BREAKING: Trump signs bill to reopen Social Security, Medicare opt-ins for priests, clergy

 By Tyler Arnold for EWTN News

October 21, 2026

              Image: CNA

President Donald Trump signed into law a measure that allows clergy — including Catholic priests and bishops — to opt back in to Social Security and Medicare if they had previously opted out of the program.

Under the tax code, clergy may opt out of Social Security and Medicare taxes for ministerial work but cannot receive the benefits if they do. A person who opts out typically cannot reverse that decision, but the law, supported by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), opens a two-year window for members of clergy to opt back in if they have changed their minds.

The law, signed on Oct. 20, allows clergy members to opt back in during the 2029 or 2030 tax years, but they must still meet the standard contribution requirements to receive benefits. The House of Representatives passed the bill 350-5 on April 27, and the Senate cleared it by unanimous consent on Sept. 30.

According to a news release from the House Ways and Means Committee, about 2,000 people take the opt-out. This is the third time Congress offered a temporary window for clergy to reverse their opt-outs, with the last time being 1999.

“America’s pastors and faith leaders spend their lives caring for others,” Rep. Jason Smith, R-Missouri, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement.

“Many chose to opt out of Social Security when they were young and just starting their ministry,” he said. “A single, sometimes ill-advised, decision made decades ago should not stand between them and a secure retirement.”

Support from Catholic bishops

When reached for comment, the USCCB referred EWTN News to an April 14 letter supportive of the bill, signed by Archbishop Shelton Fabre, chair of the USCCB Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, and Archbishop Ronald Hicks, chair of the USCCB Committee on Clergy, Consecrated Life, and Vocations.

More: https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2026/10/21/trump-signs-bill-to-reopen-ssocial-security-medicare-opt-ins-for-priests-clergy/

Canonists Warn Synod’s Canon Law Proposals Blur Lines of Church Authority

 Critics say the commission’s recommendations on lay governance, tribunals and infallibility contradict Vatican II; the nonbinding report would require Pope Leo’s approval.

EDWARD PENTIN OCT 13

Pope Leo XIV meets with members of the Circolo di San Pietro at the Vatican on Oct. 12, 2026. A Synod commission’s proposed changes to canon law, which have drawn criticism from canonists, would require papal approval to take effect. (Photo: Matteo Pernaselci / Vatican Media)

VATICAN CITY — Several canon lawyers have criticized the final report of a Synod on Synodality commission on canon law, describing several proposed changes as a departure from Catholic doctrine and contrary to the teachings of the Second Vatican Council.

The commission, whose report was published Sept. 30 by the General Secretariat of the Synod, sought to identify how the theological and ecclesiological insights emerging from the 2021-2024 Synod on Synodality could be translated into canonical norms.

According to Dominican priest and canonist Father Pius Pietrzyk, the commission report contains “maybe two decent ideas,” but otherwise ranges from “silly cosmetic changes to a betrayal of the Second Vatican Council and two millennia of ecclesiology.”

Legislative proposals include amendments to 34 canons, including those governing the capacity of lay people to exercise offices, responsibilities and ministries in the Church. Others relate to canons governing councils and bishops’ conferences and propose changes to participatory bodies with the aim of strengthening participation and mission.

Infallibility and the Sensus Fidelium

A key area of contention is the report’s proposal to preface canon 749 on the doctrine of papal infallibility with a reference to the sensus fidelium, or the universal consensus of the People of God.

Borrowing language from Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium, the proposed addition states that “the entire body of the Christian faithful, having received the anointing from the Spirit, cannot err in matters of faith, and it manifests this characteristic through the supernatural sense of faith of the whole people when, from the bishops down to the last of the lay faithful, its universal consent in matters of faith and morals is demonstrated.”

Continue reading the rest of this article at www.ncregister.com

On “cultivating an ecclesiology in which fidelity to Tradition becomes a justification for habitual resistance to the living authority of the Church.”

“St John Henry Newman understood something that seems increasingly forgotten in certain traditionalist circles: fidelity to the Church cannot be separated from communion with the successor of Peter. This does not mean that every papal judgement is correct, that every disciplinary decision is wise, or that Catholics must abandon their reason and conscience. Newman himself was far too sophisticated a theologian to believe any such thing. But there is a profound difference between questioning a pope's prudential decisions and cultivating an ecclesiology in which fidelity to Tradition becomes a justification for habitual resistance to the living authority of the Church. The papacy is not an optional feature of Catholicism, to be accepted only when its occupant meets our expectations.

