Lifesite News

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Bishops meet in secret about 'culture war' stuff: What does this mean for Catholics?

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Bishops meet in secret about 'culture war' stuff: What does this mean for Catholics?

While Pope Francis was presiding over a ceremony at the Vatican to consecrate Ukraine and Russia on March 25, a group of high-ranking American bishops met in Chicago.

That could be a news story.

The gathering at Loyola University — entitled “Pope Francis, Vatican II and the Way Forward” — was co-sponsored by Boston College’s Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life and Fordham’s Center on Religion and Culture. Its aim was, according to what news coverage there was, to create a dialogue between theologians and bishops.

“We want to show that opposition to Pope Francis — not universally, but to a large extent — is opposition to Vatican II,” said Father Mark Massa, a priest and historian of the American Catholic Church, to describe the goal of the meeting. “Francis is trying to cash the check that Vatican II wrote — synodality was the big thing.”

Synodality is an invitation to build deeper communion within the body of Christ, according to the Vatican, and part of a process the pope has embarked on this year to create dialogue between Catholic believers and clergy. Or a certain type of clergy.

In other words, moving forward into the spirit of Vatican II. That is a big news story.

The two-day meeting, by invitation only, didn’t appear to fit the description of synodality. Rather, as Massa said, it was meant to see “how we can move the American church away from these culture wars divided between conservatives and liberals … to a united position where it’s possible to be on a spectrum of positions and still be considered a good Catholic and not be called names by people who disagree with you.”

Critics in the conservative Catholic press read that statement to mean how the 70 prelates in attendance — with help from progressives within the American church in the form of academics, journalists and theologians — could bolster this pope’s agenda. Those on the Catholic left in the National Catholic Reporter billed it as a way bishops “can better support the agenda of Pope Francis.”

I reported at the end of 2021 that this year would “be the one where the battle between this pontiff and doctrinal traditionalists intensifies even further.” The culture war that is dominating our politics at the moment has spilled over into our religious institutions and the Catholic church’s hierarchy.


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Ex-gay Catholic, Muslim shooter, Orthodox Jewish writer: They just don't fit the narrative?

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Ex-gay Catholic, Muslim shooter, Orthodox Jewish writer: They just don't fit the narrative?

An infamous gay personality known for his approving comments about pedophilia has had a 180-degree conversion, given up homosexual sex and has consecrated himself to St. Joseph.

Not a joke. The news broke about a month ago. Not read about it? Well, the story is out there, but mostly conservative sites are reporting on it.

Why is this? Well, it all has to do with narrative. Let’s start with the New York Post’s read on it:

Right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos has come out as “ex-gay” – announcing that he “would like to help rehabilitate what the media calls “conversion therapy” over the next decade, according to a report.

The 36-year-old British political commentator, whose speeches and writings often ridicule political correctness, social justice and feminism, declared himself no longer gay and “sodomy free,” he told LifeSite in an interview.

Yiannopoulos — who once said that sex between 13-year-olds and older men can be “life-affirming” — told the outlet that he is now leading a daily consecration online to St. Joseph.

“When I used to kid that I only became gay to torment my mother, I wasn’t entirely joking,” he said.

But what about his gay marriage?

As far as his personal life, Yiannopoulos said of his husband: “The guy I live with has been demoted to housemate, which hasn’t been easy for either of us. It helps that I can still just about afford to keep him in Givenchy and a new Porsche every year. Could be worse for him, I guess.”

Now we all know that if a major (or even not-so-major) evangelical figure can gone the opposite direction, the media would be all over it. Look at the coverage that Josh Harris, celeb author of “I Kissed Dating Good-bye,” got when he dumped his faith and was last seen marching in a gay pride parade in Vancouver, BC.


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Press doesn't get why a Catholic priest would withhold Communion from outspoken gay judge

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Debates about Catholic priests denying Holy Communion to U.S. pro-choice politicians or public officials have been around for more than a decade; indeed I covered that exact issue back in 2009. It was quite the raging issue in 2004 as well when the archbishop of St. Louis refused Communion to Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry.

The issue hasn’t faded at all; in fact this Washington Post piece, published a few months ago, notes that Democratic politicians are still being denied the sacrament if they have come out in favor of abortion.

Now there’s a priest in East Grand Rapids, Mich., who is doing something similar — not about abortion, but same-sex marriage. Here is how one TV station covered it. It happens to be the local NBC affiliate.

EAST GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Judge Sara Smolenski, chief judge of the Kent County District Court, has been denied Communion at the church where she has been a parishioner for more than six decades because she is married to a woman.

It is a move that for many was the final straw in a pattern of behavior that has them calling for the removal of a priest — a priest who came to St. Stephen Catholic Church about three years ago.

Right there you can see where this article is a set-up. The second paragraph could also read that: “It is a move that several in the parish applauded because they felt it was high time St. Stephen’s took a stand on crucial Catholic doctrines.”

Instead, you hear the dissidents’ point of view for the entire first half of the story.

In 1966, under the leadership of Rev. Msgr. Edward N. Alt, St. Stephen Catholic School became the first integrated Catholic school in Metro Grand Rapids and had a student body that was nearly 40 percent non-Catholic.

