• CATHOLIC LIFE

The Fire at the Parish School

 Mark Ingoglio May 30, 2022 0 Comments

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At first, I was ready to jump out of the front passenger side door when Rich’s car slowed down enough. Rethinking the plan, I didn’t want to make myself a victim by tripping over the gear on the floor between my feet. Thinking fast and staying in the zone is one thing. Tunnel vision is another; it’ll get you hurt or even killed.

Ten Years Ago

I don’t remember where we were headed to or heading out from when the tones dropped. I do remember the blast of radiant heat that rushed into the car when I opened my door along Broadway some two blocks or more from the scene. It was nighttime, 21 December 2010, and St. Peter’s School was on fire.

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I thanked my friend – one of our fire commissioners – for the ride as I kicked off my shoes to leave them in the car, and hopped out onto the pavement in my socks and pulled my gear out after me. Stepping into my boots, I hiked my bunker pants up by the suspenders, donned my helmet, tucked my coat under my arm (gloves and nomex hood tucked into one sleeve), and gave one last nod of the head in the driver’s direction. I shut the passenger door, I gingerly stepped over the police barricade, and we each went on our way.

I humped it – first downhill, then uphill – to the command center to learn the location of our apparatus and assignment. Crews coming out of the school were dressing down to t-shirts and shorts as fast as they could. As cold as the winter weather was, the heat from the fire was penetrating everything. The Incident Commander (IC) told me our guys were standing by in reserve with the apparatus about a block away. As I turned to start up another hill to Salvage-1, I  caught a glimpse of the building just as a new body of flame suddenly shot out of the uppermost windows and the roof.

Checking in with the Accountability Officer and donning the rest of my gear, I grabbed a tool from a side compartment on our apparatus and waited. After some time, a transmission came over the radio:

“Salvage, send a team down from your apparatus.”

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I keyed the mic.

“Salvage copies,” I confirmed.

We started to make our way to the structure – just as a new burst of fire exploded out of the top of the building. Upon arrival, we encountered Captain Brown descending the front steps, his helmet in his hands and a thick black stripe running right down the middle of it from front to back.  He plopped down on the tail step of a nearby apparatus as a firefighter came over to help him remove his air pack and get out of his coat.

Then I heard Brownie say, “She rolled. Came straight at us and there was nowhere to go.” Reverently looking at the scorched helmet lying beside him, he added, “Thank God she went right over the top of our heads.”

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We were told to move into the building. The assignment was to feed hose up the flights of stairs to the crawl space on the top floor, where fire attack was still going on. I went in and positioned myself in the stairwell, between the first and second floors. As it was passed up to me, I fed hose through the right hand banister to the man above.

“Coupling,” I’d call out every fifty feet to our officer at the door.

A metal coupling connects two fifty-foot lengths of hose, so the announcement was meant to help everyone keep track of how much line was coming in. It was also a help to the guys passing hose directly to the nozzleman and his backup firefighters; it allowed them to get ready to estimate how far away the attack team had gone, even if it was out of sight. It’s part of ongoing size-up and accountability.

As part of its own size up and accountability, the team would need to orient itself to the wall as it dragged the hose forward until it got into the crawl space to initiate the attack. It’s humbling to realize how easy it is to get completely lost in the dark if you and your team don’t remain accountable to the wall you’re following. It’s your point of reference. You can fan out if you need to, as might happen if you hear an unexpected cry for help, but you’d better be able to get back to the wall – to be accountable to it – if you expect to stay oriented, get the job done, and make it out of the building.

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Eventually, I thought we were finished feeding line. It was only a temporary pause, however, as our aching shoulders were soon put to work again, pushing hose up through the narrow space between the banister of the flight above and the stairs beyond it. If you’ve attended a parochial school, you know the kind of stairwell I’m talking about.

Like the fire that started off that year, the multiple alarm blaze that closed out 2010 also occurred in the bitter cold and on less than desirable terrain. After some time of advancing hose line up the stairs, unkinking it, waiting, drawing it back, swapping out bottles and swapping out crews, advancing the line again, and checking for extension, the fire was finally knocked down. Then it was time to bring all of those lengths down and flake them all out into the narrow and hilly street so they could be rolled and dumped on a utility vehicle for transport back to Central.

Photo taken by the author

The Parish of St. Peter’s had just finalized the sale of the building to Catholic Charities, and interior remodeling had already begun. It was ultimately determined that the blaze had originated with a piece of equipment in the basement. I knew about the sale of the old school; I attended Mass at St. Peter’s. In fact, it was at that church that I served my first-ever Traditional Latin Mass.

Years Before That

Each Wednesday before work, I would come down Broadway and make my way up and down those narrow, winding hills early in the morning. Entering the silent darkness of the church, I would pause for a moment and wait for my eyes to adjust. As the various stained glass windows came dimly into view, I would make out the German inscriptions on them and on the Stations of the Cross and marvel at the old world  craftsmanship. In more advantageous times for cultural celebration, this had been the German church.

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Acclimated to the light and to the sacred space, I would then go to the altar boys’ sacristy on the Blessed Mother side of the church, don my cassock, and begin preparing St. Joseph’s altar for Mass. The priest was saying his prayers in the priests’ sacristy by this time, and I would make my own prayerful preparation in the pew till he was ready.

From the time I was twelve and well into my twenties I had served the New Mass. Serving the Traditional Mass was a new experience utterly. It demanded a great deal of me physically, for one. For another thing, I intuited that I was the witness to an intimate conversation with the Divine. This right and just interaction was for my benefit; it was very important to me that I behave as if I knew this were the case.

The fact that the Latin was intelligible to me as a teacher and tutor of the language definitely augmented my experience. Even so, I never had the feeling that my responses were the most meaningful part of my service and participation at the altar. It was my presence there. It was both the meaning and the sense of the words. It was the movements – the slow, deliberate, quiet movements of the body – called for by the slow, deliberate, quiet words.

It was my own going down to kneel and my getting up. My bows of the head and the inclining of my torso. It was the striking of the breast. The acknowledgement of the Holy Names. The osculations. These gestures and postures, it seemed to me, supplied a quality to my spoken words when it was time to make them that I had not ever recognized before.

Many Years Before That

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Then, a few weeks ago, eleven years after my service at St. Joseph’s altar and at the St. Peter’s fire, I learned about Robert Joseph Flannery. He had been a graduate of St. Peter’s School before World War II, and his mother, Jennie, died when he was only seven years old. He attended the local high school, and joined the US Navy after graduation. Robert became a fireman and served in that capacity at his final duty station on Oahu, Hawaii aboard the Brooklyn-Class light cruiser, USS Helena (CL-50). His father Joseph passed away thirteen years after PO III Robert Joseph Flannery gave his life in supreme sacrifice on 7 December 1941 at Pearl Harbor.

Looking back on the Saint Peter’s School Fire and the piece of my life that surrounds it, I cannot avoid realizing that there is – or should be – a distinct continuity. Young Robert had come up and down those stairs many times…

Did he have a mischievous side to him? Had he and a playmate or two ever ventured near the crawl space on the top floor where the fire had rolled over Brownie’s head and given him that great souvenir? Had he ever slid down the banisters on the staircase through which I had passed those hundreds of feet of hose? If he had, did he manage to avoid discovery by the nuns? Did his father pick him up from school or did a neighbor greet him on the steps outside the school, or did he walk home with his friends or by himself?

In “those days,” wouldn’t he have been a member of the parish if he had been a student at the school? How had the pastor and, perhaps, the rectory housekeeper, extended to the motherless boy and his widower father a little human kindness and the comforts of the faith?

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Had Robert been an altar boy at Saint Peter’s, assisting at the very form of the Mass I served there? Had he come running to the early morning Mass, up and down those hills, encountered the same silent darkness, and waited to marvel at the same sacred art? Did he speak or understand any German? How good was his Latin?

Did the members of the parish give Robert any kind of a send-off before he left home in 1940? Were there Masses offered for his safe return? As talk of wars and rumors of wars grew louder, did the people meet in the church during weekday evenings to commend him to God in their devotions?

Which parishioners were in attendance when Father Hartegan went with Mr. Flannery to meet the body of the hero when it finally arrived on the 11:45 am train? Who assisted him in committing the remains to the earth at St. Mary’s Cemetery on that Thursday, 30 October 1947? Were any of them parents of his old schoolmates? Were some of them blue or gold star family members themselves?

The fire at St. Peter’s is in the past, as is the death of Joseph and Jennie Flannery and that of PO III Flannery, their son. I don’t desire to tether myself to the past, though, as if its massive weight should excuse my lack of progress in the present. Nor do I wish to attempt the impossible, struggling to pull it along as I make my way to the future. That’s a kind of tunnel vision, and tunnel vision can get you hurt or killed, remember?

What I want to do – in fact, what I need to do – is perform my size up and do my duty in the present while working to pass down Tradition, accountable to that wall, that constant point of reference. That is what Mr. and Mrs. Flannery were called to do. That is what PO III Robert Joseph Flannery did. The clergy and the faithful of St. Peter’s received the same calling, from one generation to the next. It’s the same for me and the same for you.

Whatever needs doing, I am called to be accountable there. I want to be accountable to Tradition – to something and to Someone, ultimately – Who has my body-soul composite always in mind. Something and Someone  Who will always be there, as a reliable point of reference and a true measure of my service,  regardless of what is going on. Something and Someone Whom I hope will see me safely home.

God bless and save Robert Joseph Flannery, United States Navy, and God bless and save all of our beloved dead!

