Illegal Immigrant Suspected in Killing Colorado Deputy
Tragically a sheriff’s deputy was killed in a hit-and-run, and authorities arrested an illegal alien believed to be responsible.
Colorado office deputy for Weld County, 24-year-old Alexis Hein-Nutz, was pronounced dead after someone hit her with a vehicle when she was on her way to work.
“Alexis was hired in November 2018 and assigned to the Weld County Jail where she served as a detentions deputy,” Weld County Sheriff Steve Reams said in a statement on Facebook.
“She joined our ranks at the age of 21. Alexis was born in Bismarck, N.D. It was a childhood dream to someday serve others as a peace officer,” he continued.
The sheriff’s office, Colorado State Patrol and Fort Collins police arrested Octavio Gonzalez-Garcia the next day. He is in the United States illegally and is in his late 30s.
An investigation is underway by the Colorado State Patrol, and the victim’s own Weld County Sheriff’s Office is helping to try and bring justice to all involved.
The deputy was on a motorcycle heading to work when she was hit by a Ford van driven by Gonzalez-Garcia, who fled the scene. The illegal immigrant left a stop sign and collided with Hein-Nutz with her motorcycle, which then caught on fire.
“We do believe the driver of the van was under the influence at the time; there is evidence to support that,” Colorado State Patrol’s Joshua Lewis said.
After collecting evidence that connected Gonzalez-Garcia to the scene, they discovered he had a fake Green Card and a falsified social security card in his vehicle.
The sheriff’s office wants to raise money for the victim’s family.
“Alexis was a hard worker, a caring deputy and a positive force for our agency,” Reams said. “I share in my deputies’ grief and in their anger over her senseless and tragic passing. But we are a family, and we will get through this painful event together.”
Under President Joe Biden, millions of illegal immigrants have come across the U.S.-Mexico border, leaving chaos in their midst.
Drugs and crime have poured through the border, leaving Americans to pick up the pieces.
Unfortunately, the deputy is far from the only one to lose their life due to open border policies and, sadly, won’t be the last.
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On September 19, 2022, Church Life Journal published an article co-authored by John Cavadini, Mary Healy, and Thomas Weinandy—the first in a projected five-part series, “The Renewal of the Liturgy: Successes, Failures, and Contemporary Concerns.” In order to bring to the public a more realistic account of the issues at stake, OnePeterFive is pleased to share with readers the following slightly modified excerpt from chapter 2 of Dr. Kwasniewski’s book Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright. This portion of the book has not been published online before.—TSF
Century after century, Holy Mother Church employed all her care in worshiping the Lord—from hidden gatherings of persecuted Christians to the grand basilicas of Constantine, within the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages and the ornate edifices of the Counter-Reformation, through the upheavals of modern Revolutions down to the eve of the Second Vatican Council. Always and everywhere, the holy mysteries were performed, venerated, and received in a continuum of Catholic faith accompanied by growing theological insight and spiritual devotion that matured into well-established rituals perfectly suited to their content and purpose.
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The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council celebrated the Tridentine Mass in all four sessions.[1] They did not vote to retire or abolish this form of Mass, or even to alter its most striking features: Latin as the primary language, Gregorian chant as the primary music, ample silence, the east as a common direction for all worshipers, overlapping hierarchical activity entrusted to male ministers, the temporal cycle in the calendar, Communion received kneeling and on the tongue, and so forth.
Noble patriarchs, wayward grandchildren
How, then, did we end up getting, in the late 1960s, a new Mass so different from the Mass prayed by the Church for so many centuries? The answer to that question is closely bound up with the influential “Liturgical Movement” of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This movement to rediscover the central place of the Church’s public worship in the Christian life can be described in terms of three distinct phases, although the boundaries from one to the next were somewhat fluid.
The first phase, exemplified by the pioneering figure Dom Prosper Guéranger (1805–1875) and his great work The Liturgical Year,[2] aimed at a better understanding and celebration of the inherited Roman liturgy through popular explanations and clerical-religious education. The leading idea was to take the treasures we already had and get to know and love them intimately. Guéranger often cited ancient sources to flesh out his commentaries, but without implying that the Church had erred in the medieval and post-medieval development of her liturgy, or that she should revert to these primitive models. This phase coincided with a blossoming of renewed monastic life.
The second phase—of which Dom Lambert Beauduin (1873–1960), Ildefonso Cardinal Schuster (1880–1954), Fr. Pius Parsch (1884–1954), and Fr. Romano Guardini (1885–1968) may be taken as representatives—was characterized by outstanding progress in historical, archaeological, linguistic, and theological research. It retained a profound respect for the wealth of tradition but sometimes spoke of medieval and Baroque “deviations” and showed a decided preference for what was (or, at times, was imagined by scholars to be) the most ancient—and therefore, presumably, most “authentic”—practice. This led certain individuals to dabble in experiments that conflicted with ecclesiastical legislation, e.g., celebrating Mass facing the people out of a conviction that this was how the Eucharist was originally celebrated by Christians.[3] The dangerous tendencies of this phase were called out by Pope Pius XII in his 1947 encyclical letter Mediator Dei.
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Despite the encyclical that was meant to put the brakes on, the Liturgical Movement entered a more radical third phase in the fifties and sixties, as more of its members indulged in pastoral experiments and crafted paraliturgies intended to “reach people where they’re at” and “get them involved.” Heavy liturgical reform of the general calendar, the rubrics, and the rites of Holy Week prior to the Second Vatican Council already announced that the attitude of respect for longstanding practice had lost its self-evident force. This third phase combined selective antiquarianism with a utilitarianism that sought above all “the people’s benefit,” understood in activist terms.
All three phases of the Liturgical Movement, be it noted, emphasized lay involvement. The first phase saw it primarily in terms of acquiring education: being initiated into a great tradition that one could explore for a lifetime yet never exhaust, and participating in the liturgy through prayerful engagement with the rites. The second phase strongly promoted the use of hand missals, devotional aids for living the Church year, and popular singing of plainchant. The third phase took an ideological turn, as prominent liturgists embraced the conviction that liturgy ought to be clear, comprehensible, accessible, verbal, linear, and group-oriented: modernized for Modern Man.
Paul VI lent his full papal support to the ideals and plans of this radical phase of the Liturgical Movement. When the ink was barely dry on the Council’s first approved document, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963), the pope set up a body called the Consilium. The pope and the Consilium took Vatican II’s call for moderate reform as carte blanche for an unprecedented wholesale reconstruction of the Roman rite in every area—Mass, lectionary, calendar, Divine Office, sacraments, sacramentals, pontifical and papal ceremonies, and so forth. The controversial Vincentian priest and later archbishop Annibale Bugnini (1912–1982), who worked on a succession of schemes of liturgical reform at the Vatican from 1948 to 1975, could be described as the general contractor of this massive project of demolition and reconstruction.[4]
While we can admit that the reformers were responding to certain problems of their time, we see looking back from our present vantage that they were often mistaken in their theories, naïve in their assumptions, and callous in their pastoral approach. The qualities of easy rational accessibility, immediate verbal comprehension, and community-centeredness are surely desirable in some social situations, but there is ample reason to question whether they suit well the religious ceremonies by which man comes before the God who wrapped Himself on Mount Sinai with voices, flames, the sound of the trumpet, and a dark cloud, wrought wind, rent rocks, shook stone, and whispered words, who names Himself “I AM” and “dwells in light inaccessible”;[5] the worship that leads to communion with the God-Man Christ Who baffled His own mother and foster father, who unwithered a man’s hand and withered a fig tree, Who blessed little children, raised the dead, drove out merchants with a whip, and sweated blood;[6] the operation of the Spirit who moved upon the face of the waters, descended as a dove from opened heavens, and entered as a violent rushing wind, to rest on the apostles as tongues of fire.[7]
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Indeed, prominent voices in favor of liturgical reform, such as Fr. Louis Bouyer (1913–2004), subsequently expressed their regrets and dismay at much of what was done to and with the liturgy.[8] A close associate and disciple of Pius Parsch, Fr. Petrus Tschinkel of Klosterneuburg, admitted in an interview:
Now I can tell you that Pius Parsch would not at all have agreed with the changes of the post-conciliar era. That’s not what he wanted. Yes—(the liturgy) in the mother tongue. That is all, however. But also, the Mass as mystery, as a reality hic et nunc, here and now…. After the Second Vatican Council these liturgical forms are nothing but idling: only text after text. Not a trace of internal disposition nor of mystery.[9]
Fr. Tschinkel relates that Guardini, when he received the texts of the new liturgy, looked at them for a long time and then said: “Plumbers’ work!” (Klempnerarbeit).[10] Joseph Ratzinger renders a similarly negative judgment, though in more elegiac language:
The Liturgical Movement had in fact been attempting to… teach us to understand the Liturgy as a living network of Tradition that had taken concrete form, that cannot be torn apart into little pieces but has to be seen and experienced as a living whole. Anyone who, like me, was moved by this perception at the time of the Liturgical Movement on the eve of the Second Vatican Council can only stand, deeply sorrowing, before the ruins of the very things they were concerned for.[11]
In any case, we can say that history has moved on and the Church is now in a much different place than it was fifty years ago. If anything, the passage of decades has shown how urgently our traditional Roman liturgy responds to essential and universal human needs as well as needs peculiar to the postmodern era. Although a stubborn Old Guard of Bugninians remains ensconced in many a university chair and chancery office,[12] the energy is with the Ratzingerians, whose banner is Summorum Pontificum and whose motto is “what earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too.” As Dom Alcuin Reid observes:
the reality in the life of the Church at the beginning of the twenty-first century [is] that the usus antiquior is a living liturgical rite in which people—indeed significant and growing numbers of young people—participate fully, actually, consciously and fruitfully in a manner that would have brought great satisfaction to the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council and to the pioneers of the twentieth-century liturgical movement which preceded it.[13]
When Joseph Ratzinger called for a “new liturgical movement,”[14] he seems to have had in mind a new beginning, a movement characterized by the features of the first and healthiest phase, in which filial piety, grateful receptivity, and warm devotion are directed toward a rich heritage developed over twenty centuries of continuous worship—a tradition that should never have been rejected, and, happily, was never entirely forgotten or lost.[15]
[1] The public meetings of the Council began with solemn liturgies, most often in the venerable Roman rite but also on occasion in various Eastern and non-Roman Western rites as well.
