The Catholic World Report

False Flag explains the radical, evil goals of queer politics

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(THE CATHOLIC WORLD. Joy Pullman).

Remember when gay activists told us that they just wanted tolerance—and that their agenda wouldn’t affect the rest of us?

They lied.

What was sold as tolerance for a small minority of Americans who just wanted to quietly live their lives has become a new, mandatory civil religion. The Pride flags fly over us like the banners of a conquering army, and we are supposed to shut up and do as we are told: bake the cake, use the pronouns, repeat the creeds (e.g. “trans women are women”), allow men into women’s space, and—especially—allow them to catechize and claim our children.

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Rupture by stealth?

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(The Catholic World Report. George Weigel).

According to a source well-positioned to know, one of the behind-the-scenes dramas of the present pontificate involved Pope Francis’s determination to amend the Catechism of the Catholic Church and declare capital punishment an intrinsically evil act: something that can never be countenanced. After a lengthy and bruising argument over whether that was doctrinally possible, a compromise was reached and CCC 2267 now declares the death penalty “inadmissible” – a strong term, but one with no technical theological or doctrinal meaning. Has the papal campaign against capital punishment now achieved its objective through the recent declaration of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dignitas Infinita(Infinite Dignity)?

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“He who keeps silent is to be taken as consenting…”

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(The Catholic World Report. Christopher R. Altieri).

“Who am I to judge the Rupnik stories?”

Pope Francis’s Communicator-in-Chief, Dr. Paolo Ruffini, asked that rhetorical question on Friday in an Atlanta, GA hotel ballroom, in front of journalists, one of whom—Colleen Dulle of America Magazine, it happens—had asked him to explain his dicastery’s rationale for continuing to use reproductions of artwork by a disgraced priest who is accused of serial sexual abuse. Well, nobody is asking Ruffini to judge the case, which—just so we’re clear on the point from the outset—is very strong. The Rupnik Affair has been before the public for the better part of two years. The Jesuits who investigated him believe he is guilty. The CDF believes there is a case to answer but declined to prosecute, citing the statute of limitations. Rupnik would never have faced the prospect of trial were it not for sustained press scrutiny and pressure from inside Francis’s own inner circle. No one is asking Natasa Govekar to judge the business, either.

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Head of Vatican communications strongly defends continued use of Rupnik art

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(The Catholic World Report. Christopher R. Altieri).

The Vatican’s chief comms officer on Friday defended his department’s use of an accused serial rapist’s art. “We’re not talking about abuse of minors,” said Dr. Paolo Ruffini, Prefect of the Dicastery for Communication of the Holy See, on Friday, 21st June 2024, in response to questions from journalists gathered in the Heritage Ballroom of the Atlanta Marriott Buckhead and Conference Center. Ruffini was there to deliver the keynote address on the last day of the annual Catholic Media Conference and had opened the floor to queries, two of which came from Colleen Dulle of America Magazine and Paulina Guzik of OSVNews. The Vatican has continued to use digital reproductions of pieces by a disgraced former celebrity Slovenian artist-priest, Fr. Marko Rupnik, even after he began to face allegations he spiritually, psychologically, and sexually abused dozens of victims, most of whom were women religious. The Vatican originally declined to prosecute Rupnik, and Pope Francis only reversed course after facing close scrutiny and sustained criticism.

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U.S. bishops issue plea for nonviolence ahead of elections

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(The Catholic World Report. Gigi Duncan).

A leading U.S. bishop issued a statement Wednesday urging Christians “and people of goodwill” to abstain from political violence and resolve differences through dialogue and the voting process. In the statement titled “‘Pursue What Leads to Peace’: A Christian Response to Rising Threats of Political and Ideological Violence,” Archbishop Borys Gudziak of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia warned that violent behavior is “seen by many as an acceptable means for carrying out political or ideological disputes.” Gudziak, who serves as chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) committee on domestic justice and human development, wrote: “We pray and urge all Christians and people of goodwill: Abstain from political violence of any kind! Instead, ‘pursue what leads to peace and building up one another’ (Rom 14:19) through dialogue, seeking justice.” Describing the political climate today, Gudziak wrote that “political speech is often full of insults, fear, anger, and anxiety. Sadly, racism, religious discrimination, and xenophobia are on the rise. People in public office are receiving more death threats than ever before, some of which turn into physical attacks.” The document references an Axios poll from earlier this year, which showed that 49% of Americans expect there will be violence in response to the results of future presidential elections.

