The Cross Still Stands Amid the Ruins of Destruction

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Europe is no longer Europe, it is Eurabia, a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense.  Italian Journalist Oriana Fallaci

Free speech is the soul of our nation and the foundation of all our other freedoms. If we can’t speak out against injustice and evil, those forces will prevail. Freedom of speech is the foundation of a free society. Without it, a tyrant can wreak havoc unopposed, while his opponents are silenced.  Pamela Geller, FATWA: Hunted in America

One of the most marvelous cathedrals in the world, Notre Dame of Paris, an absolute jewel, has been partially destroyed!  Yet the Cross of Christ still stands amid the ruins.

The cathedral was built on a small island called the Île de la Cité, in the middle of the Seine and is consecrated to the Virgin Mary. Construction began in 1163, during the reign of King Louis VII, and was completed in 1345. It is considered a jewel of medieval Gothic architecture. It is the most famous of the Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages and is distinguished for its size, antiquity, and architectural interest.

Notre Dame Cathedral is part of the World Heritage site of “Paris, Banks of the Seine” inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1991.  UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. UNESCO’s programs contribute to Sustainable Development Goals defined in UN Agenda 2030, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015.  World Heritage sites are land grabs controlled by the United Nations.  Link

The burning of this magnificent structure brought tears, not only to the eyes of all Christians, but to all architectural historians as they watched the destruction of this gothic French cathedral.

Videos posted on social media show a segment of the French population rejoicing over the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral on Monday, including laughing and smiling emojis by users with Arab names.  Thousands of Muslims on Twitter rejoiced.

France’s Churches Vandalized

One wonders how many refugee Muslims were working on the restoration and refurbishing of the 850-year-old cathedral.  Isn’t that a question that should be asked inasmuch as the fire started in two different places according to LCI, a French TV station, and during Christians’ Holy Week?  During nine centuries there was never a single fire in Notre Dame.

While Notre Dame is undoubtedly the most well-known landmark to be affected, Paris’ second largest church, Saint Sulpice, briefly burst into flames on March 17, the fire damaging doors and stained glass windows on the building’s exterior. Police later reported that the incident had not been an accident.  An illegal Muslim immigrant had tried to burn down Saint Sulpice.

In 2016, two veiled Muslim women tried to detonate a car filled with explosives in front of Notre Dame.

In mid-March, an illegal Muslim immigrant tried to burn down the organ of the Saint-Denis basilica, (another jewel) and destroyed stained glass.  Link

European Destruction

Countless churches throughout Western Europe are being vandalized, defecated on, and torched.  In France, two churches are desecrated every day on average. According to PI-News, a German news site, 1,063 attacks on Christian churches or symbols (crucifixes, icons, statues) were registered in France in 2018.

Similar reports are coming out of Germany. Four separate churches were vandalized and/or torched in March alone. “In this country,” PI-News explained, “there is a creeping war against everything that symbolizes Christianity: attacks on mountain-summit crosses, on sacred statues by the wayside, on churches…and recently also on cemeteries.”

Who is primarily behind these ongoing and increasing attacks on churches in Europe? The same German report offers a hint: “Crosses are broken, altars smashed, Bibles set on fire, baptismal fonts overturned, and the church doors smeared with Islamic expressions like ‘Allahu Akbar.’”

For similar examples in other European countries, please see Austria, Rome, Italy, and Spain, and so many others.

Free Speech Terminated by Fox News

Ahh yes, the newsroom narrative never touched on arson of this beautiful Notre Dame cathedral.  Instead, it had to be an accident, probably because of renovation.  Somewhere a spark from some tool ignited the cathedral in two different places, and this beautiful place of worship went up in flames while the world watched.  Yeah, sure!

Not surprisingly, but wholly choreographed, two Fox News anchors actually prevented guests from discussing the recent rash of churches being attacked which included arson. Both Shephard Smith and Neil Cavuto cut off their guests.

Bill Donahue, President of the Catholic League in the United States was speaking with Neal Cavuto.  Donahue commented that we don’t know that it was an accident, “But forgive me for being suspicious. Just last month a seventeenth century church was set on fire in Paris. We’ve seen tabernacles knocked down, crosses have been torn down, statues have been smashed.”  Cavuto cut him off, but Donahue continues saying, “But I’m sorry, I mean, when I find out that the eucharist is being destroyed and excrement is being smeared on crosses.”  Then Cavuto hangs up the phone on Bill.  Watch the video of the three-minute exchange.

Shephard Smith’s guest was French media analyst and former elected official Philippe Karsenty, who said the blaze burning at the Parisian landmark was “like a 9/11.”  Smith interrupts him and states they are not going to speculate. But Karsenty continues, “The church was there for more than 850 years. Even the Nazis didn’t dare to destroy it.”

He said there have been churches “desecrated each and every week in France, all over France” in recent years. “So, of course, you will hear the story of the political correctness which will tell you it’s probably an accident,” Karsenty said before Smith interrupted and cut him off.  Philippe Karsenty took to twitter to share the harsh and censored interview.  Link

Any logical discussion of an anti-Christian or anti-Catholic arson was terminated.  As Diana West stated in her recent article, “Given what we have all been through as veterans of the jihad, lo, these nearly 18 years, it is the pathetic height of absurdity to try to stop a rational being from wondering whether there is an Islamic connection to the burning of Notre Dame — amid all of the other possibilities, including criminal negligence on an epic scale.”

Media are no longer willing or able, to robustly defend their Judeo-Christian roots.

French Catholics Speak Out

Frenchman Maxime Lepante believes Islam represents a mortal danger for all non-Muslims.  “And when our churches, our cathedrals, our cemeteries, our monuments, are destroyed by Muslim immigrants, Macron uses our policemen to protect…the mosques!  Macron is an absolute criminal; he supports the Muslim invaders who are slaughtering us and destroying our country!”

Former French President, Francois Hollande will be infamously remembered for the November, 2015 Muslim terrorist slaughter in the Bataclan Café in Paris.  The Islamic State terrorists who attacked the Bataclan theater in Paris not only killed scores of innocents — they also gouged out the eyes and sliced up the genitals of some of the victims, according to testimony in a disturbing French report.

Some victims’ bodies from the second floor of the theater had been beheaded, eviscerated and otherwise mutilated, according to two secondhand accounts reported to a parliamentary commission set up to investigate the attack.

Now France’s President Macron will also be remembered in history for the very destruction of Notre Dame Cathedral by his beloved Muslim thugs.

Islamic Destruction of Historic Artifacts

Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci is a legend and was one of the bravest souls who wrote the truth of Islam.  The Rage and the Pride and The Force of Reason were books written by a woman who fought fascism in Italy as a kid, as an adult was shot three times and left for dead by police in Mexico City, went to Viet Nam to personally report on the war and was ultimately the recipient of an imam’s “fatwa” – a fatwa designed to permanently silence Fallaci’s criticism of Islam.

The fearless journalist interviewed Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. Forced into a chador in order to enter the Ayatollah’s presence, she ended up in a row about why women should be forced to wear such a garment, and became so enraged that she stood up and ripped off “this stupid medieval rag,” letting it fall to the floor “in an obscene black puddle.”  The Ayatollah rushed out…afraid of a woman with chutzpah!

Oriana interviewed Henry Kissinger in 1972 and he confessed in his memoirs that this interview was one of the most disastrous decisions of his career. But I digress…

In her 2001 book, The Rage and the Pride, she exposed the destruction throughout the world of historic artifacts demolished by Islam. She took up her pen to write this book after the horrors of 9-11. She told of the ruination of archeological monuments…the Bamiyan’s Buddhas of Afghanistan blown up by the Taliban on order of Mullah Omar.

It was the verdict of the Islamic Supreme Court of Kabul and their pronouncement that every pre-Islamic statue will be destroyed, every pre-Islamic symbol will be wiped out, every idol condemned by the Prophet to be pulverized.

It was pronounced on the 26th of February 2001, the same day in which the Taliban regime authorized the public hangings in the stadiums, and the last women’s rights were withdrawn.  Islamic decimation of historic architecture and documents continues, and is unabated despite being declared UNESCOs Sustainable Development World Heritage sites. Link

Fallaci tells how these people invade a country, how they live in the heart of a society that hosts them without that country questioning their differences and how the country is forced to capitulate to their so-called “religious” demands because of their own laws.

She tells of a synod held by the Vatican in October 1999 to discuss the rapport between Christians and Moslems, and an eminent Islamic scholar addressed the stunned audience declaring with placid effrontery: “By means of your democracy we shall invade you, by means of our religion we shall dominate you.”

The report was given by one of the participants, His Eminence monsignor Giuseppe Bernardini, archbishop in the Turkish Diocese of Smyrna.

Oriana says, “Dealing with them is impossible.  Attempting a dialogue, unthinkable.  Showing indulgence, suicidal.  And, he or she who believes the contrary is a fool.  The moment you give up your principles, and your values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilization is dead. Period.”

Heed her words…she is right!

Conclusion

European churches are vandalized, defecated on, and torched every day, historic monuments in the Middle East are destroyed, sharia law is forced on host countries who have allowed Islamic “refugees” to enter into their sovereign nations.

As for our country, the United States has been infiltrated thoroughly.  Robert Spencer in his book, Muslim Brotherhood in America, told that the Muslim Brotherhood’s infiltration of the Washington establishment is remarkable by any standard. Former FBI Special Agent John Guandolo of UnderstandingtheThreat noted in October 2011, “What we’re seeing not just inside the White House, but inside the government entities, the national security entities, the State Department – is a strong push by the Muslim Brotherhood to get their people not just into operational positions, but policy positions – deeper, long term, bureaucratic positions.”

In 2016, hundreds of Islamists were elected to local, state, and federal government, the invasion continues, and with it will come the destruction of our culture and our heritage and our historic monuments.

