THE LIFE OF THE SOUL AND THE LIFE OF THE BODY IN MY THOUGHTS

THE LIFE OF THE SOUL AND THE LIFE OF THE BODY IN MY THOUGHTS--11.20.2018

author unknown-

Maybe I’m kickin’ a dead horse here but hey…... I thought it was ok to disagree and share my thoughts.  I just totally disagreed with the analogy.  There was never any malice.  

When I think about ‘the life of the soul’ in Catholicism, I think about grace which comes from God through the Sacraments.  In Confession; in which we admit our sins after an examination of conscience, I think about the graces that I receive from Jesus in the confessional.  I always think of them as an infusion of grace into the soul  in which the graces feed the soul. I believe grace makes me more aware of my sins and more able to avoid them in the future with my cooperation.  It’s as though grace feeds my soul to be well.  

So, this analogy with Confession; where sin is being eliminated by the grace of God, and an oncologist; who eliminates a tumor with surgery, (cutting), radiation, (burning), and chemo (poison), in which the tumor, and worse cancer always comes back, was a true shocker to me.  I thought it was an outdated thought and terribly poor analogy (whoever wrote it) to me considering all the real health education around. It really shocked me.

And ‘Moderation’ is a terrible and deceiving term to use in either case because who wants to be moderately sinful and moderately sick...? 

So if Confession heals the soul with graces and our, ‘now enhanced abilities to cooperate’ that allows us to avoid sin more easily, then plant based food heals the body with live cell food and wards of diseases of the body. Since the body is a Temple of the Holy Spirit, I would think that God would want us to have an eating lifestyle to feed the trillion cells of our body.  The world always tries to fool us into sin and bodily disease.  Just look at legalized sin in our country alone.  Just look at all the pharmaceutical companies that feed us ‘poison’ that never heals us; and the food industry feeding us dead food and processed food.  And to think about all the trees destroyed for land to grow grain to feed the animals while humans starve, and all the oxygen gone from the planet because green vegetation gives us oxygen, makes me very sad. 

The life of the soul is grace and the life of the body is live cell food.  And of course, God has His own plan for us no matter what we do.

It is also known (saints, and present health peeps who have discovered God) that there is a higher supernatural height that you go to when you eat live cell food, when you abstain from food or from fasting.   That is simple truth.  Many vegan, plant based people have discovered God in their health food journeys.

So, all I wanted to do, was to say that I was really taken back by that analogy in the newsletter on hell. Even though the topic was not ‘specifically’ related, I felt strongly that it was an untruth and a deceiving analogy.

The Fifth Prophecy of Humanae Vitae

T.A. Mylor November 20, 2019 One Comment

In his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI prophesied four serious consequences if contraception became embraced by the culture and the family: infidelity/moral decadence, lost respect for and use of women by their husbands, government’s abuse of power, and man’s absolute dominion. Tragically, all four prophecies have come to fruition, wreaking havoc on the Church and our world, fifty-one years later.

Although not explicitly mentioned in Humanae Vitae, a fifth prophecy has unfolded before our eyes: women abdicating their roles as stay-at-home mothers, especially as it pertains to homeschooling. Repugnance toward homemaking and educating one’s children is a byproduct of contraception, one of her most pernicious fruits. The serpent who tempted Eve in the garden tempts every mother in a similar manner: “You should be like your husband. You don’t need to be tied down by your children.” C.S. Lewis begged to differ when he declared, “Homemaking is surely in reality the most important work in the world.” Yes, mothers have an extraordinary vocation in God’s eyes as co-creators of life and co-formators of supernatural life.

Contraception helped initiate the trend of more mothers entering the workforce, which in turn has played a major factor in the vocations decline. For instance, a 2017 study by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown found that one out of ten men in the seminary was homeschooled and that homeschooled men are four times more likely to join the seminary compared to those who study in Catholic institutions. Remove the mother from the home, and you remove vocations from the Church.

Despite the above study combined with the flourishing of traditional religious orders and seminaries, especially in dioceses with an orthodox bishop, many in the hierarchy continue to deny reality and truth by staunchly advocating for female priests and deacons. These same cardinals and bishops, who condone contraception, have failed to adequately address one of the most fundamental causes of the vocation’s crisis: contraception and its sinister effect to remove mothers from the home. Instead of being sidetracked by their own agendas, our religious leaders, especially priests, need to encourage and laud mothers for their noble and sacrificial decision to homeschool. Make no mistake: the more mothers reclaim the heart of their homes by educating their children rather than sending them to pagan schools, the more likely vocations will flower and new saints will arise.

