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“Army of One” Pro-Life Bishop Gracida: “In 1991 I became estranged from the majority of the my fellow bishops in Texas over a moral question…because of the heterodox nature of the moral reasoning behind the [Texas Bishop’s] Statement”

June 02, 2023

Bishop [Gracida] Excommunicates 2 In Texas for Abortion Stance

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By Ari L. Goldman

• June 30, 1990

Credit…

The New York Times Archives

“Army Of One” by The Offspring

Song Meanings and Factshttps://www.songmeaningsandfacts.com › army-of-on…

Jul 24, 2021 — The phrase “army of one” alludes to a singular individual being just as effective as an entire army. 

Catholic News Agencyhttps://www.catholicnewsagency.com › news › bishop…

“Army Of One” by The Offspring

Song Meanings and Factshttps://www.songmeaningsandfacts.com › army-of-on…

Jul 24, 2021 — The phrase “army of one” alludes to a singular individual being just as effective as an entire army. 

Bishop Rene Henry Gracida’s 100th birthday is coming up on June 9 so I am reading his autobiography in preparation for the great day. 

Bishop Gracida says “in 1991 I became estranged from the majority of the my fellow bishops in Texas over a moral question…because of the heterodox nature of the moral reasoning behind the [Texas Bishop’s] Statement”:

In addition to all the grief lawsuits caused me in 1991 I became estranged from the majority of the my fellow bishops in Texas over a moral question.  Archbishop Joseph Fiorenza, Bishop of Galveston-Houston, invited the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Boston to establish a branch office in Houston.  The branch office was opened and Father Albert S. Moraczewski, O.P. (the founding President of the NCBC) was appointed its director.  He probably suggested to Archbishop Fiorenza that the Office should make a big splash in the news in order to announce its creation.  Accordingly he set to work writing a statement on the withdrawal of nutrition and hydration from comatose patients.  I had acquired a reputation as being theologically conservative among the bishops of Texas by that time.  I received in the mail, from the Archbishop’s office, a document identified as “Draft No. 8″ of the Statement of the Bishops of Texas on the Withdrawal of Nutrition and Hydration From Comatose Patients.”  I had not received any of the preceding seven drafts.  I read the Statement and was angry, not only because I had been kept out of the loop as the Statement was being developed, but because of the heterodox nature of the moral reasoning behind the Statement.  The Statement called for the withdrawal of of nutrition and hydration, not just from terminally ill or dying patients but from all PVS patients, i.e. from all patients in a permanent vegetative state.  The problem was that there have been too many cases where a ‘permanent” vegetative state proved to be a temporary vegetative state and if nutrition and hydration had been pulled from those patients it would have killed them.

I wrote a strong critique of Draft No. 8 and sent it to all the bishops of Texas.  No one replied to my critique.  Shortly after that we had a meeting of the Province and Draft No. 8 was adopted as a Statement of the Bishops of Texas, but not by all the bishops of Texas, Bishop Bernard Ganter and I voted against the adoption of the Statement.  Shortly after that the newspaper of the Diocese of Dallas, the editor of which I had fired as the editor of the newspaper of the Diocese of Corpus Christi because of his extreme liberal editing of the paper, published a big expose of me as having dissented from a teaching of the Bishops of Texas, no mention was made of Bishop Ganter’s vote against the adoption of the Statement.  The Dallas Diocesan papers story was picked up by NC News Service and spread all across the United States and I acquired a reputation as a dissenter.  I did not want people to think of me in the same way they thought of the dissenters from Humanae Vitae, so I wrote a detailed dissent from the Statement and published it in my own Diocesan paper.  Naturally, my published dissent was ignored by the media.

Shortly thereafter I attended a meeting of the NCCB Prolife Activities Committee, of which I was one of seven bishop members, and I moved that the Committee should issue a statement contradicting the stand taken by the bishops of Texas.  The Committee approved my motion and Cardinal O’Connor appointed me and Bishop Donald L. Trautman of Eirie, Pennsylvania to write the statement.  We did and submitted it at the next meeting of the Committee.  Cardinal O’Connor felt that we should consult with the Holy See before issuing the statement so he sent it to Cardinal Ratzinger at the CDF in Rome.  Cardinal Ratzinger wrote back that we should publish the statement but that we could not say that he approved it since the Holy See had not yet formally studied the subject.  We published it.  The bishops of Pennsylvnia and the Bishops of Florida soon issued their own statements that mirrored what I had written  and fourteen years later, in 2004,  Pope John Paul II in an address to the Pontifical Commission of Life said basically the same thing that I had said in my dissent from the Statement of the bishops of Texas.  It was a Pyrrhic victory for me however; my relations with most of the bishops of Texas plummeted.  The bishops of Texas have never retracted their Statement and I doubt that they will ever forgive me for my dissent.  My relations with them only got worse as the 1990’s progressed, as you will see!

On a positive note.  If I may be allowed to boast, I will boast about a legal victory.  This time as President of the Kenedy Foundation.  In 1985 Gary Mauro, the Land Commissioner of the State of Texas awarded petroleum leases on 35,000 acres of land belonging to the Kenedy Foundation.  Those acres bordered the inter-coastal canal and had been subject to flooding during hurricanes.  Mauro claimed that they were tidal flats and belonged to the State of Texas.  The Kenedy Foundation filed suit to prevent him from collecting royalties from the oil companies and denying his claim that the land was tidal.  The lawsuit dragged on for six years through the district court, the apellate court and on to the Texas Supreme Court. All the courts upheld Mauro’s claim even though we showed that the tides in the Laguna Madre were less than 12 inches, not enough to cover the land.  If Mauro’s victory in the courts had been allowed to stand the property rights of all owners of coastal property from Brownsville to the Louisiana border would have been in jeopardy.  We appealed to the Texas Supreme Court for a rehearing of the case and we won; the Court said that the decision of the Court in 1954 in the Case of Humble Oil v Texas (the Gardner decision) was decisive and the land belonged to the Foundation.  The foundation collected over $5,000,000 in royalties that had been held in escrow by the courts.

Bishop Drury had applied to the Federal Communications Commission for a permit for the Diocese to own and operatea low-power FM station in Corpus Christi.  He retired before the FCC acted on his application.  The permit was granted after I became Bishop of Corpus Christi and I built a telecommunications center to house the FM station which I named KLUX, incorporating the Latin word  lux which means “light”; I wanted the station to be Christ’s light on the world.  We also created TV production facilities and began to tape programs to be shown on public television and commercial stations.  I applied for another permit to build  a low-power FM station in Laredo while Laredo was still part of the Diocese.  I named the station in Laredo KHOY, hoy being the Spanish word for “today.”  We also built a TV production facility in Laredo equal to the one in Corpus Christi.  Both stations have become powerful means of evangelization in South Texas and, in the case of KHOY in Mexico.  KLUX has been linked to the world on the intenet and now can be listened to any place on earth.

————————————–

John Cardinal O’Connor, Archbishop of New York

My becoming  persona non grata with my brother bishops in Texas was to get even worse, it that were possible.  The Board of Directors of the John G. and Marie Stella Memorial Foundation was made up of seven individuals with myself as President and Chairman, the Board was elected by the Members of the Foundation who were also members of the Board of Directors.   The three other  individuals of the Board reflected the same religious affiliations as the Members of the Foundation.  The Court decision in 1963 that settled Brother Leo’s first lawsuit against the Foundation stipulated that from then on the group of Members of the Foundation would be 2/3 Catholic and 1/3 non-catholic, i.e. four Catholics and two non-catholics.  The Board of Directors had the same religious proportions.

The Board of Directors made all the decisions about the operations of the Foundation.  I was elected President of the Foundation and Chairman of the Board of Directors from 1984 until 1997.  The Board of Directors was made up professional people, doctors, lawyers, engineers, bankers, hospital administrators and government officials.  While I provided leadership for the Board of Directors the Directors were not my puppets.  They frequently rejected my ideas for the activities on the ranch that might provide additional income for the Foundation other than oil and gas.  I never voted on the awarding of grants; I would speak in favor or against but I would never vote.

The Foundation gave away tens of millions of dollars in grants.  Fifteen per cent of the grants had to be to non-religious entities by order of the Court in its 1963 decision.  The Foundation gave millions of dollars in grants to all the dioceses of Texas with the exception of the two largest, richest dioceses, Dallas and Houston.  It was inevitable that, human nature being what it is, some of the bishops felt that they should receive more.  That may have motivated some to launch an attack on me or some of their motivation may have stemmed from their anger over the nutrition and hydration scandal; only God knows!  Here is what happened.

In 1992 Bishop Leroy Matthieson, Bishop of Amarillo gave an interview to the Diocesan newspaper of the Diocese of Tyler.  In the interview he accused me of abusing my power as President of the Foundation.  In short order Bishop Joseph Delaney of Fort Worth and Bishop John McCarthy jumped on Bishop Mattieson’s bandwagon and began to make public statements that were quoted in the media accusing me of abusing my authority as President of the Foundation.  They persuaded Archbishop Flores to visit the Attorney General of Texas and to convey their concerns.  Archbishop visited the Attorney General, Dan Morales, and he filed suit in the District Court in Travis County that had jurisdiction over charitable foundations asking the court to remove me from the Board of the Kenedy Foundation and to reorganize the Foundation’s governance.

The appearance of an attorney from the Attorney General’s office at the office of the Foundation demanding that all of the files of the Foundation be turned over to the Attorney General sent shock waves through the staff and Board of the Foundation.  In addition to our Foundation attorney the Board retained the services of former Judge Jorge Rangel to defend the Board and the battle was joined.

The three bishops I named above continued to slander me in the media.  Concerned about my good name and reputation and also conscious of the scandal they were giving to the Catholics of the United States I asked John Cardinal O’Connor to help by getting Rome to stop the three bishops from making their slanderous remarks about me in the media.  It was the biggest mistake I ever made in my life!

I had know John O’Connor ever since I was Auxiliary Bishop in Miami and he was Chief of Chaplains to the United States Military.  We met in 1972 when I celebrated a confirmation in Key West and again at Homestead Air Force Base.  We hit it off since I was ex-military myself.  Then over the years we worked together on committees of the N.C.C.B.  We had served together on a special committee consisting of himself as Chairman and Cardinals James Hickey and Joseph Bernardin with Bishop Sean O’Malley and myself, charged by the President of the N.C.C.B with visiting Nicaragua, Guatamala, Honduras and El Salvador to gather information of the Church’s struggle with revolutionary forces.  I had worked closely with him on the N.C.C.B. Committee for Prolife Activities.  I counted on our friendship to persuade him to do as I asked.

It was a mistake because I forgot that during the decades when Brother Leo and Peter Grace had tried to gain control of the Foundation they had appealed for help, first to Cardinal Spellman and later to Cardinal Krol.  Both Cardinals, far from trying to help Brother Leo and Peter Grace tried to gain control of the Foundation themselves.  I should have remembered that.  The love of money and the power that it gains was too much for Cardinal O’Connor to resist.  He asked the Congregation of Bishops to appoint a special commission to investigate the Kenedy Foundation and Cardinal Gantin, Prefect of the Congregation of Bishops appointed Cardinal O’Connor chairman of the Special Commission with Cardinal Bernard Law, Archbishop of Boston and Bishop Raymond Burke, Bishop of La Crosse.

When the Attorney General of Texas, Dan Morales, filled suit against me and the Board of Directors of the Kenedy Foundation I recognized that anything could happen and I did not want the Diocese of Corpus Christi to be vacant for any period of time after I retired since that meant that there would not be a Bishop of Corpus Christi as a member of the Foundation and a member of its Board of Directors.  So I decided that I would ask Rome for a Coadjutor Bishop to assist me in the last few years until I turned 75 and had to send my resignation to the Pope.  Coadjutor Bishops usually do not have any power in the diocese until the Ordinary dies or retires.  They only have the right to succeed the Ordinary and become Ordinary in his place.  Until the Ordinary dies or retires the Coadjutor functions in the same way an Auxiliary Bishop would function.

So now I made the second biggest mistake of my life.  I approached the Apostolic Nuncio and told him of my desire to have a Coadjutor with right of succession in place when I retired so that the Diocese Foundation relationship would not be jeopardized.  He asked me if I had anyone in mind.  I told him that while I was Chairman of the Hispanic Affairs Committee of the N.C.C.B.  I was impressed with the Auxiliary Bishop of Boston, Bishop Roberto Gonzalez.  The Nuncio told me to speak with Cardinal Law and see if he was willing to let Bishop Roberto go from Boston.  I did, he agreed and I informed the Nuncio; Bishop Roberto was appoint my Coadjutor shortly thereafter without any special powers, only the right to succeed me.  I say that the appointment of Bishop Roberto was a mistake because after Cardinal Gantin appointed the Commission Cardinal Law and Cardinal O’Connor had, in Bishop Roberto, an agent in my Chancery and he did betray my trust.

