#ordinance on convicted

[newzquest]

Rahul Gandhi "Tore" the 2013 Ordinance that could have saved him from disqualification.

Wish Rahul could have undo now..'Ordinance should be torn and thrown out' ''अध्यादेश को फाड़कर बाहर फेंक देना चाहिए': काश राहुल अब इसे प��र्ववत कर सकते थे, काश अध्यादेश ना फाड़ दिया होता ! कहते हैं वक्त की लाठी बे-आवाज़ होती है.. दर्द का एहसास बाद में पता

Wish Rahul could have undo now..‘Ordinance should be torn and thrown out’ ”अध्यादेश को फाड़कर बाहर फेंक देना चाहिए’: काश राहुल अब इसे पूर्ववत कर सकते थे, काश अध्यादेश ना फाड़ दिया होता ! कहते हैं वक्त की लाठी बे-आवाज़ होती है.. दर्द का एहसास बाद में पता लगता है. एक इक बात में सच्चाई है उस की लेकिन,अपने हरकतओ से मुकर जाने को जी चाहता है!! Rahul Gandhi was disqualified as a member of Parliament…

[portraitsofsaints]

Saint John Ogilvie

1579 - 1615

Feast Day: March 10

Patron of Scotland

Saint John Ogilvie was a Scottish Roman Catholic Jesuit martyr, born into a wealthy respected Calvinist family in 1579.  In the midst of the religious controversies and turmoil that engulfed Europe of that era, he decided to become a Roman Catholic. He joined the Society of Jesus and was ordained a priest in Paris in 1610. After ordination, he returned to Scotland in November 1613 disguised as a horse trader named John Watson, to minister to the few remaining Roman Catholics in the Glasgow area where it was illegal to preach or otherwise endorse Roman Catholicism. In 1614, he was betrayed and arrested in Glasgow, convicted of high treason for refusing to accept the King's spiritual jurisdiction, suffered terrible tortures and was hanged. 

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase here: (website)

[morlock-holmes]

In one of those things that makes you feel like reality is slipping away, Neil Gorsuch, in his majority opinion, essentially paraphrases that famous Anatole French quote,

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."

Here's Gorsuch (Page 3 of the decision):

Grants Pass’s public-camping ordinances do not criminalize status. The public-camping laws prohibit actions undertaken by any person, regardless of status. It makes no difference whether the charged defendant is currently a person experiencing homelessness, a backpacker on vacation, or a student who abandons his dorm room to camp out in protest on the lawn of a municipal building.

The man isn't an idiot. His argument is that, in the precedent cited, the Supreme Court ruled that one cannot criminalize a status. Specifically, it cannot criminalize the status of being an addict.

(c) Plaintiffs insist the Court should extend Robinson to prohibit the enforcement of laws that proscribe certain acts that are in some sense “involuntary,” because some homeless individuals cannot help but do what the law forbids. See Brief for Respondents 24–25, 29, 32. The Ninth Circuit pursued this line of thinking below and in Martin, but this Court already rejected it in Powell v. Texas, 392 U. S. 514. In Powell, the Court confronted a defendant who had been convicted under a Texas statute making it a crime to “ ‘get drunk or be found in a state of intoxication in any public place.’ ” Id., at 517 (plurality opinion). Like the plaintiffs here, Powell argued that his drunkenness was an “‘involuntary’” byproduct of his status as an alcoholic. Id., at 533. The Court did not agree that Texas’s law effectively criminalized Powell’s status as an alcoholic. Writing for a plurality, Justice Marshall observed that Robinson’s “very small” intrusion “into the substantive criminal law” prevents States only from enforcing laws that criminalize “a mere status.” Id., at 532–533. It does nothing to curtail a State’s authority to secure a conviction when “the accused has committed some act . . . society has an interest in preventing.” Id., at 533. That remains true, Justice Marshall continued, even if the defendant’s conduct might, “in some sense” be described as “ ‘involuntary’ or ‘occasioned by’” a particular status. Ibid.

My counterargument would be that not all alcoholics drink, and they certainly do not all get drunk in a public place.

All homeless people must sleep.

My big picture question is that, if you have a status that essentially requires certain behavior, what, in practice, is the distinction between criminalizing the status and criminalizing the behavior?

Suppose I do not have private property on which I am allowed to sleep; how might I avoid getting arrested for violating this ordinance?

The answer is that I literally cannot. By definition.

The court, I suspect, would argue back that essentially "Not having private property on which to sleep" is itself not a status, but a behavior, and the state may have a justified reason to criminalize the behavior of not acquiring private property on which to sleep.

I hope I don't need to explain why I find that barbaric (And frankly, stupid as well).

PS - The conflation between behavior that is occasioned by a status and behavior that is involuntary in Powell seems like a moral mistake by the court. An Alcoholic may get drunk in his house, rather than in public; therefore, even though public drunkenness is clearly occasioned by his status as an addict, it is not involuntary.

For example, imagine a state law which makes it illegal to check your blood sugar. Does this not essentially criminalize the status of being Diabetic? If the state objected that it had not criminalized being a diabetic, because all citizens were forbidden from checking their blood sugar, I hope we'd be able to dismiss that as the absurdity that it is.

[ausetkmt]

At President Trump's rally in Tampa last week, a familiar face made it back in the national news. Maurice Symonette, also known as Michael the Black Man, was front and center in a crowd hurling invective at CNN reporter Jim Acosta, waving a "Blacks for Trump" sign.

Symonette has been a regular at Trump rallies all over Florida and as far away as Arizona. Just last month, he popped up at the U.S. border to appear in a video with disgraced sheriff-turned-pardoned-Senate-candidate Joe Arpaio.

All that national exposure raises an obvious question: Who is paying the bills for Symonette, a former member of Miami's murderous Yahweh ben Yahweh cult, to represent "Blacks for Trump" at Trump rallies? 

Since Blacks for Trump isn't a registered political organization with the Florida Division of Elections or the Federal Election Commission, there are no public records of any donations funding the group's operations.

It seems unlikely Symonette is fronting the cash for his travel himself because he filed for bankruptcy this past May. In federal court records, he reports that he's unemployed, generates no income, and has $0 in the bank. He also says four banks have staked claims on $2.9 million worth of property around Dade County. 

So how is he getting to Arizona and Tampa to stand behind Trump on national TV?  Reached on his cell phone, Symonette declined to discuss his group's financing. "You guys are horrible racists," he said. "You are lawbreakers and you're mean... God is going to punish you horribly."

Throughout the '80s, Symonette — then known as Maurice Woodside — was a devoted follower of Yahweh ben Yahweh, a charismatic preacher who wore white robes and called himself the Messiah.

