Fifteen years ago, Bishop Michael Burbidge, then heading the Diocese of Raleigh, instituted one of the best plans for implementing Summorum Pontificum. Two months ago, he announced one of the worst policies for implementing Traditionis Custodes in his current Diocese of Arlington. Public understanding of this policy has been confused by half-truths from both the diocese and its critics. The reality is in some ways better and in some ways more disturbing than it seems.
Beginning on the positive side, the number of locations offering the Tridentine Mass every Sunday has only been reduced from ten to eight. Eleven parishes had the Tridentine Mass on a limited basis, often only on a handful of weekdays each month. Provision for the laity remains reasonable, though hardly “generous” as the diocese fatuously claims. A generous bishop would have dispensed all twenty-one parishes from Traditionis Custodes on his own authority. A great one would have encouraged eleven of them to begin weekly Sunday Masses.
But limiting locations to a reasonable number is not the whole story. Three were transferred from parish churches to school cafeterias and gyms, another to a former church recently turned into a hall and stripped bare. Parishes have been told not to list Tridentine Mass times in their bulletins.
These policies were not enacted because Bishop Burbidge decided to choose appeasement or because he was later hounded by Rome. They were enacted because Bishop Burbidge chose a path which he and his representatives are calling “faithfulness” but is more accurately termed “servility.”
I do not use the term lightly. I do not use it because Bishop Burbidge disagrees with those who believe current circumstances justify certain forms of disobedience or with what can and cannot be done during a grave crisis. I do not use it because of any disagreement I may have with Bishop Burbidge as to the bare minimum which Church law strictly requires.
I use the term because Bishop Burbidge is not interested in determining the bare minimum Church law strictly requires and then facilitating use of the Tridentine Mass as much as possible. His policy is to embrace Pope Francis’ decision to restrict the Tridentine Mass as much as he can while still providing reasonable access to it. The reason is that Bishop Burbidge misunderstands how obedience ordinarily works under normal conditions.
According to St. Thomas Aquinas, perfection consists primarily in choosing God as the supreme good. Obeying Him as the supreme authority is an essential element of that—not the core of perfection. We most directly choose God as the supreme good in prayer. In necessary obedience we indirectly obey God as the supreme authority. The perfection of prayer is the perfection of choosing God and uniting ourselves to Him as the supreme good. Perfection of obedience through nonessential obedience is not an essential precondition for perfect prayer and is virtuous only insofar as it does not impede the higher good.
Later writers inverted St. Thomas’ principles. For them perfection does not consist primarily in choosing God as the supreme good but in obeying Him as the supreme authority. Perfecting obedience was then elevated above perfecting prayer. The natural but absurd conclusion is the belief that to pray less deeply but under perfect obedience pleases God more than to pray perfectly while being minimally obedient.
More simply, in the view of St. Thomas, we obey God as a necessary aspect of loving Him; in an anti-Thomist view, we love Him as a necessary aspect of obeying Him. But, ironically enough, acting on the Thomist view is more obedient to the hierarchy of goods which finds its origin in God Himself.
All other things are distinctly unequal when nonessential obedience impacts others. Charity is greater than obedience. When nonessential obedience negatively impacts others, minimal obedience becomes virtuous and sometimes necessary under pain of sin.
Bishop Burbidge has decided to make a strong effort to implement whatever the pope of the moment’s liturgical policy is—and argues that this is virtuous. Hence, on July 15, 2021, Bishop Burbidge was committed to promoting use of the Tridentine Mass in accordance with Summorum Pontificum, and on the following day he was committed to restricting its use in accordance with Traditionis Custodes.
His abrupt change of course is due to the fact that his priority is not to foster his people’s spiritual lives as much as essential obedience allows. His priority is to be as obedient as he can be, provided his people’s spiritual lives are adequately fostered. He chose to be sufficiently charitable so he could be more obedient rather than sufficiently obedient so he could be more charitable.
Such prioritization of nonessential obedience over charity is ultimately rooted in the anti-Thomist view and culminated in nineteenth-century ultramontanism. Such excessive submissiveness to the pope is precisely the danger which St. John Henry Newman warned against. Newman ultimately welcomed the First Vatican Council’s dogmatic definition of papal infallibility because he always believed the doctrine and the definition made clear how limited the scope of infallibility is. His earlier reservations were motivated by the fact that some ultramontanes wanted a definition which would push infallibility beyond its traditional limits, or at least be vague enough to insist upon nonessential submission to Rome in practice.
Newman’s anti-ultramontane principle of minimalization—of examining what we are strictly required to submit to and beyond that considering ourselves free to act on our own judgement as to whether greater obedience or something else is more reasonable in particular circumstances—accords with the Thomistic position that perfection consists primarily in choosing God as good. Belief that perfection consists primarily in obeying God as the supreme authority leads to the nineteenth-century ultramontane uncharitable attempts to pummel Catholics into nonessential obedience to Rome, which caused Newman to call them “an insolent aggressive faction” and to describe their behavior as “tyrannousness and cruelty.”
From the perspective of the doctrines of both St. Thomas and of St. John Newman, Bishop Burbidge has been even more incoherent by thoroughly implementing papal policies based on opposite theologies. Summorum Pontificum, as the bishop himself once accurately articulated, was based in Pope Benedict’s “hermeneutic of continuity.” Cardinal Roche has plainly stated he wants the Tridentine Mass restricted because he believes in the “hermeneutic of rupture.”
Either Bishop Burbidge has not investigated the reasons for the law which led him to impose drastic restrictions or he knows those reasons are unorthodox and went ahead anyway. Saints Thomas and Newman would insist that the choice between maximum and minimum obedience must take into account the good or evil ends intended by the superior.
From this it is clear that Burbidge does not understand the role of a bishop. It is not his role to be as obedient as possible. It is to sanctify his people and as much as essential obedience allows. This is why bishops have broad powers to dispense from universal Church law, to make diocesan law, and even to replace elements of universal law with particular law. Within the limits of Catholic doctrine and of essential obedience, sanctifying his people requires taking them—rather than the pope—as the basic point of reference.
Other bishops have done their jobs and worked to sanctify their people by allowing the Tridentine Mass to continue as before. They understood that they are Successors of the Apostles, not regional managers. Bishop Burbidge has not even had the integrity to openly admit he freely chose to do more than strictly required, relying instead on platitudes about “faithfulness.”
Catholics in Arlington have overwhelmingly tried to be polite and deferential. But our bishop has chosen to act like a Quisling rather than like a Successor of the Apostles. So, within the bare minimum of absolutely strictly essential obedience, it is time to embrace the joyful defiance of Quisling’s eminent contemporary, who recognized that “without victory there is no survival” and declared We Shall Never Surrender.
James Baresel is a freelance writer. Publications for which he has written include Tudor Life, Catholic World Report, American History, Fine Art Connoisseur, Military History, Catholic Herald, Claremont Review of Books, Adoremus Bulletin, New Eastern Europe and America’s Civil War.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on It is obvious that many bishops do not understand the role of a bishop. It is not a bishop’s role to be as obedient as possible. It is to sanctify his people as much as essential obedience allows. This is why bishops have broad powers to dispense from universal Church law, to make diocesan law, and even to replace elements of universal law with particular law. Within the limits of Catholic doctrine and of essential obedience, sanctifying his people requires taking them—rather than the pope—as the basic point of reference.
Civilization is fragile. It hinges on ensuring the stuff of life.
To be able to eat, to move about, to have shelter, to be free from state or tribal coercion, to be secure abroad, and safe at home—only that allows cultures to be freed from the daily drudgery of mere survival.
Civilization alone permits humans to pursue sophisticated scientific research, the arts, and the finer aspects of culture.
So, the great achievement of Western civilization—consensual government, individual freedom, rationalism in partnership with religious belief, free market economics, and constant self-critique and audit—was to liberate people from daily worry over state violence, random crime, famine, and an often-unforgiving nature.
But so often the resulting leisure and affluence instead deluded arrogant Western societies into thinking that modern man no longer needed to worry about the fruits of civilization he took to be his elemental birthright.
As a result, the once prosperous Greek city-state, Roman Empire, Renaissance republics, and European democracies of the 1930s imploded—as civilization went headlong in reverse.
We in the modern Western world are now facing just such a crisis.
We talk grandly about the globalized Great Reset. We blindly accept the faddish New Green Deal. We virtue signal about defunding the police. We merely shrug at open borders. And we brag about banning fertilizers and pesticides, outlawing the internal combustion engine, and discounting Armageddon in the nuclear age—as if on autopilot we have already reached utopia.
But meanwhile, Westerners are systematically destroying the very elements of our civilization that permitted such fantasies in the first place.
Take fuel. Europeans arrogantly lectured the world that they no longer need traditional fuels. So, they shut down nuclear power plants. They stopped drilling for oil and gas. And they banned coal.
What followed was a dystopian nightmare. Europeans will burn dirty wood this winter as their civilization reverts from postmodern abundance to premodern survival.
The Biden Administration ossified oil fields. It canceled new federal oil and gas leases. It stopped pipeline construction and hectored investors to shun fossil fuels.
When scarcity naturally followed, fuel prices soared.
The middle class has now mortgaged its upward mobility to ensure that it might afford gasoline, heating oil, and skyrocketing electricity.
The Pentagon must keep America safe by deterring enemies, reassuring allies, and winning over neutrals.
It is not to hector soldiers based on their race. It is not to indoctrinate recruits in the woke agenda. It is not to become a partisan political force.
The result of those suicidal Pentagon detours is the fiasco in Afghanistan, the aggression of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the new bellicosity of China, and the loud threats of rogue regimes like Iran.
At home, the Biden Administration inexplicably destroyed the southern border—as if civilized nations of the past never needed such boundaries.
Utter chaos followed. Three million poured into the United States illegally. They entered without audit, and largely without skills, high-school diplomas, or capital.
The streets of our cities are anarchical—and by intent.
Defunding the police, emptying the jails, and destroying the criminal justice system unleashed a wave of criminals. It is now open season on the weak and innocent.
America is racing backward into the 19th century wild West. Predators maim, kill, and rob with impunity. Felons correctly conclude that bankrupt postmodern “critical legal theory” will ensure their exemption from punishment.
Few Americans know anything about agriculture, except to expect limitless supplies of inexpensive, safe, and nutritious food at their beck and call.
But that entitlement for 330 million hungry mouths requires massive water projects, and new dams and reservoirs. Farmers rely on steady supplies of fertilizer, fuels, and chemicals. Take away that support—as green nihilists are attempting—and millions will soon go hungry, as they have since the dawn of civilization.
Perhaps nearly a million homeless now live on the streets of America. Our major cities have turned medieval with their open sewers, garbage-strewn sidewalks, and violent vagrants.
So, we are in a great experiment in which regressive progressivism discounts all the institutions, and the methodologies of the past that have guaranteed a safe, affluent, well-fed and sheltered America.
Instead, we arrogantly are reverting to a new feudalism as the wealthy elite—terrified of what they have wrought—selfishly retreat to their private keeps.
But the rest who suffer the consequences of elite flirtations with nihilism cannot even afford food, shelter, and fuel. And they now feel unsafe, both as individuals and as Americans.
As we suffer self-inflicted mass looting, random street violence, hyperinflation, a nonexistent border, unaffordable fuel, and a collapsing military, Americans will come to appreciate just how thin is the veneer of their civilization.
When stripped away, we are relearning that what lies just beneath is utterly terrifying.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on Civilization alone permits humans to pursue sophisticated scientific research, the arts, and the finer aspects of culture.
Fifteen years ago, Bishop Michael Burbidge, then heading the Diocese of Raleigh, instituted one of the best plans for implementing Summorum Pontificum. Two months ago, he announced one of the worst policies for implementing Traditionis Custodes in his current Diocese of Arlington. Public understanding of this policy has been confused by half-truths from both the diocese and its critics. The reality is in some ways better and in some ways more disturbing than it seems.
Beginning on the positive side, the number of locations offering the Tridentine Mass every Sunday has only been reduced from ten to eight. Eleven parishes had the Tridentine Mass on a limited basis, often only on a handful of weekdays each month. Provision for the laity remains reasonable, though hardly “generous” as the diocese fatuously claims. A generous bishop would have dispensed all twenty-one parishes from Traditionis Custodes on his own authority. A great one would have encouraged eleven of them to begin weekly Sunday Masses.
But limiting locations to a reasonable number is not the whole story. Three were transferred from parish churches to school cafeterias and gyms, another to a former church recently turned into a hall and stripped bare. Parishes have been told not to list Tridentine Mass times in their bulletins.
These policies were not enacted because Bishop Burbidge decided to choose appeasement or because he was later hounded by Rome. They were enacted because Bishop Burbidge chose a path which he and his representatives are calling “faithfulness” but is more accurately termed “servility.”
I do not use the term lightly. I do not use it because Bishop Burbidge disagrees with those who believe current circumstances justify certain forms of disobedience or with what can and cannot be done during a grave crisis. I do not use it because of any disagreement I may have with Bishop Burbidge as to the bare minimum which Church law strictly requires.
