In 2023, Villanova hosted a lecture by Naomi Washington-Leapheart, a lesbian LGBT activist and adjunct professor in Villanova’s Theology and Religious Studies department, on “the end of white Christian America.” She has stated that she can only remain a Christian by imagining “Jesus is Black and queer.”
| Bolivian president Eva Morales gives a hammer and sickle crucifix to 'Pope Francis' - who says, "it is the Communists who think like Christians" |
From Fr John A Perricone, writing for Crisis Magazine:
Hammer and Sickle? Who under the age of 60 would even remember that barbaric symbol of Communism? Or the tens of millions it executed under its totalitarian death grip? Or the fact that several nations still smart beneath its jackboot?
Given the degraded state of contemporary education, such ignorance is to be expected. To call this a mere problem is too benign a word, like calling the bombing of Dresden an incident. No, tragedy more befits this development.
Educated Americans sincerely query how such amnesia could have settled upon our nation. The statistics take us aback. Nearly 38 percent of Americans under the age of 30 believe socialism is better than capitalism. Take no consolation that we are speaking about socialism not communism. Hardly a hair’s difference lies between them. Communism is being garroted with a piano wire; socialism is being garroted with a silk scarf. Both are fatal.
This disturbing landscape is being dramatically brought to the forefront of American attention by the election of politicians boasting their socialism bona fides. Socialist politicians staff their campaigns, and then their administrations, with a youth brigade torn right out of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Very little difference lies between a Mamdani cabinet and a Red Guard Struggle Session.
Take a glance at the political platform of the Democratic Socialists of America:
- abolition of police and jails
- abolition of the War Department
- abolition of the Constitution
- abolition of Congress and the presidency
It would be incautious to dismiss this as the rantings of a lunatic fringe. Doing so would be as foolhardy as the Romanovs dismissing Lenin. More disturbing is its currency with the young.
This predicament did not rise up suddenly as Athena rising fully armored out of the head of Zeus. No, the gestation period extends back over a century. Faint echoes are present in John Dewey’s 1938 Experience and Education as well as in his entire oeuvre. Having seeded his educational antinomianism for some twenty years at Columbia’s Teachers College, the die was cast. His radical program to replace, with careful cultivation of the intellect, perennial truth with social activism was at a gallop.
Out went the millennial anthropology of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas which guided the nurturing of the human intellect. Forgotten were classics such as Fr. Edward Leen’s What is Education? or Fr. Sertillanges’ The Intellectual Life. Here was the triumph of praxis over intellectus which portended dire consequences.
This frontal attack upon the metaphysical structure and thrust of the intellect cast its roots deeply among America’s intelligentsia. Soon, “progressivism” in education was setting its roots far and wide, from grammar schools to universities.
Like termites chewing at a foundation, its progress was furtive, lest it alarm a naïve American public still informed by a robust Judeo-Christian ethos.
A somnolent American public had shivers down its spine when Alger Hiss, a high official in the State Department, was convicted in 1950 of treason.
This alarming turn of events was capped by the stunning revelation of Whittaker Chambers in his absorbing account Witness, where he traces his ardent affiliation in the Communist party to his conversion to Christianity. In testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee sealing Hiss’ fate, Chambers remarked with melancholy, “I know that I am leaving the winning side for the losing side but it is better to die on the losing side than to live under communism.”
He wrote sometime later to his friend William F. Buckley Jr. with a note of apocalyptic doom:
It is idle to talk about preventing the wreck of Western civilization. It is already a wreck from within. That is why we can hope to do little more than snatch a fingernail of a saint from the rack or a handful of ashes from the faggots, and bury them secretly in a flowerpot…
The Long March (to borrow a term of Chairman Mao) proceeded through American education with nary a whisper of alarm from the American people. The Marxist paradigm was settling in upon the academy in carefully timed increments: lessening of discipline, abolition of prayer in public schools, the introduction of new systems of mathematics and reading.
History textbooks that undermined American exceptionalism and applauded non-Western thinking began to appear. Upon entering the university classroom, students were already primed for advanced indoctrination.
It would take the thunderbolt of Buckley’s 1951 God and Man at Yale to unmask the extent this perilous revolution had taken. It was nothing less than revolution infiltrating the commanding heights of American culture.
