Reflections on A.D. 2023

by Justin Soutar

Looking back on the Year of Our Lord 2023, I find many things to be thankful for and some things to pray for, personally and professionally as well as nationally, internationally and ecclesiastically. Here are just a few highlights.

Photo by Justin Soutar

Personally, I was blessed to make four brief road trips this year. The first was with a friend of mine to Richmond on February 1 for the Virginia March for Life. We joined with Bishop Barry Knestout, Bishop Michael Burbidge, Governor Glenn Youngkin, Attorney General Jason Miyares, and thousands of fellow Catholics and Christians from across the Commonwealth to peacefully demonstrate and advocate for the legal protection of the unborn in our state and to support and encourage single mothers to choose life for their babies. The second trip, in mid-April, was to the National Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton and the nearby National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes (on the campus of Mount Saint Mary's University) in Emmitsburg, Maryland. The awe-inspiring Byzantine architecture and unique history of the Shrine as the birthplace of the Catholic school system, and the peaceful, prayerful atmosphere of the Grotto with its outdoor Stations of the Cross, many statues of saints, tiny Blessed Sacrament chapel, and towering gold statue of Mary nearby, renewed and uplifted my spirit as I continued to recover from COVID. 

Photo by Justin Soutar

 

My third trip was to the northern West Virginia panhandle in early July to visit a good priest friend and former boss of mine. We enjoyed an afternoon and evening together, with the beautiful scenery of the Mountain State and the Ohio River a pleasant bonus. The fourth and most memorable trip was to the historic Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. on October 21 to participate with more than 1,000 fellow Catholics in the Diocese of Richmond's pilgrimage led by Bishop Knestout. It was a partly cloudy and windy autumn day, and every time the sun came back out it would pour through the many stained-glass windows onto different areas of the walls and columns and mosaics of the massive basilica. I took advantage of this opportunity to tour and photograph the many Marian chapels and mosaics adorning the magnificent Great Upper Church, and to go to confession as well as pray the Rosary and attend Mass and Eucharistic Exposition and Benediction with fellow pilgrims. The bishop's homily on the great treasure of our faith did not disappoint, and the world-class music provided by the Shrine choir and organist for the Mass and Eucharistic procession through the basilica was so glorious, majestic, and overpowering at times that I could scarcely hold back tears. I will continue to treasure this day-long visit to Mary's Shrine for years to come.

Photo by Justin Soutar

 

Professionally, from January through June, as music minister and liturgical assistant, I was blessed to continue leading Saint Patrick Catholic Church in Lexington, Virginia, through the sesquicentennial celebration of its establishment in 1873. To commemorate this historic event, the adult choir performed renowned sacred masterworks, several for the first time, including Palestrina's "Sicut cervus", Faure's "Cantique de Jean Racine", Bruno Vlahek's "Ave Maria", Mozart's "Ave verum", and Handel's "Hallelujah!" Chorus from Messiah. I was further blessed to begin leading the parish through the National Eucharistic Revival this year, highlighted by a Eucharistic healing service in April led by Father John A. Boughton, C.F.R., and a remarkably successful Forty Hours devotion to the Blessed Sacrament in October--the first such event at this parish in decades.

Photo by Justin Soutar

 

Also professionally, a few months ago I learned that the publisher of my first book, America’s Back-Door Enemy (see right sidebar photo), went out of business in 2017 under a cloud of corruption and scandal. Back in 2008 when they accepted my manuscript and offered me a contract, Tate Publishing was a small but idealistic and high-quality Christian publisher located in Mustang, Oklahoma. By 2014 they had grown dramatically to become the third-largest Christian publishing house in the United States, but I was unaware that this position had been attained through the dishonest practices of senior management. I pray for the conversion of those who grew wealthy by violating the Seventh Commandment on such a massive scale. If you haven’t read this important book about American foreign policy in the Middle East but would like to, please write to me and I’ll obtain a used copy for you.

Nationally, it was a tumultuous year in government and politics, reflecting our ever-deepening philosophical and moral divide and the increasing totalitarianism of the Democratic Party leadership. Having secured a narrow majority in the House of Representatives in the 2022 election, Congressional Republicans under the capable and effective leadership of Speaker Kevin McCarthy proceeded to act in the best interests of the country while holding the illegitimate Biden administration accountable for its flagrant abuses of power; opening a corruption investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden’s shady business dealings with Communist China, Russia, and Ukraine; and launching overdue impeachment proceedings against "Crooked Joe." Congressional Democrats and eight Republicans In Name Only joined forces to brazenly retaliate by firing McCarthy as House Speaker in September. 

