Letter #104, 2023, Friday, June 16: Viganò on D.C. Mass (on June 14) Here is a letter from Archbishop Viganò on a Mass celebrated in Washington D.C. two days ago. —RMSupport the Moynihan Letters Archbishop Viganò. Washington LGBTQ+ Mass Statement. (link) 14 June 2023 Posted by Marco Tosatti Dear friends and enemies of Stilum Curiae, we receive and gladly publish this statement by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. Happy reading and spreading.§§§ DECLARATIONabout the Mass that will be celebrated today [June 14, 2023]in the Parish of the Holy Trinityof Washington Today, in the parish of the Holy Trinity run by the Jesuits of Georgetown University of the Archdiocese of Washington, a Mass will be celebrated for “Catholic” activists of the LGBTQ+ movement. For years ± ever since he was Archbishop of Atlanta — Wilton Daniel Gregory has abused his power to promote the homosexual agenda, to the great scandal of the Catholic faithful. His monomaniacal fixation on vice against nature earned him the Sacred Purple and the appointment to the See of Washington, a worthy heir to McCarrick and Wuerl, confirming that the betrayal of Christ’s teaching is considered in Bergoglio’s Vatican as an indispensable requirement for ecclesiastical career. It is not surprising that Cardinal Gregory is a follower of James Martin, S.J., whose recent sacrilegious utterances on the cult of the Sacred Heart have aroused indignation in the ecclesial body and prompted them to organize a reparatory procession on June 16th at Dodgers Stadium in Los Angeles. I feel great pain to learn that the clergy of the Archdiocese of Washington prefer to slavishly keep silent about this umpteenth sacrilege, with which the Holy Sacrifice is sacrilegiously used as a propaganda tool for a sin that cries out for vengeance in the presence of God, while souls are confirmed of so many poor sinners in vice. But even greater is the pain in seeing the Blessed Sacrament profaned — in the Octave of Corpus Domini and two days before the feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus — by admitting to Communion people whom Pastors should instead admonish and direct towards a path of true conversion and fidelity to the will of God. Pastors misled by “homoheresy” should remember that, when they present themselves before the Throne of God to be judged, they will have to give an account to Our Lord for the souls who, because of them, are damned for eternity: souls for which He has shed his blood on the cross. By confirming these poor souls in mortal sin, they have usurped the authority of Christ and the authority of the Church for the opposite purpose to that which Christian Charity demands, demonstrating their own moral corruption, together with that of those who let them act undisturbed for scatter the flock entrusted to them. I therefore spiritually unite myself in the Holy Rosary of reparation that was organized in front of the parish of the Most Holy Trinity, hoping that this commendable initiative may obtain Our Lord’s forgiveness for the betrayal of His Ministers, conversion for the souls misled by these false Shepherds, expiation for the irreverence and sacrileges that will be committed. In this bleak picture of apostasy and rebellion against God’s Commandments and the natural Law, the aversion to the Truth of Christ on the part of these infidel priests should make us understand the gravity of the situation in the Church in the United States of America, moving Catholics to prayer, fasting and penance so that the divine Majesty grants His Church holy Shepherds, inflamed with love for the Lord and for souls, and removes the servants of the Antichrist from the sacred enclosure. + Carlo Maria Viganò, ArchbishopJune 14, 2023Infra Oct. Ss.mi Corporis et Sanguinis D.ni
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Dodgers Violates Code Of Conduct Bill Donohue June 16, 2023 The Los Angeles Dodgers has a code of conduct for fans that is being violated not only by some attendees, but by the team itself. To be specific, giving an award tonight to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence is an expressed violation of this policy. Among the 19 rules governing fan behavior, the last one is key. “Any conduct or attire (including caps, face coverings, etc.) that includes any content (such as words, photos, drawings, artwork, or other designs) deemed by the Dodgers in their sole discretion to be obscene, profane, vulgar, indecent, violent, threatening, abusive, prejudiced against any individual or group (e.g., because of their race, religion, or sexual orientation), or which encourages or promotes illegal behavior, is prohibited. Content that is not overtly in violation of the foregoing, but is suggestive of prohibited content, is similarly prohibited (my emphasis).” Any fair-minded person who has read the report I have written on the “Sisters” must acknowledge that they have routinely smeared Catholic nuns, and have viciously trashed the Eucharist, the heart of the Catholic religion. In other words, these “fans” are an express violation of the code of conduct. Worse, they are being honored for doing so by the Dodgers. Let’s be clear: The Los Angeles Dodgers is an organization that glorifies bigotry, making a mockery of their professed interest in tolerance and inclusion. Their “code of conduct” is a scam.
“We have a man in the Oval Office who’s a PATHOLOGICAL LIAR!!” Mark Levin just went BALLISTIC on Joe Biden’s ARREST of President Trump. We have a CRIMINAL who’s occupying the Oval Office, and if we don’t have an IMMEDIATE pushback, this criminal will WIN! We’re organizing a ONE MILLION PATRIOT PUSH to respond.We need ONE MILLION patriots to add their name RIGHT NOW to go on the record and say DROP ALL CHARGES against President Trump.DROP ALL CHARGESTHIS IS THE BIGGEST PRO-TRUMP RESPONSE IN HISTORY – THERE’S NO ROOM FOR ERROR! If just 999,999 patriots sign, we’ll FAIL. Please please PLEASE go on the record in defense of our President. There’s zero time to waste.DROP ALL CHARGES
Bishop Gracida tells of his “retirement” & “shift from ranching to fighting the forces of the ‘Third Path’ & my fighting would once again bring me into conflict with the bishops of Texas”
Braunvieh Bull similar to my bulls, Cornerstone Amigo and Ambassador
Bishop Rene Henry Gracida’s 100th birthday is coming up on June 9 so I am reading his autobiography in preparation for the great day.
Bishop Gracida tells of his “retirement” and “shift from ranching to fighting the forces of the ‘Third Path’ and my fighting would once again bring me into conflict with the bishops of Texas”:
I was close to celebrating my 74th birthday and I realized that in just one more year I would be 75 years old and on my 75th Birthday I would be required to submit to the Pope a letter of resignation. The more I thought about it the more I questioned why I should wait a year to do it. I was mentally and physically exhausted from the Kenedy lawsuit, the attacks by the bishops, other ‘slip and fall’ lawsuits and now the daily problems created for me by my Coadjutor. I decided that I would ask the Pope to let me retire a year early. I wrote to Pope John Paul II and asked him for permission to retire. He granted me permission and so on April Fools Day, April 1, 1997, I retired.
My worst fears about Bishop Roberto were soon realized. He closed Camp Corpus Christi and began closing different chancery offices such as the Office of Evangelization, the Office of Pro-life Activities and others. It was a disaster. Many of the programs that I had started that were successful were now shut down. Some people were comparing him to Attila the Hun laying waste the countryside. Thank God the Diocese of Corpus Christi was spared further damage when, after just two years as Ordinary, Pope John Paul II promoted Bishop Roberto to be the Archbishop of San Juan, Puerto Rico. This is not the place to recount all that happened in San Juan after he became its Archbishop. Suffice it to say that he has been the subject of an Apostolic Visitation and has been asked by the Holy See to resign.
I had moved out of the big house occupied by the bishops of Corpus Christi and had moved in 1992 into the little frame house across the street on the bayshore built by Bishop Drury for his retirement. The house was on Diocesan property and belonged to the Diocese. There I was relatively isolated from the chaos that was taking place in the Diocese but even being that close, across the street from the bishop’s house, was too close.
