“Wait on the Lord,
Be of good courage and He will strengthen your heart,
Wait, I say, on the Lord – Psalm 27
A few people have asked me why I have written so little about Pope Leo XIV. I operate under the theory that the head of any large organization, if he is shrewd, will spend his first year to year and a half showing the disparate members of that organization that he means them no serious harm. I call it my “don’t spook the horses” theorem. This is particularly true if the organization is already riven with dissension. Certainly, the Catholic Church and its hierarchy qualify under that standard. Most lay Catholics and many Bishops want to live the Gospel as well and authentically as they can. Yet a substantial cohort of Bishops and activists are determined to overthrow authentic Catholic doctrine and the words of Christ to conform themselves to current cultural enthusiasms. Finally, a substantial cohort of people want the consolation of ritual without being bothered to live the commands of Christ.
I was chatting with a high Church authority this week who is very orthodox who understood my point, but thought there are some abuses which are just plain wrong and need to be corrected forthwith. He is, of course, right. But I pointed out that when any group tries to abruptly impose its program you are sure to get serious backlash, using the Biden administration and its push for hard left authoritarianism, as an example. People have to first get comfortable and emotionally accept the legitimacy of a new leader before that leader can successfully start pushing the envelope. My friend noted that re-establishing the fundamentals of the faith IS the needed pushback now. In essence, we are agreed on substance but differ on method. He did not use Trump’s hard pushback against leftist supremacy as a successful example of his preferred method – but he certainly could have.
I am certainly aware of some of the suspect appointments Pope Leo has made of Bishops who are heterodox (to say the least). I get annoyed when he talks of political matters as if they were fundamentals of the faith. No matter who tells me that I must take the climate change hoax seriously, I will not. As far as the climate goes, we are janitors, not architects. One would think that, after the massive failure of the Bishops’ collective response to the Covid nonsense, leaving altars across the globe desolate, they would have a little more humility about their lack of authority over temporal things and more vigor in teaching the fundamentals of the faith and preaching for salvation. But here we are.
I also know that Pope Leo has made it very clear that Jesus Christ is – and must be – at the center of our faith. This month Cardinal Raymond Burke will celebrate the traditional Latin Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica with the approval of Pope Leo. It seems to me that the Pope has approved of synodality as a means of authentically listening to the faithful, but that it can never replace the hierarchical structure Christ appointed to govern His Church. My friend is not sure of this point, though he is hopeful I am right. (So am I.)
The point is that both those who want a Church that follows Christ’s teachings and those who want to remake the Church in the world’s image have some things they can point to. Obviously, I am among the former – but I do not think we will know what manner of Pope Leo is for another year. Is he soothing the radical dissidents before a return to the Magisterium or is he soothing people like me before yet another hard left, political turn? I don’t know. But I do know that Christ’s Church will not fall. Whether this Pope will lead a return to the fullness of the faith or is yet another stumbling block on the way to it is yet to be determined.
The first two and a half years of his papacy, I was quite the apologist for Pope Francis. I came to think him to be the worst Pope the Church has had in its entire history. I want to believe a Pope is centered in Christ. But I won’t jump near as quickly as I once would have. Neither will I be black-pilled, believing every suspect decision is an indicator of rebellion from Christ.
As I finish this, I see that Pope Leo has made a stumbling, incoherent defense of Chicago Cardinal Blaise Cupich’s effort to give radical pro-abortion Senator Dick Durbin a Catholic Achievement Award. For the moment, I choose to believe that Pope Leo was just caught off guard by a question he had not seriously considered before. If, indeed, he believes that murdering children is the same as refusing entry to illegal aliens, our long, global, nightmare is not yet over. I choose to hope for the best until I am proven wrong.
St. Paul was rightly honored by the Church for his many contributions to the faith. He was given no honors at all while he was still Saul, persecuting the Church and killing the faithful.
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I was infuriated by the reaction of some supposedly conservative officials and commentators to the brief suspension of Jimmy Kimmel from ABC. After Kimmel falsely intimated that Charlie Kirk’s assassin was actually MAGA, FCC head Brendan Carr said that ABC could act or the FCC might open an investigation. Several “conservatives,” including Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and more than a few commentators, said the FCC Commissioner should not be trying to suppress free speech.
I expect this sort of dishonest dissembling from Democrats: the truth is not in them. But conservatives should live to a higher standard. When Kimmel said the assassin was MAGA, it was well-known that the assassin was actually a far-left activist in a relationship with a transgender, as confirmed by every law enforcement agency involved. It is a violation of FCC regulations for a broadcast outlet to knowingly give false information about a crime. Carr should not have threatened action; he should have taken action and then revoked it if ABC corrected the problem. That, actually, is his duty under the law.
I am sick to death of “conservatives” who argue we must not enforce the law if it will provoke a hissy fit from the left but don’t defend conservative laymen from persecution for having legitimate, lawful, conservative opinions.
Did you know that every U.S. Senator knew almost from the start that the Russian collusion hoax was just that – a hoax? They did. Because of laws on revealing classified information, every single Republican Senator chose to let the hoax against Donald Trump proceed rather than tell the truth and take the consequences while sparing the country this toxic, debilitating lie for almost three years. There were no “profiles in courage” among Republican Senators during that hoax. They knew – and refused to reveal their knowledge for fear it might cost them their influence. Not near as bad as Democrats who knowingly perpetrated the lie, but not much of a defense against the tyrannical ambitions of the left.
I pray that the supposed defenders of the republic will find their footing, but right now they disgust me.
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The federal government is supposedly “shut down” today – and we still have several orders of magnitude more government than the founders of the republic said it was safe for a free people to have. I am not amused.
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Some people seem to think that the Christian concept of forgiving evil-doers must be synonymous with enabling that evil. It is not. Forgiving an evil-doer leaves room for him to seek redemption. It does not – and cannot – relieve him of consequences. If it does, it is just a program to compound evil and violence throughout our culture. That’s a leftist ideal, not a conservative or Christian one.
Vengeance is, indeed, the Lord’s. Justice is the duty of all of us. Enabling evil is to betray those of genuine honor. While vengeance is God’s, I believe we all have a duty to be the instruments to deliver His justice.
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The Blood of Christ has not gone anemic. If we refuse to be vigorous in defense of honor, liberty, and justice, we are enablers of society’s collapse into nihilism and evil. We had best think long and hard about that rather than just speaking in easy platitudes.
I have said repeatedly that the power of evil has been broken – and I mean it. I have also said that does not mean that the battle is over, but rather that the final battle with evil has finally begun. The question now is whether we have the fortitude and vigor to prevail when God, Himself, has largely cleared the field. Evil is shriekingly loud and vigorously active now that its power is broken. We will not defeat it by timidly deferring to its sensibilities.
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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The Corps of Renewal and Charity (CORAC)
18208 Preston Rd., Ste. D9-552
Dallas, Texas 75252
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