I use the term because Bishop Burbidge is not interested in determining the bare minimum Church law strictly requires and then facilitating use of the Tridentine Mass as much as possible. His policy is to embrace Pope Francis’ decision to restrict the Tridentine Mass as much as he can while still providing reasonable access to it. The reason is that Bishop Burbidge misunderstands how obedience ordinarily works under normal conditions.
According to St. Thomas Aquinas, perfection consists primarily in choosing God as the supreme good. Obeying Him as the supreme authority is an essential element of that—not the core of perfection. We most directly choose God as the supreme good in prayer. In necessary obedience we indirectly obey God as the supreme authority. The perfection of prayer is the perfection of choosing God and uniting ourselves to Him as the supreme good. Perfection of obedience through nonessential obedience is not an essential precondition for perfect prayer and is virtuous only insofar as it does not impede the higher good.
Later writers inverted St. Thomas’ principles. For them perfection does not consist primarily in choosing God as the supreme good but in obeying Him as the supreme authority. Perfecting obedience was then elevated above perfecting prayer. The natural but absurd conclusion is the belief that to pray less deeply but under perfect obedience pleases God more than to pray perfectly while being minimally obedient.
More simply, in the view of St. Thomas, we obey God as a necessary aspect of loving Him; in an anti-Thomist view, we love Him as a necessary aspect of obeying Him. But, ironically enough, acting on the Thomist view is more obedient to the hierarchy of goods which finds its origin in God Himself.
All other things are distinctly unequal when nonessential obedience impacts others. Charity is greater than obedience. When nonessential obedience negatively impacts others, minimal obedience becomes virtuous and sometimes necessary under pain of sin.
Bishop Burbidge has decided to make a strong effort to implement whatever the pope of the moment’s liturgical policy is—and argues that this is virtuous. Hence, on July 15, 2021, Bishop Burbidge was committed to promoting use of the Tridentine Mass in accordance with Summorum Pontificum, and on the following day he was committed to restricting its use in accordance with Traditionis Custodes.
His abrupt change of course is due to the fact that his priority is not to foster his people’s spiritual lives as much as essential obedience allows. His priority is to be as obedient as he can be, provided his people’s spiritual lives are adequately fostered. He chose to be sufficiently charitable so he could be more obedient rather than sufficiently obedient so he could be more charitable.
Such prioritization of nonessential obedience over charity is ultimately rooted in the anti-Thomist view and culminated in nineteenth-century ultramontanism. Such excessive submissiveness to the pope is precisely the danger which St. John Henry Newman warned against. Newman ultimately welcomed the First Vatican Council’s dogmatic definition of papal infallibility because he always believed the doctrine and the definition made clear how limited the scope of infallibility is. His earlier reservations were motivated by the fact that some ultramontanes wanted a definition which would push infallibility beyond its traditional limits, or at least be vague enough to insist upon nonessential submission to Rome in practice.
Newman’s anti-ultramontane principle of minimalization—of examining what we are strictly required to submit to and beyond that considering ourselves free to act on our own judgement as to whether greater obedience or something else is more reasonable in particular circumstances—accords with the Thomistic position that perfection consists primarily in choosing God as good. Belief that perfection consists primarily in obeying God as the supreme authority leads to the nineteenth-century ultramontane uncharitable attempts to pummel Catholics into nonessential obedience to Rome, which caused Newman to call them “an insolent aggressive faction” and to describe their behavior as “tyrannousness and cruelty.”
From the perspective of the doctrines of both St. Thomas and of St. John Newman, Bishop Burbidge has been even more incoherent by thoroughly implementing papal policies based on opposite theologies. Summorum Pontificum, as the bishop himself once accurately articulated, was based in Pope Benedict’s “hermeneutic of continuity.” Cardinal Roche has plainly stated he wants the Tridentine Mass restricted because he believes in the “hermeneutic of rupture.”
Either Bishop Burbidge has not investigated the reasons for the law which led him to impose drastic restrictions or he knows those reasons are unorthodox and went ahead anyway. Saints Thomas and Newman would insist that the choice between maximum and minimum obedience must take into account the good or evil ends intended by the superior.
From this it is clear that Burbidge does not understand the role of a bishop. It is not his role to be as obedient as possible. It is to sanctify his people and as much as essential obedience allows. This is why bishops have broad powers to dispense from universal Church law, to make diocesan law, and even to replace elements of universal law with particular law. Within the limits of Catholic doctrine and of essential obedience, sanctifying his people requires taking them—rather than the pope—as the basic point of reference.
Other bishops have done their jobs and worked to sanctify their people by allowing the Tridentine Mass to continue as before. They understood that they are Successors of the Apostles, not regional managers. Bishop Burbidge has not even had the integrity to openly admit he freely chose to do more than strictly required, relying instead on platitudes about “faithfulness.”
Catholics in Arlington have overwhelmingly tried to be polite and deferential. But our bishop has chosen to act like a Quisling rather than like a Successor of the Apostles. So, within the bare minimum of absolutely strictly essential obedience, it is time to embrace the joyful defiance of Quisling’s eminent contemporary, who recognized that “without victory there is no survival” and declared We Shall Never Surrender.
James Baresel is a freelance writer. Publications for which he has written include Tudor Life, Catholic World Report, American History, Fine Art Connoisseur, Military History, Catholic Herald, Claremont Review of Books, Adoremus Bulletin, New Eastern Europe and America’s Civil War.
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Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on Later writers inverted St. Thomas’ principles. For them perfection does not consist primarily in choosing God as the supreme good but in obeying Him as the supreme authority. Perfecting obedience was then elevated above perfecting prayer. The natural but absurd conclusion is the belief that to pray less deeply but under perfect obedience pleases God more than to pray perfectly while being minimally obedient.
The China Syndrome: “Beyond parody even by Bergoglian standards, the Archbishop’s canonisation of the demonic ChiComs betrays the same signs of mental illness”
Chinese campaign donor Johnny Chung famously stated that the Clinton White House was “like a subway. You have to put in coins to open the gates.”
Personified nowadays by “Beijing Joe” and the Biden Crime Family, the venality, as noted earlier, is no longer the worst of it.
In detailing “the secret deals wealthy Americans have cut to help China build its military, technological, and economic might,” Schweizer reveals the ideological progression of the Rockefeller-effect: how nowadays very many of these elites also “quietly believe the Chinese dictatorial regime is superior to American democracy.”
Useful Roman idiots
And not only the secular elites. Today, even the reigning pontiff and his Vatican entourage are channelling David Rockefeller.
Apparently treated to the same choreographed tour as the trillionaire, Argentinian Archbishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, returned from a 2018 trip to Beijing to inform the world he had discovered “an extraordinary China” with an exceptional work ethic.
“You don’t have shantytowns, you don’t have drugs, young people do not take drugs. There is like a positive national consciousness, they want to show that they have changed, and now they accept private property.” The Chinese, he insisted, “look for the common good and subordinate other things to the general welfare.” “The Chinese,” he concluded, “are the ones implementing Catholic social teaching best.”
Inverting Catholic social doctrine throughout his interview with Vatican Insider [2/2/18], the diabolically disoriented prelate went on to praise Beijing’s “moral leadership,” insisting China defends “the dignity of the person” better than other countries.
Whereas western neo-liberal thought has “liquidated the concept of the common good,” he explained, “the Chinese, on the contrary, propose work and the common good,” displaying “a moral quality that you don’t find in many places.”
Organ donation “has increased enormously,” he enthused by way of example, studiously skipping the ‘donors’: political ‘dissidents’ who are frequently murdered and their transplantable organs harvested for Party sycophants.
Beyond parody even by Bergoglian standards, the Archbishop’s canonisation of the demonic ChiComs betrays the same signs of mental illness so often flagged by his papal superior. – Christian Order
The Catholic Monitor is greatly honored to post, with permission, the full 2022 February editorial “The China Syndrome” of the most influential Traditionalist Catholic journal in the United Kingdom, the Christian Order:
The China Syndrome
THE EDITOR
Polish friends have long reiterated how the Communists wear a population down not just through force, fear and propaganda but with minutiae. Endless arbitrary changes to rules and regulations that govern daily life simply tire people out. As fatigue sets in, hearts and minds become ever more lethargic, docile and pliable.
Though sobering and educational, this first-hand knowledge of oppression was too far removed from workaday Western life to really hit home. Seeing, however,is believing. The East European experience has become far more comprehensible now that our putative democracies have made this debilitating “strategy of tension” their own. While ruthlessly applying the same coercive methods at the service of vested interests high and low, they too have exhausted everyone with minutiae: ever-shifting policies and measures, most of them baseless and futile, which confuse, infuriate and further divide and demoralise the electorate.
The Communistic parallels are striking for the simple reason that China is the inspiration and template for the global sanitary dictatorship, and the interrelated “social credit system” by which the pseudo-elites wish to assume total technocratic control.
Psychopaths of the world unite!
A joint creation of the Chinese Communists and their Deep State comrades which should be designated ChiComDS-19, the Wuhan virus itself merely accelerated this cherished goal of the money powers, whose love affair with totalising regimes, left or right, never flags. The Rockefellers for one have always touted the need for global governance (under their direction, of course).
Typically, the late David Rockefeller once exalted China in the New York Times (“From a China Traveler,” 10 August 1973, p. 31).
After a 10-day Cook’s tour arranged for him with “remarkable thoughtfulness” by his “hosts,” Rockefeller returned home to variously laud every aspect of Chinese life, from “the sense of national harmony” and “loud patriotic music” to “a very real and pervasive dedication to Chairman Mao and Maoist principles.” He gushed that “Streets and homes are spotlessly clean, and medical care greatly improved. Crime, drug addiction, prostitution and venereal disease have been virtually eliminated. Doors are routinely left unlocked.”
It is a measure of the psychopathy of the Western elites he personifies that Rockefeller marvels at it all in full knowledge that the trip was “choreographed precisely by our hosts.” While conceding that “We saw what they wanted us to,” he dismisses the deception of his psychopathic brethren as easily as he waves away the fact that “The universities are rigorously politicised, with little room for inquiry unrelated to Chairman Mao’s thought,” and that “Freedom to travel or change jobs is restricted.”
Neither the choreographed illusion nor the brutal facts mattered one jot. Before the torture, enslavement and genocide for which his “hosts” are synonymous, all he could muster was a passing comment that “a stiff price has been paid in terms of cultural and intellectual constraint.” Apart from that unfortunate hiccup, he assured his equally self-deluded NYT readership that “Whatever the price of the Chinese Revolution, it has obviously succeeded not only in producing more efficient and dedicated administration, but also in fostering high morale and community of purpose.”
Rockefeller lives!
Nearly thirty years later, in a telling 15 January 2022 podcast, the pitiless spirit of Rockefeller was channelled by Chamath Palihapitiya, who declared that “nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs.”
A venture capitalist who counts minority ownership of an American basketball franchise among his affluent ‘toys,’ Palihapitiya is unmoved by the ethnic cleansing of the Uyghurs, a religious minority in Northwest China whose organs are also being harvested by the Chinese Communist Party. “Nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs. OK?” he snapped. “You bring it up because you care and I think it’s nice that you care. The rest of us don’t care.”
(A poster-boy for bleeding heart-liberal duplicity, ensuing outrage dictated that, suddenly, he did care after all. Coercive-compassion?)
Palihapitiya is hardly an outlier.
Consider the mindset of Peter Walker, a former senior partner of consulting firm McKinsey & Co., a group that works with Chinese state-owned companies. On 1 November 2019 he gushed:
“What I discovered in China was the people were happy, they were proud, they were energised. The government officials I met genuinely wanted to do the right thing by the people.”
Reminded by Fox News commentatorTucker Carlson that the Chinese response to Wuhan was to lock people in their homes and leave them to die, snatch people off the street and bundle them into police vans never to be seen again, etc., etc., Walker’s admiration only heightened:
“I think the harsh action that they took, given the scale of China and the number of big cities, was exactly what they needed to do in order to prevent the outbreak from going any further.”
Noting that Wuhan is roughly the size of the New York metro area, and that New York lost more people to the virus than the Chinese at least publicly admit to having lost, Carlson then asked if New York authorities would also deserve praise if they locked New Yorkers in their homes until they starved to death. Walker dodged the question, forcing no-nonsense Carlson to ask again until Walker finally proffered: “Those specific actions I think were overly harsh, were insensitive.” In other words, not unspeakable and homicidal but mere government overreach.
On his website, Mr Walker rationalised that “In the US, human rights are inalienable and absolute; human rights in China are relativist and weighed against other societal needs…. Including food, shelter, borders, stability, and safety.”
Sounding like a Rockefeller puppet in a Splitting Image sketch, he then offered as an example, “the treatment of the Uyghurs. China would point to dramatic improvements in the Uyghurs’ quality of life… in terms of literacy, prosperity and longevity as well as a sharp reduction in Islamic terrorist incidents to the benefit of all Chinese.”
Referencing those comments, Carlson pondered: “That’s what China got out of putting a million people in concentration camps. Do you think that was a fair trade off? It sounds like you do.”
Walker bristled:
“No, actually I don’t. I understand that from the government’s point of view, clamping down on Islamic terrorism was a high priority. And one of the things when you spend a lot of time in China as I have, is, they are fanatics about stability. Do I agree that locking down a million people in internment camps is a smart way to deal with Islamic terrorism? Absolutely not.”
