Contra Conservatives

 

Wherein is demonstrated how many, if not most, of the bad things to befall the United States came from conservatives and republicans. 

Traditionalists and conservatives could use some advice from Jimmy Buffet: “Some people claim that there’s a woman (Hilary, Pelosi, Susan from the parish council) to blame, but I know: it’s my own damn fault.”

Republicans do not have a great record in the last 100 years when it comes to modern threats to the faith and to conservatism. Economics and treatment of the poor that would give the prophets Isaiah and Amos fits, the masonic FBI director who created the modern American police state, the Supreme Court justices who mandated legal contraception, abortion, then redefined marriage and who banned prayer in public schools, the Governor who started no fault divorce, the destruction of ancient Christian communities in Biblical lands, the initial go aheads to China, big tech, and big pharma; and an opening salvo justifying the rejection of magisterial teaching by practicing Catholics. 

Hoover

It’s safe to say the 1920s were the last time American conservatism was truly dominant, with Republican Presidents winning the vote in New York City and Supreme Court rulings rolling back earlier progressive decisions. Americans wanted a “return to normalcy” after the dizzying progressive era and the First World War. 

Republicans ruled for almost all of the 20s. And did a fine job enabling debt-financed materialism, giving rise to conniving tycoons like Joe Kennedy, and hollowing out the economy. They also presided over the organized crime of John Dillinger and Al Capone en route to handing the growing Bureau of Investigation to a 20-something Freemason named J. Edgar Hoover. 

When the chickens came home to roost, President Hoover raised taxes and tariffs to stave off deficit spending. The resulting deathblow to the money supply turned what should’ve been a short-term crash into an epoch-defining depression. The depression handed the country to the progressives for 50 years while giving Europe a shove toward fascism and communism. Membership in the American Communist Party swelled in the 30s, as did support for FDR’s alphabet soup, and Huey Long’s tyrannical “Share Our Wealth” program. 

Eisenhower

The greatest damage was done by his appointment of Earl Warren as Chief Justice in 1953. Warren may be the most influential man in the history of America in the 20th century. Warren was Governor of California, and not a judge, before his appointment. Eisenhower likely viewed his political skills as necessary to push the Court to hand down tough but necessary rulings on civil rights for racial minorities (and needed to pay Warren back for getting Eisenhower nominated for the Presidency). But what happens when the fire you use to warm your house and cook your food starts burning down your living room? 

The Warren Court handed down ruling after ruling reengineering American social norms. Griswold struck down laws prohibiting contraception (and opened the door to Roe), Aaron v. Cooper gave the Court unlimited authority over the US Constitution, Yates v. United States struck down laws aimed at suppressing communists, Engel banned prayer as part of the school day in public schools. It’s worth noting that these rulings came years before the countercultural explosion of 1968. Warren was also in charge of investigating the Kennedy assassination, and did such a good job that today no one questions who killed JFK. 

This is not even to mention the interstate highway system. This beauty started its life by physically destroying hundreds of neighborhoods (often poor ones), and matured by hollowing out urban centers, eliminating more efficient public transit, and magnifying concentration of poverty and racial segregation. 

William Buckley

In many ways, I find William Buckley and National Review inspiring for their educated, conservative take. Nevertheless, it was Buckley and National Review writer Gary Wills who planted the seed for modern cafeteria Catholicism by publicly rejecting Pope John XXIII’s encyclical on Catholic social teaching Mater et Magistra in 1961. It was not surprising when Wills made common cause with the liberals a few years later to reject Humanae Vitae. 

It has gradually become clear that Buckley and the National Review Catholics of today are Americanists who support the basic moral teachings of the faith but reject anything that contradicts the agnostic American Constitution and materialist neoliberal economics. Reaganism apparently supersedes magisterial teaching. This is ultimately self defeating, because if magisterial teaching on economics can be set aside, then it’s artificial to claim the Church’s moral and family teaching are somehow in a different, more binding category for the faithful. 

One either accepts magisterial teaching, even in areas that go against one’s preferred politics, or one does not. Buckley and National Review did not, and do not. Hence the good theology and ideas they do hold are unlikely to be taken seriously by working class folks trapped in cycles of unjust wages and usury. 

Nixon

Where to begin? Watergate, opening the door to communist China, getting guys killed by slow rolling the Vietnam withdrawal, and appointing Justice Blackmun, who wrote the Roe v. Wade opinion. 

Reagan

Where to begin? Governor Reagan made California the first state with no fault divorce, and signed an early permissive state law on abortion. 

As President, he did nothing substantive or lasting to roll back massive increases in government, nor was he ever able to lead the Republicans to a majority in Congress. He did, however, preside over searing government deficits and refuse to enforce antitrust law, leadening to ridiculous increases in executive pay and stagnating middle class incomes. He failed to do much to prosecute what Michael Lewis in Liar’s Poker called “an unprecedented era of greed, gluttony, and outrageous fortune” throughout Wall Street. 

