Pope Francis a Wolfe In Shepherd’s clothing?

 

‘Pope Francis’ – A Wolf in Shepherd’s Clothing?

BY WILLIAM KILPATRICK | JAN 25, 2022

Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano sheds a disturbing light on the ‘Deep Church’.

“A non-Catholic Pope”?  It sounds like a contradiction in terms.  But those are the words used to describe Pope Francis by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States.  In fact, he rarely uses the term “Pope Francis.”  He refers to him instead as “Bergoglio” and to his pontificate as the “Bergoglian papacy.”

Vigano has a following in some Catholic circles but it’s likely that the vast majority of Catholics have never heard of him.  Yet the questions he raises about Pope Francis are of great consequence, not just for Catholics but for non-Catholics as well.

Since there are about 1.3 billion Catholics in the world, whoever leads them can have a significant effect on a large segment of the global population.  It’s widely thought, for instance, that Pope John Paul II did more to put an end to communism in Eastern Europe than any other individual with the exception of Ronald Reagan.  For evidence of the close collaboration between the two men, read historian Paul Kengor’s revealing book, A Pope and a President.

Now we have a new pope and a new president and neither of them seem terribly concerned about the revival of communist power throughout the world.  In fact, both men have surrounded themselves with left-leaning advisors and appointees.

In addition, both Francis and Biden have effectively rolled back the agendas of their immediate predecessors.  This is obvious in the case of Biden because the reversal has been swift and abrupt.  The reversal that Francis has engineered is less noticeable since it has been more gradual, but the resulting change in the Catholic Church has been every bit as radical as the one now taking place in American government and society.

Archbishop Vigano links the two together.  He talks of a coup in America and other Western nations led by secular leftist ideologues, and a coup in the Catholic Church led by Bergoglio and the progressive Catholics who surround him.

However, the coup in the Church has been a more silent one.  Catholic writers who have studied Francis’s career describe him as a skillful–even Machiavellian–manipulator.  According to them, all his actions are shrouded in a deliberate fog.  Consequently, most Catholics remain unaware of the magnitude of the changes.  It is only when a priest or prelate resists Francis that “the dictator pope” (the title of Henry Sire’s book about Francis) reveals himself. Just as the Biden administration is seeking to purge conservatives from government and the military, Francis seeks to purge traditional Catholics from the Church.  And since some of the strongest resistance to Francis comes from adherents of the Latin Mass, he has acted to suppress the Latin Mass.  Meanwhile, some conservative prelates find themselves demoted to obscure outposts, and others live in fear that false charges of sex abuse could land them in jail (as happened to Australian Cardinal George Pell).

Moreover, since Francis has been promoting progressive prelates to high posts for nine years, it looks likely that his “anti-Catholic” (Vigano’s term) brand of Catholicism will continue to dominate.  Because Francis has carefully packed the College of Cardinals (who elect the next pope) with men made in his own image, we shouldn’t be surprised if the next Pope takes the name, Pope Francis II.

You’ve heard of the “deep state;” Vigano maintains that there is also a “deep church”—a network of progressive prelates who, together with Francis, plan to change the face of the Church beyond recognition.  Moreover, the deep state and the deep church reinforce each other: “The deep church and deep state are nothing other than two parallel tracks which run in the same direction and have as their final destination the New World Order, with its religion and its prophet.”

Vigano points out that although Francis is “universally considered as the head of the Church,” he is at the same time a “liquidator” of the Church: “His dual role as pope and liquidator of the Catholic Church allows him on the one hand to demolish it with decrees and acts of governance, and on the other hand to use the prestige that his office entails to establish and spread the new religion over the rubble of the old one.”

The “new religion” which Francis hopes to usher in is, according to Vigano, a humanist and progressive one— “the religion of Mankind, an ecumenical and ecological one.”  This new religion will also result in “the legitimization of Evil,” and the persecution of good people.”

If all of this—this notion of a non-Catholic pope who seeks to liquidate the Church—seems outlandish and inconceivable, consider that only a short time ago, the notion of a communist-ruled USA also seemed inconceivable.  It seemed inconceivable that Americans would elect as president a man who would immediately set about to demolish American history, values, and institutions.  But that is what seems to be happening.

As far as I know, Vigano has never actually said that Francis is not the pope, but he has implied as much.  The evidence that he and others present can be divided into four categories:

1. Evidence that Pope Benedict’s resignation was invalid
2. Evidence that the election of Francis was rigged
3. Evidenced of widespread corruption in the Francis papacy.
4. Evidence that Francis embraces heresy.

Whether or not Vigano makes the case is a subject for another time.  The point I want to make here is that, despite the gravity of the charges against Francis, the response has been muted.  Neither Francis nor the Vatican has ever responded to Vigano’s explosive “testimony” in 2018 accusing Francis and other prelates of covering up Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s long history of sex abuse.  Francis said that he would trust the media to come to the proper conclusion; and the media obliged by ignoring Vigano’s charges altogether.

