LAY CATHOLICS SUPPORT THE Latin Mass

Posted on September 14, 2021 by abyssum

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Lay Catholics on Latin Mass: ‘We will not let anyone deprive the faithful of this treasure’

Lay Catholics from all over the world asked the Pope ‘to reverse his decision, by abrogating Traditionis Custodes and restoring full freedom to celebrate the Tridentine Mass, for the glory of God and the good of the faithful.’Traditional Latin MassChristopher Sanchez

Maike
Hickson

Tue Sep 14, 2021 – 9:45 am EDT

(LifeSiteNews) — An international group of lay scholars and Catholic organizations on Tuesday launched a website and published a list of prominent Catholics in support of a recent September 8 statement declaring they will not accept Pope Francis’ motu proprio Traditionis Custodes which is essentially trying to abolish the Traditional Latin Mass.

Among the 91 signatories are Phil Lawler, Maureen Mullarkey, George Neumayr, Martin Mosebach, Eric Sammons, and Michael Matt, as well as political analyst Jack Maxey. Catholic media outlets such as Crisis Magazine, OnePeterFive, Catholic Family News, and The Remnant, are represented (see full text and list of signatories below).

Together, they request that the Pope “reverse his decision, by abrogating Traditionis Custodes and restoring full freedom to celebrate the Tridentine Mass, for the glory of God and the good of the faithful.”

“We will not let anyone deprive the faithful of this treasure which is first of all that of the Church,” the statement said. “We will not remain inactive in the face of the spiritual suffocation of vocations laid forth in the Motu proprio Traditionis Custodes. We will not deprive our children of this privileged means of transmitting the faith which is faithfulness to the traditional liturgy.”

The statement had been originally published on September 8 by several French Catholic organizations, prominently among them Notre Dame de Chrétienté, the group organizing the yearly pilgrimage to Chartres. Among the original signatories at the time were well-known authors and activists, such as Henry Sire and Peter Kwasniewski. Philippe de Villiers, a French former minister, LifeSite’s Paris correspondent Jeanne Smits, as well as numerous other French personalities and outlets had signed. My husband and I were honored to have been able to sign, as well.

The traditional Catholic newspaper The Remnant then published the text in English with the full list of the 43 original signatories, as did other outlets, such as OnePeterFive.com and Rorate Caeli, expressing their public support of it.

On Tuesday, the initiative launched a website for others to sign, as well. Signatories now come from many different countries, including Canada and the U.S., Germany, France, Italy, Spain, South America, and elsewhere.

The intention of this statement is very clear. It tells Pope Francis that he will face disobedience and strong resistance should he try to take away the source and foundation, the very center of the traditional Catholic Faith, the Traditional Latin Mass. Catholics worldwide will not obey this false order.

On the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, July 16, Pope Francis had published his motu proprio Traditionis Custodes and its accompanying letter, in which he claims that many members of Latin Mass communities worldwide sow “disunity” by rejecting the Second Vatican Council and by believing that they are the “true” Church. Pope Francis claims that a recent questionnaire among the bishops in the world has confirmed the existence of such attitudes among the traditional Catholic communities.

However, many are questioning that those were the results of the questionnaire, and Pope Francis so far has not shown himself to be willing to provide evidence for his claim. As Rome-based journalist Diane Montagna reported in June of this year concerning the results of the Vatican questionnaire: “Approximately thirty percent of the world’s bishops responded to the questionnaire, and more than half of those who responded had a favorable or neutral response, multiple sources confirmed.”

Based on the alleged results of his questionnaire, the Pope concluded that the Traditional Latin Mass has to disappear. He told the bishops in his July 16 letter: “Responding to your requests, I take the firm decision to abrogate all the norms, instructions, permissions and customs that precede the present Motu proprio, and declare that the liturgical books promulgated by the saintly Pontiffs Paul VI and John Paul II, in conformity with the decrees of Vatican Council II, constitute the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite.” In the end, according to Pope Francis, traditional Catholics “need to return in due time to the Roman Rite promulgated by Saints Paul VI and John Paul II,” that is, the Novus Ordo Mass.

It is clear that Pope Francis does not wish for traditional Catholic communities to flourish, but the September 8 statement — now endorsed by dozens of new signatories — makes a firm stance in defense of the traditional Mass. We will not let it be taken away from us and our children.

“The explicit will of Pope Francis, stated in the Motu Proprio Traditionis Custodes, of July 16, 2021, is to see the celebration of the Mass of the Tradition of the Church disappear,” the September 8 statement reads. “This decision drives us to great dismay.”

Marco Tosatti, one of the signatories, told LifeSite “I think that it is really important to try and defend the right of the Catholic people to worship according to a rite which has been performed for many centuries, and in which they find a way of spiritual enrichment.”

“The Church should be, must be, a place of freedom,” he added. “Not of irrational, whimsical despotism.”

“I signed the statement for two reasons,” said Catholic author, podcast host, and teacher Taylor Marshall. “Firstly, the Traditional Latin Mass was never abrogated. Because of this historical fact, the Catholics priests of the Roman Rite can and should celebrate the ancient Mass of the Ages as guaranteed by Pope Benedict XVI. Secondly, the draconian measures of Traditionis Custodes essentially sideline the former Ecclesia Dei bodies (FSSP, ICKSP, etc.). These good priests and religious have grown in size and influence and must continue to grow. The motu proprio appears to freeze them as well.”

See here the full statement:

Letter of the Faithful Attached to the Traditional Mass to the Catholics of the Whole World

What father, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? (Mt 7, 9)

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

It is with great sadness that we learned of Pope Francis’ decision to abrogate the main provisions of the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, promulgated by Pope Benedict XVI on July 7, 2007. After decades of divisions and quarrels, that Motu Proprio was, for all the Catholic faithful, a work of peace and reconciliation.

Rome violates the word given by Pope Benedict XVI with brutality and intransigence, far from the much vaunted fraternal welcoming.

The explicit will of Pope Francis, stated in the Motu Proprio Traditionis Custodes, of July 16, 2021, is to see the celebration of the Mass of the Tradition of the Church disappear. This decision drives us to great dismay. How can we understand this rupture with the traditional Missal, a “venerable and ancient” actualization of the “law of faith,” which has bore fruit through so many nations, so many missionaries, and so many saints? What harm is done by the faithful who simply want to pray as their ancestors had done for centuries? Can we be unaware that the Tridentine Mass converts many souls, that it attracts young and fervent assemblies, that it arouses many vocations, that it has given rise to seminaries, religious communities, monasteries, that it is the backbone of many schools, youth groups, catechism activities, spiritual retreats, and pilgrimages?

Many of you, Catholic brothers and sisters, priests, and bishops, have shared with us your failure to understand this and your deep sorrow: thank you for your many testimonies of support.

To promote peace within the Church, in order to build unity in charity, and also to lead Catholics to reconnect with their own heritage by making as many people as possible discover the riches of liturgical tradition, the treasure of the Church: those were the goals pursued by Summorum Pontificum. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI witnesses his work for reconciliation destroyed during his own lifetime.

In a time steeped in materialism and torn by social and cultural divisions, liturgical peace appears to us as an absolute necessity for the Faith and for the spiritual life of Catholics in a world that is dying of thirst. The drastic restriction of the authorization to celebrate Mass in its traditional form will bring back mistrust, doubt, and it heralds the return of an agonizing liturgical war for the Christian people.

We solemnly affirm, before God and before men:

We will not let anyone deprive the faithful of this treasure which is first of all that of the Church.

We will not remain inactive in the face of the spiritual suffocation of vocations laid forth in the Motu proprio Traditionis Custodes.

We will not deprive our children of this privileged means of transmitting the faith which is faithfulness to the traditional liturgy.

As children to their father, we request Pope Francis to reverse his decision, by abrogating Traditionis Custodes and restoring full freedom to celebrate the Tridentine Mass, for the glory of God and the good of the faithful.

Bread rather than stones.

