Bishop Gracida tells of his "retirement" & "shift from ranching to fighting the forces of the 'Third Path' & my fighting would once again bring me into conflict with the bishops of Texas"

Braunvieh Bull similar to my bulls, Cornerstone Amigo and Ambassador

Bishop Rene Henry Gracida's 100th birthday is coming up on June 9 so I am reading his autobiography in preparation for the great day. 

Bishop Gracida tells of his "retirement" and "shift from ranching to fighting the forces of the 'Third Path' and my fighting would once again bring me into conflict with the bishops of Texas":

I was close to celebrating my 74th birthday and I realized that in just one more year I would be 75 years old and on my 75th Birthday I would be required to submit to the Pope a letter of resignation.  The more I thought about it the more I questioned why I should wait a year to do it.  I was mentally and physically exhausted from the Kenedy lawsuit, the attacks by the bishops, other ‘slip and fall’ lawsuits and now the daily problems created for me by my Coadjutor.  I decided that I would ask the Pope to let me retire a year early.  I wrote to Pope John Paul II and asked him for permission to retire.  He granted me permission and so on April Fools Day, April 1, 1997, I retired.

My worst fears about Bishop Roberto were soon realized.  He closed Camp Corpus Christi and began closing different chancery offices such as the Office of Evangelization, the Office of Pro-life Activities and others.  It was a disaster.  Many of the programs that I had started that were successful were now shut down.  Some people were comparing him to Attila the Hun laying waste the countryside.  Thank God the Diocese of Corpus Christi was spared further damage when, after just two years as Ordinary, Pope John Paul II promoted Bishop Roberto to be the Archbishop of San Juan, Puerto Rico.  This is not the place to recount all that happened in San Juan after he became its Archbishop.  Suffice it to say that he has been the subject of an Apostolic Visitation and has been asked by the Holy See to resign.

I had moved out of the big house occupied by the bishops of Corpus Christi and had moved in 1992 into the little frame house across the street on the bayshore built by Bishop Drury for his retirement.  The house was on Diocesan property and belonged to the Diocese.  There I was relatively isolated from the chaos that was taking place in the Diocese but even being that close, across the street from the bishop’s house, was too close.

I had been thinking all along about what I might do after I retired.  I looked around at all of the bishops who had retired ahead of me andd realized that many of them were vegetating, i.e. they were rapidly declining mentally and physically because they did not have enough mental challenges or physical activity to keep them in shape.  In reflecting on my own situation I decided that since during the  fourteen years I had served as President of the Kenedy Foundation I had had to review the operations of the Foundation’s cattle tenant on the 235,000 acre Kenedy Ranch I had been exposed to a lot of the workings of a cattle ranch.  Our tenant ran 10,000 head of cattle on the ranch.  It was important for me to visit the ranch frequently to help our ranch manager make important decisions affecting our tenant.  Therefore, I decided I would start a little ranch of my own.

Since I had been exposed to the actual workings of a cattle ranch but had little scientific knowledge about ranching, as soon as I retired I enrolled as a student at Texas A & M University in College Station, Texas, in the Beef Science Program.  After having spent 32 years from 1927 to 1959 sitting behind a desk (except for the war years) in a classroom this would not be a new experience for me.   By the end of the summer of 1997 I graduated with a Certificate in Beef Management Science and was ready to start my ranch.

I bought 80 acres just east of Mathis, Texas, just forty-five minutes by car from my house in Corpus Christi to the ranch.  I named the ranch Rancho Milagro because I felt it was sort of a miracle that at my age I was able to even think about being a rancher.  I bought a mobile home and put it on the ranch.  I bought six cows and a bull.  Over the next fourteen years I increased the acreage of the ranch to 240 acres, ran 100 cattle, 100 sheep, 25 chickens, 3 geese, 8 guinea fowl, 10 goats, four dogs and a cat.  I bought a very large tractor, cultivated my hayfield, hired a neighbor to cut and bale my hay and then I moved and stacked 150 large round bales of hay weighing 1,000 pounds each summer.  I vaccinated my animals, fed them, nursed them when they got sick and hauled them to the auction barn when they were ready to be sold.

