The presidential race is in a state of flux as several key state contests remain undecided. There are numerous ballot issues and discrepancies being reported in Wisconsin, Arizona and Michigan. It still seems likely Georgia and North Carolina will add to President Trump’s electoral tally; and there is a possibility Arizona’s current result (in favor of Joe Biden) may change depending on outstanding ballots yet to be counted.
Upon exiting the Constitutional Convention in 1787 Benjamin Franklin was approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of government the delegates had created. His answer was: “A republic, if you can keep it.” The brevity of that response should not cause us to under-value its essential meaning: democratic republics are not merely founded upon the consent of the people, they are also absolutely dependent upon the active and informed involvement of the people for their continued good health.
Current electoral count is Biden 227 -vs- Trump 213 [270 needed to win]
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on Upon exiting the Constitutional Convention in 1787 Benjamin Franklin was approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of government the delegates had created. His answer was: “A republic, if you can keep it.” The brevity of that response should not cause us to under-value its essential meaning: democratic republics are not merely founded upon the consent of the people, they are also absolutely dependent upon the active and informed involvement of the people for their continued good health.
The latest step of our descent into selfishness and perversity is a trend called “platonic parenting.” A woman finds a stud male who is pleasant enough, who will be her “friend,” who will make no claims upon her, so that he can get her pregnant and they can raise the resultant experiment together while they are not together—not living together, not bound to one another for life, but casually together, perhaps by an agreement confirmed with a handshake.
When I wrote Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments for Sanity (2014), the single argument that my critics greeted with the most ridicule was that the acceptance of homosexual liaisons would “drive a deeper wedge between men and women.” “How can that be?” they scoffed. “Am I going to love my wife any less, just because two men are living together in the house next door?”ADVERTISEMENT – CONTINUE READING BELOW
We do not reason any longer from principles, nor do we consider how those principles work themselves out in human culture and history. We are not serious people. Oh, we may be grim enough in our entertainment and angry in our politics, but we are not serious; heavy-hearted, but not grave and sober; Pharisees without the Law. The two principles that the sexual libertarians boast are no principles for moral action at all. One is that consent between or among adults makes a sexual act permissible. Such a position is deeply antisocial: as if the very thing by which a society comes to exist at all is not of social import and social concern. We would do well to revisit the arguments of congressmen who made statehood for Utah contingent upon the Mormon church’s rejection of bigamy. The congressmen understood that the principle of monogamy was at stake, and that if we gave way, we could expect reversion to barbarism, the chaos caused by bad example, and, a fortiori,the spread of the more natural evil: divorce. A state’s border is not a wall.
The other non-principle is that feelings are to be honored: they express what is most true about a human person. This is worse than antisocial. It is unreal. We hardly know what our feelings are; we deceive ourselves and others about them all the time. Feelings come and go. They are also immersed in our decisions, for at every moment of our lives we are feeling, thinking, and choosing creatures. If I am by nature given to being tight with money—because I have certain fears about security, or certain longings for wealth—I need not simply say, “That is what I am.” I can restrain, redirect, confirm, mollify, or reject those feelings. I can learn. If I am violent by nature, I need not steep my hands in blood. I can restrain, redirect, confirm, mollify, or reject my feelings. I can learn.
The principle of Sodom is that our bodies have no inherent meaning as male and female, created for one another, and indeed biological sex makes no sense and has no purpose otherwise. That principle has now worked its way into the dispirited and pathetically defiant minds of young people. I knew six years ago that you were more likely to see a young person blind drunk on a college campus than to see a boy and a girl holding hands. Pornography has supplanted romance. I did not foresee that the collapse of marriage would accelerate so quickly. Nor did I foresee that millions of young people would explicitly reject the very possibility of falling in love with someone of the opposite sex (after the ordinary way of nature), marrying, and having children. “Wasting time on romance” is what a recent article in The Guardian calls it; wasting time on what, in a real culture, next to religious devotion, is the single greatest motive for poetry and music and art.ADVERTISEMENT – CONTINUE READING BELOW
The world ends, I see, not in tragedy but in farce, not with the cries of a Nietzsche, but with advertising slogans, taken internally. One of the sites facilitating “platonic parenting” calls itself PollenTree.com. Pollen. What else should we expect? When you say, “We are going to raise a child on purpose without love,” you have given up from the start, and have confined the child ipso facto into a sort of shallow and meaningless divorce. In so doing, you have done worse than to deny what sex is: you deny what a human being is. You make yourself and the child into objects of exchange or manufacture.
A human being is not a time-share at the seaside. A human being is more than a dog. A dog might be happy with Dad on Monday and Mom on Tuesday, and not miss a thing. But the human person does more than remember. He recollects; he keeps in mind; he makes memorials. He is born, and is (or should be) embedded in history, especially the history of his family, extending back through his mother and father, and including uncles and cousins, grandparents, and their parents in turn. I am not speaking here about mere genetic material. A dog has that. I am talking about the family as a breathing, remembering, life-extending society, one that makes connections with other societies, and that possesses an order, for strength in the present and survival and proliferation in the future. Because we are the kinds of creatures we are, a child has the right to a real and not merely a notional family, just as he has a right to a home and not just a bed to sleep in. The child should be able to say of himself and his parents and his brothers and sisters, We.
