THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

Thanks to Beatrice for calling my attention to this item which properly rebukes Donald Wuerl's and Theodore McCarrick's successor as Archbishop of Washington, D.C. for his sanctimonious arrogance in ignorance...

In this case, who is truly
'baffling and reprehensible'?
(On the emblematic hypocrisy of Bishop Gregory
and other frankly anti-Trump bishops)
By Phil Lawler

June 3, 2020

“I find it baffling and reprehensible that any Catholic facility would allow itself to be so egregiously misused and manipulated in a fashion that violates our religious principles,” said Archbishop Wilton Gregory after President Donald Trump visited the St. John Paul II Shrine in Washington.

Do you want to know what I find baffling and reprehensible, Archbishop Gregory?

I find it baffling and reprehensible:

… that a Catholic archbishop would issue a patently partisan statement at a time when our nation is already deeply divided.
… that any responsible leader would issue an inflammatory statement without checking the facts — and learning, in this case, that Trump’s visit to the Shrine was not connected with the demonstrations and riots in our cities, had been planned well in advance, and was intended to focus attention on the international quest for religious freedom — which, the last time I checked, was a cause that did not violate Catholic religious principles.
… that a Catholic prelate evidently didn’t bother to contact an important Catholic institution, to hear its side of the story, before issuing a public condemnation. The Knights of Columbus, who administer the St. John Paul II Shrine, have been scrupulously loyal to the Catholic hierarchy; they deserve at least this elementary courtesy in return.
…that a Catholic archbishop ripped into the President at a time when Trump was advancing a cause that is, in fact, unequivocally in accordance with Catholic principles. While at the Shrine, Trump signed an executive order that directs the US government to make religious freedom a high priority in foreign affairs, and provides [$50 million] funding for that campaign. Whatever else Catholics might think about White House initiatives, this one deserved support, not angry denunciation.
… that a Catholic pastor who has passively accepted the imposition of government restrictions which effectively prevent the public celebration of Mass would make a political matter — not the administration of the sacraments — his top priority.
… that Archbishop Gregory would be hypocritical enough to criticize someone else for allowing the manipulation of the Church for political purposes, when he has given over the pulpit of his cathedral to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose ardent defense of abortion on demand unquestionably “violates our religious principles.”
… and for that matter, that Archbishop Gregory, who devoted a Pentecost Sunday statement to a condemnation of racism, so blithely overlooks the most evident display of racial disparity on our nation: the systematic extermination of African-Americans in the womb, aided and abetted by the liberal Catholic politicians who welcomed the archbishop’s latest petulant outburst. [Petulant? This was more than just bad-tempered sulking. This was a deliberately malicious, aggravated by the willful ignorance it betrayed about the subject matter, and most execrably reprehensible indeed, to correctly use Gregory's own adjective to describe an action he did not even bother to inform himself about before getting on his lame stilts!]


America’s utopian city wreckers
We live in the real world, not the world of John Lennon’s imaginings.
Those who seek utopia rather than rational reform will never be happy with what they get.
by William Kilpatrick

June 7, 2020

“The best is the enemy of the good.” That observation by Voltaire may help to explain the vast destruction resulting from two weeks of violent protesting following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.

The saying means that those who are satisfied with nothing less than perfection will never be satisfied. In the case of the death of George Floyd, the sentiment is encapsulated in the slogan “no justice, no peace.” One suspects, however, that what is sought is not practical, achievable justice, but perfect justice — the kind only God can deliver.

In a perfectly just world, George Floyd would never have been killed in the first place. But there can be little doubt that practically the whole nation agreed that he had been done an injustice, and that everything possible ought to be done to right that injustice.

Meanwhile, the Minnesota authorities acted quickly. The officer who killed Floyd was quickly removed from the force, jailed and charged with third, then second degree murder. The three other officers who were involved have also been jailed. The Minneapolis City Council has even proposed that the police force be dismantled.

Moreover, many of those who are protesting the killing of Floyd are white. In some cities, white protesters seem to be in the majority. [White protesters who, more than anything, are virtue-signalling, and since most of them are young people who have been victims of America's mind-crushing, free thought-stifling, relentlessly liberal and ultimately anti-American educational system over the past half-century, their hysterical rants of the senseless slogan 'Black lives matter!, sounds very much like 'mea culpa' screams of self-flagellation for 'white guilt'.]

Would this be the case if America were an irredeemably racist society in which blacks will never see justice? What’s more, many of the racial justice reforms that were sought in the past have long been in place. Numerous cities have black mayors, black city council members, black judges, black police chiefs and, in some cases, black majority police forces. In Minnesota, where the nationwide protests first erupted, the chief justice officer is Attorney General Keith Ellison, a black man.

Of course, there is, and will always be room for improvement. But, once again, it seems that what many people [i.e., the demonstrators] — both black and white — want is not improvement, but perfection: the kind of perfection that human beings by their very nature are incapable of.

