Did Anti-Fr. Altmann Bp. Callahan think his Apparent Friend Disgraced Gay Archbishop Rembert Weakland had an Infelicitous “Manner and Tone”?
Fr. James Altman was banished as pastor of his parish and even had his priestly faculties indefinitely suspended by Bishop William P. Callahan for reasons ranging from the incomprehensible to the outrageous. Admonished for his supposedly infelicitous “manner and tone” and accused of a lack of pastoral “efficacy.”
It appears that Callahan didn’t think his apparent friend disgraced gay Archbishop Rembert Weakland had an infelicitous “manner and tone” and a lack of pastoral “efficacy” as revealed by the Badger Catholic website in 2009:
Earlier this week I posted that I had heard that Bishop Callahan would be one possible suitors to the Diocese of La Crosse. Thanks to a commenter I looked into him further.
Here is a report from May 13, 2009 on Callahan’s response in the wake of Weakland’s book promoting homosexuality.
Callahan said he talked to Former Archbishop Weakland last week, but despite his knowledge of the book, it was not discussed.[ummm that’s a bit strange] Callahan, who’s known Weakland for years, said he’s surprised by Weakland’s admission that he is gay. [….soooo, he wasn’t aware he had an affair with a male college student whom he paid millions out of diocesan funds??] “I think it caught me off guard. It was not necessarily something I was ready to hear coming from the Archbishop,” Callahan said. [none of us were ready, but “caught off guard” by that revelation?] WISN 12 News asked Callahan if he thinks the Archdiocese can move on beyond the things Weakland left behind.“Certainly, without a doubt, certainly. The church has moved on for centuries with saints and sinners, and that’s Jesus’ intention,” Callahan said. [Note Well:]Callahan said Weakland’s legacy in the church is not just his mistakes but also some of the good he did, including shaping the modern mass. He does not expect the Vatican to weight in on the book.
Weakland’s legacy is defined by his mistakes. I would say the appointment of Weakland by Paul VI in the first place has now been proven to be one of several major mistakes. With his book Weakland becomes tauntingly close to conditions necessary for excommunication.
Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He want you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.
Francis Notes:
– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:
“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.” (The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)
– LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:
The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”
– On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:
“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”
– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:
“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.
Eeyore ’s Corner: From Hippies to Yuppies to Our Puppies?Part Two: Yuppiedom By: Victor Davis HansonVictor Davis Hanson // Private PapersJuly 8, 2021
HAT TIP: RIP MCINTOSH
The nihilism of the protests movements, the drop-outs’ human wreckage, the end of the draft and American involvement in Vietnam, and the ‘silent majority’ reaction to hippiness, all ended the Sixites, albeit in the 1970s. George McGovern’s landslide loss to Richard Nixon in 1972 marked the beginning of the end of the age of protest. Both the right-wing insurance agent and the aging professor, like the silly Dionysiac outfitted Teiresias and Cadmus in Euripides Bacchae, now wore paisley and bell-bottoms, and viewed Deep Throat, but, otherwise, America was on to taste and the good life. Even Watergate hysterias could not save the now despised hard Left. Jimmy Carter was in 1976 elected on the basis of his southern accent, the downfall of Nixon, and the ruse of Democratic centralism. When Carter proved that he was both a sanctimonious leftist and an incompetent—stagflation, the Iran hostage crisis, oil shocks, “malaise”—then followed 12 years of a Reagan-Bush regnum that politically nailed shut the Sixties coffin. Bill Clinton squeezed out eight years of a Democratic revival, but only by using his southern patina, good ol’ boy, “aw-shucks” schtick. And still, he needed, counted on, third-party Texas populist Ross Perot to siphon off mostly traditional and populist swing voters in 1992 and to a lesser extent in 1996. Remember that the fake centrism of the “New Democratic” party was a brilliant Dick Morris’s creation, which for a decade professed an end to open borders, talked up more policemen on the beat, and even bragged about school uniforms. From 1980 through 2008, we were in full Yuppie mode. Aging hippies or pseudo radicals kept vestigial and mostly superficial elements of the 1960s—longish hair, wire-rim glasses, casual fashion, dope-smoking, spiraling divorce, promiscuity—but channeled their innate conceit and self-centeredness into making money and consumerism. So-so novels chronicle the metamorphosis like Bright Lights, Big City, by Jay McInerney, or Louis Auchincloss, Diary of a Yuppie. If in their 20s, these radicals talked about communes, geodesic domes, the “revolution,” and heavy metal, in their forties, fifties, and sixties they had transmogrified into Yuppie careerists, sensualists, now on their own and in need of enough cash to sustain the extravagant indulgences of the 1960s with refinement. The most ambitious yuppies focused on Wall Street, the corporate boardroom, the media, academia, entertainment, and especially the new Silicon Valley—all the industries and professions geared to take off when the US went global in the 21st century, and all the institutions now mostly absorbed by the Left. Was that the Yuppie legacy? Making lots of money, while subverting what empowered them? Fine wines, obsessions with diet and “healthy living,” granite counters, stainless steel appliances, wood floors, vacations to Tuscany—supposed upper-middle-class elite tastes were the remnant protests against fast-food America and deplorable fly-over culture. Sixties stuff like Ramparts Magazine and R. Crumb cartoons gave way to House Beautiful and new versions of Esquire and Vanity Fair, with ads about high-priced liquor, clothes, and vacations. Yuppies were not so political like Hippies, or rather they fused their ideology, such as it was, into mainstream American capitalism. They assumed the country was stuck in a leftist-centrist orbit—Bushes and Clintons—that did not impinge on their personal and financial agendas. Certainly, read the Democratic platforms at the 1992 and 1996: they are to the right of a John McCain/Mitt Romney/Jeb Bush Rhinoism. For all the caricatures of the Yuppies, they sort of outsourced the 1980s culture wars to the hard-core, die-hard and remnant Sixites revolutionaries and instead unthinkingly, and without much zeal, just assumed the 1960s radicalism would, here and there, seep in, or was already too deeply imprinted inside the cultural DNA to ever be removed. It would reemerge at the opportune time to add style, panache, and acceptable ways to assuage guilt to Yuppie good life. Take the career of Barack Obama. He was slightly fake-Sixites in his youth, then full Yuppie. And now he’s gone Puppy-like as murmurs how unfair it is that we did not appreciate all the forces that prevented him from going full woke in 2009.
Through his Intercession, we Humbly ask that Bishop Callahan would Retract his Unprincipled Decision about Fr. Altman
Father Walijewski, pray for Bishop Callahan!
At this moment, the eyes of the Catholic world are on the little Diocese of La Crosse, Wisconsin, where news has recently broken that Father James Altman has been removed as pastor of his parish, and even had his priestly faculties indefinitely suspended, by Bishop William P. Callahan, O.F.M. Conv., for reasons ranging from the incomprehensible to the outrageous. Admonished for his supposedly infelicitous “manner and tone” and accused of a lack of pastoral “efficacy,” Father Altman is said to have sought—or, at the very least, to have permitted to spring up around him—a “cult of personality” intolerable in priestly ministry. All of this is mystifying at best when Father Altman himself merely insists, and demonstrates by his actions the authenticity of this insistence, that what he is trying to do is to be a good father to his spiritual family, which embraces not only the members of Saint James the Less Parish in La Crosse, but also, very specifically, the unborn children whose lives are imperiled by abortion and whose body parts are commercialized in the manufacturing of certain kinds of vaccines.
Many people correctly detect a double standard when comparing the treatment meted out to Father Altman with that given to theologically dissident priests such as James Martin, S.J. Why, they ask, does Father Altman get punished so harshly when others—seemingly much more deserving of denunciation and canonical censure—get off scot free? One reason proffered is that Bishop Callahan, in and of himself, has no jurisdiction over James Martin, and so there is no comparison to be drawn. Fair enough. Let us ask, in that case, why there does exist a flagrant disconnect between the treatment meted out to Father Altman and that given to another humble, relatively unknown priest of the Diocese of La Crosse itself—namely, Servant of God Father Joseph Walijewski.
Padre José, as he is affectionately known, was a Michigan native eventually incardinated in Wisconsin. A figure somewhat reminiscent of Saint Joseph of Cupertino in certain respects, Father Walijewski’s very vocation was threatened at the outset by the modesty of his intellectual gifts, which were considered in certain quarters to be inadequate relative to the requirements of ordination. Rejected ominously, young Joseph refused to give up and was eventually accepted by the Diocese of La Crosse, under then-Bishop Alexander McGavick. Touchingly, Father Walijewski later remarked in a letter that he considered himself an “orphan no more” as a result. “I owe my whole life’s work to the Diocese of La Crosse,” he once stated, and anyone interested in the impressive, ongoing and undoubtedly supernatural scope of that work may learn about it by viewing the EWTN documentary, “A Pencil in Our Lord’s Hand: The Padre Jose Story,” among other sources.
Father Walijewski, like Father Altman, was a man of iron-willed determination; he could not have accomplished all he did accomplish otherwise, because grace builds on nature. Father Walijewski, like Father Altman, was a priest who took his spiritual fatherhood seriously, feeding those entrusted to his care both Eucharistically and physically. Father Walijewski, like Father Altman, touched lives beyond the confines of his own home diocese in Wisconsin, taking seriously the Dominical imperative to spread the Gospel “to the ends of the earth.” So why is Father Walijewski applauded by Bishop Callahan (and others) for perseverance in doing the will of God, while Father Altman is reproached for bull-headedness and pronounced in need of a metanoia on a 30-day—or evidently, if necessary, perpetual—retreat? Why isn’t Father Walijewski–who once reflected that if you told him he would become the father of eighty children at a time, he wouldn’t have believed it—accused of encouraging, or at least of allowing to spring up around him, a “cult of personality” incompatible with priestly ministry? The difference lies, manifestly, not between Father Altman and Father Walijewski, but between Bishop Callahan and Bishop McGavick; between those whose exercise of ecclesial authority manifests the heart of a good shepherd and those whose unprincipled impositions evoke the spectre, instead, of a mitered wormtongue answerable to God knows whom.
