Comer: ‘6 or 7 Bidens’ Ride the Family Gravy Train~The Biden Family Influence-Peddling Scandal Just Got Much, Much Worse

The Biden Family Influence-Peddling Scandal Just Got Much, Much Worse

BY KEVIN DOWNEY, JR

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/kevindowneyjr/2023/03/16/ridin-with-the-biden-gang-6-or-7-bidens-ride-the-gravy-train-n1678847;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

House Oversight Committee master-blaster Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who is digging — successfully — into the Biden family’s alleged influence peddling, believes there may be more than half a dozen Bidens leeching cheddar from the tens of millions of dollars sent to family members by people with ties to the Chinese commies.

FACT-O-RAMA! Communist China — which is spying on us with balloons, maintains secret police stations in North America, and is currently seeking ways to disarm our military satellites — is considered our biggest enemy and the greatest threat to our nation. Yet it has funneled tens of millions of dollars to the Biden family. Coincidentally, Joe Biden has taken criticism for being soft on China with regard to the origins of COVID-19 and the billion-dollar industry of Chinese fentanyl pouring over our southern border, which leaves 80,000-plus Americans dead from overdoses every year.

“At the end of this, I think we’re gonna see there are probably six or seven Biden family members who were involved in various business schemes around the world,” Comer revealed to Fox News’s Laura Ingraham.

A Family Tradition

Comer did not name names, but he recently mentioned that a “new Biden” had dipped his or her beak — for the first time — into a $3 million payment sent to Hunter Biden lackey John “Rob” Walker. Walker received this payment from two people with ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He then distributed the cheddar to three members of the Biden family.

Comer further stated that, though he had bank records in hand via subpoena, he had no idea what the $3 million payment was for.

He wasn’t done spilling Biden family secrets, either. He further told Ingraham:

So this just shows how deep the Biden family was involved in this influence-peddling scheme.

It looks to me like these people, who are closely aligned with the Chinese Communist Party, sent $3 million to a shell corporation, then they turned around and split it three ways with a third going to the Biden family – three different family members for no apparent reason.

They didn’t invest it in a business. They just, it appears, stuck it in their pocket.

La Famiglia

The Bidens are starting to look more like a New York Mafia family than a political dynasty. Here are the big players we know about thus far in the Biden la Cosa Nostra family:

  • Joe “the Big Guy” Biden, head of the Biden crime syndicate.
  • Jim “Consigliere” Biden, Joe’s brother. Remains close to Joe. Though Jim stays out of the press, the FBI has a bushel of evidence pointing to years of his shenanigans.
  • Hunter “Fredo” Biden, Joe’s son. Ukrainian bagman, known for videotaping himself smoking crack and plowing hookers.
  • Frank “Frankie the Magician” Biden, Joe’s brother. Takes high-paying jobs with fledgling companies, and suddenly those businesses start landing lucrative government contracts.
Ed Reinke

So who is the “new Biden” found scooping cash from the family slush fund? Comer hasn’t told us, but we have some suspects:

  • Sara Biden, wife of Jim Biden.
  • Dr. Howard Krein, husband of Joe Biden’s daughter, Ashley, with whom Joe is believed to have taken “not appropriate” showers when she was a child.
  • Valerie Biden Owens, Joe’s sister. She ran all of his Senate campaigns as well as his failed 1988 and 2008 presidential runs.

Related: Uh-Oh. Biden’s Daughter Ashley Has a Diary and the Feds Are Investigating

FACT-O-RAMA! While vice president, Joe Biden was Obama’s point man for Ukraine and Costa Rica. During that time, the Biden family landed tasty contracts in numerous fields, despite a lack of experience in any of those fields, in both countries as well as Iraq, Mozambique, and the United States.

Rep. Comer’s Oversight Committee is a thorn in the side of the Biden family, but what can we expect to happen? Democrat fat cats — like the Clintons — always seem to walk away unscathed from allegations of wrongdoing.

But this Oversight Committee investigation might be different. As per Comer, up to seven members — thus far — of the Biden family might be involved in the alleged influence-peddling scheme. And with the known links between the Bidens and tens of millions of commie dollars that Comer claims he has found, this might become too big to hide.

On the other hand, does the nation really want to see the inauguration of President Harris?

One thing we do know is that the Biden family is finally against the ropes. When—not if—they fall, the world will see the Bidens’ ties to the Chinese commies who are trying to conquer us. I think the word for that is treason.

According to my history books, commies don’t go down easily. As their walls close in on them at this historical point in our nation’s existence, we can only expect the bolshies to roll up their sleeves and fight their hardest. And that’s what We the People must do as well.

You, patriot, have been doing a great job fighting for our values and our liberties. Thank you. Let’s hoist a bourbon and then get back to the battle. Is there more work to be done to sustain our freedoms and liberties? Plenty.

For starters, you can sign up for our newsletters and share articles like this with Americans who still don’t see the existential threat to the United States. It’s time to involve the people who never wanted to get involved. It’s time to, once again, awaken America’s sleeping giant.

You can also keep patriotic American news sources—like PJ Media—in the fight by becoming a VIP member TODAY.

The bolshies have their sites on PJ Media. We are an increasingly bigger thorn in their non-binary, Croc-wearing heels. The libs demonetize us every chance they get. Remember, if the 1st Amendment disappears, we will have to rely on the 2nd, and that is a situation no one wants to see.

 

Biden’s “Epiphany”: Not Supporting Transgender Madness Is ‘Close to Sinful’~NO WONDER HE HAS A VACATION HOUSE IN GAY REHOBOTH BEACH, DE

Biden said he had an “epiphany.”

Ο Joe Biden υπόσχεται να πολεμήσει την πολιτική τρανσφοβία: «Η απαγόρευση των trans δικαιωμάτων είναι αμαρτία»

Kal Penn & President Biden Talk Same-Sex Marriage

Joe Biden joins Kal Penn to discuss his evolution on same-sex marriage and how the government can protect the transgender community.

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/03/14/biden-says-opposing-the-mutilation-of-children-is-close-to-sinful-n1678275;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Old Joe Biden appeared on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show Monday night, where the guest host Kal Penn, star of the deathless classic Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, asked him about same-sex marriage and boys who want to become girls and girls boys. In response, Biden struck a moral tone, suggesting that support for same-sex marriage and the genital mutilation of children in pursuit of delusions and fantasies was simply the decent position to take, and darn it, Lunchbucket Joe didn’t see why it had to be any more complicated than that.

As we have all come to expect by now, Biden lied when he told a story that he has told before about his alleged “epiphany” on same-sex marriage. As Matt Margolis shows here, Biden claims to have begun to support same-sex marriage as a teenager, when he saw two men kissing. This was the 1950s when no one was talking about same-sex marriage and it was extremely rare to see homosexuals kissing in public, so his story is dubious on its face. But Matt demonstrates that Biden opposed same-sex marriage decades after that, casting his entire “epiphany” into doubt. Old Joe even threw in his patented insistence “I’m not joking,” which he often says when he’s in the middle of telling a lie.

Then, when Biden turned to a discussion of today’s fashionable gender madness, the conversation got even worse.

Penn had asked the ostensible president about what the government could do to protect the “trans kids who are dealing with all these regressive state laws that are popping up right now.” Biden replied, “Transgender kids is a really harder dnnnn. Thing. What’s going on in Florida,” and here he paused, shaking his head, weary at the evil of it all, “is, as my mother would say, close to sinful.”

What’s going on in Florida? Last October, the Florida Board of Medicine voted to ban the mutilation of children in the name of attempting to aid them to pretend that they’re of the opposite sex. At a Board workshop on this issue, a woman named Chloe Cole, who had embarked upon the path that she thought would make her a man, described the monstrousness of the procedures involved in abetting these delusions:  “My breasts were beautiful, now they’ve been incinerated for nothing. Thank you, modern medicine. At 13, I started taking puberty blockers and testosterone, and at 15, I underwent a double mastectomy in which my breasts were removed and my nipples were grafted. And yet, at 16, after years of medically transitioning, I came to realize that I severely regretted my transition.”

Woke doctors sold Cole a lie: “During my diagnosis for dysphoria and the consultations for these treatments, the overall picture of my life just went completely unaddressed….I was introduced to inappropriate content and an echo chamber of far-left ideology, such as that sex and gender are separate, women are inherently victims, men are inherently superior in every way, and that dysphoric children need hormones and surgeries in order to live.” This Mengelian manipulation is what Old Joe Biden was saying it’s “close to sinful” to stop.

Old Joe rambled on semi-coherently, claiming to be on the side of the good and loving: “It’s terrible what they’re doing. It’s not like a kid wakes up one morning and says, ‘You know, I decided I want to become a man’ or ‘I want to become a woman’ or ‘I want to change.’ I mean, what are they thinking about here? They’re human beings. They love. They have feelings. They have inclinations that are… I mean, it just, to me, is, I don’t know, is, it’s cruel.” No. What’s cruel is putting children on a path that they think will help them attain their delusions, only to find that it’s impossible for them to discard what they are and become something else.

Related: Biden Claims He Had an ‘Epiphany’ on Same-Sex Marriage as a Teen, but We Have the Receipts

What’s cruel is Old Joe Biden pretending that any of this butchery and mutilation is compassionate. But he is determined to protect these Frankensteinian, life-destroying procedures by law: he said that we need to “make sure we pass legislation like we passed with same-sex marriage. You mess with that, you’re breaking the law and you’re going to be held accountable.”

Will Biden himself ever be held accountable for the human cost of his misplaced “compassion”? Almost certainly not. He’s more likely to get a Nobel Prize than to face the repudiation and shame that should be coming to him for endorsing this inhuman social contagion. Still, Biden’s appropriation of religious language to support this disgusting barbarism is one of the most disgraceful episodes of this singularly repulsive man’s noxious career.

The Catholic Church’s LGBTQ Odyssey Welcome to the full-fledged freefall.

BY JOSEPH HIPPOLITO

SEE: https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-catholic-churchs-lgbtq-odyssey/;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

As it confronts perhaps the ultimate challenge to its credibility, the Catholic Church finds itself in full-fledged freefall.

Two American bishops publicly and strongly disagree about whether LGBTQ Catholics need to repent of their sexual behavior. One, the recently appointed cardinal of San Diego, argued for what he called “radical inclusion” without repentance. Another, a specialist in canon law, did more than disagree vigorously. He called his fellow prelate a heretic who should be relieved of his position.

Meanwhile, as his church burns, Pope Francis imitates that great Roman violinist, Nero.

San Diego Cardinal Robert McElroy, whom Francis promoted in August, called for “radical inclusion” of LGBTQ Catholics and removing “structures and cultures of exclusion” in a Jan. 24 article for America, the Jesuit magazine. Those “structures” include a doctrine demanding that anyone engaging in sexual sin becomes ineligible to receive Communion, which Catholics call the Eucharist, “without previous sacramental confession,” canon law states.

“The exclusion of men and women because of their marital status or their sexual orientation/activity is pre-eminently a pastoral question, not a doctrinal one,” wrote McElroy, who criticized “a theology of eucharistic coherence that multiplies barriers to the grace and gift of the eucharist. Unworthiness cannot be the prism of accompaniment for disciples of the God of grace and mercy.” (Emphasis in original)

For McElroy, neither repentance nor sexual behavior matters.

“The distinction between orientation and activity cannot be the principal focus,” he wrote, “because it inevitably suggests dividing the LBGT community into those who refrain from sexual activity and those who do not.”

In disregarding repentance for sexual sin, McElroy went even further.

“The effect of the tradition that all sexual acts outside of marriage constitute objectively grave sin has been to focus the Christian moral life disproportionately upon sexual activity,” he wrote. “The heart of Christian discipleship is a relationship with God the Father, Son, and Spirit rooted in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The church has a hierarchy of truths that flow from this…Sexual activity, while profound, does not lie at the heart of this hierarchy.”

McElroy, in perhaps his most passionate rhetoric, apparently views anything other than blind acceptance as hate.

“It is a demonic mystery of the human soul why so many men and women have a profound and visceral animus toward members of the LGBT communities,” he wrote. “The church’s primary witness in the face of this bigotry must be one of embrace rather than distance or condemnation.”

Compare McElroy’s views with the Catholic catechism:

“Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to natural law. … Under no circumstances can they be approved.”

In the Bible, Leviticus listed homosexuality among other sexual behaviors considered “detestable.” Jesus defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Paul, a former Pharisee, described homosexual acts as “shameful” and practicing homosexuals as unable to “inherit the Kingdom of God.”

Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Ill. quoted the catechism in his rebuttal to McElroy, which appeared on Feb. 28 in First Things magazine. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops recently elected Paprocki as chairman of its Committee on Canonical Affairs and Church Governance.

” … it is contrary to a ‘truth which is to be believed by divine and Catholic faith’ to reject or condemn ‘a theology of eucharistic coherence that multiplies barriers to the grace and gift of the eucharist,’ as if no such barriers existed,” Paprocki wrote in quoting McElroy’s article. “They do exist, and they are a matter of divine revelation.”

Paprocki also quoted several sections of canon law in asserting that “a cardinal of the Catholic Church, like any other Catholic who denies settled Catholic teaching, embraces heresy, the result of which is automatic ex-communication from the Catholic Church,” he wrote.

Promoting heresy, Paprocki continued, would result in a cleric losing any offices, powers, and privileges, and could even mean being defrocked if the problem is serious or long-standing. But Paprocki added a pivotal stipulation.

