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Tue, 11 Dec 2018 | Cover | Page 01

Enough, Mr. Dreher!

(An Open Letter from a Concerned Catholic Priest)

by Fr. Richard Munkelt

Editor’s Note: Anyone reading The Remnant for a period of time can attest to the fact that in these dark days of confusion we have long been committed to "uniting the clans" against the enemies of Christ’s Church whenever possible.

Now more than ever before, those who can "pray the Creed with us, and mean it" (as the late, great Dr. William Marra used to say) must be considered brothers in arms. The following article pulls no punches. It is written by a diocesan priest, Father Richard Munkelt—an academic not given to the kind of pot-stirring polemics all the rage on social media. This is not a "spitting contest" with Rod Dreher—a well-known and talented writer with whom Father Munkelt has been acquainted for many years. Instead, this is a priestly tour de force on the fundamentals of Catholicism, closely following and critiquing Mr. Dreher’s recent articles on the Catholic Church. We are publishing it not because we have some personal animus against Mr. Dreher, who left the Church over the clerical scandals, but rather because we seek his return to the fold, while encouraging others not to follow the dangerous and misguided path he’s taken. At this most critical moment, faithful Catholics are confronted with the same fork in the road that has divided these two men—Munkelt and Dreher: When faced with an ecclesial crisis of apocalyptic proportions, what are faithful Catholics to do: Stay on and fight for the Bride of Christ, no matter how vile her captors might be? Or shall we yield to the scandal we all feel in our heart and abandon Mother Church in pursuit of the illusion of greener pastures. In this article, we have the opportunity to consider the latter course of action as seen through the eyes of a faithful priest who has chosen the

~ See Enough, Mr. Dreher!/ Page 9

Have we not seen this before? 'Reformers' who would use a crisis in the Church as an excuse to attack the Bride of Christ herself.

Enough, Mr. Dreher!

Fr. Munkelt/ Continued form Page 1

former. May God grant us all the grace to know the truth and the courage to defend it, come what may.

MJM Dear Rod, Your recent articles in The American Conservative on "Catholic Triumphalism," constituting your latest broadside against the Catholic Church, were brought to my attention. After reading the articles, and in close connection with your remarks, I have some sobering thoughts concerning your departure from the Church and ongoing vilification not just of her abusive personnel (who are fair game) but of her very person. As such, I am not writing to you alone but also to those among your Catholic readers who may not be fully cognizant of your not-so-hidden campaign to turn souls away from and against the Bride of Christ. To them I say, there is nothing more unprofitable than to try to pick figs from thistles. It is my duty, therefore, to assist my fellow Catholics in not becoming unwitting purveyors of your Anti-Catholicism. I’m sure you understand.

If you care to read on, brace yourself, for charity sometimes carries a stick, as St.

Augustine noted. And I shall not spare it, especially since you boast of being irreformable. I promise you, therefore, something in the spirit of St. Jerome.

1) Catholic Moral Teaching? In the two articles in question, possibly the most astonishing statement you make is this: "More importantly, though, where are the other churches who allow in their teaching for the sexual molestation of minors?"

[My emphasis.] In all my years of study in theology and in the history of the Church, this putative Catholic teaching permitting the molestation of minors has completely escaped me. To be frank, without a citation from an authoritative doctrinal source, and of course none can be found, your statement is not only evidence of your brazen malice, it is sinister.

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2) Emotion vs. Reason. From your own words, all indications are that you left the Catholic Church not because you had any theological argument against it but because you had an emotionally charged reaction to the clerical scandals and only afterwards adopted a new theology. As you put it: "I had never really considered Orthodoxy until my Roman Catholic faith had turned to dust." This suggests that an irrational response then went in search of cognitive validation, rather than rational reexamination. While your initial revulsion and anger at the revelations of clerical misconduct are quite understandable (who couldn’t feel the same?), you lost all mental proportion and threw the Christ child out with the bath water.

Failing at self-control, you failed to distinguish between (moral) teaching and (immoral) practice, and thus incredibly and pervertedly equated the two, as we just saw in paragraph #1. Therefore, when rightly attacking the faults of various members of the Catholic hierarchy, you regrettably resort to hyperbole and the fallacy of tu quoque, a fallacy Our Lord was careful to avoid when criticizing the doctors of the Law. Then, with your mind shot, there was nothing left but to create a fantasy of a religious paradise in the green pastures of Orthodoxy. Except you found, or rather others like me would find for you, that you had one foot in a cow pie and the other about to step in a second. With that, let’s discuss reality rather than fantasy.

3) A True Faith. I should hope that you at least have left a scintilla of interest in a right or true faith, not just a sentimental one, because after all, is there any point to being a votary of a religion if it is not true?

In this regard, you are correct to say that the Catholic Church "maintains that it is an exclusive and authoritative means of salvation." To be clear, the Catholic Church still teaches, as it must, that there is no salvation outside the Church (CCC, 846). Call this triumphalism if you wish, but it belongs to the constant teaching of the Church of Christ down through the age of the Church Fathers at least to St.

Cyprian. Does the Orthodox Church, or rather do the Orthodox churches (there being no such thing as the Orthodox Church) maintain that teaching? If they do not, how are they consistent with historical Christianity? And if they do, to which autocephalous church of ethnic particularity must I subscribe in order to be saved? Given that Orthodox churches have been known to censure and excommunicate others, sometimes along ethnic and political lines, you can see that this is no easy question, to say the least.

Making for more confusion is the farcical struggle between Orthodox patriarchs for plentitude of authority.

Repetition of personal and subjective declarations of non serviam will not do: "I could no longer believe that my eternal salvation depended on maintaining communion with the Roman see." "I really did believe that [submission to Rome] until I didn’t." Etc. I’m sorry, but your readers deserve more. If you are going to indulge in criticism, some might say bashing, of the Catholic Church, they are due at least a well-informed precis of theological and historical reasons for spurning Catholicism, unless there are finally no substantive reasons. I know that business is "complicated," as you are wont to remind us, while moving on to the next wave of invective, but it is precisely the ground on which serious minds ought to meet... caritas congaudet veritati.

Nevertheless, often enough you like to throw a theological barb at the Church, only thereafter conveniently taking cover behind your smoke screen of not wanting to "over intellectualize." Accordingly, part of my task here is to uncover your intellectual and theological pretensions.

4) Apostate, Heretic, or Just Schismatic?

Since you yourself raise this important consideration, please understand that what I am about to say, I say only as a matter of theological fact, and not as some off-hand personal affront.

It is an enormous spiritual mistake to absolve yourself of apostasy and heresy, blithely self-assuring that at worst you are only subject to the grave charge of schism.

Of course, in knowingly and purposely separating yourself from the Catholic fold, you are undeniably a formal schismatic.

A situation aggravated, I should add, by your having made a career of assailing the Church, all the while absurdly preaching to Catholics how to live better lives as Catholics. Pertinent to this last point, you wrote a book called The Benedict Option and artfully curry favor with--and sales from--Catholics as well as Catholic communities and organizations, who in some cases have been foolish enough to throw you a party. Why didn’t you call it The Orthodox Option?

Furthermore, you are also a formal heretic because you clearly deny at least one article (and doubtless more) of your former Catholic faith, namely, the Primacy of Peter. And even though you are not strictly speaking an apostate because, as far as I know, you continue to profess a belief in the divinity of Christ, arguably you are one from another point of view: rejection of the Church of Christ and the Unity of Apostolic Faith is tantamount to the rejection of Christ the Divine Founder. At any rate, for all your media exploitation of a tragic and culpable decision in the sphere of religion you have incurred automatic excommunication. Congratulations.

Please keep in mind that your status does not necessarily apply to other members of Orthodox churches who, if raised in Orthodoxy, may not be culpable for their material errors.

5) A Question of Motives and the Seed that Falls on Stony Ground. To be sure, the clerical homosexual-fueled scandals in the Catholic Church, by and large a product of the liberal and modernist spirit that hijacked Vatican II, have been egregious and must be exposed. But motives here are vital. And yours reek of self-justification for a horrendously ill-conceived defection.

That is why, some years ago, I rejected your sordid effort to enlist me in your personal crusade against the Church.

In addition, you make a declaration of your personal failings and seem to admit the superficial nature of your faith and spirituality while you were a Catholic, and then effectively blame the Church for your shortcomings! Strikingly, it is as if you stepped right out of the pages of the Gospel: your faith failed to take root, troubles came along, and you fell away.

And now you proudly announce yourself practically immunized against any possible scandals in Orthodoxy by the device of downplaying the institution qua institution. Then why don’t you try that back in the Catholic Church? Or how ‘bout the Eastern Catholic Church? There you’ve got nice liturgy and no schism. That is not an "impassioned plea" for your return to the Household of Faith, for which I make no pretense. I am merely writing to direct attention to your penchant for subterfuge.

6) Orthodox Corruption. Though one could create a weighty list of Orthodox clerical corruption--from decades of criminal collaboration with homicidal communist authorities to luxury, venality, and, yes, occasional sexual abuse--in the end it is a fool’s errand to make endless opposing tallies of clerical deviance, Catholic vs. Orthodox, because, when all is said and done, the tallies won’t decide the theological question. To your credit, you seem to have some inkling of this point.

Continued on Page 10

Rod Dreher

Enough, Mr. Dreher!

Continued...

All things considered, I'll take the Catholic Renaissance, its glory and misery, over the cuckoo clock and Eastern cultural torpor.

Fr. Munkelt/ Continued from Page 9

May you face up someday to the fact that your profession is often intoxicated with the topical and sensational. Accordingly, you have no time for the spade work of authentic theological investigation, and above all you hate the ordinary, like the innumerable unacknowledged clergy, in the West and the East, who have faithfully and admirably fulfilled their duties over the centuries, even to the point of martyrdom. Shame on you for that and your extraordinary disservice to Christianity in an age when the work of Christ is beset by wolves from within and without the sheepfold.

7) The Theological Question. It is in this area where you are most vulnerable, and so you tend to avoid it, preferring to whine that you just couldn’t take the scandals anymore but still "honor" those who stuck with the Church. As you know and recall, I for one did, and could, as a newly ordained priest, reasonably claim to have undergone a greater conflict and ordeal than you went through. And so I thank you for your honoring and self-depreciation. I must admit, therefore, that in the context of spiritual warfare you remind me of the soldier that General Patton slapped in World War II.

Since you are not a theologian or a historian, the theological-avoidance strategy is probably a wise one. That leaves you prone to yellow journalism, however, an issue I shall address ahead.

Yet you can’t help a foray or two into the field of theology and history. So let me briefly address those forays.

First, you ought to honestly rethink just how much you know about church history and theology. It gives one pause, and doubts arise, when you trot out hackneyed anti-Catholic bits like Pope Alexander VI. Didn’t you know about the so-called bad popes when you were a "convinced Roman Catholic"? And what’s next, your expertise on the Galileo affair? However, no one should be surprised at your frequent arrogation of knowledge when you hold forth on Dante but don’t know Italian, or blow your horn for Russian Orthodoxy when you don’t speak Russian and probably have only a passing acquaintance with Russian history, if that.

Also, consider that in the period from Justinian to the fall of Constantinople, the formative years of Orthodoxy, Emperors, Empresses, and Patriarchs could at times make for a lurid court. One of my favorite stories is that of the Empress and murderess Zoe who gave Patriarch Alexios fifty pounds of gold to anoint her lover emperor. In my opinion, he should have held out for a hundred.

All things considered, I’ll take the Catholic Renaissance, its glory and misery, over the cuckoo clock and Eastern cultural torpor.

"The Orthodox tradition is far more stable in late modernity than the Catholic tradition." Unfortunately, this is an illusion bolstered by the fact that Orthodoxy is intellectually moribund. To excuse it on the basis of an attachment to ritualism and mysticism is most deceptive. Let’s not confuse stultification with stability.

Orthodox thinkers like D.B. Hart cannot mount an argument against modernity without relying heavily on western and Catholic philosophers and on the theoretical acuity of scholasticism, in

THE REMNANT ~

particular that of St. Thomas Aquinas.

I once spoke with a Greek Orthodox seminarian who exulted in not being able to tell me a thing about Plato andAristotle! Speaking of Aquinas and the saints, perhaps I could address the matter of sainthood in Protestantism for you and your Protestant readers, since I was formerly in their camp and you have an idiotic hypothesis about the prospects for Protestant examples of sanctification.

Properly understood, there are no saints in Protestantism. That is why you will not find them. It is not just because Protestants depart from the teachings of the Church, it is primarily because the magisterial founders of Protestantism were extreme predestinarians. This means that those who are going to heaven or hell were arbitrarily chosen by God before they were created without any prescience of good human works, which mean nothing to the Creator. Humans have no free will and therefore no power to choose moral actions in cooperation with divine grace, a prerequisite of bona fide sainthood.And, besides, for Protestantism the saints are invisible and known only to God.

