When Pope Francis issued Traditionis Custodes in July of this year, he attempted to do away with the bizarre situation in which Catholics have lived out their Faith since after the Second Vatican Council. For my whole life, we have had a doubled Mass. There have been two parallel visions of the Faith, and it had become increasingly clear that they were not as similar as the Church has been insisting. Francis tried to solve this dilemma by obliterating one of the two parallel lines.

ON SATURDAY, OCTOBER 9, Pope Francis put on a very public performance with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). (https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/10/09/pope-francis-welcomes-nancy-pelosi-in-the-vatican/) Francis not only made time to meet with Pelosi—a courtesy he does not afford to Cardinal Zen. He also sat down with her in the papal office, smiling for the cameras rolling in the background. It was the papal equivalent of a political endorsement. All that was missing was the yard sign.

The two rows of colonnades which frame St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican were designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini to resemble arms outstretched in welcome. (https://vatican.com/St-Peters-Square-Colonnades/) The Catholic Church is universal and open to all who seek salvation. At the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York City is a secular version of this sentiment: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” (https://www.nps.gov/stli/learn/historyculture/colossus.htm) For the Church, however, there are no “masses,” no “teeming” throngs of faceless proletariat. There are individual sinners, and the Church is Christ seeking out the lost sheep, calling everyone home by name. Everyone may knock on the doors of the Church and seek baptism, forgiveness, and the bread of everlasting life.

The debate over the recently-announced vaccine mandate is awash in illogic.

For example: vaccines are like seatbelts, we’re told. But how many of us have to wear three, four, even five seatbelts at a time?  How many of us have to buckle in to additional seatbelts the longer we drive?

Sources exclusive to The Remnant have revealed that Pope Francis traveled to the People’s Republic of China in July, 2021 to celebrate the 100^th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. Francis and a small, socially-distanced entourage (Fr. James Martin, Klaus Schwab, John Cena, Pachamama, and Theodore McCarrick) toured what Francis, on the plane to Beijing, called “the New Jerusalem” as the personal guests of benevolent Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

A band played “The East Is Red” as Francis descended from his plane onto the tarmac in China. Francis made the Sign of the Sickle as he gave thanks for his safe landing.

As the betrayal in Afghanistan unfolded over the past few gut-wrenching weeks, people from all political persuasions began to demand answers. “Someone has to take responsibility for abandoning Americans to be raped, tortured, enslaved, and murdered by the Taliban,” the country cried out. “The people running the State Department, Pentagon, White House (whoever that mystery person happens to be), and Democrat-media-complex must be held to account.”

The fall of Kabul to the Taliban should give all Christians pause. What have we—Christians, Americans—been doing in Afghanistan for twenty years? That’s one question, but it’s but a small part of a much bigger one: What have we—Christians, Americans—been doing everywhere during the Great Potomac Jihad?

“Great Potomac Jihad”?

There has been a flurry of articles in the press recently about a subject which comes up from time to time: Will the United States Supreme Court in its next session overturn Roe v. Wade? The first time this kind of speculation started, at least as far as I can remember, was Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992). City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health (1986) and Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989) were important, too, but not nearly as monumental as Casey. Pro-lifers hoped mightily that Roe would be undone then. However, the Supreme Court held in Planned Parenthood v. Casey that Roe was fundamentally sound, that the Constitution of the United States, although the word “abortion” appears nowhere within it, guaranteed the right of a woman to “choose” to end the life growing within her.

GERMAN FILMMAKER LENI Riefenstahl’s 1936 cinematic encomium to the Berlin Olympics, Festival of Nations, opens with a montage of marble statues of Greek gods and goddesses in the ruins of ancient temples. One statue, of a discus thrower, comes to life, after which the action is of human beings engaging in the ancient Greek sports of javelin hurling, shotput, and long-distance running. Apollonian men strive in dramatic lighting, bodies glistening with sweat, taut with exertion. Aphroditic female nudes cavort with rings and dance in the glory of the human form. This prelude soon gives way to a stadium in modern-day Germany, where athletes from around the world have gathered to display their sinews and test their strength on the world stage. Only the best win the laurels, though. Only the strongest win through. The will conquers all.

When most of us see the police, we see them on the front lines of the war for our country. The police are on the streets, chasing down Democrat-supported mobs burning down Black businesses or dealing drugs on the corners of Democrat-run cities. The police run toward gunfire, toward traffic accidents, toward scenes of domestic abuse. We see the police in uniform, the thin blue line between our safety and the chaos of the Woke American Revolution (WAR).