CATHOLIC VIRTUE SIGNALING: SISTER WILHELMINA LANCASTER
“A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah.” Jesus then left them and went away. Matthew 16:4
A lion has left his lair, And a destroyer of nations is on his way. He has gone out from his place To desolate your land; Your cities will be in ruins Without an inhabitant. Jeremiah 4:7
Before an odor could reach Roman nostrils, and as the George Floyd narrative started to unravel, Sr. Wilhelmina Lancaster, who in life resembled the Black actress Whoopi Goldberg from the 1992 film Sister Act, was declared a saint by a Catholic chatterer. Eric Sammons, editor of Crisis, pontificated in a tweet
“Follow Timothy [Flanders] as he takes a pilgrimage of hope in the footsteps of Sister Wilhelmina. This is the way – following the saints!” (October 10, 2023, 5:35 p.m.)
Tim is the editor of OnePeterFive, and that publication or platform is linked with Crisis and The Sophia Institute which claims responsibility for both. Tim and I have had various discussions over the years, and his current actions in connection with Sr. Wilhelmina are distressing to me. I wish he would rethink his involvement with this sensationalized matter. As to Sammons, he is on record for supporting the “Whites are racist” narrative put forth by the plutocracy.
OnePeterFive is now asking for donations to raise funds for a film on the life of Sr. Wilhelmina. This was part of an effort to “place our lay sodality under the patronage of Sr. Wilhelmina, for the greater praise and honour [why the English spelling?] of Our Lady and her devoted handmaid, and for the hope of the faithful. I will offer our lay sodality to her at the Monastery on the feast of the Maternity of Our Lady, October 11th, and end in Peoria, IL meeting up with Royce Hood, on the anniversary of the miracle of the sun, October 13.”
This effort invokes words and phrases and concepts and memes that pious Catholics would understand and to which they would flock. This is what I consider to be a construction zone, the creation of a dream world into which dissatisfied, demoralized Catholics, leaderless, shocked and battered, divided and weak, can crawl. There they can remain content while the world burns down around them and the powerful and wealthy gain ever more wealth, power and control unhindered.
Why the Sister Wilhelmina excitement? Because the plutocracy wants the Church further “cleansed” of “racism” and further involved in the anti-racism crusade. The corpse of Wilhelmina Lancaster provides a good weapon for doing that.
The mainstream media (MSM) through National Public Radio (NPR) proclaimed “`Miracle’ Missouri nun overcame racism in life and the elements in death.” NPR had more skepticism than Sammons seems to have. Dan Stockman, the national correspondent for Global Sisters Report, made clear this was all about the anti-racism crusade when he wrote, “You can’t avoid the racial aspects here.” According to the plutocracy (through NPR), the Catholic Church was another version of the pre-civil rights South just waiting to be purified of its sins:
“Black nuns suffered tremendously in the 1950s and 1960s. `The Catholic Church in the United States does not have a great track record on race. You had stories of sisters who applauded when Martin Luther King was assassinated,’ said Stockman. `Black sisters in white orders who were treated just unbelievably bad. Um, and yet they stayed, they kept the faith.’ Sister Wilhelmina not only stayed, she started a vigorous new monastic order….”
The MSM dog-whistled, and the Catholic chatterers dutifully responded – they wanted to show they were against racism and against the racist Catholic Church! They were going to do that by talking up the dead Black woman to their White audience as some sort of an example to be followed while condemning the racist Whites! This was a continuation of the White-shaming that has been going on in this country and around the world for a long time. Wilhelmina is being used to further liberalize the Church, making it more responsive to the nation destroyers, and turning it against its main constituencies. Charges of racism are weapons leveled against Church members who dare defend their nation and the right teaching of the Church which is the right role and value of nations.
The Wilhelmina crowd is clutching at straws to establish some sort of divine approval of this anti-racist crusade. For starters, the dead nun is not a saint despite Sammons’ declaration, and as far as I can tell a cause has not been started though Sammons and company seem to want support for a cause. The “clear, outward signs of holiness” that the MSM said Wilhelmina exhibited are simply not present. The photos of the corpse are not conclusive as to incorruptibility, and as discussed later, can be deceiving. There has been some withering or drying of the right arm and the face appears to have corruption around the mouth. The left leg is bent in and that is not explained. A story cites the mortician, Jack Kline, who signed the death certificate, as saying that the body was not embalmed in May, 2019 when Sr. Wilhelmina died at the age of 95. Significantly, Kline noted there was no odor at all when he saw the body after it was disinterred.
