Time To Take A Stand And Defend The Faith

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) – I am, what one would call, a cradle Catholic. I was born, baptized, and sent to Catholic schools by parents who not only took their faith seriously, they endeavored to instill that faith in me. For the most part, I guess, it worked. I graduated from a Catholic high school and went to a Jesuit college.

I was Catholic. And later, at the suggestion of my family and several parishioners, I began studying for the diaconate and was ordained. Over the years I have developed a great love for the Church, its history, and its teachings; and from early on I developed a great devotion to Our Blessed Mother and spent much time researching her apparitions and the messages that accompanied them.

I don’t know if it would be correct to call me a Catholic nerd, but I am anything but an apostate.

Thus it saddens me to read daily stories of how the Church and many of its leaders have undermined the faith of the laity; and how many of that same laity are now in a not-so quiet rebellion against some of the most fundamental teachings of the Church. Bishops are contradicting other bishops, priests are being censored for speaking truth, and the faithful accepts lay leadership that hasn’t the vaguest idea of what the Church is and what makes it different from all other Christian dominations, and have no grasp of the rich tradition and history that is the Catholic Church.

And, of course, I wonder why.

If you are a regular reader of this column, you’ve seen some hints over the five or so years I’ve been writing this. So I’m going to try to put it together in thumbnail fashion, starting with the answer: The Prince of this World, also known as Satan. He’s known by many other names, but Satan, or the devil, will do for our purposes.

He is successful today because he has found many helpmates who have, by design or ignorance, behind the scenes wreaked havoc with the Church we love. We know the devil has been busy trying to defeat the Church since the time of the apostles, but lately it seems that he has turned up the heat.

After the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, with its near-fatal blow to the Church in Europe, the movement began to splinter into various cults. There was then an increasing voice for a “new world order” based on natural — not spiritual — values. This new “religion” was to replace Catholicism and was fostered through secret societies throughout the Continent. The chief opponent of the Church was the Freemasons.

[In 1859 there was published a secret document of the Italian Carbonari, an anti-clerical sect with connections to Freemasonry, The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita. The document, which fell into the hands of both Pius IX and Leo XIII, outlined the Masonic plan to infiltrate the Church and to place one of their own or a supporter on the Chair of Peter.]

(See https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03330c.htm for more on the Freemasons and also the Alta Vendita.)

Then, one morning in 1884, during the papacy of Leo XIII, the Pope appeared discombobulated and seemed to lose consciousness after saying morning Mass. His aides came to his assistance and after the episode passed he told them what had happened.

He said he had witnessed a conversation between God and Satan during which Satan boasted that he would be able to destroy the Church if only God would give him the time. God granted his request and gave him one hundred years. The Pope then had a vision of Hell and saw the Archangel Michael respond to prayers of the faithful. He penned the Prayer to St. Michael which he directed should be recited after each Low Mass worldwide. That prayer was recited until it was removed from its place during the reforms of Vatican II in 1964. Recently, there have been moves to restore it to its place, however.

Let’s move a bit further ahead in time. In 1904 Maria Asunta Isabella Visono — later known as Bella Dodd — was born in Italy and was soon taken to the United States. With a bright mind Bella graduated from college, attended graduate school at Columbia, and finally received a law degree from New York University. It was during her schooling that she left her native Catholicism and ultimately became an adviser for the local teachers union and finally a member of the Communist Party where she ultimately rose to membership in the party’s national committee.

Dodd, who later reconverted to Catholicism and renounced Communism, claimed that in the late 1920s and 1930s, in response to directives that were sent from Moscow, the party was to place party members in seminaries and Church organizations in order to destroy the Church from within. She also claimed that she, herself, placed numerous fellow-travelers into U.S. seminaries.

That’s all interesting to hear, a little scary, but interesting. So, how does all this fit into what is going on now? Consider:

[Starting in 1624 Our Lady appeared to Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres in her convent in Quito, Ecuador and, among other messages, told her, “Thus I make it known to you that from the end of the 19th century and shortly after the middle of the 20th century… the Catholic spirit will rapidly decay; the precious light of the faith will gradually be extinguished…” The series of apparitions are known as the Our Lady of Good Success.

In 1846 the Mother of God appeared to two children in La Salette, France. She told the children: “Lucifer, with a great number of demons will be unchained from Hell. By degrees they shall abolish the faith, even among persons consecrated to God. …

[T]he abomination shall be seen in holy places, in convents, and then the demon shall make himself the king of hearts. … Rome will lose the faith and become the seat of the Antichrist.”

