The Usual Suspects

By FR. JAMES ALTMAN

Dear family, in our English lexicon is found the phrase: “The Usual Suspects.” Most often it seems to be a phrase that evokes scorn or, at the very least, significant dismay. “The Usual Suspects” typically is understood in the same vein as “the same cast of characters.” In simple terms, it means that the same set of folks are doing the same bad thing — again. Sooner or later — if we are paying even the slightest attention, it should be sooner — we figure out that these same “birds of a feather” are up to their old tricks. So it is, yet again, with the recent letter signed by Wilton Gregory, Blase Cupich, and more than 60 other bishops of the U.S. urging the USCCB to table discussion on the issue known as “Eucharistic coherence.”
For the record, there are 194 dioceses in the U.S., plus the military archdiocese, each with its head bishop, along with several auxiliary bishops to help those in the biggest dioceses. Last time I researched it, that meant there were about 260 active bishops in the U.S., not counting the retired ones. So this letter written by “The Usual Suspects” represents almost one-third of the head bishops in the U.S.
So, in addition to this being a memo to “The Usual Suspects,” let it also be a memo to the other two-thirds who have to deal with them. Albert Einstein said: “If I were to remain silent, I’d be guilty of complicity.” Your time for silence is over. Your silence from this point forward is complicity. Failure to condemn the damnable is to be complicit in the damnable, and there will be a price. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, “[we] must now atone in blood for [our] complicity in wickedness.” Just ponder Lincoln’s words in his magnificent Second Inaugural Address and realize exactly what he meant when he quoted Sacred Scripture, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” Let the judgments begin.
Do not take my word for it. A fundamental building block of all Truth, knowledge, and wisdom is “The Principle of Non-Contradiction,” or the PNC. The PNC means that if something is true, anything contrary to it is false. Anything. No majority vote can make something false become true. So, in whatever city you are reading this, the bottom line is that 2 + 2 = 4, not 5, 6, or 7 or whatever you may want it to be.
With that foundation of all Truth, here’s the point of the memo. Either reception of Holy Communion by pro-abort politicians is a sacrilege and, thus, a scandal to all Catholics, or it is not. It cannot be both. So either all bishops should deny Holy Communion to pro-abort politicians or no bishop should deny Holy Communion to pro-abort politicians.
The fact is that pro-abort politicians commit sacrilege by deigning to flaunt 2,000 years of the unchanged and unchangeable Truth about the abomination that is, in a word, abortion. The undeniable, unchanged, and unchangeable Truth is that abortion is the Godless sacrifice of precious babies in the womb. Of course, we have known this since the days of Abraham, about 4,000 years ago. We have known this since the first Catechism, the apostles’ Didache, almost 2,000 years ago. We know it today. And we know it because it does not take a doctorate in theology to understand. In fact, when asked “should pro-choice politicians receive Holy Communion,” the great Francis Cardinal Arinze responded:
“Do you really need a cardinal from the Vatican to answer that? Ask the children receiving First Communion and say to them, somebody votes for the killing of unborn babies, and says, I voted for that, I will vote for that every time — and these babies are killed, not one or two, but in the millions, and that person says I am a practicing Catholic — should that person receive Communion? The children will answer that at the drop of a hat. You don’t need a cardinal to answer that.”
Boom. Done. Game over.
So, memo to Wilton Gregory, Blase Cupich, and every other shepherd that dared to sign that letter, as well as every other bishop who fails to speak out boldly against you. Faithful Catholics are angry and they have a right to be. They’ve had 48 years of the moronic proposition of “dialogue” with the John Kerrys, Nancy Pelosis, and Joe Bidens of the political world. They are not going to put up with one more minute of it. They are done with your dialogue.
Here’s what faithful Catholics know. Back in 2004, the great Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, wrote a letter to the USCCB, writing it in English to the then president of the USCCB, Theodore McCarrick. Ratzinger made it absolutely crystal clear: Thou shalt not give Holy Communion to pro-abort politicians. And what did McCarrick and company do with that letter? They kept it from the bishops and, as is widely acknowledged, offered a misinterpretation that it would be up to each individual bishop to decide that in his diocese! And who was vice-president at the time? Wilton Gregory.