September 8, 2021,

on the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

List of signatories:

• Bernard Antony, Président AGRIF
• Xavier Arnaud, Président, Forum catholique
• Victor Aubert, Président Academia Christiana
• Patrick Banken, Président, Una Voce France
• Alex Barbas, Publisher
• Donna Bethell, Board member Collegium Sanctorum Angelorum & The Paulus Institute
• Moh-Christophe Bilek, Fondateur, ND de Kabylie
• François Billot de Lochner, Président Fondation de Service politique
• Benjamin Blanchard, DG de SOS Chrétiens d’Orient
• Anne Brassié, Journaliste et écrivain
• Patrick Buisson, Historien et conseiller politique
• Georges Buscemi, Président Québec-Vie
• Stuart Chessman, President, Society of St. Hugh of Cluny
• Jacques Charles-Gaffiot, Historien d’art
• Thibaud Collin, Professeur agrégé de philosophie
• Edgardo J. Cruz Ramos, President, Una Voce Puerto Rico
• Laurent Dandrieu, Journaliste
• Yves Daoudal, Journaliste – Directeur de Blog
• Michel De Jaeghere, Journaliste et essayiste
• Pierre de Lauzun, Haut fonctionnaire Ecrivain
• Massimo de Leonardis, President International Commission of Military History
• Roberto de Mattei, Ancien pdt du CNR (CNRS italien)
• Charles de Meyer, Président de SOS Chrétiens d’Orient
• Jean de Tauriers, Président de ND de Chrétienté
• Guillaume de Thieulloy, Editeur de presse
• Philippe de Villiers, Ancien ministre, écrivain
• Marie-Pauline Deswarte, Docteur en Droit
• Stéphane Deswarte, Docteur en Chimie
• Cyrille Dounot, Docteur en droit, licencié en droit canonique
• Christian & Fabienne Drouhot, Présidents, Domus Christiani
• Alvino-Mario Fantini, Editor-in-Chief of The European Conservative
• Timothy Flanders, Editor, OnePeterFive
• Rémi Fontaine, Journaliste et écrivain
• François Foucart, Journaliste
• Matt Gaspers, Managing Editor of Catholic Family News
• Jean Goyard, Chargé de communication
• Claude Goyard, Professeur des universités
• Max Guazzini, Ancien président de groupe de presse
• Michael Hageböck, Summorum Pontificum Freiburg
• Joël Hautebert, Professur de droit, université d’Angers
• Maike Hickson, Founder net
• Robert Hickson, Ecrivain
• Marek Jurek, Ancien pdt de la Diète de Pologne
• Paul N. King, President, The Paulus Institute for the Propagation of Sacred Liturgy
• Peter Kwasniewski, Ecrivain, compositeur, chercheur
• Philippe Lauvaux, Professeur de droit public ULB Paris & Assas
• Philip Lawler, Editor, Catholic World News
• Leila Lawler, Auhtor, Blog
• Anne Le Pape, Journaliste
• Maria Madise, Director of Voice of the Family
• Bronwen McShea, Ph.D., Historian
• Christian Marquant, Président de Paix Liturgique
• Taylor Marshall, YouTube commentator & writer
• Michael Matt, Editor, The Remnant
• Jean-Pierre Maugendre, Président, Renaissance Catholique
• Philippe Maxence, Rédacteur en Chef de L’Homme Nouveau
• Jack Maxey, journalist and political analyst
• Brian McCall, Chair in Law University of Oklahoma Editor-in-Chief Catholic Family News
• Paweł Milcarek, Fondateur et Editeur en chef Christianitas
• Dominique Millet-Girard, Professur à la Sorbonne
• Jean-Marie Molitor, Journaliste
• Martin Mosebach, Ecrivain
• Maureen Mullarkey, Writer
• Georges Neumayr, Book author
• Hugh Owen, Director Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation
• Hugues Petit, Docteur en Droit
• Philippe Pichot-Bravard, Docteur en Droit
• Claudio Pierantoni, PhD History of Christianity & PhD Philosophy
• Jean-Baptiste Pierchon, Docteur en Droit
• Enrico Maria Radaelli, Research Director and Professor ICSA
• Carlo Regazzoni, Philosopher of Culture
• Christophe Réveillard, Docteur en Histoire, Universitaire
• Monika Rheinschmitt, President Pro Missa Tridentina
• Hervé Rolland, Vice-Président de ND de Chrétienté
• Eric Sammons, Editor-in-Chief of Crisis Magazine
• Edward Schaefer, President Collegium sanctorum angelorum
• Wolfram Schrems, Mag. theol., Mag. phil., catechist
• Reynald Secher, Historien
• Jean Sévillia, Journaliste, Historien, Ecrivain
• Henri Sire, Ecrivain, compositeur, chercheur
• Michael Sirilla, PhD, Steubenville, Ohio
• John Smeaton, Past SPUC CEO
• Jeanne Smits, Journaliste – Directrice de Blog
• Christian Spaemann, MD, psychiatrist and psychotherapist
• Peter Stephan, Professor for Art History and Theory of Architecture, Postdam Univ.
• Marco Tosatti, Blog Editor, Stilum Curiae
• Jérôme Triomphe, Avocat
• Inge M. Thürkauf, katholische Publizistin
• John-Henry Westen, Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of LifeSiteNews
• Elizabeth Yore, Attorney, Founder YoreChilden
• Alberto Luiz Zucchi, Presidente Associação cultural montfort

Dr. Maike Hickson was born and raised in Germany. She holds a PhD from the University of Hannover, Germany, after having written in Switzerland her doctoral dissertation on the history of Swiss intellectuals before and during World War II. She now lives in the U.S. and is married to Dr. Robert Hickson, and they have been blessed with two beautiful children. She is a happy housewife who likes to write articles when time permits.

Dr. Hickson published in 2014 a Festschrift, a collection of some thirty essays written by thoughtful authors in honor of her husband upon his 70th birthday, which is entitled A Catholic Witness in Our Time.

Hickson has closely followed the papacy of Pope Francis and the developments in the Catholic Church in Germany, and she has been writing articles on religion and politics for U.S. and European publications and websites such as LifeSiteNews, OnePeterFive, The Wanderer, Rorate Caeli, Catholicism.org, Catholic Family News, Christian Order, Notizie Pro-Vita, Corrispondenza Romana, Katholisches.info, Der Dreizehnte, Zeit-Fragen, and Westfalen-Blatt.

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So when we refer to Biden as a viper—“a vicious or treacherous person”—we are being quite precise.

Posted on September 14, 2021 by abyssum

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COULD THIS BE THE RESULT OF A DECISION BY JORGE BERGOLIO?

Posted on September 13, 2021 by abyssum

LAST GASP FOR SPIRITUAL STRENGTH?

NEWS:COMMENTARY“The Dedication” by Edmund Blair Lei

by Raymond de Souza, KHS, KM • ChurchMilitant.com • May 24, 2021 11 Comments

Loss of ceremonial sword marks loss of chivalry

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The decision of the Grand Master of the Equestrian Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre to abolish the use of the sword in the ceremony of investiture of a knight was a tolling bell for the end of a last remnant of Catholic chivalry in the world.

The accolade was central to rite of
passage ceremonies conferring knighthood
during the Middle Ages

All true knights of the Holy Sepulchre, spiritual descendants of the Crusaders who defended the Holy Land, are in mourning.

Were the knights consulted about their opinion? Were the ladies consulted if they wanted to see the men no longer receiving the touch of a sword on their shoulders? Did the young men who aspire to knighthood agree to be “knighted” just as the women?

When the spirit of chivalry is dead among Catholics, the sacrament of confirmation loses its grip on souls. Cowardice reigns.

Loss in Historical Context

For us to understand the gravity of the loss — certainly to all true knights who have mourned the removal of the sword — let us see what a knight was like in medieval times.

Below is an excerpt from a study I have on medieval chivalry, which I use in retreats for men:

It was the end of the battle. Everywhere, the strewn bodies of the Crusaders were covered with blood. They testified to their fidelity, to their ideal and unfortunately, to their defeat. The Moslems had won in the Battle of Tibiriadis and the main Christian leaders, and even the King of Jerusalem, had become prisoners of Saladin.
Only one man carried on fighting.
Covered with iron and blood, mounted upon a horse that was both exhausted and foaming, surrounded by Turks, he was the last knight who resisted. He brandished his sword in the air with incredible agility, and the bodies of the infidels who had dared to come too close to him piled up around him.
The Turks contemplated him from far away, and in the fury of their gaze, there was also, in spite of everything, a spark of admiration. Who was this Christian man who did not surrender? What kind of man was that who’d never give up? Who’d not step back? Who’d not retreat? What mother had given birth to a son of such magnitude? Who had forged this soul that was like a suit of armor and this indomitable heart?
Wounded and bloodless, both knight and steed fell to the ground, the enemies surrounding him. Everything came to an end.
Everything? No.
The admiration did not end. The death of the hero made the admiration grow still. And the Turks, the semi-barbarians, the Moslems, the enemies, approached the dead knight and touched the tips of their capes to the blood of the Crusader to keep with them something of a souvenir of the most valiant of men.
Who was that man of an iron heart? Which mother had conceived and given birth to such a hero?
He was a son of the Catholic Church. He was a knight.