At the siege of Vienna in 1683, Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe.  We are in a new phase of a very old war.

Is the American Church Dying?

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One often hears dire reports in the media about the impending doom of the Christian church. But Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Family recently wrote an article in the Federalist that showed such reports may be premature.

Stanton notes, “Religious faith in America is going the way of the Yellow Pages and travel maps, we keep hearing. It’s just a matter of time until Christianity’s total and happy extinction, chortle our cultural elites. Is this true? Is churchgoing and religious adherence really in ‘widespread decline’ so much so that conservative believers should suffer ‘growing anxiety’? Two words: Absolutely not. New research published late last year by scholars at Harvard University and Indiana University Bloomington is just the latest to reveal the myth.” [emphasis his]

Stanton is summarizing the research of Landon Schnabel of Indiana University and Sean Bock of Harvard University from their article in Sociological Science. They write, “Recent research argues that the United States is secularizing, that this religious change is consistent with the secularization thesis, and that American religion is not exceptional.”

But their own research leads them to deduce otherwise: “We conclude that intense religion in the United States is persistent and exceptional in ways that do not fit the secularization thesis.”

I interviewed Glenn Stanton on my radio show recently on this subject: Is the American church dying?

He told me, “You hear that everywhere, and you even hear it in the church from good Christian speakers, leaders, and pastors. They say that young people are leaving the church in droves, and there may not even be a Christian church in America in the next couple of years. And it’s just simply not true.” [emphasis his]

Stanton is the author of eight books, and he has a new one coming out soon, called, The Myth of the Dying Church, with a Foreword by Baylor’s Byron Johnson.

Stanton said the research shows that, “far from dying, “the best parts of Christianity (biblical Christianity, or what C. S. Lewis called ‘mere Christianity’) are growing in the United States and just blossoming around the world.”

He said the key is to understand the difference between the mainline churches (the older and now generally more liberal churches—and the evangelical, Bible-based churches). The former are in “freefall,” with members leaving en masse. But that’s because these churches have “long abandoned the basics of the Christian faith.”

The Apostle Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15 that the essence of Christianity is that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures; He was buried; and on the third day, He rose from the dead, according to the Scriptures.

Paul even says about these basic truths, “By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.” This is a good thing to be reminded of at this Easter time.

Yet, Stanton notes, many of the more liberal Protestant churches and their leaders have long abandoned these basics of the faith. They have also compromised on biblical morality (e.g., sexual issues, including abortion). These are the churches in America that are dying.

Stanton told me, speaking of these liberal churches, “They are bailing on the basics of Christianity, and, guess what? People are bailing on them. People are leaving those churches as if the buildings are on fire, and do you know where they are going? They are not going nowhere. They are going to the biblically faithful churches, and those are the churches that are growing. So basically what we have here is a great, great good news story. Yes, some parts of Christianity are declining, but those are the people that are compromising the faith. They might as well become Unitarians or something like that.”

I remember reading that only 20 percent of modern day Unitarian Universalists even call themselves Christians. Why pretend?

Jesus said to the professing Christians of Laodicea, “I would that you were hot or cold, but because you are lukewarm, I will spew you out of My mouth.”

In his article for the Federalist, Stanton observes, “The percentage of Americans who attend church more than once a week, pray daily, and accept the Bible as wholly reliable and deeply instructive to their lives has remained absolutely, steel-bar constant for the last 50 years or more, right up to today.”

Stanton adds, “The number of church attendees has continued to rise each and every decade over our nation’s history right up until the present day.”

So, as has been said, “The good news is: the bad news is wrong.”

True Christians are taking the time to worship the crucified and risen Christ.

He is risen. He is risen indeed.

VIDEO: Churchill and the Jews….simply fascinating!

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Thanks to my friend Ann Alexander for this riveting historical piece.

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Paris Weeps as Notre Dame Burns

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April 15th, President Macron was scheduled to address the nation at 8 PM, to present a sort of executive summary of government policy, revised but not diverted by five months of weekly Gilet Jaune actions. I switched on the television 10 minutes before the hour, expecting to hear the usual quibbling: The Gilets Jaunes expect nothing and won’t be satisfied until the president resigns. What a surprise. Commentators, specialists, journalists and the man in the street don’t think any real problem will be really solved. That’s a safe bet. They will all, who knows why, entertain the confusion between the Gilets Jaunes, boiled down to some thirty thousand seditionists, and French voters that may or may not have joined in the great national debate. President Macron does not have to satisfy the Gilets Jaunes. We live in a democracy, not a tyranny of turbulent minorities.

I turn on the television.

No, it’s not the panel waiting to pounce on the president.

It’s Notre Dame in flames.

You don’t have to be Catholic, Christian, or a lover of cathedral architecture. You don’t have to be Parisian, French, or a citizen of the western world. Raging flames devouring Notre Dame can bring tears to your eyes. It is universally heartbreaking.

Here in Paris, awestruck pedestrians stopped in their tracks. Gasped. Prayed. Exclaimed. Sobbed. Watched in disbelief as the sky-high inferno defied our will and determination. On the doorstep of Holy Week, Notre Dame was going up in flames and it looked like nothing could stop it. Do leaden roof tiles burn and melt, do stones go white hot and lose their grip, will we watch, helpless, as fire consumes the entire edifice, leaving a gaping black hole in the heart of Paris?

Is it terrorism? No one knows. It is absolutely terrifying. What if nothing could stop the blaze? It could spread across the Ile St. Louis, swallowing up mansions and touristy restaurants, leveling expensive hotels and sizzling a dozen Berthillon ice cream parlors.

Time stands still, the 19th century Viollet-le-Duc spire fills to bursting with red hot flames, dense turbulent multi-color smoke billows and roars. It seems like nothing can get on top of the fire. No ladder can reach that high. President Trump slaps us with a scorching tweet: Bring on the water bombardiers! Commentators, originally brought in to haggle over President Macron’s speech, mumble and stutter. Hmmm, maybe the Canadairs are too far south? I can hear my American friends snickering. “Those stupid French don’t even know how to extinguish cathedral fires.” It takes a while before we learn that a cathedral is not a forest, even when the roof beams are made of hoary oak. You can’t bombard Notre Dame with tons of water. The walls would come tumbling down.

The spire bends and collapses like a spent candle.

Later, we join the stream of people coming from all directions, on foot, on scooters, bikes, and motorcycles, converging in hushed tones at vista points on Ile St. Louis. An urban pilgrimage that reminds us, on a very small scale, of the millions that walked through the city after the Charlie Hebdo / Hyper Cacher / Montrouge jihad attack. Leaving the fire behind, we walk along the quai, embraced by a mild spring evening and the enduring beauty of bridges spanning the Seine, lights glittering on the softly flowing river.

Synagogues brûlées République en danger

“Torched Synagogues Troubled République.” We marched behind that banner in April 2002. The synagogue in Trappes had burned to the ground in October 2000. They said it was caused by a short circuit. And today we discover that French churches by the hundreds are desecrated, vandalized, sullied and cursed with Allahu akhbars. Arson is suspected in a March 17th fire at l’Eglise St. Sulpice. A week earlier a suspect was arrested for vandalizing the Basilique St. Denis. Inès Madani, ringleader of a cluster of niqab-clad jihadists was just sentenced to eight years in prison for enlisting and inciting terrorists. She will be tried six months from now for the botched car bomb attack on a side street near Notre Dame in 2016.

Two and two make four but the agonizing repetition of jihad assaults on the Western world does not prove that the spectacular Notre Dame fire is part of the series. While many, of all origins, shed tears over the blaze, others are exulting. Including antifas, left wing ultras, and ranking members of the French Students’ Union. France’s chief rabbi Haim Korsia was one of the first to express solidarity. Muslims can be found on both sides of the divide. Before the Notre Dame fire, Gilets Jaunes and assorted allies solemnly promised to burn and bleed Paris this Saturday. Apocalypse now. It is their prepaid reaction to the president’s — now postponed — speech. The government has been on the defensive since mid-November, allowing Yellow Saturdays to become an abiding feature of the cityscape. Thugs — of the gilet jaune, black blocs or banlieue persuasion — attack the police, torch cars and banks, sack and plunder boutiques, pelt firemen with rocks, and spout trash ideologies. They are the ones that vandalized l’Arc de Triomphe, fellow of the Tour Eiffel – Notre Dame trinity.

What do we know now, what will we know eventually? At this stage, the fire is being investigated by a criminal police unit… as accidental. They cannot go into the cathedral until inspectors have eliminated the danger of structural collapse. We don’t know if concrete evidence of the fire’s origin has gone up in smoke or is lurking in the charred and sodden remains that skulk on the cathedral floor. Officials have access to countless sources of information, while those who suspect a jihad attack rely on shaky “if x then y” logic. They assume that mainstream media, hand in hand with the government, will hide the truth.

Spontaneous combustion

The logic of real life is not so simple. The monumental Notre Dame fire may have been caused by a careless gesture or by an arsonist hell bent on destruction. A moment of inattention, a slight misjudgment, a stupid coincidence can have tragic consequences in a human life. A small spark could be responsible for the inferno that almost destroyed Notre Dame. According to published reports, when the first alarm rang at 6:20 PM the cathedral was evacuated but the source of the fire was not detected. 23 minutes later, the fire alarm rang again, and it was already too late to keep the fire from spreading to the entire roof. From there on, it’s a story of courage and heroism. The crown of thorns, the tunic of St. Louis the Crusader, and other treasures were saved. The belfries did not collapse. No fatalities. One firefighter slightly injured. The stained glass windows and the organ are apparently intact.