Likewise, the Francis-friendly media has had little to say about Vigano’s claim that Francis is not a legitimate pope.  As a result, the average Catholic is unaware that there is a problem.  Most Catholics would be surprised to learn that although Francis has frequently promised to put an end to clerical sex-abuse, he surrounds himself with abusers and enablers and promotes them to high office.  Likewise, most Catholics would be surprised to discover that although Francis verbally condemns abortion, he sees to it that prominent advocates of abortion are invited to Vatican conferences, and he sometimes showers them with praise.

Moreover, although he states that abortion is murder, he intervened to prevent the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) from voting to deny communion to President Biden because of Biden’s flagrant pro-abortion policy. According to Vigano, Francis is a master of duplicity whose modus operandi is to say one thing to please the pew-sitters, and to do the opposite in order to please the worldly elites.

It should be noted that Vigano has recently been a bit more in the public eye because of two letters he wrote to Donald Trump, and because of Trump’s positive response to them. As a result, some in the liberal Catholic press have mounted a vigorous campaign to discredit him.  For example, the Jesuit-run magazine Americadismisses him as just another right-wing conspiracy theorist who ought to be wearing a MAGA hat instead of a bishop’s cap.

The foundation for the conspiracy-theorist charge is that Vigano says what a growing number of Americans believe about a deep state increasingly controlled by global elites intent on reducing average people to the status of worker bees.  He speaks disparagingly of the New World Order, and the machinations of the Rockefeller Foundation, The World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, and Bill Gates.  Furthermore, in contrast to Francis, he sees the Covid pandemic as an invented crisis which is intended to create a more docile population.  Finally, Vigano often talks in apocalyptic terms.  He speaks of death and judgement, heaven and hell, Satan’s war against heaven, the Second Coming of Christ, and the “Mark of the Beast.” To the modern ear and to many modern Christians such talk is embarrassing, but through the ages most Christians have regarded such signs and prophesies not as the ravings of extremists, but as the revealed word of God.

Vigano has a good grip on science, finance, and politics, yet he does sometimes sound more like a 19thcentury pope than a 21st century prelate. This is actually quite refreshing because many modern clergymen have learned to talk in a corporate-therapeutic lingo that is devoid of any depth.  Take this tweet sent out by the USCCB to prepare Catholics for the upcoming “Synod on Synodality:”

“Here are seven attitudes we can all adopt as we continue our synodal journey together.  Which one inspires you the most?”

• Innovative Outlook
• Inclusivity
• Open-mindedness
• Listening
• Accompaniment
• Co-responsibility
• Dialogue

“Which one inspires you the most?”  But these psychobabble buzzwords aren’t meant to inspire, they’re meant to put to sleep—to distract people from the crucial issues that face the Church today such as the issue of “a pope who does not behave like a pope and does not speak like a pope.”

Vigano wants to wake up the sheep and so it seems quite fitting that he uses the strong language of the Bible to arouse people from their slumber.  While other bishops babble on about “inclusivity,” “dialogue,” and “open-mindedness,” it’s somehow reassuring that at least one bishop points to the very disturbing signs of the time.

It’s easy enough to dismiss Vigano as a paranoid conspiracy theorist, but let’s not forget that the Bible contains many admonitions to be alert to the signs of the time, and many warnings about “spiritual” leaders who are not what they seem. One of the warnings goes like this: “Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.” Mt. 7: 15.

Of course, it’s not easy to discern a false prophet when he is dressed in sheep’s clothing.  It would be more difficult still if he were dressed as a shepherd.

This article originally appeared in the January 25, 2022 edition of Front Page.

Pictured above: Pope Francis

Photo credit: Pixabay

 

‘Opinions of a man,’ not the Church: Cardinal Burke criticizes Pope Francis’ praise for LGBT group leader

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The cardinal discussed his 'miraculous' recovery from COVID-19, the attacks launched against the Traditional Latin Mass, and the Pope’s letters of gratitude to pro-LGBT advocate Sister Jeannine Gramick of the controversial New Ways Ministry.

Cardinal Burke interviews on EWTN's The World Over, January 20, 2022The World Over Screenshot

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David McLoone

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Fri Jan 21, 2022 - 11:59 am EST

(LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Raymond Burke has openly criticized Pope Francis for his recent endorsement of the pro-LGBT group New Ways Ministry, clarifying that his words are merely the “opinions of a man” and have “nothing to do with the Magisterium of the Church.”

In a wide-ranging interview Thursday on EWTN’s The World Over, the American cardinal discussed his “miraculous” recovery from COVID-19, the attacks launched against the Traditional Latin Mass from the Vatican and high-ranking prelates, and the Pope’s letters of gratitude to pro-LGBT advocate Sr. Jeannine Gramick of the controversial New Ways Ministry.

Alongside his criticisms of Francis’ personal musings, Burke has defended the right of Catholics not to receive the COVID jabs, citing “Catholic teaching” as the basis for rejecting shot mandates while criticizing Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin for implementing a jab requirement.

He added that “forced vaccination is a violation of human rights.”

