When I opened my copy of the Sierra County Sentinel on May 5, I focused on an ad with a color photo of William George Norris with a baseball cap casting a shadow over his eyes, a long thick beard and a black sweatshirt with three dangling medallions.
“Notice: Your Children Are In Danger,” read the headline. The text warned the public schools were about to adopt a “diabolical curriculum” with “homosexuality, transgenderism, other sexual perversions, and CRT.” People were urged to attend a public hearing on the issue on May 8.
I posted the odd ad on Facebook and got several funny comments. One said Norris is connected to Mary’s Little Remnant, a group of sedevacantists. I had to look up the word. It refers to Roman Catholics who believe the church has been ruled by false popes for nearly 1,000 years, thus the Holy See is vacant. The belief got a boost in the early 1960s after the Vatican II changes that eliminated the Latin mass.
Another acquaintance said Mary’s Little Remnant’s headquarters was behind the city utility yard off Riverside Drive. I drove over to find the dilapidated shack at East Joffre St. — an unpaved road immediately to the south and down a steep embankment from another East Joffre Street that is paved. The two East Joffre streets are not connected and the dirt one does not appear on city maps. A neighbor on the upper East Joffre Street told me he had quarreled with the occupants of the lower street about allowing passersby to camp next door on what is his property.
No one was home. The house needed a lot of work. One of its window screens was torn and a curtain was flapping in the breeze. The metal roof was buckling. The porch floorboards looked unstable. The tarpaper siding was torn. There was a little trailer in the carport and a shrine to Mary in the front yard. What caught my eye was a hand-carved sign that said, “Mary’s Littel House.”
Origins
On May 8, my wife Stacy and I were among nearly 200 people at the school board public hearing — so large it had to be moved to the high school cafeteria. Many who signed up to speak had heard about the hearing only the day before in church. We sat near Truth or Consequences Mayor Amanda Forrister, who passed around Norris’s research, with the title of one textbook “My World” misspelled as “My Word” and other typographical errors.
“Please don’t let this CRT into our schools,” one of the first speakers said as if this obscure academic theory were a child molester. Critical race theory postulates that slavery has shaped and continues to shape modern society. Conservatives popularized the abbreviation which once meant cathode ray tube. A common objection is that CRT makes white children feel guilty for what their ancestors did to people of other ethnicities. Given what we know from history, and what research keeps revealing, what sort of white person would not feel a twinge of guilt? Norris, for one. The main thing I remember him saying at the public hearing was that white people are responsible for spreading Christianity to the world.
But the underlying fear in the room was sexuality. Many speakers feared the curriculum could turn their children gay. Several spoke of “transgenderism” as if it were a belief system.
Among the materials from Mary’s Little Remnant was a page labeled “My Word Interactive 2” with a bucolic scene of a family and the headline: “How Are Families Organized?” The second paragraph of the text says: “Some families have one parent, a mom and a dad, two moms, or two dads.” This was what had many people riled up. Only, this is not from a textbook, but from a teachers guide to remind teachers some students may have different types of families. The insinuation in the handouts that this is for students is misleading and dishonest. Mary’s Little Remnant’s written objections also mention Marxism, paganism, witchcraft, radical feminism (“which by default undermines fathers and males”) and “destruction of the family.” One of the examples is from another teachers guide for fifth graders that suggests assigned readings might include stories about Native American cultures which recognize individuals with both masculine and feminine spirits.
We left the hearing after it became clear it would go late. Later, the board voted to approve the curriculum for high school and middle school by 3-2 votes. Barbara Pearlman, Christine LaFont and Mark Hedge voted yes; Julianna Stroup and Jamie Sweeney voted no. But when Pearlman moved to approve the curriculum for K-5 grades, no one seconded, so the motion died. This means elementary students will continue to use last year’s texts. This would seem to be a partial victory for Mary’s Little Remnant. But Norris and the group’s spiritual leader didn’t see it that way.