“The obligation of a Bishop”–we find asserted (without citing or even alluding to any authoritative document of the Catholic Church, since poor Bishop Callahan and his spokespersons are clearly winging it here) in the recent Statement Regarding Father James Altman from the current, not the former, Diocese of La Crosse—”is to ensure that all who serve the faithful are able to do so while unifying and building the Body of Christ.” Is it, really, in the sense that each of those words is intended to mean in its present, anti-Altman context? One wonders if Alexander McGavick would agree. That prelate’s decision to take on young Joseph Walijewski as a seminarian in the first place would necessarily have been a “divisive” one, by today’s standards. Would Bishop Callahan’s wise and fearless predecessor not have considered the affectionate acclaim of Father Altman’s burgeoning number of parishioners, both literal and virtual, to be an authentic and indeed most effective “building up” of the Body of Christ? The filial protestations of those who have been helped in their lives and in their Catholic faith by Father James Altman, formerly of Saint James the Less Parish, are reverberating across the globe, while in La Crosse itself all cries for justice for Father Altman fall on the local ordinary’s deaf ears. Yet this same man, Bishop William Patrick Callahan O.F.M. Conv., says in the documentary about Father Walijewski, while standing right in front of that holy man’s final resting place (he is talking about the behavior of the people, when Padre José was laid to rest):
The little kids were helped by the big kids, and every one of them was as reverent as could be. They were astonishingly reverent. They came up here, and they knew who was here. They knew that Father Joe was here. It was an encounter with somebody who really did something wonderful, and it was an encounter they had with Jesus, through Father Joe.
Why is it “something wonderful” for people to encounter Jesus through Father Joe, but not through Father James? When is Bishop Callahan going to realize that his own priest, whom he himself is shutting down, is “the kind of guy who touched lives,” as Bishop Callahan says in the documentary that he eventually came to realize about Padre José? In assessing what is going on hic et nunc, right before our very eyes, one cannot avoid the impression that it is the very reverence—the astonishing reverence—of Father Altman himself, and of all whom he manifestly inspires, that is at the root of Bishop Callahan’s quashing of Father Altman’s priestly ministry and concomitant, ineluctable enabling of the powers-that-be which would rather see Holy Communion handed out both blithely and blasphemously to the Presidential and other promoters of abortion instead.
There is a prayer directed to Father Joseph Walijewski which the Diocese of La Crosse currently asks people to say, inserting their own intention at the appropriate place. Until Bishop Callahan, not Father Altman, changes his mind, let us offer it daily as follows:
Holy and good God, your servant and priest, Father Joseph Walijewski, through priestly zeal and heroic holiness, defended innocence against the sadness of evil, especially to broken families and helpless children.
Imaging the compassionate Christ, he led others to the font of sacramental life and the knowledge of Jesus Christ as their true and only Savior.
Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He want you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.
Francis Notes:
– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:
“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.” (The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)
– LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:
The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”
– On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:
“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”
– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:
“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.
Anti-Fr. Altmann Bp. Callahan said of Disgraced Gay Archbishop Weakland: He made “his Mistakes but also [did] some of the Good” according to WISN 12 News
Archbishop Listecki’s left are Archbishop emeritus Rembert G. Weakland, and Bishops William P. Callahan
Bishop William Callahan of La Crosse has launched an unmerciful attack on Catholic pro-life Fr. JamesAltmann and removed him from his ministry.
Shockingly in 2009, Callahan said of his apparent friend disgraced gay Archbishop Rembert Weakland that he made “his mistakes but also [did] some of the good” according to WISN 12 News:
Callahan said he talked to Former Archbishop Weakland last week, but despite his knowledge of the book, it was not discussed.
Callahan, who’s known Weakland for years, said he’s surprised by Weakland’s admission that he is gay…
… Weakland is no stranger to controversy. He retired in 2002 after it came out he had an affair decades earlier with a male college student. He has also came under fire for hiding the actions of pedophile priests.
WISN 12 News asked Callahan if he thinks the Archdiocese can move on beyond the things Weakland left behind.
“Certainly, without a doubt, certainly. The church has moved on for centuries with saints and sinners, and that’s Jesus’ intention,” Callahan said.
Patrick J. Buchanan reported the following of Callahan’s apparent friend Weakland:
For Weakland was a homosexual who confessed in a 1980 letter he was in “deep love” with a male paramour who shook down the archbishop for $450,000 in church funds as hush money to keep his lover’s mouth shut about their squalid affair.
According to Rod Dreher, Weakland moved Father William Effinger, who would die in prison, from parish to parish, knowing Effinger was a serial pederast.
When one of Effinger’s victims sued the archdiocese but lost because of a statute of limitations, Weakland counter-sued and extracted $4,000 from the victim of his predator priest.
Dreher describes Weakland’s tenure thus:
“He directed Catholic schools … to teach kids how to use condoms as part of AIDS education and approved a graphic sex-education program for parochial-school kids that taught ‘there is no right and wrong’ on the issues of abortion, contraception and premarital sex. He has advocated for gay rights and women’s ordination, bitterly attacked Pope John Paul II, denounced pro-lifers as ‘fundamentalist’ and declared that one could be both pro-choice and a Catholic in good standing.”
Speaking of sex-abuse victims in 1988, Weakland was quoted: “Not all adolescent victims are so innocent. Some can be sexually very active and aggressive and often streetwise.” [http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=36362Anti-Catholicism and the Times by Patrick J. Buchanan , 04/06/2010]
Last year, Bishop Callahan launched an attacked on Catholic pro-life Fr. Altmann saying “he will attempt fraternal correction before imposing canonical penalties or taking other formal steps in the matter, and acknowledged that the priest had inflicted a ‘wound’ upon the Church.” [https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2020/09/09/la-crosse-bishop-to-correct-catholics-cant-be-democrats-priest/]
Fr. Altmann in his YouTube viral video correctly said: “You can not be Catholic and be a Democrat. Period” because the Democrat party is for the “intrinsically evil” of killing unborn babies.
It appears that Bishop Callahan may, also, disagrees with the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Our Lady of Fatima on telling people in “intrinsically evil” about the possibility of the infallible Catholic teaching on Hell.
The La Crosse Tribune quotes Callahan apparently possibly saying that he “hope[s]… no one” speaks of “hell” to those in “intrinsically evil”:
Does Callahan “hope… no one” speaks of “hell” to those in “intrinsically evil”?
If this is what Bishop Callahan is saying then it appears that the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Our Lady of Fatima disagree with him.
I hope that Callahan isn’t disagreeing with Our Lord and Lady.
Hopefully, he teaches about making first Fridays and first Saturdays to make reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus as well as the Immaculate Heart of Mary and for the conversion of sinners as Our Lady of Fatima asked for so they don’t go to Hell.
Tradition in Action explains that Jesus is merciful, but also because of original sin and when after baptism we sin which is an infinite crime He had to redeemed us by his infinite sacrifice on Good Friday. However, He requires that we in grace unite to His Redemption by doing penance and reparation for forgiveness of our sins and implicitly for others:
“In the images of the Sacred Heart, He points to this symbolic font of love and mercy for us. The devotions to the Sacred Heart always suppose reparation for our sins. We are sinners, we must make reparation. Despite the promises from Our Lord and the fact that He paid an infinite price for our Redemption, we must make reparation. We should always do penance for our sins and make various kinds of reparation.”
“… the error of the [extreme Francis] Divine Mercy devotion. It preaches that we can expect an unconditional mercy with no price to be paid whatsoever, with no obligations whatsoever. This is not the message of Christ.”
“Christ is merciful. Time and time again, His mercy pardons our repeated sins in the Sacrament of Penance, always taking us back no matter how bad our sins are. And what happens in the Sacrament of Penance? The very name of the Sacrament tells us exactly what happens: to be effective the Sacrament supposes penance. Not only are you there at the Sacrament recognizing your full submission to the Church and your dependence on the Sacraments for forgiveness, but you walk out of the confessional with an imposed penance.” [https://www.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/f072_DivMercy.htm]
Also, Fatima’s Sister Lucia said that Our Lady asked for sacrifices and rosaries to obtain the graces so sinners will not go to Hell, but, also, for reparation because of sins against God and the Mother of God:
“Sacrifice yourself for sinners and say many times especially whenever you make such a sacrifice: ‘O Jesus, it is for love of You, for the conversions of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.”
Sister Lucia told Father Lombardi, according to the Vatican’s Osservatore della Domenica on February 7, 1954, the following about why there is a need for sacrifices and prayers for sinners so they can be saved from Hell.
Fr. Lombardi: “Tell me is the Better World Movement a response of the Church to the words spoken to Our Lady?”
Lucia: “Father there is certainly a great need for this renewal. If it is not done, and taking into account the present development of humanity, only a limited number of the human race will be saved.”
Fr. Lombardi: “Do you really believe that many will go to Hell? I hope that God will save the greater part of humanity.” [He had just written a book entitled: Salvation for those without faith.]
Lucia: “Father, many will be lost.”
Fr. Lombardi: “It is true that the world is full of evil, but there is always a hope of salvation.”
Lucia: “No Father, many will be lost.” (Fatima, The Great Sign by Francis Johnston, Tan Publishers, Inc. Rockford, Illinois, Page 36)
The devotions of Our Lady of Fatima and the Sacred Heart of Jesus are both about reparation because each person has free will that by grace can cooperate with God for his redemption or reject God’s grace and sin by committing “intrinsically evil” actions whereby he may and can reject God’s mercy and freely choose to go to Hell.
Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He want you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.
Francis Notes:
– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:
“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.” (The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)
– LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:
The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”
– On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:
“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”
– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:
“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.
Trump Launches Class Action Lawsuit Against Big Tech Giants
By Chris Pandolfo July 08, 2021 | Image Source: The Blaze
Former President Donald Trump announced class action lawsuits Wednesday against Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, the leaders of three Big Tech companies that banned him from their platforms after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol building.
“I stand before you this morning to announce a very important and very beautiful, I think, development for our freedom and our freedom of speech … today, in conjunction with the America First Policy Institute, I’m filing as the lead class action representative a major class action lawsuit against the Big Tech giants including Facebook, Google and Twitter, as well as their CEOs,” Trump said.
The lawsuit seeks a court order to immediately halt social media platforms “illegal, shameful, censorship of the American people.” The former president is demanding an end to shadow-banning, blacklisting, and canceling of conservatives by Big Tech companies.
“Our case will prove this censorship is unlawful, it’s unconstitutional, and it’s completely un-American,” Trump said.
