Saturday, October 27, 2018

Religion, Nations, Geopolitics Review: Saturday Oct 27

                                                                 Weekly Brief

                                                           MULTIPLE CHOICE:      
A large group of well trained Saudi males enter a foreign territory and carry out a coordinated diabolical murder.  Two parts to the question:

1)For which event did the Saudi government give this excuse? 

        "It was a rogue operation. The Saudi government knew nothing  of it."


2)For which event did the FBI, American press and federal government accept this explanation?  

        "It was a rogue operation. The Saudi government knew nothing  of it."

A)The killing off Jamal Kashoggi
B) The Twin Towers and Pentagon Bombing of Sept 11, 2001
C) Both

This is a pretty complicated  quiz format so here is the Answer Key.  

Question 1: C=Both

Question 2: B=  911 



                                                   I  The Pope and the Church

THE POPE PUNISHES. HE IS SETTING A PRECEDENT  HIS PREDECESSORS DID NOT DARE. THE BEGINNING OF THE BEGINNING.
Many of the worst clerical abusers have never been removed from the priesthood. Pope Francis is changing this inexcusable pollution of the priesthood in a radical way. Of course he gets almost no credit for this with some observers calling these particular laicizations "picking low fruit." One of his most persistent critics complained about the need for canonical trials even for a proven forced sodomites. Look ahead--many many priests are going to have to go and go with great speed when sodomy is shown. No priesthood and no pension--this is punishment not retirement. The Eucharist must be protected from any further defilement. Should Marciel Maciella really have been allowed to include saying Mass in his "life of penance and prayer"?  Those who downplay the significance of these punitive papal acts fail to understand the pollution--purification nature of the priestly/Eucharistic  crisis.
Karadima stayed a priest-not with Francis.
  A Chilean national hero was not spared. 
Two bishops are removed from the priesthood not just asked to move out of their local dioceses  (Cardinal Ray Burke's not so heavy hammer approach for Apuron of Guam )

THE POPE TELLS U.S. BISHOPS, "GO ON RETREAT TOGETHER"
 LET THE EXORCISM BEGIN--WASHING OUT JUDAS WAS AN ACTION OF CHRIST HE COMMANDED HIS APOSTLES TO REPEAT.
This will happen in January of 2019 and it is here that the bishops must confront each other and say that any man  among them who has  desecrated the Eucharistic altar and office of the priesthood by committing an act of sodomy must be removed from the priesthood. A sodomite saying Mass is a Black Mass. The bishops form a body together--they must wash the corporate body clean-not all of them for "all of you are not unclean." That is the aim of a retreat as a body of bishops--to confront the corporate part of themselves that has been allowed to pollute the rest and despoil the sheep. Protectors are not judged by whether they exploited their dependents. That's a pretty low bar for the apostolic successors.  The question is did you protect them and feed them...and you is a singular and plural pronoun.
 Bishops should bring evidence to the retreat in making accusations and allow a time when men can accuse in private and face to face. If the bishops do  not voluntarily resign their offices as a preliminary step, the accusation must be made in public.  This is the right forum-the brothers face to face.  Do not invite lay advisers. Do not be transparent to the press. Put yourselves in the presence of the Holy Spirit and clean the American Episcopacy. This is going to be the synodal model for reform  more than  visitations from the Vatican. We had our fraudulent visitation (Sept 2005-May 2006 headed by Archbishop Edwin OBrien--a notorious homosexual himself)  to clean out the homosexuals in the seminary. This shows the papal problem. Who should the Pope send?  How many men can he trust in the Vatican?  The Popes needs the help of local clergy and bishops to expose the artists of deceit that make their way up the episcopal hierarchy. Bishops must clean out their local diocese and the true bishops in every national or regional conference must openly accuse the many bishops in their own countries.  The problem is not James Martin giving talks about homosexuality. It si hundreds of bishops and priest BEING homosexuals. The Catholic conservative media should start helping by naming names in New York and Chicago--name names in America. There are lots of stories to tell.
After the local meeting and confrontation among American bishops,  a report can be given to the Congregation of Bishops and Holy Father for formal actions only they can do.  Fraternal correction will reform homosexual clericalism.  Loyalty to individuals as individuals must give way to loyalty to the sacral priesthood which includes the Apostles and so many martyrs.
Laymen can help tremendously by initiating investigations with overt or covert help of priests to make dossiers on bishops with strong evidence of homosexual behavior. Rembert Weakland should be presented to the Vatican for laicization. He will know a lot of others who should go with him and he's the type of guy who might tell a lot. Laymen should be close brothers with the clerics trying to do their duty. We should never ask in any way to be inserted in the clerical chain of command. That break in apostolic and priestly fraternity and authority is what the devil wants. We need a unified strong episcopacy because the final exorcism which they must lead is not from the priesthood but from the whole earth.

                                                   
                                             II AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY                                

AMERICA AND THE SAUDIS

The  Scapegoat Dilemna for Muhammed bin Salman by  Bruce Reidel


WHAT IF?

What if the Muslim Brotherhood is a force for republican government and the Saudi Wahhabis are for Salafist violence? What if that's why Kashoggi  died? What if he is less a journalist but more a serious Muslim international  political thinker who favors the new brotherhood political movements of Sunni Islam over the Cleric-Monarch deal of MbS ? What if he saw the Saudi Israeli alliance as bad for Arabs?  What if blockaded Qatar is the "Wahhabis of the Sea" who are willing to work with Shia and Christians while the Sauds are the "Wahhabis of the Land" who must kill their foes to maintain their rule?
What if Turkey and Pakistan can live with Iran...only the Sauds and Israelis want regime change? What if killing the Shia of Yemen is just that and calling them Iran proxies is like calling local black civil rights workers "agents of outside Communists."  What if 911 was a  Saudi operation and George Bush and Robert Mueller the chief of his FBI missed the big picture while over investigating the smaller crimes?
What if our friends are our enemies and our enemies can be our allies? What if we had 100 statesmen (twenty would suffice) in our Senate and ten journalists in our media(three would do)  and they debated these questions?


Saudi Involvement.  FBI and CIA Non-involvement in 911.

Several journalists and the families of 911 victims as well as prominent members of the 911 Commission believe the Saudi role in the 911 attack was deliberately covered up to pursue other foreign policy objectives of the George Bush White House. Many thought the election of Donald Trump would lead to a reevaluation of our alliance with Saudis  and possibly a reopening of the 911 investigations to determine the real enemy "who hates us so ".
Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan are clearly not the perpetrators.
28 pages of the original 911 report (released December 2002) were redacted because they implicated members of the Saudi government and royal family in the crime. After years of wrangling, the pages were released(July 15, 2016).They showed significant connections that begged for further study.
With amazing chutzpah several officials said the pages showed the Saudis were clean.
John Brennan, head of CIA, in an interview from June 2016,  just before the pages were released was effusive in his praise of Saudis and dismissive of their involvement. He said it was good the 28 pages would be released. It would prove their innocence.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir who is today's face of Muhammed bin Salman telling us the Royal Family is innocent of the "rogue" killing of Jamal Kashoggi.
He said the same when the 28 pages were released.  The 28 pages "exonerated the Saudis" and the matter "is now finished", he proclaimed.
The head of the FBI a week before 911 and for the decade following has a shown little interest in this line of inquiry. He has always been a tenacious righteous investigator of peripheral problems while showing an obtuse indifference to the larger crimes right before his face. Robert Mueller was a significant obstacle to investigating the Saudi role in 911  

George Papadopoulos Interview
As he pieces more and more together he sees he was set up "by Western intelligence agencies." In the world of globalism, there is no American foreign policy---there is a Western policy with a big role for Britain. President Trump was a huge threat top the British establishment. Did they meddle? Are they a foreign government though they are white and speak English?



WHEN MARINES THINK TERRORISM, THEY REMEMBER BEIRUT AND THEY SEEK REVENGE AGAINST IRAN
Secretary of Defense Mattis is a Marine. President Trump 35 years after Beirut bombing. This one of deep hostilities which drives American foreign policy. The Saudis have not killed a lot of soldiers on battlefields like Irtanians have in Iraq and Lebanon because the Saudis don't show up on battlefields as Sauds. .
                                                                 III The Nations

PAKISTAN
Led by a great athlete and new nationalist. Imran Khan is culturally English and Muslim. His greatest ally is China. He is Sunni but he wants good relations with Shia Iran. Pakistan is 5-20% Shia and has not supported the Saudi bombing of Yemen. Pakistan holds the only Muslim bomb. Another new  and interesting nation man at work.