A few days later, I dropped by lower East Joffre again. This time, when I knocked on the door, a man with the same medals that Norris wore and demeanor of a scoutmaster emerged from the travel trailer. Richard Joseph Michael Ibranyi, 67, was happy to answer my questions. He grew up in Newark, N.J., the son of a physician of Hungarian descent, a Roman Catholic and a Republican. He went to college, became an optician, opened a shop, prospered, got married, began to sin prodigiously and then ran into the devil. “The devil was knocking me around the room,” he told me. “I know the devil’s real. Things were flying around the room, punching me. I went to God immediately. The priests can’t explain it. It ripped the faith out of me.”
This led to years of searching. He and his wife divorced. He traveled around and stayed in monasteries, but he kept clashing with traditional Roman Catholicism, and began learning about sedevacantism. He studied a form of it at the Most Holy Family monastery in Fillmore, N.Y., and eventually moved to New Mexico, living in Chimayo for a time and then at the Artesian trailer park in Truth or Consequences.
When I asked Ibranyi if his group was likely to get involved in the Nov. 7 school board race, he said he had been discouraged by the whole experience and wasn’t sure what they would do. But he told me I should speak to Norris about his clash with the Sierra County Republican Party leadership, and gave me Norris’ number. Before I left, I pointed to the hand-carved sign on the porch and asked him if “Littel” was misspelled for a reason. He looked at it for several seconds, then turned back to me and said, “You’re the first person who has ever noticed that.”
I spoke to Norris on the phone later that day and made arrangements to meet him at his home on what he calls “Mary’s Little Ranch” — about 2 1/2 acres of scrub brush and cactus with gravel roads, about one mile south of Williamsburg off NM-187. The property has a half dozen mobile homes, a large panel of photovoltaic cells, several shrines to Jesus and Mary, and the graves of two deceased members. We sat at a kitchen table inside one of the mobile homes and began to talk.
Norris, 50, grew up on Chicago’s south side, in a Roman Catholic, Democratic, union-leaning family. He studied philosophy in college, considered becoming a priest, but became discouraged by mainstream Catholicism. He attended the same sedevacantist monastery where Ibranyi had been years earlier. After Norris left and was living in Pennsylvania, he began to read Ibranyi’s writings. Ibranyi was living in Truth or Consequences at the time. Norris called him and they talked for two hours. In October of 2001, Norris headed west to join him. They bought the little house and the ranch, and founded Mary’s Little Remnant, but not as a nonprofit like most churches, so they could legally participate partisan politics. Now he and Ibranyi live on salaries from tithing by the tiny congregation. Ibranyi is the spiritual and intellectual leader, while Norris is more like an administrator and caretaker of the properties.
Conflicts with Sierra County Republicans
Last year, Norris was named to the executive committee of the Sierra County Republican Party. His politics generally jibe with mainstream Republicanism — fiscal conservancy, gun rights and stricter limits on immigration, for instance. But he soon found daylight between his beliefs and those of the local party on abortion. Many Republicans want to make abortion illegal all over the country, with exceptions for rape, incest or if carrying the pregnancy to term would damage a woman’s health. Mary’s Little Remnant, like some other conservatives in Texas and elsewhere, want to eliminate these exceptions and allow abortions only if carrying to term would kill the pregnant woman.
But not even Truth or Consequences’ conservative standard bearer and longtime abortion foe, Rebecca Dow, would openly support such a measure that might drag down efforts to ban or limit abortion in Democratic-leaning New Mexico, where abortion was legal even before Rowe vs. Wade in 1973. Dow is a former state representative who resigned in 2022 to run for the GOP nomination for governor on a platform that emphasized her opposition to abortion, losing to TV weatherman Mark Ronchetti (58.4% to 15.5% with 13.9% for Gregory Zanetti). Ronchetti, who soft-pedaled his pro-life stance, went on to lose to incumbent Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham (52% to 45% with 2.4% for Libertarian Karen Bedonie). Dow recently announced her intention to seek the state House seat again.