“Well good,” acknowledged Carlson. “But may I ask: why would you note that their literacy had increased? I guess the obvious question is, who cares about your literacy if you’re in a concentration camp?”
Touché!
Walker quickly changed tack, underlining “the huge disconnect” between Chinese collectivism and US individualism, the US view of the sanctity of every life as opposed to China locking up a million people in a region of 80 million, which, he explained, they view as interning a mere 1% for the betterment of 99%.
He then extolled Confucian “values” that prioritise family and country over the individual, and said the Chinese always look at “getting the maximum number of people out of poverty, education, whatever it is.”
“Oh, I bet they do. I bet they do,” nodded marvellous Tucker, signally unimpressed.
“That’s a pretty handy way to excuse putting a million people in a concentration camp,” he pointed out before delivering this coup de grâce:
“Listening to you, it seems like a pure apology for fascist behaviour. Let me ask you the obvious question, because I don’t think anyone would do this for free. How much money have you made over the course of your career with McKinsey, in China? If you could just put a rough estimate out there, it might be helpful to understand this. Just ballpark.”
“Look, I probably spent a quarter of my time in China, over the course of a dozen years, something like that,” conceded Walker.
Carlson went on:
“I guess the point I’m making is, this country, in part at the urging of McKinsey, is so economically tied to China, that you’ve got to wonder if the values you describe, which are repulsive — I think most Westerners would agree with that; exterminating individuals for the sake of the group — I wonder if that’s in fact hurting our country. I mean, why would you want to be aligned to government that grotesque? Is that a fair question, do you think?”
Exposed and exasperated by Tucker’s integrity, Mr. Walker came clean.
“Well look,” he blurted out, “I’m a real pragmatist.”
The problem with pragmatism
You bet!
And there’s the rub.
The bottomless Chinese money-pit makes for professional pragmatists, even and especially Vatican ones, as China’s fake largesse turns amorality into a very lucrative business. A Chinese strategy of “soft power,” it compromises and corrupts everything it touches. Not least the World Health Organisation and those countries foolish enough to hook up with the Belt-and-Road express — China’s imperialistic infrastructure and investment juggernaut stretching from East Asia to Europe.
Italy for one suffered for its snatching at Chinese cash when ChiComDS-19 flew direct from Wuhan to its northern airports, courtesy of Xi Jinping and the 100,000 Chinese workers they invited (and Xi directed) to work there. This influx inevitably triggered a viral crisis among the elderly and generally unhealthy population of heavily polluted northern Italy, killing many. Then, as an added thank-you for being the only G7 member to jump aboard Belt-and-Road, Italy was rewarded with a “donation” of Chinese medical supplies, which magnanimity turned out to be a multi-million dollar sale. Worse still, what Italy received and paid for was its own equipment — genuinely donated to China at the height of its Wuhan crisis!
Before such cold-blooded opportunism, grabbing Chinese carrots is suicidal enough. The self-harm beggars belief. After all, how difficult can it be to comprehend the myriad long-term dangers of lucrative short-term gains offered by a death cult of Communist psychopaths who not only traffick in organs they plunder from the living (dwarfing in nature and scale even Planned Parenthood’s wickedness), but also preach and practice a strategy of total war, beyond any and all moral and ethical limits, into the bargain? Calculating the tragic denouement is not rocket science.
But it all goes far beyond the Big Sticks of economic dependency and Chinese colonisation by stealth. Ultimately, it effects the deeper moral malaise that cyclically rots and destroys nations and entire civilisation from within.
As with Western Deep State actors forever profiting from the misery and death of others, mendacity, cynicism and cruelty constitute the DNA of the Chinese Communist Party. Before the global mayhem triggered by Xi censoring information about the virus, spreading it abroad via international flights, ‘disappearing’ Wuhan truth-tellers etc. etc., journalist Daniel Flynn truly observed:
Communists, ever believers in ends justifying means, do that. They lie. They do that not in moments of human failing but always and everywhere as anideological commitment. And people who do business with them… end up compromising their values, too. … Morality is more contagious than any virus.
Indeed. And yet the amoral infection is already so deep and pervasive that even the ChiComDS-19 catastrophe is unlikely to wean Belt-and-Road junkies off their Chinese addiction. If Iran’s initial fury with its Chinese ally-cum-sugar daddy over the heavy viral toll on its elderly citizens was pure political theatre (one dictatorship posturing with another), the West has too many self-serving fingers in the lucrative pie to bother with high-sounding appeals to airy-fairy notions about a “common good.”
What is that? they ask; after the fashion of Pontius Pilate, the patron saint of pragmatists who stood face to face with the Source and Summit of that Good. And since the Supreme Good’s Vicar on earth now doubles as Communist-appeaser-in-chief, they can pose their rhetorical question with even greater cynicism.
Of course, Belt-and-Road is only part of it.
Effectively describing the elites of every continent, Congressman Michael Waltz recently lamented that American business and mainstream media leaders are “totally drunk on Chinese dollars and are willing to compromise our values,” pointing out that China has “deliberately cornered the market on our pharmaceuticals, computer chips, and rare earth minerals. They’ve done it deliberately,” he warned, “and they’re threatening already to choke off those supply chains if we don’t see the world the way they want to.”
All the while, he added, President Xi Jinping, “is openly talking about replacing the American dream with the China dream and being the new dominant world power. The sad irony of it always is that it is American companies that are funding it.” [Newsmax, 8/2/22]
Ideological turn
Congressman Waltz also took aim at the grotesque hypocrisy of American companies that “like to preach social justice” in the United States but turn “a blind eye to millions of people in concentration camps and the modern-day slavery that’s used to make their products.”
But whereas the human misery and corpses piled high were once obscured by dollar signs alone, from their Olympian vantage point of wealth, privilege and power the godless now see an atheistic creed to be admired and a methodology of ends justifying means to be emulated, as their venality and amorality coalesce into an ideological mindset.
Sadly, these Rockefeller clones now populate the globalist food chain from top to bottom. Less and less shy about proclaiming their alien outlook, it often bursts forth in declarations by the most unlikely apparatchiks. Barack Obama’s White House Communications Director, Anita Dunn, comes to mind.
Obama himself was mentored in his youth by card-carrying Communist Frank Marshall Davis, then cultivated by hard left socialist organisations before launching his political career in the living room of domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, a murderous Marxist (see “The Obama Transition,” CO, June/July 2009).
Little wonder, then, that even the lowly Dunn once boasted that one of her favourite political philosophers was Mao Tse-tung. Such breathtaking idiocy recalls the razor-sharp title of Daniel Flynn’s 2004 work, Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Stupid.
Dunn’s admission, Obama’s pedigree and Flynn’s book title also call to mind a local comrade of note: one Susan Michie.
A 40-year member of the British Communist Party whose first husband was a key adviser to former Labour leader and doctrinaire Marxist Jeremy Corbyn, Professor Michie doubles as a senior member and spokesman for SAGE; the scientific advisory group behind destructive Covid policies.
In a scathing letter of 22 August 2021, signed by more than 130 UK medical professionals and sent to the Prime Minister and other government officials, SAGE was among the government bodies specifically accused of causing “massive, permanent and unnecessary harm” to the country — economic and human devastation that confirms two hallmarks of Communism.
Firstly, that sacred socialist ends justify all means of advancing the revolution, as inhumane Covid measures surely have.
Second, that “collateral damage” to the hapless proletariat never impacts higher-ups like champagne socialist Michie; a wealthy descendant of aristocracy, who, a few years back, sold a family-owned Picasso to the Saudi Royals for £50 million.
The same treacherous Red Thread runs through the key institutions of most nations.
As researchers such as Diane West and Peter Schweizer have thoroughly documented, the entire Washington establishment is littered with ideological Marxists and self-serving fellow travellers. Schweizer, a regular best-selling author, says that his latest work, Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win (Jan. 2022), is the scariest investigation he has ever conducted in his 25-years as an investigative journalist.
Billed as exposing “the nexus of power between the Chinese government and the American elites who do its bidding,” the publicity blurb explains that after a year spent “scouring a massive trove of global corporate records and legal filings to expose the hidden transactions China’s enablers hoped would never see the light of day, Schweizer and his team of forensic investigators lay bare the bad actors at both ends of the political spectrum who are eager to help the Chinese dictatorship in its quest for global hegemony. Presidential families, Silicon Valley gurus, Wall Street high rollers, Ivy League universities, even professional athletes—all willing to sacrifice American strength and security on the altar of personal enrichment.”
The likes of Bill and Hilary started selling out for filthy lucre decades ago. Chinese campaign donor Johnny Chung famously stated that the Clinton White House was “like a subway. You have to put in coins to open the gates.”
Personified nowadays by “Beijing Joe” and the Biden Crime Family, the venality, as noted earlier, is no longer the worst of it.
In detailing “the secret deals wealthy Americans have cut to help China build its military, technological, and economic might,” Schweizer reveals the ideological progression of the Rockefeller-effect: how nowadays very many of these elites also “quietly believe the Chinese dictatorial regime is superior to American democracy.”
Useful Roman idiots
And not only the secular elites. Today, even the reigning pontiff and his Vatican entourage are channelling David Rockefeller.
Apparently treated to the same choreographed tour as the trillionaire, Argentinian Archbishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, returned from a 2018 trip to Beijing to inform the world he had discovered “an extraordinary China” with an exceptional work ethic.
“You don’t have shantytowns, you don’t have drugs, young people do not take drugs. There is like a positive national consciousness, they want to show that they have changed, and now they accept private property.” The Chinese, he insisted, “look for the common good and subordinate other things to the general welfare.” “The Chinese,” he concluded, “are the ones implementing Catholic social teaching best.”
Inverting Catholic social doctrine throughout his interview with Vatican Insider [2/2/18], the diabolically disoriented prelate went on to praise Beijing’s “moral leadership,” insisting China defends “the dignity of the person” better than other countries.
Whereas western neo-liberal thought has “liquidated the concept of the common good,” he explained, “the Chinese, on the contrary, propose work and the common good,” displaying “a moral quality that you don’t find in many places.”
Organ donation “has increased enormously,” he enthused by way of example, studiously skipping the ‘donors’: political ‘dissidents’ who are frequently murdered and their transplantable organs harvested for Party sycophants.
Beyond parody even by Bergoglian standards, the Archbishop’s canonisation of the demonic ChiComs betrays the same signs of mental illness so often flagged by his papal superior.
John Paul II’s biographer George Weigel for one is in no doubt.
Turning “a blind eye to repression and persecution in order to indulge” socialist “fantasies,” he wrote in reaction to Sorondo’s comments, “requires something approaching a psychotic detachment from reality.” Moreover, he added, they “inevitably implicate the pope he serves, and cast doubt not only on the prudence of the Vatican’s current attempts at a démarche with [China]…but on the integrity of the Holy See.”
The Dictator Pope is not for turning, however. China’s totalitarian temper suits his own. And so, thanks to his lead — at once immoral, cruel, and venal (through acquiescence in the persecution of Catholics involving reportedly massive Chinese kickbacks, to service Vatican debt and who knows what else) — the Church is paying the same stiff price as everyone else with a snout in China’s money trough.
Catholic anchor
It is difficult for the normal and decent to comprehend this bewildering admiration and promotion of totalitarian control and the disdain for human life it engenders. Its myriad manifestations on the flimsy pretext of Covid (—the sudden eager transition of police into brutal Brownshirts, to cite just one shocking example) has finally alerted many to dark agendas they had never imagined, never mind pondered. But they should also understand its less obvious trickle-down effect on Western electorates.
Certainly, disinterest in the recent Winter Olympics hosted by China was a sign of hope. Doubtless Francis, Sorondo and the entire curia were glued to their TV for the duration (— did they cadge a Sky Sports package from their buddy Xi, the “great moral leader”? I think we should be told.) Outside the Vatican City bubble, however, viewer-ratings tanked. After all, if serial murderer Ted Bundy hosted a barbeque, then how many neighbours might attend? Happily, very many did not care to watch a Winter Olympics hosted by homicidal ChiComs.
So, you still can’t fool all the people all of the time. Deo gratias. And yet… While Chamath Palihapitiya generalises he does not wildly exaggerate when he says “the rest of us don’t care” about Communist atrocities.
Polls regularly reveal the broad swathe of dumbed-down, brainwashed Western youth who favour socialist and communist governance, or at very least do not view it unfavourably. Corporate executives like Peter Walker and Palihapitiya speak not just on behalf of the amoral corporate world, it seems, but for pragmatic Western electorates long cut adrift from Christ and His Church.
Alas, as the useful-idiocy of Archbishop Sorondo and the ensuing article confirm, the masses are unlikely to be thrown a moral, doctrinal or liturgical anchor by a Vatican that has made common cause with China in particular and Marxism in general. Under this heretical, hyper-political pontiff, the proper relations of Church and State are being muddied as Catholic social teachings are inverted and trashed along with everything else.
