Now is the Winter of Our Discontent

by Mary Ann Kreitzer

Students of Shakespeare will recognize the title of this article as the opening line from Richard III: “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York.” The speaker is Richard, Duke of Gloucester, a man portrayed by the bard (and described by himself in the first scene) as “determined to prove a villain...subtle, false and treacherous.” Richard is both physically and morally deformed, a devoted servant of evil. His greed for power knows no bounds. He attributes the “glorious summer” to the fact that his oldest brother, Edward, a Yorkist, is now king, after usurping the throne from Henry VI.

But Richard isn’t content with his brother’s success; he wants to be numero uno and his older brother Clarence and Clarence’s two young sons, as well as the king, stand in his way. And, so the plot begins. Richard stokes the enmity between Edward and Clarence. He convinces Edward that his dream of being murdered by G refers to Clarence whose name is George. Of course, the G really stands for Richard himself, i.e., Gloucester. Murder and mayhem follow as Richard schemes his way to power.

What, you may ask, does this play written over five centuries ago about an obscure English king, Richard III, have to do with events of our own day? No student of history need ask. Every age reveals political intrigue and corruption which always involve lust for power and money. The villains are boringly similar as our current “winter of discontent” shows, made anything but glorious by a “son of York.” Yes, although Biden was born in Scranton, PA his father began his career in York, a bit of trivia for you. Joe is a pathetic shadow of Richard since he has neither his brains nor his courage, although he has the same maniacal ego and revels in shedding innocent blood to a degree Richard never dreamed of. In addition to murdering babies in the womb, Joe has spent his life “killing” the careers of men he disagree with politically, most notably Robert Bork.

If I had to choose two events that I think most define the Democrat party today and its titular leader, it would be the theft of the 1960 election when Daddy Joe Kennedy bought the White House for son Jack and the destruction of the Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork.

Let’s look at the 1960 scandal first. With the help of Mayor Richard Daley and the Chicago mob along with a narrow win in Texas when 100,000 Democrat votes magically appeared in VP candidate Lyndon Johnson’s district, JFK defeated Richard Nixon. Nixon, despite urging from his party, refused to contest the election. During the 2000 contentious Bush/Gore battle, the New York Post’s Deborah Orin harked back to 1960 writing:

The man later known as “Tricky Dick” also reportedly convinced the now-defunct, Republican-leaning New York Herald Tribune to kill a planned 12-part series on election fraud. Nixon is said to have told Tribune reporter Earl Mazo: “Our country can’t afford the agony of a constitutional crisis – and I damn well will not be a party to creating one, just to become president.”

Many historians support the contention that the 1960 election was stolen. As the FBI releases more documents, it becomes harder to refute. In his memoirs, Nixon attributed his loss to massive ballot stuffing and vote buying. Some things never change!

Interestingly, Joe Biden often describes being inspired by JFK. Cloaking himself in the Camelot myth (as well as the devout Catholic myth) he portrays himself, and has for decades, as a “man of integrity” devoted to uniting the country. The lying mainstream media promoted the charade during the election cycle and continue even as Democrats call for re-educating 75 million Trump voters labeling them Nazis and cult followers who must be muzzled. Joe ditched the unity mask the minute he was elected and now stands firmly behind moves by big tech giants and extremists like AOC to demonize not only President Trump, but his 75 million voters. We are all “white supremacists” and fascists now, even conservatives who are black and Hispanic! How exactly does this kind of rhetoric foster unity?

But even more telling than election fraud, which has been a staple of party politics of all stripes since the beginning of the Republic (Lincoln was an expert.), is the growth of the politics of personal destruction. And that brings us to 1987 and the “murder” of Robert Bork by Ted Kennedy and his sidekick Joe. They were so successful, in fact, that a new verb entered the English vocabulary. “To bork,” according Merriam Webster, means “to attack or defeat (a nominee or candidate for public office) unfairly through an organized campaign of harsh public criticism or vilification.” Do you think Democrats are embarrassed by that definition? Not at all! They are, in fact, so proud of their success, that the shameless party continues “to bork” their enemies, hence the despicable attacks on Supreme Court nominees Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh. Both were confirmed despite outrageous lies solicited from Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford.

At the 4th presidential debate Joe Biden bragged about his role in the acrimonious and unjust assault on Bork, one of the finest jurists of the 20th century. Responding to a question on abortion, he said, “When I defeated Robert

right to choose [to kill her baby] for the better part of a generation.” What a horrifying legacy for a man who relentlessly claims to be a “devout Catholic” whose faith is important to him – so important, in fact, that he dispenses with it at every opportunity to champion sins that cry to heaven for vengeance. In Bork’s case, he resorted to calumny and slander to destroy the career and reputation of a man because he didn’t like his philosophy.