A human being is also meant for love. I am not speaking about mere affection. A dog has that. I am not speaking about loyalty. A dog has that, and many a human being does not. The “platonic” couples, pasted together with a bit of glue and a sticker, do not. To love, for a human being, is to be for the welfare of the beloved, to place yourself entirely at his or her disposal, to say, “I am no longer my own.” As the poet Spenser says, referring to his marriage soon to come, “to enter in these bonds is to be free.” We become who we are meant to be by giving ourselves away. How, then, can the stiff-arm mother and the servile father possibly give the child an example of love, when they keep themselves daintily (but not chastely) secure from the welter of passion and the defeats and the triumphs of a man and woman attempting to build up a steadfast home for themselves and for their children? Do they truly love that child when they do not deign even to try?ADVERTISEMENT – CONTINUE READING BELOW
And why should there be only two persons involved in the time-share? Why not three or four? Why not pitch the child from mother to father to mother to father? Or why should we not set up a Rent-a-Kid, so that people without the heart to love can get their hugs in?
The man and woman in the article say they have seen too much of the bitterness and anger of marriage and divorce. In their minds, they are sparing the child the pain that a real marriage and a real family would bring. “An admirable evasion of whoremaster man,” to use Shakespeare’s words. There is not honey enough in all the world to glaze the excuses that men and woman make when they want what they want, and to hell with anyone else. But there are things worse than bitterness and anger. Insipidity and indifference are worse. And fulfilling your duty is more important than procuring your pleasure. “What did I know, what did I know,” says the poet Robert Hayden, thinking of his father’s reliable and unthanked acts of duty on cold winter mornings, “of love’s austere and lonely offices?”
Anthony Esolen, a contributing editor at Crisis, is a professor and writer-in-residence at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts. He is the author, most recently, of Sex and the Unreal City (Ignatius Press, 2020).
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By Bai Macfarlane, Mary’s Advocates, Rocky River OH
A divorce defendant has submitted an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court asserting that Pennsylvania’s no-fault divorce law is unconstitutional. The SCOTUS docketed the case on November 3. Pennsylvania Code §3301(d) provides a statutory cause of action granting divorces on an individualized basis, for any reason and for no reason at all. The law simply requires that the petitioner allege their marriage to be irretrievably broken, and then directs the trial court to provide its stamp of approval.
Mary’s Advocates corresponded with appellant Ryan Pankoe, via email. He says “I’ve brought a constitutional challenge against this law in order to invalidate the egregious practice of unilateral no-fault divorce. Whether a marriage isirretrievably broken is matter of opinion and viewpoint.”
He argues that the First Amendment absolutely prohibits the government from enacting laws that regulate viewpoint. The government only has constitutional authority to regulate conduct. An irretrievable breakdown of marriage is a subjective viewpoint that has nothing to do with a general standard of conduct. Ryan notes, “The Pennsylvania courts even admit their determination is based on subjective viewpoint; consequently, the no-fault law is a viewpoint-based statute.”
Ryan has taken this case to the U.S. Supreme Court because, “The no-fault divorce law converts Pennsylvania into a state-sponsor of divorce, and Pennsylvania is therefore the perpetrator in this situation.” In the absence of legal infraction or consent, the government of Pennsylvania has forced a divorce upon Ryan and his family. Compulsory divorce leaves Ryan without any recourse against the state’s total control over his private life, his property rights, his child custody rights, and even his religious freedoms. For those reasons, Ryan argues “compulsory divorce is fundamentally unjust.”
Pennsylvania has said that it cannot deny a divorce based on a party’s [religious] viewpoint without violating the Establishment Clause. Ryan argues that this logic should also apply to granting divorces. The Petition to the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately argues that Pennsylvania failed to adhere to its own reasoning by granting a divorce based solely on the Plaintiff’s (wife’s) subjective opinion that her marriage was irretrievably broken – indeed, a violation of the Establishment Clause.
The plea to U.S. Supreme Court to review Pennsylvania’s judgment is called a Petition for Writ of Certiorari (see E-filing the here).
By Bai Macfarlane, Mary’s Advocates, Rocky River OH
A divorce defendant has submitted an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court asserting that Pennsylvania’s no-fault divorce law is unconstitutional. The SCOTUS docketed the case on November 3. Pennsylvania Code §3301(d) provides a statutory cause of action granting divorces on an individualized basis, for any reason and for no reason at all. The law simply requires that the petitioner allege their marriage to be irretrievably broken, and then directs the trial court to provide its stamp of approval.
