The Cruel Progressive Creed Undoing Civilization  The Left’s progressive wasteland is an acceptable price to pay for the terrifying visions of its anointed. By: Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness June 27, 2021 (emphasis added) Hat Tip: Rip McIntosh Debt is suffocating us. Our currency is on its way to being Lebanonized.  Most major American cities are broke, dirty, unsafe, and run by either corrupt incumbents, neo-Marxists, or both. The law is optional and applied asymmetrically on the basis of race and ideology. The past is found guilty by the laws of the present and so it is being undone. The military budget is on a trajectory to be the smallest in terms of GDP allotment since World War II; its careerist officers, for their own short-term interests, are now demonizing and will soon be driving away the very demographic that has suffered percentage-wise the greatest casualties in recent wars and was once unquestionably the foundation of the military.  There is no U.S. border; it is an abstract construct that millions will illegally cross in the next few years, ostensibly because they will become future soldiers in the progressive wars for America to come.  The idea of merit that built America is a dirty word, replaced by medieval tribalism of hiring and promotion by superficial appearance.  In just five months, Joe Biden created a desert and called it progress. Progressivism is billed as many things. But its foundational brand is devotion to supposedly “scientific” principles to improve the human condition. That Enlightenment project demands greater social welfare expenditure and therapeutic education to “improve” human nature itself. And all this can sometimes require necessary force. Such utopian dreams of mandated equity attract all sorts to the cause. There are the naïve who feel socialist redistribution, if at last done right just this once, can really, really create social equity and inclusion. Many of the sympathetic rich assume they will be exempt from the tough medicine that follows from their own guilt or sense of civic duty. Some are opportunistic and parasitical careerists piggy-backing on the chaos. Others are social and psychological zealots who find meaning and relevance as wannabe soldiers marching to utopia. But inherent in such 20th-century hubris is the concession that there will be lots of collateral damage in reordering society. When imposing abstract, but uncompromising theories onto the otherwise unenlightened people, eggs will have to be broken to bake the new omelet. And, from what we have seen in the last few months, the progressive toll is becoming every bit as excruciating as our woke custodians are indifferent to it.  As a general rule, anytime anyone anywhere announces that he has a master plan to reorder society and “fundamentally transform” or “reset” it by creating larger government, more rules, and an elite hierarchy to oversee compliance for the recalcitrant, then run. You can rest assured ultimately the architect will change the language, demonize and marginalize new opponents, given the omelet always needs more eggs. They will subvert institutions, and, if need be, resort to violence to ensure change. The Progressive ScorecardTake the border. Human nature over the eons has assumed the world functions according to deterrence. People make choices, good and bad, based on their own cost-to-benefit analyses. In other words, they balance incentives against disincentives about whether to enter the United States illegally or stay home. Perhaps nearly 2 million illegal aliens will cross the border over this calendar year. Most would never have attempted to do so last summer.  Why? Because after January 20, 2021, they believed the border was open. Now, meeting a border security guard ensures no detention, much less deportation.  Now arrivals assume a fast track to permanent residence as “political refugees” and a future of government subsidy and alleviation of the miseries of life south of the border.  So they rightly believe the risks of illegal entry are far fewer than the rewards of being not just American residents, but protected by a new progressive paternalism that finds advantage in illegal immigration. Progressives believe, at least in theory, that breaking federal law to usher in millions of poor into the United States reveals to us their own morally superior commitment to improving the lot of mankind. Cynics counter that progressives wish to import not so much people as constituents and voters, to turn more red counties and states blue.  Who worries much about the ensuing collateral damage: squalid conditions in border halfway stations, cartel predation on the vulnerable, the overtaxing of social welfare services at the expense of American poor, greater rates of crime and gang violence, the diminution in entry-level wages, and less integration and assimilation of newcomers who come en masse? The crude ideology applies to current spiraling crime—the direct result of progressive rhetoric, policies, and political agendas. It is not that the Left wants violence in the streets, only that it is a small price to pay to implement never-let-a-crisis-go-to waste ideas that normally would have no support.  Progressives obsess over stop-and-frisk, supposedly inordinate incarceration and racially asymmetrical arrests, but they have little concern for keeping the streets safe for the young, the elderly, the weak, the inner-city poor, and the vulnerable from the attacks of history’s archetypical predator, the unbound young male between 15 and 40.  So naturally, crime spikes throughout the country, given deterrence is lost. Criminals prove far better students of human nature than do the professors, lawyers, and politicians. Who would have thought the criminally minded would interpret state laxity as the timidity of a bankrupt establishment to be exploited rather than reciprocated?  Given that progressivism is the cachet of the rich, the secure, and the influential, rarely does the damage of implementing progressivism law enforcement befall its exempt architects.  Translated in the real world, the progressive mind fixates on the lone suspect shot in a police confrontation, the rare white-on-black crime, and almost any anomaly that “proves” the deductive idea of the perennially victimized. It cannot tolerate news or video accounts of the violence in Chicago, now-routine theft in San Francisco, or the street executions in New York. So such norms are simply cut out of the narrative.  Last week in Portland, Antifa, and Black Lives Matter were poised to protest and riot over the police shooting of a supposed “victim” of color—only to dissipate when the victim was announced to be white and the shooter a black officer. The media covers a white policeman shooting an unarmed black suspect as a teachable moment of systemic racism, but smothers the story of an officer of “unknown”race who shot and killed unarmed Ashli Babbitt attempting to climb through a window inside the Capitol Building—and shows its own racist proclivities. Again, the correct revolutionary narrative matters, not the facts or details, in the manner humanity must be saved even if the truth—and some humans—are sacrificed. Transgendered sports are another example of the callousness of progressivism in all its glory. It believes “science” has rendered passé biological sexual differences between male and female.  The Left then trumpets its liberation of the transgendered by popularizing a new third sex, as mothers become “birthing people” and men need not have male genitalia. But in the concrete, progressivism cares little that transgenderism is utterly destroying women’s sports. Those born biologically male compete with innately physical advantages over biological females in size, stature, and strength.  But then who cares about women athletes anyway? Why are not women transitioning to males not also competing successfully, if at all, with men? Again, the aspirations of millions of young female athletes are a tiny charge to pay for the larger transformation, liberation, and equitization of sexuality itself. Racism can be defined as the ancient and eternal pathology of assessing and stereotyping humans in all manner of human life as inferior. The entire pathology fixates on superficial collective appearances rather than unique individual character, talent, and achievement. By that definition, the new wokeism is again racist to the core. The BLM brain trust rails about innately pernicious “whiteness,” and the pathologies that all “whites” share, and the universal need for all “whites” to become “reprogrammed” and “reeducated.”  Yet racism and igniting tribal wars are small progressive prices to pay for achieving an equity society characterized by an engineered equality of result in all spheres of life and insured by the government. Why worry about individual lives ruined by racial preferences and institutionalized prejudices?  We know that those with COVID-19 antibodies usually have nearly as much or the same immunity as those vaccinated. We know also that those previously infected may run a somewhat greater risk of side effects from vaccinations than those uninfected. And we know that those under 15 may run even more risks from vaccinations than they would be coming down with a case of COVID-19 infection.  Yet progressive science will tell us all that is not true or at least of no interest given the need to vaccinate all 330 million Americans—or else and until the progressive narrative changes for the greater good as it did with Dr. Fauci and his changing “science” of masks.  Once progressive science decides what constitutes herd immunity—defined by one of Dr. Fauci’s noble lies of 60, 70, 80, or 90 percent protection with antibodies—then whatever means necessary to achieve the collective good are justified. That can entail everything from vaccinating the very young and the previously infected to misleading the public that white deplorables rank as the most dangerous to us all by their disproportionate resistance to vaccination, or ignoring quarantine violations by large numbers of the right sort of protestors.  Meanwhile, progressivism’s noble lies assure us that most minorities, who on average actually have fewer vaccinations per capita than do whites and Asians, are not as culpable as working-class whites who are demonized for resisting vaccination. Instead, minorities have no free will and are “underserved” and “marginalized” as they understandably balk at vaccination due to “historic and legitimate suspicions” or “fear of deportation—and the prior 2020 castigations of the vaccinations by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, as well as “experts” warning that being vaxxed still means masks and quarantines, will not really go away. We know that defunding the police erodes deterrence, encouraging criminals to believe in a cost-to-benefit gamble that the chances of arrest, indictment, conviction, and incarceration are small and the rewards or delights in criminality are ample. But we do not care because it is far more important to advance the narrative that particular groups are victims, and others, deductive victimizers. And only the government can apply the power and morality to punish and reward accordingly. If it is a choice between reducing some 700 shooting deaths of blacks in Chicago by increasing the police presence to protect inner-city residents, and thereby losing the progressive narrative of an epidemic of out-of-control racist rogue cops, then inner-city violence is a tolerable price. Our Progressive GuardiansProgressivism is also at its basic level elitist. Sweeping reengineering of society, micromanagement of millions of lives, and elimination of individual pathologies require exemptions. For example, crusaders such as John Kerry and Al Gore have offered a valuable window into the progressive heart and mind.  Kerry reminded us that he often leaves a huge carbon footprint from his wife’s private jet. Indeed, he jets to get a climate change award since such gas-guzzling travel was “the only choice for someone like me” who had to travel the world quickly and in comfort “to win the battle.” This was the progressive bookend argument to his earlier advocacy for higher taxes, as he moved his luxury yacht from its Massachusetts dock to one in low-tax Rhode Island to save nearly $500,000.  Al Gore once trumped even Kerry’s progressive exemptions in a twofer of rushing to sell his failed cable TV company to carbon-rich, oil-exporting Qatar’s Al Jazeera—in hopes of avoiding projected rises in capital gains taxes. As Platonic Guardians, progressives must have the time, the resources, and the multifarious exemptions to plan and care for the rest of us.  Think for a minute. In the cases above, if illegal aliens now crossing the Rio Grande proved to be more right-wing than Cubans, the border would be closed tomorrow. If criminals focused their efforts on Presidio Heights, Malibu, Martha’s Vineyard, or Newport, Rhode Island, there would be progressive outcries to fund more police. If transgendering muscular “female” teenage athletes demanded the use of women’s gym showers and restrooms in the nation’s top prep schools, progressives would likely recalibrate their new theories of trisexuality.  The new progressivism is not the old Democratic Party or even 1960s liberalism. It is a cruel creed, a faith-based ideology that allows no apostasies. Progressivism envisions humanity as a marbleized abstraction, not incarnate humans. If need be, it will alter language, change names, cancel people, erase events, and destroy elements of existing civilization. It stereotypes both adherents and opponents as either useful or disposable. And the carnage it wreaks on the masses is always acceptable damage for these terrifying visions of the anointed.

