Category: Book reviews

A typical anti-motherhood and pro-euthanasia narrative, Weaver’s novel almost makes the reader happy that the godforsaken eponymous main character commits suicide at novel’s end.

Weaver’s novel traces the life of Billie Girl from babyhood to old age.  Abandoned by her parents, raised by transgender “mothers”, manipulated by a boy who wanted her to masturbate him, and living with various men who use her as their sexual objects, one would hope that a woman who undergoes these abuses would realize that she has the opportunity to rise above her trauma, to love life, and to help others.

Unfortunately, Billie illustrates the opposite, and so the novel repeats a common plot of women with tragic lives who perpetuate tragedy in fellow human beings.  Billie does not change her life’s trajectory from being a victim to overcoming bad influences in her life.  She will continue to slither from one man to another, never considering that marriage is a sacrament.  The sexual activity she engages in with the various men in her life is just something to do to occupy her time.  Billie’s philosophy is succinctly offered in the ambiguous claim that “We do what we have to do” (132).

Most distressing, however, is Billie’s adoption of standard anti-life ideas.  She never wanted her stillborn child because “I had never wanted to be a mother” (132).  Moreover, like other novels with characters who deny motherhood or who support abortion, Billie’s attitude toward the elderly is explicitly anti-life.  She calls the elderly in the nursing home where she resides “other old, useless, decomposing human beings—most of them not in their right minds” [221].  The cavalier way in which she describes killing people is remarkable.  The tortured syntax of saying that “The next two residents I sent on their way” (225) is brutal, yet a literary gem.  Killing a nursing home resident because “She had pooped in the bed” (228) almost gives the reader delight, if not a sense of divine justice, in knowing that such an evil person as Billie eventually commits suicide.

Billie thus has a didactic function to perform for contemporary readers.  Pro-life readers can use Weaver’s novel to be vigilant against those who disrespect human life, whether the life of others or their own.

This was the first of five novels I examined for a presentation before a scholarly audience on recent transgender literature and the right-to-life issues.  My recommendation is that it is neither worthwhile nor necessary to purchase this novel (especially not from Amazon, which supports pro-abortion politicians), but pro-life readers may want to borrow it from their local libraries instead.

Interesting casual reading, functioning as a warning for parents against genetic editing of their children and for children not to rely on “Artificial Friends” for companionship.

Ishiguro has depicted once again a dystopian world like his Never Let Me Go which entertains, but serves the didactic function of literature more.  The novel is an admonition for parents, showing the negative effects of “uplifting” their children by genetic editing.  The work also serves to caution children and young adults not to rely on the AFs (Artificial Friends) created for them.

One thinks immediately of the hundreds or thousands of “friends” whom many young people have on social media services like Facebook or Twitter.  Is the art of friendship so lost among our youth that they rely on the sanitized profiles of anyone on the Internet?

One part of the plot is weak and implausible.  Klara, the AF for the human Josie, plans to destroy only one machine which she thinks will help stop the pollution that she thinks is responsible for making her human feeble.  Since AFs are supposed to be intelligent, if Klara were that intelligent, wouldn’t she know that much more would be necessary to save the life of her human?  Despite this weakness, the narrative proceeds strongly enough so that the reader doesn’t know with certainty until page 243 that being “lifted” means that children are enhanced by “genetic editing.”

Is the moral of the novel, then, that it’s perfectly human for kids to be stupid?  Not necessarily.  Besides, if any parent wants STOOPID kids, then he or she will send his or her children to public schools and then leftist colleges or have them vote Democrat.

There are, however, two conclusions one can reach from the novel.

First, work with the abilities that children naturally have.

Second, yank those damned Xbox and phones saturated with social media apps out of kids’ hands and then kick the kids out of the house to play in the back yard with other children.

A penultimate thought: religious readers will see through the stupidity of those adults who come close but never near enough to recognize that human beings have souls.  Witness the following passages where characters hint at that bit of immortality given to them by God yet never reach it:

“Our generation still carry [verb tense in original] the old feelings.  A part of us refuses to let go.  The part that wants to keep believing there’s something unreachable inside each of us.  Something that’s unique and won’t transfer.  But there’s nothing like that, we know that now”  [….]  It’s not faith you need.  Only rationality” (207, continuing on unpaginated 208)

Similarly, Josie’s father seems to think that the “human heart” is “Something that makes each of us special and individual” (215).

Dear God, are there that many people in the reading public who can’t understand religious language?

A final thought: the last paragraph in the novel, which shows Klara in a junkyard, waiting for a construction crane to take her away, is sheer pathos since Klara seems more human than the human characters.

A classic of Catholic Christian examination of the abortion industry and its demonic nature, Euteneuer’s 2010 book is as relevant in 2022 as it was when first published, maybe even more relevant than then since abortion zealots in academia, entertainment (so-called), and government (think of the violently pro-abortion wrongs Democratic Party) collaborate to force abortion on all of us.

Euteneuer’s book can be easily read in one day, and transcribing notes using the voice feature of most email services will enhance the study of the demonic nature of the abortion wrongs movement not only for students who are fighting high school and college indoctrination, but also seasoned pro-life activists who witness at abortion mills.

Instead of elaborating needlessly about the high quality of Euteneuer’s ideas and writing style, I offer the following quotes as the ones that I deem most interesting and applicable to fighting the satanic nature of the abortion movement.

