Monsignor Hilary C. Franco’s wonderful life

Six Popes: A Son of the Church Remembers is Monsignor Hilary C. Franco’s memoir, an engaging story only a son can tell, a son not only of the Catholic Church, but also of Italian immigrants. In his telling of that story, it was my privilege to have played the role of scribe.

By God’s grace, Monsignor Franco will turn 89 on July 16th, but he’s by no means retired: the latest item on his impossibly long resume is his current role of Advisor to the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations. But that title doesn’t begin to convey the drama of his life. The stories of the six pontiffs Franco served are reference points along his walk through the corridors of spiritual power in New York, Washington, D.C., and Rome over the past 70 years.

Six Popes: A Son of the Church Remembers, published by Humanix Books last Tuesday, is Monsignor Franco’s eyewitness account of many of the people, events, and movements that shaped our world and the Catholic Church, including his assistance to Archbishop Fulton Sheen at the Second Vatican Council. There is no other book like it.

A few days ago, Newsmax TV’s Rachel Rollar interviewed Franco on Wake Up America. You can catch the five-minute chat here. During her interview she mentioned the Newsmax page where you can read Six Pope’s first chapter; here the link to that. The book’s introduction is on another Newsmax page. Please check them out, buy the book (hardcover or Kindle), and post a review!

Otis Q. Sellers’s eschatological distinctives, ordered from the Day of the Lord, documented provisionally

Otis Q. Sellers , independent Bible teacher, born in Wellston, OH, 1901, died in Los Angeles, CA, 1992.

The following are notes for my manuscript, tentatively titled Maverick Workman: How Otis Q. Sellers Broke with the Churches, Discovered the Premillennial Kingdom, and Embodied Christian Individualism, a work in progress.

When the events recorded in the Book of Revelation were revealed to John, he was in the spirit on the Day of the Lord.[1] Before that Day’s arrival[2], however, there will be a seven-year rebellion, [3] during the course of which the Man of Sin will be revealed, sitting in the Temple of God, pretending to be God.[4]

The rebellion’s target will be Israel’s restored kingdom, under the conditions of God’s kingdom. The Apostles asked about this.[5] This event presupposes the miraculous transfer (and, for many, if not most Jews who have ever lived, resurrection) of Israel’s descendants from the diaspora to the promised land, the subject of an irrevocable divine promise.[6]

In the wilderness, God will plead His case to Israel, woo her as a man a woman, and reveal Jesus to them as the prophesied mashiach (Messiah).[7] Jesus’ messiahship is unintelligible apart from His fulfillment of the promise of the new covenant with Israel and Judah, which fulfillment He announced at His last Passover.[8] Jews today can neither retard nor accelerate their miraculous return to the land.

The restoration’s context is the prophesied global Kingdom of God, whose imminence Jesus proclaimed during His earthly ministry.[9] During this centuries-long administration or dispensation of divine government, earth will be the mediatorial planet between heaven and the rest of creation; Israel will be the mediatorial nation between heaven, the seat of God’s government, and that rule’s effects on earth.[10] Resurrected Apostles will rule as tribal governors[11] under David, Jesus’ viceregent.

Jesus will leave His throne to descend to earth in order to put down forcefully the Rebellion[12] and then be personally present[13] on earth to reign for a thousand years from His footstool[14] (after centuries of rule from His throne).[15] He will descend with a shout[16] and proceed to take vengeance those who neither know God nor obey Jesus Christ’s gospel, that is, Christ’s “right message” (evangelion, “gospel”) for that day.[17] Belief in the content of that message is the plan of salvation.

The commencement of the Day of Christ—the inauguration of the manifest Kingdom of God—will be a quiet affair (unlike the Day of the Lord). God will pour out His spirit on all flesh.[18] When He assumes sovereignty—bringing forth judgment unto truth and causing the nations to trust in His name—He will neither cry nor cause His voice to be heard.[19] (Were the Day of the Lord God’s next move, there’d be no nations left to trust in His name.) Therefore, the Kingdom of God on Earth must have a premillennial phase. Continue reading “Otis Q. Sellers’s eschatological distinctives, ordered from the Day of the Lord, documented provisionally”

Aquinas’s proto-liberal concerns

The pleasant discovery of a series of posts by Professor Jonathan McIntosh on the site of the Libertarian Christian Institute (LCI) has occasioned my republishing today part of Chapter 10 of Christ, Capital & Liberty: A Polemic (CCL). As that chapter originated as a post written about ten years ago, I’ve edited it, airbrushing references to the polemic. (Those interested in the latter should consult the book. I’ve modified the chapter in other ways.)

With erudition and nuance, Dr. McIntosh locates Thomas Aquinas on the political spectrum as a proto-liberal (my term, not McIntosh’s).

