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Is the Catholic Media a “PC Culture… Relying on Communist Propaganda Tricks” or is there a “Tipping Point” when it “Decide[s]” its “Credibility” will be Lost in Covering-up for Francis?

November 11, 2021

Why is even discussing the possibility of a imperfect council and/or a cardinal and bishop investigation into the Francis conclave and Pope Benedict XVI resignation beyond the “Rope Limit”?

Who and/or what has made Cardinal Burke and the faithful Catholic media into George P. Dog with a rope leash and a “Rope Limit.”

Who or what controls them?

Why are they forbidden to even give reasoned arguments, instead of straw man agruments that don’t counter our stated dissertations or name calling, against Bishop Rene Gracida and Latin language expert Br. Alexis Bugnolo who put forward serious reasoned dissertations from canon law and Pope John Paul II’s conclave constitution?

If they really think those who follow Bishop Gracida and Br. Bugnolo are wrong and headed to hell for being in schism from Francis then out of simple charity for our souls they should counter our dissertations and arguments.

If they really believe we are wrong and headed to hell for calling for a formal correction, a St. Francis de Sales/St. Bellarmine imperfect council, a canonical trial and cardinal investigation of the Francis’ conclave and refuse to give us real arguments then they apparently have lost the supernatural virtue of charity.

If they really believe what they say then for charity’s sake they should attempt to save us from hell for being in “schism” from Francis:

But, all we hear are straw man agruments that don’t counter our stated dissertations, name calling propaganda, silence or the noise of them running away as fast as they can from serious reasoned back and forth argumentation. – The Catholic Monitor [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/05/formal-correction-why-are-cd-burke.html]

Wernz-Vidal: “One cannot consider as Schismatics those who … – The Catholic Monitor

The Intellectual Takeout website said “The PC Culture is Relying on Communist Propaganda Tricks”:

The PC culture that now dominates American schools is often over-the-top… according to author Theodore Dalrymple, that’s exactly the point. 

In a 2005 interview he made the following comparison between communist propaganda and the new politically correct culture:

“Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.” [https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/pc-culture-relying-communist-propaganda-tricks/]

My question is:  

Is the Catholic media a “PC Culture… Relying on Communist Propaganda Tricks” or is there a “tipping point” when it “decide[s]” its “credibility” will be lost in covering-up for Francis like with the so-called mainstream media on Mario Cuomo?

In August, The Epoch Times put up a post on “Governor Cuomo’s Sex Scandal and the Media’s Corruption” which said “there must have come a tipping point where the media collectively decided that such credibility with the public as they still retained would be lost unless they abandoned their initial attempts to ignore or kill the story”:

In most such cases, the media’s protection of their favorites is a simple matter of insisting that the charges of wrong-doing against them are politically motivated—the work of “right wing hatchet men” or a “vast right-wing conspiracy”—which is richly ironic in view of the undisguised political motivations behind their own cries of scandal against Republican targets.

The crowning achievement of such deflective tactics came during last year’s election campaign when the media quickly rounded up 50 current or former “intelligence officials” to sign on to a statement claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop story in the right-wing New York Post sounded to them like “Russian disinformation.”

But when, as in the Clinton and Cuomo cases, the allegations are of sexual misbehavior against a white male Democrat—a black male Democrat like Lt Governor Justin Fairfax of Virginia, still in office in spite of allegations of rape against him, may be a different matter—this approach runs the risk of offending the important Democratic constituency of educated women, who are often ideologically committed to the view that women never lie about such things.

The $64,000 question for the media is this: Are these female Democrats equally committed to the view that charges of sexual misconduct are equally serious no matter which party the alleged offender belongs to?

There were few protests on the left—almost none that I am aware of—when the media successfully buried the story of Tara Reid’s allegations of sexual assault against Joe Biden last year. But Ms. Reid was an isolated case and could be portrayed, as at first Monica Lewinsky was, as a bitter and perhaps mentally unbalanced woman with a grudge.

Besides, Joe Biden was by that time the presumptive Democrat standard-bearer against the hated man in the White House and had to be protected at all costs.

But with Governor Cuomo, as with President Clinton before him, there must have come a tipping point where the media collectively decided that such credibility with the public as they still retained would be lost unless they abandoned their initial attempts to ignore or kill the story and turned the big guns of their moral outrage, at least temporarily, against their former favorites.[https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/governor-cuomos-sex-scandal-and-the-medias-corruption_3937588.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-08-08&mktids=cd6dd79f5b811d67c9702ccedf953cb2&est=XxfS263Fyohk3449%2BbjMjzMJokRqu3%2BWFD05wJw6SK%2BnjUMS3LhoES5T1lJN]

Catholic blogger Ann Barnhardt wrote of Joe Biden’s open “lust on a pre-pubescent child from the podium”:

Remember, the greatest rush that demoniacs feel is from openly manifesting their evil and then watching people let them get away with it.

Biden is obviously demented, but the pedophilia is intrinsic to him – he was sexually into children, including his own, according to his daughter, long before any brain injuries or dementia. So The Powers That Be placed a pedophile with rapidly fading self-censoring capability as the “president” of the “united states”.

I think at this point, this is a trolling operation. I think they are positively luxuriating in the utter refusal of the unwashed masses to do a damn thing to resist them in any way.

They can literally let their front puppet openly lust on a pre-pubescent child from the podium, and nobody [especially the media] bats an eye. [https://www.barnhardt.biz/2021/05/29/the-only-question-remaining-at-this-point-is-whether-joe-bidens-open-pedophilia-is-considered-a-feature-or-a-bug-by-the-powers-that-be/]

Miss Barnhardt in another post showed how people like Biden, Andrew Cuomo, Bill Crosby and Francis gets away with their shenanigans:

In this episode we discuss Bill Cosby and his effeminate supporting caste of beta narcissists — including his wife — who allowed and empowered him to act as sexual predator for DECADES. Also, Ann wonders: “If I learn to read bad poetry really slowly, can I be a Wise Woman of Color(tm) too?” And we discuss a listener’s email and how it applies to another group of beta narcissists, Professional Catholics, and why they don’t enunciate the full truth.

This week’s required studying: the section on Alpha/Beta Diabolic Narcissist dynamics from her video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4dtcwv5dPM&feature=youtu.be&t=1h38m52s[https://www.barnhardt.biz/2017/06/13/barnhardt-podcast-008-massa-cosby-and-all-his-little-house-negroes/]

The secular and Catholic media are their supporting “caste of beta narcissists” that “empowered” them.

The feminist Crusader Newspaper Group gave an overview of some of those “empowered” by the media “caste of beta narcissists”: 

Once again, a high profile male is in the spotlight due to allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has been called upon to resign from office due to sexual harassment claims leveled by former employees…

… Cuomo’s situation is one of the latest of the accusations made by women regarding improper sexual behavior. Other accusations of inappropriate sexual conduct have been leveled at the R & B singer R. Kelly, who is currently in jail, and former comedian and sitcom star Bill Cosby, who is currently serving time in prison for allegedly drugging and raping a woman.

These cases are just a drop in the proverbial bucket of a huge number of them. In fact, these accusations are so pervasive that almost every man in a position of power can become suspect. Even our current President, Joe Biden, has had fingers pointed at him based on his “affectionate” behavior.

One of the things that all of these cases have in common is that there is often a great deal of time, usually multiple years, between the alleged incidents and the victims’ reporting of the events. [https://chicagocrusader.com/male-sexist-culture-on-trial/]

Finally, we return to 2018, when faithful Catholics thought that Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano had single-handedly destroyed Francis and his sex abuse cover-up and heretical legacy. The LifeSiteNews headline was “Pope Francis covered up McCarrick abuse, former US nuncio.” 

But, the media “caste of beta narcissists” then also stepped in.

The Catholic and mainstream media, for the most part, has protected Francis and the Vatican gay lobby for a long time from the following being known by most people:

Taylor Marshall on YouTube in “Dr. Taylor Marshall ties together Vatican financial scandal with homosexual activity” summarized what lead to Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation and Francis:

If Archbishop Carlo Marie Vigano is telling the truth then it appears that the Vatican gay lobby apparently forced Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation and it appears that Francis has “reinstated and promoted” all those who brought about the resignation.

Marshall stated:

“First of, Vigano blew the whistle on money laundering.”

“Two, the accusations of money laundering leads to the Vatileaks scandal.”

“Three, the Vatileaks scandal leads Benedict to form a secret investigation with three cardinals.”

“Four, those three cardinals expose moral rot, sexual deviancy, that is paired up with financial irregularity.”

“This is what moves the Pope to resignation. And just to make sure there is enough pressure on him to do it and do it quick something funny goes on with the Vatican Bank beginning on January 1, 2013.”

“And it seems the powerful cardinals within Vatican City wanted it to happen fast because they don’t want the 300 page dossier released to the public because there is moral scandal in those pages.”

“That binder was left with Pope Francis, but nothing has been done. And what we see is that those who were oppose to Benedict XVI theologically, but also on administration, have been reinvolved, reinstated and promoted.”

On February 22,  2013, The Sydney Morning Herald verified Marshall’s explanation of why Pope Benedict XVI resigned:

“Pope Benedict XVI resigned after an internal investigation informed him about a web of blackmail, corruption and gay sex in the Vatican, Italian media reports say.”

“Three cardinals were asked by Benedict to verify allegations of financial impropriety, cronyism and corruption exposed in the so-called VatiLeaks affair.”

“On December 17, 2012, they handed the pontiff two red-leather bound volumes, almost 300 pages long, containing “an exact map of the mischief and the bad fish” inside the Holy See, La Repubblicasaid.”

“‘It was on that day, with those papers on his desk, that Benedict XVI took the decision he had mulled over for so long,’ said the centre-left newspaper.”

“… La Repubblica quoted a man described as “very close” to the authors as saying the information it contained was “all about the breach of the sixth and seven commandments” – which say “thou shalt not commit adultery” and ‘thou shalt not steal.'”

“The cardinals were said to have uncovered an underground gay network, whose members organise sexual meetings in several venues in Rome and Vatican City, leaving them prone to blackmail.”

“The secret report also delves into suspect dealings at the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), the Vatican’s bank.”
(The Sydney Morning Herald, “Vatican scandal cited in Pope resignation,” February 22, 2013)

On January 26, 2012, the Business Insider verified Marshall’s narrative showing that the Vatican insiders removed Vigano for attempting to clean up those involved with “financial irregularity” who were the gay lobby:

“The show “The Untouchables”, on private television network La 7 Wednesday night showed several letters that Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the erstwhile deputy-governor of Vatican City, sent to superiors, including Pope Benedict, in 2011 about the corruption.”

“… As deputy-governor of the Vatican City from 2009 to 2011, Vigano was the No. 2 official in a department responsible for maintaining the city-state’s infrastructure.”

“Soon after his appointment, Vigano discovered corruption, nepotism and cronyism, especially in the awarding of contracts to outside companies at inflated prices, which he sought to remedy.”

“The TV program interviewed a member of the bankers’ committee — whose face was blurred and voice changed to protect his identity — who said Vigano had a reputation as a “ballbreaker” among companies that had contracts with the Vatican, because of his emphasis on transparency and fair competition.”

“… While Vigano turned Vatican City’s budget from deficit to surplus during his tenure through cost-cutting, it made him some enemies, who had unsigned articles criticizing him as inefficient published in the Italian newspaper Il Giornale in 2011.”

“On March 22, 2011, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone removed Vigano from his position for reasons identical to those published in an anonymous articles published against him.” [https://www.businessinsider.com/carlo-maria-vigano-vatican-corruption-2012-1]

On June 11, 2013, The Telegraph revealed that even Francis verified Marshall’s report that there was a gay lobby tied to “financial irregularity”:

“The Pontiff supposedly made the claim during an audience last Thursday at the Vatican with a group of Latin American priests and nuns.”

“‘Yes, it is difficult,’ he reportedly said. ‘In the Curia there are holy people, truly holy people. But there is also a current of corruption, also there is, it is true … they speak of a ‘gay lobby’ and that is true, it is there … we will have to see what we can do.'”

“… In his audience, Pope Francis allegedly promised to reform the Vatican but said it would be ‘difficult’ and that he could not carry out the reforms himself because he was ‘disorganised’. He reportedly said he would be relying on the commission of eight cardinals he appointed in April to organise reform of the Curia, which is due to meet in October.”  [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/vaticancityandholysee/10113779/Gay-lobby-in-the-Vatican-says-Pope-Francis.html]

Unfortunately, what The Telegraph didn’t reveal or know is that Francis had been surrounded by a gay lobby as a cardinal in Argentina and surrounded himself with the gay lobby in the Vatican and in his “commission of eight [later nine] cardinals… to organise reform of the Curia” which is called the C9.

The Telegraph didn’t know as Marshall put it that Francis “reinvolved, reinstated and promoted” the Vatican gay lobby:

The Catholic Argentinian website the Wanderer on October 23, 2014 posted “Unmasking Bergoglio”:

“Bergoglio always had the “gay agenda” among his plans… It is a question of asking the Buenoairean clergy about the constant protection that he lavished on many homosexual priests.”

