Saint Paul the Sociologist

David Carlin

FRIDAY, MAY 15, 2020

Note: It’s hard to say whether St. Paul would like being recruited into the tribe of sociologists, as Professor Carlin does today. But there’s no question that this reading of St. Paul casts a very interesting light on the recent history of America and much of the rest of the world. Taking Scripture seriously – even when it speaks directly against modern shibboleths like homosexual acts – is a central part of what we do here at The Catholic Thing. Other writers or publications may try to make such passages say something they don’t or ignore them entirely. We strive not only to note them but to bring them clearly into the questions that define human life today. If you’re reading this Note, you understand how important it is for the modern world to hear the Good News again, rather than for the world to evangelize the Church. We’re moving along nicely in raising support for this mission, but we’re still a long way from our goals. I don’t browbeat, but I don’t hesitate to ask: if you get The Catholic Thing, please support it. We can’t complain about the world we’re living in today if we don’t do anything to change it. Click the button. Give what you can. You’ll be happy to have done your part. – Robert Royal

Re-reading the first chapter of St Paul’s Letter to the Romans recently, it occurred to me that Paul was offering, among other things, a kind of sociological theory of the three stages of society’s moral degeneration.

The first stage is atheism, or at least a willful rejection of God:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth.  For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.  Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.  So, they are without excuse; for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened.  Claiming to be wise, they became fools; and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images of a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles. (1:18-23. NRSV)

The second stage is immense sexual immorality:

Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!  Amen.  For this reason, God gave them up to degrading passions.  Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another.  Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error. (1:24-27)

The third and final stage is generalized immorality:

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done.  They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice.  Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.  They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die – yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them. (1:28-32)

If I’m correct (which would, by the way, entitle him to a chapter, or at least a few paragraphs, in any book on the history of sociology), does his theory apply to American society today?  I think it may.  Let’s look at the three Pauline stages.

Sometime early in the second half of the 20^th century the United States, hitherto an overwhelmingly Christian country, mostly Protestant but with a significant Catholic minority, began turning away from belief in God.  At first not many people became outright atheists, frankly and openly declaring their disbelief in God.

That has been changing in recent years; explicit atheism is no longer and especially rare thing in America nowadays.  But great numbers of people have become virtual atheists.  Without acknowledging their rejection of God, often without acknowledging it even to themselves, they have simply lost interest in God; he no longer had anything to do with their moral or intellectual life.

These people, if asked to describe their metaphysical beliefs, will often call themselves agnostics.  Perhaps more often, they are simply indifferent to metaphysical questions.  They have no time for belief, but they also have no time for atheism or agnosticism.  They are busy about many other things: pursuing a career, rising in the world, having adventures (including romantic adventures), getting and spending money.

They have no time to ask themselves questions regarding the ultimate foundation of the universe.  In the immediate postwar period, these atheists and semi-atheists were no more than a small cloud on the horizon.  Today they are a dark cloud dominating the sky, blocking the sun.

By the late 1960s, America entered a second phase: an era of great sexual immorality, the so-called Sexual Revolution. At first, this revolution was a limited thing.  It might more accurately have been labeled at first a fornication revolution, not a generalized sexual revolution.  Or it could have been called a sex-in-college revolution.  For its principal function at the beginning was to allow college boys and girls to go to bed with one another while having a non-guilty conscience about doing so.

Like all true revolutions, however, it moved inexorably leftward.  Soon it gave moral legitimacy to unmarried cohabitation, loveless sex, unmarried childbirth, abortion, and – after something of a delay – homosexuality.

One might want to say that the culminating moment of the sexual revolution came in June of 2015 when the Supreme Court found (or rather, “found”) that the Constitution contains a right to same-sex “marriage” – just as one might want to say that the culminating moment of the French Revolution came in January of 1793 when the revolutionaries cut off the head of King Louis XVI.

Just as the French Revolution still had many heads to cut off after January 1793, I suspect our sexual revolution still has many surprises in store for us.  I suspect we have not yet seen its culmination.

Which brings us to phase three. Are we now on the verge of a complete moral breakdown?  Having discarded God (our traditional foundation of morality) and having discarded very large chunks of traditional sexual morality, are we on the verge of plunging into moral anarchy?  I don’t know.  I fear the worst, but I think it is still a little too early to tell.

