The Pew Research Center, a reliable source on American attitudes about religion, found in 2019 that 43 percent of American Catholics were “unaware” of Church teaching about Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist. Twenty-two percent said they knew, but didn’t believe it. Only 28 percent both knew and believed the teaching. And this, as we’re often hearing these days, about what Vatican II called the “source and summit” of Christian life. (Lumen Gentium 11) No wonder that on many other matters, Catholics – even educated and publicly visible Catholics – also display a stunning casualness and ignorance about the Faith.
a decision by U.S. bishops to elevate issues of human sexuality, however important, above all others seems contrary to the Gospel. No reading of the life of Jesus would suggest these issues as his primary, or even secondary, concern. His towering message is about love of neighbor as oneself with a special focus on the poor, sick, hungry, marginalized.
Kaine spent time in Honduras as a young man with a Jesuit mission, so he can’t be entirely faulted (as many other Catholic politicians can be) for thinking that Jesus’ concern for others only means voting for ever-larger government spending on social “programs.” But Kaine can be tasked – again like many others – for not knowing what he’s talking about.
The bishops have for decades been in virtual lockstep with Democrats on immigration, poverty, climate, etc. They are preparing their document on “Eucharistic Coherence” not because of general concern over sexual issues (about which more below) but because figures like President Biden and Speaker Pelosi have shifted from “personally opposed” to outright promotion, funding, and facilitating of abortion. That public scandal cannot go unchecked.
But Jesus never spoke about abortion, you say. Well, that’s because it was unthinkable among Jews of his day. Early Christians did speak explicitly against the practice. Further, the problem with abortion is not that it’s “sexual”; it’s that it’s murderous. In opposing abortion, the Church is affirming Catholic teaching. But it’s also reminding a society that has become coarse about sex that it’s committing violence on an immense scale against the innocent, which even human reason sees is an abomination.
Trying to group abortion with sexual questions is simple misdirection.
I often hear from readers that people like me are engaging in partisan politics, that we hammer away at Democrats about abortion, but don’t criticize Republicans like former Attorney General William Barr for supporting the death penalty.
The cases are simply not equivalent. The Church has long recognized the death penalty as a licit punishment that, after fair legal procedures, may be imposed on offenders. That such systems sometimes make mistakes on capital cases and others does not invalidate the general point. If you need evidence, Edward Feser and Joseph Bessette have produced the definitive work: By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment.
It’s true that recent popes have questioned the wisdom of using the death penalty. Pope Francis has even altered the Catechism to read that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” (CCC 2267)
But this is his personal view. In the Old Testament, God Himself prescribes death for certain crimes. And a long series of the pope’s predecessors would have argued the opposite: holding people responsible for grave acts is, in a way, an affirmation of their human dignity as moral actors.
And there’s also the practical question: Affluent societies may be able to afford, say, life sentences for murderers. Poorer societies, in circumstances of instability and disorder, may not.
Calling the death penalty “inadmissible,” rather than unambiguously immoral, is a tacit sign that even the pope knows he’s on thin moral ice and wants enough ambiguity that he can’t be accused of changing the teaching of past popes.
To indict someone likeWilliam Barr on such flimsy grounds and to equate the few executions that occur in America with the massive offense against human life that is abortion in America today is, for me and many others, quite a stretch.
As to the poor, the sick, the hungry, and the marginalized, which is often the plea of pro-abortion politicians today – implying that their spending on social programs (that often have unintended bad consequences) is what Jesus was focused on in the Gospels – let’s try instead to think like Catholics.
Catholic social teaching begins from the very useful understanding that the family, not the isolated individual, is the basis of society. (Catechism 1605) Many of our social problems stem from the breakdown of the family, which became supercharged with the advent of the sexual revolution.
Brad Wilcox, a professor at the University of Virginia, has studied how fathers – especially black fathers – make a difference to children and society at large. In a recent article, he presented this:
The numbers are not the only thing of importance in such matters, to be sure. But they show that family structure plays a large role – in several respects much larger than alleged “racism” – in rates of criminality, incarcerations, and economic inequalities. Though intact families help whites as well, of course, some studies even show a greater positive benefit for blacks living in two-parent households than for whites.
It’s no good to claim that the breakdown of the black family is the result of racism. In 1940 (when Jim Crow was riding high), about 18 percent of black children were born out of wedlock; today it’s over 70 percent. Racism has been weakening in American society even as family breakdown has been increasing for all races.
BORDER FIGHT PITS TEXAS AGAINST WHITE HOUSE — HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra is slated to visit an emergency shelter for children in El Paso, Texas, today, while Texas Gov. Greg Abbott plans to accompany former President Donald Trump on a trip to the border Wednesday. The Republican governor pledged this month to effectively close 52 shelters across the state that collectively house roughly 4,500 unaccompanied immigrant children. Abbott’s plan to yank the facilities’ licenses would go into effect at the end of August. It’d upend the administration’s refugee resettlement efforts, and federal health officials have threatened to sue, Adam writes.A series of tense letters between Becerra and a defiant Abbott this month obtained by Adam shed light on the GOP’s broader campaign to hammer Biden over immigration and border security.Abbott’s order is the most drastic attempt yet by a state to decouple itself from a long-running federal program that relies on state-licensed organizations to shelter migrant children until they can be placed with guardians. That would leave more than a quarter of the nation’s entire population of migrant kids without anywhere to stay. Texas hasn’t offered any housing alternatives, with Abbott insisting that it’s HHS’ responsibility.HHS has accused Abbott of launching a “direct attack” on the administration’s effort to care for record numbers of unaccompanied children crossing the southern border and said it’s consulting with the Justice Department on necessary legal action.