Federal prosecutors later accused Yahweh, whose real name was Hulon Mitchell Jr., of ordering his followers to murder at least 14 people, including random white vagrants who were massacred as an initiation rite.

Symonette was charged in federal court along with Mitchell and 15 other followers in 1990; while the cult's leader was later convicted of 14 charges of murder conspiracy and served nearly two decades in prison, Symonette and six other cult members were acquitted.

In the decades since, Symonette has been charged with crimes including grand theft auto, carrying a weapon onto an airplane, and threatening a police officer, but has never been convicted. (He does have a pending case on a municipal ordinance charge in Hollywood after police showed up to a really loud party he threw.)

Since Trump's election, Symonette has carved out an unlikely new niche as one of President Trump's most visible African-American supporters. He has a knack for getting prime placement directly behind Trump and has handed out hundreds of his "Blacks for Trump" signs.

They advertise his website, which is full of conspiracy theories about Cherokees running the U.S. banking system. (Really.)

Symonette was even featured at a Miami Trump rally that prosecutors later alleged had been funded by Russian nationals looking to disrupt the election.

Symonette filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on May 16, listing Washington Mutual, Homecomings Financial, HSBC Bank, and Indymac Bank as his creditors; each institution laid claim to one of four houses. Three are in North Miami-Dade County, and one is near Kendall.

In court docs, his only listed assets are clothing, watches, various household items, and a pool table. He does say that his live-in girlfriend, whom he doesn't identify by name, provides him with $2,000 per month.

Could that money from his significant other cover Blacks for Trump's various trips around the country to support the president on TV? Symonette wouldn't discuss that with a New Times reporter. 

Instead, he spoke at length about his belief that the banking system is corrupt. He added that "Trump being the president is the greatest blessing we have ever had."

In his bankruptcy case, he's repeated those allegations about the banking system being crooked to Judge Laurel M. Isicoff. He's also repeatedly sought to change hearings that overlapped with Trump events. Symonette suggested the scheduling conflicts are a sinister plot to keep him away from the spotlight at Trump rallies.

"Creditors know that I have a rally in Arizona on July 25 and deliberately set the hearing on that date to cause me and my musical band to miss the performance and the rally with the bus we rented," he wrote in a motion filed the same morning as the Phoenix rally. "The creditors overheard that at the house we are disputing... and set that hearing on the same date just to harm me."

That motion was denied, as was another he filed on July 30, just before Trump's Tampa rally. "As founder of Blacks for Trump, (I) have rented vans to go to Trump's rally. We need to make the country aware how the banks (FOREIGNERS FROM THE EAST) are illegally taking WHITE AND BLACK PEOPLE'S houses away."

Maurice Symonette's story is baffling, to put it mildly. Symonette, who also goes by the name Michael the Black Man, somehow went from being part of the murderous Yahweh ben Yahweh cult to getting acquitted of murder charges himself to being a staple at Donald Trump's presidential rallies all over the country. Even among the rogue's gallery of rodeo clowns and Bond villains who make up Trump's core cadre of supporters, Symonette might legitimately be the weirdest person hovering around Trumpworld

.

After Michael the Black Man turned up at a Tampa-area Trump rally last week and led anti-press chants, it's worth taking note of all the bizarre places he's materialized since becoming a prominent Trump supporter:

1. At the original October 2016 Trump rally where he first popped up on TV:

Conservative Twitter is abuzz this afternoon with a trending hashtag: #BlacksForTrump. The spark is clear: Thousands have retweeted photos from Trump's rally in Lakeland, Florida, this afternoon showing a small group standing directly behind the Donald while enthusiastically waving "Blacks for Trump" signs. "Blacks are for Trump and the left can't stand it," writes @LawlessPirate, with another pic of the sign-waving man wearing a shirt reading "Trump & Republicans Are Not Racist." So who is this new face of Trump's elusive black support? He's none other than Michael the Black Man, also known as Maurice Woodside or Michael Symonette, who has made waves in Miami in recent years with protests against the Democratic Party and rallies for the GOP. He's also a former member of the murderous Yahweh ben Yahweh cult, which was led by the charismatic preacher Hulon Mitchell Jr., who was charged by the feds in 1990 with conspiracy in killings that included a gruesome beheading in the Everglades. Michael, along with 15 other Yahweh followers, was charged for allegedly conspiring in two murders; his brother, who was also in the cult, told jurors that Michael had helped beat one man who was later killed and stuck a sharpened stick into another man's eyeball. But jurors found Michael (and six other Yahweh followers) innocent. They sent Mitchell away for 20 years in the federal pen. In the years that followed, Michael changed his last name to Symonette, made a career as a musician, started a radio station in Miami, and then reinvented himself as Michael the Black Man, an anti-gay, anti-liberal preacher with a golden instinct for getting on TV at GOP events. He's planned events with Rick Santorum and gotten cable news play for bashing Obama. Since 1997, he's been charged with grand theft auto, carrying a weapon onto an airplane and threatening a police officer, but never convicted in any of those cases. 

2. At a Trump rally in Bayfront Park in Miami just before the election: 3. At a rally allegedly organized with the help of Russian agents:

A federal grand jury filed charges against 13 Russian nationals [in February 2018] for allegedly stealing identities, wiring money overseas, and staging a small series of flash mobs to help tip the 2016 election in Donald Trump's favor. It's unclear whether the social media campaign had any actual impact on voting, but the FBI alleges Russian money indeed affected one small group of Miamians who unknowingly used Russian cash to pay for supplies for an unnamed rally the September before the presidential election. There still seem to be online traces of that Moscow-funded rally. Only one publicized, pro-Trump rally appears to have taken place in the Miami area — #LatinosConTrump in Doral at 1 p.m. September 11, 2016. The event was pitched as an "anti-media" protest outside the town's Univision offices. The national group Latinos With Trump created flyers for the rally and noted that virtually all of Miami's most prominent pro-Trump groups — Cubans 4 Trump, Hispanas for Trump, Latinas for Trump, and the official Miami Trump Volunteers — would attend.

4. At a 2017 Trump rally in Phoenix, per the Washington Post:

And so it was Tuesday night before a crowd of Trump supporters in Phoenix who had come to watch another show. There was the president, whipping up the wildly cheering crowd, and then there was Michael the Black Man, chanting just beyond Trump’s right shoulder in that trademark T-shirt. The presence of Michael — variously known as Michael Symonette, Maurice Woodside and Mikael Israel — has inspired not only trending Twitter hashtags but a great deal of curiosity and Google searches. Internet sleuths find the man’s bizarre URL, an easily accessible gateway to his strange and checkered past. The radical fringe activist from Miami once belonged to a violent black supremacist religious cult, and he runs a handful of amateur, unintelligible conspiracy websites. He has called Barack Obama “The Beast” and Hillary Clinton a Ku Klux Klan member. Oprah Winfrey, he says, is the devil. Most curiously, in the 1990s, he was charged, then acquitted, with conspiracy to commit two murders.