Under Reagan, greed was good, Wall Street was king, and families were hollowed out as men spent more time hitting quarterly numbers than building and protecting their families. Paeans paid to Christian values were largely lip service as major cities suffered under dreadful waves of crime and drug addiction. 

There was also the matter of the Supreme Court justices Sandra Day O’Connor (an early concession to identity politics) and Anthony Kennedy (who would manage to be on the wrong but winning side of just about every landmark ruling in the 2010s). 

Newt Gingrich

Just when a Republican Congress comes in to rescue us from 60 years of progressivism, we find out the Congressional Emperor has no clothes in front of women who are not his lawful wife. Wonderful. And a nice touch shutting down the government chasing an unattainable conviction of a President for… sexual misconduct. What was so important about securing the presidency for Al Gore that conservatives had to be associated with such obvious hypocrisy?

Bush 43

Bush did a better job than most destroying Christianity in the Middle East with his war in Iraq that destabilized the entire area. Christians who were at least getting by in the past left the area in droves if they weren’t killed. 

It was difficult to listen to Bush fanboys bleat about abortion when even a 2007 survey estimated that the Iraq War directly led to over 1.2 million deaths, not counting the depredations of ISIS that followed. 

When I was growing up, religion was at least respected if not widely practiced. By the time Bush left office, it was positively held in contempt after my generation (who always hated the Clintons and were ripe for the picking for conservatives) watched 8 years of deadly incompetence. 

If you’re wary of standardized testing and massive federal spending and deficits, thank Bush who expanded Medicare and led us into the No Child Left Behind boondoggle. Under a Republican Congress no less. 

Do the same if you’re scared stiff about China, which joined the World Trade Organization in December 2001 and swelled to a quasi superpower during the Bush administration. 

The early warning signs of tech company oligopoly were happily ignored by Bush, who had no issue watching Google acquire YouTube and DoubleClick. The same goes for pharmaceuticals, with several massive Pfizer acquisitions getting smooth approval by the Bush administration. 

There’s also the Supreme Court, as his choice of Chief Justice has turned what should be a solidly conservative Supreme Court into a overtly political institution since the Chief cares more for the Court’s public image among college educated liberals than fulfilling his oath to the Constitution. 

Trump

It was hard to watch traditional Catholics cheer lustily for a man whose goons tore Catholic immigrant children away from their families, who was widely known for his libertine ways, used all sorts of shenanigans to escape paying incurred debts to his creditors like Deutschebank, and did little to give conservatives a good name or shore up his chronically poor favorability ratings. 

Within just a few years he managed to repeatedly attack lifelong conservatives, hounding quite a few from Office, and losing conservatives their supposedly bulletproof House majority as well as Senate elections in Arizona and Georgia of all places. The January 6 thing was bush league banana republic nonsense, though it mercifully put an end to the embarrassment the country suffered on his Twitter account. 

His first Supreme Court nominee Gorsuch teamed up with Roberts to hand the social engineers a victory in the Clayton County case that rewrote the 55-year old Civil Rights Act, giving the Left a sledgehammer to use on any conservative employer or coworker who dares to uphold the reality of biological sex. With “textualism” logic that wouldn’t work on most five year olds. 

But hey, at least we achieved long term normalization of relations with Russia and aren’t about to go to war or anything.

If the Catholic alliance with the democratic party was a disaster from the start, the modern alliance of “conservative” Catholics with the republican party is almost as bad. While political compromises are sometimes necessary to survive, traditional Catholics should take a hard look at the last century and ask the serious question of whether remaining in the republican fold is truly the best for the faith and for the country. 

A Right-Friendly Covid Strategy

 

I’ve been skeptical of everything covid since April 2020. I am aware that makes me come off as the old Groucho Marx “Whatever it is, I’m against it” type. 

So what should we do, Sherlock? For this article, I’m thinking the Biden administration, given the administration’s self-professed competence and adherence to science. But parts also apply to Trump and state governments.

Treat proof of recovery the same as or better than proof of vaccination

Scale up healthcare infrastructure 

Invoke the Defense Production Act to order the mass production of rapid covid and antibody tests, reusable N95 masks, and treatments like monoclonal antibodies, ivermectin, etc. 

The only way to get covid “under control” is to quickly and reliably figure out who has it, limit spread using credible measures, and save lives/shorten infections through proven treatments. 

Use OSHA or relevant federal and state agencies to mandate filtering and ventilation standards, especially within multifamily buildings

Every single time I bring this up to a vax-focused relative it is dismissed as too hard. It’s not too hard. Every building manager can install a MERV 12 or higher filter, open the building’s dampers, and measure the results with a CO2 sensor that doesn’t cost more than a couple hundred bucks. 

Having worked on sustainability in buildings for years I am positive that a huge driver of infections in urban areas in the US and Europe is concentrating people in multifamily apartments where the disease spreads freely through the air ducts between units. 

