This essay is adapted from Michael Anton’s forthcoming book, The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return (Regnery Publishing) The Case for TrumpThere’s little wrong with President Trump that more Trump couldn’t solve. by: Michael AntonSummer, 2020 Americans who want to remain citizens of a united country that at least makes some desultory attempt to protect them and further their interests have no choice but to stay the course. As the saying goes, the only way out is through. I know that some readers will lament that the Trump Administration has been a disappointment. “Where’s our wall?” I’d like to have seen more progress by now, too. “Why wasn’t he tougher during the riots and their aftermath?” I don’t know. But it does seem clear that a few of the things we thought all along are actually true. The presidency is hard enough to manage with decades of experience in politics and a series of elective offices under your belt.It’s that much harder when a president assumes the office not merely from the outside, but politically speaking, from out of nowhere. It’s harder still without a party. Yes, President Trump enjoys the overwhelming loyalty of Republican voters—but his hold on Republican donors, and especially officials, is much more tenuous. He ran against them and won—and most of them will never forgive him. They play nice to his face and undermine him behind his back. That’s before we even get to the ones in open rebellion. No president—Democrat or Republican—has ever come to power facing organized efforts by his own party’s middle management to tally lists of people declaring on the record that under no circumstances will they work for the incoming administration. It’s been hard, to say the least, to staff up when a good chunk of the party is dead-set against their leader, and nearly all the rest spent their careers furthering policies diametrically opposed to those he ran—and won—on. And that’s just President Trump’s ostensible own side. Then factor in all his open enemies from the other party, and virtually every other power center in our society, plus the steadfast opposition of the so-called “deep state”—i.e., the very federal bureaucrats whom he was elected to oversee and direct. Viewed from this angle, one may fairly wonder how it’s been possible for him to accomplish anything at all. More fundamentally: where do you think the country would be without him? Even if you’re disappointed with less than 200 miles of wall, remember that leading Democrats not only insist that every single new inch is a moral atrocity, they want to tear down sections that already exist. Think the trade agenda is progressing too slowly? Well, President Trump already renegotiated two of our worst trade deals. How many new, bad ones do you think a Hillary administration would have signed by now? Trump not tough enough on China for you? A little too much talk about his “good friend” Xi Jinping? I sympathize. But he’s still done more than all the last four presidents combined. More than that, he’s reversed the China policy of the last four presidents combined. Have you heard how Joe Biden kowtows to China? And I know that some will insist that, so long as a single American soldier, sailor, airman, or marine is deployed anywhere in the Middle East, then Trump has failed—or worse, betrayed them. But in fact, the president has mostly succeeded at the tasks he promised for that region: defeating ISIS, revitalizing our alliances while requiring more from our allies, and prudently disengaging from existing conflicts while not starting any new ones. All of these trends, changes, policies, and initiatives, and many others—however incomplete—would be reversed in the event of a Trump loss. The ruling class would hail the president’s defeat as a historic repudiation of his (allegedly) “racist and xenophobic” vision, etc., as a vindication of every charge and complaint they’ve made against him and his supporters since Day 1. Their goal would be to erase the last four years and the 2016 election as if they never happened. If think-tank conservatives want above all to get into a DeLorean and go back to 1985, the ruling class wants to cram America into a Prius and force us back to 2015. And then resume the trajectory the country had been on back then, i.e., the road to woke managerial tyranny. Whenever I’m asked—mostly by leftist concern trolls who want to write “Former Trump Official Bashes President”—if I have any criticisms of President Trump, my answer is always the same: there’s little wrong with President Trump that more Trump couldn’t solve. More populism. More nationalism. More patriotism. More law and order. More full-throated advocacy for the neglected American people, for the working class, for the Rust Belt and rural America, for religious believers and law-abiding gun owners. More defense of free speech against tech and corporate censorship and suppression, more support for his voters when they or their interests are viciously attacked. In short, more adherence to the 2016 agenda. The only way to get more Trump is, literally, to get more Trump. Which means the president being reelected and implementing his core agenda in a second term. But that alone will not be enough. Saving America as a unified, self-governing republic is a long-term—possibly generational—project.American UnityIn 1991, former Kennedy White House aide and longtime college professor, scholar, and public intellectual Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., published a slim volume entitled The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society. Precisely because of his impeccable liberal credentials, Schlesinger’s brief against multiculturalism, anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism hit the intellectual world like a thunderbolt. Those being (very) different times, his book was—outside the fever swamps of the universities, and even by some within them—widely praised by Left and Right alike. Today it would be denounced as a rightwing screed. Schlesinger criticized multiculturalists as “very often ethnocentric separatists who see little in the Western heritage other than Western crimes,” whose “mood is one of divesting Americans of their sinful European inheritance and seeking redemptive infusions from non-Western cultures.” We can’t go on this like this and remain a “we,” he warned, and urged Americans to (re)unite around our shared language, heritage, history and interests. About a decade later, three-term Democratic Colorado Governor Richard Lamm gave a short speech, a third person-account of which became one of the earliest known documents to “go viral” online. In the speech, Lamm laid out what he called—tongue firmly in cheek—his “secret plan to destroy America.” All of his eight points focused on deliberately fostering disunity: encouraging multiculturalism, multilingualism, dual citizenship, “diversity,” the politics of victimization and resentment, and so on. Every dire trend Schlesinger and Lamm warned about was already happening when they gave their warnings. Each is exponentially truer today. The country was still united enough in 1991, and in 1998 when Schlesinger augmented and republished his book, even in 2006 when Lamm spoke, the two of them at least got favorable hearings. Of course, no one left or right heeded or acted on any part of what they had to say. Instead, all the trends were not merely allowed to continue but deliberately intensified. And now here we are: in so many ways, more divided than we were in 1860—in so many ways, not even a “we” anymore. Restoring American unity in this climate sounds almost comically impossible. How to restore unity after five decades and counting of Cold Civil War—the rancor of which only seems to intensify month to­ month? I have some ideas, which I will get to. But first, let’s understand what is meant by “unity.” It does not mean a unanimous vote in the Electoral College, such as George Washington won twice. It doesn’t mean return to the bipartisan consensus of World War II and the first decades of the postwar, Cold War era. It doesn’t even mean anything like the 1972 or 1984 49-state landslide—which can almost certainly never be repeated. “Unity” in the American political context—really, for any republic, and one may say for republicanism simply—means a shared set of basic goals and assumptions. It doesn’t mean everyone has to agree on everything or even like everyone. Indeed, a unified republic may nonetheless be quite divided in certain respects. Historically the most common division in any republic has been economic, with religion and culture providing the underlying bedrock of unity. Divisions between patricians and plebeians over sharing spoils and offices continually wracked Republican Rome, but the city also remained fundamentally unified, as Rome, with both classes speaking the same language, worshiping the same gods, adhering to the same morality, and committed to Roman greatness and glory. To say the least, there does not appear to be any shared interest or bond of unity underneath contemporary America’s bitter Red-Blue divide. One side loves America, the other hates it—or can tolerate it only for what it might someday become, were the Left’s entire program to be enacted without exception. One faction, or most of it, is religious in the traditional sense; the other invented the god of wokeness, which it worships with Dionysian abandon. One side speaks only English, the other boasts of the literally hundreds of languages now heard in America’s Blue precincts. One side insists that the ultimate moral imperative is to punish the other—who in turn understand that morality requires fairness and equal justice under law. What would partisans of either side cite as something they share in common with the other? The land itself? But they each go to great lengths not to live anywhere near one another. “The economy?” It’s been reengineered to benefit one side at the expense of the other. As for the culture—that reliable unifying bond throughout most of history—to ask is to laugh, and cry, at the same time. The merest shred of cultural unity would seem so far out of reach as to be scarcely worth trying for, at least for the foreseeable future. I don’t believe the country can continue indefinitely without any semblance of a common culture, but focusing right now on a near- and medium-term impossibility would be folly. Which leaves us with economics.Even that’s going to be hard enough. How to do you reconcile—much less unify—a fundamentally rural, small-town and small-city manufacturing-agricultural economy with an urban and affluent-suburban finance-information-managerial economy? Especially when the profits of the latter so depend on strip-mining the resources—outsourcing the industries and replacing the labor—of the former? The seemingly paradoxical answer is that one side needs to gain and keep—electorally!—the upper hand for a while: specifically, the side that has been getting the short end of the stick for the last generation at least. Its leaders will of course, and of necessity, use their power to benefit their side—their base—but they must also use it to right the ship, to rebalance and benefit the whole. Reform or ReplaceWe see immediately, however, that no party representing the interests of the rural, small-town and small-city manufacturing-agricultural population currently exists. The Democrats long ago abandoned “the common man” in favor of their high-low coalition. The Republicans would seem to be the country party—certainly, they get a lot of their votes from such people—but in practice GOP office-holders and donors are just as, if not more, likely to side with the interests of the ruling class and “global capital” over those of their own ostensible base. What’s needed, then, is a Trumpist political party focused squarely on “old economy”—rural, manufacturing, and blue-collar interests. Which means, in most if not all cases, a party actively opposed to the program of the ruling class. If the Republican Party can become that, all to the good. If it can’t, it should go out of business. Trump’s 2016 vision and program remain the right ones—the only ones with any hope of restoring what measure of American unity can be salvaged and of keeping the republic going as a republic. For it to be carried out, the president must be followed by a succession—an army—of Trumpists. His base—and America itself—will need a new cadre of populist-nationalist leaders at the federal (of course) but also state and local levels. The party—whether Republican or a successor—needs such people both as a farm team or bench from which to recruit future elected and appointed high office-holders, and also to force D.C. to respect states and local communities as serious political power centers in their own rights, to make Washington think twice about being too heavy-handed. “Trumpism” needs a strong state and local political class ready and willing to fight for its core supporters and their interests, and to resist ruling-class authoritarianism. Let’s also be clear that saving the Republican Party will require, in no small measure, moving it to the left economically. Note well: moving it leftward, not making it a leftwing party. A Trumpist party—whether Republican or something else—will still be the party of property rights and of basic economic freedom, and will be the party opposed to “reparations” and other forms of unjust redistribution and expropriation. But it will be a party much friendlier to the interests of workers: the party of tight labor markets and rising wages, of reasonable worker safety and environmental regulations, of far-sighted government spending on infrastructure, and, above all, of industrial and trade policies that favor and encourage domestic manufacturing. Republican free-trade, low-tax, no-regulation dogma stopped serving the interests of at least half of the Republican voting base decades ago. The wing of the party that still sings from that hymnal today is nothing but a controlled-opposition adjunct of the ruling class. Its dogma will have to be smashed. A major area of continuity between the old and new Republican Party, however, will be the so-called “social” or “cultural” issues. The party must speak forthrightly for people distrustful, even fearful, of social engineering. The Left’s rout in the “culture wars” has made Republicans so gun-shy that they can’t even seize obvious opportunities, such as standing up for female high school athletes who suddenly find themselves losing all their track meets to biological boys. Much—probably most—of the ground lost in the culture war can never be regained (at least not as long as the current “sect” lasts). There’s no going back to 1985, much less 1955. Somewhat paradoxically, though, the Left’s many cultural victories make the Right’s task easier today. All the low-hanging fruit has been plucked: every social cause that ordinary Americans can be convinced is a matter of simple fairness has been achieved. What’s left are radical causes that sound to middle America not merely lunatic but dangerous. Fifty-year-old men asserting a fundamental “right” to change in front of 11-year-old girls in YWCA locker rooms is not the moral equivalent of ending Jim Crow—and despite the Left’s caterwauling, few Americans see it that way. What they lack are politicians with the spine to stand up to this nonsense. In other words, to succeed the Republican Party needs to become more like the old Democratic Party—more worker-friendly, more concerned with wage and wealth inequality—but also the opposite of today’s Democratic Party: openly nationalistic on economics and trade, stalwartly traditional on morality and culture. If the Republicans can so transform themselves, they have a chance. If they cannot, then the party will have to be destroyed and replaced—or else left to wither in the ruling class’s ante-room, its dwindling adherents the last to realize their own irrelevance. The Republicans are not exactly the “white party”—the spiritual and financial core of the Democratic Party is white—but they are the party that draws the overwhelming majority of its support from white voters. Were the Republican Party to die and be replaced by another—the same way the Republicans themselves replaced the Whigs in the 19th century—the new party would also be overwhelmingly white, and so would face the same demographic challenge. Which is that, for a Republican—or post-Republican, or Republican/post-Republican­-plus-Democratic-defector—coalition to emerge, it will have to include a substantial proportion of nonwhite voters. That’s just math. As our Blue overlords never tire of reminding us, “demographic change” means, or soon will mean, that assembling a national majority is impossible without a “diverse” coalition. Politically, Republicans would have to walk a very fine line: maximize their white support—especially in the Rust Belt and among those on the lower half of the income/education ladder—while actively campaigning for blue-collar, working- and lower middle-class black and Hispanic votes, especially among men, without jeopardizing their base. Another electoral quandary is how, simultaneously, to appeal to Asian voters. On paper, they should be the real “natural conservatives”: religious, family-oriented, meritocratic, successful, wealthy, supportive of law and order. And yet they are integral to the “high” part of the Democratic high-low collation. To update for our time Milton Himmelfarb’s quip about the Jews (who earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans), Asian Americans earn like Ashkenazis and vote like Somalis. That it’s possible to win, simultaneously, the votes of technocratic and managerial-class Asians and working-class blacks and Hispanics is demonstrated by the fact that Democrats routinely manage it. Could Republicans? Maybe—with the right message (more on this below). But cutting deep into the Democrats’ margin with their base voters would likely be enough to secure Republicans a majority for a generation or two—if they could manage to do so without losing their own. The Democrats know this. And it terrifies them. Which is why the ruling class and its minions will use their complete control of the Megaphone—the entire media and educational system propaganda machine through which our rulers broadcast their message—to make winning such votes very, very difficult. There is practically no end to the Left’s motivations for calling anyone to their right “racist.” But this fear is perhaps the biggest. Hence if and when the Republicans ever mount such an effort the calumny machine will kick into overdrive. The inherently paradoxical propaganda script is already written: the fact that you don’t win votes of color proves that you’re racist and bad; the only way to redeem yourselves is to court voters of color; but any voter of color who votes for you is a race traitor. Heads they shoot us, tails they hang us. Hysterical Megaphone propaganda 24/7 will be hard to overcome. But Republicans will not only have to try—they’ll have to succeed. Some will no doubt object that the Republican “brand” is too sullied in the minds of such voters for this to ever work. Certainly the Megaphone’s volume and shrillness have reached unprecedented levels under Trump. But that could be because Trump—a media-age celebrity if ever there was one—is so obviously not a “racist” but instead a respecter of fame, wealth, and power regardless of race and, moreover, exactly the kind of blingy, emotive, trash-talking “big man” whom working-class men of all races are apt to admire. Trump is the Republicans’ first real threat to attract minority voters since the New Deal, so the demonization had to be intensified in proportion to the threat. Before the 2020 Cultural Revolution raised vilification levels to an intensity hitherto unknown in American politics, Trump’s approval rating with minorities (again, especially men) was, even with all the hate thrown his way, higher than that of any Republican in at least a generation. Granted, those relatively high approvals hadn’t—yet—translated into votes. But the mere prospect that they might is a mortal threat to the Democratic coalition. A New MessageFor this to work, the Republicans will need a new “message.” The one they’ve been using for the last two decades—essentially a fusion of the 1980 platform with pledges never to stop fighting in the Middle East—not only no longer inspires the party’s base, it positively repulses many of them. It has no chance whatsoever of winning over any part of the Democratic coalition. What might? A winning message must combine the promise of concrete benefits with a sincere appeal to voters’ sense of dignity, individuality, and self-worth, and also to feelings of common cause, common citizenship, and patriotism. Something along the lines of: We’re the party of good jobs and higher wages—for you. Yes, we’re for economic freedom and (mostly) free markets, but not as ends in themselves, rather because theory and practice alike show that these are the best ways to produce prosperity for all. We’re well aware that the pseudo-prosperity of the last few decades has not been shared but has been gobbled up by those at the top, that you and your families have been left behind and even left out. The animating spirit of our party is to change that, to pursue policies that encourage domestic manufacturing, create jobs, and raise wages. And not just any jobs—not just paper-pushing and burger-flipping jobs—but jobs making real, tangible things that real people want and need. Jobs that—to be blunt—Americans, and especially American men, want to do. That means a shift from a purely information-service-consumer economy to a more balanced economy that respects and honors manufacturing. It means moving away from relying almost completely on imports in favor of making things at home—and a return to selling some of what we make overseas. It means no more dumb trade giveaways or tax and regulatory policies that favor bankers and techies while shafting everyone else. It means protecting American industries and jobs when and where beneficial to American workers. We’re also the party committed to ensuring that your hard-earned wage gains won’t be wiped out by rising health care costs. We’re not going to do that by forcing a government takeover of the system, which would make everything worse for everyone but the superrich, who could always afford to buy the best care (assuming high-quality care could survive a complete government takeover). We’re instead going to use government power to make the private market more affordable for routine doctor visits and ordinary care, and create a public backstop to ensure that, in cases of injury or disease, no person or family need worry about how to pay their medical bills. We’re the party of real “meritocracy,” not the phony kind the ruling class dangles to trick you into thinking our system is fair to you and yours. We’re the party that will neither create nor tolerate any impediments whatsoever in the way of your or your children’s rise. Help will be provided where it’s needed, but fairly, impartially. We will never pit race against race, group against group, citizen against citizen. We’re the party of military strength and foreign policy restraint—the party that will protect our country’s interests while minding our own business. America’s days as the world’s arbiter-intervener of first resort must and will end. As a commercial republic whose prosperity depends in part on buying and selling overseas, America must be able to project strength abroad. But we will do so only where and when we must, to protect our interests, which we will define strictly and narrowly. We’re the party of the common man and woman, the ordinary Joe and Jane, the average American—the party of family, faith, and our shared, cherished American way of life. We’re the party that will defend our common ideas of decency, morality, and citizenship. We’re the party that stands in favor of you living and worshiping the way you always have, the way your sacred scripture says and your ancestors taught you. We stand against silly, destructive fads cooked up on university campuses and in big cities to alter and degrade your way of life—and to insult and belittle you in the process. We’re for “progress,” but the real kind: progress in shared wealth and new technologies that benefit all, not just a small elite; progress in building up the dignity and honor of you and your families; progress in the strength and greatness of our shared country; progress toward a future in which America’s central institutions and power centers care about you and fight for you. I know that’s much too long for a political “message” in the age of soundbites. I leave to the consultants, pollsters, and focus-group jockeys the task of carving a workable set of one-liners out of the above material. I am however confident that a message based on these themes is the only one that stands a chance at building a majority coalition of middle-class and working-class voters capable of beating the hard Left at the ballot box. Michael Anton is a lecturer and research fellow at Hillsdale College, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, and a former national security official in the Trump administration.

