What Cardinal Kasper Said, If Cardinal Kasper Said What I Believe Cardinal Kasper To Have Said

In this day of Fake News, or rather, constant accusations of fake news, one is reminded more than ever that no one can have empirical knowledge of all matters that interests or concerns him.
I am not there to hear to the actual words spoken by a president, or here to watch the actual expressions and gestures of a pope or that other place to see the actions taken by a terrorist .

When it gets down to it, I don't know that those images of storms flickering on the screen are of an actual event happening now, that the contents of this pill bottle are what the box describes, or even if they are, that they will do what I am told by my doctor who is told by the FDA or a pharmaceutical conglomerate, that they will.
But you have to trust somebody, and I choose to trust the weather man, and I choose to trust my GP. One hopes previous accuracy or good faith is, if not quite a pledge, at least an indication of present accuracy and good faith.
National Review, New York Times, Breitbart, HuffPo... who knows?
An additional problem in this area of finding and trusting sources for information, especially in the ecclesiastical realm is the translation issue.
All that is by way of prelude to saying, Sandro Magister is someone in whom I have a high degree of trust. He has a  piece on the push for inter-communion in recent ecumenical initiatives, including some of an interview Cardinal Kasper gave, to which I can only say, What the Francis? [Emphasis supplied]

Cardinal Kasper: We are friends, we are brothers and sisters. We have begun this ecumenical way and we have taken many steps in the meantime. We have good hope that one day we will even reach full communion. Even now we already have a great deal of communion among us.
       Q: A communion at the Eucharistic table as well?
Cardinal Kasper:Yes, shared communion in certain cases, I think so. If [two spouses, one Catholic and one Protestant] share the same Eucharistic faith - this is the presupposition - and if they are interiorly disposed, they can decide in their conscience to receive communion. And this is also the position, I think, of the current pope, because there is a process of coming together; and a couple, a family, cannot be divided in front of the altar.

Um, no.
The entire premise is flawed because the two descriptors of this hypothetical couple are incongruous, they cannot exist at one and the same time.
If they ACTUALLY "share the same Eucharistic faith" it is either because the one has ceased to be Catholic or the other has ceased to be protestant.
(Yes, I'm shouting.)
And the idea that just because they are a couple they cannot be divided this way is absurd.
He's speaking of mainline protestants with liturgical worship and at least some sacraments, whose Eucharist faith is similar, (NOT "the same,") but what of others?
What if one is Catholic and the other Mormon? or Baptist? or Jewish? of Satanist? or pagan? or Muslim? or Taoist? or atheist?Should they be divided in front of the altar?

Deplorable and Deplorabler

Poor Fr. Fox.
For saying that a Catholic can, in good conscience, vote for either the lesser of two evils or abstain from voting, he is ripped by a crazy woman, (who makes her choice quite clear.)

evShe uses a tactic I am seeing more and more, not just from crazy commenters, and careless on-the-fly bloggers and conversationalists at parties, but from actual "journalists," and that is to repeat over and over the accusation that ones target has said something "amounting" to something deplorable, but steadfastly refusing to supply actual quotes, even out of context.
The tactic is used by both sides, of course, the Trumpite right winger against Fr Fox, the liberal Twitter over-lord against a Breitbart gadfly.
Too much reading of Jane Austen, and her free indirect speech!
All I need to do is vaguely describe what I want people to think you said, and damn you for my words, I needn't actually quote you and be honest about it.

You'd think Catholics especially would balk at such dishonesty deception, lies, this method having been used against the Church for.... well, forever.
(Soon to be saint,) Fulton Sheen, anyone?

“There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.”

The devil's having a grand old time this election.

Dear NYTimes -- Stop Othering

Are you aware of how dismissively "other" this declares your black readership to be?

#HereIsMyAmericaHow well do we understand the multifaceted lives of black Americans? Or the lives of anyone of color?

2d agoBy BAYETÉ ROSS SMITH

I used to be painfully aware of this casual and unthinking othering in regard to women, (TV Guide would have no trouble describing a crime-fighting duo as "a reformed criminal and a woman," "a hard-nosed cop and a blonde,") and I had to fight this in a former parish where we would have bi-lingual programs and the Spanish was given phonetically.
To consider maleness, or whiteness or English speaking-ness a default is to belittle woman, blacks, Spanish speakers.
Is the white anglophone male even normative anymore?
Shouldn't the flagship of there is no abnormal therefore there is no normal be beyond this?

