Cardinal George Pell, RIP, Peace At Last!!!

My great respect for His Eminence George Cardinal Pell impels me to reveal that I had been privileged to enjoy a personal friendship with him. It began as a result of Roe v Wade. Shortly after that infamous decision of the United States Supreme Court Archbishop Coleman Carroll appointed me, in addition to my being the Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Miami, to additional responsibilities as Promoter of the Pro-life Apostolate for the Ecclesiastical Province of Miami which consisted of the Archdiocese of Miami and the suffragan dioceses of Saint Augustine, Palm Beach, Saint Petersburg and Palm Beach. I enjoyed such success in that work that a television station in Australia sent a television crew to Florida to do a documentary on our program of activities. The television program was subsequently aired throughout Australia. George Cardinal Pell subsequently wrote to me congratulating me on the success of our pro-life activities. In 1945 I was appointed the first bishop of the new Florida Diocese of Pennsacola-Tallahassee. Cardinal Pell sent me a letter congratulating me on my installation as Bishop of the new Diocese and the friendship was strengthened. May he Rest In Peace!!!

Besides being a champion for orthodox Catholicism in an age of liberalism, Cardinal Pell will be remembered primarily as the Prince of the Church who went to prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

• Sean Fitzpatrick

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After a hip replacement surgery in Rome, His Eminence Cardinal George Pell, 81, died unexpectedly on Tuesday of an apparent cardiac arrest. The passing of the Australian Cardinal should serve as a renewed moment of recollection for the Church regarding how the innocent can be punished for the malefactions of evildoers. 

Besides being a champion for orthodox Catholicism in an age of liberalism—speaking out often against homosexual “marriage,” abortion, and contraception—and who, as Vatican treasurer, occupied the third highest authority in the Church, Cardinal Pell will be remembered primarily as the Prince of the Church who went to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. 

In a society where truth is dismissed for what the late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI called the “dictatorship of relativism,” there is a similar threat to the existence of justice. Justice cannot thrive without truth, and even in the face of egregious wrongdoing and tremendous injury, truth cannot be rejected to pacify a public cry of blood for blood. The innocent must be safe, and guilt must never be a foregone conclusion, especially when priest victims stand to be created together with the victims of priests. Though he deserves far more than this, Cardinal Pell’s legacy will be laced with this associative and blind victimization. 

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The sex-abuse scandal of the Catholic Church has been a series of shocks over the years, and another and new shock occurred on April 7, 2020—but one less terrible, in a certain sense, than the previous ones. After a five-year legal battle and in a truly shocking turn of events, Cardinal George Pell was released from prison after the Australian High Court unanimously overturned his conviction on five counts of child sex abuse allegedly occurring in 1996. Cardinal Pell was an incomprehensible victim of a blind rage bred of victimization which holds the accused as guilty until proven innocent. 

Cardinal Pell’s acquittal ended the tragedy caused by a 30-year-old accuser who claimed the now-late Cardinal sexually abused him in 1996, making Pell the most senior church official to be publicly indicted of a child-related sex crime. Many joined the Cardinal in denying the allegations of this lone litigant and his questionable evidence—especially given the preposterous circumstances that described then-Archbishop Pell accosting and abusing two choirboys at Melbourne’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Yet after an initial trial resulted in a hung jury, the second trial found Pell guilty in 2018 and sentenced him to six years in prison.  

Cardinal Pell went from the court directly to prison, and there he remained for over a year while his steadfast legal aides appealed the conviction tirelessly, pointing out the unfeasibility of the alleged attack given the conditions and timeline. These lawyers soon brought the case to the Victoria Court of Appeals, giving more than a dozen reasons why reasonable doubt should have been entertained by jury members in the inherently implausible accusations. At last, the High Court’s irreversible ruling upheld that the jury failed to entertain appropriate doubt as to guilt given the evidence for each of the convicted offenses, ordering that the verdicts be replaced with acquittals.  

Cardinal Pell was cleared of the crime he never committed and could not have committed as presented, and his name was removed from Australia’s register of child sex offenders. Though this is a painful story, and one that is fraught with the bias of a world that has been damaged by the crimes of monstrous priests, it is a relief for all that an innocent man found justice. The Catholic world should remember Cardinal Pell now in prayer as he goes to his final rest after a tumultuous close to his life a martyr for the errors of deviant priests and vindictive people. 

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As His Eminence said after his acquittal, “The only basis for long term healing is truth, and the only basis for justice is truth, because justice means truth for all.” But when truth is not the primary goal of attorneys and diocesan settlement organizations—a situation born and bred by decades of disgusting abuse by priests who betrayed their priesthood—the innocent will be taken down with the guilty. 

Cardinal Pell stood with grace as he maintained his innocence without rancor or bitterness for his accusers, a victim of an infernal atmosphere of condemnation. The Church should suffer for her shortcomings in allowing the abuse of children by her wayward ministers, but she should not suffer injustices born of injustice. 

Cardinal Pell’s conviction was a miscarriage of justice, and his acquittal was a sign of hope that justice—and truth—can still force their way through the hatred and bigotry that influence and even possess the general opinion. That is the hope with which Cardinal Pell’s life should leave us. Though suspicion and contempt have been sadly and shamefully earned in many respects, that is not a reason to level censure at everyone who comes under accusation. 

Again, truth must matter, or else the innocent will continue to be crushed under the grinding cogs of a system that is more concerned with the appearance of justice and with payouts and non-disclosure settlements than with the truth. Cardinal Pell wrote that his trial was not a referendum on the Catholic Church or the sex-abuse crisis, but it still stands as a challenge for the Church to divorce herself from predisposed policies and penchants, abiding instead by a process conducive to discovering the truth despite optics or outcry. 

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Though Cardinal Pell was freed, he no doubt lost a great deal in the last years of his life—his reputation, his career, his savings, his dignity, and God knows what else. He was given his freedom back, which he lost for 13 months, but at what price? Perhaps these trials were his salvation. Again, God knows—and we pray. 

There should, without doubt, be satisfaction that an innocent and holy man was released from prison and that a Prince of the Church was cleared of unspeakable crimes. Yet, that an innocent man was slandered and imprisoned due to an environment of falsehood and hostility should be of deep cultural concern for Catholics and for all.  

Victims should be heard, make no mistake, and the injustices they suffered should be redressed. But the innocent should not fall with the guilty in a wide swathe of indifferent, spiteful mowing among those who have devoted their lives to Jesus Christ. 

Though his earthly suffering is over, Catholics must not allow Cardinal Pell’s story to be forgotten and should urge justice officials and politicians to prevent truth from being dethroned in order to maintain allegiance with a cultural prejudice and popular witch-hunts. The life of Cardinal Pell should be a source of healing, courage, and hope. May he have a good defense before the awesome judgment seat of Christ and rest in peace. 

