The Federal Trade Commission voted 3-2 along party lines to file a new antitrust complaint against Facebook, rebooting the case after a federal judge tossed the agency’s original suit in June.

The suit, originally filed in December, seeks to break up the social media giant by unwinding its Obama-era acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.

FTC Chair Lina Khan declined to recuse herself from the vote. Facebook had sought to knock out the progressive antitrust advocate from its case because of her previous statements about the company and her work on a major tech antitrust probe by the House Judiciary Committee

Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/19/ftc-reboots-its-antitrust-complaint-against-facebook-506248

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From NRO’s Bench Memos:

En Banc Fifth Circuit OKs Texas Law Barring Live-Dismemberment Abortions

By ED WHELAN

August 19, 2021 11:24 AM

In an important decision yesterday in Whole Woman’s Health v. Paxton, the en banc Fifth Circuit ruled by a vote of 9 to 5 that a Texas law that generally prohibits the live-dismemberment version of the dilation-and-evacuation (D&E) abortion method is permissible under the Supreme Court’s abortion precedents.

Judges Jennifer Walker Elrod and Don Willett jointly authored the lead opinion, which was joined by Judges Edith Jones, Jerry Smith, James Ho, Kurt Engelhardt and Cory Wilson. (Because it garnered only seven of the fourteen votes, it is a plurality opinion, not a majority.) Chief Judge Priscilla Owen wrote an opinion concurring in the judgment, and Judge Catharina Haynes also concurred in the judgment (without opinion). Judge Ho added a concurring opinion. Judge James Dennis, joined by Judges Carl Stewart and James Graves, wrote a long dissent, and Judge Stephen Higginson, joined by Judge Gregg Costa, wrote a short one. (Judges Leslie Southwick, Kyle Duncan, and Andy Oldham all recused.)

Here is an overview:

1. The Texas law, enacted in 2017, provides: “A person may not intentionally perform a dismemberment abortion unless the dismemberment abortion is necessary in a medical emergency.” It defines “dismemberment abortion” as:

an abortion in which a person, with the purpose of causing the death of an unborn child, dismembers the living unborn child and extracts the unborn child one piece at a time from the uterus through the use of clamps, grasping forceps, tongs, scissors, or a similar instrument that, through the convergence of two rigid levers, slices, crushes, or grasps, or performs any combination of those actions on, a piece of a the unborn child’s body to cut or rip the piece from the body.

Like the other D&E versions, live-dismemberment abortion is commonly used in the 15^th week of gestation and later.

2. My high-level summary of the Elrod/Willett plurality opinion:

The Texas law prohibits only one particular D&E method and only when a medical emergency does not exist. Doctors can safely use other D&E methods that are already in widespread use.

The district court’s conclusion that the law is a complete ban on standard D&E abortions rests on four errors, each of which independently compels reversal:

a. The district court misapplied Casey’s undue-burden standard by balancing the law’s benefits against its burdens. Under the Chief Justice’s controlling opinion in June Medical, courts should not engage in such balancing. (Pp. 9-14.)

b. The district court slighted or entirely disregarded the state’s interests, even though the Supreme Court had accepted all of these interests in its 2007 ruling in favor of the federal partial-birth abortion law in Gonzales v. Carhart. (Pp. 14-19.)

c. The district court’s myriad and fundamental legal errors mean that no deference is owed to its factual findings. But even with deference, those findings would not demonstrate an undue burden.

The district court incorrectly concluded that there is only one kind of standard D&E abortion and thus wrongly held that the law would result in a complete ban on D&E abortions. It failed to apply the direct teachings of Gonzales. The record shows that performing a D&E that complies with the Texas law, using either suction or digoxin, is safe, effective, and commonplace. (Pp. 19-33.)

d. In a facial challenge, the plantiffs bear the heavy burden of showing that an abortion law would be unconstitutional in a “large fraction of cases.” The district court botched both the numerator and the denominator in the fraction. (Pp. 33-36.)

3. In her opinion concurring in the judgment (pp. 38-53), Judge Owen agrees broadly with the Elrod/Willett opinion. In her view, it is unnecessary to decide whether the Chief Justice’s concurring opinion in June Medical governs how the undue-burden standard applies, for, as she explains, the Texas law is permissible under both the Chief Justice’s approach and the balancing approach.

