DO CHURCH LEADERS SOMETIMES SHIELD RINOS AND CINOS ???

Posted on February 25, 2018 by abyssum

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TEXAS BISHOPS SLAM FAITHFUL PRO-LIFE GROUP

NEWS: US NEWS

by Stephen Wynne  •  ChurchMilitant.com  •  February 22, 2018    26 Comments

Church leaders shielding RINOs?

AUSTIN, Texas (ChurchMilitant.com) – Fake Republicans in Texas are losing, and the Catholic bishops seem ready to sacrifice a faithful pro-life leader to defend them.

On Thursday, the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops issued a rebuke to Texas Right to Life, warning parishes “not to participate in their activities or allow the organization to use parish sites.”

Texas Right to Life, headed by outspoken Catholic Jim Graham, has openly, consistently criticized the “soft push” of GOP Establishment leaders who have obstructed pro-life legislation. The bishops, meanwhile — members of the Church Establishment — are cozy with Texas RINOs (Republicans in Name Only).

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The bishops’ denouncement of Texas Right to Life comes in the wake of a split looming inside the Texas Republican Party — a winnowing of the conservative wheat from the Establishment chaff. Internal polling indicates Lone Star State RINOs are facing extinction in the upcoming elections, and political insiders believe the bishops’ “advisory” is a ploy to save their political hides. By demonizing Texas Right to Life, they suggest, the bishops hope to preserve their political allies in office.

According to their “advisory,” the bishops are spurning Texas Right to Life for three reasons:

  1. Conflicts on pro-life reform. The bishops complained the group “often opposes the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops and has implied that the bishops do not faithfully represent Church teaching.” Texas Right to Life rejects the bishops’ “incrementalism” as a halting, soft approach.
  2. Conflicts on end-of-life reform. The bishops slammed Texas Right to Life’s messaging on end-of-life care and advance directives as “misstatements.”
  3. Texas Right to Life’s voter guide. The group publishes an annual voter guide scoring Texas lawmakers according to their pro-life record. The bishops have denounced the guide as built on unfair analysis, and they maintain “a number of legislators who have consistently voted for pro-life and end of life legislation have been opposed by Texas Right to Life.”

This isn’t the first time Texas Right to Life has run afoul of the Church Establishment. In 2013, Jeffrey Patterson, executive director of the Texas Catholic Conference, wrote to state Representative Dan Huberty on behalf of the bishops, blasting Texas Right to Life’s voter guide as “unconventional,” “subjective” and producing “perplexing results.” He complained that the voter guide assigned low scores to “pro-life lawmakers who have worked long and hard to protect and preserve life.”

But Republican lawmakers like Byron Cook and Joseph Straus, key leaders of the Texas GOP Establishment, have been criticized by Texas Right to Life for obstructing pro-life laws.

As Church Militant reported in October 2017, “Cook, as the chairman of the Texas House State Affairs Committee, has worked overtime to block pro-life legislation from being passed in the Texas legislature despite claiming to be pro-life.” For example, he killed HB1113, the Pro-Life Health Insurance Reform, which would prohibit insurance companies from paying for elective abortions.

The pro-life bills Cook did support were considered “weak” and “fake” by Texas Right to Life — “ineffective or non-priority” measures that were actually “detrimental to the pro-life movement.”

Straus, meanwhile, as Speaker of the House, “put a sudden end to a special legislative session” that Gov. Greg Abbott had called in order to address important bills Establishment Republicans ignored during the 2016–17 regular session.

Seeing the writing on the wall, in 2017 Cook and Straus announced they wouldn’t seek re-election.

Texas Right to Life responded by declaring the news “worthy of an epic celebration,” aruing, “In order for the Establishment ship to stay afloat, Straus and Cook had to walk the gangplank, rather than face an embarrassing electoral pummeling and sink the entire Establishment ship.”

“If the members of the Texas House think they should merely change the name on the door of the speaker’s office to another one of Gordon Johnson’s puppets,” Texas Right to Life added, “they too, should resign and resign in shame and be treated for Stockholm syndrome, before they are defeated by their electorate in the March 6, 2018 primary.”

This primary, political insiders say, is what sparked today’s denunciation of Texas Right to Life. If RINOs have any hope of retaining office, they have to silence the voice of unrelenting critics like Texas Right to Life. The “advisory,” observers suggest, is the work of collusion between the bishops’ conference and RINOs desperate to cling to power in the face of an approaching wipe-out at the ballot box.

Representing the Lone Star State’s 13 dioceses and 2 archdioceses, the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops includes:

  • Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston
  • Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller of San Antonio
  • Bishop Patrick J. Zurek of Amarillo
  • Bishop Joe S. Vásquez of Austin
  • Bishop Curtis John Guillory of Beaumont
  • Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville
  • Bishop Michael Mulvey of Corpus Christi
  • Bishop Edward J. Burns of Dallas
  • Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso
  • Bishop Michael F. Olson of Ft. Worth
  • Bishop James Tamayo of Laredo
  • Bishop Robert Coerver of Lubbock
  • Bishop Michael J. Sis of San Angelo
  • Bishop Joseph E. Strickland of Tyler
  • Bishop Brendan J. Cahill of Victoria

The conference is available for comment:

Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops
PO Box 13285
Austin, TX 78711
(512) 339-9882

Email: https://txcatholic.org/contact/email-us/
Twitter: @TXCatholic

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There are fights that are optional, and fights that are mandatory, and fights that one should never get in.

Posted on February 25, 2018 by abyssum

image14

Texas Catholic Conference Conducts Ugly, Unprecedented Attack on Texas Right to Life 
February 23, 2018 Posted by Tantumblogo
 
I’ve written on this subject before, though it’s been some time – basically, there has long existed a marked division among the Texas pro-life movement, the uncompromising, total ban on abortion and other forms of murder position represented by Texas Right to Life, and the much more accommodating stand taken by Texas Alliance for Life.  There are many reasons to view Texas Alliance as weak on key issues, and indeed, most of the most dedicated, most successful pro-life advocates tend to support Texas Right to Life.  During the 2014 legislative session, some acrimonious division developed between Texas Right to Life and the Texas Catholic Conference (TCC), which is the bureaucratic arm of the state’s bishops (like a mini-USCCB).  Dominated by its lay staff and their preferences, including their relations with several prominent Texas lawmakers, TCC at various points supported end-of-life legislation that a number of pro-life advocates believed – I should say proved –  actually worsened the status quo in Texas, and put elderly, the sick, and their families even more at the mercy of doctors and hospitals in making end of life decisions.
 