“Newman reminds us that we do not remain Catholic because we trust the personal judgement of every pope. We remain Catholic because we trust Christ, who established His Church upon Peter and promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against her. The test of our fidelity to the papacy is not how readily we defend a pope with whom we agree, but whether we remain faithful when we disagree.”

- Mark Lambert @sitsio

About Roman appointments

“Every generation of Catholics discovers, often painfully, that the men who govern the Church are not always worthy of their office. Perhaps this is why Jesus chose St. Peter?

“Belloc's famous observation about the Church's astonishing capacity for mismanagement is funny because it exposes an uncomfortable truth. Given two thousand years of corruption, incompetence, scandal and betrayal, how is the Catholic Church still standing?

“Empires have risen and vanished. Institutions far better administered have disappeared. Yet the Church endures, despite the damage inflicted by those entrusted with her care. This is no defence of bad shepherds. Our Lord's warning about millstones was deadly serious. Nor does fidelity demand that we pretend every papal judgement is wise or every bishop beyond criticism. But we make a profound theological mistake when we confuse the failures of the Church's human administration with the integrity of her divine constitution.

“The Church does not endure because her leaders are good. She endures because Christ is faithful. He promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against her. He never promised that her bishops would always be impressive.

“Criticise what deserves criticism. Defend what must be defended. But never allow disappointment with the men who govern the Church to become an excuse for abandoning communion with her. Christ did not ask us to trust in the perfection of His shepherds. He asked us to remain faithful to His Church.”

Mark Lambert @sitsio 

Archbishop Cordileone: Church had greater unity under Summorum Pontificum

 

NIWA LIMBU

OCT. 8, 2026

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone has said the Church experienced greater unity under Summorum Pontificum than under Traditionis Custodes, warning that restrictions on the traditional liturgy risk reopening old wounds

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone has said the Church experienced greater unity under Pope Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificum than it does under Pope Francis’s Traditionis Custodes.

In an interview with French Catholic newspaper Tribune Chrétienne on October 8, the Archbishop of San Francisco said the restrictions placed on the traditional liturgy risk repeating wounds caused by the rapid liturgical changes that followed the Second Vatican Council.

“It’s very clear to me that there was more unity in the Church when we were living under Summorum Pontificum than we are now under Traditionis Custodes,” Archbishop Cordileone said.

He recalled the “liturgical wars” that followed the Council, when Catholics were judged and stereotyped according to their liturgical preferences. He said tensions continued into the 1990s before the situation began to “mellow” following the indult permitted under St John Paul II and then the publication of Summorum Pontificum.

Under Pope Benedict’s approach, Archbishop Cordileone said, Catholics attached to traditional worship and those preferring more contemporary forms could coexist peacefully without harsh judgement.

The Archbishop said Pope Benedict recognised that the Church had suffered a “profound wound” through the rupture experienced after the Council, including cases in which rapid and radical liturgical changes had damaged, and sometimes destroyed, Catholics’ faith.

Archbishop Cordileone also explained that Pope Benedict XVI’s proposal to recognise the ordinary and extraordinary forms of the Roman Rite was intended to facilitate what the former Pope called an “internal reconciliation” within the Church’s worship. His Grace said Benedict understood that genuine reconciliation could not be engineered by a committee of scholars drafting a new liturgy, but would have to develop organically through generations of Catholics worshipping according to both forms.

“It has to happen organically,” Archbishop Cordileone said. “Pope Benedict understood that this would take a long time, generations, maybe even centuries, with people worshiping with both forms of the Mass to come to a unified worship in the Church.”

His Grace said Benedict understood that the rapid changes which followed the Second Vatican Council had created a rupture that could not simply be resolved by imposing another reform from above.

“He understood the rupture that had taken place,” Archbishop Cordileone said. “He lived through it. He saw how the faith of Catholics was very seriously challenged, damaged. I’ve heard of cases even destroyed because of very quick, radical changes in the way the liturgy was carried out.”

Archbishop Cordileone warned that Catholics attached to the traditional form of worship had been “stigmatized and marginalized” within the Church, arguing that such treatment risked reopening the wounds Benedict had sought to heal.