4. In his concurring opinion (pp. 54-65), Judge Ho explains that the Supreme Court’s abortion precedents are “unequivocal” on the principle that judges “have no business deciding which scientists are right and which are wrong” and, drawing on some very interesting historical examples, warns against “blindly” following the scientists:

Someday, scientists may look back on today’s abortion debates as shocking and barbaric—just as we look back in disbelief at those who ridiculed and ostracized proponents of handwashing and sterilizing surgical instruments to prevent disease and infection.

Ho also points out that Texas abortion law is “more permissive than the overwhelming majority of laws around the world.”

5. Judge Dennis’s dissent (pp. 66-105) contends that the plurality opinion “ignores on-point Supreme Court precedent in multiple ways” and “fails to defer to the district court’s well-reasoned and well-supported factual findings.” He also disputes its application of the “large fraction” analysis for a facial challenge.

6. In his dissent, Judge Higginson argues that, given the plurality’s view that the district court applied the wrong standard, the court should have remanded the case to the district court. He also indicates his view that the Texas law is invalid under Supreme Court precedents.

White House Asks China and Russia for Help in Afghanistan

(RepublicanNews.org) – Afghanistan is currently a mess. Taliban soldiers seized control of the presidential palace in Kabul this past weekend, causing widespread fear and uncertainty. Thousands of foreign troops have reinforced security at Hamid Karzai International Airport as US officials hastily evacuate remaining personnel from the region. To further its efforts, the White House has reached out to other nations for help in restoring order to Afghanistan and the region.

On Monday, August 16, US Department of State spokesperson Ned Price confirmed Secretary Antony Blinken spoke with China’s State Councilor and Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, and Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov, about recent developments in Afghanistan.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-



(RepublicanNews.org) – Afghanistan is currently a mess. Taliban soldiers seized control of the presidential palace in Kabul this past weekend, causing widespread fear and uncertainty. Thousands of foreign troops have reinforced security at Hamid Karzai International Airport as US officials hastily evacuate remaining personnel from the region. To further its efforts, the White House has reached out to other nations for help in restoring order to Afghanistan and the region.

A readout of Blinken’s call with Wang showed he talked about security issues in Afghanistan and US/Chinese efforts to evacuate their respective citizens. Blinken had a similar conversation with Lavrov, and the two men discussed efforts to get US citizens and vulnerable Afghans safely out of the Middle Eastern country.

Coordination with China and Russia could be vital in the coming weeks and months. Both countries have indicated a willingness to work with the Taliban and acknowledge their control of Afghanistan.

Will that willingness put Americans in more danger, considering the already contentious relations between Moscow and Washington and rising US sanctions on Chinese companies?

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A readout of Blinken’s call with Wang showed he talked about security issues in Afghanistan and US/Chinese efforts to evacuate their respective citizens. Blinken had a similar conversation with Lavrov, and the two men discussed efforts to get US citizens and vulnerable Afghans safely out of the Middle Eastern country.

Coordination with China and Russia could be vital in the coming weeks and months. Both countries have indicated a willingness to work with the Taliban and acknowledge their control of Afghanistan.

Will that willingness put Americans in more danger, considering the already contentious relations between Moscow and Washington and rising US sanctions on Chinese companies?

Copyright 2021, RepublicanNews.org

OnePeterFive

Rebuilding Catholic Culture. Restoring Catholic Tradition.

• CATHOLIC LIFE

Is the Novus Ordo the Only Law of Prayer?

 Joseph Shaw, PhDAugust 16, 20210 Comments

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The practical fall-out from Traditionis Custodes will be making itself felt for some time to come. In some places it has already been devastating; in others, it appears it will be minimal. The theological fall-out, however, threatens a profound problem on a different plane. This arises from the claim made in Article 1 of the document, and repeated in the accompanying Letter to Bishops, that “the liturgical books promulgated by Saint Paul VI and Saint John Paul II, in conformity with the decrees of Vatican Council II, are the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite.”

