Omaha, Nebraska – I departed home yesterday for my latest missionary tour. About 70 miles northeast of Denver, a prairie fire swept across the road just before Wiggins, Colorado. After sitting for 15 minutes in the backed-up traffic, my GPS announced that the road ahead was now closed. Taking a gander at the median, it looked doable, so I pulled across it figuring my GPS would come up with an alternate route. Sure enough, after taking me through five miles of dirt road, it delivered me to the secondary road I had walked on as I approached Denver over 12 years ago on my pilgrimage. I thought, wow, if I went through a time warp that took me back, I might see my younger (and skinnier) self walking towards me. The only major thing I went by that I had a vivid memory of before getting back on I-76 past the fire was a huge sheep lot. A little over 12 years ago it took me the better part of a day to get past the smothering, pungent smell of the thing. I understood then why so many Bishops are not that anxious to get the smell of the sheep on them. So much for my brief trip down memory lane.

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Shortly after I arrived in Denver, the late Fr. Regis Scanlon became a dear friend. He was not a man given to mysticism. We worked together on a few very practical projects. About a year after I got here, the story of my mystical experiences went viral. Fr. Regis, with a big grin, told me he got asked about me six or seven times a day – and always said the same thing: “I don’t know about his prophecies, but he’s not nuts!” A few years before he died Fr. Regis did start delving into some overtly mystical events – particularly the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima, which he wrote about in several publications.

One of the pleasing aspects of my work is that I have chatted with a host of Priests throughout the country who, having previously avoided all discussions of mysticism, enjoy exploring the subject with me. I think the phenomenon is similar to when I first ran a statewide Republican primary for a Senate seat. Everybody told me that the establishment, including all county chairmen, were the committed enemies of conservatives and could not be reasoned with. While keeping that in mind, I did sustained outreach anyway. It turned out that, at the county chairman level, at least, most were not enemies at all. In fact, quite a few of them relished the meaning that principled initiatives added to the daily grind of wheeling and dealing. They just were not fans of the sort of suicide missions most conservatives insist on instead of actual campaigns. With carefully crafted, coherent campaign plans that were vigorously prosecuted, I had a LOT of conservatives jumping on board – along with more than a few RINOS. Turns out that not being a wild-eyed nut opens a lot of doors with people who are interested, but don’t want to be smeared as a fanatic.

Six or seven years ago, a very well-known Priest, who is not given to mysticism, was giving me a ride back to my hotel after an event. We were discussing the rapidly degenerating culture we inhabit. I said, at one point, that when the men in a society go bad it is terrible, but that when the women in a society go bad, it is downright horrifying. The Priest turned to me and animatedly exclaimed that he had been wondering for some time if the spirit of Jezebel had been unleashed upon us. We had a lively, speculative conversation about how things could have gotten so culturally sick so quickly. In the years since then, I have often thought of that talk. The Old Testament Jezebel turned her followers away from worship of the one God, Yahweh. She promoted worship of Baal and Asherah. Baal was a sort of weather God who brought storms, lightning and destruction. Mainly, his followers prayed that he would pass them by. Asherah was a hypersexualized goddess or cultic object which worshipped trees – in part, by all manner of fornication and perversion. The hypersexuality, which treated children as an unwelcome nuisance, was at the edge of overt child sacrifice. Serial perversion, itself, became a substitute for meaning – and of course, welcomed in a progressive storm of destruction. Of all the demons running rampant in our world, I have come to think the spirit of Jezebel is, indeed, prominent among them.

Even among the most secularized people there is a profound longing for meaning in life. It is, perhaps, the most profound of all longings. St. Augustine, who spent his young adulthood in lechery and ambition said (and I paraphrase) “There is a hole in our hearts that only God can fill and make whole – and we are restless until we rest in Him.” Those who don’t find their meaning in God adopt cheap – and sometimes horrifying – substitutes in their restless effort to fill that hole. In our time, the restless search for power and dominance over others is the de facto substitute. But it can be much worse. Witness the Manson Family.

The Manson Family was comprised, mainly of young girls in their teens into their 20s who were completely devoted to Charles Manson – so devoted that they brutally murdered strangers at his command and rejoiced in the savagery. The most murderous of these women were girls who, just a few years earlier, had literally been church choirgirls, Campfire Girls, and members of their high school homecoming courts.