Mary’s Advocates corresponded with appellant Ryan Pankoe, via email. He says “I’ve brought a constitutional challenge against this law in order to invalidate the egregious practice of unilateral no-fault divorce. Whether a marriage isirretrievably broken is matter of opinion and viewpoint.”
He argues that the First Amendment absolutely prohibits the government from enacting laws that regulate viewpoint. The government only has constitutional authority to regulate conduct. An irretrievable breakdown of marriage is a subjective viewpoint that has nothing to do with a general standard of conduct. Ryan notes, “The Pennsylvania courts even admit their determination is based on subjective viewpoint; consequently, the no-fault law is a viewpoint-based statute.”
Ryan has taken this case to the U.S. Supreme Court because, “The no-fault divorce law converts Pennsylvania into a state-sponsor of divorce, and Pennsylvania is therefore the perpetrator in this situation.” In the absence of legal infraction or consent, the government of Pennsylvania has forced a divorce upon Ryan and his family. Compulsory divorce leaves Ryan without any recourse against the state’s total control over his private life, his property rights, his child custody rights, and even his religious freedoms. For those reasons, Ryan argues “compulsory divorce is fundamentally unjust.”
Pennsylvania has said that it cannot deny a divorce based on a party’s [religious] viewpoint without violating the Establishment Clause. Ryan argues that this logic should also apply to granting divorces. The Petition to the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately argues that Pennsylvania failed to adhere to its own reasoning by granting a divorce based solely on the Plaintiff’s (wife’s) subjective opinion that her marriage was irretrievably broken – indeed, a violation of the Establishment Clause.
The plea to U.S. Supreme Court to review Pennsylvania’s judgment is called a Petition for Writ of Certiorari (see E-filing the here).
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on A constitutional challenge against NO-FAULT DIVORCE law in order to invalidate the egregious practice of unilateral no-fault divorce. Whether a marriage isirretrievably broken is matter of opinion and viewpoint.”
Poland several times has played a pivotal, spoiler role in overcoming some of the greatest threats to Western civilization. In 1683, a Polish army led by John III Sobieski repelled an Ottoman army besieging the city of Vienna that threatened the survival of all of Christendom. In 1920, at the Miracle of the Vistula, a Polish army repulsed an invading Bolshevik army that aimed to incite an atheistic communist revolution across Europe. And in 1989 Polish voters defeated the communists at the polls and ushered in a new democratic government.
Yet what almost fifty years of communist rule could not achieve—namely, provoking widespread popular animus against a Catholic Church that has been instrumental in all of Poland’s most glorious achievements—has been accomplished in 25 years of EU-driven liberal influence. Following an October 22 decision by Poland’s highest court that rule abortions due to fetal defects to be unconstitutional, more than 100,000 pro-choice protestors hit the streets of Warsaw. Many thousands more protested in the nation’s other urban areas.ADVERTISEMENT – CONTINUE READING BELOW
Yet this hasn’t been only a reaction against the ruling populist, socially-conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS). There has also been a strong anti-Catholic tenor to protests. Demonstrators, some wearing costumes meant to mimic the dystopian novel and television series The Handmaid’s Tale, have interrupted Masses. A woman in Warsaw stood directly in front of the priest at the altar and held a sign saying, “Let us pray for the right to abortion.” In Krakow, protesters gathered at the “Pope’s window” of the archbishop’s palace where St. John Paul II had appeared to bless adoring crowds… except these crowds now chanted “f— the clergy.” Many churches, meanwhile, have been defaced.
Though Poland is one of the most predominantly Catholic nations in Europe, Polish media outlets are now publishing how-to guides for those who wish to officially commit apostasy. People are publicly harassing Catholic priests in the streets. Pro-abortion leader Marta Lempart in turn called on the nation’s Catholics to “oppose” the Church. “At the moment, you partake in what is going on, in this disgusting stuff the Church is doing. And this is the final warning, because you should revolt, your communities, you – engaged in the life of the church,” she said. This even included entering and damaging churches. You should do what you feel, what you think, what is effective and what they deserve,” Lempart added.
In truth, Poland has been on the decline for decades, especially among the youth, who are more likely to be liberal and pro-EU. Indeed, resistance to the country’s “LGBT-free zones,” which are intended as resistance to LGBT ideology, has been strongest among the nation’s younger generation.ADVERTISEMENT – CONTINUE READING BELOW
Poland’s current crisis is not only political, but profoundly spiritual. President Andrzej Duda of PiS won a narrow reelection earlier this year, much of his support coming from the more pious wing of the electorate. Voter turnout was the highest for a presidential election in 25 years, which proved PiS had a mandate, though a relatively thin one. Hence, the ruckus incited by the recent abortion decision has only aggravated the fault-lines between the older, rural, and devout generations, and younger, urban Poles. The latter may not even remember John Paul II; they certainly seem eager and willing to dispense with what has made Poland truly great—her faith.
