In Defense of the Two-State Solution

by Justin Soutar

As a freelance writer who has been following the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a Catholic perspective for twenty years, it’s heartbreaking to watch what is now happening in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian Territories, especially Gaza, as the dangerous radical Zionist ideology unleashes its destructive power against hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and the historic Christian community in the Holy Land continues to dwindle toward extinction. No less disturbing is the hard-heartedness of well-intentioned American conservative politicians, TV and radio commentators, magazine editors, and citizens who, blinded by their wholehearted support for Israel, cannot see the naked evil of radical Zionism or the havoc it is wreaking in the Holy Land and the surrounding Middle East.

Radical Zionism is the fundamental root cause of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Without the existence and activity of this century-old ideology and movement, no such conflict would have arisen and persisted so stubbornly. The radical Zionists’ trademark crime of seizing Palestinian property outside Israel’s internationally recognized borders, evicting or killing its owners and tenants, and handing it over to illegal European Jewish settlers has instigated and fueled the conflict while provoking occasional wars between Israel and surrounding Arab nations as well as radical “Islamic” terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians by a handful of Palestinians. In this vicious circle of injustice perpetuated by Israeli and Palestinian extremists, radical Zionists bear greater responsibility, as they initiated the cycle of violence and consistently kill and displace far more innocent people than the radical “Muslims” do.

The radical Zionist ideology and movement were founded by a handful of non-religious European Jewish intellectuals who settled illegally in British-occupied Palestine in the early 1900s, often forcing native Palestinians off their ancestral lands in the process. An offshoot of the mainstream (that is, peaceful and legitimate) Zionist movement, which led to the creation of the modern nation of Israel in 1948 and has generally dominated its politics since then, radical Zionism has much in common with the better-known twentieth-century ideologies of Nazism and Communism: it is fundamentally atheistic, secularist, utopian, racist, violent, and genocidal. Its ambitious goal is to expand Israel’s territory until it includes all of the land that was part of the ancient biblical Kingdom of Israel, which stretched from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in present-day Iraq, and to create therein an earthly paradise reserved exclusively for European Jews. The radical Zionist ideologues have used, are now using, and will continue to use any and all means necessary to achieve this goal of restoring the “Eretz Yisrael” (“Greater Israel”), including anti-Palestinian propaganda and economic warfare; the Israeli electoral process; mass forced displacement of Palestinian Muslims, Christians, and Jews; illegal immigration and settlement of Palestinian land; bribery; intimidation; terrorism; arbitrary arrest and detention; military invasion, occupation, and annexation; and mass murder.

In their blissful ignorance of radical Zionism, American conservative commentators cite radical “Islam” as the greatest threat to peace in the Middle East. From the perspective of the radical Zionists, this common misconception conveniently deflects public attention from the elephant in the room. Radical Zionism is the more dangerous of the two ideologies because its followers are more widespread, more professional, better organized and trained, better funded, more secretive, more determined, and more violent. Its adherents in Israel, the U.S. and Europe range from headline-grabbing settler-terrorists to behind-the-scenes intelligence operatives to politicians in business suits. Their visibility, activities, and locations may differ, but they are united in a single purpose: to make the dream of the Greater Israel a reality. The radical Zionist movement of the twenty-first century wields an international terrorist organization of greater reach, destruction, and effectiveness than any radical “Muslim” terrorist network, and it is operating virtually unchecked.

The success and influence of the radical Zionist settler movement has waxed and waned through the years depending on various political, diplomatic, social, cultural, and economic factors. Concomitantly, the methods used to illegally acquire Palestinian land parcels and the number of illegal settlements have fluctuated significantly over time. For much of its existence, the movement was limited to small and scattered groups of European Jewish illegal immigrants living permanently in Palestinian territory with the knowledge, if not always the approval or permission, of the Zionist council or the Israeli government. Israeli leaders unsympathetic to radical Zionism have attempted to halt illegal settlement construction altogether, which allowed the peace process to move forward. On the other hand, during those occasional periods when the radical Zionists managed to gain control of the Israeli government and military, illegal settlement construction boomed, provoking further violent conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

