The USS Liberty Incident as a Basis for anti-Israel US Policy November 8, 2019
Posted by Tantumblogo in fightback, General Catholic, pr stunts, secularism, sickness, Society, the struggle for the Church.comments closed
This post both got too long and is some deep-inside baseball stuff on small aspects of the conservative movement. But, I’m a Youtube addict and this is a matter that is attracting much attention, there. It has to do with fringe elements of the conservative movement among younger millenials and Zoomers and their criticisms of more mainstream conservatism. I agree with much of what they have to say but disagree on one particular element. That’s not even true, I don’t mind changing US policy towards Israel, but I just don’t see how it’s germane to the other topics, or why it needs to be such a huge focus of their attention, and I think it is a very dangerous game that could lead to severe damage not just to these youngsters but the entire conservative agenda and even the re-election chances of Donald Trump. At any rate, the part on the Liberty is in italics, you can read just that if you want. The whole thing is probably TL;DR.
I have seen a growing movement online among primarily young men – many of them under the influence of E. Michael Jones and also the Youtube personality Nick Fuentes (who presents as an orthodox if not traditional Catholic) – who are vociferously criticizing slightly more mainstream conservatives such as Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk, and others at various public events. They call themselves “groypers” and they advocate an “America First” vision of conservatism which is very similar to certain strains of pre-WWII conservatism in the US. That is, they advocate for a much more isolationist foreign policy, they are extremely concerned over the threat posed to this nation’s culture (such as it is) and government by unconstrained immigration, legal and illegal, and they have very strong criticisms towards Israel that, at times, seem to tip into anti-semitism, though the “groypers” deny the charge. While there is much to admire in this movement, I believe this anti-Israel stand is ultimately going to prove counterproductive and even destructive of their aims.
Tactically speaking, there is no way to get labeled an “alt-right” fascist quicker than to start throwing rhetorical bombs at Israel. There is certainly room for criticism of US policy towards Israel, but given the bias in the media, the historical past, and the, how shall I say, extreme friendliness of the political/cultural elite in the current culture towards Israel and Zionism generally, making loud and very brash and broad criticisms of Israel is a very short path towards getting your movement labeled extremist, fascist, Nazi-like, etc. That may not be fair, but it’s the reality.
As I said, there is much to admire in these “groypers.” They are well organized, dedicated, and largely coherent. I have no problems with, and indeed strongly concur on a number of the policy positions they advocate, especially those related to immigration. I believe at this time and place in American history, we need to not only control illegal immigration but put in place a practical moratorium on legal immigration for a period of 20 or 30 years, to allow for assimilation of those teeming millions who have flooded our country over the past 50 years. I also have no problem with a more coherent and thoughtful foreign policy that gets away from the “troops first, ask questions later” mentality of the past 18 years. That has gotten us nowhere in terms of advancing American interests and has indeed led to the needless expenditure of trillions of dollars and thousands of lives. It has left the Mideast much worse off, from a geopolitical standpoint, than it was 20 years ago.
But many Americans, myself included, are probably more than a little confused what Israel has to do with any of this. The “groypers” claim that the US involvement in the Mideast has been done at Israel’s behest, but this is a case they are far from proving, and in fact they tend to resort to hand-waving very quickly when questioned. When asked why the US should stop supporting Israel with – frankly speaking, relative to the federal budget – paltry sums of a few billions dollars a year (about $4 billion). Most of that money winds up coming back to the US in the form of the purchase of defense hardware.
The ”groypers” frequently insist that Israel is not the US’ friend and that we have no business supporting them. While this is a highly debated question and one I don’t need to go into now, one of their primary justifications for this claim is the USS Liberty incident. In this, I’m afraid they err, and quite possibly, tip their hand more than they intend to.
The attack on the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967, is one of those incidents in history that has attracted far more attention and controversy than it has any right to. A US surveillance ship in international waters was attacked by Isreali fighter aircraft on the 4th day of the Six Day War. Israeli aircraft were constantly traversing this region of the Mediterranean going to and from targets in Egypt, whose military they obliterated in the course of a few days. The USS Liberty was in the area under NSA orders to gather intelligence on both sides, but particularly the Egyptians, who used mostly Soviet hardware. The ship was strafed and torpedoed repeatedly, with 34 men killed, 171 wounded, and the ship almost sunk.
Israel quickly apologized for the attack and paid some degree of compensation, but ever since, many people, including a number of the Liberty’s survivors, have claimed that the vessel was deliberately attacked by Israel, for what reason is never quite made clear, or makes much sense. The US was at that time Israel’s largest and just about only ally. How Israel would benefit from this attack is also far from clear.
But, some survivors and those who feel the attack was deliberately made claim, Israel had to know it was a US ship! It was flying an American flag! Israel had been notified of the ship’s presence! Unfortunately, the notification of the ship’s presence never made it to the Israeli Air Force and the squadron involved in the attack. False reports of Egyptian ships shelling Israeli units in Sinai caused alarm in Israel’s chain of command. Aircraft were dispatched to investigate. They found the Liberty, and attacked.
But still, the flag! They should have known it was a US ship! Also, the Liberty was a converted freighter, which looks nothing like a warship. They should have, they must have known.
This is where a little knowledge of military history enters in. In fact, misidentification of ships by aircraft is a constant, severe, and ongoing problem. Air force pilots are rarely well trained in ship identification. Even naval aviation pilots often make severe mistakes. How severe? A few examples:
- British pilots attacked US ships in several of the Malta convoys during WWII in the same region – the Mediterranean.
- US pilots at Coral Sea, the Eastern Solomons, Santa Cruz, and the Philippine Sea constantly misreported attacks. The Japanese did the same in all these battles, and more. The Japs sank USS Neosho, an 8000 ton oiler, at the Coral Sea, and thought they had sunk the USS Lexington, a 40,000 ton, 900 foot long aircraft carrier (they did, later). US pilots reported sinking battleships and aircraft carriers when they had actually slightly damaged a freighter or a destroyer. US pilots attacked US ships. German pilots attacked Italian ships. This kind of thing happened all the time. There were literally dozens of such incidents.
- At the invasion of Sicily, Allied warplanes attacked allied ships of the invasion fleet right off the coast, in spite being briefed that is exactly where they would be!
