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New Age Invasion - Is This Spirituality Replacing Catholic Faith?
San Diego News Notes ^ | May 2005 | Robert Kumpel

Posted on 05/08/2005 3:56:34 PM PDT by NYer

The First Commandment is "I am the Lord Thy God. Thou shalt not have strange gods before Me." But, according to one local convert from the New Age, San Diego Catholics who aspire to know their God better are sometimes presented with information on strange gods instead.

Moira Noonan, a resident of Encinitas, authored Ransomed From Darkness which tells the story of her conversion from New Age spirituality to the Catholic faith. Noonan believes most Catholics are being insidiously exposed to New Age ideas in the Church.

How long have you been a Catholic?

I finished RCIA about 10 years ago. Actually, I was baptized Catholic and attended Catholic school as a little kid. New Agers are constantly searching, always looking for something new. The first true — I hate to say it — 'enlightenment' which dawned on me was that I didn't want to be reincarnated. And I thought, "How do I get off this wheel of reincarnation?" I remembered something from when I was a [Catholic] kid about 'eternal life.' Yet I was constantly being bombarded with reincarnation in the New Age. I just said, 'I don't want to come back. If there is eternal life, or if any of those Sacred Heart nuns who taught me as a kid are in eternal life now, won't you pray for me right now?' It triggered something.

Reincarnation is one of the biggest demonic heresies in the world. When you consider how much of the world's population believes in reincarnation, it's scary. All New Agers believe it. And most of the people I knew in the New Age were fallen-away Catholics.

What do people mean when they say, "I'm not religious, but I'm very spiritual?"?

"Spiritual" seems to be one of the trendy catch words coming out of the New Age movement, because New Agers never say, "I'm of this faith" or "that faith". What they say is, "I'm spiritual" because the New Age movement came from the spiritualist movement. The spiritualist movement was a big movement in America around the turn of the century, with people like Madam Blavatsky. This all came from the time when people started believing in Darwinism. We didn't need God anymore. Now people are saying that they are "spiritual." We don't need any religious truth or religious facts, because we can make up our own gods again.

Is their any link between homosexuality's ascendancy and the New Age movement?

I don't recall seeing homosexuals in the New Age movement, or at least I never met any. They seem to prefer to stay in their own community. But apparently now the lesbian movement is huge in the New Age. This is what's happened to some women's religious orders. Many of them were feminists who turned to Wicca or white witchcraft. It's much more pervasive on the East Coast and, thankfully, I was never a part of any of that. I agree with our Church['s position] that it [homosexuality] is gravely disordered.

I used to go to confession at the Cathedral downtown. One time, when I walked in, I saw a book on the Enneagram (a New Age personality type test) sitting on the priest's chair. What's wrong with the Enneagram?

First off, the Enneagram is being used in almost every Catholic spiritual direction and retreat house in America. It's now the main tool for teaching people how to do spiritual direction. Its origins are occult, not Christian. Now why is this different than using traditional Catholic spiritual direction and counseling, such as St. Ignatius of Loyola's exercises to discern God's will? The Enneagram isn't about working with God's will or understanding it, it's all about personality. It's a personality exercise, not spiritual, and it's not based on God's will. It relies on the human spirit, rather than something divine."

So where is this New Age infiltration happening in the Church in San Diego?

I really don't want to mention these sisters by name, because some of them were very helpful in my conversion a long time ago. I can tell you that they are in a beach community where they operate a retreat house. They also use the Celestine Prophecy for spiritual direction. The Celestine Prophecy was a popular New Age novel which, like the Da Vinci Code, was taken as fact but in reality slanders the Catholic Church. It enjoyed a brief vogue in the 1990s. It's all about developing psychic powers. I was a former New Ager and I sure didn't need these nuns teaching me New Age stuff after leaving the New Age movement. After that experience, thank goodness, a priest from out of state got me to go to Prince of Peace Abbey for spiritual direction. And that is the only place I would recommend anyone in San Diego to go."