“… Cardinal Bergoglio as Primate… of the Argentine Episcopal Conference… “[had a] “star”… of the Argentine Episcopate. The great theologian… of the poor [Archbishop Juan Carlos Maccarone].”

“Until… in March 2005 a video appeared in which the archbishop appeared having sexual games with a young man… Pope Benedict XVI… immediately removed [him from his]… position [as bishop].”

“The reaction of Bergoglio”

“By a letter that Maccarone himself directed in [to] his bother bishops, it can be easily deduced that the entire Argentine episcopal gang knew of his weakness… And, in spite of that, they promoted him to the episcopal office.”

“… Bergoglio… issued a statement in which he expressed his ‘gratitude’ to the former bishop [Maccarone].”

“… The spokesman of the arzobipado porteno went out to say… the [sex] video corresponded to “the private life of Bishop Maccarone.”

Jimmy Burns in his book “Francis, Pope of Good Promise” after referencing that “Maccarone resigned” because of the “videotape showing the bishop having ‘intimate relations'” wrote:

“Bergoglio’s own spokesman, rather than focus on Maccarone’s political links with Kirchner, jumped to the bishop’s defense claiming he had been set up.”

“… Fortunato Millimaci, a Buenos Aires sociologist [said]… ‘This means that the idea of the Catholic Church as a moral reference of a Catholic nation is very strongly in doubt… It shows that a double standard exists within the Church [of Bergoglio] itself.'” (Pages 231-232)

Francis’s Vatican inner circle and C9 was largely composed of the gay lobby and those who covered-up for them:

Business Standard, September 19, 2017:

Francis’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith perfect Archbishop Ferrer will go to trail for “complicity in alleged cover-up” of paedophile priest.

The Telegraph, July 19, 2013:

“Pope’s [Francis’s] ‘eyes and ears’ in Vatican bank [allegedly] ‘had string of homosexual affairs’… [Battista] Ricca is a trusted confidante of the Pope”

LifeSiteNews, March 7,2018:

Francis’s closest advisor in the C9 papal inner circle Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga left in charge of his Honduras archdiocese his close confidant Bishop Juan Pineda “accused of ‘abusing seminarians, having a string of male lovers.'”

National Catholic Reporter, April 29, 2014:

Francis’s close advisor in C9 papal inner circle Cardinal “Errazuriz [and his]… successor… [Cardinal] Ezzati” “Chilean cardinals close to pope stained by abuse cover-ups” of priest sex abuser of Juan Carlos Cruz.

The Remnant, September 12, 2017:

Francis’s confidant Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio’s Secretary has homosexual orgy in Vatican:

“Secretary to the powerful Cardinal Francesco ‘Positive Realities of Homosexuals’… [Coccopalmerio’s Secretary] Capozzi was arrested for hosting a raucous drug fueled homosexual orgy.”

BBC, August 29, 2010 & LifeSiteNews, September 16, 2017:

Francis collaborator invited by Pope to be number two representative in family synod “Belgian Cardinal Danneels condoned sex-abuse silence.”

The Week, January 3, 2017:

“Pope Francis and his cardinal allies… known to interfere…  on abuse cases… Consider case of [serial sex-abuser] Fr. Mauro Inzoli… Francis returned him to the priestly state.”

Vebuumdei.blogspot, June 23, 2014 & Catholic Monitor, April 18, 2017:

Francis strolled hand in hand down the street with gay activist Fr. Luigi Ciotti at a anti-gangster event.

Chiesa, December 16, 2016:

Vatican expert Sandro Magister said Francis has a “number of homosexual priests in the inner circle of his closest collaborators and confidants.”

Caucus99percent.com, 02/02/2018:

“Pope Francis’ continuous aiding and abetting of sexual predators and his officials who protect them.”

“Although he was personally informed of the accusations against them, Pope Francis protected these sexual predators: Fr. Mauro Inzoli (the pope later defrocked Inzoli but he is still a free man) Luis Fernando Figari, Archbishop Anthony Apuron, Auxiliary Bishop Gabino Miranda Melgarejo, Fr. Don Corradi and Archbishop Josef Wesolowski.”

“After Pope Francis did nothing to stop Corradi, the priest and four others were arrested in November 2016 and charged with raping and molesting at least 22 children. More reports poured in and ‘it’s now thought that as many as 60 children fell victim to abuse.’”

“Wesolowski was put under Vatican house arrest 14 months after the pope judged him to be guilty only after ‘there was a serious risk that [he] would be arrested on Italian territory at the request of the Dominican Republic authorities and then extradited,’ as reported by Corriere della Sera. The archbishop was found with more than 100,000 computer files of child pornography, a “key ingredient” in sex trafficking. Wesolowski continued to possess child pornography even under Vatican house arrest.”

“Kamil Jarzembowski, a former student at the Vatican’s preseminary, wrote a letter about the sexual abuse of minors in the school and handed it directly to Pope Francis. The pope did nothing to stop it.”

“Pope Francis had ordered an investigation of Honduran Bishop Juan José Pineda by an Argentine bishop who was “shocked” by “accounts of sexual abuse perpetrated against priests and seminarians …. So far the only action that has been taken has been to send Bishop Pineda to stay with Jesuits in Madrid on a short retreat,” wrote veteran Vatican reporter Edward Pentin.”

“Pope Francis promoted Archbishop Luis Ladaria Ferrer as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican department that judges cases of clergy sexual abuse. While Ladaria held the second highest position in the CDF, he found Fr. Gianni Trotta guilty of sexually abusing minors in 2012 but failed to inform the Italian authorities. Trotta, already convicted of sexual violence against an 11-year-old and sentenced to eight years in prison by a civil court, is now standing trial for nine other alleged cases of sex abuse against boys that occurred in 2014. Ladaria, himself, will stand trial in April, accused by French authorities of “complicity in the alleged cover-up” of Fr. Bernard Preynat.”

“A month after his election, the pope appointed a Council of Cardinals to help him govern the Church. Three of the eight initial members had protected pedophile priests: George Pell, Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa, and Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga who he named as head of the council.”

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

• RELIGIOUS LIFE

When Nuns Are Persecuted: Lessons from the Russian Underground

 Peter Kwasniewski, PhDNovember 10, 20210 Comments

Those who have been paying attention to the mounting attack on the contemplative religious life and on traditional religious communities (an attack extremely well documented by Hilary White: see this recent article, which also gives links to her past articles) may be wondering: What can be done about this evil? How can nuns or sisters defend themselves? What can they do? Are they helplessly at the mercy of Church authorities who would obliterate them from off the face of the earth?

The answer to the first question is grim: there is very little that can be done about the attack, which is under way right now, and, short of a dramatic divine intervention, the Vatican boom will be lowered. Attempts will be made to discredit, dissolve, and disperse traditional communities, especially the contemplative Carmelite nuns who are the “heart” of the Church. To the second question, the nuns may defend themselves by appealing to various dicasteries in defense of their centuries-old and consistently approved charism, by asking for the intervention of friendly cardinals and other influencers, even by directly calling on the pope to make exceptions for them.Advertisement – Continue Reading Below

But let us say these routes fail to deliver the goods, and a decree comes down saying: “Your monastery is closed.” Or: “We are sending so-and-so as your interim superior until the problems we discovered have been resolved.” What then?

There is a strategy that has worked before during times of persecution in Church history. And let us be clear about it: there is a persecution taking place—this time not from the State, as in Henry VIII’s suppression of monasteries or the savagery of the French Revolution, but from churchmen who dare, with diabolic pride, to lay violent hands on the apple of God’s eye. This strategy aims at preserving the reality of the charism and traditional way of life by temporarily sacrificing some of its external manifestations. The step is taken under compulsion and therefore does not count in the sight of God as a blameworthy abandonment of these external manifestations; indeed, they are left aside precisely to continue adhering to what they signify.

The most basic presupposition is that the community’s material possessions, including their land and buildings, must be owned by a lay organization, so that no religious entity, diocesan or otherwise, can lay hands on it as their “spoils of war.”

Assuming this to be in place, the nuns do not have to bend to unjust demands for their modernization, coerced federating, etc. Instead, they voluntarily “dissolve” the community by taking off their religious habits. The place will no longer be called a convent or monastery; signs, placards, and letterhead to this effect will have disappeared. The nuns adopt a form of simple lay clothing that suggests a religious habit, and remain in their buildings, living exactly the same life of personal and liturgical prayer and penance that they were living before.Advertisement – Continue Reading Below

The monastery has thus become, in the sight of the world, a center in which like-minded women voluntarily pursue a common interest. It’s nothing other than a group of devout laity who have formed what might be called a “household of prayer,” against which there are no prohibitions in either civil or canon law. They do not even have to ask to be “an association of the faithful” (consociationes christifidelium). They don’t need to have any status whatsoever. They just do what they have always done, but without the labels. They know in their hearts that they are still nuns.

The most important “piece” in this scenario is the availability of a traditionally-minded priest who can serve as their chaplain. If the nuns are located in a diocese with a favorable bishop, that bishop could no doubt find or appoint a suitable priest to serve in this capacity, or welcome a priest from elsewhere who has the requisite background. If the nuns are located in a diocese with a hostile bishop or a bishop who, buckling under Vatican pressure, refuses to give these women a chaplain, then it will be time for a more radical step: the nuns would need to find their own chaplain—probably a “canceled priest”—who, though he may officially lack faculties, knows with a clean conscience and a spotless record that he has been canceled illicitly and invalidly, and is therefore free to give himself to this important work. That is a worst-case scenario, but in our times it may be necessary, until the pope and the Roman curia reverse their self-destructive course, and/or until the local ordinary grasps the necessity to act fearlessly for the benefit of his flock, regardless of bullying from above.[1]

If worse comes to worst, the religious life can move entirely underground. I read an incredibly inspiring book a few years ago called Everyday Saints about Russian Orthodox monks and nuns—with a lot of attention give to their sufferings and survival under the Communists.[2] They were clever about how to manipulate or mislead or confound the authorities; and when they ran out of luck, they knew how to move into disguise, going underground and continuing their life under the very noses of their persecutors. When Communism fell, it was discovered that certain monks and nuns had kept their life intact and had passed it on to new members over the course of decades of official suppression.

The best chapter in this regard is “The True Story of Mother Frosya,” of which I will now share some excerpts.

In that little house on Lesnaya Street in Diveyevo where the relics of St. Seraphim were kept, there lived a schema-nun named Margarita. Except that for many, many years nobody knew that she was secretly a nun. Everybody just called her Mother Frosya or just simply Frosya. She was as old as the century itself. When I met her in February 1983 on my first trip to Diveyevo, she had just turned eighty-three years old.

“Secret monasticism” is something that began to happen during the persecutions of the Church of the twentieth century. Having been secretly given monastic vows, monks and nuns would remain living in the world, would wear normal secular clothes, and would work in normal secular institutions, while strictly fulfilling all their monastic vows in secret. Only a father confessor or spiritual father would know about their vows and about their new names….

Everyone thought that Mother Frosya had simply once been just a novice in the former monastery. And if curious persons would ask her questions about her past, Mother Frosya would answer completely honestly that there once had been a time when she was a novice in the Monastery of Diveyevo.

She was only forced to reveal her true monastic name in the beginning of the 1990s, with the blessing of Abbess Sergia, the first appointed abbess of the resurrected Diveyevo Monastery, to which Mother Frosya moved back for her last three years before her death. But until this time everyone just called her Frosya.[3]

Mother Frosya herself describes what it was like when the Soviet soldiers came to expel them from the monastery in September of 1927 and then destroy its buildings:

One week later, before the final Evening Vespers we rang all the bells, sounding all their chimes, all of them—letting them ring for the last time. We rang and rang them, and then we said our Divine Service. Then we were scattered like little birds, scattered to the wind! Just like that—in the pouring rain. The cops came and kicked us out into the street! Lord! We were getting it from everywhere: from the people on one side, and God on the other. Oh, Queen of Heaven!

What could we do? It was impossible for us to wear our nuns’ habits anymore. The authorities had forbidden it. So we had to wear secular clothes. And all icons were forbidden. They made us put up pictures of Lenin instead. None of us would agree to that!…

On the second day, they took our Mother Superior off to jail. And we got scattered all over. There was a bishop there secretly, and he said to us all, “They drove you out of the monastery. But we have not released you from your monastic vows.”…

It was the year 1937. I and several of the other nuns were still living near the monastery. I was right here on Kalganovka Street. And on the other side of the street there were also little houses in which nuns were living…[4]

She talks about how the nuns were eventually rounded up and sent to a work camp, accused of being “vagabonds”:

We were searched! They took everything from us! They took away our crosses! Lord forgive them! Oh, Mother of God… One policeman ripped off my neck cross, then threw it on the ground and trampled on it, barking at me: “Why are you wearing that?” You know, when they were taking away our crosses, the feeling I had—it was as if our Lord and Savior himself were standing their crucified, suffering and enduring it all himself! They took away our crosses! How could they? It was so awful!