 

Meanwhile, "former" President Donald Trump, the rightful winner of the 2020 presidential election, spent the entire year preparing for his 2024 presidential campaign by traveling the country, speaking to and raising money from millions of ordinary Americans who are grateful for what he did for the nation during his first term as president and who are appalled by what has transpired under Biden's misrule. Remarkably, Trump has successfully weathered multiple violent storms of personal attacks, baseless indictments and lawsuits involving his finances and eligibility to run for president, arrest and imprisonment, and FBI surveillance from Crooked Joe and his Democratic cronies, all coupled with pervasive anti-Trump bias from major media outlets--steadily increasing his support base to the point where he is now clearly leading not only Biden, but all of the other Republican presidential candidates combined, in the polls in all of the key battleground states. May God grant this fearless champion of the American people victory over his enemies and return him to the White House in 2025.

At the same time, independent thinker and plain-spoken maverick candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. successfully connected with millions of voters disenchanted with both major parties, adding another element of interest to the early presidential contest. He promised to break the unholy alliance between Big Government and Big Business and to do an even better job than Trump of draining the D.C. swamp. Mainly an old-fashioned liberal with a handful of conservative issue positions, he will likely draw many more votes away from Biden than from Trump in November 2024. Some of his derided "conspiracy theories," such as the link between childhood vaccines and autism and the CIA's role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy, are actually true (check out the books Autism--Prevention Care and Management by Marvin Anderson, M.D. and Plausible Denial by Mark Lane).

Photo by Justin Soutar

We pro-lifers were disappointed that voters passed pro-abortion laws in Ohio and Kentucky and elected pro-abortion majorities to the Virginia Senate and House of Delegates, but we shouldn't have been surprised. The Planned Parenthood abortion cartel and its loyal Democratic allies poured millions of dollars into false advertising in these states to frighten and deceive voters regarding the nature of the proposed laws and to convince them to vote for Democrats. Just like the fight against slavery, the fight against abortion will not be won quickly or easily. It takes time to change hearts and minds and to defeat rich and powerful enemies.

Internationally, the tragic and devastating war in Ukraine continued unabated with the tide gradually turning in Russia’s favor, and the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict re-erupted with a brutal Hamas terrorist attack on Israeli civilians and an invasion of Palestinian Gaza by the Israeli army. Both conflicts have been viewed too simplistically by many prominent observers and ordinary people who are unaware of the complexities involved. Russia and Ukraine share a close ethnic, cultural, religious, and geographical relationship going back many centuries, and eastern Ukraine is more Russian than the rest of the country. Russian naval access to a Black Sea port is a key issue at the heart of the conflict that Ukraine has failed to address. In recent years, many Western leaders ignored the lessons of twentieth-century history, failing to realize that by siding with Ukraine and expanding NATO on Russia’s western flank, they would provoke a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. While some of Russia’s grievances and territorial claims may be legitimate, they do not justify the murderous and destructive military invasion and occupation of Ukraine. And while Ukraine has the right to defend herself against Russian aggression, there is a great deal of corruption in the Ukrainian government.

Neither is the Israel-Hamas confrontation as black and white as conservative American commentators paint it. It is not a “war,” properly speaking, between the armies of two nations, but rather a violent conflict between the Israeli army and Hamas terrorists. Nor is Hamas an entirely evil entity; it is primarily a humanitarian, social, and educational Palestinian institution with a radical terrorist fringe. The peaceful organization operates quietly, enjoying broad support among the Palestinian people for its good works, while its violent wing grabs the media headlines. Although nothing justified the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack on innocent Israeli civilians, this atrocity did not justify Israel’s unilateral military invasion of Gaza with its unacceptable collateral damage to Palestinian homes, churches, hospitals, and innocent civilians either. Hamas terrorism is fueled by the situation of political and economic injustice to which the state of Israel has unfortunately subjected the Palestinian people for more than seventy years. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not be resolved until a Palestinian state is officially established alongside Israel; both sides agree to respect the borderlines drawn by the UN in 1948; and Jerusalem is placed in an international zone. (For a more thorough examination of this topic, please request a copy of my book mentioned above.)

 

Ecclesiastically, Pope Francis--at age 86 the oldest pontiff in recent memory--marked the tenth anniversary of his election and continued his holy and generally wise leadership of the Church, unruffled by constant criticism from certain faithful and well-meaning Catholic bishops and media outlets, delivering insightful homilies and addresses and visiting several foreign countries despite his declining health. Some of the most powerful and memorable words he spoke this year were uttered to government leaders in Budapest, Hungary, in April:

"In the world in which we presently live, however, that passionate quest of a politics of community and the strengthening of multilateral relations seems a wistful memory from a distant past. We seem to be witnessing the sorry sunset of that choral dream of peace, as the soloists of war now take over....

