Thursday, June 30, 2022

My latest column: “Vatican Shell Game”

 

Vatican Shell Game

June 30, 2022

By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK

The World Meeting of Families was kicked off with a song glorifying King David’s adultery. Attendees were treated to the performance of Cohen’s Hallelujah in the Paul VI audience hall.

How does that set the tone for a Catholic event affirming the sacrament of marriage? It doesn’t. So, why have it?

Pope Francis’ comments to open the meeting held in Rome in late June sounded fine. But why titillate people beforehand with sounds and mental images of adulterous behavior, which do not prepare them well at all to receive high-sounding words about fidelity and the call to holiness? One commentator described Cohen’s lyrics as “tired, faithless, despairing and cynical.” I would stop at “not Catholic.”
What we are experiencing at times seems like a giant shell game.

The premise of the shell game suggests to a credulous observer that a single object is hidden beneath one of a number of “shells” or coverings and dares him to guess the location of the object, which is constantly moving.

Old games, new tricks. As always, “Caveat emptor”; buyer beware.
The Catholic in the pew these days continually searches with difficulty for the Catholic content underneath the various projects and promotions out of Rome. Everything has a Catholic cover, but scratch the surface, look behind the veneer, and often you do not find what should be there.

Of all the music to choose for a performance at the Vatican, why this?

Read the rest: https://thewandererpress.com/catholic/news/our-catholic-faith/vatican-shell-game/

Wednesday, June 29, 2022

Parents turn children over to groomers in BSA


A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.”?




Prophecy

“ Soon we will have priests reduced to the role of social worker and the message of faith reduced to political vision. Everything will seem lost, but at the right time, at the most dramatic stage of the crisis, the Church will be reborn." 

                                        - Joseph Ratzinger

For Nancy Pelosi, yet another decorous political junket to Rome and political manipulation of the Eucharist; “the Faith is a path to so many other things”, including abortion?

As I predicted, Nancy travelled yet again to Rome, and in repudiation of Archbishop Cordileone’s public instruction that she should not receive Communion, has defiantly  done so.

Of course, she enjoyed a political audience with Pope Francis as prelude to her political instrumentalization of reception of the sacramental Body of Christ at the Mass for Sts Peter & Paul in Saint Peter’s Basilica.


Story here: https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-pelosi-receives-holy-communion-at-mass-presided-over-by-pope-francis/

For Nancy Pelosi, yet another decorous political junket to Rome and political manipulation of the Eucharist. She is quoted saying “the Faith is a path to so many other things”. Her words and actions make clear she believes one of those things is premeditated murder of the preborn boy or girl in abortion.

The faith is a path to God. For Pelosi, unfortunately, her denial and distortion of the Faith won’t get her anywhere near the one goal and destiny for which it exists: heavenly beatitude with Him.

The pope preached a homily, and Cardinal Re presided, at the Mass today at which Pelosi desecrated the holy Eucharist. Details here: https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2022-06/pope-francis-church-called-to-promote-culture-of-care.html

The TLM evangelizes in ways the novus ordo doesn’t

In a new document Pope Francis makes claims about the novus ordo, or new Mass created by a deceptive committee after the fathers of Vatican II returned to their home dioceses, which do not hold up and which describe, in fact, only the traditional Latin Mass.

So often those who pronounce with authority on the traditional liturgy do not pray it and thus do not know or understand it. I have offered the two liturgies side by side for over a decade, observing most closely the prayer, and effects on the faithful praying, attending each.

He libels the Church’s traditional liturgy as a kind of empty formalism which cannot evangelize when that is exactly what it has done for nearly 2,000 years. The TLM draws converts every year to my parish. The novus ordo does not.

Doctrinal doubters and deniers, along with many well-intentioned faithful, attend the new Mass exclusively. This is, of course, certainly better than the alternative of profaning the Lord’s Day by not attending Mass. Prsying the Mass, however, should result in the healing and perfecting of our faith.

Typically, dissenters to the Church’s teaching on marriage and life are found in novus ordo congregations but not in TLM communities. To the contrary, faithful who attend the TLM give assent of intellect and will to all that the Church teaches in faith and morals. Which, in fact, is evangelization and which not? 

