A “Traditional” Catholic Family saw their lives turned upside down when FBI agents trolled their son to share a meme that gave them an excuse to brutally arrest them and accuse them of being seditionists working against the state, Progmerica, which is no America at all.
The Rufini family were arrested in their homes, dragged out, and threatened with criminal prosecution after the FBI entrapped their 15-year old son to share a meme they could interpret at being a call for violence.
The father of the boy, Jeremiah Rufini, said of the brutal assault, “None of our children, including my son, had been raised with cell phones or unrestricted internet access. It became necessary for him to have a phone so we could communicate while he was alone at my father’s house caring for my grandmother, and so we reluctantly allowed him to have a cell phone. He spent a lot of time alone with nothing to do but wait and think and the cell phone became a welcome distraction.”
“His interests in history and theology led him down a rabbit hole where he was recruited into group chats targeting teenage traditionalist Catholics with extreme political content. We later learned that these chats were being closely monitored, and possibly operated by, FBI agents as part of an effort to investigate Traditional Catholics that was downstream of a broader domestic investigation spurred by the events of January 6th.”
Jim Jordan (R-OH) has subpoenaed FBI Director and DNC-CCP activist Christopher Wray to turn over all documents related not only to this unconstitutional assault on an American family, but on the whole decision process that led the FBI to label Traditional Catholics and Pro-Lifers as terror threats.
He said, “We have repeatedly sought information from the FBI relating to a January 23, 2023 document generated by the Richmond Field Office entitled ‘Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities’ (FBI’s Richmond document).”
After the months of terrorism inflicted on this family by the DNC-CCP’s Police State enforcement officers (aka the FBI) and thousands of dollars of legal expenses, the “investigation” ended with the son being charged with one misdemeanor count of “disturbing the peace.”
Merrick Garland, the DNC-CCP Lawfare Assassin in charge of the DOJ (The Department of in-Justice, the Central Hub of the DNC-CCP’s Lawfare assault operations), lied to congress, saying, “The Justice Department does not do that, it does not do investigations based on religion… I saw the document you have, it’s appalling, I’m in complete agreement with you. I understand that the FBI has withdrawn it and is now looking into how this could ever have happened.”
Three Jewish students were terrorized by Pro-Hamas rioters at Cooper Union College in New York City. The rioters began as protestors, but ended as rioters, breaking into the school and targeting Jews for assaults. Three Jewish students managed to flee to a library, but had to escape through secret tunnels as the rioters were attempting to break in.
The school itself embraced the scheduled protests in support of the bloodthirsty death cult that is Hamas. That distinction should be made, for these students and the staff of this Marxist-infested school weren’t protesting just in support of Palestine, they were protesting in support of Hamas. The teachers bent over backwards to not only accommodate these entitled American students by cancelling classes so they wouldn’t fall behind the students who rightly do NOT support Hamas, they gave them extra credit to do so.
Giving students extra credit to rally in support of a murderous death cult should get the teachers fired. Rallying in support of Hamas should not get anyone cancelled. Breaking in to the school, hunting Jews, terrorizing Jews should not only get the students removed from school, but they should face criminal prosecution, something not very likely in a city ruled by anti-Americanists, who don’t value America’s rule of law, they value “laws” more in keeping with the death cult of Hamas than with our Constitution.
Councilwoman Inna Vernikov — you may remember her from getting arrested for having a gun on her during one of the many pro-Hamas rallies in NYC — spoke with the four students. The mostly peaceful pro-Hamas rally/walkout was supposed to take place outside of the school. Faculty members canceled classes in support of the rally/walkout and participated in it themselves. Even giving extra credit.
It was supposed to stay outside, but the pro-Hamas students stormed the inside of the school anyway with sticks and antisemitic signs. Progressives in NYC tend to think the rules don’t apply to them because as we saw in 2020-2021 they don’t.
Police were told they weren’t allowed to enter the school after it was stormed by the pro-Hamas protestors. However, the Dean was able to escape out the back with his security. Good for him.