The article was written by Mr. Cornel Nistorescu and published under the title ‘C’ntarea Americii, meaning ‘Ode America ‘) in the Romanian newspaper Evenimentulzilei ‘The Daily Event’ or ‘News of the Day’ – 20 years ago. ~An Ode to America ~Why are Americans so united? They would not resemble one another even if you painted them all one color! They speak all the languages of the world and form an astonishing mixture of civilizations and religious beliefs. On 9/ll, the American tragedy turned three hundred million people into a hand put on the heart. Nobody rushed to accuse the White House, the Army, or the Secret Service that they are only a bunch of losers. Nobody rushed to empty their bank accounts. Nobody rushed out onto the streets nearby to gape about. Instead, the Americans volunteered to donate blood and to give a helping hand. After the first moments of panic, they raised their flag over the smoking ruins, putting on T-shirts, caps, and ties in the colors of the national flag. They placed flags on buildings and cars as if in every place and on every car a government official or the president was passing. On every occasion, they started singing: ‘God Bless America!’ I watched the live broadcast and rerun after rerun for hours listening to the story of the guy who went down one hundred floors with a woman in a wheelchair without knowing who she was, or of the Californian hockey player, who gave his life fighting with the terrorists and prevented the plane from hitting a target that could have killed other hundreds or thousands of people. How on earth were they able to respond united as one human being? Imperceptibly, with every word and musical note, the memory of some turned into a modern myth of tragic heroes. And with every phone call, millions and millions of dollars were put into collection aimed at rewarding not a man or a family, but a spirit, which no money can buy. What on earth unites the Americans in such a way? Their land? Their history? Their economic Power? Money? I tried for hours to find an answer, humming songs and murmuring phrases with the risk of sounding commonplace, I thought things over, I reached but only one conclusion… Only freedom can work such miracles.

