Chick-fil-A has emboldened the LGBT mob.

Patrick B. Craine, "Chick-fil-A has emboldened the LGBT mob" LifeSiteNews (November 29, 2019):

We have sadly decided to boycott Chic-fil-A. Sadly, because we LOVE Chic-fil-A chicken. No one makes better chicken. Much better than KFC or any other vendor. And normally I wouldn't care much where I'm getting my fast food on the road, as long as it's good. I wouldn't care if those making my food are religious, agnostic, or gay. But when an institution stands for traditional Christian family values, is closed on Sundays out of respect for Judeo-Christian sabbath observance, and has "Christian" in its mission statement, but then caves in to anti-Christian lobbies where it’s hard – where the Gospel butts up against our culture of death and sexual licentiousness – they have betrayed their Christian identity. Chic-fil-A is the warning canary in the coal mine, and it just died. Sad. Caveat emptor!

If you’re still defending them, watch this:



[If you would prefer to read a transcript of the video, click here.]

Why I’ve Tuned Out National Public Radio

Why I've Tuned Out National Public Radio
ON THE WORSHIP OF THE MOLOCH OF EQUALITY

By John Lyon | September 2019

One day recently, prompted by programming on National Public Radio (NPR), I undertook a penance I had often threatened myself with on similar provocation but had firmly resisted: I listened to an hour of Rush Limbaugh.

Since 1956 I’ve listened to NPR via various state affiliates from Pennsylvania to Minnesota, including 26 years of broadcasts from Madison, Wisconsin. Over those 63 years, I’ve witnessed the steady drift of NPR’s programming downward and to the Left: the expectable, inevitable, massive movement of most institutions in a democracy.

By some fey magic, NPR manages to continue providing valuable programming: classical music; the narration of vital books; generally useful because informative programs about agricultural, medical, and scientific matters; and even news of events. The slant of commentary about events, however, as well as the choice of topics and sociopolitical pitch of most of its talk-show sessions, is obnoxiously slanted and blatantly partisan. It is sheer “progressive” propaganda. And this is particularly dangerous in a republic degenerating into a democracy.

National Public Radio pleads the cause of radical feminism. (Why isn’t this a form of sexism?) It foments racism by offering outrageous examples of it, all designed to demonstrate that nothing white is right. I can’t recall the last time it covered a case of egregious black-on-white or black-on-black violence. Recently, NPR has been treating listeners to endless harassment over “reparations” — even poetry is called to take sides — because some of our ancestors were here when slavery was legal. How does this bring people together in our society? If genuine reconciliation is to take place, then truly monstrous behavior in the past ought not to be forgotten, but it ought never to be emphasized by public media.

National Public Radio plays about with socialism — a discreet, tentative, middle-class, pleading, speaking-in-euphemisms about what is, in fact, revolutionary. In NPR’s scope, policemen, policing, and, above all, any action carried out by ICE functionaries tend ipso facto to be in the wrong; meanwhile, NPR makes celebrities of chosen criminals.

National Public Radio turned the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh into a circus maximus performance, abetting the pre-judged, thumbs-down verdict of social media in the circus minimus. It played to the galleries about the bad, bad Covington High School students’ oppressing and threatening a poor, unarmed, tom-tom beating “Native American,” when it was, in fact, the tom-tom beater who was attempting to incite an outrage.

Fr. Perrone: a foreboding of the world falling into darkness under some impending, overpowering evil

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, February 17, 2019)

You may wonder from time to time, as I do, where we may be in the line of human history. Are we in its last days? Or are we nearing a time of great tribulation like that which preceded the outbreak of the two great World Wars, when the forces of evil were gathering strength but awareness of them was slight and th strength to resist them wanting? I think about this (as I mused in a recent sermon) with reference to Germany just before its takeover by the Nazi party. There's a feeling of apprehension in the air that some overpowering evil is about to descend upon us -- the USA and the Catholic Church. There have been times of mounting tension in society and in the Church where things somehow worked themselves out without the worst happening. I'm trying to understand if ours is but a passing moment testing our endurance or the prelude to some great catastrophe.

Along comes my reading of the Divine Office -- the prayerbook every priest is obliged to say everyday -- where the following passage is given for this Wednesday past, a portion of Saint Paul's Second Epistle to Timothy. It reads like a prepared script characterizing people of our time in surprisingly accurate detail. "In the last days, dangerous times will come. Men will be lovers of self, covetous, haughty, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, criminal, heartless, faithless, slanderers, incontinent, merciless, unkind, treacherous, stubborn, puffed up with pride, loving pleasure more than God, having a semblance of piety." One would be hard put to amass a better compilation of adjectives to describe people at this time. In another letter, the Apostle writes, "There shall come a time when men will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their onw desire they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears, and will indeed turn away from hearing the truth, but will turn to fables." Translation: people hearing only what they want to hear.

I get tired of the endless regression of things, from bad to worse. No matter where I turn, in education, politics, jurisprudence, the Vatican, and just about anywhere else, good initiatives are shot down, those of good will are stymied or punished, and the wicked go from success to success. Priests doing the things they're supposed to do are being squeezed in on two fronts -- opposed by their parishioners from below and chastised by their superiors from above. "Catholic" politicians promote child killing and sodomy with impunity by the Church and are reelected to office. Abortions can't be stopped. Innocent children are being hopelessly trapped in addictions to electronic media, porn, and in gender uncertainty. Most people seem oblivious to the dissolution of civilized society and to the crisis in the Church. All bad news. The single exception to the barrage of distressing reports is the economy which is doing very well, I'm told. But might this not also be a veiled misfortune signifying that our love of money (Mammon) prevails over every other concern?