In January, after a mob of Trump supporters gathered at the U.S. Capitol and got into violent altercations with police officers, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube — which is owned by Google — each announced that Trump would no longer be able to use their platforms. The tech companies claimed that Trump’s repeated insistence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that President Joe Biden’s victory was illegitimate incited the violence at the Capitol.
Twitter permanently banned Trump, citing the “risk of further incitement of violence” by his account, while Facebook indefinitely deplatformed the sitting president. After Facebook’s Oversight Board criticized the company for imposing an arbitrary punishment on Trump, the company clarified that Trump will remain deplatformed through Jan. 7, 2023, at least. Trump’s YouTube channel remains indefinitely suspended until there is no longer a “risk of incitement to violence.”
“There is no better evidence that Big Tech is out of control than the fact that they banned the sitting president of the United States earlier this year,” Trump told the gathered reporters. “If they can do it to me, they can do it to anyone.”
First reported by Axios, Trump’s lawsuit will also seek the immediate restoration of his social media accounts and “punitive damages” on the Big Tech giants.
The lawsuits also target the liability protections Big Tech companies enjoy under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
“While the social media companies are officially private entities, in recent years they have ceased to be private with the enactment and their historical use of Section 230, which profoundly protects them from liability,” Trump said. “It is in effect a massive government subsidy, these companies have been co-opted, coerced and weaponized by government actors to become the enforcers of illegal, unconstitutional censorship.”
The former president accused social media companies of coordinating with federal public health officials during the pandemic to censor certain speech. Trump pointed to policies that banned users for sharing “misinformation” about COVID-19, such as opinions that raised questions about the origins of the virus and whether it was leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Big Tech companies became “the de-facto censorship arm of the U.S. government,” Trump said.
Excellent portrayal of our lonely planet. Copied from a Facebook page. Author unknown, yet quite erudite.
“Men, like nations, think they’re eternal. What man in his 20s or 30s doesn’t believe, at least subconsciously, that he’ll live forever? In the springtime of youth, an endless summer beckons. As you pass 70, it’s harder to hide from reality. Nations also have seasons: Imagine a Roman of the 2nd century contemplating an empire that stretched from Britain to the Near East, thinking: This will endure forever…. Forever was about 500 years, give or take. France was pivotal in the 17th and 18th centuries; now the land of Charles Martel is on its way to becoming part of the Muslim ummah. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the sun never set on the British empire; now Albion exists in perpetual twilight. Its 95-year-old sovereign is a fitting symbol for a nation in terminal decline. In the 1980s, Japan seemed poised to buy the world. Business schools taught Japanese management techniques. Today, its birth rate is so low and its population aging so rapidly that an industry has sprung up to remove the remains of elderly Japanese who die alone. I was born in 1942, almost at the midpoint of the 20th century – the American century. America’s prestige and influence were never greater. Thanks to the ‘Greatest Generation,’ we won a World War fought throughout most of Europe, Asia, and the Pacific. We reduced Germany to rubble and put the rising sun to bed. It set the stage for almost half a century of unprecedented prosperity. We stopped the spread of communism in Europe and Asia and fought international terrorism. We rebuilt our enemies and lavished foreign aid on much of the world. We built skyscrapers and rockets to the moon. We conquered Polio and now COVID. We explored the mysteries of the Universe and the wonders of DNA…the blueprint of life. But where is the glory that once was Rome? America has moved from a relatively free economy to socialism – which has worked so well NOWHERE in the world. We’ve gone from a republican government guided by a constitution to a regime of revolving elites. We have less freedom with each passing year. Like a signpost to the coming reign of terror, the cancel culture is everywhere. We’ve traded the American Revolution for the Cultural Revolution. The pathetic creature in the White House is an empty vessel filled by his handlers. At the G-7 Summit, ‘Dr. Jill’ had to lead him like a child. In 1961, when we were young and vigorous, our leader was too. Now a feeble nation is technically led by the oldest man to ever serve in the presidency. We can’t defend our borders, our history (including monuments to past greatness), or our streets. Our cities have become anarchist playgrounds. We are a nation of dependents, mendicants, and misplaced charity. Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegal aliens are put up in hotels. The president of the United States can’t even quote the beginning of the Declaration of Independence (‘You know — The Thing’) correctly. Ivy League graduates routinely fail history tests that 5th graders could pass a generation ago. Crime rates soar and we blame the 2nd. Amendment and slash police budgets. Our culture is certifiably insane. Men who think they’re women. People who fight racism by seeking to convince members of one race that they’re inherently evil, and others that they are perpetual victims. A psychiatrist lecturing at Yale said she fantasizes about ‘unloading a revolver into the head of any white person.’ We slaughter the unborn in the name of freedom, while our birth rate dips lower year by year. Our national debt is so high that we can no longer even pretend that we will repay it one day. It’s a $28-trillion monument to our improvidence and refusal to confront reality. Our ‘entertainment’ is sadistic, nihilistic, and as enduring as a candy bar wrapper thrown in the trash. Our music is noise that spans the spectrum from annoying to repulsive. Patriotism is called insurrection, treason celebrated, and perversion sanctified. A man in blue gets less respect than a man in a dress. We’re asking soldiers to fight for a nation our leaders no longer believe in. How meekly most of us submitted to Fauci-ism (the regime of face masks, lockdowns, and hand sanitizers) shows the impending death of the American spirit. How do nations slip from greatness to obscurity? • Fighting endless wars they can’t or won’t win • Accumulating massive debt far beyond their ability to repay • Refusing to guard their borders, allowing the nation to be inundated by an alien horde • Surrendering control of their cities to mob rule • Allowing indoctrination of the young • Moving from a republican form of government to an oligarchy • Losing national identity • Indulging indolence • Abandoning faith and family – the bulwarks of social order. In America, every one of these symptoms is pronounced, indicating an advanced stage of the disease. Even if the cause seems hopeless, do we not have an obligation to those who sacrificed so much to give us what we had? I’m surrounded by ghosts urging me on: • the Union soldiers who held Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg, • the battered bastards of Bastogne, • those who served in the cold hell of Korea, • the guys who went to the jungles of Southeast Asia and came home to be reviled or neglected. This is the nation that took in my immigrant grandparents, whose uniform my father and most of my uncles wore in the Second World War. I don’t want to imagine a world without America, even though it becomes increasingly likely. During Britain’s darkest hour, when its professional army was trapped at Dunkirk and a German invasion seemed imminent, Churchill reminded his countrymen, ‘Nations that go down fighting rise again, and those that surrender tamely are finished.’ The same might be said of causes. If we let America slip through our fingers, if we lose without a fight, what will posterity say of us? While the prognosis is far from good, only God knows if America’s day in the sun is over.”
A few weeks ago my wife and I spent an afternoon with some old friends, a retired couple who had just come back from their winter home in Florida. The wife of this couple told us a story from her childhood that reminded me of the glory days of American Catholicism.
She grew up in a small town in Massachusetts, not far from Fall River. She went to a Catholic school in the 1950s. The nuns told their students about the Church’s early martyrs, saintly Christians who, rather than renounce their faith, consented to being killed by hungry lions in the Flavian Amphitheater. These martyrs immediately went to Heaven, where they met Jesus and commenced to enjoy eternal bliss. The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church.
This was in the 1950s, at the height of the Cold War. And so the nuns, not content with giving edifying history lessons, reminded their charges that the need for Christian heroism had not vanished with the conversion of Rome to Christianity. The nuns gave their pupils a thought-provoking hypothetical. Let’s suppose the Communists take over America, and let’s further suppose they confront you and other Catholic school-kids with the horrible option: “Renounce your faith or be shot dead.”
What will you boys and girls do? You know what the right thing would be. But will you have the courage to do the right thing when the moment arrives? Will your faith be strong enough?
Our friend told us that this question provoked a great deal of anxiety in her child’s soul. Would she have the courage needed to become a martyr? Or would her courage fail her? Would her faith not be strong enough? The question tormented her.
After weeks of mental suffering, she finally ended the torment by resolving: “When the moment comes, I will save my life by renouncing the faith.” After making that decision, her mental torment vanished.
Well, the Commies never took over Massachusetts. (Of course, some of my conservative friends will dispute that.) Our friend remains a church-going Catholic to this day. My guess is that God has long since forgiven her for her moment of weakness.
A hundred years ago the de-Christianization of Russia advanced with the help of guns pointed at Christian heads. But the present-day de-Christianization of America advances nonviolently. No guns are used, only persuasion and seduction.
*
For example, June was “Pride Month” – a month during which the nation, with something very close to unanimity, celebrated the goodness of all of the following: homosexuality and homosexual practice (both male and female), bisexuality, transgenderism, queerness (whatever that means), and a potentially unlimited number of other deviations from the traditional Christian idea of sexual propriety.
At least it seemed to be a virtually unanimous celebration of LGBTQ+. I heard few if any dissenting voices (apart from the voice in my own head). Major business corporations celebrated, TV networks celebrated, colleges and universities celebrated, the mainstream media celebrated, Silicon Valley celebrated, the NBA celebrated, major league baseball celebrated, and, perhaps most notable of all, President Biden (America’s second Catholic president) celebrated. U.S. embassies around the world displayed the rainbow flag, and every big city in America had a PRIDE parade. (I myself have seen two of these parades, one in Cleveland, the other in Louisville. I confess that they entertained me even while they offended my moral conscience. “This is bad,” I said to myself, “but it’s fun.”)
Just as Communism and Nazism were non-theistic “religions,” so LGBTQ-ism has become something of a non-theistic religion, providing meaning and purpose to the lives of many Americans (and not just Americans). What’s more, it is a missionary religion; it seeks converts, just as Christianity and Islam seek converts.
How does it win these converts? In two ways.
In one way, by seduction. If a teenage kid has his or her first sexual experiences with a somewhat older person of the same sex, and if he/finds these experiences intensely pleasurable, there is a good chance that he/she will become addicted to such homosexual experiences – much the way young persons who “experiment” with strong opiates often become drug addicts. This addiction to homosexual sex is especially likely if the young person has an antecedent leaning in that direction.
