By Marco Tosatti, Stilum Curiae, February 24, 2023
The recent rescript approved by Francis and the Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Cardinal Roche, continues to arouse reactions.
The new document, which reinforces the motu proprio Traditinis custodes, establishes that the use of a parish church or the erection of a personal parish for the celebration of the Eucharist according to the 1962 Missale Romanum and the granting of the license to priests ordained after the publication of the Motu proprio Traditionis custodes to celebrate according to the Missale Romanum of 1962, will be the responsibility of Rome.
InfoVaticana contacted Cardinal Müller to find out his opinion on this decision by the Pope and Cardinal Roche. The former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith replied that “Pope Benedict XVI has given the papacy a great reputation, even among agnostics far from the Church (Paolo Flores D’Arcais, Jürgen Habermas, Piergiorgio Odifreddi) thanks to his high theological competence and intellectual honesty”.
Alluding to Benedict, Müller argues that “it was not necessary for him to insist on formal obedience in an authoritarian way, because even the obedience of faith to God, which is decisive for salvation, does not require blind servility, but a devotion to God Trinity with reason and free will, that is, an obesequium rationabile (Vatican II, Your word 5)”.
On the other hand, the German cardinal states that “when it comes to obedience to ecclesiastical authority, one must distinguish between religious obedience, which refers to the authoritative submission of revealed faith, and willingness to willingly follow the Pope and the bishops even concerning the discipline of ecclesiastical organization and the order of the liturgy”. “We distinguish between the substance of the sacraments, over which the Pope and the bishops have no power of disposition, and the liturgical rite, which has historically developed into the various legitimate rites within the single Catholic Church”, adds the cardinal.
Müller assures that “Pope Benedict overcame the tensions that had arisen in a theologically competent and pastorally sensitive way, distinguishing between the ordinary and extraordinary form of the Latin rite”. Cardinal Müller describes this decision as a “brutal intolerance” against those who prefer the traditional Mass. He adds that it is a “pastorally counterproductive” decision and “a frightening example of theological incompetence in distinguishing between the unavailable substance of the sacrament and the richness of the forms of liturgical rites”.
Cardinal Müller describes this decision as a “brutal intolerance” against those who prefer the traditional Mass. He adds that it is a “pastorally counterproductive” decision and “a frightening example of theological incompetence in distinguishing between the unavailable substance of the sacrament and the richness of the forms of liturgical rites”.
In this sense, Cardinal Müller does not hesitate to underline that this new writing “degrades bishops or local ordinaries of secondary rank to signatories of petitions to the highest authority (that is, the bureaucracy of the Dicastery for Worship).” The German cardinal underlines that this decision “damages the pastoral responsibility of the episcopate” and “obscures the true meaning of the papacy, which is to represent and realize the unity of the Church in the truth of the faith and in sacramental communion”.
Finally, Müller regrets that “recognition of papal authority is not promoted, but weakened in the long run”, as it can give the impression of a kind of autocratic leadership.
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Last week, when hosting the screening of the movie, Till, President Joe Biden said that black people were “lynched simply for being black, nothing more. With white crowds, white families gathered to celebrate the spectacle, taking pictures of the bodies and mailing them as postcards. Hard to believe that was done, and some people still want to do that today.”
Which people still want to do that today, Joe? He has no evidence that there are people who still want to lynch black people today, yet he made that charge anyway. He doesn’t name a name, so he impugns the entire white race which divides the country. Making non-specific accusations is a common tactic used by race baiters. When Meghan Markle accused a member of the Royal family of racism, she would not reveal to whom she was referring, and therefore, she was able to indict the entire Royal family because without a specified name, anyone in the Royal family could be the racist, so they all are seen as racists. That’s exactly what Joe Biden did. By saying that some white people still want to lynch black people, but not identifying who, then all white people become guilty.
The New York Times, 1619 Project, which is being taught in many of our schools aims to do just that, foist guilt upon the entire white race in America. It reframes American history through the lens of slavery, claiming that our true founding occurred not in 1776, but in 1619, when 20 black slaves were brought by boat from Africa to the Jamestown colony. The 1619 Project teaches that America’s “founding ideals were false when they were written” and that “nearly everything that made America exceptional grew out of slavery”. It argues that because of our past sins, “racism runs in the very DNA of this country.”
Unsubstantiated charges of racism are regularly levied against white people, and it has now become embedded into our educational system. Last week, Arizona School Superintendent, Scott Menzel, said that white people have a “problematic racial identity that we typically avoid”. On Thursday, Ethan Hooper, a 6th-grade teacher in Orlando, Florida was suspended for posting a TikTok video of his white students being forced to bow down to black students. The State University of New York (SUNY) college system is mandating that all incoming freshmen take a course focused on “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Social Justice” — or they won’t graduate. Harvard University recently hosted a “Black Health Matters” conference which focused on the theme of “decolonizing black health” claiming that health care in 2023 America is shaped by “colonialism, racism, and other forms of oppression.”
Interestingly, the only time that a non-white person is ever called a racist is when they do not toe the “all white people are racist” line. California Governor Gavin Newson called Gubernatorial candidate, Larry Elder the “black face of white supremacy” during last year’s campaign for governor because Elder happens to be a Republican who does not espouse this far-left narrative on race in America.
Last week, on MSNBC, left-wing columnist Wajahat Ali called Republican Presidential candidate, Nikki Haley an “alpha-Karen with brown skin” who “uses her skin as a weapon against poor black folks and poor brown folks” to “launder white supremacist talking points.” He added, “not all skinfolk are kinfolk.” Race baiters like this, regularly make the charge of “white supremacy” without ever providing evidence to support it.
