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[Catholic Caucus] Singing a New Synodal Church into Being: What is it going to look like? t’s understandable that we are a great deal caught up with the questions that seem to be immediately to hand: What do I do if I am a priest and I get suspended, laicised or even excommunicated for preaching the Faith against Bergoglianism or VaticanTwoism? What if the pontifical university I teach in suddenly gets “reconfigured” to conform to the New Bergoglian Paradigm by Rome? What do I do if the Traditional Mass my family goes to gets cancelled? What if my children’s school...

[Catholic Caucus] Guest Op-Ed: When bishops knew how to respond to a pope suspected of heresy In his recent letter to the College of Cardinals Cardinal Brandmüller wrote that all cardinals must consider how they will react to ‘any heretical statements or decisions of the [Amazonian] synod.’ In the past, it wouldn’t have been necessary to ask this question because the bishops of the Western Church had a reputation for robustly reacting against heresy.  A case in point is how the bishops reacted to the mere suspicion that Pope Vigilius (537-555 AD) was sympathetic towards the Monophysite heresy that sought...

The true appeal of the new "Joker" movie lies in its invidious validation of the white-male resentment that helped bring President Trump to power, writes Jeff Yang for

Kyle Harper’s From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (Harvard, 2013) is an impressively learned and important book. Still a youngish man (which means younger than me), Harper is already a professor of classics and letters and senior vice president and provost at the University of Oklahoma. As an expert in the history of the late Roman world, Harper explores in this volume how the Christian sexual ethic, so despised and seemingly inconsequential in the first century, came to be codified in law by the sixth century. Harper does not take sides in this...

On a recent Thursday evening in August, a 40-year-old MMA gym owner in Beijing named Xu Xiaodong activated his VPN, hopped over the Chinese government’s internet firewall, and began his first-ever live YouTube broadcast. He wanted to talk about the ongoing protests in Hong Kong, in which hundreds of thousands of citizens have demonstrated against mainland China’s attempts to circumvent Hong Kong’s autonomy and civil liberties. Xu looked into the camera and took a stance on the protests that few, if any, of his countrymen living on the mainland were willing to publicly take: “Hong Kong people are Chinese. I...

PRESIDENT TRUMP VIEWS US AS AMERICANS. THE ANSWER OF COURSE TO THAT QUESTION IS THAT WE HAD ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO LOSE FROM TAKING A CHANCE ON HIM AND NOW, WE ARE WINNING AREA WE WANT TRUMP, WE WANT THE VICTOR NARRATIVE, WE WANT OPPORTUNITIES . WE WANT TO BE VIEWED AS AMERICANS FIRST AND FOREMOST. I RARELY GIVE HIM CREDIT THAT MAYBE FORMER PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA SAID IT BEST IN HIS HARVARD LAW SCHOOL PAPER WHEN HE WROTE, THE AMERICAN DREAM IS TO BE LIKE DONALD TRUMP. [APPLAUSE] WE WANT THE AMERICAN DREAM. THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH FOR BEING...

Many Americans who watch George Stephanopoulos on ABC News in the mornings have no idea what he used to do for a living. Along with another media hack, James Carville, this smug little person was once in charge of the Bill Clinton political “war room” and was widely credited with helping foist Slick Willy BJ” Clinton and his corrupt wife, Hillary, on the country.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mtIwff6E_U

The rollout of Maine’s new law allowing doctors to prescribe life-ending medication has moved faster than in other states with similar laws, though major health care providers in the state won’t allow so-called “death with dignity” until at least January. Maine is now one of nine states to allow people to adopt such a law after it was passed by the Democratic-led Legislature earlier this year and signed into law by Gov. Janet Mills in June. Adults with a terminal illness who are deemed mentally competent can request life-ending medication from a doctor, who can choose to fill the prescription...

A second whistleblower has come forward in the escalating Ukraine scandal that has led to an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, ABC News reported Sunday. The whistleblower, an intelligence official, is represented by the same attorney who's representing the first whistleblower who filed a complaint in August related to Trump's dealings with Ukraine that was released in late September and has sent shockwaves through Washington. The complaint centered on a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump urged Zelensky to investigate former Vice President and his son, Joe Biden. Mark Zaid, the...

"We were going to change the world together, but she took my last cupcake." — Esther the Wonder Pig Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg took a break from her high-profile campaign against climate change this week to hang out with a fellow famous vegan and Earth lover in Ontario. Only instead of handshakes, the meeting between the two influential figures involved a forehead pet and snout rub. On Tuesday afternoon the 16-year-old and her father stopped by the Campbellville, Ont., animal sanctuary of Esther the Wonder Pig, a social media sensation with two books written about her and an upcoming...

