See details in this newsletter. Meanwhile, All Saints and All Souls Days are creeping up this weekend. I love All Souls; most of us are likely to be among the Poor Souls in Purgatory one day, so I welcome the opportunity to pray for them now.

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

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

Today many, perhaps even most, actual scientists believe there is some power greater than us at work in the universe. (God forbid they should call that force “God.”) In all areas of complexity, things are just consistently too fine-tuned to support the notion of random chance.

Few people know that Darwinism was dead by the late 1940’s and early 50’s. All of Darwin’s proposed tests to prove his theory of evolution had failed. All of them. In its own version of Weekend at Bernie’s, the scientific community did its dead-level best to keep the news to itself until it could figure out a suitable replacement that would preserve their self-image as the real gods of the universe.

I remember a chart on the “Evolution of the Horse” that fascinated me when I was in second or third grade. Turns out a lot of school districts had that chart. Later, as a young adult, I was talking to a paleontologist and asked where I might see skeletons of those precursors to the horse. He actually laughed. He knew the chart and informed me it was never factual, it was just how the horse might have developed if evolutionary theory is accurate – so there were no skeletons to be seen. I was oddly furious about it because that was not how it was billed to little kids. I mostly kept my fuming to myself, though with a somewhat more jaundiced attitude to scientific assertions.

In the late 50’s and early 60’s, neo-Darwinian efforts began to try to prove that, having been wrong about nearly everything, evolutionary theory was somehow still true. When you hear someone say they are a Darwinian, they either mean they are a neo-Darwinian or they are completely ignorant on the subject. But the scientific community likes the use of Darwinian rather than neo-Darwinian as it gives them the illusion of continuity, so they have less to explain. The neo-Darwinians have come up with all sorts of subordinate theories, many of which do describe well how adaptation occurs within a species, but none of which offers a credible mechanism for the sort of innovation for one species to evolve into another.

The most maddening part for many scientists who would like to be atheists and, thus, stay atop the tower of wisdom, is that the Biblical account of Creation, even taken metaphorically, is MUCH more true to how things actually unfolded than the scientists’ efforts.

You may know that George LeMaitre proposed the Big Bang Theory almost a hundred years ago. What you probably don’t know is that he was Father George LeMaitre, a Catholic Priest when he proposed the theory and until the day he died, working most of his later life at Loyola University in Chicago. For decades debate raged on The Big Bang Theory; many in the scientific community felt it sounded WAY too much like the account in Genesis of how the universe began. In the mid-1970’s scientists discovered cosmic background radiation, which LeMaitre had predicted would be the residue of the Big Bang – and its implications, for all intents and purposes, proved the Big Bang Theory to be fact. It completely proved the ‘Steady State Universe’ theory to be absolute hokum, unrelated to reality.

If you look him up, you will find him constantly referred to as merely George LeMaitre, almost never Fr. George LeMaitre. The Big Bang theory robbed the scientific community of its concept of infinite time, which it desperately needed to prop up its badly frayed evolutionary theory. That loss was bad enough; that it was made by a committed Christian, a Catholic Priest, who was a better scientist than they were, was just too much to bear.

Originally, the scientific method was developed to illuminate, in human terms, the marvels that God has wrought. Somewhere around the Enlightenment Period, scientists largely became materialist phenomenalists. They insisted that the only real things were things that were concrete and behaved according to concrete rules. They abandoned spiritual reality altogether. If something could not be explained in material terms, it was an illusion, they maintained. Pretty stupid. You could maintain that trees aren’t real, just an illusion – but if you drive your car into one of those illusions the result would be the same.

Ironically, some in the scientific community sneer that Christians just want to deny evolution because they think it undermines God. The opposite is actually true; much of the scientific community wants to prop up failed evolutionary theory because they desperately want it to disprove God, so that they can clutch the crown for themselves. But it has all been coming undone – and science is slowly, grudgingly, silently returning to its original purpose of illuminating, in human terms, the marvels of God. The only people who say they don’t believe in God because they believe in science now are pseudo-intellectuals who know little actual science and even less about God.

If you are interested in reading about what has happened to change so many scientific minds (however quiet they are about it) you might start with Is Atheism Dead by Eric Metaxas for a very readable survey of all that has happened these last 50 years to topple scientific materialism. If you want to go deeper – and have a scientific or deep research background – you might move on to Dr. Stephen C. Meyer’s Darwin’s Doubt – and his several other books, positing intelligent design and The Return of the God Hypothesis.

The point is that the next time some pseudo-intellectual sneers that he believes in SCIENCE, know that it is just a skinsuit to cover his raw ignorance. You, my friends, are at the cutting edge of modern knowledge. Imagine all these self-absorbed dandies, searching relentlessly, like Ponce de Leon, for the fountain of knowledge (or youth, in de Leon’s case). They are overjoyed at finally finding it – until they see Sts. Thomas Aquinas and Augustine sipping tea with other theologians who got there centuries and millennia ago.

On October 26th CORAC’s Physical Healing Prayer ministry will be marking its third-year anniversary of offering our online sessions via Zoom. Many lives have been touched by the Healing Hand of Jesus. You can hear some of these testimonials on the CORAC website. Mark Kollar and his team lead these sessions. Mark is a veteran of St. Paul Street Evanglization. You can hear more about him here >

CORAC’s Physical Healing Prayer Zoom Sessions are held monthly, usually the last Wednesday evening of the month. For exact dates and times, and how to register, visit our “Event Calendar” on CORAC’s homepage.