I loved the rural life, the life of a rancher. I loved the animals and most of all I loved the solitude.  I guess that that was one thing I missed very much after I left Saint Vincent Archabbey.  I could go out on my deck at night and sit and pray and count the stars.  Being out in the country one can see stars one never knew existed because on the ranch there were no city lights to interfere with viewing the heavens.

I did not retreat from my responsibilities as a bishop, now no longer an ordinary,  to minister to God’s people.  I accepted every invitation to speak, to celebrate Liturgies and to minister anyway I could.  I had satellite internet servvice and I began to blog and soon had a large number of people corresponding with me with some asking for spiritual direction.  In addition, I began to become involved in pro-life activities that did not involve the Diocese.  For example, in 2005 Texas Right to Life asked me to host a Symposium on Brain Death at a hotel in Corpus Christi.   I did and it resulted in a ‘conversion,’ not of faith but of a change of focus in my fight to protect innocent human life.  From 1971 until 2005 all my energy in fighting for greater respect for the sanctity of innocent human life was focused on the unborn child, now my focus would also be on end-of-life issues.

The Roe v Wade decision gave impetus to my work as Chairman of the Commission for Pro-life Activities of the Province of Miami.  My experience in the Province of Miami and in the Diocese of Pennsacola-Tallahassee, my participation in the Annual March for Life in Washington, my deep friendship with Nellie Gray, the founder of the National March for Life who was from Corpus Christi,  all this fighting of abortion paid off when I became Bishop of Corpus Christi.  As I have written, by organizing The Body of Christ Rescue and excommunicating the three abortionists the City of Corpus Christi has become abortion-free.

I had followed with great interest the cases of Nancy Quilan, Terri Schiavo and Nancy Cruzan and I was shocked by the public support that Bishop Robert Lynch of Saint Petersburg, Florida gave to the efforts of the husband of XXXX to obtain a court order that was the direct cause of her death.  Terry was reported to have been insured for $250,000 and her death probably enriched someone.  I was learning that the assault on the human lives of critically ill people can be traced in many instances to human greed.  That the love of money is the root of all evil was being proved to be involved in more and more end-of-life cases.  I began to become very active in end-of-life issues, not because I was approaching the end of my own life, which I look forward to with joyful expectation, but rather because when innocent human life is attacked, whether through abortion, infanticide, murder, unjust administration of the death penalty, passive or active euthanasia, the issue is still the same:  the unjust taking of innocent human life.

I owe my education in understanding end-of-life issues to a number of holy, intelligent, brave men and women who patiently led me to understand all the factors that produced and continue to promote the “Third Path” of euthanasia.  Here are the principle individuals:  Dr. Paul Byrne, Neurosurgeon, Elizabeth Graham of Texas Right to Life, Kassi Dee Marks an Appellate Attorney, Elizabeth Wickham, Publisher of LifeTree.org,  Julie Grimstad, blogger, Ione Whitlock Publisher of BelburyReview.com, Francette Meaney, Founder of Birthright of Corpus Christi, Sister Anne Sophie, Foundress of The Society of the Body of Christ and Judy Brown, President of the American Life League.

My retirement activity was now to shift from ranching to fighting the forces of the “Third Path” and my fighting would once again bring me into conflict with the bishops of Texas.

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My Fair Lady has always been one of my favorite movies.  I thought of it in 2011 when the drought which had already afflicted South Texas for three years was about to enter its fourth year.  I remembered Eliza Doolittle’s explanation of her aunt’s illness, “She were near done in by gin!”  I thought I am about to be ‘done in’ as a rancher by this terrible drought.  Over the years I had had several inquiries from realtors asking if I were interested in selling the ranch.  I called the one who was most persistent and gave the listing.  By the end of the year the ranch was sold and I had until February 28 to move all the animals off the ranch.  Some I sold and some I gave away to friends.  When we closed the sale on February 28, 2012 I returned to the house owned by the Diocese on Ocean Drive in Corpus Christi that I had kept while I worked the ranch.

Now most of my time was devoted to helping reform the current Texas Advance Directive Law, most recently fighting the passage of Senate Bill 303 in the Texas Legislature.  For several decades the State has had a law in effect that regulated the use of advance directives in cases of critically or terminally ill patients in hospitals.  It is a badly defective law.  It gave to ethics committees in hospitals the right to terminate care and it only gave the surrogates of a patient ten days to find another health care facility or the hospital would “pull the plug” on the patient.  Most hospitals in Texas belong to the Texas Hospital Association.  At times it functions like a “gentleman’s club” in which there is a tacit agreement that one hospital will not embarrass another hospital.  Consequently it was difficult, if not impossible to transfer a patient from one hospital to another in ten days.  The pro-life activists in the State pushed for a revision of the advance directives statute that would increase the time allotted to transfer the patient to another hospital, among other patient protections.

As often happens, the liberal Representatives and Senators in the Texas Legislature proposed SB303 according to their own liberal agenda in an attempt to reform current law, but not in positive steps forward..  The pro-life activists in the State immediately rallied in opposition to SB303.  Much to their (and my) amazement, the bishops of Texas speaking through The Texas Catholic Conference supported the passage of SB303 as introduced.  The battle was joined.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, many years ago had written that national episcopal conferences are dangerous.  He wrote that sometimes the bureaucracy or staff of a conference would come to have too much influence over the bishops and the bishops, like sheep, would be led to their slaughter.  What the Cardinal wrote about national episcopal conferences was true also of the Texas Catholic Conference.  The staff of the Conference had always been liberal.  The first Executive Director of the Texas Catholic Conference was Monsignor John McCarthy, later Bishop of Austin.  There is probably not a more liberal bishop in Texas than Bishop John McCarthy.  The Conference was connected for years to Saint Edwards University in Austin, a very liberal University in the most liberal city in the State of Texas.

During all my years as a member of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops/United States Catholic Conference I had ample opportunity to see Cardinal Ratzinger’s observation validated.  Also, in the Texas Catholic Conference I had ample opportunity to observe that it is only on rare occasions that the body of bishops will reject a proposal or opinion of the Conference’s staff.  I doubt very much that any bishop-member of the TCC had actually read SB303, despite many Catholic patient advocates, legislators, and pro-life activists writing to them about the specific dangers of the nuanced language in SB303. I had plowed through it and Kassi Dee Marks, and appellate attorney did a detailed analysis of SB303 which she shared with me.  I suspect that following the usual procedure the bishops would have received and accepted the analysis of SB303 prepared by the staff of The Texas Catholic Conference.  Perhaps that reliance on staff would be acceptable in many matters, but not in the matters of life or death.

I along with other pro-life activists had a good working relationship with Governor Rick Perry.  We explained to him in clear legal and moral theology terms the dangerous provisions in SB303.  He listened, did his own analysis consulted with his staff, and expressed his opposition to key legislators who were instrumental in stopping the legislation in the House.  SB303 passed the State Senate and was set for a hearing in the House late in the 2013 Legislative Session.  During this saga, the Bishop of Austin, speaking for the bishops of Texas visited the Governor and asked him not to veto the bill.  Governor Perry, knowing that I was totally opposed to the bill asked Bishop Vasquez, “Are all the bishops of Texas in favor of SB303?”  Bishop Vasquez replied, “All except one old retired guy.”  This old, retired guy is grateful to Governor Perry for help in stopping the passage of SB303.  The next session of the Texas Legislature will be in the Spring of 2015 and “this old retired guy” will again join with the pro-life activists (if I am still alive)  in opposing the revived version of that anti-life, anti-patient bad legislation.

I suspect that part of the problem of the liberalism of the staff of The Texas Catholic Conference lies in its proximity to the Capitol of Texas.  There is much that is positive in that proximity and much that is negative.  One of the negatives is that the staff of the Texas Catholic Conference, especially its Executive Director, is subject to lobbying by special moneyed interests such as The Texas Hospital Association, The Texas Medical Association, big pharma  and others who have a financial interest in the outcome of legislative battles over specific legislative proposals.  Proposals that sometimes verge on being immoral.

