Quote:There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy.

The handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election–an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted. For more than a year, a loosely organized coalition of operatives scrambled to shore up America’s institutions as they came under simultaneous attack from a remorseless pandemic and an autocratically inclined President. Though much of this activity took place on the left, it was separate from the Biden campaign and crossed ideological lines, with crucial contributions by nonpartisan and conservative actors. The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory. It was an election so calamitous that no result could be discerned at all, a failure of the central act of democratic self-governance that has been a hallmark of America since its founding.

Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears. They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction. After Election Day, they monitored every pressure point to ensure that Trump could not overturn the result. “The untold story of the election is the thousands of people of both parties who accomplished the triumph of American democracy at its very foundation,” says Norm Eisen, a prominent lawyer and former Obama Administration official who recruited Republicans and Democrats to the board of the Voter Protection Program.

Quote:“…the fear factor has got to step back. This idea that I don’t want to give you something that I don’t even know that I have is almost at the point of ridiculous. Let’s use some common sense.”

Quote:“I’m seeing patients that have facial rashes, fungal infections, bacterial infections. Reports coming from my colleagues, all over the world, are suggesting that the bacterial pneumonias are on the rise.

“Why might that be? Because untrained members of the public are wearing medical masks, repeatedly… in a non-sterile fashion… They’re becoming contaminated. They’re pulling them off of their car seat, off the rearview mirror, out of their pocket, from their countertop, and they’re reapplying a mask that should be worn fresh and sterile every single time.”

Quote:“New research is showing that cloth masks may be increasing the aerosolization of the SARS-COV-2 virus into the environment causing an increased transmission of the disease…”

Quote:“In February and March we were told not to wear masks. What changed? The science didn’t change. The politics did. This is about compliance. It’s not about science… Our opposition is using low-level retrospective observational studies that should not be the basis for making a medical decision of this nature.”

Quote:“From a political point of view, the realization of this synthesis is a kind of coup de force. The Roman Congregation itself should have analyzed the responses of the bishops and made a general synthesis of them. However, both the Italian and the French Conferences (and no doubt others as well) have decided to do this work themselves, which makes it possible, according to the usual inclination of bishops' conferences, to draw up a general line, to which a certain number of bishops will not relate, and to formulate wishes that are purported to be those of all.”

Quote:“When a place run by the FSSPX is nearby, there is no notable flux of a return to the Catholic Church” – even though the excommunications of the bishops ordained by Bishop Lefebvre in 1988 were lifted by Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis gave its priests the legal power to celebrate marriages and to hear confessions.

Quote:“The regular decline of practicing Catholics is a sure witness… It is clear that if the churches are emptying, it is because of doctrinal and moral deficiencies and of the meagerness of the spiritual life being offered by the ‘conciliar’ Church.”

• Take care not to extend the TLM so as not to induce a wrongful understanding of the place of this form that would end up being considered as a rite.
  
• A fragile and identity-conscious youth is easily fascinated by the TLM. It is reinforced in its siege mentality by mediocre sermons and by social media that impoverish thought and reinforce the young in their ideas and even their excesses.
  
• Liturgical education (Ars celebrandi) and historical and theological training that insist on ecclesiology (study of the Dogmatic Constitutions and pastoral care according to Vatican II).
  
• Verifying the obedience of the communities that celebrate in the extraordinary form.
  

Quote:“The publication of the Motu proprio demonstrates commendable intent but it is not giving expected fruits. While it honors a principle of reality, un untiring work for unity appears necessary. The promise of mutual enrichment of the two forms of the one Roman Rite remain largely inchoative. Sterilizing mutual distrust remains. The concern for the unity of the Church is not honored in full by the implementation of the Motu proprio. The implementation of this letter ultimately poses ecclesiological questions rather than liturgical ones.”

Quote:“The text in itself is not surprising when one frequents certain French episcopal circles. It represents the historical canal of the progressive reforms, of the great pastoral, liturgical and suchlike experiments of the sixties. In France, these ill-inspired and badly conducted reforms aroused a powerful traditional reaction that created, among other things, Notre-Dame de Chrétienté. Benedict XVI wanted to appease the spirits through an act of reconciliation (the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum of 2007). The reading of this synthesis of the CEF clearly shows that the motu proprio was ultimately never accepted or understood by many dioceses.”

Quote:“We meet many priests and seminarians in our pilgrimages who do not all come from the so-called ‘Eccesia Dei’ environment. Remember all those conversations with priests, seminarians and sometimes bishops during our pilgrimage. The Catholic friendship that unites us is much more important than the stereotypes being spread by the synthesis. This friendship is the fruit of Benedict XVI’s motu proprio. When he was Cardinal Ratzinger, he assured us that we had our full place in the Church, just as we were, that is, integrally.

“Dear pilgrim friends of Notre Dame de Chrétienté, I understand your resentment in the face of this ill-treatment. You are involved in your workplaces, in schools, in pro-life movements, in the defense of the family, in evangelization. …You fight every day so that your children may receive a Catholic catechism, and Catholic sacraments in an atheistic and anti-Catholic world. You are right to support the priests of communities who give their lives for your souls. Let us neither be discouraged nor divided. This synthesis of the CEF shows no understanding for the difficulty of Christian life in a ‘world that has ceased to be Christian’. This anti-Catholic world, dear friends, is a legacy you have inherited and those who today criticize and judge you, are those who attended in the front row the collapse of the Catholic Church in France!

“The last ‘observant’ French Catholic families have no use for this hatred, this shriveled resentment. They simply ask for the basic charity of the Catholic towards his neighbor and also, for the salvation of our souls, the possibility of carrying on the experiment of tradition.”