Wednesday, November 30, 2022

"I Do Not Say Person Because This Is Debated But A Living Human Being

Did this nonsense come from Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi?  We'd expect such distortions of logic to come from them or some other pro-abort now, wouldn't we?  Nope!  It comes from the current occupant of the chair of Peter, Francis.  This came from a recent interview that he gave to the Jesuit kitty-litter known as "America".  Please see the tweet below.


In past years, I never could understand how the bishops could be so spineless when it came to making a stand for innocent human life and rebuking pro-aborts in their midst.  I thought they were just being weak and/or currying political and financial favors.  Then their masks started sliding off and I realized that many if not most of the bishops are just as pro-abortion as Biden, Pelosi, Ted Kennedy et al.  I now believe that Francis just tipped his hand in that regard - if he bothers to hide his cards in the first place.

We simply must stop blindly taking this man's prattling as though it were God's word, lest we find our souls in danger.

Saturday, November 26, 2022

Refuting Attempts To Discredit The Mass Of The Ages

Over a month ago, three theologians, Drs. Mary Healy and John Cavadini, with Father Thomas Weinandy, wrote a series of articles that appeared in Church Life Journal.  I haven't read all the articles, but what I read seems to be an attempt at justifying the heavy-handedness of Francis' Traditionis Custodes.  I'm not going into all the detail of the errors here.  Two other theologians, Drs Joseph Shaw and Peter Kwasniewski, have done an excellent job.  I suggest that all links be read, even the links contained in the linked articles.

I am not acquainted with Dr. Cavadini, but am with Dr. Healy and Father Weinandy, although it's been quite a few years since I've seen either of them.  That acquaintance goes back to our days in the Mother of God Community, a group that was part of the so-called "charismatic renewal" that fell under scrutiny owing to cultish behaviors on the part of the leadership in the early 1990s.  I parted ways with that group at that time.  A major reason for my departure was the overemphasis on personal experience over adherence to Catholic doctrine.  The Novus Ordo Mass is geared to personal experience whereas the Traditional Latin Mass is geared towards worship of God exclusively.  

That last word "exclusively" is key.  You'll not find sloppy dress nor conduct in a church dedicated to the Traditional Latin Mass.  Women dress decently and modestly: no exposed body parts, cloths modest and in good repair.  Similarly, men are not dressed as though they were just in a drunken brawl: no jeans, tee-shirts but lots of suits and ties.  Before and after Mass in the nave of the church, there is no chit-chat going on between adults.  One might hear the occasional cooing of babies.  Speaking of which, there are many young families with many children at at Traditional Latin Mass, more so than at a Novus Ordo.

I myself attend both.  On Sundays I will attend a Traditional Latin Mass, although I must drive some distance to do so.  That Mass isn't available other days for me so I will attend the Novus Ordo Masses.  Often at those Masses I am reminded of why I prefer the Traditional Latin Mass.  However, if I truly believed that the Novus Ordo Mass was an inherent danger to my faith, I would not attend (barring Holy Days of Obligation).  I personally don't know anyone who attends the Traditional Latin Mass who believes it would be dangerous and even sinful to attend.  The CHW series intimates, though, that this mindset is so prevalent as to justify Francis' draconian actions towards the Traditional Latin Mass.  I realize that a few attendees of the Traditional Latin Mass do hold those erroneous attitudes towards the Novus Ordo, but to attribute such mindsets towards all the attendees, including me, and to publish such attributions veers into sins of slander and libel.

Some faithful and courageous prelates are not taking this attack on the Latin Mass lying down.  Archbishop Vigano penned an open letter to another Italian bishop, taking him to task for his senseless quashing of the Latin Mass.  There have been others.  As I track them down, I will repost.

Addendum as of November 28  Mr. Kwasniewski offered more commentary exposing the errors underlying the CHW piece.

Tuesday, November 22, 2022

France Tries To Quash An Actual Catholic Priest

I wrote a few weeks ago about the persecution of Father Sean Sheehy in Ireland who denounced abortion from the pulpit.  Now we hear of a similar occurrence in France.  Father Francois Schneider, during an Armistace Day Mass on November 11, pointed out that abortion killed more people than did World War 1.  Apparently that wasn't the first time Father Schneider dared speak truth to his congregation and they had enough.  The cry-babies whined to the chancery and the diocesan superiors forbade Father to speak in public for four weeks.  After all, we can't have Catholic priests speaking like...Catholic priests, now, can we?

