Posted on 08/18/2002 3:05:56 PM PDT by NYer
Victims of the September 11 hijackers were not just people. One victim of the September 11 terrorists was the truth about a Catholic priest. This is the story of how homosexual activists hijacked the truth about Father Mychal Judge.
The Father Mike We Knew
By now, nearly everyone in America knows the story of Father Mike. He was born May 11, 1933, and ordained as a Franciscan priest on February 25, 1961. He died September 11, 2001, administering last rites of the Catholic faith to fallen firefighters as the World Trade Center Towers collapsed. Before his tragic death, Father Mike ministered to families in parishes throughout the metropolitan New York area, to students at Sienna College, and to New York City firefighters. And Father Mike ministered to the homeless, the sick and dying of AIDS, to homosexuals, heterosexuals and especially to anyone needing help. Father Mike saw Christ in everyone without exception and without objection.
Yet, as is typical with activists, the truth about someone never stood in their way to advance their agenda. This was true with the homosexual activists who saw in Father Mike's heroic death a chance to attack the Roman Catholic Church. It didn't matter if what they said about Father Mike wasn't true. All that mattered was that a heroic, celibate, faithful Catholic priest could become a homosexual icon. This is how it happened.
The Father Mike I Knew
I knew Father Mike for about one decade before his death. Father Mike was very close to the Steven and Patti Ann McDonald family. Father Mike was present at the Hospital after Police Officer Steven McDonald was shot and paralyzed in 1987. Father Mike prayed with Officer McDonald and his family and was present when Officer McDonald, although completely paralyzed, forgave the person who shot him. The McDonald family and Father Mike shared a special love of Ireland. I was privileged to help Father Mike and Officer McDonald travel to Northern Ireland spreading Jesus' message of reconciliation through forgiveness in that troubled part of the world.
During the planning for one of these trips to Northern Ireland, a homosexual activist named Brendan Fay contacted me. After a very successful first trip to Northern Ireland where Officer McDonald and Father Mike preached Jesus' message of reconciliation through forgiveness, the second trip was being planned amid much publicity. Father Mike told me that Brendan Fay, who was born in Ireland, really wanted to become part of our Project Reconciliation Team. Father Mike told me that Brendan Fay was someone he was trying to help bring closer to Christ, although Brendan had a history of being a troublemaker.
The Homosexual Activist
I also knew Brendan Fay as the person who attacked the Catholic Church by trying to have homosexuals march as a recognized unit in the New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade. Now, we all know that homosexuals and heterosexuals have marched in the St. Patrick's Day Parade since it began. Yet, homosexual activists didn't just want that equal right to march. Homosexual activists like Brendan Fay wanted recognition and approval of their conduct in a Catholic event by being accepted for their sins. Brendan Fay was the person everyone in New York City saw on television and who was mentioned elsewhere in the media. Brendan Fay had an activist's mission to force Irish-Catholics to accept in their Parade not love of the sinner, but love of the sin.
I met with Brendan Fay and Father Mike for lunch. Brendan Fay told me how much he wanted to help plan and participate in our trip to Northern Ireland. Brendan Fay told me of many contacts he had in Ireland and how his participation could help make the trip even more successful. I sensed that Brendan was not being truthful, but just a troublemaker as Father Mike mentioned. I also sensed that all Brendan Fay wanted was a headline or a story about him or his homosexual agenda through this trip to Northern Ireland. Brendan Fay wanted trouble, not reconciliation.
Nevertheless, I agreed to have Brendan join the planning and even the trip - on one condition. That condition was that the trip would only be about Police Officer Steven McDonald and his effort to spread Jesus' message of reconciliation through forgiveness in Northern Ireland. I told Brendan this meant no names are ever mentioned in referencing the trip except Police Officer Steven McDonald and Father Mike. Brendan asked me, "Does that mean I can't do television interviews?" I told Brendan clearly, "Absolutely not. This is a story about Steven McDonald and his trip. This is not about you or me or any agenda." As a result, Brendan never followed through on the planning or the trip to Northern Ireland. He had no interest in the message of reconciliation. If the story wasn't about Brendan Fay, Brendan was not interested.
Father Mike's Death
The next time I met Brendan Fay was three years later at Father Mike's funeral mass, at the Franciscan friary in Manhattan, which was packed with mourners. Everyone I saw was solemn and sad - everyone, that is, except Brendan Fay. Brendan was smiling and strangely happy. I greeted him before Mass started and watched him carry on almost joyfully on a day when tears were on the faces of everyone else. I didn't know why Brendan was acting in that strange, almost demonic, way, but I would soon find out.