The official English translation which I have quoted is actually a poor rendering of the Italian expression, “l’unica espressione”, which means the only expression. The document is claiming that the only Missal which expresses the Roman Rite’s lex orandi, its “law of prayer,” is the reformed Missal.https://7a8202716a0e6fcf836d3009847d1208.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

The Church’s law of prayer, her lex orandi, must correspond to, and indeed determine, her law of belief (lex credendi): that was the claim of Prosper of Aquitaine when he coined the phrase in the 5^thcentury. Prosper was making the point that if you want to know what people believe, then look at how they express themselves in prayer. If they genuflect at the reference to the Incarnation in the Creed, of if they kneel to receive Holy Communion, this tells you something: Arians will refuse to do the first, and Lutherans the second. A Missal is a “law of prayer” in the sense that it sets out a way for people to pray, and we would expect Catholic Missals to give a theologically correct law of prayer and Arian and Lutheran ones to give theologically erroneous ones. What, then, can it mean to say that the Roman Rite has only one law of prayer, and that this is the one expressed in a particular Missal, and not in another, in a document which allows both to be used in the Church?

I have not been alone in struggling to understand what this means. I recently took part in a collaborative blog-post with Fr. Anthony Ruff, the founder of the Pray Tell blog. On this issue Fr. Ruff responded:

[Pope Francis] did not say that the 1962 Missal has no lex orandi, or is opposed to the Church’s lex orandi. The 1962 Missal reflects the Roman rite’s lex orandi to the extent that it reflects the Church’s liturgy as found in the 1970 Missal. There is continuity between 1962 and 1970 in the sense that the core features of the reformed liturgy, which oftentimes derive from Catholic tradition of earliest centuries, are found in the 1962 Missal but in an occluded and obscure manner which needed to be made more apparent.

Fr. Ruff appears to be saying that the 1962 Missal has validity on loan, as it were, from the 1970 Missal: insofar as it agrees with the later Missal, it can be said to express the Roman Rite’s lex orandi.I’m not sure whether this can be squared with the wording of Traditionis Custodes or not, but it doesn’t matter because Fr. Ruff’s sympathetic interpretation does nothing to fend off the real problem with Article 1, which can be expressed as the simple question: what was the Church’s lex orandi up to 1962?

This question is addressed by Dr. Richard H. Bulzacchelli, Lecturer in Theology at Catholic Studies Academy and Senior Fellow with the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, in a video talk. On the hypothetical supposition that Traditionis Custodes should be understood literally, Dr. Bulzacchelli explains (from about the 19 minute mark):

If the Novus Ordo is the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite then by definition no other liturgical form can express that lex orandi. The logical implications of this assertion are staggering. If the Usus Antiquior cannot express the lex orandi of the Roman Rite, then what we call the Roman Rite today … isn’t the same thing as what we called the Roman Rite in 1962. Yet that attitude is exactly what Francis says he wants to correct. The only way that’s not a contradiction is if the decision flowing from his own defined will is what determines what the truth is in the objective order of reality. … Did the Roman Rite exist for fifteen centuries without an authentic expression of its lex orandi?This would be impossible…

What Dr. Bulzacchelli is saying is that, if it is absurd to suggest (as surely it is) that the Roman Rite had no lex orandi of any kind in 1962, then it appears that Article 1 is claiming that the Roman Rite’s lex orandi changed in 1970 from the one expressed by the older Missal to that expressed by the newer Missal.

Now, in 1970 the Church adopted a new Missal, and by doing so adopted a new law of prayer, just in the sense that we had a new way of celebrating Mass. This is clearly true. But what does it mean that there is (now) only one expression of the Roman Rite’s law of prayer? The only reason for rejecting a Missal as a lex orandi is if it is theologically problematic, as we would reject the lex orandi of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer: it does not correspond faithfully to the Church’s lex credendi.

So is that the claim? That the 1962 Missal is theologically defective? But this implies after all that there was no authentic law of prayer for the Roman Rite in 1962. Unless it became theologically defective in 1970, or later, by a legislative act: as Bulzacchelli puts it, “the decision flowing from his own defined will is what determines what the truth is in the objective order of reality.”