The fate of the Catholic Church in Poland means more to American Catholicism than one might think. France might still be called the “eldest daughter of the Church,” but it has been Poland that has in recent memory carried the torch in Europe. This is especially the case now that Catholicism is in precipitous, perhaps permanent decline in the once fervently religious Ireland. Polonia, as the Latins called it, gave the Church some of her most impressive twentieth century saints: Faustina Kowalska, Maximilian Kolbe, and Jerzy Popiełuszko among them. Henryk Sienkiewicz and Czesław Miłosz, who both won the Nobel Prize in Literature in the twentieth century, were also deeply influenced by their Catholic faith.
Thus the decline of Catholicism in Poland, and strong anti-Catholic activism should serve as a bellwether for American Catholics. About a quarter of Americans are either practicing or former Catholics. Despite the many crises the Catholic Church in America has suffered in recent decades, she remains remarkably influential, both politically and spiritually. The pro-life movement is predominantly Catholic, as is the religious liberty movement. Six of nine justices on the Supreme Court are Catholic. That last data point is important, because we may very well see similar court rulings restricting access to abortion in the United States.ADVERTISEMENT – CONTINUE READING BELOW
This year has witnessed a significant increase in anti-Catholic activism in the United States. Our saints have been vilified, their statues torn down and defaced. There have been numerous attacks on our parish churches. Before that, the Democratic Party’s vice-presidential nominee publicly maligned the Knights of Columbus, the largest Catholic fraternal organization in the country. Federal, state, and local governments have targeted Catholic hospitals, adoption agencies, and nonprofits.
It would be naive to think these trends will not continue, especially if we have a pro-life Supreme Court ruling similar to that in Poland. Imagine hundreds of angry, aggressive pro-choice protestors surrounding your parish church, perhaps coming into your sanctuary during Sunday Mass and harassing clergy. If it can happen in Poland, you better believe it can happen here.
“No invader has ever conquered the heart of Poland, that spirit which is the inheritance of sons and daughters, the private passion of families and the ancient, unbreakable tie to all those who came before,” wrote James A. Michener in his epic historical fiction novel Poland. Perhaps he’s right, and that it will ultimately have to be the Poles themselves who are their own undoing. If that’s the case, and hostility towards the Church in Poland continues to grow, it will be a valuable (if sobering) lesson in what lies in store for our Catholicism in America.
This is all the more reason we must commit to pray, not only for the protection and preservation of Catholicism in the United States, but also in distant Poland. She has gifted to America generations of pious patriots, going all the way back to Casimir Pulaski and Tadeusz Kościuszko of the Revolutionary War era. If Poland falls, so may we.
Saint Faustina Kowalska, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Blessed Jerzy Popiełuszko, and Saint John Paul II, ora pro nobis.
Casey Chalk is a senior contributor at Crisis. He holds a Masters in Theology from Christendom College.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on “No invader has ever conquered the heart of Poland, that spirit which is the inheritance of sons and daughters, the private passion of families and the ancient, unbreakable tie to all those who came before,” wrote James A. Michener in his epic historical fiction novel Poland. Perhaps he’s right, and that it will ultimately have to be the Poles themselves who are their own undoing. If that’s the case, and hostility towards the Church in Poland continues to grow, it will be a valuable (if sobering) lesson in what lies in store for our Catholicism in America.
A Throne of BayonetsBy:Judd GarrettObjectivity is the ObjectiveNovember 4, 2020 This is embarrassing. The most important mechanism of our country is conducting a fair and honest election. That is infinitely more important than who actually wins the election. When the people have lost trust in the integrity of the election system, we have lost the country.
Going to the mail-in ballot system was flawed to begin with. It was ripe for corruption and completely unnecessary. When certain states are allowing ballots to be turned in and counted days after Election Day, when signatures on ballots need not match the signatures on voter registration cards, when makeshift ballots boxes are set up throughout the country with no guarantee of the custody of each ballot, it is an invitation for voter fraud, and stuffing the ballot boxes. When determining which ballots should be counted and which ones discarded is turned over to the courts who will favor the candidate of their political persuasion, the legitimacy of the power of the elected officials will be highly questioned, making the laws and legislation they pass appear illegitimate. It’s easy to admonish people for questioning the legitimacy of the recently elected officials, and tell them to simply ignore what we have just witnessed, accept the results of the election and acknowledge these elected as our leaders. But that would only serve to legitimize an apparent illegitimate process. It’s difficult to accept something that is unfair and rigged. It made no sense to go down this road of mail-in ballots. I voted in person, and the process was more safe from Covid-19 than going to the grocery store. The health risks were minimal, if at all. And for those who did not want to take that minimal risk, the absentee ballot system which has been in place for decades with a proven track record of integrity was there for them. Why did we need mail-in ballots? We didn’t. It was put in place specifically for what we are witnessing today, either steal the election or delegitimize the President if you can’t. When a country has lost its integrity in its elections, it has lost its soul. We have lost the soul of this great nation, and how do you regain a lost soul? You probably can’t. And the attempts to do so by hypocritical politicians will be feeble at best. Their speeches filled with high sounding words calling for unity based in principle will fall on deaf ears. For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Do you want to be Hank Aaron with 755 legitimate home runs, or Barry Bonds with 762 home runs (445 legitimate and 317 steroid-induced), where the record-books say you’re the home run king but everyone knows you’re not. To those part and parcel to this fraud, what have you really gained? A divided nation where half the country sees you as illegitimate. You cannot gain power through corrupt means and then expect the laws you use that power to impose on others to be adhered to. Why should the people follow the rules when the leaders have not? How can we expect the people to act with integrity when those in charge have not? The people will rally around a President they didn’t vote for only if they believe the process of electing him had been fair and legitimate. But if they don’t, they won’t because they will believe they were disenfranchised of their vote in the process. This is why going to the extreme to uphold the legitimacy of elections is the most paramount duty of our government, and in the 2020 election, it is a duty that our officials failed miserably at, and the damage caused may never be repaired. This election is not the end, it is only the beginning. Boris Yeltsin once said, “You can build a throne with bayonets, but you can’t sit on it for long.” Our future leaders will not be those picked by the will of the people, but will be those who can perpetrate the bigger fraud.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on Boris Yeltsin once said, “You can build a throne with bayonets, but you can’t sit on it for long.” Our future leaders will not be those picked by the will of the people, but will be those who can perpetrate the bigger fraud.