With TLM: Converts every year. Novus ordo not.

With TLM: entire family attends Sunday Mass, parents together with kids. Novus ordo not.

With TLM: all young courting couples desire sacrament of marriage. Novus ordo not. Traditional Catholic youth “court”, they don’t “date”, acknowledging the Church’s teaching on chastity.

With TLM: couples who ask for infant baptism attend Sunday Mass faithfully and are sacramentally married. Novus ordo often do not.

With TLM: more men participate more often in Sunday and weekday Mass and devotions, at times up to a majority of the congregation at any given moment. Novus ordo not.

With TLM: parents take active role in forming their children in the faith by example and home instruction. Novus ordo not.

Perhaps the most glaring difference is the frequency of confession for those who attend the TLM in contrast to those who exclusively attend the novus ordo and who rarely confess but who receive Communion at the same percentages. Is one to believe all mortal sin has disappeared in the novus ordo?

New parishioners are joining the traditional community on a continuing basis: another new member joined this week. Not so in the novus ordo.

Traditional Catholics also show up for weekday Mass and Wednesday evening adoration. Novus ordo families, with the exception of those who also attend the traditional Mass, do not participate in devotions beyond the Sunday liturgy. Restricting a parish to offering only the new Mass sounds the death knell for community life.

At this link a news item about the latest assault on Catholic tradition: 


https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2022-06/pope-francis-apostolic-letter-desiderio-desideravi-liturgy.html

Yet another document that creates more division where there was mutual peace about the matter of the Church’s way of worship and yet more refusal to allow the Holy Spirit to decide the legitimacy of the new liturgy within the Catholic Faith.

There is a great lack of silence in the new liturgy which in fact has none except where there are perfunctory pauses between prayers, all done our loud, which inhibit congregational reflection. Despite that here is a claim in the new document for that which does not exist:

“Among the ritual acts that belong to the whole assembly, silence occupies a place of absolute importance” which “moves to sorrow for sin and the desire for conversion. It awakens a readiness to hear the Word and awakens prayer. It disposes us to adore the Body and Blood of Christ” (52).”

For those unfortunately addicted to the new liturgy, silence creates an unwanted and uncomfortable agitation, an impatient waiting for the next item or loud interruption of interior quiet which makes room for God.

The traditional liturgy, on the other hand, creates space for profound participation by stipulating that certain prayers of the priest are to be uttered in the low tone to give interior room, through silence for deeper participation on the part of all, entering thereby more deeply into the prayer of mind and heart without the distraction of loudness and constant noise, a frequent characteristic, a feature not a bug, of the new liturgy.


Monday, June 27, 2022

Homeland Security claims pro-abortion terror attacks could continue ‘for weeks’ after Roe ruling

 While the brief states that the most pressing threats will be directed against state and federal officials, it also warns of attacks against pro-life organizations and people.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – An intelligence brief released by the Department of Homeland Security on Friday predicts that terrorist attacks could continue “for weeks” after the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade.

“Some domestic violent extremists (DVEs) will likely exploit the recent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade to intensify violence against a wide range of targets,” the brief states. “We expect violence could occur for weeks following the release, particularly as DVEs may be mobilized to respond to changes in state laws and ballot measures on abortion stemming from the decision. We base this assessment on an observed increase in violent incidents across the United States following the unauthorized disclosure in May of a draft majority opinion on the case.”

Read the rest: https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/homeland-security-claims-pro-abortion-terror-attacks-could-continue-for-weeks-after-roe-ruling/

Priest’s open letter to Pope Francis: Please correct your ‘serious’ errors and defend divine truth

 'O Father, it is impossible not to ask you the following questions: Are you a member of ecclesiastical masonry? Who are the cardinals, bishops and priests who are members of this ecclesiastical masonry?'

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(LifeSiteNews) – Editor’s note: The following is the fourth open letter from a Catholic priest from the Ivory Coast written to Pope Francis, asking him to “take the path of humility,” and to clarify his “errors.” The priest writes under the name Father Jesusmary Missigbètò: his first open letter can be read here, with the second here, and the third here.