A Hierarchy of Atrocities, How the "News" Ranks Tragedy

Why do American news outlets give so much more coverage to one act of barbarity than to another?
They seem to have so much more to say about murders at a shopping center in Munich than a suicide bombing in Kabul.
Is the level of the victims' otherness the deciding factor?
Is where Americans might vacation?
Is war news fatigue to blame? (Oh, some more of those people have blown up yet more others of those people...)

And in nightclub shootings, it seemed there was an immediate effort to put a  face on the Orlando victims, even while a stand-off was occurring.
Not so with the children killed in Ft Myers.
Is that because in the Pulse incident both victims and murderer were members of privileged-by-forces-of-political-correctness classes? (Never mind the rush to blame the atrocity on those who were members of neither of the two.)

Then what to make of news reports on the Club Blu horror? Clearly from news photos, twitter postings and facebook videos, the club's teen-aged clientele was primarily, if not exclusively black. Is that not relevant?
And if not, why not?
Are victims' identity as African-American, (presumably, though one cannot tell residence or citizenship from photos and names,) teen-agers of less moment that that of Latino homosexuals, do they matter less, is it a less "sex" story?
Or conversely, is neglect of such details an effort to forestall commentary on black-on-black crime, whether that be rational or bigoted?

My hear is sick, how the world needs prayer!

"I Suffered Quite a Lot As a Goat"

Sure, why not.......?

When the rat race became too much for [an eejit the Daily Mail has decided to enable/humor/exploit] he quit London and became a goat... in Switzerland. The 35-year-old spent a year creating prosthetic 'goat legs' that would allow him to roam the Alps comfortably on all fours and an artificial stomach that would enable him to blend in and 'eat grass'. [the eejit]  said..."I was constantly falling over, and of course I had to eat grass."

Well yes, there is that.

'When I first had the idea a lot of people called me crazy, but I was fed up with my life anyway and I needed a break. I was jobless and I had a lot of personal problems, and I found everyday life so stressful.... as he was not keen on meat he decided against becoming a dog.
[The eejit]  said the idea of 'being an elephant had appealed' but then he realised they 'seem to have the same problems we do - they get sad, they get upset and they can even suffer from post-traumatic stress. That was exactly the sort of thing I was trying to get away from.'

Eventually he settled on the idea of being a goat....
'I learned something important, and that is that even goats have a hard life and need to fight for their existence. Every day was tough, and that is something that just is part of being alive.
'The one other thing I reckon I found is that goats are better people. They live much more in the moment than we do, and show us that we really do need to learn to be a bit more relaxed about life.'
Now he has written a book

Of course he has.
But wait, didn't Barth cover that?

"A Problem With the Truth"

While futzing around with tea and coffee and the morning news and getting ready for Mass this a.m., Himself asked if I had head the name, X, a "journalist,"  for a "major" "news" organization, (Oh dear! I'm going to run out of scare quotes!) forced to return a Pulitzer because she had fabricated her entire winning story.
He brought it up because he had just come across the Gabriel García Márquez bon mot, "it was unfair that she won the Pulitzer prize, but also unfair that she didn't win the Nobel Prize in Literature."
I refreshed his memory that it was only yesterday that we were discussing a Times piece about the growing problem of the dubious veracity of "documentary" movies which ought better to have been released with the "Inspired by true events" tagline.
There is a whole new style of documentary, challenged, no doubt but how compelling Ken Burns' (honest, excellent,) work is, to sex up their under-researched offerings with "re-enactments" of events that are imagined rather than attested to; completely bogus "facts" are presented, and the film-makers absolve themselves from their lies by saying, "not everyone agrees" and devoting a tenth of the time spent on the fiction to some sober, boring truth. (The Hitler History Channel, NGC, Discovery provide an outlet for much of this stuff.)
Then as we tangentalized the conversation into the recent spate of Advocacy Fiction Masquerading as Journalism, (e.g., Sabrina Eredely's campus rape hoax, the New York Times with the Duke lacrosse story, or its ugly and insensitive "embarrassment to Ireland" exploitation of the death of students at the hands of a criminally crooked construction company); deliberately spun yarns, (Blair, Glass,) reporters and editors too lazy or harried or eager, to fact check when scams are fed to them as news by PR hacks or comedians, (wolves in the Olympic hotel?); outright shills.... he realized that he hadn't noticed the sheer volume, how very ordinary, almost expected dishonesty has become in institutions in which one once had some trust.