For some time now, the La Providencia retreat center in Alpine has been offering Reiki. It's been said that Reiki is just a type of massage therapy. Is that correct?

I don't know anything about La Providencia, but I can tell you about Reiki. Reiki is psychic healing. It is not reconcilable in any way, shape, or form with the Catholic Church, because it uses spirit guides. Spirit guides are fallen angels — not guardian angels but deceivers. It's not Swedish massage. It's occult massage. In order to do Reiki, you have to follow a master. It's like being consecrated to a guru or master. I can say that, because I was an advanced Reiki master healer.

Some photos posted on the internet from Cardinal Mahony's latest religious education congress, show people walking around through labyrinths.

They're using labyrinths in Christian churches and New Age churches. The big difference is that in the New Age churches, they are doing it to a mantra. If it's done in a Christian setting and with a Christian mindset, then I wouldn't have any objection to it.

Does the San Diego diocese contribute to this New Age contamination?

I can tell you that here in North County, there is a coastal parish where I just finished a basic catechist course — I really don't want to mention it by name -- that is so bad you cannot believe it. This is where they are training people to be religious education teachers in parishes. I was told by this instructor not to mention Mary, the rosary, statues, novenas or "any of that superstitious stuff." This is the director of religious education for that parish who teaches the class. It was so unbelievably awful. And, just as in the New Age, he told us that no stories in the Bible were literal events." He said that the Bible is, "nothing but stories, not an accurate account."


TOPICS: Activism; Apologetics; Catholic; Current Events; History; Religion & Culture; Worship
KEYWORDS: cults; enneagram
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To: A CA Guy
If they dance unto God and for the people at the church, they are NOT worshiping a false god, they are having a celebration of their faith.

5.3 Performing Liturgical Dance 

Dance is not allowed whatsoever. The document Dance In The Liturgy contains a full explanation. To summarize:

"[In western culture] dancing is tied with love, with diversion, with profaneness, with unbridling of the senses: such dancing, in general, is not pure."

"For that reason it cannot be introduced into liturgical celebrations of any kind whatever: that would be to inject into the liturgy one of the most desacralized and desacralizing elements; and so it would be equivalent to creating an atmosphere of profaneness which would easily recall to those present and to the participants in the celebration worldly places and situations."

The Bishops have expressly prohibited any and all forms of dancing in the Liturgy.

IS YOUR MASS VALID?

121 posted on 05/09/2005 3:26:30 AM PDT by NYer ("Love without truth is blind; Truth without love is empty." - Pope Benedict XVI)
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To: NYer

A great consoling story! Old churches are amazing places, and to think this one was vacant for 40 years. Thank God for slate shingles-probably saved the place. Any photos online?


122 posted on 05/09/2005 3:30:07 AM PDT by Antioch (Benedict XVI: "I think the essential point is a weakness of faith.")
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To: A CA Guy

Murph is right. I also live in the Diocese of Rockville Centre and it is absolutely infiltrated with all sorts of New Age nonsense, up to and including a "Jesus Prayer" that had MY KIDS ohhhhhmmmmm-ing all over the place like one of Richard Gere's minions and NUNS leading a "prayer" that went something like:

Oh, Spirit of the Spring,
Send your soothing rains and gentle winds to refresh our souls...

YICK!

I hope the new pope comes down on these whackos HARD. They are endangering my children.

Regards,


123 posted on 05/09/2005 3:52:33 AM PDT by VermiciousKnid
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To: A CA Guy
I'm sure what they did was OK with the Vatican

Don't be.

Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum

[117.] Sacred vessels for containing the Body and Blood of the Lord must be made in strict conformity with the norms of tradition and of the liturgical books. The Bishops’ Conferences have the faculty to decide whether it is appropriate, once their decisions have been given the recognitio by the Apostolic See, for sacred vessels to be made of other solid materials as well. It is strictly required, however, that such materials be truly noble in the common estimation within a given region, so that honour will be given to the Lord by their use, and all risk of diminishing the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharistic species in the eyes of the faithful will be avoided. Reprobated, therefore, is any practice of using for the celebration of Mass common vessels, or others lacking in quality, or devoid of all artistic merit or which are mere containers, as also other vessels made from glass, earthenware, clay, or other materials that break easily. This norm is to be applied even as regards metals and other materials that easily rust or deteriorate.