Mark Ingoglio

Mark Ingoglio is an emergency responder working in fire, EMS, and emergency management. A graduate of Mt. St. Mary College and originally a teacher of English and then also of high school Latin, he holds a CBIS from the American Academy of Certified Brain Injury Specialists and currently teach adult survivors of brain injury in the sub-acute rehabilitation setting. He is a life-long Catholic and resident of New York State, and a devotee of St. Ignatius and the Jesuit saints, admiring their drive to “go anywhere and do anything” in the service of Christ and His Catholic Church.

Listen to EPPC’s New Podcast Series, “Life After Dobbs”

For 49 years, we’ve marched, prayed, volunteered, and made the case to reverse Roe v. Wade. And now, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court seems poised to do just that. But it’s not just about the Court. The work of building a culture that protects and welcomes babies, while providing for and supporting mothers and families, has always been essential, and this work will continue for many years to come. In the new podcast series Life After Dobbs, brought to you by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, hosts Ryan T. Anderson and Alexandra DeSanctis explore how the pro-life movement got here and what happens next. Anderson and DeSanctis are the coauthors of the new book Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing.  In each episode, they sit down with experts and activists to talk about the future of the pro-life movement and to ask questions such as: What are the best policies to support moms and babies?Is abortion ever medically necessary?Can you be a human being but not be a human person?Can feminism recover its authentically pro-life voice?How will the debate over abortion shape elections in 2022, 2024, and beyond?Join us each week as we talk with pro-life leaders and scholars to prepare…for life after Dobbs.Listen to the TrailerSubscribe on Apple PodcastsSubscribe on SpotifySubscribe on Amazon Music

Reframing the Wordsby Judie BrownSh https://all.org/judie-brown-commentary/reframing-the-wordsBy Judie BrownThe Hill used the headline “With a Reframed Message, Democrats Can Start Winning the Abortion Fight” to invite attention to the wrong subject. The use of the term “abortion fight” says nothing about the actual subject being discussed, nor does it convey the urgency of the quest to end the murder of little babies before they are born. But such is the way of our world today. It is as if some think that by reframing language, they can continue to hide the awful truth about what abortion does to innocent people.Pro-life writer Frank Tinari has given this a lot of thought. In “Euphemisms to Deceive the Public” he points out that “abortion-on-demand is phrased as ‘reproductive health care’ essential to ‘women’s empowerment’ even though the death of a developing human being is the goal of such ‘care.’ A preborn baby, with [his] own brain, hands & feet, is called a part of a woman’s body. A desire to eliminate the life of a developing baby in the womb is called a ‘right to choose.’”Thus the language of death is disguised so that most people remain numbed into thinking that the alleged “right to choose” has no victims. But while this is great if you are choosing what to put on your hot dog, it is deadly if you are choosing death for your baby.And now, regardless of what the hype might suggest, these babies are going to be faced with a Supreme Court decision that will condemn most babies to death. Allowing states to regulate the killing is not going to end the killing.It is time to stop the reframing of the words and get down to the details.The court is deciding on abortion based on a Mississippi law that is tragically flawed, though it is paraded as a pro-life law. But don’t take my word for it. We do not like reframed words around here, so let me quote that law, designed “to restrict the practice of nontherapeutic or elective abortion to the period up to the fifteenth week of gestation.”In other words, preborn children between creation and 14 weeks, six days of age are still fair game for abortion. And as we know from Centers for Disease Control statistics, 92.7% of all abortions are committed at or before 13 weeks gestational age. In other words, if upheld by the court, the Mississippi law would not protect the vast majority of babies from death.The point is that, for those of us who know that every preborn child is a human being from the beginning of his life, debates and court decisions that are not based on this simple truth are as St. Thomas Aquinas said, all “straw.” Aquinas was comparing his brilliant writing to his vision of heaven, but we are comparing the claims about what the court will do to what we know will continue to be the fate of nearly all the babies before the ink of that decision is dry.The debate may be necessary, but in substance the babies are still going to die. Our work is based on the fact that every one of these children is a human being deserving of protection, not just those who are a certain gestational age. Until the pro-life movement unites on this simple fact and works toward a court decision or congressional law that sets this fact forth, emotion and outrageous language based on empty promises will continue.Reframing words will not change the facts. So like the Lord, we should weep, not rejoice.

Crisis Magazine

A Voice for the Faithful Catholic Laity

MAY 31, 2022

Behind the Motives of Mass Shooters

ANTHONY ESOLEN

In the wake of the most recent horror, the mass shooting at an elementary school in Texas, I have heard two kinds of responses. Lawyers are used to saying that to commit a crime you need means, opportunity, and motive. So then, some people want to limit or eliminate the means by passing more restrictive gun laws, or by eliminating the right of private persons to bear arms altogether. The latter, no doubt, would require a constitutional amendment, which, given American history and culture, and given the fact that many people still use guns to put some food on the table, stands little likelihood of passing.  

As for the more restrictive laws, perhaps we need to reconsider the age of majority, as we appear to be raising plenty of people who reach twenty years of age but who still possess the emotional maturity of a disgruntled and antisocial elementary school student. The boy in Texas, a dropout with no medical history of mental illness, procured his gun legally. 

Some people will say that the kind of gun the boy used should be banned. It was a semiautomatic, meaning that you need to release the trigger and press it again to shoot another bullet, but you do not have to eject the cartridge yourself. Hunters commonly use such rifles. Ranchers and farmers, I have heard, use them against prairie dogs and other vermin and marauders. Would it be unconstitutional to require a reason for their purchase—a hunter’s license, for example, or an explanatory letter? Probably.

Others focus on the opportunity. They say, with some justification, that if you post a heavily armed guard at the door of the school, gunmen would be deterred because such people are cowards, picking on the unarmed, and what they fear most is not death but abject failure and embarrassment. I think it would work, but the image is appalling. 

It is also a tacit admission that we are no longer a real society but a sort of morbid aggregate, wherein people do not trust each other. You cannot walk down your street at night without looking over your shoulder, or without the cell phone in your pocket, ready to call the police. The conditions are like those of a civil war.

May we then look to the motive? Why would someone want to take a gun to a school and start shooting—often killing strangers, indiscriminately?

 “Evil,” you might say, “is irrational, and so it cannot be explained, and as long as man exists, evil will be among us because ‘the heart of man is evil from his youth.’” I see in my mind’s eye a small gathering of Amish children in a schoolroom, repeating that very verse from Genesis along with their teacher, “The heart of man is evil from his youth,” before she rings the bell and they go out to play their innocent games on the grounds. Yet Amish children do not go on shooting sprees.

All killers have a motive, even if it is a mad one. Let me rephrase the question.  Why would someone want to take a gun to a large, impersonal institution; one characterized, for many, by continual indignities and humiliations; the site of envy and jealousy, lust and treachery, avarice and ambition; a place built like a factory or a prison, where the very fact of his person seems to have been obliterated—the place, or the type of place, where he was never noticed except to be harassed or penalized or ordered from room to room; a place where he was certainly never loved? 

For how can you love a thousand children, most of whose names you will not even know? Name for me a single institution anywhere in the long history of the world, until our time, to which children would be made subject by the many hundreds, or by more than a thousand?

I am not saying that such institutions necessarily invite such hatred and vindictiveness that the occasional mad young person will take it out in mass murder. It appears to me, rather, that we have several coinciding factors that make such a horror conceivable. 

Let us go back in time. When my parents were teenagers, many a public school had a shooting club, yet there were no mass murders. And many high school boys, when I was a teenager, would bring their rifles to school during deer season so that they could go hunting afterward without having to drive home first, and yet there were no mass shootings. Why not?

Most obviously, our families were intact. That meant there was a father in the home—not in prison, not off with his latest bedmate somewhere, not languishing in a city far away and working himself thin to pay off an adulterous wife and her new bedmate. The father stands for authority. The neurologists and the endocrinologists themselves tell us what the father in the home does, by the unwitting action of the body, to the temperaments of the children. And that does not begin to describe the moral direction he gives, to restrain, channel, and direct the aggressions of his sons; and to be a rock of reliability for his daughters, so that they need neither fear the male sex nor rush toward it for affirmation.

We also generally accepted a clear moral law to govern the passions, especially the most unruly and self-destructive, namely the sexual. I recall a book I read once, from the 1950s, in which a liberal doctor, speaking to high school boys, told them that it was unmanly for them to put pressure on girls to have sex, or even to do much less than that, and that it was wrong in any case to do the child-making thing before they had provided the haven of marriage for the children they were going to make. 

A few years later, the name of God would be scrubbed out of the official school day, rather as you might scrub out certain foul words some boys are fond of from the lavatory stalls. God is the maker and the guarantor of moral order, and when you commit yourself to a practical atheism, you commit yourself to moral chaos. Sociality tries to take the place of moral law in the land of nihilism: you should do thus and so because that is what nice people do. And a few boys here and there will say, and they will not be wholly wrong about it, “To hell with sociality and nice people.”

But that brings me back to the form of the school. It is pathological. Form and function reveal one another. The school, built neither like a town hall nor like a church, must rely, as a prison does, upon force, compulsion, to keep the resultant chaos under the lid. 

But make no mistake. To the extent that the school is necessarily impersonal, far too large for the small and vulnerable charges who must go there, fostering anonymity and its resultant moral alleyways and interconnecting basements, denying the claims of a personal God, and attempting to educate children whose personal lives have met the wrecking ball of family breakdown, or whose families were never fully enough formed in the first place to meet that wrecking ball, it is itself chaotic. It really is a place to loathe, to detest. Schools should not be so.