Fr Ra Blake has a blog on Amoris Laetitia, but I'm going to leave that for now. I haven't really digested the, (yes, Father, very long,) document, or his opinion on it.
This is what I want to be read, I want people to notice -

I think the crisis in the Church is one of integrity. Benedict interpreted it as a crisis of the disintegration of the liturgy, following the idea that we believe what we say and do in the liturgy, lex credendi lex orandi. It stems of course from the 2nd Commandment,  that if we keep Holy the name of God, nothing we do in the name of God should be trivial or false, that our "yes means yes and no means no". The ending of our  prayers, "Through Our Lord Jesus Christ ..." turns them into a sacred oath. Lies and obfuscation have no place in the Christian life. There must be something very different in way Christians speak, most especially bishops and priests, Christ after all spoke with authority, unlike the religious and political leaders of his day. His words were witnessed to by God himself, the Father and the Spirit witness to Him as the Truth. It is as the Truth that Pilate is incapable of recognising Him, and therefore as the Truth that He is condemned and crucified. Those who are on the side of Truth listen to His voice, because He is the Word of God, the Son of the Father, full of Grace and Truth.
The child abuse crisis and consequent episcopal cover-ups revealed the Church or rather ["SOME of", please, Father!] its leaders as being without integrity, as being far from the truth, in fact many were shown to be downright liars. If we are to witness to the truth of Christ we need to be men and women of total integrity, the knotty wood of the Cross is the great sign of integrity, it is through our trustworthiness as witnesses to the resurrection that others are called to believe, if the Church cannot be trusted we cannot be faithful witnesses.
Perhaps it is not just in the Church but in society in general that there is a problem with the truth, manipulation by politicians, journalists, spin-doctors, political correctness, language manipulation all in one way or another create an environment of mistrust in which communion/communication between human beings breaks down. Its the tower of Babel situation there are so many voices crying out but no-one can hear what is being said. The Church is supposed to be different, making out of many nations one people, with one certain truth, down the centuries the Church has sought truth, the One Truth, now it seems to me that the Church is following the world, that bishops are emulating politicians, that we are not so much concerned with truth as its application or spin, that we no longer see truth as person but a commodity.

The Paper of Record Axe-grinding?

(You may notice, I have resumed complaining following my Holy Week fast.)
Mother Mary Angelica, nee Rita Rizzo, in the words of the President of the USCCB, an “extraordinary woman, devout believer and media pioneer,” merited a fairly long obit in the au gust ful New York Times, and rightly so.
She had an influence on both mass media and religion in his county such as has not been seen since Billy Graham, I would opine.
The Times, of course, was desperate for a death to outrank hers on their obituary page. They didn't actually find one, though they pretended otherwise.

What struck me in their "reporting" was that they found two American prelates whose opposition to her and her work they could include in the piece.

Well, no, not really that.
Of course anyone who actually accomplishes anything is going to make, at the very least, frenemies.

I think the Cardinal and the Archbishop the Time cited qualify as actual enemies.

But seriously, (and just to let you know where I'm coming from, I have never been a particular fan of Mother Angelica, though I admire her work immensely, and have grown to admire her more and more over the years,) how could you quote a liberal churchman or two with whom she had run-ins without noting that one of them resigned in disgrace and the other was relieved of ministerial duties in his disgraced retirement because, um, SHE WAS RIGHT?
Their liberal "morality" and ecclesiology was bankrupt.

Would you quote Cardinal Law on Church governance without noting ... a lack of credibility?

The Merciful Murderers

What does it say about me, what does it say about the world, when a headline about some atrocity draws my attention
and I am relieved to see that the Islamists responsible for the killing being reported merely shot their victims, instead of employing a more grisly, more barabric method?

Another Day, Another "Wait, WHAAAT? ....That's Not What He Said"

One of my husband's siblings has a calling, in life: to take the joy and fun out of any pleasant reminiscences by droning, "That's not the way it happened...."
Now, I don't mean this person corrects libels, our postman, growin' up, killed his best friend so that he could marry the widow, I always heard) or contradicts life-threatening advice, (yup, gramps drank a quart of motor oil every day, and that's why he lived to be 103.)