So why has Texas Catholic Conference taken the very  unusual step of disavowing, or telling all Catholics in the state to disavow, this most effective pro-life group now?  In a word, politics.  Texas Right to Life, along with a number of other hardcore grass-roots conservatives groups like the Eagle Forum, Concerned Women for America, Texas homeschoolers, and others, have managed to fund a number of “insurgent” campaigns by true, hardcore conservatives against establishment candidates like Angela Paxton.  Early voting is underway for the party primaries, so feeling their establishment buddies under threat, major Texas politicians like Joe Straus – the Speaker of the House, who has done more than anyone to block effective pro-life legislation in this state and who saw Texas’ pro-life ranking drop from #4 to #12 in his 10 year tenure as speaker – are pulling out the stops to try to break the backs of the conservative groups supporting the insurgent candidacies.
 
We’ve seen this before in this state, where the establishment always favors its own, but not to this degree, and not with a public disavowal of a group whose only “sin”, even by Texas Catholic Conference’s own admission, is to be “too pro-life.”  In point of fact, the very minor pro-life “gains” we have seen in Texas are out of all proportion to the citizenry’s general abhorrence of abortion.  In one of the most conservative states of the union, Texas’ pro-life legislation falls further and further behind, because of the super slow boil establishment approach.
 
Many Texas Catholics are incensed by what they see as a betrayal of THE most effective, most dedicated pro-life group in the state (which also happens to have the support of the best bishop this state has seen in 50+ years, Bishop Emeritus Rene Gracida of Corpus Christi, who now offers the TLM more or less exclusively).
 
If you want more on the inside baseball of Texas politics and how this very sad abandonment of a great pro-life group9 came to pass, read the below from Church Militant, which……..yeah, I know, but just roll with it:
 
The bishops’ denouncement of Texas Right to Life comes in the wake of a split looming inside the Texas Republican Party — a winnowing of the conservative wheat from the Establishment chaff. Internal polling indicates Lone Star State RINOs are facing extinction in the upcoming elections, and political insiders believe the bishops’ “advisory” is a ploy to save their political hides. By demonizing Texas Right to Life, they suggest, the bishops hope to preserve their political allies in office.
According to their “advisory,” the bishops are spurning Texas Right to Life for three reasons:
 
  1. Conflicts on pro-life reform. The bishops complained the group “often opposes the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops and has implied that the bishops do not faithfully represent Church teaching.” Texas Right to Life rejects the bishops’  “incrementalism” as a halting, soft approach.
  2. Conflicts on end-of-life reform. The bishops slammed Texas Right to Life’s messaging on end-of-life care and advance directives as “misstatements.”
  3. Texas Right to Life’s voter guide. The group publishes an annual voter guide scoring Texas lawmakers according to their pro-life record. The bishops have denounced the guide as built on unfair analysis, and they maintain “a number of legislators who have consistently voted for pro-life and end of life legislation have been opposed by Texas Right to Life.”
This isn’t the first time Texas Right to Life has run afoul of the Church Establishment. In 2013, Jeffrey Patterson, executive director of the Texas Catholic Conference, wrote to state Representative Dan Huberty on behalf of the bishops, blasting Texas Right to Life’s voter guide as “unconventional,” “subjective” and producing “perplexing results.” He complained that the voter guide assigned low scores to “pro-life lawmakers who have worked long and hard to protect and preserve life.”
 
But Republican lawmakers like Byron Cook and Joseph Straus, key leaders of the Texas GOP Establishment, have been criticized by Texas Right to Life for obstructing pro-life laws.
 
As Church Militant reported in October 2017, “Cook, as the chairman of the Texas House State Affairs Committee, has worked overtime to block pro-life legislation from being passed in the Texas legislature despite claiming to be pro-life.” For example, he killed HB1113, the Pro-Life Health Insurance Reform, which would prohibit insurance companies from paying for elective abortions.
 
The pro-life bills Cook did support were considered “weak” and “fake” by Texas Right to Life — “ineffective or non-priority” measures that were actually “detrimental to the pro-life movement.”
 
Straus, meanwhile, as Speaker of the House, “put a sudden end to a special legislative session” that Gov. Greg Abbott had called in order to address important bills Establishment Republicans ignored during the 2016–17 regular session.
 
Just because, fearing losing a primary election, Straus and Cook are no longer seeking another term, does not mean that the establishment is broken or disorganized. As we see, they are still plenty powerful.
 
I do wonder the degree to which the 21 bishops who ostensibly make up TCC are involved in this, and the degree to which it comes from the lay bureaucrats who run TCC on a day to day basis?
 
If you want to read the TCC declaration, here it is—>>>02-2018_TRTL_parish_advisory 
Some folks are planning to walk out if the announcement is read in their parish during Mass this Sunday. I don’t think I’m going to have to worry about that.
 
I am saddened and shocked at this turn of events.  There was no need for such an absolutist position from TCC against TRL – the two have worked together at many points in the past.  Why now, of all times, this matter had to be brought to the fore is incomprehensible for reasons of doctrine or importance to souls.  It very much appears to be doing what their political allies in Austin want the TCC to do, which is to try to remove a troublesome thorn from the establishcrats side.  To Bishop Olson – dude, I’ve defended you in the past, but you got to get a hold of your temper.   There are fights that are optional, and fights that are mandatory, and fights that one should never get in, and this is one of those.
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HERE IS YOUR LITTLE DOSE OF SATIRE TO HELP YOU THROUGH THE DAY’S INSANITIES

Posted on February 25, 2018 by abyssum

Eccles and Bosco is saved
Charity accuses “transpotphobic” teacher of hate crime

Posted: 24 Feb 2018 02:34 PM PST

It is worrying to read that the charity “Teasmades” has called the police after a teacher refused to acknowledge one of his pupils as “transpotted”.Teasmade

The Director of Teasmades.

The Catholic (and indeed medical) position is clear. Many children go through a phase of singing the immortal hymn “I’m a little teapot, Short and stout. Here’s my handle, Here’s my spout” (arr. Dan Schutte), and this leads some of them to believe for a while that they are in fact teapots. But transpotterism is a psychological condition, and there is no way that such kids can really be teapots.

I'm a teapot kids

Should these kids be given surgery to fit handles and spouts?

The Catholic Catechism (based on quotations from the book of He-brews) is clear. Transpotted children and adults should be treated sympathetically: for example it is not permissible to describe them as “potty”. Teasmades, however, is going too far in saying that they should be encouraged in their fantasies, and describing it as a “hate crime” when someone refuses to buy into such delusions.