To the reigning Pontiff Pope Francis,

Dearest Father, thank you for receiving this letter through the Prelate of Opus Dei. May Mary and Joseph help you to guide the Catholic Church in the Truth (Jesus Christ)! On May 28, 2022, your response to my letter of appeal and to the five questions I had asked you was silence. O Father, how sad, for your errors are grave and obvious…

September 5, 2016: “the commitment to live in continence can be proposed. Amoris laetitia does not ignore the difficulties of this option… the mentioned option may not, in fact, be feasible” (Pope Francis, Bishops of the Pastoral Region of Buenos Aires) But, Father, since when has the virtue of chastity become an option? How is it possible for a pope to ignore what all Catholics with a minimum of orthodox Christian formation (and even non-Christians who strive to live the natural moral law) know? Chastity is never an option but a serious moral duty for every human being.

Unfortunately, on June 5, 2017, you ordered that these three sentences be published as “Magisterium authenticum” (Acta Apostolicae Sedis 108, pp. 1071-1074). In over 2,000 years of Catholic history, this is the first papal doctrinal-moral error thus recorded in the Vatican Archives (cf. my 2nd open letter), with the astonishing support of several cardinals, bishops and priests: Parolin, Kasper, Schönborn, Coccopalmerio, Vallini, Cupich, Grech, Paglia, Forte, Scicluna, Fenoy, McElroy, Spadaro, Bordeyne, etc.

Moreover, does not this official publication, clearly showing your desire to impose this error on all Catholics, call into question the application of the dogma of infallibility to your pontificate? Could we not see here, a posteriori, the proof of a possible invalidity of your election to the Chair of St. Peter? (cf. Vatican Council I, First Dogmatic Constitution Pastor Aeternus on the Church of Christ, Chapter 4, July 18, 1870)

Read the rest: https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/priests-open-letter-to-pope-francis-please-correct-your-serious-errors-and-defend-divine-truth/

Virginia: Fairfax County PD investigating vandalism at a Reston Catholic church after the overturn of Roe v Wade.

 


Mexico: Drug-Fueled Rampage Ends With Two Dead Priests Dumped in a Desert


 Read it here: https://www.thedailybeast.com/drug-fueled-cartel-rampage-ends-with-two-dead-priests-dumped-in-a-mexican-desert?source=articles&via=rss

Multiple crews respond to suspicious Catholic Church fire in West Virginia

The historic church before:


and after the fire:


“According to the Beaver Volunteer Fire Department, the call for a structure fire at the Saint Colman Catholic Church in Shady Spring came in at 10:16 A.M. on Sunday, June 26, 2022. When crews arrived, the church was already burned to the ground and still smoldering. 

“The Beaver Volunteer Fire Department said given the nature of the fire, it is considered suspicious in nature and is being investigated as arson.

Read the rest: https://www.wvnstv.com/news/west-virginia-news/raleigh-county/multiple-crews-respond-to-suspicious-church-fire-in-shady-spring/

Police suspect arsonist destroyed historic Catholic church building



Dating back to 1888, St. Colman church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Catholic book store burned down in Houston


https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2022/06/26/fire-erupts-at-downtown-shopping-center-hfd-says-crews-work-to-put-out-blaze/

Archbishop Lori of Baltimore presides at FSSP parish of Saint Alphonsus



 

UPDATED: Fire in vicinity of Vatican contained


 

Hungarian Cardinal Erdo Turns 70 Amid Speculation He's Next Pope

 

Cardinal Peter Erdo, Metropolitan archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest, celebrated his 70th birthday Saturday at a time talk is mounting the primate of Hungary will eventually succeed Pope Francis as leader of 1.34 billion Roman Catholics worldwide.

"The boss is not going to be around for long," a Vatican insider who requested anonymity told Newsmax last week, referring to widespread reports that the 85-year Francis is in failing health. "At the most, he will be there until December."

The same source told Newsmax to closely "watch Cardinal Erdo ... he is the one who [the College of Cardinals, who will elect the next Pope] are beginning to talk about. And he will be great."

