A Sobering Reality – “Catholic leaders need to understand that, a decade ago, Pew Research Center numbers were already warning that 13% of American adults are ex-Catholics, with 6.5 former Catholics for every Catholic convert.” A hard truth: Most American Catholics don’t care about saving souls (Terry Mattingly’s On Religion)
Liturgical Distress – Sacrilege and synodality have come to the fore these last days. Dead Synodality (The Catholic Thing)
Funeral Controversy Continues – “Many Catholics are not sick of hearing about the Feb. 15 funeral of LGBT activist Cecilia Gentili … “ Amid funeral controversy, will Dolan watch the pitch? (The Pillar)
The All-Encompassing Religion of Secular Liberalism – “While Christians, Muslims, and others are understandably focused on the things that explicitly reject our faiths (issues like abortion, sexuality, gender, etc.), we’re missing that the norms of thinking itself in the modern West inscribe the religion of secular liberalism.” Relearning the Moral Life While Rejecting the Tyranny of the Banal (What We Need Now)
Church Militant Hypocrite? – “In his 17 years as a self-appointed enforcer of what he viewed as traditional Catholicism, Michael Voris developed a go-to strategy for taking on his targets: accusing them of being gay.” He led an anti-gay Catholic site. Staffers say he sent them racy selfies (The Washington Post)
Why the Old is Attracting the Young – “Yesterday after our Solemn Mass at 10:30 an older couple visiting from Pennsylvania stopped to talk with me. They were amazed at the packed church, the number of altar boys, the beautiful singing of the girls’ choir, the reverence and focus on worship.” Why Are Young People Drawn to Traditional Catholic Worship? (Fr. Dwight Longnecker)
Annunciation House – “The news last week that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wants to shut down a Catholic migrant shelter in El Paso struck many as an unjust attack on both migrants and the faith-based groups that assist them.” How Christians Help Human Traffickers (Compact Magazine)
Christian Trumpists – “Despite a mountain of indictments and relentless media assaults, Donald Trump remains wildly popular with a large portion of the American people.” Why Trump Is Still Wildly Popular (First Things)
Objects of Nostalgia – “An appliance used to be a machine. Now it’s a bureaucracy.” Things Used to Work in This Country (The New Atlantis)
Russia’s Backlash to Fiducia – “As the world marked the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine yesterday, the failure to date of all diplomatic efforts, including those of the Vatican, to bring the war to an end were painfully clear. How Pope’s blessings for same-sex couples undermine peace efforts in Ukraine (Catholic Herald)
Fruit of the West – “Reading classic literature in libraries will not magically oust the LGBTQ books. Playing Mozart on the radio will not deter pedophilia. The issues of our society run far, far deeper than this.” The Arts Won’t Save Us (Intellectual Takeout)
(*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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About Church Militant and Michael Voris: anything reported by the Washington Post is assumed to be biased leftist propaganda.
As Catholics, we ought never gloat over anyone’s sins lest we pay a hefty price when God judges us similarly on that day of judgment.
What you say is very true, and their main target has been, quite properly, heterodoxy, even among prominent prelates. But they have had many faults besides the personal weaknesses of Voris. I was banned for life, with hundreds of my past comments instantly deleted with no warning or subsequent explanation, even when I pleaded for the honorability of a reasonable explanation from the entire staff. I did get a one sentence explanation. It was based on complaints from other commenters when I tried to point out, even while citing my credentials as a physicist, that recent attempts in some Catholic “circles” to defend geocentrism based on some quack going around promoting his fake pseudo-science does as much damage to Catholic credibility, and therefore our witness in the abortion wars, as any one of the many foolhardy public positions coming from this pontificate. I also pointed out that the Church never really defended geocentrism. So I was banned, and they didn’t even refund my money as a premium member while denying me access to premium benefits.
@ Russia’s Backlash to Fiducia
Cardinal Zuppi, positioned as Church good will apologist, with San Egidio all male togetherness credentials punches back with velvet glove, it’s always Cain who kills his good brother. Russians don’t buy into it, not because they’re models of sanctity, only that they can spot the sanctimonious a mile away since they’re masters at it.
Russia, admixture of Russian orthodoxy and murderous Bolshevik hangover are the strange new champions of Christian morality, compared to Vatican hireling Philistine Zuppi. A Roman pontiff reducing our Church to purveyors of sodomy. Russia’s Orthodox respond with incredulity and shock. Expecting better from Rome. Putin, a perceived, apparently verifiable scoundrel, nevertheless realized the unifying power of Russia’s Orthodox Christianity. Patriarch Kirill, believer in Russia’s mythical manifest destiny is nevertheless strictly orthodox as well as Orthodox. Against homosexuality in all its forms. Essentially puritanical in comparison to woebegone America. What’s worse, the imperialist invasion of Ukraine or the apostate invasion of Christ’s revelation? Hope is required here for the poor faithful Catholic, certainly the theological kind.
