“The most evident mark of God’s anger, and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world, is manifest when He permits His people to fall into the hands of a clergy who are more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and affection of devoted shepherds. They abandon the things of God to devote themselves to the things of the world and, in their saintly calling of holiness, they spend their time in profane and worldly pursuits. When God permits such things, it is a very positive proof that He is thoroughly angrywith His peopleand is visiting His most dreadful wrath uponthem.” –Saint John EudesBergoglio is the prime example of the above statement by Saint John Eudes.
Yesterday Antipope Bergoglio declared the TEN COMMANDMENTS to be to be optional, but the poisonous Death Injection to be an “act of charity”. Satan’s little helper and all of his minions are swiftly making the DeathJab the obligatory Antichurch anti-sacrament condition of attending Mass – the satanic analogue of nothing less than BAPTISM. Hands up if you’ve been through RCIA and recognize the practice of dismissing the unbaptized from the Mass at the Offertory, before the confection of the Eucharist. Yup. Exactly. Because the DeathJab is the ANTIBAPTISM anti-sacrament of the Antichurch.
Remember, Antipope Bergoglio, as the very probable False Prophet Forerunner of the Antichrist is the Anti-John the Baptist!!! What did St. John do? He called the faithful repentant to BAPTISM.
Bergoglio calls the UNrepentant to the death of the ANTI-baptism: the DeathJab. Lest you be expelled from the Mass. The UNREPENTANT. And they line up by the hundreds of millions.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on YESTERDAY Jorge Bergolio DECLARED THE Ten Commandments TO BE OPTIONAL, BUT THE POISONOUS DEATH INJECTION OF THE CORONAVIRUS VACCINE TO BE “AN ACT OF CHARITY”
Flashback: Fred Martinez’s “The Hidden of Evil” Explains the Mind-Set of the Pro-Abortion Lobby
By W. J. Rayment, Editor of the Conservative Monitor
“The Hidden of Evil” explains the mind-set of the pro-abortion lobby and the tools used to manipulate the electorate into backing the abortionist agenda. As [Conservative Monitor Religion Editor] Fred Martinez points out, there is a vicious cycle. A person who has killed her child by abortion is more likely to continue to support the abortion agenda because she wants to justify her drastic past decisions. To become pro-life is to admit guilt.
This issue has inflamed modern Catholicism because it has personally touched so many members of the church. Like divorce, abortion is a fact conveniently side-stepped and often ignored by the American church, even while the Vatican continues to adhere to traditional values.
Beyond abortion, Fred Martinez takes on the issue of Gays in the priesthood. The American left-wing press has real problems of credibility on this issue because their agenda has been obvious for so long. For the left-wing media, established religion is anathema because of its stand on morality.
Moral relativism is the holy god of the left.
Click here for Credit Card and Amazon Order of Fred Martinez’s book “Hidden Axis”:
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.
Many of Jesus’ disciples who were listening said, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?”
What does it mean that our Lord’s saying is “hard”? Now, it could mean that it’s difficult to understand. And since our Lord was speaking about the Eucharist – themystery of faith – that would be a fair reaction; It’s just too hard to grasp.
But that’s not what it means. The word “hard” here indicates something offensive or intolerable. That is why our Lord asks, “Does this shock [literally, scandalize] you?” In other words, “Do you find it offensive and intolerable?” He doesn’t ask if it confuses them, because by this point in the Bread of Life discourse, He has already clarified His teaching several times. They understand Him clearly enough; they are simply unwilling to accept what He taught. The problem here is not in the intellect, but the will.
More to the point, they were unwilling to accept what He taught because then they would have to change their lives. He was inviting them to yield their earth-bound view to His supernatural truths: “It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail.” (Jn 6:63) They intuited what His words meant: If this teaching was true, they would have to change their lives accordingly. So, they balked. Even after witnessing His miracles and signs, they still could not entrust themselves to His teaching. “As a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.” (Jn 6:66)
These disciples fall into the same backsliding as their ancestors in the Exodus. The Israelites who followed Moses out into the wilderness eventually wearied of trusting in the Lord and His miraculous manna. At a certain point they said, “Thus far and no further.” They even began to long for the fleshpots in Egypt and a return to that land of slavery. (cf. Ex 16:3; Nm 14:4) So also, the disciples who followed Christ out into the desert sought Him because He fed them miraculously, but not because He had the words of eternal life. (cf. Jn 6:68) Thus, those who had been fed by Him, who had witnessed His miracles, now return “to their former way of life.”