Prospero Cardinal Lambertini, the man who would become Pope Benedict XIV (r. 1740-1758), wrote the definitive guide on incorruptibility: the chapter De Cadaverum Incorruptione of his five volume work, De Beatificatione Servorum Dei et be Beatorum Canonizatione. Several things stand out that are simply not present in the case of the dead Black nun. A more recent work by the late Joan Carroll Cruz called The Incorruptibles from 1977 examined 102 saints who are actually recognized by the Church to be incorrupt. Her work confirmed the correctness of Cardinal Lambertini’s treatise.
First, incorruptibility has to be determined and natural causes ruled out as do attempts to deliberately preserve a corpse. As to natural causes, the type of soil is a factor of great importance. The Bogs of Ireland are an example of soil that preserved corpses for many years just as have the ice packs of the Alps or of the Himalayas. Attempts to preserve the corpse are not limited to embalming but can also include covering the body in some sort of preservative. In the case of Wilhelmina, none of this appears to have been determined, much less investigated.
Second, a sweet odor emanating from the body is associated with the incorrupt remains. There is no sweet odor of sanctity – there is no odor at all according to Mr. Kline.
Third, the body is supposed to keep its suppleness for a very long time – decades, centuries even — not a few years. Wilhelmina looks pretty rigid stretched out for all to see. Cardinal Lambertini wrote that “the bodies of saintly persons that are found intact, but disintegrated after a few years, could not be considered miraculous preservation….The only conservations he was willing to consider extraordinary are these that retain their lifelike flexibility, color and freshness, with deliberate intervention, for many years following their deaths.” One such example is St John of the Cross who after more than 400 years “is still perfectly supple”.
Finally, “photo quality” of corpses can cause people to think that the corpse is miraculously preserved when such is not the case. Without meeting all of the conditions as set forth by Cardinal Lambertini, “false rumors” abound about bodies.
Throwing out caution and Catholic tradition is not new. We have seen this a lot since Vatican II because of the “spirit of Vatican II”. This time is different because it is a further subjugation of the Church to the will of the plutocratic elites so as to continue their work of destroying nations. But they need willing accomplices, or useful idiots, and human nature being what it is, people are fairly adept at determining who is really in charge as well as what is approved and what is not especially if one wants to socially advance. That helps the plutocracy get their recruits.
The staffs and funders of Crisis and OnePeterFive are not going to put forth anything other than the accepted narrative in the arena of race. They accept the story pushed on us for about the last 100 years, and challenging that is to touch the proverbial “third rail”.[1] This is submission to the will of the plutocrats and that becomes easier if one does not know the truth or the Catholic Faith, or is too personally ambitious to seek and stand for the truth. Most don’t get prominence as a chatterer unless they are personally ambitious and political. The funders of these enterprises have an agenda and they want to make sure that the editors are true to that agenda, which is fairly obvious. Money talks and….well, you know the rest.
Not challenging the racism narrative goes hand in hand with rejecting American identity or ethnicity. A lot of notable Catholics go a step further and deny being American but claim some identity based on the state in which they live. This is a ridiculous position because it accepts a made up and transitory identity founded on a legal status alone, and ignores an American ethnicity which is of course based partly on….race.
While I digress, the good news is that by now we developed tools to spot the ambitious rather quickly. The marks of ambition can be seen in the countless podcasts out there – austere settings with icons and books in the background – and in their deportment – short cropped hair, a stubble for a beard or some other form of facial hair, suit with dress shirt and tieless. Almost inevitably the ones with beards will claim to be orthodox or traditional because beards suggest age, wisdom, a different time. All of this is part of a uniform, the uniform of the ambitious who seek their own welfare mainly over that of their own people who they eschew.
According to social media influencer Sachin Jose, Robert Cardinal Sarah, from Guinea in Africa and a member of the Coniaguis people, said:
“Statistics show that there will be a serious cultural, religious and demographic imbalance in the West in the very near future. The West, decadent, without children, without families, will disappear, drowned and eliminated by a population of Islamic origin.” (October 19, 2023, 1:27 p.m.)
This state of affairs arrived because as I have repeatedly said elsewhere, the Liberal Order with its separation of Church and State and the emplacement of real cultural, political, economic, and religious power in the hands of the plutocracy, was accepted by the Catholic leadership as the ideal as a result of the successful deployment of the doctrinal weapon known as The American Proposition. The plutocracy seeks to eliminate or destroy barriers to their power.
