Coming this week on FOT:
Dr. Matthew Bunson, executive editor of EWTN News
(ewtnnews.com): Religious liberty and the 2020 election; what will be the
effect?
Matt Lamb, assistant editor, The College Fix
(thecollegefix.com): Censorship and self-censorship of conservative and
Christian college students.
Faith On Trial – 10 a.m. CDT on Iowa Catholic Radio, 1150 AM; 88.5 & 94.5 FM, streaming on IowaCatholicRadio.com or download our free app.
Parents, legislators, taxpayers, and others footing the
bill for college education might be interested in just what is in store for the
upcoming academic year.
Since many college classes will be online, there is a
chance to witness professors indoctrinating their students in real time. So,
there’s a chance that some college faculty might change their behavior. To
see recent examples of campus nonsense and indoctrination, visit the Campus Reform and College Fix websites. 
Walter E. Williams
Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington
University, warned congressional lawmakers “that Antifa is ‘winning’ and that
much of academia, whether wittingly or unwittingly, is complicit in its
success,” reported Campus
Reform.
In his testimony before Congress Turley said:
How are socialists deluding a whole generation? Learn
more now >>
To Antifa, people like me are the
personification of the classical liberal view of free speech that perpetuates a
system of oppression and abuse. I wish I could say that my view remains
strongly implanted in our higher educational institutions. However, you are
more likely to find public supporters for restricting free speech than you are to find defenders
of free speech principles on many campuses.
The leftist bias at our colleges and universities has many
harmful effects. A mathematics professor at University of California,
Davis, faced considerable backlash over her opposition to the requirement for
“diversity statements” from potential faculty.
Those seeking employment at the University of California,
San Diego, are required to admit that “barriers” prevent women and minorities
from full participation in campus life.
At American University, a history professor wrote a book
calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment. A Rutgers University professor
said: “Watching the Iowa Caucus is a sickening display of the
overrepresentation of whiteness.”
A Williams College professor has advocated the inclusion of
social justice in math textbooks. Students at Wayne State University are no
longer required to take a single math course to graduate; however, they may
soon be required to take a diversity course.
Maybe some students will be forced into sharing the vision
of Laurie Rubel, a math education professor at Brooklyn College. She says the
idea of cultural neutrality in math is a “myth,” and that asking whether 2 plus
2 equals 4 “reeks of white supremacist patriarchy.”
Rubel tweeted: “Y’all must know that the idea that math is
objective or neutral IS A MYTH.”
Math professors and academics at other universities,
including Harvard and the University of Illinois, discussed the “Eurocentric”
roots of American mathematics. As for me, I would like to see the proof, in any
culture, that 2 plus 2 is something other than 4.
Rutgers University’s English department chairwoman, Rebecca
Walkowitz, announced changes to the department’s graduate writing program
emphasizing “social justice” and “critical grammar.”
Leonydus Johnson, a speech-language pathologist and
libertarian activist, says Walkowitz’s changes make the assumption that
minorities cannot understand traditional and grammatically correct English
speech and writing, which is “insulting, patronizing, and in itself, extremely
racist.”
Then there is the nonsense taught on college campuses about
white privilege. The idea of white privilege doesn’t explain why several historically
marginalized groups outperform whites today.
For example, Japanese Americans suffered under the Alien
Land Law of 1913 and other racist, exclusionary laws legally preventing them
from owning land and property in more than a dozen American states until the
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952.
During World War II, more than 120,000 Japanese Americans
were interned. However, by 1959, the income disparity between Japanese
Americans and white Americans had almost disappeared.
Today, Japanese Americans outperform white Americans by
large margins in income statistics, education outcomes, and test scores, and
have much lower incarceration rates.
According to Rav Arora, writing for the New York Post,
several black immigrant groups such as Nigerians, Trinidadians, Tobagonians,
Barbadians, and Ghanaians all “have a median household income well above the
American average.”
We are left with the question whether the people handing
out “white privilege” made a mistake. The other alternative is that Japanese
Americans, Nigerians, Barbadians, Ghanaians, Trinidadians, and Tobagonians are
really white Americans.
The bottom line is that more Americans need to pay
attention to the miseducation of our youth and that miseducation is not limited
to higher education.
Walter E. Williams, a columnist for The Daily
Signal, is a professor of economics at George Mason University.
COPYRIGHT 2020 CREATORS.COM
This article has been updated to reflect the
sourcing of a passage about Turley’s testimony.
A Note
for our Readers:
Democratic Socialists say, "America should be more like socialist countries such as Sweden and Denmark." And
For years, “Democratic Socialists” have been growing a crop of followers that
include students and young professionals. America’s future will be in their
hands.
How are socialists deluding a whole generation? One of their most effective
arguments is that “democratic socialism” is working in Scandinavian countries
like Sweden and Norway. They claim these countries are "proof" that
socialism will work for America. But they’re wrong. And it’s easy to
explain why.
Our friends at The Heritage Foundation just published a new guide that provides
three irrefutable facts that debunks these myths. For a limited time,
they're offering it to readers of The Daily Signal for free.