A few years after I was born, my Dad met a stranger who was new to our city. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around from then on. As I grew up, I never questioned his place in my family. In my young mind, he had a special niche. My parents were complementary instructors: Mum taught me good from evil, and Dad taught me to obey. But the stranger…he was our storyteller. He would keep us spellbound for hours on end with adventures, mysteries, and comedies. If I wanted to know anything about politics, history, or science, he always knew the answers about the past, understood the present, and even seemed able to predict the future! He took my family to the first premiership game. He made me laugh, and he made me cry. The stranger never stopped talking, but Dad didn’t seem to mind. Sometimes, Mum would get up quietly while the rest of us were shushing each other to listen to what he had to say, and she would go to the kitchen for peace and quiet. (I wonder now if she ever prayed for the stranger to leave.) Dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions, but the stranger never felt obligated to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our home – not from us, our friends, or any visitors. Our long-time visitor, however, got away with four-letter words that burned my ears and made my dad squirm and my mother blush. My Dad didn’t permit the liberal use of alcohol but the stranger encouraged us to try it on a regular basis. He made cigarettes look cool, cigars manly, and pipes distinguished. He talked freely (much too freely!) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing. I now know that my early concepts about relationships were influenced strongly by the stranger. Time after time, he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked…and was NEVER asked to leave. More than seventy years have passed since the stranger moved in with our family. He has blended right in and is not nearly as fascinating as he was at first. Still, if you could walk into my parents’ den today, you would still find him sitting over in his corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures. His name? We just call him TV. He has a wife now…we call her Computer.Their first child is Cell PhoneAnd their second child is Video Games. By the way, they now have a wonderful grandchild. She is a genius! She is fondly called WhatsApp. She is nearly more popular than her mom. Her older cousin is Facebook and her new baby cousins are Snapchat & Instagram. This Stranger and members of its family appear to have taken up permanent residence in our homes “and we seem powerless to check their excesses.“
Biden Bombing of Iraq & Syria “Harkening Back to the Days… Cheney” & Bush made Endless Wars & the possible War with Russia
“If there is one man I can imagine… turning Cold War II into World War III, it is the self-anointed heir of FDR, Joseph Robinette Biden.” – Bloomberg’s Niall Ferguson
Pulitzer winner Glenn Greenwald, reported that the Joe Biden bombing of Iraq and Syria “harkening back to the days of John Yoo and Dick Cheney” and the RINO George Bush endless wars:
In its statement justifying the bombing raids, Biden’s Pentagon barely even bothered to pretend any of this is legal. It did not cite either the 2002 AUMF for Iraq or the 2001 AUMF authorizing the use of force against those responsible for 9/11 (a category which, manifestly, did not include Iran, Iraq or Syria). Instead, harkening back to the days of John Yoo and Dick Cheney, the Biden Defense Department claimed that “as a matter of international law, the United States acted pursuant to its right of self-defense,” and casually asserted that “as a matter of domestic law, the President took this action pursuant to his Article II authority to protect U.S. personnel in Iraq.”
Those claims are nothing short of a joke. Nobody seriously believes that Joe Biden has congressional authority to bomb Syria and Iraq, nor to bomb “Iranian-backed” forces of any kind. As The Daily Beast’s long-time War on Terror reporter Spencer Ackerman put it on Sunday night, discussions of legality at this point are “parody” because when it comes to the U.S.’s Endless Wars in the name of the War on Terror, “we passed Lawful behind many many years ago. Authorization citations are just pretexts written by lawyers who need to pantomime at lawfulness. The U.S. presence in Syria is blatantly illegal. Such things never stop the U.S.”
That is exactly right. The U.S. government is a lawless entity. It violates the law, including its own Constitution, whenever it wants…
…
Having to watch the Bush/Cheney and Obama/Biden operatives who ushered in this permanent state of illegality and lawless wars prance around during the Trump years as noble defenders of the sacred rule of law — all while being celebrated and profiting greatly — was nauseating in the best of times. American elites do not care about the rule of law or the Constitution. Ignoring it is how they empower themselves at the expense of the citizenry. That is why very few will care about the fact that Biden (indulging the fiction for a moment that it was he) ordered the bombings on two countries without the slightest whiff of legal authority to do so.
While it feels frivolous even to raise questions of legality — since so few in Washington care about such matters — the real overarching question is the simplest one. Why does the U.S. continue to have a military presence in Iraq and Syria? What conceivable benefits redound to American citizens from the massive expenditures required to keep U.S. troops stationed in these two countries, the risk of those troops’ lives, the endless acquisition of bombs and other weapons to fight there, and the obvious but severe dangers from triggering escalation with powerful militaries that — unlike the U.S. — actually have a vital interest in what takes place in their bordering countries?
