During a congressional hearing, a former FBI agent revealed that the agency manipulated data related to the January 6 incident to portray domestic terrorism as a widespread issue rather than an isolated event.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government conducted the hearing, where FBI whistleblowers shared their testimonies about the abuse and politicization of the agency. These individuals also discussed the backlash they faced, including job losses, for refusing to conform to the narrative set by FBI leadership.
During the hearing, Steve Friend, a former FBI special agent with experience in local law enforcement, stated that the agency artificially inflated domestic terrorism data. Instead of investigating January 6 as one case involving multiple individuals, the decision was made to open separate cases for each individual. These cases were then distributed among the various field offices, creating the illusion of widespread domestic terrorism activities across the country when, in reality, they were all connected to Washington, D.C. The Washington field office had a task force responsible for overseeing all these cases.
Friend highlighted this as part of a broader trend within the FBI, where the focus of counterterrorism efforts has shifted from legitimate foreign actors to political opponents within the country.
In recent years, the FBI has faced criticism for its alleged politicization in favor of certain political interests. Additional evidence has emerged suggesting that the FBI may have had a greater role in instigating the events of January 6 than previously believed. A February Government Accountability Office report revealed that the FBI and Capitol Police were aware of threats before January 6 but failed to take sufficient action.
In addition, the FBI has been criticized for censoring American citizens online through social media companies. One notable example was its involvement in urging social media platforms to shut down the Hunter Biden laptop story shortly before the 2020 presidential election, claiming it was Russian disinformation. Although later verified as a legitimate story, the FBI’s actions had already impacted the election.
These concerns and others have led to significant scrutiny of the FBI, particularly from Republican lawmakers like U.S. Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, who chaired the committee hearing and criticized the agency for being politically focused.
Responding to these allegations, an FBI spokesperson stated that the agency does not retaliate against individuals making protected whistleblower disclosures. The FBI emphasized that while the crimes on January 6 occurred in Washington, D.C., many individuals traveled from different parts of the country. The agency investigates individuals involved in violent acts or other criminal activities that constitute federal crimes or threaten national security. They also asserted their commitment to upholding the constitutional rights of all Americans and stated that investigations are not conducted solely based on First Amendment activity.
The revelations made by the former FBI agent and the subsequent scrutiny of the agency have raised serious concerns about the integrity and impartiality of the FBI. The alleged manipulation of data to exaggerate the scale of domestic terrorism linked to the January 6 incident undermines public trust in the agency’s ability to provide accurate and unbiased information.
The FBI’s claim that a person’s views do not influence investigations and that they uphold constitutional rights is important. Still, it does little to address the specific allegations raised by the whistleblower. The testimonies presented during the congressional hearing shed light on potential abuses and misuse of power within the agency, suggesting a deeper problem that needs to be thoroughly investigated.
Congress, oversight committees, and other relevant authorities must conduct a comprehensive inquiry into data manipulation and politicization allegations within the FBI. This investigation should include reviewing the agency’s practices, policies, and leadership decisions to determine the extent of wrongdoing.
Furthermore, measures must be implemented to protect whistleblowers within the FBI and other government agencies. Whistleblowers play a crucial role in exposing misconduct and ensuring accountability, and their voices must be heard without fear of retaliation.
The public deserves transparency and accountability from its law enforcement agencies, especially concerning national security and domestic terrorism. Restoring public trust in the FBI will require addressing these allegations head-on, implementing reforms if necessary, and taking steps to ensure that the agency operates with the highest standards of professionalism, integrity, and non-partisanship.
Ultimately, the credibility and effectiveness of the FBI in safeguarding the nation’s security and upholding the rule of law are at stake. Appropriate action must be taken to restore confidence in the agency.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on EVIDENCE THAT THE FBI MANIPULATED DATA TO MAKE IT APPEAR THAT THE JANUARY 6 INCIDENT AT THE U.S. CAPITOL WAS MUCH MORE SERIOUS THAN IT REALLY WAS
Do the Wanderer & Fr. Harrison Think Francis’s “Authentic Magisterium” Teaching of Communion for those Committing Adultery isn’t Heresy?
Cardinal Caffarra explains the reasons behind the dubia
Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, emeritus Archbishop of Bologna.
“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]– 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.” The Catholic Monitor
In 2019, The Wanderer’s Fr. Brian Harrison issued a attack on the 19 scholar heroes by first presenting a straw man then showing his argument:
“Pope Francis has indeed said some things I believe to be heretical… the heretical doctrine of annihilation… [but] Francis is notorious for frequently speaking ‘off the cuff’… [was] he/she accurately reported… [but] supposing… [It’s] really heretical opinion… Only if he/she remains stubborn and obstinate can the Church declare him/her to be a formal heretic.” (The Wanderer, “Why I didn’t Sign the Open Letter Accusing the Pope of Heresy,” May 3, 2019)
It is strange that Harrison says Francis has only “said” some things that may be heretical when he knows the pontiff wrote the Argentine letter that teaches that those committing adultery can receive Communion which was called “authentic magisterium” by the Pope’s Vatican and placed in the Holy See’s Official Acts of the Apostolic See (AAS).
This means the unorthodox interpretation of Communion for those committing adultery is the official teaching of Francis.
How might Francis and Harrison have known for a long time this teaching is heretical?
First, they just have to read the Ten Commandments. One happens to say that God commands that: “Thou shall not commit adultery.”
But, just in case they never heard of the Ten Commandments, way back on December 23, 2016, Dubia Cardinal Walter Brandmuller said:
“Whoever thinks that persistent adultery and reception of Holy Communion are compatible is a heretic and promotes schism.” (LifeSiteNews, “Dubia Cardinal: Anyone who Opens Communion to Adulterers is a Heretic and Promotes Schism,” December 23, 2016)
In 2017, Francis made it the official teaching of his papacy that those committing adultery can receive Communion by placing the Argentine letter in the Holy See’s AAS.
He did this despite the fact that in 2016 Cardinal Brandmuller said Communion for adulterers is heretical and in that same year three other cardinals joined him to issue the Dubia against Communion for adulterers as well as other issues.
It has now been 957 day since the Dubia was issued.
Many people say Francis never answered the Dubia.
They are wrong.
He answered the Dubia in 2017 when he made the heretical teaching Communion for adulterers his official teaching by placing the Argentine letter in the Holy See’s AAS.
Could he have been anymore “obstinate” in heresy than that Fr. Harrison?
You, Fr. Harrison, say the Open Letter is “disrespectful to the Supreme Pontiff.”
Like Paul was disrespectful to the first pope, Peter, when he rebuked him.
Like the disrespectful Catholics of the Middle Ages:
“[T]he Sorbonne’s Chancellor, Jean Gerson [even] reached the point of threatening [Pope] John XXII with the stake if he didn’t make a retraction” of his heretical teaching on the Beatific Vision. (Rotate Caeli, “Popes who fell into Heresy,” January 28, 2015)
They would not be like you Fr. Harrison in thinking it is “disrespectful” to call on the world’s bishops to admonish Francis.
Do you believe that Communion for adulterers it is heretical?
Do you believe that the Ten Commandments are infallible teachings?
If you do believe then start acting like St. Paul or the Medieval Chancellor Jean Gerson.
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)
– 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.
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.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on WORDS OF WISDOM FROM CARDINAL CALFARRA!!!!!!!
A Twelve Step Program for Bishops – Bishop Rene Henry Gracida
A Twelve Step Program for Bishops
Bishop Rene Henry Gracida
My recent essay entitled “Denying Holy Communion, A Case Study” has prompted a number of people to suggest that the procedure which I followed in issuing a decree of Interdiction forbidding the reception of Holy Communion by a pro-abortion Texas State Representative is outdated. Some have suggested that such was fitting for 1994 but that it is no longer appropriate for 2004. They say that the times have changed. I agree that the times have changed — for the worse!