All of this brings to mind what has come to be called “Eucharistic coherence” – the simple truth that those who receive the Eucharist ought to live lives coherent with It. Now, this has become inexplicably controversial. In fact, “Eucharistic coherence” is a fairly low bar. After all, we shouldn’t strive to live in a manner that is simply coherent with our reception of the Eucharist. Rather, we should strive to draw life and the very meaning of our lives from the Eucharist. Put differently, our lives should be coherent with the Eucharist because they are determined by It.
*
The disciples in Capernaum recognized what was being asked of them. They found the saying hard precisely because they perceived that to accept it meant to live in coherence with it. Unlike many today who receive the Eucharist in an incoherent manner, those disciples at least had the integrity to recognize their unwillingness and walk away.
Dietrich von Hildebrand writes that to be a disciple of Christ requires “the readiness to change, the waxlike receptiveness to Christ.” (emphasis added) Operative throughout a Christian’s life, this disposition applies most of all to our reception of the Eucharist. In Saint Catherine of Siena’s Dialogue, our Lord uses just this image to describe the reception of Communion: “When this appearance of bread has been consumed, I leave behind the imprint of my grace, just as a seal that is pressed into warm wax leaves its imprint when it is lifted off.”
Eucharistic coherence requires the willingness – indeed, the desire – to receive the imprint of Christ, no matter how “hard” His teaching might be. Thus, we should dispose ourselves to receive what He desires to give. We should desire from Holy Communion what He wills, not what we will; it should effect in us what He wants, not what we want.
Of course, we shouldn’t fault the disciples in Capernaum too strongly. For them, the teaching on the Eucharist was something extraordinary, supernatural, and shockingly new. We have two millennia of teaching and witnesses to bolster our faith. And even with all those advantages, we can still fail in our Eucharistic devotion. So, like their ancestors in the desert, those disciples provide a cautionary tale. It makes no sense to note (and complain about) the Eucharisticincoherence of others if we do not strive to correct it in ourselves.
Again, von Hildebrand: “There are many religious Catholics whose readiness to change is merely a conditional one.” In other words, we’re always in danger of becoming like the disciples in Capernaum by limiting our readiness to change, finding His sayings too hard, and arriving at that point at which we say, “Thus far and no further.” Some come to that point when they encounter a hard teaching of Christ’s Church, others when they suffer some loss, pain, or scandal. Whatever the case, the result is the same: a hardness that resists His grace.
This, then, is a good way for us to prepare for Holy Communion – by asking for the proper docility and waxlike disposition so that the Eucharist benefits us as He desires and impresses His image upon us more deeply.
*Image:The Virgin Mary Receiving the Eucharist from Saint John the Apostle by an unknown artist of the Flemish School, c. 1650 [National Trust for Scotland, Fyvie Castle]
Biden Desperately Attempts To Escape Blame For His Failure
August 19, 2021
Just a few days into the mis-managed Afghanistan withdrawal, and the Biden White House is already playing the blame game.
CNN reported that the Dept. of Defense and State Dept. are blaming each other and the Intel. Community for the bad situation in the nation of Afghanistan, where the terrorist-supporting Taliban has seized the country in only a matter of days.
“Military officials have stated that for weeks they pushed the State Dept. to go faster in evacuating its personnel. State Dept. officials have said they were working based on intel. assessments that suggested they get more time, but intel. officials insist that they had previously reported the possibility of a fast Taliban takeover,” CNN said.
The news outlet added, however, that an “intelligence assessment given within the past month found that the Taliban were pushing for complete military victory inside Afghanistan, a source who knew the intelligence said, despite having peace negotiations and even as the White House showed confidence in those discussions.”
Biden’s messaging on Afghanistan has not been coherent. On July 8, President Biden had a press conference stating that the Afghan government would continue and we would not see mass evacuations like at the end of Vietnam. That turned out incorrect.
On Tuesday, The NY Times reported that the Biden White House understood three weeks ago that Afghanistan could rapidly fall to the Taliban.
“Classified assessments by American spies over the summer gave an increasingly grim account of the potential of a Taliban takeover of the country and warned about the rapid collapse of the American-trained Afghan military, even as Joe Biden and his team of advisers reported publicly that this was unlikely to happen as sudden as it did,” the outlet said.