“Only the pope can remove a cardinal from office or dismiss him from the clerical state in the case of heresy or other grave crimes,” he wrote. “If he does not do so, the unseemly prospect arises of a cardinal, excommunicated … due to heresy, voting in a papal conclave.”

So what will Francis do? Probably nothing, which reflects his passive strategy to promote the LGBTQ agenda.

As FrontPage Magazine reported in December, Francis uses his rhetoric to defend historic teaching. He even called gender theory “ideological colonization” and supported the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith’s decision in 2021 not to allow German bishops to bless same-sex unions.

But the pope’s actions reveal apathy toward, if not support for, homosexual behavior and activism.

As FrontPage Magazine reported in the same article, Francis’ appointments reflect his attitude. One is Cardinal Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life and the former president of the Pontifical Council on the Family. Before coming to Rome, Paglia commissioned and personally supervised work on a homoerotic painting for his cathedral. That painting featured a scene showing the semi-nude archbishop embracing a semi-nude male.

As president of the now-defunct Pontifical Council for the Family, Paglia in 2016 approved a sex-education program for teens that a Catholic psychiatrist called “the most dangerous threat to Catholic youth that I have seen over the past 40 years.”

Another appointment is the Rev. James Martin, America’s editor-at-large who serves as a communications advisor. Martin regularly uses his speaking engagements and media platforms to promote the LGBTQ agenda. For example, Martin told a gay man at Villanova University in 2017, “I hope in 10 years you will be able to kiss your partner (in church) or, you know, soon to be your husband. Why not? What’s the terrible thing?”

Two years later, Martin admitted on Twitter that the Bible “clearly condemns” homosexual sex. “The issue,” he continued, “is precisely whether the biblical judgment is correct.”

In 2021, Martin tweeted opposition to a pastoral letter condemning gender ideology from Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington, Va. In February 2022, Martin likewise responded to a legal opinion from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who stated that prescribing hormone blockers and sex-change surgeries for children constituted child abuse under state law. That March, Martin opposed a proposed Idaho law banning similar procedures on children.

Not only has Francis yet to discipline Martin. The pope invited him to the Vatican in November to discuss “the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties, of LGBTQ Catholics,” Martin tweeted. The time was “indeed punctuated with smiles and laughter, and after which I indeed felt elated,” he added.

So Francis’ subtle sabotage benefits McElroy, one of his most important allies. As FrontPage Magazine also reported, McElroy stated in a voting guide for California’s 2020 primary that the pope’s positions on immigration and the environment mattered more than the church’s historic opposition to abortion and contraception.

Two-and-a-half years later, Francis made McElroy a cardinal.

The crisis holds serious implications beyond theology. As FrontPage Magazine’s Christine Williams reported, a student at a Catholic high school in Canada was suspended for insisting that only two sexes exist. That student, Josh Alexander, led a student walkout in November to support girls who opposed having transgender boys use their restrooms. Alexander and the girls tried to convince Principal Derek Lennox to intervene but Lennox did nothing.

St. Joseph’s Catholic High School suspended Alexander after the walkout. When Alexander tried to return once his suspension ended, the school had him arrested for trespassing.

Alexander, who calls himself a “born-again Christian,” tried to get support from a local priest, who refused to talk with him.

“I’m kind of shocked at how little response there has been from the church,” Alexander said on a podcast. “I even phoned one of the local churches the other day, and the pastor just told me he didn’t want to speak to me. I can’t imagine a leader of a church telling a 16-year-old kid he wouldn’t even have a discussion with him.”

But another priest reached the breaking point when Francis publicly advocated ending anti-sodomy laws in interviews surrounding his February trip to Africa and called upon bishops to lead that effort.

“It struck me that a lot of the Holy Father’s public comments revolve around this issue of homosexuality, as though that were the centerpiece of his ministry,” the Rev. Jason Charron said on video Feb. 8. “You don’t hear a whole lot of comments coming from him calling for the defense of persecuted Christians in, oh, I don’t know, places like China?”

Charron ended by posing a provocative question:

“Who do you belong to, Francis? Do you belong to Christ or do you belong to Sodom?”

************

BREAKING: Pope Francis showed his ultimate intent regarding the issue on March 7 by appointing Jesuit Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, archbishop of Luxembourg, to his circle of close advisors, the Council of Cardinals. Last year, Hollerich publicly rejected the church’s historic teaching on homosexuality in an interview with a German Catholic news service.

“I believe that this is wrong,” Hollerich said. “But I also believe that we are thinking ahead here in teaching. As the Pope has said in the past, this can lead to a doctrinal change. Because I believe that the sociological-scientific foundation of this doctrine is no longer correct. I believe that it is time for us to make a fundamental revision of doctrine.”

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Joseph Hippolito

Joseph Hippolito is a freelance writer and a regular contributor to FrontPage. His commentaries have appeared in The Federalist, The Stream, Human Events, American Spectator, Wall Street Journal, Jerusalem Post, and National Post.

Bishop Calls Out Biden for His “Fake Catholicism”

BY BOB ADELMANN

SEE: https://thenewamerican.com/bishop-calls-out-biden-for-his-fake-catholicism/;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Days after the chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities asked Congress to pass a bill prohibiting taxpayer funding for abortions, Joe Biden was asked about it:

Reporter: Catholic bishops are demanding that federal tax dollars not fund abortions.

Biden: No, they are not all doing that, nor is the Pope.

Bishop Joseph Strickland of the Catholic Diocese of Tyler, Texas, immediately tweeted: “Mr. Biden can’t be allowed to twist the words of Pope Francis in this way.… It is time to denounce Biden’s fake Catholicism.”

It’s long past time. Biden, the master flip-flopper, was, once-upon-a-time, back in 2012, a “pro-life Democrat.”

But that was then. Now, he’s all-in for abortion “under any circumstances.” And he’s all-in for ending the Hyde Amendment that prohibits Congress from funding abortions.

Back in July, Pope Francis made his church’s position on abortion clear: “A month after conception, the DNA of the fetus is already there and the organs are aligned. There is human life.”

And then Francis added a question directed to Biden, a self-proclaimed “devout Catholic”: “Is it just to eliminate a human life?”

The question was rhetorical. Said Francis: “I leave it to [Biden’s] conscience, and [request] that he speak to his bishop, his pastor, his parish priest, about that incoherence.”

National Public Radio (NPR) exposed the conflict just days after Biden was inaugurated, posing the issue: “Biden Is Catholic. He Also Supports Abortion Rights.”

One knows that Biden is a “devout Catholic” because his first press secretary, Jen Psaki, said so. At Biden’s very first press conference, she was asked point-blank about Biden’s abortion policies. Here is her response:

I will just take the opportunity to remind all of you that he is a devout Catholic, and somebody who attends church regularly. He started his day attending church with his family this morning.

The Most Reverend Jose Gomez, archbishop of Los Angeles and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, was far more enlightening. In his statement following Biden’s inauguration, he reminded his readers:

The bishops and Catholic faithful carry out Christ’s commandment to love God and love our neighbors by working for an America that protects human dignity, expands equality and opportunities for every person, and is open-hearted towards the suffering and weak. (Emphasis added)

And Gomez certainly expected Biden, as a “devout Catholic,” to be willing and open to “engage” with him on the touchy topic of abortion:

It will be refreshing to engage with a President who clearly understands, in a deep and personal way, the importance of religious faith and institutions.

Mr. Biden’s piety and personal story, his moving witness to how his faith as brought him solace in times of darkness and tragedy, his longstanding commitment to the Gospel’s priority for the poor — all of this I find hopeful and inspiring.

But, Gomez warned:

We cannot stay silent when nearly a million unborn lives are being cast aside in our country year after year through abortion….

I must point out that our new President has pledged to pursue certain policies that would advance moral evils and threaten human life and dignity, most seriously in the areas of abortion, contraception, marriage, and gender.

He added that those policies, as they are enacted, would affect all human beings, especially Catholics who hold that life is precious, dear, and a gift from God: “Of deep concern is the liberty of the Church and the freedom of believers to live according to their consciences.”

As Biden’s mental and physical health continues to deteriorate, the time gets nearer he will learn his final destiny. As Jesus’ Apostle John wrote in Revelation 21:8:

But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.

Pope Francis: “Proselytizing is something pagan, not evangelical, not Christian”

Pope Francis Calls Catholics to Seek the Lost "Without Proselytism"

Pope Francis I

The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I Hashem am your God.

Leviticus19:34 (the Israel bible)

BY Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz

SEE: https://www.israel365news.com/365692/pope-francis-proselytizing-is-something-pagan-not-evangelical-not-christian/;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

On Wednesday, Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, addressed crowds gathered for his weekly general audience that convincing someone from another religion to become Christian is a “pagan” practice.

“To evangelize is not to proselytize,” the pope told crowds gathered in the Vatican for his weekly general audience. “To proselytize is something pagan, it is neither religious nor evangelical.”

Quoting the late Pope Benedict XVI, who died Dec. 31, Pope Francis said that “the church does not proselytize, but rather she grows by ‘attraction’” to the beauty of God’s love.

Evangelization “does not begin by seeking to convince others, but by bearing witness each day to the love that has watched over us and lifted us back up,” he said.

“This is not about proselytism, as I said so that others become ‘one of us’ – no, this is not Christian,” he reiterated. “It is about loving so that they might be happy children of God.”

The pontiff has spoken against proselytizing several times. In the first year of his papacy, in an October 2013 interview with La Repubblica, he said, “Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense … I believe in God, not in a Catholic God, there is no Catholic God, there is God and I believe in Jesus Christ, his incarnation.”

In an interview with Spanish language news outlet Mundo Negro back in mid-December, which was published on January 13, Pope Francis acknowledged that he initially became a Jesuit to go as a missionary to Japan.

“I see that the Catholic Mission is not a proselytizer, but announces the Gospel according to the culture of each place,” the Pope said. “Catholicism is that, respecting cultures.”

“A missionary goes, respects what is found in each place, and helps to create harmony,” he added. “But it does not engage in ideological or religious proselytism, much less colonialism….the most serious sin that a missionary can have is proselytism. Catholicism is not proselytizing.”

Pope Francis has specifically forbidden attempts to convert Jews. In December 2015, the Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with Jews released a document instructing Catholics not to try to convert Jews and should, instead, work with them to fight anti-Semitism. The document emphasized that the two religions were intertwined and that God had never annulled his covenant with the Jewish people.

“The Church is therefore obliged to view evangelization (spreading Christianity) to Jews, who believe in the one God, in a different manner from that to people of other religions and world views,” it said.

“A Christian can never be an anti-Semite, especially because of the Jewish roots of Christianity,” it said.

The document coincided with the 50th anniversary of a Vatican repudiation of the concept of collective Jewish guilt for Jesus’ death and the launch of a theological dialogue that traditionalists have rejected.

 

 

Pope’s Moral Equivalence Between the IDF and Palestinian Islamic Jihad

BY HUGH FITZGERALD

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/01/popes-moral-equivalence-between-the-idf-and-palestinian-islamic-jihad;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

As is well known, big-hearted muddle-headed Pope Francis doesn’t take sides in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. As far as he is concerned, both sides are equally guilty of unleashing violence against the other; both deserve to be chastised and their respective acts of violence equally deplored. But of course, there is no moral equivalence between Palestinian terror groups, that plot to stab, shoot, and blow up with rockets innocent civilians, and the IDF, which seeks to defend the people of Israel by punishing and preventing such attacks. More on Pope Francis’ call for Israel and the Palestinians to stop what he calls their “spiral of death,” can be found here: “Pope calls for Israel, Palestinians to halt ‘spiral of death,'” Reuters, January 29, 2023:

Pope Francis on Sunday called on Israel and the Palestinians to engage in dialogue in pursuit of peace, deploring the recent violence in the region.

Speaking after the Angelus prayer in Rome, the Pope said he had been greatly saddened by the news of the Palestinians killed during Israeli counter-terrorism operations, as well as by the deaths of Israeli Jews in a synagogue terror attack on Friday.

Here’s the full report in the Vatican News on what the Pope said: “Pope prays for Holy Land as ‘death spiral’ widens in Jerusalem,” by Devin Watkins and Nathan Morley, Vatican News, January 29, 2023:

Pope Francis expressed his sorrow for the recent flareup in violence in the Holy Land on Sunday in his greetings following the noon-day Angelus prayer.

Since the beginning of the year, dozens of Palestinians have been killed in firefights with the Israeli army,” he said.

The Pope recalled the death of 10 Palestinians, including a woman, during an “Israeli military anti-terrorist raid in Palestine.”

He also lamented the deaths of 7 Israeli Jews who were killed, and three others who were injured, by a Palestinian as they were leaving a synagogue on Friday.

Note the order of things. The Pope first expressed his sorrow about the “dozens of Palestinians” who had been killed in firefights with the IDF since the beginning of 2023. Then he mentioned the death of ten Palestinians, most of them members of the terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, killed in Jenin. And only then did he see fit to mention the seven Israeli Jews who were killed in Jerusalem when he “also lamented” their deaths.

Why was Pope Francis “greatly saddened” by the deaths of eight terrorists who were in the final stages of planning a major attack? Was he “greatly saddened” by the death of Osama bin Laden? Was he “greatly saddened” by the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi? Was he greatly saddened by the death of Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps? It’s an intolerable remark, bespeaking moral myopia.