And then what? How could we live without our crosses? Well, in those days we all were set to work as seamstresses, using locally picked Uzbek cotton. They had these little forklike twigs, those cotton balls, and if you cut them a little bit they were like little crosses. So we all made ourselves little crosses. But then we went with our makeshift crosses into the prison bathhouse. Some of the women there ratted us out to the bosses: “Those nuns are wearing crosses again!” But they didn’t bother taking away our little homemade crosses. There was no point. Take them away and we’d make new ones….

Some of our group had been in the choir. And so sometimes we would gather together on the top prison planks and we would just quietly sing the Annunciation hymn—“The Voice of the Archangel.” Several of them in there knew everything by heart, the church services, the Akathists, so it didn’t matter that they didn’t let us have any books. Yes, they took all our holy books away.[5]

The nightmare scenario of the total destruction of monasteries by an atheistic political regime is not yet upon us. If Mother Frosya and forty other nuns in prison could continue their religious life, all the more can it be continued in any place in the world where people are still free to associate, to pursue a common interest, and to live under the same roof.

The author of Everyday Saints, Archimandrite Tikhon, writes about his experience of visiting the secret nuns in the 1980s, at the tail end of Communism, and when the monastery of Diveyevo was still in ruins (it was subsequently gloriously rebuilt):

Father Boniface was on his way to Diveyevo in order to give Communion to a few old nuns still living in the area around the monastery—some of the last few still living in our time of the thousand who once inhabited the pre-Revolutionary convent.… Father Boniface tried to dress in a way so that no one would ever suspect him to be a priest: carefully tucking away the pleats and folds of his cassock beneath his coat, and hiding away his very long beard into his thick scarf and upturned collar….

In a ramshackle little hut on the outskirts of Diveyevo I saw something that I could have never imagined even in my most radiant dreams. I saw alive the Church Radiant, invincible and indefatigable, youthful and joyful in the consciousness of its God, our Shepherd and Savior…. And what’s more, the most beautiful and unforgettable church service in my life took place then—not in some magnificent grand cathedral, not in some glorious ancient church hallowed with age, but in a nondescript building in the community center of Diveyevo, on Number 16, Lesnaya Street. It was not even a church at all, but an old bathhouse somehow vaguely converted into communal housing.

When I first arrived with Father Boniface, I saw a dingy little room crowded by about a dozen elderly women, the youngest of whom could not have been younger than eighty, while the oldest were definitely more than 100 years old. All of them were dressed in simple old country maids’ clothes and wearing peasant kerchiefs. None of them was wearing a habit or any kind of monastic or ecclesiastical clothing. Of course, these weren’t nuns—just simple old ladies; that’s what anyone would have thought, including me, if I had not known that these old women were in fact some of the most courageous modern-day confessors of our faith, true heroines who had suffered tortures and decades in prisons and concentration camps for their beliefs. And yet despite all their ordeals, their spiritual loyalty and unshakable faith in God had only grown….

As Father Boniface and the old women were exchanging greetings, I looked around. Icons in ancient ceremonial frames, dimly lit by flickering lamps, were hung on the walls… Meanwhile I started to prepare myself for the Vigil service. It took my breath away as the nuns started to take out of their secret hiding places and set down on the crudely put-together wooden table genuine artifacts belonging to St. Seraphim himself. Here was the stole of his ecclesiastical vestment; there was his heavy iron cross on thick chains, worn for the mortification of the flesh, a leather glove, and the old-fashioned cast iron pot in which the saint had cooked his food. After the Revolution when the monastery was pillaged and destroyed, these holy relics had been passed down from sister to sister by the nuns of the Monastery of Diveyevo.

Having put on his vestments, Father Boniface gave the priest’s pronouncement that begins the Vigil service. The nuns immediately perked up and began to sing. What a divine and utterly amazing choir they were!… These incredible nuns sang the entire service virtually by heart. Only very rarely did one of them glance at the thick old books, for which they needed to use not just eyeglasses but gigantic magnifying glasses with wooden handles. They had risked death or punishment saying this service in concentration camps and prisons and places of exile. They said it even now after all their sufferings, here in Diveyevo, settling into their wretched hovels on the outskirts of the town. For them it was nothing unusual, and yet for me I could scarcely understand whether I was in Heaven or on Earth.

These aged nuns were possessed of such incredible spiritual strength, such prayer, such courage, such modesty, goodness, and love, and they were full of such faith, that it was then at that wonderful service that I understood that they with their faith would triumph over everything—over our godless government despite all its power, over the faithlessness of this world, and over death itself, of which they had absolutely no fear.[6]

Plenty of similar stories could be told from the Western tradition, of course. I quote at length from Mother Frosya’s story because it is so near to our times, it concerns women who continued to live out their monastic life under the most atrocious circumstances and in spite of the most numerous hindrances, and because, finally, the mentality and the actions of the ‘c’atholic persecutors of traditional religious life are strangely and sickly akin to those of the Communists. The sooner we recognize this, the sooner we will develop a healthy realism and a gritty determination about how to proceed.

Photo: Silhouette of Diveyevo Convent, rebuilt after its partial destruction by the Soviets. This was where Mother Frosya began her monastic life at the start of the 20th century and ended it at the end of the century, with decades of hidden monasticism in between. Via Wiki commons.

[1] This winter, I have a booklet coming out from Sophia Institute Press—“True Obedience in the Church: A Guide to Discernment in Challenging Times”—that will take up in greater detail some of the canonical issues involved. A more compact form of the argument may be heard in the lecture I gave at the Catholic Identity Conference in October 2021 (posted at YouTube).Advertisement – Continue Reading Below

[2] Yes, I’m aware that some of the Russian Orthodox were in collusion with the Communists and that they did horrible things (or allowed them to be done) to Greek Catholics and Roman Catholics, etc. But let us have the fairness to acknowledge the greatness of the witness and resistance given by so many of the Orthodox, too. Anyone who reads this book will be able to see that and will be inspired by it.

[3] Everyday Saints, 223–24.

[4] Everyday Saints, 239–40.

[5] Everyday Saints, 241–42. The whole section on Mother Frosya (pp. 217–51) is one of the most moving and delightful accounts of a contemporary hero of Christianity that I have ever read.Advertisement – Continue Reading Below

[6] Everyday Saints, 218–21.

Peter Kwasniewski, PhD

Dr. Peter Kwasniewski is a graduate of Thomas Aquinas College and The Catholic University of America who taught at the International Theological Institute in Austria, the Franciscan University of Steubenville’s Austria Program, and Wyoming Catholic College, which he helped establish in 2006. Today he is a full-time writer and speaker on traditional Catholicism whose work appears online at, among others, OnePeterFive, New Liturgical Movement, LifeSiteNews, The Remnant, and Catholic Family News. He has published thirteen books, including Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright: The Genius and Timeliness of the Traditional Latin Mass (Angelico, 2020), The Ecstasy of Love in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Emmaus, 2021), and Are Canonizations Infallible? Revisiting a Disputed Question (Arouca, 2021). His work has been translated into at least eighteen languages. Visit his website at www.peterkwasniewski.com.www.peterkwasniewski.com

Post-election reality check: Youngkin, Carlyle Group and Dominion

• by: WorldTribune.com
• 11/04/2021
• Source: WorldTribune.com

Carlyle by N/A is licensed under Twitter N/A‘Carlyle co-founder David Rubenstein personally recruited Glenn Youngkin to join the organization in 1995. He was there for 25 years.’byWorldTribuneStaff, November 4, 2021

Analysis byJoe Schaeffer

Virginia Republican Governor-Elect Glenn Youngkin’s former Carlyle Group cohorts own Dominion Voting Systems, the controversial voting machine company that is at the heart of widespread claims the 2020 presidential election was fraudulently stolen.

This disturbing fact did not prevent Youngkin from running as the “alternative” to those who were declared the victor in the highly-irregular presidential race. He even repeatedly called for an “audit” of the Dominion machines themselves while on the campaign trail.

Was this classic control mechanics at work? First create the problem, to your own immense personal benefit. Then present yourself as the solution, also to rewarding personal effect.

It doesn’t just work with lab-orchestrated viruses and vaccines.

Happy red voters need to pause and ask themselves: Is what went down in Virginia on Nov. 2 an orchestrated drama to reconstitute the Uniparty dominant nexus that was smashed to atoms by Trump in 2016?

Dominion Voting Systems is owned by Staple Street Capital, which was co-founded by two ex-Carlyle Group bigwigs. Axios reported last year:

The Canada-founded and Denver-based company was acquired in mid-2018 by Staple Street Capital, a mid-market buyout firm co-founded by Carlyle Group and Cerberus vets.Here’s more from that Nov. 17, 2020 Axios story. Is it getting uncomfortable yet?

Dominion’s owner is keeping a particularly low profile, removing the team, portfolio and contact pages from its website in recent days.Axios hysterically tried to spin private equity control of the voting machines used in the 2020 presidential election as proof of their impartiality:

Private equity has one overarching goal, which is to [generate] profits for itself and its investors. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, it’s very difficult to believe these firms were party to election-rigging, given that exposure of such misdeeds would destroy their portfolio companies’ value.As we will see below, private equity also greatly values high-level political connections. What represents the bigger revenue stream to these soulless profiteers: A successful voting machine company or influence and control over those running the United States government?

Stephen D. Owens is the co-founder of Staple Street Capital. From his corporate bio:

Prior to founding Staple Street Capital, Mr. Owens was a Managing Director at The Carlyle Group where he was a member of the firm’s U.S. Buyout team. During his tenure at Carlyle, he co-founded the firm’s Global Consumer & Retail Group, was a senior member of the firm’s Global Communications & Media Group and executed and oversaw investments in the business services and transportation sectors. Mr. Owens was responsible for sourcing, executing, overseeing and exiting investments and serving on the boards of various Carlyle portfolio companies.The second co-founder, Hootan Yaghoobzadeh, is a Carlyle alum as well:

Prior to joining Cerberus, Mr. Yaghoobzadeh worked in The Carlyle Group’s U.S. Buyout team. At Carlyle, Mr. Yaghoobzadeh focused on leverage buyout transactions in the communications and media, aerospace and defense, business services, and industrial sectors. Prior to joining Carlyle, Mr. Yaghoobzadeh worked at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette on merchant banking, restructuring, M&A, high yield and leveraged-loan transactions.It’s a fact: two Carlyle alums own Dominion Voting Systems.

Do patriotic Americans justifiably elated to see ultra-corrupt Clintonite crony Terry McAuliffe go down to defeat truly understand just how bad Carlyle is?

Carlyle co-founder David Rubenstein personally recruited Glenn Youngkin to join the organization in 1995. He was there for 25 years.

News item: 1993: Nation-destroying progressive globalist billionaire George Soros funds Carlyle to the tune of $100 million:

For Carlyle, the commitment from Soros Fund Management represents a kind of financial blessing from one of the current high priests of investing. Carlyle is best known for its high-octane political connections, which include former defense secretary Frank Carlucci, former secretary of state James A. Baker III and Richard G. Darman, former director of the Office of Management and Budget….

“We are very pleased with the Soros relationship and have enormous respect for that organization’s achievements,” said David Rubenstein, a managing director.Russia’s richest oligarch, a man with close Soros ties, sat on a Carlyle advisory board:

The New York-based Soros Foundation has spent more than $1 billion on charitable projects in Russia during the last 15 years. [Mikhail] Khodorkovsky had based his own charitable organization, the Open Russia Foundation, on Soros’ Open Society Institute and had close links to the Soros Foundation’s work in supporting libraries, Internet education, community development and the promotion of civil society.Along with Soros, Khodorkovsky was awash in American elitist ties:

His quest led him from Moscow to Houston and New York and, eventually, to the White House. In 2001, Yukos set up a foundation. (Mr. Khodorkovsky called it the Open Russia Foundation, an echo of George Soros’s Open Society Institute.) For the board Mr. Khodorkovsky enlisted Henry Kissinger, Lord Rothschild and a former United States ambassador to the Soviet Union….

Washington took the bait. In September, George H. W. Bush came to Moscow to give a speech at a dinner held by the Carlyle Group, one of the world’s richest private equity funds. Rumors still swirl as to the real reason behind the dinner, but this much is known: Mr. Khodorkovsky, who now sits in Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina prison, also sits on a Carlyle advisory board with the secretary of state under Mr. Bush, James A. Baker III.Do not deceive yourself. This is the world Glenn Youngkin travels in. Never mind his waist, the man is literally shoulder-deep in the darkest globalist power networks. Along with his wife Suzanne, Youngkin co-chaired the 2020 Wilson Center awards dinner honoring moneyed investment banker and former Trump administration Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and former International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde:

The 2020 Wilson Awards Dinner will be co-chaired by Glenn and Suzanne Youngkin…

In July 2011, [Christine] Lagarde was elected the 11th Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and was the first woman to hold that position. Since November of 2019 she has served as President of the European Central Bank, and is the first woman to hold that position. She is being recognized for her work in the fight against climate change and for gender equality.Get a load of this list of former honorees:

Previous recipients of the Woodrow Wilson Award include former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretaries of State Dr. Henry Kissinger, General Colin Powell, Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, and Rex Tillerson, and former Secretaries of Defense Ash Carter and Chuck Hagel, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Ambassador Nikki Haley.WorldTribune has documented the Wilson Center’s extensive internationalist and Hillary Clinton-led pro-abortion feminist ties. The “Feminist Foreign Policy” mantra is a globalist boondoggle especially dear to the hearts of the radicals inhabiting the Biden administration today.

