Catholic Monitor

Thursday, May 28, 2020

Is Taylor Marshall Ignorant or Deliberately Steering Clear about the “Necessary Reference to the [Two] Terms of Canon 17”?

Dr. Taylor Marshall, in his recent podcast with Latinist Dr. Ed Mazza, “sound[ed] really intellectual” in explaining apparently from Latin dictionaries that “munus and ministerium” are not “a chasm apart,” but was ignorant or deliberately steered clear about the “necessary reference to the [two] terms of Canon 17”:

“One of the things that bothers me… people who don’t know a lick of Latin… there are these two words munus and ministerium… and they think they is a chasm apart… it’s a way for a layman to latch onto something that sounds really intellectual”
(https://youtu.be/bABWi2CoVlc,  59:46-59:59)

It appears that Marshall won’t believe someone on the importance of the terms “munus and ministerium” in discussing Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation unless they know “a lick of Latin.” Maybe he will listen to a Latin language expert on the subject.

Maybe the renowned Latin language expert Br. Alexis Bugnolo, who was the editor of the Franciscan Archive as publisher, project coordinator and translator of Bonaventure and Lombard, might be his man.

If one googles Br. Alexis Bugnolo and books.google, one finds Bugnolo’s name as well as translations mentioned over and over again in footnotes and text.

The Catholic Monitor by email contacted Latinist Br. Bugnolo on his opinion on the Marshall and Mazza podcast. Br. Bugnolo said:

“Marshall and Dr Mazza discuss munus and ministerium without the necessary reference to the terms of Canon 17, which requires that you seek its meaning in how it is used in the Code of Canon Law in parallel passages. Therefore, everything they said last night on munus and ministerium is praeter rem, because the question is not what Benedict intended or did, but what is the canonical effect or value of what he wrote.”
Moreover, well-known Canon lawyer Edward Peters explained why Canon 17 is important in this matter:

“Canon 17… states ‘if the meaning [of the law, and UDG is a law] remains doubtful and obscure, recourse must be made to parallel places.'”
(CatholicWorld Report, “Francis was never pope? Call me unpersuaded,” September 28, 2017)
Now, we get to where Br. Bugnolo explains in overwhelming detail in the following treatise using the canon law Latin why Marshall and Mazza are wrong in saying apparently that ministerium and munus have the exact same meaning in canon law:

https://fromrome.wordpress.com/2019/10/31/munus-and-ministerium-a-canonical-study/

Munus and Ministerium: A Textual Study of their Usage
in the Code of Canon Law of 1983

by Br. Alexis Bugnolo
The study of Canon Law is a recondite field for nearly everyone in the Church except Canon Lawyers. And even for Canon Lawyers, most of whom are prepared to work in the Marriage Tribunals of the Church, most of the Code of Canon Law is not frequently referred to.

However, when it comes to the problems of determining the validity of a canonical act, the expertise among Canon Lawyers becomes even more difficult to find, since the circumstances and problems in a single canonical act touch upon a great number of Canons of the Code of Canon Law, and thus require the profound knowledge and experience of years of problem solving to be readily recognized.

For this reason, though popularly many Catholics are amazed that after 6 years there can still be questions and doubts about the validity of the Act of Renunciation declared by Pope Benedict XVI on February 11, 2013, it actually is not so surprising when one knows just a little about the complexity of the problems presented by the document which contains that Act.

First of all, the Latin of the Act, which is the only official and canonical text, is rife with errors of Latin Grammar. All the translations of the Act which have ever been done, save for a few, cover those errors with a good deal of indulgence, because it is clear that whoever wrote the Latin was not so fluent in writing Latin as they thought, a thing only the experts at such an art can detect.

Even myself, who have translated thousands of pages of Latin into English, and whose expertise is more in making Latin intelligible as read, than in writing intelligible Latin according to the rules of Latin grammar can see this. However, we are not talking about literary indulgences when we speak of the canonical value or signification of a text.

For centuries it was a constant principle of interpretation, that if a canonical act in Latin contained errors it was not to be construed as valid, but had to be redone. Unfortunately for the Church, Cardinal Sodano and whatever Cardinals or Canonists examined the text of the Act prior to the public announcement of its signification utterly failed on this point, as will be seen during this conference.

This is because if there are multiple errors or any error, the Cardinal was allowed and even obliged under canons 40 and 41 to ask that the text be corrected.

This evening, however, we are not going to talk about the lack of good Latinity in the text of the Act nor of the other errors which make the text unintelligible to fluent Latinists who think like the Romans of Cicero’s day when they see Latin written, but rather, of the signification of Canon 332 §2, in its fundamental clause of condition, where it says in the Latin, Si contingat ut Romanus Pontifex muneri suo renuntiet, which in good English is, If it happen that the Roman Pontiff renounce his munus….The entire condition for a Papal Renunciation of Office in the Code of Canon Law promulgated by Pope John Paul II is founded on this first clause of Canon 332 §2.  It behooves us, therefore, when any say that the Renunciation was valid or invalid, to first read this Canon and understand when a renunciation takes place and when it does not take place.

For this purpose, in this first intervention at this Conference, I will speak about the meaning of the two words, Munus and Ministerium, in the Code of Canon Law.  I will speak of both, because, in Canon 332 §2 Pope John Paul II wrote munus and in the Act of Renunciation, Pope Benedict XVI renounced ministerium.

This study is not an idle one, or even only of academic interest. It is required by Canon Law, because in Canon 17, it says, that when there arises a doubt about the signification of a canon, one is to have recourse to the Code of Canon Law, the sources of canonical tradition and the Mind of the Legislator (Pope John Paul II) in determining the authentic meaning.

According to Canon 17 the words of Canoon 332 §2, therefore, are to be understood properly. Therefore, let us examine the Code to see what is the proper meaning of the words munus and ministerium.

Ministerium in the Code of Canon Law

This study is something everyone with the Internet can do. Because there exists an indexed copy of the Latin text of the Code on line at Intratext.com.  In the Alphabetic index of which one can find hyperlinked, all the words found in the Code, in their different Latin forms.For the word Ministerium, there are 6 forms found:  Ministeria, Ministerii, Ministeriis, Ministerio, Ministeriorum, Ministerium.  Respectively they occur 7, 13, 3, 17, 3, 25 times each in the Code.Let us take a look at each, briefly.

Ministeria: 
The Nominative and Accusative Plural:  Occurs 7 times. In canons 230, 232, 233,  237, 385, 611 and 1035.  Each of these refer to one or more of the sacred ministries or services exercised during the Divine Liturgy, whether by priests, lectors, acolytes etc..Ministerii:
The Genitive. Occurs 13 times.  In canons 233 twice, 276, 278, 519, 551, 756, 759, 1370, 1373, 1375 1389, 1548.  These refer to the sacred service (canons 233, in canon 271 §2, 1, to the duties of the pastoral ministry (ministerii pastoralis  officia as in canon 276, 278 or 551) which sanctify the priest, and specifically in relation to munus in several canons:

In Canon 519, where it says of the duties of the Pastor of a Parish:

Can. 519 – Parochus est pastor proprius paroeciae sibi commissae, cura pastorali communitatis sibi concreditae fungens sub auctoritate Episcopi dioecesani, cuius in partem ministerii Christi vocatus est, ut pro eadem communitate munera exsequatur docendi, sanctificandi et regendi, cooperantibus etiam aliis presbyteris vel diaconis atque operam conferentibus christifidelibus laicis, ad normam iuris.

Which in English is:

Canon 519:  The parish priest is the pastor of the parish assigned to him, exercising (fungens) the pastoral care of the community entrusted to him under the authority of the Diocesan Bishop, in a portion of whose ministry in Christ (in partem ministerii Chirsti) he has been called, so that he might execute (exsequatur) the munera of teaching, sanctifying and ruling for the same community, with the cooperation also of the other priests and/or deacons and faithful laity assisting in the work, according to the norm of law.

Let us note, first of all, that here the Code distinguishes between the munera of teaching, santifying and ruling from the entire ministry of Christ a part of which is shared by the Bishop.

And again in Canon 756, when it speaks of the munus of  announcing the Gospel, it says, after speaking of the duty of the Roman Pontiff in this regard in conjunction with the College of Bishops:

756 § 2.  Quoad Ecclesiam particularem sibi concreditam illud munus exercent singuli Episcopi, qui quidem totius ministerii verbi in eadem sunt moderatores; quandoque vero aliqui Episcopi coniunctim illud explent quoad diversas simul Ecclesias, ad normam iuris.

Which in English is:

756 §2  In regard to the particular Church entrusted to him, every Bishop, who is indeed the moderater of the whole ministry of the word to it, exercises (exercent) this munus; but also when any Bishop fulfills that conjointly in regard to the diverse Churches, according to the norm of law.

Let us note here simply that the Code distinguishes between the exercise of a munus and the ministerium of preaching the word.

Again in canon 759, ministerii is used regarding the preaching of the word. In Canon 1370 it is used in reference to the contempt of ecclesiastical power or ministry. In canon 1373, it is spoken of in regard the an act of ecclesiastical power or ministry. In canon 1548 in regard to the exercise of the sacred ministry of the clergy.

In canon 1389, it is spoken of in the context of power, munus and ministry. Let us take a closer look:

Can. 1389 – § 1.  Ecclesiastica potestate vel munere abutens pro actus vel omissionis gravitate puniatur, non exclusa officii privatione, nisi in eum abusum iam poena sit lege vel praecepto constituta.
2. Qui vero, ex culpabili neglegentia, ecclesiasticae potestatis vel ministerii vel muneris actum illegitime cum damno alieno ponit vel omittit, iusta poena puniatur.

Which in English is:

Canon 1389 §1  Let the one abusing Ecclesiastical power and/or munus be punished in proportion to the gravity of the act and/or omission, not excluding privation of office, unless for that abuse there has already been established a punishment by law and/or precept.
2. However, Let him who, out of culpable negligence, illegitimately posits and/or omits an act of ecclesiastical power and/or ministry and/or of munus, with damage to another, be punished with a just punishment.

Let us note here that the Code in a penal precept distinguishes between: potestas, ministerium and munus. This implies that in at least one proper sense of each of these terms, they can be understood to signify something different or distinct from the other.

This finishes the study of the occurences of ministerii.

Ministeriis
The ablative and dative plural form. Occurs 3 times.   In canons 274 and 674, where it refers to the sacred ministry of the priesthood and to the ministries exercised in parish life, respectively.

And in Canon 1331 §1, 3, where the one excommunicated is forbidden to exercise all ecclesiastical duties (officiis) and/or ministries and/or munera (muneribus) The Latin is:

Can. 1331 – § 1.  Excommunicatus vetatur:
1 ullam habere participationem ministerialem in celebrandis Eucharistiae Sacrificio vel  quibuslibet aliis cultus caerimoniis;
2 sacramenta vel sacramentalia celebrare et sacramenta recipere;
3 ecclesiasticis officiis vel ministeriis vel muneribus quibuslibet fungi vel actus regiminis ponere.

The English  is:Canon 1331 §1.  An excommunicate is forbidden:

1. from having any ministerial participation in the celebrating of the Sacrifice of the Eucharist and/or in any other ceremonies of worship
2. from celebrating the Sacraments and/or sacramentals and from receiving the Sacraments;
3. from exercising (fungi) ecclesiastical officia and/or ministeria and/or munera and/or from positing acts of governance.

Let us note again, that the Code distinguishes in this negative precept the terms Officia, Ministeria and Munera. This means, very significantly, that in the Mind of the Legislator, there is a proper sense in which these terms can each be understood as excluding the other. All three are named to make the signification of the negative precept comprehensive of all possible significations.Ministerio
The Ablative and Dative singular form. Occurs 17 times. Canons 252, 271, 281, 386 refer to the ministries exercised in the liturgy or apostolate. Canon 545 uses ministerio in reference to the pastoral ministry being proffered, 548 likewise in reference to the pastor of a parish, 559 likewise. Canon 713 refers to the priestly ministry, canons 757, 760 and 836 to the ministry of the word. Canon 899 to the priestly ministry of Christ. Canon 1036 speaks of the need a Bishop has to have knowledge that a candidate for ordination has a willingness to dedicate himself to the life long service which is the duty of orders.Canon 1722, which has to deal with canonical trials, speaks again of the sacred ministerium, officium and munus exercised (arcere) of the one accused. Distinguishing all three terms to make a comprehensive statement of what can be interdicted by a penalty.

This far for the 17 instances of ministerio.

Ministeriorum
The genitive plural form. Occurs 3 times. In canon 230 in regard to the conferral of ministries of acolyte and lector upon laymen. In canon 499 in regard to having members of the Presbyteral Council of the Diocese include priests with a variety of ministries exercised all over the diocese. And in canon 1050, in regard to those to be ordained, that they have a document showing they have willingly accepted a live long ministry in sacred service.And finally the Nominative Singular form.

MINISTERIUM
Of which there are 25 occurrences in the Code.
First and most significantly in Canon 41, the very canon that Cardinal Sodano had to act upon when examining the Act of Renunciation by Pope Benedict.The Latin reads:

Can. 41 — Exsecutor actus administrativi cui committitur merum exsecutionis ministerium, exsecutionem huius actus denegare non potest, nisi manifesto appareat eundem actum esse nullum aut alia ex gravi causa sustineri non posse aut condiciones in ipso actu administrativo appositas non esse adimpletas; si tamen actus administrativi exsecutio adiunctorum personae aut loci ratione videatur inopportuna, exsecutor exsecutionem intermittat; quibus in casibus statim certiorem faciat auctoritatem quae actum edidit.

The English reads:

Canon 41: The executor of an administrative act to whom there has been committed the mere ministry (ministerium) of execution, cannot refuse execution of the act, unless the same act appears to be null from (something) manifest [manifesto] or cannot be sustained for any grave cause or the conditions in the administrative act itself do not seem to be able to have been fulfilled: however, if the execution of the administrative act seems inopportune by reason of place or adjoined persons, let the executor omit the execution; in which cases let him immediately bring the matter to the attention of (certiorem faciat) the authority which published the act.

Then, ministerium occurs again in canon 230, in reference to the ministry of the word, where officia is used in the sense of duties. In canon 245, in regard to the pastoral ministry and teaching missionaries the ministry. In Canon 249 again in regard to the pastoral ministry, in 255 in regard to the ministry of teaching, sanctifying etc.., in 256, 257, 271, 324 in regard to the sacred ministry of priests, in Canon 392 in regard to the ministries of the word. In Canon 509 in regard to the ministry exercised by the Canons of the Cathedral Chapter. In Canon 545 in regard to the parish ministry, in canon 533 in regard to the ministry exercised by a Vicar. In canons 618 and 654 in regard to the power received by religious superiors through the ministry of the Church. In Canon 1025, 1041, and 1051 to the usefulness of a candidate for orders for service (ministerium) to the Church. In Canon 1375 to those who exercise power and/or ecclesiastical ministry.Ministerium occurs significantly in canon 1384, regard to the penalites a priest can incurr.

Can. 1384 – Qui, praeter casus, de quibus in cann. 1378-1383, sacerdotale munus vel aliud sacrum ministerium illegitime exsequitur, iusta poena puniri potest.

Which in English is:

Canon 1384  Who, besides the cases, concerning which in canons 1378 to 1383 the priestly munus and/or any other sacred ministerium is illegitimately executed, can be punished with a just punishment.

The Code explicitly distinguishes between munus and ministerium as entirely different and or distinct aspects of priestly being and action.

To finish off, the Code mentions Ministerium, again in Canon 1481 in regard to the ministry of lawyers, 1502 and 1634 to the ministry of judges, and in 1740 to ministry of the pastor of a parish.

This completes the entire citation of the Code on the word Ministry in all its Latin Forms, singular and plural.

In summation, we can see already that the Code distinguishes between proper senses of ministerium and munus, habitually throughout its canons and uses ministerium always for a service to be rendered by a layman, priest, Bishop, lawyer, judge or to or by the Church Herself. It never uses ministerium as an office or title or dignity or charge.

Munus in the Code of Canon Law

Munus is a very common term in the Code of Canon Law, occurring a total of 188 times.