We do well, therefore, to set forth the truth of the Church’s authority and role vis-à-vis the State as willed by God (all human efforts to spoil that sublime complementary balance notwithstanding). To that end, we commence in this edition a series which will enlighten and affirm the reader amid the current confusion and extreme polarisation within and without. Not least in providing Catholic context and meaning to shorthand socio-political terms like “patriotism,” “individualism” “nationalism” and the like, so often understood in a secular light.
Although comprising Catholic study papers delivered during a conference held in 1935, the topicality and relevance of their content is striking. Even more so in light of the rise of Nazi Germany at that time; a totalitarian menace mirrored today in the rising surveillance state of the Chinese Communist-Deep State Capitalist alliance, and its global web of unaccountable technocrats led by Klaus Schwab, the son of a Nazi-engineer no less. The shameless disregard with which the coercive gene-therapy experiment masquerading as mass ‘vaccination’ is shredding the Nuremberg Code and other protective post-war moral and ethical Agreements not only justifies the totalitarian parallel, its underscores the dogged intent.
Perfect diabolic storm
Don’t be fooled. The implacable quest for technocratic hegemony rolls on.
The most welcome relief provided by the current lifting of many Covid restrictions in some nations, including the UK, must be viewed in a realistic light: not as a victory but a lull — a respite that we hope will lead on to ever greater exposure and total expulsion of the underlying evil. For without that final and definitive resolution we will remain forever on tenterhooks, awaiting further lockdowns and next-level technocratic tyranny amid intermittent periods of calm; not unlike that experienced by the German people during the 1930s, as the storm clouds gathered.
Caution is especially necessary given the continued jabbing of zero-risk British children, and the deepening vax-controls still ruining lives and livelihoods across the Channel and elsewhere.
Even as we count our local blessings, the plight of the peoples of Italy, France, Austria, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and other sorely oppressed countries and American states should give us pause. For these citizens, Yuri Bezmenov’s blunt depiction of a Marxist takeover remains palpable. “If you’re not scared by now,” said the ex-KGB propagandist, describing the demoralisation phase of that process, “nothing can scare you.”
There are burgeoning signs that “humanity is withdrawing its consent from government tyrants all over the world,” as some reasonably claim. It is also true that when faced with a galvanised populace the elites often retreat with surprising speed. But, only to bide their time. They have far too much invested in a globally centralised transhuman future to change direction.
Like David Rockefeller, prominent central banker Paul Warburg was never shy of grandiose proclamations. He once declared on behalf of his brethren: “We will have a world government whether you like it or not. The only question is whether that government will be achieved by consent or conquest.” More precisely, to be a slave, or not to be a slave: that is his (purely rhetorical) question.
Having spent so much time, effort and money turning science-fiction into Frankenstein-fact, the one certainty in an uncertain world is that the Rockefellers, Warburgs, J.P. Morgans et.al, will intensify their efforts to bring their dystopian Prison Planet to fruition.
While we pray, hope and work always for deliverance from these megalomaniacs, sooner or later we must expect them to launch further false flags attacks of equal or even greater magnitude and inhumanity than ChiComDS-19 — viral, financial, environmental, cyber, military… whatever facilitates, or distracts from, their darks deeds.
In his 1973 paean to China, David Rockefeller gave advanced notice of this unyielding pursuit of total control. Looking back from our vantage point of the Covid coup, two of his warnings stand out.
Firstly, his statement of admiration that “Enormous social advances of China have benefited greatly from the singleness of ideology and purpose.“
And secondly, against all humanity and sanity, his declaration that “The social experiment in China under Chairman Mao’s leadership, is one of the most important and successful in human history.”
The chilling conclusion to his China travelogue, this maniacal assertion assumes even greater significance before the global expansion of said “social experiment” through a virus manufactured in his favourite nation in cahoots with his favourite industry; which nexus — between the Chinese political template and the eugenic movement equally beloved by the Family from Hell — constitutes the perfect diabolic storm. For, it was the Rockefellers who founded the pharmaceutical cartel over a century ago, imbuing the Big Pharma syndicate with the eugenic spirit now manifest in a coercive gene-therapy experiment being perpetrated on the entire human race.
The UN building in New York – built on Rockefeller land and fronted by this statue: a man wielding a hammer and holding a sickle-shaped sword, as if to underline the family’s public admiration for the total power and control afforded by Communism. The brutal figure is even more ominous now that China controls UN agencies like the WHO.
Infowars
None of this is to lose sight of the constant stream of good news, reported outside fearmongering mainstream outlets, which tells us everything is still to play for!
As Melissa MacKenzie conveys in her spirited summary of the American landscape, a time of electoral reckoning draws nigh for the Covid enablers in America as everywhere. Unfortunately for the Davos crew, even as their weaponised press continues to dismiss and demonise the popular mass resistance being mounted worldwide against crushing ‘vaccine’ mandates and passports, alternative media continues to counter the orchestrated blackout. Its reportage of the ‘dissident’ Canadian truckers and their brave stand throughout the country could not be more important.
The truckers have shown up the fear of the establishment, galvanising opposition to bought-and-paid-for PM Justin Trudeau (who sought to characterise them as swastika flag wavers, even as his state media labelled them Russian agents!). In the process, they have pressured the provincial governments of Saskatchewan, Alberta and Prince Edward Island, among others, into lifting their local mandates.
To cite just one of many other huge freedom protests: on 12 February Australians descended on Canberra en masse. Well over a million vehicles entered the city and surrounds in the week leading up, far exceeding normal traffic. If just a third of the vehicles carried 2-3 protestors, then the numbers dwarfed the entire population of the small city! The Federal Police Commissioner himself admitted it was the biggest protest he’d ever witnessed. And yet, as Reignite Democracy Australia noted in the aftermath: “The disgraceful Australian media performed its now familiar job of lying and distorting. Newspaper reports said that there were only 10-20,000 people there; one outlet even said only 4,000. A glance at the aerial shots indicates how dishonest that is.”
Truth is power!
The fate of the West hinges on this battle for objective, factual reportage.
It is a fearful state of affairs.
Yet if the times are scary, as Bezmenov forewarned, the spine-stiffening answer to the problem of intimidation and lies is always within our grasp: to insist upon the truth.
And since the Covid Stasi will only stop when we stop them, let each within their own sphere of influence, great or small, continue to expose this naked totalitarian coup, until the number of righteous truth-tellers becomes overwhelming. Praying always that, as in Catholic Poland, the Holy Spiritwill bless and guide this righteous resistance unto the collapse of the socialist New World Disorder long cherished and relentlessly pursued.
Pray, too, that the Dictator Pope and his rebellious Modernist cohorts will repent, or depart. For, afflicted with the China Syndrome and drawn to its warped utopian vision like prideful moths to a revolutionary flame, they imperil both Church and State; their thunderous “Non serviam!” echoing the cry of the Luciferian elites, who would dethrone God, and enslave us all.
Faith! Freedom!
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 Chinese campaign donor Johnny Chung famously stated that the Clinton White House was “like a subway. You have to put in coins to open the gates.”
Let’s meet the Nones and go together to the altar of God
Dr. Jean-Francois Orsini, OP, Ph.D.
In America and the Catholic Church, we are losing the Nones, the young and the confused who are unaffiliated. I think that things are even worse: these Nones seem to define the post-Christian world in which we live and that becomes very much like a post-post-Christian world. Because we are in a world that has lost an appreciation for the true, the beautiful and the good. This is really two steps back from Catholicism.
I happen to be in a very special and rare bubble: I am a specialist of management and I am also a traditional Catholic. There are very few of us. In most courses of management that are offered in Catholic colleges and universities they use textbooks that bow to the worst narratives of the psychological and sociological “sciences”.
But I am here to tell you that we can change the world of the Nones and our world at this precise level point of the courses of management.
Indeed, let’s take a look at history and how religion existed within the past economic cultures. The economies were principally based on agriculture. Up to 90% of the population were occupied in farming 1. What is the mindset of a farmer? He has to deal with many variables for the success of his labor, some he can work with and others he cannot. Among the variables he cannot deal with are of some of formidable imports: the climate, droughts, strong rains, insects, hail, etc. What can he do about these? Turn himself to God and pray. Religion showed them all the farmers stories from the Bible and told them that in all things they have to rely on God’s will. They could connect with that and religion flourished.
Coming back to the Nones. What are their principal modes of survivals? Well, it is their career and the professionalism they need to build their careers. How dire is their situation? Very dire! 64%2 of the population live paycheck to paycheck. They spend their income on invoices and taxes without building significant savings. Losing a single paycheck, for one month, is a serious problem. Especially when statistics say that in average, they may spend up to 6 months3 finding another job.
Now what does the Church do to help them with this problem? Answer very little. So, why is the Church not helping the executives, the white-collar workers and the myriad of small businesses that represent the great majority of the working population, young and not so young? Is it that there is a bias against them as they are viewed as the non-poor? Others than poor? And taking care of the poor is such a major requirement, we are told, for our plans of spiritual development? Is it that there is a feeling that counseling the non-poor would necessitate talking about money and that is felt to be an unclean matter? Is it that to deal with the better-off as the non-poor may be considered to be having to go into major economic and political matters which are not advised for the clergy to go into? To respond to that later consideration we just have St. Pope John Paul II who wrote in his encyclical “Laborem Exercens” (On Human Work): the key to socio-economic question is Work. I am paraphrasing: Capital is something completed on, that thing which a person works on. A sheet of music is capital, the professional singer following the sheet is doing work. When the song is recorded on a disk, it becomes capital and so forth.
Actually, the Catholic Church possesses very powerful tools to advise these non-poor but genuinely in need Nones. These tools are the virtues that have been held high by the Church but are really the fruit of human wisdom and human patrimony. They are the cardinal virtues which were first mentioned by Plato in the Phaedo before being mentioned by Isaiah, according to Joseph Pieper. He even mentions them as if they were old hat already in his time.
St. Antoninus of Florence who is one of these saints who are saintly at avery young age knew about them. He was quite cognizant of the realities of the world of commerce as the principle of double accounting was invented in his city. In his Summa he lays the principle of genuine business ethics. He wrote that it is simply about applying the virtues to commerce.
These virtues are what should really be appealing to the Nones, because the Cardinal virtues are very practical.
A Jesuit (sorry I did not retain the source) professor of management at Santa Clara University did a study with successful businessmen. He asked them what was the most important element that was necessary for their business success. In his questionnaire, he offered many possible responses, including marrying the boss’s daughter. They responded that what was the most important secret of their success was “good judgment”. Indeed, good judgment is the virtue of Prudence. Prudence is essentially being able to find, develop, imagine, the tools to attain a desired objective. It is the foundation of correct planning. Peter Drucker, perhaps the most prominent management consultant – and someone who taught Catholic catechism in Rome before becoming the chief consultant of General Motors – invented the concept of “management by objectives” … doesn’t it sounds like teleology? Shouldn’t our Moral Theologians be interested in getting involved now?
Here is another example of the practicality of the virtues in management. During a conference of Industrial psychologists, a speaker mentioned and deplored that his field did not have a concept of effort. Effort indeed is a chief interest to top and middle management who want to ensure that their charges are putting enough effort to complete their tasks well and on time. Now don’t you sense that “effort” is part of the virtue of Courage/Fortitude. This virtue is not limited to the soldier charging the enemy with his bayonet. It can be opened to many other lower risks as long as they aim at achieving a “bonum arduum” a good thing that is difficult to attain. Well, the difficult good to be attained can be found in the workplace. It can be a physical difficulty, but also, mental, financial, intellectual, career related, even ethical, etc.
I should add examples of the other cardinal virtues applied to management. Justice is ensuring to provide to each what is his due. Before exercising justice, one must look around to find anomalies between what is due and has not been provided to those we call “stakeholders”. This effort of examining one’s environment is important in management as it resembles the need for a constant search not only of inequities but also of threats and opportunities and should spur to action. Temperance in management goes beyond refraining from goods like food or sex for the purpose of higher goods. So, managers should not hold on exclusively on a preferred product, a method of working, a department, etc. at the expense of a better solution. There is an expression for a manager who fight for his department against another. It is called “empire building”. Let say: his marketing department wishes to spend great sums of money in advertising against the finance department that wants to limit these expenditures; those are typical fights that might jeopardize the financial health of the whole company.
Naturally a virtuous person has to possess all these virtues together. An other important lesson.
Why am I very excited to tell you all these things today? It is because of a certain experience. As I was in the University of Pennsylvania library consulting a collection of academic paper, a long time ago, for my doctoral thesis at the Wharton School, I found a paper that upset me at the highest level. The author was goading me with the statement that nowadays management consultants have the same role with top management of corporations as saints had with kings (like St. Thomas Aquinas with French King St. Louis IX).
Also, I wrote a book to promote the virtues in business called “Virtue Based Management”4. There are two copies selling in Amazon as I had to re-edit it after the fall of communism. Please look at the reviews on the old edition but the newer edition is fresher. I have had a dismal nonsuccess with this complete Catholic and Thomistic handbook of management. Similarly, to the instant realization that all the themes of management can be improved descriptively and normatively by a study of the virtues, which started me on the book, I recently had the flash realization that I had a solution for the saving the souls of the Nones. From the Cardinal virtues, the Nones may be led to the understanding and appreciation of the theological virtues and from there to the whole catechism.
