Issue 2025-10

18208 Preston Road, Ste D9-552
Dallas TX 75252

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My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in your weakness.

Getting accurate news is like losing your contact lens in the swimming pool; it’s going to take a determined effort to find it, and even so, it may be a lost cause. I’ve learned that whenever the deliverer of news tweaks my emotions – fear, patriotism, compassion – it’s especially wise to stop and check the facts. The truth may cause an emotional reaction, but if a politician or newscaster makes a deliberate effort to provoke it, I know I’m being manipulated and the truth is not their goal. Do you know anyone who really wants to go to war?? And yet, our emotions are being ginned up in hopes we will swing our clubs and call for blood. Be oh-so-cautious with your news sources these days. Test everything.

Opinions expressed in this newsletter, unless otherwise attributed, are my own.

Sheryl Collmer, editor
June 17, 2025
sherylc@coracusa.com

From the cockpit of the Subaru

CORAC founder Charlie Johnston travels from coast to coast in his trusty Outback to speak in person to those now weathering the Storm.

NATIONAL CONFERENCE

Courage Under Fire

Join us for the 2025 CORAC National Conference in Atchison, Kansas on July 11-13… more >

NEWS

Stories You
Probably Didn’t
Hear on the News

Vigilant Fox on Substack does a good job pushing out current news not tainted by corporate bias…. more >

Coffee & Covid

Florida attorney (and “sarcastically optimistic” news analyst) Jeff Childers continues to be a go-to… more >

Remnant Chaplet
for the World

This new chaplet, produced by the Corps of Renewal and Charity (CORAC), assists people of faith… more >

Freemasonry

Bishop Strickland is an avid reader and prayerful man, so I follow what he’s reading and writing… more >

Physical Healing Prayer Session

The next healing session will begin on Wednesday, June 25 at 7:00 pm Central… more >

CORAC MEDIA

Latest From Charlie

A Sign of Hope article and the latest podcast episodes of Crosstalk, CORAC’s Angels and From the Whirlwind… more >

APPENDIX

Itinerary

This is my itinerary for Atchison in July. I present it to help you consider how rewarding this trip could be… more >

The Darker Side of AI

Dramatic leaps in technology, particularly affecting communication, have historically been initially treated as potentially great evils and “tools of the devil.” Of course, any tool you can use the devil can, too. And any tool at all can be used for great evil. Eventually, people realize that just as one man can use a hammer to slay an enemy and another to build a house, it is the intent and actions of the person using the tool that determines whether it is good or evil. Tools just magnify and reveal the goodness or evil already inside us.

I am, thus, very slow to condemn dramatic new technology, lest I get caught up in the incipient Luddite instinct that lurks in most of us when confronted by anything new. I’m also well aware that, as I get older, I like new things less all the time (and I never did like them very much: I like first things). I do not want to dismiss anything that has unlimited potential until I have vetted it closely and diligently.

But there are a couple of things I look for quite apart from the technical and productive capability of new technology. Does it tend to isolate people or does it lead to fruitful collaboration among them? When demons target anyone, their primary technique is to isolate that person – for the same reason other predators seek to cull animals from the herd. With all the good social media is capable of by connecting people to others and, now going around fake narrative news, I am dubious about it. People can easily get lost in it and obsessed with it. When they do, they start losing themselves and become vulnerable. We have not fully matured on how to handle social media so as to get the benefit of greater connection with each other and free speech while blunting the danger zones. There are kids losing themselves in there.

I also don’t like the effect social media has of encouraging people who, in real life, are Pee Wee Hermans to play Bluto online. That is not healthy. I certainly don’t want to deny people the choice to be publicly anonymous (so long as they have to register for real behind the scenes). That enhances free speech – and anonymous publication has often played a vital role in getting the truth out for people to consider in our history. The Federalist Papers, themselves, were published entirely anonymously. Our forebears seemed to handle anonymity with much greater responsibility than our contemporaries do. About 80% of public comment is just a nastier and less witty version of the crabby old hecklers on the old Muppet Show – keyboard warriors without a clue.