I say this not to idly offend the separated brethren, who should take no umbrage since I have simply set forth their own classical teaching, but rather to expose the arrogance of your theological ignorance and to show just how empty at each step your words are: "one of my greatest errors as a Catholic was to live primarily as an intellectual within the church. I made the mistake of thinking that if I mastered the intellectual dimension of the faith, I would be safe." The "greatest error"?

Really? Who ever said you were a Catholic intellectual? And where is the evidence that you intellectually mastered any faith, be it Protestantism, Catholicism, or Orthodoxy? You already essentially admitted that your Catholic faith was superficial. For heaven’s sake, man: hubris unchained!

In the wake of this theological adventure of yours (Protestant saints etc.), and in relation to your preposterous claim that you were "raised within historical Christian orthodoxy," I finally realized that your religion is not Orthodoxy at all. It is instead Pluralism, with devotion to all her pallid issue and slogans flitting about the walls of your cave...diversity, relativism, indifferentism, inclusiveness and the like. Either that or you are just invincibly ignorant of the massive break with historical Christianity that the Reformation represented, including Anglicanism, Arminianism, and Methodism. You should know that the Lutherans, in the sixteenth century, made an overture to the Patriarch of Constantinople and he rebuffed them on the central questions of justification by faith alone and the sacraments. But if you were raised as you say, why the need to become Catholic or Orthodox? Or is there some arcane difference between orthodoxy and Orthodoxy? I suggest you open a book, other than one you wrote. Here’s a work you should try: Luther and His Progeny, 500 Years of Protestantism and Its Consequences for Church, State, and Society (Angelico Press, 2017).

"How many Aquinases and Chartreses are worth enduring a clerical class that systematically buggers boys and elevates dirty old men like the molester Ted McCarrick to the heights of spiritual authority within its ranks?" Having warned of yellow journalism, this amazingly vulgar hyperbole speaks for itself and for you, not least because a young person stands a far greater chance of being abused by a parent or foster parent than by a priest. Shall we speak of systematic parental abuse and get rid of parenthood?

That said, unlike yourself, a Catholic knows by the eternal promises of Christ that the Church will overcome this sad but contingent present moment in its history. Thus all the Church’s magnificent cultural and saintly output, which is not contingent but of her very nature, makes the endurance of the tares amongst her wheat eminently worthwhile. St. Paul himself knew scandals, heresies, schisms, and preached perseverance.

In any event, what good is a stable Orthodox tradition (if it is) when there is a massive ecclesiological error at its core? Did Christ really intend to institute a loose network of state-subordinated national churches wrapped in ethnicity and missionary inertia? Is Moscow really the new Rome? Is KGB Orthodoxy the true refuge and home of Christians? Read your own pathetically naive words: https://www.theamericanconservative.

com/dreher/why-is-the-russian-churchdefending- devils-corpse/ I aver that the truth is, Orthodoxy is singularly unable to confront the moral anarchy of liberalism because of its crypto-fideism and appalling disdain of the venerable Theory of Natural Law.

As such, it continues to slide on issues of bioethics, marriage, contraception, and even abortion. To understand the depth of confusion in Orthodoxy concerning moral science, I highly recommend you read the debate in First Things between D.B. Hart and Prof. Edward Feser, in which Feser exposes and explodes Hart’s failure to understand the proper meaning of natural law and its importance to Christianity.

On the other hand, the Catholic tradition has a settled and well-defined body of doctrine in faith and morals that can be found in a single book for all the world to see and by which even popes can be judged. Moreover, the Church is also prepared to meet the rational challenge of modernity with right reason. There is simply no unifying magisterium and no single definitive universal body of teaching in Orthodoxy, apart from the first seven ecumenical councils, which were not sufficient of themselves to stem the plethora of heresies and liturgical changes periodically endorsed by caesaropapist emperors, up to and beyond Peter the Great. Verily, an argument can be made that Byzantine Orthodoxy, the mother of Orthodoxy, doesn’t actually exist anymore. For Orthodoxy without the Emperor is like the ancient Hebrew religion without the Temple. Allow me to quote Patriarch Anthony (1395) on the ecclesial centrality of the imperial autokrator: "it is impossible for Christians to have a church and no empire." It would appear that you haven’t really had a religion since 1453.

"A figure like Pope Francis is unthinkable within Orthodoxy." Well, unthinkable until one thinks of Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, who is open to the ordination of women and same-sex marriage on the basis of "consensus," not excluding heretical communions. Ironically, Orthodoxy’s continuous flirtations with Anglicanism and the heretical potpourri known as the World Council of Churches surely has, and will make, inroads into Orthodox teaching, especially in the moral arena. As beautiful as the Eastern liturgy is (but no more beautiful than the Traditional Latin

Continued on Page 10

(Pope Francis asks Patriarch Bartholomew to "bless me and the Church of Rome" at the Orthodox Church of St. George in Istanbul.) The Benedict Option?

www.RemnantNewspaper.com

Enough, Mr. Dreher!

Concluded

Fr. Munkelt/ COntinued from Page 10

Mass), all liturgies are nothing but tinkling brass if right faith and right practice are lost. Apropos, did you know that there is a small but growing movement called Traditional Orthodoxy? How contrarian!

Or is it?

Finally, the issue of celibacy is a big fat red herring. Despite your apparent nonchalance on the issue, you must realize that both the Western and Eastern Christian traditions have made celibacy, in imitation of Christ, a mark of the fullness of the priesthood, viz., the episcopacy. Hence, it is not merely a disciplinary matter. The priest shortage is entirely manufactured.

Any relaxation now of celibacy amongst the lower clergy will only make the crisis in the Catholic priesthood worse for its disregard of the real modernist causes of the problem. Contrariwise, traditional Catholic seminaries are full, thank you, to the point of having to turn eligible candidates away, as the novus ordo experiment with novelty gradually implodes.

8) False Reasoning on the Role of Institutions. Try as you may, it will do no good to downplay the institutional aspect of religion in general and Christian religion in particular, which is all the fashion these days. For one thing, Christ instituted an apostolic Church. The question is, which one? Get that wrong and you may get a lot of other things wrong as well. I remember some years ago you reported that an Orthodox priest told you that the papacy was an invention of the Franks, and you readily accepted that howler.

Second, because man is a socio-political animal, it follows that he is institutional. He’s institutional even when he thinks he’s not. And third, religious traditions are inherently institutional, Orthodoxy no exception. By the by, what is a way of life without a founder who gave birth to it and his institutional legacy that nurtures it? Certainly, everybody has a way of life.

And every way of life is totalizing.What makes a way of life true? The following phrase, from wherever it came, if it has any meaning, is just prejudicial rubbish: "Catholicism is an institution with a way of life attached, but Orthodoxy is a way of life with an institution attached." Is this true of your favorite model of Christian life, that of the (Catholic) Benedictines?

Regardless, the logic here suggests that one way or another you’ve got a way of life and an institution attached to each other! Kind of dumb, no? These sorts of breezy aphorisms can only satisfy a jejune mind and theology. I should think this sort of thing beneath you.

9) Your Triumph. Let me say that you have brilliantly succeeded, indeed triumphed, in creating an enemy (or soon enemies) of Orthodoxy where there was none.

Nonetheless I’m pained to have said what had to be said. However, make no mistake, you have effectively declared war on the Bride and Her offspring, whether your soporific Catholic friends know it or not.

For my part, She is to be defended against the flagrum in your hand.

Like some Vandal, you, along with the bad element in the Church, drool on the axe you would gladly put to the root of the civilizational institution that not only gave us Hildegard, Richard, Francis,Aquinas, Chartres, Michelangelo, More, Cologne Cathedral, Florence, Venice, Teresa of Avila, Loyola, El Greco, Bernini, but also Edith Stein, Kolbe, La Sagrada Familia, Poulenc, Messiaen and all the rest.

10) Summing Up. It is a malicious work to cut and bend the Christian religion to fit one’s personal narrative. For your sake, I wish truth and salvation were simply a matter of saying, I had one faith and now I have another. But that is a convenient delusion. However, take nothing for granted, you say. Very well, I’ll take your advice to heart with respect to your soul.

Rod, the upshot is this. Better for you and Christianity if either you reverse spiritual course, which from a natural standpoint is little to be expected, or at least drop the media platform as a means for trying to prove to yourself that your change of religion was the right thing, a compulsion that only gets more spiteful and inane over time. Instead, I suggest, stick to writing articles on politics and social criticism in which, I am reasonably confident, you may develop a conservative voice worth listening to.

Yours in Christ, Fr. Munkelt PS: Thomas More to Will Roper ( Man for All Seasons): "Listen, Roper. Two years ago you were a passionate Churchman; now you’re a passionate Lutheran. We must just pray that when your head’s finished turning, your face is to the front again." ■

I finally realized that your religion is not Orthodoxy at all. It is instead

Pluralism, with devotion to all her pallid issue and slogans flitting about the walls of your cave...diversity, relativism, indifferentism, inclusiveness and the like.

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Tue, 11 Dec 2018 | Cover | Page 01

Treasure in Mortal Hands

by Father Robert Brucciani, SSPX Great Britain Superior

My Dear Brethren, We have a treasure in our hands which has been faithfully guarded by a long line of popes and bishops spanning two millennia. It is a treasure that enables a soul to span the infinite gulf between herself and God.

Touching God

We touch God spiritually in this life by the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity which God infuses directly into the soul, but these virtues can only reach perfection by the treasure handed down from generation to generation by frail members of Holy Mother the Church.

~ See Treasure/ Page 7

Treasure in Mortal Hands,

Continued...

Fr. Brucciani/ Continued from Page 1

The treasure which gives supernatural faith something to believe in (i.e. its material object) is sacred doctrine from the wellsprings of Tradition and Holy Scripture.

The treasure which gives us reason to hope is the sacramental priesthood, by which the Christ the Mediator is made present among us.

The treasure in which supernatural charity finds its ultimate expression is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, by which the soul inserts itself into the perfect prayer of God offering God to God, entering thereby into the life of the Blessed Trinity itself.

Supernatural faith, hope and charity are never in danger as gifts, because God is their dispenser. The triple treasure of doctrine, priesthood and the Mass are perpetually in peril because their keeper is man.

Satan’s War

Little surprise, therefore, that since the establishment of the Church, Satan has tried to subvert doctrine, corrupt priests and desecrate the Mass. Most of his assaults have been against one or other of the treasures singly: heresies of every description have troubled the Church, moral corruption at every level of the hierarchy have scandalised so many souls across the centuries, the liturgy has suffered with the passage of time and at the hands of misguided innovators.

But each time the hierarchy has acted to restore order, the Church has emerged stronger than before; each time that is, until the Protestant Reformation.

The Reformation was a major victory for Satan: all three treasures were attacked simultaneously and within 20 years, a third of Christendom had fallen away from the Church. It left an open wound within the frontiers of Christendom where new heresies, new religions and new organisations were able to grow to further the work of the Prince of the World.

By the end of the 19th century, the Church was infected with a coalescence of philosophical and theological errors, a masterpiece of Satan, called Modernism.

Modernism

The modernist is a nominalist (or idealist): denying the knowability of objective truth. The modernist is also a prisoner of naturalism: effectively denying the existence of the supernatural order. To the modernist: faith is from within, hope is founded on one’s own natural endowments, and charity is following one’s sentimental inclinations irrespective of objective truth and the commandments.

The heresy of modernism corrupts the intellect and therefore necessarily corrupts morals too. The injunction "If you love Me, keep My commandments" becomes "If you love Me, do what you feel is right."

The modernist, like the Protestant..

"..really believes that he is doing the will of God, but in practice private judgment means that he interprets the will of God by his own will and that his rule of faith is to do what he thinks right-that is to say, he uses his own judgment to decide what God’s judgment will be and then follows the result as God’s judgment. Thus, while he thinks he is agreeing with God, he is really making God agree with him.

[It is not simply that every man is his own pope, but that every man is his own God, for the pope’s authority is limited by God who gives it, but the individual’s authority, being wrong ab initio, is limited in no way.] Gradually he comes (usually unconsciously) to leave out this middle step and no longer thinks of God in each individual case, but only as a kind of general approver of his actions. Then rejecting alike atheism and deism, he has reached the practical position of believing in God’s existence and God’s will for us, but of acting exactly as though there were no God but his own will." (Frank Sheed, Booklet on the Catholic Evidence Guild, 1924).