The Latin forms which appear in the Code are Munus (77 times), Muneris (26 times), Muneri (2 times), Munere (48 times), Munera (20 times) Munerum (6 times) and Muneribus (9 times).

While the length of this conference does not me to cite them all, I will refer to the most important occurrences.

I will omit citing Canon 331, 333, 334 and 749, where speaking of the Papal Office, the code uses the words Munus. In no other canons does it speak of the Papal office per se, except in Canon 332 §2, which governs Papal renunciations, where it also uses munus.

But as to the proper sense of munus in the Code, let us look at the most significant usages:

First as regards predication, where the Mind of the Legislator indicates when any given proper sense of this term can be said to be a another term.

This occurs only once in canon 145, §1

Can. 145 – § 1. Officium ecclesiasticum est quodlibet munus ordinatione sive divina sive ecclesiastica stabiliter constitutum in finem spiritualem exercendum.

Which in English is:

Canon 145 § 1. An ecclesiastical office (officium) is any munus constituted by divine or ecclesiastical ordinance as to be exercised for a spiritual end.

Second, as regards the canons governing the events of Feb. 11, 2013, there is  Canon 40, which Cardinal Sodano and his assistants had to refer to in the moments following the Consistory of Feb 11, 2013:

Can. 40 — Exsecutor alicuius actus administrativi invalide suo munere fungitur, antequam litteras receperit earumque authenticitatem et integritatem recognoverit, nisi praevia earundem notitia ad ipsum auctoritate eundem actum edentis transmissa fuerit.

In English:

Canon 40: The executor of any administrative act invalidly conducts his munus (suo munero), before he receives the document (letteras) and certifies (recognoverit) its integrity and authenticity, unless previous knowledge of it has been transmitted to him by the authority publishing the act itself.

Third, as regards to the distinction of munus and the fulfillment of a duty of office, there is Canon 1484, §1 in regard to the offices of Procurator and Advocate in a Tribunal of Eccleisastical Jurisdiction:

Can. 1484 – § 1.  Procurator et advocatus antequam munus suscipiant, mandatum authenticum apud tribunal deponere debent.

Which in English is:

Canon 1484 §1.  The procurator and advocate ought to deposit a copy of their authentic mandate with the Tribunal, before they undertake their munus.

Note here, significantly, that the Code associates the mandate to exercise an office with the undertaking of the munus (munus). Negatively, therefore, what is implied by this canon is that when one lays down his mandate, there is a renunciation of the munus.

Finally, in regard to possibile synonyms for munus, in the Code we have Canon 1331, §2, n. 4, which is one of the most significant in the entire code, as we shall see: There is forbidden the promotion of those who are excommunicated:

4 nequit valide consequi dignitatem, officium aliudve munus in Ecclesia

Which in English reads:

4. He cannot validly obtain a dignity, office and/or any munus in the Church.

If there was every any doubt about the Mind of the Legislator of the proper sense of terms in the Code of Canon law regarding what Munus means, this canon answers it by equating dignity, office and munus as things to which one cannot be promoted!

Note well, ministerium is not included in that list!  thus Ministerium does not signify a dignity, office or munus!

This study of Munis and Ministerium in the Code thus concludes, for the lack of time. We have seen that the Code distinguishes clearly between the terms of officium, munus, ministerium, potestas and dignitas. It predicates officium of munus alone, It equates dignitas and munus and officium. It distinguishes between potestas and ministerium.

The only sane conclusion is, therefore, that munus and ministerium are distinct terms with different meanings. They cannot substitute for one another in any sentence in which their proper senses are employed. Munus can substitute for officium, when officium means that which regards a title or dignity or ecclesiastical office.

Thus in Canon 332 §2, where the Canon reads, Si contingat ut Romanus Pontifex muneri suo renuntiet. The Code is not speaking of ministerium, and if it is speaking of any other terms, it is speaking of a dignitas or officium. But the papal office is a dignitas, officium and a munus.  thus Canon 332 §2 is using munus in its proper sense and referring to the papal office.——(This is a transcript of my first talk at the Conference on the Renunciation of Pope Benedict XVI, which took place at Rome on Oct 21, 2019, the full transcript of which is found here)
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Mass and the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. 
Fred Martinez at 9:41 PMShare

3 comments:

1. Aqua11:40 PMI think smart people, like rich people, have a harder time entering through the narrow gate of heaven – not impossible, more difficult.
   
   It doesn’t take a genius to know something went seriously wrong during and after the false resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. Benedict remains. Pope 2 Bergóglio is leading an apostatizing antichurch. Chaos reigns. Mass is closed. Christ is profaned.
   
   And yet the geniuses still defend as normal the predicate for this madness.
   
   At this point, I think everyone has chosen their sides. All that is left now are the just rewards.
   
   “And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words: going forth out of that house or city shake off the dust from your feet. (Matt 10:14)
   
   Reply
2. BrotherBeowulf6:06 AMSt Mary Magdalen de Pazzi
   29th May MMXX A. D.
   
   Thank you Bro Alexis, for this service to the Truth!
   
   A clear explanation why Benedict is still Pope. In a nutshell: Pope Benedict is still the Pope because he has not (ever) renounced the Papal Munus, Office or Mandate, as clearly required by Church Canon Law, Canon 332 Section 2.  
   
   It is important and a great service and benefit for the sake of the stragglers, the uncertain, the wavering in Antipope Francis’s hellish camp. We need a two second synopsis, soundbite, an elevator argument that does not ramble on for an hour and a half. Canon 332, Section 2 is our Argument.
   
   No man left behind, Bro A! (And I mean both Alexis and Aqua.) Thank you!
   
   Smart people have a duty to make it clear and simple for those not so well informed. Parable of the Talents, anyone? got ten, use ’em! Don’t despair, don’t quail, don’t faint! And Never Surrender!
   
   It’s the exact same argument Fr. Gruner made months before he died, in early 2015 +, when he publicly recognized Benedict as the one and only Pope. Fr. Gruner noted that Canon Law 332 Section 2 requires a Pope to renounce the munus, but Benedict in his February 11, 2013 “Declaratio” renounced only the ministry. Fr. Gruner also confessed Benedict as Pope, and as the Pope he commemorated in his daily Tridentine-rite Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
   
   Trad Inc. has never publicly commented on Fr. Gruner and this (Elephant#1 in their “Who’s the Pope” Room), his confessional video:
   
   https://vimeo.com/228833627. They’ve publicly scandalously denied Fr. Gruner, as in the case of one prominent Fatiman(?) lawyer, but never directly confronted the truth of this video.
   
   
   Subsequently, post February 2013 A. D., Pope Benedict seems to have retained even many aspects of the ministry, often in his own words, often through spokesmen whose comments he approved, as to the contemplative, prayerful, and suffering aspects of that ministry.
   
   Viva, Poor Pope Benedetto! To the Battlements, with Truth as our shield!Reply
3. Alexis Bugnolo9:39 AMDear Fred,
   
   Dr. Mazza is a professor in history, not a latinist, as far as I know.Reply

https://www.blogger.com/comment-iframe.g?blogID=22704303&postID=8522549033578277313&m=1&blogspotRpcToken=3997256#%7B%22color%22:%22rgb(34,%2034,%2034)%22,%22backgroundColor%22:%22rgb(255,%20255,%20255)%22,%22unvisitedLinkColor%22:%22rgb(204,%20102,%2017)%22,%22fontFamily%22:%22Arial,%20Tahoma,%20Helvetica,%20FreeSans,%20sans-serif%22%7D›HomeView web version

About Me

Fred MartinezFred Martinez is a widely published Catholic writer and former TV broadcaster who has been a pro-life activist, speaker and Board member/adviser with various organisations for many years. In 1985 he founded the Juan Diego Society through which hundreds of babies under threat of abortion were saved. Praise for Fred Martinez’s The Hidden Axis : “[T]horough piece of journalism.”- Dale Ahlquist, EWTN host and American Chesterton Society President, “[N]ecessary reading.” – Ginny Hitchcock, National pro-life leader and longtime colleague of Fr. Paul Marx, “[A] moral tour de force that is must reading .”- Chuck Morse, radio talk show host, WROL-Boston, “[O]ne incredible, thought-provoking book.” – Tony DiGirolamo, Executive Producer of the Culture Shock television show, “[P]rofoundly important.” – Dr. Pravin Thevathasan, Catholic Psychologist, “[T]renchant expose.” Click here for “Hidden Axis”: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1410746186/qid=1099936755/sr=11-1/refView my complete profile

Postmodern Anarchism – and Atheism

David Carlin

FRIDAY, MAY 29, 2020

I don’t like it when I hear that a person is non-binary – in other words, that the person is neither male nor female.  But I chalk that up to mental illness, and I feel sorry for such a person, and I hope that he/she/it gets help.

I dislike it even more when really up-to-date people, out of respect (so they claim) for non-binary persons, refuse to use the pronouns “he” or “she” when referring to such persons.  Instead, they try to use whatever pronouns the non-binary person prefers.  These up-to-date people are not mentally ill, at least not usually; and only rarely, it seems to me, are they acting out of genuine respect for non-binary persons when they consent to use their lunatic pronouns.

What, then, motivates these up-to-date people?  A hatred of civilization, I suspect.  They are linguistic vandals.  Not the petty vandals who spray-paint walls, break windows, and set fires to vacant buildings. More like the Vandals who in the 5^th Century invaded and largely wrecked the Roman Empire in the West.

But can we ruin a civilization by using silly pronouns?  Yes – at least if these silly pronouns are part of a larger pattern of reality-hating behavior.  For this is what these modern Vandals are.  They don’t hate the Roman Empire.  They don’t simply hate American capitalism (although they often tell us that they do).  They hate reality itself.

And they don’t hate current socio-economic reality in the name of some better reality, a Utopian reality that lies in the more or less distant future (although, again, they often tell us that it is this Utopian reality they are working toward).  No, they have a grievance against reality itself.  Hence, their commitment to destruction.

These people resemble, not just the Vandals who invaded the Empire, but the revolutionary anarchists of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  In contrast to Communists, who held that the party of revolution (they themselves) would have to hold power for years and decades (and perhaps even centuries) after destruction of the old regime in order to build a new social order, the anarchists held that the party of revolution (they themselves) could close up shop the morning after the old regime has been destroyed.

For once the people have been liberated from the oppressions of church and state and capitalism, the fundamental goodness of human nature –  Rousseau type of natural goodness – will be free to manifest itself.  A new and better social order will spring spontaneously from the hearts and minds of the people.

This theory of the natural goodness of human beings was the justification offered by anarchists for their strategy of mere destruction.  But it was an excuse, and a spurious one at that; not a true justification.

What motivated the typical anarchist was not a hope for a better world, but a hatred of the present world of church and state and private property.  The truth behind anarchism was revealed in a flash in the early days of the Spanish Civil War.  It was in July of 1936 when courageous and furious anarchists who, more than anybody else, defended Barcelona from the forces of Franco and the other generals bent on overthrowing the republic.

But what did the anarchists do during those July days in the hours when they were not fighting against the generals?  They were murdering priests and nuns by the hundreds, and they were destroying churches and other buildings owned by the Catholic Church.

They were good at killing.  And so, were they good soldiers in the civil war that followed?  Well, they were brave soldiers, and bravery is one element of a good soldier, but not the only element.

You can’t run an army on anarchist principles; to be effective, an army must follow an iron discipline. You cannot, for instance, have soldiers electing their officers in August and then shooting them in September; you can’t have individual soldiers taking the initiative to eliminate an officer.

Eventually, the Communists, who understood the importance of discipline, had little choice but to take charge and purge the anti-Franco forces of anarchists.

Our present-day anarchists are like that, but even more so.  For it isn’t this or that regime that they hate; it is reality itself that they hate.  They exhibit this hatred by denying certain common-sense truths.

For instance, they deny that an unborn baby is a human being.  And they deny that nature “intends” males and females to have sexual relations with one another, as opposed to males having sex with males and females having sex with females.  And they deny that a boy is by nature a boy, and a girl is by nature is a girl; no, they say, you’re a girl only if you want to be a girl, and you’re a boy only if you want to be a boy.  (And they may add: You’re transgender if your ultra-fashionable mother wants you to be transgender.  “Look how cool I am,” your mother says, “I have a transgender kid.”)

You may tell me, “You’re exaggerating.  These are only a few obnoxious instances.  Civilization is not in danger.”  I reply: Wait and see.  They have only begun.  They have established the principle that things are not what they are; they are what we say they are.

Once this principle is taken as an axiom, numerous consequences follow, some of them comic (e.g., “My pronoun is ze”), others tragic – for example, the mass murder of unborn babies and the mass murder of economically unprofitable old people (that will happen soon enough).

If God exists, he is the ultimate reality (the Ens Realissimus as the medieval professors used to say).  And if I’m a destructive anarchist who hates all reality I will hate God above all.  If I cannot destroy God, I can do the next best thing: I can deny his existence and persuade others to deny it.

And that’s why atheism, I believe, lies at the bottom of our currently fashionable hatred of reality.

*Image: Jean-Jacques Rousseau Meditating in the Park at La Rochecordon Near Lyon by Alexandre-Hyacinthe Dunouy, 1770 [Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris]

© 2020 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.orgThe Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

• About the Author
• Latest Articles

David Carlin

David Carlin is a professor of sociology and philosophy at the Community College of Rhode Island, and the author of The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America.

MAY 29, 2020

Islam’s Trojan Horse

WILLIAM KILPATRICK

“Active shooter at Naval Air Station in Corpus Christi.” That was the breaking news story on Thursday morning. It turned out that the shooter was no longer active, having been “neutralized” after wounding a member of the base security force.

As it happens, I was in the middle of writing a piece—the article you are now reading—about Islam’s Trojan horse–like infiltration of Western society. Was the Corpus Christi incident a case of that? So far, we know that the shooter, Adam Alsahli, had expressed support for terrorists online, and that he was born in Syria and seems to have attended a university in Saudi Arabia. At some point he must have migrated to the U.S.  So, at the least, he seems to be guilty of migration infiltration—a subject that is discussed at length in Solomon and Maqdisi’s Modern Day Trojan Horse: The Islamic Doctrine of Immigration. To date, the details about Alsahli are sketchy, and as the authorities are always reminding us, we should not jump to conclusions. As is quite obvious by now, however, the problem is not that the authorities jump to conclusions, but that they never come to any.

What follows are some examples of infiltration—some minor and some major. The most recent example I came across was this headline: “Utah:  Imam on terror watch list delivers opening prayer at state senate session.” How did the radical imam get past the gatekeepers? The answer is that the Islamic Trojan horse outside your gate always comes with a note attached: “It would be Islamophobic to look inside.” Most of us don’t even have to read the message. We have internalized it.

The story of the Utah imam reminded me that, years ago, when he was hailed as a model Muslim, Anwar al-Awlaki had been invited to lead prayers inside the U.S. House of Representatives. Al-Awlaki was later to become al-Qaeda’s chief propaganda officer, but at the time he had already been a mentor to several terrorists including three of the 9/11 hijackers.https://secureaddisplay.com/i/view/js/?Viewable=1&isMobile=0&AULU=31049420180502T2200289306460AB42454C400A8A16937CB3EB93D7&cb=1590770493929&ccvid=795024241&pvid=1621403664https://secureaddisplay.com/i/view/js/?Viewable=0&isMobile=0&AULU=31049420180502T2200289306460AB42454C400A8A16937CB3EB93D7&cb=1590770493929&ccvid=795024241&pvid=1621403664https://secureaddisplay.com/i/t/js/?ALU=134920200306T1245004234B289EF0EE7142C88A686F3FF4C2AE11&AULU=31049420180502T2200289306460AB42454C400A8A16937CB3EB93D7&cb=1590770493929&ccvid=795024241&pvid=1621403664

This reminded me that al-Awlaki had also been a mentor of Nidal Hasan, the Army Major and “Soldier of Allah” who murdered 14 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009.  And that reminded me that just last December, another Soldier of Allah, Mohammed Alshamrani, a Saudi Arabian officer, killed three naval personnel and injured eight others at the Pensacola Naval Air Station.  It was recently revealed that Alshamrani had been radicalized five years ago.  How come the government didn’t vet officer Alshamrani more carefully?  The short answer is that it would have been “Islamophobic” to look too closely into his past. Fear of being thought Islamophobic was also the reason that Major Hasan’s fellow officers never reported him even though they considered him to be a “ticking time bomb.”