The Cruel Progressive Creed Undoing Civilization  The Left’s progressive wasteland is an acceptable price to pay for the terrifying visions of its anointed. By: Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness June 27, 2021 (emphasis added) Hat Tip: Rip McIntosh Debt is suffocating us. Our currency is on its way to being Lebanonized.  Most major American cities are broke, dirty, unsafe, and run by either corrupt incumbents, neo-Marxists, or both. The law is optional and applied asymmetrically on the basis of race and ideology. The past is found guilty by the laws of the present and so it is being undone. The military budget is on a trajectory to be the smallest in terms of GDP allotment since World War II; its careerist officers, for their own short-term interests, are now demonizing and will soon be driving away the very demographic that has suffered percentage-wise the greatest casualties in recent wars and was once unquestionably the foundation of the military.  There is no U.S. border; it is an abstract construct that millions will illegally cross in the next few years, ostensibly because they will become future soldiers in the progressive wars for America to come.  The idea of merit that built America is a dirty word, replaced by medieval tribalism of hiring and promotion by superficial appearance.  In just five months, Joe Biden created a desert and called it progress. Progressivism is billed as many things. But its foundational brand is devotion to supposedly “scientific” principles to improve the human condition. That Enlightenment project demands greater social welfare expenditure and therapeutic education to “improve” human nature itself. And all this can sometimes require necessary force. Such utopian dreams of mandated equity attract all sorts to the cause. There are the naïve who feel socialist redistribution, if at last done right just this once, can really, really create social equity and inclusion. Many of the sympathetic rich assume they will be exempt from the tough medicine that follows from their own guilt or sense of civic duty. Some are opportunistic and parasitical careerists piggy-backing on the chaos. Others are social and psychological zealots who find meaning and relevance as wannabe soldiers marching to utopia. But inherent in such 20th-century hubris is the concession that there will be lots of collateral damage in reordering society. When imposing abstract, but uncompromising theories onto the otherwise unenlightened people, eggs will have to be broken to bake the new omelet. And, from what we have seen in the last few months, the progressive toll is becoming every bit as excruciating as our woke custodians are indifferent to it.  As a general rule, anytime anyone anywhere announces that he has a master plan to reorder society and “fundamentally transform” or “reset” it by creating larger government, more rules, and an elite hierarchy to oversee compliance for the recalcitrant, then run. You can rest assured ultimately the architect will change the language, demonize and marginalize new opponents, given the omelet always needs more eggs. They will subvert institutions, and, if need be, resort to violence to ensure change. The Progressive ScorecardTake the border. Human nature over the eons has assumed the world functions according to deterrence. People make choices, good and bad, based on their own cost-to-benefit analyses. In other words, they balance incentives against disincentives about whether to enter the United States illegally or stay home. Perhaps nearly 2 million illegal aliens will cross the border over this calendar year. Most would never have attempted to do so last summer.  Why? Because after January 20, 2021, they believed the border was open. Now, meeting a border security guard ensures no detention, much less deportation.  Now arrivals assume a fast track to permanent residence as “political refugees” and a future of government subsidy and alleviation of the miseries of life south of the border.  So they rightly believe the risks of illegal entry are far fewer than the rewards of being not just American residents, but protected by a new progressive paternalism that finds advantage in illegal immigration. Progressives believe, at least in theory, that breaking federal law to usher in millions of poor into the United States reveals to us their own morally superior commitment to improving the lot of mankind. Cynics counter that progressives wish to import not so much people as constituents and voters, to turn more red counties and states blue.  Who worries much about the ensuing collateral damage: squalid conditions in border halfway stations, cartel predation on the vulnerable, the overtaxing of social welfare services at the expense of American poor, greater rates of crime and gang violence, the diminution in entry-level wages, and less integration and assimilation of newcomers who come en masse? The crude ideology applies to current spiraling crime—the direct result of progressive rhetoric, policies, and political agendas. It is not that the Left wants violence in the streets, only that it is a small price to pay to implement never-let-a-crisis-go-to waste ideas that normally would have no support.  Progressives obsess over stop-and-frisk, supposedly inordinate incarceration and racially asymmetrical arrests, but they have little concern for keeping the streets safe for the young, the elderly, the weak, the inner-city poor, and the vulnerable from the attacks of history’s archetypical predator, the unbound young male between 15 and 40.  So naturally, crime spikes throughout the country, given deterrence is lost. Criminals prove far better students of human nature than do the professors, lawyers, and politicians. Who would have thought the criminally minded would interpret state laxity as the timidity of a bankrupt establishment to be exploited rather than reciprocated?  Given that progressivism is the cachet of the rich, the secure, and the influential, rarely does the damage of implementing progressivism law enforcement befall its exempt architects.  Translated in the real world, the progressive mind fixates on the lone suspect shot in a police confrontation, the rare white-on-black crime, and almost any anomaly that “proves” the deductive idea of the perennially victimized. It cannot tolerate news or video accounts of the violence in Chicago, now-routine theft in San Francisco, or the street executions in New York. So such norms are simply cut out of the narrative.  Last week in Portland, Antifa, and Black Lives Matter were poised to protest and riot over the police shooting of a supposed “victim” of color—only to dissipate when the victim was announced to be white and the shooter a black officer. The media covers a white policeman shooting an unarmed black suspect as a teachable moment of systemic racism, but smothers the story of an officer of “unknown”race who shot and killed unarmed Ashli Babbitt attempting to climb through a window inside the Capitol Building—and shows its own racist proclivities. Again, the correct revolutionary narrative matters, not the facts or details, in the manner humanity must be saved even if the truth—and some humans—are sacrificed. Transgendered sports are another example of the callousness of progressivism in all its glory. It believes “science” has rendered passé biological sexual differences between male and female.  The Left then trumpets its liberation of the transgendered by popularizing a new third sex, as mothers become “birthing people” and men need not have male genitalia. But in the concrete, progressivism cares little that transgenderism is utterly destroying women’s sports. Those born biologically male compete with innately physical advantages over biological females in size, stature, and strength.  But then who cares about women athletes anyway? Why are not women transitioning to males not also competing successfully, if at all, with men? Again, the aspirations of millions of young female athletes are a tiny charge to pay for the larger transformation, liberation, and equitization of sexuality itself. Racism can be defined as the ancient and eternal pathology of assessing and stereotyping humans in all manner of human life as inferior. The entire pathology fixates on superficial collective appearances rather than unique individual character, talent, and achievement. By that definition, the new wokeism is again racist to the core. The BLM brain trust rails about innately pernicious “whiteness,” and the pathologies that all “whites” share, and the universal need for all “whites” to become “reprogrammed” and “reeducated.”  Yet racism and igniting tribal wars are small progressive prices to pay for achieving an equity society characterized by an engineered equality of result in all spheres of life and insured by the government. Why worry about individual lives ruined by racial preferences and institutionalized prejudices?  We know that those with COVID-19 antibodies usually have nearly as much or the same immunity as those vaccinated. We know also that those previously infected may run a somewhat greater risk of side effects from vaccinations than those uninfected. And we know that those under 15 may run even more risks from vaccinations than they would be coming down with a case of COVID-19 infection.  Yet progressive science will tell us all that is not true or at least of no interest given the need to vaccinate all 330 million Americans—or else and until the progressive narrative changes for the greater good as it did with Dr. Fauci and his changing “science” of masks.  Once progressive science decides what constitutes herd immunity—defined by one of Dr. Fauci’s noble lies of 60, 70, 80, or 90 percent protection with antibodies—then whatever means necessary to achieve the collective good are justified. That can entail everything from vaccinating the very young and the previously infected to misleading the public that white deplorables rank as the most dangerous to us all by their disproportionate resistance to vaccination, or ignoring quarantine violations by large numbers of the right sort of protestors.  Meanwhile, progressivism’s noble lies assure us that most minorities, who on average actually have fewer vaccinations per capita than do whites and Asians, are not as culpable as working-class whites who are demonized for resisting vaccination. Instead, minorities have no free will and are “underserved” and “marginalized” as they understandably balk at vaccination due to “historic and legitimate suspicions” or “fear of deportation—and the prior 2020 castigations of the vaccinations by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, as well as “experts” warning that being vaxxed still means masks and quarantines, will not really go away. We know that defunding the police erodes deterrence, encouraging criminals to believe in a cost-to-benefit gamble that the chances of arrest, indictment, conviction, and incarceration are small and the rewards or delights in criminality are ample. But we do not care because it is far more important to advance the narrative that particular groups are victims, and others, deductive victimizers. And only the government can apply the power and morality to punish and reward accordingly. If it is a choice between reducing some 700 shooting deaths of blacks in Chicago by increasing the police presence to protect inner-city residents, and thereby losing the progressive narrative of an epidemic of out-of-control racist rogue cops, then inner-city violence is a tolerable price. Our Progressive GuardiansProgressivism is also at its basic level elitist. Sweeping reengineering of society, micromanagement of millions of lives, and elimination of individual pathologies require exemptions. For example, crusaders such as John Kerry and Al Gore have offered a valuable window into the progressive heart and mind.  Kerry reminded us that he often leaves a huge carbon footprint from his wife’s private jet. Indeed, he jets to get a climate change award since such gas-guzzling travel was “the only choice for someone like me” who had to travel the world quickly and in comfort “to win the battle.” This was the progressive bookend argument to his earlier advocacy for higher taxes, as he moved his luxury yacht from its Massachusetts dock to one in low-tax Rhode Island to save nearly $500,000.  Al Gore once trumped even Kerry’s progressive exemptions in a twofer of rushing to sell his failed cable TV company to carbon-rich, oil-exporting Qatar’s Al Jazeera—in hopes of avoiding projected rises in capital gains taxes. As Platonic Guardians, progressives must have the time, the resources, and the multifarious exemptions to plan and care for the rest of us.  Think for a minute. In the cases above, if illegal aliens now crossing the Rio Grande proved to be more right-wing than Cubans, the border would be closed tomorrow. If criminals focused their efforts on Presidio Heights, Malibu, Martha’s Vineyard, or Newport, Rhode Island, there would be progressive outcries to fund more police. If transgendering muscular “female” teenage athletes demanded the use of women’s gym showers and restrooms in the nation’s top prep schools, progressives would likely recalibrate their new theories of trisexuality.  The new progressivism is not the old Democratic Party or even 1960s liberalism. It is a cruel creed, a faith-based ideology that allows no apostasies. Progressivism envisions humanity as a marbleized abstraction, not incarnate humans. If need be, it will alter language, change names, cancel people, erase events, and destroy elements of existing civilization. It stereotypes both adherents and opponents as either useful or disposable. And the carnage it wreaks on the masses is always acceptable damage for these terrifying visions of the anointed.