The former head of the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican’s highest court, also defended the Latin Mass, explaining that its use has “absolutely not” been a cause of disunity in the Church, and that there is nothing “in the documents of the Second Vatican Council that would lead to a banning of the traditional way, of the traditional posture or position of the priest during the celebration of the Mass.”

Regarding the Pope’s praise of the work of New Ways Ministry, Burke maintained that the position taken by previous popes and entered into the Acta Apostolicae Sedis in 1999 still stands, that Gramick’s teaching on homosexuality does “not faithfully convey the clear and constant teaching of the Catholic Church.”

Burke added that Pope Francis’ personal opinions on the matter have “have nothing to do with the Church’s teaching.”

Below follows a full transcript of the interview:

Raymond Arroyo: First of all, how are you feeling? And are you having any lingering effects from the COVID recovery?

Cardinal Raymond Burke: In general I’m feeling very well and I’m returning more or less to a normal pace of life. The lingering effect has been on my lungs. The virus attacked in a very vicious way my lungs and so there’s some healing yet that has to take place and the doctors tell me that they don’t know a lot about this; how long it takes, but that it could take upwards of a year or so. I’m getting stronger all the time, but that’s the one lingering effect. Of course I was on a ventilator for nine days which were nine days lost for me – I don’t have any recollection at all of that –and so when I came out from the from that intubation I couldn’t even stand up and I had to regain all of my ability to stand, to walk, to negotiate stairs, and thanks be to God that has gone well, and that was part of the reason for the long recovery. And then as people who’ve had this will tell you that there was this terrible fatigue that I had. I left the hospital on September 3rd and for about a month I was just tired all the time: it didn’t matter how many hours I slept at night, I would wake up in the morning tired. It’s a terrible thing but that passed too, thanks be to God and yeah, I’m tired a little earlier in the day than I used to but during the day I’m quite fine.

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I became ill quite suddenly and then I was very quickly put on the ventilator, but when I came out from that, I think it was on the 20th of August, and I began to read these messages and to learn about all the people who were praying for me, I was really overwhelmed with it and just filled with a profound gratitude. I have to say that when they took the tubing out and I was conscious again, that I had an immediate sense that our Blessed Mother had been taking care of me all the time, and I say this very sincerely. The doctors had informed my good sister Mary that there was really not any hope that I was going to survive this, and that she should put my things in order, and I have no question in my mind that it was all these prayers that were raised up to Our Lord and the prayers that He heard, and saved me for some work now that He has for me to do. But I had immediately that very strong sense and it has remained with me; it really was miraculous, and we should never doubt the power of prayer. But in this instance, I have experienced it in a remarkable way because I knew I was dying and I really wasn’t at all certain that I would survive. When I then gained my consciousness again, I learned about all these prayers that were offered, I understood what had happened.

In many reports of your illness you were portrayed, Your Eminence, as a vaccine denier and skeptic. Even the pope made reference to you as a denier on the papal plane returning on his trip from Slovakia in September. He said: “Even in the college of cardinals there are some deniers and one of those, poor guy, is hospitalized with the virus: the irony of life.” What did you think when you heard those comments that you were a denier and a skeptic of vaccines? Are you?

Well, no, I have never said to anyone that he or she should not be vaccinated. I have insisted that the question of having the vaccination is a personal decision, it’s an exercise of a fundamental human right, and that I’m absolutely opposed to forced vaccination, to these mandates. But I have not taken a position of being against the vaccine. On the other hand, we have only one Savior, Our Lord Jesus Christ: we put ourselves in His hands, and vaccinating the whole world is not going to save the world. and that there is this kind of rhetoric today where people think that if that if everyone were vaccinated everything would be just fine; that isn’t correct thinking for a Christian.

And scientifically invalid I might add as events have proven particularly with this omicron variant. The Vatican however, Your Eminence, is currently mandating vaccines for all employees. It’s been encouraging that everyone, including children, be vaccinated. Several members of the Pontifical Swiss Guard have lost their jobs for not receiving the jab. There are no numbers of reporting on other jobs that have been lost so far, we just don’t know. Your reaction to the Vatican’s vaccine mandate especially now, when as we mentioned it’s been widely reported the vaccine’s not effective against omicron, and several European countries have now – namely England and Spain – have lifted their vaccine mandates?

The Vatican’s position on this is very severe, there’s no question about it. You cannot enter for instance the apostolic palace or other offices of the Vatican unless you can demonstrate that that you are vaccinated and this is a very severe policy. I understand – I don’t know personally but I understand – that that there are a number of people who cannot come to work because they’re not vaccinated, and of course their absence from work is classified as unjustified and therefore they aren’t paid: and also, I have heard that a number of the Swiss Guards had to leave the service of the Guards because they chose not to be vaccinated. As I said before I believe that the forced vaccination is a violation of human rights, and also there are normal precautions which can be taken with regard to the spreading of any kind of illness and those precautions should be taken; but it’s correct: there are a lot of people who have been vaccinated who now have contracted seemingly this omicron variation. To me the bottom line is that the vaccination, as it is, is an experiment. We don’t have the necessary experience with the vaccine, and so people who take the vaccine are accepting to be part of an experiment.

