Cardinal Müller claims women’s ordination is impossible. He has Amazon Synod Derangement Syndrome, and has called it a “wrecking ball” bent on “restructuring the Universal Church.” We learn from this that the cardinal is very inept with metaphor, since wrecking balls don’t “restructure” anything. Maybe this is a minor problem. The bigger issue with Müller is that he says no pope, no synod, no council “could make possible the ordination of women as bishop, priest, or deacon.” “It would be invalid,” Müller says.
Of course the Church can ordain women; it’s already done so.
BY: Henry Matthew Alt • July 29, 2019 • Church History
Dean Dettloff at America Magazine seems to think there is one, but he doesn’t give us a Catholic case for Communism either. Much of his article is spent telling us that many Communists are very nice people, and they’re not all atheists, and a lot of their goals are things the Catholic Church is friendly to. I’m surprised any of that is in dispute. Dettloff does not tell us why Communism is a good way to achieve any of them; he just tells us the goals are nice. Nor does he account for St. John Paul II’s words condemning Communism in Centessimus Annus.
Mr. Pavone is so much more than a Trump apologist; he struts and waves pompoms for the stable genius, and he will not be caught protesting anything, unless it’s abortion. Good Mr. Pavone loves America, and babies. And because he loves babies, he has typed many hundreds of characters on Twitter defending the separation of children from their families. That’s what happens when you violate the law, he says. (And the children at the border are a very different set of babies than the infinitely more precious babies yet to be born.)
But Alt! But Alt! When the Church says deportation is evil, it has in mind the deportations that took place in World War II. You know, like that pic. That’s the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Jews were citizens. The Church doesn’t have in mind deportation of criminals who are in a country illegally. The Church has never taught that all deportation is evil.” Is that so? Is it? Now, you know, dear reader, I believe in going to Church texts to find out what the Church teaches. So in this case, I’m going to go to Veritatis Splendor 80, where Pope John Paul II defines “intrinsic evil.” 
In their generous service to the gospel ideal, some priests feel drawn to political involvement in order to help more effectively in reforming political life and in eliminating injustices, exploitation, and every type of oppression. The Church reminds them that on this road it is easy to be caught in partisan strife, with the risk of helping not to bring about the just world for which they long, but new and worse ways of exploiting poor people. In any case they must know that they have neither the mission nor the charism from above for this political involvement and activism.”
“It will not do,” John Calvin cries, “to say that the only ground on which we obtain forgiveness of sins is in the mass, because it has been already purchased by the death of Christ.” Protestants love false dichotomies: The Mass or the death of Christ; as though they are different. But no. The Mass is the death of Christ. It is not, as I pointed out in the last segment, a new death of Christ, but the same sacrifice done in obedience to Luke 22:19. (Do this is sacrificial language; the Mass is not a bare commemoration.) But Calvin, being Calvin, will have none of that. 
A legion of Taylor Marshall’s defenders seem to have picked up this claim from the false prophet himself: Demons speak the truth during exorcism; for they are compelled to by the power of Christ. One perhaps should be grateful they are attributing this truth-telling to the power of Christ rather than the demons’ native honesty. Small favors. Dr. Marshall never cited any source for the claim that demons tell the truth during an exorcism; he just said it’s “what I’ve been told.” He didn’t even do us the courtesy of mentioning who told him so. 
Very early in this chapter, John Calvin is already making claims that are painfully easy to disprove. He has grown desperate. “What is the direct aim of the mass,” he cries, “but just to put Christ again to death, if that were possible?” I’m glad he admits it’s not possible. That’s a first. Just before this, Calvin claimed that the Mass “overthrows the cross of Christ,” but nowhere says that that’s not possible. Though he seasons it with caution, Calvin grows more wreckless in his charges. You’d think we were processing Christ down the aisle in thorns.
Some years ago, I came across an audio file of part of the exorcism of Anneleise Michel. Probably I had just watched “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” and was curious about the true story. Things like that interest me, but I don’t recommend you get interested; the audio, even in a language I could not understand, unsettled me. After Taylor Marshall recorded a ninety-minute podcast promoting things the demons said during the exorcism, I thought: Wait. Demons are liars. “There is no truth in him,” Jesus said. “He is a liar and the father of lies.” 
Too many people imagine that infallibility means nothing in the Church can change. They treat Church teachings or traditions as though they are museum pieces and must be kept in protective glass. It is not thus. The Church may grow in its understanding even of its infallible teachings, such as the Eucharist being the body and blood of Jesus Christ. So when change occurs before our eyes, there are those who panic and speak of crisis. But infallibility is not meant to force the Magisterium into an old wineskin. This is why the Magisterium is living. 
Calvin made wild claims; but he got people to believe them, even today, which is wilder. This one – the Mass banishes the remembrance of Christ’s death! — is easily disproven for anyone who bothers to read the text of the liturgy. (Or even: for anyone who walks into a Catholic church and bothers to look at the crucifix or the Stations of the Cross.) Perhaps people are lazy and just take deceivers like Calvin at their word; I don’t know. But there’s a funny little part of the Mass called the Words of Institution, at least as old as St. Cyril of Jerusalem. 
On Twitter, Fr. Frank Pavone wrote this: “There is an immigration crisis, the 1st immigrant is the unborn child. There is a #Crisis at the border of the womb. They are not being detained or deported, they’re being #dismembered. We’re not going to be able to welcome an immigrant when we can’t welcome our own children.” No, excuse me. This is exactly why people say that those who are pro-life care only about the unborn, not about the born. Exhibit 1 is the odious Frank “Coughlin” Pavone, who pits the unborn child against the migrant child.
Yesterday my very excellent fellow Patheos blogger Mary Pezzulo asks: What Must a Christian Do For the Helpless? Her answer is that we must “conform ourselves to Christ” and what he would do. When we see the helpless, we must live in imitation of Christ; the imitation of Christ is not just for when we are feeling pious at adoration. Still less is it for when we take to our blogs and defend, neither Christ nor the helpless, but ourselves. Christ never, Mary points out, blamed the helpless for being helpless. Neither do I condemn you.