Jesuit Priest Tells Catholics to Fight Abortion by Electing ‘Pro-Choice Democrats’

I seldom share anything from purely secular sources, but this is too important not to share. Fr Reese is symptomatic of the depths to which the Jesuit Order has fallen (and, remember, Francis is a Jesuit!). Once the bastion of orthodoxy, the fighting vanguard of the Church, they sent men into England in the dark days of martyrdom, and men to die in the attempt to convert the First Nations. Now, they seem to have become the Communist Party at prayer!

Ss Edmund Campion, Robert Southwell, Isaac Jogues, Jean de Brébeuf, and all ye Jesuit Martyrs, pray for your Order and for the Church!



From Breitbart

Jesuit Father Thomas Reese has published a disgraceful essay urging Americans to vote for pro-choice Democrats while claiming that defunding Planned Parenthood is “irresponsible.”

Writing for Religion News Service (RNS)— Father Reese, the former editor-in-chief of America Magazine—says that “pro-lifers must consider voting for candidates, even pro-choice Democrats, who will reduce the number of abortions by supporting programs that help mothers and their children.”

In his political propaganda piece aimed at discrediting President Trump’s recent moves to partially defund Planned Parenthood, Father Reese abandons his role as a Catholic cleric to stump for the Democratic Party.

Closing Planned Parenthood clinics “that provide health care and birth control to women before replacements are up and running is irresponsible and counterproductive,” he writes.

Employing convoluted logic meant to assuage the consciences of Christians who support pro-abortion legislators, Reese makes the claim that Democrats like Hillary Clinton who support Planned Parenthood and abortion-on-demand are actually better for the pro-life cause than Republicans who attempt to install pro-life justices or draft legislation aimed at restricting abortions.

“Pro-life voters must choose between Republican rhetoric and Democratic results,” he writes, in bold advocacy for the party that applies a pro-abortion litmus test to all its potential political candidates.

Reese’s “argument” goes something like this: Abortion will never be illegal, and pro-lifers must accept this fact. They must, therefore, abandon efforts to rescind or limit laws permitting abortion and devote themselves, instead, to enacting more expansive government programs that support women so they will not choose to have abortions.

“Trying to preserve anti-abortion laws or trying to reverse the legalization of abortion is simply not working,” Reese writes, citing the recent Irish abortion referendum as a case in point.

Thinking that abortion could ever be illegal is “simply ignoring reality,” he contends. “Time is on the side of the pro-choice movement.”

Pro-life advocates should, instead, “strongly support programs that give women a real choice — increasing the minimum wage, free or affordable day care for working and student moms, free or affordable health care for mothers and their children, parental leave programs, education and job-training programs, income and food supplements, etc.” he writes.

Had he lived a century-and-a-half ago, Father Reese would have found himself among the shameful Christian clerics who argued that since abolition was impossible and black slavery would never be illegal, efforts should be made to help slaveowners treat their human property as nicely as possible. Such political “realism” has ever been the ally of moral cowardice.

In direct opposition to the U.S. Bishops, Reese further asserts that “the contraceptive mandate of the Obama administration will do more to reduce the number of abortions than all of the legislative gimmicks of Republican legislators.”

“If European Catholic institutions can pay money into national health programs that perform abortions, then American Catholic employers can pay for insurance programs that pay for birth control,” he insists.

The pro-life movement “has to support birth control as a means of avoiding unwanted pregnancies,” he insists, and those, like the Catholic church, “who consider artificial contraception to be wrong must also recognize that abortion is a greater evil. When forced to choose, one must choose the lesser of two evils.”

What Father Reese may forget from his seminary lessons in moral theology, the concept of choosing a “lesser evil” never justifies choosing any moral evil so that good may come from it. It refers, rather, to opting for an imperfect—but not immoral—solution to a problem when a perfect solution is unavailable.

Father Reese’s love affair with the Democratic Party and his willingness to sacrifice moral truth for political gain is reminiscent of the conduct of his confrère, Jesuit Father Robert Drinan (D-MA), who served in the House of Representatives from 1971 to 1981.

A vocal advocate of abortion rights, Father Drinan notably supported President Bill Clinton’s veto of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in 1996.

Soon after, the redoubtable archbishop of New York, Cardinal John O’Connor, rebuked Drinan in his weekly column in Catholic New York. “You could have raised your voice for life; you raised it for death. Hardly the role of a lawyer. Surely not the role of a priest.”

One can only hope that, similarly, moral clarity will prevail in the present case. If Father Reese wishes to speak for the Catholic church, he had best get his story straight.

Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter 

Italy Challenges the Postwar Order

As of yesterday, Italy has a new Government. The Premier, Giuseppe Conte, is a practicing Catholic and has a devotion to St Padre Pio of Pietrelcina. One of the Deputy Premiers, Luigi Di Maio, Leader of the Five Star Movement, one of the two parties in Government, began his campaign by kissing the Reliquary of the Blood of St Januarius and bowing before the Cardinal-Archbishop of Naples. He has stated, 'The Church is my home. I am a Catholic.' The other Deputy Premier, Matteo Salvini, Leader of the League of the North, the other Party in Government, held up a Rosary, 'swearing allegiance to the Gospel and my people'. The Minister of Family and Disability, Lorenzo Fontana, opposes the insanity of abortion and 'same-sex civil unions'.

The article says of the Five Star-League Government, 'It combines elements of left and right in a way that scandalizes well catechized political elites.' I think I like it! It is not surprising that they have been called 'retrograde', insurgents', and 'barbarians' by the left. It reminds me of something I said in my post, A Promise Fulfilled (Part II), 'Since solidifying these ideas, I have been called a marxist by my right-wing friends, and a fascist by my left-wing friends, so I think I may have hit upon the correct solution to the Social Question! 

