Jesus therefore, when he had taken the vinegar, said: It is consummated. And bowing his head, he gave up the ghost.

There is no evil to be faced that Christ does not face with us. There is no enemy that Christ has not already conquered. There is no cross to bear that Christ has not already borne for us, and does not now bear with us. And on the far side of every cross we find the newness of life in the Holy Spirit, that new life which will reach its fulfillment in the resurrection. This is our faith. This is our witness before the world. – St. John Paul II

Good Friday… The “Hour” Of Christ’s Battle Against Satan And The Spirit Of The World

By JAMES MONTI

Each year the return of Holy Week brings with it a sense of entering into a loftier realm, a more sacred domain, the Holy of Holies surpassing any other liturgical season. From the middle of Lent onward, the daily readings from the Gospel of St. John at the weekday Masses have fostered within our souls a building sense of drama. Time and again in the pages of John’s inspired account, there appear the evocative words “hour” and “world.” Yet these are not mere literary inventions of the Evangelist; he has taken them from the lips of our Lord.
And it is from the lips of Christ that the Church has learned to understand His Passion as the ultimate battle between good and evil, an understanding that she eloquently articulates through the sacred liturgy of Holy Week. From an early date the Church has seen the palms of Palm Sunday as a symbol of this combat. Both St. Isidore of Seville (+636) and a prayer for the blessing of palm and olive branches from the tenth century Romano-Germanic Pontifical speak of the salutation of Christ with palms as anticipating His triumph over “the prince of death.”
The term “world” is used in a twofold manner by our Lord. There is the world as created by God, created to be good, created for our good, and it is of this “world” that He speaks when He tells Nicodemus, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:16-17).
Yet this world created by God has become a fallen world, which is precisely why it needs to be saved by Him. And it is of this world in the sense of its alienation from God that our Lord speaks when, in answering those urging Him to go to Jerusalem for the Passover, He replies, “The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify of it that its works are evil” (John 7:7). His enemies are the slaves of this alienated world:
“You are from below; I am from above; you are of this world; I am not of this world” (John 8:23). And this world alienated from God has its prince (cf. John 12:31), its tyrant, the author of its hatred for God, he who is “a murderer from the beginning…a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).
There are those who insinuate that the Church has had a centuries-old “bad attitude” toward the world, with the Gospel of St. John blamed for this. First of all, the Church has never had a bad attitude toward the goodness of the world as God created it; in fact, she has condemned as heresy the idea that creation is evil.
As for the Gospel of St. John, this Gospel is the inspired and inerrant word of God. Like the other three Gospels, it has faithfully preserved for us the very words of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made man, uttered while He dwelt among us, and these words include warnings about the spirit of “the world,” that is, the ethos or culture that fallen, sinful man has fashioned for himself under the tutelage of Satan, an ethos of materialism, relativism, and the pursuit of carnal pleasure in which the sovereignty and very existence of God, the reality of the supernatural and an afterlife, as well as the reality of God-given Commandments are ignored or flatly denied.
It was all the amassed wealth and power of such a world, “all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them” (Matt. 4:8), that Satan offered to hand over to Christ when he madly dared to tempt our Lord, as recorded in the Gospels of Saints Matthew and Luke: “To you I will give all this authority and their glory; for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will” (Luke 4:6; see also Matt. 4:8-9). … Continue Reading