I know this is a confused mixture of secular and ecclesiastical woes. And that's the point. They're coming together as in a strange coalition (dare I say, collusion?) such that one wonders whether some nefarious Mastermind is so arranging events in the world and in the Church to conspire in a huge eruption of wickedness incapable of abatement. In that case, "last days" would not be a far-fetched estimation of our present moment. In any case, the times are out of joint. My recourse to this unrelenting assault of evil is to implore God's intervention through more focused and frequent prayers of reparation.

Maybe this alarming message, whatever its intrinsic value, is a good inroad to Septuagesima, the pre-Lenten season which opens today for Latin Mass goers but which can be useful to everyone as the season of penance approaches. Speaking for myself, I'm going to give thought to how my Lenten practices might manage to sway our Lord to bring relief from the evils plaguing us. You also should get mentally ready for Lent now so as to greet its arrival eagerly, like true soldiers ready to do battle for the cause of Christ. Like it or not, you may find yourselves embroiled in the conflict.

Fr. Perrone

P.S. Before I take leave of you, don't forget Dr. Blosser's philosophy class today (Sunday) in the lounge after the noon Mass. Feed your mind!

Multiculturalism's cheap rationalizations of non-Western pathologies

Fr. George Rutler (Weekly Column, July 8, 2018):

There is no limit to the excuses ideologues will make to promote theory over fact. Consider attempts to justify Aztec human sacrifice in the interest of “multiculturalism.” Archeological discoveries of massive numbers of victims are being explained away as not really significant. The estimable scholar, Victor Davis Hanson, has written: “For the useful idiot, multiculturalism is supposedly aimed at ecumenicalism and hopes to diminish difference by inclusiveness and non-judgmentalism. But mostly it is a narcissistic fit, in which the multiculturalist offers a cheap rationalization of non-Western pathologies . . .”

Like hyperbole about the Spanish Inquisition, refuted by the latest scholarship, the “Black Legend” would have us believe that the Spaniards destroyed a benign and creative civilization in Mesoamerica. The Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún, a missionary and pioneer anthropologist who translated the Gospel into the Aztec Nahuatl language, represents the best of a not unblemished Hispanic cultural imperative that led to the abolition of human sacrifice, though at a cost, for many Spaniards were cannibalized by the Acolhuas, Aztec allies. Similarly, it was the influence of Christian missionaries like William Carey that banned the Hindu practice of “sati,” the cremation of widows on their husbands’ funeral pyres in the Indian principalities. Between 1815 and 1818, 839 widows were burnt alive in Bengal province alone. A general ban was enforced by Queen Victoria in 1861, the year her own husband died, but sati was still practiced in Nepal until 1920.

One estimate has 80,400 Aztec captives sacrificed in 1487 at the re-consecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlán. Although the actual figure may have been lower, the cutting out of hearts from victims still alive is an intolerable barbarity, graphically depicted in the film Apocalypto, which shows such rites among the earlier Mayan people. A mixed-race descendant of Cortez, Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxóchitl, calculated that 20% of the infants and children in the general “Mexica” area were sacrificed annually to appease rain deities, along with men and women sacrificed in honor of the serpentine god Quetzalcóatl, the jaguar god Tezcatlipoca and the aquiline warrior god Huitzilopochtli.

In the sixteenth century, Montaigne, anticipating Dryden’s “noble savage,” sought to cut the primitive cultures a little slack because he saw barbaric acts among his own European peoples. Those who were scandalized by his analogy then are like those today who commit atrocities under the veneer of progressivism. In 1992, a writer in the leftist Die Zeit of Hamburg rhetorically bent over backwards to deny that the Mesoamericans had committed human sacrifice. We know what happened in his own country among the National Socialist eugenicists.

Sacrifices on the altars of ancient temples cannot match the millions of infants aborted today in sterile clinics. Pope Francis has said, “Last century, the whole world was scandalized by what the Nazis did to purify the race. Today, we do the same thing but with white gloves.” Perhaps five centuries from now, revisionists will deny that abortion was ever legal.

Manners in the presence of others and in the Real Presence: "Zeal for Your house ..."

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, May 6, 2018):

Zeal for Your house consumes Me.

Walking along outdoors on one of those fine sunny days of the past week, discreetly saying my rosary the while, I caught sight of a young woman approaching me from the opposite direction. Quickly letting go of the beads concealed in my pocket, I readied myself to tip my cap (visor worn forward, mind you) in a gesture of respect I had often seen my father make to women in similar circumstances. To no avail. The young lady, perhaps fearing an untoward glance, kept her eyes firmly riveted to the ground.

Many courtesies once commonplace are now passé. The aforementioned baseball cap reminds me how youth are generally unmindful of what a breech of good manners it is for men to wear hats indoors, a fortiori at the table. Equally vanishing from the scene are young couples walking together on the sidewalk with the male on the outside, that is, on the street side, indicating chivalrous protection of his consort. The drinking of water, in full view of others, from plastic bottles flared high, with one's throat strained crane-like towards the heavens is perhaps beyond the capability of people in our time to consider as discourteous, however so mildly it may be so. Discourtesies so ubiquitous as now to be regarded as benign if not fully accepted may include the public picking of one's teeth, cutting or painting the nails, the yawn full agape. Needless to add are certain bodily noises -- amongst which I confine myself to belching and spitting -- which are best discharges in private chambers or, at best, in the seclusion of familial quarters.