Now we have candidates for the Presidency and Congress publicly professing to be a practicing Catholics who, although supportive of many of the Church’s teachings on social issues, on the most important issue — the inalienable right to life — are diametrically opposed to our Holy Catholic Faith. The most important issue facing the world today is the assault on the sanctity of human life.
The highest teaching Authority of the Magisterium, Pope John Paul II and his Predecessors, as well as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, have taught repeatedly that the right to life is the foundation of all other rights in civil society. The denial of this basic right leads eventually to the denial of all others rights.
All other grave social issues, such as war, poverty, health, economic justice, immigration, etc. are of secondary importance and indeed pale in comparison to innocent human life under systematic annihilation. This is not simply a matter of one’s personal faith, it is a matter of reason.
The human intellect knows intuitively that the innocent person’s right to life has a greater priority than other social issues which are concerned with the quality of life. By magisterial teaching it also happens to be an article of Faith. Christ Himself instructed the Apostles and His Disciples to uphold the Fifth Commandment, “Thou Shalt Not Murder.” Ex. XX, 13. Bishops, as Successors to those Apostles, are charged with doing the same in Christ’s name.
In 1994 the greatest assault on innocent human life was being waged then, like now, by the abortionists. Euthanasia had begun to emerge as a growing concern, but cloning, embryonic stem cell research and even infanticide had not yet assumed the magnitude of the tragedy or danger that they pose in common today.
In that year of 1994, I felt that limiting Interdiction in the internal forum was important not only for the spiritual well being of the person being interdicted, but also for the spiritual good of the community. I had not felt that way about the three decrees of excommunication (latae sententiae) which I had issued earlier for one simple reason: they were directed at three Catholics who were directly involved in procuring murder by abortion – two women who each administered an abortuary and one doctor who performed the unspeakable evil of abortion himself.
Their cases, clearly constituting formal cooperation in evil, that is, the direct immediate and voluntary participation in the physical taking of human life, demanded the infliction of the gravest of public ecclesiastical penalties, excommunication. On the other hand, the case of a politician who publicly protested a “personal opposition” to abortion, all the while publicly defending a right to choose abortion as allowed by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade, at that time did not appear to impel the public declaration of the gravest of censures.
In 1995 Pope John Paul II concluded that it was urgent to promulgate the Encyclical Evangelium Vitae. Some 12,000,000 abortions later, it has become crystal clear that the politician who actively engages his political skills to maintain abortion-on-demand and who protects the ongoing genocide by voting for legislation in favor of abortion formally cooperates in the evil of abortion itself. In reality, the distinction between the abortionist and the politician is almost nominal: One, a murderer, is guilty of directly procuring abortions; the politician, makes it legally possible for the genocide to continue unabated.
Critically, now, without doubt, the integrity of the Christian Faith is under attack not just from without, but worse, from within the Church. It is under attack by Catholic politicians who publicly and obstinately support what in all truth is nothing less than Heresy. By heresy I mean an obstinate denial or doubt of a core, non-negotiable dogma of the Faith proposed by the Magisterium as revealed doctrine, as set forth in Canon 751 of the Code of Canon Law of 1983 and amended in 1998. In my recently published essay, “The Arian Heresy Revisited,” I tried to show that the heresy of the Fourth Century which denied the divinity of Christ, is the mirror-image of our modern heresy which denies the sanctity of the human person redeemed by His Incarnation, Passion, Death and Resurrection.
Heresy is indeed committed by supporting either the moral rectitude of abortion as a “human right,” or absent that, professing merely the “civil right to abortion.” Both of these errors are so diametrically opposed to the demands of Christian witness that to obstinately adhere to them automatically cuts one off from any hope of salvation. Any one Catholic who supports these two heresies risks eternal damnation. I say this to all who have fallen into this error with all the voice of reason and clarity possible, with the full and earnest hope of their swift return to the One Body of Christ.
Recognizing the complexity of the situation in the Church and in our society at the present time I should like to help my brother bishops find their way through the thicket of conflicting opinions and proposals for action. After substantial reflection, I propose a twelve-step program for my brother bishops to help them decisively deal with the grave crisis facing our Church and our Nation.
The proposed schema is unambiguous. The continuing scandal of Catholics publicly bearing false witness to the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ has not just become collusion in genocide, but indeed now a grave undermining of the authentic Deposit of Faith and Morals. To fail to act decisively now is to continue to let the wolves devour the sheep committed to us all to protect and keep.
The following are twelve simple rules enabling bishops to effectively remedy the crisis in all transparency yet resolute firmness:
1
Ordinaries need to instill publicly, through their personal preaching and through the vicarious preaching of their priests, that not only is it against the Christian Faith to support the ‘right to choose,’ but that one loses entirely the virtue of Supernatural Faith, the right to the Sacraments, Christian Burial, and more importantly, eternal Salvation if one publicly and obstinately adheres to a ‘right to choose abortion’ in opposition to the fundamental belief of the Christian and Apostolic Faith in the sanctity of innocent human life.
Any public and obstinate support, by word or by vote, of either abortion, or absent that, “only” the civil “right-to-choose abortion” qualifies as heresy. To be “personally opposed to abortion” is not a defense to supporting a “right to choose murder.” The propositions 1) “Abortion is not intrinsically evil” and 2) One has a “civil” or “human” right to choose abortion are both in reason, and by Divine Law, two specifically distinct heresies. A pro-choice Catholic politician may get away with not committing the one, but he certainly falls into the pit of committing the other.
2
The grave circumstances of the age in which we live, the obligation to proclaim the Faith in all its purity, the need to protect the Sacraments from sacrilege, and the obligation to eliminate grave scandal amongst the faithful all impel the bishop to publicly and courageously inquire among the clergy and laity of his diocese as to who amongst those Catholic politicians having a domicile in his territory are publicly supporting abortion or a right to choose, in accord with Canon 1717, No. 1. Evidence verifiable in the external forum should be presented along with any information.
3
Upon being presented with evidence of the presence in the Diocese of a politician having a domicile or quasi-domicile who both publicly holds the right-to-murder doctrine and receives the Sacrament of the Eucharist, and, upon verification of the evidence, the bishop should order the individual to appear before him quam primum (Canon 1339, No. 2).
4
Should the politician agree to the meeting, the bishop should at that time point out his error, reiterate to the individual the obligation to submit with the assent of Faith to the dogmatic teaching of the Church on the need to respect innocent human life. Clarify the absolute incompatibility of the position he espouses with the baptismal character, and thence order him to cease and desist from any further or private support of his pro-choice deviance. As a Catholic in public office, the individual can never favor or condone a right to abortion, but to the contrary, must strive to limit and revoke pro-choice legislation. As the obligation to publicly profess dogmatic Faith inures in the Catholic subject whenever publicly interrogated, a Catholic can never support, whether in public or in private, a right to choose abortion (Canon 750, No. 1, Canon 1364, No. 1).
5
Should the politician not agree to the meeting, then the substance of Step No. 4 should be sent to the individual in writing by registered mail (Canon 1509, No. 1;)
6
At the conclusion of the meeting agreed to, the bishop should obtain a formal written recantation of the individual’s erroneous beliefs. Once done, an offer to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation should be extended to the penitent.
7
If the bishop obtains a formal written recantation, with the consent of the individual, he should release a statement publicizing the fact that the individual and the Church are one in the same Faith once again (cfr. Canon 1347, No. 1). Additionally, an obligation for reparation of harm and the dispelling of scandal, commensurate to the degree of injury done to the Faith, the Church, and civil society, needs to be completed or seriously promised prior to reconciliation (Canon 1347, No. 2).