During Black History Month, the black people whose stories are recognized the most all have one thing in common – they overcame racial prejudice or discrimination. Television and the media rarely run a story on a black person who was merely successful or simply accomplished something great. They always play up the discrimination angle to such an extent that it appears they are more interested in highlighting the evils of white people than the triumphs of black people. That’s why we rarely see feature stories on highly successful black people like Clarence Thomas or Dr. Ben Carson or Condoleezza Rice because these highly successful black people distance themselves from the racial victim narrative.
We must understand the psychological game that is being played out in our country when it comes to America’s history of racism. In the Christian faith, we are all sinners saved by the grace of God. When we renounce our sinful ways, Jesus forgives us of our sins. He offers us grace and tells us that we are worthy of salvation. We are called to live in the present, and not dwell on our past. When we renounce our previous sinful life, we are called to keep our eyes on the now, looking forward, not backward.
But in today’s America, there is no forgiveness, no redemption, and no grace. All the sins of our past, even those committed in our youth, are forever attached to us, emblazoned for all to see, like the scarlet letter. That is what we see with cancel culture, and what we are seeing with race relations in America. The devil is a master at pulling our minds back to the sins of our past, constantly reminding us of the broken person we were. He wants us to dwell on our past sins, so we fill ourselves up with so much guilt and shame that we will deem ourselves unworthy of receiving the grace of God, so we remain separate from God.
There is a segment of our population today that is determined on pulling our country back to our past sins of racism. It is the work of the devil. The United States abolished slavery 160 years ago. 600,000 men laid down their lives to end that evil institution. We passed sweeping Civil Rights legislation 60 years ago, outlawing segregation and Jim Crow laws. But there is no room for redemption or grace. Every day of our lives, we are reminded of our past racism. We are told to look backward and not forward, to dwell on our sins so a certain segment of the population is filled with guilt and deemed unworthy of both God’s grace and the promise of America.
The most nefarious part of all of this is that the people who are shamed and guilted and devalued did not commit any of the sins for which they are being shamed and guilted. They are deemed guilty based solely on their race, convicted of sins they did not commit but because they share the same skin color as those who did. They are told they are not worthy of grace or forgiveness or redemption. It is the most evil and destructive lie there is.
If you never owned a slave, if you never supported segregation or Jim Crow, if you never discriminated against anybody based on race, then you should harbor no racial guilt. You should carry no shame. We are only accountable for the sins that we commit. Our skin color is not a sin. We are not responsible for the sins of other people who share our same skin color. It does not work that way. Do not fall for this white guilt trap that the race baiters and nation dividers have set for 190 million people in this country. We all know who we are. We all know what we have done, good and bad, in our lives. Take accountability for our own sins, make amends for the times we harmed someone else, and move forward. Never let another human being try to devalue you.
Jesus values you enough to have laid down his life for your salvation. Jesus forgives our sins because he believes in our redemption. He doesn’t focus on what we were but on who we are. Even if we are not worthy of his forgiveness or grace at the time he gives it to us, his act of giving us grace makes us worthy of it, and at that point, our lives become fulfilled. And the moment America is offered redemption and grace for our past sins will be the moment that we become the truly great nation we were destined to be.
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I bring you the peace and light of the sleeping Christ child. I watched Him sleep that night, you know. I kissed His tiny fingers and toes as He slept upon the straw, Newborn and yet eternal, with no beginning or end. I felt a mother’s desire to protect Him from the night, And yet the night’s darkness could not overcome His light, For indeed His arrival pierced the night and sent it scurrying Into the very corners of our humble shelter. For inside this sleeping baby was the light of a thousand stars, That although contained unseen within Him, Burst forth within my heart when I looked at Him, And caused even simple shepherds to glow that night.
I bring you the joy and the love of the sleeping Christ child. I watched Him sleep that night, you know. I kissed His cheeks and murmured words of love, As He opened His eyes, and love itself looked back at me. And I was filled with the joy of this new life, And I thought of all that I would show Him of this world, Even as the world held its breath, and stars danced in the sky, Acknowledging that this small baby held the secret of their creation. For although the tiny fingers held no scepter, And there was no crown upon His head, He was more a King than any king who had ever lived, As He had always been, and was now, and would always be.
I bring you the hope and the promise of the sleeping Christ child. I watched Him sleep that night, you know. I kissed His brow and stroked His hair, And thought of how I would guide His steps, Even as angels watched in awe, and demons trembled in fear, At the birth of this child who held the wisdom of heaven, And the hope of all mankind. And although hope was tangible in His presence, As He looked at me, I saw more than hope in His gaze, For as He waved tiny hands, and moved tiny feet, The despair of all the ages was dispelled, And in its place hope, bursting forth like a thousand roses Brought the aroma of a promise Which permeated the air and covered the earth, With each wave of His tiny hands.
Last week, the ninth dead whale washed up on New York and New Jersey beaches in the last two months. Scientists suspect that the sonar used in creating offshore wind farms is disorienting the whales, causing them to beach themselves. And, nothing is being done to stop this. Environmentalists used to care about saving the whales, but not anymore. They are now willing to sacrifice pretty much anything on the altar of climate change.
Joe Biden has gone all-in to stop climate change. On his first day in office, he shut down the Keystone XL Pipeline to reduce our production of fossil fuels which sent gas prices through the roof. He then signed an agreement to bring the United States back into the Paris Climate Accords which are heavily tilted against wealthy countries and favor poor countries. The United States will shoulder the bulk of the sacrifice and expense of these accords because we are the wealthiest country on the planet. But surprisingly, China has been exempted from the protocols because they are deemed a poor country, even though it is the second wealthiest country in the world, so China will be allowed to continue to spew as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as it wants for the next 20 to 30 years while it overtakes the United States as the wealthiest country on the planet.