[2] Different publishers have kept this masterpiece in print over the years. The most recent edition: Dom Prosper Guéranger, OSB, The Liturgical Year, trans. by Dom Laurence Shepherd, OSB (Fitzwilliam, NH: Loreto Publications, 2017), 15 vols. Some sections may be found online.
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[3] We now know that this is not true and that the history is more complicated. For a good overview, see Fiedrowicz, Traditional Mass, ch. 7, “Direction of Prayer,” 141–52.
[4] For an excellent biography that also handily summarizes the liturgical fermentation and change from 1945–1975, see Yves Chiron, Annibale Bugnini: Reformer of the Liturgy, trans. John Pepino (Brooklyn, NY: Angelico Press, 2018). There was a short period during the Second Vatican Council when Bugnini was not working for the Vatican in an official capacity. He nevertheless remained in Rome, in close contact with all the major players, until he was reappointed as secretary of the Consilium.
[8] See The Memoirs of Louis Bouyer: From Youth and Conversion to Vatican II, the Liturgical Reform, and After, trans. John Pepino (Kettering, OH: Angelico Press, 2015), 218–25.
[9] See Wolfram Schrems, “The Council’s Constitution on the Liturgy: Reform or revolution?,” Rorate Caeli, May 3, 2018.
[10] Ibid. The German colloquialism means work done in a hasty, slipshod way, with inadequate care, and botched results. The reference to a hack plumber doing a mechanical job carries the implication that the reform of the liturgy was approached like the fixing, cutting, adapting, or welding of pieces of metal pipe, rather than as a subtle work of skill on a delicate living reality that would require holiness, discretion, and learning. Klempnerarbeit might also convey in this case a lack of aesthetic value in the misnamed “reforms.”
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[11] Preface to Alcuin Reid, The Organic Development of the Liturgy: The Principles of Liturgical Reform and Their Relation to the Twentieth-Century Liturgical MovementPrior to the Second Vatican Council, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), 11.
[12] Notable figures who staunchly support the liturgical reform of Paul VI include Bugnini’s quondam secretary Archbishop Piero Marini (b. 1942), Msgr. Kevin Irwin (b. 1946), Fr. John Baldovin, SJ (b. 1947), Andrea Grillo (b. 1961), Fr. Anthony Ruff, OSB (b. 1963), and Massimo Faggioli (b. 1970).
[13] “The older form of the Roman rite is alive and well,” The Catholic World Report, April 3, 2020.
[15] See Fr. Thomas M. Kocik, Singing His Song: A Short Introduction to the Liturgical Movement, rev. and expanded ed. (Hong Kong: Chorabooks, 2019); cf. “The New Liturgical Movement: Urgent Care for a Sick Church,” in Kwasniewski, Noble Beauty, 89–112.
Wow! Even Francis Apologist Catholic Herald isn’t making up excuses for their Beloved Francis’s “Abandoning Zen” to the Altar of his Beloved “Democratic” Communist Totalitarian China
Even the Francis apologist Catholic Herald isn’t making up excuses for their beloved Francis’s “abandoning Zen” to the altar of his beloved “democratic” Communist China:
Returning from Kazakhstan, Pope Francis – who made very accommodating comments about China and argued “there is a dialogue commission that is going well”, and Parolin “is the person right now who knows the most about China and dialogue with the Chinese” – only briefly touched on Zen.
Having said he does “not identify with” designating China as undemocratic, the Pope said of Zen “he says what he feels, and you can see that there are limitations”. Despite this, other clerics have spoken up for Zen and somewhat shamed the Pontiff.
As UCA News reported, German Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller expressed dismay over the Vatican’s silence on China’s abuses and Zen’s imminent “unfair” trial. Müller – a former prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith – made the remarks in an interview with Il Messengero.
During a recent consistory, the German prelate said no senior Vatican official or even the Pope mentioned Zen, with “no solidarity document, no prayer initiative for him”. Müller believes the CCP deal undermines the possibility of support for Zen, warning the deal “does not serve the interests of the Holy See and the Vatican State to the ecclesial dimension and the truth”.
Cardinal Müller said the Church should be less bound to worldly logic of power, more able to intervene and, if necessary, criticise politicians who undermine human rights: “why not criticise Beijing”, he blasted, warning that – when needed – the Church should “criticise the powerful of this world”.
With a 48-hour breather, at least, the Pope now has the chance to make amends. With even the Wall Street Journal accusing him of abandoning Zen, and offering no support, how can the Pope and those around him not see that it is the right thing to do to defend Zen? [https://catholicherald.co.uk/pope-francis-has-24-hours-to-do-the-right-thing/]
For some reason this makes me remember when Francis didn’t do the “right thing” by slapping the Asian woman at the Vatican and thus making worldwide headlines, but most forget that she was apparently according to the Fr. Z website distraught about Francis’s beloved “democratic” China’s totalitarian suppression of free Hong Kong.
His post had an Asian commenter Disc-Thrower from a Asian “multiethnic city” say her language isn’t any of seven Asian languages he knows and “wondered if” it was heavily accented “Spanish or Italian?” and he said she said “Hong Kong es… .”
As the Fr. Z’s headline appeared to put it the “distraught woman [was]… plead[ing]” for Francis to support Hong Kong, despite the pro-China Francis refusal to condemn the Chinese Communist regime’s puppets in Hong Kong who are brutally manhandling and arresting the Hong Kong freedom protesters.
Was the distraught women worried that Francis would betray Hong Kong like he betrayed the Chinese Catholic underground?
It appears that Francis’s China deal was a cold-blooded betrayal.
Francis is appointing Communist regime operatives as bishops is a de facto endorsement of the Chinese totalitarianism.
In 2017, Cardinal Joseph Zen before Christmas said:
“China’s underground Church… feels betrayed.”
Francis’s Vatican has “demanded the retirement of one bishop and the demotion of another” so that Communist totalitarian controlled state bishops can get control of the underground Chinese Church.
The National Review’s Michael Dougherty reported what this Vatican betrayal means to the Chinese Catholics in quoting a Chinese underground pewsitter witness to the Communist regime’s reign of terror:
“Everybody, and I mean everybody, knows someone who was murdered, or tortured, or disappeared to defend the principle that was just abandoned.” (National Review, “The Vatican’s Deal with China: What to make of Cardinal Parolin’s Diplomacy,” January 23, 2017)
Cardinal Joseph Zen, bishop emeritus of Hong Kong in 2016 said the Francis “diplomacy” is like betraying Joseph, Mary and the baby Jesus to the murderous Herod.
Cardinal Zen said:
“[T]oday would our diplomats advise Joseph to go and humbly beg for dialogue with Herod!”
Pray an Our Father now 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 Mary
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on Even the Francis apologist Catholic Herald isn’t making up excuses for their beloved Francis’s “abandoning Zen” to the altar of his beloved “democratic” Communist China:
(LifeSiteNews) — Four bishops, several priests, and numerous Catholic scholars have signed a statement rebuking Pope Francis for a recent statement about the reception of Holy Communion, according to which “everyone is invited to the supper of the wedding of the Lamb (Re 19:9). To be admitted to the feast all that is required is the wedding garment of faith which comes from the hearing of his Word.” The Pope wrote these words in his June 29 Apostolic Letter on the liturgy, Desiderio desideravi, but for the signatories of this new statement (see full text below), he omitted the “essential topic of repentance for sin for the worthy reception of the Eucharist.”
Therefore, the papal words about the “garment of faith” as the only requirement for the reception of Holy Communion, “contradict[] the faith of the Catholic Church,” as the authors wrote. They explain:
The Catholic Church has always taught that in order to receive the Holy Eucharist worthily and without sin, Catholics must receive sacramental absolution, if possible, for any mortal sins they may have committed and obey all other laws of the Church concerning reception of the Eucharist (as, for example, the laws concerning fasting prior to reception of the Eucharist).