+ OMNIUM SANCTORUM + OMNIUM FIDELIUM DEFUNCTORUM +
In 2020, as in 2016 | Fr. Rutler: In this presidential election, we cannot be indifferent – one side is pro-life, the other is EVIL
In November 2016, we posted the column below by Fr. George Rutler — and it is even more pertinent today. After almost 4 years in the White House, President Donald J. Trump rewarded the confidence pro-lifers placed in him. In every possible measure that the Executive Branch can further (from discretionary funding to judicial appointments), President Trump has been the most pro-life president ever.
With a fake pro-abortion “Catholic” on the other side, faithful Christians have no choice other than voting for the reelection of the President.
***
FROM THE PASTOROctober 30, 2016by Fr. George W. Rutler On the Election Exactly eight years ago [2008] I wrote a column titled “The One We Were Waiting For” in which I referred to a book by Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, The Lord of the World. That dystopian novel has been cited by Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis said he has read it several times. The protagonist, if one can apply that term to an Anti-Christ, imposed a new world religion with Man himself as god. His one foe was Christianity, which he thwarted in part by using “compromised Catholics” and compliant priests to persuade timid Catholics. Since then, that program has been realized in our time, to an extent beyond the warnings of the most dire pessimists. Our federal government has intimidated religious orders and churches, challenging religious freedom. The institution of the family has been re-defined, and sexual identity has been Gnosticized to the point of mocking biology. Assisted suicide is spreading, abortions since 1973 have reached a total equal to the population of Italy, and sexually transmitted diseases are at a record high. Objective journalism has died, justice has been corrupted, racial bitterness ruins cities, entertainment is degraded, knowledge of the liberal arts spirals downwards, and authentically Catholic universities have all but vanished. A weak and confused foreign policy has encouraged aggressor nations and terrorism, while metastasized immigration is destroying remnant western cultures, and genocide is slaughtering Christian populations. The cynical promise of economic prosperity is mocked by the lowest rate of labor participation in forty years, an unprecedented number of people on food stamps and welfare assistance, and the largest disparity in wealth in over a century. In his own grim days, Saint Augustine warned against nostalgia: “The past times that you think were good, are good because they are not yours here and now.” The present time, however, might try even his confidence. Sands blow over the ruins of churches he knew in North Africa where the Cross is virtually forbidden. By a blessed irony, a new church is opened every day in formerly Communist Russia, while churches in our own formerly Christian nation are being closed daily. For those who bought into the seductions of politicians’ false hopes, there is the counsel of Walt Kelly’s character Pogo: “It’s always darkest before it goes pitch black.” It is incorrect to say that the coming election poses a choice between two evils. For ethical and aesthetic reasons, there may be some bad in certain candidates, but badness consists in doing bad things. Evil is different: it is the deliberate destruction of truth, virtue and holiness. While one may pragmatically vote for a flawed candidate, one may not vote for anyone who advocates and enables unmitigatedly evil acts, and that includes abortion. “In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to ‘take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or vote for it’” (Evangelium Vitae, 73). At one party’s convention, the name of God was excluded from its platform and a woman who boasted of having aborted her child was applauded. It is a grave sin, requiring sacramental confession and penance, to become an accomplice in objective evil by voting for anyone who encourages it, for that imperils the nation and destroys the soul. It is also the duty of the clergy to make this clear and not to shrink, under the pretense of charity, from explaining the Church’s censures. Wolves in sheep’s clothing are dangerous, but worse are wolves in shepherd’s clothing. While the evils foreseen eight years ago were realized, worse would come if those affronts to human dignity were endorsed again. In the most adverse prospect, God forbid, there might not be another free election, and soon Catholics would arrive at shuttered churches and vacant altars. The illusion of indifference cannot long be perpetuated by lame jokes and synthetic laughter at banquets, for there is handwriting on the wall.
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Bp. Barron hit with massive backlash after praising pro-LGBT Fr. James Martin
‘Fr. Martin is a winsome guide to all those who want to deepen their friendship with the Lord,’ Barron wrote.Sat Oct 31, 2020 – 1:51 pm EST
Los Angeles auxiliary bishop Robert Barron chaired the revision of the U.S. Bishops’ teaching on the death penalty in Baltimore, Md., June 2019. Lisa Bourne / LifeSiteNews
October 31, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — Bishop Robert Barron, an auxiliary bishop for Los Angeles and founder of the popular “Word on Fire” ministry, experienced a tsunami of criticism after praising pro-LGBT Fr. James Martin in an endorsement for the Jesuit’s new book about prayer.
“Delighted to share the final cover of ‘Learning to Pray: A Guide for Everyone,’ to be published in Feb by Harper One Books,” said Martin in a tweet which accompanies the galley proofs for the book’s cover.
A close inspection of the back cover reveals Bishop Barron’s personal praise for the Jesuit, long known for his dedication to normalizing homosexuality and transgenderism within the Catholic Church.
“Fr. Martin is a winsome guide to all those who want to deepen their friendship with the Lord,” wrote Barron.
Galley sheet back cover of Fr. James Martin’s new book, with Bishop Barron’s endorsement circled
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Backlash
Social media erupted with sharp backlash from orthodox Catholics decrying Barron’s support for Martin.
“Now that Barron has publicly endorsed a book on prayer by Fr. James Martin, he has absolutely no credibility for orthodox Catholics,” declared LifeSite columnist Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, an outspoken Thomistic theologian, liturgical scholar, author, and Church commentator, in a Facebook posting.
“This, friends, is a moment of God-given clarity,” continued Kwasniewski. “Barron, standing atop his media empire, brandishing a new Barronized Bible, has made the mistake of thinking he’s invincible.”
“This step clinches that he is in the charmed circle of [James] Martin, [Blase] Cupich, [Wilton] Gregory, [Theodore] McCarrick, et alia.”
“I am angry. But, more than that, I am so very sad,” wrote Fr. Richard Heilman, popular author and speaker. “It is now more clear than ever that the appeasement and compromise of our bishops to the ruling class and the purveyors of moral disintegration has been revealed to be endemic. This, while prelates do not blink an eye in castigating any holy and heroic priest who receives so much as one complaint from the Left.”
“As seen with Wilton Gregory and others, this kind of appeasement and compromise (recall he warmly invited Fr. James Martin to speak in his diocese) opens the pathway to elevation, under this pontificate,” noted Heilman.
“Bishop Barron is not your friend. See the signs and run far away,” urged Catholic author and marriage activist Leila Miller.
“I will warn people away from him regularly now. Enough is enough,” declaredMiller. “The faithful have had enough, and I am done being silent. Any complicity with James Martin is complicity with darkness.
“And to encourage people to READ any of Martin’s books, to put people on Martin’s trail, as if he were trustworthy, prayerful, ‘winsome’ — well, it’s a bridge too far (no pun intended),” she continued. “Asking slithery, disingenuous, LGBTQ-activist Martin to teach you how to pray is like asking the devil to teach you how to pray.”— Article continues below Petition —PETITION: Ask Pope Francis to clarify and rectify scandalous remarks on homosexual civil unions
“James Martin holds heretical views that are leading young men to burn,” tweeted Austin Ruse, pro-life activist, author, and founder of C-Fam. “No one, most of all a bishop should endorse his work on any topic.”https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-1&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1322550441847279617&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lifesitenews.com%2Fnews%2Fbp-barron-hit-with-massive-backlash-after-praising-pro-lgbt-fr-james-martin&siteScreenName=LifeSite&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px
Perhaps the most poignant — and most important — reaction came from Joseph Sciambra, a former gay porn actor who returned to the Church, despite having suffered sexual abuse from predatory homosexual priests.
My abuser: “You were born gay; God made you that way.”
James Martin: “God made you this way.”
[Pope] Francis: “God made you gay.”
In less than 40 years, the script used by predator priests has moved through the hierarchy — all the way up to the Pope.
Earlier this month, LifeSiteNews reported on Bishop Barron’s murky, equivocating commentary on what he described as the “intense dilemma” Catholics face with regard to their vote. The net result was to obscure the clear pro-life choices Catholics and other people of faith face in the presidential election which is already upon us.
“A Catholic in good conscience could never say that she will vote for Joe Biden because the Democrat is pro-choice, and by the same token, a Catholic in good conscience could never say that he will vote for Donald Trump because the Republican is for capital punishment,” asserted Barron.