"Peace will never come as the result of the pursuit of individual strategic interests, but only from policies capable of looking to the bigger picture, to the development of everyone: policies that are attentive to individuals, to the poor and to the future, and not merely to power, profit and present prospects.

"At this historical juncture, Europe is crucial, for thanks to its history, it represents the memory of humanity; in this sense, it is called to take up its proper role, which is to unite those far apart, to welcome other peoples and to refuse to consider anyone an eternal enemy. It is vital, then, to recover the European spirit: the excitement and vision of its founders, who were statesmen able to look beyond their own times, beyond national boundaries and immediate needs, and to generate forms of diplomacy capable of pursuing unity, not aggravating divisions."

In October, Catholic bishops, priests and lay leaders from around the world converged on Vatican City for the Synod on Communion, Participation, and Mission (sadly misnamed the "Synod on Synodality"), in a serious and mostly sincere attempt to first listen to the concerns of Catholics worldwide and then to discern where the Holy Spirit is leading the Church today. As with so many other high-profile events in Francis' pontificate, this worthy undertaking has been unnecessarily controversial. For example, some prominent faithful Catholics harshly criticized Pope Francis for allowing certain dissident and unfaithful Catholics to participate in the Synod, forgetting that the Synod is merely an advisory body to the pope and that Jesus himself regularly associated with notorious public sinners.

Likewise, in December, the Holy See's issuance of new guidelines for blessings for homosexual couples ignited unnecessary controversy among many faithful Catholics. The secular media didn't help by quickly spreading the lie that the Church now officially recognizes homosexual unions on a par with traditional marriage. Bishop Robert Barron's analysis of both the Synod and the official blessings document from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith is correct: the pope is not trying to change Church doctrine (as if he had the power to do that in any case), but rather trying to draw people who are not fully living the doctrine closer to the fullness of life in Christ.

Indeed, many things to be thankful for and some things to pray for. Let us continue to pray the Rosary for the conversion of sinners and for peace in the world as Our Lady of Fatima requested.

Happy New Year!

 

Copyright © 2023 Justin D. Soutar.

Ten Years with Francis, the Misunderstood Pope

by Justin Soutar
March 30, 2023

Following the surprise resignation of Pope Benedict XVI in February of 2013 for age and health reasons, few observers were anticipating the quick election of 76-year-old Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina, as his successor. As the first pontiff from Latin America, the first Jesuit, and the first to take the name of Saint Francis of Assisi, he was a newcomer, a teacher, and a reformer. Francis brought to the Petrine office a fresh perspective, a humble and engaging personality, a simple and clear way of preaching and teaching the Catholic faith, and a frugal lifestyle reflecting Gospel values. With his winning combination of personal warmth, simplicity of life, emphasis on divine mercy, and charitable outreach to the poor and marginalized, he immediately captured the hearts of hundreds of millions of Catholics and non-Catholics alike across the globe.

Building upon and continuing the work of his great predecessors Pope Saint Paul VI, Pope Saint John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI, Francis has consistently striven to shed the light of the perennial truths of Christ and His Church through the lens of the Second Vatican Council onto the complex situation of the twenty-first century world. Through his homilies, addresses, apostolic exhortations, encyclicals, canon law reforms, the Jubilee Year of Mercy, the Year of Saint Joseph, and the three Synods on the Family, the Amazon, and on Participation, Communion, and Mission, he has strengthened and equipped believers to face contemporary issues with the power of Gospel truth; made official Church business more transparent and accountable; and has summoned the whole Church to listen more carefully and respond more effectively to a great variety of pastoral challenges. Furthermore, he successfully navigated the Church through the unexpected and difficult storm of the COVID-19 pandemic and the initial worldwide lockdown in response to it.

Unfortunately, less than two years after his election, the initial widespread enthusiasm with which Pope Francis was received had dissolved into heated controversy, unfair criticism, inane conspiracy theories, and frank disillusionment regarding his character and intentions among large numbers of people both within and outside of the Church, for opposing reasons. His “progressive” style and emphasis, including his elevation to the Curia of some bishops with incomplete fidelity to Church teaching and his call in Amoris Laetitia for a new pastoral approach to some irregular marital situations, has led many faithful and traditionalist Catholics to view him through a “hermeneutic of rupture” as a wild-eyed radical who is bent on distorting Church doctrine and discipline beyond recognition and who was elected through the machinations of a secret group of cardinals for this very purpose. Meanwhile, many heretics and radical secularists who had expected Francis to remake the Church in their own image were profoundly disappointed to find him upholding traditional Church teachings on abortion, marriage, and the devil and publicly rebuking the wayward German synod.