And these were largely aircraft piloted by very experienced men who were experts in identifying ships! It goes to show how incredibly difficult it is to ID a ship from a fast moving aircraft. And fast moving is very relative. Those mistakes in WWII were made by men flying aircraft at perhaps 250 kts. A jet fighter will be going twice that speed, making identification all the more difficult. During the infamous Gulf of Tonkin incident, Vice Admiral and later Vice Presidential candidate James Stockdale came within an ace of unloading his ordinance on a US destroyer, mistaking it for a North Vietnamese PT boat, which is about 1/6th the size of a destroyer.
The same applies to the torpedo boats which attacked the Liberty. While not as common as aircraft friendly fire attacks on ships, in the fog of war instances of “blue on blue” or accidental attacks by surface ships are still quite frequent. During WWII, the motor torpedo boats – PT boats in US parlance – were a frequent source of accidental, US-on-US attacks. One particularly famous incident was during the 2nd Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, when the US’ best battleship admiral in history, Willis Augustus Lee, had to make an emergency, plain-language, unencrypted call to the nearby PT boat squadron base to keep them from attacking his ships. And that, too, was a close run thing. Now, most of these same side surface ship attacks occurred at night, when visibility is of course much worse, but they have been known to happen at day. So, what happened with the Liberty is not all that surprising.
And I think that’s one of the reasons this has become such a persistent conspiracy theory, one maintained, to a large degree, by some of the Liberty’s survivors. If I’m right, their suffering and the deaths of their friends were the result of an accident, and thus devoid of meaning. That’s a hard thing to take. It’s too much for some people. So, instead of accepting this likelihood, they have created a mythos that the attack was deliberate.
The “groypers”, almost every time they bring up Israel, have referenced this attack as a reason why the US should have a neutral, if not hostile, attitude towards that nation. The Liberty incident seems to play a major role in their ideology regarding Israel. But I think the evidence overwhelmingly indicates this an entirely false premise.
And, as I said, I think it’s a serious mistake tactically, and I think it points to some unfortunate biases that have crept into their thinking. It is not an understatement to note that E. Michael Jones has laid much, if not almost all, of the blame for the current collapse of Christendom at the feet of the perfidious Jews. Much of his analysis is based on conspiratorial reads of historical and cultural developments and points towards a deliberate destruction of that culture perpetrated by one group of people. As I indicated above, many of these “groypers,” including two of their leaders, are very open about the degree to which they are influenced by Jones, which is far more than slightly. Thus, it is perhaps not entirely surprising that some of those they are attacking react by calling them anti-semites. At least some of the “groypers” were previously involved in the increasingly marginalized “alt-right” of extreme racist and anti-Semite Richard Spencer. The “groypers” purported outrage, then, at being called anti-semitic is perhaps at least somewhat disingenuous.
Again, this is not to say that all criticism of Israel is out of bounds, nor that it is unacceptable to suggest completely changing US policy with regard to that nation. It’s more how they’ve done it, and the degree to which they have made it such a focus of their rhetoric, exclaiming that those who support Israel are guilty of “dual loyalty” (a very old anti-semitic trope), etc.
I also have a problem with another aspect of their tactics, which is the zero-sum game mentality, which holds that in order for them to rise, they must tear others down. Number 1 “groyper” Fuentes goes on for hours almost nightly about how they must essentially destroy the reputations and influence of the likes of Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, Matt Walsh, Dan Crenshaw, etc., in order to “get a seat at the table” and advance this supposed “America-first” agenda. Now, I can understand on some level this desire, as conservatism has been cursed for decades with leadership that is full of lying, self-serving fools who disdain the base and their views and only play at being conservative for long enough to get elected or their cushy, “Conservative, Inc” jobs. Indeed, Fuentes does make some distinctions, and seems to recognize that some people are much more honest and convicted conservatives than others. He seems to have particular ire for Charlie Kirk/Turning Point USA and Dan Crenshaw, who he thinks are RINO shills with no real conservative principles. So, some of these people may need to be exposed.
But……….the “groypers” have laid traps for other, much more stalwart conservatives like Shapiro, Walsh, and Crowder. I think this kind of internecine, destructive warfare is not helpful in the long run.
Which is why the thought has crossed my mind that some or much of this “groyper” movement might be plants – just as the leftists loved the “alt-right” and Richard Spencer and gave him a platform every chance they could, in order to try to discredit conservatives generally as hateful, fascist bigots. I would not say I’m convinced of their being plants, not even close, really, but it is something I will continue to ponder as I observe the actions of the “groypers.”
In a Church in Chaos, Don’t Let Perfect Be the Enemy of Good Enough October 17, 2019
Posted by Tantumblogo in asshatery, blogfoolery, Dallas Diocese, error, foolishness, General Catholic, Latin Mass, pr stunts, sadness, self-serving, Society, the struggle for the Church, Tradition, Virtue.comments closed
An article appeared at the generally strong Federalist a few weeks ago, which surprisingly centered on a disgruntled TLM-er – or former traddie – listing the manifest failures of the TLM parish from their point of view. It seemed to me a rather strange choice for The Federalist, as they normally do politics from a reliably right wing perspective and most often are out there excoriating Never Trumpers, and rightly so. But, whatevs. You should read the whole thing. I’d appreciate your insight on it.
Now, a few things up front. I happen to know the author. Not really, but I’ve seen him. He’s been around pretty regularly for several years. I think he was in one of the choirs at one point. I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to him. And, the parish he was criticizing was my own, or, at least, given that he regularly assisted there off and on for years I’d tend to think it figured largely in his thinking. I say that out front to let you know that I have a bit of a vested interest in this matter– this is the parish I have chosen to plight my troth with and raise my children in. I am well aware of the limitations of traditional Catholicism generally in this time of unprecedented crisis, and of the priestly fraternity that operates the parish I attend, and of the parish itself. The author, Auguste Meyrat, repeats many of the shopworn criticisms of traditional parishes – an ostensible lack of charity, the people are “weird” or “extreme” (but that tattooed, plate-lipped RCIA instructor at Our Lady of Feelin’ Good is groovy), not enough involvement or social outlets for single people in particular, etc.
