FW: so-called ‘brain death’

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From: Maike Hickson <maikehickson@gmail.com> 
Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2019 7:46 AM

On Sun, May 19, 2019 at 6:22 AM Philippe Schepens <ps@ouardye.org> wrote:

Swedish stroke patient hears doctors discuss removing his organs.

___________________________________________________

43-year-old man lodges official complaint after overhearing medics talking to his girlfriend about organ donation while he was paralysed but fully conscious

“They looked at an x-ray of my brain, and when they had done that, they told my girlfriend that it wasn’t good and that I wouldn’t live,” Mr Fritze said .

By Richard Orange, Malmö 4:37 PM BST 04 Apr 2014

A Swedish man who was paralysed by a stroke is filing an official complaint against a Gothenburg hospital after he listened in horror to his doctors telling his girlfriend and relatives he was going to die and discussing transplanting his liver and kidney.
“I heard them tell my girlfriend and my relatives that there was no hope,” Jimi Fritze, 43, told The Telegraph.
“I couldn’t do anything. I could only see and hear. I couldn’t move my body.”
The former supermarket manager from Örebro suffered a stroke nearly two years ago as he and his girlfriend were dining on smoked fish and fine wine at a restaurant on the Gothenburg archipelago.
As it was too windy for a helicopter to land on the island, it took one and a half hours to get him by boat to hospital.
By that time, he was completely paralysed.
“They looked at an x-ray of my brain, and when they had done that, they told my girlfriend that it wasn’t good and that I wouldn’t live,” Mr Fritze said.
“I could hear her crying the whole time, but I couldn’t do anything.”
He drifted into unconsciousness, waking later to hear the doctors discussing his case.
“I heard them talking about donation, they wanted to do some tests on my liver and my kidney, so they could give them to some people,” he said.
Still, he could do nothing to alert anyone to the fact that he was fully conscious.
“I was scared because I thought that I was going to die then, and a hard death,” he said. “I remember I thought, what will happen if they cremate me, will I see the fire and feel the fire?”.
When his family came in to say their final farewell, the doctors discussed organ donation with them, even though Mr Fritze had yet to be declared officially brain dead, something he believes violated official guidelines.
If a more experienced doctor had not returned from holiday three days after his accident, he is in little doubt that he would not be here today.
“I think I would have been stuck in bed until my body didn’t work any more, so they could take the parts from me,” Mr Fritze said.
As it happened, when the new doctor took another look at the x-ray, she immediately realised that there was a good chance that Mr Fritze might recover. Within days, he was able to communicate by nodding his head.
After nearly two years, and constant rehabilitation therapy, Mr Fritze can now speak and move, although he remains confined to a wheelchair and reliant on an assistant.
Last month, he filed an official complaint to Gothenburg’s Sahlgrenska Hospital, where he was treated, hoping that it will help prevent the same thing happening to others.
Stefan Sarajärvi, a spokesman for the hospital, said that the hospital had begun an inquiry into Mr Fritze’s complaint, and would respond later this month.
“We take all the complaints we receive very seriously, and do everything we can to make sure it doesn’t happen in future,” he said.

Source : The Telegraph (London) May 19th 2019

in Christo

Philippe Schepens MD

Virus-free. www.avast.com

on overruling Roe, and more

Ed Whelan ewhelan@eppc.org via mailchimpapp.net	Fri, May 17, 11:17 AM (1 day ago)
to me

From NRO’s Bench Memos:

Some Thoughts on Overruling Roe

By ED WHELAN

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·          

May 17, 2019 11:51 AM

·          

·         1. For reasons I explained more fully in my Senate Judiciary Committee testimony in 2005, I believe that the case for overruling Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey is overwhelming. Here is an excerpt:

·          

Roe is the Dred Scott of our age. Like few other Supreme Court cases in our nation’s history, Roe is not merely patently wrong but also fundamentally hostile to core precepts of American government and citizenship. Roe is a lawless power grab by the Supreme Court, an unconstitutional act of aggression by the Court against the political branches and the American people. Roe prevents all Americans from working together, through an ongoing process of peaceful and vigorous persuasion, to establish and revise the policies on abortion governing our respective states. Roe imposes on all Americans a radical regime of unrestricted abortion for any reason all the way up to viability—and, under the predominant reading of sloppy language in Roe’s companion case, Doe v. Bolton, essentially unrestricted even in the period from viability until birth. Roe fuels endless litigation in which pro-abortion extremists challenge modest abortion-related measures that state legislators have enacted and that are overwhelmingly favored by the public—provisions, for example, seeking to ensure informed consent and parental involvement for minors and barring atrocities like partial-birth abortion. Roe disenfranchises the millions and millions of patriotic American citizens who believe that the self-evident truth proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence—that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with an unalienable right to life—warrants significant governmental protection of the lives of unborn human beings.

See part 2 of that testimony for some devastating criticisms of Roe from liberals who support a right to abortion.

2. The wave of protective pro-life legislation demonstrates that Planned Parenthood v. Casey’s effort to preserve Roe has failed. As Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule succinctly explained in a tweet the other day (my underlining):

The premise of Planned Parenthood v. Casey was that the Court’s abortion jurisprudence could succeed in “call[ing] the contending sides of a national controversy to end their national division.” Doesn’t seem to have worked. Casey fails its own test.

3. We often hear from the Left pleas for “judicial statesmanship” to preserve liberal precedents. But real judicial statesmanship would be for the liberals on the Court to recognize that Roe is a dismal failure and to forge a unanimous ruling against it.

4. All the clamor over the Alabama and Georgia laws ignores that there are certiorari petitions pending before the Court right now that provide the opportunity to erode or overrule Roe.

One petition (which the Court has been sitting on for months now) presents the questions (1) whether a state may require health care facilities to dispose of fetal remains in the same manner as other human remains (i.e., by burial or cremation); and (2) whether a state may prohibit abortions motivated solely by the race, sex, or disability of the fetus.

Another presents the question whether a state may require an ultrasound at least eighteen hours before an abortion.

And yet another challenges a Fifth Circuit decision that upheld a Louisiana law that requires physicians who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. This is the law that the liberal justices, together with the Chief, blocked from taking effect, so it’s a safe bet that certiorari will be granted in the case.

5. Any justices who recognize that Roe should be overruled but who are waiting for just the right occasion to do so are fooling themselves. There will never be a perfect time, and stretching things out unnecessarily just means that the Court will be a fat political target. That doesn’t mean that the Court necessarily needs to overrule Roe at the first opportunity, but it shouldn’t shy from the challenge.

This Day in Liberal Judicial Activism—May 17

By ED WHELAN

·          

·          

May 17, 2019 8:00 AM

1954—In Brown v. Board of Education, a unanimous Supreme Court abandons available originalist justifications for its ruling that state-segregated schools violate the Equal Protection Clause—justifications that would have been far weightier, and commanded far more public respect, than its own makeshift reliance on contemporaneous psychological research of dubious relevance. Contrary to conventional understanding, the Court declines to revisit its notorious 1896 ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson and instead limits itself to the question whether the separate-but-equal rule of Plessy “should be held inapplicable to public education.”

1993—Tennessee chief justice Lyle Reid and justice Martha Craig Daughtrey dispute the ruling by the Tennessee supreme court in State v. Marshall that obscenity is not protected speech under the Tennessee constitution. The majority’s ruling, they extravagantly contend, hands “the right most essential to personal dignity and democratic government, the freedom of expression, … into the willing grasp of the censor.”

Daughtrey will be appointed by President Clinton to the Sixth Circuit later in 1993.

2013—Crackheaded, indeed. In United States v. Blewett, Sixth Circuit judge Gilbert S. Merritt Jr., joined by fellow Carter appointee Boyce F. Martin Jr., holds that the more lenient sentences of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 apply to crack-cocaine offenders who were sentenced before the Act’s effective date.

