JUST PASSING THROUGH: Breaching what was once considered the most heavily defended airspace on earth, a Ukrainian AN-196 ‘Lyutyy' strike drone sails undisturbed over downtown Moscow. And in broad daylight, too.
In a recent interview, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, former grand chancellor of the John Paul II Institute on Marriage and Family Life, confirmed the worst suspicions that many of us had.
He admitted that the changes he made at the Institute during the Pope Francis years were designed to initiate a "very profound" reform of the idea of the natural law.
Instead of absolute moral norms grounded in a keen understanding of the basic goods, he and his colleagues were proposing a moral theory rooted in historical discernment of subjective and cultural experience--not an "armchair theology" but one operating "within history and within people's lives."
This, of course, is the language of trendy postmodernism, and it is dangerous indeed.
Allow me to illustrate the principle with one example. Is slavery wrong?
Intrinsically wrong? Wrong no matter what public opinion polls say about it, no matter what the current consensus on it might be? I imagine any decent person would say yes.
But that yes is predicated upon precisely what the tradition calls the natural law and the basic goods. There are some values so fundamental that acts repugnant to them are by their very nature wicked.
If you want a highly articulate presentation of this idea, go to St. John Paul II's Veritatis Splendor.
If we say that this is just "armchair theologizing" and that morality is a function of ever-shifting cultural and experiential data, then why couldn't slavery be justified?
One of the very smartest persons that ever lived, the philosopher Aristotle, thought it was; extremely bright and morally upright persons in our country, well into the 19th century, thought it was permissible.
Who is to say whether the consensus might shift back again? Who is to say that "lived experience" might come to justify it?
What any truly coherent moral program requires is the very thing that Archbishop Paglia and his colleagues were endeavoring to eliminate, namely, absolute moral norms.
Ridding ourselves of these in the name of freedom or pastoral sensitivity actually renders moral discourse dysfunctional, just as relativizing the basic principle of logic would render any rational conversation impossible.
The Archbishop's interview, frankly, reminded me of the discussions I had at the Synod on Synodality with some of my German colleagues. Under the rubric of the development of doctrine, they were eager to relativize or radically change the principles undergirding classical morality. If this was and is truly the game, we have ventured onto perilous seas.
Link to the article below.
Russia's flagship state television channel and one of the Kremlin's main propaganda outlets, Russia-1, broadcast a QR code linking to a fundraiser for FPV drones for the Ukrainian Armed Forces to viewers across all of Russia while airing a segment about Serhii Sternenko.
The beast does not merely want your vote. It does not merely want your silence. It wants your will; every tyranny from the Gulag to the soft tyranny of distraction, begins by training men to surrender interior freedom. Fear, comfort, endless noise. See my latest YouTube video
Fatima Secret: Why the Official Story Doesn't Fit https://t.co/lR0DX6LMBw via @YouTube
If the Rosary isn’t the anchor of your prayer life, I urge you to listen to this priest and pray the Rosary. If it is your anchor in this storm please urge others to join in praying it.
In this month of May, let us remember that Fatima was not given so Catholics could become sentimental about Mary.
It was given as a warning.
A warning about Russia.
A warning about apostasy.
A warning about priests, bishops, popes, nations, and the cost of unbelief.
KYIV—The White House's new national security paper vindicates what I have been warning and confirms my messaging was right all along.
There are two main points in this paper that we've been continuously addressing:
1) Yes, US wants to remain a dominant military and industrial power with whomever will seem to be true allies.
Our message has been: UKRAINE IS THE KEY ALLY FOR DECIDING THE FUTURE OF WARFARE AND FOR THE SECURITY OF FREEDOM.
But Ukrainian leaders have NOT been making this case!
2) Yes, US sees European weakness and self-destructionist policies as a huge liability.
Our message has been: This is absolutely correct and there needs to be a great European awakening.
The elite bureaucratic "liberal/left" had FOUR years to solve this sh*t. They failed, because as always they focus on Process rather than Results.
So I'd say with urgency it's time to double down on our tow core messages:
—Ukraine is the best American ally
—Europe needs to wake the fuck up
If you get in the way of sharing this message, you are de facto helping Russia.
And, just as so many of you have been so lovingly hateful toward me for my resistance, so shall I be to anyone who gets in the way of what is needed for victory for Ukraine and the free world.