It’s a shame that influential and otherwise faithful Catholic media outlets such as the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) and Inside the Vatican magazine have turned themselves into platforms for slanderous attacks on, and unjust criticisms of, Pope Francis by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano and other chronically negative commentators. By frequently zeroing in on a handful of Francis’ vague or unclear words and actions, magnifying their controversial aspects, and ignoring the larger context while conspicuously failing to recognize his personal holiness and the many remarkable accomplishments of his papacy, they are presenting to hundreds of millions of people a heavily biased, distorted, and inaccurate picture of Francis and his reign, thus harming the Church by fueling confusion and division within her and by alienating large numbers of the faithful from their own shepherd. This is not only irresponsible journalism, it is unjust and uncharitable and a tragic disservice to the truth. No wonder that the Holy Father has publicly referred to such incessant criticism as “the work of the devil”!

Many faithful Catholics now erroneously view Benedict XVI as a good pope loyal to tradition and Francis as a bad pope disloyal to it, conveniently brushing aside the facts that Benedict himself as Pope Emeritus explicitly rejected this narrative on multiple occasions as entirely baseless, remained a close friend and confidant of Francis, and frequently renewed his pledge of fidelity and obedience to the Jesuit pontiff. But even apart from Benedict’s unwavering support for his successor--not to mention the sadly neglected doctrine of papal infallibility--when one looks objectively at the totality of Francis’ public words and actions during his ten years as the Vicar of Christ to date, it becomes abundantly evident that the “hermeneutic of rupture” has no logical foundation whatsoever.

Thankfully, the majority of Catholics worldwide still correctly view Francis as the good, simple, holy, hardworking, Christ-like pope that he has been and appreciate the many blessings and graces God has bestowed on the Church through his generally wise and capable leadership. While there is certainly room for respectful criticism regarding some aspects and decisions of his administration, for the most part Francis has served as an exemplary Successor of Saint Peter. History will probably judge his pontificate favorably, and he will likely be fondly remembered long after his harshest critics have vanished into obscurity. Christ too was misunderstood and criticized by some of the religious leaders of his day for reaching out to those on the margins of society. Yet the Church he founded on Peter and the apostles has endured through two thousand years and has survived many grave problems because he and the Holy Spirit have remained with her and have protected her from teaching error. The self-assured critics of Francis on both sides seem unaware that the Church and the papacy are divine institutions.

Copyright © 2023 Justin D. Soutar. All rights reserved.

Quote of the Day

"As is our custom, Vespers were said in the late afternoon, and a special thanksgiving was offered to God for giving us renewed hope through the many signs of land he has provided. I now believe that the light I saw earlier was a sign from God and that it was truly the first positive indication of land."

--Christopher Columbus, Diary, October 11, 1492

The Natural Law Basis for Dobbs and Eliminating Legalized Abortion

by Justin Soutar

Like many other Americans of good will, during the past ten days I've been offering prayers of thanksgiving for the historic Supreme Court decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization that overturned the Court's terrible 1973 ruling in Roe vs. Wade. At the same time, I've been offering prayers of petition for the continued growth and spread of a culture of respect for life throughout our land.

The Dobbs decision is a credit to the fine legal minds and devout Catholicism of Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Writing for the majority, Alito is absolutely correct that the reasoning underpinning Roe was egregiously flawed, and that there is no "right to abortion" in the U.S. Constitution. These five justices performed their sworn duty before God to the American people by strictly interpreting the Constitution according to its original text, meaning, and intent with regard to abortion law. That is exactly what all Supreme Court justices are supposed to do in every legal case, regardless of the issue. They are not supposed to "legislate from the bench," twisting the Constitution's original meaning to impose a contemporary ideological viewpoint on the entire nation, as they did in Roe and have unfortunately done many times since then on other important issues.

So what does Catholicism have to do with the majority's ruling in Dobbs? Two things. First, the Catholic Church teaches that there is no conflict between faith and reason, properly understood and applied, because both come from God and are sources of objective truth. When taken seriously in its totality, when believed and practiced as intended, Catholicism not only encourages faith in God (religion) and love of God and neighbor (morality), but also good critical thinking, coherent logical reasoning, and sound judgment. This is why the Catholic Church founded the modern university system in Europe in the High Middle Ages, and it is a major reason why these five justices earned great legal reputations and were appointed to the highest court in the United States.

Secondly, as Catholic League president Bill Donohue pointed out in his excellent book Why Catholicism Matters (2012), the foundation of inalienable human rights originating from the Creator on which our Declaration of Independence and Constitution were built was given to the world by the Catholic Church. While some of her members have notoriously violated her teachings in these areas, the Church has steadfastly maintained the sacredness of human life and the immorality of abortion since ancient times and has developed her doctrine on ordered liberty in the course of centuries. Our nation's Founders inherited the timeless natural law principle of inalienable rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness primarily from Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Robert Bellarmine, and they explicitly constructed a new nation on this principle written by the Creator into the fabric of human nature.

The idea of objective and universal moral truths of divine origin existing outside of ourselves and to which we must humbly submit is anathema to the morally relativistic and radically secularist thinking that has poisoned our society with a hedonistic "culture of death" in recent years. As a result of Roe vs. Wade, during the past fifty years, more than sixty million innocent unborn children (potential citizens) of the United States have been brutally denied the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that were theoretically guaranteed to them by the Constitution for the sake of convenience. Simultaneously, the number of violent crimes against born human beings in this country has increased dramatically, and several states have legalized euthanasia. This should come as no surprise. Saint Teresa of Calcutta declared truthfully that abortion is the greatest destroyer of peace because if a woman can kill her unborn child, there is nothing to stop anyone else from killing whomever they wish to kill.

But the reality of inalienable human rights exists in all times and places, whether it is fully acknowledged and respected or not. The grave evil of African-American slavery was both legal and common throughout much of the United States for more than eighty years, and the alleged "right" to own slaves was even upheld for a time by the Supreme Court in Dred Scott vs. Sanford. Someday, the citizens of this country will rightly look back with utter horror at the Roe vs. Wade regime, viewing abortion the same way we view slavery today: How could this civilized nation founded on the principle of "liberty and justice for all" have tolerated such a grave injustice against so many millions of her own people for so many years?

I was disappointed but not surprised that Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the pro-Roe minority in the Dobbs case. Appointed to the High Court by President George W. Bush in 2005, Roberts was a faithful Catholic with apparently stellar conservative credentials. Just seven years later in 2012, however, Roberts was the deciding vote upholding the Affordable Care Act in United States vs. ObamaCare. He is an example of the unfortunate trend among many justices and judges in the United States in recent decades pointed out by Robert Bork in Slouching Towards Gomorrah (1996): when conservative lawyers are placed in U.S. courts, they often become less conservative.

The Supreme Court was right to return the issue of abortion to us, the people and our elected representatives. Unfortunately, while many states will now vote to restrict abortion or to outlaw it altogether, some will keep it legal with few if any restrictions. The monumental challenge now facing the pro-life movement in the United States is to sufficiently educate and mobilize the public and elected representatives to eradicate the evil of legalized abortion from all fifty states, either state by state or through Congressional legislation. President Ronald Reagan foresaw the latter method in his famous "Evil Empire" speech of 1983, declaring, "Human life legislation ending this tragedy [abortion on demand] will someday pass the Congress, and you and I must not rest until it does."." 

If the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution mean anything, the inalienable right to life of American unborn children cannot be protected in some states and left unprotected in others per the differing whims of majority vote, court ruling, state law, or executive order. As a matter of basic justice, it must be legally guaranteed throughout the nation. Given the controversial nature of the issue, this won't happen without a fight. As we fought a Civil War for the just cause of eliminating legalized slavery, we may well have to fight another for the just cause of eliminating legalized abortion. Our national transformation from a culture of death to a culture of life will not happen overnight, and prayer and fasting will play a critical role in its success. The closing lyrics of our national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner," come to mind:

O thus be it ever, when free men shall stand 

Between their loved homes and the war's desolation.  

Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the Heav'n-rescued land 

Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserved us a nation!

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,

And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Copyright © 2022 Justin D. Soutar. All right reserved.

Quote of the Day

"The historical truth is that [Father Junipero] Serra repeatedly pressed the Spanish authorities for better treatment of the Native American communities. Serra was not simply a man of his times. In working with Native Americans, he was a man ahead of his times who made great sacrifices to defend and serve the indigenous population and work against an oppression that extends far beyond the mission era. And if that is not enough to legitimate a public statue in the state that he did so much to create, then virtually every historical figure from our nation’s past will have to be removed for their failings measured in the light of today’s standards.”

