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Flashback: “Saruman” Taylor Marshall’s False Dichotomies on Francis 

November 16, 2021

Dr. Taylor Marshall’s podcast from Wednesday discusses Bergoglio and “civil unions”as well as Francis’s status as Pope starting right about minute 27. 

Unfortunately, Marshall sets up a false dichotomy. He represents our choice of responses as, “Bergoglio is a heretic, let’s start a new Church,” or “Bergoglio’s the Pope and that’s just the way it is.” Who ever said anything about starting a new Church? There have been a number of anti-popes during the course of history and dealing with them has never meant that.

Then he uses the annulment analogy, and another false dichotomy sets in. Either a couple decides for themselves (which is wrong) or the couple waits passively for the judgment of the Church, declaring themselves incompetent even to form and advance a reasoned opinion.

This is ridiculous.  If people couldn’t form their own judgment, they couldn’t petition the Tribunal in the first place. How could you wait for and submit to the judgment of the Church if the Church receives no petition to judge?

Like Gandalf talking to Saruman, I reject the options that Taylor has outlined here. I wonder, does he have others to offer?  Because God does, and so does Canon Law.

Note: This was written by a good friend and one of the most intelligent persons I know. The Catholic Monitor is honored to post it.

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

 –  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

Abortion and the Corruption of History

By ED WHELAN

November 16, 2021 1:37 PM

More from the new “End Roe” issue of National Review:

Ramesh Ponnuru has a devastating piece on the “false and sometimes fraudulent version of history” that proponents of a constitutional right to abortion have propagated from the 1960s all the way through to the amicus brief filed by the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians in the pending case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

As Ponnuru explains, the “slipshod scholarship” that Justice Harry Blackmun repeatedly cited in his majority opinion in Roe v. Wade “was already in the process of being discredited in 1973 and has since been comprehensively de­bunked.” But the Court has “never revisited its mistaken historical claims, which have instead taken on a life of their own in academic work, popular journalism, and legal briefs.”

Read the whole thing. Here’s Ponnuru’s summation:

The truth is that for centuries Anglo-American law forbade abortion from the first time an unborn child was known to be alive, and that as knowledge of biology accumulated the law was deliberately changed, the better to protect unborn life. 

Set aside the fact that this is not the sort of reliance—detrimental reliance—that stare decisis protects against (see EPPC amicus brief at 14-15), and set aside further that the democratic processes can fully take into account these concerns. Even on its own terms, Casey’s reliance argument fails.

Casey’s False Reliance Claim

By ED WHELAN

November 16, 2021 2:20 PM

For now, I’ll highlight just one more article (on top of the two I covered in these posts) in the new “End Roe” issue of National Review.

In its stare decisis analysis of Roe v. Wade, the plurality opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) concocted what Chief Justice Rehnquist in dissent properly labeled “an unconventional—and unconvincing—notion of reliance.” In the plurality’s view:

[F]or two decades of economic and social developments, people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail. The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives.

Set aside the fact that this is not the sort of reliance—detrimental reliance—that stare decisis protects against (see EPPC amicus brief at 14-15), and set aside further that the democratic processes can fully take into account these concerns. Even on its own terms, Casey’s reliance argument fails.

As my EPPC colleague Erika Bachiochi explains, easy access to abortion encouraged “more sexual risk-taking,” which in turn “resulted in more children conceived, and increasingly outside of marriage.” This has not benefited women generally:

Ironically, in the world that Roe created, the risks of sex — and the responsibilities of having children — have been assumed disproportionately by women. For far too many men, children are no longer part of the sexual bargain.

Further, Bachiochi argues, Roe and Casey

bear some blame for the fact that workplaces remain deeply inhospitable to women (and increasingly men) with children. Rather than challenge workplace norms head-on, the decades-long quest for unfettered abortion feeds into the model of the ideal male worker who is beholden to no one but his boss. If abortion is what enables women to participate in the workplace, then perhaps costly accommodations, flexible work schedules, and part-time-pay equity are not so necessary.

