Tag Archives: #CatholicChurch

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A great Mexican family

We are having to renovate the rectory at St Elizabeth’s Catholic Church, which was, to put it bluntly, somewhat neglected for almost twenty years; our previous pastor was an uncomplaining man, and even in very warm, humid Kentucky, never even wanted air conditioning, save for a single, 110-volt window unit.

Now, we are having to catch up, and our new priest, who is Mexican and very well-liked by the Hispanic communities in the surrounding counties — our county really has few Latinos — and a Mexican family who have their own construction and remodeling company volunteered, volunteered I stress, to help us do some major work. They are not even parishioners here, but at St Mark’s in Richmond, where our priest, Fr Enrico Montoya, has been saying the 1:00 PM Mass in Spanish One thing is certain: though I did a lot of work myself, two contractors in their forties can do more work than my 70-year-old body can do! 🙂

On Saturday, our project was to remove the old carpeting from the rectory. After twenty years of our previous pastor, a child of the Depression who hated spending money, things were just plain not clean.

The brothers, Casiano and Anesimo — I’m not going to use their last names here — showed up, with two sons, in their late teens or early twenties, and we started work. I will say one thing: these guys worked! We cut out the carpets, removed them, and removed the ancient padding under them, to expose the hardwood floors beneath them. Pulling the carpets wasn’t that bad; it was cleaning the floors underneath them! The old padding had stuck to the finish on the original floors, not in one piece, but in small pieces across the entire area. We — including me! — were on our hands and knees, scraping the floors, pulling up staples and the nailer strips that hold wall-to-wall carpets in place. I might have said darn or heck or even shoot a couple of times, had our priest not been there.

The doors of St Elizabeth’s Church, after I refinished them last Fall.

Around 11:30, the men’s wives and families showed up. They set up a long table on the covered front porch, and they had brought a ton of food, for everybody. This was real Mexican food, not what you get at Taco Bell or other Mexican restaurants in the United States, and it was great. I’d never pictured real Mexican food as being anything like this, and Anesimo — I wound up closer friends with him than any of the others — told me that they don’t really consider what we see served in Mexican restaurants around here to be Mexican; their families are from far south in Mexico, near the Guatemalan border, so the cuisine is probably different from closer to the United States.

The family are huge! Lots of kids and grandkids, and the older wives joined right in with their husbands in pulling staples from the floor. They all spoke English, though among themselves, Spanish. And my thoughts were simple: these are the kind of immigrants the United States needs!

I do not know, and certainly didn’t ask, if Anesimo and Casiano and their wives were here legally. Considering that they had built companies in Kentucky, the younger kids were almost certainly born in the United States, and are citizens.

But what we need is the kind of border security that allows families like this into our country, to become citizens, while keeping the riff-raff out. And if the family with which I worked Saturday are here illegally, why don’t we just keep them, and deport some lazy, good-for-nothing Americans sucking up welfare in their place?

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The real way to keep your kids out of trouble Doing the right things teaches your kids to do the right things

We have previously noted the homicide rate in St Louis, which, with an even 200 murders in 2022, and a Census Bureau estimated population of 286,578 as of July 1, 2022, yields a homicide rate of a whopping 69.79 per 100,000 population. When Philadelphia says that it’s the murder capital of the United States, St Louis laughs and says, “Hold my beer!”[1]With a Census Bureau estimated population of 1,567,258 as of July 1, 2022, and 516 murders that year, Philly’s homicide rate works out to a measly 32.92 per 100,000 population.

More specifically, with 45 of the homicide victims so far this year in the Gateway City being black males, black males in St Louis are bearing a homicide rate of a staggering 179.93 per 100,000 population.[2]The math: 286,578 total population, times 0.448, the percentage of the population listed as being black, times 0.487, the percentage of the population who are male, yields a black male population of … Continue reading

Now, why do I raise that subject? It is due to an article I saw in the St Louis Post-Dispatch:

Archbishop of St. Louis closes 35 parishes, reassigns 155 priests in Catholic church reorganization

by Blythe Bernhard | Pentecost Sunday, May 28, 2023

SHREWSBURY — The Archbishop of St. Louis will close 35 parishes and reassign 155 priests in the most sweeping reorganization of the Catholic church in St. Louis history.