Imagine if St. Joseph and Our Lady sent Jesus away to be taught by the Romans so they could devote all her energies to building a lucrative carpentry business. Perhaps they considered sending Jesus to the Temple permanently to be instructed by the greatest scholars of the law because they felt ill equipped for such a daunting task. Clearly, God the Father could have willed that His beloved Son be born into home of the world’s greatest intellectuals, but this was not the case. Instead, God wanted to be raised by the most virtuous parents in the history of the world. The home, the domestic church, is the greatest school of virtue. After all, which is more important: getting our children into Heaven or Harvard?

In his book Christus Vincut: Christ’s Triumph over the Darkness of the Age, Bishop Athanasius Schneider is asked specifically about the rise of homeschooling in United States along with its suppression in other countries like Germany. He declares,

This is a dictatorship. Under Communism in the Soviet Union, education in the family was also forbidden, as it was under the Nazi regime. The prohibition against homeschooling is a dictatorial law. We have a challenge and duty to restore civilization and the reign of Christ in our families, in our society.

Bishop Athanasius further comments, “So, it will always be a battle, a fight.” The battle for our children’s eternal salvation is real. Having attended Catholic schools my entire life and having been instructed by a beautiful teaching order of nuns, the Sisters of St. Francis of the Martyr St. George, did not guarantee me a virtuous life. By God’s grace and due to my parents’ and these holy nuns’ witness, I was protected from the debauchery that infiltrated my Catholic high school. Many of my classmates who came from decent homes were not so fortunate. Their parents seemed distracted by their own careers or cared only about their sons’ and daughters’ intellectual prowess. Consequently, my classmates did whatever they wanted, so long as they maintained their GPA, made this varsity team, and got into that prestigious college. Sin was overlooked; secularism and egoism reigned. In effect, these parents entrusted their children to many faith-filled Catholic educators while sadly renouncing their fundamental right to educate their children, especially in the ways of morality.

Reflecting on my past, one of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t insist upon being homeschooled because I too fell for the culture’s lie that academic and athletic success is more important than loving God and living a moral life. Having heard about the devastating effects of two families who stopped homeschooling their children years ago, I felt compelled to write this article. At one point, both families lived a simple life, but the opportunity for a more comfortable lifestyle allured the mothers into the workforce. The husbands were on board. Having homeschooled their older children until they became adolescents, the two mothers decided they had had enough. Within a short time, years of solid religious formation vanished as their children were dragged into the culture of death by their godless public high school peers. Drinking, drugs, and sex replaced faith, hope, and love. Today, several of the children have the left the Faith and are living in serious sin. In conversations with their adult children who still practice the Faith, they point to their mothers’ absence from the home as the catalyst for the breakdown of their families. Even though both sets of parents attend Mass every Sunday, frequent confession, pray the rosary, and lead their families in prayer before meals, their decision to stop homeschooling was more costly than they realized.

At the same time, homeschooling cannot always keep our children on the narrow road due to their own free will. And for some parents, solid Catholic primary and secondary schools (which are rare but do exist) are the best fit based on circumstances or a child’s specific needs. Yet homeschooling provides countless opportunities for grace, such as daily Mass; siblings growing together in virtue; spending timeless moments with your children; and, above all, safeguarding our children’s purity and faith from numerous evil forces found in pagan public schools and nominal Catholic schools.

When a mother chooses her career over her children for any other reason than absolute necessity, she exposes her innocent children to a world of vice. A quick read of St. Teresa of Avila’s autobiography reveals how wicked relatives and friends were leading her to Hell had she not repented.

The Devil knows that we have only a short time to form our children — eighteen years is brief, likely not even one fourth of their lives. Therefore, he relentlessly tempts us to squander this precious window by spending more time on social media and watching television than being with our children, by allowing other adults and our children’s peers to have more influence on our children than we do, and by allowing our careers to take precedence over our children’s eternal salvation. On our deathbeds, will we regret that we didn’t spend enough time with our children and do enough to keep them from Satan’s grip? I pray not!

The time is now for mothers to be that heroic and unheralded heart of their homes. The time is now for fathers to support their wives, so their children receive the finest religious and intellectual formation, even if it means working two jobs. If we fathers want to know how to raise a saint, we must look no farther than St. Padre Pio’s father, Grazio, who traveled twice to the United States for work so that his son could become a priest. Despite the distance, Grazio closely monitored Pio’s education. In fact, Grazio once convinced his wife to have Pio transfer schools because the one was run by an ex-priest and lacked sound formation. The time is now for parents to raise great saints like Padre Pio.

