Once They’re Just A Husk . . . What Do Bad Catholics Take Into Their Eternity But Emptiness?

By DEXTER DUGGAN

One genre in science fiction is the human victim whose very being has been emptied out, leaving only a husk to be replaced with some new organs and identity. Think pod people.
That can happen in real life, too. Think religious practice that has been replaced with left-wing politics claiming to be somehow a better version of what existed before, even though it denies and contradicts the faith that vanished. Think, say, Democrat Nancy Pelosi insisting on receiving the Eucharist even though she’s just a brittle shell of having been a practicing Catholic.
Or think Joe Biden “clutching” his rosary — the verb the media love to assign to anyone else holding rosary beads — even though this particular person with a rosary is no more than an effigy of a practicing Catholic.
God is all-powerful, but here are a few things He can’t do: Force a good person to go to Hell, or welcome a defiant sinner into Heaven.
That’s because God’s powers don’t contradict themselves. God can’t sin. God can’t tell the lie that evil is good and good is evil. God can’t declare that unrepentant bad Catholic politicians are His friends deserving lasting reward.
Reacting to U.S. Catholic bishops voting in June to draft a response for consideration about defiant Catholic public figures receiving the Eucharist, a number of Catholic Democrat politicians said their other good works override the offense of being fervent permissive-abortion supporters.
Hey, slaughtering millions of defenseless infants pales in comparison to voting for a higher minimum wage and affordable housing and more mass transit and so on.
But why is that excuse supposed to work for facilitating massive abortion when it won’t work for nightly brutal wife-beating? “Sure, Judge, I beat her bloody all the time, but don’t you know how many needy people have a roof over their heads thanks to me?”
Or, to take a very personal example for Democrat politicians during the length of a century, “Sure, I’m a grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, but think of all the good I’ve done.”
This is a get-out-of-jail card that shouldn’t unlock any cells.
Spitting defiance while showing his doctrinal ignorance, California liberal Democrat Cong. Ted Lieu listed the ways he rejects fundamental Church teaching but said he dared the bishops to deny him Communion. Now where did Lieu get the idea he could get away with that?
Biden likes to be seen on camera showing that he can order treats at little shops — even though he fumbles for cue cards if he’s asked questions. But he likes to avoid the stupendous mystery of who actually is running this big nation while he futilely pretends he’s up to the task — even though foreign capitals smirk at his mental fog while they wait for their chance.
In Beijing, the eyes of Communist totalitarian Xi Jinping definitely aren’t popping in amazement at an adept Biden exhibiting dexterous management.
For a moment leave aside Biden’s hypocrisy on the Eucharist and promoting abortion. Let’s look instead at some other deeply evil works of the cognitively impaired aging Democrat.
Like intentionally throwing open the border so it is flooded by countless criminal sex- and drug-traffickers — even hauling in and raping minors — as well as terrorists and cartel gangsters, in hopes of this outrage benefiting Biden and his political party, even though it wreaks immense damage on entire nations.
Is this not a level of continued intentional massive sin that should exclude Biden from any identity of being a practicing Catholic until he does public penance?
Or how about Biden ordering the nation’s border enforcers to transport aliens ill with COVID-19 right into the heart of vulnerable communities around the country, even though he never ceases with his hollow howling for literally everyone to get vaccinated for health security? “Oh, I should get the jab, Mr. Prez, to protect me from the sick foreigners you’ve brought thousands of miles to live next door to me?”
To say nothing of Biden’s eager federal-government promotion of dismaying sexual confusion and disorientation as the advancement of civil rights.
Biden is to turn 79 in November. Pelosi already is 81. Without being morbid, what are the actuarial odds they, or anyone else their ages, will be here on Earth a mere 16 years from now? To compare: 16 years ago, we already were five years into this new millennium, 9-11 was four years in the past, and Pelosi had not yet become House speaker.
Walk through some European cemeteries with long-forgotten celebrities whose former fame and power avail them exactly nothing today. Are they joyously with God now, or cut off from Him forever because of their grim unrepented defiance?
Replacing the comprehensive belief system of religion by enthroning politics is no answer when human life remains as uncertain as it ever has been. After one’s eyes close for the last time on Earth, who hopes to open them anew to a vision of Pelosi handing out little models of her speaker’s gavel and 10,000 copies of the Congressional Record? Talk about going to Hell!
We’re fast approaching the twentieth anniversary of the September day when unsuspecting workers in Manhattan and the Pentagon had hell rained on them by terrorists putting jetliners on collision course that were full of passengers.
Also shocking, even though with considerably fewer deaths, was the late-June collapse of the condo tower in Surfside, Fla. Supposedly safe in their beds in the very early morning, dozens of people suddenly plummeted to the ground.
While death by the thousands is more remarkable, every day there are individual personal tragedies. Just before July Fourth, to take just two examples, a middle-aged golf pro was shot to death on the links in Georgia, and a youngster died on a water-adventure ride in Iowa.
There’s nothing wrong with hoping for a full lifespan, but it’s not guaranteed. In a modern world where people’s focus often is lured to the latest model of some electronic gadget, it’s best to remember the Lord’s reminder that you know not the day or hour of His return.
Some years ago, people were told they mustn’t bring their faith into public life because that would be imposing it on others. But now that religion has been drained out and replaced with an aggressive political secularism that masquerades as faith for Biden, where do believers who aren’t phonies turn for succor?
Radio talk host Seth Leibsohn at Phoenix-based KKNT (960 AM) looked at the difficulty for worshipers who go to church or synagogue but receive a message with no more spirituality than they’d get at a bowling alley. So they don’t need to go to a worship space at all.
The Wanderer asked Leibsohn to comment a bit more on this. He replied on July 7: “I recall for years in the eighties and nineties, the mainstream media and liberals cowered — and tried to cower the country — over conservative messages in and activism from the faithful.
“Since then, the left engaged in two strategies: strip the public square of religion, and ensure leftist ideology and liberation theology dominated the pulpits and pews,” Leibsohn said. “What the left did to education it has done to religion. It’s all subtext and no text — and thus not really even religion so much as politics by other means.”
On another topic, Leibsohn interviewed Cong. Andy Biggs (R., Ariz.), the chairman of the U.S. House Freedom Caucus, on July 7, about Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas instructing ICE officers to diminish their sworn duty to enforce immigration laws.

