The Fred Martinez Report

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Fernando: PART of ONE PAGE PLAY OUTLINE - and PLAY CONTINUED

Working on a ONE PAGE OUTLINE we talked about. I rely on the internet for info. on the battles as I forgot most of what I read in the book. I looked up how Shakespeare staged battles. While sword fights take place on stage, most military battles occur behind a scrim. Audience will see silohuette of the troops in action. with loud sound effects. Also drums, trumpets, Cannon fire using blanks, etc It also says one of the Characters in the battle describes what is occurring. (Narrator) When you get a chance , google The Battle of Jaen, It relates to the premise of the play. One or two tips. Make characters different--one is reckless, another careful--always wants more troops, another wait for good weather. A doubting Tomas which i I included in previous email. However, all want victory over the enemy. On the dialog, fewer words in a sentence the better. A play needs conflict which fuels dramatic tension. The goal is to...

So your objection is exactly right: Leo's reported pastoral handling of an exceptional case cannot simply be presented as Leo's magisterial teaching that would support Francis's later interpretation. And that substantially changes my earlier answer to your question, “name one pope who could possibly agree with Francis.” I cannot responsibly name a pre-Francis pope as having taught Francis's Buenos Aires position as magisterial teaching on the basis of the Leo evidence.Did Francis merely exercise a pastoral judgment within the existing doctrine, or did he introduce a new principle concerning access to the sacraments that conflicts with the previous magisterium?.

Yes. That is an important correction to my previous answer. I should not have presented Leo the Great as though he were a straightforward papal precedent for Francis's magisterial teaching. The key distinction is between: a particular pastoral action or accommodation by an individual Father , and an authoritative teaching of the papal magisterium establishing a doctrine or universal sacramental discipline. Joseph Ratzinger's 1998 CDF text makes precisely this distinction. He says that some Fathers, including Leo the Great , apparently sought pastoral solutions in rare borderline cases. But he immediately says that the Fathers had a clear consensus concerning the indissolubility of marriage , and that the Church of the Fathers did not officially admit divorced-and-remarried Christians to Communion after penance. Even more directly, the 1994 CDF document says that analogous pastoral solutions proposed or practiced by some Fathers never achieved the consensus of the Father...

Not as a historical blanket statement. I would not agree that every pope in history disagreed with Francis, because that would require evidence about every pope and every relevant aspect of Francis's teaching. But on the specific question we've been discussing—divorced-and-remarried Catholics and Eucharistic Communion—there is a demonstrable discontinuity between Francis's approved Buenos Aires interpretation and the explicit teaching/discipline articulated by John Paul II and reaffirmed by Benedict XVI. John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio 84 (1981): divorced Catholics who have entered another union are not admitted to Eucharistic Communion because their state objectively contradicts the Eucharistic sign of Christ's union with the Church. Reconciliation leading to Communion requires a way of life no longer contradicting marital indissolubility, concretely including continence when separation is impossible. Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis 29 (2007): explicitly says the Synod confirmed the Church's practice of not admitting divorced-and-remarried persons to the sacraments because their state objectively contradicts the Eucharistic sign. Francis's interpretation: the 2023 Vatican response explicitly says that Francis permits, in some cases after adequate discernment, reconciliation even when a person has not succeeded in maintaining the continence proposed by the earlier discipline. So I would sharpen what you are arguing rather than make the much broader claim about all popes: Francis introduced a significant change in the application of Eucharistic discipline for divorced-and-remarried Catholics that is difficult to reconcile with the explicit formulation of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. That is a much stronger claim historically because we can put the relevant papal texts side by side. And this is exactly where Rist's argument becomes more interesting: the issue isn't simply whether Francis used ambiguous language. There is an identifiable conflict between an earlier formulation that says the objectively contrary state itself excludes Communion and Francis's later framework in which discernment of diminished culpability can, in some circumstances, lead to sacramental reconciliation despite failure to live in continence. Whether that constitutes heresy, however, remains a separate theological question. The crucial step is establishing that the proposition Francis changed is itself a divinely revealed doctrine, rather than a disciplinary rule or a prudential application of broader doctrine. That is the point Rist would have to establish to get from “Francis departed from previous papal teaching” to “Francis is a heretic.” would any pope in history agree with your statement: The crucial step is establishing that the proposition Francis changed is itself a divinely revealed doctrine, rather than a disciplinary rule or a prudential application of broader doctrine No—not in the sense that I can legitimately attribute that exact methodological statement to any particular pope in history. I was stating a theological distinction of my own, and I should not have presented it as though it were necessarily the framework a pope would accept. More importantly, the documents themselves make the issue sharper than my earlier wording suggested. John Paul II did not describe the prohibition simply as a changeable disciplinary rule. In 1997 he said that the Church's pastoral response presupposes recognition of the doctrine and that the Church “does not have the power to contravene this disposition of divine wisdom.” He then reaffirmed that divorced-and-remarried persons cannot receive Communion, invoking the authority of Christ. The 1994 CDF letter under John Paul II likewise described the practice as binding, founded on Scripture, and said that it could not be modified merely because circumstances differ; it explicitly grounded the matter in divine law from which the Church has no power to dispense. Benedict XVI reaffirmed the practice in Sacramentum Caritatis, saying that the Synod confirmed the Church's practice, based on Scripture, of not admitting the divorced-and-remarried to the sacraments because their state objectively contradicts the Eucharistic sign. So I would revise my previous statement: It is not enough simply to call the pre-Francis rule “disciplinary” and therefore subject to papal modification. The pre-Francis sources themselves give the rule a theological foundation in Scripture, divine law, the nature of marriage, and the Eucharist. That doesn't by itself prove that Francis is a formal heretic. But it does mean that the burden on someone defending continuity is considerably heavier than I made it sound. And there is an important textual fact on Francis's side: the 2023 Vatican response explicitly says that Amoris Laetitia is authentic magisterium and that Francis's interpretation permits sacramental reconciliation in some cases even when continence has not been achieved. So the real theological question is no longer merely: “Did Francis change a discipline?” It is: “Can the Francis interpretation be reconciled with the earlier claim that the exclusion follows from divine law and from the objective incompatibility between the new union and the Eucharistic sign?” That is a much more difficult question for the continuity thesis—and it is precisely where Rist's argument deserves to be examined in detail rather than dismissed as simply confusing discipline with doctrine.

Not as a historical blanket statement. I would not agree that every pope in history disagreed with Francis , because that would require evidence about every pope and every relevant aspect of Francis's teaching. But on the specific question we've been discussing—divorced-and-remarried Catholics and Eucharistic Communion—there is a demonstrable discontinuity between Francis's approved Buenos Aires interpretation and the explicit teaching/discipline articulated by John Paul II and reaffirmed by Benedict XVI. John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio 84 (1981): divorced Catholics who have entered another union are not admitted to Eucharistic Communion because their state objectively contradicts the Eucharistic sign of Christ's union with the Church. Reconciliation leading to Communion requires a way of life no longer contradicting marital indissolubility, concretely including continence when separation is impossible. Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis 29 (2007): explic...

The Secret's Out: It's Actually 'Artificial Stupidity'...Artificial Intelligence is going to be great. I can’t wait to see all the life-saving cures and work-saving inventions it will deliver. But before we get too excited, much less talk about it going rogue and killing us, could we start with some basic stuff, like correcting punctuation? It’s hard to scare me about A.I. when my Roomba still gets stuck under the couch, and Google A.I. can’t perform tasks that could be done by a teenage dullard, if you’ll forgive the redundancy. Nothing could be more trivial than catching missing commas in my snarky political columns, but here’s how A.I. is working out in my life. Grok simply refuses to punctuate columns, and Google A.I. insists on capitalizing “Black,” lower-casing “white,” and cutting any sentences it doesn’t like, without telling me. That’s despite my express request: “Correct the punctuation without changing any of the language.”.. No wonder the big AI companies want protection from their upstart competitors. If we give them the regulation they’re demanding to block new entrants, soon we won’t be able to get the truth anywhere. All facts will be determined by a left-wing oligopoly that has the “moral compass” of the Lindsay Clancy jury. A.I. isn’t dangerous; regulation is.

The Secret's Out: It's Actually 'Artificial Stupidity' - Ann Coulter anncoulter.com https://anncoulter.com › Column 3 days ago — 2026 by Ann Coulter . Google A.I. insists on capitalizing “Black,” lower-casing “white,” and cutting any sentences. A.I. isn't dangerous; ... Artificial Intelligence is going to be great. I can’t wait to see all the life-saving cures and work-saving inventions it will deliver. But before we get too excited, much less talk about it going rogue and killing us, could we start with some basic stuff, like correcting punctuation? It’s hard to scare me about A.I. when my Roomba still gets stuck under the couch, and Google A.I. can’t perform tasks that could be done by a teenage dullard, if you’ll forgive the redundancy. Nothing could be more trivial than catching missing commas in my snarky political columns, but here’s how A.I. is working out in my life. Grok simply refuses to punctuate columns, and Google A.I. insists on capitalizing “Black,...