5. With noted racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio at the U.S.-Mexico border just last week:

Via our sister paper Phoenix New Times:

Former sheriff Joe Arpaio filmed a video at the U.S.-Mexico border with a former Florida cult member who goes by the name Michael the Black Man. In the video posted on Thursday, Michael has his arm around Arpaio as the ousted former sheriff promotes his improbable race for Arizona's open Senate seat during a visit to the border fence in Naco, Arizona. Michael was a follower of the Yahweh ben Yahweh cult, a black-supremacist religious sect in Florida. In 1990, the feds charged Michael and over a dozen fellow cult members with conspiracy related to brutal murders in Florida. Alongside Arpaio and Michael in the video is an independent Senate candidate in Massachusetts, Shiva Ayyadurai, who shared the live video on Twitter. Born in India, Ayyadurai is a scientist and MIT graduate who claims that he invented email. He began his Senate campaign as a Republican before switching to run as an independent. Ayyadurai’s campaign uses the slogan, “Defeat #FakeIndian Elizabeth Warren,” as a derogatory jab at his Democratic opponent. “First of all, I’m from Massachusetts, so of course I’m supporting this great guy,” Arpaio says of Ayyadurai in the video. “He’s gonna win.” Michael says, “We’re at the border right here, between Arizona and Mexico.” He turns to Arpaio to ask if he has anything to say to the camera. The aging former sheriff brings up his law enforcement background. “It’s great to see the border again; I haven’t seen it in a while,” Arpaio says. 

If you've got any info on who's paying Symonette's travel bills to Trump rallies, email [email protected] or [email protected]

For a second, Donald Trump seemed to be backing off his vitriolic attacks on the free press. After five journalists were massacred at the Annapolis Capital Gazette, Trump briefly toned down his slurs. He even invited New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzburger to the White House to clear the air. But it didn't last.

Trump quickly returned to his Stalinist, enemies-of-the-people label for journalists and then lied about his meeting with Sulzburger to insist that truthful reporting is "fake news." Those insults have a real effect, and that fact was never frighteningly clearer than at Trump's rally last night in Tampa, where an unhinged-looking mob screamed insults and waved middle fingers at journalists, particularly CNN's chief White House correspondent, Jim Acosta.

The scene left many political watchers deeply shaken, including Acosta:

Just a sample of the sad scene we faced at the Trump rally in Tampa. I’m very worried that the hostility whipped up by Trump and some in conservative media will result in somebody getting hurt. We should not treat our fellow Americans this way. The press is not the enemy. pic.twitter.com/IhSRw5Ui3R— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) August 1, 2018

But most national press watchers didn't notice who was right at the center of that mob hurling invective at Acosta and his colleagues: Yep, it was Michael the Black Man, AKA Maurice Symonette, a former member of Miami's murderous Yahweh ben Yawheh cult who once faced charges of conspiring in the group's murders.

That's him with his instantly recognizable "Blacks for Trump" sign:

.@Acosta is trying to do a stand-up at #trumptampa and the crowd is booing and chanting “CNN sucks” behind him. pic.twitter.com/XiULajB1Li— Emily L. Mahoney (@mahoneysthename) July 31, 2018

Symonette has been a mainstay at Florida Trump rallies and over the past year has popped up at other Trump-linked events around the nation. Just last week, he flew to Arizona to film a video at the border with disgraced former sheriff Joe Arpaio. Trump's staff regularly gives Symonette front-and-center seats where he waves his black-and-white sign on national television.

Here's some background on Symonette from New Times' earlier reporting on him:

He's also a former member of the murderous Yahweh ben Yahweh cult, which was led by the charismatic preacher Hulon Mitchell Jr., who was charged by the feds in 1990 with conspiracy in killings that included a gruesome beheading in the Everglades. Michael, along with 15 other Yahweh followers, was charged for allegedly conspiring in two murders; his brother, who was also in the cult, told jurors that Michael had helped beat one man who was later killed and stuck a sharpened stick into another man's eyeball. But jurors found Michael (and six other Yahweh followers) innocent. They sent Mitchell away for 20 years in the federal pen. In the years that followed, he changed his last name to Symonette, made a career as a musician, started a radio station in Miami and then re-invented himself as Michael the Black Man, an anti-gay, anti-liberal preacher with a golden instinct for getting on TV at GOP events. He's planned events with Rick Santorum and gotten cable news play for bashing Obama. Since 1997, he's been charged with grand theft auto, carrying a weapon onto an airplane and threatening a police officer, but never convicted in any of those cases. 

In other words, he's exactly the kind of guy you might not want to drive into a blind rage at journalists who are just trying to do their jobs. Yet there he was in Tampa, right in the middle of the crowd screaming at Acosta — who, incidentally, took time to talk to the crowds who were so angry with him:

After each live shot, @Acosta would walk down and politely talk to the people who just heckled him. He talked to one group for at least 15 minutes. pic.twitter.com/J26nlxfD6k— Christopher Heath (@CHeathWFTV) August 1, 2018

There are two safe bets on this topic going forward: Trump won't stop throwing insults at the media, and wherever the president is whipping up that anger, Michael the Black Man will probably be there with his signs, happily taking the bait.

[canonicallyobserving911]

So glad it wasn’t just me who noticed the lack of Eddie in that promo 😑 and the only shots focused on him were like old footage from s2 and 3. None of his s5 breakdown or hostage situation badassery or May Day cool moments (like smashing the glass with the fire extinguisher), not even any of his sassy faces from s6. And not a single line of dialogue from him. My motivation to watch s7 dropped about 10 points. The shot of buck and death doula didn't help either 😑

Thank you @blutterlie for the ask.

I noticed the lack of Eddie immediately then I watched the promo again to make sure I didn't miss him but I realized I was right the first time. I was pissed they didn't include any of Eddie's badassery from all the seasons he's been on the show. Let's check notes on how Bad Ass Cool Under Pressure "Sexy Eddie Diaz" is for a minute.

First and foremost, Eddie Diaz is the best dad there is. He's been raising Chris and he sacrifices EVERYTHING for him!

He removed a live grenade from a man's leg and everyone who doesn't remember should realize EDDIE WAS GOING TO GO INTO THE AMBULANCE BY HIMSELF!

