R. J. Grigaitis

September 19, 2009
Tim Hortons Head Office
874 Sinclair Road
Oakville, ON L6K 2Y1

To whom it may concern:

I had a morality crises today. I asked my daughters, “Mommy wants a coffee and five Timbits. Does anyone else want any Timbits?” One said she’d have some, but the other said, “I’ll have two, but don’t get any chocolate.” I asked, “Why not?” She replied, “Because they’re not fair trade.” I said, “Neither is the coffee, so what’s the difference?” She got angry with me, and explained that I shouldn’t buy Tim Hortons coffee either. This sparked an hour of discussion that involved some research on the internet.

We have three coffee shops in our home town: Two are Tim Hortons, and one is a Starbucks. The Starbucks is in our Safeway, and we usually only buy coffee there when we have to buy something at Safeway, which isn’t very often because we prefer to shop at another store. This means we usually go to one of the two Tim Hortons once or twice a day; buying a total of at least one large coffee and donut a day, and as much a four large coffee based drinks in addition to baked goods.

After our discussion and research, we’ve decided to switch to Starbucks solely on the fair trade issue. I’ve compared prices, and Starbucks is 12¢ more for 473 ml of coffee. This will add up to more than $50 a year, but we are willing to pay it in order to be sure a fair price is paid to the coffee grower.

We would consider switching back to Tim Hortons for convenience sake if Tim Hortons begins to use fair trade coffee and chocolate in all its products. Please contact me if this happens.

I have given a copy of this letter to the two Tim Hortons in town, and have posted a copy on my blog to encourage others to be more conscientious about their coffee and chocolate purchases.

Sincerely yours,
R. J. Grigaitis

Below is the response I received from the above letter. I obtain permission from the TDL Group to post this on my blog.

Dear Mr. Grigaitis,

Thank you for your questions regarding Tim Hortons and fair trade Coffee. We believe the best approach to address the long-term issues facing coffee growers is through a “coffee partnership” program. Although fair trade programs are admirable we decided against buying fair trade coffee and developing a program that works directly with the growers. The fair trade program requires certification on behalf of the farmers which is an expense they cannot usually afford plus it provides a price that has no relation to the quality of the coffee.

In 2005, we launched a coffee partnership pilot project to make a meaningful contribution in the fight against poverty amongst the people who are an integral part of the coffee industry. We also wanted to play a meaningful role in providing for the future supply of quality green coffee. The initial pilot project in Guatemala touches approximately 1,000 small coffee producers and their families and is intended to directly improve the living conditions of about 5,000 people. Under the program small coffee producers are being provided with technical support and training to help them increase the amount and quality of coffee they produce. Assistance is being provided to them to get their coffee to market, at the best time and for the best price, while emphasizing the need to respect and protect the environment. The program aims to improve the social conditions of the farmers and their families by identifying and addressing the pressing needs of the families, especially youth education.

In 2006, we launched two additional coffee partnership projects, one in Columbia and one in Brazil, with the result that these programs now touch the lives of approximately 9000 people.

With this new and innovative program, Tim Hortons is helping to improve the living conditions of thousands of small coffee farmers and their families. More importantly, we believe that Tim Hortons will set an example for the rest of the coffee industry and showcase how coffee can be produced in a sustainable way based on strong partnerships within the supply chain.

Kind Regards,

Sheila
Operations Services
The TDL Group Corp.

My reply to this was quite simple:

If fair trade certification is too expensive for your coffee growers to afford, then obviously you’re not paying them enough. I’ll stay with Starbucks because they pay their growers enough so that they can get fair trade certification.

This is the opening paragraph to an article I just read from LifeNews.com (http://www.lifenews.com/state4423.html):

Washington University has joined forces with Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Planned Parenthood of St. Louis to train abortionists. It is called the Family Planning Fellowship Program, and its stated goal is to “develop tomorrow’s leaders in reproductive health.”

The last two words made me stop and think: “Shouldn’t reproductive health involve reproduction?”

Cardiovascular health involves helping a heart pump blood throughout the vascular system. Any doctor that intentionally stops a cardiovascular system is not engaging in cardiovascular health, but murder.