If a sacramental confession is not possible, but the reception of Holy Communion urgent (such as for a priest celebrating Mass), the Sacrament of Penance has to be sought as soon as possible afterwards, and the penitent must have perfect contrition for his mortal sins. By extensively quoting from the Council of Trent’s documents, the signatories also make it clear that such teachings as presented in Pope Francis’ document have already been condemned as heresy. “The claim,” they write, “that faith is the only requirement for worthy reception of the Holy Eucharist was condemned by the Council of Trent as a heresy.”
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This false teaching might become more important now at this historic moment. Only in May, a U.S. Bishop – Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone – publicly banned Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, from receiving Holy Communion because she is defying the Church’s teaching against abortion. “A Catholic legislator,” he then wrote, “who supports procured abortion, after knowing the teaching of the Church, commits a manifestly grave sin which is a cause of most serious scandal to others.”
It nearly looks as if Pope Francis’s June 2022 document is a response to that diocesan ruling, now stating that faith alone is sufficient for receiving Holy Communion.
As the new statement points out, “on the day that Desiderio desideravi was issued, Pope Francis received in audience Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives,” and on that day, she received Holy Communion at a papal Mass, in St. Peter’s, over which Pope Francis presided, thereby “causing scandal to Catholics over all the world,” in the statement’s words. The text continues: “When asked about her illegal reception of communion, Pope Francis expressed no disapproval of it. Instead, he responded by saying ‘When the Church loses its pastoral nature, when a bishop loses his pastoral nature, it causes a political problem. That’s all I can say.’ This response rebukes Archbishop Cordileone for his justified application of Canon 915.”
Among the signatories of this new statement are Bishop Joseph E. Strickland, Bishop Rene H. Gracida, Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Bishop Robert Mutsaerts, Father Gerald E. Murray, Father James Altman, Father John Lovell and several other priests, along with well-known academic teachers such as Professor Claudio Pierantoni, Dr. John Lamont, Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, Professor Anna Silvas, Dr. Anthony Esolen, Professor John Rist, and Professor Paolo Pasqualucci. Among Catholic scholars can be found Julia Meloni and George Neumayr. LifeSite’s John-Henry Westen and Liz Yore also signed the document.
The new statement by clergymen and scholars also refers back to the Code of Canon Law, especially can. 915 (and more), which lays down the same rules about the worthy reception of Holy Communion as presented above. The signatories state:
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The purpose of these canons is to prevent grave sin on the part of the person unworthily receiving the Eucharist, to prevent scandal, and to prevent the desecration of the sacrament by such unworthy reception. These canons are still in force. They cannot be validly repealed, because their content expresses the divine law concerning the Eucharist that is taught in the Holy Scriptures and Sacred Tradition.
In a sense, one could see this new statement by Pope Francis, on faith being the only condition for receiving Holy Communion, as a linchpin and summary statement of his pontificate. Early on, from 2014 on, he promoted the idea of giving Holy Communion to unrepentant remarried divorcees; then he opened up the idea of Protestants following their own conscience when deciding to receive Holy Communion.
In addition, the Pope has been encouraging pro-abortion Catholics to receive Holy Communion and even called pro-LGBT advocate Father James Martin, S.J. as a Vatican counsellor. In all of these cases, the Pope allows Catholics to receive Holy Communion who are objectively violating the Church’s laws and teachings, thus promoting moral relativism.
LifeSite asked Professor Claudio Pierantoni, one of the signatories of this new statement, to comment on the papal words in light of the above-mentioned case of Nancy Pelosi. He wrote:
We have thought necessary to issue this statement because this error can lead to great scandal, like that of admitting to Communion politicians who publicly approve of abortion, or even promote it directly with their actions. This is precisely what has been happening recently in the US, after the ruling of the Supreme Court that overturned the infamous Roe versus Wade, when President Biden and Speaker Pelosi, both Catholic, openly supported the campaign in favor of restoring the “right” to abortion all over the country. The pope not only omitted to rebuke Biden and Pelosi for this scandalous stance; not only omitted to support those bishops who did implement canonical censures against such politicians, but went to the extreme of criticizing those bishops (though making no names), arguing that such censures (like excommunication), “are not pastoral,” and “cause political problems.”
Now this papal document (Desiderio desideravi) affirming that “the garment of faith” is “all that is required” to be admitted to the Eucharistic banquet, seems to provide a theological justification for this attitude, which could have been thought to be simply the result of political opportunism. This scandal had moreover a striking confirmation through the coincidence that Nancy Pelosi received Holy Communion in St. Peter’s basilica, on the feast of Peter and Paul, the very same day in which Desiderio desideravi was published. Such an attitude on the part of the pope is, of course, the opposite of true “pastorality,” since the first duty of the spiritual pastor is to warn the sinner, and particularly the public sinner, not only of the seriousness of his fault, but of the immense damage that is caused to millions of Catholics who are thereby deceived and led to think that this can be an acceptable and orthodox behavior.
Please see here the full statement, with the list of signatories at the end of the text. A pdf of the statement can be downloaded HERE and a Spanishversion HERE.
The teaching of the Catholic faith on the reception of the Holy Eucharist
The recent Apostolic Letter Desiderio desideravi, given June 29th 2022, the Feast of SS. Peter and Paul, states:
The world still does not know it, but everyone is invited to the supper of the wedding of the Lamb (Re 19:9). To be admitted to the feast all that is required is the wedding garment of faith which comes from the hearing of his Word (cf. Ro 10:17). [Il mondo ancora non lo sa, ma tutti sono invitati al banchetto di nozze dell’Agnello (Ap 19,9). Per accedervi occorre solo l’abito nuziale della fede che viene dall’ascolto della sua Parola (cfr. Rm 10,17)[…].
The natural meaning of these words is that the only requirement for a Catholic to worthily receive the Holy Eucharist is possession of the virtue of faith, by which one believes Christian teaching on the grounds of its being divinely revealed. Moreover, in the Apostolic Letter as a whole there is silence on this essential topic of repentance for sin for the worthy reception of the Eucharist.
This natural meaning contradicts the faith of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has always taught that in order to receive the Holy Eucharist worthily and without sin, Catholics must receive sacramental absolution, if possible, for any mortal sins they may have committed and obey all other laws of the Church concerning reception of the Eucharist (as, for example, the laws concerning fasting prior to reception of the Eucharist). However, if a Catholic is unable to confess mortal sins but has a grave reason for receiving the Eucharist (such as a priest who may be required to celebrate Mass at a given time but who is unable to go to Confession), such a person must be confident to the best of his ability that he have perfect contrition for any mortal sins that he may have committed.
The claim that faith is the only requirement for worthy reception of the Holy Eucharist was condemned by the Council of Trent as a heresy.
The holy and ecumenical Council of Trent, Decree concerning the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist (October 11th 1551).
Chapter VII. The Preparation that Must be Employed to Receive the Holy Eucharist Worthily
If it is not becoming for anyone to approach any of the sacred functions except solemnly, certainly, the more the holiness and the divinity of this heavenly sacrament is understood by a Christian, the more diligently ought he to take heed lest he approach to receive it without great reverence and holiness [can. 2], especially when we read in the Apostle those words full of terror: “He that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself not discerning the body of the Lord” [1 Cor. 11 :29 ]. Therefore, the precept, “Let a man prove himself” [1 Cor. 11:28], must be recalled to mind by him who wishes to communicate. Now ecclesiastical usage declares that this examination is necessary, that no one conscious of mortal sin, however contrite he may seem to himself, should approach the Holy Eucharist without a previous sacramental confession. This, the holy Synod has decreed, is always to be observed by all Christians, even by those priests on whom by their office it may be incumbent to celebrate, provided the recourses of a confessor be not lacking to them. But if in an urgent necessity a priest should celebrate without previous confession, let him confess as soon as possible.
…
Canon 11. If anyone says that faith alone is sufficient preparation for receiving the sacrament of the most Holy Eucharist, let him be anathema. [Si quis dixerit, solam fidem esse sufficientem praeparationem ad sumendum sanctissimum eucharistiae sacramentum, anathema sit.]
This claim also contradicts Canons 915 and 916 of the Latin Code of Canon Law, and Canons 711 and 712 of the Oriental Code of Canon Law.
Latin Code of Canon Law
Can. 915 Those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion.
Can. 916 A person who is conscious of grave sin is not to celebrate Mass or receive the body of the Lord without previous sacramental confession unless there is a grave reason and there is no opportunity to confess; in this case the person is to remember the obligation to make an act of perfect contrition which includes the resolution of confessing as soon as possible.
Oriental Code of Canon Law
Canon 711. A person who is conscious of serious sin is not to celebrate the Divine Liturgy nor receive the Divine Eucharist unless a serious reason is present and there is no opportunity of receiving the sacrament of penance; in this case the person should make an act of perfect contrition, including the intention of confessing as soon as possible.
Canon 712. Those who are publicly unworthy are forbidden from receiving the Divine Eucharist.
