No, Pope Francis Did Not Approve Blessings For Same-Sex Unions

 The Federalist 

 "Corporate media outlets are running salacious headlines that Pope Francis is now allowing “priests to bless same-sex relationships.” The implication from the media is that the Catholic Church has made a “radical” reversal on its stance that marriage is between one man and one woman. This is factually untrue.

"On Monday, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith released a “Declaration ‘Fiducia Supplicans’ On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings.” In the declaration, the Vatican first reaffirms that marriage is the “exclusive, stable, and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to the generation of children.”

"The document also establishes that contrary to media reports, liturgical blessings related to formal Church sacraments can never endorse same-sex unions, which the Catholic Church does not recognize. “[T]he Church does not have the power to confer its liturgical blessing when that would somehow offer a form of moral legitimacy to a union that presumes to be a marriage or to an extra-marital sexual practice,” reads the declaration.

"The document does say that individuals, including “same-sex couples,” may receive “spontaneous,” “informal” blessings related to overcoming human sin. “[O]ne should not prevent or prohibit the Church’s closeness to people in every situation in which they might seek God’s help through a simple blessing,” states the document.

"This, of course, is not new information. Anyone — irrespective of the types of sin they happen to struggle with — has always been able to receive an informal blessing from a Catholic priest. In other words, the document is a pointless reiteration of already established Church teachings. Indeed, the declaration is being grotesquely misrepresented by the corporate media and leftist Catholics who wish the document had been a reversal of Church doctrine, which, again, it was not.

"While the document is theologically sound, many Catholics are calling it a “pastoral nightmare.” Ulrich L. Lehner, a Catholic historian who teaches in the University of Notre Dame theology department, warns that the document’s “imprecise language invites misunderstanding and will sow confusion.” . . .

Liberals destroy society

 From dams to cities to children, they demolish everything

The destruction from the left is stunning. It is political shock and awe. Amid a water crisis and rolling blackouts, Gavin Newsom bragged about destroying dams along the Klamath River. He’s demolishing four hydroelectric plants. 

"I see in the papers that Kanye West went off his meds. TMZ reported, “Kanye West is apparently in the grips of a serious mental health episode. That’s the only conclusion to draw from his furious rant, attacking his ex-business partners, Donald Trump and, of course, Jewish people.”

"Hates Trump. Hates Jews. Blames others for his problems. His beliefs are so mainstream Democrat that he could be president of Harvard. Given his propensity for marrying women with large doctor-inflated chests, maybe he also believes that children should be allowed to get plastic surgery.

"Maybe he believes boys can turn into girls (and girls into boys) using magic elixirs and surgery, a medical alchemy that for doctors and hospitals turns children who cannot cope with puberty into gold.

"West’s politics once were called liberalism but the word liberal became so toxic that its adherents adopted the name progressive. And like Flo in the commercials for Progressive Insurance became overexposed, liberals quickly overstayed their welcome.

"What liberals appear to support changes constantly. Liberals who once embraced feminism now dismiss it as a movement by suburban white women. Men in dresses replaced real women who are now called TERFs, an acronym for women without testosterone.

"I recall how women in the 1960s objected to being called broads and dames. Abracadabra, feminism came along. Liberals now call them bitches and ho’s. Problem solved." . . .

RFK Jr. Executes Perfect Takedown of Sniveling Anti-Israel Host, 'Should Have Resigned in Disgrace

Ball is clueless. She's the embodiment of every too-online pro-Hamas supporter who pretends to be "pro-Palestinian." Kennedy may be a liberal, but he never enters a debate without stats and figures. He was ready, and Ball wasn't. That's why all she had was crosstalk and trying to move on.

Bonchie – RedState  " With all the knowledge of your average TikTok pro-Hamas supporter, Ball threw out talking point after talking point while Kennedy expertly took them apart. By the end she was so flustered that she was trying to change the subject. " . . .

Read the exchange here.

What an absolute takedown. Ball was so flustered she wanted to change the subject at the end. pic.twitter.com/saYWx628U7

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) December 19, 2023

. . ."There's more that I'll get to in a moment, but I want to highlight the above exchange because it's so informative about how just uninformed your average "pro-Palestinian" is. Ball tried to assert that Israel was somehow responsible for Gaza being destitute, but Kennedy came with the numbers showing just how "pampered" the Palestinians have been regarding international aid. I'm fairly certain that more aid per capita has been poured into Gaza and the West Bank than any other area on earth in the history of mankind. 

"I've made that point before, it's so prudent. Israel is not to blame for most Palestinians living in filth and squalor. The governments of those territories, whether Hamas or the PA, have wasted that money to promote terrorism and build terroristic infrastructure, which has ensured continued instability. The Palestinians themselves aren't innocent, either. Polls continually show astronomical levels of support for Hamas and the killing of Jews. 

"It was not a "blockade" that hampered Gaza (and the Rafah Crossing with Egypt is not controlled by Israel). It was Hamas' choice to waste billions upon billions of dollars of international aid to enrich its leadership and wage war. As Kennedy goes on to explain, Hamas has broken every single peace agreement Israel has agreed to, including the one that was in force on October 6th." 

Ball is MSNBC, mind you; the station of Joy Reid and Ali ("Fiery riot but mostly peaceful") Velshi and perpetually livid Joe Scarborough. They do their part in teaching the Antifa generation to be anti-Israel.

I saw raw footage of Hamas horrors in Israel. These genocidal terrorists must not win.

 The same footage the people of Gaza were cheering and applauding? Supported by the American Antifa generation, where Evil has taken root and prospers unencumbered. TD

I saw raw footage of Hamas horrors in Israel. These genocidal terrorists must not win. (msn.com)

"I can’t get the images out of my head. 

"A week ago, I saw raw footage of Hamas' slaughter on Oct. 7 of at least 1,200 Israelis (most were civilians) – and the kidnapping of more than 200, many of whom remain in captivity. 

"I was part of a small group in metro Detroit who watched “Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre,” which was presented by the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Israeli Consulate to the Midwest. Among us were conservatives and liberals, journalists, a former congressman, a university president, business leaders and others with prominent positions throughout Michigan.   

"The organizers requested the anonymity of those present, largely for their safety. The screening itself was private – not publicized whatsoever – because of the sad reality that this video could have easily sparked protests and violence, as it has in other parts of the country. 

"Yet, for those who have played down – or refused to believe – the atrocities that Hamas committed that day, this video should be required viewing. 

"Hamas filmed its own barbarism through body cameras and cell phones, and much of "Bearing Witness" comes directly from that footage. That is one of the most chilling things about what happened: These terrorists wanted to preserve the brutal murders on camera, and they were gleeful as they inflicted unspeakably evil acts on innocent civilians. 

Atmosphere of a funeral 

"When I arrived at the screening, there was a palpable tension in the room. People spoke hushed tones. Everyone was uptight about what we would witness. 

"It felt as if we were at a visitation for a deceased family member. 

Hamas!

"And in a way we were. 

"For the next 45 minutes, we sat mostly in silence as Hamas’ brutality passed before our eyes. Some in the audience looked stunned. Some cried. I felt sick." . . . 

“ 'Bearing Witness” is not the only effort to create a record of what happened on Oct. 7. The Shoah Foundation, founded by director Steven Spielberg, is collecting first-person accounts of what people witnessed that day – much like it has done for survivors of the Holocaust. 

 "While horrific to watch, people need to see what happened. Public perception shifts too easily. President Joe Biden has noted that Israel seems to be losing the world’s sympathy. And a shocking 72% of Palestinians say Hamas was correct to attack Israel on Oct. 7.