Reproductive health involves helping the reproduction of human life. Any doctor that intentionally stops the reproduction process is not engaging in reproductive health. If a life is aborted, murder is committed.

I really didn’t think Barack Obama would become President of the United States of America. I didn’t think Americans would be so foolish. In particular, I thought  Catholic Americans would listen to their bishops who did everything they could to say not to vote for Obama without crossing the line of actually saying who to vote or not vote for. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Many of these “Catholics” don’t even know who their bishop is (if you do go to Mass, the name of your bishop gets mentioned in the Eucharistic Prayer).

I thought the day Obama was elected president was a very black day in American history; however, I’ve since changed my mind. According to recent polling data, Obama has had a very positive effect on Americans. It seems that Obama’s radical anti-life stance on a number of issues has wakened up sleeping Americans to these issues. What they really didn’t have an opinion on before, they are now forming an opinion, and that opinion is turning out to be pro-life.

Obama is doing a great job of showing what evil is possible within American borders, and the American public is taking note. The only problem is they have to wait a little more than three years before they can do anything about it.

I hope Sarah Palin runs for president in 2012.

I’ve been asked two questions concerning Hitler’s relationship with the Catholic Church that seem to demonstrate the Church’s culpability in the Holocaust: Why wasn’t Hitler excommunicated from the Catholic Church? And, why wasn’t Mein Kampf put on the Index of Forbidden Books?

It is true that Mein Kampf was never banned by the Catholic Church; however, this does not mean that the Church approved of the book. Mein Kampf was examined by the Vatican for three years before deciding not to ban the book. They had more than enough reason to ban the book, but they had a good reason not to, as well as something better than simply banning the book.

Although the Church did not approve of Hitler, he did come to power legally; thus, the best thing the Church could do was to get Germany to sign a concordat to secure certian rights of the Church within Germany. Banning a book written by the chancellor of Germany would not have been a wise diplomatic move, and would have likely hindered getting the concordat signed. Getting Germany to sign the concordat, however, gave the Church the right to do something better than banning Mein Kampf. Pius XI’s 1937 encyclical, Mit Brennender Sorge (With Burning Concern), was a direct assault on the Nazi ideology and a critique of Mein Kampf. It was not written in Latin, which is the usual language for papal encyclicals, but in German. Without any pre-announcement, copies were smuggled in to Germany and read from the pulpit of every Catholic church in Germany on Palm Sunday (Mass was two hours that day).

Mit Brennender Sorge was the first official denunciation of Nazism made by any major organisation, and because of the concordat that the Nazis had signed with the Catholic Church four years earlier, Catholic priests could legally read it from the pulpit. This did not stop Nazi reprisal, but it did help. The Catholic Church was not able to make such a massive affront to the Nazis again; however, the French did air drop 88,000 copies of Pius XII’s 1939 encyclical, Summi Pontificatus (On the Unity of Human Society), over Germany as Ally propaganda.

These two encyclicals make it very clear that the Catholic Church did not approve of Hitler or the Nazis; however, some say the Catholic Church could have taken an even further step in opposition by excommunicating Hitler.

Excommunicating Hitler would have been pointless. He left the Catholic Faith when he left his parents’ home. His own description of his religious beliefs was as “a complete pagan.” Nonetheless, any Catholic priest could have refused the sacraments to him because he would have been excommunicated ipso facto due to his numerous crimes. There is no evidence that Hitler ever attempted to receive the sacraments after his childhood, and since the only reason for excommunication is to help a sinner recognise the gravity of his sin, thus leading him to seek forgiveness, it would have achieved nothing in Hitler’s case.

The Church would have formally excommunicated Hitler if she felt that it would have had some positive effect, and, in the interest of both Christian and Jewish lives, the Church chose not to ban Mein Kampf.

On June 18, 2008, I left the following comment on Doug and Adele’s blog Journey to Therese:

Men are only a temporary necessity until women have a better technology. In the future, women will be able to clone themselves with the DNA of another woman’s egg. They’ll both have the the X chromosomes so there won’t be any more men. Face it, women will win the battle of the sexes!