And the soul-searching begins. Was the cathedral, like so many national monuments, pauperized, bereft of safety features that would have prevented this colossal damage? Is it the lack of faith and penury of the faithful that reduces the Catholic architectural heritage to one more Disneyland? Has our capitalist, individualist, globalized, consumerist society turned its back on past glory and failed in its duty of transmission? The shame of the Church mired in abject pedophile scandals could, in itself, destroy one cathedral after the other by spontaneous combustion. And the Pope? Too busy compromising with Islam, shielding Jerusalem from Jewish sovereignty, and exhorting us to welcome immigrants to protect the fast-disappearing Christians of the Levant.

Mixed feelings

Holy Week was mortally dangerous for Jews in Christian lands. The main entrance to Notre Dame is flanked on the left by the statue of the blindfolded Sinagoga and on right by the noble Ecclesia. Ramadan is perilous for Jews in Islamic countries… or neighborhoods. The fiery Erdogan wants to turn Hagia Sophia into a mosque. And today, when the great fortunes of France have pledged hundreds of millions of euros to restore Notre Dame… the social justice gang gives them boos and sneers. If they had so much money, why didn’t they give it to us… the people?

Jihad, cheap Facebook unrest, social media gutterish, anti-Semitic anti-Zionism, incendiary balloons from Gaza, seething hatred, vituperation, depravity, raging transgenderism, identity politics, cultural impoverishment, and flames leaping from the age-old rooftops of Notre Dame that bring tears to my eyes. I weep for the fragility of civilization, here in its concrete monumental form, there in the eloquent expression of noble values. For one night, the flames of Notre Dame portrayed those devouring forces that stubbornly defy our humanity.

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EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Times of Israel. It is republished with permission.

Colorado Sex Ed Bill Would Force Kids to Learn LGBT Ideology, Ban Talk of Abstinence

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Colorado’s wildly controversial, comprehensive sex ed legislation has ignited national discussions about how far Americans want to expose their children to a radical social agenda.

More than a few eyebrows were raised when Colorado passed its mandatory comprehensive sex education law in 2013, which required students undergo “culturally sensitive” lessons.

“Culturally sensitive” meant that sex ed lessons would incorporate minority perspectives on sex that had not previously been represented in sex-ed—including LGBT individuals, but also other groups. (In practice, this meant teaching and affirming more diverse kinds of sex.)

Though many parents were concerned, those concerns were appeased by the fact that students could discuss their moral, ethical, and religious beliefs on sex and sexuality in the classroom. It also allowed some schools to be excused from provisions of the law, if requested.

Yet, just five years later, Colorado’s Democrat-controlled General Assembly thinks the 2013 law is no longer good enough to address the sexual education of teens.

Enter HB 1032.

HB 1032 would do away with all the “concessions” included in the 2013 law and would specifically prohibit religious, moral, and ethical perspectives on sex from being discussed in the classroom.

The bill demands that schools teach about the relational and sexual experiences of LGBT teens. It would forbid any emphasis on abstinence and sexual-risk avoidance as the only foolproof method against pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, and even declares that saying so in the classroom is against the law.

HB 1032 would strip teachers, administrators, and school boards of the ability to choose the content of their comprehensive sex ed curriculums and would no longer allow schools to be excused from the requirements of the bill.

The bill is almost militant in its stringent requirements and prohibitions, thoroughly censoring the speech of teachers and crushing parental rights and religious freedom in the classroom.

Currently, only two states in the country (California and Louisiana) prohibit schools from speaking about religious beliefs regarding sex. The majority of states—including Colorado currently—allow abstinence to be stressed or emphasized to teens as the only foolproof method against sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy.

Yet, HB 1032 would flat-out ban speech that suggests abstinence is the best and healthiest choice. That’s despite the fact that the majority of American teens are choosing abstinence, and Colorado teens have a lower rate of sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted teen pregnancies than the national average.

HB 1032 would flat-out ban speech that suggests abstinence is the best and healthiest choice.

Prohibiting emphasis on abstinence isn’t the only instance of the Colorado Legislature attempting to place words into the mouths of teachers and ideology into the hearts of our children. HB 1032 would also require that teachers who discuss pregnancy outcomes, like adoption and parenting, also discuss abortion.

If passed, Colorado would become only the third state in the country to have that, after Vermont and California.

Clearly, the vast majority of American parents, teachers, and schools believe adoption and abortion are not morally or ethically equivalent options. The bill brazenly refers to teaching abortion as an example of “objective, unbiased” instruction, despite abortion being one of the most contentious issues of our time.

It probably comes as no surprise that Planned Parenthood lobbies across the nation for comprehensive sex education bills to be enacted, and Colorado was no exception.

It certainly isn’t coincidence that Planned Parenthood is one of the world’s largest providers of comprehensive sex education materials in the world, peddling radical content that even the most liberal among us might find too shocking for our taste.

Planned Parenthood’s ready-made sex education curriculum just happens to fit the exact requirements HB 1032 would impose on local school districts. Its materials often promote virtually any type of sexual exploration and experimentation as a “safe and healthy” part of any relationship, no matter the child’s age or biological sex, just as long as you “say yes.”

Planned Parenthood’s ready-made sex-education curriculum just happens to fit the exact requirements HB 1032 would impose on local school districts.

That last point is certainly the provision of Colorado’s sex education bill that garnered the most heartfelt protests from parents during the 20-odd hours of public testimony. Parents tend to take issue with the government mandating teaching elementary school students the definition of “consent.” They already know the answer.

In Colorado, as in most other states, the definition of consent for elementary students is: Illegal. Criminal. Unsafe.

Parents have been rightfully confused on how teaching young children about consent could possibly protect them from predators. How did decades of “No Means No!” education become upended to be “Yes Means Yes”?

Young children are certainly capable of voluntarily saying the word “yes” to acts that might feel good but are nonetheless deeply harmful and traumatic. It is a parent’s job to protect their children from an agenda that has shifted sex education dialogue from being one of protection to one of pleasure, from prevention to gratification.

Unfortunately, HB 1032’s sponsors and supporters have downplayed the tens of thousands of parents clamoring for the bill to die as well as the national dialogue the bill has ignited on how parents can guard their children’s hearts and minds in today’s schools.

HB 1032 has already been passed through a state House committee, the House floor, and its first state Senate committee, despite the overwhelming outcry. The bill is currently being considered in a Senate fiscal committee, which will soon vote on whether $1 million will be allocated from the general fund to schools to help them pay for implementing the burdensome legislative requirements.

If passed out of committee, the full Senate will vote on the bill, and then it will be off to the desk of Colorado’s openly gay governor, Jared Polis, for signature.

It is a parent’s job to protect their children from an agenda that has shifted sex-education dialogue from being one of protection to one of pleasure, from prevention to gratification.

Families in states such as Arizona, Massachusetts, and Texas are fighting controversial provisions similar to Colorado’s. Tennessee, Alaska, Idaho, and other states are taking proactive measures to ensure family values are respected in the classroom.

Washington state parents recently took a page from Colorado parents’ book and successfully stopped their own appalling comprehensive sex education bill, as did parents in New Mexico.

But the threat isn’t limited to state legislatures. The U.S. House of Representatives will be voting soon on the deceptively named “Equality Act,” which could lead to federal courts ordering schools to implement curriculums on sexual orientation and gender identity.

We hope the outcry in Colorado continues to encourage parents in other states around the country to stay informed about what’s being taught in their children’s classrooms—and to do everything they can to protect their children from harmful ideology.

COMMENTARY BY

Stephanie Curry

Stephanie Curry is the policy manager for Family Policy Alliance.

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Dear Readers:

Just two short years after the end of the Obama administration’s disastrous policies, America is once again thriving due to conservative solutions that have produced a historic surge in economic growth.

The Trump administration has embraced over 60 percent of The Heritage Foundation’s policy recommendations since his inauguration. But with the House now firmly within the grips of the progressive left, the victories may come to a screeching halt.

Why? Because they are determined more than ever to give the government more control over your lives. Restoring your liberty and embracing freedom is the best thing for you and the country.

President Donald Trump needs all of the allies he can find to push through the stone wall he now faces within this divided government. And the best way you can partner with him is by becoming a member of his greatest ally in Washington: The Heritage Foundation.

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RELATED ARTICLE: California Parents Object to New Sex Ed Program in Public Schools

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission.

Two Commentaries on Benedict XVI’s Letter

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Note: Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s brief letter to German priests, which was released last week, has generated a flood of commentary, both because it was unexpected from a figure who has maintained almost total silence since his resignation, and because it presented sharp observations about developments inside and outside the Church that led to the steep rise in sexual abuse. That text warrants extensive consideration, but for now two commentaries by TCT regulars: Fr. Gerald Murray, a theologian and canon lawyer; and Michael Pakaluk, a philosopher. – Robert Royal

God’s Absence Enabled the Offenses

Fr. Gerald E. Murray

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, in his surprise letter on the sexual abuse crisis in the Church, examines the root causes of the criminal immorality of an astounding number of Catholic clerics. He identifies as a prime factor the collapse of sound moral theology, the result of the rejection of natural law reasoning. Underlying this theological chaos is a deeper crisis, what Benedict calls “the absence of God.” He writes: “Only where faith no longer determines the actions of man are such offenses possible.”

This calls to mind Robert Cardinal Sarah’s book God or Nothing. When God ceases in fact to be the motive, the center and the hope of the Church’s teaching and activity, innovators very quickly create clever substitutes that in fact turn out to be nothing more than self-worship.

Benedict writes that, after the Council, “it was chiefly the hypothesis that morality was to be exclusively determined by the purposes of human action that prevailed.” Since each man determines his purposes, each man creates his own morality, making himself the determinant of right and wrong for himself, pushing God and His law aside.