While the ordinary American only suffers from all of this, there are definitely some sectors of U.S. society which benefit. The corporation that Biden’s Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin left in order to run the Pentagon — Raytheon — needs ongoing troop deployment and permanent warfare for its profitability. According to The New York Times, it was “Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, [who] briefed Mr. Biden on attack options early last week,” after which “Mr. Biden approved striking the three targets.” So Gen. Austin’s colleagues on the Raytheon Board of Directors, as well as his comrades on the Boards of General Dynamics and Boeing, are surely thrilled with this attack.
Indeed, anyone invested in endless war in the Middle East — including the entire U.S. intelligence community and the weapons industry which feeds off of it — must be thrilled by all of this. [Glenn Greenwald (greenwald@substack.com), “Biden’s Lawless Bombing of Iraq and Syria Only Serves the Weapons Industry Funding Both Parties,” You’re on the free list for Glenn Greenwald]
Moreover, will Biden start World War III with this bombing of an ally of Russia?
Last year, Greenwald, who is a co-founder of the Intercept new outlet renowned for its accurate journalism on intelligence, reported Joe “Biden’s top national security advisers and now Biden himself have, with no evidence shown to the public, repeatedly threatened aggressive retaliation against the country with the world’s second-largest nuclear stockpile”:
With the Democrats, under Joe Biden, just weeks away from [possibly] assuming control of the White House and the U.S. military and foreign policy that goes along with it, the discourse from them and their media allies about Russia is becoming even more unhinged and dangerous. Moscow’s alleged responsibility for the recently revealed, multi-pronged hack of U.S. Government agencies and various corporate servers is asserted — despite not a shred of evidence, literally, having yet been presented — as not merely proven fact, but as so obviously true that it is off-limits from doubt or questioning.
Any questioning of this claim will be instantly vilified by the Democrats’ extremely militaristic media spokespeople as virtual treason. “Now the president is not just silent on Russia and the hack. He is deliberately running defense for the Kremlin by contradicting his own Secretary of State on Russian responsibility,” pronounced CNN’s national security reporter Jim Sciutto, who last week depicted Trump’s attempted troop withdrawal from Syria and Germany as “ceding territory” and furnishing “gifts” to Putin. More alarmingly, both the rhetoric to describe the hack and the retaliation being threatened are rapidly spiraling out of control.
Democrats (along with some Republicans long obsessed with The Russian Threat, such as Mitt Romney) are casting the latest alleged hack by Moscow in the most melodramatic terms possible, ensuring that Biden will enter the White House with tensions sky-high with Russia and facing heavy pressure to retaliate aggressively. Biden’s top national security advisers and now Biden himself have, with no evidence shown to the public, repeatedly threatened aggressive retaliation against the country with the world’s second-largest nuclear stockpile. [Glenn Greenwald(greenwald@substack.com), “With Biden’s New Threats, the Russia Discourse is More Reckless and Dangerous Than Ever,” You’re on the free list for Glenn Greenwald. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber.]
The Global Village Space news outlet apparently asked the question:
Will Biden “presidency risk plunging the world into a catastrophic third world war“?
The news outlet admitted that President Donald Trump has been a peace president:
“Nevertheless, despite the occasional show of force, Trump has shown remarkable restraint during his four-year presidency against the advice of his national security advisers who wanted more proactive engagement of the US military in conflict flashpoints, such as Syria, Iran and Afghanistan, to the point that some generals in the top-brass of the US military even accused him of being Putin’s ‘useful idiot.’”
The Global Village Space says that deep state war hawks apparently know that a Joe Biden win would risk bringing about a endless wars president and therefore support him despite the possibly of him starting World War III :
“To name a few Trump aides who resigned or were sacked, they include former national security adviser John Bolton, former national security adviser H.R. McMaster, former defense secretary Jim Mattis, former White House chief of staff John Kelly, former director of national intelligence Dan Coats, former Navy secretary Richard Spencer and former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security Miles Taylor.”
“In fact, scores of former Republican national security officials recently made their preference public that they would vote for Joe Biden instead of Donald Trump against party lines.”war
“What does that imply?”
“It implies that the latent conflict between the deep state and the elected representatives of the American people has come to a head during the Trump presidency… “
“… On another occasion, he ruffled more feathers by telling the reporters: ‘I’m not saying the military’s in love with me. The soldiers are. The top people in the Pentagon probably aren’t because they want to do nothing but fight wars so all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy.’”
“In conclusion, to answer the oft-repeated question as to how the Biden Presidency would look like, how the “Sleepy Joe’s” vice presidency looked like, as Trump often derisively taunts him on social media and in speeches. His presidency would be no different from his uneventful vice presidency.”
In 2014, ex-President Barack Obama’s former Defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, agreed that Biden was a war hawk according to the Los Angeles Times:
“Gates takes special aim at some of Obama’s top advisors, including Vice President Joe Biden. Biden, he charges, ‘has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.’”
“Obama worried that top Pentagon officers, including Petraeus and Adm. Michael Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs, were giving him ‘the bum’s rush’ in pressing for more troops in Afghanistan early in his first term, Gates says. He blamed Biden, among other aides, for that.” [https://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-pn-gates-book-obama-20140107-story.html]Joe Biden Could End Up Being A Wartime President
Is 2020 war hawk Biden a replay of 2016 war hawk Clinton on starting World War III?