Talk of Erdo as a future Pope is nothing new. But it has recently been heightened by the growing rumors that Pope Francis is in failing health or that he may retire following the consistory (meeting) Aug. 27 at which he will formally install 21 new cardinals (16 of whom are under the age of 80 and thus eligible to vote for the next Pope).

Considered a traditionalist in the mold of Popes John Paul II and Benedict, sources say Erdo shows respect to those who prefer the Mass in Latin, celebrated universally for 500 years until 1970 (and with whom Francis has created tremendous animosity by attempting to limit the Latin Mass through his document "Traditiones Custodes," issued last July).

Erdo is fluent in Latin as well as Italian, French, English, and his native Hungarian.

His traditionalist pedigree aside, Erdo is also respected by the so-called "modernist" or "liberal" faction in the church embodied by Francis. The current Pope appointed Erdo as the "relator general" of the Third Extraordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in October of 2014. The theme of the synod was "The Challenges of the Family in the Context of Evangelization."

Read the rest: https://www.newsmax.com/john-gizzi/hungary-cardinal-erdo-pope-francis/2022/06/25/id/1076086/#

Angry worker slaps Rudy Giuliani on back over abortion; video viewed over 2M times

Video of Rudy Giuliani Slapped Inside Grocery Store Viewed 2M Times

https://www.newsweek.com/rudy-giuliani-assault-video-shoprite-attack-slap-new-york-supermarket-staten-island-1719308

Saturday, June 25, 2022

“This historic Supreme Court decision would not have happened without fifty years of patient, loving, hard work by people of all faiths and none, in diverse fields including social service, religion, law, medicine, culture, education, policy and politics. But our work has just begun.”

 Statement by Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone on U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Dobbs Vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization

Upon the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on Dobbs Vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone released the following statement,

“The arc of history is long but it bends towards justice.”  Never have the words the Rev. Martin Luther King*, the great prophet of human rights in the 20th century, rung more true.  This historic Supreme Court decision would not have happened without fifty years of patient, loving, hard work by people of all faiths and none, in diverse fields including social service, religion, law, medicine, culture, education, policy and politics.  But our work has just begun.  The artificial barriers the Supreme Court created by erecting a so-called constitutional right out of thin air have been removed.  The struggle to demonstrate we can build a culture that respects every human life, including mothers in crisis pregnancies and the babies they carry, continues.  We must redouble our efforts to accompany women and couples who are facing unexpected or difficult pregnancies, as well as to offer mercy to those suffering the after-effects of the abortion experience.  Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the unborn, pray for us.

*Martin Luther King was a sexual predator, newly-released FBI evidence suggests: https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/martin-luther-king-was-a-sexual-predator-newly-released-fbi-evidence-suggests/

(As well as a plagiarist, apologist for abortion and denier of the divinity of Christ:

Self-defense, the right to “keep and bear arms” is pro-life

 

Supreme Court Issues Pro-Life Decision … on the Second Amendment

By JOHN ZMIRAKJune 23, 2022

No, you didn’t misread the headline. The Court hasn’t yet issued its long-awaited decision that might overturn Roe v. Wade. But the Second Amendment decision it did just issue is every bit as important for the intertwined causes of innocent life, human dignity, and true American freedom. What’s more, the justices’ courage in flouting elite opinion stiffens our hope that they will also overturn Roe.

The court majority has shown that it cares about the actual words of our Constitution, and the real-world history of their careful application in law. We no longer have a court of would-be philosopher kings, each writing his own Utopian laws, to please his private ideology and curry favor with academia. A majority of the “nine lawyers” whom Justice Antonin Scalia feared would rule the country as an oligarchy have instead subjected themselves to the Constitution, and ruled that state legislators and Congress must do the same.

For an excellent overview of what’s in this new decision, see Margot Cleveland at The Federalist. She traces the legal developments over the past 10 years that helped rescue the Second Amendment from the status of a “second-class” privilege, and restored it as a fundamental right, guaranteed by the Constitution. Put briefly, the court has ruled against New York state (and with it, implicitly, many other states and cities) which violated the Second Amendment rights of citizens by imprisoning them for carrying concealed weapons.

