Religion’s Role Cited In Florida Curriculum August 31, 2021 Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on Florida’s social studies curriculum: Last spring, several critics of Western Civilization, mostly atheists, took aim at Florida’s proposed social studies curriculum. Their phobia of religion was on grand display as they railed against supposed religious indoctrination. Over the summer, the draft of the curriculum was revised. Some changes were made, though none were substantial. Critics were particularly exercised over any mention of the Judeo-Christian roots of Western civilization and American history. Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) is one of the nation’s premier Christian-bashing organizations. The atheists were upset with the draft curriculum which they said emphasized “how Judeo-Christian values influenced American’s founding ideals and documents”; they also objected to asking students to identify “Judeo-Christian values.” An attorney for FFRF, Ryan D. Jayne, opined that “Public schools cannot present the government as a Christian or ‘Judeo-Christian’ entity.” American Atheists also expressed its outrage over the alleged emphasis on the “Judeo-Christian” roots of the American founding, and the need to identify “Judeo-Christian” values. Jocelyn Williamson of the Central Florida Freethought Community wrote a piece for the Orlando Sentinel where she feared students would learn of “Judeo-Christian” exceptionalism in American history. These critics are all dishonest. In the draft curriculum, the term “Judeo-Christian” is never mentioned. They made it up. The final version makes one mention, saying it is important for ninth grade students to recognize the historical and religious roots of Western civilization, including the “Judeo-Christian influence.” FFRF does not like the term “God-given rights” in reference to the Declaration of Independence. It should be happy knowing that it was deleted in the final document (though reference to “In God We Trust” and “one nation under God” remained). Similarly, the word “Creator” in the Declaration initially was mentioned twice but was cut to one. All of these critics were unhappy with mentioning the Ten Commandments, and some were angered over the term “Protestant work ethic.” The former appeared once in the draft and was excised from the final document; neither the draft nor the approved version makes any reference to the “Protestant work ethic.” The fact is America has benefited from the Protestant work ethic, and indeed those who do not embody it tend to be at the bottom of the socio-economic scale. Importantly, our rights as Americans do not come from government—they are “God-given,” the result of our “Creator,” as noted by Jefferson in the Declaration. Moreover, the Ten Commandments are the moral edifice of Western civilization, which is based on our “Judeo-Christian” values. The assault on the religious roots of our heritage is not something we should tolerate. The truth can never be sacrificed on the altar of radical secularism.
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Letter #97, 2021, Tuesday, August 31: True GuardiansInboxDr. Robert Moynihanvia icontactmail4.com 9:07 AM (1 hour ago)to me ”The teachings of the fathers are despised, the apostolic traditions are ignored, and the churches are filled with the inventions of innovators. The shepherds have been driven out, and in their place they bring in ravening wolves to tear apart the flock of Christ.”—St. Basil of Caesarea, in 372. A.D. ”Thus the paradoxical situation arises: in order that the Bride of Christ, the Church, may be preserved from amnesia, from a loss of memory, Catholics faithful to tradition will now have to prove themselves as counter-revolutionaries, conservative faithful will have to assume the role of rebels, in order to be themselves ultimately found to be, before the judgment of history and above all in the eyes of God, the true and only, guardians of tradition, who really deserve this name.” —Dr. Michael Fiedrowicz, a German priest from the archdiocese of Berlin who is an expert on Church history and liturgy, especially the history and theology of the old Latin Mass, in the final lines of the essay republished below *** Letter #97, 2021, Tuesday, August 31: True Guardians In the ebb and flow of history, we are often presented with difficult, wrenching choices. Very difficult choices, as various voices call on us to do one thing, or its opposite — to remain faithful to the old ways, to the past, or to reject the old ways, the past, in order to embrace new ways proposed as better than those of the past. This has happened repeatedly throughout human history, and throughout the history of the Church. And each time the choices are presented, souls struggle to see clearly, choose the right path, the path with the deepest fidelity to Christ. *** We now face such a time again, a time when “the teachings of the fathers are despised” and “the apostolic traditions are ignored,” to city St. Basil of Caesarea (from the first quote above). We know that our Church and our culture have passed through decades of turmoil. We know that millions have left the Church and thousands the religious life. We know that our very leaders have proposed and counter-proposed — Cardinal Siri and Cardinal Montini, Paul VI and Cardinals Ottavianiand Bacci, Karl Rahner and Joseph Ratzinger, Fr. Karol Wojtyla and Fr. Charles Curran, Fr. John Courtney Murray and Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Cardinal Angelo Sodano and Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò — all of them tacking one way and then the other in the face of the roaring winds of modernity (“the synthesis of all heresies”), sometimes guiding us into quieter harbors, sometimes guiding us out into the deep, where the winds rage, the surging waves are white-capped, and the barque of Peter, heaving and plunging and taking on water, seems about to capsize. *** And so the choice is presented to us: do we allow the Bride of Christ to forget Her past? To suffer amnesia, forgetting the ways of praying, and of believing, of those fathers and mothers, those grandfathers and grandmothers, who prayed and believed in the generations before us? Do we believe that our time alone has understood the correct faith, the correct love, the correct hope? Are we so irreverent with regard to our fathers and mothers in the faith? Dr, Michael Fiedrowicz, a German historian and liturgist, a priest of the archdiocese of Berlin, urges us to remain faithful, no matter how intense the storm. *** We may not know all the reasons for the decisions announced, the measures taken, by our leaders. Perhaps there are important things we do not know, things which would explain certain paradoxes and mysteries. But we must persist and persevere with what we do know: what was good and holy for our ancestors can and ought to be still good and holy for us today. This is the continuity of faith and practice over time, over space, and we are merely one more link in this long chain, a chain that begins with Christ, stretches down through the centuries to our own time, and will continue after us to the end of time. What is the conclusion of the good professor Fiedrowicz? That our destiny and vocation is precisely to find ourselves in thistime, having to preserve the faith in this time, in these circumstances. And in this time, in these circumstances, Fiedrowicz argues, “conservative faithful will have to assume the role of rebels, in order to be themselves ultimately found to be, before the judgment of history and above all in the eyes of God, the true and only traditionis custodes, guardians of tradition, who really deserve this name.” Let us be, then, of our tradition the true guardians.—RM =================== Note: I received this link to a Twitter post, and propose it here for your consideration: (link). =================== Here is the essay by Dr. Michael Fiedrowicz, posted yesterday on the Rorate Caeli website: Dr. Michael Fiedrowicz on Traditionis Custodes: “Frighteningly reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984” The Rorate Caeli website editor yesterday (August 30) wrote: “We publish today an English translation of a powerful piece written by Prof. Dr. Michael Fiedrowicz (b. 1957), an expert on Church history and liturgy, and author of the best scholarly book on the Traditional Latin Mass: “The Traditional Mass: History, Form, and Theology of the Classical Roman Rite” (Angelico Press, 2020). This piece appeared first in the “IK-Nachrichten” of the association Pro Sancta Ecclesia and then on August 30 at CNA-Deutsch. Professor Fiedrowicz teaches at the Faculty of Theology in Trier at the Chair of Ancient Church History, Patrology and Christian Archaeology. He is a priest of the Archdiocese of Berlin. “They Do Not Even Know What Has Been Taken from Them” By Prof. Dr. Michael Fiedrowicz Lex orandi–lex credendi [Note: “The law of praying is the law of believing” or, perhaps better, “The way one prays determines how and what one believes”] On July 16, 2021, the feast day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the Apostolic Exhortation in the form of a Motu proprioTraditionis custodes on the use of the Roman Liturgy before the 1970 reform was promulgated. Article 1 reads, “The liturgical books promulgated by Popes St. Paul VI and St. John Paul II in conformity with the decrees of the Second Vatican Council are the sole expression (l’unica espressione) of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite.” To appreciate the full implications of this provision, it is necessary to know that the term lex orandi—the law or rule of prayer—is part of a broader formula coined in the 5th century. The Gallic monk Prosper of Aquitaine, between 435 and 442, formulated the principle: “so that the rule of prayer may determine the rule of faith” (ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi). In the background was a theological controversy about grace. The question was whether the first beginning of faith (initium fidei) also proceeded from the grace of God or from the decision of man. Prosper referred to the Church’s prayer of intercession and thanksgiving, which is significant for the doctrine of grace: “But let us also take into account the mysteries of the priestly prayers, which, handed down by the apostles, are solemnly offered uniformly throughout the world and throughout the entire Catholic Church, so that the rule of prayer may determine the rule of faith” (indiculus 8). Prosper then enumerated various requests made by the Church in her official prayers and deduced from them the necessity of divine grace, since otherwise the Church’s petition and thanksgiving would be useless and meaningless. For Prosper, then, the faith of the Church manifested itself in the prayer of the Church, so that the Church’s official prayer is the standard by which the Church’s faith is to be read. Already Prosper’s teacher Augustine had developed the idea that the prayer of the Church testifies to its faith and makes it recognizable. The principle lex orandi–lex credendi was henceforth part of the basic understanding of Catholic doctrine. The liturgy, like the Scriptures and Tradition, is a locus theologicus, a place of discovery, a source of knowledge and a witness to what the Church believes. Pope Pius XII called the liturgy “a faithful reflection of the doctrine handed down by our ancestors and believed by the Christian people” (Encyclical Letter Ad Coeli Reginam, 1954). Likewise, he emphasized, “The liturgy as a whole, therefore, contains the Catholic faith insofar as it publicly testifies to the faith of the Church” (Encyclical Mediator Dei, 1947). The sole expression of all the elements of the Roman Rite? Pope Francis, however, now defines, or rather reduces, the liturgy of the Roman Rite to that which is expressed in the liturgical books promulgated by Paul VI and John Paul II. These books are “the sole expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite.” If one assumes the original [i.e., face-value] meaning of the terminology used here, then the lex credendi—what is to be believed—would also have to be taken from those books alone. But is this true? Are these books really the only ones that suffice to be able to read the Catholic faith from them? Certainly, the papal letter accompanying the motu proprio suggests that all the essentials of the Roman Rite before the liturgical reform can also be found in Paul VI’s missal: “Those who wish to celebrate with devotion the earlier liturgical form will not find it difficult to find in the Roman Missal, reformed according to the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, all the elements of the Roman Rite, especially the Roman Canon, which is one of the most characteristic elements.” Leaving aside the experience of liturgical practice, where the Roman Canon is almost never used in the Novus Ordo—either in parish services, in episcopal churches, or at papal liturgies—the question must be asked whether indeed “all the elements of the Roman Rite” are to be found in the new liturgical books. This question can be answered in the affirmative only by someone who considers obsolete much of what has characterized the Roman Rite for centuries and constituted its theological-spiritual richness, as is evidently the case with Pope Francis. Liturgical reform: damnatio memoriae This would include everything that was eradicated by the driving forces of the liturgical reform, whether to accommodate Protestants in a misguided ecumenical effort or to meet the supposed mentality of “modern man.” To name just a few examples: —Feasts of the saints were abolished or degraded in the liturgical hierarchy. —The Offertory prayers with the clear and unambiguous idea of sacrifice were replaced by a Jewish table prayer. —The Dies irae, the poignant depiction of the Last Judgment, was no longer tolerated in the Requiem Mass. —The Apostle Paul’s warning in the Maundy Thursday epistle that he who communicates unworthily eats and drinks condemnation (1 Cor 11:27) was omitted. —The Orations: those “most beautiful jewels of the Church’s liturgical treasure” (Dom Gérard Calvet OSB), which are among the most ancient components of her spiritual heritage and are completely imbued with dogma, constitute virtually a ‘summa theologica’ in nuce, expressing the Catholic faith unabridged and concisely… The Orations of the Classical Rite alone, of which only a very small part was incorporated unchanged into the Missal of Paul VI, contain and preserve numerous ideas that have been weakened or have disappeared altogether in the later modified versions, but which belong indissolubly to the Catholic faith: detachment from earthly goods and the longing for the eternal; the struggle against heresy and schism; the conversion of unbelievers; the necessity of returning to the Catholic Church and to unadulterated truth; merits, miracles, apparitions of the saints; God’s wrath against sin and the possibility of eternal damnation. All of these aspects are deeply rooted in the biblical message and have unmistakably shaped Catholic piety for nearly two millennia. In addition to these direct modifications to the Roman Rite itself, however, we must not forget the other concomitants that reveal a profoundly changed basic understanding of the Holy Mass: precious high altars destroyed, with meal tables taking their place; valuable paraments burned or sold off; “Tinnef and Trevira” (M. Mosebach) made their entrance,[1] Gregorian chant and the Latin sacral language were banished from the liturgy. The approach of the liturgical reform is partly reminiscent of the damnatio memoriae in ancient Rome, the erasure of the memory of disliked rulers. Names on triumphal arches were erased, coins with their images melted down. Nothing should remind us of them any more. All the changes that actually took place in the course of the liturgical reforms unmistakably resemble a damnatio memoriae, a deliberate erasure of the memory of the traditional Catholic liturgy. Parallels in the fourth century In the history of the Church there have been similar situations again and again. In the middle of the fourth century, the divinity of Christ and that of the Holy Spirit were denied: Son and Spirit were only creatures of God. Bishoprics and churches were widely in the hands of the Arian heretics. Those who remained orthodox gathered in remote places to worship. In 372, Bishop Basil of Caesarea gave a moving description of the situation: “The teachings of the fathers are despised, the apostolic traditions are ignored, and the churches are filled with the inventions of innovators. The shepherds have been driven out, and in their place they bring in ravening wolves to tear apart the flock of Christ. The places of prayer are deserted by those who gathered there, the wastelands are filled with wailing people. The elderly lament as they compare the former time with the present; the young are even more pitiful because they do not even know what has been taken from them.” (Epistula 9:2) These words from the fourth century undoubtedly also applied to the generations born after the Council: for a long time they did not even know what had been taken from them, knowing only the present appearance of the Church. Two expressions or one? Pope Benedict XVI, with the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum of July 7, 2007, made the treasures of the Church’s undiminished deposit of faith accessible again, so that younger generations could now know again and witness from their own experience what had originally been taken from them. The then-pontiff spoke of there being “two expressions of the lex orandi of the Church,” the ordinary expression (ordinaria expressio) found in the Missal promulgated by Paul VI, and the extraordinary expression (extraordinaria expressio) found in the Roman Missal reissued by St. Pius V and John XXIII (SP, art. 1). In his most recent motu proprio, Pope Francis refers directly to this passage (espressione della ‘lex orandi’) in his choice of words and sentence structure, but places himself in diametrical opposition to it by now determining only a “single form of expression” (l’unica espressione) of the lex orandi as valid (TC, art. 1). But what significance can the traditional form of the liturgy still claim for the Church’s consciousness of faith? If the recent motu proprio and the accompanying letter make readily apparent that the real goal in the middle or long-term is the total destruction of the traditional liturgy, and that for the time being it is still being granted a grace period with drastic restrictions that are intended rigorously to prevent any possibility of its further expansion, then—should decisive resistance fail to materialize—St. Basil the Great’s lament about the fate of the younger generation of his time will once again obtain with renewed force: “For they do not even know what has been taken from them.” Saving the Bride of Christ from amnesia The newly enacted regulations are frighteningly reminiscent of what the author George Orwell described as a bleak vision of the future in his 1948 novel 1984. There is the dictatorship of a Party, which rules in a totalitarian surveillance state: “Big Brother is watching you.” In this state there are different ministries. The Ministry of Peace prepares the wars. The Ministry of Abundance manages the socialist economy of scarcity. There is no mention of a Ministry of Health, but there is a Ministry of Truth, which spreads the official propaganda of lies: the party is always right. For this to be so, every memory of the past must be erased. No more comparisons must be possible; everything must appear to have no alternative. The Ministry of Truth is busy changing everything that reminds of the past and could make such a comparison possible. Orwell writes: ”Already we know almost literally nothing about the Revolution and the years before the Revolution. Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered.”[2] To associate Orwell’s words with the recent Council does not seem illegitimate, since Vatican II was widely celebrated as a “revolution of the Church from above.” Thus the paradoxical situation arises: in order that the Bride of Christ, the Church, may be preserved from amnesia, from a loss of memory, Catholics faithful to tradition will now have to prove themselves as counter-revolutionaries, conservative faithful will have to assume the role of rebels, in order to be themselves ultimately found to be, before the judgment of history and above all in the eyes of God, the true and only, guardians of tradition, who really deserve this name. NOTES [1] “Tinnef” means items made out of recycled plastics. “Trevira” is a type of polyester fabric. [2] Signet Classics edition, p. 155.