The purpose of these canons is to prevent grave sin on the part of the person unworthily receiving the Eucharist, to prevent scandal, and to prevent the desecration of the sacrament by such unworthy reception. These canons are still in force. They cannot be validly repealed, because their content expresses the divine law concerning the Eucharist that is taught in the Holy Scriptures and Sacred Tradition. This has been pointed out in the Declaration of June 24th 2000 by the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, concerning the admission to Holy Communion of faithful who are divorced and remarried:
The Code of Canon Law establishes that “Those upon whom the penalty of excommunication or interdict has been imposed or declared, and others who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin, are not to be admitted to Holy Communion” (can. 915). … The prohibition found in the cited canon, by its nature, is derived from divine law and transcends the domain of positive ecclesiastical laws: the latter cannot introduce legislative changes which would oppose the doctrine of the Church. The scriptural text on which the ecclesial tradition has always relied is that of St. Paul: “This means that whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily sins against the body and blood of the Lord. A man should examine himself first only then should he eat of the bread and drink of the cup. He who eats and drinks without recognizing the body eats and drinks a judgment on himself.”
Pope Francis has indicated by his words and actions that he holds the view expressed by the natural meaning of the words of Desiderio desideravi cited above.
In his Angelus for the feast of “Corpus Domini” on June 6, 2021, Pope Francis said:
… there is another strength that stands out in the fragility of the Eucharist: the strength to love those who make mistakes. It is on the night he is betrayed that Jesus gives us the Bread of Life. He gives us the greatest gift while he feels the deepest abyss in his heart: the disciple who eats with Him, who dips the morsel in the same plate, is betraying Him. And betrayal is the worst suffering for one who loves. And what does Jesus do? He reacts to the evil with a greater good. He responds to Judas’ ‘no’ with the ‘yes’ of mercy. He does not punish the sinner, but rather gives His life for him; He pays for him. When we receive the Eucharist, Jesus does the same with us: he knows us; he knows we are sinners; and he knows we make many mistakes, but he does not give up on joining his life to ours. He knows that we need it, because the Eucharist is not the reward of saints, no, it is the Bread of sinners. This is why he exhorts us: “Do not be afraid! Take and eat.”
The statement that the Eucharist is not the reward of saints but the bread of sinners might be understood in an orthodox sense if taken in isolation. However, placed in the context of the reception of the Eucharist by Judas referred to in the Angelus address (cf. John 13:23-27), and in the context of Pope Francis’s other words and actions, it suggests that renunciation of sin is not necessary for one’s reception of the Eucharist to be acceptable to God. This view is borne out in the following statement from Desiderio desideravi: ‘Indeed, every reception of communion of the Body and Blood of Christ was already desired by him in the Last Supper’ (n. 6).
The teaching of the Council of Trent cited above condemns the position of Martin Luther on faith and justification. Pope Francis has publicly expressed his agreement with the condemned positions of Luther. In an in-flight press conference on June 26th, 2016, Pope Francis stated:
I think that Martin Luther’s intentions were not mistaken; he was a reformer. Perhaps some of his methods were not right, although at that time, if you read Pastor’s history, for example – Pastor was a German Lutheran who experienced a conversion when he studied the facts of that period; he became a Catholic – we see that the Church was not exactly a model to emulate. There was corruption and worldliness in the Church; there was attachment to money and power. That was the basis of his protest. He was also intelligent, and he went ahead, justifying his reasons for it. Nowadays, Lutherans and Catholics, and all Protestants, are in agreement on the doctrine of justification: on this very important point he was not mistaken.
On the day that Desiderio desideravi was issued, Pope Francis received in audience Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Nancy Pelosi has been publicly forbidden to receive communion under Canon 915 by her ordinary, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone. The grounds for this measure were her consistent political support for the complete legalization of abortion up to birth. After the audience with Pope Francis, Nancy Pelosi received communion at a mass in St. Peter’s over which Pope Francis presided, causing scandal to Catholics over all the world. When asked about her illegal reception of communion, Pope Francis expressed no disapproval of it. Instead, he responded by saying ‘When the Church loses its pastoral nature, when a bishop loses his pastoral nature, it causes a political problem. That’s all I can say.’ This response rebukes Archbishop Cordileone for his justified application of Canon 915.
The Apostolic Letter Desiderio desideravi is not an infallible teaching, because it does not satisfy the necessary conditions for an exercise of papal infallibility. The canon of the Council of Trent is an exercise of the infallible teaching authority of the Church. Therefore, the contradiction between Desiderio desideravi and the defined doctrine of the Council of Trent does not falsify the claim of the Catholic Church to be infallibly guided by the Holy Spirit when by an exercise of her teaching office she requires all Catholics to believe a doctrine as being divinely revealed. On the possibility of a pope publicly teaching error, see the Correctio filialis addressed to Pope Francis by a number of Catholic scholars (https://www.correctiofilialis.org), and the discussions in the book Defending the Faith against Present Heresies (Arouca Press, 2021). No Catholic can believe or act upon a papal pronouncement if it contradicts the divinely revealed Catholic faith.
We, the undersigned, confess the Catholic faith concerning the worthy reception of the Eucharist as it is defined by the Council of Trent, according to which faith alone is not a sufficient preparation for receiving the sacrament of the most Holy Eucharist. We encourage all the bishops and clerics of the Catholic Church to publicly confess the same doctrine about the worthy reception of the Eucharist, and enforce the related canons in order to avoid grave and public scandal.
[Signed.]
Please see here the list of first signatories. Scholars and clergymen are invited to contact us should they wish to sign this document: mhickson@lifesitenews.com
Signatories
Most Rev. Joseph Strickland, Bishop of Tyler
Most Rev. René Henry Gracida, Bishop Emeritus of Corpus Christi
Most Rev. Robert Mutsaerts, Auxiliary Bishop of S’Hertogenbosch in Netherlands
Most Rev. Athanasius Schneider, Auxiliary Bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan
Fr. James Altman
Dr. Heinz-Lothar Barth, until 2016 professor of Latin and Greek at the University of Bonn
Donna F. Bethell, JD
James Bogle, Esq., MA TD VR, barrister-at-law and former President of Una Voce International
Deacon Philip Clingerman OCDS BS, BA, MA [Theology]
Deacon Nick Donnelly, MA
Anthony Esolen, PhD
Deacon Keith Fournier, JD, MTS, MPhil
Matt Gaspers, Managing Editor, Catholic Family News
Fr Stanislaw C. Gibziński, Reading, UK
Maria Guarini, STB, editor of the website Chiesa e postconcilio
Sarah Henderson, DCHS, MA (Religious Education and Catechetics), BA
Dr. Maike Hickson, PhD, journalist
Dr. Robert Hickson, retired professor of literature and philosophy
Dr. Dr. Rudolf Hilfer, Stuttgart, Germany
Dr. Rafael Huentelmann, Editor in Chief, METAPHYSICA
Steve Jalsevac, co-founder and president, LifeSiteNews.com
Dr. Peter A. Kwasniewski, PhD
Dr. John Lamont, DPhil
Fr. Elias Leyds, CSJ, diocese of Den Bosch, Netherlands
Fr. John P. Lovell
Dr. Cesar Felix Sanchez Martinez. Professor of Philosophy of Nature at the Saint Jerome Archdiocesan Seminary of Arequipa (Peru)
Deacon Eugene McGuirk
Martin Mosebach
Brian M. McCall, Editor in Chief, Catholic Family News
Patricia McKeever, B.Ed. M.Th., Editor, Catholic Truth (Scotland)
Julia Meloni, B.A. Yale, A.M. Harvard, author
Fr. Cor Mennen, lic. canon law, former seminary professor
Fr. Michael Menner
Dr. Sebastian Morello, BA, MA, PhD, essays editor for the The European Conservative
Fr. Gerald E. Murray, J.C.D., Pastor, Church of the Holy Family, New York, NY
George Neumayr, author
Fr. Guy Pagès
Paolo Pasqualucci, ret. professor of philosophy, University of Perugia, Italy
Dr. Claudio Pierantoni, Universidad de Chile, PhD History of Christianity, PhD Philosophy
Dr. Carlo Regazzoni, philosopher of culture
Dr. John Rist, emeritus professor of Classics and Philosophy, University of Toronto, FRSC
Eric Sammons, Editor, Crisis Magazine
Edward Schaefer, president, The Collegium
Wolfram Schrems, Mag. theol., Mag. phil.