The fact is, the Islamic Trojan horse has been inside the gates for a very long time, not only in the U.S. but also in Europe.  Indeed, a plot to Islamize the school system in Birmingham, England, several years ago was code-named ”Operation Trojan Horse.” Not very subtle, but why bother with subtlety when you’re dealing with people who are far more worried about Islamophobia than Islamic infiltration?

Educators are not, on the whole, a subtle lot.  They have trouble making fine distinctions, and prefer instead to deal in large and shiny generalities—diversity, gender, race, and so on.  That’s why it was so easy to pull the wool over the eyes of school administrators in Birmingham.  And that’s why the Muslim Brotherhood’s initial infiltration of the U.S. was accomplished through a university student organization—the Muslim Student Association.  The MSA’s membership has included such illustrious figures as al-Awlaki (who was president of the MSA at Colorado State University), Huma Abedin (who was an advisor to and close confidant of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton), and Mohammed Morsi (the Muslim Brotherhood leader who just happened  to come to power in Egypt while Clinton was at State).

You would think that some sharp-eyed professors might have become suspicious about the aims and purposes of the MSA, but their sharp eyes were apparently distracted by all the Arab money that was rolling into university coffers and paying for their research and sabbaticals.  According to the Clarion Project report on “Foreign Influences Ops on U.S. Universities,” since 2012 Qatar has donated $376 million to Carnegie Mellon University, $351 million to Georgetown, $340 million to Northwestern, $275 million to Texas A&M, $41 million to Virginia Commonwealth University, and smaller amounts to two dozen other institutions.  At the same time, Saudi Arabia has been pouring millions into Harvard and other “needy” universities.

In short, many professors of history, Middle East Studies, and Islamic Studies may have a financial interest in presenting pleasant narratives about Islam to their students.  Whatever the reason, universities have become mighty friendly toward Islam and might unfriendly toward its critics.

Take the case of Nicholas Damask, a professor at Scottsdale Community College in Arizona.  A Muslim student was offended by a quiz about Islam given in Damask’s World Politics course.  Pretty soon an online campaign against Professor Damask was mounted by offended Muslim students.  Because the campaign included numerous death threats, the professor and his family went into hiding.

Instead of coming to his defense, the college president responded by condemning Damask’s course, and demanding that he apologize to the student community. “We all benefit,” said President Haines, “by embracing a diversity of voices, viewpoints, and experiences.” “Diversity,” of course, no longer includes academics like Professor Damask who have non-conforming views about Islam.  They represent the wrong kind of diversity, and hence they are a vanishing breed on campus.

Islam’s Trojan horse operation on American schools also extends to the secondary and elementary level.  In 2008, the American Textbook Council examined the treatment of Islam in ten widely adopted junior and senior high school history textbooks.  The study found many serious omissions and misrepresentations as well as a “reverential treatment of Islamic history.”  This pro-Islam bias, suggests the author of the study, may result from the fact that social studies textbook editors “make a business of appeasing pressure groups.”

Islamic activist pressure groups can be high pressure indeed. After all, in 2011 Islamic activist groups pressured the FBI, the Pentagon, Homeland Security, and about a dozen other security agencies to rewrite their training manuals to remove anything that the activists considered offensive to Islam—which, in effect, meant any reference to Islam.

Although such external pressures can be very effective, internal pressures can be even more so.  These are the pressures that come from living in a politically correct culture where we are constantly told that we need to make amends to all the victims of our racist, sexist, and xenophobic society. Many of the highly placed people who make concessions to Islam do so not because of the intimidation factor, but because they want to demonstrate their tolerance.

The habit of virtue-signaling explains a lot about the Islamic penetration of our institutions.  Why else would so many politicians have endorsed the building of a mega-mosque near Ground-Zero in Manhattan except that they wanted to broadcast their tolerance?  Why else would Abduraham Alamoudi, who is now in prison for financing Al Qaeda, have been appointed as the Islamic Advisor to President Clinton, and “Goodwill Ambassador” for the State Department?  Why else would Mustafa Javed Ali, who previously worked for Muslim Brotherhood–linked CAIR, have been appointed as Senior Director of Counter-Terrorism for the National Security Council in the early days of the Trump administration?

And why, to get back to recent events, would Mohammed Alshamrani, a Saudi officer about whom very little was known, get approved to train at Pensacola Naval Air Station?  Along the line, there must have been a number of senior officers who signed off on Alshamrani, thinking, “If I don’t sign, there’s going to be a big fuss about Islamophobia.”

And so it is that the Islamic Trojan horse is not only within the gates of our society, but firmly embedded in some of the most sensitive and important institutions in our nation. As a youngster, I used to wonder how the Trojans were so easily fooled. But in light of all the foolishness displayed by our own politically correct gatekeepers, it seems that the type of  naïveté exhibited by the guardians of Troy is a perennial problem.

Image: a 16-year-old Osama bin Laden and his family visit Sweden.

Tagged as “Islamophobia”, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, Saudi Arabia, Terrorismhttps://www.facebook.com/v2.10/plugins/like.php?action=like&app_id=485814248461205&channel=https%3A%2F%2Fstaticxx.facebook.com%2Fx%2Fconnect%2Fxd_arbiter%2F%3Fversion%3D46%23cb%3Dfed6430fe50bec%26domain%3Dwww.crisismagazine.com%26origin%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.crisismagazine.com%252Ff1e03fcac17dcc6%26relation%3Dparent.parent&container_width=660&href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.crisismagazine.com%2F2020%2Fislams-trojan-horse&layout=button_count&locale=en_US&sdk=joey&share=true&show_faces=false114

By William Kilpatrick

William Kilpatrick taught for many years at Boston College. He is the author of several books about cultural and religious issues, including Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right From Wrong; and Christianity, Islam and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Jihad. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, including Catholic World Report, National Catholic Register, Aleteia, Saint Austin Review, Investor’s Business Daily,and First Things. His work is supported in part by the Shillman Foundation. For more on his work and writings, visit his website, turningpointproject.com

Memorial Day Closes…

A long-held musical tradition at military funerals, the music of Taps originated from a Civil War bugle call entitled, “Extinguish Lights”. A plaintive call, the sounding of Taps signals the end of the fallen serviceman’s duty and is the final tribute from a grateful nation.

To those who have given the last full measure of devotion, we honor your service, pay tribute to your lives, and thank you for your selfless sacrifice.

The Bugler is Technical Sgt. Jason Covey. The location is Culpeper National Cemeteryhttps

.

“Today we honor the extra ordinary sacrifice of not only these service members, but also their families–especially our Gold Star families. Each individual loss brings untold grief. Each loss is a hope never realized. Each loss is a dream never reached.”

“Every one was a son or a daughter. A husband or a wife. A mother or a father. Each is a gaping hole of grief that can never be adequately filled.”

“For the families of the fallen we are here to remember that for them every day is Memorial Day.”

~ Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff U.S. Army General Mark A. Milley

As a 97 year old veteran of World War II permit me to recount a humorous incident that happened to me last year without intending any disrespect to my brothers-in-arms whom we remember on Memorial Day.

I was driving from Corpus Christi to Sinton after 5:00 PM in a heavy downpour of rain on Interstate Highway 37.

I was very sleepy and the driving conditions and heavy traffic made me realize that I was a danger to myself and other drivers.

I decided to pull off of the Interstate and find a spot where I could sleep for ten or fifteen minutes and hopefully would be able to continue to Sinton without the heavy rain.

I exited the Interstate Highway and found myself at the entrance to the Veterans’ Military Cemetery. I figured that it would be a quiet place to take a nap and so I entered and parked. I soon fell sound asleep.

I must have slept for 30 or 40 minutes when I was awakened by the sound of a bugle playing TAPS. It was now dark and still raining and for a few moments I was disoriented. I recognized that I was in a cemetery and in my half-awake confusion I thought that I had died and that I was being buried in a veterans military cemetery instead of the Crypt Chapel of Corpus Christi Cathedral. I became very confused and it took me a few minutes to fully wake up and realize that the playing of Taps was a signal that the Cemetery was being closed for the night.

I must confess to driving a little too fast as I exited the Cemetery as they were closing the gates for the night.

It was an unforgettable experience I enjoy retelling again and again.

Catholic Monitor

Monday, May 25, 2020

OPEN LETTER TO TAYLOR MARSHALL

Dr. Marshall, for many of us (myself included), your podcasts have been a source of enlightenment, entertainment, and—quite frankly—hope, during this very dark time in the history of the Church.  As someone who studied his way into the Catholic Faith, having the grace and the integrity to acknowledge the necessity of conversion from the Protestant sect to which you formerly belonged, you have not been content to rest on your laurels but have “put yourself out there,” launching the New Saint Thomas Institute and discussing current events sub luce aeternitatis.  Your willingness to deal with things the way they are, and not the way they would be if we were all painted on holy cards already, is refreshing and appreciated.
Accordingly, I am writing to you today in regard to your recent statements about being “open” to the idea that Jorge Bergoglio is not actually the pope.  For a person in your position, so much as admitting that possibility must require all the grace and integrity you have demonstrated in the past—and then some.  I say this not in the spirit of flattery, but in the hopes of spurring you to go even further in the search for truth upon which you embarked some years ago.
Either Bergoglio is the pope, or he isn’t.  The concept of objective reality, to which our minds must conform, is a philosophical prerequisite, so to speak, for acceptance of the Catholic Faith itself.  It is humility to recognize the existence of objective reality—not pride.
There seems to be a missing step, in other words, in the “rush to non-judgment” taking place among unapostasized Catholics, post-Resignation.  “It is not up to us, to say who is and isn’t the pope,” has become (rather conveniently)  the mantra of the day.  True—and at the same time, not so.  While the final determination may be up to the Church, no one is excused from the requirement of using his or her own rational faculties in reaching a determination on a matter so weighty.  If we all did so, and began to act legitimately on our determinations, what would keep things from changing for the better?
As a thought experiment, why don’t we apply this attitude to another issue—one we all tend to agree on?  What if someone were to say, “I am not a Supreme Court Justice, and therefore it is not up to me whether unrestricted abortion is the law of the land.  I have no opinion on the matter, and no responsibility to form one, either”?   Would we not reject such a stance as self-excusatory sophistry of the worst kind?  The fact that an ordinary person truly doesn’t have the authority to overturn Roe v. Wade does not excuse him or her from the responsibility of doing everything possible, regardless—namely, to understand that abortion violates the laws of God and man, to recognize that outrages against the rights of the Creator and one’s fellow man cannot be permitted to stand, and to demand that those who are Supreme Court Justices reach and respect this reality as well.
“Ah, but that is politics,” I can hear you (and everybody else) respond.  “That’s not how things work, where Cardinals are concerned.  The Church is not a democracy, after all!”  Of course not.  But it is not Nazi Germany, either.  The faithful are not required to behave like brainwashed tools in totalitarian systems.  On the contrary, God both wants and obliges us to use the gift of reason with which He has endowed us.  Is it possible to know who is the true pope?  First of all, let us agree that we are not excused from attempting to find out.  “But what can we do?”  In addition to keeping up the prayers we can exercise our rights and responsibilities as baptized Catholics, start demanding that others do so as well, and quit wimping out.
Secondly, I would like to address your own tendency–shared by other Catholic luminaries as well–to speak as though reaching such a determination is a matter of indifference, even if it is possible.  “Saints have disagreed about who the actual pope is; some have even been wrong!” runs the next stage of the argument.  (The name Vincent Ferrer is almost certain to crop up at this stage.)  It is telling, however, that this observation only cuts one way.  As currently wielded, it means that people who accept Bergoglio as the successor of Saint Peter will be justified if they turn out to be wrong in the long run, while people who question the Argentinian’s papal validity in the first place are bad Catholics, ipso facto.  You yourself, commendably, have backed off from this double standard markedly in recent days, but many others have not.
In the same vein let’s talk, for a second, about your treatment of Felix II in a recent podcast.  What struck me, as someone admittedly ignorant of the historical circumstances beyond what you stated in the presentation itself, was your selective application of “the moral of the story” to one side of the current conflict only.  OK, so there still exists some residual fuzziness about who was the authentic Roman Pontiff, or even (in some attenuated sense) whether there were “two popes at one time,” back in the day.  That doesn’t mean that comparable confusion exists right now, nor that an aberration can be retrofitted as the norm.  Maybe it is difficult to sift through the tangled theological and political intricacies of that all-but-forgotten episode.  Reading through Universi Dominici Gregis isn’t.  Why not draw the lesson that, because there have been antipopes before, there very well could be again?  It’s not impossible.  It’s not even unlikely, as Cardinal Pell did a stint in jail for knotting his eyebrows over.
Another big difference between then and now is, of course, Amoris laetitia Chapter 8.  Could it be that Vincent Ferrer made it to Heaven without getting the “pope quiz question” right because, at the time, it didn’t make any serious difference to souls—his own, or anybody else’s?  Before Bergoglio, deciding between one claimant to the papal throne and another was a matter of merely temporal, not theological, importance, since only the former archbishop of Buenos Aires has ever dared to insert situation ethics into the AAS, or change the Catechism of the Catholic Churchto suit his own revolting, long-discredited ideological biases, or take issue with (you can’t make this stuff up) the wording of the Our Father itself.  L’eglise c’est moi!  I for one do not attempt to justify the bad example of John Paul II at Assisi and elsewhere, but between Veritatis Splendor and Laudato Si’ there exists an abyss like unto the one separating Lazarus resting in the bosom of Abraham from the Rich Man in torment.  Did Our Lady come down from Heaven and make the sun spin in order to warn everybody against Felix II?  She did not; and why not?  Maybe because he wasn’t worth Her time.
Speaking of Fatima, here’s another thing you guys always stop just short of taking into consideration.  When a person passes in front of a mirror, it is quite true that you can suddenly see two of them.  Problem is, reflection not only doubles; it also reverses.  If the Third Secret revealed that there will be more than one “Holy Father” in this sense, then according to the apparition’s own imagery, one of them—the one that isn’t the original–has to be exactly backwards.  Are you seriously going to contend that we have no way of identifying which man-in-a-white-cassock-currently-residing-in-Rome (Jorge Bergoglio or Joseph Ratzinger, take your pick) constitutes the perfect inversion of everything an authentic Supreme Pontiff is meant to be?
At the more practical level, I (among other Taylor Marshall loyalists) have been waiting a long time now for you to move beyond private judgment in your treatment of the Bipapal Arrangement.  I listen as often and as carefully as I can, and maybe I have missed something, but all I have ever heard you say about the munus/ministerium clash is that you have examined those arguments for yourself and have found them wanting.  Well frankly, every Protestant convert has to confront the fact that his or her own perspective simply isn’t, in the final analysis, the determining factor about anything.  I have a good friend, for example, to whom I often try to explain points of Catholic belief while she patiently identifies which ones she agrees with, and which ones are out of luck.  What I have yet to succeed in getting across to her is that her personal rejection of the Immaculate Conception, for instance, taints Our Blessed Mother not one spot.  What I am trying to say is that what you think, Dr. Marshall, doesn’t . . . well . . . matter.  If someone dares to opine that Ratzinger may still be reigning, he or she immediately runs afoul of the “Karens of Bergoglianism,” ever ready to issue the scolding reminder that “Francis” is “the Pope” whether we like it or nor!  Nobody ever points out, however, that there is a flipside to this very coin.  If “Francis” actually isn’t “the Pope,” then all the Karens in the world can’t make him one.
“But the Cardinals elected him!”  That’s the whole problem about antipopes, isn’t it?   If someone who isn’t the pope hadn’t been apparently raised to the papal dignity somehow, he’d hardly qualify in the first place.  The question is—how?   “But most of the Cardinals believe he’s for real, and they’re the ones who make the call!”  The private judgment of a Cardinal, or even a majority thereof, has no more bearing on the issue than yours or mine.  Even Princes of the Church have to conform their subjective determinations to reality, and elect popes in deference to canon law.
In the same way, everybody (and I believe I am correct in including you, Dr. Marshall, in this crowd) brushes aside the thought that Benedict might have resigned under duress by piously repeating his attestations to the contrary.  Have you ever seen “Charade,” with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn?  There is a classic scene in which Hepburn’s character tries to determine whether Grant’s character is lying, and he points out it’s nearly impossible to do so.  There are two kinds of Indians, according to him (please excuse the deplorable lack of political correctness, back in the day) a Truthful Whitefoot, and a Lying Blackfoot.  One always tells the truth, and the other always lies.  “Which are you?” she wants to know.  

