In a recent interview Pope Francis lamented the existence of “restorers,” a label he appears to tag on those who do not “accept the Council.” He said,

Restorationism has come to gag the Council. The number of groups of ‘restorers’ — for example, in the United States there are many — is significant.

I was struck by the pope’s use of the term, “restorers.” Whether the pope meant it as an insult or just a descriptive label, I take it as an accurate description of my views and the views of many other Catholics (a “significant” number, according to the pope). I absolutely do want to restore many things that have been lost (or stolen away), including: ad orientem worship, processions, Rogation Days, Ember Days, Gregorian chant, sacred architecture, sacred music, high altars, beautiful vestments (including lace!), cassocks, birettas, Epiphany blessings, Epiphany and Ascension feasts celebrated on their proper days, prayers at the foot of the altar before Mass, the St. Michael prayer after Mass, the Last Gospel, the Baltimore Catechism, Septuagesima season, a zeal for converting non-Catholics, clear moral teaching on areas of sexuality, and a whole host of other traditions and devotions no longer with us.

What’s ironic is that Francis uses the term “restorers” to describe those who don’t “accept” the Council, but none of the things on the list above were abolished by Vatican II (some were even encouraged!). Show me the Council document that removes Rogation Days from the calendar (and while you’re at it, please give me a good reason these beautiful and deeply religious days were removed). Show me which Council session said we should remove our high altars and replace them with IKEA-designed tables. Show me which Council Father proposed we move Ascension Thursday to the following Sunday for modern convenience.

Of course, it’s likely that Francis means “restorers” in a negative light, painting a picture of someone with a sense of over-imaginative nostalgia who simply wants to return to things exactly as they were in 1958. While there might be a few Catholics like that, this stereotype falls short. No, we restorers want to restore a firm foundation, a foundation that can be built upon for the re-evangelization of the world. We see the foundation built in the wake of the Council as a house built upon sand (and again, this shaky foundation is more often than not unrelated to the Council itself), and so we want to restore the foundation of Tradition, which includes many of those small and seemingly insignificant traditions that have been practiced for generations, and whose value is only truly recognized when it’s taken away.

Following St. Pius X, we embrace the words of St. Paul who wanted to “restore all things in Christ” (Eph. 1:10). While it’s true that some lost traditions are far more important than others, all were developed over centuries to form a tapestry which helped countless Catholics draw closer to Christ and into a deeper relationship with him.

So, yes, Holy Father, I am a “restorer,” and I hope and pray you will be too.

 

As everyone is forced to know, this month in the pagan world is “Pride Month,” when corporations and governments far and wide are required to declare their allegiance to the Rainbow Flag and their undying support for the Alphabet People. This is the time when corporate virtue signaling goes into high gear; even companies that might not care about the issue make sure to show their support for fear of being cancelled by a small, but vocal (and rich), demographic.

Professional sports teams are no different, and so this month every Major League Baseball team is hosting a “Pride Night,” in which rainbow flags are flown and statements are made with inane declarations like “love is love” (is it something else?) and “we believe all people should be able to play baseball” (as if anyone is denied the right to play ball these days).

Each team decides the specifics of their Pride Night, and some teams push the agenda more than others (true story: a few years ago I accidentally attended a Pride Night at the Kansas City Royals park, and didn’t even realize it except for a single announcement during the game). This year the Tampa Bay Rays decided to up their devotion to the cause by changing their on-field uniform to have rainbow-colored team logos instead of the usual blue ones. But, perhaps realizing not every player would be on board, they allowed players to choose whether to wear the rainbow logos or the regular ones.

Anyone who has been paying attention to the culture wars in recent years should know what happened next. A few players decided not to wear the rainbow logos, and the Woke Mob was not happy. The story made national news, and of course ESPN and other Woke Media did their best to stir up the controversy.

One of the dissenting Rays spoke for the group and, to be honest, he sounds terrified.

“So it’s a hard decision,” [Rays pitcher Jason] Adam told the Tampa Bay Times. “Because ultimately we all said what we want is them to know that all are welcome and loved here. But when we put it on our bodies, I think a lot of guys decided that it’s just a lifestyle that maybe — not that they look down on anybody or think differently — it’s just that maybe we don’t want to encourage it if we believe in Jesus, who’s encouraged us to live a lifestyle that would abstain from that behavior.