Paul A. Scott PhD, FRSA, FRHistS, FCIL, CL, Associate Professor of French and Cramer Professor, Affiliate Faculty of the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction, Affiliate Faculty of the Ad Astra Center for Science Fiction and Speculative Imagination, General Editor of The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies (Brill) Department of French, Francophone and Italian Studies, University of Kansas, USA
Anna Silvas, BA, MA, PhD, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, University of New England, Australia
Dr. Michael Sirilla, PhD
Anthony P. Stine, PhD
Dr. Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg, Netherlands
Dr. phil. habil. Berthold Wald, retired professor, Theological Faculty of Paderborn, Germany
John-Henry Westen, Co-Founder and Editor in Chief of LifeSiteNews.com
Elizabeth Yore, Esq., Founder, Yore Children
John Zmirak, PhD
Addtional signatories
Fr. Edward B. Connolly
Christina Fox, BA BDiv., independent scholar
Adrie A.M. van der Hoeven MSc, author of jesusking.info
Fr. Tyler Johnson
Edgardo J. Cruz Ramos, President, Una Voce Puerto Rico
Luis Roman, MBA and MA student of theology, host and producer of the well-known show in the Hispanic community named Conoce, Ama Y Vive Tu Fe
Prof. Leonard Wessell (ret.), Ph.D. (USA), Dr. Phil. (Germany), Doctorado, (Spain)
Deacon Timothy Woods
September 18
Deacon Frederick Bartels, MA
Rev. Edmund A Castronovo
Fr. Joseph Fishwick
Paul N. King, Esq., President, The Paulus Institute for the Propagation of Sacred Liturgy
Dr. Thaddeus J Kozinski, author and professor of philosophy
Elizabeth O’Bourke Acosta OCDS, BS Engineering, MBA, STL, STD student
September 19
Prof. Dr. Dr. Sergio Raúl Castaño: Investigador Principal del CONICET, Titular de Teoría del Estado (UNCOMA), Director del Centro de Estudios Políticos (UNSTA), Ex Director del Depto. de Política y Desarrollo Integrado (FUNDACIÓN BARILOCHE-CONICET)
Deacon Dr. Julian L Delgado
Robert T. Fertig, President of Fertig Christian Trust Foundation, Inc.
Fr. Angelo Luigi Fratus SMM, Montfortian priest
Michael Martonick, M.D.
Fr. Terence Mary (Naughtin) OFM Conv
Mgr. Beatriz Reyes Oribe: Becaria CONICET, Prof. de Historia de la Filosofía Medieval, Prof. de Lectura de Textos Filosóficos II UNSTA
.José Antonio Pérez Stuart: Journalist, political-economic analyst, Lic. in administration, master’s degrees in psychology, law, and history of thought.
Fr. Tam X. Tran, S.T.L., Pastor, Our Lady of Vietnam Catholic Church, Silver Spring, MD
September 20
Luis Fernando Pérez Bustamante, Catholic journalist
Fr. Thomas Nathe
Deacon Dr. Bart Overman, Netherlands
Pedro L. Llera Vázquez, school headmaster and author at InfoCatólica
Cris Yozía, editor of Diary 7 Archivos
September 21
Fr. José Miguel Marqués Campo
Fr. Michael Matysik, Fidei Donum missionary
Fabiano Farias de Medeiros, administrator and coordinator of the Pro-Life Movement in Brazil, catechist and administrator of the apostolate @educarparaoceu
Dr. Maike Hickson was born and raised in Germany. She holds a PhD from the University of Hannover, Germany, after having written in Switzerland her doctoral dissertation on the history of Swiss intellectuals before and during World War II. She now lives in the U.S. and is married to Dr. Robert Hickson, and they have been blessed with two beautiful children. She is a happy housewife who likes to write articles when time permits.
Dr. Hickson published in 2014 a Festschrift, a collection of some thirty essays written by thoughtful authors in honor of her husband upon his 70th birthday, which is entitled A Catholic Witness in Our Time.
Hickson has closely followed the papacy of Pope Francis and the developments in the Catholic Church in Germany, and she has been writing articles on religion and politics for U.S. and European publications and websites such as LifeSiteNews, OnePeterFive, The Wanderer, Rorate Caeli, Catholicism.org, Catholic Family News, Christian Order, Notizie Pro-Vita, Corrispondenza Romana, Katholisches.info, Der Dreizehnte, Zeit-Fragen, and Westfalen-Blatt.
This past Saturday, a group of 300 Catholics processed five miles between St. Thomas More Cathedral in Arlington, VA (the main cathedral of the Diocese of Arlington) and St. Matthew the Apostle Cathedral in Washington, D.C. (the main cathedral of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C.). We carried beautiful Catholic banners, flags, and processional crosses, chanted the rosary, and sang Marian hymns.
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What could have brought so many Catholics into the street to participate in a two-hour march? The power and beauty of the Traditional Latin Mass—and the cruelty of attempts to restrict it. Specifically, this march was prompted by Traditionis Custodes and the harsh restrictions on the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass subsequently announced by Cardinal Gregory of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. (on July 22) and Bishop Burbidge of the Diocese of Arlington (on July 29, 2022).
As I noted in my speech at the end of the pilgrimage, “Traditionis Custodes, and these decrees, have done what hundreds of synodal listening sessions and ecumenical councils could not—they have activated the laity.” That is, “they have emboldened us to leave the quiet of the pews and venture into the street, to proclaim what Popes and tradition and the Church teach to be true—that ‘what earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.’”
The decrees from our bishops were harshindeed. Cardinal Gregory’s decree ordered that the Traditional Latin Mass must end entirely at all but one parish location, and all Latin Mass attendees herded to three regional “Mass Centers.” Bishop Burbidge’s decree cancelled all but three parish Traditional Latin Masses (out of 21), and permitted five more in offsite locations such as school gyms and social halls—but not in the parish church.
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However, our pilgrimage was not about protesting our bishops or the Pope, but making a show of gratitude for the Traditional Latin Mass and the graces it has given us, and a show of sorrow over what we have lost with the new restrictions. As I noted in my speech, “We pray for our Bishops, who allowed us to experience the riches of the older form of the liturgy for so long!” and “[w]e will continue to work with our Bishops, pray for our Bishops, with the confidence that these restrictions will not and cannot last.”
In our pilgrimage, we successfully demonstrated the beauty and vitality of the movement for the Traditional Latin Mass within the Church. Visually. The march was stunning. The marchers were mostly young, with many young families with small children in strollers. It is important for us to reclaim space as Catholics, and we truly had the feeling of reclaiming the space for Christ as we marched through the streets of Arlington and over the Key Bridge into Washington, D.C. The pilgrimage felt like a great spiritual army moving through Arlington and Washington, D.C., spreading the truth of Christ and His grace into the world.
The march was all the more impressive because this was a completely grassroots effort – we had no outside organizations backing us or funding us. The pilgrimage was organized in the span of a month by ordinary parishioners in the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. and the Diocese of Arlington who love the Traditional Latin Mass. Catholics from all over the area came together to volunteer their knowledge, their time, and their homes to make the pilgrimage a massive success. The March strengthened our resolve to work with our Bishops to restore the free celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass. It also strengthened our resolve to take on greater leadership roles in our parishes and our dioceses. As I stated in my speech, “We will continue to be involved in our parishes and the Diocese, more actively than ever.”
Traditionis has taught us that we cannot afford to be passive as Catholics—in a fallen and sinful world, with the Church in state of confusion and crisis, we must take action to effectively stand up for our timeless Catholic faith. Sadly, the laity can no longer passively rely on Church hierarchy to protect the unity of the Church and Catholic teaching. Church leadership continues to be marred by scandal and division. Nor can we rely on the institutional Church to effectively evangelize as Catholic belief and practice continues its dramatic decline. This harsh reality places an enormous responsibility on laity. Fortunately, we have seen in the Diocese of Arlington and Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. that traditional Catholics are up to the task.
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Already, the five non-parish spaces that we were given in Arlington Diocese for Mass—school gyms and social halls—have been miraculously transformed, almost overnight, into beautiful holy spaces for Mass. And that, just in the span of a couple weekends. We also saw the work of Catholic renewalafoot at the parishes in the two dioceses where the Traditional Latin Mass had been permitted. Stories abound of churches renovated and restored, and of dying parishes experiencing new life and new growth.
Thus, while these restrictions make the work of growth and renewal more difficult, they do not diminish in any way our obligation to evangelize and save souls for Christ. We have a Church to restore, and a fallen world to convert. Traditionis and its associated restrictions will force us to be more creative and resourceful—and they will ultimately provide a template for how traditional Catholicism can grow within the Church no matter what obstacles or restrictions might be placed in its way. The vibrancy and energy on display at the National Summorum Pontificum Pilgrimage leaves me with no doubt that, with the power of the Holy Spirit and Catholic Tradition and the strength of our Catholic communities, we will be successful in bringing about the Catholic renewal that the world cries out for.
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Hello RENE HENRY GRACIDA, In my new Remnant Underground, I make the case that there is only force on earth capable of stopping the demonic Great Reset.
I am referring, of course, to authentic Christianity.
The Great Reset is first, foremost, and fundamentally antichristian, because it seeks to bury the old world order of Christ and Christianity beneath a new world order of Man and Technology.
The real crisis today, however, is that Christianity has become so badly battered, fragmented, and infiltrated that it lacks the strength necessary even to defend itself, much less withstand the Globalist builders of a New Order.
So, what are Christians dutybound before God to do in this dire situation?
First off, if this Great Reset is to be stopped dead in its cloven hoof prints, it is going to require a good deal more of us than Bible reading and making joyful noises unto the Lord. It is going to require an organized and universal proclamation of the social Kingship of Jesus Christ.
Why do you think Klaus Schwab and the WEF expend so much effort recruiting Francis and his representatives to join their green and transhumanist revolution? It is because the organized old order of Christendom – if it ever were to be revived – would efficiently dispatch with the Great Reset in a very short period of time.
The Globalists need to make sure that never happens, thus their feverish push to coopt the last vestiges of organized Christianity. Thus Francis’s frantic efforts to crush the Latin Mass — the touchstone of Christian civilization for nearly two thousand years.
