the Aryan Nations and the KKK in court, and it monitors a wide variety of organizations it deems “hate groups” all over the country.
Mark Potok, a researcher for the law center, insisted the church was not on the map because of its religious doctrines. The center’s intelligence report on the church from 2006 mentions an early leader’s penchant for conspiracies, reports about speakers who have given lectures on Jewish and Masonic plots for world domination or members who share that view.
The listing on the hate map surprised Tony Stewart, a North Idaho human rights activist who praises the law center for its work to defeat the Aryan Nations by winning a lawsuit that caused the neo-Nazis to surrender their compound at Hayden Lake. Stewart said he visited Mount St. Michael a few years ago when he invited the Singing Nuns to appear on a local public television show. They said they wanted to meet him first.
“We had coffee and cookies. I had a wonderful couple of hours with the leaders of the convent and the sisters,” Stewart said.
On hill near Hillyard
Mount St. Michael was originally developed north of Hillyard by Gonzaga’s Jesuits as a villa and as a farm to supply the university. It later became a seminary. In the 1970s, the Jesuits decided it was too expensive to operate and put the land up for sale. In 1977, it was purchased by a small but growing congregation of breakaway Catholics who rejected the reforms that started in the previous decade with the Second Vatican Council.
Sometimes called Tridentine or Latin-Rite Catholics, they believe changes in the liturgy and doctrine from Vatican II are invalid, as are all the popes and any pronouncements they have made since then. They use an older, Latin version of the Mass and adhere strictly to doctrines in place before that council.
In the early 1980s, the congregation’s leader, Bishop Francis Schuckardt, was ousted amid allegations of sexual misconduct, drug abuse and financial impropriety. Schuckardt and some of his followers went to California, where he was later arrested for drug violations. The main congregation continued to expand and now has facilities in Omaha as well as Spokane.
The law center lists some of Schuckardt’s legal and financial problems and abuse allegations in its intelligence briefing, adding that his successor has condemned the Vatican for efforts to reach out to Jews and Muslims and that the church’s website has sold anti-Semitic literature or hosted speakers who talk about Jewish-Masonic conspiracies or praise well-known anti-Semites.
Puskorius said the bookstore might have stocked some books like the law center describes at various times, or had some speakers who talk about those conspiracies at Mount St. Michael at some point. “Those are opinions that people have. People have made the case for them,” he said, but the church doesn’t push conspiracies.
The congregation is not anti-Semitic, Puskorius said. It invited a Jewish photographer to its annual conference to discuss the Shroud of Turin, the cloth that some believe wrapped the body of Jesus after the crucifixion, he said.
“We do pray for the conversion of the Jews,” Puskorius said, because they believe that’s what the Bible teaches. “We pray for the conversion of all non-Catholics.”
Hard to get off list
Mother Kathryn Joseph, who was among more than a dozen nuns who left Mount St. Michael in 2007 to rejoin the Roman Catholic Church and form a new order, doesn’t believe her former congregation is prejudiced against Jews. She had been at Mount St. Michael for decades and hadn’t heard anything about Jewish conspiracies since the 1980s, when Schuckardt ran the congregation. She remembers seeing “Protocols of Zion,” one of the anti-Semitic books mentioned by the law center, on a table in those days, but the former bishop “had a lot of conspiracy theory things out.”
Like most Traditional Catholic groups, they reject Nostra Aetate, a letter from Pope Paul VI which denounces anti-Semitism, Mother Kathryn said. But that’s because they reject everything any pope has done for the last 50 years, she added, not because of the message.
“To suggest that they are anti-Semitic is just not fair,” said Mother Kathryn, now the head of the Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Church, a Roman Catholic order in the Spokane Diocese.
The Sisters of Mary wear navy blue habits; the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen sisters from Mount St. Michael wear royal blue. Members of the two orders are often mistaken for each other. It’s the Mount St. Michael sisters who perform the Singing Nuns concerts around Christmas and the Fourth of July.
Carol Swain, a professor of law and political science at Vanderbilt University and critic of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said Mount St. Michael appears to be tarred by a liberal organization for holding conservative religious beliefs. Swain has previously defended conservative groups and individuals, such as Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs, who came under fire by the law center. She contends the law center is so narrow-minded that it is a hate group. Swain, an African-American who once recommended a documentary the center considers racist, has been labeled an apologist for white supremacists by the law center.
“I’ve never heard of anyone getting off their list,” Swain said. She thinks a conservative group should take being listed by the law center as “a badge of honor.”
The law center intelligence briefing lists no instances of anti-Semitic activities in the Spokane area traced to the congregation or any of its members, and Rabbi Michael Goldstein of Temple Beth Shalom said he’s unaware of any problems connected to the north Spokane church.