“A Truthful Whitefoot,” he replies, with that winning and iconic but ultimately enigmatic smile.
Dr. Marshall, if Benedict XVI did resign under duress,  perhaps through fear inflicted by threats so horrific that you and I cannot make any informed conjecture about their magnitude, from which his prompt abdication and self-imposed lifelong silence constitutes in his mind the only possible deflection, then what do you expect him to say about it, afterwards?  “Pope Emeritus, did you freely resign?”
“No way, Jose.  I stepped down because only by doing so and then keeping quiet forever could I avert consequences too terrible to talk about, which is precisely why I’m mentioning them to you right now.”  Makes sense, no?  No.
In other words, Dr. Marshall, think for a second!  Benedict XVI would have to say the same thing about the “force or fear” question, whether he is being a “Truthful Whitefoot” or not.
Still, duress isn’t the only invalidating factor; it just seems to be the only one you ever talk about because, in your mind at least, it appears to be the most easily debunked.  What about the Daneels admission that the Sankt Gallen Mafia colluded to elect Bergoglio, in direct contravention of existing conclave rules?  The extra ballot?  The fact that no one seems to have dispensed the Argentinian Jesuit from his religious vows prior to March 13, 2013, making it impossible for him to have accepted the office even if elected validly?  What about Cardinal Burke’s perspective, expressed to Patrick Coffin and swiftly consigned to the Memory Hole, that it could probably be proven that Bergoglio is an imposter and that the only real drawback is the difficulty of collecting the evidence?  And by the way, has the Holy Spirit also decided that all of this is all above His pay grade, too–quietly giving up on His responsibility of protecting genuine successors of Saint Peter from teaching error in matters of faith and morals?  Or are we just going to continue moving the doctrinal and pastoral goal posts until all that was previously identifiable as “Catholicism” simply disappears, in deference to the insatiable Bergoglian appetite for globalist control, entirely?
I do not know the answers to all of the above, even if my opinion is just about as “revealed” as Qui Gon Jinn’s regarding whether or not young Anakin is supposed to bring balance to the Force.  What I don’t like is the effective suppression, by the relevant commentariat at large, of all such questions.  Please, Dr. Marshall, crack open the Overton Window a little more, if you really meant what you said about possibly being wrong yourself.  You speak with edifying clarity, authority, and erudition on many other matters pertaining to the ongoing crisis of our times.  Why not the one on which the rest may finally hinge?

Note: This was written by a good friend and one of the most intelligent persons I know. The Catholic Monitor is honored to post it.

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Mass and the Church as well as for the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart of the Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.Posted by Fred Martinez at 8:05 PM Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest

2 comments:

Aaron Aukema said…

I want to know why Dr. Marshall so easily rejects the FACT that munus and ministerium DO NOT MEAN THE SAME THING!! Seriously, Canon Law distinguishes between the two terms, and he NEVER actually attempts to put up an argument on how they can be seen as synonymous. 8:09 AM

Alexis Bugnolo said…

Someone should ask Taylor if he has ever studied Latin, let alone Canon Law.

Also, some one should ask him the ethical question of teaching as definitive something which you have never studied, especially in such a grave matter and dispute, when you own opinion is basically, Let’s not pay attention to the documents and the evidence, let’s approach this merely politically on the grounds that the Cardinals are always right in their majority opinons…

8:56 AM

NEWS

BISHOP OF BRESCIA HAS PASTOR HAULED TO A MENTAL HOSPITAL FOR REFUSING TO WEAR A MASK

MAY 25, 2020FROM ROME EDITORLEAVE A COMMENT

by Br. Alexis Bugnolo

The news is as incredible as it is terrifying. The Bishop of Brescia, Italy, has had Don Gianluca Loda forcibly removed from his residence by a squad of police and taken to a mental hospital, where he is now being kept against his will. (He is the priest in the cassock on the left of the featured image.)

The full story is reported by Aldo Maria Valli.

His crime or offense? Nothing to do with the Catholic religion. No, rather, he publicly acted as if the new cult of COVID-19 is a false religion. That is, he ate pizza at a restaurant without wearing a mask. Was fined by the police, and then in the evening returned and ate pizza alone without a mask.

The matter being reported to his bishop, Pierantonio Tremolada, a decision was made with the consultation of other priests, to order what appears to be a TSO — a forcible sequestration of person for reasons of mental health.

Police broke into the rectory through a window and seized his person and dragged him away.

His fate and location are not known. It is said that he has been taken to a hospital for observation.

Father Loda is known to be a sane and rational man. He has publicly criticized the government approved Islamic invasion of Europe. He openly decries the Masonic agenda of the European Union. And I infer, from his recent behavior at the restaurant that he might have criticized the VIRUS mass which the Government, with the supine agreement of the Bishops’ Conference, has imposed on the Church, making it impossible for Catholics to worship anywhere in Italy without mixing the politics of lies, deceit and terror above that of the worship of Jesus Christ.

+ + +

Support FromRome.Info

Help us take on the established Catholic Media who are controlled opposition. They are promoting schism from Pope Benedict, and remain silent at the heresies and schisms of Jorge Mario Bergoglio. We cannot let the St. Gallen Mafia win the information war, which they are presently doing through controlled media. — TO FIGHT THIS WAR we need your generous financial support. — Funds go to Ordo Militaris Inc., and are capital gifts for this Apostolate.

$10.00

NEWS

BISHOP OF BRESCIA HAS PASTOR HAULED TO A MENTAL HOSPITAL FOR REFUSING TO WEAR A MASK

MAY 25, 2020FROM ROME EDITORLEAVE A COMMENT

by Br. Alexis Bugnolo

The news is as incredible as it is terrifying. The Bishop of Brescia, Italy, has had Don Gianluca Loda forcibly removed from his residence by a squad of police and taken to a mental hospital, where he is now being kept against his will. (He is the priest in the cassock on the left of the featured image.)

The full story is reported by Aldo Maria Valli.

His crime or offense? Nothing to do with the Catholic religion. No, rather, he publicly acted as if the new cult of COVID-19 is a false religion. That is, he ate pizza at a restaurant without wearing a mask. Was fined by the police, and then in the evening returned and ate pizza alone without a mask.

The matter being reported to his bishop, Pierantonio Tremolada, a decision was made with the consultation of other priests, to order what appears to be a TSO — a forcible sequestration of person for reasons of mental health.

Police broke into the rectory through a window and seized his person and dragged him away.

His fate and location are not known. It is said that he has been taken to a hospital for observation.

Father Loda is known to be a sane and rational man. He has publicly criticized the government approved Islamic invasion of Europe. He openly decries the Masonic agenda of the European Union. And I infer, from his recent behavior at the restaurant that he might have criticized the VIRUS mass which the Government, with the supine agreement of the Bishops’ Conference, has imposed on the Church, making it impossible for Catholics to worship anywhere in Italy without mixing the politics of lies, deceit and terror above that of the worship of Jesus Christ.

+ + +

Support FromRome.Info

Help us take on the established Catholic Media who are controlled opposition. They are promoting schism from Pope Benedict, and remain silent at the heresies and schisms of Jorge Mario Bergoglio. We cannot let the St. Gallen Mafia win the information war, which they are presently doing through controlled media. — TO FIGHT THIS WAR we need your generous financial support. — Funds go to Ordo Militaris Inc., and are capital gifts for this Apostolate.

$10.00

Catholic Monitor

Friday, May 22, 2020

Is Francis’ Nihilistic Modernism behind his Sex Abuse Cover-ups? 

The Catholic Thing wrote that “Francis made a startling claim” that appears to deny objective truth:

“We must be careful not to fall into the temptation of making idols of certain abstract truths.”
[https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2018/04/21/of-truth-and-idols/]

Francis apparently got this terminology about “abstract truths” from a Jesuit theologian Michael de Certeau who wrote:

“In history everything begins with the gesture of setting aside, of putting together, of transforming certain classified objects… It exiles them from practice [praxis] in order to confer upon them the status of ‘abstract’ objects of knowledge…”

“… [T]he historical discipline… designate[s] the ‘that’ as a ‘fact’ is only a way of naming what cannot be understood.”
( Michael de Certeau’s book: The Writing of History, pages 72-73 and 84)

De Certeau is a nihilist who Francis considers to “be the greatest theologian for today.” This theologian believes that there is no “possibility of an objective basis for truth” and that there is no objective meaning or reality. (Dictionary.com definitions of nihilism)

In simple words, de Certeau’s theology denies objective truth and objective Catholic truth.

Francis considers him the most eminent modern theologian. Francis said:

“For me, de Certeau is still the greatest theologian for today.” (onepeterfive.com, March 8, 2016, “Pope Francis Reveals His Mind to Private Audience”)

Rev. Dr. Federico Colautti, ITI, in a talk titled “Pope Francis: Understanding His Language and Mission (1-10-2015),” shows that de Certeau had “a great influence in the Pope’s way of being open… [n]ot making faith of a museum”:

In the “discourse, a video message that the Pope send the Catholic University of Buenos Aires… I discovered that one of the few quotes he makes is from a theologian… a certain Michael de Certeau… I can imagine that this author had a great influence in the Pope’s way of being open… Not making faith of a museum… This preference for the periphery could have a relationship with this theologian Michael de Certeau.”

De Certeau in his greatest book “Heterologies” said:

“It is not Mr. Foucault who is making fun of domains of knowledge… It is history that is laughing at them. It plays tricks on the teleologists who take themselves to be the lieutenants of meaning. A meaninglessness of history.” (“Heterologogies,” Pages 195-196)

Historian Keith Windschuttle shows that Francis’ favorite modern theologian is a radical who thinks that there is no “access” to outside reality. Windschuttle wrote:

“Of all the French theorists… de Certeau is the most radical. He is critical of the poststructuralist Foucault for his use of documentary evidence and of Derrida for the way he privileges the practice of writing. For de Certeau, writing is a form of oppression… he argues… writing itself constitutes the act of colonisation…”

“Like both structuralist and poststructuralist theorists, de Certeau subscribes to the thesis that we have access only to our language and not to any real, outside world…”

“De Certeau claims that writing can never be objective. Its status is no different from that of fiction. So, because history is a form of writing, all history is also fiction.” (“The Killing of History,” Pages 31-34)

By Francis’ greatest modern theologian’s logic then Jesus Christ, true God and true man, who walked the earth during the reign of Pontius Pilate, is fiction.

The central doctrine of Catholism, the Incarnation, is fiction.

Post Structuralists like de Certeau, more widely known as Postmodernists, believe all reality is fiction or “narrative.”

They change the “narrative” or story usually to compile with their leftist or liberal views on politics, sexual morality or whatever their pet project happens to be.

They rarely use scholarship to backup their “narrative” point of view, only mind numbing long confusing writing that obscures instead of clarifying.

The Postmodernists in the media are one exception to the obscurantism of non-clarity.

Their “narratives” are clear and well written, but again rarely is there scholarship or strong evidence to backup their stories. They use spin to obscure.

Media spin “narrative” is “news and information that is manipulated or slanted to affect its interpretation and influence public opinion.” (Dictionary.com)

They usually use their “narratives” in history, news, the Bible and any writing as a vehicle to promote their ideological ideas.

With that background, here is Francis’ favorite theologian’s central religious ideas. The de Certeau Scholar Johannes Hoff wrote:

“According to this new approach to the Biblical narrative, the focal event of Christianity is not the incarnation, the crucifixion, or the resurrection of Christ, but the empty tomb. The Christian form of life is no longer associated with a place, a body, or an institution, but with a quest for a missing body: the missing body of the people of Israel, and mutatis mutandis the missing body of Jesus.”
(Article by Johannes Hoff, “Mysticism, Ecclesiology And The Body Christ: Certeau’s (Mis-) Reading of Corpus Mystium and the Legacy of Henri de Lubac” Page 87, Titus Brandsma Institute Studies In Spirituality, Supplement 24, “Spiritual Spaces: History and Mysticism in Michel De Certeau”)

The nihilist theologian believes that the central truths of Christianity are about “absence” or nonexistence. De Certeau scholar Graham Ward wrote:

“For de Lubac the… Eucharist is not a sign of the presence of Christ’s body, it is Christ’s body… And yet Certeau… makes the Eucharist (as later the church and body of mystical text he treats) into substitutes, acts of bereavement, signs of absence.” (“Michel de Certeau – in the Plural, ” Page 511)

In other words, Francis’s greatest modern theologian believes that the Eucharist is not the body of Christ present, he doesn’t even believe it is a sign of the presence of Christ’s body like some Protestants, but a sign of “absence.”

Might de Certeau’s influence on Francis be the reason he never kneels before the Eucharist, but kneels to wash the feet of those he like Certeau might consider oppressed?

De Certeau’s influence on Francis may be the reason he reportedly said:

“It is not excluded that I will enter history as the one who split the Catholic Church.” (Der Spiegel magazine, December, 23, 2016)

De Certeau scholar Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt wrote:

“Certeau… came increasingly to stress the clash of interpretation, the ‘law of conflict,’ that applies even to the church. Under the pressure of this clash, the ecclesial/eucharistic body is ‘shattered.'” (“Michael de Certeau – in the Plural”, Page 359)

Francis’s greatest modern theologian doesn’t believe in the central truths of the Catholic Church.

The Francis’s most eminent modern theologian doesn’t even believe in objective truth.

Does Francis believe in the central doctrines of the Catholic Church or in objective truth?

The question needs to be asked:

If Francis is a disciple of de Certeau and Postmodernism, then what ultimately do he and these thinkers believe in?

Philosopher Stephen Hicks said:

The “Left thinkers of the 1950s and 1960s… Confronted by the continued poverty and brutality of socialism, they could either go with the evidence and reject their most cherish ideals – or stick by their ideals and attack the whole idea that evidence and logic matter…”

“Postmodernism is born of the marriage of Left politics and skeptical epistemology…”

“Then, strikingly, postmodernism turns out not to be relativistic at all. Relativism becomes part of a rhetorical political strategy, some Machiavellian realpolitik employed to throw the opposition off track…”

“Here it is useful to recall Derrida: ‘deconstruction never had any meaning… than as a radicalization… within the tradition of a certain Marxism, in a certain spirit of Marxism.'” (“Explaining Postmodernism,” Page 90, 186)

For Postmodernists like de Certeau, Derrida, Foucault and it appears Francis, if he is their disciple, falsehood or truth doesn’t matter.

The only thing that matters is achieving power for their liberal ideology or group.

Instead of economic Marxism, the post-modernist in the 1970’s focused on Cultural Marxism which de Certeau and other post-modernists termed “oppression” of groups.

Power not truth for groups such as women, gays, transexauls, workers and any sub-category of minorities was the new goal to achieving control.

An example is abortion: women had to have power over their bodies so the truth that the unborn baby is human must be denied and politically incorrect.

Another example is homosexual acts: gays had to have power over their bodies so the truth that it is was a sin and led to disease and a early death had to be denied and politically incorrect.

Remember that liberals, who never use Marxist words, are nothing but Postmodernist who use words like equality and compassion as masks for raw power.

Venezuela is another example.

The liberals from Fr. James Martin to Francis will not lift a finger or say a word to stop the Venezuelan people from being starved and brutalized because the country’s dictator is part of their liberal group.

The liberals means to achieve power in the Church is praxis theology.

Internationally renowned theologian Dr. Tracey Rowland said Francis’s “decision – making process” outlined in Evangelii Gaudium is “the tendency to give priority to praxis over theory.”

She states that chapter eight of Amoris Laetitia “might be described as the praxis chapter rather than a theory chapter.” Theory meaning Catholic doctrine.