Among those who have read the Third Secret of Fatima (1917), including Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, have stated that it concerns a great apostasy at the highest levels of the Church. Cardinal Mario Ciappi, who read the Third Secret and was personal papal theologian to Popes John XXIII, Paul VI, and John Paul II, said, “In the Third Secret it is foretold, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top”]

In Akita, Japan, Mary told Sr. Agnes Sasagawa in 1973, “The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against bishops. The priests who venerate me will be scorned and opposed by their confreres…the Church will be full of those who accept compromises and the demon will press many priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the Lord.”

(The Most Rev. John Shojiro Ito, bishop of Niigata, recognized “the supernatural character of a series of mysterious events concerning the statue of the Holy Mother Mary” and authorized “the veneration of the Holy Mother of Akita” within the Roman Catholic Diocese of Niigata in a 1984 pastoral letter.)

Pope St. Pius X, seeing the Church under siege from modernism, wrote in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (Feeding the Lord’s Flock) in 1907:

“[T]hey put into operation their designs for [the Church’s] undoing, not from without but from within. Hence, the danger is present almost in the very veins and heart of the Church, whose injury is the more certain from the very fact that their knowledge of Her is more intimate. Moreover, they lay the ax not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the faith and its deepest fibers.”

Pius XII warned, “I am worried by the Blessed Virgin’s messages to Lucy of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a Divine warning against the suicide of altering the faith.”

And of course there is Pope Paul VI’s comment in 1972 when the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae was being rejected by priests, bishops, and the culture: “The smoke of Satan has entered the Church.”

Of course I could go on but I think you get my point. Satan is using every weapon available to him to infiltrate the Church to destroy it. And we wonder now why there is so much confusion going on, why many bishops won’t take firm stands on major doctrinal issues facing the Church, and instead wish to “dialogue” with dissenters instead of insisting on orthodoxy.

And just what would we “dialogue” about? Questioning the humanity of a baby in the womb? Discussing why a person can pick his gender and change it at will? Or why your teen daughter is forced to shower with the boy down the block after gym class? Is that what some call “relativism”?

Anyway, it’s time to take a stand and shoe the infiltrators out. Bishops, clergy, and laity must hold fast to the universal truth of the Catholic faith. It might not make us popular, but as Jesus said, if they hate us it’s because they hated Him first. Kinda puts you in good company, doesn’t it?

(Items in brackets not included in original publication. You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and hear his radio program, Faith On Trial, every Thursday at 10 a.m. Central, on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)

 

Faith On Trial – Thursday June 3

Guests: Tyson Langhoffer, senior counsel, the Alliance Defending Freedom on Jack Denton the FSU student who was removed from his position as president of the student senate over comments made in a Catholic chat-room; and the case of Lydia Booth, the third grader who was told by her school that she could not wear her “Jesus Loves Me” mask. And: Matt Lamb, assistant editor, the College Fix, on actions taken by the Colorado State University student senate against an off-campus crisis pregnancy clinic.

Most Popular U.S. Worldview Disregards Biblical Values

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) – An “overwhelming majority of American adults lack a cohesive, coherent worldview, and instead substitute a patchwork of conflicting, often irreconcilable beliefs and values as they navigate life,” according to the newly released American Worldview Inventory 2021 by the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University.

The report is made up of three surveys: The first found that only 6 percent of American adults have a truly biblical worldview; the second found that the most popular worldview is that of “moralistic therapeutic deism, which recognizes the existence of an uninvolved God, and where being happy and feeling good is the polestar; and the new generation of Millennials seek a nation without God, the Bible, and churches.”

The results are a warning of things to come as the millennial generation comes of age. Beliefs and behaviors of the younger generations “threaten to reshape the nations’ religious parameters beyond recognition,” says the report, warning that a “radical spiritual revolution” has created this generation of Millennials.

The findings confirm a decade’s long decline in the prevailing Judeo-Christian culture formerly found throughout the United States.

The project’s lead researcher, sociology professor Dr. George Barna, found that nearly nine of ten adults (88 percent) embrace an impure, unrecognizable worldview that blends ideas from multiple perspectives, which Barna call “syncretism.”