[Photo Credit: Daniel Ibañez (CNA)]

• Sean FitzpatrickSean Fitzpatrick is a senior contributor to Crisis and serves on the faculty of Gregory the Great Academy, a Catholic boarding school for boys in Pennsylvania. 

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Doctor Who Has Euthanized Over 400 People Brags About ‘Most Rewarding Work’

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As Canada continues to take pride in its citizens’ increasingly opting to euthanize themselves, two euthanasia specialists have openly bragged about the staggering number of people that they have personally killed — with one calling it the “most rewarding work.”

During a seminar, Ellen Wiebe revealed that she had personally euthanized over 400 people — including one man who was rejected by the Canadian government’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) program, but had found his way to Wiebe, who then cleared him, flew him out and euthanized him.

According to the euthanasia specialist, the man did not have any serious illnesses, nor “the capacity to make informed decisions about his own personal health.”

Despite being incapable of making his own decisions, Wiebe was apparently perfectly okay with allowing the man to choose the most permanent decision possible — death.

“Most of the MAID is provided by people like me who have become specialists in MAID,” Wiebe went on to say later in the seminar, adding that “it’s the most rewarding work we’ve ever done.”

Wiebe declined to be interviewed about her comments made during the seminar, but she did respond with a comment saying that “it is rare for assessors to have patients who have unmet needs, but it does happen. Usually, these unmet needs are around loneliness and poverty.”

“As all Canadians have rights to an assisted death, people who are lonely or poor also have those rights,” she added.

Another euthanasia specialist, Stefanie Green, made similar shocking comments during an interview with the New Atlantis.

Green, a physician from British Columbia, Canada, has personally euthanized over 300 people, and says that “offering the option of an assisted death is one of the most therapeutic things we do.”

She noted in the interview that the job has gotten easier over time.

“Writing scripts and picking up lethal drugs and driving across town” isn’t a shocking ordeal to her anymore, Green said, adding that “it’s oddly okay for [her] to be doing that.”

As a former obstetrician, Green disturbingly decides to compare delivering babies to euthanasia in her book “This Is Assisted Dying,” claiming that there are similarities between the two “deliveries.”

“At both ‘deliveries,’ as I call them, I am invited into a most intimate moment in people’s lives,” she writes in the book.

Green also made sure to mention during the interview that the MAID procedure “is 100% effective.”

According to data obtained by the Daily Mail, California’s assisted suicide program euthanized 486 people in 2021, while the MAID program resulted in the deaths of a shocking 10,064 Canadians in the same year.

Compared to 2020, the number of people using Canada’s MAID program increased by nearly 2,500. The number of people euthanized in Canada has risen every year since 2016, totaling more than 31,000 deaths in the five-year period.

Canada’s MAID program has faced controversy recently, as it was reported that a 52-year-old Canadian veteran and Paralympian was offered euthanasia after she complained about delays in installing a wheelchair lift in her home.

“I have a letter saying that if you’re so desperate, madam, we can offer you MAID, medical assistance in dying,” said retired Army Corporal Christine Gauthier.

Gender Ideology Breaches the Gates of Medicine

• James O. Breen, M.D.

If you relied exclusively on the legacy media for the news, you’d never know that, recently, the Catholic Medical Association, along with other faith-and-reason-based medical organizations, issued an open letter to the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, and other medical advocates of “gender-affirming care” for minors suffering from gender dysphoria.  

In the open letter, the CMA and its co-authors appeal to all medical professionals’ common interest in minimizing suffering and improving care for these children and adolescents through the unbiased appraisal of existing medical evidence regarding causes and treatments, pointing out that “respectful debate and disagreement provide a basis for furthering scientific inquiry.” 

Indeed, the development of competing hypotheses among members of the medical community is the very process by which clinical concepts are challenged and either validated or disproven. That such open debate has not been permitted on such a controversial topic damages the scientific process, the trustworthiness of the medical community, and the welfare of the public. 

Rather than foster a spirit of dialogue, the medical establishment has anointed a small cabal of subject specialists who issue authoritative treatment guidelines on the gender care of minors based upon their own expert opinion, foreclosing attempts at engaging in a free and open debate. Much as the broader legacy media does not give air time to news such as the counterpoint proffered in the CMA open letter, the editors of prominent journals—including JAMA and the New England Journal of Medicine—stifle viewpoints that deviate from the “gender-affirming” positions they espouse in their pages. Rather than foster a spirit of dialogue, the medical establishment has anointed a small cabal of subject specialists who issue authoritative treatment guidelines on the gender care of minors based upon their own expert opinion.Tweet This

Readers who doubt this are invited to peruse the tables of contents of prominent medical journals for any articles expressing a divergent point of view. I recommend allotting ample time for this exercise, as diverging opinions on gender ideology in medical publications are rarer than hen’s teeth.  

Indeed, the unquestioning unanimity among journal authors in defense of the purported benefits provided by social transitioning, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and gender reassignment surgery—based on poor-quality observational studies and expert opinion—is uncharacteristic among medical academics, whose modus operandi usually requires a high degree of scientific rigor before issuing clinical treatment guidelines and recommendations.  

As an illustration of the weak state of the science on this topic, a representative example of evidence used to support the use of pubertal suppression in adolescents relies on survey data derived from a data set of 27,000 transgender adults recruited by activist organizations, comparing self-reported mental health outcomes between a cohort of a mere 89 patients who received puberty-blocking medications in adolescence and those who did not.

    Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, 81. He will turn 82 on January 16. Below, three of his recent texts    ”The family… is the place where that order is realized in Charity which is the necessary premise for the social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ.” —Archbishop Viganò, in a letter dated January 8 for the Feast of the Holy Family (full text below)    ”It is not surprising that the enemies of God also want to cancel his name, replacing it with parent 1 and parent 2, precisely to eliminate those blessed names, with which we can call Abba, Father none other than God, and Mother the heavenly Mother of God.“ —Ibid.    ”American Catholics find themselves today in the impossible situation of being represented by a political class that is revealing itself to be completely incapable of representing and expressing Catholic convictions in moral and religious matters.” —Archbishop Viganò, in a December 20 Declaration regarding “the recent gala at Mar-a-Lago” (the home of Donald Trump near Miami, Florida (full text at the end of this letter)        ***    Letter #15, 2023 Thursday, January 12: Three powerful letters from Archbishop Viganò    The past weeks have been crowded with events, emotions, transitions, celebrations, polemics, prayers.    We celebrated Christmas with joy, then learned with sorrow that Pope Benedict was suddenly “very ill.”    We approached the end of the year 2022, and the start of 2023, with hopes and resolutions, and on the 31st of December, we learned that Pope Benedict had died at the age of 95.    We were plunged into a mixture of gratitude for his life, and mourning for his death… of sorrow that he had confronted so many obstacle and that we had been unable to help him more, and of joy that he had “run the race” to the end, becoming an example of prayer and humility to all the world.    For four days the old Pope’s body, tiny, frail, grey, lay silent as well-wishers paid their last respects to him.    On the 5th of December was the solemn funeral Mass in St. Peter’s Square.    There were even polemics surrounding the funeral, what was said and not said there, and what was done and not done, but I do not wish to speak of them here.    Benedict’s body was laid to rest.    And at that moment, on January 5, an epoch came to an end…    ***    The end of an epoch    We may call it the end of the epoch of Pope John Paul II (1978-2005) and Pope Benedict XVI (2005-2013).    We could say that the John Paul II-Benedict XVI Epoch lasted from 1978 until 2022, 44 years. The two worked together, talked and planned together, and one succeeded the other in order to keep more or less the same line, like two brothers of the same family, two spiritual in brothers (though they had very different characters).    Perhaps it would be better, however, to call the epoch that ended on January 5 at Benedict’s funeral “The Epoch of Vatican II” or “The Conciliar Epoch.” The epoch when all discussions, debates, decisions, and plans in the Catholic Church — and especially in Rome — revolved around the question of moving from the Church’s past (the pre-conciliar period, prior to 1962) to her future (the post-conciliar period, from 1965 until today).    We might then date the epoch more broadly, to the period of the lives of Pope John Paul II (1920-2005) and Pope Benedict XVI (1927-2022) — so, from 1920 (the birth of John Paul) to 2022 (the death of Benedict).    Or, as I said above, to January 5, 2023, the date of Benedict’s funeral.     So, from 1920 to early 2023… 103 years — almost exactly a century.     The 42 years before the Council began (1920-1962), was a preparatory phase, when the events and currents of thought after the First World War and during and after the Second World War shaped minds and hearts.    Then came the four years of the Council (fall 1962 to fall 1965).    Then followed the 57 years since the Council, ending a week ago with Benedict’s funeral (1966-2023).    So we have:    42 years (1920-1962) + 4 years (1962-1965) = 46 + 57 years (1966-2023) = 103 years    The “Epoch of Vatican II.”    ***    Praise and blame    Now, with Benedict’s passing, that epoch is over.    We are in a new and different time, truly a “post-Conciliar Epoch,” a time in which we may begin finally to assess and benefit from the lessons learned in these past 103 years.    If that epoch wrestled (as it wished to wrestle) with how to make the Church more able to bear witness to the Gospel in the “modern” world(note that every age thinks it is the “modern” age, until its time too passes by), then it was a good and worthy struggle, though with mixed results.    Then we should praise the men of the conciliar age, and perhaps Benedict XVI chief among them…    If that epoch wrestled rather with how to change the Church, to alter its teachings and practices to be more “acceptable” to the “modern” world, then it was a misguided, unworthy struggle, also with quite mixed results.    Evil and unworthy because it is the unchanging witness, the unaltered faith, the same sacraments, handed down to us over 2,000 years of prayer and struggle and sacrifice, which constitutes the treasure, the mission, of each generation.    We are tasked to preserve and hand on what we have received.    And if Benedict XVI, whose funeral closed the epoch, finally understood this dialectic in all its stark clarity — as he seems to have understood, with his repeated, heartfelt efforts to explain that there were “two Councils,” the real Council and the mediatic Council, the Council that sought to explain the same faith in a new context vs. the Council which tailored elements of the faith in order to please a new world order— then he, Benedict, perhaps above all others of the “conciliar age,” should be honored and praised, and studied, and imitated.    ***    These questions are at the heart of the intellectual and spiritual battle that Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò — who will turn 82 on January 16, in four days — continues to fight, not with physical weapons, but in writings, with written words, exhortations and appeals, and in prayer.    Here below are three recent letters from the archbishop.    (1) The first is from January 8, and is a homily for the feast of the Holy Family. Naturally, this homily speaks about the family of Joseph, Mary and Jesus, but also about the attack on the family in this “modern” age.    (2) The second is from January 6, the Feast of Epiphany, concerning the coming of the Three Wise Men to worship the newborn King, and bringing him presents, representing the right ordering of worldly power toward the divine, toward God, and toward God’s son. Naturally, since that right ordering has been largely overturned in this “modern” age, the homily also speaks about the disorder of our times, and appeals for a renewed right ordering of human affairs.    (3) The third is a “declaration” from December 20, and is in some ways the most interesting of the three.    In it, the archbishop criticizes and takes his distance from one of the recent decisions of Donald Trump, a man the archbishop has supported in the past. But Trump recently made a choice that has perplexed some of his supporters, and Viganò in this third letter criticizes this choice.    This suggests (suggests) that, for the archbishop, in the United States and perhaps also in other countries of the West, some important truths and policies no longer being supported by any major party.    This means — it would seem — that the archbishop is saying that either these major parties need to be thoroughly reformed, or… that new, more coherent parties should be founded.—RM     Support the Moynihan Letters ET ERAT SUBDITUS ILLIS (link)Homily of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganòfor the Sunday in the Octave of the EpiphanyJanuary 8, 2023“And he was submissive to them.And her mother kept all these things in her heart;and Jesus increased in wisdom and age, and in favorwith God and with men.” —Luke 2:51Praised be Jesus Christ!    In the Octave of the Epiphany, the Holy Church celebrates the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, inserting this feast immediately after the manifestation of the divinity of Our Lord.    But why should we celebrate the memory of the Holy Family, a mystery of intimacy and affection to be guarded around the domestic hearth, precisely when the divine royalty of the Child King is shown, adored by the shepherds and the Magi who came from the East?     The reason is that the family — the natural one, certainly, but even more so the one sanctified by the Sacrament of Marriage, and to the highest degree the one in which the parents are the Blessed Virgin and the Patriarch Joseph, and the son is the Incarnate Word — is the place where that order is realized in Charity which is the necessary premise for the social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ.    It unites the spouses in the hierarchical relationship which has as its model the love between the Head of the Church and his Mystical Body. It prepares children — in this “microcosm” which is rightly recognized as the “cell of society” — to be good Christians, valiant soldiers of Christ, honest citizens, wise and prudent rulers.    Without the family there can be no well-ordered society; and without the Christian family there can be no Christian society in which the Lordship of Christ is recognized.    In the family, parents exercise their authority over their children in the name of God, and it is therefore within the context of God’s Law that this authority is legitimate and can make use of the graces of the state to find obedience in their children.    And this potestas — recognized by natural law — acquires a supernatural dimension when it is inspired by the infinite love with which the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father; a divine love, of such power as to be itself God, the Holy Spirit.    Just as man shows in his faculties — memory, intellect and will — the Trinitarian imprint of the Creator, so too the family is in some way a mirror of the Most Holy Trinity, because in it we find the creative power of the Father, the redemptive obedience of the Son, the sanctifying love of the Holy Spirit.    