Focus restrictions and punitive actions on those who have tested positive, been exposed, or are in a known vulnerable category

If you test positive and break quarantine, that’s on you, and you should be liable to fines. Applying the same restrictions to the rest of us, when statistically over 75% of us don’t have covid at any given time is not viable or sustainable. 

Provide free or reduced price delivery service and house calls to the elderly and those diagnosed with diabetes or respiratory illness

Anyone not living under a rock has surely seen that many of the people in grocery stores, in restaurants, and in elective healthcare offices at the height of covid were elderly people who had no business doing so. Provide reduced price delivery to anyone whose driver’s license number identifies them as over 65 or whatever threshold you want to set. 

Distribute vitamin D and C kits at every testing center

If someone is concerned enough to get tested, they should be taking vitamin C and vitamin D supplements. This is an easy way to save hundreds of lives. 

Focus direct financial assistance on those with required in-person jobs below regionally appropriate income levels

Throwing out money to every household, including relatively affluent households with the breadwinner working from home (such as mine) is insane when you have lower income individuals out of work for extended periods. 

Forbid administration officials from speaking publicly about vaccines and masks without speaking about ventilation and the preference for n95 masks

The reason no one wears n95s or thinks about ventilation is because no one talks about them. Talk about them. 

Forbid administration officials from speaking about surface sanitization, plexiglass screens, and handwashing

These things were proven not to work over a year ago. It’s time to move on. 

Uphold constitutional rights by avoiding restrictions on churches, other places of worship, freedom of assembly, and freedom of speech

The constitution is not suspended during the pandemic, and those of any political persuasion should be allowed to publicly protest, speak their mind, and worship without discrimination disguised as public health guidance. 

Create livable quarantine centers in vacant hotels, resorts

Some, particularly in multigeneration households, need pleasant, social places to quarantine when they get sick. Instead of wasting money on boondoggles like contact tracing, create spaces where people want to go to discourage them from going elsewhere and infecting others.

Demand competence from local and state governments

Why was Seattle and the state of Washington permitting Seattle Sounders games when multiple nursing home residents were dying of covid in February 2020? Why were states not allowed to administer their own tests during the same timeframe? Competent state governments are a must to implement and enforce any public health guidelines, and it does no good to create the expectation that they are empty shells that punt everything to the feds. 

Enforce Accountability

A comprehensive response to a pandemic requires people across the political spectrum to make sacrifices and endure restrictions they hate for a prolonged period. 

Getting people in a country like America to follow through requires universal trust from everyone. A plan and a set of administrators that have lost credibility with large chunks of the country are not good enough. 

Americans need the government to acknowledge and address the abject incompetence and lying they’ve been forced to live with for two years. Otherwise they will not take those officials and their guidance seriously. 

Briefly:

The officials at the FDA who botched the US’s initial covid tests in February 2020 should be named and fired. 

To stay on as Chief Medical Officer Fauci should be removed from any position of influence over NIH grant funding, a clear conflict of interest. 

He should also be ordered to stop playing semantic games about gain of function research, the public availability of his financial disclosures, or his clear denial that masks are effective on 60 Minutes in March 2020.  

If he refuses to comply, fire him. 

Censure politicians who fail to abide by their own covid restrictions, such as Gretchen Whitmer and Gavin Newsom. 

Publicly name and fine hospitals that are proven to have lied about their covid statistics. 

Do the same to those who have engaged in malpractice by refusing to use treatments proven to be effective, ranging from vitamin D to ivermectin. 

Demand that officials in the FDA, CDC, and media with links to the pharmaceutical companies disclose these links publicly and, where feasible, recuse themselves from pharmaceutical-related guidance and reporting. How many people know that the head of Reuters for most of 2020 is a Pfizer board member? 

Admit fault

Missteps early in any war are understandable. But the government needs to provide clear answers to basic questions. 

Why did the trained, experienced public health establishment contradict itself on everything from surface transmission to masks for months? Surely these are basic questions that a public health official should be expected to get right from the get-go? Fauci needs to take the lead here and eat some humble pie. 

Get real about masks

Masks are dubiously effective at best. If you’re going to insist on them, provide defensible standards around mask material. When your mask mandates result in most people wearing unfitted cloth masks, your mask mandates get people killed because they encourage some vulnerable people to go places they shouldn’t be going under the false pretense that masks will keep them safe. 

People hate masks. They are uncomfortable and are a barrier to communication. Instead of demonizing people who point out these commonsense issues, address their concerns. Manufacture n95 standard masks with soft, adjustable straps, that are see-through. 

Deal even-handedly with misinformation

Franklin Templeton pointed out in summer 2020 that people vastly overstated the risk of covid, and this was more common among democrats and those who used social media for news. Yet it is only ever right-leaning voices like Robert Malone who are censored. 

Start flagging voices who proclaim vaccine and cloth mask effectiveness that does not really exist. Do the same to any voices and guidance that are still talking about sanitization and hand washing. Call out groups like teacher unions that refuse to return to work when approved guidelines are in place. Do the same to those who exaggerate the risks of covid well beyond the scientific evidence. 

