Topic: Pro-Abortion Catholic Politicians Receiving Communion

[Advisory: I recently received the following contained in an email]

Statement:

Nobody who is obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin should be given Holy Communion. But pro-abortion politicians are obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin for, by being politicians, their support of abortion — the murder of babies in the womb — is an extremely grave sin, and it is publicly manifest. Moreover, they do so in a manner that is obstinate to the clear teachings of the Church, and they persevere in this; thus, they are obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin. Thus, again, nobody who publicly supports abortion should be given Holy Communion.

Justification:

Greetings in the Lord to the faithful of Christ and His Holy Church. The greatest evil, at least on the natural level, in our world today is, by far, the massive slaughter of God’s children in the womb through abortion. With each abortion, an innocent child’s life is snuffed out, and, with legalized abortion, the number of these murders of children in the womb is mind-numbing (an estimated 50 million children murdered by abortion throughout the world each year — over 100,000 daily!) For good reason, then, does the Catechism of the Catholic Church call this sin an “abominable crime.” With each abortion, not only is an innocent baby’s life ended but, along with that, many other lives are deeply devastated: We priests know all too well the indescribably deep pain inflicted on the hearts and souls of the mothers and fathers of these children (to whom our hearts go out with deep fatherly affection) as well as so many others wounded by this horrible scourge, a scourge that is of — or beyond — biblical proportions. “Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils and shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan: And the land was polluted with blood” (Psalm 106: 37–38).

With all this in mind concerning the absolute horror and injustice of abortion, we, the PFC and our supporting clergy, want the faithful to know that Catholic politicians who publicly support this mass murder of God’s children ought not be given Our Lord’s Body and Blood in Holy Communion! For, by publicly supporting abortion, such politicians are contributing to the shedding of the blood of many children, precious children for whom Our Lord shed His Blood, that same Blood that is received in Holy Communion. Concerning the unworthy reception of Holy Communion, i.e., the reception of Holy Communion in a state of mortal sin, the Apostle Paul flat out declares, “He that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body” (1 Corinthians 11:29). Based on these words of the Apostle, the Church herself, in her Code of Canon Law (Canon 915) declares that anyone who is “obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin” (e.g., pro-abortion politicians) is “not to be admitted to Holy Communion.” Thus, these politicians ought not to be given Holy Communion, for, in presenting themselves for the sacrament, they are causing scandal to the faithful and offending Our Eucharistic Lord, who, again, shed that very Blood of His, present in the Holy Eucharist, for each and every poor, innocent child who is so very unjustly killed by abortion.

In fact, more than that, we, the PFC, do not understand why these politicians are not required, under ecclesiastical obedience, by our fathers, the bishops, to publicly recant and repent from their pro-abortion positions under pain of receiving a formal, public excommunication should they fail to do so! Nobody who persists in the support of mass baby-murder (which is what legalized abortion is) — especially one who does so publicly — has any right to call himself Catholic! To allow this is to do a disservice to the very names “Catholic” and “Christian”!

The fact that pro-baby-murder politicians are being permitted to receive Our Sacred Lord has the potential to undermine both our awareness of the indescribable evil of this massive child-sacrifice known as legalized abortion, as well as the indescribable sacredness of the Blessed Sacrament — both truths we must uphold as Catholics. In the end, the permitting of such politicians to receive Our Lord amounts, objectively, to a serious lack of charity towards, first, the children in the womb who, daily, are slaughtered by the tens of thousands throughout the world and, second, Our Lord Himself, truly present in the Blessed Sacrament, who is treated in a sacrilegious manner by each and every one of these public sacrilegious Communions. If these little ones of God and the Eucharistic Lord Himself are truly loved, how can this be permitted? It cannot.

