Quote of the Day

"History is not history unless it's the truth."

--Abraham Lincoln

Quote of the Day

"Men are capable of reciprocal comprehension because, far from being wholly separate islands of being, they communicate in the same truth. The greater their inner contact with the one reality which unites them, namely, the truth, the greater their capacity to meet on common ground. Dialogue without this interior obedient listening to the truth would be nothing more than a discussion among the deaf."

--Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict XVI (1927--2022)

Quote of the Day

“Cowardice asks the question - is it safe? Expediency asks the question - is it politic? Vanity asks the question - is it popular? But conscience asks the question - is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right.”

--Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929--1968)

Quote of the Day

"The Church does not have technical solutions to offer and does not claim 'to interfere in any way in the politics of States.' She does, however, have a mission of truth to accomplish, in every time and circumstance, for a society that is attuned to man, to his dignity, to his vocation…Fidelity to man requires fidelity to the truth, which alone is the guarantee of freedom (cf. Jn 8:32) and of the possibility of integral human development."

--Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, no. 9

Two Letters on the 2020 General Election

The following letter to then-Vice President Mike Pence was written by members of the Virginia House of Delegates, including my own Delegate, Ronnie R. Campbell (VA-24), and sent January 5, 2021:

*****

Dear Sir:

This letter is written to you by elected members of the Virginia General Assembly, notifying you that we hereby ask you to nullify the Certificate of Ascertainment of Presidential Electors issued by the governor of our state. Further, we request a stay of designation of any designation of Presidential Electors from our state until such time as a comprehensive forensic audit of the November 3, 2020, election has taken place to determine the actual winner.

The reported vote margin in Virginia between the electoral slates is 451,138 votes. In compliance with the unconstitutional 2020 Special Session legislation SB 5120 (CHAP0001), at least 215,140 ballots were deposited in unsecured "drop boxes" otherwise prohibited in the Commonwealth (39 localities, including some larger ones, were not able to provide actual counts or estimates of "drop box" ballots received).

As members of the state legislature of Virginia, we make the following findings: We find that SB 5120 (CHAP0001), purportedly enacted by our state legislature during the 2020 Special Session, was enacted in violation of the Constitution of Virginia, and thus laws which should have governed the election of Presidential Electors were not followed. SB 5120 was intended to change election laws with an emergency enactment date in violation of the Constitution of Virginia's Article IV, Section 13's requirement that "all laws enacted at a special session, including laws which are enacted by reason of actions taken during the reconvened session following a special session but excluding a general appropriation law, shall take effect on the first day of the fourth month following the month of adjournment of the special session; unless in the case of an emergency (which emergency shall be expressed in the body of the bill) the General Assembly shall specify an earlier date by a vote of four-fifths of the members voting in each house..."

We have received written correspondence from most of the 133 registrars in Virginia. There is a clear consensus among them that the last-minute changes to election law, (which were passed in an unconstitutional act of the Virginia General Assembly), were communicated poorly, required significant additional labor to execute, came with little additional funding, and greatly compromised the ability of registrars to conduct the 2020 election.

We further find that numerous changes to the laws of Virginia enacted in the 2020 session of the Virginia General Assembly led to greatly increased opportunities for massive voter fraud and election fraud. In Virginia, the race for President, the U.S. Senate race, and five Congressional races had their vote tallies shifted by large, late-night reporting from central absentee precincts, which do not provide the data necessary to establish the authenticity and validity of these counts. This is a significant issue which has not arisen in years past, as nearly two-thirds of Virginia's vote was counted in central absentee precincts. This absence of data has made the election impossible to verify. This is a serious concern, as the means, motive, and opportunity for large-scale vote fraud exists in the Commonwealth of Virginia. In the process of investigating the 2020 General Election, many additional serious irregularities have been shown to exist, including improper third-party payments to local governments, late-night ballot counting inconsistent with state guidance, untimely execution of certifications for machine logic and accuracy testing, improper political activities by registrars and at polling locations, and much more.

It is our fervent request that the date of this joint session of Congress be deferred until the completion of the forensic audit of the election.

Should you, as Vice President, announce a winner based on a tally of unconstitutionally and fraudulently elected Presidential Electors, it would create a rent in the fabric of the nation. Our Country is based on the consent of the governed, and if half of the country were to believe that their votes no longer matter, we fear for the consequences for the union.

*****

Here is the letter I wrote and sent this morning to Delegate Campbell in response:

*****

Dear Delegate Campbell:

Thank you very much for signing and sending a truthful and informative letter to Vice President Mike Pence on January 5, in which you and fellow delegates briefly summarized many grave problems with the conduct and processing of the 2020 presidential, Senate, and House elections in the Commonwealth of Virginia in violation of our state Constitution, and called upon him to nullify the fraudulent Certificate of Ascertainment of Presidential Electors issued by Governor Ralph Northam.

Like many Virginians and Americans, I have been appalled to witness an increasingly radicalized Democratic Party employ large-scale illegal voter fraud, roll out a highly sophisticated disinformation campaign through traditional and social media, and use corruption, manipulation, intimidation, blackmail, character assassination, and even impeachment to steal federal and state elections from principled Republican candidates and to silence and destroy their opponents in their unbridled greed for power and domination. And like millions of Americans, I was greatly disappointed that the Vice President, instead of upholding the Constitution of the United States in favor of the rightful winner of the 2020 presidential election, chose to ratify the Electoral College vote of January 6 based on fraudulent ascertainment of presidential electors from Virginia, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and several other states.