There is no clear cut way to “end” the pandemic. But the current approach of lurching from crisis to crisis is not working. Nor is the Obama-era trope of sticking to failed policies and blaming one’s political opponents and using dorm room meme level language. Governments need to stick to the facts, focus on those directly infected and vulnerable, and restore trust across the political spectrum through honesty and accountability. Covid is not going anywhere, and we need to establish long-term measures to take the edge off that we can agree on and implement successfully. 

Jubilees and Baileys

 

Yesterday’s Bible study focused on the passage in Luke where Christ declares the prophecy in Isaiah 61 fulfilled in the hearing of the Nazareth synagogue:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." 

After listening to Father Mike Schmitz’s gentle tones on the Bible in a Year, it seems natural that this passage is supposed to refer to the Year of Jubilee. This is a topic fit to give any self-respecting American conservative fits. Highlights from Leviticus 25.

And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants; it shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his family. 

A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be to you; in it you shall neither sow, nor reap what grows of itself, nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines. "In this year of jubilee each of you shall return to his property. 

And if you sell to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor, you shall not wrong one another. According to the number of years after the jubilee, you shall buy from your neighbor, and according to the number of years for crops he shall sell to you. If the years are many you shall increase the price, and if the years are few you shall diminish the price, for it is the number of the crops that he is selling to you. 

You shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God; for I am the LORD your God. "Therefore you shall do my statutes, and keep my ordinances and perform them; so you will dwell in the land securely. The land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill, and dwell in it securely. And if you say, 'What shall we eat in the seventh year, if we may not sow or gather in our crop?” I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, so that it will bring forth fruit for three years. The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with me. And in all the country you possess, you shall grant a redemption of the land. 

"If your brother becomes poor, and sells part of his property, then his next of kin shall come and redeem what his brother has sold. If a man has no one to redeem it, and then himself becomes prosperous and finds sufficient means to redeem it, let him reckon the years since he sold it and pay back the overpayment to the man to whom he sold it; and he shall return to his property. 

But if he has not sufficient means to get it back for himself, then what he sold shall remain in the hand of him who bought it until the year of jubilee; in the jubilee it shall be released, and he shall return to his property. 

"And if your brother becomes poor, and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall maintain him; as a stranger and a sojourner he shall live with you. Take no interest from him or increase, but fear your God; that your brother may live beside you.  

You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit. 

I am the LORD your God, who brought you forth out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God. "And if your brother becomes poor beside you, and sells himself to you, you shall not make him serve as a slave: he shall be with you as a hired servant and as a sojourner. He shall serve with you until the year of the jubilee; then he shall go out from you, he and his children with him, and go back to his own family, and return to the possession of his fathers. 

For they are my servants, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves. You shall not rule over him with harshness, but shall fear your God. 

It would be difficult to find a passage more scandalous to American conservatism than the above passage. God repeatedly links acknowledgement of His lordship with restoring property to the poor, canceling debts, paying fair wages, refusing to pursue wealth and sustenance for a full year, and giving the poor what they need out of charity, foregoing any profit. 

The Lord is God, and we are not. It is not our ingenuity, money, economic systems, or productivity that sustain our lives but God. The Levitical economy revolves around God and His justice, not human contracts, pareto efficiency, or GDP statistics. We require a regular interruption to the workaday cycle that prioritizes wealth and commerce over justice and faith. 

This is an early Biblical example of a kind of socio spiritual physics. Our modern world should understand what this means:

You shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God; for I am the LORD your God. "Therefore you shall do my statutes, and keep my ordinances and perform them; so you will dwell in the land securely.

Surely we’ve seen this movie before. A society grows economically, abuses the poor, the poor become disenfranchised and radicalized, and then some popular figure takes advantage and topples the existing order. It happened in Israel and Judah repeatedly, with the Gracchi and Caesar in Rome, in communist countries worldwide, and it is happening in the United States right now. 

Traditionalists should ask themselves the honest question of how the United States would look different morally, culturally, and politically had Catholics fully put the social teaching of Leo XIII and Pius XI into practice by working to restore and retain the poor in their property and by demanding just wages and contracts as a condition for participation in the American economy. 

The Catholic and Levitical ideal looks an awful lot like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. In one scene, rich man Potter’s rent collector informs him that George Bailey built a whole neighborhood of homes valued at twice what it cost George to build them. In another scene George tells the bank examiner that his Building and Loan firm is broke. The implication is clear: George spent a life in economic hardship and anxiety because he sold homes at break even prices to enable the poor of Bedford Falls to afford to own their own property. 

Instead, most self-identified orthodox Catholics appear to have sold out to the neoliberal philosophy. Economic anarchy and self indulgence is fine, as long as you’re giving something to the Church (well I can’t tithe because, don’t ya know, my family and all) and not funding Planned Parenthood. 