As an old sociology professor, it is my earnest prayer that God will allow me to live one or two hundred more years in order that I may see how all this turns out.  (God probably has a different plan for me.) But it’s awfully interesting to have a ringside seat at what may be the collapse of a once-great nation.

*Image: Saint Paul by Philippe de Champaigne, c. 1650 [Musée des Beaux-Arts de Troyes, France]

© 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.

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•  HOUSES OF WORSHIP

Pope John Paul II’s Soviet Spy

Even to a hardened nonbeliever, the Polish pontiff could be ‘a source of light.’

By George WeigelMay 14, 2020 7:23 pm ET

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Students of the Cold War’s dark arts know that Communist intelligence services deeply penetrated the Vatican in the 1970s. Yet few know that Pope John Paul II, whose centenary will be marked on May 18, had his own secret agent in the Soviet Union during the 1980s. That relationship led to a remarkable personal encounter that helps explain what made the pope the man he was.

John Paul’s unlikely 007 was Irina Ilovayskaya Alberti, the Russian-born widow of an Italian diplomat. A former personal assistant to Alexander Solzhenitsyn in Vermont, she met the pope quite by accident during a papal audience in the early 1980s. A friendship quickly developed between them. As the Gorbachev thaw made access to the U.S.S.R. easier, Alberti traveled to the country several times a year. “If I learned anything interesting,” she told me years later, “I’d call the pope, we’d meet, and I’d tell him.” Vatican diplomats, who liked to keep such matters on close hold, didn’t appreciate that kind of back channel. But John Paul had a habit of going around his mandarins when he thought doing so might yield useful information. He ignored the traditional managers and kept in touch with his clandestine operative.

As it happened, Alberti was also a friend of Yelena Bonner, the tough-minded wife of Soviet nuclear physicist and human-rights campaigner Andrei Sakharov. Under house arrest in 1985, Sakharov went on a hunger strike and demanded Soviet officials let his wife leave the country for critical medical care. The authorities finally agreed, but Sakharov was hostage to Bonner’s good behavior abroad. That meant no meetings with world leaders or the press.

Alberti still thought Bonner should meet the pope. When she came to Rome after her medical treatment, Alberti organized a subterfuge that had the Roman press corps chasing Bonner’s children as she drove the recovering dissident into Vatican City, incognito. Emotionally hardened by decades of battling the KGB, Bonner wasn’t given to sentimentality. Nor was she religious. Yet a two-hour, one-on-one meeting with Pope John Paul II left her sobbing. She told Alberti afterward, “He’s the most incredible man I’ve ever met. He’s all light. He is a source of light.”

The Bonner-John Paul II relationship continued for years and eventually led to a lengthy private meeting between the pope and Sakharov, who sought advice about playing a political role in the endgame of the U.S.S.R. It was that first meeting with Bonner—and her reaction to this Pole, a man she had never met before and the leader of a faith she didn’t share—that is worth pondering on John Paul’s centenary, though.

How did Pope John Paul II touch hearts and minds, even those of unbelievers, the way he did? He was a man of probing intelligence, an experienced pastor, a polyglot and a shrewd operator on the world stage. His commitment to basic human rights, irrespective of religious conviction or the lack thereof, had been demonstrated time and again during his years as archbishop of Krakow and as pope. He had paid the price of that advocacy with his own blood, surviving an assassination attempt that he certainly suspected had been initiated in Moscow.

But that curriculum vitae and that credibility do not explain why a tearful nonbeliever should say, “He is all light. He is a source of light.” Or why, in his last years, wracked by Parkinson’s disease, he could still draw vast crowds and lift the spirits of the suffering.

Pope John Paul II cannot be explained or understood unless he is taken for what he said he was: a radically converted Christian disciple. He believed that God had revealed himself in history, first to the Jewish people and ultimately in Jesus of Nazareth. He believed that the resurrection of the crucified Nazarene was the axial point of the human saga: an event in and beyond what we know as “history,” which disclosed that God’s passionate love for humanity was stronger than death itself.

Believing that, he lived without fear. And living without fear, he inspired fearlessness in others. He was “a source of light” because he spent his life allowing what he had experienced as divine light to shine through him.