Might Taylor Marshall possibly think “the See… [could be] Impeded… Benedict does not accept Bergoglio as Pope so “Peaceful and Universal Acceptance” is Non-existent”?
Benedict VIII was opposed by an antipope, Gregory VI, who compelled him to flee Rome.[3] He was restored by King Henry II of Germany, whom he crowned emperor on 14 February 1014. – Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Benedict_VIII]
Today, the Catholic Monitor commenter unJabbed wrote:
Interestingly Taylor Marshall on August 28th tweeted, without further comment, a From Rome link to Marco Tosatti’s article covering the Andrea Cionci thesis of an impeded see.
Of course if the See is indeed impeded, then Benedict does not accept Bergoglio as pope so “peaceful and universal acceptance” is non-existent. [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/08/yes-dr-marshall-that-means-you.html?showComment=1630401243794#c5425700309250691343]
I cannot double check Marshall’s Twitter account to confirm the above because he has me blocked. But, here is a taste of the probable From Rome post which he may reportedly have tweeted:
However, the concept of an impeded See explains a number of oddities, such as when Ratzinger wrote in “Last Conversations”: “No pope has resigned for a thousand years, and even in the first millennium it was an exception”. Given that six popes abdicated in the first millennium and four in the second, he assimilates himself, as confirmed by the historian Mores (Univ. Milan) to the “exception” of the medieval pope Benedict VIII who, in the first millennium, was sent into exile by an antipope and then had – coincidentally – was restore to his see. It is also significant that the institution of the pope emeritus is now considered non-existent, so much so that – as Il Giornale.reports – the Vatican is working (now) to find a jurisprudential solution. So what has Ratzinger been for eight years? It would explain his white robe, the other papal prerogatives that he continues to enjoy and the strange ambiguity that persists in his statements and interviews, suggesting an inability to communicate clearly, because of the impeded seat.
The suspicion – a very serious one – is that in fact Pope Ratzinger has been communicating subtly through books and interviews for eight years, without anyone picking up his logical messages hidden under apparent inconsistencies. Is it possible that the adamantine and highly cultured theologian, after 2013 has forgotten Latin, canon law, Church history, while continuing to write books and give profound interviews? And that all these distractions always lead to the same scenario of the impeded See?
The latest discovery was made by a journalist from RomaIT, Mirko Ciminiello. Again in “Latest Conversations,” Ratzinger admits that he himself may indeed be the last pope on St. Malachy’s list of pontiffs: he practically does not consider Francis as his legitimate successor.If Benedict has not abdicated, in fact, the lines of succession are forever separated: one papal and one anti-papal, and if the cardinals do not settle the canonical question about his Declaratio, the true Church will continue in hiding, with a next spiritual leader who is the true successor of Benedict XVI. [https://www.fromrome.info/2021/08/28/tosatti-takes-up-the-discussion-of-benedict-xvis-intention-to-declare-a-impeded-see/]
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)
– 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.
Marilyn M. Singleton, MD, JD and Paul Byrne, MD—Greater Risk-Disease or Shot?—Radio Maria USA, Tuesday Noon ET
Dear Radio Maria listeners, donors and Children of Mary.
Both Doctors Singleton and Byrne have been our Guests on “The Quest for a Culture of Life in America” several times addressing COVID-19 infection and treatment issues. The situation today is very confusing with major pushes for universal vaccination from the federal government, big Pharm and big Media being challenged by an increasing counter-push against vaccination due to wide ranging adverse effects of vaccination.
Here are the ways you can listen to Radio Maria USA
Dr. Singleton is a board-certified anesthesiologist and past president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). She graduated from Stanford and earned her MD at UCSF Medical School. Dr. Singleton completed 2 years of Surgery residency at UCSF, then her
Anesthesia residency at Harvard’s Beth Israel Hospital. While still working in the operating room, she attended UC Berkeley Law School, focusing on constitutional law and administrative law. She interned at the National Health Law Project and practiced insurance and health law. She teaches classes in the recognition of elder abuse and constitutional law for non-lawyers.Dr Byrne is a pioneering neonatologist/pediatrician and international authority and critic on “brain death” caring for multiple patients scattered around the world. He has been a full Professor at Medical schools in 4 states and lectures on a wide range of medical and theological issues. Radio Maria USA listeners have been the beneficiary of many of his lectures.
As millions have received the unapproved experimental “vaccines” the reported adverse effects
of these not fully tested shots are becoming increasingly obvious and reported on many blogs, symposia and press conferences by highly qualified experts like Dr Peter McCullough, Elizabeth Lee Vliets, and many others from America, Europe and the middle east. The evidence cannot be ignored. The question being raised is this: “Which is the healthiest approach to COVID-19 and variants—Natural and “herd” immunity, OR the exposure to a variety of (and perhaps continuous) “shots” with uncertain short and long term effects that are being exposed by their
experimental use world-wide.I have asked Doctors Marilyn and Paul to share with us the serious adverse effects of these shots on the: 1. Heart–stroke, heart attack, clotting 2. Lungs–clotting, difficulty breathing3. Neurological Systems–immobility, headaches, cognition, 4. Immune System–COVID,
5. Pregnancy–miscarriage 6. Gynecology–menstruation, menopause 7. Other
Listen to today’s program on Youtube: Marilyn Singleton Paul Byrne 20210831
May we all be blessed physically and spiritually!!