So, in the face of such scandalous actions taking place, we, the PFC, urge the faithful to hold fast to their utter hatred of the evil of abortion (and their love of those killed by abortion, as well as those so very deeply wounded by abortion, especially the parents of these children) and to their utter love of the Blessed Sacrament (and, consequently, to their hatred of anything that denigrates this Most Holy of Sacraments, such as is taking place with these publicly scandalous and sacrilegious Communions).

We urgently call upon our spiritual fathers, the bishops, to stop this horrific and unjust (and uncharitable) scandal, even as we also call upon these pro-abortion Catholic politicians (most especially our son in the Lord and in His Church, Joseph Biden) to repent of their sins against, first, the unborn, and, secondly, against Our Lord Himself (for, to these politicians, sons and daughters of ours in the Church, we say that, when your lives are over, you will no longer have power but, rather, will face Our Lord and all His little ones, and you will then have to give an account of your actions: If you do not repent, you will face everlasting condemnation; and, so, out of love for you, our sons and daughters in the Lord and the Church, we call you to repentance today!)

In Christ,
Patres Fidelium Christi (PFC)

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.

"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.

Liberal Tradition, Yes; Liberal Ideology, No?

In a provocative essay, R. R. Reno, "Liberal Tradition, Yes; Liberal Ideology, No" (First Things, December, 2017), responds to critics who regard him as shifting to a "mirror image of the anti-American, anti-capitalist left." This is, of course, not quite true, as Reno goes on to show. What interests me here, however, is his reference to Ryzard Legutko's The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, which Adrian Vermeule reviewed sympathetically in the January 2017 issue of First Things, in an article entitled "Liturgy of Liberalism."

As Reno notes, "Vermeule endorses Legutko's central claim, which is that the liberal consensus in the post-1989 West has taken on many of the attributes of the communism that dominated Poland when Legutko came of age. The countries in the West that promote liberal democracy are not islands of toleration, diversity, and free inquiry. Instead, Vermeule writes, echoing Legutko, they are dominated by “a spreading social, cultural, and ideological conformism.” Liberalism has become a religion. Those who dissent are heretics."

Of course, critics will regard this way of talking as hyperbolic and distorting -- like trying to equate perversions such as political correctness with Soviet gulags or Cambodian killing fields. But Reno responds:

But neither Legutko nor Vermeule is equating Berkeley with the closed city of Gorky. They are comparing them—and finding some telling similarities. Both places impose a rigid orthodoxy and stifle dissent. Gorky used secret police, while Berkeley relies on a suffocating climate of opinion. This is a crucial difference, as Ahmari points out. But it does not erase the similarities.

Legutko’s goal—my goal—is not to undermine “liberalism.” It is to clear away some of the blind dogmatism that has built up in the West, especially since 1989. It won’t do to label our efforts “illiberal” just because they call into question the dominant mentality of our time. In fact, that accusation reinforces the totalitarian atmosphere. Contemporary liberalism rarely answers critics. Instead, it silences dissent by labeling it “extremist,” “far-right,” “authoritarian,” and “illiberal.” We can’t come to grips with the problems we face in 2017 if we are constantly policed. And in any event, as Vermeule points out in our last issue (“A Christian Strategy”), our loyalty is to Christ, not to any particular political philosophy or tradition. This transcendent loyalty disenchants political ideologies, and freedom from the idolatry of politics is the soul of true liberalism.

I am not certain that Reno or Vermeule go far enough, in light of Christopher A. Ferrara's penetrating critique of the Liberal tradition itself in Liberty, the God that Failed (2012). But one can learn a great deal from their analysis, which is certainly illuminating as far as it goes.

I should also mention Timothy D. Lusch's exclusive interview with Ryszard Legutko, "A Demon-Haunted Europe: Democracy's Totalitarian Impulse" (New Oxford Review, October 2017), which we have reposted by permission of the publisher here. Lugtko is a professor of philosophy at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, a member of the European Parliament, and one of the more astute critics of the totalitarian impulses in contemporary western liberal democracies.

