Biden’s Cheap Words Have ImplicationsBy: Robert B. Charles The Association of Mature American CitizensFebruary 18, 2021(emphasis added) No one should be surprised Joe Biden called for unity, with 17 highly offensive, partisan, economically damaging executive orders on his desk. No one is surprised Biden bashed Trump for COVID, then admitted no plan. No one should be surprised Biden is crippling American energy independence, outlawing pipelines, drilling, and fracking after promising jobs. Words are cheap, especially Biden’s. No one should be surprised Biden pledged to “fire on the spot” White House staff who disrespected others – yet keeps a foul-mouthed staffer who berated a female reporter with profanity, threatened to “destroy” her, if she reported on a conflict of interest. If that story is a “one day wonder,” the bigger story is this: Biden seems to mean nothing he says. The issue of duplicitous politicians is not new, but extreme forms invite scrutiny – and danger. In short, as wide as the margins are these days for tolerating hypocrisy, Biden pushes the limits. This has real implications, and they go beyond the obvious. Americans have just been lectured by congressional Democrats to ignore the Constitution’s text, case law, and history, put aside the iconic pledge of due process and tolerate a legal standard that aims to impeach a president on a free speech standard that would convict half of Congress for “incitement,” and criminalizes citizen free speech. The spectacle of chasing a former president was objectively embarrassing. It struck the world as a classic political “show trial,” the sort of “gotcha” politics Americans were supposed to be above, the sort we tell others not to conduct, yet conducted in violation of our Constitution. During that travesty, now settling, Biden said nothing. Graduating at the bottom of his law class, not practicing for 50 years, he may not remember free speech. But it remains real in law and – to most Americans – in practice, as does the public expectation that words matter. Moving beyond free speech, here is the issue. If a president repeatedly says he will do something, means something, stands for something, pledges to act in a certain way – and does not do so, and in fact, does the opposite from expedience or duplicity, two things happen. First, the American people begin to see that he is a paper tiger, a man without convictions, someone who – whether you like or hate his promises – does not deliver with fidelity, predictability, or integrity. Many who did not like Trump, saw his resolve to deliver, a commitment to make real what he promised – border wall and military spending to reduced regulation and taxes, record economic growth, wages, and employment to calling out China. Here is the second implication – and it matters. Anyone who promises and does not deliver, despite being able to, to his own people is a pushover. He is a paper tiger, a weak player on the world stage. Joining things, issuing memos, hyping long-term goals are well and good. But a president who will not honor pledges he makes to his own people, who will not even fire a White House staffer who makes a fool of him, is a weak link. Do not think, for one moment, that China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Turkey, Cuba, Venezuela, half the Middle East and all of Europe, with dozens of other countries, are not looking with clear eyes, eagerly rethinking options, recognizing that tough talk and aviator glasses are cheap, snowflakes on a desert, gone in heat. Biden’s behavior suggests malign opportunity. Our adversaries are assessing Biden, and what they see – unless he reverses the impression fast – is weakness, profound and consistent, bumbling and bleached out, stumbling and stuck in a time warp where words are enough to stop hungry, powerful, anti-Western, insatiable adversaries. Bottom line is this: So far, the Biden team looks like a gaggle of young geese, a field of bump-and-go goslings, sure they know which way to go, paying no attention to each other, little to the president, preening before cameras. And Biden is letting them do so, as if all this were a game. It is not. International opportunists, like eager predators – state and non-state adversaries – are measuring the Biden team’s depth and resolve, seriousness, organization, gamesmanship, experience, qualifications, courage, willingness to take hard decisions, the capacity to unify – and finding them objectively wanting. Few could reach any other conclusion. Odds grow each day that Biden will be sorely tested by foreign adversaries, likely on multiple fronts at once with direct or surrogate actions, maybe both, and maybe coordinated. As Biden’s politically correct, internally preoccupied, blame -America team churns cheap words, obsessed with militarizing Washington (wholly unnecessary), vetting the American military for “extremists”(ditto), defunding law enforcement (tragic), those with a bead on us watch – and plan. Things need to change fast, signals get sent – or things may change not at our behest. In short, words are cheap. Our adversaries know it. We need to make them count and keep ours.
GLACIERS IN IOWA By: Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army, retiredFebruary 16, 2021 At some point K-8th grade in my one-room schoolhouse in rural Iowa, my only classmate and I learned about the glaciers that crept south and covered our homeland about 300 million years ago. Conclusion: yes, there is climate change. The climate has been changing, is changing, and will continue to change on its own. But it begs the question, is the human race causing climate to change too fast for us to survive? For purposes of discussion, assume what all the dooms-day folks are saying is true, we the people are killing our planet with too much greenhouse gas emissions. How then, do we reduce the amount of carbon released and what will we substitute to produce the power we need to survive? The last part of that question is the issue because we cannot survive with massive, continuous electrical power. We have put ourselves in that box and it won’t go away. My intent is not to suggest a surefire solution. Impossible at this time. However, it is not too soon to begin turning over some rocks and see what crawls out. We need to take off our rose-colored glasses right now because the “green” propaganda has too many folks believing this is easy because, for example, “wind and sunshine are free”. This is long, way long, but it is a very big subject so please bear with me. THE BIDEN NEW GREEN DEAL: Let’s begin with his vision statement, “100% clean energy economy and net-zero emissions no later than 2050.” In my mind, at this time, it raises more questions than answers. Is “net zero” just a sound bite or even within the art of the possible? If not, it would be good to know that now. If it is achievable it would be nice to know how many trillions of dollars it will cost and can we borrow that many trillions of dollars? If the collective nations of the world fail to buy in, what then? Is it better to go ahead now and work on half a loaf irrespective of the feasibility of ever doing the second half or does that just prolong the enviable doomsday? PARIS GLOBAL CLIMATE ACCORDS:The Paris Accords entered into force on November 4, 2016, and has been signed by 195 countries and ratified by 190 as of January 2021. The objective is to limit greenhouse gas emissions by 50 % by 2030 and ultimately to levels that would prevent global temperatures from increasing more than 3.6°F before the end of this century. Each signatory to the Paris Climate Agreement was asked to submit a plan. The “plan” was to specify their year-by-year program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. So, what happens if a nation does not submit a plan or does not achieve its objectives? Nothing, absolutely nothing. The plans are not enforceable and there are no penalties for failure. The Paris Climate Agreement is a glorified global PR effort. No teeth. No funding. No sanctions for failure. But the story gets worse. Under the Paris agreement, “developed countries” such as the United States pledge to provide funding and technical support to “developing countries”, such as India, to assist with emissions reductions; wherein India promptly estimated that it would need “at least US $2.5 trillion” in aid by 2030 to achieve its emissions reduction targets. To date, almost 75% of the nations’ pledges are insufficient to achieve the 2030 target. And then there is China’s “pledge”. They will continue to increase emissions of carbon dioxide at least until 2030; i.e., zero reduction planning. And the democrats could not say enough bad things about President Trump for pulling out of this Paris Accords charade. By the way, a year after pulling out, the U.S. led the world in reducing carbon emissions primarily because of fracking and natural gas production. U.S. coal production has been declining since 2007 primarily because we have been able to pump enough natural gas out of the ground to replace the coal in energy-producing plants. QUESTION FOR PRESIDENT BIDEN: The World Bank officially categorizes 139 nations as “developing”. China is one of them! How many of the 139 will want a handout from the U.S. taxpayers to achieve their environmental goals. Aren’t we thankful that one of Biden’s first official acts was to rejoin the Paris Climate Accords? COAL-FIRED POWER PLANTS, WHAT’S HAPPENING IN THE US?In 2019 there were still 241 coal-powered units across the US which generated 23% of the United States electricity. Between 2010 and 2019, 290 coal-fired power plants were closed which represented 40% of the US coal-generating capacity. Additionally, more than half of U.S. coal mines have closed since 2008. Bottom line, years before the Paris Accords came into existence and before AOC’s bartending career took off, we have been ahead of the world in planning for greenhouse gas reductions. The US Energy Information Administration reports that between 2005 and 2019, “total US electricity generation increased by almost 2% while related CO2 emissions fell by 33%” QUESTION FOR PRESIDENT BIDEN: Now that, in a knee-jerk I’ll-show-you-trump-supporters order to shut down fracking and leasing on public lands, will there be sufficient quantities of natural gas to continue the transition from coal? COAL-FIRED POWER PLANTS, WHAT’S HAPPENING IN CHINA AND INDIA?The world has about 10,210 coal-fired power plants; the US has less than 300. China and India combined have about 40% of the world’s population and about 50% (5,100) coal-fired power plants. That’s the bad news; the worse news is that between the two of them China and India are in the process of building 634 new coal-fired power plants by 2030. That means standing up a new coal-fired plant about every 60 days, 2021-2030. China is also building and financing hundreds of other coal-fired power plants in countries such as Turkey, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Egypt, and Bangladesh. China accounts for roughly half the world’s coal consumption. If we are to believe the green folks, they are focused on global change in order to save the planet which raises the following question: QUESTION FOR PRESIDENT BIDEN: Do you have any leverage to use to get the likes of China and India on board with greenhouse gas reductions? WIND AND SOLAR GENERATED ENERGY AND BATTERY-POWERED VEHICLES: Yes, our portfolio of non-carbon power generation needs to include wind and solar, and, yes, we need to drastically reduce carbon emissions from transportation. The problem is, there is no free lunch and