[173.] Although the gravity of a matter is to be judged in accordance with the common teaching of the Church and the norms established by her, objectively to be considered among grave matters is anything that puts at risk the validity and dignity of the Most Holy Eucharist: namely, anything that contravenes what is set out above in nn. 48-52, 56, 76-77, 79, 91-92, 94, 96, 101-102, 104, 106, 109, 111, 115, 117, 126, 131-133, 138, 153 and 168. Moreover, attention should be given to the other prescriptions of the Code of Canon Law, and especially what is laid down by canons 1364, 1369, 1373, 1376, 1380, 1384, 1385, 1386, and 1398.


124 posted on 05/09/2005 4:27:41 AM PDT by gbcdoj (St. Athanasius, ora pro nobis.)
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To: murphE; GipperGal; cyborg; onyx; fortunecookie
GipperGal: What a pack of freaks? Are they doing this during a Mass?

murphE: That is none other than Cardinal Mahoney and friends at the "arena mass" which took place during the Catholic Education Conference this year in February.

Precisely! "What a pack of freaks."

125 posted on 05/09/2005 4:47:29 AM PDT by Petronski (Pope Benedict XVI: A German Shepherd on the Throne of Peter)
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To: GipperGal

She looks like she's suffered a "prescription gap."

126 posted on 05/09/2005 4:48:38 AM PDT by Petronski (Pope Benedict XVI: A German Shepherd on the Throne of Peter)
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To: Petronski

"She looks like she's suffered a "prescription gap."

Yeah.

You know, that picture is about to make me hurl. Do you supppose we could have a moratorium on it?


127 posted on 05/09/2005 4:53:06 AM PDT by dsc
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To: GipperGal; dsc; A CA Guy; onyx; cyborg; fortunecookie
Here's one more of liturgical dance for your consideration:


128 posted on 05/09/2005 4:55:37 AM PDT by Petronski (Pope Benedict XVI: A German Shepherd on the Throne of Peter)
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To: dsc

If 126 makes you want to hurl, I can't imagine what you think of 128. LOL


129 posted on 05/09/2005 5:00:08 AM PDT by Petronski (Pope Benedict XVI: A German Shepherd on the Throne of Peter)
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To: A CA Guy

Most of what is in those pictures is against the GIRM and plain and simply not permitted.

Mahoney needs to go. It's just a matter of time before either the Vatican or the FBI nails him.


130 posted on 05/09/2005 5:03:57 AM PDT by Desdemona (Music Librarian and provider of cucumber sandwiches, TTGC Ladies' Auxiliary. Hats required.)
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To: Petronski

Well, I have a normal male reaction to it: "Argh, avast there, me beauty. Strike yer sales and stand by to be boarded."

Followed by a "I have a wife and six kids" response.

And then a Catholic response: "Yes, I am subject to temptation. Good thing I'm old, fat, and ugly, and therefore don't have to worry about ever having a chance to go mortal on that sin."

No hurling, though, since she's not an obvious one-worlder gun-fearing pansy-assed chicken-chocking globalist twinkie-addled Subaru driving Starbucks-sipping Dixie-Chicks-admiring John-Kerry-channeling nitwit godless unpatriotic pierced-nose Volvo-driving France-loving left-wing Communist latte-sucking tofu-chomping holistic-wacko neurotic vegan weenie pervert in the act of committing sacrilege.


131 posted on 05/09/2005 5:13:51 AM PDT by dsc
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To: cyborg
Right click on the picture and click "properties". That will give you the URL.

