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	Why is Francis obsessed with traditionalists?
		Hello RENE HENRY GRACIDA,Here’s a question for you: Do you think we’re winning right now, or losing? It’s tempting, given the prevailing insanity going on at the global level – from Washington, D.C., to the Vatican – to go with the latter. But what about this: If we’re losing, why is there such a massive effort underway to silence, ban, de-platform and intimidate traditional Catholics, conservatives and Christian patriots? Seems to me that the movers and the shakers of the world right now – from Biden to Francis to Zuckerberg and beyond – spend a disproportionate amount of time fretting about us if, in fact, we are a bunch of insignificant losers. In my talk at this year’s Roman Forum on Long Island, New York, I lay out reasons for why I believe we are absolutely NOT losing and that, in fact, the voices of sane and God-centered resistance are stronger and more organized right now than they’ve been in 50 years. How can this be? Because at long last it’s become perfectly obvious what the other side is all about, i.e., world domination on the part of Leftists, progressives, globalists, and the rest of the Christophobic losers. By briefly tracing the history of the Traditional Catholic movement, I explain why we should have much more hope and renewed confidence in victory today than our fathers had back in the 1970s. Over the course of the Covid madness especially, traditional Catholicism “came of age” as the “Church of Accompaniment” shut down the churches and allowed Big Brother to declare religious observances “non-essential” services. This phenomenon is happening not just with Catholics but with Christian patriots the world over. Right now, the EU is threatening the entire country of Hungary, for example, for refusing to comply with their revolution against God. When in 2020 even the Pope showed himself to be complicit with the builders of the New World Order, it became obvious to millions that the time has come to stop circling the wagons and instead go to war. I hope you enjoy this talk, which also includes clips from how it was in the basement chapels of 40 years ago. We’ve come a long way since then, and with God’s help we’ve got a long way to go. I pray you’ll join me. And I hope you like and share this video. In Christo Rege, Michael J. Matt   LESSONS OF COVID: Why Francis Fears Us Michael J. Matt delivers a lecture at The Roman Forum on the lessons learned from COVID, when traditional Catholicism led the charge against the Globalist tyrants who declared religious ceremonies a “non-essential service.”  Looking back over the past 40 years, Michael argues that it’s time stop circling the wagons. We’re on the front lines, so let’s start acting like it.  Read Full Article on the Remnant Website…

https://remnant-tv.com/video/395/peter-kwasniewski-beyond-summorum-pontificum-retrieving-the-tridentine-heritage?channelName=RemnantTV

Dulce et Decorum Est

Michael Pakaluk

THE CATHOLIC THING

THURSDAY, JULY 8, 2021

Note: TCT Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal will be appearing this evening on EWTN’s “The World Over with Raymond Arroyo.” He’ll be discussing the pope’s surgery, the indictments in the Vatican over financial scandals, church burnings in Canada, and the ongoing controversies over President Biden and Communion. The show will air at 8PM Eastern Time (consult local listings for broadcasts and rebroadcasts). And it will be available on the EWTN YouTube channel shortly after it first appears.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori: “Sweet and fitting it is, to die for one’s country.”  A line from the Roman poet, Horace, today the phrase would most likely be recognized – when it’s recognized at all – as the title of a famous poem by Wilfred Owen, one of the great “war poets” of World War I.

The poem describes the convulsive death of a soldier who failed to put on his mask in time before a gas attack: “In all my dreams before my helpless sight,/ He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning,” If you could continue to see him too, Owen says, “His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;/ If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood/ Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,” then:

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie, Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

When this poem is taught today, it’s as a complete and definitive rejection of war. But things are not quite so simple. Owen himself was a decorated hero, known for bold action in battle.  His citation for the Military Cross states, “He personally manipulated a captured enemy machine gun from an isolated position and inflicted considerable losses on the enemy.”

At one point during the war, he was sent back to an Edinburgh hospital to recover from “neurasthenia” (shell shock). He was rehabilitated enough to be fit, in his doctors’ judgment, for light service back home. But Owen insisted on returning to the front lines, where he was killed in battle on November 8, 1918, exactly one week before the Armistice.  In notes and letters, he decried the “Prussian” military-industrial war machine and suggested that the war was necessary to defend the gentle and predominantly pastoral life still preserved in England.