SNIP Beginning in August 2017, Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”) began identifying various individuals who reported that they had been extorted after using a dating website (the “Website”). In general, each victim reported communicating on the Website with an individual the victim believed was an adult. Then, after the victim received and shared sexually-explicit photos with the person the victim believed was an adult, the victim was contacted by a person who claimed that the victim had communicated with an underage minor and needed to pay the minor’s family to prevent law enforcement involvement. The victims made payments via money transfers...

A former Trump Organization executive says she thinks President Donald Trump may resign rather than face possible removal from office by impeachment. "He does a lot of things to save face," Barbara Res, a former Trump Organization vice president, told CNN's Brian Stelter on Reliable Sources Sunday. "It would be very, very, very bad for him to be impeached," Res said. "I don't know that he'll be found guilty but I don't know that he wants to be impeached. I think that's what this panic is about. And my gut [instinct] is that he'll leave office, he'll resign. Or make...

Chuck Todd, host of NBC's "Meet the Press," called out Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) for responding to a question with a "Fox News conspiracy" during a heated interview on Sunday. "I have no idea why a Fox News conspiracy propaganda stuff is popping up on here. I have no idea. I have no idea why we're going here," Todd said. He then pushed the senator to "answer the question that I asked you instead of trying to make Donald Trump feel better here that you're not criticizing him." "What made you wince? I’m asking a simple question about you clearly...

There’s no way I can write about the return of Flight Simulator without sharing just a little bit of my own story for context,... ... Like many of its predecessors, the new simulator models the entire planet, including something like 40,000 airports worldwide. I used to brag in presentations about FSX that we started with 2 terabytes of scenery data, and then compressed that to fit onto a couple of DVDs in a box. The world in the new version consists of 2 petabytes of data — yes, that’s one thousand times bigger. The scenery is built on Bing satellite...

As Democrats inch closer to the 2020 primary elections without a clear front-runner, two prominent liberal super PACs are pouring money into Pennsylvania in an effort to pull working-class voters away from Donald Trump. In separate efforts that nonetheless have striking similarities, Priorities USA and American Bridge have pledged millions of dollars to persuading swing voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida and Wisconsin that the incumbent Republican president isn't looking out for their interests. "We want to show what life is like for real Pennsylvanians in Trump's economy," said Jack Doyle, director of outreach for Priorities USA’s Pennsylvania effort. "President Trump...

Hunter Biden’s name appears on a list of directors of a state-backed equity fund in China, the South China Morning Post reported today (link at web site). President Trump called on China to investigate the activities of former VP Biden and his family in the country. Hunter is the son of the elder Biden, a top candidate for the Democratic Party and possible Trump opponent in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Hunter Biden is listed as a director of BHR Equity Investment Fund Management, whose indirect shareholders include the government-controlled Bank of China, the South China Morning Post reported. He...

n this week’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) vowed to have the “whistleblowers” charging wrongdoing of President Donald Trump testify publicly if House Democrats move forward with impeachment. Graham said. “Here’s what’s going to happen: if the whistleblowers’ allegations are turned into an impeachment article it’s imperative that the whistleblower be interviewed in public, under oath, and cross-examined. Nobody in America goes to jail or has anything done to them without confronting their accuser. So here is what I’m going to insist upon, but the whistleblower one or two,...

The accused gunman in the deadly shooting at a San Diego-area synagogue pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and attempted murder. In addition to entering pleas on Thursday in a San Diego court for firing an assault rifle inside the Chabad of Poway synagogue, John Earnest, 20, also pleaded not guilty to arson charges for a fire a month earlier at a nearby mosque, the ABC affiliate in San Diego, 10 News reported. One woman, Lori Gilbert-Kaye, 60, was killed and three people were wounded, including an 8-year-old girl and the synagogue’s rabbi, who lost a finger, in the...

Direct-to-consumer digital health company Hims & Hers—reportedly valued at $1 billion—plans to build its first in-house pharmacy fulfillment center in Columbus, Ohio, next year. The company plans to invest $1.5 million to build a fully licensed mail-order pharmacy, fulfillment center and customer support center. The 300,000- to 400,000-square-foot location will create 500 jobs and will help speed order fulfillment, company executives stated in a blog post. It will also help reduce the chances of service disruption as the company won't solely depend on third-party pharmacies. The company, which combines telehealth and medication delivery, is currently in the process of finding...