The renowned theologian asks:

How can footnote 351 of Amoris Laetitia “be consistent with paragraph eighty-four of John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris consortio and paragraph twenty-nine of Benedict XVI’s Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis? A pastoral crisis may arise if the lay faithful and their priests have to choose between… two Popes (John Paul II and Benedict XVI) on one side, and a third Pope (Pope Francis) on the other.” (“Catholic Theology,” Page 192, 198, 199)

The choice appears to be between the infallible doctrines of the Catholic Church or praxis theology.

Rowland says “praxis types agree in rejecting classical metaphysics.” She then explains praxis ideology or “theology”:

“Doctrinal theory is at best extrinsic and secondary. The reflex character of theory-praxis tends toward a reduction of theory to reflection on praxis as variously understood. The normativity tends toward an identification of Christianity with modern, secular (liberal or Marxist) process.” (“Catholic Theology,” Page174)

If what the internationally renowned theologian is saying is true of  Francis and praxis “theology,” then the Church is in the greatest crisis in history.

The Church has a Bishop in Rome who has betrayed Jesus Christ and His Gospel for the world.

It appears that Francis has exchanged the Gospel of Jesus Christ for “secular (liberal or Marxist)” ideology which denies objective truth.

Francis in Amoris Laetitia and back on Holy Thursday appeared to be denying objective truth. Canon lawyer Fr. Gerald E. Murray, in The Catholic Thing, wrote at the Chrism Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Holy Thursday morning “Francis made a startling claim” when he called truth an idol:

“We must be careful not to fall into the temptation of making idols of certain abstract truths. They can be comfortable idols, always within easy reach; they offer a certain prestige and power and are difficult to discern. Because the “truth-idol” imitates, it dresses itself up in the words of the Gospel, but does not let those words touch the heart. Much worse, it distances ordinary people from the healing closeness of the word and of the sacraments of Jesus.”

Fr. Murray then defines truth as the Catholic Church and St. Thomas Aquinas teaches and shows that apparently Francis denies truth and makes“erroneous opinion into an idol”:

“Truth is the conformity of mind and reality. The truth about God is understood when we accurately grasp the nature and purpose of His creation (natural theology), and when we believe in any supernatural revelation He may make. Jesus told us that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. All truths have their origin in the Truth who is God made man. The Christian understands that the truth is a Person.”

“… Pope Francis states that “the ‘truth-idol’ imitates, it dresses itself up in the words of the Gospel, but does not let those words touch the heart.” Is the Gospel obscured or falsified by truths taught by the Magisterium of the Church – which are drawn from that Gospel?

“If the truth could be an idol, then naturally any use of the Scriptures to illustrate that particular truth would be a charade. But the truth of God cannot be an idol because what God has made known to us is our means of entering into His reality – the goal of our existence.”

“Francis states that this ‘truth-idolatry’ in fact ‘distances ordinary people from the healing closeness of the word and of the sacraments of Jesus.’”

“Here we have the interpretative key to what I think he is getting at. He is defending his decision in Amoris Laetitia to allow some people who are living in adulterous unions to receive the sacraments of penance and the Holy Eucharistic while intending to continue to engage in adulterous relations.”

“… The truth will set you free, it will not enslave you in error and darkness. Those who seek to be healed by coming close to Christ in his sacraments will only realize that goal by knowing and doing what Jesus asks of them. To reject in practice his words about the permanence of marriage and the obligation to avoid adultery, and then assert a right to receive the sacraments risks making an erroneous opinion into an idol.” [https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2018/04/21/of-truth-and-idols/]

Francis because of his apparent denial of truth appears to be denying objective morality and intrinsically evil acts. Professor Claudio Pierantoni, a Patristic Scholar of Medieval Philosophy at the University of Chile and Member of JAHLF (John Paul II Academy for Human Life and Family), said that  Francis’s Gaudete et Exsultate appears to deny “the existence of intrinsically evil acts” and is promoting “situation ethics”:

“[T]he document is read within the context of the present controversies in the Church, especially that about Amoris Laetitia and situation ethics, one gets the strong impression that many passages are directly aimed at harshly rebuking all those people (cardinals, scholars, journalists and simple laypeople writing on blogs) that have opposed the papal agenda about giving Communion to the divorced and remarried, Communion to Protestants, permitting contraception in certain cases, too mild opposition or silence in the face of anti-family and anti-life legislation (pro-abortion, pro-birth control pro-euthanasia and pro same-sex marriage). In this sense, the document brings no progress or clarity in any of the most controversial and anti-doctrinal stances of Pope Francis. Quite to the contrary, it seems to represent one more step towards giving a kind of official approval to situation ethics.”

“So, the reading of this document should once more to urge us to plead before the Pope for an answer to the dubia, and in particular to dubium no. 2 about the existence of intrinsically evil acts, which are not justifiable in any situation. We should not forget that to deny this doctrine, or sow doubts about it, in any field of ethics, is the principal heresy of our times and the most dangerous enemy of sanctity.” [http://m.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/professor-pierantoni-gaudete-et-exsultate-supports-error-of-situational-eth#.WuLDtN9lDqC]

Why does Francis deny truth which has led to his promoting situation ethics?

Francis expert Austen Ivereigh points to how this happened:

“Bergoglio’s fascination with polarities began in the 1960s, when he first began exploring as a Jesuit via Gaston Fessard’s 1956 monumental anti-Hegelian work on the dialectics of grace and freedom in St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. Fessard,Francis tells Borghesi, ‘gave me so many of the elements that later got mixed in.’” 
“Fessard was one of a 1950s group of Lyons-based jésuites blondéliens – that is, Jesuits inspired by Maurice Blondel – that included Henri de Lubac, Gaston Fessardand Michel de Certeau.” [https://cruxnow.com/book-review/2017/11/18/new-book-looks-intellectual-history-francis-pope-polarity/]

Ivereigh’s claim that Fessard is “anti-Hegelian” is wrong.

Back in 1950, scholar Jules “Isaac [O.P.] was accusing Fessard of identifying this quasi-science of thought with the science of the real order, or metaphysics. That is what Hegel does.”

“The executive function of the dialectic, as Isaac interpreted Aquinas, uses the law of thought in a concrete instance of thinking or arguing. Because Fessard used these laws not as laws of arguing, but as laws of the development of historical events, he is again accused of Hegelianism.” (“Gaston Fessard S.J., His Work Toward A Theology of History,” by Mary Alice Muir, 1970, page 25-26)

 Francis theological advisor Fr. Juan Carlos Scannone connects the final dots of the close connection of Francis’s thinking with Fessard and Blondel’s Hegelian teachings which explains why the Pope does not apparently believe in truth and promotes situation ethics:

“Between Blondel’s philosophy of action and Pope Francis’ pastoral action, there are significant coincidences, probably because they both draw from the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. However, indirect links between the two should not be excluded, for example, through the relationship between Gaston Fessard (strongly influenced by Blondel) and Miguel Ángel Fiorito, much appreciated by Bergoglio. This article focuses first on the convergences regarding action; then it compares the coincidences between the two authors regarding the overcoming of social and existential conflicts. Finally, it studies the parallelism between the «logic of love», nominated and applied by the Pope, and the «logic of a moral life» by Blondel, focused on charity. ( La Civiltà Cattolica 2015 III / www.laciviltacattolica.it )” [https://m.facebook.com/civiltacattolica/photos/a.10150836993325245.745627.379688310244/10242607255245/?type=3]

Scannone connecting the Pope’s thinking to Blondel is very important because he is one of “Francis’ closest theological advisors” according to an expert on Latin America and Francis’s theology, Claudio Remeseira:

“In the almost fifty years since its appearance, the Theology of the People has become the Argentine theological school by default. The generation of its founders was followed by a second generation of disseminators, the most prolific of whom is father Scannone… Scannone, Galli, and Fernández are among Francis’ closest theological advisors. [“https://medium.com/@hispanicnewyork/pope-francis-per%C3%B3n-and-god-s-people-the-political-religion-of-jorge-mario-bergoglio-2a85787e7abe ]

Theologian John Lamont explains what Blondel taught:

“The neomodernists, due to their historical perspectivism, did not think that the theology and dogma of previous epochs could satisfy this understanding, but they did not want to dismiss them as false. They accordingly held that dogma was true, but that its truth could not be understood in Aristotle’s sense. Garrigou-Lagrange saw them as reviving the philosopher Maurice Blondel’s rejection of the traditional definition of truth as bringing the mind into conformity with reality (‘adaequatio rei et intellectus’) in favour of an account of truth as bringing thought into line with life (‘adaequatio realis mentis et vitae’). While this definition of truth was not explicitly stated by the neomodernists, the importance of Blondel for their thought makes this interpretation a plausible one; Bouillard, for example, wrote extensively and approvingly on Blondel.¹² What they did explicitly assert was that the truth of past dogmatic pronouncements does not consist in their being an accurate description of reality, and that a theology that was not relevant to the present day (‘actuel’) was untrue.” [https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2015/01/a-christmastide-gift-for-our-readers.html?m=1]

Even liberal neo-modernist philosophy writer Anthony Carroll wrote:

“Conscious of the challenge to the traditional Thomist theory of knowledge that had been ushered in by modern philosophy, Blondel, for example, sought to identify the practical level of human action as the place where one might find a new apologetic for the Christian faith. In his L’Action(1893), he analyses the dynamics of human action and argues that the distance between what we desire and what we actually realise in our actions indicates that what we truly desire lies always beyond the particular object that we are momentarily fixed upon. This transcendental horizon of desire draws the mind and heart towards God as the only One who can satisfy truly our infinite longings. For Blondel, it is this Augustinian unrest that leaves a trace of the divine in our human experience. Such a turn to the interiority of human experience as grounds for the proof of God’s existence is what is meant by immanentism in Pascendi.”

“Rather than pointing towards the historical existence of Jesus, the factual occurrence of miracles and the fulfilment of earlier prophecies for proof of God’s existence, the Blondelian schema holds that justification for the faith is to be found by turning inwards to the personal experience of the human subject. This turn to the subject is characteristic of modern philosophy, from Descartes right up to the Idealism of Kant and Hegel and beyond, and presented a major challenge to the traditional Catholic apologetics of the time, which had been constructed on the basis that external revelation could be taken for granted. With this turn to the interior experience of the human subject, more than simply philosophical questions were raised. If it were the case that inner experience justified the faith, if each person was to find the proof of God’s existence within their own life, then what would be the basis for the teaching authority of the Church?” [https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/20090724_1.htm]

Finally, the great theologian and teacher of Pope John Paul II, Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., wrote about Blondel and why anyone who was influenced by his teachings, directly or indirectly, would deny truth, as apparently Francis is influenced according one of his closest advisor’s Scannone:

“One sees the danger of the new definition of 
truth, no longer the adequation of intellect and reality 
but the conformity of mind and life.™ When Maurice 
Blondel in 1906 proposed this substitution, he did not 
foresee all of the consequences for the faith. Would he 
himself not be terrified, or at least very troubled? 
What life” is meant in this definition of: “conformity 
of mind and life”? It means human life. And so then, 
how can one avoid the modernist definition: “Truth is 
no more immutable than man himself inasmuch as it 
is evolved with him, in him and through him. (Denz. 
2058) One understands why Pius X said of the 
modernists: “they pervert the eternal concept of truth. 11 
(Denz. 2080) ” [https://archive.org/stream/Garrigou-LagrangeEnglish/_Where%20is%20the%20New%20Theology%20Leading%20Us__%20-%20Garrigou-Lagrange%2C%20Reginald%2C%20O.P__djvu.txt]

Blondel’s modernist theology came from “the Idealism of Kant and Hegel.” Hegel leads to the “Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida” where de Certeau got most of his philosophy. 

Did Francis’s theology of the periphery come from the “Prophets of Extremity”?

The definition of extremity is “the furthest point or limit of something.”

The definition of periphery is “the outer limit or edge of an area or object.”

Remember what Francis expert Rev. Dr. Colautti said:

In the “discourse, a video message that the Pope send the Catholic University of Buenos Aires… I discovered that one of the few quotes he makes is from a theologian… a certain Michael de Certeau… I can imagine that this author had a great influence in the Pope’s way of being open… Not making faith of a museum… This preference for the periphery could have a relationship with this theologian Michael de Certeau.”

Francis’ favorite theologian de Certeau’s key ideas are oppression of groups and the deconstruction of meaning for the most part. De Certeau got these ideas from most of the same sources as Derrida who, like Fessard, had as his starting point Hegel. Remember that much of Francis’ thinking comes not only from de Certeau, but from Fessard who was a Hegelian.

Derrida scholar Allan Megill on the Hegelian influence wrote:

He “sees no possibility of ever ‘escaping’ Hegel… every attempt to state a truth is already a reintegration into the dialectic… A key term for Derrida is ‘dissemination’… a kind of anti-dialectic, going against the dialectical rule of three… The fourth moment of the dialectic is the deconstruction moment: position, negation, negation of the negation, deconstruction (or Nietzsche… Derrida).”
(“Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida,” Pages 271, 273-274)

The fourth moment or the deconstruction of meaning for Derrida and de Certeau is the Nietzschean relativism moment.

Francis’ favorite theologian de Certeau ultimately leads him to Friedrick Nietzsche and the Nietzschean relativism moment.

De Certeau apparently made Francis a Nietzschean.

Nietzsche scholar Hans-Georg Gadamer wrote a book that shows Hegel leads to Nietzsche:

Nietzsche said the “‘dialectical principles with which Hegel assisted the German spirit to gain its victory over Europe- ‘contradiction moves the world, all things are contradictory to themselves.'”
(“From Hegel to Nietzsche,” Page 180)

Professor Allan Bloom, author of “The Closing of the American Mind thought that the only virtue 50 years of Nietzsche’s influence on public education – and he could have said 50 years of Catholic education – has achieved is relativity of truth.

Bloom said relativism “is the modern replacement for the inalienable natural rights that used to be the traditional ground for a free society.”

The move away from objective truth leads to universal rights being replaced by Nietzsche’s will to power. Bloom, for example, showed how the old civil rights movement “relied on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.” But the new Black Power movement considered the Constitution “corrupt” and demanded a “black identity, not universal rights. Not rights but power counted.” 

The liberal “Catholics” speak the jargon of the Catholic while following Nietzsche’s will to power. They understand power and hold most of the power positions in the infrastructure of the American Church.

According to Catholic scholar James Hitchcock, the leftist “clerical homosexual network” extends to “bishops, seminary rectors, chancery officials, [and] superiors of religious orders.” 

The faithful Catholics, the ones not infected with relativism and will to power, not realizing that their opponents use words as ploys to attain power, still use logic in an attempt to reason them back into objective truth. So they control many traditional and conservative publications, as well as the EWTN Cable Network, but they have power over only a few dioceses, colleges and high schools, where the real power is. 

Meanwhile, the Nietzschean “Catholics” are going for the throat by going after the young. They control the American Catholic high school system, which is pro-homosexual, and filter out Roman Church documents such as the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Catechism states that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered … [and] under no circumstances can they be approved.” 

That the Catholic schools are not teaching the Catechism of the Catholic Church is shown by recent polls which found that the vast majority of Catholic high school students are pro-gay. That is, they buy the whole gay agenda and even have gay clubs at their Catholic schools.

Norman Mailer, in his book “Prisoner of Sex,” shows why this relativism and moving away from natural objective truths such as heterosexual sex can lead to will to power: 

“So, yes, [homosexuals] in prison strive to become part of the male population, and indeed – it is the irony of homosexuality – try to take on the masculine powers of the man who enters them, even as the studs, if Genet is our accurate guide, become effeminate over the years. … Homosexuality is not heterosexuality. There is no conception possible, no, no inner space, no damnable spongy pool of a womb … no hint remains of the awe that a life in these circumstances can be conceived. Heterosexual sex with contraception is become by this logic a form of sexual currency closer to the homosexual than the heterosexual, a clearinghouse for power, a market for psychic power in which the stronger will use the weaker, and the female in the act, whether possessed of a vagina or phallus, will look to ingest or steal the masculine qualities of the dominator.” 

This is the end result when universal truths and responsibility toward those truths are denied. The only “currency” left to the left is stealing of power, because they are insecure in any truth including their own objective masculinity. 