How dare the Pope compares the deliberate murders of seven Israeli civilians, including a 14-year-old boy, with the killing of PIJ terrorists who had opened fire on the IDF soldiers who had arrived at their hideout to arrest them?

“I appeal to the two governments and the international community, and I ask them to find immediately, without wasting any time, other paths which include dialogue and the sincere search for peace.”

The Palestinians have rejected every Israeli offer for a peace settlement – in 2000, 2001, and 2008 – and the P.A. will only agree to talk if Israel commits itself in advance to being squeezed back within the 1949 armistice lines, which Abba Eban once described as “the lines of Auschwitz,” and which would leave Israel with a nine-mile-wide waist from Qalqilya to the sea. With such borders, the country could be cut in two by an invader from the East within an hour. As for that “search for peace,” Pope Francis ought to be directing his remarks to the unyielding and corrupt rais in Ramallah.

The Pope appeals to “the two governments.” But “Palestine” is not a state, and the Palestinian Authority is something much less than a government. The Pope ought to have made his appeal to “both sides.”

“It is with great pain that I hear of the news coming from the Holy Land.The spiral of death which is growing every day does nothing but kill the little trust that there is between these two peoples,” he said.

The Pope’s phrase “spiral of death” suggests another deceptive phrase that has often been used about the Israel-Palestinian conflict. We are told that an attack by one side or the other is part of a “cycle of violence” for which both sides must be equally blamed. But the violence proceeds thus: it begins with a terror attack by the Palestinians, involving the kidnapping or murder of several Israeli Jews, or the launching of rockets from Gaza into southern Israel; this leads to an Israeli attack to punish the terrorists responsible or to inflict sufficient pain on the Palestinians generally that the terror group or groups involved then decide to stop – for a while — their attacks.

Israel has had to fight four wars against Hamas in Gaza, each time in order to discourage Hamas from killing Israelis, or from launching rocket and missile attacks on civilians in such southern cities as Ashkelon and Ashdod. Israel, in fact, is not continuing a “cycle of violence,” but rather, trying to end, through punishing attacks, that “cycle of violence” everyone deplores but which few understand has been the fault solely of the Palestinians, for it has always been they who begin the violence.

Pope Francis, deploring the “spiral of death,” has refrained from passing any moral judgment on the two parties. Can he really think that there is no difference between Israel, only trying to protect its people and the Palestinians who wish to destroy the Jewish state? Since 1948, when the armies of five Arab states tried to snuff out the young life of the nascent state of Israel, the Jewish state had to fight two more wars for its very survival, in 1967 and 1973. Furthermore, Israel has had to fight many smaller wars against the Palestinian terror groups – the PLO, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the PFLP, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade – that have launched thousands of attacks on the Jews of Israel. Does the Pope fully grasp this history?

In these attacks, which Pope Francis claims are part of a “spiral of violence” that he deplores, but about which he withholds judgment as to which side is more to blame, it has always been the Palestinians who have begun the violence, or more exactly, have never stopped their violence, and Israel strikes back not in every case, but mainly when a series of attacks have been particularly deadly, or when an Israeli attack will, in the opinion of the IDF, prevent a major attack from happening. The IDF’s entry into Jenin was undertaken to arrest those PIJ members plotting an imminent terrorist attack, as the Shin Bet had warned. It had no other purpose than to prevent that attack from taking place. This worry about terror attacks in Israel has recently become especially acute because, since last spring, there has been an upsurge in those attacks, and the IDF has, as a consequence, become more aggressive in raiding terrorist dens in Jenin and Nablus, currently the two centers of terrorist activity. The IDF went into Jenin not to kill, but to arrest the terrorists. But the soldiers were met with gunfire, and a three-hour gun battle ensued. When it was over, eight terrorists lay dead. Was the IDF fighting back in Jenin part of a “spiral of death,” or was it the justified reaction of those who had first been fired on? And wasn’t the mission itself, to prevent a terror attack on civilians, also justified? One would like Pope Francis to answer those questions.

The Pope seems to think that the murders in Jerusalem of seven Israelis by a 21-year-old Palestinian were in response to the gun battle in Jenin. But the Palestinian murderer had been planning for months to become a “martyr,” as his postings on social media make clear. The battle in Jenin did not prompt his violence in Jerusalem. The Pope wants to believe that we must blame this “spiral of death” on Israel, as one side – it doesn’t matter whether it is Israel or the Palestinians since both in his view are equally culpable – attacks the other; that other side then retaliates with its own attack, and again, the first side then responds, and there is no end to this. There is no room in Pope Francis’ understanding for moral judgments to be made on either side; it’s simply a case of two parties fighting each other for no good reason. The Pope is not about to suggest that the Palestinians’ reason for fighting is to bring about the destruction of the Jewish state, and Israel’s reason for fighting is to make sure that doesn’t happen. As the Pope sees it, every Palestinian who dies is just as much to be mourned as every Israeli; the “two peoples” (the Pope does not know that the “Palestinian people” were invented in the mid-1960s, at the suggestion of the KGB) must be helped by those who, like the Pope himself, will not presume to judge matters of morality, but will only work to end their “cycle of violence.”

In July, Pope Francis spoke of the possibility of retiring. That’s the best idea he’s had in a very long time.

PAGAN STATUE, SYMBOLISM OF A Woman Rises In New York City~THE IDOLATRY OF ABORTION PROMOTER RUTH BADER GINSBURG

‘IMAGE OF THE BEAST’: Satanic Horned Statue Honoring Abortion and RGB Invades the Streets Of NYC!

SEE: https://nextnewsnetwork.com/2023/01/27/image-of-the-beast-satanic-horned-statue-honoring-abortion-and-rgb-invades-the-streets-of-nyc/

Image

Civic Center, Manhattan, NYC

Ruth Bader Ginsburg released from hospital after cancer surgery

Words cannot adequately describe the shock and horror of witnessing a demonic, horned beast statue erected at a New York City courthouse in honor of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and abortion. This disturbing image is a testament to the lengths some will go to defend these practices, no matter what common decency dictates. While opinions may vary on the morality of abortion and Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s legacy, many are left speechless at such an overt display of support for them both. No doubt this eerie monument will be the source of much conversation for years to come.

Shahzia Sikander has stirred controversy among citizens in New York City with the recent unveiling of her sculpture, “NOW”. The statue atop the courthouse features a horned, demonic figure – interpreted as a celebration of abortion and homage to former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg by the artist – which is notably reminiscent of pagan gods Nefertem, Vishnu and Brahma, as well as Hindu goddess of destruction Shiva outside the CERN facility in Geneva. At the neckline hangs Justice Ginsburg’s distinctive trademark collar of lace, prompting an eruption of debates among political figures and religious groups. With her iconic piece provoking vastly different reactions in its audiences, the underlying message behind Sikander’s art remains ambiguous.

The Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade was a monumental event, one that undoubtedly saved countless unborn children from being terminated. After the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the chances of the decision being overturned seemed increasingly likely, and this became reality in July 2020. Surprisingly, conservative commentators have had to point out that overturning Roe does not mean that abortion has been outlawed everywhere– indeed, it merely means that the decision will revert back to individual states to decide for themselves whether or not abortion should be permitted there. As noted by Breitbart in a report on Sikander’s words, though, it is clear that any overturn would be seen as a setback for women and those fighting for equality; thus the battle will continue against anti-abortion forces across the nation.

Pagan imagery can be seen in multiple locations, both worldwide and domestically. Within the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) facility lies a statue of Shiva the Hindu goddess of destruction.

In the United States, an infamous satanic figure of Baphomet was unveiled in Detroit in 2015 and later made an appearance at the Arkansas Capitol building. The iconographic representation of Baphomet included a prominent pentagram and two young children standing near it.

A similar unveiling caused controversy in Detroit in 2015.

These instances demonstrate a shift away from traditional Christian religious symbols towards paganism artifacts that have gained traction in recent years.

In recent days and weeks, we have seen a stark visual display showing just how far some will go to defend abortion as a “right.” In many cases, this includes utilization of pagan imagery, taking us away from traditional religious symbols in favor of an often-demonized source. The surprise horned statue located at a NYC courthouse for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is certainly not an isolated incident – it serves as a reminder that people are increasingly likely to use potentially offensive visual representations to further a cause. This is truly stunning, and serves as an important reminder just how far America has fallen away from God which further emboldens us to stand our ground for The Faith..

 

Pope Benedict’s Secret Book is Out, Blasting Pope Francis

NO CATHOLIC NEWS SOURCES ARE REPORTING THIS! GAY CLUBS IN SEMINARIES?

Pope Benedict Unleashes Posthumous BOMBSHELL on the Catholic Church

Benedict XVI: Most Catholic Bishops Are Enemies Of The Church

Pope Benedict says Time of the ANTICHRIST is NOW...Is the Pope right?

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/culture/robert-spencer/2023/01/24/pope-benedict-unleashes-posthumous-bombshell-on-the-catholic-church-n1664629;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

When Pope Benedict XVI died on December 31 at the age of 95, it turns out that he had a completed book ready for publication upon his death. Written in Italian, that book, Che cos’è il Cristianesimo: Quasi un testamento spirituale (What Is Christianity: Almost a Spiritual Testament), is full of explosive revelations and trenchant criticism of his woke successor, Pope Francis. Could Pope Benedict begin a counter-revolution within the Roman Catholic Church from the grave? Stranger things have happened, although it would take any one of us a good while to think of one.

Pope Benedict explains that he did not want the book published while he was still living because of the furious reaction his writings inspired: “For my part, in life, I no longer want to publish anything. The fury of the circles against me in Germany is so strong that the appearance of my every word immediately causes murderous shouting from them. I want to spare myself and Christendom this.”

It’s easy to see why this book would inspire “murderous shouting” from some corners of the Roman Catholic Church. Benedict writes that the Church is close to “collapse” and paints a picture of seminaries in the United States as centers of promiscuous homosexuality and perversion. “In various seminaries,” the pope explained, “homosexual ‘clubs’ were formed which acted more or less openly and which clearly transformed the atmosphere in the seminaries. In a seminary in southern Germany, candidates for the priesthood and candidates for the lay office of pastoral referent lived together.”

The corruption was more or less out in the open. “During common meals,” Benedict noted, “the seminarians were together with married pastoral representatives, partly accompanied by their wives and children and in some cases by their girlfriends. The climate in the seminary could not help priestly formation.” He said that a “bishop who had previously been rector had allowed seminarians to be shown pornographic films, presumably with the intention of thereby enabling them to resist against behavior contrary to the faith.”

These allegations are all too plausible. On Sunday, the Times of London reported that “the Roman Catholic church is investigating allegations of a lockdown ‘sex party’ at a cathedral as part of an inquiry into a former bishop’s tenure. In a highly unusual move, the Vatican has ordered an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding Robert Byrne’s resignation as the Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle in December.” It appears that “a number of complaints were made by individuals within the diocese after information came to light about a sex party taking place in the priests’ living quarters attached to Newcastle cathedral.” As a result of all this, “the cathedral had become a laughing stock.”

Amid the steady stream of news about sexual misconduct by priests, this kind of story is sadly unsurprising, and comes, according to Pope Benedict, amid the effort of some Catholic leaders to remake the faith itself: “There were individual bishops, and not only in the United States, who rejected the Catholic tradition as a whole, aiming in their dioceses to develop a kind of new, modern catholicity.” Pope Benedict, who respected Catholic tradition, was the enemy in these circles: “Perhaps it is worth mentioning the fact that, in not a few seminaries, students caught reading my books were considered unfit for the priesthood. My books were concealed as harmful literature and were read only in secret, so to speak.”

Related: Pope Benedict XVI Has Died; NOW Who’s the Pope?

Pope Benedict criticized Pope Francis for doing nothing to stop the rampant corruption: “In the context of the meeting of the presidents of the episcopal conferences of the whole work with Pope Francis, it is at heart above all the question of priestly life and also that of seminaries. As regards the problem of preparation for priestly ministry in seminaries, we note in fact a vast collapse of the current form of this preparation.”

Pope Benedict also warned that amid the Church’s disarray, the world was becoming increasingly anti-Christian. He noted that the “great powers of tolerance do not grant to Christianity the tolerance they propagate, adding that their “radical manipulation of man” and “distortion of the sexes through gender ideology” were inherently anti-Christian, and regarded the Church as an obstacle: “The intolerance of this apparent modernity towards the Christian faith has not yet turned into open persecution, and yet it manifests itself in an increasingly authoritarian way with the aim of achieving, by appropriate legislation, the eradication of what is essentially Christian.” Anyone who doubts that should just consult the daily headlines.

Against this, the Roman Catholic Church and all the churches need to recover their faith and sense of themselves and stand to battle for the truth. Instead, they are consumed with the same “progressive” virus that infects everything else.

Vatican Asks That Biden Not Attend Pope Benedict’s Funeral

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/01/04/catholic-joe-biden-wont-be-at-pope-benedict-xvis-funeral-in-line-with-the-wishes-of-the-late-pope-n1658554;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

The second Roman Catholic president of the United States, Old Joe Biden, will not be present at the funeral of Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday. This is not because Biden would ever pass up an opportunity to flaunt the Catholic piety he so ostentatiously displays for political purposes, but because he was rather pointedly not invited. Are the falsity and hypocrisy of Old Joe’s religious displays finally catching up with him?