I had been thinking all along about what I might do after I retired. I looked around at all of the bishops who had retired ahead of me andd realized that many of them were vegetating, i.e. they were rapidly declining mentally and physically because they did not have enough mental challenges or physical activity to keep them in shape. In reflecting on my own situation I decided that since during the fourteen years I had served as President of the Kenedy Foundation I had had to review the operations of the Foundation’s cattle tenant on the 235,000 acre Kenedy Ranch I had been exposed to a lot of the workings of a cattle ranch. Our tenant ran 10,000 head of cattle on the ranch. It was important for me to visit the ranch frequently to help our ranch manager make important decisions affecting our tenant. Therefore, I decided I would start a little ranch of my own.
Since I had been exposed to the actual workings of a cattle ranch but had little scientific knowledge about ranching, as soon as I retired I enrolled as a student at Texas A & M University in College Station, Texas, in the Beef Science Program. After having spent 32 years from 1927 to 1959 sitting behind a desk (except for the war years) in a classroom this would not be a new experience for me. By the end of the summer of 1997 I graduated with a Certificate in Beef Management Science and was ready to start my ranch.
I bought 80 acres just east of Mathis, Texas, just forty-five minutes by car from my house in Corpus Christi to the ranch. I named the ranch Rancho Milagro because I felt it was sort of a miracle that at my age I was able to even think about being a rancher. I bought a mobile home and put it on the ranch. I bought six cows and a bull. Over the next fourteen years I increased the acreage of the ranch to 240 acres, ran 100 cattle, 100 sheep, 25 chickens, 3 geese, 8 guinea fowl, 10 goats, four dogs and a cat. I bought a very large tractor, cultivated my hayfield, hired a neighbor to cut and bale my hay and then I moved and stacked 150 large round bales of hay weighing 1,000 pounds each summer. I vaccinated my animals, fed them, nursed them when they got sick and hauled them to the auction barn when they were ready to be sold.
I loved the rural life, the life of a rancher. I loved the animals and most of all I loved the solitude. I guess that that was one thing I missed very much after I left Saint Vincent Archabbey. I could go out on my deck at night and sit and pray and count the stars. Being out in the country one can see stars one never knew existed because on the ranch there were no city lights to interfere with viewing the heavens.
I did not retreat from my responsibilities as a bishop, now no longer an ordinary, to minister to God’s people. I accepted every invitation to speak, to celebrate Liturgies and to minister anyway I could. I had satellite internet servvice and I began to blog and soon had a large number of people corresponding with me with some asking for spiritual direction. In addition, I began to become involved in pro-life activities that did not involve the Diocese. For example, in 2005 Texas Right to Life asked me to host a Symposium on Brain Death at a hotel in Corpus Christi. I did and it resulted in a ‘conversion,’ not of faith but of a change of focus in my fight to protect innocent human life. From 1971 until 2005 all my energy in fighting for greater respect for the sanctity of innocent human life was focused on the unborn child, now my focus would also be on end-of-life issues.
The Roe v Wade decision gave impetus to my work as Chairman of the Commission for Pro-life Activities of the Province of Miami. My experience in the Province of Miami and in the Diocese of Pennsacola-Tallahassee, my participation in the Annual March for Life in Washington, my deep friendship with Nellie Gray, the founder of the National March for Life who was from Corpus Christi, all this fighting of abortion paid off when I became Bishop of Corpus Christi. As I have written, by organizing The Body of Christ Rescue and excommunicating the three abortionists the City of Corpus Christi has become abortion-free.
I had followed with great interest the cases of Nancy Quilan, Terri Schiavo and Nancy Cruzan and I was shocked by the public support that Bishop Robert Lynch of Saint Petersburg, Florida gave to the efforts of the husband of XXXX to obtain a court order that was the direct cause of her death. Terry was reported to have been insured for $250,000 and her death probably enriched someone. I was learning that the assault on the human lives of critically ill people can be traced in many instances to human greed. That the love of money is the root of all evil was being proved to be involved in more and more end-of-life cases. I began to become very active in end-of-life issues, not because I was approaching the end of my own life, which I look forward to with joyful expectation, but rather because when innocent human life is attacked, whether through abortion, infanticide, murder, unjust administration of the death penalty, passive or active euthanasia, the issue is still the same: the unjust taking of innocent human life.
I owe my education in understanding end-of-life issues to a number of holy, intelligent, brave men and women who patiently led me to understand all the factors that produced and continue to promote the “Third Path” of euthanasia. Here are the principle individuals: Dr. Paul Byrne, Neurosurgeon, Elizabeth Graham of Texas Right to Life, Kassi Dee Marks an Appellate Attorney, Elizabeth Wickham, Publisher of LifeTree.org, Julie Grimstad, blogger, Ione Whitlock Publisher of BelburyReview.com, Francette Meaney, Founder of Birthright of Corpus Christi, Sister Anne Sophie, Foundress of The Society of the Body of Christ and Judy Brown, President of the American Life League.
My retirement activity was now to shift from ranching to fighting the forces of the “Third Path” and my fighting would once again bring me into conflict with the bishops of Texas.
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My Fair Lady has always been one of my favorite movies. I thought of it in 2011 when the drought which had already afflicted South Texas for three years was about to enter its fourth year. I remembered Eliza Doolittle’s explanation of her aunt’s illness, “She were near done in by gin!” I thought I am about to be ‘done in’ as a rancher by this terrible drought. Over the years I had had several inquiries from realtors asking if I were interested in selling the ranch. I called the one who was most persistent and gave the listing. By the end of the year the ranch was sold and I had until February 28 to move all the animals off the ranch. Some I sold and some I gave away to friends. When we closed the sale on February 28, 2012 I returned to the house owned by the Diocese on Ocean Drive in Corpus Christi that I had kept while I worked the ranch.
Now most of my time was devoted to helping reform the current Texas Advance Directive Law, most recently fighting the passage of Senate Bill 303 in the Texas Legislature. For several decades the State has had a law in effect that regulated the use of advance directives in cases of critically or terminally ill patients in hospitals. It is a badly defective law. It gave to ethics committees in hospitals the right to terminate care and it only gave the surrogates of a patient ten days to find another health care facility or the hospital would “pull the plug” on the patient. Most hospitals in Texas belong to the Texas Hospital Association. At times it functions like a “gentleman’s club” in which there is a tacit agreement that one hospital will not embarrass another hospital. Consequently it was difficult, if not impossible to transfer a patient from one hospital to another in ten days. The pro-life activists in the State pushed for a revision of the advance directives statute that would increase the time allotted to transfer the patient to another hospital, among other patient protections.
As often happens, the liberal Representatives and Senators in the Texas Legislature proposed SB303 according to their own liberal agenda in an attempt to reform current law, but not in positive steps forward.. The pro-life activists in the State immediately rallied in opposition to SB303. Much to their (and my) amazement, the bishops of Texas speaking through The Texas Catholic Conference supported the passage of SB303 as introduced. The battle was joined.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, many years ago had written that national episcopal conferences are dangerous. He wrote that sometimes the bureaucracy or staff of a conference would come to have too much influence over the bishops and the bishops, like sheep, would be led to their slaughter. What the Cardinal wrote about national episcopal conferences was true also of the Texas Catholic Conference. The staff of the Conference had always been liberal. The first Executive Director of the Texas Catholic Conference was Monsignor John McCarthy, later Bishop of Austin. There is probably not a more liberal bishop in Texas than Bishop John McCarthy. The Conference was connected for years to Saint Edwards University in Austin, a very liberal University in the most liberal city in the State of Texas.