It is painfully obvious to any candid observer that the integrity of our national elections has been compromised on a massive and unprecedented scale in favor of a wholesale takeover of the legislative and executive branches by a thoroughly dishonest and corrupt Democratic Party.

Amid the grave injustice of this dangerous situation for our beloved country, which continues to cry out to Heaven for redress and rectification in spite of all attempts to repress and conceal it, we the people of Virginia and the United States find great consolation in the presence in Richmond and Washington, D.C. of honest, dedicated, and God-fearing Representatives like yourself who still act and govern in accordance with right reason, the common good, and the laws of our state and federal Constitutions.

As you assume the great challenge of carrying out exemplary service to our state and our nation while fighting against the new tyrannical Democratic regime, please be assured of my continued support and prayers.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Justin Soutar

*****

Reflections on the Past Twenty Years

by Justin Soutar

I wish all readers of this blog post a Happy New Year 2020 and a happy new decade as well. It's hard to believe we've just entered the "Twenties," since my maternal grandparents were born in the 1920s almost one hundred years ago. This milestone is a good time to pause and reflect on the direction of the Church, our country and our world during the first twenty years of the twenty-first century.

From the Jubilee Year 2000 to 2019, the Catholic Church generally prospered under the courageous leadership of three saintly Popes: Saint John Paul II "the Great", Benedict XVI and Francis. Despite major differences in personality, style, and emphasis arising from their different backgrounds and training, there has been a great continuity among the Polish, German, and Argentinian pontiffs in their unwavering focus on Christ and His Gospel; the clarity of their teaching on the essential doctrines of the Faith; and their efforts toward administrative and spiritual reform of the Roman Curia and the Church generally.

While disturbing revelations of sexual abuse of children and youth by some Catholic priests and cover-up by a few bishops in the second half of the twentieth century cast a shadow over the Church throughout the world, these same revelations led to the establishment of new Church policies and structures that contributed to a drastic reduction in abuse incidents in the U.S. during this period. Additionally, during the late 2010s, dissident pressure groups and the secular media ignited an unfortunate controversy within the Church in the U.S. and elsewhere over the meaning and application of certain passages in Pope Francis' beautiful apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love), leading millions of faithful Catholics to erroneously believe that Francis wants to change the Church's moral teachings or is unfit for office.

Despite these problems, the Church overall has been thriving. In the U.S., the majority of bishops have been saintly men and nearly all have remained faithful to the Magisterium. We saw the beginning of the end of the chronic priest shortage as orthodox seminaries across America were packed with increasing numbers of holy young men each year and the number of priestly ordinations began to steadily increase. Faithful religious women such as the Nashville Dominicans also grew substantially in number. The number of lay faithful has continued to grow with each Easter Vigil. EWTN expanded its media apostolate by acquiring the National Catholic Register in 2011 and adding tens of millions of new radio listeners and TV viewers. Worldwide, the Church added about 300 million new members during the past twenty years, the majority of them in Africa.

Our country enjoyed an economic boom from 2000 to 2007 during the Bush administration which was followed by the stock market crash of 2008 and resulting Great Recession which was prolonged by the Obama administration's high taxes and increased government regulation of businesses. Lower taxes and less regulation contributed to economic growth and historically low unemployment during the first three years of the Trump administration. While the standard of living generally increased with nearly every American enjoying Internet access, a cell phone and flat screen TV, corporate greed and the failure of wages to keep pace with cost of living increases contributed to the dismemberment of the middle class, and the national debt swelled from $2 trillion to $20 trillion.

The growth of major corporations such as Dollar General, Wal-Mart, Lowe's and The Home Depot forced tens of thousands of small businesses to close by flooding the U.S. market with cheap goods imported from China and other foreign countries. However, a popular movement to support American manufacturers by buying American made products had gained steam by the end of the 2010s, with President Trump replacing NAFTA with USMCA to discourage the outsourcing of American manufacturing. And fueled by growing demand, the organic food and renewable energy industries saw significant growth during the past two decades.

Politically, our country has grown more and more divided from the contested presidential election of 2000 to the futile attempt by House Democrats to impeach President Trump in late 2019. Corrupt Republican and Democratic members of Congress have proven incapable of bipartisan collaboration on a host of pressing issues from abortion and religious freedom to healthcare and the environment to immigration and foreign policy. Unable or unwilling to peaceably discuss and work with their colleagues across the aisle, they've resorted to scoring whatever legislative or judicial victories they can scrape for their own side and either violently attacking or quietly distancing themselves from the opposition. Millions of frustrated Americans espousing traditional Judeo-Christian values created the Tea Party movement within the Republican Party in 2009, many of whose candidates were swept into state and national office in the gubernatorial, senatorial and Congressional elections of 2010 and 2014.

Religiously and morally, our country has become increasingly less Christian under the pervasive influence of militant secularism. Christians are still a large majority of the population, but their percentage has gradually declined while the percentage of nonreligious individuals has grown into double digits and Satanism and the occult have become more popular. In 2000, freedom of religion as protected by the First Amendment was sacrosanct, but just ten years later, under pressure from the abortion cartel and pharmaceutical and insurance giants, the Obama administration was requiring abortion and contraception to be part of "healthcare coverage" regardless of religious or moral objection to these anti-life practices.

During his visit to the U.S. in 2008, Pope Benedict XVI had warned that radical secularism would lead to an attack on religious liberty, and Pope Francis repeatedly highlighted the importance of religious freedom and met briefly with Kim Davis and the Little Sisters of the Poor during his own tour of the U.S. in 2015. The ObamaCare assault on our first freedom provoked a well-organized religious liberty campaign led by our bishops during the 2010s, including an annual Fortnight for Freedom, that led ultimately to the reversal of Obama's HHS mandate and many other anti-religious regulations by the Trump administration.