“In the political calculus of a Catholic, opposition to abortion, euthanasia, and capital punishment should take pride of place,” said Barron, finally allowing that “the number of those threatened by abortion and euthanasia is far greater than the number of those under threat of capital punishment.”
Donald Trump, CounterrevolutionaryAgainst all the money and clout of America’s revolutionary forces, the counterrevolutionary Trump had only one asset, the proverbial people. By: Victor Davis HansonNovember 1, 2020 Until Donald Trump’s arrival, the globalist revolution was almost solidified and institutionalized—with the United States increasingly its greatest and most “woke” advocate. We know its bipartisan establishment contours. China would inherit the world in 20 or 30 years. The self-appointed task of American elites—many of whom had already been enriched and compromised by Chinese partners and joint ventures—was to facilitate this all-in-the-family transition in the manner of the imperial British hand-off of hegemony to the United States in the late 1940s. Our best and brightest like the Biden family, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Bill Gates, or Mark Zuckerberg would enlighten us about the “real” China, so we yokels would not fall into Neanderthal bitterness as they managed our foreordained decline. We would usher China into “the world community”—grimacing at, but overlooking the destruction it wrought on the global commercial order and the American interior. We would politely forget about Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, and the Uyghurs. Hollywood would nod as it put out more lucrative comic-book and cartoonish films for the Chinese markets, albeit with mandated lighter-skinned actors. The NBA would nod twice and trash a democratic United States, while praising genocidal China—becoming richer and more esteemed abroad to make up for becoming boring and poorer at home. The universities would nod three times, and see a crime not in Chinese espionage and security breaches, but in the reporting of them as crimes. So our revolutionary role would be to play stuffy and snooty Athenian philosophers to the new muscular Roman legions of China. Given our elites’ superior morality, genius, and sense of self, we would gently chide and cajole our Chinese masters into becoming enlightened world overseers and democrats—all the easier, the richer and more affluent Chinese became. For now, Trump has stopped that revolution. Internal Counter RevolutionsUntil Trump’s arrival, Big Tech was three-quarters home on the road to Nineteen Eighty-Four. Five or six companies monopolized most American—and indeed the world’s—access and use of the internet. In cynical fashion, Silicon Valley grandees patronized naïve conservatives that they were the supposed embodiment of Milton Friedman libertarianism and 19th century robber baron daring. Yet to their leftist kindred, the moguls of Menlo Park simultaneously whispered, “Don’t worry about such necessary disinformation: we will enrich only your candidates, only your agendas, only your foundations, only your universities—in exchange for your exemptions.” Antitrust legislation was as much an anathema to good liberals as rigging searches, institutionalizing the cancel culture, and censoring thoughts and ideas were welcomed. For now Trump, almost alone, is battling that revolution. Until Trump’s arrival, there was increasingly no border at all. Fifty-million foreign-born resided, both legally and illegally, in the United States. Nearly a million annually walked northward across the border with ease and without legal sanction or invitation. To object to illegal immigration and decry its deleterious effects on the entry-level wages of our working poor, on the social safety net of the American needy, and on the sanctity of the law was to be smeared as racist, xenophobic, and nativist. More than a quarter of California’s current resident population were not born in the United States. That desirous “new demography” since 1988 had flipped California into a caring blue state. Open borders and the end of immigration law enforcement had pushed Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado into just Democratic societies, and was supposedly soon to transform Texas and Arizona into enlightened states. For now, Trump—with his soon-to-be 400-mile wall, his beefed up ICE, and his war on sanctuary nullification zones—has nearly stopped the revolution to end borders. Until Trump, the American interior was loser country. In-between the two gilded coasts resided the deplorables, irredeemables, clingers, the smelly Walmart patrons decried in the Page-Strzok text echanges, those John McCain called “crazies,” and Joe Biden has variously called the “dregs,” the “chumps” and the “ugly folks.” They were written off as Morlocks, who were occasionally seen poking about the rotting, rusting skeletons of abandoned steel plants, and for some reason never had proper orthodontics as children. Obama laughed about the “magic wand” needed to revive these unrevivable people. Larry Summers reportedly called such an idea a “fantasy.” He was said to have praised the meritocracy that properly gives to such losers what they justly deserve. Very caring and very humane elites felt very little for supposedly very expendable riffraff.Translated, that meant on the eve of the Chinese takeover, our clueless deplorables never learned to code, or to borrow $200,000 to get a woke-studies education, and so deserved the opioids they took and the trailers they crashed in. Few apostates said, “Wait a minute! The United States has cheaper energy than anywhere on earth, a skilled workforce, a huge domestic market, and a still-viable infrastructure. There was a reason why Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania once led the world and why they can again.” Through tax reform, deregulation, trade rebooting, a new foreign policy, and loud jawboning, Trump for a while has stopped the revolution that was destroying our once greatest states. Until Trump, the woke cultural wars were just about won by the elites. Seeking unity was dead; chest-pounding diversity, often the spark that had ignited history’s multiracial societies, was ascendent. The melting pot that sought to make race incidental was deemed racist; the salad bowl that