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How to say we are in a pandemic and mean it without being a liar

For obvious reasons, I have tried to downplay the supposed Covid-19 pandemic because there is no medical emergency, and in fact, never has been. Invariably, however, the subject will come up in casual conversations with Covid-19 believers and to skirt around the issue and be agreeable, I normally use the term "Covid-19 fiasco". It helps me get around the fact that there is no actual pandemic in medical terms, but still conveys that something cataclysmic has happened.

The other day I was in the shop, and I ran into an old professional acquaintance. As we had not met for several years, the first point on the agenda, naturally, was to catch up.

I asked about his farm animals and what he was doing and he did the same. He also mentioned that he had expected me not to be around, on account of a  plans I had previously. I then went into how circumstances put a spanner in those works, and I mentioned "the pandemic" as being a central aspect.

While it is true that the Covid-19 fiasco was the immediate cause of the cessation of my plan on the timescale I had intended, subsequent events altered conditions so much that my original plans become untenable. In other words, if anything, the Covid-19 fiasco spared me the trouble of getting out of a pretty bad spot, in which I may well have found myself had those plans gone ahead, and that actually may be the only positive that has come out of this whole fiasco. What I thought was a mere postponement became in the course of time a change of plans. 

Anyway, enought of that: There are not enough details on that story to juice it up into something interesting.

So, almost immediately after I had laid the blame on "the pandemic", I felt guilty, and even more so after we had parted ways. After all, anyone who knows me well enough to engage me in private conversation knows that I not only a Covid-19 skeptic, but a full-blown Covid-19 denier.

Below is a sampling of phrases which I think have probably worn out most people around me by  now:

"There is no pandemic!"

"Who's  dying?"

"Nobody is dying!"

"It's a hoax!"

Then I had to go and blame it all on a pandemic which is non-existent in actual statistics and experience. I felt a bit ashamed, but  on reflection, I thought to myself, "Was I lying? Is there really no pandemic?"

Well, as a perverted occupant of the U.S. White House once said, "It depends on what the meaning of 'is' is", because, of course, there is a pandemic.

We have today the world's greatest pandemic in world history, except it is not that of a disease killing indiscriminately, or discriminately, depending on whatever the lie-of-the-week is, but rather a pandemic of liars and tyrants who have been allowed to rise to power, enabled by a populace which will believe anything they are told by people claiming to be scientists.

There is indeed a pandemic. It is one of power-hungry politicians. It is one of dishonest at best, probably clueless, and at worst criminally nefarious scientists who would push us into a new world order ruled my misanthropes. It is one of a populace which will do anything the government wants so long as the government has scared them into believing it cares for them. It is one of media which will only parrot government narratives. It is one of corporations which will go along to get a piece of the cake, while driving their smaller competitors out of business. It is one of teachers who do not care for the good of their pupils and students. It is one of doctors who do not care for their patients. It is one of cowardice in the face of obvious lies. It is one of sinful sloth whereby people who spend hours on the Internet on trivial affairs cannot take 15 minutes to research the one topic which has dominated the world's conversation for the past 18 months from sources other than those which have been proved wrong so many times.

Worst of all, perhaps, it is of Catholic clergy who do not care for the souls of those entrusted to them. It is of a pope who is going along with this anti-God and anti-Christian agenda, and of bishops who, if they realise this, are too cowardly to do anything about it.

So there is a pandemic, and I don't even mind calling it Covid-19 because the term can be seen as the umbrella term for all these dishonest and slothful characters.

I have been accused of being argumentative to the point of liking argument for argument's sake. That is a mischaracterisation, because while I do not shy away from arguments, I canot recal ever engating in argument for contrarianism's sake. I do, however, generally attempt not to stay silent in the face of little lies, because big lies almost make use of little lies to craft grand deceitful narratives, and also because the search for truth is one to which Christians are duty-bound. 

Here though, I think I have found a way to seem agreeable while actually meaning something completely different, yet being completely truthful. 

Of course, with close friends and acquaintances, I am much more likely to confromt the major lies, but in passing, and where occasion does not afford me this opportunity, I realised, on reflection, I can now say that we "there is a pandemic", and not feel guilty about it, because it is true.

Truth will have its day and in time the real panedmic will be seen to be one of tyrants, liars, scientism on the part of the transmitters of lies, and sloth on the part of the recipients. Whether anybody will care for the truth when it comes out is another matter entirely as so many people have welded themselves to the grand Covid-19 narrative, and attached a pseudo-religious...

Bergoglio goes for low-hanging theological fruit, and neo-Catholics largely let him get away with it - Sunday 29th of July to Saturday 4th of August

There is really only one place to start this week and that is with the news that Bergoglio has altered the John Paul II Catechism to read that the death penalty is now  "inadmissible" in all circumstances because it violates "human dignity" . That God Himself in the Bible did not realise this, or the various Church fathers, or Doctors of the Church, or all the popes up until Bergoglio ought to get us suspicious.

I cannot do justice to the arguments against this latest heresy by Bergoglio so I shall simply leave it to you to have a look at the links below, one of which is from OnePeter5 and is titled "Pope Francis Is Wrong about the Death Penalty. Here’s Why." Rorate Caeli ran one under the title "What was black is now white".

The one thing I shall note is that the argument that Bergoglio uses is one that is expressly condemned by the Catechism of Trent. Bergoglio argues that using the death penalty deprives the convict of the chance of conversion. The Catechism of Trent tells us, in rather common-sensical terms, that he who knows that his life will end and is granted the grace of knowing when will scarcely convert at a later time if he cannot do it while at the point of oncoming death. So Bergoglio's argument is not even original, and is one which has been put down before as nonsensical.

It is interesting to note that the only person Bergoglio can quote to rationalise his new posture is himself, continuing his now-growing list of novelties by self-quotation.

As usual, the neo-Catholics were mostly out in force proving that they are part of the problem. To watch EWTN reporting that "the pope has changed the Church's teaching on the death penalty" or the "pope has strengthened the Church's opposition to the death penalty" would have  been to come away with the conclusion that a pope can change the Church's teaching. The Papal Pose was misex, with Fr. Murray arguing that it was a break, and Robert Royal at his usual neo-Catholic best when responding that canonists will have to determine whether it is 'de fide', when asked that by Arroyo. It's striking that these people are there to respond as experts and they do not even know that catechisms are not in and of themselves infallible, not even the venerable Catechism of Trent. They ought, however, to contain infallible truths.

Some of the Novus Ordites argued that it is a case of the pope implanting his prudential judgement and that we should take it seriously, having been offered this opinion. Excuse me, but the Catechism is there to tell us what the Church teaches explicitly, not to argue for selective enforcement of prudential judgements, regardless of where they hail!

This is nothing short of heresy because the Church has taught definitively about this issue from her beginning, and God has made it clear that the death penalty can be justifiably imposed by legitimate authority. To argue otherwise is to do nothing short of lying, and to pass it off to others it to shirk responsibility.

What is clear is that Bergoglio has gone after low-hanging theological fruit. He knows that even among those who argue for the licitness of the death penalty, many are opposed to it in practice. The death penalty is only available in a few countries and even in these it is rarely used. He knows that people will not die on 'death penalty hill', so to speak, protesting "thus far but no farther!" We can, however, be sure that if Bergoglio gets away with this he will not stop there.

The arguments he puts forward for it, namely that people nowadays have a realisation that the death penalty is opposed to human dignity, can be used to rationalise pretty much every heresy and Church teaching which is not popular with the modernists. It is pretty much what he has attempted to do with divorce and remarriage and you can be sure that he is testing waters by formally changing the Catechism on the death penalty. Next up on the line might just be your favourite teaching.

Some have argued that Bergoglio only did this to divert attention from the McCarrick scandal - given that it involves one of his closest aides - while others have argued that even with Bergoglio being an idiot, using heresy as deflection is a move too dumb even for him. I am not sure there is anything so dumb that Bergoglio will not do it, so I'll not dismiss the theory entirely.  I too was initially drawn to the theory that he used it as a distraction from the McCarrick scandal. However, I do pride myself in thinking outside the box, and I have wondered: What if the reverse is true?

What if Bergoglio used the McCarrick scandal to introduce formal heresy into the teaching of the Church? What if the McCarrick scandal was itself the distraction? Most of the Catholic and secular media is pre-occupied with other stuff anyway, and there is no better time to poison  the Church's  already-sub-standard Catechism . If he pulls it back on account of major opposition (yeah, as if Bergoglio listens to anyone!) then it will hardly be headline news. If it sticks, then he can use it as reference for even further heresy, knowing that EWTN and the rest of  the neo-Catholic establishment has his back arguing as dishonestly as ever that we need to try and take onboard something which is obviously a heresy simply because the pope has put his weight behind it.

I have often maintained that neo-Catholics, or 'conservative Catholics', will reject every heresy unless it comes from the pope. This incident proves me right, yet again!

All I can say is that I am in total agreement with Christopher Ferrara that The Reversible Magisterium...

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