It really stretches credulity to suggest he did not know of this at the time, but even if he did not, it is common knowledge now amongst them all. In fact, it may be why the current head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith was against Cardinal Ratzinger’s letter being discussed at the upcoming bishops’ meeting.
So let’s do the math, shall we? Can a bishop in, say, DC, Chicago, or Newark, say, “Oh yes, Biden can receive Holy Communion” even as other Catholic bishops in other dioceses could say, “Heck no, Joe, don’t go.” Let us apply the PNC to this absurdity. A third-grader can figure out that no pro-abort politician should receive Holy Communion but a bishop in DC, Chicago, or Newark cannot?
So what are faithful Catholics supposed to do with those 60+ signers? You don’t have to ask me. They already are doing something. They are done. They finally are speaking up and speaking out. They are done just like the great Fulton J. Sheen said they should be done: “Who is going to save our Church? Not our bishops, not our priests and religious. It is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes, and the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops act like bishops, and your religious act like religious.”
That is a great thing, for as the great Archbishop Charles Chaput, OFM Cap., said: “For Pope Benedict, lay people and priests don’t need to publicly renounce their Catholic faith to be apostates; they simply need to be silent when their Baptism demands that they speak out, to be cowards when Jesus asks them to have courage.”
Good, faithful Catholics must do something. They must dialogue with their pocketbooks, saying, “We are done with those false shepherds who, after 48 years of the slaughter of the innocents, still think we need dialogue.”
I am not divisive for saying so. I am not the divisive one. Those shepherds are the divisive ones. They have divided faithful Catholics from their modernist, relativist ideology. They created a de facto schism in the Catholic Church in the U.S. and around the world, and they have been aided and abetted by every shepherd — priest or bishop — who does not speak up and speak out to challenge them.
As the martyr Blessed Jerzy Popieluszko said, “Truth never changes. It cannot be destroyed by any decision or legal act.” Similarly, as Pope Benedict XVI said, “The Truth is not decided by popular opinion.” The Truth is the Truth, and it is the same always and everywhere. Thus, as the great Robert Cardinal Sarah said, “The Church is dying because her pastors are afraid to speak in all truth and clarity.”
So, memo to all priests out there: The time for silence is over. We no longer have an excuse for remaining silent in the face of such a Godless and preposterous proposition that even a third grader can figure out.
Further, we not only have the right, we have the duty to interpose this in the public arena. As Venerable Fulton J. Sheen said: “A religion that doesn’t interfere with the secular order will soon discover that the secular order will not refrain from interfering with it.” We only need ponder the hell Obama foisted on the Little Sisters of the Poor to know that this is true. So. Enough. Enough is enough. About 10,000 babies will be slaughtered this Saturday and these 60+ false shepherds think we need to postpone dialogue on a coherent statement?
Some people have complained that I use language that is too strong. For instance, I may refer to those who support the diabolical slaughter of innocents as “vermin.” Dear family, the problem with the word “vermin” is not that it is too strong. The problem is that there is not a word strong enough. Yet again, and as always, you don’t have to take my word for it.
Pope St. Pius X said: “Liberal Catholics are wolves in sheep’s clothing. The priest must unveil to the people the perfidious plot, their iniquitous design.” “Unveiling” does not use soft, pansy language.
There you have it. In short, faithful Catholics have had it with “dialogue” over the murder of babies and the sacrilege committed every single time one of those fake-Catholic politicians come forward to receive the Real Presence. They have had it with shepherds who enable such sacrilege. Such shepherds only have themselves to blame when truly faithful Catholics quit coming to their particular churches. Such shepherds only have themselves to blame when truly faithful Catholics quit supporting their churches.
Faithful Catholics, as you read above, Archbishop Sheen said: “Who is going to save our Church? Not our bishops, not our priests and religious. It is up to you, the people.” So let your pocketbook be your dialogue with these 60+, and let them know, in writing, of your dialogue. At this point, it appears to be the only dialogue they understand. And, very importantly, make every effort to defend your faithful priests who stand up and say what even a third-grader knows: no more sacrilegious reception of Holy Communion.