The Dispatch: More from CWR...

Extra, extra! News and views for April 19, 2023

Here are some articles, essays, and editorials that caught our attention this past week or so.*

Fresco from the Chora Church, Istanbul (Wikipedia/Gunnar Bach Pedersen)

Jesus’ Resurrection – “Skeptics will argue that Jesus’ resurrection is just one more instance of the dying-and-rising-god motif prevalent in the religions of the ancient Near East.” Jesus’ Resurrection Is Not a Pagan Myth (Catholic Answers)

Oregon’s Ideological Insanity – “Adopting children through Oregon’s foster care system increasingly comes with ideological policing.” Woke Adoption (The American Conservative)

The Transgender Movement – In an effort to confuse the issue, gender ideologues cite rare ambiguous ‘intersex’ cases. A Biologist Explains Why Sex Is Binary (Wall Street Journal)

Fake Revolutionaries – “A Berkeley student approaches two older women. She has a flier in her hand. ‘Hey, happy No-Pants Day!’ she exclaims, in the state of undress to match her words.” Judith Butler’s Trouble (First Things)

Doctrine on Sexuality – ‘Still alive,’ in his own words, after his latest hospital stay, Jorge Mario Bergoglio is doing all he can to discourage those who are counting on his imminent exit from the stage. Francis, Pontiff for Life. But Without a Successor “of His Own” (L’Espresso)

Detransitioning Teen – “Layla Jane is suing doctors who ‘fixed’ her gender dysphoria”. A double mastectomy at 13? How can President Biden possibly overlook that? (Mercatornet)

The Russo-Ukrainian War – “American support for Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion that began on February 24, 2022, seems to be waning.” Byzantine Catholicism and the Fight for Ukraine (The Catholic Thing)

Shocking Claims – “Orlandi has insisted for some time that Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis all know more than they’ve ever said about his sister’s case, but of late he’s sharpened his insinuations about John Paul.” John Paul II insinuations in ‘Vatican Girl’ case create dilemma for Francis (Crux)

Lula in Shanghai – “With Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva back in power in Brazil, the acronym “BRICS” is once again in fashion in international affairs.” Waiting for the Catholic Lula to arouse the ‘Perennials’ (Crux)

Wiping out the Humanities – Microsoft’s new AI chatbot tried to convince New York Times writer Kevin Roose that he should leave his wife. Microsoft quickly went on damage control following the article, but the glimpse of AI as a would-be marriage Terminator got attention. As AI grows, we terminate the humanities at our peril (Detroit Catholic)

Instrumentum Laboris – “In the heyday of Liberation Theology, the movement’s theorists often argued that it wasn’t enough for the Church to care for those wounded by political and economic injustice – roughly what Pope Francis has called a ‘field hospital.'” Getting Serious about the Synod (The Catholic Thing)

Off-the-Cuff Interviews – “The pope’s recent statement that the Church’s teaching on sex is ‘still in diapers’ reveals a tragic ignorance of reality.” Is the Church Teaching on Sex “Still in Diapers”

(*The posting of any particular news item or essay is not an endorsement of the content and perspective of said news item or essay.)


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12 Comments

  1. Doctors performing double mastectomies in a 13 year old…unconscionable! But then, again, so is the killing of a baby in his mother’s womb by a doctor.

  2. @ Oregon’s Ideological Insanity
    If the Synodale Weg is a template for the great Synod on Synodality [Robert Royal’s analogy] Oregon is the template for the entire Nation. Author Carl Olson bravely described that impending madness in an ‘earlier epoch’ essay on end of life care for chickens in Portland. A sort of prophetic insight.
    Portlandia, the humorous skit series seems to typify the zaniness. Although it’s no longer humor, considering the degradation of our humanness in promoting “everything gay”, everything bizarre in the name of liberty. Olson references the Jessica Bates case for hope of a return to sanity. My previous comment on that effort is repeated here,
    “Justice Alito was correct in his dissenting concerns in Obergefell. We’ve established the faux legal tenets that permit a particular ideology to force that ideology on the remainder of society. Oregon’s Dept Human Services is not protecting rights, it’s enforcing an ideology on constituents, and further, it’s indoctrinating them in an immoral ideology contrary to their Constitutional religious right, or for that matter, preferred right to believe”.
    Carl Olson sums it best, “The truth, about everything from specific cases to human nature, is a casualty”. Reason why the Church must become vividly aware of the reality, and the dangerous path the Synod on Synodality is enticing the faithful to follow. That happens when we submit absolute moral principles to willy-nilly discussion.