Now possibly someone might say this: a statement might become theologically defective with the passage of time because of the way the Church’s Magisterium has developed. Thus we find that before the Definition of the Marian Dogmas, the Divine Praises did not include the lines “Blessed be her Holy and Immaculate Conception. Blessed be her Glorious Assumption.” Looking for the text online to create a booklet for Benediction, I once found a version which excluded those lines and I realized I had stumbled on a website maintained by one of the splinter groups deriving from the “Old Catholic” schism of 1870. Their lex orandi is defective, we might say, not because of something they had changed, but something they had refused to change.

However, this is not really right. The older version of the Divine Praises is not theologically defective: it is in no way incompatible with the Catholic Faith. Certainly the Old Catholic schismatics are motivated to keep it because they reject the dogmas, but liturgical texts which are merely silent about particular theological issues are not for that reason unusable: to say so would be absurd. Were it to become an issue in the context of the reconciliation of a body of schismatics to the Holy See, historical precedent would suggest that they would be allowed to make a statement of Faith and carry on with the older texts, if it meant so much to them.

And the parallel with the 1962 Missal is hard to make out. Could someone please show me the dogmatic definitions which are reflected in the reformed Missal, and whose absence from the older Missal gives an opportunity, for those attached to it, to display their rejection of them? There are of course no such definitions. The closest anyone has come to making the case for this is in relation to the Prayer for the Jews in the Good Friday Liturgy. I have examined this argument here but briefly it doesn’t survive the observation that the 1974 Liturgy of the Hours calls for the Jews to accept Jesus as their Messiah, and does so several times.

Nevertheless something like this reasoning may be behind Article 1. In the accompanying Letter to Bishops, Pope Francis criticizes the “rejection not only of the liturgical reform, but of the Vatican Council II itself, claiming, with unfounded and unsustainable assertions, that it betrayed the Tradition and the ‘true Church.’” Instead, he stresses continuity, calling Vatican II “a recent stage of this dynamic,” the “dynamic of Tradition.”

The problem is, if the 1962 Missal does not express the Church’s lex orandi, or does so (as Fr. Ruff imagines) only in an inadequate way and by reference to a later “stage of the dynamic”—in short, if it has no validity in and of itself—then it does look as though whatever the content of the tradition up to 1962 was, it was altered in its substance—“betrayed,” a partisan of that tradition might say—by the 1970 Missal.

This is why Dr. Bulzacchelli is concerned that Traditionis Custodes appears to be making true the very criticism of the Novus Ordo which it condemns, and which had hitherto seemed, not least to me, to be extreme and unwarranted. Either we say, with Pope Benedict XVI, that the old and the new are both legitimate expressions of the Church’s lex orandi (alongside all the other rites and usages), or we say that they conflict, and that the historical transition from old to new marked the moment at which the Church did not just develop its expression of existing doctrines, in which case the older expressions would remain valid, but adopted a new law of belief. Which of course is impossible.

My own view is that Pope Benedict was correct and that this part of Traditionis Custodes, as it stands and in the context of the Letter to Bishops, fails to express anything: it is incomprehensible because it is self-contradictory. This may seem a drastic option, but it is better than to swallow the logical implications Dr. Bulzacchelli draws out. Readers may derive some comfort from the thought that until the document appears, perhaps in Latin, in the Acta Apostolicis Sedis (as we have been promised it will), the text can still be tweaked, as actually happened, for far less serious reasons, with the text of Summorum Pontificum. However, I won’t be holding my breath.

Photo credit: Grant Whitty via unsplash.com.

Joseph Shaw, PhD

Dr Joseph Shaw has a Doctorate in Philosophy from Oxford University, where he also gained a first degree in Politics and Philosophy and a graduate Diploma in Theology. He has published on Ethics and Philosophy of Religion and has edited The Case for Liturgical Restoration: Una Voce Position Papers on the Extraordinary Form(Angelico Press). He is the Chairman of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales and Secretary of Una Voce International. He teaches Philosophy in Oxford University and lives nearby with his wife and nine children.www.lmschairman.org

THE CATHOLIC MONITOR

Is Biden a Chinese Asset & is the Non-Afghanistan “International Terrorist” Taliban Military Operation being run by Chinese Ally Pakistan?

August 17, 2021

The terror, Najafizada said, is partly due to the makeup of the Taliban, which is “a movement held by the foreign fighters from different international terrorist organizations, from neighboring countries. They don’t have a national agenda, local agenda, an Afghan agenda.” – The Epoch Times

Is Joe Biden a Chinese Communist asset or puppet?