I have long been fascinated by – and study – severely aberrant behavior. I read people pretty well and pretty quickly. But the seriously aberrant mystify me, particularly sadistic serial killers. I cannot get to the heart of them, but I try to see how they impact those around them. In the case of the Manson girls, there was always some serious breach with their families during adolescence. Do not think that this was always – or even usually – the parents’ fault. Much of it was youthful rebellion that led to a sort of nomadic wandering, both in the streets and in the restless search for meaning. The vast emptiness in their hearts that was only being made bigger by promiscuity, drugs, and alcohol came to an end for many when they met and began following Manson. Their agonized search for meaning showed, as many claimed to believe he was Jesus Christ. What an absurdity! They knew enough to know that Christ is the exemplar of the good, but devoted themselves so mindlessly to a man who validated their basest appetites that they happily committed savage murders for him. So strong is our need for meaning and our capacity for self-delusion that we can embrace even the most raw savagery and justify it to try to fill that hole.

Polls consistently show that single women of child-bearing age rate the availability of abortion as their greatest need. That got me to thinking of the Manson girls. What vicious turn has our culture taken when the maternal instinct is superseded by a homicidal instinct? Yet despite the reality that such single women have almost universal access to abortion in the first trimester, they constitute one of the most miserable, angry, unfulfilled cohorts in human history. Why is that?

The devil has unleashed one of his most brilliant gambits. All the modern cultural leaders insist that a woman finds her highest dignity by imitating men. Choosing to be a homemaker is greeted with a sneer. It is only in the job market that women can find dignity and worth, the cultural arbiters say. Alas, when they arrive women find what men have long known: the task of the modern day hunter/gatherer is not particularly glamorous. It is a scramble and a grind. The cultural gatekeepers say that women must imitate the worst qualities of the worst men – to be sleazy and promiscuous without consequence – to be truly equal. And they find, as many men have over the ages, that it is a formula for unfulfilled misery. I once sat and comforted a man I worked with – a cheerful Don Juan, macho man who had often mocked me for my more traditional ways (even when sexually active, I was never promiscuous). He had privately confessed to me that he was empty, bereft of love and companionship – and miserable. He desperately wanted to know how to build a real life. He was crying for much of our talk. I figuratively held his hand for weeks as he tried to embark on building a life that was previously alien to him, but that he desperately wanted. To everyone else, he was still the slick Lothario. All other folks saw was that he was off his game – not chasing after everything in a skirt. Always, what starts as irresponsible fun, if pursued to its logical end, leads to desperate, unremitting misery. And our cultural arbiters are telling young women that this dead end is the path of “dignity and autonomy.”

The invasion into women’s sports by men pretending to be women has dramatically put the lie to fantasies of “gurl power,” with cinematic 110-lb. waifs tossing around 220-lb. men like rag dolls. Physically speaking, women ARE the weaker sex. So what? Why is biological reality such an offense? Women are NOT the dumber sex. For millennia the sexes have been complementary. Yes, there have been societies where men abused their superior physical strength to oppress women. There still are – primarily in Islamic countries. Paradoxically, most of the gurl power brigades are allies with these countries that still oppress women. In the English-speaking world, it is primarily Great Britain that was the most misogynist – prompting philosopher John Stuart Mill to publish a treatise denouncing it in 1869. In America, historically, the differences between men and women have been used primarily as an efficient division of labor rather than rank oppression. Even what is regarded as the most patriarchal period and section of American history, the antebellum south, turns out to be largely a matriarchal society when studied closely. Yes, the men conquered the land and dominated politics, but the women ruled the home with an iron fist (though in a delightfully velvet glove). Traditional southern women are past masters at making men think they are in charge while exercising the final word.

Interestingly, current polling shows 56 percent of married women supporting Donald Trump while 68 percent of single women support Kamala Harris. The left says that is because married women just do what their husbands tell them to do. Really?! That shows how little leftists know – or care – about family life. The truth is that, in a healthy relationship there is an ebb and flow, a give and take, in a real partnership. It is immensely rewarding and brings a great sense of security. You do not have to grapple with your toughest sorrows, your greatest challenges and your quiet fears alone. Are there misogynists out there. Yes, there are. But there are also misandrists (haters of men) – and there are more of them today than there are misogynists. Both are pathologies that make happiness and fulfillment nearly impossible. Yet while misogyny is rightly denounced, the cultural arbiters encourage misandry as the key to feminine empowerment. The term, itself, is a deception. Empowerment assumes victimhood – and makes every slight, every misunderstanding, every normal disagreement into victimization. No one can live like that. I knew real survivors – survivors of the holocaust and of Soviet purges. One woman who worked with me saw her husband and her son murdered in front of her by Soviet agents in Hungary. She, like every other genuine survivor I ever knew, fought with vigor and resolve against actual oppression, but refused to hate. I was the manager of a hotel in which the woman I speak was a housekeeping supervisor. All the girls in housekeeping sought her counsel and confided in her because of her wisdom and kindness. None of them knew of her tragic history. She only told me because of a deep conversation we had one day (people tell me stuff. I pray it is because they sense I am a safe repository for their deepest sorrows and fears) and she sought – and got – my pledge not to tell anyone about it. Those who have survived real hardship and victimization tend to be marked with a serene largeness of spirit, not a shrieking sense of ever-unfulfilled entitlement…and real gratitude for small things.

