Why Biden’s Vaccine Mandate Fails the Constitutional Test

In the name of an ‘emergency,’ the administration is invoking a 50-year-old statute of doubtful relevance to justify a sweeping and unprecedented mandate over the private sector.

By: John Yoo & Robert J. Delahunty

The Hoover Institution

September 23, 2021

(Emphasis added)

President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate represents a bold, unprecedented use of federal power. Despite its being advanced in the name of public health, and during a viral pandemic, it should fail because it undermines the Constitution’s balance between Congress and the president and between the federal and state governments. Congress has not vested the president with the power to govern every aspect of every office and factory in the nation, and even if it had, such a grant of sweeping power would violate the very division of authority between the national and state governments.

In fact, the administration implicitly concedes that it does not have the power to order every American to obtain a vaccine against COVID-19. Instead, it has announced that it will issue an emergency order by way of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). OSHA is to issue a rule that private employers with 100 or more employees require their workers to get vaccinated or get tested on a weekly basis, or else lose their jobs. Apparently, small businesses and individuals remain exempt from the Biden vaccine command — a sign of the constitutional problems to come.

OSHA is to promulgate this regulation as an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS), to go into effect immediately on publication, thus bypassing the ordinary rules of administrative procedure. Those rules would have required an extended period of public notice and comment. Employers who do not comply with the ETS face enforcement actions by OSHA, including fines of up to $13,653 for each “serious” violation. The administration estimates that this action will result in the vaccination of about 80 million private-sector employees.

Biden’s order recalls his recent, ill-fated decision to permit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to extend its moratorium on tenant evictions beyond the deadline authorized by Congress. That move flew in the face of an earlier Supreme Court decision clearly indicating that such an extension would be impermissible without congressional approval. When Congress did not act, the Biden administration determined to treat the Supreme Court precedent as a mere bump in the road and extended the moratorium anyway. The Court swiftly struck down the renewed extension on August 26 in Alabama Association of Realtors v. Department of Health and Human Services.

Although the CDC and OSHA cases are significantly different, both raise the question of the authority delegated to the administrative agencies by Congress. In substance, reviewing courts will ask whether Biden can order a measure of this magnitude and impact without seeking specific congressional approval. And their review will be guided by the Supreme Court’s recent statement in the CDC case that “we expect Congress to speak clearly when authorizing an agency to exercise powers of ‘vast economic and political significance.’”If the eviction-moratorium case is any guide, the Supreme Court will look suspiciously on any Biden effort to rig up an unrelated law into a mandate to regulate public health nationwide — even during a dangerous pandemic.

The Perils of Procedure

If the Supreme Court reviews OSHA’s regulation, as we expect, it may well base its decision on seemingly arcane procedural considerations. In several important recent decisions during both the Trump and Biden presidencies, the Court has rebuffed important executive initiatives — Trump’s attempt to rescind the Obama-era “deferred enforced departure” policy and Biden’s attempted reversal of Trump’s “remain in Mexico” policy — on the grounds that those actions did not follow the right procedures for issuing or reversing administrative rules. It could do so again here.

OSHA has been charged with promulgating the ETS through a “fast track” procedure provided under the OSH Act. The agency has used this procedure only sparingly in the past, and on those occasions its efforts have not stood up well in court. Before COVID, OSHA had issued only nine Emergency Temporary Standards, of which six were challenged. Of these six, the courts overturned four and partially vacated a fifth. In a successful 1984 challenge to an asbestos ETS, a reviewing court found that OSHA was not justified in taking “resort to the most dramatic weapon in [its] enforcement arsenal.”

Normal procedure under both the foundational Administrative Procedure Act and the OSH Act calls for the agency to give public notice of a proposed rule and to provide for a period of public comment on the proposal. Because Congress typically delegates much of its lawmaking power to the agencies, this policy seeks to force the agencies to emulate the deliberative process by which Congress enacts legislation. Notice-and-comment procedures are designed to improve the quality of agency rules by subjecting them to the scrutiny of those who will be regulated, and to contribute to the rules’ legitimacy by ensuring that interested constituencies will have had ample opportunity to influence the outcome.

But of course, emergencies that call for rapid responses arise, and they may justify allowing an agency to act immediately without first going through full notice-and-comment procedures. Even so, the suspension of the normal rulemaking process is only temporary. An ETS has only a six-month life span, and OSHA is required to begin the full rulemaking process for a permanent standard as soon as it promulgates the temporary one. Experience has shown that OSHA rulemaking is an extremely protracted process that can take several years to complete — by which time the emergency has probably passed. Hence the OSH Act permits recourse to a fast-track procedure.

The Grave Danger Test

The law allows OSHA to use this emergency process only under two conditions: The employees must be “exposed to grave danger,” and the emergency standard must be“necessary to protect employees from such danger.”

On the “grave danger” prong, OSHA can offer two main defenses: that it is obvious that a pandemic that has killed over 670,000 Americans is a grave danger, and that in any case the question whether a “grave danger” exists is for the executive agencies to determine.

Both claims are dubious. The pandemic has been here for a year and a half, and it is increasingly difficult to describe it as an emergency. To be sure, the highly contagious Delta variant has disappointed earlier expectations that the COVID threat was passing, and that life was fully returning to normal. But widespread vaccination — two-thirds of the population aged 18 or above, and over four-fifths of the population aged 65 or above, have been fully vaccinated — natural immunity, and improved availability of treatments are having a marked effect.

OSHA’s second defense — that it is not for the judiciary to determine whether a “grave danger” exists — is indeed consonant with earlier legal doctrine. Chief Justice John Roberts took such a view early in the outbreak in his concurring opinion in the 2020 South Bay United Pentecostal Church case. But it is unconvincing in current circumstances. If the courts blindly defer to the agency’s judgment, they would be giving it virtually unbounded power whenever it decides that a public-health emergency exists. If OSHA had decided that the AIDS epidemic constituted a “grave danger” in the workplace, could it have ordered employers to require workers to take weekly tests that identified those who were HIV-positive? Could OSHA have done so free from judicial review? We think the answer to both questions is clearly no.

Courts should be alert to the possibility of abuse when an agency invokes a 50-year-old statute of doubtful relevance in order to justify a sweeping and unprecedented mandate over the private sector in the name of an emergency that began 18 months ago. Nor is judicial deference due to OSHA because it has special expertise as to COVID. Unlike industrial accidents or toxic substances found in the workplace, OSHA has no special competence to regulate a virus that can be caught anywhere.

Finally, courts will note that the Biden administration’s appeal to an emergency in the workplace is pretextual. Biden’s White House chief of staff Ronald Klain retweeted a tweet by an MSNBC anchor that “OSHA doing this vaxx mandate as an emergency workplace safety rule is the ultimate work-around for the Federal govt to require vaccinations.” We doubt that the courts will readily lend themselves to this cynical “work-around.”