Ironically, while America is bearing the brunt of combating climate change because we are the wealthiest country in the world, within the United States, it will be the exact opposite, the poor and middle class will be sacrificing the most as we implement the climate change agenda. Our government is pushing electric cars, solar and wind farms, and even banning gas-burning stoves. Energy prices will skyrocket when we transition away from cheap and plentiful fossil fuels. Eventually, the government will implement an energy tax, a carbon tax. Systems will be put in place to limit on how much carbon we can use. Credit card companies will have mechanisms on their cards that can tally how much carbon we buy and stop purchases when we have reached a certain limit. The government will monitor our electric cars, recording how much we drive, and when we exceed our limit, we will be taxed extra or simply cut off from driving.
The rich will be able to buy carbon credits, so millionaires and billionaires will not have to alter their lifestyles in any way. They will continue to live in the 21st century while we will be forced back into the 19th century. As we see time and again, the biggest climate activists, John Kerry, Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Taylor Swift, can live their lives as if there is not a climate crisis as they virtuously give speeches on the evils of climate change. They all own 10,000+ square-foot mansions, vacation on carbon-spewing yachts, and fly around the world in private jets, creating a carbon footprint that is 50 times that of the average American.
Bill Gates recently argued that he should be allowed to continue to fly on private planes because he buys “the gold standard of Climeworks to do direct air capture that far exceeds my family’s carbon footprint.” This is just another example of how the rich buy their way out of the rules they impose on everyone else. If Gates cared about stopping climate change, then he would do both; he would buy the gold standard of Climeworks air capture AND also stop flying private. Maybe if Gates and others stopped flying private and riding on yachts, we wouldn’t have to impose such draconian carbon restrictions on poor people in America. The top 20 billionaires in the world have a carbon footprint of 8,190 tons, 82 times the average American’s carbon footprint of 5 tons, but the average American is the one who will sacrifice the most on the altar of climate change.
Leading German scientist, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said this week that we [the world] need to establish a “planetary guardrail” which limits every person to three tons of CO2 emissions per year and those who exceed their limit should be forced to pay.
Climate activist, Greta Thunberg, believes the answer to climate change is less complicated than that. In her new book, entitled The Climate Book she wrote that “the solution to this [climate] crisis is not exactly rocket science. What we have to do is to halt the emission of greenhouse gasses”. That’s it. Just stop emitting greenhouse gases. It is that easy. Let’s revert society to pre-industrial times. But are greenhouse gases really a problem?
According to climate activists, the two most dangerous greenhouse gases that humans are responsible for emitting into the atmosphere are Carbon Dioxide and Methane gas. How much of these gases are we actually emitting? In 1900, almost 2 billion metric tons of CO2 were released due to fossil fuel usage. According to NASA, by 2014, that number had increased to 35 billion metric tons. That’s a lot of tonnage. That comes out to 35 trillion or 35,000,000,000,000 kgs of CO2. No wonder our planet is burning up. We are selfishly releasing 35 trillion kilograms of CO2 into the atmosphere with no conscience. How can anybody question climate change when we are emitting that much CO2 into the atmosphere?
Let’s put that number into perspective. Our atmosphere has a total mass of 5.15 quintillion or 5,150,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms of gas. 1 quintillion is a number with eighteen zeros and six commas. That’s how big our atmosphere is. And the climate change activists get up in arms over 35,000,000,000,000 kg which only has twelve zeros and four commas. So, the amount of CO2 that we emit into the atmosphere every year is only 0.00068% of all the gas in our atmosphere.
Carbon Dioxide itself is only a trace gas, comprising only 0.0417% of the Earth’s atmosphere, totaling 2.148 quadrillion or 2,148,000,000,000,000 kilograms. So, the 35 trillion kgs of CO2 that we release into the atmosphere is only 1.63% of all the total CO2 already in the atmosphere. It is not enough to even move the needle. The percentages of gases in the atmosphere stay the same. The CO2 we release into the atmosphere is a trace amount of a trace gas, and we are supposed to believe that it is doing irreparable damage to the climate and is an existential threat to life on Earth. It is like adding four gallons of water to an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
So, they scare us with the incredibly large number of 35 trillion kilograms of CO2, but they purposely do not provide the proper perspective for us to determine if that number is a lot or a little because they are only concerned about propping up the climate change delusion. They are doing the same thing with Methane gas claiming that cow burps and flatulence are driving global warming. Methane is even more of a trace gas than Carbon Dioxide. It makes up only 0.00018% of the Earth’s atmosphere for a total of 9,270,000,000,000 or 9.27 trillion kilograms.
There are 94 million cows in the United States that release on average 100 kgs of Methane gas per year which totals 9.4 billion or 9,400,000,000 kg of Methane. When you run the numbers, you see that the amount of Methane cows produce is only 0.1014% of all the Methane already in the atmosphere. So, like with CO2, the Methane that is released from cows is only a trace amount of a trace gas, which also is too small to move the needle.
It is all proportional. Humans believe we are much bigger, much more important, and much more impactful than we really are. It’s a delusion of grandeur. The biggest pollutants in the world 50 years from now will be the decaying materials from the millions of wind turbine and solar panel parts in landfills that will be leeching chemicals into the groundwater.
