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Sohrab Ahmari’s Case for Tradition

MAY 12, 2021BY DANIEL J. MAHONEYSohrab Ahmari’s new book enlightens in many respects, while falling short before the tribunal of moral and political prudence. Still, it succeeds admirably in making the case for “the wisdom of tradition” as the one thing most needful today.

Sohrab Ahmari is undoubtedly right that we live in “an age of chaos” that desperately needs to recover—or, perhaps for the majority of our contemporaries, to “discover” for the first time—what he calls “the wisdom of tradition.” His new book, The Unbroken Thread, is a most welcome invitation to take both wisdom and tradition seriously again, to see in tradition an indispensable vehicle for conveying and sustaining wisdom about the things that truly matter. In that regard, Ahmari’s very fine book is profoundly countercultural.

It is not a flawless book. Sometimes the argument leans too far toward mere traditionalism, thereby risking the subordination of wisdom to a somewhat romanticized account of tradition. Still, its fundamental claim is both unobjectionable and liberating:

the very modes of life and thinking that strike most people in the West as antiquated or “limiting” can liberate us, while the Western dream of autonomy and choice without limits, is, in fact, a prison; that the quest to define ourselves on our own is a kind of El Dorado, driving to madness the many who seek after it; that for our best, highest selves to soar, other parts of us must be tied down, enclosed, limited, bound.

Ahmari’s book entails, above all, a thoughtful and eloquent plea for humanizing limits. In making his case, he assumes “the role of the critic, the interrogator of modern certainties.” He thus combines an essentially interrogative approach with a deep intuition that “our contemporary philosophy might be wrong in crucial respects—that we may have too hastily thrown away the insights of traditional thought and too eagerly encouraged the desire for total human mastery.” In this respect, despite some missteps along the way, Ahmari’s argument succeeds brilliantly.

A Gift to the Next Generation

Ahmari’s lucid, measured but passionate prose is driven by a profoundly existential concern: that his infant son Maximilian (“Max”), named for the Catholic saint and martyr Maximilian Kolbe, who freely took the place of a prisoner (and head of a family) in a Nazi death camp in Poland, will grow up in a country and culture with few if any “substantive ideals.” This book is thus a gift to the next generation, in the concrete form of Ahmari’s cherished son. Its purpose is to remind them of the need to cultivate the precious gift that is the human soul.

That task demands openness to “the fundamental dilemmas of what it means to be fully human,” and an accompanying willingness to respond to the call of sacrifice and self-restraint, even to the requirements of authentic heroism and sanctity so nobly represented by the “other” Maximilian, St. Maximilian Kolbe. Instead of the false allure of unlimited “progress,” which “can’t fulfill our soul yearnings or satisfy our urge to put ourselves right with the sacred,” Ahmari recommends a dialectical return to the “wisdom of tradition” through a thoughtful and engaging challenge to the unexamined dogmas at the heart of radically progressivist or modernist thought.

With C.S. Lewis (whose prose and fictional writings Ahmari explores with insight and gusto), Ahmari rejects the “chronological snobbery” that dismisses “good ideas from the past merely because they were from the past.” He demonstrates that we have forgotten many humanizing answers precisely because of a “false sense of superiority” that gets in the way of confronting the truly enduring questions. A “reflexive hostility to tradition” thus leads to an equally reflexive dismissal of the hard-won spiritual and philosophical wisdom passed on by our forebears. The result is a terrible diminution of the human mind and heart.

The questions Ahmari asks are, for the most part, just the right questions, and the thinkers he explores (with one notable exception) are indeed notable and noble purveyors of wisdom and spiritual insight. At the beginning of the book, he tells us, with all due modesty, that he is “neither a philosopher nor a theologian” but rather “a journalist and story teller.” Accordingly, the bulk of the book is “devoted to telling the stories of great ideas and of the men and women who brought them forth, and highlighting the lessons we can take from each of them.” Our author claims no “scholarly originality.” But the stories are splendidly told and are informed by impressive learning. Ahmari is no dilettante. His is a book of “haute vulgarisation” (as the French say) in the very best sense of the phrase.

Essential Questions, Compelling Portraits

In a relatively compact review essay, I can only highlight a few of the questions and portraits that Ahmari deftly draws and that struck this reviewer as worthy of further commentary. To begin with, Ahmari’s treatment of C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy, the fictional or literary version of his critique of scientism and relativism in The Abolition of Man (1946), is simply superb. As Ahmari notes, C.S. Lewis’s writings demonstrate the irrationality of the idea that “sheer accumulation of facts and technique can allow us to take moral shortcuts.” There can be no moral or civilizational clarity if we reject right reason, first principles, or the moral law, for they are the indispensable foundation for everything that follows.

Although Ahmari’s treatment of Thomas Aquinas and the question “Is God Reasonable?” is unoriginal, it helpfully distinguishes the Christian rationalism of St. Thomas from Averroes’s notion of distinct truths available only to philosophers, who have no need of revealed truth. The chapter also demonstrates that even Thomas’s “coldly rationalistic” five proofs for the existence of God provide the warm hope that human beings are indeed “wanted” and “belong.” We human beings do not live in a universe without purpose or meaning, Thomas insists. This assurance is deepened by a more robust faith in the providence of a loving God, and in the sacrifice and saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

A very suggestive chapter on Abraham Joshua Heschel, a Polish-Lithuanian rabbi who barely escaped Nazi despotism and the murderous Holocaust, highlights the holiness of the Sabbath. To instrumentalize the sacred day of rest and worship is, according to Heschel, to allow “the realm of space” to win out over the “realm of time,” a realm that ultimately gives us access to Eternity. Already in Heschel’s time (he died in New York in December 1972), Americans were beginning to banish the Sabbath, the Lord’s Day, “in the name of ‘choice,’” both consumer and recreational. Heschel’s lesson, as summarized by Ahmari, remains both challenging and vitally true: “a world without the Sabbath is a world without soul.” In its simplicity, this lesson invites us to radically rethink our misplaced spiritual priorities.

An odd, if interesting, chapter, deals with Andrea Dworkin, the American radical feminist, who identified human sexuality with the various “circles of hell.’” A radical and astute critic of the identification of sex and pornography with “banal fun,” she eventually identified “intercourse” per se with cruelty, exploitation, and injustice. Ahmari provisionally, and unpersuasively, calls her a “traditionalist,” in no small part because she is an unwavering critic of “lust.” But in the end, Dworkin was a lost soul, a nihilist and misanthrope who rejected “natural law and other regulations as means for promoting the unlimited ‘power of men over women’” as just one more lamentable effort to prop up the patriarchy. She is the only figure in the book who is not a model to follow. But the chapter informs and provokes, and that is all to the good.

Ahmari’s compelling final chapter, provocatively called “What’s Good about Death?’ capably harnesses the arguments of the Roman Stoic Seneca against “transhumanists” who want to indefinitely expand human life at the service of this-wordly immortality. In this awful dispensation, nothing would be new. The human soul would lose all sense of purpose and would be overwhelmed by self-disgust. In decisive respects, Seneca was right when he argued “that it’s a great gift of Nature that we must die.” If endless self-preservation becomes the great desideratum, he argued, we might be all too willing to betray a friend to live longer, or hand over our children “for lechery—just to see the next dawn.” We would lose our souls and betray our consciences. As Ahmari reminds us, we must aim to live well, not indefinitely.