Everyone At Risk

A person might gasp: As if the border wasn’t being violated enough already, and as if Biden needs to sin even more greatly by having his open-borders administration continue to crush the United States under unlimited lawless invasion.
Biggs began a July 6 letter he sent to Mayorkas: “Your actions to limit U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) ability to enforce immigration law are unacceptable and must be reversed. Limiting enforcement of immigration law is an affront to the rule of law and an insult to the American people and the millions of immigrants who have come to our country legally. Additionally, it places everyone at risk because criminal aliens are not being removed.”
He added later in the letter: “Your actions preventing ICE from faithfully enforcing the law and removing aliens are causing the entire immigration system to lose credibility. You must support ICE’s efforts to enforce the law instead of actively working to reduce immigration enforcement.”
Giving an example, Biggs told Leibsohn that the Customs and Border Protection station in Willcox, Ariz., in the border county of Cochise, had been closed so its agents could help process the flood of border-crossers elsewhere.
Meanwhile, back on the East Coast, The Washington Post took another hit at Christians in early July, writing eerily, in part: “Some have found in recent years a growing overlap between White Americans who put a high value on individualism and libertarianism and those who embrace Christian nationalism, a cultural belief that America is defined by Christian identity, heritage, and social order and that the government needs to protect it.
“They are now looking at the way Trump’s presidency united disparate groups — largely White — under the umbrella of Christian nationalism,” the Post warned, adding later in its story:
“Americans who have Christian-nationalist beliefs who do not attend church are more likely to have voted for and support Trump, compared with those who attend more regularly, said Paul Froese, a sociologist at Baylor University who published a paper on the topic in January.”
Yes, the Post takes about a millionth swipe at Christians and Donald Trump. How much longer can the elite allow these supposedly dangerous characters to imperil the nation?
On the other hand, the elite are perfectly comfortable with their pal bad Catholic Biden committing sacrilege with the Eucharist. The parish council at D.C.’s Holy Trinity Catholic Church saw nothing at all wrong with this.
If Biden were to order ICE to start machine-gunning any and all children who crossed the border illegally, everyone knows the liberal Catholics would do a head-snapping reversal of their “tolerance” of his bold, unrepented sin. But he’d get horribly tough about the border about the same time he’d say transgender indoctrination for kindergartners is wrong. Which is never.
The Wanderer received an email on July 7 from a reader who said he was reminding that parish council of what’s right, but no response so far: “I went online and found the email for the president of parish council and have been forwarding articles from The Wanderer about why he should not be given Communion, and of course have received no response.”
A major topic that corporate media fear to touch is the expanding revelation of Biden’s involvement in son Hunter’s making lucrative deals with foreigners, despite “the big guy’s” denial of contact with Hunter’s business partners.

Daddy Pay Care

In an article that went online on June 30, New York Post columnist Miranda Devine discussed this while posting photos of Joe with some of those partners. The headline was, “Laptop shows Joe Biden attended meetings between Hunter and his Mexican business partners.”
Even worse for Joe, Hunter complained that he was forced to give some of the cash he was raking in to Dad. Let’s see, getting payoffs because he’s a highly placed politician’s son, then funneling some of that dough to said politician. Impeachment, anyone? Devine wrote this up in a column posted July 4 and headlined, “Hunter Biden engaged in some daddy pay care.”
Or, as an article was headlined on July 7 at The Federalist site: “In a healthy country, the Bidens would be seen as the picture of elite corruption; it’s pretty clear that Hunter Biden’s corrupt foreign influence-peddling benefited the current president of the United States.”
As this week’s final item, let’s note liberal journalist Kevin Drum posting at his blog on July 3, “If you hate the culture wars, blame liberals.”
Noting some movement by minorities toward Republicans, Drum wrote that it shouldn’t be surprising liberals are the ones stirring culture war: “Almost by definition, liberals are the ones pushing for change while conservatives are merely responding to whatever liberals do. More specifically, progressives have been bragging publicly about pushing the Democratic Party leftward since at least 2004 — and they’ve succeeded.
“Now, I’m personally happy about most of this,” Drum continued. “But that doesn’t blind me to the fact that ‘personally happy’ means nothing in politics. What matters is what the median voter feels, and Democrats have been moving further and further away from the median voter for years.”