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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tried to walk back his stance on abortion over the weekend, but probably ended up making it worse.

As LifeNews reported on Friday, RFK Jr. gave an interview in which he confirmed he supports abortions up to birth.

“Even if it’s full-term,” Kennedy said in response to a follow-up question.

This weekend, Kennedy clarified that he means that he supports killing babies in abortions up to birth only if they’re disabled. He says he meant that late-term abortions should be reserved for babies with major health problems that affect their viability.

“Cases like this are why I am leery of inserting the government into abortion,” Kennedy wrote. “I had been assuming that virtually all late-term abortions were such cases, but I’ve learned that my assumption was wrong. Sometimes, women abort healthy, viable late-term fetuses. These cases of purely ‘elective’ late-term abortion are very upsetting. Once the baby is viable outside the womb, it should have rights and it deserves society’s protection.”

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The problem is this so-called health exception essentially continues allowing abortions up to birth, even on health babies. First, studies have confirmed that prenatal tests are notoriously wrong and often show false positives that may prompt abortions of health babies. Secondly, thousands of anecdotal stories over the years have confirmed the studies to be true as mothers and couples have rejected doctors’ suggestions to have abortions of supposedly disabled babies only to give birth to babies who are either healthy or have problems that can be corrected with treatment or surgery.

Even taking Kennedy’s comments at face value, he still supports abortion on demand through viability – meaning he’s fine with 90% of the 65 million abortions that have killed babies since Roe.

Although Kennedy may not support late-term aboritons personally, his answer Friday makes it crystal clear that his policial policy would allow late-term abortions with no limits.

During an interview with podcaster Sage Steele, the former ESPN host asked Kennedy what the limit should be for women to have an abortion. “Should there be a limit or are you saying all the way up to full-term, a woman has a right to have an abortion?” she said.

Kennedy answered that he doesn’t think anyone would want to do that at eight months of pregnancy, but abortion should be out of the hands of the government and in the hands of women.

Steele continued to push Kennedy, asking if he agrees with the Roe v. Wade standard or with abortion being left up to the states, and Kennedy reiterated that the decision should not lie with the states but with the mother.

“Even if it’s full-term,” Kennedy said in response to a follow-up question. “I don’t think it’s ever okay,” he added. When Steele says that would allow late-term abortions, Kennedy said, “I think we have to leave it to the women rather than the state.”

Kennedy and his campaign clarified last year that he supports abortions up to birth without limits.

Kennedy will be on the ballot in Utah, Michigan, California, Delaware, and Oklahoma, according to his campaign and its working to get him on the ballot in New Hampshire, Nevada, Hawaii, North Carolina, Idaho, Nebraska, Iowa, and Ohio.

The post Robert F Kennedy Jr. Says It’s Okay to Kill Babies in Abortions Up to Birth if They’re Disabled appeared first on LifeNews.com.

Sentencing hearings for nine pro-life advocates are set to commence Tuesday.

The defendants – often called “rescuers” by fellow members of the pro-life movement – partook in a 2020 peaceful protest against a notorious Washington, D.C. abortuary that performed late-term abortions.

Last year, all nine were found guilty of violating the controversial Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. They each face a sentence of up to 11 years in federal prison.

Senior Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotely will preside over the hearings, which are slated to take place at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia just a few blocks from the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Tuesday, May 14, Kollar-Kotely is scheduled to sentence Lauren Handy at 9:00 a.m., John Hinshaw at 10:30 a.m., and Will Goodman at 3:00 p.m. All times are in Eastern Daylight Time.

Handy, a Catholic, is a well-known pro-life voice on the political left. She was the primary organizer and leader of the peaceful protest that led to the ongoing court cases.

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The sentencings will continue on Wednesday, May 15, with Herb (born Rosemary) Geraghty at 9:00 a.m., Jonathan Darnel at 11:00 a.m., Jean Marshall at 1:30 p.m., and Joan Andrews Bell at 3:00 p.m.

On Friday, May 17, the judge is scheduled to sentence Heather Idoni at 9:30 a.m.

Kollar-Kotely was also originally going to sentence the final defendant, Paulette Harlow, on Friday. However, Harlow’s sentencing was postponed until two weeks later on Friday, May 31, at 1:30 p.m.

LifeSiteNews reported last week that “[e]ight of the nine defendants are being held in federal custody at the Alexandria Detention Center in Alexandria, Virginia, and the ninth is under house arrest.”