We have to know our battlefield in this conquest of the Nones through virtuous management. There are very few books of Catholic management. On one hand, there is the typical anti-Catholic bias of publishers, in particular of management books. You can verify that there are many more advice to managers from a Buddhist angle than from the Catholic angle. This is part of the modern culture in which the principle of Karma is much better understood and utilized in the wider population than the principle of transubstantiation for example.
On the other hand, there is also the bias of Catholic publishers against a book that is not addressing spirituality from beginning to end. When I proposed to Father Joseph Fessio, SJ that Father John Hardon, SJ had communicated to me that my book was “highly publishable”, Father Fessio responded: “Find yourself a publisher”.
Therefore, I had to self-publish.
Another consideration: what about Opus Dei? It has officially placed its protection under St. Joseph the worker. I was involved for several months with Opus Dei who has a center two blocks away from my home. The good Opus Dei priest who did a very good work at operating a backhoe at my sins (their specialty) would place a wall between my spirituality and my work and considered the writing of my book: work. I have joined the Third Order Dominican instead. Being pre-Reformation, their spirituality and charisma does not put walls in doctrine as barriers to contain the heathen protestants.
In conclusion, to promote these efforts to reach to the Nones, we need an groundswell in the Church that will be perceived by these Nones. We need first a great involvement at the doctrinal level from moral theologians. Then a considerable effort at the pastoral level from the clergy and lay people to rally our dear Nones and hold them in our arms. But first we need to understand that these Nones do not necessarily have a materialistic heart and a love of money but are children of God trying to survive in this world’s economy.
If we do this, I would like to predict that we will also be able the rechristianize our culture.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on In America and the Catholic Church, we are losing the Nones, the young and the confused who are unaffiliated. I think that things are even worse: these Nones seem to define the post-Christian world in which we live and that becomes very much like a post-post-Christian world. Because we are in a world that has lost an appreciation for the true, the beautiful and the good. This is really two steps back from Catholicism.
The very first openly transgender officer in the Army was indicted this week on charges that they tried to give American service members medical information for the Russian Government.
The officer, Maj. Jamie Lee Henry was brought before a federal grand jury in Baltimore, MD. Maj. Henry and his wife, Anna Gabrielan who is a Johns Hopkins anesthesiologist, were faced with counts of conspiracy and wrongful disclosure of individually identifiable health information (IIHI), according to court documents.
Henry and Gabrielan were approached by an undercover FBI agent posing as a Russian diplomat. Gabrielan questioned the agent if she was from the Russian Embassy and the agent said she was.
Gabrielan gave the undercover agent medical information from Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Gabrielan told the FBI agent that she was “motivated by patriotism toward Russia to provide any assistance she could to Russia, even if it meant going to jail.”
“Gabrielan also told the UC during that meeting that Henry, a military officer, was currently a more important source for Russia than she was since Henry had more helpful information, including on how the U.S. military establishes an army hospital in war conditions and about previous training the U.S. military provided to Ukrainian military personnel,” the court documents said.
There was a second meeting with both Henry and Gabrielan meeting with the UC. Court documents describe this: “During that meeting, Henry explained to the UC he was committed to assisting Russia, and he had looked into volunteering to join the Russian Army after the conflict in Ukraine began, but Russia wanted people with ‘combat experience,’ and he did not have any. Henry further stated: ‘the way I am viewing what is going on in Ukraine now is that the United States is using Ukrainians as a proxy for their own hatred toward Russia.’”
According to The Baltimore Banner, Henry, a doctor at Fort Bragg, gave the undercover agent material on five patients at a military facility. The information reportedly included a retired Army officer, a current Department of Defense employee, and the spouses of deceased Army veterans.
Newsom’s Latest Sanctuary State Scam September 30, 2022 Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s latest sanctuary state scam: Illegal aliens who crash our borders can find sanctuary in California. Women who want to abort their child, but live in states with restrictive abortion laws, can come to California to have a doctor kill their baby. Now young boys and girls who are sexually confused, and who live in states where puberty blockers and chemical castration are considered child abuse, can go to California where they will be “treated.” The contempt that California Gov. Gavin Newsom has for America’s sovereignty is on a par with his contempt for state’s rights and parental rights. All this from a man who helped kill his own mother in 2002, at a time when assisted suicide was a felony in California! On September 29, Newsom signed a bill, sponsored by a homosexual activist and state senator, Scott Wiener, that legally shields parents and young people who come to California for sex-reassignment surgery from being penalized in their home state. The goal is to undercut the right of states to ban this form of child abuse. This policy comes on the heels of Newsom’s billboard campaign targeting states that have restrictive abortion laws. Thanks to Newsom, California is not only a sanctuary state for women seeking easy access to an abortionist, his state’s taxpayers are paying for billboards in seven states advertising how welcoming California is to mothers seeking to end their unborn child’s life. In Mississippi and Oklahoma, the billboards even quote the New Testament in support of the killings. Newsom’s predecessor, Jerry Brown, declared California a sanctuary state for illegal aliens in 2017. Newsom went beyond Brown in suing the Trump administration for building a wall to keep the illegals out. Last week he signed a law granting a state ID to illegal aliens. On August 30, California lawmakers heard the testimony of Chloe Cole, an 18-year-old girl who described what happened to her when she was 15. At the time she was considering transition surgery. “My parents were told that the options were transition or suicide. They complied because they were not offered any other treatment solution for my distress. My distraught parents wanted me alive, so they listened to my doctors. I was placed on puberty blockers and testosterone after expressing my gender dysphoria to my therapists, and I was approved for a double mastectomy all by the age of 15.” She then got pointed. “Who here really believes that as a 15-year-old, I should have had my healthy breasts removed or that should have been an option? SB 107 will open the floodgates for confused children like me to get the gender interventions that many so regret. I am the canary in the coal mine.” No professionals were there to counteract the advice she and her parents were given. “So I easily fell prey to the narrative that if I felt different and did not want to be a highly sexualized girl, I must be a boy. I obsessed over becoming a boy. I believed that all my insecurities and anxiety would magically disappear once I transitioned. The mental health professionals did not try to dissuade me of this delusional belief. I was fast-tracked into medical transition after I was diagnosed with dysphoria in California.” The day after this young woman told her story, the state senate voted 30-9 to make California a sanctuary state for transgender youth and their families. Every Democrat voted for it and every Republican voted against it. And now Gov. Newsom has made it official. Contact Newsom’s executive secretary, Jim DeBoo: Jim.DeBoo@gov.ca.gov
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Hi everyone.On the Wednesday, 21st September “From The Grapevine” post I included the following article from Lifesite News: The Final Confrontation: Examining the End Times through the Lens of Fatima and Benedict XVIhttps://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/the-final-confrontation-examining-the-end-times-through-the-lens-of-fatima-and-benedict-xvi/emphasising that”This is a fascinating read!!!” This article was brought to my notice by a friend, Chris, from New Zealand.I have now put this article under the microscope and done some highlighting and bullet pointing for emphasis. It is one of the most brilliant and gripping articles I have read on the current crisis in the Church under Jorge Mario Bergoglio. It is quite long, so I expect some of you may not have read it all yet. However this article builds to a compelling climax and conclusion. Please….please….please read it all…and read it slowly….. to the very end…maybe take a couple of coffee breaks as you go through it. It was originally published by famous Italian Catholic Journalist Marco Tossati on his Website – https://www.marcotosatti.com/2022/09/08/ratzinger-tyconius-and-fatima-an-interpretive-key-for-the-end-times/(STILUM CURIAE) But he is not the author!!! Here Tossati’s introduction to the article and the author (who remains anonymous) :Dear friends and foes of Stilum Curiae, a scholar has sent us this short essay which we gladly offer for your attention, convinced that it may be of great interest. Happy reading. +++++++++++++++++++++++++ https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/the-final-confrontation-examining-the-end-times-through-the-lens-of-fatima-and-benedict-xvi/ The final confrontation: Examining the end times through the lens of Fatima and Benedict XVI Relying on the eschatological worldview of fourth century theologian Tyconius, Pope Benedict XVI appears to indicate that the Third Secret of Fatima plays a crucial role in the end times. Book of revelation from the Bible or the apocalypse Fri Sep 9, 2022 – 3:10 pm EDT This article was originally published on Marco Tosatti’s blog, Stilum Curiae (LifeSiteNews) – It is no easy task to understand the present crisis of evil within the Church, which at times may seem overwhelming. Benedict XVI has indicated that the theology of Tyconius can assist the Church in understanding how to expose, and ultimately defeat, the evil of “false brethren” who lie hidden within her.Tyconius’ insights overlap in various ways with the message of Fatima. If we consider Benedict’s comments about Fatima in light of the Tyconian theology of the end times, we are offered a unique perspective on the nature of the Church and the antichurch during their final confrontation.‘The bishops do, under the guise of a gift of the church, what advances the will of the devil.’ – Tyconius, ‘Commentary on the Apocalypse,’ fouth century ‘[T]he Antichrist belongs to the Church, grows in it and with it until the great discessio (dispersal, separation, division), which initiates the final revelation.’
– Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Observations on Tyconius’ Concept of the Church,’ 1956
‘It is not possible for the Church to survive if it passively defers the solution of the conflict that tears apart the ‘two-part body’ to the end of time.’
– Giorgio Agamben, ‘The Mystery of Evil: Benedict XVI and the End Times,’ 2013
‘A great theologian’
During his general audience on Wednesday, April 22, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI made a remarkable reference to an obscure ancient Christian writer from North Africa, Tyconius. Even among erudite scholars and Church history buffs, the name of Tyconius is often unfamiliar. If a student ever comes across a reference to Tyconius when studying the Latin Fathers, it is usually in passing, with hardly a second glance.
By designating Tyconius that April day as “a great theologian” – a Donatist who lived an ascetical life of prayer in the desert and presumably died separated from the Catholic Church[i] – was Benedict hoping that at least some souls, seeking to understand the perplexing trials of the Church during these times, would wonder why?If no one took much notice immediately, was the Holy Father confident that his allusion to Tyconius would serve as a signpost to be detected and more fully comprehended in the future?
Addressing the crowd in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Benedict unobtrusively dropped clues about and cues toward Tyconius, seeming to mention him only incidentally while focusing his address on another relatively obscure Latin Church writer, Ambrose Autpert:
Autpert came into contact with the interpretation of the Apocalypse[ii] bequeathed to us by Tyconius[iii]… In his commentary he [Tyconius] sees the Apocalypse above all as a reflection of the mystery of the Church. Tyconius had reached the conviction that the Church was a bipartite body: on the one hand, he says, she belongs to Christ, but there is another part of the Church that belongs to the devil.[iv]
Within his catechesis, Benedict XVI imparted several salient indicators of his own understanding of the true nature of the eschatological drama that is currently unfolding within the Church.Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that anyone unfamiliar with Tyconius’ theological outlook on the book of the Apocalypse is ultimately incapable of understanding the seemingly inexplicable thought and conduct of Benedict XVI in response to the crisis of the Church in our time.
For Benedict, Tyconius’ conception of what will happen to the Church in the end times provides an important “missing link” for grasping the unprecedented moment in the economy of salvation at which the Holy Father believes the Church and the world have now arrived, as well as offering insight into his exceptionally enigmatic “resignation.”
As early as 1956, Joseph Ratzinger was intrigued by the 4th century African theologian when, as a young bourgeoning priest and professor, he crafted and published an essay entitled “Reflections on Tyconius’ Concept of the Church in the ‘Liber Regularum.’”[v]The essay explores what Ratzinger calls the “paradox” of Tyconius: “the fact that a man consciously and willingly places himself outside of any concrete ecclesiastical communion while still wanting to remain a Christian, and believes he belongs to the true Church.”[vi]Thus, by the time he made his remarks at the 2009 audience, Benedict XVI had invested well over half a century of reflection on Tyconius’ perception of the fate of the Church in the era of the Apocalypse (the “end times”).