“The pro-life movement has an immense amount of resource material on issues and activities related to the effort to restore legal protection to the unborn child, but the present work is not meant to be an analysis of the pro-life issues per se.  […]  Here I examine the spiritual power that the Church can marshal in the defense of the most innocent of God’s children, the unborn—and their mothers—from abortion.  I will also relate this effort to the need to repulse other demonic attacks against the sacred institutions of marriage and the family.” (6-7)

“The term ‘culture of death’ refers to any society, region or nation where killing innocent human beings has been legalized and institutionalized.” (9)

“Planned Parenthood-style hedonistic indoctrination about sex [has] a devastating effect on the young: they hook them on birth control, indoctrinate them into alternative lifestyles and open them to the idea that abortion is just another ‘choice’ that they can make when promiscuity gets them into trouble.” (17)

“The abortion industry of today offers ritual blood sacrifice to that ancient demon of child sacrifice: it is in every way a demonic religion.  It has an infallible dogma (“choice”), a ruling hierarchy (Planned Parenthood), theologians (feminist ideologues), a sacrificing priesthood (abortionists), temples (abortion mills), altars of sacrifice (surgical tables), ritual victims (babies and also women), acolytes and sacristans (clinic workers and technicians), guardian angels (police and escorts), congregations (foundations and private supporters of abortion) and its own version of ‘grace’ which makes everything work (money).” (21)

“There is indisputable evidence now that abortion targets the very people that feminists were supposed to liberate: namely females.  Female infanticide is the ugly hidden secret of the culture of death.” (29)

“In sum, contraception is essentially the gateway drug to an immense amount of spiritual evil.  It is a bitter pill that has poisoned the human race’s very gift of procreation and seduced generations of fertile men and women into sins against God and themselves.” (43)

“Finally, abortion has contributed mightily to the fracturing of American society into essentially two opposed value camps: pagan and Christian; or those who see all truth as relative and those who acknowledge that objective right and wrong really exist and have a claim on us.  These differences are reflected roughly in our political divisions, in our social permissiveness versus true moral values, in the various opposing cultural movements which are growing in intensity each day, in the corrupt media versus the new alternative media, etc.” (49)

“It is therefore no surprise that the culture of death has grown in direct proportion to the weakening of the Catholic Church and her leadership in the past forty years.  When the Church is weak in carrying out its God-given mission, all society is weak.  When God is driven out or unwelcome in a culture, demons enter in.  Only the re-establishment of a strong, authoritative Church will heal and liberate the world from abortion.” (56)

“At an abortion mill, for example, a person can bind any of the unclean spirits that are present at that spiritual stronghold: the spirits of abortion, birth control, coercion, fear, greed, violence, witchcraft, etc. [with the following prayer] ‘In the Name of Jesus, I bind the spirit of ­­­­­ ___.’” (60)

“Abortion is a traumatic experience, physically, emotionally and spiritually, and demons can enter through this trauma.” (74)

“In general, we must always be extremely careful to present the truth about abortion in a professional fashion to an abortion-minded woman, rather than trying to scare her out of an abortion by claiming that it is demonic or will cause infestation.” (74)

“Let us never pretend that abortion is just a social or political phenomenon that has to be voted out of office to be defeated.  We must do everything we can to restore legal protection to our most innocent citizens, but our battle against the devil will not be one of the polls.  It will be won on our knees before the Lord and on our feet before the centers of death.  More than ever we need men and women of tested holiness who are willing to fight the spiritual battle for the lives of God’s precious babies and the souls of their mothers and fathers.  Even abortionists […] are caught up in a demonic religion which can be challenged and defeated by those of us who belong to the true Church of Christ, the only spiritual power strong enough to defeat the ‘sacrament’ of abortion.” (114)

A well-written odyssey of a male teen who befriends a teen mother who rejects abortion, Posthuma has generated a fast-paced novel that transgender and pro-life activists can enjoy without being bashed over the head with woke or leftist nonsense.

So many contemporary novelists (especially those who use their writing skills to groom children and young adults to accept abortion, gay marriage, or anal genital activity) bash their readers over the head with their distortions of sexuality.  Think, for example, of Heppermann’s Ask Me How I Got Here (Greenwillow Books, 2016) or Bonnie Pipkin’s Aftercare Instructions (Flatiron Books, 2017).

How refreshing, then, that Posthuma has written a novel which contains controversial elements that develop characters and advance the narrative instead of a novel which works merely to make her readers accept her positions on contemporary biological, political, or social issues.

And the novel has much which is controversial.

You want a gay component in your casual fiction reading, a feature which every novel published in the woke United States of 2022 apparently must have?  Posthuma’s novel has it; focus on the character Maverick and his male model perfection.

You want an abortion component?  Posthuma’s novel has it; the abortion business Planned Parenthood won’t appreciate this novel, though, since the mother in question went to her appointment for an abortion but obviously rejected that choice and delivered her daughter.  Lost profit for Planned Parenthood, but an exciting narrative for everybody else.  On this criterion alone, Posthuma’s novel far surpasses the preachiness of both Heppermann and Pipkin, who struggle to disinfect the abortion company as much as they can with their stiflingly ignorant praise of the business.

You want a little bit of religion?  Posthuma’s novel has it; orthodox readers will wonder at the hypocrisy of a purported Catholic character like the mother of the narrator, Solo, and every instance of the word “God” being lower case, as though God is merely an interjection.  Agnostic and atheist readers will appreciate the life-affirming choices that not only the character Baby makes to give birth to the unborn child, but also Solo’s choice not to commit suicide.

You want aliens from Saturn sweeping the hapless and useless Joe Biden out of the White House, thus saving the planet from World War III?  Not gonna happen.  Unlike other partisan hacks who write abortion or transgender “novels” which are more didactic than entertaining, Posthuma’s work is grounded in reality.  These are real irreligious young people who swear, think sex is meant for just casual entertainment, and slither from one minor life goal to another.

You want a transgender component, another feature which every novel published in the woke United States of 2022 apparently must have to avoid being persecuted by leftist activists?  This is perhaps the most fascinating feature of Posthuma’s work, the suggestion that the narrator or his alter ego, Crystal, may suffer from gender dysphoria.  Since I like this novel, no spoiler alert will follow.  Suffice it to say that activists on both sides of the transgender nonsense plaguing the nation will appreciate the sensitivity of Posthuma’s narrative, which, unlike other activist authors, shows readers the discomfort of those genuinely confused about their gender despite their sexuality having been recognized (not assigned) at birth.

Since Posthuma’s fiction approximates real life, its 406 pages read so mellifluously and swiftly that the entire work can be leisurely read in two days.

Despite the pro-abortion author’s efforts to make the abortion business Planned Parenthood shine, pro-life readers can cite this book as evidence of the many negatives of the abortion behemoth—aspects that Planned Parenthood’s Marketing and Public Relations departments can never erase.