Newman, Conscience, and “Liberalism in Religion”

My favorite chapter is dedicated to Cardinal John Henry Newman and his defense and articulation of the true human and Christian meaning of conscience. No one in the great tradition has treated conscience so amply and compellingly as Newman, perhaps because he was obliged to respond to counterfeit claims in the mid-to-late nineteenth century made in the name of conscience.

In his Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864), Newman wrote with exceptional grace and depth about the central role of conscience in the life of the soul: “What is a higher guide for us in speculation and in practice than that conscience of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, those sentiments of what is decorous, consistent, and noble, which our Creator has made part of our original nature?” These soaring words get to the heart of the truth about the moral constitution of human beings. Later, in his superb Letter to the Duke of Norfolk (1875), Newman defended the authentic Catholic teaching of conscience (which is the teaching of natural law, too) against attacks from Prime Minister William Gladstone. Gladstone mistakenly claimed that Catholics, loyal to allegedly illiberal popes, could not honor civil liberties, free inquiry, and moral conscience. With the same blessed powers of articulation, Newman defended “the rule of ethical truth, the standard of right and wrong, a sovereign irreversible, absolute authority in the presence of man and Angels” against that counterfeit substitute for authentic conscience called subjectivism and “the right of self-will.”

Ahmari lays all this out accurately and precisely. But he goes too far when he confuses Newman’s critique of “liberalism in religion” with liberalism tout court. A regime of civil and political liberty, informed by right reason and true conscience, is not subjected to Newman’s censure and ire. This is a distinction Ahmari needs to recognize, and the failure to do so is a weakness of the book.

Where Ahmari Goes Awry

Ahmari’s chapter on the Russian writer and Nobel Laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn raises the indispensable question “What is Freedom For?” The answer Ahmari presents exemplifies both the strengths and the weaknesses of the book as a whole.

Ahmari helpfully highlights essential themes of Solzhenitsyn’s great and controversial Harvard Address of June 8, 1978: the distinction between the rule of law and soul-numbing legalism; the decline of civic courage in societies engrossed in the frenetic pursuit of material well-being; and most importantly, the inability of atheistic “rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy” to sustain the promise of human liberty and dignity.

Unfortunately, like most commentators on the Harvard address, Ahmari misses Solzhenitsyn’s final call for us to move “up from modernity” by finding true balance in the human soul and the human world. Underlying Solzhenitsyn’s alleged jeremiad at Harvard is a truly novel call for moderation and voluntary self-limitation. In his view, we must resist not only the claim that man is the highest thing in the universe but also the tyranny of the spiritual, which tends to forget the centrality of human freedom to a life well lived. Ahmari hardly acknowledges such tyranny as a human possibility.

While Ahmari is wonderfully open to the wisdom of the medieval world, he doesn’t seem to appreciate that the Middle Ages suffered from generally bad governance. Not despotism, to be sure, but an inability to settle the longstanding conflict between pope and emperor, the temporal and spiritual realms. Until relatively recent times, the papal states themselves were among the most poorly governed states in the whole of Europe. On this side of the Atlantic, the founding fathers of the American republic did not advocate a soulless “procedural republic,” as Ahmari claims, even if so many academics of a certain cast insist they did. Our old republic has some moral resources that we would be imprudent and ungrateful to reject. While people of faith and right reason should be unhesitating in opposition to “the poison of subjectivism” (C.S. Lewis) and “the dictatorship of relativism” (Pope Benedict XVI), we cannot make the direct promotion of the “Highest Good,” as Ahmari claims, the explicit goal of the temporal or political realm. That is to succumb to the politics of perfection.

If we are to avoid either religious or secularist fanaticism and fundamentalism, we must live with an unnerving indetermination regarding the relationship between truth and liberty, while firmly resisting the advancing forces of moral nihilism. This excellent book enlightens in so many respects while falling short, in my judgment, before the tribunal of moral and political prudence. Still, it succeeds admirably in making the case for “the wisdom of tradition” as the one thing most needful today.

Join us May 13th at 7 PM for a webinar with Sohrab Ahmari on his new book. Sign up here. 

About the Author

DANIEL J. MAHONEY

Daniel J. Mahoney holds the Augustine Chair in Distinguished Scholarship at Assumption College and is 2020-2021 Garwood Visiting Fellow, James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He has written extensively on statesmanship, religion and po… READ MORE

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Public Discourse is pleased to invite you to a free webinar with Sohrab Ahmari. Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser.

Dear Rene Henry,Most of us are familiar with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s criticisms of the Soviet Union, but few have grappled with his worries about the West. As Sohrab Ahmari summarizes them, “could it be [Solzhenitsyn asks] that the liberal West, having reduced freedom to a bare legalism and the absence of natural and traditional barriers, [is] also unfree, only in a different way?” We hope you can join us this evening for a webinar attempting to answer this question with Sohrab Ahmari and R. J. Snell. The webinar will run from 7:00 PM to 8:00 EST and will include a question and answer period.Click here to register for the webinar. We hope you’ll join us! All are invited.  What: Webinar with Sohrab AhmariWhen: 7:00 pm, Thursday, May 13th, 2021Where: Zoom. Register Here All the best, The Public Discourse Team

Biden caves to pressure from locals, resumes border wall construction

Image Source: USA Today

President Biden will resume work on President Trump’s border wall. The Biden administration would retrieve the equipment and materials that had been abandoned at the US-Mexico border and, at the request of Republican governors, will use them to build the barrier that Trump supporters had hoped for.

The Army Corps of Engineers has reported to Fox News that work on a 13.4-mile stretch of the border wall in the Rio Grande Valley will resume.

During a recent visit to the border, Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz said that the conditions were “a dereliction of duty. It is deliberate. It is endangering the people of my home state of Texas and endangering people all across the country. It is unacceptable. It is inhumane. It is wrong.”

Terrorists gained access to holes in the wall that were left when the government stopped building. Materials and vehicles were left littering sections of the border.