There is a second reason. The Americans, and other peoples of European descent, are denied the right to be a people because that would be “racism” or against the principles of “racial equality” and “interracial justice”, doctrinal weapons fashioned and perfected over the last 100 years. Once Americans realize they are a nation, a people, with value, and once the culture and media as well as the real power of society is in the hands of those who desire their best interests which requires discarding or seriously amending the Liberal Order, then men will be men and fathers will be fathers and husbands will be husbands, just like women will be women, mothers will be mothers, and wives will be wives. The proper roles of man and woman – as creator and protector of families which are part of the nation which itself is worthy of protection and prosperity – are essential to the prosperity and flourishing of the nations. We cannot get there by calling certain nations, individuals, or organizations racist because the allegation goes to one’s being and invalidates that person as a person. And, to build Catholic culture, which is the stated mission of the Sophia Institute conglomerate, you have to understand that culture and nationhood are linked and essential. Religion is not enough. You need blood and soil.
Elevating a dead Black nun to sainthood on the basis of “fighting racism” is harmful to the American people (ie, Whites). This is proceeding at a time when Blacks are held in the public mind to be more important than Whites, or Americans. This effort reinforces the message that Whites, or Americans, are somehow defective and should look up to people of other races. This hurts the American people, and the Blacks. Those who support this effort are serving the plutocracy which wants to destroy the nations and make the earth infertile. Endorsing the Sr. Wilhelmina craze is virtue signaling and it hurts a lot of people.
This is all a form of political warfare by the plutocracy against Americans. CD Jackson once wrote of the importance of having leaders repeat ideas, though this quote pertains to advancing an idea of “freedom” during the Cold War by using businessmen. He explained that the businessman was essential. Political warfare required a “dynamic policy” and was in the “realm of attitude.” This is where businessmen came in for the “U.S. Government attitude is a function of the conveyed will of the American people.” And businessmen, “leaders of community thought, about to disperse to the many states of our free union, able to radiate ideas – positive ideas – and create a body of thought in the great community that is America, all three images come together into one single focus, and form the greater image of the freedom of the world, achieved through the dynamic will and leadership of this country and its citizens.” The greatest image was that of “Freedom…symbolized by America.”[2]
The way forward for personally ambitious Catholics is to repeat the messaging of the day which comes from the elites, or, in other words, to virtue signal. That includes elevating Blacks in the eyes of a White, or American, audience. This, in particular, demeans, or destroys, Whites and so destroys the American nationality. Catholics have long been ambitious in America, and they competed with their fellow countrymen for social advancement while at the same time denigrating many of them in the process. This is Catholic experience in America, and I started to tell it in John Courtney Murray, Time/Life, and The American Proposition. It is the North American version of the Irish “taking the soup” on the Emerald Isle, and it means the co-option of the Catholics who should be converting Americans, protecting the flock, and changing society for the better. Many well-meaning, simple, honest Catholics suffer as a result as do the American people, and the peoples of the world. The Wilhelmina Lancaster crowd is aiming to visit more of that on all of us.
I will not be joining the Wilhelmina Lancaster sanctification parade. It is virtue signaling, and that serves personal ambition while advancing the elites’ agenda of destroying the nations so as to remake them into something they can better control, and define. Wilhelmina’s story is a weapon that calls my own people, the Americans, racist and hence evil. It is a weapon that calls the Catholic Church racist, and hence evil. In the name of holiness, un-holiness is advanced. To support this “cause” is to engage in a contradiction. Contradiction is not from God, but from Satan.
References:
Hannah Brockhaus, “What is incorruptibility? Here’s what you need to know,” May 25, 2023, Catholic News Agency.
T.S. Flanders, OnePeter Five Pilgrimage to Sr. Wilhelmina, September 12, 2023, OnePeterFive.
Michelle La Rosa, “When it comes to bodies, just how `incorrupt’ is `incorruptible’?” May 25, 2023, The Pillar and May 29, 2023, Catholic News New Zealand.
Frank Morris, “`Miracle’ Missouri nun overcame racism in life and the elements in death,” June 21, 2023, KCUR, NPR.
Rev. William Saunders, “The Question of Incorruptibility,” 2006, Arlington Catholic Herald.
David Wemhoff, John Courtney Murray, Time/Life, and the American Proposition (Granger, Indiana: Wagon Wheel Press, 2nd ed., 2022)
“What is the significance of incorruptibility?” Catholic Straight Answers
“Carlo Acutis raises question: What does it mean if a saint’s body is `incorrupt’?” Catholic News Agency
[1] See, David Wemhoff, “The Interracial Problem Is About Developing Nations,” July 20, 2023, The American Proposition.
[2] C.D. Jackson, Speech to the American Legion St Louis, Missouri dated August 28, 1953, C.D. Jackson Papers, Box 99, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas.