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Nominalism’s Post-Truth Francis & RINO Kennedy World of the Denial of Law of Non-Contradiction: If Justice Kennedy is a “Satanist,” then is Francis a “Satanist,” too?

May 05, 2022

A Papacy of Contradictions – Catholic …

catholicworldreport.com

 

 

Posted on 10 November 2014 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf:

I had intended to write today about the translation error in the English version of the recent Synod’s final document. 

However, over at The Catholic Thing, Robert Royal covers the issue well and says many of the same things I had intended to say, and he does so masterfully. I urge you to read his piece.

Royal also comments on the demotion of Card. Burke, saying:

 There’s a double sadness here. Pope Francis clearly approved these moves – whether they were instigated by him personally or by advisers he listens to. But it’s precisely voices like Burke’s that he needs to keep around. 

 He’s already hearing plenty from often unreliable counselors like Cardinals Maradiaga, Marx, and Kasper. The last in particular seems more and more incoherent as he tries to explain precisely why marriage is indissoluble and yet those in a second sexual relationship – though not a marriage – may be absolved and return to receiving Communion. The only way that’s possible is if God repeals the Law of Non-contradiction. I don’t think that’s on his to-do list.

 But there’s more and, I think, worse. I’m not especially given to conspiracy theories in sacred or secular contexts. But there’s some – let’s say – systemic problem within the Vatican that having a loyal truth-teller like Burke around helps to correct. The Catholic Monitor [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2018/11/fr-z-flashback-cdl-burke-fired-god.html]

There have been something like FORTY antipopes in the past 2000 years, and every one was contested in real time, and almost all were deposed and ejected whilst squatting upon the See of Peter. One of the reasons that the Antipapacy of Anacletus II is so unusual is precisely because he died naturally “in office” after an eight year usurpation. St. Bernard of Clairvaux was the man who went to Rome WHILE ANACLETUS was still alive, and methodically demonstrated to the clergy and the aristocracy of Rome that Anacletus II was an Antipope, such that after Anacletus II died and his “successor” Antipope Victor IV was “elected”, Antipope Victor IV quickly repented after TWO DAYS as Antipope and presented himself to the true Pope, Innocent II. Bernard of Clairvaux and others worked tirelessly and persistently to correct the situation, remove the Antipope and restore the true Pope to the Chair IN REAL TIME. If one listens to the irrational gibberish being spewed today by these intransigent “Fwanciss is Pope shuddup stoopid schismatic!” partisans, one would have to declare that St. Bernard of Clairvaux committed the MORTAL SIN of SCHISM for even daring to question the legal and ontological truth of the identity of the Vicar of Christ on earth. Even though St. Bernard was 100% correct, according to these people today who, if one didn’t know better might think that they belong to some sort of cult that revolves around the violation of the Law of Non-contradiction as its very creed, are arguing that he was in “mortal sin” for EVEN ASKING THE QUESTION. So, according to the “Fwanciss is Pope shuddup stoopid schismatic” set, St. Bernard of Clairvaux was BOTH an unrepentant mortally sinful schismatic, AND is a SAINT AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH. Yet another fat, juicy violation of the Law of Non-contradiction. Another attempted denial and upending of Reality itself. Remember folks, ONLY THE REAL COUNTS. ONLY THE REAL MATTERS. Anything that involves any violation of the Law of Non-contradiction is either a LIE or a FANTASY. – Ann Barnhardt [https://www.barnhardt.biz/]

I don’t mean the bloody red demon exorcist green-pea-soup satanism, though that certainly exists and is the true darker side of it, and I don’t mean the LARPy dress-up ackshually satanism of redditors. I mean in the worst sense, the Luciferian Freemasonic sense, where man thinks himself Godlike. This is beyond the idea that man sole measure of all things, but that man is also the creator of things. – Renowned statistician and scholar William Briggs

Ironically, Francis conservative Carl E. Olson shows the history of nominalism and it’s implicit Lutheran connection to Francis’s relativistic Amoris Laetitia. He explains what Francis’s most eminent modern theologian Certeau’s nonimalism teachings ultimately are and implicitly why Francis’s beloved Martin Luther noninalistic  thinking helped bring about the present Certeau/Derrida WOKE “hyper-nominalism” of Joe Biden’s transgender post-truth America and the world. – The Catholic Monitor 

In January, renowned statistician and scholar William Briggs wrote that “Justice Anthony Kennedy Is A Satanist”:

Anthony Kennedy, while sitting as a Supreme Court Justice, in an infamous ruling wrote, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

This is satanism. 

I don’t mean the bloody red demon exorcist green-pea-soup satanism, though that certainly exists and is the true darker side of it, and I don’t mean the LARPy dress-up ackshually satanism of redditors. I mean in the worst sense, the Luciferian Freemasonic sense, where man thinks himself Godlike.. This is beyond the idea that man sole measure of all things, but that man is also the creator of things…

… If Kennedy is right, you have no foundation, no basis at all, to prove me wrong. You may only disagree. Your disagreement means nothing. It is mere air. Especially if you are weaker than I, and it is dinner time.

As idiotic as this disproof is, it is valid because it relies on ideas we all have embedded into us, or we quickly learn, which are certain universal notions. It is that now we (especially the young) deny them. Or pretend to. It is the retreat from universalism that led to Kennedy and to us.

We can thank especially William of Ockham, he of the dull razor fame, for this. At the peak of Realism in philosophy, the glorious Middle Ages (an apt term), certain academic thoughts occurred to those impatient with the rigor of the schoolmen. Thoughts of doubt. Which became a mark of sophistication. Which, through the passing of years and encrustation of theory, led to the considered-brilliant solution: we are certain we can never be certain.

Anyway, Ockham was the father of nominalism, which is the denial of universals, and therefore of underlying fixed Reality. [https://wmbriggs.com/post/38845/] 

If “nominalist” Justice Kennedy is a “satanist” then is Francis a “satanist,” too? 

Does Francis believe that there is no objective basis for truth and that there is no objective meaning or reality like Kennedy seems to think due to his aparent nominalism? 

  
The nominalist Michel de Certeau believed in all of the above.

In simple words, de Certeau’s theology denies objective truth.

The Francis considers him the most eminent modern theologian. Francis said:

“For me, de Certeau is still the greatest theologian for today.” (onepeterfive.com, March 8, 2016, “Pope Francis Reveals His Mind to Private Audience”)

De Certeau in his greatest book “Heterologies” said:

“It is not Mr. Foucault who is making fun of domains of knowledge… It is history that is laughing at them. It plays tricks on the teleologists who take themselves to be the lieutenants of meaning. A meaninglessness of history.” (“Heterologogies,” Pages 195-196)

Historian Keith Windschuttle shows that the Pope’s favorite modern theologian is a radical who thinks that there is no outside reality. Windschuttle wrote:

“Of all the French theorists… de Certeau is the most radical. He is critical of the poststructuralist Foucault for his use of documentary evidence and of Derrida for the way he privileges the practice of writing. For de Certeau, writing is a form of oppression… he argues… writing itself constitutes the act of colonisation…”

“Like both structuralist and poststructuralist theorists, de Certeau subscribes to the thesis that we have access only to our language and not to any real, outside world…”

“De Certeau claims that writing can never be objective. Its status is no different from that of fiction. So, because history is a form of writing, all history is also fiction.” (“The Killing of History,” Pages 31-34)

The Pope’s favorite theologian’s central religious idea according to de Certeau Scholar Johannes Hoff are:

“According to this new approach to the Biblical narrative, the focal event of Christianity is not the incarnation, the crucifixion, or the resurrection of Christ, but the empty tomb. The Christian form of life is no longer associated with a place, a body, or an institution, but with a quest for a missing body: the missing body of the people of Israel, and mutatis mutandis the missing body of Jesus.”
(Article by Johannes Hoff, “Mysticism, Ecclesiology And The Body Christ: Certeau’s (Mis-) Reading of Corpus Mystium and the Legacy of Henri de Lubac” Page 87, Titus Brandsma Institute Studies In Spirituality, Supplement 24, “Spiritual Spaces: History and Mysticism in Michel De Certeau”)

The nihilist theologian believes that the central truths of Christianity are about “absence” or nonexistence. De Certeau scholar Graham Ward wrote:

“For de Lubac the… Eucharist is not a sign of the presence of Christ’s body, it is Christ’s body… And yet Certeau… makes the Eucharist (as later the church and body of mystical text he treats) into substitutes, acts of bereavement, signs of absence.” (“Michel de Certeau – in the Plural, ” Page 511)

In other words, Francis’s greatest modern theologian believes that the Eucharist is not the body of Christ present, he doesn’t even believe it is a sign of the presence of Christ’s body like some Protestants, but a sign of “absence.”