For 26 glorious years, ending after 2014, the Swamp Uniparty ruling establishment enjoyed the very best kind of monopoly over the U.S. political process. From Bush-Dukakis all the way through Obama-Romney, it was able to perpetuate a thoroughly bogus illusion of choice to the American people while assuring that it would hold the reins of power in Washington, D.C. no matter which candidate won.

An attempt is being made to bring back those halcyon elitist days. Those engaged in this crushingly corrosive agenda believe that getting uber globalist Glenn Youngkin elected on the backs of patriotic Trump supporters has aided their cause immeasurably.

Open letter by Dominican theologian Fr. Wojciech Gołaski: “I must bear witness to the treasure of the holy rites of the Church”

The following open letter to Pope Francis was composed by Fr. Wojciech Gołaski O.P. and has been published already in Polish. Below is the English translation that was provided to Rorate Caeli by the author. Regardless of where one stands on the question of the SSPX, it deserves an attentive reading for its formidable critique of “Traditionis Custodes.”   Fr. Wojciech Gołaski O.P.
Jamna, August 17, 2021                                                                        His Holiness Pope Francis                                                                        Domus Sanctae Marthae                                                                        The Holy See                                                                        Vatican City
For the attention of:Rev. General Master of the Order, Gerard Francisco Timoner III OPRev. Provincial of the Polish Province, Paweł Kozacki OPH.E. Bishop of the Tarnów Diocese, Andrzej JeżRev. Superior of the House in Jamna, Andrzej Chlewicki OPBrothers and Sisters in the OrderRev. Superior of the Polish District of the Fraternity of St Pius X, Karl Stehlin FSSPXOmnes quos res tangit
Most Holy Father,
I was born 57 years ago and joined the Dominican Order 35 years ago. I took my perpetual vows 29 years ago and have been a priest now for 28 years. I had only vague recollections from my early childhood of the Holy Mass in its form predating the reforms of 1970. Sixteen years after my ordination, two lay friends (unknown to each other) urged me to learn how to celebrate the Holy Mass in its traditional form. I listened to them.
It was a shock to me. I discovered that the Holy Mass in its classical form:- directs the entire attention of both priest and faithful towards the Mystery,- expresses, with great precision of words and gestures, the faith of the Church in what is happening here and now on the altar,- reinforces, with a power equal to its precision, the faith of the celebrant and of the people,- does not lead either priest or faithful towards any invention or creativity of their own during the liturgy,- places them, quite on the contrary, on a path of silence and contemplation,- offers by the number and nature of its gestures the possibility of incessant acts of piety and love towards God,- unites the priest and faithful, placing them on the same side of the altar and turning them in the same direction: versus Crucem, versus Deum.
I said to myself: so this is what the Holy Mass is! And I, a priest of 16 years, did not know it! It was a powerful eureka, a discovery, after which my idea of the Mass could not remain the same.
From the beginning it had struck me that this rite is the opposite of the stereotype. Instead of formalism, free expression of the soul before God. Instead of frigidity, the fervour of divine cult. Instead of distance, closeness. Instead of strangeness, intimacy. Instead of rigidity, security. Instead of the passivity of the laity, their deep and living connection to the mystery (it was through the laity, after all, that I was led to the traditional Mass). Instead of a chasm between priest and the faithful, a close spiritual union between all those present, protected and expressed by the silence of the Canon. In making this discovery it became clear to me: this very form is our bridge to the generations who lived before us and passed on the faith. My joy in this ecclesial unity which transcends all time was enormous.
From the beginning, I experienced the powerful force of spiritual attraction of the Mass in its traditional form. It was not the signs in themselves which attracted me, but their significance, which the soul knows how to read. The very thought of the next celebration filled me with joy. I sought every opportunity to celebrate with eagerness and longing. Very soon a complete certainty matured within me, that, were I to celebrate Mass (as well as every Sacrament and ceremony) only in its traditional form till the end of my days, I would not miss the post-conciliar form in the least.
Had someone asked me to express with a single word my feelings about the traditional celebration in the context of the reformed rite, I would have replied “relief.” For it was indeed a relief, one of indescribable depth. It was like that of someone who, having walked all his life in shoes with a pebble in them that rubs and irritates his feet, but who has no other experience of walking, is offered, 16 years later, a pair of shoes with no pebble and the words: “Here,” “Put them on,” “try them!” Not only did I rediscover the Holy Mass, but also the astounding difference between the two forms: that which had been in use for centuries and the post-conciliar one. I had not known this difference because I had not known the earlier form. I cannot compare my encounter with the traditional liturgy to a meeting with someone who has adopted me and has become my adoptive parent. It was a meeting with a Mother who has always been my Mother, yet I had not known her.
I was accompanied in all this by the blessing of the Supreme Pontiffs. They had taught that the missal of 1962 “had never been legally abrogated and remained therefore, in principle, always permitted,” adding that “what had been sacred for previous generations remained sacred and great also for us, and could not suddenly become completely forbidden nor even considered harmful.  It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed through the faith and prayer of the Church and to give them their proper place” (Benedict XVI, Letter to the Bishops, 2007). The faithful were also taught: “On account of its venerable and ancient use, the forma extraordinaria is to be maintained with the honour due to it”; it has been described as “a precious treasure to be preserved” (Instruction Universae Ecclesiae, 2011). These words followed earlier documents which made it possible for the faithful to use the traditional liturgy after the reforms of 1970, the first being Quattuor abhinc annos of 1984. The foundation and source for all these documents remains the Bull of Saint Pius V, Quo primum tempore (1570).
Holy Father, if, without forgetting the solemn document of Pope Pius V, we take into consideration the lapse of time covering the declarations of your immediate predecessors we have a duration of 37 years, from 1984 to 2021, during which the Church said to the faithful, concerning the traditional liturgy, and ever more strongly: “There is such a way. You may walk along it.”
I therefore took the path offered to me by the Church.
Whoever takes this road—whoever wants this rite, which is the vessel of divine Presence and divine Oblation, to bear fruit within his own life—should open himself entirely so as to entrust himself and others to God, present and acting within us through the vessel of this holy rite. This I did, with complete confidence.
Then came the 16th of July 2021.
From your documents, Holy Father, I learnt that the path I had been walking on for 12 years had ceased to exist.
We have affirmations of two Popes. His Holiness Benedict XVI had said that the Roman Missal promulgated by Saint Pius V “must be considered the extraordinary expression of the lex orandi of the Catholic Church of the Roman Rite.” Yet His Holiness Pope Francis says that “the liturgical books promulgated by Popes St. Paul VI and St. John Paul II (…) are the only expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite.”  The affirmation of the successor thus denies that of his still-living predecessor.
Can a certain manner of celebrating Mass, confirmed by immemorial, centuries-old Tradition, recognized by every Pope, including yourself, Holy Father, until the 16th of July of 2021, and sanctified by its practice over so many centuries, suddenly cease to be the lex orandi of the Roman Rite? If this were the case, it would mean that such a characteristic is not intrinsic to the rite but is an external attribute, subject to the decisions of those who occupy places of high authority. In reality, the traditional liturgy expresses the lex orandi of the Roman Rite by its every gesture and every sentence and by the whole that they compose. It is guaranteed also to express this lex orandi, as the Church has always held, on account of its uninterrupted use, since time immemorial. We must conclude that the first papal affirmation [of Benedict] has solid foundations and is true and that the second [of Francis] is groundless and is false. But despite its being false, it is nevertheless given power of law. This has consequences about which I will write below.
Concessions regarding the use of the Missal of 1962 now have a different character than earlier ones. It is no longer about responding to the love with which the faithful adhere to the traditional form, but about giving the faithful time—how much time, we are not told—to “return” to the reformed liturgy. The words of the Motu Proprio and your Letter to the Bishops make it entirely clear that the decision has been taken, and is already being implemented, to remove the traditional liturgy from the life of the Church and cast it into the abyss of oblivion: it may not be used in parish churches, new groups must not be formed, Rome must be consulted if new priests are to say it. The bishops are now indeed to be Traditionis Custodes, “custodians of Tradition,” yet not in the sense of guardians who protect it, but rather in the sense of custodians of a jail.
Allow me to express my conviction that this will not happen, and that the operation will fail. What are the grounds for this conviction? A careful analysis of both Letters of July 16th exposes four components: Hegelianism, nominalism, belief in the Pope’s omnipotence, and collective responsibility. Each one is an essential component of your message and none of them can be reconciled with the deposit of the Catholic faith. Since they cannot be reconciled with the faith, they will not be integrated into it either in theory or in practice. Let us examine each of them in turn.
1) Hegelianism. The term is a conventional one: it does not mean literally the system of the German philosopher Hegel, but something that derives from this system, namely the understanding of history as a good, rational, and inevitable process of continuous changes. This way of thinking has a long history, from Heraclitus and Plotinus, to Joachim of Fiore, down to Hegel, Marx, and their modern heirs. The characteristic of this approach is to divide history into phases, such that the beginning of each new phase is joined to the end of the preceding one. Attempts to “baptize” Hegelianism are nothing other than attempts to endow these supposed historical phases with the authority of the Holy Spirit. It is assumed that the Holy Spirit communicates to the next generation something that He has not spoken of to the preceding one, or even that He imparts something that contradicts what He has said before. In the latter case, we must accept one of three things: either in certain phases the Church failed to obey the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Spirit is subject to change, or He carries contradictions within Him.
Another consequence of this world-view is a change in how we understand the Church and Tradition. The Church is no longer seen as a community uniting the faithful by transcending time, as the Catholic faith holds, but as a set of groups belonging to the various phases. These groups no longer have a common language: our ancestors had no access to what the Holy Spirit says to us today. Tradition itself is no longer one message that is continuously studied; it consists rather in receiving again and again new things from the Holy Spirit. We then come to hear instead, as in Your Letter to the Bishops, Holy Father, of “the dynamic of Tradition,” often with an application to specific events. An example of this is when you write that this dynamic’s “last stage is the Second Vatican Council, during which Catholic bishops gathered in order to listen and discern the way shown to the Church by the Holy Spirit.” This line of reasoning implies that a new phase requires new liturgical forms, because the former ones were suited to the previous stage, which is over. Since this sequence of stages is sanctioned by the Holy Spirit, through the Council, those who hold on to the old forms despite having access to new ones oppose the Holy Spirit.
Such views, however, are contrary to the faith. Holy Scripture, the norm of Catholic faith, provides no grounds for such an understanding of history. Rather, it teaches us an altogether different understanding. King Josiah, having learned about the discovery of the old book of the Law, ordered that the celebration of Passover be conducted in accordance with it, despite an interruption of half a century (2 Kgs 22-23). In the same way, Ezra and Nehemiah on their return from the Babylonian captivity celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles with the entire people, strictly according to the ancient records of the Law, despite many decades having passed since the previous celebration (Neh 8). In each case, the old documents of the law were used to renew the divine worship after a period of turmoil. No one demanded a change in the ritual on the ground that new times had arrived.
2) Nominalism. While Hegelianism influences one’s understanding of history, nominalism affects one’s understanding of unity. Nominalism implies that introducing outward unity (by means of a top-down administrative decision) is equivalent to achieving real unity. This is because nominalism abolishes spiritual reality by seeking to grasp and regulate it with material measures. You write, Holy Father, that: “It is to defend the unity of the Body of Christ that I am forced to withdraw the faculty granted by my predecessors.” But to reach this goal, true unity, your predecessors made the opposite decision, and not without reason. When one understands that true unity includes something spiritual and internal, and thus differs from mere external unity, one no longer seeks it simply by uniformity of external signs. We do not obtain true unity in this way, but rather, impoverishment, and the opposite of unity: division.
Unity does not result from the withdrawal of faculties, the revocation of consent, and the imposition of limitations. King Rehoboam of Judah, before deciding how to treat the Israelites, who wished him to improve their lot, consulted two groups of advisors. The older ones recommended leniency and a reduction of the people’s burdens: age, in Holy Scripture, often symbolises maturity. The young, who were contemporaries of the king, recommended increasing their burdens and the use of harsh words: youth, in Scripture, often symbolises immaturity. The king followed the advice of the young. This failed to bring unity between Judah and Israel. On the contrary, it started the division of the country into two kingdoms (1 Kgs 12). Our Lord healed this division through mildness, knowing that the lack of this virtue had caused the split.
Before Pentecost, the apostles assessed unity by external criteria. This approach was corrected by the Saviour Himself, who, in reply to the words of St. John: “Master, we saw a man driving out evil spirits in your name, and we did not let him do it, because he was not one of us,” answered “Let him do so, for he who is not against you is with you” (Lk 9,49-50, cf. Mt 9,38-41). Holy Father, you had many hundreds of thousands of the faithful who “were not against” you. And you have done so much to make things difficult for them! Would it not have been better to follow the words of the Saviour indicating a deeper, spiritual foundation of unity? Hegelianism and nominalism frequently become allies, since the materialistic understanding of history leads to the conviction that each stage must irrevocably end.
3) Belief in the Pope’s omnipotence. When Pope Benedict XVI granted greater freedom to the use of the classic form of liturgy, he referred to a centuries-old custom and usus. These provided a solid basis for his resolve. The decision of Your Holiness is based on no such foundations. On the contrary, it revokes something that has existed and endured for a very long time. You write, Holy Father, that you find support in the decisions of St. Pius V, but he applied criteria which are exactly the opposite of your own. According to him, what had existed and lasted for centuries would continue undisturbed; only what was newer was abrogated. The sole basis left for your decision is therefore the will of one person endowed with papal authority. Can this authority, though, however great it may be, prevent ancient liturgical customs from being an expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Church? Saint Thomas Aquinas asks himself whether God can cause something which once existed, never to have existed. The answer is no, because contradiction is not part of God’s omnipotence (Summa Theologiae, p. I, qu. 25, art. 4). In a similar way, papal authority cannot cause traditional rituals that have expressed the faith of the Church (lex credendi) for centuries, suddenly, one day, no longer to express the law of the prayer of the same Church (lex orandi). The Pope may make decisions, but not ones that violate a unity which extends to the past and to the future, far beyond the duration of his pontificate. The Pope is at the service of a unity greater than his own authority. For it is a God-given unity and not one of human origin. It is therefore unity which takes precedence over authority, and not authority over unity.
4) Collective responsibility. Indicating the motives of your decision, Holy Father, you make various and grave allegations against those who exercise the faculties recognised by Pope Benedict XVI. It is not specified, however, who perpetrates these abuses, or where, or in what number. There are only the words “often” and “many.” We do not even know whether it is a majority. Probably not. Yet not a majority, but all those who make use of the above-mentioned faculties have been affected by a draconian penal sanction. They have been deprived of their spiritual path, either immediately or at some unspecified future time. There are certainly people who misuse knives. Should the production and distribution of knives therefore be banned? Your decision, Holy Father, is far more grievous than would be the hypothetical absurdity of a universal prohibition against making knives.
Holy Father: why are you doing this? Why have you attacked the holy practice of the ancient form of celebrating the Most Holy Sacrifice of Our Lord? The abuses committed in other forms, widespread or universal though they are, lead to nothing beyond words, to declarations expressed in general terms. But how can one teach with authority that “the disappearance of a culture can be just as serious, or even more serious, than the disappearance of a species of plant or animal” (Laudato si 145), and then a few years later, with a single act, destine a great part of the Church’s own spiritual and cultural heritage to extinction? Why do the rules of “deep ecology” formulated by you fail to apply in this case? Why did you not instead ask whether the constantly growing number of the faithful assisting at the traditional liturgy could be a sign from the Holy Spirit? You did not follow the advice of Gamaliel (Acts 5). Instead, you struck them with a ban that had not even a vacatio legis.
The Lord God, the model for earthly rulers and, in the first place, for church authorities, does not use His power in this way. Holy Scripture speaks thus to God: “For thy power is the beginning of justice: and because thou art Lord to all, thou makest thyself gracious to all (…) But thou being master of power, judgest, and with great favour disposest of us: for thy power is at hand when thy wilt” (Wis 12, 16-18). Real power does not need to prove itself by harshness. And harshness is not an attribute of any authority which follows the divine model. Our Saviour Himself left us a precise and reliable teaching on this (Mt 20, 24-28). Not only has the carpet been pulled, so to speak, from beneath the feet of people who were walking towards God; an attempt has been made to deprive them of the very ground they walk on. This attempt will not succeed. Nothing which is in conflict with Catholicism will be accepted in God’s Church.
Holy Father, it is impossible to experience the ground under one’s feet for 12 years and suddenly assert that it is no longer there. It is impossible to conclude that my own Mother, found after many long years, is not my Mother. Papal authority is immense. But even this authority cannot make my Mother cease to be my Mother! A single life cannot bear two mutually exclusive ruptures, one of which opens a treasure, whilst the other claims that this treasure must be abandoned because its value has expired. If I were to accept these contradictions I should no longer be able to have any intellectual life, nor, therefore, any spiritual life either. From two contradictory statements, any affirmation, true or false, may be made to follow. This means the end of rational thinking, the end of any notion of reality, the end of effective communication of anything to anyone. But all these things are basic components of human life in general, and of Dominican life in particular.
I have no doubts about my vocation. I am firmly resolved to continue my life and service within the Order of St Dominic. But to do so I must be able to reason correctly and logically. After the 16th of July 2021 this is no longer possible for me within the existing structures. I see with complete clarity that the treasure of the holy rites of the Church, the ground under the feet of those who practice them, and the mother of their piety, continues to exist. It has become equally clear to me that I must bear witness to it.
I have been left no choice now but to turn to those who from the very beginning of the radical changes (changes, let it be noted, that go far beyond the will of the Second Vatican Council) have defended the Tradition of the Church, together with the Church’s respect for the requirements of reason, and who continue to pass on the unchangeable deposit of Catholic faith to the faithful: the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X. The SSPX has shown a readiness to accept me, whilst fully respecting my Dominican identity. It is providing me not only with a life of service to God and the Church, a service not impeded by contradictions, but also with an opportunity to oppose those contradictions which are an enemy to Truth, and which have attacked the Church so vigorously.
There is a state of controversy between the SSPX and the official structures of the Church. It is an internal dispute within the Church, and it concerns matters of great importance. The documents and the decisions of the 16th of July have caused my position on this subject to converge with that of the SSPX. As in the case of any important dispute, this one too must be resolved. I am determined to devote my efforts towards this end. I intend this letter to be part of this effort. The means used can only be a humble respect for Truth, and gentleness, both springing from a supernatural source. Thus we can hope for the solution of the controversy and the rebuilding of a unity that will embrace not only those living now but also all generations, both past and future.
I thank you for the attention you have granted to my words and beg, Most Holy Father, for your apostolic blessing.
With filial devotion in Christ,
Fr. Wojciech Gołaski, O.P.Labels: “God of Surprises”, Development of Doctrine, Hegel, SSPX, Summorum, Traditionalist Unity, Wojciech GołaskiBy Peter Kwasniewski at 11/10/2021 11:00:00 AM