If Donald Trump had not won the presidential in 2016, was Clinton thinking of starting World War III?
Does Hilary’s collaborator Biden want to do in 2021 what Clinton couldn’t do in 2017 if he can by the massive voter fraud Biden Steal illegally and fraudulently assume office and become an Anti-President or Fake President?
In 2016, liberal Green Party candidate Jill Stein said:
‘Mikhail Gorbachev, who was the prime minister of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, saying that the threat of nuclear war is hotter now than it has ever been in all of history, you’ve got to take that pretty seriously. And when you haveHillary Clinton then beating the war drums against Russia, and essentially saLeupp, that if she’s elected that we will declare war on Russia.'”[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-26/fact-check-trump-right-clinton-might-cause-ww3]
The British International Business Times UK reported that Hillary Clinton, on August 31, 2016 at the American Legion National Conference, said:
The U.S. mainstream media with few exceptions didn’t report, and in fact covered-up, Hillary’s threat to start a war with Russia over the Wikileaks exposure of the Clintons corruption which she alleges is from Russian intelligence.
However, Clinton makes unqualified claims that the Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee as war rhetoric and as a way of switching the narrative when Donald Trump says that her no-fly zone over Syrian policy could lead to war with Russia.
As I showed in my article “Are the Total Corruption of Hillary and the Media as well as their Cover-ups almost Satanic?” and as the Wikileaks emails show most of the mainstream television and print media are in an almost satanic cover-up as well as in collusion with Hillary and an extension of the Clinton campaign. Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta who helped coordinate the media cover-up is even linked through his brother Tony to the satanic ritual called spiritual cooking according to Churchmilitant.com.[http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2016/10/are-total-corruption-of-hillary-and.html?m=1 ]
The media parrot a Clinton campaign talking point by switching the topic of her Syrian policy leading to war with Russia to claims of Russian hacking.
At other times, the media when this topic comes up uses another Democrat campaign talking point as a way of switching the narrative by saying with journalistic jargon that Trump is a “puppet of Putin.” Tufts University professor of History Gary Leupp, who is no friend of Trump, in Counterpunch.org which has Ralph Nader as a contributor, says the “corporate media” is covering up Clinton’s extreme hawkish war record and says she has “all but declared war on Syria.” Leupp said:
“Clinton’s policies are in contrast highly predictable on the basis of her record and recent public pronouncements…[s]he has all but declared war on Syria…Trump…maybe citing the Jeff Sachs quote about her supporting every war proposed by the military or CIA…could win. However frightening that might be, would a Clinton victory be less frightening?”[http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/03/hillary-clintons-foreign-policy-resume-what-the-record-shows/]
As Counterpunch.org Paul Street said in agreement with Leupp, “Clinton is the greater evil when it comes to World War III.”
Trump made the statement that Hillary’s Clinton’s no-fly zone policy over Syria could lead to WWW III. Is that fiction or fact?
Fact check on Clinton’s Syria policy as leading to war with Russia:
Zero hedge.com/news reported on October 26 that one major U. S. liberal voice and one U. S. mainstream outlet broke from the cover-up:
“The Washington Post points out that a vote for Clinton is a vote for escalating military confrontation in Syria and elsewhere:
The Republicans and Democrats who make up the foreign policy elite are laying the groundwork for a more assertive American foreign policy, via a flurry of reports shaped by officials who are likely to play senior roles in a potential Clinton White House.
***
The studies, which reflect Clinton’s stated views, break most forcefully with Obama on Syria …. call[ing] for stepped-up military action to deter President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and Russian forces in Syria.
***
Most of the studies propose limited American airstrikes with cruise missiles to punish Assad ….
***
Last year, Obama dismissed calls for a no-fly zone in northwestern Syria — a position advocated by Clinton — as ‘half-baked.’
Hillary Clinton wants to start an air war with Russia. Let’s be clear: That’s what a no-fly zone means. It is tantamount to a declaration of war against Russia.
***
The most likely nuclear threat right now is with Russia. There’s no doubt about that. When you have Mikhail Gorbachev, who was the prime minister of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, saying that the threat of nuclear war is hotter now than it has ever been in all of history, you’ve got to take that pretty seriously. And when you have Hillary Clinton then beating the war drums against Russia, and essentially saying that if she’s elected that we will declare war on Russia.'”[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-26/fact-check-trump-right-clinton-might-cause-ww3]
Even Hillary Clinton admitted her Syrian policy would “kill a lot of Syrians” according to the British BBC News:
“But in a 2013 speech to Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs, Mrs Clinton said establishing a no-fly zone would ‘kill a lot of Syrians’, according to a transcript disclosed by Wikileaks.”[http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37766786]
On October 26, 2016, the BBC News reported that the highest-ranking military officer in the US armed forces, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Marine Dunford, told the Senate Arms Services Committee:
Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He want you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.
Francis Notes:
– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:
“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.” (The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)
– LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:
The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”
– On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:
“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”
– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:
“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.