Norris’ reaction to the school board vote turned out to be the final straw for the local GOP. After the May 8 vote, the county Republican executive committee began moving to oust Norris for his public criticism of elected officials — not only Pearlman, a Democrat who voted to approve the textbooks, but also Stroup, chair of the local Republican Party, who voted to disapprove them, but declined to criticize Pearlman afterwards. On June 2, the party ran an ad in the Sentinel that said Norris’ “behavior and attempts to divide our community are contrary to conservative values.” On June 8, they voted to expel him by a vote of 5 to 1 with only him dissenting. On June 18, he fired back with a full page ad in the Sentinel, doubling down on Dow, Stroup and others. “Let it be known that Rebecca Dow refused to publically [sic] condemn the sexual perversions in the proposed school curriculum,” he wrote.
In my interview with Norris at Mary’s Little Ranch, he told me he also objects to Dow’s associations with homosexual men. Not only does he oppose equal rights for gays; he believes they should be shunned publicly. Members of his group say that have broken off relationships with family members because they are gay. When I pushed him about what he wants to do with gay people, he told me he is not advocating violence, but that in a “perfect Catholic state,” they would be executed.
He singled out what he called “sodomites” with whom Dow works closely. Among them is John Block, an openly gay, conservative Christian and Republican state representative from Alamogordo. Block was elected in 2022, narrowly beating a primary opponent (50.8% to 49.2%), then trouncing the Democrat in the general election (63% to 37%). He founded and edits the Piñon Post, an online conservative political news site. Even Norris admits it is the best place to keep up with New Mexico political news for conservatives. He occasionally comments on articles on the site.
Block didn’t respond to my requests for comment, but Dow emailed me to say she considers Mary’s Little Remnant a cult. “When Mr Norris explained to me that only six humans in the world are true Christians, I decided to stop engaging with him,” she wrote. “To be clear, I believe life begins at conception.”
Johanna Tighe, a former chair of the local Republican Party, now its secretary, told me “we’re trying to ignore (Norris) . . . trying to get him to go away.” Tighe said she recruited Norris because he seemed bright with lots of enthusiasm for conservative politics, but soon became “way too radical” and began “calling out all kinds of people.” When I mentioned his attempts to “out” gay men, she said that she believes Norris “cherry picks” Bible verses to justify his ideas. She said she knows gay people, has had them to dinner at her home and does not believe anyone has a right to invade their private lives. As a born-again Christian, she said, she knows homosexuality is a sin but she would welcome gays or anyone else to the Church at the Butte where she is a member. It occurred to me as I hung up with Tighe that Mary’s Little Remnant may be one of the few things in Sierra County that Republicans and Democrats can agree on.
My conversations with Norris and Ibranyi continued over the summer and into the fall. I didn’t tell them initially that I am on the executive committee of the Sierra County Democratic Party and a retired journalist, thinking they might clam up. But as I got to know them, I revealed my background. When I began to understand the political implications, I asked Norris what he would think about me writing a story about Mary’s Little Remnant. He didn’t seem surprised, smiled and said he would talk to Ibranyi. After I put my name on an ad in the Sentinel endorsing Pearlman for reelection, it was clear whose side I was on. But they kept talking to me. I even confessed that I became an agnostic around age 12, when a Methodist Sunday school teacher scolded me for doubting the Bible, and that today I believe all religion is superstition. I wanted all the cards on the table. I warned them they might face danger if the full extent of their beliefs were public. They didn’t flinch. Despite our vastly different political leanings, I found myself liking them personally. They are direct, lack pretentiousness and never lapse into bureaucratic gobbledegook. They never asked me to go off the record, backtracked or refused to answer a question.