Get your free copy of "Why Democratic Socialists Can't Legitimately Claim
Sweden and Denmark as Success Stories" today and equip yourself with the
facts you need to debunk these myths once and for all.
By KRISTINE MARSH
Minutes before the kickoff of the Republican National
Convention, ABC revealed they were taking notes from CNN and
MSNBC on how to continue smearing former Covington Catholic
student Nick Sandmann and
the St. Louis McCloskeys, both slated to speak this week. On ABC News
Live, White House correspondent Rachel Scott and political contributor Yvette
Simpson sneered these speakers, who were victimized by the media, were
actually “controversial” and “disgraced.”
Anchor Diane Macedo prompted WH Correspondent Rachel Scott
to comment on the “real Americans” scheduled to speak during the convention.
Scott couldn’t hide her disdain for the St. Louis couple who defended their
home against a violent leftist mob. While suggesting the McCloskeys were
racists, she defended
the Black Lives Matter mob as “peaceful protesters:”
Yeah they’re real people, real American people as the campaign says that will be speaking today and then some of them are also some controversial figures now as we have this moment of racial reckoning in our history. One is that St Louis couple who brought out their rifles as Black Lives Matter protesters peacefully marched through their community, they are on the list to speak….
But Democrat activist and ABC political contributor Yvette
Simpson’s choice of words for the RNC guests was even worse. She had the
audacity to call the McCloskeys and Nick Sandmann “disgraced:”
One of the downsides of this convention is you’re not going
to see a lot of party leaders here you’re not going to see a lot of folks who
are heralded in the party they’re not showing up. And as Rachel
reflected some of the- real American people that you’re seeing have been people
who are disgraced not people that people rally around like the St Louis couple
or the young man from [inaudible] who interacted with the elder native American
in DC. And so it will be a very different–it will be the Trump show is the
short answer and- it’ll be interesting to see if that pays off…
The only ones disgraced or controversial here are the
media outlets who tried to ruin these people’s lives with their hack
reporting. Nick Sandmann sued and settled with several media outlets over
their disgusting
hit jobs on him. His lawyer filed five more defamation suits against
the media in May, one of which was against ABC, a relevant point not
uttered during this segment.
LifeNews Note: Kristine Marsh is Staff Writer
for MRC Culture at the Media Research Center where this
originally appeared.
August 21, 2020
Dear Pastors,
I write to you as a fellow
preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This Gospel makes clear moral demands
on individuals and on governments alike. The duty of preaching the Gospel
involves not only the urgent exhortation to personal holiness and salvation, but
the equally urgent exhortation to govern justly. Those responsible for the
common good are obliged to protect the fundamental rights of the citizens and
their freedom to live out their Faith in the way that they – and not the
government – see fit.
Anyone who has been paying
attention over the last six decades has seen an organized and persistent effort
to limit the Gospel to the private arena of our hearts and within the four
walls of our Churches.
Prayer and Bible reading have
been banished from our schools. People of faith have had to fight in court to
display religious symbols in public and to conduct their businesses and
ministries in accordance with their moral convictions. The right to even talk
about our faith has been attacked on campuses and in the media.
And as the courts have
increasingly upheld religious freedom, haters of religion have now taken to the
streets to show their contempt for our beliefs by destroying its symbols.
Moreover, the legal protection
afforded to our most fundamental good, life itself, and to God’s creation of
marriage and the family, has been obliterated by amoral legislators and
activist judges. Some 62 million children have been killed in the name of
“freedom.”
Yet our Founding Fathers,
anticipating the extent to which human nature can fall into error and sin, have
provided for us a system of self-governance that can overcome and correct even
these drastic departures from the laws of nature and of nature’s God.
Our nation is preparing to
engage in two months of voting from September 4th, when the first
absentee balloting begins, through Election Day, November 3. In this time, some
100,000 electoral races will be decided at every level of state and federal
government.
We therefore have a choice.
And the choice we have is as
relevant to what kind of church we will be as it is to what kind of nation we
will be.
On the one hand, we can adopt
a mentality that says that we have neither the duty nor the possibility of
changing the course of public policy in our nation. This mindset takes various
forms and utilizes various excuses.
Some maintain we cannot really
know the difference between what’s good for the nation and what isn’t, or that
morality is up to each church or individual to decide.
Some maintain that churches
and pastors are to stay far away from any engagement in politics or public
policy, and simply preach a Gospel that pertains only to individual, interior
spiritual life.
On the other hand, we have the
choice to engage the battle, taking on the same mindset that led pastors to
preach the large body of political sermons of our nation’s Founding Era, giving
spiritual and moral energy and guidance to the very creation of our country.
We can commit ourselves to the
same spiritual imperative that led believers to fight slavery and that led
their descendants to move from the Churches into the streets to battle
segregation.
We can be convinced of the
words Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached on the night before he was
assassinated:
"I'm always happy to see
a relevant ministry. It's alright to talk about 'long white robes over yonder,'
in all of its symbolism. But ultimately people want some suits and dresses and
shoes to wear down here. It's alright to talk about 'streets flowing with milk
and honey,' but God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here,
and his children who can't eat three square meals a day. It's alright to talk
about the new Jerusalem, but one day, God's preacher must talk about the new
New York, the new Atlanta, the new Philadelphia, the new Los Angeles, the new
Memphis, Tennessee. This is what we have to do."
We can understand that
equipping the People of God to elect the right candidates is not a political task
but a pastoral task, because we are enabling them to carry out
the Great Commission, teaching all nations to carry out everything our Lord has
commanded.
This is our choice, as we
enter Elections 2020.
Our Lord told us we need to be
attentive to the signs of the times. The problem is not that the Church is
becoming too political, but that our politics have become too pagan.
The political divide in our
nation is no longer between two major parties that “have the same goals but
different ideas of how to get there.” That was once true, but is no longer.
They have different goals,
different views of America, totally divergent views of morality, and completely
incompatible views of religion and the Church.
The Democrat Party platform
has not only departed from the Republican Party platform in matters of policy.
The differences are matters of principle. The
Democrat Party platform has abandoned the principle of the God-given right to
life and the liberty our Founders embraced to practice their Faith in their
public life. Moreover, they have made their intentions clear to write into the
laws and into the Courts a worldview completely devoid of those principles.
This is not the kind of divide
we can “rise above,” nor the kind of battle from which we can exempt ourselves
or our congregations.
This is a test for us. Either
we recognize this problem, and like good shepherds, warn our people, or we
retreat into a ‘neutrality’ so absolute that it no longer allows us to see,
much less neutralize, threats to the very survival of our nation and our
ministries.
When a political party
embraces the destruction of innocent life and the suppression of the freedom of
the Church, it can no longer be treated in a neutral way by the Church. That
Party becomes an existential threat to the nation to which we pledge our allegiance
and to the Kingdom to which we have pledged our souls.
We are, moreover, at a moment
when our President, Donald Trump, his Administration, and the Republican Party
at every level, have achieved record-breaking accomplishments to
protect our religious freedom from oppressive mandates at home and persecution
abroad. The President has defended our freedom to preach in the pulpits, and
the freedom of our children to pray in school and speak up on their campus for
the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The over 200 federal judges he has put in place,
moreover, are men and women likewise committed to religious freedom.
Dear pastors, at the founding
of our nation, Pastor John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg declared in his
sermon on January 21, 1776, "In the language of the Holy Writ,
there is a time for all things. There is a time to preach and a time to fight.
And now is the time to fight." He then threw off his clerical
robes to reveal the uniform of an officer in the Continental Army. As one
account relates, “Drums began to roll, men kissed their wives, and they walked
down the aisle to enlist. The next day, Pastor Muhlenberg led
300 men of his church and surrounding churches to join General Washington's
Continental Army.”
Nearly two centuries later,
Catholic Bishop Clemens von Galen (d. 1946), preached
fearlessly against the Nazi regime and its oppression of human life and
religious freedom. He was not afraid to name and fight the political threat
that was right before his eyes.
It is not that these men
abandoned their pastoral mission in order to become political. It is, rather,
that they saw the demands that their pastoral mission placed on them in the
circumstances of their time, and courageously rose to the occasion.
That is the choice, and the opportunity,
you and I have before us right now.
The choice for our nation is
not simply about which political party will have power, but about which kind of
America we will be – one marked by moral chaos, the Culture of Death, socialism
and religious oppression, or one based on the freedom and principles our
Founders made clear.
And the choice for our
churches is whether we will retreat in silence and cowardice out of fear of
being ‘too political,’ and hence become irrelevant to the world around us, or
respond clearly and courageously to this moment of unprecedented conflict, and
lead the People of God to protect their rights, their freedom, their Church and
their beloved country.
Sincerely,
Fr. Frank Pavone
National Director, Priests for Life
By Catholic League president Bill Donohue
Pro-life Democrats tried to persuade Joe Biden and the leadership of the Democratic Party to soften their language on abortion rights. But the 2020 Democratic Party Platform that passed on August 19 shows they lost. Indeed, they lost on every recommendation they made.
On May 12, Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats For Life of America (DFLA), wrote a letter to the members of the Platform Committee. She made four recommendations, three of which were specific.
The DFLA lost on all three. The Platform calls for "the repeal of the Hyde Amendment," as well as the codification of "the right to reproductive freedom." Furthermore, the Platform says nothing about making abortions "rare." As for conscience rights, they are nowhere mentioned.
The DFLA must have known that Biden would never commit to making abortions "rare." This explains why its second letter to the Platform Committee, issued three months later on August 14, only included reference to the first and third recommendations listed above. It was signed by more than 100 Democratic politicians.
There was a time, not too long ago, when Biden would have had no problem accepting all three recommendations. Indeed, he was never an extremist on abortion, until recently. Now he is: There is no abortion, at any time of pregnancy, or for any reason, that he finds objectionable.
In 1992, Bill Clinton made sure that the 1992 Democratic Party Platform included language saying abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare." In 2008, Hillary Clinton, in the presidential primary, went so far as to say abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare, and by rare, I mean rare."