Is it just a coincidence that the world has doubled and tripled down on green energy on the heels of major innovations in fracking which can extract a virtual bottomless pit of natural gas from the Earth’s crust? In the last 10-15 years, we have discovered ways to tap into hundreds of years of supply of cheap and plentiful energy, and we are turning our back on it. It seems that the more our technology advances to extract fossil fuels out of the ground inexpensively and plentifully, the more we vilify fossil fuels in favor of the less abundant, more expensive “green energy”. It is estimated the cost to combat this so-called climate crisis could be as high as $50 trillion over the next 20 years. Maybe those in power who are championing the climate change crusade, merely do not want cheap plentiful energy because the cheaper and more plentiful energy is, the less their profit margins will be.
I’m not a climate scientist and don’t claim to be one. But I do know how to add, subtract, multiply, divide, and find percentages. And this is just me looking at the numbers, finding the percentages, and asking questions. The so-called greenhouse gases, Carbon Dioxide and Methane are trace gases; they are fractions of fractions of one percent of all the gases in our atmosphere, and the amount of these gases that we emit is also a trace amount, fractions of these trace gases. How could these gases which are so minuscule of a percent be so dangerous? How does adding a trace amount of a trace gas create an existential threat to our planet? Maybe there are legitimate answers to these questions. If there are, I would like to hear them. I’m not a climate scientist, but as Bob Dylan once sang, “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
Mark Middleton was a special advisor to Bill Clinton. He allegedly allowed Jeffrey Epstein, a notorious pedophile, into the Clinton White House at least seven more times. Middleton was found dead last January. Middleton was tied to a tree and had an extension cord wrapped around his neck. He also had a gunshot wound on his chest.
His death was ruled a suicide after nearly a year. The weapon that killed him was not found.
The Daily Mail reports that nine months after his death, the grisly scene in which a high-ranking Bill Clinton adviser was hanged from a tree with his chest shot by a gun has finally been revealed. “But, the sheriff’s investigation into Mark Middleton’s death raises more questions than it answers. It shows that his death was ruled a suicide but that the weapon that killed him wasn’t found.
Middleton’s relatives had asked the judge not to release the report about his death. However, the judge finally allowed all photographs to be published.
“I could see that he had a gunshot wound to the chest and that he had a knot tied in an extension cord that was around his neck and it was attached to the limb directly above him,” Perry County Sheriff’s Deputy Jeremy Lawson wrote in his report.
Three boxes of buckshot and a gun case were found in his vehicle, but no weapon. Middleton’s family said that he was suffering from depression.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on SOME DAY A COMPETENT INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST WILL WRITE A BOOK THAT WILL HIGHLIGHT THE REMARKABLE HIGH NUMBER OF MEN CONNECTED TO BILL AND HILLARY WHO DIED DEATHS THAT LOOKED VERY MUCH LIKE MURDER VICTIMS BUT WERE RULED BY GOVERNMENT CORONERS SUICIDE VICTIMS
Starting in March 2020, our government spent two years locking down the country, forcing us to wear masks, mandating experimental vaccines, closing businesses, canceling schools, and locking down churches all in the name of public safety. They were terrified of a virus that was less harmful to most Americans than the seasonal flu. Their mantra was, if doing all this saved even one life, then it is worth doing it.
Our government is upending our entire energy sector because we are scared of a benign gas that without it, all life on the planet would cease to exist. They act as if carbon dioxide, which is every plant’s oxygen, is equivalent to a toxic poison. And these radical and costly changes are all done in the name of saving lives. (OUR GOVERNMENT IS BEING RUN BY IDIOTS!!! Abyssum)
Yet, our government after authorizing the intentional burning of millions of gallons of deadly chemicals that had spilled in a train derailment right outside of Palestine, Ohio which created a mushroom cloud filled with the deadly toxins, such as Phosgene – a WWI German chemical weapon – told the people of Palestine, to return to their homes and drink the water, a mere 3 days later. The same people who locked down the country for fear of Covid told American citizens to go back to a town whose air, ground, and water are still poisoned with toxins.
Our government takes extreme caution with Covid-19 and carbon dioxide, shaming anyone who doesn’t act with the same extreme caution, but when confronted with deadly, carcinogenic toxins in the air over Palestine, Ohio, our political leaders have taken the exact opposite approach. It is apparent, they do not care about the people of Palestine. Whether they live or die, contract cancer or not, means absolutely nothing to them. Their apathy for the lives of these citizens is not solely a result of the town voting overwhelmingly for their opponent, it is more than that. This is a crisis that they cannot exploit to procure more power for themselves.
George Floyd’s death could be exploited to incite 500 riots which threw our country into total chaos months before a Presidential election in which they were trying to unseat the incumbent. Covid-19 was exploited to allow the government to control the population, businesses, schools, and places of worship showing them how much autonomy the people would be willing to cede to protect their health. Climate change is a manufactured crisis that the powerful are actively exploiting to control the people and enrich themselves.
Attorney Michael Barasch, whose law firm represents over 25,000 members of the 9/11 community, said the EPA insisting the “air is safe” sent “shivers” up his spine, knowing that clients of his “are dying every single day from 9/11 toxic dust.” He went on to say, “in 10 or 20 years, you’re gonna see people [from Palestine] getting cancer” because of the toxins in their environment. And our government sends them back to their homes in just 72 hours. Cities around the country are housing tens of thousands of illegal immigrants in luxury hotels, spending tens of millions of dollars, yet our government refuses to house the people of Palestine, Ohio somewhere safe until the air, water, and ground have been cleaned of toxins. They are not willing to do whatever it takes to save even one life of the people of Palestine, Ohio.
Instead of automatically taking action as the Secretary of Transportation to help these citizens deal with the toxic disaster in their town, Pete Buttigieg has spent his time recently telling crowds about how white construction workers are taking jobs from people of color. It’s not his fault. Pete Buttigieg wasn’t hired to be the Transportation Secretary. He was hired to be the first gay Cabinet Secretary. Qualifications and competence did not matter. What mattered was that he checked the right boxes and was committed to equity and not achievement.