I first heard of such an idea when I was in high School (last year was my 20 year reunion). LifeNews.com reports today that we’re one step closer to making this science fiction a reality.

It seems that scientists have created a human sperm using embryonic stem cells. Of course the embryonic stem cells came from an aborted child that was created with a naturally occurring sperm. However, if a number of sperm were created from one aborted child all of them could be used to fertilise a number of eggs in vitro. Once these children are implanted in to a woman, the most viable one or two could be left to live while the rest are all aborted to make more sperm. Do this over and over again and there will be no more need for men. The battle of the sexes would be over.

More seriously, judging by all the cloning results so far, if a child is ever brought to term using this method, he will have too many birth defects to live very long. Why do scientists want to cause so much unnecessary suffering and death?

Since, as my last post states, there are no photographs of Eugenio Pacelli and Hitler together, either before or after Pacelli became pope, the next best thing to discredit Pope Pius XII is a photograph of Hitler with the man that succeeded Pacelli as Papal Nuncio to Germany. Archbishop Cesare Orsenigo held this office from 1930 to 1945, which meant it was his job to represent the Vatican to whatever German government was in power. At first, it was the Weimar Republic, the president of which was Paul von Hindenburg (the photograph in my last post was of Pacelli leaving a birthday reception for von Hindenburg). Soon after von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany, the Weimar Republic gave way to the Third Reich, and it was to Hitler and his government that Archbishop Orsenigo had to direct all Vatican negotiations and diplomacy.

As the chief Vatican diplomat in Berlin, Orsenigo had opportunities to voice Vatican concerns directly to Hitler. Below is a photograph of one such occasion:

I received an e-mail from someone with a version of this photograph where everyone is cropped out except Orsenigo and Hitler.  Along with the picture is this text:

On April 20, 1939, Archbishop Orsenigo celebrated Hitler’s birthday. The celebrations, initiated by Pacelli (Pope Pius XII) became a tradition. Each April 20, Cardinal Bertram of Berlin was to send “warmest congratulations to the Fuhrer in the name of the bishops and the dioceses in Germany” and added with “fervent prayers which the Catholics of Germany are sending to heaven on their altars.”

(Source: Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII, by John Cornwell)

It is interesting to note the the source of this picture and text. The British edition of Hitler’s Pope has the photograph found in my last post on the cover with a caption dating the picture March of 1939. As I explained, this date is false. The cover of the American edition doesn’t give this false date, however, the picture has been doctored in such a way that this false date appears possible. I concluded that the doctoring of this photograph was not accidental, but a deliberate attempt to deceive people. Thus, the text that accompanies the above picture is questionable at best.

Did Pacelli initiate a tradition to celebrate Hitler’s birthday each April 20? He couldn’t have done it personally because, as I stated in my last post, Pacelli left Berlin never to return four years before Hitler came to power. He could have initiated it from Rome. If he did, he would have needed approval of Pope Pius XI, who died February 10, 1939.

Would Pius XI approve an initiative to celebrate Hitler’s birthday? Judging by correspondence between Orsenigo and the Vatican, the answer would be no!

In 1936, Orsenigo asked instructions regarding an invitation from Hitler to attend a Nazi Party meeting in Nuremberg, along with the entire diplomatic corps. Pacelli replied, ”The Holy Father thinks it is preferable that your Excellency abstain, taking a few days’ vacation.”

In 1937, Orsenigo was invited along with the diplomatic corps to a reception for Hitler’s birthday. Orsenigo asked the Vatican if he should attend. Pacelli’s reply was, “The Holy Father thinks not. Also because of the position of this Embassy, the Holy Father believes it is preferable in the present situation if your Excellency abstains from taking part in manifestations of homage toward the Lord Chancellor,”

In Hitler’s much publicised visit to Rome in 1938, Pius XI and Pacelli refused to meet with Hitler by leaving Rome a month early for the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo. Pius XI’s remarked, “The air in Rome makes me ill.”