“During their nine-month incarceration, several of the prisoners have already suffered serious mistreatment that meets the definition of torture both according to American law and international standards,” according to LifeSite:

Heather Idoni, 59, was placed in prolonged solitary confinement for 22 days and deprived of sleep with the lights of her cell kept on continually. The mother of five and adopted mother of 10 was forced to appear in full shackles in federal court in March 2024 for a pre-trial hearing in a manner usually reserved for dangerous or violent criminals.

Jean Marshall, 74, was deprived of sufficient clothing and heat during extreme freezing winter cold, resulting in the contracting of pneumonia, which went untreated for three weeks. She has been denied an urgently needed hip surgery, contrary to her physician’s instructions, resulting in excruciating pain and debilitating use of her right leg.

LifeSite’s report added: “Paulette Harlow, 75, a devout Catholic, has been refused allowance to attend Mass at a Catholic Church while under house arrest despite her express request to the judge while in court.”

Defendant Will Goodman told LifeSite that he is “trying to cultivate what St. Ignatius describes as ‘holy indifference’” as his sentencing looms.

“I don’t care what happens. Whatever transpires, it will be an opportunity to try to love and serve and obey God,” Goodman told the publication. “I simply want to try to do my best in following His will. So whatever happens will be for my good.”

In a column for LifeSite, defendant John Hinshaw wrote: “The fact is that from Thoreau through Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. all the way to the recent pro-Hamas demonstrations, NEVER have peaceful civil disobedience faced such legal violence as our federal law enforcement is now practicing!”

He added: “From the abolitionists, the suffragettes, the civil rights movement, anti-Vietnam war protests, anti-nuclear protests, climate alarmists, and even the ‘mostly peaceful’ riots of 2020, NO ONE was threatened with 11 years!!!”

Starting on May 5, Hinshaw’s niece Clare Hinshaw has been praying a daily Novena to St. Jude for her uncle and posting the prayer to X.

“Uncle John’s sentencing will be at 10 am May 14,” the younger Hinshaw wrote on the social media platform:

I’m starting a novena to St. Jude today that the Lord would soften the judge’s heart. I’ll be posting the prayers each day if you’d like to join me.  And, of course, any prayers for this intention would be much appreciated!

On August 29, 2023, CatholicVote reported: “After a drama-filled trial, five pro-life advocates were found guilty of violating an almost three-decade-old federal law that has been used to prevent pro-lifers from exercising their right to free speech.”

CatholicVote continued:

The five defendants—Lauren Handy, William Goodman, John Hinshaw, Heather Idoni, and Herb Geraghty— were each found guilty “for conspiracy against the right to reproductive health services” and for violating the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act.

Lila Rose, president of Live Action, a pro-life organization, called the trial a “sham.”

“This trial has been a sham with a biased pro-abortion judge who has made a mockery of our justice system,” said Rose. “This decision will be appealed, & we demand it be overturned.”

The other four co-defendants currently awaiting sentencing were convicted later in the year.

LifeNews Note: Joshua Mercer writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.

The post Biden Wants to Put 9 Pro-Life Advocates in Prison for 11 Years for Protesting Abortion appeared first on LifeNews.com.

A study by the Harvard Business School in experimental psychology relating to people’s tendency to “shoot the messenger” came up with a  startling finding that such human behaviour stems in part from a desire to make sense of chance processes. 

Simply put, receiving bad news activates the desire to sense-make, and in turn, activating this desire enhances the tendency to dislike bearers of bad news.

In the current churning around the Ukraine war, French President Emmanuel Macron and the UK foreign Secretary David Cameron fit the description of messengers with malevolent motives — Macron keeps  repeating his pet idea of combat deployment by European countries in Ukraine and Cameron arguing for the escalation of the war theatre to Russian territory. 

Moscow disliked them both as bearers of bad news. But if further evidence was needed, the US national security advisor Jake Sullivan provided the “big picture” at the FT Weekend Festival in Washington last Saturday when he expressed the hope that Kiev would have the capacity to “hold the line” over the course of this year, and expects Ukrainian military to mount a new counteroffensive in 2025. 

Sullivan will not rule out “Russian advances in the coming period” on the battlefield, because “you can’t instantly flip the switch,” but insisted that Ukraine intended to “to move forward to recapture the territory that the Russians have taken from them.” 