Even though the fifth prophecy of Humanae Vitae has been fulfilled, maybe it’s not too late to reverse it since nothing is impossible for God. However, in order for us to  “restore civilization and the reign of Christ in our families, in our society,” it must start with one family at a time — specifically, one mother at a time, who courageously says “yes” like the Blessed Mother to the glories and sufferings of home life.

https://onepeterfive.com/humanae-vitae-prophecy/

Image: David D via Flickr.

G.K. Chesterton’s Radical Vision for Conservatives

Jesse Sumpter

The recent National Conservatism conference is one of many examples that conservatism is going through a significant re-evaluation process. This process began in large part as a response to the Trump presidency, but it is also a response to alarming liberal trends: transgender issues, gay marriage, immigration, abortion, and many others. All these factors have forced conservatives to examine again the principles that unite them. In the midst of this re-evaluation process, it would be worthwhile to look to G.K. Chesterton and consider his thoughts on conservatism.

While Chesterton shares many of the principles of conservatives, he also sees the common weaknesses in some forms of conservatism. For example, conservatism which seeks to simply maintain what was done in the past is not enough of a vision for true conservatism to thrive. Chesterton instead argues that true conservatism has to be able to re-align itself and make adjustments. That is what is happening in the national conversation among conservatives today. Conservatives are asking: Where did we get off target? How do we recapture a true vision for American culture and society? As we work through this evaluation process, it is helpful to consider Chesterton’s vision for conservatism, a vision that offers our generation a robust reminder of what it looks like to thrive.

Chesterton first shows how true conservatism is a radically inclusive vision. In looking to the past for guidance for today and tomorrow, conservatives are not promoting a static position but one that is truly dynamic and democratic. He writes, “I have never been able to understand where people got the idea that democracy was in some way opposed to tradition. It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time. It is trusting to a consensus of common human voices rather than to some isolated or arbitrary record.”[1] In looking back to what our forefathers thought and said about our country, we are acknowledging the voices of the past that continue to have a say in our lives today. These men and women shaped where we are today and so we cannot really understand our own time unless we understand them.

The past also gives us a measuring stick with which to judge our current moment in time. The past is not the only standard to use but it is a good one that many have forgotten or ignored. Why only count the “vote” of the current generation? Let’s be radically inclusive and count the “vote” of those who first built this country. Conservatives are being truly democratic in reminding us to look to the past to gain a better vision for the future.

Chesterton next shows us how true conservatism is radically active. Rather than being a vision that idolizes one point in the past—some might call it “the good old’ days”—instead true conservatism is a constant re-evaluation process driven by a standard which we are seeking to align with more and more. The current re-evaluation that conservatives are conducting is actually something that conservatives must always do. Chesterton writes, “But all conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution.”[2] The world is always changing. People grow old and things fall apart. True conservatives must be vigilant and active because there is a standard which we are aiming for and we cannot reach that standard trying to maintain the status quo.

New things will arise that we must think through and understand. Some new things will be good and some will be bad. It takes vigilance to keep up with the changes and know how to handle them. To grow weeds in a garden, you don’t have to do anything. And so true conservatives realize that we need to weed a little every day. A conservative vision is one that cultivates, prunes, waters, and weeds. Conservatism is not static but a living force to be reckoned with.

This leads to Chesterton’s third point: in being for permanent truths, the conservative position is not a static position. Rather, the truly permanent things are the ones that are most alive. Chesterton looks at the sun as a great example of this truth: “Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life.”[3] This is like the child sitting in a swing going back and forth over and over again. Adults get tired of that kind of action but a child will do it all day. Why is this? Because the young and youthful do not get tired like the old and aged. We tire easily. In this way we see that the sun is a wonderful picture of the conservative vision. It never tires of rising and setting. It does the same thing day after day, not because it is bored, but rather because it has never gotten tired. It is full of a robust life that we old humans must once again grasp anew.

That is why we need a constant and consistent reminder of the true and permanent things. We wear out but the permanent things never do. That is why they are permanent. They survive every twist and turn in the road. They do not change but we do. And so we need to look to them again and again. We need to refresh the vision or we will lose it.

Chesterton then looks to the only permanent thing: God. He never changes. To our ears that sounds like a dreadful, boring thing to say but that is because we do not know what that really means. To be unchanging means to be perfect. It means to be all that He needs to be. There is no lack. He doesn’t grow tired. He does not need to grow more or to improve. He is the most alive thing. Philosophers speak of God’s aseity, that is, his self-sufficient nature. He is his own source of existence. Rather than being stuck in place, like we are, God is a rushing wind, a roaring tidal wave, a cosmic dance, that never ends.