The Vatican was closed, and the priests and religious brothers and sisters left in Rome were told not to participate in the festivities and celebrations surrounding Hitler’s Visit. On the Feast of the Holy Cross, Pius XI said from Castel Gandolfo, “It saddens me to think that today in Rome the cross that is worshipped is not the Cross of our Saviour.” (He was referring to the swastika.)

If this was the attitude of Pius XI and the future Pius XII (Pacelli), why was Orsenigo photographed at a birthday reception for Hitler on April 20, 1939? The answer is simple, this date is as reliable as the rest of the text with it. This photograph was actually taken at a New Year’s reception in Berlin on January 1, 1935.

What would Orsenigo and Hitler talk about on such occasions? We may not know what they were talking about in this photograph, but we do know that on May 4, 1939, Orsenigo voiced Pius XII’s concerns on what appeared to be an imminent war. Hitler showed little interest. Hitler gave the same response (or lack of) in November of 1943 when Orsenigo spoke on Pius XII behalf about the status of persecuted peoples in the Third Reich, apparently referring to Jews.

On these two occasions, Orsenigo met no success; however, diplomacy did have some affect, at least early on. A key to this diplomacy was the Reichskonkordat, which I mentioned in my last post. I found this photograph of the signing of this concordat online, along with the following text:

The Concordat between the Vatican and the Nazis

Cardinal Secretary of State, Eugenio Pacelli (later to become Pope Pius XII) signs the Concordat between Nazi Germany and the Vatican at a formal ceremony in Rome on 20 July 1933. Nazi Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen sits at the left, Pacelli in the middle, and the Rudolf Buttmann sits at the right.

The Concordat effectively legitimized Hitler and the Nazi government to the eyes of Catholicism, Christianity, and the world.

There is some truth in this text, but only a selected portion of the truth. The goal of getting this concordat signed was not to legitimise Hitler and the Nazi government, but to secure the rights of the Church in Germany. Pacelli had been working for such a concordat since the 1920s, but was unsuccessful. When Hitler came to power, he accepted the concordat proposed to the Weimar Republic to gain international respectability. However, the concordat helped the Jews more than it helped the Nazis.

The concordat gave priests and bishops the right to speak out against moral wrong doing, so they were able to legally condemn Nazism as time went along. It also prohibited Catholic priests and bishops from joining the Nazi Party. (Protestant ministers were not protected in both of these regards.) Most importantly, the memorandum accompanying the ratification to the concordat specified that “Jews must be treated with Christian Charity.”

Five months after the concordat was signed, the Austrian bishops stated the following in a letter:

The concordat recently concluded between the Holy See and Germany does not mean that the Catholic Church approves of the religious errors of Nazism. Everybody knows how tense is the situation between the Church and State in Germany. . . . The Catholic Church has never agreed with the three fundamental errors of Nazism, which are first, race madness, second, violent anti-Semitism, and third extreme nationalism.

Between 1933 and 1939, Pacellie issued more than fifty protests of concordat violations, mostly over the treatment of the Jews. In these protests, the language used regarding violations against the Jews was virtually identical to the language used regarding violations against Catholics.

Another important feature of the concordat was that the Church had standing to protect and object to the maltreatment of Catholics. The Church used this to protect Jews by issuing false baptismal certificates. A few Jews were actually baptised, but for the most part, they were issued the certificates without being baptised.

As these historical facts suggest, Catholics were discouraged from honouring Hitler, both by Pope Pius XI and by Pope Pius XII. When possible, Vatican diplomats, such as Archbishop Eugenio Pacelli and Archbishop Cesare Orsenigo, did everything they could to protect Catholics, Jews, and anybody else persecuted by the Nazis. In attempting to secure such protection, these Vatican diplomats had to negotiate face to face with Nazis, including Hitler himself. To suggest that such diplomacy with the Nazis was collaboration is utterly ridiculous. Unfortunately, by simply putting deceiving captions under actual photographs, many are misled.

In an e-mail discussion with someone, I was told, “Just do a google and you will see many pictures of the Pope and Hitler together.” The implication is that if they were photographed together, they must be collaborators, or the very least, on friendly terms. This, of course, is a faulty argument because before Eugenio Pacelli became Pope Pius XII, he was papal nuncio to Germany. This meant that it was his job to represent the Vatican to whatever German government was in power.

Expecting to find something vaguely incriminating I’d have to explain, I did a Google search of images with the query «Hitler pope» and got a lot of hits. I went through the first 32 pages of images, and didn’t find a single picture of the pope and Hitler together. What I did find was this photograph, along with a number of copies of a doctored version:

According to some sources, this is a photograph of Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII, leaving the presidential palace in Berlin in March 1939. He is supposed to be leaving a meeting with Hitler. You can’t miss the profile of Pacelli, but the date must be wrong because Pacelli was elected pope on March 2, 1939. He would have been in the conclave the day before, so it would have been impossible for him to be in Berlin in March of 1939.

It is obvious that the two soldiers on either side of the staircase are Weimar soldiers and not Nazi soldiers, so the photograph must have been taken before 1933. The doctored version of this photograph fixes this discrepancy by cropping the nearest soldier out of the picture, and blurring the rest of the photograph so that one can’t tell if the other soldier is a Weimar soldier or a Nazi. The helmets are similar, so once the farther soldier is blurred, it’s easy to mistaken him as a Nazi.

Another mistake that is easy to make when the photograph is blurred is to think that the chauffeur saluting Pacelli is an SS officer. To help this deception, the open car door is also cropped out.

The car door itself is also a hint to the actual date of the photograph because it has square corners. This is typical of the 1920s. By the 1930s they were rounded. In addition to making the chauffeur look like a saluting SS officer by cropping out the car door, it hides the fact that that car pre-dates the Third Reich. It would be very unusual for a diplomat, such as a papal nuncio like Pacelli, to be chauffeured around in an old car.

It is very revealing that although the doctored version of this photograph is blurred, Pacelli’s unmistakable face is not blurred in the least. In the original, you can make out all the faces, but in the doctored version, only Pacelli’s face is clear. This could not be an accident. Whoever doctored this photograph wanted to deceive people.

This photograph was actually taken in October of 1927. Pacelli, as papal nuncio to Germany, was leaving a birthday reception for Paul von Hindenburg, president of the Weimar Republic. This is twelve years before Pacelli became pope, and six years before Hitler became Chancellor of Germany.

Another interesting fact is that Pacelli never actually met Hitler, even though Pacelli was the first papal nuncio in Berlin and was in Munich at the same time as Hitler. Pacelli was appointed nuncio to Bavaria in 1917, and since there was no nuncio to Prussia or Germany, he was the Vatican representative to the entire German Empire. After World War I, Pacelli was one of the few foreign diplomats to remain in Munich. The night of the Hitler-Ludendorff-Putsch in 1923, the only member of the Bavaria cabinet that was not at the Bürgerbräu Keller was Franz Matt, who was having dinner with Munich Archbishop Michael von Faulhaber and Papal Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli. In 1925,  the German nunciature was moved to Berline, and in 1929 Pacelli left Germany never to return. This was four years before Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. When Pacelli signed the  Reichskonkordat for the Vatican in 1933, Hitler didn’t sign it, but sent his vice chancellor, Franz von Papen, to Rome to sign for Germany. This is why there are no photographs of Pacelli and Hitler together. Due to the timing of diplomatic appointments, they never had a chance to meet.

The doctoring of this photograph, and the incorrect historical information that sometimes accompanies it only demonstrates the lengths that some hateful men will go to discredit a very good man.

I haven’t watched David Letterman since I was in high-school (my 20 year reunion was last year, so he must be getting pretty old); however, this exchange between him and Governor Sarah Palin has caught my attention. It’s not the crudeness of Letterman’s joke that caught my attention (although I did send an e-mail to CBS through the American Family Association asking for an apology). What really caught my attention was the environment in which this joke was deemed acceptable.

I accept that Letterman made a mistake about which daughter was with Governor Palin at the ball game, and that the intended subject of the joke was Bristol and not Willow. What I don’t accept is that the American public seems to think that this joke is acceptable now that Bristol is 18 years old. Implying that Bristol Palin is promiscuous because she became pregnant at 17 by who she thought would be her future husband is completely unacceptable.