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How parents are freeing their kids from the public schools monopoly

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(The Catholic World Report. John M. Grondelski).

As I write this review, The New York Post reports that City Schools Chancellor David Banks cashiered an elected mother on a Manhattan Community Education Council (a parents’ advisory board). She got the boot ostensibly for criticizing a pro-Hamas editorial but really because—as she (and most observers) believe—she refused to pledge allegiance to gender ideology (on the Upper East Side, no less). It doesn’t matter that she was democratically elected: the self-anointed “guardians of democracy” will eliminate anybody whose notion of democracy is not theirs. Da, da tovarich! Happily, she’s suing Banks. Meanwhile, a federal court just told parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, who wanted to opt their kids out of the district’s “comprehensive” gender ideology program that they cannot, affirming the school board’s refusal. The school lockdowns of 2020 opened many parents’ eyes to the ideological indoctrination being propagandized in American public schools. As parents and children shared the same quarters during online schooling, parents discovered what was “mainstream” in so many school systems. When they woke up, Merrick Garland’s Justice Department labeled them “domestic terrorists” (alongside those Catholics that go to Latin Mass). When a father whose girl was raped as a result of Loudon County, Virginia’s confusion about girl’s bathrooms being for girls, not boys, he was arrested–and is probably one reason why Democrats got kicked out of the Governor’s Mansion in Richmond.

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10 years after Mosul’s destruction, will Christians come back?

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(The Catholic World Report. Georgena Habbaba).

The fall of Mosul, Iraq, to ISIS in 2014 wasn’t the beginning of the struggle for the city’s Christians. Killings, abductions, and threats from armed groups had plagued the community since the 2003 invasion by U.S. military. Clergy and laypeople alike bore the brunt of the violence, with bombings targeting churches as well. The situation reached a peak when security forces crumbled, failing to protect Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city and the heart of Nineveh province. ISIS seized control on June 10, 2014, plunging Mosul’s Christians into the darkest period of their recent history. Today, they grapple with rebuilding their lives while demanding accountability and a future built on equity and justice. In the wake of clashes and bombings between security forces and ISIS, Mosul’s residents were left to fend for themselves. Witness Nahed Abdul Ahad, interviewed by ACI Mena, CNA’s Arabic-language news partner, described the complete absence of security forces. “Many families fled the city, particularly Christians,” Abdul Ahad said. “They feared the worst, especially after widespread reports of killings and torture by terrorists. Others clung to the hope that this was just a temporary security lapse.”

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Continued errors are costing the Vatican in late innings

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(TCWR. Christopher R. Altieri).

What do the scandals in and around Major League Baseball of late have to do with the ongoing leadership crisis in the Catholic Church? In a word: Nothing. In another: Everything. Bad for business, bad for baseball. There are gambling scandals, for example, one of which has seen a player get the boot and one of which hasn’t. 24-year-old journeyman Tucupita Marcano of Venezuela received a lifetime ban for placing bets on baseball with a legal sportsbook, totaling $150,000 over a several months’ stretch that began in 2023 when Marcano was on the injured list. The LA Dodgers’ superstar nice guy and perennial fan favorite, Shohei Ohtani of Japan, has seen his reputation tarnished by the behavior of his friend and interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara. Ohtani, it seems to prosecutors, had been inadvertently bankrolling his interpreter’s gambling habit to the tune of $16 million in illegal bets on games other than baseball. One should not be surprised to see the Lords of Baseball taking an institutional hard line on baseball betting. The “Black Sox” scandal nearly ruined Major League Baseball a little more than a hundred years ago. The best-known of the unfortunate fellows at the center of the Black Sox scandal was Joseph Jefferson “Shoeless Joe” Jackson, a slugging outfielder. Some shady characters offered Jackson and seven other players for the Chicago White Sox some big money to throw the 1919 World Series. Word got out. There was an investigation and a trial that ended in acquittal, but Major League Baseball banned Shoeless Joe and the others for life.