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Is Ensuring Election Integrity Anti-Democratic?

October 2021 • Volume 50, Number 10 • John R. Lott, Jr.

John R. Lott, Jr.
Founder and President, Crime Prevention Research Center

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John R. Lott, Jr., is founder and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center. He received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from UCLA and has held research or teaching positions at the University of Chicago, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, Yale University, and Rice University. He served in the Trump administration as Senior Advisor for Research and Statistics at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he studied vote fraud. He has written for numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times, and is the author of ten books, including More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws.

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The following is adapted from a talk delivered at Hillsdale College on September 20, 2021, during a Center for Constructive Alternatives conference on “Critical American Elections.”

Sixteen years ago, in 2005, the Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform issued a report that proposed a uniform system of requiring a photo ID in order to vote in U.S. elections. The report also pointed out that widespread absentee voting makes vote fraud more likely. Voter files contain ineligible, duplicate, fictional, and deceased voters, a fact easily exploited using absentee ballots to commit fraud. Citizens who vote absentee are more susceptible to pressure and intimidation. And vote-buying schemes are far easier when citizens vote by mail. 

Who was behind the Carter-Baker Commission? Donald Trump? No. The Commission’s two ranking members were former President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, and former Secretary of State James Baker III, a Republican. Other Democrats on the Commission were former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton. It was a truly bipartisan commission that made what seemed at the time to be common sense proposals.

How things have changed. Some of the Commission’s members, Jimmy Carter among them, came out last year to disavow the Commission’s work. And despite surveys showing that Americans overwhelmingly support measures to ensure election integrity—a recent Rasmussen survey found that 80 percent of Americans support a voter ID requirement—Democratic leaders across the board oppose such measures in the strongest terms. 

Here, for instance, is President Biden speaking recently in Philadelphia, condemning the idea of voter IDs: “There is an unfolding assault taking place in America today—an attempt to suppress and subvert the right to vote in fair and free elections, an assault on democracy, an assault on liberty, an assault on who we are—who we are as Americans. For, make no mistake, bullies and merchants of fear and peddlers of lies are threatening the very foundation of our country.” Sadly but predicably, he went on to suggest that requiring voter IDs would mean returning people to slavery. 

But the fact is that the U.S. is an outlier among the world’s democracies in notrequiring voter ID. Of the 47 countries in Europe today, 46 of them currently require government-issued photo IDs to vote. The odd man out is the United Kingdom, in which Northern Ireland and many localities require voter IDs, but the requirement is not nationwide. The British Parliament, however, is considering a nationwide requirement, so very soon all 47 European countries will likely have adopted this common-sense policy.

When it comes to absentee voting, we Americans, accustomed as we are to very loose rules, are often shocked to learn that 35 of the 47 European countries—including France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden—don’t allow absentee voting for citizens living in country. Another ten European countries—including England, Ireland, Denmark, Portugal, and Spain—allow absentee voting, but require voters to show up in person and present a photo ID to pick up their ballots. It isn’t like in the U.S., where a person can say he’s going to be out of town and have a ballot mailed to him.

England used to have absentee voting rules similar to ours in the U.S. But in 2004, in the city of Birmingham, officials uncovered a massive vote fraud scheme in the city council races. The six winning Labor candidates had fraudulently acquired about 40,000 absentee votes, mainly from Muslim areas of the city. As a result, England ended the practice of mailing out absentee ballots and required voters to pick up their ballots in person with a photo ID. 

Up until 1975, France also had loose absentee voting rules. But when massive vote fraud was discovered on the island of Corsica—where hundreds of thousands of dead people were found to be voting and even larger-scale vote-buying operations were occurring—France banned absentee voting altogether. 

On the topic of buying votes, I should point out that we in the U.S. did not always have secret ballots. It wasn’t until 1880 that the first state adopted the secret ballot, and the last state to adopt it was South Carolina in 1950. Perhaps surprisingly, when secret ballots were adopted, the percentage of people voting fell by about twelve percent. Why was that? Prior to the adoption of the secret ballot, lots of people would get paid for voting. In those days, people voted by placing pieces of colored paper in the ballot box, with different colors representing different parties. Party officials would be present to observe what color paper each voter put into the box, and depending on the color, the voter would often get paid. Secret ballots put an end to this practice. 

France learned in 1975 that the use of absentee ballots led to the same practice—it allowed third parties to know how people voted and pay them for voting a certain way. This same problem is now proliferating in the U.S. in the form of “ballot harvesting,” the increasingly common practice where party functionaries distribute and collect ballots. 

Defenders of our current voting rules point out that in lieu of absentee voting, some European countries allow “proxy voting,” whereby one person can designate another to vote for him. And while it is true that eight of the 47 European countries allow proxy voting—meaning that 39 do not—there are strict requirements. In five of the eight countries—Belgium, England, Monaco, Poland, and Sweden—proxy voting is limited to those with a disability or an illness or who are out of the country. In Poland, it also requires the approval of the local mayor, and in Monaco the approval of the general secretariat. In France and the Netherlands, proxy voting has to be arranged through a notary public. Switzerland is the only country in Europe with a relatively liberal proxy voting policy, requiring only a signature match.

How about our neighbors, Canada and Mexico? Canada requires a photo ID to vote. If a voter shows up at the polls without an ID, he is allowed to vote only if he declares who he is in writing and if there is someone working at the polling station who can personally verify his identity. 

Mexico has had a long history of election fraud. Partly because its leaders were concerned about a drop in foreign investment if it wasn’t perceived to be a legitimate democracy, Mexico recently instituted strict reforms. Voters must present a biometric ID—an ID with not only a photo, but also a thumb print. Voters also have indelible ink applied to their thumbs, preventing them from voting more than once. And absentee voting is prohibited, even for people living outside the country.

Those who oppose election integrity reform here in the U.S. often condemn it as a means of “voter suppression.” But in Mexico, the percent of people voting rose from 59 percent before the reforms to 68 percent after. It turned out that Mexicans were more, not less, likely to vote when they had confidence that their votes mattered.

H.R. 1, the radical bill Democratic Party leaders have been pushing to adopt this year, would prohibit states from requiring voter ID and require states to allow permanent mail-in voting. And mail-in voting, I hardly need to point out, is even worse, in terms of vote fraud, than absentee voting. With absentee voting, a person at least has to request a ballot. With mail-in voting—as we saw in too many places in the 2020 election—ballots are simply mailed out to everyone. With loose absentee voting rules, a country is making itself vulnerable to vote fraud. With mail-in voting, a country is almost begging for vote fraud.

If the rhetoric we hear from the Left today is correct—if voter ID requirements and restrictions on absentee (or even mail-in) voting are un-democratic—then so are the countries of Europe and the rest of the developed world. But this is utter nonsense. 

Those opposing common sense measures to ensure integrity in U.S. elections—measures such as those recommended by the bipartisan Carter-Baker Commission in 2005—are not motivated by a concern for democracy, but by partisan interests. 