Man is to be honored in place of God as the source of his own moral truth. This is the apostasy of the autonomous man of “conscience” who recognizes God’s law only when it is in agreement with what he has decided he already wants to do.
In the strange world of a Church without God at its center, what about other doctrines of the Faith? Benedict examines the loss of faith manifested by how many in the Church treat the Most Holy Eucharist: “Our handling of the Eucharist can only arouse concern.”

The generalized loss of a sense of awe and respect for Christ’s Real Presence is undeniable. Benedict writes: “What predominates is not a new reverence for the presence of Christ’s death and resurrection, but a way of dealing with Him that destroys the greatness of the Mystery.” His use of the word “destroy” is telling.

The new thinking about the Mass and the Eucharist that largely prevailed after the Second Vatican Council resulted in various changes that have diminished the reverence expressed by the average Mass goer:

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  • Holy Communion is no longer received kneeling but standing, no longer on the tongue alone but now also in the hand;
  • the tabernacle was moved off of the main altar, and the priest now stands, or sits in a chair, in the location where the Blessed Sacrament was formerly reserved;
  • the tabernacle containing the sacramental presence of God made man is placed off center on a side altar or in some instances in a location not visible from the church pews;
  • silence in church before Mass has been replaced by casual banter in audible tones;
  • many, many parishioners no longer genuflect when entering or leaving the church;
  • venerable liturgical forms, the Latin language and sacred chant were cast out and replaced by generally inadequate and uninspiring replacements;
  • almost everyone at Mass goes to Communion, while very few people go to Confession, indicating that people no longer have a consciousness that one must not receive Communion is a state of mortal sin, because most people no longer think that mortal sin is still mortal sin.

Benedict identifies the signs of this breakdown of faith and worship:

  •  “The declining participation in the Sunday Eucharistic celebration shows how little we Christians of today still know about appreciating the greatness of the gift that consists in His Real Presence.
  •  “The Eucharist is devalued into a mere ceremonial gesture when it is taken for granted that courtesy requires Him to be offered at family celebrations or on occasions such as weddings and funerals to all those invited for family reasons.
  • “The way people often simply receive the Holy Sacrament in communion as a matter of course shows that many see communion as a purely ceremonial gesture.”

The temptation to make religion into a kind of folkloric experience celebrating man’s attempt to build a community of benevolence and good feeling is seen when a priest invites everyone at a Funeral Mass of Nuptial Mass to receive Holy Communion.

Why would a priest invite people who do not believe in the Real Presence to come forward to receive, saying to them ”The Body of Christ” in response to which the non-believers are asked to say “Amen,” signifying belief in what they do not believe?
Why would a priest communicate to non-practicing Catholics that they should feel free to receive Holy Communion without previous confession? How did we get to this point of treating the Sacred Body and Blood of Christ as a mere token of participation in a ritual?

Benedict calls us all to renewed faith: “what is required first and foremost is the renewal of the Faith in the Reality of Jesus Christ given to us in the Blessed Sacrament.”

It is obvious that a profound disorientation entered into the Church that has manifested itself in doctrinal confusion and an attitude of laxity regarding immorality and even criminal sexual abuse.
The remedy that Benedict indicates is to return to a deep appreciation of the Faith according to its true nature, which includes being ready to die for Christ as the price of fidelity to him.

The Rev. Gerald E. Murray, J.C.D. is a canon lawyer and the pastor of Holy Family Church in New York City. He is a frequent contributor on radio and television, including EWTN’s Papal Posse.

A Practical Way for Pastors – and Laity

Michael Pakaluk

Benedict was the universal pastor of the Church, but his essay on sex abuse and the crisis is written not as pope but as a priest, to priests, in Germany (specifically, to the journal Klerusblatt). Therefore, although it raises large questions in passing – and no one who publishes today can claim to be addressing only a restricted readership – it is valuable mainly as showing a practical way for pastors. In doing so, it also shows ordinary Catholics how humbly to serve the Church in these troubled times.

We see its limited purposes in its opening sentence: “The matter begins with the state-prescribed and supported introduction of children and youths into the nature of sexuality.” He is referring to how, in Germany in 1968, the Ministry of Health under Käte Strobel published a “sex atlas” (Sexualkundeatlas), and produced a movie called Helga, both ostensibly “educational,” but calculated to subvert the authority of local governments and churches over sexual mores.

One could raise deep and universal questions on this basis. Walker Percy, for instance, pleaded with us to consider how America almost overnight became a society in which people streamed to see a pornographic movie in their neighborhood theater. He meant Deep Throat (1972), which became the highest grossing movie of its time.

Or one might ask why libertinism gets introduced under the guise of objective science.

Or whether a sexually permissive society doesn’t, as a society, set itself against the welfare of children – abandoned in divorce, instrumentalized by in vitro conception, or killed by abortions.

But it’s clear that Benedict gives the example simply to appeal to the memories of his readers, mainly elderly German clerics, to shock them once again into seeing that “what is evil and destroys man has become a matter of course.”

Even his reference to Veritatis splendor has a limited purpose. It’s an open secret that Veritatis splendor is not a favorite reference source of the magisterium of Francis. In particular, Amoris Laetitia ignores it, while seeming, to many interpreters at least, to re-introduce all the errors that the encyclical rejected – the “fundamental option,” conscience as subjective not objective, the denial of intrinsically evil acts.

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So how is it possible to refer to Veritatis splendor without at least asking whether any current hesitancy, today, in dealing firmly with sexual abuse, is a consequence of a dalliance among influential bishops in those old errors?

And yet Benedict, now devoted primarily to a life of prayer and contemplation, obviously avoids asking this. He does not even write in the manner of someone who thought to raise the question, but then thought better of it. In his essay, Veritatis splendor was important in putting an end to the Church’s vulnerability in teaching, in the face of the sexual revolution.

That vulnerability led to a collapse in seminary formation. Veritatis splendor proved a necessary piece in the reform of seminaries, which has mainly been successful. This again reflects the viewpoint of a priest, who wonders “how young people in this situation could approach the priesthood and accept it, with all its ramifications.”

I said that Benedict’s essay shows a humble path. So it is, here, in its engagement with Veritatis Splendor. He refers to just one teaching of the encyclical, “there [are] actions which [are] always and under all circumstances to be classified as evil.” His essay clearly assumes that that claim, although once controversial, is now taken for granted by everyone.

Why? Because everyone has come to judge, correctly, that sexual abuse of minors is intrinsically evil. Philosophy professors know that certain stock examples have always been able to confound relativists in the classroom: What about rape? What about dashing out the brains of infants?

Well, what about sexual abuse of minors? For Benedict it’s a secondary point that that logic has not, yet, been universally extended to other intrinsically wrong sexual acts, such as sodomy.

That he is writing humbly, for priests, is shown in the Eucharist’s being the focal point of the essay. John Paul II used to write a humble letter to priests, as a fellow priest, on Holy Thursday. Benedict does something similar just before Holy Week.
Benedict gives a wonderful précis of the gospel: the universe is meaningless without God; but a loving God would reveal himself; and he showed the depth of his love by taking on our nature.

Just as the source of evil is flight from God, so the remedy for evil is found in the presence of God. “Let us consider this with regard to a central issue,” he next says, “the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. Our handling of the Eucharist can only arouse concern.”

Note the “our”: he means priests. It’s within the power of any parish priest to address the abuse crisis just here.

The letter closes, “I would like to thank Pope Francis for everything he does to show us, again and again, the light of God, which has not disappeared, even today.” Here, too, is an example of great humility, since it is clear from Benedict’s essay that, the differences noted above notwithstanding, he has allowed himself to be influenced by Francis.

Consider that a couple of paragraphs in the essay are on the theme of the devil as the great accuser. That was not a big theme of Benedict’s pontificate but it has been for Francis, long before Viganò.

Or the theme that, although it’s good to foster communities of Christian life, the Church catches up the good and bad in its dragnet.

The most beautiful paragraphs in the essay perhaps those on martyrdom, “Today God also has His witnesses (martyres) in the world. We just have to be vigilant in order to see and hear them.”

Benedict, I think, means Francis and the martyrs Francis has noticed for us. Read Francis’ homily at a Mass for Martyrs of the 20th and 21st centuries to get the point. And of course, he encourages us to be witnesses ourselves.

Michael Pakaluk, an Aristotle scholar and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is acting dean of the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. He lives in Hyattsville, MD with his wife Catherine, also a professor at the Busch School, and their eight children. His latest book, on the Gospel of Mark, The Memoirs of St Peter, is coming out from Regnery Gateway in March 2019.

The Catholic Thing

EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own. Like us on Facebook and Twitter. © 2019 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

VIDEO: The Vortex — Attacking the Good Guys

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TRANSCRIPT

I’m Michael Voris coming to you from the St. Benedict Center in Richmond, New Hampshire, where the small community here of faithful, committed Catholics is coming under attack from their home the diocese of Manchester.

These are the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart established by Jesuit Fr. Leonard Feeney, S.J., in 1949, and this particular community was born in 1989.

The attack is centered around the group’s adherence to the Catholic dogma “outside the Church there is no salvation” —  in Latin known as Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus or, in shorthand, EENS.

And yes, you heard correctly, a group of faithful Catholics is being attacked by the local diocese for believing and teaching a magisterially defined dogma of the Faith, reiterated even as recently as last year by Pope Francis and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Br. Andre Marie: What effect has that had on the community? The effect has been utterly devastating. Not only on the brothers and sisters but on our school children, our school teachers, all of the community members, because we have lots of people who would go to daily Mass and (which isn’t allowed to be offered anymore) — no, we have an empty tabernacle that we have left opened just to remind us that Our Lord is not there.

In recent years, the climate in the Church has made a definitive turn away from tradition, and those concerned about this have serious misgivings about what’s going on here at St. Benedict Center.