The Christophobes simply cannot pull this off without Francis, which is why the Christian “clans” must unite against the diabolical Davos/Vatican Pact.
We are all called to resist Francis, in other words. In fact, even if you are not Catholic, you must still resist the Globalist agenda of Pope Francis.
So you’ll be happy to note that, this week in Kazakhstan, the world witnessed an example of that resistance on steroids.
During the runup to the pope’s visit to Kazakhstan for the “7th Annual Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions”, Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan warned the world of the danger of such meetings, telling the media that there is “only one true religion, founded by God Himself, but commanded to all men, to religions, to believe and accept His Son Jesus Christ the only savior.”
Surely, even non-Catholics can appreciate the significance of Schneider’s public but charitable warning (broadcast to the world by Reuters and the Associated Press) on the eve of the Pope’s visit to Kazakhstan.
Bishop Schneider also warned that “such global events” might be exploited by “the political elites” (the WEF?) for “their own purposes” because such events “signal that Catholicism is one Faith among others, with equal legitimacy” — which is “not correct because there is only one true religion” (the Catholic Church) and “only one Savior” (Jesus Christ).
So much for “equity and inclusion,” the twin dogmas of the Great Reset!
In my latest video, I point out that the bishop is here acting in the spirit of St. Paul in Galatians 2:11, when he “resisted Peter to his face because Peter was blameworthy” — an honorable act that stands in stark contrast to dishonorably condemning Peter behind his back.
I would encourage you to hear the entire case as laid out here, and let me know what you think. It is pretty essential that we get this right.
God bless Bishop Schneider, let us pray for the conversion of Pope Francis and, until that happens, for God’s sake, resist Francis to his face.
In Christo Rege, Michael J. Matt
P.S. Also in this video, King Great Reset III, AKA King Charles III, buries the Magna Carta and launches the Terra Carta, as he and his allies in Davos gear up for Agenda 2030. TERRA CARTA: Kazakhstan and the New World ReligionNew from Remnant TV…The Queen is dead, God save us from the King. Perhaps the most significant political figure (after Pope Francis) to endorse Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates’s global lockdown was Prince Charles. Today, the King of the Great Reset has got plans for the world that are truly bloodcurdling. Watch on the Remnant Website…
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Hello RENE HENRY GRACIDA, In my new Remnant Underground, I make the case that there is only force on earth capable of stopping the demonic Great Reset.
I am referring, of course, to authentic Christianity.
The Great Reset is first, foremost, and fundamentally antichristian, because it seeks to bury the old world order of Christ and Christianity beneath a new world order of Man and Technology.
The real crisis today, however, is that Christianity has become so badly battered, fragmented, and infiltrated that it lacks the strength necessary even to defend itself, much less withstand the Globalist builders of a New Order.
So, what are Christians dutybound before God to do in this dire situation?
First off, if this Great Reset is to be stopped dead in its cloven hoof prints, it is going to require a good deal more of us than Bible reading and making joyful noises unto the Lord. It is going to require an organized and universal proclamation of the social Kingship of Jesus Christ.
Why do you think Klaus Schwab and the WEF expend so much effort recruiting Francis and his representatives to join their green and transhumanist revolution? It is because the organized old order of Christendom – if it ever were to be revived – would efficiently dispatch with the Great Reset in a very short period of time.
The Globalists need to make sure that never happens, thus their feverish push to coopt the last vestiges of organized Christianity. Thus Francis’s frantic efforts to crush the Latin Mass — the touchstone of Christian civilization for nearly two thousand years.
The Christophobes simply cannot pull this off without Francis, which is why the Christian “clans” must unite against the diabolical Davos/Vatican Pact.
We are all called to resist Francis, in other words. In fact, even if you are not Catholic, you must still resist the Globalist agenda of Pope Francis.
So you’ll be happy to note that, this week in Kazakhstan, the world witnessed an example of that resistance on steroids.
During the runup to the pope’s visit to Kazakhstan for the “7th Annual Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions”, Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan warned the world of the danger of such meetings, telling the media that there is “only one true religion, founded by God Himself, but commanded to all men, to religions, to believe and accept His Son Jesus Christ the only savior.”
Surely, even non-Catholics can appreciate the significance of Schneider’s public but charitable warning (broadcast to the world by Reuters and the Associated Press) on the eve of the Pope’s visit to Kazakhstan.
Bishop Schneider also warned that “such global events” might be exploited by “the political elites” (the WEF?) for “their own purposes” because such events “signal that Catholicism is one Faith among others, with equal legitimacy” — which is “not correct because there is only one true religion” (the Catholic Church) and “only one Savior” (Jesus Christ).
So much for “equity and inclusion,” the twin dogmas of the Great Reset!
In my latest video, I point out that the bishop is here acting in the spirit of St. Paul in Galatians 2:11, when he “resisted Peter to his face because Peter was blameworthy” — an honorable act that stands in stark contrast to dishonorably condemning Peter behind his back.
I would encourage you to hear the entire case as laid out here, and let me know what you think. It is pretty essential that we get this right.
God bless Bishop Schneider, let us pray for the conversion of Pope Francis and, until that happens, for God’s sake, resist Francis to his face.
In Christo Rege, Michael J. Matt
P.S. Also in this video, King Great Reset III, AKA King Charles III, buries the Magna Carta and launches the Terra Carta, as he and his allies in Davos gear up for Agenda 2030. TERRA CARTA: Kazakhstan and the New World ReligionNew from Remnant TV…The Queen is dead, God save us from the King. Perhaps the most significant political figure (after Pope Francis) to endorse Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates’s global lockdown was Prince Charles. Today, the King of the Great Reset has got plans for the world that are truly bloodcurdling.
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Judge Upholds Florida Gov Ron DeSantis’ Decision to Suspend Prosecutor Who Won’t Enforce Abortion Ban
State | Steven Ertelt | Sep 19, 2022 | 12:56PM | Washington, DC
A federal judge has temporarily upheld Florida Gov Ron DeSantis’ decision to suspend a liberal prosecutor who refuses to uphold Florida’s 15-week abortion ban.
DeSantis suspended Soros-backed state attorney Andrew Warren for refusing to enforce the pro-life law he signed earlier this year. The pro-life governor signed the late-term abortion ban back in April, which could save as many as 5,000 babies from aboritons every year.
“The constitution of Florida has vested the veto power in the governor, not in state attorneys,” DeSantis said last month after the suspension. “We are not going to allow this pathogen of ignoring the law get a foothold in the state of Florida.”
He said Warren has repeatedly tried to install himself as an adjudicator of what laws will and will not be enforced.
Today, a federal judge declined to strike down the decision –ruling Monday not to reinstate Andrew Warren while the prosecutor’s case challenging DeSantis’ firing of him moves forward. Forbes has more on the ruling:
U.S. District Judge Robert L. Hinkle ruled during a hearing Monday not to grant Warren’s request for a preliminary injunction that would reinstate him as state attorney, localoutletsreport, but the case is still ongoing.
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Warren sued DeSantis (R) after the governor suspended him on August 4 and replaced him with his own appointee, accusing Warren of “neglect of duty” and “spit[ting] in the face of voters” because he signed statements saying he wouldn’t prosecute crimes related to abortion or gender-affirming care.
Hinkle wanted to “settle the issue ‘once and for all’” through a trial rather than potentially reinstating Warren now only to remove him again later, the Tampa Bay Timesreports, and Florida Politics reportsthe judge “didn’t appear convinced” by the governor’s case, suggesting he could still side with Warren.
Warren’s legal team wants the case to go to trial within a month, while DeSantis’ team wants the case to proceed in three to four months, the Times reports. Hinkle has not yet set a final trial date.Warren’s legal team wants the case to go to trial within a month, while DeSantis’ team wants the case to proceed in three to four months, the Times reports. Hinkle has not yet set a final trial date.
Warren was the only prosecutor in Florida to sign a letter vowing not to prosecute abortionists who kill babies in violation of the late-term abortion ban.
“We are suspending Soros-backed 13th circuit state attorney Andrew Warren for neglecting his duties as he pledges not to uphold the laws of the state,” DeSantis’ office said in a statement at the time of the suspension.
When DeSantis signed the 15-week law, the governor said the bill “protects the rights of unborn children starting at 15 weeks. This is a time where these babies have beating hearts. They can move, they can taste, they can see, they can feel pain, they can suck their thumb, and they have brain waves.”
“Life is a sacred gift worthy of our protection, and I am proud to sign this great piece of legislation which represents the most significant protections for life in the state’s modern history,” he said.
“So this will represent the most significant protections for life that have been enacted in this state in a generation.”
Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, some Democrat district attorneys and prosecutors are saying they will not uphold or enforce various pro-life laws or abortion bans and DeSantis’ move could be the first in a long line of decisions to remove them or limit their powers for not protecting babies and enforcing the law.
As LifeNews reported, the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, with a 6-3 majority ruling in the Dobbs case that “The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion” — allowing states to ban abortions and protect unborn babies. The high court also ruled 6-3 uphold the Mississippi 15-week abortion ban so states can further limit abortions and to get rid of the false viability standard.
Michigan, Wisconsin and West Virginia have old pro-life laws on the books but there is question about whether they are applicable and will be enforced.