In his 2018 book Them: Why We Hate Each Other—and How to Heal, Nebraska Republican Senator, Ben Sasse wrote that the “borking” of Robert Bork created an “angry constituency.” In fact, one might argue, it laid the ground-work for the election of Donald Trump. Sasse wrote:

In one of the more influential speeches of Twentieth-Century America, liberal lion Ted Kennedy declared to the public in a planned nationally televised speech that Robert Bork, President Ronald Reagan’s nominee to fill a High Court vacancy in 1986, was quite simply a monster. Here’s Kennedy: ‘Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are at the heart of our democracy.”

This was simply a grotesque slander and lie like Lyndon Johnson’s daisy ad that sent the message that electing Barry Goldwater as president would lead to a nuclear war. (The ad featured a little girl singing and picking daisies in a field as a nuclear explosion and mushroom cloud erupted in the background.) Sasse went on writing:

Liberal activist groups had decided, for the first time in American history, to wage an electronic-era political campaign against a Supreme Court candidacy, and the media aided the effort, covering the nomination not as a debate over competing ideas about the role of the American judiciary, but as a battle of good versus evil.... It is unusual for a sitting justice to comment publicly on politics at all, let alone on a court confirmation battle, but left-of-center Justice John Paul Stevens not only defended Bork against Kennedy’s accusations, but recommended his confirmation.

Since the Bork hearings, politics has degenerated into an absolute avalanche of hate. Both sides have been guilty, but not to the same degree. Take the January 6th protest at the Capitol that liberals compare to Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Ask yourself, what looked more like a war zone – the Capitol where a few hundred unarmed individuals swarmed into the building, some actually invited in by the Capitol police, or the looted, burned out cities of Portland, Seattle, Chicago, St. Louis, and Kenosha. It’s clear that BLM/Antifa supporters joined and helped instigate lawlessness at the Capitol. But even if all the protesters were Trump supporters, they represented a tiny fraction of those on the mall where the atmosphere was described as festive despite the seriousness of why people were there. Entire families attended with their children. Did you see any of them in the melee at the Capitol? It was no “insurrection!”

As the Biden team continues to dig in and implement their evil agenda, Catholics need a roadmap for negotiating the next four years and beyond. We may not see another fair election for a long time, but evil never wins forever. The French Revolution lasted about a decade followed by another decade under Napoleon’s tyrannical reign which left four million corpses on the battlefield. The totalitarian Nazis took power in 1933 and disappeared in a dozen years after murdering six million. Even the Soviet Union, the carnage leader with at least 50 million murders, was dismantled in a lifetime. All these bloody regimes wreaked savagery on the world, but they came to an end. So will our own day and era of infamy with over 60 million savage murders of the most innocent among us.

Remember that evil events like these arise from sin. Mary said during the July 13th apparition at Fatima, “The war is going to end, but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out....When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that He is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father.”

And yet, men did not repent and World War II ensued. Since then the world has sunk into even worse depravity. We still ignore heaven’s call. But God, in his faithfulness, continues to send Our Lady. The most recent approved apparitions took place in Kibeho, Rwanda in 1981 and 1982. Mary urged the people to pray to prevent a terrible war. They didn’t listen and the civil war of mass genocide devastated the country about a decade later from April to July 1994 when government-backed Hutus butchered hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus. For days the slaughter raged while radio blared government messages urging Hutus to “Kill the cockroaches!”

Mary’s message in Kibeho called on the people to pray and repent. She gave the seers a new chaplet, the rosary of Our Lady of Sorrows, and urged them to pray it as well as continuing to pray the traditional rosary. Among her messages was this: “I speak to you who hold power, and who represent the nation: save the people, instead of being their torturers. Don't rob the people; share with others. Be careful not to persecute, to muzzle those who want to denounce your errors. I say it to you, I repeat it, whatever you do, even though you try everything to harm somebody because he loves his fellow men, defends human rights, fights for the respect of the life of others, and for the truth and all that is good, and even because he fights so that God may be loved and respected, whatever you do, you can do nothing against him.” Sounds like a message for the current administration, and, in fact, it was. Mary made that point very clearly when she told Marie Claire, one of the seers later killed in the genocide: “I am making this appeal to the world [which] is on the edge of catastrophe.”

