The Glory of Sts. Peter and Paul

Fr. Robert P. Imbelli

The Glory of Sts. Peter and PaulFr. Robert P. ImbelliTUESDAY, JUNE 29, 2021“Taking every human design into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor 10:5)Michelangelo Buonarroti always insisted that he was a sculptor, not a painter. That he had imbibed stone dust with the milk of his wet nurse. That his sculpting only released the form, the design, il concetto already embodied in the block of marble that he worked with such passion. That he painted only under constraint and enforced obedience to a succession of popes, from the imperious Julius II to the more amiable Paul III.It was Paul who conceived the project of constructing and then decorating the chapel that bears his name: Cappella Paolina. It was to serve as Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament and the place where the Cardinals would gather prior to entering Conclave in the adjacent Cappella Sistina. And he charged Michelangelo, the greatest artist of an age of great artists, to decorate the Chapel walls with depictions of the founding saints of the Roman church: Peter and Paul.Michelangelo had recently finished the incomparable and revolutionary “Last Judgment” in the Sistine Chapel, and yearned to return to the work which had haunted him for a lifetime: the grandiosely designed and hubristically undertaken tomb of Julius II. But once more, he acquiesced to the wishes and dictates of a pope.Thus, over a period of seven years, the Master toiled on what were to be his last paintings: “The Conversion of Saul” and “The Crucifixion of Saint Peter,” concluding his labors in his seventy-fifth yearThough Pope Paul himself seems to have been well pleased with them, the paintings themselves were met with incomprehension and even disapproval. The alluring celebration of physical beauty of the young Michelangelo’s creations – the monumental “David” and the depictions on the Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel – now yielded to the seeming disharmonies of spiritual drama.The Conversion of SaulThe “Conversion of Saul” represents the first act of the theo-drama. The ascended Christ is the center of radiating energy. No remote figure, he enters our world as disruptive grace. Christ’s mighty right arm hurls the proud Pharisee to the earth and also suffuses the prone figure with a new mysterious light.  At the same time, the gesture of Christ’s left arm directs the soon-to-be apostle to Damascus, where a new identity (as Paul) and mission await him.But the dramatic narrative suggests yet more. For beyond Damascus lie Rome and the Vatican hill. Indeed, the very chapel where the viewer stands is testimony to the drama’s denouement. By the ultimate surrender of self in the shedding of his blood, Paul consecrated the very ground on which the chapel stands.There remains one more piece to the drama, intriguing if controverted. Contrary to the prevailing tradition, Michelangelo portrays the blinded Saul as an elderly man. Indeed, some have contended that the figure bears notable resemblance to portraits of the elderly Michelangelo himself.Leo Steinberg, in his Michelangelo’s Painting, treats these last paintings at length. Of the “Conversion of Saul” he writes: “The artist is like the protagonist of his picture in past pride and selfhood, and in longing to undergo the apostolic ordeal – wanting only the assurance of grace. . . .His self-projection into the role of Saul is a petition.”Michelangelo worked on his last painting, the “Crucifixion of Saint Peter,” from 1547 to 1549. Paul III scampered up a ladder to the scaffold to view the fresco in October 1549. Within a month the aged pontiff was called to render an account of his stewardship.What the pope beheld was the massive figure of the man, whose ministry he inherited, affixed to a cross raised, as he requested, upside down. By a prodigious feat of will, the crucified Peter lifts his upper body, turns, and fixes his gaze upon the viewer.The Crucifixion of St. PeterTwo observations help to appreciate Michelangelo’s striking achievement. First, the fact that he portrays the Crucifixion of Peter and not the Consigning of the Keys. It appears that Christ giving the keys to Peter was the originally intended subject, as befits a chapel associated with a papal conclave. Though there is no sure evidence, indications are that it was the artist himself who proposed the change in theme. That the pope acquiesced was evident sign of his affection and esteem for the artistThe second crucial observation is that Michelangelo’s depiction of Peter’s crucifixion broke in a radical way from the iconographic tradition, which portrayed the event circumspectly, the cross already embedded in the ground. Prior portrayals do not register the physical and spiritual energies in play (never separable for Michelangelo), either on the part of the antagonists or, especially, on the part of the protagonist himself.For Michelangelo’s Peter is no passive victim, but an active participant, who in his death bears witness to and proclaims the crucified Lord who turns the world upside down. The ancient world, the viewer’s world, the artist’s world on the verge of being transformed.In a brilliant analysis of the painting, Steinberg discerns a diagonal that descends from the Roman captain, upper left, pointing to Peter, through the transverse beam of the cross, to terminate at the outsize figure of the elder striding out of the frame and into our present.\We recognize a clear resemblance between the figure in the fresco and that of “Nicodemus” in the great, unfinished “Pietà” which Michelangelo began to sculpt at night, after days of toil in the Cappella Paolina. The erudite, but uncomprehending, Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night and is instructed about the need to be “born from above of water and the Spirit” (Jn 3:1–8). In the “Pietà” he now embraces the crucified-living Christ – some even suggest in a posture of giving birth.Significantly, both the figure of Nicodemus and the elder in the fresco bear the features of the artist.Whether working in stone or paint, concept and design were for Michelangelo never abstract ideas, but bodily realities. The artistic embodiment ultimately involves and implicates the artist personally. Whether in his last paintings or his last “Pietà,” the supreme, excruciating art allows the Christ form to emerge from the recalcitrant marble of the self. To bring the self’s purposes and designs into alignment with those of Christ.To view the Chapel and its artwork: www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/paolina_vr/]© 2021 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.orgThe Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.About the AuthorLatest ArticlesFr. Robert P. ImbelliRobert P. Imbelli, a Priest of the Archdiocese of New York. He is the author of Rekindling the Christic Imagination: Theological Meditations on the New Evangelization. A volume of essays in his honor, The Center Is Jesus Christ Himself, edited by Andrew Meszaros, will appear next month from The Catholic University of America Press.

TUESDAY, JUNE 29, 2021

“Taking every human design into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor 10:5)Michelangelo Buonarroti always insisted that he was a sculptor, not a painter. That he had imbibed stone dust with the milk of his wet nurse. That his sculpting only released the form, the design, il concetto already embodied in the block of marble that he worked with such passion. That he painted only under constraint and enforced obedience to a succession of popes, from the imperious Julius II to the more amiable Paul III.It was Paul who conceived the project of constructing and then decorating the chapel that bears his name: Cappella Paolina. It was to serve as Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament and the place where the Cardinals would gather prior to entering Conclave in the adjacent Cappella Sistina. And he charged Michelangelo, the greatest artist of an age of great artists, to decorate the Chapel walls with depictions of the founding saints of the Roman church: Peter and Paul.Michelangelo had recently finished the incomparable and revolutionary “Last Judgment” in the Sistine Chapel, and yearned to return to the work which had haunted him for a lifetime: the grandiosely designed and hubristically undertaken tomb of Julius II. But once more, he acquiesced to the wishes and dictates of a pope.Thus, over a period of seven years, the Master toiled on what were to be his last paintings: “The Conversion of Saul” and “The Crucifixion of Saint Peter,” concluding his labors in his seventy-fifth yearThough Pope Paul himself seems to have been well pleased with them, the paintings themselves were met with incomprehension and even disapproval. The alluring celebration of physical beauty of the young Michelangelo’s creations – the monumental “David” and the depictions on the Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel – now yielded to the seeming disharmonies of spiritual drama.The Conversion of SaulThe “Conversion of Saul” represents the first act of the theo-drama. The ascended Christ is the center of radiating energy. No remote figure, he enters our world as disruptive grace. Christ’s mighty right arm hurls the proud Pharisee to the earth and also suffuses the prone figure with a new mysterious light.  At the same time, the gesture of Christ’s left arm directs the soon-to-be apostle to Damascus, where a new identity (as Paul) and mission await him.But the dramatic narrative suggests yet more. For beyond Damascus lie Rome and the Vatican hill. Indeed, the very chapel where the viewer stands is testimony to the drama’s denouement. By the ultimate surrender of self in the shedding of his blood, Paul consecrated the very ground on which the chapel stands.There remains one more piece to the drama, intriguing if controverted. Contrary to the prevailing tradition, Michelangelo portrays the blinded Saul as an elderly man. Indeed, some have contended that the figure bears notable resemblance to portraits of the elderly Michelangelo himself.Leo Steinberg, in his Michelangelo’s Painting, treats these last paintings at length. Of the “Conversion of Saul” he writes: “The artist is like the protagonist of his picture in past pride and selfhood, and in longing to undergo the apostolic ordeal – wanting only the assurance of grace. . . .His self-projection into the role of Saul is a petition.”Michelangelo worked on his last painting, the “Crucifixion of Saint Peter,” from 1547 to 1549. Paul III scampered up a ladder to the scaffold to view the fresco in October 1549. Within a month the aged pontiff was called to render an account of his stewardship.What the pope beheld was the massive figure of the man, whose ministry he inherited, affixed to a cross raised, as he requested, upside down. By a prodigious feat of will, the crucified Peter lifts his upper body, turns, and fixes his gaze upon the viewer.The Crucifixion of St. PeterTwo observations help to appreciate Michelangelo’s striking achievement. First, the fact that he portrays the Crucifixion of Peter and not the Consigning of the Keys. It appears that Christ giving the keys to Peter was the originally intended subject, as befits a chapel associated with a papal conclave. Though there is no sure evidence, indications are that it was the artist himself who proposed the change in theme. That the pope acquiesced was evident sign of his affection and esteem for the artistThe second crucial observation is that Michelangelo’s depiction of Peter’s crucifixion broke in a radical way from the iconographic tradition, which portrayed the event circumspectly, the cross already embedded in the ground. Prior portrayals do not register the physical and spiritual energies in play (never separable for Michelangelo), either on the part of the antagonists or, especially, on the part of the protagonist himself.For Michelangelo’s Peter is no passive victim, but an active participant, who in his death bears witness to and proclaims the crucified Lord who turns the world upside down. The ancient world, the viewer’s world, the artist’s world on the verge of being transformed.In a brilliant analysis of the painting, Steinberg discerns a diagonal that descends from the Roman captain, upper left, pointing to Peter, through the transverse beam of the cross, to terminate at the outsize figure of the elder striding out of the frame and into our present.\We recognize a clear resemblance between the figure in the fresco and that of “Nicodemus” in the great, unfinished “Pietà” which Michelangelo began to sculpt at night, after days of toil in the Cappella Paolina. The erudite, but uncomprehending, Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night and is instructed about the need to be “born from above of water and the Spirit” (Jn 3:1–8). In the “Pietà” he now embraces the crucified-living Christ – some even suggest in a posture of giving birth.Significantly, both the figure of Nicodemus and the elder in the fresco bear the features of the artist.Whether working in stone or paint, concept and design were for Michelangelo never abstract ideas, but bodily realities. The artistic embodiment ultimately involves and implicates the artist personally. Whether in his last paintings or his last “Pietà,” the supreme, excruciating art allows the Christ form to emerge from the recalcitrant marble of the self. To bring the self’s purposes and designs into alignment with those of Christ.To view the Chapel and its artwork: www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/paolina_vr/]© 2021 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.orgThe Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.About the AuthorLatest ArticlesFr. Robert P. ImbelliRobert P. Imbelli, a Priest of the Archdiocese of New York. He is the author of Rekindling the Christic Imagination: Theological Meditations on the New Evangelization. A volume of essays in his honor, The Center Is Jesus Christ Himself, edited by Andrew Meszaros, will appear next month from The Catholic University of America Press.