As the modernist excuses himself from obedience to doctrine and obedience to an objective moral law, he feels free to experiment with the liturgy too. By the 1950s, debate about the future of the Mass was led by the progressives of the day. Ugly churches were built, not for the traditional Latin Mass of 1600 years, but in anticipation of a new man-centred liturgy for modern times.

Modernism, because it can operate within the hierarchy of the Church and because it undermines the intellect and the will more fundamentally than Protestantism, represents the greatest existential threat to the triple treasure of doctrine, priesthood and the Mass that the Church has ever faced.

Modernism’s Victory

Pope St. Pius X tried in vain to extirpate Modernism from the Church throughout his pontificate (1903-1914). The heresy went to ground for a few years, only to emerge again like a tenacious fungal infection, nourished by churchmen’s desire to fit-in with an increasingly pagan world and accelerated by the organised infiltration of the hierarchy by Freemasons and Communists. At the Second Vatican Council (19625), a carefully prepared revolution established the heresy of Modernism - that "synthesis of all heresies" - as the new orthodoxy. Doctrine changed: new notions of religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality were only the start of a continuous slide which now sees the natural law being officially ignored by a pope.

The priesthood changed: the priest was to perceive himself as the president of an assembly rather than an alter Christus; more game-show host than instrument of Christ in the Divine Sacrifice. He forgot who he was and what he should be. Scandals of political and financial corruption, homosexuality, sexual abuse and infidelity are now set before us by a gleeful media almost every day.

The liturgy was changed to reflect the new doctrinal errors. It was ugly, it emptied the churches and left souls deprived of the triple treasure handed down faithfully for two thousand years.

Remnant Keeps the Treasure

Satan’s victory was complete but for a stubborn bishop here or there, and priests considered too old to learn new tricks or too odd to get with the programme.

The most visible of the bishops was Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

He founded our Society precisely to conserve and transmit the triple treasure, but was repaid for his efforts by being subject to the full fury of the new modernist hierarchy. He was forbidden to administer the sacraments in 1976 ( suspensio a divinis) for sounding the alarm and was "excommunicated" in 1988 for consecrating those bishops who would best preserve the triple treasure.

Members of the Society were effectively excommunicated too, being refused the use of Catholic churches and accused of being schismatic.

Archbishop Lefebvre’s guardianship of the triple treasure is now to his eternal merit. He has not only left an increasing body of priests and religious to continue with the work of conserving and transmitting the triple treasure, he has given space and encouragement for individuals and other congregations to do the same throughout the Church.

Turning Tide

In his interview of 12th October, the new Superior General of the Society, Rev. Fr. Davide Pagliarani, called upon the official Church "to stop considering Tradition [the triple treasure] as a burden or a set of outmoded old things, but rather as the only possible way to regenerate herself." This is precisely what an increasing number of good souls, clergy and laity alike, are coming to realise.

Never since the promulgation of the Novus Ordo Missae have there been so many Traditional Latin Masses. Never since the Second Vatican Council have so many understood that the Council was a revolution in which doctrine, the priesthood and the liturgy were subverted. These souls have joined the ranks of guardians of our sacred treasure and have left the corrupt, modernist churchmen to blush before the baying media. The only way forward for the Church is back to Tradition.

My dear brethren, we are all called to assist in the longed-for regeneration of the Church. We can do this most effectively by the regeneration of our own souls first. Faith, hope and charity are ready gifts to be granted, but they will only be granted if we value the triple treasure in our hands. May the approaching time of Advent, therefore, be a time of rediscovery of this precious treasure and a time of preparation for the coming of the greatest of all treasures, Our Lord Himself.

In Jesu et Maria, Rev. Robert Brucciani ■

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

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Tue, 11 Dec 2018 | Cover | Page 01

From the Editor's Desk...

by Michael J. Matt

The ‘New Rosary’ and Pope John Paul the Great

One October 15, 2002, we published The Problem with the ‘New Rosary’: The Fourth Commandment and Other Reformist Woes by Robert Emmett Henry. For the benefit of the many "new recruits" to Tradition here in 2018, we’re reproducing it on Page 13, as it helps to place Pope Francis into the proper Modernist context of the Revolution of Vatican II.

We must keep in mind that during his reign, Pope John Paul went from the "great white hope" of conservatives early on, to the most outspoken champion of the Revolution of all time.

And his many gifts to the Church—i.e., altar girls, Theology of the Body, the saint-making factory, Assisi-styled interfaith lallapaloosas, a New Rosary, etc.—did precious little to assuage the fears of traditional Catholics who felt that the situation in the Church—under Pope John Paul the GREAT! —couldn’t get much more apocalyptic.

Granted, in hindsight John Paul seems like something of a watchdog of orthodoxy; but this is only in comparison to Francis the Uber-Modernist. To employ a pretty clumsy analogy from the cultural revolution of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll—Francis might be Miley Cyrus or Marilyn Manson, while Pope John Paul is the Beatles. They’re all part of the same revolution but the Beatles were well-dressed, articulate, talented and smart enough to overcome Christian society’s residual social and moral sensibilities. Most decent people with a pulse can see a problem with Cyrus

~ See Editor's Desk/ Page 2

Editor's Desk, Continued...

and Manson; but just try criticizing the 'greatest' Marxist minstrels of all time, the Fab Four, the gods of early rock ‘n’ roll, and see how popular you are at the next cocktail party.

And yet this is what the traditionalists felt more or less dutybound to do where all the post-conciliar popes were concerned. This is why the traditionalists were vilified, called ugly names like ‘schismatic’ and dismissed as ‘trouble makers’...because, to them, the Emperor looked pretty darn naked and they told him so!

Pope John Paul did have two distinct advantages over Francis, however: Charisma, on the one hand, and a retention of some semblance of the Catholic Faith on the other. John Paul was also cool. He’s the Michael Jordan of popes. He was charming, cosmopolitan, multilingual, confident, and conveyed the easy impression that he—along with Maggie Thatcher, Sylvester Stallone and Ronald Reagan— could make the world a better place. The world was understandably seduced by the great pope who, by the way, actually pioneered the Papal Apology To The World Tour For All Things Catholic.

But the hard reality is this: without Wojtyla there would never have been a Bergoglio. And while to his everlasting credit Pope John Paul certainly held the Catholic line on abortion, it’s also true that when it came to phony ecumenism, liturgical mayhem and dogmas such as extra ecclesiam nulla salus, he was much closer to Francis than St. Pius X. And let’s not forget who "excommunicated" Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

And one quick point about his New Rosary: It was not the new mysteries themselves that created the furor, but rather their introduction. So, let’s not get hung up on defending the "Proclamation of the Kingdom" or whatever they are.

That’s not the point.

The problem with the New Rosary was that it was more of the same Modernist tinkering and changing and updating of EVERYTHING in the years after the Council—even down to and including, finally, Our Lady’s own Rosary itself.

This is what left traditional Catholics less than disposed to take advantage of John Paul’s suggestion (as laid out in his Rosarium Virginis Mariae) to meditate on the optional Luminous Mysteries if one were so disposed. In fact, I myself have never once made use of the Luminous option, and I never shall.

Does this sound harsh? Arrogant, perhaps? But you must remember what they’d already done to the Church by the time the so-called New Rosary was trotted out: They’d wrecked the Mass, smashed the statues, bulldozed the sanctuaries, knocked out the high altars, made the liturgical calendar unrecognizable, green-lighted meat on Fridays, edited the Bible, kicked over the communion rails, gutted the breviary, turned sacred music over to John Denver, swapped organs for guitars, and now—guess what?—they wanted to "reform" the Rosary! No, thanks!

Besides, Archbishop Bugnini, the grand architect of the Novus Ordo, had already suggested changing the rosary back during the pontificate of Paul VI. At the time, Pope Paul VI responded through his Vatican Secretary of State: "[T]he faithful would conclude that ‘the Pope has changed the Rosary,’ and the psychological effect would be disastrous…. Any change in it cannot but lessen the confidence of the simple and the poor."

That might be one of the few things Paul VI got right. (And it would have been even more disastrous had Catholics still been praying the Rosary at all by 2002, which, of course, most were not).

In any case, a few years later when another pope was old and feeble, the same malignant forces of Modernism finally got their way and rammed a New Rosary down the Church’s throat, making it so there was really nothing left in the Church not branded with their great, big M for Modernism.

So, the article on Page 13 fits rather nicely into the Remnant’s larger effort to "get back to basics", and to connect the dots from Francis to the Revolution of Vatican II, for which he is the perfect, if unwitting, poster boy. Because, again, Francis isn’t the fundamental problem so much as its inevitable consequence.

We’ve got to stop behaving as if what’s going on in Rome today is something new, because it’s not! We have to be honest about what led up to the Francis crisis, especially now in anticipation of the Neo-Catholic Caravan that is making its way to Tradition, the Novus Ordo having become largely uninhabitable, riddled with predators, dominated by dictators, and certainly no place for children.

If you’re new to Tradition, the article on Page 13 may be challenging. But I encourage you to open your mind to the reality that Francis really is nothing more than the last straw.

At best, he’s the cleanup batter, the bases having been loaded long before this befuddled old Modernist ever slouched into the batter’s box.

MJM

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Pope Sergius I, Guru of Globalism

By Jason Morgan

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend a talk given by the Dalai Lama. I have long been interested in Buddhism, and I am also deeply concerned about the ongoing genocide of the Tibetan people under the rule of the People’s Republic of China. So, I was looking forward to the event, and hoped that His Holiness would have a few words to say about the communists who have made it part of their daily routine to tear down Tibetan monasteries and torture unarmed monks and nuns.

The Dalai Lama is said to be the fourteenth reincarnation of the bodhisattva of compassion, so I did not expect him to twist his mouth up like Rambo and call for the blood of his people’s tormentors to run in the streets of Lhasa. And yet, I was surprised that the Dalai Lama did not mention what is happening in Tibet at all.

Surely there are geopolitical considerations at work, and I should also note that many in the audience that day were students from local high schools, so the Dalai Lama was not exactly in a position to launch into a detailed discussion about the history of Chinese oppression or the future prospects of the Tibetan government-in-exile in northern India. Also, the Dalai Lama has long said

~ See Pope Serguis I/ Page 6

Pope Sergius I,

Continued...

J. Morgan/ Continued From Page 1

that he is a Marxist—flabbergastingly, he once asked to join the Chinese Communist Party. So probably no blistering critiques of Beijing from someone who has criticized the PRC for not being Marxist enough.

But even given all this, how could a man who has not been to his homeland in nearly sixty years refrain from giving voice to the fact?

To my further surprise, when asked what he thought was the biggest problem facing the world today, the Dalai Lama said that global warming was causing him the greatest amount of concern. At that point, and afterwards as he rattled off a list of platitudes that could easily have come from either a Davos press kit or an issue of Self magazine, I realized that the Dalai Lama, for all of his palpable greatness of soul, had become a guru of globalism. In the same instant, I realized something else: he has a rival.

If you replaced the word "compassion" with the word "mercy," and the saffron-colored robes with a white cassock, you would come very close to His Holiness Pope Francis.

Mouthing the pabulums of the globalist elite seems to be the best our religious leaders can do nowadays. The Dalai Lama does it very well, but nobody does it better than Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

Internationalist liberalism has conquered the planet, and it has turned even spiritual figures into spokesmen for that brand of smug secularist progressivism that seeps from every pore of our modern media-political arrangement.

To be sure, religion bending the knee to politics is as old as either institution. But there is something more sinister at work here than the usual human tendency to take the easy way out and be popular with one’s captors. Navigating among hostile forces is one thing; rushing out to crown them with laurels and sacrifice the faithful under one’s charge is quite another.

In July of 1927, in the midst of an anti-religious holocaust that eventually killed as many as 20 million Christians, Sergius, the Patriarch of Moscow, pledged that not only his own but the "complete" loyalty of the entire Russian Orthodox Church would reside with the militantly atheistic Soviet Union.

This written declaration, a shocking document surrendering the Orthodox Church and all its clergy and faithful over to the hands of one of the most murderous regimes in human history, made its author so infamous that there is even a heresy named for him.

Sergianism is that admixture of apostasy, cowardice, dereliction of duty, and material cooperation with grave evil that needed the czar-worship of the Russian Orthodox and the utter depravity of the Russian communists to bring into existence.

Do we see a one-upping of Sergianism in the making today?

Just a couple of months ago, Pope Francis inked a deal with a regime that is even worse than the Soviet Union. Over the course of the One Child Policy in the People’s Republic of China, Chinese "doctors" have performed hundreds of millions of abortions, more murders than Stalin dared to dream about carrying out. And the Chinese have been even more hostile to religion than the Soviets were.

A million Muslims are in concentration camps in East Turkestan, and Tibetan Buddhism has been largely reduced to ashes and PTSD in its homeland.