“By July, many intel. reports became pessimistic, questioning if any Afghan forces would have any serious resistance and whether the Kabul government would hold. President Biden then stated on July 8th that the Afghan western-backed government was not likely to fall and there would be no chaotic events like America saw at the end of the Vietnam War.”
Author: Scott Dowdy
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on BIDEN’S INDELIBLE MARK OF SHAME FOR THE TRAGEDY OF AFGHANISTAN
“Coincidence? Three Presidents Dead after Blocking Distribution of Covid Vaccines”
In remembering a clip from C-SPAN, I found it amusing that a Catholic news outlet whose name will not be mentioned was spreading disinformation on Archbishop Carlo Vigano claiming he was into “conspiracy theories” for presenting evidence on the leftist Francis’s unseemly doings. He also has recently been putting the spotlight on the COVID and the abortion-tainted vaccines promotion of Francis:“A caller to Washington Journal, May 27, 2018, raised the repeal of the Smith Mundt Act, legalizing domestic propaganda and the complicity of the media with the Deep State. The Daily Beast’s Eleanor Clift dismissed this fact as a conspiracy theory, but the Washington Times’ Cheryl Chumley reminded her of Operation Mockingbird in which intelligence assets were placed in the media. Eleanor looked very unconfortable.” [https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4731767/operation-mockingbird-exposed-span]It appears a number of media outlets such as Reuters and USA Today are attacking speculation about the strange coincidence that three presidents and others who opposed vaccine mandates have died including one by assassination. Knowing the media’s misinformation tendencies it seemed a good time to look into the matter. NOQ Reported gave a good report on the evidence in its post “Coincidence? Three presidents dead after blocking distribution of Covid vaccines”: The leaders of three different countries died after having stopped the distribution of the experimental Covid-19 jabs. All three countries took the decision to distribute the vaccines to their citizens only after their leaders passed away.One of them was Haitian President Jovenel Moise, who was assassinated at his home in Port-au-Prince recently by a group of mercenaries.The Caribbean country has been eligible for free vaccines through the COVAX scheme, run by the World Health Organisation as well as global vaccine charities, but Moise had notably refused the AstraZeneca shots. Only days after his murder, the US dispatched vaccines to Haiti, together with a team of FBI agents.This means that Haiti is now no longer the only country in the Western Hemisphere not to accept the Covid injection. Soon after President John Magufuli of Tanzania had declared the vaccines dangerous, he passed away from a “heart ailment”. In February 2021, his health minister had told the media: “We are not yet satisfied that those vaccines have been clinically proven safe.” The death of the immensely popular Magufuli resulted in thousands of mourners crowding into a stadium to view his body. However, soon after Magufuli’s death, Tanzania ordered a huge shipment of the products worth millions of dollars for its 60 million citizens…… Burundi was the second African country to reject Covid shots in February this year. The health minister of the African nation, Thaddee Ndikumana, told reporters that prevention was more important, and “since more than 95 percent of patients are recovering, we estimate that the vaccines are not yet necessary”.Burundi’s late President Pierre Nkurunziza was harshly criticized for not advancing the notion of injections against SARS-CoV-2. Remarkably, the current President Evariste Ndayishimiye now describes the virus as Burundi’s “worst enemy”. In the most vaccinated countries, like Israel, the UK or the Seychelles, and especially in Gibraltar which boasts a 100 percent vaccination rate, the alleged delta variant now doubles every 3 days. [https://noqreport.com/2021/07/18/three-presidents-who-opposed-covid-vaccines-have-conveniently-died-replaced-by-pro-vaxxers/]
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.
If it’s true (and it is) that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church, then it’s fair to say that the death of director Cameron O’Hearn’s father is the seed of the greatest Catholic documentary of the decade—maybe even of all time.
“Mass of the Ages” may have had humble beginnings—after it was funded by a grassroots lay initiative—but I can imagine a moment where the team of young men behind the scenes awoke to the realization that this wasn’t an ordinary film. Whether Thomas Shannon’s awe-inspiring cinematography, Christopher Amodio’s quintessential color grading, or Mark Nowakowski’s sensational score, the movie’s production had all the mixings of something truly great. And if any doubt remained, it was certainly washed away under wave after wave of priests and bishops, scholars, and laypeople telling the tale of how the Traditional Latin Mass totally transformed their lives.