With this inversion firmly established, a prominent academic struggled to sound a final, desperate warning bell. In 1987, Dr. Allan Bloom, distinguished professor of European Literature at both the University of Chicago and Cornell University, published his brilliant monitum The Closing of the American Mind. With a careful dissection of the roots of the decline of American education, he registered his panic that this presaged nothing less than civilizational chaos.
Yet, slowly, the demise widened. Certain flashpoints alerted the American public to the jarring crisis right at their footsteps. Such a flashpoint occurred only a few days ago.
Scores of Americans had their jaws drop at the Congressional hearings on July 21. The Smithsonian Institution’s director, Anthea Hartig, smugly defended this venerable institution’s descent into wholesale Marxist ideology. To many an American’s astonishment, the long-hidden policy agenda of this once venerable institution was unmasked, leaving many a citizen stunned.
Their policy list was jolting:
- Politeness, objectivity, and hard work are symptoms of white supremacy.
- Celebration of transgenderism, bondage, and sadomasochism were routinely on display in their public exhibits.
- Anthea Hartig, who describes herself as “propped up by the cushions of whiteness and the pillows of the bourgeois” had the Institution speak of history as a “prime tool of social justice.”
- One exhibit listed the evils of whiteness as rugged individualism, self-reliance, hard work, objectivity, the nuclear family, progress, respect for authority, and delayed gratification.
| If you've seen this quote, it's a fake. Leo has never spoken against communism despite plenty of opportunities to do so while in Peru during a Communist Revolution. |
In a better time, the Roman Catholic Church, with her mighty doctrinal voice, daunting religious orders, and sprawling constellation of impressive educational institutions would have acted as a battering ram against this Marxist stampede.
Today, they augment it. Official pronunciamentos seem only to act as an echo chamber of woke ideology. In lockstep with the decaying culture, many in the Church today add to the quicksand enveloping the West.
Try to find a single bishop censuring his Catholic university for propping up this Marxist drumbeat. Rather, these educational Catholic institutions of higher learning are on the cutting edge of leftist ideology, especially the erstwhile gold standard Jesuit colleges and universities.
A sliver of evidence to this alliance of woke ideology and Catholic leadership was on full display only recently. In a cringeworthy letter recently promulgated by the provincial of a major religious order, he announced the redesign of one of their parishes:
I am excited by a new approach to structuring parish ministry because it reflects well the contemporary way of proceeding…discernment, collaboration and networking. By fostering collaboration amongst our priests and lay colleagues, this is a response to the signs of the times…adapting ourselves to changing resources…it embodies a networked approach to mission that enhances both effectiveness and shared commitment…
O my!
Is this not a “tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” (Macbeth Act V, Scene V). One fears that what is afoot here is worse than mere idiocy.
The Church’s most prestigious educational institutions have been peddling Marxist and woke prattle for decades. No surprise at seeing graduates of Catholic universities excitedly joining the campaigns for Marxist candidates. They have received ample preparation, having been spoon-fed this ideology for their entire time of university matriculation. Pity that not even one bishop raised his voice against this wholesale abduction of one of the most venerable institutions of Western civilization.
Paul Johnson wrote with chilling prescience of this crisis in his magnum opus, Modern Times:
The greatest event of recent times—that God is dead, that the belief in the Christian God is no longer tenable, is beginning to cast its first shadows over Europe. Among the advanced races, the decline and ultimately the collapse of the religious impulse leave a huge vacuum.
The history of modern times is in great part the history of how that vacuum had been filled. Nietzsche rightly perceived that the most likely candidate would be what he would call the Will to Power, which offered a more comprehensive and in the end a more plausible explanation of human behavior than either Marx or Freud.
In place of religious belief, there would be secular ideology. Those who had once filled the ranks of the totalitarian clergy would become totalitarian politicians.
And, above all, the Will to Power would produce a new kind of Messiah, uninhibited by any religious sanctions whatever, and with an unappeasable appetite for controlling mankind. The end of the Old Order, with an unguided world adrift in a relativistic universe, was a summons to such a gangster-statesmen to emerge.
To Americans in general and Catholics in particular, there must be an awakening to the multi-tentacled hydra that has been growing beneath our very feet. Thinking this overwrought or to persist in leaving it to someone else to address this enormity is an invitation to demise.
Belloc’s premonitory words are still bracing. Though this author has frequently cited them, they do not cease being terribly pertinent:
We sit by and watch the barbarian, we tolerate him. In the longest stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence. His cosmic inversion of our old certitudes and fixed creeds refreshes us: we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large unlawful faces from beyond, and on these faces, there is no smile.