Beware The Anti-Racism Agenda May 13, 2021 Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on racism and what elites are saying about it: The Catholic Church regards racism to be “intrinsically evil” and supports policies to check it. It must be noted, however, that today there is no shortage of educators, reporters, activists, and lawmakers who claim to oppose racism while harboring an agenda that sometimes promotes it. They do so mostly for ideological reasons, though those in the diversity and grievance industry also profit from it monetarily. Critical race theory, which is an inherently racist prescription—it judges people on the basis of their skin color, not their individual traits—is a textbook example of promoting racism in the name of fighting it. In my lifetime, never have non-whites been treated more fairly than they are today, yet there is an avalanche of news stories that say just the opposite. While objective conditions have definitely improved, the perception that we are a racist nation is widespread. How can this be? When Senator Tim Scott, an African American, recently said that “America is not a racist country,” he was ridiculed, maligned, and insulted. Why the anger? Because he challenged, to great effect, the raging narrative in elite quarters that America is irredeemably racist. Vice President Kamala Harris was asked to comment on what Scott said. “No, I don’t think America is a racist country,” she said, but we need to “speak truth about the history of racism.” Previously, she went further than that when she declared, “America has a long history of systemic racism.”  President Biden is concerned about racism as well, claiming that “white supremacists” constitute the “most lethal terrorist threat.” He took his cues from the FBI which is preoccupied with white supremacists. Ask most Americans who qualifies as a white supremacist and the likely answer is someone who belongs to the Ku Klux Klan. But the Klan has actually been in decline. So who are these people who pose the “most lethal terrorist threat”? The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is the go-to site that journalists use to access information about white supremacy and hate crimes. It is a left-wing activist organization that claims to monitor such offenses. Last month it sounded very much like President Biden when its president and CEO, Margaret Huang, said, “We’re facing a crisis of far-right extremism and deep threats to our democracy.” From whom? She identified the mob storming the Capitol in January as being “led by white supremacists and other far-right extremists.” Huang provided no evidence to support her remarks; she simply asserted that white supremacists were the principal culprits. It apparently never occurred to her that these men and women were mostly angry pro-Trump supporters who felt disabused by electoral politics and political correctness, concerns that have nothing to do with feelings of racial superiority. Veterans and former police officers appear to have been overrepresented. If they are white supremacists, we need to see the empirical evidence. In fact, the SPLC does a lousy job defining who these white supremacists are. Its lengthy report, “The Year in Hate and Extremism 2020,” says an awful lot about white supremacists but is noticeably short on identifying exactly who they are. For example, it says they track “extremist flyers,” reporting that they found 4,900 “flyering incidents.” The worst offenders, it said, were those who promoted the “white nationalist ideology,” a train of thought it left undefined. It did not say who these white nationalists were or whether they were responsible for any violence. It did say that the Klan is no longer “a significant generator of white supremacist terror,” largely because it “saw its count dwindle to 25 groups in 2020.” So who are the new Klansmen? SPLC has racism on the brain. In its report, it expresses dismay over the fact that “only 38 percent of respondents” in a survey believed that “systemic racism” accounts for a disparity in health outcomes between whites and non-whites, “even as COVID-19 ravages communities of color.” It did not say whether white supremacists were to blame for this condition, but it did say that it was unnerved to learn that the majority of Americans thought that Black Lives Matter (BLM) violence in 2020 was a bigger problem than police violence against blacks. With good reason: BLM killed 25 people, assaulted the police, burned down entire neighborhoods, and engaged in widespread looting. In 2019, police shot and killed 999 people: 452 were white and 252 were black; 26 of the whites and 12 of the blacks were unarmed. For the record, SPLC regards as “far right” extremists anyone who thinks that boys who “transition” to girls should not be allowed to compete against girls in sports and shower with them. Perhaps they are the new Klansmen. Real racism and extremism, as the Catholic Church understands it, must be opposed and defeated. It does not help this noble cause when prominent Americans and non-profit organizations are bent on finding racism under every rock.

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Did Problematic Ideas within Franciscan Theology possibly help bring about Francis’s Amoris Laetitia? 

May 13, 2021

The Washington Post called Francis “A Franciscan Jesuit for pope.”

Did certain problematic ideas within Franciscan theology such as “voluntarism” (“emphasis on will over intellect”) help bring about the loss of natural law and help bring about Francis’s Amoris Laetitia?

Thomist Edward Feser’s book, The Last Superstition,on pages 167, 168, and 170 seems to say that the Franciscan theologians John Duns Scotus’s and William of Ockham’s “tendency toward voluntarism” may have helped bring about the present denial of natural law and ethics: 

 – “John Duns Scotus (c. 1266-1308) and William of Ockham (c. 1287-1347), who, though scholastics, rejected Aquinas’s synthesis of Aristotelianism and Christian theology. Their reasons for doing so anticipate certain key themes of modern philosophy . . . [these ideas] led to the undoing of the Scholastic tradition, which had reached its apex in Aquinas’s thought.”

– “Both Scotus and Ockham denied the possibility of the sort of knowledge of God Aquinas claimed could be had through reason…”

– “The motivation for Scotus’s skepticism was an excessive emphasis (as Thomists see it) on God’s will over His intellect. Aquinas, in Scotus’s estimation, makes God and His actions too comprehensible, too rational, too open to our puny philosophical investigations. So radically free is God’s will, in Scotus’s view, that we simply cannot deduce from the natural order either His intentions or any necessary features of the things He created, since He might have created them in any number of ways, as His inscrutable will directed.”

– “Meanwhile, Scotus’s and Ockham’s tendency toward voluntarism (i.e. their emphasis on will over intellect), and the related idea that morality derives from arbitrary divine commands, became secularized in the notion that all law rests ultimately on the sheer will of a sovereign, rather than in a rationally ascertainable natural order. Combine these themes and you are not far from Thomas Hobbes’s view that man’s “natural” condition is to be at war with his fellowman, and that this unhappy situation can be remedied only by agreeing to submit to the will of an absolute ruler.”

Moreover, the pro-Amoris Laetitia website Where Peter Is apparently supports certain ideas of Scotus:

“Duns Scotus and his Franciscan school of theology successfully defended the Absolute Primacy of Christ. God did not send His Son into the world as a consequence of sin but “by reason of His very great love”. (Eph. 2:4)” [https://wherepeteris.com/who-art-thou-o-immaculata/]

The independent scholar James Larson explained to me in an email exchange the problem with this and other ideas of Scotus:

I am very far from being an expert on Scotus, and have no desire to be so. But I would offer the following:
Employing “univocity” in relation to any terms used of both God and His creation necessarily terminates in some type of pantheistic-gnostic mush. Strictly speaking God is the only Being, in the sense of possessing Being of Himself. It is true that, in relation to created things, we do distinguish the category of substantial being from all the categories of accidental being by saying that it is something suited to exist “in itself”. But this is a definition necessary to distinguish the category of  relative, created, substance from accidens, which are suited to exist only as inhering in substance. Without understanding the principle of analogy between all created things and God, we necessarily end up confusing the Thomistic concept of creative “participation” in being with the idea that creative things are somehow “part” of God. In other words, we destroy Catholic ontology (and all that is contained in the concept creation ex nihilo), and ultimately everything which is intimately connected to this ontology. Even sanctifying grace, and the entire concept of possessing the life of God in our souls, must be considered a created gift of God.
In regard to the so-called Franciscan doctrine which is usually now termed the “Absolute Primacy of Christ“.
St. Thomas, while certainly being clear that the question has not been given final determination by the Church, yet declares his tentative opposition to this notion because Holy Scripture never offers any other reason for Christ’s Incarnation other than that supreme Divine Love which “bends over” towards man in order to merit our redemption from sin. Christ Himself says, “Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). To attempt to assert therefore that through the proposed doctrine of “Absolute Primacy of Christ”(the notion that Incarnation would have occurred even without sin) they somehow possess a greater and deeper understanding of the primacy of Christ and the greatness of His love is indeed a “walking on thin ice”.It smacks ultimately of placing some sort of “necessity” in God in relation to His creation.
Interestingly enough, Mary of Agreda (herself a Franciscan Conception), in the City of God, claims endorsement of this Franciscan theory as a private revelation from Christ (Vol. I, p.77). But even more interesting, she places “necessity” in God in relation to creation. Thus, she writes:
“The Majesty of God, beholding the nature of  his infinite perfection, their virtue and efficacy operating with magnificence, saw that it was just and most proper, and, as it were, , a necessity, to communicate Himself, and to follow the inclination of imparting and exercising his liberality and mercy, by distributing outside of Himself with magnificence, the plenitude of the infinite treasures, contained in the Divinity. For, being Infinite in all things, it is much more natural, that He communicate gifts and graces, than that fire should ascend, or the stone should gravitate toward its center, or that the sun should diffuse light.” (ibid. p. 52)
So much for the total gratuitousness and freedom of God in relation to all of His gifts to man.
You might also be interested in reading my two-part fictional work The Mind of Antichrist, which is here:
 http://rosarytotheinterior.com/the-mind-of-antichrist/That said, I want to apologize for possibly not being clear above that I respect Scotus who is a blessed and a great theologian despite the above problematic ideas. But, I think as the Church (Pope Leo XIII and other popes) teaches that St.Thomas is the most important Doctor of the the Church. On the other hand, Scotus paved the way for the Immaculate Conception dogma of the Church and showed Thomas can be wrong in some issues.  Ockham is another story. He is a disaster as the great Thomist Feser shows: Moreover, even such morality as Ockham leaves us with is radically transformed.  As Pinckaers argues, in the absence of any conception of an end toward which the will is naturally directed, the focus of moral reflection tends to turn toward the individual act, isolated from considerations about the overall character of the moral agent or the way the action might promote or impede the agent’s flourishing or happiness.  When coupled with Ockham’s grounding of morality in arbitrary divine commands, moral theory was thus bound to come to emphasize law as such rather than the realization of a good defined in terms of our natural end, and obligation as such rather than the virtues which facilitate our realization of that good.  In short, just as Ockhamism, when shorn of its theological commitments, prefigures Hume in metaphysics, so too does it prefigure Kant – that “catastrophic spider” – in ethics.And that is only the beginning. As Michael Allen Gillespie argues in his recent book The Theological Origins of Modernity, the Renaissance humanists’ revolution in culture, Luther’s revolution in theology, Descartes’ revolution in philosophy, and Hobbes’s revolution in politics also have their roots in Ockhamism.  With the humanists this was manifested in their emphasis on man as an individual, willing being rather than as a rational animal.  In Luther’s case, the prospect of judgment by the terrifying God of nominalism and voluntarism – an omnipotent and capricious will, ungoverned by any rational principle – was cause for despair.  Since reason is incapable of fathoming this God and good works incapable of appeasing Him, faith alone could be Luther’s refuge.  With Descartes, the God of nominalism and voluntarism opened the door to a radical doubt in which even the propositions of mathematics – the truth of which was in Descartes’ view subject to God’s will no less than the contingent truths of experience – were in principle uncertain.  And we see the moral and political implications of nominalism in the amoral, self-interested individuals of Hobbes’s so-called “state of nature,” and in the fearsome absolutist monarch of his Leviathan, whose relationship to his subjects parallels that of the nominalist God to the universe. [http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/03/razor-boy.html?m=1] Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He want you to do next. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet

Francis Notes:

– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:

“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.”
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:

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

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

Election Notes:  

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

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

Opinion:Most Illegitimate “President” in the U.S. By: Brit Speares The Northwest Connection May 5, 2021 HAT TIP: RIP MCINTOSH On the evening of November 3rd, 2020, most of us went to bed, concluding that, for better or worse, President Trump had been re-elected. Florida and Ohio not only had Trump leading but amazingly he was leading by double-digits in both States. During the past 70+ years, whichever political party had this level of popularity in Florida and Ohio always ended up winning the Electoral College (EC). Then, for anyone who stayed up long after midnight, something unprecedented happened in the wee hours of the 4th. The voting machines and tallying of ballots — in the States of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — simultaneously shut down for several hours. When ballot-counting resumed in these six States, the numbers for Biden leaped upwards by tens or hundreds of thousands each minute, unmatched by few or no votes for Trump.  In fact, Trump’s ballot totals sometimes even decreased. Some voting districts had more Biden votes than registered voters. None of this was seen in the other 44 States. The alleged EC final count was “Biden 306, Trump 232”; the purported popular vote was Biden 80 million, Trump 78 million. [Biden 80 million? Are you serious? In 2012 and 2016, Obama and Hillary each received less than 66 million.] Allegations of the 2020 popular vote were Trump 79 million, and Biden 68 million, i.e.,  curiously, comparing “before the voting-machine shutdown” to “the final tally,” Trump had lost about 1 million votes while Biden had gained ~12 million. The computer programs were believed to have been “set” to add sufficient numbers of Biden ballots to ensure victories of at least one, or several, thousand in each of these six States; the alleged reason as to why the voting machines had shut down for several hours — was that the quantity of Trump ballots had been strikingly underestimated, requiring the programs to be “readjusted” to take care of this unexpected surge. Within a few weeks after the election, teams of nonpartisan mathematical statisticians had reported that, given what was known by the time of the mysterious shutdown, “the chances that Biden won the 2020 election were extraordinarily unlikely.” [This mathematical FACT is unequivocally true — despite dozens of left-wing articles in Mainstream Media and on the web and in social media, spinning fake news.] More recently:[1], in-depth nonpartisan analyses of Pennsylvania [2] and Michigan [3] have been reported; they conclude that Trump should have won those States by 370,000 and 150,000 votes, respectively. In time, in-depth forensic voter audits will be completed in Arizona and New Hampshire — with Trump expected to win both those States. Democrats have sued to block audits in Arizona and other States, but why would they do this, if they were so confident of Biden’s victory? Pennsylvania has 20 EC votes and Michigan 16. Those two States going for Trump would change the EC vote to Biden 270, Trump 268. Georgia has 16 EC votes, Wisconsin 10, and New Hampshire 4. These three States going for Trump would provide a 298-240 EC victory for Trump. Including EC votes for Arizona = 11 and Nevada = 6 would result in an even greater victory for Trump, 315 to 223. Senator McConnell, Vice President Pence, and U.S. Attorney General William Barr all concluded that there was insufficient evidence of fraud to change the results that Biden had won the election (although no one looked for any evidence of fraud). Any of these three could have demanded a bipartisan election analysis, before declaring a winner — even if this meant delaying the Inauguration by several months. The Supreme Court refused to consider many lawsuits on this topic, citing spurious excuses such as “the election is over” and“there is insufficient time to investigate corruption.” Perhaps the powerful Deep State within the federal government is too intimidating to anyone who is not a member? Does this mean we’ll have an illegitimate Executive Branch at least until January 2024?  Will these voting machines continue to help the Democratic Party to win all future elections? Just this week, FBI agents raided Giuliani’s apartment to confiscate all documents related to the Trump presidency; this is unconstitutional.  Even more recently, there are suggestions of tampering in the 2020 census to provide some Blue States with more representatives in the House of Representatives than factually determined.  Has integrity in the U.S. political system been forever lost? Will we ever again see a two-party equity-in-Justice system again? References:[1] https://www.scribd.com/document/504352231/Election-Integrity-Recommendations-Report [this URL, and all documents listed within, provide the most comprehensive of all analyses of the 2020 election, to date][2] https://www.scribd.com/document/487657522/Pennsylvania-2020-Voter-Analysis-Report[3] https://www.scribd.com/document/487615684/Michigan-2020-Voter-Analysis-Report —Brit Speares, your Washington DC Inside-the Beltway Correspondent

