Posted on 08/18/2009 11:18:21 AM PDT by oklahomaconservative
http://www.reddirtreport.com/news.php?id=12076
OKLAHOMA CITY – The flyer is simple but informative. “Community Organizing at St. Charles.” Sounds innocuous enough. But upon closer inspection, it appears to be further attempts by ACORN-esque organizers to infiltrate well-meaning parishioners in the Catholic Church in the Oklahoma City area, among other places.
The flyer reads: “Come to a special training in community organizing for Catholic parishes, presented by Oklahoma Sponsoring Committee and hosted by Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish.”
Not much could be found about the Oklahoma Sponsoring Committee, other than a Grace Presbyterian Church flyer online that notes that “the OSC is a congregation-based community action group that equips churches to better meet the needs of their communities through training and support.”
It also said seven Catholic churches are part of 27 churches in Oklahoma City that are getting involved with this community-organizing activity.
The corrupt group ACORN, which had been active in Oklahoma City until late last summer, is believed to be connected to this action considering it’s past links, as noted in this 2003 National Housing Institute article. Red Dirt Report was given an exclusive peek into a recently-abandoned ACORN office in south Oklahoma City last October. That report can be found here.
The event, scheduled August 8 from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. is not being held at St. Charles Borromeo, rather at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in their Connor Center at 32nd and Western.
Among items on the “program” at this “community organizing” event, includes “interactive community organizing training based on the first five chapters of Nehemiah with attention to the concepts of subsidiarity and solidarity, by Kris Ausdenmoore, lead organizer, Oklahoma Sponsoring Committee.”
Ausdenmoore, it turns out, according to a 2008 article in the Sooner Catholic, was the lead organizer for the Oklahoma IAF. IAF stands for Industrial Areas Foundation. They are located throughout the United States and have chapters in Canada, England and Germany, according to www.industrialareasfoundation.org. And they deal with not only Christians but Muslims, Jews and others as well.
“The leaders and organizers of the Industrial Areas Foundation build organizations whose primary purpose is POWER – the ability to act – and whose chief product is social change. They continue to practice what the Founding Fathers preached; the ongoing attempt to make life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness everyday realities for more and more Americans.”
IAF is pushing socialistic political ideas like the “living wage movement” in the United States, according to their website. And when they ask themselves why they do what they do, they respond, in part: “We do it because we are angry.” Boiled down, they are angry that life is not fair and more must be done to make it fair, whatever it takes. This is not much different from the liberation theology movement that swept Latin America and radical Catholic churches in North America more than 30 years ago.
It also notes there will be a potluck lunch, “focused house meeting training,” and don’t forget your Bible.
Alerting the masses to this Marxist organizing activity was popular afternoon radio talk show host Mark Shannon on KTOK AM 1000 in Oklahoma City.
“This is nothing more than a scam for Saul Alinsky, Barack Obama’s Marxist mentor. And to the churches, shame on you,” Shannon said.
And this is true. Obama, the community organizer, was a great admirer of Rules for Radicals author and activist Alinsky, who died in 1972. Charles Beggs, who writes for the Tulsa Beacon, wrote in April in an article called “The Wolves Are At the Door,” that IAF has “disavowed some of Alinsky’s more extreme views” but also split churches in the process “seek(ing) to work within unsuspecting Catholic and Protestant congregations, and among other constituencies, to further a decidedly liberal agenda.”
Callers to his show Tuesday afternoon were equally concerned. One caller noted that this is nothing but a government attempt to further Obamanize the churches by forming “brownshirt” groups and advance leftist and socialistic ideas, including redistribution of wealth.
Another caller said he was fed up with Oklahoma City Archbishop Eusebius Beltran because he is a poor leader and Catholics who have concerns about radical leftists making inroads in their churches are ignored.
Shannon tended to agree and chided the churches that are getting involved with this activity, calling on listeners to “infiltrate the meeting” and “tape record the meetings” and send them to him afterward.
These community organizers, Shannon said, are “bad, bad news. We don’t want them in Oklahoma City.”
Further research led Red Dirt Report to the website of St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church, which goes into more detail about the “Community Organizing at St. Charles.”
The website says they are involved in community organizing by quoting Pope Benedict 16th and the late Pope John Paul II and noting that they are looking out for the “common good.”
“In September (community organizers) will conduct a parish information campaign. The object of this campaign will not be to GIVE information to parishioners. It will be to HEAR the concerns of our parishioners and to lean abou the pressures facing our families and individuals as citizens in the metropolitan area.”