We are in such an unfortunate period now. Following the murder of more than 1,000 Israeli civilians by terrorists from the violent wing of Hamas in October 2023, radical Zionists cunningly played on Israeli citizens’ fears of additional attacks to seize full control of the Israeli government and armed forces. The recent pattern of official Israeli statements and actions clearly indicates the current government’s aggressive and unconditional support for the radical Zionist movement and betrays its genocidal intentions. The current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is a lifelong radical Zionist who committed terrorist attacks against Palestinian civilians in his youth. His regime is dramatically accelerating the process of establishing the Greater Israel through forced displacement and slaughter of the Palestinian people. The killing of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians and the expulsion of one million more from Gaza is just the tip of the iceberg. Building the Greater Israel will require the unilateral annexation of all Palestinian territory and, eventually, parts of nearby Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt; the obliteration of priceless Jewish, Christian, and Muslim holy sites; the massacre of several million innocent Palestinian and other Arab civilians; and the forced displacement of many millions more Arabs into nearby countries and areas. In other words, genocide, a regional war, cultural destruction, and a massive refugee crisis are in the offing, to say nothing of the environmental and economic devastation the war will inevitably cause. These regional hostilities will expand into a world war if the international community intervenes decisively to stop the radical Zionists from founding the Greater Israel, just as it did eighty-plus years ago to prevent the Nazis from establishing the Third Reich.

In the violent conflict of the last two years (not a “war,” properly speaking, as wars are fought by nation-states, such as Russia and Ukraine) between “Islamic” terrorists from the radical wing of Hamas and the radical Zionist-controlled Israeli military, approximately 3,000 innocent Israelis and 65,000 innocent Palestinians have been killed. It is clear from the outrageously disproportionate nature of the casualties—more than twenty Palestinians for every Israeli—which ideology is bloodier, yet American conservative commentators do not sound the alarm about the dangers of radical Zionism, dismissing factual reports of Palestinian genocide by Israel out of hand, blaming radical “Muslim” terrorists for the Palestinian refugee crisis, and denouncing criticism of Israeli policies as “anti-Semitic”. Whenever an Israeli civilian is killed, these commentators speak and write all about it; but when a Palestinian civilian is killed by violence or starvation, they remain silent or mention it in passing, seeming not to notice or care. Are Israelis and Palestinians not both children of God? Has the Creator not equally endowed them with inalienable rights?

During the twentieth century, Turkey slaughtered its Armenians, Germany killed its Jews, and Pakistan butchered its East Bengalis, to mention just a few modern examples of ethnic cleansing. Yet in most cases, the genocidal tyrants were defeated, often at the cost of a bloody war, and the victim peoples survived to realize their dream of self-determination. In the case of the East Bengalis, the independent nation of Bangladesh came to birth on India’s east-central border. The good of natural law ultimately triumphed over the evil of ideology. Taking a lesson from history, this author predicts that the Palestinian people will survive the current genocide and return to their homeland to establish the independent nation that is rightfully theirs.

In 1948, after careful and extensive research, the recently founded United Nations Organization, led by the United States, approved the establishment of the modern nation of Israel with specific borders and with the understanding that within ten to twenty years, a modern nation of Palestine would be established alongside it. Unfortunately, due to the persistent and outsized influence of the radical Zionist ideology, modern Israel has always illegitimately claimed and occupied various portions of territory beyond its internationally recognized borderlines, and the birth of the Palestinian nation has been delayed indefinitely. Meanwhile, demographic shifts during the past eight decades have only strengthened the Palestinian position. The number of Palestinians during this time has grown rapidly, leading to a high population density in the Palestinian Territories, while the number of Israelis has increased quite modestly by comparison. So if anything, the borderlines drawn by the UN in 1948 are considerably more generous to Israel than they were almost eighty years ago.

It has been the position of the Holy See for decades, which this author shares, that the long-proposed two-state solution, with two independent nations of Israel and Palestine existing side by side within internationally recognized borders and the historic Old City of Jerusalem in a special international zone, is the only way to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and bring real and lasting peace to the Middle East. There can be no peace without justice, and there will be no justice for the Palestinian people until the radical Zionist ideology and movement are defeated. Let us pray daily for the conversion of the radical Zionists and of those well-intentioned commentators whose ignorance and silence allow the evil of radical Zionism to grow more powerful with each passing day.

Copyright © 2025 Justin D. Soutar.

