For the last 25 years, the Washington Archdiocese has held an annual youth rally and Mass for Life in conjunction with the March for Life.
But this year it has been canceled and some are wondering if internal Church politics are to blame.
The Archdiocese said the cancellation was a “difficult decision” that followed “a consultation process that involved dialogue with other dioceses, ministry leaders and the partners who assist the Archdiocese in hosting the annual Rally and Mass.”
Cardinal Wilton Gregory, who heads the Washington Archdiocese has a history of enabling pro-abortion politicians who profess to be Catholic.
Gregory has stated that he will not deny Holy Communion to Joe Biden, despite Joe Biden’s unrepentant support for abortion.
Even worse, Gregory even invited rabidly pro-abortion Nancy Pelosi to speak from the pulpit during a funeral.
Gregory tries to justify this by saying Bishops are “not there as police, we’re there as pastors.”
But allowing known unrepentant pro-abortion radicals to receive Holy Communion is not acting a pastor, it’s caving to the woke mob.
Those who support abortion should certainly be welcome to attend Mass but they should not receive Holy Communion until they confess and repent from their sin.
Every Catholic knows that taking Holy Communion while in a state of mortal sin is itself a mortal sin.
It is not uncommon for Catholics who attend Mass to not accept Communion at the time for this reason.
How is knowingly enabling one of your parishioners to commit a mortal sin behaving as a pastor?
The canceling of this important event is another sign that some within the Church are straying from its teachings.
Supporting murder through abortion is incompatible with being a true Catholic.
The Church should not be backing off on this position to appease the Left.
Fighting for life is more important now than ever
The March for Life has stressed the importance of continuing these events after the fall of Roe v. Wade.
“As we unveil our historic 2023 March for Life theme which will guide us towards our 50th anniversary and through our first post-Roe march, we seek to inspire clarity and enthusiasm among all pro-life people in this critical next phase of building a culture of life,” the March’s website reads.
“On January 20, we will celebrate the 50th annual March for Life and the momentous overturn of Roe v. Wade!” it adds. “We will honor those who have gone before us making this historic victory possible, and we will present the strategic plan for building a culture of life in this moment in time.”
So far, 13 states have passed laws protecting the unborn.
It’s a great start, but pro-lifers still have much work to do.
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Recently chemistry professor Dr. Maitland Jones Jr. was fired after 82 of his students signed a petition noting that his organic chemistry class was “too hard.” The students accused Jones of purposely making the class difficult, citing that their low scores negatively impacted their “well-being,” and their chances of getting into medical school. Instead of evaluating the rigor and substance of Jones’ curriculum, NYU justified its hasty action by noting the class’s unfavorable student reviews.
In response to the disciplinary action, former medical humanities professor and bioethicist Dr. Alice Dreger blasted the move in a tweet, saying it “made her skin crawl.”
“We aren’t going to end up with good doctors by letting undergrad pre-meds pass organic chem because universities want to protect their US News rankings,” she wrote.
The reaction is justified considering how standards for pre-med programs and even medical schools have shifted in the direction of equity and social justice. It seems that even professors cannot hold the line on academic performance, when the institutions they teach at make it a secondary importance to accommodating students’ sensitivities on the basis of how faulted or victimized they feel while learning in the highly competitive and demanding field of medicine.
The shift in a medicine-based education to an emphasis on race and social concern was highlighted by former University of Pennsylvania Medical School Dean Stanley Goldfarb, who stated:
“…Today a master’s degree in education is often what it takes to qualify for key administrative roles on medical-school faculties. The zeitgeist of sociology and social work have become the driving force in medical education. The goal of today’s educators is to produce legions of primary care physicians who engage in what is termed ‘population health.’”
Medical schools’ administrations seem to have become taken over by sociologists and critical race theorists—if not in title, then certainly in practice.
Most recently in the news, the University of Minnesota Medical School conducted a white coat ceremony for its Class of 2026, where each student had to recite a modified Hippocratic Oath which—on top of pledging to do no harm and to help the sick whenever possible—would “honor all Indigenous ways of healing that have been historically marginalized by Western medicine…white supremacy, colonialism, and the gender binary.”
The politicization of medicine has greater effects than just this sort of political white-knighting. Instead of focusing on promoting preventative care and treatment based on actual medical effectiveness, the impetus behind these medical schools’ actions seems to be entirely race-based. For example, Georgetown University is funding the study and formation of courses to prevent ‘microaggressions’ in medicine.
Likewise, the Association of American Medical Colleges released a new standard for teaching medicine which requires students to achieve ‘competencies’ in ‘white privilege’ or risk failing. It also seeks to do away with the ideas of gender and race, the latter of which the AAMC describes as “… a social construct that is a cause of health and health care inequities, not a risk factor for disease.” If this is the case, then how will doctors address the pervasiveness of Sickle-Cell Anemia and Multiple Myeloma in African-American communities, the prevalence of diabetes in Asian groups, or the largely unknown effects of hormonal therapies in minors?