Rather than developing an internally consistent and philosophically coherent perspective on life, Americans embrace points of view or actions that feel comfortable or seem most convenient. Those beliefs and behaviors are often inconsistent, or even contradictory, but few Americans seemed troubled by those failings,” the survey reported.

The survey was taken last February among a nationally representative sample of 2,000 adults in half-hour long personal interviews. It has an error rate of plus or minus two percentage points. It compared the generational attitudes of Millennials (born 1984-2002), Generation X (1965-1983), Baby Boomers (1946-1964), and Builders (1927-1945) and their worldviews. It found:

“Together, Gen Xers and Millennials (i.e., two generations currently in their late teens through mid-50s) emerged with many beliefs that stand in sharp contrast to those held by Boomers and Builders (the two generations in their mid-50s and older). The younger pair of generations is substantially more likely than their elders to believe the following:
“Horoscopes provide useful guidance for their life; Getting even with those who offend or harm them is defensible; God is not involved in people’s lives; Allowing people to own property facilitates economic injustice; Karma is a viable life principle; The Bible is ambiguous in what it teaches about abortion; Human beings have developed over a long period of time from less advanced life forms to our current condition; and the Bible is not the accurate and reliable (i.e., inerrant) word of God.

“In fact, the two younger adult generations are considerably more likely than older generations to rely primarily on Moralistic Therapeutic Deism for worldview guidance which typically conflicts with core biblical teachings. They are also significantly more likely than people from older generations to argue that traditional moral perspectives are irrelevant today, making a series of formerly rejected behaviors now considered to be morally acceptable. Those included lying, not repaying loans, taking illegal tax deductions, speeding, and committing suicide, or allowing for euthanasia.

“The two younger generations are also much less likely than their older counterparts to accept the Golden Rule,” according to the survey, or to accept that “wealth is provided by God for its possessors to manage for His purposes.”

The survey notes that Millennials have gone further than any other recent generation to cut ties with traditional Christian views and biblical teachings:

“Gen X and the Millennials have solidified dramatic changes in the nation’s central beliefs and lifestyles. From a nationwide perspective, the Christian Church has done shockingly little to push back. The result is a culture in which core institutions — including churches — and basic ways of life are continually being radically redefined,” said Dr. Barna.

In expanding on his comments, he continued, “The family unit and traditional family practices have been reshaped, with some long-term, fundamental family ideals and practices outlawed. The responsibilities of government have been significantly broadened and transformed. The influence of the Christian church has diminished while the influence of arts, entertainment, and news media has exploded. As millions of parents discovered during the pandemic, public schools have become indoctrination farms rather than places for teaching basic life skills.”

Barna lamented the direction that Millennials have embraced. “Millennials are leading the way toward the new worldview emphases in America,” he stated. “The research reveals that their rhetoric is often inconsistent with their behavior. Because people do what they believe, if behavior does not coincide with stated beliefs we know that people do not truly hold those beliefs.

“For example Millennials champion the concept of tolerating different points of view. Yet we see in the research that their behaviors — such as promoting getting even, situational treatment of other people, or censoring specific viewpoints or policies — conflict with their alleged embrace of tolerance and diversity. In fact, Millennials are twice as likely as older adults to specify that the people they respect are those who hold the same religious and political views as they do. The attitudinal and behavioral evidence related to a variety of beliefs and related behaviors suggests that they are not a tolerant generation despite their self-image and public promotion as such.”

“More importantly,” Barna continued, “the millennial generation in particular seems committed to living without God, without the Bible, and without Christian churches as foundations in either their personal life or within American society. In the sixties and seventies, Baby Boomers opened the floodgates of questioning cultural foundations. Baby Busters, or Gen X, continued that cultural transition, though less emphatically. Millennials are emulating the aggressiveness of the Boomers in their determination to reshape culture according to their preferences.

“It is hard to imagine a louder, clearer, and more direct challenge to the future of the Christian faith in the United States,” Barna concluded. “If Christian churches, pastors, schools, and individuals believe that a biblical Christian faith is important — not just for themselves but also for our nation and the world beyond it — time is running out to aggressively and strategically act on that belief, before those who so vehemently disagree succeed in destroying the freedom and opportunity to preserve the ways of God.”

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, commented on the report: “These results are the logical fallout of what happens when God and truth are jettisoned. Having rejected any external basis for truth, the nucleus of one’s moral compass reverts to oneself. That being the case, happiness and comfort become paramount, and anything that stands in the way of their fulfillment is verboten.”