"This war is not Israel’s fault. Hamas carefully plotted the vicious attack, and Hamas jihadists have openly said they will launch rampage after rampage until Israel is destroyed. Hamas is not a liberation group, as some have claimed. They are genocidal terrorists. 

"This evil – what I saw with my own eyes – must not win." . . .  

Young Americans Seems Quite Supportive of Murdering Jewish People (townhall.com)

"Should we be worried about these crosstabs, or is this a classic example of young people being complete morons on political issues? 

"It's nothing new: young people have been stupid for generations. It's a cyclical thing, but young people being "dumb" on the issues never ventured into genocidal territory. It was usually about taxes; young folks were "soak the rich" types, or they went off about gun control or abortion. It was never about whether Israel should be destroyed and all Jews should die." . . .

Why Michelle Obama is as Rotten a Choice for President as Hillary Clinton

 Marie Hembree - American Thinker  "Democrats are using identity politics again to test the waters for a ballot replacement for Joe Biden instead of finding a candidate with bona fide qualifications -- and integrity.

"Michelle Obama is being touted as a possible candidate who could beat Donald Trump.

"She was recently publicized as an executive producer of a Netflix fiction movie, along with her husband, Barack. 

"There was not much of the old Obama hopey-change messaging in her anti-white Netflix endeavor, however, which left identity politics as her selling point with voters.

"Per the academic definition, identity politics is a Marxist tactic of assigning utmost societal importance to a candidate’s empowerment of a collective, victimized group such as women or minorities.

"Anyone opposing the "candidate as victim" is immediately labeled as suppressing the entire representative group. For example, people who opposed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton were labeled as anti-women or misogynists, just as those who criticized Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 were called racist.

"Identity politics has pulverized Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of Americans judging others by the “content of their character instead of the color of their skin” in choosing a candidate.

"Meanwhile, collectivism is a fundamental element of totalitarian ideology." . . .

Diogenes' Middle Finger: The Brian Stelter Memorial Award for Worst Quote of the Year 2023

 Diogenes' Middle Finger: The Brian Stelter Memorial Award for Worst Quote of the Year 2023 (diogenesmiddlefinger.com)

Our Favorite Kickball Squinty Joe Takes Top Honors!! 

"NewsBusters - It was a challenging task, but an esteemed panel of NewsBusters editors boiled down all the biased outbursts from lefty hack hosts, anchors, reporters and pundits in 2023 and declared a winner. This year the winner is Joe Scarborough! 

"The MSNBC host won for his absurd and dire prediction that if Donald Trump wins re-election he will “imprison” and “execute” his political opponents. The former Republican Congressman, on the November 21 edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe also claimed that the federal judiciary was the “only thing that stood between” Trump and “the destruction of American democracy” when he was in office.

“Joe Scarborough spews out this kind of insanity every morning. But this particular attack on President Trump and his supporters was so absurd it managed to stand out from the everyday nonsense you typically hear from Joe, Mika and the rest of his crazy leftist cronies on that tire fire of a show. Scarborough was full of crazy rants in the AM this year. 

He also claimed Trump would wipe out the “free press.” He dismissed President Joe Biden’s many senior moments as he bragged that “behind closed doors” Biden is “sharp” and “on top of everything” and has made “Europe safe for democracy.” Scarborough also shamed GOP House members as a bunch of “weirdos, insurrectionists and freaks” for trying to impeach the President over “Biden crime family nonsense.”  

  "The Runners Up Came as No Surprise Either - READ MORE HERE"

CA Law to Punish Stores for Not Having Gender-Neutral Toy Section

  The Punching Bag Post

"The Assembly Bill AB-1084 was signed into law by California’s Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom in October 2021 and it takes effect early next month. The law mandates a separate toy section for children at all major department stores in the state that sell children’s toys. On the official California Legislative Information website, the bill’s draft justifies the law as:

"Keeping similar items that are traditionally marketed either for girls or for boys separated makes it more difficult for the consumer to compare the products and incorrectly implies that their use by one gender is inappropriate.