But we also find there the awareness of one’s own identity and traditions (memory), the ability to treasure them to face the present trials (intellect) and the bond of love between spouses and between parents and children (will).    When in the Pater noster (“Our Father”) we pray Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, we often do not pay attention to these words.     We ask that the Lordship of Christ be affirmed over the nations, because only where Christ reigns can peace and justice reign.     We ask that Christ reign because this is God’s will: “Oportet autem illum regnare donec ponat omnes inimicos sub pedibus ejus” (“It is necessary that He reigns, until He puts all enemies under His feet,” 1 Corinthians 15:25; see also Psalm 109:1).    But in order to reign in society, it is necessary that the governors and the subjects be good Christians; and for this to happen, the family is necessary, the “domestic church” and school for life in the civil consortium.     It is in the Catholic family that children are conceived, given birth, sanctified and educated, preparing them to be good Christians, honest citizens and future parents.     And it is in a misguided family — or in its diabolical parody of LGBTQ ideology — that they kill themselves in body and soul, pervert themselves, corrupt their children, causing their vices to corrupt the social and ecclesial body as well.    The epochal battle that we are fighting against the globalist Leviathan has as its aim — we know it well, by admission of its own supporters — the systematic destruction of every trace of the presence of Christ from souls, families and society, to replace it with the gloomy horror of the lordship of Satan and the reign of the Antichrist.    In this battle we are not only besieged by very powerful and unleashed enemy forces, but also by the fifth columns who, within the Church and even in government positions, support the infernal plan of the New World Order out of interest, out of blackmail or out of cowardice.     Abortion, divorce, euthanasia, gender theory, homosexualism and neo-Malthusianism are nothing more than tools with which to destroy society, but even before it the family, because in the family it is possible to realize that form of resistance to the dictatorship of single thought, thanks to which one can maintain one’s determination to courageously defend their faith and their identity.    It is no coincidence that, in the mass manipulation of the Great Reset conducted through the recent pandemic farce, the desire was to separate the elderly from their loved ones, parents from their children, grandparents from their grandchildren: the disappearance of these family and hierarchical relationships, with all that these relationships entail, was the obligatory step for isolating people, weakening them psychologically, weakening them spiritually, and thus being able to force them to obey.    On closer inspection, everything that this corrupt and barbaric world imposes on peoples is always oriented towards control and submission.     And just when freedom is exalted by shaking off the gentle yoke of God’s Law, we see the chains of Satan’s tyranny tighten around our wrists.    On the other hand, how could the Enemy love an institution — the family, in fact — made up of a father and a mother, who refer to the Heavenly Eternal Father who generates us to life and Grace, and to a Mother who is Advocate at the throne of her divine Son?     It is not surprising that the enemies of God also want to cancel his name, replacing it with parent 1 and parent 2, precisely to eliminate those blessed names, with which we can call Abba, Father none other than God, and Mother the heavenly Mother of God.    Nor is it surprising hatred towards the father figure, who is the archetype of God’s authority, so that even ecclesiastical and civil superiors are called fathers, and they must behave as fathers.    At the beginning of this meditation, I asked why the Church wanted to fix the celebration of the Holy Family to Sunday in the Octave of the Epiphany. We have the answer: the Holy Family shows us the model of the Christian family which is the necessary and indispensable premise for the divine Kingship of Our Lord to be made concrete in society, fulfilling the prophecy of the Psalmist, which we heard in the Epiphany Mass: “Et adorabunt eum omnes reges terræ; omnes gentes servient ei” (“And all the kings of the earth will adore Him; and all peoples will serve Him,” Ps 71:11).    Let us therefore invoke Our Lord, the Virgin Mother and Saint Joseph to protect our families, keep them in the Grace of God and enable them to cooperate with Faith and Charity in the plan of Providence.     If Christ will reign in them, he will also reign in civil society. Adveniat regnum tuum; fiat voluntas tua. (“Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done.)    And so be it.    + Carlos Maria Viganò, Archbishop8 January CCXXIIISactæ Familiæ Jesu Mariæ Josep      Archbishop Viganò: Everyone will face God’s judgement… even the architects of the Great Reset (link)    ”Even today we see the simple and the leaders of distant nations recognizing the Saviour, and conforming their private and public lives to Him, while world leaders prefer to gather in Davos for their globalist agenda, and the prelates of the Bergoglian sect think only of hiding their scandals, propagating synodality and encouraging the most unmentionable vices.” —Archbishop Viganò, in the essay below Homily of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò on the Epiphany of Our Lord Jesus ChristJanuary 6, 2023“Et adorabunt eum omnes reges terræ;omnes gentes servient ei.”(“And all the kings of the earth will adore Him; and all people will serve Him.”)—Psalm 71:11    PRAISED BE JESUS CHRIST    This solemn day is sanctified by three miracles: the adoration of the Magi, the changing of water into wine at the wedding at Cana, and the Baptism of Christ in the Jordan.     These miraculous signs show us the divinity of Our Lord and His universal Lordship over the cosmos, over nature and over us.    It is no longer only the shepherds who are called by the Angels to recognize the Verbum caro factum, but it is the whole human race, it is all creation that the voice of God himself calls to adore Him, to listen to Him, to obey Him.     A Lordship that some recognize with humble Faith and that others reject out of pride.    In the Martyrology on Christmas Eve, we heard sung the announcement of the Birth of the Savior secundum carnem (“according to the flesh”) placed in history with a multiplicity of precise and detailed chronological references.     The Toto orbe in pace composito (“entire world having been brought together in peace”) that the cantor solemnly pronounces shortly before raising the tone of his voice to mark the historical reality of the salvific event of Christ’s Birth refers to the triple triumph of Augustus, author and peacemaker of the Roman Empire.     A human and pagan triumph, certainly; but which was intended to prepare the eternal triumph of the Rex pacificus (“the King of Peace”), the immortal Emperor, the unconquered Sun.     For this reason, January 6, established as a civil holiday to celebrate the human glory of Rome, was chosen by the Church to celebrate the undying glory of Christ, King of kings and Lord of lords.    In this age of apostasy, marked by wars and conflicts caused by rebellion against God, it is difficult to understand how the earthly authority of the Emperor could constitute in the plan of Providence the necessary prerequisite for the coming of the Lord.     What seems to us more “normal” — so to speak — is the ferocious and ruthless response of Herod, who in his mad attempt to kill the Child King exterminated the children of Bethlehem whom we recalled a few days ago in the Liturgy.     Life and death, peace and war, light and darkness, grace and damnation: we constantly have before our eyes the two great alternatives for ourselves, for our families, for civil society.     And it is Christ who stands as a point of reference, as a stumbling block, asking us to make our moral choice, recognizing Him as our Life, our Peace, our Light, our everything.     If not, that is, if we renounce this choice, if we wanted to declare ourselves neutral in the face of the battle fought by the angelic hosts against the infernal powers, we would still be making a choice on which our salvation and that of the whole world depends.     We see it today: those who do not take the field under the banners of Christ inexorably end up being allies of His enemies, stand by watching as the innocents are killed by Herod, and before the manger refuse to adore the Lord, all in the name of a perverted concept of freedom and secularism in which the sovereign rights of God are denied or silenced.    And yet, precisely in contemplating the mysteries of this Most Holy Day, the Church shows us the need for the Epiphany, the manifestation of the divinity of Jesus Christ; a necessity for which Providence does not hesitate to move the stars, if a star can lead pagan scholars towards the light of Grace and conversion to the true God.     In fact, the simple and faithful adoration of the shepherds, made up of a humble and poor interiority, was not enough: it recalls the act of faith of the individual, of each one of us, but remains incomplete for the fate of the world if it is not accompanied by the public and official adoration of those who hold authority on earth, since this authority is a reflection of the authority of God, the Supreme Legislator and Judge.     As the Psalm prophesies: Et adorabunt eum omnes reges terræ; omnes gentes servient ei.    It is surprising, somehow, that it is wise men from the East who pay homage to the Child God, while the representatives of the imperial authority are absent, just as neither the king of Israel nor the High Priests appear; who also played a decisive role in trying and condemning the Lord to death.     Present at the moment of death, but absent at the moment of life.     Why do we not see the Roman Procurator, Herod, Annas and Caiaphas, the officials of the Sanhedrin and the scribes of the people around the manger, as we contemplate Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar kneeling before the Child intent on offering their gifts?    