Hence, even though the official position of the LGBTQ+ movement is that gays and lesbians are not sexually interested in underage boys and girls, the fact is that many homosexuals are sexually interested in underage kids, and many act on that interest. A frequent theme of homosexual fiction is early same-sex experience. Many kids become addicted to this unnatural love and pretending they don’t know what really happened. They convince themselves that they were “born that way.”
The other mode of winning converts (and this is perhaps the more important mode) is by way of persuasion. And so the LGBTQ+ movement has for some years now promoted a tremendous propaganda campaign urging, not just toleration, but strong approval of the conduct symbolized by the letters LGBTQ. And not just approval, but strong disapproval of anybody who dissents, condemning such dissenters as moral reprobates.
Joining the LGBTQ+ movement in this propaganda campaign have been major corporations, colleges and universities, public schools, Hollywood, the entertainment industry generally, the mainstream media, liberal churches and synagogues, and the Democratic Party. As a result of all this, it’s now relatively fashionable (“cool”) among many young persons to “identify” as something other than strictly heterosexual, and it is almost universally un-cool to disapprove of such deviations.
Catholic young people have generally abandoned the ancient teaching of their religion as to the sinfulness of homosexual practice – and since these young people are more or less logical, this renunciation of one part of the faith will eventually lead to the renunciation of the entire faith.
American Catholicism, I fear, is like that building in Miami. It’s on the verge of collapse. Without a shot being fired. Without lions. No blood of martyrs.
*Image: The U.S. embassy in Vatican City this June [photo: CNA/Twitter]
Why I’m Suing Big TechIf Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube can censor me, they can censor you,and, believe me, they are.By Donald J. TrumpWall Street JournalJuly 8, 2021 One of the gravest threats to our democracy today is a powerful group of Big Tech corporations that have teamed up with the government to censor the free speech of the American people. This is not only wrong—it is unconstitutional. To restore free speech for myself and for every American, I am suing Big Tech to stop it. Social media has become as central to free speech as town meeting halls, newspapers, and television networks were in prior generations. The internet is the new public square. In recent years, however, Big Tech platforms have become increasingly brazen and shameless in censoring and discriminating against ideas, information, and people on social media — banning users, de-platforming organizations, and aggressively blocking the free flow of information on which our democracy depends. No longer are Big Tech giants simply removing specific threats of violence. They are manipulating and controlling the political debate itself. Consider content that was censored in the past year. Big Tech companies banned users from their platforms for publishing evidence that showed the coronavirus emerged from a Chinese lab, which even the corporate media now admits may be true. In the middle of a pandemic, Big Tech censored physicians from discussing potential treatments such as hydroxychloroquine, which studies have now shown does work to relieve symptoms of Covid-19. In the weeks before a presidential election, the platforms banned the New York Post — America’s oldest newspaper — for publishing a story critical of Joe Biden’s family, a story the Biden campaign did not even dispute. Perhaps most egregious, in the weeks after the election, Big Tech blocked the social-media accounts of the sitting president. If they can do it to me, they can do it to you—and believe me, they are. Jennifer Horton, a Michigan schoolteacher, was banned from Facebook for sharing an article questioning whether mandatory masks for young children are healthy. Later, when her brother went missing, she was unable to use Facebook to get the word out. Colorado physician Kelly Victory was deplatformed by YouTube after she made a video for her church explaining how to hold services safely. Kiyan Michael of Florida and her husband, Bobby, lost their 21-year-old son in a fatal collision caused by a twice-deported illegal alien. Facebook censored them after they posted on border security and immigration enforcement. Meanwhile, Chinese propagandists and the Iranian dictator spew threats and hateful lies on these platforms with impunity. This flagrant attack on free speech is doing terrible damage to our country. That is why in conjunction with the America First Policy Institute, I filed class-action lawsuits to force Big Tech to stop censoring the American people. The suits seek damages to deter such behavior in the future and injunctions restoring my accounts. Our lawsuits argue that Big Tech companies are being used to impose illegal and unconstitutional government censorship. In 1996 Congress sought to promote the growth of the internet by extending liability protections to internet platforms, recognizing that they were exactly that—platforms, not publishers. Unlike publishers, companies such as Facebook and Twitter can’t be held legally liable for the content posted to their sites. Without this immunity, social media companies could not exist. Democrats in Congress are exploiting this leverage to coerce platforms into censoring their political opponents. In recent years, we have all watched Congress haul Big Tech CEOs before their committees and demand that they censor “false” stories and “disinformation”—labels determined by an army of partisan fact-checkers loyal to the Democrat Party. As the cases of fellow plaintiffs Ms. Horton, Dr. Victory, and the Michael family demonstrate, in practice this amounts to suppression of speech that those in power do not like. Further, Big Tech and government agencies are actively coordinating to remove content from the platforms according to the guidance of agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Big Tech and traditional media entities formed the Trusted News Initiative, which essentially takes instructions from the CDC about what information they need to “combat.” The tech companies are doing the government’s bidding, colluding to censor unapproved ideas. This coercion and coordination is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has held that Congress can’t use private actors to achieve what the Constitution prohibits it from doing itself. In effect, Big Tech has been illegally deputized as the censorship arm of the U.S. government. This should alarm you no matter your political persuasion. It is unacceptable, unlawful, and un-American. Through these lawsuits, I intend to restore free speech for all Americans — Democrats, Republicans, and independents. I will never stop fighting to defend the constitutional rights and sacred liberties of the American people.
Why I’m Suing Big TechIf Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube can censor me, they can censor you,and, believe me, they are.By Donald J. TrumpWall Street JournalJuly 8, 2021 One of the gravest threats to our democracy today is a powerful group of Big Tech corporations that have teamed up with the government to censor the free speech of the American people. This is not only wrong—it is unconstitutional. To restore free speech for myself and for every American, I am suing Big Tech to stop it. Social media has become as central to free speech as town meeting halls, newspapers, and television networks were in prior generations. The internet is the new public square. In recent years, however, Big Tech platforms have become increasingly brazen and shameless in censoring and discriminating against ideas, information, and people on social media — banning users, de-platforming organizations, and aggressively blocking the free flow of information on which our democracy depends. No longer are Big Tech giants simply removing specific threats of violence. They are manipulating and controlling the political debate itself. Consider content that was censored in the past year. Big Tech companies banned users from their platforms for publishing evidence that showed the coronavirus emerged from a Chinese lab, which even the corporate media now admits may be true. In the middle of a pandemic, Big Tech censored physicians from discussing potential treatments such as hydroxychloroquine, which studies have now shown does work to relieve symptoms of Covid-19. In the weeks before a presidential election, the platforms banned the New York Post — America’s oldest newspaper — for publishing a story critical of Joe Biden’s family, a story the Biden campaign did not even dispute. Perhaps most egregious, in the weeks after the election, Big Tech blocked the social-media accounts of the sitting president. If they can do it to me, they can do it to you—and believe me, they are. Jennifer Horton, a Michigan schoolteacher, was banned from Facebook for sharing an article questioning whether mandatory masks for young children are healthy. Later, when her brother went missing, she was unable to use Facebook to get the word out. Colorado physician Kelly Victory was deplatformed by YouTube after she made a video for her church explaining how to hold services safely. Kiyan Michael of Florida and her husband, Bobby, lost their 21-year-old son in a fatal collision caused by a twice-deported illegal alien. Facebook censored them after they posted on border security and immigration enforcement. Meanwhile, Chinese propagandists and the Iranian dictator spew threats and hateful lies on these platforms with impunity. This flagrant attack on free speech is doing terrible damage to our country. That is why in conjunction with the America First Policy Institute, I filed class-action lawsuits to force Big Tech to stop censoring the American people. The suits seek damages to deter such behavior in the future and injunctions restoring my accounts. Our lawsuits argue that Big Tech companies are being used to impose illegal and unconstitutional government censorship. In 1996 Congress sought to promote the growth of the internet by extending liability protections to internet platforms, recognizing that they were exactly that—platforms, not publishers. Unlike publishers, companies such as Facebook and Twitter can’t be held legally liable for the content posted to their sites. Without this immunity, social media companies could not exist. Democrats in Congress are exploiting this leverage to coerce platforms into censoring their political opponents. In recent years, we have all watched Congress haul Big Tech CEOs before their committees and demand that they censor “false” stories and “disinformation”—labels determined by an army of partisan fact-checkers loyal to the Democrat Party. As the cases of fellow plaintiffs Ms. Horton, Dr. Victory, and the Michael family demonstrate, in practice this amounts to suppression of speech that those in power do not like. Further, Big Tech and government agencies are actively coordinating to remove content from the platforms according to the guidance of agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Big Tech and traditional media entities formed the Trusted News Initiative, which essentially takes instructions from the CDC about what information they need to “combat.” The tech companies are doing the government’s bidding, colluding to censor unapproved ideas. This coercion and coordination is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has held that Congress can’t use private actors to achieve what the Constitution prohibits it from doing itself. In effect, Big Tech has been illegally deputized as the censorship arm of the U.S. government. This should alarm you no matter your political persuasion. It is unacceptable, unlawful, and un-American. Through these lawsuits, I intend to restore free speech for all Americans — Democrats, Republicans, and independents. I will never stop fighting to defend the constitutional rights and sacred liberties of the American people.
Is Blue Pill Francis’s Vatican II Wokeism “Switch[ing] the Ordering of the Faith from OBJECTIVE TRUTH to… Nihilistic Relativism”?
In May, the great Catholic website The Deus Ex Machina Blog posted an article by The Conservative Treehouse explaining to Catholic conservative critics of Donald Trump why he “is a walking red-pill” against the Deep State Wokeism:
The MAGA movement is the future of the Republican party…
… Hindsight is 20/20, but there are people who proclaim that Donald J Trump should have been more wise in his counsel; more selective in his cabinet; more forceful in his confrontation of corporate globalists. Let me be clear….
I will never join that crew of Trump critics because I have understood his adversary for decades. CTH did not just come around to the understanding of the enemy. CTH has been outlining the scope of the enemy, the scale of the specific war and the financial and economic power of the opposition for over a decade. We understand the totality of the effort it will take to stop decades of willful blindness amid the American people. We also see with clear eyes exactly what they are doing now, even with President Trump forcefully removed from office, to destroy the threat he still represents.