What is even worse is that if she were promiscuous, as long as she didn’t get pregnant, likely no one would make a joke because she’d be considered a normal teenager. If the Palin family decided to keep the whole thing quiet and make Bristol have an abortion, there would be no joke because nobody would know (Do the laws in Alaska allow teenagers to get abortions with out their parent knowledge? If not, Obama will soon give them such rights.)

Bristol made a mistake by having pre-marital sex with the person she thought she was going to marry. Now that it looks like they aren’t going to get married, she’s probably regretting it; although, I’m sure she and the whole Palin family do not regret having little baby Tripp.

There are many young women that make the same mistake. Sometimes they go on to marry the father of their child. Sometimes these are good and happy marriages where the only person the couple ever know sexually is their marriage partner. Sometimes the story isn’t so happy. Nonetheless, it is appalling that these moral young women are the subject of such vulgar humour.

It is an appalling and sad reflection on western culture: It’s OK to have pre-marital sex, just don’t get pregnant, but if you do, just have an abortion before anyone knows. It doesn’t matter. Just don’t have a baby before you’re married.

I’ve been following the George Tiller story, and there’s one thing I just don’t understand: Why are so many pro-abortion advocates drawing a connection between this killing and the pro-life movement? Anyone with any acquaintance with the pro-life movement will know the aim of this movement is the protection of life from conception to natural death. This means that the pro-life movement entails a lot more than just an anti-abortion agenda. The agenda also includes being anti-euthanasia, anti-human cloning, anti-human embryonic stem cells research and anti-death penalty (It should also include being anti-contraception, but I’m not going to debate that right now).

George Tiller did not die a natural death; therefore, the person responsible for his death is not pro-life. In case any pro-abortion advocates miss this, I’ll say it again. The person responsible for George Tiller’s death is not pro-life. It is a contradiction to say that a murderer is pro-life. The issue gets a little fuzzy with the just war theory and with self-defence, but in this case, the issue is clear: it was wrong for George Tiller’s killer to take Dr. Tiller’s life.

Over and over again, pro-life groups have been denouncing Dr. Tiller’s killing and demonstrating they had no involvement, but they really shouldn’t have to. When a drug lord is murdered, anti-drug advocates don’t have to denounce the killing or prove their innocence to the media. Why are pro-life groups not given the same courtesy?

The man arrested and charged with Dr. Tiller’s killing, Scott Roeder, has no connection to any legitimate pro-life organisation. His family members, however, say he does suffer from a mental illness. Why doesn’t the media and pro-abortion advocates attack the mentally ill? We (that’s right, I have a mental illness) usually don’t kill anyone, but, unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Pro-life advocates, on the other hand, never kill anyone, if they do, they are no longer pro-life advocates.

It is a sad fact that some mentally ill persons succeed in killing people, most commonly themselves. It is an even sadder fact that far more people are killed through abortion than through mental illness. For the most part, people involved with abortion don’t fully realise that a person is being killed. If they did, only a few mentally ill persons or the most callous of people could actually go through with it. Many times the after affects of abortion induce mental illness, sometimes resulting in suicide.

The death of babies and the suicides over their deaths are what the pro-life movement is trying to prevent. Murdering an abortionist will not achieve this goal. Even though the facts prove otherwise, it seems that George Tiller is becoming a martyr for the pro-abortion cause. People believe the lie that “it’s not really a baby,” so they’re likely to believe the lie that the pro-life movement killed George Tiller.

The following quote comes from Wikipedia:

In God We Trust is the official motto of the United States and the U.S. state of Florida. The motto first appeared on a United States coin in 1864 during strong Christian sentiment emerging during the Civil War, but In God We Trust did not become the official U.S. national motto until after the passage of an Act of Congress in 1956. It is codified as federal law in the United States Code at 36 U.S. 302, which provides: “‘In God we trust’ is the national motto”.

Now that President Obama has made it clear that America is not a Christian nation, this motto must be changed. This is my suggestion based on what seems to be the number one basis of faith in the present U.S. administration:

“In Condoms we trust.”