Month: February 2024

The time has come to say (or print) aloud what is obvious, but which pundits are reluctant to acknowledge: almost every foreign policy decision made by the Biden Administration has harmed American interests and aided our international opponents.

The extent of Biden’s anti-American foreign policy actions that harm U.S. interests, and indeed, the very safety of the nation’s citizenry, is long and deadly.

 It was widely agreed that the U.S. should end its ground war in Afghanistan, but that Bagram air base should remain as a guarantee that terrorists would not march into the void and take over.  Biden not only inexplicably closed down that vital facility, but he left billions of dollars in military equipment to the very terrorist groups responsible for the 911 attacks. He abandoned vast numbers of pro-Americans and indeed some Americans to Al-Qaeda.  The disaster didn’t end there.  Recently, he appointed Tracey Ann Jacobson, a key figure in the Afghanistan debacle, to serve to be the next US ambassador to Iraq

Equally as inexplicable, Biden has bent over backwards to help Iran, the nation whose leaders regularly chant “Death to America.” The Wall Street Journal’s editorial Board argues that “You’d think the Biden Administration would have realized by now that enriching the Iranian regime is a dangerous mistake. You’d be wrong. Relaxed U.S. enforcement of oil sanctions continued through October, refilling Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s coffers even after the Oct. 7 slaughter and the more than 40 attacks on U.S. troops by Iran’s proxies in the weeks since.” .  Biden also is responsible for Robert Malley’s role as the United States Special Envoy for Iran. Malley had his security clearance pulled and was suspended from his post at the State Department while the FBI investigates his alleged mishandling of classified documents.  On top of that, there is an allegation that some of his associates were compromised by the Iran Experts Initiatives (IEI), a vast Tehran-controlled propaganda operation.

After tolerating Iranian-backed attacks on U.S. and international ships, and assaults on U.S. facilities that led to injuries and deaths to American servicemembers, it is reasonable to assume that the President would respond directly against Iran.  He chose not to do so, and indeed, telegraphed his plans allowing the effectiveness of the strikes he did make against Iran’s proxy to be minimized.

Biden’s actions towards China are the most perplexing of all. He ended an existing anti-espionage surveillance program that addressed Beijing’s massive spying on both American companies and the U.S. military. He allows the Chinese Communist Party to harass their nation’s emigrees in America.  Stunningly, he permitted a Chinese spy ballon to traverse the entire length of the United States, taking detailed pictures of sensitive military installations from coast to coast. His White Houses has pursued energy policies that have little effect on the environment but massively strengthen Chinese industries as the expense of U.S. workers and companies.

The most visible of Biden’s refusals to protect the nation he leads is his push to open U.S. borders and facilitate illegal immigration.  While the drastic impact on crime levels and state and local budgets has been well documented, the threat to national security has not been adequately stated.

Senator James Lankford (R-OK), lead Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Government Operations and Border Management, has sounded the alarm about “military-age, single adult men” coming across the border illegally from non-Spanish speaking countries.

Senator Steve Daines (R-Montana) reported in October that “Since the first of October, Border Patrol agents have apprehended individuals from Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya. Malaysia, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.”

24,000 Chinese citizens were caught on the southern border during the 2023 fiscal year, more than the las ten years combined.  That’s more than the past 10 years combined.

It is a futile gesture to attempt to get inside the mind of the President or those who are making the decisions for him. However, the Progressive, woke cadre dominates his policy choices. Those choices reflect an indoctrination by leftists that America is evil.

In Newsweek, C. J. Pearson wrote “The identity crisis fueling Gen Z has been cultivated by the left-wing indoctrination into which we are inculcated at every educational and cultural institution in America. … We have been groomed to be disgusted by tradition, ashamed of our identity as Americans…” 

It’s a mode of thinking that gained prominence in the Obama-Biden Administration. Thomas Sowell noted in a 2012 Newsmax article    “Many of Barack Obama’s actions as president of the United States reflect neither political expediency nor an attempt to promote the best interests of the American people…Are Americans supposed to let foreigners tell them how to live their lives? The implied answer is clearly ‘Yes!’ When President Obama went to the United Nations for authority to take military action and ignored the Congress of the United States, that was all consistent with his vision of the way the world should be…How has Obama gotten away with so many things that are foreign to American beliefs and traditions? Partly it is because of a quiescent media, sharing many of his ideological views.”