Recalling a history that many choose to ignore, Bachiochi concludes:

The earliest women’s-rights advocates in this country knew that for women to participate more fully in the economic and social life of the nation, the nation would need to become far more hospitable to children and the women who bear them. The first woman to run for president of the United States, in 1872, was not only an outspoken advocate of constitutional equality for women, she also advocated the rights of children — rights that, as she said, “begin while yet they remain the fetus.” Victoria Woodhull and the women’s-rights advocates of her time knew what 1970s feminist advocates of abortion would come to forget: The advancement of women will be possible only when the dignity of their children, born and unborn, is protected.

(Bachiochi’s article draws on the amicus brief that she co-authored on behalf of a large group of women scholars and professionals in the pending Dobbs case.)

Dobbs and the Court’s ‘Legitimacy’

By ED WHELAN

November 16, 2021 1:15 PM

The new issue of National Review is dedicated to the theme “End Roe” and features an excellent collection of sixteen articles that comprehensively “examine the legal arguments, the policy arguments, and the social arguments for finally ending the Roe era in America.” Even better, they all appear to be out from behind the paywall.

I’ll highlight a few of the articles in this and follow-on posts.

In the first article in the series, Matt Franck and Robby George explore the concept of the Court’s “legitimacy.” They explain that the plurality opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), in addressing the topic, offered “at once at once a grandiose vision of the Court’s role in our constitutional order and a kind of cringing neediness for ‘the people’s acceptance.’” Casey has been a manifest failure: “by clinging steadfastly to Roe—a ruling Casey exposed as lacking any roots in the text, logic, structure, or original understanding of the Constitution—the Court only exacerbated the country’s divisions and guaranteed continuing controversy.”

By contrast, Chief Justice Rehnquist set forth in his dissent in Casey the simple proposition that the “Judicial Branch derives its legitimacy, not from following public opinion, but from deciding by its best lights whether legislative enactments of the popular branches of Government comport with the Constitution.”

As Franck and George sum it up:

To argue that indefensible precedents must be preserved only because they excite half the country to demand their preservation and the other half to demand their abandonment; to say that the Court risks some “political capital” in doing what a majority of the justices know is the right thing — the constitutionally correct thing; to quake at the thought of the political conflicts that will be loosed on the world by a sound interpretation of the Constitution, when a half century of experience shows that those conflicts were generated in the first place by a ruling that traduced the Constitution — all such arguments are founded on a confusion of the business of law with the business of politics.