Prior to Father Mike's death, everyone who knew him for any length of time would never describe him as a homosexual. In fact, never has even one homosexual activist ever provided evidence that Father Mike was "gay." Yet, in newspapers immediately after the funeral mass, Brendan Fay was quoted saying that Father Mike was a homosexual. Fay arranged a media event where many people spoke of Father Mike's concern for the homosexual community and claimed Father Mike was "gay." This was news to me, and I knew Father Mike for nearly a decade.
The Media Lies About Father Mike
After the first series of newspapers stories reported that Father Mike was a homosexual, suddenly politicians were standing up in Congress lamenting the death of "Father Mike, the gay priest." Concerned that Father Mike was being used by homosexual activists, I began to contact many people who knew him for as long or longer than I did. I wanted the truth about Father Mike to be published. Not one of these longtime friends every heard or saw anything that Father Mike did that would indicate he was homosexual. I personally spent weeks at a time with Father Mike where he and I spoke about many personal matters. Not once was there even a suggestion that Father Mike was "gay." He was a celibate Catholic priest and nothing more.
As time passed, Brendan Fay began to organize events claming Father Mike to be "Hero, Priest and Gay." The media began to refer to Father Mike as being not just "gay," but an "openly gay" priest. None of this was true. I wrote a letter to Gannett Newspapers about one such reference to Father Mike. Gannett responded by citing law that you can't defame a dead person. I wrote back to say that I wasn't bringing a defamation claim; I only wanted the truth about Father Mike to be published. I received no further response. The New York Times also wrote an article alleging that Father Mike was a homosexual. I wrote to the Times requesting evidence, since many, many people did not believe Father Mike to be "gay." I received no response from the Times.
In fact, when one newspaper wrote an article proclaiming that Father Mike was homosexual and the newspaper was challenged about the story, the editor's response was shocking. The editor wrote that it really didn't matter if Father Mike was a homosexual or not. Homosexuals are a disadvantaged group, the editor said, and if the story helped them with their self-esteem, then Father Mike would be happy. In other words, the truth about Father Mike being a faithful Catholic priest didn't matter in our Politically Correct world.
As more time passed after Father Mike's death, homosexual activists embellished their story even more. During "Gay Pride Week" in the New York City area, one newspaper published the falsehood that Father Mike had been a "leader" in the homosexual "GLBT movement" (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual). The lies about Father Mike continued to grow in the Politically Correct media. Sadly, even a member of the Catholic hierarchy in New York commented in the media that Father Mike was "a gay Priest." When questioned later about this comment, the priest admitted he only knew what he had "read in the media" about Father Mike.
The Truth About Father Mike
The truth is that Father Mychal F. Judge, O.F.M., was a wonderful Catholic priest. Father Mike saw Christ in everyone. He ministered to everyone with a smile, a prayer and the love of Jesus Christ in his heart. Father Mike was tireless in living a life as a Priest modeled after St. Francis of Assisi. Although homosexual activists have hijacked this truth, I know that, from heaven, Father Mike would want you to know the truth about him. He would also want you to pray for those who bear false witness. Most of all, Father Mike would care not that you remember him, but that you remember and live the Prayer of St. Francis.
Bump. I totally agree. The gays that I have met are generally some of the biggest bunch of liars anywhere. They lie about anything... big or small. Perhaps it is from living a life dedicated to hiding the truth about themselves with lies. Whatever their reasons are, though, I just don't believe anything they say. Plain and simple.
I can't imagine where you got this idea, but it certainly isn't accurate. No one in the gay community would assume that because someone identifies themselves as gay, that person has necessarily had physical homosexual experience. The term describes an orientation, not a sexual history, just as the term straight or heterosexual would not be assumed to automatically imply sexually experienced. Most people -- gay or straight -- have an idea of their sexual orientation long before they actually have sex. All the evidence suggests that Father Judge self-identified as gay, but no evidence I've seen suggests that he didn't adhere his priestly vow of celibacy.
Don't know if the father was a[n?] homo or not.
If his flock stands up for him, and he never buggered any altar boys, that's good enough for me (besides the fact that he died ministering to his flock, which I personally would find hard to believe in any of the today's homo deviants).
In the old days, (pre-1973 APA de-classification of homo's as sexual deviants), if a priest was a homo, he knew it was deviant behavior and (hopefully) channeled his deviance into "pennace" and doing good (the freaks out in society stayed in the closet or risked getting rightfully shunned and/or bashed).
Those days are long gone and our society has reaped what the APA and the homo agenda has sown.
What I do know is all the liberal ink it got in the press and toob.
"Homo priest this, Homo priest that"
Disgusting.
Typical homo agenda stuff.
How about the press headlining
99.99999% HETEROSEXUAL, FAMILY, MEN AND WOMEN died in the 9/11 attack? ? ! ! !