After 18 months of waiting, Catholics learned on Saturday the fate of their priests and parishes in the downsizing of the archdiocese called “All Things New.”

The changes, which will reshape the archdiocese from 178 individual parishes into 134, were announced Saturday by Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski in a press conference and in a letter read by priests during vigil Mass.

“I wish these changes were not necessary, but it is what we are called to do at this moment,” Rozanski said Saturday.

The archbishop maintained that the plan affects the entire region, although nearly half of the closures are in north St. Louis and north St. Louis County and only one, St. John Bosco in Maryland Heights, is west of Interstate 270 in St. Louis County.

There’s more at the original.

One thing really jumped off the page at me: in the very areas in which St Louis was suffering the greatest number of murders, the “North Patrol,” are also the areas in which Mass attendance has declined so greatly that the Church is having to close parishes.

Let me be perfectly clear here: if you want your children not to grow up to be gang-bangers, not to be getting into situations in which gunfire or other serious violence is going to be the result, take them to church! Don’t send them to church, but take them to church. Don’t find excuses to sleep in, don’t say, “Oh, we’ll go next Sunday,” but take them to church every Sunday.

Some readers will complain that I have been overly simplistic in this, that there are so many other factors involved, but I really don’t see it that way. Taking your kids to church, every Sunday, teaches them that you believe religion and reverence are good and important things. Taking them to church every Sunday shows them that you are willing to make the effort to get out of bed yourself, to do the right thing. Taking them to church every Sunday exposes them to other kids and other families, also being taught the same lessons.

And taking the kids to church every Sunday encourages parents to do the right thing as well.

Is this the only thing that parents need to do? No, it isn’t, but it is the one thing which will help them get started, help them to do better, which does not require a lot of money or some complicated organizational effort. All you need to do is get the kids, your spouse, and yourself out of bed in the morning, and go. Yeah, it’s nice if you can drop some money in the collection basket, but if you don’t have the money to spare, the priest will still be happy to see you, other families will be glad you are there, and soon enough you will be able to manage to contribute something, anything, to the church. Doing the right thing very often brings the right rewards, even if it doesn’t always seem obvious.

References

References
↑1 With a Census Bureau estimated population of 1,567,258 as of July 1, 2022, and 516 murders that year, Philly’s homicide rate works out to a measly 32.92 per 100,000 population.
↑2 The math: 286,578 total population, times 0.448, the percentage of the population listed as being black, times 0.487, the percentage of the population who are male, yields a black male population of 62,524. 45 black male victims divided by 0.62524 equals 71.97236, divided by 146, the day of the year, and multiplied by 365 days in the year yields 179.93.
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There’s no statute of limitations on stupidity

My old Bible, using an Israeli 20 shekel note as a bookmark.

Those who know me know that I am not just Catholic in name only, but a Mass every Sunday Catholic, and occasionally attend weekday Mass as well. I have article tags for the Catholic Church and Catholic Priesthood. And the last thing I want to see are more sexual abuse cases among the priesthood revealed.

Philly archdiocese accused of covering up sex abuse complaints against priest who allegedly found a new victim in Nashville

“If there was ever a case of reckless disregard for the safety of the public and parishioners,” said lawyers representing a woman now suing church officials over an alleged cover-up, “it’s this one.”

by Jeremy Roebuck | Thursday, April 20, 2023

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia is facing new accusations that it covered up sexual misconduct, this time involving a former priest who allegedly forced himself on multiple women and told them the unwanted encounters were “special trials” ordained by God.

In court filings this week, a 27-year-old woman said church officials’ failure to disclose previous complaints against the Rev. Kevin Barry McGoldrick enabled abuse she endured after he was transferred from Philadelphia to Nashville in 2013.

Even after the Philadelphia archdiocese had substantiated her claims that McGoldrick had plied her with bourbon and then sexually assaulted her while he was serving as a college chaplain in Tennessee, she said, church officials here still refused to acknowledge they’d received reports years earlier of his involvement in similar misconduct.

The woman, now living in Virginia and identified in court filings only as Jane Doe, made those accusations in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that seeks hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages from church officials and McGoldrick himself in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.