Donald J Trump was/is a walking red-pill; a “touchstone”: a visible, empirical test or criterion for determining the quality or genuineness of anything political. I have been deep enough into the network of the Deep State to understand the scale and scope of this enemy. To think that President Trump alone could carry the burden of correcting four decades of severe corruption of all things political, without simultaneously considering the scale of the financial opposition, is naive in the extreme.
POTUS Trump was disrupting the global order of things in order to protect and preserve the shrinking interests of the U.S. He was fighting, almost single-handed, at the threshold of the abyss…
About a month ago, the same website showed that Traditionalists are the walking red-pill against Francis and the members of Vatican II’s Wokeism:
Folks, your humble blogger has been OBSERVING an interesting PHENOMENON of late.
As we all know, there appears to be an UPRISING taking place in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
This UPRISING is taking place among various sectors of the American populace, and not only.
I am embedding a rather longish video from Dr. Steve Turley’s youtube channel, but it is worth watching.
Below, is a post that appeared on our favorite small “c” catholic website, Zero Hedge. The post describes steps being taken to form an “alternative source of higher education” outside of the conventional higher education system.
The reason I point out these two initiatives is that they literally span the entire range of socio-economic sub-strata of our population.
But there is one overriding theme that is becoming very visible and is driving both these two initiative as well as all the other initiatives of this sort.
And that underlying theme is “OBJECTIVE TRUTH”.
Therefore, it is becoming quite apparent that the WAR ON COMPETENCE is nothing more than the WAR ON OBJECTIVE TRUTH.
Speaking of the WAR ON OBJECTIVE TRUTH, the first major institution to abrogate their “ordering” to OBJECTIVE TRUTH is…
… the post-conciliar church.
I will leave off here, but would like to draw you attention to a 20+ part series that the Society of St. Pius X is producing which lays out the background about how this cabal of German bishops and their Belgian, Dutch and French sidekicks SWINDLED the Council Fathers into legitimizing a “pastoral council that did not promulgate any new dogma” whose real intent was to switch the ordering of the Faith from OBJECTIVE TRUTH to a form of nihilistic relativism that would be able to “situational ethic” literally any sin or deviancy. (see here) [https://sarmaticusblog.wordpress.com/2021/05/14/the-uprising-is-spreading/]
The embodiment of Vatican II’s Wokeism is Francis and his “switch[ing] the ordering of the Faith from OBJECTIVE TRUTH to a form of nihilistic relativism that would be able to “situational ethic” literally any sin or deviancy”:
The Catholic Thing wrote that “Francis made a startling claim” that appears to deny objective truth:
Francis apparently got this terminology about “abstract truths” from a Jesuit theologian Michael de Certeau who wrote:
“In history everything begins with the gesture of setting aside, of putting together, of transforming certain classified objects… It exiles them from practice [praxis] in order to confer upon them the status of “abstract” objects of knowledge…”
“… [T]he historical discipline… designate[s] the “that” as a “fact” is only a way of naming what cannot be understood.” ( Michael de Certeau’s book: The Writing of History, pages 72-73 and 84)
De Certeau is a nihilist who Francis considers to “be the greatest theologian for today.” This theologian believes that there is no “possibility of an objective basis for truth” and that there is no objective meaning or reality. (Dictionary.com definitions of nihilism)
In simple words, de Certeau’s theology denies objective truth and objective Catholic truth.
The Francis considers him the most eminent modern theologian. Francis said:
“For me, de Certeau is still the greatest theologian for today.” (onepeterfive.com, March 8, 2016, “Pope Francis Reveals His Mind to Private Audience”)
Rev. Dr. Federico Colautti, ITI, in a talk titled “Pope Francis: Understanding His Language and Mission (1-10-2015),” shows that de Certeau had “a great influence in the Pope’s way of being open… [n]ot making faith of a museum”:
In the “discourse, a video message that the Pope send the Catholic University of Buenos Aires… I discovered that one of the few quotes he makes is from a theologian… a certain Michael de Certeau… I can imagine that this author had a great influence in the Pope’s way of being open… Not making faith of a museum… This preference for the periphery could have a relationship with this theologian Michael de Certeau.”
De Certeau in his greatest book “Heterologies” said:
“It is not Mr. Foucault who is making fun of domains of knowledge… It is history that is laughing at them. It plays tricks on the teleologists who take themselves to be the lieutenants of meaning. A meaninglessness of history.” (“Heterologogies,” Pages 195-196)
Historian Keith Windschuttle shows that the Pope’s favorite modern theologian is a radical who thinks that there is no “access” to outside reality. Windschuttle wrote:
“Of all the French theorists… de Certeau is the most radical. He is critical of the poststructuralist Foucault for his use of documentary evidence and of Derrida for the way he privileges the practice of writing. For de Certeau, writing is a form of oppression… he argues… writing itself constitutes the act of colonisation…”
“Like both structuralist and poststructuralist theorists, de Certeau subscribes to the thesis that we have access only to our language and not to any real, outside world…”
“De Certeau claims that writing can never be objective. Its status is no different from that of fiction. So, because history is a form of writing, all history is also fiction.” (“The Killing of History,” Pages 31-34)
By Francis’s greatest modern theologian’s logic then Jesus Christ, true God and true man, who walked the earth during the reign of Pontius Pilate, is fiction.
The central doctrine of Catholism, the Incarnation, is fiction.
Post Structuralists like de Certeau, more widely known as Postmodernists, believe all reality is fiction or “narrative.”
They change the “narrative” or story usually to compile with their leftist or liberal views on politics, sexual morality or whatever their pet project happens to be.
They rarely use scholarship to backup their “narrative” point of view, only mind numbing long confusing writing that obscures instead of clarifying.
The Postmodernists in the media are one exception to the obscurantism of non-clarity.
Their “narratives” are clear and well written, but again rarely is there scholarship or strong evidence to backup their stories. They use spin to obscure.
Media spin “narrative” is “news and information that is manipulated or slanted to affect its interpretation and influence public opinion.” (Dictionary.com)
They usually use their “narratives” in history, news, the Bible and any writing as a vehicle to promote their ideological ideas.
With that background, here is the Fransis’s favorite theologian’s central religious ideas. The de Certeau Scholar Johannes Hoff wrote:
“According to this new approach to the Biblical narrative, the focal event of Christianity is not the incarnation, the crucifixion, or the resurrection of Christ, but the empty tomb. The Christian form of life is no longer associated with a place, a body, or an institution, but with a quest for a missing body: the missing body of the people of Israel, and mutatis mutandis the missing body of Jesus.” (Article by Johannes Hoff, “Mysticism, Ecclesiology And The Body Christ: Certeau’s (Mis-) Reading of Corpus Mystium and the Legacy of Henri de Lubac” Page 87, Titus Brandsma Institute Studies In Spirituality, Supplement 24, “Spiritual Spaces: History and Mysticism in Michel De Certeau”)
The nihilist theologian believes that the central truths of Christianity are about “absence” or nonexistence. De Certeau scholar Graham Ward wrote:
“For de Lubac the… Eucharist is not a sign of the presence of Christ’s body, it is Christ’s body… And yet Certeau… makes the Eucharist (as later the church and body of mystical text he treats) into substitutes, acts of bereavement, signs of absence.” (“Michel de Certeau – in the Plural, ” Page 511)
In other words, Francis’s greatest modern theologian believes that the Eucharist is not the body of Christ present, he doesn’t even believe it is a sign of the presence of Christ’s body like some Protestants, but a sign of “absence.”
Might de Certeau’s influence on Francis be the reason he never kneels before the Eucharist, but kneels to wash the feet of those he like Certeau might consider oppressed?
De Certeau’s influence on Francis may be the reason he reportedly said:
“It is not excluded that I will enter history as the one who split the Catholic Church.” (Der Spiegel magazine, December, 23, 2016)
De Certeau scholar Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt wrote:
“Certeau… came increasingly to stress the clash of interpretation, the “law of conflict,” that applies even to the church. Under the pressure of this clash, the ecclesial/eucharistic body is “shattered.” (“Michael de Certeau – in the Plural”, Page 359)
Francis’s greatest modern theologian doesn’t believe in the central truths of the Catholic Church.
The Francis’s most eminent modern theologian doesn’t even believe in objective truth.
Does Francis believe in the central doctrines of the Catholic Church or in objective truth?
The question needs to be asked:
If the Pope is a disciple of de Certeau and Postmodernism, then what ultimately do he and these thinkers believe in?
Philosopher Stephen Hicks said:
The “Left thinkers of the 1950s and 1960s… Confronted by the continued poverty and brutality of socialism, they could either go with the evidence and reject their most cherish ideals – or stick by their ideals and attack the whole idea that evidence and logic matter…”
“Postmodernism is born of the marriage of Left politics and skeptical epistemology…”
“Then, strikingly, postmodernism turns out not to be relativistic at all. Relativism becomes part of a rhetorical political strategy, some Machiavellian realpolitik employed to throw the opposition off track…”
“Here it is useful to recall Derrida: ‘deconstruction never had any meaning… than as a radicalization… within the tradition of a certain Marxism, in a certain spirit of Marxism.'” (“Explaining Postmodernism,” Page 90, 186)
For Postmodernists like de Certeau, Derrida, Foucault and it appears Francis, if he is their disciple, falsehood or truth doesn’t matter.
The only thing that matters is achieving power for their liberal ideology or group.
Instead of economic Marxism, the post-modernist in the 1970’s focused on Cultural Marxism which de Certeau and other post-modernists termed “oppression” of groups.
Power not truth for groups such as women, gays, transexauls, workers and any sub-category of minorities was the new goal to achieving control.
An example is abortion: women had to have power over their bodies so the truth that the unborn baby is human must be denied and politically incorrect.
Another example is homosexual acts: gays had to have power over their bodies so the truth that it is was a sin and led to disease and a early death had to be denied and politically incorrect.
Remember that liberals, who never use Marxist words, are nothing but post-modernist who use words like equality and compassion as masks for raw power.
Venezuela is another example.
The liberals from Fr. James Martin to Pope Francis will not lift a finger or say a word to stop the Venezuelan people from being starved and brutalized because the country’s dictator is part of their liberal group.
The liberals means to achieve power in the Church is praxis theology.
Internationally renowned theologian Dr. Tracey Rowland said Francis’s “decision – making process” outlined in Evangelii Gaudium is “the tendency to give priority to praxis over theory.”
