Father Frank Pavone on the stolen election

 Open Letter from Father Frank Pavone:

A Letter to My Fellow American Citizens

December 22, 2020

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

We are blessed to live in the most exceptional nation on earth, a nation to which more people from around the world are drawn each year than to any other, because of its promise of opportunity and freedom.

One of the key ways we have lived out and protected that freedom is to conduct fair and free elections, by which we the people choose those who will represent us, write and enforce our laws, and judge our disputes. Those who govern us derive their powers to do so from the consent of the governed, and subject to the laws of Almighty God.

Our Founders understood God’s law and the value of human freedom. They also understood human weakness and sinfulness, and foresaw how that sinfulness could threaten our freedom. They therefore built into our system of government and our manner of elections provisions to safeguard us in the event that human error or willful deception would taint our elections or threaten our freedom.

It is not unprecedented that in the conduct of our national elections, we have had to resort to procedures and remedies which are rarely utilized but nonetheless completely legal and constitutional, in order to assure that our elections reflected the will of the voters and the demands of honesty, integrity and fairness. These remedies have been employed in order that public confidence in our electoral system would be maintained.

Today, in the elections of 2020, we face the need to do so once again. Since Election Day, the percentage of our fellow citizens who believe that these elections were tainted by fraud has risen from nearly one third to nearly half.

Americans have become increasingly aware of the more than 50 lawsuits, thousands of affidavits and declarations, testimony presented in various state hearings, published reports and analyses by think tanks and legal centers, videos and photos, public comments and first-hand accounts, and various press reports, all of which suggest that something went seriously wrong in the way our Presidential race was conducted and tabulated, particularly in six disputed states (PA, AZ, GA, WI, MI, NV).

These concerns cross partisan lines, as well they should. If the most powerful nation and greatest system of government in the world cannot conduct free and fair elections, then we and the rest of the world have little hope for the survival of freedom.

The concerns about our election are well documented, and summarized in documents like this report by Peter Navarro and this brief by the State of Texas. Problems include outright voter fraud (e.g. counting ballots multiple times, destruction of ballots, creation of fake ballots, ballots from people who were ineligible to vote because they live elsewhere or have died), mishandling of ballots (e.g. failing to check for signatures, accepting ballots after the legal deadline, backdating ballots, lack of identification, ballots without security envelopes, unauthorized or unsupervised access to ballots), violation of procedures (e.g. throwing out poll watchers, fixing mistakes on ballots in violation of state law, allowing people to vote who were not registered), violations of equal protection (giving certain voters and poll watchers preferential treatment over others), voter machine irregularities (inaccuracies and inexplicable surges of Biden votes), and statistical anomalies (below average rejection rate of absentee ballots, voter turnout exceeding 100%, unusual vote surges and statistically improbably vote totals).

State officials have changed election laws and loosened election security in an unconstitutional manner by bypassing the state legislatures, which are the only bodies empowered by the Constitution to set the manner for choosing electors.

Besides these specific problems, countless Americans wonder why the vote counting in various key states suddenly stopped on election night, when President Trump was leading by hundreds of thousands of votes in four of the disputed states (PA, WI, MI, GA), and then, upon resuming, saw Biden ballots come pouring in to erase that lead. Americans wonder how Biden could have won when he lost in the bellwether counties across the nation, and did worse than Hillary Clinton did in 2016 in the major urban centers except only for the four cities in the key states he had to win: Milwaukee, Detroit, Atlanta, and Philadelphia.

These and numerous other questions persist, and the refusal of courts to grant relief has not been because they have examined the evidence and provided satisfactory answers to these questions, but rather precisely because the merits of the questions have not been given the examination they deserve.

But the courts are not the final resort here. Both state and federal legislators have authority to make things right in these disputes. State legislators determine how the electors will be chosen in a given state. And the Congress, on January 6th, must meet in joint session to count and make official – or object if necessary – to the votes taken by those electors.

All of our public officials take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. And that duty is carried out according to how each of them understands the Constitution. It is not an oath to carry out a court’s understanding of the Constitution.

On January 6th, certain courageous members of the US House and the US Senate will rise to object to the electoral vote as it has been cast in various states that are in dispute. These members hold that if the election results in a given state are so questionable that they cannot be certain they are a valid representation of the will of the voters in that state, then those electoral votes simply cannot be accepted. To object in this case is not only a right but a duty. It is not only logical, but patriotic.