Chesterton describes it this way: “It may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old and our Father is younger than we.”[5] We see then that true conservatism is the vision of eternal youth. The permanent things are not really old; they are the eternal young. We are the ones who grow old and wear out; the permanent things do not. That is why they last. They are truly alive.

It is only the things that are truly alive that can outlast death. The test of time is a test of the grave. Can you kill this thing? If you cannot kill it, then it must be eternal. This leads to what conservatives ultimately need: not just permanent ideas or visions but a permanent person. Only a person who can stand the test of time is able to give conservatives a truly living standard. That is the central thrust of Chesterton’s radical vision for conservatism. There is an eternal standard—the Lord Jesus—who does not change. That standard enables us to look to the past to honor our parents, it also motivates us to be vigilant because we can see what we are aiming at, and it also gives us a vision of the true life. That vision is alive and active and we must hurry to catch him.

https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/11/gk-chesterton-radical-vision-conservatives-jesse-sumpter.html

The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.

[1] G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908, 84.

[2] Ibid, 212.

[3] Ibid, 108.

[4] Ibid, 109.

The featured image is a photograph of G.K. Chesterton taken by Hector Murchison (1864-1934) and courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Leftism Isn’t a Religion, It’s Something Worse

Auguste Meyrat

Like Christians of old confronting the idol-worship of the pagans, we must not attempt to parse through the dense tangles of Leftist culture’s false beliefs and mythology and make corrections; instead we must create greater counter-movements based on truth and authentic experience.

It has become common among today’s conservatives to call environmentalism, socialism, militant feminism, transgenderism, and other leftist ideologies the modern equivalents of religion. 

Whereas in the past, people treated the central ideas of these movements as ideas like any other—that is, subject to discussion and evaluation—now, people must treat them with the same reverence and respect as they would with religion.

Considering the apparent zeal of climate-change activists and social-justice warriors, one can easily spot a few other similarities. Like religion, most of these movements have a transcendent idea akin to a deity, most have a community of sorts that will come together for a common purpose (mainly protesting), and most feature a kind of dogmatism distinguishing true from false believers. And, as exemplified with the 16-year-old activist Greta Thunberg, these ideologies now have their own saints.

However, the similarities end there, and insisting that people treat these movements like religions does a disservice both to religion and the movement itself. In truth, they are really false idols, idealized fixations devoid of much meaning. This makes them something less than religions, in terms of their intellectual and spiritual content. Nevertheless, they are still problematic and capable of corrupting civilization—particularly a civilization that does all it can to dispense with religion altogether.

At its most fundamental level, religion is a system of beliefs, in the form of a creed, while ideology usually consists of one belief, often in the form of a general notion. This leads the former to have a system of logic based on these core beliefs about God (a theology); the latter only has a singular belief that people can interpret however they like. True, people could do away with conflicting opinions in ideology by actually studying climatology or economics (as religious people study holy scripture and tradition), but few really do—and those that do would likely have different conclusions about climate change and socialism.

Instead, most adherents of modern ideologies focus on certain narratives: “Humans, particularly the ones in first-world countries, are destroying the planet,” “The system is rigged and the rich are oppressing the poor,” or “The white patriarchy continues to hold down women and people of color at all levels.” Where they go with this depends less on logic and more on how much they care. Those who care deeply become activists joining and organizing various marches and sit-ins; those who care somewhat become “slacktivists” who periodically post articles about injustice on social media; and those who care a little may just vote Democrat and blithely ignore arguments from the other side.

Although feelings are also important to religious practice, they do not constitute its foundation. Religious adherents do not follow a certain moral code, worship a certain way, or hold certain beliefs because this makes them feel good or look cool, but because they think they are true. The typical Catholic father who drags his young children to Mass might not feel much when he is there, but he accepts the truth that he fulfilling his obligation as a Christian disciple and receiving special graces from the sacrifice at the altar. By contrast, the typical hipster may reconsider joining his friends for climate protest if he doesn’t feel like it and wants to stay in and binge-watch Netflix instead.

The lack of theology, in turn, affects how these movements are organized. Because feelings predominate, specific people will become leaders based on their ability to inspire feelings instead of having actual credibility or expertise. Even if Greta Thunberg is a troubled teenager suffering from depression and Asperger’s Syndrome, or Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is an actress who originally auditioned for the Justice Democrats in her run for congress, or Bernie Sanders is an old man who failed at every job except being a politician, they all generate buzz and make their respective issues exciting and accessible.

