Sober Up in 2025, part two

Well, I tried.

I really, really tried.

What did I try to do?

As always, you, the eight readers of this site, ask penetratingly pertinent questions.

The answer?

Sure, you are entitled to one.

I tried to give President Donald John Trump the benefit of the doubt when he nominated Drs. Marty Makary and David Weldon to serve, respectively, as the Directors of the Food and Health Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As we know, the rug was pulled out from under Dr. David Weldon’s nomination just twelve hours before he was to appear before the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education. Labor, and Pensions (HELP) for his confirmation hearing to be the Director of the United Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). See Sober Up in 2025, part one for the details.

Sadly, it turns out also that Dr. Marty Makary was willing to retain the chief counsel for the United States Food and Drug Administration, Hillary Perkins, a holdover from the administration of former President in Name Only Joseph Robinette Autopen Biden and Kamala Word Salad Harris Emhoff, until her support for surgical baby-killing and the Wuhan Virus vaccines was exposed by United States Senator Joshua Hawley (R-Missouri), a member of the HELP committee:

WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — A lawyer who defended abortion and vaccine mandates will no longer be the top legal representative for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the Trump administration following public scrutiny of her history, the FDA announced Thursday.

On Tuesday, Axios reported the selection of Hilary Perkins for FDA chief counsel, and that she was the choice of Dr. Marty Makary, President Donald Trump’s nominee for FDA commissioner. Makary testified before the Senate this week he would spearhead objective reviews of abortion pill and vaccine policy, commitments conservatives had little reason to doubt given his credentials as a critic of the COVID-19 establishment.

“We’ve been able to recruit higher quality personnel to HHS than in any time in its history,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said. “These are individuals who will return the agency to gold-standard science, evidence-based medicine, and recalibrate its trajectory toward public health rather than industry profiteering.”

However, the report noted that Perkins had been the Justice Department attorney who defended the Biden administration’s relaxation of rules governing the dispensation of abortion pills in court.

The next day, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said he directed his team to look deeper into the matter, and found that “this Biden lawyer has argued FOR Biden’s outrageous pro-abortion rules in many cases.”

“She also argued FOR Biden’s draconian, discredited vaccine mandates,” Hawley added.

Her brief in one case said objections to COVID-19 mandates “verge on the conspiratorial – e.g., that there is no public health emergency and that the American people have been psychologically manipulated.” The brief also stated that Biden’s orders mandating vaccination “strike a careful balance between the federal government’s compelling interest in stemming the spread of COVID-19 and certain individuals’ medical or religious reasons for declining vaccination.”

These positions are – obviously – totally out of line with President Trump — Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) March 13, 2025

On Thursday morning, the FDA announced that Perkins had resigned from the position, effective immediately. It did not elaborate as to why.

While the outcome appears to demonstrate that public scrutiny and pressure can still produce results, the situation raises new questions about the views and judgment of Makary himself. The Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee voted 14-9 Thursday to advance his nomination to the Senate floor for final approval.

Trump has taken a number of pro-life actions since returning to office, but he said on the campaign trail that he would not enforce federal law prohibiting abortion pills from being dispensed by mail. Kennedy says Trump has asked him to study the dangers of abortion pills which, along with Makary’s previous testimony, has given pro-lifers hope for the possibility of a reversal. (Top FDA lawyer resigns after Josh Hawley exposes defense of abortion, vaccine mandates.)

Anyone who does not understand the fact that the slaughter of the innocent preborn, whether by chemical or surgical means, is opposed to the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment and the Natural Law is disqualified to serve in any position of public trust, which is why I opposed Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr.’s., nomination to be the Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services despite his important, if not indispensable, work opposing the Wuhan Virus plandemic (see “The mission of HHS is to enhance the health and well-being of all Americans, and this includes the unborn.”) and exposing the statist fraud and tinhorn public “health” dictator named Anthony Fauci. That Dr. Marty Makary, himself an opponent of the whole Wuhan Virus scheme to control the public, chose a virulent pro-abort to be the FDA’s chief counsel demonstrates that he does not understand the prophetic nature of the life issue.

Saddest yet is the fact that President Donald John Trump’s choice to succeed Dr. David Weldon as his nominee to serve the Director of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Susan Monarez, a researcher and not a physician, is as completely delusion about the Wuhan Virus poisoned jabs as is the president himself:

President Trump has selected Susan Monarez, the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to lead the agency permanently.