The United States has been incredibly blessed. We have seen few wars within our borders and none since the Civil War over 160 years ago. Is that about to change? Or has it already? Many cities look like burned out war zones due to riots fueled by Democrats. Censorship and draconian acts by leftist allies in the media against millions of American citizens resemble early control mechanisms by totalitarian governments of the past. Joseph Goebbels had nothing on Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg, and liberal media propaganda. They are more powerful than the state.

Some believe China deliberately released the Wuhan virus in an act of biological warfare. They fear that connections to the Chinese Communist party (CCP) by Biden, Democrat members of Congress, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and others bode ill for America’s future. In view of the policy of the CCP to kill their own people with their one-child policy, the idea that China is waging an undeclared war against us doesn’t seem that far-fetched. Consider that those hit hardest by the virus are the elderly. In a culture that’s killed so many of its own children, the population of young people able to care for aging parents has disappeared. What a convenient “final solution” the virus is proving for China’s useless eaters.

In light of the assaults on faith and family during this bitter political winter, how should Catholics respond? First, of course, turn to God and particularly to Our Lady, the mediatrix of all graces. Everything that’s happening in our country and the world was revealed over 400 years ago to a Spanish nun in Quito, Ecuador, Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres. Mary’s messages to Mother read like a catalogue of the sins of our day as she describes rampant sexual immorality even among clergy and religious, corruption of the sacraments, lack of vocations, unbridled luxury leading to indifference, lost innocence among the young, secularization of the culture, priests held in hatred and contempt because of the sins of some, etc.

Mary revealed that the greatest sorrow to the Sacred Heart is the ingratitude and indifference of those chosen souls called to priesthood and religious life. She also lamented that, “In this supreme moment of need of the Church, those who should speak will fall silent.” Is that not the ugly portrait of our 21st century Catholic Church? Those who should speak and defend the truth are silent and those who despise the truth, like Fr. James Martin and Cardinal Blase Cupich rant and rage with passionate intensity. Where were our bishops when government was using the Wuhan virus as a devastating attack on the Church? How many dioceses enable the attack by their silence? Many Catholics will never return to Mass after months of virtual worship, especially the young. Can’t you hear them arguing with Mom and Dad. "Hey, it isn't essential....The government says so and the bishop agrees...and it's boring... and I don't get anything out of it anyway." Sound familiar, parents? Once you give Caesar the keys to the church, it’s hard to take them back.

We need a passionate outcry against the murder of the innocent and Church discipline of rabid pro-abortion Catholic politicians like Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Andrew Cuomo, Tim Kaine, and others. Words must be followed by action. Bishop Gomez and the USCCB statement describing abortion as the “preeminent” issue is fine, but did the bishops preach that during the presidential campaign? Mostly no! Many sent messages to priests not to preach on politics. Is it politics, however, to warn souls that voting for those who champion sins that call to heaven for vengeance is gravely sinful?

This isn’t the first time the flock have been threatened by storms and persecution. Heresy and error fill the pages of Church history from its earliest days. Many souls succumb and lose the faith during such upheavals. Is the same thing happening now? It seems like the average pew sitter needs to be a theologian, philosopher, and canon lawyer to unravel all the nonsense spouted by liberal priests, bishops, and even the pope. But then I remember little Therese who was none of those things, but is still a Doctor of the Church. The only thing necessary for us is her little way of love.

St. Augustine said, "Love God and do what you will." St. Therese expressed it more passionately. “In the excess of my delirious joy, I cried out: O Jesus, my Love, ....my vocation, at last I have found it....MY VOCATION IS LOVE.” It’s the vocation all Christians share. Augustine and Therese, however, weren’t talking about modern mush love, but the compulsion to be united to the will of God and reflect His love. Augustine’s sermon on love is a goldmine! If we follow Augustine and Therese’s call to love, not an easy task, we will be able to maneuver the confusing highways and biways of our wicked times without losing our balance or our faith. A priest once said that the wisest and holiest person he ever met was a little old woman with limited education who cleaned office buildings. She obviously gained her wisdom in the school of the saints, the school of self-giving, loving sacrifice.

The great and powerful, like King Richard III and our own treacherous elitists beginning with Joe Biden, often think they are above the moral law. But those “determined to prove a villain” do not generally end well. Many of the architects of the French Revolution lost their own heads to Madame Guillotine. Shakespeare’s Richard dies at the Battle of Bosworth Field after a night of unquiet dreams. His multitude of murder victims visit and accuse him of his foul acts, each one ending, “Despair and die.” And that is the looming danger for all who reject Christ and pledge their fidelity to evil. In love, let us pray for their conversion, that they will repent and live.

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