The LifeSiteNews article contains a link to the diocesan web page.  If you use Chrome, you can ask it to translate it into English.  Then click the "contact us" button and leave your protest.  Be firm and truthful.  While not forgetting that you yourselves are Catholics, do NOT feel you have to be overly conciliatory.  The time for "nice guy" is long past.

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

Cardinal Gregory Cancels Youth Rally And Mass For Life - That May Be A Good Thing

Recently Cardinal Gregory of the Archdiocese of Washington announced that the Youth Rally and Mass for Life that the archdiocese sponsored for the past 25 years will be canceled.  Many pro-life people are outraged and understandably so.  Me, not so much, and I'll explain why.

Having been friends of a previous director and assistant director of the Archdiocese pro-life office, I have a bit of an insider perspective of these events.  I know that prior to each event, both directors worked for several months non-stop to pull these events together.  Many logistical details had to be worked out.  What that meant is that they didn't have time for other pro-life matters in the archdiocese.  I believe this is one reason why the parish pro-life organizations received no real direction from the chancery.  They were left to flounder.  Now, looking back at some of the prelates involved, I wonder if these rallies were meant to keep the two directors, who are honorable and sincere people, too busy to direct any meaningful and effective pro-life efforts at the grass roots.

The spiritual tenor of these events left much to be desired.  When they first started under Cardinal Hickey, the rally consisted of a few talks that were helpful to varying degrees.  That changed after his retirement when the former "Cardinal" McCarrick took over.  It moved from the DAR Constitution Hall to the MCI Center near Chinatown.  It became much more entertainment-oriented, geared towards the high school kids in attendance.  In other words, save for the Mass, it became quite a dog-and-pony show, taking up much effort and money that could have been spent on real constructive pro-life projects.

I also noticed something else.  When these Masses ended and the attendees went to join the main rally on the Ellipse, the main rally was ending and getting ready to process to the Supreme Court.  Realizing that these thousands of people were not being included in the counts taken by the DC police department, I decided to inquire about that.  I got the opportunity to do so at an event at the Rosensteel Knights of Columbus Hall in early January.  One of DC's auxiliary bishops, who is now deceased, gave an address.  Before he scooted out the door, I presented my concerns to him, suggesting the very thing that Cardinal Gregory is now doing.  First, he opined that the kids needed to be entertained or else they wouldn't accept the pro-life message.  I was appalled at the condescension towards the young people.  He also claimed that Nellie Gray had on the stage some speakers whom the chancery didn't think deserved a Catholic audience.  I found out later that one speaker whom they eschewed was the late Senator Jesse Helms, who I always held to be an honorable man.

After that conversation, I never attended another of those rallies and Masses.  I simply went to Mass elsewhere.  Actually I did attend one or two of them, but only because I had handouts to distribute.  I wanted to be included in the headcount for Nellie Gray's rallies.

I don't know why Cardinal Gregory decided to cancel these events.  Given other actions of his, I've no doubt that his reasons for doing so may well indicate no pro-life convictions.  I would simply suggest that the attendees go to Mass elsewhere at the numerous churches in the near vicinity.  The Catholic schools that once sent their students to the rallies need to redouble their efforts at teaching Catholic morality to their students.  They also need to get themselves to the March for Life rallies - the entire rallies.  Cardinal Gregory might well have done the pro-life movement a great service, even if inadvertently.  He may have communicated the message that young people need to obey God's laws for God's sake, not because they were "entertained" into doing so.

Sunday, November 13, 2022

Bishops Meeting In Baltimore Starts Tomorrow November 14 - It's Time To Call Them Out

Yesterday's Mass was the Memorial of St. Josaphat, bishop and martyr.  The first reading appears below.

Here John is exhorting the recipients to assist some missionaries.  Take note of the third line from the bottom, where it says that these missionaries "are accepting nothing from the pagans".  Dear readers, for the past several decades, our bishops have sold the collective soul of the US Catholic Church as they grovel and snivel before de facto pagan governments for huge sums of our tax dollars.  Of course many of these receipts are funneled to leftwing progressive organizations.  

We can rest assured that they will be strategizing ways to suck some more from the federal teats.  That will be high on the priority list along with the ongoing efforts to strangle the Traditional Latin Mass and marginalize faithful Catholics, while allowing pro-abortion politicians and other celebrities to receive Holy Communion sacrilegiously.  Baby-slaughter, gay perversions and loss of supernatural faith among Catholics will register mere blips on their radar screens - if that much.

Fortunately faithful Catholics are rising up and are calling our bishops to be the shepherds that they've been ordained to be.  Please see the flyer below.  This is a call for Catholic men to be actual men.  I know that many men have participated in the "That Man Is You" and the "Exodus 90" programs these past few years.  Now here's a golden opportunity to put some walk to all that talk.  Men in the Baltimore/DC area, be there!  If you are in distant areas of the country, organize your own marches.