This is neither Scriptural nor Catholic teaching, both of which make it clear that usury (which powers credit card companies and good deal of retirement investing) is always morally wrong. Both also demand the payment of a just wage to the laborer and fair contracts. They also insist on living a simple life focused on the necessities. 

The stock market portfolio, 401k dependent lifestyle is explicitly condemned in the story of the man in Luke 12 who built larger barns to store his excess. Isaiah 5 proclaims woe to those who join house upon house, field upon field. 

We cannot just ignore the fact that this Reaganist approach to economics directly contradicts Scripture and has trained society to focus on dollar amounts as the only acceptable measure of value. This has created a whole murderer’s row of corporations who have no values at all, or whose only values are those opposed to tradition. 

Former Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia (yes, from that Scalia family) personified this selling out of Catholic values in 2020 with an infuriating rule to ban retirement plans from considering Environmental, Social, and Governance factors of companies they invest in. 

Private employer-sponsored retirement plans are not vehicles for furthering social goals or policy objectives that are not in the financial interest of the plan,” Scalia says. “Rather, ERISA plans should be managed with unwavering focus on a single, very important social goal—providing for the retirement security of American workers.”

It should bother us that a public figure from a prominent, mostly orthodox Catholic family used his position to force companies to consider only financial value when investing billions of dollars into the economy. 

Another path would be to take God’s commands seriously, even when they don’t align with convenient partisan politics. Think intentionally about how to apply teachings on the sabbatical year, year of jubilee, and ensuring property and just wages to the poor in one’s own financial investments, purchases, and career decisions. And call out Catholics who think they can justify themselves by separating the Church’s moral teaching on family and intimacy from moral teaching on economics. 

The Progressive Playbook

 

Attending a hearing today on “medical assistance in dying” really brought the progressive playbook into sharp relief. Feel free to put on the musical Hamilton’s “10 Duel Commandments” while reading this. 

Number one: Frame the matter as offering a free choice when everyone knows full well there’s massive coercion involved. 

A prime example is abortion. It’s safe to say most if not the vast majority of abortions are coerced in some way, often by men. 

It’s not like this is a secret or a conspiracy theory. In The Fab Five by Mitch Albom, a story of the University of Michigan basketball team in 1991-93, player Eric Riley openly tells a story of how he heard that he got a girl pregnant and immediately told her to get an abortion. Her christian mother prevented it. 

Intentionally induced death is no different. When a medical professional tells the patient that intentional death is a valid medical option, that is applying influence to a patient who views the medical profesional as an authority figure. And we have plenty of examples from the Netherlands, Belgium, and Canada where people feel pressured toward death, Roger Foley in Canada for one. 

Number two: Stage manage to limit dissent

The hearing was from 11 AM to 2 PM on a Wednesday. Obviously most working folks are unable to attend a meeting at that time, weighting the attendees toward a combination of professional activists and retirees favorable to the bill. This is a common progressive technique of pushing through milestones when most normal people are unavailable or unlikely to get involved. Fivethirtyeight pointed out that democrats are standouts at voter suppression by deliberately scheduling off-cycle elections for local officials and school budgets to engineer a favorable electorate. 

Further, the first hour was taken up by witnesses, neither of whom was from the state nor a medical professional. The next chunk was taken up by waffling from the reps. Leaving less than two hours for 62 public commenters. In a civilized polity, this kind of hearing would begin at 7 PM and stretch to 1 AM given the gravity of the matter and the number of interested constituents. But not today. 

Number three: Redefine language, then label anyone who uses real language as dangerous

Quickly the bill’s sponsor and his witnesses moved to stifle dissent by banning the use of legitimate terms to describe the bill and its effects. We were told that calling “medical aid in dying” suicide was shameful and dangerous because it equates the very different “traditional” notion of self-inflicted death to this new action of ending a terminally ill life with dignity on one’s own terms. 

The bill itself says that “medical assistance in dying” is not to be understood as assisted suicide or euthanasia. 

This is nonsense. Ending one’s life in the midst of suffering is suicide, whether it is done after a terminal diagnosis in a hospital bed or after a searingly depressing life experience as a physically healthy teenager. Intentionally inducing death through pharmacological means is euthanasia, whether it is motivated by eugenics and done on a young person with a genetic disability or whether it is done on an elderly person suffering from a significant illness. We use the exact same term in the exact same sense when speaking of animals, it is unreasonable to suggest it cannot be used in the same context when speaking of people. 

Number four: Use one-sided identity politics to exclude dissenters

The sponsor boldly told all of us that we didn’t have standing to argue against the bill because we were not terminally ill. Standing is a defined legal term. A friend of mine who is a practicing attorney made a public comment asserting that the sponsor had no idea what the word standing meant. 

Had I the chance, I would’ve asked the bill’s sponsor, cosponsors, and favorable witnesses if they were terminally ill. Of course they are not, yet that does not bar them from speaking about the bill.

