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Why are “Francis is Definitely the Pope Pundits like Voris, Tim Gordon & Taylor Marshall not saying Mr. Frank Pavone? & Can one commit a Mortal Sin by claiming that Francis is Definitely Pope?”

December 26, 2022

Chris Slattery, quoted in the Lifesite article, “Indefensible,” refers to “Mr. Pavone.”  That’s what happens when you prove yourself previously willing to commit the intellectual act of cowardice of calling Bergoglio “Pope Francis.”  A classic case of the slippery slope. – Text from a friend of The Catholic Monitor

Mr Frank Pavone? – Fr Dwight Longenecker

Mr Frank Pavone?

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In an interview Sunday with Catholic News Agency (CNA), canonist Father Gerald Murray, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York and a regular contributor to EWTN’s “The World Over with Raymond Arroyo,” noted that the Pope alone can issue a decision “against which there is no possible appeal.” 

“Only the Pope, who enjoys ‘full and supreme power in the Church’ (canon 332, 1), can issue such a decision against which there is no possible appeal,” Murray said. – LifeSite News [https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/fr-pavones-laicization-came-from-pope-francis-himself-canon-lawyer/]

First question:

Why are Francis is Definitely the Pope pundits like Michael Voris, Tim Gordon & Taylor Marshall not saying Mr. Frank Pavone if they definitely think Francis has “full and supreme power in the Church”?

Second question:

If someone has definite solid reasons from canon law to doubt the validity of Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation can one commit a mortal sin if he doesn’t resolve that doubt before claiming Francis is definitely pope?

The important theological book “Rodriguez and the Confession of Doubtful Mortal Sins” in page 225 says:

“If one does not resolve the doubt and deliberately does the action anyhow, it means that he is willing to offend God gravely, and therefore he commits a mortal sin.”
(Google: Theological Studies -cdn- 1 PDF by U. Adelman – Cited by 1 Related articles)

Now please read carefully the following:

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

Latin language expert Br. Alexis Bugnolo says the only correct way to approach the validity or invalidity of Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation is an objective reading of what the two words ministerium and munus mean by means of using canon 17’s criteria and not a subjective reading of what the two words may possibly have meant in the mind of Benedict:

“Canon 17 requires that Canon 332 S2 be read in accord with the meaning of canon 145 S1  and canon 41… requires that ministerium and munus be understood as referring to two different things.”
(From Rome, “Ganswein, Brandmuller & Burke: Please read Canon 17, February 14, 2019)

When I read that I thought it would be extremely helpful if he could go into detail on the above by going into canon 17, canon 332 S2, canon 145 S1 and canon 41. He has done just that.

But, before we get to that it is important to understand that Pope John Paul II promulgated the current canon law which is the supreme law of the Catholic Church.

Moreover, it is important to understand that canon 17 is the key to understanding the supreme law of the Church.

Canon lawyer Edward Peters explains:

“Canon 17… states ‘if the meaning [of the law, and UDG is a law] remains doubtful and obscure, recourse must be made to parallel places.'”
(CatholicWorld Report, “Francis was never pope? Call me unpersuaded,” September 28, 2017)

Now, we get to Br. Bugnolo who has explained in overwhelming detail in the following treatise using canon law why canonists are wrong in saying ministerium and munus are synonyms that mean the exact same thing or nearly the exact same thing. Moreover, Br. Bugnolo said “I hope that bloggers everywhere republish it and translate it”:

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

Final question:

The Restore-DC-Catholicism website asked in July “Do These Pre-Conclave Meetings Invalidate Cdl Bergoglio’s Election To The Papacy?:

Yesterday an interview that the pope had was published by Telam and reported by thedialog.org.  The pope seems to have let the cat out of the bag, as it were.  He states that the havoc he wreaked his accomplishments to date are goals agreed upon with other cardinals at a pre-conclave meeting.  Let that sink in.  Goals for his papacy were set before the conclave happened that elected him pope…

…  The answers to these questions might well have bearing on the validity of both Pope Benedict’s resignation and Pope Francis’ election.  Enough irregularities have been detected to call both into question. [http://restore-dc-catholicism.blogspot.com/2022/07/do-these-pre-conclave-meetings.html]

Bishop Rene Gracida summed the “canonical” situation we are in with the doubtfulness of the Pope Benedict XVI resignation:

“[I]f the [Pope Benedict XVI] Renunciation is doubtful, then in virtue of canon 332 §2, it is invalid for lack of due manifestation”
[https://abyssum.org/ ]

It appears that if someone has definite solid reasons from canon law to doubt the validity of Pope Benedict’s resignation one can it appears possibly commit a sin if he doesn’t resolve that doubt before claiming Francis is definitely pope.

Again, the important theological book “Rodriguez and the Confession of Doubtful Mortal Sins” in page 225 said:

“If one does not resolve the doubt and deliberately does the action anyhow, it means that he is willing to offend God gravely, and therefore he commits a mortal sin.”
(Google: Theological Studies -cdn- 1 PDF by U. Adelman – Cited by 1 Related articles)

Moreover, Dogmatic theology scholar Fr. Elwood Sylvester Berry (1879-1954), who was professor at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Maryland, in his apologetic and dogmatic treatise which according to his introduction “was originally written in Latin” stated that according to Doctor of the Church St. Robert Bellarmine: “a doubtful pope is no pope… ‘if a papal election is doubtful for any reason'” therefore a imperfect council of bishops is needed:

“Hence the saying of Bellarmine: a doubtful pope is no pope. ‘Therefore,’ continues the Cardinal, ‘if a papal election is really doubtful for any reason, the elected should resign, so that a new election may be held. But if he refuses to resign, it becomes the duty of the bishops to adjust the matter, for although the bishops without the pope cannot define dogma nor make laws for the universal Church, they can and ought to decide, when occasion demands, who is the legitimate pope; and if the matter be doubtful, they should provide for the Church by having a legitimate and undoubted pastor elected. That is what the Council of Constance rightly did.'” 8
(The Church of Christ: An Apologetic and Dogmatic Treatise, By Rev. E. Sylvester Berry,  Page 229, Note 8: Bellarmine, “De Concilio, ii, 19)

Moreover, Catholic pundit Patrick Coffin on his YouTube show asked Cardinal Raymond Burke:

“I was wondering rather if those rules [of the 2013 conclave that elected Francis] were violated and rather or not the whole election of Francis may be invalid. Is there any foundation for that speculation?”

Cardinal Burke answered:

“The only grounds that could be used for calling into question the validity of the election would be were the election organized by a campaign beforehand which is strictly forbidden and that would be difficult to demonstrate…”

“… If these persons [the St. Gallen Mafia of liberal cardinals] engaged in a active campaign first to undermined Pope Benedict XVI and at the same time to engineer the election of someone [Francis] then that could be a argument. I don’t think I have the facts, and there have to be facts, to prove that. That’s all I have to say about that.”
(Patrick Coffin show, “141: Dubia Cardinal Goes on the Record – Raymond Cardinal Burke (Free Version),” Premiered 13 hours ago, 19:55 to 21:46)

Recently, Francis’s closest adviser, Cardinal Oscar R. Maradiaga, apparently said and implied that there were “’pre-conclave’ meetings” for Francis’s seemingly post conclave planned supposed future papacy which sounds like this brings into play Cardinal Burkes’ the “only grounds that could be used for calling into question the validity of the election would be were the election organized by a campaign beforehand which is strictly forbidden”:

The cardinal begins by confirming that the idea of ​​the C9 germinated during the “pre-conclave meetings,” with a clearly expressed goal: “that information not pass only through the apostolic nunciatures or the secretariat of State” and that the pope “be supported by a group of ‘grassroots’ cardinals.”[https://fsspx.news/en/news-events/news/cardinal%E2%80%99s-surprising-confidences-71198]

Pray an Our Father now for reparation for the sins committed because of Francis’s Amoris Laetitia.

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

Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.

Francis Notes:

– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:

“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.”
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)

Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said “the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church.”
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]

– “If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html

– “Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html

– If Francis betrays Benedict XVI & the”Roman Rite Communities” like he betrayed the Chinese Catholics we must respond like St. Athanasius, the Saintly English Bishop Robert Grosseteste & “Eminent Canonists and Theologians” by “Resist[ing]” him: https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/12/if-francis-betrays-benedict-xvi.html 

 –  LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:

The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”

–  On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:

“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”

– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:

“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.

Election Notes: 

– Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: “212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted…Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden” [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]

– Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times “Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html

– Tucker Carlson’s Conservatism Inc. Biden Steal Betrayal is explained by “One of the Greatest Columns ever Written” according to Rush: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/tucker-carlsons-conservatism-inc-biden.html?m=1

– A Hour which will Live in Infamy: 10:01pm November 3, 2020:
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1

What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: “Anitfa ‘Agent Provocateurs‘”:
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1] 

Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God’s Will and to do it.

Pray an Our Father now for America.

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

THE CATHOLIC MONITOR

SEARCH

Why are Francis is Definitely the Pope Pundits like Voris, Tim Gordon & Taylor Marshall not saying Mr. Frank Pavone? & Can one commit a Mortal Sin by claiming that Francis is Definitely Pope?

December 26, 2022

Chris Slattery, quoted in the Lifesite article, “Indefensible,” refers to “Mr. Pavone.”  That’s what happens when you prove yourself previously willing to commit the intellectual act of cowardice of calling Bergoglio “Pope Francis.”  A classic case of the slippery slope. – Text from a friend of The Catholic Monitor

Mr Frank Pavone? – Fr Dwight Longenecker

Mr Frank Pavone?

PreviousNext

• View Larger Image

In an interview Sunday with Catholic News Agency (CNA), canonist Father Gerald Murray, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York and a regular contributor to EWTN’s “The World Over with Raymond Arroyo,” noted that the Pope alone can issue a decision “against which there is no possible appeal.” 

“Only the Pope, who enjoys ‘full and supreme power in the Church’ (canon 332, 1), can issue such a decision against which there is no possible appeal,” Murray said. – LifeSite News [https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/fr-pavones-laicization-came-from-pope-francis-himself-canon-lawyer/]

First question:

Why are Francis is Definitely the Pope pundits like Michael Voris, Tim Gordon & Taylor Marshall not saying Mr. Frank Pavone if they definitely think Francis has “full and supreme power in the Church”?

Second question:

If someone has definite solid reasons from canon law to doubt the validity of Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation can one commit a mortal sin if he doesn’t resolve that doubt before claiming Francis is definitely pope?

The important theological book “Rodriguez and the Confession of Doubtful Mortal Sins” in page 225 says:

“If one does not resolve the doubt and deliberately does the action anyhow, it means that he is willing to offend God gravely, and therefore he commits a mortal sin.”
(Google: Theological Studies -cdn- 1 PDF by U. Adelman – Cited by 1 Related articles)

Now please read carefully the following:

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

Latin language expert Br. Alexis Bugnolo says the only correct way to approach the validity or invalidity of Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation is an objective reading of what the two words ministerium and munus mean by means of using canon 17’s criteria and not a subjective reading of what the two words may possibly have meant in the mind of Benedict:

“Canon 17 requires that Canon 332 S2 be read in accord with the meaning of canon 145 S1  and canon 41… requires that ministerium and munus be understood as referring to two different things.”
(From Rome, “Ganswein, Brandmuller & Burke: Please read Canon 17, February 14, 2019)

When I read that I thought it would be extremely helpful if he could go into detail on the above by going into canon 17, canon 332 S2, canon 145 S1 and canon 41. He has done just that.