Trump Wins: Federal Judge Tosses Most Of BLM’s Claims Against President, Bill Barr, US Officials Over Lafayette Park Incident 

By Emily Zanotti June 23, 2021 | Image Source: Daily Wire

On Tuesday, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., dismissed a number of claims leveled at former President Donald Trump, former Attorney General William Barr, and other U.S. government and Washington, D.C., officials over what Black Lives Matter and the American Civil Liberties Union claimed was an unnecessary show of force in Lafayette Square, across from the White House, last year.

The Washington Post reported that the plaintiffs, including BLM and the ACLU, claimed that “the government used unnecessary force to enable a photo op of President Donald Trump holding a Bible outside of the historical St. John’s Church.”

“U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich of Washington called allegations that federal officials conspired to make way for the photo too speculative,” the outlet continued.

The judge also said that Barr and then-Park Police chief Gregory T. Monahan were acting within the scope of their duties and, as such, are immune from civil suits. She later added that the Black Lives Matter organization did not have standing to sue because it could not prove that it was directly harmed by the president’s walkabout or an earlier decision by Park Police to push protesters further from the White House.

Donald Trump Scrambles as New Details EmergeIs This The End Of Donald Trump?Continue Reading 38,900

The claims, the judge said, relied on “conclusory allegations” that “Trump, Barr and then-Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper directed a conspiracy to violate the civil rights of demonstrators just before the park was cleared.”

“Friedrich acknowledged claims that Trump tweeted threats and encouragement of violence against protesters, and ordered Barr take charge of the situation before Barr mobilized law enforcement and appeared at the square just before it was cleared,” The Washington Post reported. “The judge also said the square was cleared right before Trump, Barr, and Esper’s walk to the church. But these events weren’t enough to allow conspiracy claims to go forward without further, specific factual allegations, Friedrich wrote.”

She also refused, Politico added, to grant protesters an injunction against further action on the part of the federal government — a request that could, essentially, allow them to avoid arrest.

“The plaintiffs’ claims of impending future harm are too speculative to confer standing to seek an injunction,” the judge noted.

In their suit, BLM and the ACLU claimed that Park Police “officers attacked and improperly dispersed the protesters—they did not restrain them or attempt to seize them in place…,” but the judge responded that “quite the opposite was true—the officers attempted to cause the protestors and fleeing crowd to leave their location, rather than cause them to remain there.”

The Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of the Interior found, earlier this month, that a decision was made to expand the perimeter in Lafayette Square and press protesters back before President Trump decided to take a walkabout, traveling from the White House across the square to St. Paul’s Church, which sustained some fire damage in earlier aggressive protests. Park Police, the report notes, were, in some cases, surprised that to see the president.

“The evidence we obtained did not support a finding that the [United States Park Police] cleared the park to allow the president to survey the damage and walk to St. John’s Church. Instead, the evidence we reviewed showed that the USPP cleared the park to allow the contractor to safely install the antiscale fencing in response to the destruction of property and injury to officers occurring on May 30 and 31,” the Inspector General’s report read.

The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member. 

Author: Emily Zanotti

Source: Daily Wire: Trump Wins: Federal Judge Tosses Most Of BLM’s Claims Against President, Bill Barr, U.S. Officials Over Lafayette Park Incident

Trump Wins: Federal Judge Tosses Most Of BLM’s Claims Against President, Bill Barr, US Officials Over Lafayette Park Incident 

By Emily Zanotti June 23, 2021 | Image Source: Daily Wire

On Tuesday, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., dismissed a number of claims leveled at former President Donald Trump, former Attorney General William Barr, and other U.S. government and Washington, D.C., officials over what Black Lives Matter and the American Civil Liberties Union claimed was an unnecessary show of force in Lafayette Square, across from the White House, last year.

The Washington Post reported that the plaintiffs, including BLM and the ACLU, claimed that “the government used unnecessary force to enable a photo op of President Donald Trump holding a Bible outside of the historical St. John’s Church.”

“U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich of Washington called allegations that federal officials conspired to make way for the photo too speculative,” the outlet continued.

The judge also said that Barr and then-Park Police chief Gregory T. Monahan were acting within the scope of their duties and, as such, are immune from civil suits. She later added that the Black Lives Matter organization did not have standing to sue because it could not prove that it was directly harmed by the president’s walkabout or an earlier decision by Park Police to push protesters further from the White House.

Donald Trump Scrambles as New Details EmergeIs This The End Of Donald Trump?Continue Reading 38,900

The claims, the judge said, relied on “conclusory allegations” that “Trump, Barr and then-Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper directed a conspiracy to violate the civil rights of demonstrators just before the park was cleared.”

“Friedrich acknowledged claims that Trump tweeted threats and encouragement of violence against protesters, and ordered Barr take charge of the situation before Barr mobilized law enforcement and appeared at the square just before it was cleared,” The Washington Post reported. “The judge also said the square was cleared right before Trump, Barr, and Esper’s walk to the church. But these events weren’t enough to allow conspiracy claims to go forward without further, specific factual allegations, Friedrich wrote.”

She also refused, Politico added, to grant protesters an injunction against further action on the part of the federal government — a request that could, essentially, allow them to avoid arrest.

“The plaintiffs’ claims of impending future harm are too speculative to confer standing to seek an injunction,” the judge noted.

In their suit, BLM and the ACLU claimed that Park Police “officers attacked and improperly dispersed the protesters—they did not restrain them or attempt to seize them in place…,” but the judge responded that “quite the opposite was true—the officers attempted to cause the protestors and fleeing crowd to leave their location, rather than cause them to remain there.”

The Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of the Interior found, earlier this month, that a decision was made to expand the perimeter in Lafayette Square and press protesters back before President Trump decided to take a walkabout, traveling from the White House across the square to St. Paul’s Church, which sustained some fire damage in earlier aggressive protests. Park Police, the report notes, were, in some cases, surprised that to see the president.

“The evidence we obtained did not support a finding that the [United States Park Police] cleared the park to allow the president to survey the damage and walk to St. John’s Church. Instead, the evidence we reviewed showed that the USPP cleared the park to allow the contractor to safely install the antiscale fencing in response to the destruction of property and injury to officers occurring on May 30 and 31,” the Inspector General’s report read.

The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member. 