From First Things

Italy’s new government represents the most radical challenge yet to the order that has dominated Europe since World War II. Comprising the populist-left Five Star Movement and the populist-right League, the coalition is often described as a combination of alt-left and hard-right, but in fact it moves beyond conventional ideological categories. No wonder its members have been darkly described as “barbarians” by the Financial Times and “insurgents” by the Telegraph.

Something in the project of European integration is not working, and the elites who lead it have refused to adjust. The euro is failing miserably in southern Europe, yet the European commission wants to deepen economic and monetary union. The euro has powered German economic growth while saddling countries like Italy and Greece with austerity and debt. According to official government statistics by Istat, absolute poverty in Italy has doubled in the past decade, a few years after the euro was introduced as the country’s currency.

The new government’s eclectic program emphasizes environmentalism, claiming that “man and the environment are two sides of the same coin,” and calls for a reduction of carbon emissions and an end to fossil fuels. The mixed ideological character of the new coalition is illustrated byAlberto Bagnai, a left-wing eurosceptic economist who represents the League in the Italian Senate. His book, The Sunset of the Euro, decries the single currency as a means for Germany to exert its dominance in the Eurozone. Bagnai also strongly opposes mass immigration, calling it a tool to drive down wages and increase exploitation of workers: “It’s no surprise that ‘left-wing’ ‘intellectuals’ don’t care about immigrants’ impact on wages—it’s because they’re not low skilled workers.”

Even more radically, the 31-year-old leader of the Five Star Movement, Luigi Di Maio, has challenged the tyranny of economic metrics. In a speech prior to the election, he said: “The economic indicator for growth will no longer be GDP.” This represents a fundamental challenge to the free-trade post-war order, which has culminated in the rule of multi-national corporations over small businesses and enterprises.

To address Italy’s public debt crisis, the program rejects austerity measures and seeks to revisit EU treaties that recommend them. In place of austerity, the coalition has proposed a minimum salary, a universal basic income, and a lowering of the pension age. What has raised some eyebrows is the League’s proposal for a more libertarian flax-tax system. How can the government increase spending while also decreasing its revenue? The coalition claims that the program will be paid for by eliminating bureaucratic inefficiencies and by subsidies from the EU. And Italy does indeed have a problem with corruption—Five Star built its popularity by campaigning against it.

The new government also has a traditionalist family minister, the League’s Lorenzo Fontana, who opposes abortion and same-sex civil unions. Italy passed a law for same-sex civil unions only last year and is one of the few countries that has not legalized gay marriage. Fontana strongly opposes the civil-unions law, claiming: “They want to dominate us and erase our people.”

In another traditionalist initiative, the Five Star–League program seeks to reverse Italy’s plummeting birth rates. “It’s necessary to provide family welfare,” the program says. The program proposes measures to help women manage their motherly and professional roles by providing free child-care facilities, thus addressing one of the main reasons for the declining birthrate: the financial penalty imposed by childbirth. The caseof Valeria Ferrara, a mother who was denied a Sunday per month to spend with her family by the multi-national Calvin Klein, Inc., is exemplary of this crisis. Both Five Star and the League have, in the past few years, proposed to end Sunday labor. Luigi Di Maio, the leader of Five Star, said, “unrestrained liberalization is making us poorer.”

The Five Star–League program also states that it will oversee the deportation of 500,000 illegal migrants currently living in Italy. Matteo Salvini, the head of the League, who holds the strongest position on immigration, will become minister of the interior under the new government. But even Di Maio, the head of Five Star, has indicated his opposition to mass migration. Last summer he said that the center-left government that has ruled Italy for the past five years had transformed the country into “Europe’s biggest port” for migrants. Di Maio also criticized the activities of NGOs operating in the Mediterranean and transporting migrants to Italian shores: “The EU doesn’t care about saving migrant lives, they just want the money.” The Five Star–Leagueprogram has accordingly promised to “stop the business of smuggling” and take down “criminal organizations responsible for human trafficking,” which have caused “countless deaths in the Mediterranean.” As for financing the deportation of illegal migrants, the government would accomplish this by “directing funds used for hospitality towards repatriations.”

This would be the toughest stance yet taken by an EU member in Western Europe. (It is interesting to note that Switzerland, which is not part of the EU, has maintained very strict immigration controls and received very little criticism for it.) The measures proposed by the coalition prompted the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, to say that the European Commission will now “monitor the rights of African migrants in Italy.” This comment suggests that a collision over migration is imminent, particularly given the EU’s stance toward countries that have taken a tough stance on migration, such as Poland and Hungary.

On foreign policy, the Five Star–League program says it wants to “end sanctions on Russia.” Indeed, the coalition sees Russia as a strategic partner in combating “Islamic terrorism” in the region and in ending the conflicts in Syria, Libya, and Yemen. Despite the great displays of alarm over this fact, it merely reflects a growing consensus in Europe that relationships with Russia must change. “I do think we have to reconnect with Russia,” Juncker said at a conference in Brussels this week. “This Russia-bashing has to be brought to an end.”

Religion also plays a strong role in the program, a role often overlooked by the media. The League has pushed for the registering and monitoring of mosques in Italy. There have also been increasing appeals to a Catholic identity. Di Maio and Salvini have both shown uncommon reverence toward the Catholic Church. In September, Di Maio launched his campaign by observing the old Catholic custom of kissing the vial containing the blood of St. Januarius and bowing before the cardinal of Naples. In 2016, in front of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, Di Maio said: “The Church is my home. I am a Catholic.” Leftwing papers have responded by calling him “retrograde.”

Salvini may be even more outspoken about his faith. In March, just before the election, he held up a rosary at one of his rallies, “swearing allegiance to the Gospel and my people.” The chosen prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, a previously unknown figure, is a former leftist who turned to the Five Star Movement. Conte is devoted to Padre Pio, a Catholic saint famous for his stigmata and bilocation.

The Five Star–League program combines euroskepticism, environmentalism, strong borders, protection of families and small businesses against globalization, and respect for religion. It combines elements of left and right in a way that scandalizes well catechized political elites. If it succeeds, it will be the first real sign that we are moving beyond the postwar order.

Chevalier Charles Coulombe on Should the Holy Roman Empire be re-established?

The Chevalier discusses whether the Papal States and the Holy Roman Empire should be re-established. His answer, with which I agree, is 'yes' in both cases, but he goes into detail asking what, exactly, do we wish to establish, and questioning whether the Empire has actually ceased to exist. Fascinating!

Mutually Non-Consensual Sex

In 1961, a musical by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley opened in the West End. Its title pretty well sums up my feelings when I read stories like this, the Providence College situation, and much of the news in general. It was called 'Stop the World--I want to Get Off!'

From The Atlantic

By Caitlin Flanagan

A Title IX case at the University of Cincinnati—rife with legal, anatomical, and emotional improbabilities—illustrates the potential excesses of policing sex on campus.

Is it possible for two people to simultaneously sexually assault each other? This is the question—rife with legal, anatomical, and emotional improbabilities—to which the University of Cincinnati now addresses itself, and with some urgency, as the institution and three of its employees are currently being sued over an encounter that was sexual for a brief moment, but that just as quickly entered the realm of eternal return. The one important thing you need to know about the case is that according to the lawsuit, a woman has been indefinitely suspended from college because she let a man touch her vagina. What kind of sexually repressive madness could have allowed for this to happen? Answer that question and you will go a long way toward answering the question, “What the hell is happening on American college campuses?”

The substantive facts of the case come to us only through a lawsuit, one that has thus far implicated everything from Title IX, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Constitution to “slut shaming” and good old-fashioned horniness. But not super horniness, because—as with many high profile cases involving the infinitely expandable concept of “college sexual assault”—the actual encounter exists as merest prologue to the massive novel of ideas that followed it.

The event in précis, as summarized by Robby Soave of Reason magazine:

“Male and female student have a drunken hookup. He wakes up, terrified she's going to file a sexual misconduct complaint, so he goes to the Title IX office and beats her to the punch. She is found guilty and suspended.” 

The image that this conjured—of a couple waking up in the fetid bed of blackout sex, coming to the hideous realization of what happened and then lacing up their running shoes for a mad race across campus to the Torquemada of Title IX—is not just amusing, but offers a potentially useful precedent to the nation’s college men. The race is not always to the swift, but the functionaries of the college sex panic have an obdurate habit of determining that the victim of a blearily remembered amorous encounter is the person who decides to report it, with all ties broken by the one who reports it first.

But the lawsuit filed by the young woman introduces a complicated subplot. Both students are members of the campus ROTC, it says, and the young woman previously accused a third ROTC student of sexual misconduct. The suit claims that this produced a Title IX complaint, and forced the discharge of her alleged assailant from the ROTC program. And it asserts that the young man who made the latest report did so not as a means of self-preservation but as revenge for what happened to his friend. (Neither of the men in question is identified by name in these filings, and so they could not be reached to respond to these claims. The university’s Title IX office declined to say whether they had disputed these specifics, or to comment on either Title IX proceeding.)

With the stage thus set, let us journey to fair Verona on the Ohio, and to the tale of star-crossed lovers as it is told by the potentially unreliable narrator of Case Number 1-18 –cv—312 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Western Division. A September night, a campus party, and two students—Jane Roe and John Doe—meet up. Both are hammered (vodka and beer for her, schnapps and beer for him) but John is apparently more hammered, because Jane offers to walk him home and he agrees. They arrive at his apartment and Jane fusses over him, offering water and ibuprofen for his injured foot. One or both fall asleep, but awaken briefly for a moment of fumbling. It ends with Jane politely asking, “Is there anything else you want to do?” and John taking a hard pass. Two days later, John makes his report and the campus investigator intrudes into the private lives of adult college students, with the result that Jane is suspended from the university “indefinitely”—meaning until John’s eventual graduation, for he has been afforded the full range of protections recommended for college sexual-assault victims, including not having to share the campus with his assailant.

It would take the combined talents of Judd Apatow, Margaret Atwood, and a parish priest to make meaningful sense of this episode and its punishment, but we will forge ahead with only the facts as Roe presented them in her court filing. (I spoke with the University of Cincinnati spokesman Gregory Vehr, who invited me to stop by next time I was in Ohio to see all of the great things that were happening on campus and emailed me a statement: “The University of Cincinnati focuses on the well-being of our entire university community and makes every effort to provide an equitable process that respects everyone’s rights and accommodates their needs. Due to federal confidentiality requirements, we cannot address the specifics of any individual case. Our goal, as an educational institution, is what’s best for all of our students in terms of safety, equity, and support.”)

By some kind of weird alchemy involving the sum of its parts, this strange little event manages to hit upon almost every troubling aspect of the way that these cases are interpreted and punished on the contemporary campus. It proceeds from the assumption that if two drunk college students make out, one of them—and only one of them—is a victim of the event. It resulted in a fairly common but extremely severe consequence meted on students found guilty of very minor offenses—banishment from the university until the complainant graduates. And it suggests how easily the system can be manipulated by a student with an alleged grudge.

