Prime Minister Manuel Valls

Here are a couple of snippets from an article at Aleteia.org written by John Burger back in April of 2015. Not sure how we managed to miss this one, unless the politically incorrect nature of the French Prime Minister’s comment caused certain mainstream news agencies to bury the story. Stranger things have happened. Check it out:

“[I]n the wake of a thwarted terrorist attack on churches in France this past weekend, Prime Minister Manuel Valls was clear: attending Mass is “the most beautiful and strongest" answer to terrorism.

Valls spoke to reporters while standing next to Bishop Michel Santier of Creteil, the diocese south of Paris where one or more churches were allegedly in the crosshairs of a 24-year-old Algerian national. The plot, foiled when the student accidentally shot himself and called for an ambulance, was, according to Valls, the fifth terrorist attack authorities thwarted since the Charlie Hebdo attack in January.

"What could have happened is a shock to everyone,” Valls said, adding that he wanted to meet with Church officials to express “our deep emotion and our total solidarity…. This time, it was the Christians, the Catholics of France, who were targeted for the first time. Two churches were in the viewfinder of the individual.”

Valls said that “specific protection” is being provided to 178 Catholic places of worship. 

To attack a church is to attack “a symbol of France," the premier said… "The faithful of the Catholic religion,” he continued, “must be able to worship, go to Mass in perfect serenity. Moreover, it is the most beautiful and strongest of the answers we need to terrorism, which targets France to divide…. France has a great Christian heritage. Cathedrals, churches, chapels, attract tourists, pilgrims, thousands of the faithful around the world. This heritage must be protected, but must remain open, accessible.” FULL REPORT HERE 

REMNANT COMMENT: One wonders if Valls is coming to realize that his boss’s (President Hollande) draconian pro-Muslim “anti-hate” campaign isn’t working out too well.

In any case, though this statement isn’t particularly strong by our standards, by secularist French standards it’s the Edict of Milan. One hopes that after the most recent terrorist attacks in Paris, this seemingly insignificant nod to France's Catholic roots may grow into the beginnings of at least a faint awakening in France, that if France does not remember the promises of her baptism—if she does not recognize the satanic nature of her 1905 law on the Separation of Church and State--she will be destroyed from within and may one day cease to exist altogether.

Sainte Jeanne d'Arc s'il vous plaît prier pour la France catholique

A statement by Father Christian BOUCHACOURT, District Superior of France of the SSPX

Terrorist acts of great gravity have been inflicted upon our country. Hundreds of people were killed, injured or traumatized, and we pray for the repose of the souls of those who lost their lives in this tragedy, and we pledge our prayers for their families and loved ones in mourning, and for the injured victims, that they may regain their health quickly.

This today from Breitbart:

Polish football (soccer) fans unveiled an enormous anti mass migration banner at Sunday’s Silesian Wrocław match against Poznań. Images from the match last night show a giant crusader defending Europe from invading jihadists in boats labelled USS Hussein, USS Bin Laden and USS ISIS.

Just a week after Poland voted to kick out every left-wing member of it’s national parliament, ordinary Poles have again shown the spirit which led them to elect the nationalist conservative Law and Justice party, with football fans unveiling an over-sized anti-migration banner at Sunday’s match. FULL REPORT HERE

REMNANT COMMENT: It might be a little soon for this but I'm going to do it anyway--with a wish and prayer for the resurrection of Catholic Poland.

This from the New York Times' Ross Douthat:

"My dear professors!

"I read with interest your widely-publicized letter to my editors this week, in which you objected to my recent coverage of Roman Catholic controversies, complained that I was making unfounded accusations of heresy (both “subtly” and “openly”!), and deplored this newspaper’s willingness to let someone lacking theological credentials opine on debates within our church. I was appropriately impressed with the dozens of academic names who signed the letter on the Daily Theology site, and the distinguished institutions (Georgetown, Boston College, Villanova) represented on the list.I have great respect for your vocation. Let me try to explain mine.

"A columnist has two tasks: To explain and to provoke. The first requires giving readers a sense of the stakes in a given controversy, and why it might deserve a moment of their fragmenting attention span. The second requires taking a clear position on that controversy, the better to induce the feelings (solidarity, stimulation, blinding rage) that persuade people to read, return, and re-subscribe.

"I hope we can agree that current controversies in Roman Catholicism cry out for explanation. And not only for Catholics: The world is fascinated — as it should be — by Pope Francis’ efforts to reshape our church. But the main parties in the church’s controversies have incentives to downplay the stakes. Conservative Catholics don’t want to concede that disruptive change is even possible. Liberal Catholics don’t want to admit that the pope might be leading the church into a crisis." READ FULL REPORT HERE


REMNANT COMMENT: What's this? No apology? No groveling? No boot-licking? Who is this strange man and from what planet does he hail?  