My subject matter is the coarsening of good manners as representing a diminishing respect for others. (Manners, let it be said, can be overdone, even unto a fastidious prissiness, unbecoming for a man -- dare I invoke the outmoded phrase, for a gentleman?). As desirable as it is for rational beings to cultivate good habits respecting the presence of one's fellows, yet my primary motivation in writing on this rare, perhaps indignifying subject, is not in the hope of rekindling polite conduct towards one's "fellow man" (a contrived, feminist faux pas) but rather to bring attention to the indifference if not ill-treatment by Catholics in our time towards His Majesty in the tabernacles of our churches. Vanishing is the genuflection, that posture whichuniquely evidences both faith in the Real Presence and adoration of Christ's divinity. Even the less satisfactory curtsy or nod of the head towards the place of His reposition has become scarce. The general rule is to disregard God sacramentally in-residence and to carry on coram sacratissimum Sacramentum (in the presence of the most holy Sacrament) as if He were not there. Whether this is do to malice, to disbelief, or to the wide-embracing ignorance of right doctrine and practice by Catholics is hard to determine. But the resulting insult to a God who did not disdain to endure the crucifixion for the salvation of mankind cannot be denied.

Recently I visited a Catholic church where people were gathered to hear a concert -- a thing permitted under certain conditions, among which is the removal of the Blessed Sacrament and Its telltale sign, the sanctuary lamp. These prescribed measures were, to all appearances, not observed. As a result, not only was there the ordinary, moderate-tones chitchat of the audience before a performance but even the inducement to chaos by the evening's MC, as is now the prevailing custom in many a parish church, that everyone should turn to greet his neighboring pewsters on all sides. I was heartbroken as I thought of the Lord in His self-induced imprisonment to beckon a voluntary profession of faith in and respect for His divine Presence. While surely not all attendees of the musical event were Catholics, yet by no outward sign of theirs was witness given of their belief in the Divine Presence. Or, is that the point, namely, that faith in the Real Presence of Christ -- Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Holy Sacrament -- is absent? Have we come to this state?

Zeal for Your house consumes Me," our Lord lamented, when He ousted the money-changers from the Temple (Jn 2), abridging words of the psalm (68:9) which adds, "and the insults of those who insult You have fallen on Me." I too have some of Christ's "zeal," and I feel embarrassment and sorrow that my Lord is treated dismissively by His own. "Be silent before the Lord, all flesh, for He has roused Himself from His holy dwelling place" (Zech. 2:13) -- that admonition was made in reference to God's rather vague manner of presence in the Jerusalem Temple. Yet what have we in our churches but the very Incarnate Son of God under sacramental signs?

I insist that in our parish church the Lord not be abused by "outrage, sacrilege, and indifference" (to quote the familiar prayer). Avoid talking to your neighbor in church or, if the matter warrants it, in a whisper. The Lord has "zeal" for the sanctity of His house.

"Be still before the Lord!" (Ps. 36, Vulgate).

Fr. Perrone

The weight of a priest's examen: How will I be judged by history, by God?

Fr. Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, April 22, 2018)

Recently I watched a video about the Stalin years in the Soviet Union. It was concerned with the 'other' interest of my life, music. The backdrop to the story is that during the height of the Communist era everything was under the control of the central government which, in turn, meant under Joseph Stalin. In terms of music, there was a Soviet Composer's Union which promoted patriotic, that is, Soviet, themes of national pride, (forced) happiness, and (feigned) comradery among the peoples of the USSR. Along with this artificially induced patriotism there was a suppression of any music which was deemed modernistic or, in the language of the day, formalistic. By this means of name-labeling, certain composers of modern music were held in check by Soviet controls. The man Stalin appointed to head this union of composers was the subject of the DVD I saw. In the historical footage he was shown at the height of his power delivering inflated fustian (pompous talking) about the high ideals of Soviet nationalistic music with condemnation of types of music that were being performed in those decadent western countries (such as the USA). At the time of the making of the DVD, the Soviet empire had collapsed and this same man who had once been Stalin's appointee was being interviewed. It was a sad spectacle, in some ways. Now that the great Enemy (Communism) had been defeated, what was one to say for having stood by, complicit in the oppressive Soviet system, an accomplice in fact of the brutal Stalinist regime? Thus was the man interviewed in the post-Soviet era.

This DVD affected me greatly, not only because of the musical interest I had in it but also because of the significance it holds for me as a priest in those disturbing times. What will history say about us, and about me specifically, when at some future time the Church will have settled down (God grant it!) and there will be a return to orthodoxy and sanity in the Church? I imagine an interviewer questioning me about what I was doing and not doing during those years (the present time) and why I had not been more outspoken about abuses in the Church, about the failure of the hierarchy to defend Christ's truth and their contentment to be silent bystanders as corruption rotted away the faith and morals of the Catholic faithful. "How come you, Father Perrone, did not come out and speak more forcefully against the tidal wave of corruption?" This is the question I imagine being posed to me in some future time. The dilemma for me now, as it was for many in the Communist era, is whether it is prudent to be vocal in condemnation or in working in more subtle, behind-the-scenes ways. Prudence is needed to know how much to say at a given time and when to say it. Should, for example, I have spoken out any more forthrightly against things such as contraception, gay 'marriage,' or the troubling messages purportedly made by Pope Francis? Have I been wimpy? Certainly, at the moment many priests and bishops in our country have been anywhere from timid to cooperative in the evil things taking place in our day. What then will happen when this era will have passed and history will pass its judgment upon them? While I wonder about this I am particularly disturbed about what will be leveled against me for not having been a more outstanding critic and defender of truth.