Saturday, November 12, 2022

Let Church Bulletins Keep Silence

Today I attended a Rosary Rally for the Latin Mass at the Vatican Embassy in Washington DC.  The Arlington Latin Mass Society has been conducting these rallies for two months now, where they pray the Rosary (in Latin) for the freedom to celebrate the Tridentine Mass without the ridiculous hindrances imposed by Traditionis Custodes.  

I met a lady there who composed this parody hymn and put it on youtube.  Here it is.  I believe there are more on her youtube channel.

If you live in the MD/DC/VA area, stop by and pray for an end to the unjust suppression of the Latin Mass that is being done in direct disobedience to Quo Primum, issued by Pope St Pius V after the Council of Trent.

Sunday, November 6, 2022

On The Cusp Of The Elections, They Now Try Pandemisty


From the October 31st issue of the Atlantic, we read this "cya" (that's short for "cover your arse") piece from Emily Oster.

LET’S DECLARE A PANDEMIC AMNESTY

Let’s focus on the future, and fix the problems we still need to solve.

In April 2020, with nothing else to do, my family took an enormous number of hikes. We all wore cloth masks that I had made myself. We had a family hand signal, which the person in the front would use if someone was approaching on the trail and we needed to put on our masks.  Once, when another child got too close to my then-4-year-old son on a bridge, he yelled at her “SOCIAL DISTANCING!”

These precautions were totally misguided. In April 2020, no one got the coronavirus from passing someone else hiking. Outdoor transmission was vanishingly rare. Our cloth masks made out of old bandanas wouldn’t have done anything, anyway. But the thing is: We didn’t know.

I have been reflecting on this lack of knowledge thanks to a class I’m co-teaching at Brown University on COVID. We’ve spent several lectures reliving the first year of the pandemic, discussing the many important choices we had to make under conditions of tremendous uncertainty.

Some of these choices turned out better than others. To take an example close to my own work, there is an emerging (if not universal) consensus that schools in the U.S. were closed for too long: The health risks of in-school spread were relatively low, whereas the costs to students’ well-being and educational progress were high. The latest figures on learning loss are alarming.  But in spring and summer 2020, we had only glimmers of information. Reasonable people—people who cared about children and teachers—advocated on both sides of the reopening debate.

Obviously some people intended to mislead and made wildly irresponsible claims. Remember when the public-health community had to spend a lot of time and resources urging Americans not to inject themselves with bleach? That was bad. Misinformation was, and remains, a huge problem. But most errors were made by people who were working in earnest for the good of society.

Given the amount of uncertainty, almost every position was taken on every topic. And on every topic, someone was eventually proved right, and someone else was proved wrong. In some instances, the right people were right for the wrong reasons. In other instances, they had a prescient understanding of the available information.


The people who got it right, for whatever reason, may want to gloat. Those who got it wrong, for whatever reason, may feel defensive and retrench into a position that doesn’t accord with the facts. All of this gloating and defensiveness continues to gobble up a lot of social energy and to drive the culture wars, especially on the internet. These discussions are heated, unpleasant and, ultimately, unproductive. In the face of so much uncertainty, getting something right had a hefty element of luck. And, similarly, getting something wrong wasn’t a moral failing. Treating pandemic choices as a scorecard on which some people racked up more points than others is preventing us from moving forward.

Moving on is crucial now, because the pandemic created many problems that we still need to solve.

Student test scores have shown historic declines, more so in math than in reading, and more so for students who were disadvantaged at the start. We need to collect data, experiment, and invest. Is high-dosage tutoring more or less cost-effective than extended school years? Why have some states recovered faster than others? We should focus on questions like these, because answering them is how we will help our children recover.

Many people have neglected their health care over the past several years. Notably, routine vaccination rates for children (for measles, pertussis, etc.) are way down. Rather than debating the role that messaging about COVID vaccines had in this decline, we need to put all our energy into bringing these rates back up. Pediatricians and public-health officials will need to work together on community outreach, and politicians will need to consider school mandates.

The standard saying is that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. But dwelling on the mistakes of history can lead to a repetitive doom loop as well. Let’s acknowledge that we made complicated choices in the face of deep uncertainty, and then try to work together to build back and move forward.

END OF SNIVEL-PIECE

I can sum all this up in a few words: "Oopsie-boopsie!  Some mistakes were made!  Well, why don't we just let bygones be bygones and forget about making amends?"