It is Jane Roe’s good fortune to have as her attorney Josh Engel, whose practice is largely centered on suing universities—including, on five occasions, the University of Cincinnati—on behalf of plaintiffs who faced discipline for sexual misconduct by campus disciplinary proceedings—all of whom, until now have been men. In the lawsuit, he cites a recent and underreported ruling from the Sixth Circuit, which has significant relevance to the large number of campus sexual-assault proceedings involving two drunk students. Doe vs. University of Miami found that a school acts in a discriminatory manner when it finds that both a male and a female student are intoxicated and engage in sexual activity yet chooses only to discipline one of the students. As Engel told me, “From a constitutional standpoint a public school violates the equal-protection rights of their students when there is no rational basis to differentiate between male and female students. The court found that even if only one student makes a report, if the school possesses knowledge that both were intoxicated, “the school has an affirmative obligation to investigate both students for misconduct without waiting for a ‘report,’” Engel said.

In other words—college students and administrators take note—the days of blaming one person (almost always the man) for a no-harm, no foul, mutually drunken hook up may be coming to an end. It was a ridiculous standard, one that that infantilized college women, demonized male sexuality, and was responsible for harsh punishment meted out to an unknown number of college students, almost all of them male. It trivialized something grave: sex crime. And because it poured all of these experiences through an interpretive system that forced women into the role of passive victims and men in that of aggressive predators, it has helped stoke understandable resentment among young men on campuses across the country.

We are left with one central question: Why, exactly, did John Doe make his report? It is possible, of course, that he legitimately felt himself to have been violated by a sexual predator. Alternatively, he may have been motivated either by self-preservation or revenge. Whatever inspired him, one thing is clear: The system as it currently exists has burrowed itself so deeply into the private sexual behavior of adult students that it stands as a hovering third party to every intimate act, a monitoring, prurient, vengeful force.

A half-century ago a group of American college students realized that the American university had assumed a role in their lives that was fundamentally at odds with their constitutional right to live in freedom. They wanted personal freedom, political freedom, sexual freedom. They wanted to take their chances in life and be answerable only to the law and to their own consciences, not to the politically narrow and sexually repressive standards of a committee of campus bureaucrats. They wanted the university out of their private lives. For young women in particular—their virginity endlessly protected and fetishized by institutional protocols that included curfews, parietals, chaperones, dress codes, and letters to Mother sent by concerned deans of women—sexual freedom, with all of the excitement and danger and pleasure and deep risk that is attendant to it, could only be theirs if the university got out of their bedrooms and let them make the sexual lives they wanted.

Now, in many regards, universities monitor the sexuality of their students more intrusively than in the 1950s. There are fulltime employees of American universities whose job is to sit young people down and interrogate them about when and where and how they touched another person sexually, and how it felt, and what signs and sounds and words and gestures made them believe that consent had been granted. This was how homosexuals used to be thrown out of schools and sports teams and the military; this is how young women were punished for acting on their sexual impulses by a wide variety of American institutions in the past. This is beyond the overreach of the modern university; this is an affront to the most essential and irreducible of all of the American ideas: the freedom of the individual.

A long time ago, Mario Savio stood on the steps of Berkeley’s Sproul Hall, his audience a crowd of kids who were in many regards conservative; some had crew cuts and curfews, many others shared an unexamined faith in the political promises of Barry Goldwater, but all of them had this in common: a gathering awareness that the university assumed a role in their life that was oppressive and fundamentally anti-democratic. Savio’s famous words are the stuff of street poetry: “There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the levers and upon all of the apparatus—you’ve got to make it stop!”

That time is coming again on American campuses, as the strongest and smartest and bravest among the students are beginning to realize that the beliefs and practices that dominate these places are irrational and hugely political. These new students are waking up, resisting, fighting back, in all sorts of areas of college life. The administrators want to crush them, but the wind is at their back. The progressive left has all the power on campus, but this unfolding awareness on the part of these counter-revolutionaries has its own unassailable power: truth, logic, and reason.

Mob Justice at Providence College

I don't believe I've posted on the Providence College affaire, but I'm sure many of my readers are aware of the story. A so-called 'Catholic' college, run by the Dominicans of the Province of St Joseph or the Eastern US Province has gone insane. A young man who had the temerity to publicly support the immemorial doctrine of the Church, nay the position of sanity, that a marriage is the union of a man and a woman, was harassed and eventually banned from the campus under court order, thankfully, not until he was grudgingly allowed to graduate.

From Crisis

By Dr Anthony Esolen

Harkins Hall, Providence College

I wrote the following several weeks ago, and decided to wait on it. Meanwhile, something has happened to the young man in question, something worse by far than what I have described here. So here goes:

I have just learned that the Women’s Studies Program at my old school, Providence College, does not take rape seriously. Or at least not as seriously as they take a plastic water bottle.

Here is the back story.

Two years ago, some male students were having a noisy party at their house off campus. They had already gotten into trouble over partying, and they saw a patrol car outside, so they began to quiet things down and turn people away whom they did not know or who did not belong to the house.

While this was going on, late at night, some young women from Providence College showed up and asked to be allowed in. The young man at the door politely refused, as is plain from a video taken at the time. The leader of the young women, who had been drinking, saw some white people entering, so she began to accuse the doorkeeper of racism. “You don’t believe I’m a student here!” she hollered.

“I do believe that you’re a student,” he said, “but you’re not getting in.”

She and her friends got angry, and she started yelling vulgar names at him, daring him to come out and fight. He held his ground. Then somebody from inside the house tossed a half empty plastic water bottle out from the balcony. Nobody knows who threw it, and nobody knows whether it was thrown with any intent.

The police were called, and the newspapers reported the next day that some kids had allegedly had an “all white” party, that the girls were turned aside because they were not white, that they had been the victims of racial epithets, and that bottles were thrown at them.