Facebook Message from Father Corapi Catholic Site

March 1, 2019 by The Lord’s PlaceThe below answer was from a question I asked the Facebook Subscription referring to a Facebook site on Father John Corapi. 

My question was:Did Father John return to the Priesthood? I know I last saw him on Linked [In Page].Father Corapi Catholic site reply: “That Linked In Page is fake and is being operated by an imposter, we have reported it to the authorities but so far they have ignored all requests to take it down. 

As for Father Corapi leaving the Priesthood, please do not believe hearsay and gossip which has been promoted by liberal haters of orthodox Catholic teaching which is what Father always taught, Bishops who are behaving immorally and promoting same-sex marriage absolutely hate preachers like Father Corapi because he was publicly singling them out as heretics to the true Catholic Church established by Jesus Christ.

This is a brief explanation outlining this false accusation (..in case you have been misinformed by the many lies that have been circulated by those who do not like Father’s straightforward and undiluted teaching of authentic Catholic Doctrine.).

Allegedly – Fr. John Corapi was accused of sexual misconduct, drug abuse and financial improprieties. 

Thousands of international Catholics believe in his innocence. We have congregated across the world in staunch defense of his unjust victimization. We are spiritual warriors because of Fr. Corapi, and now we battle to reinstate his impeccable reputation, honor, and to deliver him from such accusations.

He was ordained a Priest within the order of the Society of Our Lady of the Trinity, also known as S.O.L.T. He did not receive a fair hearing or review by Church authorities or by his peers. They demanded he surrender his civil and legal rights, which he refused to do. Within only three short weeks after the false accusation, mediated by a trio of unknown so-called ‘experts’ who showed preferential treatment to the accuser, and he was finished. He was not even allowed to examine the evidence, much less defend himself. Not a single member of his staff was interviewed. Caught ‘between a rock and a hard place’ Father resigned from public ministry.

Certain people have access to Fr. Corapi’s preaching and teaching ministry.  People would also have access to Fr. Corapi’s media operation; including telephones, text messaging, email, and all relevant sources of communications. Furthermore, certain persons have access to private contacts and information regarding Fr. Corapi’s business when employed by him.  It would not be hard to work with this kind of information for personal gain. 

ln today’s world certain bishops are not defending their priests.
We, the members of the body of Christ, support Fr. Corapi and many other falsely accused priests throughout the world, and indeed there are many (over 1,000). The zero tolerance policies do not treat our Priests with the same rights as the accusers. It is impossible to find Fr. Corapi guilty of all those accusations. 

SOLT’s ‘fact finding team’ did not even interview employees at Santa Cruz Media, nor Fr. Corapi himself, nor anyone who was associated with him.

Their claim of Fr. Corapi having inappropriate amounts of money is also an insult. 

The courts compensated Fr. Corapi after he became a whistleblower against a fraudulent healthcare company.

Fr. Corapi gave so much to charitable institutions and to SOLT, yet the silence of his generosity is deafening.

In a civil court of law this case would be thrown out immediately. One solitary letter of accusation without any evidence corroboration.
The Church rules proposed by the bishops, including ‘zero tolerance’ for Priests who faced allegations of abuse, were drawn up in a short amount of time under intense public scrutiny. Certain rash ‘decisions’ were made under intense heat and pressure, caused by the sex scandals inside the Church, to take drastic action in order to satisfy the demands of the media and public. This is clearly what happened to Fr. Corapi. He even offered to take a drug(s) test but they were not interested. That, within itself cries ‘foul’ – when the accused is offering his very own body to be examined only to be rejected, is indeed an injustice. SOLT’s ‘fact finding team’ rushed through this decision to appease the likes of SNAP and many others who bear personal grudges against Priests.

It is rather heartbreaking to know that Fr. Corapi’s public ministry has been taken away by just one letter.  

They did not lift a finger to investigate this correctly through fear of scandal, yet by their actions they have caused more scandal.

Father prays the Rosary and celebrates Mass daily for all his faithful supporters. He remains silent out of love for the Church and even though he is suffering in the aftermath of this false accusation, he will not go against the Church in any way. He lives in Montana and until he is exonerated, he will not be giving any talks or communicating publicly. Father John is offering this up for all, and in God’s time He will exonerate him.

Father Corapi was, and still is hated by the Evil One, as well as by many liberal individuals both outside and inside the Church.  Father loves the Church and never left the Church, he resigned from public ministry because he had no choice. He is, and always will be a Priest.

We are doing everything possible to help clear his name and are very confident that Christ will soon win the victory for his chosen apostle Father John Corapi. 

Our Blessed Mother in Heaven will surely intercede for her beloved Priest who has brought thousands upon thousands of souls into, or back into, the Catholic Church by passing on the Faith without subverting or diluting it, unlike many Bishops, Priests and ‘Theologians’ are doing today.

Fr. Corapi’s Catechism series and many of his other talks on our Facebook Page and YouTube channel are still bringing new converts into the Catholic Church, as well as bringing back fallen away cradle Catholics – we don’t make this claim lightly – the proof is in the public comments.

For more important work by Father John Corapi see here: 

Please tell your friends and family to pray and do penance for more than one thousand falsely accused Priests worldwide, and to continue watching Father’s videos on this  YouTube Channel where they are all freely accessible.
God bless you and keep you safe.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyvpGjfRsSPEse8fWGuEO0Q/playlistsGod Bless Fr.J.Corapi

MAIKE HICKSON

BLOGS

Cardinal Müller discusses cancel culture, ‘Great Reset,’ ‘gender language’ as part of totalitarian rule

‘Cancel culture is just another word for the brainwashing that the communists in China and the Soviet Union developed to the highest perfection.’Tue Jun 29, 2021 – 11:18 am EST

June 29, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Gerhard Müller has granted an interview to Lothar Rilinger, a German lawyer and book author. LifeSite is honored to publish a pertinent excerpt here (see full text below). The larger interview deals with aspects and foundations of free speech, and in the selection published here, Cardinal Müller strongly criticizes the totalitarian tendencies of our time, including the Great Reset, the Black Lives Matter movement, LGBT “fanatics,” as well as the Communist cancel culture.

In defense of a free academic discussion, the German prelate rejects the idea of police or public institutions controlling such a discussion, commenting: “That’s just decadence, when professors are invited or thrown out by the intellectual measure of gender activists, Black Lives Matter zealots and LGBT fanatics.” The former head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith goes on to say that there is an attempt “on a grand scale” to codify into law what is politically correct.

Here, Cardinal Müller sees that American billionaires and the pharmaceutical industry go along with the Chinese communists in the implementation of a so-called Great Reset: “The American super billionaires, big tech giants and the pharmaceutical industry are trying to impose their poor view of humanity and their economically limited world view in combination with the CP [Communist Party]-Chinese model on the whole world via their foundations and the opportunities for the Great Reset after the Corona crisis.”With unambiguous words, the German prelate condemns attempts at dictating to people what to think and how to speak. This includes so-called cancel culture, which rejects parts of a nation’s heritage, as well as the imposition of “gender language,” a way of writing and saying German words by using an asterisk that includes men and women, as well as any other possible gender identity.Cardinal Müller calls such attempts “simply barbarism, intellectual vandalism,” as well as an “imitation of the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century in the style of Orwell’s nightmares.” He proposes to describe this cancel culture with words such as “cancel vulture, the vulture culture, or of political respectlessness.”“Cancel culture,” the German cardinal goes on to say, “is just another word for the brainwashing that the communists in China and the Soviet Union developed to the highest perfection.” SUBSCRIBE to LifeSite’s daily headlinesSUBSCRIBEU.S. Canada World CatholicMore specifically with regard to “gender language,” Müller calls it an “instrument of domination” used by people with “block warden mentality.”“The vast majority of Germans,” he concludes, “flatly reject the misuse of their language to mentally terrorize people.”