I know of priests who have stood apart and been bold to challenge the mediocrity of our leadership. They have suffered the consequences of their valor. But in the end, and especially in view of the Last Judgment, I wonder how will I stand against accusations of my moderation or my cowardice. Will I be deemed a betrayer of moral and religious truth? Do I need to be more clear or forceful to make my parishioners comprehend doctrinal truth and to practice Catholic living? Or am I failing them by my weakness?

It's always difficult to assess oneself in the present moment, to know that one is pursuing the right path. If I were to deliver a weekly diatribe against the evils of our time in the world and in the Church, would I have been acting rightly? Or are my people already in the know and I only need to be subtly nuanced in condemning errors and the deceptions that cause many to err? I recall Saint John Paul II's first address to the world after his election: "Do not be afraid!"

This reflection of mine also concerns you as parents, citizens of this country, and members of the Catholic Church. How much must you be a vocal "witness"? If you speak up imprudently you may do more harm than good. If you fail to act at all you may be betraying Christ. This is the dilemma.

God's mercy is for this life. When we will finally appear before God's judgment seat, we should expect only justice, what is neither too lenient nor too severe. Each will get exactly what is his due, not more or less, according to what he has done or failed to do.

Wile we have time in this life let us do as much good as we can and repair for our evils. And let us not fear to help our relatives and neighbours to do the same. Much is expected of us.

Fr. Perrone

"The Corporate War on Free Speech"

G. K. Chesterton once said "The problem with capitalism is too few capitalists," thereby pointing out that not only socialism but capitalism could be oppressive if unconstrained by the moral respect for the individual, the family, and what Pius IX called the Principle of Subsidiarity. In his book, The Church and the Libertarian, Christopher A. Ferrara also points out that it is not only big government, but a triumvirate of big government, big business, and big finance that serves to create a "market-driven" political economy where the the Church has no business intruding with its moral imperatives. The other side of that equation is that the "free marketplace" of business and finance isn't a value-free "naked public square," to borrow the phrase of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, but a place now straightjacketed with the "politically correct" values of the left. Ryszard Legutko argues this in his masterful book, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies (2016). And now Jim Goad argues, in "The Corporate War on Free Speech" (Taki's Magazine, March 5, 2018), that it is not only government-sponsored PC censorship that threatens the free marketplace of ideas, but, even more, the private sector's corporations that have taken up the left's ideological war on the traditional ideals of freedom of thought and free speech in the public forum. And when "Political Correctness Goes to the Vatican" (The Philosophical Salon and the Los Angeles Review of Books, December 25, 2017), one wonders what traditional institutions remain to oppose the totalitarian grip of leftist ideology and its dream of jackboot repression of all opposition.

The Church as champion of "bourgeois religion"?

R. R. Reno, "Bourgeois Religion" (First Things, December, 2017), offers an excoriating assessment of the Catholic hierarchy today. Excerpts follow. (Legere, et orare):

The Catholic Church’s retreat from anything resembling clarity about sexual morality does not surprise me. It’s been a long time coming. Catholicism and other forms of establishment Christianity in the West tend to take the form of bourgeois religion. That term denotes the fusion of church culture with the moral consensus held by the good, respectable people who set the tone for society as a whole. In the aftermath of the sexual revolution, that consensus shifted. For a long time now it has been socially acceptable to divorce and contracept. Soon thereafter it was OK to cohabitate, and then the good and responsible people who run things adopted an affirmative attitude toward gay sex. During all this, the same consensus became hostile to those who say otherwise. It became “cruel,” “hateful,” and “bigoted” to call something wrong that the bourgeois consensus now deems right. In this way, the good and responsible people did not just accommodate themselves to the sexual revolution; they took ownership of it.

Amid this change, most Catholic bishops and priests have been disoriented. Not too long ago, they were happy chaplains of the bourgeois, the good people, who tended to affirm the moral code that the Church taught. As the sexual revolution worked its way through elite culture, bishops and priests were eager to sustain their place as chaplains of the establishment consensus.... Do the loving thing! This noble and conveniently vague imperative offers wide latitude. In the smug and self-complimenting culture of the bourgeois, that meant pretty much anything they did was by definition loving. These sorts of people are always seeking to do what’s best!

.. Reconciling the Catholic Church with the sexual revolution is necessary in order to preserve Catholicism as a bourgeois religion. Unless this is done, more and more of the good and responsible people will come to regard the Church as a regressive, harmful force in society, a source of repression and bigotry that is antithetical to the spirit of inclusion and affirmation that promotes human flourishing. This is especially obvious in the controversy surrounding divorce, remarriage, and communion. These are good, sensitive people trying to make the best of a difficult situation! How can the Church deny them communion? The same is true for those who use artificial means of contraception or who are committed to another person of the same sex—which is why it’s reasonable to think the pontificate will seek to muddy the Church’s teaching on those issues as well ...