The answer is evident in all its simplicity.     The shepherds adored Christ with the trusting abandonment of the simple, who has nothing to offer but himself and the poor things of daily life and his humble work.     The Magi adored Christ thanks to His miraculous manifestation in the course of the stars, and their human wisdom, their ability to peer into the cosmos, led them to the timeless Sun, because they too, with humility, knew how to recognize the birth of God in the world.     Both were illuminated by Grace, the former through the announcement of the Angel, the latter through the signs of heaven.     Instead, Herod and the High Priests, who should have known very well the Messianic prophecies preserved by Israel, could neither see nor believe, because their first concern was power.     On the one hand, the temporal power, exercised under the domination of pagan Rome and forgetting that the Jewish Sovereigns were vicars of the only King of Israel, the Lord God of hosts; on the other, spiritual power, exercised in what today we would call “self-referentiality,” that is, concerned to preserve itself and keep the people in ignorance.     This is confirmed by the harsh rebukes and severe warnings of the prophets, by the mouth of which the Lord reminded His priests of their duties, while they were busy lengthening the prongs of the forks with which they held part of the sacrificial flesh for themselves, or while profiting from the trades of the money changers and merchants brought into the Temple.     Deaf to Grace!     Deaf is Herod, who should have seen in the little Jesus the ratifying of his own authority; deaf are the High Priests, who should have recognized in Him the promised Messiah, the Desired One of all peoples.     Both, significantly, had preferred to submit to the invader, rather than bow to the One who holds in His hand the fate of the world and time. Non habemus regem nisi Cæsarem. (“We have no king but Caesar!”)    The present situation is not very different in this regard from that time.    Even today the civil and ecclesiastical authorities refuse to worship Jesus Christ, or do so only in words plotting for His killing, for fear of losing their power.     Even today we see the simple and the leaders of distant nations recognizing the Saviour, and conforming their private and public lives to Him, while world leaders prefer to gather in Davos for their globalist agenda, and the prelates of the Bergoglian sect think only of hiding their scandals, propagating synodality and encouraging the most unmentionable vices.     Both support each other and recognize each other’s legitimacy. Both see Jesus Christ as an uncomfortable obstacle to the pursuit of their plans for power and domination. Yet, as we sing in the hymn of the Epiphany, non eripit mortalia qui regna dat cœlestia. “He who gives us heavenly kingdoms does not ravish earthly ones.”    But if on the one hand the Magi, with their tribute of Faith, have been able to publicly adore the King of kings, having nothing to fear for their authority; on the other hand, the rulers who are rebellious and indocile to God, not recognizing the divine origin of the power they exercise, place themselves against His Lordship and also against their subjects, transforming wise and just government into an instrument of hateful tyranny.     This is how the prophet Jeremiah expresses himself against them:    26 For among my people there are wicked people who spy like lurking hunters, they set traps for men.     27 Like a cage full of birds, so their houses are full of deceit; therefore, they become great and rich.     28 They are fat and wicked, they go beyond the limits of evil; they do not defend justice, they do not care for the cause of the orphan, they do not do justice to the poor.      29 Should I not punish these sins? Oracle of the Lord. Should I not take revenge on a people like this?     30 Terrifying and horrible things take place in the land.     31 The prophets foretell in the name of lies, and the priests rule at their behest; yet my people are pleased with this. What will you do when the end comes?    Listening to these words of Sacred Scripture, we wonder if they are not addressed to the powerful of this world, to the members of the globalist elite and to those who serve them out of cowardice, self-interest, and obsequious complicity.     And to those who, established in authority in the Church to feed the flock entrusted to them by the Lord, abuse their power to govern at the nod of the prophets of the New World Order, who prophesy pandemics and emergencies of which they are ruthless architects.    ”What will you do when the end comes?” the Lord asks.     Will you create new emergencies, new crises, new pandemics, new wars with which to keep the people subjugated?     Will you continue to exterminate innocent children, to render fathers and mothers sterile, to defraud the worker of his reward, to corrupt the young, to kill the sick and the elderly because they are considered useless for your own vile interests?     Will you barricade yourselves in your fortresses, hoping to escape God’s wrath and your just chastisement?     What will you do, servants of the Great Reset, when your masters have to flee into their lairs and hide in the bowels of the earth?     Do you think you can sell yourself to a new owner as you have done so far?     Poor, miserable, deluded ones.     The terrible day of the Lord will come for everyone, and also for you: first with the particular Judgment, and then with the universal Judgment.     If earthly justice stands idly by and watches your crimes passively because it is subservient to you, Divine Justice will instead be inexorable and terrible, so that your public sins against the Majesty of God and against the man whom He created in His image and likeness, and whom He redeemed with His own Blood, do not go unpunished.     And if our poor strength fails to overcome your conspiracies, know that each one of us, every faithful one of the Holy Church, every single good soul is praying, fasting, and doing penance, asking for the intervention of the Lord, the King of the Nations, whom you refuse to recognize, adore, and serve.     What will you do when the end comes?    On this day of the Epiphany, when we celebrate the public manifestation of the divine kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the public tribute of the Magi to His universal and eternal Lordship, let us also renew our offering.     It is a poor and miserable offering, because it comes from us who have nothing but what Providence has granted us.     And yet it is a precious offering, if presented by Our Lady, Mary Most Holy, the Queen Mother who is our Advocate at the Throne of the Son.     It is an infinite offering when it rises to the Majesty of the Father through the hands of the pure and holy Victim, the High Priest, the Eternal Pontiff who renews the Sacrifice of the Cross in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.     Let us place our penances at the foot of the altar, so that they may become the gold of kings; our prayers, that they may ascend to heaven like the incense that priests burn to God; and our fasts, so that the Holy Mass may convert them into the myrrh of sacrifice.     And we ask the Child King to convert those who hold authority both in civil society and in the Church, who find themselves today having to choose whether to follow the star to Bethlehem to worship Him, or to ignore His Birth in order to avoid His will and wage war against Him.    And so may it be.    + Carlo Maria, Archbishop    January 6, 2023 DECLARATIONof Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganòregarding the recent gala at Mar-a-LagoDecember 20, 2022    By Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò    A large scandal has been created, as well as discouragement, upon learning the news of the gala event hosted by President Donald J. Trumpfor openly homosexual supporters of the Republican Party.     This endorsement of LGBTQ ideology is even more serious if one considers that, only two days previously, Joe Biden signed the “Respect for Marriage Act” which recognizes the legal validity of so-called homosexual marriages in the United States, in violation of the Natural Law and also the Law of God.    The Democratic Party is totally anti-Christian and obstinately determined to implement the globalist agenda of the New World Order.     On the other hand, the Republican Party is recklessly pursuing a minority of voters who are indulging in lifestyles that are contrary to the Commandments and to the common good.     American Catholics find themselves today in the impossible situation of being represented by a political class that is revealing itself to be completely incapable of representing and expressing Catholic convictions in moral and religious matters.    This causes voters to become disaffected, which is added to electoral fraud and scandals that are emerging about media censorship and the manipulation of electoral consensus.    Up until now, certain aspects of the political platform of the Republican Party were able to be overlooked to some extent due to the much more serious threat embodied by the Democratic Party.     But it is now evident that the action of the deep state has contaminated the entire political elite without distinction, even involving Donald Trump, who up until now seemed to be a source of hope for the future of the United States.    A nation that offends the Law of God cannot hope to be blessed by the Lord, and those who support sinful lifestyles ought to think of the Judgment that awaits them rather than pleasing those who are corrupt in a calculated effort to win votes.     This nonchalance in political action by Republicans is no less harmful than the open opposition to the perennial Magisterium of the Church on the part of Democrats.    I urge American Catholics to pray, asking the Lord to enlighten politicians of sound principles, urging them to fight with courageous commitment for the defense of the Natural Law and the Commandments of God.    + Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop,    former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America    December 20, 2022