Of course, much can (and should) be said regarding every jot and tittle of the film, but I was particularly moved by something said by Dr. Taylor Marshall. For beyond the saddening statistics concerning the shortage of Catholic priests or the tragic loss of faith among the laity, there was (as Marshall so eloquently said regarding the brilliance of the Blessed Sacrament nestled within the setting of the traditional Roman rite) a kind of diamond in this film. This diamond was cut deep by the Great Lapidary, through which the light of Christ seemed to shine most bright…that being, the Mauss family, the central narrative of the film.
The movie began, symbolically enough, with a well-lit scene proceeding toward the illustrious high altar at the Oratory of St. Francis de Sales in St. Louis, Missouri, followed by a descent through the dimly lit sanctuary of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in Littleton, Colorado. The optics were captivating, but then, toward the tail end of the departure, the camera gently glides between rows of candles…candles twinkling alongside the black funeral pall of a casket. I shuddered at the sight, and I worried whether this film wasn’t what I’d expected—or, maybe more accurately, that it was more than I was prepared to handle. The answer came seconds later, with a somber scene at a cemetery, where a family huddled together in prayer.
It was jolting, and tears flooded my eyes, as I saw at this moment a reflection of my own experience. And while I was yet unsure where all of this would lead, one thing was certain: “Mass of the Ages” wasn’t a film I could watch on my own. It was, as the aftermath of my daughter’s death with childhood brain cancer, a family affair, something we were destined to experience together. So I rushed to the family room and told them that I had something I wanted them to see… and, more importantly, I told them that I needed them, through to the end by my side.
And it was true, for scene after scene struck so many heartstrings, composing a kind of chorus involving the most bittersweet of memories and emotions. Things we’d seen, things we’d felt, things we’d loved and lost… many of them so agonizingly beautiful, but all of them things we had to do. The comparisons were endless, too! The father, Michael Mauss, was diagnosed with a glioblastoma, given only 12 months to live. My daughter Sami, at only 10-years-old, was diagnosed with anaplastic astrocytoma, which took her life after a mere 16 months.
There was the story of Michael, shortly after learning of his diagnosis, smiling on a hospital bed, assuring everyone he’ll do his best and that everything will be fine. This fit the exact description of a video Sami made for her supporters shortly after learning she had cancer. And there was the tear-jerking scene of Michael and Kristine renewing their wedding vows, which reminded us of the time a priest prayed a blessing over my daughter, whom he lovingly referred to as “Fire Toes.”
Watching this was almost overwhelming, and everyone was in tears, but it was the aftermath of Michael’s death that hit me most profoundly. Like Kristine after the loss of her husband, the death of our daughter left my family in limbo, unsure of what the future held in store. By that time, I was a Catholic turned apostate, adrift in the raging seas of secular atheism, lacking what Kristine calls “the solid foundation of tradition.” But like Fr. Illo points out later in the film, “There’s a lot of questions that kids normally have, and if those are not addressed… they’ll go somewhere else to find the answers.” And my kids had some serious questions!
“Who built the universe, Papa?” “What is right and wrong, Papa?” “Why don’t you ever pray, Papa?”
I addressed them, of course, but I knew I was wrong, and they knew it too, so they continued, even asking to see what church looked like. I did my darnedest to distract and dissuade them, even going so far as to show a series of videos from popular Protestant denominations, banking on the idea that they’d find it all very laughable — and they did. But it wasn’t enough, as one of them quickly replied, “But are we Catholic, Papa?” It was specific, and with names like Athanasius, Ambrose Louis, and Teresa Avila Lucille, it was definitely “a God thing.”
As an Atheist, I finally conceded to our children’s request for “God.” So like any parent in the 21st century does, we showed them YouTube videos of different religions: Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, as well as the Novus Ordo rite. But when we showed them a video of the Latin Mass, my barely-catechized children understood that that was the only place they sought to find God. Their decision was unanimous: we would go to Christmas Vigil at the local parish where Ambrose’s godmother attended… and where, unbeknownst to us, the priest who blessed my daughter just so happened to preside.
At one point in the film, Crisis Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Eric Sammons says, “The first impression [of the Latin Mass] for some people isn’t always a positive one because it’s so different from anything they experienced…they really just don’t know what to think.” That’s true for some people. For others, that foreign feeling of something timeless and transcendent, something set apart in (and beyond) space and time, is just what they’re looking for and exactly what they need. Kristine knows this all too well, insisting, “The idea of eternity, it smacks them in the middle of the eyes every day.” For the Mauss family, it’s where their dad is. For us, it’s where Sami lives, always smiling, dancing care- and cancer-free for all eternity. And Kristine’s right: “it’s not to make everything about death, but this life is not what we were created for…and to walk my children into heaven however I can is the number one priority of my life.”