“I think that foments division,” His Grace said. “Some people felt alienated from the Church. I fear that that might begin to happen again.”

More: https://advaticanum.com/article/archbishop-cordileone-church-had-greater-unity-under-summorum-pontificum/

“… the left is no longer the left once it has broken with the working classes.”

Guillaume Herblot  @Guigz75116

The Far Left, or the Secession of the Cultural Elites.

French geographer and essayist Christophe Guilluy put it better than anyone: the left is no longer the left once it has broken with the working classes.  

And contemporary far-left activism is not the uprising of the “people from below.” It is the pinnacle of the cultural petite bourgeoisie that has colonized the language of poverty to turn it into a marker of distinction.

The typical profile of the activist and intellectual core is not the factory worker, the suburban office clerk, or the precarious resident of the banlieues. It is predominantly white women, college-educated (bachelor’s plus three years to grandes écoles or equivalent in social sciences, education, culture), urban, hailing from Metropolia. They fancy themselves “close to the people” they claim to defend, but they are the exact sociological and cultural inverse. 

Guilluy speaks of an “almost anthropological rupture” between those who speak about the people and the people themselves. The sociology of the militants and spokespeople is very much upper-middle-class.

• The Mechanism.

Since the 1980s, the dominant left has abandoned the social question. It has replaced the alliance of teachers and workers with a bobo alliance of the metropolises and electorates from immigrant backgrounds in the neighborhoods.  

Result: the working classes of peripheral France (small towns, suburbs, rural areas) have culturally autonomized themselves. They no longer recognize themselves in the narrative produced by intellectual, media, and academic elites. The real people vote elsewhere. The far left, meanwhile, remains trapped in its progressive bubble.

• Colonization of Poverty.

That’s exactly it. We appropriate the words of oppression, domination, and “decolonization” to inject them with priorities that are those of the cultural bourgeoisie: identity issues, migration, gender, radical ecology. The working classes, by contrast, have pragmatic diagnoses (jobs, purchasing power, security, schools, migration regulation). Guilluy sums it up: bobos are “Rougon-Macquart characters dressed as hipsters.” They preserve their position, their real estate assets, the schooling of their children, all while draping themselves in virtue. They practice residential and school avoidance while demanding that others bear the consequences of their “luxury beliefs.”

• The Anthology of Contradictions.

- They defend “the people” but despise those who don’t share their codes (the “redneck,” the “racist” from the periphery).

- They talk of solidarity and diversity while living in socially and culturally homogeneous circles.

- They denounce elites while forming the new cultural elite that has captured education, culture, part of the media, and the civil service.

- They claim to fight capitalism while being the products and beneficiaries of the educational system and the metropolises that concentrate resources.

Guilluy has mapped the schism: on one side Metropolia (the big cities where the progressive cultural bourgeoisie and its electoral allies are concentrated), on the other Peripheria (the ordinary majority, everyday people, multiethnic but culturally autonomous). 

The far left is the discursive armed wing of the former against the latter. It is not a revolution. 

It is a secession of the elites masquerading as the voice of the oppressed.  

The people don’t need to be symbolically colonized. They need us to stop despising them.

BREAKING: Fr. Chad Ripperger silenced by his bishop for a year

Denver Archbishop James Golka has ordered Fr. Chad Ripperger to cease all public ministry — no talks, no preaching, no writing — for one year.

Fr. Chad RippergerYouTube/Screenshot

(LifeSiteNews) — Denver Archbishop James Golka has ordered Fr. Chad Ripperger, the most widely heard living American priest on exorcism and spiritual warfare, to cease all public ministry for one year, LifeSiteNews has confirmed directly with the priest.

The order seems to cover public appearances, online homilies, and writings. Talks already booked are to be cancelled.

Fr. Ripperger was scheduled to speak at the upcoming LifeSite 30th anniversary gala on April 24, 2027. He has notified us that he can no longer honor the engagement. “The Archbishop has asked me to take a break on public speaking,” he wrote. When asked to do a video address or something in writing, he also declined noting that questions on the restriction should be directed to the Archbishop of Denver. Moreover, he noted that the restrictions would be in place for a year – till next September. LifeSite has also learned he has cancelled speaking engagements with at least two other organizations.