8
If the bishop is unable to obtain a formal written retraction, fraternal correction and canonical correction should be exercised in writing by registered mail (Canon 1339, Nos. 1-3), and, if possible, in person, reproving that 1) the requirement of Christian witness to a non-negotiable tenet of the Faith demands that he be publicly identified as holding a contradictory position to that of the Catholic Church, depriving him of the right to call himself “Catholic,” and 2) should the individual refuse to amend his ways, the Bishop may impose an Interdict ferendae sententiae barring him from receiving the Most Holy Eucharist in order to safeguard unambiguously and without question the provisions of Canon 915. Moreover, the individual may be advised that, circumstances warranting, the Ordinary may, after the expiration of a certain allowance of time as set forth in the monitum, publicly declare him to have been automatically excommunicated for heresy according to Canon 1364, No. 1, and deprived from the reception of all of the Sacraments (Canon 1331, No. 1 as well as Christian burial (Canon 1184, No. 1).
9
After giving the individual a reasonable period of time for reflection and consultation with his confessor/spiritual director (Canon 1347, Nos. 1-2), failing the acceptance of a further opportunity for emendation provided to the individual within a determined time limit, the bishop should decide by decree and after consultation with two other judges or experts (Canon 1718, Nos. 2-3), whether he can (Canon 1718, No. 1, 1), should (Canons 1341: 1718, No. 1, 2), and must (Canon 1728, No. 1, 3) proceed by way of judicial process or extra-judicial administrative decree in order to inflict or declare the commensurate penalty of Interdict ferendae sententiae, or declare Excommunication for heresy to have been incurred latae sententiae.
10
Once the Sentence is pronounced, or the extra-judicial Decree issued, the Bishop should promulgate the decree by publication in the diocesan newspaper with an appropriate description of the process leading up to the issuing of the canonical decree (Canon 8, No. 2).
11
After the publication of the decree, the bishop should send a letter to the clergy explaining to them what their duties and responsibilities are in respect to the penalties imposed by the decree.
12
The bishop should follow up on the publication of the decree with a letter to the recalcitrant, urging him to return into full communion with the Church, reminding him of the Parable of the Prodigal Son: As the Good Shepherd never refrains from welcoming a stray sheep back into the fold, so will the bishop, in imitation of Christ, always strive to bring the one who became lost back into the bosom of Holy Mother Church, but only in entire Truth and Charity.
This Twelve-Step Program is clear, coherent with the Faith, and in accordance with the requirements of canonical equity. If the Penal Canons of the Code are now to be dusted off and brought out of the cupboard within which they have lain dormant for almost half-a-century, it is because the balm of mercy and discretion of measure have failed to heal the growing infection of error and scandal inside the Church and the genocide increasing daily in the world around us. The time for half-measures and fear of reprisal, loss of position, temporal advantage, or career opportunity is over — the time for action in now.
Rene Henry Gracida, DD Bishop Emeritus of Corpus Christi
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on ANOTHER LOOK AT THE CANONICAL/PASTORAL PROGRAM WHICH I PROPOSED MANY YEARS AGO WHEN I WAS ACTIVE AS THE BISHOP OF CORPUS CHRISTI IN COMBATTING THE PRO-ABORTION ACTIVITIES OF CATHOLIC PUBLIC OFFICE HOLDERS
I don’t remember much about that year. The days passed in a haze of grief, though at the time, I didn’t know to call the hollowed-out feeling I lived with “grief.” Nor did I know that the constant exhaustion I felt was grief, or that the days I felt too heavy to go to school were grief, or the times I’d drive home for lunch, fall asleep in my bed, and miss my afternoon classes.
All of it was grief. I didn’t know how to bear it so instead, I placed heavy, impenetrable plates of armor around my heart. If I could protect myself from feeling my own pain, I could survive the crushing weight of losing my dad.
Had God abandoned me, turned a blind eye to my family and our suffering? I thought he must have because I’d begged him to save my dad from cancer. But instead, my dad died less than two months after being diagnosed.
I still believed in God. I still loved being Catholic, though more out of stubbornness than depth of faith. In my public high school, being Catholic required a certain amount of pluckiness. I was proud that we alone, among all the Christians in the world and throughout history, had clung to the truth of the Eucharist, even though I didn’t know that the Eucharist was a person. I was proud to be Catholic, even though it usually meant being misunderstood. I was proud to have something to defend. But after my dad died, it seemed like God was distant, uncaring, unmoved. I didn’t know how to relate to someone who was so far away.
I felt so alone. None of my friends had lost a parent, and few of my teachers had, either. No one knew how to handle such a fragile heart, me least of all.
One of the places I felt safest was my parish’s youth group. I can’t say that being part of the youth group saved me during that dark time. I was only involved so I could participate in fundraising opportunities for World Youth Day in Australia. But one of my best friends went to youth group activities, so I went, too. In the meantime, we got to go on other fun trips, like Steubenville conferences.
Steubenville West happens every July in Tucson, Arizona. I didn’t know what to expect that first year. I had never experienced praise and worship before, or men and women who were so passionate about their faith. I had never heard such engaging talks or homilies, or seen so many other teenagers who were also passionate about being Catholic.
If you’ve ever been to a Steubenville conference before, you know that there’s Mass every day, talks on various topics, and confession offered throughout the weekend. The highlight, though, is Adoration night.
The night starts with praise and worship and a riveting talk. I don’t remember who the speaker was that year or what they said. All I know is that when the priest processed in with the Blessed Sacrament and walked through the theater aisle by aisle, I fell to my knees and knew: this really is Jesus. Jesus really is God and he really is alive.
Despite every feeling to the contrary, Jesus hadn’t left me alone to grieve for my dad. He had been with me every step of the way, at every Mass I had ever attended. For the first time since my dad had died five months earlier, I let myself weep freely without trying to tamp down my tears. I poured my heart out to God that night, and for the first time, I knew that God listens.
Five years later, I graduated from college and moved to Georgia to be a full-time missionary. Although I was raised Catholic and had gone to CCD every year of my childhood and adolescence, I realized that I had been catechized, not evangelized. I had been taught all of the Church’s many teachings, but I had never been introduced to Jesus “one-to-one,” as Mother Teresa says. I wanted to help people meet Jesus in the Eucharist. I wanted to tell them about God’s love. I wanted them to know they are never alone, even in their darkest times.
I don’t know how much good I did as a missionary–I won’t know until I get to heaven–but I do know that Jesus did huge work in my heart during those four years. We started every day with a Holy Hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament, and those countless hours spent in prayer molded my heart around Jesus’s heart.
To this day, no matter how hard it sometimes is to be Catholic, I know I will never leave because nowhere and no one else has the Eucharist. For me, the Eucharist is everything.
How can you work some time in front of the Eucharist into your week?
Even if it’s just a few minutes of prayer in your parish church, with or without Eucharistic exposition. Pray for a revival of belief in Jesus’ True Presence in the Eucharist, or if you’ve never had an encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist yourself, pray that he would reveal himself to you, one-to-one, as Mother Teresa was famous for saying to her Missionaries of Charity.
I don’t remember much about that year. The days passed in a haze of grief, though at the time, I didn’t know to call the hollowed-out feeling I lived with “grief.” Nor did I know that the constant exhaustion I felt was grief, or that the days I felt too heavy to go to school were grief, or the times I’d drive home for lunch, fall asleep in my bed, and miss my afternoon classes.
All of it was grief. I didn’t know how to bear it so instead, I placed heavy, impenetrable plates of armor around my heart. If I could protect myself from feeling my own pain, I could survive the crushing weight of losing my dad.
Had God abandoned me, turned a blind eye to my family and our suffering? I thought he must have because I’d begged him to save my dad from cancer. But instead, my dad died less than two months after being diagnosed.