(I can't find the GIF I made of him doing the damn thing but if anyone wants to see it, they can watch 2x1 to see sexy Eddie do it because he's the one who KNEW THE ORDINANCE.)

The man was trapped in a well and swam to safety on his own while the team was above ground trying to figure out what to do to save him.

He was shot by a sniper.

He was held hostage by an escaped convict.

He had a mental breakdown and went to therapy to get better.

He climbed a 70-foot ladder to rescue Buck after he WAS CATAPULTED OFF THE BASE OF THE TRUCK WITHOUT BEING HARNESSED IN!

But the season 7 promo didn't include any of that.

What else does Eddie have to do to get some damn respect?

It was my main issue with season 6 and it looks like they're going to repeat history and it appears Past will be Prologue for them because they continue to ignore Eddie, Bobby and Chimney. They weren't in the promo that much either but you know who was, Buck's ridiculously short-term love interest ND who's been around for like 2 minutes. It's season 5 all over again, ND is the new TK and I'm not here for it.

They didn't even show Karen, Denny or that much of Ravi in the promo. Or Josh or Linda and these ARE ALL RECURRING CHARACTERS WHO'VE BEEN ON THE SHOW FOR YEARS!

I'm so sick of this BS. They never treat Eddie right and they've been sidelining him for too long. And for those who always holler, "Eddie had a big storyline in season 5" the amount of screen time he receives shouldn't have anything to do with that and if we're being HONEST, all of Eddie's scenes are made to be about Buck and his reaction to Eddie being hurt. Also, Eddie's scenes are usually crammed into the last 5 minutes of the episode and are rarely given the attention they deserve.

HE'S A MAIN CHARACTER BUT THEY KEEP SIDELINING HIM! But they sure don't have a problem giving Buck a lot of recurring characters for his gazillion storylines. Hell, he had 7 in season 6 alone but all they gave Eddie was some raggedy dating storyline and set him up with a chick who's more in love with her brother. 🙄

It would have been better if they would have included ONLY THE MAIN CAST AND LEFT ND OUT OF IT. SHE SHOULDN'T HAVE BEEN INCLUDED AND I'LL KEEP SCREAMING IT AND NO ONE IS GOING TO STOP ME!

FREE EDDIE DIAZ FROM 9-1-1'S RIDICULOUS SIDELINES AND GIVE HIM THE SCREEN TIME HE DESERVES.

Thanks again for the ask and I know my response is long but I'm still pissed off by the lack of Eddie Diaz in that damn promo.

[gatheringbones]

[“When it passed, some feminists hailed the 1994 Crime Act as a triumph because it included major legislation that sought to tackle violence against women – the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). In a 2015 Feminist Current essay titled ‘A Thank-You Note to “Carceral”/”Sex-Negative” Feminists’, writer Penny White typifies this mainstream feminist praise for the VAWA and the police, writing that feminists of the seventies and eighties were ‘heroes’ who ‘paved the way for the Violence Against Women Act … which gave law enforcement 1.6 billion dollars to investigate and prosecute sexual and domestic violence … [This] transformed our culture into a bigger, safer, and freer space for women than I had ever dreamed possible.’

Rhetoric like this doesn’t just forget about victims of police and state violence – it throws them under the bus. Liberal commentator Amanda Marcotte caused outrage when she wrote an article titled ‘Prosecutors Arrest Alleged Rape Victim to Make Her Cooperate in Their Case. They Made the Right Call’, arguing that it was ‘understandable’ that prosecutors ‘might try to do everything within their power to convict [the perpetrator]’, including jailing his victim, adding that ‘we have to decide what’s more important to us: putting abusive men in jail or letting their victims opt out of cooperating with the prosecution as they see fit’. Carceral feminism prioritises punishing wrongdoers above all else, even protecting victims.

These competing perspectives on the 1994 Crime Act speak to larger conflicts within the feminist anti-violence movement and illuminate some of the problems with seeing the police as the solution to violence against women. Identifying the problems of this law-and-order approach pushes us to locate violence against women within the broader texture of state violence – including arrests, deportations, evictions, loss of child custody, anti-homelessness ordinances, the war on drugs, gentrification, and racism in policing and in the criminal justice system. The fight for decriminalisation is just one strand. Working to end the power of the police to assault, arrest, prosecute or deport people in the sex trades is part of a larger struggle for safety, a struggle which includes freeing incarcerated survivors, ending cash bail, and fighting for investment in the things that make people safer – not cops and prisons.”]

molly smith, juno mac, from revolting prostitutes: the fight for sex workers’ rights, 2018

[trans-axolotl2]

"Disabled people have always been among the chief intended targets of all forms of incarceration, representing the largest marginalized population in jails and prisons (and almost one hundred percent of those confined in other locked institutions). Disabled people are disproportionately represented in jail/prison for two main reasons. First, the criminal legal system targets and disadvantages disabled people at every phase of the criminal legal process, and second because carceral institutions are disabling by design (so those who enter jail, prison and other locked institutions without disabilities almost assuredly acquire disabilities while incarcerated).

...There are undeniable similarities, connections and overlays between Black Codes, Indian Removal and Appropriations Acts, Jim Crow, manumission, Public Charge Laws; unsightly beggar ordinances, anti-tramping, anti-solicitation and anti-vagrancy laws; and convict leasing, vendue, sharecropping, peonage, sheltered workshop and modern prison labor systems. The interchangeable and often indistinguishable sites where those targeted by these laws and systems inevitably find themselves — often cyclically — reveals the ease with which powerholders leverage ableism to categorize and (re)distribute marginalized people into and across carceral institutions on the basis of purported health, criminality and vulnerability. Some of these places include: plantations, stockades, privately owned and operated “homes,” and “houses of corrections” (i.e., jails/prisons); poor houses, workhouses, poor farms and homeless “shelters”; asylums, county infirmaries and prison hospitals; reservations, boarding and residential “schools,” orphanages and boot camps, among others. While the stated purposes of these institutions and practices always includes a positive spin (e.g., aid, treatment, cure, rehabilitation, correction, discipline, vocational skills development and proving, etc.), all are carceral regardless of their euphemistic name or stated benevolent rationale or claim. This is the backdrop against which we must understand and challenge eugenics like that proposed by Mayor Adams and other government officials nationwide." (Talila Lewis from an interview with George Yancy at Truthout).

Read this amazing article diving into incarceration and ableism from Talila Lewis who is an incredible activist and scholar.