2 of 13

on Court’s legitimacy; corruption of history; false reliance; and much moreInboxEd Whelan <ewhelan@eppc.org> Unsubscribe1:39 PM (21 minutes ago)to meFrom NRO’s Bench Memos:Dobbs and the Court’s ‘Legitimacy’By ED WHELANNovember 16, 2021 1:15 PMThe new issue of National Review is dedicated to the theme “End Roe” and features an excellent collection of sixteen articles that comprehensively “examine the legal arguments, the policy arguments, and the social arguments for finally ending the Roe era in America.” Even better, they all appear to be out from behind the paywall.I’ll highlight a few of the articles in this and follow-on posts.In the first article in the series, Matt Franck and Robby George explore the concept of the Court’s “legitimacy.” They explain that the plurality opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), in addressing the topic, offered “at once at once a grandiose vision of the Court’s role in our constitutional order and a kind of cringing neediness for ‘the people’s acceptance.’” Casey has been a manifest failure: “by clinging steadfastly to Roe—a ruling Casey exposed as lacking any roots in the text, logic, structure, or original understanding of the Constitution—the Court only exacerbated the country’s divisions and guaranteed continuing controversy.”By contrast, Chief Justice Rehnquist set forth in his dissent in Casey the simple proposition that the “Judicial Branch derives its legitimacy, not from following public opinion, but from deciding by its best lights whether legislative enactments of the popular branches of Government comport with the Constitution.”As Franck and George sum it up:To argue that indefensible precedents must be preserved only because they excite half the country to demand their preservation and the other half to demand their abandonment; to say that the Court risks some “political capital” in doing what a majority of the justices know is the right thing — the constitutionally correct thing; to quake at the thought of the political conflicts that will be loosed on the world by a sound interpretation of the Constitution, when a half century of experience shows that those conflicts were generated in the first place by a ruling that traduced the Constitution — all such arguments are founded on a confusion of the business of law with the business of politics. Abortion and the Corruption of HistoryBy ED WHELANNovember 16, 2021 1:37 PMMore from the new “End Roe” issue of National Review:Ramesh Ponnuru has a devastating piece on the “false and sometimes fraudulent version of history” that proponents of a constitutional right to abortion have propagated from the 1960s all the way through to the amicus brief filed by the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians in the pending case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.As Ponnuru explains, the “slipshod scholarship” that Justice Harry Blackmun repeatedly cited in his majority opinion in Roe v. Wade “was already in the process of being discredited in 1973 and has since been comprehensively de­bunked.” But the Court has “never revisited its mistaken historical claims, which have instead taken on a life of their own in academic work, popular journalism, and legal briefs.”Read the whole thing. Here’s Ponnuru’s summation:The truth is that for centuries Anglo-American law forbade abortion from the first time an unborn child was known to be alive, and that as knowledge of biology accumulated the law was deliberately changed, the better to protect unborn life. Casey’s False Reliance ClaimBy ED WHELANNovember 16, 2021 2:20 PMFor now, I’ll highlight just one more article (on top of the two I covered in these posts) in the new “End Roe” issue of National Review.In its stare decisis analysis of Roe v. Wade, the plurality opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) concocted what Chief Justice Rehnquist in dissent properly labeled “an unconventional—and unconvincing—notion of reliance.” In the plurality’s view:[F]or two decades of economic and social developments, people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail. The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives.Set aside the fact that this is not the sort of reliance—detrimental reliance—that stare decisis protects against (see EPPC amicus brief at 14-15), and set aside further that the democratic processes can fully take into account these concerns. Even on its own terms, Casey’s reliance argument fails.As my EPPC colleague Erika Bachiochi explains, easy access to abortion encouraged “more sexual risk-taking,” which in turn “resulted in more children conceived, and increasingly outside of marriage.” This has not benefited women generally:Ironically, in the world that Roe created, the risks of sex — and the responsibilities of having children — have been assumed disproportionately by women. For far too many men, children are no longer part of the sexual bargain.Further, Bachiochi argues, Roe and Caseybear some blame for the fact that workplaces remain deeply inhospitable to women (and increasingly men) with children. Rather than challenge workplace norms head-on, the decades-long quest for unfettered abortion feeds into the model of the ideal male worker who is beholden to no one but his boss. If abortion is what enables women to participate in the workplace, then perhaps costly accommodations, flexible work schedules, and part-time-pay equity are not so necessary.Recalling a history that many choose to ignore, Bachiochi concludes:The earliest women’s-rights advocates in this country knew that for women to participate more fully in the economic and social life of the nation, the nation would need to become far more hospitable to children and the women who bear them. The first woman to run for president of the United States, in 1872, was not only an outspoken advocate of constitutional equality for women, she also advocated the rights of children — rights that, as she said, “begin while yet they remain the fetus.” Victoria Woodhull and the women’s-rights advocates of her time knew what 1970s feminist advocates of abortion would come to forget: The advancement of women will be possible only when the dignity of their children, born and unborn, is protected.(Bachiochi’s article draws on the amicus brief that she co-authored on behalf of a large group of women scholars and professionals in the pending Dobbs case.)

• POLITICS

Fox News could be taken off the air if Joe Biden’s nominee to the Federal Communications Commission gets her way

November 15, 2021

The “woke” radical Left is waging an all-out war on free speech in America.

Their ultimate goal is to completely shut down conservative media.

And Fox News could be taken off the air if Joe Biden’s nominee to the Federal Communications Commission gets her way.

After Joe Biden was elected President in 2020, the radical Left ramped up their war on conservative speech like never before.

Big Tech banned Donald Trump and several other conservatives from using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and virtually every other social media platform in the world.

They’ve even started banning and censoring anyone – even individuals – who dares to question any portion of the Democrats’ socialist agenda. 

But their ultimate goal is to shut down Fox News, Newsmax, One America News Network, and all the other popular conservative media outlets.

And if Biden’s nominee to the Federal Communications Commission, Gigi Sohn, is confirmed, Fox News could end up being the first conservative media outlet to be taken off the air by the federal government.

In fact, Gigi Sohn has spent the last few years viciously attacking Fox News on her social media account, referring to the network as “state-sponsored propaganda.”

But Sohn has done much more than just criticize the network.https://lockerdome.com/lad/14230595806901350?pubid=ld-7945-558&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Frightnewswire.com&rid=&width=640

She also demanded the FCC revoke the license of Sinclair Broadcasting, the largest owner of television stations in the U.S., for allegedly airing “biased political segments.”

“Will @FCC do anything when Sinclair’s licenses are up for renewal,” Sohn asked on social media back in 2018.

Of course, by “biased political segments,” Sohn really means anyone who disagrees with the Left’s socialist agenda.https://lockerdome.com/lad/14230597383959654?pubid=ld-667-5472&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Frightnewswire.com&rid=&width=640

And now, just four years later, Gigi Sohn could potentially serve on the same FCC that she previously demanded to revoke the license of conservative media outlets and take them off the air for good.

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Flashback- LifeSiteNews’ Westen: “The Easiest Solution would be to have Pope Francis declared some kind of Heretic or Illegally Elected… discussions are going on among the Hierarchy” 

November 15, 2021

Biden says Pope Francis told him he’s a ‘good Catholic’ – ABCNews

In war among Catholics, Pope Francis sides with Biden – The Hill
“[T]he easiest solution would be to have Pope Francis declared some kind of heretic or illegally elected or whatever. And I know discussions are going on among the hierarchy. But, for lay people we are unable to make those calls. And for right now we are called to pray for the pope and I pray literally for his [Francis’s] conversion.” – LifeSiteNews’ chief editor John-Henry Westen

Today [March 16, 2020 ], in a Dr. Taylor Marshall YouTube podcast, LifeSiteNews’ chief editor John-Henry Westen admitted that “discussions are going on among the hierarchy” that Francis is a “heretic or illegally elected”:

“[Marshall said] Beneplenists, Benedict is pope, has taken off and we saw Bishop Gracida endorsing this [Catholic Monitor correction: Bishop Rene Gracida has apparently proposed this as one option of three courses of action including the illegal conclave option and the Bellarmine option for an manifest heretic.] And also… Archbishop Lenga has kind of joined on board and there are a lot of voices in Italy of course Antonio Socci… “

“… How does John-Henry Westen compute all this?… “

“… [Westen answered] “[T]he easiest solution would be to have Pope Francis declared some kind of heretic or illegally elected or whatever. And I know discussions are going on among the hierarchy. But, for lay people we are unable to make those calls. And for right now we are called to pray for the pope and I pray literally for his [Francis’s] conversion.”
(Dr. Taylor Marshall YouTube Channel, “Did Pope Francis Betray Catholic China? Is Corona the Judgement?,” 51:35-54:04)

Question for Westen:

If lay people are not allowed an opinion, how can he, a layman, affirm Francis is the pope?

At LifeSiteNews, only lay people who question Francis’s validity are not allowed to have opinions. Everybody else is.

Moreover, if the “hierarchy” is discussing whether Francis is a antipope due to an “illegal” election then he is a “doubtful pope.”

Theologian Fr. Sylvester Berry wrote:

“Hence the saying of [Doctor of the Church St. Robert] Bellarmine: a doubtful pope is no pope. ‘Therefore,’ continued to Cardinal, ‘if a papal election is really doubtful for any reason, the elected should resign… the universal Church… can and ought to decide, when occasion demands, who is the legitimate pope.”
(The Church of Christ: An Apologetic and Dogmatic Treatise, Page 229, Note 8: Bellarmine, “De Concilio, ii, 19)

Finally, if Westen is praying for Francis’s “conversion” then that mean he apparently is of the opinion that Francis has lost the faith and may be a heretic.

If this is true then the Bellarmine option summarize by his friend and colleague Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales comes into play:

“[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)