A Demon-Haunted Europe: Democracy’s Totalitarian Impulse

"An Exclusive Interview with Ryszard Lugutko" (New Oxford Review, October, 2017)

by Timothy D. Lusch

Timothy D. Lusch is an attorney and writer. His writing has appeared in Saint Austin Review, The University Bookman, Chronicles, and at CrisisMagazine.com and CatholicExchange.com. He blogs about books at PityItsPithy.com.

Ryszard Legutko is a professor of philosophy at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. He is also a member of the European Parliament, a Polish politician, and an author. He has written one of the most consequential works on political philosophy to be published in recent years, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies. In this profound and vital book, Legutko argues that liberal democracies — specifically in Europe — have much in common with communism. He traces the twin developments of liberalism and democracy and shows how, at their precise intersection, the totalitarian impulse rises. With grave implications for freedom in the West, and for traditional institutions like the Catholic Church, Legutko sounds a warning: either recognize the danger and defeat it, or be destroyed by it.

NOR: Professor Legutko, you have written a significant book with particular appeal for the people and institutions of the West. Following your thesis, the seed of slavery seems to be sewn into the fabric of liberal democracy. What implications does this have with respect to our understanding of freedom? Is our understanding of freedom undergoing a paradigmatic shift such that we will demand greater freedoms (e.g., determining our gender identity) and end up with less (e.g., enforcement of “gender identity” rights and language limiting the speech of dissenters)?

Legutko: I am not sure we demand greater freedom today. On the contrary, I think freedom has ceased to be a highly valued commodity. What is happening is that some groups demand certain privileges, often called “rights,” and other groups seem favorable to these demands because they see in them a vehicle for constructing a new society compatible with their outrageous ideologies. When we see, for example, privileges granted to homosexuals, including the right to marry and adopt children — rather unusual privileges, to be sure — we mistake it for the growth of freedom in general. But this is an erroneous conclusion.

Take gender. It is a strange concept, and rather absurd, because not only does it undermine the obvious biological differences on which the existence of the human race has depended from time immemorial, but it makes this strange concept an instrument to reconstruct the entire human culture, including the humanities, art, law, philosophy, even natural sciences and mathematics. Its aim is to restructure society and the human mind — to make a mental, political, social, and cultural revolution — not to enlarge our freedom. One can compare it to Marxism and its theory of class struggle, which some people in the past believed serves the cause of freedom while in fact it is a tool for a revolution, not only in social relations but also in the humanities, art, law, philosophy, natural sciences, and mathematics. (For instance, multi-valued logic was said to be correlated to the growth of imperialism, and the general theory of relativity allegedly contradicted the dialectics of nature.)

In the case of both Marxism and gender, we have an attempt to make a deep restructuring of society. Revolutions hardly ever enlarge our freedom, though the revolutionaries often include “freedom” among their slogans. In the early stages of a revolution, people are lured by such slogans — and, indeed, some kind of freedom is given to them following the breakdown of the existing rules and the ensuing chaos. But soon the revolutionaries tighten their grip on society and impose the new rules that are stricter and more humiliating than before. The world before the gender revolution certainly had more freedom than it has now. Laws were less intrusive, the humanities more open and diversified, philosophy less dogmatic, human relations less legalistic. Likewise, as a result of granting privileges to homosexuals, we have experienced significant encroachments on the freedom of speech and many other liberties, and, consequently, on liberty in general.

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

The problem with "American Exceptionalism"

Jack Kerwick, in "'American Exceptionalism' Reconsidered ... And Rejected," argues that this has become a central dogma of neoconservatism, that it is an ahistorical fiction, a rationalization for globalist imperialism, and at odds with patriotism and Christianity.

[Hat tip to L.S.]

"George Weigel: The Swan Song of the Catholic Neocons"

[Disclaimer: Rules ##7-9]

A Review of George Weigel’s Lessons in Hope: My Unexpected Life with St. John Paul II (Basic Books, 2017), by Dr. Jesse Russell, Fetzen Fliegen (A Remnant newspaper blog, September 7, 2017):

The notorious journalist and friend of Catholic traditionalist Patrick Buchanan, Hunter S. Thompson once wrote in his famous essay “The Hippies”: “The best year to be a hippie was 1965, but then there was not much to write about, because not much was happening in public and most of what was happening in private was illegal.”

A similar statement could be made of Catholic neoconservatives: the best year to be a Catholic neoconservative was 2001. September 11 had given the green light to the destruction of any country that stood in the way of the New World Order’s goal of global hegemony. With magazines like First Things and books such as Witness to Hope and The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, the very polite triumvirate of neoconservative leaders, Fr. Richard Neuhaus, George Weigel, and Michael Novak, had not only complete control over the American reception of John Paul II’s life and work, but increasing access to the White House of President George W. Bush.

Many bishops such as Charles Chaput, Francis George, and Timothy Dolan (whom Weigel refers to as an “old friend”) were the under the spell of Weigel, Neuhaus, and Novak. Even the lumbering, felt-banner-adorned battleship of old liberals called the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops was turning toward the shores of the “new” Catholic conservativism born from Fr. John Courtney Murray and Jacques Maritain.

But then something happened. Like a Greek tragic hero, the Catholic neocons at the apex of their power, fell from grace.

Sammons and Lawler: why we pretend nothing went wrong after Vatican II

Three articles were published recently revisiting the confusion following Vatican II and suggesting how to make sense of it:

• Martin Mosebach, "Pope Benedict's Red Thread," First Things (August 10, 2017)
• Eric Sammons, "Evangelization, Vatican II, and Censorship," Crisis (August 15, 2017)
• Phil Lawler, "Let's stop pretending: something DID go wrong after Vatican II," CatholicCulture.org (August 23, 2017)

The last article by Lawler draws the three together by summarizing points made by Mosebach and Sammons. Mosebach's and Sammons' articles, however, should not be neglected, because they make excellent points in their own right that do not make it into Lawler's summary -- particularly some of the details about "soft censorship" of bad news by the Church and Catholic media, and their promotion, almost exclusively, of good news (the "Everything is Awesome" view). A good example of the latter is George Weigel's recent article, "Motown and the Turbocharged Church," First Things (August 16, 2017), which speaks to the positive aspirations of key Church leaders in Detroit, but ignores the long-entrenched aberrations of others.

Sammons identifies three reasons why inconvenient truths are often suppressed by Catholic media. Bad theology ("Many believe that since Ecumenical Councils are guided by the Holy Spirit, nothing erroneous or even harmful can come from them"); institutional bias ("The Church and its supporting institutions have heavily invested themselves on the idea that Vatican II was beneficial to the Church"); and financial support ("If an orthodox organization questioned Vatican II, its speaking engagements and invitations from parishes and dioceses would disappear"). It is safe to assume that George Weigel's speaking engagements and invitations will not disappear any time soon.

But Lawler offers the most convenient summary. He writes:

Something went wrong—seriously wrong—in the Catholic Church in the years after Vatican II. Can we all agree on that much? Leave aside, for now, the familiar debate about the causes of the problem; let’s begin with the agreement that there is, or at least certainly was, a problem.

Eric Sammons makes the point in a provocative essay that appeared in Crisis last week:

If an entirely objective social scientist were to study the Catholic Church in the second half of the twentieth century, he would see one fact staring him straight in the face: the Church experienced a precipitous decline in the Western world during that time.

The problem (whatever it is) is compounded, Sammons remarks, by a general refusal to acknowledge the reality of our post-conciliar difficulties: what he terms a “soft censorship” of unpleasant news. Bishops and pastors, diocesan newspapers and parish bulletins have bombarded us for years with reports that the Church is “vibrant,” that programs are booming, that the liturgy is beautiful, that religious education is robust. Never is heard a discouraging word. Yet we know better. We know about the shortage of priests; we see the news of parish closing; we notice the empty pews on Sundays. Something is wrong; we know that.

Sammons argues persuasively that this “soft censorship,” this see-no-evil approach, is now an impediment to evangelization [my emphasis], because it thwarts serious discussions about the current state of the Church. Evangelization means bringing people to the truth, he reasons, and that process “cannot thrive in a censored environment.” ...

... Did the problems that arose after Vatican II come solely because the Council’s teachings were ignored, or improperly applied? Or were there difficulties with the documents themselves? Were there enough ambiguities in the Council’s teaching to create confusion? If so, were the ambiguities intentional—the result of compromises by the Council fathers?

Suggesting that there could be difficulties with some Vatican II documents does not mean denying the authority of the Council’s teaching. No document drafted by human hands will ever be perfect. There may be a need for clarification, elucidation, explanation, even correction.

More to the point, while it is certainly true that the “spirit of Vatican II” that is often cited in support of radical changes cannot be reconciled with the actual teachings of the Council, it is also true that the proponents of change can cite specific passages from Council documents in support of their plans. So are those passages being misinterpreted. Are they taken out of context? Or are there troublesome elements of the Council’s teaching, with which we should now grapple honestly? One thing is certain: we will not solve the problem by pretending that it does not exist.

Related: John T. Elson, "The Catholic Church Battles Its Old Guard," LIFE Magazine (October 18, 1963), pp. 114ff.

[Hat tip to E.P. and J.M.]

Southern Poverty Law Center hate crimes

[Advisory: see Rules ##7-9]

Here Chris Ferrara interviews Michael Matt following his full-length address at a conference at which Ron Paul was the keynote speaker a few years ago. In his full-length address, Michael Matt defended Catholics against the ludicrous charge of anti-Semitism, exposing the ignorance of history, scripture and theology on the part of the Southern Poverty Law Center and other far-Left Christophobes. Watch and learn.



Related:

The Marcello Pera interview: a political interpretation of Pope Francis

President of the Italian Senate Marcello Pera is a classical liberal Catholic and friend of the former Pope Benedict XVI, with whom he co-authored a book: Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam. Here he is interviewed by Corrado Ocone (Il Mattino, July 9, 2017), translated by Rorate Caeli in "THE ULTIMATE INTERVIEW to Understand all About Pope Francis: Marcello Pera, Italian politician and close Ratzinger friend" (Rorate Caeli, July 14, 2017).

AIM Report: Did Mueller Know Hoover’s Dark Secret?

Another underground agent, let's call him "Guy Rouge - private eye," writes:

The republicans know this but they will not fight against the establishment which hired Mueller to take Trump out.

Politically, Trump is a dead man walking and his executioner is man whose hands are covered with the same blood that Irish Mobster, and rifleman man Flemmi, spilled in Boston with the knowledge and assistance of the FBI.

Mueller knew....

"AIM Report: Did Mueller Know Hoover’s Dark Secret?" (Accuracy In Media, April 14, 2002):

It may be the worst scandal in FBI history: Joseph Salvati spent three decades in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. He was put there by uncorroborated, false testimony from an informant under the protection of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. There is compelling evidence that the Bureau knew Salvati was an innocent man and then conspired to keep him in prison for more than three decades. Knowledge of the Bureau’s actions seems to have gone right to the very top; documents uncovered recently show that then-Director J. Edgar Hoover monitored the case from Washington.

The FBI scandal was investigated for two years by the House Government Reform Committee, then under the chairmanship of Congressman Dan Burton (R-IN), who introduced legislation to remove Hoover’s name from FBI headquarters as a result of what he learned.

But the scandal gets worse than that. When Burton tried to acquire official records on the case from the Justice Department, he was stonewalled, and Attorney General John Ashcroft persuaded President George W. Bush to invoke “executive privilege” to block the committee’s subpoenas. This was President Bush’s first, and thus far only, use of executive privilege to withhold information from the Congress. Some think Bush is trying to protect current FBI Director Robert Mueller, who was in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Boston during part of the relevant time period. The confrontation with Burton prompted columns on the controversy by William Safire and Robert Novak.

Read more >>

“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).

Book: The Political Pope, by George Heumayr

This is more about the politics of the Holy Father than his theology, though some might beg to differ; but it's a book that's catching quite a bit of attention. It's by George Neumayr, who is contributing editor to and former executive editor of the conservative American Spectator.

Maike Hickson recently published "An Interview with George Neumayr, Author of The Political Pope" (OnePeterFive, May 6, 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.

Archbishop Chaput on how liberal democracies become despotic

Charles J. Chaput, Strangers in a Strange Land: Living the Catholic Faith in a Post-Christian World (2017), Chapter 1, "Resident Aliens" (comments mine):

In a democracy, political legitimacy comes from the will of sovereign individuals. Their will is expressed through elected representatives. Anything that interferes with their will, anything that places inherited or unchosen obligations on the individual -- except for the government itself -- becomes the target of suspicion. [Which is why the Principle of Subsidiarity articulated by Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo anno (1931) is so important, like the Kuyperian concept of Sphere Sovereignty of 'Intermediary Institutions.']

To protect the sovereignty of individuals, democracy separates them from one another. And to achieve that, the state sooner or later seeks to break down any relationship or entity that stands in its way. That includes every kind of mediating institution, from fraternal organizations to synagogues and churches, to the family itself. This is why Alexis de Tocqueville, the great French observer of early American life, said that "despotism, which is dangerous at all times, [is] particularly to be feared in democratic centuries."

Tocqueville saw that the strength of American society, the force that kept the tyrannical logic of democracy in creative check, was the prevalence and intensity of religious belief. Religion is to democracy as a bridle is to a horse. Religion moderates democracy because it appeals to an authority higher than democracy itself.


But religion only works its influence on democracy if people really believe what it teaches. Nobody believes in God just because it's socially useful. To put it in Catholic terms, Christianity is worthless as a leaven in society unless people actually believe in Jesus Christ, follow the Gospel, love the Church, and act like real disciples. If they don't, then religion is just another form of self-medication. And unfortunately, that's how many of us live out our Baptism.

Until recent decades, American culture was largely Protestant. That was part of the country's genius. But it also meant that Catholics and other minorities lived through long periods of exclusion and prejudice. The effect of being outsiders has always fueled a Catholic passion to fit in, to find a way into the mainstream, to excel by the standards of the people who disdain us. Over time, we Catholics have succeeded very well -- evidently too well. And that very success has weakened any chance the Church had to seize a "Catholic moment" when Catholics might fill the moral hole in our culture created by the collapse of a Protestant consensus.

As a result, Tocqueville's fear about democracy without religious constraints -- what he called its power to kill souls and prepare citizens for servitude -- is arguably where we find ourselves today...."

We Are [Are Not] The World.

A courier pigeon from Guy Noir came flying in my open window this afternoon with a message from last October. Not sure what happened here, though the weather has been unseasonably warm of late.

So back on October 15, 2016 Noir apparently wrote this message linking to an article by James V. Schall, S.J., "On Universal Citizenship" (The Catholic Thing, October 11, 2016). Noir's handwriting was barely legible (was he back to nipping that bourbon again before breakfast?). In a scrawled hand, he wrote:

The fundamental difference in trad vs modern Catholics: is modern man at enmity with God? Fr Schall hits the nail on the head in such a single, graceful paragraph no one even notices or hears the "bam!" of impact.

Here are the key excerpts:

From high over the planet in a space capsule, all boundaries on earth disappear. It looks like one unified system below....

Why would it not be a good thing, many ask, if we discarded the political frontiers? We could all be citizens of the same world-government....