Unsure of their own objective masculinity – or any objective truth, for that matter – they will not tolerate truth, calling it intolerance. They will not tolerate the truth of the purpose of sex, which is married love, with the creation of a secure family for the children of that love. 

Leftists replace the traditional family with sexual power struggles that lead to the death mills of the abortion industry and the graveyards of AIDS and the abandonment of children and women at the altar of free sex. 

Sex is not free. It was once a responsibility that a mature man entered into for life, for the security of his beloved children and wife. 

Likewise, liberals replace the Constitution with gay, gender, group and ethnic power struggles that lead to the breaking of the rule of law.

If a president can sexually abuse women and possibly even rape them, then obstruct justice and lie under oath, are we under the rule of law?

If our society will not tolerate truth, then men and women are not secure in their “inalienable natural rights that used to be the traditional ground for a free society,” as Bloom said. 

If we reject the rule of law and natural rights, our society will progress toward the Clintonian and homosexual power tactics of prison inmates.

The leftists in the Church and the media rejecting objective truth no longer want to be identified as men of objective faith and reason, but rather as Nietzschean post-modernists to be identified with the “culture” of the gay and Clintonian playboy slogans of the media elite. 

The media elite uses management tactics on anyone who wants to be identified as a man of objective morals, faith and reason. They redefine the meaning of words like morals, faith and reason through association and repetition, then isolate those who don’t accept the new definitions, after which they ostracize the good name of any person or group that doesn’t accept the new “culture” and isn’t a “team player.” 

The very respected scholar Edgar H. Schein of MIT Sloan School of Management explains the process in “Organizational Learning as Cognitive Re-definition: Coercive Persuasion Revisited”: 

“It may seem absurd to the reader to draw an analogy between the coercive persuasion in political prisons and a new leader announcing that he or she is going ‘to change the culture.’ 

“However, if the leader really means it, if the change will really affect fundamental assumptions and values, one can anticipate levels of anxiety and resistance quite comparable to those one would see in prisons. The coercive element is not as strong. More people will simply leave before they change their cognitive structures, but if they have a financial stake or a career investment in the organization, they face the same pressure to ‘convert’ that the prisoner did. … Consider, for example, what it means to impose a ‘culture of teamwork’ based on ‘openness and mutual trust’ in an individualistic society.” 

By using this process, the leftists with the media’s marketing ability learned they could create massive peer pressure – some would call it a “mob mentality,” which changes the worldview of people with weak morals, weak faith or the Judas mentality. These types of people see themselves as the “elite” because they accept the “culture of teamwork” and have “openness” to the new definitions.

These persons wishing to be part of the “culture” or “team” are open to cognitive re-definition. Schein explains how the process works: 

“‘Cognitive redefinition’ involved two different processes. First, concepts like crime and espionage had to be semantically redefined. Crime is an abstraction that can mean different things in different conceptual systems when one makes it concrete. Second, standards of judgment had to be altered. Even within the western concept of crime, what was previously regarded as trivial was now seen to be serious. The anchors by which judgments are made are shifted and the point of neutrality is moved. Behavior that was previously judged to be neutral or of no consequence became criminal, once the anchor of what was a minimum crime was shifted. These two processes, semantic re-definition and changing one’s anchors for what is good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable, are the essence of cognitive re-definition.”

Professor Bloom thought that Nietzsche was the father of the modern American culture with it’s “semantic re-definition and changing one’s anchors for what is good or bad.” He said, “Words such as ‘charisma,’ ‘lifestyle,’ ‘commitment,’ ‘identity,’ and many others, all of which can easily be traced to Nietzsche … are now practically American slang.” 

But the most important Nietzschean slang word is “values.”

“Values” are the death of Christian morality because values simply mean opinions. If opinion is how things are decided, then might makes right. 

One must remember that whenever someone talks about values in modern America – family values or religious values or place-the-blank-in-front-of values – they are saying there is no real or objective right or wrong – only opinions of the self and its will to power. 

Nietzsche’s philosophy is summed up by Bloom as:

“Commitment values the values and makes them valuable. Not love of truth but intellectual honesty characterizes the proper state of mind. Since there is no truth in the values, and what truth there is about life is not lovable, the hallmark of the authentic will is consulting one’s oracle while facing up to what one is and what one experiences. Decisions, not, deliberations, are the movers of deeds. One cannot know or plan the future. One must will it.”

As a philologist, Nietzsche believed there was no original text and transferred this belief to reality, which he thought was only pure chaos. He proposed will to power in which one imposes or “posits” one’s values on a meaningless world.

Previous to Freud’s psychoanalysis, Nietzsche’s writings spoke of the unconscious and destructive side of the self. In fact, Freud wrote that Nietzsche “had a more penetrating knowledge of himself than any other man who ever lived or was likely to live.” 

Max Weber and Sigmund Freud are the two writers most responsible for Nietzschean language in America. Few know that Freud was ” profoundly influenced by Nietzsche,” according to Bloom. Freud, much more than Weber, profoundly changed America from a Christian culture to a therapeutic or self-centered culture. 

The therapeutic approaches, which started with Freud, have a basic assumption that is not Christian. The starting point is not the Christian worldview, which is summed up in the parable of the prodigal son: a fallen and sinful world with persons needing God the Father to forgive them so they can return to be His sons and daughters. 

Unlike the Christian worldview, the therapeutic starting point is that the individual must overcome personal unconscious forces, in Freud, and in Carl Jung the person must unite to the collective unconscious, which is shared by all humans. 

In both cases, the therapist assists his client to change himself to ‘become his real self.’ Forgiveness and returning to God are not needed. What is needed are not God and His Forgiveness, but a therapist assisting a self to reach the fullness of its self. 

Freud, under the influence of Nietzsche, moved psychiatry away from the mechanistic and biological to the previously “unscientific” model of the “symbolic language of the unconscious.” 

Freud’s pupil Carl Jung took the symbolic language of the unconscious a step further. Unlike his mentor, Jung’s unconscious theory is not just about making conscious sexually repressed or forgotten memories. His symbolic therapy used what he called the “active imagination” to incorporate split-off parts of the unconscious (complexes) into the conscious mind. 

He believed with Freud that dreams and symbols are means to the unconscious, but for Jung the dream and symbol are not repressed lusts from stages of development. They are a way to unite with the collective unconsciousness. 

Many Christians thought this “language of the soul” was a step forward from what they considered the cramped scientific reality of modernity. What they didn’t understand was that Jung’s theory was part of a movement that led to the rejection of objective morality and truth. 

Jungian (and Freudian) psychoanalysis reduces Christian concepts such as God, free will and intelligence to blind reactions, unconscious urges and uncontrollable acts. Even more disastrous, Jung inverted Christian worship. 

Leanne Payne, a Christian therapist, considers Jung “not a scientist, but a post-modernist subjectivist. Jung’s active imagination therapy is hostile not only to the Judeo-Christian worldview, but to all systems containing objective moral and spiritual value. Within this world the unconscious urge becomes god. What the unconscious urge wants is what is finally right or moral. These psychic personae [complexes] are literally called ‘gods’ (archetypes),’ and so an overt idolatry of self follows quickly.” 

It seems to me that within the modern French Nietzschean schools of thought of Foucault, Derrida and Francis’s favorite theologian de Certeau a type of Jungian unconscious urge is replacing the old existential conscious self who chooses. The Postmodernist and all Nietzschean secularists are moving from the idolatry of self to the idolatry of autonomous inner “beings” that, according to Payne, are similar to pagan “gods.” 

Sadly, these pagan “gods” appear to be the “spirits” that guide those who are disciples of de Certeau and the French Postmodernists who can be called Marxist “Materialist Magicians.”

Are they the “spirit” that guide the Pope’s synods? Francis has said of his synods:

They are “the outcome of the working of the Spirit.”
(Fatima Perspectives, “The ‘Synodality’ Scam,” November 20, 2018)

As C.S. Lewis predicted in “The Screwtape Letters,” we are moving to a “scientific” paganism. C.S. Lewis’ name for the “scientific” pagan was the Materialist Magician and the name of the autonomous inner “beings” was the “Forces.” 

In “The Screwtape Letters,” his character who is a senior evil spirit said: 

I have high hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, belief in us (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to the Enemy [God]. The “Life Force,” the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis may here prove useful. If once we can produce our prefect work – the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls “Forces” while denying the existence of “spirits” – then the end of the war will be in sight. 

Some of the largest audiences for this “scientific” paganism with its inversion of worship and the Judeo-Christian worldview are followers of Christ. By using Christian symbols and terminology, Jungian spirituality has infiltrated to a large extent Christian publishers, seminaries, even convents and monasteries. 

Many Christians are using Jung’s active imagination as a method of prayer. Psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover, M.D., thinks this is dangerous “because this fantasy life has no moral underpinnings, because it helps to reinforce an experience of autonomous inner ‘beings’ accessible via the imagination, and because it is a defense against redemptive suffering, it easily allies with and quickly becomes a Gnostic form of spiritually with powerfully occult overtones.” 

If one is under the influence of the autonomous inner “beings,” uncontrollable urges can overpower the self. One can go temporarily or permanently insane. And in the Christian worldview, the autonomous inner “being” is not always just an imaginary being, but can be a personal being, which then makes possession a rare, but not impossible, occurrence. 

In fact, according to one Jungian therapist, Nietzsche himself went insane permanently when an autonomous inner “being” (archetype) overpowered him. So, unfortunately with the widespread acceptance of Jungian spirituality, mainstream Christianity seems to be moving to post-modern Nietzschean insanity and possibly, in some cases, possession. 

Jung’s autobiography is full of insane or occult experiences. He was continually hearing ‘voices.’ In his autobiography he said his home was “… crammed full of spirits … they were packed deep right up to the front door and the air was so thick it was scarcely possible to breathe.” 

During the Hitler regime, which itself was obsessed with the occult, Jung edited a Nazi psychotherapeutic journal where he said, “The ‘Aryan’ unconscious has a higher potential than the Jewish.” Keep that word “potential” in your mind. It will be used by American psychology. 

Once opinion is master, then might makes right. In “Beyond Good and Evil,” Nietzsche proclaimed a new morality, “Master morality,” which was different from Christian morality – or “slave morality,” as he called it. He thought the weak have the morality of obedience and conformity to the master. Masters have a right to do whatever they want; since there is no God, everything is permissible. 

In what Nietzsche considered his masterpiece, “Zarathustra,” he said the new masters would replace the dead God. The masters were to be called Supermen, or the superior men. 

After Freud and Jung came Alfred Adler, also a follower of Nietzsche, with “Individual psychology,” which maintains that the individual strives for what he called “superiority” but now is called “self-realization” or “self-actualization,” and which came from Nietzsche’s ideas of striving and self-creation. 

The “human potential movement” and humanistic psychology of Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers are imbedded with these types of ideas. The psychologists of “potential” teach the superior man. 

Edvard Munch said: 

“Alfred Adler translated Nietzsche’s philosophical idea of ‘will to power’ into the psychological concept of self-actualization.”

“Thus, Nietzschean thought forms the foundation for and permeates Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology, Abraham Maslow’s Humanistic Biology, Carl Rogers’s Person-Centered Psychology, and has influenced many other psychological ideas and systems. … Alfred Adler was the first psychologist to borrow directly from Nietzsche, making numerous references to the philosopher throughout his works. Adler took Nietzsche’s idea of “will to power” and transformed it into the psychological concept of self-actualization, in which an individual strives to realize his potential.”

Mary Kearns, in an address to the Catholic Head Teachers Association of Scotland, spoke of the Nietzschean ideas now being taught in Catholic schools in the name of “scientific” psychology. Kearns said: 

“The methods are based on ‘the group therapy technique’ first developed in America in the 1970’s by two psychologists, Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow. They described how emotional conditioning should be carried out by a group ‘facilitator.’ The facilitator does not impart knowledge like the old fashioned teacher. Instead he/she initiates discussions encouraging children to reveal their personal views and feelings. The facilitator’s approach is ‘value free.’ There is no right or wrong answer to any religious or moral question. Each person discloses what is right or wrong for them. All choices are equally valid even if they are opposites. Everything depends on feelings or emotions. Reason and conscience are discouraged. If anyone attempts objective evaluation, they are to be treated as an ‘outsider’ and there will be a strong emotional reaction against such judgemental intolerance'”. 

If it is true that Catholic education now uses these techniques in “teaching religious and moral education,” then the Catholic education system has entered into the Nietzschean insanity. If these are the techniques being used in education and in the seminaries, then sexual misconduct charges against priests are a symptom of “scientific” paganism replacing Christianity. 

Santa Rosa priest Don Kimball, who is charged with sexual misconduct, is an example of someone whose “approach” was “value free” – that is, there was “no right or wrong answer to any religious or moral question.” 

In 1996, Karyn Wolfe and Mark Spaulding of Pacific Church News said, “THE WEDGE! You can’t do youth ministry (any ministry for that matter) without it. … Basing his theory on psychologist Abraham Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’, the Rev. Don Kimball developed this model for the growth and maturity process of a group.” 

Another example of the value-free approach is Thomas Zanzig, a major leader in the Catholic Church for youth ministry, plus an editor and writer of Catholic textbooks.

According to Marks S. Winward, Zanzig, in a book on youth ministry, “bases his ‘Wedge Model’ on a similar model developed by Fr. Don Kimble.” Homeschool leader Marianna Bartold said, “Sharing the Christian Message by Thomas Zanzig has students come up with as many slang or street words as possible for penis and vagina in three or four minutes.” 

Now, many might say these are only isolated cases of misuses of Maslow and Adler until one reads the original text. According to William Coulson, a former collaborator of Carl Rogers, Maslow was always a revolutionary. … In 1965, working a radical idea about children and adult sex into his book about management, “In Eupsychian Management: A Journal,” [Maslow said]: “I remember talking with Alfred Adler about this in a kind of joking way, but then we both got quite serious about it, and Adler thought that this sexual therapy at various ages was certainly a very fine thing. As we both played with the thought, we envisioned a kind of social worker … as a psychotherapist in giving therapy literally on the couch.” 

As one can see, the basic therapeutic assumption leads to certain results in the real world. These thinkers don’t believe in the basic Christian assumption that there is a need for forgiveness from God. Instead, they believe there is no sin, only selves needing to reach the fullness of themselves. 

It is understandable that Nietzschean atheists such as Maslow, Adler and gay activists could hold these basic assumptions that sexually abusing children is okay, just as Hitler thought killing Jews was okay since he had the basic assumption that there is no right or wrong only relativism and will to power disguised in Nazi pagan religious and “National Socialist” language.

It would not be understandable and would be a disgrace if Francis holds these Nietzschean assumptions of Nihilistic Modernism. Relativism with its implicit denial of original sin and personal sin is, in large part, behind the sex-abuse headlines of the Vatican, Chile, Pennsylvania and those around the globe.