This Strategy’s Practical Consequences
This dramatic shift from upholding course standards to molding medicine in a racial lens is concerning. Though proponents of such measures would argue this is critical to improving race-relations in medicine and to deconstructing students’ “implicit biases,” saving lives and providing exceptional preventative care supersedes that.
A 2016 BMJ analysis found that medical errors in health-care facilities are actually incredibly common and may even be the third-leading cause of death in the US. Medical malpractice accounts for about 251,000 deaths every year—this is more than accidents, stroke, Alzheimer’s, and respiratory disease:
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on ALAS POOR HIPPOCRATES, I KNEW HIM WELL, HORATIO!!!
Recently chemistry professor Dr. Maitland Jones Jr. was fired after 82 of his students signed a petition noting that his organic chemistry class was “too hard.” The students accused Jones of purposely making the class difficult, citing that their low scores negatively impacted their “well-being,” and their chances of getting into medical school. Instead of evaluating the rigor and substance of Jones’ curriculum, NYU justified its hasty action by noting the class’s unfavorable student reviews.
In response to the disciplinary action, former medical humanities professor and bioethicist Dr. Alice Dreger blasted the move in a tweet, saying it “made her skin crawl.”
“We aren’t going to end up with good doctors by letting undergrad pre-meds pass organic chem because universities want to protect their US News rankings,” she wrote.
The reaction is justified considering how standards for pre-med programs and even medical schools have shifted in the direction of equity and social justice. It seems that even professors cannot hold the line on academic performance, when the institutions they teach at make it a secondary importance to accommodating students’ sensitivities on the basis of how faulted or victimized they feel while learning in the highly competitive and demanding field of medicine.
The shift in a medicine-based education to an emphasis on race and social concern was highlighted by former University of Pennsylvania Medical School Dean Stanley Goldfarb, who stated:
“…Today a master’s degree in education is often what it takes to qualify for key administrative roles on medical-school faculties. The zeitgeist of sociology and social work have become the driving force in medical education. The goal of today’s educators is to produce legions of primary care physicians who engage in what is termed ‘population health.’”
Medical schools’ administrations seem to have become taken over by sociologists and critical race theorists—if not in title, then certainly in practice.
Most recently in the news, the University of Minnesota Medical School conducted a white coat ceremony for its Class of 2026, where each student had to recite a modified Hippocratic Oath which—on top of pledging to do no harm and to help the sick whenever possible—would “honor all Indigenous ways of healing that have been historically marginalized by Western medicine…white supremacy, colonialism, and the gender binary.”
The politicization of medicine has greater effects than just this sort of political white-knighting. Instead of focusing on promoting preventative care and treatment based on actual medical effectiveness, the impetus behind these medical schools’ actions seems to be entirely race-based. For example, Georgetown University is funding the study and formation of courses to prevent ‘microaggressions’ in medicine.
Likewise, the Association of American Medical Colleges released a new standard for teaching medicine which requires students to achieve ‘competencies’ in ‘white privilege’ or risk failing. It also seeks to do away with the ideas of gender and race, the latter of which the AAMC describes as “… a social construct that is a cause of health and health care inequities, not a risk factor for disease.” If this is the case, then how will doctors address the pervasiveness of Sickle-Cell Anemia and Multiple Myeloma in African-American communities, the prevalence of diabetes in Asian groups, or the largely unknown effects of hormonal therapies in minors?
This Strategy’s Practical Consequences
This dramatic shift from upholding course standards to molding medicine in a racial lens is concerning. Though proponents of such measures would argue this is critical to improving race-relations in medicine and to deconstructing students’ “implicit biases,” saving lives and providing exceptional preventative care supersedes that.
A 2016 BMJ analysis found that medical errors in health-care facilities are actually incredibly common and may even be the third-leading cause of death in the US. Medical malpractice accounts for about 251,000 deaths every year—this is more than accidents.
And it was fueled by two realities: one, Ron DeSantis had a spectacular night (and two years ago had delivered Florida for Trump in 2020), and two, Donald Trump, in circular fashion and often vulgarly, attacked almost everyone, from his wife Melania and Dr. Oz to DeSantis and Glenn Youngkin. As a result, the commentariat simply declared Trump dead and buried. He may be, but the people, not the hierarchies, will decide his fate.
Who or what exactly was to blame for the Republican meltdown?
Back and forth, voices screamed that Trump candidates brought down the entire ticket.
No, in response, Trumpers objected, many like J.D. Vance won and many anti-Trumpers like Joe O’Dea lost.
Polls had misled conservatives into thinking that Insider Advantage and Trafalgar were correct in predicting a huge tsunami and in giddy response they let down their guard. (They were off about 7 points on average in 13 states’ key races.)
No, the culprit was naivete about mail-in/early voting and the Democratic mastery of having turned Election Day into a Republican fossilized construct. (Again, reread Molly Ball’s 2021 Time spike-the-football essay, bragging on how the Left outsmarted us, Neanderthals, in changing laws, voting rules, and raising billions.)
Republicans naively harped only on how horrible Biden’s record was—but without offering concrete steps on how to undo his damage.