All this could be taken as a given. Virtually any parish, anywhere, that has not been led by Saint X, has suffered general lack of virtue. That is our human nature. Even the parishioners of St. Jean Marie Vianney were the objects of constant, stinging rebukes from that great Saint, and his people were, especially after the first few years, souls who had been formed and influenced by someone virtually all the parishioners knew would be canonized someday. This is the nature of any moderately sized grouping of people. Souls gonna sin. It’s our nature. That doesn’t mean we don’t constantly strive for improvement. Of course we do, and we need to hear correction from time to time, especially from our priests, who know our collective and individual failings far better than any layman ever could.
But that’s not my principle problem with this piece criticizing my parish. My principle problem is the tone, the overall nastiness of the criticisms, the sense of entitlement, and the overweening lack of gratitude present. To take a few examples (my comments):
………….TLM parishes can sometimes become unwelcoming places that feel more like strange cults than normal Catholic communities.” [oh? What does a “normal” Catholic community feel like?]
……….This stance often makes some traditional Catholics weird, for lack of a better word. In their minds, countless Freemasons lurk in the shadows, the South really will rise again, monarchy is the ideal form of government, all music after 1700 is sinful, and the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy is the greatest work of literature after the Bible. [Huh. I find Tolkein boring. Sorry. I got 50 pages into The Hobbit and quit. Funny the author just quoted Taylor Marshall’s Infiltration (I did not include), and now drops this remark about Freemasons. The South will what? Monarchy? Music what? What the heck are you talking about? Speaking of, the author quotes Father Ripperger lovingly, and yet Father Ripperger has a lot negative to say about virtually any 20th century music. So which is it?]
They believe the mainstream church is a disgrace, and everything outside the church is an apocalyptic wasteland. In response, they hope to create isolated, self-sustaining communities to buffet the tides of immorality and impiety surrounding them. [Yeah. Exactly. Seriously, that’s one of the best descriptions for why I’m a traditional Catholic. It’s like the first rule of medicine – first, do no harm. Protect what you have. Defend your family. Most of us find we have more than enough to fill our time doing just that. But some of us do occasionally make efforts to convert the wider culture.]
The more normal traditional Catholics at these parishes often go to great lengths to contain the nuttiness. [Really. Explain how.] Depending on the parish and the priests running it, they may succeed, or else they may find themselves falling into the same patterns. Without occasional outside contact, there is no reality check. [We live in a time where “outside contact” is practically unavoidable. Be it radio, TV, internet, co-workers, neighbors, family, shopping, etc, the most insulated Catholics of today probably encounter 100 times as many people in a year than the most outgoing villagers and isolated farmers – the normative Catholic of 1700 – did. This is silly. Note also the author siting himself with the “normals.” In this time of rampant sodomy, four year old transvestites, baby murder, drug addiction, unconstrained usury and rapacious capitalism, etc……..is that what’s being called “normal?”]
I could go on, but I’ll desist (in fact, I left out some of the harshest stuff). I think you have by now gotten the tenor of the piece, and why I take exception to it. It’s painting with a very coarse brush, and does not give anywhere near the exculpation for supposedly strange Trad behaviors that people might rightly deserve – such as the trauma at seeing friends and loved ones consumed and destroyed by this culture, the hatred and vitriol directed at them by the institutional Church, the destructive errors emanating from virtually every Novus Ordo pulpit every Sunday (let alone Rome and this pope, which the author essentially ignores or downplays to a level of insouciance) that lead souls to destruction in this life and in the next. Again, I could go on and on. If some Trads are extreme, if they tend towards a bit of strange behavior, perhaps they could be forgiven, for the damage they’ve incurred and the treatment they’ve been exposed to.
My real riposte to Meyrat, however, would be compared to what ideal are the current afficianados of the TLM so deficient? Compared to some other parish? Some Novus Ordo parish, perhaps? If that’s the case, I’d say there is much more going on here than just a bit of concern about bad attitudes evidenced from time to time.
Or perhaps the comparison is to some hypothetical ideal that exists only in the author’s mind? I suspect that’s the more likely. Certainly, compared to some real Catholic communities that have existed, led by exceptional souls cooperating with grace in superhuman ways that have been the ideals towards which all Catholic communities have pointed for 2000 years, every Trad parish falls short. Of course, so does every Novus Ordo parish, and to a remarkably greater degree. Those past communities were led by people who now have “Saint” in front of their names. These saintly communities rarely had to deal with both a culture and a Church in such utter, deplorable crisis and moral depravity. But, nevertheless, if this is the ideal the author, strongly influenced, it seems, by Father Chad Ripperger, holds, then so be it. This is rightly the ideal towards which all Catholic communities should aim.
But I still take exception to the type and manner of criticisms made. I don’t think it’s helpful for people to be made fun of or made to seem ridiculous for failing to live up to the very highest standards of Catholic formation and community life of the past 2000 years, and I think to some extent that’s what’s going on here. In addition, the piece as a whole had far too much of the sense of an almost anthropological examination of some strange tribe, some “other” to be analyzed and criticized, but not joined or properly understood, rather like the author viewed himself as somehow above or separate from the community.
And that’s another point. Our family has been very involved in this parish for 10 years. My wife, particularly, knocks herself out, especially with regard to the high school co-op. I’ve done a thing or two myself. This is my biggest problem with Mater Dei. While the parish has grown from 300 to 1800 in 10 years, the same 30 people seem to do 90% of the labor at the parish. That’s not entirely true, speaking totally extemporaneously, out of every 100 new parishioners about 1 or 2 will come on board and really help out. It’s a lot easier to just sit back and criticize and find fault, than to join in and help out and build up. What?
The author was worried that weirdo trads are going to keep the TLM phenomenon from growing. I think his analysis is quite off here, too. First, we can only plant, God alone gives the increase, but I think these pieces excoriating wide swaths of the TLM movement as strange, mean, and ugly do far more to keep souls away than the behavior of the 3 or 5% of stereotypical angry old Trads. While I wouldn’t exactly describe this piece at The Federalist as being another circular firing squad amont Trads, it comes close, and does probably more harm than good, certainly more than the author intended. In fact, I think broad criticisms like this are singularly unhelpful, especially published in a secular venue where lack of nuance can easily lead large numbers of people to develop the wrong idea.
I would also add that it is remarkable that for such deficient community, it is amazing that Mater Dei has managed to grow 600% over the past decade. If the souls assisting at Mater Dei were anything like the author describes, that growth would have been impossible. Virtually any other parish, Novus Ordo or TLM, would love to have had such growth over the same timeframe. I don’t think that is accidental, or would have been possible with such a toxic community as described in the piece. The same goes for the other regional TLMs in Tyler, Fort Worth, Houston, and Oklahoma City, to varying degrees.