Pope Benedict: Hammer Of Heretics

By SHAUN KENNEY

Pope Benedict XVI (emeritus) has issued what some have termed a post-papal encyclical identifying the rot at core inside the Catholic Church — and it is worth reading in full.
One of the key highlights thus far? The source of the disease. Pope Francis, who not only signed off on the document but whom Benedict explicitly praised, has argued that the disease lies within a certain pernicious form of clericalism. What is clericalism, one might ask? No one is quite sure . . . but we are all very certain that it is very bad and we should all throw rocks at it this very moment.
Alternatively, Benedict offers a rather simple answer that — once his vision of a smaller, more faithful Catholicism proves true — should stand the test of time. Namely, that the world simply forgot God.
There are other bold lines in this letter that are worth noting, specifically the lens through which the Second Vatican Council was interpreted by certain theologians attempting to build a morality based purely on Sacred Scripture. In the end, Catholic natural law was quite nearly replaced by a form of relative judgments. Benedict explains this as an effort to replace morality with intention. Without the natural law to ground anyone, all acts are perceived through conditions. The very idea of an intrinsically evil act (or an intrinsically good one?) was very nearly wiped out.
Two things happened. First, the leader of this effort — the German theologian Franz Bockle — had sworn to fight any encyclical that determined that some acts truly were intrinsically evil. He died, and Pope John Paul II published Veritatis Splendor some months later, and the world was given insight into a new category of goods.
For those of you not acquainted with Catholic moral theology, most goods are broken down into two sorts: basic goods which require no further grounding, and instrumental goods which lead us to some other basic good (money or medicine in the pursuit of health, for instance).
Benedict mentions specifically that there are certain goods which can never be subject to a trade-off. “Martyrdom is a basic category of Christian existence,” Benedict writes. “The fact that martyrdom is no longer morally necessary in the theory advocated by Bockle and many others shows that the very essence of Christianity is at stake here.”
Benedict introduces a third category: Great Goods. What are these great goods, one might ask? The Catholic Faith — and not merely in the sense of some idealistic thing hovering in the clouds, but the Catholic faith both as a society and as an individual.
Yet this “great good” cannot be protected so long as basic goods can be pursued for illegitimate ends. Benedict mentions a reform of canon law that is oriented to the protection of “great goods” such as human persons and the Deposit of Faith. Yet once again Benedict imposes this consistent theme that humanity has forgotten God and expected freedom in return, and yet instead is coming to discover that by forgetting God we have put an end to human freedom. … Continue Reading

St. John Paul’s Thought… Medical Workers Attend Program Of Reflection On Mystery Of Suffering

By DEXTER DUGGAN

PHOENIX — St. John Paul II’s 1984 apostolic letter on redemptive suffering, Salvifici Doloris, was the focus of a Lenten program of reflection offered to members of the Catholic Medical Association of Phoenix (CMAP) by a young pastor of the Diocese of Phoenix.
Fr. Dan Connealy, ordained in 2016 and recently appointed pastor of Phoenix’s St. Joan of Arc Parish, said St. John Paul “proposes the subject of suffering as a mystery,” not as a problem, which would have a practical solution to fix it.
Connealy previously served at the Newman Center at Northern Arizona University, in the mountains of Flagstaff, Ariz., in addition to doing parish work there.
The April 6 reflection, held at Phoenix diocesan headquarters, was one of CMAP’s monthly meetings seeking to reinvigorate Catholic medical workers’ involvement with Church teaching as part of their conscience and practice.
To the left of the lectern was a banner saying: “Catholic Medical Association: Upholding the principles of the Catholic faith in the science and practice of medicine.”
The monthly gathering typically lasts about four hours and includes Eucharistic adoration, opportunity for Confession, Mass, and a lunch, as well as a speaking topic of the day.
“John Paul II says suffering seems to belong to man’s transcendence,” Connealy said. “. . . Redemption is accomplished through the Cross. . . . If it’s good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for us. . . .
“If you find a way to get rid of suffering, let me know….We want to approach it with compassion,” he said.
Jesus is waiting for people to turn to Him when nothing else satisfies, Connealy said. “It is Jesus who stirs in you” the desire “to do something great.”
Connealy recalled that the Pope said not all suffering is the result of sin.
The priest cited the biblical conversation between God and Satan where God praised His faithful servant Job, but Satan contended Job would turn against God if his prosperity ended. So God permitted Satan to tempt His servant severely.
Job’s “suffering is the suffering of someone who is innocent,” Connealy said, adding that this suffering shows God doesn’t punish “just for the sake of punishing.”
God allowed the suffering “to demonstrate His own righteousness,” he said. … Continue Reading