NATIONALISTS AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Any New Nuclear Arms Treaties should include US Russia China and Pakistan. The world is not bipolar. Why US needed out.  The Russians did not seem so offended.
Putin to Bolton:

Meanwhile, in a bit of dark humor that underscored the moment, Putin referred to Washington’s announced withdrawal from the INF and then quipped about the balance between peace and force represented by the Great Seal of the United States.
“As far as I can remember, the U.S. seal depicts an eagle on one side holding 13 arrows and on the other side an olive branch with 13 olives,” Putin said, sitting across from Bolton at talks before the news conference. “Here’s the question: Did your eagle already eat all the olives and only the arrows are left?”
“Hopefully I’ll have some answers for you,” Bolton replied. “But I didn’t bring any more olives.”
“That’s what I thought,” Putin said, provoking laughter from Bolton. —

President Trump likes John Bolton's ability to articulate an argument. Bolton has shown he knows who is President and who works for whom. There is nothing better in the education of John Bolton than sitting across the table from a statesman like Putin instead of in a conference room with the editors of Weekly Standard.



HUNGARY AND UKRAINE: LANGUAGE AND NATION

We don't agree with author's conclusions but his reporting on this key dispute is very revealing. 


AUSTRIA
The youngest Chancellor is a nationalist.   Austria has 8.5 million people, 70% Catholic. Germany has  82 million people; 60% Christian, 1/2 Catholic.

Sebastian Kurz is also Catholic 


                                                   III Patriarchy and Culture

The Patriarchy of God the Father, the Brotherhood of the Nations--the masculine personality of the citizen-warrior.
The most important cultural front in the war of Patriarchy and fraternity against feminists and fruitcakes is not "gay marriage". It is the breakdown of all male protective groups in military units and service academies. What kind of society do we want to live in? What kind of people do we want to be?  When Cardinal Wuerl, of Washington DC was asked what the Catholic Church thought of the decision to allow women in all combat positions in the US military (announced in January 2013 by departing Secretary of the Defense  Catholic Leon Panetta) the homosexual cleric said the Catholic Church had no position on the issue. Wuerl has spent a lifetime undermining an all male religious protective group known as the Catholic priesthood. In his cold pinched heart, he saw this civic corruption as progress.   General Mattis and the Male Military


         
Cain in Mecca and Judas Priests in Rome
Is it not striking that the two of the three great monotheistic capitals are overrun with toxic contradictory male spirits.  Both Mecca and Rome are presently undisciplined by the patriarchy and fraternity which marks the movements coming from the Spirit. In Mecca, the most violent sadistic cult of Cain now predominates in the Saudi form of Wahhabism.  In Rome, the clergy(cardinals, bishops and priests) is overrun with a plague of males betraying and polluting with a kiss. This does not include the Pope who will lead us in cleansing this plague even as lesser men blame him for the  corruption. Our public institutions -Church, mosque synagogue and the nations must return to patriarchy and fraternity. This means following the perfect Father in heaven and adopting a filial posture to our imperfect fathers on earth as together we move toward greater accord and ordered love.



The Rejection of Patriarchy is both a rejection of a perfect Living God the Father and a rejection of the living imperfect fathers from whom we come and who rule our civic and ecclesial common lives. There is no community without authority, no authority without real men in charge, no real men without faults. The tendency in the Church and political life to frame every issue  as a father failure by the Pope or President is a manifestation of the anti authority, anti father cult of the sexual revolution. It is a poison.

Solzhenitsyn:
"Why, we don't even know what living means now, what it is, and what it is called? Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in confusion at once. We shall not know what to join on to, what to cling to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise. We are oppressed at being men—men with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalised man. We are stillborn, and for generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, and that suits us better and better. We are developing a taste for it. Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea."

 Categories to make Life Easier: One God, Two Sexes, Many Nations


                         


Friday, October 26, 2018

Light of Christ by Thomas White OP and Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man by Henri de Lubac SJ. A Comparative Review by Frederick Blonigen

If Satan is the great divider then one indispensable weapon for battling him is a clear and comprehensive understanding of the whole. Two priests from two different eras have given us such wide canvas presentations of Catholicism.

Fr. Thomas White’s In the Light of Christ: An Introduction to Catholicism (2017) and Fr. Henri de Lubac’s Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man (1947) are two comprehensive expositions of the narrative, the dogma, the characters, and the practices of the Catholic religion.

Archbishop Charles Chaput compared  Fr.White’s new book to Fr. Ratzinger's Introduction to Christianity of fifty years ago: “(White) combines scholarly depth with an engaging style to present the what and why of Catholic belief with exceptional clarity and grace.” Bishop Robert Barron called Fr. White “one of the brightest and most articulate theologians writing today”.  His new work is “an intelligent and spiritually alert introduction to the principal themes of Catholic theology. Both beginners and serious academics will find much to savor in its pages.” Philosopher and Catholic convert, Edward Feser says “Fr. Thomas Joseph White articulates the Catholic faith in a way that lays bare its harmony with reason. He is a superb teacher. Skeptics and believers, academics and laymen alike, will learn much from this fine book.”
                                                                       

Fr. White, a Dominican friar and an associate professor of systematic theology at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington , D.C., has authored several other important Thomistic works, especially his 2009 book, Wisdom in the Face of Modernity. Fr. White’s new book has all the qualities of a Catholic classic. It can be favorably compared to such venerated expositions of the Catholic faith as Frank Sheed’s Theology and Sanity, Fr. Ronald Knox’s The Belief of Catholics, Fr. Karl Adam’s The Spirit of Catholicism, and Msgr. A.N. Gilbey’s We Believe. 

In the Light of Christ has eight main chapters : 1. Revelation and Reason 2. God and Trinity 3. Creation and the Human Person 4. Incarnation and Atonement 5. The Church 6. Social Doctrine 7. The Last Things and 8. Epilogue: On Prayer.

In his introduction, Fr. White argues that human beings are innately conditioned to raise basic metaphysical questions.  “The spiritual quest of the human person for truth, goodness, and beauty can be deferred and even denied for a time. It can be stunted and stymied by lack of education, corrupt social influences, and subservience to the idols of money, status and other forms of worldly success. But it cannot be eradicated. Our souls will not be satisfied with mere information, as if our hunger for knowledge could be quelled by uploading data. Google provides endless facts, available in an instant. But we want understanding, insight, and wisdom. We want to know why and what for. We wish to perceive all in the unending light of what is and cannot not be. Our hearts are restless with the desire to know the truth.”

Fr. White then articulates the major purpose of In the Light of Christ : “My goal is to make explicit in a few broad strokes the shape of Catholicism. I hope to outline its inherent intelligibility or form as a mystery that is at once visible and invisible, ancient and contemporary, mystical and reasonable. Throughout I do not seek primarily to present my own individual ideas, but to represent the wisdom of the Catholic Church. For she has been for us what Christ himself promised she would be: the trustworthy teacher of truths both human and divine.”

In the first chapter of his book, Fr. White discusses the critical interplay between Revelation and reason. The starting point of Christianity is based on an appeal to the truth of God “uncovering” or “unveiling” Himself to mankind. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth (Jn. 1:14).” The foundational principle of Christianity is not a philosophical idea or an intellectual abstraction. It is the reality of a Personal God showing Himself to mankind in and through a Chosen People, the Israelites, and most fully manifesting Himself in the Divine Person of Jesus Christ. God takes the initiative revealing Himself as the Creator of all that exists Who out of love designed human beings for a life of love in this world and in the next. Faith is the supernatural gift from God, a theological virtue, by which a human being responds to Divine Revelation. Or as the new Catechism says, “Faith is a personal act—the free response of the human person to the initiative of God who reveals himself ” (CCC 166). God can be known through reason and faith. Even without Divine Revelation all men, by nature, can know something about God but because God is infinite and human beings are finite, human reason alone is radically insufficient when it comes to knowing God. However, God has revealed knowledge of Himself in a way that far exceeds anything unaided human reason could know. Faith is not a leap in the dark, a substitute for knowing. Faith is a deeper way of knowing a reality more profound than that clasped in the grasp of reason. The Unveiling of God took place in three “Trinitarian” steps: 1. God revealed Himself to Israel, the Chosen People. 2. God revealed Himself through the Incarnation of His Eternal Son, Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh, and the fullness of Revelation. 3. God revealed Himself through the Holy Spirit and Christ’s Body, the Church, to carry on His work until the end of the world.

In his discussion of ways of knowing God, Fr. White emphasizes the harmony between faith and reason. Right reason never opposes or contradicts faith. They are allies not enemies. And, of course, no philosopher or theologian ever demonstrated this harmonious relationship between faith and reason more persuasively than St. Thomas Aquinas, the master of Scholasticism. In a penetrating passage, Fr. White writes as a true disciple of Aquinas:

“The real opposition, then is not between faith and reason, but between a skeptical reason that is reductive and a magnanimous, studious reason that engages in faith. Expansive desire for the truth breaks away from conventions, and awakens human beings to our true nobility, against temptations to self-diminishment. The Christian vocation of ‘faith seeking understanding’ is both dynamic and restful. It gives us something greater than ourselves to ponder, and takes us out of ourselves toward God as our teacher. But it also allows us to know ourselves as rational beings, able to truly ask and even answer the deeper religious questions. Faith therefore creates a learning community. The Church is a place where human beings have the conviction to patiently seek the truth together, in shared life of charity, one that is both cosmopolitan and personal, both reasonable and religious, both philosophical and theological. This communion in the truth is made possible, however, only because people have first accepted to be apprenticed to revelation through a common effort of learning the truth from Another (i.e., God), who is the author of truth, and from one another.”

In the second chapter of The Light of Christ, Fr. White writes magnificently about the greatest of all mysteries of the faith: the Trinity. The lucidity and sheer beauty of his prose reminds one of Frank Sheed’s exposition of the Trinity in his greatest apologetic work, Theology and Sanity. According to Fr. White there are two ways we can think about the Trinity: First, we can start with a personal, affective relationship with God Whom we know in faith, through a prayerful encounter, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He calls this an “intuitive” knowledge of the triune God. Second, we can acquire a speculative understanding of God as we analyze the mystery of three Persons in one God. “The great works of reflection on the Trinity in the early Church—those of Irenaeus, Gregory of Nazianzus , Augustine, and others—are living meditations that spring from the inner life of faith, and from reflection on Scripture and Church doctrine. They are profound intellectual works, but they are also grounded in a deeper mystical life and spiritual aspiration.” For the great Fathers and Doctors of the Church, the study of the deepest of all mysteries, the Trinity, was not a mere academic exercise; it was an attempt to understand with a prayerful heart the Trinitarian God whom we worship and adore. It is what the renowned theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar calls “a kneeling theology.” It begins every classroom lesson and every writing session with the Sign of the Cross.

As Fr. White explains, the Trinity is a communion of divine persons, co-equal and co-eternal. “That is to say, each person is a subsistent relation. The Son is utterly relational by being from the Father by virtue of his eternal generation. But the Son is also the subsistent being of God. He is God from God, Who has in Himself all that is in the Father and the Spirit. The Father likewise is entirely relational, as the paternal origin of the Son and the Spirit, and has in Himself the plenitude of the deity, and thus possesses all that is in the Son and the Spirit. The Spirit is entirely relative to the Father and the Son from whom He proceeds as love, but He has in Himself the plentitude of the divine essence, and thus all that is in the Father and the Son.”

This Trinitarian doctrine is the central mystery of the faith, the source and summit of everything we believe as Christians. It is the theological vantage point from which we interpret all of reality. And our decision to believe this greatest of all revealed truths is determined by how we understand the person of Jesus. If Jesus Christ truly is the Son of God, if He truly rose from the dead, if He truly founded His Church on the apostles, then the mystery of the Trinity is real. We cannot believe in the Trinity without believing in Christ and we cannot believe in Christ unless we believe in the Trinity. St. Teresa of Avila, the great 16th Carmelite mystic, always emphasized the importance of going to God the Father through the sacred humanity of Jesus Christ. As Fr. White explains,” The study of the Trinity is meant to help us understand more deeply the mystery of the life of Jesus itself, to see his unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit, in his actions of healing, forgiving sins, and bearing witness to the truth, but also in the mystery of the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Christ. The paschal mystery of Jesus reveals to us the identity of Christ as the Son of God, but also as the wisdom and power of the Father, who raised Jesus from the dead, and the gift of love that is the Holy Spirit, poured out upon the Church from the Cross.”
                                                                           

Chapter Three, entitled “Creation and the Human Person”, is one the most insightful sections of Fr. White’s book. The author argues that Genesis provides us with six major teachings regarding the nature of reality: 1. All that exists receives its being from God and creation itself has a temporal beginning. 2. God not only created all that exists but He is the universal governor of the hierarchial order of the universe. 3.The human being because he is made in God ‘s image and likeness is the pinnacle of all visible creatures. Man is one being composed of a material body and an immaterial soul. 4. The human being was created in original justice, in the grace and friendship of God. 5. The human being fell from God’s grace through a personal sin that took place at the beginning of human history. 6. The human beings who sinned in the beginning transmitted to all their descendents original sin - human life deprived of God’s grace and friendship. The state of sin is not a stain but a separation. While all of these teachings about creation and the human person are not meant to be “scientific”, they are in no way in conflict with what science has been able to tell us about the universe and man’s place in it. True science and true theology never contradict each other. In an exquisite passage, Fr. White explains beautifully how the Catholic Church’s understanding of the Trinity and its vision of creation present us with a profound view of reality and the human person’s role in the cosmic scheme of things:

“We said that God in his inmost identity is a mystery of relational persons, the communion of love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Thus the ultimate foundation of all of reality is both personal and interrelational. If this is the primary truth behind all other truths, then it casts a theological light upon all else that exists. We can see in the light of the Holy Trinity that the physical cosmos ultimately exists for spiritual persons and relational love. The human community is a community of persons, of personal, spiritual animals, who can choose to live in the truth, and to love one another authentically, or to live in falsehood and selfishness. This ‘calling to truth and love’ that is proper to the human person is inscribed in our very being as spiritual persons. It is also meant to be lived out or enacted in our bodies, as the bodies of persons. Here then we can see a fundamental truth of the cosmos: there is a relational character to the hierarchy of being....The human being is the ‘bridge’ between the spiritual and the physical world in a twofold way. In the ascendant direction, the physical world mounts up toward God, or ‘returns’ to God through human actions of knowledge and love. This is especially true in corporate worship, or liturgy, in which the human visible world is made wholly relative and turned toward God in adoration. In the descending direction, man is the ‘place’ that the spiritual world is made visible or manifest in the cosmos. The human community is a kind of icon of spiritual life manifesting itself in bodily, visible form. When human beings are turned toward the truth of God, this icon can become a sign of the transcendent mystery of God, a visible church. But when the human being turns in on itself in pride and rejection of God, it can also become a spiritually empty image covered over by spiritual melancholy, lust, violent frustration, and self–destruction. Ultimately, then, the human being is meant to be a special ‘location’ of grace in the cosmos, where the spiritual gifts of God descend through human freedom into the preservation and construction of a beautiful physical world: a human common life based upon truth, moral goodness, and beauty. The human body can serve the spirit of man so as to acknowledge God in and through human actions. In the bodily life of the human being the physical cosmos can glorify God.”

Fr. White’s eloquence and insight regarding the relational nature and dignity of the human person continues in Chapter Four where the author writes about the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. In the ancient Church there were two answers to the question “why did God become human?” One answer came from St. Athansius and the other came from St. Anselm of Canterbury. St. Athanasius, the great defender of Christ’s divinity, argued that Christ became man so that man might “become God”, that is, that man might become more and more Godlike through a grace-filled union with God. This view of the Incarnation is technically known as “divinization,” or among Eastern Christians as “theosis”. St. Anselm offers a different but complementary view of the Incarnation. Because of the Fall and the reality of man’s sinfulness and man’s consequent alienation from God, a chasm opened up between God and man that only God Himself could bridge. The great St. Catherine of Siena, in fact, in her famous work The Dialogue refers to Christ as the Bridge between heaven and earth. To quote the words of Fr. White, “Christ atones for human sin by being himself humanly loving, and obedient in our stead, as our sinless representative before God. Because Christ is God, his self-offering on our behalf is one of infinite holiness, reconciling us with God’s absolute righteousness. His atonement acts as a compensation for human sin that is more than sufficient for all the sins of the human race. Consequently, even in the face of our own sinfulness we should not live in alienation from God, but in confidence and friendship with God by faith.”

Through His Passion, Death, and Resurrection Christ has redeemed mankind, atoned for man’s sins, and reopened the gates of heaven. The Church He established upon the apostles is, in fact, a continuation of the Incarnate Christ and His saving work in space and time. As the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church has received the divine mandate to preach the Gospel to every corner of the world. “The mission of the Holy Spirit is to accompany the work of the visible, apostolic Church, acting in the preaching and sacramental life of her members, sanctifying them by works of love, and leading them into the fullness of truths.”

In the remaining chapters, Fr. White deepens and develops his reflections by interweaving enlightening discussions of the Church, Mary, the seven sacraments, the social doctrine of the Church, the last things, and prayer. It is difficult to do justice to Fr. White's book even in a long review. He presents the Catholic faith in all of its truth, goodness and beauty. His exposition of Catholicism is a work of great erudition. Just as obvious, it is a work of great faith and love. Fr. White concludes In the Light of Christ: “ It is this mysterious love of Christ for humanity that sustains the Catholic Church in being down through the ages, and that inspires her saints. His love reaches out from the Cross to all of creation, and remains hidden at the center of the world as its living heart. The grace of Christ crucified is the source of the Church’s life, her devotion to the truth and her freedom to love. Therein lies the essence of Catholicism: at the heart of the Church is the life of Christ. It is this life that God invites us to, and that He wants to give us, if we open our minds and hearts to Him in prayer.”
A Nov, 2017 interview with Fr White on his book.