Opinion:Most Illegitimate “President” in the U.S. By: Brit Speares The Northwest Connection May 5, 2021 HAT TIP: RIP MCINTOSH On the evening of November 3rd, 2020, most of us went to bed, concluding that, for better or worse, President Trump had been re-elected. Florida and Ohio not only had Trump leading but amazingly he was leading by double-digits in both States. During the past 70+ years, whichever political party had this level of popularity in Florida and Ohio always ended up winning the Electoral College (EC). Then, for anyone who stayed up long after midnight, something unprecedented happened in the wee hours of the 4th. The voting machines and tallying of ballots — in the States of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — simultaneously shut down for several hours. When ballot-counting resumed in these six States, the numbers for Biden leaped upwards by tens or hundreds of thousands each minute, unmatched by few or no votes for Trump.  In fact, Trump’s ballot totals sometimes even decreased. Some voting districts had more Biden votes than registered voters. None of this was seen in the other 44 States. The alleged EC final count was “Biden 306, Trump 232”; the purported popular vote was Biden 80 million, Trump 78 million. [Biden 80 million? Are you serious? In 2012 and 2016, Obama and Hillary each received less than 66 million.] Allegations of the 2020 popular vote were Trump 79 million, and Biden 68 million, i.e.,  curiously, comparing “before the voting-machine shutdown” to “the final tally,” Trump had lost about 1 million votes while Biden had gained ~12 million. The computer programs were believed to have been “set” to add sufficient numbers of Biden ballots to ensure victories of at least one, or several, thousand in each of these six States; the alleged reason as to why the voting machines had shut down for several hours — was that the quantity of Trump ballots had been strikingly underestimated, requiring the programs to be “readjusted” to take care of this unexpected surge. Within a few weeks after the election, teams of nonpartisan mathematical statisticians had reported that, given what was known by the time of the mysterious shutdown, “the chances that Biden won the 2020 election were extraordinarily unlikely.” [This mathematical FACT is unequivocally true — despite dozens of left-wing articles in Mainstream Media and on the web and in social media, spinning fake news.] More recently:[1], in-depth nonpartisan analyses of Pennsylvania [2] and Michigan [3] have been reported; they conclude that Trump should have won those States by 370,000 and 150,000 votes, respectively. In time, in-depth forensic voter audits will be completed in Arizona and New Hampshire — with Trump expected to win both those States. Democrats have sued to block audits in Arizona and other States, but why would they do this, if they were so confident of Biden’s victory? Pennsylvania has 20 EC votes and Michigan 16. Those two States going for Trump would change the EC vote to Biden 270, Trump 268. Georgia has 16 EC votes, Wisconsin 10, and New Hampshire 4. These three States going for Trump would provide a 298-240 EC victory for Trump. Including EC votes for Arizona = 11 and Nevada = 6 would result in an even greater victory for Trump, 315 to 223. Senator McConnell, Vice President Pence, and U.S. Attorney General William Barr all concluded that there was insufficient evidence of fraud to change the results that Biden had won the election (although no one looked for any evidence of fraud). Any of these three could have demanded a bipartisan election analysis, before declaring a winner — even if this meant delaying the Inauguration by several months. The Supreme Court refused to consider many lawsuits on this topic, citing spurious excuses such as “the election is over” and“there is insufficient time to investigate corruption.” Perhaps the powerful Deep State within the federal government is too intimidating to anyone who is not a member? Does this mean we’ll have an illegitimate Executive Branch at least until January 2024?  Will these voting machines continue to help the Democratic Party to win all future elections? Just this week, FBI agents raided Giuliani’s apartment to confiscate all documents related to the Trump presidency; this is unconstitutional.  Even more recently, there are suggestions of tampering in the 2020 census to provide some Blue States with more representatives in the House of Representatives than factually determined.  Has integrity in the U.S. political system been forever lost? Will we ever again see a two-party equity-in-Justice system again? References:[1] https://www.scribd.com/document/504352231/Election-Integrity-Recommendations-Report [this URL, and all documents listed within, provide the most comprehensive of all analyses of the 2020 election, to date][2] https://www.scribd.com/document/487657522/Pennsylvania-2020-Voter-Analysis-Report[3] https://www.scribd.com/document/487615684/Michigan-2020-Voter-Analysis-Report —Brit Speares, your Washington DC Inside-the Beltway Correspondent

Biden Administration Is Mocking Ancient Wisdom

When an arrogant present dismisses the wisdom of the past, then an all too predictable future becomes terrifying.

By: VICTOR DAVIS HANSON

The Patriot Post

May 13, 2021

(emphasis added)

Hat TipL: Rip McIntosh

Human nature stays the same across time and space. That is why there used to be predictable political, economic and social behavior that all countries understood.
The supply of money governs inflation. Print it without either greater productivity or more goods and services, and the currency cheapens. Yet America apparently rejects that primordial truism.
The United States is more than $28 trillion in debt — about 130 percent of the country’s annual gross domestic product. The government will run up a $2.3 trillion budget deficit for 2021 after a record $3.1 trillion deficit the year before.
The Biden administration still wants to borrow more — another $2 trillion in new social programs and “infrastructure.”
In the crazy last 100 days, the price of everything from lumber, food, and gas to cars and houses has soared. Yet many interest rates are still stuck at or below 3%.
Jobs are plentiful; workers are not. Is it a surprise when government handouts discourage the unemployed from taking a pay cut to go back to work?
After being freed from 13 months of quarantine, Americans are splurging. But this huge pent-up demand is causing shortages. 
Producers fear the Biden administration’s loose talk of higher taxes, greater regulation, and cutbacks in energy development.
Are the old principles really obsolete? Should we be printing money while expanding government debt? Is it wise to keep interest rates close to zero and to discourage employment, production and thrift? This dangerous behavior used to ensure inflation, followed by ruinous stagflation.
After George Floyd was killed while in police custody in Minneapolis, some U.S. cities slashed police spending. Police response times have slowed in many places, perhaps because officers are worried about being fired for using force.
The result? In major cities such as New York and Los Angeles, homicide and violent crime rates have increased by double digits.
State and local governments believed they were exempt fromprimeval laws of deterrence that warned when criminals assumed they would not be caught and punished, then they committed more crimes.
The same dangers of ignoring unchanging human nature apply to foreign policy.
Aggressive opponents such as Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia expect that the Biden administration will ignore their brinkmanship. They assume the administration will cut American defenses. And Biden sounds to them more critical of Trump’s foreign policy than of America’s enemies. Why not take previously unwarranted risks?
So, Russian troops predictably mass on the Ukrainian border. China steps up its harassment of Taiwan. North Korea launches more missiles, Iran hazes U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf. And now, rockets from Gaza pour into Israel.
Apparently, the Biden administration did not believe that dictatorships and theocracies would interpret its virtue-signaling as a weakness to be exploited rather than as magnanimity to be returned in kind.
The old dictum of the Roman writer Vegetius — if you want peace, prepare for war — was just too much of a downer to take seriously.
In the old days, the greater the impediments to crossing a nation’s border — walls and the enforcement of laws — the less likely was illegal immigration. Here too, the Biden administration apparently rejected the ancient warnings.
Stopping construction of the border wall, promising amnesties in advance, and damning the tough enforcement of the previous administration have only led to more illegal immigration.
Refusing to call the chaos at the southern border a “crisis” did not mean it was not a disaster.
Wisdom of the ages also warned that humans’ first allegiance was to their own tribe, as defined by race, ethnicity, or religion. That existential danger is why multiracial nations always wisely sought to tamp down tribal differences and to emphasize common ties of citizenship and transcendent common interests. Otherwise, a diverse country ended up like Lebanon, Rwanda, or the former Yugoslavia, where tribal feuding turned bloody and barbaric.
Yet for three months, the Biden administration has emphasized racial differences rather than our melting-pot commonalities. It has stereotyped America’s white population — hardly uniform in terms of class and ethnicity — as somehow uniformly enjoying unearned privileged and acting systemically racist.
Amid such talk, the danger is that racial tensions will increase, hate crimes will spike, racial demagogues will dominate, meritocracy will vanish and tribal solidarity will replace it. And the ancient idea of America will unwind.
When an arrogant present dismisses the wisdom of the past, then an all too predictable future becomes terrifying.