the green folks never seem to get to a discussion of the down-side and unintended consequences such as, tangentially added carbon footprints, added environmental mine-fields, potential vast cost increases for increasingly scarce essential natural resources. Here are some issues that need to be included in the equation getting to Biden’s end-state of, “100% clean energy economy and net-zero emissions no later than 2050.” WIND: First of all, the green folks would have us all believe that wind and sunshine are free. Well, technically yes, but harnessing them certainly is not. There are about 240,000 operating wind turbines in the world, producing about 4% of the required electricity. When it comes to wind turbine construction, there are a lot of numbers out there. I believe this set fairly captures the story. The American Wind Energy Association says it takes somewhere in the range of 200 to 230 tons of steel to make a single wind turbine. The steel tower is anchored in a platform of more than a thousand tons of concrete and steel rebar, 30 to 50 feet across and anywhere from 6 to 30 feet deep. Add to that 45 tons of nonrecyclable plastic blades and 2 tons of rare-earth elements. Then after a life-cycle of around 20 years, start over. If we want wind to produce half the world’s electricity, we will need to build about 3 million more turbines. Three million turbines at 230 tons of steel each equals about 690 million tons of steel. To produce steel for one turbine requires about 150 tons of coking coal and about 300 tons of iron ore, all mined, transported, and probably producing hydrocarbons. More bad news. It should be pointed out that cement is the number one carbon contributor in the world. The production of one pound of cement also produces one pound of CO2. Then there are the emissions from all the trucks, trains, ships, bulldozers, cranes, and other equipment involved in turbine construction. We are constantly being fed unattainable projections about power production from wind turbines. Wind proponents describe capability in terms of “capacity.” That is if the turbine was fully active 24/7 it would produce X amount of power. The truth is that because of varying weather conditions, a turbine’s output averages barely a quarter of its “capacity.” That fact brings us to another disturbing question; what do we do for power when the wind doesn’t blow? The most obvious answer is that we must maintain, at all times, a fully operational backup power source. Or do we just heat half the houses, run half the manufacturing plants, recharge half the cell phones? Because of the requirement for near 100% backup, some experts predict a wind farm’s power will actually cost around $25,000 for every home it powers. Another downside to wind is that the turbines are so preposterously expensive that no one would dream of building one unless they were guaranteed a huge government subsidy, also known as tax dollars. After we dig out of the earth millions of tons of raw materials, transport them, manufacture and construct the turbines all of which will likely cause huge carbon emissions, what is the net carbon reduction? Researchers believe the actual CO2 reduction is so insignificant that one large windfarm saves less in a year than is given off over the same period by a single jumbo jet flying daily between the U.S. and England. QUESTION FOR PRESIDENT BIDEN: When are you going to have a reality check and tell the American people all of this? SOLAR ENERGY: Good news, China already has more solar capacity than any other country in the world and is looking to increase the proportion of renewable energy in its power mix. However, the picture of power production in China is still grim, solar covers only about 5% of their needs and coal 60%. China remains the world’s leader in carbon gas emissions. The discussion of cement/steel requirement for energy from wind is sobering. I’m sorry to report that energy from solar power requires even more cement and steel than wind turbines to produce the same amount of electricity. Additionally, production of solar panels requires large amounts of silver and indium. Mining of these metals is expected to increase by 250% and 1200% respectively over the next twenty years and someday we will likely run out of both. Solar panels require other “rare-earth” elements which are not currently mined in the US. Demand for these elements is expected to rise 250-1000% by 2050. Access to these metals is questionable. For example, the Republic of the Congo produces 70% of the world’s raw cobalt and China controls 90% of cobalt refining. As recently as 1990, the U.S. was the world’s number-one producer of minerals. Today, it is in seventh place. Even though we have vast mineral reserves worth trillions of dollars, America is now 100% dependent on imports for some 17 key minerals, and, for another 29, over half of our needs are imported. Tremendous vulnerability. Also, alarming is the fact that about 90% of the world’s solar panels are built in Asia on coal-heavy electric grids. The Netherlands government recently sponsored a “Green Study” and concluded that their country’s green objectives would consume a major share of the global metals required. The Netherlands population is about 17 million. The world population is about 7.5 billion. By the way, estimates are that by 2050, with current plans, the quantity of worn-out solar panels, much of it non-recyclable, will constitute double the tonnage of all today’s global plastic waste, along with over 3 million tons per year of unrecyclable plastics from worn-out wind turbine blades. POWER GENERATION LABOR FORCE: Another interesting factoid not spoken about by the green folks is workers required to produce the same amount of electrical power. That is, X amount of power generated by just one coal worker requires two workers from natural gas and 79 from solar. In the words of President Biden, “clean energy will produce millions of new jobs” is true as a stand-alone statement. But we know there is a labor cost associated with the production of any product and that cost is always passed on to the consumer. For example, last year about 400,000 natural gas workers produced more than one-third of U.S. electric power. The same size labor force, 400,000, accounted for solar’s minuscule share of 0.9 percent. Bottom Line: The goal of America’s energy sector should not be to create as many renewable energy jobs as possible, but rather, the economic goal should be to produce as much clean electric power as possible with the fewest number of energy workers. When it comes to solar energy, the outrageous production-to-labor-force ratio is a sure sign of economic inefficiency. QUESTION FOR PRESIDENT BIDEN: Does it make sense to spend billions of taxpayer dollars to artificially support an energy source that is so labor-intensive that it requires a workforce 40 times greater than that for natural gas? BATTERY POWERED VEHICLES: The Green New Deal seeks to replace gas-guzzling vehicles with battery power to reduce hydro-carbon buildup. This is not a simple matter. Some factors impacting on this green issue: Transportation (cars, trucks, planes, boats, trains) account for about 23% of greenhouse gas emissions. Switching to electric can make a big difference. There are about 1 billion vehicles in the world and only about 4.8 million (less than half of one percent) are electric. There are about 280 million vehicles in the U.S. also with only about half of one percent electric. The point being, we have a long way to go to reach the Paris Agreement goal of, “limiting greenhouse gas emissions by 50 % by 2030”. How are we doing? To meet the Paris Agreement, we would need to swap out 25 million combustion vehicles for electric-powered ones each year 2010-2030. In 2019 about 1.5 million new electric vehicles were added to the worldwide fleet. What about coal-fired power plant emission reductions? With China and India bringing on a new coal-fired power plant every 6th day, 2010-2030, the Paris goal of 50% reduction will not be feasible. One electric car battery weighs in at about 1000 pounds. To produce one battery requires digging up and processing about 500,000 pounds of raw materials such as cadmium, cobalt, lead, lithium, and nickel. For example, for some of these types of materials, the end product is about one-half of one percent of the weight of the material dug out of the ground. CO2 emissions from vehicles are not just a U.S. problem. To achieve success all nations need to be involved. To that point, there are about one billion vehicles in the world today. It would take 250 billion tons of materials to build a battery for every car, once. Currently, electric car battery life is seven to ten years and then we need to dig another 250 billion tons, and again and again. Is that feasible? By the way, replacing one vehicle battery-pack costs anywhere from $1000 to $6000. In years ahead when the demand for raw materials increases exponentially, who knows what the cost might be. This means that any significant expansion of today’s modest level of green energy will create an unprecedented increase in global mining for needed minerals and dramatically increase U.S. imports and the vulnerability of America’s energy supply chain. How long will the supply of raw materials to make vehicle batteries last? Another piece of bad news; China dominates the world’s supply of rare metals. Producing an electric vehicle contributes, on average, twice as much to global warming and uses double the amount of energy than producing a combustion engine car. This is mainly because of its lithium-ion battery. Given all that, it takes about nine years for an electric car to be “greener” than a diesel car, assuming an annual average mileage of 8100 miles. Supply and demand: Increasingly high demand for vehicle batteries (90% of the lithium-ion battery market by 2025) and perhaps the diminishing supply of raw materials to make them, may drive up the price of electric vehicles to untenable levels. An estimated 11 million tons of spent lithium-ion batteries will flood U.S. markets by 2025, without systems in place to handle them. Recycling lithium costs five times as much as extracting virgin material. Therefore, currently, only 5% of lithium-ion batteries are recycled in Europe. To get an idea of the scale of mining for raw materials involved in replacing the world’s gasoline and diesel-fueled cars with electric vehicles we can take the example provided by Michael Kelly, Professor of Technology at the University of Cambridge. According to Professor Kelly, if all of the UK vehicle fleet is replaced with electronic vehicles, they would need the following materials: about twice the annual global production of cobalt; three-quarters of the world’s production of lithium carbonate; nearly the entire world production of neodymium; and more than half the world’s production of copper in 2018. And this is just for the UK. Professor Kelly estimates that if we want the whole world to be transported by electric vehicles, the vast increases in the demand for the raw materials listed above would go far beyond known reserves. The environmental and social impact of vastly-expanded mining for these materials, some of which are highly toxic when mined, transported, and processed, are inestimable. Will we be fighting wars over mining rights for raw materials? Another question: how much power does it take on a continuous basis to recharge the batteries in 1 billion vehicles? CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS:Disclaimer: There are a lot of numbers in this piece and I’m certain they are not all absolutely correct. There is a load of conflicting information to draw from on this subject. My intent was not to ensure every number would fact-check but to build the best possible picture of where we are, where we say we want to go and the likelihood of that being within the art of the possible. There is also some personal math at arriving at some of the numbers. My apologies if I miscounted all the zeros. How many of the 195 signatories to the Paris Accords have the resources to do wind/solar/electric vehicles. I’m saying very few and the answer could be none of them. How many trillions of dollars can we continue to borrow? Will we always be able to borrow another trillion? No. When will that day occur? Perhaps it is long before we can achieve our CO2 reduction goals. No matter how many wind turbines and solar panels we build for the world, there will always be the need for substantial on-call backup around the world for when the sun doesn’t shine and/or the wind doesn’t blow. Right now, battery backup would fall woefully short and may never be a feasible alternative. The U.S. is successfully converting coal-fired production to clean-burning natural gas because we have the greatest supply of natural gas in the world which makes our backup doable, albeit very expensive. What do the nations that have zero natural gas do? I am a proponent for wind, solar, electric vehicles and whatever science can come up with to produce power. What I am not for is false hope. I get frustrated with the “well, let’s get on with it and just hope for the best” crowd. Hope is not a process. False hope is demoralizing and destructive.Our environment and the future of this planet are too important to be toyed with by political sound bites and unfathomable green fantasies. Viable long-range strategic planning begins at the end, that is, with a definition of the end-state. In planning jargon, end-state is the “where” of the who-what-when-where-why-and how questions; “Where” we want to go to prosper or must go to survive. Having done that, there must be a quiet period of contemplation when the powers that be look seriously at the problem, do some back-of-the-envelope work, and come to some conclusions about the viability of the end-state vs hallucination. Nuclear power plants: France, generates over 70% of its electricity from nuclear reactors, the highest percentage in the world. By contrast, the U.S. generates only about 20% of our electricity from 94 nuclear reactors. Why should we do more? A nuclear plant’s total operating expenses are a third less than that of gas turbine and fossil fuel plants and it is clean energy. The U.S. has not brought a new nuclear plant online for over 30 years. Two new nuclear units in Georgia are due to begin operating in 2021 and 2022; their approval process began in 2004. Snail-paced government bureaucracies and environmentalists-generated delays in the courts are the overriding reasons why we don’t have more. The environmentalists tie-up nuclear construction in the courts for years and years. The environmentalists can’t have it both ways, if they don’t want millions of tons of CO2 clogging up the atmosphere then they need to give a little on alternate power production capabilities. Waste management has over 6000 of its 18,000 garbage collection trucks running on natural gas. The gas they use comes from the decomposition of trash in landfills and which has been turned into pipeline-quality natural gas. Great work by WM. There are about 130 million trucks in the U.S. and around 400 million worldwide. Why isn’t there an initiative to transition truck power over a period of years to natural gas which has a much lower carbon footprint? President Biden, please stop, damn it, just stop messing with U.S. energy independence. Until Biden shut down drilling on public lands, the U.S. has been the world’s largest producer of natural gas. Prediction: The Paris Climate Accord’s goals will not be met for two reasons. Most of the countries can neither afford the infrastructure nor the import of the minerals necessary to make it happen. That leaves it up to the U.S. to bankroll saving the planet and we do not now have nor will we have in the future the wherewithal to do that. I will leave you with this thought. As an out-spoken cynic when it comes to politicians, I believe we should not be captured by the one-liner political solutions. Remember that old saying, “For every complex problem there is a simple solution, and it is usually wrong”. The devil is in the details; see above. Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army, retired, is the author of VISION TO EXECUTION, a book for leaders, a columnist for THE PILOT, a national award-winning local newspaper in Southern Pines, NC and the author of a blog, WeThePeopleSpeaking.com.
Rip McIntosh
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BIDEN’S FOLLYTHE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCESWhat it Means to Eliminate the Oil Industry Among Other Things By E.P. Unum I wrote this essay back in the summer of 2020. Now that Joe Biden is President, it bears repeating because much of what feared has, sadly, already taken place. Many Democrats and Liberals like to shout and scream about how we all need to become more climate-conscious. They like to march down streets and wave their placards and makeshift flags about the need to eliminate fracking and do away with fossil fuels. Make no mistake, the self-anointed leader of the Democratic Party, Joe Biden promised during his Presidential campaign that he would not “do away with fracking or oil and gas exploration”, and then, as is his habit, did exactly the reverse once he was elected President. In the blink of an eye and a stroke of his pen, he abandoned the Keystone XL Pipeline, banned fracking and oil & gas exploration on federal lands, and now is thinking about canceling the Dakota Access Pipeline. His action has unilaterally abolished thousands of jobs and obliterated America’s Energy Independence which took us decades to achieve. His acolytes Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are overjoyed. Do any of these people truly understand what they have done? Let me try to answer this for all of you. The central question is: what do Biden’s actions mean for people like you and I and our children and grandchildren? Apart from putting thousands of people out of work, the Law of Unintended Consequences comes into play. For example, did you ever think about the products that are produced from petroleum? You surely must know that oil is a basic ingredient of more products than gasoline, heating, and motor oil. Let’s think about that for a minute or two, and then think of the implications for America and the number of people whose jobs would be displaced as a result of eliminating fossil fuels as a component of our energy needs. Indeed, there is quite a large list of products made from petroleum. This list is constantly growing as new inventions are created. Here are some of the items which are made from petroleum: Antihistamines, Antiseptics, Ballpoint Pens, Basketballs, Bearing Grease, Bicycle Tires, Boats, Candles, Car Battery Cases, Cassettes, Caulking, CD Player, Clothesline, Cortisone, Curtains, Dashboards, Denture Adhesive, Deodorant, Dice, Diesel fuel, Dishwasher parts, Dresses, Dyes, Electric Blankets, Electrician’s Tape, Epoxy, Faucet Washers, Fertilizers, Fishing Boots, Fishing lures, Fishing Rods, Floor Wax, Food Preservatives, Footballs, Football Cleats, Glycerin, Golf Bags, Hair Coloring, Hand Lotion, House Paint, Ice Cube Trays, Ink, Insect Repellent, Insecticides, Life Jackets, Linings, Linoleum, Lipstick, Mops, Motor Oil, Motorcycle Helmets, Nail Polish, Nylon Rope, Oil Filters, Paint, Paint Rollers, Panty Hose, Percolators, Perfumes, Petroleum Jelly, Plastic Wood, Purses, Putty, Refrigerant, Roller Skates, Roofing, Rubber Cement, Rubbing Alcohol, Shag Rugs, Shampoo, Shoe Polish, Shoes, Shower Curtains, Skis, Slacks, Soap, Solvents, Speakers, Sports Car Bodies, Surf Boards, Sweaters, Synthetic Rubber, Tennis Rackets, Tires, Toilet Seats, Tool Boxes, Tool Racks, Transparent Tape, Trash Bags, TV Cabinets, Umbrellas, Upholstery, Vitamin Capsules, Water Pipes, Wheels, Yarn, In the State of Pennsylvania where Joe Biden is from, there are 300,000 people employed in the oil and fracking industry alone. There are millions of people employed in the oil exploration and refinery industry in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Florida and Alaska. How many people are employed in all of the other industries listed above?Where will these people go when their jobs are displaced? Remember, this is just the oil industry. It is irresponsible to announce to the American people that you have taken the first steps to eliminate the oil industry without first letting them know the impact such a decision will have on our overall economy and the specific plans and programs you have for the nation to absorb such displacement. The problem with Democrats is they are long on promises and short on plans for execution. And this one has all the earmarks of a blueprint for crippling America. If you think the above is worthy of your consideration, the implications for the healthcare industry are even more staggering if Democrats double down on Obamacare and expand it to a single-payer system. There will be economic consequences that will dwarf the impact of eliminating oil and gas from our lives. Think about the implications for American innovation, creativity, and technology in the medical field. People living in the U.S. have been blinded by a naïve and corrupt media into thinking that our healthcare delivery system is wasteful and inefficient and nothing could be further from the truth. If we are as bad as the media likes to portray, why then are there so many more people coming to the U.S. for treatment and complex surgeries than any other place on earth? Why has the United States earned more Nobel Prizes in Science and Medicine than any other nation on the planet? It is because we are the best and we get better each and every year because our system rewards excellence and innovation and discovery. Recall, the government-private sector partnership under President Trump produced two vaccines to treat Covid-19 in less than one year, a remarkable achievement. And Trump implemented a plan for delivering the vaccines to Americans, contrary to what Kamala Harris says. For as long as I can remember, Democrats have used a Playbook for prosecuting elections that has not changed in over 150 years. A core dimension of that Playbook has been two-fold:1. Fear: Making you afraid of the other party and,2. Telling you who is to blame for your problems. They are highly proficient at pointing fingers and they use any means necessary, fair or unfair, to achieve their major objective which is all about gaining power. Fortunately, we had someone who stood in their way. That person was Donald J. Trump, President of the United States. He may be the only person in history to have sacrificed his wealth by serving as President. He is certainly the only U.S. President to donate his entire salary as President, $400,000, to various charities each quarter. And his accomplishments on behalf of the American people are a matter of record. And his accomplishments were achieved without the help or cooperation of the Democratic Party and the corrupt mainstream media. Biden’s next target is the Second Amendment. Stand by for that because it is coming. It is tragic and downright dangerous that Americans did not remember this on November 3, 2020.