And then we come to the person. You may have means, opportunity, and even motive to commit a crime, and still you do not commit it. To take that final step, to give yourself over to the evil one, you must despair. Will it be controversial for me to say here that not all the best secular intentions in the world can give you cause for hope? Optimism is the art of the charlatan, or the self-deception of the fool: read Melville’s The Confidence-Man, the villain who plays upon his victims’ avarice by selling not faith but confidence, confidence in human goodness. 

Our shooter knows very well that people are not good, and they are not to be trusted. You cannot persuade the young man with the gun that he has reason for secular optimism. He doesn’t. He is not going to be a rich lawyer or doctor or engineer. You cannot persuade him that he should love people, with “love” meaning not what Christ showed on the Cross, but rather a sort of easygoing good feeling. He doesn’t have that feeling, and he doesn’t want it. He spews it out of his mouth.

He needs hope. Where will he get it? From nothing that resembles either his shambles of a home or that even more chaotic four-square rule-ridden prisoner-forming thing called school. We know where he might get it. We know where it is to be had. Let us be more open about offering that hope. It is the only lifeline.

By Anthony Esolen

Anthony Esolen, a contributing editor at Crisis, is a professor and writer-in-residence at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts. He is the author, most recently, of Sex and the Unreal City (Ignatius Press, 2020).

The Anti-Catholic Roots Of Roe V. Wade May 31, 2022 The following article has been adapted by Catholic League president Bill Donohue from a 2001 lengthy article written by Robert P. Lockwood, “NARAL, Anti-Catholicism & the Roots of the Pro-Abortion Campaign”; it is available on our website. At that time, Bob was our Director of Research. He was former president and publisher of Our Sunday Visitor and a member of the Catholic League’s board of directors. He died in 2019. The public debate over abortion was critical in a resurgent anti-Catholicism in the mid-1960s. With the cooperation of media, abortion became an ongoing battle waged in a war of words based on anti-Catholicism. The issue was quickly defined as Catholicism and its role in public life, rather than abortion itself. When the Catholic Church hierarchy took a strong stand on abortion, it found itself the target, rather than the position espoused. Quickly, the public issue of whether or not abortion should be fully legal in the United States descended into a cauldron of unrelated issues of separation of Church and State, the Catholic Church’s tax exempt status, the religious affiliation of abortion opponents, alleged “Catholic power,” and the imposition of sectarian belief on American law. As one New York state legislator would thunder in the midst of abortion debate, “you have no right to come to the floor of this body and ask us to enact into law church doctrine.” Why did Catholicism become the issue in the abortion debate? It was through a planned effort by the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. Called by the acronym NARAL, the organization began as a collective of pro-abortion groups, nascent feminist organizations, illegal abortion referral services, and various Zero Population Growth zealots in the late 1960s. One of the primary motivations in NARAL’s abortion campaign was the anti-Catholicism of its founder and first executive director, Lawrence J. Lader. Lader would effectively harness and use anti-Catholicism as a fundamental aspect of NARAL in abortion politics, legislating, public debate and media coverage. Under the influence of Lader and NARAL, Catholicism would become the issue, as much as abortion itself. According to Dr. Bernard Nathanson, one of NARAL’s original members and a close confidant of Lader, this anti-Catholicism “was probably the most effective strategy we had.” According to Nathanson, he and Lader were discussing the overall strategy for legalizing abortion in the United States in October, 1967, six years before the Supreme Court would knock down all state laws that criminalized abortion in its Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions and two years before the formation of NARAL. After Lader described the need to activate feminist leadership to see abortion as not one of many issues but a foundational part of the feminist crusade, Lader – as recalled by Nathanson – “brought out his favorite whipping boy”: “‘…(A)nd the other thing we’ve got to do is bring the Catholic hierarchy out where we can fight them. That’s the real enemy. The biggest single obstacle to peace and decency throughout all of history.’ “It was a comprehensive and chilling indictment of the poisonous influence of Catholicism in secular affairs from its inception until the day before yesterday. I was far from an admirer of the church’s role in the world chronicle, but his insistent, uncompromising recitation brought to mind the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It passed through my mind that if one had substituted ‘Jewish’ for ‘Catholic,’ it would have been the most vicious anti-Semitic tirade imaginable.'” As Lader would amplify in a later conversation, “every revolution has to have a villain…There’s always been one group of people in this country associated with reactionary politics, behind-the-scenes manipulation, socially backward ideas…(I)ts got to be the Catholic hierarchy.” Under Lader’s leadership, NARAL would quickly move to make the abortion debate appear to be a “Catholic” issue. The strategy was simple: convince the media and the public that this was a case of the Catholic hierarchy attempting to impose its will on America. Portray all opposition from Catholics to legalized abortion as a power play by the Church with the laity marching in lockstep to its clerical overlords. Accuse the Church of abusing its tax exemption for a political power-grab. Secure the right to unlimited access to abortion by painting the pro-life position as a peculiarly Catholic notion with no rights in a pluralistic society. Pull out all the old anti-Catholic canards and focus the debate as a church-state issue. This was the anti-Catholicism of Lawrence Lader and an infant NARAL. It would use the old nativist anti-Catholic arguments that had visceral appeal throughout American culture – the Church as authoritarian and undemocratic; the Church as an alien presence within American democracy; the Church as the enemy of separation of Church and State; the Church as attempting to impose its morality on American culture; Catholic laity as political foot-soldiers dominated by a hierarchy and incapable of individual thought – and strip them of post-Reformation theological rhetoric. Rather than a religious and racial prejudice, anti-Catholicism in the abortion debate would become a secular assumption. The pro-life position was wrong because it was Catholic, not because it necessarily lacked merit. As Nathanson explained, in liberal circles anti-Catholicism would become a very effective tool. It still is, many decades later. Nathanson later gave up his abortion practice, became pro-life and converted to Catholicism.

THE CATHOLIC MONITOR

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Did Obama/Biden/Pelosi Abortion Values help bring “the Uvalde Shootings…which… Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre… in his book After Virtue… [shows were the] replacement of Virtue” according to Mother Teresa? 

May 30, 2022

“Mother Teresa: If a Mother Can Kill Her Own Child, How Can We Tell Other People Not to Kill?”[https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/michael-w-chapman/mother-teresa-if-mother-can-kill-her-own-child-how-can-we-tell-other]

I was reminded of Himmelfarb’s important distinction when reading Stephen Soukup’s reflections on the Uvalde shootings in which he cites the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre’s discussion, in his book After Virtue, of the replacement of virtue by what Soukup calls [values] “a state of emotive expression, a condition in which feelings and sensations are elevated above objective reality and traditional conceptions of right and wrong, good and evil, etc.” – Ray Field[https://therayfield.com/alasdair-macintyres-essential-liberalism]

Did Obama/Biden/Pelosi abortion values help bring “the Uvalde shootings…which… philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre… in his book After Virtue… [shows were the] replacement of virtue” according to Mother Teresa? 

Jonah Goldberg shows what Barack Obama values mean to liberals like Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden: 

“Asked to define sin, Barack Obama replied that sin is ‘being out of alignment with my values.’ Statements such as this have caused many people to wonder whether Obama has a God complex or is hopelessly arrogant. For the record, sin isn’t being out of alignment with your own values (if it were, Hannibal Lecter wouldn’t be a sinner because his values hold that it’s OK to eat people) nor is it being out of alignment with Obama’s — unless he really is our Savior.”
[http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/08/obama-the-postm.html, http://www.audacityofhypocrisy.com/2008/06/06/barack-obama-the-2004-god-factor-interview-transcript/%5D

“Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre… in his book After Virtue… [shows the] replacement of virtue” which are liberal Obama/Biden/Pelosi values like murdering the unborn babies which helped according apparently to Mother Teresa to brings about things like “the Uvalde shootings“:

The difference between virtues and values is adumbrated by everyday language. “One cannot.” Himmelfarb points out, “say of  virtues, as one can of values, that anyone’s virtues are as good as anyone else’s, or that everyone has a right to his own virtues.”

I was reminded of Himmelfarb’s important distinction when reading Stephen Soukup’s reflections on the Uvalde shootings in which he cites the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre’s discussion, in his book After Virtue, of the replacement of virtue by what Soukup calls “a state of emotive expression, a condition in which feelings and sensations are elevated above objective reality and traditional conceptions of right and wrong, good and evil, etc.” Soukup broadens MacIntyre’s analysis, showing how it helps explain the structure and impetus of the administrative state. “Broadly,” he writes, 

MacIntyre’s critique is that bureaucracy/management is emotive in practice. Because management is concerned EXCLUSIVELY with process, with means and NOT with ends, it is, almost by definition, an amoral scheme. Management is purportedly rational, but rationality can only apply to means, and therefore the ends become the purview of the manager/administrator who substitutes his own personal preferences for genuine moral positions.

In another column, Soukup glosses MacIntyre’s argument, arguing that “One of the greatest tragedies of the Enlightenment was the abandonment of virtue ethics.”

Prior to the Enlightenment, the entire history of Western Civilization—from (at least) the ancient Greeks right up to the American Founding Fathers—virtue ethics dominated moral philosophy and the expectations of moral people.

In brief, virtue ethics posits that the most effective and functional means by which to create a civil society, foster good citizenship, and encourage the pursuit of a ‘good life,’ is the identification, propagation, and encouraged PRACTICE of virtues deemed universally important and universally affirmative. 

There is a lot to this point, and I thought it might be worth saying something more about the evolution of MacIntyre’s philosophy and his effort to reanimate the claims of virtue. 