Human Dignity Includes Gun Rights

Our founding documents weren’t written by atheists, or even non-committal Deists. Some 90 percent or more of the drafters and signers of the Constitution were Augustinian Christians — as scholar Mark David Hall has proven beyond any question. They believed that man was made a little lower than the angels, too noble an image of God to be treated like an animal by his government.

He also fell with Adam, so he needed some form of government as the divinely appointed avenger of crime.

But man as redeemed by Christ should never be governed by tyrants who disregard his rights, defacing the divine image he bears.

Man’s fundamental liberties come from God, not the government. That’s merely a tool we use to coordinate and cooperate, and punish evildoers who violate those rights. The government must answer to the people, and if it rebels against its proper purpose, they have the right to overthrow it. If they have the right, they must have the means. And so they must have weapons, comparable to the government’s.

For a detailed explanation of how the Christian view of man demands gun rights for citizens, see the paper I wrote with Jason Jones and published here at The Stream: “God, Guns, and the Government.” (Soon it’s to be a book!)

A Last Defense Against Tyrants

As constitutional scholar Steven Halbrook documents in The Founders’ Second Amendment, the statesmen who drafted our Constitution and Bill of Rights disagreed on many things. One thing they were unanimous about? The need for an “armed citizenry” to stand as the back-up guarantee against the rise of tyrannical government. Over and over, the founders cited “citizens militias” (who helped give America birth — remember Lexington and Concord?) as the last defense, should every other guarantee of freedom they’d put in place fail.

It’s almost as if they had a time machine, and could look ahead to the 20th century. That’s when modern secular states would intentionally murder — not including casualties of war — 170 million peaceful civilians, as R.J. Rummel documents in Death By Government. The only thing linking those Jews, kulaks, Chinese, and Tutsis? They’d all been disarmed previously by the government.

Of course, our founders didn’t need a time machine. They’d studied history, from ancient Greece and the Roman Republic to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. They were steeped in the recent history of England, where Stuart monarchs had tried to establish an autocratic regime — and been beaten, by armed citizens. They studied the history of France, where the kings had succeeded in crushing all opposition to their power, and viciously persecuted religious minorities.

Our founders took the text of the Second Amendment largely from the 1690 English Bill of Rights, which linked gun rights to religious freedom — because they remembered how Charles I and Charles II had tried to disarm dissenting Protestants, as a prelude to legal abuse.

You Are Not a Child of God, But a Termite

American Progressives, starting in the early 1900s with the likes of Woodrow Wilson, rejected our founders’ worldview. They waved it off as “antiquated,” and looked instead to the Social Gospel, which virtually divinized the government. (Wilson apparently believed that as U.S. president, he was the voice of the Holy Spirit, in action.) They swooned at all the “progress” possible when the State isn’t hampered by old superstitions concerning human dignity and liberty. And they got busy stripping power from citizens, local governments, even states.

Please Support The Stream: Equipping Christians to Think Clearly About the Political, Economic, and Moral Issues of Our Day.

To Progressives, we aren’t images of God, or even really primates. Nor mammals. We’re instead something akin to social insects, like termites. Such insects don’t revolt, don’t think for themselves, and willingly give up their lives whenever the Collective requires it. They might have soldiers among them, but these are the only creatures that will ever wield deadly force, and only at the behest of the Queen. Such insects don’t treat their larvae as sacred, or even special. The Queen can decide to eat them, and none will object.

Hive insects. That is how leftists today, and with them RINO Republicans, really see you. So of course they want you defanged, passive, unable even to defend yourself against crime. But it’s not how God made you, or how you are meant to live. Thank the Lord our Supreme Court has resoundingly affirmed that.

Now that the justices have asserted that the Constitution means what it says, let’s pray that next they rule it doesn’t mean what it doesn’t say: that it doesn’t include (somehow in invisible ink between the lines) the right of women to kill their children for sexual convenience. Stay tuned.

 

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. He is co-author with Jason Jones of “God, Guns, & the Government.”

Scalia’s judicial heir and a great Catholic


Thanks be to God for Justice Clarence Thomas. History will prove him a great American and a great Catholic man of faith.


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