Yes, and as you mentioned there have even been Vatican officials who’ve now contracted COVID, many of them triple vaxxed in some cases. Tell me how this squares though with Catholic teaching because the CDF document of last year, of last December, said you can in good conscience and as a good Catholic decide not to take these vaccines, and that’s perfectly licit, but now we seem to be getting a different message, at least in word, from the Vatican, to say nothing of these mandates they’ve dropped on employees.

What the Congregation for the Doctrine of the faith said is Catholic teaching. A forced vaccination of people is no part of Catholic teaching and that’s all I can say: this has never been in the Church’s teaching, in the document of the Congregation. The CDF was clear about that and I thought that it was understood. But then the Vatican itself has taken this position which really doesn’t square with that teaching and it’s causing a great deal of suffering.

Your Eminence, I want to move on to another topic: the continued support of and attacks upon the traditional Latin Mass since Pope Francis’ motu proprio “Guardians of Tradition” that was released in July. In the archdiocese of Chicago where the Latin Mass has practically been banned – Cardinal Blase Cupich issued rules last month on Christmas day that banned the use of the traditional liturgy on Christmas, Easter Sunday, and the first Sunday of each month and other holy days; now Cardinal Cupich explains his reasoning for these new rules is the following: “To foster and make manifest the unity of this local church as well as to provide all Catholics in the archdiocese an opportunity to offer a concrete manifestation of the acceptance of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council and its liturgical books.” Cardinal Burke, what is the fear of the Old Rite based upon, and is the ongoing celebration of the Latin Mass a challenge in your mind to the Second Vatican Council or the liturgical books that came out of it?

Absolutely not. In many dioceses now for many years, some of the faithful have been assisting at the celebration of the Holy Mass, especially on feast days, according to the more ancient usage, the usus antiquior, the extraordinary form as it’s called today. That hasn’t been any cause of disunity. In fact I served in two dioceses and it was a great blessing to have these communities who were following those ancient rites as they’ve been handed down to us from the time of pope Gregory the Great and even before, and I don’t want to talk about them as if they’re simply antiquities, not at all! The sacred liturgy is a living reality: it’s Christ himself acting in our midst to sanctify us, and the Holy Mass in the most wonderful way possible by His renewing His sacrifice on calvary sacramentally, and then nourishing us with His own Body and Blood. And this remains the reality, so that the form of the Mass as it was set forth after the Council of Trent but as it had existed for centuries before is a living reality, and you can’t deny that. With regard to the Second Vatican Council many things that happened after the Council with regard to the sacred liturgy have no foundation whatsoever in the in the documents on the sacred liturgy, and intelligent people who have studied these matters know well that there were many abuses following the Council – the so-called spirit of the council, and the whole way in which the liturgy was reformed, the rites were reformed. So there are legitimate questions. Some of them have been addressed, some need yet to be addressed. But Pope Saint John Paul II for instance, in the last years of his pontificate, was continually insisting on the need to address the sacred liturgy and to restore the transcendence of the liturgical action: namely that it’s Jesus Christ Himself who acts in our midst, comes into our midst through the sacred liturgy. And, of course, Pope Benedict XVI was a wonderful teacher in that regard, and Summorum Pontificum, his motu proprio by which he made more accessible the celebration of the extraordinary form, as he called it, was a great gift and was proceeding in the exercise of that gift. The use of that gift was a great gift in the church. I don’t understand this. I have a lot of contact with the oratories and parishes that celebrate the extraordinary form, and with priests, and it’s all positive. They don’t think of themselves as being the real Church or better Catholics than anyone else: they simply find a tremendous spiritual nourishment through these ancient rites, the traditional form of the mass. And why should that be denied to them?

Your Eminence, a priest in the Chicago diocese asked to be allowed to use the ad orientemposture, facing the East during mass: he was denied. When he protested, he was charged with inciting disobedience against the diocesan bishop. Has the ad orientem posture been abrogated, forbidden by the Council or the Church and what does the all of that have to do with the Latin Mass?

Any mass can be celebrated facing the Lord or facing the east ad orientem versus Dominum, and in fact many people tell me, and it makes perfect sense, that it’s a very beautiful thing to have the priest at the head of the congregation offering the Mass when everyone is facing Our Lord, so this makes it clear that the sacrifice is Our Lord’s sacrifice. We worship in spirit and truth in Our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s true that that the more ancient usage was certainly to celebrate Mass facing the Lord, facing the east, but I don’t find anything in the documents of the Second Vatican Council that would lead to a banning of the traditional way, of the traditional posture or position of the priest during the celebration of the Mass; and why this is now being brought forward I don’t understand.

Your Eminence, the practical effect of this, I think people haven’t given due consideration in Rome, what I’m hearing is so many of these Catholic communities – and again these are small groups of Catholics but they’re fervent, the church is packed for these traditional Latin Masses – many of them are now going over to these Society of Saint Pius X chapels. Is the intention here on the part of some in Rome to drive those Catholics attached to this rite to the Society of Saint Pius X and then declare them all schismatics at some later date? Why create this division while talking of accompaniment?