New post on Roma Locuta Est

The “we” in “We did it!” — and what they didby Steven O’ReillyAugust 15, 2020 (Steven O’Reilly) – This article is the ‘promised’ followup to my recent article on Theodore McCarrick and the 2013 conclave (see McCarrick on Bergoglio’s Election: “We did it!”). As reported in that article, following the election of Pope Francis, McCarrick is said to have excitedly told a prelate in Rome that “we did it.” The prelate in question said he understood this to mean that McCarrick, with others, had campaigned for Bergoglio’s election (see McCarrick: “We did it!” ).The interest for Roma Locuta Est in continuing to investigate certain aspects of the pre-conclave maneuvers has been primarily a historical one. The reason I say ‘primarily historical’ is for the following reason. It is certain that the rules governing conclaves (cf Universi Dominici Gregis, Normas Nonnullas) would not invalidate an election that was achieved through simony (cf UDG 78). Consequently, given that paying for votes does not invalidate an election, it is hard to imagine how campaigning for votes would do so. That is for canonists to debate. But if campaigning does not  invalidate an election, it is still curious that “St. Gallen mafia” members — who are widely believed to have done so — reject this suspicion so adamantly. It does seem these members of the St. Gallen mafia ‘doth seem to protest too much‘ — that is, if campaigning is all that is in question.In the last article, I recalled Patrick Coffin’s interview of Cardinal Burke in August of 2019. The interview touched upon the various concerns surrounding the 2013 conclave involving the activities of the “St. Gallen mafia” and of McCarrick’s “influential Italian gentleman” (see here). In that interview, Cardinal Raymond Burke, at least as I understand him, speaking in the hypothetical, seemed to suggest there “could be” an argument to invalidate the conclave if two things were demonstrated: (1) that the St. Gallen mafia engaged in an active campaign to undermine the pontificate of Benedict XVI and (2) that the St. Gallen mafia, at the same time, engineered the election of someone to their liking (see Coffin interview here, especially at 20:39-21:33)Roma Locuta Est has already written much on the pre-conclave period of February and March in 2013, including the importance of the timeline (see The “Influential Italian Gentleman”, The 7th Anniversary of McCarrick’s “Influential Italian Gentleman”).  However, revisiting Cardinal Burke’s criteria, I thought I’d summarize some key points.Whatever the date of the late Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor’s dinner with Cardinal Bergoglio in early March 2013  before the start of the General Congregations [see note 1], Murphy O’Connor would have us believe the two did not discuss Bergoglio’s prospects in the upcoming conclave, and contrary to Ivereigh’s original account of the pre-conclave period, no approach was made to Bergoglio to determine his interest in the papacy. [see Note 2]  This is true not only in ‘pope-maker’ Murphy-O’Connor’s account of the period, but in journalist Gerard O’Connell’s account as well (see The Election of Pope Francis).  Bergoglian-friendly sources paint a picture of Bergoglio blithely disinterested in the papacy.However, In his book The Dictator Pope, Henry Sire observes while Bergoglio made a show of being ‘indifferent’ and “making a circus of not wanting to go to Rome” for the conclave, this was far from the truth. Sire cites El Verdadero Francisco which quotes one priest, who dismissing this pretense of disinterest, said “…I knew that he was talking to half the world and plotting like mad.” That Bergoglio took an active interest in events in Rome following Benedict’s resignation announcement also comes through clear enough in O’Connell’s book. Still, Gerard O’Connell’s sources, per his book, would have us believe Bergoglio “knew nothing” of a vote-counting meeting of cardinals prior to the conclave at “Cardinal Nicora’s apartment” and nor was he aware of “earlier meetings at the English and American Colleges and the British Embassy” (cf The Election of Pope Francis, p. 181). Murphy-O’Connor was a close friend and confidant of Bergoglio, and one of the key “St. Gallen mafia” members leading the effort to advance the candidacy of Bergoglio in all of these meetings. Yet, we are expected to believe not a word was said to Bergoglio on anyof this, or his potential candidacy until the day the conclave began (March 12). But even then, we are further expected to believe Murphy-O’Connor briefly warned Bergoglio, only saying to him: “Stai attento!” (“watch out!”) [p. 189], and nothing more.  And, to this cryptic comment, Bergoglio —  who we have just been told was blithely ignorant of it all — somehow grasped the meaning of the English cardinal, and replied, “capisco” (“I understand”).  Unbelievable.The Befuddled Beneficiary of many Happy Coincidences?In February and March of 2013, Cardinal Bergoglio was blessed by many happy coincidences, it seems. On the day of Bergoglio’s arrival in Rome (February 27) before the effective date of Pope Benedict’s resignation (February 28), the cardinal — who we are expected to believe would be surprised to be elected pope — just happened to dine with four influential Italian journalists, all close friends. Two of these close friends were influential Vaticanisti (see here). Someone more ambitious for the papacy, more so than our blithely indifferent Bergoglio, might die for such an opportunity.So, it was additional happy coincidence that one of these two Vaticanisti (Andrea Tornielli) published an article on the morning of March 2nd that — whether by design or happenstance I cannot say for sure — certainly boosted Bergoglio’s papal candidacy (see here). Surely, it must have had that practical effect on the cardinals assembling in Rome at the time. Consider, quoting an anonymous cardinal, the article’s opening line famously read: “Four years of Bergoglio would be enough to change things.” That is certainly an attention grabber for the cardinals in Rome at the time, all of whom followed Vaticanisti commentary on the conclave and papabili closely.The infamous “influential Italian gentleman” (see here and here) used a very similar line in his meeting with McCarrick (see Villanova Speech), though he used “five years” — assuming McCarrick had not just simply misremembered or garbled the quote —  instead of “four years” as was written in Tornielli’s article. The ultimate origin of this phrase is a bit murky. The same phrase bubbled up to the surface in various places at the time. It was quoted by at least three separate reporters using two to possibly three separate sources — not to mention its use by the McCarrick’s visitor [see Note 3]! What all the known sources who used the phrase have in common (Tornielli or his source), Cardinal Errazuriz, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, and ex-cardinal McCarrick’s visitor), is that all were close friends of then-Cardinal Bergoglio. Thus, one might be forgiven for wondering whether the root source of the phrase was none other than Cardinal Bergoglio himself. After all, the phrase served as a pithy elevator pitch intended to assuage cardinals concerned about Bergoglio’s age, which might have otherwise been considered an obstacle to his election.  Roma Locuta Est has offered some hypotheses as to whom the “influential Italian gentleman” might be (see here and here). One of the names previously discussed is that of Andrea Riccardi (see The “Influential Italian Gentleman”: A Sant’Egidio Connection?). He is an interesting possibility. For one, by his own admission, Riccardi described himself as being a “convinced Bergoglian” since 2005 (see here). In addition, it seems that he had a prior habit of lobbying before a conclave. For example, Italian journalist Sandro Magister writes of Riccardi (emphasis added):”On the eve of the conclave of 2005 he carried out an incessant lobbying effort among the cardinals, in order to block the Ratzinger candidacy and to push that of Dionigi Tettamanzi, at the time the archbishop of Milan.”(Source: Sandro Magister, Between “Gay” Marriage and Elections. Can the Pope Trust Andrea Riccardi?, January 10, 2013)Indeed, even as far back as 1998, Magister, commenting on the Community of Sant’Egidio founded by Riccardi, wrote (emphasis added):But they´ll get their way. The members of Sant´Egidio are few in number. It´s difficult for them to make new recruits, and many leave. But they think of themselves as “the ant capable of doing great things with modest resources.” They are a powerful lobby. They will influence the conclave that elects the next Pope. No Church leader wants to have them as an enemy. Riccardi frequently says to his followers: “We must seem to be more than what we really are. That is our miracle: the great bluff.” (Source: Sandro Magister, The Story of Sant´Egidio. The Great Bluff. April 9, 1998)Riccardi was a “convinced Bergoglian” who also, apparently, according to Magister above, was an anti-Ratzingerian. Coincidentally, this is something he held in common with the members of the St. Gallen mafia. Also, coincidentally, the founding member of the anti-Ratzingerian St.Gallen mafia, the late Cardinal Martini, had close ties to Sant’Egidio and Riccardi (e.g., see The Story of Sant´Egidio. The Great Bluff. April 9, 1998, by Sandro Magister) [see note 4].  Magister even described Martini as a “cardinal protector” of the Community of Sant-Egidio.While confirmation of the identity of Riccardi as the “influential Italian gentleman” remains, for the moment, up in the air; what is clear from the context of McCarrick’s description is that his visitor was close to Pope Bergoglio (e.g., he knew McCarrick and Bergoglio were friends). We have also outlined elsewhere in detail how McCarrick could be very useful to a papal campaign (see here), and thus, why he was sought out for this very purpose.The “influential Italian gentlemen” visited McCarrick before the start of the General Congregations, the meetings of cardinals held prior to the actual conclave. As these began on March 4th, the meeting of the two men was likely on March 2nd or 3rd. If we accept McCarrick’s Villanova account, the ex-cardinal had not been actively campaigning for Bergoglio before this time frame. After all, speaking of Bergoglio, McCarrick told his visitor ‘no one was talking about him’ and ‘he wasn’t on anyone’s mind.’  McCarrick in his Villanova speech told the audience it was on this occasion that he first heard mention of Bergoglio as a viable candidate.The same visitor, then reminding the McCarrick of the ex-cardinal’s friendship with Bergoglio, asked McCarrick to “talk him (Bergoglio) up.” We now can confirm that McCarrick did, in fact, “talk up Bergoglio.” First, he did so indirectly during the General Congregations, suggesting in a short speech it was time to elect a pope from Latin America. Second, we have direct evidence McCarrick did so in the contemporary, written record of an eyewitness.  Sister Mary Ann Walsh wrote on her USCCB blog at the time that ‘prior to the Conclave Cardinal McCarrick…was touting the praises of Cardinal Jorge Borgoglio’ (sic) [see USCCBlog, “Pope Francis Has A Style All His Own,” by Sister Mary Ann Walsh. March 15, 2013]. Third, McCarrick’s “we did it” statement is itself direct confirmation and admission he contributed to the election of Cardinal Bergoglio (see McCarrick on Bergoglio’s Election: “We did it!”). While the evidence above is enough to demonstrate the point, I am quite confident there are cardinals in Rome and elsewhere who could also confirm that McCarrick “talked up Bergoglio.”  Engineering an Election?Prior to March 2nd, McCarrick was not ‘talking up Bergoglio’ but after the visit from the “influential Italian gentleman,” a friend of Cardinal Bergoglio, he commenced doing so.  As I opined before (see The Influential Italian Gentleman: McCarrick “touted the praises” of Bergoglio Prior to the Conclave), it seems unlikely that a narcissist like McCarrickwould have been moved to action had this request come from some random acquaintance who did not have a direct link to Bergoglio. What seems more probable is that he would be moved to action if he knew this request ultimately came from Bergoglio, someone who could specifically favor McCarrick in return. That Bergoglio had knowledge of McCarrick’s efforts on his behalf seems to be a reasonable deduction, given Bergoglio’s otherwise inexplicable lifting of restrictions imposed upon McCarrick by Pope Benedict XVI. Archbishop Vigano, as well, in his Testimony suggests this was done due to the “important part he (McCarrick) had played in his (Bergoglio’s) recent election.” Thus, it does not seem so outrageous to suppose as likely, if not probable, that the “influential Italian gentleman” acted as an emissary not only on behalf of Bergoglio but he had done so with Bergoglio’s prior knowledge, consent, and direction.All the above considered, even if a “campaign” by itself might not invalidate a conclave, there is evidence to suggest that Bergoglio was an active participant in the campaign that elected him, if not the probable instigator of it. For me at least, there are too many “happy coincidences”, as I outlined earlier….and as a former intelligence officer: ‘there are no such things as coincidences.’  The evidence suggests planning for a Bergoglian campaign had begun prior to the effective date of Benedict’s resignation.Undermining the Pontificate of Benedict XVI?As indicated above, the two criteria, outlined by Cardinal Burke, which together mightinvalidate the conclave would be (1) an attempt by the St. Gallen mafia to undermine the pontificate of Benedict XVI, and (2) an effort to engineer the election of a pope to their liking. With regard to the second of these criteria — discussed above, there is evidence that the St. Gallen mafia and others aligned with them, e.g., the influential Italian gentleman, and even Cardinal Bergoglio himself campaigned for — or “engineered” — Bergoglio’s election, even before the effective date of Benedict’s resignation. But what of the first criteria? Is there evidence the St. Gallen mafia undermined the pontificate of the Benedict XVI with the intent to bring an end to it? On this question, I have no evidence at present. None. Here the matter might end. However, there are a few observations I would make on some things I do find curious and notable. First, in 2012, the late Cardinal Martini — mentioned earlier as a “cardinal protector” of Sant’Egidio, and a founder of the anti-Ratzingerian St. Gallen mafia — urged Pope Benedict XVI to resign, months before Benedict did so. Martini made this suggestion in the summer of 2012 after the embarrassing Vatileaks scandal had been in the headlines for some time (see here). According to one of Martini’s associates (Fr. Fausti), the ostensible reason for Cardinal Martini’s suggestion in 2012 was that Benedict had failed to reform the curia (see here).Second, curiously, this was not the first time Martini had mentioned to Benedict the possibility of resigning as a consequence of failing to reform the curia. During the 2005 conclave, Martini threw his own support and votes behind Ratzinger’s election. Reportedly, he suggested to then Cardinal Ratzinger that if he failed to reform the curia, he should resign at some future point.Third, while the reform of the curia had been one of the supposed goals of Cardinal Martini and of the St. Gallen mafia; St. Gallen’s pope of choice — Cardinal Bergoglio — has had a only spotty record at best on the subject. Without going into a comprehensive list, we might touch upon a few items from the record. Early in his pontificate, Pope Francis lifted the sanctions on ex-cardinal McCarrick, despite the horrendous nature of the accusations against him; accusations of which he was undoubtedly made aware by Archbishop Vigano….that is if Pope Francis had not already been aware of them. There were the Pope’s dubious appointments of Bishop Zanchetta to the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (see here), and of Archbishop Edgar Pena Parra as an assistant Secretary of State at the Vatican (see here). The Pope halted an investigation into sexual abuse accusations against the aforementioned Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor (see here). Third parties were said to have interfered with CDF sexual abuse investigations, and Pope Francis dismissed two priests involved in such investigations at the CDF under Cardinal Mueller, then prefect of the CDF (see here). There have been additional sexual scandals, such as the orgy — by some accounts, presided over by a cardinal close to Francis (see here). Without going into great detail here, it is enough to note that financial reform has fared no better (e.g., here and here).Given the record of St. Gallen’s Pope on reform in Rome, one might wonder whether Cardinal Martini’s suggestion to Benedict (i.e., that he resign) was motivated more by an interest in seeing Benedict gone than in seeing the Curia reformed. That is, was the latter the means to achieve the former? I have previously offered some thoughts on such a hypothetical papal plot in a previous article (see Thoughts on Free Will and Hypothetical Papal Plots):Given the St. Gallen group had a secret agenda (opposition to Ratzinger, “drastic reform” of the Church, “modernization” of the Church, etc.), Cardinal Martini—in both of his discussions with Ratzinger on the question of accepting the papacy (2005) and resigning the papacy (2012)—appears to have been disingenuous, to say the least. The St. Gallen group wanted “drastic reform” and “modernization” of the Church—not reform of the Vatican Curia—and it opposed Ratzinger. The evidence on its face suggests Cardinal Martini as a member of the Saint Gallen group was duplicitous on both occasions. It appears Martini played his Machiavellian best with his losing hand in the 2005 conclave (to appear magnanimous in throwing his votes to Ratzinger!) and thereby setting up a plausible pretext (i.e., “reform of the curia”) to push Benedict XVI to resign in 2012 when he had failed to do so.Reportedly, Benedict made his decision to resign on December 17, 2012 after receiving a report on the Vatileaks scandal and the “Velvet mafia” (i.e., a gay lobby) operating in the Vatican (see here). Following his resignation, this report was provided by Benedict to Francis. However, it has yet to see the light of day. Francis has taken no discernible action on this report. Given his actions with regard to McCarrick in 2013, we might reasonably surmise his attitude toward the “Velvet Mafia” report was at best indifferent. So, I do have questions about Cardinal Martini’s and St. Gallen’s professed interest in curial “reform” in relation to prior suggestions that Benedict resign. Was St. Gallen’s profession of interest in “curial reform” an end, or was it a means to an end? That is, might the leaks regarding various scandals have been orchestrated by anti-Ratzingerians as the intended means to further exhaust and dishearten an aging Benedict to the point he would resign?   Final ThoughtsWe began this article by recalling Patrick Coffin’s interview of Cardinal Burke, wherein the Cardinal, replying to Coffin, seemed to suggest there “could be” an argument to invalidate the conclave if two things were demonstrated: that the St. Gallen mafia (1) engaged in an active campaign to undermine the pontificate of Benedict XVI and (2) at the same time engineered the election of someone to their liking (see Coffin interview here, especially at 20:39-21:33).Regarding the second of Burke’s criteria, in my opinion, the evidence appears strong that plotting to elect Bergoglio was underway before the effective date of Benedict’s resignation. However, with regard to the first of the criteria — that there was an active campaign to undermine Benedict’s pontificate, I know of no such evidence. That said, we do know a St. Gallen cardinal, Martini, had on at least two occasions discussed a papal resignation with Pope Benedict.  On the first occasion, at the 2005 conclave, he suggested to Ratzinger that, if elected pope with Martini’s support, he resign should he fail to reform the curia. On the second occasion, 2012, he suggested to Ratzinger that he resign because he had failed to do so. We also know that St. Gallen’s pope has a questionable record on or interest in true “reform” (e.g., McCarrick, Zanchetta, Parra, etc).  As for cardinals, bishops, reporters, etc., who might be reading this–particularly those cardinals who participated in the 2013 conclave; again I suggest….now might be a good time to seek an opportunity to interview McCarrick, and to query him about the “influential Italian gentleman,” his own efforts on Bergoglio’s behalf, the identities of McCarrick’s “we“, what the we “did” precisely, and what did Bergoglio know about “it.”  He should also be queried about his knowledge of Vatileaks and the “Velvet mafia.”  In addition, I think some questions should be directed toward some of the other names mentioned above (e.g., Tornielli, Riccardi).  PostscriptThe last curiosity of this story involves the report that Pope Benedict XVI made his decision to resign on December 17, 2012 — after receiving the report on Vatileaks and the “Velvet mafia” (i.e., gay lobby) in the Vatican.The date of December 17 popped up in another article I read today.  Maike Hickson on her LifeSiteNews blog (see What we know of Our Lady of Fatima’s ‘3rd secret’ appears to be unfolding in Church today: priest) discussed and provided a commentary by a German priest (Father Frank Unterhalt, “a German diocesan priest and speaker of a group of faithful priests called Communio veritatis“). In his commentary, provided by Ms. Hickson, Fr. Unterhalt offers interesting commentary on the Third Secret of Fatima and our times. I won’t go into the article in detail here, but recommend folks definitely read it. However, toward the end of Fr. Unterhalt’s article, speaking of St. Faustina, he writes:So, during this time, she experiences in everything the passion of Jesus and the abysmal iniquity of the betrayal. Christ made the servant of the true Mercy, St. Sister Faustina, experience all the bitterness of the Church’s agony of Gethsemane. She wrote in her diary: “On that day I suffered more than at any other time, inwardly and outwardly. I did not know that one can suffer so much in a single day.” The most terrible dimension of Gethsemane is the appearance of the traitor. St. Sister Faustina noted the date of this worst day of suffering. It was December 17, 1936.One must read Fr. Unterhalt’s commentary in full to appreciate the context of his citation of St. Faustina. But the mention of the date, December 17, as the day of greatest suffering in St. Faustina’s account above, struck me when I read it. I thought I had seen that date before, and then I remembered: Benedict reportedly made his decision to resign on December 17 — the day he received the reports on the Vatileaks scandal and the “Velvet mafia” (see here). But…then I remembered something else associated with the date of December 17. It is the birthday of Pope Francis. Steven O’Reilly is a graduate of the University of Dallas and the Georgia Institute of Technology. A former intelligence officer, he and his wife, Margaret, live near Atlanta with their family. He has written apologetic articles and is author of Book I of the Pia Fidelis trilogy, The Two Kingdoms. (Follow on twitter at @fidelispia for updates). He asks for your prayers for his intentions.  He can be contacted at StevenOReilly@AOL.com  or StevenOReilly@ProtonMail.com (or follow on Twitter: @S_OReilly_USA or on Parler: @StevenOReilly).Notes:There is much that doesn’t add up, or that at least is in need of clarification. There is, for example, the curious discrepancy between Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor’s account of the  timing of his dinner with Cardinal Bergoglio, and journalist Gerard O’Connell’s timing of that same dinner.  In his own book, Murphy O’Connor places the dinner on March 3rd, the eve of the General Congregations, meetings in which vote- and non-voting eligible cardinals would begin their pre-conclave discussions. In the ‘pope-maker’ Murphy-O’Connor’s account, this dinner did not take place until the fifth night of Bergoglio’s arrival in Rome, whereas O’Connell — apparently basing himself on notes of direct discussion with the cardinal — places it on March 1st, the day immediately following Benedict’s resignation.Certainly in terms of credibility, there are reasons to examine more closely the credibility of Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, who — despite his protestations there were no violations of the rules against campaigning — may have, nonetheless, been the potential source of information provided to journalist Gerard O’Connor. This information, provided at the start of the conclave, allowed Andrea Tornielli to appear quite prescient  as to how the voting was going in the conclave (see 2013 Conclave: Was there a violation of Universi Dominici Gregis 12?). If Murphy-O’Connor, or another cardinal had been the ultimate source of such information, the act was a violation of the oath taken by the cardinals (see UDG 12).The origin of the phrase — “Four years of Bergoglio would be enough to change things …” — is a curious one. As I discuss in more detail in my original article, “The influential Italian Gentleman,”  Tornielli cites an anonymous cardinal, as indicated above. Gerald O’Connell, in his book, The Election of Pope Francis discusses the famous quote. In it, one of O’Connell vaticanisti colleagues, Mathilde Burgos, quotes Cardinal Errazuriz, using the same line: “Four years of Bergoglio would be enough to change things!” While it is possible Errazuriz used the line with both Burgos and Tornielli, writer Paul Vallely quotes Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor use of the line (see here): “”Four years of Bergoglio would be enough to change things,” Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, and an old friend of Francis, told me.”  This is curious indeed.  We have Cardinal Errazuriz using the line with a Chilean reporter, and we have either Cardinal Errazuriz or Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor using the same line with Tornielli.  Or was it yet another cardinal that used it with Tornielli? With such an circuitous pedigree, the “four years” line appears to be a pre-packaged, electioneering talking point manufactured to defuse concerns cardinals might have about Bergoglio’s age–and indeed there had been such concerns. We know the line was used with at least three different journalists, and was possibly used by two or even three different cardinals, and by the “influential Italian gentleman.” Yet, given this commonality, one may rightly wonder whether the line was even original to any of them!  There is the real and amusing prospect that Cardinal Bergoglio himself was the ultimate and original source of the pithy phrase.”Another cardinal protector of Sant´Egidio is the Jesuit Carlo Maria Martini, the archbishop of Milan. They even call Martini an honorary member, because in 1975, when he was in Rome as the rector of the Pontifical Biblical Institute, he was thunderstruck upon meeting them and was part of their community for four years: he took care of an old man in Trastevere and said Mass in the blue collar neighborhood of Alessandrina.” (Source: Sandro Magister, The Story of Sant´Egidio. The Great Bluff. April 9, 1998)