This happened in the times of the Crusades, in the time when there was faith on earth — times when people would follow the counsel of Christ when He said, “Now he who does not have a sword, let him sell his mantle, and buy one.” (Luke 22:46)https://www.youtube.com/embed/HbrHXYvbtf8
Forward to 6:50 to see the practice of using a sword as part of investiture

This happened in the centuries of faith and of glory, in the centuries of Chivalry — an army of men, standards floating to the winds of glory, rushing upon the infidels in a cavalcade of faith and of heroism.

Chivalry: A Saint-Making Force

In the Middle Ages, chivalry was the Christian form of the military condition, and the knight was the Christian soldier in his fullness. Much more than an institution, chivalry was an ideal of the military life. It was by the means of chivalry that the Church transformed barbarians into saints.

You can understand the value of this institution when you consider:

St. Louis, king of France
St. Ferdinand, king of Castile
St. Nuno Álvares Pereira, constable of Portugal
St. Joan of Arc

They were some of the saints generated by the Church by means of chivalry. And because of this, chivalry was admired even by the infidels.

In spite of all the defects that are known to us, medieval chivalry gave to the Church a collection of saints, men and women like no other social class has ever given, precisely because they were a true social elite, and holiness was multiplied in them by heroism — by the consecration of the magnificent energies they had.

It suffices to evoke the saints, kings and queens since the 12th century; there have never been so many saints among the heads of state in a state known as Catholicism.

Moreover, the missionary vocation of so many young Europeans — in the sense of foreign missionaries going to pagan lands; they derive their mission, their enthusiasm, from the spirit of chivalry.

Chivalry Manifest

So, the knights were the vassals of God and soldiers of the Faith. For them, Our Lady was their Dame, the lady whom they had to serve as the vassal served the lady of his castle. This relationship with God and Our Lady and the knights was so alive, the way they referred to God was so real that it sometimes caused confusion.

When St. Joan of Arc presented herself to the captain Robert de Baudricourt, asking him to give her soldiers to help save France, she left him confused when she said to him, “France does not belong to the sire of England, nor to the sire of France, but to my Sire.” And the captain was amazed because there were already two kings disputing the throne of France, and now she comes with the potential of a third. He asks, “Who is your sire?” and she replied with that candor of innocence, “Mon Sire est Dieu” (My king is God).

St. Theresa of Ávila referred to Our Lord Jesus Christ, as “Your Majesty,” because, for her, He was her living king.

The Code of Chivalry has never been written; the historians have deduced it by examining the lives of the knights. It consisted of Ten Commandments every knight had to respect to be worthy of his title.Permit that Thy servant here present may … never make use of this sword or another to injure anyone unjustly, but he may use it always to defend justice and right.Gab Tweet

The knighthood ceremonial prayer, uttered by the bishop or the lord as he invested the new knight by touching his shoulders with the sword, asks:

Most Holy Lord, Father Almighty, Thou Who didst permit the use of the sword on earth to combat the perfidy of the evil ones and to defend justice, and wants to establish the order of chivalry for the protection of the people, permit that Thy servant here present may dispose his heart to do good and never make use of this sword or another to injure anyone unjustly, but he may use it always to defend justice and right.

The knights exalted during Holy Mass repeated the choirs of the heavenly militias: “Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus exercituum!” (Holy, Holy, Holy, the Lord God of Armies!)

Because they had faith.

Catholic Spiritedness Dying?

The last remnant of that great Catholic spiritedness has just been buried by the new orientation of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem — aimed to reflect the views of the pope. Equality between men and women is the new “woke” paradigm.

All true Catholic women want their husbands, sons and brothers to be real Catholic men — leaders marked by Christian courage, who are prepared to sacrifice themselves to defend those whom they love, the Church, country and family — not snowflakes who fear brandishing the sword.Raymond de Souza, KHS, KM gives retreats on the spirit of Chivalry to men interested in serving the Truth in a masculine, Catholic way.

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Eric Clapton DESCRIBES HIS HORRIFIC EXPERIENCE WITH THE CORONAVIRUS JAB

Posted on September 13, 2021 by abyssum

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So, what is truly evil is the current woke trademark of loud privileged whites who scapegoat the losers in the globalist game as racist (or in the Obama-Hillary Clinton-Biden patois of “clingers,” “deplorables,” “irredeemables,” “dregs,” “chumps”), mostly out of elite condescension, virtue-signaling guilt, and pathetic contextualizing their own privilege by projecting their unearned status onto supposedly distant cultural losers.

Posted on September 13, 2021 by abyssum

___________________________________________________

Wokeness:

An Evil of Our Age

Even the Chinese apparat could not invent a more evil, more macabre way to destroy the United States.

By: Victor Davis Hanson

American Greatness

September 12, 2021

History is replete with examples of nations, successful and not-so-successful alike, that abruptly committed suicide.

The ancient polis of Corcyra devoured itself in a bloody conflict as a collective madness took hold of the island city-state during the Peloponnesian War.

The Jacobins in 1793 hijacked the French Revolution and turned a movement toward a constitutional republic into a totalitarian, year-zero effort to destroy the past and ensure equity for all—or else. The Reign of Terror—and eventually Napoleon—followed.

The effort to force war-weary Czarist Russia to reform into a constitutional monarchy ended up being kidnapped by a small but lethal clique of Leninist Bolsheviks. What ensued was the destruction of Russian life—and millions of corpses—over the next 70 years.

Ditto Mao Zedong’s various murderous resets culminating in the cannibalistic “Cultural Revolution.” Mao’s final tab was 60-70 million deaths of his fellow Chinese.

French, Russian, and Chinese wokists all toppled statues, canceled out the nonbelievers, wiped away history, tore down monuments, and declared themselves the purest of all generations in their year zero—before getting down to the business of dividing up the spoils and settling scores.

Most of these bloodbaths started out with the supposedly noble idea of delivering social justice, equity, and fairness before they inevitably went deadly and feral. We should be just as worried about our own woke pandemic.

Mythological

Start with the idea that “wokeness” is an ideology divorced from reality. Nearly all its premises are complete distortions.

Between 2017 and 2020, minorities had made the greatest gains in employment in U.S. history. Women currently represent about 60 percent of all college students.

Recent wage gains for minority middle-class Americans outpaced those of the white working- and middle class. The latter were underrepresented in college enrollments and as graduates—but vastly overrepresented (at twice their percentage of the general population) in the toll of combat dead in Afghanistan and Iraq. Asian-Americans and a dozen other ethnic groups outpace so-called whites in per capita and household income. “White privilege” is usually a sloppy term that applies mostly to the white elites who use it to smear others.

America was in our sixth decade of “affirmative action,” the euphemism of ensuring equity of result by calibrating race and gender—but not class—in hiring and admissions. Proportional representation and disparate impact continued or were even enhanced. But they became increasingly selective as entire fields from the Postal Service to professional sports were somehow exempt from racial set-asides applied to others. Quotas disappeared when the marginalized were “overrepresented” in a field.

The historical reparatory effort of the massive programs born out of the Great Society continued to address the baleful legacy of slavery that had ended over 150 years ago, as well as Southern Jim Crow laws that had largely disappeared 40-50 years ago, and the fumes of such racial toxicity. So, Martin Luther King’s “content of our character” rather than the “color of our skin” was still embraced as the melting-pot ideal of the Civil Rights movement that had fought for integration and full assimilation into American society. Meanwhile, intermarriage has never been more common.

The desperate Left had therefore been forced to invent adjectives and phraseology like “systemic racism” and “microaggression” and “whiteness” given the vast majority of Americans did not feel or express or act out on “racism.”