Mankind is tired of all this violence. It causes wars. Wars are caused by distinctions, by differing religions, by racism, by poverty, by genderism, by property. Let everyone have access to everything. We can eliminate evil. This is the “right” of every world citizen if given his due.

Above all, no set “doctrines” exist, no “sins,” except for the denial of world citizenship without restrictions....

Yes, we are no longer Gentiles or Jews, Romans or Greeks, barbarians or civilized, Christians or Muslims or Hindus, or Chinese. Nothing is above us. Nothing is below us. We are impatient. We have waited long enough! We are at home everywhere. Nowhere is alien to us.

I look at these claims as a reader of Augustine. He already understood most of these things in the fifth century after Christ. He thought them all mostly true – but only after this life. Here, we are in a vale of tears, a broken world. We are not asked to save the world, but to save our souls in a world mostly at odds with what it means to save our souls.

We are given commandments to keep, not to oppose. The only “universal citizenship” is in the City of God begun in this world following the plan of divine providence, but completed in the next. The meaning of our times is straightforward. We refuse to accept the world for which we were created. What we see about us is the universal citizenship of our collective refusal. [emphasis added]

Bishop Athanasius Schneider on the Social Kingship of Christ

By all accounts, this is one of the best recent presentations on the subject to be found. The first video is the presentation. The second is the Q & A. Enjoy.



[Hat tip to Sir A.S.]

On leftist hyperventilation over change in administration

"Tom Cotton: Media, Democrats ‘Astonished’ Federal Government Still Working" (Breitbart, February 11, 2017):

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) this week ripped into critics of President Donald Trump who predicted a world of “chaos” under the new administration, and defended his muscular foreign policy stance.

“Some people, especially in the media and the Democratic Party, are astonished that we’re 18 days into the Trump administration, yet the federal government is still functioning,” he said in a wide-ranging speech on foreign policy at the American Enterprise Institute.

“World War III hasn’t broken out. America is still standing,” he said. “Perhaps our Constitution is more resilient than some believe, our people built of sturdier stuff than sugar candy, to borrow from Churchill. So resilient and sturdy, in fact, that our system can withstand the shock of a Republican presidency—even if the media can’t.”

Cotton cited one senator as saying Trump’s penchant for tweeting is “going to lead to chaos in our international relations.”

“I hate to break this to you: The world already is in chaos. The world already is unsettled. And I have more bad news: Barack Obama was the president for the last eight years, and it’s his actions that unsettled the world and spread chaos, not Donald Trump’s words,” he said.

Cotton, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was a vocal critic of the Obama administration’s foreign policy, particularly in the middle east, where he served as a soldier in Iraq.

He listed a litany of what he characterized as Obama’s missteps:

Barack Obama quit Iraq, sacrificing the gains we’d fought so hard for and leaving that country to fend for itself against Iran and the Islamic State.

Barack Obama conciliated with Iran from the first days of his presidency, ignoring the Green Movement and tolerating Iran’s imperial aggression across the Middle East, all in pursuit of a fatally flawed nuclear deal.

Barack Obama reset relations with Russia and promised more flexibility after his reelection. In return, Russia invaded Ukraine, destroyed Aleppo, harbored Edward Snowden, teamed up with Iran in the Middle East, and shot a civilian airliner out of the sky .

Barack Obama said al Qaeda was on the run, handcuffed our military and intelligence officers, and refused to call the jihadist enemy by its name, resulting in more and more complex terror threats than anything our nation has ever faced.

Even when he used force, he did so half-heartedly. He surged troops into Afghanistan—but not as many as his commanders requested and only with an explicit withdrawal date. He toppled the Qaddaffi regime in Libya with neither a plan nor any interest to stabilize the country.

“I would challenge you to name one country where America enjoys a stronger position than we did eight years ago—or one country that’s better off because of American policy. President Obama’s legacy is a legacy of ashes from the smoking ruins of a world ablaze,” he said.