“… It’s not judgmental. It’s not looking down. It’s just what we believe the lifestyle he’s encouraged us to live, for our good, not to withhold. But again, we love these men and women, we care about them, and we want them to feel safe and welcome here.”

This sounds like someone with a gun to his head trying to figure a way out of his predicament. And, in a sense, that’s exactly what he is. Adam knows that his career could very well be on the line—if there is enough pushback, there could be demands for his “cancellation.” Any dip in performance on the field could be used as an excuse to send him to the minor leagues or even cut him from the team, all in an effort to have forced unity on the team.

Years ago, when the “gay rights” movement demanded more and more concessions, you’d often hear their activists say, “Why are you opposed to gay rights? This won’t impact your life in any way.” Of course, they don’t even try to say that anymore, as every one knows it’s a lie. There are no longer calls for tolerance, but compliance. You MUST agree with their lifestyles, no matter how aberrant and sinful. If you don’t publicly show your support for what every generation before ours knew to be physically, mentally, psychologically, and spiritually unhealthy, then you could lose your job, your friends, and anything else you might value.

Someone on Twitter is displaying the famous picture of the German who refused make the Nazi salute every day this month, and it’s an accurate way to look at Pride Month.

Everyone thinks he is the lone guy, but anyone displaying a rainbow flag is definitely NOT the lone guy. He’s part of the compliant crowd, willing to go along in order to stay out of trouble…even if what is promoted with is troubling. Everyone today is being forced to show their compliance to the totalitarian demands of the Alphabet movement—demands made both by governments and woke corporations.

One day the Rainbow Flag will go down in history as a symbol of oppression and hatred. When that day comes, sensible people will look back at these corporations and wonder how they didn’t know they were the “baddies.” Until then, let’s pray for and support those who resist the immense pressures to comply with the Rainbow Regime.

Like clockwork, the mainstream media is using the tragic school shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas to push for greater gun-control laws. They are joined by all the usual Leftist bloviators, including far too many Catholic bishops. In response, many on the Right, such as Texas Senator Ted Cruz, are pushing for armed guards at all our schools. Neither solution, however, even attempts to look at the roots of the problem, and both solutions would do little to solve the problem and likely would make things worse.

Whenever a tragedy like this happens, social media and the 24-hour news channels are awash with immediate “hot takes.” None of these hot takes, whether from liberal or conservative commentators, look beyond the surface problem; they complain either of too-easy access to guns or not enough security. Below the surface, however, are a multitude of problems, most of which have no easy legislative solutions (which is why they are ignored).

What are some of these underlying problems? They are legion.

First, most of these shootings happen in public schools, which too often are breeding grounds for malcontents and the mentally unstable. This should not be surprising, as the very foundational principle of public schools is a lie: that “secular” education is possible. Boys and girls are a composite of body, mind, and soul, and any education that ignores one aspect—such as the soul—will fail to truly educate the human person. Further, public schools are Petri dishes of experimentation of the latest educational fads (including demonic ones like encouraging boys to say they are girls and vice versa), most of which do nothing to form well-adjusted young men and women.

Modern public schools are also fundamentally unsuited to the education of boys and young men. They too often want these bundles of physical energy to sit still for hours each day, and then when they naturally rebel against those unnatural restrictions they are punished or, even worse, medicated.

Another problem that can’t be ignored is the impact of the Covid lockdowns and restrictions. There’s some evidence that these policies had an impact on last week’s Buffalo shooter, and we know there’s been an increase in mental health issues among young people from the lockdowns. The idea that you could simply force every child in America to essentially be in solitary confinement for months, then require them to wear masks all day and keep their distance from their peers, then convince them that they could kill their grandmas if they weren’t super-duper careful, then tell them that everyone is a dangerous vector of disease, and this would have no impact on their mental wellbeing is ludicrous.

Then there is the problem of fatherlessness. Most of these mass shooters do not have fathers in their lives. We live in a culture where manhood in general and fathers in particular are demeaned and degraded. To be a strong father is something to ridicule rather than to praise. Add to that our divorce culture and you have a recipe for young men with no models of how to be mature, well-balanced adult men.