MacIntyre, who is still with us at 93, has had a long and distinguished career as an academic philosopher and public polemicist. Among other things, his mental and political itinerary provides a good illustration of the fact that few things are better calculated to garner attention than the spectacle of conversion, be it secular or religious. When After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory first appeared in 1981, it was not surprising that it should have caused a mild sensation, generating notice far beyond the purlieus of academic philosophy. Not only did the book present a bold thesis, suggesting as it did that the moral chaos of modern life might be overcome by rehabilitating certain aspects of Aristotle’s ethical teaching; it also appeared to represent a kind of conversion on the part of its author, the distinguished Glasgow-born philosopher and teacher. 

Previously best known for his combative, Marxist-inspired ruminations on liberalism, ideology, and religion, MacIntyre now said goodbye to all that—well, goodbye at least to his old militancy—and came to the “drastic” conclusion that Marxism was every bit as bankrupt as liberal individualism. One no longer found him arguing, as he did in Marxism and Christianity (revised edition, 1968), that Marxism is “the historical successor of Christianity” and the only philosophy “we have for reestablishing hope as a social virtue.” By the time he wrote After Virtue, MacIntyre had decided that Marxism and liberalism both embodied “the ethos of the distinctively modern and modernizing world, and nothing less than a rejection of a large part of that ethos will provide us with a rationally and morally defensible standpoint from which to judge and to act.”

One might object that nothing is more “modern” than the ambition to reject “a large part”—the larger the better, it sometimes seems—of the modern world. But it was obviously not that aspect of the modern ethos with which MacIntyre quarreled. For him, the great curse of modernity is liberal individualism; and one of the main problems with liberal individualism is that it deliberately forsakes any substantive notion of the good, thus robbing moral language—and moral life—of an intelligible foundation. Liberal moral theory tends to be cheerful, permissive, relativistic—and quite empty. By appealing to a putatively universal rationality, it seems less particularistic and less culture-bound than other views of morality; but it is also less helpful in resolving important moral dilemmas.

In other words, liberalism does not dwell on the question of man’s proper ends. Instead, it offers an institutional framework within which individuals cobble together what answers they can from an unedifying process of compromise and debate. It is “the mark of a liberal order,” MacIntyre remarks, “to refer its conflicts . . . to the verdicts of its legal system. The lawyers, not the philosophers, are the clergy of liberalism.” Doubtless having to choose between lawyers and philosophers to preside over the commonweal is akin to choosing between Scylla and Charybdis. But MacIntyre’s point is that liberalism’s lack of allegiance to any positive conception of the good renders it ill equipped to provide a satisfactory response to the basic question, “What should I do?”

For MacIntyre, this is a crippling lack, one that is not shared by other traditions—what we might call “traditional traditions”—of moral inquiry. In his search for an alternative to liberalism, MacIntyre came to believe that the “key question” is whether “Aristotle’s ethics, or something very like them, [can] after all be vindicated?” As he put it near the end of After Virtue, “the crucial moral opposition is between liberal individualism in some version or other and the Aristotelian tradition in some version or other.” Two things above all attracted MacIntyre to Aristotle’s ethics. In the first place, Aristotle began by proposing specific answers to the question of man’s moral good. And secondly, Aristotle’s conclusions about morals consciously resulted from his response to a particular tradition of moral reasoning, one inherited largely from the heroic culture of Homer and from Plato.

In both respects, Aristotle’s ethics are the obverse of the ethics of liberalism. Where Aristotle advocated the practice of particular virtues—courage, justice, temperance, and so on—to achieve a well-defined moral end, liberalism begins with wholly abstract principles or “rules” of reasoning (of which Kant’s categorical imperative is perhaps the purest example), and regards the content of particular virtues and moral ends as secondary and relative. And where Aristotle consciously reasoned from a specific cultural tradition, liberalism typically aspires to formulate abstract, universally valid principles of moral reasoning. In After Virtue, MacIntyre puts the case for Aristotle and against liberal individualism, ending with the haunting suggestion that “we are waiting not for a Godot, but for another—doubtless very different—St. Benedict.”

As it happens, MacIntyre later came to find the original St. Benedict more persuasive than he here implies. In the opening pages of Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (1988), the latter-day Marxist turned Aristotelian declares himself “an Augustinian Christian.” But the broad appeal of After Virtue lay less in any proposed saviors than in the extremity of its diagnosis. Beginning with the “disquieting suggestion” that the language of morality today is in a state of “grave disorder,” that it consists of little more than half-understood fragments salvaged from a disrupted tradition, MacIntyre charged that “we have—very largely, if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.” Though we are mostly unaware of this moral poverty, we are nonetheless “all already in a state so disastrous that there are no large remedies for it.” Hence MacIntyre concludes by recommending his version of counter-cultural withdrawal. “What matters at this stage,” he writes, “is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and the moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us.”

As MacIntyre was quick to acknowledge, many of his dour pronouncements in After Virtue deliberately echo Nietzsche. The foundation of moral discourse has been shattered (“God is dead”); culture has lost its moorings; values have become increasingly arbitrary and pointless; the optimistic ideals of liberalism have shown themselves to be hypocritical fictions—all this repeated Nietzsche’s analysis of the nihilistic bent of modern culture. But MacIntyre departed from Nietzsche in his judgment about how we should respond to the fragmentation of traditional values. Nietzsche preached a species of heroic individualism, epitomized by his doctrine of “self-overcoming,” the Übermensch, and his vision of an ethic “beyond good and evil.” MacIntyre, on the contrary, advocated a return to community and resuscitation of the virtues as understood by Aristotle. [https://therayfield.com/alasdair-macintyres-essential-liberalism]

Moreover, MacIntyre regarded Nietzsche as a late, largely unwitting representative of the very culture that he, Nietzsche, criticized so perspicaciously: the rootless culture born of the Enlightenment with its suspicion of tradition and its faith in a putatively universal moral reasoning. MacIntyre argues that one can discern “grounds for the authority of laws and virtues” only “by entering into those relationships which constitute communities whose central bond is a shared vision of and understanding of goods.” “To isolate oneself from [such] communities,” he maintains, “will be to debar oneself from finding any good outside oneself.” It follows that in MacIntyre’s view Nietzsche’s ideal of the completely autonomous, asocial individualist represents an extreme form of liberalism, not an alternative. If Aristotle is the presiding deity of After Virtue, Nietzsche turns out to be something closer to its resident nemesis. As MacIntyre put it in the title of one of his central chapters, the real choice is: Nietzsche or Aristotle?[https://therayfield.com/alasdair-macintyres-essential-liberalism]

Pray an Our Father now for reparation for the sins committed because of Francis’s Amoris Laetitia. 

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.

Francis Notes:

– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:

“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.”
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)

Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said “the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church.”
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]

– “If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html

– “Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html

– If Francis betrays Benedict XVI & the”Roman Rite Communities” like he betrayed the Chinese Catholics we must respond like St. Athanasius, the Saintly English Bishop Robert Grosseteste & “Eminent Canonists and Theologians” by “Resist[ing]” him: https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/12/if-francis-betrays-benedict-xvi.html 

 –  LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:

The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”

–  On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:

“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”

– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:

“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.

Election Notes: 

– Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: “212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted…Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden” [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]

– Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times “Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html

– Tucker Carlson’s Conservatism Inc. Biden Steal Betrayal is explained by “One of the Greatest Columns ever Written” according to Rush: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/tucker-carlsons-conservatism-inc-biden.html?m=1

– A Hour which will Live in Infamy: 10:01pm November 3, 2020: 
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1

What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: “Anitfa ‘Agent Provocateurs‘”: 
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1] 

Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God’s Will and to do it.

Pray an Our Father now for America.

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

THE CATHOLIC MONITOR

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Does Francis’s “Right-hand Man” Parra have a “Sexual Predation against Seminarians, Adultery, and even a Deadly Sex Game…[that] ‘might even be a Scandal Surpassing that of McCarrick'”?

August 12, 2021

Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra with Francis

Today, the Call Me Jorge website asked “What could be so important that Francis interrupted his weekly adulation [Audience] session?”:

Pope gets a phone call during the Audience. Haven’t seen this before. Then he quickly leaves and says he will be back. pic.twitter.com/npCuPzdnxP— The Catholic Traveler (@MountainButorac) August 11, 2021

It was Abp. Mons. Edgar Robinson Peña Parra, Substitute for the Secretariat of State, who was involved in the recent scandal of mismanagement during the acquisition of a € 300 million building in London. Still no word on what the phone call was about. [http://callmejorgebergoglio.blogspot.com/2021/08/what-could-be-so-important-that-francis.html]

Who is Archbishop Edgar Robinson Peña Parra?

Parra according to the Catholic Herald is Francis’s “right-hand man”[https://catholicherald.co.uk/roman-curia-the-popes-new-right-hand-man/]

In 2019, Life Site News reported that Parra allegedly had a “sexual predation against seminarians, adultery, and even a deadly sex game… [that] might even be a scandal surpassing that of McCarrick”:

Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, who was installed in October of last year as the Substitute of the Secretariat of State, the second in charge of the most influential Vatican dicastery, has been under a cloud of suspicion following reports in the Italian media in 2018 of an investigation made by his bishop in the 1980s regarding accusations of homosexuality made against him anonymously. However, the accusations mentioned by Archbishop Viganò are far more serious, including sexual predation against seminarians, adultery, and even a deadly sex game.

“This might even be a scandal surpassing that of McCarrick, and it must not be allowed to be covered by silence,” says Viganò.

LifeSiteNews reached out to Archbishop Peña Parra for comment but did not receive a reply.