No, others object, the real issue was abortion that galvanized coastal women and the under 30 single and childless. (The short-term is going to be bad for conservatives if they don’t figure out non-Election-Day voting; the long-term outlook is good in that they have larger families and better-run states and are simply happier people on average.)
Trump was stingy with his huge PAC money.
No, the base protests, it was Mitch McConnell who used his PAC war chest to ensure that he retained his party’s Senate leadership post by cutting off Blake Masters and pouring cash into Lisa Murkowski’s race against a true conservative Kelly Tshibaka.
Trump’s final meltdown ensured his final demise.
No, his supporters insist, his temporary bout of derangement will quiet down and his base remains firm.
DeSantis is another Ronald Reagan, but with a more impressive resume and record.
No, we don’t know whether he will prove the great-governor hope like Scott Walker in 2016 whose superb work in Wisconsin did not transfer to the primary debate stage. And we don’t know, Trump supporters worry, whether the corporate Romney-Bush Right will see his candidacy as an opportunity to pour in Wall Street money and get back control of the party.
In all this chaos and back-and-forth, remember it is the people who alone decide.
If Trump candidates performed poorly, it was because the people voted for them in the primaries as they did for Trump in 2016 and by acclamation in 2020. And they did so in part in reaction to the dismal McCain-Romney races and the 2008 loss of the Congress, overseen by a bankrupt Republican leadership.
Remember, we do not appoint candidates in a free society.
Mitch McConnell may or may not be right that candidates like Don Bolduc or Blake Masters lost “sure” races. But then again McConnell waited until the last minute to help the former and not at all the latter. We were told the RNC had superb “new” congressional candidates—but many of them got trounced. So, what is the alternative to selecting primary candidates or forbidding so-called losers to run? Just let the people vote for whomever they wish, the more candidates the merrier.
In truth, we do not know who the nominee will be in 2024. Now, of course, with Trump’s implosion and DeSantis’s deserved ascendence, we naively feel it is almost a done deal. The more Trump screams crazy things at DeSantis and the more the latter sits in silence and plays rope-a-dope watching Trump punch shadows in vain, all the more the “experts” deem Trump through and DeSantis coronated.
But Trump has nine lives and only about seven are expended. The candidate who survived the Access Hollywood psychodrama and January 6th has a history of recovery from the unrecoverable. And there are also other candidates—Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence, Tim Scott—who will have their moments. Expect Biden’s hubris to incur Nemesis. The likely dilemma will be more on the Democratic side about who will replace incumbent Biden, given his health, his terrible record, and his increasingly angry, get-off-my-grass snarling.
In a perfect world, Trump emeritus perhaps would retire to Mar-a-Lago, rest on his considerable 2017–21 laurels, contrast his four years with Biden’s, spread his PAC treasure liberally among MAGA candidates, and talk about issues as he hopes a DeSantis does well in perpetuating his own agenda.
But this is not a perfect world. Trump believes he was so wronged, so slandered, so damned by two impeachments, the Russian-collusion hoaxes, the laptop melodrama, and the weirdly radical changes in the 2020 election laws in most states that explain our present messy voting today, that he sees 2024, at best, as deserved redemption and, at worst, an occasion to get back power to get-even and settle scores.
So let the games begin as we distill who is the last person standing.
If Trump slips more, or if DeSantis trips in the future, there are plenty ready to “pounce” and capitalize. Certainly, no one thought Joe Biden would be the nominee in 2020 after his dismal February. Few imagined Trump in 2016 would win either the primaries or the general election. Most thought Hillary in 2008 would crush Obama by convention time. The idea of a John Fetterman to me is a terrifying notion. But the people of Pennsylvania disagree and so they will live either with a recovered socialist senator or a serial stroke-suffering socialist senator, but it is their choice, not anyone else’s.
So, we will have a Lucha libre of all comers. And We the People alone will see how it will end up. The op-ed pages, the Sunday shows, the polls, Silicon Valley, Mark Zuckerberg, and the insiders at the DNC or RNC don’t quite yet have the power to anoint candidates.
So let the people vote—wisely or foolishly—and live with their decision as they must.
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On September 19, 2022, Church Life Journal published an article co-authored by John Cavadini, Mary Healy, and Thomas Weinandy—the first in a projected five-part series, “The Renewal of the Liturgy: Successes, Failures, and Contemporary Concerns.” In order to bring to the public a more realistic account of the issues at stake, OnePeterFive is pleased to share with readers the following slightly modified excerpt from chapter 2 of Dr. Kwasniewski’s book Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright. This portion of the book has not been published online before.—TSF
Century after century, Holy Mother Church employed all her care in worshiping the Lord—from hidden gatherings of persecuted Christians to the grand basilicas of Constantine, within the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages and the ornate edifices of the Counter-Reformation, through the upheavals of modern Revolutions down to the eve of the Second Vatican Council. Always and everywhere, the holy mysteries were performed, venerated, and received in a continuum of Catholic faith accompanied by growing theological insight and spiritual devotion that matured into well-established rituals perfectly suited to their content and purpose.