The American Worldview Inventory 2021 is an annual survey that evaluates the worldview of the U.S. adult population. Begun as an annual tracking study in 2020, the assessment is based on several dozen worldview-related questions drawn from eight categories of worldview application, measuring both beliefs and behavior. The eight are: Biblical Theism (or a biblical worldview), Secular Humanism, Postmodernism, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, Nihilism, Marxism (along with its offshoot, Critical Race Theory), and Eastern Mysticism (also known as “New Age”).

This new research revealed “that across all four generations the category in which Americans are least likely to think and act biblically is the dimension of ‘Bible, truth, and morals’.”

Obviously, this does not bode well for the future of the world nor our children. It does suggest, however, that our family and religious values can easily be undermined by a Marxist approach to education, a complicit media and entertainment industry, and politicians who value their next election more than they value the worth of the next generation.

Prayer would not be a bad option for us to follow, especially Eucharistic adoration.

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday at 10 a.m. Central Time on Faith On Trial on IowaCatholicRadio.com.) 

After legal setback, teen girls fighting courts and woke editors

After legal setback, teen girls fighting courts and woke editors: The battle to stop biological males from competing against female athletes is not over despite a legal setback, vows an attorney representing four female clients who sued their state athletic association.

Faith On Trial, Thursday May 27

Dr. Matthew Bunson, executive editor of EWTN News on the upcoming spring assembly of the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and a possible debate about distributing communion to pro-abortion Catholic politicians. Denise Harle, senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom on the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization concerning a Mississippi law that limits abortions after 15 weeks of gestational age.

This Thursday (5-27) on Faith On Trial

Guests: Dr. Matthew Bunson, executive editor of EWTN News on the upcoming spring assembly of the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and a possible debate about distributing communion to pro-abortion Catholic politicians.

Denise Harle, senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom on the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization concerning a Mississippi law that limits abortions after 15 weeks of gestational age.

Faith On Trial airs this and every Thursday at 10 a.m. Central on Iowa Catholic Radio, 1150 AM; 88.5 & 94.5 FM, and streaming live on our website (www.iowacatholicradio.com) where you can listen to previous programs and download our free and convenient app.  

The Holy Ghost Is Allowed In Courtrooms … And Other Cases Of Note . . .

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) – My December column, the last I wrote for the year before COVID took me out of circulation for about eight weeks, was about a case in which a juror was removed from deliberations in a criminal case involving a former congresswoman, Corrine Brown. It seems that the judge removed the juror for guidance the juror said he was receiving from the Holy Ghost.

As you might recall, during the second day of deliberations, one of the jurors sent a note to the judge expressing concern about the comments a fellow juror had made. The complaining juror was called into chambers and asked for further information. She told the judge that one juror had made a comment that he was praying for guidance and trusted the Holy Ghost who, apparently, told the man that the defendant, Corrine Brown, was not guilty on all of the twenty-two counts in the indictment.

The judge then called the “offending juror” into chambers and questioned him. The juror told the judge that he had told the other jurors “in listening to all the information, taking it all down, I listen for the truth, and I know the truth when the truth is spoken,” and that “I prayed about this, I have looked at the information, and that I receive information as to what I was told to do in relation to what I heard here.”

After a long colloquy with the juror, during which the juror told the judge that he was following the judge’s instructions, and both jurors had stated that all jurors were engaged in good faith deliberations, the government moved to strike the juror, which the judge did. He was replaced by an alternate, jury deliberations continued for another day, when the jury found the defendant guilty on eighteen counts, and not guilty on four.

Brown appealed the decision asking the court for a new trial over the issue of the juror’s disqualification. The trial court and a panel of the Eleventh Circuit rejected the defense argument, but the entire circuit agreed to hear the appeal en banc, that is, with all the judges of the circuit court.

On May 6, 2021, the National Day of Prayer, the full court vacated Brown’s convictions and remanded the case for a new trial, holding that the removal of the juror was improper and violated the defendant’s right under the Sixth Amendment to a unanimous jury verdict.

Circuit Chief Justice William Pryor, writing for the majority, said that a trial judge may remove a juror after deliberations had begun only upon a finding of “good cause,” which exists when it is found that the juror refuses to apply the law or to follow the court’s instructions. “So, for a district judge to find that this standard of proof is satisfied, he must determine ‘with utmost certainty’ that a juror has refused to base his verdict on the law as instructed and the evidence admitted at trial.”

