COVID-19
For all those people who missed their religious services this weekend
For every week of every year of their entire lives, billions of people around the world in some way celebrate their sabbath. Whether Saturday, or Friday, or Sunday, it’s part of the routine of life. Going to Church, or Temple, or Mosque is no different and no less important than eating and sleeping and participating in any of our passions. We just can’t really imagine life without it.
In this part of the world (Canada’s prairies) building a Church was often top of mind for European immigrants who arrived here about 100 to 150 years ago. People who literally scraped a small farm from the earth with nothing but the most rudimentary tools and their own muscles would use that same earth to create their first home in North America from sod. Their first priority was to feed their families. As soon as they could, they’d build a box out of wood, slap a window and a door on it, and call it a house. By this time there was an extremely good chance they were also spending time with their neighbours, often from the same part of the world, speaking the same language and practicing the same faith. While they personally lived in sod or poorly insulated wood huts, they’d be building something far more substantial to celebrate their faith in.
That hasn’t changed much today. Now immigrants come from all over the earth. When they arrive, one of their top priorities is to locate other people from their part of the world. They may be integrating quickly into a new language and culture and all that means, but they are deeply attracted to any links to their language and culture, and faith. So it’s not uncommon to see Mosques on the prairie or Egyptian Coptic Churches, or a Sikh Temple.
We’ve all heard of the term Freedom of Religion. It’s an important aspect of Western Society, maybe especially for all those who understand it as being Free From Religion. That’s important too. As a result, the vast majority of people who go somewhere to celebrate their faith are doing it of their own free will. They want to be there. They feel they need to be there. They have a lot of other options.
That brings me to my life today. Our family goes to a Catholic Church every Sunday. Without fail. I’m an adult and I’ve missed a couple of Sunday masses in my life, but not many. Even at the heights of my personal struggle with faith and when I’m frankly mad at God, I still go. It’s at these times, my culture, the example my parents set for me, and maybe even the stories of the saints convince me that this anger or doubt may be deep, but it will eventually pass. I don’t go to Mass because I think it’s some kind of ticket to the afterlife. I need it. Going to Mass is part of my culture, as much a part of me as the language I speak and the food I eat. It’s who I am. So when I heard Mass was cancelled this weekend, I immediately thought of my parents. My mom has never missed mass to my knowledge. I still remember the one time my dad missed mass. He couldn’t really get out of bed that day. Unless he was going to the bathroom. Then I thought of the important role of the Eucharist in the Catholic Mass. That’s a whole other discussion.
It wasn’t until I came upon this reflection from Father Emmanuel that I started to feel better, much better. I think it’s worth sharing with anyone else who is feeling out of sorts in a way we could never imagine in this lifetime in this part of the world. We cannot attend out religious service. Please enjoy these words from Father Mbah.
From Father Emmanuel Mbah
Everything Works Out Together for Good…
When I hear people complaining about the current situation of things, especially with regards to some of the precautionary measures that have been put in place due to the coronavirus pandemic, I cannot help but marvel. I have also heard some women and men of faith crying out that this is the devil’s attack on the Church, owing that churches should remain open and should not be shut down. They see the shutting down of churches as an indirect attack on the faith. Thus, I am drawn to even a deeper wonder: Is it not true that in most cases, we fail to realize the value of what we have until after we have lost it? This cuts across individuals in interpersonal relationship and corporate bodies in employer-employee relationship.
A lot of Christians before now, complain about their different churches; either the priest/pastor is not preaching well or preaching too long, or that parishioners or church members are not friendly and welcoming. Could it be that God is also offering us this time to stay home and experience what it is like not to come together as a worshipping community on the day of the Lord? So that at the end of it all, we would be wiser and more appreciative of the deposit of our faith and the communion and fellowship that we share.