But, before we get to that it is important to understand that Pope John Paul II promulgated the current canon law which is the supreme law of the Catholic Church.

Moreover, it is important to understand that canon 17 is the key to understanding the supreme law of the Church.

Canon lawyer Edward Peters explains:

“Canon 17… states ‘if the meaning [of the law, and UDG is a law] remains doubtful and obscure, recourse must be made to parallel places.'”
(CatholicWorld Report, “Francis was never pope? Call me unpersuaded,” September 28, 2017)

Now, we get to Br. Bugnolo who has explained in overwhelming detail in the following treatise using canon law why canonists are wrong in saying ministerium and munus are synonyms that mean the exact same thing or nearly the exact same thing. Moreover, Br. Bugnolo said “I hope that bloggers everywhere republish it and translate it”:

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

Final question:

The Restore-DC-Catholicism website asked in July “Do These Pre-Conclave Meetings Invalidate Cdl Bergoglio’s Election To The Papacy?:

Yesterday an interview that the pope had was published by Telam and reported by thedialog.org.  The pope seems to have let the cat out of the bag, as it were.  He states that the havoc he wreaked his accomplishments to date are goals agreed upon with other cardinals at a pre-conclave meeting.  Let that sink in.  Goals for his papacy were set before the conclave happened that elected him pope…

…  The answers to these questions might well have bearing on the validity of both Pope Benedict’s resignation and Pope Francis’ election.  Enough irregularities have been detected to call both into question. [http://restore-dc-catholicism.blogspot.com/2022/07/do-these-pre-conclave-meetings.html]

Bishop Rene Gracida summed the “canonical” situation we are in with the doubtfulness of the Pope Benedict XVI resignation:

“[I]f the [Pope Benedict XVI] Renunciation is doubtful, then in virtue of canon 332 §2, it is invalid for lack of due manifestation”
[https://abyssum.org/ ]

It appears that if someone has definite solid reasons from canon law to doubt the validity of Pope Benedict’s resignation one can it appears possibly commit a sin if he doesn’t resolve that doubt before claiming Francis is definitely pope.

Again, the important theological book “Rodriguez and the Confession of Doubtful Mortal Sins” in page 225 said:

“If one does not resolve the doubt and deliberately does the action anyhow, it means that he is willing to offend God gravely, and therefore he commits a mortal sin.”
(Google: Theological Studies -cdn- 1 PDF by U. Adelman – Cited by 1 Related articles)

Moreover, Dogmatic theology scholar Fr. Elwood Sylvester Berry (1879-1954), who was professor at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Maryland, in his apologetic and dogmatic treatise which according to his introduction “was originally written in Latin” stated that according to Doctor of the Church St. Robert Bellarmine: “a doubtful pope is no pope… ‘if a papal election is doubtful for any reason'” therefore a imperfect council of bishops is needed:

“Hence the saying of Bellarmine: a doubtful pope is no pope. ‘Therefore,’ continues the Cardinal, ‘if a papal election is really doubtful for any reason, the elected should resign, so that a new election may be held. But if he refuses to resign, it becomes the duty of the bishops to adjust the matter, for although the bishops without the pope cannot define dogma nor make laws for the universal Church, they can and ought to decide, when occasion demands, who is the legitimate pope; and if the matter be doubtful, they should provide for the Church by having a legitimate and undoubted pastor elected. That is what the Council of Constance rightly did.'” 8
(The Church of Christ: An Apologetic and Dogmatic Treatise, By Rev. E. Sylvester Berry,  Page 229, Note 8: Bellarmine, “De Concilio, ii, 19)

Moreover, Catholic pundit Patrick Coffin on his YouTube show asked Cardinal Raymond Burke:

“I was wondering rather if those rules [of the 2013 conclave that elected Francis] were violated and rather or not the whole election of Francis may be invalid. Is there any foundation for that speculation?”

Cardinal Burke answered:

“The only grounds that could be used for calling into question the validity of the election would be were the election organized by a campaign beforehand which is strictly forbidden and that would be difficult to demonstrate…”

“… If these persons [the St. Gallen Mafia of liberal cardinals] engaged in a active campaign first to undermined Pope Benedict XVI and at the same time to engineer the election of someone [Francis] then that could be a argument. I don’t think I have the facts, and there have to be facts, to prove that. That’s all I have to say about that.”
(Patrick Coffin show, “141: Dubia Cardinal Goes on the Record – Raymond Cardinal Burke (Free Version),” Premiered 13 hours ago, 19:55 to 21:46)

Recently, Francis’s closest adviser, Cardinal Oscar R. Maradiaga, apparently said and implied that there were “’pre-conclave’ meetings” for Francis’s seemingly post conclave planned supposed future papacy which sounds like this brings into play Cardinal Burkes’ the “only grounds that could be used for calling into question the validity of the election would be were the election organized by a campaign beforehand which is strictly forbidden”:

The cardinal begins by confirming that the idea of ​​the C9 germinated during the “pre-conclave meetings,” with a clearly expressed goal: “that information not pass only through the apostolic nunciatures or the secretariat of State” and that the pope “be supported by a group of ‘grassroots’ cardinals.”[https://fsspx.news/en/news-events/news/cardinal%E2%80%99s-surprising-confidences-71198]

Pray an Our Father now for reparation for the sins committed because of Francis’s Amoris Laetitia.

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

Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.

Francis Notes:

– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:

“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.”
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)

Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said “the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church.”
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]

– “If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html

– “Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html

– If Francis betrays Benedict XVI & the”Roman Rite Communities” like he betrayed the Chinese Catholics we must respond like St. Athanasius, the Saintly English Bishop Robert Grosseteste & “Eminent Canonists and Theologians” by “Resist[ing]” him: https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/12/if-francis-betrays-benedict-xvi.html 

 –  LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:

The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”

–  On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:

“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”

– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:

“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.

Election Notes: 

– Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: “212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted…Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden” [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]

– Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times “Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html

– Tucker Carlson’s Conservatism Inc. Biden Steal Betrayal is explained by “One of the Greatest Columns ever Written” according to Rush: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/tucker-carlsons-conservatism-inc-biden.html?m=1

– A Hour which will Live in Infamy: 10:01pm November 3, 2020:
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1

What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: “Anitfa ‘Agent Provocateurs‘”:
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1] 

Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God’s Will and to do it.

Pray an Our Father now for America.

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

THE CATHOLIC MONITOR

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Abp. Vigano apparently in writing about the Laicization of Fr. Pavone said that Francis & his Friends may have a type of Paraniod Thinking called “a Persecutory Mind”

December 22, 2022

SCHIZOPHRENIA

Dealing With Persecutory Delusions

Paranoia, Persecution, and False BeliefsPrint 

What Are Persecutory Delusions?

Persecutory delusions occur when someone believes others are out to harm them despite evidence to the contrary.It’s a type of paranoid thinking that can be part of several different mental illnesses. – Verywell Mind [https://www.verywellmind.com/what-are-persecutory-delusions-4586500]

In an interview Sunday with Catholic News Agency (CNA), canonist Father Gerald Murray, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York and a regular contributor to EWTN’s “The World Over with Raymond Arroyo,” noted that the Pope alone can issue a decision “against which there is no possible appeal.” 

“Only the Pope, who enjoys ‘full and supreme power in the Church’ (canon 332, 1), can issue such a decision against which there is no possible appeal,” Murray said. – LifeSite News [https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/fr-pavones-laicization-came-from-pope-francis-himself-canon-lawyer/]

Today, ArchbishopCarlo Maria Vigano apparently wrote that Francis and his “magic circle” friends (who according to canonist Fr. Gerald Murray laicized pro-life priest Fr. Frank Pavone) may have a type of paraniod thinking called “a persecutory mind”:

We find confirmation of this principle of ontology in the canonical sanctions recently imposed by the Holy See on Father Frank A. Pavone, a well-known and appreciated pro-life priest, who for decades has been committed to the battle against the horrible crime of abortion. If a Roman Dicastery decides to electrocute a priest with reduction to the lay state, accusing him of blasphemy and preventing him from having the ability to defend himself legally in a canonical trial; and if, at the same time, analogous decisions are not taken with regard to notorious heretical, corrupt, and fornicating clergy, it is not out of place to ask if such a persecutory action reveals a persecutory mind.[https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/6299-vigano-s-declaration-on-the-canonical-sanctions-imposed-on-father-frank-a-pavone]

Francis and his inner circle appear to have a history of persecutory paranoia-like thinking. Cardinal Gerhard Mueller in a 2017 interview revealed that Francis told him:

“They tell me you’re my enemy.”

Muller in the interview said the “magic circle” around Francis does “spying on alleged opponents” and tells him who are his friends or enemies.

It seems that Francis may be overly attached and surrounded by certain persons with unhealthy thought processes and strange conspiracy ideas.

The Vatican Insider usually a solid news source which has access to ranking Vatican insiders close to the Francis on October 19, 2016 wrote a tabloid like paranoid article.

It slandered anyone remotely criticizing the questionable prudential actions and non- infallible teachings of Francis.

The Insider claimed that those who question Francis are in a global conspiracy with Russian strongman Putin against the him.

Phil Lawler and his CatholicCulture.org which defends many of Francis’s teachings and even the Argentine norm of Amoris Laetitia when commenting on this article said:

It is “likely…people surrounding Pope Francis” have a “paranoid style” and have fallen into ‘conspiracy’ thinking that “see enemies wherever there is resistance to their agenda.” [https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/the-city-gates.cfm?id=1367]

Francis like those who surround him appears to have fallen into paranoid and conspiracy thought processes as shown by his thinking the wishy-washy Muller is his “enemy.”

This is the namby-pamby Muller who while working in the Vatican attacked the Dubia Cardinals to the “bewilderment” of his staff at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith because he contradicted “everything he said… on the matter until now” according to Vatican expert Edward Pentin. (National Catholic Register, “Cardinal Muller TV Interview Causes Bewilderment,” January 9, 2017)

If Francis thinks the indecisive Muller is his “enemy,” who endorsed Amoris Laetitia and before said the divorce and remarried can’t receive Communion unless chaste, then it appears that the he may have a type of persecutory dementia.

Alzheimer experts say a symptom of dementia can be paranoia.

The Alzheimer’s Foundation of America says individuals “with dementia may become paranoid.”

The Every Day Health post “The Seven Stages of Dementia- Alzheimer’s Disease Center” says a sign of severe dementia is:

“Changes in personality or behavior, such as increased paranoia.” (Everydayhealth.com, By Madeline Vann, MPH)

Wikipedia says paranoia “is a thought process believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety and fear…typically includes…beliefs of conspiracy.”

Even EWTN commentator Robert Royal of The Catholic Thing said in the 2014 article “Pope Francis Needs New Friends” that Francis appears to be surrounded by certain persons with strange non-rational conspiracy ideas:

“He’s clearly in a bubble” with Cardinals like the German Kasper who wants “God to repeal the Laws of Non-contradiction” and radicals like the Honduran Maraiaga who were leading Francis to “connect…global poverty-with a kind of conspiracy theory about arms sales and war is simply bizarre.”

Pray an Our Father now for reparation for the sins committed because of Francis’s Amoris Laetitia.

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

Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.