He noted that in the juror’s interview with the court, he never gave any indication that he was refusing to consider the evidence or follow the law. “The district judge was wrong to conclude that [the juror’s] statements that he received guidance in response to prayers were categorically a bridge too far.”

And: “[The juror’s] vernacular that the Holy Spirit ‘told’ him Brown was ‘not guilty on all charges’ was no more disqualifying by itself than a secular juror’s statement that his conscience or gut ‘told’ him the same. Of course, neither a religious nor a secular juror may convict or acquit a defendant using his internal decision-making processes without regard to the evidence. But [the juror] repeatedly explained that he was, in fact, reviewing and deliberating over the evidence.”

Former Solicitor General Paul Clement had written in a brief supporting Brown: “A nation that enshrines religious toleration in its founding document and invokes the religious beliefs of its citizenry to reinforce their public oaths cannot dismiss jurors based on the way they express their religious convictions.”

And Lea Patterson, counsel for First Liberty, released a statement saying: “We are grateful that the court reaffirmed the strong standard required to dismiss a deliberating juror. No American should be disqualified from fulfilling their civic duty as jurors simply because they believe that God answers prayer.”

A couple of other cases with satisfactory results:

In Indianapolis the archdiocese was being sued by a former Catholic high school teacher after he was dismissed for entering into a same-sex union in violation of the terms of his teaching contract and Church teaching. “If the First Amendment means anything, it means the government can’t punish the Catholic Church for asking Catholic educators to support Catholic teaching,” said Luke Goodrich, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, which represented the archdiocese. (See The Wanderer, May 20, 2021, p. 3A.)

The trial court initially ruled that the case against the archdiocese could move forward, but the archdiocese appealed that ruling, citing the school’s handbook that requires teachers to “Support the teachings and traditions of the Roman Catholic Church . . . [and] serve as a role model for Christ-centered lifestyle,” and incorporates a morals clause which states that “teachers, as leaders in a ministry of the Catholic Church . . . must be credible witnesses of the Catholic faith,” and “models of Christian values.”

The Indiana Supreme Court sent the case back to the trial court with instructions to reconsider. The court then threw out the suit, vindicating the Church’s constitutional right to set religious standards for its schools.

In Minnesota the governor, Tim Walz, on May 5 agreed to settle a suit with two Christian churches — Northland Baptist Church and Living Word Christian Center — over COVID restrictions. The churches claimed that the state had placed restrictions on the churches that were more severe than those imposed on other businesses. When the state filed and lost a motion to dismiss the suit, it decided to settle and entered into an agreement that future emergency orders can no longer discriminate against churches on capacity limits. The churches were represented by the Upper Midwest Law Center which described the settlement as a “big win.”

In the pending category, the Milwaukee Archdiocese has sued the state’s Department of Corrections over a policy that prevents clergy from visiting prisoners. The archdiocese complained that for over a year corrections employees such as psychologists, social workers, and outside attorneys have been allowed to visit with prisoners as long as they followed proper health guidelines. However, those protocols do not apply to clergy.

A conservative legal group, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL), filed the suit. “There is no rational connection between the DOC’s policy and its interest in combatting COVID-19 given that the DOC allows social workers and lawyers entrance from outside of facilities, for example, but not clergy,” WILL wrote to the department.

The state “must act now to restore the rights of Wisconsin’s inmates to freely exercise their religion,” the letter argued.

This one is just getting started. We’ll watch for developments.

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com, and listen to him every Thursday at 10 a.m. Central Time, on Faith On Trial, on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)

 

Former Satanist tells his story

Last night at my parish, St. Augustin, Mr. Zachary King, former High Wizard of the Church of Satin, spoke about his life as a Satanist and his conversion to the Catholic Church. The tape was running for some time before the program bagan, so slide the "time" bar forward to 20 to begin.

Religion Clause: 9th Circuit: Denial of Invocation Spot To Satanic ...

Religion Clause: 9th Circuit: Denial of Invocation Spot To Satanic ...:  In The Satanic Temple, Inc. v. City of Scottsdale ,  (9th Cir., May 19, 2021), the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed an Arizona fe...