With that in mind, Red Dirt Report hopes to attend the Saturday organizing event and will report more in the coming days.
Another group that’s forgotten “Thou shalt not steal” and “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods”.
Go to the parish priest and complain.
Go to the Bishop and complain.
Educate them.
Let them know that they are being used!
I was a sponsor at an RCIA meeting once, where the talk was way too tilted to “social justice” SOCIALISM, and I argued with the Priest, and told him he was wrong.
I talked about “Subsidiarity” and explained that charity must be voluntary, and that individual responsibility should be encouraged, and that the true teaching of the Church was that the social unit closest to the problem, and most able to address the problem should be in charge of the problem
A nice encroachment by the State (or activists on behalf of Statism) on the Church. The ACLU must be out of town that day.
Hope they’re dumb enough to try this in Denver!
I will continue to make time to oppose the spread of “liberation theology” wherever it shows up!
We will NOT stand for the anti-Life crowd pretending that giving everybody an insurance card is a sign of compassion!
Thanks for the term. I didn't know the Catholic Church regarded this concept as applicable doctrine. What did the Priest reply to you?
You can't make this stuff up.
You should thank God every day that your archdiocese has been blessed with Archbishop Charles Chaput. I was in Denver for a Bible conference at St. Thomas More Church in June. The vibrancy of the Catholic Church in Denver is amazing and inspiring.
The Priest was clueless.
He admitted that Subsidiarity was still doctrine, yet he did not understand how his support for outright socialism, and his advocacy of “social justice” was not in keeping with the doctrine of Subsidiarity.
I later mailed him a bunch of Catholic literature in support of my view that it is “impossible to be, at the same time, a true Catholic and a Socialist”
LOL. That "voluntary" thing really gets them, don't it? They love the "let's all work together" shtick, because they think it morally justifies their total dominating control of everyone. But if you agree to the flowers and candy and rainbows and chocolate, yet add in that one word - voluntary - they act like you hit them in the head with a 2x4.
IMO, their response reveals their true intentions. Liberals get confused, because they're focused on all the goodies like the useful idiots they really are. But Leftists get pissed, because you've revealed the totalitarian behind the curtain.
The 911 terrorists had associations with OU. Nick Berg, the guy who was beheaded was from OU and let’s not foget his father is with MoveOn.org and ANSWER. And then there was the suicide bomber who blew himself up outside the OU stadium. Anyone not surprised these “community organizers” have targeted Oklahoma City?
Mark couldn’t have said this today, Tuesday. He doesn’t even come on until 5 CDT.
Good post..........
Aug. 8th........
The best action is to tell the clergy involved from parish priest to bishop that you will a) not be giving money to the Catholic Church, b) will encourage others not to give to the church, c) call those who advertise in the church’s publications that they will no longer be favored with your money, d) that you change your will to remove any donation to the church, and e) (optional) you will let the Vatican know the above.
Money talks with the Catholic church and you know everything else walks.
Hi all,
I received a tip from someone who goes to St. Eugene in Oklahoma City. She explained to me that her church was going to follow the course of other churches in the area and that she needs help figuring out what to do.
In terms of Mark Shannon, the material mentioned in the article and much more are posted on his own blog.
And then suggesting that people with-old their tithe - that would be called “extortion” - and the Catechism has a little bit about that, too. He's an embarassment to conservatives like myself.
Oklahomaconservative got it right with “the social unit closest to the problem, and most able to address the problem should be in charge of the problem”. Who's closer to the problem than your church community? That's what the Oklahoma Sponsoring Committee is doing - each church is going to have as many of its members as possible meeting in small groups to talk about pressures their families face. Then, we'll all come together, find a common theme, figure out what we can do and then act. It's called citizenship, and we only intend on tackling LOCAL ISSUES. This isn't like ACORN that (from what I can tell) pushes a national agenda - we only intend on covering local issues that we as Oklahomans decide for ourselves.
It's quite unlikely you'll see us push for more taxes or bigger government because most Oklahomans don't want that.
As far as the IAF is concerned, we've essentially hired them as consultants to train us. The IAF founder, Saul Alinsky, was pretty radical, but he's been dead for 35+ years and the organization was reshaped after his passing. The IAF works with churches all over the U.S. and you'll only find positive stories if you look at their affiliate sites.
I hope this is helpful in explaining what's going on.
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