Steve Koob, Co-founder One More Soul, and Host for “The Quest for a Culture of Life in America” steve@oloas.org
Steve Koob 20210511 or TBD Kevin Symonds 20210518 or TBD Kevin Symonds 20210525 or TBD Michael O’Neal 20210601 or TBD Paul Byrne 20210608 Jeanne Dvorak 20210622 Marilyn Singleton 20210615 Marilyn Singleton 20210629 Steve Koob 20210706
Paul Byrne 20210720 Christine Zainer 20210727 Nancy Valko 20210803 Tony Jesse 20210810 Maria McFadden Maffucci 20210817 Clarke Forsythe 20210824 Marilyn Singleton Paul Byrne 20210831
FROM INSIDE THE VATICAN BY ROBERT MOYNIHAN INSIDE THE VATICAN AUGUST, 2021
On another matter: our office has been receiving many emails and phone calls from people asking whether they might receive a religious exemption from vaccination for their children, who are being required to be vaccinated in order to go to school. The parents are concerned because they have questions and reservations about how the vaccines were manufactured (whether the vaccines depended in some ways on aborted human fetal tissue, something they would regard as immoral) and about the potential side effects of the vaccines in years to come, especially in view of the fact that young children up until now seem to have had very little risk of getting gravely ill or dying from the Coronavirus. We do not know whether there are any Church officials who might be willing to help such parents and their children obtain such “faith-based exemptions,” so we are raising the question here: does anyone know if it possible to obtain a religious exemption from anyone in a position of authority in order to assist such concerned parents? *** In this context, I publish here an article that appeared in Catholic World Report on May 9, 2021, almost four months ago now. Why Catholics should oppose vaccine mandates (both private and public) Some assorted observations on serious (and often-ignored) legal, medical, ethical, cultural, social, and theological concerns surrounding COVID vaccinations and mandates May 9, 2021 Rachel M. Coleman • Most people have heard of Buck v. Bell (1927), in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled lawful a Virginia statute permitting sterilization of the “unfit.” Many know the infamous line of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s ruling: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Many people do not know, however, the sentence that immediately precedes it: “The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination (Jacobson v. Massachusetts [1905]) is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.” There was a direct connection, at least in the minds of the Supreme Court justices, between compulsory vaccination and compulsory sterilization. • This connection should give us pause in our present situation, when there is a lot of talk about the need for vaccine mandates for COVID-19. This is a disease which has a >99% survival rate for people under 70 years old (the survival rate is 94.6% for those over 70). Thus, while it seems to make a great deal of sense for those older than 70 and those with exacerbating conditions to receive the vaccine, what are we to say about the tremendous pressure, exerted by both public and private authorities, for absolutely everyone to get vaccinated—even children, upon whom COVID-19 seems rarely to have any effect whatsoever? • The Church, too, is not unaffected by the present trend. Catholics, and Catholic institutions in particular, are also exerting pressure for universal vaccination. But not only does this program of complete vaccination lack a clear scientific basis, as just noted, exerting pressure in the way it requires arguably looks very much like what is at its core an anti-Christian attempt to control. • The Buck v. Bell case ushered in an era of state-backed eugenical programs in the United States, leading to things like the North Carolina Eugenics Board, which routinely sterilized minorities and poor people; the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, which experimented upon black men; and anti-miscegenation laws, which, one supposes, were intended to protect people from themselves. • We’d like to think we are far beyond such horrors, but I very much doubt it. In some sense, we can now exert violent control over human bodies and lives both more broadly and more hiddenly, thanks to the rise of modern technology. And even if we insist that we are beyond temptation here, do we want to test our theory by giving the state, and the corporate oligarchy that works with it, the sweeping powers required to enforce vaccine mandates? • But let us return for a moment to eugenics. People think it looks exclusively like state-backed programs such as eugenics boards, or Josef Mengele, or the Holocaust. But eugenics is both more and less than these concrete programs: it is a logic. • The logic of eugenics is a logic of willful control. It is anti-creational. The Christian understanding of creation is that it is a gift: received from Another, animated by a purpose and an order that precede man’s will. Eugenics, by contrast, attempts to reject the gift and is at root a bid by man to assert his will over the order of creation, rather than being steward to it. • Humanae vitae articulates this logic well, though the encyclical stops short of calling it eugenical: “the domination and rational organization of the forces of nature to the point that [man] is endeavoring to extend this control over every aspect of his own life—over his body, over his mind and emotions, and even over the laws that regulate the transmission of life” (2). • Am I saying this in order to equate the COVID-19 vaccines with forced sterilization? Of course not. I am, however, saying that there seems to be a similar logic at work in both—especially in view of the effort to exert immense public and private pressure on those who hesitate about receiving the vaccine. Again, even the appearance of a logical similarity between forced sterilization and compulsory vaccinations should at least give us pause. • Let me lay my cards on the table and propose the following thesis: Modern medicine has an anti-woman bias. I say this on account of what I see as its tendency to view women’s bodies as if they were men’s bodies with some inconvenient body parts attached. Modern medicine, in short, does not regard women’s fertility as central to their health, but approaches it as a problem it doesn’t know how to handle. The medical establishment then tries to suppress this problematic fertility with contraception, to jump-start it with IVF, or to erase it all together with sterilization. • Modern medicine is by nature short-sighted: it is focused on treating symptoms now, rather than on waiting to understand why they are arising and what they can tell us about the whole. For the same reason, modern medicine lacks the patience to understand women and their fertility. This is how we end up with the disasters of thalidomide and diethylstilbestrol. The history of modern medicine is littered with women’s bodies—and the bodies of their children (it is fairly well known that mothers who were prescribed thalidomide for their morning sickness gave birth to children with severe limb deformities; it is less well known that the children of mothers who were prescribed diethylstilbestrol are much more likely to have problems with their fertility—and their daughters are at much greater risk for blood clots and cancer. We are now seeing epigenetic effects in the grandchildren of those women who were prescribed diethylstilbestrol). • Vaginal mesh is another example of the horrors inflicted upon women because of an over-hasty modern medicine directed all too often by the interests of pharmaceutical companies, rather than by the health of the patient. Some types of hormonal contraception increase a woman’s risk of fatal blood clots three to nine times, but this has never halted the production and use of birth control. Jennifer Block’s excellent Everything Below the Waist is a mine of information on these matters, while Caroline Criado Perez’s book Invisible Women documents the phenomenon of the bias against women in both modern medicine and modern science. • The lesson is this: when modern medicine moves too quickly, women suffer most immediately. Men suffer too—it’s just that their suffering is not as immediate or apparent. How we treat women—and in particular their fertility—is a bit like the canary in the coal mine: it reveals how we approach all of nature (human and otherwise). • We know that many women are reporting irregularities with their period after receiving one of the COVID-19 vaccines. Given what’s at stake—women’s health, their fertility, and human nature’s capacity to be, literally, pro-creative—why are we barreling ahead with this program of vaccination? Shouldn’t reports like these give us pause? Are we sure that we are not backing ourselves into a logic of violent control that is akin to that displayed in eugenics? • I am not arguing that no one should take the COVID-19 vaccines. I am arguing that we ignore these kinds of signals about their possible long-terms effects at great risk. • The biotechnology being used in the vaccines available in the United States has never before been used in vaccination. We do not and indeed cannot have data about its long-term effects. And yet we seem to be barreling forward with a population-level experiment while preparing to take coercive measures against those who would hesitate. • In April 