Christianity orients us upward and toward the divine. Bourgeois religion is horizontal. It takes its cues from the consensus of the moment, the opinions of the good and responsible people. This reduces Christianity to a political religion organized to buttress the status quo. The Francis papacy largely follows this pattern, making it quite predictable. We can count on Pope Francis to talk about the poor in exactly the same way that people do in Berkeley, which means with great earnestness and little consequence.

This papacy is not hard to figure out. Pope Francis and his associates echo the pieties and self-complimenting utopianism of progressives. That’s not surprising. The Jesuit charism is multifaceted and powerful. I count myself among those profoundly influenced by the spiritual genius of St. Ignatius. Yet there’s no disputing that for centuries Jesuits have shown great talent in adjusting the gospel to suit the powerful. And so, I think the European establishment can count on the Vatican to denounce the populism currently threatening its hold on power. I predict that this papacy will be a great defender of migrants and refugees—until political pressures on the European ruling class become so great that it shifts and becomes more “realistic,” at which point the Vatican will shift as well. What is presently denounced will be permitted; what is presently permitted will be denounced.

This will not end well. The West has seen a long season of loosening, opening up, and deconsolidation, of which the sexual revolution is but a part. Our establishment is committed to sustaining this consensus. This is why it has been at war with Catholic intransigence, which is based on the Church’s insistence that she answer to timeless, unchanging, and demanding truths. It’s foolish for the papacy to make a peace treaty with this establishment consensus. It’s theologically unworkable. It’s also politically inept. For the establishment consensus is failing, and that includes the sexual revolution, which made many promises that were not fulfilled.

Related: Link

Christian defeatism?

Our underground news correspondent, Guy Noir - Private Eye, recently sent me this:

There is widespread misgivings in every church about the increasing evidence of Christian defeatism. A monthly periodical created a sensation with an article entitled, “Have Christians lost Their Nerve?” Most of the bishops whom I met in Rome had read his article and none was inclined to dispute its depressing conclusions.... One feared that the ecumenical movement was taking what little was left of the fight out of the Church:

“Christ said ‘They will throw you out of the synagogues.’ Today we priests are being invited to preach in the synagogues. Too many of our Catholics are like the pale tepid lot who Dante said were not fit for Heaven and too cheap for Hell. He wasn’t going to bother to speak about them. Just look at them and pass on. The great word now is ‘Dialogue,' which means futile conversation between Christians of different communions, none of whom has any real belief in anything which he professes. Another popular word is ‘Encounter, which means meeting God rather less then half way.”

Arnold Lunn, 1968

New interview with Bishop Athanasius Schneider

Steve Skojec, "Video: New Interview With Bishop Schneider" (1P5, November 20, 2017):

The humble integrity of the man who played Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons

"Scofield himself was baptized into the faith of his Catholic mother, although he always felt somewhat divided in spiritual matters since his father was Anglican. He was known for being 'a true country gentleman' who put his marriage, family, and home life first and never allowed the fame of his career to go to his head. A classically trained Shakespearian actor and resident of a small village in Sussex, he did not even go in person to collect his Academy Award for Best Actor. He also rejected the offer of knighthood three times, believing in the maxim 'Never the actor before the part he plays.' After his death, many of Scofield's fellow villagers knew next to nothing about his fame in the acting world, simply regarding him as one of their own, the nice old man who always supported local theater productions. Perhaps it is this abiding combination of humility and intellectual honesty, and recognition of the important things of life that truly made him perfectly destined to bring the character of Thomas More to life on screen."

Avellina Balestri, "Silence Louder Than Words: Looking back at A Man for All Seasons," The Latin Mass: The Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Fall 2017), p. 58.

My dear Wormwood, ...

... I note what you say about guiding your patient’s reading and taking care that he sees a good deal of his materialist friend. But are you not being a trifle naïf ? It sounds as if you supposed that argument was the way to keep him out of the Enemy’s clutches. That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier. At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning. But what with the weekly press and other such weapons we have largely altered that. Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn’t think of doctrines as primarily “true” or “false”, but as “academic” or “practical”, “outworn” or “contemporary”, “conventional” or “ruthless”. Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don’t waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true ! Make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous — that it is the philosophy of the future. That’s the sort of thing he cares about.

The trouble about argument is that it moves the whole struggle onto the Enemy’s own ground. He can argue too; whereas in really practical propaganda of the kind I am suggesting He has been shown for centuries to be greatly the inferior of Our Father Below. By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient’s reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result? Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favour, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it “real life” and don’t let him ask what he means by “real”.

Related: [From C. S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters (New York: Macmillan Co., 1947), pp. 11-12; republished online (Samizdat University Press, 2016).]