Again I don't know about the father, but how about the press even advertising that the a
NON-PEDOPHILE, NON-HOMOSEXUAL priest had died in the 9/11 attack?
If the father was the man the article says he was, then I feel sorry his legacy has been despoiled by the homo agenda. It doesn't suprise me in the least however.
If you were a sexual deviant and had somehow (inexplicably, unbelievably) managed to con society into thinking it was acceptable, wouldn't you test the limits of how far you could go? Sex with boy scouts, sex with children, sex with your OWN children, sex with animals, sex with everything!
p.s.
If you doubt anything I've said, read Chapter 4, "The Gay Subculture; How Homosexual Politics Discriminates Against Healthy, Heterosexual Seminarians" in Michael S. Rose's "Goodbey, Good Men".
p.p.s.
I dare ANYONE to find and post a copy of the 1973 APA book TOC which lists homo's right up there with pedophiles and all the other philes.
p.p.p.s.
Any bets that Slick Willy prefers the "hersey highway", even if it is with women? Makes perfect sense to me. With all his other deviant behaviors, why should anal sex be taboo?
Whoops, I think I hear a Charlton Heston movie on the toob, gotta run.
Well, I certainly didn't pull my definition from APA; but as I understand the history, reading about the redefinition of homosexuality in DSM-III, the APA got rolled anyway by politically motivated gay members, so that their science on the subject of homosexuality has been corrupted by politics, guarded by committees, and informed by and an agenda ever since.
I derived my working definition of "gay" (as opposed to merely homosexual) from listening (reading) self-aware gay activists on Salon "TableTalk" bloviate about what it is to be gay, how horrible straight people are, and so on. The way they were using the term "gay" seems to have awareness and orientation and self-acceptance benchmarks rolled into the meaning, such that a self-hating, closeted Kinsey 6 isn't necessarily "gay".
"Gay" to these people (there were men and lesbians both) means not only being homosexual to some undefined degree of preference, but also "out", self-accepting, and self-affirming, fully "in the life" and even implicitly aggressive toward the prevailing culture, which they define as "heterosexist" (which is used very nearly interchangably with "homophobic" in their speech). "Heterosexist" appears, then, to be very nearly the complementary term to "gay". The pair "gay/straight" is still used, but so many negative attitudes and stereotypic habits are imputed by these gays to the straights they talk about, that the term "heterosexist" would seem to be the complementary adjective on the other side of the orientation/preference fence.
Mind you, I'm just describing the usage I've encountered in the last couple of years among a self-selected group of active, assertive, articulate gays.
That's what caught liars always say -- as is questioning what the meaning of "is" is.
For a lengthy but worthwhile article concerning same-sex semantics, I recommend "Catholic Language Regarding Homosexuality."
Personally, I bellyfeel doubleplusgood duckspeakers.
The men seen carrying the body of Fr. Mychal Judge in that graphic, were spared death. Only seconds after that picture was shot, the second tower fell. In deciding to carry the body of Fr. Judge from where he was felled, their lives were saved. Had they remained at their posts, they too would have been victims of this tragic assault on America. Even in death, Fr. Judge continued to save lives.
I watched, on and off, the Masses today on EWTN and one of the speakers at the Cathedral in Washington spoke at length about Fr. Judge. He was an incredibly faith filled priest. How lucky we are to know him, even now. One of him makes up for so many of the other kind of priests. Fr. Judge is closer to almost all the priests I've met in my lifetime - I've, thank God, never known a "bad" priest.
MYCHAL, JUDGED
by Rod Dreher
Posted July 3, 2002 11:33 AM
Here's an essay that's been making the conservative Catholic rounds, asserting that the hero priest of 9/11, Fire Department of New York chaplain Mychal Judge, was not a homosexual. The author, Dennis Lynch, says he and others who knew Fr. Judge for some time never had the slightest hint that he was gay. That may be true, but that proves nothing. In fact, a number of people close to Judge, including former FDNY Commissioner Thomas von Essen, have said Fr. Judge came out to them (it seems beyond doubt that Fr. Judge affiliated himself with the dissenting gay Catholic group Dignity). Others close to him - like his brother Franciscan Brian Jordan - say they never knew about his private life. One friend of the late priest's said Judge was careful not to out himself to friends and congregants he figured might be upset by this knowledge. Fr. Judge's homosexuality does not take away from the fact that he did a world of good for the men and women of New York, and that he died heroically. Nor does his good work posthumously baptize his dissent from Church teaching, or prove the Church wrong, as some gay activists would have it. All can agree he was a flawed but good-hearted man who was loving, and was loved, and who died on a mission of mercy. Beyond that, I say it's up to God.
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