LifeSiteNews has contacted the Archdiocese of Denver seeking comment on the nature, reasons, duration, and any Vatican involvement. So far the archdiocese has declined to comment.

Golka, named bishop of Colorado Springs by Pope Francis in 2021 and archbishop of Denver by Pope Leo XIV in February 2026, now holds faculties over Ripperger and the Society of the Most Sorrowful Mother (Doloran Fathers), the public association Archbishop Samuel Aquila received into the archdiocese. There has been no public decree explaining the penalty, no announced finding of heresy.

The silencing follows the largest public exposure any priest has likely ever had with Fr. Ripperger’s recent appearances on the mega talk-shows of Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Sean Ryan.

On April 3, 2026, Ripperger sat with Tucker Carlson for nearly two hours to discuss possession, the occult, politicians and the demonic, addiction, and communism as a psychological twin of diabolic method. The full episode on Tucker’s YouTube channel got more than 3 million views and nearly 94,000 likes. Short clips continue to add millions more.

He went twice to the Shawn Ryan Show, among the top podcasts on Spotify. Episode #285 (March 5, 2026), a four-hour conversation on the mark of the beast and the rise of the Antichrist, has been reported in the 2.5 to 4.1 million view range on YouTube. The July 23 return visit, episode #324, sits around 2.7 million views; a single clip from that hour has passed 640,000. Combined with Spotify audio, the Ryan appearances alone put Ripperger in front of millions of listeners who did not come looking for a diocesan chancery statement.

More: https://x.com/lifesite/status/2112234027746766903?s=46&t=IydJ-X8H6c0NM044nYKQ0w

Out of control Synod now defending rejection of divinely founded ecclesiastical hierarchy

Mark Lambert:

I HOPE YOU'RE ALL PAYING ATTENTION TO THIS ONE!

The most consequential legacy of the Synod on Synodality may not be yet another prolix Vatican document, but a rewriting of the laws governing who exercises authority in the Catholic Church. To wit the Synod's Canon Law Commission has now published proposals to amend numerous provisions of the Code of Canon Law, addressing everything from the participation of lay Catholics in ecclesiastical governance to the responsibilities of bishops, episcopal conferences and diocesan consultative bodies.

ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION NOW? 🤔

Among the provisions under consideration are Canon 228, concerning the eligibility of lay Catholics for ecclesiastical offices, Canon 476, concerning episcopal vicars, and Canon 1421, concerning judges in ecclesiastical tribunals. These are not peripheral administrative matters, they concern the actual exercise of authority within the Church. I think the central theological question is whether and to what extent, the power of governance can be exercised by those who have not received Holy Orders. Catholic teaching has always distinguished the common priesthood of the baptised from the ministerial priesthood, which differ essentially and not merely in degree, as Lumen gentium §10 makes clear, but it does not follow that every ecclesiastical office or administrative responsibility must be reserved to the ordained. Lay Catholics already exercise significant responsibilities within the Church, including in ecclesiastical tribunals and certain offices of the Roman Curia.

The real difficulty lies in establishing precisely where legitimate lay participation ends and responsibilities intrinsically connected to the sacrament of Holy Orders begin. This is where the discussion becomes particularly important. If synodality means ensuring that bishops listen more carefully, that qualified lay Catholics contribute their expertise and that ecclesiastical institutions become more accountable, there is much to welcome. But if it obscures the distinction between the authority conferred through Holy Orders and responsibilities that can legitimately be entrusted to the laity, then we are dealing with something considerably more serious than administrative reform. Canon law is not simply an organisational handbook. It gives juridical expression to the Church's understanding of her own nature.

The Church cannot alter her divine constitution by changing the wording of a canon. Equally, she should not mistake every historically established administrative arrangement for something divinely instituted. Both principles are important and preserving the distinction between them will be essential if these proposals are to serve the Church rather than generate further confusion. For now, these are proposals, not enacted legislation. Pope Leo XIV has not approved the changes. But the direction of the discussion is unmistakable: the Synod's theological language is moving towards concrete institutional and juridical consequences.

The question is whether those consequences will clarify the relationship between baptism, Holy Orders and ecclesiastical governance, or leave Catholics with an increasingly ambiguous understanding of authority in the Church. That is a debate worth having before the legislation is changed, rather than afterwards.

@sitsio

The Wisdom of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: “Men have forgotten God.”