--California Catholic Conference of Bishops, June 22, 2020

A Buried Treasure: The "Ave Maria" of Bruno Vlahek

by Justin Soutar

Back in 2013, I was visiting the popular British sheet music website Score Exchange (where I happen to sell some of my own music), searching for a good piano arrangement of the familiar and timeless Schubert Ave Maria. As I combed through the search results, I stumbled upon a completely different, and much more recently written, Ave Maria for soprano solo, SATB choir and piano that I had never seen or heard before. Using the site's Scorch playback feature to listen to the score on my computer (a mechanical device that gives a rough idea of how it should really sound), I found the unfamiliar music so hauntingly beautiful, richly complex and deeply moving that it became permanently engraved within my consciousness, impossible to forget. In fact, the emotional impact of this contemporary classical work dated 2005 was on par with the well-known classic Ave Maria compositions of Schubert, Bach/Gounod and Mozart. The site's description revealed that this piece was actually the composer's own piano reduction and SATB arrangement of his original version of the Ave Maria published in 2003, which was written for soprano, SAA chorus and orchestra.

The writer of this particular Ave Maria, a certain Bruno Vlahek, was also unfamiliar to me. Checking out his biography on Score Exchange, I learned that he is a remarkably gifted, world-renowned, award-winning Croatian composer and virtuoso pianist my own age, which meant--incredibly--that he had turned out both versions of this Ave Maria in his late teens. Since the piano/choral score was offered free of charge on the website at that time, I printed out a copy for myself, and during my leisure time on Sunday afternoons, I would occasionally amuse myself by attempting to play some of the piano part, which was quite complex and difficult with its simultaneous natural and syncopated rhythms and a half-dozen triplets thrown into a steady drumbeat of sixteenth and thirty-second notes. I longed to master the entire piece, but given my work schedule and commitments at the time, this was a pipe dream.

Then in late 2016, the good Lord gave me my dream job as a full-time music director at Saint Patrick Catholic Church in Lexington, Virginia. Realizing that 2017 would be the one hundredth anniversary of Our Lady's apparitions at Fatima, I decided that we should do something special musically to mark this important centennial, and I felt that the glorious but obscure Vlahek Ave Maria would be perfect for the occasion--something definitely off the beaten path that was beautiful and memorable. Here was a chance to publicly honor the Blessed Virgin Mary while sharing with the congregation a magnificent piece of music they had never heard before and would probably never hear otherwise. When I shared an excellent YouTube video performance of this score with the pastor, Father Joe, his reaction was the same as mine had been a few years earlier: "It's different, but I like it." He gave it his blessing right away.

So early in 2017, I rose to meet the formidable double challenge of mastering the piano part and teaching our little sixteen-member volunteer choir and soloist to sing the beloved Latin prayer to new melodies and unfamiliar rhythms. Initially the choristers were somewhat cool toward the piece and intimidated by the difficulty of the material, but after two months of patient rehearsal beginning in May, their attitude had changed from trepidation to enthusiasm; they had discovered that this challenging new Ave Maria was actually fun to sing! After three more months of prayer and diligent practice, as well as valuable advice and assistance from one choir member who is a band director, we were ready to present this stunning hymn to the Blessed Mother just in time for the conclusion of the Fatima centennial.

We finally presented the Ave Maria by Bruno Vlahek on October 29, 2017, during the 10:30 AM Sunday Mass with approximately 180 parishioners and visitors in attendance, my band director friend conducting the choir, and my small digital audio recorder going. While not perfect in every detail, our rendition was well received, eliciting spontaneous applause. As far I know, this was the first time it had ever been publicly performed in the United States. Father Joe responded with an immediate public request for an encore presentation on December 8, 2017, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Somehow, with our conductor and one other choir member absent, we managed to execute it nearly perfectly at the 5:30 PM Mass that Friday evening. (Regrettably, I failed to snag an audio recording of this spectacular achievement.) Our third presentation, which fell somewhere in quality between the first and second attempts, took place during the 5:30 PM Mass on August 14, 2019, the Vigil of the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

I'm deeply grateful to the Lord and to his holy Mother for granting and obtaining for me and our little choir the talents and graces necessary to learn and share with our parishioners and visitors this awesome but largely buried contemporary Marian hymn masterpiece. It is no small accomplishment to have such a challenging world-class piano and choral work firmly in our liturgical music repertoire. I'm eagerly looking forward to performing it again as soon and as often as we have the opportunity to do so. My sincere hope is that our past and future efforts to share the Vlahek Ave Maria with others will contribute to making this jewel of twenty-first century Catholic classical music more widely performed, known and appreciated, so that it may eventually earn the honored and secure place it certainly deserves in both the Church and the world’s great musical treasuries.