Merritt purports to recognize that “there is no equal protection violation without discriminatory intent,” and he acknowledges that when the 100-to-1 crack statute was adopted in 1986, “there was no intent or design to discriminate on a racial basis.” But he contends that the knowledge gained since 1986 about the disparate impact of the original minimums on blacks means that continued enforcement of those sentences is intentional discrimination.aw has a (constitutionally permissible) racially disparate impact, the maintenance of that law would suddenly be transformed into intentional discrimination. As Clinton appointee Ronald Lee Gilman observes in dissent, there is no support for such a propositi

Mr. Whelan is co-editor of the New York Times bestseller 
Scalia Speaks:Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived 
and On Faith: Lessons from an American Believer, both 
published by Crown Forum

Matthew Cullinan HoffmanFollow Matthew

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NEWSCATHOLIC CHURCHFri May 17, 2019 – 4:38 pm EST

Francis’ former doctrine chief blasts Vatican reform plan, German bishops on sex abuse

 Catholic, Curial Reform, Gerhard Müller, Holy See, Pope Francis, Synodal Path, Synodality

May 17, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), has in a new interview answered questions about the rise of the concept of “synodality,” the synodal approach of the German Church which he says is “crazy,”  the Amazon Synod, female diaconate, Curia reform, formation of priests and bishops, and much more. 

The Cardinal has become, very reluctantly, a potent focus of attention after Pope Francis failed to renew is 5-year term at the CDF in 2017. During his recent visit to Madrid, on the occasion of a solemn liturgy of the Constantinian Order, of which he is Grand Prior, he granted this interview exclusively to InfoVaticana. It has been translated by LifeSiteNews: 

***

InfoVaticana: Your Eminence, let’s talk about the concept of synodality. What are the theological reference points, according to the magisterium of the Church, of synodality? What is this concept being used for in practice, in the life of the Church today? Is there a risk of using this practice as an instrument for other purposes? 

Cardinal Müller: Synodality is a neologism (new expression). Before there was the collegiality of the bishops, in which they worked together with the pope. And there were the regional and provincial synods, general synods, ecumenical councils… But theologically it is something new, involving a little invention. Collaboration is a natural thing for all members of the Church. That’s why I don’t understand what a sense of “synodality” would be that would be different from what we already had throughout the history of the Church. As if processes could change the Church’s ideas. More important than processes is orienting oneself towards the classical principles of Sacred Scripture, of the apostolic tradition, of the magisterium, in declarations, infallible definitions… These are the points of reference and we cannot change the doctrine of the Church little by little in order to convert it to ideas that are against Revelation.

InfoVaticana: In this sense, speaking of processes, are you concerned about the synodal approach of the German Church as the point of the spear?

Cardinal Müller: This is something crazy. They think that sexual abuse by some clergy has something to do with the interpretation of sexuality or with celibacy and women’s access to the priesthood. The existence of abuse is used to advance another agenda. It’s absolutely false. One cannot accept this because there are many causes of abuse, including moral confusion: the failure of personal and also ecclesiastical morals, since ecclesiastical discipline has not been well understood. One becomes a priest of Jesus Christ to give a good example to others. The priest runs the risk of falling into temptation, of not respecting young people in the sanctity of their lives, in their personality… These are the real reasons for this failure. The vast majority of priests are good, you can’t make these good priests liable for other people’s personal guilt. We know that there are abusers in families, that there are abusive parents, but it cannot be said that the majority of these perpetrators, of those who do these things, are the parents. Because most parents are good parents.

InfoVaticana: Do you believe that the text of Pope Benedict on the causes of pedophilia in the Church has been deliberately silenced because of the arguments made by the Pope Emeritus?

Cardinal Müller: He, Benedict XVI, tells the truth and some do not want to listen to him. They have invented the theory that Archbishop Georg Gänswein and I wrote that text. That’s what I’ve read in the press. He, the Pope Emeritus, is more capable of writing these texts than most of his critics. That is to say, he has a great intellect, and he has enough experience – 60 years, and also as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and then as pope. The two popes, John Paul II and Benedict, did everything they could to counteract pedophilia in the clergy. They must be given credit for fighting this plague. Those who criticize it are ideologues. Most of these have not read, have not studied this letter of 20 pages or more. They’ve only read a few headlines in the newspapers that said the pope was blaming the mentality of 1968.  But the pope emeritus did not say that it was to blame, but rather that it set the stage for the annihilation of morals and of conscience.

InfoVaticana: Are you worried about what might come out of the Amazon Synod?

Cardinal Müller: What I have seen so far is very superfluous. The reason for the lack of priests is not celibacy, it is the lack of preparation for the priestly vocation. Such a vocation comes from God and it is up to us to listen and respond to this vocation of God, which is a spiritual act. The Church must foster a good pastoral care of vocations. Celibacy is a spiritual reality and those who do not think of the Spirit of God cannot understand it. As Jesus said: the people of the world do not understand what celibacy is, to give one’s life and not to live in marriage, which for us is a sacrament. With celibacy we also bear witness to the eschatological dimension of hope for eternal life. Because human life, Christian life, does not end in this terrestrial world. We have a hope beyond this life. All those who speak (about and) who have their aspirations in this Synod of the Amazon, speak only of some practical aspects of the matter. And they don’t enter profoundly into the issues. They think more in accordance with the world than in a spiritual way.

InfoVaticana: You have written several books on women and the priesthood. There’s been a commission on the female diaconate. Do you believe that there will be an opening to the female diaconate and therefore, in the future, to the priesthood of women?

Cardinal Müller: No. Dogmatically it is not possible. The pope does not have the power and authority to change the sacraments. And there was never a sacramental diaconate for women. And some historical data cannot be interpreted in this sense, and the Church has never dogmatically said that it is possible for women to receive the sacrament of Holy Orders. There is only one sacrament of Holy Orders: bishop, priest and deacon, and the sacrament cannot be separated or distinguished.

InfoVaticana: And an intermediate way of a non-sacramental ministerial diaconate, is it possible?

Cardinal Müller: No. Why call it a ministerial diaconate? It would create a confusion of words. Large numbers of our Christians are instructed by the press and do not know how to make theological distinctions because of a lack of education in theology. That’s what we have ministries for. Lay ministries too. The same applies to men and women. There is no point in constructing something in the sense of a female diaconate, because we have this word, “ministry,” which comes from Latin. Why create confusion? The word deacon is a technical term for the first degree of the sacrament of Holy Orders. We cannot create a terminological confusion.

InfoVaticana: We are in a time in which doctrine has moved to second place. The first is now occupied by a singular, even spiritual, conception of praxis. What role does doctrine play in the Christian life, in the configuration of Catholic identity?

Cardinal Müller: There are many, now the Church, who do not know what doctrine is. They think it’s a theory, a kind of thought. The doctrine of the Church is the Gospel of Jesus, it is the doctrine of Jesus, and of the apostles, and that is why it is the presentation, the verbalization of the Logos, of the word of God. The doctrine of the Church is the explanation of God’s self-revelation, and it is not our theory about God, or about some topic in the Church. A distinction must be made between the dogmatic doctrine of the Church and the academic doctrine of theologians. In this preparation of the so-called reform of the Curia they are lowering the priority of the faith. First comes the Secretariat of State, which says that the State Secretariat, with its relations with States, diplomacy and Vatican bureaucracy, is more linked to the Pope’s supreme mission than the doctrine of faith. This is absurd. Those are mundane, secular chores. The spiritual mission comes from Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ has not constituted the Vatican State with its head, and this head with his state governs the Church. It’s absurd. The truth is the opposite. The Secretariat of State is only an aid to guarantee the independence, the freedom of the pope against the influence of politicians. But it is not the essence of the Petrine ministry.  And how can it be said, among the dicasteries, that first comes that of evangelization and then faith and the doctrine of faith? Evangelization is praxis and faith is theory. What concept of theory and praxis do they have? The Marxist system? Faith is the origin, the root of justification. Only through faith in Jesus Christ are we saved. Without faith, no one can please God. Faith is an infused virtue. The first gift of the Holy Spirit to us is faith and hope, love. You can’t say faith is just a theory.

InfoVaticana: What other aspects of the Curia reform concern you?

Cardinal Müller: It is also very problematic that the Congregations of the cardinals, who represent the Roman Church, have been replaced by dicasteries. Now we have only dicasteries. Dicasteries are a bureaucracy. The Roman Curia cannot be a bureaucratic apparatus to help the Pope, the conferences, the bishops… It is an ecclesiastical reality that represents the Roman Church. Collegiate with the pope as his body, is in first place the College of Cardinals. The curia is also a form of the work of the College of Cardinals. And because of that, the congregation is the Latin expression of “synod.” They speak of synodality and do away with the  Congregations, and instead of “synodality” or “congregation” they now introduce a bureaucratic term.

InfoVaticana: What motivated you to make your Confession of Faith public?

Cardinal Müller: It was necessary. We talk a lot about climate, climate change, immigrants… and we have to talk about the themes of our Christian and Catholic faith. Cardinal Kasper said that what I had written about were some elements arbitrarily chosen by me. But the themes are the Trinity, the Incarnation, the sacramentality of the Church, the unity between faith and life and the expectation for eternal life, and the eschatological dimension. That’s exactly what the symbol says, the profession of faith. And this is where we are. The Church, as the Pope always says, is not an NGO, the Church is a communion in faith, united in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The word of God that became flesh. This is the center of the Church, the sacrament in Christ to bring people into full communion with God and among us, to give an example or a sign of unity to humanity. This is the Church. We don’t need a church that’s a department of the United Nations.

InfoVaticana: I would like to ask you about the theological formation of priests and bishops. What are the consequences of an absence of theological and doctrinal formation of priests and bishops?

Cardinal Müller: Bishops and priests are the servants of the Word. That’s why they have to know the Word. The intelligence of faith is not a reality that comes from outside to faith, it comes from within, from faith. Faith is also a rational act. We believe with our reason and with our will taken from grace. But it’s a truly human act. And we must be prepared to give an answer to all those who ask us about the reasonableness of the hope that is in us. We have this great tradition of theology, of intellectuality, of faith. All the great teachers, especially St. Thomas, have spoken of the bishop as the master of the word, as the one who teaches the word and has to know all the elements of faith. He doesn’t have to be a specialist theologian like those in the academy, but he has to be at that level. He has to be able to argue with theology professors. He must be informed every day, read the Bible, study the Bible, the great texts and documents of the apostolic tradition, and he has to be familiar with  contemporary theologians, and all of the discussion that we have today – anthropology, the false anthropology that defines man as a single biological being. We have to give convincing answers to today’s intellectuals. It is not enough to be ministers of worship, ritualism – this is not enough – or to repeat some common phrases. It is necessary to have the capacity to penetrate these subjects. And that is why we need a profound study of theology, and also a permanent formation.

InfoVaticana: In your biography there is an outstanding chapter on your relationship with Gustavo Gutiérrez, with whom you also elaborated a theology on the poor. Today we are in a time when the poor have acquired a singular prominence as a priority of the Church’s discourse regarding the Gospel, that the poor are at the center of the message. But isn’t this discourse being used for something else?

Cardinal Müller: Everything can be made into an instrument of ideology. But the Christian, Catholic faith is not an ideology. It is the experience of God’s reality in our midst. This is the Catholic faith. The poor in the world are not a marginal reality. It’s a big issue, because there are millions of these poor people, and they live at a level that is below their dignity as human beings.  With the strength of faith, and the spirit of love, we must concern ourselves with the integral development of humanity. It cannot be that a few are very rich and others have nothing. The riches of the world are given to all. The Social Doctrine of the Church, and the theology of liberation along the lines of Gustavo Gutiérrez, say that this is not a Marxist ideology, but that it asks us how we can speak of God in the face of these injustices, inequalities and sufferings. The struggle against the structure of poverty, against the lack of human dignity, belongs to the mission of the Church, to diakonia.

Translated by Matthew Cullinan Hoffman for LifeSiteNews.com

Friday, May 17, 2019

Is Anti-Open Letter Taylor Marshall calling Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales a “Sedevacantist”?

http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2019/05/is-anti-open-letter-taylor-marshall.html?m=1

On Twitter, Nick Donnelly wrote:
“Bishop Schneider tells Raymond Arroyo that the signatories were wrong to accuse Francis of heresy because he hasn’t made a formal, universal declaration of heresy. Though he admits he has allowed wrong teaching Very disappointing hair splitting.”[  youtu.be/PH26z5uJlBQ3:30 AM – 17 May 2019 ]

In responding to Donnelly’s statement, anti-Open Letter Taylor Marshall, apparently, is implicitly calling Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales a “sedevacantist”:

“I agree w Bishop Schneider. If you condemn Francis as “heretical pope” one must break communion with him. This is why I called the doc “practically sedevacantist”. It’s not formally sede but the natural conclusion is.”
[https://mobile.twitter.com/TaylorRMarshall/status/1129334902153986050]

Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales wrote:

“Thus we do not say that the Pope cannot err in his private opinion, as did John XXIL.; or be altogether a heretic, as perhaps Honorius was. Now when he is explicitly a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, andthe Church must either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See, and must say as S. Peter did: ‘Let another take his bishopric.'”
(The Catholic Controversy by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)

Marshall appears to be saying by inference that the Doctor of the Church is a “sede” by “natural conclusion” when he wrote:
“[T]he  Pope… when he is explicitly a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, andthe Church must either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.”
Do Marshall and Schneider think they are greater theologians than St. Francis de Sales?

Do Marshall and Schneider think that the Church can’t depose a pope contradicting a Doctor of the Church or possibly that magically the Church doesn’t have to “condemn Francis as [a] ‘heretical pope'” before it “either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See”?

According to Donnelly, Bishop Athanasius Schneider said “the signatories were wrong to accuse Francis of heresy because he hasn’t made a formal, universal declaration of heresy.” Marshall agreed with this statement.

Are Schneider and Marshall waiting for “a formal, universal declaration of heresy” such as this:

Not privately, but Pope Francis officially acting as the pope explicitly contradicted traditional Catholic teaching on divorce and remarriage when he in a “official act as the pope” placed the Argentine letter in the the Acts of the Apostolic See (AAS) in which he said of the Buenos Aires region episcopal guidelines:

“There is no other interpretations.”

The guidelines explicitly allows according to LifeSiteNews “sexuality active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”(LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers, December 4, 2017)
In a article on OnePeterFive, specialist in Magisterial authority Dr. John Joy said “It means that it is an official act of the pope.” 
Moreover, the article said:

“Dr. Joy pointed out that adding the letter to the AAS could, in fact, damage the credibility of Amoris Laetitia by potentially removing the possibility that it could be intercepted in an orthodox way, via its publication in the official acts of the Apostolic See, that the unorthodox interpretation is the official one.”(OnePeterFive, “Pope’s Letter on Argentinian Communion Guidelines for Remarriage Given Official Status,” December 2, 2017)

The “official act of” Francis is a “unorthodox interpretation.”
It is not just a private contradiction of traditional Catholic teaching.

The “official act of the pope” is a “unorthodox interpretation” which means it contradicts traditional Catholic teaching which is just another way of saying by “official act the pope” is teaching heresy.

Now, let us quote philosopher Ed Feser:
“(1) Adulterous sexual acts are in some special circumstances morally permissible… these propositions flatly contradict irreformable Catholic teaching. Proposition (1) contradicts not only the perennial moral teaching of the Church, but the teaching of scripture itself.”(Edwardfeser.blogspot, “Denial flows into the Tiber,” December 18, 2016)

How’s that for an understatement?

Marshall and Schneider might of heard that God commanded in one of the Ten Commandments:

“Thou shalt not commit adultery.”

But, just in case they never heard of the Ten Commandments, Dubia Cardinal Walter Brandmuller said:

“Whoever thinks that persistent adultery and reception of Holy Communion are compatible is a heretic and promotes schism.”
(LifeSiteNews, “Dubia Cardinal: Anyone who Opens Communion to Adulterers a Heretic and Promotes Schism,” December 23, 2016)

Does this mean because Cardinal Brandmuller said that if a pope “open[ed] Communion to adulterers” he is “a heretic and promotes schism” that according to Marshall by inference he is a “sede” by “natural conclusion”?

Getting back to St. Francis de Sales’ teaching that heretical popes can be deposed by the Church, just in case Schneider and Marshall don’t think the Doctor of the Church knew what he was talking about here are some of his credentials as a great theologian. The Catholic websites Word on Fire and Catholic Culture.org wrote:

– “In addition to his devotional and apologetical writings, he also was a brilliant theologian who helped orchestrate something of a cease-fire in the debates between the Dominicans and Jesuits on grace and predestination. He also wrote the mystical Treatise on the Love of God, of which Pope Benedict XVI said: ‘In an intensely flourishing season of mysticism The Treatise on the Love of God was a true and proper summa and at the same time a fascinating literary work.’”[https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/blog/the-evangelical-and-pastoral-heart-of-st-francis-de-sales/21622/]

– “The special importance of the teaching of St. Francis de Sales: The thought of this Doctor of the Church is of special importance since the Pope himself followed the advice of St. Francis in putting an end to the debates De Auxiliis. Pope Pius IX reports it as follows:¹ ‘. . . our Predecessor of holy memory, Paul V, when the famous debate De Auxiliis was being held at Rome decided to ask the opinion of this Bishop on the matter and, following his advice, judged that this most subtle question, full of danger, and agitated long and keenly, should be laid to rest, and that silence should be imposed on the parties.’ The special importance of his teaching is even clearer from the words of Pius XI:² ‘But taking the opportunity, he lucidly explained the most difficult questions, such as efficacious grace, predestination, and the call to the faith.'”[https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/most/getchap.cfm?WorkNum=214&ChapNum=22]

But, again, just in case Schneider and Marshall need St. Francis de Sales’ credentials as a great theologian on matters dealing with papal theology explained by another anti-Open Letter conservative Catholic here is what pro-Francis Dave Armstrong wrote about the Doctor of the Church:

“Historically, there were many expressions similar to ‘papal infallibility’, such as: papal authority, papal primacy, headship, papal supremacy, Roman primacy, etc. All of those can be traced back to very early times. Papal infallibility developed (i.e., became more fully understood in its detail) just as all Christian doctrines do.” 

“But if we restrict ourselves to uses of the word infallibility itself, (and with direct reference to the pope), one notable historical use comes from a Doctor of the Church, St. Francis de Sales, and his book, The Catholic Controversy, completed in 1596. Note how remarkably it anticipates the later fully developed dogma of papal infallibility, as pronounced at the First Vatican Council in 1870 (274 years before it):

‘When he teaches the whole Church as shepherd, in general matters of faith and morals, then there is nothing but doctrine and truth. And in fact everything a king says is not a law or an edict, but that only which a king says as king and as a legislator. So everything the Pope says is not canon law or of legal obligation; he must mean to define and to lay down the law for the sheep, and he must keep the due order and form.’

‘We must not think that in everything and everywhere his judgment is infallible, but then only when he gives judgment on a matter of faith in questions necessary to the whole Church; for in particular cases which depend on human fact he can err, there is no doubt, though it is not for us to control him in these cases save with all reverence, submission, and discretion. Theologians have said, in a word, that he can err in questions of fact, not in questions of right; that he can err extra cathedram, outside the chair of Peter. that is, as a private individual, by writings and bad example.’

‘But he cannot err when he is in cathedra, that is, when he intends to make an instruction and decree for the guidance of the whole Church, when he means to confirm his brethren as supreme pastor, and to conduct them into the pastures of the faith. For then it is not so much man who determines, resolves, and defines as it is the Blessed Holy Spirit by man, which Spirit, according to the promise made by Our Lord to the Apostles, teaches all truth to the Church.’ (The Catholic Controversy, translated by Henry B. Mackey, Rockford, Illinois: TAN Books, 1989, 306-307)”[http://m.ncregister.com/blog/darmstrong/a-brief-history-of-papal-infallibility]

Schneider and Marshall, although good men, appear not to be great theologians when compared St. Francis de Sales.

Also, it appears that Schneider and Marshall, although good men, appear cowardly when compared to St. Athanasius.

Athanasius demanded the Arian semi-heretical and heretical Church leaders of his time be deposed unless they repented.

Schneider and Marshall are directly contradicting the traditional teaching of Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales in saying the Church can’t depose a heretical pope.

And in saying there is no formal Church definition saying the Church can depose a heretical pope so let’s sit in our hands they are showing they are very unlike Athanasius.

Again, Athanasius shows Schneider and Marshall to be a bit cowardly as compared to him by his defense of the as yet not formally defined traditional teaching that Jesus is God and demanding a Church formal definition that Jesus is God.

We need to act like Athanasius did, and not act like Schneider and Marshall, in demanding that the traditional teaching that a heretical pope can be deposed be formally defined by the Church.

Sadly, the sincere Schneider and Marshall are apparently like many good men in the Church in our time and I hope they proves me wrong. They speak well of the truths of the Church, but are afraid to act on those truths.

There is only one bishop in our time acting with the bravery of St. Athanasius. That is Bishop Rene Gracida.

All good, but fearful Catholics needs to hear the following:

 – Bishop Fulton Sheen:

“Cowards go to Hell. Never forget that. No matter what happens in your life never forget that basic truth.”
(CatholicMilitant.com, “Saints and Popes Quotes”)

– Pope Pius IX (1792-1878) 

“If a future pope teaches anything contrary to the Catholic Faith, do not follow him. (Letter to Bishop Brizen)”

– Francisco Suarez S. J. (1548-1617)

“If the pope gives an order contrary to right customs, he should not be obeyed; if he attempts to do something manifestly opposed to justice and the common good, it will be lawful to resist him; if he attacks by force, by force he can be repelled, with a moderation appropriate to a just defence. (De Fide, Disp. X, Sec. VI, N. 16)”

– St. Robert Bellarmine, S. J. (1542-1621) 

“Just as it is lawful to resist the pope that attacks the body, it is also lawful to resist the one who attacks souls or who disturbs civil order, or, above all, who attempts to destroy the Church. I say that it is lawful to resist him by not doing what he orders and preventing his will from being executed. (De Romano Pontifice, Lib. II, Ch. 29)”
[https://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2018/10/resisting-heretic-popes-classic-catholic-reflections.html]

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church.

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Obama DHS Chief Sounds Border Alarm: Population of Orlando Showing Up Every 2 Months

By Randy DeSoto
Published May 15, 2019 at 7:02pm

Wall Street Journal

Former Obama administration Department of Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson argued that with approximately the population of the city of Orlando being apprehended at the southern border every two months, the U.S. is definitely dealing with a “crisis.”

“We had 100,000 apprehensions in the month of March and another 100,000 in the month of April. That’s the highest it’s been in 12 years,” Johnson told Fox News host Neil Cavuto on Wednesday.

“Think of it this way: that is the equivalent of the population of the city of Orlando, Florida, showing up on our southern border in the course of two months,” he added.

President Obama’s former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on the illegal aliens flooding the U.S.: Equivalent to the population of Orlando showed up on the border in just 2 months4814:06 PM – May 15, 2019365 people are talking about thisTwitter Ads info and privacy

Johnson also affirmed the importance of a border wall at strategic locations to help address the crisis.

“We should not view a wall or a fence as a black and white issue,” he said. “Are there are places on the southern border where some form of barrier could be fortified or an existing barrier replaced or something of that nature? Yeah.”

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Additionally, Johnson expressed confidence that President Donald Trump’s recently named acting DHS chief Kevin McAleenan — who worked as deputy commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection during the Obama administration — has a “smart border security plan” ready to be implemented.

Johnson told Cavuto part of the current crisis has been created by the Flores court decision.

Under the 1997 Flores v. Reno settlement, federal authorities may only detainunaccompanied migrant children for 20 days, then they must be released to parents, adult relatives or sanctioned programs.

In 2015, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee, an Obama appointee, ruled that the Flores requirements apply to both unaccompanied minors and children apprehended with their parents. This update makes deporting families with children seeking asylum virtually impossible.