The 13 total states with trigger laws that would effectively ban all or most abortions are: Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.
“Abortion presents a profound moral question. The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives,” Alito wrote.
“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences,” Alito wrote. “And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division.”
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer authored a joint dissent condemning the decision as enabling states to enact “draconian” restrictions on women.
Cdl. Brandmüller: German Synodal Path decisions a ‘mass apostasy from Holy Scripture and Tradition’
‘But what is really alarming and dismaying is that the consecrated and commissioned shepherds of the Church, the bishops, have in such large numbers apparently easily forgotten the oath they first swore before their ordination to the priesthood and then at their episcopal consecration before all the people – and before God’s Face.’
Cardinal Brandmuller speaking at the 2019 Rome Life Forum.Steve Jalsevac / LifeSiteNews
(LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, a German prelate and church historian, has decried as “mass apostasy” the recent decisions taken by the September 8-10 German Synodal Path assembly in Frankfurt.
A minority of bishops had, with a September 8 vote, rejected a heterodox document on sexuality, but then the leadership of the assembly, which consists of bishops and lay people, decided to still make use of the rejected document and to put these dissenting bishops on the spot by forbidding secret ballots. The consequence was a collapse of the opposition on the second day, followed by the approval of above-mentioned topics.
LifeSite reached out to Cardinal Brandmüller – who is also one of the four Dubia cardinals who asked Pope Francis in 2016 to clarify certain problematic statements in his document Amoris laetitia – for comment on the German Synodal Path.
In his submission (see full text below), the German prelate says that the decisions of the German bishops – the majority of which supported the heretical statements – “diametrically contradicted the teaching of Holy Scripture and the Apostolic Tradition.” He wonders if they forgot the oaths they made at their priestly ordination and then at their episcopal consecration. The recent decisions at the German assembly reveal for him “an understanding of the Church, of the doctrine of faith and morals, which is worlds apart from the authentic proclamation of the faith of the Church.”
The German Synodal Path seems to think that it can adapt itself to the zeitgeist of its time, forgetting God’s revelation.
Cardinal Brandmüller is reminded of “that rebellion of man against his Creator, as the fatal grasp for the fruit of the Forbidden Tree, which in the course of human history has been repeated again and again, and in ever new forms, and has resulted in streams of blood and tears.”
As a church historian, the 93-year-old prelate also sees a parallel to the struggles of the 4th and 5th centuries A.D., “when the majority of the Eastern bishops of the Arian heresy denied the divinity of Jesus, while Saint Athanasius, persecuted by them, was expelled several times from his episcopal see or had to flee.” But he also warns the German bishops and lay people of the consequences of heresy when he adds: “Soon the armies of the prophet from Mecca fell upon these churches, leaving them in smoke and ruins….”
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This is not the first time that Cardinal Brandmüller has publicly criticized the German Synodal Path which started in 2019. He had warned against it even then, saying that it could lead to a “national church” without “nearly any ties to Rome” and that this would be “certainly be the surest path into the final decline.” He called the assembly to fidelity to the Church’s magisterium and, just this March, he reminded the German bishops of their oath at their episcopal consecration. With these repeated interventions, indeed, Cardinal Brandmüller shows his own fidelity to the Church’s teaching and love for the Church, in imitation of St. Athanasius in the 4th century.
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Please see here the full statement by Cardinal Walter Brandmüller:
Frankfurt
The failure of the Frankfurt “Synod” document on sexual ethics is remarkable in several respects. First, the text presented was rejected by the assembly. The votes of the bishops had not been sufficient for the adoption of the text, a text that 82.8% of the lay members of the synod and 61.1% of the bishops had accepted. The latter had fallen short of the required 2/3 majority. If Bishop Bätzing, in view of this voting result, spoke of a “crisis,” then this is undoubtedly true. But not in the sense of Bishop Bätzing. The crisis of this vote consisted in fact in the fact that 82.2% of the lay synod members diametrically contradicted the teaching of Holy Scripture and the Apostolic Tradition. Even worse, 61.1% of the voting bishops also did so. This means that only 17.2% of the laity and only 38.9% of the bishops were committed to the teaching of the Church.
This result, however, can only be called a mass apostasy from Holy Scripture and Tradition, the sources of the faith revealed by God. The result of this vote reveals an understanding of the Church, of the doctrine of faith and morals, which is worlds apart from the authentic proclamation of the faith of the Church. Religion, Church, faith: in this “synodal” view, these are variable factors that can be adapted to the social and cultural conditions of the particular “today.” [This is] a point-of-view that not only makes it possible for the Church, but indeed even demands it, to march into the future in step with society, even as its avant-garde.
At this point, however, the question must be asked whether such a conviction is still compatible with the authentic Catholic, indeed Christian, faith. The same question may be asked by a Jew, but not only that, Aristotle and Plato are also quickly disposed of in the wastebasket with superior smiles by the zeitgeisty Frankfurt moralists. They do not even ask what “the German philosopher” from Königsberg [Immanuel Kant] would have said about it. It is a cultural collapse of “the people of poets and thinkers.”
But then it is also about the essence of religion. Does the whole thing possibly not only have to do with man, but primarily with the Creator of man and the world, with God?
And with the self-revelation of the Creator to his creature man?
That is indeed what it is all about.
God has – so the beginning of the letter to the Hebrews – “Many times and in many ways God spoke to our fathers, but last of all through his Son.” Now, of course, it depends decisively on whether I really recognize in the written record of this message a word of the Living God to his creature man, or in it only a product of Near Eastern literature of antiquity. But if it is really about God’s Word, on whose faithful hearing and obeying it definitely depends, whether the life of man, of the human community succeeds or falls into chaos, then the question arises, what authorizes the Frankfurt Synod to refuse this reality?
In the Frankfurt resolutions nothing less happens here and there than that rebellion of man against his Creator, as the fatal grasp for the fruit of the Forbidden Tree, which in the course of human history has been repeated again and again, and in ever new forms, and has resulted in streams of blood and tears. And now the Frankfurt-German Church is doing the same.
But what is really alarming and dismaying is that the consecrated and commissioned shepherds of the Church, the bishops, have in such large numbers apparently easily forgotten the oath they first swore before their ordination to the priesthood and then at their episcopal consecration before all the people – and before God’s Face. One is reminded, like John Henry Newman more than a hundred years ago, of the 4th/5th century, when the majority of the Eastern bishops of the Arian heresy denied the divinity of Jesus, while Saint Athanasius, persecuted by them, was expelled several times from his episcopal see or had to flee.
Soon the armies of the prophet from Mecca fell upon these churches, leaving them in smoke and ruins….
Translated by LifeSite’s Dr. Maike Hickson
Dr. Maike Hickson was born and raised in Germany. She holds a PhD from the University of Hannover, Germany, after having written in Switzerland her doctoral dissertation on the history of Swiss intellectuals before and during World War II. She now lives in the U.S. and is married to Dr. Robert Hickson, and they have been blessed with two beautiful children. She is a happy housewife who likes to write articles when time permits.
Dr. Hickson published in 2014 a Festschrift, a collection of some thirty essays written by thoughtful authors in honor of her husband upon his 70th birthday, which is entitled A Catholic Witness in Our Time.
Hickson has closely followed the papacy of Pope Francis and the developments in the Catholic Church in Germany, and she has been writing articles on religion and politics for U.S. and European publications and websites such as LifeSiteNews, OnePeterFive, The Wanderer, Rorate Caeli, Catholicism.org, Catholic Family News, Christian Order, Notizie Pro-Vita, Corrispondenza Romana, Katholisches.info, Der Dreizehnte, Zeit-Fragen, and Westfalen-Blatt.
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SO WHAT WILL BECOME THE NEXT. AND MOST DANGEROUS, STAGE OF THE WAR IN THE UKRAINE?
So, what will become the next, and most dangerous, stage III of the war?
By: Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
September 14, 2022
Russia started the war with Ukraine in late February with a shock-and-awe effort to grab Kyiv. It failed both to decapitate the government and absorb half the country in one fell swoop.
Soon the conflict descended into a war of attrition in Eastern Ukraine over the occupied majority of Russian-speaking borderlands.
That deadlock was eventually going to be resolved by relative morale, manpower, and supply.
Would the high-tech weaponry and money of the United States and Europe allow heroic Ukrainian forces to be better equipped than a larger Russian force—drawing on an economy 10 times greater and a population nearly four times larger than Ukraine’s?
After the latest sudden Ukrainian territorial gains and embarrassing Russian retreats, we now know the answer.
Russia may be bigger and richer than Ukraine, but it is not up to the combined resources of the United States, along with the nations of NATO and the European Union.
Most are now in a de facto proxy war with an increasingly overwhelmed Russia. And so far, a circumspect China has not stepped in to try to remedy the Russian dilemma.
So, what will become the next, and most dangerous, stage III of the war?
A heady Ukraine believes it now has the wherewithal to clear out the entire occupied Donbas and turn southward to free Crimea. To complete that agenda of rolling back all Russian aggression since 2014, it may step up hitting strategic targets across the Russian border and on the Black Sea.
Again, what will a nuclear Russia—run by an ailing, desperate autocrat—do when a far smaller Ukraine finally and deservedly humiliates her before a global audience?