Meanwhile, my sources within the PRC continue to report arrests of Christians, disappearances of bishops and clergy, and the widespread destruction of churches and religious imagery such as icons and crucifixes. The People’s Republic of China is not a nation-state, it is a horror movie starring a billion enslaved extras. Trying to negotiate with such a lucid nightmare is like trying to sit down and hammer out a contract with Norman Bates.

And yet, like the Dalai Lama, Francis blithely ignores the reality of the PRC, preferring to bask in the adulation of the globalists who praise him from the pages of the elite-run transnational newspapers and media conglomerates in chic metropolises like London, New York, and Washington, DC.

Unlike the Dalai Lama, however, Bergoglio has made the arrangement official, surpassing the Sergianism of the last century with Francisism, the not-sosubtle swapping of the Chair of Peter for the Couch of Oprah.

Francisism is the selling out of all of the Church’s spiritual and moral authority, the bargain-basement offloading of the ecclesial capital accrued by twenty centuries of suffering so that one man, the pope, can have the honor of giving Leonardo DiCaprio and Bono a platform for their globalist buncombe.

The next pope will not just have to recover the Magisterium—he will have to rehabilitate the Church after Francisism, that period in Church history when the pontiff tried to bless godless government but found that all he got in return was even more mayhem and death than before. ■

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Bishop Robert Morlino, RIP

We are truly devasted to learn of the passing of the great Bishop Robert C.

Morlino at 9:15 on Saturday, November 24th in St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin (the Feast of St. John of the Cross). He was 71 years old.

After having survived a cardiac "event" the day before Thanksgiving, His Excellency took a turn for the worse. In your charity, please storm Heaven for the repose of the soul of this good and faithful bishop.

Over the years, Bishop Morlino confirmed several of my children according to the traditional Rite of Confirmation, as his diocese had become something of a port in the storm for many displaced and disillusioned Catholic families. His kindness and pastoral solicitude for us--strangers in his diocese--was a great consolation and proof that God had not left our children spiritual orphans.

He was surely one of the most charitable and pastoral bishops my children had ever been graced to know in person.

And for that fine priestly example I’ll be forever grateful to him and to God.

Below are just a few examples of why we have supported Bishop Morlino over the years and why he will be so greatly missed (print edition readers can find these articles online by typing the titles into your browser along with "RemnantNewspaper"): Bishop Morlino Targets ‘Homosexual Subculture’ in the Church, Calls for Reparation to Sacred Heart of Jesus Remnant Petitions Pope: Stand with Bishop Morlino BOMBSHELL: Bishop Morlino Apologizes to the SSPX Bishop Morlino fought the good fight and, for him, the race is now over. But Christ’s poor Church, which the good Bishop served so well and for so many years, will surely mourn his passing for a long time to come. May he now intercede on behalf of us all--the flock with whom he stayed and kept careful watch--even when so many other shepherds had abandoned the flock either for fear of the wolves or because they’d decided to join them.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon him.

Requiescat in pacem. ■

Jorge Mario Bergoglio is made a cardinal in February 2001 by Pope John Paul II. [Photo: Osservatore Romano.]

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The Remnant Speaks

Letters to the Editor: The Remnant Speaks P.O. Box 1117, Forest Lake, MN 55025 ~ Editor@RemnantNewspaper.com

Theistic Evolution

Editor, The Remnant: Three times I reread Tony McCarthy’s riveting expose on the Modernist deception of theistic evolution. (Evolution of Deceit and the Vengeance of the God of Genesis: Remnant October 15, 2018). Men puffed up with pride and seeking respect and admiration for their ingenious scriptural exegesis will answer to God for their heretical teachings that lead many souls toward a loss of their Faith.

McCarthy told us how Pope St. Pius X had taught that Evolutionism nearly summed up the whole of the teachings of the Modernists. He called Modernism the synthesis of all errors. Like that great scientist, scriptural scholar and apologist Robert Sungenis, McCarthy pointed out how so many of the teachings of the Modernists contradict what scripture teaches us. God made heaven and the earth in six days and rested on the seventh. God made everything beautifully and perfectly at once, and did not litter our planet with deformed, deceased mutant animals and plants that only gradually approached perfection through evolution.

McCarthy’s essay reminded me of Sungenis’ magnificent trilogy of books Galileo was Wrong the Church was Right wherein we read the truth about the earth sitting at the center of the universe, a constantly repeated scriptural teaching of the Old Testament. Recently probative modern scientific observations now convincingly prove this. Let me recommend Remnant readers purchase Sungenis’ 2014 DVD movie titled The Principle. It was wonderfully liberating and refreshing for me to rediscover these simple old beautiful truths after having fallen for the evolutionary hoax in my youth that had sent me into a long depression.

Yes, Sungenis and his friends have also shown us that Einstein’s special theory of relativity does not hold up to close honest scientific scrutiny. We read that Einstein had an agenda to put forth a cosmological theory that didn’t need a Creator; a theory that needed to posit black holes and dark matter to patch it together in order to sufficiently satisfy his applauding atheist colleagues.

God is in his heavens. The Earth sits at the center of the universe, and God didn’t create it very long ago. Not billions of years ago, but only thousands of years ago. Until the appearance of the Modernists and their false evolutionary beliefs and accommodating "theistic" teachings, the Church had always taught that God created the earth not long ago, and He had put it at the center of the universe. Where else would you expect the Creator of the universe to assume human flesh in the womb of an Immaculately pure and holy Virgin? In a backwater of a minor galaxy?

In Dom Prosper Gueranger’s The Liturgical Year we read: " The twentyfifth day of December. The seventh moon. In the five thousand one hundred and ninety-ninth year of the creation of the world from the time when God in the beginning created the heavens and the earth; the two thousand nine hundred and fifty-seventh year after the flood…."

I believe Gueranger got it right, and so did Tony McCarthy.

Matt Werner Castle Rock, CO

Thank God for Father Celatus

Editor, The Remnant: I just finished the November 15 issue. May God bless and protect Fr. Celatus! I wish, pray, beg and hope for all of the above. If enough of us do--just maybe.

Some time ago a lady asked what she could do. I thought about that. She should pray, study her faith, frequent mass and confession. Also, if she trusts God, He will let her know what she can do where she is. There is much. Also, ecclesiadei.org on the web has all the traditional masses in each state so she can learn if there is one she can get to.

We need the real mass. I also think, through the Remnant, she can be put in contact with others who are faithful members of the Body of Christ. I, for one would be happy to be in contact with her. When I went to last year’s Catholic Identity Conference, I learned how much I definitely was NOT alone and it was a life changing experience.

Judy Martin Powell, Ohio

Sacred Heart Imbedded in Hospital

Editor, The Remnant: Thanks again for a great CIC in 2018! It was a pleasure to meet you. Thought you might like to see a few pictures from 11/28/18 in Goochland, Virginia. I am a Rehabilitation Medicine MD at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va. VCU and Sheltering Arms are building a new state of the art Inpatient Rehabilitation Hospital in Goochland (just west of Richmond), Sheltering Arms Institute. Yesterday was the topping off ceremony, everyone got a chance to sign their name to the beam before it was lifted into position.

I wanted to include the Sacred Heart.

(Sheltering Arms has been part of the Bon Secours System, a not for Profit Catholic company, but Sheltering Arms is leaving Bon Secours for this Joint Venture with VCUHS).

I happily wear my Sacred Heart pin.

Continued on Page 4

Letters to the Editor,

Continued from page 3...

Have you considered making a sticker of the Sacred Heart (like the pins) to put on cars, etc? God Bless, Pat McGowan

Death Comes for the Archdiocese

Editor, The Remnant: Earlier this semester, I read for the umpteenth time -- with a class of home-schooled high school students -- the 1927 novel Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather. Although Cather was raised a Baptist and died an Episcopalian, her novel -- based on the real lives of two saintly French missionaries, the first archbishop of Santa Fe (the title character) and the first archbishop of Denver -- demonstrates such a remarkable understanding of and affinity for Catholicism and Catholic sensibilities that it’s regularly on Top 10 lists of Catholic novels. It’s a beautiful book that gets better with every reading. This week, the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, headed by a pro-LGBT archbishop, declared bankruptcy after paying millions of dollars to victims of sexual assault.

Cathedral of Santa Fe, built by the first archbishop in French Romanesque style

The archbishop, John Wester, has gone on record accusing Archbishop Vigano and other critics of Pope Francis, McCarrick and Co. of misusing the abuse crisis to "promote a certain agenda"-- presumably one that doesn’t embrace sodomy as just another wonderful way of loving.

Looks like the Archdiocese has been preparing for the bankruptcy filing by shielding its assets: it has been incorporating parishes as separate nonprofit organizations -- each headed by a group of officers with the pastor as president. The archdiocese says this is designed to emphasize the "canonical uniqueness" of each parish!! "The Archdiocese of Santa Fe has long been structured as what is known as a corporation sole. That is, the archbishop is the only officer of the corporation."

Or, to flip the words around, he is only the officer of a corporation -- a badly-run one at that.

One weeps to think of what Jean-Baptiste Lamy and Joseph Projectus Machebeuf (or, indeed, Willa Cather, who we might hope is with them) think of the stewardship of those to whose care they left the fruits of their extraordinary labor. Heartbreaking.

Anne Rao

Voris, Leave the SSPX Alone

Editor, The Remnant: I have no idea why Church Militant is hammering SSPX to this day. These are men who are simply holding to what has always been taught. Its all about, according to CM and Voris, whom I am a huge fan of btw, is submission to Rome. Lol, now a few weeks ago Voris made a video asking Pope Francis to resign. I guess we all have different breaking points. But I know this, we are all in this together.

I love you guys at the Remnant, its guys like you who have given me an alternative to Sedevacantism or even Orthodoxy.

Thank you so much for helping to keep me AND MY FAMILY THEREFORE CATHOLIC. Small request, could you consider uploading a commentary video once a week or even bi weekly? You have no idea how helpful your talks are. I also will be making a trip to one of these CIC events soon. They look excellent. God bless you.

"Demon Slayer" @RemnantVideo Editor, The Remnant: Looking for a reason NOT to leave the Catholic Church I’m rather certain, Mr. Matt, that you’re the one I discovered down in the "catacombs" of the internet, more or less. And yes, I very much appreciate your alternative "Remnant" teaching.

As another ADVENT begins, I shall pay closer attention now and consider supporting your work financially as well. Thank you.

Roberta Linnenkamp Editor, The Remnant: A sincere thank you for all your work. Last year, after growing increasingly frustrated with the Episcopal church, I finally signed up for RCIA and became Catholic. I’ve read your newspaper for years and finally decided to convert. Anyway, keep up the good work.

Becky Tatro

Catholic Identity Conference Success!

Editor, The Remnant: I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed the conference this year as a first time attendee.

Wonderful, informative and entertaining speakers. In addition, I wanted to thank you for the Remnant TV and the newspaper. I am one of the people you speak about who is a late convert to Traditional Catholicism who was born and raised post Vatican II. Your videos and newspaper have played a very large part in that. Keep up the good work and may God bless you now and always.

Jim Mihelich

Seeking Pilgrimage Sponsors

Dear Remnant Readers: My name is David Kirk and I am currently in my Sophomore year at a conservative Catholic college, studying Philosophy and Theology. I became aware of this pilgrimage through several of my best friends who had the chance to go on it last year. They made it clear to me how important this really is in the life of the Church. I would love the privilege of helping with the restoration of the Faith in France, and contributing whatever sacrifices I can in reparation for the sins of our world and for whatever intentions you all might have. I would be extremely grateful for such a once in a lifetime opportunity as to walk alongside seventeen-thousand of my fellow traditional Catholic brothers and sisters on this holy pilgrimage to Chartres.

I promise all who would be willing to help me go on this pilgrimage that I will carry your intentions with me along the way and pray for you daily, offering all I can for you to our Lord through the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Louis de Montfort. Thank you all, and may God bless you and keep you.

Ô Sacré Coeur de Jésus, prends pitié de nous!

David Kirk

Just for laughs, sent by a Remnant Reader in New York.

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Tue, 11 Dec 2018 | Cover | Page 05

Remembering Who We Are

(

Hope in the Midst of the Ruins of Our Culture)

by Dr. Boyd D. Cathey

The late scholar Mel Bradford once used the wording "remembering who we are" as a title to a book of finely-honed essays about his beloved Southland. It seems to me, as Bradford so artfully and gracefully suggested in his writings, that it is memory, both individual and collective, which is essential not just to the passed-on heritage of any culture, but to the very existence of that culture.

We remember the deeds, the sayings, the handed-down lore, the usages, and the faith of our fathers and grandfathers (and mothers and grandmothers).