In the Light of Christ has all the qualities of a book destined to a Catholic classic. Fr. Henri de Lubac’s masterpiece Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man is already there. De Lubac’s book was published shortly after World War II in 1947. After a controversial initial reception, it is now recognized by theologians and scholars as one of the most important expositions of Catholicism of the 20th century. Pope Benedict XVI has said of de Lubac ‘s Catholicism , “For me, the encounter with this book{in 1949} became an essential milestone on my theological journey. For in it de Lubac does not treat merely isolated questions. He makes visible to us in a new way the fundamental intuition of Christian faith so that from this inner core all the particular elements appear in a new light. He shows how the idea of community and universality rooted in the Trinitarian concept of God, permeates and shapes all the individual elements of Faith’s content. The idea of the Catholic, the all-embracing, the inner unity of I and Thou and We does not constitute one chapter of theology among others. It is the key that opens the door to the proper understanding of the whole.”

This “deLubacian sensibility of the interpersonal whole” is likewise a major theme of Pope Francis.
Henri Cardinal de Lubac, born into the French nobility, joined the Jesuits while still in his teens. He served with distinction in the First World War and suffered a severe head injury that would result in health problems for the rest of his life. Despite his ill health, de Lubac was determined to finish his Jesuit formation and in 1927 was ordained to the priesthood. In the inter-war years, de Lubac taught fundamental theology at the Catholic University in Lyon. During the Second World War, he was a member of the French Resistance. But de Lubac is chiefly remembered as a major figure in what was called the “new theology," an effort by some of the brightest theological minds in Europe to renew Catholic theology by returning to the sources: Scripture and the Church Fathers. De Lubac’s theological works were to have a significant impact on Vatican II, especially his contribution to three of the sixteen documents of the Council, the Dogmatic Constitution on Revelation (“Dei Verbum”) , the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (“Lumen Gentium”), and the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World ("Gaudium et Spes"). During Vatican II, de Lubac would forge an important friendship with the young archbishop of Krakow, Karol Wojtyla. He would write an introduction to the French edition of Wojtyla’s book Love and Responsibility, a work that would have a great influence on St. Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae. 

Vatican II made it clear that there was not a monolithic theological approach within the Catholic Church. The two major poles toward which theologians gravitated centered on two theological journals: Concilium and Communio. Before the Council, theologians of both journals were often lumped together as "the new theology". They were friends and certainly read each other's work with appreciation. After the Council, though, fundamental differences appeared. The former journal stood for those theologians who promoted the “spirit of Vatican II” and what Joseph Ratzinger would call “the hermeneutic of rupture”: namely the idea that Vatican II represented a decisive break from the pre-Vatican II Church. The principal theologians of the Concilium camp included Karl Rahner, Hans Kung, and Edward Schillebeeckx. The theologians who began Communio in 1972 represented what Ratzinger would call the “the hermeneutic of continuity.” They believed Vatican II was, indeed, a council of needed reform in the Church: but it was most definitely not a council whose ultimate goal was to revolutionize the Church and change settled dogmatic teaching.  Theologians of the Communio camp included Henri de Lubac and his two former students Jean Danielou and Hans Urs von Balthasar, as well as Joseph Ratzinger. Australian theologian, Tracey Rowland, has explained this best in her  Catholic Theology(2017). She calls her book "a guide for a young Catholic theology student through the Catholic academic zoo."  She distinguishes the Communio and Concilium theologians, “The typical Communio scholar wants to read the Second Vatican Council as an event that emphasized the importance of Christocentrism and therefore the renewal of theological anthropology and Trinitarian theology. The typical Concilium scholar wants to read the Second Vatican Council as an event that exhorted Catholics to be aware of the signs of the times and to enter into dialogue with the world on the world’s terms.”

While Henri de Lubac was not opposed to dialogue with the modern world, he was very aware of the danger to the faith when that dialogue took place on the world’s terms. De Lubac spent his entire life understanding and then fighting the modern ideologies that the Concilium theologians were too eager to find common ground with: liberalism, relativism, Marxism, and secularism. The mission of the Catholic Church, as de Lubac understood, is to convert the world to Christ and not to have Christians converted to the world. He believed that the best way to present the saving Gospel of Christ to an ever more secular world was not through syllogisms and hair-splitting logic and an impersonal theology but through the beauty and spiritual richness of Scripture, Patristic writings, and theological personalism. De Lubac became one of the most prominent members of what is called the “resourcement “ school of theology: those theologians who returned to the ancient sources of Catholic theology. Hans von Balthasar, his former student , once referred to his teacher, De Lubac, as a young David doing battle against “the Goliath of modern rationalization and the reduction of the Christian mystery to logic.”
                                                                     


Henri de Lubac, during his long and fruitful academic career, authored many influential books including The Splendor of the Church, The Christian Faith ,The Discovery of God, and The Drama of Atheistic Humanism. He appreciated the audacious sweep of secular ideologies. In Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man he answered those noble tales with the magnus opus of the Catholic narrative. This was the work that set him apart as a Catholic theologian who wanted the Church to present Christ in the richer grammar of biblical personalism and Patristic narrative.
In the introduction to Catholicism, de Lubac captures the central thesis of his book: “Fundamentally the Gospel is obsessed with the idea of the unity of human society. This shows the full extent of the misunderstanding. We are accused of being individualists even in spite of ourselves, by the logic of our faith, whereas in reality Catholicism is essentially social. It is social in the deepest sense of the word: not merely in its applications in the field of natural institutions but first and foremost in itself, in the heart of its mystery, in the essence of its dogma. It is social in the sense that should have made ‘social Catholicism’ pleonastic.”

De Lubac divides Catholicism into three major sections: the first part demonstrates how the Catholic religion in its creed, its ecclesiology, its sacraments, and its eschatological hope has an eminently social character; the second part discusses Christianity and history, the question of Scripture and its spiritual interpretation, the salvation of humanity through the Church, the predestination of the Church, and the spirit of Catholicism manifested through the missions; and in the third and shortest part of de Lubac’s book the author writes about the present situation for the Church, the person and society, and transcendence.

In the first chapter of Catholicism entitled “Dogma” de Lubac opens:

“The supernatural dignity of one who has been baptized rests, we know, on the natural dignity of man, though it surpasses it in an infinite measure....Thus the unity of the Mystical Body of Christ, a supernatural unity, supposes a previous natural unity, the unity of the human race. So the Fathers of the Church in their treatment of grace and salvation, kept constantly before them this Body of Christ, and in dealing with the creation were not content to only mention the formation of individuals, the first man and the first woman, but delighted to contemplate God creating humanity as a whole.” For the Fathers of the Church including Irenaeus, Origen, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa , Cyril of Alexandria, Maximus, Hilary and others “the lost sheep of the Gospel that the Good Shepherd brings back to the fold is no other than the whole of human nature; its sorry state so moves the Word of God He leaves the great flock of the angels, as it were to their own devices, in order to go to its help.”

De Lubac, a scholar who has immersed himself in the study of Patristics, argues persuasively that the Fathers of the Church, in their understanding of human nature, see the fundamental principle of humanity’s unity as Genesis makes so clear. In all human persons the divine image is the same. “The same mysterious participation in God which causes the soul to exist effects at one and the same time the unity of spirits among themselves. Whence comes the notion, so beloved of Augustinianism, of one spiritual family intended to form the one city of God.” For the Fathers of the Church to believe in the God of Revelation was to believe in a common Father of all. The prayer taught by Jesus, the Our Father, makes clear that the Fatherhood of God implies the brotherhood of all men.

Into this original unity of mankind enters sin, the great disrupter of man’s primal oneness. Beginning with original sin, division and separation become a persistent reality for the human race. Even though sin cannot completely destroy the original unity of mankind, there abides a great wound. The Father sends His Son as mankind’s Redeemer to restore and, indeed, to elevate the supernatural unity of God with man and the unity of men among themselves.

 St. Augustine saw the whole as well.

"Divine Mercy gathered up the fragments from every side, forged them in the fire of love, and welded into one what had been broken....He who remade was himself the Maker, and who refashioned was himself the Fashioner.” The Incarnate Christ from the first moment of his existence bears all of humanity within Himself. “For the Word did not merely take a human body.... He incorporated himself in our humanity, and incorporated it in himself....In making a human nature, it is human nature that he united to himself, that he enclosed in himself, and it is the latter, whole and entire that in some sort he uses as a body....Whole and entire he will bear it then to Calvary, whole and entire he will raise it from the dead, whole and entire he will save it. Christ the Redeemer does not offer salvation merely to each one; he effects it, he himself is the salvation of the whole, and for each one salvation consists in a personal ratification of his original ‘belonging ‘ to Christ, so that he be not cast out, cut off from this Whole.”

