New McCarrick Review – “Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark commissioned this week an independent review into the results of an independent investigation he previously ordered into the fallout of the 2018 scandals surrounding Theodore McCarrick.” Tobin commissions independent investigation into independent investigation report (The Pillar)
Theologizing Illegal Immigration- “In so many words, the Holy Father urged his brother bishops to intervene in American politics and oppose the Trump administration’s efforts to enforce our country’s immigration laws.” Pope Francis’ Apocalyptic Dream (First Things)
A Sacramental Reality – “Combined with the Christian understanding of creation which affirms that all that God created was “good”, the Incarnation thus erases all vestiges of an oppositional dualism between matter and spirit, God and world, and time and eternity.” The Hermeneutics of Kenosis, Part Three: On the Humility and Kenosis of God (Gaudium et Spes 22)
The DOE Failed – “I served as the 11th U.S. secretary of education. That’s how I know it’s beyond repair.” Betsy DeVos: Shut Down the Department of Education (The Free Press)
Ordo Amoris – “Catholic commentators should at least be honest about the integrity of the teaching, rather than attack it because the “wrong” person said it.” JD Vance is obviously, and unremarkably, correct about the order of love (Our Sunday Visitor)
The Catholic Land Movement – “With the Industrial Revolution uprooting the working class from the land and resettling them in factories, Leo XIII specifically taught that households have a right to productive property so as to provide for themselves.” The Trendy Peasant (Crisis Magazine)
The Cultural Infestation – “We have college graduates who have not read a single book in their lives. We are not replacing ourselves with children. Marriage is not on the rocks; it hardly gets out of port to begin with. Churches are closing.” Vandals Within (The Catholic Thing)
Not Banning Contraception – “Laurie Pohutsky, 36, said she made the choice because she was ‘uncertain she would be able to access contraception’ in the future.” Democratic lawmaker undergoes ‘voluntary sterilisation’ because of Trump presidency (The Telegraph)
The Transgender Moment Ending – “After a four-year ban, Amazon has returned EPPC President Ryan T. Anderson’s book When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment to its cyber shelves.” Amazon Lifts Ban on Ryan Anderson (Ethics & Public Policy Center)
Catholic Charities Layoffs – “Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston laid off more than 20% of its work force this week, amid a White House freeze on federal reimbursements for contracted refugee and migrant resettlement programs.” Houston Catholic Charities cuts 20% of staff amid migration grant freeze (The Pillar)
A ‘Stop’ Agenda – “Hostility to the excesses of the federal government is a possible source of consensus on the right.” Stand Athwart the Progressive Leviathan (National Review)
Europe’s Temporal Immanence – “Recent attacks on religion in Europe show that the land that nursed Christianity to maturity is in desperate need of re-evangelization.” Europe’s Wars of Anti-Religion (Crisis Magazine)
(*The posting of any particular news item or essay is not an endorsement of the content and perspective of said news item or essay.)
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Re #2 Theologizing Illegal Immigration
(note to Rusty – para. 2, waive)
Does anyone listen to Pope Francis anymore?
It does take effort to get through the pope’s tar-coated words, but Reno does manage to take them, shine a bright light on them, then display the immensity of the waste that Francis alone can pass.
It is not the sede that is vacante, it’s the papal mens that is vacante. Pray for Pope Francis!
Unfortunately yes.
In this latest letter to the bishops he abuses the Holy Family yet again comparing them to the hordes crossing the border without distinction when the Holy Family sought refuge, temporarily, in Egypt. They broke no laws, nor did they seek preferential treatment. But the Holy Family can be useful props to a man of shameless political ideology who calls actual Catholicism “ideological museum pieces.”
The Pontiff Francis, and his openly apostate “Eminence” McElroy, market themselves as sanctimonious outlaws.
They have shown utter contempt and a commitment to the cult of injustice for victims of sex abusing clergy.
And they profane the office of Bishop and “signal their political virtue” and demand Catholic citizens submit to their preferences that illegal immigration, just like sex abuse, should simply continue on, as the cost that must be paid to realize their Marxist-wonderland of “queering the world” and “open borders.”
They should just “self-actualize” and run for elected office in Argentina and California, which would at least be an honest way to make their living.
@ A ‘Stop’ Agenda
NatReg highlights, harking back to William F Buckley’s yell of “Stop”, a Trump legislature prepared to do battle with progressivism. A good review, all of us among the obviously enlightened conservatives are in the throes of ecstasy that hideous progressivism is on the verge of annihilation. Wishful thinking or accurate, studied assessment?
Wrecking crew Doge leader Musk recommends demolition of standing structure, including the Department of Education. But ND Prof Deneen asks, “Why get rid of them? Why not turn them to better purposes? ‘The underlying assumption’ driving the efforts to ax departments, he says, recalls Thomas Paine: ‘Freed of the evils of government, the natural goodness of man will emerge’ and things will return to ‘normal.’ But Deneen prefers what he calls the wisdom of ‘Aristotle and Aquinas’: that ‘normal’ is ‘the result of the mysterious interaction of law’s majesty and the reciprocal influence of culture'”.