Mr. Weigel is a distinguished senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a biographer of John Paul II.

Jewish rabbi, Catholic priest sue NJ governor and top cop for violating religious rights

‘These religious leaders were persecuted,’ said the Thomas More Society. ‘Their rights to the free exercise of religion, their freedom of speech, assembly, and expressive association were trampled upon.’Tue May 12, 2020 – 8:47 pm EST

By Thomas More Society

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May 12, 2020 (Thomas More Society) — A 45-year-old Orthodox Jew emerges from a boiler room, quivering and shaking. A fellow worshipper examines pants that were ripped while jumping a fence. A dozen young children cower upstairs after a police officer opens the front door of their home, uninvited. This occurred shortly after law enforcement officers interrupted a morning prayer service, frightening members. The prayer service had been held outdoors in order to accommodate social distancing requirements.

Eventually, the adults return to the backyard of the synagogue Premishlan in Lakewood, New Jersey, where they will worship outdoors in order that they may flee when they see the police coming. It may sound like the opening moves of Kristallnacht, the 1938 Nazi pogrom against the Jewish people, but it is only COVID-19 under New Jersey’s Order 107 banning “Gatherings of Individuals,” as exercised by the police of Lakewood on April 13, 2020. On May 4, 2020, the Thomas More Society filed a lawsuit in federal court against New Jersey’s governor and chief law enforcement officer on behalf of Rabbi Yisrael Knopfler and Reverend Kevin Robinson.

A little over three weeks before Rabbi Knopfler’s congregants fled in fear, on March 20, 2020 — the day prior to Order 107 going in effect — parishioners at Saint Anthony of Padua Church in North Caldwell, New Jersey — 70 miles north of Lakewood on the Garden State Parkway — were preparing for Mass. A local police officer arrived and demanded that the Mass be cancelled. As Reverend Kevin Robinson was threatened with arrest, his congregation cowered anxiously in the basement, not unlike what their Orthodox counterparts in Lakewood would soon do.

After the North Caldwell police chief warned him that charges would be filed for violating Order 107, Pastor Robinson refrained from offering Mass. A related administrative order (Order 2020-4) issued by the Superintendent of the State Police, in his capacity as State Director of Emergency Management, “clarifies” that gatherings of 10 or fewer people are allowed but only under the vague proviso that such gatherings are “presumed” lawful unless there is “clear evidence to the contrary.”

This ten-person limit reduces the allowable Catholic congregation to 7 people or fewer, depending on the type of Mass and number of church personnel needed to execute it. For the rabbi and his congregation, the problem is even more acute: Jewish synagogue prayers require a minimum quorum of ten men. That means that there would be no additional people allowed. Under these constraints, a bride could not even attend her own wedding.

“This is an alarming case of extreme governmental overreach,” stated Thomas More Society Special Counsel Christopher Ferrara. “Order 107 is beset by vagaries, ambiguous ‘clarifications,’ and double standards. The alleged enforcement of this troublesome order has violated Reverend Robinson’s and Rabbi Knopfler’s constitutional rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. These religious leaders were persecuted. Their rights to the free exercise of religion, their freedom of speech, assembly, and expressive association were trampled upon.”SUBSCRIBEto LifeSite’s daily headlinesSUBSCRIBEU.S. Canada World Catholic

“Under Order 107, people can sit in business offices without numerical limitation, but not in churches or synagogues,” added Ferrara. “The same accountant or lawyer who can sit in an office with a hundred people is subject to criminal prosecution for ‘disorderly conduct’ if he sits in a church or synagogue with more than 9 others. This is absurd. Father Robinson and Rabbi Knopfler are entitled to First Amendment liberty, equal protection, and substantive due process, which they did not receive. This is an intolerable breach of the rights due every American and cannot be allowed to stand.”

Read the Thomas More Society’s First Amended Complaint for Civil Rights Violations, Injunctive Relief and a Declaratory Judgement on behalf of Reverend Kevin Robinson and Rabbi Yisrael A. Knopfler, filed with the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey — Newark Division in Rev. Kevin Robinson and Rabbi Yisrael A. Knopfler v. Philip D. Murphy, Governor of the State of New Jersey, in his official capacity, and Colonel Patrick J. Callahan, Superintendent of State Police and State Director of Emergency Management, in his official capacities, on May 4, 2020, here.