Their lessons, their admonitions, their successes (and failures), their examples, even their everyday customs inform us and our actions, and, indeed, help shape our lives and view of life. Historically, these are in many respects the very same accoutrements that give definition and offer the earliest structure to our existence, that define us, and that also provide an inheritance which we, in turn, impart to our offspring and descendants.

It is thus memory that is integral to the continuation of a culture and a people.

We inherit the wealth and the richness of the remembered past, and we are impelled to both add to it in our own way and also pass it on. To quote the 12th century theologian, John of Salisbury (a quote often favored by my mentor, the late Russell Kirk): "We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours."

A society—a culture—that discards memory, that cuts itself off from its inheritance, whether purposefully or accidentally, deprives itself of the accumulated wealth of that heritage.

Of course, there are always those who revile the past and its legacy, or at the very least, seek to modify or transform it. And, no doubt, change and reform, in some degree, are always necessary to any well-functioning society.

There is a fascinating quote from Prince Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s famous novel detailing the turmoil of mid-19th century Italy, The Leopard ( Il Gattopardo): "Things will have to change in order that they remain the same." There is a wonderful film based on that novel starring, quite improbably, Burt Lancaster which director Luchino Visconti directed (1963), in which the tensions between the immemorial past and the circumstances created by change are vividly explored.

No society—no culture—can completely denude itself of its inheritance and its history and actually survive. Such experiments in total revolutionary transformation have inevitably ended in bloodshed and incredible destructiveness—in the massacres of the French Revolution, and more recently, in the Gulag and the concentration camp, or in blood-soaked Maoism.

Over the past half century and more we have witnessed a different kind of revolution; it does not employ as weapons of choice the tank and bayonet, nor the Gulag as the final destination for unrepentant opponents—at least not yet. It has been an unfolding, allencompassing cultural movement spanning decades, subverting and then incorporating in its service diverse radical revolutionary elements injected into our educational system, into our entertainment industry, into our politics, even into the very language we use to communicate with each other. The "violence" it metes out is mostly of the cerebral nature, not of the physical kind, but rather predicated on shame, humiliation, fear of the loss of a job or reputation, and the playing on the natural human desire for conformity, while steadily upping the ante in our laws— constantly moving the goalposts of what is acceptable. It is the kind of intellectual "violence," now writ large, that once impelled people to look the other way when their neighbors were hauled off to Siberia under Stalin, or to Dachau under Hitler.

And it has been highly effective, utilizing as its major weaponry the terrifying twins, the ineradicable accusations of "racism" and "sexism," and a whole panoply of sub-terms that accompany such charges: "white supremacy," "historic white oppression," "colonialist imperialism," "misogyny," "toxic masculinity," and increasingly expanded to incorporate terms like "antimigrant" or "anti-transgender" bigotry.

The overarching desire of this Progressivist Revolution is, in fact, not reform—not what Lampedusa’s character the Prince of Salina says consolingly about some things changing so that other things can remain the same. No, it is incredibly "post-Marxian," making the older Communist and Marxist revolutionary dreams seem tame in comparison. It invokes and demands a total reversal, a complete transformation in which nearly all, if not all, of those institutions, those traditions, and that inheritance vouchsafed to us from our ancestors is rudely discarded, rejected, and vilely condemned as racist, sexist, fascist—in other words, our remembered past is cut off from us.

And we are then naked before history, isolated individuals, without a heritage, without a past, without family, and without memory: neutralized and bland "tabula rasa" vessels to be filled with the "new" Progressivist ideology that will convert us all into the model obedient automatons only hinted at in Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four or by Russian film director Nikita Mikhalkov’s deeply disturbing 1994 film of Stalin’s Russia, Burnt By the Sun.

Such attempts have always run aground when eventually confronted by human nature itself, those Godgiven natural characteristics ingrained in the human being and psyche that desperately seek belonging, family, a usable history, and memory. In the past all putative totalitarian systems have been impelled to offer substitutes in an attempt to satisfy those natural longings.

Verifiably, none of those ersatz replacements has worked, whether the Goddess of Reason enthroned in Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral, or the deification of the Worker and Party (or of Chairman Mao) under Communism, or modern appeals to a debauched and poisonous corruption of Christianity.

Yet such efforts continue, and in our day with increased feverish and fanatical determination. Just take a look at the Web sites of such zealous groups as the Workers World Party (centered in Durham, NC), Redneck Revolt, Black Lives Matter, or various Antifa-related outfits. The chiliastic vision of some future Utopia bleeds through nearly every line, it is right around the corner, if only—if only—all those white supremacists and racists, all those male misogynists, all that historic, Europeanoriginated and colonialist bigotry and oppression, could be swept from the scene, and, of course, if only those monuments to Confederate veterans or to Christopher Columbus, and maybe to Fr. Junipero Serra, too, could be secreted safely away in some remote museum (just a small first step, of course, in the continuing revolution).

And our timorous and pusillanimous elites, those cowardly "guardians" of our culture, those globalists and "deep state" denizens, and those political prostitutes, give way in fearful obeisance and run, cowering, to hide in the tall grass.

It is the lunacy—the sickness—of the madman, but unlike the outbreaks of such contagions in the past, its modern roots are far more demonic, and it is far closer to apparent success. It is best described perhaps in the words of the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats in his visionary poem written almost 100 years ago, "The Second Coming," an intimation of the final emergence of the "Rough Beast," an incarnation of what can only be described as the "anti-Christ," "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

[….] The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born." This, then, is the ultimate challenge and the multifaceted Enemy—the Legion— we face, which appears to have victory and domination within its grasp. And it is why we must never lose hope, for Our Creator is still Master of the Universe, and His promises are as valid and true now as ever before.

Our watchword—our abiding confidence—may be summed up in the words of early 20th century Spanish writer, Miguel de Unamuno in his volume, The Tragic Sense of Life: "Our life is a hope which is continually converting itself into memory and memory in its turn begets hope." ■

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Tue, 11 Dec 2018 | Cover | Page 06

A New Remnant Series, With Apologies to C.S. Lewis...

How to Surive at Screwtape U

By Jason Morgan

Author's Note: Please don’t confuse these letters—collectively titled "How to Survive at Screwtape U"—with satire.

These are missives from the front lines of the culture wars, the wars we keep sending our kids off to fight every time we sign a check to a university bursar’s office. "Higher education" in the United States today is a pastiche of left-wing brainwashing, bullying, bloviating, and bathos. These letters are keyholeviews into the minds of our children’s tormenters.

But there’s hope! Yes, our schools have been hijacked by cultural Marxists and taxpayer-funded Maoists and Leninists.

What you may not know is that, beneath the scarved-and-horn-rimmed exterior of every tenured radical, there is a wilting mess of insecurity and contradiction.

So don’t get angry at the left—laugh at them. And teach your kids to laugh at them, too. If you must send your child to a secular college—for example, if you live on Neptune and Neptune State U. is all you’ve got—then send them off with these letters in their pocket. Reading them may preserve their sanity, just as writing them preserved mine. –

Jason Morgan

Letter One: The Project

Dear Blair, Your mom tells me that you’ve decided to go to college. I couldn’t be happier. You’ve made a wonderful choice.As you know— or will soon find out—your Christian upbringing has hampered your ability to think, feel, and thrive. College will wring that repressed past out of you like you were a wet mop. Before long, you’ll be free to make up your own mind, and the world, to mix metaphors, will be your oyster. I am so proud of you for having done the right thing. As the resident academic in the family (and the only one—and this is not coincidental— to escape from the dungeon of churchgoing and see the light of pure reason), I feel it incumbent upon me to write you a series of letters over the next few months, gathering my thoughts on your impending release from your traditionalist captivity and thereby giving you some pointers on how you can really succeed in college. These are going to be some of the best years of your life. I’ve been down that road, too, so I’m taking the time to reflect on my own experiences in order to help you amplify yours.

I know, I know. College hasn’t even started yet, and already the lectures are underway, you must be thinking. But that’s where you’re wrong! That’s how things used to be, but college has changed so much since your mom and I were in school. There are no more lectures, really, and no more wrong answers or even hard studying or the pressures of exams. College is a state of being, a mindful presence amidst some really smart people. If you play your cards right, you could even end up reclining on that pantheon’s couch yourself someday.

So, I encourage you not to look at these letters as being preachy (Gaia forbid!) or out of touch. Indeed, I want you to get in touch, with your inner learner, and lead that person out to bask in the radiant inclusivity that you’ll find at Necker U.This is gonna be one helluva ride, kid. So, stop taking notes, and let your old Uncle Joe do the thinking for you!

I’ll write more soon. In the meantime, start making preparations to leave that household, both physically and spiritually.

Think of it as packing your parachute. Silk rustles, so do it as secretly as you can. One good place to start might be in adopting an attitude of silent contempt for the goingson at church. Try it this Sunday. Whatever that sexually-repressed pastor says from the pulpit, mentally append the two letters, "BS!" to the end of each of his sentences.

If you listen to guys like that, you’ll never have any fun, and you’ll sure as hell never succeed in college!

This is your time to shine, kid. Get ready!

Love, Uncle Joe ▀

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Tue, 11 Dec 2018 | Cover | Page 11

A Remnant Book Review. . .

What Happened at Vatican II

By Fr. John O’Malley, S.J.

reviewed for The Remnant

by Vincent Chiarello

The Remnant reader may recall that at the end of my recent review of Fr.

John O’Malley’s book, an accounting of what transpired at the Council of Trent, I mentioned that, in the course of describing events, he made several critical comments of the council by noting the achievements of a later one, the Second Vatican Council. I added: "As a matter of comparison, I would be personally interested in his published work on the Second Vatican Council, but that is a task for another time." That time has arrived.

"I am certainly not alone in believing, moreover, that the best - indeed, the indispensable - approach to understanding Roman Catholicism today is through Vatican II. Study of the council is at the same time study of the much larger phenomenon."

Fr. John. W. O’Malley,

What Happened at Vatican II

Despite the abundance of books on what Fr. O’Malley calls, "the most important religious event of the twentieth century," he notes "...missing from the crowd of volumes on the library shelves is a basic book about the council." (N.B.: this book was published a decade ago.) Seeking to address that gap, Fr. O’Malley sets out his plan to erase that deficiency, and allow the reader to understand the importance and relevance of the Second Vatican Council (hereafter: Vatican II).

Fr. O’Malley addresses that problem in a three-fold approach: "provide a essential story line..." from the beginning to the end of the council; "set the issues that emerge in the narrative into their contexts..." and, finally, "provide some keys for grasping what the council hoped to accomplish." But there is also a personal dimension to the narrative which also should be included: Fr.

O’Malley was actually present during the sessions and conferences during the last two years of Vatican II. To begin at the beginning.

While gathering primary source material for his doctoral dissertation (from Harvard) on Giles (Egidio) of Viterbo, a reformer and Prior-General of the Augustinian Order during the first two decades of the 16th century, Fr. O’Malley received a Fellowship to the American Academy in Rome, about a mile from St. Peter’s, from 1963-65.

He attended two Public Sessions and a number of press briefings that took place during the sessions of Vatican II.

As a result, Fr. O’Malley claims he was given a deeper understanding of the similarities and differences between the 16th century (Trent) and that of the 20th (Vatican II). After leaving Rome, Fr.

O’Malley returned to the Weston Jesuit School of Theology, where he taught a course on "The Great Councils: Trent and Vatican II," and published his first article about Vatican II six years after leaving the American Academy.

From 1962 through 1965, Vatican II’s participants met in four separate sessions, each lasting about ten weeks, but Fr. O’Malley makes an important point about what happened while the Council was in the intersessions, i.e., when, during the remaining nine months, the council was not meeting: "...several bishops (in all, about 2200 attended the council) and theological non-voting "periti" (experts) determined the course of the council almost as much as did the actual debate on the floor of St. Peter’s."

Pope John XXIII had appointed 201 periti at the opening of the council; at its conclusion, there were over 500.

Among them were Karl Rahner, S.J.; Hans Kung, Henri de Lubac, S.J.; and the Dominican, Yves Congar, who is considered "the father and inspiration of Vatican II." All of these priests had been suspected of heterodoxy during the pontificate of Pope Pius XII, and removed from their teaching positions.

The influence of these periti would cause serious problems during the four sessions, especially with the more traditionally-minded clergy who attended. "The air of serenity these documents breathe obscures the fact that some of them were hotly, often bitterly, contested in the council and survived only by the skin of their teeth."

Some critics of the council would add "duplicity."