The president withdrew his first nominee, Dr. Dave Weldon, just hours before his confirmation hearing. If confirmed by the Senate, Dr. Monarez, an infectious-disease researcher, will be the first nonphysician to lead the agency in more than 50 years.

“Americans have lost confidence in the C.D.C. due to political bias and disastrous mismanagement,” the president wrote on Truth Social, adding that Dr. Monarez would work with the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to address the chronic disease epidemic and restore the agency’s accountability.

“As an incredible mother and dedicated public servant, Dr. Monarez understands the importance of protecting our children, our communities, and our future,” Mr. Trump wrote.

Dr. Monarez, 50, assumed the acting director position a few days after Mr. Trump took office in January, leaving her perch as deputy director of a new federal biomedical research agency created during the Biden administration.

Dr. Monarez was expected to serve until Mr. Trump’s first choice for the job, Dr. Weldon, could be confirmed. But after Mr. Trump decided to withdraw the nomination, Republican aides in the Senate said that Dr. Weldon had failed to impress them with a plan for the agency.

Dr. Weldon blamed two Republican senators — Susan Collins of Maine and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana — for turning against him.

Some experts said Dr. Monarez marked a sharp contrast to Dr. Weldon, whose skeptical views on childhood vaccines aligned with those of Mr. Kennedy and raised alarm in the medical community.

Mr. Kennedy’s response to a growing measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico, including his lukewarm recommendation of vaccination, has drawn considerable criticism. Dr. Monarez is a biosecurity expert who endorsed the Covid vaccines, and her selection may signal a growing impatience with anti-vaccine sentiment.

“She has a strong reputation as a solid researcher and expert in infectious diseases,” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.

“She clearly understands public health and the role governmental public health plays,” he said. “I believe the public health community can work with her in a positive manner.”

But Dr. Monarez has spent weeks away from Atlanta, where the agency is headquartered. She has not attended the agency’s all-hands meetings or offered reassurance to employees unsettled by the tumult of the past weeks, according to several C.D.C. employees who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

A comment section on the agency’s internal website was quickly deleted after staff members began to note that they wanted more communication from her.

Center directors have been interpreting the president’s executive orders and various court instructions with little input from the director, the officials said.

Instead, the acting director’s office has served as a conduit for directives from the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services.

For example, she has been working with the cost-cutting initiative known as the Department of Government Efficiency to plan reductions to the agency, according to a former official with knowledge of the matter.

And when the Trump administration ordered the C.D.C. to take down pages from its website containing phrases like “L.G.B.T.Q.” and “transgender,” Dr. Monarez did not resist nor attempt to preserve important data, according to three people with knowledge of the events, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. (Trump Nominates Susan Monarez to Lead C.D.C.)

As a brief aside before continuing, the bureaucrats at the CDC do not seem to grasp that directors are supposed to follow their president’s directives, not “resist” them, which is, of course, another proof that career civil servants believe that it is their duty to do what they want and not what a president they despise orders to be done.

Putting that observation side, however, the fact remains that Dr. Susan Monarez is another vaccine maniac who will parrot all the lies of Big Pharma when it comes to “vaccines” of any type and when it comes to approve of the latest pharmaceutical product that is designed to create problems to justify the development of even more pharmaceutical products to treat the side-effects created by some “miracle cure” its hawkers had promoted only a short while previously. It is business-as-usual at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and that means more “vaccines,” more drugs, and more phony “guidelines” and medical “protocols” to deal with various disease outbreaks. Dr. Monarez’s nomination also means she will redouble efforts to promote “organ donation,” which is nothing other than human vivisection in the case of vital human organs, as she is a promoter of the modern body-snatching industry. Yes, it is business-as-usual at CDC.

Sober up, yes, sober up in 2025, which is looking a whole lot like 2017 in many, although not all, respects.

Perhaps United States Joshua Hawley and Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), both of whom serve on the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, can play the same role with Dr. Monarez that the committee’s chairman, Senator William Cassidy (R-Louisiana) and Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine), a pro-abortion Catholic in good standing within the conciliar structures, played in torpedoing Dr. Makary’s nomination. However, the likelihood is that the opposition of Senators Hawley and Paul, if it materializes, would not be sufficient to stop a “mainstream” friend of Big Pharma from being nominated.