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Call to Conversion and Holiness

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(TCWR. Eduardo Echeverria).

The second of a two-part essay in response to James Martin, SJ, on experience, respect, morality, and authority.

Fr. James Martin calls all Christians to conversion. He says, “What I mean by conversion is the conversion that all of us are called to by God and the conversion of minds and hearts that Jesus called for” (BB, 23). He adds, “LGBT people are called to be holy, as all of us are” (BB, 44). The crucial question I want to ask now is about the relationship between faith and morality in the context of the call to holiness. As Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa rightly notes, “there is no sanctity without obedience,” and thus “to say that all those baptized are called to holiness,” which Vatican II does, “is to say that all are called to obedience.” He adds, “St Paul speaks of obedience to faith (Rm 1:5; 16:26), of obedience to the teaching (Rm 6:17), of obedience to the Gospel (Rm 10:16; 2 Th 1:8), of obedience to truth (Gal 5:7), of obedience to Christ (2 Cor 10:5).”16 There is no sanctity without obedience, and there is no obedience without the gift of faith in Jesus Christ as Lord, trusting fully in his saving work, following him, dying to self, and living for him who loved me and gave himself for me on the Cross (Gal 2:20; cf. Mk 8:34-36).According to the Catholic Church, there is an intrinsic and unbreakable bond between faith and morality. Jesus said, “Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love” (John 15:10; 1 John 5: 2-3). This question about the bond between faith and morality must deal directly with the eternal significance of the moral choices that people make, indeed, with their eternal salvation. In this light, we can understand why St. Paul consistently urges us to make choices that are worthy of the calling that we have received in Christ (Eph 4: 1; Phil 1: 27; Col 1:9). In particular, he identifies the risk posed by, especially but not only, sexual offenses:

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The Triumph of the Therapeutic Mentality

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(TCWR. Eduardo Echeverria).

By the triumph of the therapeutic mentality, indeed therapeutic way of life, I mean a gospel of personal happiness in which happiness rests on the justification of self-authenticating experiences. This therapeutic way of life is pervasive throughout the domain of, for example, homosexual sexual experiences in which “no criteria of validity [for those experiences is offered] other than the therapeutic experience of conviction.”2 In response to the question—by what standards are these experiences to be judged?—the therapeutic mentality presupposes that a person’s life experience is self-validating. Experience is granted an authority that sometimes even for Christians trumps the Bible’s own moral authority;3 indeed, an individual’s experience is taken to be “a final arbiter of truth and falsehood in the Church.”4 But I shall argue that this turn to individual experience as self-validating or authenticating is “no more acceptable that any of the other historically recurring attempts to make of private inspiration a supreme court for adjudicating the gospel.”5 In the epigraph to this article, Aidan Nichols correctly affirms, “It is not experience we should trust but the transmutation of experience by Scripture and Tradition.”A good example of the therapeutic mentality is found throughout the recent book by James Martin, SJ, titled Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity (hereafter, BB).6 Significantly, Fr. Martin does not argue for the authority of experience as self-justifying; rather, it is a presupposition of his work. There are two other presuppositions that play an important role in Fr. Martin’s work: his understandings of dialogue and of respect.

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Meet the elderly and infirm women now in prison for pro-life activism

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(The Catholic World Report. Joe Bukuras).

Since she has been in prison, Jean Marshall, 74, a Catholic and pro-life nurse from Massachusetts, told CNA that she’s received over 150 letters of support, which have lifted her spirits. Marshall and three other women with major health issues spoke with CNA about their imprisonment and their treatment by the justice system under the Biden administration. Their crime? In an attempt to save the unborn on Oct. 22, 2020, they participated in a human chain, blockading the inside of a Washington, D.C., abortion clinic run by well-known late-term abortionist Dr. Cesare Santangelo. The women are among 10 protesters who participated in the attempt to save the unborn at the clinic that day who were convicted on federal charges under the controversial Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which has largely been applied to the prosecution of pro-life activists. All of them, including Marshall, are now incarcerated.

