By CHRISTOPHER MANION
It’s fair to say that 2018 had its ups and downs. In the long run, the celebration of Humanae Vitae’s fiftieth birthday certainly comes in first in the category of good news. Like so many bedrocks of the faith, the more unpopular this vibrant document has become among the elites of our secular culture, the more its principles and even its predictions have been proven to be on the mark.
Want an uplifting way to celebrate this Christmas? Get a really big stocking — make that two — and stuff them with copies of Why Humanae Vitae Is Still Right (Ignatius Press). Editor Janet Smith, the unanimous gold-medalist in explaining this beautiful teaching, has brought together a world-class team of contributors to address the history, application, and promise of St. Paul VI’s reaffirmation and illumination of the Church’s fundamental teaching on family, love, and life.
A must-have.
Yes, Humanae Vitae’s birthday was 2018’s high point, but it’s pretty clear that things went downhill from there. In the life of the Church, politics, and the broader social and cultural realm we’ve seen many signs of decay, but few signs of a springtime of hope. Yes, other years have bequeathed some pretty dismal memories, but this year we’ve seen the curtain pulled back — torn back, even shredded — a curtain that for years has hidden from view some unlovely, even grotesque, realities in the lives of the Church and the country.
A Tough Year For
Holy Mother Church
It was only last year that The Wanderer had a birthday as well. For over 150 years, we have defended the truths of the faith and the Church that teaches them. We’ve been through some pretty tough times, historic times, but 2018 was the year that the enemies of faith and freedom came out of hiding. We now know that there thrives within the hierarchy a network of malefactors who have been appointed and promoted by design.
We’ve known for years that there exists among the clergy a surprisingly high number of homosexuals and their enablers. We’ve even known a few names. But now we know that within that group there lies a working group — some might call it a cabal — that has not only sought power, but has achieved it at a startling rate.
All that is bad enough, but in the past fifty years and more, that rather seedy lot has been a driving force in our century’s chapter in Satan’s two-thousand-year project to destroy the Church from within. The Wanderer has done its best to report on this quiet, insidious war of aggression: The yeoman work of our late colleague, the intrepid Paul Likoudis, has now been vindicated in a fashion so stunning and powerful that Paul would have received a posthumous award from every honest media organization in the country, if there were any.
But there aren’t. And prelates? Many responded to Paul’s steady, quiet, and perceptive work with contempt and derision. Well, that’s over. Now that the ugly, scowling face of the Prelates’ Perversion Project has been irreversibly exposed, the response has been not the guilty prelates’ remorse, but their revenge. Clearly, they will not go quietly.
But why not? One would think that men of goodwill, many of advanced age, would consider eternity, and quietly leave the scene when their crimes were exposed. But not these guys. No, the cabal has hunkered down. In the United States, the fog factor is ten out of ten, the can is routinely kicked down the road, and not one guilty prelate has voluntarily resigned. The most audacious write books celebrating their sodomy or spend a billion dollars of the faithful’s hard-earned donations to stay out of jail.
The more cunning hunker down and join with their fellow Judases to strut their moral superiority, lavishing praise on themselves through the conduit of “virtue-signaling” — braying about their canonized left-wing political agendas and shilling for billions from pro-abortion pols who know the drill: Cash for Catholic Clunkers. The uncorrupted quiver in fear and dither. After all, they need the cash too.
We’ve watched in horror as twenty dioceses have declared bankruptcy since 2002. But what do we do when America’s bishops — and many others in the hierarchy throughout the world — declare moral bankruptcy?
And internationally?
In Rome, Pope Francis says, “I will not say one word about this.”
You know what, Your Holiness? That says it all.
Political Fundamentals
Parallel Those Of The Church
In America, both our hierarchy and our government have been infected with a deadly virus that we have called the “Deep State,” comprising truly evil players conspiring to seek the destruction of everything good. Their less lethal, but nonetheless indispensable ally is the “Shallow State” — those who might not seek power and influence so much as they seek convenience and an informally negotiated compromise with the bad guys that allows them to lay low, avoid conflict, and keep on writing memos and scheduling meetings until they retire.
America’s political cabal has now been exposed to the point that it has had to “come out.” It has now launched a public, massive, and all-out attack. The Deep State’s key players have been exposed as venal, vulgar cadavers dead to any principle of honor, duty, or patriotism. Their allies in the media have destroyed every notion of objectivity in journalism forever.
In the culture, the elites are now turning on each other with a vengeance. Did you mock sodomites twenty years ago? “You’re fired, you homophobe!” Did you call a classmate “queer” in high school? “You might have won the Heisman Trophy, pal, but if you don’t grovel right now you’re toast: The NFL cowers before the totem of sensitivity just like everyone else. On your knees!”
For the elites, merit is gained by accusing others of insufficient obedience to Mammon and Baal.
Of course, the easiest means of self-confirmation in their world of rancid virtue is to attack Christians. Adherents model themselves after Obama — and don’t forget those deplorables clinging to their Bibles and their guns! He and his wife are now billionaires, what’s not to like? So if you’re looking for heroes to emulate, look no further.
Catholics have words for this. “Superbia Vitae” is the perversion of the will by pride, the longing for fame and glory — false, of course, and cheap (1 John 2:16). “Libido dominandi” is the love of power — a love so fanatical that Augustine calls it the driving force of the City of Man, whose ruler is Satan.
Those are their loves. But why do they hate us? The Devil knows Scripture. He wanted Christ to fall down and worship him — cheap worship: he’d only gain the whole world, and Satan might even be lying! (Luke 4:1-13).
America’s secular elites, like their international allies, are not only offended, but contemptuous, that we Deplorables have the temerity to defy them. Under Obama as their leader — after all, he was the most pro-abortion leader in the free world — under Obama and his designated heiress Hillary, their triumph would have been complete! They could smell it, they could almost taste it! We would have loved Big Brother!
But we didn’t fall down and worship them. We worship the wrong god — the true God — and they are outraged. What they can’t abort they will destroy! The sword of St. Michael will one day drive the unrepentant into Hell — but not yet. In the meantime, we who defy them must bend the knee or be destroyed.
But we won’t bend. We know that in the end this world will be destroyed — but we won’t. Our confidence is in God, not in them and their pagan idols
And that’s why they hate us.
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