Of course, the novel has the usual components of an anti-life plot: warped sexuality (fornication), attacks on religious persons, disparaging pro-lifers, and the ambiguous use of language to refer to the unborn child.

For example, Genesis (the selfish and extremely voluble “I”, “me”, and “I” again narrator) is a young woman who is sexually “liberated”; her boyfriends Peter and Seth are just her boy toys.  Parents and grandparents are “old-fashioned” because they are religious and, ostensibly, pro-life.  Genesis’ sense of religion is a reduction to having meditated before theater class (9-10).  Peter’s parents are described as “nutso religo-freak parents” (13).

Since pro-abortion characters cannot refute pro-life ideas, pro-life activists suffer ad hominem attacks as in the case of Peter’s mother, who is demeaned as the “ringleader of our community’s pro-life, anti-choice movement” (38).  In contrast, abortionists are called “doctors” as though using this term would dignify their killing work as much as doctors who save human life (unpaginated 323).

Pipkin employs other standard tactics in the pro-abortion literary repertoire.  For example, she uses the third-person pronoun “it” ambiguously so that a reader cannot determine if that pronoun refers to the abortion procedure or the unborn child killed in that procedure.

For example, the narrator uses ambiguous language in talking about refusing sedation for the abortion when she says, “I wanted to feel it.  I wanted to feel my choice as it left my body” (unpaginated 3).  Does “it” refer to “abortion”, what she thinks is her legal right to “choose” killing another human being, or does that pronoun refer to the child killed?  Oddly, this same language and concept is repeated in one of the drama portions incorporated in this novel when Genesis tells the audience, “I need to feel this.  I need to know it’s real.  I need to feel it leaving.  I need to feel that I’m making a choice and it’s mine” (324).  Again, to what or to whom does “it” refer?

After five decades of anti-life authors writing about the abortion procedure, there is no new way to describe the act of killing, which is why Pipkin’s description of the abortion is clipped and composed of a series of nouns: “I think back.  To the click.  Slip.  Pull.  Snap of rubber gloves and metal wheels over tiled floor and my knees and thighs shaking” (62).  The description of the abortion procedure is repeated towards novel’s end in similarly mechanistic terms; the stage directions in one of the drama portions of the novel refer to “the buzzing sound of a machine” and then later, “The machine stops” (327).

All of these standard pro-abortion wrongs literary tactics are expected from a virulently anti-life author such as Pipkin, who is effusive in her praise of the largest abortion company in the country: “Thank you to Planned Parenthood, where I’ve been receiving safe and affordable care since I was sixteen years old.  Thank you for EVERYTHING you provide to the community without judgment.  I stand with you, always” (356; caps in original).

What is unique in this teen abortion novel is the recognition that Planned Parenthood has sinister sides.  High school and college students trained in close reading, an aspect of formalist literary criticism, will be able to look beyond the author’s pro-abortion bias immediately in the following lines.

For example, when Genesis wonders why Peter has not called her after the abortion, she says, “It’s not like I just had a tooth pulled” (41).  This line counters those anti-life activists who claim that having an abortion is a “simple” procedure, like a tooth extraction.

Similarly, Genesis’ description of the inside of the abortion business counters the best efforts of any pro-abortion marketing brochure.  “In the dingy waiting room where Security makes non-patients sit,” Pipkin writes, “With its gray-lavender walls and daytime television and fluorescent lights.  Trashy magazines and dead eyes” (155).

Another example illustrates Genesis’ frustration not only with her boyfriend, but also, using a typography which indicates shouting, with the business which aborted the child.  Genesis becomes angry over Peter’s leaving her “AT FUCKING PLANNED PARENTHOOD?” (221; all caps in original).  Note that she did not ask, as the author asserts, why Peter left her “at Planned Parenthood, where I’ve been receiving safe and affordable care since I was sixteen years old.  Thank you for EVERYTHING you provide to the community without judgment.  I stand with you, always” (see above for Pipkin’s sickening praise for the abortion company).  The use of the present participle “fucking”, in all caps moreover, suggests not so much a casual use of vulgar language typical of an irreverent and vulgar teen, but Genesis’ unconscious idea that there is something seriously wrong with Planned Parenthood.

Finally, Pipkin’s chapter titles betray Planned Parenthood as a place where medical attention is secondary to its profit-making motives.  Granted, all medical facilities give patients aftercare instructions, but those instructions naturally follow life-saving procedures.  Pipkin’s chapter titles, however, suggest that Planned Parenthood’s aftercare instructions are designed to minimize and cover up the killing which occurs at every one of its offices.

While some chapter titles seem innocuous; “Monitor Bleeding” (unpaginated 36) and “Recovery Times May Vary” (unpaginated 61) meet this criterion, the chapter titles quickly become more sinister as the novel progresses, such as “You May Experience a Wide Range of Emotions” (unpaginated 129) and “Talk to Someone if You Experience Feelings of Detachment” (unpaginated 144).  Given  the large number of mothers who have died at Planned Parenthood “clinics” and other abortion businesses and whose deaths are covered up by the pro-abortion media, the chapter title “Do Not Hesitate to Call with Any Questions” (unpaginated 175) could be translated by a suspicious person to “Call Us Instead of Your Attorney Because This Abortion Business Doesn’t Want to Be Sued.”

Interestingly, a series of even more sinister chapter titles occurs in quick succession, warning the mother who has aborted that “You Are Not Alone” (unpaginated 219), “If Your Temperature Reaches 100.4°, Call Us Immediately” (unpaginated 229), “A Period of Emotional Paralysis Can Occur” (unpaginated 243), “Are You Experiencing Any Regret?” (unpaginated 265), and “Support Groups Are Available” (unpaginated 275).

That a pro-abortion author would include such damning lines as the above in an ostensibly pro-abortion novel is not only fortunate for pro-life activists; it’s also a refreshing bit of honesty from those who support the harming of women, the killing of unborn babies, and the alienation of fathers.

Thank you, Bonnie Pipkin, for writing a novel that pro-lifers can use to protect women from Planned Parenthood!