There’s also the lack of healthy communities. Drive through a typical American suburb in the evening and what do you see? Kids playing in the street and grownups interacting? Hardly. You see empty yards and blue light emanating from house windows as everyone stares at their screens from separate rooms. This is not healthy for the body, mind, or soul.

Another factor is the weakening hold of religion on our culture. Since the 1960’s, but particularly since 2000, more and more people are leaving organized religion altogether. Young people today are often brought up not only to be non-religious, but anti-religious. The “nones” now dominate the landscape. Studies have shown that religious people are healthier and happier, yet families are increasingly fleeing religion as if it were a deadly virus.

And of course there is the underlying abortion culture that permeates our society. Any country that allows its most innocent members to be dismembered for convenience is fundamentally demonic and will reap the consequences. Pope John Paul II called it the culture of death, and death seeps into every crevice of our society. Pope Francis calls it a “throw-away culture,” and he’s right: we treat human life as no more valuable than the wrapper from a McDonald’s cheeseburger. It’s insane to think that doesn’t impact the modern mind.

These aren’t even all the underlying problems; we could mention excessive (and violent) video game playing, widespread sexual abuse of minors, the negative aspects of social media, an unwillingness to let boys settle their differences with healthy physical confrontations, and much more.

So, what is the solution? It should be clear that these are not easy problems to overcome, and none are solved by more legislation. Making it harder to obtain a gun doesn’t address any of the above issues, and likely will cause other, worse problems.

But armed guards at every school won’t help, either. A number of years ago, while I was involved in prison ministry and regularly visited a number of correctional facilities, I had to go to the local public high school to register one of my home-schooled daughters for a test. This was a typical suburban, middle-class school—not inner-city or known for any violence. I was struck, however, by how much visiting that school reminded me of visiting a jail. The security was similar and the constant surveillance was similar. No one was free to walk the halls without explicit permission and a pass. Teachers and guards hovered over the students while they were eating lunch. While I understand why a school might do this, it’s not a healthly environment. If you treat people like criminals, they will act like criminals. The negative psychological impact of spending all day, every day in such an environment cannot be dismissed.

It’s possible for individual families to address and overcome the problems I mentioned above. Homeschool your kids, don’t get divorced, go to church, be part of your community—these are ways to make sure your kids are far less likely to turn out to be the shooter or the victims of these attacks. Yet on a macro scale, none of these problems are solved easily or overnight. It will take a massive cultural shift—specifically a shift to Christ and His Church—in order to truly overcome them. Until then, we need to do all we can in our own families and communities to address the real problems that lead to these tragedies instead of looking for a silver bullet in the form of more legislation.

Last year San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone issued a pastoral letter Before I Formed You in the Womb, I Knew You. In this letter the Archbishop laid out the reasons why a pro-abortion Catholic politician should be denied Communion, and the steps that should be taken for this to happen. While Cordileone was not the first bishop to speak out about this important issue, his voice was particularly important due to a high-profile member of his flock: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic with a long history of rabid support for legalized abortion.

A year ago today I interviewed Archbishop Cordileone about his pastoral letter, and at one point in the conversation I asked him point blank if he would deny Holy Communion to Pelosi. He said he was not ready to do that, as he felt he still needed to further discuss with her the gravity of her actions. To be honest, I was frustrated and disappointed, and so were many Catholics. After all, Pelosi has been openly pro-abortion for decades, and Cordileone has been her Ordinary for almost a decade. What more could be said or done? What was the purpose of waiting?

Well, the wait is now over. Cordileone announced yesterday that Nancy Pelosi “is not to be admitted to Holy Communion.”

After numerous attempts to speak with Speaker Pelosi to help her understand the grave evil she is perpetrating, the scandal she is causing, an the danger to her own soul she is risking, I have determined that she is not to be admitted to Holy Communion. https://t.co/l7M85CyG86

— Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone (@ArchCordileone) May 20, 2022

The timing of the announcement—one year after his pastoral letter was released—makes me wonder if this was his plan all along. Publish the letter to make clear what steps would be taken, reach out to Pelosi for a year to see if there is any change of heart, and then, if no repentance is shown, announce the denial of Communion.

Cordileone has also made clear the steps Pelosi needs to take to return to Holy Communion:

you are not to present yourself for Holy Communion and, should you do so, you are not to be admitted to Holy Communion, until such time as you publicly repudiate your advocacy for the legitimacy of abortion and confess and receive absolution of this grave sin in the sacrament of Penance.