Continued on Page 12

What Happened at Vatican II

Continued from Page 11

What is not contested, however, is that Pope Paul VI promulgated 16 documents in his name and that of the council. "They are the council’s most authoritative and accessible legacy, and it is around them that study of Vatican II must turn." The highest rank were the 4 "constitutions;" followed in importance by 9 "decrees," and, finally, 3 "declarations," two of which, Nostra Aetate, which dealt with the Church and non-Christian Religions, mainly Judaism, and On Religious Liberty, have assumed much greater importance with the passage of time.

No "schema" (preliminary text) would have as many modifications and revisions as the decree on "Religious Liberty," the contribution of the American Jesuit and peritus, John Courtney Murray, who a decade earlier had been to forbidden to write on the subject of state-church relations.

Although finally approved after the Progressive wing at the council exerted its influence, its wording was deeply criticized by nine bishops, who after reading the schema, commented: "...

we no longer recognize Catholic theology." Hovering above the council was a palpable, but absent, figure whose influence would be seen in many of the documents that would emerge: Jacques Maritain, who insisted that the current Catholic teaching …"did not correspond to the reality of the Western democracies nor to the real beliefs of the Catholic politicians who led them."

The evolution of the schema on ecumenism, which was presented in five parts (chapters) in November 1963 during the Second Session, would eventually also include Nostra Aetate (In Our Age), an achievement Fr. O’Malley claims would never have been considered by a gathering of Catholic bishops five years earlier. And with reason, for "Arab opposition" to a positive statement on Jewry "weighed heavily" on the council. Was this declaration an indication that the Vatican was moving toward a recognition of the Zionist State? (N.B. The Vatican did recognize Israel in 1993, during the pontificate of John Paul II.) And what about the future of Christians in Moslem areas, a grave concern for the bishops assembled? The efforts of the late Augustin Cardinal Bea, a German Jesuit, were successful in bringing the subject to the floor for discussion after the head of the Central Preparatory Commission, Cardinal Cicognani, who had been Apostolic Nuncio to the U.S. for 25 years, removed the schema from the agenda. He was overruled by Pope John XXIII, who decided to move ahead with the discussion. To Fr. O’Malley, Cardinal Cicognani’s view of the situation was a parochial one: "...besides its other many faults, Roman theology amounted to an academic mind-game, irrelevant to life."

I cannot leave this subject without a word about Fr. O’Malley’s belief that the stage production of "The Deputy" was a factor, perhaps a major one, in the pope’s acceptance of the Cardinal Bea’s recommendation. The play, which premiered in Berlin three months after the opening of Vatican II, and which I later saw in New York City, accused Pope Pius XII of "silence" during the Holocaust. None of these charges has ever been corroborated! In reviewing Ralph McInerney’s

The Defamation of Pope Pius XII in The Remnant, I wrote: "In 2007, the former head of the Romanian secret police, Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, who had defected to the West in 1978, revealed the existence of Operation Seat 12, a disinformation campaign of communist propaganda during the Cold War which targeted the Vatican because of its outspoken anti-communism. The motto of "Operation Seat 12," which may have been an oblique reference to the dozen apostles, was "Dead men cannot defend themselves;" Pius XII had died in 1958.

Pacepa claimed that General Ivan Agayants, chief of the KGB’s Disinformation Department, created the outline for what was to become The Deputy, which portrayed the Pope as a Nazi sympathizer, and that the basic research was done not by its claimed author, the German communist Rolf Hochhuth, but by KGB agents.

Yuri Andropov, former head of the KGB, admitted that had the Soviets known in 1963 what they knew in 1974 due to newly released information that Hitler was hostile to, and plotted against, Pius XII, they never would have attacked the pope."

Another issue dealt with at Vatican II was the delicate handling of the relationship between Scripture and Tradition. The controversy arose with the voting on the many amendments to the text that would ultimately be called Dei Verbum, the Word of God. For one year, primarily behind closed doors, the arguments in favor of and against the schema had reached a fever pitch during the closing session of Vatican II. The "Traditionalists," who always seemed to be the "minority" in Fr. O’Malley’s descriptions, found the relationship was "far too weak," and held the position that "Tradition found truths not found in Scripture, and an essential part of Catholic dogma," citing the decisions of the Council of Trent. After a request by Pope Paul VI, which was withheld in some of the commissions debating the schema, a temporary compromise statement was reached: "the whole of Catholic doctrine cannot be proved from Scripture alone

directly," the last word at the request of the pope, and "vehemently opposed" by Fr. Karl Rahner S.J. The final statement, written into the text of Dei Verbum, and agreed to by the pope, was: "The church does not draw her certainty for all revealed truths from Scripture alone."

There is more - much more - about the discussions and internal squabbles that took place during the council, but my task was to attempt to compare, to the extent possible, the two councils from the Good Padre’s books on the subjects.

It should be obvious to the reader that there is no doubt Fr. O’Malley’s sympathies lie with the "most important religious event of the 20th century."

But why? Early on, Fr. O’Malley cites Vatican II thus: it was "extraordinary and set apart from its predecessors almost as a different kind of entity." He believes that "the council’s massive proportions, remarkable international breadth, and the scope and variety of the issues it addressed," were key factors, but that is only the "tip of the iceberg."

For this American Jesuit, the key to his embrace of Vatican II is his steadfast belief that it was "unique in the annals of ecumenical councils" in that 'the organizers allowed the deliberations of council members to be reviewed by scholars and churchmen who did not share many of the basic assumptions upon which Catholic doctrine and practice were based." By council’s end, 182 observers had been present, and several Protestant clergymen among them, which has often led to the question: were they, although non- voters, able to influence those who did vote? Add to that mix, the ability of radio and television organizations to transmit images around the world as a result of leaked information by the Vatican Press Office, despite an imposed secrecy of the proceedings approved before the opening of the council by Pope John XXIII, and his popularity: Time Magazine named Pope John XXIII, "Man of the Year" in 1962.

Perhaps the true key to decipher Fr.

O’Malley's admiration of the council, and, I believe, the primary source of his approval, is to examine his core belief about the Council: "... the emerging possibility of changes in posture and practice that just a few months ago had seemed set in stone.

The Catholic Church had presented itself internally and to the world as the church that does not change." (emphasis mine) Vatican II had now provided a means of doing so. "All at once, the church had a new image."

Some historians of the council are not as sanguine. In his

History of The Second Vatican Council, published two years after Fr. O’Malley’s book, Church Historian Roberto de Mattei, who occasionally cites Fr. O’Malley’s comments, raises a question about the decrees of Vatican II. De Mattei states that the Council Fathers insisted that the emerging documents be read in the "hermeneutic of continuity" (interpreting them in a traditional way), but if that is true, then something happened at Vatican II that had never happened in the aftermath of any other council: differing interpretations of texts "quarreled" (Pope Paul’s word) with each other.

As a result,

"none of its doctrines, unless ascribable to previous conciliar definitions, are infallible or unchangeable, nor are they even binding..." (Emphasis mine)

Hmmm.

Despite his noticeable "tilt" to a more "modern" interpretation of the fruits of Vatican II, this book is the result of a prodigious amount of research, with details about the council meetings that will hold the reader’s attention throughout. As I wrote in my review of the Padre’s book on Trent, his writing style makes for easy reading. In the end, you may not agree with some, or most, of Fr. O’Malley’s conclusions about Vatican II, especially in light of the current crisis within the Church, but you will walk away better informed. ■

During the December 1965 session of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI hands Orthodox Metropolitan Meliton of Heliopolis a decree canceling Orthodox excommunications nine centuries before.

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Tue, 11 Dec 2018 | Cover | Page 13

Remnants of the Past. . .

The Problem with the ‘New Rosary’

by Robert Emmett Henry (October 2002) IT WASN’T A NEW sensation, that churning feeling in the stomach that signaled rising agitation. I’d gotten it in the past when, leafing through my child’s religion text, I’d stumbled across some frantic spiritual proposition that hailed from left field – or at least from the Left.

Once it was the author engaging in that favorite technique of the modern gonzo religion text genre: The Inane Allegory.

This one quivered with originality: eating too many Twinkies would cause one to break the fifth commandment.

Now, it would be tempting to go off after this howler and have a field day over soccer moms’ terror of violence causing them to prop up a "have a nice day" example of killing, etc. But there is a more immediate point to be drawn, and so I abandon the chase after easy prey.

Turnaround is fair play, and so I accuse the Holy Father of breaking the fourth commandment in his latest devotional invention, the Luminous Mysteries.

Let’s face it. If eating too many sweets is so bad for your body that it’s a form of killing, and if, furthermore, this simile can be codified in my impressionable child’s Catholic "religion" text, then it’s open season on metaphors.

Therefore, I propose that revamping the Holy Rosary, the last vestige of tradition not previously stomped on by the Catholic hierarchy, is a form of disrespect for our spiritual parent, Holy Mother Church.

There is more logic here than the great Twinkie transgression can ever attain to. The simple fact is, the Catholic rule-makers since Vatican II have made it abundantly clear that Tradition is evil and must be eliminated from the believer’s sphere of consciousness. If we are revering God in a way that has been passed down from Tradition, then there is something not "alive" in our faith – it is clearly mummified and must be replaced by "Gosh, this is the updated expression of those anachronistic prayers, just composed over coffee by the boys in the Vatican who stayed up all night in an encounter group – or was it poker?"

Look at the record. In installing the New Mass, two thousand years of accumulated liturgical treasure in the liturgy of the Mass was replaced by Joan Baez wannabe lyrics that Joan would have retched over. The most monotonous aesthetic experience available on cue these days is a Novus Ordo Mass: low-key, off-key reaching out to God, unflinchingly dull-witted and repetitive, week after week, month after month, lyrics so banal that one would almost be tempted to think they were devised for the mentally handicapped. And keep an ear out for the priest’s latest improv on the words of the liturgy, which Canon Law (another ignored tradition) decrees should be consistent.

The supposed motive behind this fetish for change – wasn’t it Al Gore back in ’92 who proposed that thoughtprovoking chestnut, "Change is good"?

– is to avoid leaving anyone out of the race toward God. Enough of arcane Latin culture, let’s get hip and "now" and relevant, and so finally, inclusive.

Inclusive as in egalitarian, without the stamp of character or challenge … and certainly without respect for the ancient dignity of Holy Mother Church, who has Her reasons for rituals, and laws, that may exceed the ability of every member to understand.

And so, every conceivable tradition of the Roman Catholic Church has been expunged from common usage. And woe to the recalcitrant who liked the Church’s traditions, who looked to Her saints for examples of holiness, who felt very close to the angels indeed when attending a Tridentine Mass.

And … who said the Rosary.

If the Holy Father’s obvious love of the Rosary were matched by a sense of preserving the other Church traditions, it is likely that he would not be witnessing the "crisis" he correctly decried— Catholics ignoring this precious prayer.

It’s an holistic process.

Does he not recognize that decades of feverish insistence by Church rulemakers to disband traditional forms of worship would finally come home to roost with a drop-off of praying the Rosary?

Does he fail to connect the Church’s tactical maneuvering to eschew Church Tradition per se with the abandonment of this tradition, so long a bulwark of the faith? Since when did rebellion become selective?

Did he never think he was playing with fire when he allowed the "spirit of Vatican II" to degenerate into an unbalanced, Rogerian assault on the pre-Vatican II Church? It is the insistence on innovation in liturgy and devotion, on a non-contemplative expression of the liturgy of the Mass in favor of socialization with one’s neighbor during Mass, that produced a mindset among average Catholics that is inimical to the kind of prayer called for by the Rosary.

The Holy Father’s move to restore the devotion of the Rosary reminds one of the statements of Mikhail Gorbachev when the Soviet Empire was coming down around his ears. If only Communism were practiced purely, the Soviet Union would be doing just fine, he insisted to the bitter end. He failed to realize that the very system he was perpetuating was inherently flawed.

So too the Holy Father exhibits a myopic disregard for the importance of Tradition in Church policy and practice. This hero and ongoing champion of Vatican II, of a progressive Church that rarely looks back beyond that Council for precedent, and which faults and hinders those Catholics who do, is clueless as to the cure for the tepid spirituality of his times. It couldn’t be any of his reforms or colleagues – it must be a case of the reforms not being practiced purely!

Another example, the very progressive American Jerry Brown, leaps to mind.

Campaigning for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1988, he was reminded by a reporter that his stint as governor of California had given him no foreign policy experience. Asked what he could bring to this sphere of government, he shot back smugly, "Clarity of thought." He might have lifted his answer from the playbook of the modern Church reformers.

Look at the Holy Father’s bishops and cardinals – he has appointed more than almost any other pope – and try to find among them even a notable minority who railed against sex education corrupting our children, and our priests!

