In yet another display of shameful ugliness and falsity, Lifesite News pauses from endlessly smearing the Pope to smear a good woman, a good Catholic, a good scholar and a faithful defender of the Church’s teaching on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death. Her only crime, insisting that a consistent life ethic is the Church’s actual teaching and that the disgusting use of the unborn as human shields to defend every right wing culture of death priority is evil.

I’m not linking the hit piece that they wrote on her (but I will link Rebecca’ fine and thoughtful blog). The Lifesite hit piece reads like the diary of a creepy stalker bent on thinking dirty thoughts about a woman he can’t quit. It’s replete with guilt by association tactics, out of context FB screencaps, and outrageous lies to the effect that a consistent life ethic (which is, y’know, simply a way of saying “the whole teaching of the Church”) is some kind of evil plot to attack the unborn (because what is more pro-abortion than the Church’s teaching?). It also manages to smear Communion and Liberation, turn aesthetic and literary judgments and opinions into evidence in a kangaroo heresy trial, darkly suggest that Rebecca is some kind of anti-Catholic mole and seductress, and viciously collaborate with Franciscan University to expose her unjust firing by that institution for the delectation of a mob. On the whole, the anti-abortion-but-not-prolife Republican Rite Industrial Complex did a creditable job of shivving an innocent woman in the ribs and holding her up for public humiliation.

And on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross,no less. Forgive them, Father. They know not what they do.

Me? Well, speaking as Disgraced Former National Catholic Register columnist, I’m familiar with how the Gossip Machine works to destroy names and reputations in the Catholic Right Wing Noise Machine. So I welcome this sister in Christ who is disobedient to no precept of Holy Church and who believes all that Holy Church teaches. I regard her as a hero and white martyr and pray that she continues to bear witness to the Faith, the Faith preached and taught by Pope Francis, against whom Lifesite News has conducted a campaign of lies and smears for four years. You are in good company, Rebecca.

Meanwhile, you have not been kicked out of Holy Church. You’ve merely been slimed by a political sect that has seduced and beguiled a subculture of Catholics in North America.

Therefore let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing abuse for him. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city which is to come. Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. (Heb 13:13–15).

PS. I will have Rebecca on Connecting the Dots next week.