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If Francis Catholics think Vatican II defined dogma, here is Pope Benedict XVI’s answer to them

January 11, 2023

Edward Feser

@FeserEdward

Dawn says: “I trust the Church when it says the pope, even when not teaching infallibly, can’t teach error when teaching on faith & morals.” But the Church does not teach this and it is utter nonsense. “Not teaching infallibly” logically entails “could be teaching error.”

Quote Tweet

Dawn Eden Goldstein 

@DawnofMercy

·

Aug 28

Replying to @DawnofMercy@FeserEdward and 5 others

…I see as following Lumen gentium 25 & the teaching of Vatican I on papal indefectibility (see @FastiggiR’s comments here: https://patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2021/03/papal-indefectibility-dr-fastiggi-vs-fr-z.html…). In other words, I trust the Church when it says the pope, even when not teaching infallibly,… 3/x

1:14 PM · Aug 29, 2022·Twitter Web App

Roma Locuta Est (Steven O’Reilly)

Lumen Gentium Destroys Benepapism in Toto

If Francis thinks Vatican II defined dogma, here is Pope Benedict XVI’s answer to them:

The Testimony of (former) Pope Benedict XVI

(Former) Pope Benedict XVI, as Cardinal Ratzinger, also stated that Vatican II was not infallible:

[T]here is a mentality of narrow views that isolates Vatican II …. There are many accounts of it, which give the impression that from Vatican II onward, everything has been changed, and what preceded it has no value or, at best, has value only in the light of Vatican II. … The truth is that this particular Council defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain on a modest level, as a merely pastoral council; and yet many treat it as though it had made itself into a sort of superdogma which takes away the importance of all the rest. note [https://catholiccandle.neocities.org/faith/vatican-ii-is-not-infallible.html]   

National Insider

After Elon Blows Lid off of Twitter Censorship–Biden Gets Hit With Major Lawsuit

After Elon Blows Lid off of Twitter Censorship–Biden Gets Hit With Major Lawsuit

In the last few weeks, Elon Musk has thrown social media–and Washington–on its head. Musk released thousands of internal documents from former Twitter executives, revealing that the company was not only censoring users but doing so at the request of the federal government.

Top execs were colluding with the FBI and other agencies to suppress the free speech of American citizens. All to protect the political agenda of Democrats in D.C. But we’re only at the start of this unfolding drama. Hot off the heels of these revelations comes news of a new lawsuit. And it’s setting its sights on Biden himself.

The discovery phase of a free speech lawsuit from GOP state attorney generals, represented by the  New Civil Liberties Alliance, has revealed that the Biden administration pressured social media companies, including Twitter and Facebook, to censor users online who were posting information the White House deemed “Covid misinformation.” […]

“Newly released documents show that the White House has played a major role in censoring Americans on social media.”

“Email exchanges between Rob Flaherty, the White House’s director of digital media, and social-media executives prove the companies put Covid censorship policies in place in response to relentless, coercive pressure from the White House—not voluntarily,” reports the Wall Street Journal. [Source: The Post Millennial]

This is really bad for Joe. Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt along with Louisiana’s AG is bringing a lawsuit against the Biden administration. They have revealed communications between Biden’s director of digital media and various social networks. Biden’s man was pressuring these companies to censor users who questioned the administration’s COVID narrative.

In fact, the White House went so far as to censor Americans, that these companies didn’t do it voluntarily. They were coerced. This is an ugly violation of the First Amendment. Not only is the government not allowed to silence our free speech, but it cannot force private companies to silence us.

It appears that Flaherty bullied Facebook into censoring the posts and comments of those who worried about the COVID vaccines. Biden had a deep interest in forcing Americans to get the shot, even though many did not trust it. Biden even went as far as to threaten the jobs of millions of Americans with his mandates–which were, thankfully, struck down in the courts.

But behind the scenes, one of his goons was working to take down any content that revealed the dangers of these vaccines. Today, plenty of data is coming out suggesting that most Americans shouldn’t get a COVID shot. Some data might even suggest that these shots are harmful to most.