Poverty of spirit: different Papal styles

In his Vicars of Christ: A History of the Popes(Arcadia: Tumblar House, 2014), 380-90, Charles Coulombe makes the following insightful observation about the difference in 'style' between Benedict XVI and Francis:

The generation of westerners of which [Francis] is a part was marked -- in Church, State, and indeed, in every field -- by what can only be called a sort of "personalization" of authority. That is to say, that the traditional division in perception between an office and the current holder of that office -- which allowed people of wildly differing, sometimes even opposed, views to collaborate out of shared respect for the office under whose direction they functioned -- has been blurred or even obliterated. Such folk, when in authority, tend to downgrade or do away with traditional symbols of their office while emphasizing their own personalities in pursuit of some nebulous "authenticity." So it is that morning dress and uniforms disappear from presidential inauguration and legislatives openings, and royals love to appear in casual wear. The difficulty with such an approach is that it tends to weaken respect for the office in the eyes of its subjects, who in turn begin to believe that their loyalty to it is dependent purely on their personal feelings for the occupant of the moment. Seeing the problems this had created, Benedict XVI began to restore the symbolic side of the Papacy, for all that formalism and display ran extremely counter to his nature. But it is not an issue that one of Francis's generation could be expected to understand -- quite the contrary.... Despite the lack of tiara noted earlier, piece by piece [Pope Benedict] restored bits of the papal wardrobe that his immediate predecessors had discarted: the fur-lined mozzetta, the camauro, the fanon, and -- most annoying to some -- the traditional red shoes, symbolizing the fact that as Pope he walked in the footsteps of the martyrs.

Commenting on this passage, Prof. Peter A. Kwasniewski writes about Benedict:

This humble Bavarian who shied away from the limelight saw that it was necessary to elevate and accentuate the sacramental iconicity of the pontiff in order to move beyond the cult of personality inadvertently started by John XXIII and vastly augmented in the charismatic athlete, actor, poet, and playwright of John Paul II. With Pope Francis, we see a return both of the cult of personality and of the false conception of poverty, this time applied not only to liturgy but also to doctrine itself.

By "poverty of doctrine," Kwasniewski explains, "I refer to the superficiality, messiness, ambiguities, contradictions, and unclarity of this pope's teaching, in contrast to the rich truthfulness of those of his predecessors who take seriously the Lord's command to 'let what you say be simply 'yes' or 'no' (Mt 5:37); cf. 2 Cor. 1:17-19, Jas. 5:12. (Peter A. Kwasniewski, "True Poverty of Spirit in the Splendor of Worship," The Latin Mass: The Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Summer 2017), p. 14.

The impact of Catholic culture on Hemingway

Hemingway rejected the sentimental piety of his mother and the liberal 'social gospel' of the Methodism in which he was raised in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park. After witnessing the brutalities of war in Europe, he could no longer accept the conceits about the 'perfectibility of man' found in his erstwhile suburban Methodist religious culture.

Hemingway was not, however, insensitive to religious ideas and practices -- particularly those found in Catholic cultures -- as is abundantly clear from Matthew Nickel's "Young Hemingway's Wound and Conversion" (Pilgrim: A Journal of Catholic Experience, 2013), excerpted and adapted from the first chapter of his recent work, Hemingway’s Dark Night: Catholic Influences and Intertextualities in the Work of Ernest Hemingway (Wickford, RI: New Street Communications, 2013).

One of the most striking early remarks by Hemingway is in a letter to Ernest Walsh, dated January 2, 1926, in which he refers to himself a Catholic in connection with the Sacrament of extreme unction given to him on the battlefield:

If I am anything I am a Catholic. Had extreme unction administered to me as such in July 1918 and recovered. So guess I am a super-catholic.... Am not what is called a ‘good’ catholic.... But cannot imagine taking any other religion seriously.

Nickel then observes:

It is impossible to know exactly what occurred on the battlefield between Hemingway and the priest, but regardless, there is ample evidence that Hemingway practiced Catholic rituals and that he talked and wrote to others about being a Catholic after World War I. Also, the results of a canonical inquest into Hemingway’s standing in the Catholic Church by the Archdiocese of Paris – which on April 25, 1927 reported he was “certified a Catholic in good standing” -- are telling.

One cannot, of course, sidestep the brute fact of his subsequent depression and suicide in Idaho in 1961. But there is clearly more than meets the eye in the standard secular accounts of Hemingway's life and work.

[Hat tip to Christopher Blosser]

“No Enemies to the Left” [pas d’ennemis à gauche] — Still!

By Kenneth D. Whitehead

In July-August 2001, Kenneth D. Whitehead, R.I.P., a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education, was a writer living in Falls Church, Virginia, and a Contributing Editor of the NOR. His latest book was One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic: The Early Church Was the Catholic Church (Ignatius, 2000).

Ed. Note: Throughout 2017, in commemoration of our fortieth year of publication, we are featuring one article per issue from the NOR’s past. This article originally appeared in our July-August 2001 issue (volume LXVIII, number 7) and is presented here unabridged. Copyright © 2001.

Ideological slogans might not always seem to be very important. Sometimes, however, they can reveal basic and persistent mindsets. This is the case with the slogan that originated in the French Revolution, “No enemies to the Left.” Students of European politics will recognize that this slogan has persisted, and that the ideas behind it still apply to today’s politics.

In his 1928 classic, The French Revolution: A Monarchist History, Pierre Gaxotte describes the inexorable logic of revolutionary “progress”:

The revolutionary period was characterized by allowing successive avant-garde parties or factions to take political power while riots and disturbances in the streets dictated the actual government policies that were adopted. Against the royal court and the privileged classes, the members of the National Assembly appealed to the turbulent sectors of the capital. Even while privately deploring the excesses committed from July 13 on, they closed their eyes to them because they wanted to hold in reserve the power of the clubs and of the streets. Thus they became prisoners of the alliance they had made; they became prisoners of the formula “no enemies to the left” (pas d’ennemis à gauche).