During all my years as a member of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops/United States Catholic Conference I had ample opportunity to see Cardinal Ratzinger’s observation validated. Also, in the Texas Catholic Conference I had ample opportunity to observe that it is only on rare occasions that the body of bishops will reject a proposal or opinion of the Conference’s staff. I doubt very much that any bishop-member of the TCC had actually read SB303, despite many Catholic patient advocates, legislators, and pro-life activists writing to them about the specific dangers of the nuanced language in SB303. I had plowed through it and Kassi Dee Marks, and appellate attorney did a detailed analysis of SB303 which she shared with me. I suspect that following the usual procedure the bishops would have received and accepted the analysis of SB303 prepared by the staff of The Texas Catholic Conference. Perhaps that reliance on staff would be acceptable in many matters, but not in the matters of life or death.
I along with other pro-life activists had a good working relationship with Governor Rick Perry. We explained to him in clear legal and moral theology terms the dangerous provisions in SB303. He listened, did his own analysis consulted with his staff, and expressed his opposition to key legislators who were instrumental in stopping the legislation in the House. SB303 passed the State Senate and was set for a hearing in the House late in the 2013 Legislative Session. During this saga, the Bishop of Austin, speaking for the bishops of Texas visited the Governor and asked him not to veto the bill. Governor Perry, knowing that I was totally opposed to the bill asked Bishop Vasquez, “Are all the bishops of Texas in favor of SB303?” Bishop Vasquez replied, “All except one old retired guy.” This old, retired guy is grateful to Governor Perry for help in stopping the passage of SB303. The next session of the Texas Legislature will be in the Spring of 2015 and “this old retired guy” will again join with the pro-life activists (if I am still alive) in opposing the revived version of that anti-life, anti-patient bad legislation.
I suspect that part of the problem of the liberalism of the staff of The Texas Catholic Conference lies in its proximity to the Capitol of Texas. There is much that is positive in that proximity and much that is negative. One of the negatives is that the staff of the Texas Catholic Conference, especially its Executive Director, is subject to lobbying by special moneyed interests such as The Texas Hospital Association, The Texas Medical Association, big pharma and others who have a financial interest in the outcome of legislative battles over specific legislative proposals. Proposals that sometimes verge on being immoral.
The other area of interest that has kept me busy in my retirement is fighting the growing transplantation of human organs industry. The Church is in favor of transplanting human organs under certain conditions. Most compassionate people would agree that it is good to save one person’s life if the organs of another person who has died can be salvaged and transplanted. The problem lies in determining the death of the donor.
It is well established that after Dr. Christiaan Barnard had successfully made the first transplantation of a human heart from one man to another in 1966 there was a rush by the medical profession to make the transplantation of human organs, even the human heart, commonplace. The problem was and is that the human organ being transplanted must be alive, i.e. it must come from a human body in which the process of necrosis, deterioration, has not begun.
In 1967 a conference was called at Harvard University to study the problem: how could human organs be taken from a human body that was not yet dead by the standard definition of death as cessation of heart and lung activity. The solution arrived at in the Harvard Conference was, well lets change the definition of death to the cessation of brain activity and that way we can keep the heart and lungs functioning while we remove the organs from the donor. Brain death became the standard definition of death and the medical profession succeeded in getting all the state legislatures to accept in in their statutes.
The problem with brain death I learned in the Conference I hosted in Corpus Christi in 2005, according to one of the participants who is a neurosurgeon, who for a long time had engaged in the transplantation of human organs, was that he finally came to realize that the donors of the organs were not really dead, he was killing the donor by removing the donor’s vital organs. This neurosurgeon stopped participating in organ transplantation where the patient was declared “brain dead.”
The human organ transplantation industry has grown and grown and is now a monster. The money to be made by doctors and hospitals runs now in the trillions of dollars worldwide. It is a monster that seems impossible to control. A heart transplant alone can cost up to $1,000,000.00. When that kind of money is involved, morality and ethics lose their importance, they are no longer considered part of the medical care equation.
I was particularly concerned about the case of Marlise Munoz, a comatose pregnant woman in Fort Worth, who was euthanized over the protest of pro-life activists who argued that that she should be allowed to live until her child was born. Doctors in Germany did a survey and documented 21 cases where pregnant women in a PVS state were successfully delivered of their child. In Marlise’s case concern for her suffering caused people to be unconcerned about the suffering of the unborn child in her womb when she was euthanized.
Pray an Our Father now for reparation for the sins committed because of Francis’s Amoris Laetitia.
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.
Francis Notes:
– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:
“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.” (The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)
– If Francis betrays Benedict XVI & the”Roman Rite Communities” like he betrayed the Chinese Catholics we must respond like St. Athanasius, the Saintly English Bishop Robert Grosseteste & “Eminent Canonists and Theologians” by “Resist[ing]” him: https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/12/if-francis-betrays-benedict-xvi.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.
What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: “Anitfa ‘Agent Provocateurs‘”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1]
Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God’s Will and to do it.
Pray an Our Father now for America.
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.SHARE
Your Excellency, I’ve admired you so much since we met forty years ago when I was working on Latin American issues in the US Senate and you were working similar issues for the USCC/USCCB. I wish you a very happy 100th birthday – I’m only 23 years behind you – and let’s pray for each other.
Your Excellency, happy, happy birthday, and may you have many more and all of them joyous! You are a blessing to the people of God, a hard worker in the Lord’s vineyard. Thank you for your faithfulness, your integrity, your love for Christ and the church, the faith. Thank you also for caring for the poor flock, so abused today by the men in the church. Your life story is impressive, most impressive! You have an intrepid spirit, and that serves people well. I’ve seen you in photos, and you look at least 20 years younger than your age. Terry Schiavo, still breaks my heart, as do all the unborn victims and euthanasia or organ donor victims. People do not realize they should make it clear to family, doctors, and carry a card, that says they do NOT want to be an organ donor. This is especially important for young people, who’s young, fresh organs are highly valuable to the ghouls who make money off them, approaching grieving people as their child lay in life-threatening state. Say NO. Many are saying these people are tormented by having organs removed while they are alive, God forbid.
Document on Human Fraternity – From Utopia to Heresy
FEBRUARY 26, 2019
SOURCE: FSSPX.NEWS
On February 4, 2019, Pope Francis co-signed a document on “Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together” with the Grand Imam of the Al-Azhar University in Cairo. While the name of God is invoked, no mention is made of that of Jesus Christ. The Catholic Church would like to join forces “with the Muslims of the East and the West” to build a world at the service of human fraternity and universal peace. A utopia that leads to the ruin of Catholicism.
Traces of the Sillon
The introduction invites “all persons who have faith in God and faith in human fraternity to unite and work together.” This invitation to work towards human brotherhood “by safeguarding creation and the entire universe and supporting all persons” is similar to Marc Sangnier’s Sillon (1873-1950) condemned by Pope St. Pius X in 1910.
It was a vast utopia in which, under the lofty names of “human dignity, liberty, justice and fraternity”, the modern innovators led by Sangnier sought to renovate the Church and build a new humanity. They called for the birth of a new world in which a misconception of fraternity based on a vague and false notion of human dignity replaced true charity based on the Faith. The saintly Pope Pius X saw it as the ruin of Catholicism:
But stranger still, alarming and saddening at the same time, are the audacity and frivolity of men who call themselves Catholics and dream of re-shaping society under such conditions, and of establishing on earth, over and beyond the pale of the Catholic Church, ‘the reign of love and justice’ with workers coming from everywhere, of all religions and of no religion, with or without beliefs, so long as they forego what might divide them—their religious and philosophical convictions, and so long as they share what unites them—a ‘generous idealism and moral forces drawn from whence they can.’