There’s more at the original, but the important date is that Fr McGoldrick was transferred from Philadelphia to the Diocese of Nashville in 2013. Msgr. William J. Lynn, once a secretary for Cardinal Anthony Bevilaqua, the Archbishop of Philadelphia, was convicted in June of 2012 for his role in transferring priests accused of sexual misconduct to other parishes, and though that conviction was twice overturned, the Monsignor was behind bars in 2013.

Cardinal Justin Rigali, the Archbishop of Philadelphia from 2003 to 2011, had his resignation upon reaching 75 accepted by Pope Benedict XVI, but, as The New York Times noted, his resignation was tainted by the priestly abuse scandal. The Times had also noted that the District Attorney’s office had “been investigating the archdiocese aggressively since 2002“.

So, how is it that, in 2013, with the previous Archbishop having his resignation accepted under an ethical cloud, Msgr Lynn behind bars for his role in identifying ‘problem’ priests, priests Edward Avery and Charles Engelhardt in prison for the sexual abuse of minors, as was Catholic school teacher Bernard Shero, that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, then under Archbishop Charles Chaput, allegedly knew of Fr McGoldrick’s reported sexual abuses transferred him to Nashville?

Lawyers for the accuser say former Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput failed to disclose earlier investigations into McGoldrick and signed off on his transfer to Nashville in 2013. That move came two years after Pope Benedict XVI had tapped Chaput to take over the Philadelphia archdiocese and oversee reform efforts after a series of damning grand jury investigations highlighted its failures in handling clergy sex abuse complaints.

Let me be clear here: there have been no criminal charges or convictions in this case: “Jane Doe” has filed a lawsuit, something which is subject to a much lower standard of proof, the “preponderance of the evidence,” and that lawsuit has not gone to trial. At the moment, Archbishop Chaput and Fr McGoldrick are neither legally guilty nor adjudicated as responsible for any wrongdoing. I’d like to believe that Miss “Doe” is making a fraudulent claim, which is certainly a possibility. Archbishop Chaput, having been appointed to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in large part for his previous strong handling of such cases while Archbishop of Denver. It would seem improbable that he would have approved that transfer of a known sexual abuser.

However, if Miss “Doe’s” claims are valid, it might be a slightly different case. The article states that she is 27 years old now, which means she would have been 17 or 18 at the time Fr McGoldrick was transferred, and she might have been legally an adult at the time she claims she was abused by the priest.

But my wanting the claim to be false does not preclude the possibility that it could be true. And while I want it to be false, there are a lot of people out there who will be convinced that the accusations are true, because it has happened so often in the past.

If the accusation is true, it means that Archbishop Chaput and his subordinates in the Archdiocese learned absolutely nothing from not only what had happened in the past, but happened in the recent past. And our bishops have to know, and understand, this: there is exactly zero tolerance for this stuff among the public, and cover-ups just don’t work. With so many people hostile to the Church, and looking for wrongdoing, and with possible victims out there, this stuff will eventually be exposed.

There has to be zero tolerance in the Church for this, and everybody needs to know it. Actually, every priest and bishop in the Church does know it; they are all highly educated men, and they just aren’t stupid. But not being stupid overall does not mean that they can’t do stupid things, and trying to cover up for this stuff, regardless of how much they may like and respect their friends and colleagues in the priesthood, is just plain stupid.

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Secular liberalism has infected religion, and liberal religion has infected secular politics

And here I thought that Catholic bishops and priests were supposed to be guided by the Bible in which they have professed belief!

On same-gender blessings specifically, (Bishop Helmut) Dieser (of Aachen, Germany) challenged the Vatican’s ban on them, saying priests and other pastoral ministers should be guided by their consciences when deciding on whether to bless couples.

Diocese Promotes Valentine’s Day Blessings with Photo of Queer Couple Kissing

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Why is the Pope taking religious actions in a political squabble?

I have been saying it all along: I cannot see how any priest, any bishop, or any pope, would want to see fewer Catholics in the pews.

Pope intervenes again to restrict celebration of Latin Mass

Story by By Nicole Winfield | Tuesday, February 21, 2023

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis has intervened for the third time to crack down on the celebration of the old Latin Mass, a sign of continued friction with Catholic traditionalists.

Francis reasserted in a new legal decree published Tuesday that the Holy See must approve new celebrations of the old rite by signing off on bishops’ decisions to designate additional parish churches for the Latin Mass or to let newly ordained priests celebrate it.