2020, the New York Times reported that it would likely take us until November 2033 to produce a vaccine. We have rushed this process in an unprecedented way. Why? So that we might attempt to guard ourselves against the possibility of suffering and the very slight possibility of a more immediate death? • So much for the risk-benefit calculus. But I am also arguing that these vaccines in particular, combined with the pressures being exerted to force it upon everyone, look an awful lot like a form of hasty, eugenics-like control that is totalitarian in spirit. • To repeat: I am not arguing no one should take these vaccines—it in fact seems prudent that many who are at higher risk should take them. But compulsory universal vaccination looks like an attempt to exert control over every single person on the planet. It thus smells strongly of the logic of eugenics and of its sponsorship by the state and its techno-corporate actors (which, it must be said, stand to profit a great deal from every person being mandated to take the vaccine). • The Church has always acted as a counterbalance to the (attempted) political and cultural hegemony of the state. It’s one of the reasons Rome murdered Christians en masse. • By contrast, Catholic institutions, such as universities, that claim to serve the Church, but are also joining the attempt to mandate an experimental vaccine, are not first serving the Church. They are making it clear that they serve the state first by exerting the same pressure upon the people as the state is. • Many Catholics argue that we should get behind vaccine mandates (or even mandate them ourselves) for the sake of the common good. But public health is not synonymous with the common good. In order for a good truly to be common, it must transcend individual consumption. For a good to be transcendent in this sense, moreover, it must be wholly shareable by many at the same time. A cake is not a common good because you and I cannot enjoy the same piece at the same time: by definition it is not common. The same is true of a road, no piece of which you and I can use at once. • Creation, and its logic, however, is a common good. It is common to all of humanity, past, present, and future. It transcends us, preceding both our existence and our individual will. • The anti-creational logic of eugenics is by definition also anti-transcendent because it is the assertion of one individual’s (or group’s) will over nature. It says that the individual’s will should supersede the logic of creation. And it does so, as history has shown us repeatedly, at the expense of the most vulnerable. The COVID-19 vaccines—their hasty development, their unknown long-term effects, the private and public means being used to pressure everyone to get them—represent the assertion of control over nature, over human beings, that looks very much like the logic that is eugenics. • All of this stands in sharp contrast to the biblical directive to steward nature, not assert our will over it. • Christ did not ask us to be safe at all costs. He did not ask us never to risk. He asked us to understand that he is the way, the truth, and the life. He asked us to believe—profoundly, to the core of our very being—that our lives are not in our own hands, but they are in the hands of the Father. He asked us to see, protect, and preserve what his Father created. • We are not given the gift of existence never to die, but so that we might live. Rachel M. Coleman is an Assistant Professor of Theology at Assumption University in Worcester, MA. In addition to her PhD in Theology, she holds a BS in Biology and BA in Philosophy. She researches primarily in the area of metaphysics, and often writes on the intersection of philosophy, theology, and science.
Adhuc multiplica
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Texas appears likely to become the first state in America to be allowed to enforce a law banning abortions once an unborn baby’s heartbeat is detectable.
In a huge victory for life, on Sunday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals canceled a Monday hearing on a lawsuit to block the law, Newsmax reports.
That means, at least for now, the law will go into effect, as planned, on Wednesday – and potentially save more than 100 babies from abortion every single day.
The Texas heartbeat law, which Gov. Greg Abbott signed in May, prohibits abortions once an unborn baby’s heartbeat is detectable, typically about six weeks of pregnancy. Exceptions are allowed if the mother’s life is at risk. Unique from other heartbeat laws, the Texas legislation includes a private enforcement mechanism that allows people to file lawsuits against abortionists who violate the law.
The law has the potential to save tens of thousands of lives. In 2019, more than 56,600 unborn babies were aborted in Texas, and about 85 percent happened after six weeks of pregnancy, according to state health statistics.
Earlier this summer, a group of more than 20 abortion practitioners, including Planned Parenthood and Whole Woman’s Health, filed a lawsuit asking a court to block the law from going into effect. That hearing was scheduled for Monday before a federal district judge, but the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the groups’ request and canceled the hearing, according to the report.
About a dozen other states also have passed heartbeat laws, but courts have blocked the states from enforcing them, citing Roe v. Wade.
A Planned Parenthood spokesperson told the Texas Tribune that they will follow the law if it goes into effect.
However, some abortionists are rushing to abort unborn babies before Wednesday. According to the Tribune:
Marva Sadler, one of the named plaintiffs in the abortion providers’ lawsuit and senior director of clinical services for Whole Woman’s Health, said the appellate decisions make it much more likely SB 8 will go into effect Sept. 1.
On Sunday, she said she was rushing to her organization’s clinic in Fort Worth, where at least eight patients were seeking abortions before they become illegal.
Marc Hearron, senior counsel at the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights, said the weekend decision means abortions “will come to an abrupt stop” in Texas and “push abortion out of reach for as many Texans as possible.”
Pro-life advocates celebrated the news, noting that babies’ lives will be saved.
“The Texas Heartbeat Act will take effect Wednesday, September 1! This means that abortions in Texas will be illegal after the baby’s heartbeat is detectable! Help spread the word!” Texas Right to Life wrote on social media over the weekend.
What will happen in court in the coming weeks remains uncertain. A hearing on a second lawsuit filed by pro-abortion attorneys to block the law also is scheduled to be heard Monday.
But pro-life advocates have strong hopes that the pro-life law ultimately will be upheld as constitutional and the state will be allowed to protect babies in the womb.
The private enforcement provision in the Texas law is similar to language in the Sanctuary City for the Unborn ordinances that are passing at the city level, and pro-life leaders believe the law is more likely to withstand a legal challenge and save babies’ lives.
A Texas judge recently threw out Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit against a similar provision at the local level, the Lubbock Sanctuary City for the Unborn ordinance.
In 2019, a national Hill-HarrisX survey also found that 55 percent of voters said they do not think laws banning abortions after six weeks – when an unborn baby’s heartbeat is detectable – are too restrictive. Gallup polls consistently find that a majority of Americans think all or most abortions should be illegal.
In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court took away the states’ ability to protect unborn babies from abortion under Roe v. Wade, and instead forced states to legalize abortion on demand. Roe made the United States one of only seven countries in the world that allows elective abortions after 20 weeks. The court is scheduled to hear a Mississippi case in the fall that challenges this precedent.
“Yes, Dr. Marshall. That means you.” Flashback: Why doesn’t Taylor Marshall know about Antipope Anacletus II & his Pseudocardinals?
Taylor Marshall “knows” what he wants to know. He knows that staying away from the issue of Bergoglian legitimacy makes it safe–or perhaps, just safe enough–for him to go on riffing about everything else. What does that tell you about the situation in the Church today? Much like the stance of Michael Voris, I believe.
In a recent TnT video, Marshall mentions that Bishop Schneider is his current favorite. That fits, since Bishop Schneider has made himself the poster boy for the “do not diss Jorge himself, at all costs” approach which Marshall follows. Where was Bishop Schneider, for example, when the Dubia stood in need of additional signers?
The problem here is that all truth is true. It’s a package deal. If you don’t want to investigate or accept the reality of Bergoglian invalidity, you are just as much a cafeteria Catholic as any Humanae Vitae denier, no matter how anti-Modernist you claim to be. The fact that Marshall says he HAS investigated and subsequently rejected the Benevacantist position only goes to show he hasn’t shed his latent Protestant subjectivism just yet, because a Catholic with respect for UD Gregis, among other things, would acknowledge at the outset that this isn’t his call to make.