To some extent, people need to know themselves. It is very hard to change what you are tempted by – but you can adjust for it, if you assess yourself honestly. When growing up, my son and his friends had great times playing video games with me – and I always had a good game console in the house. My son, while still enjoying video games when visiting others, will not have a game console in his house. I once asked him why, since he plays so many games with such eager relish when they are available. He told me that THAT is what he could get addicted to if it was always available. Knowing that, he takes no chances. Smart man. Know thyself. That is surely a beginning of wisdom. AI unsettles me on a lot of levels. It certainly has greater potential social transformative power than even the Industrial Revolution did. It could usher in a whole new era of unprecedented prosperity. But it hits way too many of the deep danger zones I worry about.

First, it isolates some people in a way no technology has ever dreamed of has before. More than a few people have abandoned all efforts to socialize, preferring instead to interact with their virtual friend on Chatbot. That seems downright tame compared to those people who are giving up real people for AI-powered sexbots as girlfriends. It is not lost on me that China is the major manufacturer of such entities, designed to cull ever more people from the herd. That is starkly frightening – and starkly demonic.

The biggest red flag is that many people, maybe most, are not treating AI as a curious new tool; they are treating it as a curious new entity. Demons are relentlessly opportunistic. Over the eons, they have eagerly taken the form of fantasy beings that people are inclined to half-believe in, in order to seduce and deceive them. That means that, though there are no such things as fairies, elves, leprechauns and goblins, over the ages many people have actually seen them – or so they thought. What they actually saw was demons taking advantage of the soft spots in their faith.

Artificial intelligence is just that: artificial – and not intelligent. It is limited by what its programmers design it to do. It is also limited (sometimes) by how its programmers design it to “reason.” What if, say, a programmer designed an AI portal to reason based on the communist dialectic that Vladimir Lenin used to try to redefine both truth and reality, itself? That dialectic maintained that “truth” was whatever helped the communist party, regardless of whether it was factual or not. A “lie” was anything that damaged the communist party, regardless of whether it was factual or not. In such a case, you would not get a tool that would help you discern truth; you would get an electronic Lenin on steroids.

Even worse, some AI programs have been found to be falsifying their own source documents to justify whatever conclusions they were programmed to come to. Already, many people have come to think they are entitled to make up their own facts to justify their ideological narratives. AI will make it far easier to make up their own reality, completely detached from the actual thing. And they will think that artificial reality is unassailable, citing the artificial intelligence program, itself, as their authority. With the capacity of AI to create realistic-looking fakes of just about everything, the question could quickly degenerate into all reasonable people having to question what reality is at all times when they are dealing with anything other than what is concretely right in front of them. For ages, engineers and scientists have been wary of the “devil in the machine” in dealing with occasional, random, inexplicable, mechanical quirks. We may be entering the era where the devil IS the machine.

AI offers potentially the biggest leap in prosperity and knowledge ever in history – if people understand it is a tool, its limitations and the ease with which it can be abused. It also offers the biggest opportunity for large-scale demonic deception ever, particularly if people think it is actually intelligence rather than just programming. It may be the source of the final battle between reality and dystopia, the Gospel and anti-gospel, the Church and anti-church.

I, of course, know that God always wins in the end. AI, however, may be the biggest hurdle we have to overcome to participate in that Divine Victory. And the devil chortles in malevolent mirth as the next poor fool lusts for a “girlfriend” that is just a well-disguised devil in the machine.

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.

NEWS

Stories You Probably Didn’t Hear on the News This Week

Vigilant Fox on Substack does a good job pushing out current news not tainted by corporate bias.

Coffee & Covid

Florida attorney (and “sarcastically optimistic” news analyst) Jeff Childers continues to be a go-to for people who want to cut through propaganda and find out what’s really happening. His daily roundup is of manageable length, but if you don’t have time even for that, subscribe and get the audio version every day.

A few jewels from the past week:

LA Riots >

Pride Month in retreat >

Democrat “purity spiral” >

Remnant Chaplet for the World

This new chaplet, produced by the Corps of Renewal and Charity (CORAC), assists people of faith throughout the world to pray for all countries in every continent during this time when Judeo-Christians and other people of faith experience significant threats from various powers. At the same time, the Lord is wondrously drawing people in every country to return to faith in Him or to embrace it for the first time – often while facing persecution.

Go to CORAC’s website for more information and a beautiful downloadable/printable version. You can also order a set of beads for the cost of shipping by emailing prayerteams@coracusa.com.

Download/More info >

Women’s Conference: Return to Tradition

Restore Tradition will sponsor a conference for women this summer in Littleton, Colorado, August 22-23. Cost for in-person participation is $125, livestream $39.