Although a feeble teen abortion account, pro-lifers can use this “novel” (so-called) to show how post-abortion syndrome affects a young woman who lacks orthodox religious faith.

Heppermann’s work, a “novel-in-verse”, is anything but.  The “poetry” is feeble; the “lines” would read better if they were written as sentences in paragraphs.  Since full-length novels have the space to develop characters, this “work”, therefore, could qualify as a short story.  It still would not give Hemingway a run for his money.

Why Greenwillow Books would waste 225 pages of paper and ink like this is beyond me.  Maybe it felt that this tenuous “book” served a young adult reading audience need, I dunno.

Bad publishing and marketing choices aside, though, this “work” has some merit.  Although Addie is a typical young woman who fornicates with her boyfriend, becomes pregnant, and thinks only of killing the unborn child at one of the offices of the abortion business Planned Parenthood, the “work” does illustrate three ideas long known in the pro-life world:

1.  That mothers who abort experience post-abortion syndrome (PAS), often a short time after the killing has taken place.  This is evident when Addie’s personality disintegrates; she quits track at high school; picks fights with her boyfriend, leading to their breakup; and chooses a misguided lesbian relationship as a source of affection.

2.  That parents who are weak in their faith often abscond from their responsibility as parents in helping their teen daughters choose life.  This is the case with Addie’s parents, whose lack of firm Catholic Christian faith is evident when they say nothing about helping Addie choose life.

3.  That the abortion itself is difficult to talk about and the person killed in an abortion is always dehumanized.  This is obvious when Addie’s parents are unable to talk about the time of Addie’s abortion.  Addie’s mother refers to the abortion as “what we went through / a few months ago” (172); her father, similarly, cannot refer to the abortion:  “She never had those [side aches] before” without specifying that the term “before” is a truncation of “before the abortion” (173).  How surprising, then, to read that, when Addie writes a letter to her unborn child towards the “novel’s” end, she refers to the child as “a girl with Nick’s smile, / a boy with my eyes, / a baby” and says that she “would never want you / to hate yourself”, which suggests that Addie hates herself (211).

Maybe this novel is so feeble because the author herself is anti-life; Heppermann promotes the abortion business Planned Parenthood on the last unnumbered page of the book as one of several anti-life organizations that “exist at the community and national level that teens can turn to for help.”

This vapid “work” only takes about an hour to read; the “poetry” is ordinary language, nothing significant, so, unless you’re an English professor who must read crap like this to monitor fiction on the life issues, one can turn page after page without needing to annotate anything important.

The best way to reply to the book’s title Ask Me How I Got Here is to say, “Let’s not and say we did.”

Mellifluous, trenchant, and often witty writing on a variety of topics, this collection of Fr. Paul V. Mankowski’ s essays will inspire faithful Catholics to fight against pro-abortion priests and to affirm their Catholic Faith.

First, though, since Amazon collaborates with cancel culture zealots and bans conservative and pro-life books, don’t buy this book on Amazon.  Purchase it from Ignatius Press directly: https://ignatius.com/jesuit-at-large-jlerp/.

A few pages into reading this book, I knew I had a problem.  Besides George Weigel’s well-written introduction, which was forcing me to annotate several paragraphs, by the first couple of pages of Fr. Mankowski’s essays, I knew I had to buy the book.  The annotations were becoming so numerous that buying the book instead of transcribing notes from the library copy would save time in recording them into my electronic notes.

Why is the writing of Fr. Mankowski so worthwhile?  I offer three reasons.

First, of course, is the human element.  Every faithful Catholic who is persecuted by priests who are not pro-life or who support pro-abortion Democrats like the hapless Joe Biden or Catholics who are orthodox in their faith but are called rigid by the Church hierarchy (as the leftist Pope Francis does) can sympathize with Fr. Mankowski, a persecuted priest who died without ever knowing the praise he deserved for exposing corruption in the Jesuit order.

The book’s editor, George Weigel, notes that Fr. Mankowski “was often berated, deplored, and rejected by his own” (13).  Knowing that Fr. Mankowski was persecuted by his “fellow” Jesuits for exposing the political machinations that shoved a pro-abortion Jesuit, Fr. Robert Drinan, into the U.S. Congress colors the entire reading.  The book is transformed from a collection of essays into a dramatic narrative; the reader wants to know if Fr. Mankowski will be redeemed.

Furthermore, why is reading a book which includes a significant portion focusing on one pro-abortion Jesuit (Drinan) so worthwhile?  Weigel explains:

During his congressional career, Father Drinan was a reliable vote in favor of the most extreme interpretations of the abortion license created by the 1973 Supreme Court decisions Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton; in doing so, he helped provide political cover for numerous Catholic politicians who tacked to the prevailing cultural winds by taking a similar stand.  (15)

When Fr. Mankowski gave Jesuit archival material to another Catholic researcher, the famous Catholic historian James Hitchcock, abortion-minded Jesuits did not merely oppose him; they persecuted him:

The publication of Hitchcock’s article unleashed a firestorm of criticism, but the hot blasts of opprobrium were not aimed at Father Robert Drinan or his Jesuit enablers.  They were aimed at Father Paul Mankowski, who had given materials he had gleaned from the archives of the New England Province of the Society of Jesus to Professor Hitchcock as documentation for his article.  (16)

Fr. Mankowski himself succinctly explains why he exposed Drinan and his politically-minded operatives within the Jesuit order, basing his actions on pro-life principles which should endear him to every pro-life civil rights activist today:

Pro-lifers (of whom I am one) regarded Drinan as one of their most formidable and injurious opponents in the U.S., despite his insistence that he accepted Church teaching on abortion.  I’ve yet to meet a politically aware pro-life Catholic who wasn’t baffled and exasperated by the damage Drinan was permitted to do as a priest-congressman and a priest-lawyer.  Therefore, presented with firsthand testimony that Drinan was complicit in a ruse from which he launched his career as a pro-abortion legislator, I was fully disposed to challenge his moral authority by making the knowledge public.  (196)

One would hope that this persecuted good man was vindicated.  Unfortunately, Fr. Mankowski’s contributions in exposing the fraud of Drinan and those who collaborated in getting him into Congress despite the opposition of Superior General Pedro Arrupe were never appreciated in his lifetime.

This book, therefore, damns those pro-abortion Jesuits who oppose the Catholic Church’s respect for human life and vindicates Fr. Mankowski for his suffering and heroism.

The second reason why Fr. Mankowski’s essays are worthwhile is that they remain relevant, even the ones dating from the 1990s.  The pro-abortion zealot Drinan is long gone, but faithful Catholics still must contend with disgraces to the Catholic Faith like Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden, two Democrats who, like Drinan, put “social justice” (or their distortion of it) ahead of the first civil right, the right to life, and thus vote for tax dollars for abortion, appoint judges who oppose the first civil right to life, etc.

Fr. Mankowski knew that the presence of pro-abortion Jesuits was only a symptom of a larger problem: “rot” affecting the entire order.  As quoted by Weigel, Fr. Mankowski wrote, “I believe those in command [of “the Roman Jesuit leadership”] are, for the most part, frightened to stand up to the full extent of the rot.  I believe a few positively desire the rot; they want religious life to disappear and want to be agents in its disappearance” (14).

A third reason why Fr. Mankowski’s essays are worthwhile is that they address those relevant issues within the Catholic Church in a learned, beautifully written style that often contains snarky humor.

Examples of Fr. Mankowski’s mellifluous prose can be found when he affirms working-class Catholics.  His praise for such hardworking people ranges from the simple “In effect the new liturgists disenfranchised working-class Catholics, and in particular working men, from reasonably wholehearted participation in the Mass” (30) to lengthier and more complex prose, culminating in a call to “resist” those who would distort the most significant item of Catholic worship, the Mass:

Taken together, all the visions of the deconstructionist, all the resentments of the disaffected, all the personal quirks and daydreams of the individual minister, all the globally contextualized inclusivities of the professorial hierophant, do not add up to a single reason to deprive the faithful of the Mass, the Mass in its full integrity.  Those who come into our midst mouthing the sweet words of compassion and openness are, very often, trying to wheedle us out of our birthright.  Perhaps the time has come to resist.  (37)

Faithful Catholic readers will understand immediately Fr. Mankowski’s discussion of a category of cleric he calls “tames”, priests, bishops, cardinals, and, we could add, perhaps even the current problematic (and Jesuit) Pope Francis.  These tames aim for popularity instead of orthodoxy, which, by itself, is not problematic, but Fr. Mankowski explains how the drive for popularity emasculates tames when they are compelled to collaborate with the aggressive gay and lesbian lobby.  “In the contemporary Church,” Fr. Mankowski writes:

tames serve the agenda of gays in the long run, even though they sometimes find themselves forced to take a contrary stance.  Tames are extremely susceptible to emotional blackmail of all kinds, and gays are adept at putting a thumb on the emotional windpipe of weak men in order to manipulate them.  (67)

Readers will find footnote six on this matter especially interesting:

It is noteworthy that bishops who are tames almost always have a number of gays as advisers or high officials in the chancery; once in office they are virtually powerless to prevent gays from collecting around them, and as a consequence any pressures for reform are effectively neutralized.  (70)

Fr. Mankowski’ s comments about the sexual orientation of his fellow priests are alarming.  Regarding the number of priests who have unresolved same-sex attraction, he writes:

I would estimate that between 50 and 60 percent of the men who entered religious life with me in the mid-1970s were homosexuals who had no particular interest in the Church, but who were using the celibacy requirement of the priesthood as a way of camouflaging the real reason for the fact that they would never marry.  (74)

Since persons with same-sex attraction who have fallen victim to the gay and lesbian lifestyle invariably oppose chastity and purity, Church officials who promote those virtues would necessarily be targets of their opposition and hatred.  Fr. Mankowski accounts for the Jesuit hatred of Pope, now Saint, John Paul II thus:

Over the course of twenty-eight years in the Society of Jesus, I’ve watched Wojtyła- [Pope John Paul II-] hatred turn into one of the principal subthemes of Jesuit life [….]  The dreams that progressivists surfaced during Paul VI’s pontificate—of a congregational, sexually emancipated, anti-sacral “picnic” Catholicism—were frankly infantile.  Yet Catholics over fifty will remember the emotional mist of auto-suggestion that “the next pope” would move with the times and make these dreams come true.  Not all Jesuits got smitten by this vision, but the majority did, and was stunned when Wojtyła failed to act out its fantasy.  Many left the Society to seethe outside it; others remained, and seethe within.  (81-3)

One fellow Jesuit is a particular target of Fr. Mankowski’s criticism.  Everybody knows Fr. James Martin, whose pro-LGBTQ views and opposition to the Church’s teaching on sexuality saturate contemporary leftist media.  Martin has done more damage to persons with same-sex attraction than any other by suggesting not only that gays and lesbians have been abandoned by the Church, but also that the Church must accept their homosexual lifestyles.  Fr. Mankowski counters Martin’s flaccid arguments with one succinct line: persons with same-sex attraction who live a chaste life “already live in the heart of the Church” (158), and the frequency with which same-sex persons receive the confidential Sacrament of Penance testifies to their faith.

Fr. Mankowski offers a thorough analysis of another unorthodox and famous (infamous) priest, Theodore Hesburgh, president of the University of Notre Dame.  “Hesburgh became resentful of direction—which he viewed as interference—on the part of agencies claiming superior authority, most notably the Holy See and his own religious congregation” (186), Fr. Mankowski writes, so it is understandable that Hesburgh would coordinate the Land O’ Lakes conference, which sought to separate Catholic colleges from the Magisterium on a distorted claim of “academic freedom” (186).  Hesburgh further manifested his antagonism to the Magisterium by supporting contraception (188-9).  Hesburgh relegated the right-to-life movement to an inferior position, siding instead with leftists in favor of the safer, politically-correct social justice issues of “global poverty and world peace” (189).  Unlike Fr. Mankowski, who praised working-class Catholics, Hesburgh had a “fear of being lumped with the defenders of Humanae Vitae—the thick-necked ‘red meat and rosary’ folks who typified working-class Catholicism” (190.)