I don’t know. I’ve been told that too, that the thinking of some is that that anyone who is attracted to the more ancient usage should simply go over to the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X, but that’s absolutely wrong because the more ancient usage is an integral part of the life of the Church it has been along all the centuries. Even after the introduction of the Novus Ordo, as it’s called in the more recent usage, the Church has always permitted to individuals and to groups the possibility of the use of following the more ancient usage. And so this idea that somehow if you are attracted to the usus antiquior you’re a schismatic, I mean this is simply wrong and it’s wrong to drive people in that direction. But Our Lord is with us in the Church: He told us he would remain with us always in the Church, and so we have to stay in the Church and fight to preserve and to promote and cultivate the liturgical life of the Church, also through the extraordinary form. And so I tell people we don’t have a choice. Saint Athanasius was exiled, he was excommunicated, he suffered so many humiliations for defending the truth of the faith, but he never left the Church. Padre Pio is another example more recent: he suffered a great deal at the hands of the Vatican and yet he remained faithfully in the Church, and this is what we have to do. Our lord isn’t going to permit – I know this – Our Lord is not going to permit that this beautiful gift of the more ancient usage, the beautiful gift of these rites will be lost. It’s clear that He hasn’t permitted it and since the time of the Council there’s been a continual growth and interest in the more ancient usage. I know so many lay faithful and also priests who have told me that being able to assist at the Holy Mass according to the usus antiquior has so helped them to deepen their understanding and their appreciation and their participation in the Holy Mass.

I’ve had a number of priests tell me it wasn’t until they either assisted or celebrated the old rite that they fully understood and then brought a new sacrality and devotion to the new one, because one feeds the other, it stands on the back of the other. But it is as you mentioned, Your Eminence – and I would add Mother Angelica’s name to that list of martyrs for the faith fighting and being abused by authorities at times over the liturgy, let’s face it – it is curious and bizarre to me that at the same time that the Vatican is inviting protestants and Anglicans to walk with the Roman Catholic Church in this synod, we are basically treating very faithful Catholics of a living beautiful tradition of the church as if they’re lepers and saying there’s no room for you at the inn. George Weigel called Traditionis custodes “theologically incoherent, pastorally divisive and unnecessary.” Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence is calling on the Church to support those attached to the old rite. Do you think this is going to be an ongoing struggle here, and how best to fight it?

It will be, and my counsel to people is: continue to do what you’ve been doing. This is nurturing your faith, this is nurturing your closeness to your bishop and your closeness to the whole Church, and that is the way that we can best fight this battle, and then to vindicate our rights in the Church, to make recourses when injustices are done to legitimate communities of the faithful. And, of course, there are also institutes of the consecrated life or societies of apostolic life whose particular charism is the celebration of the liturgy according to the roman rite according to the more ancient usage, and to promote that. It’s their right to do that. So I believe that there will continue to be a very strong response to the situation and God willing – and I’m sure that Our Lord will bless it – that we will return to a regular free usage of the more ancient usage of the Roman rite.

In the meantime, it’s going to be very difficult when many of these priests are not allowed to celebrate the Latin Mass in a parish setting, so I guess this goes underground like as it was in days gone by and in Communist China, I guess that’s where the whole world is now.

Your Eminence, in December pope Francis wrote a letter praising the work of sister Jeannine Gramick, the head of the very controversial New Ways Ministry, a group condemned by the Bishops’ Conference in the US and two previous pontificates. The Pope praised her work for her outreach to LGBTQ Catholics. His letter fully contradicts John Paul II and Ratzinger’s 1999 admonition against her work. What are your thoughts on this letter and the message it sends to the Church and the wider world?

Well, the church’s response to the New Ways Ministry, and at that time he was still alive, father Nugent, and sister Jeanine Gramick is found in a document of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that was published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, the official organ of communication of the of the Church, in 1999, and you can read it there, and what’s written there is as true today as when it was written. What these personal acts of the pope are, are exactly that: these are acts that he is taking on personally, but they have nothing to do with the Church’s teaching as far as I’m concerned. What I read that was quoted in the media of the letter – or letters, I’m not sure – which is written to Sister Jeanine, these are simply the opinions of a man, but they have nothing to do with the Magisterium of the Church. That’s found very carefully set forth in that document: when a document is published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis this is very significant: it indicates to us that it is in a particular way an expression of the Church’s doctrine and discipline.