The confident exuberance and idealistic optimism for world peace, freedom, and prosperity that marked the beginning of the third millennium, nicely encapsulated in the Ford Millennium Anthem "Just Wave Hello," soon proved ill-founded. The shocking destruction of the World Trade Center's iconic Twin Towers by Israeli intelligence agents disguised as Arab terrorists on September 11, 2001 and subsequent terrorist attacks all over the world; the U.S. invasion of Iraq against the urgent advice of Pope John Paul II; the unabated continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the ongoing exodus of Christians from the Holy Land; the U.S. support for ISIS that led to its occupation of the Nineveh Plain in 2014 with subsequent murder and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Christians and Muslims and the destruction of dozens of ancient churches and monasteries; widespread drug and human trafficking in Central America; civil wars over natural resources in several African countries; brutal Communist repression in China; and North Korea's nuclear weapons tests were just a few symptoms of the pervasive lack of peace and freedom in our twenty-first century world.

Nor was global prosperity so easy to achieve as it seemed, although the spectacular advance of digital technology has led to nearly everyone on earth owning at least one cell phone and the rise of social media has interconnected us as never before. As John Paul II and other twentieth-century Popes predicted in their social encyclicals, transnational capitalism and free trade driven mainly by greed and untethered from moral and ethical considerations have led to the exploitation of cheap labor, economic instability, enormous gaps between rich and poor within the same nation, social unrest, emigration, and environmental degradation. Famine, poverty, and starvation are still common in many countries, and tens of millions of people have left the Third World in search of gainful employment here and in Europe. Benedict XVI's masterful 2009 encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth) features a penetrating analysis of these problems and beautifully explains why truth and love are essential to a healthy global economy.

Meanwhile, most European countries have largely succumbed to the forces of radical secularism and hedonism, with weekly church attendance in the single digits and their native populations in dramatic decline due to widespread abortion, euthanasia, and the unpopularity of marriage and traditional family life.

Notable changes from historic climate patterns were observed around the world from 2000 to 2019, but the main source of climate change was obscured by thick clouds of "global warming" propaganda and dire warnings of an impending man-made climate emergency. By virtue of its massive size and tremendous energy output, the sun is the dominant influence on earth's weather, beside which all other influences combined, including human CO2 output, are minor. Astronomers have noticed a general decline in solar activity, including a reduced number of sunspots, during this period. And NASA climate satellites have recorded a 3/10 of a degree drop in Earth's average global temperature from 1998 to 2017. Observed changes in solar activity have been the primary cause of climatic changes during the past twenty years.

The truth about the dramatic First World honeybee die-off of the past two decades has been similarly concealed. The blame for Colony Collapse Disorder is usually pinned on a certain class of pesticides, even though their use has declined greatly with the spread of organic farming practices across North America and Europe during this period. The fact is that the proliferation of cell phones and other wireless technology has disrupted normal hive activity, killing honeybees in droves. This is painfully obvious from the fact that honeybees have remained abundant in the ever fewer and shrinking parts of our country and the world where cell phone service is still absent.

To summarize, the overall picture we see here is a mixed bag, with the Church on the whole doing well and our country and our world faring rather poorly. Yet perhaps the most significant negative aspect of the past twenty years is that many of us have been so caught up in the daily newsfeed that we've lost a sense of perspective on the bigger picture, where we've come from and where we're heading, and we're ignoring or forgetting the valuable lessons history has to teach us about our current problems. The Bible says that without a vision, the people perish. In this regard, I heartily recommend Fr. George Rutler's book Calm in Chaos: Catholic Wisdom for Anxious Times.

All of the above mentioned problems in the Church, our country, and the world at large can be traced back to human failure to observe the two great commandments of love of God and love of neighbor. As Pope Benedict said, when we exalt ourselves above God, when we exclude Him as irrelevant, we succumb to the dictatorship of radical secularism. And as Pope Francis said, when we exalt ourselves above our neighbor, we fall prey to the cancer of indifference.

Pundits and interested parties too often exaggerate the gravity of today's problems, forgetting or ignoring the fact that our loving God, who created us, redeems us, sanctifies us, and sustains us in existence at every moment, knows all of our problems and their root causes intimately and is ready to help us resolve them if we humbly turn to Him and request His assistance. When asked what's wrong with the world, G.K. Chesterton famously quipped, "I am!" And Saint Pio of Pietrelcina declared that the solution to all the world's problems is personal holiness. The future of the Church, our country, and our world will be brighter if many of us answer the call to daily conversion, thus radiating the light of faith, hope, and love into the darkness of doubt, despair, and hatred.


Copyright © 2020 Justin D. Soutar.

In Praise of Democrats

No doubt many readers will be put off by the unexpected title of this essay, so I'll hasten to add a crucial disclaimer: This article will not extol the godless, radically secularist ideology of the current Democratic Party leadership or its abominable methods of putting it into practice. Nor will it condemn the traditional Judeo-Christian values, strict constitutional government, and fiscal responsibility espoused by the current Republican Party leadership. Rather, my intention here is along the lines of Jesus' famous remark to his disciples that the children of this age are wiser in their generation than the children of light. My goal is to demonstrate that there is something truly praiseworthy in our worst political enemies, the Democrats, and that there is something truly blameworthy in our best political friends, the Republicans.