Author: Emily Zanotti

Source: Daily Wire: Trump Wins: Federal Judge Tosses Most Of BLM’s Claims Against President, Bill Barr, U.S. Officials Over Lafayette Park Incident

The Fear of and Reverence for the “Hoop Snake”Part Two:  By: Victor Davis Hanson Victor Davis Hanson // Private Papers June 25, 2021  Hat Tip: Rip McIntosh For the next week after that warning about hoop snakes on the prowl as veritable animal unicyclists, I looked hourly for hoop snakes—shovel in hand—but never found a single one or even their bike-tire like trails. Yet Joe Caron said he had grown up on the reservation and saw them hooping in packs a lot. (I have a confession to make: Until 21, I remember this childhood incident as just folk ignorance—or maybe a wild pun on us? But one day in graduate school while reading about the Gnostics, I came across the ouroboros or “mouth biter,” a mythical Greek snake creature (borrowed from the Egyptians) that alchemists and Gnostic philosophers adopted as iconic, likely because of its transcendent “circle of life” message of the tail ending at and consumed by the head, or a reminder of death and rebirth. And I silently apologized to the long-dead Joe the moment I saw that his mythologies were one with the ancients). So, Joe taught me a lot of things, although he rarely said more than a few phrases at a time—and that made his advice all the more listened to. “Wear long sleeves, boys, in the heat. It will cool you down when you think it makes you hotter.”And “Wear a scarf for the sweat. You never know when you need it.” Once he got the mail as we worked the vineyard near his mailbox, and he put the letters inside his hat and continued down the row without a thought. As I wrote, we had another worker from the Azores, a master tractor driver and mechanic who lived next to us too, Carlos Silva. Carlos went often on a mean drunk. As a philosopher of sorts, he was occasionally cruel in his assessments. And every time I saw Carlos, I said to him “Well, Joe said.” And he would belly laugh and would say, “Well, Joe’s a simple, stupid man, a fool that Joe Caron is.”  And he chuckled at the effect of his slanders of our hero Joe. Snitch that I was, I would always tell my grandfather on Carlos. But he’d say only, “Well, Carlos’s a master tractor driver and he can take apart the old Oliver tractor blindfolded. And Joe’s a saint but can’t do that. So, they’re different, just different.” Joe warned us about eagles and even hawks that snatch people (as I wrote earlier of our childhood fears). He warned me not to enter the eucalyptus wilds nearby (as I wrote as well), and said, “If you ever get lost in there, yell out and I’ll hear you from home.” Joe told me of contests under the vines between black widows and mud daubers. I told him black widows were the most dangerous things in the world and would kill us all with one brief bite (we saw dozens as we picked each row). And I remember he said, “Well, listen, Mr. Vic. A good blue mud wasp will kill ‘em every time. They just drag them widows into their mud holes on the stumps. Pile-em in. When they’re done eating them up, just a bunch of legs, all’s left.”After that on Joe’s advice, I never smashed another mud dauber but did open up their mud holes looking for spider legs. His uniform was khaki pants, khaki long sleeve shirt, straw hat, a blue or red scarf around his neck, and ankle-high thick leather boots. As I grew older, Joe slowed down and we got stronger. So, then he trailed rather than led us down the row. When I told my mom about working with Joe, she seemed somehow redeemed about the occasional putdowns from college friends that she had graduated from Stanford law school and yet gone right back into genteel poverty in a tiny house with three kids and my dad. I think what she saw on the coast had worried her, and she wanted us to grow up as she had, not just with empathy for, but with friendship as equals with, the hard men of the earth. I think it was in my last year in high school, the county came out, inspected Joe’s house, declared it “substandard” and then told my grandfather to move Joe and his elderly and infirm wife out. Joe had lived there rent-free as part of the job. We later remodeled it, and my dad lived there until he died.  Odd thing is that Joe’s house was far better than the current ramshackle trailers, the tents, and the shacks that in the dozens mark the same avenue today. These shacks are mostly rented to illegal aliens, who, along with their landlords, are strangely exempt from the sort of rules and regulations that 50 years ago shut down Joe’s house. Ah, progress!  Anytime, I have faced real adversity, I think I can somehow get through because at 5, 6, and onto 16, I worked with Joe Caron and thought him a model, and even learned to take the good in men like Carlos Silva and ignore the bad.  The 1950s and 1960s are now fading shadows of memories, or as Hesiod would say, thoughts only of “work on work on top of work” from sunrise to sunset. My grandfather would say “Meet Joe with your weed shovels in the old vineyard between the ponds at 7 AM.” We would lag out at 7:30 and Joe was already covered with sweat from starting at 6 AM. He’d say only with a smile, “Now with you boys out here, we will get done before the heat and then we can all house up in the afternoon.” I can remember his smile that day. He was missing two teeth on one side and three on the bottom. I still think we were blessed that my mother and grandfather made sure we were raised amid the likes of Joe Caron, Carlos Silva, and the childhood gardens of hoop-snakes and the epic fights between black widows and mud daubers that all taught me in so many strange ways that it was what a man, any man of any color or of age or of education, could do, and not what he said or others said or thought he could do, that mattered.  And we came to see later on that Joe Caron alone, with nothing but his ethos, was a saint, and so many others we met along the way with everything but an ethos were sinners.

Survivor Of Mao’s China Stuns School Board With Chilling Warning About Critical Race Theory

By Hank Berrien

June 25, 2021

Hat Tip: Rip McIntosh

 A Chinese woman who suffered under the brutal Communist Chinese regime of Mao Tse-Tung vehemently denounced Loudoun County’s School board in Virginia for its championing of Critical Race Theory, charging, “All of this seems very familiar … the only difference is they used class instead of race. … This is, indeed, the American version of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.”
Given one minute to speak, the Chinese woman wasted no time getting to the point, asserting, “I’ve been very alarmed by what’s going on in our schools. You are now training our children to be social justice warriors and to loathe our country and our history.Growing up in Mao’s China, all of this seems very familiar. The Communist regime used the same critical theory to divide people; the only difference is they used class instead of race.”
“During the Cultural Revolution, I witnessed students and teachers turn against each other,” she recalled. “We changed school names to be politically correct. We were taught to denounce our heritage. The Red Guards destroyed anything that was not Communist: old statues, books, and anything else.”
She pointed out that in China during the Cultural Revolution, students were also encouraged to report on each other: “We were also encouraged to report on each other, just like the Student Equity Ambassador program and the Bias Reporting System.”
She concluded, “This is, indeed, the American version of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The Critical Race Theory has its roots in cultural Marxism. It should have no place in our schools.”

The American TFP > Catholic Perspective > For Pope Francis, the Holy Eucharist Is the “Bread of Sinners,” for Saint Thomas Aquinas, It Is “Panis Angelorum”

For Pope Francis, the Holy Eucharist Is the “Bread of Sinners,” for Saint Thomas Aquinas, It Is “Panis Angelorum”

June 23, 2021 | Luiz Sérgio Solimeo 

For Pope Francis, the Holy Eucharist Is the “Bread of Sinners,” for Saint Thomas Aquinas, It Is “Panis Angelorum”

Corpus Christi is the grand and solemn liturgical feast in praise of the Blessed Sacrament. Inspired by Saint Juliana of Mont Cornillon (1193–1258), it originated in the Middle Ages. Pope Urban IV approved it with the Bull Transiturus of September 8, 1264, and asked Saint Thomas Aquinas to compose its liturgical office.

Hence, we owe to Saint Thomas’s theological genius (he was also an inspired poet) the beautiful hymn Lauda Sion, that is part of the new feast’s Mass. In its verses, we find the beautiful expression “Ecce panis angelorum” (behold the Bread of angels), which came to be used frequently to designate Holy Communion. That is easy to understand because one can receive it only in the state of grace, which renders men similar to angels.

On the Feast of Corpus Christi, Pope Francis Turns the “Bread of Angels” Into “Bread of Sinners”

Pope Francis took advantage of the commemoration of the Feast of Corpus Christi on June 6 to change the meaning of the Sacrament of the Eucharist into one entirely contrary to the Church’s perennial teaching. Thus, changing the poetic but theologically safe formulation of Saint Thomas, he transforms the designation “Bread of Angels” into “Bread of sinners.”

As he had done on another occasion,¹ at the Angelus on that feast day, Pope Francis presented Judas, the traitor, as an example of divine mercy. He said that, at the Holy Supper, Jesus knew of Judas’s betrayal. And “what does Jesus do? He reacts to the evil with a greater good. He responds to Judas’s ‘no’ with the ‘yes’ of mercy. He does not punish the sinner but rather gives His life for him.”²

Pope Francis adds, “When we receive the Eucharist, Jesus does the same with us: he knows us; he knows we are sinners; and he knows we make many mistakes, but he does not give up on joining his life to ours.”

Concluding his thought, he says that Jesus “knows that we need it, because the Eucharist is not the reward of saints, no, it is the Bread of sinners. This is why he exhorts us: ‘Do not be afraid! Take and eat.’”