Church Historian Dr. Mazza on LifeSite: "A pope will lose his power, he will lose his office, if he becomes a heretic or promotes the heresy of others. So this is just one example of St. Columban here, telling that to Boniface IV'

What Church History REVEALS About Leo’s Pontificate: Burke, Miriam & Schneider’s Analysis ... We thank Dr. Ed Mazza and LifeSite News' John Henry Westen for giving The Catholic Monitor permission to post a series of probably four or five transcriptions of this important show. This is part three of the series: Westen: How did the cardinals deal with it when they had to confront them, and how they even determined that they were anti-popes. I mean, obviously, this time is mega confusing. You have the best people on either side. It reminds me of what our Lord said in the Scriptures, "In the end, even the elect, if it be possible, will be confused." Give us some examples from history of how bishops, priests, and cardinals dealt with the same kind of a thing. Mazza : One of the earliest examples we have is from one of the darkest parts of the Dark Ages. We have St. Columban, an Irish missionary, who went throughout barbarian Europe bringing the faith back. And at the time...

"His [Fortin] criticism of modern political thought was precisely that politics increasingly became organized around competing rights, interests, structures, and power claims, rather than the classical question of virtue and the common good. So Fortin might ask Wauck: Even if China is being unfairly contained, does that by itself establish that China represents the just alternative? The answer is no.... Wauck may correctly identify some genuine abuses of American power, but he risks replacing one ideological simplification with another—interpreting world history as a struggle between an “Empire” and its geopolitical opponents, without sufficiently asking whether those opponents themselves embody justice, virtue, or the common good. And that criticism would apply even if many of Wauck's individual factual claims about China, Russia, Israel, or American foreign policy turned out to be correct"

If we reconstruct the question from Fortin’s actual philosophical method , I think he would criticize Wauck less for which geopolitical side he favors and more for the philosophical framework through which he interprets politics . Fortin repeatedly criticized both the modern Left and Right when they tried to appropriate Christianity for a political program. He emphasized the distinction between classical political philosophy, Christianity, and modern political ideologies. 1. Fortin would probably object to Wauck's overarching geopolitical narrative Wauck's formulation— “the Anglo-Zionist war on the world is really all about—subjugating China” —turns a very complicated collection of international events into a single historical drama with one underlying antagonist and one underlying objective . Fortin would likely ask: What philosophical or historical evidence establishes that these diverse events constitute one coherent “war” directed toward one ultimate objective? That is c...

Scott Greer: Biggest Disappointment Of Trump 2.0... "Greatest Letdown" of Trump 2.0 & the 2028 Strategy The Dissatisfaction: Operating from the populist, nationalist wing of the conservative movement, Greer argues that the second Trump administration has significantly fallen short of its core mandates—particularly regarding immigration enforcement, rolling back the administrative state, and enacting sweeping populist economic reforms. The 2028 "Silver Lining": He posits a controversial theory that a Democratic victory in 2028 could actually serve the long-term health of the Republican party. His line of reasoning is that another Democratic term would force the GOP out of its current complacency, disrupt the influence of establishment figures, and clear a path for a more ideological, authentically right-wing populist successor (such as JD Vance or other anti-tech populists) to reshape the party without being tied to Trump's direct legacy.

Highly Respected's IQ Supplem… The Biggest Disappointment Of… 0:00 1:25:09 Listen now The Biggest Disappointment Of Trump 2.0 Highly Respected Ep. 340 Scott Greer Sep 21 1. The "Greatest Letdown" of Trump 2.0 & the 2028 Strategy The Dissatisfaction: Operating from the populist, nationalist wing of the conservative movement, Greer argues that the second Trump administration has significantly fallen short of its core mandates—particularly regarding immigration enforcement, rolling back the administrative state, and enacting sweeping populist economic reforms. The 2028 "Silver Lining": He posits a controversial theory that a Democratic victory in 2028 could actually serve the long-term health of the Republican party. His line of reasoning is that another Democratic term would force the GOP out of its current complacency, disrupt the influence of establishment figures, and clear a path for a more ideological, authentically right-wing populist successor ...