This shows how extreme Biden has become. He does not want abortion to be rare, because if he did he would have adopted the language of the DFLA. That commits him to the most promiscuous exercise of abortion imaginable. What has happened to this professed Catholic?
The country has become more pro-life, yet Biden has become more pro-abortion. This makes no sense politically, never mind morally. But it's too late to change now. Biden has laid anchor with NARAL, the most rabid defender of abortion in the nation. In fact, they recently endorsed him.
Joe Biden and his Democratic Party Platform just shut the door tight on pro-life Democrats. Looks like the big tent has a hole in it after all.
This week on Faith On Trial:
Hans von Spakovsky, author of the Heritage Foundation’s new report on voting by mail; and Adam Guillette, president of Accuracy in Media. Two topics of interest and in the news today.
You can hear both on Faith On Trial on Iowa Catholic Radio
Thursday at 10 a.m. CDT; 1150 AM; 88.5 & 94.5 FM, and streaming live on
IowaCatholicRadio.com or you can download our convenient app.
If you have questions or comments on our program you can
always contact us at: DeaconMike@q.com.
The Third Secret given to Sister Lucia predicted, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top
August 15, 2020 (LifeSiteNews)
– Father Frank Unterhalt, a German diocesan priest and speaker of a group of
faithful priests called Communio
veritatis, has written an article about the current crisis in the
Catholic Church and linking it back to the message of Our Lady of Fatima. He
quotes Cardinal Ciappi, a theologian of the Papal House from 1955 to 1989, who
stated in 1955: “In the Third Secret it is predicted, among other things, that
the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top.”
In his statement (see full text below), Father Unterhalt of
the Archdiocese of Paderborn sums up different aspects that help us to see that
the Church has been infiltrated for quite some time now by anti-Catholic
forces. Here, he quotes the former Communist Bella Dodd who admitted to having
helped infiltrate the Church in the U.S. with some 1,100 communist priests, and
he also refers back to the Freemasonic instruction “Alta Vendita” which
aimed at receiving “a pope according to our needs.”
Father Unterhalt also quotes George Weigel who, after
studying the communist archives, described in 2011 “how the communist
governments and secret services infiltrated the Vatican and used diplomatic
relations with the Holy See to promote their interests – as one might expect –
and to strengthen their efforts to penetrate the highest levels of the Catholic
Church’s leadership, especially the Vatican itself – an approach that many
high-ranking dignitaries in the Vatican apparently did not see through.”
The German priest also reminds us that it was already
Father Maximilian Kolbe, who in 1917 witnessed an appearance of Freemasons in
Rome holding up a flag with the words “Satan shall reign in the Vatican, and
the Pope shall be his slave.”
It was Pope Benedict XVI who announced in 2010 that the
Third Secret of Fatima is about the fact that “the greatest persecution of the
Church comes not from her enemies without, but arises from sin within the
Church.”
Here, we might also be reminded of the fact that, as
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he had said that
Freemasonry was the greatest danger for the Church.
Father Unterhalt does not mention the ongoing
debate as to whether or not Rome has even fully published all the
words of Sister Lucia of Fatima relating to the Third Secret, a discussion that
is kept alive since the official
publication of the Third Secret in Rome in June of 2000. In any event,
the words of Cardinal Ciappi about an apostasy at the top of the Church as
quoted by Father Unterhalt are not contained in the officially published Third
Secret. It is to be hoped that future research will give us further light in
this matter.
For example, Cardinal Silvio Oddi, who had been the
secretary of Archbishop Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli – later Pope John XXIII –
during the time the latter served as the apostolic nuncio in Paris, stated in
1990 in an interview about the Third Secret: “I would not be surprised if the
Third Secret alluded to dark times for the Church: grave confusions and
troubling apostasies within Catholicism itself … If we consider the grave
crisis we have lived through since the [Second Vatican] Council, the signs that
this prophecy has been fulfilled do not seem to be lacking.”
Father Unterhalt also reminds us that both the Book of
Revelation and the Catechism of the Catholic Church speak to us about the loss
of Faith at the end of times and of the final trials of the Church. Here he
quotes the catechism as saying: “Before Christ’s second coming the Church must
pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The
persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the ‘mystery
of iniquity’ in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent
solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth.”
Father Unterhalt has been making strong statements in the
last years that are pertaining to the preservation of the Catholic Faith. He
and his priestly group Communio veritatis opposed,
for example, the idea of intercommunion with Protestants; he publicly rebuked the
head of the German bishops, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, for adapting the Catholic
Church to the zeitgeist; and he condemned the
practice of receiving Holy Communion in the hand while standing. Unterhalt
also rejected Pope
Francis' new rule of giving Holy Communion to adulterers. Finally, he encouraged us
to remain close to Our Lady, saying that “Many faithful are asking themselves
today how one can withstand the current storm of the great test and remain in
the true Faith. I would like to answer that with the famous words of the Most
Blessed Virgin Mary in Fatima: 'My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the
way which leads you to God!'”