I still believed in God. I still loved being Catholic, though more out of stubbornness than depth of faith. In my public high school, being Catholic required a certain amount of pluckiness. I was proud that we alone, among all the Christians in the world and throughout history, had clung to the truth of the Eucharist, even though I didn’t know that the Eucharist was a person. I was proud to be Catholic, even though it usually meant being misunderstood. I was proud to have something to defend. But after my dad died, it seemed like God was distant, uncaring, unmoved. I didn’t know how to relate to someone who was so far away.
I felt so alone. None of my friends had lost a parent, and few of my teachers had, either. No one knew how to handle such a fragile heart, me least of all.
One of the places I felt safest was my parish’s youth group. I can’t say that being part of the youth group saved me during that dark time. I was only involved so I could participate in fundraising opportunities for World Youth Day in Australia. But one of my best friends went to youth group activities, so I went, too. In the meantime, we got to go on other fun trips, like Steubenville conferences.
Steubenville West happens every July in Tucson, Arizona. I didn’t know what to expect that first year. I had never experienced praise and worship before, or men and women who were so passionate about their faith. I had never heard such engaging talks or homilies, or seen so many other teenagers who were also passionate about being Catholic.
If you’ve ever been to a Steubenville conference before, you know that there’s Mass every day, talks on various topics, and confession offered throughout the weekend. The highlight, though, is Adoration night.
The night starts with praise and worship and a riveting talk. I don’t remember who the speaker was that year or what they said. All I know is that when the priest processed in with the Blessed Sacrament and walked through the theater aisle by aisle, I fell to my knees and knew: this really is Jesus. Jesus really is God and he really is alive.
Despite every feeling to the contrary, Jesus hadn’t left me alone to grieve for my dad. He had been with me every step of the way, at every Mass I had ever attended. For the first time since my dad had died five months earlier, I let myself weep freely without trying to tamp down my tears. I poured my heart out to God that night, and for the first time, I knew that God listens.
Five years later, I graduated from college and moved to Georgia to be a full-time missionary. Although I was raised Catholic and had gone to CCD every year of my childhood and adolescence, I realized that I had been catechized, not evangelized. I had been taught all of the Church’s many teachings, but I had never been introduced to Jesus “one-to-one,” as Mother Teresa says. I wanted to help people meet Jesus in the Eucharist. I wanted to tell them about God’s love. I wanted them to know they are never alone, even in their darkest times.
I don’t know how much good I did as a missionary–I won’t know until I get to heaven–but I do know that Jesus did huge work in my heart during those four years. We started every day with a Holy Hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament, and those countless hours spent in prayer molded my heart around Jesus’s heart.
To this day, no matter how hard it sometimes is to be Catholic, I know I will never leave because nowhere and no one else has the Eucharist. For me, the Eucharist is everything.
How can you work some time in front of the Eucharist into your week?
Even if it’s just a few minutes of prayer in your parish church, with or without Eucharistic exposition. Pray for a revival of belief in Jesus’ True Presence in the Eucharist, or if you’ve never had an encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist yourself, pray that he would reveal himself to you, one-to-one, as Mother Teresa was famous for saying to her Missionaries of Charity.
Children are increasingly lured into “gender-affirming” hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgeries, are never given appropriate informed consent, and they have no idea what they’re getting themselves into. Many adults even underestimate how difficult and painful it will be
All it takes for a young girl to start the gender transition process to become a boy is a letter of support from a therapist. Typically, the therapist will write a letter of support after just one or two visits. Next, she’ll be sent to an endocrinologist who, after a single visit, will prescribe her testosterone
Some gender transition centers don’t even require any kind of mental health assessment, and several Planned Parenthood clinics are apparently handing out hormone replacement therapy (HRT) prescriptions on the first visit
While some pro-trans advocates insist HRT is harmless and reversible once you quit taking the hormones, this simply isn’t true. The effects of testosterone on a girl can be both profound and permanent, and can be seen within a matter of months
The transgender movement is a stepping stone in the transhumanist agenda. Ultimately, the goal is to get rid of flesh and blood bodies altogether and have our existence either within a synthetic body or as disembodied avatar in cyberspace, or both. Turning humanity into misgendered people incapable of natural reproduction is merely a first step in that direction
In the video above, WhatsHerFace Entertainment dives into the “unspoken reality of transgender sexual reassignment surgery and all of the pain, regret and horrors it entails.”
Most clear-headed adults would realize that surgically and chemically altering your anatomy from male to female, or female to male, is a complex and painful process. The problem is that it’s typically not level-headed adults making the decision to undergo gender reassignment. It’s primarily children who are being pushed into it, and they have no idea what they’re getting themselves into. Many adults don’t even realize how difficult and painful it will be.
As reported by WhatsHerFace, all it takes for a young girl to start the gender transition process to become a boy is a letter of support from a therapist. Typically, the therapist will write a letter of support after just one or two visits. Next, she’ll be sent to an endocrinologist who, after a single visit, will prescribe her testosterone.
While that’s alarmingly lax enough, some gender transition centers have cut through even that tiny bit of red tape. Some don’t require any kind of mental health assessment, and a number of Planned Parenthood clinics are apparently handing out hormone replacement therapy (HRT) prescriptions on the first visit.
Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) Is Not Harmless
While some pro-trans advocates insist that HRT is harmless and completely reversible once you quit taking the hormones, this simply isn’t true.1 As reported by WhatsHerFace, the effects of testosterone on a girl can be both profound and permanent and can be seen within a matter of months. Effects of high-dose testosterone treatment include:
Voice deepening
Facial hair growth
Hair loss, receding hairline, balding
Increased libido
Sexual dysfunction
Increased aggression and unpredictable moods
Sterility
Enlargement of clitoris
Vaginal atrophy
As noted by Cleveland Clinic,2 many of these changes persist even if you completely stop taking testosterone. Can a child or teenager fully comprehend what sterility might mean to them later in life? I don’t think so. I also don’t think they can comprehend how other physical and emotional changes might affect them, such as going bald.
Other types of hormone therapy include puberty blockers, which are given to children who have not yet entered puberty. These drugs delay the onset of sex characteristics associated with the gender you were assigned at birth.
What’s particularly shocking is that the adults steering them toward gender reassignment don’t make it a point to thoroughly inform them about the difficulties they might face. Overall, I don’t think children and teens are capable of making the decision to transition, and encouraging or facilitating it really ought to be illegal.
Double-Mastectomies Performed at 15
While you’re considered too immature to get a full, unrestricted driver’s license until you’re 18, and can’t drink alcohol until you’re 21, “gender-affirming” sex hormone therapy can begin as early as 14,3 girls who think they’re boys can get a double-mastectomy at the age of 15, and full sex reassignment surgery is available at age 17 or 18, depending on the procedure, although the World Professional Association for Transgender Health is advocating for surgeries as early as 15.4
The Boston Children’s Hospital requires you to be 17 to undergo vaginoplasty, where a boy’s penis, testicles and scrotum are removed and a vagina is created, and 18 to undergo phalloplasty, the surgical construction of a penis, or metoidioplasty, where testosterone is used to enlarge the clitoris, from which a small penis is then constructed. Prosthetic testicles are also added in both of those cases.
When a biological woman decides to surgically become a man, she’ll undergo phalloplasty, which involves taking large sections of skin from her forearms and/or thigh to fashion a penis. As you can see from the images included in WhatsHerFace’s video, this will leave a very large unsightly scar on one or both forearms, and while the donation site heals, there’s always a risk of infection.
Since the donation site needs to be hairless, electrolysis must first be performed. If electrolysis fails and hair grows back in the donated skin, the trans male may struggle with painful hair growth inside his urethra for the rest of his life.