[haggishlyhagging]

As the theory of woman's wickedness gathered force, her representative place in the church lessened. From century to century restrictive canons multiplied and the clergy constantly grew more corrupt— although bearing bad reputation at an early date. Tertullian, whose heavy diatribes are to be found in large libraries, was bitter in his opposition to marriage. While it took many hundreds of years for the total exclusion of woman from the Christian priesthood, the celibacy of the clergy during this period was the constant effort of the church. Even during the ages that priestly marriage was permitted, celibates obtained a higher reputation for sanctity and virtue than married priests who, infinitely more than celibates were believed subject to infestation by demons.

The restriction upon clerical marriages proceeded gradually. First the superior holiness of the unmarried was taught, together with their greater freedom from infestation by demons. A single marriage only was next allowed, and that with a woman who had never before entered the relation. The council of A.D. 347, consisting of twenty-one bishops, forbade the ordination of those priests who had been twice married or whose wife had been a widow. A council of A.D. 395 ruled that a bishop who had children after ordination should be excluded from the major orders. The council of A.D. 444 deposed Chelidonius, Bishop of Besancon, for having married a widow. The council of Orleans (A.D. 511), consisting of thirty-two bishops, decided that monks who married should be expelled from the ecclesiastical order.

The church was termed the spouse of the priest. It was declared that Peter possessed a wife before his conversion but that he forsook her and all worldly things after he became Christ's, who established chastity. Priests were termed holy in proportion as they opposed marriage. The unmarried among the laity who had never entered that relation, and the married who forsook it, were regarded as saintly. So great was the opposition to marriage that a layman who married a second time was refused benediction and penance [was] imposed. A wife was termed "an unhallowed thing."

So far from celibacy producing chastity or purity of life, church restrictions upon marriage led to the most debasing crimes, the most revolting vices, the grossest immorality. As early as the fourth century (A.D. 370) the state attempted purification through a statute enacted by the emperors Valentinian, Valerius and Gratian, prohibiting ecclesiastics and monks from entering the houses of widows, single women living alone or girls who had lost their parents. The nearest ties of relationship proved ineffectual in protecting woman from priestly assault and incest became so common, it was found necessary to prohibit the residence of a priest's mother or sister in his house. This restriction was renewed at various times through the ages. The condemnation of the council of Rome (Easter, 1051) under the pontificate of Pope Leo IX, was not directed against married priests but against those who held incestuous relations.

Yet, although the church thus externally set her seal of disapprobation upon this vice, her general teaching sustained it. Gregory, Bishop of Venelli—convicted of this crime by the Council of Rome—was punished by excommunication but in a short time was restored to his former important position. The highest legates were equally guilty with the inferior priests. Cardinal John of Cremona, the pope's legate to the Council of Westminster (1125), sent by Pope Honorius for the express purpose of enforcing celibacy, became publicly notorious and disgraced and was obliged to hastily leave England in consequence of his teaching and his practice being diametrically opposed.

Through this clerical contempt of marriage, the conditions of celibacy and virginity were regarded as of the highest virtue. Jerome respected marriage as chiefly valuable in that it gave virgins to the church while Augustus, in acknowledging that marriage perpetuated the species, also contended that it also perpetuated original sin.

These diverse views in regard to marriage created the most opposite teaching from the church. By one class, the demand to increase and multiply was constantly brought up and women were taught that the rearing of children was their highest duty. The strangest sermons were sometimes preached toward the enforcement of this command. Others taught an entirely different duty for both men and women and a large celibate class was created under especial authority of the church. Women, especially those of wealth, were constantly urged to take upon themselves the vow of virginity, their property passing into possession of the church—thus helping to build up priestly power. Another class held the touch of a woman to be a contamination and to avoid it, holy men secluded themselves in caves and forests.

Through numerous decretals, confirmation was given to the theory that woman was defiled through the physical peculiarities of her being. Even her beauty was counted as an especial snare and temptation of the devil for which, in shame, she ought to do continual penance. Chrysostom, whose prayer is repeated at every Sunday morning service of the Episcopal Church, described women as a "necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic peril, a deadly fascination and a painted ill." But to escape her influence was impossible, and celibacy led to the most direful results. Monks and hermits acknowledged themselves tormented in their solitary lives by visions of beautiful women. Monasteries were visited by an illness to which celibacy imparted a name and impurity of body and soul spread throughout Christendom. The general tone of the church in regard to marriage, its creation of a double code of morality, its teaching of woman's greater sinfulness—together with that of her absolute subordination to man—subverted the moral character of the Christian world, within whose borders the vilest systems of immorality arose which the world has ever known, its extent being a subject of historical record.

-Matilda Joslyn Gage, Woman, Church and State

[darkmaga-returns]

eugyppius

Nov 02, 2024

The government that rules Germany is colloquially called the “traffic light.” This is because it is a coalition of three parties that are represented by the colours red, yellow and green.

Red is for the Social Democrats, or the SPD – the party of the welfare state and once upon a time of the working man. With the realignment of the left in our brave new era of open-borders internationalism, the SPD has been reduced to a directionless and decaying husk of its former self. As they circle the drain, the Social Democrats have accumulated a great gaggle of strange and disturbing personalities, like our eccentrically-toothed Health Minister Karl Lauterbach and our Marshmallow Interior Minister Nancy Faeser. When they are not retweeting Eric Feigl-Ding and hyperventilating about the ExTReME RigHT, SPD politicians are hard at work spending as much money as they possibly can on entitlements, even as their working-class voters abandon them in droves.Karl Lauterbach (SPD): a living metaphor for the health and vitality of his party.

Green is naturally for the Greens. The Greens are not a decaying corpse party like the SPD; instead, they represent the worldview of German elites. This is another way of saying that they are totally crazy. They hate nuclear power more than any other thing in existence, and as a close second they also hate carbon dioxide and those activities that emit carbon dioxide, such as industrial production and most economic activity. They are above all an urbanite party interested in performative self-abnegation, especially if mandating this abnegation also hurts their political enemies in the great unwashed middle of society. As an added crazy bonus, the Greens are rabid Atlanticists, particularly when this Atlanticism is contrary to the interests of ordinary Germans. Only about 8��10% of the population are hardcore Greens, but these are overwhelmingly influential people with well-endowed bank accounts. A lot of wealth must yet be destroyed before their convictions will bring them any personal pain.

This leaves the depressing yellow in the middle of the traffic light, which represents the Free Democrats, or the FDP. The FDP is a party of the centre-right that once advocated for free markets, privatisation and lower taxes. Now they no longer appear to stand for anything at all. Thus the FDP had no problem joining their ostensible red and green ideological opponents to round out the traffic light coalition in 2021, and they’ve spent the three years since happily waving through every last insane traffic light idea. They presided over the latter stages of Covid madness and even collaborated with Karl Lauterbach to extend mask mandates, they voted through the ruinous Green home heating ordinances, they stood by during the nuclear phase-out, they rubber-stamped the ludicrous Self-Determination Act so that transsexuals can change their official gender once every year …

[coochiequeens]

I've taken many jabs at the ACLU for defending perverted freaks now here's the HRC following their lead.

