“Gender ideology preys upon the young, convincing girls and boys that they were “born in the wrong body” and rushing them onto experimental drugs, hormones, and surgeries that will leave them stunted, scarred, and infertile.”

 Biden Turns Christianity on Its Head

Tyler O'Neil  / @Tyler2ONeil / March 15, 2023

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President Joe Biden calls it "close to sinful" for Florida to protect children from experimental transgender medical interventions. Pictured: Biden speaks Tuesday at the Boys and Girls Club of West San Gabriel Valley in Monterey Park, California. (Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)

COMMENTARY BY

Tyler O'Neil@Tyler2ONeil

Tyler O'Neil is managing editor of The Daily Signal and the author of "Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center."

Gender ideology preys upon the young, convincing girls and boys that they were “born in the wrong body” and rushing them onto experimental drugs, hormones, and surgeries that will leave them stunted, scarred, and infertile. Yet the ostensible Catholic who currently occupies the Oval Office not only supports this horror but had the gall to condemn those who would protect children from it as “sinful” and “cruel.”

President Joe Biden slammed the Florida Health Department’s efforts that prioritize counseling over medical transitions for children, calling these efforts “close to sinful” and “cruel.” The president emphasized the humanity of children who struggle with an identity at odds with their biological sex, saying, “They love, they have feelings, they have inclinations”—as if to suggest that the Florida Health Department considers these kids as subhuman.

Biden didn’t address the horrific outcomes of transgender medical interventions, which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ team highlighted in a gruesome—yet revealing—video responding to Biden. The president also didn’t address the recent scandal in St. Louis, Missouri, in which a pro-transgender whistleblower claimed that a gender clinic rushed kids into medical transitions on extremely flimsy grounds. 

Biden also didn’t address Pope Francis’ statement Friday—three days before Biden’s remarks aired Sunday—that “the ideology of gender” is “one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations,” denying “the richness … of men and women, and of all humanity” in “the tension of the differences.”

Instead, Biden adopted religious language to advance a cause directly opposite from the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Churchand from the witness of Scripture and Christian tradition for the past 2,000 years. He adopted the moral authority to declare sinful what Catholicism doesn’t consider sinful, and to advocate a teaching that contradicts Genesis 1:27, thus turning Christianity on its head.

Read the rest: https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/03/15/did-protecting-children-mutilation-become-sin/

My latest column: "The Rampage Of The Lawless"

 

March 16, 2023

By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK

One supposes that the truth becomes “safe” for liars once they control the levers of power and thus can take credit for finally disseminating it, or allowing it be to spread. The power of elected office or bureaucratic privilege is instrumentalized for its own perpetuation at whim through a manipulation of the facts. We are asked to believe that stupidity is as much to blame for the catastrophe of needless mortality as is obscurantism or any other possible motive.

“It always irritates some people when I say this, but it’s just the truth: The people responsible for the last three years of economic destruction, psychological injury, and mass pharmaceutical experimentation are callous and evil, but they’re also just really dumb. None of this meant anything, none of this was for anything, and that’s the bitterest pill of all. Every last person in these text messages, from Johnson to Hancock to other ministers to random experts and everyone else, has absolutely no idea what they’re doing or what the purposes of their restrictions even are.

“Lockdowns were every inch the crazy illogical senseless chaotic policies they appear to be. They are the fruit of shallow low-wattage government functionaries who have a planning horizon extending no more than two weeks, who judge their own success or failure via press coverage, and who regard the public as dimwitted cattle to be herded in expedient directions” (https://www.eugyppius.com/p/yet-another-leak-reveals-that-covid).

We have been informed in recent days that COVID originated in the Wuhan lab, as many previously thought. Those now also admitting such sit at desks in big buildings in D.C. with federal government agency names, signaling that it’s safe for the fellow-traveling propagandists at The New York Times and The Washington Post to get on board. Increasing numbers are stating as well that the vaccines were, for motives of profit, perpetrated hastily and without proper testing. Check.

Perhaps the only question remaining is, when will “the powers that be” decide the catastrophic excess mortality is real? Now that the COVID pandemic has been declared to be over, when will we admit that current excess deaths are no longer from a pandemic that has ended and begin to explore the possibility that the human intervention of the vaccine in response to it is the next most plausible source?