These are hard words, but they are words of a pastor. Forgiveness is not impossible; Nancy Pelosi is a child of God who can be reconciled to our loving Father. But first she must repent and confess her sins.

Needless to say, the reactions to this news have been predictable. Faithful Catholics are rejoicing that a shepherd has taken concrete steps to defend both the unborn and the sacredness of the Eucharist. The scandal of a woman who proclaims herself a “devout Catholic” while advocating for the killing of innocent children is incalculable. The Church’s witness for life has always been muted by the hierarchy’s refusal to take action in this regard.

For the pro-abortion Left, whether Catholic or not, the anger is palpable. Critics are accusing the Archbishop of making Holy Communion a political event, as if abortion is just another political issue like tax reform or minimum wage laws. Abortion has never been just a political issue; it is a deeply moral and spiritual issue which touches what it means to be a nation.

One thing is sure: Archbishop Cordileone needs our prayers. He will be attacked, both spiritually and politically, for his act of moral courage. Abortion has always been the Sacrament of the Left, and this frontal assault on what they hold sacred will surely not go unchallenged. Expect everything to be thrown at the Archbishop in an attempt to unseat him. As Catholics, we are duty-bound to support this brave hierarch with our prayers.

One final note: with the leak of the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade a few weeks ago, and now this news, this might very well be the best month American pro-lifers have experienced in decades. Praise and thanks be to our glorious God!

Last week the baby formula shortage made the news, so of course social media was abuzz with the hot takes. Because I’m not very bright, I decided to wade in as well.

Now I’ll admit that sometimes I’ll tweet something that I know is controversial just to stir things up. But in this case I figured there were good people suffering due to the shortages, so I made what I thought was a pretty bland, non-controversial statement:

I have sympathy for parents who are unable to obtain baby formula due to the evil and incompetence of politicians.

I would also say that hopefully this is a wakeup call to become more self-sufficient—God literally designed mothers to feed their babies.

— Eric Sammons (@EricRSammons) May 11, 2022

To me, what I said seems obvious. First, that we should have sympathy for those who are impacted by baby formula shortages, and second, that any shortage should be a call to more self-sufficiency. And I noted that women are literally designed to feed their young children.

I must have forgotten that we’re living in Bizarro-world. The tweet blew up. Many of my Catholic followers took exception to what I said, suggesting that I was condemning mothers who, for whatever reasons, could not breastfeed their children. Then the Pronoun Gang jumped in and all rational discourse soon evaporated. I was quickly ratioed, as everyone piled on to say how ignorant, unfeeling, and insensitive a person I was, which they could definitely divine from a single tweet.

The high (or low) point came when the New York Times said my take was “woefully ignorant.”

Two things strike me about this controversy. First, how artificial it is. Second, that many Catholics have joined our culture in being oversensitive and finding ways to be offended.

To say that “God literally designed mothers to feed their babies” is an objective fact. Just like He designed eyes to see, ears to hear, and idiots like me to tweet. The end—the purpose—of a woman’s breasts are to produce milk to feed her young children.

Does this mean that every single mother can breastfeed? Obviously not, just as some people are born blind or deaf. But those exceptions don’t invalidate the design, they just remind us that we live in a broken, fallen world that doesn’t always live up to God’s designs.

The Pronoun Crowd, however, will have none of such obvious obviousness. When you believe a man can breastfeed, then you can’t have someone saying that God designed anything. The irony that many were lambasting me for being ignorant of such things because I’m a man was evidently lost on them.

But we’ve come to expect the Pronoun Crowd to be post-logical and post-factual. It’s the response from many Catholics that was disappointing. Defending God’s design is important and necessary in today’s upside-down world. We shouldn’t let our personal disappointments and heartaches silence the proclamation of the truth.

It’s become the norm in our culture—including our Catholic culture—that we feel we must caveat and over-explain every single statement for fear of offending someone. It’s almost gotten to the point that we can’t praise a beautiful sunrise for fear of offending a blind person. But if we stop praising God’s designs out of fear of offending someone, then we will begin to forget those designs.

Breastfeeding is best for children. Mothers were designed to feed their children. These truths should be valued and cherished by every Catholic, even if through no fault of their own some aren’t able to breastfeed their children. Let’s not deny the beauty of God’s designs just because we sometimes fall short of them.