Students who want to appreciate a solid writing style should study Fr. Mankowski’s use of parallelism: the repetition of “I live” (21), “gone” (60), and “every culture” (112) are exemplary.  His diction is concise, as demonstrated by his ability to translate the psychobabble of papers presented at leftist academic conferences into plain English.  For example, he brilliantly reduces one paper from the American Academy of Religion to the following: “Were I forced to decode [the presenter’s] thesis in monosyllables, I would render it thus: gay men see things in more black-and-white terms than do ‘bi’ girls” (104).

I can confirm Fr. Mankowski’s general comment about the academic preoccupation with sex, having attended numerous academic conferences whose programs read more as sex therapy or heterosexuality gripe sessions than symposia for English language and literature professors:

For want of a better term, I would call it an impulse to vandalism.  The interest here displayed was overwhelmingly an interest in aberrant sexuality—evidenced not only in repeated protests against so-called “compulsory heterosexuality” but in a macabre litany of erotic pathology: mutilation, child abuse, incest, sadomasochism, ritual castration, and so on ad nauseam.  (116)

Granted, Fr. Mankowski critiques the culture well in a learned manner, but the essays are punctuated with comic gems.  For example, there is this first-page bit of humor: “I am promised prosperous and intriguing companions by the folks who brew my beer; and those who sell my shaving cream are at pains to assure me that it will provoke the women I encounter into sexual frenzy.  (The last claim, I might add, is an exaggeration.)” (21).

Feminist nuns are an especial target of some of Fr. Mankowski’s humor, probably because they, like pro-abortion Jesuits, don’t care for the pro-life issues as much as politically-correct leftist social justice ones:

Today’s Skimpole is more likely to be a feminist than a Nazi, but both are missing something—and not just a balanced picture of God.  [….]  Feminist Skimpoles [….]  are in the same intellectual position as a pouting child at the breakfast table picking the raisins out of the bran flakes.  (131-2)

Fr. Mankowski even jabs feminist nuns while reviewing a dismally ridiculous Norman Mailer novel:

[H]e is so far behind the Heterodoxy Curve as to be unaware that his shattering innovations are little more than the platitudes of New Age suburbia, and have long been superseded by those “weekend spirituality workshops” in which feminist nuns and retired orthodontists are taught how to deconstruct the New Testament and make pumpkin bread.  (152)

This 237-page compilation ends with a chronology of Fr. Mankowski’s expose of the pro-abortion Drinan and a detailed list of Drinan’s extensive anti-life votes (229-31).  Unfortunately, the volume does not have an index, a fatal flaw from Ignatius Press which impedes faculty and student research.

Summary judgement: it’s time to canonize Fr. Paul V. Mankowski for having accomplished two major tasks, exposing corruption within the Jesuit order and living worthily as a genuine and pro-life Jesuit priest.

Antall’s latest novel is a delightful review of the mistake called “Christmas” from a perspective that every pro-abortion Democratic politician would appreciate: Satan himself.

If the preceding sounds emotionally charged, then you’ll love Richard Antall’s latest novel, an account of how Satan and his minions would view the birth of Christ if, as the novel suggests, “computer” files were obtained of “reports” from Satan’s demons, trying to explain how they let the baby Jesus slip through their hands and failed to kill Him.

The novel is an attempt of reportage from Hell.  No one has ever considered the birth of Christ from the perspective of Satan, who calls the Incarnation the “Invasion” by the “enemy” angels who chose to remain with God.  Antall does a remarkable job of filling in the gaps of what a demonic account of this supreme failure would be.

And “failure” is what Christmas is, if you’re a fallen angel working for Lucifer.  Since devils despise human life (which explains why they would promote abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia), the birth of Jesus is the ultimate failure for the third of the heavenly host which fell from Heaven instead of the joyous time that the Christian world knows it to be.

The novel is certainly not simple, as in naïve.  It contains several erudite passages, including sophisticated Persian or French terms like “Dahak” or “mauvaise foi”, most of which, fortunately, are translated for us ignorant American readers (9, 58).  Also, some literary allusions require diligent readers to check DuckDuckGo.  For example, “who said that history might have been different if a certain Egyptian queen [Cleopatra] had had a longer […] nose”?  Answer: Blaise Pascal (172).

But that’s the fun of this fictional account of Satan and his minions covering their asses for the failure of stopping the birth of the Messiah.

Antall has a wonderful ability to create characters with whom us ordinary people can identify, probably because he has decades of experience not only reading the quantities of books that he has (when you think of Antall, think of an educated man), but also “reading” people who come to him for spiritual counseling or remission of their sins.

For example, even though she was a most exuberant whore and conveyor of abortifacients all of her life, readers will cheer when Pulcheria has a change of heart near the time of her collapsing in death (118).  Similarly, readers feel joy when the drunkard Nathan acts like a little child, urging his animals to warm the Holy Family as the Virgin Mary gives birth (178).

Moreover, the novel’s comedy is obvious and sophisticated.  I laughed out loud on reading the hilarious “transcriptions” of what are purported to be court records of the trials of the devils who were unable to stop Jesus’ birth.  A filmmaker would have a delightful time producing a Perry Mason-like version of many of these passages (cf. 58ff).

Technically, the novel has merits which should endear it to college and university faculty and students.  The polyvocal contributions of devilish commentary on the Messiah’s birth, the sometimes erudite literary allusions, and the plausibility of what can be categorized as a spiritual allegory should make this novel popular with students in secular institutions, which love anything which seems to attack Christianity.  Orthodox Catholic colleges and universities, of course, will appreciate the novel for its contrarian perspective.

Not only to be read during Christmas, Antall’s latest work can supplement one’s faith journey throughout the year since the topic is universal: the importance of Jesus’ Incarnation.  Who would have “thunk” that a novel written from the perspective of devils could increase someone’s faith?

Written by a lesbian writer, this novel affirms heterosexual normativity and Christian belief in the sanctity of marriage seen through the lens of adultery.  Gay and lesbian literary critics, therefore, and, even worse, transgender literary critics, would probably abuse Winterson the same way they have tried to cancel J. K. Rowling.