KNIGHTS

of the Republic

EQVITES REI PVBLICAE

the DAILY KNIGHT

Did Pope Benedict XVI Fully Resign?

David Martin | The Daily KnightPope Benedict XVI (USA Today)

With the controversial buzz that surrounded the election of Pope Francis upon the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, it seems that we may have lost sight of a key element in this episode, namely, that Benedict never fully resigned the papacy.

In a 2016 book-length interview by Peter Seewald with Benedict XVI, the Holy Father tells the journalist: “The situation of [Pope] Celestine V was extremely peculiar and could in no way be invoked as my precedent.”

Celestine V’s ‘peculiar situation’ was that he fully abdicated the papacy, that is, he laid off his papal munus and went back to being the simple monk Pietro da Morrone, and not Pope Emeritus as Benedict XVI did. What Benedict is saying is that he “in no way” relates to what Celestine did, that full abdication from the papacy is what he didn’t do.

What Benedict did do was to merely resign from the active exercise of the papacy without abandoning the Petrine office. On the eve of his resignation, he said:

“Anyone who accepts the Petrine ministry no longer has any privacy. He belongs always and completely to everyone, to the whole Church… The ‘always’ is also a ‘forever’ – there can no longer be a return to the private sphere. My decision to resign the active exercise of the ministry does not revoke this.” (General Audience, February 27, 2013)

From the text we can infer that there has been no revocation of Benedict’s office. According to Church law, a pope must fully give up his office for his resignation to be valid. (Canon 332) The text indicates that Benedict XVI chose to retain his office “forever,” which is why he continues to wear the white papal garb and to go by the name Benedict XVI.

This matches the explanation offered by 1 Archbishop Georg Gänswein, who serves as Prefect of the Pontifical Household. Speaking at the presentation of a new book on Benedict’s pontificate at the Pontifical Gregorian University on May 20, 2016, he told the press that Benedict XVI did not abandon the papacy as did Celestine V in 1294 but rather sought to continue his papal office in a way that better accommodated his frailty.

“He left the Papal Throne and yet, with the step he took on 11 February 2013, he has not abandoned this ministry,” adding that the renunciation of his office would have been “quite impossible after his irrevocable acceptance of the office in April 2005.”

What Gänswein is saying is that Benedict is still pope. “This is the reason why the correct appellation for him is ‘Your Holiness,’” Gänswein said. “This is finally the reason why he did not retire to an isolated monastery, but within the Vatican walls, as if to simply take a step aside to make space for his successor and for a new step in the history of the papacy.”

According to Gänswein, Benedict XVI’s resignation announcement of February 11, 2013, marked the introduction of a new institution into the Catholic Church: “a de facto enlarged ministry, with both an active and a contemplative member.” He said we now have “two living successors of Peter among us” that “are not in competition with each other,” i.e. Benedict and Francis.

No Shared Papacy

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a “shared papacy.” If Benedict occupies any dimension of the Petrine ministry Francis can occupy none of it, since two members of the Petrine office (popes) cannot coexist. And while Gänswein says the truth in acknowledging the continued papacy of Benedict, his explanation of a shared papacy is a derelict attempt to explain away the real issue surrounding Benedict XVI.

Benedict XVI Ousted

What it boils down to is that Benedict XVI was forced into vacating the Chair of Peter, but this was done under the guise of a resignation so as to not split the Barque of Peter asunder with controversy. Credible reports from 2015 indicate that Benedict XVI was coerced into stepping down, which was providentially foreshadowed in Benedict’s inaugural speech of April 24, 2005, when he said: “Pray for me, that I may not flee for fear of the wolves.”

We know from the late Cardinal Danneels of Brussels that he was part of a radical “mafia” reformist group opposed to Benedict XVI. Danneels, known for his support of abortion, LGBT rights, and gay-marriage, said in a taped interview in September 2015 that he and several cardinals were part of this “mafia” club that was calling for drastic changes in the Church, to make it “much more modern,” and that the plan was to oust Benedict and have Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio head it.

This infamous clique comprised key members of the Vatican “gay lobby” that had clamored for Benedict’s resignation, the same that had almost prevented his election in 2005. As the 2013 conclave neared, they held a series of closed meetings, known as congregations, one of which featured Cardinal Bergoglio as the keynote speaker.

On the eve of the conclave, Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga was busily on the phone with cardinal electors from the Honduran embassy in Rome. His phone effort was the tail end of this intense lobbying campaign to secure votes for the election of Cardinal Bergoglio as pope.

That same day, Maradiaga attended a private meeting of Bergoglio supporters, which included key players in the “St. Gallen Mafia,” and together they garnered pledges for up to twenty-five votes for Bergoglio. Not surprisingly, Bergoglio opened with twenty-six votes on the first day of the conclave, though that number would rise to 77 on the second day indicating that this campaign effort was gaining ground. Three days later the newly elected Pope Francis asked Maradiaga to head his powerful new Council of Cardinals, known as the “Council of Nine.”

On August 27, 2018, Vatican correspondent Edward Pentin tweeted concerning this political campaign.

“Cdls Danneels & Ex-Cdl McCarrick campaigned for Bergoglio to be Pope, as did ++Maradiaga on eve of Conclave, phoning up various cardinals from the Honduran embassy in Rome. Despite their pasts, all 3 prelates have since been special advisors of Francis or rehabilitated by him.”