It is up to us, the people these Members of Congress represent, to strengthen them in their resolve, and to communicate to the rest of the Members that we share these concerns and that we also object.

Now is the time to communicate with those who will serve in the 117th Congress, to let them know where we stand, and to urge them to object to the electoral votes in the disputed states. If, as a result of this process, neither presidential candidate receives the requisite 270 electoral votes, then the House of Representatives should choose the President, and the Senate choose the Vice President, as the Constitution provides.

Some of our fellow citizens dismiss all these concerns and say we should “just move on.” But “move on” to what? We are dealing here with a fundamental threat to our freedom, and a weakening of one of freedom’s most crucial safeguards: the confidence of the people in fair and free elections. This is not a fight we put off to some other time. The time to resolve this is now, and to do so with the full measure of courage it requires.

To dismiss the concerns of half the country on a fundamental matter, and to leave as an open question whether this election was stolen, is to “move on” to an unstable republic and an unsteady footing for all future elections. It is to “move on” to the possibility – and for tens of millions, the conviction – that we will have inaugurated an illegitimate President who stole an election. It is to “move on” to a position in which election law – whether by statute or the Constitution itself -- doesn’t matter anymore, and where the consent of the governed is replaced by brute force.

This is as unacceptable today as it was in 1776, and should be met with as much resistance by citizens today as it was by our Founding Fathers at the dawn of our Republic.

Indeed, from those of us who are religious leaders, there should be a battle cry for honesty, integrity and transparency in our election process – a call based not on partisan preferences but on the fact that the Commandments prohibit lying, cheating and stealing.

And from those who are Democrats, and indeed from Joe Biden himself, and from every elected official and candidate, there should be a clear message sent to American voters: I do not want, and refuse to accept or benefit from, a single illegal vote.

Whatever else is needed for national healing and national unity, these are undoubtedly necessary ingredients and starting points.

We have arrived at a pivotal moment in American history. Fortunately, we have a President who is fighting, not simply for himself, and not for some passing glory or power, but for us, the American people, and for the freedom we all enjoy. Let us pray to God that we and our public officials may have the insight and courage to do what is right. Our founders pledged to one another their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. We can do no less.

Sincerely,

Fr. Frank Pavone

National Director, Priests for Life

Toward a New Religion: A Humanist Cult of the Secular

"Christ becomes the flame of human efforts, he reveals himself as the form of faith which is most appropriate for modern needs - a religion for progress, the religion even for progress on earth; I dare say: the religion of evolution." - Pere Teilhard de Chardin

We are witnessing the gradual emergence of a new humanitarian religion which proposes man, instead of God, as the object of worship. This "religion for progress," as Teilhard de Chardin referred to it, is anti-supernatural. Robert Hugh Benson describes it in his classic "The Lord of the World" thusly:

"Humanitarianism...is becoming the an actual religion itself, though anti-supernatural. It is a Pantheism. Pantheism deifies all nature, God is the world, but naturally, man above all is God since he is the highest expression of nature. It is a religion devoid of the 'super' natural, because since God is nature itself, there is no longer a distinction between Creator and creature. The creature is God and hence arbitrator of his own destinyand establishes the moral law for himself. Nature, and man is its highest expression, has all the divine attributes. Humanitarianism is a religion devoid of the supernatural. It is developing a ritual under Freemasonry; it has a creed, 'God is man'; and the rest. It has, therefore, a real food of a sort to offer religious cravings: it idealizes, and yet makes no demands upon the spiritual faculties. Then, they have the use of all the churches except ours, and of all the Cathedrals; and they are beginning at last to encourage sentiment. Then they may display their symbols and we may not..."

Marxism was an expression of the humanitarian religion. It worshipped society and the state symbols of the party: Lenin, Stalin and Mao. National Socialism deified the state and its Fuhrer Adolph Hitler. Today the United States is moving toward Socialism and that "..supreme religious deception..that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 675).