As I reflect further, I also recall Joseph’s experience in the Old Testament, when the brothers out of jealousy sold him out. But at the end of the day, there was not only a happy ending and reunion but Joseph forgave his brothers and said to them, “As for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20). As such, I believe that everything works out together for good… (Romans 8:28). In other words, something good will come out of our current situation. It will all end in praise to the glory of God.
Stay safe and healthy- Happy Sunday!
PS. We sort of attended Mass this Sunday. We joined a few hundred other people on a Facebook live feed from a church in Kerrobert, Saskatchewan. The Priest there is in charge of four churches in four communities. Instead of performing four masses over these 24 hours in four different towns, he performed Mass in front of a video camera, all by himself. He began the virtual Mass by telling us when the church in each community was established. The youngest one was 97 years old. In all that time, not during a world war, not even during the Spanish Flu epidemic, this was the first Sunday that the people of this faith have not come together on Sunday. We’re living in very strange times. We need all the wisdom we can get. Thank you Father Emmanuel.
From the Brownstone Institute
The House report on HHS Covid propaganda is devastating. The Biden administration spent almost $1 billion to push falsehoods about Covid vaccines, boosters, and masks on the American people. If a pharma company had run the campaign, it would have been fined out of existence.
HHS engaged a PR firm, the Fors Marsh Group (FMG), for the propaganda campaign. The main goal was to increase Covid vax uptake. The strategy: 1. Exaggerate Covid mortality risk 2. Downplay the fact that there was no good evidence that the Covid vax stops transmission.
The propaganda campaign extended beyond vax uptake and included exaggerating mask efficacy and pushing for social distancing and school closures.
Ultimately, since the messaging did not match reality, the campaign collapsed public trust in public health.
The PR firm (FMG) drew most of its faulty science from the CDC’s “guidance,” which ignored the FDA’s findings on the vaccine’s limitations, as well as scientific findings from other countries that contradicted CDC groupthink.
The report details the CDC’s mask flip-flopping through the years. It’s especially infuriating to recall the CDC’s weird, anti-scientific, anti-human focus on masking toddlers with cloth masks into 2022.
President Biden’s Covid advisor Ashish K. Jha waited until Dec. 2022 (right after leaving government service) to tell the country that “[t]here is no study in the world that shows that masks work that well.” What took him so long?
In 2021, former CDC director, Rochelle Walensky rewrote CDC guidance on social distancing at the behest of the national teachers’ union, guaranteeing that schools would remain closed to in-person learning for many months.
During this period, the PR firm FMG put out ads telling parents that schools would close unless kids masked up, stayed away from friends, and got Covid-vaccinated.
In March 2021, even as the CDC told the American people that the vaxxed did not need to mask, the PR firm ran ads saying that masks were still needed, even for the vaxxed. “It’s not time to ease up” we were told, in the absence of evidence any of that did any good.
In 2021, to support the Biden/Harris administration’s push for vax mandates, the PR firm pushed the false idea that the vax stopped Covid transmission. When people started getting “breakthrough” infections, public trust in public health collapsed.
Later, when the FDA approved the vax for 12 to 15-year-old kids, the PR firm told parents that schools could open in fall 2021 only if they got their kids vaccinated. These ads never mentioned side effects like myocarditis due to the vax.
HHS has scrubbed the propaganda ads from this era from its web pages. It’s easy to see why. They are embarrassing. They tell kids, in effect, that they should treat other kids like biohazards unless they are vaccinated.
When the Delta variant arrived, the PR firm doubled down on fear-mongering, masking, and social distancing.
In September 2021, CDC director Walensky overruled the agency’s external experts to recommend the booster to all adults rather than just the elderly. The director’s action was “highly unusual” and went beyond the FDA’s approval of the booster for only the elderly.
The PR campaign and the CDC persistently overestimated the mortality risk of Covid infection in kids to scare parents into vaccinating their children with the Covid vax.
In Aug. 2021, the military imposed its Covid vax mandate, leading to 8,300 servicemen being discharged. Since 2023, the DOD has been trying to get the discharged servicemen to reenlist. What harm has been done to American national security by the vax mandate?