This is not the first time that Cardinal Müller has sharply criticized the current international political development which is fostered in a close collaboration between American high finance and big tech, as well as the Chinese Communists. In a May 2021 interview with Mr. Rilinger, he described this new collaboration – which he calls neo-Marxist socialism of capital – with the following words:

In China we have a mixture of capitalism in the economy and communism in ideology, in a way that both systems become means of absolute dominion. In the West, during the crisis of the coronavirus, the ten richest men in the world have been able to increase the value of their fortunes by 550 billion dollars, while millions of people have lost their work or slipped below the poverty line. At the same time, the large media corporations are in their hands. Thus they hold a monopoly on the interpretation of world events, and the common people are regarded as a newborn to be cared for. This is a new form of mixing capitalism with Marxist control and domination of the masses. Why do you think that interested circles in the West admire the Chinese system of surveillance and control?

“The prevailing aligned thought today,” Müller also explained, “is hostile to the spirit. From the point of view of faith we cannot negotiate with totalitarian ideologies, but we ought to remove the mask from their faces.”

Below is the text of the new Cardinal Müller interview:

R.: Do you consider the right to express opinions to be the core content of an intellectual debate?
M.: Spirit and freedom cannot be separated. I can’t imagine that the police and the public prosecutor’s office are the mainstays of academic discussion. That’s just decadence, when professors are invited and thrown out by the intellectual measure of gender activists, Black Lives Matter zealots and LGBT fanatics. After all, Socrates was sentenced to death by mediocre power politicians, and Aristotle shunned democracy, which had degenerated into mob rule, “so as not to give the Athenians a second opportunity to sin against philosophy.”

R.: The state can determine the limits of freedom of expression. Can you imagine an ideological elite determining what may be considered politically correct, and thus applied, without those standards being either codified in law or established by judicial decisions?
M.: That is being attempted on a grand scale. The American super billionaires, big tech giants and the pharmaceutical industry are trying to impose their poor view of humanity and their economically limited world view in combination with the CP [Communist Party]-Chinese model on the whole world via their foundations and the opportunities for the Great Reset after the Corona crisis. It is so nice to belong to a community where everyone is the same, thinks the same, feels the same, and is homogeneous in outrage at the dissenters and full of admiration for the brave heroes in the sense of the powerful.

R.: Do you think it is justified to purge works of world literature in the context of the phenomenon of cancel culture, if an ideological elite thinks that certain passages do not conform to political correctness?
M.: This is simply barbarism, intellectual vandalism, the imitation of the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century in the style of Orwell’s nightmares. One should rather speak of cancel vulture, the vulture culture, or of political respectlessness. Cancel culture is just another word for the brainwashing that the communists in China and the Soviet Union developed to the highest perfection. How did those end up who threw the books of renowned writers into the fire because of “un-German” passages? Instead of purification of thoughts, these violent people should start thinking themselves for once and not underestimate the ability of others to criticize. I don’t need Fouché, Goebbels, and Lenin to read works of world literature without danger for my mental hygiene.

R.: As an emeritus dogmatist and dogma historian as well as honorary professor of the University of Munich, do you consider it justifiable that criteria such as political correctness or the use of non-official gender language are used to judge the value of scientific work?
M.: Gender language [a way of writing or saying a German word that includes men and women, as well as any other gender identity] is not a scientific criterion, but an instrument of domination by mediocrities, the intellectually inferior, and authoritarian leaders with a block warden mentality. The vast majority of Germans flatly reject the misuse of their language to mentally terrorize people.

R.: Do you see the danger that through the ideological restriction of freedom of speech the relationship of people to each other as well as the freedom of science will be impaired and the intellectual debate will suffer?
M.: It is the eternal debate between the spirit of freedom and the bigotry of power, between individuality and forced lockstep.

THE CATHOLIC MONITOR

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Is It a Sin & “Moral Complicity in [Nazi-like] Organ Harvesting” to Get Vaccinated with Ethically Tainted Vaccines? 

June 29, 2021

“The Nazis were bad? The Chinese were bad? We just get the organs from the unborn so that we could have this magical vaccine… I’m sorry to say this, but I believe the [Francis] church leaders have failed us.” – Fr. Dominic Clovis

LifeSiteNews reported that “Fr. Dominic Clovis, IVE… drove home the point of the moral gravity of accepting and using such ‘[the COVID] vaccines’ by pointing out… the [Nazi] Nuremberg trials”:

[I]n the Nuremberg trials, doctors and scientists refused to use information obtained from the cruel human experimentation of the Nazis, because they saw it as amounting to approval of the atrocities, and thought it would lead others to copy them.

Fr. Clovis began, “Imagine you knew a store which was owned by a demon. But everything in that store was cheap. You could get great high quality products for very low prices. You get the latest iPhones for like twenty dollars, something really cheap — and get really great anti-aging cream, so you look 50 years younger, you look 20 years old again. Or super amazing medicine — he could cure you from any ailment.”

“Would you go to that store, would you buy the anti-aging cream, would you buy that iPhone or would you buy that medicine knowing that you’re buying it from a demon?”SUBSCRIBE to LifeSite’s daily headlinesU.S. Canada World Catholic

“We all know that sin is a personal act. When we sin, we personally choose to sin. However, we can be responsible for committing the sins committed by others by cooperating with them. So I don’t need to rob the bank or shoot someone if I was helping the person rob the bank and shoot them. I, by cooperating, can help them. But it’s not only directly helping.

Fr. Clovis explained that there are “four ways in which we can cooperate in someone else’s sin,” of which direct help, such as “voluntarily driving” someone to a bank robbery, is only one kind of cooperation.

“We could do it by ordering them — we could order an assassination, or you could order them to go to the abortion clinic and have an abortion, or you could order them to steal something.”

“You can not only order, you could advise them, you can praise them. ‘Well done, you’ve been with so many women, you’re a great man, you’re truly manly.’ By approving we could also participate in someone else’s sin, by not disclosing or not hindering them when we have the obligation to do so.”

“We could also participate in someone else’s sin by protecting the evildoer. Thus sin makes men accomplices of one another,” Clovis continued.

“After the Second World War, there were the Nuremberg Trials. They revealed that there are doctors who had done sadistic human experiments. Sadistic since they did it because they had no problem seeing that their prisoners suffer. In fact, they even might have enjoyed it. They conducted these experiments in their camps, hundreds, maybe in the thousands.”

“They did the freezing tank experiment to find out how long a man can survive in icy cold water. He’s in the water, we take him out and see how long he survives. So if he’s in the water for half an hour we take him out, shivers to death. They did these experiments because of course they wanted to see what would happen to their pilots which fell into the North Sea, how long would they survive, could they survive? What equipment they could make to help them survive … but they did this on hundreds of people.”

“They did a high altitude experiment: They lowered the pressure, giving the appearance of high altitudes. The doctor used a decompression chamber and he would often dissect, he would open up the heads of the prisoners after the experiment to show that air bubbles would start to form in the brain in hundreds of people.”

“A sea water experiment: The scientists wanted to see how long a man can live on sea water. And so they gave hundreds of prisoners sea water to drink. Sea water, being salty, dehydrates the person, so the more they drink the more thirsty they got. The more thirsty they got, the more their brains shrunk, as it got dehydrated. Their lips, their tongue, their skin started cracking. To get water, they were so thirsty, they would lick the floor and the windows.”

“Today’s world: We have the Chinese. What are the Chinese doing? They organ harvest their prisoners. If you want a new organ, just go to China. You could get one from a prisoner. You broke the law, sent a tweet about the government or about the police, or just a tweet which the government didn’t like, or maybe you believe and practice a religion which the government doesn’t like — you’re imprisoned, maybe for life. Maybe it was a priest who celebrated Mass and they were not happy with him.”

“We could point the finger — ‘the Nazis were bad people.’ You could point the finger [at] the Chinese. But what [do] we do?”

“Do you know what embryonic stem cell research is? It’s the research they do upon the unborn to find new medicines. Some say that, oh, they took the aborted fetuses, it’s fine, they can research on them, they’re aborted, they’re already dead, they don’t have no problem with it.”

“When they research on stem cells, it’s not just like a regular abortion, a regular abortion being horrific. What they do in a regular abortion, they tear the baby’s arms and legs, off they crush the skull and then they start pulling out all the pieces, and they vacuum it up with a high pressure vacuum, sucking up, tearing the baby apart.”

“That’s what abortion is. But if he did that, what was he left with? A blended, a destroyed corpse, and as you know, you cannot get living organs from a dead body. You cannot get living cells once you’ve destroyed it. For stem cell research they do something to something even more horrendous.”

“They take the baby out alive. They dissect the baby alive, without any anesthetics, because that would damage the cells. They would cut the child up, and they would open it up and take the organs they needed or they do it as soon as they can, as the moment they die, they take them out and then they harvest the organs of unborn children. They throw them on ice as soon as they can.”

“Why am I speaking to you about embryonic stem cell research? Because the HEK stem cell line comes from those children. What we have in our vaccines and how they were produced comes from that. You might say, oh, there’s only one aborted child [that] has produced tons of vaccines for everyone. I explain, as long as you’re beating up the same person over and over again, disrespecting the same person over and over again so that everyone else could be happy.”