RIP MCINTOSH
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Flashback: Pelosi’s “Fit of Rage” reminds us of when Francis was “Boiling with Rage”
Yesterday, the Populist Press reported that “Nancy Pelosi [was] in [a] fit of rage” because Donald Trump was acquitted from the Democrats imaginary insurrection “created by the fake News” as Scott Adams said.
Pelosi’s “Fit of Rage” reminds us of Francis’s “Boiling with Rage” so it’s time for a Catholic Monitor flashback:
“Boiling with Rage” Francis Afraid to Answer 5 “Yes” & “No” Questions of 4 Cardinals on if He Supports Heresy or Not
“Let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one.” (Matthew 5:37)
“[S]ources within [the Pope’s residence] Santa Marta [say] that the Pope is…boiling with rage” because of a letter from four Cardinals.
On November 14, it was revealed that Cardinal Raymond Burke and three other Cardinals have specifically asked Pope Francis in a formal letter to deny heretical interpretations of Amoris Laetitia that are counter or in direct division to Veritatis Splendor as well as sacred Scripture and the Tradition of the Church.
Fr. Antonio Spadaro has dismissed the Pope “boiling with rage” reports on Twitter.
Father Raymond de Souza called Spadaro the “mouthpiece of Pope Francis.” Aleteia journalist Konrad Sawicki said the priest is “closer to Pope Francis than most people in the world.”
The “mouthpiece of Pope Francis” closeness to the pontiff should means his words in print or twitter carry great weight in understanding the mind and heart of the Pope.
However, despite Spadaro’s closeness to Francis it appears to mean that he cannot be considered a unbiased spokesman because of his polemic tone.
He, to the astonishment of many, appeared to call Cardinal Burke “a witless worm” on twitter immediately after the letter was made public.
Spadaro claims he was calling himself “a witless worm” and would never mock cardinals or Church clerics.
Unfortunately, his the recent past counters this claim. He has mocked cardinals and Church clerics who questioned the agenda of the Pope at the Synod.
Of his past verbally abusive tone, Catholic journalist Phil Lawler said:
“Still more troubling has been the polemical tone adopted by Father Antonio Spadaro, the editor of the Jesuit journal Civilta Cattolica, who has worked closely with Pope Francis throughout the Synod process. On his Twitter feed Father Spadaro has poured out barbs, mocking those who question the apparent direction of the Synod.”
Two friends of the Pope and newly made Cardinals (Cupich and Tobin) have in a mocking tone attacked the four Cardinals saying they need “conversion” and are “naive” in an apparent attempt to discourage them.
Other friends of Francis called the Cardinals “witless…schismatic, heretical, and even comparable to the Arian heretic” according to Bishop Athanasius Schneider.
The “mouthpiece of Pope Francis,” the two Cardinals as well as the other friends of the Pope despite their name calling and belittling are obviously afraid to answer the 5 questions.
Instead of answering the “Yes” and “No” questions, they keep changing or diverting the narrative. Refusing to dialogue calmly, they belittle, verbally abuse and boil with rage.
Bishop Schneider in a statement said of these and the other friends of Francis that they are divisive in their “refusal to dialogue, and irrational rage.” He, also, said their ” violent and intolerant reactions…against the calm and circumspect plea of the four Cardinals causes astonishment.”
The statement of Bishop Schneider and the letter of the four Cardinals in their clarity, beauty and calm sharply contrast with the supporters of Amoris Laetitia rants.
Truth is beautiful and clear.
Whereas, deception hide behind ambiguity, verbal abuse, divisiveness, discouragement and a mocking tone that attempts to divert the subject away from the real question.
Deception is ugly and ambiguous.
As G. K. Chesterton said “Evil always takes advantage of ambiguity. Evil always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes.”
Dupe means victim of deception.
In the the name of Jesus Christ and his teachings, the Pope and his friends must simply answer the 5 simple questions and not change or divert the narrative with mocking smear tactics. The famous Fr. Z explained how Spadaro and the other defenders of the ambiguity in Amoris Laetitia work. He calls them the “Smear Machine.” Fr. Z said:
“They of the Machine use the standard scare-labeling (in this piece, Card. Burke is an ‘ultraconservative’) along with an unflattering photo. They cite their darlings (here, the infamous Timothy Radcliffe). They make their goofy surmises based on their deep knowledge of Catholicism (‘first step to declaring the pope a heretic the Church would be in unprecedented situation’). They psychologize the ones they want to belittle.”
Fr. Z failed to mention that Francis himself is the leader of the smear machine in psychologizing those they want to belittle. The Pope after the letter appeared, in an interview with the newspaper Avvenire, said:
“Where there’s not a nasty spirit, they can help you on the path,” he said. “Other times, you see quickly that criticisms taken here and there to justify pre-existing positions aren’t honest, they’re formed with a nasty spirit in order to sow division.”
These rigorisms, Francis argued, “are born from something missing, from trying to hide one’s own sad dissatisfaction behind a kind of armor.”
Despite the Pope and his friends attempt to discourage the Cardinals as well as isolate or divide them from the rest of the Church, they appear determined to continue.
It does appear that the letter might be the “first step to declaring the pope a heretic.” If Francis refuses to respond he implicitly endorses heresy. The maxim of the law is “Silence gives consent.” The Pope has two choices:
-To admit to error or heresy by silence
– To fight the heresies his ambiguity in Amoris Laetitia brought into the Church
If Francis chooses to remain silent and refuses to response to the letter, Cardinal Burke on November 15, in an interview with the National Catholic Register, said the Pope is in danger of receiving “a formal act of correction of serious error” from the Cardinals.
Oakes Spalding of the Mahounds Paradise blog said it best as to why Francis is afraid to answer the 5 “Yes” and “No” questions of the four Cardinals on if he supports heresy or not:
“The recent events involving Francis and his pontificate have been momentous. We may be witnessing the initial stages of an attempt to formerly “correct” a sitting pope for heresy.
Four cardinals sent the Pope a formal document or ‘Dubia’ asking for clarification in the form of five simple Yes or No answers on the interpretation of the recent apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia. The Pope refused to respond.
Everyone knows why he refused. Pope Francis wants Amoris Laetitia to have a revolutionary effect on the Church. He wants it to be interpreted and taught by the bishops as allowing, among other things, communion for unrepentant adulterers.
This, is of course heresy – a contradiction of the words of Christ as well as the tradition of the Church – and the Pope knows it. So, he can’t explicitly confirm that the document says this. On the other hand, he can’t explicitly deny that it says this, as this would largely quash the efforts of friendly bishops to put forward his desired heretical interpretation.
So he refused to respond. And after a decent interval, the cardinals went public. Now the Pope and his men are predictably engaged in an intensive campaign to vilify the cardinals and anyone who might be allied with them.”
Pope Francis and his friends in refusing to answer the 5 “Yes” and “No” questions of the four Cardinals on if he or they supports heresy or not are refusing to follow Jesus Christ’s teachings:
“Let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one.” (Matthew 5:37)
Father Louis Cameli, author of “The Devil You Don’t Know: Recognizing and Resisting Evil in Everyday Life,” wrote:
The everyday tactics of the devil are deception, division, diversion and discouragement.
These are the tactics Satan uses in his cowardly and below the belt dirty war against all mankind.
It appears that those who surround the elderly, almost 80 years old, Pope Francis such as Fr. Antonio Spadaro and others in his inner bubble are influencing others and even the Pope to use some of these tactics in a dirty war against the four Cardinals.
But, in the last few years, he has been showing signs of dementia and confusing the difference between opinion and defined infallible Catholic doctrine especially in interviews and so-called pastoral initiatives.
In these situations, he many times appears to be reflecting the views of those who have created a bubble around him.
Unfortunately, those in the bubble surrounding him are said to have a “paranoid style,” “conspiracy” thinking and appear to reject the most basic laws of reason according to reliable journalists.
EWTN commentator Robert Royal of Catholic Thing said:
“He is clearly in a bubble” with persons who want “God to repeal the Laws of Non-contradiction” and who believe “conspiracy” theories that are “bizarre.”
It is ” likely…people surrounding Pope Francis” have a “paranoid style ” and have fallen into “conspiracy” thinking that “see enemies wherever there is resistance to their adenda.”
Francis, as he is closes in on 80 years old, appears to be overly attached to the style, thinking and opinions of those who were called dissenters under Pope John Paul II and are now called liberals who make up his inner circle.
This, being overly attached to certain liberal clerics, is reflected in interviews where he makes bizarre papal statements such as couples in fornication are in a state of grace.
Also, in his apparent desire for unrepentant couples in adultery to receive Holy Communion which is always clouded in ambiguity.
This desire appears to be tied to his attachment to Cardinal Kasper and his ideas which Robert Royal says run counter the the Laws of Non-contradiction.
Dementia.com says a symptom of mid-stage dementia is becoming “overly attached to a certain person.”
In the “Signs of Dementia” article, I go over many other more explicit examples of losses of touch with reality and confusion that seem to indicate Francis’s possible mental unfitness.
If the elderly Pope Francis is mentally unfit he needs to resign his office.
However, Francis can begin to show he doesn’t have dementia by apologizing for the bizarre statements he has made that are 100 percent opposite of defined infallible Catholic doctrine.
Next, he needs to break free from the bubble of adviser who have ill advised him and apologize for the verbal abuse they have unleashed on the four Cardinals and others.
“Do not be deceived: No sexually immoral people, idolaters, adulterers or…verbally abusive people, or swindlers will inherit God’s kingdom.” (1 Corinthians 6:9- 11)
Francis Notes:
– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:
“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.” (The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)
– LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:
The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”
– On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:
“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”
– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:
“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.
Sidney Powell’s Michigan election fraud case will be heard by the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is set to hear a number of high-profile election fraud cases.
The SCOTUS is now scheduled to consider the voter fraud cases for Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia on February 19, 2021.
Justices will hear the cases that allege widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Among those to be heard are Republican Rep. Mike Kelly’s Pennsylvania election case, pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell’s Michigan election case, and attorney Lin Wood’s Georgia election case.
BREAKING: The United States Supreme Court has scheduled the Pennsylvania election case, Sidney Powell’s Michigan election case, and Lin Wood’s Georgia election case for its February 19 conference— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) February 5, 2021
The cases include challenges to the 2020 election results.
But after the court pushed them off, many lawyers said that the challenges were still important and could have long-term implications for election fairness.
Trump lawyer John Eastman told the Washington Examiner that even with Trump out of office, it was important to settle the issues raised by expanded mail-in voting.
“Our legal issue,” he said, referring to the way in which Pennsylvania conducted the 2020 election, “remains important and in need of the court’s review.”
Attorney Lin Wood’s Georgia election fraud case will also be heard
Similarly, Kelly’s lawyer Greg Teufel warned that the 10-year congressman and major Trump ally had no intention of dropping the suit.
As election litigation continues to play out in the courts, many Republican state legislators have begun introducing bills to curb mail-in voting through law.
Speaking about her case recently, Powell shared her thoughts on the 2020 election during Joe Biden’s Inauguration on Skyline News.
“He [Trump] had about 80 million votes, and Biden had much less than that, aside from the fact that hundreds of thousands of Biden votes were fraudulent from the get-go,” Powell said.
“There were hundreds of thousands of fraudulent ballots,” she added.
“There were flipped votes in algorithms run in the various machines and not just the ones from Dominion.”
Lawlessness: “CBS News… tried to Defend the Democrat Lawmakers who presented Doctored and Faudulent Evidence”
Gateway Pundit reported that CBS news “tried to defend the Democrat lawmakers who presented doctored and fraudulent evidence during the Senate:
“Trump Attorney Michael van der Veen spoke with CBS News following the acquittal of his client President Donald Trump by the US Senate in the second frivolous impeachment attempt by Speaker Nancy Pelosi.”
PJ Media gives part of the exchange between Zac and Van Der Veen who” during the time he worked on the case, his house was trashed by Leftist rabble, his law firm was being swarmed by antifa-like nutballs, his life had been threatened no fewer than 100 times”:
By the time CBS News reporter Lana Zak’s interview with the Trump lawyer ended (see the tweet below), Van der Veen had caught his limit of hypocrisy. He was done. Zak’s cavalier attitude about “doctored evidence” by the Democrat House impeachment managers, and the media “slanted” coverage of it was more than he could take.
“To be clear for our viewers,” she interrupted him, “what you’re talking about is a check mark, a verification, on Twitter that did not exist on that particular tweet, a 2020 that should have actually read 2021, and the selective editing, you say, of the tapes.”
Van der Veen had heard enough. He flooded the torpedos and began acquiring targets.
“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,’ van der Veen cut in. ‘That’s not enough for you?’
She protested that she’d never said that, but her questioning and attitude were all you needed to see, to become convinced otherwise.
She then continually interrupted his answers by saying she was only doing so “to be clear for our viewers.” Real Clear Politics provides the transcript:“‘It’s not OK to doctor a ‘little bit’ of evidence,” he said. “Respectfully, ma’am your question is turned. The media has to start telling the right story in this country,’ he said. ‘The media is trying to divide this country. You are bloodthirsty for rating, and as such you are asking questions now that are already set up with a fact pattern. I can’t believe you would ask me a question indicating that is is alright to doctor just a little bit of evidence.” [https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2021/02/14/thats-not-enough-for-you-trump-attorney-goes-apoplectic-on-slanted-media-with-clueless-cbs-interviewer-n1425566]
Francis Notes:
– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:
“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.” (The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)
– LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:
The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”
– On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:
“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”
– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:
“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.
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Sunday, February 14, 2021 Feast of St. Valentine (early 200s to AD 269 or 270), Patron of Love, Young People, Happy Marriages St. Valentine, officially known as St. Valentine of Rome, is a third-century Roman saint widely celebrated on February 14 and commonly associated with “courtly love.” Although not much of St. Valentine’s life is reliably known, it is generally agreed that St. Valentine was martyred in about 270 AD and then buried on the Via Flaminia to the north of Rome. In 1969, the Roman Catholic Church removed St. Valentine from the General Roman Calendar, because so little is known about him. However, the Church still recognizes him as a saint, listing him in the February 14 spot of Roman Martyrology. (link) One common story about St. Valentine is that at one point of his life, as the former Bishop of Terni, Narnia and Amelia, he was placed on house arrest by Judge Asterius. While discussing religion and faith with the Judge, Valentine pledged the validity of Jesus. The judge immediately put Valentine and his faith to the test. St. Valentine was presented with the judge’s blind daughter and told to restore her sight. If he succeeded, the judge vowed to do anything for Valentine. Placing his hands onto her eyes, Valentine restored the child’s vision. Judge Asterius was humbled and obeyed Valentine’s requests. Asterius broke all the idols around his house, fasted for three days and became baptized, along with his family and entire 44-member household. The now faithful judge then freed all of his Christian inmates. St. Valentine was evidently later arrested again for continuing to try to convert people to Christianity. He was sent to Rome under the emperor Claudius Gothicus (Claudius II). The story tells that St. Valentine was imprisoned for marrying Christian couples and aiding Christians being persecuted by Claudius in Rome. Both acts were considered serious crimes. A relationship between the saint and emperor began to grow, until Valentine attempted to convince Claudius of Christianity. Claudius became enraged and sentenced Valentine to death, commanding him to renounce his faith or be beaten with clubs and beheaded. St. Valentine refused to renounce his faith and Christianity and was executed outside the Flaminian Gate on February 14, 269. (However, other tales of St. Valentine’s life claim he was executed either in the year 270, 273 or 280.) Other accounts of St. Valentine’s arrests tell that he secretly married couples so husbands wouldn’t have to go to war. Another variation of the legend of St. Valentine says he refused to sacrifice to pagan gods, was imprisoned and while imprisoned he healed the jailer’s blind daughter. On the day of his execution, he left the girl a note signed, “Your Valentine.” Pope Julius I is said to have built a church near Ponte Mole in his memory, which for a long time gave name to the gate now called Porta del Popolo. The romantic nature of Valentine’s Day may have derived during the Middle Ages, when it was believed that birds paired couples in mid-February. According to English 18th-century antiquarians Alban Butlerand Francis Douce, Valentine’s Day was most likely created to overpower the pagan holiday, Lupercalia. Although the exact origin of the holiday is not widely agreed upon, it is widely recognized as a day for love, devotion and romance. Whoever he was, Valentine did really exist, because archaeologists have unearthed a Roman catacomb and an ancient church dedicated to St. Valentine. In 496 AD, Pope Gelasius marked February 14th as a celebration in honor of his martyrdom. Relics of St. Valentine can be found all over the world. A flower-crowned skull of St. Valentine can be found in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome. In 1836, other relics were exhumed from the catacombs of St. Hippolytus on the Via Tiburtina and were identified as Valentine’s. These were transported for a special Mass dedicated to those young and in love. In 1836, Fr. John Spratt received a gift from Pope Gregory XVI, a “small vessel tinged” with St. Valentine’s blood. This gift now stands placed in Whitefriar Street Church in Dublin, Ireland. Other alleged relics were found in Prague in the Church of St Peter and Paul at Vysehrad; in the parish church of St. Mary’s Assumption in Chelmno Poland; at the reliquary of Roquemaure in France; in the Stephansdom in Vienna; in Balzan in Malta and also in Blessed John Duns Scotus’ church in the Gorbals area of Glasgow, Scotland. St. Valentine is the Patron Saint of affianced couples, bee keepers, engaged couples, epilepsy, fainting, greetings, happy marriages, love, lovers, plague, travelers, and young people. He is represented in pictures with birds and roses and his feast day is celebrated on February 14.
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All the Movements promoted by Pope John Paul II have become a Church Within a Church – and have come crashing down on our heads – Legionaries of Christ, Folcolare, Opus Dei …….. cults all with common characteristics the Catholic Church has assigned to dangerous cults. Focolare is now in the Vatican spotlight with Opus Dei waiting in the wings. Ex-members of Opus need to act now to get Escriva and Co. into the limelight also. Randy Engel for ODWATCH
Light Shed on the Spirituality of Chiara Lubich, its Founder, Reflects on her Beatification.