This is a marvelous assessment, an idea for a transformative ‘change’ of structure, as opposed to demolition [at least be selective] in order to thwart progressivism. What’s at stake? Simple. Remove structure and you have none. Furthermore, the Judiciary is in opposition tying up the Musk Trump agenda in response to an avalanche of lawsuits, posing a challenge to the executive branch. An issue that may take years to decide if ever.
Theologizing Illegal Immigration- “In so many words, the Holy Father urged his brother bishops to intervene in American politics and oppose the Trump administration’s efforts to enforce our country’s immigration laws.” Pope Francis’ Apocalyptic Dream (First Things)
Editor Rusty Reno nails Francis to the US Constitution, together with God’s Law, His Prophets, the Church’s Social Teaching, and its prime saint-theologian philosopher Aquinas. Reno hangs Francis out to dry.
Rusty is too kind. Francis deserves every consequence following upon his rabidly vapid home-baked apocalypse. The Church will survive and thrive. Francis will have his little morsel of his ideal end time. The Savior will deliver it, corrected, on the platter of His Judgment.
Democratic lawmaker undergoes ‘voluntary sterilisation’ because of Trump presidency”
************
What a sad & misguided thing to do.
Theologizing Illegal Immigration – “should not enforce immigration laws” begs the question what would happen if the existing laws were absolutely enforced. From what appears in the news, under the Biden Administration the laws were kept in abeyance. It could conceivably follow that trying to make the unenforced laws work for enforcement in the conditions now prevailing will lead into a greater morass and worsen injustices.
Pope Francis is not alone as priest resorting to theological intervention in every single instant, then, out of it, arriving at an absolute conclusion going only one way; other priests do this too. I have to say that as a member of the lay faithful with only so much ecclesiastical exposure, it’s hard to know what to make of it. I had imagined that it was crucial to preserve areas where laity are free to act on responsibility and initiative proper to them. So that while the Pope may be stressing proceeding “gentle as doves” while being far-reaching, he is not ruling out the part where you must also be judicious and “wise as serpents” -I would have thought.
Especially considering the zealous drive to compensate by being completely strict in the midst of peers accusing you of racism and other nasties. On the other hand, this is also to do with novel political coalescence so surely one should embrace political processes like studying and lobbying new legislation and the different needs of the States, that allow the better coalescence to take shape and have body.
The Minnesota bishops suggest that the laws need to be overhauled, see the CRUX link. Reported as well in CNA with different emphasis.
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2025/02/minnesota-bishops-on-immigration-system-is-broken
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2025/02/10/minnesota-bishops-call-for-generous-but-also-prudent-welcome-of-refugees/
Regarding “Catholic Charities Layoffs.” Pop over to Michael Hichborn’s article http://www.lepantoin.org/wp/a-question-of-charity/ to see how the money for various Catholic charities is spent. Great quote from the article: “A very wise priest – commenting on the exorbitant salaries of those “doing charity” – once said to me, “Very often people start off doing good, and end up doing well.”
@ A Sacramental Reality
Writer Larry Chapp explores the humility (!) of a willfully self-donating God, as found in Balthasar and as not found in the more Thomistic spin on the inner nature of the Triune One. Balthasar’s theme of divine humility also serves as what should be an explicit talking point in interreligious dialogue. In another source, Balthasar adds this:
“The responses of the Old Testament and a fortiori of Islam (which remains essentially in the enclosure of the religion of Israel) are incapable of giving a satisfactory answer to the question of WHY Yahweh, why Allah, created a world of which he did not have need in order to be God. Only the fact is affirmed in the two religions, not the why. The Christian response is contained in these two fundamental dogmas: that of the Trinity and that of the [humble] Incarnation” (“My Work in Retrospect,” Ignatius Press, 1993).
Thanks, Ron, for referencing Hichborn. I quote a few paragraphs, but I’ve excluded the litany of the percentages of revenue eaten by salaries of some Catholic do-gooders claiming to do charity.
“The Great Commission, which is the primary act and purpose of the Catholic Church, has never changed. The conversion of peoples and nations to the teachings of Our Blessed Lord is the charge given to the Church, and everything done by the Church is done to this specific end. And anything done without this specific end is empty and without purpose….
”
The industrialization of charity is robbing both the wealthy and the poor – those receiving healthy salaries to “do charity” are being robbed of a great and eternal reward in Heaven, while the poor are being used as political pawns for expanded use of federal funds. Meanwhile, those who pay taxes are being squeezed in the socialist scheme to redistribute wealth. But this shouldn’t be too surprising, since Pope Paul VI predicted this very thing in his 1975 encyclical Evangelii Nuntiandi:….
“The meaning of the word “charity” is love. There is no love in mere philanthropy, and certainly not in an industry masquerading as a charity. The only difference between Catholic Charities and a prostitute is that a prostitute at least admits what she is. In selling the Church to the highest bidder, Catholic Charities CEOs are making bank on the backs of the poor.”