This is the same garbage “no uterus no opinion” approach followed by the pro abortion lobby. By that logic, neither lesbian women nor standout pro abortion leaders like Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Ted Kennedy, Andrew Cuomo, Ralph Northam, or the seven Supreme Court justices who issued Roe v. Wade could speak about abortion. Of course men can speak about abortion, especially those who have survived abortion or those who began life post Roe as an unintended teen pregnancy (such as myself). 

Number five: Lie. 

At least four times, educated adults in the public square looked me in the eye (via Zoom of course) and told me with a straight face that the protections in the current bill would limit legally approved suicide to those terminally ill who were mentally competent to choose that “option” and would have no broader impact on the disabled or the quality of healthcare. 

Stared straight into my eyes. And lied. 

It wasn’t true in Belgium. It wasn’t true in Canada, where such limits on legal suicide were struck down last year, using the same equity logic that the sponsor used to support this bill. Even the UN has called out Canada for their gross violation of the rights of the elderly and disabled in connection with assisted suicide. People have chosen assisted suicide in Canada after weeks of laying in urine-filled bedsheets.

The notion that healthcare professionals repeatedly suggesting to patients the possibility that they intentionally end their lives does not change the culture and quality of healthcare is asinine. And willfully dishonest. 

This too is common. To push the Supreme Court to ban public schools in Engel v. Vitale in 1962, the plaintiffs’ legal team lied in identifying one of the plaintiffs as an atheist. The pro abortion lobby often lies about abortion statistics in places and times where abortion is illegal. Norma Mccorvey was pressured into lying on the affidavit that launched Roe v Wade. 

The Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court case mandating state acceptance of same sex acts was also based on a lie. The plaintiffs of the case were having a drunken fight, not sex. 

If you like your healthcare plan you can keep it. I don’t think vaccines should be mandatory, and I will not demand that they be mandatory. And so on. 

Number six: Slant the debate with bad polls.

We were told that 7 in 10 Catholics support the provisions of the suicide bill. Really? What was the poll question and were respondents informed about the contents of the bill? 

The liberal media subjects us to endless polls about how most Americans favor upholding Roe. But Gallup has made it clear time and again that 48% of poll respondents think abortion should be legal only under certain cases while 19% believe it should be illegal in all cases. So 66% favor Roe, which mandates that abortion be legal in all 50 states, while 67% believe it should be outright illegal or illegal in many cases. 

Obviously most polled individuals don’t understand what Roe v Wade says, and most want more restrictions on abortion. The Pro Wade polls are junk data because they’re asking respondents about a case most know nothing about. The same can be said for the polls on suicide bills. 

And yes, the innumerable and hilariously wrong “Trump down by 10 points” polls for both the 2016 and 2020 elections were absolutely used as voter suppression tactics. 

Number seven: Claim a monopoly on science. 

We were subjected to a witness who is not a medical professional or a statistician asserting that there are no evidence based cases against the suicide bill. It took me about two minutes to find this heart-wrenching story of an Italian man who died by euthanasia after an incorrect terminal illness diagnosis. The story goes on to quote the former Chair of the New Zealand Medical Association confirming that autopsies show 10-15% of terminal diagnoses to be incorrect. 

This is no surprise, surely everyone knows someone who was doomed to die in short order by the medical establishment only to live for at least another few years. 

Yet today’s legislators flatly ignored real, verifiable scientific evidence provided by a qualified public health professional in favor of spotty testimonies from professional activists. Follow the science indeed. 

Number eight: Use tilted equity arguments to demolish self government

The sponsor asked his activist witness if it was equitable that individuals with terminal illness in New Jersey had a right to suicide while those in Delaware did not. 

In essence any state that has any restriction based on a social norm that is not shared by another state is viewed as guilty of discrimination. This is the standard liberal approach to forcing compliance with their ideology using the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection clause. 

Funny how this doesn’t throw out California’s punitive environmental or tax laws because they’re not equitable when viewed against more relaxed laws in Texas and Florida. 

Number nine: Use biased academia to create an aura of authority

Everyone knows that academia is heavily biased toward the political left. This enables liberals to bring in credentialed experts to back their initiatives. This is confirmation bias, and we should be perfectly comfortable pointing out that this is like running a victory lap around a Republican tax plan with economists from the American Enterprise Institute and Cato Institute. 

Stacking the deck with support from politically biased institutions does not mean your position is stronger. It means liberal academics are good at maintaining political control of their universities. 

So there you have it. Should traditionalists use any of these tactics? No. But we would be fools not to recognize them and arm ourselves against them. 

Let’s go…

 

I pride myself on being woefully behind on urban dictionary type terms and social references. And so it is that I’ve only recently become acquainted with the real meaning of an outwardly benign expression of support for a chap named Brandon. 

All in good fun many of my friends would say, and definitely well earned. 

I understand the snark, but do we take God seriously only when he conforms to our political views?