James Martin

“I’d rather have a cuppa!” Fr James Martin SJ wants to put the “tea” in LGBT.

Under the Equality Act, schools have a duty to accommodate transpotted children, for example by providing them with cosies, and places where they can pour out their troubles. This does not include medication, such as injections of tannin, as it would clearly be wrong to mess around with young children’s biological make-up. As for surgically fitting them with handles and spouts – an operation available on the National Health Service – this should clearly be forbidden to children, and discouraged in general.

Trudeau dancing

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a famous “transpot”. It may explain a lot.
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HOW MUCH LONGER, O LORD, HOW MUCH LONGER ???

Posted on February 24, 2018 by abyssum

 

Beyond decades, for generations the Catholic bishops of Texas, saying they are obeying the law, and hiding behind the convenient cover of saying they are fearful of losing their tax exempt status, have said they must remain silent about those running for office.

 

Of course in many areas, this silence was a loud, pointed, and implicit endorsement of democrats, candidates of the Party Of Death. From pulpits around Texas, the faithful heard from their alleged shepherds “We are not single issue voters,” that unsaid single issue being the murders daily, weekly yearly in Texas of hundreds of thousands of Texas babies, the murders being the overt policy of the democrats of the Party Of Death. The pastoral message being “Ignore the abortion murders, vote democrat.”

 

In many places on any given day, all the murdered babies, ten, twenty, thirty, were and still are Hispanic-American babies. For years, the Texas Conference of bishops have been silent about this brown genocide. Since Roe, 60,000,000 murdered babies in the US, and astoundingly, half, 30,000,000, were the children of minority mamas. Half. The democrat Party of Death RETA policy was demonically successful in getting rid of Sanger’s brown and black “human weeds.” (RETA: racial eugenic targeted abortion).

 

Still the Catholic bishops of Texas have remained silent. Hand-in-glove with the democrats in their Texas alliance for death, they have not said from pulpits to vote for a prolife candidate instead of a party-of-death candidate, because the prolife candidate was – horror of horrors – a republican candidate. Never mind that the democrat candidate supported the murder of babies, and the RETA policy.

 

But this week, mirabile dictu, wonder of wonders, the bishops speak! What could have spurred them to finally speak out – since they have never had the moral courage to say, as Peter did to the leaders of the time, “We can obey you, or we can obey God” ? Why speak out now when Hispanic-Americans are beginning to see the light and are beginning to vote for prolilfe folks to help save babies in Texas? The bishops have become painfully aware that their Texas alliance for death with the democrats is in danger. They saw what happened in 2016 in the Texas Rio Grande Valley when the Hispanic-American Catholics were shown how the Democrat RETA policy had decimated their numbers right here in Texas. And then the final horror – these enlightened voters, who love their children and live and die for family, they voted for Republicans. You could hear the weeping and the gnashing of prelates’ teeth from Brownsville to McAllen to Austin to Fort Worth to Houston – and even in El Paso.

 

So the previously silent bishops, fearing that their Texas alliance for death partnership with the democrats would fail to deliver the once- rock-solid monolith of the Hispanic-American vote, in their desperation, loudly again proclaiming they must keep silent, have come out and condemned the quintessential Texas prolife organization, Texas Right To Life, because of its efforts – wildly successful efforts – to speak the truth about the brown genocide of Texas babies promoted by the Party Of Death democrats and Texas Right To Life’s support of non-democrat non-RETA-policy candidates; and Yes, most of them, hated non-RINO republicans.

 

Lastly gasping, the bishops come out now days before the upcoming elections. Coincidence? No way, Jose. If Texas Right To Life and others like minded are to be stopped, if brown genocide in Texas is to be ignored for the sake of political power, if the Texas alliance for death is to succeed as it has in the past to elect democrats and RINO prodeath GOP candidates, the bishops had to speak out now – and it will be no surprise when they forsake these little ones in Fall 2018 again silently proclaiming we cannot endorse anyone. They will never say the truth: It is a mortal sin now to vote for any democrat.

 

Didn’t Jesus say something about “woe” to those who hurt His children? Millstones, necks and drowning? And about hirelings, masquerading as shepherds, who run away, leaving the innocent sheep to the wolves?

 

Guy McClung, Texas

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ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD

Posted on February 24, 2018 by abyssum

 

Few lands are more cheerful than beautiful Switzerland. There are the mountains, the blonde girls yodeling, the lads sounding Alpine horns across the canyons, St. Bernard dogs with brandy, and all that chocolate and material prosperity. The cynic would dismiss that as a caricature. Think of Orson Welles in the 1949 film The Third Man: “. . . in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

The cuckoo clock was actually invented in the Black Forest of Germany. And while thoughts of Switzerland evoke peace, its last strife being a brief civil war in 1847, it is highly militarized and was famous for its mercenaries (which is how the Holy See got the Swiss Guards), and it has mandatory conscription for all able-bodied males. With the lowest crime rate in the world, it ranks only below the United States and Yemen in per capita gun ownership. Switzerland is the second largest exporter per capita of assault weapons, ammunition and tanks to such countries as Saudi Arabia. No country has an unblemished history, and in 2013 the government formally apologized for the forced labor of half a million children in the past two centuries. Officially neutral in World War II, it profited greatly as a banker for Nazi gold.

While proud of its reputation for enlightened social policies, abortion is legal there and the first-trimester limit can be extended for “medical and psychological reasons.” In our time of mania for tearing down politically incorrect statues, there remains in the heart of Bern the 1546 Kindlifresser statue of an ogre devouring babies.

If the monstrous man were eating lobsters, the statue might be torn down because the Swiss government has passed a law effective March 1 that bans the boiling alive of lobsters, since it is claimed that lobsters can feel pain. Lobsters may only be cooked after first having been electrocuted or sedated. This will not have much impact, since Switzerland is land-locked, with negligible crustacean consumption; but imported lobsters must be shipped in seawater and not packed in ice. This runs parallel to California’s legislation banning foie gras, which requires the forced feeding of geese. But partial-birth abortion remains legal, even though human life in utero can feel pain after at least the first eight weeks of gestation.

We can eat lobsters even in Lent, by a revelation given to St. Peter (Acts 10:13-15). But the same God knew (Jeremiah 1:4-5) that unborn babies are sensate. That notwithstanding, there are places where lobsters and geese are safer than human babies. Inconsistent?