CJ Doyle: There certainly does seem to be an attempt to inflict all sorts of petty humiliations on them over the years. There seems to be an animus against their traditional beliefs and practices. And by the way, this is one of the few Catholic communities and few Catholic religious orders that have been completely untainted by any charge of sexual abuse or that kind of misconduct. So why are they going after a group of innocent, unoffending, traditional Catholics while they tolerate so much dissent, so much scandal and, frankly, so much corruption elsewhere.

CJ Doyle has no official connection to the center or the community, but he is a member of a group that supports their evangelization efforts and traditional expressions of the Faith: “Why would you go after a group of Catholics who are both faithful and who are effective in promoting the Faith when you have so much scandal and so much corruption elsewhere?”

The individual responsible for the attacks from the diocese is Fr. Georges de Laire, who shortly after being promoted to judicial vicar of the diocese about two years ago, began launching the broadsides against the center.

Diocesan insiders tell Church Militant the attacks are designed in part by de Laire to improve his image in Rome so he can climb the ladder and be promoted. So he whipped up some spurious claims of heresy against the community and began hurling weighty canonical measures against its members in an effort to gain attention.

That process became complicated by a misunderstanding of one of Br. Andre Marie’s replies, and de Laire jumped on the opportunity, issuing a letter this past January stripping the community of its ability to have a diocesan-approved priest offer daily Mass, which had been the case for close to a decade.

Church Militant contacted Fr. de Laire, as well as other diocesan officials, asking for an interview about this whole situation, but that request unsurprisingly was rejected.

It’s clear that de Laire wants the community to simply give up and move on, and he’s making life very difficult for them in the meanwhile.

To be clear, the group does not preach heresy — not in the slightest — and in fact, de Laire could find himself in hot water for insinuating such a false and defamatory claim because he, in effect, is positioning the group as heretics for propounding a defined dogma of the Faith.

The diocese of Manchester launching these kinds of attacks is bringing an unwelcome spotlight on the diocese and its unpleasant history, something which likely doesn’t sit well with the bishop, Peter Libasci.

CJ Doyle: The diocese of Manchester is a relatively small diocese, but it is one of the more troubled Catholic jurisdictions in the United States. More than 60 priests and religious order brothers have been credibly accused of sexual abuse. A former bishop and a former auxiliary bishop have been rather notorious for moving molesters around and protecting them. We had the chancellor of the diocese and the public face of the diocese Monsignor Edward Arsenault who went to prison for a few years ago for embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars in church funds to maintain a lavish lifestyle and to support the lifestyle of his same-sex paramour. And another priest who was a friend of Father Arsenault, Father Lower, committed suicide a few years ago after being accused of sexual abuse. This is one of the more really problematic diocese in the United States.

Brother Andre Marie is insistent that what is being charged is completely fallacious and that they are 100% faithful to the teaching of the Church.

Br. Andre Marie: We believe that we’re faithful to the teachings of the Church. We wouldn’t be so confident about taching the necessity of the Church for salvation if we didn’t have that on a divine assurance from the one institution on earth that is competent to teach man how it is we are saved. I believe we hold the Church’s teaching on no salvation outside the Church as the Church has always taught it.

Church Militant has learned that in response to the canonical precepts imposed by Fr. de Laire in January, the members of St. Benedict Center have filed hierarchical recourse against the measures before the Holy See and prayerfully await a decision. They have also retained civil counsel should any litigation in the civil courts become necessary.

In the meantime, they continue their remarkable work through the suffering.

Br. Andre Marie: It’s very tragic. It is utterly devastating to go into a place where you used to go to and kneel and pray to Our Lord in quiet prayer and now he’s not there. I mean, he’s everywhere by his omnipresence, but he’s not there sacramentally in the tabernacle. So it’s been devastating. It’s been a real moral blow to the community.

Anyone who would like to support the exemplary brothers and sisters of the St. Benedict Center, please just click on the link provided to help them out. Fighting off the attacks is not only costly spiritually, it also can bring a hefty financial bill as well.

Coming to you from the St. Benedict Center in Richmond, New Hampshire, this is Michael Voris for Church Militant.

EDITORS NOTE: This Church Militant video is republished with permission.

Pro-Abortion Snobbery

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David Carlin: What factors divide pro-life from pro-choice Americans? Mostly, it’s the difference between humility and arrogance.

This column is about abortion, but it will take a moment or two to get to the point.  Please bear with me.

If ever there was an obvious example of fallacious reasoning, it’s this: “I am rich, and you are not.  Therefore I’m right, and you’re wrong.”

What could be more stupid than an argument along these lines?  And yet this is precisely the reasoning that has been used, century after century, by those in the higher classes to dismiss complaints made by persons from the lower classes.  This is the reasoning that permitted lords of the manor to dismiss complaints by serfs, slaveholders to dismiss complaints by slaves, mill-owners to dismiss complaints by factory hands, etc.

In a society that places great value on wealth (and what society does not place great value on wealth?), rich people cannot help but feel that they are superior people: not just superior in wealth, but superior in almost every way.  And if you are superior in almost every way, then you must be superior in judgment.

If it happens, then, that a person from the lower classes disagrees with you, it becomes obvious – does it not? – that you must be right and the other must be wrong.

Your rightness and his wrongness are so obvious, in fact, that there really is no need for you (the rich person) to examine the other fellow’s case.  Save yourself time and trouble by dismissing it from the get-go as unworthy of consideration.

And don’t waste a lot of time trying to explain to the other fellow why he’s wrong. Out of a noblesse oblige kind of courtesy, you might offer him a brief explanation; but when you see (as you soon will) that he doesn’t buy it, move on to something else.

And now to abortion.  Considered on purely intellectual merits, the anti-abortion argument is vastly superior to the pro-abortion argument.  The anti-abortion or pro-life side argues that the entity that gets killed in an abortion is a human being, a tiny human being that grows less tiny every day.

And what else could it be if not a human being?  It is not a dog or a monkey or a fish or an elm tree.  The pro-abortion side has no counter-argument that comes even close to refuting the anti-abortion case.  The best the pro-abortion side can come up with are mindless slogans like “a woman’s right to choose” or “a woman’s right to control her own body” or “if you don’t like abortion, don’t have one.”

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This last is my favorite stupid argument.  It is strictly parallel to, “If you don’t like slavery, don’t own a slave.”

And yet, despite the obvious superiority of the anti-abortion argument, hardly ever is a pro-abortion person persuaded.  Why is this?

The answer, I think, can be found in the social class differences between pro-life and pro-abortion people.  The heart of the pro-abortion movement is found among men and women of the upper-middle classes: people who have (or soon will have when they finish college and get a few years older) good educations, good jobs, good cars, good houses, good food, good wine, high incomes, millions in assets, many important social and political connections, a cosmopolitan outlook, etc.

Given contemporary American standards, they are superior people.  They may not be superior according to the standards that prevailed in Plato’s Academy, or in ancient Sparta, or in the monasteries of St. Benedict, or in the Shaker communities. But they are without question “superior” according to present-day American standards.

By contrast, the heart of the pro-life movement is found among women from the lower-middle classes: persons with educations and incomes that are barely adequate in today’s high-price society; persons who lack the millions, the high culture, the good connections, etc.

These women tend to be religious; they tend to have more children than does the average American woman (and certainly more than does the typical pro-abortion activist); they tend to be sexually un-liberated – so much so that many of them (and this is truly shocking from a contemporary point of view) have had sexual relations with only one man, their husband.  According to present-day standards, these women are definitely inferior.

It will be pointed out that my ideas of the typical pro-life and pro-abortion person are stereotypes.  Of course. But stereotypes are often enough more or less accurate.

In any case, the typical pro-abortion activist, instead of taking seriously the arguments presented by the pro-life movement, says to herself or himself: “I am rich and well-educated, I own a handsome house or condo and a fine automobile, I am thin and athletic, and I am blessed with excellent taste when it comes to coffee, wine, food, furniture, music, movies, works of art, etc.  In short, I am a superior person.  The world is fortunate to have people like me in it.”

“And so, that anti-choice woman standing over there – whose education is limited, whose income is modest, whose house is small and unattractive and in the wrong neighborhood, whose body is unshapely and somewhat overweight, whose taste is appallingly vulgar – when she tells me that I am wrong about abortion, I would laugh at her if I didn’t pity her.  What could be more preposterous than to think that an inferior person like her might be right and a superior person like myself might be wrong?”

These “superior” people, let us remember, are the people who control the “command posts” of American culture. Which is to say that they are dominant in a number of our leading institutions: the mainstream journalistic media, the entertainment industry, our best colleges and universities, and one of our two great political parties.

They shape the public mind, especially the mind of younger generations.  If they won’t listen to reason (which they won’t), do we have any grounds to be hopeful for the long-run success of the pro-life movement?

Yes.  But I’ve run out of time (and space) today. More to come next time.

COLUMN BY

David Carlin

David Carlin is a professor of sociology and philosophy at the Community College of Rhode Island, and the author of The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America.

RELATED ARTICLE: How State ‘Birthday Abortions’ Bills Stack Up to Federal Restrictions

EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2019 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

I Take This Woman . . .

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The internet provides everything you’d want to know about courtships, weddings, married life, but few of them include the instructions on wife-beating.  There is a brief but enlightening film, produced by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) and posted on Jihad Watch, of a Muslim sociologist who demonstrates the “proper” wife-beating technique.  Of course, the sociologist assures his audience that Islam is merciful, and that the man, the head of the household, should not have to beat his wife every day, and to do so lightly, never to hit her face or head, bruise, break bones or cause blood to flow (m10:12, Reliance of the Traveller, A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law – ROTT).  But the cautionary statement rings hollow when the wife’s bruises will never be seen because she must be covered from head to toe.  And, should she become inured to the discipline’s sameness, there are other means of control and punishment available to him, all sanctioned by The Religion of Peace.