No, this is more like interrupting to deliver unnecessary information such as that the rooster that attacked the five of them that day at the swimming pond was red, not white, and belonged to to Old Man Otto, not the Pederesons, and anyway, we shouldn't have skipped school -- thereby sucking the life out of the presentations of some very, very gifted Blarney-mongers.

But I am here to apologize for the ill-will this has provoked in me over the 15 years I've known the family, as I now see such people are absolutely vital.
Several of them should travel with the Pope at all times, and others should be dispatched to  keep an eye on every journalist who thinks to report on what Francis is purported to have said.

What can be done about bloggers, I don't know....

Francis stopped reading the written text and said... Communion is a vital form of the Church and the unity of Her Pastors is evidence of Her veracity… There is no need for “principles” but for a community of witnesses to the Lord.

Huh?
We need not have PRINCIPLES??!??!??
Well, no.
"Princes."
He said the Church don't need no stinkin' "princes".
An honest mistake by Rorate, or Google translate, or whoever, the two words are the same in Italian.
So I think we need not to get worked up about what was said to have been said, as I said.

But here's the other problem - official translations coming out of the Vatican seem, often, to be very slow in coming, (not this case.)

Whose fault is this?

Doesn't at least a little of it devolve on the person who insists on going off script, not giving those who serve him any kind of heads up, ignoring the fact that the Prince of Lies is having a field day with those of us who think what the Pope has to say might be important and so WANT to pay attention, and tossing handfuls of ammo to those whose agenda is to destroy this "communion", this "unity"?

Just a thought, Holy Father.

And Interwebs, how about a little compassion for the Mexican episcopacy, who need to try to hear and understand him even more urgently than we laity do - isn't it possible some of their reaction is to what it was said that the Holy Father said rather than what he actually said? For that matter, my Spanish is lacking, but some of the reaction to their statement may be based on faulty understanding of what they said and what they meant.
Charity.

"Does a swimmer say 'I’ve never gotten wet'?”

I...
I don't know.
I really had nothing to say about politics.

In the coming presidential race, I honestly did not know who I might support, at one point I couldn't even say which party's nominee would more likely get my vote.
I still can't - at least with any real certainty.

But I have, not to be too melodramatic about it, a feeling of impending doom.
Is that boor's presidency a real possibility?
Is the media to blame for initially not taking him seriously as a political figure, while all too ready to take him seriously as a ratings generating entertainment powerhouse? and now, too late, trying to shine a spotlight on the monster they helped spawn?

Am I to blame, as one of a hoard of a snarky, mocking, prideful, It-Couldn't-Happen-Here grasshoppers, to blame?

Unlike some... (unlike ME! I have always pooh-poohed Himself's Chicken Little tendencies!) I think the World's soul is in peril from more than politics and war, I really do.
I am starting to see many things... Coming To An End.
People who should be worried, should be helping, should be taking things in hand are tuning up their Strads.

Forgive us, Lord.

I wrote this article  and sent it to [his] team in hopes that they would respond. But they never did. I cannot imagine what their world must be like. Who knows? It probably got lost in some email basket out there. But I tried because I felt that that would be more appropriate to do.

It’s a high stakes thing from my perspective because people make decisions about Christ on the basis of Christians and how we behave. If he’s going to call himself a Christian one day and call someone a bimbo the next or make fun of somebody’s menstrual cycle, it’s just beyond reason to me.

There was one occasion he held up a Bible. On another occasion, at Liberty University, he read from Scripture. On multiple occasions he’s said “Of course I’m a Christian.” There was a time in Iowa when he said “I’m a Christian,” and somebody asked about forgiveness and he said “I’ve never asked God for forgiveness.”

I can’t imagine that. I’m just shaking my head going “How does that work?” Does a swimmer say “I’ve never gotten wet?” Does a musician say “I’ve never sung a song?” How does a person claim to be a Christian and never need to ask for forgiveness?

Wait.

A correction, a little edit.

Forgive me, Lord.

Dishonest Heart-tugging by CBS

Last night the national news had a touching piece about a badly wounded vet who was finally going to have a child with his wife, thanks to in vitro fertilization.

But thanks to the mean mean meanies who oppose abortion, the Veterans Administration won't pay for such procedures for vets whose reproductive organs have been damaged.