I entered graduate school in 1970, determined to study two things. One was political philosophy, the consideration of the nature of justice, particularly as presented by German philosophers. The second was called comparative communism, the study of communist states and movements, particularly contemporary ones. The choice of subjects wasn’t random, if perhaps presumptive. I wanted to understand Germany, the place that had defined my origins. And I wanted to understand communism, which had defined and would define much of my life. I was hostile to Marxism but deeply believed in understanding your enemy. The more I studied, the more confused I became. Marxism seemed to have little to do with Marx, and communist regimes were rarely Marxist. Marxist movements around the world rarely consisted of workers, but rather of intellectuals and soldiers, and sometimes criminals. Similarly, Hegel and Nietzsche could be considered proto-Nazis only if you closed your eyes. The intellectual life I sought was far more coherent than the political realities around me. Since I crave order in all things, and since Marxism was more pressing at that moment than Nazism, I dove into the history of Marxism and of Marxist terrorism and MiG-21s. In the course of this, I spent a great deal of time with what was called the New Left in a number of countries. Their thoughts all ran to something called the Frankfurt School, a group of German philosophers in the 1930s and later who sought to recreate Marxism as a human imperative and system of redemption after the failures of Marxist theory and politics. Central to the Frankfurt School’s thought was critical theory, a concept they developed. I decided to write my dissertation on the Frankfurt School, starting in 1972 and completing it in 1974 in Europe. I was 22 when I began and 24 when I submitted my first draft. It was the sort of work a 22-year-old would begin writing, one who thinks well of himself and knows little. Cornell University Press, for reasons incomprehensible to me, chose to turn it into a book, impenetrable and meandering as it was. My anti-communism remained intact, but I came to better understand that critical theory was an attempt to keep Marxism from becoming a horror to be forgotten along with Stalin and Mao. To understand this, we need to think of Karl Marx. Marx sought an explanation for the development of capitalism and to forecast its end. Capitalism according to him emerged as the constant evolution of the means of production – in other words, technology. However, as capitalism developed, wealth went with those who owned the means of production, leaving the workers, the proletariat, to live in abject poverty. That abject poverty would deepen, and, as it deepened, the proletariat would be forced to revolt, seize the means of production and impose the dictatorship of the proletariat, by which Marx meant simply a society in which the interests of the workers prevailed. The problem was that history did not develop that way. Poverty was persistent in Europe, to the point of generating communist parties but not communist revolutions. Marx and his cowriter, Friedrich Engels, mentioned in passing an explanation of why there was no revolution: false consciousness. This was the idea that the workers did not understand their own interests because the system generated ideas that gave them a false understanding of the world. Lenin, rising in Russia, which by Marxist theory was not ready for a revolution, also grasped at false consciousness but saw a solution. The unwillingness of the proletariat to act required the Party to act, and the action he proposed was to ignore the workers’ consciousness with terror. The problem the Russians had was that once terror is applied, it is difficult to end and allow the workers to flower into revolutionaries. The terror continued and intensified under Stalin. Critical theory turned Marxism away from Marxist countries to capitalist countries. For the Frankfurt School, it was not inequality that would lead to revolution but the search for a solution to prosperity. They saw that Marx’s error was in not recognizing that the constant evolution of the means of production would create inequality but raise standards of living as well and that the rise of prosperity led to a life of inauthenticity and the destruction of the beauty of the psyche. It was not what we did but how we thought that was the problem they wanted to solve. As standards of living rose after the war, in the United States, in particular, there was contentment in the face of inequality. The Frankfurt School, some of whose members moved to the United States, had developed a theory that assumed the need for revolution not because of inequality but because of inauthenticity. In the midst of a consumer society, the minds of workers and others lost their humanity in favor of things. The primary job of capitalism was to develop needs and to use these things to pacify society. In their work, false consciousness ceased to be marginal even in the march of history but was the fundamental reality that stole the souls of men and replaced it with things. Authentic life was impossible. There was to me, then and now, a core question. How could the professors of the Frankfurt School avoid false consciousness and see so clearly? Why could they claim to see a truth others couldn’t fathom? The obvious answer is that as philosophers, they could understand authentic life and see the horrors of the desperate need for garbage. The problem for them was how to break the hold of modern capitalism, which invents and satisfies needs. As this advanced, Herbert Marcuse emerged, understanding that the revolution was no longer of the workers but of the young. He wrote a book called “Eros and Civilization” in which he defined authenticity as polymorphous perversity (the eros part of civilization) and worked to legitimize what every 18-year-old knew – it was party time. Now, bear in mind that it is far more complex than this, but Marcuse saw eros as a revolutionary force. Think back to the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s, and rest assured that I wasn’t just writing during this time. It was good to be young. But the revolution of the young failed, largely because they grew up, and, with life, the sense of having transcended the crisis of the psyche becomes both less credible and less important. The idea of critical theory was a forced transformation of consciousness, the transformation driven by the enlightenment of the young, who would compel “mothers and fathers throughout the land” to change their consciousness. The core idea of the Frankfurt School was that revolution was a change of consciousness. This was helped along by terrorist violence such as the Weather Underground in the United States, Red Brigades, Baader-Meinhof, and other groups in Europe, many supported by a Soviet destabilization campaign. The transformation included those who saw Lenin’s solution as superior. It became a worldwide event with the young rising in Mexico City and Paris and Prague. For the rest, it was an attempt at transforming thought by imposing terror, social and explosive. The current resurrection of critical theory, like