“If I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”

Revolution burns in France and wider Europe

@larroumecj:

We are at the confluence of two distinct civilizational phenomena leading to revolution:

The first: in a democratic society, as Tocqueville noted, every inequality quickly becomes unbearable because there are only two ways to explain why some people succeed better than oneself: corruption of the system or merit. 

And psychologically, unsurprisingly, we tend to think that those who succeed better than us benefit from a corrupt system rather than being more deserving. 

Democracy is therefore a regime that structurally creates armies of the discontented, except when there is strong economic growth.

Because then one can reasonably bide one's time, telling oneself that in a few years, one will oneself be at the same level as those one envies. 

It has been 15 years since there has been any growth in France.

Younger generations do not believe their situation will naturally catch up to that of the more privileged.

As a result, they no longer have much interest in keeping the system alive. All the more so since, often having no children and not being homeowners, they are subject to none of the traditional conservative forces.

The second: as Schumpeter noted, capitalism, by exploding industrial and agricultural productivity, reduces to a pittance the number of manual jobs. Society thus begins to produce gigantic cohorts of people trained in intellectual professions, even as the economy does not need so many people in those sectors. No matter how much we multiply bullshit jobs, we nevertheless produce a large number of educated and unemployable individuals. (They consider manual jobs not dignified enough.)

These cohorts are structurally revolutionary because they see themselves as an enlightened elite in opposition to the existing system.

France is one of the world's most tertiary economies and has one of the highest percentages of individuals pursuing higher education.

It has had no growth for 15 years.

Kaboom, then?

Not yet, because there is, however, a component of society that has an absolute interest in maintaining the system as it is: retirees.

And they represent a third of the electorate. 

Their role is ambivalent: they prevent destructive revolution just as much as any reform capable of making the system viable. 

This is thus one of the key tasks of politics today: to restart economic growth and redirect wealth toward the active population, while succeeding both in bypassing retirees' blockages and containing the revolutionary impulses of youth.

This is just one of France's many urgent projects in this period of multiple crises.

But with the approaching financial crisis, the debt buffer is coming to an end. The fundamental question of whom and what the French economic machine serves can no longer remain without a satisfactory answer for long.

More from @fpiatov:

A brutal editorial in the conservative Le Figaro. A reckoning with France's political system and its elite.

“A judiciary that is lenient toward criminals but unrelenting toward decent citizens. The incomprehensible privilege of these far-left militias, who destroy, set fires, and kill with impunity. An uncontrolled immigration, in which a portion of the immigrants rebels against the country that took them in. (…) A political class—the various strains of socialism that have governed us for fifteen years—that must be accused of frivolity, blindness, if not even a benevolent tolerance.

Emmanuel Macron's admonishments to a police force that, in his view, does not show enough ‘empathy’ toward those who attack it with screws, cobblestones, or fireworks mortars, will remain an indelible stain in memory. (…)

If the far left, criminals, and looters can turn France completely upside down within a few hours, it is above all because a self-intoxicated technocratic monarchy has systematically leveled all the moral, security-related, cultural, and economic safeguards that hold a society together. Jean-Luc Mélenchon's useful idiots do not just wear the kufiya, but also the necktie.”

Bishop Mutsaerts: Go to Latin Mass instead of trying to fix your own parish

'If there's a bad Novus Ordo Mass, you can't improve those priests, I'm afraid. So just go anywhere else,' Mutsaerts told LifeSite at the Catholic Identity Conference.

Chalice and ciborium on the altar during the Traditional Latin MassThoom/Shutterstock

---

Antonino Cambria

PITTSBURGH (LifeSiteNews) — Bishop Robert Mutsaerts said that Catholics who attend parishes with irreverent Novus Ordo Masses should find a Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) or another reverent liturgy instead of attempting to transform their home parish.

During a brief October 3 interview with LifeSite after his talk at the 2026 Catholic Identity Conference (CIC), Mutsaerts responded to a question about whether the faithful should try to improve their home parish with a bad liturgy or attend the TLM.

Mutsaerts, a conservative Dutch bishop who only knows how to celebrate the Novus Ordo, stressed that trying to improve bad parishes is futile. Instead, laypeople should go somewhere where their faith and that of their families is actually nourished.