Essential … to Whom? By Michael RussellAugust 15, 2020(emphasis added) In a free nation, producers and consumers define which economic endeavors are essential and which are not – in good times and bad.  If Bob the Baker is willing to risk his health by conducting business while under assault – whether from foreign bombs, domestic thugs, or novel flu – the choice is Bob’s. If Bob’s employees are willing to work alongside him, the choice is theirs. If Bob’s customers are willing to buy bread from him – whether while sharing open conversation or meeting in a basement wearing biohazard suits – the choice is theirs. If no one wants to work for or buy from Bob, only then is his business “nonessential.” Authoritarian apparatchiks have no more right to force Bob out of his relationships than Bob has to force workers and customers into one. In a free nation there is only one legitimate question regarding “essential”: Is Bob’s Bakery essential to Bob? Derivative questions are answerable only by individuals doing business with Bob. Viruses and power-lusting politicians are alike. Both are opportunists, advancing whenever possible on weakness. Both are oblivious to morality, only opportunity matters. Both do what their nature requires until diminished by superior resistance. Both have a common enemy: biological antibodies for one, moral-intellectual antibodies for the other. In a free nation, every business is essential to someone, in good times and bad. In a free nation facing bad times, opportunistic controllers like Cuomo, Whitmer, Evers, and Newsom are the ultimate nonessentials – and harbingers of freedom’s demise.

CHURCH HISTORY

POPE BENEDICT XVI SPEAKS ABOUT THE SECRET OF FATIMA

AUGUST 16, 2020

FROM ROME EDITOR

Father Lombardi: Thank you, and now come to Fatima, in some way the culmination, even spiritually, of this visit. Your Holiness, what meaning do the Fatima apparitions have for us today? In June 2000, when you presented the text of the third secret in the Vatican Press Office, a number of us and our former colleagues were present. You were asked if the message could be extended, beyond the attack on John Paul II, to other sufferings on the part of the Popes. Is it possible, to your mind, to include in that vision the sufferings of the Church today for the sins involving the sexual abuse of minors?

Holy Father: Before all else, I want to say how happy I am to be going to Fatima, to pray before Our Lady of Fatima. For us, Fatima is a sign of the presence of faith, of the fact that it is precisely from the little ones that faith gains new strength, one which is not limited to the little ones but has a message for the entire world and touches history here and now, and sheds light on this history. In 2000, in my presentation, I said that an apparition – a supernatural impulse which does not come purely from a person’s imagination but really from the Virgin Mary, from the supernatural – that such an impulse enters into a subject and is expressed according to the capacities of that subject. The subject is determined by his or her historical, personal, temperamental conditions, and so translates the great supernatural impulse into his or her own capabilities for seeing, imagining, expressing; yet these expressions, shaped by the subject, conceal a content which is greater, which goes deeper, and only in the course of history can we see the full depth, which was – let us say – “clothed” in this vision that was accessible to specific individuals. Consequently, I would say that, here too, beyond this great vision of the suffering of the Pope, which we can in the first place refer to Pope John Paul II, an indication is given of realities involving the future of the Church, which are gradually taking shape and becoming evident. So it is true that, in addition to moment indicated in the vision, there is mention of, there is seen, the need for a passion of the Church, which naturally is reflected in the person of the Pope, yet the Pope stands for the Church and thus it is sufferings of the Church that are announced. The Lord told us that the Church would constantly be suffering, in different ways, until the end of the world. The important thing is that the message, the response of Fatima, in substance is not directed to particular devotions, but precisely to the fundamental response, that is, to ongoing conversion, penance, prayer, and the three theological virtues: faith, hope and charity. Thus we see here the true, fundamental response which the Church must give – which we, every one of us, must give in this situation. As for the new things which we can find in this message today, there is also the fact that attacks on the Pope and the Church come not only from without, but the sufferings of the Church come precisely from within the Church, from the sin existing within the Church. This too is something that we have always known, but today we are seeing it in a really terrifying way: that the greatest persecution of the Church comes not from her enemies without, but arises from sin within the Church, and that the Church thus has a deep need to relearn penance, to accept purification, to learn forgiveness on the one hand, but also the need for justice. Forgiveness does not replace justice. In a word, we need to relearn precisely this essential: conversion, prayer, penance and the theological virtues. This is our response, we are realists in expecting that evil always attacks, attacks from within and without, yet that the forces of good are also ever present and that, in the end, the Lord is more powerful than evil and Our Lady is for us the visible, motherly guarantee of God’s goodness, which is always the last word in history.

____________

MAIKE HICKSON

BLOGS

What we know of Our Lady of Fatima’s ‘3rd secret’ appears to be unfolding in Church today: priest

The Third Secret given to Sister Lucia predicted, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the topSat Aug 15, 2020 – 12:01 am EST

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August 15, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Father Frank Unterhalt, a German diocesan priest and speaker of a group of faithful priests called Communio veritatis, has written an article about the current crisis in the Catholic Church and linking it back to the message of Our Lady of Fatima. He quotes Cardinal Ciappi, a theologian of the Papal House from 1955 to 1989, who stated in 1955: “In the Third Secret it is predicted, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top.”

In his statement (see full text below), Father Unterhalt of the Archdiocese of Paderborn sums up different aspects that help us to see that the Church has been infiltrated for quite some time now by anti-Catholic forces. Here, he quotes the former Communist Bella Dodd who admitted to having helped infiltrate the Church in the U.S. with some 1,100 communist priests, and he also refers back to the Freemasonic instruction “Alta Vendita” which aimed at receiving “a pope according to our needs.” 

Father Unterhalt also quotes George Weigel who, after studying the communist archives, described in 2011 “how the communist governments and secret services infiltrated the Vatican and used diplomatic relations with the Holy See to promote their interests – as one might expect – and to strengthen their efforts to penetrate the highest levels of the Catholic Church’s leadership, especially the Vatican itself – an approach that many high-ranking dignitaries in the Vatican apparently did not see through.”

The German priest also reminds us that it was already Father Maximilian Kolbe, who in 1917 witnessed an appearance of Freemasons in Rome holding up a flag with the words “Satan shall reign in the Vatican, and the Pope shall be his slave.”

It was Pope Benedict XVI who announced in 2010 that the Third Secret of Fatima is about the fact that “the greatest persecution of the Church comes not from her enemies without, but arises from sin within the Church.”

Here, we might also be reminded of the fact that, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he had said that Freemasonry was the greatest danger for the Church.SUBSCRIBEto LifeSite’s daily headlinesSUBSCRIBEU.S. Canada World Catholic

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Father Unterhalt does not mention the ongoing debate as to whether or not Rome has even fully published all the words of Sister Lucia of Fatima relating to the Third Secret, a discussion that is kept alive since the official publication of the Third Secret in Rome in June of 2000. In any event, the words of Cardinal Ciappi about an apostasy at the top of the Church as quoted by Father Unterhalt are not contained in the officially published Third Secret. It is to be hoped that future research will give us further light in this matter.