Catholic Monitor

Thursday, May 14, 2020

Formal Correction: Why are Cd. Burke & Francis Trads like the Leashed Dog in the Foghorn Leghorn Cartoon? 

In the old Warner Brothers cartoon the rooster Foghorn Leghorn’s archenemy George P. Dog was on a leash which meant he could only go as far as the length of the rope leash and had to stop.

Foghorn even painted a line on the ground with a sign reading “Rope Limit” which George P. Dog could never go beyond.

Why are Cardinal Raymond Burke and Francis traditionalists such the Remnant’s Michael Matt and Taylor Marshall as well as other Catholic media like Leghorn’s archenemy George P. Dog not allowed to go passed the line with the sign that reads “Rope Limit”?

Why is the once talked about Formal Correction of Francis by Burke and the faithful Catholic media now beyond the “Rope Limit”?

Why is even discussing the possibility of a imperfect council and/or a cardinal and bishop investigation into the Francis conclave and Pope Benedict XVI resignation beyond the “Rope Limit”?

Who and/or what has made Cardinal Burke and the faithful Catholic media into George P. Dog with a rope leash and a “Rope Limit.”

Who or what controls them?

Why are they forbidden to even give reasoned arguments, instead of straw man agruments that don’t counter our stated dissertations or name calling, against Bishop Rene Gracida and Latin language expert Br. Alexis Bugnolo who put forward serious reasoned dissertations from canon law and Pope John Paul II’s conclave constitution?

If they really think those who follow Bishop Gracida and Br. Bugnolo are wrong and headed to hell for being in schism from Francis then out of simple charity for our souls they should counter our dissertations and arguments.

If they really believe we are wrong and headed to hell for calling for a formal correction, a St. Francis de Sales/St. Bellarmine imperfect council, a canonical trial and cardinal investigation of the Francis’ conclave and refuse to give us real arguments then they apparently have lost the supernatural virtue of charity.

If they really believe what they say then for charity’s sake they should attempt to save us from hell for being in schism from Francis:

But, all we hear are straw man agruments that don’t counter our stated dissertations, name calling propaganda, silence or the noise of them running away as fast as they can from serious reasoned back and forth argumentation.

Just to give fair warning:

We are not going away.

We are growing.

Soon we will be to be too big to ignore.

As even Francis conservative Michael Voris reported we are becoming the majority of faithful Catholics in Rome. The same thing is happening in the United States and if you can’t stop us now we will probably grow to be the majority of faithful Catholics in America.

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

Fred Martinez at 10:32 AM

NEWS

SPIRO SKOURAS: TRUMP SAYS WILL USE MILITARY TO DISTRIBUTE 300 MILLION VACCINES TO US RESIDENTS

MAY 14, 2020FROM ROME EDITOR3 COMMENTS

Needless to say, the natural law gives every human being the right of self defense, and in particular to use lethal force to prevent himself from being injected with a dangerous material of any kind. It certainly looks like, that if Trump forces the vaccine, American Citizens will have to start a Second Revolution.

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3 THOUGHTS ON “SPIRO SKOURAS: TRUMP SAYS WILL USE MILITARY TO DISTRIBUTE 300 MILLION VACCINES TO US RESIDENTS”

1. Em SMAY 14, 2020 AT 9:43 PMI hate to say, most people are going to give into the pressure of getting a vaccine for the sake of being able to survive. I rather die than get a forced vaccine.LikeREPLY
   1. From Rome EditorMAY 14, 2020 AT 9:45 PMThose who intend to have children should not take it under any conditions.LikeREPLY
2. CatholicusMAY 14, 2020 AT 9:45 PMI’ll die before I let them insert me with the Mark of the Beast microchip with this bogus “vaccine”. Bring on the matte-black Government guillotines. See all of you here on FromRome in heaven. Ave Maria.LikeREPLY

NEWS

AT THE WHITE HOUSE, DR. SHIVA DEMANDS THE FIRING OF ANTONIO FAUCI

MAY 14, 2020

FROM ROME EDITOR

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ONE THOUGHT ON “AT THE WHITE HOUSE, DR. SHIVA DEMANDS THE FIRING OF ANTONIO FAUCI”

1. Southern MemorialMAY 14, 2020 AT 6:30 PMWould be really nice is the men (or demons) ruling over us would listen to our plea and remove Fauci, but I doubt it. Even if he were fired from his current position, he’d probably get appointed for something else like tracking and tracing. But we cannot give up. We must alert and encourage others, as well as participate in rebelling against the forces of darkness. May God help us.