FT added a nice little caveat “His [Sullivan’s] comments about a potential counteroffensive by Ukraine represent the White House’s clearest articulation of how it views the conflict evolving if president Joe Biden wins re-election in November.” Now, as things stand, that’s a big “if”, isn’t it?

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported on May 3 that the US “is leading talks among the G7 nations to develop a military aid package to Ukraine worth up to $50 billion, which would be “funded by the profits generated by accrued interest on frozen Russian assets.” 

The US calculates that the Russian assets estimated to be around $400 billion, including assets of oligarchs, predominantly held by the EU countries, will generate windfall profits annually, which would allow for repayment as Western allies provide additional aid funding for Ukraine. 

The US Congress last month passed legislation known as the REPO Act that would allow the administration to seize Russian assets held at American banks and funnel them to Ukraine. Moscow has repeatedly warned that it could lower the level of diplomatic relations with the US if Washington seized Russian assets. 

Taking all these hostile western moves into account, the upcoming Russian military exercise held to practice the use of non-strategic nuclear weapons is anything but a knee-jerk reaction to some inflammatory remarks by Macron and Cameron. 

The Russian ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov called the training activity “a forced measure in response to the arrogant and aggressive policy of the ‘collective West’… unhinged strategists in Washington and their satellites in Europe must understand that in the escalation of stakes they are spurring, Russia will use all means to protect its sovereignty and territorial integrity. The West will not be able to play a game of unilateral escalation.” 

The Russian Foreign Ministry statement on May 6 in this regard focused on the US’ intention to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia and announced an appropriate response in terms of stepping up the upgrade and manufacturing of intermediate-and shorter-range missiles and termination of Moscow’s “unilateral moratorium” on the deployment of these weapon systems as well as the future deployment of these weapon systems “at our discretion.” The statement viewed the transfer of F-16 to Ukraine as a deliberate provocation, as it is a “dual-capable” aircraft that can carry both conventional and nuclear weapons. 

It highlighted that Moscow has taken “special note of the models of US-made ATACMS missiles, which have been recently sent to Ukraine and are capable of reaching targets inside Russia.”

The statement concluded that the upcoming training exercise will convey “a sobering signal” — to the US and its allies that their hostile moves are “pushing the situation ever closer towards the explosive tipping point.”  

The heart of the matter is that the US and its G7 partners are in panic mode. They lack conviction about Ukraine’s capability to disrupt the momentum of a major Russian offensive that is widely expected in summer. There is even a sense of dark foreboding that the Ukrainian military may simply pack up in the coming months. 

Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said last week that Russian forces are in full control of the battlefield situation and are steadily advancing along the frontline. In Shoigu’s estimation, Kiev’s military losses stood at 111,000 during the first four months of this year.

In reality, therefore, the facts on the ground suggest that Macron and Cameron’s remarks fall more in the realm of hyperbole by two beleaguered governments staring at the impending defeat of their Ukraine policy. 

In a reality check, the prominent Swiss military analyst, Colonel Alexander Votraver who is also Deputy Chief of Staff to the Chief of the Swiss Armed Forces’ Military-Strategic Staff and editor-in-chief of the prestigious Swiss Military Review (RMS+), put matters in perspective while speaking on the French TV channel, “The question must be asked: is the French army sufficiently equipped in terms of training and with modern weapons to contribute to offensive operations against a superior enemy? 

“The forces we could move are two brigades of 5,000-6,000 soldiers, with a deployment duration of 1-3 months at most. But if we are talking about a longer term, as obviously in the case of Ukraine, it is only 2 battalions, which today are in the Baltic States and in Romania. The bad news is that these forces are absolutely insufficient to confront a half-million-strong Russian army.”

Doesn’t Moscow know already what the Swiss colonel laid bare with brutal frankness? As for Cameron, his uncharacteristically belligerent remark about carrying the war into Russia was apparently some publicity stunt choreographed by 10 Downing Street, Foreign Office and Reuters in the run up to Putin’s inaugural ceremony in the Kremlin on May 7 and even as results were pouring in from the local elections in Britain that dealt a historic defeat for the Conservative party, which, with a general election looming, is being viewed through a national prism. 

After Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman in Moscow Maria Zakharova told Tass that Russia has the right to strike British facilities in Ukraine or elsewhere if London’s threats about Ukrainian attacks with British weapons on Russian territory materialised, HMG reacted by expelling  Russia’s defence attache, imposing new restrictions on Russian diplomatic visas and removing diplomatic status from some Russian properties! 