If the accusations had been true, it would have been by far the worst racial incident the campus had suffered in my twenty-seven years of experience there. The administration was right to investigate. The conduct of the investigation was a different matter.

But what the rest of the campus did was not right. A large group of professors, not one of whom had been anywhere near the incident, immediately signed a statement expressing support for “our women” and demanding that the administration take action against the malefactors. This is what is known as prejudice, a rush to judgment before you know what you are judging. One professor said in the local newspaper that Providence College was characterized by “systemic racism,” while another said that the Western Civilization program—the school’s signature educational offering—was an apology for “genocide” and racism. There was a march in support of the girls. Those professors, some of whom I consider friends, made themselves into a mob, and regardless of the virtues or the intentions of its individual members, a mob is always a bad thing. Mobs are cruel, irrational, vindictive, and cowardly.
A few days later, a group of students that included at least one of the accusers occupied the president’s office for thirteen hours. They came with a petition drawn up by the Black Lives Matter movement, called “The Demands,” calling for radical changes in the school’s policies for hiring, recruiting of students, and curriculum. The president treated them kindly, had pizza delivered to the office, and ended, some months later, by conceding some of the points—to students who, outside of his office, repaid him with contempt.

Meanwhile a hostile investigation went on, with three boys under the gun. They were allowed only a single sympathetic faculty member to be with them. It took the whole semester. By their testimony, it ruined their experience of the college. So said one of them afterward. They asked him if he had any final comments for the investigators. “Yeah,” he said. “I hate PC.”

Here is what they found. Except for the one plastic bottle, which wasn’t in the possession of the doorkeeper, not one of the accusations was true. The party had not in fact been all white. The girls had brought up the business about race. There were no racial epithets. Had it not been for the accident of that video, the boys would have been roasted on a spit.

Let us step back from the heat and think about what a party with alcohol and college students is like. And then let us ask what gives anybody the right to demand entrance to a private residence. Isn’t that already an aggressive act? Yes, it is, and par for the course, for students drinking. One way to investigate the incident would have been to bring the principals together, male and female, find out who did what, knock their heads, and have them know they’d better not cause any more trouble. But not one of the investigators seems to have questioned the credibility of people who were, on the face of it, not being reasonable.

So, after three months, and after the incident had been used for political purposes, the boys were exonerated of all charges, period. At that time I said that I was sure we’d all breathe a sigh of relief, because nobody wants really to believe the worst of others. A friend of mine went after the self-righteous professors who, without a shred of evidence, had leaped to condemn the boys, and thus had helped to make their lives miserable. He urged them to issue a public apology, to atone for their hasty condemnation.

No apology.

Nor any apology or embarrassment from the administration. The faculty member allowed to advise the boys asked the dean to give them “time served,” after the dreadful months, so that they would not be punished to boot for having the party. No deal.

Now we come to the latest fiasco. Imagine, says he, that a young woman from Mexico has put up a Dreamer poster, and somebody on the other side of that high-strung issue has torn it down. Imagine then that somebody has placed, on the mirror of the girl’s bathroom, a cartoon of her being raped.

What would happen?

“The school would be on lock-down,” he says, and justly so. That is sexual assault. It is a crime.

Now imagine that the girl takes down the cartoon, and the perp slips a note under her door a couple of days later, saying, “Why did you take down my meme?”

Imagine that fellow RA’s on the other side of the political issue congregate outside of the girl’s dormitory room after hours—after midnight, when males are not allowed in the building. Imagine that she has to walk the gauntlet to go brush her teeth a couple of nights in a row. Imagine that campus security offers to take her from her room for her safety.

Imagine that the RA’s incensed by her poster demand that the girl be fired. Imagine that the RA’s all get together, more than seventy, to heap public abuse on her. Imagine that, after the threat of rape is known to the public, the men of some conservative group on campus sponsor a march against amnesty for undocumented aliens.

Imagine that the president of the college refuses to meet with her parents.

Can you imagine that? I can’t, either.

That is because, as our readers may know, it wasn’t a young woman, and it wasn’t a Dreamer poster. It was a young man, and it was a couple of cards on a bulletin board, defending the Catholic and natural understanding of marriage, that which prevailed all over the world until three minutes ago. It was wholly affirmative. It mentioned no sin. It made no condemnation. It quoted Pope Francis, as saying that “we should affirm the right of all children to grow up in a family with a mother and a father.” It was posted in a dormitory that is, in part, sponsored by the chaplaincy, so that the RA in question, a faithful Catholic, felt that he was doing his job. His poster was partly in response to a pro-lesbian poster—one that was filled with angry insinuations of homophobia against people who oppose the new orthodoxy—that another RA had hung up in a hall for a whole month.

So the Women’s Studies Program, whose members encouraged their students to march in support of Sexuality Whatever, do not care that they are heaping abuse on someone who is the object of a rape threat. Nor did the members of the administration who encouraged the march. Nor do the students who congregated in the young man’s hallway. At least some of them, I must believe, had to have seen the cartoon. What did they do? Laugh about it? Really? Some students must know who made the threat. What are they doing? Laughing too?

Laugh about rape? Rape is a felony crime. A threat of a felony is also a serious crime, whether or not you intend to carry it out.

But we know what the difference is, between my hypothetical case and what has actually happened. It can be explained briefly. The last time anybody in that college’s administration gave a passing thought to the welfare of boys as specifically masculine beings who are striving to become men was—was—I don’t know. The chaplains certainly do, but they aren’t in the administration.

Rape, shmape.

If there were justice here, any RA who knew about that cartoon and still acted to intimidate or humiliate the young man would be suspended. Any professor who encouraged such action should be reprimanded. The professors who piled on should hang their heads in shame. Such behavior is disgraceful and cowardly. You don’t gang up on someone who has been isolated. But who cares? He’s got the wrong politics, and he’s a he.

One last note. Some people say that Providence College is a lost cause. That is far from the truth. It can yet be recovered. Were it not so, I wouldn’t bother with it. I have many better and more cheerful things to write about. The Dominicans of the eastern province may have some ideas about what is to be done, and it is their job, not mine, to do it.

That was what I wrote. Stay tuned. More to come right away.

Catholic Bishop’s Advice to Graduates: Be “Politically Incorrect” in the Era of Safe Spaces

Good on His Excellency! It is refreshing to hear a Prelate go against the flow these days. Most of them seem to be determined to stay ahead of the mob in its rush to destruction.

I hope these graduates follow the good Bishop's advice!

From UCatholic

Bishop Morlino

Earlier this month one Catholic bishop offered his advice to recent graduates of Saint Thomas Aquinas College, urging them to be “politically incorrect” in an era where people need “safe spaces” and “cry closets.”

Bishop Robert C. Morlino of the Diocese of Madison, Wisconsin offered his advice during the 44th commencement ceremony for graduates of Saint Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, California. In his speech, he urged the graduates to be “the voice of reason heard in our culture” amid “the darkness of our world.”

Bishop Morlino spoke on the culture of most colleges in the United States and world today, calling them “places of chaos and political correctness,” but not to fear as they have been “sacramentally equipped by your baptism and confirmation and intellectually equipped by your education to be witnesses to the truth of Jesus Christ.”

Morlino said that speaking basic truths in today’s world requires courage in a world where people are obsessed with the idea of being offended at everything they disagree with.

“People today have been taught to be offended, people live to be offended. That’s why they need a ‘safe space’ and a ‘cry closet,’ and what they mean by that seems to be a space where they can be safe from hearing the voice of reason and truth. If you speak the truth, you might not be safe.”

His advice to the students on a world where people live to be offended? To be “politically incorrect, like St. John the Baptist, the patron saint of political incorrectness.” He spoke on Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical, Humane Vitae, and the basic truths it contains about the Church’s teaching on sexuality and contraception. He said the document

“Absolutely condemns artificial methods of birth control: abortion, sterilization, and contraception – there is an inseparable link between the procreative and unitive dimensions of human sexuality. The primary purpose of sexual union is the procreation of children; that’s what it’s for; and that’s why contraception is wrong — because it frustrates the purpose of sexual union.”

However, Bishop Morlino said although these telling these truths to others requires courage, and that they have to find common ground because the Church’s teachings can sound like a foreign language to most people.

“Courage is a gift infused by God. And it is also acquired and perfected through practice. If you want to be courageous in speaking the truth, you have to practice doing it precisely in those situations where it is difficult.”

Watch Bishop Morlino’s speech below:

Rerum Novarum and Seven Principles of Catholic Social Doctrine

An essay looking at the Social Magisterium through the lens of His Holiness Pope Leo XIII's Encyclical, Rerum Novarum.

From Ignatius Insight

All Catholic social doctrine is based on the dignity of the human person. Man derives both his dignity and his social nature from the fact that he is made in the image and likeness of God. God is a community of loving relationships between the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. Man similarly seeks out loving relationships in his life on earth. As man by his very nature desires to live in loving community with others and with God, Catholic social doctrine seeks to support all that facilitates this endeavor, and seeks to eliminate all that hampers this endeavor. While the Catholic Church is primarily concerned with the salvation of souls and with one's eternal destiny, it is also genuinely concerned with man's earthly existence and his temporal welfare during his pilgrimage to his eternal home.

In 1891, in response to a growing disparity of wealth in many areas of the world, Pope Leo XIII wrote an encyclical letter that addressed the rights and duties of those with capital who employed laborers and the rights and duties of laborers toward those with greater wealth who employed them. This encyclical, called Rerum Novarum (hereafter RN), laid out fundamental principles for the relationship between "capital" and "labor," and also responded to both negative and positive methods that were being employed to deal with this problem. The negative methods were stirring up revolution and hatred toward the wealthier in society with an interest in redistributing their personal property, while the positive methods encouraged the wealthy to practice generosity and compassion through setting up private organizations to assist workers and their families in times of need. Pope Leo XIII believed that human society could only be saved and healed by a Christian life and Christian institutions, because they are ordered to man's true end and true good. Following are seven principles of Catholic social doctrine that were laid out in this encyclical. They are as applicable today as they were over a hundred years ago.

The dignity of the human person, as mentioned above, comes from the fact that man is created in the image and likeness of God. Each person has God's life, law and love deeply imprinted on his very nature. God, each person has the ability and desire to both give and receive life, law and love to others. The ability of man to practice virtues in regard to God and his fellow man gives him a value much higher than any other earthly creature. His ability to practice virtues like prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance allows him to bring to fulfillment the powers and gifts that he possesses; hopefully in loving communion with God and his fellow man.

Another part of man's dignity comes from the fact that he possesses free will. This can be either a blessing or a curse as far as living with others in society. Due to free will a person can either choose to serve God and his fellow man with his gifts and abilities, or use his gifts and abilities to get others to serve him. Hence, virtues that were meant to help man reach his intended end of eternal happiness can instead become perverted into vices that hinder man in reaching this end. With this complex tension between virtue and vice, good and evil, one can see that relationships between capital and labor, or employers and employees, can be quite complicated. One only has to look at the present situation in the U.S. economy regarding taxes, health care, welfare programs, banking, etc. to see that things can get extremely convoluted. Where generosity should be the guiding principle, sometimes greed is present instead in the taking of greater compensation for one's work than it is worth. Where self-sacrifice should be present, sometimes selfishness exists in the exploitation of workers. RN points out that capital and labor need each other and that both have a crucial role to play in upholding man's dignity. Capital provides the funds to provide man with food, clothing and shelter, while labor provides the manpower to make the capital from the resources that God has provided.

Each person should be treated with respect because he or she has an eternal soul with hope of living for eternity as a son or daughter of God in God's heavenly kingdom. This is the principal aspect of man being created in the image and likeness of God-that man has an immortal soul and the capacity to enter into an eternal union with God. Some practical applications in respecting man's dignity in the workplace are as follows: 1) one should be given time off of work to worship God, thus upholding man's dignity and keeping him connected with his Creator; b) one should have periods of rest and not be expected to work long hours that prevent one from getting adequate sleep; c) one should not be required to work in unsafe conditions where he is in danger of bodily harm; d) one should not be forced to work in immoral conditions that endanger his soul; e) an employer should pay a fair wage and an employee should give a full day's work for a full day's pay; f) states should not overtax earnings; g) a worker should be allowed time to fulfill family obligations. These guidelines maintain the respect and dignity of the person.

The common good, according to RN, is truly more about making man virtuous than granting man material comforts. Pope Leo XIII believed that the highest good a society could have was virtue. For if everyone in society was virtuous, then there would be just and fair laws, and no one would be without the means to live fairly well because Christian charity would cause others to provide for those who were needy. Rightly understood, the "common good" does not mean what is most materially good for the most number of people. Rather it means the good that is shared by all, which they hold in common. It is really more the moral and spiritual good that all members of society hold in common. Thinking of the biblical image of the Mystical Body of Christ is a good analogy to aid in understanding the concept of the common good.

In the Mystical Body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:1-11; Eph. 1:18-23) each member of the body has an important role to contribute to the whole body. If each member of the body is healthy and contributing to the good of the whole, the body will be functional and accomplish that for which it was created. Members retain their diversity in a body (i.e., a brain cannot fulfill the function of a heart, which pumps oxygenated blood to the body, nor can a heart do the thinking and processing of electrical impulses, as a brain does), yet all the members form a single, united body. In the same way in civil society, those who labor at a trade provide an invaluable service to a society. They move the body of society in a sense. However, labor alone cannot keep society healthy and functional. There also needs to be those who hold and distribute capitallike bankers for instance-who provide the fuel for the workers' labor. To pit these two against each other is detrimental to both, as RN points out so well.

Pope Leo XIII states that if the needs of the common laborers are met, then they are more productive and those with capital benefit as well. He writes that to obtain profit and in the process cause another to be needy is morally wrong. Rather, when one is blessed with material wealth, one should use this to benefit as many others as possible. RN is quick to point out that no one should be forced to share his goods, however, as that would be stealing. Rather, all should be encouraged to practice the virtue of generosity. This Christian charity of almsgiving keeps the whole of society healthy and prevents those who are needy from becoming desperate and taking desperate or violent measures to provide for their needs. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (pars. 1907-1909) singles out three principal aspects of the common good: 1) respect for the human person and his rights; 2) social well-being and development; and 3) peace, which is "the stability and security of a just order."

Subsidiarity is a very important principle in Catholic social doctrine. While RNdoes not use this term specifically, it refers to the basic principle. Subsidiarity is the principle that governments should not intervene in matters that can be taken care of or resolved by families or communities. States or governments should not replace the rights and responsibilities of families. Rather, those in authority in government should see themselves in a fatherly role of guidance and protection. They should only intervene when a family or community is unable or unwilling to fulfill their rights and duties in regard to its members. Government should be at the service of the family, not vice versa.

Larger governments should never remove from families or smaller local governments what they can do for themselves, because this removes their freedom and personal initiative. However, if a person, family or small community is totally without any means of providing for itself—perhaps due to illness, injury, drought, flood, hurricane, earthquake, etc—then the larger government should assist. Pope Leo XIII strongly emphasizes that socialism is fundamentally flawed because is seeks to replace the rights and duties of parents, families and communities with the supervision of the state. This destroys the family unit, which is the basic building block of society, where the virtues that build a productive, cohesive society are taught and practiced most successfully.

Participation is the principle that every person in a society should participate in building up society, while keeping in mind God's plan for the human person individually and communally. This principle is based on the belief that every person has been given gifts and talents by God to grow in virtue themselves and to aid others in growing in virtue. By using one's gifts and abilities, one can achieve his highest good and intended end, as well as help others to do the same. God wants man to participate in the world in which he lives. He wants man to participate in a life with the Blessed Trinity and with one's fellow man. This goes back to the human person's social nature; the fact that man was created for communion, not for isolation. Participation is a duty to be fulfilled by all, whereby one contributes to the cultural, economic, political and social life of the civil community to which he belongs.

Solidarity is the principle that all members of society have a responsibility to help the other members of their family, community or country with the needs and problems that they cannot remedy themselves. This includes protecting and caring for those who are weak, injured or unable to provide for themselves for one reason or another. States have a duty to prevent abuses of basic human rights and punish abuses when families and communities are unable or unwilling to take care of abuses on their own. The formation of Christian virtues like charity and generosity will help one to see others' needs, and give him the desire to act to fulfill those needs. However, sometimes laziness or selfishness keeps one from voluntarily practicing solidarity.

The state should not interfere in family, employer, or employee rights and duties in general (this is the principle of subsidiarity). Sometimes, however, the government does need to step in to stop evil situations like child abuse, exploitation of workers, dangerous working conditions, or unfair labor practices. The state should also protect its citizens from evil aggressors through police and military protection when necessary. If the principle of solidarity were truly practiced by family, extended family, neighborhoods, and church communities in interactions with those they know who are suffering from physical or spiritual need, there would not need to be the extensive (and often poorly managed) state welfare programs that are in existence in the U.S. today. RN states that the government can never be as effective as Christian charity in helping the poor.

The right of private property is explained extensively in RN. Pope Leo XIII states that private property represents the wages that one has rightfully earned, and that one needs private property to provide for the needs of one's family. This was especially true in 1891 when many grew food, raised animals for food or sale, or produced a marketable crop on their property. Pope Leo XIII rightly predicted that if private property was stolen from rightful owners and given to a state in the name of distributing the wealth more equitably, workers and the poor would suffer the most. This redistribution of property was being encouraged by those preaching socialist revolution. Pope Leo XIII's prediction was borne out after the Russian Revolution of the early 1900s, when a massive redistribution of land led to an economic crisis and famine that was largely responsible for the starvation of millions of Russians.

Ownership of private property is beneficial for the common good. This point is emphasized in RN. This encyclical points out that if one has ownership of land or other possessions, he will work harder to take care of them than someone who has no vested interest in the property. If a person works hard to acquire ownership of land, and then works hard to maintain the land and cause it to produce something valuable, then one has a certain rightful pride in this and will take better care of it than a stranger. It also is a matter of justice that one who labors to cultivate land and make it fruitful should be able to possess that which he has invested so much of himself in.

Universal destination of goods is the principle that God made the goods of the earth for the use of all men so that all would be fed, clothed and sheltered.RN states that Christian living should lead to temporal prosperity for all; not necessarily great temporal wealth for all, but adequate food and shelter for all. In order for this to be a reality, man must share the goods of the earth with all. Property rights and the right of free trade are only instruments for respecting the greater principle of the universal destination of goods. For example, private property can be taxed to assist in providing goods and services that are at the service of all, like police protection, the building of roads and public libraries, for example.

The fundamental principles of Catholic social doctrine that are set out in Rerum Novarum are as important today as they were in 1891. Two more social encyclicals have been written [editor's note: prior to when this essay was written; Benedict XVI's social encyclical Caritas in veritate, was presented in 2009] to expound on these principles, and both were written in anniversary years of this important encyclical.

In 1931, Pope Pius XI wrote Quadragesimo Anno (On Social Reconstruction) and in 1991, Pope John Paul II wrote Centesimus Annus. A reading of these three encyclicals can give one an important foundation for knowing what each person's rights and responsibilities are as a member of society. It can also assist those who set government and workplace policies to know the best ways to serve the ultimate good of all while respecting the dignity of each and every human person. As RN points out, socialism, which promotes class warfare between the wealthy and the poor, is never a good answer to social and economic problems. Neither is unbridled capitalism that promotes materialism and greed.

Christian social doctrine and Christian morality are the best answers to the problems of human society that beset man today. This is because they keep greed and power-mongering in check by inspiring generosity and a spirit of service to the less fortunate. Christian life discourages vice and encourages virtue. Christianity discourages vices like laziness, lust and pride, which can destroy both large and small incomes, ruin families and end hopes of eternal beatitude. Christianity encourages virtues like prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance, which can help build a society where there is hope of both temporal well-being and eternal happiness. 

IN LUMINE FIDEI: 2 JUNE – SAINTS MARCELLINUS, PETER AND ERASMUS (Ma...

IN LUMINE FIDEI: 2 JUNE – SAINTS MARCELLINUS, PETER AND ERASMUS (Ma...: During the reign of Diocletian the exorcist Peter was imprisoned in Rome by the judge Serenus because he confessed the Christian faith. H...

2 June, A Chesterton Calendar

JUNE 2ND

Life is a thing too glorious to be enjoyed.

‘George Bernard Shaw.’

Chesterton, G. K.. The G. K. Chesterton Collection [50 Books] (Kindle Locations 44276-44277). Catholic Way Publishing. Kindle Edition.

3 June, The Roman Martyrology

ante diem iii Nonas Junias

On the morrow we keep the feast 

The holy Virgin Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi, of the Order of Carmelites, famous for her holy life, of whom mention is made upon the 25th day of the month of May. 
June 3rd anno Domini 2018 The 19th Day of the Moon were born into the better life: At Arezzo, in Tuscany, the holy brethren Pergentinus and Laurentinus, both martyrs. They were boys, who, in the persecution under Decius, after bearing horrid torments and showing forth great works of power, were slain by the sword under the President Tiburtius. 
At Constantinople, the holy martyr Lucillian and his four sons, Claud, Hypatius, Paul, and Denis. Lucillian, before he became a Christian, had been a priest of idols. All the five, after they had been put to various tortures, were cast into a furnace, but rain put out the fire, and they all escaped unhurt. Then Lucillian was crucified, and the children were beheaded, and so under Silvanus the President they finished their testimony. 
At the same place, the holy Virgin and martyr Paula, who was arrested while she was gathering up the blood of the aforesaid martyrs. She was beaten with rods, and cast into the fire, but was delivered, and at last beheaded at the same place where the holy Lucillian had been crucified. 
At Cordova, in Spain, the blessed monk Isaac, who, [in the year 851,] was slain with the sword, [by the Muslims,] for Christ's faith's sake. 
At Carthage, the holy Priest Caecilius, who brought holy Cyprian to believe in Christ. 
In the country of Orleans, [in the year 565,] the holy Confessor Liphard the Priest. 
At Lucca, in Tuscany, [in the year 1051,] the holy Confessor Davin, [the Armenian pilgrim.] 
At Paris, the holy Queen Clotilde, at whose entreaties her husband, King Clovis, accepted the faith of Christ. 
At Anagni, the holy Virgin Oliva. 
V. And elsewhere many other holy martyrs, confessors, and holy virgins.
R. Thanks be to God.

Memes of the Day