For example, Cardinal Silvio Oddi, who had been the secretary of Archbishop Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli – later Pope John XXIII – during the time the latter served as the apostolic nuncio in Paris, stated in 1990 in an interview about the Third Secret: “I would not be surprised if the Third Secret alluded to dark times for the Church: grave confusions and troubling apostasies within Catholicism itself … If we consider the grave crisis we have lived through since the [Second Vatican] Council, the signs that this prophecy has been fulfilled do not seem to be lacking.”

Father Unterhalt also reminds us that both the Book of Revelation and the Catechism of the Catholic Church speak to us about the loss of Faith at the end of times and of the final trials of the Church. Here he quotes the catechism as saying: “Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the ‘mystery of iniquity’ in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth.”

Father Unterhalt has been making strong statements in the last years that are pertaining to the preservation of the Catholic Faith. He and his priestly group Communio veritatis opposed, for example, the idea of intercommunion with Protestants; he publicly rebuked the head of the German bishops, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, for adapting the Catholic Church to the zeitgeist; and he condemned the practice of receiving Holy Communion in the hand while standing. Unterhalt also rejected Pope Francis’ new rule of giving Holy Communion to adulterers. Finally, he encouraged us to remain close to Our Lady, saying that “Many faithful are asking themselves today how one can withstand the current storm of the great test and remain in the true Faith. I would like to answer that with the famous words of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary in Fatima: ‘My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way which leads you to God!’” 

***

Full statement by Father Frank Unterhalt

The Church lives through the Third Secret of Fatima

It is high time to understand the full meaning of the prophetic announcement made by Cardinal Wojtyła at the 1976 Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia: “We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has ever experienced. I do not think that the wide circle of the American Society, or the whole wide circle of the Christian Community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-church, between the Gospel and the anti-gospel, between Christ and the antichrist. The confrontation lies within the plans of Divine Providence. It is, therefore, in God’s Plan, and it must be a trial which the Church must take up, and face courageously…”[1]

It is important to realize the full dimension of this dramatic appeal! Above all, one must consider what an anti-church needs at its head. In this sense, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen affirmed: “There will be a mystical Body of the antichrist, which will resemble in all its externals the Mystical Body of Christ.”[2]

During his visit to Germany in 1980, Pope John Paul II, when asked in Fulda how things were going with the Church in relation to the Third Secret of Fatima, replied with the following words: “We must prepare ourselves for great trials in the near future. Yes, they may even require giving our lives, and total dedication to Christ and for Christ! It can be softened by your and our prayer, but it cannot be averted. Only in this way can the true renewal of the Church arrive. How often has the renewal of the Church been born from blood. It will not be any different this time. Let us be strong and let us prepare and trust in Christ and His Holy Mother! Let us pray the Rosary very much and often!”[3]

Shortly after, this turned real for him. On May 13, 1981, the anniversary of the first apparition of the Blessed Virgin and Mother of God Mary in Fatima in 1917, the assassination attempt took place in Rome. Here the whole trial of which he spoke became visible in a dramatic picture. The direct attack against the Holy Father was not only directed at him, but at the entire Mystical Body of Christ on earth. According to the teaching of St. Augustine, the Pope is the “figura ecclesiae” and represents the whole Church.[4] Against this background, she must understand that she is in the midst of an apocalyptic struggle in which everything is at stake. This becomes even clearer when we consider the exact circumstances of the assassination attempt: The five shots were fired at 17:17.

On the one hand, this unmistakably points to the year in which Freemasonry was founded, 1717. St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe witnessed their demonstration on St. Peter’s Square in Rome in 1917. The Apostle of the Immaculata read the professed plan of the Freemasons on the relevant flag: “Satan shall reign in the Vatican, and the Pope shall be his slave.”[5]

On the other hand, in the same year 1917, the October Revolution occurred in Russia with the manifestation of atheist communism and the connected decisive struggle. 

In these contexts, the attack on the head of the Catholic Church shows the hostile attempt to overcome her completely. The aim of the attack in Rome was obviously to remove the God-given foundation of the Church in order to replace it with another “leadership.”

Of course, this plan did not end with the assassination attempt, which failed from the enemy’s point of view – to the contrary. Enlightening in this context is a letter of Sister Lucia to the Holy Father of May 12, 1982(!), in which she referred to the third part of the Secret: “Since we did not heed this appeal of the Message, we see that it has been fulfilled, Russia has invaded the world with her errors. And if we have not yet seen the complete fulfilment of the final part of this prophecy, we are going towards it little by little with great strides.”[6]

The theologian and writer Prof. Dr. George Weigel has analyzed the archives of the communist fight against Karol Wojtyła and Pope John Paul II, and has described the pertinent campaign as follows: “This material illustrates how the communist governments and secret services infiltrated the Vatican and used diplomatic relations with the Holy See to promote their interests – as one might expect – and to strengthen their efforts to penetrate the highest levels of the Catholic Church’s leadership, especially the Vatican itself – an approach that many high-ranking dignitaries in the Vatican apparently did not see through.”[7]

The shocking confession of the well-known Dr. Bella Dodd, a high-ranking member of the Communist Party in the USA, opens our eyes in a special way to the historical background. After her conversion to the Catholic faith, the former activist gave sworn testimony about the deliberate infiltration of the Church. According to her own testimony, she followed an order by Stalin at the time, which was issued to all Communist Party organizations to have agents without faith and morals infiltrate Catholic seminaries and religious orders.[8] 

This plan from Moscow was implemented extremely effectively – right down to the Vatican. In the 1950s, she explained: “In the 1930s we put 1100 men into the priesthood in order to destroy the Church from within, right now they are in the highest places in the Church.”[9]

Dr. Bella Dodd left no doubt about the drastic consequences: “You will not recognize the Catholic Church.”[10]

The philosopher Prof. Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand provides us with a profound analysis which clearly shows that the decisive battle is not outside but inside the Church herself: “An unprejudiced look at the present devastation of the Lord’s vineyard cannot overlook the fact that a ‘fifth column’ has formed in the Church (it is also called a mafia by some, even on the Church side), a group of purposeful destroyers of the Church. […] Their systematic and refined undermining of Holy Mother Church also bears clear enough witness to the fact that this is a deliberate conspiracy on the hand of the Freemasons and the Communists, who – despite their differences and other enmities – work together for this goal. For Freemasonry, the Church is the arch-enemy, and for the Communists the main obstacle to the conquest of the world. […] But the incomprehensible thing is that this conspiracy exists within the Church, that there are bishops and even cardinals, and above all priests and religious who are a kind of Judas.”[11]

Bishop Dr. Rudolf Graber has dealt with the goal of the hostile strategy. He quotes the so-called “Alta Vendita” – the Masonic plan for revolution within the Catholic Church. In it, it says: “What we demand, what we look for and have to await – just as the Jews await their Messiah – is a Pope according to our needs […] We do not doubt our reaching this highest goal of our efforts.”[12]

In this context the famous word formulated by Cardinal Ciappi is of particular importance. He was an expert on the Third Secret of Fatima and theologian of the Papal House from 1955 to 1989. In a letter to Prof. Baumgartner from Salzburg in 1995, he wrote: “In the Third Secret it is predicted, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top.”[13]

A look into the Book of Revelation makes this clear. 

The fire-red dragon (cf. Rev 12:3) represents atheistic communism, which seeks to destroy faith in God. In this battle two beasts come to the aid of the dragon, who shows himself to have powerful strength.

The black beast, which resembles a panther (cf. Rev 13:1-2), is Freemasonry. It acts in the background and hides itself in the shadows to be able to penetrate everywhere unrecognized. The throne and power of the dragon have been given to him (cf. Rev 13:2).

The other beast is ecclesial Freemasonry: “He had two horns like a lamb, but he spoke like a dragon” (Rev 13:11). This is a reference to the hierarchy of the Church, in which the mitre – with two horns – indicates the fullness of the priesthood. The beast that comes up out of the earth looks like a servant of Christ the Lamb, but is a servant of Satan the dragon.

The False Prophet (cf. Rev 19:20) is the pseudo-religious leader of the anti-church and drives apostasy from the top. He deceives and betrays the inhabitants of the earth (cf. Rev 13:14) and wants to lead people to worship the antichrist (cf. Rev 13:12), of whom he is the forerunner.

A direct reference to the Third Secret of Fatima is also found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the ‘mystery of iniquity’ in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth.”[14]

The Paschal Mystery of Christ is thus intensely renewed in his Mystical Body. The Church will follow her Lord in his death and resurrection.[15]

This is why Pope Benedict XVI, as a pilgrim on the road to Fatima in May 2010, explained the Third Secret: “Consequently, I would say that, here too, beyond this great vision of the suffering of the Pope, […] an indication is given of realities involving the future of the Church, which are gradually taking shape and becoming evident. So it is true that, in addition to moment indicated in the vision, there is mention of, there is seen, the need for a passion of the Church, which naturally is reflected in the person of the Pope, yet the Pope stands for the Church and thus it is sufferings of the Church that are announced. […]

As for the new things which we can find in this message today, there is also the fact that attacks on the Pope and the Church come not only from without, but the sufferings of the Church come precisely from within the Church, from the sin existing within the Church. This too is something that we have always known, but today we are seeing it in a really terrifying way: that the greatest persecution of the Church comes not from her enemies without, but arises from sin within the Church”.[16]

So, during this time, she experiences in everything the passion of Jesus and the abysmal iniquity of the betrayal. 

Christ made the servant of the true Mercy, St. Sister Faustina, experience all the bitterness of the Church’s agony of Gethsemane. She wrote in her diary: “On that day I suffered more than at any other time, inwardly and outwardly. I did not know that one can suffer so much in a single day.” The most terrible dimension of Gethsemane is the appearance of the traitor. St. Sister Faustina noted the date of this worst day of suffering. It was December 17, 1936.

Assumptio Beatae Mariae Virginis 2020

Pastor Frank Unterhalt

__________________

[1] John-Henry Westen, “Two timely quotes from St. John Paul II on his feast day,” in: LifeSiteNews, October 22, 2014; The Wall Street Journal, November 9, 1978.

[2] Fulton J. Sheen, Der Kommunismus und das Gewissen der westlichen Welt [Engl. title: Communism and the Conscience of the West], Berlin 1950, p. 12. [translated from German]

[3] Stimme des Glaubens [Voice of the Faith], October 1981.

[4] Cf. Augustine, Epistulae 53,2.

[5] Maria Winowska, Pater Maximilian Kolbe. Ein Leben im Dienst der Immaculata [Father Maximilian Kolbe: a Life serving the Immaculata], Freiburg/Schw. – Konstanz – München 1952, p. 41. [translated from German]

[6] Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, The Message of Fatima (June 26, 2000), Introduction.

[7] George Weigel, Der Papst der Freiheit. Johannes Paul II. Seine letzten Jahre und sein Vermächtnis [Engl. Title: The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II–The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy], Paderborn 2011, p. 14. [translated from German]

[8] Cf. Iben Thranholm, „Catholic abuse crisis is likely no accident, but a strategy to ‘destroy Church from within’“, in: LifeSiteNews, September 17, 2018.

[9] Bella V. Dodd, School of Darkness, Angelico Press reprint edition 2017, Introduction; originally published by P. J. Kenedy & Sons, New York 1954.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Dietrich von Hildebrand, Der verwüstete Weinberg [Engl. title: The Devastated Vineyard], Regensburg 1973, 2^nd ed., p. 11. [translated from German]

[12] Rudolf Graber, Athanasius und die Kirche unserer Zeit [Engl. title: Athanasius and the Church of our Time], Abensberg 1987, 11^th ed., p. 85. [translated from German]

[13] Brian W. Harrison, “Alice von Hildebrand Sheds New Light on Fatima,” Introductory commentary, in: OnePeterFive, May 12, 2016.

[14] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 675.

[15] Cf. ibid., 677.