Copyright © 2020 Justin D. Soutar. All rights reserved.

Reflection for Pentecost Sunday

"The Church that is born at Pentecost is a community that awakens wonder because, with the power that comes from God, she announces a new message – Christ’s resurrection – with a new language, the universal language of love. A new announcement: Christ is alive, he is risen; a new language: the language of love. The disciples are invested with power from above and speak with courage – a few minutes before they were all cowards, but now they speak with courage and boldness, with the freedom of the Holy Spirit.

"The Church is called always to be like this: to be able to surprise by proclaiming to everyone that Jesus the Christ has defeated death, that God’s arms are always open, that his patience is always there to care for us to heal us, to forgive us. It is precisely because of this mission that the risen Jesus sent his Spirit to the Church. Attention: if the Church is alive, she must always surprise. It is proper to the living Church to surprise. A Church that does not have the capacity to surprise is a weak, sick, dying Church that must be revived."

--Pope Francis, Regina Caeli Address, June 8, 2014

Traitors to the Church

For several months now, the Catholic Church in the United States and around the world has been undergoing a particularly severe attack from the forces of evil. Radical secularist elitists in our government and the "mainstream" media have unjustly seized upon and magnified beyond all reasonable bounds the abominable crimes and sins of sexual abuse of minors by a tiny minority of priests in the 70s, 80s and 90s, and their cover-up by several bishops--as well as the recently revealed accusations against former Cardinal, now Archbishop Emeritus Theodore McCarrick--in an unscrupulous attempt to smear the entire contemporary U.S. Church and to utterly destroy her good name in the minds of the general public. Similar but more extensive and more recent priestly sexual abuse revelations have emerged in Chile and Honduras. And in Europe, former U.S. nuncio to the Holy See Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano has publicly alleged that Pope Francis failed to act on prior knowledge of the accusations against McCarrick and has demanded his resignation from the papacy. This devastating coordinated assault of Satan against the Mystical Body of Christ has proven remarkably successful in achieving its wicked objectives, thanks in large measure to the domineering power and influence of the secular media. But the most disturbing aspect of this whole affair, and what has contributed greatly to the success and duration of this vicious anti-Catholic propaganda campaign, is that instead of taking up arms to defend Holy Mother Church from this demonic onslaught, millions of faithful and well-intentioned Catholics have been tricked by the Enemy's lies into turning against their own Mother and are now (even if unknowingly) fighting the Church as traitors with the Enemy's weapons and on the Enemy's side!

Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, has rightly exposed the voluminous Pennsylvania grand jury "report" on priestly sexual abuse for what it is: an elaborate hoax consisting of two true accounts of abuse by priests buried among hundreds of unsubstantiated cases that cannot be admitted to court. Donohue has also drawn attention to the vicious anti-Catholicism of the fake report's mastermind, Pennsylvania Attorney General Joshua Shapiro. He has unmasked Mr. Shapiro's pretense of justice and fairness by pointing out his failure to investigate the far more serious sexual abuse problems within other religions and especially within our public school system. It should be perfectly clear to any objective observer that both this salaciously detailed "report" and the language accompanying its press release were designed to inflame public outrage against the American Catholic Church. Furthermore, the timing of its publication suggests a calculated plan to discredit the Church's moral authority in advance of the 2018 Congressional elections. And that is exactly what has happened. The needle of truth was cunningly buried in a haystack of lies, and with abundant oil poured on by the secular media, the resulting conflagration has been spectacular. But eventually, the fire will burn itself out, and all that will remain is the needle.

How appalling it has been to see millions of American Catholics sharing in the general public's explosion of irrational and unjustified anger against the Church! These well-intentioned Catholics have made the terrible mistake of trusting and accepting the secular media's heavily biased reporting on the matter without question, apparently forgetting that the secular media is controlled by the Church's enemies--their enemies. Their righteous indignation is irrational and unjustified because they have nowhere to direct it. They're angry with priests, but most of the priests who committed these crimes and sins against children and teens are either dead, retired, or laicized and in prison; more than 99 percent of priests currently serving the U.S. Church have never abused a child or teen. They're mad at bishops, but most of the bishops who conspired to cover up these crimes and sins are either dead or retired, and nearly all (if not all) of the bishops currently serving the U.S. Church have never engaged in such cover-up. And they're incensed at Pope Francis (who has increasingly become a scapegoat for many of the Church's problems) for allegedly mishandling the situation, but nearly all of the crimes and sins took place during the reign of Pope Saint John Paul II, many years before Francis was elected pope. Angry Catholics, some of whom have abandoned the Church altogether, have been sucked into the secular media drama and have become unwitting pawns in Satan's army.