Then I began to read their website, Johnthebaptist.us, largely the work of Ibranyi. Almost every conspiracy theory I have ever heard of — with the exception of flat-earth theory which Ibranyi discounts — is included and most of them are blamed on Jews. For example, “Apostate Jews lie to mankind by spreading the lie that Adam came from a monkey.” According to Ibranyi’s voluminous collection of writings on the website, Jews run the media, the banks, promote sexual immorality and made up the Holocaust as a way to cover up their guilt in killing Christ. It paints Adolf Hitler as an honorable man who exposed the corruption of the Jews in Germany but whose “final solution” was “emigration, not extermination.” “If Hitler wanted to kill all the Jews, he would not starve them to death or burn or gas them (which would take up a lot of time and be a huge expense),” he wrote. “He simply would have a bullet put in their head.” Hitler gets low marks for denying the virgin birth, believing in “theistic evolution” and “glorifying the heretic Martin Luther.” He got high marks for condemning homosexuality, pedophilia, transgenderism and effeminacy, supporting marriage and opposing abortion and contraception.
One of Ibranyi’s primary sources is “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” The book, first published in Russia in 1903, purports to be the minutes of a secret council of Jews plotting world domination. It’s believed to be plagiarized from earlier novels about fictional panels of “illuminati” or others. After Protocols was translated into other languages, it became popular worldwide and promoted the stereotype that Jews are greedy, sneaky and rich. Automotive pioneer Henry Ford printed excerpts of the Protocols in his Dearborn, Mich., newspaper in the 1920s. It was part of public school curriculum in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. About 20 years ago, a dramatization of the story was broadcast on Egyptian television. Ibranyi insists the book is nonfiction and that it predicts the future. When I asked what it predicted, he mentioned 9-11, the latest Israeli-Gaza war and a coming financial catastrophe.
“They are dirty stinking liars,” he said of Israeli Jews. “The Palestinians are evil too, but the Jews are even more evil. . . . Just look at the 9-11 thing. Not every Jew got out. They kill a few Jews as sacrificial lambs. There wasn’t even anybody on those planes. They were controlled by automatic pilot. . . . Next you’re going to have a big financial crisis. Jews are planning this crash.”
Ibranyi bristles at the suggestion he is an antisemite by using a version of the cliched excuse that one has black or Jewish friends. He calls himself a Catholic Jew and says his father’s ancestors were practicing Jews in Hungary and that Ibranyi is a Hungarian Jewish name. He says this means he cannot be antisemetic. Some of his lectures on the website also verge on racism against blacks. For example, Black Lives Matter is a “hateful ideology” that aims to incite race riots. Former President Barack Obama is “the number one Black Lives criminal — the most racist president in American history.”
Sunday Services
In late October, Norris asked me if my wife and I would be interested in attending Sunday services. I said yes and he soon sent me several emails that said Stacy must wear a veil — not a face covering but simply a hair cover like those required in pre-Vatican II days — and a dress that did not show cleavage. We would not be allowed to pray aloud with the congregation, but could pray silently. We agreed and drove out to one of the mobile homes on Mary’s Little Ranch on Oct. 30. There were 11 of us, seven men and four women: Stacy and me, Norris and Ibranyi, Bruce Gott, his wife Laura Gott and their son Ryan Gott, Nicholas Worth and his two sisters Catherine Gusa and Mary Lou Donlin, and Phillip McCabe.
The men, who sat the main room, all had full beards and wore long-sleeved shirts with the three medallions. The three women congregants, with veils and modest dresses with medallions, sat in back. Stacy and I sat in the kitchen. Most of the congregation were in their 60s or 70s; the youngest was 28 — Ryan Gott, a farmer in the Animas valley. His family began worshiping with Ibranyi back in the late 1990s when they lived near Ignacio, CO. He and McCabe monitored a camera and laptops so people from around the world could watch and participate. “T.J” from Dublin, Ireland, chimed in several times to ask questions or make points.