[16] Pope Benedict XVI, Interview during the flight to Portugal, May 11, 2010

[17] Tagebuch der Schwester Maria Faustyna Kowalska [Diary of Sister Maria Faustina Kowalska], Hauteville/Schweiz 1991, 2^nd ed., No. 823. [translated from German]

Translation by LifeSite’s Martin Bürger

Would the Military Side with Leftist Tyranny or with America? By: Kurt SchlichterAug 13, 2020 The Democrats are wargaming how to steal the 2020 election, and after Grandpa Badfinger selected Lady Mac (Willie) Brown, their last best hope seems to be the military marching in and removing Donald Trump from the White House after he wins and they refuse to accept the election results. But will the military actually do the bidding of the coterie of Marxist Muppet masters with their fingers, ironically, up inside Joe Biden like he is a crusty, senile Kermit? Which he is, except the real Mr. Miss Piggy isn’t a manifestly mentally incompetent socialist Trojan Frog. And don’t even get me started on his veep, Botoxic K. Between the perma-coup against the American people, the mainstream media’s myriad and shameless lies, and the Democrats’ election fraud agenda (including the Golden Ticket to anarchy that is mail-in voting), it is absolutely clear that the Democrats will not accept Donald Trump’s impending victory. It is also clear that their plan is to sow chaos when they lose, with outright ballot box-stuffing, riots, and endless counts and recounts, so that they can obscure Trump’s win enough to create a patina of fake doubt about the result. Then they will rush into some Hawaiian courtroom and get some Hawaiian judge to announce that the Delaware Basement Crustacean won the election. The idea is to then have a deus ex militaria where somehow the establishment gets reestablished forever at gunpoint. And the liberal elite is said establishment. But it’s not completely crazy, unfortunately, to consider whether the military, or at least a portion of it, would cooperate in a liberal attempt to seize power. Here’s the troubling truth: the generals will absolutely fall in line with the liberal elite.  “Wait,” the reader asks. “Aren’t generals and majors and stuff conservative?” Well, in temperament, yes. But they are not conservative in terms of American politics. And for that reason, it is entirely possible, if not likely, that many of them would take the side of the leftist establishment if called upon to resolve a disputed election instead of demurring to the politicians to decide the matter themselves. Wow. Just writing that is scary. But these are scary times, and we are blessed with what Instapundit Glenn Reynolds tells Americans is “the worst ruling class in your history.” The generals are absolutely a part of that failed caste. The generals – a term I’ll use to describe the majority of senior active duty officers (Colonel/Captain O6 and up; note that reserve officers have a slightly different perspective, being civilians most of the time) – are creatures of the establishment. Yes, it is absolutely true that many of them showed great courage in battle against foreign enemies and made great personal sacrifices. It is also true that in the culture war they have been entirely AWOL. They are terrified of crossing the establishment by doubting its preferred mores, and that is why they accept every bizarre modern SJW trope regardless of its effect on combat readiness. They will charge a jihadi with a bayonet and wet themselves in the face of an irate Kirsten Gillibrand. It’s weird, but it’s true. Here, Trump and his populist movement are agents of rapid and disruptive change. The military, in which these generals grew up and which gives them their identities, is the least disruptive institution in American society. The lengthy and laudable tradition of civilian authority over the military, as well as the hierarchical nature of the military itself, makes it instinctively against rapid, disruptive change. Though the Democrats have moved left, they maintain a headlock on the institutions, and the institutions are what the generals are loyal to even if the leaders of those institutions have morphed into rabidly anti-American aspiring dictators. To embrace Trump and populism is to repudiate the whole establishment hothouse that grew their power and prestige. They would be opposing themselves. Look at CNN and see the endless parade of fully semi-automatic Obama generals babbling like idiots about how Trump is ruining their sweet gigs, though they don’t put it quite that way. Look at the appalling Chairman of the Joint Chiefs apologizing for following the elected president’s lead. And, especially, look at their horror that America is ending those endless wars. Those are the generals, and they have the elite’s back, not yours. A general who said “all lives matter” or refused to buy the ridiculous but fashionable notion that America’s greatest strategic threat is the weather a century hence or uttered some other heresy would not be a general much longer – and certainly not cash in on a sweet post-retirement gig at Boeing. But most Americans don’t see that. Because America remembers the military of 30 years ago that could actually win a war in a reasonable period of time (as we did in Desert Storm), today’s generals benefit from residual respect for yesterday’s Cold War military. Americans are unaware of the devastated culture cultivated by our military senior leadership. Here’s the ruinous legacy of today’s generals: Afghanistan is a disaster and still not won, ships colliding and catching fire due to gross failures of leadership, boats of sailors on tape whimpering as they surrender to the Iranian Navy, senior officers leaking to the media, colonels, generals and admirals getting court-martialed, massive prosecutorial misconduct by JAGs, woke West Point (which recently graduated an open communist), and troops kneeling before rioters. It’s a military that puts Diversity Day before D-Day. Unfortunately, the first 24 hours of war with China would make the rot agonizingly apparent – at the cost of thousands of our warriors’ precious lives. They’ll deny it, of course, and I fervently hope I’m wrong. But I fear I’m not, because none of the incentives in today’s military are aimed toward achieving combat readiness instead of achieving ideological conformity. So, count on the active duty generals to fall in line when the New York Times trumpets the Democrats’ line that Trump’s victory is illegitimate. That’s the voice of the people they really take their orders from. Then what? Good question, but remember that the military is not just the generals. The military includes the middle-grade and junior officers and non-commissioned officers as well as the enlisted troops. And while the woke poison has spread into these ranks too, there is a real question about whether those leaders, who are where the tank treads meet the road, would follow an order to make war on American citizens. That’s a harsh way of putting it, but making war is what the military does – it uses fire and maneuver to destroy the enemy, and to the liberal establishment, those of us who refuse to allow the election victory of our candidate to be undone will be the enemy. Intervention by the military necessarily means America forces killing American patriots. And no, the New York Times’ Marxist newsroom will not be exploding in protests over that domestic use of military force; it will be loudly cheering it. We know we cannot trust this generation of generals to stand up for freedom, but I’d like to think that a good portion of the troops would refuse to enter civilian politics in favor of the anti-American left. Yet, I would have also liked to think that we’d never see law enforcement officers eagerly obeying the fascist decrees of liberal poohbahs. The sight of overeager Barney Fifes hassling citizens about piehole thongs made it clear that for some people oaths come behind the giddy joy of power and keeping their pensions. So, the question is, what will our troops do? Will they make war on the American people so that Basement Biden’s puppet masters can turn America into Venezuela 2: The Quickening? Or will they say “No” to imposing a leftist dictatorship, which is what the Democrats’ Revenge Agenda proposes? Our troops are loved in large part because they don’t take a side in domestic politics; if they do, and turn on the people for the benefit of a senile old puppet and the Truancy Avenger, well, that affection evaporates.  Sadly, we cannot rely on the generals to not make the error. Let’s just hope that the danger is mooted because Trump’s margin of victory is so great that the Democrats cannot cheat.  Email Link  https://conta.cc/3kOcidi

BRAVO ARCHBISHOP Carlo Maria Vigano!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted on August 14, 2020by abyssum

CFN BLOGDR. MAIKE HICKSON

Abp. Viganò: When We Can Criticize Pope Francis, Can We Not Also Criticize Vatican II?

 Dr. Maike HicksonAugust 11, 202014 min read

In a public letter to Fr. Thomas Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap., Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò responds to the theologian’s statements that he is “uncomfortable” with the thought that the Second Vatican Council could be the “direct source and cause” of today’s ecclesial crisis. The Italian prelate quotes another, earlier article of Weinandy where he had spoken of Pope Francis as presiding over two churches – one schismatic, the other orthodox – and concludes that this, then, is also possible to say about the Second Vatican Council.

On July 27, Weinandy had published his own commentary on the current Vatican II debate. Yesterday, on August 10, Viganò responded in the form of a letter to Weinandy (see full statement below).

First, the Italian prelate quotes Weinandy as saying: “I sympathize with many of the concerns expressed and acknowledge some of the stated problematic theological and doctrinal issues enumerated. I am, however, uncomfortable with the conclusion that Vatican II is, in some way, the direct source and cause of the present disheartening state of the Church.”

Viganò then proceeds to quote an earlier October 8, 2019 essay of Fr. Weinandy, in which he dealt in a critical manner with the current situation under a Pope who allows erroneous teachings to be spread. In light of Amoris Laetitia, the German situation, the Abu Dhabi statement, and the Amazon Synod, Weinandy wrote, “What the Church will end up with, then, is a pope who is the pope of the Catholic Church and, simultaneously, the de facto leader, for all practical purposes, of a schismatic church. Because he is the head of both, the appearance of one church remains, while in fact there are two.”

It is here that Archbishop Viganò sees a parallel between Weinandy’s criticism of Francis’ pontificate and his own criticism of the Second Vatican Council. 

Asks the prelate:

“I ask then: if you admit, dear Father Thomas – as a painful trial to which Providence is subjecting the Church in order to punish her for the faults of her most unworthy members and especially of her leaders – that the Pope himself is in a state of schism with the Church, to the point of being able to speak of an “internal papal schism”, why can you not accept that the same has happened for a solemn act like a Council, and that Vatican II was a case of “internal Magisterial schism”? If it is possible for this Pope to be “for all practical purposes schismatic” – and I would say also heretical – why could not that Council also have been so, despite the fact that both one and the other were instituted by Our Lord to confirm the brethren in Faith and Morals? I ask you, what prevents the Acts of Vatican II from deviating from the path of Tradition, when the Supreme Pastor himself can deny the teaching of his Predecessors? And if the persona Papae is in schism with the papacy, why could a council that wanted to be pastoral and abstained from promulgating dogmas not be able to contradict the other canonical councils, entering into a de facto schism with the Catholic Magisterium?”

This new statement comes after several other statements by the Italian prelate and former papal nuncio of Washington, D.C., who responded to two different statements by Bishop Athanasius Schneider in June of this year.

Bishop Schneider responded to a lengthy interpretative essay by Cardinal Gerhard Müller trying to read the controversial February 4, 2019 Abu Dhabi document in an orthodox light, and thereby also positively referring back to some Council documents. Schneider stated on June 1 that the Abu Dhabi document is wrong in declaring that the “diversity of religions” is “willed by God.” In his second article, the Kazakh prelate of German origin also disagreed with the claim that Catholics and Muslims believe in the same God, a claim which is an underlying assumption of the Abu Dhabi document.

Archbishop Viganò gratefully and approvingly responded to this debate about Vatican II in a June 9 intervention, adding a June 15 statement about some of the problematic propositions that can be found in Vatican II documents. In this text, he also stated that it would be better if this Council were to be “forgotten.” He then answered interview questions from the Catholic commentator and author Phil Lawler concerning the history and background of the turbulent Second Vatican Council and the signs that it had been manipulated by a small group of modernists, on June 26.

In a response to LifeSiteNews editor-in-chief John-Henry Westen, Archbishop Viganò clarified his earlier words that he thinks this Council should better be forgotten, by saying that he considers this Council to be valid, but manipulated.

Finally, on July 6, this Italian prelate responded to a critique by the Italian journalist Sandro Magister who claimed he is on the “brink of schism.” “I have no desire to separate myself from Mother Church,” Viganò wrote in reply.

As to Weinandy himself, a well-respected theologian and former member of the International Theological Commission (2014-2019), he responded to these June/July statements by Viganò and argued at the end of July that one cannot make the Council responsible for the corruption that followed it, saying:

“It is naïve to think that so many priests, prior to the Council, were men of deep faith, and then, overnight, after the Council, were corrupted by the Council or the spirit of the Council, and so jettisoned their faith and left the priesthood.”

Weinandy then argued that there was a corruption taking place prior to the Council on which the further corruption could be based.

He himself thinks that the Council was in a sense an eye-opener, a “severe-grace” that is revealing to us how weak the Faith of most Catholics has become, until today.

“While the Council is not their cause [i.e., the cause of difficulties within the Church], the false, so-called spirit of the Council did allow the Spirit of truth to reveal to the Church, and to the world, just how feeble in faith, how anemic in life, the Church really was and had been. This severe-grace continues to be at work and is intensifying.”

It is to be hoped that this continuous debate – some of which is taking place over at Inside the Vatican’s website – will bear good fruit for the Church in her crisis, for the sake of a renewing of her Faith.

Please see below for Archbishop Viganò’s full statement to Fr. Weinandy:

August 10, 2020

Saint Laurence, Martyr

Reverend Father Thomas,

I read attentively your essay Vatican II and the Work of the Spirit which was published at Inside the Vatican on July 27, 2020 (here). It seems to me that your thoughts may be summarized in these two sentences:

“I sympathize with many of the concerns expressed and acknowledge some of the stated problematic theological and doctrinal issues enumerated. I am, however, uncomfortable with the conclusion that Vatican II is, in some way, the direct source and cause of the present disheartening state of the Church.”

Permit me, Reverend Father, to respond to you by using as an auctoritas one of your interesting writings, Pope Francis and Schism, published at The Catholic Thing on October 8, 2019 (here). Your observations allow me to highlight an analogy that I hope may contribute to clarifying my thought and demonstrate to our readers that certain apparent differences may find resolution thanks to a profitable disputatio that has as its primary purpose the glory of God, the honor of the Church, and the salvation of souls. 

In your essay Pope Francis and Schism, you observe, very appropriately and with the acumen that distinguishes your interventions, that there is a sort of dissociation between the persona Papae and Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a dichotomy in which the Vicar of Christ is silent and lets things drop, while the exuberant Argentine man who today lives at Santa Marta speaks and acts. Referring to the very grave situation of the Church in Germany, you write:

“First, many within the German hierarchy know that by becoming schismatic they would lose their Catholic voice and identity. This they cannot afford. They need to be in fellowship with Pope Francis, for he is the very one who has fostered a notion of synodality that they are now attempting to implement. He, therefore, is their ultimate protector.