Faith On Trial program this week (5-20-21): All about Mary with Msgr. Arthur B. Calkins

Special edition of Faith On Trial this Thursday (5-20)

This week for the Marian Month of May our guest is Msgr. Arthur B. Calkins a veteran of 21 years in Vatican service developing dogma, and dealing with all things Mary. Don’t miss this special programing, Thursday, May 20, 10 a.m. (Central) on Iowa Catholic Radio 1150 AM; 88.5 & 94.5 FM and streaming on our website, IowaCatholicRadio.com, where you can listen to programs you may have missed. This is a one-time special edition of the Mariology of the Catholic Church.

You can order a copy of Msgr. Calkins’ book, Totus Tuus: Pope Saint John Paul II’ Program of Marian Consecrations and Entrustments, as well as many of our other author-guests, by clicking the link in the right hand column of this page. 

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition: Ontario euthanasia deaths increase, inspite of COV...

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition: Ontario euthanasia deaths increase, inspite of COV...: Alex Schadenberg Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition The April 2021 (MAiD) euthanasia data for Ontario indicates that even t...

Deacon Mike's homily for the Ascension

Ascension Sunday – May 16, 2021 Cycle B

Readings: Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:17-23; Mark 16:15-20

Good morning …

            Today we celebrate the feast of Ascension, formally Ascension Thursday – once a holy day of obligation, but today most dioceses have transferred the celebration of the Ascension from last Thursday to today. In those dioceses the Ascension was celebrated on Thursday, today’s readings would be the Seventh Sunday after Easter. And in the traditional Latin Mass, this is the Sunday after the Ascension. So depending on where you attend Mass this weekend, the reading could differ.

            But no matter what readings you hear, the theme all centers around the message Jesus left for his followers.

            Even without the readings I think we all know what the Ascension was, I know I was taught about it by the good nuns at St. Theresia’s just a few short years ago. I know I miss those old nuns – we never quite appreciated them at the time – BVMs, remember: Black Veiled Monsters. They always came armed, with a yardstick or something to intimidate us with, but oh how they are missed today. They made sure you learned that old Baltimore Catechism and I don’t really remember them using those yardsticks, apparently their only use was to send a message.

            Anyway, the story is simple: Jesus goes to the mountain with his disciples where he gives them a final blessing and a final charge: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the good news to the whole of creation.” He also makes them a final promise: He will send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to accompany them, to give them the “spirit of truth” to testify for him.

            But he also has a final warning for them. A warning he’s been repeating for some time: You don’t belong to this world. If you did the world would love you, but because you don’t it will hate you, as it hated me first.

            Then he goes off to the Father and while the disciples are still looking up two angles appear asking, “Why are you just looking at the sky?” In other words, Get off your duff and get ready for the Advocate to prepare you and go to work.

            Now that’s pretty simple. In fact, it’s a very nice story. But it comes to us with some baggage, some things that should concern us. While we know the end of the story – God will prevail – we find ourselves at this point in history confused as to what point in the story we are reaching.

            I don’t know if you know it, but I’ve written two murder mysteries. In the first on I killed a nun, I think something in my childhood might have suggested that to me … but I digress. The point is, I know how stories are told, the protagonist always faces ups and downs, expected but often unexpected challenges which threaten his goals.

            Now we all know in a murder mystery the killer will always be uncovered, we just don’t know how or when. The same occurs in real life, and it should not be any surprise that it occurs in our spiritual lives as well. We know the end, but where are we in the story?

            It seems that we just might be in the part where the world really does hate us and where good men, for whatever reason, do not know Jesus, do not know or understand his teaching.

            There was a time, not too long ago, when Catholics were unique among Christians. Oh we had funny rituals, we didn’t eat meat on Friday and, for many, we were gently forced-fed our religion. It may have seemed quaint or funny, but it was respected. And our brothers and sisters in faith knew and practiced it. Mass attendance in as short time ago as the 1950s hovered around 70 percent. Now we’re lucky if we reach 30 percent – in fact some surveys indicate we’re losing a percent a year, and that is considered a conservative estimate.

            Our people, our brothers and sisters in Jesus, have all too often found themselves unsure of what this thing we call Catholicism is. Too often people would introduce themselves as having grown-up Catholic but for some reason have fallen away from the faith. Many still have family members who are devout but they themselves have lost their connection with the Church. 

            When we visit they will often ask questions. I don’t know how many times I’ve been asked a question about our beliefs and traditions that the Catholic person asking me should already know.

            It kind of reminds me of the old story about the young priest who was sent by his bishop into a village that had never had a priest. To get a feel of the community, the young priest asked people what they thought was the greatest Catholic feast. He got several answers that made no sense until he found an old man sitting alone in a park. He asked him the same question.