In other words, wokeness created the mythology that the nonwhite were worse off than ever before—a typical revolutionary fabrication to evoke the sort of hysteria necessary for an otherwise unpopular agenda. But then again, we live in an age where we were assured Hunter Biden’s lost laptop was “Russian disinformation”, the Steele dossier was iron-clad proof of something, and a pangolin or a bat birthed COVID-19.

The wrongful death of George Floyd in police custody—despite his later angelic deification, Floyd was in fact a felon with a history of violence toward women, arrested in the act of passing counterfeit U.S. currency—was the work of a cruel rogue cop and his incompetent enablers. Otherwise, data and statistics did not show that African American males were dying while in police custody in numbers greater than their proportions of those yearly arrested. Nor were they the victims of some pandemic of interracial hate crimes. Indeed, blacks statistically were more likely to commit rare violent interracial crimes than were others, including targeted hate crimes against other ethnic and racial groups.

Elite-Driven

Another great lie was the propaganda that the woke movement was a grass-roots movement. Yet statue-toppling, vandalism, Trotskyism, and cancel culture remain largely the work of college students, upper-middle class white coastal elites, celebrities, and privileged minorities in the media, academia, law, the corporate world, entertainment, and professional sports.

In a reductionist sense, much of the woke movement became a battle among elites to leverage diversity czars in universities, reparational quotas in administrative hiring and college admissions, and a sort of racialized intramural reseating among first-class passengers on the corporate and government Lido deck.

While wokeists harangued New York and Hollywood for more nonwhites in TV commercials, thousands of young African American males continued to be slaughtered in the inner cities, as schools in those places resisted reform and remained indifferent to the poor quality of education offered residents. Because the culpable municipal officials—hard-Left diversity mayors, neo-Marxist district attorneys, and “reformist” police chiefs—were themselves woke, no one cared about derelict governance. And so, the killing continues unabated, surrealistically unremarked upon by the wokest.

Class considerations were suppressed, given that the beneficiaries of wokeness were not necessarily previously poor and oppressed. In our racialized madness, billionaires like LeBron James, Oprah Winfrey, Jay-Z, and Beyonce, multimillionaires like the Obamas and Colin Kaepernick, and moneyed political, corporate, entertainment, military, and sports grandees—play-acted oppression and victimization from their villas and privileged perches, in perfect Marie Antoinette fashion. All they lacked was fake peasant garb and a village at Versailles.

Themselves of wokeness, the architects mostly cashed in on the supposedly toxic capitalist system they had so harangued as the ground zero of “systemic racism.” So, BLM cofounder and self-described “cultural Marxist” Patrisse Cullors is now “retired”—and the savvy owner of four new homes, residing in nearly all-white tony Topanga Canyon, with a new $35,000 security gate. How else could she best use her black privilege to direct her multimillion-dollar war against “white privilege”?

Professor Ibram X. Kendi (neé Henry Rogers), whose “antiracist” new industry calls for racism to stop racism and discrimination to end discrimination, now charges his corporate and university clients a reportedly $20,000 penance fee for a phoned-in Zoom chat. (He apparently has no discount rate for the poorer of his clients). Kendi no doubt took Lenin to heart (“Capitalists will sell us the rope to hang them with.”) when he hawks his video indulgences at $333 a minute.

The cultural revolutionary Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates was customarily already one step ahead and has moved on from the woke movement to a multimillion-dollar career writing black-themed comic books or adapting them to the big screen. Barack and Michelle Obama, long ago known for their cinematic creativity, leveraged a $50 million “consulting” movie deal with Netflix, whose founder is best known in California for his efforts to fund the campaign against Larry Elder, including commercials starring . . . Barack Obama.

Racist

Wokeness took the Obama-era mantra of diversity and simply shed any pretense that it was not racist. Remember, after 2009 our elites institutionalized the new-old idea that anyone claiming not to be white was suddenly part of a new inclusive oppressed class, one at war with the racial oppressors.

“Diversity” was a clever update of the previously failed Jesse Jackson idea of a victimized rainbow coalition that would aggregate, and force-multiply collective grievances against white male victimizers.

Suddenly, ethnic groups with higher per capita incomes than so-called whites were victims. There were no requisites to being “diverse” other than claiming nonwhite status. Wealthy Punjabi immigrants, Chilean aristocrats, illegal aliens fleeing racist Mexico, Nigerian doctors—anyone rich or poor, resident or citizen, victimized or not—was presto! “diverse” and thereby eligible for reparatory claims in hiring and admissions.

Many liberal whites wished to get in on it and got caught at it—whether Ward Churchill with this entire Native American tribal garb, or, on the cheaper side, Elizabeth Warren with her “high” cheek bones or racial fabulists Rachel Dolezal and Shaun King. After all, if gender is “constructed,” then naturally race, too, could become a construct.

All this is dangerous because we are now logically headed to DNA-categorized ID badges reminiscent of yellow Star of David patches. Here once again Elizabeth Warren had been in the lead—claiming that her boomeranged DNA results showing a tiny drop of Native American lineage were thus proof that she was an indigenous victim after all—and so in her troubled mind truly had been deserving as the first Native American law professor at Harvard. Given this nonsense, one would think a distracted America has no real debt, and is in possession of a secure border, a thriving economy, a brilliantly educated youth, and only friends abroad.

Why is Wokeism Deadly?

Wokeism is a lethal distraction. As General Mark Milley, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and Chief of Naval Operations Michael Gilday lectured the nation on the various nefarious strains of white rage, whiteness, and white supremacy, the Taliban was systematically gobbling up Afghanistan. Meanwhile their boss in the White House quoted his woke military experts to lie there was no danger of a general collapse. No general objected. Apparently, Biden even phoned the Afghan president in a sordid attempt to leverage him likewise to lie that all was well. The ubiquitous Alexander Vindman was not listening in this time around.

In a traditional Islamic society, what were woke Americans doing bragging about gender studies programs at an Afghan university, flying pride flags at the U.S. embassy, and encouraging honorific George Floyd street murals? All that is usually the haughty cultural imperialism of would-be winners, not the virtue signaling of a defeated and humiliated diplomatic and military cohort fleeing toward the exits.

Think of this for a second: as the U.S. bureaucracy invested trillions in Afghanistan to virtue-signal against supposed George-Floyd type racism, its media appendages said nothing back home as the black candidate for the California governorship was the target of an egg-throwing woman wearing a gorilla mask. What a grotesque reminder that empires flounder abroad as they rot at home.

So, these distractions never sleep, even amid the greatest defeat and loss of global deterrence in U.S. military history since Vietnam. True ideologues that they are, even our defeated on the battlefield are unfazed in their wokeist creed.

As Kabul suffered its end of days, our bemedaled wokists were still lecturing the country about the gender ratios of the Afghan refugees on U.S. flights out, the culturally sensitive food awaiting them, and a new idea of a soft Taliban—or the notion that the medieval gangsters who had defeated the Pentagon were not really all that bad, but more likely “partners” in a shared agenda of seeing us skedaddle by August 31. Will they say that in six months?

Woke indemnity blinds us to racism and classism. Gavin Newsom, of French Laundry repute, is the epitome of a white-male mediocrity leveraging his rich family friends to elevate himself by quid pro quo favoritism. Joe Biden has voiced the most racist rants of any presidential candidate or president in the last 50 years (just recently he referred to his own senior black official as “boy”). Both bought woke insurance that inoculates them against their hypocrisy—or perhaps further fuels their own class and racial biases with an efficacy rate much more impressive than COVID vaccinations.

The creation of the blanket term “whiteness” is racist to the core. It imputes to anyone considered not sufficiently pigmented some sort of conspiratorial evil, regardless of individual character, beliefs, family history, or ideological outlook. It is incoherent since it blames the United States, and everything in it, for whiteness, and then demands that the nonwhite south of the equator from Africa to Asia be given instant access to this supposedly failed white contaminated miasma. Scarier still for the wokist, whiteness is just the new face of the old racist “blackness,” in which racists imputed to individual blacks supposedly collective pathologies to justify discrimination against a single individual.

Once the neo-Confederate idea of color triumphs, then there is no logical reason why “blackness,” “brownness,” “yellowness,” “redness” and every sort of pigmentary category should not be used to condemn individuals for their supposed membership in a taboo racial tribe, massaged and negatively stereotyped for contemporary advantage. We are headed back to 1840 not ahead to 2040.