If these misguided Catholics in and out of the pews are de facto foot soldiers of the Evil One in his war against the Church, much of the blame lies with their commanding officers in Catholic media. For a number of years now, many supposedly independent Catholic journalists and media outlets in the United States have been allowing the radically secularist "mainstream" media to dictate both the content and the priority of their own stories, merely contenting themselves with approaching this news "from a Catholic perspective." The problem with this approach is that, as mentioned above, the secular media is controlled by the Church's enemies, whose agenda is diametrically opposed to Catholic faith and moral values. Catholic media executives should set their own agenda based on their religion and make their own decisions as to which stories merit their attention and how much, if any, attention a given story should receive. By slavishly following the lead of the secular media with regard to coverage of past sexual abuse by Catholic priests, Catholic journalists and pundits have played into the hands of the Church's enemies and dragged millions of hapless Catholics along with them. The crimes and sins of a few dozen U.S. Catholic priests and the complicity of a few Catholic bishops in the latter half of the twentieth century should not be today's front-page news for months on end in any media outlet, much less a Catholic media outlet! The real "scandal" here is that Catholic media "leaders" have granted wildly disproportionate coverage to an ugly chapter of the Church's past that should be left in the past, thus fueling the anger of their consumers and aiding and abetting Hell's war on the Church.

When the allegations against then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick first surfaced this past summer, the Catholic press initially expressed some healthy skepticism regarding their credibility. If the young Father McCarrick had actually abused seminarians back in 1971, how were these misdeeds so successfully kept secret for nearly fifty years--and how did this priest subsequently manage to rise through the church's ranks to the upper echelons of the hierarchy? The suggestion that the accusations might be false was clearly on the table for a moment. Unfortunately, the Catholic media quickly allowed itself to be swept into the secular media's hostile rush to judgment, abandoning critical thinking and a sense of perspective in favor of a presumption of guilt that offends seriously against justice and charity. Had Catholic journalists acted in accord with the charity, justice and prudence their faith teaches, not to mention respect for the truth, they would have reserved judgment on the McCarrick case, assuming the former cardinal's innocence until the results of the Church's investigation were in hand. Today's Catholic journalists would do well to remember that back in the 1950s, the great Italian mystic and canonized saint, Pio of Pietrelcina, was temporarily removed from public ministry while the Church looked into a credible allegation of sexual misconduct against him. Within two years, Padre Pio was acquitted and returned to public ministry. Not every priest, bishop, or cardinal accused of a sin and crime is actually guilty. Archbishop Emeritus McCarrick resigned from the College of Cardinals because Pope Francis asked him to do so as a procedural requirement for the Church's investigation process; however, his resignation is not necessarily an admission of guilt. My impression of McCarrick over the course of many years has always been a man of quiet strength and radiant joy, a passionate and articulate defender of the faith, indeed a saintly man, and I cannot reconcile the current charges against him with his apparent sanctity. I will continue to assume that he is a holy man who has been falsely accused of wrongdoing, unless and until the Church's findings indicate the latter.

It's time well-meaning American Catholics recognize they've been duped into treason, abandon the Enemy's side and re-direct their volleys of righteous indignation at the proper targets: anti-Catholic activists in our government and in the secular media. We're commanded to love our enemies, but we should NEVER trust or follow them! If your innocent mother was unjustly attacked by enemies bent upon her total destruction, wouldn't you defend her with every fiber of your being? The Church is our Mother, and she is in this exact situation at this very moment. We Catholics must speak out and take every action within our power to defend Holy Mother Church against the malicious accusations of her radically secularist enemies in government and the secular media. We must defend our holy priests and bishops against fictitious charges; we must defend Pope Francis against the false accusations of Archbishop Vigano. Above all, we must pray unceasingly for the Church as well as for the conversion of her enemies. This is a public relations battle, a battle for the Church's reputation, a cultural battle, but above all it is a spiritual battle. As Ephesians 6:12 says, "Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the present darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places." May we fight valiantly for the Church at this critical time with boundless trust in the protection and intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Michael the Archangel and all the Heavenly host, confident in Christ's promise that the gates of Hell will not prevail against her.

Copyright 2018 Justin D. Soutar. All rights reserved.