Defining “Safe Space” . . . A Place For Leftists To Hide From Their Own Hate And Damage

By DEXTER DUGGAN

The passage of a half-century or more can bring on considerable change in a technological era, but new decades being born don’t invert physical laws.
The principles of flight remain the same, although biplanes getting off the ground applied them differently than spacecraft leaving the stratosphere.
Communication connects people with each other and events, but an early electrical telegraph had a world of difference with electronically based twenty-first century social media.
On the other hand, left-wing political causes have a way of going from one point to its exact, conflicting polar opposite, but all in the same name of some brand of justice or equality.
Consider how the Berkeley, Calif., so-called Free Speech Movement that began to assault U.S. society in the mid-1960s bears no resemblance to what leftists claim regarding speech now.
On the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, 1960s radicals sprouted to say that free speech meant their ability to scream and spit obscenities right in your face. If you didn’t like that, better get used to it anyway.
Critics called it the Filthy Speech Movement, a part of the rioting drugs and sex campus anti-culture that seemed to erupt right out of the blue — or, more likely, from the depths of Hades. Everything had to be questioned or defied, no matter how disruptive or bruising the process.
If leftists felt insufficiently in control back then, a look at the Berkeley website the evening of November 13 showed the campus to be under their firmly censorious heels now. Only one way is acceptable now, set to the grating tune of left-wing sloganeering.
The officially sanctioned propaganda blasts included the school’s chancellor posting about confronting “the forces of hatred, intolerance, and division,” a law school admonition on “defeating racial fearmongering,” a lecture on “social justice and carbon reduction,” and a film on “indigenous activism.”
In language more appropriate to Soviet Newspeak, Berkeley proclaimed that its “Division of Equity & Inclusion provides leadership, accountability & inspiration to the UC Berkeley campus in integrating equity, inclusion, and diversity into all aspects of university life.”
Diverse? Procrustean is far more accurate. … Continue Reading

Familiar Issues Arise At USCCB Annual Meeting

By CHRISTOPHER MANION

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops held its fall meeting this past week, and it was designed to be uneventful. New officers were elected, new chairmen were assigned, various reports were accepted. “Many bishops express their strong support and to continue the moment[um] from last year,” read the USCCB notice on Twitter as the meeting opened.
Of course, last year any momentum they might have had was ground to a halt by Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, who abruptly shut down the bishops’ discussion of the then-Cardinal McCarrick investigation, leaving them little else to do but go home. Several bishops insisted on addressing McCarrick and the charges made by former Papal Nuncio Carlo Maria Viganò. But Cupich would have none of it. Rome would do the investigating, he said, and the report would soon be forthcoming.
That was a year ago. This time around, it was Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley’s task to explain that, no, the report wasn’t finished yet. “The Vatican wants it to be as transparent as possible,” he said, “which is why it’s taking so long.” O’Malley expects it to be released “soon.”
Call that “momentum” if you like, or call it “dead in the water.” But two issues of substance did arise this week that go to the heart of what Msgr. George Kelly called “The Battle for the American Church” forty years ago. The first issue was introduced by Archbishop Christophe Pierre, Pope Francis’ nuncio to the United States. In his address opening the meeting, Pierre didn’t waste any time. He pointed to the authority of Pope Francis as the keystone to reforming the American Church. … Continue Reading

Planned Parenthood… Gave Virginia Governor Infanticide Talking Points

RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam used Planned Parenthood abortion and infanticide talking points to run his press operations last January.
Gov. Northam did a public radio interview after he and Democratic Virginia Delegate Kathy Tran introduced HB 2491, known as The Repeal Act, which would repeal restrictions on third trimester abortions all the way up to 40 weeks. This includes killing the child during or after delivery. The Repeal Act removes hospital requirements on clinics and providers, laws that mandate informed consent, a combination of mandatory ultrasounds, literature, the 24-hour waiting period for abortions in Virginia, and additional doctor requirements for late-term abortions.
Northam tried to defend infanticide when he said, “If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and mother.”
Planned Parenthood was actually providing abortion talking points to Northam, other government officials, and the media after that radio interview.
Public records obtained by Judicial Watch from Northam’s office reveal that Alexsis Rodgers, a former policy director in the lieutenant governor’s office, was using a ppav.org (Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia) email account. Rodgers sent talking points from her ppav.org email account titled “Topline messages for Northam” to PPAV representative Missy Wesolowski, who then forwarded them to the Virginia secretary of Health and Human Services, Gena Berger. … Continue Reading

Boring Catechesis Produces Boring Catholics

By SHAUN KENNEY

One of our readers raised a concern about a Catholic evangelization program for teenagers entitled ChristLife, which is designed as a supplement or substitute for your more traditional CCD programs.
Specifically, there is a section that includes the “Romans Road” so often used by Protestants to convert Catholics that ends with a recitation of the Sinners Prayer — a non-biblical prayer used by proponents of Sola Scriptura to advocate for non-scriptural dogmas such as Sola Scriptura.
Now if one wants a truly Catholic program?
Look no further than the Culture of Life Studies Program sponsored by American Life League, either as a supplement or a curriculum entirely devoted to promoting the dignity of human life.
I am certain there are other programs available, but truth be told? So many of them succeed in one thing: boring students to tears.
I speak as someone who has suffered through as a young man listening to 50-year-old youth directors attempt to get us all riled up about the “spirit of Vatican II” and the “reform of the reform” with tambourines and guitars and the like.
Problem is, most of us had no idea what reform needed to be reformed, much less what we were actually trying to reform.
Meanwhile, five days of the week our public schools continued to push condoms and birth control and “safe sex” while listening to music about drug use and violence. Our teachers pretended to teach us, and we pretended to learn.
After school, it was Beavis and Butt-Head and MTV while watching our president question the definition of the word “is”.
Catholicism in the Diocese of Arlington became a refuge from that nonsense. Deep down, we knew we were being sold a bill of goods. Deep down, we knew that Holy Mass was the centerpiece that resisted all of that nonsense. … Continue Reading

Not Just Another Cheap Imitation

By JOE SIX-PACK

When talking about religion, I find it sad when I hear people say things like “The only thing that matters is that we all believe in the same God” or “One Christian religion is just as good as another” or “Let’s just agree to disagree.”
These comments are saddening because they all demonstrate a scandal of Christianity. There are so many Christian religions to choose from that people have become indifferent to the whole idea of thinking about which church is the right one to belong to. But we Catholics can honestly and should assertively say, “Jesus established one Christian religion, and that religion is the Catholic Church!”
The ecumenical movement of the 70s did far more damage than good. We squandered a perfect opportunity to gather millions of converts to Jesus’ Church, but those leaders of the movement were terrified by the idea of offending non-Catholics. In reality, we should’ve demonstrated to non-Catholics the things we have in common with their Christian religions, then led them to the reality of the Church founded by Christ. And proving the Catholic Church is the only one established by Christ is the focus of this column.
There are a number of proofs that the Catholic Church was established by Christ. The first proof I always point to is history. John Henry Cardinal Newman, arguably the greatest Christian apologist of the nineteenth century, was a member of the Oxford Movement — a vehemently anti-Catholic organization in England.
Fellow members tasked the young Anglican scholar with writing a history of Christianity. On the day his new Christian history was rolling off the printing press, Newman was being received into the Catholic Church. When asked what caused him to turn from his vehement anti-Catholicism and convert to Catholicism, his response was quite simple. He said, “To know history is to be Catholic.” Why? Because history alone proves that the Catholic Church was founded by Jesus Christ. We should all read Church history, because nothing will instill pride more.
By the way, it was also Cardinal Newman who said the greatest tragedy in the Church is an ignorant laity. That’s just some food for thought. … Continue Reading