The Jewish students trapped in the library were terrified. Having an angry mob of people chanting for you to be eliminated — not just in Gaza, but in Democrat Party-controlled New York City too — is liable to do that.
There has been no statement realized by the school about the pro-Hamas storming, or the fact that Jewish students are afraid of coming back to class where it isn’t safe for them, or that Jewish students are dropping out altogether. Because, if they attend class, they run the risk of being bodily harmed.
These students take such lawless, violent actions because their teachers encourage this (a criminal act in and of itself) and they know anti-American authorities won’t prosecute them for doing so. They are free to burn, to kill, to destroy at will so long as they do it in territory controlled by the anti-American, revolutionary party of the DNC-CCP.
They continue to have free speech rights, but not riot rights, not kidnapping and false imprisonment rights, and the ones who aided and abetted this violent assault should be in jail for their actions in support of an event the teachers of this school largely organized and encouraged.
Unless a person is a member of the Catholic faith, most people don’t give a great deal of thought to what they think of as “the Vatican”, unless there is some noteworthy story concerning the Church. Most historians (both professionals and amateurs) are well versed, in varying degrees, about the Church’s history. Historians know that the Holy See – the actual leadership of the complex structure that is Catholicism – is an independent and sovereign nation, a condition settled by the Lateran Pacts of 1929, after seventy years of upheaval. But really – it’s not like the Catholic Church is actually a nation, right?
Right?
Well, no, actually. That is not the case, at all. And while it of course is a matter of immediate impact to the 1.3 billion-odd Catholics in the world, it is also a major concern – or should be – for non-Catholics, including non-Christians, throughout the world.
The Catholic Church – the strictly religious organization – has certainly existed in some form for over two thousand years; in fact, our formal dating system (i.e., “2023AD”, where ‘AD’ means “Anno Domini”, or, literally, “in the Year of our Lord”) is based on the Church’s established interpretation of the historical timeline.
During those twenty-odd centuries the temporal authority of the Holy See has waxed and waned. Where it once held immediate and direct sway over the secular affairs of much of the Christian world, in the minds of most people – even of most Catholics – the notion of the Pope as a secular leader is somewhat bizarre. In 1870, when Italy was finally united, the Holy See was stripped of its “Papal States”, although the Pope of the day, Pius IX, flatly refused to recognize the “Law of Guarantees” imposed on his rule, and referred to his rule, as well as that of his successors, as the “Prisoner in the Vatican” era.
This was the situation that remained in force until the signing of the aforementioned Lateran Pacts in 1929 by Pope Pius XI, which created the modern division between the Holy See, and the Vatican as a sovereign city-state, albeit a tiny one, only holding some 108 acres within the city of Rome. However, these remain technical differences. Among those differences is that Vatican City the City-State retains its own military forces…whose “commander in chief” (to use the modern term) is the Pope.
And it is here, that we reach the subject of this article.
Unlike most of the articles like this at the Freedomist, this is not a historical piece. Instead, we will consider the Vatican’s potential to impact current affairs through creating and applying military action.
While the Holy See is no stranger to maintaining military forces – some of which still exist – it has not had “operationally deployable forces” (again, to borrow the modern vernacular) since 1870. It does retain military and police forces, specifically the Pontifical Swiss Guard and the less-well known Gendarmerie Corps of Vatican City State.
While the Swiss Guard, famous for their Renaissance-period ceremonial armor and uniforms, directly protects the Pope (or the College of Cardinals, when they gather to elect a new Bishop of Rome), the Gendarmerie conducts more police-like duties within Vatican City, mostly managing tourist traffic. The Swiss Guard has significantly improved their protective training in the decades since the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. Still, these two forces comprise barely two hundred and fifty troops, and are only armed with the lightest of small arms.