Christian traditions for centuries taught that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus, Goldstein said. That often led to violence against Jews around Easter and was the basis for pogroms in Europe.
Those teachings “are a potential source of problems, but I don’t know of anything affecting my congregation” from Mount St. Michael, Goldstein said. The rabbi, who came to Spokane in 2011, said he didn’t even know where it was located.
Oh, I know what your thinking...You're thinking, come on MainStreet, these cute little sisters, a Hate Group?!....They're harmless!....They look like they run on batteries for cripes sake! Well, as a survivor of Catholic School, I'm here to tell you that looks can be deceiving. What this photo doesn't show is that behind every one of those innocent looking faces hides a killing machine. Expert in close hand to hand combat, marshal arts, small arms, explosives (I have actually witnessed nuns explode when I screwed up in class), and Communion. Their Rosaries are registered as lethal weapons. In short, they know more ways to kill than you know how to die. If you see them, stay out of their way. Thanks to the ever vigilant SPLC, you've been warned!
Oh yes, I remember as a kid seeing other children
walking home with bleeding nuckles and asking the
others about them, “They go to Catholic school”
was always the reply... /h
Those bicycles make me think of the Viet Cong. They even smile like Charlie. Probably hiding bombs under their habits, too. :-)
let’s see. they are as southern as someione from minnisota, they don’t care about stopping poverty only increasing it, they have no regard for the law and they thiunk they are the center of the universe.
sic semper tyrannis
Best trick going is to bring a 3 ft ruler ~ or even better, a slightly longer 1 meter ruler. A metal one is even better.
So, you throw up the first slide, raise your ruler in the air so it shines in the projector's light, and ask "any of you folks go to parochial schools"? That gets a good 60% of a postal management crowd stirred up ~ you can hear them shift in their seats as a quiet titter rolls through the audience ~ sometimes it's louder than that ~ laughter! Nervous laughter ~ blood pressure goes up. People grip their hands ~ protecting those bruised knucles.
Yes, it's all true!!!!
Didn’t the shooter at the Family Research Counciluse the interactive map from SPLC as a guide for committing his hate crime, using the map to target the Center for its “bias” against homosexuality.
Yet, the SPLC can still release this map, even though its already been linked to an attempted mass shooting. The perp was going to rub Chic-Fil-A sandwiches on the bodies of his victims....
UNBELIEVABLE
I hate the SPLC.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is just a money machine for it’s founder Morris Dees and the top guys he has put in place. He uses allegations of racism & hate to solicit for donations, few of which end up to any good use outside of the organization.
“Dominique -inique -inique” was a call for race war?
Does 0bama’s minister the Rev Jeremiah Wright, make the list?
How about his other pal the unrepentant bomber, whose father just happened to be the CEO of Commonwealth Edison.
Do birds if a feather...
ROTFL! And you had to learn to duck fast when the erasers went flying!
Ive been warning folks about these evil nuns for yrs...but no one listens to me................
Of course they are anti-Semitic. Do they allow Jews to join? Huh?
“Ive been warning folks about these evil nuns for yrs...but no one listens to me................”
He refers, of course, to The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.
Google ‘em.
Nasty, eh?
But SPLC has nothing to say bad about them.
Maybe we overlooked something about Morris Dees?
;-)
Good tag line.
Correctamundo.
The Southern Poverty Law Center isn't a "civil rights" group, it's a fund-raising operation -- dedicated to the welfare of Morris Dees and those people he's let in on the scam (like Mark Potok).
They prey upon well-heeled liberals, mostly liberal Jews. If their donors knew what the SPLC was really all about, they'd be embarrassed.
Dees, a second-rate Montgomery, AL attorney, saw the civil rights movement up close in the early sixties, and he recognized it as a ticket to ride.
All you need to know about the SPLC:
“These five men, all linked with Occupy Wall Street, attempted to blow up a bridge as an overture to the wholesale destruction of Cleveland, Ohio, and in the name of anarchism. They also looked to blow up the Republican convention.”
“They were anarchists,” he repeated.
“Yes?”
He paused. “We’re not really set up to cover the extreme Left.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/299011/occupy-southern-poverty-law-center-charles-c-w-cooke
I once read up on the SPLC’s head Morris Dees. Much interesting info out there. Might make you blush.
I wonder why no one has sued these slanderers for damages done to them by being falsely reported to Homeland Insecurity and other police agencies as dangerous? Guilt by association.
They are haters themselves. Anyone can be tagged a “hater” with just political correctness campaign by the limo-liberal elite.
The leftists are animals.
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