“I tell you it’s not just one. The HEK-293 stem cell line is, yes, from one aborted child, but there were 292 aborted children before her, and I don’t know how many after her. And it’s not just one stem cell line, there are many. There are multiple stem cell lines, there are multiple children who are born, who are aborted just for their organs.”

“The Nazis were bad? The Chinese were bad? We just get the organs from the unborn so that we could have this magical vaccine.”

“You might say well, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines which we use in Canada, they don’t actually produce the vaccines from the unborn, it’s not actually in the production. No, but they had taken this child’s cells for the design, for the development of the vaccine. And once it’s designed and developed, they produce it another way. Then afterwards, they test it on what? On these same stem cell lines, on this child’s cells.”

“So the question goes again, would you go to a shop which you knew was owned by a demon? You could buy the vaccine, you could buy some amazing medicines or technology. You’re buying it from a demon. So have we cooperated in this person’s sin, the abortionists, the organ harvester, the researchers?”

“We haven’t done it directly. We haven’t ordered it, we haven’t advised it, though we might advise people [to] get the vaccine. We probably praised it. Or [said], ‘This vaccine is going to save us all,’ or approved of it. We might say, ‘Yes, it’s good, it’s going to save us.’ We have not hindered it.”

“You remember that last year, there’s a lot of voices who are speaking out against the morality of the vaccine, whether it was good or not, whether we should be able to have it or not. Who were these voices? These were Catholic voices, these were … priests or lay people. These weren’t the church leaders. These weren’t the bishops.”

“I’m sorry to say this, but I believe the church leaders have failed us.” [https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/priest-using-abortion-tainted-covid-vaccine-is-moral-complicity-in-organ-harvesting]

Which vaccines are being made with aborted fetal cells? What are the moral and ethical implications of using such vaccines?With so much conflicting information coming out regarding the moral and ethical questions that arise with the use of the new COVID-19 vaccines, many of which involve the use of aborted fetal cells, here at the Catholic Monitor we have compiled a list of some of the most solid pro-life, and traditional Catholic sources of information that we could find on the topic. It is extremely important to remain informed, up to date, and to discern and act accordingly. See below to watch, review, and share!
We will add to the list as we learn of more. 

1) The Charlotte Lozier Institute 

This pro-life institute has compiled a very comprehensive chart comparing over 35 different COVID-19 vaccines currently being developed and clearly indicating whether aborted fetal cells were used in any portion of its design & development, production, and/or during lab tests. The red triangle indicates the use of aborted fetal cells.

See the complete list here:https://lozierinstitute.org/update-covid-19-vaccine-candidates-and-abortion-derived-cell-lines/

List in PDF format here:https://s27589.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/COVID-19-Vaccine-Candidates-and-Abortion-Derived-Cell-Lines.pdf

They state on their website, 

Accurate information about the development and production of COVID-19 vaccines is essential, especially because many proposed candidates use newer molecular technologies for production of a viral vaccine. One concern regarding the ethical assessment of viral vaccine candidates is the potential use of abortion-derived cell lines in the development, production or testing of a vaccine. This analysis utilizes data from the primary scientific literature when available, along with data from clinical trial documents, reputable vaccine tracking websites, and published commercial information.¹ It is the hope that by providing accurate data, recipients can make well-informed decisions regarding vaccine choices.

2) Resistance Podcast 143: Answers on Vaccination Concerns with Father Ripperger (Exorcist, Moral Theologian, and Traditional Catholic Priest)

Listen to Father Ripperger’s interview to hear his opinion regarding the ethics and morality of using vaccines derived from aborted fetal cell lines. 
@MrCasey on Twitter summed up the talk well:

During the interview Father Ripperger also touches on the fact that one must exercise prudence when discerning wether to use the new mRNA type vaccines (i. e. Moderna and Pfizer COVID vaccines). This is the first time these types of vaccines have ever been approved by the FDA.
Listen to the podcast interview here:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sensus-fidelium-catholic-podcast/id1477010758?i=1000501122141

Watch on Rumble here: https://rumble.com/vblh29-resistance-podcast-143-answers-on-vaccination-concerns-w-fr-ripperger.html

Note: Sensus Fidelium’s, Steve Cunningham, explains here why you cannot find the video of this interview on YouTube. He lists in the video description other platforms where you can find the video.https://youtu.be/ZgGD70Uwqf8

Resistance Podcast 143: Fr. Ripperger on Vaccine Morality. A Topic Not Allowed on YouTube

3) Interview of Pamela Acker, author of Vaccinations: A Catholic Perspective, with Restoring the Faith

This interview gives an excellent overview of the topics covered in her book, including an explanation of the different types of vaccines being developed, the truth about how many babies were actually aborted to obtain the aborted fetal cell lines being used for some vaccine development, and the heartbreaking truth that many of these babies were born alive for the organ and cell harvesting. Many more important, interesting and relevant topics covered in this interview. https://youtu.be/9PDvhKyUu2Y

Author of “Vaccination: A Catholic Perspective” Joins RTF

4) Children of God for Life

This website has the best up to date information on all the types of vaccines that use aborted fetal cells, including the newer COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. You can subscribe to their website to receive updates. They also have helpful charts and lists for reference, link included below.https://cogforlife.org/

For example, in a recent post on their website regarding the moderna vaccine they stated,

Some have said that since there are no aborted fetal cells IN the vaccines, they are morally okay.  Nothing could be further from the truth because the aborted fetal cells were most certainly an integral part of Moderna’s vaccine development.

https://cogforlife.org/2020/11/16/moderna-covid-19-vaccine-facts-not-fiction/#more-18911
For quick and easy reference they have a “Covid-19 Vaccines and Treatment in Development” list denoting in red what “was originally produced with or contains aborted fetal cells”.https://cogforlife.org/wp-content/uploads/CovidCompareMoralImmoral.pdf

Another helpful chart on their website lists all the vaccines on the CDC childhood immunization schedule which are produced with aborted fetal cells, and they list ethical alternatives when available.https://cogforlife.org/wp-content/uploads/vaccineListOrigFormat.pdf

5) Two more interviews of Pamela Acker with Sensus Fidelium 

can also be found here: 
https://sensusfidelium.us/resistance-podcast-68-vaccines-the-immune-system-w-pamela-acker/

Resistance Podcast 68: Vaccines and the Immune System (Part1)
Resistance Podcast 74: Vaccines and the Immune System (Part 2)

6) Pamela Acker’s book, Vaccination: A Catholic Perspective

can be found at the Kolbe Center:
https://www.kolbecenter.org/product/vaccination-a-catholic-perspective/

——————————————————————————————————————

The Catholic Monitor publisher is honored to post this important article by one of the most intelligent persons he knows. 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.  

NEWS RELEASE  For Immediate Release    Shocking New Allegations in Lawsuit against Cardinal Dolan and North American College  Over 30 U.S. and Vatican Bishops Implicated  NEW YORK, June 28, 2021 New bombshell allegations have emerged in a lawsuit naming New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan; the Archdiocese of New York; the Pontifical North American College (NAC) in Rome; the NAC rector, Illinois-priest Father Peter Harman; the NAC vice-rector, Washington D.C.-priest Father Adam Park; and others.   The June 28, 2021 press-release video may be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyCiI5kPTkI  In New York State Supreme Court, the February 2021 legal Complaint by former seminarian Anthony Gorgia describes accounts from numerous credible witnesses who allege a history of sexual harassment and misconduct by Park toward vulnerable seminarians; graphic sexual acts by Harman and the former bishop of Springfield in Illinois at an orgy in the presence of seminarians; and a massive cover-up by Dolan and a network of complicit Church officials. In a stunning development, recently-filed affidavits now identify the former Springfield bishop as the current Archbishop of Omaha, George Lucas.  The lawsuit also alleges that NAC officials retaliated against Gorgia as a result of his refusal to be complicit with misconduct.  In a June 2021 affidavit, one of multiple subjects of Park’s sexual harassment recounted his own experiences and the cover-up that ensued when NAC rector Harman ignored his report.  The subject’s affidavit plunges into scandal the NAC and U.S. Bishops who comprise its Board of Governors for their refusal to investigate sexual misconduct by NAC leadership and threats to the safety of their vulnerable seminarians.   In a separate new affidavit, a highly-credentialed former Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) explained his analysis of incriminating evidence, including video footage, which led him to find “entirely credible” an eyewitness account of Harman and Lucas’ graphic sexual acts at an orgy involving subordinate seminarians.  The former SAC cites “the alleged dimensions and specific descriptions of Harman’s and other participants’ intimate body parts” and “the graphic sexual acts attributed to Harman and Lucas, among others.”    New affidavits filed in Court also reveal compelling long-standing ties between Dolan and Lucas dating back to their rise to power in the Archdiocese of St. Louis.  According to these affidavits, their relationship indicates Dolan’s personal interest in concealing predation which had the potential to out Harman and Lucas. The former SAC likewise reveals the factors that have caused hundreds of vulnerable seminarians over the years to be exploited by nonconsensual sexual acts and cover-ups.    The former SAC not only implicates over 30 U.S. and Vatican bishops who received and ignored numerous incriminating reports against Harman, Park, and the NAC; but also Bishop Kevin Vann of Orange, California as a first-hand witness to the graphic misconduct alleged against Harman and Lucas.  According to the former SAC, a number of these bishops who retain Harman and Park in their positions of power over the NAC’s vulnerable adults have themselves been accused of covering up sexual misconduct in the past.   Gorgia is only one of hundreds of seminarians impacted by sexual misconduct ravaging seminaries. While many of these seminarians left quietly without ever revealing what they suffered, Gorgia becomes among the first to hold accountable Church leaders who have victimized seminarians through a landmark case-in-the-making. It is expected that scores of victimized seminarians and priests will continue to come forward with overwhelming accounts that will shatter the “culture of silence” in the Church.  To support Anthony’s landmark case-in-the-making, please visit the Save Our Seminarians Fund at: https://www.gofundme.com/f/save-our-seminarians-fund  To learn more about Anthony’s case, please also visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k_C6Ij2-9U  Please direct all media inquiries to Gene Gomulka at 619-203-8911 or etgomulka@hotmail.com       Attachments areaPreview YouTube video EXPOSED: Shocking New Allegations in Lawsuit against Cardinal Dolan and North American CollegeEXPOSED: Shocking New Allegations in Lawsuit against Cardinal Dolan and North American CollegePreview YouTube video North American College & Cardinal Dolan Named in Shocking LawsuitNorth American College & Cardinal Dolan Named in Shocking Lawsuit

REVELATIONS MADE BY THE SIX DEMONS DURING THE EXORCISM OF ANNELIESE MICHEL

August 29, 2018 by The Lord’s Place

REVELATIONS MADE BY THE SIX DEMONS DURING THE EXORCISM OF ANNELIESE MICHEL
.
What Lucifer said:-
.
“I want to conquer the earth for myself. In the meantime, I make a rich booty. I am filling up my kingdom. I take whatever I can take, I must convince you of this”.
.
“The majority have abandoned the Nazarene. How foolish! Those still faithful are a small flock”.
.
“I took Judas with me! He is always at my service. He is damned. He could have saved himself, but he has not followed the Nazarene”.
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“The enemies of the Church belong to us”.
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“O, if you had an idea of how things stand below! The visionary children of Fatima have seen it. If you had an idea….. you would be on your knees day and night at the tabernacle. I had to say it because the High Lady compels me to”. The ‘High Lady’ refers to Our Lady.
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Fr Renz asks Lucifer – “You are responsible for heresies, eg those of Kung!”. Lucifer replies – ” Yes and we have still more”.
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Lucifer said – “The priests should say that I exist. Or else they will all go down!”
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Today, hardly anyone believes any longer in the Immaculate Conception. And the Church? At present, most believe it is only a community. The modernists are killing it evermore. We are hard at work at this, and we throw much poison into the Church, so it might be discredited. By now, those who believe in the Church and are faithful and believe in Her [teachings] are very few. The rosary? They think it is “modern”. Many believe that after life, everything is finished. These are very many, and they live accordingly, because they do not pray any longer. Sins reach Heaven: but the thing will not last long. The one of 1917 [the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima] said it. But only a few have listened to her. Death, tribulations, and famine, O yes, they will surely come again!”
.
What Judas said:-
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“I am damned for eternity! You careless people, if you could just imagine what it is to be damned for eternity! I am damned!
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“I will not come out of the girl. Down there, it is too tormenting”.
.
“If people knew what was in store for them by not going to church! It will fair them extremely bad”.
.
“These modernists are the result of my work and they already belong to me”.
.
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“Humanae Vitae is also with no result. It is useless”
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“The religious in monasteries watch TV and don’t pray enough, do not kneel down and they extend their paws (ie, receive Holy Communion in the hand).
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What Cain said:-
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“I have killed my brother. I am burning”
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What Hitler said:-
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“Men are so beastly stupid! They believe that after death all is finished. But life goes on, either up or down”
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What Father Fleischmann said:-
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“I was a priest at Ettleben. I am damned. It is horrible down there. Judas pulled me down there”.
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” I am damned because I fulfilled my duties very badly”
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“I have killed 1 person and I had women”.
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“I prayed too little. I was always in a hurry to finish my sacred duties. Now, I am down there languishing for eternity”.
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“No priests should marry”.
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“If the bishops did not permit communion in the hand, this would not have happened” (this refers to consecrated hosts being sold).
.
What Nero said:-
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“You should follow the message of Fatima!”
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“Humanae Vitae is decisive, the whole Humanae Vitae!”
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“The rosary should be recited, or else it is the end!”
.
Fr Renz asks about Bishop Lefebvre. Lucifer replies, “Ha! That one! But they don’t believe in him. What a pity”.
.
Miscellaneous things the demons said:-
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“The modernists are killing the Church. We are hard at work at this”.
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“No one speaks any longer of us, especially the parish priests”.
.
“The bishops are so foolish as to believe the theologians like Kung rather than the Pope.”
.
“This is the month of the rosary but very few recite it, because the parish priests think it’s not modern. They are so foolish! If they knew its importance! It is a strong weapon against Satan and against us.”
.
Nero said, “The Dutch bishops are heretics. They have become unfaithful to the Pope!”
.
“Catholics have the true doctrine and they run after the Protestants like prostitutes!”
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“There in the synods, they continue to deliberate. The bishops already know what they should do. There would be no need of synods if they followed the Pope. For them the Pope is foolish! They are those who let that thing (the host) be given in the hands!”
.
“The doctrine is falsified in the Church!”
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“Many do not go to church any longer. No one kneels down to the Blessed Sacrament. And the Church is not doing well since the time it was founded. The churches are so modern! The Nazarene and His Mother are now attacking!”
.
“People should go to confession”.
.
Judas says, “The giving of Communion in the hand was my work”.
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“Holy water should come back to houses! Also, the crucifix should return to its place in the home”.
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“The Holy Face should be venerated!”
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“It is very important to pray to St Joseph. Rather it is most important!”.
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“If the message of Fatima is not given due importance and Humanae Vitae, a new punishment will come”.
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“It won’t last much longer. The chastisement is coming”.
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“The contents of the audio cassette must beforehand be made public. Many will yet be saved.”
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“Guardian angels are day and night near you, behind you. Today people do not believe in guardian angels. Guardian angels are my enemies. I hate them.”
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Nero said, “Abortion is homicide”
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Lucifer said, “The apparitions of San Damiano and Montechiari are true. The Church did not approve them, but this is the fruit of our work.”
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Judas said, “People standing during Holy Communion pleases me more than kneeling. I do everything possible that no one be on his knees.”
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In 1975, Judas also said, “We are very happy with the new reforms. We are most happy with these changes.”
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“ABORTION AND IT DOESN’T MATTER WHICH MONTH (THE ABORTION TAKES PLACE), IS MURDER AND THAT THE THINGS, THE EMBRYOS, DO NOT REACH THE VISION OF GOD. BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT BAPTIZED.
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The Priest asks, Where to the Embryos go when they are not baptized? Not to Hell? NO!!!
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MORE MUST BE PRAYED TO THE HOLY GUARDIAN ANGELS THE PEOPLE MUST PRAY MORE TO THEM BECAUSE, BECAUSE, BECAUSE, BECAUSE…
THEY ARE MY ENEMIES I HATE THEM. YES, BECAUSE, BECAUSE THE POWER OF HELL RIGHT NOW IS SO GREAT! YES, AND THE PEOPLE MUST IMPLORE THEIR GUARDIAN ANGELS SO THAT THEY WILL STAND BY THEM!

Repudiating Roe (Part I): The Most Important Abortion Case in Thirty Years

JUNE 28, 2021BY MICHAEL STOKES PAULSENThis is a signal moment in America’s constitutional history. One of the most notorious decisions in the Court’s history is likely either to be repudiated and overruled—discarded, finally and definitively—or else reaffirmed and entrenched, perhaps permanently. The stakes could not possibly be higher.

For the first time in a generation and a half—nearly thirty years—there is a realistic chance that the Supreme Court might overrule Roe v. Wade, the Court’s 1973 decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion. The Court has agreed to hear a case next fall that presents a direct challenge to the foundations and validity of Roe.

This is a signal moment in America’s constitutional history. One of the most notorious decisions in the Court’s history is likely either to be repudiated and overruled—discarded, finally and definitively—or else reaffirmed and entrenched, perhaps permanently. The case is Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. And the stakes could not possibly be higher.

My discussion of Dobbs proceeds in two parts. Today, I explain why Dobbs is the most important abortion case to reach the Court in nearly thirty years—since Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), the case in which a splintered Court, by the narrowest of 5-4 margins, reaffirmed Roe, not because a majority of the justices thought Roe was right, but on the basis of the judicial doctrine of “stare decisis.” Dobbs is important because it frames a direct challenge to Roe and Casey, forcing the Court to confront the legal indefensibility and radicalism of the Court’s pro-abortion jurisprudence. Dobbs poses the enormously important question whether Roe and Casey, two of the worst constitutional decisions of all time, were wrongly decided and should now, finally, be overruled. On the merits, I submit, the answer must be yes.

Tomorrow, I take up the somewhat peculiar-sounding question whether the judicial doctrine of “stare decisis”—the (inconsistent) judicial practice of generally adhering to precedents—can properly require the Court deliberately to reaffirm precedents that it is persuaded are egregiously and atrociously wrong. That, I maintain today, is the only true question remaining at issue in Dobbs. And the answer is emphatically no.

Roe’s Wrongness

Start with Roe v. Wade. Roe is regarded, rightly, as one of the most consequential and controversial—and one of the very worst—constitutional decisions of the Supreme Court in its history.

In simplest terms, Roe created a constitutional right to abortion of the life of a living human fetus. That result, and Roe’s reasoning in support of it, are indefensible from a legal standpoint. No plausible argument from the constitutional text, no rule or principle fairly derived from its structure or internal logic or deducible from other propositions contained therein, and no credible argument from historical understanding or intention remotely supports the abortion right created in Roe. Roe v. Wade is simply a lawless decision. I know of no serious constitutional scholar who defends Roe’s result as a faithful interpretation of the Constitution’s language, understood according to its natural and original meaning, as understood at the time of its adoption, or as consistent with the original intent of its adopters in 1868.