The Necessity Test

But even if the ETS survives the “grave danger” test, it would also have to pass the “necessity” test. And this too is highly problematic. Widespread vaccination together with naturally acquired immunity may already be accomplishing what the ETS is purportedly designed to do — protect more people from getting COVID. And younger workers who are in good health have a low risk of hospitalization or death from COVID. Is the ETS truly “necessary” to protect them? Likewise, is mandatory vaccination (or weekly testing) “necessary” to protect those in the workplace who have already been infected and recovered? Biden himself noted that “only one out of every 160,000 fully vaccinated Americans was hospitalized for COVID per day.”

Furthermore, though the proposed ETS may be suited, say, to those working at close quarters and in confined spaces, it is hard to see how mandatory vaccination can be “necessary” to protect the many employees now working regularly from home. It is also implausible to claim that vaccination is “necessary” to protect employees who have acquired natural immunity through having been previously infected with the virus, or those who, for medical reasons, are likely to be injured by being vaccinated. Finally, measures other than vaccination, such as better ventilation or more effective masks, may achieve similar levels of workplace protection while being less intrusive.

Constitutional Limits to Federal Authority over Public Health

Even if the vaccine mandate fell within the OSH Act, the Biden administration’s use of the law would still violate fundamental constitutional principles. The Constitution’s grant of limited, enumerated powers to the national government does not include the right to regulate either public health or all human activity in the land. Under Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution, Congress enjoys the authority to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States.” It also has the power to tax and spend for the general welfare.

Properly read, the commerce clause gives the federal government a supporting role in confronting the pandemic. It can bar those who might be infected from entering the United States or traveling across interstate borders, reduce air and road traffic, and even isolate whole states. Congress can control commerce that crosses state lines and even the “channels and instrumentalities” of interstate commerce, such as transportation and communication networks. But the commerce clause cannot turn into a general police power to regulate everything and everyone in the country.

Our federal system reserves the leading role over public health to the states — as it does for most areas of life, such as crime and justice, public safety, family relations, property, contracts, and accidents. States possess the “police power” to regulate virtually all activity within their borders. As the Supreme Court has recognized, safeguarding public health and safety presents the most compelling use of state power. Only the states can impose quarantines, close businesses and schools, and limit intrastate travel. Just as some governors imposed lockdowns, only governors can impose vaccination mandates on state residents. The Supreme Court’s recent decision not to strike down Indiana University’s vaccine mandate for returning students is thus of no help to Biden’s OSHA: Indiana University is a state, not a federal, actor.

Biden’s defenders will claim that the Supreme Court has allowed Congress to regulate purely intrastate activity that, when aggregated, affects the national markets. In Gonzales v. Reich (2005), a 6–3 majority of the Supreme Court used such a theory to justify the federal criminal ban on the possession of marijuana, even if it was neither bought nor sold but grown and given as a gift (as occurred in that case in the city of Berkeley, naturally). Even though the individual gift did not involve interstate commerce, the Court reasoned, aggregating all sale and gifts of small amounts of marijuana taken together would affect interstate markets. Under this reading of the commerce clause, Congress could reach every business and force the vaccination of all workers; in fact, it could force the vaccination of all Americans.

The Power to Regulate Commerce

That limitless theory of federal power has proven anathema to the conservative justices of the Supreme Court. Even in NFIB v. Sebelius (2012), the Roberts Court held that the Affordable Care Act could not require every American to buy health insurance. “The power to regulate commerce presupposes the existence of commercial activity to be regulated,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote for a majority of five conservative justices. “If the power to ‘regulate’ something included the power to create it, many of the provisions in the Constitution would be superfluous.”

Justice Clarence Thomas has called for the end of the commerce clause’s reach to purely intrastate activity. As he wrote in concurring in United States v. Lopez (1995), which struck down the Gun-Free School Zones law:

This test, if taken to its logical extreme, would give Congress a “police power” over all aspects of American life. Unfortunately, we have never come to grips with this implication of our substantial effects formula. Although we have supposedly applied the substantial effects test for the past 60 years, we always have rejected readings of the Commerce Clause and the scope of federal power that would permit Congress to exercise a police power; our cases are quite clear that there are real limits to federal power.

It is not difficult to see Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Barrett, and Kavanaugh agreeing. Chief Justice Roberts ultimately upheld Obamacare, but even he agreed that the commerce clause had limits.

Even if Biden could find some source of authority granted by Congress to regulate all businesses, he could not enforce any command. In another set of federalism cases, decided by the Rehnquist Court, a conservative majority forbade Congress from “commandeering” state officials into enforcing federal commands. If the federal government were to demand that virtually all businesses force their workers to be vaccinated, it could only call upon federal officials to execute it. Will OSHA inspectors suddenly and systematically spy on every medium and large business, determine if tens of millions of workers have received vaccinations, and levy millions in fines and overload the federal courts with millions of cases? Washington simply does not have enough resources to manage such a vast task; the FBI, the closest we have to a national police force, has fewer agents than the NYPD has sworn officers.

Commanding or Persuading?

Article I of the Constitution provides that Congress has the power to tax and spend to “provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.” The federal government can encourage vaccination by using that power rather than compulsion and sanction. It has often used the offer of federal grants to convince — or perhaps bribe — states to bring their education, healthcare, and welfare policies into national uniformity. The spending power already has provided the nation’s most effective weapon in fighting the pandemic: federal funds paid for the development of the vaccines and their distribution throughout the country. Washington has paid for medical equipment and supplies, supported the budgets of state and local governments, and propped up the economy. It could decide to pay people to get vaccinated. The Biden administration could reward states that mandate vaccines or create programs to expand their availability.

President Biden should rely more on persuasion — including financial incentives — and less on command. If he wants to overcome the contrary views of 80 million Americans as to how best to protect their health, requiring their employers to fire them if they refuse the shot is no way to go about it.

John Yoo is the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. 

Robert J. Delahunty is the Washington Fellow at the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life.

Are Women Still Human?

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Published on September 19, 2021

Public Discourse

By CARL R. TRUEMAN & ALEXANDRA DESANCTIS

Are women human?

That was the question Dorothy L. Sayers posed in the title of a famous and witty essay. Her answer was a resounding yes, because women and men share a common humanity. Today, such a simple answer would not pass muster, for the question of what it means to be human is itself contested.

When discussing abortion, our debate over what it means to be human or to be a person tends to focus on the baby in the womb. Is the embryo a human being? Is there a meaningful distinction between a human being and a person? Parsing such questions is critical to determining abortion’s morality. This makes intuitive sense, because the answer to these questions determines whether abortion is merely a medical procedure or a form of homicide.

Yet our fundamental disagreements over abortion involve additional questions. How does a society that regards abortion as legitimate understand the humanity of the woman involved? Indeed, how does it understand humanity in general? These questions are pertinent to the moral discussion because the issue of abortion cannot be reduced to the narrow question of the status of the child in the womb. The answers rest upon broader assumptions about the purpose, the telos, of human existence in general.

If we are to believe those who defend a right to abortion, it is nothing less than the power to end the life of her unborn child that guarantees a woman her humanity—that is, the autonomy befitting her status as man’s equal.