When is it necessary to beat one’s wife?  The sociologist did posit that there are women who prefer domineering, authoritative, and even violent husbands.  For the most part, however, beatings are needed when the wife has disobeyed him and the strict Islamic rules of marriage.  She may have refused to wear a hijab (m:2:7-8, ROTT) or the finery he chose for her; or fancied attending school with the hope of one day having a career and earning a wage.  She may have wanted to leave the house unaccompanied or without her husband’s permission; she is literally under house arrest.

The Shari’a marriage contract contains her virginity status, the dowry amount, and grants sexual intercourse rights to the male, giving him total control over his wife or wives.  Should she refuse his advances, be too ill or too young to have sex, or if she engaged in sex with another man or was raped,  he could stop her daily (financial) maintenance.  The woman is considered a she-devil, equal to a domestic animal, harmful and with crooked character.  Therefore, he may disallow her to sleep in his bed; or lock her in a room, naked, and without food.  Should he choose to enact a simple divorce by repeating “I divorce you” three times – she may receive no more than three months’ maintenance and could lose her children older than age seven.

The Muslim husband has the right to accuse her of adultery, in which case he might gather his friends and neighbors together to bury her almost up to her shoulders and stone her to death.  The film, The Stoning of Soraya M, portrays the true story of Soraya, in Iran, whose husband Ali convinced their two sons and the townsfolk that she was committing adultery so that he could marry a 14-year-old girl.  The Internet has an actual film of a Syrian woman being stoned to death by ISIS.  About four women per day are murdered in “stove bursts” in Pakistan, by husbands or in-laws who claim the wives’ scarves caught fire while they were cooking.

We are assured, however, that the discipline of beating, although necessary, is done out of love and once that’s done, life can move on.  But from where does this sociologist get the concept of love?  Surely, not from the Qur’an, which clearly stipulates that women are inferior and may be taken by force or bought from her parents.  There is no Western-style courtship – no dating, no music or dancing under the stars, and no dining in a candlelit café.  In fact, there is no courtship whatsoever. Rather, a shari’a marriage is a document, usually signed at the home of the future bride, that grants sexual intercourse rights to the male with complete control over his wife or wives.  Revered Muslim theologian, Imam Ghazali (1058-1111) defined, “Marriage is a form of slavery.  The woman is the man’s slave, and her duty therefore is absolute obedience to the husband in all that he asks of her person.”

Interestingly, the marriage contract provides four blank spaces to be completed over time.  Below the signature of wife number one, there are three more signature lines for future wives, numbers two, three, and four.  The  realization that there could be three more wives with whom she would share her husband and home immediately negates love and devotion; the religious sanction of polygamy destroys the possibility of fidelity between one man and one woman, while also increasing rivalry, conflict and stress.  The message is unambiguous: “You can be replaced.”  Not only does the man have the divine right to four wives, but also to “pleasure marriages.” Only he, not she, has the right to such dalliances, and only he, not she, has the right to divorce.  He may even rid himself of the four he has and begin anew, with four wives plus “slave wives.”

The Islamic woman is among the poorest and most oppressed in the world, and regardless of her financial station, she is caged for life.  She cannot be rescued when beaten and her husband has the right to not provide an explanation to anyone for beating her, for the Prophet has said, “A man will not be asked as to why he beat his wife.”  Sunan Abu Dawad 11:2142.  This must be reassuring.

Muslim societies are based on enslavement – the enslavement of society to the state/ideology and women to men.  The Saudi woman is always guilty, even if he breaks her ribs during a beating, and she is so victimized that denial of her situation is her only comfort.  Muslim women are imprisoned for sexual crimes done by men, yet Islam insists it honors women.  The indemnity for the death or injury of a woman is one-half the indemnity paid for a man. (o4.9, ROTT).

In a Muslim society, the woman’s virginity is the basis of the family’s honor, and honor killings  are acts of vengeance executed by likeminded family members against the female family member, for reasons such as becoming “too westernized,” refusing an arranged marriage, being the victim of a sexual assault, seeking a divorce, or (allegedly) committing adultery.  The mere perception that a woman has behaved in a “dishonorable” way is sufficient reason for murder; methods include stoning, stabbing, beating,  mutilation, burning, beheading, hanging, throat slashing, lethal acid attacks, shooting and strangulation.  Women’s advocacy groups suspect that more than 20,000 women are killed worldwide each year. The UK recorded 2,823 such crimes in 2010.

Sex for the male in Islam is a plenteous buffet of alternatives, and he need never be indicted for adultery, pederasty, infant or youth pedophilia, rape, or honor killings. He even has permission to engage in sex with his wife’s cadaver within seven hours of her death.  During a televised show in Egypt,  Professor Sheikh Sabri Abdul Raeuf, of the Islamic world’s most prestigious madrasa, was asked if it is permissible for a husband to penetrate his wife after death (necrophilia).  He replied, “It is not favorable in Islam; however Islamic law considers it as halal,” it is permissible, not a crime or sin deserving of punishment in the here or hereafter.

Men, particularly “courageous” jihadis, are rewarded with sex with perpetually exquisite virgin women, so that women are not just in competition and threatened by other women (wives) on earth, but also by supermodels in the afterlife.  The Religion of Peace offers no peace to women at any time – not in infancy, not when they are genitally mutilated in childhood or married off against their will, not in their adulthood, and not even after their death.    We must never allow Shari’a laws to overtake our American laws.

Acknowledgment: Cruel and Usual Punishment, The terrifying global implications of Islamic Law, by Nonie Darwish

Reigniting the American Revolution slogan ‘No King but King Jesus’

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The American Revolution had many slogans that ignited the passions of the colonists to fight for independence from George III, the King of England. Slogans such as: Captain Nathan Hale’s “I regret I have but one life to lose for my country”, Patrick Henry’s “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death”, General Christopher Gadsden’s “Don’t Tread On Me” flag and “No taxation without representation.”

One slogan that many have debated is “No King but King Jesus.”

Both those who defend and those who wish to debunk the “No King but King Jesus” slogan point to one historical fact. On April 18, 1775, a when British soldier ordered John Adams, John Hancock, and others to “disperse in the name of George the Sovereign King of England”, Adams responded with:

“We recognize no sovereign but God, and no king but Jesus!”

Many have written about this American Revolution slogan. Those who support it argue that John Adams and John Hancock, as well at the other Founding Fathers were orthodox Christians. Those who wish to portray this slogan as a myth point out that many of the Founding Fathers were Deists (see Molinism). Merriam-Webster defines deism as:

[A] movement or system of thought advocating natural religion, emphasizing morality, and in the 18th century denying the interference of the Creator with the laws of the universe.

In a January 18, 2001 Slate article titled “Was “No King but Jesus” a Revolutionary War Slogan?” reported:

At a 1999 commencement speech at Bob Jones University, Attorney General-designate John Ashcroft said this phrase was a slogan of the founding fathers. He also said this sentiment is found in the Declaration of Independence in the phrase, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.”

Slate asks: Was this the motivating cry of the Revolution, and was Thomas Jefferson alluding to it in the Declaration? Their answer is that “No King but King Jesus” was used but the slogan was “not central to the American Revolution.”

The Founding Fathers wrote the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Many misinterpret the Establishment Clause. The Establishment Clause was not intended to separate the Christian Church from government, rather it was intended to protect the Christian Church from the government.

In 1948, the Supreme Court ruled 8 -1 in McCollum v Board of Education that the practice of inviting religious instructors into public schools to give optional religious instruction violates the Establishment Clause. Justice Black, writing for the Court, said that the practice was “unquestionably” a violation of the Establishment Clause, which created “a high and impregnable wall” between church and state. In 1962 in Engel v Vitale, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the ruled that New York’s practice of beginning school days with a prayer drafted by school officials violated the Establishment Clause.

Perhaps it is time to reignite “No King but King Jesus”? The Founding Fathers would be taken aback by what has happened since to morality in America since religion has been taken out of our public schools and the public square.

Selwyn Duke in a column titled “Restoring Civilization: We Can’t MAGA Unless We MAMA” wrote:

Echoing many Founders, George Washington noted that “morality is a necessary spring of popular government.” The famous apocryphal saying goes, “America is great because America is good, and if she ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.” For sure, we can’t MAGA unless we MAMA — Make America Moral Again.

To Make America Moral Again our culture must return to its Judeo/Christian roots. Every American must embrace the ideals in our Constitution or we are lost as a nation and as a culture.

MAMA and NKBKJ are simpatico. You can’t have one without the other.

RELATED ARTICLE: Thomas Paine Argues, “No King But God”

RELATED VIDEO: Democrats Delete God – OAN.

Are Democrats Pushing Islamic Sharia Law?

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A fan thought I exaggerated when I wrote Sharia Law will spread like wildfire across America if Democrats win the White House. She feared my over-the-top statement about the spread of Islam will damage my credibility.

My statement is not an exaggeration. For crying out loud, the federal government illegally funded a national curriculum titled, “Access Islam”. This indoctrination program outrageously teaches students how to become a Muslim – how to pray as a Muslim – how to perform Islamic “daily worship” and how to perform the “core duties” of being a Muslim. 

A California school banned all Christian-based books from its library, including books by Christian authors. Superintendent Dr. Kathleen Hermsmeyer says they do not allow “sectarian materials” on their state-authorized lending shelves. Public schools are celebrating Islam while banning Christmas.

Public education is the battlefield of the culture war. Democrats use public schools to normalize the LGBTQ agenda in the hearts and minds of our kids. Upon infiltrating public schools, LGBTQ activists began molding and shaping students into their image beginning in pre-k. Democrats continue to up the ante, expanding deviancy. Students are being indoctrinated to embrace numerous dangerous sexual perversions under the umbrella of “healthy sex education”; BDSM, rimming, anal sex, asphyxiation, gender-bending and more.