Benedict XVI Analyzes Roots Of The Scandal

By BILL DONOHUE

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has released a lengthy essay on the roots of clergy sexual abuse that is illuminating and courageous. It is illuminating because he shows how forces inside and outside the Church came together to create the problem, and it is courageous because he speaks the truth about matters that are already causing an uproar.
Benedict is no stranger to this subject. He previously condemned the “filth” in the Church that allowed for the scandal, and he did more to remove miscreant priests than either his Predecessor or Successor. He defrocked some 800 priests, including the notorious Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado. Now he tackles the issue again, this time with a blend of sociological and theological observations that are profound.
The Pope Emeritus starts with a macro sociological perspective, one that places the abuse scandal in social context. It is simply impossible to understand what happened, he says, without referencing the force of the sexual revolution.
It is not a coincidence that sexual abuse flourished in the Church at the same time that celebrations of sexual libertinism flourished outside the Church. The latter helped set the stage for the former. It was the triumph of moral relativism — the denial of moral absolutes — that helped to cripple the Church.
Benedict puts his finger on a harsh reality: Dissent in the Church peaked at the same time that the scandal unfolded. Catholic moral theology, which was always grounded in natural law, was abandoned in exchange for a more relativistic approach, one that denied the existence of evil. This was taught in the seminaries at the time. Not only that, but books by Benedict were censored.
When pornographic films are shown to seminarians, and a gay subculture is tolerated, Benedict notes, it is hardly surprising to learn that sexual misconduct will grow by leaps and bounds. “In various seminaries homosexual cliques were established,” he writes, “which acted more or less openly and significantly changed the climate in the seminaries.” The climate that emerged was toxic.
At bottom, Benedict stresses, the scandal is rooted in a crisis of faith. When the very existence of God is questioned, and when moral certainty dissipates — even with regard to foundational principles — then mere opinion becomes the new norm. This is a dangerous slope; it resulted in many sins, including priestly sexual abuse.
Some readers may think that Benedict exaggerates when he writes about pedophilia being seen as legitimate “only a short time ago.” But it was. Indeed, in some quarters, especially among intellectuals and celebrities, it still is. Recall that just recently Barbra Streisand justified Michael Jackson’s alleged sexual abuse of children. … Continue Reading

Progressive Plans Will Create Political Mischief

By MIKE MANNO

I’m not sure that the public quite understood what he meant when then-candidate Barack Obama pledged to “fundamentally change” the United States. At the time of Mr. Obama’s inauguration in January of 2009, who would have guessed that large segments of the population would now be accepting of same-sex marriage, unregulated immigration, post-birth abortions, and the concept that gender is fluid and can be changed at will? Or, for that matter, that our president was a Russian mole?
I don’t know if all of these things would have exploded after the 2016 election had Hillary Clinton been elected. I wonder sometimes if she would have steered a slightly more moderate course; after all, she wouldn’t have needed the extreme left-wing of her party to excite the electorate. Of course, when I refer to the extreme left-wing, I mean anything left of Mrs. Clinton.
I do know that had she been elected, we would not face the backlash against our entire system, as we do now, since there would have been no Uber Liberal resistance. But her loss gave an opening for some system-destroying ideas to take hold among liberal, but not necessarily far-left, Democrats.
Two weeks ago I criticized the movement to abolish the Electoral College, which is now gaining mainstream support and is largely a reaction to Mrs. Clinton’s loss. More about that a bit later, but first let’s turn our attention to the various court-packing plans that the “Resistance” is suggesting.
The Constitution, article III, establishes “one Supreme Court,” and “such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” Thus, there is no constitutional requirement of any set number of justices. However, since the Judiciary Act of 1869, the number has been fixed by law at nine.
Now there are some that claim, rightly, that the number of members of the court has changed over time. That is true, but the numerical changes had to do with the composition of the Circuit Courts of Appeal — there were none; well, none as we know now. … Continue Reading

So Deep The Poison . . . Dad Rejoices At Grandchild’s Death

By DEXTER DUGGAN

The middle-aged man in a sweater, who looked like he might spend weekends thoughtlessly popping potato chips into his mouth as he watches sports on TV, was deeply grateful, with a touch of anxiety.
“I really appreciate what you’ve done for us. I’ll never forget it,” he said to an employee as he walked away supporting his teenage daughter.
The man wasn’t pleased because an entertainment broker finally managed to find him some discounted Super Bowl tickets. He was grateful because he’d been able to push his reluctant daughter into killing his grandchild at a Texas Planned Parenthood.
He didn’t know that his young daughter was bleeding to death after the Planned Parenthood abortionist perforated her uterus, nor that clinic director Cheryl forbade an emergency call for an ambulance because the sirens would get the pro-life prayer warriors outside stirred up.
Just like federal judges always seem to be there to save the day for PP, if not for the babies’ lives, PP lucked out again and the unhappy teenager had her blood supply, and her blood pressure, restored.
PP lied to the Dad about why her abortion was taking so long — supposedly a scheduling problem — when in fact the abortion already was over and frantic PP was trying to keep her out of a coffin. Dead clients mean lawsuits, while dead babies mean big profits.
This incident from Pure Flix’s recently released movie Unplanned didn’t mention why this abortion was done, but when a single clinic does dozens of abortions a day on healthy women, the reason is hardly never-ending severe medical emergencies. … Continue Reading