Is Consequence-Free Sex the Path to Human Fulfillment?

The morality of a society is part of a shared way of imagining the world, held in common by members of said society. For abortion to be plausible, let alone acceptable, a society must hold certain ideas intuitively. One is the idea that a woman must have control, specifically sexual and reproductive control, over her own body. Most legal-abortion proponents defend their position in the language of women’s rights, arguing that, without legal abortion, women would be unable to control their bodies. This argument indicates a deeper, often unstated assumption: that sexual activity is the normative way in which human beings find fulfillment.

In our society, we are catechized in this principle from childhood. The fact that explicit sex education, detached from any larger moral framework, is promoted even in elementary schools is one obvious example, though far from the most influential. Movies, internet pornography, reality TV, even commercials present a vision of being truly human in which the satisfaction of sexual desire is seen as a quintessential element of what it means to flourish.

This is reinforced by society’s commitment to the notion that sexual desire is foundational to individual identity. This is not only an explicit principle of the LGBTQ+ movement but also an increasingly common cultural intuition. In such a world as ours has become, the failure to find sexual fulfillment or gratification is considered a failure to be fully authentic and therefore fully human. We need look no further than the way popular culture derides virginity and celibacy for proof of that reality.

Given this, our debate over abortion—and the related rhetoric of women controlling their own bodies and sexuality—requires broader context than our narrow disagreements over how to define personhood as applied to the baby in the womb. Instead, both the medical procedure itself and the rhetoric surrounding it reinforce a notion of what it means to be human that places sex—cost-free, liberated from commitment, and devoid of relational content—at its heart.

The Quest for “Reproductive Control”

Defending legal abortion as a necessary means by which women can control their reproductive decisions requires assuming that unlimited, consequence-free sex is a prerequisite for human freedom and flourishing. Both contraception and abortion are necessary, in this view, because they enable women either to avoid or to destroy the natural consequences of sexual activity; controlling one’s reproduction by avoiding the act that leads to conception isn’t so much as considered. What is billed as “reproductive control” is in fact merely the ability to pursue sexual gratification and dispose of the consequences.

This view emerged among leading thinkers of the second-wave feminist movement, who advocated contraception and abortion as essential means of liberating women from men, from the family, and from their own bodies. These thinkers regarded women as inherently disadvantaged by their ability to bear children, and they sought to free women from, as feminist writer Shulamith Firestone put it, the “tyranny of reproductive biology.” Their insistence on birth control and abortion indicated this deeper premise: that in order to be free and fulfilled, women must be able to participate in sex at will and walk away from its natural consequences. Because men are able to enjoy sex while avoiding its natural ends, women must be enabled to do the same, with the aid of technology that prevents or erases any child that might result.

This thinking persists among today’s advocates of legal abortion, who defend abortion as essential for female autonomy and deride laws protecting the unborn child as unacceptable limitations on a woman’s right to, in their language, “make decisions about her own body.” They describe pro-life laws as restrictions on a woman’s ability to decide whether to become pregnant or to control her reproductive future—despite the fact that, with or without legal abortion, most women in the United States remain perfectly free to decide whether and when to become pregnant. But in a society that assumes consequence-free sex is an essential part of human flourishing and identity, the notion that a woman might control her reproduction by declining the act that leads to pregnancy never bears mentioning. According to pro-abortion feminism, therefore, it is the right to individual irresponsibility that really makes a woman a woman. And that is a denial of what really makes us human: our natural dependence upon, and obligations towards, one another.

To return to Sayers’s question: Are women human? Not according to the logic of today’s pro-abortion feminists, it seems.

Carl R. Trueman is a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Alexandra DeSanctis is a Visiting Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

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Civilization Requires Deterrence

Deterrence is now dangerously lost. And it will be even scarier trying to recover what was so rashly and foolishly thrown away.

By: Victor Davis Hanson

The Patriot Post

September 23, 2021

Deterrence is the ancient ability to scare somebody off from hurting you, your friends, or your interests — without a major war.

Desire peace? Then be prepared for war. Or so the Romans believed.

It’s an easily understood concept in the abstract. But deterrence remains a mystical quality in the concrete since it is only acquired with difficulty and yet easily forfeited.

The tired democracies of the 1930s learned that lesson when they kept acquiescing to Hitler’s serial aggressions.

Hitler’s Germany foolishly later attacked a far stronger Soviet Union in 1941, given Moscow’s lost deterrence after its lackluster performances in Poland and Finland, its pact with the Nazis, and its recent purges of its own officer corps.

Deterrence is omnipresent and applies well beyond matters of war and peace. The current crime wave of murder and violent assault in our major cities is the wage of loud efforts to defund the police and contextualize crimes as somehow society’s rather than the criminal’s fault.

As a result, lawbreakers now believe there is a good chance that robbing people or hurting or killing them might result in monetary gain or at least bloody satisfaction. They no longer fear a likely sentence of 30 years in prison. So, they see little risk in hurting people. And innocents suffer.

With a border wall, an end to catch and release, and tough jawboning of the Mexican and Central American governments, a new American deterrent stance in 2019-20 discouraged once unstoppable waves of migrants.

Northern bound migrants knew that even if they reached and crossed the border, there was a good chance all such effort would be for naught, given quick apprehension and deportation.

So, in their rational calculations, migrants waited at home for less deterrent times. And they found them when Joe Biden stopped construction on the wall, renewed catch and release, and eased pressures on Mexico to interrupt caravans headed northward.

Abroad, Donald Trump restored the strategic deterrence lost by his predecessor.

Barack Obama had dismissed the murderous ISIS as “JVs” — and they thrived. He shrugged when China stole territory in the South China sea to build military bases. He dismantled missile defense in Europe to coax Vladimir Putin to behave during his own 2012 reelection campaign.

Obama loudly announced redlines in Syria while never intending to enforce them. He gave the Taliban back their incarcerated terrorist leaders in exchange for the return of the American deserter Bowe Bergdahl. And he sent the Iranians nocturnal cash to coax them to conclude an appeasing Iran deal. Aggression followed as U.S. deterrence eroded.

As an antidote to all that, Trump destroyed the ISIS “caliphate.” He obliterated an attack of Russian mercenaries in Syria. He took out terrorist masterminds like Iranian General Qasem Soleimani and the ISIS cutthroat Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

To dangerous actors, an unpredictable Trump appeared likely to strike back if provoked. As a result, America’s enemies become fearful of challenging the United States. And its friends and neutrals were more ready to join a power again deemed not just reliable, but willing to take reasonable risks to assist in their safety.

Key to deterrence is for all parties to know beforehand the relative power of each and the likelihood that it may be used. When strong powers unfortunately transmit signals of weakness, whether deliberately or inadvertently, then weak powers are confused and come to believe their rivals may not be so strong as their armed forces appear. Often, unnecessary wars are the unfortunate result.

These are quite dangerous times because Joe Biden has cut the defense budget. He withdrew recklessly from Afghanistan, leaving behind American citizens, our Afghan allies and friends, and tens of billions of dollars worth of modern weaponry and equipment.