Find just one who found the sexual revolution corrupting our seminaries and polluting our parishes out of control and put a stop to it. One who recognized, and made it his pastoral policy, that the age-old fight for personal piety has not been "fixed" by the Vatican II system of infantile rebellion against Church traditions. Had these been men following in the tradition – which does not mean asphyxiated by it – of brave and wise men of the cloth in ages past, they would have been keenly relevant to our times. Had they been, in Saint Thomas Aquinas’s apt phrase, able to see so far because they were standing on the shoulders of giants – their fathers – we would have a Church of an informed laity and clergy alike. And we would not be split into distrustful factions grabbing for the right to dictate forms of worship, with the innovators absurdly trying to label the traditional Mass as schismatic.

We would have, in other words, leadership … and its immediate sequel, unity. But leadership betokens respect for one’s forbears. Respect for pre-Vatican II tradition and leaders is more than absent from average Catholics: they don’t even know they have a past.

And if the flock had had the proper guidance all along from the Church hierarchy, they would not need a new set of "luminous mysteries" to light their way in these times of darkness.

The sequel to this pathetic attempt to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic is predictable. Watch for yet more divisiveness between traditional Catholics who will say the Rosary without the Holy Father’s addend, and the mainstream Catholics who will find this behavior "recalcitrant," even suggestive of schism.

If ever there had been a concerted effort in the latter 20th century to polarize Catholics, it was the establishment, and then the forced usage, of the Novus Ordo Mass (note that upper mismanagement was hardly confident in the appeal of the New Mass to let it spread spontaneously, or to permit both liturgies to coexist equitably). This latest disregard for Church tradition – a new and improved Rosary – will likely go down the same dismal path of discord. How could it not? The "new Catholics" have given no quarter to traditionalists regarding the Tridentine Mass. Now they have their "own" Rosary as well. Unity is not a likely effect of this latest enactment.

When Our Lady gave the Rosary to Saint Dominic in the thirteenth century, it came with fifteen mysteries, and they were expected to do the job of helping mankind attain an efficacious prayer life, and with it, salvation.

When Saint Louis de Montfort proselytized the praying of the Rosary, it was the fifteen-mystery Rosary.

When Our Lady came to Fatima, she pleaded with her children to say the Rosary … all fifteen mysteries of it.

Now we have a man coming up with the idea that, apparently, five more mysteries are needed to dramatize the importance of the Rosary. So … forms of worship are now tactics, to be manipulated at will, or alternately discarded and spat upon as un-Catholic when they become old?

I’m sorry, I’ve been down that "relevance" route before, in the 60s when I was young and didn’t know any better, and it holds no credence for me. It was bad for the faith then; it will continue to be bad for it now, no matter the good intentions or "clarity of thought" attending it.

I hope the Rosary will continue to be said by many more than do so now.

Somehow, I do not think that Our Lady failed to make us cognizant of all the mysteries we should have been meditating on since she spoke with Saint Dominic. Somehow, too, I think the Holy Father’s message asking his flock to pray the Rosary could have been an opportunity for him to remind us of yet one more thing we used to do right as Catholics. It might have been an opportunity to shepherd us back into the age-old Church from which the sheep have so often strayed. And there is nothing very new in that.

▀

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Tue, 11 Dec 2018 | Cover | Page 14

Papal Cattocomunismo (Italian Reds)

by Hilary White

Papal Cattocomunismo didn’t come from nowhere.

Something Americans are often surprised by when they come to live in Italy is the prominence of and acceptance of Communism. In the US, the mere application of the expression "liberal" is taken as a grave political slight, and the assumption is still made by most that full-on, hammer-and-sickle, brand-name Communism is a dead letter. Went down with the Berlin Wall in 1991. They are shocked when they come across the seas of hammer and sickle flags waved at "Gay Pride" parades and political "manifestazione," and at the unabashed association of leftist priests with openly and proudly Marxist community organisations, called "Social Centres".

But Italians are well acquainted with the presence of Communist elements in their polity and in the Church, and aren’t shy about calling it what it is. And they also know that the moral scandals of the leftists are always, always tied together with money: outrageously corrupt officials, closely inter-related "aid" organisations like Caritas Internationalis with internationalist, Soros-backed NGOs, the mafia and the bankers, all looking for a cut.

A case in point: This is Don Paolo Farinella, one of the more notorious of the Cattocomunisti priests who goes out of his way in newspaper op-eds to make a public spectacle of his apostasy and vicious hatred of the Faith as well as contempt for believers, always while pulling a long mournful face about "the poor" - that in Italy right now always equals "migrants".

1

His latest look-how-holy-I-am political stunt is to announce yesterday that

he will be closing his parish over Christmas out of "conscience" and objection to Salvini’s migrant repatriation policy.

Cattocomunisto priest cancels all Christmas observances, instead announcing he will close his Genoa parish in protest against Salvini’s migrant policies.

By what right can Christians claim to celebrate the Christmas of that Jesus that their country, without any resistance or protest, expels as a man in the Son of God? Should not the bishops with their precious clothes go in search of Jesus rejected and voted to death?

How can you open the churches and play with lullabies, "You come down from the stars", Gregorian chants, wicked nativity scenes, when outside the true Christ

1 The chronic poverty of Italians – even those with jobs – is of little concern to the Cattocomunisti clergy and bishops for whom the narrative requires a perpetual conflict between victim and oppressor classes. The communist narrative says that if you’re Italian you’re an oppressor unless you kow tow and demonstrate that you’re willing to destroy your own country as an act of political penance. Bishops demonstrate their non-oppressor status by oppressing Italian poor people in favour of African migrants. Reports have made the papers of disabled Italians being thrown out of diocesan-subsidised housing to make room for the favoured victim groups.

is offended, tortured, raped, reviled, sold, slapped, killed, like the " man of sorrows "of Isaiah prophet? ( Is 53).

The church of San Torpete in Genoa for this Christmas will be closed because it is a Christmas without Christ, a Christmas without God because Christmas without Man.

This kind of political stunt from the cattocomunisti filth is not uncommon here.

"Don Farinella is the pretonzolo [derogatory term for a priest of poor preparation and limited intelligence] who admits blasphemy in the church, but not the nativity scene. A communist priest, a bit Islamized, who a few years ago greeted positively the initiative of Don Prospero Bonzani, [known for forbidding his parishioners from making the sign of the Cross because it might "offend" Muslims] who had inserted a mosque in the crib of the parish of Via Vesuvio.

"This year the same initiative is repeated as in 2015: no Mass and church closed at Christmas : this is the decision of the parish priest of San Torpete, a parish in the heart of central-eastern Genoa, to protest against the security decree. The priest claims to send a message to those Catholics who "praising Salvini, an uncultivated man, without any sense of the state and of law, are accomplices of injustice humanity and of ‘deicide’".

And as always, he goes unchecked and uncorrected by his worthless bishop, "conservative" Angelo Cardinal Bagnasco, who a few years ago presided at the funeral Mass of another notorious communist priest, Don Gallo and gave Holy Communion to Italy’s leading "LGBT activist," a transvestite who calls himself "Vladimir Luxuria" (meaning "lust" in Latin. ) But hey, if you feel like wasting your energies, by all means contact him and tell him what you think.

Cattocomunismo, as it is called, is not exactly a secret in this country, and I think it’s such a useful term that it should start getting used more often overseas.

Here in Il Giornale it is called out by name, as happens often in Italian editorials.

"The hypocrisy of the cattocomunista"

"On TV [the Catholic and secular agencies bringing migrants in] call the refugees "migrant brothers" with a contrite face, but on the phone they talk about them as the ‘negri da spellare.’" [lit. "negros to peel" or "strip" - ie: to exploit to generate cash] Here Il Giornale’s Alessandro Sallusti says what everyone in the country knows: that migrants are big, big, BIG business, worth hundreds of millions of Euros to whoever can pack the most into Italy. This is why Caritas Internationalis and the Italian bishops’ conference are so keen to make sure there is a 20 year old African beggar standing in front of every supermarket in the country, no matter how tiny or remote the village: they get paid by the head.

The ideological advantage of frightening little old ladies - "gang rape" having gone from a dark rumour about other, more backward countries to a daily feature of European newspaper headlines - and cowing the populace in general with the message that what they might want or not want for their communities is unimportant - is just an added sidebenefit. If the little old parish ladies complain they no longer feel safe walking the 150 meters from their Thursday night parish Rosary group to their homes, you can have the added fun of calling them racists.

And this being Italy, we always have to remember that where the money is pouring, there you will find the mafia arriving with their buckets. As Sallusti reminds us: "These are not, as written yesterday by someone, ‘the hands of the mafia on the skin of immigrants,’ because the

hands of the mafia are always and everywhere money circulates."

And let us not forget that the price being paid by the migrants themselves is considerably higher than a few thousand Euros in cash. Tens of thousands are estimated to have lost their lives attempting to make the Mediterranean crossing, encouraged by the pope, paid out of their pockets to an enthusiastic and growing community of criminal traffickers. (Who, by the way, have also revived a rip-roaring slave trade as a side benefit.) Indeed it is becoming difficult to distinguish between the Mafia and the Ecclesia. And unsurprising that a man like Brett Ligon would refer without scruple to a large Catholic diocese as a "criminal organisation." As Montgomery County District Attorney, Ligon’s office ordered a police raid recently on the Archdiocese of Houston chancery, looking for evidence of criminal coverups of criminal abuser-priests.

"We are treating the Catholic Church in the same way we’d treat a bank that has records; in the way that we’d treat a criminal enterprise," Ligon said. And it’s why there was such a rousing cheer from Catholics when he added, "I know that he’s probably not pleased at all, but it’s not my job to please the cardinal."

This is all simply to explain why guys like Blase Cupich are so popular in Rome right now. He’s got the bead on the Italian-Vatican ecclesiastical mindset; we shouldn’t be going "down a rabbit hole" on this sexy-stuff when there’s migrants and the environment to talk about. They talk a lot of editorial nonsense for interviews about the sad plight of the poor darling little migrants; but the real issues are a good deal more concrete, mostly involving very large amounts of cash. Those are the issues that interest the pope because they’re what interest his financial and political backers in places like Brussels, Zurich, Vienna and Berlin.

And it’s why notoriously corrupt Cattocomunismi characters like José Rodríguez Carballo - the prelate currently working on destroying the contemplative religious life, who was Bergoglio’s very first appointment in 2013 - are always, always tied up with criminal financial scandals.

One of the leading Vatican bureaucrats who fights against the Friars is Archbishop José Rodríguez Carballo OFM, the secretary of the Congregation for the Religious, a Francis intimate, who was one of the main protagonists of the huge financial scandal hitting the Franciscans (OFM) in December 2014. The scandal was quickly hushed up.

Because Carballo is a radical-liberal, nobody touched him, on the contrary, Francis promoted him to become an archbishop.

The hints that the persecution of religious orders is closely connected to their assets are abundant. Here is Cardinal João Braz de Aviz, Prefect of the Congregation for Religious, talking about the "knots" in the religious life that need to be "untied" by "reform".

First, the cardinal spoke to the vow of poverty: Many religious possess millions in assets, such as deposits with the Vatican Bank IOR, half of whose deposits belongs to Orders.

He spoke of an order with a religious

Continued on Page 15

The Pope receives a gift from Bolivian President Evo Morales.

Papal Cattocomunismo,

Continued...

H. White/ Continued from page 13

vow of poverty which, without saying who the Order is, has 30 million in the bank.

That number - 30 million Euros - keeps cropping up again and again. In this case it is clear that the good Cattocomunista cardinal prefect was referring to the Franciscans of the Immaculate, since Marco Tosatti informed us that this was the amount that the Congregation for Religious is still trying to squeeze out of the order - an effort that has been frustrated so far by the Italian courts.

Imagine having the Italian litigation courts chastising you for corruption...

just wrap your head around that one for a second... (30 million Euros was also, incidentally, the amount that was reported to have been paid to Cardinal Parolin, Secretary of State and reportedly a rival of Bergoglio, for his help with the coup staged by the Boeselager faction in the Knights of Malta, something I’ve personally been warned against talking about too much.

It was also close to this amount that was reported to have been demanded by Bergoglio from the Papal Foundation; $25 million US. Yes, it is funny how often that particular figure pops up in the news. One might almost suspect it was named by one of the Vatican’s "financial experts" as what it costs to win a Conclave... if one were feeling particularly cynical.) "Anglosassone" Catholics like you and me, particularly Americani, who believe it isn’t outrageous to expect clergy to act in accordance with Catholic moral teaching, are looked upon as hopelessly credulous dupes by most ranking Italian prelates. Always getting our wee heads into incomprehensible tizzies over trivialities like a few kids getting abused by priests, as if everyone doesn’t know that is something that has gone on for centuries. Regrettable, if they didn’t like it, but not that big a deal.