By Reduxx Team February 16, 2024

A registered child sex offender was welcomed at the Human Rights Campaign’s North Carolina Dinner gala last week, just months after a controversy involving him being awarded a top LGBT advocacy prize. Chad Severance-Turner, a former youth minister, is currently the Chief Executive Officer at the Carolina LGBT+ Chamber of Commerce.

On February 10, the Human Rights Campaign in North Carolina held its annual dinner gala, with a number of top LGBT activists in attendance. Among the speakers at the Bank of America-sponsored “Without Exception” event was HRC Press Secretary Brandon Wolf and Democrat State Senator Lisa Grafstein.

But among those featured in attendance was Chad Severance-Turner, a registered child sex offender who has managed to rise to prominence as an LGBT advocate in North Carolina.

As previously reported by Reduxx, Turner was first accused by three boys of sexual abuse in 1998.

According to a GoUpstate report on the case from 2000, all of the victims who had come forward had met Turner through his position as the music director at the New Harvest Church of God in Gaffney, South Carolina. The cases were tried separately due to the nature of the charges, and Turner was ultimately only convicted on one offense. 

Of the incidents Turner was convicted on, a 14-year-old boy had testified that Turner had invited him to spend the night at his house in the nearby community of Bessemer City, North Carolina. The victim stated that during the visit, Turner had questioned him on how he’d feel about a man performing oral sex on him. 

Turner, wearing a silver vest, at the February 10 HRC Dinner.

“I thought he was joking,” the boy told the court. He explained that Turner frequently questioned him about sexual acts between men and women, which upset him because of the man’s position in the church. The victim continued that, following a revival meeting, he and Turner stayed overnight at the home of one of the other alleged victims. 

The teen says he awoke to find Turner fondling his genitals, but didn’t immediately report it due to shame.

The second minor, who said he was 15 when the incident occurred, stated he was invited to Turner’s home where the older man showed him a pornographic video of a man and a woman having sex. He then said that later that night, after he and Turner went to sleep in the same bed, he woke up to find Turner fondling him.

The third alleged victim, who was also 15 at the time, said Turner had made the same advances to him over a three-week period when he stayed in the boy’s home. The minor said Turner had fondled him several times. 

“He told me if I ever told the pastor, he’d make me look like a fool and a liar,” the boy said.

Turner’s registration with the North Carolina Sex Offender and Public Protection Agency.

During the trial, Turner’s defense attorney, Thomas Shealy, accused the boys of perpetrating a “witch hunt,” and asserted that it was suspicious that there was a few month delay between them being sexually abused and them going to their parents. 

Turner was ultimately convicted on the charges related to the first victim, and sentenced to 10 years in prison for committing lewd acts on a minor under the age of 16. He served 2 years behind bars before being released on parole and being ordered to the sex offender registry.

Since being released from prison, Turner has become an active and notable member of the Charlotte LGBTQ advocacy community. 

In 2012, Turner was elected the president of the LGBT+ Chamber of Commerce, immediately heading efforts to push for an expanded “nondiscrimination” ordinance which many complained would have prevented businesses from maintaining spaces such as washrooms as single-sex. 

He was named “Person of the Year” by LGBT news outlet QNotes in March of 2015, but would resign from his Chamber of Commerce post in 2016 after his history as a child sex offender came to light. He would once again join the LGBT+ Chamber of Commerce as its inaugural CEO in 2021, a position he has held since. Under his leadership, the Chamber has secured partnerships with prominent organizations like Fifth Third Bank, NASCAR, Duke Energy, Wells Fargo, Sonoco, and Novant Health. He was also recently appointed by Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles to serve on the city’s Business Advisory Committee.

Turner has previously been awarded an honor by the Human Rights Campaign at their annual gala, though at the time, HRC officials refused to state whether they were aware of his child sex offender status prior to giving him the award.

Most recently, Turner was honored with the Harvey Milk Award by Charlotte Pride in a controversial move that was quickly reversed after Reduxx reported on his pedophile past.

[offender42085]

Post 0583

Dominick David Black, Wisconsin inmate 717987, Kenosha County (Wisconsin) inmate 161466, born 2001; released to probation August 2023

Vehicle Operator Flee/Elude Officer

Dominick Black, a friend of Kyle Rittenhouse who faced two felony charges for buying a rifle used by Mr. Rittenhouse, has agreed to plead no contest to lesser charges in a deal.

Mr. Black, 20, bought an AR-15-style rifle in May 2020 for Mr. Rittenhouse, who was then 17 and too young to buy the gun legally. Mr. Rittenhouse used the rifle when he killed two people and wounded a third during an altercation amid protests in Kenosha, Wis. Mr. Rittenhouse, who was acquitted of homicide and other charges after a trial, testified that he was acting in self-defense when he fired the weapon.

Mr. Black, who was a witness for the prosecution in Mr. Rittenhouse’s widely followed homicide trial, was initially charged with two counts of intent to sell a dangerous weapon to a minor, a felony. Under the agreement made public, Mr. Black agreed to plead no contest to a noncriminal county ordinance violation of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, his lawyer, Anthony Cotton, said during a brief hearing.

In the Kenosha courtroom where Mr. Rittenhouse’s trial took place, Judge Bruce Schroeder of Kenosha County Circuit Court accepted the plea agreement and imposed a fine of $2,000.

Thomas Binger, an assistant district attorney in Kenosha, said in court that he believed it was appropriate to dismiss the felony charges, given Mr. Black’s willingness to cooperate in the case, and to impose a fine.

“I believe that does serve as a form of punishment and a deterrence to anyone going forward into the future,” Mr. Binger said. “I do want to close by saying that I do believe that it is a serious offense to purchase a firearm for someone who is not legally able to do so. Our office will continue to vigorously prosecute those offenses. And it is still our office’s position that 17-year-olds should not go armed with firearms.”

During Mr. Rittenhouse’s trial, Mr. Black told the court that he bought the gun on a trip with Mr. Rittenhouse to northern Wisconsin, where Mr. Black’s family owned a hunting property, and stored it at his stepfather’s house in Kenosha for Mr. Rittenhouse. He said that on the day of the shooting in August 2020, as protests were unfolding in Kenosha, he and Mr. Rittenhouse brought their guns from Mr. Black’s stepfather’s house and drove downtown, where they cleaned graffiti and, at night, guarded used-car lots.

Mr. Black got to know Mr. Rittenhouse when he was dating McKenzie Rittenhouse, one of Mr. Rittenhouse’s sisters.

Subsequent to the Rittenhouse events, Mr Black has been arrested 4 times, three times in 2022 and once in 2023,  He has been charged with operating a vehicle with a suspended license, operating an unregistered vehicle, operating without insurance, fleeing LEO, bail jumping, operating at excessive speeds,  As of June 1, 2023 he is in jail on a conviction related to fleeing an LEO.  He was sentenced to 6 months. He was released to probation in August 2023.

3u

Last reviewed September 2024

[portraitsofsaints]

Saint John Ogilvie 1579 - 1615 Feast Day: March 10 Patron of Scotland

Saint John Ogilvie was a Scottish Roman Catholic Jesuit martyr, born into a wealthy respected Calvinist family in 1579.  In the midst of the religious controversies and turmoil that engulfed Europe of that era, he decided to become a Roman Catholic. He joined the Society of Jesus and was ordained a priest in Paris in 1610. After ordination, he returned to Scotland in November 1613 disguised as a horse trader named John Watson, to minister to the few remaining Roman Catholics in the Glasgow area where it was illegal to preach or otherwise endorse Roman Catholicism. In 1614, he was betrayed and arrested in Glasgow, convicted of high treason for refusing to accept the King's spiritual jurisdiction, suffered terrible tortures and was hanged.

Prints, holy cards and plaques are available here: {website}

[eaglesnick]

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.”  Seneca the Younger

Nigel Farage is jetting off to the USA for a second time in a month. Pocketing  £12,000 for a speech at the “Keep Arizona Free Summit". it appears he is more interested in increasing his own personal wealth than serving the people of Clacton who elected him as their MP.

The “Keep Arizona Free” flier has this billing:

“Featuring Keynote Speaker Nigel Farage. Also known as “Mr Brexit", is a British politician, broadcaster and political analyst” (Keep Arizona Free Summit 2024)

Other speakers include the crusading Christian Brandon Tatum, a man who converted to Christianity in 2008 and now says he is working for the “Great Commission”. This means Tate is an evangelical Christian.

Unfortunately, Tate goes beyond simply preaching the word of God. Much like political Islam and Islamic extremists, Tate combines his faith with politics. He describes the Democratic Party in America as “the enemy".

“You cannot say that you are a Christian and you believe in Christian values and you turn around and vote for a party that believes in mutilating kids and gay marriage and all this other stuff,”  (Tate: 30/11/23)

I’m not sure how much child mutilation and “other stuff” happened under democrats Obama and Joe Biden but mixing politics and religion is a recipe for intolerance and dictatorship: just look to Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania and Yemen where Islamic theocratic governments rule with an iron fist. But don’t think a Christian theocratic dictatorship could not happen in the West.

“Jesus is their saviour, Trump is their candidate” was a recent headline in an apnews.com article.  And reiterating the hatred of liberal politicians, espoused by Nigel Farage’s fellow speaker Brandon Tate, Time Magazine said this:

“Trump has white evangelicals in his pocket. Whatever cognitive dissonance some devout Christians may feel for supporting a twice-impeached serial philandering liar who tried to stage a coup and threatens violence against political opponents is easily dismissed with the conviction that no Republican nominee, no matter how problematic, could be worse than losing to a Democrat.”

Another speaker sharing the Keep Arizona Free Summit platform with Nigel Farage is James T. Harris, another deeply religious man on the right of US politics, a man “committed to faith".

Farage will be in the company of like-minded people. Speaking of Britain, Farage said:

"We are a Christian country with a Christian constitution and a Christian monarch…I absolutely believe in Christian values that have made this country great." (Daily Mirror: 19/12/2015)

According to Evangelical Focus, only 6% of the UK population are practicing Christians, while 42% are non-practicing Christians. This presents Farage with a problem. Declaring his Christian believes will not bring him many votes, unlike in the USA where political evangelicalism thrives. But don’t believe for one minute right wing Christians don’t look to Farage as a UK saviour in the same way fundamentalist Christians in America look toward Trump.

This was a headline during the recent UK election campaigne:

“Reform UK: The Best Option for British Christians”. (Crisis Magazine: 01/07/24)

Fundamentalist Christians, like fundamentalist Islamist, are totally intolerant of people with values and believes that do not match their particulate brand of religious zealotry. 

Railing against the concept of social justice, Crisis said that Christians in the western world (do they mean white Christians?) were:

“..ignoring the voting recommendations of bishops wedded to a “social justice” ideology largely developed by the very same prelates, priests, thinkers, and activists who variously tolerate, implicitly accept, or actively favor sexual immorality, female ordination, liturgical abuses and numerous other evils—turning instead to such parties as the Brothers of Italy, Poland’s Law and Justice Party, and France’s National Rally.”

There you have it. GOOD Christians vote for the far-right. BAD Christians vote for liberal democracy, which brings us back to the “Keep Arizona Free Summit" and its guest speakers.

All three are regarded as “good Christians” hence their invitation to speak.

I am sure the people of Clacton, where over half of those over 16 are “economically inactive” will be cheering their support as Farage pockets his £12,000  fee as a “good Christian”. Maybe, he will ask his fellow speakers to pray for the one-in-three children in Clacton who are living in poverty? Maybe Farage, the highest paid MP in Parliament, will take heed of what Jesus said about riches.

 “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” (Matthew 19:12)

Maybe, but I sincerely doubt it.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

The mood at the Sankofa Cultural Arts and Business Center on Chicago’s west side was celebratory on June 25, 2019, as hundreds gathered to watch Illinois make history.

With the stroke of a pen, Gov. J.B. Pritzker made it legal for adults in Illinois to possess up to 30 grams of marijuana without fear of arrest. When sales began in 2020, legalization was expected to be a financial boon for the state, but the promise went deeper for some supporters.

“Today, we're hitting the reset button on the war on drugs,” the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Kelly Cassidy, D-Chicago, said to applause. “Today, we begin the process of undoing the harm of the war on drugs.”

People who had been arrested for, but not charged with, low-level cannabis offenses would have those records erased automatically. Pritzker pardoned thousands more who were convicted of possession of less than 30 grams. Anyone who had been prosecuted for possession of up to 500 grams – a little more than a pound – would be able to petition the court to have those records expunged.

“Today we're giving hundreds of thousands of people the chance at a better life, jobs, housing and real opportunity,” Pritzker said.

Around a third of Americans have some kind of criminal record by the time they are 25, said Daniel Kuehnert, a staff attorney in the western office of Land of Lincoln Legal Aid, a nonprofit serving a swath of Illinois from the Metro East to the Quad Cities. While it may just be an arrest record, “those records are consulted by basically all sorts of entities for important life decisions,” he said.

“And particularly with employment, we see employers who have better jobs doing the heavier criminal background checks,” said Megan Kinney, the managing attorney at Land of Lincoln Legal Aid’s central office, which serves clients in six counties in southwest Illinois. “So it really is not only a barrier to employment, but it's a barrier to good, well-paying, stable jobs with benefits.”

Land of Lincoln Legal Aid was one of 18 nonprofits that joined a coalition called New Leaf Illinois. The state funded the initiative, which provided free legal representation to people who wanted cannabis convictions off their record.

Christopher Bradford was among thousands helped by New Leaf. He was in his mid-20s when he was convicted of felony possession in 2003, giving him a criminal record that potential employers would not overlook.

“And I just felt like, that wasn’t right,” he said in a video posted to New Leaf’s website. “I felt like I was being singled out from others because I had a felony conviction.”

New Leaf helped Bradford clear his record, which allowed him to get a job as a kitchen manager at a restaurant in Springfield, Illinois.

“I’m working, I’m providing for my family, so you know, I’m happy,” he said.

PITFALLS IN THE PROCESS

The law wasn’t perfect.

The word “automatic” was a misnomer, said Kinney. An individual with a criminal record for marijuana had to take an active role in the court system to make that record go away, and every single court in the state is its own entity.

"You have to file a petition in every single county in which there was a charge and arrest or conviction,” Kinney said. “There's not just some magic button that someone can press and all these records just go poof, and they go away.”

The law also failed to address local restrictions on marijuana, said Kuehnert. While some counties were willing to expunge those ordinance violations, “we’ve been encountering some counties where the Judge is like, ‘Oh, hey, wait a minute, this law doesn't say anything about ordinance violations.’”

Despite those complications, Kuehnert said, Illinois generally gets high marks nationwide for how its law is structured.

“It’s been pretty good at helping people get their records cleared, helping folks move forward in their lives and helping heal some of the damage to both individuals and our communities from the war on drugs,” he said.

EXPUNGEMENT IN MISSOURI

When advocates for recreational marijuana in Missouri drafted their ballot measure, they made sure to include expungement provisions as well.

All nonviolent marijuana offenses, except for operating under the influence or sales to a minor, were to be automatically removed by the court, said John Payne, the campaign manager for Legal Missouri 2022.

While there was no formal organization like New Leaf Illinois in Missouri’s initiative, the campaign coordinated with groups like the ACLU and Empower Missouri, Payne said.

“A government program is never 100% accurate the first time,” he said. “We've talked to attorneys from some of these organizations and other attorneys who are just not necessarily affiliated with them but who have said, we'd be happy to help assist.”

Misdemeanors were supposed to be expunged by June 8, while the deadline to remove felony records is Dec. 6. But experts told KCUR those dates did not take into account how time-consuming and complicated it can be to expunge even a misdemeanor case. And while the courts asked for additional money from the state, lawmakers have not provided the assistance.

“I do know that they're making a hell of an effort because I know that the clerk's offices have hired extra people to come in and help,” Stephen Sokoloff, senior counsel for the Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, told KCUR. “In some places, I think retirees have been asked to come back and help.”

The law does not outline a penalty for missing the expungement deadlines.

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

by Matthew Perry | Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892) approached the Lord’s Table with gladness and gravity--and called his flock at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London to do the same. Why did Spurgeon hold this ordinance in such high value? In examining six sermons dating from 1857 to 1882, Spurgeon maintained consistency in his teaching of the purpose of the Lord’s Supper as well as the warnings of approaching the Table wrongly. What does Spurgeon have to teach us about the Lord’s Supper...

[thepastisalreadywritten]

SAINT OF THE DAY (September 27)

On September 27, the Catholic Church remembers Saint Vincent de Paul, the 17th-century French priest known as the patron of Catholic charities for his apostolic work among the poor and marginalized.

During a September 2010 Angelus address, Pope Benedict XVI noted that St. Vincent “keenly perceived the strong contrast between the richest and the poorest of people, and was encouraged by the love of Christ to organize permanent forms of service to provide for those in need."

Vincent was born on 24 April 1581 in the village of Pouy, in the Province of Guyenne and Gascony, the Kingdom of France, to peasant farmers.

Born to a poor family in the southwest of France, he showed his intellectual gifts from a young age, studying theology from around age 15.

He received ordination as a priest in the year 1600 and worked as a tutor to students in Toulouse.

During a sea voyage in 1605, Vincent was seized by Turkish pirates and sold into slavery.

His ordeal of captivity lasted until 1607, during which time the priest converted his owner to the Christian faith and escaped with him from Tunisia.

Afterward, he spent time studying in Rome and, in a striking reversal of fortune, served as an educator and spiritual guide to members of an upper-class French family.

Although Vincent had initially begun his priesthood with the intention of securing a life of leisure for himself, he underwent a change of heart after hearing the confession of a dying peasant.

Moved with compassion for the poor, he began undertaking missions and founding institutions to help them both materially and spiritually.

The one-time slave also ministered to convicts forced to serve in squalid conditions as rowers aboard galley ships.

Vincent established the Congregation of Priests of the Mission in 1625, as part of an effort to evangelize rural populations and foster vocations to remedy a priest shortage.

Not long after this, he worked with the future Saint Louise de Marillac to organize the Daughters of Charity, the first congregation of women religious whose consecrated life involved an extensive apostolate among the poor, the sick, and prisoners.

Under Louise’s direction, the order collected donations, which Vincent distributed widely among the needy.

These contributions went toward homes for abandoned children, a hospice for the elderly, and an immense complex where 40,000 poor people were given lodging and work.

Vincent was involved in various ways with all of these works, as well as with efforts to help refugees and to free those sold into slavery in foreign lands.

Though admired for these accomplishments during his lifetime, the priest maintained great personal humility, using his reputation and connections to help the poor and strengthen the Church.

Doctrinally, Vincent was a strong opponent of Jansenism, a theological heresy that denied the universality of God’s love and discouraged reception of the Eucharist.

He was also involved in the reform of several religious orders within France.

Vincent de Paul died on 27 September 1660, only months after the death of St. Louise de Marillac in March of the same year.

He was beatified by Pope Benedict XIII on 13 August 1729. He was canonized by Pope Clement XII on 16 June 1737.

In 1835, the French scholar Blessed Frederic Ozanam took him as the inspiration and namesake for the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, a lay Catholic organization working for the relief of the poor.

Saint Vincent de Paul has become known as the “The Apostle of Charity” and “Father of the Poor.”

His contributions to the training of priests and organizing parish missions and other services for the poor shaped the Church's role in the modern world.