Cardinal O’Connor called a meeting of all the bishops of Texas to be held at the Marriott Hotel at DFW Airport.  We all went.  The Cardinal O’Connor, Cardinal Law and Bishop Burke listened as each bishop in turn expressed his opinion.  Then Cardinal O’Connor adjourned the meeting and everyone departed.  Some weeks later Cardinal O’Connor sent a letter to me and to the Board of Directors in which he proposed that the Board be replaced by a new Board made up of the Bishops of Texas.  The Reaction of the Board was immediate and very negative.

Sarita Kenedy East had created a Foundation to be run by laity.  The only cleric she named to be on her Foundation was her Bishop, Bishop Garriga of Corpus Christi.  All her life, up until she came under the evil influence of Brother Leo, she bestowed her generous giving on people and institutions in South Texas, primarily Catholic but occasionally non-catholic.  Under Brother Leo’s influence she gave generously to the Trappist Order, but never to Dioceses other than the Diocese of Corpus Christi.  Cardinal O’Connor’s proposal was so foreign to the desires of Sarita that I told him he was violating a fundamental rule in the Church that the wishes of a donor were to be respected.  He replied, “No one knows what she thought” which was absurd because we had documentary evidence of what she thought.

To my disgust my new Coadjutor, Bishop Roberto Gonzalez began to actively conspire with his mentor, Cardinal Law and Cardinal O’Connor.  Years later in speaking with Cardinal Raymond Burke I learned from him that after the meeting in the Marriott Hotel at DFW Airport, Cardinal O’Connor never consulted him about the Diocese of Corpus Christi/Kenedy Foundation case.  O’Connor was acting just as Spellman and Krol had acted years before in trying to gain control of the foundation.

My plan for the reorganization of the Foundation Board to meet the criticisms of the bishops of Texas was for the Board to be expanded to thirteen members. It would be composed of nine members who were laity from South Texas, plus the Bishop of Corpus Christi, and one other Bishop selected by the bishops at the provincial meeting and finally two other lay persons from elsewhere in the State of Texas.  The Board of Directors voted approval of my plan and so I instructed our attorney, Jorge Rangel to begin negotiations with the Attorney General for the acceptance of our plan.

While Jorge Rangel was negotiating with the Attorney General’s office, Cardinal O’Connor send me a fax which read, “I am on my way to JFK Airport to fly to Rome to meet with Cardinal Gantin, Prefect of the Congregation of Bishops, you must fax a letter to me immediately so that I get it before my flight leaves telling me that you accept my plan for the reorganization of the Foundation.”  I was furious!  I immediately faxed a letter to him at his Chancery office knowing that they would read it to him at the Airport over the telephone; I wrote to the Cardinal,  “How dare you order me about like a servant.  I am a successor of the Apostles just as you are!  I will never accept your plan.”  My anger at him was mitigated months later when I learned that he was suffering from a brain tumor which caused his death.  No bishop in his right mind have sent that fax to me.

The Foundation was saved by the United States Justice Department launching an investigation into the conduct of Attorney General Dan Morales.  He was indicted and convicted of accepting bribes and was sentenced to a prison term in a Federal Penitentiary.  With Dan Morales, the tool of Bishops McCarthy, Delaney and Mathieson, in prison our attorney Jorge Rangel had no difficulty in persuading the Deputy Attorney General to accept the Board’s plan of reorganization.  The Office of the Attorney General dropped the lawsuit that had been filed in Austin.

So ended the drama started by Bishops Mathieson, McCarthy and Delaney.  But my troubles with the bishops of Texas did not end, they would never end.  We, they, had crossed the Rubicon.

——————————————–

Braunvieh Bull similar to my bulls, Cornerstone Amigo and Ambassador

Dan Morales’ lawsuit was settled but my troubles were not over.  I had a Coadjutor Bishop, Bishop Roberto Gonzalez, who did not understand that he was no different from an auxiliary bishop except that he had the right to succeed me when I retired.  He was constantly trying to usurp my authority.  For example, when I went on vacation he fired several of the chancery employees.  He did not have the power to hire or fire anyone and when I returned from vacation I had to rehire the people he had fired.  I began to worry about what he would do to the Diocese after I retired and he succeeded me, my worries proved to be well founded

I had bought some land in the Hill Country and created Camp Corpus Christi as a place for young Catholics with or without their families could go for a vacation.  Some of the poorer families never took vacations because they could not afford to do so.  Every summer we had a week at the Camp devoted to all the altar boys in the Diocese.  I would go to the Camp and spend the week with the altar boys.  It was a great experience for me and it was a valuable means of promoting vocations to the priesthood.

In the first summer Bishop Roberto was in the Diocese I suggested to him that he should go spend the week with the altar boys at Camp Corpus Christi.  He agreed to do so.  When he came back after the week I asked him, “How was the week?”  He replied, “It was the worst week of my life!”

I was close to celebrating my 74th birthday and I realized that in just one more year I would be 75 years old and on my 75th Birthday I would be required to submit to the Pope a letter of resignation.  The more I thought about it the more I questioned why I should wait a year to do it.  I was mentally and physically exhausted from the Kenedy lawsuit, the attacks by the bishops, other ‘slip and fall’ lawsuits and now the daily problems created for me by my Coadjutor.  I decided that I would ask the Pope to let me retire a year early.  I wrote to Pope John Paul II and asked him for permission to retire.  He granted me permission and so on April Fools Day, April 1, 1997, I retired.

My worst fears about Bishop Roberto were soon realized.  He closed Camp Corpus Christi and began closing different chancery offices such as the Office of Evangelization, the Office of Pro-life Activities and others.  It was a disaster.  Many of the programs that I had started that were successful were now shut down.  Some people were comparing him to Attila the Hun laying waste the countryside.  Thank God the Diocese of Corpus Christi was spared further damage when, after just two years as Ordinary, Pope John Paul II promoted Bishop Roberto to be the Archbishop of San Juan, Puerto Rico.  This is not the place to recount all that happened in San Juan after he became its Archbishop.  Suffice it to say that he has been the subject of an Apostolic Visitation and has been asked by the Holy See to resign.[http://extraordinarybishop.blogspot.com/2014/09/here-is-series-of-posts-by-bishop-rene.html]

Pray an Our Father now for reparation for the sins committed because of Francis’s Amoris Laetitia.