The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council celebrated the Tridentine Mass in all four sessions.[1] They did not vote to retire or abolish this form of Mass, or even to alter its most striking features: Latin as the primary language, Gregorian chant as the primary music, ample silence, the east as a common direction for all worshipers, overlapping hierarchical activity entrusted to male ministers, the temporal cycle in the calendar, Communion received kneeling and on the tongue, and so forth.
Noble patriarchs, wayward grandchildren
How, then, did we end up getting, in the late 1960s, a new Mass so different from the Mass prayed by the Church for so many centuries? The answer to that question is closely bound up with the influential “Liturgical Movement” of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This movement to rediscover the central place of the Church’s public worship in the Christian life can be described in terms of three distinct phases, although the boundaries from one to the next were somewhat fluid.
The first phase, exemplified by the pioneering figure Dom Prosper Guéranger (1805–1875) and his great work The Liturgical Year,[2] aimed at a better understanding and celebration of the inherited Roman liturgy through popular explanations and clerical-religious education. The leading idea was to take the treasures we already had and get to know and love them intimately. Guéranger often cited ancient sources to flesh out his commentaries, but without implying that the Church had erred in the medieval and post-medieval development of her liturgy, or that she should revert to these primitive models. This phase coincided with a blossoming of renewed monastic life.
The second phase—of which Dom Lambert Beauduin (1873–1960), Ildefonso Cardinal Schuster (1880–1954), Fr. Pius Parsch (1884–1954), and Fr. Romano Guardini (1885–1968) may be taken as representatives—was characterized by outstanding progress in historical, archaeological, linguistic, and theological research. It retained a profound respect for the wealth of tradition but sometimes spoke of medieval and Baroque “deviations” and showed a decided preference for what was (or, at times, was imagined by scholars to be) the most ancient—and therefore, presumably, most “authentic”—practice. This led certain individuals to dabble in experiments that conflicted with ecclesiastical legislation, e.g., celebrating Mass facing the people out of a conviction that this was how the Eucharist was originally celebrated by Christians.[3] The dangerous tendencies of this phase were called out by Pope Pius XII in his 1947 encyclical letter Mediator Dei.
Despite the encyclical that was meant to put the brakes on, the Liturgical Movement entered a more radical third phase in the fifties and sixties, as more of its members indulged in pastoral experiments and crafted paraliturgies intended to “reach people where they’re at” and “get them involved.” Heavy liturgical reform of the general calendar, the rubrics, and the rites of Holy Week prior to the Second Vatican Council already announced that the attitude of respect for longstanding practice had lost its self-evident force. This third phase combined selective antiquarianism with a utilitarianism that sought above all “the people’s benefit,” understood in activist terms.
All three phases of the Liturgical Movement, be it noted, emphasized lay involvement. The first phase saw it primarily in terms of acquiring education: being initiated into a great tradition that one could explore for a lifetime yet never exhaust, and participating in the liturgy through prayerful engagement with the rites. The second phase strongly promoted the use of hand missals, devotional aids for living the Church year, and popular singing of plainchant. The third phase took an ideological turn, as prominent liturgists embraced the conviction that liturgy ought to be clear, comprehensible, accessible, verbal, linear, and group-oriented: modernized for Modern Man.
Paul VI lent his full papal support to the ideals and plans of this radical phase of the Liturgical Movement. When the ink was barely dry on the Council’s first approved document, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963), the pope set up a body called the Consilium. The pope and the Consilium took Vatican II’s call for moderate reform as carte blanche for an unprecedented wholesale reconstruction of the Roman rite in every area—Mass, lectionary, calendar, Divine Office, sacraments, sacramentals, pontifical and papal ceremonies, and so forth. The controversial Vincentian priest and later archbishop Annibale Bugnini (1912–1982), who worked on a succession of schemes of liturgical reform at the Vatican from 1948 to 1975, could be described as the general contractor of this massive project of demolition and reconstruction.[4]
While we can admit that the reformers were responding to certain problems of their time, we see looking back from our present vantage that they were often mistaken in their theories, naïve in their assumptions, and callous in their pastoral approach. The qualities of easy rational accessibility, immediate verbal comprehension, and community-centeredness are surely desirable in some social situations, but there is ample reason to question whether they suit well the religious ceremonies by which man comes before the God who wrapped Himself on Mount Sinai with voices, flames, the sound of the trumpet, and a dark cloud, wrought wind, rent rocks, shook stone, and whispered words, who names Himself “I AM” and “dwells in light inaccessible”;[5] the worship that leads to communion with the God-Man Christ Who baffled His own mother and foster father, who unwithered a man’s hand and withered a fig tree, Who blessed little children, raised the dead, drove out merchants with a whip, and sweated blood;[6] the operation of the Spirit who moved upon the face of the waters, descended as a dove from opened heavens, and entered as a violent rushing wind, to rest on the apostles as tongues of fire.[7]
