Judge Andrew Napolitano: Is the Pope a False Prophet?

At the LewRockwell.com. Judge Andrew Napolitano questions the regime of Marxist leaning* and rock star /celebrity Pope Francis: (bold mine)

The papacy is an office created personally by Our Lord. Its occupants are direct descendants of St. Peter. Its role and authorities have evolved over the centuries, but the core of its responsibilities has always been the preservation of traditional teachings about faith and morals and safeguarding the sacraments. While the papacy is a monarchy, the teaching authority in the Church is “the bishops under the pope.” This means that a pope intent on change ought to consult with his fellow bishops.

Before the monumental Church changes of the 1960s and 1970s that trivialized the Mass and blurred the distinctions between the clergy and the laity, Popes John XXIII and Paul VI consulted their fellow bishops at Vatican II. The consultations were fractious and belligerent, but both popes got what they wanted: a watering down of liturgical practices and an easing of rules safeguarding the sacraments, so as to make the Church more appealing and accessible to former and non-adherents.

The result was a disaster. Fewer Catholics went to Mass, confusion about former theological norms reigned, and a general tenor pervaded the faithful that the Church never really meant what it preached. Former Catholics continued to stay away, new Catholics barely showed up, and many traditional faithful became demoralized.

Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI attempted to roll this back. They succeeded in part by emphasizing traditional orthodoxy and personal piety to youth. Today, Catholic seminaries throughout the world are filled with young men who are more faithful to traditional practices and beliefs than many of their professors are.

Comes now Pope Francis to use moral relativism to take the Church in two dangerous directions. The first is an assault on the family, and the second is an assault on the free market — two favorite political targets of the left.

In the past month, without consulting his fellow bishops, the pope has weakened the sacrament of matrimony by making annulments easier to obtain. The Church cannot grant divorces because Our Lord used his own words to declare valid marriages indissoluble. But it does grant annulments.

An annulment is a judicial finding that a valid marriage never existed. This generally requires a trial, at which the party seeking the annulment must prove the existence of the marital defect from the beginning.

Fair annulment trials are costly and time consuming, often taking years from the initial filing to the final appeal. Until now. Last week, Pope Francis arbitrarily ordered the entire process to be completed in 45 days or fewer. For contested matters, a fair trial in 45 days is impossible. So, to meet his deadline, more annulments will be granted administratively, not on the merits.

It gets worse.

The Church has taught for 400 years that abortion is murder. Because the victim of an abortion is always innocent, helpless and uniquely under the control of the mother, abortion removes the participants from access to the sacraments. Until now. Last week, Pope Francis, without consulting his fellow bishops, ordered that any priest may return those who have killed a baby in a womb to the communion of the faithful. He said he did this because he was moved by the anguished cries of mothers contemplating the murder of their babies.

I doubt he will defend these decisions before Congress. He will, instead, assault the free market, which he blames for poverty, pollution and the mass migrations into Europe away from to worn-torn areas in the Middle East.

Pls read the rest here

* as for Marxism, let me quote Austrian economist Thomas DiLorenzo last January (bold mine, italics original)

Is the old Marxist ideologue (a.k.a. “a Jesuit”) just trying to deceive everyone when he says that “markets and financial speculation” operate “in absolute autonomy” with no government regulation at all?  He said that yesterday in yet another  Nixonian “I am not a crook”-style denial that he is a Marxist.  (Was that a thunder bolt I just heard?)

In reality, markets have long been swamped in regulation from all levels of government.  As George Reisman pointed out, in the U.S., for beginners, we have a government that spends almost 50% of GDP; there are 15 cabinet departments that exert controls over markets; there are more than 100 federal regulatory agencies and more than 75,000 fine-print pages of regulation of markets in The Federal Register.  Then there’s almost as much regulation of markets from all the state an local governments as well.

And there’s the Fed, which in addition to regulating the money supply, regulates all aspects of all financial markets as well.  And the SEC, the FDIC, Office of Thrift Supervision, etc., etc.

The pope ignores all of this reality to once again repeat the main theme of his papacy:  That “world resources” should be allocated according to the dictum of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”  This is the Jesuit version of Catholic doctrine, but of course it is in reality propaganda from The Communist Manifesto.  No wonder Pope John Paul II criticized “liberation theology,” the “bible” of Jesuit political activists, as a danger to the teachings of the church because it is little more than Marxism masquerading as Catholicism.

I have been saying here that the Pope keeps denouncing 'trickle down economics' which he blames to capitalism. This isn't true. Trickle down economics exists nowhere in Laissez-faire capitalism. Instead it is a practice of state capitalism mainly channeled through financial repression (central bank monetary policies) or government spending (PPPs, infrastructure) where the latter breeds cronyism and corruption.

Thomas DiLorenzo: The Real Lincoln in His Own Words

At the LewRockwell.com, Austrian economist and author Thomas DiLorenzo exposes on the popular myths about former US president Abraham Lincoln

After writing two books and dozens of articles, and giving hundreds of radio and television interviews and public presentations on the subject of Lincoln and the political economy of the American "Civil War"over the past fifteen years, I have realized that the only thing the average American knows about the subject is a few slogans that we are all subjected to in elementary school. I was taught in public elementary school in Pennsylvania that Abe was so honest that he once walked six miles to return a penny to a merchant who undercharged him (and six miles back home). He was supposedly so tendered hearted that he cried after witnessing the death of a turkey. He suffered in silence his entire life after witnessing slavery as a teenager (While everyone else in the country was screaming over the issue). And of course he was "a champion of democracy, an apostle of racial equality, and a paragon of social justice," Joseph Fallon writes in his important new, must-read book, Lincoln Uncensored.