132 posted on 05/09/2005 5:17:11 AM PDT by William Terrell (Individuals can exist without government but government can't exist without individuals.)
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To: dsc

Well, I'm youngish fat and ugly, with no wife or kids yet, but beyond that, I'm with you.

Until now, though, no one has known that in that photo she's engaged in liturgical dance in the Diocese of Los Angeles....


;OD


133 posted on 05/09/2005 5:18:42 AM PDT by Petronski (Pope Benedict XVI: A German Shepherd on the Throne of Peter)
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To: Desdemona
...either the Vatican or the FBI...

Hmmmm.

134 posted on 05/09/2005 5:19:28 AM PDT by Petronski (Pope Benedict XVI: A German Shepherd on the Throne of Peter)
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To: Cincinnatus

In Plato’s Euthyphro, Socrates advanced argument that piety to many gods, who all want conflicting devotions and/or actions from humans, is impossible. Socrates exposed pagan esoteric sophistry.

Morality and all of its associated concepts are from the belief some higher power defines what is correct in human behavior. Today, morals are a religious pagan philosophy of esoteric hobgoblins. Transfiguration is a pantheon of fantasies as the medium of infinitization. Others get derision for having an unwavering Judaic belief in Yahweh or Yeshua, although their critics and enemies will evangelize insertion of phantasmagoric fetishisms into secular law.

There are three ways people are influenced according to the school of behavioral psychology - - visual (sight), auditory (sound), kinesthetic (emotion). The kinesthetic or ‘feeling’ is also olfactory and tactile sense, just like Pavlov’s salivating dogs (conditioned responses).

Considering that 90% of people tend to be more influenced by the visual, television has become a new religion. It is analogous to Plato’s cave allegory and the pagan Oracle of Delphi. The visual media as a propaganda tool helps create visual phantasms or fantastical images in the brain.

Was Freudian psychoanalytic theory of sexual stages in psychological development more accurate than accredited? The Michael Jackson Complex is fixation on mutilation of and deviance with human anatomy in the media. It is a social psychosis catering to the lowest common denominator and generated with Pavlovian behavioral conditioning in popular culture.

Visual images and sound portrayed can be used to anchor emotional and/or conditioned responses desired by those that present them, which is the case of the visual media, actors who create fantastical images in film, and Leftist politicians who pander to ‘symbolism over substance.’

Observe when in public places, at your workplace or in other community activities (i.e., restaurants, retail stores, gas stations, etc.) the pervasive presence of some exposure to music or television. This is because many people are actually terrified of being alone with their own thoughts or at the prospect of it (neuro-linguistic programming).

There is a clear connection between modern neo-paganism and ancient paganism related to Islamic conflict with the Judaic roots of Christendom. A focus on how this is manifested in a modern sense only requires a look at pop-culture icons in entertainment, steroid sports "heroes," and attempts by the Left to use a pseudo-Judaic sense of pagan moralistic idolatry to demonize political opposition. (Attacks on U.S. Senator Rick Santorum for comments on sodomy, and the ostracizing of U.S. Senator Zell Miller within the Democratic Party are cases in point.)

Like the necromancy of the late Senator Paul Wellstone’s funeral rally, or "funerally" (see the Steven Plaut article, The Rise Of Tikkun Olam Paganism, Arutz Sheva: December 27, 2002, http://www.arutzsheva.com/article.php3?id=1760 in reference to the Wellstone brand of Judaism), the use of Martin Luther King Day, or constantly invoking the "spirit of the ‘60’s," the Left attempts to raise spirits of the dead as a totem for worship. This occurred with respect to Diana, Princess of Wales, following her "tragic" death in 1997.

Consider the seemingly coincidental circumstance that Diana is also the name of a pagan Greek goddess, and idolatry. The figurative deification of Princess Diana and the massive outpouring of public grief are a form of civil worship. The heaping of flowers at Kensington Palace as if it were a shrine, melodramatic eulogizing and the political expressions of how the world should comply with her posthumous intent concerning certain issues is a modern use of idolatry. Royalty magazine, in a special edition, had a large drop quote spanning across two pages: "She needed no royal title… to generate her particular brand of magic." The whole magazine is about pet Leftist political causes mixed in with the pictures and soliloquy about her sainthood. A Golden Calf.