As for the poem, one can interpret its literal meaning as a plea for truthfulness about what soldiers actually suffer and sacrifice – an accounting of the cost – and the duty of remembering. Indeed, in his own outline for a planned collection of his war poems, Owen grouped Dulce et Decorum Est along with other poems that had the “motive” of “Indifference at Home.” But the poem is also, obviously, a commentary on the vocation of the poet, to report the truth, rather than to ignore or gloss it over in the service of some superficial standard of pleasantness or niceness.

Perhaps you also remember that C.S. Lewis in his first lecture in The Abolition of Man uses the maxim dulce et decorum as the prime example of what he wants to argue for. Lewis’s argument, in a nutshell, is that it is the role of literature to educate the emotions so that we are properly affected by the world: if we are viewing a great waterfall, for instance, we should be educated so as to be affected by its sublimity, and disposed, therefore, to call it “sublime” rather than merely “pretty.”

To be so educated is to have acquired a heart, a “chest,” so that we are no longer “men without chests,” that is, men who use their intellects solely to find increasingly clever ways to satisfy their animal desires.  An education of the heart, through literature properly taught, should open us up to embrace the natural law and to embrace “from within” what it means to be human.   But “men without chests” live by irrational instinct rather than natural law, and they view emotions simply as material for manipulation and propaganda.

Men with chests believe that dulce et decorum is true, and they will urge others as well to die for their country, along with them, when that is necessary.  Men without chests think there is nothing true about dulce et decorum, but they will appeal to it, as a matter of propaganda, when they wish to stir up others to give up their lives for them.

Lewis gave the lectures that compose Abolition of Man in 1943, in the midst of Britain’s conflict with Nazism. I used to think that he took dulce et decorum as his prime example, because he wanted his audience to reject any lingering sympathy with the pacifist movement of the interwar years and, in particular, with what I took to be the cynical outlook of Wilfred Owen. At the time, such cynicism would have been not simply false but also highly dangerous.

But then I learned more about Owen and his poems. They were not interpreted as “anti-war,” without complexity, until they became famous in the 1960s.  Lewis would not have blundered by interpreting Owen as our American classrooms do.  Owen himself, I suspect, regarded dulce et decorum as ultimately true, not as “children” understand it, but on grounds similar to Lewis.  After all, the action or process of death in battle has never been “sweet,” that is, pleasant to see and to experience, as a matter of what we feel, as a matter of sentimentalism.  (For Horace, death in battle meant butchery by sharp swords.)  Yet as a matter of what we do, of how we have acted, of what we can be credited with or judged for – then to stand firm in that way is, upon reflection, sweet and noble.  It is that appropriate emotion in response to a true judgment that Lewis is concerned with.

I see Owen in his poetry as following a trajectory that coincides with Flannery O’Connor’s in her stories.  Perhaps Siegfried Sassoon is a witness to this.  The other great “war poet” of WWI, and Owen’s inspiration and dear friend, after some troubled years Sassoon converted to the Catholic faith.  He sought instruction first from Msgr. Ronald Knox, who was dying; and he was buried close to Knox at St Andrew’s Church, Mells. The result of all these influences on Sassoon’s conversion and death is movingly preserved in oral testimony by Hilaire Belloc’s grandson, Dom Philip Jebb: “He brought heaven into the room with him.”

Image: La Mitrailleuse by Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson, 1915 [The TATE, London]. The French title means “The Machine Gun.”

© 2021 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.orgThe Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

• About the Author
• Latest Articles

Michael Pakaluk

Michael Pakaluk, an Aristotle scholar and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is a professor in the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. He lives in Hyattsville, MD with his wife Catherine, also a professor at the Busch School, and their eight children. His acclaimed book on the Gospel of Mark is The Memoirs of St Peter. His new book, Mary’s Voice in the Gospel of John: A New Translation with Commentary, is now available.

THE CATHOLIC MONITOR

Might it be Good for all of us & for Francis to Read about the “Gruesome Death of Arius”?

July 08, 2021

I have read the letters of your piety, in which you have requested me to make known to you the events of my times relating to myself, and to give an account of that most impious heresy of the Arians, in consequence of which I have endured these sufferings, and also of the manner of the death of Arius. With two out of your three demands I have readily undertaken to comply, and have sent to your Godliness what I wrote to the Monks; from which you will be able to learn my own history as well as that of the heresy. But with respect to the other matter, I mean the death, I debated with myself for a long time, fearing lest any one should suppose that I was exulting in the death of that man. But yet, since a disputation which has taken place among you concerning the heresy, has issued in this question, whether Arius died after previously communicating with the Church; I therefore was necessarily desirous of giving an account of his death, as thinking that the question would thus be set at rest, considering also that by making this known I should at the same time silence those who are fond of contention. For I conceive that when the wonderful circumstances connected with his death become known, even those who before questioned it will no longer venture to doubt that the Arian heresy is hateful in the sight of God. – Saint Athanasius’s letter to Serapionon the death of Arius