            “Easter,” the man replied.

            “And why Easter?” the priest asked.

            “Because, that is when the stone was rolled back and Jesus stepped out of the tomb … and if he sees his shadow …”

            Well, that’s kind of what we see. People, Catholics, who should know better are confusing the story of our salvation with stories that have no relevance to our faith. Too many are accepting the world in all its decadent glory.  

            Now, of course, there is a reason for this. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you what it is. There are many suggestions about what went so wrong that we lost so many of our brothers and sisters to a theological ambivalence. Some say Vatican II is to blame, others say it was the loss of so many of those beautiful black veiled sisters who had dedicated their lives to teaching the faith. Liberal catechesis and the rejection of Paul VI’s encyclical on birth control, Humanae Vitae, and if you look long enough you’ll find dozens of other theories that the wags on Facebook promote. 

            But I don’t know what it is, I have some theories, but nothing you could bet the farm on. What I do know is that something has happened in the last 50 years that has loosened the glue that had attached many to the faith we love. And I do know that we must, if we wish to follow Christ’s final charge, do something about it.     

            We hear a lot about evangelizing the world. I think perhaps we should also take another look – a look inside – and see how many of our brothers and sisters in Christ need to be re-evangelized. How many need what some might call fraternal correction – gentle, not harsh.

            That is our mission. That is what we are required to do. Those were the last words of Christ to his disciples – to us, we are, after all, nothing, if we are not his disciples.

            And he’s sending the Spirit to aid us, to envelop us, to give us the courage and strength to do so.

            Next week we celebrate his coming at Pentecost. When the Holy Spirit came at the first Pentecost, the hearts and souls of the original apostles were engulfed in his love and enflamed to carry out Christ’s great command: to go and to baptize all nations.

            We celebrate that great event next Sunday, when he came to the apostles. He also came to us in our own baptism. So let us take a little time to prepare ourselves to meet him again as we look forward to next Sunday. Let us renew that flame whose light might have dimmed a bit. Let us take some time this week before the Blessed Sacrament to welcome him back into our hearts so that we can become the new building blocks for the Church.

            We have 24 hour adoration in our chapel. So let’s take the time this week to welcome him back, to prepare ourselves to accept Christ’s great command: to evangelize the world, starting with our own friends and families.

-- Deacon Mike Manno St. Augustin Parish Des Moines, Iowa

Sooo, The Supreme Court… Anybody Want To Start Over?

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) – Okay, you might ask, so what’s with the Supreme Court?
Well, it’s taken a beating lately and under the leadership of Chief Justice John Roberts it has done nothing to distinguish itself. Now don’t get me wrong, I think the court has been doing a nice job in protecting our religious liberties and many other issues close to the heart of Christians in general and Catholics in particular. But on some of the big, and I mean really big, issues, it has let us down, mostly by its inaction.

Case in point: Just last month the court refused to allow a case to be brought against the state of California by the state of Texas over a 2016 California law that banned official travel to Texas and several other states that failed to meet specific standards regarding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.

Besides Texas, the states that were affected were Alabama, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Tennessee. According to the then-attorney general of California, Xavier Becerra, now the Biden administration’s secretary of Health and Human Services, 11 states were on the ban because of laws or practices designed to protect religious liberty. North Carolina was on the list because it enacted a law requiring state agencies to maintain separate-sex bathrooms, and my home state, Iowa, was on the ban because it wouldn’t provide Medicaid coverage for gender-reassignment surgery.

In February of 2020 the attorney general of Texas filed suit in the Supreme Court against California over the travel ban. In its filing with the Supreme Court, Texas produced the legislative record of the California law which was replete with anti-Christian and anti-religious references including a sponsor’s complaint that called religious beliefs the “old ways” and that “religion has been used again and again as a tool to justify discrimination.”

That led to Texas’ argument that the California ban was “grounded in animus towards religion,” and “The California Legislature expressly found that other states rely on ‘religious freedom’ as a ‘justification for discrimination’.” In addition to religious animus, Texas alleged violations of the Privileges and Immunities, Interstate Commerce, and Equal Protection clauses of the U.S. Constitution.

“[T]he express aim of California’s travel ban is to punish the citizens and businesses of the target states to pressure those states ‘to change their laws’ to provide fewer protections for religious freedom,” Texas wrote to the court, adding, “As intended, the direct and indirect effects of the travel ban are, respectively, to harm the businesses in the targeted states and to deprive the targeted states of associated tax revenue.”
Ultimately 19 states filed briefs in support of Texas.