The service, not called a mass because Ibranyi is not a consecrated priest, began similarly to a traditional Catholic, Episcopal or Lutheran ceremony. The first difference I noted was in the prayer asking for blessings of elected officials. Not only did Ibranyi mention President Joe Biden and Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, both Democrats, but also local Republican luminaries like Rebecca Dow and Francis Luna, publisher of the Sentinel and owner of a gun store for women, “Gunher’s”; national conservative celebrities like Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, Ted Nugent and Kanye West; authoritarian foreign leaders like Russian president Putin, Turkish president Erdogan and Hungarian prime minister Orban, and for good measure, Stacy, me and Bruce Springsteen.
Ibranyi’s lecture, rather than a sermon, compared the small congregation to times in the Bible when there were only a few righteous humans on earth — three with Adam, Eve and Cain, after Cain killed Abel. Never mind that Cain was a murderer and later managed to find a wife. Everything was in English, rather than Latin, because Ibranyi doesn’t speak Latin. He thinks it would be a good thing for Catholics to go back to Latin so they could understand each other the world over.
As the two-hour service neared its end, the women began heating up a previously prepared a lunch of beef stew, mushrooms, mashed potatoes, peas and carrots, biscuits, fresh salad and fresh fruit. The men, including me, sat at portable tables set up in the living room/sanctuary. We served our plates first in the kitchen. The women, including Stacy, sat at the kitchen table and waited until we sat down to fill their own plates. Stacy said the women were polite and open with her, telling her stories about breaking off relations with relatives, either because they were gay or because they kept arguing with them about Mary’s Little Remnant. The men chatted about growing tomatoes and mixed martial arts (MMA) matches.
When we were finished, I scooted close to Ibranyi and asked him if there was an ultimate authority on sedevancatism.
“Sure. Rome,” he said. “In the Vatican.”
“There’s an office in the Vatican?” I asked.
“Right now, it’s vacant,” he said. “It’s waiting to be filled. It’s just like when a president gets shot. It’s the same thing.”
I didn’t think he understood my question, but when I suggested he was being misleading, he got angry, shouting “You’re not being honest with me. . . . It’s a stupid question. Next question!”
“Let me put it this way,” I said. “If I have a question about sedevancantism, who would I call?”
“Me,” he said. “I’m the ruler of the church in its final days.”
It is worth mentioning in this piece about school textbook controversies that neither Norris nor Ibranyi have children or are currently with their wives. Ibranyi has been divorced for decades. Norris’ wife took up with another man and now lives in Arizona. Norris says she has been excommunicated. Norris and Ibranyi say they are celibate and believe sex is proper only between a married couple, one man and one woman. They do not believe in any kind of birth control because “failed birth control causes abortions.” They believe only God should determine if or when a child is born.
School Board Showdown
Barbara Pearlman, a former teacher who was elected to the school board after she retired, initially said she would not run for reelection due to what she had to endure from Norris, who accused her of promoting the sexualization of children for her votes on textbooks. But at the end of August, she changed her mind and signed up for the Nov. 7 ballot. Others who signed up and did not withdraw later were Jeanne Feazell, Ava Rebecca Bartoo and Tracy Ann Stout-Cole.
School board races in New Mexico are officially nonpartisan, but Pearlman and Feazell were endorsed by the local Democrats, and Bartoo and Stout-Cole by the Republicans as well as Mary’s Little Remnant. At an Oct. 13 forum in the cafeteria, Pearlman made it clear she will be an ally of gay students. Feazell said she supports critical thinking skills and has a sister who is gay. Bartoo and Stout-Cole seemed confused by a written question that alluded to “Sierra County values” — a term sometimes used to defend homophobes — and said only that they would not discriminate against anyone.
Norris and Ibranyi kept up a steady stream of ads and letters to the editor, most of them paid, in the Sentinel through September and October. They endorsed Bartoo and Stout-Cole, criticized Pearlman, Republicans and Jews. Pearlman is Jewish. Ibranyi turned up the volume of his usual rhetoric after Oct. 7, when Hamas murdered Israeli civilians and Israel invaded the Gaza Strip. “Christ–denying Jews have no right to Israel on religious grounds,” said the headline of his letter to the Sentinel on Oct. 20. Pearlman said she suspects Mary’s Little Remnant is funded by Moms for Liberty, a rightwing group that lobbies for parental rights in public schools and has been active in New Mexico textbook controversies. But Norris insisted all the money spent on the Sentinel, “much less” than $5,000, came from his congregation’s tithes.