Might de Certeau’s influence on Francis be the reason he never kneels before the Eucharist, but kneels to wash the feet of those he like Certeau might consider oppressed?

De Certeau’s key ideas are oppression of groups and the deconstruction of meaning.

For the most part, de Certeau appears to have gotten these ideas from the postmodernist Jacques Derrida.

The scholar Pablo Markin states that Francis “departs from…Thomistic positions” in his “close” following of apparent nominalist Marion’s teachings in his encyclical Amoris Laetitia:

“Oltvai argues that Pope Francis, born as Jorge Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, departs from the Thomistic positions of his predecessor, while adopting the notions of the face, the gaze and the other in his pontifical communication, such as in Evangelii gaudium and Amoris Laetitia. This stands close to the philosophical positions of not only Levinas, but also those of Marion, a French Catholic theologian, phenomenological philosopher and a student of [postmodernist Heideggerian] Jacques Derrida.” [https://dgo.hypotheses.org/221]

The Pro Quest website showed that Francis’s most important theologian and nominalist Derrida are close collaborators:

This article presents the connection between Michel de Certeau and Jacques Derrida on two key issues for both authors: the mystical and writing. Their positions and common grounds about desire, necessity and the ineffable are shown here through references to their main works.[https://www.proquest.com/docview/2089762984]

The Cairn Information site says that the top teacher Francis is a type of mystical tradition of nominalism:

The question of language enables us to make our way through the entire work. Quite early on, the mystical tradition appeared to Certeau as a particular writing, a language whose characteristics it was important to define. In doing so, he tore spirituality away from insolvable theological debates that it had become the prisoner of. At the same time, he encountered the radical questions posed to philosophy and theology by taking seriously how language functions, from the nominalist crisis to Wittgenstein and Derrida. [https://www.cairn-int.info/article-E_RSR_161_0033–michel-de-certeau-and-the-question-of.htm]

Ironically, Francis conservative Carl E. Olson shows the history of nominalism and it’s implicit Lutheran connection to Francis’s relativistic Amoris Laetitia. He explains what Francis’s most eminent modern theologian Certeau’s nonimalism teachings ultimately are and implicitly why Francis’s beloved Martin Luther noninalistic  thinking helped bring about the present Certeau/Derrida WOKE “hyper-nominalism” of Joe Biden’s transgender post-truth America and the world:

Whereas St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) had taught that man can know the true, objective essence of things, Ockham denied it was possible. As Benjamin Wiker observed in Moral Darwinism (InterVarsity, 2002), Ockham believed that “when we use the word dog there is really no universal entity, essence or dog-ness that we perceive. Dog is merely a name we apply to particular things that happen to look alike. Hence, the name of his system, nominalism, for the Latin  nomen, ‘name.'” 

In other words, nominalism is a philosophical system claiming that everything outside the mind is completely individual: Reality cannot be comprehended through the use of universal and abstract concepts but only through the empirical study of specific, individual objects. Historian and Benedictine monk David Knowles, in The Evolution of Medieval Thought, wrote that nominalism holds that “there is no such thing as a universal, and it is nonsense to speak of the thing known as present in an intelligible form in the mind of the knower.” 

[…]

Ockham went so far as to say that the Incarnation had value only to the extent God gave it value; God could have redeemed mankind just as easily by becoming a stone, tree, or donkey. If there is no common, or universal, human nature, the Incarnation was not so much about the Logos taking on human nature as it was about God working as he wishes, in a manner unrelated to any sort of logic or reason. 

Because of the arbitrary nature of reality, man cannot know the essential nature of sin and grace. Thus, he has no way of knowing his state before God — outside of intuition and inner experience…

… Ockham went so far as to say that the Incarnation had value only to the extent God gave it value; God could have redeemed mankind just as easily by becoming a stone, tree, or donkey. If there is no common, or universal, human nature, the Incarnation was not so much about the Logos taking on human nature as it was about God working as he wishes, in a manner unrelated to any sort of logic or reason. 

Because of the arbitrary nature of reality, man cannot know the essential nature of sin and grace. Thus, he has no way of knowing his state before God — outside of intuition and inner experience…

… Like a stream growing as it flows from a mountain into a valley, nominalism has helped shape modernity’s view of God, man, and reality. Ockham’s focus on empirical knowledge played a vital role in Luther and Calvin looking inwardly in search of faith. But it was not long before Enlightenment thinkers would cast aside the tenuous reality of self-enclosed faith and begin searching for data and evidence in a new way…

… What the Protestant revolt and later modernity had in common was that a subjective, individualistic view of reality turned into the essential basis of knowledge. The difference was in the object of focus. The Reformers looked to God, relying on intuitive, subjective experience. Later thinkers, relying on their own intuitive experiences, concluded that man is autonomous and God is unnecessary. The former resulted in Lutheranism, Calvinism and a host of splintering groups. The latter resulted in all sorts of nasty “isms”: empiricism, positivism, moral relativism, and deconstructionism. 

Summarized, the move toward subjective and intuitive knowledge, opposed to abstract and universal knowledge, led to increasingly radical philosophical propositions. G.W. F. Hegel, Immanuel Kant, and Karl Marx pushed the envelope of nominalist-indebted thought. German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) wrote, “There are no facts, only interpretations” — a sentiment echoed in the common contemporary refrain: “There is no truth, only opinions.” In the twentieth century, Jacques Derrida’s work in deconstruction — which asserts that truth cannot be known and words lack real meaning — was a type of hyper-nominalism.[https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=6802]

Hyper-nominalism is just another word for Modernism. Is Francis a Modernist (hyper-nominalist)?

• “[T]he [Modernist] Blondelian schema holds that justification for the faith is to be found by turning inwards to the personal experience of the human subject. This turn to the subject is characteristic of modern philosophy, from Descartes right up to the Idealism of Kant and Hegel and beyond, and presented a major challenge to the traditional Catholic apologetics… If it were the case that inner experience justified the faith, if each person was to find the proof of God’s existence within their own life, then what would be the basis for the teaching authority of the Church?” – Neo-Modernist AnthonyCarroll

• “Between [Modernist Maurice] Blondel’s philosophy of action and Pope Francis’ pastoral action, there are significant coincidence.”- Francis’s close longtime theological advisor Fr. Juan Carlos Scannone

At the Irving Convention Center in Texas on 2013, Francis’s closest adviser and collaborator Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga apparently declared himself a Modernist or at the very least at a Neo-Modernist and appeared to claim that Modernism to some extent was Francis’s agenda and the “dreams of ‘the next Pope”:

“The Second Vatican Council… meant an end to the hostilities between the Church and Modernism… Modernism was, most of the time, a reaction against injustices and abuses that disparaged the dignity and rights of the person.”

(Whispers in the Loggia Website, “The Council’s  ‘Unfinished Business,’ The Church’s ‘Return to Jesus”… and Dreams of “The Next Pope” – A Southern Weekend with Francis’ ‘Discovery Channel,'” October 28, 2013)

Francis’s close longtime theological advisor Fr. Juan Carlos Scannone said there is “significant coincidence” or concurrence between Francis’s pastoral theology and Modernism:

“Between [Modernist Maurice] Blondel’s philosophy of action and Pope Francis’ pastoral action, there are significant coincidence.”

(La Civilta Catholics, 2015 III)

The greatest theologian of the twentieth century Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange explained the Modernism of Blondel:

“One sees the danger of the new definition of truth, no longer the adequation of intellect and reality but the conformity of mind and life… Maurice Blondel in 1906 proposed this substitution… Truth is no more immutable than man himself inasmuch as it is evolved with him, in him and through him. (Denz. 2058) One understands why Pius X said of modernist: ‘they pervert the eternal concept of truth 11 (Denz. 2080)”

(Archive.org, Catholic Family News Reprint Series, Where is the New Theology)

Simply put, Modernism is the denial of objective truth in which the individual’s conscience and opinion or sentiment is supreme.

According to Pope John Paul II, the theology of Blondel leads to “the inescapable claims of truth disappear[ing].”

Below is the evidence that Francis is a Modernist heretic:

 If Francis is a Modernist it explains why his teachings in Amoris Laetitia as interpreted by his “authentic magisterium” Argentine Letter are exactly the opposite of twenty centuries of Church doctrine and Familiaris Consortio as well as deny the existence of objective truth and objective morality according to Veritatis Splendor.