Looking back over the past ten years of contemporary American history, which includes eight years of President Obama and two years of President Trump, it becomes painfully obvious that the Democrats have been steadily gaining the upper hand in national and state politics. This increasing concentration of power in Democratic hands has been taking place despite the remarkable growth and ascendancy of the Tea Party movement which swept historic Republican majorities into the Senate, the House of Representatives, and state legislatures and state governorships across the nation in 2010 and 2014 and propelled Donald Trump into the White House in 2016. Ironically, Democrats are even more powerful and dangerous now in 2019, with majority control of the House alone, than they were in 2009 when they controlled the White House, the House and the Senate with a filibuster-proof supermajority in the latter chamber. How so?

In today's money-driven, politically polarized, social media-saturated culture, a political movement easily claims victory over its opposition based on the sums of money it raises and spends on advertising, the amount of media publicity it gets, and the number of seats and chambers it wins and holds in Washington and state capitals. Although these factors are to some extent important and necessary for any political movement to achieve national prominence, their sum does not automatically equal enduring influence. The true yardstick for measuring the long-term success of any U.S. political movement is its ability to accomplish its stated objectives. And the absolutely critical factor here is the movement's determination (or lack thereof) to implement its agenda.

During the past ten years, the Democrats have made it very clear that their agenda is to fundamentally transform America from a Judeo-Christian, Constitutional, pro-life, pro-family, small-government, low-tax, balanced-budget, market-economy-based, secure-borders nation into a godless, lawless, pro-abortion, anti-family, big-government, high-tax, high-debt, socialist, open-borders nation. Their toolkit to accomplish this has included lies, propaganda, secrecy, name-calling, character assassination, threats, and blackmail. Frankly, they've made substantial progress toward their revolutionary goal with the continued expulsion of God from our national life and public places, a litany of unconstitutional laws and executive orders from ObamaCare to DACA, maintaining taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood, Supreme Court decisions upholding ObamaCare and striking down state marriage laws, swelling of the federal bureaucracy, high taxes, a national debt increase of $12 trillion, stifled economic growth, and a massive population of illegal immigrants.

The fact that most of this was accomplished with Republicans controlling one or both houses of Congress is a shining reflection on the bulldog tenacity of Democrats to see their agenda through, come what may. It's also a glaring reflection on the disappointing lack of determination by Republicans to implement their own agenda for the country. Supposedly, the Republicans want to keep America a Judeo-Christian, Constitutional, pro-life, pro-family, small-government, low-tax, fiscally responsible, market-economy-based, secure-borders nation. And it's true that in the past two years, President Trump and Congressional Republicans have taken some important steps to implement their agenda, reversing some of the damage wreaked by Democrats under President Obama. However, the Republicans have not been anywhere near as aggressive in implementing their good agenda as the Democrats have been in implementing their evil one. Worse, Democrats consistently make agenda-driven campaign promises and deliver on them, while Republicans tend to make agenda-driven campaign promises and renege on them.

Case in point: the ObamaCare monstrosity. Democrats promised it during the 2008 election campaign, and after winning that election, despite opposition from Republicans and two-thirds of the American people, they delivered, ramming the controversial bill through Congress and into law in 2010. Republicans promised to either repeal or de-fund it during the 2014 election season, but after winning that election, despite massive support for fulfilling their campaign promise, in 2015 Republicans led by House Speaker John Boehner caved in to President Obama's demand for money for his pet law. Again in 2016, Donald Trump and the Republicans solemnly pledged to repeal the Affordable Care Act [sic] and replace it with entirely new healthcare legislation in line with their own agenda. But while a Democratic-controlled White House, Senate and House in 2009 and 2010 proved entirely capable of enacting ObamaCare, a Republican-controlled White House, Senate and House in 2017 and 2018 proved entirely incapable of repealing it.

The fact that ObamaCare is still on the books today certainly demonstrates the staying power of the corrupt Washington establishment behind it (with which the Democrats are fully in bed), but more to the point here, it exemplifies the ominous trend of the past ten years in which Republicans are quickly throwing their campaign promises out the window, quietly setting their agenda aside, and gradually ceding more power to their Democratic enemies. The donkey's iron determination combined with the elephant's hushed timidity effectively renders the Democratic Party the majority party in America today. If this trend continues, within twenty years the Republican Party will find itself an irrelevant minority party, leaving the Democrats firmly in charge of national affairs.

Why have Republican politicians abandoned their core principles, betrayed their loyal constituents, and compromised their cherished values in this fashion? Apparently, for fear of the Democrats who are threatening them and have added the incitement of mob violence to their toolkit in their increasing desperation to further advance their radically secularist agenda. And apparently, Republicans are so scared of the above-mentioned establishment that they've been transformed into creatures of that very establishment, while still claiming to represent "we the people." They are now followers disguised as leaders. The Republicans' hypocrisy is sickening and their cowardice is frightening. I have to hand it to the Democrats: they know exactly what they want to achieve and how to achieve it, and come heck or high water, they're accomplishing it. Meanwhile, much of the wholesome agenda our country sorely needs languishes in the comfortable offices of House and Senate Republicans.

Yes, the Democratic bullies have lots of money and power thanks to the corrupt establishment and the "mainstream" media. But that's a poor excuse for Republicans to roll over and play dead. The Republican principles that made America great are worth defending as strenuously as possible, and since the Republican agenda based on those principles holds the key to America's long-term survival, it must be pushed with even more determination than the Democrats are pushing their rotten agenda if it is to succeed long-term. This means the Republicans must be "wise as serpents and simple as doves," taking full advantage of their own strengths and fully exploiting the Democrats' weaknesses. The Democrats may seem stronger at the moment in worldly terms, but Republicans have the far greater strengths of faith and trust in God, the revealed truths of natural law regarding human life and liberty, the wisdom and example of the Founders, prayer and fasting, and divine grace. If Republicans utilize their own strengths with sufficient determination and resolve for a sufficient period of time, America will be rescued from the tyranny of radical secularism. If not...


