THE MOYNIHAN LETTER This article contains the very moving story of one man’s sin, repentance and redemption. That man was Dr. Bernard Nathanson (1926-2011). He was arguably one of the most influential practitioners and proponents of abortion in the late 1960s into the 1970s. Then one day he saw a human baby in the womb moving in an ultrasound video. And he felt convicted that, despite all of the reasons that he had proposed in favor of abortion, that aborting human beings was morally wrong. And this conviction led him thereafter to become a powerful voice in favor of the right to life of the unborn. In the 1980s he was the narrator for the film “The Silent Scream.” And years later, as an old man, he told a young woman who came to interview him the story of his conversion and repentance. That woman was Terry Beatley, and this is her story of their encounter. The article appears in the October edition of Inside the Vatican magazine.  Robert Moynihan America’s “Abortion King” (Dr. Bernard Nathanson) and the “Catholic Strategy”Decades of Political Support for Abortion Began With This Sophisticated Propaganda Campaign By Terry T. Beatley with Clare Ruff At a prayer vigil in November 2009, I discerned the Lord asking me to interview Dr. Bernard Nathanson, the last surviving co-founder of NARAL — the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (late renamed NARAL Pro-Choice America). In the late 1960’s, Bernard Nathanson and Lawrence Lader crafted what they called the “Catholic Strategy,” later called “the most brilliant political strategy of all time.” It was a stealthy and effective scheme to destroy America’s historical protection of unborn life by undermining the spiritual authority of Divine Law and marginalizing the moral authority of the Catholic Church. As co-founders of NARAL, these two atheists deployed their Catholic Strategy with tactical precision and great efficacy. They were the pioneers of the sinister industry of abortion, which depended on political victory to deceive and destroy. And then a miracle of sorts happened, and Bernard Nathanson became immovably pro-life. I was daunted by the prospect of interviewing Dr. Nathanson, and even doubted its possibility, but I felt I was supposed to try. Tracking down his phone number via a pro-life attorney, I dialed with trepidation. His wife answered and explained that her 83-year-old husband was very frail from terminal cancer and had not granted an interview in over a year. But she instructed me to fax my letter of request, and promised to present it to her husband. A few days later she called to inform me that, much to her surprise, Dr. Nathanson had agreed to my request. On December 1, 2009, I flew to New York City to interview the man who trained Planned Parenthood how to kill children in the womb and who worked as Medical Director for the largest abortion center in the world, the Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health (CRASH). These credentials earned him the title “The Abortion King.” Yet, he was the same man who spent his final 35 years working tirelessly to undo what he had regrettably unleashed upon America: deceiving the courts, maligning clergy, manipulating the media, training doctors and crushing the souls of millions of mothers and fathers by stopping the beating hearts of their unborn children.  Dr. Nathanson meets US President Ronald Reagan (left); Dr. Nathanson and St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta (center); Dr. Nathanson meets Pope John Paul II (right) What Changed? In 1973, just a few months after celebrating the Roe v Wade decision, Dr. Nathanson witnessed for the first time a new technology: real-time ultrasound. He observed an unborn child in the womb — smiling, stretching, and wiggling her toes. He told me, “Real-time ultrasound was the bomb. It made everything come alive.” Science revealed the beauty, goodness and truth of life in this sacred space, demanding intellectual honesty from Dr. Nathanson; he had to acknowledge that abortion kills an existing human life, and admit that what he had been doing was morally wrong. In that moment, he realized he had two patients: the mother and her child. His job was to protect and save them both. In that moment, Dr. Nathanson’s pro-life journey began .  He spent two years persuading NARAL that real-time ultrasound exposed a major ethical and moral dilemma, but the organization cared little and would not alter its position.Dr. Nathanson resigned from NARAL on the second anniversary of Roe v Wade. In his resignation letter, addressed to Lawrence Lader (left), he wrote: “The judgments of the Supreme Court were never meant to be infallible or eternal. And what if we’ve been wrong – if the Court should soon reverse itself on the abortion issue in the light of changing times and/or new scientific evidence? What an incalculable injustice will have been perpetrated. What an immeasurable, irretrievable loss will have been suffered. The annual dues to NARAL are ten dollars a year and the hubris of certainty. I can no longer afford those dues.” By 1979, the father of America’s abortion industry had become 100% pro-life – without exceptions. The industry, in his words, grew “fecklessly out of control.” And fueling it was NARAL’s Catholic Strategy.Following his defection from the abortion industry, Dr. Nathanson suffered nearly a decade of depression, frequently contemplating suicide, until he crossed paths with a priest who introduced him to the love and mercy of Jesus Christ. On December 8, 1996, America’s “Abortion King” was baptized at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, and was made new in Christ as a Child of Light. Background: My Promise As I sat beside Dr. Bernard Nathanson in the interview he had granted me, listening to his great remorse for orchestrating and leading the war on America’s unborn children, I felt a deep sense of empathy. He was too ill to get his message out anymore, which compelled me to make him an offer: if he had a message for America, I would deliver it across the country until it became common knowledge – or until Roe v Wade was overturned.In a thin, raspy voice weakened by his illness, but coupled with a slight twinkle of hope in his eyes, he responded, “Yes, yes…Continue teaching about the strategy I used to deceive America, but also deliver this special message. Tell America that the co-founder of NARAL says to ‘Love one another. Abortion is not love. Stop the killing. The world needs more love. I’m all about love now.’” I reached over and shook his feeble hand, promising that one day America would hear his story — and his important message.The non-profit pro-life organization I founded, named Hosea Initiative, is committed to revealing this vital piece of American history to the public. Our informal polling shows that more than 90% of our predominantly pro-life, Catholic audience lacks awareness of Bernard N. Nathanson’s “Saul-to-Paul” conversion or NARAL’s Catholic Strategy. This is essential information for Catholics walking into the voting booth this November 3. The “Opposition Element” NARAL successfully united a fractured pro-abortion movement and aggressively lobbied for the overturn of a 140-year-old New York law which protected infants from abortion. When Governor Nelson Rockefeller signed liberal pro-abortion legislation into law in April 1970, New York City became the nation’s abortion epicenter. Only nine months later, NARAL’s Executive Committee assembled for an emergency meeting to discuss a grave risk to their blossoming abortion crusade. An increasing number of infants were born alive following second-trimester saline abortions. Executive Director Lawrence Lader showed no empathy for these salt-burned infants. He expressed just the opposite. Dr. Nathanson described Lader’s response in his post-conversion book, The Abortion Papers: Inside the Abortion Mentality (1983): “[He] saw these abortion survivors as an embarrassment to NARAL and was concerned that the press had made much of them and that the opposition elements were seizing upon them as a tactic in the abortion wars.”(p. 177) Who Was the Most Feared “Opposition Element”? The Roman Catholic Church The Catholic Church was NARAL’s primary opposition due to its long-standing, uncompromising doctrine regarding the sanctity of human life. While the Anglican Church reversed its position on contraception at the 1930 Lambeth Conference and other Protestant denominations followed, Rome held its position against contraception and abortion as destructive moral evils against God’s gift of life. For a deeper understanding of the genesis of NARAL’s response to Catholic opposition, look to Lawrence Lader’s 1966 book Abortion, where he identifies the Catholic hierarchy as “a force inimical” to what he called “legalized abortion — the final freedom.” Nathanson says Lader shows his true colors and the level of his vitriol against the Catholic Church in the sequel, Abortion II: Making the Revolution. In it, Lader names individuals with their religious affiliation (most Catholic) only if they did not support his agenda. (Interestingly, the current “cancel culture” phenomenon mirrors tactics from NARAL’s playbook.) Naral’s Religious War Together, Lader and Nathanson executed an all-out, anti-Catholic religious war: Anti-Catholic warp was a central strategy, a keystone of the abortion movement. It was, in a sense, the self-fulfilling prophecy: knowing that the Catholic Church would vigorously oppose abortion, we laced the campaign with generous dollops of anti-Catholicism, and once the monster was lured out of the cave in response to the abortion challenge and the nakedly biased line, we could make the Catholic Church the point man of the opposition. The more vigorously the church opposed, the stronger the appeal of the anti-Catholic line became to the liberal media, to the northeastern political establishment, to the leftist elements of the Protestant Church, and to the Catholic intellectuals themselves. (The Abortion Papers, p.196)A copy of the magazine of Margaret Sanger, the founder of the Birth Control Federation of America Lader also modeled his anti-Catholic bigotry after the queen of racism and eugenics, Margaret Sanger, the founder of the Birth Control Federation of America (later renamed Planned Parenthood). She started her dirty deeds in 1916 as a fallen-away Catholic whose socialist father taught her to despise the Church. In the early 1920s, she strategically pitted Protestants against Catholics over the issue of contraception.By 1939, she launched the “Negro Project,” an aggressive plan to reduce the black race by pushing birth control and sterilization onto minority communities under the guise of women’s health care. In the late 1950s, she led the charge for a little white pill which fueled an era of unfettered promiscuity and out-of-wedlock births. Then, she passed the baton of abhorrence of the Catholic Church to Lader, her biographer and admirer, who soon thereafter partnered with Nathanson to form NARAL.  Dr. Nathanson explained that NARAL braced itself for a response, especially from the Catholic hierarchy. But none came. And it only fueled NARAL’s confidence and purpose.What continually surprised us in the planning sessions and strategy meetings at NARAL was not only the comparatively mild quality of the organized Catholic opposition, but also the virtual absence of response to what was blatantly an anti-Catholic campaign. (Ibid., p.190)  Later, writing with a heavy heart, Nathanson described the tactics as morally detestable, with no modern parallel. He was convinced that “there has been, then, no social change in American history as sweeping, as potent in American family life, or as heavily dependent upon an anti-religious bias for its success as the abortion movement.” (Ibid., p. 197) The efficacy of NARAL’s Catholic Strategy helps explain why the vast majority of current U.S. Senators who identify as Roman Catholics consider themselves “pro-choice” and voted against the “Twenty-week Fetal Pain Bill,” which would have banned abortions from 20 weeks gestation onward, as well as the “Abortion Survivor Infant Protection Act,” which would have guaranteed, by law, health care to babies who survive attempted abortion.(article continued below)Hosea Initiative WebinarThe Catholic StrategyThe Abortion Industry’s War on ReligionSaturday, October 17, 2020 8:00 p.m. ESTTo register and for more information: https://www.hosea4you.org/ The Catholic Strategy Like wartime strategists, NARAL’s Executive Committee stealthily devised four primary points of attack against their leading opposition, the Catholic Church.First: Blame and Accuse the Hierarchy Cardinals, bishops and clergymen were targeted relentlessly by the NARAL team. Every time a woman was maimed or died from complications of illegal abortion, NARAL never accused the physician of malpractice, but blamed the hierarchy and Church opposition to legal abortion. Every press conference, editorial, or published article linked the name of a clergyman with social ills or women’s woes.The blame game included an endless indictment of Church leaders for starting a religious war, abusing tax-exempt status and even attempting to overturn the Bill of Rights!Nathanson explained: “The anti-Catholic tactic was… central to the maintenance of unity within the High Command of the movement. In providing a palpable, visible opposition it allowed those of us setting policy and devising a strategy to occupy ourselves with the enemy. We were kept too busy to contemplate in any critical way the quintessential brutality of permissive abortion. There was always another bishop to denounce, another pastoral letter to be rebutted, another cardinal to excoriate.” (Ibid., p. 197) Second: Support and Campaign for Catholic Pro-abortion Candidates NARAL recognized and praised Catholic politicians who publicly expressed a softened stance on abortion. It assisted legislators with election campaigns, grassroots efforts, and financial support, regardless of party affiliation. As long as the candidate embraced legalized abortion, s/he was a candidate for NARAL’s backing. Using the complicit media, NARAL made it appear times were changing, and “pro-choice” politicians were the new majority. NARAL understood the power of perception. Third: Split and Set Catholics Against Each Other The Time magazine cover devoted to Pope Paul VI on the publication of his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae NARAL recognized that John and Jacqueline Kennedy were models of the modern, enlightened twentieth-century Catholic, thinking for themselves “without obeisance to church dogma.” NARAL’s strategists, formed mostly of atheists and former Jews, recognized two categories of Catholic faithful: the well-educated, fashionable “Kennedy Catholics,” and blue-collar, conservative Catholics, only one generation removed from immigration. NARAL fueled divisiveness within the Catholic Church, pitting liberal against conservative Catholics. As Dr. Nathanson recounted it, everything was in place “for the portrayal of the Catholic Church as a political force, for the use of anti-Catholicism as a political instrument, and for the manipulation of Catholics themselves by splitting them and setting them against each other.” (Ibid., p. 181)The leap from practicing contraception to supporting legalized abortion proved an easy one.  Fourth: Execute the Straddle Perhaps the most common and effective tool in the NARAL strategy toolbox was ‘the Straddle’: a separation of religious conviction from legislative judgment. Nathanson wrote that it was first proposed to the Board by “such notables as Robert Drinan, SJ, and Richard Cardinal Cushing.” (Ibid., p. 177)“To maintain their appearance as enlightened and progressive while still retaining their bona fides as Catholics, we provided [Kennedy Catholics] with the now classic ‘straddle’ for Catholics in public positions: abortion is personally abhorrent, but everyone must be free to make their own choice. Now we were ready to use them to call over the more traditional, less trendy Catholics to our cause.” (Ibid., p.181)  Of course, substitute “slavery” for “abortion” and few would agree that one person can find slavery personally abhorrent while others are free to choose whether or not to own slaves. Yet, it’s a refrain we’ve heard for decades in politics. Dr. Nathanson prophetically warned that, as long as abortion is legal, there would be increased violence, increased public turmoil and the disintegration of the American family. These bitter fruits are everywhere apparent.  I believe the abortion ethic is fatally and forever flawed by the immorality of the means of its victory. A political victory achieved by such odious tactics is at best an unstable tyranny spawned by an unscrupulous and unprincipled minority. At the very least this disclosure of those odious tactics should compel those who are uneasy with permissive abortion to re-examine the issue. “I believe that an America which permits a junta of moral thugs to foist an evil of incalculable dimensions upon it, and continues to permit that evil to flower, creates for itself a deadly legacy: a millennium of shame. (Ibid., p. 209)” This powerful quote of Dr. Nathanson’s is one of my favorites. It reveals how intimately he understood the diabolic industry. Abortion does not simply “happen” as civilizations evolve; it is created with evil intent. Dr. Nathanson wanted every bishop, priest and Catholic layperson to know how they were deliberately exploited, and be motivated to act in defense of their Faith and the sanctity of every human life. It’s time to challenge the anti-Catholic bias which marginalizes the prophetic voice of the Church. Pivotal in this effort is the courage to elect pro-life leaders with the power to reverse the ebbing tide of pro-life legislation. It’s time to abort our “millennium of shame.” Terry T. Beatley (below, top) is President of the Hosea Initiative and author of What If We’ve Been Wrong? Keeping My Promise to America’s  “Abortion King.”  Clare Ruff (below, bottom) is Hosea Initiative’s Vice-President of Events and Outreach.