“You shall not revile God, nor curse a ruler of your people.”- Exodus 22:28

“Then Paul said to him, "God shall strike you, you whitewashed wall! Are you sitting to judge me according to the law, and yet contrary to the law you order me to be struck? Those who stood by said, "Would you revile God's high priest? And Paul said, "I did not know, brethren, that he was the high priest; for it is written, ' You shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people.' “- Acts 23:3-5

“Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them.”- Romans 12:14

I suppose I’ll get the usual eyerolls and comments of “You’re taking this too seriously/literally.” Or the old standby “But it’s different now. Look at this guy!” 

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments… He who does not love me does not keep my words; and the word which you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me.”- John 14:15, 24

I simply recall that the quotes from Acts and Romans speak of such men as these, according to Josephus and the Catholic Encyclopedia. Not so very different from our own rulers and high priests I think. 

At a time when high-priests were made and unmade by officials of Rome, and when the principal quality required seems to have been subserviency, it is no credit to the character of Caiphas to have enjoyed their favour so long.

Contrasts in Obedience: John of Parma and Marcel Lefebvre

 

Should we obey? This question comes to the fore for traditional Catholics today. Amidst the handwringing it is easy to forget that there are precedents we can draw from as we work through such questions. 

Recent events have led many Catholics to wonder if Marcel Lefebvre was right after all. Though he signed most of the documents of the Second Vatican Council, Lefebvre became the face of opposition to Conciliar reforms and the post Conciliar papacy. After setting up a traditional seminary in Econe, Lefebvre came out swinging with a public declaration in 1974 that in essence accused Pope Paul VI and the Council fathers of heretically modifying Church doctrine and practice. More ominously, he said:

It is therefore impossible for any conscientious and faithful Catholic to espouse this Reformation or to submit to it in any way whatsoever.

The only attitude of faithfulness to the Church and Catholic doctrine, in view of our salvation, is a categorical refusal to accept this Reformation.

Still, Lefebvre was not suspended until his ordination of priests in 1976 against the express warning of Paul VI, and was not excommunicated until his consecration of four bishops in 1988 against the express warning of John Paul II. 

To this day, Lefebvre’s Society of Saint Pius X is not canonically reconciled with Rome, in large part because the Society worries that Rome will appoint a leader who will damage the Society’s charism and traditions. 

In contrast, we consider the example of Blessed John of Parma. 

John was an early Franciscan who joined the order at some point in the 1230s. He was elected Minister General in 1247. Saint Francis’ early companions rejoiced at his election, correctly hoping that he would do much to restore the order’s original charism of complete poverty. John zealously visited provincial houses from England to Spain to Germany. He appeared at the first Council of Lyons in 1245. Later, he was recalled by Pope Innocent IV on an embassy to heal the schism with the Greeks, which bore some fruit in the 1274 Council of Lyons. 

Reliable sources suggest that he resigned the position of Minister General in 1257 by suggestion from Pope Alexander IV, perhaps prompted by moves against him from professors at the University of Paris. Thereafter, he retired to Greccio, where Saint Francis had reenacted the first Christmas. During this time he was prosecuted for allegedly subscribing to the Joachimist heresy, with the trial managed by his successor as Minister General Saint Bonaventure. 

Hearing that the Greeks reneged on their reunion with Rome, he received permission from Pope Nicholas IV to go to Greece only to die en route in 1289. 

Blessed John of Parma voluntarily resigned the position of Minister General of the Franciscan Order knowing that his successor would undermine the original rule of the order dedicated to strict poverty. He knew that this would jeopardize the many graces God intended to bestow on the Church and the world through the Franciscan order. 

John also knew that in doing so he was placing himself at personal risk of persecution by his successors. Still, he consistently obeyed papal requests despite the demands of his station, and even sought out papal sanction prior to taking any initiative. He also submitted to persecution by Rome based on a very spotty pretense of heresy, knowing that the persecution likely stemmed from his total to commitment to Saint Francis’ original rule of poverty. 

What are we to make of this? Was John wrong to submit to papal pressure and curial persecution? Did doing so fatally undermine the grace God wished to grant to the Church? 

I cannot help but see in John’s life a better path for faithful priests and bishops chafing against authority. God’s grace can come through patient suffering and obedience as we see in the example of Saint Rita of Cascia and many others. I think we have to trust that God will always give us a path to keep and proclaim the faith while submitting to legitimate authorities in essential matters. 

Untouchables: When Saints Do Wrong

 

Pope Saint Gregory VII is everything I should like in a saint and pope. A man who freed the Church from being “under the thumb of the state” by sheer force of will, whose tomb read “I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile,” words that may well adorn my own tomb. I vividly remember celebrating his feast and imploring his intercession at Mass last year during covid mania. 

So it was with distress that I learned that he supported the brutal Norman invasion of the Byzantine Empire while also ginning up support for the eventual crusades. The specifics are complicated, but it’s a bit rich for Catholics to maintain the “Crusades to free the Byzantines from the attacking Turks” narrative when the same popes were supporting the proto crusade of stabbing the Byzantines in the back. 