‘Terrifying dossier’ on Archbishop Peña Parra

According to reports in the Italian media, in 1985 a letter was sent from Peña Parra’s then-bishop mentioning anonymous accusations of homosexuality against him as a seminarian, and calling him a “sexually sick person.” The letter was sent by Domingo Roa Pérez, Archbishop of Maracaibo, to Pío León Cárdenas, Rector of the Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Palmira, Venezuela, where Peña Parra had been a student. Roa Pérez expresses concern about the accusations and asks if León Cárdenas can confirm or deny them.  No further correspondence has emerged to indicate the outcome of the investigation. LifeSiteNews has obtained copies of the anonymous letter containing the accusations as well the letter of inquiry written by the archbishop in response.

However, according to Archbishop Viganò, the Vatican for decades has been in possession of much more damning accusations against Peña Parra, information which has never been revealed publicly. Viganò mentions a “terrifying dossier” sent to Francis by a group of faithful Catholics from Peña Parra’s home diocese of Maracaibo in Venezuela, led by one “Dr. Enrique W. Lagunillas Machado.” The document was titled: “Who really is Msgr. Edgar Robinson Peña Parra, the New Substitute of the Secretariat of State of the Vatican?”

Viganò says that the accusations made in the letter have been known by the Vatican’s Secretariat of State since 2002, and that Viganò himself learned of them while he served as a Delegate for Pontifical Representations. LifeSiteNews has obtained a copy of the dossier from a trusted source and can verify that its contents match Archbishop Viganò’s descriptions.

In addition, Viganò claims that a journalist from Maracaibo, Gastón Guisandes López, made “serious accusations” implicating Peña Parra and other priests of the diocese in the sex abuse of minors and other “possibly criminal” acts, in 2000. He says that the following year, Guisandes López went to the apostolic nuncio in Venezuela, Archbishop André Dupuy, and although the nuncio refused to receive the journalist, he reported to Rome that he had made hair-raising accusations against Peña Parra, accusations that were partially confirmed by a diocesan official.

The nuncio reported that Peña Parra was accused of seducing two students from the minor seminary (a high school that prepares students to study for the priesthood), in September of 1990. The accusation included the specific location of the sexual abuse, which was a parish church led by a friend of Peña Parra’s, Fr. José Severeyn. Viganò says that the abuse was reported to the police and confirmed by the seminary rector, Enrique Pérez, to the Secretariat of State, adding “I have seen these documents with my own eyes.” [https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/pope-francis-ignored-terrifying-dossier-on-top-vatican-officials-sex-abuse/]

Archbishop Viganò said the dossier had the allegation that “Parra was allegedly involved … in the death of two people”:  

“Edgar Peña Parra was allegedly involved … in the death of two people … which took place in August 1992, on the island of San Carlos in Lake Maracaibo. They were killed by an electric discharge, and it is not clear whether or not the deaths were accidental … the two corpses were found naked, with evidence of macabre homosexual lewd encounters.” [https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/venezuelan-bishops-rally-behind-alleged-predator-prelate]

Last year, Church Militant reported that Bishop Alberto Perlasca’s office and residence was raided by Francis’s Vatican which may involve putting the allegedly Gay Lobby Archbishop Parra as the second in command behind Parolin at the Secretaria. (Perlasca was a Pope Benedict XVI Vatican appointment.):

Vatican investigators raided the office and residence of the investment manager of the Vatican Secretariat of State Tuesday morning and seized documents and computer equipment as part of its ongoing probe into the financial scandal involving the purchase of a London property worth $220 million. 

According to a press release from the Vatican press office, the search was ordered by Promoter of Justice Gian Piero Milano and Deputy Alessandro Diddi on the premises of Msgr. Alberto Perlasca, former Head of Administrative Office of the First Section of the Secretariat of State.
Perlasca headed the office responsible for managing Vatican investments and for overseeing the administration of the Peter’s Pence fund. On July 26, Pope Francis appointed him Promoter of Justice at the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura — chief prosecutor of the Vatican’s supreme court.

The Vatican statement confirmed that the raid was carried out “in the context of the investigation into financial investments and the work of the Secretariat of State.”
The raid on Perlasca’s home and office was in connection with “what emerged from the first interrogations” of five suspended officials, the statement said. Similar raids in October resulted in the suspension of four staff at the Secretariat of State as well as the director of the Financial Information Authority.
[https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/london-property-scam-vatican-authorities-raid-premises-of-top-cleric]

Might this raid have been part of a planned takeover of the Secretary of State? 

Vatican expert Andrea Gagliarducci says the Francis takeover of the Old Guard’s Secretary of State is long planned including putting the allegedly Gay Lobby Archbishop Parra as the second in command behind Parolin at the Secretariat.

Parra is deeply connected to Francis’s closest collaborator pro-gay Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga and his alleged gay predator ex-auxiliary Bishop Juan Jose Pineda who was forced to resign.

In August, Gagliarducci reported the Francis alleged Gay Lobby takeover of the Old Guard’s last strong hold at the Vatican:

“Pope Francis is setting up his team in the Secretariat of State. This new team will have no connection with the old guard.”
(Mondayvatican.com, “Pope Francis, how the transition is taking place,” August 5, 2019)

Moreover, Gagliarducci says the  “attack” on the Old Guard is “unprecedented” in the history of the Vatican:

“[W]hy should an entity under the oversight, namely the Institute for Religious Works [which is headed by the Francis appointed alleged Gay Lobby Monsignor Battista Ricca], report on other bodies that oversee it… the Secretariat of State?”

“… Possible answer is that the green light came directly by the Pope to the prosecutor…”

“The attack to the Institution from within the Institution is unprecedented for the Holy See. It shows the extent of the internal struggle.”
(Mondayvatican.com, “Pope Francis, what is happening in the Vatican?,” October 7, 2019)

According to FSSPX.News, this takeover began on July 26, 2019 and is “desired jointly by Cardinal Parolin and Pope Francis”:

Fabio Marchese Ragona, the Vaticanist at Il Giornale, sees in these summer changes a sign of a “change of rhythm” and “readjustment,” desired jointly by Cardinal Parolin and Pope Francis.

Transfers currently concern two key posts: the first is that of the Administrative Office, presented as the “strongbox” of the Secretariat of State. And for good reason: the head of this curial office is an ex-officio member of several Boards of Directors, including that of the pension funds of the Vatican, and that of Bambino Gesu Hospital, not to mention the Joseph Ratzinger Foundation.

Since 2009, this function, as discreet as it is important, was exercised by Bishop Alberto Perlasca, appointed at that time by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Secretary of State under the previous pontificate.

On July 26, 2019, Bishop Perlasca learned of his transfer to the court of the Apostolic Signatura, where in the future he will exercise the Office of Promoter of Justice: which is far from being a promotion, in view of his previous mission. In his place was appointed a Lithuanian prelate who should take office in a few months.

The second key position concerned is that of the Information and Documentation Office (UID), a powerful presence at the heart of Vatican communications, since it acts as a belt-drive between the Secretariat of State and the Secretariat for Communications on which depend, among others, the Vatican News platform and the Holy See press room.

Until now, the job of the head of the UID office was exercised by Mgr. Carlo Maria Polvani: this Prelate of Honor of His Holiness is the nephew of Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the former apostolic nuncio to the United States who became the first accuser of Pope Francis regarding his management of child abuse cases in America.

Demoted to adjunct under-secretary at the Pontifical Council for Culture, Mgr. Polvani succeeds Mgr. Mauro Carlino, a close associate of the former Substitute for General Affairs, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who became Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.
Finally, more anecdotal, Cardinal Parolin dismissed the one who has hitherto served as the personal secretary to the Secretary of State, Mgr. Robert Murphy.

The latter will be able to discover and taste the inexhaustible riches of Sanskrit, since he has been named to go to India, with the title of Advisor to the Nunciature—a way of illustrating the Roman adage “promoveatur ut moveatur”?

The Secretary of State has not finished with the changes, says Fabio Marchese Ragona—undertaken without restraint, they risk giving more credence to the image of a “dictator pope,” painted with vitriol by Henri Sire in his eponymous book.

An image that the current pontificate would like to get rid of: it will not happen this summer, in any case.
[https://fsspx.news/en/news-events/news/summer-changes-49814]

Gloria.tv called this moves a Francis Purge “The Francis Purges Continue: The Latest Victims” which may be “desired jointly by Cardinal Parolin and Pope Francis”:

Monsignor Gian Paolo Montini, Promoter of Justice to the Apostolic Signatura, will soon be fired at the age of 64, Marco Tosatti writes (August 29).

The reason: Montini [politely] criticized the reform of the ecclesiastical tribunals devised by Monsignore Pio Vito Pinto, the Dean of the Roman Rota, a devotee of Pope Francis.

Tosatti writes that Montini’s mistake was that he did not show enough “blind, prompt and absolute loyalty” although he was not opposed to the Francis regime.

A second recent Francis victim is Monsignor Alberto Perlasca. He was removed in July from the Economic Section of the Secretariat of State, which has more money than the Vatican Bank and is not controlled by anybody.

Perlasca has been made a promoter of Justice at the Signatura Apostolica. Tosatti asks whether the “very serious” prelate objected too much, in the face of requests coming from Francis.

Another change regards Monsignor Sergio Aumenta, the head of the legal department of the Secretariat of State. He was transferred back to his diocese, Asti. The reasons for this are clouded in mystery.
[https://gloria.tv/post/vuE3G9pcxBfz2qwUn8Np2f9X3]

Why might this “Francis Purge” possibly have been “desired jointly by Cardinal Parolin and Pope Francis”?

Might Parra who is connected to Francis’s inner circle and Parolin be worried about certain leaked documents?