***
Full statement by Father Frank Unterhalt
The Church lives through the Third Secret of
Fatima
It is high time to understand the full meaning of the
prophetic announcement made by Cardinal Wojtyła at the 1976 Eucharistic
Congress in Philadelphia: “We are now standing in the face of the greatest
historical confrontation humanity has ever experienced. I do not think that the
wide circle of the American Society, or the whole wide circle of the Christian
Community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between
the Church and the anti-church, between the Gospel and the anti-gospel, between
Christ and the antichrist. The confrontation lies within the plans of Divine
Providence. It is, therefore, in God’s Plan, and it must be a trial which the
Church must take up, and face courageously…”[1]
It is important to realize the full dimension of this
dramatic appeal! Above all, one must consider what an anti-church needs at its
head. In this sense, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen affirmed: “There will be a mystical
Body of the antichrist, which will resemble in all its externals the Mystical
Body of Christ.”[2]
During his visit to Germany in 1980, Pope John Paul II,
when asked in Fulda how things were going with the Church in relation to the
Third Secret of Fatima, replied with the following words: “We must prepare
ourselves for great trials in the near future. Yes, they may even require giving
our lives, and total dedication to Christ and for Christ! It can be softened by
your and our prayer, but it cannot be averted. Only in this way can the true
renewal of the Church arrive. How often has the renewal of the Church been born
from blood. It will not be any different this time. Let us be strong and let us
prepare and trust in Christ and His Holy Mother! Let us pray the Rosary very
much and often!”[3]
Shortly after, this turned real for him. On May 13, 1981,
the anniversary of the first apparition of the Blessed Virgin and Mother of God
Mary in Fatima in 1917, the assassination attempt took place in Rome. Here the
whole trial of which he spoke became visible in a dramatic picture. The direct
attack against the Holy Father was not only directed at him, but at the entire
Mystical Body of Christ on earth. According to the teaching of St. Augustine,
the Pope is the “figura ecclesiae” and represents the whole Church.[4]
Against this background, she must understand that she is in the midst of an
apocalyptic struggle in which everything is at stake. This becomes even clearer
when we consider the exact circumstances of the assassination attempt: The five
shots were fired at 17:17.
On the one hand, this unmistakably points to the year in
which Freemasonry was founded, 1717. St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe witnessed their
demonstration on St. Peter’s Square in Rome in 1917. The Apostle of the
Immaculata read the professed plan of the Freemasons on the relevant flag:
“Satan shall reign in the Vatican, and the Pope shall be his slave.”[5]
On the other hand, in the same year 1917, the October
Revolution occurred in Russia with the manifestation of atheist communism and
the connected decisive struggle.
In these contexts, the attack on the head of the Catholic
Church shows the hostile attempt to overcome her completely. The aim of the
attack in Rome was obviously to remove the God-given foundation of the Church
in order to replace it with another “leadership.”
Of course, this plan did not end with the assassination
attempt, which failed from the enemy’s point of view – to the contrary.
Enlightening in this context is a letter of Sister Lucia to the Holy Father of
May 12, 1982(!), in which she referred to the third part of the Secret: “Since
we did not heed this appeal of the Message, we see that it has been fulfilled,
Russia has invaded the world with her errors. And if we have not yet seen the
complete fulfilment of the final part of this prophecy, we are going towards it
little by little with great strides.”[6]
The theologian and writer Prof. Dr. George Weigel has
analyzed the archives of the communist fight against Karol Wojtyła and Pope
John Paul II, and has described the pertinent campaign as follows: “This
material illustrates how the communist governments and secret services
infiltrated the Vatican and used diplomatic relations with the Holy See to
promote their interests – as one might expect – and to strengthen their efforts
to penetrate the highest levels of the Catholic Church’s leadership, especially
the Vatican itself – an approach that many high-ranking dignitaries in the
Vatican apparently did not see through.”[7]
The shocking confession of the well-known Dr. Bella Dodd, a
high-ranking member of the Communist Party in the USA, opens our eyes in a
special way to the historical background. After her conversion to the Catholic
faith, the former activist gave sworn testimony about the deliberate
infiltration of the Church. According to her own testimony, she followed an
order by Stalin at the time, which was issued to all Communist Party
organizations to have agents without faith and morals infiltrate Catholic
seminaries and religious orders.[8]
This plan from Moscow was implemented extremely effectively
– right down to the Vatican. In the 1950s, she explained: “In the 1930s we put
1100 men into the priesthood in order to destroy the Church from within, right
now they are in the highest places in the Church.”[9]
Dr. Bella Dodd left no doubt about the drastic
consequences: “You will not recognize the Catholic Church.”[10]
The philosopher Prof. Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand provides
us with a profound analysis which clearly shows that the decisive battle is not
outside but inside the Church herself: “An unprejudiced look at the present
devastation of the Lord’s vineyard cannot overlook the fact that a ‘fifth
column’ has formed in the Church (it is also called a mafia by some, even on
the Church side), a group of purposeful destroyers of the Church. […] Their
systematic and refined undermining of Holy Mother Church also bears clear
enough witness to the fact that this is a deliberate conspiracy on the hand of
the Freemasons and the Communists, who – despite their differences and other
enmities – work together for this goal. For Freemasonry, the Church is the
arch-enemy, and for the Communists the main obstacle to the conquest of the
world. […] But the incomprehensible thing is that this conspiracy exists within
the Church, that there are bishops and even cardinals, and above all priests
and religious who are a kind of Judas.”[11]
Bishop Dr. Rudolf Graber has dealt with the goal of the
hostile strategy. He quotes the so-called “Alta Vendita” – the Masonic plan for
revolution within the Catholic Church. In it, it says: “What we demand, what we
look for and have to await – just as the Jews await their Messiah – is a Pope
according to our needs […] We do not doubt our reaching this highest goal of
our efforts.”[12]
In this context the famous word formulated by Cardinal
Ciappi is of particular importance. He was an expert on the Third Secret of
Fatima and theologian of the Papal House from 1955 to 1989. In a letter to
Prof. Baumgartner from Salzburg in 1995, he wrote: “In the Third Secret it is
predicted, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin
at the top.”[13]
A look into the Book of Revelation makes this clear.