Today, Mary Ann Kreitzer, the President of the Les Femmes-The Truth website, asked for prayers for Francis saying: 

As a seventy-something old lady, I relate to that metaphor since the pendulum on my own clock is moving faster these days…

… How many more years (or days) does he have left on his timeline before he succumbs to the grim reaper and faces his Creator? What will he say about his service to Holy Mother Church? 

I cringed recently when I read about the pope’s high praise for Fr. James Martin, S.J. whose scandals cry out to heaven. Fr. Martin has over 300,000 followers on his Twitter account. How many is he dragging to the precipice with his enthusiastic advocacy for sins that cry to heaven for vengeance?

[… ]

Jesus is always the forgiver with arms outstretched to receive His repentant children. But forgiveness offered must be received. We have the power, by our free will, to reject His forgiveness and wallow in the pigsty. [https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2021/07/pray-for-pope-francis.html]

It might be good for all of us and for Francis to read about the “Gruesome Death of Arius” found in the Ecclesiastical History“:

After the Synod of Jerusalem, Arius went to Egypt, but as he could not obtain permission to hold communion with the Church of Alexandria, he returned to Constantinople. As all those who had embraced his sentiments, and those who were attached to Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, had assembled cunningly in that city for the purpose of holding a council, Alexander, who was then ordering the see of Constantinople, used every effort to dissolve the council. But as his endeavors were frustrated, he openly refused all covenant with Arius, affirming that it was neither just nor according to ecclesiastical canons, to make powerless their own vote, and that of those bishops who had been assembled at Nicæa, from nearly every region under the sun. When the partisans of Eusebius perceived that their arguments produced no effect on Alexander, they had recourse to contumely, and threatened that unless he would receive Arius into communion on a stated day, he should be expelled from the church, and that another should be elected in his place who would be willing to hold communion with Arius. 

 They then separated, the partisans of Eusebius to await the time they had fixed for carrying their menaces into execution, and Alexander to pray that the words of Eusebius might be prevented from being carried into deed. His chief source of fear arose from the fact that the emperor had been persuaded to give way. On the day before the appointed day he prostrated himself before the altar, and continued all the night in prayer to God, that his enemies might be prevented from carrying their schemes into execution against him. 

 Late in the afternoon, Arius, being seized suddenly with pain in the stomach, was compelled to repair to the public place set apart for emergencies of this nature. As some time passed away without his coming out, some persons, who were waiting for him outside, entered, and found him dead and still sitting upon the seat. When his death became known, all people did not view the occurrence under the same aspect. Some believed that he died at that very hour, seized by a sudden disease of the heart, or suffering weakness from his joy over the fact that his matters were falling out according to his mind; others imagined that this mode of death was inflicted on him in judgment, on account of his impiety. Those who held his sentiments were of opinion that his death was brought about by magical arts. 

 It will not be out of place to quote what Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, stated on the subject. The following is his narrative: 

 “Arius, the author of the heresy and the associate of Eusebius, having been summoned before the most blessed Constantine Augustus, at the solicitation of the partisans of Eusebius, was desired to give in writing an exposition of his faith. He drew up this document with great artfulness, and, like the devil, concealed his impious assertions beneath the simple words of Scripture. The most blessed Constantine said to him, ‘If you hold any other doctrines than those which are here set forth, render testimony to the truth. but if you perjure yourself, the Lord will punish you,’ and the wretched man swore that he held no sentiments except those specified in the document.

Soon after he went out, and judgment was visited upon him, for he bent forwards and burst in the middle. With all men life terminates in death. We must not blame a man, even if he be an enemy, merely because he died, for it is uncertain whether we shall live till the evening. But the end of Arius was so singular that it seems worthy of some remark. The partisans of Eusebius threatened to reinstate him in the church, and Alexander, bishop of Constantinople, opposed their intention. Arius placed his confidence in the power and menaces of Eusebius. It was Saturday, and he expected the next day to be re-admitted into the church. The dispute ran high. The partisans of Eusebius were loud in their menaces, while Alexander had recourse to prayer. The Lord was the judge, and declared himself against the unjust. A little before sunset Arius was compelled by a want of nature to enter the place appointed for such emergencies, and here he lost at once both restoration to communion and his life. 