(This article was published on two reference sites which I thank: il sismografo, site with an international audience specialising on vatican information, and lenversdudecor, a website specialising in the fight against sectarian-based abuses, created by Xavier Léger(*)
After so many other new communities called into question because of their founder or of certain sectarian aberrations, the great Italian lay movement known as the Focolare (Work of Mary) is in its turn in the eye of the storm. In addition to the paedophile crime cases that led to recent resignations within the movement is the publication of Renata Patti’s(1) book that causes turmoil (disarray). (Disarray) A turmoil equal to the issue at stake. The Focolare, with a presence in 184 countries around the world, has (a membership of) two million members. It is thus a “power” within the Catholic Church that expects the forthcoming beatification of its founder as a form of consecration. However, some spiritual writings by Chiara Lubich are proving very problematic.
The author of the book, Renata Patti, was eleven years old when she first came into contact with the Focolare, which played a part in the familiar world of her school and her parish. The priests who regularly saw to the spirituality of this lay movement a possible educational path of sanctity. And Renata’s parents, convinced that it was an extracurricular activity, were not concerned. The book revisits the author’s 40 years of life within this movement, from her adolescent idealism, her decision to take the step to eighteen years of perpetual vows, to 47 years… only three years before resigning and permanently leaving the movement. In the meantime, she would know and endure, to “please God”, all the suffering of spiritual abuse and of the most classic abuse of power. With the associated episodes of depression, psychiatric consultations, separation, disability and so on.
All the Ingredients of Sectarian Abuses
In this testimonial, we find all the ingredients of sectarian abuse as identified elsewhere in other new communities that have had their “spotlight in the news”, subject of accusations made by the victims and occasionally of canonical proceedings that could lead to the founder’s dismissal. Absence of vocational discernment, break with the family environment judged to be “incapable of understanding”, exhausting days denied any free time, domestic tyranny, harassment and suffering, total obedience to the person responsible who combined the functions of a superior in the community, teacher, organiser of daily activities for all, sole confidante and spiritual counsellor and so on, permanent and exclusive reference to the founder’s writings, incentive to give all one’s belongings to the community in the spirit of poverty with no guarantee of return if she were to leave, censoring what was read and of the films viewed, control over every activity of every member through drafting, at the end of every day, the so-called “schemetti”. (Thus, on) That is a pre-completed form, each Focolare would write the details of her day, time spent working and resting, reading, a list of all her expenses, medicines taken, people met and the reason for their meeting, letters received and which had to be handed in. Once these had been handed in at the end of the week, the files were read by the people in charge, summarised then forwarded to the movement’s head office. A practice which violates a person’s dignity and freedom and which the Pontifical Council for the Laity has officially asked be abolished by letter of 3 June 2020 addressed to the new president Maria Voce.
A concept of unity that ignores personalities.
But the characteristic “trademark” of the world described by Renata Patti is found elsewhere. In the relationship that each Focolare member maintained – until her death in 2008 – with the founder affectionately called “Mamma Chiara”. The Focolare members are encouraged to write to share with her their joys or their doubts. And Chiara answers, through her secretary, with brief letters that always refer, one way or another, to the foundations of her spirituality, to the two concepts that make up the life in the movement.
With respect to this, Renata Patti wrote: “I tried to adhere, with all my heart, all my soul and all the strength of Chiara Lubich’s spirituality that could be summarised by the concepts of the unity and of “Jesus forsaken”. (…) Unity unfortunately not lived as such, that is, as “communion” but more as absorption and cancelling my own personality to the benefit of the authority, of the group within which one must merge oneself at every level. (…) The concept of Jesus forsaken offers those responsible a means to obtain passive obedience and total submission. Their spirit ends by substituting the breath of the Holy Spirit and the individual conscience, which no longer freely expresses itself to the point of being suffocated.”
“It really is a system…”
But there’s more, and it is worse. In a document dated 23 November 1950, Chiara Lubich wrote: “Every soul of the Focolare members should be an expression of me and nothing else. My Word holds all those of the Focolarines and Focolare members. I am the synthesis of everything. When I appear this way, they should thus allow themselves to be produced by me, to commune with me. (…) To live the life that God gave them, they must nourish themselves from the God that lives in my soul. (…) So I can communicate everything and I draw from deep within me, and so from God and me, everything I can. And the truth reveals itself. I expect from my own that they are as perfect as the Father, that they are love in actions and nothing else. If they are different, I will abandon them by also withdrawing from them that which they believe they have. Like Jesus. Unity is thus the Unity and one soul must live: mine and that of Jesus who amongst us is in me.”
A belief that nourished the growth and the operation of the movement. Renata Patti conjures up her childhood when she was shown a photo of the founder and was told: “You are only at one with the one who speaks, lose yourself completely in her” or “He who sees Chiara sees the father.” And the author comments: “Our superiors taught us to amalgamate within ourselves an attitude of adulation for Chiara Lubich and for every authority she designated within the structures of the Work.” In the postface to the book, Father Pierre Vignon writes: “It bears repeating, it is very much about a system and not about an unhappy personal experience faced by Renata. It is truly a system, that is, an entire movement that is at issue, since the Focolare are convinced of the unsustainable belief regarding the Christian tradition that their “sanctity” is community, which is, they believe, collectivist. They carry out a “collective and individual cloning”. It is genuine heresy. These people, shielded by their high representatives in the Roman Catholic Church, think this way. Salvation, for them, is not in the Christ offered them by the Church, rather it is they, in their spiritual pride, who must save it.”
Confessions of a Cardinal
This is a splendid (examination) analysis, it must be said! In his book Orgoglio e pregiudizio in Vaticano – Le confessioni di un cardinale sulla Chiesa di ieri e di oggi(2) [Confessions of a Cardinal], published in 2007 under Benedict XVI’s pontificate, Olivier le Gendre attributed statements of “sectarian abuses”, then formulated against four principal movements, into his Cardinal’s mouth. The four movements were the Focolare, the Neocatechumenal Way, the Opus Dei and the Legionaries of Christ. He had him saying: “Some of these movements demand a great deal of their members: obedience, availability, exclusivity, significant financial contributions, reverence with respect to the founders and those in charge. One is left with two opinions when faced with these demands. The first is to marvel at the generosity of these Christians who wanted to live a life committed to faith and to spare no effort in working for this cause. The second is to wonder if these demands don’t go too far, if the only ones who benefit are the leaders, if they are presented too urgently, if they are imposed by undue mental pressure.” Then, while stressing the need not to cover the accusations brought against so many abuses and the urgent need to investigate so as to gain a clear view of the reality of the situation, he reveals that he and, amongst others, Cardinal Martine and Danneels and a few French and American Bishops had alerted the Pope, the Secretary of State and the Pontifical Council for lay persons, and so on.
United in the same “santo subito (saint right away)”
Two decades earlier, on 19 August 1984, Pope John Paul II visited Chiara Lubich at Rocca di Papa, the movement’s central headquarters. “You are a small Church…” The author asked, however: “But isn’t this ‘little Church’ an alternative Church? At the time my testimony was being published, I thought the question was justified.”
These are the file documents provided by the book.(3) It will be recalled that the funeral of John Paul II on 8 April 2005 was marked by the appearance, in the crowd, of placards with the words “santo subito (saint right away)” asking for the immediate canonisation of the Polish Pope. An initiative of the Focolare that owed him so much. And that today, in exchange, it is expect that his successor Francis will beatify their founder. To achieve her dream: “One day the Church will awaken as Focolare.”
From experience, I know the accusations this type of book and note examines are likely to fuel: a desire to weaken and defile the Church, an attack on the reputation of “new communities”, the memory of a woman of great charisma, Chiara Lubich, even of an exceptional Pope, John Paul II, whose sainthood has been recognised by the Church. While in reality, the author’s clear intention is for “the healthy part of the Focolare movement to enter into a dialogue and to initiate actions so that what happened to me does not happen again.” Thus a book to serve the movement itself and the Church, in the name of the truth.
PS. Quite by chance, I published this review at the same time the Focolare’s General Assembly was being held. And the current but outgoing president, Maria Voce, uttered the same reference to a “collective sanctity” in the movement that remains ambiguous… unless the movement sees itself as the Church.
1. Renata Patti, Dieu, les focolari et moi, La libération d’une duperie. Ed. Mols 2020, 224 pp. €21.50
2. Olivier le Gendre, Confessions d’un cardinal, Ed. J.-C. Lattès 2007, 410 pp. This is a work of fiction (the Cardinal appears to be an amalgamation of several prelates) but particularly well informed of the realities of the Vatican. Renata Patti quotes this passage from the book.
3. In 2017, a first book, completed under the direction of Vincent Hanssens psycho-sociologist, Professor emeritus at the Université catholique de Louvain, had already shed a multidisciplinary light on Renata Patti’s experience. De l’emprise à la liberté, Ed. Mols 2017. 318pp., €21.5
(*) The article contains a photo from 9 February 2001 in which Chiara Lubich can be seen on a visit to the Centre for Higher Studies of the Legionaries of Christ in Rome, accompanied by a sulphurous Marcial Maciel. Xavier Léger commented: “The two founders wanted to create connections between their respective movements in response to a request by John Paul II, who wanted that new communities in the church to collaborate so as to better respond to the challenges of the New Evangelisation. XL”
Benedictine Education and the Importance of Poetic Thinking
FEBRUARY 11, 2021BY RAYMOND HAINThe poetic stance is receptive, submissive even, and begins with an appreciation of the mysterious and the inscrutable. A humble appreciation of the mysterious beauty of reality must be the context for all fruitful problem-solving.