the old, takes political issues as merely a means of transforming the psyche. The object has been to change what we think and how we organize our thoughts. We must recognize the corruption in our minds so our lives can change.The old question of critical theory persists, of course. How can the practitioners of critical theory know so clearly what the rest of us do not? How can they have escaped the intellectual traps of the rest of us, and how can they have avoided falling into new traps? For me, the old critical theory failed because it lacked the credibility to condemn the psychic damage caused by living in a suburban home and accepting the needs imposed by capitalism. Economic desperation did not make a successful revolution in the West. The old critical theory lurched into self-righteousness coupled with incomprehensible writing. They passed from history along with Woodstock, where psyches were cleansed. As for me, I came out of my book realizing that the celebration of eros was not to be dismissed, but that the Soviet Union might wreck the party more effectively than tract housing would. The number of tanks they had and the ability to deliver fuel to them when passing through Hanover was a much more important thing than the fact that Americans lived inauthentic lives in the suburbs. For a while, the ability of A-10s to destroy T-54s brushed aside consideration of the Frankfurt School. But the truth was that I had dismissed them from the beginning, because in spite of their hatred of Hitler, none of them served a day, even preparing food. I was not sophisticated enough to understand that I was inauthentic. I sought an understanding of why the Soviets and Chinese were so brutal, and why the New Left was so angry at America. I found the answer in critical theory but decided that their end was never clear and their means made little sense. But I did like the parties where everyone was committed to full authenticity. I have barely touched on the complexity of critical theory, or the perverse brilliance of its creators. Nor have I done justice to its resurrection. But the single thing I have learned from Marxism is that the transformation of being is not a mass movement, and that the will to force others to change their minds to suit yours is a form of self-indulgence.
The stubbornness of the human soul, for bad or good, transcends both a failed historical model and failed enthusiasm for change.
During his eulogy of George Floyd, Barack Obama claimed that the filibuster was a “relic of Jim Crow”. And, he recently criticized the Republicans blocking of partisan voting legislation HR1 as racist. Why does Barack Obama continually stir up racial conflicts in this country? Instead of trying to quell racial animus, Obama injects himself into situations like these and inflames any existing problems of race. Why does he need to have perpetual racial conflict and division in this country? A possible answer is because at the core of his being is racial conflict. That is all he knows. Children tend to play out the conflicts that they witnessed in their parent’s marriage in their own lives.Barack Obama’s parents were mixed-race; his father was a Kenyan national, and his mother was a white American citizen from Kansas. Early in his life, Barack Obama’s biological father left him to return to Kenya, cutting off all ties with Barack and his mother – a very difficult situation for young Barack Obama to deal with. And then at age 10, his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro another man of color in his life, took his mother to go live in Indonesia, leaving Barack to be raised by his mother’s parents in Hawaii. And therein lies his conflict, the black part of Barack Obama, the part that stares back at him in the mirror, abandoned him, while the white part of Obama took him in, raised him, cared for him, and provided him advantages in life. Obama never embraced this part of him. He wrote, “I’d arrived at an unspoken pact with my grandparents: I could live with them and they’d leave me alone so long as I kept my trouble out of sight.” So instead of writing a book about his grandparents, the sacrifices they made for him, and the difficulties they, as older people, overcame raising their grandchild, Obama chose to write a book called, Dreams from My Father. Instead of honoring the people who nurtured him, loved him, and gave him life-changing opportunities, he chose to write about his longing for the man who abandoned him, who left him, who showed young Obama that he didn’t love him. And that’s the conflict Obama has been navigating his entire life. How does Obama justify the part of him that rejected him? How does he elevate his father who abandoned him? How does he uplift the black part of himself? By knocking the white part of him down. In his book, he relates the story of his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, standing at the bus stop on her way home from work. A man approached her and asked for money. She gave him a dollar, but instead of thanking her and going on his way, the younger, stronger man proceeded to ask her for more and more money, getting up in her face, trying to intimidate her. She was so frightened by this encounter that when she got home, she was noticeably shaken. When she relayed the story to young Barack, she told him, “he was very aggressive. If the bus hadn’t come, he would have hit me over the head.”Obama’s grandfather then informed Barack that the man was black. That statement infuriated Obama. Instead of showing care and concern for his grandmother, who was just harassed and intimidated for money by a younger bigger man that she doesn’t know, he resented her. She became the villain in his eyes, and the man who harassed his grandmother, suddenly became the victim solely because he was black. Obama was unable to put himself in his grandmother’s shoes, unable to see how physically vulnerable women and older people feel in society. He was only able to view this incident from the lens of race. An older woman is intimidated by a young black man, and his only sympathy is toward the black man. How would Barack have felt if the young aggressive male harassing his grandmother had been white? Would her fear of the strange man still have evoked the same anger in Obama?This is the mentality that people like Obama who primarily view the world through race bring to issues in this country. This is the reason why they are so willing to overlook the thousands of black people killed by other black people every year, or the 70% of black children born out of wedlock, or the black gangs and black drug dealers destroying black communities. Those real and serious threats to black people by black people are always ignored or downplayed, but their devastating consequences are real to those enduring them. In Obama’s eyes, it is always white people who are to blame for the problems in the black community, like in his grandmother’s situation, white people are the villains, and black people are the victims. In his mind, his father wasn’t the villain in his life, his grandparents were. That is what you get when you view and judge the world solely by skin color. Obama will always justify the black