Cardinal Matteo Zuppi. A Philistine in respect to observance of Christian morality. During 2022 [June] Archbishop Bologna Cardinal Zuppi allegedly sanctioned [as testified by a priest celebrant] the blessing of a male homosexual union during a Mass, thereby resembling a marriage ceremony. The first such aberration in an Italian Archdiocesan church [FS was issued 12.18.2023]. Elsewhere, Zuppi indicated his preferential treatment of same sex relationships shown in a bulletin following the recent youth synod. “In common with other Church groups, including the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, the [Bologna] archdiocese’s statement used Article 150 of the Final Document of the Youth Synod to justify a pro-homosexual position. That article states that ‘all young people, without exception, are helped to integrate the sexual dimension of their personality more and more fully, as they grow in the quality of their relationships and move towards the gift of self’” (Pentin in NCReg June 22, 2022).
Finally, a true picture of a clear and present danger to our democracy.
Annunciation House…
“The news last week that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wants to shut down a Catholic migrant shelter in El Paso struck many as an unjust attack on both migrants and the faith-based groups that assist them. Catholics leaders, especially, were outraged that Paxton would target Annunciation House, which has sheltered migrants for five decades, as part of the state’s escalating efforts to secure the border and crackdown against illegal immigration”.
Paxton is an anomaly. He beat an impeachment charge for state money misuse. He was a key figure in the plight of Kate Cox, by suing her doctor and threatening her with jail time if she crossed the Texas border to save her life. Texas constitution states that an abortion is legal if the mothers life is threatened. Now he wants to shutdown the Catholic Annunciation House.
Morgan, disabled children in the womb do not pose a unique risk to their mother’s health. Please don’t pay attention to those sorts of narratives. They’re driven by agendas, not facts.
DOCTOR? We cannot fight abortion by involving questionable politicians! The medical determination for abortion is critical kidney failure, an ectopic pregnancy that ruptures the fallopian tube. This occurs when the fetus develops outside the uterus, and it can cause internal bleeding and require immediate surgery. DOCTOR? NO
Thanks for your reply.
Thanks
morgan, please explain how a child with a chromosomal defect endangers its mother’s life? This wasn’t an ectopic pregnancy, only one unwanted because of the child’s diagnosis of disability.
Thank you for that mrscracker.
Also, ectopic is considered viable in the modern science requiring monitoring and appropriate care. If it should become terminal the intervention to cure it, is not an abortion. Both types of case require sound Catholic priest and counsel. Think carefully what this is saying: priests are powerless in the law contrary to these demands. The “justifying” idea would be that “only medical practitioners” can decide the issues and/they alone may settle “moral criteria” and “moral limit”.
I don’t mean just to be about law. It reflects the society’s own false dogmatisms. If some commentator says, “Why are you always on about law”, well, obviously THAT portrayal is entering the Christian witness needed.
Edit: “obviously THAT portrayal is NOT entering the Christian witness needed”
@ Liturgical Distress/Dead Synodality
Fr. Raymond J. de Souza writes: “The synodal managers are desperately trying to breathe life into the expired steed, but trying to revive a dead horse is even more pointless than flogging it;” and then refers to the funerary carnival in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, quoting one eulogist’s reference to the deceased transvestite Cecilia Gentili as the “mother of all whores.”
Picture the synodal desperation, looking the horse/whores in the eye and “spontaneously” administering (ministry as in “non-liturgical”) an “informal” dose of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation (still a non-blessing!) to a dead horse! A scene that proves yet again that in this fallen world there are more horse’s asses than there are horses.
@ The All-Encompassing Religion of Secular Liberalism
Canadian author Dr. David Deane concludes the interview with, “In part because the epistemological categories of the modern West are so powerful, and its lure so seductive, that we’re like the protagonist in La Dolce Vita, half remembering what we once knew through a haze. The theological task of our age, and my book is just one tiny part of this, is to help us remember.”
As a footnote to Deane’s book, yours truly proposes that the “epistemological categories of the modern West” include this new triad: Evolutionism, Technocracy, and Meaningless Cosmology.” (The final three chapters of my “A Generation Abandoned,” Hamilton Books, 2017).
And about Secular Liberalism as a “religion,” in contradiction to the United States Constitution this Big Lie is very much “established” (!) as our national religion. The First Amendment restrains Congress from establishing a national religion, but the Founding Fathers never guessed at the need to restrain the other two branches of government—Judicial grooming by the Supreme Court (e.g., the moronic and oxymoronic Obergefell v. Hodges on gay “marriage,” 2015) and homo-geneous emissions from the Executive Branch.
I’ll be sharing the Tyranny of the Banal with others. I hope we can start to realize that we’ve allowed our moral imagination while living under the nation state to be stolen. We hope laws line up with our moral stances, but we are not willing to make too much real fuss if they don’t. We hide behind lawyers and politicians to be our voices. We want to keep our jobs, our 401Ks, we accept that war is inevitable, the lotus flowers of modern life are security and safety. This isn’t what The Gospel asks of us. “The world offers you comfort. But you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness”
― Pope Benedict XVI
A Sobering Reality
Dr. Rice, you have disproved me in my assessment of your leaning to or disposition in universalism. Actually you have done an edifying job of it very humbling of me.
I apologize.
You didn’t turn your flame thrower on me but I am repenting in dust and ashes all the same. God has the glory.
Thank you.