A Doctrine Contrary to the Council of Trent

The above words and the example of Judas when designating the Eucharist as “bread of sinners” make one wonder if Pope Francis suggests that the proper effect of Holy Communion is to forgive mortal sins, not just venial ones. That would run counter the Council of Trent: “Can. 5. If anyone says that the special fruit of the Most Holy Eucharist is the remission of sins, or that from it no other fruits are produced: let him be anathema.”³

Another error equally opposed to that Council and the Scriptures, and seemingly insinuated in Pope Francis’s words, is that being in the state of grace is not required to receive Holy Communion. However, quoting Saint Paul, the Council of Trent says:

[A]ssuredly, the more the holiness and divinity of this heavenly sacrament are understood by a Christian, the more diligently ought he to give heed that he approaches not to receive it but with great reverence and holiness, especially as we read in the Apostle those words full of terror: He that eat and drink unworthily, eat and drink judgment to himself (1 Cor. 11:29). Wherefore, he who would communicate ought to recall to mind the precept of the Apostle: Let a man prove himself.⁴

The moralists Antonio Lanza and Pietro Palazzini explain, “[by] divine right, all who are in mortal sin cannot licitly approach Communion.”⁵

Effects of the Sacrament of the Eucharist

These moral theologians summarize the effects of Eucharistic Communion as follows: “The specific effects of Holy Communion are: a) uniting us with Jesus Christ and His Mystical Body, the Church, in a more intimate way; b) increasing sanctifying grace in us; c) nurturing and fortify our spiritual life; d) weakening concupiscence; e) giving us a sign of eternal life. The effects will be all the more abundant the better are the dispositions [with which one receives It].”⁶

Holy Communion can indirectly erase a mortal sin when a person, unaware that he is in sin, receives Communion piously. In these cases, “theologians incline to the opinion, that in such exceptional cases the Holy Eucharist can restore the soul to the state of grace.”⁷

Communion in Amoris Laetitia

Given Pope Francis’s new designation of the Holy Eucharist as the “bread of sinners,” one understands better why, in his Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, he opened in a footnote the possibility for people living in adultery to receive Holy Communion.⁸

In that Apostolic Exhortation, he says that a person can be in an “objective situation of sin” but still “living in God’s grace, can love and can also grow in the life of grace and charity, while receiving the Church’s help to this end.” In a note, he states, “In certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments” because the Holy Eucharist “is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.”⁹

Learn All About the Prophecies of Our Lady of Good Success About Our Times

The bishops of the Buenos Aires Pastoral Region made entirely clear what Amoris Laetitia said confusingly. They say that in certain cases when the first marriage cannot be the object of annulment, “Amoris Laetitia opens the possibility of access to the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist (see notes 336 & 351). In turn, these dispose the person to continue maturing and growing with the power of grace.”¹⁰

In his response to these bishops, Pope Francis praises their pronouncement and adds, “The writing is very good and makes fully explicit the meaning of chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia. There are no other interpretations.”¹¹

Pope Francis thus deems authentic the interpretation of the Argentine bishops, according to which married couples in adultery can receive sacramental absolution and Communion without abandoning their sinful situation. This is perfectly consistent with seeing the Holy Eucharist as the “bread of sinners.”

It is good to add that, according to the traditional doctrine sanctioned at the Council of Trent, a confession made without repentance and the firm purpose of abandoning sin is invalid and a profanation of the sacrament.¹²

Unanswered Dubia

On September 19, 2016, four cardinals of Holy Church—Carlo Caffarra, Joachim Meisner (both deceased), Raymond Burke, and Walter Brandmüller—addressed to Pope Francis a request for clarification in the form of dubia (doubts) on the new doctrines contained in Amoris Laetitia, especially on the Holy Eucharist and the Sacrament of Penance. They wrote:

It is asked whether, following the affirmations of Amoris Laetitia (300-305), it has now become possible to grant absolution in the sacrament of penance and thus to admit to Holy Communion a person who, while bound by a valid marital bond, lives together with a different person more uxoriowithout fulfilling the conditions provided for by Familiaris Consortio, 84, and subsequently reaffirmed by Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, 34, and Sacramentum Caritatis, 29. Can the expression “in certain cases” found in note 351 (305) of the exhortation Amoris Laetitia be applied to divorced persons who are in a new union and who continue to live more uxorio [as husband and wife]?¹³

To this day, almost five years later, Pope Francis has not responded to the dubia. His silence in this regard is now public and notorious throughout the Catholic world.

The following year, on July 16, 2017, a group of Catholic theologians and intellectuals published a document titled Correctio filialis de haeresibus propagatis. They showed the same concern as the cardinals. They wrote forcefully, “Several passages of Amoris Laetitia, in conjunction with acts, words, and omissions of Your Holiness, serve to propagate seven heretical propositions.”¹⁴

The Sacrament and Repentant Sinners

Is it not a blasphemy to call the Holy Eucharist “bread of sinners”? The sacraments bestow grace on those who receive them worthily. None of them can be given to an adult who is not in a condition to receive them. Even for Penance or Confession (currently called the Sacrament of Reconciliation), to produce its effects of restoring a sinner to the state of grace, he needs to seriously confess his sins with perfect or at least imperfect repentance (attrition) and a firm resolve to abandon sin.

According to Lanza-Palazzini, “Whoever consciously receives the Sacrament without the proper dispositions, commits a serious sin of sacrilege because it renders useless the rite that Christ instituted as an effective sign of grace.” They conclude: “The profanation of a very holy thing is a grave insult against the Divine Founder. Concretely, the state of grace is required to receive the Sacraments of the living;¹⁵ if that is missing, sacrilege is committed.”¹⁶

Abortion and Eucharist

Objectively, in the external forum, it is quite evident that not only those who procure and those who perform an abortion are in a state of sin. The legislators or judges who turn pro-abortion measures into law are as well. They commit at least the sin of scandal by denying, in practice, a doctrine always taught by the Church and based on natural law.

Angels’ Adoration of the Holy Eucharist, cupola fresco by Giuseppe Rollini (1889-1891) in the Basilica of Mary Help of Christians, Turin, Italy.
Photo Credit: © Renáta Sedmáková – stock.adobe.com

Pope Francis’s singular teaching that the Holy Eucharist, the “Bread of Angels,” is the “bread of sinners” has serious practical consequences. No one can deny that he is at least silent on this matter regarding the dubia. Furthermore, instead of supporting courageous bishops who take Catholic doctrine seriously and publicly state how allowing such politicians to receive Holy Communion is incompatible with Catholic doctrine, Pope Francis consistently favors concessive prelates.

Ecce Panis Angelorum

Let us close with the verses of Saint Thomas Aquinas recited in the Sequence of the Mass of the Feast of Corpus Christi:

Behold the Bread of Angels,

For us pilgrims food, and token

Of the promise by Christ spoken,

Children’s meat, to dogs denied.

Shewn in Isaac’s dedication,

In the manna’s preparation:

In the Paschal immolation,

In old types pre-signified.

Jesu, shepherd of the sheep:

Thou thy flock in safety keep,

Living bread, thy life supply:

Strengthen us, or else we die,

Fill us with celestial grace.

Thou, who feeds us below:

Source of all we have or know:

Grant that with Thy Saints above,

Sitting at the feast of love,

We may see Thee face to face.

Amen. Alleluia.

THE CATHOLIC MONITOR

SEARCH

Can Francis “Conservative” Collaborators be “Proximate to Heresy” & can Popes be Heretics?

June 25, 2021

– “[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… But he cannot err when he is in cathedra, that is, when he intends to make an instruction and decree for the guidance of the whole Church, when he means to confirm his brethren as supreme pastor, and to conduct them into the pastures of the faith.”
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306, 307 and https://wherepeteris.com/st-francis-de-sales-on-the-pope-as-the-guarantor-of-orthodoxy-and-unity-in-the-church/)

 – [Francis’s] Fratelli Tutti is a bizarre doc, e.g., “We clearly state” is not a papal definition. “Tutti”, Amoris Laetitia, Abu Dhabi, etc., will be burned by a future pope/council. I hope Pell’s return might put some steel in the spines of Burke, Schneider, et al. Call an imperfect council! – Steven O’Reilly [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/10/bizarre-francis-fratelli-tutti-steven.html and https://twitter.com/S_OReilly_USA%5D

– Lewis is a Mottramist. He has repeatedly explained that if the current Pope says not-A, while all previous popes have said A, then the current pope is right. And those who say he is wrong are haters. –  Fr. VF[https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/07/vatican-i-expert-fr-rippinger-proximate.html] 

This year, Where Peter Is Mike Lewis and his so-called “conservative” Catholic Francis collaborators have continued in their campaign for COVID totalitarian tyranny and in calling Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò a “dissident cleric” which is an approximate term for a “heretic.”  [https://wherepeteris.com/catholic-media-and-critical-thinking/]

Might Fratelli Tutti and Amoris Laetitia promoter Lewis be a “dissident” heretic or at least “proximate to heresy”?

Lewis appears to believe that Francis’s Amoris Laetitia teaching allowing Communion for adulterers is infallible.

Moreover, Lewis who is a Pachamama worship apologist apparently thinks Francis cannot fall into heresy because he is definitely the pope and “ALL” his “statements… are infallible.” 

Here is what Vatican I expert Fr. Chad Ripperger, PhD, in his book “Magisterial Authority” says to Lewis who it appears is “proximate to heresy”:

“[T]reat[ing] ALL papal statements as if they are infallible… is proximate to heresy because it rejects the precise formulation of the conditions of infallibility as laid out in by Vatican I… by essentially saying that the pope is infallible regardless of conditions.”

“… Worse still, those who were to follow a pope who was in error in a non-infallible teaching which is taught contrary to something that is infallible is not, therefore, excused.”
(Magisterial Authority, Pages 5-14)

Is it possible that so-called “conservative” Catholic Francis collaborators could be a heretics and “not, therefore, excused”?

Next question, can popes be heretics?