MAY 13, 2020

Laughing at the Microbe

SEAN FITZPATRICK

Covid-19 will most likely prove one of those demarcating events in history that will be prefixed with “pre” and “post.” Until then, these are without doubt days of blind trust. No one is quite sure what is going on, but doubt is not a popular public disposition. With sorrow for those who have suffered due to the virus, is it too early to chuckle at pandemic absurdities?

A friend told me recently, “It’s okay to laugh at our tragicomic world. That’s how the Anglo-American mind best deals with absurdity. The French scoff; the Spanish weep; the Russians brood; the Irish sing; the Italians fight. We chuckle.” And so, with a healthy, Anglo-American, Catholic chuckle, let us turn to a tiny poem of titanic import by Hilaire Belloc, entitled “The Microbe.”

The Microbe is so very small
You cannot make him out at all,
But many sanguine people hope
To see him through a microscope.
His jointed tongue that lies beneath
A hundred curious rows of teeth;
His seven tufted tails with lots
Of lovely pink and purple spots,
On each of which a pattern stands,
Composed of forty separate bands;
His eyebrows of a tender green;
All these have never yet been seen—
But Scientists, who ought to know,
Assure us that they must be so…
Oh! let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about!

Never, ever doubt Mr. Belloc’s clairvoyance for our calamities—from Islamic extremism to the New Paganism, and now Covidism.https://secureaddisplay.com/i/view/js/?Viewable=1&isMobile=0&AULU=31049420180502T2200289306460AB42454C400A8A16937CB3EB93D7&cb=1589388046044&ccvid=771608360&pvid=1567206144https://secureaddisplay.com/i/view/js/?Viewable=0&isMobile=0&AULU=31049420180502T2200289306460AB42454C400A8A16937CB3EB93D7&cb=1589388046044&ccvid=771608360&pvid=1567206144https://secureaddisplay.com/i/t/js/?ALU=140120200414T2048128600DD5ABA344B74A498E55EC6ACE176472&AULU=31049420180502T2200289306460AB42454C400A8A16937CB3EB93D7&cb=1589388046044&ccvid=771608360&pvid=1567206144

Socrates said somewhere that the humor associated with the ridiculous denotes self-ignorance. I’m not a virologist; neither am I a humorist. But I think I do have a sense of humor. If this virus is bringing anything out in its more ridiculous manifestations, it is the ignorance people have of who they are and what life is all about. As Belloc’s poem amusingly captures, these are days of doubt, of profound self-ignorance. It is no wonder, then, that so much of our newly adopted behaviors seem ridiculous.

G. K. Chesterton weighs in with his bulky brilliance on what’s wrong with the world—and it’s us. “Man is an exception,” Chesterton writes, “whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.”

Let’s not go off our heads and allow this disease to make diseases out of us.

Are the orders, the closures, the distancing, the isolating, and the hysteria all for the sake of the right thing? Is the focus on the value of life, or the fear of death? To be, or not to be? No one is sure—yet the question remains. Uncertainty is airborne, just like the microbe. Blessed are they that have not seen yet believe. Covid-19 has brought out something like faith in an invisible earthly entity even as it shuttered the churches. Man seems to have found wisdom in the fear of the microbe instead of the Lord.

Again, from Chesterton: “Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel.”

The reactions to the current microbial crisis are augmented by a growing doubt concerning the meaning of life itself. Human society is not necessarily built upon health. “The most dangerous thing in the world,” says Chesterton, “is to be alive; one is always in danger of one’s life.” But that doesn’t mean we should live in fear of losing our lives. It’s ridiculous to live that way, and Catholics should respond with a chuckle.

It may be ridiculous—even funny, in some ways—but humor is, by some theories, the recognition of incongruity. For all the uncertainty, there is certainly a good deal of contagious incongruity going around. The coronavirus might make its survivors both stronger and stranger. Or perhaps just more estranged.