One cannot help but surmise that Benedict’s ulterior motive in highlighting this “great theologian” was specifically to invite his listeners to enter Tyconius’ eschatological worldview, through an examination of Tyconius’ primary extant work, “Exposition of the Apocalypse.”[vii]‘Both black and beautiful’ – The false brothers within the Church Tyconius’ Exposition, written sometime around A.D. 390, was the first commentary of its kind on the final book of Sacred Scripture, a commentary that “shaped the Latin reception and interpretation of the Apocalypse for the next eight hundred years.”[viii]Tyconius postulates in the Exposition that “there are two cities in the world, one of God and one of the devil, one originating from the abyss, the other from heaven.”[ix] However, Tyconius did not regard the world as neatly or conspicuously segregated into those two obvious parts. Rather, he observes that there is an additional bifurcation: “the people of the devil also are divided into two parts, which fight against only one.Because of this, the church is called a ‘third part,’ and the false brothers another third, and the heathen world a third.”[x]Further evidence of this two-fold composition of the people of the devil is seen when Tyconius designates the city of the devil as Babylon. “Babylon…is evil,” Tyconius writes, “whether in the heathen or in false brothers.”[xi]For Tyconius, the city of the devil exists both outside the Church and inside the Church – not only among the pagans but also among impostor Christians.Referring to “false brothers,” Tyconius speaks in the biblical sense, following the example of both St. Paul[xii] and St. John.[xiii] Tyconius thus refers to a mysterious presence of evil within salvation history that is seen throughout Sacred Scripture and culminates in the bipartite structure of the Church: she consists of two distinct bodies that co-exist in the same visible institution even though they are diametrically opposed to one another. As David Robinson, the author of the introduction to the English translation of Tyconius’ Exposition, notes: “For Tyconius… there are a left and a right part in the body of the Lord. The church is both black and beautiful, good and evil, enemy and beloved.”[xiv] In his own words, Tyconius expresses this belief in a variety of ways: “in the one body there are two parts: one persevering, the other transgressing”;[xv]“the good are mixed with the evil in the church up to the end of time”;[xvi]“the church will not spew out every evil person, but [only] some, for the purpose of showing to the world what the last persecution will be like. But with one mind she tolerates the others. Although spiritually they are outside, nevertheless they seem to be active inside”;[xvii]“there are two buildings in the church, one [built] upon rock, another upon sand”;[xviii]“this is those who seem to be in the church but are [really] outside”;[xix] “the false brothers, who, having rejected Christ, confess him with their mouth but by their actions say: ‘We have no king except Caesar’”;[xx] and, “there is blasphemy not only in the kings of the world, by whom those inside [the Church] are condemned; but it is even in the very ones who are inside.”[xxi]Tyconius perceives this bipartite typology writ large from the beginning of the Bible to the end – in Cain and Abel; in the sons of Noah (Shem and Japeth are blessed while Ham is cursed); in Ishmael and Isaac; in Esau and Jacob; in the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel. The pattern is present within the Twelve Apostles, among whom there is a devil (Judas).[xxii]Jesus frequently alludes to it in his preaching: the weeds and the wheat; the net thrown into the sea that collects fish of every kind, the good and the bad; the ten virgins, five of whom were foolish and five wise; the sheep and the goats. In the book of the Apocalypse this theological construct is prevalent in the angelic pronouncements made to each of the seven churches, all of which point out the presence of an element within the Church that is unholy.[xxvii]The Church’s continual clash with the devil is the central theme of Tyconius’ commentary, yet he is particularly preoccupied with the war waged within the Church.Robinson again offers an insight that is striking when considered in the context of the present crisis of the Church: “[Tyconius’] primary concern is the historical and spiritual conflict between theLord’s body(the church) and thedevil’s body,which Tyconius frequently calls the enemy body.The term ‘anti-church’ is a fitting designation for the devil’s body because his body masquerades as the church. For example, Tyconius notes that both the Bride of Christ and the whore of Babylonare adorned with gold, silver, and precious stones. The devil’s body imitates the Lord’s Holy Body, so that one may be deceived by the similarity of splendor.”[xxviii]Tyconius identifies this enemy body that camouflages itself with the outward trappings of the Church using two biblical terms he deems interchangeable – the “mystery of iniquity” and the “abomination of desolation.”[xxx]According to Tyconius, this iniquitous, abominable, adverse entity will be fully revealed only at the time of what Tyconius calls the great discessio, the Latin word used by St. Jerome in his translation of 2 Thessalonians 2:3 for what St. Paul calls ἀποστασία in Greek: “Ne quis vos seducat ullo modo quoniam nisi venerit discessio primum et revelatus fuerit homo peccati filius perditionis – Let no man deceive you by any means: for unless the [discessio] comes first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.”Many English translations render this word as “apostasy” or “revolt.” The Latin term clearly has the sense of a “falling away” or “separation.”It is only at the time of the “falling away” that the bipartite condition of the world – two cities, one of God and one of the devil – will be wholly laid bare and displayed in what will actually be a “tripartite” division – the true Church, the false church, and the heathen world. Tyconius explains: “Before the ‘falling away’ happens, everyone is considered the people of God. When the ‘falling away’ will have happened, then the third part of the people of God will appear;”[xxxi]“for after the unity there is going to be another separation in the last contest.”[xxxii]For Tyconius, it is only when the “great discessio” occurs that the distinction between the true Church and the false church is finally made manifest.“Only in the discessio will God’s true people, the right part of the Lord’s body, be revealed.”[xxxiii]Commenting on Apocalypse 8:12, which reads:And the fourth angel sounded a trumpet, and a third part of the sun, and a third part of the moon, and a third part of the stars were stricken, so that a third part of them would be darkened and a third part of the day would appear as night,[xxxiv]Tyconius writes:The sun, moon, and stars are the church, whose third part was stricken.‘Third’ is a designation not a quantity. For there are two parts in the church, one of the day and the other of the night…Therefore, for this reason it was stricken, that it might become apparent which is the third part of the day and the third part of the night, which is Christ’s part and which is the devil’s part. He [the Apostle John] did not say, ‘it was stricken and it was darkened,’ but so that it would be darkened and would appear since it did not appear as [night at the moment it] was stricken. But it was stricken, that is, handed over to its own desires, for this [purpose]: that as their sins become more abundant and extreme, it would be revealed in due time.[xxxv]To sum up: Tyconius holds that there are two cities in the world, one of God and the other of the devil, and at times he speaks of both of these cities as being bipartite. Yet, Tyconius does not divide humanity into four parts. As noted above, he actually envisions humanity to be only tripartite. This is because he speaks of the “false brethren” (one of the three parts) as falling into both categories at different times. The false brethren appear to be a part of the city of God, which is the Church, but actually belong to the devil.They spiritually inhabit the city of Babylon, even though that is not outwardly recognizable.Not until the Church is “stricken”[xxxvi] as a result of the discessio – the great “falling away” or “apostasy” – will the “false brethren” be fully “unmasked” and “uncovered” (the original meaning of the Greek word apokalyptein).Only then will the true Church and the false church at long last become conspicuously distinguished.The true believers will appear to leave the Church Tyconius next asserts what is arguably the most arresting detail in his entire commentary. He declares that the discessio of the end times will take place in a way that completely inverts the conventional understanding of the term. Faithful Christians usually assume that the “falling away” – the “separation,” the “departure” – will be instigated by droves of people “leaving” the Church, a massive exodus of unbelievers. The definition of “apostasy” in the Catechism of the Catholic Church – “a total repudiation of the Christian faith” – plainly conveys such an idea. For Tyconius, however, the opposite is true. Tyconius understands that the great “falling away” of the end times will not be caused by unfaithful people leaving the Bride of Christ, but rather by the Bride of Christ pulling away from those within her who are unfaithful.In other words, for Tyconius, it is not the infidels who will “fall away” but rather the true believers, who will withdraw from the evil within the Church.A paradoxical reversal indeed.For Tyconius, it is the new Israel who must depart on her new exodus. The true Church herself will effect the great apostasy as a way of salvation[xxxvii] from her enemies. In a real sense, the true Church will force the apostasy into the light, for the body of the devil, present in the false brothers inhabiting the Church, is already, and always has been, apostate. That fact has merely been concealed. Expounding on Apocalypse 16:19, which begins, “And the great city was divided into three parts,” Tyconius states: “This great city is all people entirely, everyone who is under heaven, who will be divided into three parts when the church is divided, resulting in the heathen being one part; and the ‘abomination of desolation,’ another; and the church, which will have gone out from the midst of her, a third.”[xxxviii] And again, in commenting on Apocalypse 18:4, “And I heard another voice from heaven, saying: Go out from her, my people, so that you do not share in her sins and so that you are not stricken by her plagues,” Tyconius writes: “Here he [the Apostle John] shows more fully that Babylon consists of two separate parts, external and internal, out of which also holy people, having been clearly warned by God, will leave.”[xxxix] As Antonio Socci writes in his analysis of Tyconius’ theology: “The Latin word discessio means a separation or division, meaning a great cleavage or cutting in two. It also has the sense of withdrawal.”[xl] This withdrawal is patently what Tyconius infers from the revelations made by the angels of God to St. John the Apostle – that the cleavage will be the result of a withdrawal. The Mystical Bride of Christ will extract herself from the “the mystery of iniquity,” precisely in order to expose the evil veiled within her so that she may subsequently defeat it. “In the final persecution, the ‘mystery of iniquity,’ which had been held back and hidden within the church, will come out and be revealed.”[xli]That mystery of lawlessness will reach its zenith and be enfleshed in the figure of the Antichrist, as Tyconius explains: “[I]t is necessary that Antichrist be revealed in the whole world, and in the same way to be overcome everywhere by the church… But now he is hidden in the church.”[xlii]As a consequence of the true Church extricating herself from the anti-church, Tyconius maintains that the Body of Christ will, for all intents and purposes, activate and initiate her own passion. Tyconius writes: “Before the ‘falling away’ [2 Thess 2:3] happens, everyone is considered the people of God. When the ‘falling away’ will have happened, then the third part of the people of God will appear.”[xliii] Robinson comments: “The saints will endure and faithfully preach God’s Word, and the false brothers will be unmasked when they turn and persecute the church: ‘those in league with the devil, although saying that they are Christians, will fight against the church.’”[xliv]Robinson thus concludes: “[t]he persecution finally and completely reveals the identity of the saints and the false brothers.”[xlv]Satan’s chosen instrument: The bishopsAt this point, a natural question is: At the time of the predestined apostasy, will the faithful immediately recognize the false brethren for what they are and break off affiliation with them, or will genuine believers be persuaded to remain in association with the impostors, listening to them and following their lead?How will the false brethren deceive people into trusting their guidance?Tyconius is unequivocally emphatic about this point: these false brethren are often found among the Church’s leaders, the Bishops. In denouncing the hypocrisy of the bishops, Tyconius gives an account of the “second beast” introduced in Apocalypse 13:11: “And I saw another beast coming up out of the land. And he had two horns similar to those of a lamb, and he spoke as a snake.” Tyconius decries: A lamb carries on after a snake secretly inserts its venom [into it]. For if he spoke openly as a snake, he would not be similar to a lamb. Now he fashions himself into a lamb, through which [disguise] he attacks a secure lamb.He speaks for God, through which [disguise] he turns away from the way of truth those seeking God.Because of this the Lord said: ‘Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.’[xlvi]Tyconius concludes this passage with one of his most incisive observations:“The bishops do, under the guise of a gift of the church, what advances the will of the devil.”[xlvii] The bishops offer to the beast the veneer of a lamb, while he uses them as mouthpieces for his agenda. In another passage, St. John’s Apocalypse continues: “And I saw three unclean spirits [go forth] from the mouth of the dragon and from the mouth of the beast and from the mouth of the false prophet.[xlviii] Tyconius remarks: “For the dragon, that is, the devil; and the beast, the body of the devil; and the false prophets, that is, the bishops of the body of the devil, are one spirit.”[xlix] Furthermore, Tyconius declares, “the throne of the beast is his church,”[l] on account of the duplicitous bishops that will be under his sway.Those treacherous bishops will give shape and form to the devil’s body – the false church – even after the true Church has detached herself from it. The passion of the Church Once the apostasy has been enacted, however, the Bride of Christ (the true Church) will then be battling not only the false brothers but the heathen world as well, which will have joined forces with the false brothers in an openly united demonic front: “to the whole body of the devil it was permitted by God.”[li]Yet, there is no question in Tyconius’ mind of the final outcome for the Church: “the last persecution will purify her up to the seventh trumpet,” which will mark “the coming of the Lord.”[lii] That will be “the church of the future time when, with the wicked already separated from the midst, only the good will reign with Christ.”[liii] Thus, Tyconius is certain that “the church of the last time, whether in its bishops or in its people, is in no way able to perish.”[liv]Although she will be persecuted, like her Bridegroom, and even appear defeated, she cannot be permanently destroyed. She shares in the Bridegroom’s divine life. Furthermore, she will prevail over the Antichrist and ultimately rout the false church. Nevertheless, Tyconius had no illusions about the severity of that ultimate conflict. In what might be the most lucid and pristine section in his entire Exposition, when drawing the parallel between Christ and His Church, Tyconius emphasizes their interconnectedness: That which the head suffered once, now he suffers through his members, since he has clothed himself with his church: and the church is slain daily for Christ that it may live with him forever. No one should think that the apostles alone had died for Christ and that now martyrdom has ceased and that the persecutors are not in the church. For it is necessary that the Son of Man always goes “to Jerusalem…to suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and to be killed, and to rise again after three days.’