As a result of being an equity hire, Buttigieg frames every situation through the eyes of equity. That is why he labels highways as racist and counts the number of white versus black construction workers. He cannot see beyond identity politics. And that is why he has completely ignored the people of Palestine. They do not check any of the right boxes. They are not people of color. They are not members of the LGBTQ community. They are not Muslims. They are straight, white, Christians which means they can be completely ignored and left to die. They don’t matter.
Joe Biden has yet to visit Palestine, Ohio, even though the disaster occurred almost 3 weeks ago. On Tuesday, after much backlash, Pete Buttigieg announced he did intend on visiting Palestine, but he never gave a set date for his visit, so it remains to be seen if he will actually show up. If he does visit Palestine, will he ride up on his bike because he doesn’t want the carbon dioxide from a gas-powered car to pollute the Phosgene-filled air of Palestine?
Last week, the Biden administration rejected federal disaster assistance for Palestine as they deal with the aftermath of this toxic disaster. And instead of visiting the people of Palestine, on Monday, Joe Biden made a secret trip to Ukraine and promised unending support to President Zelensky. After already giving Ukraine over $100 billion of war funding this past year, Biden promised another $500 million to Ukraine while at the same time, rejecting aid to the suffering people of Palestine.
Palestine, Ohio is 500 miles from Washington, DC. Ukraine is 5,680 miles from Washington, DC. A 500-mile flight takes about an hour. Biden could have done both. He could have taken the 1-hour flight to Palestine, met with the leaders, reassured the people, saw for himself what they need, and taken care of it. But Biden does not care about those people. He only cares about power.
Donald Trump visited Palestine, Ohio, with truckloads of bottled water for the people there. After spending billions on Ukraine, Joe Biden could not find it in himself to provide the most basic necessity of them all for these American citizens, clean water to drink. It took a private citizen, former President Donald Trump, to spend his own money so that the people in Palestine have clean drinking water.
East Palestine, Ohio Mayor Trent Conaway stated that President Joe Biden giving millions to Ukraine and nothing to the people of Palestine shows that he doesn’t care about us. He is right. Actions speak louder than words. Joe Biden’s actions and inaction speak volumes. And not only doesn’t he care about the people of Palestine, but he also doesn’t care about you and me. 5 million illegal immigrants have flooded this country since he took office, many bringing deadly drugs which kill over 100,000 Americans each year, and he is more concerned about protecting Ukraine’s border than our own border.
Don’t ever listen when these people say that they care about the American people. The citizens of Palestine, Ohio are the American people. Their town is basically destroyed. The air, water, and soil are toxic. Most of the people there will end up contracting some painful and even deadly diseases. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Pete Buttigieg, if they actually cared about people, would have visited there by now, and would have done everything in their power to protect those people, but they chose not to. They have abandoned the people of Palestine. But what can we expect from a group of politicians who opened the southern border and defunded the police? They don’t care if American citizens die from fentanyl poisoning or if they are murdered by a violent criminal out on zero cash bail. All they care about is exploiting crises to procure more power themselves.
Former Obama Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel infamously said, “you never want a serious crisis go to waste.” But the people of Palestine (OHIO) have the wrong color skin for their crisis to be taken seriously enough to be exploited, so they will tragically never get the aid that they need.
The longer this preview war goes on, the surer will follow the nightmarish main attraction.
The Ukraine mess is daily looking more like the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939, a meat grinder that took 500,000 lives. That three-year conflict became a savage proxy war and prelude for the belligerents of World War II.
The Ukraine battlefield is proving to be a similar laboratory of death. New lethal weaponry and tactics are introduced, modified — and always improved — from drones to guided missiles to internet-fed artillery.
Likewise, a similar pre-global war lineup of the eventual adversaries is emerging in a preview of a much larger, much scarier war to come.
The first mission of Ukraine, the aggrieved victim of a peremptory Russian attack, was simple survival.
But now that it has been armed to the teeth and its soldiers proved far more capable and heroic than Putin’s once-feared Russia, Kyiv now seeks to push back Russians to their 2014 Ukrainian-acquired borders.
Next President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has announced that the third stage will be to eject every Russian from 2013 Ukraine. He promises to reabsorb both the Crimea and the Donbas.
That is an ambitious goal that might require preemptive attacks inside Russia and on the Black Sea.
To accomplish the last two missions, Zelenskyy needs a blank check of support from a United States that can neither control its own borders nor maintain its critical infrastructure and is $33 trillion in debt.
Americans are not only to supply the money and arms to fuel Zelenskyy’s counteroffensives but to sign onto a dangerous anti-Russian agenda that is not necessarily synonymous with one that is in the best interests of the United States.
As far as Russia goes, Vladimir Putin knows his attack was a costly mistake. It was predicated on the assumption that an appeasing, doddering Biden and a U.S. military humiliated in Afghanistan would always remain passive.
Yet Putin still believes that his blunder will not have been a fatal one if he can still destroy much of Eastern Ukraine, institutionalize what he gained in 2014, fracture NATO, propagandize the war as an existential cause of saving Mother Russia from a corrupt West, and reconfigure a new alliance with China, Iran, North Korea, and perhaps Turkey and India.
As far as the United States goes, the Biden Administration sees America’s interest as largely defined by a proxy war to defang Russia. To paraphrase Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, America will pour limitless arms into Ukraine to so weaken Russia that it will have to stay within its current borders.