(If and when they banish him from the Old Gray Lady, I hope Mr. Douthat will consider coming our way. The Remnant is small but it's becoming a rapidly-expanding refugee camp for homeless Catholic writers who want to speak the truth in a world growing increasingly allergic to it.)

http://www.adelantelafe.com/category/the-remnant/ 

REMNANT COMMENT: Please help us spread the word that Remnant articles and TV episodes are now available in Spanish.

It is our firm conviction that a target-rich environment for the Catholic counterrevolution is the world-wide Spanish-speaking Catholic community.

Please share this link and help us bring Catholic Tradition back to our Hispanic and Latino brothers and sisters. And many thanks to our friends and allies at Adelantela Fe for helping to make this apostolic outreach possible.  Viva Cristo Rey!

This from our friends over at Rorate Caeli: "Yes, he said it over the phone to his favorite journalist, Italian editor Eugenio Scalfari of La Repubblica (the Pope's favorite newspaper), in a conversation on October 28, revealed by the latter in an editorial published this Sunday.

"There is no reason to doubt its general accuracy. We are way past the time of doubting the general accuracy of the Scalfari quotes. Not now, that the papal interviews to Scalfari have been published on the Vatican website, that they have been occasionally published by the Vatican publishing house (LEV) itself - for instance, as part of the book to the right." READ FULL REPORT HERE

REMNANT COMMENT: Gee, do you suppose this is true? Can't be. Must be another bad translation. Or more likely, it's just a lot of evil, leftist, communist media spin. We know our Pope Francis would never say such a thing. He's on the side of the angels, and, HELLO!, he's super humble.

And if the atheist Scalfari is a liar, why would the Pope keep giving him interviews? I mean.... right?

This just in from George Neumayr at The American Spectator: "The scandalous synod on the family skidded to a stop last weekend in Rome but not before Pope Francis got in a few more licks at conservatives, whom he caricatured in his final remarks as heartless.The speech was notable for its nastiness, displaying the very lack of charity he routinely assigns to conservatives. The synod, he said, had exposed “closed hearts which frequently hide even behind the Church’s teachings or good intentions, in order to sit in the chair of Moses and judge, sometimes with superiority and superficiality, difficult cases and wounded families.”

"He continued: “It was about trying to open up broader horizons, rising above conspiracy theories and blinkered viewpoints, so as to defend and spread the freedom of the children of God, and to transmit the beauty of Christian Newness, at times encrusted in a language which is archaic or simply incomprehensible.”

"Under the lightweight leftism of Pope Francis, the question “Is the Pope Catholic?” seems less and less rhetorical. Previous popes, reading the remarks above, would conclude that the speaker held to the theology of liberal Protestantism." READ ARTICLE HERE

REMNANT COMMENT: You know what? Having just returned from Rome, and knowing from on-the-ground experience how spot-on correct Mr. Neumayr is, our comment this morning is lifted right from a subsequent paragraph in this same article:  

"All the tortured throat-clearing from pundits about the “nuances” of Pope Francis is very unconvincing. He is not nuanced at all. He is an open left-wing Catholic, perfectly comfortable with the de facto heretics within his own order and inside his special cabinet of cardinals. Cardinal Walter Kasper, whom Pope Francis has identified as one of his “favorite” theologians, and Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Germany, who is one of his closest advisers, stand to the left of Martin Luther.

"Well, say the pope’s desperate propagandists, Francis may not possess a deep mind but at least he has a big heart. If so, it seems to bleed for everyone but orthodox Catholics, whose fidelity to the faith under secularism’s ceaseless encroachments is treated with contempt.

"Like many modern Jesuits, Francis often sounds like he loves every religion except his own."

Right on, Mr. Neumayr! If and when you begin to lose venues in which to publish the unvarnished truth as you've done so expertly here, please consider the columns of The Remnant wide open to you.

This just in from Damian Thompson: "Pope Francis yesterday gave an address to the profoundly divided Synod on the Family in which he confirmed his plans to decentralise the Catholic Church – giving local bishops’ conferences more freedom to work out their own solutions to the problems of divorce and homosexuality.

"This is the nightmare of conservative Catholic cardinals, including – unsurprisingly – those in the Vatican. They thought they had a sufficient majority in the synod to stop the lifting of the ban on divorced and remarried Catholics receiving communion, or any softening on the Church’s attitude to gay couples.

"But in yesterday’s keynote speech, delivered as the synod enters its last week, Francis told them that the decentralisation will be imposed from above.

"While deliberately referring to himself as ‘Bishop of Rome’, to underline his solidarity with local bishops everywhere (as opposed to the Roman Curia – i.e., ‘the Vatican’), he invoked the power of the Supreme Pontiff to overrule mere cardinals." READ FULL REPORT HERE

REMNANT COMMENT: A few questions for the International Una Voce Federation, the Fraternity of St. Peter, the Institute of Christ the King, the Society of St. Pius X, etc., etc.: What exactly are we waiting for? Many conservatives and even neo-Catholics are doing a better job exposing the obvious coup d’état going on right now inside the Vatican while we traditional Catholics are observing a solemn silence and, for the most part, sitting on our hands? I don't get it.