The reporting pretty much left it at that, as if "no help for soldiers who have lost their testicles" was some kind of casualty of an unrelated pro-life initiative, you know, the way congress like to tie extraneous amendments to must-pass bills as a way of sneaking them past media/constituents/sleeping congressmen?

They could have at least had the decency to explain that in vitro fertilization invariably involves the creation of multiple lives in the hope of obtaining on or two babies, the others that are not implanted to be destroyed, or frozen.
And in fact, even some that are successfully implanted are often times deliberately destroyed - "selective reduction" they call it, when they abort two or three of the quads a woman is carrying.

Opposition to in vitro by pro-lifers is not "the product of anti-abortion politics" it is the only logical attitude for us to have as long as the method continues to effect the creation and subsequent destruction of other human lives in the quest for one.

Commiting Suicide... "Not That There's Anything Wrong With That?"

Speaking of the knee jerk revulsion to certain matters but the PC insistence that they are not wrong, or repellent -
How do the chattering classes decide amongst themselves when a suicide is "tragic", and when it is "courageous" and "inspiring"?
And what about The Powers That Be in, say, Belgium?
Do they have suicide prevention hotlines?
Or suicide encouragement death with dignity hotlines?
Are any suicides there officially tragic? Are there some suicides out of which the government and the society try to talk people?
Which are which?
I'm sure they know, and I'm sure they are right, and I'm sure that I am just too obtuse to comprehend on my own the differentiation between the hunky-dory ones and the bad ones, but how do our betters determine who goes on which list?
It's not just the method, is it? Is it how useful or useless the dead might have been in the eyes of the chatterer?
   

Let Me Get This Straight, AP, I Can Call Myself a Man, If I Want To....

Even though I have a uterus and the XX chromosomes with which I was born, and the breasts I, uh... grew along the way, I can call myself a "man" if I want to, and the Associated Press will respect that, and use male pronouns for me.

You know, if I said that was how I "self-identify."

But it doesn't matter that I self-identify as such, the AP won't call me "pro-life"?

I asked if they considered themselves “pro-life,” even though Associated Press style didn’t approve! AP’s preferred language is “anti-abortion,” which we’re using in this article.

Aside from that fascinating fact, this is a very interesting, and very honest casual survey of pro-life demonstrators, from the point of view of a journalist who... what, is pro choice? Probably, since she treats pro-lifers as an exotic, hitherto unknown bunch.
But her position is irrelevant, because it's just fair, honest reporting.
And it's nice to see acknowledged, for a change, that the Pro-Life movement is no more monolithic than the Pro-Choicers.

I was cracking ice off of the tips of my touch-screen gloves and surveying protesters, trying to learn who had come to the march and what kind of post-post-Roe v. Wade world they wanted to build....
The majority of the marchers weren’t protesting abortion simply as an abstract, political problem. Seventy-two percent of the people I surveyed told me that they knew someone personally who had had an abortion....
The crowd I surveyed matched some expectations of the anti-abortion movement (83 percent of people I spoke to were Catholic), but the crowd was younger (36 percent under 25) than I expected and, for a movement often lumped into a war on women, included more women than men (60 percent female).

Rolling Stone Reporter Not Noted For Her Journalistic Rigor Strikes Again, But That's Not My Question

A "journalist" who's been down this road before apparently helped whip up outrage about a innocent man accused of rape.
But, you know, it was a chance to get in some licks on an institution that stands against everything much of what Rolling Stone is for, so what difference did it make if it was all a lie, and if men went to jail while the liar made a financial killing, and had their reputations ruined, and died in prison?

What difference?

It served its purpose.

It's a horrible, horrible, ugly, ugly story, and it's pretty completely covered in the linked Newsweek article, but I am left with one very off topic question.

How is a 67-year-old man suffering from heart disease handcuffed to a hospital bed, kept under armed guard, and possibly "denied a ... lifesaving heart operation"; when we are a society so solicitous of the welfare of our prison population that their elective sex-change operations are covered?

Maybe Pennsylvania is backward....
(Yes, I'm aware that that is not a trans-sexual, much less a prison inmate, but rather than marvelous Sean Bean. Or is it Seane Beane? or Swhawn Bhawn? Anyway, it's a joke. Just because it isn't funny doesn't mean it's not a joke.)

"Jesus Betrays His People"

(I know this is grossly out of date, blame Facebook's algorithms, which somehow decided this should be linked to something current I was reading today.)