REVIEW-JOURNAL ENDORSEMENT:President of the United StatesLas Vegas Review-Journal October 3, 2020  We may tend to forget during these tumultuous times that the vast majority of Americans in this great nation go about their lives focused on work, family, friends and other daily challenges rather than attuned to the crescendo of apocalysm that overwhelms today’s political discourse. They well understand that this country has room for improvement — and, indeed, must improve — but they don’t clamor for revolution, or to repudiate the republic’s founding, or to dismantle the political, social and cultural institutions that have made the United States the most successful state in world history.  The partisans on both sides will cast their ballots, yes. But this election will turn on the quiet, pragmatic voters in the middle, many of whom recoil at the impulsive and often distasteful rhetoric of President Donald Trump but also fret about the Democratic Party’s rapid leftward lurch and whether Joe Biden has the spirit, energy and desire to stand up to the progressive gale or whether he’ll collapse in its path like a rickety screen door.  On Friday, the campaign was disrupted with the news that Mr. Trump and the first lady had tested positive for the coronavirus. We and the nation wish them a speedy and complete recovery. The president has been a picture of vim and vigor during his first term, and he will need a similar spirit to deal with the challenges ahead.  Mr. Trump entered the Oval Office in 2017 promising to be a disrupting force, to upend Beltway norms. Mission accomplished.  In return, he has faced a shockingly hostile media elite rushing to bury objectivity in service to social media blather and the endless loop of the cable TV news cycle.  But for all of Mr. Trump’s 2 bluster and braggadocio, his domestic policy record has been quite traditional — and successful. Voters interested in accomplishments should take notice .  The most pressing matter facing Nevada and the nation in coming months, and even years, will be the resurrection of the economy post-pandemic. Mr. Trump’s record on job creation and economic growth speaks for itself.  Mr. Biden disingenuously blames the current administration for the economic downturn, implying that Mr. Trump had the power to stop a worldwide pandemic. That’s desperate nonsense. Prior to the lockdowns, U.S. growth was more consistently robust than it had been in years and wages were continuing their upward trend for workers.  Credit Mr. Trump’s bold tax and regulatory reforms for helping unleash the nation’s entrepreneurial forces. And for all the chatter on the left about “economic inequality,” a Federal Reserve report published last week reveals that, under Mr. Trump, “families near the bottom of the income and wealth distributions generally continued to experience substantial gains” between 2016 and 2019. The economy under Mr. Trump also produced record low unemployment, particularly for African Americans and Hispanics.  Expanding opportunity, not progressive prescriptions of wealth redistribution, remains the key to reducing inequality, and Mr. Trump has delivered in that regard.  It’s also worth noting that, while the president’s vocal critics delight in tarring him as a bigot, it was Mr. Trump who in 2018 signed the First Step Act, a bipartisan milestone in criminal justice reform that shortened prison terms for thousands of nonviolent federal inmates and led to commutations for thousands of others, many of them minorities.  Mr. Trump’s foreign policy achievements have been no less impressive. In 2017, he fulfilled a signature campaign promise and recognized Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. A year later, he relocated the U.S. Embassy there, preferring actions where previous presidents had only offered empty pledges.  Just last month, the administration finalized an historic agreement, normalizing relations between Israel and Bahrain and Israel and the United Arab Emirates, the first such deal involving a major Arab nation in decades.  Mr. Trump’s unconventional style of diplomacy has defied his critics’ projections. The president’s pressure on NATO has forced a much-needed discussion about the financial obligations of member nations and has produced results.  He refuses to downplay aggressive Chinese overreach and defused tensions with North Korea. While his trade policies overlook the value of free commerce between nations, he has been a forceful advocate for American interests across the globe. ISIS is a shadow of its former self and Iran faces increasing pressure to conform with civilized norms.  Back at home, Mr. Trump’s brightest achievement will also be his most enduring. He has appointed two stellar Supreme Court justices, with a third headed for likely confirmation. The Senate has approved nearly 200 of the president’s judicial nominees — judges with a strong allegiance to the concepts embedded in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and who stand as potentially the last line of defense against progressive extremism. A second Trump term would ensure scores of similarly minded nominees.  Meanwhile, Mr. Biden seeks to make this race about presidential character, although he quickly veered off the high road during last week’s debate. This theme appeals to independent voters afflicted with Trump fatigue and eager to believe that Mr. Biden will govern as a moderate, providing an antidote to administration drama. But the president didn’t create this hyper-partisan climate, he is a product of it.  Mr. Biden has already disavowed a host of positions he staked out less than a generation ago and couldn’t even bring himself to condemn property destruction, violence and looting until just recently. That should leave undecided voters skeptical about his ability to withstand intense pressure from a far-left flank seeking to tear down rather than build up; preaching inclusion but practicing intimidation and ostracism; extolling diversity but demanding conformity and obedience; and calling for introspection but exuding sanctimonious moral certainty.  For all his flaws, Donald J. Trump stands in forceful contrast to the relentless progressive attacks on this nation that deny and minimize the advances we have made over the decades to better reflect and honor our founding ideals.  We must continue moving forward, that can’t be denied. But we must do so while embracing rather than destroying the principles of liberty and freedom that have made the United States a beacon for the rest of the world. Mr. Trump appreciates this while offering an economic vision well-suited to helping the country rebound from this pandemic. He deserves a second term. Email Link  https://conta.cc/3d1NStA RIP MCINTOSH