Indeed, prominent voices in favor of liturgical reform, such as Fr. Louis Bouyer (1913–2004), subsequently expressed their regrets and dismay at much of what was done to and with the liturgy.[8]A close associate and disciple of Pius Parsch, Fr. Petrus Tschinkel of Klosterneuburg, admitted in an interview:
Now I can tell you that Pius Parsch would not at all have agreed with the changes of the post-conciliar era. That’s not what he wanted. Yes—(the liturgy) in the mother tongue. That is all, however. But also, the Mass as mystery, as a reality hic et nunc, here and now…. After the Second Vatican Council these liturgical forms are nothing but idling: only text after text. Not a trace of internal disposition nor of mystery.[9]
Fr. Tschinkel relates that Guardini, when he received the texts of the new liturgy, looked at them for a long time and then said: “Plumbers’ work!” (Klempnerarbeit).[10] Joseph Ratzinger renders a similarly negative judgment, though in more elegiac language:
The Liturgical Movement had in fact been attempting to… teach us to understand the Liturgy as a living network of Tradition that had taken concrete form, that cannot be torn apart into little pieces but has to be seen and experienced as a living whole. Anyone who, like me, was moved by this perception at the time of the Liturgical Movement on the eve of the Second Vatican Council can only stand, deeply sorrowing, before the ruins of the very things they were concerned for.[11]
In any case, we can say that history has moved on and the Church is now in a much different place than it was fifty years ago. If anything, the passage of decades has shown how urgently our traditional Roman liturgy responds to essential and universal human needs as well as needs peculiar to the postmodern era. Although a stubborn Old Guard of Bugninians remains ensconced in many a university chair and chancery office,[12] the energy is with the Ratzingerians, whose banner is Summorum Pontificum and whose motto is “what earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too.” As Dom Alcuin Reid observes:
the reality in the life of the Church at the beginning of the twenty-first century [is] that the usus antiquior is a living liturgical rite in which people—indeed significant and growing numbers of young people—participate fully, actually, consciously and fruitfully in a manner that would have brought great satisfaction to the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council and to the pioneers of the twentieth-century liturgical movement which preceded it.[13]
When Joseph Ratzinger called for a “new liturgical movement,”[14] he seems to have had in mind a new beginning, a movement characterized by the features of the first and healthiest phase, in which filial piety, grateful receptivity, and warm devotion are directed toward a rich heritage developed over twenty centuries of continuous worship—a tradition that should never have been rejected, and, happily, was never entirely forgotten or lost.[15]
[1] The public meetings of the Council began with solemn liturgies, most often in the venerable Roman rite but also on occasion in various Eastern and non-Roman Western rites as well.
[2] Different publishers have kept this masterpiece in print over the years. The most recent edition: Dom Prosper Guéranger, OSB, The Liturgical Year, trans. by Dom Laurence Shepherd, OSB (Fitzwilliam, NH: Loreto Publications, 2017), 15 vols. Some sections may be found online.
[3] We now know that this is not true and that the history is more complicated. For a good overview, see Fiedrowicz, Traditional Mass, ch. 7, “Direction of Prayer,” 141–52.
[4] For an excellent biography that also handily summarizes the liturgical fermentation and change from 1945–1975, see Yves Chiron, Annibale Bugnini: Reformer of the Liturgy, trans. John Pepino (Brooklyn, NY: Angelico Press, 2018). There was a short period during the Second Vatican Council when Bugnini was not working for the Vatican in an official capacity. He nevertheless remained in Rome, in close contact with all the major players, until he was reappointed as secretary of the Consilium.
[8] See The Memoirs of Louis Bouyer: From Youth and Conversion to Vatican II, the Liturgical Reform, and After, trans. John Pepino (Kettering, OH: Angelico Press, 2015), 218–25.
[9] See Wolfram Schrems, “The Council’s Constitution on the Liturgy: Reform or revolution?,” Rorate Caeli, May 3, 2018.
[10] Ibid. The German colloquialism means work done in a hasty, slipshod way, with inadequate care, and botched results. The reference to a hack plumber doing a mechanical job carries the implication that the reform of the liturgy was approached like the fixing, cutting, adapting, or welding of pieces of metal pipe, rather than as a subtle work of skill on a delicate living reality that would require holiness, discretion, and learning. Klempnerarbeit might also convey in this case a lack of aesthetic value in the misnamed “reforms.”
[11] Preface to Alcuin Reid, The Organic Development of the Liturgy: The Principles of Liturgical Reform and Their Relation to the Twentieth-Century Liturgical MovementPrior to the Second Vatican Council, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), 11.
[12] Notable figures who staunchly support the liturgical reform of Paul VI include Bugnini’s quondam secretary Archbishop Piero Marini (b. 1942), Msgr. Kevin Irwin (b. 1946), Fr. John Baldovin, SJ (b. 1947), Andrea Grillo (b. 1961), Fr. Anthony Ruff, OSB (b. 1963), and Massimo Faggioli (b. 1970).
[13] “The older form of the Roman rite is alive and well,” The Catholic World Report, April 3, 2020.