A genderless and unnamed narrator has an adulterous affair with a woman, who either has died or merely vanished from the scene.  That this entire novel is merely a linguistic exercise and not a fictional work meant to have some type of meaning in reality or didactic value for contemporary readers is obvious on the penultimate page, when the narrator asserts that “It’s as if Louise never existed, like a character in a book” (189).

That’s it.  Nothing else to say about the plot.  Typical adultery novel.

What’s fascinating, though, is that the gender of the narrator is irrelevant.  If the narrator is female, then the adultery involves a lesbian relationship.  If the narrator is male, then the adultery involves a heterosexual relationship.  So what?  Adultery is still adultery.  The narrator is still contributing to a wife breaking her marriage vows.

What’s more fascinating are the literary allusions to Scripture and Christianity throughout the novel.  Being a British work and set in Britain, the type of Christianity is Anglicanism grown flaccid in its theology and practice as the descriptive passage about a feeble worship service on pages 151-3 illustrates.

Also interesting are casual comments from various characters who show that a vibrant Christianity was desperately needed in the Britain of 1992 as it is still needed now, in 2022.  The philosophy of one of the narrator’s boyfriends is not that love is God Himself and the greatest distinguishing feature of humanity, but that “love had been invented to fool people” (93).  Another typical void-of-religion statement comes from a cancer doctor who says that taking care of cancer patients is “wasting your time”; the question “Why bother?” posed to this doctor is unanswered (149-50).

Pro-life readers, whether those who have same-sex attraction or those who are secure in heterosexual normativity, can cite one statement from the seemingly irreligious narrator as evidence against suicide.  Commenting on being separated from his adulterous lover, the narrator affirms that “Although I felt that my life had been struck in two I still wanted life.  I have never thought of suicide as a solution to unhappiness” (155).

A lucid and cogent analysis of corporate America’s distortion of social justice and its support of racist groups like Black Lives Matter, Vivek Ramaswamy’s 358-page work is an indictment of corporate greed and should be an embarrassment to those who swallowed the woke ideology without stopping to think about its anti-American positions.

So much of the book is worthy of annotation that it may be best to purchase it.  Of course, since Amazon collaborates with cancel culture zealots and bans conservative and pro-life books, don’t buy this book on Amazon.  Purchase it from Hachette Book Group directly: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/vivek-ramaswamy/woke-inc/9781546059820/.

I will, however, highlight some major ideas which will help conservative and pro-life persons fight against the Big Tech and Wall Street billionaires who (invariably) support Democratic politicians who finance the racist, pro-abortion, and anti-American woke activists.  After some initial remarks, the balance of this review will provide quotable quotes to help high school and college students fight back against the leftist tyranny of teachers and faculty, since academia, also, has swallowed the woke nonsense whole without thinking about its negative effects on the nation.

While ordinary patriotic Americans intuitively know that the woke agenda is anti-American, Ramaswamy defines it as clearly as possible for his reader.  “Basically,” he writes, “being woke means obsessing about race, gender, and sexual orientation.  Maybe climate change too” (5).  From this, he asserts that “the point of this book is to expose the dirty little secret underlying […] corporate America’s act, its Prestige.  Here’s how it works: pretend like you care about something other than profit and power, precisely to gain more of each” (3; italics in original).

It helps, too, that, like every American who has been saturated with woke politics obstructing the administration of President Donald Trump, Ramaswamy is “fed up with corporate America’s game of pretending to care about justice in order to make money” (3).

Ramaswamy’s discussion of specific legal and financial concepts can be daunting, requiring several rereadings of the text, but, overall, his language is eminently understandable to the layperson and often quite comical in its metaphors.  For example, “So, in a nutshell, here’s how wokeness and capitalism shacked up: large corporations knocked up woke millennials.  Together they birthed woke capitalism.  And they put Occupy Wall Street up for adoption” (136).

Ramaswamy does not hesitate to identify corporations which succumbed to petulant woke agitators, and his list of companies which follow the “woke-industrial complex” (1) is disturbing, making it seem as though no one can buy anything or use any electronic service without supporting the leftist lunacy of woke activists.  The companies include:

Goldman Sachs, involved in the 1MDB (1Malaysia Development Berhad Fund) scandal, while boasting of its purported “ethics” in the United States (15);

L’Oréal, Coca-Cola, and Delta, all of which endorsed the positions of the racist group Black Lives Matter (16-7);

Apple and Uber, fearful of being tainted as “racist” companies after the death of the criminal George Floyd because it would have hurt their business (58);

Volkswagen, which perpetuated the sham of being green after it installed “’defeat devices’ […] to circumvent EPA emissions standards” (91);

Airbnb’s collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party (162);

LeBron James, who fiercely defended the dictatorial regime of the Chinese Communist Party (167-8); “The whole affair exposed a darkly hilarious truth: the NBA and its stars felt duty-bound to criticize America’s president and judicial system but considered it beyond the pale to criticize China’s” (168);

Google’s cooperation with the Chinese Communist Party in censoring its people (172);

YouTube censorship in the United States (183-4);

Facebook censorship in the United States (186);

Mailchimp censorship of conservative groups (187);

the leftist Southern Poverty Law Center, which Ramaswamy calls “the charitable world’s equivalent of a Ponzi scheme” (188);

Big Tech’s suppression of Hunter Biden’s extortion crimes (190);

Twitter censorship of the New York Post (191);

Regarding Facebook and Twitter censorship: “Don’t be fooled by their [Mark Zuckerberg’s and Jack Dorsey’s] practiced vulnerability.  Was it merely a coincidence that Facebook and Twitter adopted the exact same policies with the exact same political effect at the exact same time?  Nope.  This wasn’t a case of two bumbling gentle giants that simply couldn’t get out of their own way.  It was a case of nefarious coordination” (191-2);

and finally Coca-Cola and Delta caving in to the boycott by the racist group Black Lives Matter (283).

Of course, while much of the book is devoted to highlighting the insincere support of woke politics by American companies, Ramaswamy does suggest several solutions to counter the disastrous effects of wokeness on the nation.