As the Lord concludes his meeting with His apostles this week, He reveals Himself as grossly out of touch with both grassroots Judaism and with the Sanhedrin. While there were certainly some who objected, He set forth an agenda that has little to do with the Huffington Post's wishes, and is opposed by the majority of Huffington Pot's readers.

I realize poor Miss Duddy-Burke supports certain sins, perhaps because she herself is unable to resist their temptation, or from mistaken notions of mercy toward others who are drawn to them.
And it is undoubtedly true that many sins are almost universally committed.
But where would anyone with even the most tenuous grasp of what Jesus and His Bride teach get the idea that the morality or immorality of an act or attitude,  of, yes, its fidelity to the Gospel of Jesus, is determined by majority vote?
Most people lie, for instance - is that evidence that it isn't wrong?

What about that survey, (probably deeply flawed and inaccurate,) that purported to show that one third of college men would commit rape given a consequence-free opportunity?
HAD the number been higher - would that have somehow made rape a morally permissible choice, and signal a "betrayal" by those who were still ag'n' it?

Use your brains, people, if you won't use your souls, at least use your brains!

Domestic Terrorism and the Thoughtless Use of the "M" Word

Yesterday, I listened to news on NPR; they did a short item on the re-opening of the Inland Regional Center, where an atrocity, a mass shooting was carried out by, and I quote, "a married couple."

Why did NPR insist on identifying them as "Married"?

I am getting sick and tired of Maritalphobia.

Marriage is the Relationship of Peace.

“No Relationship condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of this Married Couple's victims were either Married, or the product of Marriages,” the president has said.

Only bigots would exhibit such a closed-minded dislike of or prejudice of Married Couples, blaming the actions of a few Married Persons on Matrimony as a whole.
Yet there has been a drastic rise in the harassment of the Married, mostly directed at Married women, perhaps because they are easy to identify in public because of their wedding rings, a small bit of metal worn by "Wives", especially in the presence of adult males outside of their immediate family.

We don't know that it was their Marital status that turned these two people into killers.

One of them may have been exposed to Radical Matrimony, but that is the not representative of Marriage as a whole. 

I think the media needs to be more responsible in throwing around the word "Married" in reporting of crimes committed by people who espouse this distorted understanding of Marriage.

"Well who the hell are WE to say people should be prevented from blowing thier brains out?!??" asks the New York Times

Or wait, they didn't.
Or actually came out in support of suicide prevention.
Except when they aren't.
But by "they", I don't mean "they" because there's the paper, (LOL! do they even have any readers of "paper" anymore?) and then there's the "Editorial Board."
Which speaks for the paper, right?
Although, of course, in the pages of the Op-Ed, they may give space to other viewpoints.
Except when they point blank refuse to.
Because a multiplicity of opinions can be countenanced, should actually be encouraged.
Except when it can't because anyone who disagrees is a poopyhead.

Got it?

So.
If stricter gun control will help prevent suicides, than civilized people have no choice but to support it. ("But we should try to save as many people as possible.")
You know, because that's an absolute value, keeping distraught people from offing themselves.
Unless we approve of the means said distraught people have chosen.
Then we're in favor of it, (a "governor should sign into law a bill that would allow some terminally ill patients to hasten their death.")

One might be forgiven for suspecting that it's only guns to which the New York Times Editorial Board objects, that they hold guns to be objectively evil, but find suicide morally neutral.
At least, that's the only logical defense I can find for rationalizing the two different stances.

And I say this as a supporter of stricter gun control, who hates what the NRA, at least currently, stands for, and who despises the cowardice of its congressminions..

"Ut duo sint"?

A Catholic/Jewish panel in Rome has issued a statement.

Par for the course from the Vatican nowadays, clear as mud and flexible enough to support 'most any position already held by anyone.

The secular press, (and, true, the portions of the Catholic media less given to precision in reportage than I might like,) ,) is therefore to be forgiven for stating flatly that "the Vatican says".. Catholics "should not try to convert" the Jewish people.

The document is far more equivocal and far less authoritative that NPR et al would have it be, but hard as any German bishop or rabbi might wish, it does not really say quite that.