Yet Biden was trampling our First Amendment rights to push this vaccine, all so Big Pharma could get our tax dollars.

If that is not grounds for an impeachment probe, I don’t know what is.

Crenshaw Loses Chairmanship To Mark Green

https://decide.dev/lad/13456293297883750?pubid=ld-1168-5464&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Finformingamerica.com&rid=&width=696

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) has lost his bid to chair the House Homeland Security Committee after his “terrorist, grifters and performance artists” comments that were directed at House Republicans who opposed the leadership of now-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).

Members of the House GOP rejected Crenshaw’s application for the role, with the House Steering Committee tapping Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) as his alternative.

Crenshaw drew complaints from House Republicans when he labeled some GOP colleagues terrorists for opposing McCarthy as House speaker and delaying the start of the new Congress. Crenshaw also derided his colleagues as “grifters” and “performance artists” as the House speaker saga raged on.

https://decide.dev/lad/13456294740724326?pubid=ld-315-4258&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Finformingamerica.com&rid=&width=696

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Crenshaw, however, apologized for his “terrorists” remark on Sunday while adding that his use of the word was a “turn of phrase.”

Crenshaw, a war veteran, also came under heavy scrutiny from his Republican colleagues when he supported the red flag laws and a bill that sought to fund state immunization information programs. Conservatives have described the bill as “vaccine databases.”

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Green said he would use his new leadership position on the committee to fight for a strong and secure border.

“For the sake of our national security and homeland security, we must secure our border,” Green said. “We have no choice. We will empower our brave CBP agents to do their jobs and hold President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas accountable for the crisis they created.”

Green, a physician and three-tour combat veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq, had previously called on Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to resign over his mishandling of the border.

Green added that Mayorkas has failed to uphold his oath of office “almost too many times to count” despite only being in office for a short time.

“The first and most glaring failure of Secretary Mayorkas has been his refusal to enforce immigration law,” Green said. “For the third time since he has been in office, the number of migrants crossing our southern border surpassed 200,000 in only one month’s time.”

Green’s committee oversees border security and cybersecurity. It is also the oversight committee for the Department of Homeland Security. Green will take over from Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), who chaired the committee when the Democrats had House Majority.

Shh! Shh! The Classified Story of the Pot-Kettle-Black President 

Donald Trump’s greatest antagonist on mishandling classified documents himself mishandled classified documents. 

by DANIEL J. FLYNN

January 11, 2023, 12:06 PM 

President Joe Biden (The White House) 

As Americans separate, do we know

the final consequences of what the

diversity, equity, and inclusion 

tribalism truly entails?

  

By: Victor Davis Hanson

American Greatness

January 8, 2023

“Despite being Black, he [Rep. Byron Donalds] supports a policy agenda intent on upholding and perpetuating white supremacy.”—Representative Cori Bush (D-Mo.)

“Larry Elder [former candidate for governor of California] is the Black face of white supremacy. You’ve been warned.”—Erika Smith, Los Angeles Times columnist

America is an increasingly multiracial society. Despite its early history of slavery and racial segregation, and ongoing bias and tensions, the United States remains one of the few contemporary multiracial constitutional systems that have actually worked. Yet recently few have appreciated that achievement.

Usually multiracial nations and empires—Yugoslavia, the former Soviet Union, the Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires—require some level of coercion incompatible with a democratic constitution to force calm. Brazil, India, Lebanon, Nigeria, and Kenya may be currently multiracial democracies in theory, but in fact, they are often sectarian and tribal cauldrons.

In most such places, pride, solidarity—and even safety—are only found through common religious, ethnic, and racial bonds that become all-encompassing. The individual’s primary allegiance to each particular warring group inevitably becomes incompatible with every other’s overriding loyalties.

The United States is insidiously nearing that abyss. It has all but renounced its old commitment to the melting pot and a “content-of-our-character” ideal of assimilation and integration within a common culture. But as we obsess over race and accordingly separate, do we really know the final consequences of what the diversity/equity/ inclusion tribalism actually entails?

The first rule of tribalism is that the racial or ethnic collective superimposes solidarity over the individual, who then becomes a mere cog in the racial-political wheel. Conservatives such as Larry Elder or Byron Donalds become especially despised as examples of successful individuals who reject tribal labels and loyalties. Are LeBron James, Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.), and Representative Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) all to be black comrades first and quite different individuals second—if at all? In the same manner, do Adam Schiff, Devin Nunes, Donald Trump, and Mark Milley all share identical and overriding loyalty to “whiteness,” to the degree that we forget about their individual personalities?

One strange aspect of this new racialization is a post-Al Sharpton, post-Louis Farrakhan growing exemption accorded to elite and privileged minorities to stereotype others—blacks, though more often whites—in toxic, sometimes repulsive fashion. If embraced by any others, such hatred would be career-ending. A few examples suffice:

In a 2021 video, Brittney Cooper, an associate professor of women’s and gender studies and Africana studies at Rutgers University, claimed that white people were “villains.” She predicted that “whiteness is going to have an end date,” and she grew a bit heated in her desire to hasten that inevitable “end date” with the rallying cry: “We gotta take these muthaf—ers out.”Cooper did not explain the methodology by which America will “take out” white people.

Earlier, Texas A&M professor Tommy Curry earned some temporary buzz by casually stating in a class, “Today I want to talk about killing white people in context.” In a much-watched video, he also matter of factly opined, “In order to be equal, in order to be liberated, some white people might have to die.” We might call this new genre “snuff racism,” in which the new racism legitimizes eliminationist rhetoric.

But as a precursor to what, exactly?

In a lecture sponsored by the Yale School of Medicine, psychiatrist Aruna Khilanani gushed that she “had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step.”

We are told by the diversity industry that “words matter”and have “consequences.” Perhaps they do, given that such violent trash-talking of obscure academics can filter into the larger society. Is that why “The View” co-host Sonny Hostin, resorting to once-taboo Hitlerian arthropod imagery, recently compared white suburban women to cockroaches and Republicans to insecticide: “I read a poll just yesterday that white, Republican, suburban women are now going to vote Republican. It’s almost like roaches voting for Raid, right?” Substitute “black” for “white” and Hostin would be out of a career under the rules of her own cancel culture.

Whoopi Goldberg on the same show reduced the Holocaust into an intramural war between “white people”; her convoluted “apologies” only confirmed that she was historically ignorant and deeply prejudiced.

Not too long ago Damon Young, an occasional New York Times contributor pontificated, “Whiteness is a public health crisis. It shortens life expectancies, it pollutes air, it constricts equilibrium, it devastates forests, it melts ice caps, it sparks (and funds) wars, it flattens dialects, it infests consciousnesses, and it kills people . . . .”