Alright, I’m done defending my parish. It’s not that I think this parish, or TLM parishes in general, are above criticism. Certainly, I’ve had some things to say in the past, but generally much more specific and to the point. It’s more that I think this particular criticism was off base, and may have said a bit more about the author than it did the parish. Naturally, in matters such as this, your mileage may vary. If the author had other parishes in mind when crafting this piece, my analysis still applies, though somewhat less forcefully and specifically. I think the trope of “mean old trads” and traditional Catholic moral deficiences – as a group, as opposed to individuals – needs to die, or at least be something we see far, far less of. Or of which we see far, far less, for the English teachers out there.
What Did I Tell You? Greta Thunberg Proclaimed “Successor of Christ” by “church” of Sweden October 3, 2019
Posted by Tantumblogo in asshatery, disaster, error, foolishness, General Catholic, horror, paganism, pr stunts, rank stupidity, scandals, secularism, self-serving, sickness, Society, unadulterated evil.comments closed
You can’t make this stuff up. This is so obviously pagan and pathetically political it’s difficult not to laugh. What else should I expect from a false, heretical, man-made “church” of Sweden. In fact, given the fact that Sweden has such a fake church, and that virtually everyone belongs to it, it was practically inevitable that this kind of human-worshipping secular “sainthood” would develop.
Perhaps they deserve to die from cultural assimilation by muslim hordes. At least the muslims have the courage of their convictions:
For [her] defense of the environment, the Swedish church has claimed that activist Greta Thunberg is the “successor of Jesus Christ” at this time.
“Ad! Jesus of Nazareth has now named one of his successors, Greta Thunberg, ” wrote the Limhamns Kyrka church on Twitter.
And a fame-obsessed*, propagandized, mentally unstable child shall lead them.
I’m sure Francis can’t wait to begin surrender negotiations ecumenical dialogue with this Swedish “church.”
*- well, at least her parents are
Dallas, where the clergy sex abuse crisis got its start, proves Francis wrong yet again August 22, 2018
Posted by Tantumblogo in abdication of duty, asshatery, Dallas Diocese, disaster, Endless Corruption, episcopate, error, Francis, horror, pr stunts, scandals, secularism, self-serving, sexual depravity, sickness, Society, unadulterated evil.comments closed
Francis, Bishop of Rome, declared a week or so ago that the Church has broadly overcome the clergy sex abuse problem, that there have been few reports of new abuse cases since roughly 2005. Yeah, ask the people of Belgium, Nigeria, Chile, and other places about the truth of that statement, just another in a constant series of delusional pronouncements from the ostensible Supreme Pontiff.
But almost as a perfect rejoinder to that most recent incredible declaration, the Diocese of Dallas – where the first broad public knowledge of priest boy-rape scandals broke through in 1990/91 with the horrific Rudy Kos imbroglio – now comes stormin’ out with a report that the pastor of St. Cecilia’s parish has been reliably accused of several minors of molestation and/or rape, stole $60,000 from the parish, and has subsequently fled the country. As an aside, St. Cecilia’s used to be one of the few somewhat beautiful parishes remaining in the diocese, before an unlikely fire and subsequent wreckovation put it on a par with all the rest (a very low par, indeed). Some before and after pics are at the end of the post.
The Rev. Edmundo Paredes, longtime pastor at St. Cecilia Catholic Church in Oak Cliff, is under investigation for allegedly molesting three teenage boys in the parish more than a decade ago and stealing from the parish, churchgoers learned over the weekend.
Paredes has fled and his whereabouts are unknown, though church officials think he may be in his native country of the Philippines, Bishop Edward Burns said at the conclusion of the 7:30 a.m. Mass Sunday at St. Cecilia.
The news regarding Paredes, who was pastor of St. Cecilia for 27 years, is only the latest revelation in the Catholic Church’s ongoing priest pedophilia scandal. Independent investigations have revealed that members of the church hierarchy both turned a blind eye and actively engaged in covering up the actions of pedophiles in the priesthood……
………Paredes, a graduate of Holy Trinity Seminary in Irving, is accused of molesting the boys during his service at St. Cecilia. [If he was at St. Cecilia for 27 years, that means he was probably ordained in the early 80s and went through Holy Trinity at its absolute nadir of inculcation of heresy and rampant sodomizing during the mid-to-late 70s.]
In May 2017, Paredes came under investigation by the church for stealing from his parish. Church officials estimate he stole $60,000 to $80,000 in cash. He admitted to the financial misconduct and was suspended from the ministry and removed from St. Cecilia in June 2017, Burns said. [And yet we heard nothing for over a year] The parish of about 3,600 parishioners serves a largely Latino population and does not have the financial resources of larger parishes in northern Dallas.
After his suspension for financial irregularities, Paredes disappeared and may have left for the Philippines, though church officials do not know with certainty he is there. [I’d bet dollars to donuts they know exactly where he is, it’s just easier to pretend he’s invisible]
A spokeswoman for the Catholic Diocese of Dallas said that at the time of his suspension, church officials had no awareness of the allegations of sexual crimes.
In February, during the course of the financial investigation, church officials received allegations of criminal sexual acts by Paredes, specifically that he had molested three boys in their midteens more than a decade but less than 20 years ago. [And perhaps there were more since then. For instance, what was the $60-80,000 for? Hush money, perhaps?]………The information was not disclosed earlier because Burns “did not want to hinder [the police] investigation or compromise the anonymity of victims,” a church spokeswoman said……..[Oh BS. They were probably faced with the story coming out regardless, probably from outraged family or others who knew, and wanted to maintain spin control by getting it out, first. And yet again, the Dallas Morning News fails to press the pertinent bishops with tough questions.]
……..Burns, who served with two of the 300 priests named in the document released by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, called the revelations sickening. Although he served early in his career with the two named priests and knew a number of others, Burns said he was unaware of their actions or allegations against them.
“Knowing that this occurred at the hands of men that you knew and even worked side by side with adds to a dimension of disbelief,” he said.
Oh double baloney BS. You knew. If you did not know about those two men, specifically, you probably had many reasons to suspect, and certainly knew and know that there are many, many active sodomizers in the clergy and the episcopate, men who are inclined to, and statistically much, much more likely, to abuse young boys than the broader population or priests generally.
And this is all, of course, is related to the original sin of doctrinal error. The two feed one another – manifest sin drives rejection of Church Doctrine across the board and leads to formal heresy on a vast number of subjects, while the fall into error actually encourages more commission of sin. It is all of a piece, cut from the same cloth. The sodomite infestation of the clergy, probably invented by original communist agents planted in the clergy a la AA-1025, is at the very root of the crisis in the Church, just as the worldly corruption of a married, untrained, immoral priesthood was at the root of the crisis in the Church during the very dark 9th and 10th centuries (and having read about that recently, the Church has gone through all this before, possibly, quite possibly, even worse – we just are confronted with it as a daily reality far more today due to instant mass communications).
Francis to Canonize Paul VI, and Thus, Try to Canonize Vatican II February 22, 2018
Posted by Tantumblogo in asshatery, Basics, different religion, error, Francis, General Catholic, pr stunts, scandals, secularism, self-serving, Society, the struggle for the Church.comments closed
Michael Matt is severely critical of this move below, and asks the question on many Catholics minds – certainly, given the former rigor of the pre-1983 canonization process, when the role of devil’s advocate was taken away, canonizations were always viewed as an infallible act of the Church’s Magisterium. But that very dogmatic definition depended greatly on the former process of canonization, and the office of devil’s advocate was an instrumental part of that process. Since John Paul II had that office abolished, the process has been massively changed, and so does the same doctrinal authority still hold? It’s not an unreasonable question, and it is addressed by Charles Coulombe in the 2nd video below:
These are two well formed, learned men, and they arrive at somewhat different conclusions, I think – Matt seems much more doubtful of the post-1983 canonization process and especially the canonization of Paul VI (what happened to the damning documentation the Cure of Nantes had when we died?), whereas Coulombe seems skeptical and leaves room open for doubting the infallibility of the new process, but seems to lean towards it still being infallible.
Once again, the faithful, in this time of unprecedented doctrinal chaos in the highest echelons of the Church, where high authorities literally contradict one another on matters of grave import, the faithful are left to largely fend for themselves and make their way as best they can in this new revolutionary post-conciliar situation we’re in. Because of that, I’m fairly agnostic on where one winds up on either side of these kinds of difficult to resolve issues.
That’s speaking generally, but as for me, as Rorate notes, it is very difficult for a faithful soul who loves the Church, or tries to love the Church while being uncertain just what that massively important word means anymore, to see the destruction wrought by Paul VI and think “now there’s a man worthy of canonization.” I’m fairly reticent to get enthusiastic about John Paul II’s canonization, as well, not least of which because I think it more than a bit unseemly for the man who radically changed the process of canonization to directly benefit from that process, but much more so because he appointed thousands of modernist bishops and basically had the ability to reverse many of the worst aspects of at least the “spirit of Vatican II,” but chose not to, and in many fundamental ways helped cement that spirit much more firmly into place.
But Paul VI is infinitely more concerning than John Paul II – not only was he the pope that gave the whip hand to the modernists at Vatican II, not only did he impose the new Mass in the most draconian and uncharitable manner possible, and not only did he attempt to abrogate the TLM without justification or, as Benedict XVI proclaimed, even an ability to do so, but the very persistent allegations regarding an amoral personal life and his being blackmailed by modernist/sodomite actors in the Church have been disturbingly numerous, persistent, and detailed for my taste. These latter may be false, but if there is even a chance that they be true, how much (more) damage will be done should evidence emerge that the recently canonized “Saint Paul VI” in fact carried on a number of sodomitical acts over his life?
Then there is this final factor – what if the critics are right, and the process changed by John Paul II is no longer infallible? What if these men are not saints? By being declared so, that terminates all prayers on their behalf. This is all so politicized and wrapped up in what one thinks of the Council, for or against, and the canonizations are coming with such urgency, so much faster than they used to in the past (and involve so much hype and hoopla) that it is very hard to analyze the matter dispassionately. I really think the best course would be to put an informal ad hoc ban on canonization of popes for at least a century after their death – which is something the Church used to practice just as a matter of course, on almost all Saints, the thinking being that to really determine whether one was a Saint or not, a lot of time had to pass, as did most everyone who was alive during the Saint’s time, and analyze the matter dispassionately and with fairness and rigor. That is not at all what is occurring here, and represents, again, another major change to the process that could affect its infallibility.
It’s all a bit too much for me to figure out. Francis can do what he wants, but so can I. I won’t be directing many requests for intercession towards Paul VI. I’ll stick to the more established and less controversial Saints.
Alexa gets one right! January 10, 2018
Posted by Tantumblogo in awesomeness, Basics, Ecumenism, fun, General Catholic, pr stunts, priests, silliness, true leadership.comments closed
This may be too old now so everybody’s seen it, but if you know the scandals that have erupted over Amazon’s “Alexa” electronic servant thingee and its overwhelming left-wing bent (see this post), the video below is something of a surprise, but if you tie the two declarations together I guess it does make a sort of leftist sense – Jesus Christ may or may not be real, but the Church He founded isn’t? Or perhaps consistency is too much to expect from these little electronic devices.
Nevertheless, when a Catholic priest asks Alexa to state the founders of various Christian sects, and then the Church, the answer is as surprising as it is delightful:
Mike drop. Walk away.
That’s awesome. I don’t know if Alexa can be coached to give certain responses – both the priest and Crowder swear the responses they got are on the up and up.
Who else can you say founded the Catholic Church, anyway? If protestants want to deny that Christ founded One Church, that the Catholic Church was founded by a human, who was it? St. Peter? St. Paul? Who would not choose those for the founder of their church over Luther, Wesley, Calvin, or Mary Baker Eddy? But in reality Christ founded the Church, as Scripture makes clear and the protestants themselves claim. But they pretend, contra Christ’s infallible statement, that the Church somehow failed, and had to be “resurrected” by failed, sinful men.
The illogic in this position is so amazing it is untenable, but millions hold to it. Then again, millions of people today believe two women can be married, and that a baby is a blob of cells………..there is no limit to human ignorance.
USCCB Continues Misinformation Campaign on DACA, Trump, Immigration October 3, 2017
Posted by Tantumblogo in Basics, cultural marxism, Dallas Diocese, error, General Catholic, Immigration, It's all about the $$$, pr stunts, self-serving, Society, the struggle for the Church.comments closed
Our diocesan newspaper some weeks ago had an article repealing Trump’s use of an executive order to repeal Obama’s executive order instituting the so-called Dream Act, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). DACA has been surrounded by lies and misinformation ever since Obama enacted it, probably illegally and certainly unconstitutionally back in 2012. The USCCB has continually been in the forefront of this campaign. I’ll excerpt a few brief bits from the article to demonstrate how this dezinformatsiya campaign works:
Lisette Moreno was just 5 years old when her parents brought her from Mexico to the United States……..[The setup Obama and the Left has used to sell DACA is that we are talking about poor teens and even younger, just little kids we’d be throwing out of the country to fend for themselves in a hellish Mexico. Because that’s how the Left views third world countries. If not quite kids, they’re at least very young, maybe college students, etc. How could we be so mean?]
………Moreno is an active parishioner at the Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and soon she and upwards of 800,000 people who were brought to the United States by their parents without documents could face loss of work documents and immediate deportation from a land that they know to one that is culturally in their blood, but foreign nonetheless. [Have there been any mass deportations, yet? Any concrete plans developing to do so? Or is this really more about overturning what was a politically unpopular and unconstitutional move – by executive action only, Congress was not involved, no law was every passed – in the first place?]
…….”When we were brought here as children, we went to school and our teachers taught us to dream big; our teachers taught us to progress, to be better, to set a goal and accomplish it,” said Moreno, who is now 34. [They buried that little revelation at the end of the 6th paragraph in, well past the point when most people would have stopped reading. So this is no kid. This is a grown woman, becoming close to middle-aged. Also, if she came here when she was 5, that means she came here 29 years ago, or 1988. Which is, quite interestingly, just two years after the first shamnesty passed by Reagan, which was promised to be a “totes swearsie!” one time deal that would never recur, after which 2.5 million illegal immigrants were granted instant citizenship, the border would be closed firmly and we’d never have an illegal immigration crisis again. The lead up to the first amnesty was very well known. But her parents came later, anyway. Did her parents give a thought to what might happen if they were deported, even split up, as was certainly very possible? Does this Moreno show more allegiance to the United States than to Mexico? Does she still send remittances back?]
[Follows a parade of sad, meaningless, self-serving quotes from both our Bishop Burns and other figures in the Church]………Denouncements, criticisms, and outrage have come from many sectors across society: universities, Fortune 500 companies, small businesses, faith communities, and non-profit organizations. [All of which means absolutely nothing, since Trump was elected precisely to get a handle on the totally chaotic situation regarding illegal immigration and the southern border. A substantial majority of Americans oppose the “Dream Act” and the current immigration policy and desire a wall be built to drastically limit immigration (and drugs, and sex trafficking of minors, and a thousand other evils). I also note that every single one of the organizations listed either stands to benefit directly from continued unconstrained mass immigration through use of cheap labor/wage depression of native citizens, or through ideological alignment (adherence to leftism).]
……….Father Cruz Calderon, pastor of Santa Clara Catholic Church in Oak Cliff, called for prayers to unite, not divide. [See, when it’s what he wants, it’s unity. If not, it’s division. Get it?]
“In my opinion, it no longer is about protecting and leading a country, but about authoritarianism,” he said. “This appears to be a partisan fight to revoke laws made by a previous administration to systematically say that those laws were wrong.” [First of all, it’s not a law. A law is passed by Congress. It was an executive order, and probably unconstitutional. And yes, guess what, the people rejected the unpopular actions of that previous Obama administration, and wanted them overturned. So, we elected a new president who promised to do just that. Your disliking the result is utterly immaterial, as is your attempt to calumniate without justification the duly elected President.Just so we’re clear, yes, very many Americans feel, with eminent justification, that pretty much everything the former occupant of the White House did was wrong.]
…….Moreno, one of the founders of the Peace and Justice Commission at the cathedral………[And we get that little revelation 20 paragraphs in. So, she’s not exactly an unbiased observer, either. She’s a dedicated activist.]
Sadly, and frustratingly, Trump has indicated he’d be happy to reinstitute DACA so long as it is done legally and constitutionally, e.g., through Congress. I really hope that doesn’t come to pass, especially so long as brick one has not been laid on the much-promised wall.
We can expect much more lobbying from the institutional Catholic press in favor of just that. And, I am equally certain, even more disinformation and constant appeals to emotion. The key point is to get people feeling and not thinking. That’s exactly what articles like the above are designed to elicit, and are part and parcel of any well-orchestrated leftist campaign.
But, I hear our new Bishop Burns, in spite of his quotes in the article I declined to excerpt, is much more friendly to the Latin Mass than was his predecessor, who made it absolutely clear that there would never be a TLM outside of Mater Dei so long as he was around. I even understand that a priest or two has been “given permission” – though by canon law none is required – to offer Mass Ad Orientem again, which now Cardinal Farrell had firmly squashed.
There might even be a possibility for TLMs outside Mater Dei, and in the northern part of the Diocese where there still exists much latent unsatisfied demand. But let me counsel you folks, on the outside chance this occurs and there is a TLM in the north deanery, ATTEND IT. Don’t let it die for lack of support. There were many reasons the Novus Ordo Latin in Plano at St. Mark died, it was intended to be unsuccessful from the start, but, not showing up gave Farrell and his allies all the reason they needed to cancel it and to never permit such an “experiment” again. Don’t let that happen, especially with a TLM.
Catholic Answers Akin: Catholics Should Commemorate the Protestant Revolution September 21, 2017
Posted by Tantumblogo in abdication of duty, different religion, disaster, Ecumenism, error, foolishness, Francis, General Catholic, pr stunts, Revolution, sadness, scandals, secularism, self-serving, Society, the struggle for the Church.comments closed
I’ve never had much truck with Catholic Answers or any of its apologists. Since my conversion, I’ve always found Jimmy Akin to be pretty squishy. Both Akin and the broader organization are – and I use the term reluctantly – thoroughgoing neo-Catholics who have unequivocally demonstrated that their faith, if not quite amounting to a cult of personality revolving around the present occupant of the See of Peter, is at the very least far too pliant and far too – it seems – willing to change radically depending on what emanates from the current occupant of the Chair. Now, I’ve heard Akin spend hours arguing extremely detailed points of Scripture with protestants, pointing out their manifest errors. But once Francis signaled that he found the 500th anniversary of the protestant revolution/archheresy something to celebrate, even emulate, all those hours went out the window and now Akin proclaims his great sympathy for, even embrace of, these celebrations of the single most destructive event – for the eternal destiny of souls – in human history since the Fall.
Via reader Tim, The Remnant has its own take on this very sad exaltation of mass indifferentism. I’ll let you go read that on your own time.
But ultimately that is what this is all about – the steady rise of religious indifference, affecting even some of the most core Doctrines of the Faith, which has afflicted the Church since Vatican II.
Ecumania – my silly term for ecumenism run wild – did not start with Francis. It was going gangbusters in the years immediately following Vatican II, when the first rush of thrill of the “new and greater Pentecost” was still fresh and operative. Ecumania cooled off somewhat with the surprise election of JPII as pope, but it certainly never went away. Watch the footage or read the reports of Assisi ’86 for all the confirmation one needs of that.
I’m a former protestant. My entire family still consists of active protestants of varying degrees of faith and commitment. So, I have a very strong, personal interest in accepting and promulgating post-conciliar style ecumenism if it can be reconciled with the constant belief and practice of the Faith. But it cannot. Not by the longest of shots.
One of the greatest evils afflicting our time is the lack of knowledge of history. Coupled with widespread ignorance of theology in the Church, especially since Vatican II, and the set up is just right for convincing millions of Catholics that protestants are practically just like us, our slightly erroneous (on some tiny points of dogma nobody cares about anymore) brethren who just happen to find themselves outside the Church (and whose proselytizing activities – you know, all that solemn nonsense – are directed at Catholics as much, if not more, than out and out pagans, making tens of millions of Catholic converts to protestantism a year).
The problem is, some of us know a bit of theology. And some of us know history. And we know that, no matter what the protestant ecumenists try to say in all those wonderful ecumenical soirees in five star resorts, their understanding of Christianity is not just slightly deficient, it is not just a bit off, but it is directly contrary, on numerous critical points, to both Sacred Scripture and Tradition. These errors are sufficient to make salvation of the souls holding these errors an exceptionally dicey proposition – many Saints during the age of anti-Church revolution and counter-revolution held that it made such salvation impossible.
But history weighs even more heavily against any “celebration” of the permanent, soul-crushing rending of Christendom. Protestantism was everywhere founded by men seeking after their own prurient interests. It started with Martin Luther, progressed through the truly unhinged and evil “Anabaptists,” reached its zenith of self-exalting human reason decoupled from supernatural Grace in Calvin and Zwinglii, and then fell into its gutter-trash denouement in the pathetic fall of Henry VIII into endless vice.
I haven’t got the space in this post to recount even a tiny percentage of the evils and vices of the men who unleashed so-called protestantism on the world. The only thing they protested against was the idea that there was any moral law above that of their own, self-aggrandizing conception.
And that’s not even the half of it. It is exceedingly easy to draw a straight line from the first inklings of self-serving, hedonistic rebellion against God’s Law and His vehicle on earth for propagating and enforcing that Law – the Church – and the debauched “man as his own God” neo-pagan, increasingly barbarous society in which we live today. Protestantism set the stage for the ascendance of rationalism, science divorced from God and the supernatural, the concept of governmental authority arising up from the “will of the people” instead of down from Christ to man, steady and increasingly rapid collapse of the Christian moral order, and far too many other evils to list here. Protestantism gave us doctrine by “Scripture alone,” salvation by “faith alone,” and made every single man into his own little magisterium, deciding for himself what to believe and what not to believe. Sadly, over the past 60 years or so, most all of these errors have also found a home in the Church, once it seemed that protestantism and protestant-allied nations would be forever ascendant.
Now protestantism is in total collapse, racing ahead even of the Church, and we are supposed to celebrate it? Protestantism has fragmented into tens of thousands of different sects and groups, each believing differently from each other and from the solemn Doctrine of the Faith. Even that is not enough, and as more and more formerly “evangelical” and “fundamentalist” sects degenerate from one man’s rigid interpretation of Scripture to loose acceptance of societal norms (the “gay marriage” issue has been a disaster for evangelicals, with most of their young people eagerly accepting it), now protestants are increasingly devolving down into “house churches” and smaller and smaller groupings of people. As soon as there is a disagreement, as there must inevitably be among 400 million little popes, the disaffected individuals break off and form their own sect. This process of atomization will only continue.
In none of this is there anything to celebrate, let alone emulate. Certainly distinctions can be made, that some protestants are better than others, that there are individual protestants who do lead very pious and holy lives, that there does exist some common ground between protestants and Catholics from which to build efforts against continuing cultural rot, but overall, especially in terms of major events like 500th anniversaries and the like, the core point that protestantism has been an unmitigated disaster for Christianity, and even more so for souls, must always carry precedence.
That doesn’t mean every single time we speak of an individual protestant and something they’ve done well we have to issue a fiery condemnation. But it also means that we as Catholics don’t see anything, at all, to celebrate, emulate, extol, tout, or even positively mention regarding the phenomenon of protestantism historically, today, or in the future.
This is not the kind of unity Christ sought. Our Blessed Lord, who died to give us the Truth necessary for salvation, certainly sought unity within His Church – but that’s just the point. Protestants are not in His Church. They left it. Sure, there’s many protestants alive today who “inherited” protestantism culturally, through their families, and not so much as a deliberate act of rebellion. The Church, however, taught for centuries that once protestants came of age, they DID make at least a tacit choice, to reject the Church and the Truth revealed through her.
Protestants reject whole swaths of the Gospel Christ came to live out and communicate to us. Among individual protestants, there may be more that “unites us” than “divides,” but, overall, protestantism has been, continues to be, and was in fact created to always be, a force for continuing division and strife among Christians. It is inseparable from its nature – it is “cooked into” the very idea that individual men, absent the divine Grace associated with the office of priesthood, bishop, and Pope, can determine for himself what Scripture says, what Truth to believe.