Constant Battle for your soul

Today's Meditation “The life of prayer calls for continuous battles. It is the most important and the longest effort in a life dedicated to God. This effort has been given a beautiful name: it is called the guard of the heart. The human heart is a city; it was meant to be a stronghold. Sin surrendered it. Henceforth it is an open city, the walls of which have to be built up again. The enemy never ceases to do all he can to prevent this. He does this with his accustomed cleverness and strength, with stratagem and fury … he succeeds all along the line to distract us and entice us away from the divine presence. We must always be starting again. These continual recoveries, this endless beginning again, tires and disheartens us far more than the actual fighting. We would much prefer a real battle, fierce and decisive. But God, as a rule, thinks otherwise. He would rather we were in a constant state of war.” — Dom Augustin Guillerand, p. 57

H.O.P.E. What You Eat Matters (2018) - Full Documentary (Subs: AR/CZ/ES/...

Our Increasingly Unrecognizable Civilization

April/May 2021 • Volume 50, Number 4/5 • Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn
Host, The Mark Steyn Show

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Mark Steyn, host of The Mark Steyn Show, writes regularly at steynonline.com and has contributed to numerous publications, including the Daily Telegraph, The Irish Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Jerusalem Post. He is the author of several books, including Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech, and The Twilight of the West, America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, and The [Un]documented Mark Steyn. A frequent guest host of Tucker Carlson Tonight, he was for 15 years a guest host of The Rush Limbaugh Show. His albums include Making Spirits Bright, with Jessica Martin, and Feline Groovy: Songs for Swingin’ Cats. From 2008 to 2013, he was a Eugene C. Pulliam Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Journalism at Hillsdale College.

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The following is adapted from a speech delivered on April 26, 2021, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Franklin, Tennessee.

I live about 20 minutes south of the Canadian border, which used to be called the longest undefended frontier in the world. People moved freely back and forth across it all day every day. But now it’s been closed for over a year. At one point my daughter asked me to drive her up there, because there was a 30-minute opportunity for people on one side to talk to their friends on the other. “Sad!” as President Trump would say. It was like Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin during the Cold War, except that both sides are now like East Berlin. 

I don’t know how this happened, but it is just one indication that America, and the West in general, have become almost unrecognizable from what they were not that long ago.

Look at just three things we have lost. 

One is equality before the law, something absolutely essential to a free society. In its place, we now have politicized law. If a policeman fatally shoots someone, whether his name is released to the public depends on whether the shooting is consistent with the preferred narrative of the ruling class. A policeman recently took down a young woman who was threatening the life of another young woman with a knife, and that policeman was immediately identified—indeed, his photo was posted and he was threatened by NBA superstar LeBron James on Twitter. On the other hand, we know nothing of the policeman who shot dead an unarmed woman in the U.S. Capitol on January 6. His name will apparently never be released to the public.

Second, border control. Functioning societies, at least since the Peace of Westphalia three centuries ago, have borders. America has no southern border and no plans to get one. The official position of our government seems to be that any of the seven billion persons on this planet has a right to come and stay in the U.S. for three years, until his or her assigned court date comes up. As the number of people with pending cases continues to grow, that three years will extend out to five or seven or 15 years. If we get all seven billion people to come here, the court system will break down entirely and maybe we can go back to having a functioning border.

And third, dare I bring up the fact that it is a real question whether we can go back to agreeing to have open and honest elections? And if we don’t have open and honest elections, control of our borders, and equality before the law, then we don’t have the conditions for politics or free government. 

And here’s the thing. It is not at all clear to me that many of America’s conservative politicians understand the seriousness of all this. You can see it in the fact that they go around trying to scare people with the specter of a “radical socialist agenda.” For well over a year now, we have been living in a world in which it’s accepted as normal that the state has essentially unlimited power—and in which our freedom to decide for ourselves has been diminished almost to invisibility. Why do these conservative politicians think the words “radical socialist agenda” still scare anyone in a time when the state can tell us whether we can have Aunt Mabel over for Christmas? They are completely out of touch.

Over the same period as the pandemic lockdowns, we have seen an escalation of so-called wokeness. And if you look at one of the most startling manifestations of this, transgender fanaticism—which involves, after all, the abolition of biological sex and, I’m sorry to have to say it, the physical mutilation of children—one notices that America is farther down this road than any other country in the Western world. In other words, at this moment of crisis for Western Civilization, or for what we used to call Christendom, the leading country of the free world is pulling the wrong way.

Think of it. Your daughter has been training since she was a little girl to run in school sports. Now at 17, she’s in the state high school track championships, and you are forbidden even to notice that she’s competing against a woman who is 6’2” with thighs like tugboats, a great touch of five o’clock shadow on her face, and the most muscular bosom you’ve ever seen. You’re not supposed to notice the craziness of this, and the craziness is at its craziest right here in America.

We traditionally think of France as being a bit screwy, but today there are French intellectuals who regard themselves as hardcore leftists and yet who think America has gone bonkers on this transgender issue. President Macron himself has said that American wokeness is an existential threat to the French Republic, and he even found bureaucrats in France’s education bureaucracy who agreed. There is not a single bureaucrat in the Department of Education in Washington, D.C., who would agree, but there are apparently a few in Paris.

If you look further east in Europe to the lands that were once behind the Iron Curtain—to Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic, which still function as conventional nation-states calculating their best interests—you find tremendous fear of the threat of wokeness that is being exported, sometimes aggressively, from America. So it is here in the U.S. where we have to put the stake through these ideas. 