For the Church Fathers, as de Lubac emphasizes, the work of redemption is both vertical and horizontal. Christ through His Passion, Death, and Resurrection reunites man to God the Father but He also reunites men to one another as a sacred species. Christ came to bring peace and unity. He is in Himself the Peace of God. “Raised up on the Cross, his arms outstretched, he is to gather together the disunited portions of creation....It is by his blood that ‘those who for some time were afar off are made nigh’.... Through his one sacrifice he will make but one kingdom out of all nations.”

In many ways de Lubac’s Catholicism is primarily a work of ecclesiology as a synthesis of God’s original design, Christ’s identity, and mankind’s destiny. The book returns again and again to the nature and purpose of the Church as established by Christ for humanity.  “The Church which is ‘Jesus Christ spread abroad and communicated’ completes—so far as it can be completed here below—the work of spiritual reunion{of God and mankind} which was made necessary by sin; that work that was begun at the Incarnation and was carried on up to Calvary. In one sense the Church is herself this reunion, for that is what is meant by the name Catholic... for fundamentally Catholicity has nothing to do with geography or statistics. If is true that it should be displayed over all the earth and be manifest to all, yet its nature is not material but spiritual. Like sanctity, Catholicity is primarily an intrinsic feature of the Church.” Humanity is one by virtue of its divinely created nature; it is the mission of the Catholic Church, in a fallen world redeemed by Christ, to help restore and complete this unity.
On June 29, 1943, Pope Pius XII promulgated his monumental encyclical “Mystici Corporis Christi" , arguably the most important papal document on the Church in the modern era. Four years later, De Lubac published his ecclesiological masterpiece Catholicism. His work can be understood as a book length commentary on Pope Pius XII’s magnificent encyclical. De Lubac provides these powerful words on the true nature of the Catholic Church:

“{The} Church, the only real Church, the Church which is the Body of Christ, is not merely that strongly hierarchical and disciplined society whose divine origin has to be maintained, whose organization has to be upheld against all denial and revolt. This is an incomplete notion and but a partial cure for the separatist, individualist tendency to the notion to which it is opposed: a partial cure because it works only from without by way of authority, instead of effective union. If Christ is the sacrament of God, the Church is for us the sacrament of Christ; she represents him, in the full and ancient meaning of the term; she really makes him present. She not only carries on his work, she is his very continuation, in a sense far more real than that in which it can be said that any human institution is its founder’s continuation.”

Above all it is the sacramental character of the Church which allows this Christic representation. Because the sacraments are the principal means of grace, they are as well the principal instrument of unity in the Church. And the sacrament of sacraments and the greatest source of grace and unity is the Eucharist: Christ Himself, Really Present under the appearances of bread and wine. De Lubac is keenly aware, as the Fathers of the Church were, that the Eucharist is the heart of the Church. In fact, without the Eucharist there is no Church. De Lubac is also aware that true Eucharistic piety is not simply a devout individualism. Rather devotion to the Eucharist embraces the whole world: all of creation and humanity is gathered together at the altar of sacrifice to be offered with Christ to God the Father in the sacramental representation of Calvary. At the center of this greatest prayer to God the Father is the Holy Spirit through whose power and presence the miracle of transubstantiation takes place. At the epiclesis of the Mass, the priest calls upon the Holy Spirit to come down upon the altar and transform bread and wine into Christ’s Body and Blood. It is this same Holy Spirit, fifty days after Easter, Who came down upon the Apostles in tongues of fire and transformed these once cowardly men into courageous earthly leaders of the Church Militant. As de Lubac so aptly says,” Our churches are the ‘ upper room’ where not only is the Last Supper renewed but Pentecost also.”
                                                                           

Like Fr. White’s In the Light of Christ, Henri de Lubac’s Catholicism is a book whose theological depth, Christocentric anthropology, and Patristic learning seems inexhaustible. For de Lubac Catholicism is not just one of many world religions. “Catholicism is religion itself. It is the form that humanity must put on in order finally to be itself.” God’s progressive Revelation in the Old Testament and His covenant with the Israelites finds its fulfillment in Christ Who shows us the face of the Father. In a central theme at Vatican Council II, a theme clearly influenced by de Lubac, the Council Fathers will remind the Church and the world that not only does Jesus fully reveal to man Who the Trinitarian God is but He likewise reveals to every one of us what it truly means to be a human being. De Lubac exposed the delusion of modern atheism that only a rejection of God could lead to human flourishing. In Catholicism he  showed the only true humanism is Christocentric humanism. Only in Christ could man discover he is created and destined for eternal communion with the triune God. But there is no cheap grace. The original unity of God and humanity is only restored through the mystery of Christ's Cross and Resurrection. DeLubac agreed with the Apostolic Father, Irenaeus, “By the wood of the Cross the work of the Word of God was made manifest to all: his hands are stretched out to gather all men together. Two hands outstretched, for there are two peoples scattered over the whole earth. One sole head in the midst, for there is but one God over all, among all and in all.”

Two books a half century apart by two faithful sons of the Church  counter diabolos who is forever separating and scattering. Enter into these beautiful "works of the whole".  Be not confused!

Saturday, October 20, 2018

Religion, Nations and Geopolitics Review: Saturday Oct 20


THE WEEKLY BRIEF

The Reckonings: The Pope and Homosexual Clergy,
The President and the Wahhabi Sauds

The relentless criticism from the left of President Trump and from the Catholic right against Pope Francis are assaults on the unity of both our country and the Church. This does not mean that both men do not have fundamental long standing problems which they must address to strengthen both Church and Country. Their deepest simmering problems surfaced in living technicolor this week.

Pope Francis must face the central cause of the sexual abuse scandal-the deep infiltration and corruption of the Catholic priesthood by homosexuals. (UPDATE DECEMBER 2018 HIS CLEAREST STATEMENT ON HOMOSEXUALS IN PRIESTHOOD)

Archbishop Vigano's "third testimony"(see below) sent on the feast of the North American Jesuit martyrs is the clearest case yet for overcoming the "silence " on this issue. That silence has crippled reform for decades. We still believe Archbishop Vigano is gravely mistaken about Pope Francis rehabilitating Cardinal McCarrick. Vigano also is directly responsible for an inadequate response to "the homosexual conservative" John Nienstedt continuing to act as a bishop and priest in good standing. At the same time there is no living priest or bishop who has so forthrightly named the beast that stalks our sanctuaries. For this, all of us, including the Pope, must be grateful for the Vigano testimonies. This last testimony refrained from asking the pope to resign and adopted a much more filial posture to the pontiff.  That did not mean he wasn't sharply critical. The Pope has asked for parrhesia . Vigano complied.

 The Archbishop is making it easier for others (including the Pope) to clamor for justice by ruling any act of sodomy by a priest must engender an automatic loss of the office and clerical state. (AOA Strategy for Reform). This betrayal of sacral fatherhood is exactly analogous to the offense of abortion against femininity and motherhood. The Church punishes the woman with excommunication. There is no trial. She is excommunicated by the act itself-latae sententiae.  A similar clarity in canon law can manifest to  corrupted modern man what depravity toward the sacral fatherhood is sodomy. Are we not amazed that there is a large body of "conservatives" and "liberals" who do not consider adult consensual acts of sodomy by priests, bishops, monks or cardinals to be a "grave delict?"   If we need a focus for the Catholic conversation about the worldwide clergy corruption, this would nicely center the conversation. A clarified interpretation of the present law or an explicit canon  would both reaffirm the sacrality of the priesthood and make clear the depravity of that twisted act. If we hear this is "scapegoating gay priests", let us remember the scapegoat is one goat who is exiled for the group. There are thousands of homosexual priests--they are not scapegoats. They are the moneychangers who overran the temple... they must be driven out.

The Eucharist is a joining of humanity in the Son's sacrificial love of the Father through the liturgical action of a male Catholic priest.  Sodomy is a sin against the fundamental male love of father for son, son for father and brothers for one another under Our Father. Properly ordered masculine love is the basis of ecclesial  apostolic order and public political life. Sodomy is incompatible with the male actions at the sacred altar which order the Church's public life to the Trinitarian love of the Father and Son.  This sin has nothing to do with the Sixth Commandment or marriage. It has everything to do with the desacralization of the Mass, the Apostolic priesthood and the unifying  love of the Son for the Father and all of humanity. It is a violation of the First and Fourth commandments before the Sixth.

The incessant criticisms of the conservative Catholic media against Pope Francis are not helping us come together to face the crisis. The many rifles aimed at the pope can be better aimed at the corrupted priests and bishops we can expose and banish from every diocese and country in the Catholic world. We need Pope Francis to call together the male bishops in public face to face assemblies to address this corruption. He is doing just that in his proposed February 2019 meeting of all the heads of bishop conferences. We need time to be sure there will be several bold bishops who will go there saying the homosexualization of the clergy is the number one problem that is destroying the protective brotherhood of fathers which Jesus instituted 2000 years ago. The ordered male group is the antidote to homosexual clericalism as well as organized male violence.  We have not made that argument with enough force. We do not have the many dossiers we need to expose the homosexual clergy including those men slated to enter the conclave of cardinals to pick the next pope.  This Pope is all about the synodal character of priestly life. We need such a Pope more than another theologian or philosopher.  The reconfigured public episcopal bodies must boldly begin the act of Apostolic cleansing which Christ did to Judas on the night before he died. He ordered His bishops to do as He had done! That mandate stands today.

Pope Francis has been tricked by many progressive bishops who have exploited his call for joy and mercy to cover their double lives of squalid exploitation and depraved forms of clericalism. May our holy prayerful Pope see them for who they are. He clearly has missed on Cardinal Wuerl. But let us be careful in condemning the Pope's every move. He is surrounded by bishops and officials placed there by Popes Benedict and John Paul II. They too dined with the serpent and added significantly to his penetration of priestly life during their pontificates. It was always thus with Sodom--the sin is so destructive of fraternity that it is hard to find a quorum of men who can clean the place after a certain degree of pollution.  Let us pray for the pope and ask every bishop and priest to speak clearly about the desacralized masculinity which must be purified in every diocese and every country including the Vatican to safeguard Christ's Spotless Bride once again. Like you, me, and Vigano, Pope Francis is not perfect and has been negligent. Is he Judas or Peter? If Judas, wash him out. If Peter, may he be called to repentance and more vigorous rule. Look at the wily Wuerl. Listen to the exuberant Francis. Who is Judas? Expose him and banish him. Who is Peter? Forgive him, even criticize him, but then follow him. We must help him because like the pontiffs before him, he is surrounded. But unlike them, he is leading us to a reckoning.

In a similar way, President Trump must now face his own long neglected Achilles heel. He too has embraced our enemies thinking them friends. The great nationalist has been stymied in his policies by three "allies".  First and most importantly, President Trump has gone down the George Bush path of trusting the Saudi Kingdom-home of the most radical terrorist religious movement on the globe today. The Cold War is over and our old ally-the Sauds- are now our enemy. It is they, not Iraq and not Iran, who killed our people on 9/11 two decades ago.  All Muslims do not look alike and all Muslims do not behead Christians, fly planes into office towers or cut up their own in foreign consulates. The rash Muhammed bin Salman is the worst of the anti Shiite Wahabbis to lead Saudi Arabia in decades. (These three links ( One  Two  Three) all have sections under Islam and the Mideast  of our previous documentation and significant stories about the rise of MbS as Saudi Crown Prince).
Even if some Sunni rich girls are driving and going to soccer games--MbS has been a warmonger, an interfamilial opportunist  and murderer from the beginning. Anyone who pays  a tiny bit of attention to religion and geopolitics in the region would never have been fooled by the 30 something murderer of Houthi Shiites in Yemen. Muhammed bib Salman is easing the domestic police but he has unleashed the murderous side of the Wahhabi  sect--the belief that Shiites are not Muslims and should be exterminated to purify the religion. Before MbS tried to bring down Qatar and the al Jazeera network, Wahhabi clerics in Saudi Arabia condemned the Wahhabis of Qatar.  MbS is not reining in Saudi Wahhabism. He is sharpening their bloodiest knives while putting a smile on his outside the tent face. MbS has alienated all of his older more competent relatives. He must have the clerics and the clerics are very interested in a leader who will do real physical harm to the armed Shiite governments in the region.  MbS  is not yet  King but he wields most of the power as Crown Prince. He has rid the higher institutional positions of older more competent royals who might have been his opposition. This includes not a few men in their fifties who once were favorites of the American CIA.  To characterize the fanatical anti Shiite campaign of Wahhabi Sauds as a century old sectarian fight between Shiites and Sunnis is to call the KKK  just another group of whites in the  century long black-white divide. Yes there is a long standing Sunni-Shia divide like there has been animosity across the color line for centuries. But the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia (like the KKK) are special.

 The second ally who has undermined America and the Trump presidency is our look alike across the sea-Great Britain. British intelligence and most British politicians (pro- Brexit or not) do not want a US-Russian alliance. Employing eager anti Trump forces in both parties, Christopher Steele and many other English speaking white guys in media and British governmental services have been very successful in hiding in full view. The Russian hoax has as many British fingerprints as anti Trump Americans. They love the special Atlantic alliance of the white English speaking countries in "the West".  They hate the realignment of racial groups and civilizations which comes from nationalism and the respect of very different national cultures. A new post bipolar Cold War  nationalist policy of bandwagoning strong nations would reconfigure the relations of nations with a huge loss in status for white English speaking Britain. An alliance of  the strong nation men of Russia, of China, of Japan, and of Brazil makes a very different world than the globalists of the West managed by Angela Merkel, Theresa May and Hillary Clinton/Nikki Haley talk-alikes. This is an insight the English accented Fox News commentators may get last.

The Israelis too have played their great ally. They have escalated their anti Iran propaganda and  enlisted our country in a war against the strongest military force in the region which has destroyed ISIS and opposed our real terrorist enemies- the salafist Wahhabis. The Israelis have never seen the purification Wahhabis as a principal enemy.  ISIS hasn't shot at them and they haven't shot at ISIS. The Israeli have looked at the Muslim vs Muslim war as an opportunity to weaken their greatest enemy-Iran.  Because of this, America and Israel have fundamentally different views and strategies in the Mideast and Afghanistan. The Wahhabi Sunnis from the Hanbali school of Islam are still unpunished for 911. They are by far the greatest worldwide sponsors of terrorism (al Qaeda, ISIS, the Syrian civil war, Boko Haram, the Ughurs of China and Chechynans of Russia are all Sunni radicals not Iranian Shiites.) Israel has taken advantage of our Senators' general ignorance of religion and foreign policy. The huge Israeli lobby in Washington (and the considerable think tank and lobbying efforts of the Saudis) have pointed American weapons at Iran instead of where the hijackers came from. We cannot blame Israel for having their own interests. We can blame our political leaders for not differentiating Israel's enemies and foreign policy from our own. "America First" does not mean, "Whatever Israel Wants." A good nationalist favors an undivided Israeli capital in Jerusalem not an auxiliary branch in Washington DC.

The pathetic ignorance of our real national interests in the Mideast  is the problem in foreign policy that President Trump came to fix.  He said we have to find out "what the hell is going on with the Muslims. Where does this hate come from?"  Well ,we are still too religiously ignorant to understand  the story and punish our real enemies. We still don't understand Saudi Arabia: The Kingdom of Hate.
Nations are maneuvering for their interests (especially Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Brits ) while we are played for fools. What China did in economics, the Saudis, Israelis and Brits did in our foreign policy and post election paralysis.  We must empty our governing halls of the feminists and careerists who have sacrificed the nation for their own status pods in the swamp. Most of them are not evil just incredibly limited in dealing with much stronger and more serious men of other countries. Those men  are acting for their nation states against careerists who are only acting for their survival in office. So far it has been no contest. President Trump wants a nationalist foreign policy but he is surrounded by military men and Republican security experts who were marinated in the globalist interventionist world view. Journalists and senators should provide a counter narrative to help him realign our forces not blame him for the mess he did not make.

We must break with the Saudis who are our enemies. Our opposition to them is for sins more grave than their gruesome murder of a man they consider a traitor. This is not the first  time we have seen a plane load of Saudis leave a country after a gruesome murder. It happened in September of 2001.  The plane was leaving US airspace and it wasn't one Saudi traitor with an American green card who had been killed. It was 3000 American civilians at work in New York City. Their innocent blood still calls for justice!

Will Pope Francis see the lavender mob corrupting his priesthood? Will President Trump see the salafist jihadists from Mecca and Medina trying to get us into war with Iran? Both men have vicious enemies that misinterpret their every statement. That makes it difficult to help them see their real mistakes. Pope Francis has been horrifically slow to see the homosexual infiltration in every diocese and the Vatican in the Catholic clergy. President Trump picked the wrong country-Saudi Arabia- to be our ally and the worst of all leaders-- Muhammed bin Salman-- to promise his  loyalty. Let us see if the Pope and the President  can see their mistakes and make some very necessary and fundamental corrections.

                                                                   I The Pope and the Church

The Case Against the Pope by Michael Brandon Daugherty   
 We don't agree with this rendition but he makes the clearest case for the anti Francis movement.

Pope's letter to Wuerl - An indictment of both by Rod Dreher

Networks and Double Lives: Wright, Wuerl and the Pittsburgh Oratory
Good reporting by Ken Woodward in Commonweal Magazine

Vigano's Third Testament: A much stronger focus not on resignation by the Pope but repentance by all for not facing the plague of homosexuality corrupting the Catholic priesthood. In full below:

Archbishop Vigano Responds to Cardinal Ouellet: The Third Testimony
On the Memory of the North American Martyrs
By Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano
October 19, 2018

To bear witness to corruption in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church was a painful decision for me, and remains so. But I am an old man, one who knows he must soon give an accounting to the judge for his actions and omissions, one who fears Him who can cast body and soul into hell. A judge, even in his infinite mercy, will render to every person salvation or damnation according to what he has deserved. Anticipating the dreadful question from that judge — “How could you, who had knowledge of the truth, keep silent in the midst of falsehood and depravity?” — what answer could I give?

I testified fully aware that my testimony would bring alarm and dismay to many eminent persons: Churchmen, fellow bishops, colleagues with whom I had worked and prayed. I knew many would feel wounded and betrayed. I expected that some would in their turn assail me and my motives. Most painful of all, I knew that many of the innocent faithful would be confused and disconcerted by the spectacle of a bishop’s charging colleagues and superiors with malfeasance, sexual sin, and grave neglect of duty. Yet I believe that my continued silence would put many souls at risk, and would certainly damn my own.

Having reported multiple times to my superiors, and even to the pope, the aberrant behavior of Theodore McCarrick, I could have publicly denounced the truths of which I was aware earlier.
If I have some responsibility in this delay, I repent for that. This delay was due to the gravity of the decision I was going to take, and to the long travail of my conscience. I have been accused of creating confusion and division in the Church through my testimony. To those who believe such confusion and division were negligible prior to August 2018, perhaps such a claim is plausible.

Most impartial observers, however, will have been aware of a longstanding excess of both, as is inevitable when the successor of Peter is negligent in exercising his principal mission, which is to confirm the brothers in the faith and in sound moral doctrine. When he then exacerbates the crisis by contradictory or perplexing statements about these doctrines, the confusion is worsened. "Therefore I spoke" Therefore I spoke.

For it is the conspiracy of silence that has wrought and continues to wreak great harm in the Church — harm to so many innocent souls, to young priestly vocations, to the faithful at large. With regard to my decision, which I have taken in conscience before God, I willingly accept every fraternal correction, advice, recommendation, and invitation to progress in my life of faith and love for Christ, the Church and the pope. Let me restate the key points of my testimony:

  • In November 2000 the U.S. nuncio Archbishop (Gabriel) Montalvoinformed the Holy See of Cardinal McCarrick’s homosexual behavior with seminarians and priests.
  • In December 2006 the new U.S. nuncio, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, informed the Holy See of Cardinal McCarrick’s homosexual behavior with yet another priest.
  • In December of 2006 I myself wrote a memo to the Secretary of State Cardinal (Tarcisio) Bertone, and personally delivered it to the Substitute for General Affairs, Archbishop Leonardo Sandri, calling for the pope to bring extraordinary disciplinary measures against McCarrick to forestall future crimes and scandal. This memo received no response.
  • In April 2008 an open letter to Pope Benedict by Richard Sipe was relayed by the Prefect of the CDF, Cardinal (William) Levada, to the Secretary of State, Cardinal Bertone, containing further accusations of McCarrick’s sleeping with seminarians and priests. I received this a month later, and in May 2008 I myself delivered a second memo to the then Substitute for General Affairs, Archbishop Fernando Filoni, reporting the claims against McCarrick and calling for sanctions against him. This second memo also received no response.
  • In 2009 or 2010 I learned from Cardinal (Giovanni Battista) Re, prefect of the Congregation of Bishops, that Pope Benedict had ordered McCarrick to cease public ministry and begin a life of prayer and penance. The nuncio Sambi communicated the Pope’s orders to McCarrick in a voice heard down the corridor of the nunciature.
  • In November 2011 Cardinal (Marc) Ouellet, the new Prefect of Bishops, repeated to me, the new nuncio to the U.S., the Pope’s restrictions on McCarrick, and I myself communicated them to McCarrick face-to-face.
  • On June 21, 2013, toward the end of an official assembly of nuncios at the Vatican, Pope Francis spoke cryptic words to me criticizing the U.S. episcopacy.
  • On June 23, 2013, I met Pope Francis face-to-face in his apartment to ask for clarification, and the Pope asked me, “il cardinale McCarrick, com’è (Cardinal McCarrick — what do you make of him)?”– which I can only interpret as a feigning of curiosity in order to discover whether or not I was an ally of McCarrick. I told him that McCarrick had sexually corrupted generations of priests and seminarians, and had been ordered by Pope Benedict to confine himself to a life of prayer and penance.
  • Instead, McCarrick continued to enjoy the special regard of Pope Francis and was given new responsibilities and missions by him.
  • McCarrick was part of a network of bishops promoting homosexuality who exploiting their favor with Pope Francis manipulated episcopal appointments so as to protect themselves from justice and to strengthen the homosexual network in the hierarchy and in the Church at large.
  • Pope Francis himself has either colluded in this corruption, or, knowing what he does, is gravely negligent in failing to oppose it and uproot it.
  • "I invoked God as my witness" I invoked God as my witness to the truth of my claims, and none has been shown false.
  • Cardinal Ouellet has written to rebuke me for my temerity in breaking silence and leveling such grave accusations against my brothers and superiors, but in truth his remonstrance confirms me in my decision and, even more, serves to vindicate my claims, severally and as a whole.
  • Cardinal Ouellet concedes that he spoke with me about McCarrick’s situation prior to my leaving for Washington to begin my post as nuncio.
  • Cardinal Ouellet concedes that he communicated to me in writing the conditions and restrictions imposed on McCarrick by Pope Benedict.
  • Cardinal Ouellet concedes that these restrictions forbade McCarrick to travel or to make public appearances.
  • Cardinal Ouellet concedes that the Congregation of Bishops, in writing, first through the nuncio Sambi and then once again through me, required McCarrick to lead a life of prayer and penance. What does Cardinal Ouellet dispute?
  • Cardinal Ouellet disputes the possibility that Pope Francis could have taken in important information about McCarrick on a day when he met scores of nuncios and gave each only a few moments of conversation. But this was not my testimony. My testimony is that at a second, private meeting, I informed the Pope, answering his own question about Theodore McCarrick, then Cardinal archbishop emeritus of Washington, prominent figure of the Church in the US, telling the pope that McCarrick had sexually corrupted his own seminarians and priests. No pope could forget that.
  • Cardinal Ouellet disputes the existence in his archives of letters signed by Pope Benedict or Pope Francis regarding sanctions on McCarrick. But this was not my testimony. My testimony was that he has in his archives key documents – irrespective of provenance – incriminating McCarrick and documenting the measures taken in his regard, and other proofs on the cover-up regarding his situation. And I confirm this again.
  • Cardinal Ouellet disputes the existence in the files of his predecessor, Cardinal Re, of “audience memos” imposing on McCarrick the restrictions already mentioned. But this was not my testimony. My testimony is that there are other documents: for instance, a note from Card. Re not ex-Audientia SS.mi, or signed by the Secretary of State or by the Substitute.
  • Cardinal Ouellet disputes that it is false to present the measures taken against McCarrick as “sanctions” decreed by Pope Benedict and canceled by Pope Francis. True. They were not technically “sanctions” but provisions, “conditions and restrictions.” To quibble whether they were sanctions or provisions or something else is pure legalism. From a pastoral point of view they are exactly the same thing.

In brief, Cardinal Ouellet concedes the important claims that I did and do make, and disputes claims I don’t make and never made. There is one point on which I must absolutely refute what Cardinal Ouellet wrote. The Cardinal states that the Holy See was only aware of “rumors,” which were not enough to justify disciplinary measures against McCarrick.

I affirm to the contrary that the Holy See was aware of a variety of concrete facts, and is in possession of documentary proof, and that the responsible persons nevertheless chose not to intervene or were prevented from doing so.

Compensation by the Archdiocese of Newark and the Diocese of Metuchen to the victims of McCarrick’s sexual abuse, the letters of Fr. Ramsey, of the nuncios Montalvo in 2000 and Sambi in 2006, of Dr. Sipe in 2008, my two notes to the superiors of the Secretariat of State who described in detail the concrete allegations against McCarrick; are all these just rumors? They are official correspondence, not gossip from the sacristy.

The crimes reported were very serious, including those of attempting to give sacramental absolution to accomplices in perverse acts, with subsequent sacrilegious celebration of Mass.
These documents specify the identity of the perpetrators and their protectors, and the chronological sequence of the facts. They are kept in the appropriate archives; no extraordinary investigation is needed to recover them.

"I have noted two omissions" In the public remonstrances directed at me I have noted two omissions, two dramatic silences. The first silence regards the plight of the victims. The second regards the underlying reason why there are so many victims, namely, the corrupting influence of homosexuality in the priesthood and in the hierarchy.

As to the first, it is dismaying that, amid all the scandals and indignation, so little thought should be given to those damaged by the sexual predations of those commissioned as ministers of the gospel. This is not a matter of settling scores or sulking over the vicissitudes of ecclesiastical careers. It is not a matter of politics. It is not a matter of how church historians may evaluate this or that papacy. This is about souls. Many souls have been and are even now imperiled of their eternal salvation.
As to the second silence, this very grave crisis cannot be properly addressed and resolved unless and until we call things by their true names. This is a crisis due to the scourge of homosexuality, in its agents, in its motives, in its resistance to reform. It is no exaggeration to say that homosexuality has become a plague in the clergy, and it can only be eradicated with spiritual weapons. It is an enormous hypocrisy condemn the abusre, claim to weep for the victims, and yet refuse to denounce the root cause of so much sexual abuse: homosexuality. It is hypocrisy to refuse to acknowledge that this scourge is due to a serious crisis in the spiritual life of the clergy and to fail to take the steps necessary to remedy it.

Unquestionably there exist philandering clergy, and unquestionably they too damage their own souls, the souls of those whom they corrupt, and the Church at large. But these violations of priestly celibacy are usually confined to the individuals immediately involved. Philandering clergy usually do not recruit other philanderers, nor work to promote them, nor cover-up their misdeeds — whereas the evidence for homosexual collusion, with its deep roots that are so difficult to eradicate, is overwhelming. It is well established that homosexual predators exploit clerical privilege to their advantage.

But to claim the crisis itself to be clericalism is pure sophistry. It is to pretend that a means, anw instrument, is in fact the main motive. Denouncing homosexual corruption and the moral cowardice that allows it to flourish does not meet with congratulation in our times, not even in the highest spheres of the Church. I am not surprised that in calling attention to these plagues I am charged with disloyalty to the Holy Father and with fomenting an open and scandalous rebellion. Yet rebellion would entail urging others to topple the papacy. "I am urging no such thing" I am urging no such thing.

I pray every day for Pope Francis — more than I have ever done for the other popes. I am asking, indeed earnestly begging, the Holy Father to face up to the commitments he himself made in assuming his office as successor of Peter. He took upon himself the mission of confirming his brothers and guiding all souls in following Christ, in the spiritual combat, along the way of the cross.
Let him admit his errors, repent, show his willingness to follow the mandate given to Peter and, once converted let him confirm his brothers (Lk 22:32).

"I wish to repeat my appeal" In closing, I wish to repeat my appeal to my brother bishops and priests who know that my statements are true and who can so testify, or who have access to documents that can put the matter beyond doubt. You too are faced with a choice. You can choose to withdraw from the battle, to prop up the conspiracy of silence and avert your eyes from the spreading of corruption.
You can make excuses, compromises and justification that put off the day of reckoning. You can console yourselves with the falsehood and the delusion that it will be easier to tell the truth tomorrow, and then the following day, and so on.

On the other hand, you can choose to speak. You can trust Him who told us, “the truth will set you free.” I do not say it will be easy to decide between silence and speaking. I urge you to consider which choice– on your deathbed, and then before the just Judge — you will not regret having made.

October 19, 2018
Memory of the
North American Martyrs
+ Carlo Maria Viganò
Tit. Archbishop of Ulpiana
Apostolic Nuncio

                                                              II The President


Trump At UN September 25, 2018

Full speech - excerpts here:

"Each of us here today is the emissary of a distinct culture, a rich history, and a people bound together by ties of memory, tradition, and the values that make our homelands like nowhere else on Earth.
For similar reasons, the United States will provide no support in recognition to the International Criminal Court. As far as America is concerned, the ICC has no jurisdiction, no legitimacy, and no authority. The ICC claims near-universal jurisdiction over the citizens of every country, violating all principles of justice, fairness, and due process. We will never surrender America’s sovereignty to an unelected, unaccountable, global bureaucracy.

America is governed by Americans. We reject the ideology of globalism, and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism."

"We recognize the right of every nation in this room to set its own immigration policy in accordance with its national interests, just as we ask other countries to respect our own right to do the same — which we are doing. That is one reason the United States will not participate in the new Global Compact on Migration. Migration should not be governed by an international body unaccountable to our own citizens.

Ultimately, the only long-term solution to the migration crisis is to help people build more hopeful futures in their home countries. Make their countries great again."

"The whole world is richer, humanity is better, because of this beautiful constellation of nations, each very special, each very unique, and each shining brightly in its part of the world.
In each one, we see awesome promise of a people bound together by a shared past and working toward a common future.

As for Americans, we know what kind of future we want for ourselves. We know what kind of a nation America must always be.

In America, we believe in the majesty of freedom and the dignity of the individual. We believe in self-government and the rule of law. And we prize the culture that sustains our liberty -– a culture built on strong families, deep faith, and fierce independence. We celebrate our heroes, we treasure our traditions, and above all, we love our country.

Inside everyone in this great chamber today, and everyone listening all around the globe, there is the heart of a patriot that feels the same powerful love for your nation, the same intense loyalty to your homeland.

The passion that burns in the hearts of patriots and the souls of nations has inspired reform and revolution, sacrifice and selflessness, scientific breakthroughs, and magnificent works of art.
Our task is not to erase it, but to embrace it. To build with it. To draw on its ancient wisdom. And to find within it the will to make our nations greater, our regions safer, and the world better.
To unleash this incredible potential in our people, we must defend the foundations that make it all possible. Sovereign and independent nations are the only vehicle where freedom has ever survived, democracy has ever endured, or peace has ever prospered. And so we must protect our sovereignty and our cherished independence above all.

When we do, we will find new avenues for cooperation unfolding before us. We will find new passion for peacemaking rising within us. We will find new purpose, new resolve, and new spirit flourishing all around us, and making this a more beautiful world in which to live.

So together, let us choose a future of patriotism, prosperity, and pride. Let us choose peace and freedom over domination and defeat. And let us come here to this place to stand for our people and their nations, forever strong, forever sovereign, forever just, and forever thankful for the grace and the goodness and the glory of God.

Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the nations of the world."


III. AROUND THE WORLD ROUND UP

FOREIGN POLICY - NATIONAL SECURITY VS. INCIDENCES OF OUTRAGEThousands of dead Shiites vs One dead journalistWho is Jamal Khashoggi?

THE BRITISH INFLUENCE ON AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY: There are three countries that over influence American foreign policy: Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Britain. This is the best review of the out-sized role Britian plays in US policy. They look like us, they sort of talk like us, but their goals ARE NOT our goals. British interests and the anti Trump Russian hoax. Russian dossier is Britishgate.

IN YEMEN THE SAUDIS KILL SHIITES, BUT THE UAE IS ESTABLISHING A BASE OF OPERATIONS AGAINST ENEMY RADICAL SUNNIS: And they use American mercenaries as part of their forces.

IRAN WAS MAJOR FORCE IN DEFEAT OF ISISby Scott Ritter.

A DEATH IN AFGHANISTAN: Politics is protection. Abdul Raziq was seen as the most powerful man in southern Afghanistan. The top police general in Kandahar Province, he had earned a reputation as a ruthless anti-insurgent fighter and was widely praised for bringing Kandahar and the surrounding region away from Taliban rule and under Afghan government control. On Thursday, Oct 18 the Taliban struck back.

A gunman wearing an Afghan army uniform opened fire on participants meeting with the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller, the target of the attack claimed by the Taliban, escaped unharmed. But Abdul Raziq and two other top southern provincial officials were killed. At least three Americans were wounded as well.

American soldiers are dying in Afghanistan because our diplomats have not made peace with Iran, Pakistan, and the Afghan factions. Russia, China, and India would all help if we organized serious negotiations. We must negotiate with those who once were our enemies and we must recognize large regional powers so soldiers doing their duties and civilians leading their lives are not sacrificed to an  incoherent foreign policy. This incoherence is not caused by President Trump. He inherited it from diplomats and soldier diplomats who have not yet figured out how to live in the multi-polar world of the post Cold War.  Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat Representative from Hawaii,  and Rand Paul, a Republican Senator from Kentucky,  seem to be emerging as articulate Congressional leaders seeking a serious nationalist reappraisal of foreign policy in the Mideast and South Asia.

BOLSONARO SET TO WIN OCTOBER 28 ELECTION: The globalists and international cultural liberals are aghast. The globalists at the Economist magazine are supporting the socialist candidate. That should be a lesson. The sexual revolutionaries are screaming homophobe and misogynist. The Greens say he will deforest the Amazon. He has said he will withdraw from the climate accord. Jair Bolsonaro is recovering from the knife wound inflicted weeks ago in the campaign. He is just the God adoring, nation loving, masculine leader other Latin American countries need.  May men of his kind rise to renew the great nations of  Catholic South America.

THE ATHEISTS WHO DEFINED THE MODERN ERA: Marx taught history without Providence. Freud taught psychology without the soul. Darwin taught biology without the Creator. Einstein taught the laws of Nature without the Law Giver. Some object that Einstein was not an atheist. From 1954 Albert Einstein ”the God letter” to philosopher Erik Gutkind:

"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish," Einstein writes.

Einstein was a German-born Jew who lost his religious faith at a young age and sometimes referred to himself as an agnostic. The letter reinforces his love and shared identity with Jewish people but also calls Judaism, "like all other religions ... an incarnation of the most childish superstition."