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

Pray an Our Father now to offer reparation for the offenses against the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Immaculate Heart of Mary and for the conversion of sinners.Posted by Fred Martinez at 9:47 PM Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest

On Sunday, May 24, 2020, 4:01 AM, Elizabeth Wickham <eedwickham@yahoo.com> wrote:
Reading this quickly is worthwhile.  The extensive timeline is useful.  Indeed, it shows there is now a rush to be Frankensteins and destroy life. We know that Satan can be stopped by our prayers to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Our Lady at Fatima told us to pray the rosary.  We pray for loved ones.  
Many keep coming back to question the impact on our seniors. The fall of so many of our elderly is consistent with the major transformation in our healthcare system to bring in a new field of medicine, principally for the elderly.  Incidentally, we learn from videos being made by Dr. Diane Meier of the Center to Advance Palliative Care that they are rethinking their palliative model because family members are now isolated and in a way out of the picture, away from the actual clinicians and nursing home staff.  Palliative professionals are learning how to position themselves front and center.  They have already educated the nursing homes in the philosophy of palliative care.  And in these last two months they have stepped up to become the family’s bridge to the doctors and nurses if the patient is in the hospital.  Soros- and RWJF-funded people are contributing to the reduction in population along with Bill and Melinda Gates and the other global elites. 
Prayers to the Holy Ghost,BettyLifeTree.org

Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPad

Begin forwarded message:

On Saturday, May 23, 2020, 1:56 AM, Barbara J. kralis <avemaria@earthlink.net> wrote:Yes, I have been realizing this Communistic takeover reality more and more recently, that the confiscation of our FREEDOMS has been orchestrated and plotted for over 50 years or more, as more of the current Communist infiltration unravels. 
In 1882, over 100 years ago, the US instituted a protocol, an actual law, to never let any Chinese person already living in our US to become a citizen. Called the CHINESE EXCLUSION LAW of 1882, it was signed and executed by my distant cousin President Chester Allen Arthur, whom my younger brother, Chet, was named after.  For the first time, a US federal law prohibited immigration of one particular race for the good of its own people and their protection. In addition, it refused re-entry into our nation of any Chinese, even if they were already granted citizenship, if they were ever to leave and try to re-enter or come back. All for the protection of our nation against a ethnic group long considered to be harmful to mankind. 
However, in 1943, due to war affiliations, Congress repealed (Democrat’s) the exclusion Act and allowed only 105 Chinese to enter per year seeking naturalization.  In 1968, the limit was raised to 170,000 per year.    And we know the rest of that story. Barbara Arthur Kralis

On May 23, 2020, at 12:09 AM, Ron Panzer <rpanzer@hospicepatients.org> wrote:

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/a-timeline-pandemic-and-erosion-of-freedoms-have-been-decades-in-the-making/
MAY 21, 2020

A Timeline—Pandemic and Erosion of Freedoms Have Been Decades in the Making

By the Children’s Health Defense Team

From the moment of “COVID-19’s” naming—and particularly since the imposition of unprecedented restrictions on “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”—some people have smelled a rat. And with each passing week, the smell becomes worse. A growing chorus of ordinary citizens and world-renowned medical and scientific experts is raising questions about matters ranging from the coronavirus’s origins to the rationale for continued lockdowns (see here, here and here).

The mainstream media have shown themselves only too ready to lob ad hominem attacks against any and all such non-conformists. However, one does not have to be insensitive to the illness and deaths associated with COVID-19 to recognize that powerful agendas are riding on the coattails of SARS-CoV-2. Citizens are waking up to the fact that the countries, officials and public figures who embrace draconian interventions such as immunity certificates, microchipping, forced vaccination and the removal of children from their homes also approve of making our sovereign rights—whether to earn a living, maintain bodily integrity, congregate to practice our spirituality, enjoy the arts or protect and educate our children—contingent upon our acceptance of these Big Brother measures and technologies.

To make it easier for the public to assess what is happening and what is at stake, Children’s Health Defense has put together the following timeline of selected events. We invite readers to consider how these events—some of them seemingly unrelated—and the network of partnerships and relationships that they illustrate have contributed to the unfolding set of circumstances in which we now find ourselves.While the lockdown is a cataclysm for the world economy, it is an opportunity for Gates” and his billionaire brotherhood…

Notes/Explanatory Context

Gain-of-function research: COVID-19 has prompted renewed questioning about a long-debated branch of virology that, around 2012, scientists benignly rebranded as “gain-of-function” (GOF) research. GOF experiments seek to generate viruses “with properties that do not exist in nature” or, stated another way, “alter a pathogen to make it more transmissible or deadly.” One of the leading proponents of GOF work is Dr. Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC), a “legend in coronavirology” and “trailblazer of synthetic genomic manipulation techniques” who specializes in engineering lethal coronaviruses from “mail-order DNA.” Baric and other GOF enthusiasts argue that this type of viral tinkering is “critical to the development of broad-based vaccines and therapeutics,” but critics, such as Dr. Thomas Inglesby (director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security), dispute this putative benefit.

Big Data and Big Telecom: Children’s Health Defense Chairman Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Dafna Tachover (director of  CHD’s “Stop 5G and Wireless Harms Project”) wrote on May 8: “5G has almost nothing to do with improving your lives; it’s all about controlling your life, marketing products, and harvesting your data for Artificial Intelligence purposes. The 21st century’s ‘black gold’ is data.” They note that Bill Gates, along with a number of other players and companies, is helping set up a “microwave radiation-emitting spider web [that] will allow Big Data/Big Telecom and Big Brother to capture what happens inside and outside every person at every moment of life” using a sinister brain-machine interface and other technologies, many financed by Gates. In short, “While the lockdown is a cataclysm for the world economy, it is an opportunity for Gates” and his billionaire brotherhood, ably assisted by an unadmirable fleet of medical and scientist yes-men.

Timeline of selected events

1998

May 18: The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and 20 states file antitrust charges against Microsoft.

2000

2000: Bill Gates steps down from his position as Microsoft CEO, and Bill and Melinda Gates launch their eponymous foundation.

2000: The Gates Foundation (along with other partners) launches the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI), known today as Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. The foundation has given $4.1 billion to Gavi over the past 20 years.

2001

November: After initially losing the antitrust lawsuit and appealing the decision, Microsoft settles its case with the DOJ out of court.

2002

November 2002: University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC) researcher Ralph Baric publishes a “breakthrough work” in gain-of-function research (studies that alter pathogens to make them more transmissible or deadly, see Notes above), describing the creation of a synthetic clone of a natural mouse coronavirus.

November 2002: China’s Guangdong province reports the first case of “atypical pneumonia” (later labeled as SARS).The speed of the Baric group illustrates how quickly a qualified team of virologists can create a synthetic clone from a natural virus, and therefore make genetic modifications to it.

2003

October 28: A paper by the Baric research group at UNC describes their synthetic recreation of the “previously undescribed” SARS coronavirus. (Writing in 2020, a scientist states, “The speed of the Baric group illustrates how quickly a qualified team of virologists can create a synthetic clone from a natural virus, and therefore make genetic modifications to it. Moreover, that was back in 2003. Today, a qualified laboratory can repeat those steps in a matter of weeks.”)

2005

December: Congress approves the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, which authorizes the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “to issue a PREP Act Declaration . . . that provides immunity from liability for any loss caused, arising out of, relating to, or resulting from administration or use of countermeasures to diseases, threats, and conditions determined in the Declaration to constitute a present or credible risk of a future public health emergency.”

2009

2009-present (and earlier): The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awards millions of dollars in global health funding to Imperial College London; funding covers areas such as polio, HIV, family planning, malaria, health care delivery, agricultural development, information technology and “public awareness and analysis.”

2009: The Gates Foundation funds human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine trials in India, administering the vaccine to 23,000 young girls in remote provinces. Seven die and approximately 1,200 suffer autoimmune conditions, fertility disorders or other severe reactions. Ethical violations include forged consent forms and refusal of medical treatment for the injured girls.

October 2009: Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), goes on YouTube to declare that serious adverse events for the H1N1 influenza vaccine are “very, very, very rare.” Months later, serious adverse events such as miscarriages, narcolepsy and febrile convulsions explode in multiple countries.

2010

January: Bill Gates pledges $10 billion in funding for the World Health Organization (WHO) and announces “the Decade of Vaccines.”

May 18: Senator and physician Tom Coburn calls out Dr. Fauci for misleadingly touting “significant progress in HIV vaccine research”—research that has ushered millions into NIAID’s coffers. Dr. Coburn stated, “Most scientists involved in AIDS research believe that an HIV vaccine is further away than ever.”

2011

December 30: Dr. Fauci promotes gain-of-function research on bird flu viruses, arguing that the research is worth the risk. The risks worry other “seasoned researchers.”

2012

April 20: Baylor College researchers publish their evaluation of four vaccine candidates for SARS, concluding that “Caution in proceeding to application of a SARS-CoV vaccine in humans is indicated.”

May: The 194 Member States of the World Health Assembly endorse the Global Vaccine Action Plan (GVAP), led by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in collaboration with NIAID, WHO, Gavi, UNICEF and others. Dr. Fauci is one of five members on the GVAP’s Leadership Council.

2014

2014: Dr. Deborah Birx takes the helm of PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), which Dr. Fauci helped launch (in 2003) and which benefits from generous Gates Foundation support. Birx and Fauci are long-time allies, having worked together during the early years of AIDS and sharing overlapping career paths.

October 7: National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Francis Collins announces a “new phase of cooperation” between NIH and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, including partnering for vaccine development.

October 17: Under President Obama, the NIH halts federal funding for gain-of-function (GOF) research (see Notes) and asks federally funded GOF researchers to “agree to a voluntary moratorium.” The funding hiatus applies to 21 studies “reasonably anticipated to confer attributes to influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses such that the virus would have enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility in mammals via the respiratory route.” NIH later allows 10 of the studies to resume.[T]hese data and restrictions represent a crossroads of [gain-of-function] research concerns; the potential to prepare for and mitigate future outbreaks must be weighed against the risk of creating more dangerous pathogens.

2015

2015: NIAID, under Fauci, awards a five-year, $3.7 million grant to EcoHealth Alliance (whose director gets credit on subsequent publications for “funding acquisition” rather than scientific work) to conduct gain-of-function studies on the “risk of bat coronavirus emergence.” Ten percent of the award goes to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which does “the bulk of the on-the-ground sample collection and analysis.”

September 24: UNC’s Ralph Baric is granted a patent for the creation of chimeric coronavirus spike proteins.

November 9: Baric and the Wuhan Institute’s Shi Zheng-Li (the leading GOF coronavirus researcher in China) publish what some refer to as “the most famous gain-of-function virology paper” (in Nature Medicine), describing their creation of a synthetic chimeric coronavirus. The authors state: “[T]hese data and restrictions represent a crossroads of GOF research concerns; the potential to prepare for and mitigate future outbreaks must be weighed against the risk of creating more dangerous pathogens [emphasis added]. In developing policies moving forward, it is important to consider the value of the data generated by these studies and whether these types of chimeric virus studies warrant further investigation versus the inherent risks involved.”

2016

2016: The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity states that “very few government-funded gain-of-function experiments [pose] a significant threat to public health.”…researchers blame the Gates-funded polio vaccination campaign for almost half a million cases of childhood paralysis.

2017

February 8: The Modi administration in India severs ties with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, after researchers blame the Gates-funded polio vaccination campaign for almost half a million cases of childhood paralysis.

November 30: Shi Zheng-Li and coauthors publish a paper in PLoS Pathogens describing the creation of eight new synthetic coronaviruses.

December 19: The NIH and Dr. Fauci’s NIAID restore federal funding for gain-of-function research, ending the moratorium that began in October 2014.

December 19: Dr. Marc Lipsitch of the Harvard School of Public Health tells the New York Times that the type of gain-of-function experiments endorsed by Dr. Fauci’s NIAID have “done almost nothing to improve our preparedness for pandemics, and yet risked creating an accidental pandemic.”NIAID awards a six-year renewal grant of $3.7 million to EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology to continue their gain-of-function studies on bat coronaviruses.

2019

2019: NIAID awards a six-year renewal grant of $3.7 million to EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology to continue their gain-of-function studies on bat coronaviruses. The renewal is approved “unusually quickly,” receiving a “really extremely high priority for funding.”

August 14: Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) records show that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation owns 5.3 million shares of Crown Castle International Corp., representing the Foundation’s second largest tech holding after Microsoft. Crown Castle dominates ownership of 5G infrastructure throughout the U.S., including cell towers, small cell nodes and fiber.

October: A report released by NBC News in May, 2020 declares, “The analysis of commercial telemetry data in Wuhan suggests the COVID-19 pandemic began earlier than initially reported” and “supports the release of COVID-19 at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” NBC’s May 8 summary states, “there was no cellphone activity in a high-security portion of the Wuhan Institute of Virology from Oct. 7 through Oct. 24, 2019, and that there may have been a ‘hazardous event’ sometime between Oct. 6 and Oct. 11.”

October 6: On May 5, 2020, British and French researchers publish a study estimating that COVID-19 could have started as early as October 6, 2019.

October 18: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security convene an invitation-only “tabletop exercise” called Event 201 to map out the response to a hypothetical global coronavirus pandemic.

November-December: General practitioners in northern Italy start noticing a “strange pneumonia.”

December 2-3: Vaccine scientists attending the WHO’s Global Vaccine Safety Summit confirm major problems with vaccine safety around the world.

December 18: Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) report the development of a “novel way to record a patient’s vaccination history,” using smartphone-readable nanocrystals called “quantum dots” embedded in the skin using microneedles—this work is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

December 31: Chinese officials inform the WHO about a cluster of “mysterious pneumonia” cases. Later, the South China Morning Post reports that it can trace the first case back to November 17.Dr. Peter Hotez of Baylor College … tells a Congressional Committee that coronavirus vaccines have always had a “unique potential safety problem”

2020

January 7: Chinese authorities formally identify a “novel” coronavirus.

January 10: China makes the genome sequence of the new coronavirus publicly available.

January 11: China records its first death attributed to the new coronavirus.

January 20: The first U.S. coronavirus case is reported in Washington State.

January 23: Shi Zheng-Li releases a paper reporting that the new coronavirus is 96% identical to a strain that her lab isolated from bats in 2013 but never publicized.

January 30: The WHO declares the new coronavirus a “global health emergency.”

Jan. 31, 2020: A group of Indian scientists publishes a study finding HIV sequences in the 2019-nCoV coronavirus. The scientists withdraw the study withdrew the study within 24 hours, presumably under some pressure.

February 4: With just 11 people in the U.S. who are confirmed to have COVID-19, HHS issues a Declaration, published on March 17 in the Federal Register, that places the new coronavirus under the umbrella of the 2005 PREP Act, making medical countermeasures (including vaccines) immune from liability.

February 5: Bill and Melinda Gates announce $100 million in funding for coronavirus vaccine research and treatment efforts.

February 10: French and Canadian scientists publish a paper about the new coronavirus describing an “important” anomaly—12 additional nucleotides—not observed in previous coronaviruses. They suggest that the distinct feature “may provide a gain-of-function . . . for efficient spreading in the human population.”

February 11: The WHO gives the disease thought to be caused by the new coronavirus a name: “COVID-19.” WHO’s Director-General explains, “We had to find a name that did not refer to a geographical location, an animal, an individual or group of people, and which is also pronounceable and related to the disease.”

February 24: Moderna, Inc. sends the first batch of its experimental coronavirus vaccine, mRNA-1273, to its research partner, NIAID.

February 25: Moderna stock shares trade 15% higher.

February 29: The U.S. reports its first COVID-19 death.

March 5: Dr. Peter Hotez of Baylor College (who has previously tried to develop a SARS vaccine) tells a Congressional Committee that coronavirus vaccines have always had a “unique potential safety problem”—a “kind of paradoxical immune enhancement phenomenon.”

March 6: President Trump signs an $8.3 billion emergency coronavirus spending package, much of which “directly benefit[s] the drug industry.”

March 10: Dr. Paul Offit of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia expresses concerns about the push to “rush [a vaccine] through,” particularly in the absence of “any history of making a coronavirus vaccine.”

March 10: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome and Mastercard commit $125 million to identify, assess, develop and scale up COVID-19 treatments, forming the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator. The $50 million in Gates Foundation funding is part of the $100 million in COVID-19 funding announced by Gates on February 5.

March 11: The WHO declares COVID-19 a pandemic.

March 13: Bill Gates steps down from the Boards of Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway to “dedicate more time to philanthropic priorities.”

March 16: Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London, scientific advisor to the UK government, publishes his computer simulations warning that there will be over two million COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. unless the country adopts “intensive and socially disruptive measures.”

March 16: Dr. Fauci tells Americans that they must be prepared to “take more drastic steps” and “hunker down significantly” to slow the coronavirus’s spread.

March 16: NIAID launches a Phase 1 trial in 45 healthy adults of the mRNA-1273 coronavirus vaccine co-developed by NIAID and Moderna, Inc. The trial skips the customary step of testing the vaccine in animal models prior to proceeding to human trials.

March 17: The Nation publishes an analysis covering conflicts of interest in the Gates Foundation’s charitable giving, describing “close to $2 billion in tax-deductible charitable donations to private companies,” including GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), and “close to $250 million in charitable grants . . . to companies in which the foundation holds corporate stocks and bonds,” including Merck, GSK, Sanofi and other pharmaceutical corporations. A critic states that the foundation has “created one of the most problematic precedents in the history of foundation giving by essentially opening the door for corporations to see themselves as deserving charity claimants at a time when corporate profits are at an all-time high.”