“The Flores decision has not helped frankly,” Johnson said. “That was a decision reached by a federal district court in Los Angeles in 2015. I was opposed to it then. I’m opposed to it now.”

The Hill reported that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave the Trump administration a rare immigration policy victory last week, ruling federal authorities can continue to require asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for the court to adjudicate their petitions.

The panel of judges issued a stay on a lower court ruling blocking implementation of the policy, while litigation concerning it proceeds.

The 9th Circuit found that DHS was likely to suffer irreparable harm if the policy was halted because it “takes off the table one of the few congressionally authorized measures available to process the approximately 2,000 migrants who are currently arriving at the Nation’s southern border on a daily basis.”

Cavuto asked Johnson if he stuck by his assessment — first made last month — that there is a crisis at the border, as Trump has been contending.

“It’s very definitely a crisis,” Johnson answered. “This is common sense. Two-hundred thousand people in two months on our southern border is a crisis.”

Texas Alliance for Life Dives onto its Own Sword, Should Die on It

by Peter Amos Cohen

Recently, Texas Alliance for Life (TAL) lobbied hard to defeat Senate Bill 2089 in Texas, a bill sponsored by Texas Right to Life (TRL). Senate Bill 2089 was to repeal the 10 day rule in current law, which is named Texas Advance Directive Act (TADA).

The leader of TAL, Dr. Joe Pojman, is a disgruntled former member of Texas Right to Life. He broke away from Texas Right to Life to found a new “pro-life” group which was to be the anti-conservative “pro-life” group, or Texas Alliance for Life (TAL). The problem is that its anti-conservatism has compromised its pro-life stance from its inception. TAL has defined itself in opposition to or in competition (not cooperation) with TRL. It has made a mission out of opposing TRL initiatives, usually on the basis of an alleged “legal imprudrence” (e.g. “this will get struck down by a higher court”), sometimes even going so far as to testify in the Texas Congress side by side with the likes of Planned Parenthood against TRL legal initiatives. Since Texas Right to Life is the oldest, most well established pro-life group, one would think that opposition to it by a newer pro-life movement would entail cutting-off the branch that it sits on, since members of the pro-life movement must be concerned with unity and unity necessarily requires that the newer and future growth in the movement would be in harmony with the former, past foundations. Yet TAL has successfully thrown out lifelines to the likes of the Texas Hospital Association (THA), the Texas Medical Association (TMA), and the Office of the Texas Conference of Catholic Bishops (TCCB), with big promises of being able to deliver them into the hands of each other, thereby providing a service to each.

What does the TCCB get? The TCCB gets remotely included in some of the policy deliberations of the THA ad TMA through the brokerage of Pojman and members of the office of the TCCB get to maintain their socialist/paternalistic/patriarchal leanings (failing to make the proper distinction between ecclesiastical and political governance). While I am all in favor of secular authority bending to give ecclesiastical institutions a voice in the guidance of moral matters, I am not in favor of Churches compromising themselves in order to gain that voice. That is pharisaism, plain and simple.     

What does the THA and TMA get? To these big secular powers, by having the name of the TCCB on their initiatives, they can nullify much of the pro-life opposition when they act against life and on behalf of their monetary interests.

Thus does Joe Pojman call the TCCB and the THA/TMA into a dirty bed for a disgusting mé·nage à trois. And thus does Joe Pojman survive by appealing to certain standing powers, while fracturing the unity and political force of the pro-life movement. Hence, his nickname, “Dirty Joe.”

While Dirty Joe has usually opposed TRL on the basis of legal imprudence, he recently claimed that their initiative, SB 2089, was anti-life. He supported the 10 day TADA law, against SB 2089. In doing so, Dirty Joe was true to his dirty form. What was his argument?

It was a compound of two things. First, TAL’s argument from doctors conscience rights is the most ridiculous argument. It’s a terrible misunderstanding of conscience rights. As Bishop Mulvey of Corpus Christi taught (at a conference in Houston), the “holy trinity” of medical decision making is 1) the patient, 2) the doctor, and 3) the hospital. All three must work together cooperatively. Current TADA law fails to protect the balance of patient autonomy and physician conscience protection (traditional to Church teaching) by giving, after 10 days, sweeping permission for doctors and hospitals to act without patient consent in end-of-life care, once the doctors and hospitals agree among themselves that certain circumstances are present, making medical care “unnecessary” or “inappropriate.” Informed consent of the patient is the final moral principle in medicine that is somewhat universally in place. It is also the patient’s conscience rights. TAL’s recent push will contribute to even its loss.

Nobody wants doctors and hospitals to provide whimsical treatment, and if his conscience dictates the doctor should leave the medical relationship. But medical decision making power should not be placed solely in the hands of the doctors and hospitals. Where to place medical decision making power is a different proposition from doctor’s conscience rights. Contrary to TAL, the doctor and hospital should not have sweeping power to eliminate the patient’s conscience rights (informed consent), but they should persuade the patient/family/surrogate of the appropriate medical course of action. In short, educate. Do not act unilaterally. This part of TAL’s argument plays into the socialist tendencies of TAL’s base, since it treats people as incapable of being educated for self-governance. Rather than rule themselves, people instead must be ruled by “experts.”    

The second part of TAL’s argument is that if patient consent is included in end-of-life medical decision making, that families will unintentionally harm their loved one’s by opting for unnecessary medical procedures. I grant that this may happen, in theory.  But it is asinine to make a law to prevent it. As the old saying goes, “hard cases make bad laws.” One should not take an extreme case, where the family truly cannot be properly educated to allow a natural death, and make policy based on it as if it is normative. The hospitals and doctors also can abuse end-of-life medical care as is evident from the recent case of Carolyn Jones (https://thetexan.news/update-woman-taken-off-life-sustaining-treatment-revision-to-law-passed-in-senate/) .    

In reality, the 10 day rule is not an expression of respect for the conscience rights of doctors or of care for the patient. That is a made up argument coming from the prostitution of Catholic thought by a TAL, a pro-life group that is happy to be used to mop the floor by the pro-death powers that be — as if they really care beyond the use. If we were in the Middle Ages, where the Church really had some control and coud oversee the actual use of this authority, then I might grant such paternalistic authority. At that time, maybe medical professionals might actually be formed properly to make the right decision. Proper formation is no longer the norm, however. While it is not perfect and may be abused, self-governance (informed consent in medical matters) is a last safeguard. The 10 day rule is about doctor’s consciences and patient care only in the minds of a very small group of people trying to be both socialist (which is by definition secular) and Catholic, who are only included in certain groups because their support of the 10 day rule will confuse the pro-life lobby.

Let’s be serious: the 10 day rule is a straight expression of the care rationing, death panel, medical utilitarian, bureaucratic mentality of Obamacare. By arguing for it, TAL offered a pro-life facade to pro-death legislation. It also lured the TCCB into prostituting itself to shill for the secular powers against life. TAL thereby dove onto its own sword. Having revealed yet again that it lacks a principled commitment to life, TAL should remain on its sword and die off. By all accounts, Joe Pojman is schmoozer. It would be good for his soul and for the pro-life movement if he would subject himself and use the talents he does have in the service of someone with principles. As Clint Eastwood in the character of Harry Callahan said, “a man’s got to know his limitations.”

MAY 13, 2019

The New Primitives

WILLIAM KILPATRICK

CRISIS MAGAZINE

The New Primitives

When a man ceases to believe in God, observed Chesterton, he becomes capable of believing in anything. It looks like we may now have reached the “anything” stage of human history.

As faith in Christianity recedes in the West, a strange thing is happening. Having shaken off belief in God, people are not becoming more rational, they’re becoming more gullible. They believe that babies in the womb aren’t really human beings, that same-sex “marriage” is the equivalent of real marriage, that there are roughly 52 varieties of gender, that boys can become girls, and vice versa. In general, they believe that wishing makes it so.