The Full Crowley; Whether these journalists know it or not, in the American mind they are already retired before they have even retired .By Victor Davis Hanson October 4, 2020 In the second presidential election debate between President Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on October 16, 2012, CNN moderator Candy Crowley sensed that Obama, coming off a dismal initial September 26 debate, was again floundering.  Romney was driving home the valid point that the Obama Administration had inadequately prepared the American mission in Benghazi for likely terrorist attacks. And such laxity resulted in a horrific attack and the deaths of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador.  Yet in the wake of the attacks, Team Obama denied that the killing of four Americans was indeed an act of terror. Instead, it fed the public a transparently but politically correct false narrative of a spontaneous riot in reaction to a video posted by a purported right-wing Egyptian residing on American soil.  Yet in the debate, Obama retorted: “The day after the attack, governor, I stood in the Rose Garden and I told the American people and the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened. That this was an act of terror and I also said that we’re going to hunt down those who committed this crime.”  Romney pounced: “You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack it was an act of terror? It was not a spontaneous demonstration—is that what you’re saying? I want to make sure we get that for the record because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.”   Romney was correct. Obama took two weeks before he eventually jettisoned his administration’s concocted “spontaneous demonstrations” party line that his subordinates—Susan Rice in particular, to her eternal embarrassment—had been peddling to the American people.  Yet in the debate, Obama flailed with a weak, “Get the transcript.” In truth, Obama in his comments after the attack had simply offered, “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for”—a deliberate effort not to name Benghazi specifically in the context of a terrorist act.    Obama did not, as he was finally forced to do two weeks later, tie specifically the Benghazi deaths to the premeditated attacks of radical Islamic terrorists. No matter. Moderator Crowley jumped in with her instant fact-check: “He did, in fact, sir. So, let me—let me call it an act of terror.”  Obama was delighted for the reprieve and wagged with delight at the coming out of his debate partner, “Can you say that a little louder, Candy?” On cue, she obsequiously complied, “He did call it an act of terror.”    In other words, Crowley became a real-time, partisan fact-checker, rather than a moderator—but of a peculiar sort that did not fully assume her new role until Obama himself was desperate for a bailout.     Crowley’s crazy logic apparently was that Obama really had meant Benghazi when he deliberately talked only in vague terms about generic acts of terror shortly after the attack, but then for the next two weeks nonetheless had allowed his subordinates to float the trial balloon of an alternate reality video, before giving it up when the evidence made peddling that fiction impossible.  For much of the debate, Crowley had further tried to massage a comeback for Obama after his disastrous first outing. She cut Romney off far more frequently than she did Obama. She alone had picked the townhall questioners.  And the questions they posed were mostly asymmetrical, such as the following one addressed to Romney: “I do attribute much of America’s economic and international problems to the failings and missteps of the Bush Administration. Since both of you are Republicans, I fear the return to the policies of those years should you win this election. What is the biggest difference between you and George W. Bush, and how do you differentiate yourself from George W. Bush?”  In the debate’s aftermath, Obama supporters crowed; Romney sulked that Crowley had hijacked the debate. And Crowley was never asked to moderate anything important again.  CNN offered various defenses. But, in fact, Crowley’s career more or less ended that night and two years later she went into retirement, her finale forever a reminder of what not to do as a debate moderator and an example of media bias.  Why Not Lose Nobly?  Something similar occurred with Fox News moderator Chris Wallace in the first debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.  Like Crowley, he lost control of the debate. And similarly, much of the crosstalk grew out of Wallace’s asymmetrical “prove you are not guilty” questioning.  Wallace’s gotcha technique was to spur the candidates with a “scandal” question to rev them up, and then after two minutes, abruptly and vainly try to cut them off—as if to spur and whip a bronco and then demand on command that the infuriated horse stop his obnoxious bucking.  Trump, in the manner of Mitt Romney in 2012, was the more frequent debate interrupter, furious likewise about the similar imbalance of both the questions and the moderator’s call for order. For much of the night, Wallace grimaced as he asked Biden to explain a few misdemeanors while demanding Trump defend his presumed felonies.  And Wallace seemed stunned that Trump did not conduct himself as Romney had in 2012 with Crowley—like a philosophical pilot muttering “such is life,” as his sabotaged and powerless plane nose-dived into the oblivion below.  Financial scandals? Wallace zeroed in on the Trump tax returns, the media scandal du jour—without a word about Hunter Biden’s also breaking story of pocketing $3.5 million from the wife of the ex-mayor of Moscow even as his father was vice president. Could he not have at least mentioned such “Russian collusion”?  Race? It was not surprising that Wallace did not ask Biden why he has a habitual habit of denigrating blacks, with his riffs like “you ain’t’ black,” “junkie,” and the Corn Pop yarns. Instead, Wallace went back decades to an obscure Biden “predator” quote and then did not press Biden much when he simply stonewalled.  When Wallace, learning and forgetting nothing, turned to Trump on race, he dug up his own old 2016 debate question. And again, Wallace deliberately edited the Charlottesville quote by truncating Trump’s explicit condemnation of white supremacists and Klansmen. Wallace, for the nth time, was trying to force Trump to confess that he condemns white supremacists, in always a new way different from the various times Trump had done so in the past—reminding us that Wallace’s aim was not to find the answer but to continue to raise the question.  One might suggest Wallace was going the full “when did you stop beating your wife” routine—except our corrupt media had already ruined that old trope, by actually previously suggesting in June 2018 that the first lady may have been tardy in returning to work after an operation, in order to hide bruises from her abusive presidential husband.  When Wallace turned on Trump on the matter of honoring the verdict of the election, he honed in again on Trump’s past worries and statements about voter fraud and irregularities endangering the sanctity of the voter.  Fine. But the obvious parallel question to Biden was to ask what he was doing in the Oval Office when, in January 2017, the Obama Administration plotted to take out the national security advisor designate? If Wallace was worried about honoring the protocols of elections and transfer of power, then surely he might have asked Biden why, on his vice-presidential watch, were the FBI, Justice Department, and CIA weaponized and used to spread the fraudulent Steele dossier (paid for by Hillary Clinton and now known to have been mostly fantasies, cooked up by the huckster Steele drawing on a Russian operative working at the liberal Brookings Institution), to destroy a campaign, a transition, and a president? Instead, silence.  But if Romney chattered in crosstalk as Crowley indulged Obama, Trump, as his way, thundered at Wallace’s similar indulgence of Biden. A miffed Romney went out quietly, an enraged Trump roared and stayed put.  Outfoxed  The other day at a press conference, another Fox reporter, White House correspondent John Roberts, let loose with yet another demand that Trump condemn white supremacy—the domestic twin to the monotonous Russian collusion hoax questioning.  Roberts insisted that Trump provide a “definitive and unambiguous” denunciation for the thousandth time, as if observers were ignorant that continually asking the same question after receiving answers deemed unwelcome is not about discovering the truth, but virtue-signaling the smearing, as in, “Will you finally assert that you are not now and never have been a Communist?”  The more Trump hammers Putin—more sanctions, deadly weapons sent to Ukraine, Russian mercenaries killed in Syria, beefed-up NATO and Pentagon budgets, cheap U.S. oil crashing Russia’s main source of revenue, damning the German-Russian pipeline, getting out of ossified missile treaties, and the more Trump is exonerated by the inspector general, congressional inquiries, and the Mueller report—the more he is accused of Putin collusion.  So too, the more Trump denies he is a white supremacist, and the more his economic agenda is geared to offering minorities economic empowerment, fair drug sentencing, inner-city charter schools and help for black colleges, the more virulent the supremacist questioning. The obvious psychological diagnosis is that those who once canonized Obama’s Russian reset or said nothing as Biden talked down to and insulted blacks, the more they project these pathologies onto Trump.  Roberts droned on like a North Korean reeducation camp inquisitor, rephrasing ad nauseam the same demand for a false confession. In answering, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnaney blew him out of the water. Unlike Roberts, she came equipped with all sorts of citations not just noting Trump’s prior denunciations of supremacists, but by doing so in such detail to reveal Roberts’ own obsessions.  Afterward, there were natural social media push backs against Roberts, and in response he melted down on live TV, snapping, “For all of you on Twitter who are hammering me for asking the question, I don’t care. Stop deflecting. Stop blaming the media. I’m tired of it.” Was that the news?  A crusading journalist grows tired of that tiny pushback? Roberts apparently is unable to endure a fraction of the bothersome questioning of motives that he so doggedly has imputed to others. Roberts is a distinguished journalist. But he will now be mostly remembered for his press conference puerile petulance and later meltdown. His hysterias reflect only agendas, not a desire for truth. He likes hitting others but has a glass jaw. And he offers a reminder to us that the beltway gotcha media is narcissistic, adolescent, and incestuous. Who could trust such people to report the news dispassionately?  Media Medical Madness  When Trump was diagnosed with COVID-19, the media went berserk with all sorts of unhinged themes: did not Trump deserve the infection due to his recklessness (as if the 210,000 dead or CNN’s Chris Cuomo earned by their recklessness their infections, too?) Would not the virus make Trump now eat crow? Would he step down? Would he bow out of the debate? Was the confirmation hearing for Amy Coney Barrett over before it could even begin?  Amid that hysteria, what was Wallace’s post facto reaction to his moderator’s role at the debate?  He blamed Trump alone for the melee, never reexamined his own asymmetrical questioning, and seemed incapable of self-examination of his Crowley-like passive-aggressive performance.  Just hours after Trump had tested positive for COVID-19, a now-Dr. Wallace went on a tear, diagnosing about why and how Trump was infected—without any iota of information about the severity of the infection, its prognosis, or how exactly a number of officials, many at the Amy Coney Barrett open-air White House reception, seem likewise later to have become sickened, masks or no masks. In animated tones (“Wear the damn mask!”) an increasingly flustered Wallace variously blamed, in unhinged Don Lemon-fashion, Trump’s infection on his own laxity in not always wearing a mask. He insinuated that the White House might not be forthcoming with accurate news. He castigated White House advisor Scott Atlas as incompetent on grounds he lacked a specialization in epidemiology.  In other words, with no information, no facts, and no expertise, Dr. Wallace was now judge, jury, and executioner pontificating about why the president was singularly culpable for his own medical fate—apparently unlike the similarly infected millions worldwide, and the thousands of local, state, and federal government officials who have been sickened, including many senators and over a dozen congressional representatives. Did they all meet their fates because, on occasion, they brought it on themselves by not wearing a mask? Or were they without masks because they saw Trump sometimes on TV without one? When, after a poor public performance that has lasting consequences, a marquee journalist hits the airways to perform an encore performance of errors, to meltdown childishly, to replay his prior blunders in self-interested fashion, and to protest the unfairness of his self-created debacle, and by his continued obsessions proves that indeed his critics are correct that he is obsessed, then he has gone the full Crowley—with all that such a fate entails. Whether these journalists know it or not, in the American mind they are already retired before they have even retired. Email Link   https://conta.cc/2I19hHS

OCTOBER 6, 2020

The Unreality of Joe Biden

AUGUSTE MEYRAT

Perhaps the nicest thing that could be said about the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden was that it was a mess.

This takeaway from the debate misses the bigger point that Republicans and conservatives need to see: the Democrats are following a script and it’s completely at odds with reality. The existence and endless perpetuation of this script is why Trump was so aggressive, why Wallace was so defensive, and why Biden was mostly irrelevant. Overturning this script will be the key to winning this election and saving the country.

Each segment of the debate acted as a part of the script, starting with the first segment that was supposed to be about appointing a new U.S. Supreme Court justice. The Democrat script frames this constitutional and normal act as undemocratic and wrong. Biden said that Americans should vote this November and that next year’s senators and president should appoint a new justice.

Trump immediately pointed out that a vote already happened four years prior and that this was his responsibility to those constituents. He added that his appointee, Amy Coney Barrett, is truly beyond reproach. This issue isn’t inherently controversial, except that Democrats insist on making it so. Then Biden refused to answer whether he would pack the court or not, indicating he probably would. Ignoring this and shushing Trump, Wallace moved on.https://secureaddisplay.com/i/view/js/?Viewable=0&isMobile=0&AULU=31049420180502T2200289306460AB42454C400A8A16937CB3EB93D7&cb=1601994911445&ccvid=1043918528&pvid=2065657952

Concerning the economy, Chris Wallace stepped up to debate Trump and deliver the lines of the Democrat script, which casts Trump as the lucky beneficiary of a booming economy from Obama.

Wallace let Biden repeat the lie that Trump wrecked a perfectly good economy which he had helped create as vice president. He neglected to mention that Covid-19 shutdowns—some of which are still enforced—were the sole cause of this. Trump tried to make this point but was called out for interrupting.