The other area of interest that has kept me busy in my retirement is fighting the growing transplantation of human organs industry.  The Church is in favor of transplanting human organs under certain conditions.  Most compassionate people would agree that it is good to save one person’s life if the organs of another person who has died can be salvaged and transplanted.  The problem lies in determining the death of the donor.

It is well established that after Dr. Christiaan Barnard had successfully made the first transplantation of a human heart from one man to another in 1966 there was a rush by the medical profession to make the transplantation of human organs, even the human heart, commonplace.  The problem was and is that the human organ being transplanted must be alive, i.e. it must come from a human body in which the process of necrosis, deterioration, has not begun.

In 1967 a conference was called at Harvard University to study the problem:  how could human organs be taken from a human body that was not yet dead by the standard definition of death as cessation of heart and lung activity.  The solution arrived at in the Harvard Conference was, well lets change the definition of death to the cessation of brain activity and that way we can keep the heart and lungs functioning while we remove the organs from the donor.  Brain death became the standard definition of death and the medical profession succeeded in getting all the state legislatures to accept in in their statutes.

The problem with brain death I learned in the Conference I hosted in Corpus Christi in 2005, according to one of the participants who is a neurosurgeon, who for a long time had engaged in the transplantation of human organs, was that he finally came to realize that the donors of the organs were not really dead, he was killing the donor by removing the donor’s vital organs.  This neurosurgeon stopped participating in organ transplantation where the patient was declared “brain dead.”

The human organ transplantation industry has grown and grown and is now a monster.  The money to be made by doctors and hospitals runs now in the trillions of dollars worldwide.  It is a monster that seems impossible to control.  A heart transplant alone can cost up to $1,000,000.00.  When that kind of money is involved, morality and ethics lose their importance, they are no longer considered part of the medical care equation.

I was particularly concerned about the case of Marlise Munoz, a comatose pregnant woman in Fort Worth, who was euthanized over the protest of pro-life activists who argued that that she should be allowed to live until her child was born.  Doctors in Germany did a survey and documented 21 cases where pregnant women in a PVS state were successfully delivered of their child.  In Marlise’s case concern for her suffering caused people to be unconcerned about the suffering of the unborn child in her womb when she was euthanized.

In whatever time God allows me on this earth I have made the commitment to stay in the fight.  I ask Our Lord Jesus Christ, and his Blessed Mother to assist me. [http://extraordinarybishop.blogspot.com/2014/09/here-is-series-of-posts-by-bishop-rene.html]

Pray an Our Father now for reparation for the sins committed because of Francis's Amoris Laetitia.

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost - Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.

Francis Notes:

- Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:

"[T]he Pope... WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See."
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)

Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said "the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church."
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]

- "If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?": http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html

- "Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?": http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html

- If Francis betrays Benedict XVI & the"Roman Rite Communities" like he betrayed the Chinese Catholics we must respond like St. Athanasius, the Saintly English Bishop Robert Grosseteste & "Eminent Canonists and Theologians" by "Resist[ing]" him: https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/12/if-francis-betrays-benedict-xvi.html 

 -  LifeSiteNews, "Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers," December 4, 2017:

The AAS guidelines explicitly allows "sexually active adulterous couples facing 'complex circumstances' to 'access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'"

-  On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:

"The AAS statement... establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense."

- On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:

"Francis' heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents."

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.

Election Notes:  

- Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: "212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted...Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden" [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]

- Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times "Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003": http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html

- Tucker Carlson's Conservatism Inc. Biden Steal Betrayal is explained by “One of the Greatest Columns ever Written" according to Rush: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/tucker-carlsons-conservatism-inc-biden.html?m=1

 

- A Hour which will Live in Infamy: 10:01pm November 3, 2020:
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1

 

What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: "Anitfa 'Agent Provocateurs'":
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1] 

Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God's Will and to do it.

 

Pray an Our Father now for America.

 

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.