[15] See Fr. Thomas M. Kocik, Singing His Song: A Short Introduction to the Liturgical Movement, rev. and expanded ed. (Hong Kong: Chorabooks, 2019); cf. “The New Liturgical Movement: Urgent Care for a Sick Church,” in Kwasniewski, Noble Beauty, 89–112.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on IN ORDER TO REALLY KNOW WHO WE ARE, AND WHERE WE HAVE BEEN, AND HOW WE HAVE ARRIVED AT THIS MOMENT IN THE LIFE OF OUR CHURCH WE NEED TO READ AND RE-READ THIS CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF OUR LITURGICAL JOURNEY OF THE LAST 100 YEARS. READ IT AND WEEP. READ IT AND RESOLVE TO RESCUE THE AUTHENTIC LITURGY OF THE CHURCH FROM THE PRESENT LITURGICAL CRISIS
“My kingdom is not of this world, but indeed it encompasses this world, for My kingdom has no borders, and there is no territory that lies outside My reign.
I survey My holy city, the Church, today, and I find that many of those who are called to declare My kingdom to the world have no loyalty to Me or to My kingdom. They instead declare the supremacy of the world which I created. But how can the subjects of the King usurp the reign of the King?
I was mockingly given the title of King at My crucifixion, but what was given in jest rang out as truth for not only am I King of the Jews, I am King of the Universe; and not only am I King of Death, but I am King of Life. It is not man who assigns this title, but rather God who defines this title and who gives it unto Himself. Therefore, I am the One who has defined this title, and I am the One who has bestowed this title, and I am the One who has assumed this title.
Today My Church seeks to define My kingship and then to encase Me in that definition, thereby dethroning Me. It has always been a tactic of the ungodly to seek to dethrone Me, but now My Church also adopts this tactic. But the authority of My Church arises from the validity of My Kingship, and therefore the attempt of My Church to dethrone Me is an attempt at self-annihilation. The Church looks to the world for a king, the very place from which I have delivered it.
The heart of My Church is divided, and when I survey My Church, I see a faithless heart. My Church must again recognize My Kingship and bow before their King, or the vines of the world will begin to choke the harvest of My Kingdom. And then will the King, in a mighty display of power not yet seen, cut away the vines and restore the harvest.
The heart of My Church is full of idolatry. When I speak, my people hear not My voice, but instead bow before graven images that cannot speak. But My throne is forever, and My kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and My dominion endureth forever.
Today in My Church sin is seen as a sickness or a weakness for which man has the cure. And prophets of holiness who call the people to repentance have been proclaimed doomsayers and harsh judges. But sin is an effort to dethrone the King and to take other rulers in His place, and no cure will be effective if I am not on the throne.
Today My Church must boldly declare My Kingship and proclaim that I alone am King. If My Church continues to obscure or distort the truths of My kingdom, and to redefine the terms of My kingship, then great will be the punishment. For no man may share the throne of God, and no man called to represent the King may speak his own words in place of the King’s decrees.
Any nation that defies God will reap great tribulation, but woe to My Church who has held not the flag of the Kingdom where the nations could see it and be fortified. And woe to the shepherds in My Church who have not proclaimed My Kingship to My sheep. For all authority is Mine, but the shepherds have failed to proclaim My omnipotence and the surety of My every spoken word, and their silence cries out to Me.
I am the King of Kings! Yes, I am love, but it is a holy love, a just love, and a sovereign love. I call My people to Me in love, but I call them to acknowledge My Kingship, and to come on bended knee.
My Church must proclaim to all nations that I am King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And My Church must embrace My Kingship, and bow before My throne. Behold the King of Kings, the savior of the world!”
Who or what was responsible for the Republican nationwide collapse in the midterms? After all, pundits, politicos, and pollsters all predicted a “red tsunami.”
Moreover, the average loss of any president in his first midterm is 25 House seats. And when his approval sinks to or below 43 percent—in the fashion of Joe Biden—the loss, on average, expands to over 40 seats.
Barack Obama in 2010 lost 63 seats. Is Biden, therefore, more charismatic or more energetic than Obama? Was his agenda more successful and popular?
Given such high Republican expectations, the blame game for the loss is as strident and confusing as was the election itself.
Here are some of the most common targets of criticism.
One: Donald Trump is being blamed on various counts. Before the midterms, he strangely attacked Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. And he loudly hinted that he would run again.
Those histrionics supposedly took attention away from Republican candidates. Trump turned off some DeSantis fans from Trump-endorsed candidates and energized Trump-hating left-wingers to go out and vote to stop the momentum for a second Trump presidency.
Yet the idea that Trump was erratic or reckless was not really new and surprised no one on either side of the political divide.
Two, Trump promoted many losing candidates, often on the narrow basis of whether they had accepted his charges of a rigged 2020 election. His critics countered that while his MAGA candidates won primaries in states like Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, they had little chance of going on to win general elections.
Yet, some important Trump-supported candidates did win, including J. D. Vance in Ohio and Ted Budd in North Carolina. At the same time, many centrists and moderates, such as Joe O’Dea in Colorado, lost.