Bishop Gracida, Up until this year, South Korea had some of the strongest Pro-Life laws in the world. That’s why I am able to be here and fight for others like me.  I was born with a rare genetic disorder known as Holt-Oram Syndrome, which causes limb differences. A crash course on Korean culture: Disabled children are considered extremely undesirable and shameful in Korea. But because of South Korea’s abortion ban, I was placed for adoption. Given care and love by a Christian foster-mother and brought to Texas by a Christian family, I couldn’t have asked for more.  I was protected in my place of birth, but the innocent in America are sent to the slaughter for profit. The United States is supposed to be the beacon of freedom and liberty for all.  Thanks to folks like you, Texas is leading the way to make that happen once more.   DONATE The passage of the Texas Heartbeat Act is an enormous step in the right direction. But we have a long way to go. Will you continue to fight with us? Proverbs teaches us: “When justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers.” The abortion industry is terrified, and that is leading the industry to commit more evil.  Every aspect of the Pro-Life Movement is under attack right now. We must be on guard and moving forward. Will you consider a gift of $40, $80, $150, or more and help protect the most vulnerable? Thank you for fighting with us. For the least of these,

In Memory of Fr. Regis Scanlon, OFM Capby charliej373Fr. Regis Scanlon with St. Mother Teresa and FriendsMy dear friend, Fr. Regis Scanlon passed on last Saturday. He was one of my earliest friends in Denver. When I first got here, he was the regular Priest for Tuesday morning Mass at the Cabrini Shrine in Golden. He was solidly orthodox, with a lively wit, and a commitment to the sort of projects I love. After Mass, we would have breakfast with others in the cafeteria downstairs – and we just hit it off marvelously. In fact, he introduced me to my dear friend, Desmond Birch, the eschatologist. The three of us often went to lunch together.From the time I first met him, Fr. Regis was focused on what he believed was his last mission on earth, getting the Julia Greeley Home for single, homeless women set up to spark new hope and get these women out of the hands of predators. We spoke often of the project and I offered a small bit of counsel. Over the course of this, we became great friends. I’m not sure exactly how it came to be, but as I became more prominent in Catholic Circles, everyone in the Denver establishment knew that he and I were close. Known as a very solid, no-nonsense type of Priest and man, Fr. Regis told me at one point he was getting asked five or six times a day about me. With a hearty laugh he told me that he told them all the same thing: “I don’t know about his prophecies, but he’s NOT nuts!” Not given to mysticism, it made for some interesting conversations. I have found that more than a few serious intellectual Christians avoid mysticism altogether, but when they feel they are not being recruited into nonsense and can really challenge it without causing hurt feelings, they enter into the subject with relish. So it was with Fr. Regis and me. It turned out he was deeply devoted to and engaged with Our Lady of Fatima – and we spoke often of it in very deep terms. While much of our perspectives differed, it was not an argument, more of an exploration, seeking what was true, testing the boundaries, while staying faithful to the fundamentals of the faith. Three years ago, Father wrote a lengthy piece on it for Homiletic and Pastoral Review. While you can see it has a significantly different perspective than much of my own, Fr. Regis was quite candid in noting that our discussions played a significant role in its development – and I was very pleased to see the perspective developed in a way that did not do violence to the integrity of St. John Paul, Cdl. Ratzinger – the future Pope Benedict, or to Sr. Lucia. One of the great delights of our friendship was being able to explore significantly different perspectives, while staying grounded in the faith and charity, in order to refine our own thought. In a time when too many empty-headed vessels angrily proclaim their own supremacy of knowledge, it is as comforting as a cool breeze on a hot summer day to speak in depth with a genuinely knowledgeable and serious man who has the humility to know he does not grasp the fullness of it all but deeply wants to get it right, rather than just maintain what he says is is right. It is easy to be vulnerable and questioning with a serious man who does the same – and it brings you ever closer to the throne room of God.I was going to just repeat an article I wrote about Fr. Regis’ life six years ago – and I will put that at the end of this. But the Julia Greeley Home did a marvelous obituary and I want to highlight that. Have no fear about the Julia Greeley Home – several years ago Fr. Regis told me he was going to get Mary Callan, who he described as a brilliantly talented woman, to come in and take over as executive director – and that when that was accomplished he could rest assured that the project would fully take. At the time, he had no agreement with her – just the determination that by hook or by crook he was going to get her. Last year he did. Getting to know her, she is everything he said she was – and it delights me that she does some very heavy volunteer work for CORAC. Fr. Regis was one of those wonderful people I could speak deeply with. He challenged some of my assumptions as I did some of his, and we absolutely delighted in discovering new insights into the faith together because of that candidness. He made me a better man because of our honest discourse and deep friendship – and now I have good hope to call upon him as an intercessor from a mighty place (though one of his pet peeves was people automatically canonizing their loved ones who had passed on.) He once warned me that I had better not canonize him after he died before doing my best to help deliver him from purgatory. So I try to do both, praying for the repose of his soul and confidently expecting his intercession in the fullness of God’s time.Here, then, is the lovely obituary from Julia Greeley Home:“Father Regis Scanlon, OFMCap.February 17, 1943 – November 6, 2021   Father Regis Scanlon, OFM Cap., Founder and President of the Julia Greeley Home, passed into eternal life on Saturday, Nov. 6. He entered the hospital on May 1, the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, and although he returned to the friary, his health never fully recovered. But the irrepressible Father Regis, 78, had been down that road before. Last May, he made a video explaining how St Joseph has been helping him prepare for a happy death at least since 2010 when he faced another life threatening illness. In the video, he recalled how a kindly home-hospice nurse called to say she was en-route to the friary to help him make his end-of-life decisions. But Father Regis had other plans. Sorry, he said, but he couldn’t meet her that day: “I’m at IHOP!” Father Regis,jaunty and confidentAs it turned out, the decade to come would bring many more pancake mornings, pizza runs and friendships. In his 49 years as a Capuchin priest, Father Regis was, by turns, a teacher, writer, and youth leader (here he is, late 1980s, with some of his students). He championed the homeless and poor; to an order of nuns, he was spiritual director, and to hundreds of families and lay people, he was their favorite priest.  His crowning achievement was the Julia Greeley Home, which he founded after the earlier brush with death in 2010. Following his recovery, at age 70, convinced that God still had work for him to do, Father Regis threw his energy into founding a haven for women who are alone and homeless. Inspired by a lifelong devotion to the Blessed Mother, Father Regis was appalled that the God-given dignity of any woman was threatened by the cruel conditions of street life. Homeless organizations offered few places for the woman alone. He was haunted by the cry of a woman trying to exist after losing home and family: “But Father, I have nowhere to go!”  Father Regis opened his first home in 2013 and chose as patron Julia Greeley, a former slave who was beloved a century ago as Denver’s “Angel of Charity.” Today, she is still fully present as a candidate for sainthood in the Catholic Church. Father Regis always looked to the future. A few days before he died, a friend, hoping to encourage him, said, “The Julia Greeley Home needs you!” Not missing a beat, Father Regis replied, “It will continue, with me or without me.” In fact, a year before his death, Father Regis coaxed Dr. Mary E. Callan, PhD, to join his mission as executive director. He valued Mary’s experience as a nonprofit executive, but even more that she was a longtime advisor to Julia’s, and has a great love for Julia’s mission. He drew great support for Julia’s from all walks of life He was always looking to the future. Here he welcomed Mary Callan’s arrival on Oct. 15, 2020. “I only knew Father for about a decade, but once I met him, he was always ‘present’ even when he wasn’t with you,” Mary recalled shortly after his death. “Now that he’s passed to the other side of the veil, I can just picture him smiling and clasping his hands together, relishing the joy of beginning his finest work yet: interceding for all of us, and for the Julia Greeley Home!”  Julia Greeley wasn’t Father’s only encounter with a future saint. As a young priest, he met Mother Teresa of Calcutta. In the 1990s she asked him to give a series of spiritual talks to her nuns overseas. While Father Regis was hard to intimidate (he happily claimed the title “bull in a china shop”), he softened his approach with Mother Teresa. A few years ago he wrote about the lunch-time meetings where she outlined her project. But at the end of lunch, Father Regis just wanted to slip away.  “In those days I use to smoke a pipe, but I didn’t want the sisters to know that,” he wrote. “So, at the end of the lunch I told Mother Teresa that I was going outside to stretch my legs. She would nod in agreement. Then, I would go behind the building and puff away. One day it was raining and I said, as usual, ‘I am going out to stretch my legs’ and Mother replied: ‘Father, you can smoke your pipe here today.'” Mother Teresa not only forgave his smoking habit, she enlisted Father Regis as a spiritual director for her Missionaries of Charity. He also worked with Mother Teresa’s sisters in their ministry to AIDS patients in Denver. In addition, Father Regis was the official confessor of the Carmelite nuns in Littleton and the Benedictine nuns in Boulder.In another brush with celebrity, Father Regis developed a teaching series on the Catholic faith for Mother Angelica’s EWTN. For years, people would greet him in restaurants and elsewhere, “I watch you on EWTN!” His buoyant spirit made him a natural on TV. Yet when called upon in 1999, he gave up his TV series and embraced a humbler mission as director of Catholic Prison Ministry for the Archdiocese of Denver. With his signature enthusiasm, he marshaled help from 70 volunteers and more than a half dozen priests and deacons, to serve 850 prisoners every week in 17 prisons and jails in Colorado. He was never happier than when he was bringing Confession and the Eucharist to men and women living within the grim walls of a prison cell.For much of his life as a priest, Father Regis continued his major avocation as a writer. His goal was to use scholarly documentation to advance the truth by addressing all the major controversies facing Catholicism today. His articles have appeared in major publications including Homiletic & Pastoral Review, Crisis magazine, and New Oxford Review. In recent years he dived full-bore into the blogosphere, at http://frregisscanlon.com/.But if anyone tried to categorize Father Regis as “liberal” or “conservative,” they were confounded. The goal, he always insisted, was to teach the faith. His mission field eventually included hundreds of young people who grew up in the spiritual wilderness of the ’60s and ’70s. Making the faith come alive to young people -that energized him. In the process, Father Regis made lifelong friendships, inspired vocations, and launched happy marriages. “You always got the truth from him, and that’s why college-age people liked him,” says longtime family friend Rosina Kovar. In 1990, Rosina invited Father Regis to her home to give talks to confused Catholics on the puzzling messages flowing after Vatican II. “The crowd got so large that by the next year they had to move it to the Auraria (college) campus!” Although associated with conservative thought, Father Regis always insisted, “Don’t be conservative and don’t be liberal, be Catholic,” says Bob Gallegos, one of those young people turned lifelong friend. Bob recalls how Father Regis enjoyed setting audiences straight – while getting laughs – by insisting that, yes, Vatican II represented solid, authentic, Catholic teaching. “Father would say, “if your pastor approaches you wearing a coat and tie, with a girl on each arm, and he tells you, ‘Vatican II says this is OK,’ don’t believe it!”The Auraria Catholics club, as it was known, quickly morphed into a veritable grassroots movement of committed young Christians. What was the pull of Father Regis? “He taught me how to be a Catholic,” is the instant reply of Anne Sanfilippo Yanez. When the group exploded into the hundreds, Anne became Father Regis’s secretary, organizing activities and managing meetings and retreats (shown here, the crowd at a Father Regis-led retreat at Cabrini Shrine in the 1990s). “All the kids used to hang out at the office. Father was teaching classes two nights a week and the room was packed with students and adults.”  In 2015, Richard Milinazzo, a businessman and Julia advisor, shows software materials to Father Regis … … in June 2021, Richard was ordained a deacon, and he credits Father Regis for enkindling his faith Encountering Father Regis: Richard Milinazzo still remembers the dinner invitation of many years ago that he wanted to avoid. “I was getting to know more about my faith, and Bob Gallegos said he was meeting a friend for dinner on Friday and would I like to come? Great! After we set it up, I asked Bob who his friend was, and he said, “Father Regis Scanlon.”A priest! I was intimidated by priests. I didn’t think they were approachable. No way I was going to meet him! But it was too late. On Friday I sat in the restaurant parking lot, terrified…Finally I went in. We met, and the waitress came to take the order. I said, “I’ll have a steak.””What?!” I felt Father staring at me with those bullet eyes. “It’s Friday, and you’re gonna eat steak?””I thought Vatican II did away with that,” I said.”All this is happening within five minutes of meeting him. He starts shaking this pistol finger at me and says, ‘Listen buddy, if you’re gonna hang out with us you can’t eat meat on Friday!'””I’ll have a salad,” I said.Father Matchmaker: Father Regis had an uncanny sense of who belonged with whom, and he’s credited with launching a dozen or more marriages from the Auraria Catholics club. One of those couples was Eric and Kathy Lederhos: “For some time he kept telling me about this wonderful lady named Kathy,” Eric Lederhos recalled recently. “Father gave each of us each other’s phone numbers, but it took over a year for one of us to call the other…” Meanwhile, Kathy had gone on a retreat, and she told Father Regis that, maybe, she was called to be a nun? At that, says Eric, “Father Regis laughed out loud — ‘You’ve got to be kidding me!'” Father knew better. Here is Father Regis with Kathy and Eric on their wedding day, September 17, 1994.From love matches, to marriages, to families – Father Regis ended up with generations of fans. One of them was Michael Lederhos, son of Kathy and Eric. Michael (now grown up), was given the middle name “Regis” in honor of the family’s beloved priest. By age four, the precocious youngster was proudly introducing himself to guests: “Hello, my name is Michael Father Regis Lederhos!”   Happy New Year! Nick Gallegos had been pondering the priesthood, and then he met a young woman named Doris Soileau. On a retreat led by Father Regis, the answer to Nick’s vocation was becoming clear. Soon, his next question was, “Father Regis, when can you marry us?” “Father was always practical, never emotional,” says Doris. “He told us he was probably going to be shipped to Nebraska or Kansas, so we had to decide quick if we wanted him to marry us.” The date (why not?!): New Year’s Eve, 1994. Nick and Doris became two of Father’s closest collaborators, working closely with him in prison ministry, and joining him in many projects to the end. They also knew all Father Regis’s quirks, like his legendary dislike of hugging and all displays of affection. But on one of the last days of his life, Doris outsmarted him. At hospice, as she was saying good-bye, she whispered, “You can’t stop me now,” and planted a kiss on his forehead. Nick and Dorison their wedding day,December 31, 1994 “Father Regis liked this photo because he wanted to showhe was bringing the lambs and sheep back into the fold.”