On the issue of Covid-19, Biden recited the lines of the script that attributes each and every death to Trump. If Trump had only taken the virus more seriously—whatever that means—he could have saved all those people. Wallace conveniently never asked for details on this. It is simply accepted as obvious that Democrats would have listened to experts and made all the right moves, unlike Trump.

Trump was clear about the many things he did and the precautions he took, but this will never be enough. There should have been more mask mandates, more panic, and more shutdowns.

Concerning law and order, Democrats believe that the riots and looting that are happening in cities are due to violent extremists on both the right and left. Furthermore, they believe that crime has been rising in all cities, not just Democrat-controlled cities.

Before Trump could even respond to this, Wallace asked him to make yet another official denunciation against white supremacists (while Biden was let off the hook for not calling out Antifa). Some conservatives insist Trump should have obliged, but this would have only validated faulty premises. White supremacists are not behind the rioting and looting, and the rise in crime is directly caused by the Democrats’ antipathy to law enforcement.

On the related point of defunding the police Wallace again interjected, claiming that police won’t be defunded; rather, they will be supported by counselors who will deescalate potentially violent encounters. Biden nodded along with this, ignoring the understandable resentment of all law enforcement. When Trump mentioned Biden’s lack of support from the police associations, Wallace shushed him again and moved on.

This brought up race relations. According to Democrats, systemic racism is real and Critical Race Theory is just the tool to alleviate this problem. Also, they think Donald Trump is a racist.

Perhaps Trump could have been more eloquent in his response, but he is right to insist that these trainings are anti-American and racist in themselves. To this, Wallace—again, not Biden—nonetheless stubbornly maintained that this was just “racial sensitivity” training.

Somewhere towards the end of the debate, the issue of wildfires and climate change came up. Democrats truly believe that climate change, not poor forest management, is the cause of wildfires. If only the U.S. had stayed with the Paris Climate Accords and never burned coal, these fires wouldn’t be happening.

For his part, Trump believed in an “immaculate” environment, but corrected the idea that climate change caused the forest fires. It was a lack of proper forest management, plain and simple. This didn’t stop Wallace from asking him to solemnly swear to acknowledge climate change.

Somewhere in this part of the script there was mention of the Green New Deal, which reflects the Democrats’ collective wisdom on climate change. Trump mentioned this in some detail, but little did he know that Wallace and Biden edited out the more extreme elements. It’s unclear what the Biden plan is for the environment, but he assured Americans that it will create jobs and be relatively inexpensive.

Finally, the debate ended with the segment on election integrity and the candidates’ willingness to concede. For Democrats, there seems to be little doubt that the ballots will be submitted and counted faithfully and that Trump will refuse to leave if he loses. There is no evidence for either claim, but this is the script, and they will keep repeating it until it’s true.

Trump again had to remind everyone that ballot fraud is real, unsolicited mail-in ballots don’t work, and that getting the results for this election will be complete chaos. Unfortunately, Wallace downplayed it, and Biden was about to fall asleep at this point.

Upon review, it is evident that this debate was meant to perpetuate the Democrat script. This is why Wallace intervened, why Trump interrupted, and why Biden never bothered to explain himself. Any time the debate drifted away from the script, Wallace quickly brought it back. Democrats must continue believing that Trump singlehandedly causes all forms of strife in the world, that Democrats are mostly honest, and that climate change and racism are America’s greatest problems.

Trump did his best to confront the script. The debate was probably the first time most Democrat voters even heard that voter fraud is an issue, that forest fires result from poor forest management, that Critical Race Theory is racist and anti-American, that leftist violence is real, that Russian collusion and the impeachment were unfounded hoaxes, that Hunter Biden repeatedly cashed in on his father’s name and called members of military “stupid bastards,” or that Obama was not a very good president.

Conservatives, most of whom knew about these things and had been following them already, need to help the president and share these uncomfortable truths with Democrat voters, particularly Catholics, and help them realize what they are supporting. Most of them are never allowed to know. But Trump is only one person and can only do so much. So long as each party keeps to its own echo chambers and no one questions a script that threatens American Christians and conservatives, these debates will continue to frustrate everyone and perpetuate immoral and false narratives.

[Photo credit: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images]

Tagged as 2020 election, Donald J. Trump, Joe Bidenhttps://www.facebook.com/v2.10/plugins/like.php?action=like&app_id=485814248461205&channel=https%3A%2F%2Fstaticxx.facebook.com%2Fx%2Fconnect%2Fxd_arbiter%2F%3Fversion%3D46%23cb%3Df2fb6e8c9750b52%26domain%3Dwww.crisismagazine.com%26origin%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.crisismagazine.com%252Ff307596c5ec9166%26relation%3Dparent.parent&container_width=660&href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.crisismagazine.com%2F2020%2Fthe-unreality-of-joe-biden&layout=button_count&locale=en_US&sdk=joey&share=true&show_faces=false74

By Auguste Meyrat

Auguste Meyrat is an English teacher and department chair in north Texas. He has a BA in Arts and Humanities from University of Texas at Dallas and an MA in Humanities from the University of Dallas.

CRISIS MAGAZINE

https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/5075-interview-by-francesco-boezi-with-archbishop-carlo-maria-vigano

Thursday, October 1, 2020

Interview by Francesco Boezi with Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò

Written by  Francesco Boezi

Archbishop Viganò, why did you write a letter in favor of President Trump?

On August 14, 2011, Pope Benedict XVI let me know that it was his conviction that at that moment my providential position was the Nunciature in the United States of America. This is what he wrote to me: “I would like to tell you that I have reflected and prayed with reference to your condition after the recent events. The sad news of the passing away of His Excellency Archbishop Pietro Sambi has confirmed in me the conviction that your providential position at this moment is the Nunciature in the United States of America. On the other hand, I am certain that your knowledge of this great country will help you to undertake the demanding challenge of this work, which in many ways will prove decisive for the future of the universal Church.”

My official assignment in that immense and beloved country has ended, but the challenge to which Pope Benedict referred to almost prophetically, and in which he chose to involve me, is still present more than ever; indeed, it has become ever more dramatic, taking on tremendous dimensions: the destiny of the world is being played out at this hour precisely on the American front.

Now that I am free from my official assignment, the inspiration confided to me by Pope Benedict permits me to address President Trump with the utmost freedom, pointing out his role in the national and international context and how decisive his mission is in the epochal confrontation that has been unfolding in recent months.

An epochal confrontation? Really?

It appears today that the Holy See is being assaulted by enemy forces. I speak as a Bishop, as a Successor of the Apostles. The silence of the shepherds is deafening and upsetting. Some bishops even prefer to support the New World Order, aligning themselves with the positions of Bergoglio and Cardinal Parolin who, as a frequenter of the Bilderberg Club, has slavishly submitted to its diktats, like so many politicians as well as the mainstream media. 

I am persuaded that everything I denounced in my open letter to President Trump last June is still valid and can form an interpretive key to understanding the events that we are living through. It remains an invitation to have hope.

The Catholic Church in America, both in relation to the presidential elections and more generally, appears to be split. The Pope says that dividing is a work of the devil, but the fracturing of the American episcopate is obvious. What is happening?

The split within the American episcopate is the result of an ideological action carried out since the 1960’s especially within Catholic universities – and by the Jesuits in particular – in the formation of entire generations of young people. Progressive indoctrination (on the political front) and modernist indoctrination (on the religious front) have created an ideological support for 1968 which began with the Second Vatican Council, as Benedict XVI confirmed in his essay “Principles of Catholic Theology”: “Adherence to an anarchic and utopian Marxism […] was supported on the front lines by many chaplains of universities and youth associations, who saw the blossoming of Christian hopes there. The dominant fact is found in the events of May 1968 in France. There were Dominicans and Jesuits on the barricades. The intercommunion that was held during an ecumenical Mass in support of the barricades was considered as a kind of milestone in salvation history, a sort of revelation that inaugurated a new era of Christianity.”

This split in the United States, which today has become even more obvious as the presidential elections approaches, is also widespread in Europe and Italy: the highest levels of the Church have desired to make a radical – and in my opinion unfortunate – choice, preferring to follow the mainstream thought of environmentalism, immigrationism, and the LGBT ideology, rather than courageously standing up against them and faithfully proclaiming the salvific Truth announced by Our Lord. This choice took a great leap forward beginning in 2013 with the election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, but it goes back to at least almost sixty years ago. It is significant that even then the Jesuits – and all of the Catholic intelligentsia of the Left – looked to Mao’s China as a privileged interlocutor, almost a driving force behind the alleged social renewal, just as today La Civiltà Cattolica of Spadaro, S.J., looks to Xi Jinping’s China. The Jesuits, who supported the guerillas in Latin America and who were on the French barricades in May of ‘68, today use social media to make similar claims, always with their eyes turned towards Beijing while carrying the same hatred towards America.

It is true that division is the work of the devil: Satan sows division between man and his Creator, between the soul and Grace. The Lord, however, does not divide but separates: He creates a boundary between the City of God and the City of Satan, between those who serve the Lord and those who fight against Him. He himself will separate the just from the wicked on the Day of Judgment (Mt 25:31-46), after having placed himself “as a stumbling stone” (Rom 9:32-33). Separating light from darkness, good from evil, according to the teaching of the Lord, is necessary if we want to follow Christ and renounce Satan. But it is also necessary to separate when we choose who best protects the rights and Faith of Catholics from those who only nominally proclaim themselves to be Catholic while in fact promoting laws that are clearly opposed to both divine and natural law. Just as the Shepherd who warns the flock about the attacks of the wolves is also divisive (Jn 10:1-18).

Accusing Trump of not being Christian solely because of the fact that he wants to protect national borders; evoking the specter of sovereignism as a disaster while human trafficking is allowed; remaining silent in the face of the persecution of Christians in China and elsewhere, or silent before the thousands of profanations of churches that have been happening for months all over the world: is not all this divisive?

Joe Biden is pro-abortion, but some American Catholic circles seem to overlook this aspect. Look, for example, at James Martin. What do you think?

Father James Martin, S.J., is the standard bearer of the LGBT ideology, and despite this – indeed, because of this – he was appointed by Bergoglio as Consultor of the Holy See’s Secretariat for Communications. His work – which is truly “divisive” in the worst sense of the term – serves to strengthen a fifth column of the progressive agenda within the ecclesial body, so as to create an ideological and doctrinal split within the Church and to make people believe that the demands of progressivism, including the so-called homoheresy, come from the ground up. In reality we know well that the faithful are much less inclined to innovations than public opinion is led to believe, and that the desire to show that there is a supposed “will of the people” in order to legitimize choices incompatible with the perennial teaching of the Church is a ploy which has been used both at the ecclesial level (think of the liturgical reform, which nobody asked for) as well as at the civil level (for example, with gender ideology).

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Permit me to recall the words of American Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen (1895-1979): “The refusal to take sides on great moral issues is itself a decision. It is a silent acquiescence to evil. The tragedy of our time is that those who still believe in honesty lack fire and conviction, while those who believe in dishonesty are full of passionate conviction.”^[1] We learn to separate who is with Christ from who is against Him, since it is not possible to serve two masters.