Francis Notes:

– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:

“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.”
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)

Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said “the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church.”
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]

– “If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html

– “Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html

– If Francis betrays Benedict XVI & the”Roman Rite Communities” like he betrayed the Chinese Catholics we must respond like St. Athanasius, the Saintly English Bishop Robert Grosseteste & “Eminent Canonists and Theologians” by “Resist[ing]” him: https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/12/if-francis-betrays-benedict-xvi.html 

 –  LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:

The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”

–  On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:

“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”

– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:

“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.

Election Notes: 

– Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: “212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted…Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden” [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]

– Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times “Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html

– Tucker Carlson’s Conservatism Inc. Biden Steal Betrayal is explained by “One of the Greatest Columns ever Written” according to Rush: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/tucker-carlsons-conservatism-inc-biden.html?m=1

– A Hour which will Live in Infamy: 10:01pm November 3, 2020:
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1

What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: “Anitfa ‘Agent Provocateurs‘”:
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1] 

Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God’s Will and to do it.

Pray an Our Father now for America.

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

God redeemed man because He loves us. God became Man because He likes us.

Merry Christmas, friends. God bless you all.

Open in app or online

O Happy Fault?

On the reason for the season.

MICHAEL WARREN DAVISDEC 23

SAVE▷  LISTEN

The guys and I were having scotch and cigars the other night, to celebrate the baptism of one of our daughters.  The conversation lapsed into one of those comfortable silences you only find among old friends.  Then someone chimed in with a question.  “If you weren’t a Christian, what would you be?”  The answers were fascinating.  We had two Hindus, a Muslim, a Jew, a Buddhist, and a Renaissance Neoplatonist (a neo-Neoplatonist, I guess). 

The pressure got the better of me, so I said that if I wasn’t a Christian I would be a catechumen. But I was shouted down and accused of not entering into the spirit of the thing, so I said I would also be a Jew, since it’s the third-closest thing to the truth. 

It was a fun thought-experiment, but a strange question.  Asking a man what religion he’d be if his was false—it’s a bit like asking what you would get by adding 2+2, if not 4.  He may say three, or three hundred and three, or 3.3 million, and some answers would be more true than others.  But “more true” is just another way of saying “less wrong.” 

I don’t mean this as an attack on Jews, or even Judaism.  I don’t hate Jews; I just disagree with them.  We moderns have a hard time seeing the difference, and that includes quite a lot of Christians.  They insist on referring to Jews by condescending nicknames, like “our elder brothers in faith.” 

Thank God, my Jewish friends don’t call me their little brother in faith.  If they did, we wouldn’t be friends much longer.  They just say I’m wrong.  They find the idea of God becoming man absurd.  (On that they agree with the Muslims—and the Platonists.)  And yet, for me, nothing in the universe makes sense otherwise.

Ah!  But even among Christians, that’s a loaded statement.  This is one of the oldest and most polarizing arguments in all of theology:  was the Incarnation contingent on the Fall of Man?

Most Christians (and certainly most Catholics) would say yes.  Their view is summed up in the ancient Exsultet of St. Ambrose, the felix culpa:  “O happy fault that earned for us so great, so glorious a Redeemer.”  It was championed by Ambrose’s disciple Augustine, among others, but is commonly known as the Dominican Thesis because it was advanced by Thomas Aquinas and his followers, when the debate became more explicit in the late Middle Ages.

The opposing view is known as the Franciscan Thesis, because it was developed in its fullness by John Duns Scotus and has been championed by the Minorites for hundreds of years.  Its (Western) roots are found in the writings of Franciscans like Alexander Hales and Bonaventure, and Anselm of Canterbury before them.  It was the dominant view of the Greek Fathers, including Irenaeus, Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria, and Maximus the Confessor. 

Scotus’s thesis is simple:  God knew before all time that the Word would become flesh.  Jesus was therefore predestined from all eternity.  Again, the question is, “Why?”  According to Scotus,

If the fall were the reason for the predestination of Christ, it would follow that the greatest work of God [summum opus Dei] would be totally occasioned. . .  and it would seem highly irrational that God would have omitted so great a work [tantum bonus] for a good action of Adam, i.e., if he had not sinned.

Scotus calls the Incarnation the “Masterpiece of God.”  Would He have simply done without His greatest work had man not needed a redeemer? 

Remember that God didn’t need to create.  The Trinity is perfectly self-sufficient.  Everything He does is gratuitous.  It’s something “extra.”  That includes mankind.  As St. Augustine says, “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord.”  So, why would He undertake His greatest work only for our benefit?  It’s not impossible but, coming from a human’s mouth, it may be a little presumptuous.

There are lots of passages in Scripture that seem to contradict the Franciscan Thesis.  Take 1 Timothy 1:15:  “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.”  But Scotus’s explanation is just as simple:  nowhere in Scripture does it say that the Redemption is the only (or even the primary) reason for the Incarnation.  As the Subtle Doctor put it, “Christ would not have come as Redeemer if man had not fallen”—but he would have come anyway.

That, according to the Franciscan Thesis, is the true meaning of Ambrose’s felix culpa.  It’s not a good thing that Adam sinned.  Rather, it allowed us to know Jesus in a new way:  as Redeemer—as well as Master, Teacher, etc. 

---

This is heady stuff, and I don’t know nearly enough theology to come down hard on one side or the other.  But as you can probably tell, I lean heavily towards the Scotist camp, for one reason: the Gospels don’t sound like a business trip. For the most part, Our Lord seemed to enjoy His time on earth.

Think about it. All Christians believe that the Passion was, in some sense, unnecessary.  Even Calvinists, who believe in penal substitution—that Christ had to be punished in our stead, if we ourselves were to be spared punishment—agree that He went above and beyond the call of duty.  One drop of blood…  One bead of sweat…  A single tear…  It would have been more than sufficient to reconcile the whole universe.  Instead, he chose to be tortured to death.  He paid the bill and tipped a hundred billion percent to prove that there was no price on His love.

And yet this was only a day or two in His thirty-tree years of life on earth, most of which He spent hidden from the world.

Why?

The only answer I can think of is, “Because He wanted to.”

He wanted to be nursed and cuddled by his mother Mary.  He wanted to be bounced on Joseph’s lap.  He wanted to be tickled by His grandmother Anne. He wanted to be cooed over by his aunt Elizabeth and to study the Torah with His uncle Zachary.  He wanted to wrestle with his cousin John and tell jokes with his cousin James.  He wanted to worship His Father in the Temple of Jerusalem.  He wanted to drink at weddings and make useful things for His neighbors—chairs and tables and whatnot—at His carpenter’s shop in Nazareth.

What cinches it for me is that passage in John’s Gospel.  “Henceforth I call you not servants,” Jesus says, “but I have called you friends.”  God made family and friends, and saw that it was good. Why wouldn’t He want family and friends of His own?

This is why I say that nothing in the universe makes sense without the Incarnation.  Eberhard Arnold said, “Love means having joy in others.”  God chose to suffer for us; why wouldn’t He choose to have joy in us—with us, asus?

After all, that’s what His name means. The angel said to Mary, “Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.”  The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, because He wanted to. 

God redeemed man because He loves us. God became Man because He likes us.

Merry Christmas, friends. God bless you all.

 10 Steps to Save America

Yes, there is a way.

But is there the will?

By: Victor Davis Hanson

American Greatness

December 18, 2022

Most Americans know something has gone terribly wrong—and very abruptly—with the United States. They are certain that our wounds are almost all self-inflicted. The current pathologies are not a result of a natural disaster, exhaustion of natural resources, plagues, or an existential war. 

Crushing national debt and annual deficits, spiraling food and fuel costs amid “normal” seven-percent-plus annual inflation, bread-and-circuses entitlements, a nonexistent border, a resurgence of racial tribalism, pandemic violent criminality, and humiliation abroad—all these pathologies are easily cited as symptoms of a sick patient. Our crises are not as the Left maintains—a nine-person Supreme Court, the Electoral College, or the filibuster—all distractions from existential problems the Left largely created. 

So, what are the therapies and prognoses for America?

In the spirit of constructive rather than blanket criticism, here is a partial, 10-point plan for national recovery.

Cut the Debt 

Americans’ national debt is now $31 trillion. That is about 123 percent of current GDP. The liabilities are unsustainable. We run annual deficits of $1.6 trillion. These financial obligations will eventually ensure that rising interest rates to service the debt crowd out essential spending for national defense and the general welfare. 

Or in extremis, in the not-too-distant future, the government will be forced to default on what it owes the “rich”bondholders and foreign debt holders. Or the government will be forced to confiscate private wealth, for example, occasional crazy suggestions to nationalize and absorb 401(k)k retirement plans into the soon-to-be-insolvent Social Security system. Or the state will simply print millions of dollars to pay off obligations, Weimar-style.

In addict style, the more we come to realize that our binging habit cannot go on, the less we can practice self-restraint. And the more it is the case that those who receive government redistributions outnumber those who pay the majority of federal income taxes, the less hope there remains to avoid insolvency.

In 2010 then-President Barack Obama appointed a bipartisan “National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.” More commonly remembered as the Simpson-Bowles commission, after chairmen Senators Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and Erskine Bowles (D-N.C.), it included private citizens and elected officials. 

The commission recommended radical tax simplifications and some cuts—along with reductions in tax deductions and credits, an increase in the gas tax, restraints on entitlement spending, and various spending caps. 

Obama and Congress ultimately rejected the recommendations and the commission’s blueprint died. But had it succeeded, the current debt would have long been frozen at the 2014 level of $17 trillion—with annual reductions ensuring that this coming year 2023 the debt would have plunged to $10 trillion and then disappeared in another decade. 

Something like Simpson-Bowles could still stop the madness and avoid the natural corrective on the horizon of financial collapse. Note that federal tax revenue has increased almost every year since 2010. Sometimes it grows by nearly a half-trillion dollars per annum, even as we sink deeper into debt. Our crisis, then, is one of spending what we do not have rather than one of declining revenue.

Secure the Border 

We no longer have a southern border. There have been 5 million illegal border crossings just since Joe Biden took office. He intentionally destroyed immigration law for cheap political advantage. Nearly 50 million current American residents were not born in the United States. Well over 20 million—and perhaps 30 million—are illegal aliens. Old melting-pot efforts at assimilation and integration eroded into the salad-bowl metaphor that has just become tribalism—even as intermarriage is at an all-time high. 

The Left brags that “demography is destiny” as it cheers the electorate’s changes to ensure its political dominance. And simultaneously, it smears conservatives who agree with its triumphalism as “great replacement theory” conspiracists. 

Yet we finally found a solution in 2019-2020. Had we continued replacing rickety border fencing with an effective wall and then completed it along the entire border, had we stopped catch-and-release, had we continued demanding that refugee status be obtained before entry, had we forced Mexico and Central American governments to stop exporting human capital and subjected them to taxes on more than $60 billion in annual remittances (along with trade penalties) for their complicity with the situation at the border, had we continued to deport those who entered illegally, had we returned to assimilation and integration on the theory any who entered America did so because they wanted to become Americans, then a desired legal, meritocratic, and diverse immigration policy might easily have assimilated and absorbed perhaps 200,000 skilled and legal immigrants per year. 

Again, we had the outlines of a solution and then simply destroyed it for liberal political agendas and cheap corporate labor. 

Tap Natural Resources 

Similarly, by 2020, the United States enjoyed inexpensive fuel. It was all but independent in gas and oil. It had become the world’s largest combined gas and oil producer. That status radically curtailed the need for optional military engagements in the Middle East. It gave America enormous clout against hostile oil exporters like Russia, Iran, and Venezuela. And such independence helped reduce vast trade deficits. 

Again, the Biden Administration simply exploded the idea of fossil-fuel independence as a gradual transition to sustainable energy. So simply doing the opposite of its policies would correct the pathology almost immediately: Issue more federal gas and oil leases, approve the Keystone and Constitution pipelines, reopen the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, and build nuclear power plants. The present course of high-priced and scarce gasoline and oil is eroding the middle class, spiking inflation, widening class divisions, and reducing American autonomy abroad. 

Oppose Discrimination

Never has the United States seen more evidence of progress in racial relations, and never has such progress given way to more tribalism. If we do not return to a Martin Luther King, Jr. “content of our character” policy—one that views race as incidental rather than essential to who we are—then our future is a sectarian one with echoes of the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Iraq. 

Affirmative action was never envisioned as permanent quotas and race-based reverse discrimination. Yet after over a half-century, it has ballooned under the idea of “diversity”to invent a victim class of nearly a third of the nation, absurdly and loosely defined—in an age of commonplace intermarriage—as “non-white.”

Help for the underprivileged should be race-neutral and entirely based on class and income, given numerous ethnicities exceed the so-called white medium income. The labyrinth of racial categories grows unfathomable. The identity politics mess logically results, on the one hand, with rank iconic frauds like Elizabeth Warren, Ward Churchill, and Rachel Dolezal, and, on the other hand, with well-off poseur victims in the manner of a Meghan Markle, Colin Kaepernick, or Jussie Smollett. 

Substitution of racial criteria for merit, rather than aiding the poor of all races, is creating a commissar-like drag on the economy, spiking racial and ethnic tensions, and ensuring that every group will eventually, for its survival, go tribal based on the same logic that applies to nuclear proliferation. Again, the remedy? Just enforce civil rights statutes that prohibit racial discrimination and consider the Pavlovian shriek of “racism!” as the revealing projection of racists.

Disrupt and Reform Higher Education 

Our universities are failing to produce competent graduates essential to a meritocratic nation engaged in fierce global competition. Increasingly, students are politicized, largely ignorant, indebted, bitter, and unable to ensure American preeminence in basic science, technology, engineering, and math. 

Yet the solutions are again simple: get the government out of the student-loan business that ensures escalating tuition hikes greater than the rate of inflation. Eliminate faculty tenure and replace it with five-year contracts that require demonstrable achievement. Subject large endowments to taxation on their interest income to curb their wasted spending. Allow public schools to hire either those with school of education credentials or one-year master’s degrees that focused solely on academic study. Require standardized exit tests, in the fashion of erstwhile SAT and ACT entry tests, for the certification of the bachelor’s degree. Force universities to follow the Bill of Rights on campus, regarding due process and freedom of expression. 

These are not radical suggestions. Yet the likely fierce faculty opposition to them proves that the Left envisions higher education as it views Silicon Valley—another private monopoly that helps maintain political power in lieu of popular support.

Revive the Armed Forces 

Our military is in dire straits. It is overcommitted, under-resourced, and without any geo-political strategy other than ad hoc responses without defined objectives. It has become politically weaponized and, inevitably, unable to meet recruitment goals. The Pentagon remains obsessed with exorbitantly priced weapons that cannot be produced in sufficient numbers in an age of hostile swarms of cheap, mass-produced drones and thousands of batteries of ground-to-air and shore-to-ship missiles. 

Constant profiling, racial, and gender quotas, and obsessions over proportional representation and disparate impact increasingly apply to training, education, and promotion—to everything except worries over the disproportionate profile of those killed in battle. The Pentagon has become adept in publishing racial data on every aspect of military service to emphasize disparity and bias—except concerning the combat dead. 

To address the changes, retiring high-ranking officers should refrain from board memberships in contracting corporations for at least five years upon leaving the military. The uniform code of military justice must be strictly enforced, including article 88 which prohibits retired officers from attacking in personal terms high-ranking elected officials, and in particular their commander-in-chief. 

Woke training is destroying morale and battlefield efficacy. The military must return to a race and gender-neutral stance that does not erode meritocratic standards to fit political agendas. We should never again witness a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff virtue signaling to Congress and the nation his intention to understand “white rage” in the ranks, without supplying any confirmatory evidence or data for his apparent allegation of systemic racism in the ranks—particularly not while the greatest U.S. defeat and humiliation in a half-century was unfolding on the horizon in Kabul. Any high-ranking military officer who informs his Chinese counterpart of his own psychiatric diagnosis that his commander-in-chief is unhinged and thus U.S. strategic intentions will first be relayed to Beijing should be summarily dismissed.

Fix Voting 

Elections are a mess. The greatest political revolution in our election history has been the change—accelerated under the cover of COVID and the George Floyd riots—in many key states from a 20-30 percent “absentee ballot” vote to 70-80 percent early/mail-in balloting. In a mere four years we have all but destroyed Election Day voting and Election Night final tabulations as we had known them for decades. 

All discussions of voter IDs, fraud, and charges and countercharges of election denialism are irrelevant if there is no real mechanism to validate the authenticity of mail-in ballots that have incomplete or false addresses, names, and signatures, or do not match registration rolls. Third-party ballot harvesting and ballot curing should be outlawed at the federal level, and we should return to the requirement of requesting absentee ballots rather than automatically sending them out. Otherwise, no future election will again win the confidence of a majority of Americans. And without trust in balloting, consensual government becomes nonexistent.

Drain the Swamp 

Americans distrust the “swamp,” administrative state, or deep state. Call what you will, the Washington nexus of bureaucracies, media, and lobbyists have created a huge, unelected permanent army of auditors, regulators, investigators, and punishers, all mostly exempt from audit and accountability and without fear of their elected overseers. 

The easiest solution is to break up concentrations of power. Transfer out of Washington, in this age of zoom and telecommunications, major cabinet departments like Health and Human Services, Energy, or Agriculture into the hinterland. Restore the idea that lying to Congress, feigning amnesia, or pleading ignorance under oath to Congress or federal investigators or in depositions is a prosecutable felony with jail time. 

Had we restored equality under the law, then Andrew McCabe, James Clapper, and John Brennan would not have dared lie under oath. And Robert Mueller, James Comey, Anthony Fauci, or Jack Dorsey might have not so easily believed they simply could plead memory loss or mislead in a fashion that no American would dare to do with the IRS. 

Being forced to tell the truth would be a powerful deterrent against bureaucratic overreach. 

Finally, ossified centralized agencies like the FBI need to be broken up and their bureaus redistributed through the cabinet-level departments to avoid past pathologies resulting from a concentration of power.

Upend the Welfare State 

The number of those receiving federal and state subsidies is beginning to match the number of those who subsidize them. “No one wants to work anymore” is now a common public lament. Inflation and recession may come and go, but workers are now scarce whether we are in boom or bust times. Labor non-participation remains at an all-time high. Soon only 60 percent of the available labor force will be working. Trillion-dollar COVID subsidies have accelerated the idea that Americans need not work full-time to maintain a living. 

We can easily return to the “workfare” championed by a triangulating Bill Clinton in the 1990s that demanded healthy and able recipients to be gainfully employed upon receipt of state and federal cash. In the context of the homeless, we need to return to pre-Reagan norms of institutionalizing the mentally ill and creating hospitals and safe spaces away from American downtowns to house those who either cannot or will not take care of themselves. Defecating, urinating, injecting, and fornicating on city streets are not victimless crimes, but assaults on civilized life as we once knew it.

Restore Norms 

The fact is, few public norms are left. Rather than the current therapeutic obsessions that seek to divide Americans into binaries of oppressors and the oppressed, we are in desperate need of civic education in K-12 that acquaints all children and teens with American institutions, key events like Gettysburg or D-Day, and familiarity with the Constitution and the duties of the citizen. We will get nowhere basing our understanding of the world on psychodramas and therapeutics. 

Neither journalists nor elites understand, much less appreciate, the First Amendment, and in ignorance despise the Second.

Like it or not, the nuclear family remains the bulwark of the American nation, which will not survive if current fertility rates of below 1.7 children per woman continue to diminish and age the population. The government must incentivize childbearing and childraising. 

Without clear punishment for violent crimes, deterrence is lost, and the innocent become victims of the exempt criminal class. Critical race theory, critical legal theory, and critical criminology theory are euphemisms for unleashing lawbreakers upon the vulnerable. We are in a strange cycle in which we deliberately do not enforce gun laws in our cities, and then when murder reaches near-historic proportions we blame unenforced gun laws rather than the criminals who are exempt from using deadly weapons as the cause. 

These are just a few of the many ways that the United States could stop the present madness—which, after all, was entirely self-created.

What the Vatican did to this pro-life priest will make you sick

The Catholic Church was once the greatest force in the fight to protect the unborn. 

But left-wing forces have infiltrated the church and are pushing them away from this important doctrine. 

And what the Vatican did to this pro-life priest will make you sick.

Kicked out of the Priesthood for upholding Catholic doctrine

Father Frank Pavone is one Catholic priest who hasn’t been shy about standing up for the unborn. 

But recently, the Vatican defrocked him for alleged “blasphemous social media posts” and disobedience to his Bishop. 

Archbishop Christophe Pierre stated that there was no chance for appeal. 

In a recent social media post Pavone wrote, “We have only just begun exposing #abortion, exposing the Democrats, exposing the Swamp (in both the state & the church).”

https://decide.dev/lad/15117606981932902?pubid=ld-7664-8923&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fuspoliticaldaily.com&rid=&width=696&utm_source=uspdnl&utm_campaign=email&utm_medium=campaigner

He went on to say “One of the tactics of them all is that they think they can get away with their evil and shut the rest of us up. Wow, have they underestimated their opponents!” 

Pavone received several statements of support from the faithful. 

One user wrote, “Father as a cancelled priest, I feel what you feel, but in the end our rewards for standing up for the Truth, for Christ and His Church will be eternal happiness with Our Lord and Blessed Mother.”

In another post, Pavone noted that in nearly every occupation these days, standing up for the unborn will lead to you being treated like them, and unfortunately, now the Church is no exception. 

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=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%3D%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1604303451583807488&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fuspoliticaldaily.com%2Fwhat-the-vatican-did-to-this-pro-life-priest-will-make-you-sick%2F&sessionId=12bc2d12d69af82f8e16e08803ca94c05196040f&theme=light&widgetsVersion=a3525f077c700%3A1667415560940&width=550px

Pavone was investigated by the Diocese of Amarillo, Texas for sharing a video of an aborted baby placed on an altar. 

While some may find such a display horrific, it exposed just how horrific abortion is. 

The Left and the so-called “mainstream” media has worked to sanitize abortion in the eyes of the public. 

Sometimes such displays are necessary to show what abortion actually is: the brutal murder of the most vulnerable of human beings. 

The Swamp has infiltrated the Church

As Pavone pointed out, the Swamp has taken hold not only within government, but in the Church as well. 

Pavone’s dismissal comes at a time when the church has strayed from sound doctrine. 

Much of this comes from the rise of Jesuits within the church. 

Jesuits have long sought to weaken the Church’s stance on social issues like abortion and homosexual marriage, and have also pushed other leftist priorities, like “green energy” and open borders.

Pope Francis is the first Jesuit to ascend to the Papacy, and it shows in the issues he prioritizes. 

Recently, there have been several examples of the Church’s weakened stance on the issue of abortion.

Pro-abortion politicians like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi are allowed to take communion in front of news cameras and have even been allowed to speak from the pulpit in some churches. 

This year, the Washington Archdiocese canceled the youth rally and Mass for Life, which have taken place annually for the last 25 years. 

The disturbing direction the Church has taken over the years has led to many Catholics feeling disillusioned, and some have even abandoned their faith as a result.

US Political Daily will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.

 Leftwing Hysteria and the

Art of the Psychodrama.

Parts Seven & Eight

By: Victor Davis Hanson

December 14 & 16, 2022

Soon the affluent woke went even further in their hubris.

More statues were toppled, more names changed, and more dangerous laws passed. Somehow in the mass madness of iconoclasm, even the statues of Cervantes and Frederick Douglas were to be desecrated, along with monuments along Washington’s National Mall. The common denominator apparently was an ignorant but envious present warring against the greater minds and moralists of the past.

One day I walked to my office on Junipero Serra Mall, and the next week I discovered the name had been Trostkyized—apparently on the charge that Serra was a Spanish interloper who had used corporal punishment in his misguided effort of converting souls and teaching agriculture to indigenous Native Americans. Stanford students in BMWs and Audis had gained the moral authority to condemn a Franciscan priest who walked the length of California, creating the mission system, introducing arboriculture and viticulture, and trying to inculcate Christianly—“sins” of some 250 years ago.

When one cannot address why or how 10,000 African Americans were murdered in 2021, then one apparently erases Junipero Serra’s name (but, of course, not from an iconic Palo Alto boulevard and cherished addresses, but only from a minor cul de sac).

Even television commercials went hyper-woke—as if the presence of African Americans in 50 percent of all televised advertisements rather than the old 15-20 percent would result in racial ecumenicalism and less violence on the street.

Corporations went hyper-sanctimonious, each vying to out-virtue-signal the other. CEOs fought for market share of wokeness, as Disney, Delta, and United battled for the greatest virtuous headlines. Racial quotas for pilot training were announced (so much for the naivete that affirmative-action racialism would not extend to airline pilots and nuclear plant operators). The MLB All-Star Game was removed from Georgia, given the state had asked Americans to present an ID to vote in the manner they routinely cashed a check.

Previous race mongers like Ibram X. Kendi suddenly were re-enriched, charging $20,000 and up for a brief Zoom lecture to guilty white audiences. The Obamas on spec remerged more frequently from their various mansions, exhausted from their occasional multimillion-dollar Netflix consulting gigs, but not so tired as to miss out on lecturing Americans on their racism and shortcomings.

Oprah and Megan Markle reappeared, trading stories of oppression from their dueling Montecito mansions. Lebron James put on his Malcolm X glasses, photo-opping reading about oppression, and boldly and bravely stood for the National Anthem while getting rich from the Chinese. Colin Kaepernick became wealthy too by slandering public patriotism—and by hocking his trendy anti-American image to sneaker salesmen profiting off incarcerated slave-worker populations in China. One communist’s slave worker is another wokester’s profit-maker.

In the Floyd conundrum, Joy Reid went from an embittered racialist who had dabbled in homophobic rants, to an unrestrained racist spouting hate on her evening broadcast, as MSNBC tripled its doses of nightly racial inflammation.

Language itself changed as black was to be permanently capitalized as Black. Would that one-letter change increase inner-city test scores or reduce the crime rate? Or was it instead designed for the guilt-ridden white elite to add another virtue-signaling tool in their ample chest of ways to neglect addressing inner-city carnage?

What did emerge post-Floyd instead was a radical spike in the old knock-out game, the smash-and-grab game, the toss-him-into-the-subway game, the smack-the-Jew and stomp-the-Asian game, the carjacking game, and the follow-the-shopper-to-his-home-and-rob-him game.

Leftwing district attorneys in urban counties and big cities seized the never-let-a-crisis-go-to-waste moment. They began administratively ignoring the law. 

ü Violent criminals were not arrested. 

ü The few arrested were not charged. 

ü The fewer charged were not tried. 

ü The fewest tried were not convicted. 

ü The rarely convicted were not incarcerated, and 

ü those prior incarcerated were now released. 

What followed were hawks preying on us, the turkeys.

Statistically, blacks disproportionally doubled their numbers in the general population as hate-crime perpetrators. And on and on it went, the Left manipulating the Floyd death as the long-awaited crisis that surely was never going to go to waste. The toll of violence on the inner city was ignored by the caring Left. Was it the necessary collateral damage for the greater good of transforming the nation’s laws and jurisprudence into something like the visions of George Soros?

Critical race theory was enshrined on the principle that laws were created by old, slave-owning white relics of the past who never were forced to steal a loaf of bread and so made laws against stealing a loaf of bread. But sneakers, iPhones, computers, and TVs were looted—never bread.

The third psychodramatic day that rendered great dividends was the buffoonish January 6th riot at the Capitol. Somehow the Left turned a few hundred out-of-control idiots, some replete with cow horns, painted faces, and sloganeering signs into a cabal of sophisticated revolutionaries seeking to storm the Capitol, hold it, and prompt a coup d’état. Or so the shrill narratives soon went. But unarmed, middle-aged angry voters with potbellies and sore joints did not a revolution make or even a two-bit pseudo-insurrection.

In this case, it is hard to write about any of that day’s ridiculous protests, given the January 6th House committee charged with finding out the truth was stocked with Trump haters, and exclusionary of any Republican member who had not voted for impeachment or who would not shortly be out of office. It could be deconstructed as a leftwing ploy to manipulate embittered and soon-to-be out-of-office Liz Cheney into a willing useful idiot to veneer an otherwise patently McCarthyesque effort to smear half the country as insurrectionists.

The New York Times resident January 6th expert and Trump-obsessed Matthew Rosenberg, in an Operation Veritas ambush interview, inadvertently revealed that he and other leftists on site privately found the protest more a carnival than an insurrection. Indeed, he giddily pointed out that he recognized scores of FBI informants amid the crowd. When later asked about leaks that substantiated these allegations, FBI Director Christopher Wray refused to say anything about their presence to his Senate overseers.

Yet the leftist on the scene Rosenberg put it a bit more candidly:

“It was like, me and two other colleagues who were there outside and we were just having fun! [Jan. 6] was not a big deal as they [the media] are making it, because they were making too big a deal. They were making this an organized thing that it wasn’t. I know I’m supposed to be traumatized, but like, all these colleagues who were in the [Capitol] building and are like ‘Oh my God it was so scary!’—I’m like, ‘f*** off! … dude come on, you were not in any danger’… There were a ton of FBI informants among the people who attacked the Capitol.”

Most of what the media told us was again a half-lie or absolutely untrue.

Capitol Police officer Sicknick was not killed by protestors. He tragically died of natural causes a day later. No one died violently at the hands of others—other than protestors. There were no firearms found on the intruders inside the Capitol.

Protestor Ashli Babbitt was unarmed when lethally shot for the crime of illegally entering the Capitol through a broken window. Her Capitol Police shooter’s identity was hidden for months, despite his previous record of firearm laxity.

Eventually, the media assured that the black officer’s reckless shooting of an unarmed, petite woman, without an arrest record, but with 14 years of meritorious military service, for a misdemeanor or minor felony (of “illegally parading” in the Capitol?) was not comparable with the repeated felon George Floyd’s death at the hands of a reckless white officer after committing a felony and resisting arrest.

Some 120 days of deadly rioting in 2020 were ignored by the Left, as one day of rioting at the Capitol resulted in the greatest militarization of Washington, D.C. since the Civil War.  

Nancy Pelosi and the Pentagon called out thousands of federal troops and ringed the city with barricades and barbed wire—despite the reality that not a single follow-up riot, in 2020 fashion, ever ensued. 

The idea was to make January 6th into a permanent threat to the leftwing government, requiring near-permanent aggrandizement of power against a fabricated threat from fellow Americans.

For the next two years, January 6th became the obsession of Never-Trump Republicans and the tool by which Joe Biden could indict half the nation as election deniers, semi-fascists, and un-Americans.

Civil libertarians gleefully ignored that hundreds of either innocents or those likely guilty of misdemeanors were detained without indictments, but subject to harsh treatment in pay-back Washington, D.C. jails.

In near blasphemous terms, the Left quickly enshrined January 6th as a greater threat to America than was 9/11, a day on which nearly 3,000 souls perished from the greatest attack on the American homeland in our history. Somehow, we were told to believe that fools thrashing about and some trashing the Capitol (but not torching a federal courthouse or police precinct or iconic church) was a greater danger than Osama Bin Laden’s legions of terrorist killers.

***

Pause for a second and consider. What do all these radical changes in American life of the last three years share in common other than they were triggered by single incidents: 

ü an entire change in the very manner in which hundreds of millions of Americans vote, 

ü landmark deliberate destruction of a booming U.S. economy, 

ü the first entire lockdown of the U.S. population under veritable martial law in some jurisdictions, 

ü a complete transformation of the criminal justice system in major American cities, 

ü a radical alteration in college admissions, 

ü a revolution in American advertising, sports, and entertainment, 

ü a new tribalism that makes race essential to who we are, 

ü the militarization of the nation’s capital, 

ü a federal raid on an ex-president’s home, 

ü the jailing of any who resisted a congressional subpoena to testify to Congress, and 

ü FBI arrests of political enemies ambush-style?

The answer, three days: 

ü a COVID-19 panic-driven decision to lock down the U.S., 

ü a national hysteria following the death of George Floyd, and 

ü mass madness following January 6th. 

And what do these three days in turn share? They were crisis fodder that the Left saw as gifts that ensured permanent changes in American life otherwise impossible without such pretexts.

 Leftwing Hysteria and the

Art of the Psychodrama.

Parts Seven & Eight

By: Victor Davis Hanson

December 14 & 16, 2022

Soon the affluent woke went even further in their hubris.

More statues were toppled, more names changed, and more dangerous laws passed. Somehow in the mass madness of iconoclasm, even the statues of Cervantes and Frederick Douglas were to be desecrated, along with monuments along Washington’s National Mall. The common denominator apparently was an ignorant but envious present warring against the greater minds and moralists of the past.

One day I walked to my office on Junipero Serra Mall, and the next week I discovered the name had been Trostkyized—apparently on the charge that Serra was a Spanish interloper who had used corporal punishment in his misguided effort of converting souls and teaching agriculture to indigenous Native Americans. Stanford students in BMWs and Audis had gained the moral authority to condemn a Franciscan priest who walked the length of California, creating the mission system, introducing arboriculture and viticulture, and trying to inculcate Christianly—“sins” of some 250 years ago.

When one cannot address why or how 10,000 African Americans were murdered in 2021, then one apparently erases Junipero Serra’s name (but, of course, not from an iconic Palo Alto boulevard and cherished addresses, but only from a minor cul de sac).

Even television commercials went hyper-woke—as if the presence of African Americans in 50 percent of all televised advertisements rather than the old 15-20 percent would result in racial ecumenicalism and less violence on the street.

Corporations went hyper-sanctimonious, each vying to out-virtue-signal the other. CEOs fought for market share of wokeness, as Disney, Delta, and United battled for the greatest virtuous headlines. Racial quotas for pilot training were announced (so much for the naivete that affirmative-action racialism would not extend to airline pilots and nuclear plant operators). The MLB All-Star Game was removed from Georgia, given the state had asked Americans to present an ID to vote in the manner they routinely cashed a check.

Previous race mongers like Ibram X. Kendi suddenly were re-enriched, charging $20,000 and up for a brief Zoom lecture to guilty white audiences. The Obamas on spec remerged more frequently from their various mansions, exhausted from their occasional multimillion-dollar Netflix consulting gigs, but not so tired as to miss out on lecturing Americans on their racism and shortcomings.

Oprah and Megan Markle reappeared, trading stories of oppression from their dueling Montecito mansions. Lebron James put on his Malcolm X glasses, photo-opping reading about oppression, and boldly and bravely stood for the National Anthem while getting rich from the Chinese. Colin Kaepernick became wealthy too by slandering public patriotism—and by hocking his trendy anti-American image to sneaker salesmen profiting off incarcerated slave-worker populations in China. One communist’s slave worker is another wokester’s profit-maker.

In the Floyd conundrum, Joy Reid went from an embittered racialist who had dabbled in homophobic rants, to an unrestrained racist spouting hate on her evening broadcast, as MSNBC tripled its doses of nightly racial inflammation.

Language itself changed as black was to be permanently capitalized as Black. Would that one-letter change increase inner-city test scores or reduce the crime rate? Or was it instead designed for the guilt-ridden white elite to add another virtue-signaling tool in their ample chest of ways to neglect addressing inner-city carnage?

What did emerge post-Floyd instead was a radical spike in the old knock-out game, the smash-and-grab game, the toss-him-into-the-subway game, the smack-the-Jew and stomp-the-Asian game, the carjacking game, and the follow-the-shopper-to-his-home-and-rob-him game.

Leftwing district attorneys in urban counties and big cities seized the never-let-a-crisis-go-to-waste moment. They began administratively ignoring the law. 

ü Violent criminals were not arrested. 

ü The few arrested were not charged. 

ü The fewer charged were not tried. 

ü The fewest tried were not convicted. 

ü The rarely convicted were not incarcerated, and 

ü those prior incarcerated were now released. 

What followed were hawks preying on us, the turkeys.

Statistically, blacks disproportionally doubled their numbers in the general population as hate-crime perpetrators. And on and on it went, the Left manipulating the Floyd death as the long-awaited crisis that surely was never going to go to waste. The toll of violence on the inner city was ignored by the caring Left. Was it the necessary collateral damage for the greater good of transforming the nation’s laws and jurisprudence into something like the visions of George Soros?

Critical race theory was enshrined on the principle that laws were created by old, slave-owning white relics of the past who never were forced to steal a loaf of bread and so made laws against stealing a loaf of bread. But sneakers, iPhones, computers, and TVs were looted—never bread.

The third psychodramatic day that rendered great dividends was the buffoonish January 6th riot at the Capitol. Somehow the Left turned a few hundred out-of-control idiots, some replete with cow horns, painted faces, and sloganeering signs into a cabal of sophisticated revolutionaries seeking to storm the Capitol, hold it, and prompt a coup d’état. Or so the shrill narratives soon went. But unarmed, middle-aged angry voters with potbellies and sore joints did not a revolution make or even a two-bit pseudo-insurrection.

In this case, it is hard to write about any of that day’s ridiculous protests, given the January 6th House committee charged with finding out the truth was stocked with Trump haters, and exclusionary of any Republican member who had not voted for impeachment or who would not shortly be out of office. It could be deconstructed as a leftwing ploy to manipulate embittered and soon-to-be out-of-office Liz Cheney into a willing useful idiot to veneer an otherwise patently McCarthyesque effort to smear half the country as insurrectionists.

The New York Times resident January 6th expert and Trump-obsessed Matthew Rosenberg, in an Operation Veritas ambush interview, inadvertently revealed that he and other leftists on site privately found the protest more a carnival than an insurrection. Indeed, he giddily pointed out that he recognized scores of FBI informants amid the crowd. When later asked about leaks that substantiated these allegations, FBI Director Christopher Wray refused to say anything about their presence to his Senate overseers.

Yet the leftist on the scene Rosenberg put it a bit more candidly:

“It was like, me and two other colleagues who were there outside and we were just having fun! [Jan. 6] was not a big deal as they [the media] are making it, because they were making too big a deal. They were making this an organized thing that it wasn’t. I know I’m supposed to be traumatized, but like, all these colleagues who were in the [Capitol] building and are like ‘Oh my God it was so scary!’—I’m like, ‘f*** off! … dude come on, you were not in any danger’… There were a ton of FBI informants among the people who attacked the Capitol.”

Most of what the media told us was again a half-lie or absolutely untrue.

Capitol Police officer Sicknick was not killed by protestors. He tragically died of natural causes a day later. No one died violently at the hands of others—other than protestors. There were no firearms found on the intruders inside the Capitol.

Protestor Ashli Babbitt was unarmed when lethally shot for the crime of illegally entering the Capitol through a broken window. Her Capitol Police shooter’s identity was hidden for months, despite his previous record of firearm laxity.

Eventually, the media assured that the black officer’s reckless shooting of an unarmed, petite woman, without an arrest record, but with 14 years of meritorious military service, for a misdemeanor or minor felony (of “illegally parading” in the Capitol?) was not comparable with the repeated felon George Floyd’s death at the hands of a reckless white officer after committing a felony and resisting arrest.

Some 120 days of deadly rioting in 2020 were ignored by the Left, as one day of rioting at the Capitol resulted in the greatest militarization of Washington, D.C. since the Civil War.  

Nancy Pelosi and the Pentagon called out thousands of federal troops and ringed the city with barricades and barbed wire—despite the reality that not a single follow-up riot, in 2020 fashion, ever ensued. 

The idea was to make January 6th into a permanent threat to the leftwing government, requiring near-permanent aggrandizement of power against a fabricated threat from fellow Americans.

For the next two years, January 6th became the obsession of Never-Trump Republicans and the tool by which Joe Biden could indict half the nation as election deniers, semi-fascists, and un-Americans.

Civil libertarians gleefully ignored that hundreds of either innocents or those likely guilty of misdemeanors were detained without indictments, but subject to harsh treatment in pay-back Washington, D.C. jails.

In near blasphemous terms, the Left quickly enshrined January 6th as a greater threat to America than was 9/11, a day on which nearly 3,000 souls perished from the greatest attack on the American homeland in our history. Somehow, we were told to believe that fools thrashing about and some trashing the Capitol (but not torching a federal courthouse or police precinct or iconic church) was a greater danger than Osama Bin Laden’s legions of terrorist killers.

***

Pause for a second and consider. What do all these radical changes in American life of the last three years share in common other than they were triggered by single incidents: 

ü an entire change in the very manner in which hundreds of millions of Americans vote, 

ü landmark deliberate destruction of a booming U.S. economy, 

ü the first entire lockdown of the U.S. population under veritable martial law in some jurisdictions, 

ü a complete transformation of the criminal justice system in major American cities, 

ü a radical alteration in college admissions, 

ü a revolution in American advertising, sports, and entertainment, 

ü a new tribalism that makes race essential to who we are, 

ü the militarization of the nation’s capital, 

ü a federal raid on an ex-president’s home, 

ü the jailing of any who resisted a congressional subpoena to testify to Congress, and 

ü FBI arrests of political enemies ambush-style?

The answer, three days: 

ü a COVID-19 panic-driven decision to lock down the U.S., 

ü a national hysteria following the death of George Floyd, and 

ü mass madness following January 6th. 

And what do these three days in turn share? They were crisis fodder that the Left saw as gifts that ensured permanent changes in American life otherwise impossible without such pretexts.

OnePeterFive

Rebuilding Catholic Culture. Restoring Catholic Tradition.

• TRADITIONIS CUSTODES

Pro-TLM Strategies in the Era of “Traditionis Custodes”

 Peter Kwasniewski, PhD December 21, 2022 0 Comments

People often ask me: “What’s your advice for Catholics living in a diocese where the TLM has been limited or eliminated, or where there is a threat that this might happen? What should we do?” As we round the corner of one year past the infamous Responsa ad Dubia of then-archbishop Roche of the then-Congregation for Divine Worship, and as rumors circulate of still more draconian measures in the new year, it is time to tackle head-on the question of what can be done concretely. There are undoubtedly other points that can be added to mine by fellow soldiers in the trenches.

Here are some steps I would recommend—though obviously many different strategies could work, and certain angles work better with certain episcopal or parochial personalities or situations. Not everyone will be comfortable or enthusiastic about every idea, nor is that surprising; this is meant as a buckshot list, to cover all the bases. The items listed are not meant to be in order of importance or chronological sequence. We have to multiply strategies going forward because we simply don’t know what’s going to work, and some of these strategies involve fairly lengthy timelines.

Before I go any further, it must be understood that everyone is doing three things: praying; fasting; and giving alms. As for prayer, at least the daily Rosary, with the restoration of the Mass as a specific intention; the First Five Saturdays and the Nine First Fridays; TLMs whenever you can get to them. Join our lay sodality, the Crusade of Eucharistic Reparation, which has for its secondary intention the restoration of the Latin Mass. As for fasting, Our Lord says some kinds of demons come out only that way. As for giving alms, support traditional parishes, orders, and organizations. Don’t give up: we were born for these times! God put us here to fight this fight.

1. Start an Una Voce chapter in your diocese. It can be helpful to have an umbrella organization that speaks “with one voice,” on its own letterhead. For this reason it seems good to create an Una Voce chapter in your area, if one does not already exist. If you obtain for it 501(c)3 status, it can receive tax-deductible donations that can be put towards vestments, property, literature, training camps, stipends, and the like. An Una Voce chapter could organize an annual pilgrimage in the diocese (and if it does, the bishop should be informed of it). Seminarians and priests who show signs of interest in tradition should be supported in their TLM training, purchase of supplies, or attendance at TLM-friendly events. The internet is a great tool, but we need local in-person communication, networking, and events, and an Una Voce chapter can supply that.

2. Help the bishop to understand his canonical rights. Try to get a meeting with the bishop and explain to him (delicately, tactfully, and kindly—bishops don’t like to be instructed about their rights and duties by laity!) that canon law permits him to make his own discernment about the local situation and the needs of the faithful, as Fr. Gerald Murray explains here. The Dicastery for Divine Worship (DDW) in Rome serves in an advisory capacity toward him, not in a legislative one. The DDW has no authority to command a bishop to terminate the TLM; they may only tell him he “should,” which is quite a different matter. An abundance of canonical arguments may be found in my article “Newly Ordained Priests and Permission to Offer the Traditional Latin Mass” and, even more, in canon lawyer Fr. Réginald-Marie Rivoire’s Does “Traditionis Custodes” Pass the Juridical Rationality Test? (Os Justi Press, 2022).

Your arguments should be boiled down to the shortest possible number of pages and sent to him in advance of the meeting. Even better if you know a sympathetic priest who is a canon lawyer. The bottom line: a bishop can invoke Canon 87 to dispense from particular or universal disciplinary laws—even those issued by the supreme authority of the Church.[1]

3. Meet in person with your bishop. When you meet with the bishop, have both men and women present, and explain how much the TLM means to all of you in terms of loving God and practicing your faith in your day-to-day life. Leave out the arguments about liturgical form because he likely exclusively offers the NO and is thus not likely to have the patience for any arguments that even remotely suggest the superiority of one form over the other; go instead for the heartstrings.