But Home Secretary James Cleverly announced in parliament that the UK sought to “make sure that we protect our ability to have lines of communication with Russia, even during these most challenging of times, routes for de-escalation, of error avoidance and the avoidance of miscalculations are really important.” What a humiliating retreat!

Presaging the tides on the battlefield in Ukraine where Moscow is focusing, the Russian defence ministry announced on Wednesday military gains in the Kharkov Region. 

RT commented that “The development apparently signals an intensification of combat on the Kharkov axis, where the front line… has remained largely static for months.” The final countdown for Russia’s summer offensive seems to have begun. 

Reprinted with permission from Indian Punchline.

According to new reports from the Social Security and Medicare trustees, Social Security and a Medicare fund that pays for hospital expenses will both begin running deficits in 2035 and 2036. Disappointingly, but not surprisingly, Congress was too preoccupied spending billions more on military aid for foreign countries and banning TikTok to pay attention to the looming bankruptcy of the two largest federal entitlement programs.

Many in Congress no doubt believe they can ignore the impending bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare because they can count on the Federal Reserve to do the “dirty work” of cutting real benefits and raising taxes. This result can be produced via the hidden, and regressive, “inflation tax.”

The Federal Reserve makes the debt-financed welfare-warfare state possible by monetizing the federal debt. This is one reason why, even though interest on the debt is now the third largest item in the federal budget behind Social Security and Medicare and ahead of military spending, there are so few in Congress serious about cutting welfare or warfare. Those few who seek real spending cuts in welfare are smeared as “heartless” while those seeking real cuts in warfare are smeared as “anti-American” by the uniparty.

The government’s excessive spending and debt is leading to what some economists call “fiscal dominance.” Fiscal dominance occurs when a central bank must prioritize monetizing ever higher levels of government debt, giving Congress de facto control over monetary policy.

The Federal Reserve’s purchase of federal debt will result in price inflation. It will also encourage more government spending by reinforcing the uniparty delusion that, as former Vice President Dick Cheney said, “deficits don’t matter.” The Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies artificially lower the interest rates, which are the price of money. The artificially low interest rates distort the signals sent to investors and entrepreneurs, leading to malinvestment. This creates bubbles resulting in illusionary prosperity. Eventually, economic reality will catch up with the Fed-created illusions and the bubbles will burst, causing an economic downturn.

The next economic crisis will likely either be caused by or result in a rejection of the dollar’s world reserve currency status. Congress will be forced to make drastic cuts in spending while the Fed will be enabled to monetize the debt. This will result in massive public unrest potentially resulting in violence, the rise of authoritarian movements on the left and right, and increasing authoritarianism.

The only way to avoid this fate is for a critical mass of Americans to demand Congress immediately begin rolling back the welfare-warfare state, starting with our bloated military budget. The savings from this can be used to help protect those currently reliant on government welfare and entitlement programs as those programs are phased out and the job of providing aid is returned to private charities, churches, and local communities. Congress should also rein in the Federal Reserve by passing the Audit the Fed bill, legalizing alternative currencies, and forbidding the Fed from purchasing government debt.

Since the 2008 meltdown, Federal Reserve apologists have spent a lot of time saying that Audit the Fed puts Congress in charge of monetary policy while ignoring the fact that a real threat to the central bank’s autotomy is the growth in federal spending and debt. The goal, though, should be to abolish the Federal Reserve, not protect it. Those who truly want a monetary system free from political interference should join the movement to restore government’s constitutional limits and separate money and state.  

The Ever-Widening War

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240512/ukraines-air-defense-from-nato-territory-german-mps-give-the-green-light–1118393587.html

Chris Hedges describes the American university today

“The mandarins who run Columbia and other universities, corporatists who make salaries in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, oversee academic plantations. They treat their poorly paid adjunct faculty, who often lack health insurance and benefits, like serfs. They slavishly serve the interests of wealthy donors and corporations. They are protected by private security. They despise students, forced into onerous debt peonage for their education, who are non-conformists, who defy their fiefdoms and call out their complicity in genocide.”

According to Biden, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, and House and Senate Republicans, students protesting genocide are hate groups engaged in lawlessness.

Columbia University’s president is “a British-Egyptian baroness who built her career at institutions such as the Bank of England, World Bank and International Monetary Fund.”

https://www.unz.com/article/the-nations-conscience/

God’s Chosen People

“Israel expands its attack of Rafah; Biden admin reports that Israeli use of U.S.-provided weapons in Gaza “likely violated international humanitarian law”; food catastrophe looms as Israel continues to block aid trucks; South Africa wants ICJ to intervene in Rafah; UN General Assembly strongly supports Palestine’s quest for statehood; Israel withholds millions it owes Palestinian Authority; UN wants investigation into mass graves in Gaza.”

https://israelpalestinenews.org/fighter-jets-attack-drones-hammer-rafah-catastrophe-looms/

Bromelain, Cancer, and Covid spike detox protocol

Good news for a change

https://www.globalresearch.ca/bromelain-and-cancer/5856547

I hate the news but am invariably drawn toward it for professional reasons. I alleviate the angst by enjoying the absurdity of so much of it. For instance, within the last week, we learned that more student debt will be “canceled” by the Biden administration. It’s only another $6 billion for those who attended the Art Institutes, a system of for-profit colleges. The administration thinks that…

Source

Incredibly the Israeli genocide in Gaza is now reaching new heights of violence. Casualty figures are not coming in, as the attacks are so bad that bodies cannot be recovered, medics cannot travel and there are almost no medical facilities operational now anyway.

We now see that the Western injunctions not to attack Rafah were a smokescreen of lies to mask complicity. The final pocket of Gaza is being ruthlessly ethnically cleansed and its infrastructure will be destroyed like all the rest.

It is striking that this is accompanied by an absolutely shameless doubling down of support for Israel by the Western political and media classes. Any thought that their isolation from the vast breadth of public opinion would give them pause, must be abandoned. Their Zionist lobby paymasters have jerked the chain, and rather than rowing back, we are seeing a redoubling of their efforts to suppress dissent and obscure the truth.

Some of this shameless distortion is so dissonant with the alleged norms of Western society it is almost impossible to believe it is happening. Here are a few examples.

1) Dr Ghassan Abu Sitta is a highly respected reconstructive surgeon who continued to work heroically and tirelessly in Al Shifa hospital, carrying out operation after operation, mostly on women and children, as the hospital was shelled, strafed and machine gunned around him.

He was already a surgeon of great distinction, based in Glasgow where he is now Rector of Glasgow University.

When Germany banned him from entering to address the conference on Palestine from which Yanis Varoufakis and others were also barred, it appeared perhaps as an one-off action as part of Germany’s extreme and panicked reaction to pro-Palestinian expression.

We have come to understand that Germany has a vicious hatred of Palestinians, remarkably based on the psychological trauma of inherited guilt from the Holocaust. While this is a muddled national psychosis that is plainly immoral and wrongheaded, at least it is possible to have some understanding of how it occurred.

But it then turned out that the travel ban slapped on Dr Abu Sitta by Germany has a Schengen-wide effect as he was also banned from France. That appeared again something that was almost a technical accident as regards the rest of Europe.

But the Western political establishment has now doubled down again by banning him from the Netherlands, and this time the Dutch government has made it clear that it supports the ban, not is just caught by a Schengen restriction.

So the major governments of the European Union are forbidding a distinguished surgeon from giving first-hand medical evidence of the genocide taking place. I cannot think of anything that more sharply exposes the willingness of the Western political class to abandon the most basic tenets of supposed “Western democracy” in the interests of Israel.

2) The willingness of the United States to use extreme violence against pro-Palestinian students on college campuses is another demonstration of the same abandonment of the pretence of democracy when it comes to Israel. It also illustrates what has come to be a serious generational divide in Western public opinion, with young people very strongly motivated to oppose the genocide (which is not to say that older people are pro-genocide, just that they are more split, particularly in the USA).

This is being followed up with yet more crazed pro-Israeli legislation in the United States, seeking to designate anti-genocide and pro-Palestinian expression on campuses as anti-semitic and thus illegal.

In many ways this typifies the reaction of the ruling class across the West. Their reaction to suddenly being exposed as the paid servants of an Israel which no longer has popular support and now causes public revulsion, is simply to attempt to ban free expression and make it specifically illegal to disagree with them.

3) The British Labour Party has gone even madder. Keir Starmer’s Genocide Party is an outstanding example of the success of the Israeli lobby in buying up both sides of the aisle and controlling the entire neoliberal uniparty that poses as the repository of democratic “choice” in the West.