It’s not just perfect justice in the area of racial relations that is sought, but, increasingly, in every area of life. And, in some cases, what is demanded is not simply perfection, but impossibilities. Thus, some people believe that there can be no justice in society until everyone is free to choose their own gender. And not only that, but they believe there can be no justice until everyone else is forced to assent to their beliefs. In their quest for justice for one group, they deny it to another.

Likewise, the nationwide protests over the injustice done to George Floyd have resulted in myriad new injustices: almost two dozen killed, more than a thousand injured, many hundreds of businesses destroyed and livelihoods lost.

I am not discounting the role of outside agitators, such as Antifa, in fueling anger and discontent among the throngs of protesters. They play a large role in provoking violence, in spreading the protests and in keeping them alive long after they would normally die down. These groups —mostly leftist — did not spontaneously “hijack” the protests. They had for some time been organizing and preparing to exploit just such an occasion as the one that arose in Minneapolis. And human nature being what it is, the occasion inevitably did arise.

Antifa and Antifa-like groups tend to subscribe to a Marxist vision of society. And that vision is essentially a utopian one. [Not to forget that u-topia literally means 'no place' or 'nowhere', so utopias would and could never be.] It promises an almost perfect society which will emerge once wealth is equally shared. Although some of these leftist agitators seem to be without conscience, it’s probable that some of them are motivated by idealistic dreams of a perfect society and perfect justice. [About youthful idealism, one recalls the saying, falsely attributed to Winston Churchill, to the effect that "If you are not socialist or communist by age 20, you have no heart. But if you are still a socialist or communist after age 30, then you have no brain."]

The question is, why are so many others so susceptible to the same dream? Why do they find it intolerable that perfect justice and peace has not yet been achieved? Why do so many in our society believe that utopia is or ought to be just around the corner?

The answer is that they have been exposed to an educational system that is heavy on societal responsibility and light on individual responsibility.
- Part of this comes from a therapeutic strand in education that is obsessed with the goodness of the child’s inner self, and the wrongness of inhibiting its expression.
- Part comes from the Marxist-socialist strand (typified by Howard Zinn’s view of history) that blames social structures for all of life’s ills.

This approach dwells on the many imperfections in American history and gives the impression that perfect harmony is the normal state of mankind, and anything less is the result of oppressive racist and capitalist institutions. Each new injustice, such as the killing of George Floyd, is used to confirm this narrative.

The overall message is that you are not responsible for your troubles, society is. Likewise, you are not responsible when you cause troubles. Indeed, your rioting, looting, and arson may be justified by the oppressions you have suffered at the hands of society. Or, as the gang member in West Side Story explain, “We’re depraved ‘cause we’re deprived.”

The evidence that we are in the grip of this Rousseauian-utopian delusion keeps piling up. The latest iteration of this noble savage view of human nature is the “We-don’t-need-no-stinkin’-cops” movement now underway in numerous cities. The theory behind the movement is that once you remove the police from the scene, everyone will begin to act like Jean Valjean after the bishop saved him from the gendarmes.

Thus, the mayor of Los Angeles wants to severely cut back the budget for the Police Department, dozens of cities want to defund the police, and, as mentioned, Minneapolis wants to disband its police force. But that’s okay. It will be replaced, says one city council member, by a “public safety” committee.

Hmm. “Committee of Public Safety.” Where have we heard that before? Oh yes, that was the group that organized the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. But not to worry, says the city council member: “We can reimagine what public safety means…we can invest in cultural competency and mental health training, de-escalation and conflict resolution…we can declare policing as we know it a thing of the past, and create a compassionate, non-violent future.”

Polls show that the police are more highly trusted by the public than most other professional groups. So perhaps they are more compassionate than the city council member gives them credit for. But, even supposing that police forces can be made super compassionate, does that solve the problem of the lack of compassion in spouse-beaters, looters, arsonists, muggers, and rapists? Will restructuring law-enforcement reshape the criminal? Will you feel safer in a community where the police have been disbanded and re-imagined as social workers and therapists?

I’m reminded of T.S. Eliot’s comment on men who try to solve the problem of fallen human nature “by dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.”

It’s interesting that the line occurs in the context of the Church’s duty to talk about “Evil” and “Sin,” lest men be deluded into thinking that salvation comes from reforming societies rather than reforming lives.

In a press conference during the protests, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio invoked John Lennon’s utopian song “Imagine.” “What about a world where we didn’t live with a lot of the restrictions we have right now?” asked the mayor.

Restrictions? Like prisons? Like the presence of police? But we live in the real world, not the world of John Lennon’s imaginings. Those who seek utopia rather than rational reform will not be happy with what they get. Utopian cities without police to enforce the law will not be pleasant places. The word “utopia,” of course, means “nowhere.” And the cities of the utopian dreamers’ imaginations are nowhere that any sane person would want to live.