Church Militant revealed:

“Church Militant also reported on leaked documents revealing the scope and magnitude of the financial scandal engulfing the Vatican, implicating both Cdl. Pietro Parolin, Secretariat of State, and his deputy, Abp. Edgar Peña Parra, considered, respectively, the second- and third-most powerful men in Rome.”
[https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/london-property-scam-vatican-authorities-raid-premises-of-top-cleric]

Remember what the Call Me Jorge website said:

It was Abp. Mons. Edgar Robinson Peña Parra, Substitute for the Secretariat of State, who was involved in the recent scandal of mismanagement during the acquisition of a € 300 million building in London. Still no word on what the phone call was about. [http://callmejorgebergoglio.blogspot.com/2021/08/what-could-be-so-important-that-francis.html]

Does Francis’s “right-hand man” Parra have a “sexual predation against seminarians, adultery, and even a deadly sex game…[that] ‘might even be a scandal surpassing that of McCarrick'”? 

Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.

Francis Notes:

– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:

“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.”
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)

Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said “the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church.”
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]

– “If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html

– “Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html

 –  LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:

The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”

–  On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:

“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”

– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:

“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.

Election Notes: 

– Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: “212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted…Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden” [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]

– Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times “Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html

– Tucker Carlson’s Conservatism Inc. Biden Steal Betrayal is explained by “One of the Greatest Columns ever Written” according to Rush: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/tucker-carlsons-conservatism-inc-biden.html?m=1

– A Hour which will Live in Infamy: 10:01pm November 3, 2020: 
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1

What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: “Anitfa ‘Agent Provocateurs‘”: 
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1] 

Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God’s Will and to do it.SHARESHARECommentsAnonymous said…The reason for it all, as Book of Truth prophecies unfold.The Book of Truth (Daniel 10:21/12:4-9) seems to have been given to mankind as foretold:http://thebookoftruthonline.blogspot.com/p/the-book-of-truth-online.html———–Protect yourself and loved ones (Revelation chapter 7 – Seal of the Living God):http://thebookoftruthonline.blogspot.com/p/seal-of-living-god.htmlDo a search for “Remnant Church” and “Remnant Army” in archived messages.*the Remnant Army is the global network of “Jesus to Mankind prayer groups”









 




5:05 PM

_______________________________________________SCHOOL SECURITY FORCE

By: Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army retired,

May 29, 2022

The Columbine High School massacre occurred on April 20, 1999.  Seems like yesterday.  How many similar school shooting since then?  Too many.  

As I write this it is less than 48 hours after the school shooting in Texas.  Officials have not yet released any data on the exact timeline of the events. But let’s plow ahead with an abbreviated after-action review of the shooting; the Good, Better, How process.  

·       First question, what did they do good?  Law enforcement was on the scene ASAP. The shooter was taken down ASAP.  

·       Second, what could they have done better?  In this case about everything.  

·       Third, how do we go about institutionalizing what needs to be done, to the maximum extent possible, to prevent this from ever happening again?  That is the intent of what follows.  

The old saying, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”  True.  That is why every planning action must begin with a statement of the problem.    

PROBLEMS: 

·       Current solutions revolve around the rapid arrival of law enforcement personnel.  They arrive in minutes.  We need to counter the attack in seconds.  

·       Multiple law enforcement agencies will arrive on the scene simultaneously.  No one is in charge.  

·       It is unlikely there will be any pre-planned immediate first responder counteractions. 

·       Law enforcement arrivals, generally speaking, will not be intimately familiar with the terrain; “parking lot #3” or “in the west wing” or “room 18” will likely be meaningless information.   

·       Where will the first responders go for an initial briefing by someone on the scene? 

·       If in-school individuals are countering the shooter, who are they, and where are they? 

·       In the last two decades of school, shootings have there ever been any in-place 24/7 deterrent actions? Not that I have heard of.  

·       A current culture of hate and blame in America is reinforcement for a potential shooter.  

WHO ARE THE SHOOTERS?  

Here is a scenario that I believe is not too far-fetched. In most of the school massacres the shooter, after the fact, has been tagged as a “loner.”  Perhaps the young man is not a loner by choice.  Let’s say he is perceived by his fellow students as socially awkward, or not handsome, or has a handicap, bad hair, bad clothes, bad hygiene, whatever.  He can easily become a victim of social bullying that is so prevalent today.  He develops a hatred for schools in general, for his former school, his current school, and the people that are there every day. His absence from sports or other external socializing drives him to video games to occupy his time.  His parents feel relieved that he has some interest to turn to.  At the end of the day, he “wins” his video game because he has killed the most people.  In his demented mind killing is a game.  Etc. etc. 

Here is a concept of operations to deter and, if deterrence fails, counter an in-school shooter. I realize the idea of arming school employees is ugly, but if safe and secure schools are a priority, we must consider all options.  

DETERRENT ACTIONS: 

Because of the timeline associated with a school shooting (the arrival of first responders will always be outside the window of vulnerability), there must be a school Security Force in-place every second of every school day.  More on this in a few minutes. If the shooter has given any thought to where his target is, he may well be aware he could be walking into a Security Force death trap. Institutionalized deterrence.  

Because of the need for multiple fire exits from a school, all exit-only doors become potential breach points.  Have a camera on the door at all times and live feed to the “security rooms”.  When that door is breached from the outside, flashing lights and a unique audio alarm will immediately alert the Security Force. Physical and technical deterrence.  

Every school has multiple fire alarm mechanisms on the wall in the hallways that can be activated by anyone sensing a fire.  Add a second alarm for anyone seeing a gun or sensing there is a shooter in the school. Every person in the building is authorized to pull the alarm if necessary. Every student becomes a player in security. Have a camera observing the alarm to preclude pranksters from activating it.  The shooter alarm must have a very distinctive sound and be frequently tested. When that alarm goes off it will initiate several actions.  Every classroom will get locked down from the inside. The Security Force will react immediately and initiate pre-planned actions. A deterrent action provides peace of mind to everyone on campus.  

THE SECURITY FORCE: 

In today’s school systems, typically about half, the total number of employees are not in the classrooms; janitors, school bus maintenance personnel, counselors, nurses, the principal, etc. Also, typically there will be a position for an Assistant (or Vice) Principal to perform admin duties, scheduling, overseeing testing, supervising lunch, hallways, special events, etc. 

In this concept of operations, the Assistant Principal becomes, as his/her priority, the leader of the Security Force. That leader will designate someone to be second in command so that 100% of the time school is in session, one of them will be in the school and ready to react. 

The Security Force can be put together from, in my concept, the non-teaching employees.  Depending on the size of the school, perhaps anywhere from four to ten individuals will be needed. Four to ten is a good span of control for one tactical leader.  If a school system has hired a full-time security person, they will also be a full-time member of the force but not necessarily the leader. Members of the force will respond better to directions from the second most senior person in the school than from a fellow employee (It’s a human nature thing).  

No school employee should be forced to be in a position to use a gun.  Therefore, filling the Security Force with volunteers will be a priority. 

The Security Force will of course undergo extensive and recurring training in marksmanship.  But just as important will be situational tactical training.  Throughout the U.S. local law enforcement will avail themselves of live-fire facilities that teach how to take down a room and how to react to a hostile situation in that room. That type of training is always filmed so that it can be critiqued and prepare someone to react instantly to varying situations.  

Training to neutralize a shooter is all about tasks, conditions, and standards. The training regimen must define all the tasks required under every varying condition and to a specified standard. Security Force members who cannot meet the standards must be replaced.  Over time, skills deteriorate.  Training is not a once-and-done drill.  Repeat it whenever it is necessary. 

Somewhere in the school, there will be “security rooms.”  In those rooms, there will be a monitor for all the cameras that look at the exit-only doors.  The doors will be wired so that when a door is breached from the outside the monitor will immediately provide a flashing red light and an audio alarm.  A monitor will necessarily be in the Security Force leader’s office, in that of his second in command, and probably in the full-time security person’s office.   

DAY-TO-DAY SECURITY FORCE:  

Every member will carry a small radio that is active every minute of the school day.  There will be no chatter or admin communications; it will be used only when there is a shooter alarm of any kind.  Additionally, every member will have at their immediate disposal a red body armor vest; red to distinguish them as an armed Security Force member when the first responders arrive. Don’t shoot the good guys. 

In each member’s place of duty, mounted on the wall next to their red vest, will be a metal box with a keypad.  Inside the box will be three things, 

1) a loaded/round-chambered handgun, 

2) a lanyard with one master key to open every classroom 

3) a lanyard configured to carry additional magazines for the handgun (because most often, lady’s apparel does not have pockets). 

What are we describing here?  Doing all of the above will solve the most serious part of the present-day problem.  First responders will arrive ASAP but that is some number of minutes.  We must have a response in seconds. First responders will arrive ASAP at the shooter’s location in some number of minutes.  “ASAP” must be defined as some minimum number of seconds or kids will die.  

For example, the monitor alarm in one of the security rooms goes off indicating a breach of exit-only door three.  Through prior planning and many training rehearsals here is what happens: 

Within a specified standard number of seconds, every Security Force member must be out of their office door with a vest, two lanyards, a weapon, and their radio.  

Through prior detailed planning and training, Security Force members Tom and Sara are closest to the breach; they will go directly there in a specified, rehearsed number of seconds reporting all their actions over the radio for every member to hear. Continuous situational awareness.  All other members will report in “X” seconds with their gear to a designated assembly area in that building.  

An astute student believes they can see the butt of a pistol sticking out of the jacket pocket of someone moving down the hallway.  They know they are empowered to pull the shooter alarm hanging on the wall. 