[lv]Thus, in that culminating persecution, when the false brethren and the pagan world relentlessly attack the Church, the co-mingling of suffering between Jesus and His Mystical Body and Bride will reach its apex: “In her the Lord completes what he began. Therefore, in her he receives what he gave, and he is crowned in her whom he crowns. For there is nothing that he does or has without his body.”[lvi] Jesus gave His life for His Bride, the Church. In the end times, she will give herself for Him in a way she never has before. Just as Jesus glorified His Father through His self-offering, and His Father glorified Him with the glory that His Son had with Him before the world began,[lvii] so also the Church’s ultimate self-offering will be her crowning moment of giving herself completely for Christ,and He in turn will crown her.He and His Bride will then be perfectly one in their mutual gift of self. Tyconius, Fatima, and the great apostasy Seen in the light of Tyconian theology, Benedict XVI’s various comments about the significance of the message of Fatima take on a new significance. It becomes apparent that Benedict XVI understands the message of Fatima within the context of Tyconius’ assertion that the greatest evil for the Church in the end times is the evil hidden within her.During Benedict XVI’s pilgrimage to Fatima in May 2010, a reporter asked the Holy Father: Your Holiness, what meaning do the Fatima apparitions have for us today? In June 2000, when you presented the text of the third secret in the Vatican Press Office, a number of us and our former colleagues were present. You were asked if the message could be extended, beyond the attack on John Paul II, to other sufferings on the part of the Popes. Is it possible, to your mind, to include in that vision the sufferings of the Church today?[lviii]Considering that the Holy See had essentially closed the door on the Third Secret of Fatima, Benedict’s reply was nothing short of stupefying. It can now also be perceived as “Tyconian”: [B]eyond this great vision of the suffering of the Pope, which we can in the first place refer to Pope John Paul II, an indication is given of realities involving the future of the Church, which are gradually taking shape and becoming evident.So it is true that, in addition to the moment indicated in the vision, there is mention of, there is seen, the need for a passion of the Church, which naturally is reflected in the person of the Pope, yet the Pope stands for the Church and thus it is sufferings of the Church that are announced. The Lord told us that the Church would constantly be suffering, in different ways, until the end of the world… As for the new things which we can find in this message today, there is also the fact that attacks on the Pope and the Church come not only from without, but the sufferings of the Church come precisely from within the Church, from the sin existing within the Church. This too is something that we have always known, but today we are seeing it in a really terrifying way: that the greatest persecution of the Church comes not from her enemies without, but arises from sin within the Church.[lix] In stating that the vision of the suffering Pope “can” refer to John Paul II “in the first place,” Benedict implies that the vision refers to another Pope, or at least that it is not limited to John Paul II alone. Further, if what was shown to the children still involves “the future of the Church,” then the unfolding of the Third Secret is definitely not over and done with. Rather, the events that the Third Secret points to are “gradually taking shape and becoming evident.” Benedict’s most theologically-charged statement, however, was his comment about the vision designating a passion of the Church. According to Benedict’s assessment, the revelation to the three young children of Fatima was primarily about that passion – the coming sufferings of the Church, which are still to unfold and will be “reflected in the person of the Pope.”And, from where will the attacks that bring about this passion arise? He attested: “Precisely from within the Church.” In addition to these remarks from 2010, then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s comments in a 1984 interview with Jesus magazine are also full of import: Interviewer: “Cardinal Ratzinger, have you read what is called the Third Secret of Fatima: i.e., the one that Sister Lucia had sent to Pope John XXIII and which the latter did not wish to make known and consigned to the Vatican archives?” Ratzinger: “Yes, I have read it.” Interviewer: “Why has it not been revealed?”Ratzinger: “Because, according to the judgment of the Popes, it adds nothing (literally: ‘nothing different’) to what a Christian must know concerning what derives from Revelation: i.e., a radical call for conversion; the absolute importance of history; the dangers threatening the faith and the life of the Christian, and therefore of the world.And then the importance of the ‘novissimi’ (the last events at the end of time). If it is not made public – at least for the time being – it is in order to prevent religious prophecy from being mistaken for a quest for the sensational (literally: ‘for sensationalism’). But the things contained in this ‘Third Secret’ correspond to what has been announced in Scripture and has been said again and again in many other Marian apparitions, first of all that of Fatima in what is already known of what its message contains.”[lx]Analyzing Ratzinger’s comments, one author posits: [W]hen Cardinal Ratzinger spoke of the dangers to the Faith and the life of the Christian, he referred to other Marian apparitions, and he referred to Sacred Scripture – that what is in the Third Secret corresponds to Scripture. It [also] corresponds to what has been mentioned again and again in many other Marian apparitions. In referring to Scripture he specifies the eschatological texts of Scripture when he used that phrase in Italian, i novissimi [“the last things”]. Some have rather disingenuously tried to argue that when we speak of the “last things” we are talking about death, judgement, heaven and hell – the four last things. But that is not possibly what Cardinal Ratzinger was talking about; that is not possibly what Our Lady was talking about. If we want to learn about the four last things, we need only to consult the catechism; it is very clearly set forth there. Our Lady did not come down from heaven to impart a simple catechism lesson. When the Cardinal spoke of the last things, he was referring to what the prophet Daniel said would take place in the end. He was referring to the end times – the last things; or as we would say in Greek, eschata. The eschatological things, the eschatological texts of Scripture. This is the Third Secret[lxi]Evaluating other messages of the Blessed Virgin Mary from Church-approved apparition sites, one is inclined to agree with that author. In addition, two cardinals who had personally read the Third Secret offer further credence to that viewpoint. First, Cardinal Oddi, a personal friend of Pope John XXIII, who had discussed the secret with him, said in testimony to an Italian journalist in 1990: “It [the Third Secret] has nothing to do with Gorbachev. The Blessed Virgin was alerting us against apostasy in the Church.”[lxii] Second, Cardinal Ciappi, a personal papal theologian to Popes John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, and John Paul II, in a communication to a certain Professor Baumgartner in Salzburg, divulged: “In the Third Secret it is foretold, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top.”[lxiii]Alberto Cosmedo Amaral, Bishop of Fatima from 1972–1993, gave a nod in the same direction – that of apostasy – when he attested at a question-and-answer session at the Technical University of Vienna in 1984: The Secret of Fatima speaks neither of atomic bombs, nor nuclear warheads, nor Pershing missiles, nor SS-20’s. Its content concerns only our faith. To identify the Secret with catastrophic announcements or with a nuclear holocaust is to deform the meaning of the message. The loss of faith of a continent is worse than the annihilation of a nation; and it is true that faith is continually diminishing in Europe.[lxiv] As a final endorsement of this perspective, Father Gabriel Amorth, the former chief exorcist of Rome, who personally knew Padre Pio for twenty-six years, gave a nearly identical verification, which he attributed to the great capuchin saint and extraordinary mystic. Here is a segment of his exchange with Spanish author, José María Zavala, during a 2011 interview: ‘Forgive me for insisting on the Third Secret of Fatima: Did Padre Pio relate it, then, to the loss of faith within the Church?’ Fr. Gabriele furrows his brow and sticks out his chin. He seems very affected. ‘Indeed,’ he states, ‘One day Padre Pio said to me very sorrowfully: ‘You know, Gabriele? It is Satan who has been introduced into the bosom of the Church and within a very short time will come to rule a false Church.’’ ‘Oh my God! Some kind of Antichrist! When did he prophesy this to you?’ I [Zavala] ask. ‘It must have been about 1960, since I was already a priest then.’ ‘Was that why John XXIII had such a panic about publishing the Third Secret of Fatima, so that the people wouldn’t think that he was the anti-pope or whatever it was…?’ A slight but knowing smile curls the lips of Father Amorth. ‘Did Padre Pio say anything else to you about future catastrophes: earthquakes, floods, wars, epidemics, hunger… ? Did he allude to the same plagues prophesied in the Holy Scriptures?’ ‘Nothing of the sort mattered to him, however terrifying they proved to be, except for the great apostasy within the Church. This was the issue that really tormented him and for which he prayed and offered a great part of his suffering, crucified out of love.’ ‘The Third Secret of Fatima?’ ‘Exactly.’[lxv]Chronologically and theologically, what does the “great apostasy” have to do with “i novissimi” to which Ratzinger referred? It is their linchpin. St. Paul affirms in his Second Epistle to the Thessalonians that the great apostasy is the triggering event for the commencement of “the last things,” that which unlocks the door for the advent of the “son of perdition”/ “the lawless one”/ “the Antichrist.”[lxvi] Once set in motion, there is no turning back. The world and all of humanity will have entered a collision course with destiny. The resignation and ‘a bishop dressed in white’ So then, consider at least some of the elements that Pope Benedict XVI had before him. As cardinal, he had already attested that the Third Secret of Fatima pertains to “the last things,” and multiple reliable sources have confirmed that it relates specifically to the great apostasy.If Benedict accepts Tyconius’ rendering of how that apostasy commences and is operating from that vantage point, might that not shed light on his bizarre and controversial “resignation?”Could his decision to “step aside” in 2013 be the result of having deciphered the Third Secret from an entirely singular outlook, influenced by his study of Tyconius? Does he view the theology of Tyconius as inextricably intertwined with Mary’s message at Fatima? And, if so, has he realized that, as Pope, he has had to initiate the “withdrawal” of the true Church from the false so as to inaugurate the great apostasy and begin the exposure of the false brethren who have infiltrated the Church to the highest of levels? With those questions in mind, let us look anew at the portion of the Third Secret (transcribed by Sister Lucia herself) which pertains to the Pope: And we saw in an immense light that is God: ‘something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it’ a Bishop dressed in White – ‘we had the impression that it was the Holy Father.’ Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way.[lxvii] Reflecting on Sister Lucia’s vision, Antonio Socci proposes that the “bishop dressed in white” and the “Holy Father” may actually be two distinct persons. He provocatively asks: “Does… the ‘secret’ that has at its center two figures – the ‘bishop dressed in white’ and an old pope – speak to us about the present? Who are these two figures?”[lxviii]Further, Socci notes a truly stunning development: “On May 12, 2017, at Fatima, it was Pope Bergoglio himself who said thathe is ‘the bishop dressed in white.’”[lxix]The idea that the vision refers to two separate people is not implausible. Sister Lucia herself provides a two-fold clarification of the identity of the “bishop dressed in white.” She even put her descriptive observations in quotation marks to demarcate them. The original Portuguese document uses two sets of quotation marks (also used in the English translation above) immediately before speaking of the “bishop dressed in white” and immediately after. First, Sister Lucia says that she and her two young companions beheld the appearance of the “bishop” as “something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it.”She then said, “We had the impression that it was the Holy Father.”But later in the document she unequivocally speaks of “the Holy Father.” (TM: Therefore two different people) In support of the argument that the vision denotes two different people, it can be argued that the children of Fatima were unsure of who the bishop dressed in white was. Little children from a backwater town in Portugal would never have looked upon someone dressed in white and thought that he was a bishop. Catholic children in a small European village in the early twentieth century knew of only one church leader who dressed in white: the Pope. Furthermore, if they thought that the person dressed in white whom they saw was the Pope, wouldn’t Lucia have simply referred to him as such from the very beginning? It is inexplicable that she would describe him as “a bishop dressed in white,” unless, in fact, the children somehow were given to know, or intuited, that the individual that they saw was only a bishop who was wearing white. Later in the same testimony, when Lucia does indicate that she saw “the Holy Father,” she has no hesitation about whom she is beholding and the veracity of her assertion.If it was the same individual, wouldn’t Sister Lucia have continued to refer to him as the “bishop in white?” Sister Lucia was always extremely attentive to detail and careful to relay exactly what the Blessed Virgin revealed to her. It would have been quite simple for her to keep referring to the “bishop in white” if it was in fact one and the same person. But she did not do this. Her words make clear that there are two distinct persons: the “bishop dressed in white” and “the Holy Father.” Did Benedict XVI have the foresight to comprehend that his apparent successor would be the bishop dressed in white, long before Bergoglio was even “elected”?Did Benedict understand, well in advance, what Socci would one day speculate was the meaning of the Third Secret? Was he the first Pope to grasp that the Third Secret denotes a true pope and a false one – an apparent pope who is actually only a bishop dressed in white – which was what Sister Lucia was trying to say (and of course also the Blessed Virgin) from the start? Benedict knew the framework of Tyconius’ theology of the end times well. He knew that “after the unity there is going to be another separation in the last contest.”[lxx]He also knew that “holy people, having been clearly warned by God, will leave” the false church, causing the “great discessio.” Within such an understanding of “eschatological ecclesiology” – what must happen to the Church in the end times – the two figures described by Sister Lucia would have taken on a unique significance in the acutely theologically aware mind of Joseph Ratzinger. Benedict as Abraham It seems quite possible that at a certain point Pope Benedict XVI ascertained the overlap and intersection of the message of Fatima and the theology of Tyconius and, in doing so, realized his own staggering and monumental mission – that he was being called, like Abraham, to set forth in faith, “not knowing where he was to go.”