I am honored to be a signatory on an open letter to President Biden from a number of conservative and traditional journalists, commentators, and scholars on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Although some will want to make this out as a pro-Putin letter, it is really an anti-nuclear war, pro-peace letter. We cannot let the drumbeats of war lead us to escalate this conflict, especially when such an escalation could spell doom for the whole world.

Let us pray and fast for peace!

Full text of the letter:

Not in Our Name

Dear Mr. President,

The undersigned strongly and unambiguously express their opposition to your policy with regard to Ukraine. Your strategy is edging the world closer and closer to a nuclear war with Russia, and to another world war. Recently, you requested Congress for even more funds to be sent to Ukraine in order to help them buy more weapons for the military conflict with Russia. “So we need to contribute arms, funding, ammunition … so that they continue what they are doing,” you said on April 28 when asking for some more $33 billion in taxpayer funds to support Ukraine. “Robust military assistance” for Ukraine is your expression. Reuters reported that “President Joe Biden asked Congress for $33 billion to support Ukraine” and called it “a dramatic escalation of U.S. funding for the war with Russia.” At the same time, the U.S.-led NATO April 27 meeting in Ramstein, Germany urged NATO members to provide more military support to Ukraine, with Germany promising to send 50 self-propelled Cheetah anti-aircraft weapons. We reject your heightened escalation of this conflict as dangerous and a provocation.

The response from Russia? Just days before Biden’s appeal to Congress, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded to the increased U.S. military support of Ukraine by saying there was a “serious” risk of nuclear war over the conflict. “It’s real. It shouldn’t be underestimated,” he stated.

Do we want to risk a nuclear war with Russia over a regional conflict in Eastern Europe?

The independent journalist Glenn Greenwald just recently stated, “Whatever your views on the moral dimensions of this war, it’s hard to deny this is the most dangerous moment in US foreign policy in two decades. Every week, US/NATO involvement in the war intensifies, as Russia explicitly warns of nuclear war. For what?”

We hereby declare that your escalation of this conflict as the President of the United States has not been done in our name.

Nor did you act in our name when you, as Vice-President of the United States, were involved in the 2014 coup in Ukraine that toppled the officially elected leadership of Ukraine. At that time, a telephone conversation of your collaborator Victoria Nuland (Assistant Secretary of State under President Barak Obama) revealed how she discussed which leaders should be placed into the new government in Ukraine. The transcript of that conversation also exposed your own direct involvement in this interference with a foreign nation state. This intrusion into the internal affairs of a sovereign nation was not done in our name, either.

You designated this same official, Victoria Nuland, now as the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. In that position, she has recently had to admit that Ukraine does have bio labs and that the U.S. is involved in them and is worried what Russia would do with its dangerous content should they get a hold of it. “Ukraine has biological research facilities which in fact we are now quite concerned Russian troops may be seeking to gain control of,” Nuland said. “So we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.” Some of those very same Ukraine bio labs are ones that your own son, Hunter Biden, only months after the U.S.-led political coup in Ukraine in 2014, invested money by way of the U.S. Company Metabiota which is working with the Department of Defense. Additional evidence has been recently unearthed, effectively proving the U.S.’s involvement in Ukrainian bio labs.

This strange and troubling U.S. involvement in bio labs at the border of Russia — with direct involvement of your own family — is not done in our name, either.

And let us also remind you that the United States does not have a good moral standing when it comes to condemning unjust wars of aggression. RecentU.S. history demonstrates a pattern of multiple military invasions of sovereign states — or military and tactical support for others to do so — most prominently the unjust 2003 invasion of Iraq with hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, but also in Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria.

At this dangerous moment in history, the U.S. must exert its power to become a force for just peace, urging Russia and Ukraine to come to the negotiation table in order to agree on compromises that would enable and ensure peace in the region.

The U.S. should not engage in a policy of intensification of conflict with Russia that could lead to the deaths of millions of innocent people. There are grave consequences of cumulative provocations.

Not in our name, Mr. President.

(You can sign the petition in opposition to U. S. escalation of war with Russia here).

Signatories

Dr. Chuck Baldwin, Pastor, Author, Columnist, Radio Talk Show Host, Presidential Nominee

Donna F. Bethell, Esq. 