  3. Mr. Olsen. I am so very sorry to read about what your family experienced recently with the State of Oregon. God bless you each. I’ll be remembering your family in my prayers.

  4. Oregon DHS, yet another example that the lunatics are in charge of the asylum. Think Nurse Ratchet in “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

  5. ‘Vatican Girl’
    Having the Mafia in control of the Vatican is always a bad thing. Due to Vatican City State sovereign nation status, diplomatic immunity, this attracts every evil mobster in the world to want to operate their crime syndicate out of Vatican City State. Good Catholic Leaders need to move to someplace, any other place in the world than Vatican City State, where they can lead the Church without constant threats of their deaths from evil Cardinal mobsters.

    In 2017, the news said that the priest who put on the drug-fueled gay orgy at the Vatican, was on the fast track to becoming a Curia Bishop. It seems to me that we should be selecting our Catholic Curia Bishops from Faithful Bishops from around the world, rather than growing them under the selection of evil Mafia Cardinals.

    Vatican cops bust drug-fueled gay orgy at home of cardinal’s aide
    https://nypost.com/2017/07/05/vatican-cops-bust-drug-fueled-gay-orgy-at-cardinals-apartment/

    Pope Benedict was threatened to abdicate the papacy by the Vatican ‘gay lobby’.
    https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/report-benedict-xvis-memoirs-say-gay-lobby-tried-weild-power

    The Vatican Bank Mafia put an end to the Vatican Bank Scandal investigation. Pope Francis had also given the Vatican Bank investigators unlimited powers to investigate, yet the Vatican Mafia was still able to push them out.
    Former Vatican Auditors Sue Vatican for Damages.
    https://www.ncregister.com/news/former-vatican-auditors-lawsuit

  6. @ Off-the cuff interviews:
    The pope’s statement about diaper theology only sounds like it came from an “anti-Catholic atheistic zealot…” Rather, does the aging and overworked pope–who has claimed that he is not a theologian–now think that he IS the Church?

    In the late 19th century Pope Pius IX famously announced at the First Vatican Council: “I AM tradition!” Today, the same Ultramontanism, butt in reversible attire? The more things change, the more they stay the same.

  7. @ Doctrine on Sexuality
    Master Vaticanista Sandro Magister at his insightful, entertaining best. A pontiff torturing his opponents refusing to depart. Cardinals Kasper inimical to beloved Ratzinger, Roche, the enemy of TLM. Both now warn of schism. Or are they skilled Byzantines playing bad cop good cop for His Holiness?
    Hollerich, SJ the bane of orthodoxy, the presumed Francis successor favorite. Chances seem slim for an outspoken heretic. Then there’s Zuppi.
    Who? “A talkative chameleon on every issue under the sun. Member of the Community of Sant’Egidio. A Community that always avoids taking clear-cut positions on controversial issues like homosexuality, married clergy, women priests, democracy in the Church” (Magister).
    Sandro’s assessment of Card Zuppi, Too puny to bind and loose, on earth as in heaven. Actually, he seems the perfect Byzantine darker than dark horse. A malleus haereticorum libera nos, Domine

  8. @ Doctrine on Sexuality
    Actually, malleus haereticorum, hammer of the heretics, was the epithet of Dominican inquisitor Robert le Bougre. My intention was to say, From the malice of the heretics, save us Lord.

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