But again, even most of our conservative leaders and institutions seem oblivious. School districts in America are talking about revising their curricula to cover transgender issues from grade school on. Now, I went to an English boys’ school, and we were expected to pick up sexuality on our own time. In those days people would have looked puzzled if you had said, “We’re going to have to cancel geography or Latin, because we need to put gay studies in there.” These days, instead of going off behind the bike shed during recess to learn about sex, kids need to sneak behind the bike shed to do a little bit of closeted geography or closeted Latin. It’s completely backwards. And yet what do we hear from most conservative politicians? That it would be nice to offer people a tax cut! 

We are way beyond tax cuts. We’re broke. We’re just a smidgen away from $30 trillion in federal debt—something with no historical precedent. Talking about tax cuts today is like talking about VAT tax refunds on the Titanic. It’s not actually what’s necessary at the moment.

Another big issue that should take our minds off tax cuts is China. I can’t get over the way we in the U.S. have been ordered by our governors and the CDC to punish ourselves by living small, shrunken lives, while the people in China who loosed this pandemic on the world have paid no price for it. 

Dr. Fauci has been a federal government bureaucrat since 1968. He’s the J. Edgar Hoover of public health. He talks about the COVID virus as if we’re at war. But he seems to think a country wins a war by taking it out on its own population rather than the enemy, which is what we’ve done.

Which do you think was the only major economy to grow in 2020? It’s not a hard question. America’s economy shrank 3.5 percent last year. The economies of Germany and Japan shrank almost five percent. France’s, Italy’s, and India’s economies all shrank over eight percent, and the economy of the United Kingdom was down ten percent. China’s economy, on the other hand, grew 2.3 percent in 2020, and first quarter growth for 2021 in China set a new world record—it was up over 18.3 percent. The COVID pandemic has been hugely profitable for China. 

U.S. policy towards China since the 1990s represents perhaps the biggest strategic miscalculation by any great power in human history. Just as communism was wobbling and beginning to fall everywhere else, we helped Beijing come up with the first economically viable form of communism.

At first we were told it was only our manufacturing that we would ship to China. After all, we were told, it wasn’t economically viable for Americans to make widgets. Remember the talk in the ’90s? We were going to be the “knowledge economy.” All the clever people told us this. We weren’t going to have mills and factories, but we were going to be the knowledge economy. Well, in case you haven’t noticed, China’s got the entire knowledge economy for itself now. It makes our laptops and our smartphones and it’s out front with Huawei and 5G. It also makes the batteries that power our gizmos and the chips that run our cars. When COVID struck, we found out fast that the Chinese not only make our viruses, they also make the personal protective equipment that protects us against the viruses—and all of our medicines to boot! Those wily Chinese get you both coming and going.

China is now the number one global power. You can define this militarily, where it now has the largest surface fleet on the planet. You can define it economically. But the way I define it is to look at who gets its way in the world. New Zealand has just effectively pulled out of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing arrangement—an arrangement between the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, the oldest such arrangement on the planet. New Zealand has pulled out with respect to China because it doesn’t want to offend China. I would think Canada might be the next to go. Or look at the World Health Organization. America pays for it, but Chairman Xi in Beijing calls the shots. China gets its way now, and the U.S. doesn’t.

We need politicians with a sense of urgency about these problems, but all they seem to have is urgency about things that aren’t urgent. Look at climate change. People say we need to take action over climate change or else rising sea levels are going to overwhelm the Maldives in the Indian Ocean in the 22nd century. That’s the century after this one, which is still quite young. These same people say about the immediate crisis on the southern border that it’s “a natural phenomenon beyond the control of politicians.” But changing the weather in order to lower the sea levels that will threaten the Maldives in the Indian Ocean in the next century is within the power of politicians? In general, our leaders are urgent about nothing that matters and not in the least bit urgent about things that matter very much. 

The things our news media talks about incessantly, whether it’s transgender bathrooms or Confederate statues being toppled or the totally dishonest national conversation on race—nothing like this is heard in China as it goes along steadily strengthening its position as the world’s leading power. The Chinese don’t find themselves stuck in these sterile, drain-circling, dishonest public conversations about identity politics. These conversations are a waste of time. And one thing we should demand of our politicians is that they talk about things that aren’t a waste of time. 

At the root of our problems is that we have seen the emergence of a true ruling class, like Grand Dukes in medieval Europe. Its members intermarry. They send their kids to the same schools. They circulate back and forth between government and the private sector. And over time it has become increasingly easy to identify members of this class.

John Kerry gave a commencement address a couple of years ago in which he told the students, “You are going to be the first generation to live in a borderless world.” And for the elite, the idea of a borderless world rings true. A typical member of the ruling class will get a job with a firm like Goldman Sachs, work for a couple of years in Hong Kong, then move on for a couple of years in Geneva, and then maybe come back to America. What are borders to such a person? Meanwhile, for the common American, COVID has literally ended, to a large degree, any freedom of movement. They live in the farthest thing from a borderless world. Oftentimes they’re trapped in a town that is dying because of the open-border, cheap-labor policies advocated by people like John Kerry. 

Our political division in America today is a class division, and we need to expose it as such whenever we see it. The ruling class tries to keep racial and other forms of division stirred up in our politics so that we don’t notice the class protection racket they are running. Look at that guy from Twitter, Jack Dorsey, who wears a beard like he’s playing the hobo in a Charlie Chaplin silent film. I wouldn’t mind betting that when he’s called to testify in Congress, he has his valet hook on the beard and lower him into the clothes that make him look like he’s been sleeping in a dumpster. Then at night after the cameras are off he’s like Lord Grantham in Downton Abbey, spending an hour being dressed for dinner. Our elites have become incredibly good at theater.

Getting back to the southern border, it perfectly symbolizes the bifurcation of our society. We’re told there’s a health emergency. We’re told we can’t open our businesses or attend weddings or funerals. Yet at the same time, every day, thousands of people pour across the southern border, test positive for COVID, and are then driven to a nice hotel and put up there at taxpayers’ expense. 

It’s also interesting to compare the southern border with the northern. Prior to the pandemic, when the border with Canada was open, my kids had their Kinder Eggs confiscated by the Department of Homeland Security when we would cross the border going south into Vermont. Kinder Eggs are chocolate eggs with a kid’s toy inside. They are sold in Canada, but they are banned in the U.S. because the Food and Drug Administration calls the toy a “non-nutritive embed”—and that’s good enough to send Homeland Security agents swinging into action! There is always a big crackdown before Easter on Kinder Eggs. So at the northern border there are lots of things, down to Kinder Eggs, that are illegal. But at the southern border you can come in with pretty much anything you want, including COVID. Why is that? It is because some groups serve the needs of the ruling class and others don’t. License is extended to the former and not the latter. 

People ask me, “Why are you going on about Kinder Eggs? They’re not important. It’s more important that  so-and-so is up two points in Iowa and three points in New Hampshire. That could be a real game changer.” To which I answer no, that’s not how it works. If they take the small freedoms away from you, whether it’s the freedom to eat Kinder Eggs or to enjoy a high pressure shower, you will lose all the larger freedoms, which is the world we’re in now. 

I used to get occasional pushback when I’d talk about rights. “Rights are abstract things,” people would say—“they don’t have anything to do with our real lives.” Well, after the last year, we know they have everything to do with our real lives. When you’re told you can’t open your hair salon, when you’re told you can’t have family or friends over for dinner, when you’re told you must wear a mask in your own garden, there’s nothing abstract about it. This is where all the stupid Kinder Egg laws have been trending for years. And it’s why we need to push back.

I made a little joke earlier about studying transgenderism in grade school, but it’s not a laughing matter. Education is the biggest structural defect in our society. We have an almost entirely corrupt and abusive education establishment. And in one corner of Governor Whitmer’s Michigan, of all places, Hillsdale College stands against this. Hillsdale’s literature, I’ve noted through the years, talks a lot about the College’s 177 years of being rooted in the soil of Michigan. And this reminds me of the fact that if you do not have roots, you are not a functioning society. You can’t just be flotsam and jetsam, bobbing around on the currents of the age, wheresoever they tend. If you do that, you’re cut off from your roots.

This is what’s so frightening about the trends in education today. Cromwell told his portrait painter, “Paint me, warts and all.” That’s not what is happening in America, where the trend in education is to paint only America’s warts. So even the great Kate Smith, who sang “God Bless America” for years, is having her statue taken down because she made a racially insensitive record in 1931. Well you know who really had a racially insensitive record in 1931? The Democratic Party. But unlike Kate Smith’s statue, it’s still around. 

President Macron of France is not my favorite chap—he’s a sinister globalist for one thing. But he made an admirable stand when he announced that not one French statue would be taken down and not a single French street name would be changed, because they are all part of French history. And “Bingo!” as Peter Navarro likes to say, the statue toppling and street-name changing in France went away. Why can’t American conservatives show that kind of strength? The Senate Minority Leader says he personally would not be bothered if the historical names of U.S. military bases are changed. The editor of National Review says that he wouldn’t be bothered about taking down Confederate statues. But of course it doesn’t stop there—now they’re going for all the statues. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, McKinley, and on and on. The point conservatives need to grasp is, unless you’re prepared to surrender everything, don’t surrender anything.

I’ll end by pointing out that the Left wins because it seizes language. Take the policy of letting people vote who are not U.S. citizens and shouldn’t be voting. The Left calls this policy “counting every vote.” Therefore someone who wants to make sure voters are citizens is opposed to “counting every vote.” If we don’t take back the language, we will lose the truth. Even on FOX News, I have noticed, news anchors now talk about “gender assigned at birth,” as if that’s something different from one’s biological sex. There may be 57 genders, but there are only two biological sexes. 

Don’t surrender the language. Reclaim the language. It’s the first step to recovering our civilization.

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/increasingly-unrecognizable-civilization/