The most blessed Constantine was amazed when he heard of this occurrence, and regarded it as the punishment of perjury. It then became evident to every one that the menaces of Eusebius were absolutely futile, and that the expectations of Arius were vain and foolish. It also became manifest that the Arian heresy had met with condemnation from the Savior as well as from the pristine church. Is it not then astonishing that some are still found who seek to exculpate him whom the Lord has condemned, and to defend a heresy of which the author was not permitted by our Lord to be rejoined to the church? We have been duly informed that this was the mode of the death of Arius. It is said that for a long period subsequently no one would make use of the seat on which he died. Those who were compelled by necessities of nature to visit the public place, always avoided with horror the precise spot on which the impiety of Arius had been visited with judgment. At a later epoch a certain rich and powerful man, who had embraced the Arian tenets, bought the place of the public, and built a house on the spot, in order that the occurrence might fall into oblivion, and that there might be no perpetual memorial of the death of Arius.” [http://gloriaromanorum.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-death-of-arius.html?m=1]

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:

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

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

Election Notes:  

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

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

July 08, 2021

I have read the letters of your piety, in which you have requested me to make known to you the events of my times relating to myself, and to give an account of that most impious heresy of the Arians, in consequence of which I have endured these sufferings, and also of the manner of the death of Arius. With two out of your three demands I have readily undertaken to comply, and have sent to your Godliness what I wrote to the Monks; from which you will be able to learn my own history as well as that of the heresy. But with respect to the other matter, I mean the death, I debated with myself for a long time, fearing lest any one should suppose that I was exulting in the death of that man. But yet, since a disputation which has taken place among you concerning the heresy, has issued in this question, whether Arius died after previously communicating with the Church; I therefore was necessarily desirous of giving an account of his death, as thinking that the question would thus be set at rest, considering also that by making this known I should at the same time silence those who are fond of contention. For I conceive that when the wonderful circumstances connected with his death become known, even those who before questioned it will no longer venture to doubt that the Arian heresy is hateful in the sight of God. – Saint Athanasius’s letter to Serapionon the death of Arius

Today, Mary Ann Kreitzer, the President of the Les Femmes-The Truth website, asked for prayers for Francis saying: 

As a seventy-something old lady, I relate to that metaphor since the pendulum on my own clock is moving faster these days…

… How many more years (or days) does he have left on his timeline before he succumbs to the grim reaper and faces his Creator? What will he say about his service to Holy Mother Church? 

I cringed recently when I read about the pope’s high praise for Fr. James Martin, S.J. whose scandals cry out to heaven. Fr. Martin has over 300,000 followers on his Twitter account. How many is he dragging to the precipice with his enthusiastic advocacy for sins that cry to heaven for vengeance?

[… ]

Jesus is always the forgiver with arms outstretched to receive His repentant children. But forgiveness offered must be received. We have the power, by our free will, to reject His forgiveness and wallow in the pigsty. [https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2021/07/pray-for-pope-francis.html]

It might be good for all of us and for Francis to read about the “Gruesome Death of Arius” found in the Ecclesiastical History“:

After the Synod of Jerusalem, Arius went to Egypt, but as he could not obtain permission to hold communion with the Church of Alexandria, he returned to Constantinople. As all those who had embraced his sentiments, and those who were attached to Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, had assembled cunningly in that city for the purpose of holding a council, Alexander, who was then ordering the see of Constantinople, used every effort to dissolve the council. But as his endeavors were frustrated, he openly refused all covenant with Arius, affirming that it was neither just nor according to ecclesiastical canons, to make powerless their own vote, and that of those bishops who had been assembled at Nicæa, from nearly every region under the sun. When the partisans of Eusebius perceived that their arguments produced no effect on Alexander, they had recourse to contumely, and threatened that unless he would receive Arius into communion on a stated day, he should be expelled from the church, and that another should be elected in his place who would be willing to hold communion with Arius. 

 They then separated, the partisans of Eusebius to await the time they had fixed for carrying their menaces into execution, and Alexander to pray that the words of Eusebius might be prevented from being carried into deed. His chief source of fear arose from the fact that the emperor had been persuaded to give way. On the day before the appointed day he prostrated himself before the altar, and continued all the night in prayer to God, that his enemies might be prevented from carrying their schemes into execution against him. 