Events like this 500th anniversary should, for Catholics, be a time of great sadness, which sadness pray God will form a wellspring of determination to fight for the true of Christianity again, within the bosom of Holy Mother Church. “The discredited theology of the return” – to quote Benedict XVI – is not discredited. It is entirely necessary. It is only the fallen men within the leadership of the Church, and organizations dependent upon that leadership’s constant good graces, who have given up on that theology. Because they fear and desire to please men more than God.
Now is a time for deep prayer and sacrifice, not only for our “separated brethren” in the protestant sects, but even more so for the leadership of our Church, and lay “apostolates” like Catholic Answers, which shake like a reed to every change in direction of earthly winds.
Food for Thought: Every One of the Manson Family Women Came from Broken Homes…… September 7, 2017
Posted by Tantumblogo in asshatery, cultural marxism, disaster, error, General Catholic, horror, pr stunts, rank stupidity, scandals, secularism, self-serving, sickness, Society, unadulterated evil.comments closed
…….or had atrocious, abusive relationships with their fathers. The primary cause, however, of sending very healthy, successful, happy young girls on a downward spiral that ended in becoming possessed by a literal demon incarnate and dominated by a wholly reprobate sense (up to and including allowing their own toddler children to be included in the “family” orgies) was legalized divorce on demand. So, in a very real sense, one could say that feminism was responsible for the Manson family and the soul-rending atrocities they engaged in, of which the notorious murders only made up a very small part.
[Content warning for typical immodest hippie dress]
Now of course this is not to say that every child of divorce will wind up in such a sad state, but my own experience with several friends whose parents divorced is that every single one of them was devastated by it, even when the divorces occurred when they were grown and out of the house. Divorce takes a terrible, sometimes hidden toll, and has played a huge role in the general collapse of the culture. Furthermore, while separation of the spouses is in rare cases lamentably necessary, a huge number of divorces occur for basically selfish, skin-deep reasons.
How’s this for a topic totally out of left field? Didja every expect to see me do a post on crazy Charles Manson and his nightmare hippie cult?
In a sense, however, Manson and his slave tribe were simply the inevitable result, the inexorable climax of the moronic hippy culture of hedonism and feel-good false virtue signalling. And they were hardly the only ones. I can’t imagine how much publicity the Manson family, the “Symbionese Liberation Army,” and such would get today. Perhaps, then, our culture which seems to be coming so much unglued is not quite as bad off as it often appears. Then again, rates of divorce, illegitimacy, porn addiction, drug addiction, et. al., are far worse today than they were in the late 60s/early 70s.
As our Blessed Lord told us, we shall not know the day nor the hour. Several then living Saints, including Doctors Saint Jerome and Saint Augustine, were totally shocked to learn that Rome had been sacked in 410. The collapse of Rome appears, 1600 years on, as practically inevitable, as totally unsurprising given the dangers and weaknesses afflicting the aged empire. But at the time, no one really believed impregnable Rome could ever fall. And yet, it did.
I’ve been meaning to comment on an awesome post by Boniface at Unam Sanctam Catholicam that discusses several very common traditional Catholic tropes. I don’t think I’ll have time to do so again, today, unfortunately. That will probably be a 2000 word post, minimum. God willing, I’ll get to it tomorrow. At any rate, if you haven’t read it, go do so. It brings up much worthy of consideration.
Papal Succubus Sorondo Epitomizes Leftist Inversion of the Faith July 25, 2017
Posted by Tantumblogo in abdication of duty, asshatery, cultural marxism, different religion, disaster, episcopate, error, Francis, General Catholic, pr stunts, rank stupidity, Revolution, scandals, the struggle for the Church, unbelievable BS.comments closed
I’ve written about deranged Leftist shill Archbishop Sorondo before. He is that sad and pathetic kind of creature – not unlike our former bishop – who accords his belief system/outlook with the beliefs of his perceived master. He is an essential nonentity who by aping powerful opinion hopes to gain power and influence for himself. Thus, a succubus. Worked like a charm for Farrell.
Sorondo is the very model of the modern major churchman in the other, absolutely necessary corollary aspect, as well: he conflates the doctrines of sexular paganism with the Doctrine of the Faith, subordinating the latter to opinion while elevating the former to the new, mandatory “law of the Church.” So, contraceptive use and fornication are not grievous sins, but not believing in “climate change” is:
“From the scientific point of view, the sentence that the earth is warmed by human activity is as true as the sentence: The earth is round!” said Archbishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo.
The archbishop has been a consistent and zealous promoter of manmade climate change as a non-negotiable Church issue, despite the status of care for the environment as a prudential matter.
Climate change ideology continues to be contested as a ploy perpetrated with manipulated data by the left to enact environmental regulations and taxes.
Even so, Archbishop Sorondo dismissed deniers of climate change in a recent Vatican Radio interview as “a small, negligible minority.”………
……..Archbishop Sorondo went on in the interview to say that human-affected climate change was considered science. [And yet numerous scientific certainties of the past have been exploded and reduced to shreds by later discoveries. Not that it even matters. This claim of anthropocentric climate change is NOT settled science by any stretch] He added that the pope not only has the right but also the duty to rely on science in addition to doctrine and philosophy in seeking out truth……
……….Archbishop Sorondo is a close adviser to Pope Francis and the Chancellor of both the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. He has repeatedly welcomed pro-abortion and population control advocates to the Vatican for conferences under the pretext of the climate issue.
Note the connection – the demonaical ideology of “climate change” is not only used as a replacement for the actual sacred belief of the Faith revealed by Jesus Christ, but also as a weapon against that same Faith. This climate change mumbo-jumbo is a deliberate vehicle of attack by the partisans of one (false, ungodly) religion against another (true, inspired) religion. This is all about the continued inversion of what the Church believes, and is. These men, these demoniacs and heresiarchs, are not crazy, or dumb, or unhinged. If you understand their belief system and their objectives, their actions are entirely rational, understandable, and, yes, predictable.
Which makes the fact that Sorondo was consecrated bishop and appointed to his first influential positions by the reputedly oh-so-orthodox Saint John Paul II rather interesting. Or maybe revealing is a better word.
Thank God this devotee of a different and hostile religion hits 75, and possible retirement, on Sept. 8. If Francis George Bergoglio doesn’t make him a cardinal, first. Not that his replacement is likely to be any better. In fact worse is more than likely.
UPDATE: Fixed formatting problem from importing blogspot content.