Rejection of God does not lead to a flowering of civilization, but rather to a primitivization. Many of the ideas that are now current are pre-scientific and even anti-scientific. Science is solidly on the side of those who say that babies are babies, and that boys cannot become girls, yet when science comes into conflict with today’s magical beliefs it is rejected out of hand. For many, the ultimate source of truth is not reason, or science, or God, but feelings.

It was belief in a rational God who created a rational and ordered universe that provided the main impetus for scientific study centuries ago. Christian and Jewish scholars thought it worthwhile to study the nature of things because the nature of things was considered to be rational and discoverable. Thus, the scientific revolution was a product of the Judeo-Christian world.

But suddenly all bets are off. For many, belief in the imperial self has supplanted belief in God and a rational world. The wants and desires of the individual self are paramount. If your 12-year-old daughter decides she’s a boy, you’d better go along with her desires because the reigning doctrine holds that her gender is a matter to be decided solely by her and her doctor.

Of course, the imperial self is not really imperial at all. Now that God is considered dispensable, the state has become the ultimate authority. As a result, the wishes of the individual are only considered legitimate if they coincide with the wishes of the state.

So what we really have is not simply a regression to magical thinking, but a merging of the primitive impulse with the modern totalitarian state. The mumbo jumbo ideology of transgenderism can only survive if it is backed by state power. But the new primitives don’t know enough history to realize that they live in an increasingly unfree society. Moreover, as long as they get their daily dose of sex and “soma” (marijuana, fentanyl, etc.), they don’t really care. However, there still remains a sizable number of Christians, Jews, and other believers in Natural Law who can see that the new normal is actually quite abnormal. Unless they spill the beans, the lies about the facts of life will be made mandatory. Everyone must be forced to believe. And liberal progressive primitives and their allies in the state will move to crush those who don’t comply.

Thus:

• Police in the UK are investigating individuals who challenge gender ideology on social media.
• A Canadian judge allowed doctors to give hormone treatments to help a girl “transition” to become a boy against her father’s wishes. The same judge later forbade the father from referring to his daughter as a girl.
• UK authorities threatened to take an autistic boy from his parents when they objected to sex-change treatments proposed by doctors.

The state not only reserves the right to decide your child’s sex, it now, apparently, thinks it has the authority to decide his religion. A regional court in Schleswig, Germany, imposed a fine on parents who refused to let their son go on a school trip to a mosque. Meanwhile, in neighboring Denmark, state authorities have threatened to take away the eight-year-old foster daughter of foster parents who had raised her from infancy. Their crime? The mother had expressed criticism of Islamic terrorism on her blog. The authorities said this showed poor judgment, and they called into question her ability to parent.

The rapid ascendancy of Islam in recent times is itself evidence of social regression. Though Muslims believe in God, he is not the same God that Christians believe in. Rather, Allah is a willful God who is not bound by the laws of reason. Like an absolute and capricious tyrant, his laws are arbitrary and subject to change. The remarkable lack of scientific progress in the Muslim world is simply the logical consequence of belief in this erratic God.

Because it borrows from Christianity and Judaism, Islam is an advance over most primitive religions, but in comparison to Christianity it is a decidedly primitive faith. It sanctions beheadings, amputations for theft, stoning for adultery, polygamy, subjugation of women, and even sex slavery. One might think that the new primitives would be appalled by Islam—especially because they consider the subjugation of women to be a great evil. But some taboos are more important than others, and one of the supreme taboos of our times is the injunction against judging other cultures. The sins of Islam can be wiped away simply by repeating the incantatory chant “They have a different culture.” The villager may now be a part of a global village, but he still thinks like a villager. The village chiefs and elders have decided that Christianity is a thing of the past, and that Islam is a vital part of the coming multicultural future. The villager nods his assent because he has no other points of reference. He is willing to believe anything the authorities say.

A society that elevates Islam over Christianity is a society that is taking a step back in time, yet that is the direction in which large parts of the West are headed. Churches in Europe are largely empty, but mosques are full. Many cultural observers predict that Islam will be the dominant religion in Europe well before mid-century. The ultimate irony of rejecting the Christian God is that you may end up with the God of Muhammad in his place.

In any event, our society seems to be taking the fork in the road that leads to a dark and superstitious past. For several decades now, educators have claimed to be teaching youngsters to think critically. Increasingly, however, the thought processes of Western citizens resemble the thought processes of their tribal ancestors in the bush and the savannah. More and more, you are encouraged to think of yourself as a member of an identity group—your tribe. You are not expected to think for yourself; you are expected to think as your group thinks.

This tribal thinking is not confined to college students and Democratic politicians. It has also infected the professions. Most professionals, after all, are graduates of group-think universities and doctrinaire graduate schools. So it should come as no surprise that they might have difficulty thinking for themselves, even when it comes to such basics as the differences between the sexes.

There is, for example, hardly any research evidence to support the use of hormones and surgery to help confused youngsters “transition” from one sex to another. And there is certainly no biological evidence.  From the biological perspective—that is, from the perspective of factual knowledge—the whole transgender project is an impossible one. Moreover, most of the research that is available shows that the “treatments” used in transitioning carry great risks to the physical and psychological health of children and teenagers.

Yet doctors and therapists continue to plow ahead with the transgender project despite its grave risks. Transgender ideology is the newest and most fashionable ideology. It is what the “best” people in the tribe attest to, so it must not be challenged. If you dare to oppose their agenda, they may well come after you or your child—not with pitchforks and torches, but with a court-issued summons.

The “brave” new doctors who recommend pumping children full of hormone blockers or mutilating their bodies are like the witch doctors of old. They mutter incantations (such as “social construct” and “gender dysphoria”), they wave their hypodermics to ward off skeptical thoughts, and, since they are considered the experts on everything from emotions to ethics, parents feel they have no choice but to let them go ahead with the ritual.

The word “primitive” is not necessarily a pejorative term. When applied to people who lived long ago or to people living today in isolated tribes in remote regions, it is simply a descriptive anthropological term for those who have never developed a civilization. But it’s another matter when civilized people fall back into primitive modes of thought and morality. In that case, the pejorative meaning is well deserved. They are, as Saint Paul said of those whose minds are darkened by sin, “without excuse.”

William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, gives us a picture of a rather rapid descent from civilization to savagery. Marooned on an island, all but a few of a group of English schoolboys are soon painting their bodies, wielding spears, and making offerings to an imaginary beast.

In the conclusion of the 1963 film version of the story, Ralph, the sole holdout for civilized ways, is being pursued by the pack of savage boys. Exhausted, he falls face down in the sand awaiting his fate. But when he looks up, he sees, towering over him, a British naval officer dressed in a dazzling white uniform—the personification of civilization, order, sanity, and security. And because Britain had not yet entered its post-Christian stage at that time, the officer might also be seen as a representative of God—the Christian God of justice and mercy.

Ralph begins to cry—presumably, for what has been lost and found again. So might we all cry over how much has already been lost of our Christian heritage. After we dry our tears, we must set about to regain it. The alternative is a rapid descent into darkness.

Editor’s note: Pictured above is a scene from the 1963 film version of Lord of the Flies.

Tagged as crisis of faith / unbelief, Gender Ideology, Lord of the Flies (1954), Natural Law, Parental Rights, transgender (gender-identity disorder)397

By William Kilpatrick

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

Equality Act Is Madness On Stilts

May 14, 2019

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the Equality Act:
 
The Equality Act is the most comprehensive assault on religious liberty, the right to life, and privacy rights ever packaged into one bill in the history of the United States. It passed the House Judiciary Committee last week and is scheduled for a vote this week, possibly on Thursday.
 
This act is based on the idea that sexually challenged men and women—those who think they can transition to the other sex—should be treated as if they were members of a minority race. There is no basis in either the natural law or the positive law for such a judgment: “gender identity” is not analogous to race.
 
Unlike race, which is a natural characteristic, “gender identity” is an unnatural condition. Moreover, the former is an ascribed attribute; the latter is an act of volition. They have nothing in common.
 
Here are 12 reasons why the Equality Act is so insane.