In the end, it was enough — along with support from Sierra County’s large Republican influence. Bartoo and Stout, the top two vote getters, will take the two vacancies on the Truth or Consequences Municipal School Board. Unofficial results had Bartoo with 1,149 or 34 percent, Stout-Cole with 929 or 27 percent, Pearlman with 769 or 23 percent and Feazell with 547 or 16 percent.
Pearlman, who was a respected teacher of English and gifted courses at Hot Springs High School for more than a quarter of a century, was not optimistic about her chances when we traded emails a few days before the election. “There is such a level of hate at the moment,” she wrote. “I will be sorry to lose not for me necessarily, but because it will say something about the town and schools I have come to love. I can stand up to the hate, I am a grownup and not unfamiliar with antisemitism, but I worry about the young people and what message it might send about them or their families.”
” Given what we know from history, and what research keeps revealing, what sort of white person would not feel a twinge of guilt? ”
just one of the reasons CRT is so despicable is because it categorizes people based on race.
We should all know that race is a social perception that varies among different people. CRT dissolved that concept. I had to take a mandatory CRT class (everyone who went to a statue university in Colorado post 2012, i believe, had to take a course in CRT to graduate). It see,s to come from good faith but in reality the teachings are pretty twisted.
Otherwise, there are tons of lawsuits boiling now, some already going through the courts, in which the plaintiffs are people who were persuaded, as children, by ‘medical professionals’, to take puberty blockers and have other ‘transgender treatment’ – see https://katv.com/news/nation-world/detransitioner-sues-doctors-over-medical-negligence-after-she-was-given-irreversible-gender-treatments-as-minor-chloe-cole for just one.
I don’t see why this outlet and this author had to go after a specific group of people in town to cover this otherwise national issue, seems like this article just sets up a straw man to attack.
Why go after a specific group? Don’t you mean “I wish you didn’t report the facts about a specific group that actually tried to target a specific individual running for a school board seat”?
no- i mean ‘why make this about this local group’?- pretty much just what i said. Instead of focusing on the issues of what is or isn’t being taught in schools, which is a national discussion currently- this article focused on a group which- well- groups like the one described here can be found all over, people normally don’t give them much space because of obvious reasons.
I’d heard from other people about some of the school board meetings and heard that a ton of people from the community showed up. I know a couple people who went, they’re not extremist fundamentalists whatsoever.
I think the article which should have been written would have actually gotten into what is being taught in schools- rather than the cursoru way the author dealt with it “what white person wouldn’t feel a twinge of guilt”- seriously, that statement from the author needs to be explored, I think he forgot what a social construct is. Instead of having a pertinent discussion about something nationally relevent to our community, the author focuses on this group of religious fanatics that people normally ignore, why?
I suspect he was targeting a local group because we are all local residents and have become Disturbed by some of the despicable comments and allegations made by Mr Norris in our local paper. And I for one am glad he did.
I think we’re disturbed by these fanatical comments because both our news outlets seem to have a prejudice for publishing/emphasizing them.In y opinion, both news outlets in town censor the more centrist views. But what do I view as centrist? I suppose that’s a good question. Open dialogue, abiding by rules of logic, respect for the other person, that’s about it.
But no- we don’t seem to have that. Sensationlizing the news is always more marketable than understanding it or being humble when we don’t.