Swiss guards after a celebration inside St. Peter Dome, 29 June 2006. Photo credit: Alberto Luccaroni. CCA/3.0
Additionally, of the Church’s remaining military orders, only the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) is really “military” in any way: SMOM maintains a military medical detachment, providing medical support to the Italian Armed Forces.
Troops of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, during an army parade in Italy, 2007. Photo Credit: Utente:Jollyroger. CCA/2.5
Should the Holy See decide to expand its secular military, finances are not an issue, should the Vatican decide to reform an operational military arm. Accusations of certain fiscal shenanigans aside, the Holy See is fully capable of mobilizing all of the vast capital (much of it not easily tracked down) that it controls. At the same time, a program soliciting remittance-like donations (even tithes) from Catholics would provide a significant boost to the Holy See’s income stream. Spent wisely, Vatican finances are more than sufficient to field a very large force, and very quickly, as the world is awash in arms and equipment.
But surely, this is all hypothetical. It’s not like the Vatican is going to suddenly militarize. Right?
States have a habit of changing their nature quickly, and sometimes functionally overnight; take modern Iran as one example. How would such a thing happen to the Holy See?
While the current leadership of the Holy See and Vatican City are well known for “liberal” policies that could easily change. Granted, it would have to be an extraordinary circumstance, but a change to a staunchly conservative, even reactionary, leadership within the Church is certainly not beyond the realm of possibility. In such a circumstance, assuming that a reactionary Pope ascended to the Throne of St. Peter, and decided to field a functional military, how would that take shape?
First, the reactionary Pope would need to define a mission for the expanding Papal forces. Given the nature of the modern era, this could easily begin with a revival of the Papacy’s long-disbanded Papal State forces, including its navy.
One of the curiosities of the Covid pandemic was that many cruise lines retired their older cruise ships, selling them off for scrap, using the suspension of cruise travel to purchase new ships. Many of the ships that were scrapped were still usable, and could have been converted into hospital ships, with a land component to handle the more delicate surgeries at dockside. This is completely in line with the current mission of SMOM, and could be presented as an expansion of the Order’s mission…Of course, the docked vessels would need armed guards.
A French Georges Leygues-class destroyer moored alongside a cruise ship and other military vessels at a pier in Bahrain, following Operation Desert Storm. TSGT Paul J. Page, USAF, March 19, 1991. USAF Photo. Public Domain
An expansion of this mission is where things start to get dicey. With the active persecution of Catholics and other Christians (to say nothing of other religious groups) by terror groups like ISIL, it would be entirely plausible to see Papal “peacekeeping forces” inserting into conflict zones to defend refugee camps from attack. As has been painfully learned in the last two decades, such defense measures require serious weapons and training. That requires an army, an army with equipment…and bases.
This is not an implausible thought exercise. The Holy See maintains diplomatic relations with some one hundred and eighty nations, giving it all the diplomatic ‘in’ it needs to open a dialogue with a potential host nation. Likewise, there are many Third World states that would welcome a Vatican military base inside their borders, even with limited extraterritoriality.
World map of the foreign relations of the Holy See; dark green: diplomatic relations, light green: other relations, gray: no official relations. Credit: Muso, 2011. CCA/3.0
But – where would all the necessary military talent come from? It’s not like this is the Renaissance, with large number of experienced troops and officers available for hire at short notice, even given the vast numbers of PMC’s available for hire. The answer is unsettlingly simple.
With an estimated worldwide population of 1.3 billion Catholics – many of them, from many countries, being former soldiers and officers, many with recent combat experience – the Holy See has no shortage of potential recruits to recruit from, including many officers and long-serving enlisted personnel with all the necessary skills to train a force that would resemble the French Foreign Legion in character, given the disparate origins of its recruits.
Numbers-wise, it should be remembered that India – with a population similar in size to the Catholic Church – currently fields a force of around 2.5 million troops, counting reverses. The Holy See would not need anything approaching that number…at least, not initially. However, given the money and space to house and train troops, it could easily assemble a comparable force.