The first solution is philosophical.  A recurring theme is Ramaswamy’s belief that “I believe the best way to achieve diversity of thought on a corporate board is to simply screen board candidates for the diversity of their thoughts, not the diversity of their genetically inherited attributes” (14).  The idea of selecting intellectual diversity over skin color or gender identity recognized at birth is often repeated.  “True diversity is very valuable,” Ramaswamy judiciously affirms, “both for a nation and for a company.  But it’s diversity of thought that’s supposed to matter, not a kind of diversity crudely measured by appearance or accent” (219; italics in original).  A further insight shows that Ramaswamy can rightfully accuse woke companies and academia themselves of practicing racism: “when institutions conflate racial and gender diversity metrics with diversity of thought in their organizations, they implicitly reinforce the incorrect assumption that genetic characteristics predict something important about the way that a person thinks—the most fundamental assumption underlying racism itself” (266).

Ramaswamy’s remaining solutions to woke’s corrosive effects on the United States are more practical.  “The solution to today’s new dilemma isn’t to change capitalism, as Democrats try to.  But neither is it to ignore the inherently invasive qualities of capitalism, as many Republicans are prone to do.  Rather it’s to prevent capitalism from changing everything else, by building protective walls around the things we cherish most, like democracy” (54).

Moreover, he advocates that shareholders should be able to sue social activist shareholders of woke companies like BlackRock (76-7).  He also argues for a limit to the business judgement rule (97).

Ramaswamy thinks that Senator Josh Hawley is wrong about using antitrust law against Big Tech censorship because Big Tech will only feign a fear of being broken up.  Besides, Big Tech doesn’t restrict markets and raise prices; it censors ideas, a category not specified in the Sherman Act (194-5).  Ramaswamy does, however, recommend that “A more promising solution, at least in theory, would be for Congress to amend Section 230 in the following manner: any company that benefits from Section 230 is bound by the standards of the First Amendment” (208).

Ramaswamy’s final recommendations seem simple, but, if implemented, could halt and correct the damage done by Big Tech and corporations in their support of woke extremism.  Ramaswamy, a practicing Hindu, recommends that we should be charitable towards woke zealots as “Christ gave the Grand Inquisitor a courtesy that the Grand Inquisitor wouldn’t return” (238).  Ramaswamy, the Yale law graduate, argues for protection of political beliefs under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 against private actors like Big Tech (244).  Ramaswamy, the multimillionaire entrepreneur, proposes that, instead of divisive critical race theory (CRT), we should practice “critical diversity theory” (CDT), hallmark concepts of which are “Excellence, Opportunity, and Civility—an Alternative to ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’” (267, 270).

While the volume has extensive notes (329-53), there is no index, a grave disservice for students who may need to locate his commentary on a given topic.  For example, researching how woke activists support abortion would be enhanced if an index would collate the references to the Chinese Communist Party’s forcing abortion on Uighur mothers (165); or the book’s discussion of Disney, the CCP, and abortion (169); or vaguer references elsewhere.

Here are some quotable quotes that high school and college students may find compelling to argue in class and in their research papers:

“[T]here’s a difference between speaking up as a citizen and using your company’s market power to foist your views onto society while avoiding the rights of public debate in our democracy.  That’s exactly what Larry Fink does when BlackRock issues social mandates about what companies it will or won’t invest in or what Jack Dorsey does when Twitter consistently censors certain political viewpoints rather than others” (19).

“When companies make political proclamations, employees who personally disagree with the company’s position face a stark choice: speak up freely and risk your career, or keep your job while keeping your head down.  That isn’t how America is supposed to work, yet that is a reality for many Americans today” (20-1).

“As a society we should allow and even embrace the corporate pursuit of financial self-interest above all.  The only thing we should ask in return is this: keep it naked, instead of dressing it up as altruism” (39; italics in original).

“Personally while I believe racism exists and should be eliminated, I don’t believe in ‘systemic racism.’  In fact, I don’t even know what it means: to me, it sounds like a catchall phrase designed to allow political leaders to escape accountability for solving real-world problems like poverty and failure in education” (63).

“By adopting these new ‘woke’ values, America’s business leaders stumbled upon a once-in-a-generation opportunity to leap from heresy to sainthood.  Corporations were no longer the oppressors.  Instead, corporate power—if wielded in the right way—could actually empower the new disempowered classes who suffered not at the hands of evil corporations but instead at the hands of straight white men—the real culprits who had exploited their power not only since the birth of the corporation but throughout all of modern human history” (135).

“The wedding of wokeness to capitalism offers a tempting, individually rational choice that harms the nation as a whole by handing corporations social and political power.  They don’t truly have wokeness’s best interests at heart, and the two systems aren’t truly compatible.  Wokeness and capitalism simply tolerate each other because each feels it can use the other.  They will turn a blind eye to each other’s faults as long as they themselves can still benefit.  But a marriage in which each side secretly has contempt for the other cannot end well” (140).

“Large publicly traded technology companies, as of this writing, have added over a trillion dollars of market capitalization since the start of the pandemic in early 2020—an order of magnitude more than the GDP of most nations in the same period.  Why?  Because lockdowns meant more people decided to get their groceries on Amazon rather than go to the local store, because more people were able to meet via Zoom rather than travel to a conference, and because more people chose to subscribe to Netflix rather than go to a movie theater.  Meanwhile, small businesses across America suffered for the very same reason.  It’s no wonder that Big tech stacked the decks of public debate to favor lockdowns” (186).

“A recent report from the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology found that over a third of conservative academics and PhD students in the US have been threatened with disciplinary action for their views, and 70 percent of conservative academics report a hostile departmental climate for their beliefs.  The report contains a number of other grim statistical findings, like the fact that more that 40 percent of US academics would refuse to hire a Trump supporter” (265).

“Committed liberals should be concerned about what woke capitalism does to pure ideals like service, altruism, and social good.  Anyone who sincerely cares about important causes like female empowerment, racial equality, and environmentalism ought to be offended when these causes are cheapened by corporations that pawn them off to advance their own goals” (304).