When the bishop says “I can’t do anything else, this is what Rome said,” remind him of the content of the letter you sent showing him that he does have the freedom; remind him of his rights under canon law and of the behavior of many other bishops who are letting the TLM continue, often in multiple locations and also in parish churches. If the time and atmosphere seem right, you could also propose to him inviting the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter into the diocese, because the pope expressly approved the continuation of their work wherever the bishop welcomes it. Perhaps a church building that is on the chopping block for merger could be taken over by the FSSP. (This “deal with the FSSP” would seem to apply mutatis mutandis also to the Institute of Christ the King and smaller traditional communities; certainly that is the way things are being handled almost everywhere, except in the gravitational field of Chicago.)

One of the great challenges of our time is the distance that has grown between bishops and faithful in general; it can be difficult to build up friendship and trust when the head of the diocese is remote and inaccessible. Nevertheless one must try to do what one can. I was speaking with a lady who said she was inspired one day to call the chancery and invite the bishop over for dinner. To her shock, the bishop agreed, and came over!

4. Organize a letter campaign. Have TLM attendees, families, especially children, send letters to the bishop. Definitely, don’t flood him with letters all at once unless the situation calls for it. Instead, agree among yourselves to spread them out so that he’s always getting some mail. After a time, you may wish to pick certain seasons or dates of the year when everyone in the community will resume sending in mail (Advent, Lent, etc.). This way the mail doesn’t just drop off and never return.

It’s not necessary to write more than a sentence or two: “We are heartbroken at what has happened in our lives / to our parish…” “We feel as if we are being singled out for punishment, and why? Because we love our Faith and its traditions?” “Our boys loved serving the Latin Mass…” “We used to pray the rosary together for the pope’s intentions, and now everyone has scattered…”) Have people send the bishop spiritual bouquets from their families. We are trying to reach his heart and make him feel bad about what he has done or is threatening to do (or being bullied into doing); we want to make him regret it, rethink it, walk it back quietly.

True, such letters may not change his mind. They may not move him to change his policies. But a bishop still has a heart, even if it has hardened toward some of his faithful; he still has a conscience, even if it needs to be awakened. A steady flow of letters may soften that hard heart, may stimulate that dormant conscience. Over time, he might, for example, decide not to enforce his policies, or to enforce them inconsistently and weakly. He might decide to leave untouched a Latin Mass that has sprung up somewhere without approval, even though he has heard about it. He might intercept or sideline a damaging assault started by a more zealous fan of Traditionis Custodes.

There are many things that go on behind the scenes that most of us will never hear about, and we cannot judge simply from appearances only. When we send in letters, it is part of an effort to move things slowly but with hope and confidence. The same is true when we pray: sometimes the results are dramatic and obvious, but at other times, even most of the time, the results are hidden to our eyes. Nevertheless, we still have faith and we still pray.

One might worry: “What if the letters will annoy the bishop?” Truth be told, even that’s not a bad outcome. Remember the parable of the persistent old woman who so bothered the wicked judge that he finally granted her what she asked, so that she would finally leave him alone (see Lk 18:1–8). We very definitely want the hierarchy to get it through their heads that we are not going away and we won’t change our minds.

One cautionary note: Some bishops are actively hostile to or contemptuous of the TLM and all that goes with it. For them, sharing the “fruits” of Summorum Pontificum—the army of altar servers, the numbers of births and baptisms versus funerals, etc.—can backfire. Because of their firm conviction that the TLM represents the past and not the future, a conviction obsessively repeated by Pope Francis, all the evidence that suggests the opposite is not an occasion for reconsideration or encouragement but rather a cause of alarm. The more the tradition grows, the more such bishops will become convinced that the Catholics of their dioceses are being misled into a dangerous dead-end. Attempts to get on the good side of bishops like this may have the unfortunate result of pricking their malformed consciences that tell them to impose further restraints on your activities rather than the opposite. Thus, some discernment will be required in determining what kind of communication may or may not be fruitful with the local Ordinary.

5. Take canonical action. There are sometimes canonical recourse steps that Catholics who are being deprived of goods to which they have a right can take. Here, time is of the essence: the moment a chancery or episcopal decrees goes out restricting the TLM or old-rite baptism, confirmation, marriage, funeral, etc., you need to file with a canon lawyer ASAP. In formation right now is the Vetus Ordo Society, which has as its purpose precisely assisting the laity to file such cases. There is no risk to the individual faithful and there is a chance that the legal intervention will throw a wrench in the works.

Some Catholics say: “Taking canonical action will upset the bishop and he will retaliate by being even meaner to us.” This is the beaten wife syndrome: if I complain about my husband beating me, he will beat me even more. It is because the laity have been so passively “obedient” that the authorities can so easily get away with abusing us and attacking the good of our souls and our families. I regret to say that the villains in the Church are counting on us not to fight back, to be good sheeple whom they can cancel out, as they cancel out good priests. This is part of the whole gaslighting structure. It’s crucial that people see through it. The only thing a bully can be made to understand is fighting back, because then he has to deal with it. Otherwise, he will ride roughshod over everyone.

Now, I’m not saying that your local bishop is a bully; he might very well be a gentleman and even somewhat sympathetic. Yet he is probably a victim of the same false understanding of obedience as that under which many priests operate, where, e.g., if Francis says “give communion to remarried Catholics” or “teach that the death penalty is wrong,” they think they have no choice but to do it. St. Thomas makes it very clear that we are under immediate and exceptionless obedience to no one but God; all His human representatives must follow divine and natural law and reverence ecclesiastical law and custom.[2]

In all your formal or argumentative communications directed to the bishop (as opposed to spiritual bouquets or personal notes), it should always be made clear that you are well aware, from close study of the matter by canonical experts, that a bishop is by no means required to shut down parish TLMs or other sacramental rites. He has room to maneuver.

6. Show up in public places. Gather at the cathedral and/or the chancery and pray the rosary, holding posters with nice messages (see what is being done in Chicago and Arlington for ideas). No personal attacks on the bishop, just messages like “We are faithful Catholics who love the Latin Mass!” and “Don’t take our beloved Latin Mass away from us!” It’s especially important to try to interest local media in covering these peaceful protests, since there is no bishop who enjoys negative publicity. Pray the Rosary and sing lots of Catholic chants and hymns. Prepare a piece of paper or half a piece of paper with a simple explanation on it of who you are and what you stand for and what you are asking for, so that you can hand it to curious bystanders going in and out or passing by. In short: don’t let your existence be forgotten.

Another way of showing up is to take a table at a diocesan event, e.g., if there is an annual Diocesan Catechists Workshop or a Men’s Conference or a Women’s Conference. You can set up books to sell and informational materials.

7. Educate the clergy about the battle. Meanwhile, parallel to all of the foregoing, talk one-on-one or in small groups with the TLM-celebrating and TLM-favorable priests. Be sure to give them copies of the book True Obedience in the Church, which argues that priests may and must keep the Latin Mass and other traditional Sacraments and sacramentals alive regardless of what their bishop may allow or prohibit. There are profound theological issues at stake here; it’s no mere “matter of discipline” over which the pope and bishops have a full authority of determination to which the only response is blind obedience. On the contrary, the ban on traditional sacramental rites goes to the root of the Catholic Faith, to the Church’s consistency and coherence with herself and with Christ’s action over history and in the magisterium. A book that draws out these points in detail is From Benedict’s Peace to Francis’s War, but the aforementioned Fr. Rivoire book is also excellent (and much shorter). Get your priests quality traditional calendars so they can be better aware of its ins and outs.

8. Try to persuade priests to offer underground private Masses if need be. Be ready to support a priest, in friendship and in practical/financial assistance, if he is unjustly stripped of a position in the diocese and is given no assignment (in other words, if he becomes what is called a “canceled priest”). At that point he can become your local underground chaplain. Bishop Athanasius Schneider has supported this course of action in a case of necessity. Remember: the suppression of the TLM will be successful to the degree that priests and bishops allow themselves to be coerced. Those who refuse to be coerced may be visited with unjust penalties, but they will retain a clear conscience and fulfill the pastoral ministry to which Christ the High Priest has called them.

9. Acquire and renovate property. We have to think long-term, because the crisis that has reached fever pitch under Pope Francis is still going to be with us for some time. So, we must be realistic: long gone are the days when we could expect the institutional Church—i.e., the churchmen of the moment—to anticipate our needs and to provide for them. On the contrary, some churchmen seem to specialize in new forms of discrimination and marginalization, and in stomping on the spiritual needs and canonical rights of the faithful.

It is therefore time to meet the fire of hatred with the fire of a love that surmounts every obstacle. If a group of laypeople can find an old church, or a closed Protestant chapel, they should buy it and convert it into a usable chapel. This is a smart step for the difficult times that may be coming (and have already come in certain places).[3] All things being equal, it is better to have a church in which to celebrate the Holy Mass and other Sacraments than to limit oneself to living rooms, basements, or hotel ballrooms, as often occurred in the 1970s. If you have no success locally finding a chaplain, you may be able to get a priest from the Coalition for Canceled Priests to come in and say Mass there. Sadly, if things keep going as they are going, other priests will become available in due course.

10. Drive and carpool. Some people have the option to drive an hour or two into a neighboring diocese for a TLM offered by diocesan clergy, an Ecclesia Dei group, or the SSPX. This is obviously not a long-term solution but it can be a temporary strategy, especially for the sake of children who should not be exposed to liturgical deviations. It is also possible that a drive like this could be done once or twice a month. Van pools to help the elderly or those with no vehicles get to Mass could be considered; it would be an outstanding work of mercy.

If the Sacrament of Baptism or Confirmation is unavailable in your vicinity, see if you can bring your child to a neighboring diocese where the FSSP or ICKSP (or even, in some rare cases, a diocesan church) can take care of it. Policies vary but there have been places that welcome outsiders for the Sacraments of initiation. There is reason to believe that Vatican efforts are intensifying to cut off Catholics from any and all access to traditional-rite Sacraments apart from the Eucharist. If and when this happens in your area and you cannot find another solution, it would then be necessary to reach out to the SSPX.

11. Start a Traditional Catholic Homeschool Co-op. Unlike an Una Voce chapter or other (perhaps clandestine) group, a homeschool co-op can be an effective vehicle for openly educating the traditional Catholic youth and for collaborating to advance traditional Catholic values within the diocese. It would be best if a priest can offer a TLM on, say Friday mornings, in the local church with the co-op students meeting after for religion or other classes. Such a co-op doesn’t have to limit itself to childrens’ offerings; it might also offer fellowship and enrichment for the adults by offering adult nights featuring talks on various topics, from adult spiritual formation to experienced homeschool families teaching those new to homeschooling which curriculum and materials they’ve had the most success with. Keeping the group traditional and Catholic so that it is not overrun by a majority of Novus Ordo and/or Protestant homeschoolers is essential; this could be done with bylaws that call for voting and non-voting members, with the former having to meet certain traditional Catholic criteria.