On Tuesday, Karine Jean-Pierre fielded a question on the pope’s funeral, and characteristically bobbled it. “So let me just first say, ‘cause we haven’t been able to, uh, be on the record on this, uh, since the passing of the pope. So as the president said in his statement, as I’m sure you saw, he joins Catholics and so many others around the world in mourning the passing of Pope, uh —”

Here Jean-Pierre paused and gazed for a few moments at a word she had apparently never seen before and had no idea how to pronounce, “Emeritus,” which she pronounced “Emmer-itis,” as if it were some kind of disease. “—Emmer-itis, uh, Benedict the Sixteenth. He will always, uh, remember the pope’s generosity and me — a meaningful conversation they had when he visited the Vatican in 2011. So, to answer your question, uh, the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, Joe Donnelly, will, uh, represent the United States at the funeral of the pope, in line with the wishes of the late pope and the Vatican. This is what, uh, this is what their requests were, this is what their wishes were, uh, and so, uh, that’s what you’ll see from the U.S.”

Now, wait a minute. The Vatican expressly requested that Joe Donnelly be at the funeral. The Joe Donnelly? It’s much more likely that they expressly requested that Old Joe not be present, which is strange in light of Biden’s self-conscious and pretentious displays of his Catholicism. Jean-Pierre herself added: “You know, the president, uh, as you know, he takes, um, uh, his faith very seriously. Uh, this is someone who is, uh, passionate about his faith. That’s not something I even need to tell you. You know this, uh, for yourself.” Yes, Old Joe takes his faith so seriously that he moves heaven and earth to make sure that every baby that can be killed will be killed. Why he’s a regular Saint Francis of Assisi?

On Wednesday, a reporter asked Biden himself why he wasn’t going to Pope Benedict XVI’s funeral. With his increasingly frequent dementia-borne testiness, Biden snapped, “Well, why do you think?” The reporter responded, “You tell me,” to which the ostensible president responded, “You know why.” Quixotically, the reporter persisted: “You can tell me, sir.” Then Biden said: “Uh, the reason I’m not going to the funeral tomorrow is that it would take an entourage of a thousand people to show up, not literally.”

All right, sure. The president, even an addled front man such as Old Joe, can’t travel light; he does have to have a lot of people with him, and Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said Tuesday that “following the wishes of the pope emeritus,” which he likely knew how to pronounce, “the funeral will be held under the sign of simplicity.” Bruni added that it would be a “solemn but sober funeral. The express request on the part of the emeritus pope is that everything be simple, both with regard to the funeral as well as the other celebrations and gestures during this time of pain.”

Maybe that’s all there is to it. According to the Daily Wire, only Italy, and Germany, the two countries where Pope Benedict XVI lived and worked, were invited to send state delegations. However, “Poland’s President Andrzej Duda, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, and Slovenian President Nataša Pirc Musar are among those who have already confirmed their attendance at Benedict XVI’s funeral in an unofficial capacity. European royals Queen Sofia of Spain and King Philip and Queen Mathilde of Belgium are also planning to attend.” But not Old Joe.

Could it be that the Vatican, or at least the circle of Pope Benedict XVI, didn’t want present at the funeral a man who so cynically uses the Catholic faith to get votes while ignoring its actual content? Was the Vatican’s request that Biden not attend the funeral a shot at his relentless pro-abortion activism and war against his Church’s teaching in this matter? The Vatican is too diplomatic to say, and Biden’s handlers know better than to acknowledge an obvious rebuke. But it’s fairly obvious nevertheless.

Ex-Catholic MIKE GENDRON Exposes the TWISTED Teachings of the Catholic Church~Eternal Security and Gospel Assurance

In this video, Mike Gendron, an ex-Catholic, visits Revolve Bible Church to give a seminar that exposes the twisted, unbiblical, and outright satanic teachings of the Catholic Church that most people are completely unaware of. If you’d like to learn more about Mike, please visit his ministry’s website: https://www.proclaimingthegospel.org To watch the other videos in this Catholic evangelism series, go here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4...

Evangelicals, Do THIS When Talking to Catholics:

Catholics are lost in a very thick web of lies, but that doesn’t mean they’re hopeless. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation! Mike Gendron visited Revolve to give a seminar that helps Christians practically reach Catholics with the truths of the Bible.

Christians, Watch This if You Want to Reach Catholics for Christ:

2 Critical Things Catholicism Gets Wrong:

FROM: www. proclaimingthegospel.org

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Eternal Security and Gospel Assurance
Did you know over half of those professing Christianity denies or rejects the Gospel’s divine promise of eternal life? Our Lord Jesus made His gracious and unbreakable promise very clear: “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life" (John 5:24). The apostle John wrote an entire epistle to show believers that we can know that we have eternal life (1 John 5:13). True saving faith is the assurance of things hoped for, and our greatest hope is eternal, everlasting life with our Savior (Heb. 11:1). Yet, Satan wants to rob Christians of their joy, peace, freedom, and confidence in Christ. He persuades people to believe the lies of false teachers, rather than trust the power and promises of God found in His inspired Word. Believers are eternally secure because of God's omnipotent power and unbreakable promises.
Power of Almighty God
Everyone who has been born again to a living hope is protected by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time (1 Peter 1:3-5). Not only are all believers protected by the omnipotent power of God, but their inheritance is imperishable, undefiled, and reserved in heaven.
Promises of Our Great God and Savior
Our Lord Jesus promised, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out" (John 6:37). Our Savior's unbreakable promise is confirmed by God's will. “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:40).
Perpetual Intercession of Jesus
Our Lord Jesus "is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through Him since He always lives to make intercession for them" (Heb. 7:25). 
Proof of Christ's Unconditional Love
Paul wrote: "Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, or sword? But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 8:35, 37-39).
Protection of the Good Shepherd
The Good Shepherd described His protection this way: "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand" (John 10:27-28). Jesus “is able to keep you from falling and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy" (Jude 1:24). Our eternal destiny is assured because the Good Shepherd keeps us and protects us.
Permanence of Divine Gifts
The inspired Word of God assures us that the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable (Rom. 11:29). God will never take back His gracious, indescribable gift of salvation (Eph. 2:8-9).
Plain Meaning of the Word “Eternal”
Throughout the Bible, the word “eternal” is used to describe many things that are everlasting and never-ending. Everyone who believes the eternal Gospel is promised eternal redemption through the eternal Spirit, who guarantees our eternal inheritance (Heb. 9:12; Eph. 1:14). Our eternal God's eternal purpose promises eternal life and eternal glory to His children in His eternal kingdom (Rev. 14:6; Rom. 16:26; 1 John 5:13; 1 Pet. 5:10; 2 Pet.1:11). Those who deny or reject God's promise of eternal life need to reconsider what the word "eternal" means. They will have to answer these rhetorical questions:
  • How can one who has been made complete in Christ become incomplete? (Col. 2:10) 
  • How can one who has been born again of incorruptible seed die again? (1 Pet. 1:23)
  • How can one who is kept by the power of God ever fall away? (1 Pet. 1:5)
  • How can one who has been perfected forever be found imperfect? (Heb. 10:14)
  • How could God break His promise to glorify everyone He justifies? (Rom. 8:30)
  • How can the Good Shepherd fail to protect and keep His sheep? (John 10:1-30)
  • How can the proof of God’s unconditional love be invalidated? (Rom. 8:31-39) 
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the greatest news anyone could ever hear because it offers the greatest gift anyone could ever receive! Let us proclaim it faithfully, completely, and passionately for the glory of Christ and the salvation of those who are perishing. You might even want to forward this article to your friends and loved ones!

 

 

Vatican Defrocks Anti-Abortion Priest Who Heads ‘Priests For Life’

Defrocked Priest Responds to Vatican, Isn't Backing Down: 'We're Not Going Anywhere'

A well-known Catholic priest who has for decades been a prominent figure in the pro-life movement has been defrocked by the Vatican. Frank Pavone, the 63-year-old founder of Priests For Life, a high-profile, pro-life organization, was purportedly removed from the priesthood Nov. 9 with no chance for an appeal. The Vatican made the shocking move after charges Pavone is guilty of "blasphemous communications on social media" and "persistent disobedience" in communications with his bishop, USA Today reported. The startling story of Pavone's laicization broke after Catholic News Agency reviewed a letter reportedly sent to U.S. bishops from Archbishop Christophe Pierre, Vatican ambassador to the United States, detailing the dismissal. Pavone joined CBN's Faithwire to discuss the matter and to proclaim he has no plans to stop his pro-life work. Here's what he had to say.

BY RICK MORAN

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/culture/rick-moran/2022/12/18/vatican-defrocks-anti-abortion-priest-who-heads-priests-for-life-n1654547;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Frank Pavone, who leads the advocacy group Priests for Life and was once a spiritual advisor to Donald Trump when he was president, has been removed from the priesthood by the Vatican.

No specifics of why Pavone was defrocked have been given by the Vatican, but Pavone has frequently clashed with his superiors over some of the language he has used in his social media postings.

A letter from the papal nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Christophe Pierre, to Pavone informing him of the action — called “laicization” — was vague. “This action was taken after Father Pavone was found guilty in canonical proceedings of blasphemous communications on social media, and of persistent disobedience of the lawful instructions of his diocesan bishop,” it states.

Pierre may have been talking about a tweet from 2020 that included some very unpriestly characterizations. In it, Pavone referred to  “supporters of this goddamn loser Biden and his morally corrupt, America-hating, God-hating Democrat party.”

The letter from the papal nuncio in the U.S. was addressed to the bishops, alerting them of the decision.

The New York Times:

The statement said that Mr. Pavone was given “ample opportunity to defend himself” as well as “multiple opportunities to submit himself to the authority of his diocesan bishop.”

“It was determined that Father Pavone had no reasonable justification for his actions,” it says.

The statement said the future of Mr. Pavone’s role at Priests for Life would be entirely up to the group, which it described as “not a Catholic organization.”

“As you will know, Father Pavone was a very public and high-profile figure associated with the Right to Life Movement in the U.S.,” Archbishop Pierre states. “His dismissal from the clerical state may, therefore, be a matter of interest among the faithful.

Pavone promised to keep fighting.

And Pavone has legions of supporters, including consecrated bishops.

It’s difficult to unpack the politics of the Vatican because so much happens behind the curtains. But we can speculate that Pope Francis himself either approved the decision or stepped aside to allow it to happen. Priests don’t get defrocked every day, and a well-known priest like Frank Pavone must have transgressed beyond a few curses on Twitter to force the hand of the Holy Father and receive the ultimate priestly punishment.

For our VIPs: Pelosi Denied Communion at Home, Receives the Sacrament at the Vatican

It may very well have been that Pavone was too loud in his opposition to abortion. Francis is trying to keep the Catholic Church in America from tearing itself apart over abortion. In the U.S., as in some western countries, the church’s anti-abortion activism has led to a split between pro-life and pro-abortion camps that are being fought from the top down. From the Conference of Catholic Bishops to the smallest parish, there are divisions that have roiled the church.

Pavone won’t be silenced, which begs the question of why Pope Francis and Pavone’s enemies wanted to defrock him in the first place. All they’ve done is raise his profile and turn him into a martyr.

And that will surely help his cause going forward.

Court blocks Biden transgender mandate to force religious hospitals to facilitate gender transitions

BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2022/12/court-blocks-biden-transgender-mandate-to-force-religious-hospitals-to-facilitate-gender-transitions;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

A win for religious freedom in the face of an American President who prioritizes the far-Left agenda over the rights of Americans.

Let’s also hope that “gender-affirming care” can be stopped for underage kids; it is nothing short of child abuse.

“Transgender Mandate: Court Blocks Biden Mandate Forcing Religious Hospitals to Facilitate Gender Transitions,” by Caroline Downey, National Review, December 9, 2022:

A federal court on Friday blocked a Biden administration mandate that would force religious hospitals and doctors to facilitate gender transitions against their sincerely held moral convictions.

The Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s decision to block enforcement of the rule on the grounds that “intrusion upon the Catholic Plaintiffs’ exercise of religion is sufficient to show irreparable harm,” the filing reads.

Catholic nuns, clinics, a university, and hospitals were among the plaintiffs in the case, represented by the Becket Fund. The plaintiffs all provide medical care for transgender patients but refuse to provide gender-transition surgeries because they believe them to be harmful. Their grant of permanent injunctive relief from the lower court was preserved Friday.

Friday’s ruling, which originated in North Dakota, is one of a twin set of cases challenging the Biden mandate. The second, which originated in Texas, was decided in August by the Fifth Circuit court, which also permanently blocked the rule. The plaintiffs in the Texas case included Christian medical associations of thousands of doctors who are now protected from federal encroachment into their practices.

“We now have two different federal court of appeals saying the Biden administration is permanently blocked from forcing religious doctors and hospitals” to perform gender transitions in violation of their conscience, Luke Goodrich, attorney with the Becket Fund, said during a call with reporters….

Lighthouse Trails Research Newsletter Selected Articles 1 of 2

Top 10 Ways America Is Being Groomed to Normalize Pedophilia
LTRP Note: For nearly the full existence of Lighthouse Trails (20+ years), we have covered the topic of child sexual abuse and child endangerment. We have published a number of books, articles, and booklets by various authors to help bring awareness to and equip parents, grandparents, and guardians. The following article shows the continued danger that children in this country are facing.

By Linda Harvey

Respectable pedophilia. Are you ready for this?

I’m not and I will be screaming against it until the last breath. But it’s coming unless a massive parent brigade shows up in both schools and in another venue that must be deployed to overcome this depravity: churches.