When we consider the forces, knowledge, and supernatural virtues which are necessary to establish the Christian City, and the sufferings of millions of martyrs, and the light given by the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and the self-sacrifice of all the heroes of charity, and a powerful hierarchy ordained in Heaven, and the streams of divine grace—the whole having been built up, bound together, and impregnated by the life and spirit of Jesus Christ, the Wisdom of God, the Word made man—when we think, I say, of all this, it is frightening to behold new apostles eagerly attempting to do better by a common interchange of vague idealism and civic virtues.
What are they going to produce? What is to come of this collaboration? A mere verbal and chimerical construction in which we shall see, glowing in a jumble, and in seductive confusion, the words Liberty, Justice, Fraternity, Love, Equality, and human exultation, all resting upon an ill-understood human dignity. It will be a tumultuous agitation, sterile for the end proposed, but which will benefit the less Utopian exploiters of the people. Yes, we can truly say that the Sillon, its eyes fixed on a chimera, brings Socialism in its train.
It is distressing to see that Pope Francis is resolutely following in the footsteps of the disciples of Marc Sangnier, the founder of the Sillon. It is now “in the name of God”, “in the name of the human soul”, “in the name of the poor”, “in the name of peoples”, “in the name of fraternity”, “in the name of freedom”, and “in the name of justice and mercy” that Catholics and Muslims must commit through dialogue “to spread the culture of tolerance and of living together in peace.”
The Role of Religions in Building World Peace: Heresy and Blasphemy
The Document co-signed by the pope falls into doctrinal relativism and religious indifferentism. Indeed, in order to promote “the values of peace” and human fraternity, reciprocal knowledge and living together, “wisdom, justice and charity”, “religious awareness”, etc., various religions are presented as being willed by God. There is no longer, as St. Paul teaches, “one Lord, one Faith, one baptism” (Eph. 4:5), but a multitude of Creeds, and the true Faith is lowered to the rank of beliefs invented by men and by devils. These are the words of the Declaration:
The pluralism and the diversity of religions, color, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings.
This statement is false—it is a heresy—and attributing this to Divine Wisdom is a blasphemy.
The Son of God clearly said: “I am the door. By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved” (Jn. 10:9). And again, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No man cometh to the Father, but by Me” (Jn. 14:6). Silencing this saving truth by claiming that “pluralism and the diversity of religion…are willed by God in His wisdom” is a shipwreck in the confession of the truth Faith and a lack of charity to the wayward, infidels and unbelievers. “And what concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what part hath the faithful with the unbeliever?” asked St. Paul in his day (II Cor. 6:15).
Based on this false principle, the Vicar of Christ consequently unfolds the individual liberties found in the conciliar Declaration on Religious Freedom: freedom of belief, thought, expression and action, for all persons or religious groups (see Dignitatis Humanae, December 7, 1965). It is the program of Freemasonry.
Towards World Peace
This joint Declaration by Catholics and Muslims goes on to ask for “the protection of places of worship—synagogues, churches and mosques”, condemning terrorism with insistence, for it can in no way be instrumental to religion. A way of clearing oppressive and conquering Islam, whose fifth pillar is still the jihad? One may very well think so, since the text vaguely mentions “an accumulation of incorrect interpretations of religious texts,” as well as “policies linked to hunger, poverty, injustice, oppression and pride…” (sic).
The Document goes on to recommend that we
establish in our societies the concept of full citizenship and reject the discriminatory use of the term minorities which engenders feelings of isolation and inferiority.
Is this Newspeak being used in the service of the new world and the integration of the Muslim populations?
The text would be incomplete without a reminder to recognize “the right of women to education and employment, and to exercise their own political rights”, the defense of the fundamental rights of children, the elderly, the weak, handicapped, oppressed, etc.
The Declaration ends with the firm commitment of the Catholic Church and of the Al-Azhar University to cooperate by making this documents known, to promote its implementation in the political, legal, and educational fields, etc. It makes many calls to fraternity and awareness “with the aim of finding universal peace.”
No True Fraternity without Christian Charity
In order to understand how harmful this Declaration is to the true Catholic spirit and true Faith in the true God, one need only read St. Pius X.
In his Letter Our Apostolic Mandate on August 25, 1910 that we quoted earlier, he explains what is behind this
…notion of Fraternity which they (the innovators) found on the love of common interest or, beyond all philosophies and religions, on the mere notion of humanity, thus embracing with an equal love and tolerance all human beings and their miseries, whether these are intellectual, moral, or physical and temporal.
But Catholic doctrine tells us that the primary duty of charity does not lie in the toleration of false ideas, however sincere they may be, nor in the theoretical or practical indifference towards the errors and vices in which we see our brethren plunged, but in the zeal for their intellectual and moral improvement as well as for their material well-being. Catholic doctrine further tells us that love for our neighbor flows from our love for God, who is Father to all, and goal of the whole human family; and in Jesus Christ whose members we are, to the point that in doing good to others we are doing good to Jesus Christ Himself. Any other kind of love is sheer illusion, sterile and fleeting. Indeed, we have the human experience of pagan and secular societies of ages past to show that concern for common interests or affinities of nature weigh very little against the passions and wild desires of the heart.
No, Venerable Brethren, there is no genuine fraternity outside Christian charity. Through the love of God and His Son Jesus Christ Our Savior, Christian charity embraces all men, comforts all, and leads all to the same faith and same heavenly happiness. By separating fraternity from Christian charity thus understood, Democracy, far from being progress, would mean a disastrous step backwards for civilization. If, as We desire with all Our heart, the highest possible peak of well-being for society and its members is to be attained through fraternity or, as it is also called, universal solidarity, all minds must be united in the knowledge of Truth, all wills united in morality, and all hearts in the love of God and His Son Jesus Christ. But this union is attainable only by Catholic charity, and that is why Catholic charity alone can lead people in the march of progress towards the ideal civilization.
It is because they have forgotten this truth that the current popes are pursuing a mirage, lending a hand to the great current of apostacy, indifferentism and confusion that is spreading throughout the world. The origin of this deviation is to be found in Vatican Council II and its pastoral Constitution on the Church in the modern world.
Proclaiming the noble destiny of man and championing the Godlike seed which has been sown in him, offers to mankind the honest assistance of the Church in fostering that brotherhood of all men which corresponds to this destiny of theirs (Gaudium et Spes, 3).
By adopting the liberal values of the contemporary world, the Church has reconnected with the Sillon’s ideology and its utopia that St. Pius X, a pope of the Faith, condemned. The entire current crisis of the Church is there.
China’s CCP: World’s Most Dangerous Transnational Criminal Organization
By: Gordon G. Chang
Gatestone Institute
June 1, 2023
China’s regime is trafficking illegal drugs, protected wildlife, and humans. It is laundering cash and participating in ransomware attacks. It steals intellectual property. The ruling group, as a matter of state policy, murders people for their organs.
The Chinese state is not only a dangerous international actor, it is also a common criminal. Perhaps we should say it is an uncommon or state criminal, the most powerful and insidious kind.
What is the world’s largest transnational criminal organization? At 96.7 million members, it is the Communist Party of China.
The Obama administration’s “Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime,” issued in 2011, defines “transnational organized crime” as “self-perpetuating associations” operating transnationally “to obtain power, influence, monetary and/or commercial gains, wholly or in part by illegal means.” These organizations protect themselves “through a pattern of corruption and/or violence.”
That describes the Communist Party to a T.
The only way the Party falls outside the Obama definition is that it does not have “economic gain” as its “primary goal.”
Beijing’s primary goal is rule — not domination — of Planet Earth and the near parts of the solar system. Xi Jinping is working to impose the Chinese imperial-era system in which emperors believed not only that they had the Mandate of Heaven to rule tianxia or “all under Heaven,” but also were compelled by Heaven to do so. Moreover, China’s officials beginning in 2017 publicly talked about the moon and Mars as sovereign Chinese territory, part of the People’s Republic.