Trans men who are on testosterone also face gynecological challenges, especially vaginal dryness, and vaginal atrophy, which can be very painful. Pelvic pain and bacterial vaginosis are other commonly reported issues.5,6
Understanding Male-to-Female Reassignment Surgery
During vaginoplasty, which is where a biological male surgically transitions to female, the surgeon will use skin from the patient’s scrotum to create a vaginal canal. If additional skin grafts are needed, they’ll use skin from the sides of their abdomen.
Before the skin grafts are taken, he must undergo electrolysis on the chosen donor sites. However, electrolysis does not always permanently eliminate hair growth, especially not male hair growth, which tends to be more profuse, and if the hair grows back, the trans male can end up with hair growing in his vaginal canal.
Vaginoplasties aren’t always successful, and if they must be redone, a part of the patient’s colon will typically be used instead. A downside of this procedure, called colovaginoplasty, is an offensive discharge odor.
After vaginoplasty, the patient must then dilate the vagina on a daily basis. This basically entails stretching (dilating) the vagina using a lubricated dildo to prevent it from sealing shut. Your body basically views this new opening as a wound and will do what it can to heal it. Trans women must do this several times a day for the rest of their lives.
Dreams That Nightmares Are Made Of
Dilation is one of the challenges of male-to-female sex reassignment surgery (SRS) that most people underestimate. Here’s one testimony included in WhatsHerFace’s video.
“Three months ago, I started this ‘dream’ (nightmarish hell) that is SRS … Dilating is Hell, everything is sensitive or sore, my … leg movements are, while better than before, still pretty limited. I feel constant stinging and burning sensations pretty much around the clock in my crotch area.
This is probably the most suicidal I’ve ever been since before I actually transitioned. This ‘vaginal canal’ (which is actually a f***ing open wound) has given me nothing but grievances and Jesus f*** am I tired of it.
I’ve actually been considering asking my surgeon whether or not it’s possible to just close this pseudo-vaginal canal or just get rid of it all together. I wish somebody had told me even just a third of what a hellride this was going to be. But nobody did. And now I’m stuck with this nightmare.
I’m pretty much considering just stopping dilation. ‘The canal will shrink,’ so what? Maintaining it is pretty much keeping my whole … life prisoner of this thing. While I didn’t like what I had before, at all, it still allowed me freedom … For comparison, this shit is like going from parole straight into solitary confinement.”
Sure, you might think, but that’s just recovery. Eventually, all will be well. Maybe, maybe not. Here are the words of a trans female who is still struggling three years after her vaginoplasty.
“Suicidal thoughts. Three years post-op SRS and still having discharge and pain … I had SRS in 2016, August … and I’m experiencing discharge and pain again from my neovagina after it had gone away for two years. Orgasming is very difficult these days and when I do I feel less than half of what I used to feel down there.
I am normally a very strong person who doesn’t easily give up but over the last couple of weeks I find myself crying myself asleep almost every night. Wondering why I had to get this surgery.
Since the surgery I haven’t dated anyone and everyone I have been on a date with turned me down diplomatically when I came out and discussed that I have a neovagina. I’m not saying no one should get this surgery and I’m sure there are people who have amazing results but far too often I hear that people experience complications from SRS.
I find life very draining these days. I have to clean my vagina with isobetadine to keep smell away and to keep the discharge at bay. I have to dilate once a day still. I should have thought things more carefully through. I thought SRS was a wonderful end point to a difficult journey. It opened up a whole other can of worms.
I could have just had anal sex and left my genitals alone and maybe have the testicles removed. Doing something so taxing as having the tissues inverted turned out to be such a bad idea. I wish I could just have the vagina closed up at this point. I don’t see myself ever having sex again either way. I know I should be grateful for having had a surgery of 22,000 CAD paid for by the government. But I feel lied to. I feel so stupid.”
Parents Are Removed From the Equation
Consider those words, and then consider that pro-trans ideology is now being openly taught in kindergarten through high school across the U.S. Children are being brainwashed into thinking they can choose their own gender and that it’s as easy to switch genders as it is to switch clothes. It’s not.
Yet, the horrors of SRS are being so well hidden that neither parents nor their trans children understand what’s in store, both in the short and long term. While there are cases where everything goes right and the boy or girl finally feels “complete” after SRS,7 there seem to be far more cases where they end up even more miserable.
What’s worse, some states, like Washington, are considering laws that severely infringe on parent’s rights to be involved in their child’s decision to transition. For example, as reported by ZeroHedge:8
“April 12 [2023], House lawmakers debated Senate Bill 5599,9 which creates an exemption for the state that grants it the right to not be required to notify parents of minors who have left their homes because their parents wouldn’t let them pursue gender transition medical procedures …
Republican state Rep. Chris Corry said the bill ‘erodes parental rights in the state of Washington.’ ‘Essentially what the bill would do would be if a child left a parents’ home for certain medical care and went to a shelter or host family, that shelter or host family would not be required to notify the parents of their child’s whereabouts,’ Corry said.
‘This is obviously a fundamental violation of parental rights and something that’s deeply concerning for parents across Washington state.’ State Rep. Peter Abbarno, a Republican, said the crux of the debate over the bill was whether the state be permitted to ‘essentially hide where the child is.’
Most parents, Corry said, would ‘go to the ends of the earth to find their child’ if they disappeared after an argument. ‘And the fact that we have a bill that may become law that would say, ‘we’re not going to tell you,’ was really just a bridge too far for us,’ Corry said.
Corry told The Epoch Times that, under the bill, a disagreement between a child and parents over the child’s desire for a medical transition constitutes ‘abuse and neglect,’ only because the parent hasn’t ‘properly affirmed what the child wants.’
Corry said there are already laws that protect children from abuse and neglect in the state that require ‘solid and compelling reasons’ why children would need to be removed from their homes. ‘What’s frustrating is even in those cases, the parents still have a right to know where their kids are after they’ve been removed,’ Corry said. ‘In this case, parents would have no idea.’”
Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria: A Social Contagion
According to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, data from Western countries suggest gender dysphoria is now at 8% among children,10 compared to just a fraction of a percent among older adults.11
Kids who question their gender but aren’t good candidates for permanent transitioning may be as high as 1 in 5!12 In the U.S., research suggests 5% of 18- to 29-year-olds identify as trans, compared to 1.6% of 30- to 49-year-olds and only 0.3% of those 50 and older.13
How is this even possible? How is it that so many young people are suddenly gender confused? Social pressure appears to have a lot to do with it, and that includes pressure from adults, such as school teachers. But widespread trauma may also play a role.
According to a 2018 transgender identity study14 described in Psychology Today,15 “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” (ROGD) “appears to be a novel condition that emerges from cohort and contagion effects and novel social pressures.”
As such, its etiology and epidemiology is distinct from conventional gender dysphoria described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Remarkably, 80% of the teens identifying as transgender were girls identifying as boys.
Not surprisingly for those of us who understand how the internet is being used to manipulate impressionable minds, 63.5% of parents reported that shortly before their child announced they were trans, they’d noticed a marked increase in social media consumption. In particular, parents had noticed their child was following popular YouTubers who discussed their transition.
Signs of Indoctrination
Among the many surprises discovered in that study, the investigator, Dr. Lisa Littman, a behavioral scientist at Brown University, found that one of the many beliefs espoused by these trans teens was that anyone who isn’t specifically transgendered is “evil,” including gays and lesbians. As reported by Psychology Today:16
“Parents further reported being derogatorily called ‘breeders’ by their children, or being routinely harassed by children who played ‘pronoun-police.’ The observation that they no longer recognized their child’s voice came up time and again in parental reports.
In turn, the eerie similarity between the youth’s discourse and trans-positive online content was repeatedly emphasized. Youth were described as ‘sounding scripted,’ ‘reading from a script,’ ‘wooden,’ ‘like a form letter,’ ‘verbatim,’ ‘word for word,’ or ‘practically copy and paste.’”
To me, the fact that trans teens sound like carbon-copies of each other is a sign of indoctrination. A script has been unleashed, and trans activists are repeating that script with the aim of indoctrinating its audience. We saw the same thing happen during COVID. Mainstream media repeated the script of the official COVID narrative, word for word, day in and day out. Repetition — that’s how you indoctrinate people.
Now, we also have the added pressures of corporations that view the trans agenda as a cash cow (although most who have gone that route are finding out the hard way that trans is still a tiny minority of their customer base, and the rest are not willing to encourage the fomentation of a mental health problem).
Even if corporate CEOs aren’t gung-ho about the trans agenda, many are lured in that direction because they want to optimize their corporate equality index (CEI).
Is Transgenderism a Maladapted Collective Stress Response?
That said, Littman hypothesized that ROGD may be a maladaptive coping mechanism for other underlying mental health issues or trauma. In essence, it may be a form of maladapted collective stress response. Psychology Today wrote:17
“It is clear from Littman’s study that the rise of rapid-onset gender dysphoria, which seems to predominantly involve natal females, points to a complex web of social pressures, changing cultural norms, and new modes of distress and coping that warrant further investigation. For parents, educators, and clinicians alike, caution is warranted in dealing with this growing phenomenon.”
Cui Bono?
So, who benefits from this maladaptive groupthink? Primarily, that would be hospitals, doctors and surgeons conducting gender reassignment surgeries, and, of course, Big Pharma. The cost for a complete sex change costs, on average, $132,000, but can run as high as $200,000 to $300,000 by the time everything is said and done.
Dr. Robert Malone18 recently calculated it would cost $102 billion to transition the current cohort of young adults (a total of 2.58 million kids, teens, and young adults between the ages of 10 and 24) who believe they’re trans. Right now, that’s an untapped market, and it’s quite clear the health care industry is chomping at the bit to get it going.
At present, insurance companies do not have to cover the cost of sex reassignment surgery, but that could soon change, as the Affordable Care Act website is actively encouraging trans people to sue for unlawful sex discrimination.19
What’s Behind the Trans Agenda?
In closing, it’s worth noting that many of the same people who attacked circumcision and fought against body shaming are now promoting transgenderism, which seems to be dehumanizing to the point of self-mutilation.
In the video above, self-proclaimed feminist and investigative journalist Jennifer Bilek discusses the forces behind the trans movement and “gender-affirming medical care” for children.
In short, it’s a stepping stone in the transhumanist agenda. Ultimately, the goal is to get rid of flesh and blood bodies altogether and have our existence either within a synthetic body or as disembodied avatar in cyberspace, or both.
Turning humanity into misgendered people incapable of natural reproduction is merely a first step in that direction. Next comes the melding of man with machine and artificial intelligence. Over time, the flesh and blood part of humans will be reduced while the synthetic parts will increase.
They want the younger generations to get comfortable with the transhumanist idea that gender is fluid and based on how you feel, rather than what you are, as well as the idea that you shouldn’t want to reproduce, because human reproduction will be outsourced to the tech industry.
As explained by Bilek, the trans ideology promotes the idea that you can choose your gender, even though that is a biological impossibility, because that’s a steppingstone to the grander ideology that you can exist without a body altogether, in cyberspace, where you can be whomever you want.
They want the younger generations to get comfortable with the idea that gender is fluid and based on how you feel, rather than what you are, as well as the idea that you shouldn’t want to reproduce, because human reproduction will be outsourced to the tech industry.
Over the past decade, Bilek notes, the trans argument has gone from “some people are born in the wrong body,” to simply advocating for the right to augment yourself in whatever way you see fit, to add or strip yourself of whatever appendages you don’t want. According to Bilek, it’s a fetish-based cult, and seemingly rational people are buying into it, not understanding what it’s all about.
I believe the transgender movement poses a severe threat to mental, emotional and physical health, and must be counteracted by level-headed discourse. How can anyone say they’re concerned about children’s health and welfare while simultaneously promoting irreversible surgeries that will pose lifelong risks to their health and render many of them sterile?
It’s one thing to change a child’s pronouns. It’s another to cut off their breasts and penises just because they say they feel at odds with their — for now — elected gender. The very idea that a child should be allowed to decide with such lifelong implications as mutilating their sex organs is incomprehensibly negligent.
And when you consider the hidden motive behind this movement, it reinforces the anti-human, anti-humane nature of it, because children, who are our future, are being physically and psychologically sacrificed to further an ideology that seeks to destroy the human species and turn it into something it’s not.
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Someone once said, “We don’t appreciate what we have until it’s gone.” Google says it was Boris Yeltsin, which works for me.
Last weekend, the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts—a pillar of our “unintentional community” here in southern New Hampshire—sent off the class of 2023. My in-laws teach at TMC, so I’ve been to every grad since 2019. I hope to keep going every year, too, so long as God keeps me on this green earth. Yet every time feels like the last time. And that’s a great blessing.
All of us remainers (faculty, staff, alumni, and hangers-on like me) say the same thing. Graduation gives us a new appreciation for this place, our home. The air of valediction helps us to see the college, and our community, through the graduates’ eyes. We’re saying goodbye with them; then suddenly, we realize, it’s not goodbye at all.
TMC has a reputation for being the artsiest of the Newman Guide schools. And that’s fair. There’s a folk music guild, a sacred music guild, a schola, and a dramatic society. Every year, the sophomore class spends a semester at TMC’s Rome campus, which is based in an ancient villa near the Vatican. Every alumn has fond memories of sitting on the Trevi Fountain reading Dante and Richard Wilbur.
But it’s more than that. TMC also has a woodworking guild and a homesteading guild. Students have the option of becoming hunter-cerified in New Hampshire.
The newest professor, Michael Dominic Taylor, has become one of my closest friends. Last year, he won the Ratzinger Foundation’s Expanded Reason Award for his gorgeous book The Foundations of Nature. In another life, Mike was a lobsterman. Every year he takes his students for a day-trip to Boston so they can spend a day on a Yankee lobster boat.
Also on staff is a master trapper named Anton Kaska. Last year, on the first day of an open house, prospective students were surprised to find Mr. Kaska hauling in a huge beaver corpse for the natural-history class to dissect. Their parents, I think, were a little more than surprised.
I met my wife when she was a senior at Thomas More, and she invited me to the students’ Easter banquet. Whenever someone mentions TMC, that banquet is the first thing that comes to mind. I wrote about it once in the Catholic Herald:
These are the first days of spring in New England, when you begin to understand why Robert Frost said “nature’s first green is gold”. Three pigs turn on rotisseries made of brick and mortar. The men, decked in flannel shirts and waistcoats, sing folk-songs about Thérèse of Lisieux. Young women in light dresses string garlands in their hair and dance on pedals from the cherry-trees. We eat crackling with thanks and praise to the Risen Lord (not to mention the students who kept a 30-hour vigil at the spit) and wash it down with freshly-bottled ale courtesy of the brewers’ guild. A few pipes are lit; a few romances are enkindled. It’s the Feast of the Resurrection at Thomas More College, so we’re feasting—just as our fathers in the Faith did a millennium ago.
There’s nowhere in the world quite like TMC. Folks say that about every college, of course. But, here, I think it’s true.
This year’s commencement speaker was none other than Sohrab Ahmari, editor of Compact. We became friends not long after he converted to Catholicism in 2016. During his (in)famous debate with David French in 2019, I put myself squarely in the Ahmarist camp. Over the last couple of years, though, some daylight showed up between us.