Father George W. Rutler

 

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FATHER WEINADY CORRECTS FRANCIS

Posted on February 24, 2018 by abyssum

Settimo Cielodi Sandro Magister

New Appeal From Fr. Weinandy To the Pope: With This False Mercy the Church Is Destroyed

Weinandy

 

Everyone remembers Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy for the open letter he sent to Pope Francis last summer, and which he himself made public on November 1 on Settimo Cielo:

> A Theologian Writes To the Pope: There Is Chaos in the Church, and You Are a Cause

Today, Saturday February 24, he returns to the fray with the conference that he gave this morning in Sydney, organized by University of Notre Dame of Australia.

In it, Fr. Weinandy describes and denounces the attack of unprecedented gravity that some of the “pastoral” theories and practices encouraged by Pope Francis are carrying out against the “one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic” Church and in particular against the Eucharist that is “source and summit” of the Church’s very life.

Settimo Cielo offers here below to its readers, in four languages, the crucial passages of Fr. Weinandy’s indictment. But those who mar wish to read his conference in its entirety, in the original English, can find it on this other webpage:

> The Four Marks of the Church: The Contemporary Crisis in Ecclesiology

Fr. Weinandy, 72, is one of the most widely known and esteemed theologians, and lives in Washington at the Capuchin College, run by the Franciscan order to which he belongs. He is still a member of the international theological commission that supports the Vatican congregation for the doctrine of the faith, having been appointed to it in 2014 by Pope Francis.

He has taught in the United States at various universities, at Oxford for twelve years, and in Rome at the Pontifical Gregorian University.

It’s his turn now.

*

THE CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCH AND THE EUCHARIST

by Thomas G. Weinandy

Granted the post-Vatican II Church was rife with divisions – disputes over doctrine, morals and the liturgy. These disagreements continue still. However, at no time during the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI was there ever any doubt as to what the Church teaches concerning her doctrine, morals, and liturgical practice. […] Such is not the case, in many significant ways, within the present pontificate of Pope Francis.

Challenge to the Church’s Oneness

[…] At times it would appear that Pope Francis identifies himself not as the promoter of unity but as the agent of division. His practical philosophy, if it is an intentional philosophy, seems to consist in the belief that a greater unifying good will emerge from the present bedlam of divergent opinions and the turmoil of the resulting divisions.

My concern here is that such approach, even if unintentional, strikes at very essence of the Petrine ministry as intended by Jesus and as continuously understood by the Church. The successor of St. Peter, by the very nature of the office, is to be, literally, the personal embodiment and thus the consummate sign of the Church’s ecclesial communion, and so the principle defender and promoter of the Church’s ecclesial communion. […] By seeming to encourage doctrinal division and moral discord within the Church the present pontificate has transgressed the foundational mark of the Church – her oneness. How, nonetheless, does this offense against the Church’s unity manifest itself? It does so by destabilizing the other three marks of the Church.

Challenge to the Church’s Apostolicity

Firstly, the apostolic nature of the Church is being undermined. As has often been noted by theologians and bishops, and most frequently by the laity (those who possess the “sensus fidelium”), the teaching of the present pontiff is not noted for its clarity. […] As seen in “Amoris Laetitia”, to re-conceive and newly express the previously clear apostolic faith and magisterial tradition in a seemingly ambiguous manner, so as to leave confusion and puzzlement within the ecclesial community, is to contradict his own duties as the successor of Peter and to transgress the trust of his fellow bishops, as well as that of priests and the entire faithful.

Ignatius [of Antioch] would be dismayed at such a situation. If, for him, heretical teaching espoused by those who are only loosely associated with the Church is destructive to the Church’s unity, how much more devastating is ambiguous teaching when authored by a bishop who is divinely charged to ensure ecclesial unity. […]

Moreover, […] to appear to sanction an interpretation of doctrine or morals that contravenes what has been the received apostolic teaching and magisterial tradition of the Church – as dogmatically defined by Councils and doctrinally taught by previous popes and the bishops in communion with him, as well as accepted and believed by the faithful, cannot then be proposed as magisterial teaching. […] In the matter of faith and morals the teaching of no living pope takes apostolic and magisterial precedence over the magisterial teaching of previous pontiffs or the established magisterial doctrinal tradition. […] That Pope Francis’ ambiguous teaching at times appears to fall outside the magisterial teaching of the historic apostolic ecclesial community thus gives cause for concern, for it, as stated above, fosters division and disharmony rather than unity and peace within the one apostolic Church. […]

Challenge to the Church’s Catholicity

Secondly, […] the universality of the Church is visibly manifested in that all of the particular Churches are bound together, through the college of bishops in communion with the pope, by professing the same apostolic faith and by preaching the one universal Gospel to all of humankind. […] This mark of catholic oneness is also presently challenged.

Pope Francis’ espousal of synodality has been much touted – the allowance of local geographical Churches more self-determinative freedom. […] As envisioned, however, by Pope Francis and advocated by others, this notion of synodality, instead of ensuring the universal oneness of the Catholic Church, an ecclesial communion composed of multiple particular Churches, is now employed to undermine and so sanction divisions within the Church. […]

We are presently witnessing the disintegration of the Church’s catholicity, for local Churches, both on the diocesan and national level, are often interpreting doctrinal norms and moral precepts in various conflicting and contradictory ways. […]  The Church’s mark of oneness, a unity that the pope is divinely mandated to protect and engender, is losing its integrity because her marks of catholicity and apostolicity have fallen into doctrinal and moral disarray, a theological anarchy that the pope himself, maybe unwittingly, has initiated by advocating a flawed conception of synodality. […]

Challenge to the Church’s Holiness

Thirdly, this brings us to the fourth mark of the Church – her holiness. This mark is equally under siege, most especially, but not surprisingly, in relationship to the Eucharist. […]

To participate fully in the Church’s Eucharist, […] one must embody the four marks of the Church, for only in so doing is one in full communion with the Church so as to receive communion – the risen body and blood of Jesus, the source and culmination of one’s union with the Father in the Holy Spirit. […]

The first issue […] pertains specifically to holiness. While one must profess the Church’s one apostolic faith, faith itself is insufficient for receiving Christ in the Eucharist. Referencing Vatican II, John Paul II states that “we must persevere in sanctifying grace and love, remaining within the Church ‘bodily’ as well as ‘in our heart’” (Ecclesia de Eucharistia 36). At the beginning of the Second Century, Ignatius, made this same point – that one can only receive communion “in a state of grace” (Ad. Eph. 20). Thus, in accordance with the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Council of Trent, John Paul confirms: “I therefore desire to reaffirm that in the Church there remains in force, now and in the future, the rule by which the Council of Trent gave concrete expression to the Apostle Paul’s stern warning when it affirmed that in order to receive the Eucharist in a worthy manner, ‘one must first confess one’s sins, when one is aware of mortal sin’” (ibid.). In accordance with the doctrinal tradition of the Church, John Paul, therefore, insists that the sacrament of Penance is “necessary for full participation in the Eucharistic Sacrifice” when mortal sin is present (ibid. 37). While he acknowledges that only the person can judge his or her state of grace, he asserts that “in cases of outward conduct which is seriously, clearly and steadfastly contrary to the moral norm, the Church, in her pastoral concern for the good order of the community and out of respect for the sacrament, cannot fail to feel directly involved” (ibid.). John Paul intensifies his admonition by quoting Canon Law. Where there is “a manifest lack of proper moral disposition,” that is, according to Canon Law, when persons “obstinately persist in manifest grave sin,” they are “not to be permitted to Eucharistic communion” (ibid.).