She states that chapter eight of Amoris Laetitia “might be described as the praxis chapter rather than a theory chapter.” Theory meaning Catholic doctrine.
The renowned theologian asks:
How can footnote 351 of Amoris Laetitia “be consistent with paragraph eighty-four of John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris consortio and paragraph twenty-nine of Benedict XVI’s Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis? A pastoral crisis may arise if the lay faithful and their priests have to choose between… two Popes (John Paul II and Benedict XVI) on one side, and a third Pope (Pope Francis) on the other.” (“Catholic Theology,” Page 192, 198, 199)
The choice appears to be between the infallible doctrines of the Catholic Church or praxis theology.
Rowland says “praxis types agree in rejecting classical metaphysics.” She then explains praxis ideology or “theology”:
“Doctrinal theory is at best extrinsic and secondary. The reflex character of theory-praxis tends toward a reduction of theory to reflection on praxis as variously understood. The normativity tends toward an identification of Christianity with modern, secular (liberal or Marxist) process.” (“Catholic Theology,” Page174)
If what the internationally renowned theologian is saying is true of Pope Francis and praxis “theology,” then the Church is in the greatest crisis in history.
The Church has a man in Francis who has betrayed Jesus Christ and His Gospel for the world.
It appears that Francis has exchanged the Gospel of Jesus Christ for “secular (liberal or Marxist)” ideology which denies objective truth.
Francis in Amoris Laetitia and back on Holy Thursday appeared to be denying objective truth. Canon lawyer Fr. Gerald E. Murray, in The Catholic Thing, wrote at the Chrism Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Holy Thursday morning “Francis made a startling claim” when he called truth an idol:
“We must be careful not to fall into the temptation of making idols of certain abstract truths. They can be comfortable idols, always within easy reach; they offer a certain prestige and power and are difficult to discern. Because the “truth-idol” imitates, it dresses itself up in the words of the Gospel, but does not let those words touch the heart. Much worse, it distances ordinary people from the healing closeness of the word and of the sacraments of Jesus.”
Fr. Murray then defines truth as the Catholic Church and St. Thomas Aquinas teaches and shows that apparently Francis denies truth and makes“erroneous opinion into an idol”:
“Truth is the conformity of mind and reality. The truth about God is understood when we accurately grasp the nature and purpose of His creation (natural theology), and when we believe in any supernatural revelation He may make. Jesus told us that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. All truths have their origin in the Truth who is God made man. The Christian understands that the truth is a Person.”
“… Pope Francis states that “the ‘truth-idol’ imitates, it dresses itself up in the words of the Gospel, but does not let those words touch the heart.” Is the Gospel obscured or falsified by truths taught by the Magisterium of the Church – which are drawn from that Gospel?
“If the truth could be an idol, then naturally any use of the Scriptures to illustrate that particular truth would be a charade. But the truth of God cannot be an idol because what God has made known to us is our means of entering into His reality – the goal of our existence.”
“Francis states that this ‘truth-idolatry’ in fact ‘distances ordinary people from the healing closeness of the word and of the sacraments of Jesus.’”
“Here we have the interpretative key to what I think he is getting at. He is defending his decision in Amoris Laetitia to allow some people who are living in adulterous unions to receive the sacraments of penance and the Holy Eucharistic while intending to continue to engage in adulterous relations.”
“… The truth will set you free, it will not enslave you in error and darkness. Those who seek to be healed by coming close to Christ in his sacraments will only realize that goal by knowing and doing what Jesus asks of them. To reject in practice his words about the permanence of marriage and the obligation to avoid adultery, and then assert a right to receive the sacraments risks making an erroneous opinion into an idol.” [https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2018/04/21/of-truth-and-idols/]
Francis because of his apparent denial of truth appears to be denying objective morality and intrinsically evil acts. Professor Claudio Pierantoni, a Patristic Scholar of Medieval Philosophy at the University of Chile and Member of JAHLF (John Paul II Academy for Human Life and Family), said that Francis’s Gaudete et Exsultate appears to deny “the existence of intrinsically evil acts” and is promoting “situation ethics”:
“[T]he document is read within the context of the present controversies in the Church, especially that about Amoris Laetitia and situation ethics, one gets the strong impression that many passages are directly aimed at harshly rebuking all those people (cardinals, scholars, journalists and simple laypeople writing on blogs) that have opposed the papal agenda about giving Communion to the divorced and remarried, Communion to Protestants, permitting contraception in certain cases, too mild opposition or silence in the face of anti-family and anti-life legislation (pro-abortion, pro-birth control pro-euthanasia and pro same-sex marriage). In this sense, the document brings no progress or clarity in any of the most controversial and anti-doctrinal stances of Pope Francis. Quite to the contrary, it seems to represent one more step towards giving a kind of official approval to situation ethics.”
“So, the reading of this document should once more to urge us to plead before the Pope for an answer to the dubia, and in particular to dubium no. 2 about the existence of intrinsically evil acts, which are not justifiable in any situation. We should not forget that to deny this doctrine, or sow doubts about it, in any field of ethics, is the principal heresy of our times and the most dangerous enemy of sanctity.” [http://m.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/professor-pierantoni-gaudete-et-exsultate-supports-error-of-situational-eth#.WuLDtN9lDqC]
Why does Francis deny truth which has led to his promoting situation ethics?
“Bergoglio’s fascination with polarities began in the 1960s, when he first began exploring as a Jesuit via Gaston Fessard’s 1956 monumental anti-Hegelian work on the dialectics of grace and freedom in St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. Fessard,Francis tells Borghesi, ‘gave me so many of the elements that later got mixed in.’” “Fessard was one of a 1950s group of Lyons-based jésuites blondéliens – that is, Jesuits inspired by Maurice Blondel – that included Henri de Lubac, Gaston Fessardand Michel de Certeau.” [https://cruxnow.com/book-review/2017/11/18/new-book-looks-intellectual-history-francis-pope-polarity/]
Ivereigh’s claim that Fessard is “anti-Hegelian” is wrong.
Back in 1950, scholar Jules “Isaac [O.P.] was accusing Fessard of identifying this quasi-science of thought with the science of the real order, or metaphysics. That is what Hegel does.”
“The executive function of the dialectic, as Isaac interpreted Aquinas, uses the law of thought in a concrete instance of thinking or arguing. Because Fessard used these laws not as laws of arguing, but as laws of the development of historical events, he is again accused of Hegelianism.” (“Gaston Fessard S.J., His Work Toward A Theology of History,” by Mary Alice Muir, 1970, page 25-26)
Francis theological advisor Fr. Juan Carlos Scannone connects the final dots of the close connection of Francis’s thinking with Fessard and Blondel’s Hegelian teachings which explains why the Pope does not apparently believe in truth and promotes situation ethics:
“Between Blondel’s philosophy of action and Pope Francis’ pastoral action, there are significant coincidences, probably because they both draw from the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. However, indirect links between the two should not be excluded, for example, through the relationshipbetween Gaston Fessard (strongly influenced by Blondel) and Miguel Ángel Fiorito, much appreciated by Bergoglio. This article focuses first on the convergences regarding action; then it compares the coincidences between the two authors regarding the overcoming of social and existential conflicts. Finally, it studies the parallelism between the «logic of love», nominated and applied by the Pope, and the «logic of a moral life» by Blondel, focused on charity. ( La Civiltà Cattolica 2015 III / www.laciviltacattolica.it )” [https://m.facebook.com/civiltacattolica/photos/a.10150836993325245.745627.379688310244/10242607255245/?type=3]
Scannone connecting the Pope’s thinking to Blondel is very important because he is one of “Francis’ closest theological advisors” according to an expert on Latin America and Francis’s theology, Claudio Remeseira:
Theologian John Lamont explains what Blondel taught:
“The neomodernists, due to their historical perspectivism, did not think that the theology and dogma of previous epochs could satisfy this understanding, but they did not want to dismiss them as false. They accordingly held that dogma was true, but that its truth could not be understood in Aristotle’s sense. Garrigou-Lagrange saw them as reviving the philosopher Maurice Blondel’s rejection of the traditional definition of truth as bringing the mind into conformity with reality (‘adaequatio rei et intellectus’) in favour of an account of truth as bringing thought into line with life (‘adaequatio realis mentis et vitae’). While this definition of truth was not explicitly stated by the neomodernists, the importance of Blondel for their thought makes this interpretation a plausible one; Bouillard, for example, wrote extensively and approvingly on Blondel.12 What they did explicitly assert was that the truth of past dogmatic pronouncements does not consist in their being an accurate description of reality, and that a theology that was not relevant to the present day (‘actuel’) was untrue.” [https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2015/01/a-christmastide-gift-for-our-readers.html?m=1]
Even liberal neo-modernist philosophy writer Anthony Carroll wrote:
“Conscious of the challenge to the traditional Thomist theory of knowledge that had been ushered in by modern philosophy, Blondel, for example, sought to identify the practical level of human action as the place where one might find a new apologetic for the Christian faith. In his L’Action (1893), he analyses the dynamics of human action and argues that the distance between what we desire and what we actually realise in our actions indicates that what we truly desire lies always beyond the particular object that we are momentarily fixed upon. This transcendental horizon of desire draws the mind and heart towards God as the only One who can satisfy truly our infinite longings. For Blondel, it is this Augustinian unrest that leaves a trace of the divine in our human experience. Such a turn to the interiority of human experience as grounds for the proof of God’s existence is what is meant by immanentism in Pascendi.”