The truth of God, proclaimed by His saints and confirmed in the power, blood and resurrection of Jesus Christ, fueled by the conviction of the Holy Spirit can prevail over the tragedy of child corruption. We can do this.

But first we must face how we are all being groomed, as child sexuality is being packaged and sold to America, even as the latest fashion trend (e.g., Balenciaga).

We must refuse to be enablers and then take steps to end this diabolical trend.

Here are the top 10 ways that child sexualization is being normalized in America.

1. Child empowerment and consent.  How long before we allow children to make their own decisions about health care, counseling, and then the choice of a sexual partner? Over thirty years ago, a child’s right to “freedom of association” showed up in a revised United Nations document, “The Convention on the Rights of the Child.” That document has not been ratified by all countries, including the United States. But it remains a cherished goal of global leftists. Click here to continue reading.


Related Resources on child abuse and protecting children from Lighthouse Trails

Articles:

Horowitz: “The Medical Field’s Immoral War on Children”

Boy Scouts of America File for Bankruptcy Amid Sexual Abuse, Homosexual, and Transgender Allowances

Child Sexual Abuse Scandal at Matt Chandler’s Popular Village Church Raises Concerns Over How Churches Handle Abuse

California School District Teachings on Pedophilia Reminder of Child Sexual Abuse Epidemic and Cover-Ups

Efforts to Eliminate “Stigma” Against Pedophilia and Call it “Normal” Are Underway

A Special Commentary: Recent Events Show America’s Children in Grave Increased Danger of Sexual Abuse

Sex Before 8 – Or It’s Too Late

(Photo from bigstockphoto.com; used with permission; design by Lighthouse Trails)

Letters to the Editor: Author of The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, John Mark Comer, Bringing “Renewed” Contemplative Spirituality Into the Churches
LTRP Note: Please see editors notes below this letter.

Dear Lighthouse Trails:

Today my neighbor who’s in an emergent church . . . told me his church started a sermon series called “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry.” Hmm . . . I’ve left enough emergent churches to know a sermon series probably has a book. So, I did a search and found this disturbing link of trailers by this guy. . . .

This book (The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry), written by John Mark Comer, teaches readers to do breath prayers, mindfulness meditation, and various other contemplative-type exercises.

So, I just wanted to bring this to your attention as I see out there on vimeo and YouTube that Comer’s contemplative message is circulating in the churches.

This is such a burden as I left the Catholic Church many years ago.  I don’t even know what else to say about this. Do you think I should calmly approach the pastor in the neighborhood? Do I just pretend to not know any of this to get along?

Jane

LT Editors’ Notes:

The Letter to the Editor above was sent to us this past May, but we had not posted it yet. Yesterday, we received the following from another reader:

. . . I was wondering if you have done any research on John Mark Comer. He is the founding pastor of Bridgetown church in Portland, OR. He seems to have a big influence on pastors of other churches. He has written and promoted something called “Practicing the Way.” I’m not sure what that all is about but am concerned this may not be in line with Scripture. He has also written several books. Some of the teachings he has on YouTube are also a concern.—Debbie

In between receiving these two letters from the two LT readers, one of our authors began doing research on John Mark Comer and Tyler Staton (Staton, “lead pastor” at Bridgetown Church in Portland, is author of a new book titled Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools). Comer and Staton have worked together on various projects and interviews (such as this one on YouTube), and Comer’s endorsement of Staton’s book is inside the front cover. Both Praying Like Monks and The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry are heavily contemplative books.

The contemplative prayer movement (via Spiritual Formation) largely entered the church in 1978 when Richard Foster’s book, Celebration of Discipline was released (Foster was a self-proclaimed type protege of Catholic mystic Thomas Merton). The CP movement simmered for a couple decades but was heating up as figures like Rick Warren began promoting it (even as far back as the 1990s). But still, most Christians had not heard of it (even though their pastors were reading Celebration of Discipline unbeknownst to their congregations; and as we documented in our special reporEpidemic of Apostasy, many pastors had been introduced to contemplative spirituality in their Christian universities and seminaries).

Today, long after Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, and Brennan Manning (three pioneering Catholic contemplative mystics) are gone, a new generation of young “hip” pastors and leaders are rising up with a renewed energy to spread the contemplative message. Catholic mystic, Richard Rohr (who Ray Yungen said was today’s Thomas Merton) has provided the fodder and guidance for many of these new contemplatives. That’s easily proveable: One of Richard Rohr’s publishers told him that his biggest readership was young evangelical men [1] (e.g., today’s young pastors, two of which are Comer and Staton).

In his book, A Time of Departing, Ray Yungen explained, dissected, and exposed the contemplative issue in a way that is easy to understand and is incredibly well documented with source material (making his proclamations and warnings irrefutable—you know what we mean if you have read the book). If there is anyone reading this post who has not yet read A Time of Departing, we beseech you to read it. If you do not have a copy and are struggling to get one, we will send anyone who asks us a free copy of the book. Write to us at editors@lighthousetrails.com and give us your name and mailing address (we will keep those confidential). You see, it’s not about the money for Lighthouse Trails. It never has been. If you haven’t read our story of how we began this ministry, you can read it here. It began because of the contemplative prayer movement, and we have been compelled all these years to continue with this warning even though many pastors and church figures have belittled, mocked, and rejected our findings. If you read our story, we think you will begin to understand the urgency and continuation of our warnings.

What’s at stake here? The future of your churches and the faith of your children and grandchildren.

In A Time of Departing, Yungen exhorts us:

Contemplative advocates propose that there has been something vital and important missing from the church for centuries. The insinuation is that Christians have been lacking something necessary for their spiritual vitality; but that would mean the Holy Spirit has not been fully effective for hundreds of years and only now the secret key has been found that unlocks God’s full power to know Him. These proponents believe that Christianity has been seriously crippled without this extra ingredient. This kind of thinking leads one to believe that traditional, biblical Christianity is merely a philosophy without the contemplative prayer element. Contemplatives are making a distinction between studying and meditating on the Word of God versus experiencing Him, suggesting that we cannot hear Him or really know Him simply by studying His Word or even through normal prayer—we must be contemplative to accomplish this. But the Bible makes it clear that the Word of God is living and active, and has always been that way, and it is in filling our minds with it that we come to love Him, not through a mystical practice of stopping the flow of thought (the stillness) that is never once mentioned in the Bible, except in warnings against vain repetitions. . . .

Evangelical Christianity is being invited, perhaps even catapulted into seeing God with the “new eyes” of contemplative prayer. The question must be asked, is Thomas Merton’s silence, Henri Nouwen’s space, and Richard Foster’s contemplative prayer [which is rooted in panentheism and interspirituality] the way in which we can know and be close to God? Or is this actually a spiritual belief system contrary to the true message that the Bible so absolutely defines—that there is only one way to God and that is through His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, whose sacrifice on the Cross obtained our full salvation?

If indeed my concerns for the future actually come to fruition, then we will truly enter a time of departing. My prayer is that you will not turn away from the faith to follow a different gospel and a different Jesus but will rather stay the course and finish the race, so that after having done all you can, you will stand.

“Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.” (Ephesians 6:13)

When we consider the serious ramifications of the contemplative prayer movement and then also recognize that three of the major influences in the lives of millions of Christians—The Shack, Jesus Calling, and The Chosen—all have ties to the contemplative prayer movement, it is not difficult to conclude that millions of Christians are not wearing the “armour of God” and may, therefore, not “be able to withstand in the evil day.”


Endnote:

  1. The Liturgists Podcast (“The Cosmic Christ With Richard Rohr,” April 11, 2016, https://theliturgists.com/the-cosmic-christ-with-richard-rohr-podcast-page/)

 

 

 

Priest Advocates Porn for Overstressed Clergy

Priests like Fr. Backhaus are no longer rare exceptions in the Church.

BY WILLIAM KILPATRICK

SEE: https://www.frontpagemag.com/priest-advocates-porn-for-overstressed-clergy/;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse in the Catholic Church, Father Hermann Backhaus, a priest of the Diocese of Münster, Germany, proves you wrong. In a recent interview, Backhaus said that consuming pornography “can have a relieving effect” on celibate clergy.

Does a priest recommend pornography to fellow priests? It sounds strange at first—even a bit queer. But if you read below the headlines, you discover that Fr. Backhaus is also a psychologist. And, of course, psychologists speak with authority—even on moral issues.

At least, that’s what Fr. Backhaus seems to believe. He is quite proud of being a psychologist and mentions the fact several times during the interview.  For example: “I not only have a degree in psychology, but also a graduate degree in moral theology. But in our institution, I work as a psychologist who is also a priest—and not the other way around.”

In other words, for Fr. Backhaus, a degree in psychology trumps a degree in moral theology. “As a psychologist,” he said, “I do not judge or condemn porn consumption.”

Being a psychologist, however, does not prevent him from judging those who do judge porn consumption as wrong. Even Pope Francis comes in for criticism for having recently warned that porn provides the devil an entry point into the soul. “To bring the devil in connection with pornography,” says Backhaus, “is a very strong statement. I don’t know if Francis is not rather working against his intention than promoting it.”

As Fr. Backhaus correctly discerns, Francis’s main intention all along has been to promote a permissive attitude toward sexual activity. He may from time to time say something to pacify traditional Catholics, but his real intentions are revealed in his hirings and firings. LGBT-supportive prelates are invariably promoted, while traditional clergy are regularly demoted.

If Francis really believed that pornography was a danger to the soul, he would immediately prohibit Backhaus from counseling priests, and send him off to a remote monastery for a few years of prayer and contemplation– sans cell phone.

What’s much more likely, however, is that like other activists for sexual permissiveness such as Fr. James Martin, Fr. Backhaus will be invited to meet with Francis in a private audience. Shortly after, we can expect to see him given an influential post—perhaps in the Dicastery for Culture and Education. That institution is now headed by Francis appointee Cardinal Jose Tolentino de Mendonca, who, according to Rorate Caeli, “was well known in the Portuguese Church for being the absolutely most fabulous fabuloso of the whole fabulousness.”

One of Fr. Backhaus’s chief concerns is that priests are often lonely and overstressed. His solution to the problem is more pornography and more masturbation for their “relieving effect.” At the Dicastery of Education, he would have the time and resources for further research in the area. Perhaps the final result would be a patented product available on Amazon. It could be called “Father Backhaus’s fast relief technique for overstressed clergy.”

Meanwhile, despite what Fr. Backhaus may think, other psychologists are doubtful about the beneficial effects of pornography. For many people in our society, pornography has become a serious addiction and one of the leading causes of divorce as well. As with other forms of addiction—such as drug addiction—repeated use leads to a higher tolerance. Just as drug users eventually seek higher doses or more powerful substances, porn addicts also seek stronger stimulation–often in depictions of multiple-partner sex acts, and/or sadomasochistic sex.

In the real world, moreover, pornography leads not to stress relief but to dissatisfaction with one’s spouse, increased marital tension, and an increased incidence of marital infidelity. In fact, even in marriages where there is no actual infidelity, pornography use is experienced by both spouses—the guilty one and the aggrieved one—as an act of infidelity.

One supposes that clergy who consume pornography would also experience it as an act of infidelity. Catholic clergy take vows of chastity, and Catholic teaching explicitly condemns pornography and masturbation as sins against chastity. If a priest has a healthy conscience, we would expect him to be bothered by these infidelities, and try harder to overcome them.

On the other hand, Fr. Backhaus wants priests to deaden their consciences and give in to their temptations. After all, he says, pornography is “something that is normal in our society.” And he notes that “about 95 percent of men and 90 percent of women admit during counseling that they have had experiences with masturbation.”

Fr. Backhaus ought to ask for a tuition refund for his program in moral theology. That’s because he’s making very basic mistakes in moral reasoning. He confuses “normality” with morality. He reasons that if everybody’s doing it, it must be okay. But, as every parent knows, following the crowd is not always good advice. About 100 percent of men and women have told lies at one time or another in their lives. I guess that makes lying “normal” in our society but it certainly doesn’t make it okay.

The “everybody’s doing it” argument usually goes along with the “let’s be realistic” argument. And sure enough, Fr. Backhaus uses that argument too. Citing his authority as a psychologist, he says “we start from real life, that is reality.” He then proceeds to cite the data on the prevalence of masturbation.

What Backhaus forgets, however, is that owning slaves once seemed perfectly normal, natural, and acceptable. Meanwhile, those who thought that slavery should be abolished were told that they had to be realistic.

But being realistic about human nature is to recognize that humans are not purely natural creatures who can safely follow whatever impulses “come naturally.” Rather, according to Christian tradition and teaching, people are meant to live on both the natural and supernatural levels. And the proper order of things is for the supernatural to take precedence over the natural.

But through their sin, Adam and Eve upset the proper order of things. According to the Catholic Catechism, their sin was “an abuse of the freedom” (387) given by God, by which they fell from their original state of holiness into a state of sin.

Prior to the Fall, man exercised a “mastery of self” (377). After the Fall, however, “the control of the soul’s spiritual faculties over the body is shattered” (400), and man becomes a slave to sin.

One can dismiss all of this as nothing more than an ancient myth, but it’s difficult to deny that the ancient “myth” fits the facts of human nature more closely than the vast majority of philosophical and psychological explanations.

After forgiving the woman caught in adultery, Jesus tells the Jews who had believed in him, “Truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin” (Jn 8.34). And this is exactly the way many repeat sinners experience their sins. The alcoholic knows that he shouldn’t take another drink, but he can’t help himself. The porn addict knows that his habit is damaging his marriage, but he can’t resist the temptation. The verbally abusive husband knows he shouldn’t shout at his wife, but he can’t control his impulses.