March 22: U.S. bioweapons expert Dr. Francis Boyle repeats earlier statements that the purpose of Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) labs such as the Wuhan Institute of Virology “is the research, development, testing and stockpiling of offensive biological weapons” and that the new virus is a “weaponized” SARS coronavirus that leaked out of the Wuhan BSL-4 lab.Bill Gates announces significant funding for a company, EarthNow, that will blanket Earth with $1 billion in video surveillance satellites.

March 24: Bill Gates announces significant funding for a company, EarthNow, that will blanket Earth with $1 billion in video surveillance satellites.

March 26: Microsoft announces that it is acquiring Affirmed Networks, a company focused on 5G and “edge computing.”

March 26: Dr. Fauci publishes an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine (with senior NIAID official H. Clifford Lane and CDC director Robert Redfield), stating that “the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza,” with a case fatality rate of perhaps 0.1%.

March 27: President Trump signs the $2 trillion CARES Act into law.

March 27: Children’s Health Defense publishes its video and article, “Dr. Fauci and COVID-19 priorities: therapeutics now or vaccines later?” Shortly thereafter, Mailchimp deactivates CHD’s account with no advance notice and no violation of Mailchimp’s rules.

March 29: President Trump extends nationwide social distancing guidelines until April 30.

March 31: White House coronavirus advisors Dr. Deborah Birx and Dr. Fauci cite models showing a potential 100,000 to 240,000 coronavirus deaths “even if the country keeps stringent social distancing guidelines in place.” Fauci describes social distancing and lockdowns as “inconvenient” but “the answer to our problems.”

April 2: Bill Gates states that a coronavirus vaccine “is the only thing that will allow us to return to normal.”

April 3: Forbes reports that Moderna’s CEO has become an overnight billionaire after the company ended 2019 with a net loss.

April 6: Dr. Fauci describes a COVID-19 vaccine as a “showstopper” and states, “I hope we don’t have so many people infected that we actually have . . . herd immunity.”

April 9: Dr. Fauci states that the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus “looks more like the 60,000 [range],” adding the “models are really only as good as the assumptions that you put into the model.”

April 9: The Gates-funded Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) reports that 115 COVID-19 vaccines are in the pipeline.

April 9: Children’s Health Defense publishes “Gates’ globalist vaccine agenda: a win-win for pharma and mandatory vaccination.”

April 11: Children’s Health Defense publishes “Here’s why Bill Gates wants indemnity… Are you willing to take the risk?”

April 15: Bill Gates pledges another $150 million to coronavirus vaccine development and other measures. He states, “There are seven billion people on the planet. We are going to need to vaccinate nearly every one.”

April 16: Moderna announces up to $483 million in funding from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to speed up the mRNA-1273 vaccine’s development.

April 18: Professor Luc Montagnier, recipient of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of HIV, appears on French television and states that SARS-CoV-2 has been “manipulated” to include “added sequences” from HIV. Professor Montagnier asserts that this “meticulous” insertion could only have been carried out in a laboratory. Others raise similar questions about the origins of SARS-CoV-2.

April 18: News outlets report that the country’s first coronavirus tests are ineffective due to CDC lab contamination and the CDC’s violation of its manufacturing standards.

April 21: Washington State announces plans to have a 1,500-person contact tracing team in place by mid-May.

April 23: Researchers issue a preprint reporting “direct evidence” of at least 30 different SARS-CoV-2 genetic variants.

April 23: News outlets report that American billionaires’ wealth increased by 10% during the first few months of COVID-19.

April 23: Children’s Health Defense Chairman Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. publishes “The Bill Gates effect: WHO’s DTP vaccine killed more children in Africa than the diseases it targeted.”

April 24: The NIH cancels the funding awarded to EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology for gain-of-function research on coronaviruses (funding awarded continuously since 2015). The NIH and Dr. Fauci decline to comment.

April 27: Former FDA head Scott Gottlieb (now with Pfizer) and former Medicare/Medicaid official Andy Slavitt urge the Trump administration to dedicate $46 billion to contact tracing and isolation.

April 28: A Newsweek article reports, “Dr. Fauci backed controversial Wuhan lab with U.S. dollars for risky coronavirus research.” Fauci does not respond to requests for comments.

April 29: Bloomberg publishes a story about President Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed,” a planned pharmaceutical-government-military collaboration to shrink the development time for a coronavirus vaccine.

April 30: Bill Gates writes that “the world will be able to go back to the way things were . . . when almost every person on the planet has been vaccinated against coronavirus.” Gates also states that “Governments will need to expedite their usual drug approval processes in order to deliver the vaccine to over 7 billion people quickly.”

April 30: Dr. Fauci states that it is “doable” to have hundreds of millions of doses of a coronavirus vaccine available by January 2021.

May 1: Dr. Thomas Inglesby (director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security), discussing gain-of-function research, states that “laboratory systems are not infallible, and even in the greatest laboratories of the world, there are mistakes.”

May 1: Democratic Representative Bobby Rush of Illinois introduces the TRACE Act (“HR 6666: COVID-19 Testing, Reaching, and Contacting Everyone”). The conspicuously vague Act would allocate $100 billion to CDC-hired entities for contact tracing and “other purposes,” including family separation. (See also May 15.)

May 4: Bill Gates pledges another $50 million toward COVID-19, for a total of $300 million in commitments.

May 4: President Trump states that the U.S. will have a coronavirus vaccine by the end of 2020.

May 5: British and French researchers publish “Emergence of genomic diversity and recurrent mutations in SARS-CoV-2,” suggesting that the recurrent mutations detected “may indicate ongoing adaptation of SARS-CoV-2 to its novel human host.”

May 5: Neil Ferguson resigns from the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) after flouting his own social distancing rules. The married lover with whom Ferguson has his trysts works for an organization “loosely connected with Bill Gates, through the World Economic Forum.”

May 5: Children’s Health Defense Chairman Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. publishes “Redfield and Birx: can they be trusted with COVID?”

May 6: An anonymous software engineer (ex-Google) pronounces Neil Ferguson’s COVID-19 computer model “unusable for scientific purposes.”

May 6: New York governor Andrew Cuomo announces that the state will partner with “visionary” Bill Gates to restructure education by placing “technology at the forefront.” Cuomo appoints former Google CEO Eric Schmidt to lead a blue-ribbon committee for this purpose. Critics push back, describing past Gates-Foundation-funded educational fiascos that amassed “detailed personal information about millions of students” in the cloud.

May 7: Business Insider reports that over 33 million Americans have filed for unemployment over the seven-week period since COVID-19 restrictions began.

May 7: NPR reports that 44 states and the District of Columbia have plans to deploy a contact tracing workforce of over 66,000 workers.

May 8: NBC News releases a private report describing an unconfirmed shutdown of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in October 2019.

May 8: Children’s Health Defense Chairman Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Dafna Tachover (director of  CHD’s “Stop 5G and Wireless Harms Project”) publish “The brave new world of Bill Gates and Big Telecom.”

May 11: UK chief medical officer Dr. Chris Whitty (an insider who has received millions in malaria research funding from the Gates Foundation and who endorses stigma as a useful public health intervention) states that COVID-19 is “harmless to [the] vast majority.”

May 13: Australian researchers report that “SARS-CoV-2 is uniquely adapted to infect humans, raising important questions as to whether it arose in nature by a rare chance event or whether its origins might lie elsewhere.”

May 14: Microsoft announces that it is acquiring UK-based Metaswitch Networks “to expand its Azure 5G strategy.”

May 15: The House passes the 1,815-page, $3 trillion HEROES Act (“Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act”), sneaking in portions of the TRACE ACT that would funnel $75 billion to the CDC for “coronavirus testing, contact tracing and isolation measures.”

May 18: Moderna announces interim results from the Phase 1 trial of its mRNA-1273 coronavirus vaccine. The company reports that three out of 15 healthy participants (20%) experienced Grade 3 systemic adverse events following a second dose. (The Merck Manual defines Grade 3 as “severe or medically significant but not immediately life-threatening; hospitalization or prolongation of hospitalization indicated; disabling; limiting self care.”)

May 18: Discussing the interim results from Moderna’s Phase 1 trial of its mRNA-1273 vaccine—co-developed with NIAID—Dr. Fauci states: “I must warn that there’s also the possibility of negative consequences, where certain vaccines can actually enhance the negative effect of the infection.”

May 18: After describing its interim Phase 1 results as “promising,” shares of Moderna stock soar 25%, closing at a “record high.” The company’s stock has gained 241% since the beginning of 2020.

May 19: Children’s Health Defense Chairman Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. publishes “How Bill Gates controls global messaging and censorship.”

May 20: Microsoft announces its new supercomputer intended to create “human-like” artificial intelligence.

Stop the conveyor belt

Around the world, many people are understandably reeling in shock at the rapid economic, social and cultural changes that have followed in the wake of the phenomenon called “COVID-19.” Many of these changes involve ever-tighter restrictions on our rights and freedoms, accompanied by inexorable messaging—both public and subliminal—that a “vaccine for all” and 24/7 tracking and surveillance are the only way out. Increasingly, however, there are hopeful signs that more members of the public are recognizing the duplicity and self-interest of those offering false salvation. Each of us needs to do our part to expose these issues, standing up for individual sovereignty and working to halt the transition “to a totalitarian singularity more despotic than Orwell ever imagined.”

• 
  

Settimo Cielodi Sandro Magister 25 mag 20

In the Year of “Laudato Si’” It’s Party Time for Everyone, Except for “My Lord”

*

In these times of global shortages, those who hold the purse strings in the Vatican – the Jesuit Juan Antonio Guerrero Alves and Cardinal Reinhard Marx, prefects respectively of the secretariat for the economy and of the council for the economy – have issued urgent calls to the heads of the curia to be “sober” and to “cut the costs of conferences, travel abroad, external consultancy.”

But the celebrations for “Laudato Si’” are evidently an exception. Yesterday, Sunday May 24, the fifth birthday of the signing of the encyclical struck and a whole jubilee year was announced to celebrate it, with an endless program.

*

To begin with, there has already been a prologue, “Laudato Si’ Week,” launched on 16 May with a video message from Pope Francis amid evocative images of zebras, camels and savannas, and crowned on Sunday the 24th with the common recitation throughout the world, at noon according to local time, of a prayer composed at the Vatican for the occasion, so that we may all “know how to listen and respond to the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.”

Among those who took part in the preparatory week – with a multiplicity of local initiatives – the United States comes in first with 2,316 registrations, followed in the ranking by Italy, France, Spain, Argentina, Brazil and then other nations little by little, with China dead last with just one signup.

But there is more in store for them. Because at the end of the summer they will meet together in the “Season of Creation,” announced as in years passed from September 1, the world day of prayer for creation, to October 4, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, with the commitment to invent and put into practice over the span of those days acts of “reparation of our relationships with others and with all creation.”

This is an ecumenical initiative launched not only by Pope Francis but jointly by Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew, by Anglican archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, and by the outgoing secretary general of the Ecumenical Council of Churches, the Lutheran Olav Fyscke Tveit.

In the middle of the 2019 edition of the “Season of Creation,” on September 20, a global climate strike made headlines, with students from all over the world skipping school and with Greta Thunberg in the starring role. The strike is expected to have an encore this year.

But before the “Season of Creation” arrives, on the schedule for June at the Vatican are two initiatives of the dicastery for promoting integral human development headed by Cardinal Peter Turkson.

The first, on June 18, will consist of a web seminar – according to the jargon a “webinar” – with experts from all over the world, called to formulate “assessments” and plan “future journeys” inspired by “Laudato Si’.”

The second will be the publication of an “Inter-Dicasterial Text with Operational Guidelines” as a practical follow-up to the encyclical.

Other “webinars” unspecified in number and content have also been announced for the autumn, these too organized by the dicastery for the promotion of integral human development.

Not to mention the round table – not via the web but, it is hoped, with physical presences – that the Vatican will organize at the end of January in Davos, during the World Economic Forum that brings the who’s who of world powers together every year in the Swiss town.

At the beginning of the spring of 2021, a meeting is also on the agenda – but for now only at the “proposal” stage – among leaders of the various religions, also under the auspices of “Laudato Si’” and naturally with the pope.

All of it resulting in the concluding triduum, between May 20 and 22 of 2021, for this sort of jubilee year, during which an international conference will be held at the Vatican and a “Multi-Year Action Platform” inspired by the encyclical will be launched.

The final triduum will be gladdened with the voices and sounds of the “Living Chapel” created by Julian Revie in partnership with the United Nations and the Global Catholic Climate Movement, with a choir of children from disadvantaged areas of the world, with the songs of birds recorded in forests devastated by man, with sounds from oil barrels and other recycled materials, and with texts by Saint Francis and by the pope who took his name.

Not only that. The Vatican has announced that it will support the goal of the “Living Chapel” to “create natural gardens and sacred spaces” inspired by “Laudato Si’”; will promote the creation of a documentary film and an “immersive show” on the encyclical; will join the battle against polluting plastic materials; will support the organization “Laudato Tree” in planting one million new trees every year in the arid regions of Africa; and will launch on social media the first worldwide competition on reinterpreting the Bible in the light of “Laudato Si’.”

In addition, the Holy See will put to work a number of volunteer dioceses, parishes, families, schools, farms, etc in “a 7-year journey of integral ecology in the spirit of Laudato Si’,” with the aim of doubling the number of those engaged in it every year and so mobilizing “a critical mass needed for radical societal transformation invoked by Pope Francis.”

To individuals who distinguish themselves through their efforts in the various areas of activity, starting in 2021 the Vatican will assign a dozen “Laudato Si’” awards.

*

But it’s not finished. On the agenda of the celebratory year announced a few days ago, two separate appointments were initially scheduled for this spring but then postponed until the autumn due to the coronavirus pandemic.

They are two events in which Pope Francis has invested a great deal, but which also reveal the most vulnerable point of his pontificate.

The first will be held on October 15 at the Vatican and is entitled “Reinventing the Educational Global Compact.”

It comes as no surprise that a pope like Jorge Mario Bergoglio would take so much to heart the education and training of the new generations, he who is part of the Society of Jesus, for centuries a great educator of ruling classes.

But what is striking is the total absence in his educational project of any Christian specificity.

In the video message with which Francis launched the initiative there is not the slightest verbal trace of God, Jesus, or the Church. The dominant formula is “new humanism,” with its accessories of “common home,” “universal solidarity,” “fraternity,” “convergence,” “welcome”… And the religions? These too lumped together and neutralized in an indistinct dialogue.

The novelty of this initiative of Francis consists precisely in the fact that it is the first time – in the history of the Church – that a pope has made his own and placed himself at the helm of a worldwide educational pact so radically secularized.

The second appointment is convened for November 21 in Assisi, has the title “The Economy of Francesco” (the saint, not the pope who bears his name) and has as its objective nothing less than “a pact to change the current economy of world.”

It will be “a festival of the economy of young people with the pope, a middle way between Greta Thunberg and the powerful of the earth,” according to the announcement by the main organizer, economist Luigino Bruni, a member of the Focolare movement and a consultant for the Vatican dicastery for the laity, family and life.

Among the figures who have already confirmed their presence will be the Malthusian economist Jeffrey Sachs, in this pontificate an inevitable guest of every Vatican event concerning the economy and ecology, Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food and formerly Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s personal guest at the synod for the Amazon, and the Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva, as highly praised among the “popular movements” dear to the pope (she participated in their third world gathering) as she has been discredited by the scientific community worthy of the name.

Curiously, Vandana Shiva and Carlo Petrini were a few years ahead of their time in the condemnation of the sin of “ecocide” that Francis has said he wants to introduce into the catechism. In fact, in October of 2016, the two of them staged a symbolic trial in Holland, at the Hague, in which they convicted in absentia, precisely for that crime of “ecocide,” the biotech multinational Monsanto.

In this other initiative of Pope Francis as well there is a glaring absence of any specifically Christian feature, replaced by a generic alignment with the dominant agnostic ideology of environmentalism, pacifism, and individual rights.

It’s all happening as if the words “Laudato si’” of the canticle of Saint Francis have been purged of what comes next: “my Lord.”

.Condividi:

•  25 maggio 2020
•  English