If that were true, then I suppose Young should call Sonny Hostin for the Raid spray, Professor Cooper for the take-out solution, or Dr. Khilanani for a revolver.

The elite pundit and racialist Elie Mystal infamously wrote, “I can, more or less, only deal with whiteness when I want to . . . White people haven’t improved; I’ve just been able to limit my exposure to them.” Lester Maddox or Bull Connor would have nodded in approval.

Mystal’s antebellum choices loudly to self-separate are his own. But meanwhile, his neo-segregation views accelerate and encompass everything from racially set-aside college “theme houses” to selecting roommates on the basis of race. Rarely has Mystal’s Plessy v. Ferguson utopianism been more openly resurrected than at an off-campus U.C. Berkeley student dormitory. Their residents were proudly warned to exclude entrance on the basis of race: “Many POC moved here to be able to avoid white violence and presence, so respect their decision of avoidance if you bring white guests. White guests are not allowed in common spaces.”

How, in 2023, such apartheid rules are allowed by quasi-public housing reflects just how pervasive and venomous woke orthodoxy permeates society, and how bankrupt appeasing institutions have become.

Of course, to enforce this sort of “white guests are not allowed” apartheid, segregationists will eventually have to revisit and consult past handbooks of their racist kindred spirits to figure out the occasional borderline cases. Have the Berkeley racists yet determined whether a black resident could bring in a half-white guest? Or whether a blond-haired, blue-eyed Spanish-speaking Argentine may enter through the front door? Is a gay or disabled white intruder allowed in the back entrance?

Note how class considerations disappear. And why not, given the most vehement racial incendiaries are so often among the wealthiest and most privileged of all Americans? By definition, an Oprah Winfrey or an Ibram X. Kendi are said to be victims. The Indiana Uber driver, the Modesto waitress, and the Anchorage custodian become their victimizers, simply by virtue of their shared whiteness—or rather their “white privilege” that has apparently earned them far more money, privilege, and influence than the victimized Winfrey or Kendi.

In a multiracial society, who-is-who is increasingly impossible to ascertain, given intermarriage and our labyrinth of races, genders, sexual orientations, religions, and ethnicities. As a consequence of both racial rewards and stigmatization, opportunists will continually create either new racial personas, à la Elizabeth Warren or Rachel Dolezal, to monetize racial preferences, or continually seek advantage in victimhood by citing endless micro-oppressions or indeed inventing altogether discriminations, in the fashion of the Duchess Meghan Markle.

The problem is not just determining what tribe, half-tribe, or quarter-tribe to which we each belong, but calibrating the hierarchies of particular grievances that each claims amid the labyrinth of competing tribal oppressions.

The force-multiplying effects of all these factors have now become absurd: is the half-Brazilian with a Hispanic last name a “Latino” and does he have a shared reparatory claim on historic “discrimination” against Mexican Americans?

Can the half-Haitian, half-Irish immigrant, claim to be 

1) black, and 

2) a victim of oppression 

by piggybacking onto the black American experience?

So ancient efforts to sort out racial, religious, or ethnic differences for the purposes of discrimination and worse are the woke’s ultimate model—from the Confederacy’s genealogical tables to root out the “one drop” to the Third Reich’s resort to yellow stars to ascertain who was Jewish. But any self-sustaining tribal categorization must descend into Orwellian paradoxes. Darker-skinned Punjabi immigrants are sort of privileged in terms of vaguely defined “diversity,” but not to the extent that they would impinge on reparatory hiring of, say, Latinos from anywhere on the globe, who in turn are often indistinguishable from Italian, Greek, or Armenian Americans who find no such affirmative action boosts.

But still crazier, once a person goes fully tribal, then he opens the door to the laws of stereotypes, both its advantages and its boomerangs. If you insist the individual cedes to the group, then more than a half-century after the Civil Rights moments you will find only contradiction and hypocrisy in citing group underrepresentation and its causes. Asian Americans are overrepresented in many professions such as highly compensated orthodontists and pharmacists. Is that because they enjoyed inordinate racial leverage?  Yet they are underrepresented as U.S. Marine officers; is that because of systemic racism?

No one would dare require the NFL or the NBA “to look like America,” given blacks are overrepresented in these two lucrative professions by a magnitude of five to six times their demographics in the general population.

To defend such racial engineering in sports, the argument of using non-meritocratic criteria to pass over black, talented running backs and favor Asian or Latino athletes solely on the basis of race—would be, well, racist. And, of course, such racial gerrymandering, it would be additionally argued, would lower the quality of professional sports itself, once talent was subordinated to race. And yet recently we are told the overrepresentation of black players in such a violent sport as professional football is now as racist as prior underrepresentation.

So how odd that in areas that are critical to the national well-being, from medical school admissions to airline pilot training programs, we insist that diversity’s non-meritocratic criteria are essential. Yet, in contrast, non-diversity, merit-based standards alone should govern professional basketball?

In the matter of stereotypes, we have descended into yet another absurdity, using collective pigeon-holing when it serves tribal advantage and then decrying it as unfair when it becomes inconvenient.

The word “white” is now an agreed-on pejorative as we see from Kendi’s denunciation of “white privilege” to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley’s promises to learn about and then root out “white rage.” But where are the data used to confirm such a blanket accusation?

Does Milley define “white rage” as the propensity of white males to die in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq at twice their numbers in the general population? According to the Pentagon’s new laws of woke, there must be culpability for such toxic disproportionality and thereby a woke corrective. A DEI czar might ask whether the armed services cynically targeted rural and southern whites and its recruiters “pushed” them into combat units.

A few rubrics that might substantiate or reject “white rage”could be found by examining Justice Department and FBI data on homicide, violent crime, hate crimes, and interracial violent crimes. But in all those categories so-called whites are clearly what the diversity industry again calls “underrepresented.” In contrast, blacks are vastly overrepresented, at nearly double their demographics in hate crimes, and over five times in the commission of murders and violent assaults.

Would not a privileged, white, and angry or raging population be disproportionately violent rather than less violent and homicidal rather than suicidal? And yet whites have far higher suicide rates than do either blacks or Latinos? How is all that possible?

As far as the current epidemic of officially reported antisemitic hate crimes, blacks are vastly overrepresented as perpetrators. In New York City alone, black offenders account for 43 percent of reported hate crimes.

There is no future for this sort of racial discrimination, segregation, and hatred. History informs us where it leads. We live in a society, after all, where exercise is now deemed racist, weight loss racist, and using the word “American” or“immigrant” racist—as the race industry is clueless that when everything is deemed racist, then nothing can be racist.

The only method of avoiding Rwanda-style chaos is simply to forget racial categories, preferences, and reparatory actions entirely, and instead simply enforce the Civil Rights-era anti-discrimination laws on the books that were supposed to protect everyone from everyone but are now ignored and routinely violated by our own government.