"Reporting on the issue, The New York Post cited Jonathan Keller, president of the conservative California Family Law Council, criticizing the law. He said:

“ 'Activists and state legislators have no right to force retailers to espouse government-approved messages about gender. It’s a violation of free speech, and it’s just plain wrong.”

"Liberals have largely supported the new law for breaking through what they consider gender stereotypes in children. Conservatives, on the contrary, see it as a political move to confuse children about their gender. Many conservatives, including some celebrities in the entertainment industry, have moved out of California owing to Newsom’s far-left policies. One conservative ex-resident of California, Joey Frank, responded to the news of Newsom’s law on gender-neutral toys by writing on Twitter/X that he left California because of “idiots like Newsom.” . . .

Applying to college has changed for Jewish students since Oct. 7 –

  The Forward

"Josie LaMere, a Jewish high school senior in Minneapolis, looked at 15 or 20 colleges before picking Occidental College in Los Angeles as her dream school. She was about to submit an early decision application when she learned that 59 Occidental professors signed a letter condemning Israel’s war in Gaza as “genocide,” without mentioning the Hamas massacres that prompted Israel’s attacks.

“I don’t know if I can learn from these teachers who are telling me that this is what I have to think,” she told her mother, Melanie.

"Josie’s college counselor reached out to Occidental for reassurance. “It took eight days for them to get back to us with a non-answer,” Melanie LaMere said. “It was heartbreaking.”

"So Josie never sent that application to Occidental. “My priorities have radically transformed,” she said. “Now, more than ever, I know I want a Jewish community wherever I go,” and a school where she will “feel safe, supported, and authentically me, as a Jewish person.”

The war on campus

"Josie is one of many Jewish high school students for whom the college application process has changed since Oct. 7, when Hamas terrorists murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 240 in surprise attacks on kibbutzim and a music festival near Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip.

"Israel responded with a bombing campaign and ground invasion that Hamas officials in Gaza say has killed 15,000 people there. Many U.S. college campuses are now hotbeds of antiwar activism — and antisemitic incidents — as pro-Palestinian student groups and professors blame Israel for the war without condemning Hamas.

As Jewish students studied inside the Cooper Union library, a pro-Palestinian protest formed on the other side of the glass. Courtesy of Abigail Mottahedeh

"Jewish students have been targeted in dozens of incidents. At Stanford, an instructor ordered them to stand in a corner, then labeled them “colonizers.” At Manhattan’s Cooper Union, Jewish students barricaded themselves in a library while pro-Palestinian activists pounded on the windows." . . .

Leftist Lunacy Fuels Hamas Atrocity –

  Issues & Insights  "Israel’s descent into tragedy at the hands of Hamas reveals America’s descent into idiocy at the hands of the Left.  Every anti-Semitic outrage, all the Hamas apologists, each excuse for terrorism — together they reveal that we are not confronting just terrorism alone but an absolutist ideology.  The left has prepared the ground in which Hamas and its supporters have sown their hate, and America is witnessing its flowering.  

"As the aftermath of October 7th continues unfolding, we see mounting examples of leftist arguments defending it.  The latest lunacy occurred on Nov. 23 when Sky News’ Kay Burley interviewed Israeli spokesman Eylon Levy about the exchange of 150 Hamas prisoners for 50 Israeli hostages.  Burley stated: “I was speaking to a hostage negotiator this morning…. and he made the comparison between the numbers and the fact that does Israel not think Palestinian lives are valued as highly as Israeli lives?”

"Shocked temporarily speechless, Levy recovered:  “It is outrageous to suggest that the fact that we are willing to release prisoners who are convicted of terrorism offenses, more of them than we are getting our own innocent children back, somehow suggests that we don’t care about Palestinian lives? Really, that’s a disgusting accusation.”

"Assuredly “disgusting,” the accusation is also disturbing in its revelation of the shallowness to which the left has spiraled this discussion’s descent.  Deconstructing the accusation shows that there is no debate — and cannot be one — with the left.

"First, it was Hamas that created this vile market for the exchanging of human beings.  Hamas abducted 240 innocent Israeli civilians and did so for the clear purpose of doing what it is doing now: obtaining the release of its captured terrorists.  And without captured terrorists, there would be no one to exchange Hamas’ hostages for.  So, Hamas created both sides of this transaction.

"Second, the inequality in this exchange is also of Hamas’ making.  From a moral standpoint, Hamas sent in terrorists and took out innocent civilians.  From any civilized moral perspective, there is no equivalency here.  The transactional inequality is therefore inherent: the innocent for the guilty, the unsuspecting for the premeditated. " . . .

“The anti-American activists are the anti-Capitalist activists are the anti-Israel activists”

 Legal Insurrection

My appearance on the Mark Reardon Show about antisemitism on campuses: “Jews end up becoming a proxy for everything that these groups hate about our own society. So if you did one of Kamala Harris’s Venn diagrams and you had things that were over overlapping … anti-American, anti-Capitalist, anti-Israel, there is a huge overlap.”

 "There have been so many really, really important pieces that have been written and published here since October 7th. And I found another one from William Jacobson, who is a clinical professor of law at Cornell Law School, founder and president of a group called The Legal Insurrection Foundation. And the headline of this piece was Hatred of Western Civilization Stokes the Campus Antisemitism Crisis Campus – Mobs would Destroy Israel First, then America. I’ve made the case here over the last few weeks that this is really, a lot of this is about our way of life. It’s about western civilization. And William, welcome to the show. I think you did an exceptional job of painting the picture in a very appropriate way. How are you this afternoon?

"I’ve covered a lot of the atrocities and we’ve talked about these professors and the things that they’ve said this week. But let me kind of skip ahead to the question that you ask here and your answers and your question is, why did American campuses erupt with expressions of hatred for Israel and Jewish students? What could possibly motivate college students to act in such an inhumane, deplorable way? And we’re still seeing this on full display. So you go back a little bit to the 1980s, right? So explain your perspective on this.

. . ."Sure. Well, I was there when what we now call critical race theory and critical theories and intersectionality and all those racialized ideologies were in their formative stages at Harvard Law School in the early 1980s. And nobody really paid attention to them then. But what they were doing is they were beginning, even back then, to cast the Israeli Arab dispute in very racial terms, that they would build coalitions of non-white student groups against Israel. Now, it wasn’t as strong, it wasn’t as big as it is on campuses now, but you can see how over 30, 40 years that became institutionalized in colleges.

"And now everything in colleges is about race. I know, because I teach on a college campus, at Cornell. So every dispute is now in terms of white oppressor versus non-white oppressed. And that is how the Israeli Arab dispute or Israeli-Palestinian dispute is portrayed relentlessly on campuses." . . .

Satan welcomed. Jews must hide. - Don Surber (substack.com)  "While the devil gains acceptance in America, Jews face an historic rise in anti-Semitism. Instead of sympathy following the Palestinian attack, rape, torture and murder of 1,400 Israelis and the kidnapping of 240 people on October 7, many anti-American liberals have embraced the Hamas terrorists and are attacking Jews.

20% of young people are Holocaust Deniers, according to one poll.". . .

We Are Well Beyond Hypocrisy; Have we again forgotten the subpoenaed Trump children?

 

Victor Davis Hanson › American Greatness  "The abject narcissism of the insular Left is startling. They apparently believe the American public is amnesiac enough to forget what leftists once did, now that they’re doing the utter opposite. And they assume we are to discount their hypocrisy and self-absorption simply because they self-identify as erudite and moral and assume their opponents are irredeemable and deplorable.

Impeachment

"The Left is saturating the airwaves with outrage over the current House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry. They allege that formally investigating Joe Biden’s role in the family grifting operation is somehow a poor constitutional precedent, if not out-of-bounds entirely.