12. Begin the SSPX conversation. Only if your bishop has canceled every TLM in your diocese and/or other sacraments in the old rite and nothing else avails—if a bishop will not relent in his cancellations, if he will not be reasonable in providing for the needs of his sheep, if he will not invoke Canon 87, if he refuses to invite in the FSSP, etc.—then it is time to consider the “nuclear option,” namely, contacting and inviting the SSPX into your area. It is your way of saying, unequivocally: “We are playing for keeps and will not back down.” Given the ever-growing demands on their limited personnel at this time, the Society is not likely to be able to respond to your request right away; but if you can assure a chapel and funding, and there is a decent number of faithful in question, they may come.

Here is not the place to go into detailed questions about the status of the SSPX but I will limit myself to saying the following. If the Church is in a state of unprecedented and anomalous institutional crisis, a historical meltdown next to which the Arian controversy and the Protestant revolt are as puff-pastry—and that is the view I have, and, I would think, most of those who are reading this—then it is infinitely more necessary to retain the fullness of Catholic orthodoxy, which means both right teaching and right worship, than it is to check off all the boxes of canonical propriety and to satisfy the desiderata of scholastic manuals written at other times and without even the remotest conception of the situation we are passing through.

Plus, on a pragmatic note, and sad as it is to say it, nothing better motivates certain bishops to provide diocesan-sponsored Latin Masses than the possibility of an SSPX presence! To protect yourself against the counterargument that “you were schismatics all along, because look how you are reaching out to the SSPX!,” make it absolutely clear: “We never thought of seeking the help of the SSPX until we were painted into a corner by your unreasonable and unjust actions. It is not we who are wronging you but you who are wronging us. Since there is absolutely no good case that can be made for withdrawing the traditional sacramental rites from baptized Catholics and flourishing communities, it is clear that, in reality, the local shepherd has decided to stop feeding his sheep; and the sheep therefore turn to where they may be fed.”[4]

In this connection I would urge traditional Catholics to recognize sedevacantism for what it is, namely, a trap set by the Devil to capture those who are too quick to judge, overzealous, and unequipped with the spiritual and theological resources needed to make some sense of our chaotic times (it will never be able to make sense completely, since we are dealing with the mysterium iniquitatis, the mystery of iniquity, which is inherently irrational). Even when we legitimately protest against and refuse to follow the directives of our pope and our bishop, we do so regretfully, under duress, and for the sake of greater goods that must be defended by true Catholics. We do not stop acknowledging and praying for the pope and the clergy in general, nor do we seek to escape from the confines of the visible Church. Our goal is the restoration of tradition within the Church, its natural and supernatural home.

13. Education never stops. Finally, and very importantly, it is crucial to help educate your fellow TLM attendees on why we love this form of the Mass. It’s not just about “smells and bells.” It goes far deeper than that. A key text, if you will permit me to say so, is Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright. This is perhaps the most immediately useful “apologetics manual” for the TLM. Perhaps you could distribute chapters of it, or start up a number of reading groups run by various people. We have to educate ourselves about what we are fighting for and why. My new book from TAN is a deeper dive: The Once and Future Roman Rite: Returning to the Latin Liturgical Tradition after Seventy Years of Exile. You can find videos of talks at my YouTube channel for those who prefer that format. Another good book club book would be Stuart Chessman’s Faith of Our Fathers, a short but inspiring read about the history of the traditionalist movement in America, what it had to go through, and how by God’s grace it has overcome every obstacle.

14. Last but not least: let us endeavor to carry our cross well. It may well be that God is asking us to carry a heavier cross than before. If he asks us to do so, it means He knows we can handle it with His grace, and that we will be sanctified by it. Maybe he is asking us to bear it on behalf of those who reject and insult the cross.

Bishop Athanasius Schneider in Christus Vincit and other works talks about the suppression and rarity of the Mass during his childhood in the Soviet Union. He used that cross for his personal sanctification, and ultimately it led him to accept his priestly vocation. Look how the Lord is using him today, to preach the truth in season and out of season, around the world. The same will be true for us: God does not allow evil unless He will draw forth good. Let our own growth in virtue and sanctity be the good that He draws forth from the evils unleashed by Traditionis Custodes.

[1] Sometimes chancery officials want to keep bishops in the dark about can. 87; and sometimes threats are made by various people to the bishop (“you know, if you actually invoke this, then…”). Much depends on whether you have a man of principle and courage or not.

[2] On these points, see my work True Obedience.

[3] Don’t blow a ton of cash on a chapel that never gets used, however. Whatever you do, do it under the direction of, or with the advice of, the TLM-offering priest you’re working with.

[4] I have written two articles (1, 2) that may be helpful for those in your community who fear that this is a “Protestant” way of thinking or acting.

Peter Kwasniewski, PhD

Dr. Peter Kwasniewski is a graduate of Thomas Aquinas College and The Catholic University of America who taught at the International Theological Institute in Austria, the Franciscan University of Steubenville’s Austria Program, and Wyoming Catholic College, which he helped establish in 2006. Today he is a full-time writer and speaker on traditional Catholicism whose work appears online at, among others, OnePeterFive, New Liturgical Movement, LifeSiteNews, The Remnant, and Catholic Family News. He has published eighteen books, including Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright: The Genius and Timeliness of the Traditional Latin Mass (Angelico, 2020), The Ecstasy of Love in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Emmaus, 2021), and Are Canonizations Infallible? Revisiting a Disputed Question (Arouca, 2021). His work has been translated into at least eighteen languages. Visit his website at www.peterkwasniewski.com.

www.peterkwasniewski.com

YOU SAY THAT YOU ARE A CATHOLIC, BUT YOU STAY AT HOME ON CHRISTMAS DAY LIKE MOST PROTESTANTS

OPINION

Canceling Church Services on Christmas?

Some Protestant pastors are canceling their Sunday church services this week because it’s Christmas Day and they fear no one will show up.

• John M. Grondelski

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Do you ever wonder what happened in Boston on December 25, 1661?  

In 1659, Massachusetts Bay Colony, under Puritan leadership, banned the observance of Christmas as “superstitious,” fining anyone caught celebrating it. As in Soviet Russia, the best evidence against any “keeping” of Christmas was to go to work.   

Well, December 25, 1661, was a Sunday. And Sundays were the high point of the Massachusetts week, regulated by what one was to do (go to church) and fail to do (work). 

Orthodox. Faithful. Free.

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So, when Puritans went to church on Sunday, December 25, 1661, presumably the minister said nothing about Christmas, an early version of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” If the “Bible-in-a-Year” model had been in vogue back then, by the last week of December they should have been in the middle of some real awful plagues in the Book of Revelation. That’ll teach ‘em! 

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And when the Puritans came home on Sunday, December 25, 1661, (probably in mid-afternoon) and lolled around the farm, how did the Colony authorities know they were honoring the Sabbath rather than clandestinely “forbearing of labour” to honor Christmas? 

I make these observations in light of a feature in the December 18 New York Times’ Sunday Magazine, in which Ruth Graham interviews Protestant pastors across America who plan to cancel church servicesnext Sunday, December 25. Why? 

Because it’s Christmas Day. 

Now, lest one think that the spirit of Increase and Cotton Mather and perhaps Jonathan Edwards suddenly stalks the land, relax. There’s nothing quite so theologically serious about why they’re calling off church services. 

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The pastors are cancelling them because they don’t think people will come. 

Unlike financial planners, their future forecast is based on past performance: when Christmas last fell on a Sunday—in 2016—service attendance was minimal. People told pastors they preferred a slow morning, with their families, opening presents.   

Given that precedent, and still-anemic numbers after the great Covid lockdown, some Protestant pastors simply decided to announce no service would be scheduled. Graham reports that 84 percent of Protestant ministers surveyed planned Christmas services, which means almost one in five didn’t. 84 percent of Protestant ministers surveyed planned Christmas services, which means almost one in five didn’t.Tweet This

The Mathers at least railed at Christmas because they thought it “superstitiously” detracted from the honor due God. Today’s pastors now rail at Sunday because it detracts from the comfort options of their congregants on Christmas. 

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As if Christmas and Sunday are mutually exclusive. 

Graham notes that the 2020 pandemic experience had also changed the way some ministers think of what it means to “go to church.” Given the tele-evangelical bent of Protestantism, “online church” is growing. [That doesn’t work for a sacramental church like the Catholic Church—unless you turn the sacraments into empty rituals—but for Protestants who long ago marginalized even Eucharistic celebration, no sweat].  

Ministers who are more theologically loosey-goosey (a key theological term) invoke Matthew 18:20 (“where two or three are gathered in my name, I am in their midst”) to apply a religious patina to familial present-opening on the living room floor. It’s probably not too far from the American Golfer’s Proof for the Existence of God (“I encounter the Lord in nature…on the eighteenth hole”).   

Pundits lament the decline of “organized religion.” But the truth is that moderns don’t seem to think religion needs to be “organized.” Religion as a structure, a discipline against which one measures one’s beliefs and actions, is derided as “inauthentic” or “externalist” or even “hypocritical.” “Real” religion is interior. 

In one sense, that’s true: religion needs to be self-appropriated. But I fear that, in practice, the interiority of religion of which moderns speak is inside the house, sipping hot chocolate by the Christmas tree; or under the covers at noon, reading the Times Sunday Magazine about the other folks who aren’t going to church either. 

Honesty demands admitting this schmear has nothing in common with “organized religion,” not just because it is unorganized but because it doesn’t deserve the name “religion.” Religare, the etymological origin of “religion,” means “to bind together.” But this goo unites nothing.  

It calls itself “spiritual” because it feigns some nonmaterial aura; but it shares nothing with spirituality unless we believe everyman is simultaneously his own disciple and guru. Such schmaltz may have worked for Ralph Waldo Emerson and even Henry David Thoreau (though the latter needed his working aunt to bail the wordmonger of Walden out of jail), but I bet even Ebenezer Scrooge would have preferred a thicker gruel. 

Worship of God always involved a communal context. God made a covenant with Israel, not individual deals with Moses and Aaron. A true Jewish worship service presupposes a minyan: ten men past their bar mitzvahs (i.e., true “sons of the Torah”). Christianity speaks of the “body of Christ” (1 Corinthians 12), the “vine and the branches” (John 15:1-17), and God’s will to save men in community (Lumen gentium, # 9).   

The sidelining of the ecclesiological context of worship, while accelerated by the great Covid lockdown and the failure to reckon with the long-term damage of a “field hospital” that retreated from the battlefield, preexisted 2020. The privatization of religion has long been afoot; it is arguably even a foundational tenet of the Protestant Revolt, with its focus on personal Scriptural interpretation and “my relationship with Jesus.”   

What we see today is what happens when individualism detaches from organized religion to become a religion in itself, one that takes down its competition. It’s a “religion” that finds social resonance when even the mainstream faiths peddle a moralistic therapeutic deism instead of an authentic Judaism or Christianity. How could we imagine a “good and gentle Jesus” who simply wants us to “love” being upset that we are not “going to church” when He’s both everywhere and yet conveniently nowhere in terms of most of what I want to do in life?   

Note the verb: “imagine.” There’s a lot of imagining that takes the place of real religion today. And that’s why going to church on Christmas becomes a question, even for those who imagine this is compatible with real faith. 



• John M. GrondelskiJohn M. Grondelski (Ph.D., Fordham) is a former associate dean of the School of Theology, Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey. All views expressed herein are his own.