…Now, all of the preceding is speculation. There is no sign that the Catholic Church is going to suddenly “arm up”, drawing in hundreds of thousands of Catholics from around the world to join a massive military force, and no indication that it is even thinking about it.
But it is possible…And possibilities offer options.
Deus Vult, indeed.
The Freedomist — Keeping Watch, So You Don’t Have To
Arizona’s GOP-led legislature has passed a bill in the Senate that would prevent public schools from forcing children to deny basic human reality, that boys are boys and girls are girls. The bill is expected to be vetoed by the unelected governor, Katy Hobbes, who pledges to protect groomers in public schools from rightly angry parents. A mother of a ‘trans’ student sums up the spirit of the depraved left with this assault on protecting children from pedophiles, “This bill violates trust, eliminates the only safe haven some students have and allows bigotry in the name of religion. Let’s not be the state that willingly harms already disenfranchised students.”
GOD IS ABSOLUTELY AGAINST THE PERVERSION OF SEX AND GENDER AND THE CELEBRATION OF THE SAME AS EQUALITY WHEN IN TRUTH IT IS JUST DISGUSTING- but President Biden stands for this and violently opposes God’s laws.
President Biden despises God’s laws. He raises his voice against and abuses his power in ways that oppress the righteous and celebrate evildoers whose sins are legion. Therefore, God despises Biden et al for the reprobate enemies of the Kingdom they all are.
Biden’s preachments and the pursuits of his policies stand behind the father of lies and will destroy this country unless the righteous are elevated and wicked people like Biden are removed from all power and influence in this country and within its institutions. His Sodomite agenda of alt-gendered perversion is an abomination that will destroy this country as surely as what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah.
Sexual sin is deep spiritual transgression and rebellion against God, against nature, and yourself. Women wanting to have sex with women, men with men, and denial of the differences between men and women, which are part of God’s design for Creation, are equal to murder and other abominations in God’s eyes. Whether it is a man calling himself a woman, which God despises, or a married man cheating on his wife with another woman, sexual sin always means one has become an enemy of God.
We who follow Christ know that God’s law is supreme and no country whose laws offend the Lord and rebel against God’s standards of righteousness and justice will prosper and its people will suffer curses and wrath. Sex outside a man and woman married for life is a sin and laws must always tend toward punishing evildoers and protecting the innocent and righteous from harm.
When I argue against outlawing deviations from God’s laws in matters of sex and marriage, it is not because I don’t think those things matter, it is because I feel that righteousness without a choice is not accounted to that person, only righteousness by choice and in honor of Christ is accounted to anyone. Given a realpolitik choice between laws that punish the righteous for not having any concourse with sin (e.g. “bake the cake!”) or laws that punish evildoers in sexual matters, even though I prefer choice, I would choose rather outlaw the sin than to outlaw the righteous, which is the choice we seem to be confronting.
It’s not popular to say, but this remains true, for God rules over the nations of people, over every person, and every country and government on this planet, all will be judged based on whether they pursue righteousness or not.
All of God’s law is truth and must inform every person, relationship, association, and even government on this planet, for one day, by God’s hand, this will be a reality. Ultimately, men and women of the ilk of Biden et al, who despise God’s laws and who look upon sinful evildoers treating them as saints, namely those who rebel against God’s laws in sexuality and marriage, will be damned forever.
It is my conviction that unless wicked vipers like Biden repent, they are damned, and the more they revel in iniquity the less likely they will be to have a chance to repent. As for making laws to “protect” and “include” people whose sexual behavior is an abomination before God, and who despise God’s admonition against trying to deny your gender, for a man being effeminate is a sin before God, this is a sign of judgment against this land which the righteous had better take heed of.
As far as I’m concerned, whoever says sexual sins are OK and that gender is a social construct is an enemy of God, and therefore I count them enemies of God’s People, enemies of myself. I love my enemies, as Christ commands, but I do understand they are my enemies. I do understand that such people deserve zero respect for their abominable beliefs and actions which are not equal to the range of beliefs that fall within God’s standards.