You have spoken of the “Deep Church”. Is it really possible that one exists? Who composes it?

The expression “Deep Church” gives a good idea of what is happening in a parallel way at the political and ecclesial level. The strategy is the same, just as the goals are the same, and, in the final analysis, the mens (the mind) that is behind it. In this sense, the “Deep Church” is for the Church what the “Deep State” is for the State: a foreign body that is illegal, subversive and deprived of any sort of democratic legitimacy that uses the institution in which it is embedded to achieve goals that are diametrically opposed to the goals of the institution itself.

One example is John Podesta, a “Catholic” liberal and Democrat, a former collaborator of Bill and Hillary Clinton, who is tied to John Halpin’s Center For American Progress. In an email of February 11, 2012, Sandy Newman wrote to Podesta asking him for directions on how to “plant seeds of a revolution” in the Church in matters of contraception, abortion, and gender equality. Podesta responded by confirming that in order to obtain this “springtime of the Church” (note the echo of the idea of the “conciliar springtime”) the organizations Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United had been created. These ultra-progressive associations have been financed by George Soros, just as he has financed Jesuit foundations and Bergoglio’s apostolic visit to the United States in 2015.^[2]

We should also recall the conspiracy of the Saint Gallen Mafia, which sought to oust Benedict XVI, in concert with Obama and Clinton who saw Joseph Ratzinger as an obstacle to the spread of the globalist agenda.

As a Catholic and as a bishop, how do you judge what Trump has done?

I limit myself to observing what Trump has done during his term as President.

·         He has defended the life of the unborn, cutting funding from the abortion multinational, Planned Parenthood, and just in recent days he has issued an executive order that requires immediate care for newborns who are not killed by abortion: up until now they were allowed to die or they were exploited by harvesting their organs and selling them.

·         Trump is fighting pedophilia and pedosatanism.

·         He has not started any new war and he has drastically reduced the existing ones by obtaining peace agreements.

·         He has restored God’s right of citizenship, after Obama had even gone so far as to cancel Christmas and impose measures that were repugnant to the religious soul of Americans.

And I also observe the media war that has been waged by the press and the centers of power against the President: he has been demonized since 2016, despite the fact that he democratically obtained a majority of votes. It is well understood that the hatred against Trump – which is not dissimilar to what happens in Italy in the face of much softer members of the opposition – finds its real motivation in the awareness of his fundamental role in the battle against the Deep State and all of its internal and external ramifications.  

·         His courageous denunciation of Communism – of which Antifa and BLM are the global versions while the Chinese dictatorship is the incubator – serves in some measure to remedy the silence of the Church, which despite the heartfelt appeals of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima and La Salette has preferred not to renew its condemnation of this infernal ideology.   

·         And if Bishop Sanchez Sorondo can declare with impunity, against all the evidence, that China is the best implementer of the social doctrine of the Church, we can rejoice over the words of the President of the United States and the no less courageous words of his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

It appears that Bergoglio will now not meet with the US Secretary of State [during Pompeo’s trip to Italy this week].

We have now come to the point of paradox, indeed of the ridiculous. Certain attitudes seem more suited to the whims of an undisciplined schoolboy rather than prudence and diplomatic protocol. Pompeo denounced the violation of human rights in China and received a sharp response from Santa Marta: And I won’t play anymore. These are unworthy behaviors which are beginning to cause feelings of undisguised shame even among members of Bergoglio’s magic circle. Not only will he not receive the Secretary of State so as not to hear it said to him ore rotundo that the United States will not stand by watching idly as the Church hands itself over into the hands of a ferocious dictatorship, but he did not even respond to Cardinal Zen’s request for an audience, confirming the specific intention of the Vatican to renew its submission to the Chinese Communist Party.

Did you organize a Rosary for Trump, and, if so, why?

I was urged by many people to launch this initiative, and I did not hesitate to join it, becoming the promoter of this spiritual crusade. This is a war without quarter, in which Satan has been unchained and the gates of hell are trying in every way to prevail over the Church herself. Such a contradiction must be faced above all with prayer, with the invincible weapon of the Holy Rosary.

The involvement of Catholics in politics, under the guidance of their pastors, constitutes their concrete action as citizens who are members both of the Mystical Body of Christ as well as human society. Catholics are not “disassociated” people who believe that God is the Author and Lord of Life when they go to church, but then, at the ballot box or as elected officials, approve of the killing of innocent children. 

This action of the natural order is accompanied – indeed it must be accompanied – by the awareness that human affairs, as well as social and political events, have a transcendent spiritual dimension, in which the intervention of Divine Providence is always the determining factor. For this reason, Catholics do not extract themselves from the world, they do not flee from the political arena, passively waiting for the Lord to intervene with bolts of lightning, but, on the contrary, they give meaning to their daily action, to their commitment in society, giving it a soul, a supernatural purpose.

Prayer, in this sense, calls down from the Lord of the world and history those graces and the special help which only He can give both to the actions of private citizens as well as to the work of those who govern. And if in the past even pagan kings were able to be instruments of the good in the hands of God, this can happen still today, at a moment in which the Biblical battle between the children of darkness and the children of light has reached a crucial point.

What scenarios await the Catholics of the world if Trump should lose?

If Trump loses the presidential elections, the final kathèkon [withholder] will fail (2 Thess 2:6-7), that which prevents the “mystery of iniquity” from revealing itself, and the dictatorship of the New World Order, which has already won Bergoglio over to its cause, will have an ally in the new American President.

Joe Biden does not have his own identity: he is only the expression of a power that does not dare reveal itself for what it truly is and that is hiding itself behind a person who is totally incapable of holding the office of President of the United States, also because of his weakened mental capabilities; but it is precisely in his weakness for pending complaints, in his ability to be blackmailed for conflicts of interest, that Biden reveals himself as a marionette maneuvered by the elites, a puppet in the hands of people thirsting for power and ready to do anything to expand it.

We would find ourselves facing an Orwellian dictatorship desired by both the “Deep State” and the “Deep Church,” in which the rights that today are considered fundamental and inalienable would be trampled with the complicity of mainstream media.

I want to emphasize that the universal religion desired by the United Nations and Freemasonry has active collaborators at the highest levels of the Catholic Church who usurp authority and adulterate the Magisterium. They are opposing the Mystical Body of Christ, which is mankind’s only ark of salvation, with the mystical body of the Antichrist, according to the prophecy of the Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen. Ecumenism, Malthusian environmentalism, pan-sexualism, and immigrationism are the new dogmas of this universal religion, whose ministers are preparing the advent of the Antichrist prior to the final Savior was preceded by His Passion and Death, so too is the Church journeying towards her own persecution and the definitive victory of Our Lord. But just as the glorious Resurrection of the Calvary; and just as the Sanhedrin thought that it would eliminate the Messiah by crucifying Him, so the infamous sect believes that the eclipse of the Church is a prelude to its end. A “tiny remnant” remains, made up of fervent Catholics, just as the Mother of God, Saint John, and Mary Magdalene remained at the foot of the Cross.

We know that the destiny of the world is not in the hands of men, and that the Lord has promised that He will not abandon His Church: “the gates of hell shall not prevail” (Mt 16:18). The words of Christ are the rock of our hope: “Behold, I am with you all days, until the end of the world” (Mt 28:20).

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[1] https://twitter.com/bishopoftyler/status/1309830562643955712?s=21

[2] https://formiche.net/2016/10/clinton-podesta-papa-francesco/

Published in Remnant Articles

Is there Evidence that Francis is for Communist “Revolution”? 

October 06, 2020

Francis’s book “Dialogos entre Juan Pablo II Y Fidel Castro” presents evidence that he is pro-Communist [Cuban] Revolution,” anti-Capitalism and by inference Anti-American because the United States is the driving force behind the global free market system. 

He wrote on page 23 that there apparently could be a “convergence” of “premises” between Communism and Catholicism:

“Fidel Castro offered a… convergence or points of connection between Catholicism and the premises (los postulados) of the [Cuban Communist] Revolution.”

However, later in the his book he states there cannot be a convergence of premises between Capitalism and Catholicism:

You cannot hold the premises (los postulados) of “neoliberalismo” (Capitalism) and be considered a Christian. The failures of Marxism and Collectivism don’t authorize the Capitalist system (al sistema capitalista)… we find in “neoliberalismo” (Capitalism) the opposite of the Gospel… because it empties man of the economic progressivism or economic progress (los progresos economicos).”
(Dialogos entre Juan Pablo II Y Fidel Castro, By Jorge Bergoglio, Copyright – Ciudad Argentina, Pages 48-49, Translation by Fred Martinez with the help of a Spanish to English dictionary)

In 2015, the Muslim global news source Al Jazeera in a article asked:

“Is Pope Francis some kind of Communist? Is he anti-American? Why is he so down on the wealth-creating engine that is global capitalism?”

The global news source answered those questions by saying “he [Francis] adhered to a diluted Argentine version of [Marxist] liberation theology.”

Al Jazeera actually quoted from Francis’s book without giving a source which is given above with my translation. It’s translation is:

“No one can accept the precepts of neoliberalism and consider themselves Christian.”

It appears that for Francis “neoliberalism” is a synonym for global Capitalism.

The global news source reported that Francis was anti-Capitalist and apparently anti-American since the driving force of global Capitalism is the United States.

Al Jazeera disclosed that in a disquieting screech, he reviled capitalism for “death and destruction” and having the “stench of the dung of the devil”:

“During a trip to [Leftist Socialist] Bolivia this summer, Francis delivered his most ferocious denunciation to date. Behind all the ‘pain, death and destruction’ wrought by unrestrained global capitalism, there lurks ‘the stench of the dung of the devil,’ he told a gathering of activists. ‘We want change, real change, structural change. This system is now intolerable.'”
(Aljazeera, “Liberation theology, once reviled by church, now embraced by pope,” September 22, 2015)

Are the unsound mental workings of Francis’s apparently unbalanced mind telling him that it was not the Russian Communists and the Chinese Maoist Communists (who are still in power) that committed the holocaust of tens of millions of human “death[s] and destruction” in historical concrete reality, but instead the Communist “holocaust” was committed by global Capitalism in the imagination of the seemingly crazy brain of Francis?

Does this craziness for “real change” to end “intolerable” American global Capitalism bring about Francis allowing without protest:

– the Communist Chinese regime to systematically attack the human rights of the Chinese Catholic underground Church, all the Christian denominations in China and even the Chinese Muslims?

– the human rights violations and starvation of the citizens of Venezuela by the Chinese Communist supported Venezuelan Leftist totalitarian regime?

And here is more evidence that Francis may be crazy for Communism:

 Jose Azel, a senior scholar at the University of Miami, in the respected international relations quarterly journal World Affairs wrote a review of a book by Pope Francis, which he wrote in 1998 while he was still the then Archbishop of Buenos Aires, which apparently Francis and Vatican don’t want publicized or read.

There are usually only available a few copies of Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s [Francis’s] book “Dialogos Entre Juan Pablo y Fidel Castro [Dialogue between John Paul II and Fidel Castro]” and when they are available on Amazon it can be selling for a pretty penny.