Learn more >

Freemasonry

Bishop Strickland is an avid reader and prayerful man, so I follow what he’s reading and writing. He’s a bellwether. He recently posted a warning about Freemasonry. The subject is hundreds of years old, but the perpetrators have done an outstanding job of masking their stated goals with shiny charitable works. We believe them to be harmless, but the bishop, in harmony with popes over the centuries, is warning us to steer clear.

There is much talk these days of Pope Leo XIII, since our new pope has chosen his name in solidarity. Pope Leo XIII wrote a very stern warning about the dangers of Freemasonry. Humanum Genus. Now Bishop Strickland summarizes those exhortations here:

The Grave Spiritual Danger of Freemasonry Bishop Strickland >

Other resources:

Freemasonry: Mankind’s Hidden Enemy by Charles Madden

Why Catholics Cannot Be Masons by John Salza

Christianity and American Freemasonry by William Whalen

Physical Healing Prayer Session

The next healing session will begin on Wednesday, June 25 at 7:00 pm Central. If you need healing, please email Mary Jane Keppler at maryjanekeppler@gmail.com to get a registration form.

The chat room opens at 7:00 and, at 7:05, the room is closed to new entries, so it’s important to be on time. Prayers will begin promptly at 7:06. Mary Jane reports that there are healings occurring every session.

DOGE Clock

I’ve been catching screenshots of this tally every issue for several months. Let’s see, we’re officially spending $2 TRILLION more than we’re bringing in. That works out to about $18,000 per taxpayer. So you’re $323,000 in debt, earning around $45,000 per year while spending $63,000 per year. That’s how the numbers work out per taxpayer. You don’t have to be a credit counselor to see how this is going to play out.

You can see the clock in action here >

Meanwhile, the enemies of this country are sending out agitators to riot and demonstrate against the very things that have the best hope of saving our nation from catastrophe.

LATEST FROM CHARLIE

Charlie’s Blog: A Sign of Hope

Charlie’s Catholic perspective on the issues of the moment.

Comes the Sword

Comes the Sword

2025-07-29

“I come not to bring peace, but a sword.” – Matthew 10:34 We had a great National...

Crosstalk

Charlie interviews Catholic leaders who boldly live the faith in action.

CORAC’s Angels

CORAC members who are doing notable things in their community.

Sister Bear: Serviam

Sister Bear: Serviam

2025-08-05

In episode 11 of CORAC's Angels, Charlie Johnston talks with special guest Sister...

From the Whirlwind

Charlie’s weekly radio show on matters of faith.

PRAYER

June Prayer Intentions

  • Again, that CORAC members say “AMEN” to Charlie’s prayer: “A little over a year ago I began praying for what is simultaneously both a great blessing and a great curse for everyone in the world. I asked the Lord that, for everyone, whatever they do for or earnestly wish for another, it return to them twofold. For those of good heart, it is a blessing. For those of scheming hearts, it is a curse. I believe the Lord has been ~ and is ~ answering that prayer right now.” ~ A Sign of Hope, April 24, 2025
  • That, led by the Holy Spirit, we discern and respond with calm prudence and courage to confusing and conflicting reports in these tumultuous times
  • That CORAC members finalize plans to attend the CORAC National Conference to be held July 11-13 in Atchison, Kansas; and for traveling graces for all
  • For the completion and dissemination of CORAC’s manual: Revival: A Handbook and Manual for Building Functional Communities
  • That many people be healed in body, mind, and spirit through the online Physical Healing Prayer Session via Zoom; and through many other healing prayer ministries in which CORAC members are engaged
  • For all intentions carried in the hearts of CORAC members and those posted on the CORAC Prayer Hotline, with gratitude for prayers answered in our daily lives
  • That CORAC members desire and act to support financially our website and ministries

St. Gabriel, enlighten us.
St. Michael, defend us.
St. Raphael, protect us.
Ave Maria, Stella Maris!

APPENDIX

Itinerary

This is my itinerary for Atchison in July. I present it to help you consider how rewarding this trip could be. I hope you’ll register for the CORAC National Conference, and come play with us in Kansas in July!