On the one hand, I started to identify more closely with Tolkien’s “anarcho-monarchism.” I don’t like journalists or economists or think-tankers; I sure as hell don’t like politicians. But I’ve also become deeply disillusioned with politics. I don’t believe in journalists or economists or think-tankers; I sure as hell don’t believe in politicians. I agree with that other great anarcho-monarchist, Auberon Waugh: “It is the kindest thing one can possibly say of a politician that he changed nothing.”
My view—which I lay out in my next book, After Christendom—is that Christian civilization, at least here in the West, has been destroyed. We lost the Culture War before it even began. The Church, as Ratzinger once prophesied, has been reduced to a mustard seed. It’s too late to conserve or reclaim or RETVRN. We have to rebuild.
“Rebuilding,” first and foremost, means the following Benedict Option. I’m a disciple of Rod Dreher, and if anyone has a problem with that, we can go outside. Actually, it was my first encounter with Thomas More College that converted me to the BenOp. I wasted my youth in right-wing politics and Catholic media, but that one glorious Pascha changed everything. As I got in my car and drove home, I thought to myself, “This is the thing with feathers.”
But I would add to the Benedict Option a need for evangelism, meaning the Old Evangelism.
Here, too, community is first and foremost. Tertullian, that great Father of the Church, spoke of how many pagans were converted by the witness of charity shown by one Christian to another. “It is mainly the deeds of a love so noble that lead many to put a brand upon us. ‘See how they love one another,’ they say.” But we should also perform the Corporal Works of Mercy in the wider community. To quote David Bentley Hart:
Thus, in the late second century, Tertullian could justly boast that whereas the money donated to the temples of the old gods was squandered on feasts and drink, with their momentary pleasures, the money given to churches was used to care for the impoverished and the abandoned, to grant even the poorest decent burials, and to provide for the needs for the elderly.
Above all, though, I think, we need good old-fashioned street evangelism. That’s why, every month, our first charitable donation goes to the St. Paul Evangelization Institute.
Sohrab has more time for politicsthan I do. He’s also quite a bit more friendly to the State. That’s why I’ve criticized him on this very blog once or twice in the last few months. And I stand by what I said. He and I have substantial, big-picture disagreements. There’s no use in pretending otherwise.
Having said that, Sohrab got to spend a few hours drinking Allagash Whites, chain-smoking, and (in the best tradition of the modern Catholic Church) building bridges. Here’s what he told me:
He and his confreres totally support community-building, evangelism, and all the rest. But they feel called to offer Christian witness in the temporality. He, personally, is drawn to political economy. He wants to realize Leo XIII’s vision of the State guiding a modern industrial economy to benefit workers, especially working families. And he believes we can find common cause with American populists—Donald Trump, Victor Orban, J. D. Vance, and the like—as well as certain “anti-woke” Leftists, to achieve that goal.
Sohrab isn’t opposed to the Benedict Option as such. But he rejects the idea that we can pursue these nonpolitical avenues while neglecting the political (which clearly isn’t Rod’s error, though it may be mine). As he wrote in an essay for the Catholic Herald back in 2020,
These are the sorts of problems that the Fathers of Vatican II entrusted to the laity when they called upon us to “penetrate and perfect the temporal order” (Apostolicam Actuositate). We must solve them at the level of the state, lest they choke more seed and hinder the re-emergence of Christian peoplehood for generations. And we must pursue today’s versions of the Constantinian conversion, since what states believe to be humanity’s ultimate or highest end necessarily shapes their approach to the Catholic Church, not to mention the temporal common good of citizens.
By the way, I haven’t run any of this by Sohrab. I might be fudging the details. If so, I apologize to Sohrab.
And, for whatever it’s worth, I still don’t entirely agree with him. I’m still more of a shake-the-towndust-of-neopaganism-from-your-feet kind of guy. I’m a proud distributist, localist, agrarian, and Luddite. But if Ahmari & Co. make the world a better place for Christians—Christians like the kids at Thomas More—they’ve got my support.
So, let me be clear where I stand.
I embrace Constantine but I reject Charlemagne. I welcome Christian statesmen, and Christian statecraft, but I reject anything like forced or coerced conversion.
I believe that Christians, working within the temporality, can strive towards the Common Good, as defined—though not exclusively known—by the Christian Church. At the same time, I believe that to be a Christian is to be a lover of God (Mark 12:30) and a friend of Christ (John 15:15). Neither love nor friendship can be forced by even the most well-meaning State. Rather, both are a free offering of the individual will.
To that end, I agree with St. Gregory the Great: “humility and kindness, teaching and persuasion, are the means by which to gather in the foes of the Christian faith.”
And, above all, I want to gather the foes of the Christian faith. Failing that, nothing else matters.
Parse the difference—if there is a difference—however you want. I’m going to bed.
The most recent liberal ABC News/Washington Post poll showed Joe Biden’s approval rating at 36 percent—the lowest in history for a president at this point in his first term.
Biden’s low popularity is no mystery.
He inherited energy independence, affordable gas prices, historically low interest rates, low inflation, calm overseas, a low crime rate, and a largely closed border with legal-only immigration.
And then Biden destroyed that inheritance:
ü He has begged illiberal foreign governments to pump oil he refuses to drill domestically.
ü He spiked inflation at the highest rate in over 40 years.
ü Home interest rates have skyrocketed from less than 3 percent to 7 percent.
ü He nearly doubled the price of gasoline.
ü His hare-brained retreat from Afghanistan marked the greatest humiliation of the American military in the last half-century.
ü Kabul is now selling billions of dollars worth of abandoned American equipment to terrorists and anti-American regimes.
ü After that fiasco, Biden foolhardily played down a possible “minor” Russian invasion of Ukraine. He implored Russia to exempt some American institutions from its cyber-attack target list.
No wonder an empowered Putin went into Ukraine.
Biden’s family is corrupt from top to bottom.
Its influence-peddling schemes increasingly are targets of congressional investigations. Biden himself is explicitly mentioned by his son Hunter as the recipient of a 10 percent commission on monies the family syndicate leveraged from foreign interests.
Biden promised “unity.” Instead, he habitually smears half the country as “semi-fascists” and “ultra-MAGA” extremists.
Biden is cognitively challenged and often incoherent. And he is now losing support in the polls from African Americans, once his most loyal constituency.
In response, Biden does what he always had done for some 40 years: mouth wild racist demagoguery.
This graduation season, Biden deliberately chose Howard University to scare its black graduates into believing the greatest threat to their aspirations is “white supremacy”—but that he, Joe Biden, has been their protector in fighting it.
Note the existential threats Biden deliberately omits.
Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants are flooding over a border Biden deliberately destroyed. Millions of incoming poor will vie for limited federal and state support with Americans who are in need.
Since Biden was elected, there have been nearly 7 million illegal entries.
Some 100,000 Americans now die each year from Mexican-produced fentanyl and other opioids shipped across a wide-open border.
Biden did not mention that nearly 10,000 African Americans are murdered each year, over 90 percent of them killed by other African Americans.
Biden first should heal his own racism before he fabricates it in others.
He fueled his early Senate career with homages to southern Democratic segregationists such as Senator James O. Eastland (D-Miss.). Biden even bragged that Eastland “never called me ‘boy.’” Biden gave eulogies for former Dixiecrat Sen. Strom Thurmond and former Klansman Sen. Robert Byrd.
Of school busing, a younger Senator Joe Biden thundered, “My children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle.”
Biden in 2008 patronized Barack Obama in racist terms as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”
In 2012, Biden condescended to a group of accomplished black professionals that the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, would “put y’all back in chains.”
As a presidential candidate in 2020, he dismissed two black journalists, respectively with the putdowns “you ain’t black” and“junkie.”
His fabricated “Corn Pop” he-man autobiographical tales are utterly racist.
As president, he has referred to two prominent people of color as “boy.” He still uses the term “Negro” to refer to blacks.