Here is a short summary of the question from Catholic scholar Michael Davies:   

The problem which would face the Church if a legitimately reigning pope became an heretic has been discussed in numerous standard works of reference. The solution is provided in the 1913 edition of The Catholic Encyclopedia: “The Pope himself, if notoriously guilty of heresy, would cease to be pope because he would cease to be a member of the Church.”(2) Many theologians have discussed the possibility of a pope falling into heresy, and the consensus of their opinion concurs with that of The Catholic Encyclopedia. The Pope must evidently be a Catholic, and if he ceased to be a Catholic he could hardly remain the Vicar of Christ, the head of the Mystical Body. St. Robert Bellarmine taught: “The manifestly heretical pope ceases per se to be pope and head as he ceases per se to be a Christian and member of the Church, and therefore he can be judged and punished by the Church. This is the teaching of all the early Fathers.”(3) Saint Robert was, of course, discussing a theoretical possibility, and believed that a pope could not become an heretic and thus could not be deposed, but he also acknowledged that the more common opinion was that the pope could become an heretic, and he was thus willing to discuss what would need to be done if, per impossible, this should happen: “This opinion (that the Pope could not become an heretic) is probable and easily defended . . . Nonetheless, in view of the fact that this is not certain, and that the common opinion is the opposite one, it is useful to examine the solution to this question, within the hypothesis that the Pope can be an heretic.”(4) The great Jesuit theologian, Francisco de Suarez (1548-1617) was also sure that God’s “sweet providence” would never allow the one who could not teach error to fall into error, and that this was guaranteed by the promise Ego autem rogavi pro te . . . (Luke 22: 32). But, like Bellarmine, Suarez was willing to consider the possibility of an heretical pope as an hypothesis, particularly in view of the fact, he claimed, that several “general councils had admitted the hypothesis in question”.(5) Saint Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787) did not believe that God would ever permit a Roman Pontiff to become a public or an occult heretic, even as a private person: “We ought rightly to presume as Cardinal Bellarmine declares, that God will never let it happen that a Roman Pontiff, even as a private person, becomes a public heretic or an occult heretic.”(6) If, per impossible, a pope became a formal heretic through pertinaciously denying a de fide doctrine, how would the faithful know that he had forfeited his office as he had ceased to be a Catholic? It must be remembered that no one in the Church, including a General Council, has the authority to judge the Popes. Reputable authorities teach that if a pope did pertinaciously deny a truth which must be believed by divine and Catholic faith, after this had been brought to his attention by responsible members of the hierarchy (just as St. Paul reproved St. Peter to his face), a General Council could announce to the Church that the Pope, as a notorious heretic, had ceased to be a Catholic and hence had ceased to be Pope. It is important to note that the Council would neither be judging nor deposing the Pope, since it would not possess the authority for such an act. It would simply be making a declaratory sentence, i.e. declaring to the Church what had already become manifest from the Pope’s own actions. This is the view taken in the classic manual on Canon Law by Father F.X. Wernz, Rector of the Gregorian University and Jesuit General from 1906 to 1914. This work was revised by Father P. Vidal and was last republished in 1952. It states clearly that an heretical Pope is not deposed in virtue of the sentence of the Council, but “the General Council declares the fact of the crime by which the heretical pope has separated himself from the Church and deprived himself of his dignity.”(7) Other authorities believe that such a declaration could come from the College of Cardinals or from a representative group of bishop, while others maintain that such a declaration would not be necessary. What all those who accept the hypothesis of an heretical pope are agreed upon is that for such a pope to forfeit the papacy his heresy would have to be “manifest”, as Saint Robert Bellarmine expressed it, that is notorious and public (notorium et palam divulgata).(8) A notorious offence can be defined as one for which the evidence is so certain that it can in no way be either hidden or excused.(9) A pope who, while not being guilty of formal heresy in the strict sense, has allowed heresy to undermine the Church through compromise, weakness, ambiguous or even gravely imprudent teaching remains Pope, but can be judged by his successors, and condemned as was the case with Honorius I. [https://www.olrl.org/misc/sedevacant_md.shtml]Now, a longer summary:

Here is the answer from a POPE to so-called “conservative” Catholic Francis collaborators and all the Francis apologists who claim that a heretical pope can’t be judged by the Church:

 Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) in “Si Papa”:

“‘Let no mortal being have the audacity to reprimand a Pope on account of faults, for he whose duty it is to judge all men cannot be judged by anybody, unless he should be called to the task of having deviated from the faith. (Si Papa)'”

“Pope Innocent III: ‘For me the faith is so necessary that, whereas for other sins my only judge is God, for the slightest sin in the matter of the faith I could be judged by the Church.’ (propter solum peccatum quod in fide commititur possem ab Ecclesia judican)”
(The Remnant, “Answering a Sedevacantist Critic,” March 18, 2015)

Moreover, the important theologian Dominique Bouix in, Tractatus de papa, ubi et de concilio oecumenico, vol. II , pars IIIa, cap. iii, p. 653ff, responded to the so-called “conservative” Catholic Francis collaborators’ opinion:

It is objected 1°. — This opinion stands contrary to the more common and ancient opinion of the doctors of the school.
It is responded: That is true. But in questions not yet defined and permitted to the free disputation of the schools, it can happen that a more recent and less common opinion is true and ought at length to be recognized as such.
It is objected 2°. — Moreover, it stands contrary to the authority of Innocent III, whose words these are in the third sermon for the anniversary of his consecration: Faith is so necessary to me, that, while I have God for my judge in other sins, I am able to be judged by the Church on account of the sin which is committed against faith (see Sylvius, In IIamIIæ S. Thomæ, tom. III, q. xxxix, art. 3, concl. 2).
It is responded: Indeed, in that text Innocent III supposes that the Roman Pontiff can, as a private person, fall into heresy. But Innocent III spoke thus, following the opinion which was more accepted in his time; nor did he pronounce it as the Pontiff defining the faith; whence it can be said that in this, he erred. But this error of his is not heresy, because this proposition, the Pope cannot become a heretic even privately, even if it be true, is yet not an evident or defined ARTICLE OF FAITH. Therefore the cited dictum of Innocent III indeed favors the opinion which holds that the Pope can become a heretic privately; yet it does not have peremptory force.
It is objected 3°. — The canon Si papa (from the acta of Boniface of Mainz, in Gratian, dist. XL, c. vi) affirms that the Pope is exempt from the jurisdiction of his inferiors, with this exception: Unless he be discovered to have deviated from the faith. And in a similar document of the fifth council under Pope Symmachus it is read: Unless he should deviate from the right faith. Therefore, even in remote antiquity the doctrine held sway undoubted, that the Pope could become a heretic[https://lumenscholasticum.wordpress.com/2019/05/05/bouix-on-the-pope-heretic/] 
It is objected 3°. — The canon Si papa (from the acta of Boniface of Mainz, in Gratian, dist. XL, c. vi) affirms that the Pope is exempt from the jurisdiction of his inferiors, with this exception: Unless he be discovered to have deviated from the faith. And in a similar document of the fifth council under Pope Symmachus it is read: Unless he should deviate from the right faith. Therefore, even in remote antiquity the doctrine held sway undoubted, that the Pope could become a heretic.[https://lumenscholasticum.wordpress.com/2019/05/05/bouix-on-the-pope-heretic/]

Finally, one of the greatest modern theologian Fr. Ioachim Ioachim whom “Msgr. Clifford Fenton in a March 1953 article of the American Ecclesiastical Review [said] ‘holds very much the same position in the theological world of the mid-twentieth century that Cardinal Billot occupied in that of fifty years ago'” appears to disagree with their opinion. In Salaverri’s De Ecclesia Christi, it says:

1056. The doctrine of the Church. The first part is implicitly defined in the Council of Florence’s decree for the Jacobites: D 714. But concerning heretics and apostates, we deduce our teaching also from the formula of faith “Clemens Trinitas”, from can. 23 of the Second Lateran Council, and from the Bull Ineffabilis Deus of Pius IX: D 18 367 1641.

The second part, in which we hold that those excommunicated by perfect excommunication, which the Supreme Pontiff can determine, are separated from the body of the Church, is taught as Catholic doctrine by Pius XII in the encyclical Mystici corporis: AAS 35 (1943) 202ff.
1057. This whole thesis of ours is clearly taught by Pius XII and the Catechism of the Council of Trent.[16]

Pius XII writes: “But in truth, only those are to be numbered amongst the members of the Church who have received the laver of regeneration and profess the true faith, who have not miserably separated themselves from the community of the Church or through most grave crimes been separated by the legitimate authority…For this reason, those who are divided from one another in faith or government are unable to live in the one Body of this sort and in its divine Spirit…Nor should it be thought that the Body of the Church, because it is insigned with the name of Christ, consists, even in this time of terrestrial pilgrimage, only of members outstanding in sanctity, or that it is constituted only of the company of those who are predestined by God to sempiternal felicity…Indeed not every crime, even if a grave wickedness, is of such kind that of its very nature it separates man from the Body of the Church—as do schism, heresy, or apostasy.”