 Late in the afternoon, Arius, being seized suddenly with pain in the stomach, was compelled to repair to the public place set apart for emergencies of this nature. As some time passed away without his coming out, some persons, who were waiting for him outside, entered, and found him dead and still sitting upon the seat. When his death became known, all people did not view the occurrence under the same aspect. Some believed that he died at that very hour, seized by a sudden disease of the heart, or suffering weakness from his joy over the fact that his matters were falling out according to his mind; others imagined that this mode of death was inflicted on him in judgment, on account of his impiety. Those who held his sentiments were of opinion that his death was brought about by magical arts. 

 It will not be out of place to quote what Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, stated on the subject. The following is his narrative: 

 “Arius, the author of the heresy and the associate of Eusebius, having been summoned before the most blessed Constantine Augustus, at the solicitation of the partisans of Eusebius, was desired to give in writing an exposition of his faith. He drew up this document with great artfulness, and, like the devil, concealed his impious assertions beneath the simple words of Scripture. The most blessed Constantine said to him, ‘If you hold any other doctrines than those which are here set forth, render testimony to the truth. but if you perjure yourself, the Lord will punish you,’ and the wretched man swore that he held no sentiments except those specified in the document.

Soon after he went out, and judgment was visited upon him, for he bent forwards and burst in the middle. With all men life terminates in death. We must not blame a man, even if he be an enemy, merely because he died, for it is uncertain whether we shall live till the evening. But the end of Arius was so singular that it seems worthy of some remark. The partisans of Eusebius threatened to reinstate him in the church, and Alexander, bishop of Constantinople, opposed their intention. Arius placed his confidence in the power and menaces of Eusebius. It was Saturday, and he expected the next day to be re-admitted into the church. The dispute ran high. The partisans of Eusebius were loud in their menaces, while Alexander had recourse to prayer. The Lord was the judge, and declared himself against the unjust. A little before sunset Arius was compelled by a want of nature to enter the place appointed for such emergencies, and here he lost at once both restoration to communion and his life. 

The most blessed Constantine was amazed when he heard of this occurrence, and regarded it as the punishment of perjury. It then became evident to every one that the menaces of Eusebius were absolutely futile, and that the expectations of Arius were vain and foolish. It also became manifest that the Arian heresy had met with condemnation from the Savior as well as from the pristine church. Is it not then astonishing that some are still found who seek to exculpate him whom the Lord has condemned, and to defend a heresy of which the author was not permitted by our Lord to be rejoined to the church? We have been duly informed that this was the mode of the death of Arius. It is said that for a long period subsequently no one would make use of the seat on which he died. Those who were compelled by necessities of nature to visit the public place, always avoided with horror the precise spot on which the impiety of Arius had been visited with judgment. At a later epoch a certain rich and powerful man, who had embraced the Arian tenets, bought the place of the public, and built a house on the spot, in order that the occurrence might fall into oblivion, and that there might be no perpetual memorial of the death of Arius.” [http://gloriaromanorum.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-death-of-arius.html?m=1]

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:

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

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

Election Notes:  

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

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

Law Professor Michael Paulsen on Dobbs and Stare Decisis

By ED WHELAN

July 6, 2021 12:46 PM

Last week I highlighted the first part of law professor Michael Stokes Paulsen’s two-part series on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the huge abortion case on the Supreme Court’s docket next Term. In that first essay, Paulsen sketches how egregiously wrong and radical the Roe/Casey regime is. In his Part II essay, Paulsen addresses “whether the doctrine of stare decisis legitimately can require, or even permit, the Court to adhere to a grievously wrong, legally insupportable precedent, simply because it is a precedent.”

Paulsen argues (compellingly, in my view) that the very logic that supports the power of judicial review—the power, that is, to decline to enforce democratic enactments that conflict with the Constitution—“forbids courts from giving effect to precedents that they are fully persuaded are contrary to the true meaning of the Constitution.” Further, the “systemic values” that the doctrine of stare decisis (qualified adherence to precedent) serves—“predictability, consistency, stability, protection of justified reliance, and judicial humility—are all fully served by giving precedents their full persuasive force and a presumption of validity.” (Paulsen’s emphasis.)

Further, Paulsen explains, whether or not “the six justices on the Court who doubtless recognize Roe as badly wrong” agree in full with him on the scope of stare decisis, none of them “possesses an extreme or unprincipled approach to stare decisis—one that would support adhering to a seriously wrong precedent in known conflict with a faithful interpretation of the Constitution.” Therefore, there ought to be six votes to overrule Roe and Casey.