A Potpourri . . . “Refounding” The Institute, Pachamama, And Other Matters

By GEORGE A. KENDALL

I wrote this in the last days (Thank God) of what some might call the Satanic Synod, known to others as the Amazonian Synod. As the dust settles, I would like to offer one thought in particular on the subject of the synod’s obsession with inculturation, and with it the notion that we need to help the “indigenous peoples” to keep their traditional “spiritualities” (a word that I am coming to have an allergic reaction to).
This is one of those partial truths that cry out for qualification and clarification, not the confusion the synod perpetrators seemed so bent on. Yes, there are many truths in the pagan religions, among them the sense of cosmic order and the reverence for the fertility of the Earth. This is something the Church recognized when she preserved the writings of pagan authors, knowing that we could benefit from the truths in these writings while rejecting the errors. St. Thomas, for instance, was heavily influenced by Aristotle and managed to find much that was compatible with Christianity in his writings, while rejecting what was erroneous.
So what we need to do in evangelizing pagans is to find what is true, even if distorted, in their religions, and to show that it can be found in Christianity, purified and complete, not partial and distorted.
Let us take the cult of fertility, for example. The awe at fertility is certainly grounded in truth. But then come the distortions, in the form of cultic practices like human sacrifice to fertility goddesses, orgies, temple prostitution, and so on. All these practices are abominations, deeply destructive to humanity. But for Christians, the holiness of fertility is embodied in Mary, the Holy Mother of God, the Theotokos or God-bearer. The truth found in the cult of Mother Earth is purified and brought to completion in her. The fertility of the creation, constantly bringing forth new life, is fully revealed in her alone, whose fertility made it possible for her to give birth to her Creator. … Continue Reading

The Little Sisters Of The Poor Refuse To Buckle

By DEACON MIKE MANNO, JD

Well, I guess there is nothing stopping the Tolerant Left from trying to force the Little Sisters of the Poor into violating their religious beliefs by providing contraception, abortion, and sterilization coverage, among other evils. In fact, there is a decided effort by the left to eviscerate the conscience rights of anyone who does not embrace the left’s high sacrament styled as “reproductive freedom.”
This issue, of course, arises out of the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act (ACA), better known as Obamacare. Interestingly, the ACA does not require coverage of the above-mentioned sacrament. It does, however, authorize the executive branch to provide for “such additional preventive care and screenings” as deemed necessary, which it did. Thus the requirements for such coverage came, not from Congress, but from the agencies controlled by President Obama.
The requirement that covered employers must provide certain medical care without cost or copay to employees naturally raised the hackles of religious (real religions, not the faux religion of the left) employers who claimed that the requirements of those administrative rules violated the tenets of their faith. Prominent among them was the Little Sisters of the Poor. To refresh everybody’s memory, the Little Sisters is a Catholic order of nuns who care for the elderly poor. It was founded in France by Jeanne Jugan for that purpose in 1839.
Finding themselves between a rock and a hard place, the Little Sisters turned to the courts for relief from the Obama’s administrative burden (comply or pay heavy fines) and won a unanimous victory in the Supreme Court in 2016. After taking office in January of 2017, President Trump issued an executive order directing the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to write an exemption from the contraceptive mandate for the Little Sisters and other religious organizations thus affected.
Win one for the good guys — or gals, as the case may be.
But hold on to your hats! The progressives, who included Democrat attorneys general from numerous states, went to court to protect the sacred sacraments of the left. The results were injunctions issued against the new HHS religious exemptions, one in California which applied to the entire Ninth Circuit and a nationwide injunction from a Pennsylvania federal court. Both injunctions have been upheld by their respective appellate courts. … Continue Reading