Here we perceive the present challenge to the Church’s holiness and specifically the holiness of the Eucharist. The question of whether divorced and remarried Catholic couples, who engage in marital acts, can receive communion revolves around the very issue of “outward conduct which is seriously, clearly and steadfastly contrary to the moral norm,” and, therefore, whether they possess “a manifest lack of proper moral disposition” for receiving communion.

Pope Francis rightly insists that such couples should be accompanied and so helped to form properly their consciences. Granted that there are extraordinary marital cases where it can be rightfully discerned that a previous marriage was sacramentally invalid, even though evidence for an annulment is unobtainable, thus allowing a couple to receive communion. Nonetheless, the ambiguous manner in which Pope Francis proposes this pastoral accompaniment permits a pastoral situation to evolve whereby the common practice will swiftly ensue that almost every divorced and remarried couple will judge themselves free to receive Holy Communion.

This pastoral situation will develop because moral negative commands, such as, “one shall not commit adultery,” are no longer recognized as absolute moral norms that can never be trespassed, but as moral ideals – goals that may be achieved over a period of time, or may never be realized in one’s lifetime. In this indefinite interim people can continue, with the Church’s blessing, to strive, as best as they are able, to live “holy” lives, and so receive communion. Such pastoral practice has multiple detrimental doctrinal and moral consequences.

First, to allow those who are objectively in manifest grave sin to receive communion is an overt public attack on the holiness of what John Paul terms “the Most Holy Sacrament.” Grave sin, by its very nature, as Ignatius, Vatican II and John Paul attest, deprives one of holiness, for the Holy Spirit no longer abides within such a person, thus making the person unfit to receive holy communion. For one to receive communion in such a, literally, disgraced state enacts a lie, for in receiving the sacrament one is asserting that one is in communion with Christ, when in actuality one is not.

Similarly, such a practice is also an offense against the holiness of the Church. Yes, the Church is composed of saints and sinners, yet, those who do sin, which is everyone, must be repentant-sinners, specifically of grave sin, if they are to participate fully in the Eucharistic liturgy and so receive the most-holy risen body and blood of Jesus. A person who is in grave sin may still be a member of the Church, but as a grave-sinner such a person no longer participates in the holiness of the Church as one of the holy faithful. To receive communion in such an unholy state is, again, to enact a lie for in such a reception one is publicly attempting to testify that one is a graced and living member of the ecclesial community when one is not.

Second, and maybe more importantly, to allow those who persist in manifest grave sin to receive communion, seemingly as an act of mercy, is both to belittle the condemnatory evil of grave sin and to malign the magnitude and power of the Holy Spirit. Such a pastoral practice is implicitly acknowledging that sin continues to govern humankind despite Jesus’ redeeming work and his anointing of the Holy Spirit upon all who believe and are baptized. Jesus is actually not Savior and Lord, but rather Satan continues to reign.

Moreover, to sanction persons in grave sin is in no manner a benevolent or loving act, for one is endorsing a state wherein they could be eternally condemned, thus jeopardizing their salvation. Likewise, in turn, one is also insulting such grave-sinners, for one is subtly telling them that they are so sinful that not even the Holy Spirit is powerful enough to help them change their sinful ways and make them holy. They are inherently un-savable. Actually, though, what is ultimately being tendered is the admission that the Church of Jesus Christ is not really holy and so is incapable of truly sanctifying her members.

Lastly, scandal is the public pastoral consequence of allowing persons in unrepentant manifest grave sin to receive Holy Communion. It is not simply that the faithful members of the Eucharistic community will be dismayed and likely disgruntled, but, more importantly, they will be tempted to think that they too can sin gravely and continue in good standing with the Church. Why attempt to live a holy life, even a heroic virtuous life, when the Church herself appears to demand neither such a life, or even to encourage such a life? Here the Church becomes a mockery of herself and such a charade breeds nothing but scorn and disdain in the world, and derision and cynicism among the faithful, or at best, a hope against hope among the little ones.

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+ZELIE, 18 OCTOBER 2015 – 23 FEBRUARY 2018

Posted on February 23, 2018 by abyssum

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PARTICIPATING IN THE HOLY SACRIFICE OF THE MASS IS NOT SOMETHING WE DO TO SATISFY AN OBLIGATION, LIKE PUNCHING A TIMECLOCK, IT IS A MEANS TO AN END – MORE PERFECT UNION WITH GOD

Posted on February 21, 2018 by abyssum

Sorting Out Difficulties in Liturgical Allegiance

Peter Kwasniewski
February 21, 2018
OnePeterFive

A young adult of strong faith and an admirable family piety sent a letter to me last summer with certain questions and concerns that I believe will resonate with many other readers of OnePeterFive. I will share first the letter, and then my response (with all identifying details removed).

*  *  *

Dear Dr. Kwasniewski,

I have a few questions about the usus antiquior vs. usus recentior tension. This summer, I do not have nearly as many opportunities to attend the old Mass as I do at school. Thankfully, there is one Latin Mass in our diocese every Sunday afternoon, offered by different priests who know it. My family, however, is faithful to our (mostly reverent) Novus Ordo parish. Nearly every Sunday I’ve been attending the morning Mass with my family and then the afternoon Latin Mass by myself. Going to the later Mass often means that I cannot enjoy lunch with my family. They usually don’t mind, but I can tell that it sometimes bothers my parents. Is it selfish to want to attend the Latin Mass rather than being with my family?

Also, I have heard from many traditionalists that it is better to never attend Novus Ordo unless you have to. For example, they say you should give up daily Mass if there is only the Ordinary Form available on weekdays. I don’t think I agree, but I want to know what you think. You attend both forms at school. Isn’t it better to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and receive Holy Communion daily, even if it is not as reverent as possible? Or is it a disgrace to God to participate in Masses which are irreverent? Does it depend on how irreverent the Novus Ordo Mass is?