Father Raymond J. de Souza said:

“Veritatis Splendor, entitled ‘Lest the Cross of Christ Be Emptied of Its Power,’ warns precisely against the view that the demands of the moral life are too difficult and cannot be lived with the help of God’s grace. Chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia appears to be exactly what St. John Paul II had in mind in writing Veritatis Splendor.”

[http://m.ncregister.com/daily-news/debating-amoris-laetitia-a-look-aheaquestionsXOIYwi]

Pope John Paul II in Veritatis Splendor wrote:

“Certain currents of modern thought have gone so far as to exalt freedom to such an extent that it becomes an absolute… This is the direction taken by doctrines which have lost the sense of the transcendent or which are explicitly atheist. The  individual conscience is accorded the status of a supreme tribunal of moral judgment which hands down categorical and infallible decisions about good and evil… But in this way the inescapable claims of truth disappear.“[http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/5346/a_malta_laetitia.aspx]

Pope John Paul II in Familiaris Consortio wrote:

“This means, in practice, that when, for serious reasons, such as for example the children’s upbringing, a man and a woman cannot satisfy the obligation to separate, they take on themselves the duty to live in complete continence, that is, by abstinence from the acts proper to married couples.”[http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/5346/a_malta_laetitia.aspx]

John Paul II’s above teachings reject the denial of objective truth and situation ethics or the denial of objective morality, but Veritatis Splendor explicitly says situation ethics by making the “individual conscience… a supreme tribunal of… good and evil” leads or causes “the inescapable claims of truth [to] disappear.”

This article will show that Modernism, that is the denial of truth, also, leads to situation ethics or the denial of objective morality.

Francis’s Amoris Laetitia goes against the above teachings of John Paul II because of his apparent denial of truth which leads to his promoting “situation ethics” which by name was condemned by Pope Pius XII in 1956. (CatholicCitizens.org, “Pius XII’s Condemnation of Situation Ethics: ‘Accusations of rigidity first attack the adorable person of Christ,'” 5-30-2017)

Theologian Dr. E. Christian Brugger, writing on AL 305, gives a quick summary of the Pope’s situation ethics:

“But the passage does not presume that the sinner is in invincible ignorance or that the pastor supposes that. The passage supposes that people who are objectively committing adultery can know they are ‘in God’s grace’, and that their pastor can know it too… The pastor must help them find peace in their situation, and assist them to receive “the Church’s help”, which (note 351 makes clear) includes ‘the help of the sacraments… ‘”

“Pastors should help them discern if their situation is acceptable, even if it is ‘objectively’ sinful, so they can return to the sacraments.”

[http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/5346/a_malta_laetitia.aspx]

Francis in Amoris Laetitia and at a Holy Thursday liturgy appeared to be promoting the heresy of situation ethics because he denies truth. Canon lawyer Fr. Gerald E. Murray, in The Catholic Thing, wrote at the Chrism Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Holy Thursday morning “Francis made a startling claim” when he called truth an idol:

“We must be careful not to fall into the temptation of making idols of certain abstract truths. They can be comfortable idols, always within easy reach; they offer a certain prestige and power and are difficult to discern. Because the “truth-idol” imitates, it dresses itself up in the words of the Gospel, but does not let those words touch the heart. Much worse, it distances ordinary people from the healing closeness of the word and of the sacraments of Jesus.”

Fr. Murray then defines truth as the Catholic Church and St. Thomas Aquinas teaches and shows that apparently Francis denies truth and makes “erroneous opinion into an idol”: 

“Truth is the conformity of mind and reality. The truth about God is understood when we accurately grasp the nature and purpose of His creation (natural theology), and when we believe in any supernatural revelation He may make. Jesus told us that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. All truths have their origin in the Truth who is God made man. The Christian understands that the truth is a Person.”

“… Pope Francis states that “the ‘truth-idol’ imitates, it dresses itself up in the words of the Gospel, but does not let those words touch the heart.” Is the Gospel obscured or falsified by truths taught by the Magisterium of the Church – which are drawn from that Gospel?”

“If the truth could be an idol, then naturally any use of the Scriptures to illustrate that particular truth would be a charade. But the truth of God cannot be an idol because what God has made known to us is our means of entering into His reality – the goal of our existence.”

“Francis states that this ‘truth-idolatry’ in fact ‘distances ordinary people from the healing closeness of the word and of the sacraments of Jesus.’”

“Here we have the interpretative key to what I think he is getting at. He is defending his decision in Amoris Laetitia to allow some people who are living in adulterous unions to receive the sacraments of penance and the Holy Eucharistic while intending to continue to engage in adulterous relations.”

“… The truth will set you free, it will not enslave you in error and darkness. Those who seek to be healed by coming close to Christ in his sacraments will only realize that goal by knowing and doing what Jesus asks of them. To reject in practice his words about the permanence of marriage and the obligation to avoid adultery, and then assert a right to receive the sacraments risks making an erroneous opinion into an idol.” [https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2018/04/21/of-truth-and-idols/]

Francis because of his apparent denial of truth appears to be denying objective morality and intrinsically evil acts. Professor Claudio Pierantoni, a Patristic Scholar of Medieval Philosophy at the University of Chile and Member of JAHLF (John Paul II Academy for Human Life and Family), said that  Francis’s Gaudete et Exsultate appears to deny “the existence of intrinsically evil acts” and is promoting “situation ethics”:

“[T]he document is read within the context of the present controversies in the Church, especially that about Amoris Laetitia and situation ethics, one gets the strong impression that many passages are directly aimed at harshly rebuking all those people (cardinals, scholars, journalists and simple laypeople writing on blogs) that have opposed the papal agenda about giving Communion to the divorced and remarried, Communion to Protestants, permitting contraception in certain cases, too mild opposition or silence in the face of anti-family and anti-life legislation (pro-abortion, pro-birth control pro-euthanasia and pro same-sex marriage). In this sense, the document brings no progress or clarity in any of the most controversial and anti-doctrinal stances of Pope Francis. Quite to the contrary, it seems to represent one more step towards giving a kind of official approval to situation ethics.”

“So, the reading of this document should once more to urge us to plead before the Pope for an answer to the dubia, and in particular to dubium no. 2 about the existence of intrinsically evil acts, which are not justifiable in any situation. We should not forget that to deny this doctrine, or sow doubts about it, in any field of ethics, is the principal heresy of our times and the most dangerous enemy of sanctity.” [http://m.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/professor-pierantoni-gaudete-et-exsultate-supports-error-of-situational-eth#.WuLDtN9lDqC]

Why does Francis deny truth which has lead to his promoting situation ethics?

Francis expert Austen Ivereigh points to how this happened:

“Bergoglio’s fascination with polarities began in the 1960s, when he first began exploring as a Jesuit via Gaston Fessard’s 1956 monumental anti-Hegelian work on the dialectics of grace and freedom in St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. Fessard Francis tells Borghesi, ‘gave me so many of the elements that later got mixed in.’”

“Fessard was one of a 1950s group of Lyons-based jésuites blondéliens – that is, Jesuits inspired by Maurice Blondel – that included Henri de Lubac, Gaston Fessard and Michel de Certeau.” [https://cruxnow.com/book-review/2017/11/18/new-book-looks-intellectual-history-francis-pope-polarity/]

Francis theological advisor Fr. Juan Carlos Scannone connects the final dots of the close connection of Francis’s thinking with Blondel’s teachings which explains why the Pope does not believe in truth and promotes situation ethics:

“Between Blondel’s philosophy of action and Pope Francis’ pastoral action, there are significant coincidences, probably because they both draw from the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. However, indirect links between the two should not be excluded, for example, through the relationshipbetween Gaston Fessard (strongly influenced by Blondel) and Miguel Ángel Fiorito, much appreciated by Bergoglio. This article focuses first on the convergences regarding action; then it compares the coincidences between the two authors regarding the overcoming of social and existential conflicts. Finally, it studies the parallelism between the «logic of love», nominated and applied by the Pope, and the «logic of a moral life» by Blondel, focused on charity. ( La Civiltà Cattolica 2015 III / www.laciviltacattolica.it )” [https://m.facebook.com/civiltacattolica/photos/a.10150836993325245.745627.379688310244/10242607255245/?type=3]

Scannone connecting the Pope’s thinking to Blondel is very important because he is one of “Francis’ closest theological advisors” according to an expert on Latin America and Francis’s theology, Claudio Remeseira:

“In the almost fifty years since its appearance, the Theology of the People has become the Argentine theological school by default. The generation of its founders was followed by a second generation of disseminators, the most prolific of whom is father Scannone… Scannone, Galli, and Fernández are among Francis’ closest theological advisors. [“https://medium.com/@hispanicnewyork/pope-francis-per%C3%B3n-and-god-s-people-the-political-religion-of-jorge-mario-bergoglio-2a85787e7abe ]

Theologian John Lamont explains what Blondel taught:

“The neomodernists, due to their historical perspectivism, did not think that the theology and dogma of previous epochs could satisfy this understanding, but they did not want to dismiss them as false. They accordingly held that dogma was true, but that its truth could not be understood in Aristotle’s sense. Garrigou-Lagrange saw them as reviving the philosopher Maurice Blondel’s rejection of the traditional definition of truth as bringing the mind into conformity with reality (‘adaequatio rei et intellectus’) in favour of an account of truth as bringing thought into line with life (‘adaequatio realis mentis et vitae’). While this definition of truth was not explicitly stated by the neomodernists, the importance of Blondel for their thought makes this interpretation a plausible one; Bouillard, for example, wrote extensively and approvingly on Blondel.¹² What they did explicitly assert was that the truth of past dogmatic pronouncements does not consist in their being an accurate description of reality, and that a theology that was not relevant to the present day (‘actuel’) was untrue.” [https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2015/01/a-christmastide-gift-for-our-readers.html?m=1]

Even liberal Neo-Modernist philosophy writer Anthony Carroll wrote:

“Conscious of the challenge to the traditional Thomist theory of knowledge that had been ushered in by modern philosophy, Blondel, for example, sought to identify the practical level of human action as the place where one might find a new apologetic for the Christian faith. In his L’Action (1893), he analyses the dynamics of human action and argues that the distance between what we desire and what we actually realise in our actions indicates that what we truly desire lies always beyond the particular object that we are momentarily fixed upon. This transcendental horizon of desire draws the mind and heart towards God as the only One who can satisfy truly our infinite longings. For Blondel, it is this Augustinian unrest that leaves a trace of the divine in our human experience. Such a turn to the interiority of human experience as grounds for the proof of God’s existence is what is meant by immanentism in Pascendi.”

“Rather than pointing towards the historical existence of Jesus, the factual occurrence of miracles and the fulfilment of earlier prophecies for proof of God’s existence, the Blondelian schema holds that justification for the faith is to be found by turning inwards to the personal experience of the human subject. This turn to the subject is characteristic of modern philosophy, from Descartes right up to the Idealism of Kant and Hegel and beyond, and presented a major challenge to the traditional Catholic apologetics of the time, which had been constructed on the basis that external revelation could be taken for granted. With this turn to the interior experience of the human subject, more than simply philosophical questions were raised. If it were the case that inner experience justified the faith, if each person was to find the proof of God’s existence within their own life, then what would be the basis for the teaching authority of the Church?” [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/20090724_1.htm]

Finally, the great theologian and teacher of Pope John Paul II, Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., wrote about Blondel and why anyone who was influenced by his teachings, directly or indirectly, would deny truth, as apparently Francis is influenced according one of his closest advisor’s Scannone:

“One sees the danger of the new definition of 

truth, no longer the adequation of intellect and reality 

but the conformity of mind and life.™ When Maurice 

Blondel in 1906 proposed this substitution, he did not 

foresee all of the consequences for the faith. Would he 

himself not be terrified, or at least very troubled? 

What life” is meant in this definition of: “conformity 

of mind and life”? It means human life. And so then, 

how can one avoid the modernist definition: “Truth is 

no more immutable than man himself inasmuch as it 

is evolved with him, in him and through him. (Denz. 

2058) One understands why Pius X said of the 

modernists: “they pervert the eternal concept of truth. 11 

(Denz. 2080) ” [https://archive.org/stream/Garrigou-LagrangeEnglish/_Where%20is%20the%20New%20Theology%20Leading%20Us__%20-%20Garrigou-Lagrange%2C%20Reginald%2C%20O.P__djvu.txt]

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.SHARE

• PRO-LIFE

Catholic Bishops Fund Pro-Abortion Doulas for Third Consecutive Year, Despite 2020 Warning

 Michael Hichborn May 4, 2022 0 Comments

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Washington, DC – A new report from the Lepanto Institute proves that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is providing a third consecutive grant to an organization that advocates for abortion access to women in prison.

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In 2020, the Lepanto Institute sent a detailed report to the Catholic bishops of the United States proving that the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) provided a $60,000 grant to the Ostara Initiative. The report gave indisputable evidence that Ostara was directly advocating abortion “as a resource” to women in prison while assisting women to gain access to abortion providers. One article cited in the report indicated that the co-founder of the Ostara Initiative and her project director explained how their “doulas have sometimes served as resources for women considering abortion.” Another article said “they have recently aided a few of their clients in accessing abortion care.”

Given the evidence we provided two years ago, it’s inconceivable that the bishops would have even considered giving this organization any more funding. But now the bishops have provided two additional grants to Ostara while it continues advocating for abortion.

Rebecca Shlafer is the research director and co-founder of the Ostara Initiative, and these are her retweets following the news about Roe v. Wade:

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The Lepanto Institute’s new video report gives more recent evidence of the Ostara Initiative’s ongoing abortion advocacy and deeper context regarding the financial support from the bishops.  Video footage from an Ostara Initiative conference held in November of 2021 asserts that women have a “constitutional right” to abortion and complains that women lack access to abortions while in prison. A journal article written by Ostara co-founders Erica Gerrity and Rebecca Shlafer, published just last month, complains that “Pregnant people experiencing incarceration have been denied access to their constitutional right to abortion.”

The evidence couldn’t be clearer. The Ostara Initiative is advocating for and assisting women obtain abortion access while in prison. It’s absolutely unconscionable for the bishops to continue supporting this organization!

In addition to directly advocating for woman to obtain access to abortion while in prison, the Ostara Initiative is also in violation of the CCHD’s grant agreement forbidding membership in pro-abortion coalitions. The Ostara Initiative’s MN Prison Doula Project is a member of an organization called “Forward Together,” which is completely committed to abortion and contraception under the auspices of so-called “Reproductive Justice.” Just this year, Forward Together produced a “Reproductive Healthcare Success Guide” that claims, “Abortion is healthcare. Reproductive healthcare, including abortion care, must be integrated into the greater healthcare system.”

The only explanation for this group continuing to receive funds is that the CCHD clearly has no compunction about Catholic moral teachings and doesn’t give a rip about its own guidelines. That’s why the CCHD has to be shut down, permanently. It can’t be fixed, it’s just got to end.

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The Lepanto Institute is calling on all faithful Catholics to contact their bishops and ask them to withdraw all support for the CCHD program and work for it to be shut down once and for all.

Michael Hichborn

Michael Hichborn is the president of the Lepanto Insitute. Formerly, Michael spent nearly eight years as American Life League’s Director of the Defend the Faith project. He has researched and produced countless articles and reports on the funding of abortion, birth control, homosexuality and Marxism by Catholic Relief Servies and the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD).

Michael holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Christendom College in Political Science and Economics and a Master’s degree in Education from American Intercontinental University.

Michael lives in Virginia with his wife, Alyssa, and their five children.

www.lepantoinstitute.org/

Scientists investigate mysterious hepatitis outbreak 

A World Health Organization spokesperson said on Tuesday that it had received reports of at least 228 probable cases of child hepatitis with dozens more under investigation including ten states in the U.S. so far–Minnesota, Wisconsin, Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, New York, North Carolina and Tennessee.

“As of May 1, at least 228 probable cases were reported to WHO from 20 countries with over 50 additional cases under investigation,” the WHO’s Tarik Jasarevic told a Geneva press briefing.

Health authorities around the world are probing a mysterious increase in severe cases of hepatitis – inflammation of the liver – in young children that has resulted in at least one death.

Health authorities around the world are investigating a mysterious increase in severe cases of hepatitis – inflammation of the liver – in young children.

Below is a summary of what is known about the outbreak: 

WHAT’S HAPPENED?

More than 190 cases have been identified, with the majority in Britain, which has reported 111 cases since January.

Other countries including the United States, Israel, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain have also reported smaller numbers of cases. 

WHY IS IT CAUSING CONCERN?

Mild paediatric hepatitis is not unheard of, but the cases first raised the alarm in Scotland, on April 6, because children were very sick. Several have even needed liver transplants and one child has died.