The fire-red dragon (cf. Rev 12:3) represents atheistic
communism, which seeks to destroy faith in God. In this battle two beasts come
to the aid of the dragon, who shows himself to have powerful strength.
The black beast, which resembles a panther (cf. Rev
13:1-2), is Freemasonry. It acts in the background and hides itself in the shadows
to be able to penetrate everywhere unrecognized. The throne and power of the
dragon have been given to him (cf. Rev 13:2).
The other beast is ecclesial Freemasonry: “He had two horns
like a lamb, but he spoke like a dragon” (Rev 13:11). This is a reference to
the hierarchy of the Church, in which the mitre – with two horns – indicates
the fullness of the priesthood. The beast that comes up out of the earth looks
like a servant of Christ the Lamb, but is a servant of Satan the dragon.
The False Prophet (cf. Rev 19:20) is the pseudo-religious
leader of the anti-church and drives apostasy from the top. He deceives and
betrays the inhabitants of the earth (cf. Rev 13:14) and wants to lead people
to worship the antichrist (cf. Rev 13:12), of whom he is the forerunner.
A direct reference to the Third Secret of Fatima is also
found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Before Christ’s second coming
the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many
believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil
the ‘mystery of iniquity’ in the form of a religious deception offering men an
apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the
truth.”[14]
The Paschal Mystery of Christ is thus intensely renewed in
his Mystical Body. The Church will follow her Lord in his death and
resurrection.[15]
This is why Pope Benedict XVI, as a pilgrim on the road to
Fatima in May 2010, explained the Third Secret: “Consequently, I would say
that, here too, beyond this great vision of the suffering of the Pope, […] an
indication is given of realities involving the future of the Church, which are
gradually taking shape and becoming evident. So it is true that, in addition to
moment indicated in the vision, there is mention of, there is seen, the need
for a passion of the Church, which naturally is reflected in the person of the
Pope, yet the Pope stands for the Church and thus it is sufferings of the
Church that are announced. […]
As for the new things which we can find in this message
today, there is also the fact that attacks on the Pope and the Church come not
only from without, but the sufferings of the Church come precisely from within
the Church, from the sin existing within the Church. This too is something that
we have always known, but today we are seeing it in a really terrifying way:
that the greatest persecution of the Church comes not from her enemies without,
but arises from sin within the Church”.[16]
So, during this time, she experiences in everything the
passion of Jesus and the abysmal iniquity of the betrayal.
Christ made the servant of the true Mercy, St. Sister
Faustina, experience all the bitterness of the Church’s agony of Gethsemane.
She wrote in her diary: “On that day I suffered more than at any other time,
inwardly and outwardly. I did not know that one can suffer so much in a single
day.” The most terrible dimension of Gethsemane is the appearance of the
traitor. St. Sister Faustina noted the date of this worst day of suffering. It
was December 17, 1936.
Assumptio Beatae Mariae Virginis 2020
Pastor Frank Unterhalt
__________________
[1] John-Henry Westen, “Two timely quotes from St. John
Paul II on his feast day,” in: LifeSiteNews, October 22, 2014; The Wall
Street Journal, November 9, 1978.
[2] Fulton J. Sheen, Der Kommunismus und das
Gewissen der westlichen Welt [Engl. title: Communism and the
Conscience of the West], Berlin 1950, p. 12. [translated from German]
[3] Stimme des Glaubens [Voice of the Faith],
October 1981.
[4] Cf. Augustine, Epistulae 53,2.
[5] Maria Winowska, Pater Maximilian Kolbe. Ein
Leben im Dienst der Immaculata [Father Maximilian Kolbe: a Life serving the
Immaculata], Freiburg/Schw. – Konstanz – München 1952, p. 41. [translated
from German]
[6] Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, The
Message of Fatima (June 26, 2000), Introduction.
[7] George Weigel, Der Papst der Freiheit. Johannes
Paul II. Seine letzten Jahre und sein Vermächtnis [Engl. Title: The End and the
Beginning: Pope John Paul II--The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the
Legacy], Paderborn 2011, p. 14. [translated from German]
[8] Cf. Iben Thranholm, „Catholic abuse crisis is likely no
accident, but a strategy to ‘destroy Church from within’“, in: LifeSiteNews,
September 17, 2018.