In the Catechism of the Council of Trent we read:

“Only three sorts of men are excluded from the Church: firstly, infidels, then heretics and schismatics, and finally excommunicates: pagans indeed, because they have never been in the Church, nor ever known it, nor been made partakers of any Sacrament in the society of the Christian people; heretics and schismatics, because they have revolted from the Church, for they no more pertain to the Church, than do deserters to the army from which they have defected: yet it must not be denied that they are in the power of the Church, as ones who may be called to judgment by her, punished, and condemned by anathema. Finally also excommunicates, because by the judgment of the Church have they been excluded from her, and do not belong to her communion until they come to their senses. But concerning other men, though they be wicked and criminal, it is not to be doubted that they yet persevere in the Church.”

1058. Dogmatic value. The first part, concerning heretics, apostates, and schismatics, is implicitly defined, particularly in the Council of Florence: D 714. The second part, on excommunicates by perfect excommunication, is Catholic doctrine, especially from the words of the encyclical of Pius XII, Mystici corporis Christi, recently cited by us above.

1059. The first part is proved. Heretics, apostates, and schismatics are not members of the Church… 
        

… For the minor. That formal and manifest heretics, apostates, and schismatics formally and manifestly have severed the essential social bond of the Church’s faith or government, is clear from the notions themselves. Thus they are not of the Church, which is the congregation of the faithful, because schismatics are not congregated and heretics are not faithful.

1060. The same doctrine is confirmed by the authority of testimonies of the holy Fathers.

a) On heretics. Tertullian: “If they are heretics, they cannot be Christians” (R 298). St. Hilary: “I am a Catholic; I do not wish to be a heretic. I am a Christian, not an Arian.” St. Jerome: “Heretics pass judgment upon themselves, receding from the Church of their own will.” St. Augustine: “Sever yourselves from the members of the Church, sever yourselves from its Body. But what still might I say, in order that they might segregate themselves from the Church, since they have already done this? For they are heretics; they are already without.” The controversy on the rebaptizing of heretics, which was agitated thence from the middle of the third century, supposed as recognized by all that heretics are outside of the Church.[17]

b) On schismatics. Cyprian: “But what pertains to the person of Novatian…you know that we in the first place ought not to be inquisitive of what he taught, since he taught from without. Whosoever he is and of whatever condition, he is not a Christian who is not in the Church of Christ…he who neither held fast to fraternal charity nor ecclesiastical unity, has lost even that which he was previously.” St. Jerome: “Between heresy and schism, we think there to be this difference, that heresy imports perverse dogma; schism, on account of episcopal dissension, separates from the Church…moreover, no schism does not fabricate for itself a heresy, so that it might seem to have receded from the Church rightly.” St. Augustine: “Heretics and schismatics call their congregations churches. But heretics, thinking falsely about God, violate the faith itself; but schismatics burst free of fraternal charity through hostile divisions, although they believe those things which we believe. For this reason, heretics do not belong to the Catholic Church, because she loves God, nor schismatics, because she loves the neighbor” (R 1562). St. Fulgentius: “Most firmly hold and doubt not at all, that every one baptized outside of the Catholic Church is unable to become a partaker of eternal life, if before the end of this life he has not returned and been incorporated to the Catholic Church. Most steadily and in no way doubt, that not only all pagans, but also all Jews and all heretics and schismatics, who finish this present life outside of the Catholic Church, are to enter into the eternal fire” (R 2274-5). Pelagius I: “Pollute not a mind ever Catholic by any communion of schismatics. It is clear that the Body of Christ is one, the Church is one…our Savior taught: a vine separated from the grapevine cannot be good for anything, but fire for burning…Do not think that they either are or can be called the Church. And indeed since, as we have said, the Church is one…it is clear that there is no other but that which is founded in the apostolic root.”[18]
[https://lumenscholasticum.wordpress.com/2016/12/05/fr-salaverri-on-whether-heretics-apostates-schismatics-and-excommunicates-are-members-of-the-church/]

Lastly, if Francis is a heretic, what should canonically happen to him?

Did Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI) say that Francis is a heretic?   

On June 3, 2003 the then Cardinal Ratzinger (and future Pope Benedict), head of the Congregation for the Faith, said that the endorsement of  “homosex civil unions” was against Catholic teaching, that is heterodoxy:

“Those who would move from tolerance to the legitimatization of specific rights for cohabiting homosexual persons need to be reminded that the approval or legalization of evil is something far different from the toleration of evil… The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.”
(Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Considerations Regarding Proposals to give Legal Recognition to Unions between Homosexual Persons,” June 3, 2003)

Gloria.tv reported:

“Francis made on October 21 his latest declaration in support of [immoral] homosex civil unions, admitting that he has always stood up for them. This is true.” [https://www.gloria.tv/post/J4jp2BJtWgpv3s8DiS2ThH2dk]

If Francis is a heretic, what should canonically happen to him?

If it is true that Francis is an explicit heretic then the teaching of St. Francis de Sales comes into play. 

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]

The renowned scholar Arnaldo Xavier de Silveira who was one of the top experts in modern times of the subjects of papal validity and heretical popes gave a brief overview of his authority on this matters:

“In the 1970 Brazilian edition of my study of the heretical Pope, in the French edition of 1975 and in the Italian in 2016, I stated that on the grounds of the intrinsic theological reasons underpinning the Fifth Opinion I considered it not merely probable but certain. I chose not to insist on the qualification ‘theologically certain’ for an extrinsic reason, namely, that certain authors of weight do not adopt it.43 This was also the opinion of the then Bishop of Campos, Bishop Antonio de Castro Mayer, as expressed in a letter of 25th January 1974, when he sent my work to Paul VI, asking him to point out any possible errors (which never took place), expressly stating that he referred to the study ‘written by lawyer Arnaldo Vidigal Xavier da Silveira, with the contents of which I associate myself .’”
[https://www.scribd.com/document/374434852/Arnaldo-Vidigal-Xavier-Da-Silveira-Replies-to-Fr-Gleize-on-Heretical-Pope]

Here is what de Silveira says in his book “Implications Of New Missae And Heretic Popes (Page 176)” on the subject of heretical popes:

“Conclusion 

“Resuming: We believe that a careful examination of the question of a Pope heretic, with the 
theological elements of which we dispose today, permits one to conclude that an eventual Pope heretic would lose his charge in the moment in which his heresy became ‘notorious and publicly divulged’.”

“And we think that this sentence is not only intrinsically probable , but certain , since the reasons 
allegeable in its defense appear to us as absolutely cogent. Besides, in the works which we have 
consulted, we have not found any argument which persuaded us of the opposite. “

“(1 ) The second opinion referred by Saint Robert Bellarmine – See pp. 1 56 ft. 

(2) The first subdivision proposed by us to the fifth opinion referred by Saint Robert Bellarmine – See p. 170. 

(3) The second subdivision which we proposed to the fifth opinion – See p. 170. 

(4) The third subdivision which we proposed on the fifth opinion. – See p. 1 70. 

(5) The fourth opinion referred by Saint Robert Bellarmine . – See pp. 161 ff. 

(6) We transcribe that long argumentation on pp. 1 64 ff. – See also note 2 of p. 1 64. 

(7) One ought not to see shades of conciliarism in the principle that ecclesiastical organisms, as the Council, can omit a pronouncement declaring the eventual cessation of functions of a Pope heretic, as long as these organisms do not claim for themselves any right other than that enjoyed by any one of the faithful. For motives of mere convenience or courtesy, it could behoove these organisms to make such a declaration, in the first place; but this priority would not constitute for them a right of their own, or even less exclusive.”[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]

Dr. John R. T. Lamont, philosopher and theologian, explains the procedures of how Francis’s papacy could cease if he is declared a heretical pope by the Church: 

“Some… argue that the dubia and other criticisms of Amoris Laetitia that have been made already suffice as warnings to Pope Francis, and hence that he can now be judged to be guilty of the canonical crime of heresy…”

But for juridical purposes – especially for the very serious purpose of judging a Pope to be a heretic – they do not suffice. The evidence needed for a juridical judgment of such gravity has to take a form that is entirely clear and beyond dispute. A formal warning from a number of members of the College of Cardinals that is then disregarded by the Pope would constitute such evidence.”

“The possibility of a Pope being canonically guilty of heresy has long been admitted in the Church. It is acknowledged in the Decretals of Gratian There is no dispute among Catholic theologians on this point – even among theologians like Bellarmine who do not think that a Pope is in fact capable of being a heretic…”

“It is to be hoped that the correction of Pope Francis does not have to proceed this far, and that he will either reject the heresies he has announced or resign his office…”

“Removing him from office against his will would require the election of a new Pope, and would probably leave the Church with Francis as an anti-Pope contesting the authority of the new Pope. If Francis refuses to renounce either his heresy or his office, however, this situation will just have to be faced.”

To read the whole article click below:

[http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2016/12/article-considerations-on-dubia-of-four.html?m=1]

Finally, unambiguously, Cardinal Burke, in an interview with the World Catholic Report, said that if a pope “formally profess heresy…  he would cease…to be the Pope”: 

Cardinal Burke: If a Pope would formally profess heresy he would cease, by that act, to be the Pope. It’s automatic. And so, that could happen. 

CWR: That could happen. 

Cardinal Burke: Yes. 

CWR: That’s a scary thought. 

Cardinal Burke: It is a scary thought, and I hope we won’t be witnessing that at any time soon. 

CWR: In hindsight, with all of the controversy that has surrounded this, should you have kept these concerns to yourself and just waited for His Holiness to answer your dubia? 