Now, a little bit of procedure to fill in some of the missing points here. Under the Constitution, the Supreme Court has only appellate jurisdiction on the vast array of cases that are presented to it. However, under Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution, the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction in a limited number of cases including ones where a state is a party, and appellate jurisdiction in all other cases.

In simple language that means that the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court is limited to reviewing cases that have been decided elsewhere and cannot act as a trial court — that is, hearing the case for the first time, which is known as original jurisdiction. Just as an aside, the benchmark 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison, from which the concept of judicial review of legislative action has grown, involved the question of the court’s original vs. appellate jurisdiction.

Here, Texas was invoking the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction — its limited ability to hear the case as a trial court. It was, after all, one state suing another state over infringements against its sovereignty: Where else would you go in such a situation?
That’s when the Supreme Court dropped its bombshell; without explanation the court refused to accept Texas’ application for leave to file its case. Zip, done, nada. Texas, just live with it!

Two of the justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, to their credit, dissented. Justice Alito compared the decision to a hypothetical case of a federal judge who refused to hear a diversity suit — one between citizens of two different states — because he had more important things to do (which might indicate the topic of discussion in chambers). “We would reverse in the blink of an eye,” Alito wrote. “We might also wag a finger at the lower courts and remind them that a federal court’s obligation to hear and decide cases within its jurisdiction is ‘virtually unflagging’.”

He continued, “The State of Texas wishes to sue the State of California and invokes our ‘original and exclusive jurisdiction of all controversies between two or more States.’ Can we justify our refusal to entertain Texas’ suit on essentially the same ground that we would reject out of hand in the hypothetical diversity case just described, that is, on the ground that our original jurisdiction no longer seems as important as it was when the Constitution was adopted, and that a proliferation of original cases would crowd out more important matters on our appellate docket?…

“We have no more right to decline the exercise of jurisdiction which is given, than to usurp that which is not given. The one or the other would be treason to the Constitution. . . . The practice of refusing to permit the filing of a complaint in cases that fall within our original jurisdiction is questionable, and that is especially true when, as in this case, our original jurisdictional is exclusive.

“The principal reason provided — that entertaining all suits between two states would crowd out consideration of more important matters on our appellate docket — rests on a dubious factual premise and, in any event, is essentially indistinguishable from the justification given by the imaginary district court judge with a distaste for diversity cases.

And the suggestion in Louisiana v. Texas (cite omitted) that we should hesitate to entertain suits between two states because they are of a ‘delicate and grave’ character seems exactly backwards. It is precisely because these disputes have a ‘delicate and grave’ character that they were placed exclusively in our hands….

“Unlike the regional courts of appeals, the federal district courts, and the state courts, we are not tied to any region or state and were therefore entrusted with the responsibility of adjudicating cases where the suspicion of local bias may run high. The present case is just such a suit.”

So where does that leave Texas? For starters, without a forum to have its day in court. But it left California happy. Attorney General Rob Bonta said the court’s decision was “a win for California and it’s a win for our commitment to respecting LGBTQ+ rights. Bottom line: Texas can’t dictate how the State of California uses its own resources.”
But it seems to me that Bonta has it backwards; the case was about California trying to dictate policy to other states.

Unfortunately we’ll never know if Texas and the nineteen states that supported it were right or not. We’ll never know if California’s actions violated the Equal Protection Clause, or the Interstate Commerce Clause, or the Privileges and Immunities Clause of our Constitution. We’ll never know those things because the Roberts Court continues its stubborn refusal to consider those cases which strike at the heart of federalism and the mechanics of our constitutional government, such as those pre- and post-election cases — especially from Pennsylvania — that were rejected out of hand and didn’t even offer us the illusion of an objective look.

We deserve more. Right or wrong the court is obligated to hear, deliberate, and render decisions in cases like these. That is their sworn duty. In that they have failed.

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com, and listen to him every Thursday at 10 a.m. Central, on Faith On Trial, on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)

This week’s Faith On Trial program:

Matt Zerrusen, president of Newman Student Housing Fund; Mike Gonzales, Sr. Fellow @ Heritage Foundation, author: The Plot to Change America; How Identity Politics is dividing the Land of the Free. (Scroll down the right column to order the book.)