Walter E. Block, Ph.D., Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics Loyola University New Orleans

Dr. Peter Chojnowski, philosopher and director of Sister Lucy Truth

Patrick Delaney, journalist

Matt Gaspers, Managing Editor, Catholic Family News

The Most Reverend Bishop René Gracida

Carrie Gress and Noelle Mering, TheologyofHome.com, Fellows, Ethics & Public Policy Center

Scholars, Institute for Human Ecology, CUA

Dr. Robert Hickson (USA ret.), retired professor of literature and military history

Dr. Maike Hickson, journalist

Steve Jalsevac, Co-Founder of LifeSiteNews.com

Jim Jatras, retired former U.S. diplomat, GOP Senate foreign policy adviser

Jason Scott Jones, movie producer, founder of the Vulnerable People Project, host of the Jason Jones Show

Dr. Clifford A Kiracofe 

Jack Maxey, journalist and political analyst

Brian M. McCall, Editor-in-Chief, Catholic Family News

Eugene G. McGuirk, BA, MA, MBA, Deacon and Educator

Eric Metaxas

Hon. Andrew P. Napolitano, former jurist, constitutional scholar, and legal commentator

Fr. David Nix, Diocesan hermit

Jack Posobiec, Editor, Human Events

Eric Sammons, Editor-in-Chief, Crisis Magazine

Dr. Michael Sirilla, Professor of Theology, Franciscan University of Steubenville

Beverly Stevens, REGINA Magazine

Frank Walker, Editor, Canon212.com

John-Henry Westen, co-founder and editor-in-chief of LifeSiteNews.com

Sir Owen Samuel Whitman, GCS, political commentary and consultant

Michael Yon, War Correspondent/author

Elizabeth Yore, Esq., Founder, YoreChildren

John Zmirak, Ph.D., Senior Editor, The Stream

---

The following signatories have added their names after the initial publication of the open letter.

Pastor David Reinwald, Kissinger’s Church, Wyomissing, Pa.

Rev. Ronald Charles Buxton, Pastor Van Horn Community Church, Van Horn Texas

Doug Fuda, Catholics Against Militarism blogger, Boston Church Militant Resistance co-captain

Fr. Douglas Hauber

Edward Lozansky, President, American University in Moscow

Anne Hendershott, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio

Michelle Bachmann, Dean, Regent University

Sean Feucht, Founder, Let Us Worship

Charlie Kirk, Co-Founder, Turning Point USA

Larry Taunton, Executive Director of the Fixed Point Foundation

Dr. Thaddeus Kozinski, Philosopher, Teacher, and Author

Timothy R. Furnish, Ph.D, Professor, Author, Eschatologist

Other scholars, journalists and other personalities of public life are invited to still sign this open letter and to give their support to this anti-war message by writing to [email protected].

Last night a bombshell dropped: a draft majority opinion by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was leaked that indicated the highest court in the land will soon be overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion in this country. In the draft, Alito writes, “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start” and “We hold that Roe and Casey [the 1992 case that further enshrined legalized abortion] must be overruled.” If true, this would be the most significant overturning of a court decision since Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and made racial segregation in public schools illegal.

A few initial take-aways from this news:

• The need for Catholics to pray and fast for the overturning of Roe has only intensified. No doubt the demonic forces that prop up the abortion industry will work overtime to ensure this draft never becomes reality.
• If Roe truly is overturned, the number of innocent babies saved from death will be incalculable. No matter the lies the Left has told for over a generation about “millions of back-alley abortions” in pre-Roe days, the reality is that, like legalized divorce, making abortion legal made it much more practiced as well.
• This opinion would not make abortion illegal in the United States, but would instead throw the abortion issue back to the individual states. This is a huge improvement over our current legal landscape, but pro-lifers would need to battle in their own states to make abortion illegal locally.
• A leak of this magnitude is unprecedented, and likely indicates an attempt to undermine the direction of the Court. Perhaps it is an attempt to change the outcome of the decision before it is released, or to prepare blue states to enact legislation to ensure access to legalized abortion, or perhaps even to begin the process of packing the Court.