HomeObituariesMichael Anthony Granata Obituary

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Michael Anthony Granata

Gilroy, California

Feb 21, 1965 – Nov 1, 2021 (Age 56)Plant Memorial TreesOpens send flowers url in a new windowNot the right person? See All ›

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BORNFebruary 21, 1965DIEDNovember 1, 2021AGE56LOCATIONGilroy, California

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Habing Family Funeral Home Obituary

Michael “Mike” Anthony Granata February 21, 1965 – November 1, 2021

Michael, a longtime resident of Gilroy, passed away on November 1, 2021.  Never a kinder more gentle man did I know than my husband, Michael.

For those who knew Mike, you know that he was a good and honest man.  He was kind, considerate, and always polite.

Mike was adamant that people know what happened to him that caused his early and unexpected death.  Message from Mike: “Many nurses and non-nursing staff begged me and my wife to get the truth out to the public about the Covid-19 vaccines because the truth of deaths from the vaccine was being hidden within the medical profession. I promised I would get the message out.  So, here is my message: I was afraid of getting the vaccine for fear that I might die. At the insistence of my doctor, I gave in to pressure to get vaccinated.  On August 17th I received the Moderna vaccine and starting feeling ill three days later. I never recovered but continued to get worse. I developed multisystem inflammation and multisystem failure that medical professionals could not stop. My muscles disappeared as if to disintegrate. I was in ICU for several weeks and stabbed with needles up to 24 times a day for those several weeks, while also receiving 6 or 7 IVs at the same time (continuously). It was constant torture that I cannot describe. I was no longer treated as a human with feelings and a life. I was nothing more than a covid vaccine human guinea pig and the doctors excited to participate in my fascinating progression unto death. If you want to know more, please ask my wife.  I wished I would have never gotten vaccinated. If you are not vaccinated, don’t do it unless you are ready to suffer and die.”

Mike did not deserve the pain and suffering he endured.  He was a good man and deserved better.

Mike was born in San Jose, California and moved to Gilroy at age one, where he resided for the last 55 years. 

Mike attended Las Animas Elementary and Gilroy High schools.  He graduated from both San Jose State University and Santa Clara University earning several scholastic degrees.

Mike was an intelligent man but never flaunted it.  Mike chose to clothe himself in humility, kindness and gentleness every day, and preferred to work quietly behind the scenes doing good deeds and expecting nothing in return.

Michael was a licensed professional engineer and the owner of Engineering By Design, Design Engineering and Professional Engineering and Design. For the last 10+ years Michael worked in the Marine industry utilizing his IP for design and engineering that is known and used worldwide.

Michael could be seen twice daily walking his Golden Retriever around the neighborhood or up at Gavilan College for the last 20+ years in his jeans, t-shirt and hat.

Michael was proud to be a gear-head, a true car restoration enthusiast and tinkerer.  

Mike loved spending time with his wife, his dog, his cars and playing the drums as he was quite a gifted musician.

Michael was preceded in death by his brothers Anthony Edward Granata and Salvatore Anthony Granata.

Michael is survived by his wife, Susie Granata of Gilroy, his parents Anthony and Elizabeth Granata of Morgan Hill; his sister Catherine Flowers (John) of Brentwood, CA; Nieces: Heather Trumbull (Christopher), Mindy Peterson (Ryan), Jeannene Brady, and Alyssa Granata, and great nephews and niece: Anthony and Trevor Peterson, and Karlie and Colin Trumbull.

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Ben M.@USMortalityUS seniors saw +69% increase in all-cause excess mortality over the last 13 weeks (vs 2020). That puts the excess deaths for the 3 months period at a record level of 101 thousand people. Despite about 98%+ of US seniors vaccinated. #Covid#Covid19#Corona#Coronavirus5:48 PM · Nov 11, 2021·Twitter Web App525 Retweets102 Quote Tweets889 LikesTweet your reply
ReplyBen M.@USMortality·Nov 11Replying to @USMortalityCount in natural immunity this group should be 100% protected. But it’s not working… Or people are not actually dying from the virus…1143160Ben M.@USMortality·Nov 11Sources & Calculations: https://mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/vaccine-tracker…https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xAQOZO7oyu6TPtE6SufKAuSDaF_EFzp7WeL9GPx0Zi8/edit#gid=1827290816…docs.google.comUS Excess by week and ageChart

A defense of Bishop Athanasius Schneider’s stance on abortion-tainted vaccines

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What would St. Alphonsous Ligouri say about abortion-tainted vaccines?Coronavirus vaccineShutterstock

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Karen
Darantière

Fri Nov 12, 2021 – 11:44 am EST

November 12, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – A voice in the wilderness cries out: ‘The blood of murdered unborn children cries to God from abortion-tainted vaccinesand medicines.’

In times of trouble, as is the case today, and, worse still, of confusion within the Church, spread far and wide by many of its shepherds, God in his Providence never abandons his children, but rather raises up true shepherds, as precious as they are rare, who remain steadfast in their fidelity to the faith and the morals of Holy Mother Church, and show themselves to be lovingly paternal in their pastoral solicitude. Such is in our own day our beloved Bishop Athanasius Schneider.

We might add that Our Lady never abandons her children, and that Her Maternal Heart plays a role in raising up such bishops. The following anecdote might serve as a sign of this Maternal solicitude: Those who have been blessed to have been able to kiss the episcopal ring of this faithful shepherd have remarked with joy that on his ring is engraved the image of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, so that, according to his heart’s desire, those who would embrace this ring would, in fact, be embracing Our Lady. How beautiful!

Bishop Schneider courageously warns us of the grave evil of the fetal industry and, consequently, of the immorality of using abortion-tainted vaccines.

A defense of Bishop Athanasius Schneider’s stance on abortion-tainted vaccines 

In a recent article published in Calx Mariae, Bishop Schneider was clearly, although not nominally, targeted when the authors, rather hastily given the gravity of the accusation, treat his stance on the morality of abortion-tainted vaccines as being in opposition to the “perennial teaching of the Church,” and even constituting “a new morality, a new church.”Also, during a recent conference, organized by Voice of the Family, His Eminence Willem Jacobus Cardinal Eijk, in prudent terms, defended the moral liceity of recourse to abortion-tainted COVID vaccines, while criticizing the contrary position, as defended principally by Bishop Schneider.

However, prior to expressing this respectful disagreement, I would like to express my gratitude for the many truths affirmed by all of the speakers at this conference, and my agreement with much of the content of the several excellent interventions on a variety of subjects, on the part of some of the finest voices in the Church today. Among others, there was the talk given by Mr. John Smeaton, a pro-life warrior for 50 years and the co-founder of Voice of the Family, in which he condemns, with great force of conviction, the physical murder of the unborn through the crime of abortion, as well as the spiritual murder of innocent children through a perverse sexual education. There was also the excellent talk by Father Serafino Lanzetta, Marian theologian and pastor, who deplores the fact that the Church is this time of crisis missed the opportunity to be a beacon of light and hope – opportunity, I might add, which he himself has not missed, as he tirelessly spreads the true devotion to Our Lady, with great depth and fecundity, through his teaching on the beauty of the mystery of Mary, a great blessing for the faithful in this time of crisis.

And there is notably the conference by his Eminence Cardinal Eijk, in which he explains, in concise terms, the moral principle formulated by Saint Alphonsus of Liguori, concerning the principle, and the conditions, determining the liceity of material cooperation with evil actions.  His presentation of this principle of remote, indirect, material cooperation is clear: the cooperation may never be formal, but only material, that is to say, excluding formal approval of the evil; it must be indirect, that is, absolutely excluding directaccomplishing of an inherently evil action; it should be remote, that is, avoiding proximitywith the evil at hand. However, even such a cooperation with evil must be avoided at all costs, except when certain very strict conditions are met, and, most notably, only when there is a proportionally grave reason which would render this cooperation licit.

In other words, if these strict conditions are not met, then cooperation cannot be justified. In this case, the proper application of this principle would be to say that it cannot be used to justify this cooperation. However, explaining a principle of moral theology is, unfortunately, not the same thing as applying it correctly to any particular case. And, relying upon Bishop Schneider’s stance, while expressing it in my own words, I would like respectfully to express disagreement with the application made of this principle in our case.

Bishop Schneider has been accused of denying the moral principle in itself, whereas he has repeatedly stated that he does not deny this principle itself, but only the manner in which it has been applied in our case of abortion-tainted vaccines. It is therefore unfair to state or imply that he rejects the principle simply because he does not agree on its application to the case at hand. The crux of Bishop Schneider’s argument, as he has laid it out, if I am not mistaken, is the following: The use of abortion-tainted vaccines brings us to a close, not remote, collaboration with the fetal industry and its products, a use which is because of this proximity immoral.

Furthermore, it causes scandal, since by such a use we are de facto supporting that immoral industry. Moreover, that use weakens considerably our necessary public protest not only against abortion itself, but also against the growing fetal industry. Finally, the fetal industry is so exceptionally immoral and horrible that it cannot be considered as the moral equivalent of other common issues concerned with collaboration with or benefitting from evil acts of others, such as products of slave labor. What could compare, indeed, with “the incomparable evil… of an ever daily growing industry of killing unborn children” which, together with the fetal industry, constitute “one of the greatest evils of mankind”?

Bishop Schneider’s position is not a rejection of the traditional moral principle of cooperation with evil as developed by Saint Alphonsus of Liguori, but, on the contrary, it is its proper application. How so? I will make two points, the second being the most essential one.

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First, as the nature of the evil is not properly identified, our proximity to this evil is not correctly ascertained, and secondly, and most importantly, no argumentation is provided to demonstrate that the strict condition of there being a proportionally grave reason to cooperate materially with this evil has been met. Indeed, as, Bishop Schneider constantly reiterates, regarding the grievousness of the sins involved in the abortion and fetal industries: “the proportionality is extremely grave and extraordinary.” I will contend that our health threat does not constitute a proportionally grave reason.

Is the evil limited to one initial abortion performed decades ago?

Firstly, then, the contention that our cooperation with evil, if we accept to be injected with an abortion-tainted vaccine, is remote, is unfounded.

It is not true that the evil with which we would materially cooperate is limited to the initial abortion performed several decades ago, which provided the fetal cell lines utilized in the development or testing of the vaccines. One must also take into account the grave evils which ensued, committed by the fetal industry, through the use of fetal cells in the development and testing of these vaccines. As Bishop Schneider has insisted, these evils, although dependent upon the initial abortion, are distinct from it, are crimes in themselves.

These include: the harvesting and theft of a baby’s body parts for the sake of biomedical research; the desecration of his remains which are disposed of in the most degrading manner; the manipulation of this baby’s body parts to extract the cells useful for research; the utilization of the cell lines in the development and testing of medicines; the marketing of these immorally produced abortion-tainted medicines by the pharmaceutical industries; and so on. These crimes are clearly less remote, in closer in proximity to us than the initial abortion.

In addition, the evil with which we would be cooperating is, in fact, not merely the precise abortion and the precise subsequent crimes which enabled the production of each vaccine, but it is also the abortion industry as a whole and the fetal industry as a whole, both of which are growing by leaps and bounds, since we would, through our cooperation, be supporting and encouraging the growth of these industries, especially the hideous practice of organ harvesting and the creation of new fetal cell lines. We would also, thereby, be weakening our moral resistance to these most heinous of crimes, and finally also causing scandal to all those who believed that the Church was a staunch defender of the sanctity of unborn human life. And this is especially true today, at a time when we are witnesses to the mass murder of innocents, on a scale unprecedented in history, with an estimated 2 billion unborn babies having been massacred worldwide since abortion was legalized half a century ago, and with an estimated 1 in 4 of all unborn children worldwide slaughtered today in the womb! Moreover, those who would justify recourse to such vaccines have not uttered a word of protest against the evil of the fetal industry, and this silence constitutes a grave omission of the duty, which they themselves recognize, to protest against these crimes, as well as, yet again, causing a scandal, as this lack of protest shows a de facto approval of, or at least an indifference to, the fetal industry.