Copyright © 2019 Justin D. Soutar. All rights reserved.

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.

Defending our Freedom

As we Americans prepare to celebrate Independence Day less than two weeks from now, we American Catholics are observing the fifth annual Fortnight for Freedom declared by our bishops, a two-week period of prayer, fasting, education, and activism in support of religious liberty that always begins on June 21 and ends on the Fourth of July. Recognizing the increasing frequency and intensity of the attacks on freedom of religion by militant secularists, especially in our government and the courts but also in the media and our educational and cultural institutions, in the spring of 2012 our bishops published an important pastoral letter entitled "Our First, Most Cherished Liberty." In this document, our shepherds recalled America's rich tradition of religious freedom spanning four centuries; listed more than a dozen examples of recent attacks on that freedom; called the faithful to be vigilant in defending their hard-won religious liberties against the ever-mounting assault of radical secularism; and finally announced the first annual Fortnight for Freedom, which was promoted by EWTN and observed by Catholics across the United States.

Of course, the main event that led our bishops to establish this annual observance was the controversial HHS mandate bombshell dropped by the Obama administration in January of 2012, which demanded that health insurance plans across the country include artificial contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients regardless of religious or moral objections to the distribution of such items. Although this mandate--the crucial centerpiece of the massively unpopular Affordable Care Act, generally known as ObamaCare--is still on the books four and a half years later, having been unfortunately upheld by the Supreme Court along with the rest of the ObamaCare travesty as somehow "constitutional" in June of 2012, dozens of lower court rulings against it have provided temporary injunctive relief to scores of Catholic and other Christian religious groups, healthcare providers, charitable organizations, universities, media entities, and other institutions that have rightly refused to comply with this unjust law despite the threat of crushing tax penalties. Furthermore, last year the Supreme Court ruled that most businesses that object to compliance with the mandate on religious grounds should be permanently exempt from it. So while some progress has been made against this particularly egregious and unconstitutional attack on our religious liberties, more remains to be done: it must be completely overturned.

Like the other freedoms we enjoy as Americans such as freedom of speech and of the press, freedom to peaceably assemble, and freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances, freedom of religion is a gift from our Creator that is guaranteed by our Constitution and must accordingly be protected by our government. No one should be forced into providing anti-life products and services that he or she considers immoral, against the dictates of his or her religion and conscience.

However, as Yuval Levin pointed out in an article in First Things magazine several months ago, we should beware of too narrowly individualistic, negative, and subjective an approach to religious liberty. Freedom of religion must not be confined to simply obtaining and retaining exemptions for certain individual persons and organizations that refuse to obey the law because they consider it wrong. Rather than being limited to a condescending exception for certain seemingly fanatical individuals within our society, religious liberty should be the rule for our society as a whole, as it was once upon a time. The idea here, which originated with our nation's founders, is that American society will flourish when all of its members are allowed to freely exercise their religious beliefs together as a community. In addition, it is fundamentally misguided to oppose the HHS mandate simply because we Catholics consider it an unjust law that attacks our religious liberties and moral conscience rights or simply because we Catholics regard contraceptives and abortifacients as immoral drugs. Such arguments are too narrowly focused and too subjective to be really convincing in the long run, and our radically secularist opponents have already seized on those weaknesses to bolster their own position. We must go deeper, building our defense on the bedrock of natural law and objective truth. Ultimately, we seek to rid America of the HHS mandate, not simply because we Catholics consider it an unjust law, but because it is an unjust law--not only for Catholics, but for pro-life Americans of all faiths and even for pro-life atheists. It isn't just an attack on our religious liberties and moral conscience rights; it's an attack on the natural law established by our Creator and upon our sacred right as human beings to act in accordance with that law.

Anchored firmly in the natural law, the concept of ordered liberty was a key founding principle of our nation that unfortunately is largely forgotten today. In a remarkably Catholic view of this concept, the Founders regarded freedom not as the totally unrestricted ability of human beings to do whatever the heck they may want to do, but rather as the ability to do what they ought to do, what they should do. While the freedom our Creator has given us is indeed very broad, it does have certain limits that He has laid down for our own good, and those limits are defined by the natural law, which is accessible to human reason. As long as we obey the natural law and thus act in accord with right reason, we remain truly free as individuals and as a nation. Morally speaking, to violate the natural law is an abuse of freedom, which was once commonly referred to as license or permissiveness.

A big part of the problem with America today is that we have largely abandoned this rational concept of ordered liberty rooted in the Creator's natural law in favor of a nebulous, ill-defined sort of "freedom" that is ultimately a product of moral relativism. In the past, our nation had laws prohibiting obscenity, indecency, and pornography in printed material and radio broadcasts; these entirely reasonable laws, which reflected the natural law, benefited our society by discouraging certain forms of immorality, which naturally helped to protect our freedom. No one at the time ever claimed that these laws violated anyone's right to freedom of speech. But if someone today advocates for bringing back such laws, he or she is derided as a crackpot fundamentalist who opposes freedom of speech. That's a shame. We must revive this forgotten concept of ordered liberty based on "the laws of nature and nature's God" in order to re-learn the true meaning of freedom, so that we can preserve this treasure and hand it on to future generations.