I think modern cultural arbiters have set suggestible women on a self-fulfilling death spiral of despair and anger. The very things these arbiters say will empower their victims (and yes, women who have bought into this toxic misandry are victims – just not the way they think they are) are what leads them to bitter self-destruction. And, Lord, we need genuinely strong women! If men, at their best, are the conquerors of the land and providers women, at their best, determine and are keepers of the culture. The love of a good, strong woman is what motivates a man to give his all to conquer the wilderness and build a place for his family. The love of a good, strong man is what motivates a woman to make a joyful home and culture. Paradoxically, perhaps, it is not when we are looking inward to determine how we should be served that we find joy and fulfillment: it is when we are looking outward to see how we can serve that joy, fulfillment, and meaning take up residence in our hearts.

As we navigate the treacherous waters of this great cultural storm that has overtaken us we must, indeed, fight against the assaults the modern-day visigoths bring against us. But we must be aware that, while much of the screeching is, indeed, a hostile assault on the entire concept of the family, some of it is the misdirected anguished cry of people searching for meaning. We must offer resistance to depravity while also offering the hope of a better way. I have often said that nine times out of ten a cynic is just a disillusioned idealist looking for a reason to believe. It is our duty, under God, to be that reason while simultaneously battling all efforts to kill that hope.

The spirit of Jezebel is warring throughout the world, particularly against the very women who create and sustain the culture. Let us resolve together to crush the death spiral of despair this dark spirit brings. We must exorcise this demonic spirit that is wreaking so much havoc against us all. (Why is a herd of swine never handy when you need it?)

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Beckita and a few others have suggested that I need to revisit my warnings of a decade ago about how, in extreme circumstances and dire emergencies, we must consider doing things we would otherwise never consider in order to survive and revive the culture. Below I copy an answer I gave Beckita in an email on the subject:

“I have been edging up to and even dancing around this topic a bit already. Actually, it is the single biggest holdup to finishing the manual. I am trying to calibrate this just right. We may literally have to form battalions and such. I want to have the mechanisms in place to do that quickly without prodding for it. We know that there are many overly excitable sorts out there who will hear a dog whistle at even the plainest instructions and jump the gun. And there are others who so desperately cling to normalcy bias that they will struggle to respond when doom is at their doorstep. I feel kind of like Mel Gibson in the first major battle in Braveheart where he had designed very long pikes and was telling his people, while the English were charging, “Hold. Hold….hold!” If they lifted the pikes too soon the English would see the gambit and be able to avoid them. If they waited too long, they would be overrun by the English calvary and their pikes splintered. I have seldom had a situation where timing was so critical to everything.”

I do not expect this election to bring resolution, but decisive confrontation. It is the fundamental reality we face in the immediate future. How we handle that will be dispositive in how – and how effectively – we get back to a culture that brings life rather than a warring, disjointed culture of despair and darkness.

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A couple of years ago I unleashed a full-throated blast at Madison, Wisconsin Bishop Donald Hying. It was over what I considered the entirely political (but thankfully, mercifully brief) suppression of Fr. Richard Heilman. I am not an acolyte of the nonsense that one must never criticize a Bishop or Priest. But I also am a big advocate of the need to recognize good, solid work.

Bishop Hying was the first Bishop I saw to publicly and clearly denounce the disgusting, blasphemous parody of the Last Supper opening to the Paris Olympics. In the month or so since then, I have talked to several friends and allies in Wisconsin who have told me, independently, of how Bishop Hying has quietly taken the lead in supporting and advocating for several important orthodox initiatives.

He probably doesn’t care for me anymore than he did when I took the shot, but my regard for Bishop Hying has gone up significantly these last few months. He has been a courageous and great defender of the faith – both publicly and privately. I wanted you to know.

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As I hit the road, so begins our fall fundraising campaign. Please go to CORAC to see all we do and offer. We don’t charge for much of anything, including my visits with and talks to local chapters. But there are expenses…and as we gear up to expand and pay for the manual and administration of go forth teams, we will have a lot of new expenses. Though we will charge for hard copies of the manual (you will be able to download it in pdf form for free) we still have to pay in advance for a lot of copies. I know it is tough all over in this economy…but if you haven’t given lately and you can, would you send the most generous contribution you are able to today? A lot of good people have been selflessly doing a lot of good work these last three years. Now it looks like the rubber is about to meet the road. We need your help now more than ever.

If communication goes out for any length of time, meet outside your local Church at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Tell friends at Church now in case you can’t then. CORAC teams will be out looking for people to gather in and work with.

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