This idolatry also partly played into the modern conflict of pagan vs. Judaic concerning her billionaire playboy lover, Dodi Al Fayed. Although many consider Islamic belief to be of Judaic origin, it is pagan. The crescent symbolizing Islam was also used to symbolize the pagan goddesses (Diana, Isis, etc.) and used by modern neo-pagan nut cases as an icon. The use of the bedrock at the Dome of the Rock and the meteorite at the Kaaba as an excuse to label it an Islamic holy site, is idolatry. The three goddesses, daughters of Allah, are also contrary to the idea that Muslim faith is monotheistic.

Saddam Hussein and the Socialist Ba'ath Party are cult figures. This is a great part of the reason the Left is so frantic and upset by Western military activities in the Middle East. Hussein and his two deceased sons were not at all Muslim. They were considered to be secular political figures, when actually they were extensions of ancient pagan Chaldean and Babylonian cults. They had more than just a similitude to the Amalekite Pharaohs of ancient Egypt that arose after the fall of the Eighteenth Dynasty in the Hyksos invasion. There is a historical relationship to the book of Exodus in the Judaic Bible, where Moses figures most prominently, and a relationship to the current conflict in Israel. Saddam funded Palestinian terror. The pagan Roman occupation created the mythically perceived state of "Palestine" to begin with, specifically disenfranchising the Jews. A Golden Calf.

The Amalekites were nomadic plunderers who also plagued the Hebrews during the forty years of wandering the wilderness described in the Judaic Bible. They were also the progenitors of modern day "Palestinians." (Also, consider the ancillary fact that Yasser Arafat was actually an Egyptian by birth.) The occupation of Egypt after the Alexandrian invasion by the Ptolemic Dynasties through the Roman invasion and occupation of Egypt (where the Queen Cleopatra and Marc Antony, subjects of more Shakespearean tragedy, and legend for their affair in the dire displeasure of the Roman Emperor) are all concretely connected to the historical Pagan conflicts with the Judaic (Judaic includes Christians).

As U.S. Senator, and Democrat presidential primary candidate, Joseph Lieberman has pointed out - - if the Democrat presidential candidate Howard Dean had his way, Saddam Hussein and his two maniacal sons would still be in power, murdering, raping and plundering. Howard Dean had in effect, run on a platform of having Saddam Hussein as his running mate, and so had that other loser Sen. John Kerry.

As well, the opposition by the Leftists to Western military operations in Afghanistan, something once considered previously a subject of serious inquiry by Left leaning feminist groups because of concern for the treatment of women under the Taliban, has been displaced by the neo-pagan New Age mysticism and the 1960s' psychedelic drug culture permeating the political Left. A great source for lot of opium and hashish coming into the West is and/or was from Afghanistan. A Golden Calf.

Think of the Hashashins, from whom we get the English word ‘assassin.’ Who were they? Wondering bands of robbers stoned on hashish, plundering, raping and murdering their way across the desert. Osama Bin Laden and his groups of thugs are just like them, just in the same way Saddam Hussein and his murderous sons roamed around in Iraq. The Taliban in Afghanistan also fit this model quite neatly. Remember the Luxor, Egypt massacre of Western Tourists by terrorists? Is the recent rash of Islamic beheadings ritual murder? Is Islamic terrorism really a murder cult like the Kali cult of Hindu Thuggees?

Michael Jackson had Nation of Islam thugs as bodyguards escorting him after a court appearance through the throngs of frenzied supporters. Is Jackson their new pharaoh? Nation of Islam is a militant racist cult, that is neither Muslim or based on any traditional religious doctrine. Their leaders, Louis Farrakhan (the numerologist) and Kahlid Abdul Mohammed, are known Jew haters. They also support many illogical and socially subversive Leftist political activities intent on tearing down the structures of Modern Western Civilization and capitalism.