To be sure, a small cottage industry of legal academics has grown up around the enterprise of attempting to concoct “alternative” legal theories to support the result in Roe. These theories range from the merely strained and historically insupportable—the claim that abortion restrictions constitute sex discrimination in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is the most common—to the comically absurd and outlandish. The latter include wild assertions that abortion laws violate the Constitution’s prohibition of slavery or interfere with the guarantee to women of the right to vote. (I address and refute these theories in a book chapter of a volume collecting many of the most “creative” such contrivances, and also in an academic article.)

The Court has never adopted any of these alternative theories for abortion as a constitutional right. Nor has it come anywhere close to doing so. Instead, it has left the right to abortion where Roe purported to find it, in the guarantee that government not deprive persons of life, liberty, or property “without due process of law.” That’s the same bogus legal reasoning on which the Supreme Court had rested its infamous Dred Scott decision in 1857, holding unconstitutional Congress’s law prohibiting the introduction of slavery into federal territories. This reasoning, if one can call it that, goes by the oxymoronic label “substantive due process.” It is gibberish, as most sensible people recognize.

In Casey, the Court, while nominally reaffirming Roe’s substantive due process holding, could not bring itself actually to embrace Roe’s reasoning as correct. Indeed, a majority of justices seemed to indicate they believed that the case was wrongly decided. Casey left Roe in place almost purely on the basis of the doctrine of stare decisis. In other words, the justices concluded the Court should stick to Roe “whether or not mistaken,” simply because it was a precedent on which the Court had staked its authority, and it might look bad if it were to reverse itself. In tomorrow’s essay, I will attack this craven, unprincipled reasoning. For now, my point is simpler: Roe is a relic of abandoned reasoning that almost no one—including the Court itself—any longer thinks correct on its own terms. If Roe retains any legitimacy at all, it is only because it is a precedent and for no reason moored to the text of the Constitution.

It is important to grasp this. Roe v. Wade’s rule no longer rests on any provision of the Constitution. It rests on Roe’s rule being Roe’s rule. The constitutional right to abortion has been cut loose from any tether to the Constitution’s text. It now depends, essentially entirely, on the force of Roe’s status as a precedent and the doctrine of stare decisis.

Roe’s indefensibility as a matter of faithful constitutional interpretation is, frankly, almost no longer a matter of serious dispute. The incorrectness of Roe as a matter of first principles is practically a point of common ground, certainly so for the principled constitutional conservatives that now compose the majority of the justices on the Court. Bluntly put: Roe is as wrong as wrong can be, and everybody knows it.

Roe’s Extremism and its Human Consequences

Roe’s formulation of the abortion right is also quite extreme. In a nutshell, Roe established a constitutional right to abortion of a living human fetus for essentially any reason that a pregnant woman chooses. Under the Court’s decisions, the right to abort exists throughout all nine months of pregnancy, albeit in slightly varying forms depending on the stage of pregnancy. Prior to fetal “viability”—that is, the point when the child could live outside his or her mother’s womb, now around twenty-four weeks—the right to abort is explicitly plenary. There is no ground on which states may prohibit an abortion from being obtained. This includes, as I have recently written, eugenic reasons—aborting an unborn child because of his or her race or sex, or on account of disability.

After viability, an abortion may be had for any “health” reason, but “health” is defined broadly (and misleadingly) to embrace emotional, psychological, age, or “familial” considerations. This loophole is big enough to make the right to abortion functionally absolute, even when the child could live outside the womb. The Court’s opinions concerning “partial-birth” abortion, in 2000 and 2007, bear this out. They uphold a right to kill a fetus capable of living independently of the mother, under the rubric of the need to permit late abortions on “health” grounds. Thus, partial-birth abortion—the gruesome technique of inducing labor, delivering all of the body except the head, puncturing the skull and vacuuming out the child’s brain, collapsing the head, and then completing removal of the dead child—can be prohibited as an abortion method, even after viability, only if there is available some equally safe (to the pregnant woman) alternative method for killing the fetus.

The right to abortion is thus essentially absolute. This is especially clear for pre-viability abortions. State governments may adopt certain informed consent and waiting-period requirements, and they may enforce some (but not many) regulations of abortion clinics. But they may not prohibit abortion itself, for any reason, prior to viability. Planned Parenthood v. Casey tinkered slightly with Roe’s framework but did not alter its essentials. It retained the absolute right to pre-viability abortion and it retained the “health” right to abortion of even viable unborn babies.

It is worth pausing briefly to reflect on just how radical the Roe–Casey abortion-rights legal construct is. It is no cautious “balance” of interests. It is almost unreservedly pro-abortion. It adopts one of the most extremely lenient pro-abortion legal regimes anywhere in the world. It fails to recognize any legal rights of the unborn human fetal children, in any respect, at any stage of pregnancy. It does not recognize them as legal persons in their own right, entitled to the equal protection of the laws from private violence (a debatable but infinitely more plausible legal understanding of the common law and of the Constitution’s guarantees than is Roe’s creation of a constitutional right to abortion). Nor, short of that, does it recognize the unborn as members of the human species meriting protection by the state, whether or not they possess a constitutionally recognized legal “right to life” of their own. The living human fetus is treated, absurdly, as “potential life.”

In short, if Roe were an act of legislation, a bill passed by a legislature, it would be extremist pro-abortion legislation. And, not to put too fine a point on it, Roe is an act of legislation. (As is Casey—a modest, friendly amendment to Roe.) That Roe and Casey are acts of extremist legislation, adopted by a runaway judiciary, only makes matters worse.

The most important point about Roe’s extremism is, of course, its human toll. Roe’s practical and moral consequences have been truly stunning. Roe sanctioned, and Casey perpetuated, in the name of our fundamental law, the killing of over sixty million human beings.

This is not rhetorical overstatement but simple description. That abortion kills should not be a controversial proposition. There is no doubt that abortion results in the death of a distinct living being—an organism that was alive before is now dead. And there is no doubt that the living being killed by abortion is a human living being, distinct from the mother. Abortion thus ends a human life. To be sure, it is a human life at an early and vulnerable stage in its development. But it is the same human life it will be at all stages of its life cycle, as an embryo, fetus, infant, child, and adult.

Roe created a right of some human beings to kill other human beings. It is important to be clear about that. Since Roe, the running human death toll from abortion in America has exceeded that of the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin’s purges, and the Rwandan genocide combined. Our familiarity with Roe has led to a strange acceptance of, or numbness to, its shocking, murderous radicalism and the scale of its havoc.

Roe is both a constitutional monstrosity and a moral atrocity.  As I wrote in these pages nearly a decade ago, Roe is simply unbearably wrong. It is time—long past time—to overrule Roe v. Wade.

The Dobbs Case

That brings us to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The Dobbs case poses a direct, head-on challenge to Roe’s framework and, by necessary implication, its legitimacy. Here’s how: As noted, Roe and Casey hold that abortion cannot be banned for any reason before the point of fetal viability, when the child would be capable of living outside his or her mother’s womb, currently at about twenty-four weeks of pregnancy. Dobbs involves a legal challenge to a Mississippi law forbidding abortions after fifteenweeks of pregnancy. This is more than two months before the point of viability. Simply put, if Roe is right, Mississippi’s law is “unconstitutional” (to accede, for purposes of argument, to an inaccurate characterization). And conversely, for Mississippi’s law to be upheld, Roe and Casey must be rejected.

The Dobbs case thus squarely presents the issue of whether Roe v. Wade is wrong and should be overruled. Given what Roe and subsequent abortion decisions hold, and what the Mississippi law in question provides, the issue is practically unavoidable. And the Court’s order granting review shows no desire to avoid it. The legal question on which the justices granted review was stated as follows: “Whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.” That’s another way of asking whether Roe v. Wade is rightly or wrongly decided and should remain the operative legal rule.

What will the Court do? A solid majority of justices now on the Supreme Court clearly believes that Roe is unequivocally wrongly decided, as flagrant a departure from constitutional text, structure, and history as any precedent in the Court’s history. There is no doubt in my mind that six of the nine sitting justices firmly believe Roe is wrong. They are, in rough order of certainty: Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Chief Justice John Roberts. In truth, I believe Justice Elena Kagan in her heart of hearts is unpersuaded of Roe’s legal correctness, too. But she and fellow liberals Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor can be counted on to vote for unrestricted abortion rights no matter what.

The Stakes and Snare of “Stare Decisis”

Everything—everything—thus depends on the Court’s treatment of the legal doctrine of “stare decisis.” “Stare decisis” is a fragment of the Latin phrase taken to stand for the general rule of practice and judicial policy, drawn from the common law, that courts tend to follow their own precedents unless they have a good and sufficient legal justification for departing from them.

Significantly, the doctrine has never been thought to be constitutionally required. It is a rule of judicial policy and usual practice only. Nor has the doctrine ever been thought absolute. There are literally hundreds of examples of cases that have been overruled. Even at common law, courts could overrule prior decisions demonstrated to be unsound. Moreover, the doctrine’s roots in common-law adjudication—where the law actually consists of general principles discerned from the overall course of judicial decisions—mean that it does not transpose neatly (if at all) to constitutional interpretation, where the relevant law consists of an authoritative, written legal text. Simply put, if the text is the touchstone, judicial precedents contrary to the text are simply not faithful understandings of the relevant law. The Supreme Court’s jurisprudence in constitutional cases has consistently affirmed that core principle, leading the Court repeatedly to emphasize that adherence to precedent is “not an inexorable command.”