Emily et al, it doesn't work that way.  Either you're hopelessly clueless or flat out lying.  I think it's the latter.

One thing that sticks out is the ridiculous "we didn't know" nonsense.  You had no excuse for not knowing.  Sensible people had been saying all along that the shutdowns and vaccines were harmless.  For their attempts to spread the truth, many of them lost their livelihoods and even suffered legal sanctions.  Social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter were unabashed in cancelling any viewpoint that didn't tow the Fauci line.  To this day, Facebook continues to wag its finger at me and others if we dare post a meme that shows the vaccine narrative to be a complete farce.

In that entire screed of Oster's, I saw no hint of apology for:

  • The small businesses that were forced to cease operations, bringing financial ruin to their owners.
  • The ever-increasing count of young people who are "mysteriously dying" from heart issues, often from vaccine-induced blot-clots.  Where are the apologies to their grief-stricken families?
  • The elderly who were in nursing homes who were exposed to Covid patients when liberal governors had them transferred to the homes?
  • Many sick and elderly people in hospitals who were isolated from their families, being forced to die alone.
  • The millions of children who had their intellectual and social development stunted by both social isolation and the inane masks.
  • The uptick in substance abuse, domestic violence, divorce, and even suicides due to enforced isolation.
  • Those patients falsely diagnosed with Covid so that hospitals could get their per-covid-patient grants?
  • The absolutely unethical withholding of information regarding the benefits of ivermectin, hydroxichloroquine, zinc, quercetin, vitamins D3 and C.
  • The poisoning of people via the usage of remdesivir.
  • The draconian punishments and even imprisonments of common-sense people who refused to be masked and/or isolated.
  • Those who were fired from jobs because they refused to be injected with the vaccines.
  • Any other deleterious effects of this pandemic nonsense
Until there's some accounting for these crimes, there will be no amnesty whatsoever.  We demand accountability and we will make those demands heard on November 8.

P.S. - Francis, bishops et al, that means you too.  In addition to the above, you must answer for all the Catholics who were denied the Sacraments at the cusps of their deaths, some of whom may have died in mortal sin.  You must answer for the shuttered Churches, the denial of Holy Mass.  You must repent and it must be public repentance for the public harm done.

Friday, November 4, 2022

Another Priest Canceled For Preaching Like A Catholic

Approximately ten years ago at St. John Neumann Church in Gaithersburg MD, Father Marcel Guarnizo was celebrating the funeral Mass of a parishioner.  Her daughter happened to be a flaming lesbian and made Father quite aware of that fact minutes before the Mass began.  When the daughter presented herself for Holy Communion, Father refused to let her commit sacrilege by receiving unworthily.  Days later, he was summarily ejected from the Archdiocese of Washington.  Since then, several such incidents have occurred throughout the western world, where good priests have been betrayed by their corrupt bishops.

The latest occurred a few days ago in County Kerry, Ireland.  Father Sean Sheehy, a retired priest residing at St Mary's Church in Listowel, celebrated a memorial Mass for a deceased parishioner.  He lambasted the sins of abortion, contraception and sodomy in his homily, causing some badly-formed Catholics to clutch their pearls.  They scurried off to Bishop Kerry Browne.  Instead of explaining why Father was correct, Browne offered a sniveling apology, stating that Father's words "do not represent the Christian position."  Bishop Browne needs a catechism refresher course.  Then he forbade Father to celebrate any more Masses

I trust that the faithful Catholics of County Kerry are raising their voices and closing their wallets in protest.

Tuesday, November 1, 2022

Halloween - How Should Catholics Approach This Day?

Around this time, there is a lot of back-and-forth between Catholics regarding the merits and demerits of celebrating Halloween with secular traditions.  One faction seems to advocate not celebrating it at all, citing satanic rituals that happen that day.  On the other hand, we have those who seem to think that simply because their childhoods included the secular traditions, those traditions are harmless.

I link now to a piece from Michael Matt that leans towards the second extreme.  I'm all for some fun on that day, but some of those traditions are sinful.  Take the pranks, for example.  Mention is made of soaping up car windows.  That is not innocent, harmless fun.  Boys and girls, can we say "vandalism"?  God forbid if one of those hapless car owners had a medical emergency during the night and needed to go to a hospital quickly.  First they had to wash their windows.  I've also dealt with the inherent sinfulness of pranks in a previous post.

Below is a clip of Father Ripperger and Taylor Marshall discussing this very topic.  In it are very good things that can be done to make Halloween both a fun and uplifting experience.  Father is an exorcist so I'd take him seriously when he advises against dressing as witches, ghosts, monsters, anything to do with the occult.

E