If Something Can’t Go On Forever, It Will Stop

Finally, wokeism is unsustainable. We are already seeing large numbers of the supposedly “nonwhite” pushback against the wokeist trajectory, knowing that such a racialist monster may soon devour them, too. Drawing artificial racial Mason-Dixon lines inside millions of multiracial families, after the initial grifting subsides, will only incur anger at those who drew them. When Confederates embraced the one-drop, one-sixteenth rule, there was unanimous later agreement that it was not just abjectly racist, but lunatic; when the woke borrow such racial distillery it too will eventually be rejected as the crackpot hatred that it is.

There are probably some 100 million white males of the lower- and middle classes. Most feel little if any identity with the woke upper-middle class and wealthy bicoastal white male elite of some 20-30 million. If anything, a trucker from Boise has more in common with a Mexican-American sheriff in Modesto than he does with a woke techie in Menlo Park.

So, what is truly evil is the current woke trademark of loud privileged whites who scapegoat the losers in the globalist game as racist (or in the Obama-Hillary Clinton-Biden patois of “clingers,” “deplorables,” “irredeemables,” “dregs,” “chumps”), mostly out of elite condescension, virtue-signaling guilt, and pathetic contextualizing their own privilege by projecting their unearned status onto supposedly distant cultural losers.

There will be a substantial political correction to the madness, mostly because without one there is no longer a confident America abroad that advances and protects the interest of a free world challenged by nightmarish Chinese Communism.

Such racist selectivity would destroy a meritocratic and productive free market economy at home that fuels the Left’s massive government redistribution.

The victory of woke would guarantee that as Americans went full pre-modern and pre-civilizational, we would look in the mirror, straining to redefine and recategorize ourselves, and then search out which particular tribal band offers us the best protection from the roving mobs—and each other.

Even the Chinese apparat could not invent a more evil, more macabre way to destroy the United States.

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Last year, Breitbart reported “Idaho Police Arrest 3 at Outdoor Church Worship”:

Posted on September 13, 2021 by abyssum

THE CATHOLIC MONITOR

Will a Coney Barrett Supreme Court allow “Arresting People for Attending Church” by using the “Eugenics era Court that Authored Jacobson?

September 13, 2021 – Robert Barnes@barnes_law

The Eugenics era court that authored Jacobson also approved racial segregation, praised monopolies, cheered child labor, imprisoned people for speeches, banned minimum wage laws, ordered forced sterilizations, and stripped millions of their rights based on their parents’ ancestry [https://twitter.com/barnes_law/status/1437462934486200330]

Last year, Breitbart reported “Idaho Police Arrest 3 at Outdoor Church Worship”:

“Officers arrested Gabriel Rench, Rachel Bohnet, and Sean Bohnet, according to Moscow Report, a local independent news outlet. A video uploaded to social media shows Bohnet, a local music teacher, and his wife telling officers they refused to comply with an inaudible order. Moscow Report says the apparent infraction is that they refused to show identification.”

“Footage of the couple’s arrest shows the church body singing the hymn “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow” as officers place them in handcuffs.” [https://www.breitbart.com/faith/2020/09/24/idaho-police-arrest-3-at-outdoor-church-worship-event-in-defiance-of-mask-mandate/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+breitbart+%28Breitbart+News%29]

Will an Amy Coney Barrett Supreme Court allow “arresting people for attending church”?

Lawyer Robert Barnes who deals in civil, criminal and constitutional law reports that “Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh & Thomas… refutes and directly disagrees w/ the #Barrett pro-lockdown decision”:Robert Barnes@Barnes_Law

28mRead the excellent opinion by Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh & Thomas, that refutes and directly disagrees w/ the #Barrett pro-lockdown decision: “it is a mistake to take language in Jacobson as the last word on what the Constitution allows.” https://supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf [https://twitter.com/Barnes_Law]

However, it appears that Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts are in agreement on the “pro-lockdown decision.”

Is Barrett another Roberts who will allow “arresting people for attending church”?

On Twitter, WindTalker put it best on the irony of “the police are NOT going to protect our cities from rioting, looting and… arresting peaceful churchgoers”:WindTalker@nmlinguaphile· 1hWell, since
WindTalker@nmlinguaphile· 1hWell, since the police are NOT going to protect our cities from rioting, looting and mayhem, at least arresting people for attending church gives “law” enforcement something to do. Much less work arresting peaceful churchgoers too. Such “brave” officers. twitter.com/michaelcoudrey… [https://twitter.com/mrtnzfred], looting and mayhem, at least arresting people for attending church gives “law” enforceWindTalker@nmlinguaphile· 1h

Well, since the police are NOT going to protect our cities from rioting, looting and mayhem, at least arresting people for attending church gives “law” enforcement something to do. Much less work arresting peaceful churchgoers too. Such “brave” officers. twitter.com/michaelcoudrey… [https://twitter.com/mrtnzfred]ment something to do. Much less work arresting peaceful churchgoers too. Such “brave” officers. twitter.com/michaelcoudrey… [Retweet: https://twitter.com/mrtnzfred%5DPray 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.

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When we find “truth” only in our own appetites and urges, we make ourselves into a god—a fraudulent god, a fleeting god, a phony god—a false idol (see Wisdom 10:8, 14:27). Truth is more than a concept; truth is a person (see John 14:6)—the person who stood in front of Pilate, who, pathetically or scornfully, wanted to know the meaning of truth (John 18:38). Wisdom, then, lies in our ability, through grace, to discern the Truth and thus to know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, sacred and profane (Wisdom 4:12, Romans 16:19, 1 Thess 5:21-22).

Posted on September 13, 2021 by abyssum

OnePeterFive

Rebuilding Catholic Culture. Restoring Catholic Tradition

CATHOLIC LIFE

Profane Logic: Plagues of the Mind

Deacon James Toner

September 10, 2021

Conferences at various places and conversations with many people over the past few years have persuaded me that there is a torrent of profane (meaning impious and irreverent) “logic.” This is increasingly evident, not only in our institutions, but even in much of our daily life. Our former president, Bill Clinton, once captured its spirit in a talk at Jesuit Georgetown University by suggesting that the only secure foundation for democracy is a vigorous uncertainty about the truth of anything. That Clinton’s formulation was expressed at a university supposedly concerned with the permanent things (as in Ps. 90:2 or Jude 1:25) is an irony which apparently escaped Clinton and not a few others. It is inconvenient, however, for any public person or institution these days to testify to something as downright old fashioned as “truth.”

About thirty-five years ago, Professor Allan Bloom of the University of Chicago told us that “There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.” What is true for me, after all, may not be true for you—or so goes popular opinion, more entrenched in 2021 than it was in 1987. Many today think of truth as having all the illusion of an M.C. Escher print. Similarly, Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman employs the term “liquid modernity” to explain the rapid change he sees in relationships, convictions, and economies.https://1e897f9c3bab05ab2d9df706e9215ef3.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

Hebrews firmly teaches us, however, that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever; consequently, we must not be seduced by evanescent and bizarre teachings (13:8-9). The late Dr. Charles Rice of Notre Dame contended, with great regret, that “agnostic secular humanism is now our national religion.” The only real truth, on this view, is that truth, if it exists at all, is unknowable.

Here, then, is the profane logic which has come to be the core of our public philosophy. But more: it is at the heart, also, of many of our businesses, of our entertainment, our sports, our politics, our education, and even, occasionally, our religious convictions. It is a symptom of spiritual illness which Professor Bruce Thornton has described as “plagues of the mind.” The late Allan Bloom had it exactly right, unfortunately, when he said that “the self is the modern substitute for the soul.”

Here is how I would formulate this corrupt, if ubiquitous, “profane logic”:

Because there is no truth, there is only opinion.
Because there is only opinion, there can be no real authority.
Because there is no real authority, I am free to think, to do, and to be whatever I please.
Because I am free to think, to do, and to be whatever I please, I can and will create my own world of art, learning, and moral standards.
There is a “sacred word,” as Ayn Rand said, and it is “ego.”

In a 1992 Supreme Court case, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” Kennedy, as a Catholic, should have known that there is real liberty only where and when we are able to do what we ought to do. As St. Paul teaches us: where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (2 Cor 3:17; and see 10:5).