Starmer had been doing his best to conceal his explicitly expressed “unequivocal support for Israel” lately, and to row back from his straightforward assertion that Israel has the right to cut off food and water from the population of Gaza. There had been a fake shift, from refusing to countenance the word “ceasefire” to supporting a temporary ceasefire or a “sustainable” ceasefire – the latter being code for a ceasefire after Israel had achieved all its ethnic cleansing objectives.

But then David Lammy blew this out of the water with an address to US Republican senators in which he made the totally bonkers assertion that Nelson Mandela would have opposed the college protests for Palestine. Lammy is a truly despicable individual, one of the ultimate examples of the corrupt politician whose voice is bought. But this was a move far beyond the pale.

4) Even today, the Western media continues to spout out Israeli propaganda at mains pressure. The Guardian, despite the thousands and thousands of dead women and children we have seen on our mobile phones this past seven months, continues to pretend that the genocidal attack is on “Hamas militants”.

The bombing and shelling of civilians in tents is still described as “clashes”. This propaganda really does not wash any more, though it may reinforce the morale of hardened Zionists. Everybody else has seen through it months ago. Yet still they persist.

5) The endgame is becoming very apparent. The United States is completing its floating harbour for Gaza, and Israel has gained control of the Rafah crossing into Egypt, giving the US and Israel total control of entry points into Gaza. Israel has announced that the Rafah crossing is to be handed over to a US mercenary force. The US can then say it is complying with Biden’s pledge not to put US forces’ boots on the ground in Gaza, while actually taking control.

The Israeli attack on Rafah has been justified by the USA as a “limited military operation”, thus claiming it it does not violate Biden’s purported “red line”, even though Israel has ordered over a million displaced people in Rafah to evacuate again, to nowhere.

Conclusion:

The only possible conclusion from all of the above is to reinforce my analysis that the Zionist political and media classes in the West, including Biden, Blinken, Trudeau, Macron, Sunak, Starmer, Scholtz, von der Leyen and all, are active and willing participants in a programme of genocide.

They had numerous opportunities to turn back. We all saw what is happening months ago. They did not take them.

The endgame remains the processing of the remaining Palestinian population out of Gaza through the US-controlled points of the Rafah crossing and the floating harbour, primarily into camps in the Sinai desert. The Western powers are doubling down on their genocide and on their colonial project.

I see nothing whatsoever that indicates they can have any other long-term objective in mind than the complete Israeli annexation of Gaza minus its civilian population. What do you see?

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The post Shameless appeared first on Craig Murray.

The New Testament begins with a story about a humble young woman who willingly submits to the will of  God when He calls her to a momentous vocation. Yet she is also portrayed as a virtuous, contemplative heroine, capable of articulating the desires and expectations of her entire people in poetry so brilliant and beautiful that today, more than 2,000 years removed from that event, it’s daily prayed by millions of Catholics the world over.  The contemporary feminist critique of Catholicism, however, claims it’s a misogynist institution: whether it be the Church telling women what to do with their bodies (abortion and contraception), or prohibiting them from positions of ecclesial authority.

In response to this criticism, many Catholics claim that, far from being antiquated and sexist, the Church has always been the impetus for religious and social change that elevates the status of women. They’re not wrong. Nevertheless, apologetics that aim to argue that the Church was the first feminist institution – or similar rhetoric approaches – risk adopting the very same false premises that underlie the entire modern feminist project with its emphasis on power, autonomy, equality.

Bronwen McShea’s otherwise excellent brief history Women of the Church: What Every Catholic Should Know, flirts with this feminist tendency, practically right out of the gate. “This book is also for anyone interested in the history of Catholicism – to demonstrate that the history of the Church’s women is the Church’s history, just as much as the history of her men is.” Fair enough, though who, exactly, has said otherwise? And is this a competition?

McShea offers fascinating anecdotes of the many Catholic female saints and martyrs from the third-century Perpetua and Felicity (whose Passion is probably the earliest, first-person account from the perspective of a female) to the great medieval monarchs such as Jadwiga of Poland, to modern mystics such as Thérèse of Lisieux. Yet there also seems a forced need to convince the reader of women’s indispensability.

She argues that without Helena, Constantine’s mother, there wouldn’t have been freedom for Christianity in the late Roman Empire, and no Nicene Creed, given that Constantine called the council that created it. True, but aren’t mothers behind every great person?