These anti-libertarian sentiments [of Thomas’s, just enumerated by McIntosh] notwithstanding, there are yet many other respects in which Aquinas’s political thought is not only consistent with libertarianism, but arguably provide the latter with an ideal and even necessary, moral and metaphysical framework.

McIntosh’s aim is

to sketch at least the outlines of a distinctly Thomistic, natural law libertarianism, one that coherently combines Aquinas’s account of law’s place within the social and moral dimension of human nature, with libertarianism’s more considered and consistent ethic of law’s inherently coercive nature.

McIntosh is a kindred spirit whose work I’m happy to advertise. (Visit his blogs The Natural Law Libertarian and The Flame Imperishable.) His admiration for Thomas is great, but does not inhibit his criticism. Aquinas’s thought on the subject of liberty is, as I shall show in my own way, a mixed bag, but one whose contents every lover of liberty and reason is better off for having explored.

McIntosh’s series is entitled “The Libertarian Aquinas: Aquinas and Libertarianism,” and here are links to Part I, Part II, and Part III. (At least another installment is on the way.) I welcome any criticism of my effort he may see fit to give.

I’m taking this opportunity to thank again LCI’s Chief Executive Officer Doug Stuart for interviewing me about Christ, Capital & Liberty in late 2019 and making our discussion available on their site since last March.

Note: The “Austrians” referred to in today’s post are writers who subscribe to the Austrian School of Economics (ASE), whose “dean” was Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995). “Anarcho-Catholics” are Roman Catholics who find a “profound philosophical commonality” between the ASE and Catholic teaching (but not “Catholic Social Teaching”). I would include among them James A. Sadowsky, S.J. (1923-2012), Joseph Sobran (1946-2010), Thomas E. Woods, and Gerard N. Casey, although none of them uses (or used) that term to describe his political philosophy. I have defended that compatibility; as a dispensationalist, however, I no longer use the descriptor for myself.

Continue reading “Aquinas’s proto-liberal concerns”

The Passover, the new meaning Christ gave it, and our relationship to it

“It shall greatly help ye to understand the Scriptures if thou mark not only what is spoken or written, but of whom and to whom, with what words, at what time, where, to what intent, with what circumstances, considering what goeth before and what followeth after.”—Myles Coverdale (1488-1569), from the Introduction to his 1535 translation of the Bible.

“This do in remembrance of Me,” Jesus commanded His disciples at His last Passover, two days before the official Passover preparation that was concurrent with His passion. (He probably elected to follow Moses’ calendar.)

The antecedent of “this” is the Passover, given by God to the Israelites in Egypt and performed every year since until the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D. Henceforth, as often as His disciples would perform that ceremony, that is, annually, they were to contemplate not their ancestors’ miraculous escape from bondage, but Him, whose body, whose very Life, would soon be given for them.

Most Christians, from Roman Catholics to Plymouth Brethren, believe that Christ instituted an “ordinance” or “sacrament” at His last Passover. The evidence for that belief, however, lies in tradition, not Scripture.

The Lord had expressed His desire to eat the Passover with his disciples. He also promised that He will do so again—”drink this fruit of the vine” (Matthew 26:29)—when, enthroned as His viceregents, they are resurrected in the Kingdom. In that time of “the renewal of all things,” they will judge the twelve tribes of Israel (Matthew 19:28).

Let’s put aside for the moment whether Christ intended His disciples to understand “This is my Body” and “This is my Blood” metaphorically or not. If the ceremony in question was the Passover, the point is moot.

Continue reading “The Passover, the new meaning Christ gave it, and our relationship to it”

Better late than never: the Jesuits’ welcome, if tardy, application of the natural law

Frank Campbell, Georgetown slave, early 1900s. Campbell was one of the Maryland Jesuit slaves sold in 1838.

“. . . the abolition of slavery remained unfinished, and the seeds of a new revolt have remained to intensify to the present day. Hence, the great importance of the shift in Negro demands from greater welfare handouts to ‘reparations,’ reparations for the years of slavery and exploitation and for the failure to grant the Negroes their land, the failure to heed the Radical abolitionist’s call for ‘40 acres and a mule’ to the former slaves. In many cases, moreover, the old plantations and the heirs and descendants of the former slaves can be identified, and the reparations can become highly specific indeed.” Murray Rothbard (1969)[1]

A century-and-a-half after the Civil War, the Society of Jesus has acknowledged the justice of specific reparations owed to the five thousand or so living descendants of the Black people the Jesuits once owned, an enterprise they had engaged in for more than a century. With a “down payment” of $15 million, the Jesuits have pledged to raise $100 million in private donations (not taxpayer funds).[2] What follows is an edited excerpt from “Lock(e), Stock and Jesuit,” Chapter 29 of my Christ, Capital & Liberty: A Polemic.