He angered our NATO partners who were abandoned with some 8,000 troops, in a country that the United States had once implored them to enter. He has politicized the military into a caricature of an elite woke top brass at odds with traditionalist enlisted soldiers.

The result is that our enemies — Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the Chinese Communist apparat, the Iranian theocrats, the lunatic North Koreans — are now pondering whether Biden’s reckless laxity is an aberration. Or is it now characteristic of his administration? Or does it even signal a new weaker and confused America that offers enemies strategic openings?

Like the would-be felon, or the potential border crosser, our enemies know the United States has the power to deter unwanted behavior, given its vast military, huge economy, and global culture.

But they may have contempt that with such strength comes such perceived confusion. And thus, in the manner of an emboldened criminal, or migrant, they try something that they would otherwise not.

In sum, deterrence at home and abroad is now dangerously lost. And it will be even scarier trying to recover what was so rashly and foolishly thrown away.

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By ED WHELAN

September 23, 2021 5:12 PM

The abortion providers challenging the Texas Heartbeat Act currently have their case pending in the Fifth Circuit, with oral argument on jurisdictional issues scheduled (I’m told) for the week of December 8. But they have just filed in the Supreme Court an extraordinary petition for a writ of certiorari before judgment, asking the Court to jump past both the district court and the Fifth Circuit to decide the question “whether a State can insulate from federal-court review a law that prohibits the exercise of a constitutional right by delegating to the general public the authority to enforce that prohibition through civil actions.”

A couple of initial comments:

1. The abortion providers contend that “[o]nly [the Supreme] Court’s immediate intervention will ensure that Texans’ federal constitutional rights are protected.” But the Department of Justice, with much fanfare, has filed its own lawsuit against Texas over the Texas Heartbeat Act. The federal district judge in the DOJ case has scheduled a hearing on DOJ’s motion for a preliminary injunction for next Friday, October 1.

If my quick review is correct, the abortion providers make no mention of that lawsuit, other than to draw on various of the declarations that DOJ filed.

Do the abortion providers believe that DOJ’s lawsuit will surely fail? If so, why? If not, doesn’t that cut strongly against the extraordinary intervention that they seek from the Court?

2. When the Supreme Court denied the abortion providers’ previous application for emergency relief, the per curiam majority observed that their application “presents complex and novel antecedent procedural questions on which they have not carried their burden.” Nothing has changed on that score. So why should the Court grant certiorari? Why not benefit from the Fifth Circuit’s consideration of those antecedent questions?

Abortion Providers File Extraordinary Petition for Certiorari Before Judgment

By ED WHELAN

September 23, 2021 5:12 PM

The abortion providers challenging the Texas Heartbeat Act currently have their case pending in the Fifth Circuit, with oral argument on jurisdictional issues scheduled (I’m told) for the week of December 8. But they have just filed in the Supreme Court an extraordinary petition for a writ of certiorari before judgment, asking the Court to jump past both the district court and the Fifth Circuit to decide the question “whether a State can insulate from federal-court review a law that prohibits the exercise of a constitutional right by delegating to the general public the authority to enforce that prohibition through civil actions.”

A couple of initial comments:

1. The abortion providers contend that “[o]nly [the Supreme] Court’s immediate intervention will ensure that Texans’ federal constitutional rights are protected.” But the Department of Justice, with much fanfare, has filed its own lawsuit against Texas over the Texas Heartbeat Act. The federal district judge in the DOJ case has scheduled a hearing on DOJ’s motion for a preliminary injunction for next Friday, October 1.

If my quick review is correct, the abortion providers make no mention of that lawsuit, other than to draw on various of the declarations that DOJ filed.

Do the abortion providers believe that DOJ’s lawsuit will surely fail? If so, why? If not, doesn’t that cut strongly against the extraordinary intervention that they seek from the Court?

2. When the Supreme Court denied the abortion providers’ previous application for emergency relief, the per curiam majority observed that their application “presents complex and novel antecedent procedural questions on which they have not carried their burden.” Nothing has changed on that score. So why should the Court grant certiorari? Why not benefit from the Fifth Circuit’s consideration of those antecedent questions?

OnePeterFive

Rebuilding Catholic Culture. Restoring Catholic Tradition.

• TRADITIONIS CUSTODES

The Bishop Cancelled the Memorial Requiem for my Mother

 Victor Fuentes

September 21, 2021

To the average Penn State student, the fourth of September of 2018 was a day like any other. A Tuesday early in the semester, the weather in State College, Pennsylvania was perfect, and the buzz of a promising football season (coupled with a narrow victory the week before) permeated campus. It was around 2 o’clock in the afternoon when I received a call I had been dreading but, unfortunately, expecting.

My mother had died.

For the past four years, my mother, Cheryl, had battled stage IV metastatic breast cancer. Over the course of her illness, the disease had spread throughout her body, rendering her progressively weaker as time wore on. Always peaceful, those who did not know she was sick would later remark that they had no idea of the extent of her illness. So willing was her embrace of the Cross she was given that the priest who administered Viaticum to her remarked on his way out of the house that he “had never seen a soul so at peace.”

The day I received the phone call, something within me changed. That day, I attended daily Mass on-campus for the first time, beginning a faith journey that has brought me to the farthest corners of the state of Pennsylvania in search of that precious pearl of our forefathers, the Mass of Antiquity. My time in college has been eventful, to say the least; the foundation of the Penn State Latin Mass Society—previously featured on this site—perhaps the defining moment not only for myself, but for the other Catholic students in the Class of 2022 as well. Through these experiences, both in the Newman Club and the Latin Mass Society, I have come to realize the powerful majesty of the ancient liturgy and its ability to captivate those individuals who had, in their earlier experience with the Catholic faith, come to reject the religion outright because of their lackluster experiences with liturgy—a fate that may have befallen me had my mother’s death not brought me back into the fold. I have witnessed the powerful evangelical ability of the unchanging Roman Rite to draw in those souls yearning for their birthright, authentic Catholic liturgy.

It is a sad reality that such a significant number of the hierarchy do not realize the power of the Tridentine Mass. Unfortunately, such is the case in the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, where Penn State is located. Previously, Penn State students had access to the Latin Mass at a parish roughly 35 minutes from campus on Saturday mornings and select Holy Days. With the publishing of the facetiously-named Traditionis Custodes, the Bishop of Altoona-Johnstown, Rev. Mark Bartchak, abruptly cancelled this Mass with no reason given. With this was also cancelled the Requiem Mass, long-scheduled for my mother on Saturday the 4th of September, the third anniversary of her death.

There is, in my opinion, no liturgy offered by the Roman Church more profoundly beautiful than the Missa pro Defunctis, the Requiem Mass for the Dead. Rich with symbolism, the prayers of the Requiem are wholly ordered to that most pious custom of Christian charity—praying for the souls of the faithful departed. The entirety of the Mass, so ordered to beg almighty God to have mercy upon the soul deceased, rightly offers us the reminder that we too will one day enter into eternal judgement. The Introit of the Mass is perhaps the most beautiful piece of music the Church has ever given us; in this text, we the living, with the words of eternity, beg pardon at the hands of the most just of Judges. It is, therefore, altogether fitting and proper that those faithful who have died be prayed for with this most potent and beautiful of prayers.

With the news that my mother’s Requiem Mass was to be cancelled, I decided to call the Bishop’s office in Altoona to ask that special permission be given that this Mass be celebrated. To most, it would seem as if the simple request of a grieving son that a Mass be said for his mother would be granted enthusiastically, so I anticipated a short endeavor in which I explained the situation to the Bishop and he granted permission. Unfortunately, what I have since experienced highlights the dire situation of the traditional Catholic in the time of Traditionis Custodes.

When I first called the Bishop’s office on Thursday, August 20th, I left a message with his secretary, who told me she would notify the Bishop of the situation. I then waited until the following Tuesday (the 24th), hearing nothing from the Chancery. When I called again, I left a voicemail, again reiterating the simple request of a son who still mourns the loss of his mother. After yet again receiving no reply, I called on Thursday the 26th and left a voicemail, which again went unreturned. Once more, I called the following day, Friday the 27th of August, this time hearing from the Bishop’s secretary that the Mass was not to happen, and the priest who was to originally celebrate the Mass was to “contact me to find a solution.” With this, I received the news that my mother’s Mass had been cancelled, seemingly in accordance with the recent directives from Rome. Never once has the Bishop contacted me to express this most disappointing fact or to explain his reason for doing so.

Unfortunately, the treatment I have received is not unique in this diocese. Countless other faithful Catholics who attend the only regularly-scheduled Sunday Latin Mass in the diocese have received similar treatment, and the restrictions placed on the Mass of Antiquity are, I believe, some of the most draconian in the United States. While no formal decree has been  issued by the Bishop, these restrictions have been corroborated by public pronouncements from the parish pulpit and the shared experiences of the faithful. In the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, no sacraments, other than the celebration of the Mass, are to be celebrated using the Old Rite. This includes weddings and baptisms, but also funeral Masses—were I to die in this diocese, I would likely not be allowed to have my own Requiem Mass. Parents-to-be have been told that, if they want their unborn children baptized in the rite used  by their ancestors, they must go to the neighboring Diocese of Harrisburg or Pittsburgh to do so. Further, banned is the participation of other clerics in the celebration of the Usus Antiquior—permission must be given for any priest, deacon, or seminarian other than the prescribed celebrant to serve as deacon, subdeacon, or to even sit in choir. Holy Day Masses are also cancelled, forcing the faithful to seek shelter yet again in a neighboring diocese should they wish to attend the Old Mass on days of obligation. Together, these restrictions represent a crushing blow to the faithful of Altoona-Johnstown who so ardently wish to worship in the manner of their forefathers.

In conclusion, while my mother may not receive her scheduled Requiem Mass, I trust in the charity of the readers of this site to offer many prayers for the repose of her soul. I ask that those who may read this pray especially for Bishop Bartchak, the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, and Catholic Campus Ministry at Penn State. Though she may not receive chanted for her the beautiful words of the Requiem, I may only hope that the vision alluded to by the In Paradisum, sung as the body of the deceased is taken from the church to the cemetery, may ring true for my mother.

May the angels lead thee into Paradise; at thy coming may the martyrs receive thee, and bring thee into the holy city, Jerusalem. May the choir of angels receive thee, and with Lazarus, once a beggar, mayest thou have eternal rest.

Victor Fuentes

Victor Fuentes is a senior in Penn State’s Schreyer Honors College majoring in political science and philosophy. He is the president of the Penn State Latin Mass Society and a parishioner of St. Rita parish in Alexandria, Virginia.

Pelosi’s “View” On Abortion September 24, 2021 Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on Nancy Pelosi’s latest defense of abortion: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who identifies as a Catholic, was asked at her weekly press briefing to reply to comments made by San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone that were critical of the Women’s Health Protection Act, a radical pro-abortion bill. “You’re a Catholic,” the reporter said. “What’s your reaction?” Here is what she said (she ended with a reference to Cordileone expressing her disagreement). “Yeah, I’m Catholic. I come from a pro-life family. Not active in that regard. Different in their view of a woman’s right to choose than I am. In my right to choose, I had five children in six years and one week. And I keep saying to people who say things like that, when you have five children in six years and one day, we can talk about what business it is of us to tell anyone else [what] to do. For us, it was a complete and total blessing, which we enjoy every day of our lives. But it is none of our business how other people choose the size and timing of their families.” The key word is “view.” It is Pelosi’s “view” that her pro-life family, and the teachings of the Catholic Church, are wrong on abortion. A view is defined by Merriam-Webster as “an opinion or judgment colored by the feeling or bias of it holder.” Have you ever heard someone say that it his “view” that there are 12 months in the year? That would make it rebuttable. No, what people say is that there are 12 months in a year. They speak declaratively. It is not an opinion. The pope recently said that abortion is “murder,” and Archbishop Cordileone called it “child murder.” Neither argued that it was his “view.” Indeed, the pope said that “any book on embryology” makes clear that life begins at conception. If disagreements on abortion amount to nothing more than different “views,” as Pelosi contends, then why wouldn’t disagreements on slavery amount to the same? Consider what a pro-slavery “Catholic” might say if asked how to reply to his archbishop on the merits of slavery. “Yeah, I’m Catholic. I come from an abolitionist family. Not active in that regard. Different in their view of a slavemaster’s right to choose than I am. In my right to choose, I bought five children in six years and one week. And I keep saying to people who say things like that, when you have bought five children in six years and one day, we can talk about what business it is of any of us to tell anyone else [what] to do. For us, it was a complete and total blessing, which we enjoy every day of our lives. But it is none of our business whether other people choose to own slaves.” Those who oppose slavery and abortion rest their case on moral absolutes, not opinion. Pelosi’s moral relativism places her outside the Catholic community. Contact Pelosi’s chief of staff: terri.mccullough@mail.house.gov

Unwoke Augustine: Ethnicity and the Faith

 Jesse Russell, PhDSeptember 23, 20210

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During a recent speech to incoming Freshman at Princeton University, Princeton Classics professor Dan-el Padilla Peralta advocated for the use of free speech in the service of social justice to “tear down” Princeton University.

While Professor Peralta’s comments might have been deliberately hyperbolic, they echo statements he made in April of last year to the New York Times arguing for a radical reevaluation of the study of Greece and Rome.

This new method to studying and teaching the classics would, Peralta argues, be focused on deconstructing both the worlds of Greece and Rome as well as how classics have traditionally been taught in the West as part of wider effort to deconstruct and ultimately eliminate “whiteness.”

Upon first glance, Professor Peralta’s statements might seem somewhat sympathetic to Christianity, which has a long history of advocating for social justice and for “freeing the oppressed.”

However, Peralta’s comments are ultimately rooted, not in the Gospel, but in Cultural Marxism and the new Millennial Left, which sees its goal not on liberating the enslaved or helping the powerless but with completely deconstructing and ultimately destroying Western identity.

For much of the past fifty years the left has won victory after victory tarring much of Western history as been irreducibly evil.

With the advent of the Trump presidency and the emergence of a new muscle right wing politics, the left engaged in an even more aggressive “full court press” on the West.

Seeing all of this anger and violence directed toward them, some Western Catholics have embraced the siren song of paganism and/or a post-Nietzscheanism that is found in some digital circles once known as the “Alt” or Dissident or even Radical Right.

Many of these figures on the Radical Right argue, in line with Nietzsche, that Christianity is a decadent and enfeebling religion that has weakened and crippled Western men and women and made them sitting ducks for the assault from the left.

This unfair critique of the faith was answered over a hundred years ago by (at the time) Catholic philosopher Max Scheler, who argued that what Nietzsche was really critiquing was Enlightenment humanism and sentimentality and not the Catholic faith, which historical had strengthened, rather than enfeebled Europe.

One of the principal arguments against Christianity from the Radical Right is the notion that Christianity forbids any sense of ethnic or cultural identity.

However, nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, perhaps the most influential theologian in the West prior to St. Thomas Aquinas as well as the man who has been called the “father of the Middle Ages,” St. Augustine of Hippo, who helped to craft the quintessentially Christian notion of the City of God or Civitate Dei, writes of ethnic identity in his Confessions in a positive and affectionate way.

Known as one of the most important works in world literature as well as one of the first autobiographies in the history of the world, St. Augustine’s Confessions tells the story of the Romanized North African’s journey from his hedonist youth to his saintly life as archbishop of Hippo.

There are two major points in the Confessions at which Augustine speaks of culture and ethnic identity.

In Book VIII, St. Augustine mentions that the philosopher Victorinus was a philosopher who had converted to Christianity, but who formerly had defended various Egyptian cults practiced by the Romans, as Augustine notes:

At that time almost all Roman nobility was enthusiastic for the cult of Osiris and Monstrous gods of every kind and Anubis the barking dog, Monsters who once bore arms against Neptune and Venus and against Minerva… gods that Rome had once conquered but then implored for aid.

St. Augustine’s mockery of the Romans who practice Egyptian religion is here two-fold. First, the worship of the strange gods of the Egyptians is the worship of idols.

In addition, the worship of these gods is a ridiculous form of LARPing or “Live Action Role Playing.” As memorialized in Virgil’s Aeneid, the Romans under the budding empire of Octavian had conquered the Egyptians under the rule of Cleopatra. However, in the decadence and decay of the late Roman Empire, the Romans have  embraced the false gods of a foreign people, looking for redemption in the cultural other. A weakened Rome, would likewise begin to imitate the Germanic peoples who were in the process of conquering them.

In our day, this message can serve as a two-fold jab at contemporary Westerners who adore the idols of other peoples by adopting and admiring alien religions. Like the Romans before them, Westerners who abandon their Christian faith for foreign religions are imitating the culture of a different people and, more importantly, worshiping false gods, thus damnably offending the one true God and then foolishly LARPing as being part of someone else’s culture.

In another passage in Book VIII, while in Milan, St. Augustine receives “a surprise visit at home from a man named Ponticianus,” whom St. Augustine describes as a “compatriot [Latin: civis] in that he was an African.”

St. Augustine recognizes a special bond that he and this man have as being from the Roman province of Africa.

There is nothing terrible or awful here about having an ethnic identity or recognizing that bond between two men.

However, this man, Ponticianus, St. Augustine soon finds out, is a “…Christian and baptized believer,” which is an even greater spiritual bond between Augustine and Ponticianus.

Augustine and Ponticianus share a bond as Africans, but they also, and, more importantly, share a bond as Christians in the City of God.

Augustine identified as a Romanized African (it is possible he was half Berber, fully Berber, or like Americans of English descent, an “Italian” Roman descended from settlers living in North Africa).

However, St. Augustine became a Christian and thus entered into a deeper and eternal identity as an adopted son of God through Christ Jesus.

Catholics should resist attacks on the West as ultimately attacks on Christian civilization.

Moreover, the Church has never taught that having a culture or ethnic identity is a wicked thing as long as that ethnic identity does not become an idol or an obstacle to true charity.

Ultimately, our response to this assault on the Christian West must be one of charity and love, which will conquer the hearts of the Church’s enemies just as they did to the barbarian invaders who sacked Rome but were themselves conquered by the love of Jesus Christ.

Photo: ruins in ancient Roman Carthage, Augustine’s homeland, now modern Tunisia. Image by SofieLayla Thal from Pixabay

Jesse Russell, PhD

Jesse Russell writes for a variety of Catholic and secular publications.

Ted Cruz Mocks AOC In Senate Floor Speech On Democrats Ignoring Border Crisis 

https://lockerdome.com/lad/14284740949694566?pubid=ld-4107-2654&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Frepublicanupdate.com&rid=&width=730

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) mocked Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) during a Senate floor speech on Wednesday over the congresswoman’s past antics at the U.S.-Mexico border when President Donald Trump was in office compared to her actions now.

“I’ll tell you: I’ve been to the border. I’ve been to the Biden cages,” Cruz said. “For four years, Democrats went on and on and on, the corrupt corporate media went on and on and on about kids in cages. You couldn’t turn on the evening news without ‘hearing kids in cages.’ What they didn’t tell you is Barack Obama built those cages. And today under Joe Biden, the cages are bigger and they’re more full than they were before.”

“Mr. President, every Democrat who stood up and lamented kids in cages, in the House of Representatives, Representative Ocasio-Cortez, has a famous photo of her grasping her head by the kids in cages,” Cruz said as he imitated the photo. “Well, I’m going to give a simple challenge for Representative Ocasio-Cortez and for every Democrat in this body. Go see the Biden cages with your own eyes.”

“Why does Joe Biden refuse to go to the Rio Grande Valley? Because if he goes, the TV cameras will come with him,” Cruz later added. “Why does Kamala Harris, who’s supposed to be the border czar, she’s supposed to be in charge of this, why won’t she go to the Rio Grande Valley? Because if she went, the TV cameras would come and would show the Biden cages. And the Democrats are counting on the corrupt corporate media to suddenly say nothing to see here. 15,000 Haitians under a bridge in Del Rio. Nothing to see here. Anyone want to know what Joe Biden’s favorite ice cream flavor is? That’s the news!”https://lockerdome.com/lad/14227381762077798?pubid=ld-1562-9626&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Frepublicanupdate.com&rid=&width=730

WATCH:

TRANSCRIPT:

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): I’ll tell you, I’ve been to the border. I’ve been to the Biden cages. For four years, Democrats went on and on and on, the corrupt corporate media went on and on and on about kids in cages. You couldn’t turn on the evening news without ‘hearing kids in cages.’What they didn’t tell you is Barack Obama built those cages. And today under Joe Biden, the cages are bigger and they’re more full than they were before. Mr. President, every Democrat who stood up and lamented kids in cages, in the House of Representatives, Representative Ocasio-Cortez, has a famous photo of her grasping her head by the kids in cages. Well, I’m going to give a simple challenge for Representative Ocasio-Cortez and for every Democrat in this body. Go see the Biden cages with your own eyes.I’ve seen them in the Donna tent facility with over 4,000 people, with little boys and little girls on top of each other. Just a couple of weeks ago, when I was in the Rio Grande Valley, the rate of COVID positivity in the Biden cages was over 22%.And all the Democrats who talked about this, if they don’t go, if they don’t denounce the Biden cages, then they’re telling you that they’re hypocrites, that they didn’t believe it when they said it, that they didn’t care about it when they said it, that it was all politics. It wasn’t about their kids.Why does Joe Biden refuse to go to the Rio Grande Valley? Because if he goes, the TV cameras will come with him. Why does Kamala Harris, who’s supposed to be the border czar, she’s supposed to be in charge of this, why won’t she go to the Rio Grande Valley? Because if she went, the TV cameras would come and would show the Biden cages.And the Democrats are counting on the corrupt corporate media to suddenly say nothing to see here. 15,000 Haitians under a bridge in Del Rio. Nothing to see here. Anyone want to know what Joe Biden’s favorite ice cream flavor is? That’s the news!Nevermind 1.2 million illegal immigrants. Nevermind when I took 19 senators down to the border, we went out on the river and saw a man floating dead in the river, who died trying to cross illegally. Nevermind the South Texas farmers and ranchers, the moms who told me, ‘I won’t let my teenage kids go out on our ranch without being armed with a loaded firearm because there are so many human traffickers and narcotics traffickers that it’s dangerous for them to go out on their own ranch.’ Nevermind the South Texas farmers and ranchers who told me at roundtables, how tired they are of going out and finding dead bodies.

You want to understand what’s happening? Say there’s no crisis? Come to Brooks County. I invite every Democrat here to Brooks County. Brooks County in South Texas, it’s just north of the border. Brooks County over and over and over again. There are dead bodies of illegal immigrants. The traffickers who are bringing them in, they’re not nice guys. They’re not humanitarians. They don’t give a damn. That means if one of the illegal immigrants is a pregnant woman, is a young child, is elderly, is sick, they just abandon them. They leave them in the rough terrain in the summer heat and over and over again the farmers and ranchers encounter dead bodies on their property where the traffickers have abandoned them.

Author: Daily Wire News

Source: Daily Wire: Ted Cruz Mocks AOC In Senate Floor Speech On Democrats Ignoring Border Crisis

THE CATHOLIC MONITOR

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It appears that Pope Benedict is in a Type of Stockholm Syndrome Prisoner Situation as the United States as a Whole Country seems to be in now under Biden’s Regime

September 22, 2021

– As for my direct acquaintance with Benedict XVI, I can say that in the years of his Pontificate, in which I served the Church in the Secretariat of State, in the Governorate, and as Nuncio in the United States, I got the idea that he surrounded himself with inadequate, unreliable or even corrupt collaborators, who have largely taken advantage of the “meekness” of his character and of what could be considered as a certain “Stockholm syndrome” [i.e., a syndrome in which a prisoner, in a certain sense, comes to love those who have imprisoned him] especially towards Cardinal Bertone and towards his own personal secretary [G.G.]. – Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò in an interview with Radio Spada 

– In fact, it’s those with natural immunity that have a 13 times greater immunity to the Delta variant. They are not an obstacle to normalcy. They are not the enemy of the people.

They are an obstacle to the State’s self-justification.

No, the actions of the State to justify its own existence are an ongoing psy-ops campaign. Living like prisoners has had a deleterious effect on people’s mental health. But the people’s approval also verifies the Stockholm Syndrome. – Dr. Scott Masson

In The Epoch Times, Professor Dr.Scott Masson said the Biden’s government is pushing a stream of lies and a “endless series of bait-and-switches” to promote its own regime’s tyranny and a kind of national“Stockholm Syndrome”:

It’s all rancid piffle. Gaslighting and prevarication…… The endless series of bait-and-switches have always been aimed to protect the public health care monopoly. ICU capacity could have been expanded to do that. The bureaucracy preferred totalitarian social measures.

The long-awaited bait of the mRNA shots was that they would end the unprecedented government overreach—the “new normal“—by protecting us from SARS-CoV2 and then returning us to the “old” normal.

We ought to be there now.

Either the shots protect people or they do not. Either the authorities allow people to return to normal or they will not.

It appears they will not. The “new normal” is now just … normal.

It seems the government itself is the virus that has injected itself into everyone’s lives.

How about those who resist the idea that the “new normal” is normal? The “anti-vaxxers”? Are they “enemies of the people”?

To say that the health of people allegedly protected by mRNA shots are now somehow threatened by those who decline the protection is of the same order of logic as saying that those who wear seatbelts are endangered by those who do not. And the solution is for the protected to be protected from the unprotected by forcing the unprotected to use the protection that doesn’t protect the protected.

The emergency should be over. But a state of managed emergency is the new normal, or it will be once every child is also finally vaxxed. That is now being advertised by the Canadian government in TV ads. So will the QR code monitoring system going forwards. And these enhanced “security measures” will be added to the masking, social-distancing, and lockdown policies for everyone—including the “fully-vaccinated.”

What is the rationale for this next phase of the “new normal”? The need for herd immunity.

The level of vaccinations should already achieve that, if they were effective. The skyrocketing cases in strongly compliant countries with early double-vaccinations, such as Israel, Singapore, the UK, and Iceland, suggest they are not.

In fact, it’s those with natural immunity that have a 13 times greater immunity to the Delta variant. They are not an obstacle to normalcy. They are not the enemy of the people.

They are an obstacle to the State’s self-justification.

No, the actions of the State to justify its own existence are an ongoing psy-ops campaign. Living like prisoners has had a deleterious effect on people’s mental health. But the people’s approval also verifies the Stockholm Syndrome.

We are now living through a vast re-enactment of the Milgram experiment. The aim of COVID’s “willing executioners” is “to make our lives as miserable as possible, to segregate us, stigmatize us, demonize us, bully, and harass us, and pressure us to conform at every turn,” according to playwright C.J. Hopkins.

“Willing executioners” are found in the families who refuse to see or talk to their nearest and dearest if they haven’t had the jab. They are in churches that mandate double-vaxxes to attend. They are in companies that have mandated vaccines as a condition of employment. They run the universities and colleges that flatly contradict their own research ethics policies. They administrate the hospitals now trashing the Nuremberg Code. They direct the funding of science, at the expense of science.

These terrorized people act as if those who drive without seatbelts are putting them all at risk of a fatal collision. [https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/are-the-unvaxxed-the-enemy-of-the-people_4005333.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-09-22&mktids=1f25b1c5e93f239fa0d91132cb5fbce9&est=UXYPeegVJ8mQxzifF%2FkekrhvtrigPXoRGRJotHLCeSnHe6291F6kWkb1225R]

In 2018, I wrote that it appeared that Pope Benedict XVI was in a type of Stockholm Syndrome prisoner situation as the United States as a whole country seems to be in now under Joe Biden’s regime:March 23, 2018  The 90-year old Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI Letter is obviously a tongue in cheek bordering on sarcasm statement and not a confirmation that there is no contradiction between the Benedict and the Pope Francis pontificates.

