New from Remnant TV...

This Week on Michael J. Matt’s ‘From the Editor’s Desk’:

(Introductory Note by Michael J. Matt) 

August, 2020

Your Excellency:

Perhaps you’ll find this interesting. As you know, Bishop Robert Barron is certainly not the worst bishop in the US. I have benefited from some of his lectures in the past and do not wish to call into question his sincerity. That said, I find his recently-posted position on Vatican II, as laid out in some detail here, to be problematic on many levels. 

I have no idea whether or not the launching of this initiative had anything to do with your own recent letters on the subject, but it does strike me as a not-so-veiled attempt to disqualify (if not vilify) traditional Catholic resistance to the disastrous and non-binding novelties of the Second Vatican Council.

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Portuguese

20% of the nation’s population is now under virtual house arrest...

Melbourne, Australia is enduring an iron-fisted lockdown, due to the government’s decision to move from management to elimination of the coronavirus and due also to its spectacular mishandling of active cases.

Stage 3 restrictions came back into force only weeks after the state had slowly begun to reawaken from an initial coronavirus lockdown, which was undertaken despite there being very few cases in the community at that time.

A friend sent me the following note.

Dear Dr. Kwasniewski:

In our State of ———, masks were recently mandated in public places. Failure to comply with the new order can result in a petty misdemeanor or fine. Even at Holy Mass, all are supposed to wear masks.

New from Remnant TV...

From the Editor’s Desk, Michael Matt takes a look at some good news regarding the Covid recovery rate before he explores what’s really going on with the global pandemic.

To understand what’s really happening here, he takes us to Davos, Switzerland—to the World Economic Forum—where the movers and shakers of the world have been meeting on a regular basis, especially since January 2020, to discuss the “opportunity” for a ‘global reset’ at the Davos 2021 Summit.

Mr. and Mr. Pete Buttigieg

The University of Notre Dame has recently invited Peter Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana to join its faculty for the coming 2020-2021 academic year.  Buttigieg will be a Fellow at Notre Dame’s Institute for Advanced Study (NDIAS) and will take part in a group study focusing on the “nature of trust.”  This fall he will release a book on this subject titled Trust: America’s Best Chance.

In April 2018, in forethought of his presidential run, Buttigieg, as Mayor of South Bend, confirmed his Democrat pro-abortion bona fides by vetoing a re-zoning request that would have permitted Women’s Care Center to open a crisis pregnancy office next to an abortion facility.  Then, in June 2018, Buttigieg married his male ‘soul mate’ of three years, Chasten Glezman.

American Suffragettes

It was one hundred years ago this month that women in the United States obtained, as a matter of constitutional amendment, the guaranteed right to vote in state and national elections. With the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment on August 26, 1920, females joined their male counterparts in being able to cast ballots for the candidate of their choice.

If, like me, you attended public school, you were probably taught that the Nineteenth Amendment was a grand victory for equality and a triumph against the forces of chauvinism and reactionary darkness which have kept this country in chains since the age of Virginia Dare.

Introduction by Michael J. Matt: Early this morning, a Remnant reader in Argentina sent some background information on this unfolding story. According to our correspondent, liberal Bishop Eduardo Taussig of the Diocese of San Rafael, Mendoza, Argentina, will be transferred soon, after a controversial tenure during which he reportedly alienated some of the faithful by imposing communion in the hand and other progressive initiatives. Again, according to our correspondent, Bishop Taussig had already negotiated his exit with Pope Francis, but decided first to close down the best Seminary in Argentina: the Diocesan Seminary of San Rafael, founded by Msgr. León Kruk and led by the late Father Alberto Ezcurra and many other excellent theologians and professors.

In light of this unfortunate development, I’m pleased to publish Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s open letter to Bishop Taussig regarding this latest ecclesial scandal out of Argentina.  MJM

The Unending Anti-Viral Carnival

Our beloved Greek forbears’ claim that “those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad” does not bode well for the future of New York City,  where a tropical heat wave has in no way dimmed the terrorized population’s insane enthusiasm for obeying all of the absurd counsels of the anti-viral mafia. Its passion for donning its slave muzzles---with 90%-95% compliance in Manhattan---has been supplemented not only by face shields and gloves but even in the case of some fetishists with contraptions that look like beekeepers’ outfits or Samurai warrior gear.

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Portuguese

Whatever happened to death?

A few weeks ago I was enjoying a video by an American Orthodox priest talking about Covid19 and the spiritual poverty of the modern attitude toward death, even among believing Christians. Fr. Josiah Trenham is the pastor of St. Andrew Orthodox Church in Riverside, California, and he quoted another priest, who observed, “You know, no one wants to die anymore.” The comment is arresting. It cuts right through all our unconsciously secularist assumptions.

The Orthodox retain the ancient Christian view – elucidated by the Patristic Fathers – of death as the “catharsis of evil,” meaning the purgation or purification from our own evil and that of the world.