Without neglecting the real tragedy of, and in some cases the preventable criminal negligence resulting in, pandemic deaths we can say that the natural immunity afforded by the virus itself provided for the vast majority the most secure and dependable protection from the disease. The long arc of medical science both observed and documented handed down this knowledge. The question remains as to why so many who should have been expected as medical professionals to rely upon and follow the guidance of such reliable know-how and proved experience panicked instead.

We’ve also learned that elected representatives of the people, in their bitter hatred of a former president who they fear may run again and indeed is doing so, set up a kangaroo court in the Capitol. In this travesty of justice, they cherry-picked camera footage and lied about the death of a police officer, among other crimes, in order to frame, convict, and send to jail some of those very citizens they are charged with representing. These innocent citizens now languish behind bars while the liars who framed and imprisoned them go free. Some have blithely moved on.

The crimes and injustice of the world are also to be found within the Church. The world, the flesh, and the Devil are at play in sinful behavior everywhere. The Founder taught, “To whom much is given much is expected.” He spoke here, however, of believers, the condition necessary when speaking of faith for knowing its value. “One cannot give what one does not have.” The habit does not make the monk, then. “Let the weeds and the wheat grow together,” the Founder also taught.

Read the rest: https://thewandererpress.com/catholic/news/our-catholic-faith/the-rampage-of-the-lawless/

French philosopher urges people to rebel – by making friends

Geoffroy de Lagasnerie says focus on friendships over relationships or family is radical act in today’s society

Angelique Chrisafis in Paris

@achrisafis

Mon 6 Mar 2023 11.52 EST

Building your life around close friendships rather than family or romance is a joyous and necessary act of rebellion, and governments should put in place “friendship ministries” to radically rethink the way society is organised, a key French philosopher has argued.

Geoffroy de Lagasnerie this week publishes a manifesto for friendship, 3 Une Aspiration au Dehors, detailing his close friendship with two other writers, Didier Eribon and Édouard Louis. The three friends eat together in the evening, speak many times daily, wish each other goodnight and good morning every day and synch their schedules to make sure they prioritise friendship moments, namely meeting up for long chats. He described the friendship as the centre of their lives, “one long discussion that never ends”.

Presented as a kind of radical blueprint for investing in good friendships, De Lagasnerie questions society’s “authoritarian” insistence on prioritising family structures and romantic relationships.

French philosopher and sociologist Geoffroy de Lagasnerie. Photograph: Martin Bureau/AFP/Getty Images

He describes in the book how the three men always spend their birthdays and special occasions together, including Christmas Eve. “When we send other people our Christmas photos or post them on social media, we get a vast number of messages from people who say they envy the chance to spend the festive season with friends ... This raises the question: why does friendship as a way of life seem so inaccessible, even to those who aspire to it?”

Read the rest: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/mar/06/french-philosopher-geoffroy-de-lagasnerie-friendships

Ten terrible years: “Francis himself, both before and after his election, has empowered and protected predatory clergy and their accomplices.“

 

Ten terrible years of Pope Francis

The church has lost all its moral authority

 

Damian Thompson is a journalist and author

March 13, 2023

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Ten years ago today, on the afternoon of Wednesday, March 13, 2013, the 115 cardinal-electors of the Catholic Church walked up one after the other to a table in the Sistine Chapel to deposit folded ballot papers, only an inch wide, in a silver urn. Each bore the name of the cardinal they wanted to succeed Pope Benedict XVI, who had stunned them by his resignation just over a month earlier. It was an anonymous vote, of course, but just to make sure, the cardinals had been instructed to disguise their handwriting.

It was the fifth ballot since Tuesday night, and they knew it would be the last. After that first vote, there was a ripple of surprise when the bookies’ favourite, the scholarly but energetic Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan, received 30 votes instead of the anticipated 40. The runner-up, with 26 votes, was the cardinal who came second to Joseph Ratzinger in 2005, Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires.

Most commentators had written off Bergoglio because he was 76. But, of all the candidates, he seemed the most determined to clear out the filth in the Vatican. The year before, Benedict XVI’s butler had leaked documents revealing the industrial-scale blackmailing of senior clerics with an appetite for gay sex parties and money-laundering. The old pope was not personally implicated, but he clearly didn’t have a clue what to do about it. When he announced that, at 85, he no longer had the strength to do the job, few cardinals doubted that the so-called “Vatileaks” were to blame. Likewise, no one doubted that Bergoglio — who had been a nightclub bouncer before becoming a Jesuit priest — was looking forward to knocking heads together.

On Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, the horse-trading began, carried out sotto voce during meal breaks and rest periods in the Domus Sancta Marthae, a cross between a five-star hotel and a prison where the cardinals are incarcerated between ballots. By the fourth ballot, the Argentinian Jesuit was unstoppable. The fifth ballot was merely an opportunity for as many cardinals as possible to vote for the winner.

When it was over, 90 out of 115 had backed Bergoglio. The white smoke billowed forth and the bells of St Peter’s rang out to confirm the election (a recent innovation, just in case the accident-prone Vatican sends out black smoke by mistake). The new pope, who had chosen the name Francis after the medieval saint who embraced extreme poverty, walked on to the balcony of St Peter’s minus the traditional gorgeously embroidered stole. His disarming manner sent the crowd into an ecstasy of cheering. The next morning, Francis turned up at the counter of the Domus to pay his bill in person. He rang his newsagent in Buenos Aires to tell him to stop delivering the papers. The media were charmed by these faux-humble stunts.

And so began one of the darkest decades in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church. The cardinals had been taken for a ride. They had elected a man about whom they knew little: a divisive and intellectually lazy clerical politician.

But that is not the worst of it. The truth — unforgivably obscured by a mainstream media that relies on papal allies for “commentary” on Vatican affairs — is that Francis himself, both before and after his election, has empowered and protected predatory clergy and their accomplices.

Read the rest: https://unherd.com/2023/03/ten-terrible-years-of-pope-francis/

My latest column: “The Holy Eucharist, The Power Of His Body”

By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK

As a young Army officer, I learned that military readiness meant ultimate availability. A constant capacity to respond when the mission demanded an ability to pack up and move out at any time was a given. One of the easiest ways to fall short in military life was failing to respond when summoned, wherever or whenever.

There was a lot of “togetherness” back then. Nothing like the military to throw you in together with 500 of your “best friends.” There was plenty of time for shooting the breeze. “Smoking and joking” as we called it. We never thought of fearing lack of human contact. We longed rather more often for solo time at home to rest and recuperate after tank gunnery or deployments. Phone calls often came only to transmit the bare essentials of communication.

I was trained to always answer the phone in those days of home landlines. I never got over the strange impression upon later witnessing people automatically and routinely letting a call go to voicemail. Obnoxious sales calls were only just beginning to prove a nuisance.

Later came voice mail, checked for new messages upon returning each day from work. Later in the Navy there were pagers and more pressure to be on call everywhere. These were just a foretaste of ultimate availability on the go at all times provided by mobile devices. And they came with the benefit and burden of the Internet.
Communication became then something bordering at times on oppression. Expectations of a response loomed every time you hit the “send” button. We had to get used to assuming a text or email was received and read in the absence of a response of any kind.

Information and affirmation are always interconnected, but increasing substitution of technology which can’t replace the full effect provided by human presence threatens to overwhelm the other aspects of relationships.

When there is nothing else of context to provide countering information one is tempted to wonder: “Does silence mean it’s all over?” Because sometimes it does. The young people call this phenomenon “ghosting.” This from the social set that uses texting for any and all communication, shunning voice communications as too risky. But risk of failure and vulnerability are part of all relationships. Avoiding phone calls will not eliminate such.

Self-image, and ultimately relationships and love, are affected for good or ill by the ways in which ever-present technology is used and by the ways in which gestures enabled by it are interpreted.
Texting and social media, counting likes and views, are a poor substitute for relationships “in real life.” Compare the satisfaction of one single friendship to thousands of faceless finger-taps on a screen button. No contest.

Technology gives control to choose where and when to establish spaces in relationships. This is understandable and necessary in all healthy connections. For others, perhaps, the occasional perception of an unacknowledged gesture brings perhaps a sense of dissatisfaction in its train.

All of these forms of communication, affirmation, human loves and friendships will ultimately pass away, however. Important as they may be now in various ways, we cannot ultimately rely on them. Blessings they are, but the kind that come and go.

These finally are only road marks along a path to eternity guided by the hand extended by One in whom all the other gifts and graces, forms of affirmation and companionship, are granted only for a time.

Read the rest: https://thewandererpress.com/catholic/news/our-catholic-faith/the-holy-eucharist-the-power-of-his-body/

My latest column: “ Fasting: Denial Of The Flesh, Joy Of The Spirit”

 By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK

“Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.”

The suffering of physical privation in our Lent fasting and other means of self-denial has the purpose of securing for ourselves higher spiritual goods. The grace of inner gladness, that of the spirit which endures beyond the limits of the flesh, is one of these.