Paulsen ends with a somber word of warning: Three decades ago, Roe was ripe to be overruled in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. But “[e]normous public pressure was brought to bear on [Justices] O’Connor, Kennedy, and Souter not to overrule Roe,” and they “defected to the pro-abortion side”:

Casey was a calculated, intentional, venal, despicable judicial act deliberately reaching the wrong constitutional result, and then seeking to cloak that action in a plausible-sounding but pernicious manipulation of the doctrine of stare decisis. Casey combines the wrongness of Roe with the seemingly deliberate manipulativeness of Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Court’s atrocious, dishonest pro-slavery decision of 1857. It is as important for the Court to repudiate Casey as it is for the Court to repudiate Roe.

But could it happen again? Nothing is certain. The doctrine of stare decisis is a dangerous tool, malleable, and peculiarly susceptible to manipulation and abuse. It entices and deceives. And Supreme Court justices are vulnerable and, to some extent, political human beings. They are flawed men and women. They might cave, trim, shade, temporize, politicize. They might act from fear of reproof or reprisal, from concerns over image, or from political motives. They might betray, or compromise, their own prior stated principles. They might betray the Constitution. All it takes is two, and Dobbs is lost.

If so, Dobbs will displace Casey as the worst Supreme Court decision of all time, and the justices rendering it will merit the most severe condemnation of history. But if the Court overrules Roe and Casey, the Dobbs case would rank among the most magnificent decisions in the Court’s history, taking its place alongside other great overruling decisions like Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

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Society must balance the paradox of human nature

BY NOAH GOULD • JULY 7, 2021

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Ignoring either the inherent goodness or the fallenness of man leads us to either utopia or authoritarianism. If man is endowed with human dignity and also perfect, there is no need for laws. If man is corrupted and is not inherently valuable, then even the harshest laws have no downside. 

A debate is brewing over the thousands of inmates who were allowed to return home due to the health risks of the COVID-19 pandemic. They could soon be sent back to prison to finish their sentences. Prison reform activists argue that the system should prioritize rehabilitation at home while others argue that the sentences given by the courts should be fulfilled to maintain a fair judicial system.

Underlying this debate is an unspoken discussion about the paradox of human nature. Humans are all at once created with intrinsic value and also capable of great evil. Properly understanding this paradox is key to organizing society.

The first half of the paradox begins in the garden of Eden. On the sixth day of creation, God created humans and determined that they were “very good.” Humans were valued by God above all the other created things because they were made in his image. Human dignity is foundational to a flourishing society. Without it, we have no way of valuing a human being above a cow or a tree.

Human dignity, however, is not the only core part of human nature. The second half of the paradox has to do with what humans did with their freedom in the garden. Humans chose to commit great evils. The tendency toward evil is apparent everywhere in the world. People are constantly willfully harming those around them for personal gain.

This is the paradox of human nature: humans are at the same time the culmination of creation and capable of the greatest evil. The paradox is evident in the world. When war or famine hits an area, there are some who sacrifice to help those who are in the greatest need and others who use the opportunity to cheat, steal from, and exploit others.

This idea would be familiar to the founders. “If men were angels, no government would be necessary,” wrote James Madison in Federalist Paper No. 52. The American founding was a counterpoint to utopianism that would insist on the perfectibility of man. Yet the Declaration of Independence also states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Our founding documents wisely created a system which presupposes human dignity yet also holds a realistic view of human action.

Unfortunately, in current policy debates we often tend toward one side or the other.

In the criminal justice system, some argue for deterrence while others for rehabilitation. In the welfare system, some argue for strict requirements for aid while others argue for a universal basic income. Human nature creates the need for a system to balance justice and mercy.

Shakespeare noted this paradox in the quality of mercy speech from the Merchant of Venice:

Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea;

Ignoring either the inherent goodness or the fallenness of man leads us to either utopia or authoritarianism. If man is endowed with human dignity and also perfect, there is no need for laws. If man is corrupted and is not inherently valuable, then even the harshest laws have no downside. This perspective also shuns simplistic answers that posit an overly simplistic solution to our current problems.

The story of human nature starts in a garden and ends in a glorious city. We are in neither that first perfect dwelling nor the final re-perfected one. In our current position, the paradox of human nature must be central to our political discussion.

We must have a realistic understanding of sin nature which is “mitigated” by a vibrant understanding of human dignity.

NOAH GOULD

Noah is a Programs Associate at the Acton Institute where he regularly contributes to the blog and Religion and Liberty. He is a graduate of Grove City College, where he studied Economics.