Is it possible that the presidency is being run by an agent of a foreign government as the Democrats and the media for four years falsely accused Donald Trump of doing to the point of impeachment? 

Some pundits including Senator Tom Cotton, Congressman Dan Crenshaw and others are saying because of Hunter Biden’s suspicious dealings with China and for other reasons that his father, Joe, may be a Chinese Communist asset:

Tom Cotton@SenTomCottonNov 23, 2020As Bob Gates said, Joe Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Now he’s surrounding himself with panda huggers who will only reinforce his instincts to go soft on China.  Nov 23, 2020 John Kerry will jet off to Beijing in pursuit of a climate accord with the world’s biggest polluter, the Chinese Communist Party. If Xi Jinping plays along, he’ll demand concessions. And we know what that means: more shuttered factories in the U.S., more hot air from Beijing.  Nov 23, 2020What else will Biden, Kerry, & Blinken give away to “smooth relations” with Beijing? Will they stop efforts to arrest Chinese spies on our campuses? Rescue China’s electronic surveillance company, Huawei? Weaken export controls? Delay arms sales to Taiwan?… Nov 23, 2020America will be in deep trouble if the same officials who oversaw the Obama/Biden administration’s disastrous China policy enter office and roll back all of the progress made against Beijing over the past four years. [https://twitter.com/SenTomCotton/status/1330993653276405767?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw]

Rep. Dan Crenshaw@RepDanCrenshaw ·Nov 23, 2020Biden‘s plan is to let radicals destroy our economy, with little if any benefit for the environment, and huge benefits for China. We will fight this every step for the way. [https://twitter.com/RepDanCrenshaw/status/1330953537308782593?s=20] Paul Joseph Watson@PrisonPlanet·Nov 22, 2020Joe Biden set to appoint another compromised SIMP for China. Imagine my shock.[https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet/status/1330733661155700736]
The next question which nobody apparently is asking, is the current Afghanistan Taliban military operation being run by Pakistan with the possible collaboration of China whom it is closely militarily and financially allied with?  The Epoch Times reported that Afghanistan experts and “Rajiv Dogra, a former Indian diplomat and the author of  ‘Durand’s Curse,’ a best-selling and critically acclaimed book” on Afghanistan stated the Taliban military operation may be run by non-Afghanistan “international terrorist[s]” who are controlled by Chinese ally Pakistan: The terror, Najafizada said, is partly due to the makeup of the Taliban, which is “a movement held by the foreign fighters from different international terrorist organizations, from neighboring countries. They don’t have a national agenda, local agenda, an Afghan agenda.” [… ] 
Dogra said that the size of the Taliban’s forces and the military equipment they are using show that they’re supported and advised by an “organized state body,” and pointed to Pakistan.

“The strategy and quick change of tactics is another pointer of high professional input. A third indication is that the Taliban are using some of the tactics, like target killing, that groups like LeT [the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba] have employed in Kashmir,” Dogra said.

“If any further proof of the Pakistan Army’s involvement is needed, it is provided by the body bags of Pakistani soldiers that are regularly being brought back to Pakistan from Afghanistan. Taliban’s regular consultations with the ISI are the final proof of who pulls the strings.” [https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-taliban-wages-psychological-warfare-with-targeted-assassinations-experts_3939640.html ]

Moreover, most people don’t seem to know that Pakistan is closely tied to China militarily and financially according to Politico:

Protests, massive debt, dwindling cash reserves. Those are the consequences of Pakistan’s increasing reliance on China — but the country has still decided it’s all worth it. 

It’s not what Pakistan anticipated when it happily embraced a $60 billion handout from China in 2013, when the countries formalized the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), part of Beijing’s international infrastructure strategy known as the Belt and Road Initiative. Initially, the realignment with Beijing seemed a win-win situation, as the cash-strapped South Asian country drifted away from its traditional ally: the United States. Beyond the geostrategic satisfaction of outflanking India, the traditional mutual archenemy of both China and Pakistan, there have been plenty of tangible economic benefits…

…  The problem, Haqqani said, is that the various aspects of Pakistan’s relationship with China are intertwined. While European politicians can strike an investment deal with China while simultaneously criticizing its human rights record, Pakistan has a “one window operation.”

“If you don’t give them what they want in the economic realm, they push back in the military realm. To keep the military relationship going, they have to give up the economic realm,” he said. China is now Pakistan’s biggest arms supplier, and with Pakistan’s military playing an oversized role in its politics, the civilian government has to be wary it doesn’t upset its generals in addition to Beijing.

“In the end Pakistan ends up giving everything,” Haqqani said. [https://www.politico.eu/article/pakistan-learns-cost-of-economic-alliance-with-china/]Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.

Francis Notes:

– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:

“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.”
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)

Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said “the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church.”
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]

– “If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html

– “Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html

 –  LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:

The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”

–  On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:

“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”

– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:

“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.

Election Notes: 

– Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: “212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted…Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden” [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]

– Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times “Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html– Tucker Carlson’s Conservatism Inc. Biden Steal Betrayal is explained by “One of the Greatest Columns ever Written” according to Rush: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/tucker-carlsons-conservatism-inc-biden.html?m=1 – A Hour which will Live in Infamy: 10:01pm November 3, 2020: 
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1 What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: “Anitfa ‘Agent Provocateurs‘”: 
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1] 
Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God’s Will and to do it.   

THE CATHOLIC MONITOR

Is Biden a Chinese Asset & is the Non-Afghanistan “International Terrorist” Taliban Military Operation being run by Chinese Ally Pakistan?

August 17, 2021

The terror, Najafizada said, is partly due to the makeup of the Taliban, which is “a movement held by the foreign fighters from different international terrorist organizations, from neighboring countries. They don’t have a national agenda, local agenda, an Afghan agenda.” – The Epoch Times

Is Joe Biden a Chinese Communist asset or puppet?

Is it possible that the presidency is being run by an agent of a foreign government as the Democrats and the media for four years falsely accused Donald Trump of doing to the point of impeachment? 

Some pundits including Senator Tom Cotton, Congressman Dan Crenshaw and others are saying because of Hunter Biden’s suspicious dealings with China and for other reasons that his father, Joe, may be a Chinese Communist asset:

Tom Cotton@SenTomCottonNov 23, 2020As Bob Gates said, Joe Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Now he’s surrounding himself with panda huggers who will only reinforce his instincts to go soft on China.  Nov 23, 2020 John Kerry will jet off to Beijing in pursuit of a climate accord with the world’s biggest polluter, the Chinese Communist Party. If Xi Jinping plays along, he’ll demand concessions. And we know what that means: more shuttered factories in the U.S., more hot air from Beijing.  Nov 23, 2020What else will Biden, Kerry, & Blinken give away to “smooth relations” with Beijing? Will they stop efforts to arrest Chinese spies on our campuses? Rescue China’s electronic surveillance company, Huawei? Weaken export controls? Delay arms sales to Taiwan?… Nov 23, 2020America will be in deep trouble if the same officials who oversaw the Obama/Biden administration’s disastrous China policy enter office and roll back all of the progress made against Beijing over the past four years. [https://twitter.com/SenTomCotton/status/1330993653276405767?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw]

Rep. Dan Crenshaw@RepDanCrenshaw ·Nov 23, 2020Biden‘s plan is to let radicals destroy our economy, with little if any benefit for the environment, and huge benefits for China. We will fight this every step for the way. [https://twitter.com/RepDanCrenshaw/status/1330953537308782593?s=20] Paul Joseph Watson@PrisonPlanet·Nov 22, 2020Joe Biden set to appoint another compromised SIMP for China. Imagine my shock.[https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet/status/1330733661155700736]
The next question which nobody apparently is asking, is the current Afghanistan Taliban military operation being run by Pakistan with the possible collaboration of China whom it is closely militarily and financially allied with?  The Epoch Times reported that Afghanistan experts and “Rajiv Dogra, a former Indian diplomat and the author of  ‘Durand’s Curse,’ a best-selling and critically acclaimed book” on Afghanistan stated the Taliban military operation may be run by non-Afghanistan “international terrorist[s]” who are controlled by Chinese ally Pakistan: The terror, Najafizada said, is partly due to the makeup of the Taliban, which is “a movement held by the foreign fighters from different international terrorist organizations, from neighboring countries. They don’t have a national agenda, local agenda, an Afghan agenda.” [… ] 
Dogra said that the size of the Taliban’s forces and the military equipment they are using show that they’re supported and advised by an “organized state body,” and pointed to Pakistan.

“The strategy and quick change of tactics is another pointer of high professional input. A third indication is that the Taliban are using some of the tactics, like target killing, that groups like LeT [the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba] have employed in Kashmir,” Dogra said.

“If any further proof of the Pakistan Army’s involvement is needed, it is provided by the body bags of Pakistani soldiers that are regularly being brought back to Pakistan from Afghanistan. Taliban’s regular consultations with the ISI are the final proof of who pulls the strings.” [https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-taliban-wages-psychological-warfare-with-targeted-assassinations-experts_3939640.html ]

Moreover, most people don’t seem to know that Pakistan is closely tied to China militarily and financially according to Politico:

Protests, massive debt, dwindling cash reserves. Those are the consequences of Pakistan’s increasing reliance on China — but the country has still decided it’s all worth it. 

It’s not what Pakistan anticipated when it happily embraced a $60 billion handout from China in 2013, when the countries formalized the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), part of Beijing’s international infrastructure strategy known as the Belt and Road Initiative. Initially, the realignment with Beijing seemed a win-win situation, as the cash-strapped South Asian country drifted away from its traditional ally: the United States. Beyond the geostrategic satisfaction of outflanking India, the traditional mutual archenemy of both China and Pakistan, there have been plenty of tangible economic benefits…

…  The problem, Haqqani said, is that the various aspects of Pakistan’s relationship with China are intertwined. While European politicians can strike an investment deal with China while simultaneously criticizing its human rights record, Pakistan has a “one window operation.”

“If you don’t give them what they want in the economic realm, they push back in the military realm. To keep the military relationship going, they have to give up the economic realm,” he said. China is now Pakistan’s biggest arms supplier, and with Pakistan’s military playing an oversized role in its politics, the civilian government has to be wary it doesn’t upset its generals in addition to Beijing.

“In the end Pakistan ends up giving everything,” Haqqani said. [https://www.politico.eu/article/pakistan-learns-cost-of-economic-alliance-with-china/]Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.

Francis Notes:

– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:

“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.”
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)

Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said “the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church.”
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]

– “If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html

– “Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html

 –  LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:

The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”

–  On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:

“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”

– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:

“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.

Election Notes: 

– Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: “212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted…Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden” [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]

– Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times “Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html– Tucker Carlson’s Conservatism Inc. Biden Steal Betrayal is explained by “One of the Greatest Columns ever Written” according to Rush: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/tucker-carlsons-conservatism-inc-biden.html?m=1 – A Hour which will Live in Infamy: 10:01pm November 3, 2020: 
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1 What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: “Anitfa ‘Agent Provocateurs‘”: 
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1] 
Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God’s Will and to do it.  