You thought cellphones were atomizing? Try adding a mask to that picture, as well as personal space lines painted on the floor like traffic lines and the abolition of the handshake. How much further can we go? (W.H.O. knows.) In the meantime, never doubt the limits of man’s unsurety.

❧

The microbe has shown us that we are becoming a people of the government, by the government, and for the government in the misunderstanding that big government will somehow keep us from perishing from the earth. Though all of this is an error of materialism, based on over-reliance, secularism, and spiritual and intellectual social distancing, the funny thing is that there is a type of materialism that we must all live with and be sick with together, according to G.K.C., if we are to thrive as a culture:

No one has even begun to understand comradeship who does not accept with it a certain hearty eagerness in eating, drinking, or smoking, an uproarious materialism which to many women appears only hoggish. You may call the thing an orgy or a sacrament; it is certainly an essential. It is at root a resistance to the superciliousness of the individual. Nay, its very swaggering and howling are humble. In the heart of its rowdiness there is a sort of mad modesty; a desire to melt the separate soul into the mass of unpretentious masculinity. It is a clamorous confession of the weakness of all flesh. No man must be superior to the things that are common to men. This sort of equality must be bodily and gross and comic. Not only are we all in the same boat, but we are all seasick.

All things should be taken with a sense of humor, which is to say, with common sense. Humor is a basis for sanity as it provides relief and balance. It keeps us healthy. The populace is refreshed more readily by arrant absurdities than academic analyses. Chestertonian hat-chases in the wind bestow the hilarious and humbling reminder that though man is the steward of nature, he is subject to it at the same time. This  is one of the deftest jokes of humanity. And one of the deepest jokes of humanity is death, as Mr. Chesterton reminds us in his poem “The Skeleton.”

Surely, friends, I might have guessed
Death was but the good King’s jest,
It was hid so carefully.

As we all know, there’s no getting out of this alive. Scientists will not find the meaning of life under their microscopes, and we should face death without a metaphorical mask so our smile can be seen. There are certainly things in life that we should never doubt even though nobody is sure about them—and we should also not be afraid that we will never be sure. Some things, like life and death, are meant to be mysteries.

We’re all sick. We’re all dying. And that’s alright. It’s even amusing. We should be prudent, of course, in these dangerous days and be a good neighbor to all. At the same time, though, let’s not forget this: it’s not a sin to laugh, knowing that the microbe will not laugh last. The last word, however, goes to Mr. Belloc:

Physicians of the Utmost Fame
Were called at once; but when they came
They answered, as they took their Fees,
“There is no cure for this disease.”https://www.facebook.com/v2.10/plugins/like.php?action=like&app_id=485814248461205&channel=https%3A%2F%2Fstaticxx.facebook.com%2Fconnect%2Fxd_arbiter.php%3Fversion%3D46%23cb%3Df34e92d25e6f978%26domain%3Dwww.crisismagazine.com%26origin%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.crisismagazine.com%252Ff8a98cbbe40c24%26relation%3Dparent.parent&container_width=660&href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.crisismagazine.com%2F2020%2Flaughing-at-the-microbe&layout=button_count&locale=en_US&sdk=joey&share=true&show_faces=false67

By Sean Fitzpatrick

Sean Fitzpatrick is a senior contributor to Crisis. He’s graduate of Thomas Aquinas College and the Headmaster of Gregory the Great Academy. He lives in Scranton, Penn. with his wife and family of four.

Pope Pushes One World Religion on Israel’s Independence Day

By Adam Eliyahu BerkowitzFebruary 11, 2020 , 2:51 pm

https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/145012/pope-pushes-one-world-religion-on-israels-independence-day/

They have said: ‘Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance.’ For they have consulted together with one consent; against Thee do they make a covenant; The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites.” Psalms 83:5-7 (The Israel Bible™)

Pope Francis. (Giulio Napolitano / Shutterstock.com)FacebookTwitterEmailWhatsAppPrintShare15k

Historically, the Vatican was no friend to the Jews but its new initiative aligns the Catholic Church with Islam in a one-world religion that may be the biggest threat ever to the Jewish People. A major event to advance the project will take place on the anniversary of the birth of the State of Israel which, according to one rabbi, is fitting since Judaism is the last bastion, entirely incompatible with a New World Order.