[9] Bella V. Dodd, School of Darkness, Angelico
Press reprint edition 2017, Introduction; originally published by P. J. Kenedy
& Sons, New York 1954.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Dietrich von Hildebrand, Der verwüstete
Weinberg [Engl. title: The Devastated Vineyard], Regensburg
1973, 2nd ed., p. 11. [translated from German]
[12] Rudolf Graber, Athanasius und die Kirche
unserer Zeit [Engl. title: Athanasius and the Church of our Time],
Abensberg 1987, 11th ed., p. 85. [translated from German]
[13] Brian W. Harrison, “Alice von Hildebrand Sheds New
Light on Fatima,” Introductory commentary, in: OnePeterFive, May 12, 2016.
[14] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 675.
[15] Cf. ibid., 677.
[16] Pope Benedict XVI, Interview during the flight to
Portugal, May 11, 2010
[17] Tagebuch der Schwester Maria Faustyna Kowalska
[Diary of Sister Maria Faustina Kowalska], Hauteville/Schweiz 1991, 2nd ed.,
No. 823. [translated from German]
Translation by LifeSite's Martin Bürger.
Removing history from the curriculum? That is what an Illinois legislator is proposing. What will that do, and is it a good idea? Laurie Higgins from the Illinois Family Institute will join us to discuss. Then Thomas More Society Special Council Jeffrey Trissel will discuss whether the removal of the statute of St. Junipero Serra by the city of Ventura, California was an act of anti-Catholic bigotry.
By Bill Donohue, Catholic League president
Crime is a serious problem in many black inner-city neighborhoods, and that is why a recent Gallup survey found that most blacks—81 percent—want the police to spend the same amount of time (61 percent) or more time (20 percent) in their area. If most blacks thought the cops were the enemy, they would not want a police presence where they live.
Why is Black Lives Matter such a threat to the health and safety of black people? Because it wants to eliminate the police force and empty the prisons. If this were to happen, blacks would suffer the most.
On the website of Black Lives Matter there is a petition calling for "a national defunding of police." While others are also calling to defund the police, Black Lives Matter is front and center.
Patrisse Cullors is one of the three founders of Black Lives Matter; she is also its most prominent spokesperson. She recently told Newsweek that "Policing and incarceration are part of a continuum," and that her organization is committed to "getting rid of both systems." She added that "When we're thinking about defunding police, we need to be thinking about defunding the mass incarceration state."
On its website, Black Lives Matter lists "prison abolition" as one of its objectives. In June, Black Lives Matter Chicago said this goal was urgent. "We say #DefundThePolice and #DefundDepOfCorrections because they work in tandem. The rise of mass incarceration occurred alongside the rise of militarized and mass policing. They must be abolished as a system."
Chicago, of course, is where black lives matter the least: black-on-black shootings are routine, especially on weekends. Most Chicagoan blacks, like blacks everywhere, are peaceful, which explains why they want more arrests and more incarcerations, not less. So why is Black Lives Matter doing everything it can to subvert the aspirations of black people?
One reason why we have gotten to this absurd stage is because of the white "allies" of Black Lives Matter. To be specific, legions of young affluent white men and women have been intellectually seduced by their ideologically corrupt professors. They sincerely believe that the cops are the enemy and the prisons are evil. They need a reality check.
In truth, it is they, along with Black Lives Matter, who are the greatest threat to the health and safety of black people.
If we get rid of the police and the prisons, Black Lives Matter officials will be unaffected, as will their white allies; they live in comfortable neighborhoods. It will be innocent black men, women and children who will pay the price for their insanity. It doesn't get any more perverse than this. Indeed, the Klan could not improve on their agenda.
Guests: Former Congressman Tim Huelskamp, Ph.D. and senior political adviser for CatholicVote: What’s at stake if Catholic schools don’t open this fall?
And Roger L. Simon, opinion writer for The Epoch Times,
author, and co-founder of PJ Media: Is Antifa the natural product of our
educational system?
Join Deacon Mike and Gina Noll this Thursday, 10 a.m. CDT
on Iowa Catholic Radio, 1150 AM; 88.5 & 94.5 FM, or IowaCatholoicRadio.com
but why not just down load our convenient app. Thanks to Imogene Ingredients
for supporting Faith On Trial.
By Deacon Mike Manno, JD
The Wanderer
Of all the outrages being
committed by the progressive left these days, few would compare with the
attempts by a coalition of Democratic state attorneys general and the American
Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to force Catholic hospitals and health-care
workers to perform elective hysterectomies for women seeking to “transition” to
men, to perform “trans” surgeries, and to require all to perform abortions.
The party of death and its secular arm, the ACLU, have filed two federal
lawsuits to strip away from Catholic hospitals and medical personnel their
right to decline to perform certain medical procedures as a matter of faith or
conscience.
“The last thing anyone should want right now is fewer hospitals. And yet, that
may very well be the outcome of lawsuits like this one. If people are worried
about the health-care system being overwhelmed today — just wait until liberals
force the religiously affiliated groups entirely out of business. Because
that’s what’ll happen if the left insists on forcing religious facilities to
embrace their radical views,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family
Research Council.