In short, habitual sin takes away our freedom not to sin, and we truly become slaves to sin.

Herr Father Backhaus thinks that by encouraging priests to watch porn (or in some cases, more porn), he is freeing them both from stress and guilt. But in reality, he is setting them on a road that may lead them into spiritual slavery. At that point, other, more mature priests and psychologists will need to be called in to see if they can undo the damage.

The bad news is that priests like Fr. Backhaus are no longer rare exceptions in the Church. As anyone who pays attention can now see, the Catholic establishment is getting wackier by the day.

The good news is that the nuttiness has become so extreme and so visible that more and more Catholics are noticing. And that includes more of those who can actually do something about the situation.

In my next piece, I plan to detail some of the good news. Stay tuned.

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William Kilpatrick

William Kilpatrick is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. His books include Christianity, Islam, and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West, What Catholics Need to Know About Islam, and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Jihad.

HOLIER THAN THOW CATHOLIC, POPE’S PUPPET Mike Pence Hits Donald Trump’s ‘Reckless’ Jan. 6 Rhetoric

"HOLIER THAN THOW" CATHOLIC

Mike Pence opens up with David Muir on Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol "Attack":

Pence Claims Trump’s Words on Jan. 6 ‘Endangered Me and My Family’

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2022/11/14/pence-echoes-leftist-talking-points-claims-trumps-words-on-jan-6-endangered-me-and-my-family-n1645617;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

When did Mike Pence morph into Mitt Romney? The formerly sane vice president has now joined the likes of Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger in banging the tattered Jan. 6 “insurrection” drum, trying to stoke hatred of Donald Trump and provoke legal action against him over this supposed effort to destroy “our democracy” that lacked a leader, advance planning, weapons, and everything else you might expect an attempt to overthrow the government to have.

Pence is making the media rounds promoting his new memoir, So Help Me God, which is sure to release a megaton of pious posturing and hypocrisy into the atmosphere; on Sunday, ABC’s World News Tonight released portions of an interview, showing that Pence is going all-in on echoing talking points that Leftists use with increasing frequency to silence and discredit patriots.

Pence told ABC’s David Muir that Donald Trump engaged in “reckless” rhetoric on that fateful day and he “endangered me and my family and everyone at the Capitol.” This came when Muir “referenced the former president’s tweet as violent protesters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, accusing Pence of not having the ‘courage to do what he should have done’ with regard to certifying President Joe Biden’s electoral victory in Congress in his capacity as president of the Senate.”

Pence told Muir: “It angered me, but I turned to my daughter, who was standing nearby, and I said, ‘It doesn’t take courage to break the law, it takes courage to uphold the law.’ The president’s words were reckless. It was clear he decided to be part of the problem. The president’s words that day at the rally endangered me and my family and everyone at the Capitol building.” This was just feeding the Jan. 6 mythology of a mob of violent, crazed MAGA protestors, stirred into a frenzy by Trump, storming the Capitol. Like the Jan. 6 Committee, Pence ignores the fact that Trump told protestors to proceed “peacefully and patriotically.”

Even worse, Pence takes Trump’s critical statement, that he lacked the “courage to do what he should have done,” as incitement to violence, endangering him and his family. This is an extremely common Leftist talking point: a patriot says something critical about a Leftist, no matter how mild, and then the Leftist claims that he or she has been inundated with death threats as a result. This is both a deflection from the fact that the Left is responsible for the overwhelming majority of the political violence in this country and an attempt to reinforce the Biden regime’s false narrative that “white supremacists” and “right-wing extremists” constitute the greatest terror threat the nation faces today.

For Pence to aid and abet the propagation of the myth that conservative speech equals violence is the height of irresponsibility. The Left’s long-term goal in propagating this myth is to silence dissent altogether, which would include silencing Mike Pence as well, unless he continues on his present trajectory and comes out as transgender or something tomorrow, publishing a new memoir called So Help Me Gaia.

If Mike Pence was in danger on Jan. 6 and there were angry protestors shouting “Hang Mike Pence,” he wasn’t in danger because Trump had tweeted that he lacked courage. Pence is also echoing discredited witness Cassidy Hutchinson’s claim that Trump said Pence “deserved” the chants, which Trump heatedly denied saying. The Jan. 6 stitch-up is an elaborate exercise in trying to fabricate an act of treason and pin it on Trump. It should be beneath Mike Pence to go along with the charade.

Related: Tone-Deaf Pence: ‘Attacks on the FBI Must Stop’

But of course, Pence made his choice long ago; he said on Jan. 4, 2021: “I promise you, come this Wednesday, we’ll have our day in Congress. We’ll hear the objections. We’ll hear the evidence.” Yet just two days later, without explanation, he was singing a very different tune. And now this. The establishment media is delighted and is, of course, giving Pence’s statements big play, but they’re unlikely to convince anyone who hasn’t already fallen for their Jan. 6 melodrama.

What Pence himself is getting out of all this is unclear. Maybe he thinks he can become the Romney/Cheney Republicans’ choice for president in 2024. Given how the 2022 elections went, he could conceivably play that game all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But it’s much more likely that he, like so many other Republicans, would just be cast to play the Washington Generals facing the Democrats’ Harlem Globetrotters.

Posts From Lighthouse Trails Research Newsletter

The Radical Inclusive CATHOLIC Church

Irish of a traditional bent need not apply.

BY WILLIAM KILPATRICK

SEE: https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-radical-inclusive-church/;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Most practicing Catholics will have noticed by now that the Church under Francis has changed.  And many are not happy with the changes.

For example, Andrea Cianci, author of a new book that questions the validity of Francis’s election, says that Francis’s objective is to “demolish Catholicism.” But it’s not only Francis that traditional Catholics worry about. His plans for the dismantling of the Church are being implemented by a small army of prelates who are, in essence, Francis clones.

Right now, Francis and his supporters are utilizing the Synod on Synodality as the main engine for transforming the Church into something new and strange. Conservative critics of the synod claim that it is a “hostile takeover of the Church,” an “exercise in self-destructive behavior,” and an “open revolution.” This may seem extreme, but many of Francis’s words and actions reveal a man who is deeply hostile to the Catholic Church—a Church that he considers “rigid,” “fundamentalist,” “exclusivist,” and very much in need of opening up. Moreover, those who are running the Synod share his sentiments.

In reality, the Church has been opening up ever since the pontificate of John XXIII, but much of what the Church of Francis is engaged in is not simply an opening up of the Church, but a rejection of it.  Church leaders are already in the process of rejecting the Church’s teaching on marriage, adultery, abortion, homosexuality, gender, divorce, polygamy, clerical celibacy, and women’s ordination. To the extent that they are opening the Church, they are opening it to people who dissent from Church teaching on these and other matters.

Perhaps because they realize they are already firmly in control, the “woke” prelates have become quite open about what they plan to do.  For example, the Vatican has just released a new document for the Synod on Synodality which calls for “a Church capable of radical inclusion.”

The 44-page document is entitled “Enlarge the space of your tent,” but the tent doesn’t seem to have much space for traditional Catholic beliefs and practices.  Rather it encourages dialogue with “those who, for various reasons, feel a tension between belonging to the Church and their own loving relationship, such as remarried divorcees, single parents, people living in a polygamous marriage, LGBTQ people, etc.”

“Polygamous marriage?”  One wonders what’s included in “etc.”  In any event, this new inclusive model is being suggested as the model the Church should embrace.  But don’t assume that the plan is to help the “marginalized” (i.e., adulterers, LGBTQ, etc.) to conform their lives to Church teaching.  Rather, the plan is to conform the Church’s teachings to the “lived experience” of the marginalized.

“Radical inclusion” sounds vaguely Christian, but it is actually a plan for demolishing the Church—as the word “radical” implies. The word brings to mind images of the radical French Revolution, the radical Russian Revolution, and the radical Sexual Revolution. All three resulted in enormous damage to the societies involved, yet the Synod documents often speak the language of revolutionary change. Moreover, the Synod fathers seem anxious to bless the Sexual Revolution and bring it fully into the Church. “Radical” is not usually thought of as a term of praise, but that’s the way it was used by Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, the Relator General of the Synod, in a recent interview with L’Osservatore Romano. Hollerich praised Pope Francis for being “not a liberal” but a “radical.”

Most Catholics don’t keep up with recent issues of L’Osservatore Romano or with the latest Vatican document. So, relatively few are aware of the radical nature of the changes being proposed in the synods. Perhaps the most prominent synodal theme is “inclusion,” and the promise that no one is excluded. But when the Synod fathers say “no one is excluded,” it should give us pause.  Do they also mean “no sins are excluded?”  Do they mean that no repentance is required? The numerous synod documents suggest that what progressive Catholics want is an inclusive community without rules—a place where each follows his or her own inner guidance.

But workable communities that last do have rules and, in order to survive, they tend to exclude those who won’t follow the rules.  One supposes, for example, that a good number of bishops belong to a golf club.  And it’s a good bet they know and observe the rules of the club.  If a bishop drives his golf cart in a reckless way after several drinks and several warnings, he can expect to be excluded from the club.  He can claim that the club has “marginalized” him, but in reality, he has marginalized himself.

One might counter by observing that the Church is not a golf club. It follows a different—more merciful– set of rules. Cardinal Hollerich has said as much: “[The] Kingdom of God is not an exclusive club.” Rather, he says, its doors are open “to everyone without discrimination.” “This,” said Hollerich, “is simply about affirming that Christ’s message is for everyone.”

All Christians can agree that Christ’s message is for everyone. But most would want “everyone” to hear the full message of Christ, not a highly redacted version. If you read the full message of Christ on the subject of entrance into the Kingdom of God, you would not, contra Hollerich, get the impression that it’s open “to everyone without discrimination.” Not by a long shot.

Take Matthew 25:31-46—the parable about the sheep and the goats. On Judgment Day, “[The King] will separate the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left.” He then invites the sheep to inherit the kingdom, but the goats are sent away “into eternal punishment.”

I don’t know about you, but that sounds discriminatory to me. And frightening as well. Thank Heaven for purgatory.

Christ also discriminates on several occasions in favor of wheat over weeds (or chaff): “Let both grow together until the harvest and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, ‘Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn’” (Mt.13:30).

In another parable, he tells his disciples: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a net which was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind; when it was full, men…sorted the good into vessels but threw away the bad” (Mt. 13:47-48).

Lest there be any misunderstanding, Jesus then explains: “So it will be at the end of the age, the angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous, and throw them into the furnace of fire” (Mt. 13 49-50).

The meaning of these parables seems clear, yet Christ tells several other parables with the same message.  In one parable, he tells of five wise maidens who, having made proper preparations, are admitted to a wedding feast; and of five foolish maidens who, having failed to make sufficient preparations, are excluded from the feast.

In another parable about a wedding feast, a guest without a wedding garment is cast out the door: “Then the king said to the attendants, “Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness…For many are called, but few are chosen” (Mt. 22: 13-14).

Hollerich may say that the Kingdom of God is open “to everyone without discrimination,” but the Gospels seem to be saying something different.  Hollerich says, in effect, “come as you are,” but Jesus advises us to come wearing a wedding suit (i.e., in a state of grace.) Although well-acquainted with the merciful sayings of Jesus, Hollerich, and Francis seem to ignore his more judgmental warnings.

Quite obviously, the words of Jesus are an obstacle to the synodal plans of Hollerich, Francis, and others in the hierarchy.  Quite obviously, Jesus will have to go if the synodalists hope to achieve their goals.  Expect him to gradually disappear from the new radically inclusive Church.  Either that or expect him to be transformed to better fit the jolly theology of Cardinal Hollerich who tells us that “living in the footsteps of Christ means living well, it means enjoying life.”

In short, expect Jesus to be transformed into some kind of happy genderless hippie who utters woke platitudes and announces the good news that your sins aren’t really sins at all.  He just wants you to be happy doing whatever makes you feel good.

It is, of course, a formula for disaster. Canon Lawyer Rev. Gerald F. Murray calls it “a self-destructive Synod.”  He notes some of the signs of decline in the Church we have already seen under Francis: “lack of priestly vocations in the developed world; the steep decline in Mass attendance, baptisms, and Church weddings…the collapse of religious orders and the rejection of doctrinal fidelity.”

One doesn’t have to look far to find signs of doctrinal infidelity.  Here in the U.S., LGBTQ activist priest Fr. James Martin has asserted that LGBT Christians are not bound by the rule of chastity.  And in formerly Catholic Ireland, an elderly priest was recently suspended by his bishop for speaking of the sinfulness of certain sexual activities.

The priest, Fr. Sean Sheehy, said he was simply stating what was in the Gospel. But that’s the problem, isn’t it?  Fr. Murray says the Synod is “self-destructive.”  But it’s only self-destructive if the intention of the Synod is to preserve and strengthen the Church founded by Christ and revealed to Christians in the gospels.  If the intention of the Synod fathers (along with Pope Francis) is to replace the Church of Christ with a humanistic/modernist Church with all the supernatural elements purged out, then the Synod has thus far been a roaring success for them—if not for the rest of us.

It’s possible that the Synod organizers are genuinely well-intentioned.  Perhaps they think that by downplaying immorality and by convincing Catholics to “take it easy on yourself,” Catholics will shake off their burden of guilt and lead happier healthier lives.  But previous attempts at relaxing the rules while ignoring the supernatural dimension of life—such as the Sexual Revolution—eventually resulted in making life harder not easier.