The Spanish speaking Azel in his review of the book reported “[i]n my reading of the pope’s complex Spanish prose…”:

– “he favors socialism over capitalism provided it incorporates theism…”

– “He does not take issue with Fidel Castro’s claim that ‘Karl Marx’s doctrine is very close to the Sermon on the Mount’… “

– “… and views the Cuban polity [form of government] as in harmony with the Church’s social doctrine…”

– “… Francis leaves no doubt that he sympathizes with the Cuban dictatorship…”

– “… and that he is not a fan of liberal democracy or markets…”

– “… He clearly believes in a very large, authoritarian role for the state in social and economic affairs…”

– “… his language in the prologue is reminiscent of the ‘liberation theology’… very intertwined [with] Marxist ideology. Fathered by Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutierrez, the movement provided the intellectual foundations that, with Cuban support, served to orchestrate’ wars of national liberation’ throughout the continent. It’s iconography portrayed Jesus as a guerrilla an AK-47 slung over his shoulder…”

– “… Francis speaks of a ‘shared solidarity’… that solidarity appears to be with the undemocratic, illegitimate authority in Cuba and not with the people…”

– “… Cubans will remember that this pope had a choice between freedom and authoritarianism.”
( World Affairs, “Whose Pope? Francis and Cuba,” Fall 2015)

The University of Miami senior scholar Azel in the article in his own translation of Francis’s book quotes the pope saying:

“[N]eoliberal capitalism is a model that subordinates human beings and conditions development to pure market forces… thus humanity attends a cruel spectacle that crystallizes the enrichment of the few at the expense of the impoverishment of the many.”

Is this the reason why among legitimate world leaders, that is leaders who are not Islamists (Iran’s leadership), ex-Communists (the Russian leadership) and Communists (the Cuban and Chinese totalitarian leadership), only the Socialist Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and Francis refuse to condemn the Venezuelan Nicolas Maduro’s Socialist dictatorship and back Venezuelan assembly leader, Juan Guaido, as the country’s interim president?
(Politico, “‘He is not going to be the nominee’s: Dems slam Sanders over Maduro stance,” February 21, 2019)

According to Politico even the left leaning Florida Democrats are slamming Bernie Sanders over his pro-totalitarian Venezuelan stance.

Why aren’t Catholics, and all those who care about the plight of the oppressed Venezuelan people suffering under the Socialist “authoritarian… state,” slamming Francis like even the left leaning Florida Democrats are slamming Sanders for not condemning dictator Maduro and not backing Guaido?

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

FRED MARTINEZ

Biden Victory, Continued COVID Restrictions,  Would Lead to Mark of the Beast

By David Martin

 For the past several months people across the globe have stringently followed state COVID guidelines to shut down operations and observe social distancing, not realizing that this has been strengthening the globalist plan to lock down on liberty and usher in a satanic one-world government. 

It is no secret that the Coronavirus was manufactured in a China lab with the intention of instilling worldwide fear so that it could be used as a political tool to control the masses. The plan was to *exaggerate COVID-19 case and death figures to heighten the urgency and thus “justify” the imposition of draconian restrictions on the people, for which reason some are now calling the COVID crisis the “Scamdemic.”

Global Agenda

The objective in springing COVID-19 on us was to bring about the great “global reset” planned by global architects. This is the “new normal” touted by globalists, a society ruled by “essential” despots where race-riots, revolution, and satanic corporate giants like Walmart can flourish while Christian patriots and the private working man are stripped of their freedoms.  

What we are seeing is Socialism operating through the Democratic platform. If Joe Biden is elected it will come about that Americans will be dragged off and quarantined in COVID detention centers, since Biden has made it clear that he will enforce the COVID-19 lock-down well into the future. Globalists are hinging on a Biden victory to lock this plan into place so they can move forward with their plan to enslave America under a communistic world government. 

Mark of the Beast

The ultimate objective in bringing about COVID-19 was to provide an excuse to impose jinxed vaccines that alter our DNA and kill people. Bill Gates, in conjunction with other globalists and the World Health Organization (WHO) has developed the Human Implantable Quantum Dot Microneedle Vaccination Delivery System and they plan to vaccinate the world’s peoples with this to ensure that COVID “doesn’t spread.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywuCRVJVDqs

What is crucial to this plan is that every vaccination administered is verified so that world “health” officials know exactly who has and hasn’t received the vaccine. To this end, Gates and his team of Luciferians have developed a chemical enzyme called “Luciferase” that makes the vaccination readable through a mobile device app. When the vaccinated person is scanned, this Luciferase enzyme lights up and makes the vaccination readable long after it has been injected. The number 060606 will appear on the bar-code.

Hence we see the connection between COVID-19 and the prophesied Mark of the Beast. COVID-19 stands for “Certification Of Vaccination ID,” a plan that was finalized in 2019. The mobile app will verify your vaccination, without which you have no ticket to ride in society — can’t ride a bus, can’t buy a house, can’t have medical insurance or care. Through this blackmail, globalists will arrange “that no man might buy or sell, but he that hath the character, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” (Apocalypse 13:17) 

The enzymatic name “Luciferase” clearly marks the COVID-19 vaccine as Lucifer’s project, which obligates Christians to have no part with it. Globalists deliberately arranged that the vaccine would openly be identified with Lucifer so that it would incur eternal damnation on those who receive it. For one is not accountable if he has been unknowingly tricked, therefore the enemy has made sure that all will know that this COVID vaccine is from Lucifer. The time will come—if Biden is elected—when they will say, ‘This is from the devil, reject Jesus and your Christian-patriot ideas and be marked with Lucifer.’ 

Those who would make excuses for accepting this infernal vaccine by saying, ‘I need to be well to take care of my baby, my husband, etc.,’ had best consider the warning of Holy Scripture to those who sell out to save their skin.  

“If any man shall adore the beast and his image, and receive his character in his forehead, or in his hand; He also shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mingled with pure wine in the cup of his wrath, and shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the sight of the holy angels, and in the sight of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torments shall ascend up for ever and ever: neither have they rest day nor night, who have adored the beast, and his image, and whoever receiveth the character of his name.” (Apocalypse 14: 9-11) 

Christ’s admonition to renounce all especially applies at this time. “If any man come to me, and despise not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14: 26)

Trump Victory Needed to Save America

Hence we have arrived at a historic crossroads when it will be necessary for Americans to make the right decision to preserve our freedom. It is imperative that America reelect Donald Trump this November because his mission from God is to deliver America from the New World Order. A Trump victory will keep America free, which in turn will keep the western world free, because without America, there is no free world.

But if America votes for Biden, we are finished as a nation because he will hand this country over to the New World Order in no time. A Biden victory would strengthen his plan to impose face-masks on everyone, to force Americans to fund abortion, and would empower the globalist plan to impose diabolical vaccines under the penalty of losing everything we have. 

Americans have push-button power to save America and to save the world. Let them use it wisely on November 3.

*The CDC recently reported that only 9200 people in America have died of COVID-19 alone, a mere 6% of the 182,779 previously claimed. 94% of the deaths had other “health conditions and contributing causes” and many if not most of the now deceased “COVID” patients had no COVID-19 symptoms. Death certificates have become as fraudulent as the rigged Democratic votes.                     New CDC report shows 94% of COVID-19 deaths in US had contributing conditions