The other concern was that the cases were not linked to the typical viruses usually linked to the condition – hepatitis A, B, C, D and E. 

“This is still a very low number of cases, but they are children, that is the main concern, and the other thing is the severity,” said Maria Buti, a hepatology professor from Barcelona and chair of the European Association of the Study of the Liver’s public health committee, who has been following the outbreak closely with the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC). 

WHAT IS CAUSING IT?

The leading theory is viral infection, probably with an adenovirus – a common family of viruses that can cause the common cold, among other conditions. 

One kind of adenovirus, type 41, commonly causes acute gastroenteritis, and there have been reports of it causing hepatitis in immunocompromised children, but never previously in healthy children. 

Public Health Scotland’s director, Jim McMenamin, said work was under way to establish if the adenovirus involved had mutated to cause more severe disease, or if it could be causing the problems “in tandem” with another virus, including possibly SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Of the affected children in Britain, 75% tested positive for adenovirus.

It is also possible that a novel pathogen may be involved, or exposure to a toxin, but the geographic spread of cases suggests infection is a more likely explanation, scientists say. 

Any link to COVID-19 vaccines has been ruled out, as the children in Britain, where the majority of cases have been found, were not vaccinated.

Other scientists said lowered immunity as a result of reduced social mixing during the pandemic could be an explanation. 

“This may be an over-response to stimulation to the immune system that is not used to such insult … that’s a good theory,” said Simon Taylor-Robinson, a consultant hepatologist and professor of translational medicine at Imperial College London.

Others cautioned that the adenovirus infections could be coincidental, because they circulate widely at this time of year.

WHAT ARE PUBLIC HEALTH AUTHORITIES ADVISING?

Public health alerts in the United States and Europe have asked doctors to be on the lookout for the condition, and to test children for adenovirus if they suspect hepatitis.

Symptoms include dark urine, yellowing of the eyes and skin (jaundice), fatigue, fever, loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, light-coloured stools and joint pain.

There is no specific treatment to cure hepatitis but drugs can help to reduce inflammation and other symptoms.

Parents are being told to watch out for symptoms and to contact a health professional if they are concerned. 

To prevent further spread, the British Health Security Agency urged handwashing and “good thorough respiratory hygiene”, such as catching coughs and sneezes in a tissue.  

Experts said that the rise in case numbers had been relatively slow but cautioned that more cases were expected.

“If you pay attention to a thing, you see more of it,” Buti said.

25% Increase in ‘Cardiovascular Events’ in Young People After Vax Rollout: M.I.T. Study

ByJon Fleetwood

22 hours ago

Peer-reviewed study findings “raise concerns regarding vaccine-induced undetected severe cardiovascular side-effects and underscore the already established causal relationship between vaccines and myocarditis, a frequent cause of unexpected cardiac arrest in young individuals.”

QUICK FACTS:

• A study authored by doctors from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and published in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Reports analyzed COVID-19 vaccine safety data from Israel and evaluated the association between instances of cardiac arrest (CA) and acute coronary syndrome (ACS) in the 16–39-year-old population.
• MIT researchers began the paper by emphasizing how adverse conditions are caused not only by COVID-19 infections but also by “side-effects of the COVID-19 vaccines.”
• “Using a unique dataset from Israel National Emergency Medical Services (EMS) from 2019 to 2021,” the authors said, “the study aims to evaluate the association between the volume of cardiac arrest and acute coronary syndrome EMS calls in the 16–39-year-old population with potential factors including COVID-19 infection and vaccination rates.”
• The researchers found that there was a 25% increase in “cardiovascular events” among the young population. “An increase of over 25% was detected in both call types during January–May 2021, compared with the years 2019–2020,” the authors stated.
• They also found that emergency call rates were “significantly associated” with vaccine administration, writing that “the weekly emergency call counts were significantly associated with the rates of 1st and 2nd vaccine doses administered to this age group but were not with COVID-19 infection rates.”
• While the study authors did not establish a direct causal relationship between heart disease and vaccines, they did state that “the findings raise concerns regarding vaccine-induced undetected severe cardiovascular side-effects and underscore the already established causal relationship between vaccines and myocarditis, a frequent cause of unexpected cardiac arrest in young individuals.”
• The authors concluded by calling for an improvement in “current vaccine safety surveillance systems” as well as “additional data sources” in order to enhance our understanding of COVID-19 vaccine safety. “Surveillance of potential vaccine side-effects and COVID-19 outcomes should incorporate EMS and other health data to identify public health trends (e.g., increased in EMS calls), and promptly investigate potential underlying causes,” they went on to say.

WHAT ELSE THE MIT RESEARCHERS SAID:

“The large increase in the incidence of CA and ACS events in the population of age 16–39 parallel to the vaccination rollout and its association with the vaccination rates could be consistent with the known causal relationship between the mRNA vaccines and incidents of myocarditis in young people as well as the fact that myocarditis is often misdiagnosed as ACS and that asymptomatic myocarditis is a frequent cause for unexplained sudden death among young adults from CA,” the study authors wrote in the publication’s ‘Discussion’ section. “This is further supported by more anecdotal reports describing sudden cardiac death following COVID-19 vaccination. While vaccine-induced myocarditis was predominantly reported in males it is interesting to note that the relative increases of CA and ACS events (Table 1) was larger in females. This may suggest the potential underdiagnosis or under-self-reporting of myocarditis in females, or other unique patterns, which is consistent with the ongoing challenge of gender-related differences related to cardiovascular disease diagnosis and care.”

READ THE FULL STUDY:

s41598-022-10928-zDownload

BACKGROUND:

• Pfizer is testing doses of its vaccine in children under 5 and wants to report to U.S. regulators how its COVID-19 vaccine works in the young age group by late May or early June.
• However, a survey published Wednesday shows parents of young children are hesitant to vaccinate their children for coronavirus. The KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor survey showed that only 18% of parents with children under age 5 want to get their children vaccinated, while 38% of parents say they plan to wait to see how the vaccine is working for others.

Prolifers need to send a clear message to the “United States Supreme Court” [ The real Supreme Court is God] . That message is “Outlaw not Regulate Abortion.”

Since abortion is the deliberate killing of an unborn child – who has committed no crime that deserves the death penalty –  the real issue the court is facing is not about “regulating” the killing of an innocent human being whatever his stage of gestation, but rather “outlawing” the killing of an innocent human being.” 

Randy Engel, U.S. Coalition for Life

The Enigma Of Multiple Abortions May 5, 2022 Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on women who have had multiple abortions: All abortions are tragic, both for the pregnant woman and her baby, but most pro-life people do not lump all women who have had an abortion together, treating them all the same. For example, while we cannot condone it, most understand that a 15-year-old girl who becomes pregnant, and is fearful of telling her drunken and violent dad about it, may elect to have an abortion. They are less understanding of women who have had multiple abortions. This week on “The View,” Whoopi Goldberg said, “Getting an abortion is not easy. Making the decision is not easy. It’s not something people do lightly.” Who can argue with that? What’s strange about her comment, however, is that she has admitted to having six or seven abortions by the age of 25. Six or seven—she’s not sure. If the decision to abort a baby is “not easy,” it appears to become easier for those who have another. That’s a serious problem which the media do not cover. In 2008, 50% of all abortions were done on women who had a prior one. The most recent figure is 45%. This is an enigma. Why would approximately half of all women who have had an abortion go to a clinic again and again? Abby Johnson, who was a director at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas, described how “Angie,” a recidivist, spoke to clinic personnel. “‘Could y’all just Xerox my chart and I’ll fill in the dates?’ She would jest. Once the paperwork was in order, Angie would attempt to banter with the girls in the waiting room. ‘It’s no big thing,’ she assured them. ‘I’ve done it eight times before, and I have no regrets.'” Irene Vilar’s mother committed suicide when she was eight-years-old; her brothers were heroin addicts. When she was a teenager she married a tyrannical 50-year-old professor. She wound up having 15 abortions in 16 years, admitting that women who have had multiple abortions show a certain “recklessness.” She was 15 times reckless. “Mary” had three abortions when she was in her early twenties. After she was pregnant the third time, she wanted to have the baby but her boyfriend did not, so she had an abortion. “I felt like we were committing murder, that I was killing something I wanted.” Dr. E. Joanne Angelo knows what Mary was going through. She is associated with Project Rachel, a Catholic support group that ministers to women—of any faith—who have had an abortion, and are seeking reconciliation. “When a woman finds herself pregnant in a crisis situation, she immediately calculates the date when her child would be born,” she says. “After the abortion she may feel numb, her grief over the death of her child being blunted by her strong ambivalent feelings—her tender feelings for her child, and the defensive denial of these feelings which enabled her to submit to the abortion procedure,” Angelo writes. She further observes that “her inner life is often plagued by guilt and shame, nightmares of babies being sucked down tubes or dying in horrific accidents or violent crimes….Some may become seriously depressed and even suicidal.” If this condition is commonplace among women who have had one abortion, why is it that at least some women who have had multiple abortions take it in stride? If, as it appears likely, Roe v. Wade will be overturned, the problem of women having multiple abortions will not go away. There needs to be more aggressive intervention on the part of the medical community and the clergy after a woman has had an abortion for the first time. We need to end the enigma of multiple abortions. That also means we need to be just as aggressive in dealing with the impregnating men. They’ve gotten away with their irresponsible behavior for too long.