The decree states that the Vatican’s liturgy office, headed by British Cardinal Arthur Roche, is responsible for evaluating such requests on behalf of the Holy See and that all requests from bishops must go there.

For weeks, Catholic traditionalist blogs and websites have reported a further crackdown on the old Latin Mass was in the works, following Francis’ remarkable decision in 2021 to reimpose restrictions on its celebration that were relaxed in 2007 by then-Pope Benedict XVI.

Francis said at the time that he was acting preserve church unity, saying the spread of the Tridentine Mass had become a source of division and been exploited by Catholics opposed to the Second Vatican Council, the 1960s meetings that modernized the church and its liturgy.

Yes, it’s true: there are a few, few! Catholics who have rejected Vatican II. Those few will not attend a Novus ordo Mass, so the Holy Father is, in effect, casting them out of the Church altogether.

More, I would guess, are attracted to the Tridentine Mass because of the grandeur of that Mass, in the same fashion that many Protestants cling to the King James Bible, the lofty, Elizabethan English. They will attend Novus ordo Masses, but I suspect that they might not attend as frequently, being disappointed with the services.

The primary mission of the Church is, and always has been, to bring more people to God. But the Holy Father seems to be doing his best to run off some of the most devout Catholics around, and he’s doing it for political rather than religious reasons, to try to disarm the critics who oppose him on the ‘social justice’ issues.

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We wicked Catholics and our Assault Rosaries!

My good friend — OK, OK, I’ve never actually met her, but people can become good friends over Twitter these days — Christine Flowers says, in her Twitter biography, that she has an “open carry permit for (her) assault rosary.” That was a mocking reference to an article by Daniel Panneton in The Atlantic, originally entitled “How the Rosary Became an Extremist Symbol“, about which I have previously written.

The Atlantic got plenty of pushback about it, and twice changed the article headline and subheading — the title “How Extremist Gun Culture Co-Opted the Rosary: The AR-15 is a sacred object among Christian nationalists. Now “radical-traditional” Catholics are bringing a sacrament of their own to the movement” isn’t shown in the screen captures tweeted by Taylor Marshall — imaged to the left, but the internet is forever.

And now we find out that some in the federal government, specifically the FBI, see Catholics, at least some Catholics, as evil subversives. From National Review:

FBI Internal Memo Warns against ‘Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology’

by Brittany Bernstein | Wednesday, February 8, 2023 | 5:14 PM EST

The FBI’s Richmond field office released an internal memo last month warning against “radical traditionalist Catholic ideology,” and claiming it “almost certainly presents new mitigation opportunities,” according to a document shared by an FBI whistleblower on Wednesday.

Kyle Seraphin, who was a special agent at the bureau for six years before he was indefinitely suspended without pay in June 2022, published the document, “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities,” on UncoverDC.com. Continue reading →

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If the Tridentine Mass brings more Catholics to Mass, why would the Church ever restrict it?

The First Page of the Book of Genesis in the 1611 printing of the KJV, from Wikipedia. Click to enlarge.

Technically, I’m a “cradle Catholic,” baptized the month after I was born, because my father was Catholic. My mother? I really don’t know, other than her mother was Episcopalian. I remember very little about my life in California, before my parents divorced, and if they took me to Mass, which would have been a Latin Mass in the 1950s, I do not remember a bit of it.

I do know that my mother never took us to church after we got to Kentucky. My religious conscience was left to develop for itself, but somehow, I knew that I was Catholic. I did know that I had been baptized in the Catholic Church, because my mother told me, but that really was it.

In small town Mt Sterling, Kentucky, I certainly knew about the Protestant churches, and, for a while, when we lived off Richmond Avenue, there was a Pentecostalist church very close by, a church that took to heart raising a joyful noise unto the Lord, Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings. Google maps Streetscape tells me that it’s still there, though the white-painted concrete block walls have now been covered with white vinyl siding. But one of the things I also remember were that there were several Protestant churches which advertised themselves as King James Only, arguing that “the KJV needs no further improvements because it is the greatest English translation of the Bible which was ever published, and they also believe that all other English translations of the Bible which were published after the KJV was published are corrupt.” They have their reasons, which I will not argue here, and which you can read if you follow the link.