Washington blithely dismisses all of Putin’s existential threats as empty nuclear saber-rattling — on the Pentagon’s assurance that wounded, cornered, and growling tigers can always be assumed to remain predictably docile.
Biden, whose family influence-peddled with Kyiv for a decade, has radically reversed his initial course. No longer is Biden offering a free ride out of Dodge for Zelenskyy or dismissing any worry over a “minor” Russian invasion.
Biden instead now sees saving Ukraine and punishing Russia as his one shot at a redeeming accomplishment for an otherwise failed administration.
The once-pacifist American Left has embraced Ukraine as its “I told you so” proof that Putin was really the monster that it could not find guilty in its various Russian collusion concoctions and laptop disinformation hoaxes.
The NATO nations are acting uncharacteristically defiant given the war is on their borders. They rightly fear a victorious Putin would be vengeful and not satiated.
Yet their “you go first” shipment of hodgepodge weapons to Ukraine, as well as their embarrassment over their past suicidal energy policies, and slow-motion disarmament, remind us that Europeans in NATO before the war could not keep the Russians out, the Americans in, or the Germans down.
China believes it can be the real winner of the war. Its rivals and enemies are weakened the longer the war continues. The West is depleting its arsenals. It is tiring of the cost. Rival Russia is bleeding, selling Beijing cheap oil and begging for its weapons.
Neither Europe nor America, China believes, will want to repeat another proxy war — say, one over Taiwan — against a nuclear power with far more leverage over the West and far greater wherewithal on the battlefield.
Iran is selling drones to Russia. Tehran expects a desperate Putin to sell it all the enriched uranium it needs, prevent a preemptive strike on Tehran, and end Moscow’s Syrian wink-and-nod policy with Israel.
India, like Turkey, likes newfound cheap Russian oil. It feels a proximate Russia and China are better entertained than a distant and provocative, but increasingly internally divided and weakened, United States.
Turkey is suddenly booming with cheap oil and a big arms appetite from Russia. It feels rich and illiberal China and Russia both fear Turkey’s export of Islamism and seem better allies than the loud-talking but declining West.
North Korea sees only positives in Western distraction in Ukraine. It counts that its nuclear recklessness is seen as a valuable irritant by both Russia and China.
The longer this preview war goes on, the surer will follow the nightmarish main attraction.
National Archives Fires Staffer Who Demanded Students Remove Their Pro-Life Shirts
National | Mary Margaret Olohan | Feb 23, 2023 | 2:33PM | Washington, DC
The National Archives says it has fired the security officer responsible for telling students that they could not wear pro-life apparel in the museum.
On Jan. 20, 2023, the day the national March for Life took place in Washington, D.C., security officers at the National Archives ordered multiple visitors to “remove their hats and cover their attire displaying pro-life messages,” according to a letter from acting Archivist Debra Steidel Wall obtained by The Daily Signal.
“This action was contrary to NARA policy,” she said. “The irony that this happened just steps away from the permanent display of the original Bill of Rights is not lost on me or any of the employees who proudly welcome more than one million annual visitors to the Museum.”
Wall was responding to a bicameral letter led by Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and Republican Texas Rep. Chip Roy demanding answers about the situation. She informed the lawmakers that the security officers involved in the incident are private contractors on a contract with the National Archives.
“Our vendor conducted its own investigation of the incident and determined a supervisor that it employed, who was working that day, provided instructions to other security officers who work for the same vendor that were contrary to our policy,” she explained. “The vendor has removed this supervisor from NARA’s contract, and that individual is no longer working in any NARA facility.”
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Cruz told The Daily Signal on Thursday that he is glad “the National Archives acknowledged the seriousness of their mistake and took the necessary steps to prevent this kind of incident from happening again.”
“The First Amendment rights of pro-life visitors should never have been infringed to begin with,” he said. “These rights, like the documents housed at the National Archives, are foundational, and must be protected for everyone.”
Wall emphasized that there is no policy at the National Archives that prohibits wearing pro-life garments. She also said that no such policy was put in place expressly on the day of the March for Life, and that the contract security officers who asked the pro-life visitors to cover up their clothing “did so in violation of explicit and long-standing NARA policy that allows museum visitors to wear clothing that expresses their political and religious viewpoints.”
“NARA’s policy explicitly allows visitors to the museum to wear clothing that expresses their political and religious viewpoints,” she wrote. “Unfortunately, for a short period of time, on the morning of January 20, 2023, a security officer provided instructions to other security officers that were contrary to that policy. This was subsequently corrected by the security officer that same morning.”
The National Archives publicly apologized for the incident on Feb. 10 after the American Center for Law and Justice filed a lawsuit on behalf of the four individuals who visited the museum wearing pro-life clothing.
The American Center for Law and Justice similarly filed a lawsuit over a separate incident that took place at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, for which the Smithsonian has also apologized.
“All of our clients were told by National Archives employees that they had to take off their religious, pro-life apparel or leave the museum,” Jordan Sekulow, Executive Director of the American Center for Law and Justice, wrote at the time his organization sued the National Archives. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
He continued: “When one of our clients questioned the order, a National Archives security officer said that the apparel would ‘incite others’ and that she was ‘disturbing peace.’ Yet another one of our clients was told that her T-shirt was ‘offensive’ and had to be covered up or removed. Her shirt read simply, ‘MARCH 4 LIFE 2014: Saint Cecilia’s Youth Group, Glen Carbon, IL.’”
“Perhaps most disturbing of all were the National Archives security officers who instructed a whole group of Catholic students and chaperones to remove or cover up ALL their religious and pro-life clothing while standing in the same room as the Constitution of the United States,” Sekulow added.