Rules and Regulations Violated

Clearly, there was intense politics and vote canvassing at work around the time of the conclave, which directly violated Pope John Paul II’s 1996 Apostolic Constitution Universi Dominici Gregis, governing papal elections. Therein he makes it clear that vote canvassing among cardinal electors is strictly forbidden and incurs automatic excommunication. Consider the following from his Constitution:

“The Cardinal electors shall further abstain from any form of pact, agreement, promise or other commitment of any kind which could oblige them to give or deny their vote to a person or persons. If this were in fact done, even under oath, I decree that such a commitment shall be null and void and that no one shall be bound to observe it; and I hereby impose the penalty of excommunication latae sententiae upon those who violate this prohibition.” (81)

This prohibition applies not only to the election itself but to that time just before the election when preparations are underway, since it is during this time that illicit political activity would exert its greatest influence on the vote. “Any form of pact” obliging electors “to give or deny their vote to a person” would be secured before the election.

The pope says in his Constitution:

“Confirming the prescriptions of my Predecessors, I likewise forbid anyone, even if he is a Cardinal, during the Pope’s lifetime and without having consulted him, to make plans concerning the election of his successor, or to promise votes, or to make decisions in this regard in private gatherings.” (79)

A clique of cardinals did “make plans” to force Benedict XVI’s resignation and to campaign for “the election of his successor,” with up to 25 cardinals “promising votes” the day before the election, this having come about through “private gatherings,” thus revealing the illicit conduct of those cardinal electors to be.

Under the pain of excommunication latae sententiae, Pope John Paul forbids “each and every Cardinal elector, present and future, as also the Secretary of the College of Cardinals and all other persons taking part in the preparation and carrying out of everything necessary for the election” to allow “all possible forms of interference, opposition and suggestion whereby secular authorities of whatever order and degree, or any individual or group, might attempt to exercise influence on the election of the Pope.” (80)

Unfortunately, secular and political interference played the key part in Francis’ election. According to John Paul II, such interference renders the papal election null and void.

Should the election take place in a way other than that prescribed in the present Constitution, or should the conditions laid down here not be observed, the election is for this very reason 2 null and void, without any need for a declaration on the matter; consequently, it confers no right on the one elected. (76)

Universi Dominici Gregis (February 22, 1996) | John Paul II

Hence it appears that the 2013 conclave conferred “no right on the one elected” since the election took place “in a way other than that prescribed in the present Constitution.” It should come as no surprise then that two shafts of lightning struck the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica just hours after Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation on February 11, 2013. Clearly, this signaled that divine wrath was looming over the Church.

Need for Episcopal Examination

It is high time that a committee of bishops convene to address the matter of Benedict’s resignation, seeing that it launched the most destructive pontificate of Church history. They need to bring into question his continuance in the Petrine office, the illicit nature of the 2013 conclave, and Francis’ destructive path.

Though Benedict relinquished his administrative powers to govern the Church, he retains his papal office in a similar way a bishop retains his episcopal office after relinquishing his administrative powers to govern a diocese. But unlike a bishop, a pope cannot have a replacement unless he lays off every vestige of papal dignity and abdicates his office.

It indeed is high time that an episcopal committee take a serious look at the matter of Benedict’s resignation lest the present “diabolical disorientation” lead to a total eclipse of the Faith. Our Lady at La Salette prophesied that “The Church will be in eclipse” and that “Rome will lose the Faith and become the seat of Antichrist” so those in ecclesiastical authority should make the truth known without further scruple to prevent complete darkness from overtaking the Church.

1. The same was also the personal secretary of Benedict XVI during his 8-year pontificate.

2. Only in cases of collusion involving simony does the pope lift the nullity in order that the election may remain valid (78).