Biden never cites data to support his wild accusations that white supremacy poses the nation’s greatest threat.
The 2020 riots, the lengthiest in our history, left up to 40 people dead, destroyed $2 billion in property, led to 14,000 arrests, spanned 120 days of mass looting, and arson, and saw mobs torching police precincts, federal courthouses, and an historic church.
That violence was engineered by radicals in Antifa and Black Lives Matter.
In the January 6 Capitol protests, the only person confirmed to have been killed at that event was an unarmed military veteran and Trump supporter, Ashli Babbitt. She was lethally shot by a Capitol police officer for the misdemeanor of attempting to enter through a broken window.
If “white supremacy” was our “greatest” terrorist threat, surely crime statistics would reveal such an existential peril.
Yet federal hate- and interracial-crime data show that so-called whites are considerably unrepresented demographically in such racially motivated violence.
Far from galvanizing the public, Biden’s monotonous racial demagoguery is turning it off.
The military suffers a vast drop in enlistments that began once Biden’s Pentagon brass, without evidence, likewise began demagoguing about supposed “white rage” in the ranks.
Only 37 percent of independents in a recent poll now support Biden. Some 70 percent of the public in other polls opposes a second Biden run.
So on spec, a panicked Biden now turns to what he has done for decades—inflammatory racial demagoguery.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on READ THIS AND DETERMINE WHETHER OR NOT YOU QUALIFY AS ONE OF THE MENTALLY RETARDED VOTERS WHO VOTED FOR JOSEPH BIDEN IN THE LAST PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION AND PLAN TO VOTE FOR HIM AGAIN IN THE NEXT PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
The most recent liberal ABC News/Washington Post poll showed Joe Biden’s approval rating at 36 percent—the lowest in history for a president at this point in his first term.
Biden’s low popularity is no mystery.
He inherited energy independence, affordable gas prices, historically low interest rates, low inflation, calm overseas, a low crime rate, and a largely closed border with legal-only immigration.
And then Biden destroyed that inheritance:
ü He has begged illiberal foreign governments to pump oil he refuses to drill domestically.
ü He spiked inflation at the highest rate in over 40 years.
ü Home interest rates have skyrocketed from less than 3 percent to 7 percent.
ü He nearly doubled the price of gasoline.
ü His hare-brained retreat from Afghanistan marked the greatest humiliation of the American military in the last half-century.
ü Kabul is now selling billions of dollars worth of abandoned American equipment to terrorists and anti-American regimes.
ü After that fiasco, Biden foolhardily played down a possible “minor” Russian invasion of Ukraine. He implored Russia to exempt some American institutions from its cyber-attack target list.
No wonder an empowered Putin went into Ukraine.
Biden’s family is corrupt from top to bottom.
Its influence-peddling schemes increasingly are targets of congressional investigations. Biden himself is explicitly mentioned by his son Hunter as the recipient of a 10 percent commission on monies the family syndicate leveraged from foreign interests.
Biden promised “unity.” Instead, he habitually smears half the country as “semi-fascists” and “ultra-MAGA” extremists.
Biden is cognitively challenged and often incoherent. And he is now losing support in the polls from African Americans, once his most loyal constituency.
In response, Biden does what he always had done for some 40 years: mouth wild racist demagoguery.
This graduation season, Biden deliberately chose Howard University to scare its black graduates into believing the greatest threat to their aspirations is “white supremacy”—but that he, Joe Biden, has been their protector in fighting it.
Note the existential threats Biden deliberately omits.
Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants are flooding over a border Biden deliberately destroyed. Millions of incoming poor will vie for limited federal and state support with Americans who are in need.
Since Biden was elected, there have been nearly 7 million illegal entries.
Some 100,000 Americans now die each year from Mexican-produced fentanyl and other opioids shipped across a wide-open border.
Biden did not mention that nearly 10,000 African Americans are murdered each year, over 90 percent of them killed by other African Americans.
Biden first should heal his own racism before he fabricates it in others.
He fueled his early Senate career with homages to southern Democratic segregationists such as Senator James O. Eastland (D-Miss.). Biden even bragged that Eastland “never called me ‘boy.’” Biden gave eulogies for former Dixiecrat Sen. Strom Thurmond and former Klansman Sen. Robert Byrd.
Of school busing, a younger Senator Joe Biden thundered, “My children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle.”
Biden in 2008 patronized Barack Obama in racist terms as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”
In 2012, Biden condescended to a group of accomplished black professionals that the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, would “put y’all back in chains.”
As a presidential candidate in 2020, he dismissed two black journalists, respectively with the putdowns “you ain’t black” and“junkie.”
His fabricated “Corn Pop” he-man autobiographical tales are utterly racist.
As president, he has referred to two prominent people of color as “boy.” He still uses the term “Negro” to refer to blacks.
Biden never cites data to support his wild accusations that white supremacy poses the nation’s greatest threat.
The 2020 riots, the lengthiest in our history, left up to 40 people dead, destroyed $2 billion in property, led to 14,000 arrests, spanned 120 days of mass looting, and arson, and saw mobs torching police precincts, federal courthouses, and an historic church.
That violence was engineered by radicals in Antifa and Black Lives Matter.
In the January 6 Capitol protests, the only person confirmed to have been killed at that event was an unarmed military veteran and Trump supporter, Ashli Babbitt. She was lethally shot by a Capitol police officer for the misdemeanor of attempting to enter through a broken window.
If “white supremacy” was our “greatest” terrorist threat, surely crime statistics would reveal such an existential peril.
Yet federal hate- and interracial-crime data show that so-called whites are considerably unrepresented demographically in such racially motivated violence.
Far from galvanizing the public, Biden’s monotonous racial demagoguery is turning it off.
The military suffers a vast drop in enlistments that began once Biden’s Pentagon brass, without evidence, likewise began demagoguing about supposed “white rage” in the ranks.
Only 37 percent of independents in a recent poll now support Biden. Some 70 percent of the public in other polls opposes a second Biden run.
So on spec, a panicked Biden now turns to what he has done for decades—inflammatory racial demagoguery.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on Joe Biden’s Approval Rating is the lowest in the history of the presidents of the United States.
Francis Scandal: Cardinal Muller is right about all this, but he is not–so to speak–right enough
The following is from a reader of The Catholic Monitor:
“Cardinal Müller On Francis, “Popes Can Become A Scandal”
The papacy is not a secular office as if the pope were an absolutist king, Cardinal Müller said at a Mai 7 talk in Turin (SilereNonPossum.it).
There is a difference between the apostles and the bishops because the apostles received God’s revelation while bishops and the pope “are bound in content to the fulfilment of revelation in Scripture and apostolic Tradition.”
A pope ist not allowed to promote his private friends or arbitrarily depose bishops which he personally dislikes and interfere without just cause in the ordinary pastoral office of the diocesan bishop, Müller explains with evident reference to Francis.
He further points at Francis when he says that “every pope must distinguish precisely between his divine mandate and himself as an individual with all his limitations. He must not impose on other Christians his private views on politics or economics and non-theological sciences.”
Müller knows that “even popes can become a scandal because, as human beings, they believe they want to chart a course that is populist for the public’s taste but contradicts the spirit of Christ.””
Cardinal Muller is right about all this, but he is not–so to speak–right enough.
Cardinal Muller keeps trying to expand the definition of the papacy to include a derelict like Bergoglio, and perhaps Cardinal Muller is correct inasmuch as there could be such a person as pope.
That possibility, if it actually exists, doesn’t equate to Bergoglian legitimacy, however. There are any number of men who could be pope but who aren’t, not having been legitimately elected to that most august office.
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)
– 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.
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
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on “POPES CAN BECOME A SCANDAL”, CARDINAL GERHARD MUELLER
ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP 
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