Conveniently enough, our journey played out in a way that can be summed up by different quotes from the film. There’s Fr. Illo’s story of the woman who recognized, through the quiet and humbling lens of the Latin Mass, her desire (and complete lack) of control. There’s Fr. Joshua Caswell, SJC, detailing how the goal of the liturgy is not to evangelize but to worship God, and yet, how
“So many atheists, Satanists, and other people wander into the church, knowing little to nothing about the Catholic faith, and yet are seemingly drawn to it because there’s an experience of something bigger than themselves.”
And Dr. Peter Kwasniewski’s description of how the prayers at the foot of the altar start us slowly and carefully, “preparing us for the ascent up the Holy Mountain,” granting us a sense of our sinfulness and
“A chance to wake up to what we are doing, to catch up with what we’re doing—in a way, to slow us down… [serving as] a period of preparation, a period of transition that takes us from secular life to this timeless domain of the sacred.”
I was an atheist, but I experienced God at the Latin Mass. And just the married couple recalling their humorous first experience at a Latin Mass—“What’s crazy is that we came back, we kept going”—suddenly we found ourselves returning every Sunday to the traditional Roman rite. For now, like Kristine, my goal and number one priority from that point onward was to “walk my children into heaven however I can,” and that
The way I have been able to reorder my life [as a parent] has come from traditional Catholicism… it has completely, radically transformed every aspect of our lives… it is a liturgy and a way of life that breeds incredible peace and freedom… it’s a refuge… from this crazy scary world, and it’s the space where I can just place the cross down for a little bit.
Kristine finishes that line of thought with a question: where would we be without this? To which I echo her answer, “I don’t know,” adding only, “in a sea of sorrow, a desert of despair… anywhere (and everywhere) but Rome sweet home.”
And this is the story of countless souls across the world whose lives have been transformed by their encounter with God in the Mass of the Ages. Pope Francis seems to have largely hinged his recent motu proprio on the claim that the Latin Mass is “tied more to the desire and wishes of individual priests than to the real need of the ‘holy People of God’” (Letter Accompanying Traditionis Custodes). From the grassroots funding for the film, to the stories related therein, to our own experience and those of thousands more, this claim of “clericalism” could not be further from the truth about the liturgy of our forefathers.
The film elevates the Mauss family brilliantly, set in the cinematic Golden Hour, with Kristine standing with her children along the water’s edge of a lakeside shore. Whether dusk or dawn, it doesn’t matter, for, as had become evident throughout the film, the Mauss family lives, moves, and has their being in the inextinguishable light of an everlasting fire, one that burns brightly in their hearts, shining forth, mysteriously, through the collective twinkle in their smiling eyes for all the world to see. And behind them, almost prophetically, a skyline of heavenly hills, coruscating clouds, and solace, hidden, yet ever-present, distant, but only for a time. And, as it is with faithful Catholics tethered to the Traditional Latin Mass, it’s saddled on a circuit, providing warmth and light, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever, world without end, amen.
Mass of the Ages is a MUST-SEE movie fit for people of all ages. As for me and my family, we give it a resounding 5/5 stars. We are eagerly awaiting the premiere of Episode II which hints at addressing the real history of our liturgical chaos and the crisis in the Church.
Jeremiah Bannister is a writer, YouTuber, and public speaker. After serving in the U.S. Navy, he earned a degree in Journalism & Mass Communication, with a minor in Political Science, from Olivet College (Michigan), where he was awarded the school’s top-honor in three specialties: creative writing, political science, and public speaking. Since then, he has hosted a local TV show, served as a contributing editor for the Distributist Review, and hosted a live AM/FM talk radio program (PaleoRadio). Jeremiah has presented before audiences at Michigan State University, Ferris State University, and Campellsville University. He currently hosts Paleocrat Diaries LIVE on Meaning of Catholic, which airs every Wednesday morning at 9 a.m. EST on MoC’s YouTube channel. To learn more about his work or to schedule an interview/event, contact him at PaleocratDiaries@gmail.com.
“Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat” (Gen 2:17)
35. In the Book of Genesis we read: “The Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may eat freely of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die’ ” (Gen2:16-17).