• » A Shout Out to MaryMichael Pakaluk

A Shout Out to MaryMichael PakalukWEDNESDAY, AUGUST 18, 2021I had always pictured the Visitation as an intimate affair, and paintings display it in that way also: two holy women, perhaps embracing, sharing in confidence the great things that God was accomplishing in them, through the children they bore in their wombs.  What is more intimate than pregnancy?So maybe you were brought up short, as was I, by Luke’s language of “cried out in a loud voice” in last Sunday’s gospel:Luke 1:41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the holy Spirit,  42 cried out in a loud voice and said, “Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 43 And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord[n] should come to me? 44 For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. 45 Blessed are you who believed[o] that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.” (emphasis added)If anything, the phrase is under translated.  The verb (anaphōneō) means strictly to shout aloud, even, to make a great noise, as in this verse where it is used in the Greek Septuagint: “So all Israel brought up the ark of the covenant of the LORD with shouting, and with the sound of the horn, with trumpets, with the loud-sounding of cymbals, with harps, and lyres.” (1 Chronicles 15:28, emphasis added)Imagine now Elizabeth’s first banging a cymbal to get attention and then shouting out commensurately. That in effect is what Luke is depicting.The language “in a loud voice” is just as striking.  Again, this language is an under translation.  The Greek noun means strictly a shout, or even a piercing wail.  Jesus uses the word for the proclamation of the bridegroom’s arrival: “At midnight, there was a cry, ‘Behold, the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’” (Mt 25:6, emphasis added)  John uses the word to mean a clamor of distress. (Rev 21:4)This kind of shouting of Elizabeth, as if making a public proclamation to a crowd, is said to be the effect of the Holy Spirit filling her and also, apparently, of the leaping of the infant in her womb.  That infant of course was the Baptist, the one whose voice, also in the Spirit, would later be shouting in the wilderness (Mk 1:3).  John leaps when Elizabeth hears the voice of Mary, and Elizabeth shouts when John leaps. She seems to be both the ears and the voice of her son.The commentators are generally silent on this “crying out in a loud voice” or say foolish things (“an unrestrained utterance under the influence of irrepressible feeling, thoroughly true to feminine nature” says one). But St. Ambrose gets it: Magna voce clamavit, ubi domini sensit adventum.  (“She shouted out loudly when she realized the Lord had come.”)*After I realized what was going on in this verse, I thought of the prayer, the Hail Mary. Apparently, that prayer did not take the form we use today until around 1500. In that form, it has traditionally been described as having four parts: the first part was contributed by an angel (Luke 1:28); the second, by Elizabeth (v. 42 above); the third, the holy name of Jesus, by the popes; the fourth, the closing petition, by the piety of the faithful.Surely the second part, “Blessed art thou among women” etc. – words inspired by the Holy Spirit, given apparently through a prophet (the Baptist), and even shouted aloud by Elizabeth in the presence of the Lord (v. 43) – surely words delivered in this way, in this context, are not just mere curiosities for Christians henceforth, but something like a canon of prayer. How could the Protestant Reformers for instance (some of them) have scrupled at this prayer?Looking at the verses anew, I was also called up short by the parallelism:blessed are you among women
blessed is the fruit of your wombThe same word is used for “blessed” in each case.  Read the clauses in the less familiar, opposite order, and it’s striking that Mary is called blessed in exactly the same way as the Holy One, the Lord, is called blessed. To be sure, her blessedness comes from the blessedness of the Lord.  We must assert this.  Of course, she is a creature, not a fit object of adoration or latria. Nonetheless, as at least as far as Elizabeth’s shouted words are concerned, the honors, the standing, the reverence due, the cause for joy, is the same.  (The tradition marks out this attitude as hyperdulia).In his Harmony of the Gospels, even John Calvin, after being worried by the language – “She seems to put Mary and Christ on an equal footing, which would have been highly improper” – admits: “at this day the blessedness brought us by Christ cannot be the subject of our praise, without reminding us, at the same time, of the distinguished honor which God was pleased to bestow upon Mary.”But Calvin also said some foolish things about the Hail Mary. The first part, he said, involved taking the angel’s words for our own, which (to him) was impertinent.  And it used a greeting to address an absent person, which was foolish.  “With extraordinary ignorance have the Papists, by an enchanter’s trick, changed this salutation into a prayer.”I’ll close this article by letting Major Julian Cook refute Calvin. Crossing the river Waal during Operation Market Garden on September 17, 1944, Cook rallied the men to row evenly using only a fragment of the angel’s greeting, as Cornelius Ryan reported in A Bridge Too Far:  “’The Lord is with thee’ was too long,” Cook says, “so I kept repeating, ‘Hail Mary,’ (one stroke), ‘Full of grace’ (second stroke).”Major Cook too cried out in a loud voice. And no one doubted he was saying a prayer. *Image: Magnificat by James Patrick Reid, contemporary [Saint Patrick’s Church, Chatham, NJ]You may also enjoy:Professor Pakaluk’s “Mother of Fair Love”Robert Royal’s “The New Pro-life Movement”© 2021 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.orgThe Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.About the AuthorLatest ArticlesMichael PakalukMichael Pakaluk, an Aristotle scholar and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is a professor in the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. He lives in Hyattsville, MD with his wife Catherine, also a professor at the Busch School, and their eight children. His acclaimed book on the Gospel of Mark is The Memoirs of St Peter. His new book, Mary’s Voice in the Gospel of John: A New Translation with Commentary, is now available.