Welcome to the Weekend Roundup! – News & Views – 7/31/21

• Documentarian and Latin Mass devotee says, ‘You can’t just squash it’
• Catholic bishop defies pope Francis’s clampdown on Traditional Latin Mass
• Cardinal Burke Questions the Authority of Pope Francis to Eliminate the Traditional Latin Mass
• Priest hit hard by Traditional Latin Mass edict
• How limiting Latin Mass may become the defining moment for Pope Francis

Pope Francis’ recent restriction of the Latin mass, aimed toward its eventual elimination, has conservative and traditionalist Catholics in an uproar. Conservative Catholics have endured Francis and his progressive reforms (including lifting the ban on sacraments for remarried divorcees, prohibition of capital punishment in all cases, and approval of same-sex civil unions) with dismay and frustration for eight years, but largely without suggestion of schism because absolute fealty to the pope is one of their cardinal tenets. But could this “attack” upon their beloved Latin mass be the unpardonable tipping point?

• San Francisco Archbishop to Pelosi: ‘No one can claim to be devout Catholic’ and support abortion

The wafer wars went on the back-burner after pope Francis’ assault on the Latin mass, but this controversy is far from being over.

• Three years after the 2018 ‘summer of shame,’ what do American Catholics think about the sex abuse crisis?

The revelations involving pedophile cardinal Ted McCarrick, followed by the Pennsylvania attorney general’s report on abuse by priests in that state, followed by the subsequent investigations by multiple states’ attorney generals was a scandal of tsunamian proportions for the RCC in 2018. Only the most die-hard credulous Catholics could continue as members after that.

• Bankruptcy adds to sad legacy of Catholic Church scandal

The Catholic diocese of Norwich, Connecticut just became the 27th diocese in the U.S. to file for bankruptcy in order to shield its financial assets from victims of priest sexual abuse and diocesan cover-up.

• ‘Don’t be calling me turncoat: call me turned-heart’ – Kerry’s convert controversy

This book about a group of 800 people living in County Kerry, Ireland in the early 1800s who accepted Jesus Christ as Savior and came out of the Catholic church in an EXTREMELY Catholic country (at the time) sounds fascinating!

• Anti-vaccine ministry uses Facebook to promote dangerous COVID-19 and vaccine falsehoods to millions followers

It’s time for this “news and views” guy to address the elephant in the middle of the room. I don’t endorse everything in the above article, but anti-vaxxism is sadly rampant within “evangelicalism” to a degree greater than anywhere else. The highest spikes in COVID 19-Delta Variant cases that we’re currently seeing are in the Bible Belt states and that is no coincidence. I enjoy channel surfing right before going to sleep and regularly come upon the Daystar cable channel run by prosperity gospel peddlers, Marcus and Joni Lamb. Seems like most times I stroll by, Joni is inevitably dispensing some hyperbolic, pseudo-science attack on the COVID-19 vaccines. People have their individual reasons for not getting vaccinated, but the tire-meets-the-road truth is that the vaccines won’t work unless enough people get them. The dramatic spike in COVID 19-Delta Variant cases that we’re currently seeing across the entire country is the direct result of a significant percentage of the population choosing not to get vaccinated. Only 66% of American adults and children of age have been vaccinated to date. Even people who have been vaccinated are now being affected in “breakthrough” cases. We’re all going to have to go back to wearing masks. Worst of all, obviously, is that hundreds of thousands of additional people will die as the virus lingers on, and on, and on. 613,000 Americans have died from the COVID-19 virus to date. Have some people gotten sick after receiving the vaccine? Yup, but the number of those cases is exponentially dwarfed by the number who have caught the virus. Are the vaccines immoral because they are connected to abortions? The vaccines aren’t produced using aborted fetal tissue as some mistakenly think, but, yes, the pharmaceutical companies did use cell lines from babies aborted back in the 70s and 80s to develop the C-19 vaccines. Ideal? No, but we live in a society that includes many things of ignominous origin. I drive a Volkswagen, a pet project of Adolf Hitler, and live in a geographical region that was basically taken at musketpoint from the Iroquois Native Americans. Anti-vaxxers decry “mask fascism” and “vaccine fascism” while they continue to spread the virus. Overwhelmed hospital staff are reporting that newly-admitted COVID-19 patients are – too late – expressing regret for not getting vaccinated. It’s incongruous to pray for relief from the pandemic while walking around unvaccinated.