This expansive Chinese view has many implications, but one of them is that China’s regime does not believe it is bound by the laws of the international community. China’s regime, with this mentality, thinks that whatever it does by definition is within its right and therefore not criminal.
China, however, is one big crime scene. All transnational crimes committed in the Chinese state — even those not committed by state agents — are the CCP’s criminal acts as well.
Why?
The People’s Republic of China maintains the world’s most sophisticated surveillance state. With the possible exception of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), no state knows more about the activities of its people.
There are in China, for instance, over 700 million surveillance cameras in its SkyNet system, about one camera for every two residents. Those devices are being connected to one centrally controlled system as the regime stitches together a nationwide social credit system to monitor every person in the People’s Republic.
In addition, the regime uses 1.69 billion cell phones — 0.97 billion of these are smartphones — for surveillance purposes. Taxis and other vehicles also have government-installed cameras. The CCP has thought of everything. As a result, China is fast becoming totalitarian and a total surveillance state.
The Communist Party cannot run such a state and claim it does not know what is going on. So, if large, organized criminal gangs continue operating in China, it is obvious these organizations have both the knowledge and approval of the party-state.
This means the CCP is responsible for the tens of thousands of Americans annually killed by fentanyl. Fentanyl is one of dozens of opioids Chinese gangs design and make in laboratories in China. The gangs then sell the precursor chemicals primarily to two Mexican cartels, which mix the Chinese precursors and then smuggle the fentanyl into the U.S. through a wide-open southern border. The result, Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institution wrote, is “the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history.”
As Ray Donovan, recently retired Chief of Operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration, told Fox News Digital, “China is the lead nation for the production of precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl and the Chinese chemical industry is the most unregulated industry in all of China.”
Moreover, the Chinese surveillance state does more than just know and approve of the activities of the drug gangs, it also gives them diplomatic support. In early April, for instance, the Chinese foreign ministry publicly stated this: “There is no so-called illicit fentanyl trafficking problem between China and Mexico.”
In addition, the Chinese central government and Communist Party media outlets support the Chinese gangs. Even China’s private companies participate in this propaganda barrage. TikTok, for example, which Beijing effectively controls, glamorizes drug use. Yes, the wildly popular app has community guidelines prohibiting videos promoting drug use, but you can find clips with millions of views teaching kids how to take illegal drugs.
Moreover, the Chinese gangs launder profits through the Chinese state banking system. Chinese “money brokers,” working for Latin American drug lords, have quickly displaced rivals with, as a source told Reuters, “the most sophisticated form of money laundering that’s ever existed.”
The Chinese gangs use burner phones and Chinese banking apps to move vast sums quickly, quietly, and securely through the Chinese state banking system. The Communist Party of China tightly controls all Chinese banks, and no one could transfer sums through their networks without the cooperation of the regime.
Beijing, not surprisingly, has not cooperated with American efforts to stop fentanyl trafficking.
Why does the Communist Party resort to criminal activity? The regime apparently sees fentanyl as a way to increase its Comprehensive National Power or CNP. CNP is an empirical framework, developed by the Soviets, to rank countries. China wants the No. 1 ranking, and one way of getting there is by decreasing America’s ranking. Transnational crime, especially peddling fentanyl, comes in handy for that.
The Communist Party’s ambitions, however, go beyond CNP rankings. ProPublica has tied Chinese money launderers, who moved Latin American drug cash, to Beijing’s attempt to influence American politics. Li Xizhi, once China’s leading money-launderer in the Western hemisphere, and associate Liu Tao launched “a high-rolling quest for political influence” that resulted in at least two meetings with a recent sitting American president, Donald Trump. This appears to have been a Chinese covert operation to penetrate American politics, as Li’s political forays had almost nothing to do with his money-laundering business.
Furthermore, it is increasingly apparent that Chinese authorities have decided to foster the drug trade in the Americas to destabilize the region and spread corruption as well as addiction and death. China’s gangs do not just operate on the sidelines of society in Latin America and the Caribbean, they also corrupt the ruling elites — in other words, whole countries, as cited by Joseph Humire below.
In the Western hemisphere, China distorts business and politics. The results of Beijing’s activities are more corruption, more conflicts, and more destabilization.
“At its core, the People’s Republic of China is focused on gaining geopolitical leverage over countries in Central and South America to be used in an eventual conflict with the United States,” Joseph Humire of the Center for a Secure Free Society told Gatestone. “This includes empowering autocratic leaders with ties to illicit actors in each country to change the incentives from a free enterprise system to an illicit enterprise system that relies on drug trafficking, human smuggling, contraband, illegal fishing, and other illicit activities.”
These are just a few of China’s crimes as detailed in Frank Gaffney’s new book, The Indictment: Prosecuting the Chinese Communist Party & Friends for Crimes Against America, China, and the World. Unfortunately, American law enforcement prosecutes individuals when it should be prosecuting the Communist Party of China instead. Similarly, the U.S. Treasury on May 30 announced sanctions on 13 entities in China for the production of illicit synthetic drugs but failed to name the real culprit, the Party.
Criminality and lawlessness are inherent in the nature of China’s communist state, which idealizes struggle and domination, and the continued criminality of its ruling group throws into question the world’s basic assumptions about the Chinese system.
China’s Communist Party is now threatening to engulf the world with its criminality. What is at stake, therefore, are the principles that hold modern society together.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China, a Gatestone Institute distinguished senior fellow and a member of its Advisory Board.
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After the world escaped a nuclear exchange during the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, it has been generally understood that nuclear-armed nations did not publicly threaten their rivals and enemies with thermonuclear weapons.
Of course, there were occasional lunatic exceptions to the rule. Since 2006, when the unhinged North Korean regime acquired nuclear weapons, the world has periodically dismissed the zany threats from the Kim dynasty. Kim Jong Un has sporadically warned he might strike Japan, South Korea, and the United States—usually in an outrageous and outlandish fashion.
Kim finally was warned of the consequences of his brinkmanship rhetoric, most famously by Donald Trump in 2018. He reminded Kim that the American nuclear button was bigger than North Korea’s—an eerie counter-warning that for a time led to the cooling of North Korean rhetoric.
Pakistan went nuclear in 1998. From time to time, its prime ministers have warned India that in any confrontation, what Pakistan lacked in numbers and arms would be made up by the preemptive use of nuclear weapons. But again, Pakistan’s threats, like those of Kim Jong Un’s, were dismissed as the rantings of the insecure and blustering, who were otherwise deterred by much larger nuclear arsenals.
But the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine opened a new chapter in nuclear trash-talking. The Ukrainian War has proved dangerously unique in a variety of ways. True, there have been prior large land wars involving nuclear powers. The first Gulf War of 1991 saw Britain, France, and the United States combine to help crush Iraq without mention of nuclear arms. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 without such threats. Neither did China mention a nuclear option in 1979, despite a less-than-successful short invasion of Vietnam. Nor did Great Britain, in its 1982 retaking of the Falkland Islands, talk of the bomb, although recently declassified documents revealed that the Royal Navy carried 31 nuclear weapons on its expeditionary fleet—presumably depth charges, bombs, and missiles—to the chagrin of the current Argentine government.
Yet the Ukrainian war is the first large conventional war on the very doorstep of a nuclear superpower. And additionally, it has become a proxy war between the nuclear-armed NATO alliance and nuclear Russia.
There are other dangers as well. The old maxim that democratic governments do not pose existential threats to the same degree as their autocratic counterparts suggests that the Putin regime is a bit different, a bit more unfettered than its NATO enemies.