With this imagery, Revelation teaches that the power to decide what is good and what is evil does not belong to man, but to God alone. The man is certainly free, inasmuch as he can understand and accept God’s commands. And he possesses an extremely far-reaching freedom, since he can eat “of every tree of the garden”. But his freedom is not unlimited: it must halt before the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”, for it is called to accept the moral law given by God. In fact, human freedom finds its authentic and complete fulfilment precisely in the acceptance of that law. God, who alone is good, knows perfectly what is good for man, and by virtue of his very love proposes this good to man in the commandments.
God’s law does not reduce, much less do away with human freedom; rather, it protects and promotes that freedom. In contrast, however, some present-day cultural tendencies have given rise to several currents of thought in ethics which centre upon an alleged conflict between freedom and law. These doctrines would grant to individuals or social groups the right to determine what is good or evil. Human freedom would thus be able to “create values” and would enjoy a primacy over truth, to the point that truth itself would be considered a creation of freedom. Freedom would thus lay claim to a moral autonomy which would actually amount to an absolute sovereignty.
36. The modern concern for the claims of autonomy has not failed to exercise an influence also in the sphere of Catholic moral theology. While the latter has certainly never attempted to set human freedom against the divine law or to question the existence of an ultimate religious foundation for moral norms, it has, nonetheless, been led to undertake a profound rethinking about the role of reason and of faith in identifying moral norms with reference to specific “innerworldly” kinds of behaviour involving oneself, others and the material world.
It must be acknowledged that underlying this work of rethinking there are certain positive concerns which to a great extent belong to the best tradition of Catholic thought. In response to the encouragement of the Second Vatican Council,60 there has been a desire to foster dialogue with modern culture, emphasizing the rational — and thus universally understandable and communicable — character of moral norms belonging to the sphere of the natural moral law.61 There has also been an attempt to reaffirm the interior character of the ethical requirements deriving from that law, requirements which create an obligation for the will only because such an obligation was previously acknowledged by human reason and, concretely, by personal conscience.
Some people, however, disregarding the dependence of human reason on Divine Wisdom and the need, given the present state of fallen nature, for Divine Revelation as an effective means for knowing moral truths, even those of the natural order,62 have actually posited a complete sovereignty of reason in the domain of moral norms regarding the right ordering of life in this world. Such norms would constitute the boundaries for a merely “human” morality; they would be the expression of a law which man in an autonomous manner lays down for himself and which has its source exclusively in human reason. In no way could God be considered the Author of this law, except in the sense that human reason exercises its autonomy in setting down laws by virtue of a primordial and total mandate given to man by God. These trends of thought have led to a denial, in opposition to Sacred Scripture (cf. Mt 15:3-6) and the Church’s constant teaching, of the fact that the natural moral law has God as its author, and that man, by the use of reason, participates in the eternal law, which it is not for him to establish.
37. In their desire, however, to keep the moral life in a Christian context, certain moral theologians have introduced a sharp distinction, contrary to Catholic doctrine,63 between an ethical order, which would be human in origin and of value for this world alone, and an order of salvation, for which only certain intentions and interior attitudes regarding God and neighbour would be significant. This has then led to an actual denial that there exists, in Divine Revelation, a specific and determined moral content, universally valid and permanent. The word of God would be limited to proposing an exhortation, a generic paraenesis, which the autonomous reason alone would then have the task of completing with normative directives which are truly “objective”, that is, adapted to the concrete historical situation. Naturally, an autonomy conceived in this way also involves the denial of a specific doctrinal competence on the part of the Church and her Magisterium with regard to particular moral norms which deal with the so-called “human good”. Such norms would not be part of the proper content of Revelation, and would not in themselves be relevant for salvation.
No one can fail to see that such an interpretation of the autonomy of human reason involves positions incompatible with Catholic teaching.
In such a context it is absolutely necessary to clarify, in the light of the word of God and the living Tradition of the Church, the fundamental notions of human freedom and of the moral law, as well as their profound and intimate relationship. Only thus will it be possible to respond to the rightful claims of human reason in a way which accepts the valid elements present in certain currents of contemporary moral theology without compromising the Church’s heritage of moral teaching with ideas derived from an erroneous concept of autonomy.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on VERITATIS SPLENDOR, NOS. 35-37; SAINT POPE John Paul II
In an extraordinary order yesterday in U.S. v. Carrillo-Lopez, federal district judge Miranda Du (D. Nev.) ruled that a core provision of federal immigration law is unconstitutional. Judge Du concluded that section 1326 of Title 8, which imposes criminal penalties on aliens who have been removed and who thereafter re-enter the United States, “violates the equal protection guarantee of the Fifth Amendment.” Specifically, Judge Du determined that section 1326 “was enacted with a discriminatory purpose” and “has a disparate impact on Latinx persons” (she uses the term Latinx 21 times) and that the government “fail[ed] to show that Section 1326 would have been enacted absent racial animus.”