Continue reading “Better late than never: the Jesuits’ welcome, if tardy, application of the natural law”

When Herbert echoed Hillary: Aptheker on the “vast right-wing conspiracy” that threatened “fascism” in 1998

Haiti's revolution inspired revolutionary abolitionist John Brown - YouTube — Herbert Aptheker (1915-2003), late 1990s.

Some of you may remember when Hillary Clinton told Today’s Matt Lauer about a “vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband [Bill Clinton] since the day he announced for president.”[1] That was on January 27, 1998.

Right to left: Paul Robeson, his son Paul, Jr, daughter-in-law Marilyn, unidentified woman. Soviet Embassy, Washington, DC, 1951

Nineteen days later, on February 15th, the San Francisco Public Library marked the centennial of Paul Robeson (1898-1976), the American singer and actor, Stalinism’s first global superstar. Among the panelists was Herbert Aptheker (1915-2003), Stalinism’s chief American propagandist, also revered by the Left as an historian, who reminisced about Robeson.

Near the end of his remarks at the podium Aptheker—W. E. B. Du Bois’s comrade and literary executor—expressed his hope that the U.S. Postal Service would one day honor Robeson with a postage stamp as, two weeks earlier, it had Du Bois—for the second time.[2]

Du Bois and (on his right) wife Shirley Graham Du Bois, and Nikita Khrushchev in 1951. Khrushchev was then one of Stalin’s advisors, not yet First Secretary.

In 1997 Hillary’s husband established by executive order (13050) the “One America Initiative on Race,” headed by John Hope Franklin.[3] “I have great confidence in him and his committee,” Aptheker predicted. “Nothing but good can come of it.” Actually, nothing at all came out of it except another “report.” It was, however, another step on the road to the South African-style “Truth and Reconciliation Commissions” being planned for us in the Age of Critical Race Theory.

Continue reading “When Herbert echoed Hillary: Aptheker on the “vast right-wing conspiracy” that threatened “fascism” in 1998″

Revisiting Herbert Aptheker’s pattern of misrepresentation and omission

Shortly after my Herbert Aptheker: Studies in Willful Blindness was published in 2019, Lloyd Billingsley reviewed it for Frontpage Magazine. John Hamelin commented on his review at the time, but somehow I missed it, and comments are closed. It attempts to defend Aptheker’s scholarly credibility; it warrants an answer.

Hamelin starts off with:

While The Black Jacobins [hereafter, TBJ] is certainly a significant work in its own right and Aptheker’s avoidance in citing it can be considered an example of petty political rivalries, the idea that it somehow demolishes Aptheker’s writings on Black American history is absurd.

It would be absurd, but that’s not what I wrote. It’s not even in the review. The reviewer got it right: “Flood aims to modify the received opinion that Herbert Aptheker was a historian.”

I sure do.

What I argued for in the book, which Hamelin gives no evidence of having read, is that Aptheker’s work cannot be trusted. That doesn’t mean everything Aptheker wrote is a lie. It means that nothing he has written can be taken at face value.

Continue reading “Revisiting Herbert Aptheker’s pattern of misrepresentation and omission”

The quickest way to get up to speed on Diana West

Welcome to my shortest blog post to date.

Video interview (February 22, 2021; UK) with Diana West.* In less than an hour, she traces the genesis of her research into Communist subversion via her interest in Islam immediately post-9/11.

Diana West : The Secret Assault on our Nations Character

SPOILER ALERT: There was no “victory over Communism”!

Share the link while you can.

* American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character; The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization; The Red Thread: A Search for Ideological Drivers Inside the Anti-Trump Conspiracy

American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character: West, Diana: 9780312630782: Amazon.com: Books The Death of the Grown-Up | Diana West | Macmillan The Red Thread: A Search for Ideological Drivers Inside the Anti-Trump Conspiracy: West, Diana: 9781796761276: Amazon.com: Books

The Square of Religious Opposition: A Van Tillian insight, diagrammed by Frame, taught by Bahnsen, paraphrased by me

“Van Til observed that both the unbeliever and the believer maintain correlative views of continuity (rationalism) and discontinuity (irrationalism), and that these two sets of correlative views stand in contradiction to each other. . . . The Christian holds that God knows and controls all things (resulting in rationality and continuity), which contradicts the non-Christian’s view that reality is an expression of pure chance (resulting in irrationality and discontinuity). The Christian holds that God must reveal Himself and does so with authority over man’s reasoning (stressing discontinuity and ‘irrationality’ or man’s rational inadequacy), which contradicts the non-Christian’s view that reality is controlled and (in principle) completely knowable by the laws of his own mind (stressing rationality and continuity).