Another challenge is the fact that the saga of Russian and Ukrainian borders is complex, with long messy histories analogous to the volatility of the Balkans, and especially accentuated by the collapse of the borders of the old Soviet Union.
Much of western Ukraine was Polish until 1939 when it was gobbled up and never surrendered by Stalin in 1945, who had switched alliances in 1941 to the Allied side. Crimea had been Russian since 1783 when it was annexed from the Islamic Khanate. Much of Ukraine itself was part of Russia from the 18th century until the collapse of the Soviet Union. In sum, autocracy, irredentism, and nuclear war make for a volatile combination.
But far more dangerous is the notion that Russia was a superpower and in some ways still is one, given its huge land mass, its rich natural resources of natural gas and oil, and its nearly 6,000 nuclear weapons—still the largest such stockpile in the world.
But most importantly, Putin’s blatant aggression is now checked and stalemated, and thousands of Russians have died. Ukraine is on the offensive, and there have been prior attacks on the Russian Black Sea fleet, strikes inside Russia itself, and apparent drone missions against Moscow suburbs. No one knows who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline, but assurances that it was not Russia’s enemies seem increasingly unconvincing, as new narratives emerge of Ukrainian responsibility, with likely Western support and perhaps foreknowledge.
Ukraine’s stated war aims are not just to push Moscow back to the 2022 prewar border, but to cleanse Ukraine of all Russian troops and restore the 2014 Ukrainian nation, including all of Crimea and the disputed borderlands. That, of course, is a legitimate aim, given Russia’s cruel invasion and targeting of civilian targets. But the expansive agenda poses additional paradoxes and dangers—and what is a militarily sound and necessary strategy can often go out the window when nuclear weapons come into play.
Putin first invaded Ukraine during the appeasing years of the Obama-Biden Administration. His sudden rashness likely was in response to the 2011 American Libyan misadventure, the empty Obama “redline” rhetoric in Syria, John Kerry’s request for Russia’s reentry into Middle East affairs, and Obama’s eerie “Tell Vladimir” quid pro quo “deal” of “space” for ending missile defense, all caught on a hot mic in Seoul in March 2012.
In any case, no major Western leader, and especially not Barack Obama, ever had talked of supporting a counteroffensive between 2014 and 2022 to reclaim what had been lost in 2014. That current Western-sanctioned aim apparently emerged in 2023 in response to Russian setbacks and deeper Western supply intervention. Of course, new agendas always arise as a legitimate part of war, and hinge on the pulse of the battlefield. But again, there was no Obama-Biden post-2014 initiative to rally the West then to reclaim what it aims to now.
A final wrinkle is the massive U.S. and NATO military aid to Kyiv, which in direct shipments, intelligence, and training might already have exceeded $100 billion. If so, Ukraine, in the most recent 12-month period, would have enjoyed the third-largest military budget in the world, behind only the United States and China—and nearly double the annual defense expenditures of Russia itself.
Stranger still, Ukraine and its Western allies claim that such a staggering sum is insufficient, given that Ukraine needs far more offensive weapons to cut off the Russian supply chain, originating, of course, from inside Russia. That offensive agenda apparently is now to include F-15 and F-16 fighters, the most sophisticated German, British, and American armored vehicles, billion-dollar anti-missile batteries, and the most lethal artillery and missile weapons in the world.
Add it all up, and what we are witnessing is a once haughty and aggressive dictatorial Russia so far increasing bleeding and humiliated in Ukraine—in large part thanks to the largest shipments of Western military support to any single country since the Anglo-American Lend-Lease supply of Soviet Russia in World War II.
These weapons, necessary to the defense of an invaded Ukraine, largely explain Russia’s enormous losses, which may have reached or exceeded 200,000 or more dead, wounded, captured, and missing.
Once-loose talk of incorporating Ukraine into NATO is now de rigeur. Next followed the admission into the alliance of Finland, with its 800-mile-long Russian border, and soon likely Sweden, which likewise possesses an extremely capable military and is a neighbor as well of Russia.
What does all this mean to a humiliated Russia?
The Putin dictatorship, which asked for such comeuppance, is flailing. The Russian military has suffered global disgrace. Moscow blames Western powers for ensuring the collapse of its offensive in its own backyard. Western leaders, including the U.S. defense secretary, have boasted that the Ukraine war is a needed proxy conflict in which the West will further weaken Russia and curb its aggression.
Now Ukraine is targeting sites inside Russia—as traditional military doctrine would advise if its aim is to expel all Russians from its pre-2014 borders. But again, that was not the policy of the West from 2014 to 2021. Many of today’s loudest hawks were strangely silent when the Obama Administration appeasement led to the 2014 Russian invasion, that then was shrugged off as a permanent fait accompli throughout the Obama years.
Russia is facing internal chaos and war resistance. An ailing Vladimir Putin is reeling. And the result is the largest epidemic of nuclear trash talk since the dawn of the nuclear age, almost all of it blithely dismissed as empty saber-rattling by an ailing thug who got his just deserts.
Perhaps. But consider that the epidemic of nuclear bluster has exceeded the usual “one-bomb state” nuclear nonsense from theocratic Iran.
For example, in summer of 2022, Putin repeatedly suggested that Russia reserved the right to use nuclear weapons if threatened with destruction. A few prominent Russians openly envisioned thermonuclear war. Alexei Zhuravlev, a member of the Russian parliament, boasted on Russian state television,
“I will tell you absolutely competently that to destroy the entire East Coast of the United States, two Sarmat missiles are needed. And the same goes for the West Coast. Four missiles and there will be nothing left.”
In September 2022, as Russian fortunes in Ukraine became even more problematic, the threats increased. Former Russian lawmaker Sergei Markov warned of such intercontinental strikes with nuclear weapons, publicly warning London:
“In Russia, there’s partial mobilization, and for your British listeners, Vladimir Putin told you that he would be ready to use nuclear weapons against Western countries, including nuclear weapons against Great Britain. Your cities will be targeted.”
In March, the International Court at the Hague indicted Putin as a “war criminal” for the savageries unleashed in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In response, a number of prominent Russians once again threatened a nuclear response. The former president of the Russian Federation and current deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, warned the justices,
“It’s quite possible to imagine a surgical application of a hypersonic Onyx from a Russian ship in the North Sea to The Hague courthouse. So, judges, look carefully to the sky.”
Margarita Simonyan, of the Kremlin-funded broadcaster Russia Today, likewise threatened, “I’d like to see a country that would arrest Putin under the ruling of The Hague. In about eight minutes, or whatever the [missile] flight time to its capital.”
When a mysterious unidentified drone hit the Kremlin in early May, there was a chorus of renewed calls for nuclear action: “After today’s terrorist act, no variant remains other than the physical elimination of Zelenskyy and his clique,” once more thundered the megaphone Medvedev. And the chairman of the lower house of parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, warned the Ukrainian nation that he would demand “the use of weapons capable of destroying it.”
Russia’s former space chief Dmitry Rogozin likewise tried to lower the threshold of nuclear weapons use: “According to our [nuclear] doctrine we have the right to use tactical nuclear weapons because that’s what they exist for . . . a great equalizer for the moments when there is a clear discrepancy in the enemy’s favor.” When still more likely Ukrainian drone bombers hit an upscale district of Moscow in late May last year, Medvedev again issued more of his nuclear bombast: “The West does not fully realize the threat of nuclear war . . . There are irreversible laws of war. If it comes to nuclear weapons, there will have to be a preemptive strike.”