On a quick review of Du’s 43-page order, I have lots of doubts about her reasoning. Here are some of them:
1. Let’s accept for the sake of argument Du’s conclusion that both the enactment in 1929 of the predecessor version of section 1326 and the enactment in 1952 of section 1326 were motivated by discriminatory intent. As she points out, section 1326 was also amended in 1988, 1990, 1994, and 1996 (twice). Du contends that these amendments weren’t “substantive” (because they supposedly didn’t “change the operation of Section 1326”) but instead merely “served to increase financial and carceral penalties.” But surely the increase in those penalties reflects an embrace by each of the enacting Congresses of the substantive provision. They weren’t mere technical amendments. So it’s odd that Du refuses to agree that those actions by later Congresses, which Du doesn’t argue reflected racial animus, suffice to cure section 1326 of its tainted origins.
It’s particularly odd that Du seems to imagine that Congress had to “attempt … to grapple with the racist history of Section 1326 or remove its influence on the legislation.” A provision setting forth criminal penalties for illegal re-entry would seem to be an unsurprising part of a functioning immigration system. Why isn’t it enough that later Congresses—again, Congresses that Du does not allege to have been racially motivated—have made clear their support for such a provision?
2. In finding that section 1326 “has a disparate impact on Latinx persons,” Du rejects the government’s position that geography explains the disparate impact. In her words, “It cannot be the case that the mere over-policing of certain locations—here the Southern border as opposed to the Northern border—prevents a specific group from raising equal protection challenges.” But her contention that the border with Mexico is “over-polic[ed]” compared to the border with Canada makes no effort to address the vast differences between the two borders.
3. Under Du’s reasoning, why wouldn’t enforcement of other ordinary immigration laws also violate equal protection? Why wouldn’t the ban on illegal entry in the first place be unlawful? Surely Du could dig up the same kind and quality of evidence of discriminatory purpose in the past and of disparate impact.
I doubt that even the often very wacky Ninth Circuit will agree with Du’s ruling (though much might depend on the panel draw).
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on LIBERAL JUDGES ARE HARD AT WORK DESTROYING OUR NATION
“I’m getting sick and tired of hearing about morality, our moral obligation,” Joe Biden said in 1975. “There’s a point where you are incapable of meeting moral obligations that exist worldwide.” At the time, he was arguing against U.S. aid to Cambodia. But he could just as easily have said the same about his decision this year to end the American presence in Afghanistan, a catastrophic mistake that has led to a Taliban takeover, undermined our national interest, and morally stained Biden’s presidency.
It is the latest blunder in a foreign-policy record filled with them.
In 1975, Biden opposed giving aid to the South Vietnamese government during its war against the North, ensuring the victory of a brutal regime and causing a mass exodus of refugees.
In 1991, Biden opposed the Gulf War, one of the most successful military campaigns in American history. Not only did he later regret his congressional vote, but in 1998, he criticized George H. W. Bush for not deposing Saddam Hussein, calling that decision a “fundamental mistake.”
In 2003, Biden supported the Iraq War—another congressional vote he later regretted.
In 2007, he opposed President George W. Bush’s new counterinsurgency strategy and surge in troops in Iraq, calling it a “tragic mistake.” In fact, the surge led to stunning progress, including dramatic drops in civilian deaths and sectarian violence.
In December 2011, President Barack Obama and Vice President Biden withdrew America’s much-scaled-down troop presence in Iraq; the former had declared Iraq to be “sovereign, stable, and self-reliant,” and the latter had predicted that Iraq “could be one of the great achievements of this administration.” Their decision sent Iraq spiraling into sectarian violence and civil war, allowing Iran to expand its influence and opening the way for the rise of the jihadist group ISIS.
According to Obama’s memoir A Promised Land, Biden had advised the former president to take more time before launching the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Ten years ago, Biden said in an interview that “the Taliban per se is not our enemy.” He added, “If, in fact, the Taliban is able to collapse the existing government, which is cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us, then that becomes a problem for us.” Indeed.