When people state that Benedict may still be the Pope, in other words, they are shouted down. “You can’t say that! You’re only a layman! You have no authority here!” But no one ever points out the exact same thing to people claiming to know for themselves that the “true Pope” is Bergoglio.
Yes, Dr. Marshall. That means you. – Catholic Monitor commenter Justina
Dr. Taylor Marshall in his book “Infiltration” made up a pseudo problem against investigating the validity of the Francis conclave despite the fact that Cardinal Raymond Burke told Patrick Coffin there are “grounds… for calling into question the [Francis] election.” (Patrick Coffin show, Dubia Cardinal Goes on Record – Raymond Cardinal Burke,” 19:55 to 21:46)
In page 239 of his book he presents his non-problem by saying if Francis’s election was invalid then “those Francis cardinals are invalid cardinals. A [future] conclave including invalid cardinals would itself be invalid.”
Which leads to the question:
Why doesn’t Marshall know about Antipope Anacletus II and his pseudocardinals?
Briefly, here is a little background on the antipope. St. Bernard of Clairvaux investigated the validity of the Anacletus conclave and found his pontificate was not valid because he had violated the conclave constitution.
It so happened that Anacletus made eight “cardinals” who are in the Catholic history books called pseudocardinals which according to Marshall’s reasoning meant the next conclave in the time of Bernard would be invalid. (Wikipedia, “Pseudocardinals”)
The non-problem would be solved the same way today as it was solved in the time of St. Bernard:
The pseudocardinals are not allowed to vote in the next real conclave.
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church. 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)
– 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.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on Taylor Marshall “knows” what he wants to know. He knows that staying away from the issue of Bergolian legitimacy makes it safe –or perhaps, just safe enough– for him to go on riffing about everything else.
I often like to imagine how the radical liturgical reforms after Vatican II would have proceeded in the internet age. Certainly the quick availability of information and the means by which to network globally in seeking answers would have made the position of the extreme wing of reformers more precarious, and certainly the analog “fog of war” which the Bugniniites hid behind would have been more easily penetrated. A great example of what things may have looked like come from our own Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, who has been doing an astounding bit of sleuthing into the work of Andrea Grillo, one of the minds rumored to be either indirectly or directly involved in the language of the Pope’s latest Motu Proprio.
Indeed, in order to appreciate the Eucharistic liturgy, to enter into its theology, to savor its human and spiritual power, we need to recover the hidden but effective layers of our humanity. The plan of Eucharistic reform sought by the Second Vatican Council, with the intent that the Church might emerge from the blind alleys of clerical reduction, devotional parallelism, formalistic dryness or informal disfigurement, introduced a profound reworking of the experience of faith, calling for a new experience of ritual action, which would include ‘active participation’ as a rule. Liturgy is a common language in which we participate in community.
For this to be true, and for us to become a priestly community, we must recognize that we are celebrating as adult men and adult women, but all of us are capable of rediscovering the animal, the child, the primitive, and the madman that dwells within us and from which we live. Without this profound and elementary rediscovery, no one can truly celebrate. He can at best be rigidly present at a ceremony, or retreat into a meditation or focus on an idea. But this is not celebrating. (Un abbecedario per la messa: 30 immagini e 30 parole, trans. K. Hall).[1]
What Grillo describes is the embrace of cultural suicide and a willing devolution in conscious spite of our highest cultural achievements and spiritual yearnings. Furthermore, if Grillo is right, then such a quote illuminates a vital part of the divide between those who dive headfirst into every popular innovation and fad and those who cling to tradition. Grillo is here insisting that the modern liturgy can only function within the individual if that individual first embraces the inversion of the elevated and sublime Catholic worship of previous ages in favor of a pure primitivism. That such a new liturgical reality is itself unnatural and therefore unachievable without the clinging rigidly to a strict ideology seems not to dawn on him. For across peoples and cultures, we observe that natural law tends to elevate the higher forms of beauty and culture and impose moral laws against the unleashing of more primitive, disorderly forces.
For Catholics who came of age or were converted after the council—indeed, for those of us who understood very little about the rupture between the old and new worlds—Grillo’s statement here explains why so many of us remained so deeply uncomfortable in modern liturgy even before we knew that another options existed. It also reveals why so many would seek to trample and remove those other options from our world. This is the revenge of the rigid, seeking to impose ideology upon human nature.
Discovering the Logos of Music
To zoom back out from the specific and into a personal social narrative, I will admit that ever since early childhood I have been deeply uncomfortable with popular culture and the way people behave when unified by simplistic fads and passing fashions. I never wanted to do the electric slide, be in the center of the dance circle while music not fit for even canine consumption blared and bonked, let alone make the silly face and join the crowd in making an fool of myself. Such social experiences were not only uncomfortable, but they were utterly painful at times. More than once I was told to loosen up, not be haughty, or “just have fun.” If the question was not about pop culture but rather liturgy, I’m rather sure I’d have been called “rigid”.
As my journey into classical music and becoming a professional composer took shape, my study of higher culture revealed to me the astounding divide between contemporary popular culture and the high culture of the west, while more recently I have contemplated the differences between popular culture and authentic folk culture.
Yet in experiencing both high culture and authentic folk culture, I rarely found myself as uncomfortable as when in the throes of our modern popular culture. Whether such expressions drew us to the elevated and sublime or unified with more primitive instincts, there was an authenticity in high and folk experiences which brought with it comfort and natural satisfaction. And this was even before we considered the deeper social connections which such experiences could create.
I remember telling my wife once: “I’m surprised that it turns out that I don’t hate dancing. Rather, I hate what modern culture has done to dancing, which makes me feel awkward and horrifically stupid when I partake in it, and that is even before the jarring stupidity of its driving music is considered.”
I began to suspect that I never really needed to “loosen up” at all, but rather that the popular culture and its antecedents presented us with a broken apparatus which made people with a sense of dignity—let alone a yearning for transcendence—feel markedly out of place. If I was tense, it was because I was witnessing a poisonous devolution against which tension is a natural and rational response. It’s ultimately not an easy position to take in our time, as 99.9% of people will disagree with you, but I think that the clear-headed reappraisal of modern popular culture is essential for anyone who truly wants to be free enough to accept sanctifying grace into their lives.
I knew then that it wasn’t a matter of opinion to say that, for instance, Bach or Palestrina could lead you to a numinous experience in a way that no popular song could even begin to do: it was rather a matter of perspective unclouded by aesthetic and cultural detritus. Later, having stumbled into the unfortunate liturgical wars, being called “rigid” or “culturally narrow” by liturgical modernists never really left a mark, because I was able to articulate clearly and at great length about aesthetic experience, culture, and why certain forms and expressions could lead one to the numinous and the sublime while others couldn’t. This is nothing less than the logos of music, which is true based on natural law, not ideology.
Yet Grillo’s rumination here is illuminating to me in explaining why modern and pop-infused liturgical expressions are not only uncomfortable experiences for the numinously sensitive, but are actually deficient by nature. They quite literally assume—like the modern popular cultural activities they are so clearly linked to and influenced by—that higher thinking must be discarded in favor of a more primitive “inner man’s” experience. Indeed, we are told that if we can’t just loosen up and let go of our higher faculties, we are bound to “at best stiffen in a ceremony, or retreat into a meditation or focus on an idea. But this is not celebrating.” In other words, be “rigid.” To anyone who perceived the culture of “coolness” as an imposition rather than a joy, this should sound familiar indeed.