But, regardless of their arguments, one thing is certain: the Elizabethan English used in the King James Version is lofty in a way that modern English simply is not, and I have to wonder: does the grandeur of the language itself inspire some English-speaking people?

Old Latin Mass Finds New American Audience, Despite Pope’s Disapproval

An ancient form of Catholic worship is drawing in young traditionalists and conservatives. But it signals a divide within the church.

by Ruth Graham | Tuesday, November 15, 2022

I suppose that I have to laugh here, given that the form of the Tridentine, or Traditional Latin Mass, dates from the Missal of 1962. I’m not quite sure how that can be called, in the subtitle, “an ancient form.” 🙂 Continue reading →

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How Daniel Panneton used 1,183 words to tell us that he’s a great researcher who doesn’t understand a single thing about his subject

Daniel Panneton’s Twitter bio. Click to enlarge.

Daniel Panneton tells us, in his Twitter biography, that he is a “Museums worker and online hate researcher”. He also tells us that he is very afraid to let the Unapproved see his tweets. I looked, but was unable to find a significantly more detailed biography of Mr Panneton. A writer for The Atlantic, he has had published several other articles from which anyone who can read can discern his very much #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading leftist bias.

And now? This obviously well-read has decided that traditional Catholics are now evil reich-wing Protestants! I’m pretty sure that both Catholics and our separated brethren wouldn’t see it that way.

How Extremist Gun Culture Co-Opted the Rosary

The AR-15 is a sacred object among Christian nationalists. Now “radical-traditional” Catholics are bringing a sacrament of their own to the movement.

By Daniel Panneton | Sunday, August 14, 2022 | 8:00 AM EDT

Just as the AR-15 rifle has become a sacred object for Christian nationalists in general, the rosary has acquired a militaristic meaning for radical-traditional (or “rad trad”) Catholics. On this extremist fringe, rosary beads have been woven into a conspiratorial politics and absolutist gun culture. These armed radical traditionalists have taken up a spiritual notion that the rosary can be a weapon in the fight against evil and turned it into something dangerously literal.

While some people might not understand that a crucifix is more commonly Catholic than Protestant, almost no one would mistake that a rosary is a Catholic symbol. What Mr Panneton has missed is that no one who prays the rosary these days is out shooting people.

Their social-media pages are saturated with images of rosaries draped over firearms, warriors in prayer, Deus Vult (“God wills it”) crusader memes, and exhortations for men to rise up and become Church Militants. Influencers on platforms such as Instagram share posts referencing “everyday carry” and “gat check” (gat is slang for “firearm”) that include soldiers’ “battle beads,” handguns, and assault rifles. One artist posts illustrations of his favorite Catholic saints, clergy, and influencers toting AR-15-style rifles labeled sanctum rosarium alongside violently homophobic screeds that are celebrated by social-media accounts with thousands of followers.The theologian and historian Massimo Faggioli has described a network of conservative Catholic bloggers and commentary organizations as a “Catholic cyber-militia” that actively campaigns against LGBTQ acceptance in the Church.

Considering that the Bible is very explicit in its condemnation of homosexual activity, and the Catechism affirms that,[2]§2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of … Continue reading it is the duty of all Catholics to fight against the approval of homosexual activity. To Mr Panneton, this is just wholly, wholly wrong.

These rad-trad rosary-as-weapon memes represent a social-media diffusion of such messaging, and they work to integrate ultraconservative Catholicism with other aspects of online far-right culture. The phenomenon might be tempting to dismiss as mere trolling or merchandising, and ironical provocations based on traditionalist Catholic symbols do exist, but the far right’s constellations of violent, racist, and homophobic online milieus are well documented for providing a pathway to radicalization and real-world terrorist attacks. The rosary—in these hands—is anything but holy. But for millions of believers, the beads, which provide an aide-mémoire for a sequence of devotional prayers, are a widely recognized symbol of Catholicism and a source of strength. And many take genuine sustenance from Catholic theology’s concept of the Church Militant and the tradition of regarding the rosary as a weapon against Satan. As Pope Francis said in a 2020 address, “There is no path to holiness … without spiritual combat,” and Francis is only one of many Church officials who have endorsed the idea of the rosary as an armament in that fight.