President Donald Trump lives.  DC media hit hardest. This group of people has completely lost it. It would be funny if it weren’t so serious.  My perspective, even when I was writing about President Obama, was that this is the leader the American people elected. God is Master of the realm (the example of David with an insane Saul is a good one) and respect for the office and for God’s will must supersede saying something evil. Policy-wise, I cannot think of one thing I agreed with President Obama on. In addition, it’s no small thing for the President of the United States to be incapacitated. The media being shrill and hysterical aids and abets America’s enemies. The President, it turns out, hasn’t been incapacitated, but a drive-by to fans outside Walter Reed hospitaland a good natured video from the Presidentdispatched the media-led conspiracy theories. The media quickly moved on to heightened agitation because THE PRESIDENT EXPOSED SECRET SERVICE AGENTS!!! The media is not barking-mad ala Antifa and BLM terrorists yet, but they’re close. There’s a serious lack of sobriety. I don’t get it. According to polling, America is a +14 Democrat country and Biden has the election in the bag. The media has yet to ask Joe Biden a tough question and if one is hinted i.e. court-packing, he just pretends that he doesn’t hear the question and says the answer will be a distraction. Uh, yeah it would be. Joe goes back to his basement while the media drools and snaps in Bethesda, Maryland. The way the media is acting is not sound or normal. One of the reasons might be that people just aren’t listening to them anymore. The NBA finals are off by a significant percentage. Enjoy your wokeness, guys! When it comes to mainstream sources, no one is listening to them, either. Back in the day, at a national Tea Party event in D.C. sponsored by FreedomWorks, I sat in the press box with the cameramen from other news orgs. At one point, I had over 20,000 people watching the event on the U-Stream. That was years ago. Now, on Facebook, Ben Shapiro has more interaction than every other Mainstream Media source combined. After Trump announced his Covid diagnosis, 30,000+ people tuned in on Periscope to Mike Cernovich. The next day, 60,000+ watched Scott Adams. There was a huge prayer vigil organized and hundreds of thousands of people prayed for the President – it was all coordinated by social media. People met on the beach in California. They met outside Walter Reed. They met in living rooms. They met online in Periscope meetings.  People simply aren’t paying attention to the Mainstream Media. Their numbers are declining. Their influence waning. Ted Koppel is shocked at the truth of this. People are watching Tim Pool and Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro and Megyn Kelly (new podcast). Alternative news sources like OANN, Newsmax, Breitbart, the Daily Caller Foundation are sending out young reporters to riots and other news the MSM refuses to cover or covers up. (Mostly peaceful!) And for commentary, old sources are going bust and new ones or new old ones like The American Spectator are being read. I don’t want to sell us short, either. Our reporter, George Parry is the only one who has done serious investigative reporting on the George Floyd overdose death. George’s work is now being featured in a documentary. There’s hope of a fair trial for these police officers because of his brave reporting. You won’t find that in the mainstream media. George isn’t the only George doing digging. George Neumayr has tirelessly covered the corruption in the Catholic Church. He’s also just written a book about Joe Biden’s corruption. Do you see now why the Media is losing it? Whether Trump wins or loses, THEY’VE ALREADY LOST. Their industry is over. Their ideological hegemony is done. They are relics of a bygone era. The worst part is that they’ve done it to themselves. They’ve torched their credibility and manage to cover nothing of importance. They’ve missed every major news story. As the narrative of the Russia Hoax crumbles and the evil-doers in the Obama administration are revealed, what little credibility they had is gone. They promulgated, unquestioningly, a conspiracy theory for four years. Many still cling to it, so tied to their own identity, are these lies. It’s pathetic and antithetical to the job of journalists. They don’t care. They’re activists and this isn’t about truth. It’s about shaping a narrative. America has stopped listening and watching. They don’t care. They’ve moved on.  They watch the debates on YouTube or C-Span or OANN or their favorite channel and they don’t even turn on the TV. For sports they skip ESPN and check in with Barstool Sports. For edgy reporting, they read Revolver. The insanity you’re seeing from the mainstream media is terror. They hate Donald Trump, but without him, they’re over. They’ve boxed themselves into a corner. So while marveling about the MSM’s nuttiness, keep in mind that it’s not really about Trump. It’s about them. They’re experiencing existential dread. They’re right to be afraid. And a side note: If they were at all God-fearing, they’d be even more fearful. As for Trump’s health. I am cautiously optimistic. He’s not a great age for this diagnosis, but he’s mostly healthy and he has an iron will, which matters so much. The President is on a cocktail of drugs. The whole of the media are physicians now and inveighing on this or that medicine and claiming to know what it means. Here’s the thing: The doctors treating Trump don’t know what it means. This guessing is stupid. Covid is an extremely creative virus. It’s also maddening in that it can be nothing or it can really cause respiratory inflammation and all that that entails. Trump strikes me as a patient who, when presented risks and benefits, is the guy who says, “Throw everything at it!” Most people don’t want to admit that medicine is as much art as is it science. They don’t want to admit the constant give and take between patient and doctor. They don’t want to admit that there may not be great choices only the best ones available. There are upsides and downsides of every treatment. What works for one person may not for another and on and on. Life is complex. The media seem to want simple, baby answers. I wish the media could calm the heck down for one minute and just be still. The next couple of days will be important. So far, though, the President seems to be doing amazingly well for his age. For that, we should be grateful. The rest of his team and family must be remembered. This concentration of sick people strikes me as strange. Even in the church cluster, where the spread out choir got sick, it wasn’t every single choir member. This cluster is extraordinary. Not much attention has been given to that. Wiping out Trump’s whole team (this didn’t) and many Senators is a security crisis as much as anything. This illness outbreak should be taken as a cautionary moment for the Secret Service considering biological warfare threats. This was only Covid. No doubt there are worse things out there that could do more damage if loosed amongst the President’s circle.   Food Interlude I had a long conversation with lots of people on Twitter about non-stick pans. People were giving me brand recommendations but the experts seem to agree that non-stick pans are not lifetime purchases, so buy cheap. I did just that this weekend at Costco where I got two Titanium-Ceramic coated aluminum pans for $29. Good deal. Why is this so important? One reason: I like scrambled eggs. Gordon Ramsey’s style of making them has changed my life. They’re custardy and oh so good. I don’t like using a sauce pan though. And I don’t like using a heavy cast iron pan. (And for the purists, yes, I have a beautifully seasoned cast iron pan that I use all the time for steaks and all sorts of things.) Thus, my need for a nonstick pan. It really comes down to me being lazy about cleaning the pan after cooking.  One of my goals is to learn how to make a gorgeous French omelette. I don’t know if I can do it. It seems so delicate. And I don’t like American omelettes with everything and the kitchen sink thrown into them. I do, however, like crepes (both savory and sweet) with all sorts of fillings. Winning With Wine With California burning, I suspect that wine prices, especially a good Cab, will be going up. So here’s my question for you: What’s your favorite Sub-$15 bottle of wine? I’ve found that it’s difficult to find a bad bottle of wine anymore and that’s a credit to America’s changing palate and home-grown wines. Every once in a while, I’ll stumble over a fabulous bottle and be amazed at the relatively cheap blessing. I look forward to your recommendations.  Will Amy Coney Barrett be confirmed now? Yes. Moving along.About Biden Where is he? Is he well? There are lots of recent shots of him coughing. In addition, he said today that he is not getting tested for Covid daily. That’s really weird to me. He’s at the age where it would be a chief concern. Furthermore, he’s obviously fragile. Trump’s brush with mortality should put the spotlight on Joe Biden who has seemed particularly unable to handle the grueling effects of the campaign. Not only that, he seems to have a difficult time every time he interacts with people. He’s angry, impatient, easily flustered, and seems to be constantly confused. He’ll have moments of clarity. And then, he’s back to being really old. Why aren’t the media asking any obvious questions? Well, the answer is obvious, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that he seems even more feeble than Hillary. With the IBD poll showing Trump within the margin of error (IBD has been accurate more often than not), one would think think Biden would be out there pounding the pavement. But no. Instead, he’s just lyin. In the next 30 days, he should be grilled about his health. The Trump campaign should drive him out of hiding with ads questioning his health. The V.P. Debate is going to put two potential presidents in the spotlight. Radical Kamala Harris or mild-mannered former Governor Pence. This Wednesday will be interesting.Hardened Hearts It’s easy to dehumanize those with whom we disagree. And when people are barking like dogs, they dehumanize themselves. Still, we should never give up hope of a unified America where there’s less acrimony and more cohesion. I love America. Hope all things. Believe all things. This week, a retired FBI agent wrote me, furious. Why did we at TAS include naive writers who criticized the President or didn’t understand the stakes? I’d like to answer the question for everyone reading here, because this is an important question and deserves an answer. Many readers of traditional right-leaning media feel betrayed and rightly so. Hell, I feel betrayed. People who I respected, bought and read their books, have descended into instability during the Trump presidency. They’re convinced that the country isn’t on the brink, even with all the BLM and Antifa violence, even with militias marching, even with the abuse that Trump supporters generally receive. It seems like willful ignorance at this point.  And these same NeverTrumpers will magnify supposed flaws on the right and use leftist talking points to do it.  So I get the anger at right-leaning publications giving any quarter to diverse viewpoints. Some of the writers at TAS really don’t like Donald Trump even as they see the wider context. Some of the writers view Donald Trump as the only hope. Many are on the spectrum. But here’s my thing as Publisher: How do we get people to challenge their own beliefs if all they read is content reinforcing their opinions? I’ll give a recent example of my own. I couldn’t get through the video of George Floyd’s death. It was too awful. I couldn’t bear it. It seemed clear to me that he choked and died and I didn’t want to see a man killed on camera. And I really didn’t want to watch a policeman killing an innocent man. George Parry submitted a piece that calmly, clearly upended my beliefs. I asked a couple questions. He clarified. And George convinced me. I was wrong. Furthermore, everyone was wrong. These poor police officers face a lifetime in prison for a crime they didn’t commit and if no one had courage to countervail the conventional wisdom, they’d have no hope of a fair trial. They still might not. The truth matters. Always. Many pieces get published on The American Spectator that I 100% disagree with. Sometimes, I’m so irritated that I write a piece challenging the premise of the writer and a banter ensues. That is as it should be.  We need to think. We need to challenge ourselves and our readers. We have to not know just what to believe but why we believe it. And we have to convince those who are unsure. If we’re just proclaiming one point of view, why are we even necessary? We’ll be propaganda and nothing more. Worst of all, lots of people on the fence won’t even stop by because they’ll already know what will be said. Too many conservative sites have betrayed their readers because the leadership at the organization hates Donald Trump. It’s elitist, heaps scorn on their readers, and makes one wonder who exactly is their audience? On the other hand, there are some sites that are so predictable in their “analysis” that it’s a waste of time to go to the site because the obvious take will be the take.  At The American Spectator, we’ve always carried the points of view of paleocons, neocons, social conservatives, libertarians, conservatarians, and everything in between. R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. saw the Reagan phenomenon before anyone else. He saw the Trump phenomenon before anyone else and predicts his win, again. Like an idiot, the night before the election in 2016, I wrote a blog post saying that Trump would lose. I just couldn’t fathom him winning even as my friends and family were fanatics for him. I was wrong. It won’t be the last time. My beliefs have been challenged by writers at The American Spectator and that’s how it should be. Can I love those who disagree with me? Can I empathize with their point of view? I get that the Left has become callous and violent. Well, I don’t want to be that way until I have to be and I pray that I never have to be. My hope is that words will be the only swords we have to wield and that words can convince people before swords are necessary. Scriptures to read: Isaiah 6:10 and it’s fulfilled in the latter times in Matthew 15:13 [Amplified]:For this nation’s heart has grown hard, And with their ears they hardly hear, And they have [tightly] closed their eyes, Otherwise they would see with their eyes, And hear with their ears, And understand with their heart, and turn [to Me] And I would heal them [spiritually].’ Source: https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/Matthew/13/15 As always, your feedback means so much. Email me at mackenziem@spectator.org. I respond as often as I can. I’m going to try to take a couple days off this week before the big final push of the election.  Freedom! Melissa Mackenzie Publisher, The American Spectator

Settimo Cielodi Sandro Magister

 05 ott 20

Deep In the Red. The Disappointing Balance Two Years Into the Accord with China

The provisional and secret agreement signed two years ago with China expired on September 22, and the Holy See would like to renew it for at least another two years.

The signals coming from China are conflicting. But paradoxically, the frontal attack launched against the agreement by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, first with a text on “First Things” and then during his visit to Rome on October 1, could play in favor of an agreement, since Beijing – as the expert on the Chinese Church Gianni Cardinale noted in “Avvenire” – “is willing to make greater concessions with interlocutors criticized rather than blessed by Washington.”

Judging by how much freedom of religion there is in China, the agreement of September 22 2018 has not produced any positive effects. Just the opposite, according to sources like Asia News, UCA News, and Bitter Winter.

But the agreement hinged on a very limited issue, the appointment of Catholic bishops in China. And even reducing the evaluation to this measure alone, the bottom line appears unsatisfactory.

*

For starters, just consider that there are 135 dioceses and apostolic prefectures in China and of these, at the time the agreement was signed, those governed by a bishop were only 73. Well then, today those headed by a bishop are 74, up by only one. So with nearly as many dioceses that remain vacant, despite the fact that one of the Holy See’s objectives in signing the agreement was precisely that of filling these gaps.

Hong Kong, like Macau, is not included in this count, since its bishop can be installed by the pope with full freedom. Yet even there the appointment of the new occupant is slow in coming, for almost two years now. Cardinal Joseph Zen Zekiun, 88, bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, went to Rome at the end of September to beg the pope not to choose one of Beijing’s lackeys as pastor, but Francis refused to receive him. Just as he has so far refused to say a single word in defense of the city’s autonomy, which is increasingly in danger.

Of the 74 dioceses now ruled by bishops, the only one that was vacant in 2018 and is so no longer is that of Jining, in Inner Mongolia. In all the others, what has changed over the last two years is only the proportion between the “official” bishops, meaning recognized by both Rome and Beijing, and the “underground,” recognized only by Rome but not by the Chinese authorities.

On September 22 2018 the dioceses ruled by official bishops were 56, and today they are 62. While those ruled by underground bishops were 17 and today are 12.

But what matters most is the nature of these changes.

*

It should be noted that in conjunction with the agreement of September 22 2018 Rome lifted the excommunication of 7 bishops unilaterally installed by the regime, assigning them the diocese in which they resided and in two cases dismissing or demoting the underground bishops already present and active there.

Evidently, the lifting of these excommunications was a precondition imposed by Beijing for the signing of the agreement. But Rome has bowed to it to the point of leaving to his fate the underground bishop of one of the dioceses assigned to the former excommunicated, that of Xiapu-Mindong. Demoted to auxiliary and guilty of disobeying the “diktats” of the regime irreconcilable with the Catholic faith, including joining a so-called “independent Church,” sixty-year-old bishop Vincent Guo Xijin has been subjected to a crescendo of reprisals, culminating in removal from his home and the complete loss of his freedom, and all this to total silence from the Holy See.