“Catholic nonprofits have told the country before — in adoption and abortion
debates — that choosing between their faith and ministry is no choice at all.
They’d rather shut their doors than bend an inch on biblical teachings,” he
said, suggesting that liberal radicals are willing to “blow a gaping hole in
America’s medical care just to advance their political goals.”
Both of the suits take aim at Catholic teaching that Catholic health-care
organizations are not permitted to engage in “immediate material cooperation in
actions that are intrinsically immoral, such as abortion, euthanasia, assisted
suicide, and direct sterilization.”
The first one was filed by 24 state attorneys general, led by New York Attorney
General Letitia James, aiming at nullifying recent Trump administration rules
protecting the conscience and religious rights of medical personnel. That rule
replaced a 2016 anti-discrimination rule by the Obama administration which
would have forced those workers to commit abortions and perform gender
reassignment procedures.
Obama’s anti-discrimination rule was blocked by a federal court in late 2016 to
protect religious freedom of the health-care workers. That ruling was
subsequently upheld on appeal last year.
The new Trump rules were promulgated just days before the Supreme Court issued
its ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County,
which expanded the definition of “sex” to include “sexual orientation” and
“gender identity” under Title VII’s employment discrimination protections.
In the New York suit, the AGs claim that
Bostock should apply to health issues, including the rules that provide the
operational platform for interpreting the provisions of the Patient Protection
and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). The result being that the original rules
blocked by the courts in 2016 should be in effect.
Thus, under the left’s interpretation, the act “prohibits all health programs
and activities receiving federal financial assistance . . . from discriminating
against individuals on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, age, or
disability.”
Of course, the majority opinion in Bostock,
written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, went to pains to point out that it only
applied to employment cases. “But how these doctrines protecting religious
liberty interact with Title VII are questions for future cases,” Gorsuch wrote.
At the time, I wrote in this column (July 2 issue), “How about Catholic
hospitals who refuse to perform sexual reassignment surgery? There are already
a spate of lawsuits claiming that the refusal is discrimination on the basis of
sex.” Well, I guess we’re finding out how the Dems and the left want to expand Bostock — as most of us feared.
The second suit was filed in Maryland and involves a woman transitioning to
male who is suing a hospital over its refusal to perform the “medically
necessary” hysterectomy for her/him to medically make the crossover from woman
to man.
Oddly, the plaintiff, a Jesse Hammons, did ultimately receive the surgery from
another hospital. But like some of the other LGBTQ bullies who received their
requested services from other businesses and still went back and sued, Ms./Mr.
Hammons and the ACLU decided to go back and sue the hospital that had
originally refused to perform the hysterectomy, which by now she/he had
received from another hospital.
The purpose of that, of course, is to bully people of faith into compliance
with their sinful demands.
There is a bit of a twist in this case that will make legal scholars study this
case in the future. The hospital is not technically a Catholic hospital. St.
Joseph Hospital belongs to the University of Maryland Medical System
Corporation. That corporation was established by statute and the members of its
board of directors are appointed by the Maryland governor. In short, it is a
state-owned entity. So how does it come off following Catholic medical
protocols?
Well, this might be the tricky part. It seems that a few years ago, St. Joseph
Hospital was sold to the Maryland Medical System. Since it was a Catholic
hospital and adhered to Catholic hospital directives, part of the terms and
conditions of the sale was that it would always adhere to those directives,
which it does to this day.
Of course, that gives leave to our ACLU friends to claim that the state is
impermissibly governing the hospital by Catholic rules to the disadvantage of
the general population, which should be protected by the nondiscrimination
clause in the statute that created the Maryland Medical System. And to further
complicate the hospital’s legal status, in 2011 the State Supreme Court
declared that the University of Maryland Medical System was an “instrumentality
of the state.”
Both suits were filed in July, so we have a long way to go before anything
definitive is produced. We’ll follow closely.
++ + Speaking of the LGBTQ
lobby, Facebook, not surprisingly, has given in to it. It now bars any posts
that discuss or promote what is known as “conversion therapy,” the process by
which people who are suffering from unwanted same-sex attraction seek
therapeutic help. LGBTQ activists have successfully lobbied many state
legislatures to ban the procedure in their states.
Apparently you can announce your “coming out” on Facebook, but it is forbidden
to question if you might want to go back. What a queer state of affairs.
++ + While we’re on the
subject of social media, this tidbit: Mike Gundy, football coach with Oklahoma
State University, was photographed wearing a T-shirt with a logo of One America
News Network, a conservative cable television outfit. Apparently someone posted
the photo online, which triggered some of his less manly players. ESPN reported
that within days of the uproar, Coach Gundy fell on the sword of the cancel
culture, apologized for wearing the shirt, surrendered a million dollars and
lost a year on his contract.
My first thought was: Where can I get one of those? But I decided to buy an
Archbishop Viganò coffee cup instead. Wonder if Bishop Strickland might have
key rings for sale. Hmmmm.
(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com. His Faith On Trial program is on
IowaCatholicRadio.com at 10 a.m. (CDT) every Thursday.)