If we remove the “Spirit of the Lord,” which is truth and the moral sense, we have, not liberty, but spiritual chaos, moral relativism, and cultural chaos. At the heart of moral liberty, then, is not self-indulgence but awareness of and commitment to right reason (see CCC, 1959). Not for nothing did Dante tell us, 700 years ago, that “In His will is our peace.”

Several years ago at an academic convention, one of the main speakers suggested to the audience: “Take a moment to give ourselves a big hug. Let me remind us that the person we’re hugging is the most important person in our lives.” Of course, if anyone truly believes that, he cannot be a husband or a father or much of a son. If anyone truly believes that, she cannot be a mother or a wife or much of a daughter. That kind of rank egoism rules out religious conviction (see Mt. 16:24-25), genuine patriotism, and authentic friendship (Proverbs 18:24, John 15:13).

When we find “truth” only in our own appetites and urges, we make ourselves into a god—a fraudulent god, a fleeting god, a phony god—a false idol (see Wisdom 10:8, 14:27). Truth is more than a concept; truth is a person (see John 14:6)—the person who stood in front of Pilate, who, pathetically or scornfully, wanted to know the meaning of truth (John 18:38). Wisdom, then, lies in our ability, through grace, to discern the Truth and thus to know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, sacred and profane (Wisdom 4:12, Romans 16:19, 1 Thess 5:21-22).

There is, then, a sacred logic:

Because truth exists, there can be the light of wisdom—the recognition of truth, which is never merely a matter of opinion. (It was Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen who said the crowd’s choice of Barabbas [Mt 27:21] was the first public opinion poll!)
Because wisdom exists, authority which is rooted in it deserves respect.
Because respectable authority exists, I am genuinely free to the extent that I accept that authority and configure my thoughts, words, and actions to it (Romans 12:2; CCC, 1269).
Because, guided by proper authority (Psalm 25:10), I seek to become the man or woman I am called to be (Eph 4:1), I discover a world of art, of learning, and of moral standards which provides meaning and direction for all people who see it (Mt 13:16).
There is a sacred name, but it is St. Paul, not Ayn Rand, who told the Philippians (2:9-11), and us, about it: Jesus.

Photo credit: SevenStorm Juhaszimrus via pexels.com.

Deacon James Toner

Deacon James H. Toner (M.A., William & Mary; Ph.D., Notre Dame) is Professor Emeritus of Leadership and Ethics at the U.S. Air War College, a former U.S. Army officer, and author of numerous books, articles, reviews, and monographs. He has taught at Notre Dame, Norwich, Auburn, the U.S. Air Force Academy, and Holy Apostles College & Seminary. He has contributed many columns to The Catholic Thing, Crisis Magazine, One Peter Five, and the Wanderer, as well as myriad academic and military periodicals. He and his wife Rebecca have three sons and eleven grandchildren.

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“is this the same Latin rite?” an emphatic “yes!” has been the response. Why? It is because those in the Church have been promoting not so much an absence of continuity, but rather an active faking of continuity. Perhaps we have Pope Francis to thank for finally bringing this home

Posted on September 13, 2021 by abyssum

OnePeterFive

Rebuilding Catholic Culture. Restoring Catholic Tradition

The Hermeneutic of 17% and the Faking of Reality

Dan Millette September 13, 2021

Here is a typical modern situation: A couple – or throuple – hires two television stars to renovate their historic house. The homeowners leave for two weeks while the celebrities argue about what tiles, fixtures, and lamps they plan to install. Meanwhile, an actual crew of laborers work behind-the-scenes to do the real painting and tile installation. In fairness to the television stars, they do show up on the last day of the renovation to fluff a few pillows and talk about how stressful the process has been. The day of the reveal comes. In walk the homeowners. Their jaws drop and they utter the rehearsed crude line: “Oh ***! Is this even the same house?!” Awkward laughs ensue. Another successful home renovation episode concludes.

Such is the exalted state of television these days. I imagine one John Senior calling down from heaven: “Smash the television set!” Someday, Mr. Senior, someday soon. However, for now there is an analogy to be derived from this.

Let us take the scenario one step further. Suppose the television stars take the house renovation and, without the homeowner’s knowledge, start smashing down all walls, cupboards, and countertops. The roof and front porch are removed. Even the foundation is jackhammered away and replaced with a combination of untreated wood, spray foam, and sand. The star renovators, being as ruthless as they are arrogant, leave little behind of the original house. To the dumpsters go the antique furniture, hand-crafted bannisters, and rock-solid oak flooring. In comes the shag carpets, rainbow wallpaper, and checkered linoleum. As the great reveal is made, the homeowners drop their jaws, though in disbelief, and murmur, “Is this even the same house?” This time the phrase is not accompanied with awkward laughter.

The television stars answer that they have left more than enough of the old house. “What use is a study filled with… books, anyway?” they explain, while rearranging the new lime-green asparagus steamer neatly beside a custom ice-cream scoop warmer. “Naturally this is the same house! I think we even kept one of the doors. You’ll love how we painted it hot pink. Also, there might be an original vanity in one of the bathrooms upstairs. All in all, you’ll be happy to know that we kept 17% of the character of the original home. So, of course it’s the same house!”

A brawl ensues. Finally, television is worth watching.

Continuity. It is crucial to the wellbeing of a functional society. Natura non facit saltus – “nature makes no jump” – is Leibniz’s oft-quoted apothegm. There is truth to this. I do not think a standard business could survive if it abruptly fired 83% of its employees. Rewriting 83% of the American Constitution would cause more than a little chaos to Americans. Drastically altering 83% of one’s wardrobe to identify with, say, the hippie movement would make family and friends wonder if a mid-life crisis was happening. “What’s going on with you?” they might ask, “you’re not the same person.” There is only so much change something, or someone, can undergo without it being a rupture.

Ultimately in all of this I am referring to the Mass; the sublime gift from God, organically developed with great devotion and care throughout centuries. The Mass is far more than a business, national constitution, or even personal identity. It is our faith. It is our very redemption, offered in an unbloody manner. That up to 83% of the Orations at Mass were altered or removed with the creation – and I do mean creation – of the novus ordo Mass is not a trivial matter. That Latin and the Roman Canon were essentially gutted and tossed in a dumpster, along with a sweeping amount of prayers and gestures, all while whitewashing the churches and placing man – not Christ’s sacrifice – at the center of the action. What we are dealing with is not simply a rupture, but a nuclear explosion.

I do not wish to belabor the point. To say that the novus ordo – and yes, it is a valid Mass – and traditional Latin Mass are not in continuity is obvious to even a seven-year-old child. “Dad, I don’t want to go to Mass in town. I want to go to real Mass,” said my one son to me. Ouch. The emperor has no clothes. Despite Benedict XVI’s repeated past attempts at a hermeneutic of continuity, even he could not fool a bright young child when it comes to Mass. A child knows when he is being sprinkled with holy water at the asperges, and when he is not.

Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a “real Mass” in my parts for over a month. Locking the old Mass away is the new nefarious agenda. Pope Francis’ summer motu proprio attacking the traditional Latin Mass has sought to bar such little ones as my son from approaching the TLM. But there is a salient consolation from his otherwise disastrous proclamation. That is, the blatant truth was finally admitted. Francis publicly confessed that the two Masses are, in fact, not in continuity. From his own mouth came the word that the new Mass is the “unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman rite,” and that the TLM is not. His conclusion is utterly wrong, of course, but it nevertheless professes that the two Masses are on entirely different playing fields. Reports of continuity have been greatly exaggerated. End of story.

It must be asked, then, if we do not have continuity, what do we have? To say we have change, or even rupture, is insufficient. I return to the late Catholic thinker, John Senior. In his important work, The Death of Christian Culture, Senior mused on the transcendentals Being and Truth. He noted that “the opposite of Being is not just nothing – the mere absence of Being, like empty space, which has a kind of ablative reality, a potential for being filled. Pure non-Being, anti-Being, is the faking of reality” (p. 35).