This view of Lincoln, writes Fallon, is only true "in official histories or in Hollywood movies" but not in reality. The reason for this historical disconnect is that "this myth of Lincoln, not the Constitution . . . now confers legitimacy on the political system of the United States." Despite being mostly a bundle of lies, it is nevertheless the ideological cornerstone of statism in America and has been for nearly 150 years.

The real Lincoln was a dictator and a tyrant who shredded the Constitution, fiendishly orchestrated the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of fellow citizens, and did it all for the economic benefit of the special interests who funded the Republican Party (and his own political career). But don’t take Joseph Fallon’s or Thomas DiLorenzo’s word for it. Read the words of Abe Lincoln himself. That is what Fallon allows everyone to do in his great work of scholarship, Lincoln Uncensored. No longer do Americans need to rely on politically-correct, heavily state-censored textbooks or movies made by communistic-minded Hollywood hedonists to learn about this part of their own country’s history.

Each of the twenty-three chaptes of Lincoln Uncensored explains the real Lincoln in Lincoln’s own words by quoting him directly from The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (CW), complete with specific citations for every single quotation. The following is an abbreviated sampling of what you will learn upon readingLincoln Uncensored.

LINCOLN WAS AN OBSESSIVE WHITE SUPREMACIST

"Free them [blacks] and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this . . . . We can not then make them equals." (CW, Vol. II, p. 256).

"There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people, to the idea of an indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races" (CW, Vol. II, p. 405).

"What I would most desire would be the separation of the white and black races" (CW, Vol. II, p. 521).

"I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races . . . . I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary." (CW, Vol. III, p. 16).

"I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races . . . . I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people . . ." (CW, Vol, III, pp. 145-146).

"I will to the very last stand by the law of this state, which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes." (CW, Vol. III, p. 146).

"Senator Douglas remarked . . that . . . this government was made for the white people and not for negroes. Why, in point of mere fact, I think so too." (CW, Vol. II, p. 281).

Until His Dying Day, Lincoln Plotted to Deport all the Black People Out of America

"I have said that the separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation . . . . Such separation . . . must be effected by colonization" [to Liberia, Central America, anywhere]. (CW, Vol. II, p. 409).

"Let us be brought to believe it is morally right , and . . . favorable to . . . our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime . . ." (CW, Vol. II, p. 409).

"The place I am thinking about having for a colony [for the deportation of all American blacks] is in Central America. It is nearer to us than Liberia." (CW, Vol. V, pp. 373, 374).

LINCOLN ONLY RHETORICALLY OPPOSED SOUTHERN SLAVERY. IN PRACTICE, HE STRENGTHENED IT

" I think no wise man has perceived, how it [slavery] could be at once eradicated, without producing a greater evil, even to the cause of human liberty himself." (CW, Vol. II, p. 130).

"I meant not to ask for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia." (CW, Vol., II, p. 260).

"I believe there is no right, and ought to be no inclination I the people of the free states to enter into the slave states and interfere with the question of slavery at all." (CW, Vol. II, p. 492).

"I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists." (CW, Vol. III, p. 16).

"I say that we must not interfere with the institution of slavery . . . because the constitution forbids it, and the general welfare does not require us to do so." (CW, Vol. III, p. 460).

LINCOLN CHAMPIONED THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT

"I do not now, nor ever did, stand in favor of the unconditional repeal of the fugitive slave law." (CW, Vol., III., p. 40).

"[T]he people of the Southern states are entitled to a Congressional Fugitive Slave Law." (CW, Vol. III, p. 41).

Lincoln Advocated Secession When it Could Advance His Political Career

"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better." (CW, Vol. 1, p. 438).

LINCOLN VIEWED FORT SUMTER AS AN IMPORTANT TAX COLLECTION POINT AND WENT TO WAR OVER IT

"I think we should hold the forts, or retake them, as the case may be, and collect the revenue." (CW, Vol. IV, p. 164).

Read the rest here

Much of what we have learned from the mainstream, like undue hero worshiping or attributing "greatness" to leaders or presidents, who presided over war/s, turn out to be mostly propaganda from statists.

Quote of the Day: Distinguishing the Environmentalist from the Conservationist

An "environmentalist" is a totalitarian socialist whose real objective is to revive socialism and economic central planning under the subterfuge of "saving the planet" from capitalism. He is "green" on the outside, but red on the inside, and is hence appropriately labeled a "watermelon."

A conservationist, by contrast, is someone who is actually interested in solving environmental and ecological problems and protecting wildlife and its habitat. He does not propose having government force a separation of man and nature by nationalizing land and other resources, confiscating private property, prohibiting the raising of certain types of animals, regulating human food intake, etc. He is not a socialist ideologue who is hell bent on destroying capitalism. He does not publicly wish that a "new virus" will come along and kill millions, as the founder of "Earth First" once did. More often than not, he seeks ways to use the institutions of capitalism to solve environmental problems. There is even a new name for such a person: enviropreneur. Or he may call himself a "free-market environmentalist" who understands how property rights, common law, and markets can solve many environmental problems, as indeed they have.

That’s from Professor Thomas DiLorenzo on the coming Earth Summit