The Death of Innocents

Don’t be naïve: repealing ‘Roe’ won’t end infanticide.

Michael Warren DavisMay 5

Two days after I published my last newsletter on the futility of politics, Politicoran a leaked draft of a Supreme Court decision in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson.  If this decision is officially handed down, it will overturn Roe v. Wade. 

First and foremost, this would be a crippling blow to the demon Moloch, on whose altars 63 million children have been sacrificed since 1973.  We can do no better than to storm Heaven with prayers that this leaked draft is ratified.  Then, if it is, we should storm Heaven again with prayers of thanksgiving. 

If that’s all you take away from this week’s post, it’s more than enough.  I don’t want to make this historic moment about me and my little theories.  But eventually we do have to talk about the political dimension.  So, while we wait, I’ll get a head start.

Many would no doubt take such a decision as a vindication of party politics.  But I’m not going to revise my opinion, for two reasons.

First, if Roe is overturned, it won’t be because conservatives have finally turned the tide in the Culture War.  No: there has always been a perfectly sound legal case against Roe. 

The authors of the original 1973 decision based their decision on the Constitutional “right to privacy.”  The problem is that no such right exists.  Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg knew that.  The late Justice Ginsburg was staunchly pro-choice, yet she knew a shoddy piece of legal fiction when she saw one. 

So, if the Roberts Court throws out Roe, it doesn’t mean the winds of change are a-blowing in conservatives’ direction.  The decision will not be predicated on Christian principles, but on Originalist ones.  Nor, of course, will it enshrine the right to life in our Constitution.  It will only kick the decision back to the states.  

That’s exactly what the leaked draft means to do. It’s perfectly agnostic on the morality of abortion. It only professes to restore the “political process,” which was “abruptly ended” by an exercise of “raw judicial power.” It wants the abortion issue to be settled, not by judges, but by lawmakers. It certainly doesn’t enshrine a right to life for unborn children.

Which brings us to the next point…

Second, overturning Roe probably won’t change Americans’ overall opinion about abortion.  Our countrymen are extremely fickle on this issue, which baffles me.  But I have no doubt that, in general, they will tend to become more pro-choice.  Why? Because the idea that human beings are uniquely and inherently valuable, simply by virtue of their existence, is a Christian one.  It doesn’t exist anywhere outside the bounds of Christendom.  And as belief in Christianity declines, so will belief in the innate value of human life.

For instance, archaeologists recently found a letter from the year 1 B.C. written by a Greek businessman in Alexandria.  His name is Hilarion.  He’s writing to his pregnant wife, Alis, whose due date is fast approaching.  Hilarion instructs his wife, “If it is a boy, keep it.  If it is a girl, discard it.”  (Needless to say, by “discard it” he doesn’t mean “put her up for adoption.”)

This is the norm in the non-Christian world.  Never mind abortion.  Most cultures believed that parents had the right to commit infanticide, for any reason they saw fit.  Children (especially babies) were thought to have no rights.  They belonged to their parents.  They were property.  

---

There’s a certain logic to this view.  After all, children are helpless without their parents.  A mother doesn’t actually have to murder her baby in order to kill him.  She can simply refuse to feed and shelter him.  So, if you say that a baby has a right to life, you’re saying that parents have a duty to nurture them.  

This is exactly the case that pro-choicers make.  How can the government force Mrs. Jones to carry Baby Jones for nine months, and then force her to go through the agony of childbirth?  How can the fetus’s right to life infringe upon Mrs. Jones’s right to her own body?

That’s a hard case to make—which is why, for the majority of human history, it hasn’t been made.  Our instinct is to say that, when a weak creature (like a baby) is totally dependent on a strong creature (like his mother), the strong creature has a right to put its own needs and desires first.

The pro-choice case appears even stronger in times of material scarcity.  Imagine you’re a serf in ancient Japan and your wife gives birth to a sickly little girl.  You were hoping for a strong son to help you in the field.  Instead, you now have to feed this child and yourself and your wife.  At this rate, all of you will starve.  So, why not kill the girl?  How could that be wrong?  That’s a huge part of the reason why infanticide was permissible in feudal Japan, as in most other societies.

It’s also why China implemented its infamous one-child policy.  Again, infanticide isn’t an artefact from some distant and benighted past.  It’s only too common in non-Christian cultures, both historically and in the modern world.

No doubt many non-Christians find this kind of talk insulting.  They’re appalled by the suggestion that, without the Church, they would happily murder their own children.  Well, I didn’t say happily.  But it will happen. 

How do I know?  Because there’s absolutely no historical evidence to suggest that, without the Church’s influence, the West would have abolished infanticide. Just the opposite is true.  The practice was routine in every corner of pagan Europe, from Italy to Scandinavia. Why should anything have changed?

And when Christianity recedes again, why shouldn’t things go back to the way they were before? Few non-believers are like the historian Tom Holland, who calls himself a “proud Christian” in his ethics while rejecting supernatural faith.  By studying the ancient world, Dr. Holland realized that he identified with the Medievals far more than he did with ancient Greece and Rome.  As he wrote in The New Statesman in 2016,

The longer I spent immersed in the study of classical antiquity, the more alien and unsettling I came to find it. The values of Leonidas, whose people had practised a peculiarly murderous form of eugenics, and trained their young to kill uppity Untermenschen by night, were nothing that I recognised as my own; nor were those of Caesar, who was reported to have killed a million Gauls and enslaved a million more. It was not just the extremes of callousness that I came to find shocking, but the lack of a sense that the poor or the weak might have any intrinsic value. As such, the founding conviction of the Enlightenment—that it owed nothing to the faith into which most of its greatest figures had been born—increasingly came to seem to me unsustainable.

But like I said, Dr. Holland is a rare breed.  They probably won’t survive much longer as the Church continues to recede in the West. 

---

It may seem like I’m trying to scare people into being Christian.  I’m not.  There’s no point, because I can only scare people who find this sort of thing scary—that is, other Christians. These arguments are only compelling to folks who happen to agree with me.

Put it this way. Imagine if a Hindu came down from a remote village in the Himalayas and somehow found his way to Dallas.  I’m sure he’d be surprised to find that nobody shares his horror of hamburgers.  And look at how everyone swats mosquitoes, as if their little buggy lives meant nothing at all!

In the long term, Christians will find it just as difficult to shock people with pictures of aborted fetuses—though we may be shocked by their indifference. 

I am trying to scare my fellow Christians, though I don’t suppose I’ll have much luck. We refuse to take these warnings seriously.  We refuse to believe that, without the Church, we’ll automatically revert to barbarism. Why? Because there’s a little voice in our heads that says, “That can’t be right.  I mean, if I was an atheist, I would never be okay with infanticide.” 

Sure, we’d like to think that.  I certainly would.  But the evidence against us is overwhelming.

This is why Our Lord said, “There is none good but one, that is, God.”  It’s why the truly humble man says, like St. Paul, “Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.  For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing.”  These aren’t pious mumblings.  How many of us realize just what kind of evil and depravity we men are capable of? 

And by “men” I don’t mean “the libs.”  I mean you and me. Until we really come to grips with our own fallen nature, we can’t begin to imagine just how terrible the West may yet become.

Will overturning Roe change human nature?  Will it restore the Church Militant to its former glory?  Will it inculcate Western man in the faith of Jesus Christ?  Will it make flourish His teaching that every last human being is infinitely precious in the eyes of God? I’m afraid not.  

I’ll cheer the repeal of Roe along with everyone else, but I also stand by what I said before.  There is no hope for the West except a mass reversion to Christianity.  Barring that, all is lost.  