Sitting idly will certainly guarantee that the hammer and sickle will indeed be coming to a town near you.https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/hammers-and-sickles-coming-soon-to-a-town-near-you
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ReplyDelete"Excommunication" is a Church construct. Christ would never do this. He welcomed back the Prodigy, Mary Magdelena, Lazarus, etc. Excommunication is used by the Church to control the faithful and crush the disenders.
ReplyDeleteSo it's basically just one and d same person called Pope BergoLeo
ReplyDeleteAgha Yarns leo the reincarnation of Bergoglio
ReplyDeletetime to stand up to the pope:
Aquinas on resisting a pope. This is where he becomes absolutely fearless, and it’s one of the clearest, most important teachings he ever gave on ecclesial authority.
I’ll give you the structured, precise, original Thomistic doctrine, exactly as Aquinas lays it out in the Summa and his commentaries.
🔥 1. Aquinas’ foundational principle
Aquinas begins with the same rule he uses for obedience, schism, and the First Commandment:
We must obey God rather than men. (Acts 5:29 — quoted directly by Aquinas)
This applies even to the pope.
This is the foundation of all resistance in Catholic theology.
🔥 2. A pope can be resisted if he endangers the faith
Aquinas explicitly teaches:
“If the faith is endangered, a subject ought to rebuke his prelate publicly.” (Commentary on Galatians 2:11)
This is not optional. This is not rebellion. This is not schism.
It is duty.
Aquinas bases this on St. Paul resisting St. Peter:
“I resisted him to his face, because he was to be blamed.” (Galatians 2:11)
Aquinas says Paul was right and Peter was wrong.
This is the clearest Thomistic precedent for resisting a pope.
🔥 3. Aquinas: Resistance is charity, not rebellion
Aquinas says Paul’s resistance was an act of:
• charity,
• truth,
• fidelity to God,
• protection of the Church.
He explicitly says it was not schism.
Why?
Because schism is rejecting the unity of the Church out of pride. Paul resisted Peter to defend unity, not break it.
This distinction is everything.
🔥 4. A pope may be resisted in two ways
Aquinas distinguishes two forms of resistance:
1. Resistance by correction
When a pope acts wrongly, he may be rebuked, even publicly, if the faith is harmed.
2. Resistance by non obedience
If a pope commands something:
• sinful,
• unjust,
• harmful to faith,
• contrary to divine law,
• or outside his authority,
then Aquinas says:
“He must not be obeyed.”
This is the First Commandment applied to papal authority.
🔥 5. The pope is not above divine law
Aquinas teaches:
• The pope cannot command sin.
• The pope cannot contradict Scripture.
• The pope cannot abolish divine commandments.
• The pope cannot redefine doctrine.
• The pope cannot override conscience.
• The pope cannot change the nature of sacraments.
If he attempts any of these, Aquinas says:
Obedience becomes sin.
This is the most important line in his entire treatment.
🔥 6. Aquinas: The pope can be judged indirectly
Aquinas says:
No one judges the pope directly. But the Church judges whether he is acting contrary to the faith.
This is how resistance is justified:
• not by personal judgment,
• but by fidelity to divine truth.
Aquinas even says that if a pope were to fall into heresy, he would cease to be pope by divine law — because heresy separates a man from the Church.
This is not political. This is metaphysical.
🔥 7. Conscience is higher than papal command
Aquinas teaches:
Conscience is the proximate norm of human action.
Meaning:
• Conscience binds absolutely.
• No pope can override conscience.
• Violating conscience is a sin against God.
So if a pope commands something that violates conscience, Aquinas says:
You must not obey.
This is the First Commandment inside the soul.
🔥 8. The conclusion
Here is Aquinas distilled into one sentence:
The pope is resisted when he endangers the faith, because obedience to God is higher than obedience to the pope.
ReplyDeletePope Leo, then Bishop Prevost has spoken out against Communism: A Peruvian news outlet compiled 11 documented statements attributed to him from his years as an Augustinian missionary and later as a bishop. These include:
1995 – Villanova University (USA)
“La teologÃa marxista busca reemplazar la Gracia por la revolución y termina adorando al Estado por encima de Dios.”
(“Marxist theology seeks to replace Grace with revolution and ends up worshipping the State above God.”)
2001 – Address to Augustinian Congregation, Lima
“Comunismo es el error del Siglo XX que aún amenaza nuestras comunidades más vulnerables. Su ateÃsmo es su primer veneno.”