This is the first full Fortnight for Freedom since the Supreme Court's infamous ruling last June that overturned dozens of state marriage laws by elevating immoral homosexual relationships to the legal status of marriage throughout the country. As with the Obama administration's HHS mandate, this terribly misguided and wrong decision is not just a major attack on our religious liberties, but constitutes an assault on the Creator's natural law, in which the union of a man and a woman is the primary social institution for the good of the couple, their children, and the whole society. As we fight to defend our religious freedom on this particular front, our well-reasoned arguments must be grounded in the objective truth of the natural law and borne out by the personal witness of our own lives in order to resonate with the widest possible audience and effectively influence public opinion.

Returning to what was said above about the communal aspect of religious freedom, it should be underscored that only a truly religious people will value, fight for, protect, and defend their religious liberty. America's founders and colonists who fought for our independence from Britain and established our nation were deeply religious people of devout Christian faith, and we considered ourselves a Christian country until very recently. As the pseudo-religion of radical secularism increasingly dominates American society and strives to supplant the Judeo-Christian philosophy that made us a great nation, the question naturally arises as to whether we will remain a religious people tenaciously committed to defending our first freedom in an increasingly hostile cultural climate, or whether we will eventually surrender to the forces of militant secularism and allow this cherished freedom to be stolen from us by a handful of godless elitist pirates who have commandeered our Ship of State. It is to be hoped that we the people will retain the courage to stand up and retake control of our nation from the high priests of radical secularism; to recover and proudly reassert our nation's traditional Christian identity; and to consistently and vigorously defend the religious liberties and moral conscience rights of all Americans of good will, so that we can pass this great land on to our children and grandchildren as "one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all".

Mary Immaculate, Patroness of the United States, pray for us!

Why Is EWTN Boycotting Ben Carson?

by Justin Soutar

(NOTE: This article was originally published by Catholic Online Dec. 28, 2015 at http://www.catholic.org/news/politics/story.php?id=66141 )

Like tens of millions of Catholics and others throughout the United States and hundreds of millions of people around the world, I am immensely grateful to God for the priceless gift of the Eternal Word Television Network. From the day of its founding by a Poor Clare nun named Mother Mary Angelica in a Birmingham, Alabama garage some thirty-five years ago, this great tool of catechesis, inspiration, and evangelization has been faithfully proclaiming the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as taught by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church both “in season and out of season,” strengthening and assisting those of us who are “inside the fold” while attractively presenting the beauty of our faith to those outside the Church, leading to many conversions to Catholicism. As someone who has been watching EWTN since 1993, I have been delighted to observe the steady growth of this Catholic cable and satellite network in national and global reach, professionalism, and the quality and variety of programming offered. Since its initial foray into shortwave and AM/FM radio back in the nineties, the advent of twenty-first century media technology has further extended the network’s reach to the Internet, satellite radio, mobile devices, and social media. Along the way, EWTN has acquired a new studio along with its own publishing house which offers our nation’s leading Catholic newspaper, the National Catholic Register, in both print and digital format together with an array of high-quality Catholic books. All of these providential developments have transformed the network from a small amateur TV station of humble origin into the world’s foremost Catholic media apostolate, which is now reaching well over one billion people across the globe.

Thanks to the ongoing prayers and sacrifices of Mother Angelica and her Poor Clare nuns as well as to the spiritual and financial support of its ever broader base of viewers, EWTN has continued to remain remarkably faithful to its mission, in general doing a fantastic job of nourishing and spreading the Catholic faith. Because of that, I have rarely felt the need to question or criticize a policy decision of the network’s leadership during my twenty-two years of watching EWTN. At the present moment, however, I do feel that it is important to raise a question and offer a little dose of healthy criticism regarding one aspect of the network’s programming and publishing that has been bothering me for some time. We are commanded to speak the truth in love, so that is what I will attempt to do here.

My current bone to pick with EWTN has to do with the network’s news programming and publishing—and specifically with its overall coverage of the 2016 presidential election campaign—in light of its mission to faithfully proclaim the truth of the Gospel. I have no objection whatsoever to the network offering extensive and in-depth coverage of this election campaign from a faithful Catholic perspective, as it has been doing over the past year on TV and radio programs such as The World Over Live, EWTN News Nightly and Candidate Conversations, as well as through the National Catholic Register. My problem lies with the fact that this coverage has been noticeably slanted—that is to say, unfairly biased—in favor of certain Republican candidates and against others, under the influence of the godless, radically secularist, worldly, dishonest, immoral, corrupt, and money-driven mainstream media establishment whose values are diametrically opposed to those of the network itself.

As a civil nonprofit corporation run chiefly by lay Catholics, EWTN has long prided itself, and rightly so, on its independence from official Church institutions as well as from corporate entities of both a religious and secular nature, which has allowed it to strike its own path and pursue its mission without unwelcome interference. Unfortunately, when it comes to covering American politics and world news, in recent years the network has gradually but perceptibly drifted from its core mission to be an independent voice of truth, and it is now almost slavishly following the lead of the worldly mainstream media both in the stories it is choosing to break and discuss and in the presidential candidates on whom it is focusing. Whereas EWTN News was once accustomed to offering a fresh and balanced perspective on well-known current events and highlighting important stories neglected by the mainstream media, the network’s journalism division is now largely caught up in the Beltway news cycle, airing and discussing much the same headlines and focusing on the same presidential candidates as Fox News, CNN, the New York Times, Politico, and all the other D.C. establishment media outlets. This is quite a sea change from ten years ago, when Raymond Arroyo and other Catholic journalists at the network were known for their refreshingly independent and investigative approach, often digging up interesting stories off the beaten path, occasionally presenting a different angle on well-known stories, and not infrequently interviewing news makers who were being unfairly attacked by the mainstream media--or who might otherwise never appear on television, radio or in print.