Should the Synod fathers succeed in convincing Catholics that sin is not sinful, the destructive, addictive, and family-wrecking effects of sin will still be at work—both in individual lives and throughout society. The Synod leaders may succeed in bringing about a radical change in the Church, but because of their naivete about human nature, the changes will inexorably lead to widespread unhappiness and despair.

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William Kilpatrick

William Kilpatrick is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. His books include Christianity, Islam, and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West, What Catholics Need to Know About Islam, and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Jihad.

Pope FRANCIS praises Muslim Council of Elders, claims it is ‘committed to dispelling erroneous interpretations’ of Islam

With Russia’s war in Ukraine raging, Pope Francis joined Muslim, Christian, and Jewish leaders Friday in calling for the world’s great religions to work together for peace, telling an interfaith summit that religion must never be used to justify violence and that faith leaders must counter the “childlike” whims of the powerful to make war.

LIVE from the Mosque - Sakhir Royal Palace | Join us for Pope Francis' meeting with Members of the Muslim Council of Elders. Later, the Holy Father will move to the Our Lady of Arabia Cathedral to join an Ecumenical Prayer for Peace.

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2022/11/pope-praises-muslim-council-of-elders-claims-it-is-committed-to-dispelling-erroneous-interpretations-of-islam;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

The naive Francis twice said: “As-salamu alaikum!,” not realizing that in Islamic law, only Muslims may use that greeting, when greeting fellow Muslims. It means “Peace be upon you,” and to unbelievers, a Muslim is supposed to say “Peace be upon those who are rightly guided.”

He also said: “I offer you cordial greetings and I express my prayerful hope that the peace of the Most High may descend upon each of you: upon you, who desire to foster reconciliation in order to avoid divisions and conflicts in Muslim communities; upon you, who see in extremism a danger that corrodes genuine religion; upon you, who are committed to dispelling erroneous interpretations that through violence misconstrue, exploit and do a disservice to religious belief.”

It would be refreshing if the Muslim Council of Elders actually bothered to explain how the interpretations of “extremists” are “erroneous,” so that their influence in Muslim communities could be combatted. But they don’t do this, and the pope doesn’t seem to notice or care.

“Pope Francis to Muslim Elders: God ‘Never Incites Hatred, Never Supports Violence,’” by Thomas D. Williams, Breitbart, November 5, 2022:

ROME — Pope Francis told Muslim elders in Bahrain Friday that God is the source of peace and he “never brings about war, never incites hatred, never supports violence.”

“I have come among you as a believer in God, as a brother and as a pilgrim of peace,” the pontiff told the Muslim Council of Elders, so that “we can journey together.”

In passing, the pope also addressed concerns of alleged human rights abuses in the majority Sunni Muslim nation, especially of the country’s minority Shiite Muslim community. In recent years many Shiite activists have been imprisoned or deported, and the largest Shiite opposition group has been outlawed.

“I offer … my prayerful hope that the peace of the Most High may descend upon each of you … who desire to foster reconciliation in order to avoid divisions and conflicts in Muslim communities,” Francis said.

“We, who believe in [God], are called to promote peace with tools of peace, such as encounter, patient negotiations and dialogue, which is the oxygen of peaceful coexistence,” he said.

“Peace is born of fraternity; it grows through the struggle against injustice and inequality; it is built by holding out a hand to others,” he declared, which is made possible “by eliminating the forms of inequality and discrimination that give rise to instability and hostility.”

The pope praised his hearers for seeing in extremism “a danger that corrodes genuine religion” and for their commitment “to dispelling erroneous interpretations that through violence misconstrue, exploit and do a disservice to religious belief.”

“We need to put a future of fraternity ahead of a past of antagonism, overcoming historical prejudices and misunderstandings in the name of the One who is the source of peace,” he asserted….

Interfaith Dialogue: Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Plays the Pope Like a Cheap Fiddle

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/culture/robert-spencer/2022/11/04/interfaith-dialogue-grand-imam-of-al-azhar-plays-the-pope-like-a-cheap-fiddle-n1642845;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayyeb, who as grand imam of Cairo’s Al-Azhar is the foremost cleric in Sunni Islam, met up again with his pal Pope Francis in Bahrain on Friday and gave us one of the best episodes yet of their ongoing buddy-movie series. Whenever these two get together, they always serve up fresh steaming piles of cynical deception, Islamic proselytizing, and Leftist agitprop, and Friday’s episode was no different. In fact, it was one of the most outstanding examples yet of how Islamic leaders use interreligious dialogue to further their own ends, playing their naïve Christian counterparts for fools again and again.

At the Bahrain Forum for Dialogue, according to Church Militant, al-Tayyeb asserted that “what is said and promoted from time to time about the institution of war in Islam against the infidels is not true. Indeed, it is a real lie about Islam and the life of its prophet, even if this is affirmed by some followers of the same religion, a religion that is based on evidence and testimony, not on ambiguity and lies.” The “lie” that al-Tayyeb had in mind was the readily demonstrable proposition that Islam is the only major world religion that has a developed doctrine involving warfare against the subjugation of unbelievers. Despite statements to that effect from numerous Muslim clerics and the undeniable evidence of over 42,000 violent jihad attacks worldwide since 9/11, al-Tayyeb insisted that it was all a misunderstanding.

We have, of course, heard this song before, and al-Tayyeb was aware of that, telling the pope: “I hope you are not bored with the constant claims that Islam is a religion of peace and equality.” Pope Francis, of course, was just the opposite of bored. He can’t get enough of that sort of thing, as back in 2013 he himself declared, with imperviousness to facts and evidence that was truly breathtaking, that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.”

Why is this so hard for Westerners to grasp? Well, it’s largely because it isn’t remotely true, but as far as al-Tayyeb was concerned, it was because Muslim scholars have been less than “diligent in letting Westerners know about true Islam.” He said that they should “continue to highlight what Islam encompasses in terms of lofty ideals, human brotherhood and cooperation, and other commonalities that the West and East agree on and welcome.” Yeah, good idea. Maybe he can explain where exactly the Qur’an calls for “human brotherhood and cooperation” with non-Muslims, whom the Islamic holy book calls “the most vile of created beings” (98:6).

Al-Tayyeb didn’t get close to dealing with that Qur’an verse and others like it. He was too busy playing to his audience, knowing that a doctrinaire Leftist such as Pope Francis would be thrilled to hear about how the Big Bad West could learn from the wise, benign, serene East: “Western culture should not be represented as the only civilized society and as the standard for judging other cultures. Any interference with other cultures is an abuse of power. The West needs the wisdom of the East, its religious and moral values upon which its people were raised, as well as its balanced view of man, the universe, and our Creator,” so as “not to be blinded by putting the ephemeral before the eternal.”

Related: Pope Francis: ‘Through My Racism, Through My Most Grievous Racism’

Church Militant notes that “while Pope Francis did not make any explicit reference to the Triune God or the Holy Bible, the highest-ranking cleric in the Sunni-Muslim world introduced and ended his address with an Islamic blessing and unapologetically quoted the Quran several times in his text.” At one point, al-Tayyeb asked: “What is the relationship between people according to the philosophy of the Qur’an? The only way to make this relationship work is knowledge, which is how Allah has established the interactions and relationships between people. The Qur’an says it clearly: ‘O humanity! Indeed, we created you from a male and a female and made you into peoples and tribes so that you may get to know one another. Surely, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous among you. Allah is truly All-Knowing, All-Aware,’ (Qur’an 49:13).”

Gee, that sounds great, but unfortunately, it is not even close to being the Qur’an’s last or only word on such matters. As I told Church Militant, Al-Tayyeb’s statements demonstrated yet again that for all too many Islamic leaders, if not all, interreligious dialogue is a vehicle for dawah, Islamic proselytizing, not genuine give-and-take. His copious quotations from the Qur’an, while Francis fastidiously refrained from quoting the Bible, show once again how one-sided this “dialogue” really is: the self-abnegation and deference are all on the Christian side, while the Muslim side retains a resolute self-awareness and doesn’t move toward the other side even an inch.

Meanwhile, al-Tayyeb’s exposition of Islam was highly inaccurate and misleading; among the many salient Qur’an passages he did not quote are “Fight them until there is no more persecution and religion is all for Allah” (8:39), which is an open-ended declaration of war against unbelievers, and “Muhammad is the apostle of Allah. Those who follow him are ruthless to unbelievers, merciful to one another” (48:29), which belies claims he made about Islam teaching that “peace and knowledge” should guide relationships between people. Even if he knew how deceptive al-Tayyeb was being, which he almost certainly did not, Francis wouldn’t have dreamed of contradicting him publicly or asking him any pointed questions. He willingly and happily played the useful idiot and dhimmi.

That’s the state of interfaith dialogue in this enlightened year 2022.

Faithful Catholics Are Resisting Pope Francis’ Globalism, Subversion, Heresy, & Apostasy

Faithful Catholics Are Resisting Pope Francis’ Globalism, Subversion, Heresy, & Apostasy

BY WILLIAM F. JASPER

SEE: https://thenewamerican.com/faithful-catholics-are-resisting-pope-francis-globalism-subversion-heresy-apostasy/;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Pope Francis is facing a mounting insurrection within the Catholic prelature, clergy, and laity in response to his ongoing radical efforts to change Catholic doctrine, moral teachings, Church governance, liturgy, diplomacy, and other matters. A prominent cardinal has characterized Pope Francis’ actions as tantamount to “a hostile takeover of the Catholic Church.” An archbishop and former Vatican official has accused the pope of being an “authoritarian tyrant” whose “violent and destructive” actions are causing “incalculable” damage to the Church and the faithful. An internationally renowned Catholic professor at Princeton University called Pope Francis's appointment “shocking and scandalous.” A conference in October of prominent Catholic laymen and women, featuring a bishop and an archbishop, issued a formal declaration of resistance to Pope Francis. And there is much more.

Among Pope Francis’ latest scandals are the outrageous and heretical proposals of his Synod on Synodality; his appointment, on October 15, to the Pontifical Academy for Life of Professor Mariana Mazzucato, an atheist, globalist, pro-abortion feminist, and advocate for the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset; his betrayal of China’s persecuted Catholics and the aged, heroic Cardinal Joseph Zen with the Vatican’s agreement with Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party; and his harsh attacks on faithful Catholics and suppression of the traditional Latin Mass, while at the same time refusing to root out homosexual clerics and refusing to condemn or rein in wild liturgical abuses.

The pope’s Synod on Synodality, a three-year-long process culminating in October 2024, has already stirred widespread opposition for its calls to embrace same-sex marriage, same-sex adoption, radical “inclusion” of LGBTQ groups, and ordination of women, as well as for the synod’s inclusion of dissident ex-Catholics and anti-Catholics. In an essay for the (U.S.) National Catholic Register, Australia’s Cardinal George Pell wrote, “The synodal process has begun disastrously in Germany, and matters will become worse unless we soon have effective papal corrections on, for instance, Christian sexual morality, women priests, etc.” “We find no precedents in Catholic history for the active participation of ex-Catholics and anti-Catholics in such bodies,” he continued, warning against the synod’s allowing of “serious heresies to continue undisturbed.”

Germany’s Gerhard Ludwig Müller, the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s oldest department of the Roman Curia, has been even more pointed in his criticism of the synod, calling it “a hostile takeover of the Church of Jesus Christ.” The synodal leaders, said Cardinal Müller in an October interview with Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), “are dreaming of another church that has nothing to do with the Catholic faith … and they want to abuse this process, for shifting the Catholic Church” and for “the destruction of the Catholic Church.” In a subsequent interview with LifeSiteNews, Cardinal Müller blasted the introduction of same-sex “blessings” by the bishops of Belgium’s Flanders region as “an absolute heresy and schism.” “No bishop or pope has authority to bless something which is against the will of our Creator and our Redeemer,” the Vatican’s former doctrinal chief said.

In tandem with the destructive Synod on Synodality, Pope Francis’ manifest subversion of the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAL) over the past several years appears to be a concerted effort to destroy the Catholic Church’s global moral opposition to abortion, euthanasia, and other assaults on the sanctity of life, while simultaneously redirecting the Church’s attention to global warming, ecumenism (including “indigenous” pagan religions), “stakeholder” capitalism, Universal Basic Income, and LGBTQ inclusion. He has taken a sledgehammer to the PAL, founded in 1994 by Pope John Paul II, casting out veteran members who are stalwart defenders of life and replacing them with non-Catholics and anti-Catholics who militantly oppose the Catholic Church’s teachings on life issues.

Pope Francis’ appointment of Mariana Mazzucato to PAL is but one of the most recent and obviously strident examples of this subversion. Professor Mazzucato, for those who do not know, is a celebrity economist who has been catapulted to star status over the past few years by the World Economic Forum, Bill Gates, Lynn Forester de Rothschild, the Aspen Institute, the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bank for International Settlements, The New York Times, CNN, BBC, The Economist, Politico, Project Syndicate, and the rest of the usual cabal of globalist malefactors. The globalists have crowned her as one of their “It girls” for their Great Reset. Kind of like an older Greta Thunberg with a Ph.D.