The security officer made some students take their pro-life hats off, including one hat that read, “Life always wins,” and “pro-life,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit continues:
Plaintiff witnessed another guard participate in these instructions to her classmates and at no time did any of the other guards in the Rotunda intercede and provide contrary instruction. Plaintiff, astonished by [the security officer’s] instructions – given her close proximity to the very documents that prohibit the government’s interference with her First Amendment right to free speech and expression and her free exercise of religion – nonetheless zipped up her jacket and removed her button for fear that she would be thrown out of the National Archives if she did not comply. Plaintiff immediately believed her constitutional rights were being violated by the very government officials tasked with protecting them.
Yet at the same time, according to the lawsuit, the pro-life students saw at least two other National Archives visitors “freely walking around” wearing apparel with messages such as “My Body, My Choice.”
“Treating religious pro-life speech differently than opposing speech is blatantly unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination,” Sekulow wrote.
The American Center for Law and Justice lawsuit alleges violations of the First Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It also asks the court to declare the National Archives security officer’s actions both unlawful and unconstitutional
“What occurred is not only an injustice, it is intolerable, and we aren’t going to let them get away with it,” said Sekulow. “We intend to find out what’s behind this targeted discrimination.”
His Holiness reaching out to the margins? With the chief Rabbi of Cyprus, Dec 3, 2021. Photo Credit: Vatican Media.
The Latin Mass Society of England and Wales and the FIUV (Una Voce International) have issued a joint press releaseon yesterday’s Rescript, which insists that bishops may not allow the celebration of Masses in parish churches on their own authority: the matter is “reserved to the Holy See,” with the Dicastery for Divine Worship making the final decision. In the press release we have tried to explain exactly what this means and what happens next. As a matter of official Church policy, however, the whole business seems bizarre.
We have repeatedly been told that Pope Francis is concerned about people “on the peripheries” of the Church. He wants to make them feel welcome and included. And yet here is a policy which is specifically designed to make people feel unwelcome and excluded, and to drive people who had found a precarious spiritual home in a parish to the peripheries. Catholics attached to the Traditional Mass must be made to feel like second-class citizens.
The Dicastery for Divine Worship made this quite clear in their previous document on this subject, the Responsa ad dubia:
The exclusion of the parish church is intended to affirm that the celebration of the Eucharist according to the previous rite, being a concession limited to these groups, is not part of the ordinary life of the parish community.
The “ordinary life of the parish community” is something from which the “group” of Traditional Catholics is to be excluded. They must be pushed out.
The drafters of this document seem to feel some embarrassment about this bald statement and a few paragraphs later they try to claw it back a bit:
There is no intention in these provisions to marginalise the faithful who are rooted in the previous form of celebration: they are only meant to remind them that this is a concession to provide for their good (in view of the common use of the one lex orandi of the Roman Rite) and not an opportunity to promote the previous rite.
So, they insist, it is not meant to marginalise them. Ok, so what is it supposed to do? It “reminds” them of something: that they are second-class citizens, perhaps. And then we get this odd claim: that this “concession” to allow them the Old Mass is “not an opportunity to promote” it, something that happens, apparently, by the mere fact of it taking place in the same ecclesiastical building as the Novus Ordo, however many hours separate the two services. It seems that attachment to the Traditional Mass to tantamount to having a contagious disease, from which the real “parish community,” the hitherto uninfected ones, must be protected.
Those Trads need to be quarantined.
No amount of weasel words can hide it: we are to be kept apart from others, isolated, until we oblige the Holy See by withering away. If you like the Traditional Mass, you are ipso facto, by that very fact, not a part of the “parish community”: even if it so happens that you have worshipped in that parish all your life.
Some people have suggested over the years that Catholics attached to the Traditional Mass would do well to avoid appearing stand-offish, or even as having a “schismatic mentality,” and integrate themselves as much as possible into their parishes: go along to parish events, contribute to fund-raising, join the rota for cleaning the church, get stuck in to the finance committee, and whatever else is going on. How easy this is in practice has varied a good deal: parish events on Saturdays and weekday evenings don’t seem so attractive if you live 100 miles away. Nevertheless, when it works, parishes with celebrations of both missals have found Trads among their most dedicated and generous parishioners. In some cases the very survival of a parish has come to depend upon them.
But how wrong we all were. We have now heard from the Holy See in unambiguous terms that the integration into parish life of Catholics attached to the older Missal is a thoroughly bad thing. The ones with a schismatic mentality, whatever that was supposed to mean, are the good ones: or at least the less bad ones. The ones contributing to the new roof or the parish pot-luck need to be “reminded” that, truly, they are not welcome. Perhaps a place can be found for them in a cramped convent chapel or a rented meeting-room, to rub the point in. The ideal, however, is for them to go away, or cease to exist.
I started to attend the TLM before Summorum Pontificum in 2007, when the official attitude was pretty similar to the one being promoted today. I experienced several Mass locations where the Traditional Mass was available, but where we were nonetheless deliberately made to feel unwelcome. The times of our Masses were not advertised; we weren’t allowed to use a parish room for a social gathering after Mass; sermons included snide little remarks about us. In one case, Masses took place in a municipal meeting room which we hired by the hour. I’m a cradle Catholic, and discovering the ancient Mass was a strange experience: I’d found my liturgical heritage, but lost my ecclesial home. I had located myself in the Church’s history and tradition, but been turfed out of the Church in social terms.
That’s what they want to do to us again, but things have changed. The attitude of the clergy is by and large completely different today, and that includes many bishops. This new policy is going to cause great pain quite pointlessly to many good people, but it will fail. The Church is our home, and we are not leaving it: and the priests who celebrate the old Mass for us certainly do not want to see us go.