Anti-Culture against Nature
If such a goal is at the heart of the modern liturgical impetus, then it is troubling and revealing in at least two more tragic ways. The first tragedy is in how this approach seeks to divide man from a total experiencing of liturgical prayer. This type of prayer seeks to unify every aspect of the person from their toes to their inner spiritual groans to their highest flights of contemplation. This unnatural ideology instead prefers a flattening of us into a “madman” or “animal” or “primitive” who celebrates unthinkingly with the willing crowd.
The second tragedy is perhaps even more profound: in seeking to primitivize the individual and their liturgical experience, they truly bring us to a thoughtless place, as much of the world has lost any authentic folk culture which could catch and cradle such a liturgical experience. The willing participant therefore can find themselves outside of high culture and beneath folk culture, in a place which can easily be termed an “anti-culture.”
Such approaches also destroy what is left of folk culture, perhaps permanently. It seems that folk cultures generally cannot be reconstructed in any meaningful way: that is their particular nature and fragility. Thankfully high culture, often being a codified crystallization of numinous striving, can be packaged and re-opened wherever an open mind and heart can accept them (when the rigid ideology is relaxed and open to true “dialogue”).
This is why classical music has been so effectively embraced in Asia while Europe commits cultural suicide, and why a small Catholic Classical academy can have a culture of ancient Greek theater (with a high level of cultural understanding) in their midst. Authentic high culture can be preserved, and so long as a young child can read the language—be it poetry or philosophy or music notation—it can be perceived anew again in each generation.
Plato and Aquinas and Shakespeare and Bach speak in startling freshness to each new young person who openly encounters them, which is why many have compared tradition in the Church not to a musty museum, but rather a true and living fire. It is only those weighed down by filth and ideology or the burden of their unacknowledged sin who hate such things and want them crushed in favor of the animalistic. And when they say that the old ways are gone and cannot be reconstructed, they add another terrible lie to their profile, a lie which is shattered by every young mind which discovers philosophy and every young hand which learns its first fugue (let alone every young family which finds comfort in a traditional Catholic rite). The living fire not only mercilessly consumes the primitive and the ugly, but it fuels endless authentic new flights of contemplations and pursuits of Beauty Himself. It is a shining beacon on a hill, and at most all its enemies can do is obscure it, or teach others to call it a hateful thing when it can no longer be obscured (this, indeed, may be at the spiritual root of the rise of modern Critical Theory, but that is again another topic for another article).
It really does come down to an unpopular binary choice: It’s the cloistered chant or the cha-cha, the liturgical dance vs the meditative silence, the sheering expression of polyphony vs the bass booming during the electric slide. And certainly there are people who – stuck entirely in the popular culture but perceiving the luminous power of high culture, seek to have both. They ask: “Can I not sing chant and still be a break-dancing Priest? Can I not have both?” No, you cannot. You simply cannot embrace both worlds if you really understand what each of these worlds is ultimately pulling you towards. This is because one of these is anti-culture against nature itself.
Our Duty
It is the power of organic form—built over time like the best of folk culture—and the refined striving of high culture similarly built over time which leads so many of us to experience traditional Catholic liturgical rites as a soothing balm and the greatest of goods. Whether east or west, reverently practiced traditional rites are now some of the only places on the planet where we can encounter the highest form of worship, the highest level of form and aesthetic expression, and all within a confines which keeps the modern world outside of its sacred chambers. It is, in short, a place where we can be most fully human, and it explains why we are incapable of just “letting it go” and “joining the crowd.” We can’t just make the silly face and do the silly dance: our souls desire more from this short-lived experience than patent foolishness even in its most refined forms.
Those possessed with a hatred of what is sublime or elevated—or those still deceived and enslaved by (now outdated) counter-cultural notions of popular interaction and devotion—will seek to stamp out traditional rites. For our part, it is not a matter of simply not letting them do so. Rather to maintain what is most deeply human in us, we simply cannot let them do so. In our modern times, droves of old hippies die away while the vacuous and dangerous aspect of our derelict modern culture becomes more apparent.
If God allows this world to persist, it is certainly our duty to make sure that the Church remains at least one place where unfettered beauty, culture, and authentic worship may be found. As to the Grillos, let them and their vapid philosophies be a part of a future seminary course on what went wrong so many years ago, while the common Catholics are mercifully ignorant of such names and the destructive ideas they espoused. It’s either that, or perdition.
—
[1] In effetti, per gustare la liturgia eucaristica, per entrare nella sua teologia, per assaporarne la potenza umana e spirituale, occorre recuperare gli strati nascosti, ma efficaci, della nostra umanità. Il disegno di riforma della eucaristia voluto dal Concilio Vaticano II, perché la Chiesa uscisse dai vicoli ciechi della riduzione clericale, del parallelismo devoto, dell’inamidatura formalistica o dello sfiguramento informale, ha introdotto una profonda rielaborazione della esperienza di fede, chiedendo una nuova esperienza della azione rituale, che prevedesse la “partecipazione attiva” come regola. La liturgia è linguaggio comune, al quale partecipiamo in comunità. “Perché questo sia vero, e perché noi diventiamo comunità sacerdotale, dobbiamo riconoscere di celebrare come uomini adulti e donne adulte, ma tutti e tutte capaci di riscoprire l’animale, il bambino, il primitivo e il pazzo che abita in noi e del quale viviamo. Senza questa riscoperta, profonda ed elementare, nessuno può davvero celebrare. Può al massimo irrigidirsi in una cerimonia, o ritirarsi in una meditazione o concentrarsi su una idea. Ma questo non è celebrare
Dr. Mark Nowakowski is a scholar and composer whose music has been performed internationally and released on the Gramophone-praised Naxos Records album, “Blood, Forgotten.” His writings on Catholicism, music, aesthetics, and music technology appear in numerous publications regularly, while he also maintains an active schedule as a composer and professor of music. A proud native of Chicago, he currently lives with his wife and three children in Ohio.www.marknowakowski.com/marknowakowski/
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on Francis’ motu proprio proposes that Catholics plunge headfirst into every popular innovation and fad and those who cling to tradition have become ossified, dry bones. Grillo is here insisting that the modern liturgy can only function within the individual if that individual first embraces the inversion of the elevated and sublime Catholic worship of previous ages in favor of a pure primitivism.
It’s not enough that Texas abortion providers continue to press a lawsuit against the Texas Heartbeat Act that should have been dismissed at the outset for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. They’re now running to the Supreme Court to try to get the Justices to enjoin state officials from enforcing a law that the law itself prohibits those state officials from enforcing. They seem to imagine that courts can enjoin a law, when what courts actually can do (upon a proper showing) is enjoin defendants from enforcing a law, but only when (among other things) defendants actually have an enforcement role.
The short answer to the abortion providers’ application is that the ordinary rules governing pre-enforcement challenges to laws apply in this case as well, and those ordinary rules mean that the abortion providers lack standing and that there are no defendants against whom they are entitled to obtain relief. They can instead challenge the constitutionality of the Act if and when private plaintiffs undertake to enforce it against them.
I’ll also note that because the district court hadn’t yet ruled on plaintiffs’ request to certify statewide classes of judges and clerks, the single judge and single clerk named as defendants work in only one of Texas’s 254 counties. Under plaintiffs’ own theory, they won’t be able to operate at all in Texas if the only judges and clerks against whom they were to obtain relief were these two defendants. Thus, any harm they face is the same whether or not they receive the emergency relief they seek against these two defendants. In other words, they haven’t shown that emergency relief against actual defendants would prevent any injury they allege.