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On that Associated Press piece and the future of the Church in America

Posted on by Catholic Radar JI

(The Catholic World Report).

The Church, having identified too intimately with the culture, has been wallowing in more “liberal” talk of forgiveness, mercy, compassion, and love, but without a corresponding and primary emphasis on truth.

Tim Sullivan’s recent piece for the Associated Press on the state of the Church in America has made the rounds in Catholic circles, and it feels like a generally accurate snapshot of where things are and where they’re heading. Sullivan looks at recent developments at St. Maria Goretti parish in Madison, Wisconsin, and Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, arguing that they’re emblematic of a broader shift across the U.S. toward a “new, old” Church: Latin and Gregorian chant in the liturgy, cassocks, and habits on priests and religious, and dogma and doctrine back in the conversation.

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The forgotten history of Christian slavery under Islam

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(The Catholic World Report. Darío Fernández Morera).

The historical revisionists of our time, who are so eager to “correct” the historical record in an attempt to right the wrongs of the past always seem to ignore the centuries-long phenomenon of European Christian slavery in Africa. It is a purposefully forgotten history.

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Thoughts on Dignitas Infinita

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(The Catholic World Report. George Weige).

When the always well-written and often wrongheaded New Yorker dislikes something, chances are good that I’ll like it – a principle that holds, with certain reservations, in the case of Dignitas Infinita, the April 8 “Declaration of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on Human Dignity.” The Declaration underscores the Catholic Church’s commitment to the defense of every human life from conception until natural death, calls Catholics to compassionate care for the most vulnerable among us, defends the biblical idea of the human person as defined in Genesis 1:27-28, and offers a welcome critique of gender theory and the legion of demons it spawns (this last being, predictably, was what upset the New Yorker).

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Nigerian Catholics address reasons behind ongoing violence

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(The Catholic World Report).

Year after year, Islamic extremists in Nigeria have been perpetrating massacres. And, year after year, major media outlets in the West tend to frame these incidents as general banditry or climate change-related land struggles between largely Muslim herders and largely Christian farmers.

However, a series of murderous attacks on Nigerian Christians over the Christmas 2023 holiday left virtually no doubt as to the presence of religious motivation.

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Puberty blockers may cause irreversible harm to young boys, Mayo Clinic study finds

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(The Catholic Word Report –  Kate Quiñones for CNA).

When parents seek medical help for their gender-confused children, they are assured that puberty blockers are “reversible” treatment that pauses puberty, offering the “chance to explore gender identity.”

But a Mayo Clinic study published in late March found that boys who take puberty blockers may suffer “irreversible” harm.

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The missing lens and the key weakness of Dignitas Infinitas

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(The Catholic Word Report – David Deane).

While we can be thankful for what Declaration does right, it may ultimately fuel the ongoing decline of the very beliefs that it champions.

Moral beliefs linger on after the reasons for them have been forgotten. We need only look at our own Western secular culture for an example of this.

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Pope Francis: ‘A Christian without courage’ is ‘a useless Christian’

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(Por Matthew Santucci para CNA).-

Pope Francis on Wednesday dedicated his general audience catechesis to the virtue of fortitude, observing that it consists of the ability to live with courage and to confront the inner — and outer — turmoils of life.

“A Christian without courage, who does not turn his own strength to good, who does not bother anyone, is a useless Christian,” the pope declared during the general audience held on a windy, overcast morning in St. Peter’s Square.

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Church in Kyrgyzstan: a ‘blossoming bud’ growing in the peripheries of the world

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(By Kristina Millare for CNA).

During Easter Week, April 2-3, the Apostolic Administration of Kyrgyzstan convened a two-day meeting in the capital of Bishkek dedicated to prayer, sharing, and the work of evangelization within the small yet budding Catholic community spread throughout the Central Asian country.

“It is such a great consolation to all of us to be a part of this universal Church with so many members across the world,” said Father Anthony Corcoran, SJ, apostolic administrator of Kyrgyzstan, in an interview with CNA. “But it is also a grace to be here in such a small community.”

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