Finally, where do you stand on the Reform of the Reform mindset? Do you believe that the Novus Ordo should or will always be around and so we should embrace and make it as reverent as possible? Or do you seek to reform it to be as reverent as possible while still moving people closer and closer to the old Mass so that the TLM might someday be the ordinary or only form there is again? Some of my friends who have listened to you or read your articles asked me where exactly you stand, so I thought I’d ask you before trying to answer.

Sincerely yours,
N.

*  *  *

Dear N.,

With probity and insight, you have put your finger on some of the most difficult questions that educated Catholics have to face today. When I say “educated,” I mean Catholics who have studied and experienced the vast gulf that separates the conflicted and pluralistic state of the Church today from the luminosity of her constant doctrinal teaching and the treasure of her liturgy as it was handed down over the centuries. There are no easy answers, because we are living in a period of unprecedented rootlessness, amnesia, and confusion.

I remember when I was around your age going through exactly the same situation. I had grown up at a mainstream parish in New Jersey, and as I discovered magisterial documents like Mediator Dei and theologians like Aquinas, I began to see how messed up the parish was. My parents kept going there, but at a certain point I just couldn’t do it any more. So I began to go elsewhere, attending both the Novus Ordo and the traditional Latin Mass, and it was a tense situation. I’m not sure they ever fully understood, in spite of my attempts—probably not very successful ones, come to think of it—to explain myself. But you’re a nicer, gentler, and more intelligent person than I was at your age, and your parents are probably more serious Catholics than mine were, so you may have more success in your attempts to explain why you love the old Mass and wish to attend it. It also seems to me a sign of humility and filial piety that you continue to attend Mass with them; they cannot really complain that you are being anti-social or “elitist.”

The most important point is this: it is never selfish to want to nourish one’s own spiritual life with the rich food of the traditional liturgy. As always, one does need to take circumstances into account. St. Frances de Sales says it is better for a woman to take care of her children than to neglect them by spending extra time in prayer at church. On the other hand, a woman who only took care of her children and never made time for personal prayer would end up being a bad mother and eventually a bad Christian. So we must take the needs of our souls quite seriously, and I believe that once one tastes the beauty of the old Mass (and all of the other liturgies and devotions that cluster around it), it is barely possible anymore to subsist on meagre fare, thin gruel. Don’t forget what Pope Benedict XVI said in his letter to Bishops of July 7, 2007, speaking about the usus antiquior: “Young persons too have discovered this liturgical form, felt its attraction, and found in it a form of encounter with the Mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist particularly suited to them.”

Would your parents ever consider coming with you? Perhaps they could be drawn to love what you have been drawn to love.

In any case, other questions remain, and you frame them well. Where and when does one draw the line? Should one always go to daily Mass, regardless of how it is celebrated? Is there ever a reason not to attend a Mass? And could there ever be a reason to stop attending the Novus Ordo and simply attend the Vetus Ordo? These are prudential areas, but we can say for sure that a Mass that is not correctly and reverently celebrated is offensive to God in those respects in which it is deficient (the liturgy is, after all, connected with the exercise of the moral virtue of religion, by which we give to God that which we owe Him in justice—and this we can fail to do in several notable ways). Moreover, such a Mass is unhealthy for us spiritually, inasmuch as it malforms us. And when we become distracted or irritated, we are poorly disposed to worship God and to receive Holy Communion, for which we are required to have a disposition of lively faith and devotion.

I believe we can learn something from the Eastern tradition, which speaks of “aliturgical days”—days on which liturgy is not celebrated—and thinks of them in analogy with fasting: our desire for the Sacrament is intensified by other forms of prayer. The sacrifice of the Mass is the crown jewel, but it needs to be set within a golden crown, which is the Divine Office and our personal prayer. The Divine Office is also liturgical prayer, but it has the benefit of being something any Christian can do, even on his own or in a small group. When one prays Lauds or Prime in the morning, and/or Vespers or Compline in the evening, and any “little hours” if one can fit them in, the day is consecrated to the Lord in much the same way as when one attends Mass. It is part of the great sacrifice of praise that Our Lord as the Eternal High Priest offers to His Father in the Holy Spirit.

Joseph Ratzinger also spoke more than once of the benefits of making a “Eucharistic fast” (see this article for more). He said that in an era like ours, which is too prone to take Communion for granted, reducing it to a routine that lacks a deep hunger and thirst for God, we can benefit ourselves and make reparation for others by not going to Communion, but rather, by making an act of desire—a spiritual communion. This is a way we can think positively about days without Mass, whether because it is not possible to find a Mass compatible with one’s schedule, or because, unfortunately, there is no suitably reverent Mass available.

For me, personally, the Ordinary Form is very difficult to pray at, for a variety of reasons. When I am able to sing the Proper and Ordinary Gregorian chants with the schola, as at the College, it becomes easier to pray, because I can enter into the spirit of the liturgy through those authentic chants of our tradition, which were “built for praying.” But it remains a challenge nonetheless. Moreover, as you know, in the usus antiquior, the celebrant makes far less of a difference than in the usus recentior, where the personality of the priest is inevitably on display, above all on account of the versus populum stance and the requirement that nearly everything be said aloud. Hence, who the celebrant is makes a huge difference in whether or not I can attend a Novus Ordo Mass with spiritual profit.

These are realities that deserve to be considered; in no way would it be right to force oneself to go to daily Mass “just because.” There is no “just because” in the spiritual life: we must be aware of what we are doing, how it affects us, and how it may please or displease the Lord. The Mass is not just a “Communion delivery system.” It is a formal, structured, public act of worship consisting of prayers, chants, readings, ceremonies, and gestures, ordered to such movements of the soul as adoration, glorification, thanksgiving, supplication, and repentance. So it is not simply a matter of “wherever Jesus is, God is pleased”; it is also a matter of what we are doing, what we are offering of ourselves to God, and how, and why.

The Mass was given by Christ to the apostles and reaches us through accumulated tradition, the path by which He willed that we should be enriched by the faith and holiness of every age of the Church. Nothing could be further from the truth than to think that liturgy is indifferent as long as the Eucharist is present. The Eucharist is present at a Satanic black Mass in an act of supreme sacrilege. The Eucharist is present as well at many licit and valid Masses that are nonetheless offensive to God and harmful to us precisely because of the manner in which they treat (or fail to treat) the Presence of God. The Eucharist is a culminating point; it does not cancel out everything else.