Three, why did Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the fossilized Republican hierarchy short candidate Blake Masters in Arizona, while pouring money into an internecine fight in Alaska on the side of the less conservative Republican candidate?
Nevertheless, Republican House and Senate coffers probably gave MAGA candidates more than Donald Trump did from his $100 million-plus campaign stash.
Four, are we not in the midst of the greatest political revolution of our age? Election Day voting in most states has been reduced to about 30 percent of the electorate. What replaced it is an utter mess of early balloting, absentee balloting, mail-in balloting, ranked voting, run-off voting, and endless counting.
The Left saw winning advantages with these radical changes, many made under the pretext of the COVID-19 lockdowns. And it has mastered them to such a degree that most Republicans with small leads at the end of Election Day now expect to lose over the subsequent days and weeks.
Yet, the Republicans already got burned in 2020 by these ongoing radical changes. Did they not have ample time to avoid their recurrence?
Five, this time the silent and undercounted voters were not disillusioned MAGA supporters who hung up on pollsters’ calls.
Instead, pollsters missed the 70 percent of those under 30, along with single women, who voted straight Democratic tickets.
Mannered Republicans may have scoffed at how Biden and the Left demagogued the abortion issue or slandered Republicans as semi-fascists, and un-American insurrectionists. They shrugged at Biden’s hokey efforts at buying off young voters with amnesties for marijuana convictions and student loans or offering slightly cheaper gas by draining the strategic petroleum reserves.
But all those low-minded strategies resulted in high left-wing enthusiasm and turnout.
Six, usually reliable conservative pollsters forecast a huge Republican victory. Apparently, they oversampled conservative voters, reasoning that left-leaning pollsters usually undersampled them.
They were not just wrong, but way off. And the ensuing hubris of certain victory led to nemesis as Republicans let up the last few weeks. Thousands of conservative voters may have passed at the chance to go to the polls deeming their votes superfluous.
Seven, the Left smeared conservatives as democracy destroyers and violent insurrectionists. So, when the Republicans offered nonstop negative appraisals of Biden’s failed policies without commensurate alternative positive agendas, they unknowingly fed into the Democrats’ false narrative of cranky nihilists.
Could not Republicans have offered an upbeat and coherent contract with America that offered uplifting, concrete solutions to each of Biden’s messes?
Finally, Democrats are now the party of the very rich. The neo-socialist Democratic Party has more billionaire capitalists than do the free-market Republicans.
In almost every important Senate or gubernatorial race, the Democratic candidate was the far better funded of the two. In some races, like the New Hampshire U.S. Senate election, the Democrat outspent his Republican counterpart by a staggering 17-1.
Has the Republican Party of capitalism forgotten the power and role of money in politics? Why is it once again so easily out-funded, outspent, and outsmarted?
All these writs variously explain the otherwise inexplicable dismal Republican performance.
Yet there is a common denominator for Republicans to all these multifaceted problems: either different leaders or different strategies—or both—are necessary to ensure different results.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on There is a common denominator for Republicans to all the multifaceted problems that are apparent in the results of the recent runoff election: either different leaders or different strategies—or both—are necessary to ensure different results.
Flashback: Chris Ferrara called for an “Imperfect Council” & his Mentor called Francis an Antipope & Why don’t you write a article explaining why you disagree with Fr. Gruner that Francis is an Antipope
On September 17, 2018, Chris Ferrara, president of the American Catholic Lawyers Association wrote an article calling for a “imperfect council” to be enjoined to investigate and possibly “declare” Francis “deposed” from the papacy:
“The Synod [of Sutri in 1046] was convoked by Henry III, the German king and soon-to-be-crowned Holy Roman Emperor, a pious and austere Christian and an exponent of the Cluniac spirit of reform. The Synod declared that Benedict IX (who had refused to appear) was deposed notwithstanding his attempt to undo his resignation. As for Sylvester, the Synod declared that he be “stripped of his sacerdotal rank and shut up in a monastery.” Gregory was also declared deposed, either by the act of the Synod itself or by Gregory’s own voluntary resignation in view of the Synod [Historian Warren Carroll states in “The Building of Christendom” that it was by his resignation, Page 464.].”
“… What would be the grounds for a declaration of deposition at such a gathering of prelates? One could readily point to the evidence that a faction that included Bergoglio himself had agreed upon his election before the conclave, and that all those involved, including Bergoglio, were thereby excommunicated latae sententiae in accordance with Article 81 of John Paul II’s Universi Dominici Gregis, which provides:
‘The Cardinal electors shall further abstain from any form of pact, agreement, promise or other commitment of any kind which could oblige them to give or deny their vote to a person or persons. If this were in fact done, even under oath, I decree that such a commitment shall be null and void and that no one shall be bound to observe it; and I hereby impose the penalty of excommunication latae sententiae upon those who violate this prohibition.'”
“To quote Cajetan on this point (citations taken from the linked article by Robert Siscoe), deposition by an imperfect council is appropriate ‘when one or more Popes suffer uncertainty with regard to their election, as seems to have arisen in the schism of Urban VI and others. Then, lest the Church be perplexed, those members of the Church who are available have the power to judge which is the true pope, if it can be known, and if it cannot be known, [it has] the power to provide that the electors agree on one or another of them.’”