“John Frame has often capitalized on this significant insight in Van Til. . . . It is found in ‘the square of religious opposition’ in his The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing Co., 1987), 14-15. . . .” Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis, 399-400, n. 267.

A long excerpt from Frame’s The Doctrine of the Christian Life (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing Co., 2008) is freely available online; his exposition of the square of religious opposition is in chapter 4, 42ff. What follows is my rendering (part transcription, part paraphrase, done at least ten years ago) of Greg L. Bahnsen’s interpretation of Frame’s idea. My source is Bahnsen’s lecture “Disarming Worldviews” in his Loving God with Your Whole Mind series GB1413. (Clicking the link will take you to a file you may play or download.)

* * *

There’s an antithesis between the Christian worldview and the non-Christian worldview, but at least they have being worldviews in common. Every worldview incorporates considerations of transcendence and elements of immanence.

A worldview’s elements of transcendence are the absolutes, authority, and universals it depends on, all of which are prior to experience. They are the controls that provide unity, continuity, and order for experience.

1. What is absolute is not part of transient experience, but renders the latter intelligible and therefore must transcend that person-relative, changing, and qualified experience.
2. Every appeal to authority relativizes momentary thinking. If I claim to live according to a principle, then that principle, and not any thought that happens to cross my mind, functions as an authority for me. That standard, external to my mind and not a product of it, is that to which my thinking must conform.
3. No philosopher looks upon the world as a realm of utter diversity, so it must notice “commonalities” and employ universals to refer to those commonalities in order to conceive and talk about the diversity he or she does find. When we analyze the reality presented in our experience, we use universals that necessarily transcend the experience to be analyzed.

By contrast, immanence is about the here-and-now, the close-at-hand, what is continuous with our experience. It stresses the concrete details over the abstract plan. Every philosophy deals not only in authority and control measures, but also in the freedom we have to change, make our own decisions, to be different. Continue reading “The Square of Religious Opposition: A Van Tillian insight, diagrammed by Frame, taught by Bahnsen, paraphrased by me”

What are we doing when we’re reading? Part 2: Gordon Clark’s occasionalism and Bernard Lonergan’s accumulation of insights converging on a viewpoint

This sequel to “What are we doing when we’re reading? Bernard Lonergan and Gordon Clark on ‘black marks on white paper’” is occasioned by Joseph K. Gordon‘s comment there. He is the author of Divine Scripture in Human Understanding: A Systematic Theology of the Christian Bible (Notre Dame Press, 2019). Another book firmly on my legenda.

Gordon supplied the (for me) elusive passage in Insight where Lonergan elaborates on the role of those marks in human knowing. The narrowing of my search to a half-dozen pages was a godsend, for I would have never made the time to comb the 748 pages of the Longmans edition I’ve used since 1978. In either edition the textual “address” of this portion of Insight is Chapter XVII, “Metaphysics as Dialectic,” Section 3, “The Truth of Interpretation,” Part 7 (or subsection 3.7) “Counterpositions.” In the original edition, it comprises pages 581-86.

Before dipping into that pregnant passage, let me review the problem the previous post touched on. It’s theological. Or rather, it’s a hermeneutical problem governed by theological commitments. My point of departure was Gordon H. Clark’s epistemology, which he believed his commitment to the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) logically demanded he adopt.

According to Clark, human knowledge is restricted to the propositions that one either reads in Holy Scripture or can validly infer therefrom. That was Clark’s axiom, his absolute, nondemonstrable starting point. All other beliefs, even if true, are at best opinion if not so stated in or deducible “by good and necessary consequence” (WCF I:VI) from Scripture.

My question continues to be: how did Gordon Clark access the propositions of Scripture? He was adamant that ink marks on a Bible’s white paper pages (or pixels on a computer screen) convey nothing to the mind. The Holy Spirit, however, uses those marks to “stimulate” or occasion the divinely intended proposition in the believer’s mind.

Clark was aware of the issue. As he formulated and rebutted a criticism:

Don’t you have to read the Bible? Well do I know the objections that this [ideal of axiomatization of Biblical propositions] immediately raises. Evidentialist apologists and secular philosophies alike exclaim, “But that assumes the point at issue; you are begging the question; you are arguing in a circle.” The reply to this objection should be obvious. The opponents, both secular and religious, assume the authority of experience, the inerrancy of sensation, the validity of induction. But this assumes the point at issue, this begs the question, and the one is as circular as the other.[1]

Continue reading “What are we doing when we’re reading? Part 2: Gordon Clark’s occasionalism and Bernard Lonergan’s accumulation of insights converging on a viewpoint”