Beginning with portraying pedophiles as victims of our closed-minded society, Democrats are pushing to legalize pedophilia along with 11 other perversions. Civil unions granted homosexuals the same benefits as marriage. And yet, Democrats chose to use activist judges to destroy God’s sacred union of marriage. This is a long way down the road from LGBTQ activists claiming they simply wanted tolerance. Today, many Americans quake in fear opposing any demand of LGBTQ activists. Democrats want government to mandate that Christians throw away their Bibles to fully embrace Democrats’ anything-goes-sexually society.

Now Democrats are using government mandates to instill Islam in public schools while rooting-out Christianity. Remember Democrat AG Loretta Lynch threat to jail anyone caught speaking badly of Islam? Lynch’s boss, Obama, was the most pro-Islam and anti-Christian president in U.S. history. 

Democrats use blacks, women, homosexuals and Muslims as useful idiots to further their extreme radical leftist agenda. For example. Democrats and fake news said that opposing Obama’s punish-America policies was racist. Had Hillary won, opposing her leftist agenda would be branded sexist. If homosexual Democrat presidential candidate Mayor Pete wins the White House, opposing his extreme radical leftist ideas will be branded homophobia. If one of the antisemitic Democrats win the presidency, opposing their hate-Israel rants will be branded Islamophobic. This tactic is called “Shaming”. Democrats and fake news routinely use shaming to silence all opposition, while forcing their anti-American and anti-Christian agendas down our throats.

Judge Jeanine Pirro’s TV show was taken off the air for two weeks for daring to tell the truth about Muslim Democrat Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s rabid bold antisemitism. Rather than strongly rebuking Omar’s hatred for our ally, Israel, every Democrat presidential candidate decided to give Israel their middle finger by refusing to attend AIPAC. 

Can you believe there are “Muslim Community Patrol” cars in Brooklyn New York which look exactly like police cars? Disturbed residents are questioning why this is necessary because the NYPD is extremely diverse. These Muslim patrols are allowed to stealthily enforce Sharia Law in their neighborhoods; no homosexuals, no women wearing short skirts and so on. 

Respecting Islam, a California public school caved to Sharia Law by forbidding students to draw images of Mohammed. And yet, Democrats defended the NEA funding “Piss Christ” which featured a crucifix submerged in urine.

My late dad was a Methodist pastor. Dad said every year for decades LGBTQ activists brought ordaining homosexuals to the table at their annual conference. Due to the Bible’s clear rebuke, ordaining homosexuals was voted down. Then one year, it passed. We are seeing this same persistence tactic used to further Sharia Law.

Thank God Texas turned back the establishment of the first official Sharia court in America. Do not become complacent folks. These people will never give up and will keep coming back at us.

Traditions, principles and values everyday Americans and Christians hold dear are under relentless attack by Democrat enemies-within. As a Christian, I view Democrats’ aggression as the Spirit of Anti-Christ. Jesus proclaiming himself our savior and Lord is as repulsive to leftists as is showing Dracula the cross. This is why even though Islam clearly hates homosexuals and suppresses women, Democrats overwhelmingly prefer Islam over Christianity. Democrats are banning Christianity in public school while quietly replacing it with Islam.

No, I do not believe Sharia Law will overtake America. But if Democrats take the White House, Sharia Law will swiftly gain government-protected dramatic strongholds across America.

Benedict XVI: Sexual, Theological Corruption at Root of Abuse Crisis

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Pope Emeritus traces crisis to 1960s cultural, ecclesiastical revolutions

VATICAN CITY (ChurchMilitant.com) – Voicing hope for “a new beginning” for the Church, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is speaking out against the clerical sex abuse crisis.

On Thursday, the former pontiff issued a 6,000-word essay on the roots of the crisis; titled “The Church and the Scandal of Sexual Abuse,” the piece was published in Klerusblatt, a monthly journal for German-speaking clergy, instead of through official Vatican channels.

Outlining the “wider social context” of the predator priest phenomenon, Benedict begins by observing that, in the 1960s, “an egregious event occurred, on a scale unprecedented in history. It could be said that in the 20 years from 1960 to 1980, the previously normative standards regarding sexuality collapsed entirely, and a new normalcy arose that has by now been the subject of laborious attempts at disruption.”

He points to the malign influence of radical “state-prescribed and supported” sex education programs introduced during the period, noting that under the guise of “liberation,” they destroyed the innocence of Western youth by inciting hedonistic self-indulgence and abandoning the concept of human sexuality as a sacred, God-given gift.

“Among the freedoms that the Revolution of 1968 sought to fight for was this all-out sexual freedom, one which no longer conceded any norms,” he writes.

As sexual revolution inflamed societies across the West, inside the Church, a parallel crisis was developing. After decades spent working quietly in the shadows, modernist philosophers and theologians began emerging from the shadows, using Vatican II as cover to promote their views. Among them, Benedict writes, was the idea that morality is relative — that truth is not absolute:

In the end, it was chiefly the hypothesis that morality was to be exclusively determined by the purposes of human action that prevailed. While the old phrase “the end justifies the means” was not confirmed in this crude form, its way of thinking had become definitive. Consequently, there could no longer be anything that constituted an absolute good, any more than anything fundamentally evil; [there could be] only relative value judgments. There no longer was the [absolute] good, but only the relatively better, contingent on the moment and on circumstances.

As these concepts took hold among Catholic theologians, clerics and laity, doubts about “the fundamental authority of the Church in matters of morality” exploded, he notes. Then, as now, those “who deny the Church a final teaching competence in this area force her to remain silent precisely where the boundary between truth and lies is at stake.”

“The long-prepared and ongoing process of dissolution of the Christian concept of morality was … marked by an unprecedented radicalism in the 1960s,” Benedict observes. “This dissolution of the moral teaching authority of the Church necessarily had to have an effect on the diverse areas of the Church.”

“The extensive collapse of the next generation of priests in those years and the very high number of laicizations were a consequence of all these developments,” he adds.

By the late 1960s, the surging licentiousness of secular society had engulfed the seminaries.

“In various seminaries homosexual cliques were established, which acted more or less openly and significantly changed the climate in the seminaries,” Benedict writes.

“There were — not only in the United States of America — individual bishops who rejected the Catholic tradition as a whole and sought to bring about a kind of new, modern ‘Catholicity’ in their dioceses,” he continues. “Perhaps it is worth mentioning that in not a few seminaries, students caught reading my books were considered unsuitable for the priesthood. My books were hidden away, like bad literature, and only read under the desk.”

“Indeed, in many parts of the Church, conciliar attitudes were understood to mean having a critical or negative attitude towards the hitherto existing tradition, which was now to be replaced by a new, radically open relationship with the world,” the former pontiff recalls. “One bishop, who had previously been seminary rector, had arranged for the seminarians to be shown pornographic films, allegedly with the intention of thus making them resistant to behavior contrary to the faith.”

Reflecting further, Benedict notes the catastrophic impact of the 1960s revolutions on the Church, and the West as a whole:

A society without God — a society that does not know Him and treats Him as non-existent — is a society that loses its measure. In our day, the catchphrase of God’s death was coined. When God does die in a society, it becomes free, we were assured. In reality, the death of God in a society also means the end of freedom, because what dies is the purpose that provides orientation. And because the compass disappears that points us in the right direction by teaching us to distinguish good from evil. Western society is a society in which God is absent in the public sphere and has nothing left to offer it. And that is why it is a society in which the measure of humanity is increasingly lost. At individual points it becomes suddenly apparent that what is evil and destroys man has become a matter of course.

“And now we realize with shock that things are happening to our children and young people that threaten to destroy them,” Benedict laments. “The fact that this could also spread in the Church and among priests ought to disturb us in particular.”

“Why did pedophilia reach such proportions?” he asks.

Ultimately, the reason is the absence of God. … God is regarded as the party concern of a small group and can no longer stand as the guiding principle for the community as a whole. This decision reflects the situation in the West, where God has become the private affair of a minority.

“A world without God can only be a world without meaning,” says Benedict. “For where, then, does everything that is come from? In any case, it has no spiritual purpose. It is somehow simply there and has neither any goal nor any sense.”

“Then there are no standards of good or evil. Then only what is stronger than the other can assert itself. Power is then the only principle. Truth does not count, it actually does not exist,” he continues. “Only if things have a spiritual reason, are intended and conceived — only if there is a Creator God who is good and wants the good — can the life of man also have meaning.”

Benedict reminds Catholics that though today’s Church is infested with sexual and doctrinal dissenters, the institution itself will, as Christ promised, weather the current storm: “It is very important to oppose the lies and half-truths of the devil with the whole truth: Yes, there is sin in the Church and evil. But even today there is the Holy Church, which is indestructible.”

“Today there are many people who humbly believe, suffer and love, in whom the real God, the loving God, shows Himself to us,” he notes. “Today God also has His witnesses (martyrs) in the world. We just have to be vigilant in order to see and hear them.”

Benedict goes on to acknowledge that “today’s Church is more than ever a ‘Church of the Martyrs’ and thus a witness to the living God.”

“If we look around and listen with an attentive heart, we can find witnesses everywhere today, especially among ordinary people, but also in the high ranks of the Church, who stand up for God with their life and suffering,” he notes. “One of the great and essential tasks of our evangelization is, as far as we can, to establish habitats of Faith and, above all, to find and recognize them.”

COLUMN BY

Stephen Wynne

Stephen hails from the City of Fountains, Kansas City, Missouri. He holds a B.A. in Creative Writing from Pepperdine University, and an E.M.B.A. from the University of Missouri.