• It would mean that homosexuals and the sexually challenged would qualify for affirmative action. Though the 1964 Civil Rights Act explicitly did not allow for preferential treatment, it has been interpreted by the courts that way. Therefore, if homosexuals and the sexually challenged are included in this historic piece of legislation, they would get preferential treatment in hiring.
• The act would effectively gut the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, eviscerating important religious rights.
• State laws that protect religious liberty would be gutted.
• Freedom of speech, belief, and thought, as the U.S. Bishops have said, would be put “at risk.” Conscience rights are the most important of all rights. When they are attacked, all liberties are jeopardized.
• Taxpayer-funded abortions would become a reality.
• The bishops stress that “Houses of worship and other religious spaces will be turned into places of ‘public accommodation.'”
• Adoption and foster care providers would have their rights stripped.
• Catholic hospitals would no longer be allowed to govern as Catholic facilities, threatening healthcare for everyone, especially the poor.
• Starting in kindergarten, students would be indoctrinated in the LGBT agenda.
• Parental rights would be decimated.
• Men who transition to female could compete in women’s sports, effectively working against the rights of women.
• Privacy rights would be a thing of the past. As has already happened, a man who thinks of himself as a woman would be allowed to use the women’s locker room, parading around with male genitalia. In normal times, he would be arrested for indecent exposure.

If anyone thinks this is an exaggeration, check out what has happened to religious liberty in New Jersey and Ohio where Catholic hospitals have been targeted. Unless they agree to perform a hysterectomy on a woman who claims to be a man, they can be sued. The ACLU has been suing Catholic hospitals all over the nation trying to force them to adopt its anti-Catholic agenda. While it typically loses, this legislation will reverse that record.
 
All persons are equal in the eyes of God, and that certainly includes the sexually challenged. But no society grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition is required to sabotage its heritage in the name of truly bizarre notions of liberty and equality.
 
Those who fantasize that they are a member of the opposite sex, and take steps to achieve that result, suffer from a mental disorder. The research on this subject is clear. Years following sex reassignment surgery, the suicide rate spikes for those who undergo this operation. They need our help, and our prayers. What they don’t need is pandering or affirmation.
 
Even those radical feminists and lesbians who belong to the Women’s Liberation Front are opposed to the Equality Act. They are certainly more enlightened than the big corporations who are supporting it.
 
If the American people knew more about this act, they would be opposed to it by a large margin, and this is doubly true of parents. This isn’t about fairness—it’s about a war on religion, privacy, and common sense. The Equality Act is madness on stilts.

kassiblog.com

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UPDATE: Mrs. Jones Is Dying Right Now via TADA; SB 2089 Is More Important than EverPosted: 13 May 2019 06:11 PM PDTMany of us have talked and written about Mrs. Jones, the conscious woman who Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston decided they just did not want to treat anymore; not that her care was ineffective or harming her more than benefitting her. Well, today is the 10th day and as they said they would, they withdrew her ventilator. Not only that, if she is not dead by tomorrow, they will withdraw her dialysis.  Emily Kebodeaux Cook, of Texas Right to Life, has been trying to help the family. Unfortunately, Mrs. Jones could not be transferred in time and there were financial hurdles. The new news outlet, The Texan, covered the story again today in more detail.  Just a bit ago, Emily posted this update: This would not be legal if SB 2089 was passed. It will not save Mrs. Jones, but it could stop this in the future. There is very little time left in this session. I’ve heard that today might be the last day the Senate can vote on the bill, but I’ve also seen indications that we might have another day or two, but I’d not count on that. I do know that time is of the essence.  If the Senate does not pass it immediately, then the House cannot take it up. SB 2089 will die. Opponents are wanting this bill as dead as Mrs. Jones is going to be when Memorial Hermann is finished withdrawing her life-sustaining treatment. This must end. This session.  I also know that very few people actually call their Congressmen to voice their opinions about things. So when people do, they assume that there are even more of that viewpoint. The net result is that your one call or email count vastly more than your one vote come election time.  The phones and inboxes of our Texas Senators need to be flooded with calls and emails right this second. You can send an email easily using this form and it will go to your proper senator. The forces that oppose SB 2089 are in full swing and, frankly, more disgusting than ever in their support of involuntary passive euthanasia. They are claiming that patients will actually lose rights under SB 2089.  What rights would those be that are lost by SB 2089 which just patients them more than 10 days to find a facility and requires treatment until they can be transferred? That is the only interpretation of this that makes sense – if you have to oppose SB 2089 to “protect patient” rights – then logically, they are claiming rights are lost. That is not true. That is a lie.  Patients have no due process rights now under current law! I’ve talked about this many times.  Some are claiming that this bill will harm patients at the end of life: I ask that you do the opposite of what TAL says – that you to call Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick at that number and tell him to do the pro-life thing, stop euthanasia, and SUPPORT SB 2089. The Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops are claiming:  Remember, these are patients who want their care continued, such as Chris Dunn and Mrs. Jones. Some are unable to speak for themselves but their families are in the best position to know what they would want. (TAL is run by a Catholic and the TCCB and Catholic Health Association (another opponent of SB 2089 as I’ve written before) are presumably Catholic or run by or advised by Catholics. Read up on the Principle of Subsidiarity. I’ve written about it here, here, and here.) Remember, Sec. 166.046 overrides your Advance Directive and any Medical Power of Attorney you may have given someone. They don’t have to listen to you. If you’re in an 046 situation, they are not intending to or you’d not be in this quagmire. There is no one better able to decide what is in your best interest and what you would want than your family. And, no, contrary to what many of these opponents to SB 2089/proponents of the current involuntary passive euthanasia law say, these patients are not all in the situation where the patient is being harmed by the continued care. I discussed those scenarios before (see the footnote and the link in the footnote). That’s not what we’re talking about. But in the majority of these cases, the care is not being withdrawn because it is not working or harmful, but because it is working and those in authority don’t think the life is worth living; they’ve made a quality of life determination for you or your loved one. That’s not their job.   Here’s one more point I’m not sure I’ve made on this blog but I had this discussion on Facebook with the below-mentioned particularly vocal proponent of current law and a doctor’s right to decide whether you live or die and when. She made the same claim that the TCCB is – that the care will go on indefinitely. That’s just not true as a matter of logic and science…and common sense. What I said then was: Sometimes transfer takes time and is difficult. Many of these patients are going to die with their life-sustaining treatment in place as their underlying conditions overtake them. The families understand that and just don’t want the deaths hastened by imposing involuntary passive euthanasia on them. Thus, the care is not indefinite. Many will eventually be transferred especially if obstacles are cleared. Some will actually recover to a point where it’s not needed.  Currently, this very reasonable bill is trying to be killed by those who simply think they should decide when you live or die. They support euthanasia and have supported existing law in legal briefs before court. Don’t buy what they say now. One particularly vocal involuntary passive euthanasia activist who claims the mantle of pro-life asserts that getting two days’ notice, being able to attend the hearing, and being about “to go to court” are rights under current law. That there are a few things provided in the procedure do not make them due process rights. A family gets to sit there and be told what’s going to happen to their loved one against their will that ultimately is the withdrawal of their life-sustaining care which will thereby hasten their death. Those aren’t rights. That is certainly not due process which requires sufficient notice, the right tot be heard (attending is not being heard), the right to representation (I know for a fact that attorneys and patient advocates have been prevented from attending medical ethics hearings), the right to a tribunal free of conflicts of interest (that cannot occur as a matter of fact when all the board members are employees of the hospital or otherwise connected with it), the right to appeal (the right to go to court is to beg for a few more days within that limited 10 days requiring evidence you may not yet have; that’s not really going to court to address the merits and receive a review of what happened), etc. Due process is a specifically defined term under the law as I mentioned in the post linked above.  This is serious. Every one of us will end up in the hospital one day or have a loved one there with some serious illness or injury. How can anyone not relate to this and not want someone with this mentality calling the shots about pulling their plugs? I just still can’t understand it.  Remember, all of the alleged concerns of the opponents of SB 2089 and those who justify TADA – including the conscience rights for doctors – can be addressed in ways other than killing the patient that someone no longer wants to treat. They refuse to see this. They are dangerous. This law is dangerous. It is not pro-life, it is euthanasia in Texas. And once euthanasia begins, it expands. Remember what I talked about last time.  There is simply no way to justify this or characterize it as anything other than involuntary passive euthanasia.  Please pray for the Jones Family. Pray for Texas Right to Life and everyone there working to get SB 2089 passed, including its author Sen. Bryan Hughes. Please pray that those who oppose SB 2089, support TADA, and thereby support involuntary passive euthanasia are converted. Pray for the Senate including your Senator by name, even if you think they will not pass this. Pray anyway. Pray for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick that he will assert his influence as the leader of the Senate to move this legislation. Pray for its passage. Pray for the House to take it up and pass it. Pray for Gov. Abbott to sign it into law. Pray for the Culture of Life and its success. Pray that the Culture of Death be beaten back and defeated. Pray without ceasing.  Thanks for reading! ️☦ P.S. Incidentally, at least one well-positioned Catholic has taken to criticizing me for calling out the TCCB now that I’m not a Catholic anymore. (I’ve chosen not to post the screenshots here.) As you know, I publicly announced my conversion to Russian Orthodoxy in December. What I did not write then was that I did so in part because I anticipated just such a “response” to my advocacy. In fact, this person at least at one point was a board member of the organization I expected such an “attack” to come from. The response was a poor attempt at an ad hominem (a logical fallacy) and an example of the error of clericalism and the bandwagon fallacy, which, as you know, I’ve written about before in this context.  To state the obvious: I do not have to be a Catholic to call out Catholic clerics for creating yet another scandal for faithful Catholics to endure as they promote euthanasia. (I have many Catholic friends. Not a single one of them supports TADA or the Bishops on this. A number of them aren’t certain they will remain Catholic as they’ve had more than anyone should have to endure of scandals, including this one. They do not like this either. They are just not all called to say so publicly. But the idea that everyone does as the Bishops say on this matter is completely incorrect. The Catholics I know are fully aware of their moral obligation to understand what the RCC teaches and apply it correctly to each context. They have done the proper analysis and reached the same conclusion I did – SIX YEARS AGO – when I was still a Catholic who thought that the Bishops might right the ship on this (among other things).)  To put it another way: Do we have to be abortionists to oppose abortion and call out other abortion proponents and abortionists? Do you see how illogical this is?  A Christian or pro-life justification for TADA cannot be found. (And, by the way, none was offered here, except that the Bishops are right.) We simply don’t involuntarily passively euthanize people. We just don’t. We don’t treat humans like animals. It’s dehumanizing. It’s immoral. It’s unethical. It’s unconstitutional. And, as I said in December, I’ll call out any person or group that does this. My religion has nothing to do with it except that it has taught me right from wrong and a consistent life ethic that I have chosen to take into the Public Square. But I know others who argue from a secular position, as I do from time to time as well, and we are just as correct from that standpoint. All life has value. All life should be protected.  We err, if we are to err at all, on the side of life. Always.