Normally, this kind of hierarchy would wither in the face of conflicting reality, but a well-funded media and new technology have pushed perception ever further along and effectively smothered reality. This is how so many young people genuinely fear ecological doom despite living in the best of times. This is how so many college students, perhaps the most privileged group in society, identify with the proletariat and hope to overturn the very institutions that made them so privileged in the first place. The messages they see and hear have normalized these fantastical notions.

All this poses unique problems for institutions looking to best reconcile these movements with the greater good of the community. They cannot disprove them because they were never actually proven. They cannot reform them because they were never actually formed. They cannot argue against them, because they are never actually argued. And, these ideologies cannot be adapted to philosophy or religion (as Pope Francis and his progressive bishops were trying to do in the recent Amazon Synod) because they are inherently incompatible with rational systems.

Rather, in order to best handle these movements based on falsehoods and propaganda, such institutions must create greater counter-movements based on truth and authentic experience. This was precisely what the early Christians did when they encountered idol-worship. They did not attempt to parse through the dense tangles of each culture’s false beliefs and mythology and make corrections; they proclaimed a coherent, all-encompassing religion to replace them. In answering the confused collective of people channeling their anxiety into idols, they offered a universal community based on charity.

Too many religious people today seem averse to confronting these idols, and most non-religious people are unequipped to properly identify and reject these ideologies as idols. Moral relativism and mediocre education have made all opinions and arguments equal and legitimate.

Many conservatives have rightly attributed the rise of fanatical ideological movements to the unfulfilled religious longing of people who live in secularized societies, but this doesn’t really explain the meaning of religious longing. Religious longing is the longing not just for ceremony, higher ideals, and shared label, but also a longing for truth, logic, and engagement.

People fall into these modern idols, however false and incredible, because there is no authority to offer something of substance. Therefore, the best way to lead people out of them is not reasoned rebuttal or disparagement, but a confident faith and honest friendship.

https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/11/leftism-religion-auguste-meyrat.html

The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.

The featured image is courtesy of Pixabay.

Sir Gawain on Maturity

Louis Markos

The mature man is the one who not only honors vows and oaths, but who, when he breaks them, confesses his crime, feels shame for his failure, and seeks to make right what he has violated. Shrugging off one’s moral failings, acting as if they don’t matter, is not a sign of maturity but an abdication of it.

Author’s Introduction: Imagine if Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and the other great poets of ancient Greece, Rome, and the Middle Ages had been given the gift, not only to peer into the twenty-first century, but to correspond with us who live in that most confusing and rudderless of centuries. Had it been in their power to do both of those things, what might they say to us? How would they advise us to live our lives? What wisdom from their experience and from their timeless poems might they choose to pass down to us?

Sir Gawain: On Maturity

We all mature in different ways and at different rates. Some reach maturity by the age of twenty; some never reach it all. Part of the reason for this is that people rarely mature, rarely come of age, until they have undergone a rite of passage, an ordeal that tests their courage, their endurance, and their faith.

Alas, there are many who fail the test when it comes, who choose to meet it with pride or envy, bitterness or skepticism. Such are those who think they have matured, but who have not. For maturity and cynicism are not synonyms but opposing states of mind. There is a difference between seeing one’s flaws and feeling sorry for oneself, between choosing to sacrifice yourself for others and developing a martyr’s complex, between doubting yourself and doubting goodness and truth.

Consider my Sir Gawain, noble knight of the Round Table and nephew to King Arthur. The trial he underwent tested every ounce of his physical courage and moral fiber. Yet he survived it and returned to Camelot a sadder but wiser man.

We are all friends here; let me tell you the tale.

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The tale begins on Christmas Eve during the innocent days of Arthur’s court, before Guinevere broke her troth or Mordred schemed the downfall of Camelot and the Table. Oh, those were golden days of untroubled chivalry. It seemed that neither cowardice nor malice nor treachery could spoil the joy of Arthur and his knights.

Optimism was high and virtue abounded, but few, if any, of the knights had yet been tested. Even Arthur himself was a trifle naïve, thinking the good days would last forever and that no ill thing could befall his majestic court.

And then he came, a pebble to trouble the still stream, a stone to shatter the stable roof, a boulder to start an avalanche on a peaceful mountain. He was a man, but a man as tall as a giant. And his hair and his skin and his raiment so glistened and shone with a brilliant shade of green that those who dared to gaze upon him thought that a mighty tree had strode into the hall.