As Mormon Families Drove By… Here’s Why Cartel Assassins Were In Northern Mexico

By DEXTER DUGGAN

PHOENIX — Like the lawbreaker who reputedly shrugged that he robbed banks because that’s where the money is, vicious Latino criminals gather just south of the Southwestern United States because that’s the porous entryway for their booming illicit businesses.
On November 4, the month of Thanksgiving and the month before Christmas, three mothers and six children, including two infants, were slaughtered and other youngsters in a three-vehicle caravan were wounded when their innocent drive through northern Mexico, not far from Arizona, ran afoul of terrorist-like gunmen.
Open borders has been the poisoned holy grail of vote-hungry U.S. Democrats, big-business Republicans, and Catholic Church bureaucrats for far too long. This deadly drink led to still more deaths in violent cartel-land with the brutal attack on the offshoot U.S. Mormon families living in Sonora, which borders the Grand Canyon State.
To enjoy dual citizenship and be bilingual in rural northern Mexico might seem a wonderful life, although subject to the limitations of all earthly existence, except for the lawless gangs of the land whose criminal lusts are worsened by the opportunities abundant near open borders.
And what could be more enticing than a U.S. whose addled leftists dangle sanctuary cities and states before them, where crime can pay even more? Thanks, Dems, GOP bizmen, and the bishops’ bureaucrats.
Meanwhile, some Americans headed to the polls on November 5 after dominant media once again had minimized dangers along the border for month after month.
National Public Radio reported on November 6: “The large Mormon community lives in an area just south of Arizona where rival cartels are currently at war, fighting to secure smuggling routes close to the U.S. border. But citing the intensity of the attack, relatives say the criminals intentionally killed carloads of women and children.” … Continue Reading

The Chronicles Of Pachamama

By CHRISTOPHER MANION

The “Amazon Synod” has finally ended. For three weeks a raft of advocacy, pageantry, heterodoxy, even idolatry, paraded through the Holy City’s streets and churches. While the synod was described as an opportunity to reflect on the Church’s mission to the region’s indigenous peoples, its stage managers quickly shifted to their desired narrative: women deacons, married priests, and the diluting of the Church’s teaching in order to accommodate the pagan religions of the region, as well as the worship of their gods and goddesses.
To put it bluntly, the synod’s cast of characters was stacked with theological and political leftists, steeped in the language of Liberation Theology. Many participants weren’t interested in theology at all. Consider: Former United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki Moon and Jeffrey Sachs were both invited by the synod’s organizers. The “theology” label just gave them cover for their agenda of worldwide abortion and population control.
One might say that the gathering served as a Rorschach test. It was quite vivid: Nuns calmly explaining how they hear “confessions”; a missionary bishop bragging that he hadn’t baptized one indigenous person in fifty years; a group of synod bishops declaring in the catacombs their devotion to Mother Earth and the fight against global warming; the bishops’ promise to “walk ecumenically with other Christian communities in the inculturation and liberating proclamation of the gospel with other religions.”
On hearing this palaver, some cheer, while others tremble in horror and fear of divine retribution. … Continue Reading

A Book Review . . . More Than One Valuable Resource Among Many

By JAMES BARESEL

Probes: Deep Sea Diving into Saint John’s Gospel, by Peter Kreeft. (Ignatius: 2019). Order at Ignatius.com.

One of the most effective methods of indoctrination used by teachers, professors, and leaders of study groups is one which purports to ask students to “think for themselves” while in reality directing them to think on the basis of presuppositions which are merely taken for granted, as though not in need of justification let alone open to debate. The result is that the students, regardless of the questions they give to the questions they are asked, are formed in a habit of mind which assumes the truth of the presuppositions on the basis of which they were asked to think.
So, for example, a professor who wishes to inculcate leftist economic beliefs in his students will ask them what they think are the best ways to create economic equality. By leading students to think on the basis of the presupposition that economic equality is a goal at which we should aim, this question subliminally inculcates into students’ minds the belief that economic equality is in fact a good thing — often enough to the point that they take it for granted as an “obvious truth” and become impervious to rational argument on the topic.
To ask students to debate whether we should work for economic equality or whether property rights ought to take precedence would form them in a very different habit of mind. Asking them how best we can defend property rights against egalitarianism would form them in yet another one.
We can see the same method of indoctrination at work in many religious education programs. A religion teacher might, for example, use the story of the Good Samaritan as a basis for asking “who are the outsiders that aren’t accepted in today’s society or who haven’t been accepted by practicing Catholics?” Probably without, and if necessary with, some basic manipulation he can then ensure that the answers are dominated by a predictable laundry list of putative “victim groups.”
And the students will go away assuming that Christ was anachronistically advocating contemporary theories of “inclusiveness” rather than teaching that nationality was not among those factors determinative of who is to be included in and who excluded from membership of His Church. … Continue Reading