This is it. They're taking over our Church. They’re invading our home. They’re raping our mother. Our lives as Catholics will never be the same after this. Please God, who cares about canonical status and Latin Mass permission slips and appearing respectable and mainstream to apostates. Who cares! The ship is going down and we need to march on Rome, if not physically than in every other way including via the Internet and through prayer brigades. 

The time for diplomacy has come and gone. Whether we like it or not, they've declared war on us and everything we hold sacred, including the faith handed down to us from our fathers. Let's march then. 

This may well be our last chance, for once Rome completely capitulates on the moral issues we will no longer have recourse to the "conscientious objection" clause when the thought police come pounding on our doors in the middle of the night. We won't be able to appeal to our religious beliefs when it comes to accepting gay 'marriage" and cohabitation and all the rest. If we teach our kids the old faith and the old morality in the days to come, we will be branded as fundamentalists and haters who are unfit to raise our own children. 

These modernist madmen in Rome are right now setting the table for the worst persecution of Catholics in history. And when that happens I wonder how concerned we’ll be that there was a time when people called us ‘rad trads’, accused us of being in ‘schism’ and lacking due canonical status. Again, WHO CARES!

The time to rise up and fight back is right now, and to do anything less will surely cause history to condemn us as aiders and abettors of those snakes and demons who did all in their power to destroy the holy Church of Jesus Christ the King.

May God help us all to do the right thing right now.
 

This just in from LifeSiteNews -- "Archbishop Blase Cupich of Chicago  — who is participating in the Synod of the Family at Pope Francis’ personal invitation —  said at a press scrum in the Vatican press office this afternoon that the conscience is "inviolable" and that he believes divorced and remarried couples could be permitted to receive the sacraments, if they have "come to a decision" to do so "in good conscience" - theological reasoning that he indicated in response to a follow-up question would also apply to gay couples.

“In Chicago I visit regularly with people who feel marginalized: the elderly, the divorced and remarried, gay and lesbian individuals and also couples. I think that we really need to get to know what their life is like if we’re going to accompany them,” he said.

When asked to give a concrete example of how he would accompany the divorced and remarried in their desire to receive the sacraments, Cupich replied: “If people come to a decision in good conscience then our job is to help them move forward and to respect that. The conscience is inviolable and we have to respect that when they make decisions, and I’ve always done that.” READ FULL REPORT HERE

REMNANT COMMENT: Begone, Satan!

This just in from Aleteia.com: “Two newly released interventions by Synod Fathers offer insight into the gravest threats facing the family today, and unite in calling for a rediscovery of the beauty of Christian family life and the transforming power of the Gospel….

“Cardinal Sarah serves as the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. On Monday he released jointly to Aleteia and the National Catholic Register the intervention he delivered at the opening general congregations of the Synod.

“What Nazi-Fascism and Communism were in the twentieth century, Western homosexual and abortion ideologies and Islamic fanaticism are today,” the Cardinal said in his strongly-worded intervention. “The church must promote a true “epiphany of the Family,” he added, “…for the marriage crisis is essentially a crisis of God, but also a crisis of faith…” Also on October 10, Aleteia spoke with the Cardinal Sarah following a meeting of the bishops of Africa. The Guinean cardinal voiced his concern about three controversial paragraphs being included in the Instrumentum laboris, saying that by retaining the paragraphs which did not receive a two-thirds majority at last year’s meeting, he believes “there is an agenda they are trying to impose.” READ FULL REPORT HERE

REMNANT COMMENT: Rumor has it that Pope Francis is still considering the papal abdication option at some point down the road. We heartily encourage the Holy Father to explore that option, sooner rather than later in fact. And, by the way, perhaps it is time for a black pope.  Can there be much doubt that the Church would be in better hands were Cardinal Sarah sitting in Peter's chair?

This just in from Aleteia: "One of the cardinals who signed a controversial letter to Pope Francis explained in an interview today how his participation came about.

"Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York said on Sirius XM’s Catholic Channel that he was in a meeting last week with Australian Cardinal George Pell, who suggested writing to Pope Francis about concerns over how the synod was being run.

"According to Damian Thomson in The Spectator, and other reports, 13 of the 74 cardinals participating in the synod wrote Pope Francis a private letter warning that the synod is being hijacked by liberals obsessed with the narrow issue of giving Communion to divorced and remarried people. The letter was leaked by Vaticanista Sandro Magister on Monday. The signatories also expressed concern that taking a route of “pastoral flexibility” could lead to the Church falling apart in the same way as liberal Protestant denominations; and that the synod working papers prepared by Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri and Archbishop Bruno Forte are a mess. READ FULL REPORT HERE

REMNANT COMMENT: You know we're really in some kind of trouble when even Cardinal Dolan thinks it's time to stand up and object. Still, it is what it is, so I say "good for him and God bless ya. Bravo!"