We want to avoid two extremes: a liturgical snobbery for which nothing is ever “good enough” (for indeed, nothing short of the beatific vision will ever be totally satisfying to us—although at its best, the sacred liturgy can be and ought to be a foretaste of heaven!), and, on the other hand, a false humility that pretends not to know the difference between fitting and unfitting, beautiful and ugly, noble and banal, reverent and irreverent—differences that have serious implications for our spiritual life and the exercise of the virtues of faith, hope, charity, and religion. The former attitude can harden into a peevish discontent, and the latter into a relativism that undermines ever-needed efforts at improving our ecclesiastical life.

If the great reforming saints had had the attitude that “it’s all okay” and “who am I to judge?,” Catholic renewal would never have happened in many former centuries; but if they had been too impatient and severe, they would have ended up in despair. As always, virtus stet in medio, virtue stands in the mean or middle position; and as Aristotle repeatedly remarks in his Ethics, finding the mean is no easy task. But still and always, we must strive for it.

I do not withhold my help from improving the Novus Ordo when called upon to do so, but my mind and my heart are firmly and forever with the classical Roman Rite, which is our heritage, our treasure, our lifeline, our touchstone, our glory as Roman Catholics. Re-establishing this magnificent lex orandi and participating most deeply in it is the goal we should set ourselves, both for our own benefit and for that of countless fellow believers who are dehydrated of the divine and starving for the sacred.

Oremus pro invicem.

Dr. Kwasniewski

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I HAVE SINNED AGAINST LOVE: (1)____ (2)____ (3)____ SAINT PAUL’S GUIDE FOR MAKING A GOOD CONFESSION

Posted on February 21, 2018 by abyssum
h5_1975

Working Title/Artist: Christ Carrying the CrossDepartment: Robert Lehman CollnCulture/Period/Location: HB/TOA Date Code: Working Date: 1580s (?) Digital Photo File Name: h1_1975.1.145.tif Online Publications Edited By Steven Paneccasio for TOAH 07/09/15

1 Corinthians, chapter 13

If I speak in human and angelic tongues* but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal.

And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.

If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.

 Love is patient.

Love is kind.

Love is not jealous.

Love is not pompous, it is not inflated.

Love is not rude.

Love does not seek its own interests.
Love is not quick-tempered.

Love does not brood over injury.

Love does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.

 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.f

Love never fails.

If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing.

If tongues, they will cease.

If knowledge, it will be brought to nothing.

For we know partially and we prophesy partially,

But when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.

When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things.

At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face.

At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known.

So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

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MORE AND MORE FREQUENTLY THE MEDICAL PROFESSION AND THE STATE DO NOT CONSIDER PARENTAL RIGHTS AND RELIGIOUS VIEWS TO BE FACTORS TO BE WEIGHED IN DECIDING CASES INVOLVING CHILDREN

Posted on February 21, 2018 by abyssum
Judge Who Removed Trans Teen From Parents Highlights What’s At Stake

Judge Who Removed Trans Teen From Parents Highlights What’s At Stake

The Ohio case is not a ‘slam dunk’ validation of adolescent transgender transition, or self-styled gender experts.
Mary Hasson

By

FEBRUARY21, 2018

“Transgender boy wins right to transition before college” read the headlines last week after Hamilton County (OH) Juvenile Court Judge Sylvia Hendon awarded custody of a 17-year-old female (identifying as a transgender boy) to her grandparents.

To understand what is at stake in this complicated case, some background is in order. (While the case proceedings are not fully available, the judge’s February 16, 2018 decision is available here and provides some factual context, although the timeline is not completely clear from the court’s order.)

In 2016, the teen apparently was suffering from anxiety and depression severe enough that her parents sought inpatient treatment for her at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Cincinnati Children’s, which boasts of its status as a leading center for the treatment of transgender youth, subsequently diagnosed the teen with gender dysphoria.

Up until the summer of 2016, the court noted, the child had “lived consistent with the assigned gender at birth” (female). After beginning care with Cincinnati Children’s, the child was diagnosed as transgender and within months the hospital recommended the teen begin hormone treatment. (Given that the teen was 16 at the time, the recommended hormones were likely cross-sex hormones, which would sterilize the child.)

Then Things Got Worse

By early 2017, family relations had frayed. The parents sought Christian counseling for the teen, who resisted and called a crisis hotline alleging, according to news reports, that one parent had told the teen to commit suicide. On February 8, 2017, the Hamilton County Department of Jobs and Family Services (HCJFS) sought interim custody of the teen but the parties agreed instead to allow the teen to continue living with the child’s maternal grandparents and to continue receiving therapy from Cincinnati Children’s.

By April 2017, according to the court, “the situation had deteriorated” and HCJFS obtained temporary custody of the teen. The parents, grandparents, and county agreed to work towards a “permanency goal” in which the teen would be under the grandparents’ care.

But with the teen under the county’s interim custody, Cincinnati Children’s stepped up pressure to begin hormonal therapy to affirm the girl’s masculine gender identity. The county filed “case plans” with the court stating that the hospital “‘would like’ to begin hormone therapy with the child pursuant to a treatment plan for the diagnosis of gender dysphoria.”

The parents objected and a magistrate’s hearing found no “emergency” that would warrant expedited approval, at which point the county withdrew the case plans and switched arguments. The county’s court filings sought to end its own interim custody and to “award legal custody to the maternal grandparents,” using the “best interests of the child standard.” The magistrate conducted evidentiary hearings and the grandparents petitioned for custody in December 2017. The court’s ruling on February 16, 2018 decided the matter, awarding custody to the grandparents.

The case is troubling for many reasons. It foreshadows the likely future in which minors will be granted the right, under state laws, to decide their own gender identity treatments, and it capitulates to the ideological narrative that children have “a legitimate right to pursue life with a different gender identity than the one assigned at birth.” Even so, the case is not a “slam dunk” validation of adolescent transgender transition—or gender experts either.

Judge Hendon Put Her Finger On Big Issues at Stake

Let’s look first at some big concerns the judge voiced. The judge describes “the entire field of gender identity and non-conforming gender treatment” as beset by “a surprising lack of definitive clinical study available to determine the success of different treatment modalities.” She’s right.

But the “sparse” research base hasn’t stopped gender “experts” from plunging ahead, promoting “gender-affirming” medical interventions for kids and creating new transgender programs at hospitals across the country. In the past five years, the number of U.S. gender clinics for children and adolescents has exploded, from just three to more than 41.

The court expressed “concern” that the Transgender Program at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital deemed “100% of the patients…who present for care” to be “appropriate candidates for continued gender treatment.” Put differently, the judge seems suspicious that just as everything’s a nail to a person with a hammer, every troubled kid is “transgender” to a gender “specialist” with hormones to dispense.