"So we hear further arguments that it will be unwise to impeach a first-term president when he loses his House majority, that there is no reason to “waste” congressional time and effort when Biden will be automatically acquitted in the Democratically controlled Senate, and that the impeachment is cynically timed to synchronize with president’s reelection efforts.

"All of these are the precise arguments many of us cited when Donald Trump was impeached in December 2019 (as his reelection campaign began, and immediately after being cleared of the 22-month, $40-million-special-counsel Russian-collusion hoax).

"The Democrats tried to remove an elected president over a phone call without a special counsel’s report. So Trump was impeached only after the 2018 election led to a Democratic House majority, which went from eating up nearly two years of his administration in the Russian-collusion hoax straight into the impeachment farce. There was no concern about the cost to the nation of putting an elected government into a continual state of siege.

"There is one difference, though, between the Trump impeachment and the Biden impeachment inquiry. Donald Trump was impeached because he accurately accused the members of the Ukrainian government of paying Hunter Biden, with his zero fossil fuel expertise, an astronomical sum to serve on the Burisma board—as the costly quid that earned the lucrative quo from his dad Vice President Joe Biden.

"No one now denies that Joe Biden got prosecutor Viktor Shokin fired by threatening to cancel legislatively-approved U.S. aid. Shokin knew about the skullduggery through which the Biden family eventually received $6.5 million from Ukraine—and so Biden ensured his firing, and publicly bragged about it in performance-art fashion." . . .

Former Biden Spox Reckons White House Wants Hunter Biden To ‘Stop Talking In Public’ | The Daily Wire

Who is teaching Jew-hate to the young?

  Monica Showalter - American Thinker   "The strange outburst of pro-Hamas, antisemitic demonstrations on multiple college campuses in recent weeks suggests that it's more than a fringe of the student body that finds this repugnant kind of protest appealling.

"Now a new Harvard/Harris poll confirms it:" . . .

New Harvard/Harris poll results: 67% of respondents aged 18-24 agree that "Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors," 60% of respondents aged 18-24 agree that Hamas’ October 7th massacre can be justified by the grievances of Palestinians, and 31% of… pic.twitter.com/Ma5WHLO1OO

— Eden Cohen ✡︎ עדן כהן (@edencohentweets) December 16, 2023

. . . "This antisemitic freak was a leader, telling other teachers what they should do, and her activities stretched over months and months without so much as a blink from her fellow union leaders. Obviously, a rotten culture is happening there, as if we didn't know it already based on other indicators.

"Besides having hideous people like this allowed to be around children, a second problem is that very little teaching -- about the Holocaust, about Israel, about Jewish people, about antisemitism -- goes on at these places of higher learning. What kind of Holocaust education do kids get these days? It may well be that the only people they hear from are the deniers.

"Obviously, the picture is unfolding, and this needs far more study, but it signals some kind of moral crisis. It's astonishing that the young generation should sound like the Hitler generation, while older generations harbor far more reasonable and fair minded people.

"Something has contaminated the youth pool and the suspect list needs much, much, more examination if it is to be rooted out. Jew-hate should be an ugly memory, not the next hot trend among the young people.

Satan welcomed. Jews must hide. - Don Surber (substack.com)  . . ."Now let me try to wrap my head around this. When you want to display the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments, freedom of religion blocks you.

"But if you want to display Satan’s seven fundamental tenets prominently in the Rotunda of the state Capitol that is covered by free speech. The Rolling Stones are not the only ones with sympathy for the devil.

(Representative Brad) "Sherman said, “The outrage and disgust for this satanic display is widespread, but few people think there is much that can be legally done about it because of free speech and freedom of religion. However, I disagree.”

"I do too. Our rights come from the Lord. I am sure He would not protect Satanism because He wants to protect mankind from evil. God isn’t a RINO.