A paradigm shift has clearly occurred within the journalism department at EWTN. Prior to this shift, the network was focused on the objective truth of what is happening in the world today, and its priorities were to seek out and discover that truth and share it with viewers as an independent source of faithful Catholic news and commentary. Now the focus is on what is happening in the world as seen through the dirty and short-sighted lenses of the worldly and highly subjective mainstream media, and the priority seems to be to highlight and discuss whatever the mainstream media is highlighting and discussing at the moment. While EWTN News was once prized for original Catholic news and analysis you couldn’t get anywhere else, now its programming is often almost a lock-step imitation of secular mainstream media news broadcasts—secular news with Catholic overtones, if you will. Although faithful Catholic perspectives are still routinely offered on current events, the global Catholic network’s overall news agenda is now largely dictated by the mainstream media. It’s like an orchestra whose members have remained the same, but they now have a different conductor and are playing different music.

This shift seems to have begun back in 2008 when the TV studio for the network’s flagship news magazine, The World Over Live, was permanently relocated from Birmingham to Washington, D.C. Whereas prior to this big move, the weekly news program was produced in a small, devoutly Catholic media enclave on the outskirts of a large city in central Alabama, now it comes to us from Capitol Hill, where the idols of money and power generally hold sway and where the alluring yet toxic influence of the mainstream media is difficult to resist. Over time, this significant change of environment has led, regrettably yet predictably, to a noticeable change in both the content and tone of the EWTN News programming. Without constant vigilance and the help of God’s wisdom and grace, how could any good Catholic journalist who lives and breathes this radically secular environment not find himself being gradually influenced by it as time passes? It will increasingly reshape his ways of thinking and acting, until eventually he is hardly distinguishable from his worldly peers.

Yes, it must be acknowledged that a certain degree of worldliness has crept into the journalism department at EWTN. This is clearly evident from just a cursory glance at its coverage of the 2016 presidential election cycle thus far, which—with the notable exception of Raymond Arroyo’s brief interview with Senator Rand Paul, a true statesman of character and principle—has generally mimicked the mainstream media coverage. This coverage has been unfairly skewed in favor of wealthy Republican candidates such as billionaire real estate magnate Donald Trump, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, with insufficient attention given to the moral character, voting records, and issue positions of these candidates—the things that really matter to faithful Catholics looking to cast their vote responsibly in next year’s elections. Trump, a longtime Democrat and a good friend of Hillary Clinton, has donated money to Planned Parenthood, supports ObamaCare, and earned much of his fortune by forcing other companies into bankruptcy. That EWTN’s news director would unhesitatingly embrace him as a good candidate and give him so much positive attention on a faithful Catholic TV network this past summer was an example of irresponsible journalism that betrayed a serious lack of wisdom and discernment.

Meanwhile, just about every other leading and longshot Republican presidential candidate has been interviewed or discussed at some length on one or more EWTN news programs during this past year, indicating that some degree of fairness and balance does still prevail within that realm. However, there is one leading Republican candidate who, for no good reason, has been glaringly conspicuous by his near-total absence from the network’s news programming and publishing. Perhaps there is no better way to highlight the problem under discussion here than to pose the following simple question: Why is EWTN boycotting Ben Carson?

Now, it’s true that the term “boycott” usually refers to a consciously activist, deliberate and explicit decision to exclude a certain person, product, or service from one’s support or patronage because he, she or it in some way violates the principles held by the one engaged in the boycott. I am not aware of any conscious or explicit decision on the part of EWTN executives to ban Dr. Carson from the network airwaves or press; nor am I aware of anything in Carson’s character, achievements, or issue positions that would warrant such a boycott by a faithful Catholic media powerhouse. Yet the fact remains—having grown painfully obvious over the past few months—that, aside from occasionally mentioning him briefly in passing on a few programs and in one or two news articles, EWTN News has been avoiding Carson like the plague, neglecting to interview or discuss him and in general refusing to have anything to do with him. There seems to be an implicit, unspoken decision by the network’s journalism staff to simply ignore Ben Carson. And the answer to the simple question posed by this article is unfortunately also quite simple: EWTN is boycotting Dr. Carson because the corrupt and worldly mainstream media—from which the network’s journalism department now takes its cues—is deathly afraid of this particular presidential candidate and hates him with a passionate vengeance.

This, of course, leads to another question: Why does the Washington, D.C. media establishment so deeply fear and loathe Ben Carson? And the answer to this is that the Beltway media elite correctly perceives that Dr. Carson’s candidacy poses a major threat to everything it stands for. And what exactly does this radically secularist mainstream media empire stand for? Moral relativism, religious syncretism, unbridled materialism and hedonism, abortion on demand, continued funding for Planned Parenthood, the retention of ObamaCare and the unjust HHS mandate, unlimited government growth, higher taxes, endless national debt accumulation, the destruction of the nuclear family through sexual immorality and deviant lifestyles, the radical homosexual agenda, the continued stranglehold of powerful special interest groups on our national politics and economy, the recension of our Constitutionally guaranteed rights and liberties, and the thorough de-Christianization of our country.

By contrast, Ben Carson is a devout Christian who stands for moral absolutes, hard work and sacrifice, the right to life of the innocent unborn and an end to legalized abortion, the repeal of ObamaCare and the HHS mandate, smaller government, lower taxes, a balanced budget, traditional marriage and family values, personal responsibility, and a return to strict Constitutional government. However, Dr. Carson’s values alone cannot adequately explain the malicious ferocity of the mainstream media’s coordinated vitriolic assault on him or why he is perceived as being such a formidable threat to the establishment. Other Republican and Tea Party presidential candidates claim to stand for these things as well, yet they are not being half so viciously attacked by the mainstream media. Why is Ben Carson being treated differently?