In his 2014 memoir, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, Robert Gates, who served as the secretary of defense under George W. Bush and Obama, said that Biden “has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
So is there a unifying theory of why Biden is so consistently wrong on major foreign-policy matters? Does he misunderstand something about the world, or possess some set of instincts that don’t serve him well?
Perhaps the place to begin is by recognizing that Biden has never been an impressive strategic thinker. When talking about his strengths, those close to Biden stress his people skills: his ability to read foreign leaders, to know when to push and when to yield, when to socialize and when to turn to business. But that’s very different from having a strategic vision and a sophisticated understanding of historical events and forces.
What the Biden foreign-policy record shows, I think, is a man who behaves as if he knows much more than he does, who has far too much confidence in his own judgment in the face of contrary advice from experts. (My hunch is he’s overcompensating for an intellectual inferiority complex, which has manifested itself in his history of plagiarism, lying about his academic achievements, and other embellishments.)
On national-security matters, President Biden lacks some of the most important qualities needed in those who govern—discernment, wisdom, and prudence; the ability to anticipate unfolding events; the capacity to make the right decision based on incomplete information; and the willingness to adjust one’s analysis in light of changing circumstances.
To put it in simple terms, Joe Biden has bad judgment.
William Inboden of the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas, who worked on George W. Bush’s National Security Council, told me that the key thing to understand about Biden is he is first and foremost a politician, consistently aligned with the Democratic Party’s center of gravity on any foreign-policy issue, a follower more than a leader, and certainly not an independent or creative thinker.
But Biden’s foreign-policy record has one other through line: the betrayal of people who have sided with the United States against its enemies and who, in the aftermath of American withdrawal, face a future of oppression, brutality, and death. And these betrayals of people in foreign lands seem to leave Biden unmoved. There is a troubling callousness to it all, a callousness that is at odds with empathy that Biden has clearly shown in other areas of his life.
According to my colleague George Packer’s biography of Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Biden has argued that the United States does not have an obligation to Afghans who trusted the United States.
“We don’t have to worry about that. We did it in Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger got away with it,” Biden told Holbrooke. Biden also “reportedly pushed back on the argument that America had a moral obligation to women in Afghanistan,” according to The Washington Post.
The withdrawals that Biden insisted on in Iraq and Afghanistan were at stages in those wars when very few American troops were at risk, when U.S. troop levels in those countries were quite low. As Paul D. Miller wrote in The Dispatch, “The U.S. presence in Afghanistan the last few years was tiny—just 2,500 troops before the start of the final withdrawal. It was indefinitely sustainable. There is no significant antiwar movement to speak of, there is no domestic political pressure to withdraw, and no election will hinge on U.S. policy toward Afghanistan.” Miller, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan who served as director for Afghanistan and Pakistan on the National Security Council for Presidents George W. Bush and Obama, went on to say this:
The US mission in Afghanistan accomplished some important successes. There have been no large-scale international terrorist attacks emanating from Afghanistan or Pakistan since 2001. The Afghan people broadly support the country’s new constitution. The Afghan economy showed consistent growth. By virtually every metric of human development, Afghans are better off today than they were 20 years ago. The intervention was not an unmitigated failure—except that many of these successes are likely to unravel with the Afghan army’s collapse.
But Biden decided to do in Afghanistan what he decided to do in Iraq: cut the cord because he was determined to cut the cord, because he thinks he knows better, not because circumstances on the ground dictated that it be done. The result is a human-rights catastrophe.
America’s second Catholic president speaks openly of his faith, carries a rosary in his pocket, and attends Mass every Sunday. “Joe is someone for whom the ways in which he sees issues around racial justice, around the treatment of refugees and immigrants—all of that is connected to a view of other people—who he sees as neighbor, who he sees as being made in the image of God,” Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, a close friend of Biden’s, told NPR.
Carol Keehan, the former head of the Catholic Health Association, who has worked closely with Biden for years, echoes those sentiments. “He’s very clear about justice,” she told NPR. “When Joe Biden talks about faith, he talks very much about things like the Gospel of Matthew—‘what you’ve done to the least of my brother, you’ve done to me.’”
Just don’t tell that to the girls, women, and other frightened souls in Afghanistan who, thanks to a decision made by Joseph R. Biden Jr., are about to enter the gates of hell.
Peter Wehner is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He writes widely on political, cultural, religious, and national-security issues, and he is the author of The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.
Peter Wehner is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He writes widely on political, cultural, religious, and national-security issues, and he is the author of The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.
ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP 
You must be logged in to post a comment.