(“Communism is the error of the 20th century that still threatens our most vulnerable communities. Its atheism is its first poison.”)
2003 – Spiritual retreat, Cusco
“Los cristianos deben resistir las tentaciones ideológicas del colectivismo extremo…”
(“Christians must resist the ideological temptations of extreme collectivism…”) (Leo XIV) ROBERT PREVOST: 11 key statements on communism and gender ideology. People need to beware of those who claim to be traditional when in fact they are promoting lies and are doing the work of the father of all liars and it is they who need to be unmasked.
Sarah Oconnor
Delete·
Janet Curran there were always token gestures from Pope Francis towards traditionalism.
Then immediately contradicted by acts of aggression towards traditionalism.
What I saw was a plausible deniability whenever it was called out, because someone would always point to the minor achievement and ignore the massive impacts.
It seems to be how the Vatican operates now.
Give with one hand, take more with the other.
Janet Curran what were your thoughts on this?
DeletePope Leo XIV has strongly advocated for the protection and welcoming of migrants, famously stating that in every rejected immigrant, "it is Christ himself who knocks at the door of the community". During his visits to major migration gateway points like the Canary Islands and the Italian island of Lampedusa, he urged global leaders to open doors with compassion while emphasizing that human dignity has no passport.
Given the state of Europe, and the flood of illegal immigrants, predominantly young males, the rape of European girls, and the burning of churches all over Europe and elsewhere.
What do you actually think of his stance?
I know we can all reference bible verses about kindness to strangers, helping the poor, etc etc.
But the reality is, western civilisation is being destroyed. And he is encouraging it.
This seems undeniable to me. And yet people still defend it.
Sarah O'Connor, nothing is ever going to convince people who believe the Church has defected. You all have your minds made up. I honestly don't see any hope of any reconciliation for you. Martin Luther, like the Pied Piper led people away from the Church and you are all on the same path.
Delete
ReplyDeleteMother Miriam says she has changed her mind on the SSPX consecrations: Mother Miriam says she has changed her mind because she now sees that disobedience to the Pope in episcopal consecrations inevitably leads to Protestantism, where each group becomes its own authority.
She explains that:
She initially sympathised with the SSPX’s motives.
After “taking time to fully collect her thoughts,” she concluded that obedience to the seat of Peter must be maintained even in crisis.
She now believes the consecrations were gravely wrong and dangerous for the Church.
DeleteYou're repeating yourself, Janet. I suppose you noted that Mother Miriam also says it's "very dangerous that Leo is carrying on Pope Francis' agenda".
DeleteJanet Curran is she now the authority?
I used to like Mother Miriam, but the one thing that put me off her, was her constant drum beat about how Jewish she is, and how special that is.
I’m not criticising her Catholicism, but her superiority within it.
It’s subtle. But if you watch her a lot, like I used to, it’s actually very frustrating to listen too. And one of the reasons I stopped watching her a few years ago.
Julia du Fresne, no one repeats his or herself more than you do on this blog. You are a Papal basher extraordinaire.
Delete
ReplyDeleteProvost is a communist trying to destroy the Catholic church
ReplyDeleteLooks like he's a Chicago democrat working for Satan rather than God!
ReplyDeleteOhhh it's worse than that. They're looking to canonize Fr. Lorenzo Milani as their LGBTQ priest. It's the one both Francis and Leo went to see in his tomb.
Excerpt from article:
"How could I explain that I love my parishioners more than the Church and the Pope? And that if there is a risk I run for my soul, it is certainly not that of having loved too little, but rather of loving too much (that is, of taking them with me even into bed!). And whoever does not teach school in this way will never teach a true school, and it is useless for him to argue about confessional and non-confessional schools, useless for him to worry about filling his school with holy images and edifying speeches, because people do not believe those who do not love, and it is useless for him to try to keep atheist teachers away from the school… And who could ever love children to the bone without ending up putting it even in their ass, if not a teacher who, together with them, loves God and fears Hell and desires Paradise?” (cf. Giorgio Pecorini, Fr. Milani! Chi era Costui?, Baldini&Castoldi, 1996, pp. 386-391).
But it says that the Church recognizes in that life an exemplary way of serving the Gospel, the poor and the Church herself.”
His canonization would be functional to the “moral decriminalization” of homosexual acts and trans-sexuality.