“Rather than pointing towards the historical existence of Jesus, the factual occurrence of miracles and the fulfilment of earlier prophecies for proof of God’s existence, the Blondelian schema holds that justification for the faith is to be found by turning inwards to the personal experience of the human subject. This turn to the subject is characteristic of modern philosophy, from Descartes right up to the Idealism of Kant and Hegel and beyond, and presented a major challenge to the traditional Catholic apologetics of the time, which had been constructed on the basis that external revelation could be taken for granted. With this turn to the interior experience of the human subject, more than simply philosophical questions were raised. If it were the case that inner experience justified the faith, if each person was to find the proof of God’s existence within their own life, then what would be the basis for the teaching authority of the Church?” [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/20090724_1.htm]
Finally, the great theologian and teacher of Pope John Paul II, Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., wrote about Blondel and why anyone who was influenced by his teachings, directly or indirectly, would deny truth, as apparently Francis is influenced according one of his closest advisor’s Scannone:
“One sees the danger of the new definition of truth, no longer the adequation of intellect and reality but the conformity of mind and life.™ When Maurice Blondel in 1906 proposed this substitution, he did not foresee all of the consequences for the faith. Would he himself not be terrified, or at least very troubled? What life” is meant in this definition of: “conformity of mind and life”? It means human life. And so then, how can one avoid the modernist definition: “Truth is no more immutable than man himself inasmuch as it is evolved with him, in him and through him. (Denz. 2058) One understands why Pius X said of the modernists: “they pervert the eternal concept of truth. 11 (Denz. 2080) ” [https://archive.org/stream/Garrigou-LagrangeEnglish/_Where%20is%20the%20New%20Theology%20Leading%20Us__%20-%20Garrigou-Lagrange%2C%20Reginald%2C%20O.P__djvu.txt]
Blondel’s modernist theology came from “the Idealism of Kant and Hegel.” Hegel leads to the “Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida” where de Certeau got most of his philosophy.
Did Francis’s theology of the periphery come from the “Prophets of Extremity”?
The definition of extremity is “the furthest point or limit of something.”
The definition of periphery is “the outer limit or edge of an area or object.”
Remember what Francis expert Rev. Dr. Colautti said:
In the “discourse, a video message that the Pope send the Catholic University of Buenos Aires… I discovered that one of the few quotes he makes is from a theologian… a certain Michael de Certeau… I can imagine that this author had a great influence in the Pope’s way of being open… Not making faith of a museum… This preference for the periphery could have a relationship with this theologian Michael de Certeau.”
Francis’s favorite theologian de Certeau’s key ideas are oppression of groups and the deconstruction of meaning for the most part. De Certeau got these ideas from most of the same sources as Derrida who, like Fessard, had as his starting point Hegel. Remember that much of Francis’s thinking comes not only from de Certeau, but from Fessard who was a Hegelian.
Derrida scholar Allan Megill on the Hegelian influence wrote:
He “sees no possibility of ever “escaping” Hegel… every attempt to state a truth is already a reintegration into the dialectic… A key term for Derrida is “dissemination”… a kind of anti-dialectic, going against the dialectical rule of three… The fourth moment of the dialectic is the deconstruction moment: position, negation, negation of the negation, deconstruction (or Nietzsche… Derrida).” (“Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida,” Pages 271, 273-274)
The fourth moment or the deconstruction of meaning for Derrida and de Certeau is the Nietzschean relativism moment.
Francis’s favorite theologian de Certeau ultimately leads him to Friedrick Nietzsche and the Nietzschean relativism moment.
De Certeau apparently made Francis a Nietzschean.
Nietzsche scholar Hans-Georg Gadamer wrote a book that shows Hegel leads to Nietzsche:
Nietzsche said the “‘dialectical principles with which Hegel assisted the German spirit to gain its victory over Europe- ‘contradiction moves the world, all things are contradictory to themselves.'” (“From Hegel to Nietzsche,” Page 180)
Professor Allan Bloom, author of “The Closing of the American Mind thought that the only virtue 50 years of Nietzsche’s influence on public education – and he could have said 50 years of Catholic education – has achieved is relativity of truth.
Bloom said relativism “is the modern replacement for the inalienable natural rights that used to be the traditional ground for a free society.”
The move away from objective truth leads to universal rights being replaced by Nietzsche’s will to power. Bloom, for example, showed how the old civil rights movement “relied on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.” But the new Black Power movement considered the Constitution “corrupt” and demanded a “black identity, not universal rights. Not rights but power counted.”
The liberal “Catholics” speak the jargon of the Catholic while following Nietzsche’s will to power. They understand power and hold most of the power positions in the infrastructure of the American Church.
According to Catholic scholar James Hitchcock, the leftist “clerical homosexual network” extends to “bishops, seminary rectors, chancery officials, [and] superiors of religious orders.”
The faithful Catholics, the ones not infected with relativism and will to power, not realizing that their opponents use words as ploys to attain power, still use logic in an attempt to reason them back into objective truth. So they control many traditional and conservative publications, as well as the EWTN Cable Network, but they have power over only a few dioceses, colleges and high schools, where the real power is.
Meanwhile, the Nietzschean “Catholics” are going for the throat by going after the young. They control the American Catholic high school system, which is pro-homosexual, and filter out Roman Church documents such as the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Catechism states that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered … [and] under no circumstances can they be approved.”
That the Catholic schools are not teaching the Catechism of the Catholic Church is shown by recent polls which found that the vast majority of Catholic high school students are pro-gay. That is, they buy the whole gay agenda and even have gay clubs at their Catholic schools.
Norman Mailer, in his book “Prisoner of Sex,” shows why this relativism and moving away from natural objective truths such as heterosexual sex can lead to will to power:
“So, yes, [homosexuals] in prison strive to become part of the male population, and indeed – it is the irony of homosexuality – try to take on the masculine powers of the man who enters them, even as the studs, if Genet is our accurate guide, become effeminate over the years. … Homosexuality is not heterosexuality. There is no conception possible, no, no inner space, no damnable spongy pool of a womb … no hint remains of the awe that a life in these circumstances can be conceived. Heterosexual sex with contraception is become by this logic a form of sexual currency closer to the homosexual than the heterosexual, a clearinghouse for power, a market for psychic power in which the stronger will use the weaker, and the female in the act, whether possessed of a vagina or phallus, will look to ingest or steal the masculine qualities of the dominator.”
This is the end result when universal truths and responsibility toward those truths are denied. The only “currency” left to the left is stealing of power, because they are insecure in any truth including their own objective masculinity.
Unsure of their own objective masculinity – or any objective truth, for that matter – they will not tolerate truth, calling it intolerance. They will not tolerate the truth of the purpose of sex, which is married love, with the creation of a secure family for the children of that love.
Leftists replace the traditional family with sexual power struggles that lead to the death mills of the abortion industry and the graveyards of AIDS and the abandonment of children and women at the altar of free sex.
Sex is not free. It was once a responsibility that a mature man entered into for life, for the security of his beloved children and wife.
Likewise, liberals replace the Constitution with gay, gender, group and ethnic power struggles that lead to the breaking of the rule of law.
If a president can sexually abuse women and possibly even rape them, then obstruct justice and lie under oath, are we under the rule of law?
If our society will not tolerate truth, then men and women are not secure in their “inalienable natural rights that used to be the traditional ground for a free society,” as Bloom said.
If we reject the rule of law and natural rights, our society will progress toward the Clintonian and homosexual power tactics of prison inmates.
The leftists in the Church and the media rejecting objective truth no longer want to be identified as men of objective faith and reason, but rather as Nietzschean post-modernists to be identified with the “culture” of the gay and Clintonian playboy slogans of the media elite.
The media elite uses management tactics on anyone who wants to be identified as a man of objective morals, faith and reason. They redefine the meaning of words like morals, faith and reason through association and repetition, then isolate those who don’t accept the new definitions, after which they ostracize the good name of any person or group that doesn’t accept the new “culture” and isn’t a “team player.”
The very respected scholar Edgar H. Schein of MIT Sloan School of Management explains the process in “Organizational Learning as Cognitive Re-definition: Coercive Persuasion Revisited”:
“It may seem absurd to the reader to draw an analogy between the coercive persuasion in political prisons and a new leader announcing that he or she is going ‘to change the culture.’
“However, if the leader really means it, if the change will really affect fundamental assumptions and values, one can anticipate levels of anxiety and resistance quite comparable to those one would see in prisons. The coercive element is not as strong. More people will simply leave before they change their cognitive structures, but if they have a financial stake or a career investment in the organization, they face the same pressure to ‘convert’ that the prisoner did. … Consider, for example, what it means to impose a ‘culture of teamwork’ based on ‘openness and mutual trust’ in an individualistic society.”
By using this process, the leftists with the media’s marketing ability learned they could create massive peer pressure – some would call it a “mob mentality,” which changes the worldview of people with weak morals, weak faith or the Judas mentality. These types of people see themselves as the “elite” because they accept the “culture of teamwork” and have “openness” to the new definitions.
These persons wishing to be part of the “culture” or “team” are open to cognitive re-definition. Schein explains how the process works:
“‘Cognitive redefinition’ involved two different processes. First, concepts like crime and espionage had to be semantically redefined. Crime is an abstraction that can mean different things in different conceptual systems when one makes it concrete. Second, standards of judgment had to be altered. Even within the western concept of crime, what was previously regarded as trivial was now seen to be serious. The anchors by which judgments are made are shifted and the point of neutrality is moved. Behavior that was previously judged to be neutral or of no consequence became criminal, once the anchor of what was a minimum crime was shifted. These two processes, semantic re-definition and changing one’s anchors for what is good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable, are the essence of cognitive re-definition.”
Professor Bloom thought that Nietzsche was the father of the modern American culture with it’s “semantic re-definition and changing one’s anchors for what is good or bad.” He said, “Words such as ‘charisma,’ ‘lifestyle,’ ‘commitment,’ ‘identity,’ and many others, all of which can easily be traced to Nietzsche … are now practically American slang.”
But the most important Nietzschean slang word is “values.”
“Values” are the death of Christian morality because values simply mean opinions. If opinion is how things are decided, then might makes right.
One must remember that whenever someone talks about values in modern America – family values or religious values or place-the-blank-in-front-of values – they are saying there is no real or objective right or wrong – only opinions of the self and its will to power.
Nietzsche’s philosophy is summed up by Bloom as:
“Commitment values the values and makes them valuable. Not love of truth but intellectual honesty characterizes the proper state of mind. Since there is no truth in the values, and what truth there is about life is not lovable, the hallmark of the authentic will is consulting one’s oracle while facing up to what one is and what one experiences. Decisions, not, deliberations, are the movers of deeds. One cannot know or plan the future. One must will it.”
As a philologist, Nietzsche believed there was no original text and transferred this belief to reality, which he thought was only pure chaos. He proposed will to power in which one imposes or “posits” one’s values on a meaningless world.
Previous to Freud’s psychoanalysis, Nietzsche’s writings spoke of the unconscious and destructive side of the self. In fact, Freud wrote that Nietzsche “had a more penetrating knowledge of himself than any other man who ever lived or was likely to live.”