At once, the Green Knight challenged Arthur and his men to a duel, an exchange of blows to the neck. He did not share their sunny, complacent faith in their own courage and invincibility and told them so in cutting words and menacing gestures.

The silence of the knights in response to his haughty and condescending call to single combat was deafening. Ashamed that no one would take up the Green Knight’s challenge, Arthur himself made bold to accept it. But he was stopped by Sir Gawain, who begged that he, young though he was, be allowed to grapple with this giant upstart who dared to taunt the flower of chivalry.

The Green Knight agreed and laid down his neck to receive a blow from Sir Gawain’s sword. With all his strength, the young knight brought down his weapon, severing the green head from its massive body. But Sir Gawain’s victory was to be short lived. For the headless body of the Green Knight, though blood streamed from its naked neck, rose from the floor, took its head in its hand, and held it up to speak:

“This time next year, you must meet me at my Green Chapel and offer your neck to receive a blow from my own sword.” And then the Green Knight was gone.

The festivities continued, with Arthur laughing aloud at the spectacle. But the heart of Gawain was troubled, knowing what awaited him in the following year.

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Had my Gawain received his blow on that self-same night, his initiation into the world of maturity would have been far less severe and lasting. As it turned out, that year of waiting and dread and searching aged him by ten, forcing him to face his own capacity for despair and building up within him the gifts of patient endurance, fearless honesty, and resolute chastity. In a word, delayed gratification.

For his was to be a slow and grueling education. In addition to facing dangers along the road, Gawain, in his search for the Green Chapel, came upon a castle where the true quality of his Christian chivalry was tested to the breaking point.

No sooner was Gawain ushered into the castle than he was treated by all as a celebrity, a knight from Camelot well-schooled in the dual arts of war and love. The lady of the manor quickly took a fancy to the handsome Gawain while the lord proposed a game. He would leave Gawain behind in the castle while he went hunting for three consecutive days; in the evening, they would exchange whatever prizes they had won.

How could the innocent Gawain know that on each of those days the lord’s wife would steal into his bedroom and attempt to seduce him? Nevertheless, the knight stayed true, only allowing himself to indulge in a number of courtly kisses—all of which he passed on to the lord in the evening.

Alas, his courage proved less true. When the lady gave him a green girdle that she swore would protect him from harm, he chose to conceal it from the lord and bring it with him to the Green Chapel.

In the end, the Green Knight did not kill Gawain; instead, he cut a gash in the side of his neck as a reminder of the cowardice and coveting he showed in keeping the girdle. For you see, the Green Knight and the lord of the manor were one and the same. Though he scolded Gawain for loving his life too much, he praised him for staying true in the test of chastity and sent him back home with the scar and the girdle as tokens of his journey.

Chastened, Gawain returned to Camelot and confessed to all his deeds. But Arthur and his knights, preferring to remain in their state of innocence, made merry of Gawain’s ordeal and adopted the girdle as the symbol of their order. Amidst the courtly laughter, however, Gawain took to heart his hard-won maturity and hid his tears from the rest.

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What then has my tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to say to those of you who live in an age where chivalry is but a distant memory and chastity has lost its central importance? A great deal, I believe.

The mature man is the one who not only honors vows and oaths, but who, when he breaks them, confesses his crime, feels shame for his failure, and seeks to make right what he has violated. Shrugging off one’s moral failings, acting as if they don’t matter, is not a sign of maturity but an abdication of it.

Taking responsibility for one’s actions, staying true to one’s word, and denying one’s lusts: in my age, in yours, or in Arthur’s, these are the perennial signs of maturity.

—A humble poet

The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.

The featured image is “The Vigil” by John Pettie, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/11/sir-gawain-maturity-louis-markos.html

Responding to Lt. Col. Vindman about my Ukraine columns … with the facts

November 22, 2019John Solomon

• 

I honor and applaud Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s service to his country. He’s a hero. I also respect his decision to testify at the impeachment proceedings. I suspect neither his service nor his testimony was easy.

But I also know the liberties that Lt. Col. Vindman fought on the battlefield to preserve permit for a free and honest debate in America, one that can’t be muted by the color of uniform or the crushing power of the state.

So I want to exercise my right to debate Lt. Col. Vindman about the testimony he gave about me. You see, under oath to Congress, he asserted all the factual elements in my columns at The Hill about Ukraine were false, except maybe my grammar

Here are his exact words:

“I think all the key elements were false,” Vindman testified.

Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y, pressed him about what he meant. “Just so I understand what you mean when you say key elements, are you referring to everything John Solomon stated or just some of it?”