Oddly, the abortion providers also fault the Fifth Circuit for its supposedly “rigid application of the divestiture doctrine.” But as they elsewhere acknowledge, the district court likewise granted a stay of the proceedings as to all defendants except the private citizen “based on their [i.e., defendants’] argument that the interlocutory appeal on sovereign immunity divested the court of jurisdiction.” The abortion providers’ claim that the Fifth Circuit has somehow left things “in limbo” likewise fails to acknowledge that it has acted, and can be expected to continue to act, with dispatch.
I find it especially amusing that here, as in the Fifth Circuit, the abortion providers ask that the district-court’s ruling in their favor—denying defendants’ motion to dismiss on jurisdictional grounds—be vacated (so that the transfer of jurisdiction over the case from the district court to the Fifth Circuit would be undone).
The Supreme Court should unanimously deny this request—in a heartbeat.
Abortion activists are irrationally angry at a Fifth Circuit panel for what is, as I will explain, an elementary order that, in light of a pending appeal on threshold jurisdictional questions, prevents the district court from proceeding with a case challenging the Texas Heartbeat Act. Let’s put things in proper context.
Texas governor Greg Abbott signed S.B. No. 8, the Texas Heartbeat Act, into law in May. Except in the case of a medical emergency, the Act prohibits a physician from performing or inducing an abortion “if the physician detected a fetal heartbeat for the unborn child … or failed to perform a test to detect a fetal heartbeat.”
What is most innovative—indeed, brilliant—about the Texas Heartbeat Act is that it affirmatively prohibits state officials from enforcing the Act in any way and instead authorizes private persons to bring a civil action against anyone who performs or induces an abortion in violation of the Act or who knowingly aids or abets such a post-heartbeat abortion (including employers and insurers who pay for or reimburse the costs of a post-heartbeat abortion). (See §§ 171.207-.208.) If a private plaintiff prevails, the court “shall award” injunctive relief to prevent further violations by the defendants, statutory damages to the plaintiff in the amount of at least $10,000 for each violation, and costs and attorney’s fees. The Act becomes effective on September 1.
The Texas Heartbeat Act was written this way to prevent abortion providers from obtaining pre-enforcement relief against state officials. Because state officials are not permitted to enforce the Act, they will have sovereign immunity if anyone attempts to sue them over the constitutionality of the statute. (The Ex parte Young exception to sovereign immunity applies only when the named defendant has “some connection with the enforcement of the act.”) State-court judges also are immune from suit, under both Ex parte Young and Fifth Circuit precedent.* In short, any abortion provider that wants to challenge the constitutionality of the Act must wait to be sued and assert its constitutional claims defensively in the private civil-enforcement action.
In mid-July, in a desperate attempt to preempt enforcement of the act, various abortion providers and other plaintiffs nonetheless filed suit in federal district court. Specifically, they sued four sets of defendants: (1) the state attorney general and various other state officials; (2) a state judge; (3) a county judicial clerk; and (4) Mark Lee Dickson, a private citizen and pro-life activist. The plaintiffs asked the district court to certify a defendant class of every state-court judge and enjoin the entire state judiciary from considering any lawsuit brought under the Act. They also asked the district court to certify a defendant class of every court clerk in Texas and enjoin clerks from accepting or filing any documents submitted in private civil-enforcement lawsuits.
To put it mildly, this was an audacious lawsuit, and it faced insuperable jurisdictional hurdles. The claims against the state officials are unequivocally barred by sovereign immunity because the Act explicitly prohibits state officials from enforcing it in any manner. The claims against the state judges and court clerks are also barred by sovereign immunity because the Ex parte Young exception is inapplicable to lawsuits that seek to prevent the state judiciary from adjudicating cases between litigants. And Dickson, who was evidently sued only because he is a pro-life activist, submitted a sworn affidavit stating that he has no intention of suing any of the plaintiffs under the Act. So there is no live case or controversy with respect to Dickson, and there is also no Article III case or controversy with respect to the other defendants, as none of them is enforcing or threatening to enforce the Act against any of the plaintiffs.
Somehow none of that stopped federal district judge Robert L. Pitman (an Obama appointee) from issuing an order last Wednesday denying defendants’ motion to dismiss on jurisdictional grounds. But because Pitman denied defendants’ sovereign-immunity defense, they had a right, which they promptly exercised, to appeal his ruling to the Fifth Circuit. And by appealing Pitman’s ruling, the defendants immediately divested Pitman of jurisdiction to proceed against them, as Fifth Circuit precedent holds that an appeal of a sovereign-immunity defense automatically divests the district court of jurisdiction until after the appellate court has ruled.
That’s why a Fifth Circuit panel on Friday granted defendants’ motion to block Pitman from further proceedings in the meantime, including a hearing that he had set for today on plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction. That also explains why the plaintiffs, in a hilarious maneuver designed to send the case back to Pitman, asked the Fifth Circuit panel to vacate Pitman’s order in their favor on the sovereign-immunity (and other jurisdictional) issues—a request that the panel promptly and properly denied yesterday.
Judge Pitman never had proper jurisdiction over this case to begin with, and the case should have been dismissed at the outset for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. The Fifth Circuit will now have the opportunity to make that clear.
* See Ex parte Young (1908) (“[T]he right to enjoin an individual, even though a state official, from commencing suits . . .does not include the power to restrain a court from acting in any case brought before it, either of a civil or criminal nature.… [A]n injunction against a state court would be a violation of the whole scheme of our Government.”); Bauer v. Texas, (5th Cir. 2003) (“The requirement of a justiciable controversy is not satisfied where a judge acts in his adjudicatory capacity”).
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on Abortionists in Texas are now running to the Supreme Court to try to get the Justices to enjoin state officials from enforcing a law that the law itself prohibits those state officials from enforcing. They seem to imagine that courts can enjoin a law, when what courts actually can do (upon a proper showing) is enjoin defendants from enforcing a law, but only when (among other things) defendants actually have an enforcement role.
HERE ARE A FEW OF THE FORTUNATE ONES WHO WERE ABLE TO FLEE AFGHANISTAN, MANY MORE, UNFORTUNATELY WERE NOT ABLE TO MAKE IT ONTO THE AIRBASE.
Image Source: The Washington Free Beacon
Listening to Joe Biden and his staff, you’d think that the emergency evacuation of American citizens and allies in Afghanistan was going along swimmingly. But if you asked the actual people still stranded there, they’d tell a much darker story of frustration and abandonment.
According to the people that Joe Biden left behind as he made our hasty retreat from the war-torn country, the administration failed to maintain contact with those needing to flee Afghanistan. As a result, many are resorting to contacting their congressional representatives and senators to plead for help.
“So far, they’ve been unable to reach the airport. I know [White House press secretary] Jen Psaki has previously said this isn’t happening, but she’s dead wrong,” said the office of Representative Darrell Issa of California.
Do you mean to tell me that Jen Psaki lied to the press to protect her boss? What a shocker.
Meanwhile, many experts and analysts are trying to push Biden to ignore the August 31st deadline for getting the last Americans and allied Afghans out through the Kabul airport. But our allies were able to get their people out of the country with time to spare. So why haven’t we been able to do the same thing?
Dr. Robert Moynihan 
ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP 
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