Rather than actually proscriptively banning such evangelization, the doc, (which clear states of itself that it is "not a magisterial document or doctrinal teaching" of the Church, descriptively  says how things are at the present time, that the Church "neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission work directed towards Jews," and it "is not a matter of missionary efforts to convert Jews" which is "a very delicate and sensitive matter," and "must be presented correctly."
The Jewish people are unique, unlike any other non-Christians, occupying a special and privileged place.
BUT, the Church's members are "nonetheless called to bear witness to their faith in Jesus Christ also to Jews," since She believes in the "universality of salvation in Jesus Christ," She "cannot refrain from proclaiming Jesus as Lord and Messiah," and yeah, sure, the "figure of Jesus thus is and remains for Jews the ‘stumbling block’", and the Old Testament is meaningless for Christians unless interpreted through the "key" of Jesus Christ, who is the "cornerstone" of the faith.
"Jesus Christ is the universal mediator of salvation,...there is no other."

Oh, and yeah, forced conversions and violence and antisemitism are bad and soup kitchens are good.
What was that commission Christ gave his disciples? and how did He pray to the Father?

"Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, except the Jews, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching everyone, oh, but like I said before, leave the Jewish people out of it, to observe all that I have commanded you." 
"I pray that they may all be one, but, You know, with the usual exceptions, as You, Father, are in me and I in you... but now that I think of it, You and I are one but We're also kind of two, so yeah, like that, I pray that they all may be two...."

.... said Jesus NEVER. 

"Europe, You Will Pay"

I have two very different circles of "friends" on Facebook, (some of both genuinely are friends as opposed to "friends,") one very right wing, one very left, both politically and socially.

I  grow weary, at times, of the posts of both. (Note - none of them support anyone but Carson and Sanders. No Rubio, no Clinton, no Bush, no O'Malley... moderation is in short supply.)

And I have knee jerk reactions to many posts but besides being weary, I am wary - so often a stance, even one with which I utterly agree, is supported by some obvious lie or absurdity. "Evidence" is provided in the form of graphs or listicles that are patently false.
But it isn't always obvious, and I try to stay in low-to-medium dudgeon until I investigate a bit.

Right now in the wake of the Paris Massacre, propagandists for both anti-Islamic Fundamentalism partisans, and anti-Islamophobia partisans are working at capacity.

There's a photo that runs with the "see I told you so" posts and blogs and tweets, without apparent irony, where in addition to the, "Behead the Infidel" signs, there's a swarthy and swathed protester carrying a placard that say, "Europe you will pay."
Seems plausible.
But his slogan continues,  "Fantastic 4 are on the way!!!"

 

Hence, my initial reaction - these people, over-eager to convince everyone of the dangers of a Muslim Europe, have used someone's, (the Onion's perhaps?) completely fake, staged photo unwittingly. (The saintly Eccles is not among the over-eager dupes, of course, as.... well, as he's Eccles. He is wittingly witty.)
An Icelandic site, not much help, as my Icelandic is only googlish, in fact, I thought it was Finnish, at first.)
But only a very little bit more effort, and I am comfortable thinking that this is indeed a photo of a real and hate-filled demonstration, with a minor photo-shopped joke, (from a number of years ago.)

Maybe I am a sap, but I have at least a little trust in the BBC, (not it's opinions, but it's facts.)

The technology that allows one to look into such matters is, of course, the same technology that makes the spread of misinformation possible.

Those Interwebs giveth, and those Interwebs taketh away.

PR Coup by Creep Preparing to Quit His Job, World Press Fall For It

Or at least, so it seems.

[The media] today is catching up to how [a snake] hoodwinked them to get maximum publicity for an upcoming book....“He also promised an exclusive to us,” [admits one journalist]... It appears [two] publications thought the [clown] was going to come out on their pages. 
They were wrong. [One periodical] draws out the following conclusion from what happened:
[The magazine's editor] writes today in the piece, “The Global Marketing of [the guy in question],” that “the main intention of Saturday’s spectacle was the promotion of a forthcoming book by the [con man]” He also concludes that, “I don’t doubt that the loud [PR move] will lead to the sale of tens of thousands of books.”
One is reminded of Lenin’s remark in What is to be Done?:

A newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, it is also a collective organizer.

[The scoundrel] used God, [claims of victimhood], and the ... press to organize a big paycheck for himself. This is how you should stage-manage your “martyrdom.”
Ahh, the things we won’t do for our Good Lord Mammon.

Hard to believe this guy isn't being head-hunted by American PR concerns. He's got game.