“All the elements that I just laid out for you. The criticisms of corruption were false…. Were there more items in there, frankly, congressman? I don’t recall. I haven’t looked at the article in quite some time, but you know, his grammar might have been right.”

Such testimony has been injurious to my reputation, one earned during 30 years of impactful reporting for news organizations that included The Associated Press, The Washington Post, The Washington Times and The Daily Beast/Newsweek.

And so Lt. Col. Vindman, here are the 28 primary factual elements in my Ukraine columns, complete with attribution and links to sourcing. Please tell me which, if any, was factually wrong.

Fact 1: Hunter Biden was hired in May 2014 by Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas company, at a time when his father Joe Biden was Vice President and overseeing US-Ukraine Policy. Here is the announcement. Hunter Biden’s hiring came just a few short weeks after Joe Biden urged Ukraine to expand natural gas production and use Americans to help. You can read his comments to the Ukrainian prime minister here. Hunter Biden’s firm then began receiving monthly payments totaling $166,666. You can see those payments here.

Fact 2: Burisma was under investigation by British authorities for corruption and soon came under investigation by Ukrainian authorities led by Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.

Fact 3: Vice President Joe Biden and his office were alerted by a December 2015 New York Times article that Shokin’s office was investigating Burisma and that Hunter Biden’s role at the company was undercutting his father’s anticorruption efforts in Ukraine.

Fact 4: The Biden-Burisma issue created the appearance of a conflict of interest, especially for State Department officials. I especially refer you to State official George Kent’s testimony here. He testified he viewed Burisma as corrupt and the Bidens as creating the perception of a conflict of interest. His concerns both caused him to contact the vice president’s office and to block a project that State’s USAID agency was planning with Burisma in 2016. In addition, Ambassador Yovanovitch testified she, too, saw the Bidens-Burisma connection as creating the appearance of a conflict of interest. You can read her testimony here.

Fact 5: The Obama White House invited Shokin’s prosecutorial team to Washington for meetings in January 2016 to discuss their anticorruption investigations. You can read about that here. Also, here is the official agenda for that meeting in Ukraine and English. I call your attention to the NSC organizer of the meeting.

Fact 6: The Ukraine investigation of Hunter Biden’s employer, Burisma Holdings, escalated in February 2016 when Shokin’s office raided the home of company owner Mykola Zlochevsky and seized his property. Here is the announcement of that court-approved raid.

Fact 7: Shokin was making plans in February 2016 to interview Hunter Biden as part of his investigation. You can read his interview with me here, his sworn deposition to a court here and his interview with ABC News here.

Fact 8: Burisma’s American representatives lobbied the State Department in late February 2016 to help end the corruption allegations against the company, and specifically invoked Hunter Biden’s name as a reason to intervene. You can read State officials’ account of that effort here

Fact 9: Joe Biden boasted in a 2018 videotape that he forced Ukraine’s president to fire Shokin in March 2016 by threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid. You can view his videotape here. 

Fact 10: Shokin stated in interviews with me and ABC News that he was told he was fired because Joe Biden was unhappy the Burisma investigation wasn’t shut down. He made that claim anew in this sworn deposition prepared for a court in Europe. You can read that here.

Fact 11:  The day Shokin’s firing was announced in March 2016, Burisma’s legal representatives sought an immediate meeting with his temporary replacement to address the ongoing investigation. You can read the text of their emails here.

Fact 12: Burisma’s legal representatives secured that meeting April 6, 2016 and told Ukrainian prosecutors that “false information” had been spread to justify Shokin’s firing, according to a Ukrainian government memo about the meeting. The representatives also offered to arrange for the remaining Ukrainian prosecutors to meet with U.S  State and Justice officials. You can read the Ukrainian prosecutors’ summary memo of the meeting here and here and the Burisma lawyers’ invite to Washington here.

Fact 13: Burisma officials eventually settled the Ukraine investigations in late 2016 and early 2017, paying a multimillion dollar fine for tax issues. You can read their lawyer’s February 2017 announcement of the end of the investigations here.

Fact 14: In March 2019, Ukraine authorities reopened an investigation against Burisma and Zlochevsky based on new evidence of money laundering. You can read NABU’s February 2019 recommendation to re-open the case here, the March 2019 notice of suspicion by Ukraine prosecutors here and a May 2019 interview here with a Ukrainian senior law enforcement official stating the investigation was ongoing. And here is an announcement this week that the Zlochevsky/Burisma probe has been expanded to include allegations of theft of Ukrainian state funds.  