side as a way to justify the part of him that left him, that abandoned him, In 2009, Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested by Cambridge police. Obama, without knowing one fact in the case, stated that “the police acted stupidly.” He blindly took the side of the black person over the white person without a shred of evidence. It turned out that the police acted appropriately in that situation. Obama then held a “Beer Summit” with the police officer and the professor, and referred to the incident as a “teachable moment”, not for himself or the professor, but for the police officer and white America.In 2012, Obama immediately took the side of Trayvon Martin in his shooting death, solely because of the way he looked. Obama infamously said, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” So, the facts of the case did not matter to Obama. The only thing that mattered was how the parties involved looked. And, since Trayvon Martin looked more like Obama than George Zimmerman did, he sided with Trayvon. Only by elevating the part of him that abandoned him can Obama feel whole; and the only way he can elevate that part of him is to continually side with that side of the broader racial conflicts that he is projecting on society from his own internal racial conflicts. That is why he continues to knock white people down and elevate black people because somewhere deep down he is elevating his father, and only by elevating the part of him that rejected him can he elevate himself and create that internal equilibrium to make himself whole.Colin Kaepernick deals with the same internal racial conflict as Barack Obama. Like Obama, Kaepernick was abandoned by the black part of him, and raised by white parents, who loved him, cared for him, and nurtured him. Yet, anti-white hatred spews out of him. He rejects the part of him that embraced him, and embraces the part that rejected him. Both Obama and Kaepernick hate the very country which has given them so much. They would argue that everything that they have achieved or accumulated in life has been earned, and not given, and they are absolutely right. That is what America has given both of them, and everyone for that matter – the good fortune to live in a country that is a meritocracy, where you get what you earn, you get what you deserve, you get what you work for. The color of their skin didn’t stop them. The fact that they were abandoned by their parents, didn’t stop them. They got everything that they earned in life. And this is all that we are asking for, a meritocracy. But, that is the exact opposite of the ideology that is promoted by Critical Race Theory which is infiltrating our schools and society, an ideology that separates people, judges people, rewards and punishes people, based solely on their skin color. That is the only system where Obama’s father can be admired as a father, one not based on merit. Meritocracy doesn’t exist in the world of Critical Race Theory.During the 2008 campaign, Obama referred to his grandmother as a “typical white woman”. Would it be right and fair to call Barack Obama Sr, a “typical black man”? Even though there’s an epidemic of out-of-wedlock births in the black community, it is wrong to say that the father who abandoned Barack Obama is a “typical black man” because that would be racist. We should not generalize about people based on skin color the way it’s becoming more and more acceptable to do to white people. We must stop determining villains and victims solely by the race of the people involved. It only creates more racial conflicts. Barack Obama has never made peace with the racial conflict within himself, so he will never allow the racial conflicts within our country to be resolved peacefully. His internal struggle continues to be our external conflicts because people like him continue to stoke the flames of the racial divisions on the rest of us because they have never been able to resolve the racial conflicts inside themselves.
Democrats have been and continue to be the party harboring and being racists. Their yapping about Critical Race Theory and all their public knee-bending obeisance is for show. They don’t care about racial justice except in as much as it grants them power. They’ll bad-mouth those in fly-over country – where, it might be noted, anyone is free to live – while belonging to clubs where one must have the recommendation of a member to belong. And oopsie, no black people allowed! Meanwhile, if you look at maps of where America is and isn’t integrated, well, what do you know? The Northeast and West are the LEAST integrated. That comes as no surprise to anyone who has lived there. Now, we find out that old Sheldon Whitehouse doesn’t just belong to an all-white Beach club but also to an all-white Sailing club. Oh, the humanity! I bring this up because the threat of being called racist is bandied about non-stop by the Left toward those on the Right. People are deplatformed all over for just suggesting that someone deserves mercy for past mistakes. But not elected Democrats. Not one word by BLM or the Black Caucus about Sheldon Whitehouse. He’ll never lose his job or even be sanctioned.Biden Is Not A Good Guy No big whup, the United States President, Joe Biden, just casually threatened to nuke or use F-15’s against his domestic enemies. If you’re right of Chaiman Mao, that would be you. It was a frustrating day for old Joe. Democrats have been trying to govern like they have a mandate. The public polling and action by Americans keeps reminding them that they don’t have a mandate, and furthermore, the American people are not too thrilled with the direction Democrats are taking the nation. This shouldn’t be shocking. Democrats have been using their BLM and Antifa shock troops to be the militarized arm of their very unpopular policy. Even New York city is rebelling against the burn, loot and murder mandate from the commies in charge. Small businesses have fled. No one feels safe. I wonder how the summer recreation and travel is to NYC, this year? Who wants to go there? Anecdotally, I can tell you that my small town, kitschy road trip vacation plans are complicated by not being able to find lodging. Everyone is getting the hell out of Dodge and the great American road trip is back on the menu. How many are stopping in New York and Chicago and San Francisco and Los Angeles? Kamala Harris is going to the border finally. I love Biden’s absolute malevolence regarding Harris. He’s sending her to the border. No matter what she does, the photo ops are going to be atrocious. It will raise all sorts of uncomfortable questions – questions that this bumbling politician will not be able to answer. She’s caught in a vice. Couldn’t happen to a nicer gal. Then there’s Critical Race theory. Teachers can’t manage to waddle to the classrooms for fear of COVID but they have time to foist mind poison on kids? Teacher’s Unions deserve every bit of scorn coming their way and then some. Don’t forget abortion! Biden is all for your tax-payer money paying for someone else’s irresponsibility and murdering their child. Travesty. If you voted for Biden because you hate Trump, I’d like to know how you defend this sickening agenda.