Be Good Bankers

Michael Pakaluk

TUESDAY, MAY 14, 2019

“We must carefully practice what the Savior of our souls was accustomed to say, as the ancients have informed us, ‘Be good bankers,’” writes St. Francis de Sales in his Introduction to the Devout Life (III.22).

The “ancients” he refers to include St. Clement of Alexandria, St. Jerome, and Origen, all of whom report that Jesus used to say this. It’s one of the few well-attested sayings of Jesus outside the canon of Scripture.

Besides, it rings true and has some resemblance to sayings in the Gospels: “Trade with this [talent] until I return” (Lk. 19:13); “How does a man profit if he gains the whole world at the price of his soul?” (Mk 8:36); “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went his way, and sold all that he had, and bought it,” (Mt. 13:45-46); and “Use unrighteous mammon to make friends for yourself,” (Lk 16:9).

All these sayings reveal that Jesus liked to use skillful trading and shrewd investment as a model for prudence in discipleship.  One wonders whether these various images somehow went back to St. Matthew’s calling, just as images of fishing and fishermen went back to the calling of St. Peter and St. James.

St. Francis gives a particular meaning to “Be good bankers.” He says that it means we should sift out the good from the bad in our relationships: “That is, don’t take in counterfeit money along with the good. . . .Why should we indiscriminately absorb a friend’s tares and imperfections along with his friendship?”

St. Clement, in contrast, gives the saying a very general sense.  Astonishingly, he says that Jesus was recommending a “true dialectic,” of the sort which Plato wished to find, which is a general ability to sift out true from counterfeit, good from bad:

This true dialectic is the science which analyses the objects of thought, and shows abstractly and by itself the individual substratum of existences, or the power of dividing things into genera, which descends to their most special properties, and presents each individual object to be contemplated simply such as it is.  Hence, it alone conducts to true wisdom.

Clement ostensibly would make those well-trained in Christian philosophy the best “bankers” of all.  They can best tell counterfeits and recognize a truly “good deal.”

St. Francis introduces this remarkable saying in a telling way.  It is not something that “Jesus” or “the Lord” said, but specifically the “Savior of our souls” (le Sauveur de nos ames) – the only time, in fact, that St. Francis uses this mode of reference in his book.

Why is this telling?  Because it makes sense that we would be asked to take good care of something that was purchased for us at great price.  “Empti enim estis pretio magno! (1 Cor 6:20), you and I have been “bought at a great price.” We must bring into our life, to make them our own, the life and death of Christ” (St. Josemaria, The Way of the Cross, Station 14).

The soul is something Jesus has saved from eternal loss by his very death: now you save it by your prudence.

It’s typical to depreciate these days the contrast between body and soul.  Isn’t the Scriptural distinction, rather, between “spirit” and “flesh”?  Doesn’t talk of a soul seem too close to the harmful dualism of Descartes?   But one merit of the older way of speaking is that people could easily see that the soul is something we “have,” which we can be exhorted to take care of, just like any other possession.

What do I mean?  Well, consider this.  A human being is rightly defined as a unity of body and soul (just as in the Real Presence one finds the “body, blood, soul, and divinity” of Christ, CCC 382).

But when we die, our body surely does not survive right then. Only the soul survives.  This soul, again, is not the entire human being; thus it is only a part.  And in Christian wisdom we find that the life of the whole man now is understood as directed toward the guiding to safety, upon death, of this “part.”

Just consider some representative teachings in the Catechism. The soul is something we are endowed with. (CCC 1703)  God immediately creates our soul and entrusts it to us. (CCC366)  At death, “Each man receives his eternal retribution in his immortal soul at the very moment of his death.” (CCC 1022)  Sanctifying grace specifically perfects the soul. (CCC 2000)

Classical philosophers used to distinguish between “external goods” such as wealth and “internal goods,” which included the body and the soul. Being a good banker for them would have meant trading external goods for internal, and goods of the body for those of the soul.  Plato actually has Socrates speak in this way in the Phaedo.  The Christian tradition is continuous with the classical tradition in this sense, not at odds with it.

The old reputation of Socrates is that he went around Athens telling his countrymen that they had souls and then asking them why they put so much care into making their bodies look good but no care at all into acquiring the virtues, which made their souls look good.

Can’t the same question be asked in Christian cities today?  You wash your cars once a week: do you ever cleanse your soul in Confession?  You exercise each day: do you pray even more frequently?  You look for the best foods: do you take care to receive the manna come down from heaven?  You keep adding to your retirement account: but what about your eternal account?

Have you invested only for short-term returns?  Do you continue to hold, irrationally, poorly performing investments?  Have you even learned how to recognize good investments?  Have you been a good banker?

The Investor who created and saved your soul wants to know.

*Image: The Parable of the Talents by Herman Janz Muller, 1580 [Mooney Art Exhibit, Charles City Public Library, Iowa]

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Michael Pakaluk

Michael Pakaluk, an Aristotle scholar and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is acting dean of the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. He lives in Hyattsville, MD with his wife Catherine, also a professor at the Busch School, and their eight children. His latest book, on the Gospel of Mark, The Memoirs of St Peter, is now available from Regnery Gateway.