This acquiescence to abortion-tainted vaccines and this lack of protest, at this precise historical moment, constitute a monumental failure on the part of the Church hierarchy to exercise its divinely ordained moral authority.

It must be noted that Cardinal Eijk is simply reiterating the position of the Vatican over the past two decades. However, neither Cardinal Eijk, nor the Vatican declarations, which are not infallible in their application of this principle, takes into account our cooperation with the chain of evils, linked to, but distinct from, the initial abortion, which is the starting point from which has sprung up an entire fetal organ harvesting industry.

Should we not take into account, as we try to apply this principle of material cooperation, the vast amplitude and the profound grievousness of this ever-growing fetal industry? Our awareness on this issue has deepened in recent years, in large part thanks to the very meritorious reporting of LifeSiteNews, and our new awareness should come into play in our assessment of the morality of recourse to abortion-tainted vaccines. Bishop Schneider in his interventions on this topic does just this.

This disregard for the evils of the fetal industry, to which we are rather proximately than remotely connected, is the first reason why this moral principle is improperly applied, but it is not the most significant misjudgment, as we will now see.   

Which way does the balance lean?

The most important thing to consider in this case is the very strict condition which is placed on this material cooperation, namely that there be a proportionally grave reason to cooperate. Indeed, the liceity of this material cooperation is seriously restricted by, and hinges upon this condition, the fulfillment of which would alone permit it. To ascertain whether or not this proportionately serious reason exists, without which this cooperation is illicit, one must weigh, so to speak, on a balance, on the one hand, the urgency of the need, i.e. the gravity of the present threat to public health, against, on the other hand, the incomparable evil of the ever-growing abortion and fetal industries, involving the gruesome mass murder of unborn children, the dismemberment of their bodies, the harvesting of their organs, the processing of their cells in laboratories, and so on in an long chain of iniquity leading to the production of certain vaccines which are the evil fruits of this long series of unspeakably callous and cruel crimes.

The correctness of the stance held by Bishop Schneider, as opposed to that of the Vatican, reiterated by Cardinal Eijk, resides essentially, in my opinion, in this precise point. Cardinal Eijk formulates it thus: “indirect material cooperation with illicit acts may sometimes be justifiable, but then on strict conditions. … The cooperator should have a proportionally grave reason for cooperating in somebody else’s illicit act. To evaluate the gravity of the reason one should take into account … whether it concerns cooperation with a serious or less serious evil act.”

Then, in order to apply this principle, he states the following: “On the one hand, procured abortion is a serious evil, on the other hand the Covid-19 pandemic disrupts social life in the whole world. It is, of course, true that the disaster of the pandemic does not justify abortion in itself, but in some cases it may be possible in the case of indirect material cooperation in it.” The precise explanation we expect is wanting. There is no argumentation, no demonstration, but a mere affirmation. And yet, the current debate obviously hinges upon whether the strict condition is fulfilled or not!

There is no effort to argue or prove that this essential condition has been met. It is simply asserted as if it were a truth so obvious that it requires no proof. However, the missing evidence has perhaps been provided by Mr. Smeaton himself, in his own conference. He affirms with great conviction that abortion is “the greatest moral evil in the history of the world,” that it constitutes “a war on humanity of apocalyptic proportions.” So, now, let us ask ourselves: Just how heavily does the greatest moral evil in the history of humanity, which is a war on humanity of apocalyptic proportions, weigh on one side of the balance? Rather heavily, I suppose. Might it not even break the balance under its crushing weight? And, proportionally speaking (as proportionality is what we are to consider as the “strict condition” to be met) is there actually in our health crisis “a proportionally grave reason”for cooperating with this evil?

What if, in the above quotation from Cardinal Eijk’s talk, we replace the tepid-sounding words: “on the one hand, procured abortion is a serious evil,” with Mr. Smeaton’s own strong words: “On one side of the balance we must place ‘the greatest moral evil in the history of the world’ which constitutes ‘a war on humanity of apocalyptic proportions’”? And he is referring only to abortion, without including the fetal industry! If we were to add this organ-harvesting industry onto the balance, how much more apocalyptic would the proportions become? Would this not tip the balance even more heavily on the side of this overwhelming evil?

Furthermore, let us try to clarify the following inaccurate words: “on the other hand the Covid-19 pandemic disrupts social life in the whole world” by carefully distinguishing the illness and mortality caused by the virus from the disruption of social life caused by governments the world over. We could end up with a statement like the following: “On one side of the balance we must place ‘the greatest moral evil in the history of the world’ which constitutes ‘a war on humanity of apocalyptic proportions,’ on the other side we must place the Covid-19 pandemic, with its overall survival rate of close to or above 99 %.”

This would set aside the governmental decisions as a distinct question, namely: Might these governmental measures not be disproportionate to the actual threat of the virus?

But first, if we truly contemplate the incommensurable gravity of this evil, regarding which Bishop Schneider states that “the proportionality is extremely grave and extraordinary,”how grave a health threat would actually warrant recourse to such abortion-tainted vaccines? Would the gravity of the Black Death of the 14^th century, which killed up to 200 million people, constitute a sufficient counter-weight to the incommensurable evil of the ever-growing abortion and fetal industries? Does our pandemic come near to constituting “a proportionately serious reason” for using abortion-tainted vaccines, thereby cooperating with “the greatest moral evil in the history of the world”?

In addition, it could be asserted that not only is the evil with which we would cooperate immensely greater than the threat to bodily health overall, but one could equally assert that global governmental measures were disproportionate compared with the threat to public health, and that the primacy of the common good over fundamental individual liberties would not warrant, in this case, restrictive measures of such monumental proportions. Was it truly warranted by the common good, given the gravity of the threat to public health, to mandate such long-term isolation of individuals from their parish, school, and other natural communities, by imprisoning them in their homes for long periods of time? Does the gravity of the public health threat warrant the denial to such an extraordinary degree of the most fundamental liberties: to leave one’s home and walk in the street, to earn one’s daily bread and feed one’s family, to breathe without impediment, to face the world with dignity and not masked with faceless fear, to render to God Almighty the worship due to Him through attendance at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass?— Article continues below Petition —PETITION: No to mandatory vaccination for the coronavirus 1074228 have signed the petition.Let’s get to 1100000!Add your signature:  Show Petition Text  Country…USACanadaAaland IslandsAfghanistanAlbaniaAlgeriaAmerican SamoaAndorraAngolaAnguillaAntarcticaAntigua and BarbudaArgentinaArmeniaArubaAustraliaAustriaAzerbaijanBahamasBahrainBangladeshBarbadosBelarusBelgiumBelizeBeninBermudaBhutanBoliviaBosnia and HerzegovinaBotswanaBouvet IslandBrazilBritish Indian Ocean TerritoryBrunei DarussalamBulgariaBurkina FasoBurundiCambodiaCameroonCape VerdeCayman IslandsCentral African RepublicChadChileChinaChristmas IslandCocos (Keeling) IslandsColombiaComorosCongoCook IslandsCosta RicaCote D’IvoireCroatiaCubaCuracaoCyprusCzech RepublicDemocratic Republic of the CongoDenmarkDjiboutiDominicaDominican RepublicEcuadorEgyptEl SalvadorEquatorial GuineaEritreaEstoniaEthiopiaFalkland IslandsFaroe IslandsFijiFinlandFranceFrench GuianaFrench PolynesiaFrench Southern TerritoriesGabonGambiaGeorgiaGermanyGhanaGibraltarGreeceGreenlandGrenadaGuadeloupeGuamGuatemalaGuernseyGuineaGuinea-BissauGuyanaHaitiHeard and McDonald IslandsHondurasHong KongHungaryIcelandIndiaIndonesiaIranIraqIrelandIsle of ManIsraelItalyJamaicaJapanJerseyJordanKazakhstanKenyaKiribatiKuwaitKyrgyzstanLao People’s Democratic RepublicLatviaLebanonLesothoLiberiaLibyaLiechtensteinLithuaniaLuxembourgMacauMacedoniaMadagascarMalawiMalaysiaMaldivesMaliMaltaMarshall IslandsMartiniqueMauritaniaMauritiusMayotteMexicoMicronesiaMoldovaMonacoMongoliaMontenegroMontserratMoroccoMozambiqueMyanmarNamibiaNauruNepalNetherlandsNetherlands AntillesNew CaledoniaNew ZealandNicaraguaNigerNigeriaNiueNorfolk IslandNorth KoreaNorthern Mariana IslandsNorwayOmanPakistanPalauPalestinePanamaPapua New GuineaParaguayPeruPhilippinesPitcairnPolandPortugalPuerto RicoQatarRepublic of KosovoReunionRomaniaRussiaRwandaSaint BarthelemySaint HelenaSaint Kitts and NevisSaint LuciaSaint MartinSaint Pierre and MiquelonSaint Vincent and the GrenadinesSamoaSan MarinoSao Tome and PrincipeSaudi ArabiaSenegalSerbiaSeychellesSierra LeoneSingaporeSint MaartenSlovakiaSloveniaSolomon IslandsSomaliaSouth AfricaSouth Georgia and the South Sandwich IslandsSouth KoreaSouth SudanSpainSri LankaSudanSurinameSvalbard and Jan Mayen IslandsSwazilandSwedenSwitzerlandSyriaTaiwanTajikistanTanzaniaThailandTimor-LesteTogoTokelauTongaTrinidad and TobagoTunisiaTurkeyTurkmenistanTurks and Caicos IslandsTuvaluUgandaUkraineUnited Arab EmiratesUnited KingdomUnited States Minor Outlying IslandsUruguayUzbekistanVanuatuVatican CityVenezuelaVietnamVirgin Islands (British)Virgin Islands (U.S.)Wallis and Futuna IslandsWestern SaharaYemenZambiaZimbabwe Not Collected Keep me updated via email on this petition and related issues.  Sign this Petition

To summarize: the evil with which we would be cooperating, as Bishop Schneider insists, is not only the abortion industry, but also the fetal industry. The crimes involved in this latter industry, which have not been taken into account, are proximate, not remote, as might perhaps be the case with the initial abortion. Finally, the strict condition of a proportionally grave reason is not met in this case because, as Bishop Schneider forcefully reminds us, the sins of the abortion and the fetal industries are of such immense proportions, as to render cooperation with them illicit. In other words, therefore, the strict condition on this theory limiting the liceity of material cooperation has not been met due to the extraordinary gravity of the crimes.

A call for courageous bishops

Mr. Smeaton, in his talk, calls for courageous bishops to confront the evils of abortion and the perversion of the education of the young, the killing of bodies and the maiming of souls, and he quotes Cardinal von Galen who, when the Nazis were triumphant, courageously spoke out against the evils of the Nazi regime: “The dear God … made me the leader and responsible guide of hundreds and thousands… when God’s truth and justice… and the rights of the human being, were … thrown on the ground.”

However, one could respectfully suggest that he need not look so far back in time to find such courage. Bishop Athanasius Schneider raises his voice in our moral wasteland to defend the sanctity of the lives of the unborn: not only does he denounce our massacre of the innocents, but also the callous harvesting of their little organs in our modern feticidal horror tale.

What would Saint Alphonsus of Liguori and Our Blessed Mother say?

Finally, we could ponder over the following questions: What would Saint Alphonsus of Liguori say about the way in which the moral principle he wisely formulated is being applied in the case of abortion-tainted vaccines, fruits of “the greatest moral evil in the history of the world”? Is it really self-evident that this great Marian saint would approve of those who, without satisfactory explanation of how they apply this principle, declare cooperation licit with the unconscionably heinous crime of the present-day mass murder of a quarter of the infants in the wombs of mothers worldwide through the abortion industry? And what would he say about our further descent into the hell on earth we ourselves are creating, through the ever-growing exploitation of their organs through the development of vaccines by the fetal industry?

Let’s, indeed, now invoke this great saint: O Saint Alphonsus, our heavenly friend and paternal intercessor, you who so beautifully sang the Glories of our Blessed Mother during your earthly sojourn, please enlighten us: Is there a proportionally grave reason, in our case of abortion-tainted vaccines, for declaring licit cooperation with these “unspeakable” crimes which are “the uttermost negation of the truth of man,” “the greatest crimes, the greatest persecutions, in human history,” and constitute “a war on humanity of apocalyptic proportions”? Do we not hear Saint Alphonsus, without hesitating for even a second, respond to us: Beloved friends, dear little ones who are painfully plodding along in the dimly lit vale of tears, did you really need so much time to examine this case? Was there really any reason to hesitate about how this principle, which I formulated for difficult cases, applies here? Is the response you seek not self-evident to the simplest of childlike souls? And do we not see Saint Alphonsus in heavenly realm, turning towards his Blessed Mother, to request her wise words? Does she not, in lieu of response, without uttering a single word, simply show to him, to us, Her Immaculate Heart, pierced to the core by our feticidal sins of fathomless depth?TOPICS