The Biden/Harris administration imposed the OSHA, CMS, and military vax mandates, even though the CDC knew that the Delta variant evaded vaccine immunity. The PR campaign studiously avoided informing Americans about waning vaccine efficacy in the face of variants.
The propaganda campaign hired celebrities and influencers to “persuade” children to get the Covid vax.
I think if a celebrity is paid to advertise a faulty product, that celebrity should be partially liable if the product harms some people.
In the absence of evidence, the propaganda campaign ran ads telling parents that the vaccine would prevent their kids from getting Long Covid.
With the collapse in public trust in the CDC, parents have begun to question all CDC advice. Predictably, the HHS propaganda campaign has led to a decline in the uptake of routine childhood vaccines.
The report makes several recommendations, including formally defining the CDC’s core mission to focus on disease prevention, forcing HHS propaganda to abide by the FDA’s product labeling rules, and revamping the process of evaluating vaccine safety.
Probably the most important recommendation: HHS should never again adopt a policy of silencing dissenting scientists in an attempt to create an illusion of consensus in favor of CDC groupthink.
You can find a copy of the full House report here. The HHS must take its findings seriously if there is any hope for public health to regain public.
Author
From LifeSiteNews
While Pat King has been labeled as one of the leaders of the Freedom Convoy by the mainstream media, he is largely considered by those who followed the event to be a tertiary actor.
A Canadian judge has found Pat King, a controversial figure connected to the Freedom Convoy, guilty of a total of five charges related to his involvement in the 2022 protests held in the nation’s capital which called for an end to COVID mandates.
An Ottawa judge found King guilty of two counts of disobeying a court order, one count of mischief, one count of counselling others to commit mischief, as well as one count of counselling others to obstruct police.
As reported by the Canadian Press, King was also found not guilty of four other charges, those being three counts of intimidation and one count of obstructing police.
King’s lawyers had argued that his involvement with the Freedom Convoy was peaceful in nature and did not warrant any of the charges laid against him.
Crown lawyers claimed that King was one of the main leaders of the Freedom Convoy who played a key role in the month-long protests that took place in January and February of 2022.
The Crown’s case relied heavily on videos posted to social media, which were shared by King throughout the protests.
While King has been labeled as one of the leaders of the Freedom Convoy by the mainstream media, he is largely considered by those who followed the event to be a tertiary actor.
For instance, True North’s Andrew Lawton, who wrote a book on the Freedom Convoy, wrote in 2022, “the media keeps calling Pat King the ringleader of the convoy, but in reality, organizers told him to get lost when they realized he was toxic.”
In 2022, King was granted bail after spending five months in jail for his involvement with the protests. He had to pay a $25,000 fine and was banned from speaking to other Freedom Convoy members and was placed under curfew.
In February 2022, during the height of the Freedom Convoy, King told protesters to “Hold the line, ladies and gentlemen,” and to “not back down, we got your backs.”
In late February that same year, King was denied bail by a judge. He was arrested on February 18 and was charged with various offenses, including mischief and counseling to commit mischief.
As it stands now, the Freedom Convoy’s actual main leaders, Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, are awaiting their fate in their trial for their involvement in the 2022 protests. As reported by LifeSiteNews, Lich and Barber face a possible 10-year prison sentence for their role in the 2022 Freedom Convoy.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, some protesters charged for participating the Freedom Convoy have seen their charges dropped.
In early 2022, thousands of Canadians from coast to coast came to Ottawa to demand an end to COVID mandates in all forms. Despite the peaceful nature of the protest, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government enacted the Emergencies Act on February 14. Trudeau revoked the EA on February 23.
The EA controversially allowed the government to freeze the bank accounts of protesters, conscript tow truck drivers, and arrest people for participating in assemblies the government deemed illegal.
COVID vaccine mandates, which also came from provincial governments with the support of the federal government, split Canadian society. The mRNA shots have been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects in children.
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