Biden has continued and expanded upon that, and in doing, has placed the nation in ultimate peril.

Illustration: Pixabay

Is the Declaration regarding the blessings of same-sex couples sufficient to guide the prudent and fatherly discernment of ordained ministers ?

According to Reuters, this “ruling is bound to be opposed by conservatives, who already criticised the pope when he made his initial comments on the subject in October. Ulrich L. Lehner, a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame in the United States, said the new guidance from the doctrinal office ‘invites misunderstanding and will sow confusion.’ Voicing concern that some bishops would use it as a pretext to do what is explicitly forbidden, the professor added, ‘it is, and I hate to say it, an invitation to schism.'”

Meanwhile, Reuters also noted the support for the statement from those who wish to “use it as a pretext to do what is explicitly forbidden.” For instance, “Father James Martin, a prominent American Jesuit priest who ministers to the LGBT community…said…that ‘along with many priests, I will now be delighted to bless my friends in same-sex unions.'” 

Think an advocate like Father Martin will avoid giving those blessings without any of the “clothing, gestures or words that are proper to a wedding?”

Attorney John Bursch, writing for the National Catholic Register, believes that Priests like Father Martin would NEVER deviate from the Pope’s directions. He believes the Statement is not “the supposed authorization of blessings for same-sex unions…that’s not what the document says at all. If anything, the document could be understood to encourage blessings so that same-sex-attracted individuals (or any individual in what the document calls an ‘irregular’ relationship) will be encouraged to live out God’s plan for human sexuality rather than their own… the Church contemplates the possibility of blessing individual persons in irregular relationships to call them to holiness.” 

Yes, you read that right – Bursch believes that gay couples asking for a blessing from a Catholic Priest are not seeking an endorsement of their same sex relationship, but are actually asking for the strength to follow the Church’s teachings on homosexual relationships, and dedicate their life to chastity.

If that’s really what Bursch believes, then he has spoken with too many same sex couples.  In fact, Reuters quotes a couple who have a more conventional view of the Church’s statement on blessings, one more in keeping with the fears of more conservative Catholics: “Martin Hardwick and Andrew Gibb of Manchester, England, who are married and have been together 41 years, said the move was long overdue. ‘You know if Jesus said love was love, then love is love, isn’t it?’ Hardwick said. ‘It’s about time,’ Gibb added.” 

As a point of clarification for the reader, at no time did Jesus say “love is love.”

Breitbart has a particularly dark view of the new statement; “’Such blessings are meant for everyone; no one is to be excluded from them,’ the text states. By extension, since a blessing can now be ‘offered to all without requiring anything,’ one must suppose that sweatshops, drug cartels, prostitution rings, abortion clinics, and child pornography studios should not be denied a blessing if they request one.” 

In regard to these concerns, it is not unfair to ask what the Church means by “irregular relationships.”  Does this ambiguous phrase contemplate a pedophile seeking a blessing while in a relationship with someone under the age of consent?  What about more outlandish relationships?  Is a Priest now encouraged to bless someone in love with their Sheep?

In general, “(o)utlets across Catholic media, from the progressive  America Magazine  to the conservative  Catholic Herald , drew the same conclusion from the response: that Pope Francis had provided wiggle room for ‘pastoral prudence’ in offering blessings for same-sex unions. Countless commentators and LGBTQ activist groups reacted similarly, including the controversial New Ways Ministry , which went so far as to thank the pontiff for the ‘allowance for pastoral ministers to bless same-gender couples.'” 

This, then, is the very heart of the problem with the Church’s new position on blessings.  Clearly, Pope Francis has given a tacit wink and a nod to Priests who wish to make some “official” acknowledgment of gay marriage, in their capacity as Priests, while claiming their blessing is “unofficial,” and that there is no change to Church doctrine regarding homosexuality.

Much as with the declaration regarding transgender participation in Church rites such as weddings and baptisms, the Pope’s desire for secular progressive change affects and colors his pronouncements regarding long-established Church doctrine, resulting in confusion for the faithful and internally inconsistent declarations.

As Peter Laffin states in the Washington Examiner, “it’s possible that Pope Francis did not intend to ‘signal openness to blessings for gay couples’…It’s also possible that he did intend to signal a change. As ever, Pope Francis’s intentions are difficult to divine. The Vatican’s refusal to issue a correction to the global media’s collective interpretation of the comments can itself be read in numerous ways: as callous indifference toward the spiritual formation of the faithful, as excessively slow reaction speed, or as evidence that no correction is necessary…Faithful Catholics would do well to pray for the Pope, as always, and for clear teaching on the moral issues of the day. Now more than ever, the faithful need the Church to instruct and lead with coherence and resolve.” 

Judge Wilson served on the bench in NYC

Photo: Pixabay

Recently, we discussed the vague and conflicting directions given by the Office of the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith of the Roman Catholic Church.  In a letter authored by Argentinean Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, and approved by Pope Francis at the end of October, 2023, the Church asserted that “Transgender people can be godparents at Roman Catholic baptisms, witnesses at religious weddings and receive baptism themselves.”  

We noted that such instructions fail “to clarify whether a transgender person should be baptized under a name consistent with their birth sex, or with a name consistent with their chosen sexual identity,” or “how a same sex couple could be expected to provide a ‘well-founded hope’ that their child would be ‘educated in the Catholic religion.'”

Rather than clarify these unclear views, In December of 2023, Pope Francis double downed on his obvious intentions to welcome practicing homosexuals into the Roman Catholic Church.

Once more, in a statement prepared by Cardinal Fernandez, which specifically notes that  “the document was discussed with the Holy Father,” and that “the text of the Declaration was submitted to the Holy Father for his review, and he approved it with his signature,” the Dicastery now allows for “the possibility of blessing couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples.”  Somehow, this is to be accomplished “without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage.” 

The statement begins by claiming that Pope Francis wishes to avoid “’something that is not marriage…being recognized as marriage’…rites and prayers that could create confusion between what constitutes marriage – which is the ‘exclusive, stable, and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to the generation of children’ – and what contradicts it are inadmissible. This conviction is grounded in the perennial Catholic doctrine of marriage; it is only in this context that sexual relations find their natural, proper, and fully human meaning. The Church’s doctrine on this point remains firm.”

Yet, “Pope Francis urged us not to ‘lose pastoral charity, which should permeate all our decisions and attitudes’ and to avoid being ‘judges who only deny, reject, and exclude.’ Let us then respond to the Holy Father’s proposal by developing a broader understanding of blessings.”

Further, “(t)he Church…must shy away from resting its pastoral praxis on the fixed nature of certain doctrinal or disciplinary schemes, especially when they lead to ‘a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism, whereby instead of evangelizing, one analyzes and classifies others, and instead of opening the door to grace, one exhausts his or her energies in inspecting and verifying.’” 

In other words, Pope Francis claims to reaffirm Church doctrine on what constitutes a marriage, while at the same time, demanding that the Church not be focused on the “fixed nature of certain doctrine” – such as, apparently, what constitutes a marriage.

“Within the horizon outlined” in the Declaration “appears the possibility of blessings for couples in irregular situations and for couples of the same sex.”  Yet again, the statement emphasizes that “the form of (this blessing) should not be fixed ritually by ecclesial authorities to avoid producing confusion with the blessing proper to the Sacrament of Marriage.”

“In any case,” the Declaration continues, “precisely to avoid any form of confusion or scandal, when the prayer of blessing is requested by a couple in an irregular situation, even though it is expressed outside the rites prescribed by the liturgical books, this blessing should never be imparted in concurrence with the ceremonies of a civil union, and not even in connection with them. Nor can it be performed with any clothing, gestures, or words that are proper to a wedding. The same applies when the blessing is requested by a same-sex couple.”

Cardinal Fernandez concludes with this cryptic statement; “What has been said in this Declaration regarding the blessings of same-sex couples is sufficient to guide the prudent and fatherly discernment of ordained ministers in this regard.”

Judge Wilson’s (ret.) article concludes tomorrow

Photo: Pixabay