At an address to Vatican diplomats last month, Pope Francis announced that the Vatican will be hosting a global event with titled,  “Reinventing the Global Compact on Education.” 

“A global educational pact is needed to educate us in universal solidarity and a new humanism,” the Pope said when he first proposed the summit.

A Vatican-backed website to promote the pact added: “Educating young people in fraternity, in learning to overcome divisions and conflicts, promote hospitality, justice and peace: Pope Francis has invited everyone who cares about the education of the young generation to sign a Global Pact, to create a global change of mentality through education.”

The Pope described the need for the global alliance.

“‘Never before has there been such need to unite our efforts in a broad educational alliance, to form mature individuals capable of overcoming division and antagonism, and to restore the fabric of relationships for the sake of a more fraternal humanity,’” he said.

The Pope cited the aphorism “It takes a village to raise a child,” explaining its place in his global vision.https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html

“All change, like the epochal change we are now experiencing, calls for a process of education and the creation of an educational village capable of forming a network of open and human relationships,” he said. 

“Education is not limited to school and university classrooms,” the Pope said at the address last month. “[It is] principally ensured by strengthening and reinforcing the primary right of the family to educate, and the right of Churches and social communities to support and assist families in raising their children.”

The education initiative is a continuation of the Pope’s global vision as laid out in his Document on the Human Brotherhood for World Peace and Common Living Together signed by Pope Francis and Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, in February 2019 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. https://lockerdome.com/lad/12806891424398694?pubid=ld-dfp-ad-12806891424398694-0&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.breakingisraelnews.com&rid=&width=677

The agreement between the two religious leaders was criticized for its stance on the diversity of religions.

“The fact that people are forced to adhere to a certain religion or culture must be rejected,” the document read. “As too the imposition of a cultural way of life that others do not accept.”

Rabbi Pinchas Winston,  a prolific end-of-times author, noted that in many surprising respects, the Vatican is now practically indistinguishable from secularism.

“It used to be that the Catholic Church was the bastion that stood against liberalism in every way, denouncing it as heresy,” Rabbi Winston said. “This was the case for as long as the Vatican could impose its will on its people and influence the rest of the world. That reality has changed because they don’t have that power anymore. Pope Francis is a result of this change. He is a ‘man of the people.’”

Rabbi Winston noted that traditional values in the Catholic Church are indeed changing in ways that would have been inconceivable not so long ago.

“They used to say that secular values and liberalism were bad but when the people changed and liberalism became widespread, the Vatican reversed that position.,” Rabbi Winston said. “How can a religion claim to be from God when a man can decide to change it?”

Rabbi Winston noted that the theme of one-world order as presented by the Pope was presented several times in the Bible.

“Seeing the world as one is how it was in the days before the Tower of Babel,” Rabbi Winston said. “This was when men joined together to take over the world and kick God out.”

Rabbi Winston noted that the counterintuitive mix of secular intellectualism and religion appeared later in Genesis.

“According to Midrash, Esau impressed his father, Isaac, with questions that seemed to relate to religion but were only leveled on the intellectual level. The real intent of the questions was to generate chaos and division. The erev rav (mixed multitude) works this way, by making it appear that their intentions are pure and that they are good people. But their real intent is destructive; to disable truth.” 

“The secular present universalism as the source of all brotherhood but it is exactly the opposite. There is more diversity in the world than ever before in human history. To have one way to worship God before Moshiach (Messiah) comes and brings everyone up to speed is not realistic and harmful to anyone who does not conform. The Pope should be smart enough to realize that there are very good reasons for the differences. People are different. This new initiative by the Vatican is classic liberalism in the garb of religion.”

The date of the global educational summit is May 14, precisely 72 years after Israel proclaimed its independence. Rabbi Winston suggested that this could have a deeper meaning, indicating the inherent conflict between the Jewish People and universal religion.

“They can’t get rid of the Jews and what they represent anymore by simply attacking us, which was how it was done for 2,000 years,” Rabbi Winston said. “Are they trying to get rid of the Jews and the Torah by creating one world religion? Anyone who wants a one-world order has to get rid of the Jews because all of human history has proven that the core of Torah Judaism doesn’t change, even, when necessary, and the cost of death. We are still the same people in the same land with the same Torah.”