Nonetheless, the doctrine retains some intuitive appeal, especially for “conservatives,” as it purports to advance conservative-sounding values of stability, predictability, consistency, humility, and restraint. And it does advance these values, at least to some extent. But the doctrine is slippery, deceptive, and readily manipulated. In practice, the doctrine often disserves the very policies it claims to serve, undermining predictability and stability and disguising judicial discretion. There is a strong claim that it is not “conservative” at all—that faithful adherence to the Constitution requires just that: faithful adherence to the Constitution, not to faithless departures from its text, structure, history, and original meaning.

Ironically, the staunchest defenders of stare decisis today are liberal, activist judges, who invoke it selectively and perhaps a bit cynically, as a tool for entrenching liberal decisions that are not defensible under the Constitution. That is, they invoke stare decisis precisely to preserve such faithless departures from the text itself.

Like the apple in the Garden, then, the doctrine of stare decisis can be deceptively enticing. Dangled by the devil for evil purposes, the doctrine has an enormous capacity to mislead and deceive. Some nominally “conservative” members of the Court have succumbed to its appeal in the past, including in abortion cases, substituting a corrupted version of the doctrine for constitutional principle. That is what happened in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 decision in which a 5-4 majority of the Court voted to reaffirm Roe v. Wade on the supposed basis of the doctrine of stare decisis—even while changing Roe’s standards and framework and overruling two cases.

Is there a risk that something like this could happen again in Dobbs? Is there a risk of another Casey? Might the Court hold, in the name of stare decisis, that Roe and Casey should be upheld, no matter how wrong they were, how extreme they are, and how atrocious their consequences, simply because they were decided before?

I take up that question tomorrow: Does the doctrine of stare decisis require adherence to an egregiously wrong, legally indefensible precedent, in conflict with a proper understanding of the Constitution, simply because it is a precedent?

About the Author

MICHAEL STOKES PAULSEN

Michael Stokes Paulsen is Distinguished University Chair & Professor of Law, at the University of St. Thomas, in Minneapolis. He is co-author, with Luke Paulsen, of The Constitution: An Introduction, published by Basic Books.

THE CATHOLIC MONITOR

Do “‘Conspiracy’ Thinking” Francis & his Inner Circle have Paranoia? 

June 20, 2021

Francis and his inner circle appear to have symptoms of paranoia. Cardinal Gerhard Mueller in a 2017 interview revealed that Francis told him: 

“They tell me you’re my enemy.”

Muller in the interview said the “magic circle” around Francis does “spying on alleged opponents” and tells him who are his friends or enemies. 

It seems that Francis may be overly attached and surrounded by certain persons with unhealthy thought processes and strange conspiracy ideas.

The Vatican Insider usually a solid news source which has access to ranking Vatican insiders close to the Francis on October 19, 2016 wrote a tabloid like paranoid article.

It slandered anyone remotely criticizing the questionable prudential actions and non- infallible teachings of Francis.

The Insider claimed that those who question Francis are in a global conspiracy with Russian strongman Putin against the him.

Phil Lawler and his CatholicCulture.org which defends many of Francis’s teachings and even the Argentine norm of Amoris Laetitia when commenting on this article said:

It is “likely…people surrounding Pope Francis” have a “paranoid style” and have fallen into ‘conspiracy’ thinking that “see enemies wherever there is resistance to their agenda.” [https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/the-city-gates.cfm?id=1367]

Francis like those who surround him appears to have fallen into paranoid and conspiracy thought processes as shown by his thinking the wishy-washy Muller is his “enemy.”

This is the namby-pamby Muller who while working in the Vatican attacked the Dubia Cardinals to the “bewilderment” of his staff at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith because he contradicted “everything he said… on the matter until now” according to Vatican expert Edward Pentin. (National Catholic Register, “Cardinal Muller TV Interview Causes Bewilderment,” January 9, 2017)

If Francis thinks the indecisive Muller is his “enemy,” who endorsed Amoris Laetitia and before said the divorce and remarried can’t receive Communion unless chaste, then it appears that the he may have dementia.

Alzheimer experts say a symptom of dementia can be paranoia.

The Alzheimer’s Foundation of America says individuals “with dementia may become paranoid.”

The Every Day Health post “The Seven Stages of Dementia- Alzheimer’s Disease Center” says a sign of severe dementia is:

“Changes in personality or behavior, such as increased paranoia.” (Everydayhealth.com, By Madeline Vann, MPH)

Wikipedia says paranoia “is a thought process believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety and fear…typically includes…beliefs of conspiracy.”

Even EWTN commentator Robert Royal of The Catholic Thing said in the 2014 article “Pope Francis Needs New Friends” that Francis appears to be surrounded by certain persons with strange non-rational conspiracy ideas:

“He’s clearly in a bubble” with Cardinals like the German Kasper who wants “God to repeal the Laws of Non-contradiction” and radicals like the Honduran Maraiaga who were leading Francis to “connect…global poverty-with a kind of conspiracy theory about arms sales and war is simply bizarre.”

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. Pray an Our Father now for America. Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.It is, however, possible that this transient paralysis may h

Read more at:
https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/dr-altaf-patel/are-doctors-afraid-of-the-coronavirus/articleshow/76272164.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppstAmerican magnate and inventor Howard Hughes was at one time 

Read more at:
https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/dr-altaf-patel/are-doctors-afraid-of-the-coronavirus/articleshow/76272164.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppstAmerican magnate and inventor Howard Hughes was at one time 

Read more at:
https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/dr-altaf-patel/are-doctors-afraid-of-the-coronavirus/articleshow/76272164.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppstSHARE

THE CATHOLIC MONITOR

Do “‘Conspiracy’ Thinking” Francis & his Inner Circle have Paranoia? 

June 20, 2021

Francis and his inner circle appear to have symptoms of paranoia. Cardinal Gerhard Mueller in a 2017 interview revealed that Francis told him: 

“They tell me you’re my enemy.”

Muller in the interview said the “magic circle” around Francis does “spying on alleged opponents” and tells him who are his friends or enemies. 

It seems that Francis may be overly attached and surrounded by certain persons with unhealthy thought processes and strange conspiracy ideas.

The Vatican Insider usually a solid news source which has access to ranking Vatican insiders close to the Francis on October 19, 2016 wrote a tabloid like paranoid article.

It slandered anyone remotely criticizing the questionable prudential actions and non- infallible teachings of Francis.

The Insider claimed that those who question Francis are in a global conspiracy with Russian strongman Putin against the him.

Phil Lawler and his CatholicCulture.org which defends many of Francis’s teachings and even the Argentine norm of Amoris Laetitia when commenting on this article said:

It is “likely…people surrounding Pope Francis” have a “paranoid style” and have fallen into ‘conspiracy’ thinking that “see enemies wherever there is resistance to their agenda.” [https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/the-city-gates.cfm?id=1367]

Francis like those who surround him appears to have fallen into paranoid and conspiracy thought processes as shown by his thinking the wishy-washy Muller is his “enemy.”

This is the namby-pamby Muller who while working in the Vatican attacked the Dubia Cardinals to the “bewilderment” of his staff at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith because he contradicted “everything he said… on the matter until now” according to Vatican expert Edward Pentin. (National Catholic Register, “Cardinal Muller TV Interview Causes Bewilderment,” January 9, 2017)

If Francis thinks the indecisive Muller is his “enemy,” who endorsed Amoris Laetitia and before said the divorce and remarried can’t receive Communion unless chaste, then it appears that the he may have dementia.

Alzheimer experts say a symptom of dementia can be paranoia.

The Alzheimer’s Foundation of America says individuals “with dementia may become paranoid.”

The Every Day Health post “The Seven Stages of Dementia- Alzheimer’s Disease Center” says a sign of severe dementia is:

“Changes in personality or behavior, such as increased paranoia.” (Everydayhealth.com, By Madeline Vann, MPH)

Wikipedia says paranoia “is a thought process believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety and fear…typically includes…beliefs of conspiracy.”

Even EWTN commentator Robert Royal of The Catholic Thing said in the 2014 article “Pope Francis Needs New Friends” that Francis appears to be surrounded by certain persons with strange non-rational conspiracy ideas:

“He’s clearly in a bubble” with Cardinals like the German Kasper who wants “God to repeal the Laws of Non-contradiction” and radicals like the Honduran Maraiaga who were leading Francis to “connect…global poverty-with a kind of conspiracy theory about arms sales and war is simply bizarre.”

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. Pray an Our Father now for America. Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

The Biden No-Go Zones

The Democratic Party won the long march through journalism, but this Pyrrhic victory has meant the destruction of every principle of journalistic integrity liberals ever claimed to champion.