“I am not saying that such a case has been proven. Rather, what I am saying is that this hypothetical imperfect council could determine that it has been proven and act accordingly, and that the Church would judge any resulting deposition of Bergoglio in the same manner it judges the deposition of Benedict IX.”
Why don’t you in 2020, again, call for a “imperfect council”?
Moreover, everyone knows that Ferrara’s good friend and mentor was Fr. Nicholas Gruner before he passed away.
My next respectful question to Mr. Ferrara is:
Why don’t you write a article explaining why you disagree with your mentor and close friend Fr. Gruner that Francis is an antipope because Pope Benedict XVI didn’t resign the “munus”?
Here is Fr. Gruner exactly and precisely saying what Ann Barnhardt and Br. Alexis Bugnolo are saying on German youtu.be:
Mr. Ferrara, please, be honest and explain why you disagree with the man who mentored you in Catholic theology.
Stop running away from the issue. Go on your new friend Taylor Marshall’s show and tell everyone why you disagree with your mentor.
Pray an Our Father now in reparation for the sins 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.”
– 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.
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‘”:
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 MarySHARE
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on My respectful question to Mr. Ferrara is:
Doubtful Schneider vs. St. Bellarmine & Bp. Gracida: “A Doubtful Pope is no Pope”
Bishop Athanasius Schneider’s opinion on “doubtful matters”:
“[T]he Magisterium of the Church, since Popes Pius X and Benedict XV, has seemed to reject such an opinion, as the formulation of the spurious decree of Gratian was eliminated in the Code of Canon Law 1917. The canons that address the automatic loss of an ecclesiastical office for heresy in the 1917 Code of Canon Law (canon 188 §4) and in the 1983 Code of Canon Law (canon 194 §2) are not applicable to the pope, because the Church deliberately eliminated from the Code of Canon Law the following formulation taken from the previous Corpus Iuris Canonici: “unless the pope is caught deviating from the faith (nisi deprehendatur a fide devius).” By this act, the Church manifested her understanding, the mens ecclesiae, regarding this crucial issue. Even if one does not agree with this conclusion, the matter remains at least doubtful. In doubtful matters, however, one cannot proceed to concrete acts with fundamental implications for the life of the Church, such as, e.g., not to name an allegedly heretical or an allegedly invalidly elected pope in the Canon of the Mas or preparing for a new papal election.” [https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/bishop-schneider-releases-essay-on-the-question-of-the-true-pope]
Schneider is right:
“In doubtful matters, however, one cannot proceed to concrete acts with fundamental implications for the life of the Church.”
Bishop Rene Gracida summed the 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/ ]
Moreover, it appears that if someone has definite solid reasons from canon law to doubt the validity of Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation one can it appears possibly commit a 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)
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)
Pray an Our Father now in reparation for the sins 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.”
– 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.
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‘”:
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 MarySHARE
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on “A DOUBTFUL POPE IS NO POPE”
Top GOP Senator Reacts to Trump News–Drops Truth Bomb on Former President
Donald Trump announced his bid for re-election in 2024. It was news many people had been waiting for–and it kicked off the 2024 election two years out. Plenty of people will weigh in on Trump and his chances at re-election. It is impossible to predict what will happen–and even if he will get the GOP nomination.
It’s clear he will be facing off against the Republican establishment once again. Much like in 2016, he will have to defy both parties to win the nomination and secure the White House. But, unlike in 2016, things are very different. And one top GOP senator pointed that out.
If President Trump continues this tone and delivers this message on a consistent basis, he will be hard to beat.
His speech tonight, contrasting his policies and results against the Biden Administration, charts a winning path for him in the primaries and general election.
As we listen to President Trump remind us of what is possible regarding our borders, economy, and national security, it is my hope that he will continue to focus on the solutions that he offered tonight to restore a broken America. [Source: Twitter]
Sen. Lindsey Graham appeared to be offering some advice to Donald Trump. He said that if Trump kept the tone from his recent speech and focused on his message, he would be “hard to beat.” The Republican said Trump needs to focus on contrasting the success of his administration against Biden’s complete failure.
If Trump can convince voters his leadership worked, securing a strong America, then Biden has nothing to counter it. Under Biden, the economy is in free fall and most Americans believe we are on the wrong track. Biden is a failure by every metric and any Republican candidate can crush him.
Trump has the upper hand because he already served in the White House. His first three years were marked by tremendous growth and success. Biden can’t even come close. If Trump focuses on that, he will have an advantage over every candidate, Republican or Democrat.
But it seems Graham is also warning Trump. If Trump deviates from this winning strategy and devolves into petty insults, attacking his own party, and other polarizing antics, he will lose hard. Most agree the nation is divided. And when Trump is at his worst, he only hurts the problem.
If he sticks to promising a better future, reversing Biden’s failures, he just might be unbeatable.
Author: Jim Stone
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on A WORD OF CAUTION TO PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP
ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP 
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