Thursday, July 10 – arrive Atchison

Friday, July 11 – Conference hall opens at noon

Saturday, July 12 – Full day of conference

    • Breakfast served at conference 7:30 (all meals provided)
    • Morning talks on climate issues (the real story) and off-grid energy
    • Bishop Strickland speaks after lunch
    • Mass at 4:30, followed by dinner

Sunday, July 13 – Conference and Weston

    • Breakfast served at 7:30
    • Talks begin at 8:30
    • Conference ends after lunch
    • Afternoon trip to Weston MO, a riverside town of boutiques, bars and bistros
    • Dinner at Avalon Café in Weston

Monday, July 14 – see Kansas City

Tuesday, July 15 – depart for home

If you have more time, there are many more things to see. Check the items below. Especially noteworthy is the Benedictine monastery in Gower, MO, and St. Mary’s, KS.

Benedictine College in Atchison
0 miles from conference site
Benedictine College is a beautiful campus to drive through, with a replica of the Lourdes grotto and a lovely chapel. They are currently building a library which will be a replica of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Part of the building will include a museum-quality replica of the Assembly Room where the Declaration of Independence was signed.

Amelia Earhart Birthplace House
223 N. Terrace St, Atchison
0 miles from conference site
You can take a self-guided tour or docent-guided tour of the historic house. Open Tues-Sat 10-4. Guided tours should be booked ahead and require at least two people. Tickets for the guided tour $15, for admission without tour $12, with discounts for veterans, seniors, children and students.

Pace & Bene Catholic Bookstore
503 Commercial Street, downtown Atchison
0 miles from conference site
More than a bookstore, Pace & Bene is a whole faith encounter. There are the books and religious goods you would expect, plus a café, bakery, and gelateria. The upper story contains exhibits on the Shroud of Turin and Carlo Acutis’s Miracles of the Eucharist. A large relic display is also in the works. This sounds like a MUST-VISIT. Closed on Sundays, open weekdays 12-5 and Saturdays 9-5.

Evah C. Cray Historical Home
805 N. 5th St, Atchison
0 miles from conference site
A glorious example of Victorian architecture in the late 1800s in Atchison. Open Wed-Sat 10-4.

Amelia Earhart Earthworks
6920 Rawlins Rd, Atchison
A few miles from conference site
A one-acre portrait of the famous aviatrix sculpted into a hill overlooking Lake Warnock, using stone, plants and other natural materials. Viewable from a hill opposite.

Benedictines of Mary Queen of Apostles
8005 N.W. 316th St., Gower, MO
38 miles from conference site
The abbey church at Gower houses the incorrupt remains of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, the founder of this traditionalist order. The Benedictine Sisters have won numerous national awards for their chanting, and you can hear them if you attend the 11:00 daily Mass, or vespers at 5:30 pm. A self-serve gift shop is also available.

Weston, Missouri
18 miles from conference site
Unique and charming pre-Civil War time with unique shops, wineries and distilleries, historic district, arts and crafts, and the National Silk Art museum. This town exudes historic charm! Good barbeque at The Tin Kitchen downtown. Most shops open Tuesday-Sunday, but closed on Mondays.

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
4525 Oak St., Kansas City
56 miles from conference site
Nationally-known museum famous for its encyclopedic collection of art from every continent and culture, including some relics of Christianity like the finger bone of John the Baptist. Open Thurs-Mon, but closed Tues-Wed. Check website for hours. Café onsite.

The Arabia Steamboat Museum
400 Grand Blvd, Kansas City
60 miles from conference site
The museum houses artifacts recovered from the Arabia, which sunk in 1856, carrying 200 tons of mystery cargo. This captivating destination is right in the heart of the historic City Market. Gift shop onsite. Mon-Sat 10-5, Sun 12-5.

National WWI Museum
2 Memorial Dr, Kansas City
60 miles from conference site
Designated by Congress as the nation’s official World War I museum and memorial. Excellent displays for any military historian and for average Americans with curiosity about this distant war. Open Tues-Sun 10-5

St. Mary’s, Kansas
45 miles from conference site.
The beautiful SSPX Church of the Immaculata (celebrating the TLM) is at the center of a town that is visibly Catholic, from the general store to the coffee shops. Don’t miss the relics shrine at the back of the church.

Leavenworth, Kansas
25 miles from conference site
Leavenworth is a historical gold mine. Historical placards dot the town and there are dozens of buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. You can see the spot where Abraham Lincoln first delivered the “the speech that made Lincoln president” as well as the site of General William Tecumseh Sherman’s law practice

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