“But his disciples said to Jesus, ‘You see how the crowd is pressing upon you, and yet you ask, “Who touched me?”’” (Mk 5:31)
One sympathizes with the disciples. Our Lord’s question seems unreasonable. He’s a celebrity, after all. The entire town and countryside turn out to see Him. They want to be close to Him, maybe out of devotion, but just as likely out of a desire to say that they saw Him. There’s the inevitable jostling of the crowd and many people probably bumped into Him.But one person touches Him differently. The woman with the hemorrhage reaches out to touch His cloak intentionally, with faith. Many people just happen to bump into Him. Only one touches Him. This contrast provides a way to consider a tension we’re experiencing now, between a cultural and an intentional Catholicism.Catholicism requires a culture. Or rather, it forms a culture for its own continuation. The Catholic faith is not a hobby that we can relegate to one area of our lives. It is a way of life – indeed, the Way, as the ancient Church called it. (Acts 9:2) It should shape every aspect of the believer’s life: thoughts, words, actions, and relationships. It is lived by heart, mind, soul, and body. It takes up our time with its seasons and feasts. It fills up our space with its art and architecture.A culture properly imbued by Catholic doctrine hands on the faith more easily. We’re not meant to learn the faith only in a classroom or by books. We learn it from our parents and grandparents, as well as by way of songs, sights, and smells. With so many helps around him, a person can embrace and interiorize the faith more naturally, peacefully, and thoroughly. Thus, a Catholic culture produces such extraordinary and diverse saints as Thomas Aquinas, Charles Borromeo, and Teresa of Avila. We should strive to build such a culture.*At the same time, the danger of a Catholic culture should be painfully obvious. If not properly tended, it becomes merely cultural Catholicism. That counterfeit has produced many people who have grown up with the trappings and in the atmosphere of Catholicism, who indeed claim to be Catholic (perhaps even “devout”), but who are far from the actual faith. Cultural Catholics often preface their words of dissent with, “I went to twelve years of Catholic school.”These accidental Catholics are like the crowd surrounding Jesus. They bump into Him on occasion, as a result of being in the same place. They allow the trappings to substitute for the personal investment. They don’t actually touch Him in faith. Our Lord Himself warned of such superficial contact: “And you will say, ‘We ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets.’ Then he will say to you, ‘I do not know where [you] are from. Depart from me, all you evildoers!’” (Lk 13:26)In response to cultural Catholicism’s danger, we now talk about being “intentional” and forming “intentional disciples.” The desire is to produce Catholics who don’t just bump into our Lord but touch Him out of faith.This is desperately needed. The external supports that a Catholic culture would provide for the soul are gone. Sure, a parish should try to build a Catholic culture. But that’s still a small thing against the tsunami of our toxic culture. For a long time now, it has been foolish to presume that, in our secular society, Catholic trappings could lead to a vibrant Catholic faith. Now, just to survive, Catholics must be intentional and deliberate in professing and living their faith.But this intentionality has drawbacks as well. An “intentional community” can quickly become gnostic and cliquish. Or a country club. Too much or the wrong emphasis on intentionality can lead to the mindset that we have chosen Him. It can obscure the power of His words: “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you.” (Jn 15:16) Our intentional choice is simply a response to His initiative. We choose because we’ve first been chosen.A great defense against this danger is the Catholic parish, which (with few exceptions) is geographical, not intentional. Indeed, a “destination parish” – although necessary is some places – is an oxymoron. One of the beautiful things about a Catholic parish is the cross-section of people it draws. On any given Sunday, the faithful are gathered not owing to any shared hobby or worldly interest but because they are all sinners who have found redemption in Christ’s Church. They are otherwise not a group of people who would be found together.James Joyce’s famous definition of Catholicism – “Here comes everybody” – is found in every parish. The faithful – of whatever degree – are at a parish not so much because they have chosen it, but because God, in His Providence, has plopped them in its boundaries. They are responding to that reality.Of course, some parishioners are less intentional than others. We don’t for that reason drive out or exclude them. Instead, we hope that authentic Catholic doctrine, devotion, liturgy – in a word, culture – will draw them closer to the center of the parish and to the heart of the Church.Thus, the solution is (as one would expect) both a cultural and an intentional Catholicism. That is, to cultivate a vibrant Catholic culture that does not substitute for the personal investment but fosters that intentional commitment to Christ.
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Courage Begets Courage
ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP 
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