This tradition of inclusion and acceptance would be the essence of the school and the church for 50 years.

But now, some here say that is changing.


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Bitter clash between LGBTQ orthodoxy and Orthodox Christianity? Press should ask about that

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Over the past week or two, I have probably received more emails about the bitter divorce and custody case surrounding a 7-year-old child in Texas than any other topic.

The father, Jeffrey Younger, calls his son James. The child’s pediatrician mother, Anne Georgulas, has transitioned to the name “Luna,” since she believes her child has sent clues that, while identified as male at birth, “Luna” has shown evidence of gender dysphoria and should begin transitioning to life as a female.

The topic has roared through social media for some time now, as trans cases involving young children tend to do.

In the emails I have received, quite a bit of attention has been focused on the mother’s very Greek name — Georgulas. The question many are asking is quite simple: Is this a battle inside an Eastern Orthodox family?

I have delayed writing about this case, since I was waiting to see what would happen when it broke out of social-media and into elite media. Now the New York Times and the Washington Post have spoken.

The bottom line: The fact that the father, and his supporters, think that Christian faith is relevant in this case isn’t an viewpoint that is worthy of discussion. This case is rooted in politics, law and modern medicine. And that’s that. This is all about fake news.

Thus, here is the double-decker headline at the Times:

Texas Father Says 7-Year-Old Isn’t Transgender, Igniting a Politicized Outcry 

A bitter custody battle grabbed the attention of Gov. Greg Abbott, Senator Ted Cruz and other conservative lawmakers.

That fits perfectly with the overture:

A bitter custody battle in Dallas that centers on the gender identity of a 7-year-old child provoked an outcry among conservatives this month. 


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A second Houston library drag queen was a child molester and reporters refused to cover it?

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I keep thinking that the controversy involving drag queens reading stories to young children at public libraries will die down. I’ve already written two posts about the national debate and a flare-up in Houston when it was discovered that one of the “queens” was a sex offender.

But more stuff keeps on popping up.

About six weeks after the first sex offender was revealed –- the program was cancelled with promises that this was a mistake that would never be repeated again -– the activist group Mass Resistance has discovered a second sex offender among the Houston “queens.”

LifeSite News ran a story by Mass Resistance about this and although we don’t typically cover activist news media, I’m making an exception here because journalists in the mainstream Texas media have been so derelict on this story. The LifeSite report also includes sources and references to public documents that other journalists could have used as hooks to begin research.

For those of you new to it all, MassResistance activists exposed a Houston Public Library drag queen as a convicted child sex offender in mid-March. Then the Houston Chronicle reported that, despite the protests, the library officials wish to restore drag queen story hour sometime this summer. But Mass Resistance wasn’t done yet.

Now, it turns out that a second Houston Public Library Drag Queen was convicted of multiple sexual assaults against young children, according to records uncovered by Houston MassResistance activists. The man has also written a lurid article describing his work as a transgender prostitute. And he was photographed at a Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) event carrying a rubber chicken — a symbol used by homosexuals to indicate a sexual preference for young boys.

This man is part of the local Drag Queen group brought in to do the "Story Hour" events. We now know that local group is part of a bigoted national anti-Catholic Drag Queen organization.

That would be the San Francisco-based Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.


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Archbishop Vigano's explosive testimony dismissed as new conservative attack on Pope Francis

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Just when you think the wheels have come completely off the ongoing Catholic sexual abuse story, it goes to the next level.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former papal nuncio to the United States, is the author of an 11-page document that is rocking the Roman Catholic world. You may remember him as the official who was ejected from his Washington, D.C. post in 2016 by Pope Francis after he arranged a meeting between the pope and Kim Davis, a former municipal clerk in Kentucky who was fired for refusing to sign marriage licenses to gay couples.

When word got out that Francis had secretly met with her during his September 2015, U.S. visit that year, the Vatican furiously backpedaled on whether Francis backed religious-liberty claims by Davis, and many U.S. bishops. Viganò was eventually removed.

Revenge is a dish best served cold and Viganò waited for an opportune time to strike back. It arrived on June 22, when former Washington Cardinal McCarrick, a Vatican favorite and a Francis confidante, was exposed for being a serial sexual predator. Viganò’s letter was released two months later.

The document is very detailed; it mentions dates and names (which can be easily verified or disproved) and, Viganò assures, all the documents backing him up are at the Vatican and the apostolic nunciature office on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, DC.

Ross Douthat, a New York Times columnist, tweeted that the document implicates 17 cardinals (I counted 23), two popes, four archbishops and three bishops.

As tmatt pointed out yesterday, different media are reading this different ways. Still, others at the Times attacked the messenger, portraying it as yet another battle between church liberals and conservatives. 

DUBLIN — On the final day of Pope Francis’ mission to Ireland, as he issued wrenching apologies for clerical sex abuse scandals, a former top Vatican diplomat claimed in a letter published on Sunday that the pope himself had joined top Vatican officials in covering up the abuses and called for his resignation.



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