Cincinnati Children’s established an adolescent transgender clinic a few years before this case, and rapidly expanded the number of children under its care, treating 115 in January 2015, 365 in January 2016, and 965 in January 2018. And the transgender clinic just scored a $2 million gift to expand its services.

Hendon rightfully expressed sympathy for the parents, noting, “it is understandable that the parents were legitimately surprised and confused when the child’s anxiety and depression symptoms became the basis for the diagnosis of gender dysphoria.”

The parents had conscientiously sought in-patient care from Cincinnati Children’s for their child’s depression and anxiety. It’s clear they care deeply about their child’s well-being and sought to provide appropriate treatment that aligned with their religious beliefs. The court’s effort to avoid demonizing the parents was appropriate and welcome. Surprisingly, the court did not directly address the parents’ religious beliefs or the issue of parental rights. Hendon only expressed regret that the adversarial posture of a court proceeding, and the parents’ fraught relationship with the teen, prevented the family from having “ample” time to get used to “the reality of the fact that the child truly may be gender nonconforming” and has a right to self-define an identity.

Threatening Suicide Is Not a Fair Tactic, Kids

The judge refused to allow the “threat of [teen] suicide and the existence of suicidal ideation” to “hold this Court hostage” to teenage desires and gender clinicians’ pressure. “Troubled adolescents,” noted the court, too often “threaten self-harm” to try to force a particular outcome. The court cannot “take jurisdiction every time a minor threatens self-harm if he or she is unable to gain some desired procedure, such as a rhinoplasty or similar cosmetic surgery.”

It’s emotional blackmail, using suicide statistics.

The judge’s comments are a needed corrective to the panic gender experts stir up: they propel parents into consenting to their child’s transition by presenting a false choice between having an affirmed transgender child or an un-affirmed child who dies by suicide. It’s emotional blackmail, using suicide statistics.

Troubled adolescents are not the only ones who use manipulation to force hasty capitulation to “gender affirming” treatments. The court found it “particularly troubling” that the “initial filings in this case indicate that suicide is a potential factor to be considered by the Court, when in the medical records admitted during trial it is clearly not.” In other words, the county and the hospital filed papers with the court suggesting the threat of the teen’s “imminent suicide” was reason enough to approve hormone treatments.

These “case plans” expressed the hospital’s desire to “begin hormone therapy with the child pursuant to a treatment plan for the diagnosis of gender dysphoria,” but the judge clearly doubted the hospital’s objectivity. Her final decision stipulates that “before hormone therapy begins, the child shall be evaluated by a psychologist UNAFFILIATED with Cincinnati Children’s hospital on the issue of consistency in the child’s gender presentation and feelings of non-conformity” (emphasis in judge’s order). That’s a well-deserved rebuke for Cincinnati Children’s and their lead (and only) gender doctor, Lee-Ann Conard.

There’s Some Reality Check Here, But Not Enough

The judge’s frank comments, though under-reported, were valuable nonetheless. They offer judicial recognition—to some degree—of the risks facing children with gender dysphoria as hospitals and clinics move aggressively to promote their treatments and grow their gender transition businesses.

Despite expressing concern about the dearth of high-quality research supporting hormone treatments and other medical interventions, the judge supported their use.

Hendon’s order, however, contains the seeds of worse problems. Despite expressing concern about the dearth of high-quality research supporting hormone treatments and other medical interventions, the judge supported their use anyway. She seemed loath to “intrude” on medical judgments pertaining to the child, even though they surely play a role in determing the “best interests of the child.”

The judge also expressed solid support for the “child’s right” to self-define, apart from the reality of biological sex—a clear indication that, in the end, the judge buys into gender activists’ propaganda.

The judge’s final decision awarding custody to the grandparents is not terribly surprising, in one sense: the parents “agreed that the child should remain with the maternal grandparents,” the grandparents were willing to assume custody and financial support of the child, and the situation would allow for the child’s continued enrollment in the same school, where the teen by all accounts excelled. Under the “best interest” standard, the grandparents were awarded custody—a short-term result, as the child will turn 18 this year and be able to consent to hormone treatment as an “adult.”

It is surprising, however, that the judge’s decision did not address the state’s disregard for the parents’ religious beliefs. According to new reports, the county attorney had argued that the parents’ refusal to consent to hormonal treatments for their daughter was based solely on their religious beliefs, strongly suggesting that religious beliefs were not “good enough” reasons to reject hormonal interventions for gender dysphoria. The child’s court-appointed guardian similarly argued that the grandparents were bestsuited to look out for the child’s best interests because “the grandparents are the ones who have an open mind and will … [to] make this sort of decision best for the child,” while “the parents have clearly indicated that they’re not open to it.”

In fact, the parents’ attorney argued that the parents opposed hormonal treatment for both religious and health reasons. It is not clear how much weight, if any, the judge gave to the county’s argument that the parents’ religious beliefs precluded them from acting in the child’s best interests. But it’s an ominous sign for the state to argue that becauseparents oppose a child’s hormonal treatment on the basis of religion, the parents presumptively lack openness to the child’s best interests.

Another Nail in the Coffin on Parental Rights

The closing paragraph of the judge’s order quite likely foreshadows the looming fight on the horizon. The judge called on legislators to propose criteria for courts to use in deciding whether and when a minor has the “right to consent” to transgender treatment.

It’s becoming impossible for parents to ‘opt’ their kids out of exposure to LGBTQ or transgender issues while enrolled in public schools.

Parents’ rights have been eroded already by “mature minor” laws, which allow minors to consent to medical care regarding sexual and reproductive matters. For example, teens may consent to testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, receive contraception without parental notification, and undergo abortions (although some states require parental notice or consent, with judicial bypass options).

Parents’ rights have been curtailed in indirect ways as well, as states, cities, and school districts increasingly promulgate new regulations or policies that prohibit schools from informing parents—unless the child consents—that the child is expressing a new gender identity at school. Schools also integrate gender ideology into anti-bullying programs and general school culture, making it impossible for parents to “opt” their kids out of exposure to LGBTQ or transgender issues while keeping their kids enrolled in public schools.

If state legislators heed Hendon’s call, parents will face the terrible prospect of losing the ability to protect their children from the harms inflicted by self-serving gender “medical professionals”— “experts” bent on advancing an ideological agenda and growing an increasingly lucrative business.

Mary Rice Hasson is an attorney and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington DC.
Photo User1977 / Wikimedia
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