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

Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants 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

– If Francis betrays Benedict XVI & the”Roman Rite Communities” like he betrayed the Chinese Catholics we must respond like St. Athanasius, the Saintly English Bishop Robert Grosseteste & “Eminent Canonists and Theologians” by “Resist[ing]” him: https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/12/if-francis-betrays-benedict-xvi.html 

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

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

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

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

– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:

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

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

Election Notes: 

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

– Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times “Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html

– Tucker Carlson’s Conservatism Inc. Biden Steal Betrayal is explained by “One of the Greatest Columns ever Written” according to Rush: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/tucker-carlsons-conservatism-inc-biden.html?m=1

– A Hour which will Live in Infamy: 10:01pm November 3, 2020:
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1

What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: “Anitfa ‘Agent Provocateurs‘”:
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1] 

Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God’s Will and to do it.

Pray an Our Father now for America.

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

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FIFTH DAY: Please Join The Catholic Monitor St. Joseph Novena to Celebrate Bishop Gracida’s 100th Birthday that will be on June 9

June 04, 2023

FIFTH DAY

PATRON OF THE CHURCH

Saint Joseph, God has appointed you patron of the Catholic Church because you were the head of the Holy Family, the starting-point of the Church.[https://americaneedsfatima.org/prayers/novena-prayers-to-saint-joseph]]

Let us for nine days enter St. Joseph’s workshop for nine days as Jesus did and pray for Bishop Rene Henry Gracida in celebration of his 100th birthday on June 9.
 “When you invoke St. Joseph, you don’t have to speak much. You know your Father in Heaven knows what you need; well, so does His friend St. Joseph.” “Tell him, ‘If you were in my place and Bishop Gracida’s place, St. Joseph, what would you do? Well, pray for this in Bishop Gracida’s behalf.’” – This prayer is adapted from a St. Andre Bessette prayer. Also, say the Hail Joseph prayer:

Hail Joseph the just, Wisdom is with you; blessed are you among all men and blessed is Jesus, the fruit of Mary, your faithful spouse. Holy Joseph, worthy foster-father of Jesus Christ, pray for us sinners and obtain divine Wisdom for us from God, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. – St. Louis Marie de Montfort

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Raising the Roof

By Judd Garrett

Objectivity is the Objective

June 1, 2023

The House passed a budget deal Friday which raises the debt ceiling in exchange for certain budgetary concessions from the White House. This agreement has been greeted with mixed reviews. The moderates in both parties cheered Kevin McCarthy for his leadership on this deal, but the more extreme in both parties think it’s a travesty. The rightwing Republicans said that McCarthy did not get enough cuts in spending while the leftwing Democrats claim that Biden agreed to too many spending cuts. Many conservatives believe that McCarthy could have gotten more out of this deal than he did, but are taking heart that at least, he did not agree to a flat raise of the debt ceiling without any concessions. 

In reality, it doesn’t really matter what the budget deal they agreed on actually looks like, it is not going to solve our problems. It is not even a first step in solving our problems. Just the idea that we are going to raise the debt ceiling at all when we already have repeatedly raised the debt ceiling over and over again in the last 40 years to accrue $31.5 trillion of debt, is a travesty. When you have $31.5 trillion of debt, does it matter if you increase that debt by $4 trillion or $6 trillion over the next 5 years? Does that mean anything? Of course not. If you’re already drowning in a pool, does it matter if the hose is turned on or not? 

The fact that we have $31.5 trillion of debt, very few politicians in Washington, and no one in the mainstream media cares. They all are cheering that raising the debt ceiling proves that our country is too far gone to fix. We are now in a slow decline until we crash and burn. This is going to be the new normal – trillion-dollar deficits every year coupled with phony promises and empty talking points of fiscal responsibility until our whole financial system collapses. And we can’t solely blame the Democrats. Remember, the Republicans did not reduce the deficit very much in Trump’s first two years when he had a Republican controlled House and Senate. And Republicans did not reduce the deficit in any of the years when George W. Bush was President and he had a Republican House and Senate. They all love the gravy train. Republicans had to repay their millionaire and billionaire donors as much as the Democrats did.

In reality, nothing substantive will ever be accomplished on the debt or the deficit, because the United States citizens as a whole will never elect politicians who are fiscally responsible enough to do so because the American people are not fiscally responsible. The problem is not simply that the politicians are addicted to deficit spending which they are. Our citizenry is also addicted to deficit spending. Americans are currently carrying $930.6 billion in credit card debt alone. If we want something, we go and buy it whether we have the money or not, and the politicians in Washington are doing the same. That is the American mentality these days. 

So, we will never legitimately cut our deficit or our debt. Never, because the goal of the federal government over the last 50 years has been to create dependency on the federal government, of which it has done a masterful job. The American people are dependent on the government; we enjoy the gravy train of government spending as much as the politicians. So, nothing will ever happen to rein in our fiscal irresponsibility. We are caught in a death spiral that is too scary from which to pull ourselves out. The politicians fear that they will lose elections if they cut spending, and the voters fear they will lose government benefits if they vote for politicians who will cut spending. The American people want all the goodies that the government provides without raising taxes and without incurring debt. We are living in La La Land. We hate the government when they come for our tax dollars; we hate the government when it accrues $31.5 trillion of debt, but we love the government when it is doling out benefits.

One may argue, “There are important things that the government needs to spend on that I support, I just don’t like the wasteful spending.” That’s absolutely correct, and everyone agrees on that. The problem is that not every one of the 150 million people who voted in the last election will agree on which government spending is vital and which is wasteful. So, everyone votes for the politicians who will support the spending they believe is important, and the politician who agrees to give everything to everybody is the one for whom the most people will vote, and the one who will likely get elected. 

As Alexander Fraser Tytler said in the 18th century,

 â€œA democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: 

·      From bondage to spiritual faith; 

·      From spiritual faith to great courage; 

·      From courage to liberty; 

·      From liberty to abundance; 

·      From abundance to selfishness; 

·      From selfishness to apathy; 

·      From apathy to dependence; 

·      From dependence back into bondage.†

We are in the dependency stage right now, and we are staring bondage in the face. And no one cares because freedom and true liberty are much too hard. When the Israelites were wandering in the desert after being freed from slavery, they begged Moses to bring them back to Egypt because the safety and security of bondage were less frightening than the unknowns and uncertainty of freedom. During Covid, most Americans chose the security of the authoritarian rule of the government over the uncertainty of freedom. We allowed the government to lock us in our homes, put masks on our faces, and shut down our schools, businesses, and churches because freedom was much too scary. We allowed the government to censor us on social media because freedom of speech is too scary. 