The folks at Catholic Culture collected a sampling of her many pro-abortion tweets (which can be seen here). While Mazzucato has no qualms about killing unborn children — indeed, she enthusiastically supports it — she is fanatically passionate about the supposed moral imperatives of “climate change,” “sustainability,” “inclusivity,” Covid mandates, the Green New Deal, a zero-carbon economy, “stakeholder capitalism,” and all the other trendy, buzzword snares put forward by the elites for whom she shills. How does that qualify her for a slot in the Pontifical Academy for Life? That’s the question that has many faithful Catholics puzzled — and angry. Judie Brown, the founder and president of the American Life League for 15 years a PAL member, says the Mazzucato appointment is further proof that the  “Pontifical Academy for Life has abandoned its purpose under Pope Francis.”

“This outrage is only made worse,” says Mrs. Brown, “when we recognize that the Academy was established to fight against abortion, contraception, euthanasia, and all practices that threaten the life of the innocent. The principles that were held by the Academy’s first members, and that were once the bedrock upon which we all stood, have disappeared from view.” She notes that “regardless of the current debacle involving the pope and his minions, one thing never changes, and that is truth itself. As the academy’s Declaration of Principles once said, ‘Before God and men we bear witness that for us every human being is a person and that ‘from the moment the embryo is formed until death it is the same human being which grows to maturity and dies.’”

Dr. Robert P. George, a Catholic and a professor of jurisprudence and constitution and international law at Princeton University, questioned Mazzucato’s appointment in an interview with the Catholic News Agency (CNA), calling it “shocking and scandalous.” “The Pontifical Academy for Life exists to advance the Church’s mission to foster respect for the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of each and every member of the human family, beginning with the precious child in the womb,” George said. “Either one believes in this mission or one does not. If one does not, then why would one wish to be part of the Pontifical Academy?” “And why,” he continued, “would someone with appointment authority appoint someone to the academy? I can think of no explanation that is not shocking and scandalous.”

A Disturbing Pattern

The appointment of a militantly pro-abortion atheist to the Catholic Church’s premier pro-life institution would be outrageous and bewildering under any circumstances, but the move has been all the more disturbing because it is not merely a one-off fluke; it has occurred amid a whole series of shake-ups and similar appointments to the Pontifical Academy for Life by Pope Francis that appear to be aimed at destroying the very purpose for which it was founded.

According to CNA, among the changes the pope has made to the Pontifical Academy for Life is his removal of the requirement that members sign a declaration that they are pro-life and Christian. His appointments speak to this issue, inasmuch as even his chief appointee, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, has a sketchy background and as president of PAL has made troubling statements and carried out Francis’ purges and appointments. President Paglia, for instance, commissioned a homosexual artist to paint a blasphemous homoerotic orgiastic mural in his cathedral church that includes an image of the archbishop himself (naked) in the embrace of a nude man.

In an interview with one of Italy’s largest television networks, Paglia made the stunning statement that Italy’s notorious Law 194 legalizing abortion “is now a pillar of our social life,” which he (and PAL) will not oppose. Besides Mazzucato, among the new Francis/Paglia appointments to the Pontifical Academy for Life are:

  • Roberto Dell’Oro, moral theology and bioethics professor at Loyola Marymount University, supports abortion up to 16 weeks of pregnancy and has criticized the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade;
  • Nigel Biggar, an Anglican clergyman and professor of theology at Oxford University, supports abortion and euthanasia;
  • Father Maurizio Chiodi, who has written and spoken in contradiction to the Church’s teaching on contraception, divorce, and adultery;
  • Marie-Jo Thiel, professor of ethics at the University of Strasbourg, has written in support of assisted suicide;
  • Monsignor Pierangelo Sequeira, who was reportedly one of the organizers of the secret “Shadow Synod” of revolutionists within the Church that conspired to overturn Church teaching on sexual morality, marriage, divorce, same-sex unions, and more at the 2015 Synod on the Family;
  • Anne-Marie Pelletier, a “biblical scholar” who was a key leader of the pro-gay 2015 Synod on the Family and a participant in the secret Shadow Synod of liberal-left clergy and academics that worked behind the scenes to redefine Church teaching on morality and the family; and
  • Laura Palazanni, professor of law at the University of Rome and vice president of  Italy’s National Committee of Bioethics, supports giving puberty blockers to children so that they can later “change sex.”

A closely related matter is the appointment last year of Monsignor Philippe Bordeyne as the new president of the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences (JPII Institute) in Rome. The selection of Bordeyne followed a wholesale purging of pro-life loyalists among the institute’s leadership and faculty began in 2019, and the gutting of its curriculum. Shortly after taking up his new post, Bordeyne created fireworks by stating in a media interview that “we theologians cannot continue to assert certainties about the family when we see the transformations it is undergoing today.” The meaning behind his words was not mistaken, since he was — along with Anne-Marie Pelletier, mentioned above — one of the Shadow Synod schemers at the Synod on the Family. He has written extensively in favor of blessing homosexual unions and redefining the family.

An Enemy Hath Done This

In addition to the Francis/Paglia “coups” at the PAL and JPII Institute, Pope Francis has used the Chair of Peter as a political bully pulpit to criticize and condemn pro-life politicians such as President Donald Trump (whom he compared to Hitler), Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, while at the same time embracing, praising, and promoting pro-abortion politicians such as President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, French President Emanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Irish President Michael Higgins, Brazilian President Lula da Silva, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

All of this is too much for many Catholics, who agree with Cardinal Müller that the pontificate of Jorge Bergoglio (Pope Francis) is looking more and more like “a hostile takeover” of the Catholic Church.

Among the many Catholic thought leaders and veteran pro-life activists, including former PAL members, who have condemned Pope Francis/Paglia sabotage of the PAL and JPII Institute are:

  • Bishop Joseph Strickland of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas;
  • Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who served as Apostolic Nuncio to the United States and President of the Governorate of Vatican City State;
  • Dr. José María Simón Castellví, president emeritus of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations (FIAMC), based in Spain;
  • Cardinal Willem Eijk, Archbishop of Utrecht and a trained physician;
  • Dr. Wanda Poltawska, 101-year-old physician/author, a close friend of Pope John Paul II, and survivor of the Nazi concentration camp at Ravensbruck;
  • Jean-Marie Le Méné, president of the Lejeune Foundation, named for Catholic physician/scientist Jerome Lejeune, founder of the Pontifical Academy for Life;
  • Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Auxiliary Bishop of Astana in Kazakhstan;
  • Dr. Thomas Ward, founder of the U.K.’s National Association of Catholic Families;
  • Mercedes Wilson, president of Family of the Americas and also a founding member of the Pontifical Academy for Life;
  • John-Henry Weston, co-founder, and editor-in-chief of LifeSiteNews;
  • Michael J. Matt, editor of The Remnant newspaper and host of The Remnant Underground at Remnant-TV.com;
  • Dr. Taylor Marshall, bestselling author of many books, including Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Church from Within, and host of The Doctor Taylor Marshall Show podcast;
  • Dr. Steven Mosher, author, China scholar, and president of the Population Research Institute;
  • Dr. Brian McCall, author, professor of law at the University of Oklahoma, and editor-in-chief of Catholic Family News;
  • Joseph Shaw, president of Una Voce International Federation, chairman of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales, and lecturer in philosophy at the University of Oxford;
  • Michael Voris, founder and president of St. Michael’s Media/Church Militant; and
  • John Horvat, vice president of the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property.  

Naturally, the corporate Fake News media that idolizes Pope Francis and completely sympathizes with the direction he is leading the Church on moral issues, ecumenism, and politics either smothers the voices of these faithful Catholics who dissent from Francis’ heterodoxy or smears them as cranks and schismatics. So, many people, including most Catholics, are completely unaware of Pope Francis’ destructive actions — or that there is a growing resistance to them.

Feeding Christians to the Dragon

Perhaps no action by Pope Francis is more incomprehensibly perverse than his betrayal of the Catholics of China. And not the Catholics only, but also Chinese Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Falun Gong, and all religious believers who are being harassed, viciously persecuted, hunted, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered by the communist Beijing regime. The pope, who is forever proclaiming compassion, mercy, empathy, and the moral obligation to defend the defenseless and assist the poor and the suffering, cannot be bothered to speak up in defense of the Chinese faithful who are suffering the most brutal oppression on the planet. Worse, in 2020 he snubbed Cardinal Joseph Zen, the courageous emeritus bishop of Hong Kong when the then-88-year-old prelate journeyed to Rome in a desperate effort to convince him not to sell out China’s Catholics to the Chinese Communist Party.

The pope of compassion was too busy to meet with the most important Catholic figure in Asia, who is now experiencing his Golgotha in a Communist Chinese kangaroo court. But the pope of compassion always finds time to meet with Biden, Pelosi, Leonardo DiCaprio, Angelina Jolie, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gloria Estefan, George Clooney, Martin Scorsese, Sting, Bono, Katy Perry, Greta Thunberg, NBA and NFL athletes, Melinda Gates, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, Gates-Soros minion Jeffrey Sachs, communist dictators Fidel and Raul Castro, and Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg.

But poor Cardinal Zen is a different story. He has no lucre, fan base, or star power to benefit the falsely humble but immensely vain and ambitious pontiff. Besides, a meeting with Zen would upset Francis’ new comrades in Beijing, with whom he continues to work out an agreement to let Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) appoint their own communist apparatchiks as China’s “Catholic” bishops. “They’re [sending] the flock into the mouths of the wolves. It’s an incredible betrayal,” Cardinal Zen said of the Vatican-Beijing deal, the details of which still remain secret. The frail, brave cardinal, now 90 years old, is currently on trial, but Pope Francis is too busy with his CCP pals, Hollywood glitterati, Silicon Valley moguls, Wall Street titans, and Davos/UN globalists to appeal on Zen’s behalf or even send him moral support.

“We Resist Him to the Face”

As a result of these and numerous other outrages and betrayals of the Catholic Faith, some 800 Catholic thought leaders — from around the world, but mostly from the United States and Canada — gathered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from September 30 to October 2, 2022, at the Catholic Identity Conference (CIC) and issued a “Declaration of Filial Resistance to Globalist Agenda of Pope Francis.”

At a CIC press conference, Michael J. Matt of The Remnant, John Henry Weston of LifeSiteNews, and attorney Eric Frankovich presented articles of resistance listing the papal offenses that compel them to resist Pope Francis. In so doing, Mr. Matt said, they were not seeking to depose him, nor were they engaging in schism.

“The use of the term ‘resist’ is taken directly from Holy Scripture, Galatians 2:11, wherein St. Paul resisted Peter to his face because he was blameworthy,” Matt noted. “But St. Paul did not hate Peter, nor did he deny Peter’s Petrine office. St. Paul was not committing a schismatic act, and neither are we.” He continued:

We resist Francis honorably to his face and in charity, as loyal sons of the Church resist an abusive father.

We neither judge nor condemn him, and we place our filial resistance in the context of the teaching of St. Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church, who in his On the Sovereign Pontiff writes the following:

“Therefore, just as it would be lawful to resist a Pontiff invading a body, so is it lawful to resist him invading souls or disturbing a state, and much more if he should endeavor to destroy the Church. I say, it is lawful to resist him, by not doing what he commands, and by blocking him, lest he should carry out his will.”…

Ladies and gentlemen, we do not judge the pope. We would not seek to depose him even if we had it within our power to do so.

Later in the press conference, Matt stated: “We pray for Francis every day, but we are also bound in conscience, before the dread judgment seat of God Himself, to resist Francis, his novel teachings, and his public alliance with those who deny the very existence of Christ the King — those who would lock down the world in the name of climate change, close the churches, and enslave humanity in a global super state. This is not me theorizing. This is exactly what Francis’s friends in Davos have been broadcasting to the world for 50 years, but especially since 2020.”

The resistance is growing. A few years ago Cardinal Raymond Burke and Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano were lonely voices challenging the ever-more disturbing path on which Pope Francis was leading the Catholic Church. Today, many more cardinals, bishops, priests, and lay Catholics are standing up and speaking out. It is a hopeful sign.

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Biden’s Midterm Hail Mary Is Outrageous Lies About Trump

Joe Biden & Liberal Media Try To Blame Trump And MAGA For Hippie Nudist Attacking Paul Pelosi

BY MATT MARGOLIS

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/11/04/bidens-midterm-hail-mary-is-outrageous-lies-about-trump-n1642694;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

At a campaign rally in California on Thursday night, Joe Biden falsely aligned David DePape—the mentally ill, illegal immigrant Canadian and nudist activist who attacked Paul Pelosi last week—with Trump supporters and also suggested that  Donald Trump had used the term “patriots” to allude to DePape—which is also completely false.

“And how can you call yourself a democracy when you have a group of 1,000 people who storm the United States Capitol, break the windows and doors down, two policemen die as a consequence of it, break through the House and Senate doors and chambers, have people cowering on the floor, threatening to kill people?” Biden asked, repeating the lie that Capitol Police officers were killed during the riot. “You saw what happened to Paul Pelosi in an effort to get to Nancy. Well, guess what? What do they call these guys? What do Trump and all his Trumpies call them? He said they’re ‘patriots.’ No! No! No! No! No! Not a joke! These are ‘patriots'”

DePape is reportedly a leftist who supported Nancy Pelosi. But that clearly doesn’t matter to Biden, who wants people to believe that DePape is a MAGA Republican.

As for what Biden said about Trump, Trump is on record calling the attack on Mr. Pelosi “a terrible thing.” Trump also condemned the violence at the Capitol.

Does Joe Biden really think his lies will save the Democrats on Tuesday?

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