We should be heartened by the Supreme Court’s decision, if and when it’s handed down.  But it won’t be the end of this war.  We’ve not even begun to fight.

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© 2022 

From Sheep to Shepherds One of the great wonders of God is His incredible ability and desire to transform men and women from shame to exaltation, from mediocrity to greatness, from sinners to saints. The Lord is constantly guiding all of us in this process, but He does this in a unique way for the devout men who become priests.Certainly, there is a natural maturation of men who spend years studying and praying in seminary. However, their greatest transformation has nothing to do with their intelligence, or really anything they can naturally do on their own. Their greatest transformation comes with the ability to confer the Sacraments.No one but God alone can forgive sins. No one besides God can cause mere bread and wine to become Jesus. If every time we received the Sacraments we saw the spiritual effects the same way we see physical cause and effect, we would be more amazed than if we saw someone being raised from the dead!This is why Christ promised the disciples that they would someday do even greater works than he did during his public ministry (John 14:12). But how can this be? After all, priests aren’t God and they certainly are not without sin. How is it even fitting that priests do more incredible things than Jesus did?The trick is that on their own priests can’t confer any of the Sacraments, but it is Christ himself acting through the priest. This happens in a unique way when priests celebrate the Sacraments, but Jesus wants to work through all of us all of the time.This is why St. Paul focuses so much on the fact that the Church is the Body of Christ, we its members. When we love others and bear fruit in our lives it is always Jesus himself acting through us. Without him, we can do nothing. Yet, when we die to ourselves and let Christ work through us, then all things are possible.So as we approach the time of year when young men are ordained and transformed from sheep to shepherds, let us pray for all priests and seminarians. Though many fall short of representing Christ let us praise God for the priesthood and how despite humanity’s imperfections He works miracles through and in us!“If I were to meet a priest and an angel, I should salute the priest before I saluted the angel. The latter is the friend of God but the priest holds His place.” St. John VianneyGod Bless You and Your Family, Christopher P. Wendt International Director Confraternity of Our Lady of Fatima

From: philsevilla <philsevilla@att.net> 

Date: 5/4/22 9:37 AM (GMT-06:00) 

Subject: The Destruction of the Supreme Court – Republican Daily 

Really … the destruction of the Supreme Court over the leak? Deep throat couldn’t destroy the Presidency during Watergate. But it brought down an incumbent President. Unless one of the sitting justices was behind it, it won’t be terribly difficult in this digital forensic age to pick up the trail and locate the offending party(s). Sit back and watch the drama.

I’m not surprised the leak happened. Abortion as a socio-political issue has been the burning issue in America for 50 years like the legal institution of slavery decades before the civil war. The landmark cases, Roe and Casey, never doused the flames of moral discontent and conflict.

Expect the pro abortion zealots to whip up public  hysteria, violent public action ala Antifa/BLM, and doomsday screeching over the next few months. Bye bye Ukraine news, Durham investigations, Covidmania whistleblowing, Hunter laptop trivia, etc. At least for awhile.

We will be descending into abortion news hell and it may be a good thing to wake up sleepwalking Americans. What we’re witnessing will be historic and will expose the deep moral chasms in our society leading up to the official High Court decision on Dobbs in a month or two. (It is telling that Justice Alito is authoring the majority opinion.) It may be our last chance to help transform America in our lifetime as our Almighty God turns up the heat like He did in 1860. 

There is something about the sins of nations. We all surely can tick off a number of historical examples. America, post WWII, is chained to the abortion monster. Like the Manhattan Project’s A Bomb, America owns the unleashing of the abortion holocaust. Not our nation’s proudest moments.

America ushered in worldwide permissive abortion in 1973 … after many decades of eugenist Margaret Sanger’s “evangelization” even before Planned Parenthood was founded. Sanger is to abortion what Karl Marx was to Bolshevik Marxist socialism. 

America was instrumental in developing the modern OCP (birth control pill) in 1965 which Fr. Paul Marx, founder of HLI,  warned would open the Pandora’s box to acceptance of the worldwide abortion culture and beyond (infantide). St. Pope Paul VI warned the world in his prophetic 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae, inspite of shrill, ugly attacks from the secular world and manifold dissenters within the Church.

The recipe for this social disaster and sweeping moral disorder included to a large extent the 1960s sexual revolution and radical feminist movement firebrands like Steinem, Greer, Abzug, Friedan, Fonda, Helen Gurley Brown … all Americans, crusading daughters of Margaret Sanger with hedonist allies like Playboy’s Hugh Hefner and pseudo scientists like sexologist Alfred Kinsey aiding and abetting the sick, deadly revolution. The Church opened windows to the world and toxic smoke from hell entered the sanctuaries. Only blind fools would doubt that.

Much to ponder and teach our young’uns … if we forget our past, we stumble blindly towards our future.https://republicandaily.com/2022/05/the-destruction-of-the-supreme-court/

In Jesus we trust!