Accordingly, the threshold on nuclear trash-talking and preemptive war, in general, have been lowered elsewhere. In December 2022, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, explicitly warned Greece that newly acquired Turkish missiles could strike Athens itself—unless “you stay calm.” As Erdoğan more unabashedly defined his threats: “When you say ‘Tayfun,’ [“typhoon”] the Greek gets scared and says, ‘It will hit Athens.’ Well, of course, it will . . . We can come down suddenly one night when the time comes.”
In December 2022, Iran was again talking of strikes against the Israeli’s nuclear reactor with threats to “raze Tel Aviv.” Tehran released a video showing simulated nuclear missile attacks destroying Israel. China is now in on the act, bragging about the virtual end of a defiant Taiwan, and has issued nuclear threats against both Japan and Taiwan, should they alter Taiwan’s status.
All this rhetoric again is treated with nonchalance in the West—and occasionally with near glee as welcome symptomology of Russia’s crackup and the impending implosion of the Putin regime.
Maybe, maybe not.
Yet with billion-dollar critical pipelines and dams blowing up, we are entering a new phase of the war, in which casual reference to hitting targets inside Russia, of nonstop bragging about the superiority of lethal Western weapons over their inferior Russian counterparts, of schadenfreude over the flailing Russians, and reports of horrendous losses to both Ukraine and Russia are all earning eerie nuclear backtalk that we have not heard in 60 years.
Is it all just saber rattling, buffoonery, the last braggadocious mutterings of a failed regime? Cheap efforts to obtain deterrence that Russian arms have lost? Perhaps. And then again, perhaps not.
The key to remember, however, is that there must be a near certainty that nuclear trash-talking is all cheap rhetoric, since the slight chance that it forewarns something deadly serious is . . . quite deadly, indeed.
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Some 10,000 casualties is a good guess, including nearly 4,500 dead. Well over 400 soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured every hour of the first day.
Remembering the Horrors
of D-Day
By: Victor Davis Hanson
The Patriot Post
June 8, 2023
Seventy-nine years ago this week, the Allies assaulted the Normandy beaches on D-Day, June 6, 1944.
Their invasion marked the largest amphibious landing since the Persians under Xerxes invaded the Greek mainland in 480 B.C.
Nearly 160,000 American, British, and Canadian soldiers stormed five beaches of Nazi-occupied France. The plan was to liberate Western Europe after four years of occupation, push into Germany, and end the Nazi regime.
Less than a year later, the Allies from the West, and the Soviet Russians from the East, did just that, utterly destroying Hitler’s Third Reich.
Ostensibly, the assault seemed impossible even to attempt.
Germany had repulsed with heavy Canadian losses an earlier Normandy raid at Dieppe in August 1942.
The Germans also knew roughly when the Allies were coming. They placed their best general, Erwin Rommel, in charge of the Normandy defenses.
The huge D-Day force required enormous supplies of arms and provisions just to get off the beaches. Yet the Allies had no means of capturing even one port on the nearby heavily fortified French coast.
To land so many troops so quickly, the Allies would have to ensure complete naval and air supremacy.
They would have to tow over from Britain their own ports, lay their own gasoline pipeline across the English Channel, and invent novel ships and armored vehicles just to get onto and over the beaches.
More dangerous still, the invaders would ensure armor and tactical air dominance to avoid being cut off, surrounded, and annihilated once they went inland.
German Panzer units—battle-hardened troops in frightening Panther and Tiger tanks, with over three hard years of fighting experience on the Eastern Front—were confident they could annihilate in a matter of days the outnumbered lightly armed invaders.
Such a huge force required 50 miles of landing space on the beaches. That vast expanse ensured that some landing sites were less than ideal—Omaha Beach in particular.
No one quite knows how many Allied soldiers, airmen, and sailors were lost during D-Day’s 24 hours.
Some 10,000 casualties is a good guess, including nearly 4,500 dead. Well over 400 soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured every hour of the first day.
Most of the losses occurred at Omaha Beach, the riskiest landing area. Cliffs there offered perfect German lines of fire onto the landing craft below.
Concrete seawalls blocked access from the beaches. Crack German troops had recently beefed up the fortifications. Mined hedgerows blocked entry into the countryside.
A tragic paradox of D-Day was that Omaha Beach proved an ungodly nightmare, while the other four landing sites worked like clockwork with few casualties.
Nearly a quarter-million Allied soldiers were killed or wounded in “Operation Overlord” over the ensuing seven weeks of fighting in Normandy. Combined German and Allied casualties exceeded 400,000. Nearly 20,000 French civilians were killed as “collateral” damage.
The Allies did not secure Normandy until the end of July when they finally broke out into the plains of France and began racing toward Germany.
Intelligence failures, poor coordination between airborne and infantry troops, and mediocre leadership all plagued the Allies for most of June and July.
Yet the Allies pulled off the impossible by surprising the Germans, securing a beachhead, supplying that toehold in Western Europe, and then expanding the pocket into a vast 1,000-mile front that in less than a year shattered Hitler’s defenses.
How and why did the Americans on Omaha charge right off their landing craft into a hail of German machine gun and artillery fire, despite being mowed down in droves?
In a word, they “believed” in the United States.
That generation had emerged from the crushing poverty of the Great Depression to face the reality that the Axis powers wanted to destroy their civilization and their country.
They were confident in American know-how. They were convinced they fought for the right cause. They were not awed by traveling thousands of miles from home to face German technological wizardry, veterans with years of battle experience, and a ruthless martial code.
The men at Omaha did not believe America had to be perfect to be good—just far better than the alternative.
They understood, like their predecessors at Valley Forge, Gettysburg, and the Meuse-Argonne, that nothing in the United States was guaranteed.
They accepted that periodically some Americans—usually those in the prime of life with the greatest futures and the most to lose—would be asked to face certain death in nightmarish places like Omaha, in a B-17 over Berlin, or the horrid jungles in the Pacific.
The least our generation—affluent, leisured, and so often self-absorbed—can do is to remember who they were, what they did, and how much we owe them.
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Mark Levin DROPS THE HAMMER on Trump’s new federal indictment:“President Trump is 76 years old. If the Department of Justice gets its way, he will die in federal prison… They don’t want to just win elections, they want to take control of this country, they want one-party rule. And they have used the Department of Justice and the FBI to get what they want.”Mark Levin is spot on.
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Issued and approved by Pope Pius X on December 20, 1905
The Holy Council of Trent, having in view the ineffable riches of grace which are offered to the faithful who receive the Most Holy Eucharist, makes the following declaration: “The Holy Council wishes indeed that at each Mass the faithful who are present should communicate, not only in spiritual desire, but sacramentally, by the actual reception of the Eucharist.” These words declare plainly enough the wish of the Church that all Christians should be daily nourished by this heavenly banquet and should derive therefrom more abundant fruit for their sanctification.
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This wish of the Council fully conforms to that desire wherewith Christ our Lord was inflamed when He instituted this Divine Sacrament. For He Himself, more than once, and in clarity of word, pointed out the necessity of frequently eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood, especially in these words: This is the bread that has come down from heaven; not as your fathers ate the manna, and died. He who eats this bread shall live forever. From this comparison of the Food of angels with bread and with manna, it was easily to be understood by His disciples that, as the body is daily nourished with bread, and as the Hebrews were daily fed with manna in the desert, so the Christian soul might daily partake of this heavenly bread and be refreshed thereby. Moreover, we are bidden in the Lord’s Prayer to ask for “our daily bread” by which words, the holy Fathers of the Church all but unanimously teach, must be understood not so much that material bread which is the support of the body as the Eucharistic bread which ought to be our daily food.