I will admit to some amusement that this article was published on Sunday, August 14th, the same day as this Gospel reading in our Catholic Churches:

Luke 12:49 “I have come to cast fire upon the earth; and how I wish it were already kindled!
50 But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is accomplished!
51 Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division;
52 for from now on five members in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three.
53 They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

Mr Panneton has managed to wholly misunderstand what Pope Francis has said. “Spiritual combat” means to fight, with prayer, for the right ideas.

However, this is where the author truly shows how little he understands about his subject. There is no greater enemy of the “Church Militant” than Pope Francis, who has been doing his best to stamp out the Tridentine, or Traditional Latin, Mass.

Daniel Panneton, photo from his protected Twitter profile.

In mainstream Catholicism, the rosary-as-weapon is not an intrinsically harmful interpretation of the sacramental, and this symbolism has a long history. In the 1930s and ’40s, the ultramontane Catholic student publication Jeunesse Étudiante Catholique regularly used the concept to rally the faithful. But the modern radical-traditionalist Catholic movement—which generally rejects the Second Vatican Council’s reforms—is far outside the majority opinion in the Roman Catholic Church in America. Many prominent American Catholic bishops advocate for gun control, and after the Uvalde school shooting, Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas, lamented the way some Americans “sacralize death’s instruments.”Militia culture, a fetishism of Western civilization, and masculinist anxieties have become mainstays of the far right in the U.S.—and rad-trad Catholics have now taken up residence in this company. Their social-media accounts commonly promote accelerationist and survivalist content, along with combat-medical and tactical training, as well as memes depicting balaclava-clad gunmen that draw on the “terrorwave” or “warcore” aesthetic that is popular in far-right circles.

Like such networks, radical-traditional Catholics sustain their own cottage industry of goods and services that reinforces the radicalization. Rosaries are common among the merchandise on offer—some made of cartridge casings, and complete with gun-metal-finish crucifixes. One Catholic online store, which describes itself as “dedicated to offering battle-ready products and manuals to ‘stand firm against the tactics of the devil’” (a New Testament reference), sells replicas of the rosaries issued to American soldiers during the First World War as “combat rosaries.” Discerning consumers can also buy a “concealed carry” permit for their combat rosary and a sacramental storage box resembling an ammunition can. In 2016, the pontifical Swiss Guard accepted a donation of combat rosaries; during a ceremony at the Vatican, their commander described the gift as “the most powerful weapon that exists on the market.”

The militarism also glorifies a warrior mentality and notions of manliness and male strength. This conflation of the masculine and the military is rooted in wider anxieties about Catholic manhood—the idea that it is in crisis has some currency among senior Church figures and lay organizations. In 2015, Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix issued an apostolic exhortation calling for a renewal of traditional conceptions of Catholic masculinity titled “Into the Breach,” which led the Knights of Columbus, an influential fraternal order, to produce a video series promoting Olmsted’s ideas. But among radical-traditional Catholic men, such concerns take an extremist turn, rooted in fantasies of violently defending one’s family and church from marauders.

You know, this reminds me of Amanda Marcotte’s argument in her 2008 book, It’s a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments. Miss Marcotte had been arguing, for a long time — and still does — that evil reich wing conservatives don’t just want to ban prenatal infanticide, but artificial contraception as well. But when it came to actually documenting her claim, the only thing with which she could come up was Quiverfull, a belief set more than an organization, the adherents to which, according to a 2006 guesstimate, range in “the thousands to the low tens of thousands”.

Miss Marcotte managed to conflate maybe 10,000 families to a nationwide assault on contraception, and now, Mr Panneton is conflating the rosary, something millions of Catholics have, and something I have hanging from the rear-view mirror of my very masculine Ford F-150, as meaning I have an AR-15 that I’m ready to use to kill queers, abortionists, illegal immigrants, liberals, girly boys and Novus Ordo Catholics.

There’s more at Mr Panneton’s 1,183-word original, but it’s a lot of the same, the conflation of a small number of people into a national menace, and the possession of a rosary as a visible symbol, practically a swastika, showing just how horribly evil we are.

I have a rosary hanging from the rear view mirror of my F-150.

Of course, some of his sources are silly ones, such as citing Salon to prove that Catholics are a “growing contingent” of Christian nationalism, and Media Matters for America complaining that Twitter should take action against people calling groomers, groomers. About the only thing he failed to mention was Libs of TikTok.