Here’s a summary of the Letter that makes the tongue in cheek bordering on sarcasm language obvious:

“I am unable to read the eleven volumes” but the “small volumes show, rightly, that Pope Francis is a man of profound philosophical and theological formation, and they therefore help to see the inner continuity between the two pontificates… I don’t feel like writing a short and dense theological passage on them… Professor Hünermann, who during my pontificate had distinguished himself by leading anti-papal initiatives. He played a major part in the release of the ‘Kölner Erklärung’, which, in relation to the encyclical ‘Veritatis splendor’, virulently attacked the magisterial authority of the Pope, especially on questions of moral theology… I am sure you will understand my refusal.” As an aside, ‘Veritatis splendor’ contradicts the moral theology of Amoris Laetitia Have a nice day. [http://m.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/full-text-of-benedict-xvis-letter-to-mons.-vigano#.WrU3eXNlAwh]

Persons who use tongue in cheek or sarcastic language, if it is not solely meant as dark humor, usually do so because they feel they cannot speak plainly or bluntly.

Why would Benedict feel like he can’t speak plainly?

Journalist Steve Skojec wrote about situations where people might not speak plainly:

“Dr. Carver describes four situations in which a foundation for Stockholm Syndrome is present. ‘These four situations,’ he says, ‘can be found in hostage, severe abuse, and abusive relationships’:

• The presence of a perceived threat to one’s physical or psychological survival and the belief that the abuser would carry out the threat.
• The presence of a perceived small kindness from the abuser to the victim
• Isolation from perspectives other than those of the abuser
• The perceived inability to escape the situation…”

“We have heard for some time about the ‘climate of fear’ at the Vatican. This isn’t new — in an anonymous letter from a former member of the Curia penned in 2015, this exact term was used. More recently, we have seen this fear publicly discussed by not just journalists at LifeSiteNews and the National Catholic Register who have spent time in Rome, but Bishop Athanasius Schneider, who lived under Soviet communism and has compared the situation in Rome to his experiences…”

“I have often described Müller to others as ‘essentially under house arrest.’ The fear of monitored communications on the part of CDF officials has been noted in these pages before… One source of mine described the situation at the Vatican, as I have previously written, as ‘like an occupied state.'” [https://onepeterfive.com/stockholm-syndrome-at-the-cdf-has-cardinal-muller-been-compromised/]

Does this describe the situation that Benedict is in?

Is it possible he is essentially under house arrest? [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2018/03/did-benedicts-need-to-use-tongue-in.html]

^{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 destroyour 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.   

Biden’s Pro-Abortion Bill Is Off-The-Charts September 22, 2021 Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on President Biden’s latest pro-abortion bill: “The Administration strongly supports House passage of H.R. 3755, the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2021.” That is the statement released by the White House on September 20. In actual fact, the proposed law has nothing to do with women’s health—it is a pro-abortion bill. This is true notwithstanding the bill’s contention that “Abortion is essential health care and one of the safest medical procedures in the United States.” Essential health care would be things like heart surgery and treatment for Covid, not elective abortion. And it is fatuous to say that it is safe. Safe for whom? The bill maintains that abortion restrictions are “a tool of gender oppression.” If this were true, why were America’s first feminists staunch opponents of abortion? In 1858, Elizabeth Cady Stanton spoke about “the murder of children, either before or after birth.” She branded it “evil.” Similarly, Susan B. Anthony called abortion “child murder” and “infanticide.” So if the first feminists were strongly opposed to abortion—they said it was analogous to treating women as property—when did abortion restrictions become “a tool of gender oppression”? In the 1960s. That was when two men, Lawrence Lader and Dr. Bernard Nathanson (who later became a Catholic and a pro-life activist), convinced feminists such as Betty Friedan that abortion should be seen as an example of women’s liberation. In other words, it took the boys to teach the girls about their own “emancipation.” As for this bill, it is anything but “women friendly.” To be explicit, it would abolish the requirement that abortion can only be performed by a physician, thus allowing mid-wives, nurses and doctor’s assistants to do the job. The bill also eliminates health and safety regulations that are specific to abortion facilities. Now ask yourself this: If a bill were passed that would allow dental hygienists to pull your tooth, and that it could be done in a facility without customary health and safety regulations, would anyone in his right mind consider this to be progress? Iterations of this bill have been introduced every year since 2013, but it wasn’t until this year that dramatically new language was introduced. The neologisms are emblematic of the wild-eyed activists who work in the White House. For example, the bill talks about “reproductive justice” and the necessity of opposing “restrictions on reproductive health, including abortion, that perpetuate systems of oppression, lack of bodily autonomy, white supremacy, and anti-Black racism.” This is the mindset of those who are positively obsessed with race, the kind of people who find discussions about chocolate and vanilla to have racial undertones. Just as some who were obsessed about communism in the 1950s found communism under every pillow, those who work in the Biden administration find racism under every blanket. The bill insists that “Access to equitable reproductive health care, including abortion, has always been deficient” for blacks and other minorities. In actual fact, thanks to Planned Parenthood, this is a lie: access to abortion services have been fantastic for blacks. Planned Parenthood erects 86 percent of its abortion facilities in or near minority neighborhoods in the 25 counties with the most abortions. Although these 25 counties make up just 1 percent of all U.S. counties, they accounted for 30 percent of all the abortions in the U.S. in 2014. Is it any surprise that although blacks comprise roughly 13 percent of the population, they account for at least a third of all the abortions? It is therefore dishonest to claim that they lack access to abortion mills. Another novelty found in this bill is the linguistic game of pretending that males and females can change their sex. For example, it says that abortion services “are used primarily by women (my italic).” This is factually wrong. Only women can get pregnant and only women can abort their child. A man can identify as a woman (or as a gorilla for that matter), but he can never get pregnant. Similarly, the geniuses who wrote this bill make more than two dozen  references to “pregnant people”; this is roughly twice as often as they speak of “pregnant women.” Now if a man can get pregnant, in what orifice does his baby exit? His ear? If this isn’t nutty enough, the bill’s authors add that it is their intention “to protect all people with the capacity of becoming pregnant—cisgender women [meaning real women] transgender men [meaning delusional women who think they are a man], non-binary individuals [there is no such breed], those who identify with a different gender [the mentally challenged], and others.” Who the “others” are remains a mystery. Catholics need to take note. Though this “off-the-charts” bill is not likely to pass, it is the expressed desire of our “devout Catholic” president that it should. Biden can carry his rosary to the moon and back, but all that matters are his values and his policies, and in many instances they are anything but Catholic. Contact White House press secretary Jen Psaki: jennifer.r.psaki@who.eop.gov