The monitor in the security rooms will indicate the location of the alarm mechanism.  The first order over the security force radio will be “west wing, third floor”. Through countless trial runs during training, the Security Force leader knows he should have at least one member arriving at that location within “X” seconds with everyone who is present for duty within “Y” seconds. 

Shots fired.  One immediate radio call to the entire Security Force from whoever heard the shot; “shots fired in building one.”  There is nothing else required at that time. Everyone goes to a pre-designated assembly point in that building.  The Security Force leader or his/her assistant would call 911 because they can provide the greatest clarity at that point without the emotion most people would have.  

TRAINING: 

If I was a county superintendent of schools, I would set this program in motion, explain it in detail to the County Sheriff and local Chiefs of Police, ask for their assistance in providing training areas (ranges and shooting houses) and provide training assistance throughout the year.  Include them in unannounced response training sessions for the Security Force. 

There is one critical element in the training regimen that must be considered.  A member of the Security Force may be the best marksman and may get exceptional scores in the shooting house,  but the leader also has to be comfortable with that person’s mental status.  Are they comfortable with executing the concept of “taking a life to save a life”?  Can they be relied on to pull the trigger if and when it becomes necessary?    

CONCLUSIONS:  

Accountability: This program does not need permission from the president or the U.S. Congress; although they should applaud it. It does not require state law or the Governor’s approval, but they could fund the security person for each school. County Boards of Education, superintendents, and principals are accountable for the existence and professionalism of such a program.  This is all about decentralized planning and execution. 

The deterrent Security Force will be available every school day. There are no conflicts with personnel being on vacation. Everyone involved is expected to be at work every day.  No requirement nights, weekends, and only for half the year; 180 school days, 185 non-school days per year.  

Reaction timing, seconds vs minutes, solves the problems articulated above. 

Deterrence: Someone, however deranged may think twice about knowing he is walking into a potential death trap against the on-campus Security Force. Future attempts to shoot up a school are likely to be unsuccessful and get national attention; deterrence in action.  

BOTTOM LINE: 

Security Force mission statement:  Sustain the actions necessary to deter future shooters from acting out against schools and, if deterrence fails, be capable every minute of every school day to take out the shooter(s) in seconds. 

With 142,000 schools in America, the likelihood that a particular in-school force will ever be used is extremely low.  However, the likelihood that an internal force will be necessary in some schools in the future is high; that’s the world in which we live.  Without it, more kids will die. 

This program is not hard, not expensive, and clearly within the art of the possible. It is far better than what we have now which is nothing but hope.  Hope is not a process.  

Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army, retired, is the author of VISION TO EXECUTION, a book for leaders, and a new book May 2022, FIX THE SYSTEMS, TRANSFORM AMERICA.

OnePeterFive

Rebuilding Catholic Culture. Restoring Catholic Tradition.

• RELIGIOUS LIFE

Lefebvre Was Right? The “Disobedient” Ordination of Alcuin Reid

 T. S. Flanders May 27, 2022 

Above: Dom Alcuin Reid pictured with Cardinal Burke in 2014 (New Liturgical Movement). This photo is not meant to imply anything other than that fact. 

Dom Alcuin Reid has been for years a respected liturgical scholar in the Church (Cardinal Ratzinger wrote the forward to his seminal work published by Ignatius Press). He is the founding Prior of the Monastère Saint-Benoît in the diocese of Fréjus-Toulon, France and has published numerous academic works on the sacred liturgy. Thus he made an important appearance yesterday in the premier of documentary, Mass of the Ages, Episode II: A Perfect Storm, which details the creation of the Novus Ordo Missae following Vatican II.

After Traditionis Custodes was released, Catholic World Report published his essay “Does Traditionis Custodes pass Liturgical History 101?” in which he said, following Ratzinger:

As I have said many times, I am not a traditionalist. I am a Catholic. And as a Catholic I hold that the bitterness, fear, alienation, and growing division directly brought about by Traditionis custodes is a situation of the utmost grave concern. It is a source of scandal well beyond those whom it targeted and, pastorally speaking, is already a disaster – particularly amongst the young.

In the face of this, as a liturgical historian, I cannot remain silent. Legislation cannot change historical facts. Nor can an act of legal positivism determine what is or is not part of the lex orandi of the Church, for as the Catechism teaches, “the law of prayer is the law of faith: the Church believes as she prays. Liturgy is a constitutive element of the holy and living Tradition” (par. 1124) – of which the bishops, and first amongst them, the Bishop of Rome, are guardians, not the proprietors.

As the prior of Monastère Saint-Benoît since its founding in August 2020, however, Dom Alcuin was only a deacon and the growing monastery depended (with difficulty) on diocesan clergy for the Holy Mass according to the traditional Roman Rite. As a result of this dependence on diocesan clergy, the monks had sometimes had to go without the Holy Sacrifice on any given day, which obviously destabilised their Benedictine life, besides threatening vocations.

Three monastic visitators, therefore, recommended to the local bishop (Msgr Dominique Rey) that Dom Alcuin be ordained to the holy priesthood, even as late as December 2021 – after Traditionis Custodes.

However, according to the recent statement of the monastery, the Bishop feared to go through with the plan for fear of repercussions from Rome and informed the monastery that he would not ordain Reid. Now the life of the monastery was again asked to suffer for the sake of the bishop’s fears.

Meanwhile, vocations to the priesthood worldwide and the general faith of society continues to degrade.

At some point, the monks felt the situation of approved Latin Mass religious life – which had been quite clear and lawful under the past two pontificates – had been thrown into a climate of fear. This is exactly what esteemed historian and OnePeterFive contributor Henry Sire documented about this pontificate years before Traditionis Custodes, which earned Pope Francis the nickname “Dictator Pope.” (Proving his argument, Henry Sire was immediately “canceled” by the Francis pontificate for his truth-telling).

Under Francis, it is clear to all that traditional religious life has been in the cross hairs from the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate – an order documented by Mr. Sire as unlawfully suppressed – to the new Cor Orans regime seeking to undermine contemplative, religious life to the latest efforts against the Carmelites of Fairfield.

Therefore no one can deny that Reid and his monks were exercising the virtue of caution – to apply experience from the past in order to avoid future evil.

After much prayer and providential opportunities – Dom Alcuin Reid was secretly ordained by an anonymous bishop who is, according to the monastery, a “senior prelate in unimpeded communion with the Holy See.” He then submitted himself to his local bishop Rey, who immediately suspended him.

The action of secret ordination was justified, according to the monastery’s statement, “for the ultimate good of souls in a truly extraordinary situation in the life of the Church.”

As Anthony Stine observed, this is an obvious parallel to Archbishop Lefebvre’s justification. Mike Parrott has also made note that it has similarities with the disobedient, secret ordinations conducted by Karol Wojtyła (John Paul II) and Josef Slipyj.

In this climate of fear and hyperüberultramontanism, this new suspended status for Fr. Alcuin Reid might make the organisations that formerly published Reid afraid and some might “cancel” this great scholar that Ratzinger promoted (similar to the way some had cancelled Msgr. Klaus Gamber, whom Ratzinger also defended). As the Holy Father continued to rail on Trads and punish the little ones and take away the sacred liturgy from them, do we not see what Mr. Sire documented a few years ago? What is this climate of fear but a dictatorial regime?

This is a matter of grave importance as we see traditional religious life – the very life blood of the Church’s spiritual life – continually threatened under this pontificate.

All good and pious Catholics must ask themselves this question: does Alcuin Reid deserve the judgment of charity and mercy? Do you think he was doing his best to obey God in a difficult situation? Unless you would like to judge his heart about his statement, we can reasonably and charitably conclude he believed his conscience was well formed, and acting in obedience to God.

Do you think the same about the future John Paul II and his illicit ordinations, or about Archbishop Lefebvre? Do not all Catholic deserve the judgment of charity?

As St. Thomas says:

Unless we have evident indications of a person’s wickedness, we ought to deem him good, by interpreting for the best whatever is doubtful about him… He who interprets doubtful matters for the best, may happen to be deceived more often than not; yet it is better to err frequently through thinking well of a wicked man, than to err less frequently through having an evil opinion of a good man, because in the latter case an injury is inflicted, but not in the former (ST II-II q60 a4).

To those Catholics who would see a suspension like this and do the uncharitable and anti-Christian act of “cancelling” a well-respected churchmen and a brother in Christ, I ask this: what is your evidentindication of his wickedness?

You say: he disobeyed his bishop! He has been suspended!

I say: when has the Church defined that disobedience to a bishop is intrinsically evil? Or that suspensions are infallible?

Is the salvation of souls the law above every law? or not?

No, every Catholic must admit this in theory since that is the very purpose of canon law and the episcopal office. 

No one can posit that a suspension is infallible or that disobedience to a bishop is intrinsically evil. Therefore, we have no evident reason to claim Reid’s wickedness. Thus, if we are to act like Christians instead of internet trolls, we are obliged to judge every party in this case with charity. Perhaps Reid did the wrong thing. Perhaps the bishop did the wrong thing. Perhaps Pope Francis is wrong about Traditionis Custodes, as many orthodox Catholics and many bishops and priests have agreed at this point.

Go now and read his statement with charity and see if you can possibly conclude that he was not honestly doing his best to obey God.

If you are so arrogant as to claim knowledge of a man’s heart and cancel him on a difficult matter, you sin against your brother by acting against charity. Instead, let us follow the Angelic Doctor in this case, and in the cases too of John Paul II, Cardinal Slipyj, and even Archbishop Lefebvre. Instead of the impious wickedness of the internet and shallow media lynch mobs, let us follow the wisdom of the saints:

It is dangerous to judge others because, being unaware of the need or the motive out of which they do things offensive to us but either correct or excusable in God’s sight, we put ourselves in the position of having judged them rashly; in this we commit no small sin by thinking of our brothers other than we ought.[1]

It is only after many years that pious men with wisdom discern and agree with one another on some disputed question of conscience. Some of these questions have still been unresolved after centuries.

Will all Catholics one day know if Lefebvre was right or wrong? Are we truly living through a neo-Arian crisis which demands from pious hearts disobedience to ecclesiastical authority in order to obey God?

Thank God – we are not the judges of men’s hearts, but God Almighty is. Let us then, properly form our own consciences and do our best, by God, to be faithful to grace, showing great mercy and kindness to our brother, lest we come under the judgment of God Who said, blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. He who judges his brother rashly or harshly will himself be judged harshly by God. Let us rather tremble, brethren, before the awesome judgment seat of Christ.

I encourage all Catholics to avail themselves of the new treatise on obedience by Dr. Kwasniewski (which is free for seminarians and all clerics). With the help of grace, this text will help form our consciences for the days and years ahead.

Meanwhile, traditional religious may need to abandon the ideal of a stable monastery and return to the roots of monasticism: laymen going to the desert, following the Father of Monasticism. No bishop can stop laymen and women from forming into monastic communities and renouncing the world, just like St. Anthony.

They can take our Sacraments, but they can never take away our faith and our prayer life.

It may take nothing less to preserve traditional monastic life. But let us not fear but pray the words of the Holy Psalter that the Novus Ordo Liturgy of the Hours censored:

In thy mercy thou wilt destroy my enemies. And thou wilt cut off all them that afflict my soul: for I am thy servant (Ps. cxlii. 12).

But they have sought my soul in vain, they shall go into the lower parts of the earth: They shall be delivered into the hands of the sword, they shall be the portions of foxes. But the king shall rejoice in God, all they shall be praised that swear by him: because the mouth is stopped of them that speak wicked things (Ps. lxii., 10-12).

Let us pray these words of Christ against the world, the flesh, and the devil, and let all monks and nuns rejoice in suffering in union with their Crucified Lord.[2]

[1] St. John Cassian, Institutes, bk. 5.30 in Boniface Ramsey, trans. (Paulist, 2000), 134.

[2] On the spirituality of Christ in the Psalter, see T. S. Flanders, Introduction to the Holy Bible for Traditional Catholics, ch. 2.

T. S. Flanders

Timothy Flanders is the editor of OnePeterFive. He is the author of City of God versus City of Man: The Battles of the Church from Antiquity to the Present and Introduction to the Holy Bible for Traditional Catholics. His writings have appeared at OnePeterFive and Crisis, as well as in Catholic Family News. In 2019 he founded The Meaning of Catholic, a lay apostolate dedicated to uniting Catholics against the enemies of Holy Church. He holds a degree in classical languages from Grand Valley State University and has done graduate work with the Catholic University of Ukraine. He lives in Michigan with his wife and five children.

Abortion Activists Vandalize Mississippi Church as Pro-Abortion Violence Continues Nationwide

State  |  Micaiah Bilger  |   May 26, 2022   |   10:08AM   |  Jackson, Mississippi

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A rural Mississippi church was vandalized with pro-abortion graffiti Monday, the latest in dozens of attacks against churches and pro-life organizations in recent weeks.

The walls, doors and windows of Mt. Avery Missionary Baptist Church in Columbus, near the Alabama border, were found covered with pro-abortion slogans and what appears to be a drawing of a sexual assault, WCBI News reports.

St. Elmore Armistad, a deacon at the church, said someone noticed the graffiti Monday afternoon and called him, according to the Associated Press.

“Why us? That’s the first thing I wondered,” Armistad said. “You hear about things like that happening other places, but you don’t get a grip on it until it happens to you.”

Photos taken by the local news show phrases like “Keep your laws off my body,” “Girls just want to have fundamental human rights” and comments about sexual assault painted all over the building.

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Armistad said the congregation is poor, older and African American, and just a handful of people attend every week.

“Everybody is on disability that’s here,” he told the local news. “Except for some young ones that attend sometimes. You know how young people don’t attend church anymore.”

Lowndes County Sheriff Eddie Hawkins is investigating, but the church is located in such a rural area off a small country road that he said it will be difficult to find witnesses, according to the reports.

Hawkins and Armistad said they suspect the vandals chose to target the church because they would not get caught. Armistad said he does not know what other reason there could be, because the congregation is not political.

“We don’t preach abortion,” he said. “We preach Jesus Christ. It just don’t add up.”

Four other churches also were vandalized with pro-abortion graffiti this week in Washington state, and dozens of attacks on pro-life and Christian groups have occurred since news broke earlier this month about a leaked draft U.S. Supreme Court ruling that shows the justices overturning Roe v. Wade through the Mississippi case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health.

Even prominent pro-abortion groups are using words that hint at possible insurrection and violence. Earlier this month, Rachel O’Leary Carmona, executive director of Women’s March, warned that abortion activists will be “ungovernable” until the government legalizes abortion on demand.

Other pro-abortion groups have been calling for churches to be the target of abortion activists’ outrage. And one group posted the addresses of the Supreme Court justices online to urge people to protest outside their homes.

The Supreme Court has not issued a final ruling on the abortion case yet, but the Department of Homeland Security released a report last week warning that radical abortion activists plan to burn down or storm the Supreme Court building and murder justices and their law clerks if the court overturns Roe v. Wade. The report indicates these pro-abortion extremists also plan to target churches and other places of worship with violence and vandalism.

LifeNews has been keeping track of reports of pro-abortion vandalism, violence, threats and other incidents since the leak. They include:

Oregon – Pro-Life Billboard Vandalized in Portland: “Abort the Supreme Court” (Andy Ngo)

Washington state – Four Churches Vandalized by Pro-Abortion Radicals in Olympia (more from Center for Security Policy)

Alabama – Vicar, Parishioners Respond to Vandalism at Pro-Life Women’s Clinic in Auburn (Opelika-Auburn News)

Kansas – Supports of Pro-Life “Value The Both” Amendment Report Yard Signs Stolen (KAKE)

Arizona – Planned Parenthood Chair Brags How Her Husband Assaulted Man in “Blacks for Trump” Shirt

USA – Abortion Activists Threaten to Burn Down Supreme Court, Kill Justices When Roe is Overturned (more at CBS News)

Arizona – Watch: Pro-Abortion Demonstrators Attack, Spit on ‘Students for Kari’ Volunteers (College Fix)

Missouri – Pro-life Student Group at University of Missouri Calls for Dialogue after its Memorial Was Vandalized (Campus Reform)

Indiana – Pro-Life Student Advocates Shoved, Grabbed from Behind at Pro-Abortion Rally (Students for Life)

Idaho – Two Arrested at Pro-Abortion Rally, Protester Allegedly Kicked Police Officer (KTVB 7)

Maryland – Birthright of Frederick Vandalized: “F— Fake Clinics”

Maryland – Alpha Pregnancy Center in Reisterstown Vandalized with Pro-Abortion Graffiti (Andy Ngo) (more at WBAL-TV 11)

USA – Video: Pro-Life Student Activists Kicked, Shoved by Pro-Abortion Protesters (Students for Life)

Michigan – Michigan Catholic Church Vandalized with Satanic Symbols after Roe Leak (more at The Tennessee Star)

New York City – Abortion Activists Threaten to Bomb, Burn Down St. Patrick’s Catholic Church

Maine – Republican Senator Receives Threats after Voting No on Radical Pro-Abortion Bill (Boston Globe)

Texas – Another Pro-Life Pregnancy Center Vandalized in Denton (NRL News)

Virginia – Pro-Life Organization Office Vandalized; Man Exposes Himself, Urinates on Front Door (Concerned Women for America)

Washington, D.C. – Justice Alito and His Family Taken to Secure Location to Protect Them From Pro-Abortion Violence

Colorado – Parish church in Fort Collins tagged with pro-abortion graffiti; police investigating (Catholic News Agency)

Oregon – Oregon Right to Life Firebombed With Molotov Cocktail

Texas – Catholic Churches Vandalized with Pro-Abortion Graffiti

Virginia – Pregnancy Center Vandalized with Pro-Abortion Graffiti in Northern Virginia (National Review) (more from Human Coalition)

USA – Pro-Abortion Feminist Calls for Violence against Pro-Life Americans, Celebrates Arson

Wisconsin – Abortion Activists Light Fire in Pro-Life Group’s Office, Throw Molotov Cocktails

Texas – Pro-Life Pregnancy Center Vandalized in Denton, Texas (more from Students for Life)

Oregon, Maryland – Radical Abortion Activists Vandalize Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers That Help Pregnant Women

Washington, D.C. – Two Pro-Life Leaders Say Abortion Activists Punched Them at D.C. Protest (Stand True)

Texas – Pro-Abortion Group Brags about Vandalizing Trotter House Pregnancy Center in Austin (Stop the Sweeps ATX) (more at Pregnancy Help News)

Texas – Pro-Life University of North Texas Student Says Antifa Vandalized Door, Issued Threats (Fox News)

Washington state – Antifa Assault News Crew during Pro-Abortion Rally in Seattle (Andy Ngo)

Colorado – Catholic Church in Boulder Defiled Following Roe v. Wade Draft Opinion Leak (Denver Gazette)

Oregon – Pro-Abortion Protesters Damage Property In Portland Following SCOTUS Leak On Abortion (KXL 101 FM News) (more at KOIN 6)

California – Two Police Officers Injured at Pro-Abortion Protest in Los Angeles (more at CBS News)

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