Alas, this what must happen with there is such confusion about right principles in a world where most people, including most Catholics, are utterly indifferent about the fact that the Word—the Logos—the very Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity—became Incarnate on this day, March 25, in the Virginal and Immaculate Womb of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary by the power of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, after she had given her fiat (Ecce ancilla Domini, fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum) to God the Father’s Holy Will as announced by Saint Gabriel the Archangel.

Father Francis Weninger, S.J., explicated the beauties of today’s feast, which signifies the moment when time met eternity and the importance of happily doing God’s Holy Will in all things by always repeating the confident words of Our Lady, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done unto me according to Thy Word”:

Mary said: Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to Thy word."--Luke i, 38.

The glorious festival of the Blessed Virgin Mary, from one point of view, refers expressly and solemnly to the message of the angel to Mary; for that message contains precisely what, properly speaking, renders life valuable for us. As the Church entones in the Easter preface on Holy Saturday: "Of what use would it be to have been born, had we not had the happiness to be redeemed?"

The work of the redemption and delivery of man was destined to be accomplished through the incarnation of the Son of God. This divine truth, the personal union of our human nature with the second person of the Blessed Trinity, is the most stupendous fact which the omnipotence of God ever effected or could effect. Though He might call into existence myriads of worlds, the splendor of which would far surpass this globe of ours, such a proof of His power would never appear so incomprehensible to us, as, that God, in the might of His immutable and eternal nature, united Himself, in the course of time, with a creature--a created nature--and entered this world in suffering, and all for us!

This article of faith also points to the great mystery of the freedom of the will, which, however, without the concurrence of God, can do nothing, entirely nothing, absolutely nothing in the order of salvation; and this co-operation is required by God to enable us to participate in the fruits of the redemption. This will be understood when I say that the will remains perfectly free in spite of its total dependence upon God; and, therefore, man must, of his own voluntary choice, embrace the service of God.

Even from the Blessed Virgin Mary, God required consent before the incarnation of His divine Son took place; therefore, If we wish to participate in the fruits of incarnation, we must, with the dispositions of her most obedient heart, confess before God: "Behold the servant of the Lord; be it done to me according to His word!"

O Mary, obtain for us today from Jesus, the blessed fruit of thy womb, the grace of perfect submission to the will of God! I speak in the most holy name of Jesus, for the greater honor and glory of God!

Christ was, upon one occasion, in company with Mary His mother, and other relatives according to the flesh, when His benign gaze rested suddenly upon them, and He gave utterance to the following words: "Whosoever doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven is my mother, my brother." By these words Christ instructs us that there is a spiritual union regarding the effects of nature and grace, and that it depends on the co-operation of our free will as to how far we victoriously complete the great affair of our salvation, and, according to this measure, obtain a higher or lower degree of glory in heaven. I apply this truth to the event we celebrate today, and say: "As the Lord sent an angel to Mary with the message of salvation, so God sends to every human soul that same message, through a call to the Holy Catholic Church, through the interior encouragement of grace, and through exterior circumstances; and, as He looked for the consent of Mary from the angel, so does He require our consent to follow the call of grace by a free decision of will." In this way, beloved in Christ, we shall spiritually receive Christ, as if He had been indeed born therein, and, by the continued co-operation of our will, He will grow in our hearts to the perfection of the life of grace. In this regard every thing depends on the sincerity, firmness, and fidelity of the will.

When the angel addressed Mary desiring her consent to become the mother of God--of the Son of God made man--it was not alone honor and glory which he offered her; for when that radiant being stood before her, she saw in spirit all the sacrifices, renunciations, mortifications, sufferings the most intense, and anguish the most bitter, which she would have to undergo in the days of her earthly pilgrimage, by becoming the mother of Jesus. She beheld the eve of the first Christmas, when she and her holy spouse, St. Joseph, two homeless wanderers, sought refuge in the stable at Bethlehem, because there was no room for them in the inn. The flight into Egypt, the weary, toilsome life which she, with her dear ones, led both there and at Nazareth, arose before her. And the vail of futurity was withdrawn that she might see the terror and grief which would overwhelm her soul when, later on, she would accompany her Son on His apostolic journeys through the land. All that the malice, obstinacy, and falsehood of His persecutors would cause that divine Son to suffer, she saw; and more than all, her spirit well nigh fainted within her when, in anticipation, her maternal heart was rent with the anguish of that dread day on which her Son would die. Ah! then indeed she felt the sharpness of that sword of grief which, according to holy Simeon, was to pierce her heart when she would receive the lacerated body of her beloved Son after He had expired upon the cross: and thus would be Mary the Queen of martyrs, the mother of Jesus, who is the King of martyrs!