Will Putin cut off all European energy supplies to force a European end to supplying Ukraine?
Russia has all but done that. But so far Putin has gained little strategic advantage on the battlefield, despite current European fears of an impending bitter winter.
Will Putin go fully medieval on Ukraine, like the carnage in Chechnya when he leveled Grozny in 2000?
But a European Ukraine is vast compared to tiny Chechnya. And the Chechens even without allies still withstood a decade of savage Russian brutality.
So how will Putin survive his self-created disaster that may have cost him nearly 100,000 casualties, and now risks losing him all the territorial advances from 2014?
Will Russia mobilize its entire army, drop its silly euphemism “special military operation,” and finally try to crush Ukraine with a full Soviet-style assault?
But that escalation might push an already restive Russian population into open and angry defiance.
Can he just admit defeat, slink back home, and stop the massive Russian hemorrhaging?
Yet can Putin take his chances that sacked generals, money-losing oligarchs, and the embarrassed Russian street will fear his bloodstained reach too much to neuter or remove him?
Will Putin instead keep declaring that Russia is not losing to Ukraine, but to the United States and NATO—even though the West is only doing to him what an opportunistic Russia once did to America in both its Vietnam and Afghanistan fiascos
Putin would then keep portraying himself and Russia as the victim of this conflict. He would drone on that the United States, by supplying the Ukrainians weapons, is now the “aggressor”—as our new proxy keeps hitting more targets inside Mother Russia, sinks more ships of the Black fleet, and assassinates more Russian generals.
Putin’s only way to keep his cred, back up his dangerous brinkmanship, and retain power is apparently to play defender of Mother Russia and continue threatening the use of a tactical nuclear weapon—perhaps against the Ukrainian nuclear power complex or Kyiv itself.
That final gambit of an updated version of the Cuban missile crisis is something the American people need to stop simply discounting. Do our leaders know for certain that the man Joe Biden once dubbed a “killer” is merely yesterday’s empty bluffer?
Of course, Putin deserves all he is suffering. And the Ukrainians warrant the world’s thanks for repelling a brutal aggressor.
But that moral and strategic victory is still a very different story from America sliding into a nuclear confrontation with a desperate autocrat. Do the American people support offering up their nuclear umbrella to a non-NATO, former Russian republic?
And not so long ago, the United States advantageously saw Russia as a useful triangulation to the greater threat of Chinese aggression.
Western agendas is that so far they in toto appear mutually exclusive.
Consequently, the question remains: How exactly does the United States all at once avoid the resumption of a Verdun-like, endless bloodbath on the Ukrainian-Russian border, reject any negotiated settlement until Ukraine unambiguously wins the war and expels every Russian from all its territory, prevent a wounded Putin from using a tactical nuclear weapon—and circumvent a head-to-head showdown with Russia and its 7,000 nukes?
Modern-Day Pharisees
By: Judd Garrett
Objectivity is the Objective
September 14, 2022
The two groups in America that are the most often and pervasively mischaracterized by our culture and by mainstream media are Christians and Conservatives. These two groups are not merely presented as caricatures of themselves, but as mirror opposites of their very nature and essence. And it is all done to discredit and even destroy these groups.
Christians are continually mischaracterized as judgmental people who want to throw anyone who does not agree with their beliefs or who engages in behavior that they disapprove of, into the fires of hell for eternity. When in reality, Christianity is possibly the least judgmental and most forgiving religion there is. The entire Christian belief is centered around forgiveness of sins. Jesus came to earth and allowed himself to be tortured, crucified, and killed, as the ultimate sacrifice for us, to forgive us of our sins, and to offer us redemption as a sinner. That is the crux of the entire religion, forgiveness of sins and redemption, not by our own actions but by the grace of God.
Non-judgmental forgiveness is embedded throughout Jesus’ teachings. He taught, “do unto others as you would have done unto you.” He warned, “judge not lest ye be judged.” He commanded, “he, who is without sin, may cast the first stone.” Jesus told the parable of the prodigal son – the story of the young man, who after squandering his inheritance on reckless, extravagant living, was welcomed back into his father’s home with open arms.
Forgiveness, non-judgment, and redemption are integral parts of Christian philosophy. This is not to say that there is not a standard behavior that is expected for Christians to strive to uphold, and if we deviate from it, it is considered a sin. But there is a general belief and understanding among Christians that we are all sinners, saved only by the grace of God. But time and again, the people who want to destroy Christianity, continually tell the world that Christians are unforgiving and judgmental – the exact opposite of what and who we are.
They are projecting their own judgementalism onto us. They are the ones who are unforgiving. They are the ones who promote cancel culture, who do not allow a person to redeem himself for his sins. They are the most judgmental group of people in our society, yet they will claim that Christians are. In their ideology, there is no room for forgiveness, there is no room for redemption. They judge people and deem them either worthy or unworthy.
The very people who are constantly trying to disrupt the binary way of thinking – right and wrong, good and evil, male and female, black and white, have created a very self-serving binary. If you agree with them, then you are a good person, and if you don’t agree with them, then you are evil. There’s no nuance in their approach. If you’re thinking anyway deviates from their orthodoxy, then you deserve to be canceled, and erased from society. Cancel culture is the ultimate and most destructive binary. If you put something up on social media that goes against their way of thinking, it is taken down. There’s no room for a gray area in their mindset, you are either in or you’re out.
It is the same thing for Conservatives. Conservatives are continually mischaracterized by the left and the mainstream media as being the opposite of who they really are. Conservatives are the ones who believe in our Constitution, who believe in our democracy, and who want to protect our election system from fraud. Conservatives are the ones who love America, who are the real patriots. Conservatives are the ones who will defend America from all attacks both foreign and domestic. Conservatives believe in law and order.
The people who are claiming that Conservatives are against our Constitution are the ones who want to destroy our Constitution. They are the ones who are undercutting the first amendment with their government-induced big tech censorship, who want to repeal the second amendment, and who are trampling upon our fourth amendment rights. They are the ones who want to Pack the Supreme Court so the Justices will twist the Constitution to fit their wants and needs.
The people who are claiming that Republicans are against law and order, are the ones who have opened our southern border and allowed tens of thousands of criminal aliens to come into our country. They are the ones who have empowered the drug cartels to control our border and ship tons of fentanyl into this country, killing over a hundred thousand Americans every year. They are the ones who set up sanctuary cities where laws are not enforced against criminal aliens. They are the ones who encouraged five straight months of rioting in our cities. They are the ones who defunded the police and are doing away with cash bail so violent criminals are let back onto the street to commit more violence.
They call Conservatives racist when they are the ones who judge people based solely on the color of their skin. They warn against violent extremists on the right while they support violent leftist extreme groups like Antifa and BLM. They claim the one riot at the Capital was an existential threat to America but stated that the 500 riots which destroyed many of our major cities were necessary and “peaceful protests”. They are the ones who want to hold people today accountable for sins other people of their same skin color committed 155 years ago.
They will tell us that Conservatives are against democracy when they are the ones who have challenged the results of every major election they have lost over the last 20 years. They are the ones who are implementing universal mail-in ballots, unsecured drop boxes, no voter ID, and no signature match, all of which make our elections extremely vulnerable to fraud. They claim that Conservatives are not patriotic and don’t love America whereas the Democrats are actively trying to destroy America. They are the ones who want to erase our history, denigrate our founders, and claim our founding was illegitimate. They are the ones that are trying to destroy the principles and ideals which are the foundation of this country. They are the ones who are tearing down statues of our founders, and publicly disrespecting the American flag and our National Anthem.
As always, they are accusing us of what they’re doing. The devil mixes the truth with his lies. They are masters of that. They live in the world of half-truths. They are trying to turn us against ourselves. That is what they are doing to Christians, and what they are doing to Conservatives. The calling card of the Democrats, the people trying to destroy Conservatives is hypocrisy. But the good news is that Jesus continually called out the hypocrites who were trying to destroy him, and we must stand up to and call out the liars and hypocrites who are trying to destroy us. Hypocrisy is not a new phenomenon. Hypocrisy is fundamental to humanity. Christians have been fighting hypocrites since the days Jesus was walking this planet. And all we can do is continually point out their hypocrisy.
The problem is that these people have no shame of their hypocrisy, no embarrassment of their willful disingenuousness. They only care about the money and power they receive from their hypocrisy. Even though they may appear to be winning, they are not. When Jesus was crucified, at the time, the Pharisees thought they had won, but they had not. Jesus won. Jesus became that much greater in death than in life. The Pharisees were standing in the presence of the living truth, and not only couldn’t recognize the truth, but they also tried to discredit the truth and ultimately killed the truth. Who wants to be that person, the liar, the hypocrite, the weak, who lied to and misrepresented Jesus to take him down to preserve their fleeting power and position? No one wants to go down in history as a Pharisee regardless of what the history books say. And those forces who are deceitfully trying to destroy Christians and Conservatives, are the modern-day Pharisees. And who wants to be a pharisee?
Pope FrancisPhoto by Michael Campanella/Getty Images
Cardinal Brandmuller speaking at the 2019 Rome Life Forum.Steve Jalsevac / LifeSiteNews
ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP 
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