While interviewing for an academic position, I was once asked whether I thought philosophy was most properly a problem or a mystery. Taken aback, after a moment’s reflection I answered “mystery.” Since then I have asked that question myself of many of my colleagues, often replacing “philosophy” with “the intellectual life.” I find it the most telling indication of how someone approaches teaching and learning, what methods he employs, what accomplishments he honors, and what satisfactions he hopes for.
This contrast between problem and mystery marks a fault line in our educational landscape. On one side stands much of our contemporary primary, secondary, and post-secondary educational culture. Its banner is “Critical Thinking,” the inspiration and justification for a wide range of educational and professional practices, especially those in the humanities. Arrayed on the other side is a motley band, united under a flag whose figures are harder to make out. Following St. John Henry Newman, partisans of this more mysterious cause should look to St. Benedict as their standard bearer and “Poetic Thinking” as their standard.
“Problem” and “mystery” were on Newman’s mind when he wrote two essays on St. Benedict and Benedictine education for Atlantis in the 1850s. I am immensely grateful to Cluny Media for recently republishing them (paired with new essays from Margarita Mooney, Christopher Fisher, and Abbot Thomas Frerking, O.S.B.), in partnership with the Portsmouth Institute. Newman has helped reframe how I think about recent developments in Catholic education, education more broadly, and where we are headed in this new millennium. Although Thomas Aquinas inspired the renewal of Catholic education in the twentieth century, Newman has so far been the inspiration for renewal in the twenty-first.
Newman’s Vision of St. Benedict
According to Newman, St. Benedict formed the training of the ancient intellect, St. Dominic the medieval, and St. Ignatius the modern. To Benedict he assigns “the element of Poetry,” to Dominic the “Scientific,” and to Ignatius the “Practical.” The contrast between Benedict and Dominic is striking (though Ignatius is interesting too, perhaps for other reasons—is it mere coincidence that the Jesuits today are such dedicated and successful champions of social justice?). Benedictine monasticism was flight from the world to the cloister, a mortification of sense, and a mortification of reason.
Such a peaceful life, says Newman, is “full of the elements of the poetical.” By “poetry” Newman means something much more expansive than rhyming verse:
Poetry is always the antagonist to science. As science makes progress in any subject-matter, poetry recedes from it. The two cannot stand together; they belong respectively to two modes of viewing things, which are contradictory of each other. Reason investigates, analyzes, numbers, weighs, measures, ascertains, locates, the objects of its contemplation, and thus gains a scientific knowledge of them. Science results in system, which is complex unity; poetry delights in the indefinite and various as contrasted with unity, and in the simple as contrasted with system. The aim of science is to get a hold of things, to grasp them, to handle them, to comprehend them; that is (to use the familiar term), to masterthem, or to be superior to them. Its mission is to destroy ignorance, doubt, surmise, suspense, illusions, fears, deceits. But as to the poetical, very different is the frame of mind which is necessary for its perception. It demands, as its primary condition, that we should not put ourselves above the objects in which it resides, but at their feet; that we should feel them to be above and beyond us, that we should look up to them, and that, instead of fancying that we can comprehend them, we should take for granted that we are surrounded and comprehended by them ourselves. It implies that we understand them to be vast, immeasurable, impenetrable, inscrutable, mysterious; so that at best we are only forming conjectures about them, not conclusions.
There is an entire cultural world in this sweeping paragraph, including a striking educational program. The poetic stance is receptive, submissive even, and begins with an appreciation of the mysterious and the inscrutable. A poetic person’s soul is gentle, with a tender and simple heart. The poetic stance’s chief virtue is humility, its chief action obedience, and its chief purpose healing.
Such a disposition of spirit, when it comes into contact with books, and hence also with education, is transformed into a literary method of instruction rather than a problem-solving one. What could it mean to say such a thing? It does not mean that “literature” as we commonly understand it is one’s principal subject matter, as if we should all be English majors. Instead, it means one fits oneself to what one reads, learns in order to imitate rather than to correct or to surpass, sees the text before one’s eyes as a guide and not a rival—this is the character of Benedictine education for Newman.
The Limits of Critical Thinking
All this has immediate and telling educational implications. The natural product of critical thinking is the “argumentative essay” (or “academic paper” in its more professional incarnation). Such an essay depends on analysis, critique, and evaluation: the qualities that contemporary intellectuals prize most and teach—by example as well as by instruction—to college students everywhere.
This form of writing analyzes in order to reconstruct and evaluate. It takes a poem by Keats and turns it into five main points, one of which is still worth making, and all of which could, it seems, be made without resorting to poetry. It takes a Platonic dialogue and discards the literary window-dressing in order to focus on the arguments, and then removes the arguments themselves from their conversational setting in order to express them simply, cleanly, and in a form amenable to critique. We aim at the mastery Newman describes, a mastery exhibited most powerfully by the tendency to distill and strip away until what remains is a short summary, what might be included in a tightened-up version of Spark Notes.
This is a caricature, of course. It would be silly to imply that the “scientific” is the problem here and that we should all be “uncritical thinkers” unable to recognize and solve the challenges before us. Newman knows as well as any of us that St. Dominic is as necessary to the Church, and the world, as St. Benedict. Newman himself, the author of An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, believed that development, creativity, and invention were necessary treasures. But this does not let us off the hook; for when I answered “mystery” to my thoughtful questioner, I did not mean that philosophers do not confront and try to solve problems (sometimes even successfully). I meant instead that a humble appreciation of the mysterious beauty of reality must be the context for all fruitful problem-solving. We educators all too frequently forget the place of Benedict in the constellation of saints, and in doing so make it harder to look up at the stars.
Poetic Pedagogy
What does poetic pedagogy look like? It was not so long ago that imitative forms of writing were expected and praised. Whereas we typically honor disagreement rather than gratitude, and innovation over preservation or appreciation, it is not hard to imagine an educational and intellectual landscape that fostered a culture of appreciation rather than critique. Imitation is the sincerest form of gratitude, and we could replace the argumentative essay with imitative forms of engagement.
How would the experience of our students change if, instead of asking them to write an essay analyzing the relationship between Adam and Eve in Genesis, we instead asked them to rewrite their story in the language of the King James while trying to re-present in their own words the movement of those few chapters? If before evaluating a poem by Keats, they had to memorize it first? If instead of critiquing a bit of dialogue by Plato, they composed their own dialogue instead? And how might our own intellectual habits shift if we took time away from composing our academic papers to do such things ourselves before assigning them to our students?
At the root of Benedictine education was the reading of Scripture, and if God is the author of Scripture, then you had better put yourself first at the feet of your text. But this pose is useful for all texts, just as it is useful for all people. For if we teach one another that the highest achievement is criticism of what we read, then we shouldn’t be surprised if we end up aiming at criticism of the people we meet. Learning how to read books is a way of learning how to treat people.
Cultivating Childlike Perception
I suppose one might reply that the “poetic heart,” like poetic education more generally, belongs properly to children. It is children who were educated in the Benedictine schools, the forerunners of those majestic medieval universities. While Benedictine education might be necessary and beautiful in its own way, all of us must grow out of it. The serious business of the intellectual life belongs, ultimately, to science and Dominican education and the practical and morally good uses to which Ignatius put it.
But as Newman says, “what the Catholic Church once has had, she never has lost. Instead of passing from one stage of life to another, she has carried her youth and middle age along with her. She has not changed possessions, but accumulated them. She did not lose Benedict by finding Dominic; and she has still both Benedict and Dominic at home, though she has become the mother of Ignatius.” And what is true for the Church is true for her members, for we are told to be like little children.
Margarita Mooney has called this a return to a childlike state of perception. A professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and the founder and director of the Scala Foundation (“scala,” as in the ladder by means of which, according to St. Benedict, we can follow Jacob to the heights of heavenly exaltation made possible by humility), she writes in her introduction to the Cluny edition: “At times, our tendency to analyze, measure, and manipulate needs to be forgone in order to return to a childlike, simple state of perceiving reality that opens up to a sacramental way of living—seeing in visible things the invisible grace of God.” The poetic suffuses all else that comes after it, and calls us back (more often, I think, than we answer) that we might refresh ourselves at its deep wells.
Contemporary Renewal
A broad range of recent renewal movements in Catholic education are products and producers of poetic thinking. These begin not so much with the return to St. Thomas Aquinas called for by Leo XIII in Aeterni Patris (though St. Thomas remains irreplaceable), but with other nineteenth-century cultural developments (including Newman himself) from which emerged the “great books” movement at Columbia in the 1920s.
To follow just one branch of this tree: John Senior, a Columbia alumnus, organized the Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas throughout the 1970s. Some graduates of that program joined a Benedictine monastery in France and then returned to found Clear Creek Monastery in Oklahoma. Another graduate helped found Wyoming Catholic College; and still others were instrumental in founding Gregory the Great Academy in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a boys school that, among other things, sends its high school seniors around Europe on the funds that students earn themselves by juggling in town squares. Or we could follow another branch, the Catholic Studies movement, developed by the Newman scholar Don Briel at the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota, and followed now by over fifty Catholic Studies programs across the country.
Dominic had a special devotion to Truth, and Ignatius to a life of generous Goodness, but Benedict claims for himself the way of Beauty. Only God knows how Catholic education will continue to develop, but I am convinced that I need to think more poetically and less critically, and read more of Newman, to develop my own contributions. And I know, at the very least, that I should begin and end by asking my students to appreciate, to memorize, and to imitate, and only now and again, rather sparingly, to analyze, to critique, and to replace.
Raymond Hain is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Associate Director of the Humanities Program at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island. He writes and teaches on topics connected to ethics and culture, and is the editor most recently of Beyond the Self: Virtue Ethics… READ MORE
Was Francis “Chosen” by the Obama/Biden Deep State who is his Ultimate Boss?
Is it possible that Francis and his collaborator ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick were part of the Barack Obama/Joe Biden deep state betrayal of the China underground church and “coup to oust a rightfully-elected president”?
Former intelligence officer Steven O’Reilly on his website asked “Why did McCarrick visit the Obama/Biden White House in July 2013?:
McCarrick and the White House, a US connection to Vatican China policy?
As seen above, McCarrick, Bergoglio, and Sant’Egidio have had similar views on what ‘rapprochement’ between the Catholic Church in China and the CPP should look like (i.e., submissiveness to the regime, and support of state-appointed bishops). These shared views appear to extend to other components of the globalist agenda (e.g., immigration, climate change, etc.). It is unfortunate the McCarrick Report did not shed further light on which American Catholic donors supported McCarrick, and what their political affiliation might be. However, we have our suspicions as to the sorts of Catholics who would support such a globalist or “Catholic spring” agenda for the Church (see Six Degrees of the “Influential Italian Gentleman”?).
This leads us to the curious bit of information — mentioned at the beginning of this article — that Roma Locuta Est recently came across. McCarrick met in the White House with Denis McDonough on July 18, 2013. At the time, McDonough was President Obama’s Chief of Staff. Previous to this post, McDonough had worked on the staff of the National Security Council as Deputy National Security Advisor. Vigano’s Testimony suggests McCarrick traveled to China on June 21, 2013; and the McCarrick Report states the ex-cardinal briefed the Pope “upon his return.” Consequently, given the timing, in all probability, McCarrick discussed his China trip with Denis McDonough later in July.
But here is the interesting thing. McDonough’s name is found only once in the McCarrick Report (p. 331), the reference being to McCarrick forwarding a report of a January 2009 meeting with McDonough to the Nuncio in Washington D.C. Yet, no mention is found in the McCarrick Report with regard to the July 18, 2013 meeting at the White House, nor of any similar such report of McCarrick’s discussion with McDonough — a senior White House official — being forwarded to the Nuncio in July of 2013. Why not? Did McCarrick not forward a report of this meeting to the Nuncio? If not, why not? If so, why no mention of it in the McCarrick Report? Did McCarrick deem the nature of the meeting so sensitive that he only reported back on its proceedings directly to Cardinal Parolin or to Francis? If this is the case, did Pope Francis send McCarrick to discuss China/Church relations with the Obama Administration? If so, why? Did the Vatican under Pope Francis seek support/help from the Obama Administration on its new China policy? What role did the Obama Administration, or then Vice-President Biden — as the Obama Administrations point man on China — play in supporting the Vatican’s deal with China?
The former intelligence officer appears to be asking was McCarrick “perhaps” reporting back to the Obama/Biden Administration who is the possible boss of both McCarrick and Francis?
Independent scholar and researcher Laramie Hirsch for the Catholic Monitor asked:
Was Jorge Bergoglio [Francis] “chosen” by the Obama/Biden deep state who is his ultimate boss?:
Bergoglio Was Chosen
Before the conclave of 2013, an anonymous whistleblower pre-warned usthat the CIA had already picked out who would be the next pope. We were told the pope would be from Argentina, that the United States would try to gain control of South America, and that this would be the last pope. Enter Bergoglio.
Bergoglio is known for his complicity with the CIA during Operation Condor, a deep state operation that would destabilize Argentina with a military junta responsible for tortures and mass killings. The Vatican under Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II had a central role in Argentine’s atrocities. Jorge Bergoglio, specifically, complied with death squads who kidnapped two priests and “disappeared” six members of their parish. When in 2005 the time came for the evasive Bergoglio to account for what happened under his watch, he twice invoked his right under Argentine law to not go to open court. In 2010, Argentine lawyer, Ms. Myriam Bergman, described her encounter she finally had with the pontiff-to-be:
“He finally excepted to see us in an office alongside Buenos Aires cathedral sitting underneath a tapestry of the Virgin Mary,“ Ms. Bregman said. “It was an intimidating experience. We were very uncomfortable intruding in a religious building.“ She added that Bergoglio did not provide any significant information on the two priests. “He seemed reticent, I left with a bitter taste,“ she said.From Operation Gladio, by Paul L. Williams
The slippery evasiveness of Bergoglio left Ms. Bregman dumbfounded, and she described her later feelings of Bergoglio’s election as that of “amazement and impotence.“ When a major trial of Argentina’s “Dirty War” finally opened up in Buenos Aires on March 5, 2013, only a week later would Bergoglio become Bishop of Rome. “Pope Francis” escaped any further accountability, and he is the first pope in history to be charged with crimes against humanity. His time colluding with the CIA had paid off, and it was time to collect.
Yet, Bergoglio would still continue the work of factions within the U.S. intelligence community.
The Bidding of His Masters
Bergoglio’s evasiveness—-which the entire world is now familiar with—-served his purposes. And his skillset would come to serve him again, now as “pope.” What deeds would Bergoglio work in his new role? The specific details of what was demanded remain unknown. However, we do know that some of his functions are to facilitate globalism, climate change paranoia, the Kalergi Plan, socialism, the widespread acceptance of homosexuality, and most every other radical left wing cause on the table. To the best of his ability, this man who calls himself “Pope Francis” is stacking the college of cardinals with as many questionable deviants as possible, almost as though to intentionally discredit the authority of the Catholic Church. Is this his objective? Will this man, as Ann Barnhardt and Dr. Mazza once speculated, try to drive the Vatican into insolvency and sell it off to UNESCO as a World Heritage Site? One can only guess.
This push of leftist modernism by “the bishop in white” has many strings leading to many different places in the world, yet Bergoglio’s leash to the U.S. remains. For example, shortly before the 2016 election, we learned from a Wikileaks dump of e-mails that Democrat operative Sanford “Sandy” Newman was pitching the idea of a leftist “Catholic Spring” to his friend, John Podesta. In reply, John Podesta said that preparations were well underway:
We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organize for a moment like this. But I think it lacks the leadership to do so now. Likewise Catholics United. Like most Spring movements, I think this one will have to be bottom up. I’ll discuss with Tara. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is the other person to consult.
Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United are George Soros-funded groups. They are populated with political creatures, not churchmen, who are only interested in utilizing the Church’s influence.
Yet even more interesting is that this discussion of a “Catholic Spring” among Democrat operatives took place in 2011. Only two short years later, Pope Benedict XVI engaged in, what appears to be, his forced resignation. Was there a “Catholic Spring” initiative that helped to drive him off the Chair of Peter? There are a lot of murky circumstances surrounding his abdication, after all. For example, international monetary transactions with the Vatican were suspended just before Pope Benedict resigned, and they did not resume until February 12, 2013—the day after he announced his resignation. Even the National Security Agency (NSA) was monitoring the conclave that elected Bergoglio. Were there covert operatives working to bring Bergoglio into power? After all, this man has all the appearances of being a puppet, a non-canonically elected pontiff, and hardly the leader of a religion.
During President Trump’s first term, after three and a half years of lies and scandalmongering, the Left in the U.S. revealed its deep ties within the various “alphabet intelligence agencies.” Often, these agencies served the interests of the Democrat Party, and hardly ever have they shown favoritism towards anyone else. In fact, the wars in the Middle East—-and even many elements of what happened on 9/11—have the fingerprints of shady business on the part of these agencies, and whenever war and conflict are spearheaded by the U.S., it is always to the detriment of Christians throughout the world. There is always an anti-Christian, leftist bent in US-led conflicts, and the agencies are always behind the curtain pulling the ropes.
With these facts in mind, Bergoglio’s political maneuverings make more sense, as does his blatant opposition to the current anti-Establishment U.S. president, Donald Trump. Elements within the FBI and other agencies actively worked to perform a political coup to oust a rightfully-elected president whom the Left in America despise. And as this has all happened, the various intelligence agencies have worked for decades to destroy all remaining vestiges of Christendom throughout the world. “Pope Francis” has been the perfect catalyst for this, and he has served as an excellent scapegoat to take all attention away from other prevailing forces who clandestinely hide in the shadows as the world loses its Christianity. [https://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/10/implications-of-cia-pope-real-mover-and.html]
Francis Notes:
– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:
“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.” (The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)
– LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:
The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”
– On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:
“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”
– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:
“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on HISTORY WILL RECORD THE PART JORGE BERGOLIO AND THEODORE MCCARRICK PLAYED IN THE DEEP STATE BETRAYAL OF THE CHINA UNDERGROUND CHURCH AND THE COUP TO OUST A RIGHTFULLY ELECTED PRESIDENT OF THE United States
ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP 
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