If you think being anything but a person whose sexuality is with the opposite sex only, contained within marriage for life, and/or that you or anyone can change their God-given gender and demand others recognize and applaud that, then you are an enemy of God unless and until you repent.
Biden applauds that and would probably consider me a domestic terrorist or seek to curtail my rights just for telling you the truth. But sex is sacred and marriage is a spiritual union that can only occur between a man and woman, who are married for life.
I’m not sure what Biden et al think God’s design and purpose of government is, they love talking about democracy and equality, but they don’t understand what it really is. God’s purpose and design for government primarily is to punish evildoers. It is to keep the land pure and clean of all wickedness. It is to protect the innocent and the righteous from all hazards and harm to their well-being, to their spiritual sovereignty as beings created in the image of God. We can argue it is also to secure the boundaries of habitation for all nations of people within their jurisdiction.
The government under our present leaders, most of whom are wicked and ungodly fools who pander to evildoers, especially sexual deviants and the alt-gendered, has become a vile abomination before God. It is an enemy of the Kingdom and wages war against the righteous in the name of the alleged “rights” of the wicked!
People have sinned and God offers redemption. If you were married before and remarried and now understand this, then let this be a marriage for life. If you have committed adultery or fornication or you have engaged in sex with someone of your sex and realize kow the sacredness of marriage and the marriage bed, then repent and let your future be ruled by Christ and not sin.
If you are angry and offended that I say swapping gender, sex between two people of the same sex, or sex at all outside a lifelong commitment to marriage, is sinful and God hates it, then so be it. Your side says awful things of people like me who hold similar views as I am sharing, so it’s not as if you abominable reprobates who hate righteousness and life evil are any better at tolerating others. You despise dignities and make war against the righteous, who you hate just as surely as you hate God.
The difference between me and these wicked abusers of power is that I don’t seek to deny your rights to find God’s truth and follow His laws in a strictly voluntary and non-coercive manner! I would not outlaw you or take away your choice or right to speak. I am secure and at peace with my beliefs and choices. You who would silence me and become so enraged as to either become violent or use the violence of the state to punish me are behaving in a predictably reprehensible manner, which further alienates you from God and His People.
Like St. Stephen, I will preach the truth even if it makes you want to literally gnash your teeth on me in a fit of demonic rage.
They say the alt-gendered and Sodomites are suicidal because people like me will never accept them and their ways and because we call these something a sin and an abomination. The question is always, “what is right and true?” Righteousness, not “inclusiveness” for reprobates, exalts a nation. I accept people as people, knowing all without Christ are sinners and that, without Christ, I too would be an enemy of God, so I am no better.
Biden’s “lgbtq+ etcetera” agenda is a false rainbow perversion like unto Ahab and Jezebel and as long as Americans either support or refuse to defy this “agenda of Sodom”, then this country is in danger of destruction.
Our leaders, Biden et al, follow an ideology that is based on the doctrines of demons and has no place in a decent society. President Biden is an abomination and he is damned for his abuse of power. Biden et al are against God’s laws and God’s People, therefore God is against them.
Be careful with things that frustrate, bring regret, or make you wish you were someone else. In short, change your thinking in order to find happiness even in times of painful circumstances and loss.
Life can make you feel pain, sorrow, and deep depression when you face things and see others around you seemingly untouched by such things. A person who cannot walk may feel angry at the universe or God because they see others around them walking and wish they could too. They can become so focused on that they may miss the things they can do that others can’t.
When you start to feel this way, change the subject in your head.Go read your Bible, find and ingest wholesome content, use your talents to write or draw, or even play a video game. Avoid content that refocuses you on your problem: if you are a girl and just got dumped by your boyfriend, now may not be the time to watch romance comedies unless that actually cheers you up (which it probably won’t).
Do anything but let yourself dwell on that thing, because things we cannot control but focus on our frustration about can be crazy making. Dwelling on things in your life that are sad and painful, at times when you cannot take action on them, is never fruitful.