“I think the article which should have been written would have actually gotten into what is being taught in schools-”
We did write it:
https://sierracountysun.org/edu/understanding-new-mexicos-proposed-new-social-studies-standards-for-k-12-students/
I didn’t see anything in this article that sensationalized the facts in any way. “Sensationalizing” would be a word more accurate if used to describe statements made by the members of “Mary’s Little Remnants” about the Jewish population, gay people, the Catholic Church, you name it. Also mendacious, fallacious, silly, downright ignorant. And they are far from the only ones that hold many of these views, unfortunately. They are a symptom of something deeper and more dangerous.
Great article. It’s unfortunate that perspectives like those of Mr Norris seem to be percolating into the mainstream, like chemical pollution into the water table.
I hope this article is widely shared and read for the in-depth exploration of the influence of a small group with extreme beliefs. Outstanding journalism.
I agree with you 100% Patty! My prayer is that this article goes all around the world. I thank Tom for writing this article and giving us free publicity. Everything that was written about our beliefs is true. Whether it be Rome Being in Apostasy for a thousand years, Francis not being a true pope, the Holocaust being a hoax, 9-11 being an inside job or Hitler being an honorable man, it’s all true and if people due their due diligence with an open mind they will see that we are correct. I invite everyone on this blog to visit our website (www.JohnTheBaptist.us) and please check out the proofs we provide.
So a man who murdered millions, Adolf Hitler, is an honorable man? Are you sure you want these views shared with the world?
I regret that Mr. Norris misunderstood my comment. I did not in any way see the article as providing a platform for his views. Quite the opposite. I disagree with all of Norris’s ideas. I believe this article’s importance lies in its exposure of the harm done by allowing a small group with extremist views to influence such an important election.
We currently have a Speaker of the House who doesn’t believe in the separation of church and state and tried to get the votes to overturn the last election is his, is anti-abortion under any and all, circumstances, believes in creationism and that practicing homosexuality is a sin against God. I don’t know about his views on Judaism and those who practice it but I wouldn’t be surprised if you still viewed them as Christ killers who won’t have a place in Paradise. So I’m not sure how far off the views of the two individuals profile here are from his own. The man is full of surprises and none of them are good ones.
I would like to make a few corrections to the article.
1) In a perfect Catholic State unrepentant homosexuals get the death penalty and thus not those who repent.
2) I did not speak of Adam, Eve, and Cain in my lecture. I spoke of how there were only eight faithful people in Noe’s day; only one when God called Abraham; only one at times in the days of Elias and Eliseus; almost none at times in the days of Isaias, Micheas, and King David; there were no good kings in the Northern Kingdom of Israel and only three in the Southern Kingdom of Juda; only six at the beginning of the Machabean revolt against the Seleucids who Hellenized Judaism; there were only a few at first when Jesus began his public ministry, twelve then seventy-two and only one-hundred-and-twenty in the upper room after Jesus ascended into heaven; in the end times, only the two witnesses and the few who follow them until they gain more converts, which also proves that there is no Catholic hierarchy intact or else there would be no need for the two witnesses.
3) Sedevacantism means the Holy See is vacant and thus there is no pope. The man who calls himself pope today is an apostate antipope. The vacant see will be filled by the next true pope. Some believe the Holy See has been vacant since apostate Antipope John XXIII in 1958. But I have discovered that the Holy See has been vacant since 1130, beginning with apostate Antipope Innocent II.
Richard Joseph Michael Ibranyi (RJMI)
Numbers 1 and 3 are not corrections, but expansions on Ibranyi’s ideas. As for Number 2, yes, indeed, Ibranyi’s lecture used Adam, Eve and Cain as an example of when only a few righteous people were on earth. I suggest he review the videotape. By the way, I sent Norris and Ibranyi a copy of my draft. Both reviewed it and had a few minor corrections, but Ibranyi didn’t have any problems with my account of his lecture then. He also uses this angle to expand on his Biblical citations. Ibranyi rarely misses an opportunity to expand.
CORRECTION: Number 2 was a mistake. Ibranyi’s lecture compared his small congregation to times when only a few righteous people existed. I remembered him using Adam/Eve as an example. But reviewing my notes and a videotape of the lecture, I see he instead used Noah and his seven family members following the Flood.