I would argue that, for the past 50 years, we have had the faking of continuity. It has been widespread, deliberate, and at times malicious. We have been told by our fathers and theologians that black is white, up is down, Dan Schutte and Gregorian chant are both valid options, Canons can be created by committees, and that keeping 17% of the Orations makes for perfect continuity with our ancestors. When we have gawked in disbelief and asked honestly, “is this the same Latin rite?” an emphatic “yes!” has been the response. Why? It is because those in the Church have been promoting not so much an absence of continuity, but rather an active faking of continuity. Perhaps we have Pope Francis to thank for finally bringing this home. Did I just say that?

To all of this I must conclude with an obvious point. It is obvious to those theologians able to submit detailed arguments, obvious to a seven-year-old child wondering why one Mass does not have the prayers at the foot of the altar, and now even admitted as obvious by Pope Francis himself. That is, the TLM and novus ordo are not in continuity, which therefore means that the continuity-wishing-game must cease and desist. It is distracting, artificial, unfruitful, and ultimately a fusion of modernism with antiquarianism. More than this, it is the active assertion of what is not true; it is the faking of reality. There is no hermeneutic of seventeen percent, no matter how much we pretend.

Blessed and true continuity: it is crucial to a thriving Church. To which one may be forgiven for wondering: “Is this even the same Church?” For thriving, we are not.

Photo by Kevin Woblick on Unsplash.

Dan Millette

Dan Millette is a husband and father of four. He teaches in Saskatchewan, Canada. Millette is a graduate from Our Lady Seat of Wisdom College in Ontario and has a Master of Arts degree in theology from Holy Apostles College in Connecticut. His personal blog is www.bravestthing.com.

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The award-winning novelist and journalist Roger L. Simon said that the pull yourself up by your own bootstraps Larry Elder attended South Central’s Crenshaw High which is one of the worst slum schools in California meanwhile the pro-Gavin Newsom media is attacking Elder for lacking “values”:

Posted on September 13, 2021 by abyssum

THE CATHOLIC MONITOR

Newsom was a Drunk who Slept “with the Wife of… [his] Best Friend” & had a “Sugar Daddy” who was “Oil Heir Gordon Getty”

September 12, 2021

Gavin Newsom 'ate birthday dinner INSIDE California restaurant' | Daily Mail Online

“Photos emerge of mask-less Gavin Newsom breaking his rules for private gatherings.” [https://www.kusi.com/photos-emerge-of-mask-less-gavin-newsom-breaking-his-rules-for-private-gatherings/]

The award-winning novelist and journalist Roger L. Simon said that the pull yourself up by your own bootstraps Larry Elder attended South Central’s Crenshaw High which is one of the worst slum schools in California meanwhile the pro-Gavin Newsom media is attacking Elder for lacking “values”:

But just what are those California values everyone is supposed to hold so dear Newsom was speaking about? And are they in the process of changing or going back to something from years ago that was lost?

In a sense, the current governor and the editor of the state’s most prominent paper are correct, this recall election is about values.

But are they the values of a rich class that has, for years and years, sent their kids to private schools while they—at the insistence of all-powerful teachers’ unions—deny poor minority children “school choice” and force them into schools like the one Larry Elder attended years back in South Central, Crenshaw High, from which, just recently, but two percent of students passed a basic math proficiency test? [https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/elder-versus-newsom-a-battle-for-the-soul-of-america_3974246.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-09-01&mktids=2d240b912c772a0ab22c5f7b07a0f9a5&est=vsqujvSkEXMGItPKrocvLBoPtrAsP%2F5f4GW1ihiSMLJrhGrIq4pj%2BDl6L58T]

Are those “California values” reflected in the slimy elitist Newsom being an apparent puppet of oil heir Gordon Getty, having “an affair with his appointments secretary… [who] was married to one of his top political aides and best friend,” and who apparently was a scandalous public drunk who “let everyone believe that he was going into legitimate alcohol rehab,” but never went.

The Sacramento Bee gave a brief summary of Newsom’s “white male privilege. Class privilege. Wealth privilege” before he ran against Elder:

He has white male privilege. Class privilege. Wealth privilege. The privilege of good looks.

All creates a Teflon exterior, protecting Newsom’s horrendous lapses of judgment and character, excusing his questionable background. It is simply accepted without eliciting the negative scrutiny that would dog or even derail lesser mortals.

If one of Newsom’s opponents – say, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa or State Treasurer John Chiang – were bankrolled by one of the richest men in California for most of their lives, as Newsom has been by oil heir Gordon Getty, they would be answering for it every day on the campaign trail. A Mexican American guy or an Asian guy having a rich, white sugar daddy greasing the skids for them at every critical turn of their adult lives would be viewed with suspicion. But that is what Newsom had with Getty…

… OK, well, in 2007 Newsom had an affair with his appointments secretary. And she wasn’t just his secretary. She was married to one of his top political aides and best friend. After the affair became public, Newsom’s lover somehow landed a $10,000 payout in public money from a fund intended for city employees with catastrophic and life-threatening illnesses.

How can sleeping with Gavin Newsom be considered a catastrophic or life-theatening illness?

As The Bee’s Angela Hart reported: “(Ruby Rippey-Tourk) was given approval by the former director of San Francisco’s public health department, Mitch Katz, according to documents received by The Sacramento Bee. She was granted approval for her substance abuse problems – a rare qualification. (Katz is a close adviser to Newsom on health care.)”

“A 2007 investigation by the city attorney’s office found no one other than Rippey-Gibbey had been allowed to receive sick leave payments for substance abuse alone, and there were cases in which city employees were denied participation in the program for substance abuse unaccompanied by a life-threatening illness.,” Hart wrote.

So nobody else ever got a payout like this, except the woman who slept with Newsom? And it was granted by a guy who now works for Newsom. As usual, Newsom was cleared of wrongdoing. Of course he was.

But how do you sleep with the wife of your best friend? Where do your mind and soul go when you allow yourself to descend to such a dark place? But it gets better. Newsom told everyone he had a drinking problem. So his grievous betrayal became about substance abuse. He had a problem, right? The narrative became that Newsom was going to rehab. He let everyone believe that he was going into legitimate alcohol rehab. It was all part of the Newsom redemption tour. Elitist

And then suddenly, as reported by Hart last month, it turned out he didn’t. He went to some encounter group meetings run by one of his enablers. But real legitimate alcohol rehab? Nope. [https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/marcos-breton/article210409949.html]

Francis Notes:

– “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

Election Notes:

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The majority’s second ruling turned on “[l]aw professor hypotheticals and dreamed-up scenarios” that defy precedent and that, if applied elsewhere, would mean that “no statute could pass constitutional muster.”

Posted on September 13, 2021 by abyssum

DOJ Lawsuit Against Texas Heartbeat Act—A Quick Overview

By ED WHELAN

September 13, 2021 3:28 PM

Last Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice, on behalf of the United States, filed suit against Texas over the Texas Heartbeat Act. (For background on the broader controversy, read my posts on the litigation brought by abortion providers against the Act and the Supreme Court’s denial of their request for emergency relief.)

The complaint alleges that the Act has inflicted irreparable injury on the United States in two different respects. First, under a parens patriae theory, the complaint alleges that the Act “injures the United States by depriving women in Texas of their constitutional rights while seeking to prevent them from vindicating those rights in federal court.” (See pp. 15-16.) Second, the complaint alleges that the Act “unconstitutionally restricts the operations of the federal government” (see pp. 16-24)—in particular, the Department of Labor’s Job Corps Program (pp. 16-19), the Office of Refugee Resettlement (p. 19), the Bureau of Prisons (pp. 19-21), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (pp. 21-22), the Office of Personnel Management (pp. 22-23), and the Department of Defense (pp. 23-24).

The complaint presents three counts: “Supremacy Clause—Fourteenth Amendment” (pp. 24-25), “Preemption” (pp. 25-26), and “Violation of Intergovernmental Immunity” (p. 26).

At DOJ’s request, the case has been assigned to Judge Robert L. Pitman, the Obama appointee handling the litigation brought by abortion providers against the Act. (That litigation is now pending on appeal before the Fifth Circuit on jurisdictional questions.)

Some preliminary observations:

1. The complaint does not undertake to identify the specific causes of action that might underlie its counts. It instead asserts generically that the federal district court “has authority to provide the relief requested under the Supremacy Clause, U.S. Const. art. VI, cl. 2, the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 28 U.S.C. §§ 1651, 2201, and 2202, and its inherent equitable authority.” Whether and to what extent any of these sources actually creates a cause of action for a particular claim in DOJ’s complaint will likely be a central matter of dispute in the case.