Attending a parish that nourishes your faith

“If there’s a bad Novus Ordo Mass, you can’t improve those priests, I’m afraid. So just go anywhere else,” Mutsaerts told LifeSite. “I used to think, ‘Support your own parish.’ I’m not saying that anymore … because you might lose your faith there. Go somewhere where you think, ‘This is right, this is authentic, this is true.'”

“Go there, and if you have children or youngsters, go where they’ll meet other young people. That’s what stimulates,” he added. “And young people, they meet one another in the Vetus Ordo, the Novus Ordo, but (at) places where they find the sacred, where the liturgy is in order … You need some encouragement (from your parish community), you don’t get it if you’re 18 and all the rest (of the parishioners) are 80.”

In recent months, several Catholic thinkers have debated whether the faithful should try to fix their geographical parish, as Catholic writer Patrick Neve argued in a January Substack post titled “The parish you hate might need you.” Still, others have agreed with Mutsaerts in saying it is more important to attend Mass where you are spiritually fulfilled, even if that requires driving a long distance.

Keeping the faith in a period of ‘synodality’

On keeping the faith as the Church hierarchy promotes synodality, one of the themes of his conference talk, Mutsaerts encouraged the faithful to cling to the Church’s traditional practices while slamming the “fruits of synodality.”

“Well, do the regular (Catholic) things. Go to a Mass where there’s proper liturgy,  pray the rosary, give a good example (to others),” he said. “And if synodality doesn’t mean anything to you, don’t go there; it’s a waste of time. We’ve been going on eight years, and can you see the fruits? I can’t. Nothing but a waste of time.”

“In the meantime, just stick to the regular Catholic things, as I just mentioned a few of them. Like the Catholic Church always has, try and find the truth; the truth will set you free,” he added.

More: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid06Hrcc65qcMdWSk1mVbAKx7PzMrXV44qyHaAg18wLVcYMYZDKffY9Mz3wkAGkYU69l&id=100064701575399

Baptism and “a right to be forgotten”?

Can the “right to be forgotten” require the Church to forget that somebody was baptised? That question is now before the European Court of Justice and it is actually a lot more interesting than it might initially sound. 

The case concerns a man baptised as a child in Belgium who later decided that he no longer wished to belong to the Catholic Church. He asked for his name to be removed from the baptismal register. The Diocese of Ghent refused to delete the record but offered instead to annotate it, recording his decision to leave the Church. The dispute eventually reached the Belgian courts and has now arrived before the EU's highest court, where Advocate General Tamara Ćapeta has argued that the Church should not enjoy a general exemption from the GDPR requirement to erase personal data simply because the information appears in a baptismal register. Before reaching instinctively for the Catholic answer, I think we should acknowledge that there is a serious privacy argument here.

Imagine being baptised as a baby without having chosen it, growing into adulthood, rejecting Christianity completely and formally telling the Church that you no longer wish to be associated with it. You might reasonably object if an institution continued to describe you as one of its members. You might also ask why an organisation with which you no longer identify should possess a permanent record connecting your name with a religious affiliation you explicitly reject. In this day and age, personal data can be aggregated, transferred and processed on an enormous scale, the principle that individuals should possess meaningful control over information held about them is not trivial.

I also think that Churches should not expect an exemption from every legitimate protection of privacy merely because their records have a religious purpose. But bear with me here, baptismal registers create an unusual problem because they are not simply membership databases. A baptismal record makes an historical claim. It records that, on a particular date and in a particular place, a particular person was baptised, usually identifying parents, godparents and the minister as well.

Deleting the entry therefore does something rather different from removing somebody from a mailing list or cancelling a gym membership. It alters the surviving institutional record of an event which actually happened. That distinction becomes even more important in Catholic theology. The Church does not believe baptism is merely an enrolment procedure by which somebody joins an organisation until deciding to resign from it. Baptism is a sacrament which, if validly received, cannot be repeated or undone. Catholic theology traditionally describes it as imparting an indelible sacramental character.

That does NOT mean the Church is entitled to pretend somebody remains a practising Catholic when they have explicitly rejected the faith. Those are two different claims. “The Church says I remain sacramentally baptised” is a theological statement about what Catholics believe happened at baptism. “The Church claims I remain a practising member” is a sociological statement about my present beliefs and affiliation.