The author’s tactics are familiar. The New Yorker noted a complaint by a black United States Postal Service worker that he was the subject of racial discrimination because some other workers wore caps with the Gadsden flag, and some have even called the thirteen-star Betsy Ross flag a symbol of hate. The old “OK” hand sign has been labeled a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League.

There are two things going on here. One is that the left are trying, once again, to control what speech or expression is acceptable, in an attempt to limit the terms of debate by limiting how the debate may be held. If Mr Panneton had his way, if I drove to a county commissioner’s meeting with the rosary visible in my F-150, I would be ostracized and, who knows, perhaps even escorted off the property by the police for having the alt-right symbol of a rosary.

But there’s more. Mr Panneton’s motives are really pretty clear: he wants to attack Catholicism itself, by trying to make actual Catholics into Enemies of the Republic, people who, if seen with a rosary, ought to be shunned as Nazis, reported to the police, and fired from their jobs. After all, we are all heavily armed, right?

Nevertheless, he’s being pretty stupid. Other than topics of sexual morality, which are explicitly set down in the Bible, Catholic priests and theologians tend to be pretty liberal politically. Perhaps alienating people who be (mostly) your allies isn’t the wisest thing he could do.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

↑2

  • §2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.
  • §2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.
  • §2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.
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Cardinal Wilton Gregory gains a very nice church and grounds to sell

St Mary Mother of God Church, Washington DC. Photo by Farragut, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported.

We noted, just yesterday, how the parish of St Mary Mother of God in Washington DC had lost the right to have the Tridentine, or Traditional Latin Mass. The website Crux, which claims to be an independent and objective news site covering the Catholic Church, has more:

DC parish rues Latin Mass ban, warns of financial and membership losses

By John Lavenburg | Monday, July 25, 2022

NEW YORK – The community at St. Mary Mother of God appealed to Cardinal Wilton Gregory during an archdiocesan synod listening session not to ban the Traditional Latin Mass at the parish, mainly because it would mean potentially losing about half of the parishioners.

That appeal failed. The listening sessions concluded in May, and Gregory announced July 22 that the Traditional Latin Mass would be restricted in the archdiocese to three non-parochial churches. The plan goes into effect on September 21.

For St. Mary’s, the change will be more than simply replacing a Mass in the Old Rite with a Mass in the New Rite. Parish vitality – in both the pews and community – is now a question mark, and closure isn’t out of the realm of possibility.

Skipping down, here’s the money line:

The present St. Mary’s church was built in 1890 and has served downtown Washington, D.C. ever since. Currently, it serves three distinct communities. It has about 200 Traditional Latin Mass parishioners, 120 parishioners who attend Mass in the ordinary form in English, and about 100 Chinese parishioners who are ministered to autonomously.

Assuming that those numbers are reasonably accurate, that means that St Mary’s could lose roughly 48%, almost half, of its parishioners, parishioners who contribute roughly 60% of St Mary’s collections.

In the 25-minute homily, De Rosa also called it “unjust” that none of the people involved in this decision ever visited the St. Mary’s Traditional Latin Mass parishioners. De Rosa requested that Gregory visit the parish in the spring, and was told by Father Anthony Lickteig, the episcopal vicar for clergy, that “the Cardinal will not be able to visit St. Mary’s at this time due to his schedule,” according to a copy of the email obtained by Crux.

In other words, His Eminence, Wilton Cardinal Gregory, Archbishop of Washington, just plain didn’t care about the 200 parishioners who attend the Tridentine Mass at St Mary’s. You can try to explain it any other way you wish, but that’s what it all comes down to, he just didn’t care.

According to Fr De Rosa’s letter to his parishioners, the Tridentine Mass will now be celebrated at the Franciscan Monastery in Brookland, which is 3.8 miles from St Mary’s, about a 16 minute drive along US Route 1 North, not too far to drive, which means that many of the Old Rite parishioners might not be too put out, and able to make the trip.

It also means that for most of the Tridentine Mass parishioners, it won’t be too difficult to abandon their home parish.  And it means that Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the Archbishop of Washington, will have a very nice church building and grounds to sell, when parish membership dwindles to 220 people.