The text is unnecessarily sprinkled with this kind of language. “Women played an important part in the beginnings of Christian monasticism.” Christian queens and noblewomen “played leading roles in establishing new monastic communities.” Isabella of Spain was a “formidable Catholic woman without whom important episodes in the Church’s history cannot be fully understood.” Maria Theresa of Austria was “one of the most powerful figures in the Enlightenment era.”

This ritualistic reiteration of women’s power and influence is a drag on an otherwise interesting summary of female roles in Christian history. In the preface, McShea admits that as a child she was more drawn to male saints who appeared more “dynamic,” which seems to be an attempt to appeal to feminist readers suspicious of an oppressive, patriarchal Church. The celebrated Catholic writer Patricia Snow underscores that objective in her foreword when she writes, somewhat bizarrely: “the woman moves to the center and the dimensions of the female project become clear.”

Undoubtedly, McShea is correct regarding women’s critical role throughout Church history. The Bible and the early Church were quite radical in their respect for the human dignity of women, as well as for giving them unprecedented degrees of influence and autonomy. It was women who funded Jesus’ ministry (Luke 8:30); who comprised most of His followers at His crucifixion (Mark 15:40-41); and who first saw the risen Lord (John 20:1-18).

Controversy notwithstanding, McShea writes beautifully about women – saints and not – across two millennia of Church history. We learn of Dihya, a Berber queen in what is today Algeria, who fought against the armies of the Umayyad Caliphate in an (ultimately losing) action against Muslim conquest. We read of medieval Beguines, who, though not taking solemn religious vows, were informally committed to celibacy, prayer, fasting, manual labor, and charitable work. We are told of Blessed Mary Theresa Ledóchowska, a Polish noblewoman who promoted African missions in the decades around the beginning of the twentieth century.

But what lesson should we learn from these riveting anecdotes? Is it that these women were powerful, influential, and independent – language that, even if unintentionally, capitulates to modern feminist themes about where human meaning is ultimately found? Or that they courageously lived (and often died) for Christ? The whole presentation seems to imply that modern women need not fear; the Church promotes those feminist values of which they have already been catechized by secular feminists.

Moreover, such an approach belies the realities of Catholic teaching manifested in that Marian beginning to the Gospels – where a woman humbly surrenders her autonomy for the sake of others.  As sociologist Rodney Stark argues in his impressive The Rise of Christianity, this served as a major impetus for growth in the first five centuries of the Church.

In a Roman Empire that endorsed a system of abortion and infanticide that disproportionately targeted female babies, Christianity asserted the inherent dignity of all human life, regardless of sex. Christian condemnations of divorce, incest, marital infidelity, and polygamy all served to protect women. Meanwhile, the large percentage of females in Christian communities inevitably led them into positions of privilege rarely accessible in pagan Rome.

Ironically, the very same Catholic teachings that once fostered female value and status are today perceived to be the greatest obstacles to those goods. What links secular, feminist modernity to the ancient pagan world seems to be an aversion, if not hostility, towards female fertility, which limits human autonomy and power.

If so, telling women that they will find power, influence, and equality in the Church is clearly not the right message, given that the Church more fundamentally teaches humility and self-abnegation.

Far better, I’d think, forthrightly to tell the marvelous stories of female Catholics with all the pluck and passion they deserve. At that task, in any case, McShea succeeds.

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At the Vatican this weekend, the great German composer’s ode to joy provided a sublime exhortation to universal brotherhood at the World Meeting on Human Fraternity. The event featured an array of celebrities, including Garth Brooks and Tom Brady, the latter fresh from an obscenity-laced Netflix “roast.” Such “fraternal” encounters can be fraught, but it remains true that culture can give expression to the highest ideals and noblest aspirations.
 

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Bishop Thomas Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois, is accusing President Joe Biden of “making a mockery of our Catholic faith” after he made the sign of the cross while promoting abortion. Making the sign of the cross is one of the most profound gestures a Catholic can make in showing reverence for Christ’s death on the cross and belief in the Holy Trinity as we sign ourselves in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” the bishop said.
 

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On May 1, the US House of Representatives passed the fraudulently titled “Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2023.” It’s not yet law, pending Senate passage and a presidential signature, but the lopsided House vote (320 to 91) should worry all Americans, including the country’s 7.6 million Jews. In theory, the bill merely clarifies how the US … Continue reading "We’ve Already Got an ‘Antisemitism Awareness Act.’ It’s Called the First Amendment."

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