By: Victor Davis Hanson

June 20, 2021

(emphasis added)

Hat Tip: Rip McIntosh

In American journalism, there are supposed to be some clear, nonnegotiable third-rails. 
One is zero tolerance for overtly racist language and comportment among our movers and shakers. Reporters, for example, for four years damned Donald Trump for his neutralizing summation that there were both “fine people” and extremists mingled among the hordes of protestors during their occasionally violent encounters in Charlottesville, Virginia. 
It mattered little to the media that Trump added qualifiers of “many” and “both” sides of the protests: 
We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence, on many sides . . . And I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists because they should be condemned totally—but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, OK?. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats—you had a lot of bad people in the other group, too.
Selected words from the above quote were recycled ad nauseam as proof Trump was a racist. 
Another no-go zone is any hint of contextualizing sexual harassment or assault. No statute of limitations can provide exemption, much less a “she said/he said” defense in the age of “women must be believed.”
The Brett Kavanaugh circus of September 2018 was a reminder that a lack of evidence, credible witnesses, or basic logic is no defense against the 30-year-old charges of alleged teenage sexual misbehavior. Bill Clinton managed to use his progressive credentials as an insurance policy to avoid for months any condemnation that he was a callous womanizer, but finally the press corps found his exploitative appetites too egregious to ignore.
A third zero-tolerance zone is any hint of presidential debility. We were told in the dark days of 1973 that Nixon was non compos mentis, nursing his wounds with drink as his legendary constitution finally cracked under the pressure, making him supposedly unable physically to withstand the impending impeachment. Saturday Night Live made an industry out of Chevy Chase replaying Gerald Ford’s stumbles. Ronald Reagan was all but declared senile by the press for using index cards in some of his summits and speeches, or putting his hand to his ear and claiming he could not fathom reporters’ gottcha questions amid the din of swirling helicopter blades on the White House lawn. 
Finally, lying, fibbing, and even presidential exaggeration are deemed intolerable—or so we are told by the media. It does not matter that the newsroom is currently one of the great purveyors of untruth, as we saw in the Russian collusion hoax, the dubious Wuhan wet-market narrative, or the yarn about the Lafayette Square militarization to green-light a Trump photo-op. 
Reporters never let Richard Nixon live down his “tricky Dick” reputation for his purported bouts of misinformation. Lyndon Johnson’s lies about the supposed impending victory in Vietnam doomed him. 
George H. W. Bush never got free of his “Read my lips: No new taxes” pledge. Bill Clinton was impeached because what he said about his sexual misadventures, sometimes under oath, could not be squared with the facts. 
There is no need to rehash the media’s echo chamber of “Bush lied, people died” in connection with the flawed CIA intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. One reason why the media’s canonization of Barack Obama ultimately failed was the latter’s blatant lies. (Who can forget “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”?) The Washington Post and an epidemic of “fact-checkers” tallied up all of Trump’s exaggerations and contradictions to convince the public that he was an inveterate liar. 
Americans may disagree with these journalistic rules, but to quote Hyman Roth about the state of our media, “This is the business we’ve chosen.”
Yet it is arguable that while no other president in modern memory has trespassed more egregiously on these no-go areas than Joe Biden, he has received no criticism for his transgressions. 
Joe Biden (never mind his son, Hunter) has compiled the most glaring rap sheet of racist quotes of any current modern political leader. He characterized Barack Obama as the first “clean and articulate” black presidential candidate. He told a group of accomplished black professionals that Romney would put “y’all back in chains,” as if they were helpless laborers. 
Biden’s rants about Indians and donut shops, the Corn Pop fables, his dismissals of black journalists with put-downs such as “you ain’t black” and invectives such as “junkie” would have disqualified any other candidate. His earlier treatment of Clarence Thomas during his Supreme Court nomination confirmation hearing, his idolization of fossilized racist kingpins in the Senate, his rhetoric on busing and black career criminals, were all couched in racial condescension. 
At a time when the current incarnation of Biden is siccing the federal government—and the Pentagon in particular—on a mythical, nationwide white supremacist conspiracy, the president’s own son is revealed to have habitually used the N-word and emulated what he thought was a backward black patois. Was Joe warning America about Hunter, when he charged that white supremacy reigned and must be dethroned?
While Joe Biden is also pointing fingers at white America with despicable false accusations of anti-Asian hate crimes (in truth, these attacks disproportionately are committed by black males), the press is quiet about Hunter Biden’s exchanges with his cousin Caroline Biden over set-up “dates.” In one, Caroline warns Hunter “I can’t give you f—ing Asian sorry. I’m not doing it.” Hunter trumps her racist slurs with his own agreement: “No yellow.” That story was buried by mainstream journalists who have long ago fused with the progressive cause.
As a senator, vice president, and presidential candidate Joe Biden was often caught—and occasionally even apologized for—habitually touching, smooching, squeezing, hugging, and breathing on women, some of them preteens, in a manner that can only be called creepy, with all of the females recoiling at his advances. When the intrusions became too great to ignore, the would-be president said only he would be “mindful” of invading the private space of women. 
Tara Reade, a former assistant in Senator Biden’s office, replayed the role of Christine Blasey Ford with charges of sexual assault—but with far greater credibility and detail (“There was no exchange, really, he just had me up against the wall . . . I remember it happened all at once . . . his hands were on me and underneath my clothes.”). Reade provided corroborating evidence, and explicit details of assault, yet the same journalists and politicians—again so often joined at the hip—who had sought to destroy Brett Kavanaugh gave Biden a pass, absurdly citing the statute of limitations, and even questioning the sanity and stability of Reade herself.
As far as presidential health goes, even Donald Trump’s enemies have remarked on his almost unnatural stamina and energy, characterized by 20-hour workdays and near inexplicable rapid recovery from COVID-19. No matter. By mid-2017 there was a nonstop journalist mantra that Trump was “crazy” and “unhinged,” and too “sick” to remain president. The clamor continued until Trump himself took the Montreal Cognitive Assessment and aced the exam’s questions. A Yale psychiatrist achieved mini-celebrity status by unprofessionally diagnosing Trump in absentia as mentally challenged and in need of a forced intervention—unhinged charges that nonetheless enhanced reporters’ frenzied calls for the invocation of the 25th Amendment. 
Contrast this with Joe Biden. He has trouble walking up the steps of the Air Force One. He forgets names and events. His days are short and his attention span shorter, his press conferences rare—and scripted. At the recent G-7 summit he displayed a mishmash of bizarre interruptions, “get off my lawn” temper tantrums at reporters, slurred words, incomplete thoughts and sentences, cognitive freezes, and general fragilities. His own administration, or more likely those around Vice President Kamala Harris, habitually leak to their lackeys in the media portentous “worries” that Biden’s infirmities are such that they can longer be successfully hidden. And yet the ruse continues.
Finally, Biden says things that are just flat-out lies. He declared that no Americans had been vaccinated until he took office, despite a presidential photo-op of him greeting the vaccination on December 21, 2020, and the fact 1 million people had been vaccinated by the day he took office, including him. 
At the G-7 meeting, Biden offered his most egregious untruth—that Trump supporters had killed officer Brian Sicknick—although the autopsy report, now several weeks old, found Sicknick had died of natural causes a day after the riot. 
While the border is wide open, Biden ignores the chaos and asserts the border is secure and closed. 
Hunter Biden’s laptop, Joe insists, was a result of “Russian disinformation.” 
Almost everything Biden has said on illegal immigration, the effects of his proposed tax hikes, and the January 6 Capitol assault is untrue. 
Reporters ignore the mounting lies, ironically winking and in acknowledgment that most are the result of Biden’s own cognitive deterioration—as if it is more reassuring that a president does not know what he is saying rather than is saying something untrue.
How can we explain this utter dereliction of American journalism? 
The media was always left-leaning. But after 2016, it openly announced that it could no longer remain unbiased given the existential threats supposedly posed by President Trump. CNN transmogrified from a leftist airport news aggregator into a purveyor of whoppers, open threats against the president, and outright obscenities. 
Remember the blasé reporting about presidential decapitation and poisoning? On-air discussion of defecation? The forced retractions of fake news? The retirements and firings for fabricating stories? All that characterized CNN after 2015. 
But aside from Trump, another reason why journalism died was the rise of Silicon Valley and related left-wing billionaires, enriched from monopolies of social media and Internet communications, buying up media companies. 
Abetted by the subversion of higher education that turned journalism schools into ideological factories, the tech oligarchs made war on the First Amendment, which they hate almost as much as the Second. Reporters were rewarded handsomely for upholding woke orthodoxy, knowing that while an accurate story offering a positive view of a conservative could stall a career, any inaccurate negative take on conservatism was likely to be job enhancing.
Finally, there is no longer a Democratic Party—at least not of the kind that Joe Manchin and earlier incarnations of Joe Biden and Bill Clinton used to represent. The Left talks of Representative Liz Cheney’s (R-Wyo.) psychodramas and fissures in the Republican Party, but only because civil war for control of the Democratic Party is long over, and was won by the hardcore neosocialist left. Now it is only a matter of mopping up stragglers and relics. 
Translated into presidential coverage, reporters know that any tough question or honest reporting on Joe Biden will not be praised for disinterested journalism or personal courage, but damned as apostasy and disloyalty. In truth, Democratic politicians treat the media now as if they were obedient poodles. They consider any who timidly bark when not so instructed to be in need of neutering.
The final ironies? The Democratic Party won the long march through journalism, but this Pyrrhic victory has meant the destruction of every principle of journalistic integrity liberals ever claimed to champion. 
Now, its most progressive leaders—Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi—have grown so accustomed to fawning Soviet-style reportage that they no longer have the ability to answer any real journalist’s questions. 
Stranger still, the beneficiaries of media obsequiousness have nothing but contempt for the helots who now serve them. Remember Ben Rhodes’ haughty putdown of slavish journalists who “know nothing” and were unknowingly drowning in the swampy echo chambers he had so cynically created?
Once politicians lose all fear of the press, they will say and do anything in their hubris, as we now see with the completely unmoored Joe Biden. And having lost not just the respect of the public but also the regard of the very progressives they idolize, America’s journalists are routinely slapped down as the fawning toadies they have become.