Also at this time we should not forget the many pro-life heroes who have been battling abortion for almost 50 years—longtime warriors like Joan Andrews Bell, Joe Scheidler, Jack Willke, Randall Terry, and Monica Miller, as well as the newer wave of pro-life activists like Lila Rose, David Daleiden, and Abby Johnson. And of course we should remember the countless and nameless soldiers who have prayed and counseled in front of abortion clinics across the country for years. Their work—our work—is not over, but we should be grateful for all those who worked to stop child-killing and soften the hearts of a hardened country to the evil of abortion.

We should also not expect the abortion-crazed Left to take this quietly. Abortion is the chief sacrament of their demonic cause, and they will stop at nothing—nothing—to keep it legalized. If Roe and Casey are truly overturned in June, we should expect civil unrest in the summer of 2022 that will make the summer of 2020 look like a picnic. Expect attacks against the institution of the Supreme Court, and perhaps even against individual justices. While Catholics should rejoice at the news of the toppling of Roe, we should also prepare ourselves both spiritually and physically for the pro-abortion response.

Finally, it’s quite possible that the overturning of Roe will be the final nail in the coffin of the American experiment. Our country was founded upon life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but in 1973 we attached the “pursuit of happiness” with an attack on life. Such a Faustian bargain cannot hold, and the unravelling of the abortion regime might very well lead to the unravelling of a nation. Such a result should be lamented, of course, but at the same time no nation that wants to kill its own babies deserves to survive.

Politico reported yesterday:

DHS is standing up a new Disinformation Governance Board to coordinate countering misinformation related to homeland security, focused specifically on irregular migration and Russia. Nina Jankowicz will head the board as executive director. She previously was a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry as part of the Fulbright Public Policy Fellowship and oversaw Russia and Belarus programs at the National Democratic Institute.

A quick background check on Ms. Jankowicz reveals a dutiful soldier of the Woke Axis who once suggested the now-confirmed Hunter Biden laptop story was potentially “disinformation” coming out of Russia.

“Disinformation” is the latest Woke bogeyman, made especially scary to Leftists everywhere in light of Elon Musk’s potential takeover of Twitter. Of course, today’s “disinformation” is tomorrow’s fact—the term is used to classify any statement, whether factual or not, that contradicts The Current Narrative. We saw this particularly in regard to information surrounding Covid: remember when we were told (by the President!) the vaccine would prevent you from getting Covid, and any suggestion otherwise was considered disinformation? Now we have a four-time vaccinated Anthony Fauci refusing to attend a banquet for fear of catching the virus. 

Right now this “Disinformation Governance Board” is focused on “irregular migration” (what does that even mean?) and Russia. While that will be bad enough (any statements that don’t lead us to World War III will likely be shot down as disinformation), we can be sure that it won’t end there. “Homeland security” has always been a problematic department with too-broad objectives and too-easy ways to restrict our freedoms. Giving them authority over what we can say or not say is just one more step to full-blown 1984.

I’ve been beating the drum against the restrictions on speech under the guise of fighting “fake news” and “disinformation” among Catholics for a while now and I hope and pray Catholics will wake up to the danger. Any society that restricts the dissemination of factual statements or unpopular opinions is a direct threat to Catholicism. We can be sure this new Ministry of Truth  Disinformation Governance Board will work to prop up our anti-Catholic, warmongering, pr0-abortion government in any way it can.

The Left is currently in full meltdown-mode over Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. Its days of controlling what can and cannot be said on one of the world’s largest social media platforms appears to be ending. Blue check liberals are now threatening to leave Twitter, much like many conservatives left the social media giant after it increased its level of censorship in the wake of January 6th.

When conservatives flocked to Gab and Parler back then, many liberals complained that those outlets were just echo chambers that didn’t give all sides of an issue (their irony meter apparently being broken). Now, however, with Musk promising to make Twitter more open to what the Left considers unacceptable speech, liberals are looking for a safer space in which to vent.

Enter counter.social, which advertises “No trolls. No abuse. No ads. No fake-news. No foreign influence operations.” They have “zero tolerance” for any “fake news,” ban anyone coming from unacceptable countries (such as Russia), and will not allow any counter-narrative speech.

I decided to give Counter Social a try, just to see how serious they were about controlling speech.

First, I set up an account at 8:19am:

Three minutes later I posted for the first time:

Three minutes after that, at 8:25am, I was permanently suspended:

That’s all it took – one statement of biological fact and I was gone.