“In that time Jesus said to His disciples: And when you fast, be not as the hypocrites, sad. For they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast” (Matt. 6:16).

Christ does not oppose the laws of religious observance. As in other circumstances recounted in the Scriptures, here again that is the case. He came “not to abolish,” He said, but rather “to fulfill” the law. So, we are urged to follow the teachings while avoiding the hypocrisy of those teachers of the law who invert the purpose of the law. As in our own day, the salvation of souls comes first, but the Pharisees of our own day are obsessed about which version of the liturgy the sheep prefer, rather than simply finding satisfaction in the fact that people want to go to Holy Mass as God commands.
St. Augustine speaks of the despising of the flesh required for investing more fully in the life of the soul. The one enduring in this world only for a time, the other for eternity.

“It is evident that by these precepts we are bidden to seek for inner gladness, lest, by running after that reward which is without, we should become conformed to the fashion of this world, and should so lose the promise of that blessing which is all the truer and more stable that it is inward, that blessing wherein God hath chosen us to be conformed to the likeness of His Son. In this chapter we will principally consider the fact that vainglory finds a ground for its exercise in struggling poverty as much as in worldly distinction and display; and this development is the most dangerous, because it entices under pretense of being the serving of God.”

Using the things of this world more temperately enables us, while growing in the love of God who gives them, to lift our minds and hearts to the greater, spiritual gifts bestowed in Christ.

“He that is characterized by unbridled indulgence in luxury or in dress, or any other display, is by these very things easily shown to be a follower of worldly vanities, and deceives no one by putting on a hypocritical mask of godliness. But those professors of Christianity, who turn all eyes on themselves by an eccentric show of groveling and dirtiness, not suffered by necessity, but by their own choice, of them we must judge by their other works whether their conduct really proceeds from the desire of mortification by giving up unnecessary comfort, or is only the means of some ambition: The Lord bids us beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing, but ‘by their fruits,’ says He, ‘ye shall know them’.”

In our own day we see the inversion of those who assume the costume of poverty in public, or demand it of others, while using personal power to enable, with appointment to office, criminals and corrupt persons who grovel like courtiers. These men of power are enriching themselves, enjoying the vain show of the trappings of rule, while surrounding themselves with rapists and thieves who go unpunished. The sheep are devoured and their souls imperiled by men who should love and serve them as Christ wills but who rather conduct themselves instead like ravening wolves.

Read the rest: https://thewandererpress.com/catholic/news/our-catholic-faith/fasting-denial-of-the-flesh-joy-of-the-spirit/

Abortion is now at your local CVS and Walgreens

Abortion Pills on Pharmacy Shelves: An Embittered Battle for the Unborn

by Michael HaynesFebruary 27, 2023

Abortion Pills on Pharmacy Shelves: An Embittered Battle for the Unborn

Healthcare workers are pushing back against the increased promotion of abortion pills following a January ruling from the Food and Drug Administration, citing their religious rights to be exempted from selling the contraceptive pills. They are being joined in the fight against the abortion lobby by pro-life lawmakers, who are looking to further protect the unborn against the current administration’s anti-life policies.

The situation further highlights the current nationwide conflict between the Biden Administration’s relentless push for increased abortions in whatever form versus the renewed legal protection for the unborn following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Background

On January 3, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finalized a new rule which permits retail pharmacies and drug stores to sell the abortifacient drug, mifepristone. Announcing the new rule, which removes former FDA rules on limiting access to mifepristone, the FDA stated that the drug can be dispensed by pharmacies who receive the necessary certification. Receipt of the abortion pill would require a prescription, but the pill can then be dispensed to the person at the counter.

The move represented a significant expansion to access to abortion, as noted by abortion giant Planned Parenthood. The organization’s president Alexis McGill Johnson welcomed the FDA’s move, calling it “a step in the right direction for health equity.”

Johnson called the measure a “game changer for people trying to access basic health care…Today’s changes will help millions of people have more access to the care they need, when they need it.”

Drug store giants CVS and Walgreens were quick to jump on the new permission, declaring only one day later that they would take advantage of it. Women could thus collect abortion pills in their stores instead of at a doctor’s clinic. Some days later, Rite Aid followed suit and announced it would start the process to authorize the dispensing of mifepristone in its stores.

The rest of the story: https://www.tfp.org/abortion-pills-on-pharmacy-shelves-an-embittered-battle-for-the-unborn/