Phil

Good News, Bad News, Best News

charliej373May 3Mount Doom (spoiler alert – the bad guys lost)By Charlie JohnstonThe Good NewsThe backlash to anti-God left-wing authoritarianism has begun in earnest.-A leaked first draft indicates that the Supreme Court has decided to overturn Roe v Wade.-Elon Musk has bought Twitter – and free speech once again has a chance.-Dinesh D’Souza has put together proof of MASSIVE vote fraud in 2020 and presents it in his new documentary, “2000 Mules.” Joe Biden lost the election by a large margin – and the criminal operation the once-noble Democratic Party has become brazenly stole it.-The Disney Corporation’s challenge to families and the people of Florida has been met – and Disney’s market cap is in full-scale collapse as parents flee from perhaps the largest institutional child grooming operation in history.-After spending $300 million to get CNN+ off the ground, it collapsed within three weeks. Whoever it was that successfully recommended to CNN suits that people would pay big bucks to watch what they would not watch for free is a genius of sorts. I hope he fails upward and continues to successfully give such toxic counsel to every woke corporation out there.-After abandoning entertainment for woke hectoring, Netflix is now bleeding subscribers and cash like a hemophiliac.-As much as authoritarians long for its return, their brand of irrational Covid panic is dead.  It has been long in coming, but ordinary Americans seem to be finding their way back to an understanding of traditional American values.The Bad NewsHave no doubt that the evil empire that American government and media has become will strike back hard. Allowing for genuine freedom and self-government would mean the elite’s total destruction.-The leaking of the Supreme Court draft is likely an effort by a lefty to pressure some conservative justice to change his vote. I think it a desperate effort, but don’t be surprised if the left mounts a new round of “peaceful protests” like the fiery destruction of the summer of 2020 to try to scare any timid conservative justice into backing down. The anti-God left’s implicit message will be, “allow us to continue to murder babies or we might murder you.”-Already the illegitimate Biden administration has set up a Ministry of Truth – the Disinformation Governance Board – to try to maintain control of the narrative by threatening to arrest you if you dare to disagree with the narrative. In a free country, citizens are never required to justify their opinions to the government; the government is required to justify its policies to the citizens.-The left does not care about facts, evidence or truth; only that they get their way by hook or by crook – or by violence. Like a demon that has been revealed, they will not repent in the face of overwhelming proof of their identity. They will only hiss and snarl and claw all the harder. Demonic entities and their acolytes have no shame. They cannot be reasoned with, only defeated.-Disney will fight and almost certainly lose, despite the hopeful meanderings of some legal sophists. But the greatest sick exposition of mass sexual disorder and psychosis will remain embedded in our dead culture. Working on a major ongoing project a few years back, a collaborator said to me in shock at our latest discoveries that, “My God, Charlie! When the history of this era is written it will turn out that we have long been governed by satanic pedophiles.” He spoke true.-Entertainment, like everything else the left touches, has been ruined. Netflix, like Hollywood, is truly in the middle stages of catastrophic collapse. But bankruptcy will not deter them. The main actors are no longer purveyors of entertainment. They are demonic advocates who seek to pervert entertainment to destroy truth and memory.-The animated Dr. Fauci (the evil doppelganger of Dr. Seuss – they both use absurdities to propel their narratives. Only Dr. Seuss’ absurdities were fun and wholesome) continues to opine that we must be prepared for more useless masking and damaging lockdowns. Bill Gates promises a new and even deadlier pandemic is just around the corner. The globalist left and its acolytes in the modern Democratic Party do not care what crisis allows them to take complete control via The Great Reset, only that one does. So they will keep manufacturing and peddling crises to the gullible in hopes that one will stick.To paraphrase Winston Churchill, the very real backlash that has begun is not the end of malignant woke culture, it is not even the beginning of the end. It is, perhaps the end of the beginning. All but the more slow-witted have begun to realize we are in the midst of an existential crisis for western civilization – and are beginning to choose their sides…deciding for whom they will stand. The anti-God left is a spiritual and civilizational “terminator.” The wisest of people are beginning to realize, with Sarah Connor, that “…it can’t be reasoned with, it can’t be bargained with, it doesn’t feel pity or remorse or fear – and it absolutely will not stop. Ever.”In a larger sense, most of the nascent backlash to the left’s attempt to seize and topple western civilization is entirely secular. Don’t get me wrong. I am not some Christian triumphalist who turns up his nose and sniffs at any help from people who have a different faith than I do – or even no religious faith. I know enough about the faith to know that, to do that, I would have to condemn St. Thomas Aquinas for relying so heavily on the work of an ancient pagan philosopher; that I would have to condemn St. Paul for mounting an apostolate to the Gentiles; and that I would have to condemn Jesus Christ for routinely ministering to pagans and Samaritans – and I would find especially noxious Jesus’ words about the pagan centurion: “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” The folks who first ask, before considering the thoughts of another, “Is he Catholic?” or “Is he Baptist?” or whatever version of “Is he part of the tribe I prefer?” don’t get it at all – and are in grave danger of having Christ someday say to them, “Depart from me. I never knew you.” I well know that wisdom is its own justification and the very process of people collaborating together in some great cause is, itself, a powerful form of evangelization. Christianity has some simple, solid, immutable rules derived from the words of Our Founder and His Apostles – but it is NOT tribal. Yet even many serious Christians have been infected by the secular ethos of our age: when things get dire, they abandon the principles of faith because tacitly they think severe problems are too serious to be left to the vagaries of one’s favorite ‘superstition.’ I was saddened during my very serious bout with Covid when some I trust tried to persuade me to abandon my publicly stated principles and go into the hospital just because I was near death. But there it is – when push comes to shove, our trust is too often in man rather than God. Much of the turmoil we are undergoing is being used by God to teach us anew that, “…the battle is not to the strong nor the race to the swift.” Without a critical mass of people who understand that God is the only sovereign, our efforts are as useless as the spinning of a stripped gear.We are, “…not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places…” (Ephesians 6:12) If we rely primarily on the tools of man to contend against demonically inspired assaults, we will lose, no matter how elegantly our resistance is crafted. Yet this great and terrible process we have entered into is not for our destruction but that we may learn, even from our failures, that nothing will avail until we put on the whole armor of God.The Best NewsGod wins. I say that not in a superficial, chirpy way of whistling past the graveyard, but as the simple, immovable reality of human history. Whenever any of the lesser conflicts before this have happened in human history, the forces of darkness have exacted a terrible toll in human lives and misery before the assault is repulsed. I expect nothing to be significantly different about this most great and terrible confrontation between good and evil. The history of western civilization is the history of Christianity – one that progressively gave the greatest benefits to mankind. But it is a history of constant struggle. Times of peace and prosperity have been the times when we must struggle hardest against out own cupidity.I think God is not seeking to change our minds: rather, He is in the midst of changing our mindsets. That is part of this process of renewal He has initiated and is a pre-requisite to the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart.When I was at my worst, laying in my sickbed, I told Beckita that if God decreed that I would be more useful to the work before us in purgatory or in heaven, He would take me. If He decreed that I would be more useful here, He would leave me. Whatever happened to me, the will of God would be advanced since I was a willing collaborator, trusting in whatever He decreed. I did tell her that I thought the Lord was taking me down to the foundation, that He might build me anew, but that was just my speculation. That trust did NOT mean that I forsook all temporal efforts at healing. I took many supplements and such. But it did mean that I would NOT violate any matters of fundamental principle – either that I had publicly articulated or privately vowed. I did fail once. In panic over one very painful symptom that lasted a few days, I ordered some supplements that I knew I should not have. (Perfectly licit supplements – but not for me…and I knew it.) Amusingly, when the expensive supplements arrived and I took them, it turned out that I was allergic to them. I laughed. Such a gentle and amusing way of God chastising me for briefly giving in to my panic. I regarded it as Him swatting me on the nose for not trusting to Him completely as I had vowed and then patting me on the head and telling me I was still a good dog who just had a bad moment.At this time in salvation history God has called each of you. Think carefully and deeply before making any vows. I tire of the casual mindless ways in which so many say, “I would never…” in order to demonstrate their prowess without having to actually live it. Whatever vows you make, rest assured that God will test whether you mean them or not by having to actually live it. So be slow to make any vows beyond the commands of Christ and absolutely steadfast in living it when it is demanded of you. It will be. Live simply. Then, when you fail in a particular, do not go into despair – which is a trap of the satan and a perverse form of pride. Don’t you know that you do not have the prowess to live even the simplest of vows? It is the Lord who strengthens you. Trust in Him, even to bind up your self-inflicted wounds, and He will take the little fish you offer Him and feed a multitude with it. This is His process of purification for you that you may be made fit to care for others.Do not be like some who retreat into idealizing some age past, magnifying its virtues and minimizing its vices as a means of solving everything. That is trusting your judgment rather than Christ’s. Do not be like some who think that by meddling with the form you can secure the substance of what is good. Do not retreat into prophecies that either tell you that God will take care of everything without you having to contribute even a crust of bread, or that all is lost just because the storm is whirling with mad fury about us. We are each called to go forth and bear fruit that will last – and the only way to do that is to walk humbly with God, knowing that even if we are the noblest of dogs, we are going to stumble often – and sometimes go off chasing after rabbits when we should be focused on the task at hand.I have always had a very blue-collar approach to whatever work I do. I cannot change the world. Most times I cannot even change the day. But I can do the work right in front of me, trusting that if I do that as well as I can, neither giving myself over to pouting when it seems I have failed nor to gloating when it seems that I have triumphed, that the Lord will protect me from the two frauds of triumph and disaster and make what little fruit I bear last.The Lord is calling each of us. Like Peter after the Resurrection, He is asking us, “Do you love me more than these?” If our answer is yes, He demands that we prove it by feeding His lambs. We are called to be missionaries of the Gospel, not just to oppose the great evil that has come upon the world (though we are certainly to do that), but to effectively call as many as we can to the peace and joy that is in Christ. That is fruit that will last.You have been invited to participate with God in the renewal of the faith and the face of the world. Take up your cross and follow Him joyfully and you will live to see an amazingly renewed world of true faith, brotherhood and prosperity either from the vantage point of here or of the next world. That is good news, indeed.*********I know it is considered bad form to ask for donations for another organization when you are in the midst of a fundraising drive yourself, but Catholic Culture is one of my two favorite Catholic sites. I love the work of both Phil Lawler and Jeff Mirus there. I saw today that they have only reached 12 % of their modest Easter goal. Why don’t you check it out, read a few pieces and, if you find it as good as I do, send them a little donation if you can. Of course, at CORACwe just reached 50% of our Easter goal. So I don’t want you to forget us. But the workmen who are doing steadfast work in the field are worthy of their hire. I hope you find us worthy and donate what you can.  If you haven’t been to the site in a while, go check it out. We have made significant improvements to make it more user-friendly – and of course, we continue to add substance to it every week. Right now, we are planning to add a new section for “Downloads,” printable pieces that will include a vaccine exemption letter, short cards on what initial steps to take in various crisis situations, and sheets of cards you can print out to pass out to friends and acquaintances urging them now to gather at their local Church at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings if communications go out. We will add useful things you can print out at home as things continue to expand. Also, our talented executive director, MP, edited pieces from one of my talks to make a wonderful three-minute video entitled, “Why CORAC?” He is an amazing editor.*********In celebration of Elon Musk’s pending purchase of Twitter, I have finally set up an account there, hoping it will become a bastion of free speech. I just did it Friday, so I have made no impact yet, but you can find me at @Charlie62394802 on Twitter. I will start adding my pieces on that site, too. If communication goes out for any length of time, meet outside your local Church at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Tell friends at Church now in case you can’t then. CORAC teams will be out looking for people to gather in and work with.Find me on Gab at Charliej373 or at the CORAC group.Find me on Twitter at @Charlie62394802Donate to CORAC!Join the Conversation!The Corps of Renewal and Charity (CORAC)18208 Preston Rd., Ste. D9-552Dallas, Texas 75252