I subscribe to very few print journals and magazines. I just can’t get through them all as they rain down on me. Hence, I am selective.
One publication I do subscribe to is Touchstone.
There was a powerful editorial in the July/August edition about the Catholicism of “devout” Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi and their sort… which I assume includes not a few bishops, priests and many other lay people, both publicly seen and unseen.
Some people are not going to like that I posted this. However, I offer it for two reasons.
First, there are those who say that Biden, Pelosi, the editors of the Fishwrap, ideological enemies of the Church’s traditional sacred worship, etc., are “not Catholics”. They are Catholics. Iuxta modum, but they are.
Next, let this serve as a form of examination of conscience before you GO TO CONFESSION. We all fail in commission and omission, none of us being perfect and most of us having both bad habits and underdeveloped virtues (which means they are not virtues at all). Mediocrity is not a goal of the awakened – not woke – Catholic. And of course promotion of downright evil is the path to Hell.
Here We Remain: Touchstone & the “Devout” Friends of Abortion
by S. M. Hitches[…]
President Biden is, to be sure, some kind of Catholic, as the Jewish atheist is some kind of Jew, or the anarchist who wishes to destroy his country is some kind of citizen, or the theologian who teaches in the name of Christ while denying his deity and his Resurrection is some kind of Christian, or the cancerous cell is some part of the body it is killing. If possession of some kind of religious sensibility, even an intense sensibility, is the proper mark of devotion, then perhaps one cannot even deny that Biden, Speaker Pelosi, and Catholics like them are “devout.” But this does not stop them from being very bad Catholics, servants of God in the same way Satan is, or bloody-minded enemies of the Church of which they are officially members in good standing, and which is replete with bishops who have no qualms about offering them Communion.
In response to the abortion-favoring policies of President Biden, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—the Vatican curial department responsible for supervising the teaching of Catholic doctrine—wrote:
When the politico-religious rulers of their time wanted to forbid the apostles from proclaiming the teachings of Christ under threat of punishment, the apostles replied, “One must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). . . . Those who -relativize the clear commitment to the sanctity of every human life on the basis of political preferences with tactical games and sophistical obfuscations [taktischen Spielen und sophistischen Verschleierungen] openly oppose the Catholic faith.
“Sophistical obfuscations”—like “devout Catholic.” What Cardinal Müller says for the believing segment of the Catholic Church is the same for any form of faith that is credibly called “Christian,” including, please God, that of this journal. On the abortion of a living child, a matter of mere Christianity, we remain as we have always been, but likely now more than ever, when faced with such devotion as Mr. Biden’s, under threat of punishment. Pray for us that our faith does not fail, and we continue to help our readers escape the religion of Antichrist, whose followers perpetually confuse religiosity with goodness.
“sophistischen Verschleierungen”… sometimes you can’t beat German.
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Father, are there other print publications you recommend? I am thankful for digital publications, blogs, and the like, but I miss receiving print publications in the mail. I am one of those people who still prefers physical books to electronic books. As always, your recommends – books, articles, and otherwise – are appreciated.
I am not fluent enough to have a real sense of it, but some dictionaries help me find “Verschleierungen” indeed an excellent word, here – ‘Schleier’ as the word Luther uses where the Vulgate has ‘pallium’ in Genesis 24:65 – to wrap a veil around something to hide it from view, also in the sense camouflage, also (at least in relation to photography) ‘fog’.
St. Paul’s “tamquam abortivo” in the Epistle on the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost ( Corinthians 15:8) got me wondering if there might be an Apostolate of Abortivi in his sense, of fervent penitents – I cannot find any evidence that there is, but it might not be a bad thing if there were.
I subscribe to both Touchstone and Salvo, another publication of the Fellowship of St James.
Both are excellent with somewhat different formats, Touchstone co0ming out bimonthly and Salvo quarterly.
Thanks, ArthurH. I will check out Salvo too.
Once a person is baptized as a Catholic he or she remains always a Catholic. An indelible spiritual mark is left on the soul through this sacrament which cannot be erased and signifies the soul as belonging to Christ. Through the life a Catholic lives he or she can be a good Catholic, a lukewarm Catholic or a bad Catholic. No matter how bad a Catholic is he or she is still a Catholic.