This Lent, offer some prayers and penances for a return to a sane and pastoral attitude: that space be made for the faithful who want the older Mass, and for the priests who want to give it to them. In the words of Pope Benedict XVI: “Let us generously open our hearts and make room for everything that the faith itself allows.”
Editor’s note: join the fellowship of St. Nicholas (English or Español) to offer corporate fasting for this intention.
Dr Joseph Shaw has a Doctorate in Philosophy from Oxford University, where he also gained a first degree in Politics and Philosophy and a graduate Diploma in Theology. He has published on Ethics and Philosophy of Religion and has edited The Case for Liturgical Restoration: Una Voce Position Papers on the Extraordinary Form (Angelico Press). He is the Chairman of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales and President of Una Voce International. He teaches Philosophy at Oxford University and lives nearby with his wife and nine children.
The Fallibility of Popes, According to St. Paul and St. Gregory
Infallibility is not to be generalized to all the pope’s statements, just as it must not be confused with impeccability. The pope is human and can sin like all of us. He can also be mistaken about things.
The pope is infallible when declaring the truth of dogma under conditions that have been applied very strictly. The definition given at the First Vatican Council clearly implies those conditions:
When the Roman Pontiff speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in exercising his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians he defines with his supreme apostolic authority that a doctrine on faith and morals is to be held by the whole Church, through the divine assistance promised him in the person of Saint Peter, he enjoys that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer wished to endow his Church in defining a doctrine on faith and morals. (Vatican Council I: DS 3074)
The continued life and growth of the Church demands the guarantee that she will teach the truth. The Protestants reject papal and conciliar infallibility even as they argue about biblical inerrancy which addresses practically the same concern for truth, although the ambiguity of interpretation may confuse the issue. Concern for the truth of the Bible cannot ignore the need for authorized and authentic interpretation of Revelation by the Church.
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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Infallibility, however, is not to be generalized to all the pope’s statements, just as it must not be confused with impeccability. The pope is human and can sin like all of us. He can also be mistaken about things. Two saints illustrate the latter point.
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In his letter to the Galatians, St. Paul recounts a dispute he had with St. Peter:
But when Cephas [Greek for “rock,” Christ’s new and symbolic name for Simon bar Jonah] came to Antioch I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he ate with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. And with him the rest of the Jews acted insincerely, so that even Barnabas was carried away by their insincerity. (Gal. 2:11-13)
Perhaps St. Peter thought the issue could be postponed until the Church was strong enough to overcome internal tensions. Maybe he thought ambiguity was called for in the current circumstances. It is clear, however, that St. Paul was correct in seeing the scandal thus given to the Gentile Christians and foreseeing greater problems later. The important thing for us to see in the situation is that the man Jesus chose as his Vicar for the Church could be mistaken in his actions.
St. Gregory the Great has a similar and much clearer explanation of papal fallibility.
In the second of his famous Dialogues, he tells the story of the holy abbot Equitius, a tremendous preacher who was not a priest. A nobleman named Felix asked him, in the words of St. Gregory, “how he dared to preach, since he was not in holy orders and did not have permission from the Bishop of Rome under whose jurisdiction he was.”
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Equitius said he had received a personal revelation and commission to preach. “Since that day I could not be silent about God even if I wished.”
The issue was not resolved there. The clergy of Rome protested about him to the pope.
In words of flattery that corrupt those who listen to their charms, they said to the Pope, “Who is this rustic who presumes authority to preach? …If it so please you, let an order be issued for him to come to Rome where he will learn to understand the discipline of the Church.”
The pope gave his consent to the request, because, says St. Gregory, “Flattery, if it is not immediately cast from the mind, easily captivates the soul of one who is preoccupied with a multitude of affairs.”
In the event, Equitius did not go to Rome, although the pope sent Julian, a prelate and apparently a clerical muscleman, to bring the abbot in. When Julian and Equitius met, after the abbot had finished his labors harvesting hay, the prelate was too tired to go back to Rome the same afternoon. Equitius was all for going at once and warned Julian, “If we do not go today, tomorrow will be too late.”
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And so it was. A special messenger came the next day to Julian to tell him the pope had reversed his order. The pontiff had a vision that warned him away from troubling Equitius. In his name, the messenger asked for Equitius’ prayers and said to him, “The Holy Father wishes to spare you the fatigue of this journey.”
St. Gregory, who was himself pope at the time, told his disciple Peter to “mark well” how God protects his own. Peter, unfailingly ingenuous in the conversations with St. Gregory, says to the saint, “I am surprised that the great Pope could have been misled about so great a saint.”
Our saint and doctor of the Church replies:
Why are you surprised, Peter, that we who are but human make mistakes? Have you forgotten that it was David’s reliance on the untruthful words of a servant that caused him to pronounce sentence against the innocent son of Jonathan? (2 Kings 16:3; 19:27) And David had the spirit of prophecy. But, since David did this, we can be sure that in God’s secret justice he acted justly, even though we cannot see the justice of it with our human reason. Why should we be surprised, then, if we who are not prophets are sometimes led astray by deceitful men? An important point to consider is that the mind of a superior is distracted by a world of cares, and once the attention is preoccupied with a variety of matters it becomes less observant of details. One who is occupied with a multitude of affairs is all the more liable to be misled in regard to any one of them.”
All of us who are sometimes surprised by what comes out of the corridors of the Vatican should listen to this and say with the disciple Peter, “That is very true.”
Msgr. Richard C. AntallMonsignor Antall is pastor of Holy Name Parish in the Diocese of Cleveland. He is the author of The X-Mass Files (Atmosphere Press, 2021), and The Wedding (Lambing Press, 2019).
ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP 
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