Canonization is not an endorsement of every action taken by a saint during his lifetime. Biblical examples of saints like Peter’s lapse under pressure from the “circumcision party” in Acts and John’s attempted worship of the angel in Revelation are provided to illustrate this. 

Modern canonizations and venerations sometimes seem to be used as a weapon to brand anyone who dares to criticize the holy man or woman as an unhinged extremist. I have seen this done with John Paul II and Fulton Sheen. 

But saints have done dreadful things, and basic honesty and spiritual maturity demand that we reckon with these things. By blinding ourselves to real faults of the saints, we block our ability to flag real problems and real solutions in the Church today. Realizing that canonized saints have indeed made grave lapses in judgment can also free us from the modern argument over the infallibility of recent canonizations without forcing us to accept every decision made by those canonized. 

Oddly, this hangup doesn’t seem to apply to saints before the modern era. Faithful Catholics today feel at ease with heavy criticism of the Crusades, even though the first two were preached by Blessed Urban II and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. Many likewise criticize Saint Ambrose for refusing to pay to rebuild a Jewish synagogue that was destroyed by a Christian mob. The same goes for Saint Thomas More’s burning of protestants while Chancellor of England. 

But try to make a suggestion that Pope John Paul II’s stewardship of the Church was less than perfect, or that Fulton Sheen’s enthusiasm for Conciliar reforms may have been misguided and inconsistent with his previous views, and you’ll be accused of schism and sedevacantism. 

I share this series of brief vignettes as part of my own journey of coming to terms with serious imperfections among the canonized and arriving at a deeper understanding of what canonization means and what it does not.  

The Eastern Church reveres Constantine as a saint, and Constantine murdered his wife and son by asphyxiation.

Saint Jerome was such a vicious trash talker that his Contra Helvedius on the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Mother began with “ I was requested by certain of the brethren not long ago to reply to a pamphlet written by one Helvidius. I have deferred doing so, not because it is a difficult matter to maintain the truth and refute an ignorant boor who has scarce known the first glimmer of learning, but because I was afraid my reply might make him appear worth defeating.”

Gregory VII, as we have said, encouraged barbarian Norman raids on the Byzantines and did nothing to repair the East-West rift in the Church, even though the 1054 bull of excommunication 20 years before his pontificate was invalid. 

James Larson makes a compelling case that Saint Bonaventure knowingly destroyed the rule of poverty of the Franciscan order given to Saint Francis by Christ and built a whole theology justifying his moves.

Pope Saint Celestine V knowingly handed over the Church to a brood of vipers by resigning and refusing to use the power of his office to push back against the mafiosi in the hierarchy terrorizing the faithful. 

Saint Thomas More wrote a letter contra Luther laced with profanity that would be shocking to hear from a raunchy teenager: “For I am ashamed even of this necessity, that while I clean out the fellow’s (Martin Luther’s) sh*t-filled mouth I see my own fingers covered with sh*t.”

More seriously, Pope Saint Pius V encouraged harebrained schemes to invade England and reestablish Catholic supremacy that got many killed, and also released a bull that implicitly threatened excommunication to anyone who acknowledged Elizabeth as Queen. This was a death sentence to already struggling English Catholics, persuaded the mass of the English people that Catholics were violent traitors, and was so problematic it was dialed back 10 years later by Gregory XIII. 

Saint John Henry Newman flirted with the idea that the doctrine of papal infallibility that had been declared at the First Vatican Council could be walked back by the bishops. 

Saint Pius X established a cabal that went on a witch hunt of modernists so indiscriminate that Saint John XXIII, then Angelo Roncalli, was flagged for supporting workers’ right to organize. 

This seems to be the line at which it becomes impermissible to criticize saints without being verbally attacked and cast out of polite Catholic society. 

It is disingenuous to suggest that criticism of saints, including popes, is inherently wrong and schismatic. Moreover, the obvious reason that people feel comfortable criticizing saints prior to our modern era is because those saints are criticized for transgressing against the liberal, pluralistic values under which we live today. Those who defended orthodoxy with force can be freely judged as too excessive while those who embraced religious tolerance are shielded from complaints under threat of censure. 

This is one reason why it is imprudent to canonize saints within the lifetime of those who knew them, except in extreme cases (such as Saint Francis of Assisi). It is even worse with Popes, since it often involves people who worked under them or knew them personally priming the pump of the canonization process. Politicization of canonization is always present, whether it is Pius V in an attempt to canonize Trent or every founder of a religious order after the 16th century to canonize the Counterreformation. But it is particularly dangerous when Popes are canonizing predecessors who promoted them to positions of power. Canonization is the highest honor the Church can bestow. When it is watered down, fast tracked, and handed out by those with a vested interest for clearly political reasons, it deals a blow to the credibility of the faith. 

The answer, besides praying for future papal restraint, is to realize that canonization does not affirm every act of a saint’s life and to celebrate the good while charitably recognizing the bad.