[lxxi]To take the Church, as Abraham took Isaac, and prepare to offer her as a holocaust.[lxxii]So that “from one man, himself as good as dead”[lxxiii] numerous descendants would one day come forth because of Benedict’s faith.A step that could only be taken because of a direct and personal call from God. A step that would make no sense if considered in terms of human calculation or worldly prudence. But a step that would initiate a new exodus for the new Israel at the hour of her “final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his Death and Resurrection.”[lxxiv]No faithful Catholic would dare to take such a step of separation, of withdrawal from what appears to be the true Church, unless he was following the successor of Peter.There could be no definitive separation, no “great discessio” of the true Church from the false unless Peter himself were to step out in faith, led by the Holy Spirit.[lxxv]Likewise, if the false church were to be “perfected” in its iniquity, it would require its own false ruler, as foretold by Padre Pio,[lxxvi] at the moment of the great discessio: a false pope.One who appears to be a pope but in fact is only a bishop, drawn from the group of bishops who, in Tyconius’ words, “do, under the guise of a gift of the church, what advances the will of the devil.”[lxxvii]A counterfeit of the true Church, but only an illusion, something that is seen “as in a mirror” – permitted to have the power to deceive the entire world, and almost the entire Church, to expose and reveal the “mystery of iniquity” concealed within the Church that is now to be definitively destroyed by a deliverance that God Himself will provide.[lxxviii]Venerable Fulton Sheen described the coming anti-church with uncanny accuracy as early as 1948: [The Antichrist] will have one great secret which he will tell to no one: he will not believe in God. Because his religion will be brotherhood without the fatherhood of God, he will deceive even the elect. He will set up a counterchurch which will be the ape of the Church, because he, the Devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. It will be a mystical body of the Antichrist that will in all externals resemble the mystical body of Christ.[lxxix]Sheen’s prophetic statements resonate with the address given by Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II, in his address at the Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1976: We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has ever experienced. I do not think that the wide circle of the American Society, or the whole wide circle of the Christian Community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-church, between the Gospel and the anti-gospel, between Christ and the Antichrist. The confrontation lies within the plans of Divine Providence. It is, therefore, in God’s Plan, and it must be a trial which the Church must take up, and face courageously.[lxxx]Did Benedict XVI glean from the Third Secret, in accord with the teaching of Tyconius, that in God’s providential designs the climax of the confrontation between the true Church and the anti-church could only take place when the valid Successor of Peter permitted the arrival of the “bishop dressed in white”?That which was shown to the children of Fatima was exactly what Sister Lucia describes – a “mirror image” – one who appears to be the Holy Father but in fact is only a double? Was Sister Lucia additionally trying to communicate and highlight this “semblance of a pope” when she said: “[W]e had the impression that it was the Holy Father”? Did she intend to place the emphasis in that sentence on the word “impression”? – “[W]e had the impression that it was the Holy Father.” Was this because, when the “bishop dressed in white” would finally appear, the whole world would be under that same “impression”? While, in point of fact, the bishop dressed in white would only resemble the pope, the way an image seen in a mirror resembles reality – an imitation… an empty reproduction… a usurper. If so, did this awareness lead Benedict XVI to set out in faith, like Abraham, “not knowing where he was going,”[lxxxi] handing practical power over the visible structure of the church, to a “bishop dressed in white,” so as to initiate the “great discessio”? Reprinted with permission from A Marian Soul. FOOTNOTES [i] From the Encyclopedia Britannica: “Tyconius, one of the most important biblical theologians of 4th-century North African Latin Christianity. Although little is known of his life, his positions on the theology of the church (ecclesiology) ultimately provided his younger contemporary and the Church FatherSt. Augustine with crucial arguments against the Donatists (a schismatic church in North Africa). In addition, Tyconius’s antimillenarian interpretation of traditionally millenarian Scriptures, such as the book of Daniel in the Old Testament and Revelation in the New Testament, were appropriated by generations of Latin Christian biblical commentators and theologians, from Jerome in the late 4th century to Bede and Beatus of Liebana in the 8th century. The ecclesiasticalallegiances of his supporters, however, only demonstrate the irony and loneliness of Tyconius’s position: although he was a Donatist who incurred his own church’s censure, he never went over to the Catholics.” Paula Fredriksen, “Tyconius: Christian theologian,” Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tyconius[ii] The Book of Revelation. [iii] Tyconius – also spelled Ticonius or Tychonius. [iv]General Audience: Ambrose Autpert (22 April 2009); Cf. –https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20090422.html. [v]Beobachtungen zum Kirchenbegriff des Tyconius im Liber regularum, J. Ratzinger, Revue d’ Etudes Augustiniennes Et Patristiques 2 (1-2): 173-185 (1956). [vi] Id. [vii]Fathers of the Church: Volume 134 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2017). [viii] Id., Introduction by David C. Robinson, 4. [ix] Id., 166. [x] Id., 75. [xi] Id., 158. [xii] “[B]ut because of the false brothers secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy on our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, that they might enslave us – to them we did not submit even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might remain intact for you” (Gal 2:4-5). [xiii] “Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that the antichrist was coming, so now many antichrists have appeared. Thus we know this is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not really of our number; if they had been, they would have remained with us. Their desertion shows that none of them was of our number” (1 Jn 2:18-19). [xiv] Tyconius, “Exposition of the Apocalypse,” Fathers of the Church: Volume 134 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2017), 10. [xv] Id., 40. [xvi] Id., 39. [xvii] Id., 75. [xviii] Id., 117. [xix] Id., 109. [xx] Id., 123. [xxi] Id., 132. [xxii] Cf. Jn 6:70. [xxvii] To the church in Ephesus: “I know your works, your labor, and your endurance, and that you cannot tolerate the wicked…Yet I hold this against you: you have lost the love you had at first”; to the church in Smyrna: “I know your tribulation and poverty, but you are rich”; to Pergamum: “you hold fast to my name and have not denied your faith in me…Yet I have a few things against you. You have some people there who hold to the teaching of Balaam”; to Thyatira: “I know your works, your love, faith, service, and endurance…Yet I hold this against you, that you tolerate a Jezebel, who teaches and misleads my servants”; to Sardis: “I know your works, that you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead…However, you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their garments; they will walk with me dressed in white, because they are worthy”; to Philadelphia: “You have limited strength, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name”; to Laodicea: “I know your works; I know that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth…Those whom I love, I reprove and chastise. Be earnest, therefore, and repent” Apocalypse 2-3 (emphasis added). [xxviii] Introduction to “Exposition of the Apocalypse,” 14-15. [xxx] Cf Dn 9:27; 11:31; 12:11; and Mt 24:15. [xxxi] Tyconius, “Exposition of the Apocalypse,” 93. [xxxii] Id., 58. [xxxiii] Id., 93 (note 22). [xxxiv] Id., 94 (this is the English translation of the biblical text given within Tyconius’ Exposition). [xxxv] Id., 94. [xxxvi] Apocalypse 8:12. [xxxvii]Da virtutis meritum, da salutis exitum, da perenne gaudium (The Sequence of Pentecost). The salutis exitum or “exit of salvation” is a “way out” of the Church’s trials that will bring about God’s salvific plan. [xxxviii] Tyconius, “Exposition of the Apocalypse,” 157. [xxxix] Id., 167. [xl] “Antonio Socci: Pope Benedict’s Understanding of the End Times,” From Rome (14 February 2020) https://www.fromrome.info/2020/02/14/antonio-socci-pope-benedicts-understanding-of-the-end-times/; Antonio Socci, “Two Parts of the Church,” excerpted from Il Dio Mercato, La Chiesa e L’Anticristo (Rizzoli, 2019). [xli] Tyconius, “Exposition of the Apocalypse,” 20. [xlii] Id., 56. [xliii] Id., 93. [xliv] Id., 20 (Introduction). [xlv] Id. [xlvi] Id., 134. [xlvii] Id., 135. [xlviii] Apocalypse 16:13. [xlix] Tyconius, Exposition of the Apocalypse, 153. [l] Id. [li] Id., 135. [lii] Id., 107. [liii] Id., 184. [liv] Id., 74. [lv] Id., 68. [lvi] Id., 70. [lvii] Cf. Jn 17:1-5. [lviii]Interview of the Holy Father Benedict XVI with the Journalists during the Flight to Portugal (Papal Flight, 11 May 2010). Cf. – https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2010/may/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20100511_portogallo-interview.html. [lix] Id. [lx] Fatima Center, Cardinal Ratzinger (November 11, 1984),– https://fatima.org/about/the-third-secret/cardinal-ratzinger-november-11-1984/. [lxi] Fr. Paul Kramer, The Mystery of Iniquity (Liberty Lake: Unmasking Iniquity Association, 2012) 132. [lxii] Fr. Paul Kramer, ed., The Devil’s Final Battle (The Missionary Association, Terryville, Conn., 2002) 33. Cf. Fatima Center, Some Other Witnesses (1930’s-2003).[lxiii] See Father Gerard Mura, “The Third Secret of Fatima: Has It Been Completely Revealed?”, Catholic magazine, (published by the Transalpine Redemptorists, Orkney Isles, Scotland, Great Britain) March 2002. Cf. Fatima Center, Some Other Witnesses (1930’s-2003).[lxiv] Fatima Center, Bishop of Fatima (September 10, 1984); Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, The Whole Truth About Fatima, Volume III: The Third Secret, (Immaculate Heart Publications, Buffalo, New York, 1990) pp. 675-676. [lxv] “Amidst Conflicting Fatima “Secrets,” a Clear Message Shines Forth,” https://onepeterfive.com/amidst-conflicting-fatima-secrets-a-clear-message-shines/ (21 April 2021); Original source: José María Zavala, El Secreto Mejor Guardado de Fátima (Planeta Publishing, 2017). [lxvi] 2 Thess 2. [lxvii]https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_ doc_20000626_message-fatima_en.html[lxviii]The Secret of Benedict XVI (Brooklyn: Angelico Press, 2019), 141. [lxix] Id. See also the Missal of the Apostolic Visit to Portugal, May 12, 2017: “as bishop dressed in white [como bispo vestido de branco], I remember all those who, robed in baptismal white, want to live in God and pray the mysteries of Christ to attain peace.” [lxx] Tyconius, “Exposition of the Apocalypse,” 58. [lxxi] Heb 11:8. [lxxii] Gen 22. [lxxiii] Heb 11:12. [lxxiv]Catechism of the Catholic Church para. 677. [lxxv] Cf. Mt 14:29 (“Peter got out of the boat and began to walk on the water toward Jesus.”). [lxxvi] Fr. Gabriele Amorth met Padre Pio about the year 1960 and spoke with him about the Third Secret of Fatima. In 2011, Amorth related during an interview that when they met Padre Pio said to him: “Satan has been introduced into the bosom of the Church (the physical structures) and he will within a very short time come to rule a false church.” [lxxvii] Tyconius, “Exposition of the Apocalypse,” 135. [lxxviii] Cf. Gen 22:8. [lxxix] Fulton J. Sheen, Communism and the Conscience of the West (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merril Company, 1948), p. 25. [lxxx] Paul Kengor, “John Paul II’s Warning on the ‘Final Confrontation’ With the ‘Anti-Church,’” National Catholic Register, October 5, 2018; emphasis added.
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Pro-life man’s life changed with one single interaction with radical pro-abortion activist
Mark Houck was just a normal Catholic man and a father of seven who cared a lot about protecting life.
He spent his spare time volunteering outside of Philadelphia abortion facilities and offering counseling and prayer to young women on their way in.
Houck wasn’t a violent man and had worked in this environment in this way for many years.
Then one day in 2021, a pro-abortion “escort” approached his son and began verbally harassing him.
Houck claims the man got in his son’s face – his son was only 12 at the time.
This prompted him to jump to his son’s defense, pushing the man away.
The man fell over.
According to reports, the incident was so minor that a District Court in Philadelphia dismissed the complaint by the radical pro-abortion activist.
Mark Houck tried to cooperate with FBI agents months ago in response to incident outside Philadelphia abortion facility
The federal government has been looking to reopen the case for several months now.
According to Houck’s attorney at the Thomas More Society, the DOJ began looking to open charges under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE).
Houck’s attorney suggested that he appear voluntarily and the FBI refused to speak with him.
Now his case is becoming a national talking point after more than 20 heavily armed federal agents stormed his home at daybreak on September 23.
They arrested him in front of his wife and seven young children – leaving them terrified.
Senator Josh Hawley tells Attorney General Garland that he has “a lot to answer for”
The case caught the attention of Missouri Senator Josh Hawley (R) and he jumped to defend Houck.
In a letter, he told Attorney General Merrick Garland that he has “a lot to answer for.”
He stated the basis of the warrant was on weak grounds and this was a “single” case of a man trying to “defend his child” near an abortion facility.
He further argued that the simple situation had already been resolved when a local court threw it out.
Instead, it turned into “20 to 25 agents” that “allegedly arrested Houck at gunpoint . . . in front of his seven children . . . Houck’s wife said . . . ‘the kids were all just screaming.’”
Hawley then focused on the clear hypocrisy being exercised by the DOJ.
Hawley calls for Garland to testify before Congress over “apparent political weaponization” of the FACE Act
“The reports are especially shocking given that your office has so far turned a blind eye to the epidemic of violence across the country by pro-abortion extremists against pregnancy resource centers, houses of worship, and pro-life Americans,” Hawley argued.
He then reminded Garland that those very pregnancy centers are protected “by the same law under which you are charging Mark Houck.”
Accusing Garland of targeting people based on ideology, he called on him to testify under oath about Garland’s “selective use and apparent political weaponization of the FACE Act.”
The FBI has commented minimally, only stating he was “taken into custody without incident.”
An aggressive, overwhelming show of force against a man who was trying to cooperate with the FBI.
The unwillingness to prosecute perpetrators of extreme violence against over 100 pregnancy centers this summer.
It’s hard to see how the FBI’s actions are anything but political these days.
The FBI swatting and arrest of a Catholic pro-life leader sent a clear message to the pro-life community: the government wants us to be silent. How will we respond?
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ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP 
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