Second, while Pope Francis may stop them from doing something egregiously contrary to the Church’s teaching, he will allow them to do things that are ambiguously contrary, for such ambiguous teaching and pastoral practice would be in accord with Francis’ own. It is in this that the Church finds herself in a situation that she never expected.”

You continue:

“It’s important to bear in mind that the German situation must be viewed within a broader context: the theological ambiguity within Amoris Laetitia; the not so subtle advancing of the homosexual agenda; the ‘re-foundation’ of the (Roman) John Paul II Institute on Marriage and Family, i.e., the undermining of the Church’s consistent teaching on moral and sacramental absolutes, especially with regard to the indissolubility of marriage, homosexuality, contraception, and abortion.

Similarly, there is the Abu Dhabi statement, which directly contradicts the will of the Father and so undermines the primacy of Jesus Christ his Son as the definitive Lord and universal Savior.

Moreover, the present Amazon Synod is teeming with participants sympathetic to and supportive of all of the above. One must likewise take into account the many theologically dubious cardinals, bishops, priests, and theologians whom Francis supports and promotes to high ecclesial positions.”

And you conclude:

“With all of this in mind, we perceive a situation, ever-growing in intensity, in which on the one hand, a majority of the world’s faithful – clergy and laity alike – are loyal and faithful to the pope, for he is their pontiff, while critical of his pontificate, and, on the other hand, a large contingent of the world’s faithful – clergy and laity alike – enthusiastically support Francis precisely because he allows and fosters their ambiguous teaching and ecclesial practice.

What the Church will end up with, then, is a pope who is the pope of the Catholic Church and, simultaneously, the de facto leader, for all practical purposes, of a schismatic church.  Because he is the head of both, the appearance of one church remains, while in fact there are two.”

Let’s try to replace the Pope with the Council, and Bergoglio with Vatican II: I think that you will find the almost literal parallel, the results of which are quite interesting. In fact, Catholics nourish veneration and respect for both the papacy and for an ecumenical council that the Church asks of them: on the one hand towards the Vicar of Christ, and on the other hand towards an act of the Magisterium in which the voice of Our Lord speaks through the Roman Pontiff and the bishops united to him. If we think of Saint Pius V and the Council of Trent, or of Pius IX and Vatican I, it will not be difficult to see the perfect correspondence between those popes and the papacy, and between those councils and the infallible Magisterium of the Church. Indeed, even thinking of a possible dichotomy would rightly fall under canonical sanctions and offend the pious ears of the faithful.

And yet, as you yourself point out, with Jorge Mario Bergoglio wearing the surreal garments of the Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, “The only phrase that I can find to describe this situation is ‘internal papal schism,’ for the pope, even as pope, will effectively be the leader of a segment of the Church that through its doctrine, moral teaching, and ecclesial structure, is for all practical purposes schismatic.”

I ask then: if you admit, dear Father Thomas – as a painful trial to which Providence is subjecting the Church in order to punish her for the faults of her most unworthy members and especially of her leaders – that the Pope himself is in a state of schism with the Church, to the point of being able to speak of an “internal papal schism”, why can you not accept that the same has happened for a solemn act like a Council, and that Vatican II was a case of “internal Magisterial schism”? If it is possible for this Pope to be “for all practical purposes schismatic” – and I would say also heretical – why could not that Council also have been so, despite the fact that both one and the other were instituted by Our Lord to confirm the brethren in Faith and Morals? I ask you, what prevents the Acts of Vatican II from deviating from the path of Tradition, when the Supreme Pastor himself can deny the teaching of his Predecessors? And if the persona Papae is in schism with the papacy, why could a council that wanted to be pastoral and abstained from promulgating dogmas not be able to contradict the other canonical councils, entering into a de facto schism with the Catholic Magisterium?

It’s true that this situation is a hapax, a case that in itself has never been seen in the history of the Church; but if this applies to the papacy – in a crescendo from Roncalli to Bergoglio – I do not see why it could not apply for Vatican II, which precisely thanks to the recent popes has set itself as an event in itself, and as such has been used by its proponents.

To use your words, “What the Church will end up with” is a Council that is a Council of the Catholic Church and, simultaneously, the de facto first council, for all practical purposes, of a schismatic church, or the “conciliar church” that considers itself to have been born at Vatican II. Since Vatican II is both an ecumenical council and a “devil council” [conciliabolo], it retains the appearance of being a single Council, when in reality there are two. And I would add: one council was legitimate and orthodox and was aborted from birth with the subversion of the preparatory schemes, and one council was illegitimate and heretical (or at least favens haeresim) and is the one to which all of the Innovators refer, including Bergoglio, in order to legitimize their doctrinal, moral and liturgical deviations. Exactly as “many theologically dubious cardinals, bishops, priests, and theologians whom Francis supports and promotes to high ecclesial positions” maintain that the authority of the Vicar of Christ should be recognized in the acts of governance and magisterium performed by Jorge Mario, right at the moment in which with those acts he demonstrates himself “for all practical purposes schismatic.”

And if on the one hand it is very true that “while Pope Francis may stop them from doing something egregiously contrary to the Church’s teaching, he will allow them to do things that are ambiguously contrary, for such ambiguous teaching and pastoral practice would be in accord with Francis’ own,” it is equally true – paraphrasing your words – that “while John XXIII and Paul VI may have stopped the modernists from doing things egregiously contrary to the Church’s teaching, they allowed them to do things that were ambiguously contrary, for such ambiguous teaching and pastoral practice were in accord with that of Roncalli and Montini.”

So it seems to me, Reverend Father, that you may find confirmation of what I affirmed in my essay at the origin of the disputatio on the Council, namely that the “container-council” was used to give apparent authority to a deliberately subversive event, exactly as today, right before our eyes, the Vicar of Christ is used to give apparent authoritativeness to a deliberately subversive operation. In both cases, the innate sense of respect towards the Church of Christ on the part of the faithful and the clergy is being used as an infernal stratagem – a Trojan horse introduced into the Sacred Citadel – in order to dissuade every form of dutiful dissent, every criticism, every legitimate denunciation.

It is painful to observe that this observation, far from rehabilitating Vatican II, confirms a profound crisis of the entire ecclesiastical institution, effected by the work of renegades who have abused their own authority against the Authority itself, of papal power against the papacy itself, and of the authority of the Conciliar Fathers against the Church herself. A devious and cowardly betrayal operated from within the Church herself, as Saint Pius X had already predicted and condemned in the Pascendi encyclical, indicating the modernists as the most harmful enemies of the Church.

Let’s not forget that Dante places the fraudulent in the Ninth Circle of Hell.

Receive, Reverend and dear Father Thomas, my blessing.

+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop

Official translation by Giuseppe PellegrinoAbu DhabiAmazon SynodAmoris LaetitiaArchbishop Carlo Maria ViganòBishop Athanasius SchneiderCardinal Gerhard MüllerFr. Thomas WeinandyHuman FraternityInside the VaticanPhil LawlerPope FrancisSandro MagisterSecond Vatican CouncilVatican II

Dr. Maike Hickson

Dr. Maike Hickson, born and raised in Germany, studied History and French Literature at the University of Hannover and lived for several years in Switzerland, where she wrote her doctoral dissertation. She is married to Dr. Robert Hickson and they have been blessed with two beautiful children. She is a happy housewife who likes to write articles when time permits. Her work has appeared in American and European publications and websites such as LifeSiteNews, OnePeterFive, The Wanderer, Rorate Caeli, Catholicism.org, Catholic Family News, Christian Order, Notizie Pro-Vita, Corrispondenza Romana, Katholisches.info, Der Dreizehnte, Zeit-Fragen, and Westfalen-Blatt.VIEW ALL POSTS

CFN BLOGDR. MAIKE HICKSON

Abp. Viganò: When We Can Criticize Pope Francis, Can We Not Also Criticize Vatican II?

 Dr. Maike HicksonAugust 11, 202014 min read

In a public letter to Fr. Thomas Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap., Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò responds to the theologian’s statements that he is “uncomfortable” with the thought that the Second Vatican Council could be the “direct source and cause” of today’s ecclesial crisis. The Italian prelate quotes another, earlier article of Weinandy where he had spoken of Pope Francis as presiding over two churches – one schismatic, the other orthodox – and concludes that this, then, is also possible to say about the Second Vatican Council.

On July 27, Weinandy had published his own commentary on the current Vatican II debate. Yesterday, on August 10, Viganò responded in the form of a letter to Weinandy (see full statement below).

First, the Italian prelate quotes Weinandy as saying: “I sympathize with many of the concerns expressed and acknowledge some of the stated problematic theological and doctrinal issues enumerated. I am, however, uncomfortable with the conclusion that Vatican II is, in some way, the direct source and cause of the present disheartening state of the Church.”

Viganò then proceeds to quote an earlier October 8, 2019 essay of Fr. Weinandy, in which he dealt in a critical manner with the current situation under a Pope who allows erroneous teachings to be spread. In light of Amoris Laetitia, the German situation, the Abu Dhabi statement, and the Amazon Synod, Weinandy wrote, “What the Church will end up with, then, is a pope who is the pope of the Catholic Church and, simultaneously, the de facto leader, for all practical purposes, of a schismatic church. Because he is the head of both, the appearance of one church remains, while in fact there are two.”

It is here that Archbishop Viganò sees a parallel between Weinandy’s criticism of Francis’ pontificate and his own criticism of the Second Vatican Council. 

Asks the prelate:

“I ask then: if you admit, dear Father Thomas – as a painful trial to which Providence is subjecting the Church in order to punish her for the faults of her most unworthy members and especially of her leaders – that the Pope himself is in a state of schism with the Church, to the point of being able to speak of an “internal papal schism”, why can you not accept that the same has happened for a solemn act like a Council, and that Vatican II was a case of “internal Magisterial schism”? If it is possible for this Pope to be “for all practical purposes schismatic” – and I would say also heretical – why could not that Council also have been so, despite the fact that both one and the other were instituted by Our Lord to confirm the brethren in Faith and Morals? I ask you, what prevents the Acts of Vatican II from deviating from the path of Tradition, when the Supreme Pastor himself can deny the teaching of his Predecessors? And if the persona Papae is in schism with the papacy, why could a council that wanted to be pastoral and abstained from promulgating dogmas not be able to contradict the other canonical councils, entering into a de facto schism with the Catholic Magisterium?”

This new statement comes after several other statements by the Italian prelate and former papal nuncio of Washington, D.C., who responded to two different statements by Bishop Athanasius Schneider in June of this year.

Bishop Schneider responded to a lengthy interpretative essay by Cardinal Gerhard Müller trying to read the controversial February 4, 2019 Abu Dhabi document in an orthodox light, and thereby also positively referring back to some Council documents. Schneider stated on June 1 that the Abu Dhabi document is wrong in declaring that the “diversity of religions” is “willed by God.” In his second article, the Kazakh prelate of German origin also disagreed with the claim that Catholics and Muslims believe in the same God, a claim which is an underlying assumption of the Abu Dhabi document.

Archbishop Viganò gratefully and approvingly responded to this debate about Vatican II in a June 9 intervention, adding a June 15 statement about some of the problematic propositions that can be found in Vatican II documents. In this text, he also stated that it would be better if this Council were to be “forgotten.” He then answered interview questions from the Catholic commentator and author Phil Lawler concerning the history and background of the turbulent Second Vatican Council and the signs that it had been manipulated by a small group of modernists, on June 26.

In a response to LifeSiteNews editor-in-chief John-Henry Westen, Archbishop Viganò clarified his earlier words that he thinks this Council should better be forgotten, by saying that he considers this Council to be valid, but manipulated.

Finally, on July 6, this Italian prelate responded to a critique by the Italian journalist Sandro Magister who claimed he is on the “brink of schism.” “I have no desire to separate myself from Mother Church,” Viganò wrote in reply.

As to Weinandy himself, a well-respected theologian and former member of the International Theological Commission (2014-2019), he responded to these June/July statements by Viganò and argued at the end of July that one cannot make the Council responsible for the corruption that followed it, saying:

“It is naïve to think that so many priests, prior to the Council, were men of deep faith, and then, overnight, after the Council, were corrupted by the Council or the spirit of the Council, and so jettisoned their faith and left the priesthood.”

Weinandy then argued that there was a corruption taking place prior to the Council on which the further corruption could be based.

He himself thinks that the Council was in a sense an eye-opener, a “severe-grace” that is revealing to us how weak the Faith of most Catholics has become, until today.

“While the Council is not their cause [i.e., the cause of difficulties within the Church], the false, so-called spirit of the Council did allow the Spirit of truth to reveal to the Church, and to the world, just how feeble in faith, how anemic in life, the Church really was and had been. This severe-grace continues to be at work and is intensifying.”