How can Vice-President Joseph Biden, a Catholic (at least in name) make an appearance on Good Morning America and defend the nomination of an avowed Socialist for the Supreme Court of the United States? Albert Drexel, in Ein Neuer Prophet? (Stein am Rhein: Christiana, 1971) explains that:

"The modernism or neo-modernism within Christianity, and especially within the Roman Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council, is above all characterized by a turning away from the supernatural and an exclusive predilection for this world, the Aggiornamento of Pope John XXIII interpreted one-sidedly and hence misapplied. Teilhard's ideology was was a definitive precondition for this. Inasmuch as he turned his back to the past, fused God and the supernatural with the process of a universal evolutionism, and proclaimed religion to be an active participation in a progressive development ending in Point Omega, the basis was given for a humanist cult of the secular." (p. 115).

In the New World Order, man will no longer believe in a God whom he cannot control. Man will worship himself and his new leader who will, like Hitler, be deified: the man spoken of by Saint Paul as the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition. This world ruler will not tolerate anyone who adores any god other than himself. As Romano Guardini has noted, "The ultimate aim of all aims will be to prove that existence without Christ is possible - nay rather, that Christ is the enemy of existence, which can be fully realized only when all Christian values have been destroyed.." (The Lord, p. 513).

The Sewer of Hell...

Most of you are aware of what Vice-President Joseph Biden, a Catholic, said to President Obama after the Senate Health-Care bill was passed. This sad situation is addressed here.

Most priests today will no doubt remain silent on this issue. But the Patron Saint of Parish Priests did not. This is what he had to say about such language.

St. Jean Vianney:

THE SEWER OF HELL

"There is yet another form of wrongdoing which is all the more deplorable in that it is more common, and that is licentious talk. There is nothing more abominable, my dear brethren, nothing more horrible than such talk. Indeed, my children, what could be more out of keeping with the holiness of our religion than impure language? It outrages God, it scandalises our neighbour. To put it even more clearly, loose talk releases all the passions. Very often it requires only one immodest or unseemly word to start a thousand evil thoughts, a thousand shameful desires, perhaps even to cause a fall into an infinite number of other sins and to bring to innocent souls evil of which they had been happily ignorant.

Can the Christian really afford to occupy his mind with such horrible images, a Christian who is the temple of the Holy Ghost, a Christian who has been sanctified by contact with the most adorable Body and precious Blood of Jesus Christ? Oh, Lord, if we had but some small idea of what we do when we commit sin! If our Lord has taught us that we may judge the tree by its fruit, you may judge after listening to the talk of certain people what must be the corruption of their hearts; and yet such corruption is very commonly encountered.

What sort of conversation do you hear among young people?

Is there anything in their mouths but this kind of loose talk?

Go -- I dare to say it with St. John Chrysostom -- go into these cabarets, into these haunts of impurity! What does the conversation turn upon, even among elderly people? Are they not trying to make a name for themselves by seeing who can be the most outrageous? Their mouths are like some sewer that Hell makes use of to spew its filth and its impurities over the earth and drag souls down to its depths. What are these bad Christians -- or rather these envoys from the nether regions -- doing?

Instead of singing the praises of God, their songs are shameful and hideous; they are songs which ought to make a Christian die of horror. Oh, great God, who would not tremble at the thought of what God's judgment of all this will be! If, as Jesus Christ Himself tells us, not a single idle word will be unpunished, alas! What will be the punishment for these licentious conversations, these indecent topics, these shameful and horrible images, which make the hair stand on end? If you would imagine how blind these poor unhappy people are, just listen to them talking after this fashion: "I had no bad intention," they will tell you, "it was just for a laugh; these things are only trifles, little stupid things, that mean nothing at all."

Is that so, my dear brethren? A sin so horrible in God's eyes that sacrilege alone surpasses it in evil! This is a trifle to you?

No, it is your hearts which are destroyed and corrupted! No! No! No one can afford to laugh or joke about something from which we should fly in horror, as we would from some pursuing beast which wanted to devour us. Besides, my dear brethren, what a crime it is to like something which God wants us to detest with all our hearts! You may tell me that you had no bad intentions, but tell me this, too, miserable and wretched tool of Hell, what about those who are listening to you -- do they have less bad thoughts and criminal desires after they have heard you? Will your harmless intention stay the workings of their imaginations and their hearts? Be honest and tell me that you are, in fact, the cause of the loss and eternal damnation of their souls! How many souls are hurled into Hell because of this sin?

The Holy Ghost tells us that this ugly sin of impurity has covered the whole surface of the earth.

I will say no more now on this subject, my children. I will return to it in an instruction when I shall do my best to depict it for you again with even more horror."



Meditation: Matthew 12: 34.