Fact 15: The Ukraine embassy in Washington issued a statement in April 2019 admitting that a Democratic National Committee contractor named Alexandra Chalupa solicited Ukrainian officials in spring 2016 for dirt on Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort in hopes of staging a congressional hearing close to the 2016 election that would damage Trump’s election chances. You can read the embassy’s statement here and here. Your colleague, Dr. Fiona Hill, confirmed this episode, testifying “Ukraine bet on the wrong horse. They bet on Hillary Clinton winning.” You can read her testimony here.

Fact 16: Chalupa sent an email to top DNC officials in May 2016 acknowledging she was working on the Manafort issue. You can read the email here.

Fact 17: Ukraine’s ambassador to Washington, Valeriy Chaly, wrote an OpEd in The Hill in August 2016 slamming GOP nominee Donald Trump for his policies on Russia despite a Geneva Convention requirement that ambassadors not become embroiled in the internal affairs or elections of their host countries. You can read Ambassador Chaly’s OpEd here and the Geneva Convention rules of conduct for foreign diplomats here. And your colleagues Ambassador Yovanovitch and Dr. Hill both confirmed this, with Dr. Hill testifying this weekthat Chaly’s OpEd was “probably not the most advisable thing to do.”

Fact 18: A Ukrainian district court ruled in December 2018 that the summer 2016 release of information by Ukrainian Parliamentary member Sergey Leschenko and NABU director Artem Sytnyk about an ongoing investigation of Manafort amounted to an improper interference by Ukraine’s government in the 2016 U.S. election.  You can read the court ruling here. Leschenko and Sytnyk deny the allegations, and have won an appeal to suspend that ruling on a jurisdictional technicality.

Fact 19: George Soros’ Open Society Foundation issued a memo in February 2016 on its strategy for Ukraine, identifying the nonprofit Anti-Corruption Action Centre as the lead for its efforts. You can read the memo here.

Fact 20: The State Department and Soros’ foundation jointly funded the Anti-Corruption Action Centre. You can read about that funding here from the Centre’s own funding records and George Kent’s testimony about it here.

Fact 21: In April 2016, US embassy charge d’affaires George Kent sent a letter to the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office demanding that Ukrainian prosecutors stand down a series of investigations into how Ukrainian nonprofits spent U.S. aid dollars, including the Anti-Corruption Actions Centre. You can read that letter here. Kent testified he signed the letter here.

Fact 22: Then-Ukraine Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said in a televised interview with me that Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch during a 2016 meeting provided the lists of names of Ukrainian nationals and groups she did want to see prosecuted. You can see I accurately quoted him by watching the video here.

Fact 23: Ambassador Yovanovitch and her embassy denied Lutsenko’s claim, calling it a “fabrication.” I reported their reaction here.

Fact 24: Despite the differing accounts of what happened at the Lutsenko-Yovanovitch meeting, a senior U.S. official in an interview arranged by the State Department stated to me in spring 2019 that US officials did pressure Lutsenko’s office on several occasions not to “prosecute, investigate or harass” certain Ukrainian activists, including Parliamentary member Leschenko, journalist Vitali Shabunin, the Anti-Corruption Action Centre and NABU director Sytnyk. You can read that official’s comments here. In addition, George Kent confirmed this same information in his deposition here.

Fact 25: In May 2018, then-House Rules Committee chairman Pete Sessions sent an official congressional letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asking that Yovanovitch be recalled as ambassador to Ukraine. Sessions and State confirmed the official letter, which you can read here.

Fact 26: In fall 2018, Ukrainian prosecutors, using a third party, hired an American lawyer (a former U.S. attorney) to proffer information to the U.S. government about certain activities at the U.S. embassy, involving Burisma and involving the 2016 election, that they believed might have violated U.S. law. You can read their account here. You can also confirm it independently by talking to the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan or the American lawyer representing the Ukrainian prosecutors’ interests.

Fact 27: In May 2016, one of George Soros’ top aides secured a meeting with the top Eurasia policy official in the State Department to discuss Russian bond issues. You can read the State memos on that meeting here.

Fact 28: In June 2016, Soros himself secured a telephonic meeting with Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland to discuss Ukraine policy. You can read the State memos on that meeting here.

Lt. Col. Vindman, if you have information that contradicts any of these 28 factual elements in my columns I ask that you make it publicly available. Your testimony did not.

If you don’t have evidence these 28 facts are wrong, I ask that you correct your testimony because any effort to call factually accurate reporting false only misleads America and chills the free debate our Constitutional framers so cherished to protect.
https://johnsolomonreports.com/responding-to-lt-col-vindman-about-my-ukraine-columns-with-the-facts/