Pinocchio, A Real-Life Character By Theodore Wilson May 11, 2021 ​ Hat Tip: Rip McIntosh “Why did you do this?” My father had summoned me to the basement, pointed to a partially burnt paintbrush and spoke in a harsh tone.​I carefully studied the charred remains of his brush and denied having any knowledge of how it happened and suggested that my little brother must be the responsible culprit.  ​“Stop lying and tell the truth.” My father’s ability to express anger by his facial expression and altering the tone of his speech was uncanny. He wasn’t talking to a child. I was in college. ​I stood my ground but it only intensified the situation when I refused to confess. Stubbornness was an inherited fault over which I had no control. The next time my older brother and his wife came to dinner, I inquired to see if he might be able to shed light on the burnt paint brush. When he admitted it, I cleared my throat to rebuke my father and he was more furious than  he had been about the burnt brush. ​Fifty years later, every time the discussion about Covid-19 surfaces, I am being accused of being Pinocchio.  ​“Have you had your Covid shot yet?” They don’t really want you to say “no,” and I am never sure why they ask. But if you have good character, you have to be stubborn and stand up for what you believe. ​“No, and I don’t intend to get a Covid shot.”  They stare at me like my nose was a foot long hotdog. ​In the United States, critical thinking has been defined as a form of descent. If you believe you have the right to speak, you must be silenced because you are a threat. Nothing is true unless the government says so, and the flow of information has been prohibited by the Pinocchio Press because you no longer have the right to hear all the details.  ​Now we are in the great crisis. We, the people, no longer have the right to be informed, get a second opinion, or are no longer allowed to control our lives. Disagreeing about the CCP Virus regulations can get you kicked off Facebook, U-Tube, and Google. ​If you are not allowed to get a second opinion, you certainly are not allowed to offer one, so let’s only look at the facts – what you already know and the forbidden truth. ​In January of 2020, I was not afraid of Covid-19. I had already experienced polio in 1950, the Asian Flu of 1957, and the Hong Kong Flu of 1968. During my annual physical with my family physician, he assured me that I would not likely die from the CCP. It only causes death in about 1.8 percent of the cases. I was content. ​When Dr. Anthony Fauci was appointed to White House Coronavirus Task Force, he agreed. Based on a study of 1099 patients confirmed with Covid-19, he stated, “This study suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 ultimately will be more akin to those of more severe seasonal influenza or a pandemic influenza similar to those of 1957 and 1968 rather than the SARS or MERS which have had case fatality rates of 9% to 10 % and 36% respectively. People do not need to wear masks. They do not work,” he said.   ​On March 11, 2020, Fauci went in front of Congress and blindsided America by reversing his stance. He screamed fire, run for your lives, and by the end of the week, the entire nation was shut down. Not a single piece of data was revealed and nothing was substantiated. ​What altered his position? His contemporaries where shocked. Renown scientists from Stanford, Harvard, and Oxford, the leading university in the world according the U.S. News, spoke out against his plan as garbage. It would not work.  ​When asked “why,”  Fauci never answered the question.  Two strong suppositions likely caused him to gaslight American citizens. ​With eight months remaining before the presidential election, he could preempt Donald Trump’s bid to return to the White House by creating a crisis, and leave the president holding the bag. Perhaps he was informed about Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots planned during the summer, and rigged elections. That was plausible because government agencies helped enable those events. Was he warned about being on the winning team? It was the CDC, The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the national public health agency of the United States, and a federal agency under the Department of Health and Human Services headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia that suggested mail-in voting six months prior to the election. The Democratic Party and Pinocchio Press accelerated their slur campaign against Trump. He was not the primary target. They hoped to break down the voting coalition of the Conservative Christian Right, members of the NRA, Anti-abortion advocates, and the traditional American families in rural United States.  Within two months after Fauci’s speech to Congress, the Democrat Campaign Committee projected an increase in Trump support, and, indeed, 10 million additional Americans cast votes for him. They needed to stuff the ballot boxes. Dr. Robert Epstein testified in a Congressional subcommittee that Google, Facebook, and Twitter were able to shift 15 million votes without the people’s knowledge or leaving a paper trail. In San Francisco, a group called Seed To Vote was a front for the Chinese Progressive Association, targeted infrequent voters in Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. The CCP paid Steven McClure, an American who worked out of Wuhan University, to generate maps and addresses of voters to be targeted for mail in votes. ​Secondly, Fauci was in bed with Chinese scientist as a co-participant in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the largest repository of bat coronaviruses in Asia working on Gain of Function Research to let a high-level corona virus loose in a controlled laboratory setting to see how it behaves. Over 300 emails between Fauci and China show this.  That experiment was highly criticized by Johns Hopkins University as extremely dangerous.  Chinese researchers at the laboratory became infected in early fall of 2019. Considering his status in the project, he must have learned that. He would have also known that the Chinese researchers in the biowarfare department of the military were working on a vaccine. We do not know why Fauci chose to bring the United States to a staggering halt.  His action turned the American medical profession into a political arena, put 40 million Americans on unemployment, 20% of small businesses failed and will never return, and the United States bureaucracy became the overseer of the citizens invested with the power to tell them when they could work, go to school or church, eat in a restaurant, play or watch sports, and gather for family meals on holiday occasions. Dozens of experienced physicians refused to follow Fauci. They stayed true to the principles of the profession to fight for the lives of their patients. They spoke publicly against his policies, and prescribed hydroxychloroquine, Zithromax, and zinc for those who contracted CCP, pharmaceutical products that had be successfully used for decades. The government’s cancel culture kicked them hard. They were fired from their practice by the medical corporations that employed them, and kicked to the curb. Simone Gold, M.D. established America’s Frontline Doctors who are committed to revealing conspiracy-pseudoscience about the CCP Virus. They provide credible/verifiable information, and they continue caring for patients. They created on-line patient care to treat Covid-19. Everyone has access to their website and an opportunity to obtain the banned medical prescriptions. The America’s Frontline Doctors participated in the January demonstration in Washington D.C. They are now labeled terrorist by the Democratic House of Representatives. The Justice Department issued a warrant for Gold’s arrest for entering the capital with the intent to sow the seeds of information that would discourage people from taking the Covid-19 vaccine. Since then, hundreds of doctors have joined the efforts of the AFD. Fauci was the perpetrator, but the people behind the scenes were the instigators. It was a mathematical scam. Power and control reap money. Everyone in the medical industry had the ability to reap incredible financial gains. Pharmaceutical companies received billions for vaccine research, hospitals capitalized every time s patient went on a ventilator, and more when they died.  Suddenly, deaths from cancer, heart attacks, and many other illnesses dropped drastically and federal payments to hospitals leapt up.  Finally, the release of the vaccine and more money in the pockets of big pharma. Where do the trillion dollars that pay for the shots derive? The taxpayers. Even the media companies profited. CNN kept the death toll numbers by the side of commentators around the clock to help viewers internalize fear. Their numbers escalated as did their ratings. The money trickled everywhere, to the unemployed, illegal immigrants, pork barrel projects, municipal governments, and on. One city is building a new city council chamber on covid money. Currently, every American taxpayer owes $183,000 on the national debt and Joe Biden spends millions of tax dollars at the rate pennies flash by on the gas pump.  Information is a weapon of destruction. Why? Because when people see facts and details, they become critical thinkers, and it makes them believe they have the right to speak. That was the reason the flow of information was censored by the Democratic Party and their partners, the Pinocchio press. What are some details about the CCP you should know? As a starter, the states with the strictest Covid19 restrictions have the highest virus statistics. Michigan proves this. That state has the strictest compliance regulations and they are the Covid Capital of the U.S.A.  The same statistics are true in Europe. The UK has been most strict and had the highest cases and death rate, a 12% to 18% increase.  Sweden and Denmark had much lower compliance regulations and had, by far, the lowest number of cases and death rate of a 1.5% increase. In the Unites States, as of May 10th, 2021, 587,950 have died from the CCP Virus, less than the rate of heart attack victims, and half of the Covid deaths were in nursing homes. They average death age of the CCP victim is 78 years old. That is the normal average death rate in the United States. A vaccine stimulates the production of antibodies to provide immunity as a synthetic substitute. The CCP vaccine represents an experimental approach antibody dependent enhancement for SARS 2. The vaccine for SARS 1 (2002) never came to market because of known complications, and studies have indicated that previous flu shots have increased the chance of major influenzas, not decreased it, and, thus, adverse effects are possible.  The misinformation about the current CCP shot leads recipients to believe they are “safe and sound,” and that cannot be a fact as this shot is an experimental medicine. To force the public to take the vaccine, they took drugs off the market that had been used successfully for 65 years and are completely safe. That boosted their revenues from the vaccine.  People who have not been vaccinated simply don’t believe it makes sense to give a healthy body an experimental drug that will alter their body permanently with a promise that it is a “good thing.” As I see it, the critics against masks are missing information in front of them. Countless times I have mentioned to friends that I have not had a cold, the flu, or a sore throat in 18 months and I receive a kindred response. Yes, they have been healthier too. Just wearing a mask tends to make us more aware of the need for good hygienic practices.  What are some of the details we have not asked about the CCP Virus? What is the confirmed case fatality rate (CFR) ? And, we should also be looking at the infection fatality rate (IFR). These statistics offer insight into Fauci’s Covid-19 war. We should also know how much money was deferred from cancer technology research, SARS, and heart disease in order to focus on the CCP virus.  A fair question, will the critical thinkers inherit the future of the United States? The odds always improve when the numbers increase. We can’t just compare the number of traditional family conservatives to the socialist and communist Democrats. You have to add a third group. How many Americans rely on the government and Pinocchio for answers.  When you follow the activities of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, they appear to be adversaries to traditional values and the Constitution.  They have targeted anti-abortion leaders, President Trump, and many of his appointees performing well. ​Gradually, Americans are waking up. The strength lies in our Congressional representation and legislatures of every state. To reclaim the power highjacked by the United States bureaucracies, we need to be on the door steps of every elected official in state, local government, and school districts. They are the backbone of the nation. ​Utah’s censure of Mitt Romney was a great beginning. The leadership of our governors who have become outstanding orators speaking for the people in their states, and legislatures that have rebelled against the voting scams, and who have pushed for education reform in the past five months represent a wave of rebellion against the violators of the United States Constitution.  ​The Biden Democratic Political Machine must be stopped before the ravenous tiger devours the Republic that ended World War I and defeated the Nazi’s and Japanese in World War II.  They are ripping apart the flesh of the helpless culture pictured in the form of a helpless women, the symbol of traditional American families.  What are you going to do about it?