The relative moderates initially responsible for getting the Estates General convoked in order to deal with the financial crisis of the French monarchy were very soon shunted aside by the more radical elements, who quickly resorted to extra-legal means to convert the Estates General into a National Assembly. These revolutionaries in the Assembly soon fell from power, however, giving way to yet more radical elements. Each successive party or faction that came to power faced the same ongoing, volatile revolutionary situation.

Continuing agitation in the country at large, but especially in Paris, kept the streets, the press, the factions, and the clubs in constant ferment. What was taken to be public opinion marched relentlessly forward. Yesterday’s impossible, unthinkable measure became today’s “idea whose time has come”; yesterday’s progressive Assembly member became today’s reactionary, if not traitor to the cause. The revolutionary mechanism ground mercilessly on.

Gaxotte correctly identifies one of the reasons why the more radical revolutionary elements were repeatedly able to displace the successively outmoded “progressives”: In a revolutionary climate, where events are thought to be leading ineluctably to human “liberation,” a “better world,” and the perfecting of the human condition, the more radical forces not only exhibit more consistency and determination toward attaining these ends, they also come to occupy the perceived moral high ground — they are the ones who appear truly dedicated to the cause, and thereby usually gain at least short-term popular support. Meanwhile, those who are more moderate and potentially more reasonable become awed or intimidated by the zeal of the zealots and tend to yield to them.

If, by definition, the Revolution is going to usher in freedom, eliminate oppression and injustice, and create a better world, then those who are more committed, energetic, and intolerant of any kind of compromise with injustice and oppression acquire a considerable psychological and moral advantage — while those who are or have become more lukewarm about the cause, or who, at the very least, have become concerned about their jobs or careers, can no longer effectively oppose the zealots and the true believers.

It is true that power relationships and the abilities and opportunities of individuals, as well as a host of other factors, play important roles in how a particular revolutionary situation develops; but if the whole aim of the Revolution is to clear away the obstacles on the road to human liberation, progress, and a better world, then those least deterred by moral or other considerations in the face of the obstacles encountered will be out in front of others who might have second thoughts, or even scruples, or who are otherwise deterred by various obstacles.

These are among the reasons why, in a revolutionary situation, there are “no enemies to the Left.” For it is the Left, after all, that by definition represents where the Revolution is supposed to go.

Mainline media plagiarizes Mad magazine: "Dear Time editors: The Kremlin is not a church. Dear CNN politicos: Churches are not mosques"

As Guy Noir - Private Eye observed recently: "Remember when big news weeklies had religion reporters of the caliber of Kenneth Woodward? Instead of twenty-somethings who have never worked a day outside of media in their lives?

"I do, vaguely. It was a time now shrouded in mists, a time when the phrase when 'biased news' was heard but a phrase like 'fake news' would have been laughed at... I have an MA in Journalism. At this juncture in history I view it as pretty much worthless. SAD!"

He then referred to this: Terry Mattingly's "Dear Time editors: The Kremlin is not a church. Dear CNN politicos: Churches are not mosques" (GetReligion, May 18, 2017).

Trump's Religious Freedom Order: "Woefully inadequate"

John Stonestreet and Roberto Rivera, "BreakPoint: President Trump's Religious Freedom Order" (BreakPoint, May 5, 2017):

President Trump’s long-anticipated order on religious freedom reminds us that salvation won’t come on Air Force One.

Yesterday, on the National Day of Prayer, President Trump signed an executive order on religious liberty.

Unfortunately, though it was a “first step,” it was a small one, an order Ryan Anderson of the Heritage Foundation called “woefully inadequate.”

Now, let me be clear: there are things in the order worth praising. The president said that “No American should be forced to choose between the dictates of the federal government and the tenets of their faith.”

I couldn’t agree more. And I’m thankful that at least so far this administration, unlike the last one, isn’t forcing that choice on Americans. Still, protecting religious freedom requires more than just noble sentiments. And here is where the executive order disappoints. After directing the federal government to “vigorously enforce Federal law’s robust protections for religious freedom,” the measures set forth in the order are, well, less than vigorous.

The order instructs the Secretaries of the Treasury, Labor, and HHS to “consider amending existing regulations” to address “conscience-based objections” to the HHS mandate.

Words like “consider” aren’t exactly a guarantee that anything will change. As Ryan Anderson told The Atlantic, the “regulatory relief” promised to groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor may very well amount to, “Well, you have to do it, because [the Supreme Court] told you to do it,” but, it “doesn’t move the ball” on religious liberty.

Nor does the emphasis on the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits churches and other charitable organizations from endorsing political candidates.

First, the Johnson Amendment is bad law, but it’s rarely, if ever, enforced. So the order effectively tells the IRS to continue doing what it is already doing. Second, the inability to endorse candidates from the pulpit on Sunday isn’t the problem with religious freedom in this country. The problem is the increasing inability of Christians and other people of religious conviction to practice their faith Monday through Saturday.

Yesterday’s events suggest that, as I said after the election, the incoming administration has offered us a reprieve on religious freedom, but not a champion. Or as Chuck Colson often put it, salvation doesn’t arrive on Air Force One.

So, with or without the executive order we really wanted, we have to know this: The case for religious freedom must be made both in our churches and over our backyard fences. Even had we gotten the executive order many of us had hoped for, it would have been, at best a temporary help.

