The feast of the dedication of ‘Saint John Lateran‘ commemorates the primary church in Christendom, the ‘mother and head’ of all other churches, the Holy Father’s own cathedral, tracing its lineage back to Constantine, who, under the authority of Pope Sylvester I, built the first basilica on the site, owned by the Laterini family, in 324, a decade after the legalization of Christianity with the Edict of Milan in 313. The church is under the patronage of both Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist. A good day to celebrate, but also pray for our current Pontiff, and all that is going on in Rome.
We should always remember that the ‘Church’ transcends space and time and any particular historical epoch, existing in heaven, triumphant, in purgatory, suffering, and – in her own imperfect, transitory way – hear on earth as the Church militant. We must soldier on through the last, in all the strife and tribulation, until we reach the first.
Pope Francis seems to claim that those who are criticize the Amazon Synod are ‘racist’. I would suggest that the Holy Father dust off his good, old Aristotle, and the fallacy of ignoratio elenchi, also known as a ‘red herring’, of drawing one away from the central issue to a peripheral one, that does not address the main point, which is how some of what is being suggested by the Synod Fathers consistent with Tradition and divinely revealed Truth.
And while on strife, the disintegration of the ‘Catholic’ school system continues, with the vote the other night in the Toronto Board, after a rancorous debate lasting until 2 in the morning, to include ‘gender identity’ and ‘gender expression’ in its official Code of Conduct. Apparently, this will now permit:
Boys dressing as girls;
Boys using girls’ change rooms, showers, and washrooms;
Teachers and students being forced to use false and make-believe transgender pronouns;
Gender-confused kids being counselled to receive artificial hormone therapy and mutilating sex-change surgery; etc.
The response of the Archdiocese was only to say that these ‘policies’ should be seen ‘through a Catholic lens’, whatever that may mean. More like rose-coloured glasses, which refuse to see how many souls are being misled and scandalized by such misguided ideology. Perhaps I should start signing off my articles with a Voltairean ecrasez l’infame, the ‘infamous thing’ here being whatever is being passed off as a Catholic education in a system now vitiated beyond any reasonably prospective redemption.
As I wrote in my preface to Leeda Crawford’s piece, beware, all parents, of sending your children into such an infernal, mixed-up, confused mess. Even Dante did envisage such. But the Devil did, and he’s wreaking what havoc he might, in the time he has. As the darkness grows, it falls to our task to teach clearly and forcefully, showing and living the truth ever-more clearly and brightly.