To reduce spending the way we need to get our fiscal house in order requires drastic cuts in government spending that too many of us are too dependent on. So, we will continue to vote for leaders who will continue to promise to give us the things we need because true freedom and liberty are much too hard. And at some point, in the future, we will get the dictatorship we deserve, the dictatorship for which we will have voted.

•  FOR THE HOLY SACRIFICE
• SACRED SCRIPTURE

Trinity Sunday: Do I hear an “Amen!”?

 Fr. John Zuhlsdorf June 2, 2023 0 Comments

Context is king in these weekly columns.  Context enriches our encounter with the living Word of God during the sacred liturgical action.  In our liturgical participation we, too, have contexts, life contexts.  Our needs and concerns bring us to thank God and offer praise, to raise petitions and to express regret for sins of omission and commission reflecting and calling forth the classic “four ends of Mass”, “end” here being “purpose, goal”.   We weave our contexts with the overarching macrocontexts of the year and the microcontexts of the elements of Mass, and in so doing we are transformed by our encounter with Mystery, ever alluring, ever overwhelming.

Where are we in the liturgical year?  With the passing of the Octave of Pentecost, we enter into the Season after Pentecost, the Tempus per Annum.  This liturgical season is not unrelated to the others.  On the one hand, it echoes the themes of the Easter Season. On the other hand, especially as it comes to its close, it foreshadows the theme of the end of the world, and judgment, the Four Last Things with the Coming of Christ.  Hence The Season after Pentecost, with its two dozen or so Sundays, dovetails with Paschaltide and with Advent.  I like to think of this period as the “practical” part of the year wherein we learn better to live and integrate the great mysteries we celebrated over the last weeks in view of the Judgment we will face.

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On this first day of the Season which celebrates no specific mystery, we celebrate the deepest mystery of all.  While this Sunday does, in fact, have its own Mass formulary (which can be used during the weekdays), we celebrate and reflect on the Most Holy Trinity.  Why now?  In a sense reflection on the Trinity is the climax of all the feasts we have recently been through.   While we address a great many of our prayers to God the Father, as Jesus did, we also invoke the Holy Name of Jesus and bind them up in the beautiful ribbon of the Holy Spirit.   Also, as Pius Parsch once put it, the Feast of the Holy Trinity is like the Church’s great Te Deum, the mighty hymn of thanksgiving to God, sung especially at auspicious times and moments of victory.   He goes on to say that Holy Trinity Sunday is “a synthesis of Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Ascension and Pentecost.

Moreover, if that is a macro way of looking at the feast, its micro look draws our focused attention to each time we pray in reference to the Trinity, which is virtually every Catholic prayer. It reminds us that the sign of the Cross is not a gesture to be made without full regard.  It underscores our own identity because we were baptized in the Names of the Most Holy Trinity.   We are absolved in the Names of the Trinity.  We are on our deathbeds sent to God in the Names of the Trinity, each solemnly invoked.

Our task is to look into the first reading or Epistle for Sunday Masses.  We have our context in the liturgical year.  How about the context of the pericope, or “cutting” of Scripture for reading at Mass?  We hear from the Apostle to the Gentiles, St. Paul, writing to the Romans.    In the context of Romans, Paul has been talking about the relationship between the Chosen People and the Gentiles.  In this chapter, 11, Paul uses the image of an olive tree to describe the Jews and Gentiles.  Some branches are broken off, in God’s severity and, in His mercy others are grafted in their place.   He says that branches from a wild olive (Gentiles) will take well to the graft, but how much more will branches taken from the original tree take to being grafted in.  So, the Jews who have come to embrace Jesus and the Truth.  Thence, Paul can only “sing” about the mystery of God’s mercy on us, so different from how we think and act:

³³ O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

³⁴ “For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”
³⁵ “Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?”

³⁶ For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory for ever. Amen.

I kept here something of the formatting in the Revised Standard version because of the poetic quality of the inserted words.  It even ends with an “Amen!”

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We have to contend with the statement that there are things we simply cant understand, not with human knowing and worldly experience. God reveals some things about Himself, through nature itself and through graces.  But God remains total other.   I am reminded of Paul’s words in Ephesians 3.  See if this doesn’t touch on the themes of Romans, we have sheer praise, and also being “grounded”, which is like being “grafted”, followed by the mystery which cannot be expressed.

¹⁴ For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, ¹⁶ that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, ¹⁷ and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸ may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fulness of God.

The RSV gives us v. 36 as “For from him and through him and to him are all things.”  In the Douay one finds, “For of him and by him, and in him, are all things.”

One way to approach this could be to consider Creation from the view of the Three Persons.  Of course all Three Persons participate in the acts of each.  However, we can make distinctions.  For that statement, “For from Him”, we might think of the Father as the origin of the existence even of the uncreated, that which is divine.  The Second and Third Persons proceed from the Father.

For that, “by Him/through Him” statement we might consider the entirety of the cosmos, the vastness of which becomes more astonishing with every deep search of the Hubble telescope.  We read of the Second Person, the Divine Logos, in the Prologue of John, “All things were made by Him, and without Him was made nothing that was made.” We might also consider the unfathomable number of angels, the number of which could rival the number of everything that moves.  If the Hubble shows us big things far away, billions of galaxies with billions of stars, other instruments show us subatomic particles… which move. Get your head around that in reference to the number of angels.

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That “in Him/to Him” statement is a little harder, but we can apply it to the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit, at the beginning of Creation, brought order to the void and primordial chaos.  This was done by the one who proceeds from the Father and from the Son, the reciprocal love between the First and the Second Person, each giving their perfect self-gift to other, the gift of everything they are, including personhood.  Hence, the ordering Spirit is also a Person, bringing the relationship of the Divine Persons into a harmony of Three rather than a closed circle of two.  The ordering of Creation was in His ordering and it flows back to Him as the orderer of Love.

It is this originating, enacting, ordering indwelling Love that we thrust from our souls through mortal sin.  That is what is restored in the Sacrament of Penance.  We are made in the very image and likeness of God, make to know, to will, to love.  We freely accept God in His Triune Mystery and we freely reject as well.  That we can return to harmony and love in God after we sin…  how unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways!