The answer is that he is different from the other Republican presidential candidates in key respects—and these differences may collectively afford him a decisive advantage over his rivals when it comes to winning both the Republican nomination and the presidency. Among the unique characteristics that set Dr. Carson apart from the rest of the field:

1. He is a citizen statesman running for president by popular demand for the good of our country, not a career politician seeking high office for his own benefit.

2. He is a devout Christian man who reads the Bible daily and puts his faith into practice, not a Christian in name only.

3. He is a trustworthy and courageous man of impeccable character and principle who always strives to do what is right, or what he thinks is right, in any given situation regardless of public opinion or other external pressures.

4. He is a clear and independent common-sense thinker whose issue positions are not predetermined by partisan rhetoric.

5. He is a great communicator, blessed with a unique ability to discuss and explain complex issues and topics in simple terms that anyone can understand.

6. He has a clear vision for America’s future based on a return to sound Constitutional government and the wisdom of our nation’s Founders.

7. He is a splendid example of the American dream and a role model for American youth, having risen from childhood poverty to become one of the world’s greatest neurosurgeons.

8. As a philanthropist, he has made a significant contribution to improving America’s education system through the Carson Scholars Fund.

9. He is the most highly decorated American civilian among all the presidential candidates and the only one to have received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

10. He has built up, and continues to steadily build up, a massive following among the American people, having already sold far more books, recruited far more campaign volunteers, and received far more individual donations than Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, or any other presidential candidate.

Those running the mainstream media establishment are all too happy to promote politically correct presidential candidates like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump who are in line with their own radically secularist philosophy and values. But the mere thought of a principled citizen statesman like Dr. Carson even approaching the White House is enough to send them into panic. The fact of the matter is that, despite his lack of political correctness, Ben Carson stands a significant chance of being nominated and elected President of the United States. The media elite is clearly aware of this, which explains their vicious and despicable attempt to destroy Carson’s candidacy. They desperately wish that he would just go away.

But the biggest reason of all for the mainstream media’s fear and hatred of Ben Carson is this: polls consistently indicate that he is the only Republican presidential candidate who can decisively defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election. Another unique characteristic of Dr. Carson as a presidential candidate is that, as an African-American who is deeply respected among his own people, he is the only Republican candidate who can realistically win a significant percentage of the black vote. If he were to win only 17 percent of the black vote in the general election, he would defeat Hillary Clinton and win the presidency. Furthermore, despite the mainstream media’s all-out effort to destroy his candidacy, polls reveal that Ben Carson has now gained the support of about 20 percent of African-American voters—and that percentage is likely to grow in the near future. In other words, Dr. Carson is the only Republican presidential candidate who can put an end to Hillary Clinton’s hope of finally becoming president herself. And therefore, Ben Carson is the only Republican who can realistically win the White House in 2016.

As the Second Vatican Council reminded the Church, those who are in charge of the communications media bear a serious responsibility to transmit the truth and to help shape public opinion in accordance with what is objectively true and good and right. When it comes to the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, the truth is that Ben Carson is the only viable alternative to Hillary Clinton as America’s next president. Therefore, EWTN should be taking advantage of its unique position as an independent and massively influential bully pulpit to help promote Dr. Carson’s candidacy among its U.S. viewers, listeners and readers and to galvanize millions of faithful American Catholics in support of his presidential campaign. I am not asking the network or its journalists to explicitly endorse Ben Carson for president (although that might not be such a bad idea); I only ask that they candidly recognize his providentially unique qualifications to lead our nation in light of the basic realities of the current presidential landscape and give him the fair share of attention he deserves.

EWTN’s beautiful and appropriate motto is “Sharing the Splendor of Truth,” and the network continues to do just that in admirable fashion as far as Catholic doctrine, liturgy, the sacraments, morality, prayer and spirituality are concerned. But when it comes to the Catholic media apostolate’s news coverage of the critically important 2016 presidential election season, the truth is not served by sweeping the best and most promising candidate in the race under the rug. It seems clearly apparent that Ben Carson has received so little attention on EWTN thus far because he has been so perniciously attacked, maligned, and belittled by the morally toxic Washington mainstream media establishment. That’s a shame. A faithful Catholic television network should not be permitting the lies and deceptions of worldly mainstream media outlets to influence the decisions of its own journalism department. On the contrary, EWTN should do whatever is necessary to reclaim and preserve its original identity as an independent voice of truth and reason, clarity and common sense in a world ever more filled with lies, irrationality, ambiguity and craziness. Instead of allowing itself to be dragged along by the Beltway media machine, EWTN News should be setting its own agenda based on its own values and striving to influence political discussions and events in a wholly different direction.

The unjustified and irrational EWTN media blackout of Ben Carson must end. The network can, and should, utilize its tremendous influence to support and further advance the presidential candidacy of Dr. Carson with the true good of our country in mind. As Catholics vote, so goes our nation. If we can get a majority of American Catholic voters firmly committed to Ben Carson, we can elect a new president who shares our Christian faith and moral values and prevent another radically secularist, scandal-ridden career politician from succeeding Barack Obama. That is a goal worth achieving, but it may be very difficult to achieve it without the vital support and assistance of the Eternal Word Television Network.


Copyright © 2015 Justin D. Soutar. All rights reserved.