The first may remain true within Catholic sacramental theology even when the second is manifestly false. And that is why annotation seems to me such an important middle course. If somebody tells the Church that he no longer identifies as Catholic, the record should be capable of stating that clearly. Such an annotation respects something morally important: a human being has the right to say what he now believes and to reject an affiliation he no longer accepts.

The Church should not count him as attending Mass, present him as a practising Catholic, contact him as though nothing has changed or use a childhood baptism to disregard his adult repudiation of the faith. But acknowledging what somebody believes today does not require pretending that something which happened yesterday did not happen. Indeed, the principle extends beyond religion. Archives constantly contain information which the people concerned might no longer wish to define them. Someone may leave a political party, renounce citizenship, dissolve a marriage, abandon an organisation or repudiate convictions sincerely held decades earlier. The historical record can acknowledge the change precisely because it preserves both realities: what was true then and what is true now.

There are legitimate questions about access, data security and how information in sacramental registers may be processed. Institutional memory cannot become an excuse for unlimited retention or exploitation of personal information. But deletion is different. A society which takes personal autonomy seriously should allow people to change their beliefs, affiliations and identities. A society which takes history seriously should also understand that changing what we believe now does not make events in our past cease to have occurred. Perhaps the solution is therefore neither to tell the former Catholic, “You cannot leave,” nor to tell the Church, “You must forget.”

Record the baptism.

Record the departure.

Respect the person's present convictions.

And preserve the truth about the past.

Source: Mark Lambert @sitsio

 comece.eu/comece-reacts-…

Europe is Burning

N.B. What Will rose from the ashes is an extension of the third world. There may be a few museums staffed by Muslims, as you find in Turkey.

@bebo919 nails it here:

“For those surprised by what’s happening in France, the surprise is the strange part.

“A policewoman is beaten in the street. A high school is burned by young men born in the country. Palestinian slogans go up on French walls. The president goes to the United Nations to talk about someone else. None of this is a mystery. When you import the Third World, you become the Third World. There are no exceptions.

“Climate does not make a culture. Museums do not make a culture. People do. Replace Europeans with people from Africa and the Islamic world and you do not get a more colorful France. You get their culture, on French ground, with French papers.

“Muslims, as a civilization, do not assimilate into a European nation. They already have one. It is the ummah, and it outranks the passport. A boy born in France who burns a French school under a foreign flag has answered the integration question. It is the ideology. Europeans treated a doctrine as a social-work problem, lost the demographics, and are now losing the street.

“They are not losing it alone. The Marxist left and the liberals are carrying the Islamists to the gate, exactly as the Iranian left carried Khomeini in 1979. They hated the old order more than they feared the new one. They called the alliance progress, anti-imperialism, and solidarity. When the Islamists took power, the alliance ended. 

“The left was hanged from the cranes and the lamp posts, the liberals were cleared out, and the revolution kept only the believers. Europe is running that partnership again. The left thinks it is using Islam against the West. Islam is using the left against the West. The lamp posts come after the ballot box.

“The next decade is not hard to sketch. As the capitals tip, those who can leave will leave. Think of South Africa: a European-built country, a demographic replacement, a ballot box that ratified the new majority, and an afterward of violence, emigration, and a state that no longer belonged to the people who built it. Europe is running the same film with a religious script added.

Remigration is the honest remedy, and past a point a democracy will not administer it. Once the new population wins the ballot box, it will not vote itself out. The window closes with the census. After that, a shrinking native population lives under rules it did not write. Some will be killed. More will be pressed into a second-class peace, the old condition of non-Muslims under Islamic rule. Convert, pay the jizya, or be killed. You may remain. You may not rule.

This does not stop at Europe. Populations change alliances. France and Britain hold nuclear weapons and submarine fleets. The warheads do not change politics when the electorate does. They change owners. America is not a spectator. A Europe that is no longer European is not an ally. It is a near shore with Western hardware and a different civilization.

“Western Europe let the cancer in. It has metastasized. I do not see a cure the patient will accept in time. For Europeans who intend to remain Europeans, the answer is Noah’s, not Brussels’. Run, while running is allowed, and build where the infection has not taken. Parts of Eastern Europe are the ark. The West that existed as a people, not a museum, is not coming back by seminar.

“There are no miracles in demography. There is only a majority, and whether anyone left in time to be a people somewhere else.”

He tweeted a video of Muslims burning down a French school. Their own school they didn’t pay for …