Is the Sleeping Conservative 

Dragon Finally Waking Up?

Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness

June 1, 2023

(Emphasis by the author)

Conservatives and traditionalists are often exasperated at the ongoing woke cultural revolution in their midst.

How can America be turned upside down, as it is, when there is little public support for the things happening around us?

They don’t see much backing for the current wide-open borders and unchecked illegal immigration, yet it continues.

Conservatives feel that most Americans reject the trend of biological men dominating female sporting events.

They fear American jurisprudence has become now vastly weaponized and warped.

Certainly, Donald Trump will be more likely indicted by a politicized New York City prosecutor for supposedly overvaluing his net worth over a decade ago than would be a current violent street criminal clubbing a subway commuter.

In 2020 torching a federal courthouse or massing at the White House grounds, in efforts to get at the president, earned either few arrests and little or no jail time. In 2021, if one entered the Capitol and illegally paraded around like a buffoon, he could get a five-year prison sentence.

Traditionalists feel that sky-high energy prices, out-of-control urban crime, a depressed economy, high interest rates, and a politicized FBI, CIA, Justice Department, and Pentagon are all needlessly self-created messes.

How then did these extremist policies that have little popular support become institutionalized?

Conservatives, by their nature and unlike the Left, are more inclined to accept existing institutions rather than to radically alter or destroy them.

They were asleep at the wheel in 2020 when left-wing-funded lawsuits radically transformed Election Day in many states into a mere construct. Some 70 percent of the electorate in key precincts voted by mail or early, with far fewer ballot audits or authentication.

They focus on nominating more conservative judges, not packing the court itself. They work to take back the Senate, not to end the filibuster or bring in two new states with four new senators.

Traditionalists often feel they have no time for politics. They prefer to focus on their families, jobs, communities, and churches. Until recently they shunned organized boycotts. They abhor massing outside the homes of left-wing politicians and judges.

They shrug and concede that universities, teachers, government unions, the corporate boardroom, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, the media, entertainment, and professional sports are hopelessly activist and left-wing.

The environmental, social, governance (ESG), diversity, equity, and inclusion, and LGBQT+ agendas were unfathomable acronyms to Middle America and thus mostly ignored.

So conservatives often slept through the woke revolution.

Yet suddenly they realize their apathy allowed the country to descend into something the nation’s founders never imagined or intended, and antithetical to what most knew as America just a couple of decades ago.

So conservatives are awakening from their slumber. And they are discovering that they too can boycott, agitate—and roar.

The woke Target corporation in just a few days has suffered a more than $10 billion loss in its stock value. Millions of shoppers shunned its 2,000 stores after the chain showcased its “pride”apparel. The displays featured “tuck pieces”—veritable cod pieces– that are intended to facilitate “women’s” male genitalia.

Anheuser-Busch came up with the bright idea that it would highlight Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender performance activist, to hawk its Bud Light brand. But beer seemed incidental to the self-absorbed Mulvaney’s fixation on promoting transgenderism.

So Bud Light-drinking, red-state America got turned off by Mulvaney’s in-your-face-advocacy.

An ensuing informal boycott cost the company nearly $16 billion in lost stock value. Hundreds of millions of dollars of unsellable light beer stagnated. Stores can’t even give it away. Meanwhile, Bud Light’s competitors coped with meeting record Memorial Day consumer demand.

Ditto the defiantly woke Disney Corporation.

The now politically activist entertainment corporation insisted on pushing woke agendas down the throats of its family-centered audience.

The result? Its online entertainment services are bleeding millions of subscribers. Disney stock has lost $16 billion in value. Its overpriced theme parks no longer count on continually increased attendance.

Sometimes traditionalists prefer simply to drop out rather than boycott wokeism. One result is that the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards now have a fraction of their previous televised audience.

In 1998—when the United States had a population of 275 million—the NBA finals earned on average 29 million television viewers. This year the NBA bragged its finals averaged a pathetic 4 million viewers in a contemporary America of 335 million.

The Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team reinvited the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence—a self-identified performance art “queer” group—to headline the team’s “pride night.”

The all-male “Sisters” usually put on anti-Catholic pornographic skits that mock Jesus Christ and sexualize Christian rituals.

That Dodger indulgence is not going over well with its fan base, especially the city’s millions of Catholic Latinos.

The woke Left still enjoys enormous advantages over the Right. The bicoastal elite has far more money, controls all the major American institutions, and dominates the dissemination of knowledge through the media and Silicon Valley.

But the Left does not enjoy majority public support. And now it has managed the impossible—to goad the normally comatose conservative dragon to awaken.

And it is just starting to breathe fire.

Franklin Graham just sounded the alarm on one spiritual battle he fears may overwhelm the world

Over the past few years it’s become abundantly clear that the world is falling apart at the seams.

Political and social leaders constantly force ideas on the working class that only serve to prove they are morally bankrupt.

And now Franklin Graham just sounded the alarm on one spiritual battle he fears may overwhelm the world.

“There is a storm coming” and Christians should “be prepared”

We live in a world where the ruling class elite is made up of the most morally bankrupt people on the planet.

They’ve used their wealth and power to quench their unquenchable thirst for power and control by attempting to control every aspect of the working class’ lives while utilizing propaganda and indoctrination to brainwash people into believing the ruling class knows best.

Rev. Franklin Graham has spent his life traveling around the world spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ.

He’s made a name for himself by pushing back on the satanic forces that are infiltrating society while encouraging people to head to church and repent their sins.

https://decide.dev/lad/15117606981932902?pubid=ld-7664-8923&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fuspoliticaldaily.com&rid=&width=696&path=%2Ffranklin-graham-just-sounded-the-alarm-on-one-spiritual-battle-he-fears-may-overwhelm-the-world%2F&utm_source=uspdnl&utm_campaign=email&utm_medium=campaigner

Now, Rev. Graham is sending a message to loyal Christians around the world, and it’s not the good news.

“There’s a storm coming, and we’ve all got to be prepared,” Graham proclaimed.

The message was delivered in a keynote address during the opening session of the annual National Religious Broadcasters’ International Christian Media Convention.

Big Tech firms own our data and “want to destroy Christian organizations”

Graham said that “the world has deteriorated so quickly,” and that “every demon from hell” has been released in our culture today.