Sigh! That people who are still angry over the election of a pope they didn’t like A THOUSAND YEARS AGO have influence over the election of a school board member today should give us pause! If the people who WERE elected over the one they denounced have ANY truck with these deranged folks then we and the children of this community are in serious jeopardy!!
I have had only one interface with a member of this commune – that was at TorC’s first and last gay pride parade. We had relatively civil repartee with the contingent of Baptists that we followed – lots of “God Bless You”s from them. But after the parade I saw the gaggle of these people (who had jeered and screamed at us all along the route) and I walked over to them and asked if it were true that they were “catholic”. Yes, they proclaimed, they were. I replied that I had grown up catholic…….. I didn’t get any further than that when a small, withered old woman dressed in a grey nun’s habit SCREAMED at me, “YOU WERE NEVER A CATHOLIC!!!”, spittle literally flying at me! I backed away knowing nothing could be gained from any further attempt at conversation. In my 8 decades of life, five as an openly gay man, I have never felt such visceral HATRED as I did from that woman. I suspect she is in one of the graves mentioned in the article. That level of pure evil is not healthy for either giver or receiver.
The level of fear I’m sensing from the right wing politicians – that if the fact of the existence of variants of human sexuality is so threatening to society that it must be hidden from children – is incredibly disturbing. It is not something that you can “catch” or be “taught” or “groomed” to. If it were WE would certainly not exist as WE were taught and groomed mercilessly to be heterosexual. It just doesn’t work that way. Only dysfunction can result from hiding reality in all it’s messy forms – you would think we would understand that by now. We all have a role to play in society. Even if you want to think that our only role is to be interior decorators that IS something. But I have raised two very heterosexual young sons and three, so far, hetero grandchildren plus taught hundreds of elementary school kids – NONE of whom turned queer as far as I know. But all of them are now aware of the FACT that gay people exist and that they can look up to as successful, honorable human beings AND, if they were gay, they could be reassured that they could grow up to be productive members of society.
Somebody famous once said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. Get over it!
That is why people like this, even a small group, need to be confronted and challenged and fought. Rachel Maddow’s new book talks about the rise of fascism prior to and during World War II, I make the point that despite our current view that these individuals were outliers they were really part of the mainstream. These ideas (Google Father Coughlin) are destructive and insidious and are used as a way to normalize or even praise racism, fascism, and intolerance of all colors, sizes and shapes.
Kyle Smith either misunderstands or misrepresents Critical Race Theory. It is an academic theory which guides the study of institutional racism, which is nothing more difficult to comprehend that the effect that such things as red-lining, restrictive covenants, biased-based insurance or bank policies and practices, urban planning which, say, uses new highways to separate different districts along racial lines, etc. It has no intention of making anyone feel bad or guilty, though the facts of such discrimination might have that effect. On those grounds, Mr. Smith would presumably object to the teaching of the history of southern slavery or the Civil War or the Indian wars in the West. If such people as Mr. Smith feel abused by such studies, they should look inward for the reasons for those feelings, not to the facts which history and sociology and anthropology teach.
Can I respond to Mr. Hays without being censored? I know that this thread has censored me already, so my words are probably not seen in full light
Mr. Hays-
Your feedback illustrates a crucial point. What is history as compared to philospophy, and is CRT a philosphy or is it history?
We should all appreciate history, while understanding the philosophies we percieve history through.
I object to your characterization of me, and I further object to this outlets censorship of my posts, whilst it promotes extremist characters.
Nonethless, I appreciate you all, anyone reading, and Mr. Hays especially, as he felt it warrranted time of his day to mention me, I do wish him well, and hope we can have a better/further discussion in the future.
Thank you for publishing this deeply reported examination of a group that seems to wield outsized influence. And at a time when antisemitism is on the upswing worldwide, it is good to recognize how deeply rooted this ancient hatred is.