Astrology is another blatant example of primitive pagan idolatry and fantasy with planets of the solar system assigned the names of pagan gods, stars grouped as fantastical images of mythical legend, whereby the fate of a person is purportedly revealed. The astrologers are revered as prophets by psychotic, neurotic adherents in frequent fanatical devotion to any musings these charlatans utter.

Images of distant stars being most often many centuries and millenniums old, are no things corporeal. The actual objects have ceased to exist as perceived and are phantasms, mere ghosts of what once was long ago. (Divination through spirits of the dead is necromancy.)

Attempting divination by optical illusions emanated from long past objects, avoiding your actual self-determined future repeatedly disregarded in favor of musings by a mystical witch doctor is neurotic, idolatrous and fanatical. Astrology is simply an epic lunatic fantasy, and saying so is the ultimate blasphemy for such pagan religionists.

The idea of fate is rooted in the fantasy that some imaginary, ethereal forces determine the course of human events. This is contrary to the ideas that God allows free will to choose or reject Salvation, and that God alone reveals prophecy (a.k.a. Providence). It is also an attempt to counterfeit and replace those ideas, where pantheons of fantasies are the medium of infinitization and not a singular limitless Creator.

The Enemy as represented in the Egyptian Book of the Dead: "Behold, I am Set, the creator of confusion, who creates both the tempest and the storm throughout the length and breadth of the heavens."

Is this the Prince of the Power of the Air, the principality of Beelzebub over phantasms in the kingdom of air and darkness, the kingdom of familiar spirits in astrology? Phantasms, ancient images of stellar events in the vacuous darkness of space?

Astrology arises from the pagan Chaldean cults of Babylon. We now know Babylon as Iraq. The Tigris-Euphrates Valley is the cradle of human civilization and has never known freedom in all of history. Is it coincidence? Is it coincidence the Neo-Pagan, New Age mystery cults of Leftist politics are so animated in their opposition to bringing freedom and the Judaic principles of justice to Iraq? Is it coincidence that many domestic social issues are being driven by cultic Leftist advocacy of unnatural, phantasmagoric perversity? Is it coincidence that they have such a seething hatred of George W. Bush?


135 posted on 05/09/2005 5:22:25 AM PDT by Sir Francis Dashwood (LET'S ROLL!)
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To: NYer

Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s, http://www.bu.edu/arion/paglia_cults00.htm.


136 posted on 05/09/2005 5:25:00 AM PDT by Sir Francis Dashwood (LET'S ROLL!)
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To: Salvation

See this:

Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s, http://www.bu.edu/arion/paglia_cults00.htm.

It will tell you where the use of the Enneagram comes from in Scientology and where Scientology comes from, among many other things...


137 posted on 05/09/2005 5:31:08 AM PDT by Sir Francis Dashwood (LET'S ROLL!)
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To: Desdemona

I know several local Catholics who were expecting Mahony (not "Mahoney") to be elected Pope. They were actually disappointed it was Ratzinger.

The conspicuous desecrations of Mahony are manifest and notorious. There is nothing Catholic about this man. He is at best a Protestant-Masonic-Communist-NewAger. Throw in homosexual activist in the mix.

No kidding. I live here, and I know what I'm saying.


138 posted on 05/09/2005 5:38:06 AM PDT by donbosco74
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To: Sir Francis Dashwood
Excellent post,
Socrates,Plato along with others like Jung, Blavatsky, Bailey and Peter Drucker have advanced all this New Age garbage.
unfortunately we live in a feel good society and people are buying into it and being fatally mislead
139 posted on 05/09/2005 5:55:42 AM PDT by pro610 (Faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains.Praise Jesus Christ!)
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To: onyx

Bizarro San Diego Catholic ping.


140 posted on 05/09/2005 6:17:24 AM PDT by bourbon (quasi morientes et ecce vivimus!)
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