The Remnant Speaks
Letters to the Editor: The Remnant Speaks P.O. Box 1117, Forest Lake, MN 55025 ~ Editor@RemnantNewspaper.
Public School Concentration Camps: Morality-Free Zones ( REMNANT TV) Editor, The Remnant: The recent Public School Concentration Camps edition of Remnant TV was outstanding. I hope it gets hundreds of thousands of views if not millions. Let us pray...and promote (FB, etc.).
Craig Waltersheid Editor, The Remnant: I am listening to your presentation about the sad state of affairs in public schools in America I taught in a public school for 7 years from 1974 to 1981 in a middle school in central Pennsylvania. The situation was much better back then being a generally conservative area.
It is time that Catholics and all people of good will start working to pass a law that states simply: "Every taxpayer will support the schools of his or her choice that covers ages 5-18. Each school will have its own governing board that will determine the school’s curricula and policies including the qualifications and the salaries of its faculty and staff.
Each school will determine by which professional body it will be certified if it so desires. No child will be barred from a school due to lack of economic means to pay the full costs of the education of the child."
Certain details need to be worked out, but this is the basic idea. Those who have children in the school will pay what it costs to educate the children plus a certain percentage for a reserve fund. Those who do not have children in the school will pay somewhat less to be determined by the costs of educating the children. This means that if the local town has a school it will not be allowed to force persons to support its school through property and other taxes. The town will have to go to each taxpayer and convince him or her to support the "public" school.
Charter schools, tax incentives, vouchers and the like will not save our schools. We must get government out of education. Law suits by the ACLU and their ilk will be eliminated because each local governing board will make the important decisions. Teacher unions and politicians will be dead set against such legislation because it will immediately release the schools from their control. We must be firm and determined to regain our schools for the sake of the children.
Peace, Fr. Matthew Chadwick, OFM Conv East Sussex, ENGLAND
Evolution: Mr. Cullen’s Reply
Editor, The Remnant: Thanks to you and Mr. Underwood for the compliments in the "Letters to the Editor" section of the 30 April Remnant. Mr. Underwood’s criticism is well-taken and in fact correct: I should not have included that number nor should I have even referred to the cypress as "one of the oldest types of trees", given that said description does indeed go against Church teaching. We both got caught with our pants down on that one! My bad, however.
Mr. Underwood’s further observations are also points well-taken; quite honestly, for me it’s a knotty (no pun intended vis-a-vis trees) problem, the whole "evolution" thing. His reasoning is sound from the standpoint of traditional Church teaching and in a traditional Catholic publication, that teaching should not be open to question, although it wasn’t my intention to question it even by implication: it simply slipped my mind, given that I confess to taking for granted the "small-e" evolution of plant and animal life as described by the anti-Darwinian D’Arcy Thompson, author of the 1917 classic On Growth and Form.
I’m grateful to Mr. Underwood for having posed the question as to where I stand on the matter, because the sad truth is that I’m not really sure! His letter was well written and perhaps it might be worth requesting an essay from him on the subject, because my knowledge of it is woefully inadequate and while it’s a controversial issue, he’s correct in stating that it’s one not often covered, although you and Christopher Ferrara did some pieces some years back that were formidable. I’m now tempted to reread Thompson (a formidable and timeconsuming task!) and do some further research, perhaps with a future (not nearterm!) essay in mind.
I’d be indebted to Mr. Underwood if he would offer some source material with respect to his comment that "from the molecular level upward, Evolution is virtually impossible". Continuing education is always welcome, as is constructive criticism.
Thanks again and God bless, Tim Cullen
The Consecration of Russia
Editor, The Remnant: With regard to William Price’s article, Fatima and the Russian Connection, in the April 30th edition of The Remnant, Mr. Price mentions that the Blessed Mother reappeared after the Fatima apparitions to Sister Lucia de Santos in June of 1929 at Tuy, Spain. Our Lady mentioned that Russia was to be consecrated to Her Immaculate Heart – a solemn consecration made by the Pope in union with the world’s bishops.
Well, a bunch of us "Old Fogies", now in our early to mid-80’s, discussed the article after Sunday’s Latin High Mass, celebrated in a suburb of Greenville, SC. (Our tradition after Mass is to usually have brunch at either IHOP or Cracker Barrel to discuss church news or other related events). Several of our group brought up the matter as to why, as we well remember the glorious days of the Church of Pope Pius XII (1939-1958), the solemn consecration, mentioning Russia specifically by name, was not done.
One of our group added, in that era, bishops were truly loyal to the Holy Father, and seemingly it would not have been a difficult matter for the Holy Father to do. I interjected that it could have been done even earlier and, that because of our then very young youth, we have little or no remembrance of Pope Pius XI (1922-1939), he could have performed the Russia Consecration with the bishops within a short time frame from the message given to Sister Lucia at Tuy in 1929.
Not only was he the then-Holy Father, but some years back I read his two encyclicals, Quadragesimo Anno (1931) and Divini Redemptoris (1937), in which Pius X1 most definitely condemned the evils of Communism. " Why was the consecration of Russia not done?" by either one of two Pontiffs during the era of a strong non-fragmented Catholic Church, apparently is a question known only by God.
Frank L. Bordell Mauldin, SC
Dr. Silvas and Amoris Laetitia
Editor, The Remnant: The Romanianborn patristic scholar, Dr. Anna Silvas, who now teaches at my alma mater, the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, has already written eloquently and perceptively about the crisis in Catholic moral teaching that is metastasizing under the present pontificate. At the April 2017 conference in Rome at which lay Catholic scholars reflected on the confusion and disunity unleashed by Amoris Laetitia in the first year after its promulgation, Professor Silvas delivered a new and outstanding paper. It will probably be published before long, but, having previewed the text, I offer here a few comments on what I found to be its highlights.
I find particularly interesting her thoughts on the quasi-Hegelian ‘spirit’ that seems to pervade Pope Francis’ thinking and strategy - encapsulated in his principle that "time is greater than space" (i.e., that the important thing is just "to set processes in motion"). Within this framework, chaos, confusion and conflict within the Church are not evils to be avoided or overcome by clear magisterial interventions from Peter’s Successor. On the contrary, they are part of a deliberate strategy by which a new revolutionary synthesis – a ‘situation ethic’ directly contrary to the philosophical, moral and sacramental tradition of the Church – will gradually emerge in her praxis
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