Moreover, the desire of Jesus Christ and of the Church that all the faithful should daily approach the sacred banquet is directed chiefly to this end, that the faithful, being united to God by means of the Sacrament, may thence derive strength to resist their sensual passions, to cleanse themselves from the stains of daily faults, and to avoid these graver sins to which human frailty is liable; so that its primary purpose is not that the honor and reverence due to our Lord may be safe-guarded, or that it may serve as a reward or recompense of virtue bestowed on the recipients. Hence the Holy Council calls the Eucharist “the antidote whereby we may be freed from daily faults and be preserved from mortal sin.”
The will of God in this respect was well understood by the first Christians; and they daily hastened to this Table of life and strength. They continued steadfastly in the teaching of the apostles and in the communion of the breaking of the bread. The holy Fathers and writers of the Church testify that this practice was continued into later ages and not without great increase of holiness and perfection.
Piety, however, grew cold, and especially afterward because of the widespread plague of Jansenism, disputes began to arise concerning the dispositions with which one ought to receive frequent and daily Communion; and writers vied with one another in demanding more and more stringent conditions as necessary to be fulfilled. The result of such disputes was that very few were considered worthy to receive the Holy Eucharist daily, and to derive from this most health-giving Sacrament its more abundant fruits; the others were content to partake of it once a year, or once a month, or at most once a week. To such a degree, indeed, was rigorism carried that whole classes of persons were excluded from a frequent approach to the Holy Table, for instance, merchants or those who were married.
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Some, however, went over to the opposite view. They held that daily Communion was prescribed by divine law and that no day should pass without communicating, and besides other practices not in accord with the approved usage of the Church, they determined that the Eucharist must be received even on Good Friday and in fact so administered it.
Toward these conditions, the Holy See did not fail in its duty. A Decree of this Sacred Congregation which begins with the words Cum ad aures, issued on February 12, 1679, with the approbation of Pope Innocent XI, condemned these errors, and put a stop to such abuses; at the same time it declared that all the faithful of whatsoever class, merchants or married persons not at all excepted, could be admitted to frequent Communion according to the devotion of each one and the judgment of his confessor. Then on December 7, 1690, by the Decree of Pope Alexander VIII, Sanctissimus Dominus noster, the proposition of Baius was condemned, requiring a most pure love of God, without any admixture of defect, on the part of those who wished to approach the Holy Table.
The poison of Jansenism, however, which, under the pretext of showing due honor and reverence to the Eucharist, had infected the minds even of good men, was by no means a thing of the past. The question as to the dispositions for the proper and licit reception of Holy Communion survived the declarations of the Holy See, and it was a fact that certain theologians of good repute were of the opinion that daily Communion could be permitted to the faithful only rarely and subject to many conditions.
On the other hand, there were not wanting men endowed with learning and piety who offered an easier approach to this practice, so salutary and so pleasing to God. They taught, with the authority of the Fathers, that there is no precept of the Church which prescribes more perfect dispositions in the case of daily than of weekly or monthly Communion; while the fruits of daily Communion will be far more abundant than those of Communion received weekly or monthly.
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In our own day the controversy has been continued with increased warmth, and not without bitterness, so that the minds of confessors and the consciences of the faithful have been disturbed, to the no small detriment of Christian piety and fervor. Certain distinguished men, themselves pastors of souls, have as a result of this, urgently begged His Holiness, Pope Pius X, to deign to settle, by his supreme authority, the question concerning the dispositions required to receive the Eucharist daily; so that this practice, so salutary and so pleasing to God, not only might suffer no decrease among the faithful, but rather that it increase and everywhere be promoted, especially in these days when religion and the Catholic faith are attacked on all sides, and the true love of God and piety are so frequently lacking. His Holiness, being most earnestly desirous, out of his solicitude and zeal, that the faithful should be invited to the sacred banquet as often as possible, even daily, and should benefit by its most abundant fruits, committed the aforesaid question to this Sacred Congregation, to be studied and decided definitely (definiendam).
Accordingly, the Sacred Congregation of the Council, in a Plenary Session held on December 16,1905, submitted this matter to a very careful study, and after sedulously examining the reasons adduced on either side, determined and declared as follows:
1. Frequent and daily Communion, as a practice most earnestly desired by Christ our Lord and by the Catholic Church, should be open to all the faithful, of whatever rank and condition of life; so that no one who is in the state of grace, and who approaches the Holy Table with a right and devout intention (recta piaque mente) can be prohibited therefrom.
2. A right intention consists in this: that he who approaches the Holy Table should do so, not out of routine, or vain glory, or human respect, but that he wish to please God, to be more closely united with Him by charity, and to have recourse to this divine remedy for his weakness and defects.
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3. Although it is especially fitting that those who receive Communion frequently or daily should be free from venial sins, at least from such as are fully deliberate, and from any affection thereto, nevertheless, it is sufficient that they be free from mortal sin, with the purpose of never sinning in the future; and if they have this sincere purpose, it is impossible by that daily communicants should gradually free themselves even from venial sins, and from all affection thereto. 4. Since, however, the Sacraments of the New Law, though they produce their effect ex opere operato, nevertheless, produce a great effect in proportion as the dispositions of the recipient are better, therefore, one should take care that Holy Communion be preceded by careful preparation, and followed by an appropriate thanksgiving, according to each one’s strength, circumstances and duties.
5. That the practice of frequent and daily Communion may be carried out with greater prudence and more fruitful merit, the confessor’s advice should be asked. Confessors, however, must take care not to dissuade anyone from frequent or daily Communion, provided he is found to be in a state of grace and approaches with a right intention.
6. But since it is plain that by the frequent or daily reception of the Holy Eucharist union with Christ is strengthened, the spiritual life more abundantly sustained, the soul more richly endowed with virtues, and the pledge of everlasting happiness more securely bestowed on the recipient, therefore, parish priests, confessors and preachers, according to the approved teaching of the Roman Catechism should exhort the faithful frequently and with great zeal to this devout and salutary practice.
7. Frequent and daily Communion is to be promoted especially in religious Institutes of all kinds; with regard to which, however, the Decree Quemadmodum issued on December 17, 1890, by the Sacred Congregation of Bishops and Regulars, is to remain in force. It is to be promoted especially in ecclesiastical seminaries, where students are preparing for the service of the altar; as also in all Christian establishments which in any way provide for the care of the young (ephebeis).
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8. In the case of religious Institutes, whether of solemn or simple vows, in whose rules, or constitutions, or calendars, Communion is assigned to certain fixed days, such regulations are to be considered as directive and not preceptive. The prescribed number of Communions should be regarded as a minimum but not a limit to the devotion of the religious. Therefore, access to the Eucharistic Table, whether it be rather frequently or daily, must always be freely open to them according to the norms above laid down in this Decree.
Furthermore, in order that all religious of both sexes may clearly understand the prescriptions of this Decree, the Superior of each house will provide that it be read in community, in the vernacular, every year within the octave of the Feast of Corpus Christi.
9. Finally, after the publication of this Decree, all ecclesiastical writers are to cease from contentious controversy concerning the dispositions requisite for frequent and daily Communion.
All this having been reported to His Holiness, Pope Pius X, by the undersigned Secretary of the Sacred Congregation in an audience held on December 17, 1905, His Holiness ratified this Decree, confirmed it and ordered its publication, anything to the contrary notwithstanding. He further ordered that it should be sent to all local Ordinaries and regular prelates, to be communicated by them to their respective seminaries, parishes, religious institutes, and priests; and that in their report on the state of their dioceses or institutes they should inform the Holy See concerning the execution of the prescriptions therein enacted. Given at Rome, the 20th day of December, 1905.
Vincent, Card. Bishop of Palestrina, Prefect
Cajetan DeLai, Secretary
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ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP 
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