The next physical healing session will be Wednesday, October 29, 7:00 Central time. To register, email maryjanekeppler@gmail.com

All videos viewable free of charge here >

A cautionary text went out on the Signal Alert channel Monday, reading (in part) as follows:

“This is a precautionary alert. Due to the Federal shutdown, multiple social welfare programs will be without funding on November 1. Risk of protests and civil unrest. Stock essentials. Logic dictates having a modest supply of essentials on hand. Shop with intention, not impulse. Act quietly and deliberately. Systems wobble when politics harden and funds run thin.”

Frankly, I think enough pressure will be put to the Democrats that they will end the shutdown at the last moment, but you never know. This could be existential for them.

Remember this absurdity? Nurses in hospitals that were supposedly overrun with dying patients, taking some lighthearted time out for a bit
of a cotillion? At best it was a lie; at worst, it was choreographed psychological manipulation. At the time, I just thought it was silly, but now I believe it may have been something darker.

Take a listen to this analysis >

After the debacles of 2020-21, I think most of us instinctively know to avoid hospitals. Sometimes it’s necessary, though, and we should know how to protect ourselves or a loved one if a hospital stay is required. Our trusted friend, Midwestern Doctor, writing at The Forgotten Side of Medicine, examines the problem in some detail.

Read more >

Daily news brief with humor and brevity, perfect for busy people who don’t want to drown in current news. And who appreciate very clever writing.

PREPAREDNESS Monday, October 27, 2025
President Trump’s surprise stop yields four trade deals and a peace pact; gold-standard lab drops shocking flu-vax study; media spins covid-jab cancer “cure”; NC Boy Scouts show real valor

GERRY’S REVENGE Saturday, October 25, 2025
DOJ offers six election monitors and media melts down; Zarutska’s killer indicted; carrier group steams into Caribbean heat; O’Keefe sting sparks probe; Trump’s Asia tour riles the Times

BLINDED BY THE LIGHT Friday, October 24, 2025
Trump unloads a rhetorical missile at media; cartel war legality explained; devilish villainess nabbed by U.S.–Mexico task force; FBI busts NBA fraud ring; donor pays troops; Trump beats Newsom again.

ROTO ROOTING Thursday, October 23, 2025
Swamp water finally drains as Trump’s election-integrity and anti-weaponization teams trigger media hysteria; GOP redistricting adds more seats; House refers Obama spook John Brennan to DOJ

PETS’ REVENGE Wednesday, October 22, 2025
Feds put bullseye on Fani Willis as steel drums pound “Island Indictment;” Haitian temp army loses jobs, visas, and factories; a silent, upside-down Trump 1.0 shutdown drags into week three

THE BRIDGE TO 1963 Tuesday, October 21, 2025
Ninth Circus okays National Guard for riot-ravaged Portland; JFK’s secret Siberian peace map resurfaces to flatten a flailing comedian; Florida spearheads phase two of the 2025 Pedophile Pileup

PEDOS AND DOMINOS Monday, October 20, 2025
Another Trump tree-assassination plot barely registers; Epstein’s biggest client finally exposed as American reckoning begins; and liberal TV docs tiptoe toward the cause of surging young cancers.

The Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage has been happening annually since 2012, in honor of the moto proprio which was issued by Pope Benedict XVI on September 17, 2007. It’s meant to be a celebration of the ancient liturgy, and an activity of evangelization. Since 2022, the Pontifical High Mass had not been allowed to be celebrated at the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter’s during the pilgrimage.

This year, the TLM was back in St. Peter’s, celebrated by Cardinal Raymond Burke, with the explicit permission of Pope Leo XIV. Many are, of course, hoping that the Big Freeze is over, and certainly it’s a step in the right direction for the TLM community.

Secular outlets such as the AP and New York Times covered the Mass, noting specifically that the priests’ backs were turned to the people, as though that was some sort of innovation. The AP opined that Pope Francis may have cracked down on the TLM especially hard in the US because of “the rise of religiously inspired political conservatism and decline in church attendance at more progressive parishes.”

The overall perception of Francis’s punishment of the TLM through Traditionis Custodes owes much to Vatican journalist Diane Montagna, who broke the story of the misrepresentation behind Pope Francis’s revocation of Summorum Pontificum. Francis justified his restriction of the TLM by asserting that he was responding to the bishops who were clamoring for an end to all expressions of the old rite. In July, Montagna discovered that the majority of bishops who responded to the questionnaire were satisfied with the TLM and saw that it was evangelizing many young people and families. In other words, Traditionis Custodes was predicated on a falsehood.

We may be looking at the opening of the TLM cage. We shall see.

More about the pilgrimage >

More about the Pontifical Mass in St. Peter’s >

Diane Montagna’s blog >

Photos from the Pontifical High Mass in St. Peter’s, credit to Dom Elvir Tabokovic.

Bishop Strickland’s X account, with 200,000 followers was hacked to such an extent that it was unrecoverable. We should all be so feared! He had to open a new account as Bishop Joseph Strickland@Pillars of Faith, @bishStrick.

Give him a follow if you’re on X. Or sign up to receive notices of new pastoral letters at pillarsoffaith.net.

Absurdistan is the Substack home of Elizabeth Nickson, mentioned in the last newsletter. She posted another great stack on Saturday. I love the idea of using the ill-gotten gains of the super bad guys to pay down our national debt.

She explains it with a bit more finesse here >

The US Debt Clock.