I’ll briefly illustrate the point with respect to the complaint’s first count. As the Supreme Court made crystal clear just a few years ago (in Justice Scalia’s majority opinion in Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Center (2015)), the “Supremacy Clause is not the source of any federal rights and certainly does not create a cause of action.” (Emphasis added, citations omitted, and cleaned up.) Further, the Fourteenth Amendment does not itself create a cause of action but instead only gives Congress the power to enforce its provisions “by appropriate legislation.” So DOJ will need to establish that one of the other authorities it identifies confers a cause of action regarding the injury that it alleges here. It’s not at all clear that it will be able to do so.

2. The relief potentially available to DOJ would seem to differ considerably depending on whether it is aimed to address the federal government’s asserted parens patriae injury or the injury resulting from alleged interference with the federal government’s operations. In the latter case, it might well be enough (if the court were to agree with DOJ) to exempt the federal government’s operations from the application of the Act.

3. DOJ has not yet filed a motion for preliminary-injunctive relief. Once expedited briefing is complete on such a motion, it’s a safe bet that Judge Pitman will give DOJ whatever relief it requests. The real action will be in the Fifth Circuit, including on the threshold question whether to block Pitman’s order pending appeal.

4. One big-picture point: Nothing in DOJ’s claim to have a right to sue to redress its supposed parens patriae injury hinges on the private civil-enforcement provisions of the Act. Thus, if DOJ were to prevail, that would open the door wide to DOJ’s bringing all sorts of individual-rights constitutional claims against whatever state laws offend the current Administration. DOJs in Republican administrations would sue predominantly “blue” states over such matters as gun regulations and racial preferences, while DOJs in Democratic administrations would sue predominantly “red” states on behalf of liberal causes. The end result would be a dramatic escalation in the politicization of DOJ.

Powerful Opinion by Judge Thapar on Illegitimacy and Unworkability of Roe/Casey Regime

By ED WHELAN

September 13, 2021 11:45 AM

On Friday, a Sixth Circuit panel majority ruled (in Memphis Center for Reproductive Health v. Slatery) that two provisions of Tennessee abortion law are constitutionally impermissible. Specifically, the majority (opinion by Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey, joined by fellow Clinton appointee Karen Nelson Moore) ruled (1) that a ban on post-heartbeat abortions imposes an “undue burden” before viability under Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and (2) that prohibiting abortion when the abortionist “knows” that the pregnant woman “is seeking the abortion because of the sex of the unborn child … because of the race of the unborn child … [or] because of a prenatal diagnosis, test, or screening indicating Down syndrome or the potential for Down syndrome in the unborn child” is impermissibly vague.

Writing separately, Judge Amul Thapar explained that Supreme Court precedent compelled him to concur in the first ruling but that the majority’s second ruling turned on “[l]aw professor hypotheticals and dreamed-up scenarios” that defy precedent and that, if applied elsewhere, would mean that “no statute could pass constitutional muster.” (See pp. 37-38, 63-70.)

More notably, while explaining that he was bound to apply the Court’s Roe/Casey regime, Thapar also powerfully expounded how the Roe/Casey framework “conflict[s] with the original understanding of the Constitution,” “cannot be justified under any modern approach to constitutional interpretation” and “has proven unworkable in practice.”

Among other things: The Roe majority “rewrote history” in trying to claim that a right to abortion has a strong historical foundation. (Pp. 42-50.) The living-constitutionalist argument for abortion ignores that abortion “remains one of the most hotly contested issues in American life,” that “‘the United States is an outlier within the international community’ when it comes to abortion,” and that “the steady march of science undermines” Roe’s agnosticism about when the life of a human being begins and Casey’s arbitrary adoption of a viability line. (Pp. 50-55.) And Casey’s “undue burden” test “has proved inherently resistant to neutral and principled application.” (Pp. 55-62.)

Here are some excerpts from Thapar’s opinion on the last point:

What legal rules and doctrines have suffered at the hand of abortion jurisprudence? Statutory interpretation, the rules of civil procedure, the standards for appellate review of legislative factfinding, and the First Amendment to name a few. [Citations omitted.]

Rather than mend the Nation’s fractures, the Casey regime’s lack of concrete guidance has generated decades of bitter litigation and widening circuit splits. Consider, for instance, the circuit split over parental notification requirements. Compare Planned Parenthood v. Camblos, 155 F.3d 352, 367 (4th Cir. 1998) (en banc), with Planned Parenthood v. Adams, 937 F.3d 973, 985–90 (7th Cir. 2019), and Planned Parenthood v. Miller, 63 F.3d 1452, 1460 (8th Cir. 1995). Or the split about laws requiring abortion providers to make certain disclosures. Compare EMW Women’s Surgical Ctr. v. Beshear, 920 F.3d 421, 430–32 (6th Cir. 2019), and Planned Parenthood v. Rounds, 686 F.3d 889, 893–906 (8th Cir. 2012), with Stuart v. Camnitz, 774 F.3d 238, 244–50 (4th Cir. 2014). Another divide has emerged over nondiscrimination provisions such as section 217. Compare Preterm[-Cleveland v. McCloud, 994 F.3d [512,] 535 [(6th Cir. 2021), with Planned Parenthood v. Comm’r of Ind. State Dep’t of Health, 888 F.3d 300, 307–10 (7th Cir. 2018). Even the question of whether states may prohibit certain types of dilation & extraction procedures—namely, the dismemberment of a still-living unborn child—has produced a circuit split. Compare Whole Woman’s Health v. Paxton, No. 17-51060, 2021 WL 3661318, at *1 (5th Cir. Aug. 18, 2021) (en banc), with W. Ala. Women’s Ctr. v. Williamson, 900 F.3d 1310, 1319 (11th Cir. 2018), and EMW Women’s Surgical Ctr., P.S.C. v. Friedlander, 960 F.3d 785, 806–07 (6th Cir. 2020). These conflicts, and others like them, highlight that an undue burden is in the eye of the beholder.

Addendum: Carrie Severino provides some other choice excerpts in this post of hers.

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ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP

LAY CATHOLICS SUPPORT THE Latin Mass

Lay Catholics on Latin Mass: ‘We will not let anyone deprive the faithful of this treasure’

Letter of the Faithful Attached to the Traditional Mass to the Catholics of the Whole World

So when we refer to Biden as a viper—“a vicious or treacherous person”—we are being quite precise.

COULD THIS BE THE RESULT OF A DECISION BY JORGE BERGOLIO?

LAST GASP FOR SPIRITUAL STRENGTH?

Loss of ceremonial sword marks loss of chivalry

Loss in Historical Context

Chivalry: A Saint-Making Force

Chivalry Manifest

Catholic Spiritedness Dying?

Eric Clapton DESCRIBES HIS HORRIFIC EXPERIENCE WITH THE CORONAVIRUS JAB

Last year, Breitbart reported “Idaho Police Arrest 3 at Outdoor Church Worship”:

THE CATHOLIC MONITOR

Will a Coney Barrett Supreme Court allow “Arresting People for Attending Church” by using the “Eugenics era Court that Authored Jacobson?

Profane Logic: Plagues of the Mind

“is this the same Latin rite?” an emphatic “yes!” has been the response. Why? It is because those in the Church have been promoting not so much an absence of continuity, but rather an active faking of continuity. Perhaps we have Pope Francis to thank for finally bringing this home

The Hermeneutic of 17% and the Faking of Reality

The award-winning novelist and journalist Roger L. Simon said that the pull yourself up by your own bootstraps Larry Elder attended South Central’s Crenshaw High which is one of the worst slum schools in California meanwhile the pro-Gavin Newsom media is attacking Elder for lacking “values”:

THE CATHOLIC MONITOR

Newsom was a Drunk who Slept “with the Wife of… [his] Best Friend” & had a “Sugar Daddy” who was “Oil Heir Gordon Getty”

The majority’s second ruling turned on “[l]aw professor hypotheticals and dreamed-up scenarios” that defy precedent and that, if applied elsewhere, would mean that “no statute could pass constitutional muster.”

DOJ Lawsuit Against Texas Heartbeat Act—A Quick Overview

Powerful Opinion by Judge Thapar on Illegitimacy and Unworkability of Roe/Casey Regime

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