made our superficial appearances essential was celebrated. Quite affluent, self-appointed minority leaders, with their quite wealthy white liberal counterparts, established who is, and who “ain’t,” “really” black—the definition resting on whether one was loyally left-wing or disloyally independent-minded. The success of civil rights was not to be calibrated by black unemployment figures, household income, family businesses, dignity in having leverage over employers, access to competitive parochial and charter schools, or descending abortion rates, but in electing more activists as progressive mayors, liberal city councilmembers, and leftist district attorneys to garner more redistributive state money to hire more careerists like themselves. Trump, branded a bigot and racist, for now has sought to end that revolution, and measure race relations not by how many minority elites have choice jobs and high incomes, but by how well the entire minority community reaches income and employment parity with the general population—an idea that will earn the “racist” Trump far greater minority support than was expressed for John McCain and Mitt Romney. Can the Revolution Be Stopped?We are in the midst of a cultural revolution, for the most part driven by angry middle-and upper-class white youth of Antifa and its sympathizers, wannabes, and enablers. Many are humiliated that they have college pedigrees, lots of multi thousand-dollar debt, plenty of woke-studies classes to their credit, but still have no real jobs, no real knowledge, and no real immediate chances of buying a house, marrying, and raising a family in their 20s. Nothing in history is more dangerous than the underemployed wannabe intellectual or college graduate, whose cultivated sense of superiority is not matched by his income or standard of living, but who blames “them” for his own self-inflicted miseries and unappreciated genius. The revolution toppled statues, renamed what it did not like, Trotskyized the past, photoshopped the present, and used language, government, and cultural intimidation to do its best to make America into Animal Farm. Corporate CEOs in terror washed the feet of the woke. University presidents, fearful for their status and careers, wrote incomprehensible memos admitting their past sins and asking how best to do present penance. Hollywood studio owners promised race and gender quotas, with ample provisions that—in the manner of NBA and NFL owners—adjustments and exceptions could be worked out for themselves. Somewhere, somehow graduations, dorms, and campus spaces, all segregated by race, became “liberal.” Intermarriage, integration, and assimilation were shamefully illiberal. Standing for the National Anthem was unpatriotic; sitting in disdain for it, cool. Donald Trump fought that revolution too. What tools did Donald Trump have to wage these many counterrevolutions? The media? America’s Fortune 400? Academia? The great foundations? The nation’s think tanks? The bipartisan government establishment? The international community? The banks? Wall Street? Corporate CEOs? Silicon Valley? Professional sports? The entertainment industry? Hollywood? The intelligence community? The current and retired top military brass? In fact, none of them. All had joined or enabled the revolution, on the theory either that their wealth and influence would shield them and their own from its excesses, or like naïve Kerenskyites their status would impress and win over even those who targeted them, or they were inner revolutionaries themselves all along, just waiting to be freed at last by BLM and Antifa. Against all that money and clout, the counterrevolutionary Trump had only one asset, the proverbial people. He had solely the under-polled and the written-off. They came out to his rallies in the tens of thousands, deluded the pollsters, and told the media less than nothing, but voted and will vote in waves to save America from what it was becoming.
This is from an email that I received from my sister Lori in response to my earlier email about the guy who doesn’t know what state he is in or what he is running for or who he is running against or how to get his umbrella on to the plane before flying to the first debate in Ohio, but will be able to lead the nation and fix everything with the exception of his own family.
I’ve been turned off by Joe since I was a high school student in Delaware and had black classmates who were given scholarships to Padua since Joey B was blocking integration ofWilmington High Schools. I had friends who worked at Wanamakers complain about Jill coming in and buying up cocktail dresses for Washington events and returning them all after the parties were over. I have friends whose kids went to Archmere with the Biden kids and would tell stories of their bad behavior. By the way, I’ve never understood how they went to Archmere. It was expensive and Joe went from law school to New Castle County government to the Senate without working in private industry for more than a year or so. I don’t understand his pricey real estate holdings when his public tax returns during the Obama years always claimed a modest income. I could go on but we can all see the corruption surrounding this family. I feel badly that any human is dealing with cognitive decline but that does not earn my vote. I’ll stick with the man that 4 years of endless investigation has failed to discover anything worse than a penchant for tweeting, who has the courage to follow through with his promises, defend the right to life, and dances to YMCA with the same joy as our father once did!God bless our President! Lori
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In this message there is an error in the date of the first message to Father Gobbi. It should be June 11, 1988. My Blue Book ends with the message of December 31, 1997.
I read and enjoy the messages you send. It is hard to find truth today. Sometimes I feel very lost in today’s world. Thank you for providing some stability. At 79, I was educated in the pre Vatican II Church. I am happy to see that there is still Truth.
God Bless you and Archbishop Vigano.
Barb Garfield, Ryegate, MT
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By Doug Mainwaring
ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP 
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