Cardinal Burke: No, not at all, because the faithful and priests and bishops have the right to have these questions answered. It was our duty as cardinals, when the Pope made it clear that he would not respond to them, to make them public so that the priests and the lay faithful who had these same doubts might know that their doubts are legitimate and that they deserve a response. 

CWR: Some consider you to be an enemy of Pope Francis. How do you see yourself in relation to him? 

Cardinal Burke: I am a Cardinal of the Church, and one of the Pope’s principal co-workers. I have absolute respect for the Petrine office. If I didn’t care about him and his exercise of the Petrine office, I would just remain silent and let everything go as it is. But because in conscience I believe he has an obligation to clarify these matters for the Church, I made it known to him, not just on this occasion, but on other occasions. The publication of the dubia was done with complete respect for his office. I am not the enemy of the Pope. 

CWR: Back to this question about the Pope committing heresy. What happens then, if the Pope commits heresy and is no longer Pope? Is there a new conclave? Who’s in charge of the Church? Or do we just not even want to go there to start figuring that stuff out? 

Cardinal Burke: There is already in place the discipline to be followed when the Pope ceases from his office, even as happened when Pope Benedict XVI abdicated his office. The Church continued to be governed in the interim between the effective date of his abdication and the inauguration of the papal ministry of Pope Francis. 

CWR: Who is competent to declare him to be in heresy? 

Cardinal Burke: It would have to be members of the College of Cardinals.[https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2016/12/19/cardinal-burke-no-i-am-not-saying-that-pope-francis-is-in-heresy/]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.  

Biden Executive Order Mandates Divisive, Unscientific Race ‘Training’ At Every Level Of The Federal Government

By: MICHAEL GINSBERG

 Daily Caller

June 26, 2021

Hat Tip: Rip McIntosh

 President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Friday that ensures that every part of the federal government will conduct race-conscious diversity trainings and engage in race-conscious hiring. The executive order “establishes an ambitious, whole-of-government initiative that will take a systematic approach to embedding DEIA [diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility] in Federal hiring and employment practices,” according to a White House fact sheet. In practice, it will ensure that federal agencies employ tenets associated with Critical Race Theory (CRT) within their hiring practices and day-to-day activities. CRT holds that America is fundamentally racist, yet it teaches people to view every social interaction and person in terms of race. Its adherents pursue “antiracism” through the end of merit, objective truth, and the adoption of race-based policies. The executive order directs federal agencies to “develop strategic plans to eliminate any barriers to success faced by under-served employees.” This will be felt through federal hiring, which will prioritize “communities that have historically faced employment discrimination and professional barriers, including people of color, women, first-generation professionals and immigrants, individuals with disabilities, [and] LGBTQ+ individuals.” Other designated groups to be prioritized in hiring include “Americans who live in rural areas, older Americans who face age discrimination when seeking employment, parents, and caregivers who face employment barriers, people of faith who require religious accommodations at work, individuals who were formerly incarcerated, and veterans and military spouses.” Notably, the order requires diversity training like the one conducted by Sandia National Laboratories, a government contractor that helps manage nuclear weapons. During a three-day “White Men’s Caucus,” male employees were required to recite “white privilege” and “male privilege” statements, according to leaked documents reported on by Manhattan Institute fellow Christopher Rufo. Trainers at the caucus told the participants that “white supremacists,” “KKK,” “Aryan Nation,” “MAGA hat,” “privileged” and “mass killings” were all associated with “white male culture.”   Those trainings were later banned by a Trump administration executive order. That executive order was later challenged in court by the NAACP, and Biden revoked it on his first day in office. The Biden administration claims that these trainings “promote respectful and inclusive workplaces and… increase understanding of implicit and unconscious bias.” However, numerous studies have found that the trainings not only fail to achieve their stated aims but actually make race relations worse. Implicit bias trainings have not “been shown to result in permanent, long-term reductions of implicit bias scores or, more importantly, sustained and meaningful changes in behavior,” public health professor Tiffany Green and psychology professor Nao Hagiwara wrote in Scientific American. The value of the Implicit Association Test, which purports to measure implicit biases, is hotly contested by psychologists. “There’s not a single study showing that above and below that cutoff [0.65 on a 2 point scale] people differ in any way based on that score,” Texas A&M University psychology professor Hart Blanton argues. Even worse, diversity trainings like the one the employees of Sandia Labs were required to participate in can actually make race relations worse. Those trainings can generate “increased belief in race essentialism, or the notion that racial group differences are valid, biologically based, and immutable,” three researchers found in a 2018 study. Diversity trainings make participants “more likely to believe that they themselves are being treated unfairly,” three psychologists wrote in 2016 in the Harvard Business Review. (RELATED: ‘Deeply Disturbing’: Sen. Hawley Reacts To Documents Detailing ‘White Men’s Caucus’ Race Training In US Nuclear Facility)

Bp. Gracida: Enjoyed your most recent posting on implications of heresy by papal claimantInboxRaymond AntoniniJun 26, 2021, 1:41 PM (2 days ago)to meDear Bishop Gracida,     Thank you for posting on your site that a pope that would embrace formal heresy would fall ipso facto from the Papal Office without a declaratory sentence being necessary as stated by St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Alphonsus de Liguori and the Dominican theologian St. Antoninus, Pope Innocent III and in the 1917 Code of Canon Law section 188.4.     I’ll include some links to those citations below from an archived version of my former web site, but first I would ask you to consider the possibility that Bergoglio, and other claimants to the papacy since 1958, were formal heretics BEFORE election to the papacy.     Did heresy suddenly infect Bergoglio after leaving Argentina and arriving in Rome or was he heterodox in his beliefs during his entire career? Did the syncretism of religions in his ‘Abrahamic Religions Temple’ spring up suddenly or had it been there all along? A certain former Jesuit in his book, “The Encounter” called for this exact heresy back in 1970.      Fr. Kolvenbach, the Superior General of the Society of Jesus in the 1990s, while not addressing this particular delict of heresy, wrote to Karol Wojtyla upon the latter’s nomination of Bergoglio to the episcopacy and warned him that Bergoglio was a sociopath and told him not to elevate him.     If Bergoglio or others were formal heretics, schismatics or apostates BEFORE election to the papacy then under Divine Law and Ecclesiastical Law as codified by Pope Paul IV to guard against this exact situation of infiltration by heretics into the hierarchy of the Church, in his Apostolic Constitution “Cum Ex Apostolatus Officious” (February 15, 1559) he decreed: “6. …or even the Roman Pontiff, prior to his promotion or his elevation as Cardinal or Roman Pontiff, has deviated from the Catholic Faith or fallen into some heresy: (i) the promotion or elevation, even if it shall have been uncontested and by the unanimous consent of all the Cardinals, shall be null, void and worthless;” Pope Paul IV then continues in Section 6 to override every other possible objection to the nullity of the election and this claimant’s papacy such as universal assent, elapse of time, not partially valid such as in the later formal vs. material argument of des Lauriers, etc. In Section 7 Pope Paul IV decrees that no allegiance of any sort is binding upon Catholics to the heretical claimant and if the heretic will not leave on his own, that the civil governments can be enlisted by Catholics to forcibly remove him. Does not specify a council being necessary. Cum Ex Apostolatus Officiohttps://web.archive.org/web/20100413163652/http://home.earthlink.net/~saintmarychapel/ceao.htm Please note that all of this further solidifies the principle that a heretic either before election by absolute nullity or after by his own act, ipso facto, would fall from the Office of the Papacy, and no council of bishops or cardinals would be necessary to first declare the See vacant. Please also note  that this IS the position of St. Robert Bellarmine and not what someone occasionally incorrectly posts in items to your site. St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Francis de Sales, St. Alphonsus de Liguori, St. Thomas Aquinas: https://web.archive.org/web/20100413163652/http://home.earthlink.net/~saintmarychapel/fdph.htm Pope Innocent III and also Code of Canon Law (1917) section 188.4 (Note this section was intentionally not included in the 1983 Code of the heretical Vactican 2 sect!): https://web.archive.org/web/20100413163652/Home.EarthLink.net/~saintmarychapel/#Teaching%20of%20the%20Magisterium%20of%20the%20Roman%20Catholic%20Church St. Antoninus and other citations: http://www.protestanterrors.com/pope-heresy.htm Fr. Wernz, Superior General of the Society of Jesus, (ob. 1914) in his five volume work “Ius Canonicum” affirming St. Robert Bellarmine’s position of ipso facto vacancy without judgement or declaration as the teaching of the Church. Citation from (after the implementation of the 1917 Code) 1938 edition by Fr. Vidal, S.J.: https://web.archive.org/web/20120321082313/http://sedevacantist.org/wernzvidal.html 1882 essay by Fr. O’Reilly on a prolonged vacancy of the Holy See: https://web.archive.org/web/20110720082331/http://www.sedevacantist.org/oreilly.html          In either case before or after election to the papacy, formal heresy, the criteria for which has most certainly been met, renders the claimant by his own act outside of Christ’s Church, completely severed from the Mystical Body, and thus permanently incapable of being its head.     We can take comfort in the fact that Our Lordpermitted this to happen only by heretical infiltrators to the Chair and not by one who fell from it. Thus just as their claims to the papacy are null, void and worthless, so were all their acts from calling for the Council to the imposition of false worship displeasing to the Sight of God to whatever is the current apostate ignominy uttered by the current claimant.      I will leave those citations for another time.         In Christ,      Raymond Antonini