Why? Because our cultural understanding of religious freedom is currently not strong enough to offer or to sustain a long-term political solution. Like the understanding of marriage was lost in the cultural imagination way before Obergefell, so the understanding of religious freedom has been lost in the culture. Many are just frankly ignorant about what the free exercise of religion means and why our founders thought it so important.

For most Americans, religious freedom means the ability to “attend the church of your choice.” The logical corollary of this would be, “what happens in church stays in church.”

Of course, if Christians took that idea seriously, there would be a lot fewer religious hospitals, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, etc. Government can’t even begin to fill the vacuum left should these institutions be forced out of business.

Americans must be reminded that believers ought not be made to choose between obeying their conscience and serving their neighbor. And it would help if Christians understood this better. In too many churches, being a Christian is about how God can make your life better, not how you can work with God to make the invisible kingdom visible.

This is where the battle for religious freedom will be fought, and either won or lost, no matter who sits in the Oval Office.

Important: Review of Rod Dreher's The Benedict Option

The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation, by Rod Dreher, Sentinel Press, 2017, 262 pp. Reviewed by Sacerdos Romanus at Rorate Caeli, April 24, 2017:

We would not usually be inclined to read a formal schismatic’s thoughts on how Christians should comport themselves in the secular world. But two things persuaded us make an exception for Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option. The first was a favorable mention of the book by the Rt. Rev. Abbot Philip Anderson of the traditionalist Benedictine monastery at Clear Creek. The second was the bitter dismissal of the book by many mainstream Catholic pundits. And we were not disappointed. While we would agree with the criticisms of some tradition-minded writers, we find that overall Dreher’s analysis of the current situation in Western Europe and North America is accurate, and his suggestions for a practical response to the situation sensible. In fact, Dreher’s insights can very easily be developed into an argument for Catholic Traditionalism and against the anti-traditionalism of the Catholic mainstream since Vatican II. Read more >>

If There's an Antichrist, What About an Antimary?

LEFT: Michelangelo, “The Fall of Adam and Eve and their Expulsion from the Garden” from the Sistine Chapel. RIGHT: Master of the Life of the Virgin, “Christ on the Cross with Mary, John and Mary Magdalene”, between 1465 and 1470.

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Carrie Gress, "If There's an Antichrist, What About an Antimary?" (National Catholic Register, January 27, 2017): No matter how strong the “spirit of antimary” may be, Mary still remains the most powerful woman in the world:

While researching my latest book, The Marian Option: God’s Solution to a Civilization in Crisis (Tan Books, May 2017), I was struck by a new theological concept. I kept running across the notion that Mary is the New Eve—an idea that goes back to the early Church Fathers. Mary as the New Eve is the female complement to Christ, the New Adam. In Scripture, St. John speaks of an antichrist as a man, but also as a movement that is present throughout history (1 John 4:3, 2 John 1:7). This got me thinking: if there is an antichrist, perhaps there is a female complement, an antimary?

What, then, would an antimary movement look like, exactly? Well, these women would not value children. They would be bawdy, vulgar, and angry. They would rage against the idea of anything resembling humble obedience or self-sacrifice for others. They would be petulant, shallow, catty, and overly sensuous. They would also be self-absorbed, manipulative, gossipy, anxious, and ambitious. In short, it would be everything that Mary is not.

While behavior like this has been put under a microscope because of the Women’s March on Washington, D.C., the trend of women-behaving-badly is nothing new. There is, however, ample evidence that we witnessing something, because of its massive scale, quite different from run-of-the-mill vice seen throughout history.

The treatment of motherhood is one of the first signs that we are dealing with a new movement. Mothers (both spiritual and biological) are a natural icon of Mary – to help others know who Mary is by their generosity, patience, compassion, peace, intuition, and ability to nurture souls. Mary’s love (and the love of mothers) offers one of the best images of what God’s love is like – unconditional, healing, and deeply personal.

The last few decades have witnessed the subtle erasing of the Marian icon in real women. First through the pill, then the advent of abortion, motherhood has been on the chopping block. Motherhood has become dispensable, to that point that today the broader culture doesn’t bat an eye when a child is adopted by two men.

Signposts in the historical erosion in French and Québécois Catholicism

Jean Louis Clement:

"The French bishops in the interwar years have favored the elaboration of a political theology which up to 1930, they rooted in the sovereignty of God, Creator of the Universe, and which later on, they built on the idea of the human person, at the service of which stand both society and State. They endeavored to promote that theology since 1919, but very specially in the thirties, in the thick of the parliamentary crisis. In the hope of countering the blossoming of political doctrines scorning the concept of 'person' the Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops offered the faithful a political catechism drafted by the Abbe Daniel Joseph Lallement under the Daladier government. The episcopate entered into negotiations for a project that aimed at rooting in the conscience obedience to the Authority."

Anthony Sistrom:

Prior to the forties Cardinal Louis Billot, SJ spoke for the bishops. Vide his scathing article, "Liberalism" online in English. In the wake of the condemnation of Action francaise, personalism became the philosophy of the moment. No one has more eloquently critiqued personalism than Charles de Koninck (the only lay peritus at Vatican II). His article "On the primacy of the Common Good against the Personalists" (1943) is online. The date is important because the Quebec bishops had just introduced a marriage preparation program based on personalism that would spell the end of the Quebec traditional family.