It is to be hoped that this continuous debate – some of which is taking place over at Inside the Vatican’s website – will bear good fruit for the Church in her crisis, for the sake of a renewing of her Faith.

Please see below for Archbishop Viganò’s full statement to Fr. Weinandy:

August 10, 2020

Saint Laurence, Martyr

Reverend Father Thomas,

I read attentively your essay Vatican II and the Work of the Spirit which was published at Inside the Vatican on July 27, 2020 (here). It seems to me that your thoughts may be summarized in these two sentences:

“I sympathize with many of the concerns expressed and acknowledge some of the stated problematic theological and doctrinal issues enumerated. I am, however, uncomfortable with the conclusion that Vatican II is, in some way, the direct source and cause of the present disheartening state of the Church.”

Permit me, Reverend Father, to respond to you by using as an auctoritas one of your interesting writings, Pope Francis and Schism, published at The Catholic Thing on October 8, 2019 (here). Your observations allow me to highlight an analogy that I hope may contribute to clarifying my thought and demonstrate to our readers that certain apparent differences may find resolution thanks to a profitable disputatio that has as its primary purpose the glory of God, the honor of the Church, and the salvation of souls. 

In your essay Pope Francis and Schism, you observe, very appropriately and with the acumen that distinguishes your interventions, that there is a sort of dissociation between the persona Papae and Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a dichotomy in which the Vicar of Christ is silent and lets things drop, while the exuberant Argentine man who today lives at Santa Marta speaks and acts. Referring to the very grave situation of the Church in Germany, you write:

“First, many within the German hierarchy know that by becoming schismatic they would lose their Catholic voice and identity. This they cannot afford. They need to be in fellowship with Pope Francis, for he is the very one who has fostered a notion of synodality that they are now attempting to implement. He, therefore, is their ultimate protector.

Second, while Pope Francis may stop them from doing something egregiously contrary to the Church’s teaching, he will allow them to do things that are ambiguously contrary, for such ambiguous teaching and pastoral practice would be in accord with Francis’ own. It is in this that the Church finds herself in a situation that she never expected.”

You continue:

“It’s important to bear in mind that the German situation must be viewed within a broader context: the theological ambiguity within Amoris Laetitia; the not so subtle advancing of the homosexual agenda; the ‘re-foundation’ of the (Roman) John Paul II Institute on Marriage and Family, i.e., the undermining of the Church’s consistent teaching on moral and sacramental absolutes, especially with regard to the indissolubility of marriage, homosexuality, contraception, and abortion.

Similarly, there is the Abu Dhabi statement, which directly contradicts the will of the Father and so undermines the primacy of Jesus Christ his Son as the definitive Lord and universal Savior.

Moreover, the present Amazon Synod is teeming with participants sympathetic to and supportive of all of the above. One must likewise take into account the many theologically dubious cardinals, bishops, priests, and theologians whom Francis supports and promotes to high ecclesial positions.”

And you conclude:

“With all of this in mind, we perceive a situation, ever-growing in intensity, in which on the one hand, a majority of the world’s faithful – clergy and laity alike – are loyal and faithful to the pope, for he is their pontiff, while critical of his pontificate, and, on the other hand, a large contingent of the world’s faithful – clergy and laity alike – enthusiastically support Francis precisely because he allows and fosters their ambiguous teaching and ecclesial practice.

What the Church will end up with, then, is a pope who is the pope of the Catholic Church and, simultaneously, the de facto leader, for all practical purposes, of a schismatic church.  Because he is the head of both, the appearance of one church remains, while in fact there are two.”

Let’s try to replace the Pope with the Council, and Bergoglio with Vatican II: I think that you will find the almost literal parallel, the results of which are quite interesting. In fact, Catholics nourish veneration and respect for both the papacy and for an ecumenical council that the Church asks of them: on the one hand towards the Vicar of Christ, and on the other hand towards an act of the Magisterium in which the voice of Our Lord speaks through the Roman Pontiff and the bishops united to him. If we think of Saint Pius V and the Council of Trent, or of Pius IX and Vatican I, it will not be difficult to see the perfect correspondence between those popes and the papacy, and between those councils and the infallible Magisterium of the Church. Indeed, even thinking of a possible dichotomy would rightly fall under canonical sanctions and offend the pious ears of the faithful.

And yet, as you yourself point out, with Jorge Mario Bergoglio wearing the surreal garments of the Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, “The only phrase that I can find to describe this situation is ‘internal papal schism,’ for the pope, even as pope, will effectively be the leader of a segment of the Church that through its doctrine, moral teaching, and ecclesial structure, is for all practical purposes schismatic.”

I ask then: if you admit, dear Father Thomas – as a painful trial to which Providence is subjecting the Church in order to punish her for the faults of her most unworthy members and especially of her leaders – that the Pope himself is in a state of schism with the Church, to the point of being able to speak of an “internal papal schism”, why can you not accept that the same has happened for a solemn act like a Council, and that Vatican II was a case of “internal Magisterial schism”? If it is possible for this Pope to be “for all practical purposes schismatic” – and I would say also heretical – why could not that Council also have been so, despite the fact that both one and the other were instituted by Our Lord to confirm the brethren in Faith and Morals? I ask you, what prevents the Acts of Vatican II from deviating from the path of Tradition, when the Supreme Pastor himself can deny the teaching of his Predecessors? And if the persona Papae is in schism with the papacy, why could a council that wanted to be pastoral and abstained from promulgating dogmas not be able to contradict the other canonical councils, entering into a de facto schism with the Catholic Magisterium?

It’s true that this situation is a hapax, a case that in itself has never been seen in the history of the Church; but if this applies to the papacy – in a crescendo from Roncalli to Bergoglio – I do not see why it could not apply for Vatican II, which precisely thanks to the recent popes has set itself as an event in itself, and as such has been used by its proponents.

To use your words, “What the Church will end up with” is a Council that is a Council of the Catholic Church and, simultaneously, the de facto first council, for all practical purposes, of a schismatic church, or the “conciliar church” that considers itself to have been born at Vatican II. Since Vatican II is both an ecumenical council and a “devil council” [conciliabolo], it retains the appearance of being a single Council, when in reality there are two. And I would add: one council was legitimate and orthodox and was aborted from birth with the subversion of the preparatory schemes, and one council was illegitimate and heretical (or at least favens haeresim) and is the one to which all of the Innovators refer, including Bergoglio, in order to legitimize their doctrinal, moral and liturgical deviations. Exactly as “many theologically dubious cardinals, bishops, priests, and theologians whom Francis supports and promotes to high ecclesial positions” maintain that the authority of the Vicar of Christ should be recognized in the acts of governance and magisterium performed by Jorge Mario, right at the moment in which with those acts he demonstrates himself “for all practical purposes schismatic.”

And if on the one hand it is very true that “while Pope Francis may stop them from doing something egregiously contrary to the Church’s teaching, he will allow them to do things that are ambiguously contrary, for such ambiguous teaching and pastoral practice would be in accord with Francis’ own,” it is equally true – paraphrasing your words – that “while John XXIII and Paul VI may have stopped the modernists from doing things egregiously contrary to the Church’s teaching, they allowed them to do things that were ambiguously contrary, for such ambiguous teaching and pastoral practice were in accord with that of Roncalli and Montini.”

So it seems to me, Reverend Father, that you may find confirmation of what I affirmed in my essay at the origin of the disputatio on the Council, namely that the “container-council” was used to give apparent authority to a deliberately subversive event, exactly as today, right before our eyes, the Vicar of Christ is used to give apparent authoritativeness to a deliberately subversive operation. In both cases, the innate sense of respect towards the Church of Christ on the part of the faithful and the clergy is being used as an infernal stratagem – a Trojan horse introduced into the Sacred Citadel – in order to dissuade every form of dutiful dissent, every criticism, every legitimate denunciation.

It is painful to observe that this observation, far from rehabilitating Vatican II, confirms a profound crisis of the entire ecclesiastical institution, effected by the work of renegades who have abused their own authority against the Authority itself, of papal power against the papacy itself, and of the authority of the Conciliar Fathers against the Church herself. A devious and cowardly betrayal operated from within the Church herself, as Saint Pius X had already predicted and condemned in the Pascendi encyclical, indicating the modernists as the most harmful enemies of the Church.

Let’s not forget that Dante places the fraudulent in the Ninth Circle of Hell.

Receive, Reverend and dear Father Thomas, my blessing.

+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop

Official translation by Giuseppe PellegrinoAbu DhabiAmazon SynodAmoris LaetitiaArchbishop Carlo Maria ViganòBishop Athanasius SchneiderCardinal Gerhard MüllerFr. Thomas WeinandyHuman FraternityInside the VaticanPhil LawlerPope FrancisSandro MagisterSecond Vatican CouncilVatican II

Dr. Maike Hickson

Dr. Maike Hickson, born and raised in Germany, studied History and French Literature at the University of Hannover and lived for several years in Switzerland, where she wrote her doctoral dissertation. She is married to Dr. Robert Hickson and they have been blessed with two beautiful children. She is a happy housewife who likes to write articles when time permits. Her work has appeared in American and European publications and websites such as LifeSiteNews, OnePeterFive, The Wanderer, Rorate Caeli, Catholicism.org, Catholic Family News, Christian Order, Notizie Pro-Vita, Corrispondenza Romana, Katholisches.info, Der Dreizehnte, Zeit-Fragen, and Westfalen-Blatt.VIEW ALL POSTS

The Leprosy of Hateby Judie BrownRead online and share: https://all.org/oh-kamala-oh-kamala/by Judie BrownSing to the tune of “Oh Christmas Tree”:Oh Kamala, Oh Kamala, How ugly are your actions! Oh Kamala, Oh Kamala, How deadly are your ways!California senator Kamala Harris is a living, breathing symbol of the threatening new reality we now see in this nation: the furtherance of the violence of abortion, contraception, and its progeny at any cost. And sadly, David Daleiden, founder of the Center for Medical Progress, knows the truth of this more than anyone.On the evening Harris was announced as Biden’s VP choice, Daleiden tweeted: “Lots of people are asking me what I think of the news tonight ‘[Kamala Harris] is the greatest threat to First Amendment civil rights our country has ever seen. I know because she had my home raided for speaking the truth about her political patrons at Planned Parenthood.’”Mind you, Daleiden is no slouch! In May of this year, he sued Harris “after alleging she conspired to violate his civil rights while attorney general of California.” Daleiden and the Center for Medical Practice sued not only Harris but also the racist Planned Parenthood and California attorney general Xavier Becerra.According to the National Review, Harris “has cosponsored the most aggressively pro-abortion piece of federal legislation ever introduced, the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would override state restrictions on abortions in the last three months of pregnancy, well after fetal viability. The bill would invalidate any state law that prohibits ‘abortion after fetal viability when, in the good-faith medical judgment of the treating physician, continuation of the pregnancy would pose a risk to the pregnant woman’s life or health.’”To say that Harris is intransigent when it comes to her support for abortion on demand would be an understatement. In fact, according to her voting record, Harris has a 100 percent pro-death record.Harris, a supporter of Black Lives Matter, has also spewed venom at the Little Sisters of the Poor, who recently won in the Supreme Court—a win that enabled the sisters to avoid covering contraception for their employees. This did not make Harris happy, and she said: “For scores of workers, the Court ruled that whether their health insurance covers birth control is up to their boss. This decision is dangerous, particularly for people of color, low-wage workers, and LGBTQ+ people who are more likely to face financial and other barriers to care. Now, more than ever, Congress must take action to protect and expand access to contraception and other reproductive health care.”Harris has also exhibited “religious bigotry” in cases where she should have been a defender of religious liberty rather than its destroyer. Pointing out Harris’ reluctance to defend the vulnerable in matters of faith, a report tells us: “A true defender of religious liberty, which any attorney general should be, ensures that religion is not used as a ruse for discrimination, bigotry, or abuse—especially when children are involved.”Yet in spite of such a hideous record—or probably because of it—feminists like racist Planned Parenthood’s Alexis McGill Johnson and Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett have united in signing a letter addressed to media elite that instructs them on how a female running mate for Biden, especially a woman of color, must be treated. Apparently systemic racism is to be avoided at any cost while the murder of the innocent, the trampling of religious freedom, and the wholesale discrimination against truth can go on unfettered and without specific concern.Good grief! It is time for Americans to take the blinders off, consider the facts, and join us in our song:Oh Kamala, Oh Kamala, How ugly are your actions! Oh Kamala, Oh Kamala, How deadly are your ways!American Life League is the nation’s oldest grassroots Catholic pro-life organization. Its president, Judie Brown, has led the organization since its 1979 beginning. She has served three terms on the Pontifical Academy for Life—appointed twice by Pope John Paul II and again by Pope Benedict XVI.Judie Brown President American Life League