Democrats’ 13-Ring Circus

By CHRISTOPHER MANION

The Democrat primary wagon rolls along, full of big smiles and sharp elbows. The two front runners — in front because they have been around so long that folks have actually heard of them — are former Vice-President Joe Biden and socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Biden might have done quite well against Trump in 2016, but, as they say in the Senate Republican cloakroom, it “wasn’t Joe’s turn.” That slot belonged to Hillary, so she was duly nominated, ran, and lost.
Is it Joe’s turn now? Maybe not. In fact, his campaign is taking a turn for the worse. That’s because over a dozen other Democrats think it’s their turn, so old “rollin’ eyes, rovin’ hands Joe” should step aside to let a “fresh team” take the party to the country.
Who’s spreading those malicious rumors about Joe’s affectionate habit of being, well . . . affectionate? It’s not “dirty tricks” Republicans who are sending all those pictures around, it’s his fellow Democrats, and they are fierce. Joe’s roaming hands and his penchant for caresses were treated as harmless for years, but now he’s an impediment to the Democrats’ “defense of women” meme, as well as to the ambitions of those other presidential wannabees.
Of course there’s no logical reason why those other Democrats, all of whom support abortion until birth, are morally superior to Joe. But each of them is trying to carve out his own piece of the electoral pie, and there’s simply not enough to go around. So “move over, Joe, your time is past.”
But wait — Bernie Sanders, the socialist fave who’s the campus rave, is a year older than Joe. And many Democrats believe that Bernie’s time has come. That fact of life irks also-rans like Senators “Fauxcahontas” Warren, Cory Booker, and Kamala Harris.
Socialist Warren just can’t get out of Bernie’s shadow. Meanwhile, Senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris are tussling for “The Next Obama” crown. Booker proclaimed his “Spartacus Moment” during the infamous Kavanaugh inquisition, and Harris kept trying, and failing, to do him one better.
Then there’s Robert Francis O’Rourke, the Ivy Leaguer masquerading-as-a-Mexican from El Paso, where he appears in amnesty rallies with Bishop Mark Seitz, who still hasn’t ever criticized Beto’s ludicrous 100 percent pro-abortion voting record. O’Rourke is fading and can’t figure out why. … Continue Reading

The Wanderer Takes Action . . . The Movie All America Must See

By REY FLORES

A few weeks ago, you read my review of Unplanned, the film that has taken America by storm. On its opening weekend, the film was a hit, despite the fact most media refused to sell advertising space to the film’s studio.

This success did not happen as a fluke. Pro-life activists across the land rallied their troops to help make this true story of a former Planned Parenthood clinic director turned pro-lifer a smash hit.

Of all the markets where the film opened across the country, two very dedicated individuals put their thinking caps on and got the support of family, friends, donors, anyone who they could bring onboard in the St. Louis, Mo., metro area.

The movie they called a “game changer” — Unplanned — came to the attention of Christopher “Zip” Rzeppa, a former popular sports broadcaster, and now president of Mater Media, and Dr. Hel­en Gelhot, president of CREDO of the Catholic Laity, which is dedicated to the defense of Church doctrine and the promotion of Catholic values through seminars, presentations, retreats, and other activities.

Long before the movie’s March 29 release, Helen was … Continue Reading

2020: Socialist America Or Trump’s America?

By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN

In the new Democratic Party, where women and people of color are to lead, and the white men are to stand back, the presidential field has begun to sort itself out somewhat problematically.
According to a RealClearPolitics average of five polls between mid-March and April 1, four white men — Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, “Beto” O’Rourke, and Pete Buttigieg — have corralled 62 percent of all Democratic voters.
The three white women running — Senators Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, and Kirsten Gillibrand — have, together, a piddling 8 percent.
The lone Hispanic candidate, Julian Castro, is at 1 percent.
African-American candidates Kamala Harris and Cory Booker fare better, with Harris at 10 and Booker at 3.
Who has raised the most money from the most contributors?
Sanders is first with $18 million; Harris is next with $12 million; Beto is third with $9 million in 18 days; and “Mayor Pete” is fourth with $7 million.
Warren, Klobuchar, and Gillibrand have yet to file reports.
But the big takeaway from recent weeks is the sudden stunning vulnerability of the front-runner. Seven women have come forward to berate Biden for unwanted and offensive touching and crowding. Joe is on the defensive. Some in the #MeToo movement want him gone.
He is also being slammed for decisions across his 36-year Senate career — opposing busing for integration, deserting Anita Hill in the Clarence Thomas hearings, supporting a racially discriminatory crime bill, voting to authorize George W. Bush to take us into war in Iraq.
And unkindest cut of all: Barack Obama’s stony silence about Joe’s candidacy.
The most compelling case for the 76-year-old ex-vice president is that he can win back Trump’s white working-class voters, and return Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania to the Democratic fold. … Continue Reading