His interests include international relations, cultural diplomacy, and theology; he is fascinated by Church history, particularly crisis points such as the Protestant revolt and the rise of modernism. Particular sounds — the crashing of waves, the wind in the trees, the pealing of bells — turn his thoughts toward God.

Stephen likes bullet trains, BBQ, and the works of Hieronymus Bosch. His favorite places include Iceland, Britain and above all, the Netherlands.

He is fueled by prayer and Red Bull, in that order.

RELATED ARTICLES: 

In new essay, Benedict XVI addresses sex abuse scandal

BENEDICT SPEAKS by R. R. Reno

Pope Benedict Essay: The Church and the Scandal of Sexual Abuse

EDITORS NOTE: This Church Militant column is republished with permission.

VIDEO EXPOSE: Vicious Anti-Semitism at University of North Carolina and Duke University

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United With Israel in a column titled “SHOCKING: Rampant Anti-Semitism at US College’s ‘Gaza’ Conference” wrote:

Ami Horowitz exposes how a thin veneer of anti-Israel sentiment hides an ocean of open anti-Semitism at a recent conference on the Gaza conflict.

Filmmaker Ami Horowitz made some disturbing discoveries at a Gaza conference on the conflict in Gaza organized by the University of North Carolina and Duke University.

From the speakers to the entertainment, Ami quickly discovers anti-Israel sentiment is no more than a flimsy disguise for open anti-Semitism.

The fact that hate like this is acceptable at an American university in 2019 is absolutely horrifying.

The Daily Wire published this video titled “Ami on the Move: Open Anti-Semitism At UNC And Duke Conference” on its YouTube channel:

RELATED ARTICLE: One third of Americans do not believe six million Jews were murdered in Holocaust

A Friendship that Changed History

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Thirty years ago, the good guys won the Cold War, yet today we have a front runner candidate for president, Bernie Sanders, who is an out-of-the closet socialist. He loved the old Soviet Union so much so that he spent his honeymoon there.

For decades, the Communists were aiming to take over the whole world. “We will bury you,” claimed Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1956.

Thirty years ago, two men played pivotal roles in helping to speed up the end of Russian domination—President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II.

Dr. Paul Kengor, a professor of history and political science, as well as a bestselling author on Reagan and on communism, wrote a book called, A Pope and a President (2017). I have interviewed Dr. Kengor on my radio show on this subject. He told me,

“The story of the 20th century was atheistic, Soviet Communism, which ran from 1917 to 1991; and these two men, Reagan and John Paul II, lived it. They saw it as the great evil of their time, and they came together of one mind and mission to defeat it.”

Kengor is the chief consultant and a recurring guest in the brilliant, new film, “The Divine Plan.” This documentary was written, produced, and directed by Rob Orlando, and it shows how Reagan and John Paul II both miraculously survived assassination attempts within weeks of each other. The film depicts how they went to work together, mostly behind the scenes, to help Solidarity—the Polish labor union led by Lech Walesa, which defied the Communist government in Poland.

I asked Rob Orlando why he made this film and why now. He told me, “I started this film during and after the Trump election and the media attacks which were deeply cynical and I felt unhealthy for our nation. I wanted to be more inspirational. I also was drawn to the idea of exploring and uncovering the riddle of ‘The Divine Plan’ in the lives of Ronald Reagan and John Paul II.”

Orlando added, “From there it became more of an inspirational quest to also show how these two men, who were almost killed within 6 weeks of one another, would come together as Cold Warriors and crush the forces of Communism. It became a heroic tale, much like the super hero stories we see again and again.”

Orlando’s film is very well done, with driving music, compelling documentary footage, and fascinating interviews, including Kengor’s.

The faith of Reagan and of John Paul II helped bring about the chain of events that led to the undoing of the evil empire. The film highlights what could be called “the God factor” in this slice of history, and the connection between faith and freedom.

There is a distinct Catholic feel to the film. But it appeals to people of all faiths interested in this fascinating story.

My boss and pastor for many years was the late Dr. D. James Kennedy, a conservative Presbyterian minister, who warned people against Communism for decades. A few years into the Reagan presidency, Kennedy made a stunning prediction.

Kennedy declared in his televised pulpit message, “The Beginning of the End of Communism” (12/30/84):

“I believe, though I am not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet, that there is every possibility that by the year 2000, Communism will be a thing of the past. This specter, as Marx and Engels described it, which has haunted Europe, and now haunts the whole world, will have been exorcised from this planet once and for all… and the Gospel of Jesus Christ moves out with all its power across the world—then the mighty hand of God will be seen. The claws and teeth of the Communist bear will be extracted and that hulk, that carcass, will be swept by the arm of God on to the garbage heap of history, and hundreds of millions of people will rejoice.”

In the movie, “The Divine Plan,” we see President Reagan speaking at a University of Notre Dame commencement (5/17/81), in which he declares: “The West won’t contain Communism. It will transcend Communism.”

But young people today have grown up without the threat of Communism over their heads. More millennials have a warm and fuzzy feeling over the term “socialism” than they do “capitalism.”

It’s unthinkable that Communism, which killed in excess of a hundred million of its own people in the 20th century alone, is among the answers that some young people are considering today.

Communism needs to be defeated again—this time in the classroom and in the late night bull sessions in dorm rooms and coffee houses of American universities. “The Divine Plan” reminds us that it once was defeated in a virtually bloodless way. It tells the story of a beautiful friendship that changed history.

VIDEO: The Vortex — Religion Dying! Time for a rebirth.

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TRANSCRIPT

No matter how you look at it, religion in America is dying.

In fact, the number of people who now say they have no religion has almost tripled since 1991 and now stands at just about the same level as the number of Catholics and Evangelicals.

According to the General Social Survey, a long-established metric of Americans’ opinions and practices across a wide spectrum of topics, the “No Religion” crowd is 23.1% of the population, Catholics are at 23% and Evangelicals account for 22.5% as of 2018. That is a statistical tie.

Mainline liberal Protestants have taken a massive hit since the day of the WASP establishment, a two-thirds decline to just roughly 11% of all Americans.

So look at the board, with everything on it at the same time.

  • No Religion: 23.1%
  • Catholic: 23%
  • Evangelical: 22.5%
  • Mainline Protestant: 10.8%

Together, that represents four out of every five Americans in one of those categories. The remaining Americans are scattered across other religions like Judaism or Islam.

Catholicism has seen what appears to be a steady erosion, decreasing 4% since 1972.

While that rate of decline is somewhat small, certainly compared to mainline Protestantism with a whopping 68% decline, it still does not bode well for the Church.

While it is true Catholicism is the single largest religious body in the United States, it is not on track to maintain that pace. Less and less are becoming or remaining Catholic, a fact borne out in the drop of the overall percentage of U.S. Catholics from 27% to 23%.

Now, two very troublesome points looming on the horizon.

First: For the past roughly 10 years, hapless U.S. Catholic leaders have been putting all their eggs in the New Evangelization basket with non-Catholic programs like Alpha. That has obviously failed, as even Lansing Bishop Earl Boyea confessed in a letter to his diocesan priests last year.

Secondly: With the constant stream of illegal aliens into the United States, again, another focus of the U.S. bishops, reports indicate that whatever percentage arrive here as Catholic, half of them leave the Faith within one generation.

Something is seriously sick in the Church.

If you look deep into the numbers, a tsunami can be detected picking up huge force. Young Catholics are jumping ship at a frightening rate, with a huge percentage deciding to leave between the ages of 10 and 18.

Older Catholics — mostly those born before Vatican II — are the most likely to have stayed, but they are dying off, and within 10 years, there will not be many left.

All this points to the reality that the Church is undergoing an enormous change — shrinking, becoming less relevant overall and having very little appeal to future generations.

Between sex scandals — mostly homosexual in nature — and now a string of ongoing state and federal investigations, the much-talked-about possibility of a U.S. Justice Department RICO investigation could be what finally pushes the Church over the edge.

It’s taken decades of corruption and dissent to arrive at this point. The treachery of many leaders — treachery against the faithful, the Faith and ultimately Jesus Christ Himself — is finally catching up.

Many of those — in fact, most — of those responsible for this have either died, are retired or approaching retirement in the next handful of years.

They have left behind a trail of tears. When they were in grade school or high school back in the 1950s or so, there was much talk about how America was on the verge of becoming a Catholic country.

But with the infiltration of Communists, homosexuals and theological dissidents, almost all of which was unknown at the time to rank and file Catholics, that possibility never got out of the gate.

It was sabotaged by the demon and his human offspring before it ever got off the ground. For those remaining faithful Catholics, the challenge is enormous.

Only the Catholic Church was established by Christ, and, therefore, only it can lead to salvation.

The forced retreat of the Church on the cultural scene, its movement toward being irrelevant, is going to have to be countered with an even greater resilience than was needed when Catholics first came ashore during the mass migration from Europe.

But for that to happen, the purification inside the Church must happen. The treachery, the cowardice, the incompetency, the emasculated men, the politically minded men in charge, all of it needs to be faced down.

Those are the very elements that have caused this meltdown, which is about to go over the cliff in the next handful of years.

We need to realize that for all intents and purposes, we will essentially be starting over — not quite, but pretty darn close.

Most Catholics sitting in the pews — the one in five who still do — either don’t know or don’t agree with the Church’s teachings, and emasculated, non-offensive, theo-babble garbage like Alpha is not the silver bullet.

When it comes time to finally say goodbye to the squishy, whiny Church of Nice Catholicism, it won’t be a minute too soon. Stalwart Catholicism, as it has always been, is how a culture is won in the long run.

We know. We did it before, and the world was given Western civilization.

We did it once, and though it took centuries, we can do it again.

EDITORS NOTE: This Church Militant video is republished with permission.