Conversely, it does not appear at all that Beijing has moved with like speed to legitimize the underground bishops, as presumably desired by Rome, much less to fill the gaps in the vacant dioceses, despite the fact that the first choice of candidates – according to what can be guessed about the secret accord – belongs to the Chinese authorities.

In the two years that have passed since the signing of the accord, only two new bishops have been appointed: Anthony Yao Shun, ordinary of the diocese of Jining, and of Stephen Yu Hongwei, coadjutor of the diocese of Hanzhong. But neither of them counts, because both sides had agreed on them well before the signing of the agreement.

With regard to the underground bishops, there are five who in the two-year period have had the recognition of the Beijing authorities, always accompanied by strong pressure to extract obedience to the regime’s imperatives. In the following order:

– on January 30 2019 Peter Jin Lugang of the diocese of Nanyang, as coadjutor and then as ordinary;
– on June 9 2020 Peter Lin Jiashan of the diocese of Fuzhou;
. on June 22 2020 Peter Li Huiyuan of the diocese of Fengxiang;
– on July 9 2020 Paul Ma Cunguo of the diocese of Shouzhou;
– on August 18 2020 Francis Xavier Jin Yangke of the diocese of Ningbo.

However, it should be noted that the first of these five government legitimations, that of Jin Lugang, had already been in the works for more than four years.

Even the legitimations of Li Huiyuan and Jin Yangke, both long-time members of the Patriotic Association, actually date back to years prior to the 2018 agreement and had been delayed only due to disagreements within the pseudo Chinese episcopal conference.

So in reality, following the accord, there are only the two remaining legitimations.

That of Lin Jiashan, 86, was strongly desired by the bishop himself, despite the opposition of a large part of his clergy and faithful, who still criticize it as an unjustified submission to the regime.

As for the recognition of Ma Cunguo, this was made official in the presence of leaders of the Patriotic Association and other organizations of political supervision, but it was carried out by the bishop with the shrewdness not to repeat in his oath the words of “adherence to the independent and self-governing Church” and of “prohibition against educating young people under the age of 18 in the faith” that the authorities would have liked to hear from him.

*

It should be added that Guo Xijin of the diocese of Xiapu-Mindong is not the only bishop under arrest. Augustine Cui Tai, coadjutor of the diocese of Xuanhua, and – since last August 15 – Julius Jia Zhiguo, of the diocese of Zhengding, currently share his fate.

But even more sensational is the case of the bishop of Shanghai, Thaddeus Ma Daqin, under house arrest since his ordination in 2012 and dismissed for leaving the Patriotic Association, the main instrument with which the regime regiments the Church. He wasn’t even able to win clemency with the act of public submission to which he stooped in 2015, met with the applause – also useless – of “La Civiltà Cattolica,” which called his gesture an exemplary model of “reconciliation between the Church in China and the Chinese government.”

For the sake of these bishops’ freedom neither the Holy See nor the pope has ever put in so much as a word in public, before or after the 2018 accord. Not to mention the mystery that still surrounds the disappearance of two other bishops, who may not even be alive anymore: James Su Zhumin of the diocese of Baoding, who would be 88 today, and Cosmas Shi Enxiang of the diocese of Yixian, who would be 98. Nothing more has been heard from the former since 1996, the date of his last arrest, or from the latter since 2001.

*

But that’s not all. Remaining unchanged, after the 2018 accord, are also the hierarchies of the two key bodies through which the regime dominates the Chinese Church. With the seven formerly excommunicated bishops in prominent positions.

One of these bodies is the Council of Bishops, a false simulacrum of an episcopal conference, from which bishops recognized only by Rome are excluded.

This is responsible, according to the agreement, for proposing to the pope the names of future bishops, following a rigged “election” of these same in the respective dioceses, by representatives – hand in glove with the regime – of the clergy, religious, and lay people.

At the head of this Council of Bishops are three of the formerly excommunicated: Joseph Ma Yinglin of the diocese of Kunming as president, Joseph Guo Jincai of the diocese of Chengde as vice-president and secretary general, and Vincent Zhan Silu of the diocese of Xiapu-Mindong as second vice-president.

In addition, eight other bishops are vice-presidents of this body, all naturally with the stamp of the Chinese authorities: Joseph Li Shan of the diocese of Beijing, John Fang Xingyao of the diocese of Linyi, Joseph Shen Bin of the diocese of Haimen, Peter Fang Jianping of the diocese of Tangshan, Paul Pei Junmin of the diocese of Liaoning, John Baptist Yang Xiaoting of the diocese of Yulin, Paul He Zeqing of the diocese of Wanzhou, Joseph Yang Yongqiang of the diocese of Zhoucun.

The other body is the aforementioned Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association.

Its president is Bishop John Fang Xingyao of the diocese of Linyi, while among the vice-presidents are four of the formerly excommunicated bishops: Joseph Ma Yinglin of the diocese of Kunming – the same who presides over the Council of Bishops – Paul Lei Shiyin of the diocese of Leshan, Joseph Huang Bingzhang of the diocese of Shantou, and Joseph Yue Fusheng of the diocese of Harbin-Heilongjiang.

The vice-president  and secretary general of the association is the layman Liu Yuandong, while four other vice-presidencies are entrusted to the bishops Joseph Shen Bin of the diocese of Haimen and Paul Meng Qinglu of the diocese of Hohhot, to the religious  sister Wu Lin, and to the laywoman Shi Xueqin.

*
Having said this, what then is the organigram of the bishops in China, official and underground, updated to the present, without counting the emeritus and retired?

Here is the complete list by categories, with names, year of birth, and diocese .

*

1. “OFFICIAL” BISHOPS (RECOGNIZED BY BOTH ROME AND BEIJING)

Vincent Zhan Silu, b. 1961, Xiapu-Mindong
Joseph Huang Bingzhang, b. 1967, Shantou
Joseph Liu Xinhong, b. b1964, Anhui
Paul Lei Shiyin, b. 1963, Leshan
Joseph Ma Yinglin, b. 1965, Kunming
Joseph Guo Jincai, b. 1968, Chengde
Joseph Yue Fusheng, b. 1964, Harbin-Heilongjiang
Joseph Li Shan, b. 1965, Beijing
Francis An Shuxin, b. 1949, Baoding
Peter Feng Xinmao, b. 1963, Jingxian
Joseph Liu Liangui, b. 1964, Xianxian-Cangzhou
Joseph Sun Jigen, b. 1967, Yongnian-Handan
Peter Fang Jianping, b. 1962, Yongping-Tangshan
Methodius Qu Ailin, b. 1961, Changsha
Joseph Tang Yuange, b. 1963, Chengdu
Joseph Chen Gong’ao, b. 1964, Nanchong
Paul He Zeqing, b. 1968, Wanxian-Wanzhou
John Lei Jiaipei, b. 1970, Xichang
Peter Luo Xuegang, b. 1964, Yibin
Joseph Cai Bingrui, b. 1966, Xiamen
Joseph Gan Junqiu, b. 1964, Guangzhou
Paul Su Yongda, b. 1958, Beihai-Zhanjiang
Paul Liang Jiansen, b. 1964, Jiangmen
Joseph Liao Hongqing, b. 1965, Meixian-Meizhou
Paul Xiao Zejiang, b. 1967, Guiyang-Guizhou
Matthew Cao Xiangde, b. 1927, Hangzhou
Paul Meng Qinglu, b. 1962, Hohhot
Joseph Li Jing, b. 1968, Yinchuan-Ningxia
Matthias Du Jiang, b. 1963, Bameng
Joseph Zhang Xianwang, b. 1965, Jinan
John Fang Xingyao, b. 1953, Linyi
Joseph Zhao Fengchang, b. 1934, Yanggu-Liaocheng
John Lu Peisan, b. 1966, Yanzhou
Joseph Yang Yongqiang, b. 1970, Zhoucun
Joseph Zhang Yinlin, b. 1971, Jixian-Anyang
Joseph Han Zhihai, b. 1966, Lanzhou
Nicholas Han Jide, b. 1940, Pingliang
John Baptist Li Sugong, b. 1964, Nanchang-Jiangxi
Francis Xavier Lu Xinping, b. 1963, Nanjing
Joseph Shen Bin, b. 1970, Haimen
Joseph Xu Honggen, b. 1962, Suzhou
John Wang Renlei, b. 1970, Xuzhou
John Baptist Tan Yanquan, b. 1962, Nanning-Guanxi
Paul Pei Junmin, b. 1969, Shenyang-Liaoning
Paul Meng Ningyu, b. 1963, Taiyuan
Peter Ding Lingbin, b. 1962, Changzhi
John Huo Cheng, b. 1926, Fenyang
Anthony Dan Mingyan, b. 1967, Xi’an
Peter Li Huiyuan, b. 1965, Fengxiang
Louis Yu Runshen, b. 1930, Hanzhong
Joseph Han Yingjin, b. 1958, Sanyuan
John Baptist Yang Xiaoting, b. 1964, Yan’an-Yulin
Joseph Martin Wu Qinjing, b. 1968, Zhouzhi
John Baptist Ye Ronghua, b. 1931, Ankang
John Baptist Wang Xiaoxun, b. 1966, Ankang coadjutor
Joseph Tong Changping, b. 1968, Tongzhou-Weinan
Peter Wu Junwei, b. 1963, Xinjiang-Yuncheng
Stephen Yu Hongwei, b. 1975, Hanzhong coadjutor
Anthony Yao Shun, b. 1965, Jining
Peter Jin Lugang, b. 1955, Nanyang
Peter Lin Jiashan, b. 1934, Fuzhou
Peter Li Huiyuan, b. 1965, Fengxiang
Paul Ma Cunguo, b. 1971, Shuoxian-Shouzhou
Francis Xavier Jin Yangke, b. 1958, Ningbo

2. “UNDERGROUND” BISHOPS (RECOGNIZED BY ROME BUT NOT BY BEIJING)

Thaddeus Ma Daqin, b. 1968, Shanghai, dismissed and under arrest
Vincent Guo Xijin, b. 1958, Xiapu-Mindong auxiliary, under surveillance
Thomas Zhao Kexun, b. 1924, Xuanhua
Augustine Cui Tai, b. 1950, Xuanhua coadjutor, under arrest
Julius Jia Zhiguo, b. 1935, Zhengding, under arrest
Joseph Hou Guoyang, b. 1922, Chongqing
John Baptist Wang Ruohan, b. 1950, Kangding
Peter Shao Zhumin, b. 1963, Yongjia-Wenzhou
Joseph Gao Hongxiao, b. 1945, Kaifeng
John Wang Ruowang, b. 1961, Tianshui
John Pei Weizhao, b. 1966, Yujiang
Andrew Han Jingtao, b. 1921, Siping-Jilin
Joseph Wej Jingyi, b. 1958, Qiqihar-Heilongjiang
Joseph Zhang Weizhu, b. 1958, Xinxiang

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