Max Weber and Sigmund Freud are the two writers most responsible for Nietzschean language in America. Few know that Freud was ” profoundly influenced by Nietzsche,” according to Bloom. Freud, much more than Weber, profoundly changed America from a Christian culture to a therapeutic or self-centered culture.
The therapeutic approaches, which started with Freud, have a basic assumption that is not Christian. The starting point is not the Christian worldview, which is summed up in the parable of the prodigal son: a fallen and sinful world with persons needing God the Father to forgive them so they can return to be His sons and daughters.
Unlike the Christian worldview, the therapeutic starting point is that the individual must overcome personal unconscious forces, in Freud, and in Carl Jung the person must unite to the collective unconscious, which is shared by all humans.
In both cases, the therapist assists his client to change himself to ‘become his real self.’ Forgiveness and returning to God are not needed. What is needed are not God and His Forgiveness, but a therapist assisting a self to reach the fullness of its self.
Freud, under the influence of Nietzsche, moved psychiatry away from the mechanistic and biological to the previously “unscientific” model of the “symbolic language of the unconscious.”
Freud’s pupil Carl Jung took the symbolic language of the unconscious a step further. Unlike his mentor, Jung’s unconscious theory is not just about making conscious sexually repressed or forgotten memories. His symbolic therapy used what he called the “active imagination” to incorporate split-off parts of the unconscious (complexes) into the conscious mind.
He believed with Freud that dreams and symbols are means to the unconscious, but for Jung the dream and symbol are not repressed lusts from stages of development. They are a way to unite with the collective unconsciousness.
Many Christians thought this “language of the soul” was a step forward from what they considered the cramped scientific reality of modernity. What they didn’t understand was that Jung’s theory was part of a movement that led to the rejection of objective morality and truth.
Jungian (and Freudian) psychoanalysis reduces Christian concepts such as God, free will and intelligence to blind reactions, unconscious urges and uncontrollable acts. Even more disastrous, Jung inverted Christian worship.
Leanne Payne, a Christian therapist, considers Jung “not a scientist, but a post-modernist subjectivist. Jung’s active imagination therapy is hostile not only to the Judeo-Christian worldview, but to all systems containing objective moral and spiritual value. Within this world the unconscious urge becomes god. What the unconscious urge wants is what is finally right or moral. These psychic personae [complexes] are literally called ‘gods’ (archetypes),’ and so an overt idolatry of self follows quickly.”
It seems to me that within the modern French Nietzschean schools of thought of Foucault, Derrida and Francis’s favorite theologian de Certeau a type of Jungian unconscious urge is replacing the old existential conscious self who chooses. The post-modernist and all Nietzschean secularists are moving from the idolatry of self to the idolatry of autonomous inner “beings” that, according to Payne, are similar to pagan “gods.”
Sadly, these pagan “gods” appear to be the “spirits” that guide those who are disciples of de Certeau and the French Postmodernists who can be called Marxist “Materialist Magicians.”
Are they the “spirit” that guide the Francis’s synods? Francis has said of his synods:
They are “the outcome of the working of the Spirit.” (Fatima Perspectives, “The ‘Synodality’ Scam,” November 20, 2018)
As C.S. Lewis predicted in “The Screwtape Letters,” we are moving to a “scientific” paganism. C.S. Lewis’ name for the “scientific” pagan was the Materialist Magician and the name of the autonomous inner “beings” was the “Forces.”
In “The Screwtape Letters,” his character who is a senior evil spirit said:
I have high hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, belief in us (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to the Enemy [God]. The “Life Force,” the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis may here prove useful. If once we can produce our prefect work – the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls “Forces” while denying the existence of “spirits” – then the end of the war will be in sight.
Some of the largest audiences for this “scientific” paganism with its inversion of worship and the Judeo-Christian worldview are followers of Christ. By using Christian symbols and terminology, Jungian spirituality has infiltrated to a large extent Christian publishers, seminaries, even convents and monasteries.
Many Christians are using Jung’s active imagination as a method of prayer. Psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover, M.D., thinks this is dangerous “because this fantasy life has no moral underpinnings, because it helps to reinforce an experience of autonomous inner ‘beings’ accessible via the imagination, and because it is a defense against redemptive suffering, it easily allies with and quickly becomes a Gnostic form of spiritually with powerfully occult overtones.”
If one is under the influence of the autonomous inner “beings,” uncontrollable urges can overpower the self. One can go temporarily or permanently insane. And in the Christian worldview, the autonomous inner “being” is not always just an imaginary being, but can be a personal being, which then makes possession a rare, but not impossible, occurrence.
In fact, according to one Jungian therapist, Nietzsche himself went insane permanently when an autonomous inner “being” (archetype) overpowered him. So, unfortunately with the widespread acceptance of Jungian spirituality, mainstream Christianity seems to be moving to post-modern Nietzschean insanity and possibly, in some cases, possession.
Jung’s autobiography is full of insane or occult experiences. He was continually hearing ‘voices.’ In his autobiography he said his home was “… crammed full of spirits … they were packed deep right up to the front door and the air was so thick it was scarcely possible to breathe.”
During the Hitler regime, which itself was obsessed with the occult, Jung edited a Nazi psychotherapeutic journal where he said, “The ‘Aryan’ unconscious has a higher potential than the Jewish.” Keep that word “potential” in your mind. It will be used by American psychology.
Once opinion is master, then might makes right. In “Beyond Good and Evil,” Nietzsche proclaimed a new morality, “Master morality,” which was different from Christian morality – or “slave morality,” as he called it. He thought the weak have the morality of obedience and conformity to the master. Masters have a right to do whatever they want; since there is no God, everything is permissible.
In what Nietzsche considered his masterpiece, “Zarathustra,” he said the new masters would replace the dead God. The masters were to be called Supermen, or the superior men.
After Freud and Jung came Alfred Adler, also a follower of Nietzsche, with “Individual psychology,” which maintains that the individual strives for what he called “superiority” but now is called “self-realization” or “self-actualization,” and which came from Nietzsche’s ideas of striving and self-creation.
The “human potential movement” and humanistic psychology of Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers are imbedded with these types of ideas. The psychologists of “potential” teach the superior man.
Edvard Munch said:
“Alfred Adler translated Nietzsche’s philosophical idea of ‘will to power’ into the psychological concept of self-actualization.”
“Thus, Nietzschean thought forms the foundation for and permeates Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology, Abraham Maslow’s Humanistic Biology, Carl Rogers’s Person-Centered Psychology, and has influenced many other psychological ideas and systems. … Alfred Adler was the first psychologist to borrow directly from Nietzsche, making numerous references to the philosopher throughout his works. Adler took Nietzsche’s idea of “will to power” and transformed it into the psychological concept of self-actualization, in which an individual strives to realize his potential.”
Mary Kearns, in an address to the Catholic Head Teachers Association of Scotland, spoke of the Nietzschean ideas now being taught in Catholic schools in the name of “scientific” psychology. Kearns said:
“The methods are based on ‘the group therapy technique’ first developed in America in the 1970’s by two psychologists, Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow. They described how emotional conditioning should be carried out by a group ‘facilitator.’ The facilitator does not impart knowledge like the old fashioned teacher. Instead he/she initiates discussions encouraging children to reveal their personal views and feelings. The facilitator’s approach is ‘value free.’ There is no right or wrong answer to any religious or moral question. Each person discloses what is right or wrong for them. All choices are equally valid even if they are opposites. Everything depends on feelings or emotions. Reason and conscience are discouraged. If anyone attempts objective evaluation, they are to be treated as an ‘outsider’ and there will be a strong emotional reaction against such judgemental intolerance'”.
If it is true that Catholic education now uses these techniques in “teaching religious and moral education,” then the Catholic education system has entered into the Nietzschean insanity. If these are the techniques being used in education and in the seminaries, then sexual misconduct charges against priests are a symptom of “scientific” paganism replacing Christianity.
Santa Rosa priest Don Kimball, who is charged with sexual misconduct, is an example of someone whose “approach” was “value free” – that is, there was “no right or wrong answer to any religious or moral question.”
In 1996, Karyn Wolfe and Mark Spaulding of Pacific Church News said, “THE WEDGE! You can’t do youth ministry (any ministry for that matter) without it. … Basing his theory on psychologist Abraham Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’, the Rev. Don Kimball developed this model for the growth and maturity process of a group.”
Another example of the value-free approach is Thomas Zanzig, a major leader in the Catholic Church for youth ministry, plus an editor and writer of Catholic textbooks.
According to Marks S. Winward, Zanzig, in a book on youth ministry, “bases his ‘Wedge Model’ on a similar model developed by Fr. Don Kimble.” Homeschool leader Marianna Bartold said, “Sharing the Christian Message by Thomas Zanzig has students come up with as many slang or street words as possible for penis and vagina in three or four minutes.”
Now, many might say these are only isolated cases of misuses of Maslow and Adler until one reads the original text. According to William Coulson, a former collaborator of Carl Rogers, Maslow was always a revolutionary. … In 1965, working a radical idea about children and adult sex into his book about management, “In Eupsychian Management: A Journal,” [Maslow said]: “I remember talking with Alfred Adler about this in a kind of joking way, but then we both got quite serious about it, and Adler thought that this sexual therapy at various ages was certainly a very fine thing. As we both played with the thought, we envisioned a kind of social worker … as a psychotherapist in giving therapy literally on the couch.”
As one can see, the basic therapeutic assumption leads to certain results in the real world. These thinkers don’t believe in the basic Christian assumption that there is a need for forgiveness from God. Instead, they believe there is no sin, only selves needing to reach the fullness of themselves.
It is understandable that Nietzschean atheists such as Maslow, Adler and gay activists could hold these basic assumptions that sexually abusing children is okay, just as Hitler thought killing Jews was okay since he had the basic assumption that there is no right or wrong only relativism and will to power disguised in Nazi pagan religious and “National Socialist” language.
It would not be understandable and would be a disgrace if Francis holds these Nietzschean assumptions. Relativism with its implicit denial of original sin and personal sin is, in large part, behind the sex-abuse headlines of Chile, Pennsylvania and those around the globe.
Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He want you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.
Francis Notes:
– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:
“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.” (The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)
– LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:
The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”
– On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:
“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”
– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:
“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.
ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP 
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