[DIM98pt]Well, Mayor No-Goodnik De Blasio, if you believe yourself, why not abolish the NYPD - and dismiss all 40,000 members of the force - and see what happens! Crime rates soar where police forces are inefficient; what would happen if there were no police forces at all? And isn't it the elected leaders' first duty to protect and defend the citizenry? How would you do that - do you think those demonstrators would volunteer en masse to give up everything else in order to proactively guarantee law and order for the city?

You could, of course, say that you will spend the considerable police budget on 'community programs to improve black communities' (as if the city weren't supposed to be doing that, anyway), but you will also suddenly have 40,000 men and family bread-earners suddenly out of work. And this goes for all those Brave New World cities deluding themselves that any community today can live without a police force to enforce law and order, and that it would be an 'easy exercise' to dissolve a police department and throw all of its members out of work.

June 9, 2020
P.S. TO THE ABOVE
It appears that more than just Abp Gregory's nauseating hypocrisy about President Trump, he was guilty of far worse in this case: he was actually invited to be present at the JPII shrine event days before it happened, and the White house has released both the White House invitation and Gregory's rejection of it on the ground that he had' prior commitments'.

Of course, it should be no surprise that Gregory lies, since we are all familiar with the record of BIG LIES told since Day 1 of his papacy by no less than Gregory's Supremo, and all the big and little lies told by the hundreds, if not thousands, of priests and bishops invoved in the sex abuse scandals, starting with McCarrick and et alia (not just 'and others' in this case but 'and allies/accomplices' who have all covered each other's asses all these years.

Archbishop Gregory was invited to
Trump event at JPII Shrine days before
the bishop's censure statement
By JD Flynn
Editor-in-Chief


Denver Newsroom, Jun 8, 2020 (CNA) - The White House said Sunday that Washington’s archbishop was invited to attend an event with President Donald Trump several days before it took place, amid media reports that the archbishop did not learn of the event until it was announced publicly the night before it took place.

White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere told CNA June 7 that “Archbishop Gregory received an invitation to the President’s event at the St. John Paul II Shrine the week prior to the President’s visit. He declined due to other commitments.”

Correspondence between Archbishop Wilton Gregory’s office and the White House indicates the same.

In correspondence dated May 30th and obtained by CNA, Gregory’s office declined “the kind invitation to attend the event celebrating International Religious Freedom on Tuesday, June 2, 2020 at the Saint John Paul II Shrine.“

The correspondence further stated that the archbishop had “a prior commitment on his schedule at Catholic University and unfortunately must decline,” and added that Gregory had personally conveyed his regrets at being unable to attend when he spoke to a member of the White House staff directly on the evening of Friday, May 29.

Crux reported June 7 that Gregory had not been told of the visit until June 1, when it was publicly announced by the White House.

Trump’s June 2 visit to the shrine has been the subject of considerable controversy.

On the day of Trump’s visit, the shrine said that the White House had “originally scheduled this as an event for the president to sign an executive order on international religious freedom.”

The visit was cut into a shorter event following Trump’s controversial visit the night before to St. John’s Episcopal Church, adjacent to the White House.

Trump stood outside that church in front of cameras holding a Bible in one hand in an apparent photo-op. The church had suffered fire damage during protests on Sunday night.

[So what's wrong with a 'photo op'? All politicians see every moment of their public life as a photo op(portunity) - those moments at least that will withstand scrutiny. All those demonstrators see everything they do in public as a photo op. So most photo ops are genuine in the sense that they do record actual events, as the photo of Trump did.

I was watching the event live on TV, and I was really taken by surprise when he held up the Bible - it was a gesture I had not expected at all but one I immediately appreciated: he was demonstrating his Christian faith unashamedly - as he has done so in his countless pro-life initiatives - in defiance of the thoughtless Godless who had tried to burn down the historic church. Those who call themselves Christian and professed to be offended by his gesture are really offended because at least in their own minds, Trump has shown them up to be the real hypocrites.

I dislike and deplore Trump's blatant narcissism and coarseness in dealing with those he perceives as enemies, and I deplore his past record of womanizing, etc., as much as most decent people do, but I also give him credit for all the positive things he has accomplished as President, most of them things he promised during the campaign and things none of his precedessors had done -such as the economic upturn not just for the country as a whole but for all US minorities, which none of is opponents can dispute - that is what I judge him about. By what he does for the American people, because I dare anyone to cite what, if any, he has done against the American people.]

Before the president arrived at the episcopal church, crowds had stood across from Lafayette Square behind the White House, protesting the death of George Floyd and police brutality. Those demonstrators were cleared from the square by police shooting pepper balls and other non-lethal weapons, before Trump walked across the square to visit the church.

On June 2, before Trump arrived at the John Paul II Shrine, Gregory issued a statement denouncing the visit.