Radical Zionism Is the Greatest Threat to Peace in the Holy Land

by Justin Soutar

It's hard to believe that I've been writing about this topic for almost twenty years now. As a young and idealistic new freelance writer way back in 2005, I undertook a broad and intense study of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict and related Middle Eastern history and culture in order to arrive at the objective truth of the situation. Two years prior, in 2003, Pope John Paul II's strong opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq had cracked and broken the glass dome of my neat and tidy view of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that had been shaped by President Bush, Republican politicians, and conservative political commentators, alerting me that something was drastically wrong with that view. So I decided to re-examine the subject with an open mind to determine the root causes of this historic conflict and how it could be resolved. I read almost everything I could get my hands on by a wide variety of authors on all sides of the issue, including historians, journalists, diplomats, and conservative and liberal political commentators, interpreting it all from the perspective of Catholic doctrine and the stated positions of recent popes, especially John Paul II and Benedict XVI. As a result, the realities of the conflict and the necessary steps to a peaceful resolution emerged with crystal clarity. It did not matter one bit that my resulting position on the issue was nearly identical with that of liberal Democratic commentators. What mattered was that I had discovered vital truths about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that few people in the U.S. seemed to be aware of, as they were getting lost in partisan political squabbles, and that the dominant conservative Republican view of the conflict was so ideologically biased and riddled with factual errors that it was an obstacle to peace in and of itself. So, in an attempt to remedy this situation, I wrote and published the book America's Back-Door Enemy: Unmasking the Unknown Terrorists (Tate Publishing, 2009), which is now out of print. (If you would like a used copy, please contact me.)

One of the most important things I learned about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has long been and continues to be ignored and dismissed by ideologically blind conservative commentators in the U.S., was the existence and activity of the radical Zionist movement. This small but vicious group of pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian, European Jewish terrorists and settlers has been around since well before the modern state of Israel was established in 1948, and has grown larger, bolder, more powerful, more cunning, more sophisticated, and more violent in recent years. It has infiltrated and influenced the Israeli military, government, courts, economy, and society through the decades and is currently in control of the Israeli government. It has committed murderous terrorist attacks against tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians and has unjustly evicted tens of thousands more, including many Christians, from their ancestral homes in the Holy Land and surrounding Palestinian territories. Radical Zionist operatives from Israel's intelligence agency Mossad orchestrated the dramatic terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, in the United States, which was a "false flag" operation carefully designed to appear carried out by Arab "Islamic" terrorists. The aim of these attacks was to get American policy, and specifically American military involvement, in the Middle East unequivocally on Israel's side. The radical Zionists were successful in getting the U.S. to invade Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power, although there was insufficient moral justification for doing so. Pope John Paul's prediction that the resulting power vacuum would be filled by Islamic fundamentalists came true as ISIS unleashed a devastating reign of terror across Iraq from 2014 until 2021.

The goal of the radical Zionist movement, which is one of the most dangerous international terrorist organizations on the planet, is to restore the biblical Greater Israel (Eretz Yisrael) that will stretch eastward to the Euphrates River in present-day Iraq and include Jordan and part of Syria as well. This demonic movement will not hesitate to use any and all means necessary, up to and including the forced displacement and genocide of the Palestinian people, in order to achieve its utopian dream. 

There is extensive media coverage and conservative commentary in the U.S. of terrorist attacks by the radical fringe of Hamas against innocent Israeli civilians and allegedly justified Israeli military responses to these crimes, but we hear precious little about the radical Zionist terrorism and land theft being committed against innocent Palestinian Jewish, Christian, and Muslim civilians with impunity, and when we do, it is not identified as radical Zionist. While the latter crimes provoke the former and the former crimes are used to justify the latter in a perpetual vicious cycle of violence, the radical Zionist movement is the fundamental root cause of the entire conflict. Its utterly godless members refuse to recognize that the Palestinian people have any rights whatsoever, seeing them merely as an obstacle to be eliminated in order to create their own paradise on earth. And they view the surrounding Arab countries as evil enemies of Israel because they acknowledge and uphold the basic human rights of the Palestinian people, their fellow Arabs.

As all recent popes have stated, there can be no peace without justice. Radical Zionism is the greatest threat to justice and peace in the Holy Land and surrounding Israel and Palestine. Therefore, this evil movement must be defeated by prayer, fasting, and the arrest and prosecution of its members. Both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples have the right to a state within clearly defined borders established by international law. The Israelis have had one for 76 years, but despite their relatively low population, at the urging of radical Zionists, they have been illegally and unjustly attempting to expand their state's territory at the expense of the Palestinians. The Palestinians, despite their much higher population, still don't have a state. The following steps are absolutely necessary for a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: 

1. Both sides must renounce the use of violence in any form as a means to achieve their goals. 

2. Israel must withdraw within and officially accept its borders established by the U.N. in 1948. 

3. The long overdue state of Palestine must be established and officially recognized by Israel.

4. The Old City of Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount which is sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims, must be placed in the international zone established by the U.N. in 1948. 

 

Copyright © 2024 Justin D. Soutar.

Quote of the Day

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

--Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865

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.