He encouraged the audience to not be “deceived’ or “fooled,” and suggested that people need to be “prepared” to push back on the demonic forces.

The world renowned evangelist pointed to Big Tech and their rights to consumer data.

He called out Amazon as one that “owns the cloud,” and said that they are weaponizing it against the public.

“We are living in a cancel culture, and they want to destroy Christian organizations,” Graham added.

Amazon pushed back on Graham in a statement to Fox New, claiming that “it’s completely false to claim that AWS [Amazon Web Services] discriminates on customer viewpoints,” before adding that they provide “services to millions of customers across political, business, and ideological spectrum.”

But Graham said that it’s not safe for Christians in today’s cultural landscape.

Don’t back down, “just tell it the way it is”

Graham said that the only thing that can protect people from cancel culture is to not “talk about sin” or “preach the gospel.”

He said that if you “try to proclaim the Gospel, they are going to try to shut you up.”

But he encouraged the audience to step up by illustrating his point with the story of Jesus from Matthew 8: 23-27.

According to the Bible, Jesus and his disciples were in a boat on the Sea of Galilee when a horrific storm came upon them.

While the disciples panicked as waves crashed onto the boat’s deck, Jesus slept soundly, and when he finally awoke, he calmly ordered the storm to stop, leaving his disciples in total disbelief as he could “control the wind and waves.”

Graham said that this is the spirit of Jesus that Christians should invoke today.

Even though they thought “they had no way out,” and that they “feared for their life,” the disciples trusted in Jesus to deliver them from the chaos that threatened to drown them.

“Just tell it the way it is,” Graham declared. “Don’t be afraid to stand up and speak out.”

ST FRANCIS DE SALES RESOLVES OUR DOUBTS

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“[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 DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)

May 30, 2023

Pope Confirms Communing Some Adulterers

SEPTEMBER 13, 2016

SOURCE: DISTRICT OF THE USA

Pope Francis has confirmed that Amoris Laetitia allows the divorced and remarried to receive Communion in some instances.

Last week the website LifeSiteNews published an unsettling report of a leaked letter purportedly written by Pope Francis stating “that there is ‘no other interpretation’ of Amoris Laetitia other than one admitting divorced and remarried Catholics to Holy Communion in some cases.” [https://sspx.org/en/news-events/news/pope-confirms-communing-some-adulterers]

“When I hear it said that this is only a pastoral change, and not a doctrinal one, or that the commandment prohibiting adultery is a purely positive law which can be changed (and I think no righteous person can think this), this signifies that yes a triangle has generally three sides, but that it is possible to construct one with four sides. That is, I say, an absurdity.“

Cardinal Caffarra also discussed the notion of “development of doctrine,” which is at times used to invoke the admission of the divorced-and-remarried to Communion.

He said that “if there is one clear point, it is that there is no evolution where there is contradiction. If I say that S is P and then I say that S is not P, the second proposition does not develop the first, but contradicts it. Already Aristotle had justly taught that enunciating a universal affirmative principle (e.g., all adultery is wrong) and at the same time a particular negative proposition having the same subject and predicate (e.g., some adultery is not wrong), this is not making an exception to the first. It is contradicting it.” – Cardinal Carlo Caffarra in CNA [https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/35237/cardinal-caffarra-explains-the-reasons-behind-the-dubia] 

rcamaoc

@rcamaoc

JANUARY 24 | ST. FRANCIS DE SALES, BISHOP AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH #SaintFrancisDeSales #rcamaoc

12:00 PM · Jan 23, 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.”

(The Catholic Controversy, by DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)

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“[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 DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)

May 30, 2023

Pope Confirms Communing Some Adulterers

SEPTEMBER 13, 2016

SOURCE: DISTRICT OF THE USA

Pope Francis has confirmed that Amoris Laetitia allows the divorced and remarried to receive Communion in some instances.

Last week the website LifeSiteNews published an unsettling report of a leaked letter purportedly written by Pope Francis stating “that there is ‘no other interpretation’ of Amoris Laetitia other than one admitting divorced and remarried Catholics to Holy Communion in some cases.” [https://sspx.org/en/news-events/news/pope-confirms-communing-some-adulterers]

“When I hear it said that this is only a pastoral change, and not a doctrinal one, or that the commandment prohibiting adultery is a purely positive law which can be changed (and I think no righteous person can think this), this signifies that yes a triangle has generally three sides, but that it is possible to construct one with four sides. That is, I say, an absurdity.“

Cardinal Caffarra also discussed the notion of “development of doctrine,” which is at times used to invoke the admission of the divorced-and-remarried to Communion.

He said that “if there is one clear point, it is that there is no evolution where there is contradiction. If I say that S is P and then I say that S is not P, the second proposition does not develop the first, but contradicts it. Already Aristotle had justly taught that enunciating a universal affirmative principle (e.g., all adultery is wrong) and at the same time a particular negative proposition having the same subject and predicate (e.g., some adultery is not wrong), this is not making an exception to the first. It is contradicting it.” – Cardinal Carlo Caffarra in CNA [https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/35237/cardinal-caffarra-explains-the-reasons-behind-the-dubia] 

rcamaoc

@rcamaoc

JANUARY 24 | ST. FRANCIS DE SALES, BISHOP AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH #SaintFrancisDeSales #rcamaoc

12:00 PM · Jan 23, 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.”

(The Catholic Controversy, by DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)

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FIRST DAY: Please Join The Catholic Monitor St. Joseph Novena to Celebrate Bishop Gracida’s 100th Birthday that will be on June 9

May 31, 2023

The novena will begin June 1 which is tomorrow:

FIRST DAY

FOSTER-FATHER OF JESUS

Saint Joseph, you were privileged to share in the mystery of the Incarnation as the foster-father of Jesus. [https://americaneedsfatima.org/prayers/novena-prayers-to-saint-joseph]

Let us for nine days enter St. Joseph’s workshop for nine days as Jesus did and pray for Bishop Rene Henry Gracida in celebration of his 100th birthday on June 9.
 “When you invoke St. Joseph, you don’t have to speak much. You know your Father in Heaven knows what you need; well, so does His friend St. Joseph.” “Tell him, ‘If you were in my place and Bishop Gracida’s place, St. Joseph, what would you do? Well, pray for this in Bishop Gracida’s behalf.’” – This prayer is adapted from a St. Andre Bessette prayer. Also, say the Hail Joseph prayer:

Hail Joseph the just, Wisdom is with you; blessed are you among all men and blessed is Jesus, the fruit of Mary, your faithful spouse. Holy Joseph, worthy foster-father of Jesus Christ, pray for us sinners and obtain divine Wisdom for us from God, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. – St. Louis Marie de Montfort

Possessed

By: Judd Garrett

Objectivity is the Objective

May 30, 2023

(Emphasis added)

Reverend Franklin Graham recently stated that “every demon from hell” has been “turned loose” in our culture today. That may sound like hyperbole, but if you look at what is going on, you will see that the demon of the woke ideology is on an unrelenting mission to infiltrate and convert every aspect of our culture. In March, Bud Light decided to put the face of transgender TikTok influencer, Dylan Mulvaney, on its beer cans in an attempt to use the popular beer brand to promote transgenderism. Not to be outdone, fashion designer, Calvin Klein decided to run an ad with a transman wearing a bra, and North Face released an ad featuring a drag queen who encouraged customers to “come out” with the brand. Transgenderism is one of the leading demonic ideologies that is permeating our culture. The devil is the ultimate shapeshifter, that’s why he took the form of a serpent in the Garden of Eden. Transgenderism, believing you can change your biological sex, is a prime example of shapeshifting. It is an ideology aligned with the devil’s worldview.

It is interesting that no matter how much backlash these companies face or how much their stock prices drop, they keep plowing ahead with their woke agenda. It appears that they are more concerned about promoting the woke ideology than promoting their own products and brands. In anticipation of Pride month, retailer Target partnered with a London-based company, Abprallen, to release a line of clothing that contains messages such as “Live Laugh Lesbian,” “Cure Transphobia Not Trans People,” “Too Queer For Here,” and “We Belong Everywhere.” Abprallen also sells apparel with satanic imagery such as pentagrams, horned skulls, devil references, and t-shirts with the message that says, “Satan respects pronouns.” That message is in fact correct; Satan does respect pronouns in the same way the LGBTQ community does. When Jesus came upon a man who was possessed, he asked him, “What is your name?” And the demon replied, “My name is Legion for we are many.”(Matt 5:9) So, the devil’s pronouns would be “they” and “them”, which are the same pronouns that many transpeople use.

Our popular culture has been embracing Satan and Satanism for some time now, and many of our most popular stars openly admit it. At the 2019 Golden Globes, in his acceptance speech for best actor, Christian Bale thanked Satan when he said, “Thank you to Satan for giving me inspiration on how to play this role.” The Church of Satan praised Bale’s speech by tweeting, “To us, Satan is a symbol of pride, liberty, and individualism. … Hail Christian! Hail Satan!” During the 2022 Grammy’s, pop star Lil Nas X put on a satanic performance complete with glittering black robes and simulated sex with the Devil. And this past February at the Grammy’s, singer Sam Smith followed suit when he performed on stage with a transgender person, dressed like Satan surrounded by demons, and performed his Satanic song, Unholy.

At the same time Satan is being promoted throughout our culture, Christianity is under attack. In an attempt to promote “diversity and inclusion”, the Los Angeles Dodgers invited the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence – a group of oversexualized drag queens, dressed up as nuns who openly mock Christianity – to the team’s Pride Night on June 16. The Dodgers released a statement, saying that “In the weeks ahead, we will continue to work with our LGBTQ+ partners to better educate ourselves, find ways to strengthen the ties that bind, and use our platform to support all of our fans who make up the diversity of the Dodgers family.” So, to the Dodgers, mocking and ridiculing Catholic nuns is an essential part of their efforts to promote diversity and inclusion in their community.

This is where we are as a culture. In a stage revival of the Monty Python movie, The Life of Brian, which parodies the life of Jesus, the producers were forced to cut out the scene from the movie which parodies a man who wants to become a woman. So, in the play that makes fun of Jesus Christ and Christianity, they were not allowed to make fun of transgender people and transgenderism. So, transgenderism – the shapeshifting ideology of the devil – is sacred in our culture whereas Christianity, one of our major religions, is not. 

So, the LGBTQ community can ridicule nuns, and they can mock Christianity, but no one is allowed to make fun of them. This is how the left operates as a whole – extreme tolerance for everything that they believe in and extreme intolerance for anybody who believes anything different from them. If somebody mocked the LGBTQ community the way that they mock Christianity, that would be called hate speech, and it would be reported to the FBI as an example of violence against the LGBTQ community. These people are not about diversity and inclusion. They are single-minded in their belief system and reject inclusion or tolerance of any other points of view. But don’t fret. Remember Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount. “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven.” (Matt 5:11-12) He also said, “If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first.” (John 15:18) So, we are in good company.

The present-day LGBTQ community is nothing like the gay community from 20-30 years ago who simply said, ‘You live your life and let us live our lives. Let’s stay out of each other’s bedrooms.’ The LGBTQ community, today, is no longer about mutual tolerance, they are all about indoctrinating as many people as possible into their lifestyle and belief system. And they’re not only going after adults, they are targeting young children, and they know exactly what they are doing. The human brain is not fully developed and is not fully cognitive until the age of 26, so it is much more easily influenced and susceptible to indoctrination before then. That is why they want to get to kids as early as possible, even as young as six and seven years old, in their school classrooms, because it is then when they can do the most damage.

Some believe that the people on the left are doing all this because they want to tear the country down, so they can rebuild it in their communist vision of the world, to make America part of their Marxist New World Order. But there is a strong segment of these people who as Alfred said to Bruce Wayne in the movie, The Dark Knight, “Some men just want to watch the world burn.” And this is what we are witnessing in our country right now. Some people just want to watch the world burn. They want to destroy the world, they want to destroy all that is good in the world, just to watch it happen.

We have a choice between Sam Smith and Jesus Christ, and many are choosing Sam Smith. We have a choice between the Prince of Darkness and the Prince of Peace, and many are choosing the Prince of Darkness. We are living in a country filled with self-hating narcissists, people who find virtue in their immorality, who brag about their feigned humility, and who promote intolerant tolerance. They are walking contradictions. But they don’t care because they live in their delusional worlds where they are able to create any reality that suits them. And that is the worldview that is most aligned with Satan, where there is no universal truth, only individual truths, where they are not expected to conform to an unbending reality, but believe they can mold reality to conform to their unbending narcissism. And the end result, as we are witnessing in real time, will be a destruction of all that is good and true in the world.