"And yet, it moves."

The Gates of Hell Will Not Prevail

We have been on the road for most of the month of April. We have celebrated a wedding on the West Coast, babysat for a grandchild in South Carolina, prayed a funeral Mass for a dear friend in New Jersey, and attended the Baptism and First Communion of two grandchildren in America’s Heartland. Kudos to my almost-93-year-old mom who joined us for the twelve-hour trip (by car) to see two of her seventeen great-grandchildren receive sacraments. She is quite a trooper.

“And yet, it moves” is the defiant phrase attributed to Galileo. Wikipedia explains it thusly: “The Catholic Church persecuted Galileo for promoting the Copernican model of the Solar System in which the Earth moves around the Sun, which contradicted Catholic orthodoxy that the Earth remained fixed in the center of the universe. According to popular legend, Galileo muttered this in 1633 after the Roman Inquisition forced him to recant his claims, though this is likely apocryphal.”

Reading what the top-rated source for A.I. LLMs (Large Language Models) has to say reminds me of another famous quote, this one by Mark Twain: “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” The truth about Galileo was much more complex, and the issue was more one of authority than science. Both he and the Church unnecessarily escalated the argument.

But I digress.

I think of “and yet, it moves” often when I encounter the myriad of illogical assertions that pass for thought these days, as well as the full-throated claims of truth that are in fact decidedly not so. Our recent liturgical calendar has shared the Gospel of John, where Jesus reminds us, HE is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. How many times He must have to say, “and yet, it moves” with a sigh of compassion.

Consider the recent New York Times breathless assertion that “The Trump Administration is Coming After Birth-Control Access in a Terrifying New Way.” The author asserts that the passage of Title X in 1969, “the first federal program entirely dedicated to family planning and reproductive health care…would go on to become one of the most successful federal programs of the last century…by providing women with free and low-cost birth control.” They cite Planned Parenthood’s (PP) research arm, the Guttmacher Institute, which credits the program with having “avoided” one million “unintended births” per year. That would make fifty-six million new lives avoided, which one can add to the sixty million lives aborted by PP and friends. Reflect on that.

The Times happily points out, without providing evidence, “[Title X] has significantly reduced child poverty.” This would be news to the higher percentage of kids in poverty. Equally entertaining is their line, “Mr. Trump seems aimed at getting more women pregnant, whether they want to be or not.” (Melania was not available for comment.)

Let’s look at some measurements the Times neglected to consider. Marriage rates have dropped 42% from 10.6 per 1,000 then, versus 6.1 today. Marriage is out and cohabitation is in. To understand the rising poverty rates, one must understand the shocking rise in children born out of wedlock. The author also neglects to mention the steep decline in female happiness, despite remarkable gains in education and employment; the relationship between contraception and abortion; the increase in maternal death; and the rising demand for IVF to conceive. (Listening to this twenty-minute podcast is highly recommended.)

The author finishes with a flourish: “Not satisfied with the end of legal abortion in America, the anti-abortion movement seems poised to end the era of affordable contraception. The result isn’t just the end of Title X as we knew it. It’s the demise of a long-held bipartisan consensus that a woman’s ability to shape her own future, even if she was poor, was worth something — and certainly worth the government’s investment.”

Meanwhile, Jesus said in reply, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So, they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate.” (MT 19:4-6) God also commanded, “Be fruitful and multiply.”

The side that still values Jesus and what He teaches on marriage and family are reproducing at an increasingly higher rate than those who read the NY Times as their bible. They are also much happier.

The Times and its readers are hereby reminded, “And yet, it moves.”

The Biden administration was back in the news recently. As a reminder, this is the administration that labeled traditional Catholics as domestic terrorists, who imprisoned peaceful prayers protesting Planned Parenthood, arrested Catholic pro-lifers at gunpoint, and led the cheerleading for abortion and transgender mutilations. They have nothing on Saul of Tarsus who was leading the persecution and execution of Christians in 33AD.

Each of those policies have been rescinded by the Trump administration, the imprisoned have been pardoned, and a few weeks ago, Mark Houck was awarded a seven-figure settlement for the persecution he and his family endured. This week we were reminded of the Biden-era anti-Catholic depravity when texts from former DOJ prosecutors were made public. These two shared the progressive fever dream of arresting religious sisters and nuns “I would like to take a special assignment of finding and prosecuting them.” Cooney, who worked in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, responded to her comments about prosecuting the sisters by saying “I’m with you” and adding: “Although Iʼd like to prosecute any nun who still wears the head habit.”

I give them credit for recognizing the existential threat the habited ladies present. Their betrothal to Christ and the concomitant vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity, are a radical rebuttal to the progressive/feminist/communist/atheist/occult movement. Their orders, which include the Sisters of Mary, the Sisters of Life, the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia, Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal, and the lovely ladies of the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (three of whom I broke bread with this weekend) are growing in numbers and efficacy.

Meanwhile, once great orders like the Sisters of Charity, founded by Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, traded their habits for social justice slogans and are no more.

The progressive movement did great harm to the priesthood, the laity, and our religious sisters. In 2020, the Church seemed poised to go the way of the dinosaurs or mainline Protestantism: extinction or irrelevance. The new global order was poised to complete its project, and too many in Church leadership were too eager to go gently into that good night. Yet here we are experiencing a revival among the laity, as well as a growing number of Christ-centered priests and religious sisters replacing the larger number of the progressive-centered who are moving on to the next life.

There, they shall meet the Christ, and He will point to His growing remnant on earth, and He will proclaim, “And yet, it moves!”

So, let’s get moving!