Often we try to psyche ourselves out a bit, like somehow we can rationalize or understand our source of sorrow, as if this will change it. It may be good to get to a point of understanding, if it is possible, but it’s not the best and most consistent way to handle that pain in the long term.
The key is not to psyche ourselves out but to simply look at something else. A Jewish friend once told me that when he was depressed his Rabbi told him to “go and count your money.” I misunderstood this to think he was being shallow. But the man had money and all the Rabbi was doing was showing him how to refocus on the good things in his life.
This man had experienced a love rejection and was so focused on that he was spiraling downwards. He counted his money and his mind changed its channel. It didn’t erase his sadness, but it decreased the burden and eventually he was able to find love again, which would have been hard if he had stayed in his funk feeling sorry for himself and imagining only sorry and rejection were his fate.
You become what you are looking at.The lesson with my Jewish friend wasn’t “money brings happiness”, his Rabbi explained, it was to focus on anything positive about your life and to give your mind and heart a vacation from the pain and sorrow.
I knew someone with cancer who was relatively young and who faced a bad prognosis, and yet they seemed happy. I asked them how they could be happy, suspecting the answer they would give, and I was not surprised. Basically, they said they don’t think about that, they don’t even focus on tomorrow or any time down the road. They live their best life here and now and when that dark cloud of comparing their life to others comes, they do anything it takes to get their mind busy doing and thinking about something else.
They lived far more years than anticipated but eventually passed, albeit never with regrets and always staying in the moment.
By changing what they looked at, from the pain and loss to happy things, they became more happy.
Happiness is not even mostly circumstantial. I’ve met people who experience great pain every day due to some serious medical condition who were mostly still happy, but I’ve also met people who were mostly unhappy whose circumstances were not pleasant but not nearly as severe as these other folks. What I saw different in them was more the things they spent time doing and ingesting or imagining than anything else.
Even in my own life I have had real depression dealing with some circumstances that were painful and yet not as bad as I imagined but yet as I grew and gained more wisdom, worse circumstances came and yet I could say some of those times I was much happier than in those less trying circumstances. There are times when the deepest painful situation happens and yet other good things are also happening because I choose to focus on them and the overall sense of joy and happiness is greater.
Most of this, with faith in God an eternal view of life as a foundation, was effectuated by the simple expedient of changing the channel in my mind.
This is not a perfect solution that will prevent you from ever feeling the pain or sorrow of your situation, or that of a loved one. But if it can reduce 70% of the amount of time you consciously sit in that, then it is worth trying.
Don’t get cynical.The saying by Nietschze that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger seems superficially true, but it is a cynical and pessimistic saying. First, “being stronger” is neither a goal nor a source of happiness and, second, wholeness, our deepest need, can come from that which not only doesn’t kill us but brings us joy.
Back to the man who eventually died from cancer. He was able to focus on what gave him joy, and even as his choices narrowed, he never stopped searching for that which gave him joy in the moment. He once said that because of his terminal diagnosis he was given many opportunities to speak into people’s lives, which gave him great joy in the moment, and this joy he imparted to others who were made stronger in love, not just some horrid trial by fire that almost killed them.
We all have been given a life and circumstances all meant to mold and shapeus into the people God ultimately desires us to be for eternity. For every tear we shed while remaining in the faith, God rewards us. One day, therefore, some of the people you may think got short-shifted in this life will be seen as having been given the greatest opportunity to experience a depth of oneness with Christ that not everyone seems to get.
Many of the people who I have met who have experienced great tragedies, some enduring for decades, have shown me truths and principles for living that have made me better and stronger. They did not begrudge me the fact my circumstances were better and that I could benefit from the wisdom they earned through great sacrifice and loss without me having to experience that loss.
Change your mind’s channelfrom your pain and suffering, inasmuch as you can, through the simple expedient of taking some action to encumber your mind’s time with something else. Why sit in the pain any longer than is necessary?
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