Bigger fish to fry, right? Bigger fruit to peel... Migrants, for instance. ■

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Tue, 11 Dec 2018 | Cover | Page 15

Feed the Priests, Starve the Bishops

By Father Celatus

Several years ago, one of my friends ended up in a bad marriage. He travelled a lot in conjunction with his work and he eventually discovered that his wife was carrying on an affair during his absence.

The marriage could not be salvaged and typical of no-fault divorce and corrupt courts, his wife was awarded alimony and custody of his children. Broken by the experience, my friend decided that he would quit his job and exhaust all his savings rather than pay her any money for support. He lost his home and ended up destitute and on welfare. There is an old proverb that fits this: Do not cut off your nose to spite your face!

There are many Catholics who, like my friend, may be cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Not over the matter of an unfaithful spouse and a broken marriage, but rather over a matter of unfaithful shepherds and a broken church. I am speaking of a movement which garnered national attention and gained impetus this past summer to starve the institutional church, and bishops in particular, of their life source: money!

As sexual scandal after scandal broke during this past Summer of Shame for the Catholic Church in the United States, headlines in the mainstream media read, Catholics consider withholding donations amid scandals, and Catholics lash out at church leaders with their wallets. Who can blame the faithful for wanting to do something—anything—to punish predator prelates who ravage and fleece their own flocks?

The shame began early in the summer, with the June revelations regarding Cardinal (no-longer) Theodore McCarrick, who as a homosexual predator preyed upon seminarians, priests and teens for decades. Even more scandalous than the perverted predation of this one individual is the fact that Uncle Ted’s behavior was "an open secret" among high ranking prelates and yet his predation was allowed to continue unabated and he continued to be elevated to ever higher positions of power and influence in the Catholic Church.

The next shock wave of scandal came in August, with the long-awaited release of the report of a grand jury on sex abuse within six dioceses of the state of Pennsylvania. The 900-page report implicated at least 300 clergy of sexually abusing minors and accused multiple prelates of cover up. According to the report:

Despite some institutional reform, individual leaders of the church [sic] have largely escaped public accountability. Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all.

For decades Monsignors, auxiliary bishops, bishops, archbishops, cardinals have mostly been protected; many, including some named in this report, have been promoted. Until that changes, we think it is too early to close the book on the Catholic Church sex scandal.

While still in the heat of August and public scrutiny, in an unprecedented act, a high ranking prelate and former nuncio to the United States released several pages of personal testimony which not only confirmed what had been revealed about the Mr. McCarrick cover up, but it incriminated Francis of Rome himself as having had first-hand knowledge of McCarrick as a serial predator at the time he restored him to positions of power and influence in the United States, in the Vatican and even in foreign relations, to include China.

Then the Summer of Shame gave way to the next seasonal change for the Church, the Fall of Failure.

With empty promises to Catholics and the secular world, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops gathered in early November to discuss and approve policies that would hold bishops accountable for protecting predators and for predatory behavior themselves.

At the eleventh hour, on the eve of their assembly, a mandate came down from the Vatican that they were not to discuss such matters at all.

Wallowing in shame, the U.S. bishops sought to salvage their assembly with a recommendation that the Vatican would open an investigation into the sordid McCarrick scandal, most especially as to how such a known serial abuser could continue this behavior and rise to positions of power and prestige he attained. By a majority vote, the U.S. bishops failed to pass this recommendation and they went home as failures.

After all these scandals and so much more, we again ask the question, "Who can blame Catholics for withholding money from these miserable men?" The Last Word agrees: it’s time to starve the shepherds!

What are ways in which the faithful can starve the shepherds? A good place to begin, as traditional Catholics have long known, is to cut off donations to any of the many USCCB approved collections:

Collection for the Church in Latin America, Collection for Aid to the Church in Central and Eastern Europe, The Catholic Relief Services Collection, Catholic Home Mission Appeal, Catholic Communication Campaign, Peter’s Pence Collection, Catholic Campaign for Human Development, Retirement Fund for Religious, Pastoral Solidarity Fund for the Church in Africa, Black and Indian Missions, CRS Rice Bowl, Pontifical Good Friday Collection for the Holy Land, The Catholic University of America, World Mission Sunday, Collection for the Archdiocese for the Military Services.

No doubt many of you are astounded by the number of nationally approved collections. Count yourself blessed if your pastor has done you the favor of eliminating these collections from your church envelopes. In addition to these collections, dioceses have additional causes for which they solicit funds, to include annual diocesan appeals of various sorts. Withholding from these starves the local bishop of his income.

But some want to go a step farther and starve their bishop by withholding donations to their own parish. And this is where Catholics may be cutting off their own noses to spite their face. By all means, if you belong to a progressive parish with a modernist pastor, you should not financially support it. For that matter, you should withhold not only your money but also your presence. In other words, go elsewhere.

But if you belong to a parish at which you are provided with the traditional Mass and Sacraments and substance by a solid pastor, then please do not withhold your weekly offering with the idea that it will hurt a bishop. For every nickel on the dollar that may make its way to a chancery the other ninety-five cents is denied to your own parish and will have far greater negative impact at home than in the diocese.

The Last Word on this matter is this: by all means, starve the bishops; but support those who support you! ■

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Tue, 11 Dec 2018 | Cover | Page 16

Baby killers collude with politician to put prolife hero David Daleiden behind bars for decades

Dear Remnant Reader,

If David Daleiden is found guilty of the 15 false felony charges against him, he could be put behind bars for decades in San Quentin Penitentiary. He could spend 23 hours a day in a 5-foot by 11-foot cell with a bed, a sink, a toilet, and cockroaches.

The only thing that can prevent that monstrous injustice is the strongest possible legal defense.

Let me brief ly introduce myself to you. I’m attorney Tom Brejcha, the founder and president of the Chicago-based Thomas More Society. For over 20 years my organization has defended the defenders of innocent babies.

As you may recall, the Thomas More Society successfully defended the legendary Joe Scheidler, the father of pro-life activism, when the abortion industry filed a nasty, unjust lawsuit against him. Joe won a unanimous victory in the U.S. Supreme Court. That’s why David Daleiden asked my organization to defend him.

Never before have I seen a pro-life activist in so much trouble. Incredible as it sounds, David faces 15 false felony charges in California plus two racketeering lawsuits in federal court plus other litigation in Washington state.

David is innocent!

David obtained video evidence during his 30-month undercover investigation that the abortionists committed these acts that violate federal law: (1) they trafficked in aborted babies’ body parts for profit, (2) they altered abortion procedures for the purpose of getting better fetal specimens for sale, and (3) they committed partial-birth abortions.

In other words, the abortionists shouldbeontrial,notDavid.Theyknow they’re in trouble, and they believe their best defense is a strong offense.

That’s why they’re using the "trial by avalanche" strategy to crush and bury David. Who can afford to defend himself against 15 false criminal charges plus two gigantic racketeering lawsuits? Only a multi-millionaire. But David is just an average person.

The abortionists want to bury David with litigation, crush him with exorbitant lawsuit judgments and fines, and put him behind bars in San Quentin. If that happens, David and his work will be unjustly discredited, and the abortionists may even get away with their crimes against federal law. That’s why the abortionists and their pals in public office are pushing so hard to nail David!

Because of space limitations, I can’t describe all of the complex legal issues here. But let me briefly explain in layman’s language why the 15 felony charges are as phony as a $3 bill.

You see, the California Attorney General applauds undercover journalists that expose such things as cruelty to animals or dishonest car repair shops. Undercover journalists in those cases aren’t charged with a felony for violating California’s eavesdropping law, which requires that both parties consent to recording a confidential conversation. Indeed, no criminal would ever consent to being recorded!

Becerra loves abortion!

Attorney General Becerra is persecuting David for one reason only: because David’svideosexposedillegalactsofabortionists— the people Becerra admires.

What’s more, the conversations David recorded weren’t confidential. The conversations took place in restaurants and exhibit halls where busboys, waitresses, and other hotel employees could easily overhear what was being recorded. The 15 felony charges are unjust. They don’t hold water.

The federal racketeering lawsuits against David are also meritless. But the dangerous and complex civil lawsuits and criminal charges could ruin his life. It bears repeating that David needs the strongest possible defense in all of the cases against him! Otherwise he’ll be buried in the avalanche of litigation.

This is an unprecedented legal emergency and personal crisis for David, an innocent man who is by far the abortionists’ strongest foe.

Without mercy, the attack-dog lawyers are nipping at David’s heels and harassing him with abusive, frivolous litigation. They’ve already gotten a gag-order against him, which prevents him from releasing any more videos. They hope he’ll knuckle under and settle.

David will never quit!

He’ll never settle. He’ll never compromise. Nor will I. The only thing that can stop me is shortness of funds. As long as I have breath in me, I’ll go to the wall to defend David.

It bears repeating that David hired me because I successfully defended America’s No. 1 pro-life activist Joe Scheidler in a similar federal racketeering lawsuit, which we won by a unanimous vote of the U.S. Supreme Court. He has confidence that the Thomas More Society will successfully defend him. That’s why we depend on friends like you to support his legal defense.

I’m not asking for myself. I’m asking for David, who needs a strong legal defense, and for the babies David will save by putting the abortionists out of business. If, God forbid, David loses, babies will die. It’s that simple.

You see, the Thomas More Society runs on a shoestring. We never charge a fee to pro-life clients. Instead, we rely on the sacrifices and prayers of people like you.

Because David’s case is a multifront battle—with two federal lawsuits in San Francisco, another in Seattle, plus criminal felony charges in California state court—the financial needs for David’s defense are enormous. To win a victory I’ve hired seasoned pro-life attorneys who are in private practice to join David’s defense team.

Please support David’s legal defense now!

Even though these pro-life attorneys charge the Thomas More Society a reduced rate, the cost of defending David Daleiden over the next several months could easily exceed a half million dollars. (In one month alone, the cost was six figures.) That’s a lot of money, but it’s only a fraction of what the abortionists are paying the anti-life lawyers who are bent on destroying David. You can’t put a price tag on justice. Justice is beyond price.

Victory for David is a must! But victory will come neither quickly, nor easily, nor cheaply. However, I can assure you that I won’t quit. I’ve assembled a winning legal defense team of seasoned pro-life attorneys to beat the abortion lawyers. I’m committed to fight for David for the long haul. The only thing that can stop us is shortness of funds.

I’m praying that two heroes will step forward with a tax-deductible sacrifice of $10,000 or more. Could you consider being one of those heroes? If not, please join me in praying that someone else will step forward with a gift like that.

Could you consider making a gift of $1,000, $2,500, or $5,000? The Thomas More Society needs gifts in that range to win a victory for David.

We also need many gifts of $500, $250, or $100—and even more gifts of $50, $35, or whatever you can sacrifice. No gift is too large, and no gift is too small. Please dig deep and send the biggest sacrifice you can. Your gift will help us defend not only David Daleiden but other innocent pro-lifers who depend on the Thomas More Society for free legal help.

Every sacrifice is precious to the Lord—even a widow’s mite, as the Gospel says. Please rush your tax-deductible gift now, made payable to the Thomas More Society.

Very truly yours, Tom Brejcha, attorney Founder and President Thomas More Society P.S. The abortionists hope you’ll ignore this appeal. They hope David Daleiden’s defense team will run out of funds so they can win their lawsuits by default and ruin him. Please don’t let that happen. Please pray for David’s victory, and mail your sacrificial gift right now while the reply coupon is at hand.

Meet Xavier Becerra, the fanatical pro-abortion Attorney General of California. When he was elected, his abortionist pals at Planned Parenthood sponsored his victory party. He does the abortionists’ bidding as he works hand-in-glove with them to destroy the innocent pro-life hero David Daleiden. Becerra has slapped David with 15 false felonies to punish him for his undercover journalism that exposed Planned Parenthood’s illegal trafficking in aborted babies’ body parts. David needs the strongest possible defense to beat these false charges in a state where the jury is likely to be pro-abortion.

Meet David Daleiden, a just man whose 30-month undercover investigation exposed a shocking scandal of illegal trafficking in aborted babies’ brains, hearts, livers, eyeballs, etc. The evidence is so damning that it could topple the abortion industry, but a pro-abortion federal judge has censored much of his evidence with a gag order. Yet David faces 15 false felony charges in California state court plus two racketeering lawsuits in federal court. In this extreme emergency, David depends on friends like you to support his legal defense. He says, "Please send your tax-deductible gift to the Chicago-based Thomas More Society."

David Bereit, the co-founder of 40 Days for Life, says, "America’s No. 1 pro-life attorney, Tom Brejcha, defends innocent pro-lifers who are falsely arrested or harassed. Please rush a tax-deductible gift to Tom’s organization, the Chicago-based Thomas More Society, to support the legal defense of pro-life hero David Daleiden."

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