The sacrifice which God required of her rose up in its might on that Feast of the Annunciation--in ages past and gone--and yet she hesitated not one moment in her submissive acceptance, but gave an immediate and decided consent, in those words which millions of devout Christians, her loving children, repeat whenever the Angelus bell peals forth at morning, noon, and eve: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to Thy word."

Let me make the application, and say that invitations are given to every human soul to enter into the bonds of fraternal relationship with Christ; but we must take special care to know how we can fulfill the holy will of God in the most perfect manner, that we may act ever as His own true children, and derive the richest fruits from the mystery we commemorate today. We must keep ever in view the important truth that if we would belong to Christ, imitate Him and secure our eternal salvation, we must live in a manner wholly different from the children of this world. We have not been placed upon earth to care for its perishable treasures, empty honors, and transitory joys. The watchword of our efforts to attain eternal life, whether we be wealthy or poor, blessed with health or afflicted with sickness, whether God in His goodness grants us "length of days," or early calls us to Himself, should be: "Thy will be done." "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; may it be done to me according to Thy word." Beloved Christians, if, in accordance with this declaration the most holy will of God should please to deprive you of worldly wealth, or of what is more precious still, your honor, that fair fame which is so justly dear to your hearts; if you should even be covered with ignominy, and treated as the last of your kind, your unfaltering reply, when the bitter cup is held to your quivering lips, should be: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to Thy word."

Finally, if God should demand that in the performance of your daily duties your health and strength give way, and that you languish a helpless sufferer for years; nay, if He require the sacrifice of life itself, and that under the most painful circumstances, you should be ready to say with willing heart: "Father, Thy will be done." "I am Thy servant, Thy handmaid; be it done to me according to Thy word."

O happy, thrice happy the Christian whose heart is thus disposed; for the Saviour has indeed chosen it for his abiding-place, and Jesus will lead him on to the perfection of spiritual life! But take care lest Satan assume the garb of an angel of light, and deceive you, as he so often does, with those over whom he fears he has lost his power, and whom he tries to delude by such diabolical arts.

Mary, the most prudent Virgin, as she is styled by the Church, evinced, indeed, an eminent degree of prudence by her manner of testing the truth of the angelic message. "How can this be?" she said, "for I know not man; "and not until the satisfactory reply of the celestial guide was given did she utter the words which saved us from sin and hell. She had every reason to believe that it was an angel from heaven who appeared before her, and yet she was alarmed, and distrusted his address. What an example for us!

Those by whom we are surrounded, to whom we go for counsel, are men, frail and sinful men, liable to err,--wearing an appearance of zeal; but perhaps inwardly, they are devouring wolves. Prudence! Oh, how essential it is to the fulfillment, not of our own will but of the most holy will of God. True prudence we need; for there is no greater bar to our sanctification, and to the salvation of the Church in general, than its counterfeit which prevails to such an extent; that worldly prudence which, in all that concerns the salvation of our souls, means ruin. To one who has only earthly motives in view many things will seem but folly, and yet they are the very acme of prudence.

Many Christians, through human respect, or a fear lest others should be unwilling to assist them, refrain from soliciting their aid in some work for the honor of God; for example, the propagation of His kingdom on earth, the Holy Church. The angel who delivered the message to Mary, might well teach us a lesson of faith; for the miracle which he announced to the holy Virgin shows us that nothing is impossible with God. O children of the Holy Catholic Church! in this, our nineteenth century, millions of wonders effected by God are placed before our spiritual vision; if, then, we are convinced that this or that is truly the holy will of God, our own weakness should never for a moment be a cause of dejection or discouragement. The more unworthy we are in ourselves, the more resplendent will be the glorification of God, if, in spite of all impediments, the work is accomplished by us, and accomplished well.Therefore, in every event of life our watchword should be those words of the Blessed Virgin Mary, so touching in their humility, so admirable in their submission to the divine will: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; may it be done unto me according to Thy divine will!"--Amen! (Father Francis X. Weninger, S.J., Second Sermon for the Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as found at: Sermons for the Feast of the Annunciation.)

May the Joyful Mysteries of Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary we pray today, Tuesday, March 25, 2025, the Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, help us to always fly above the needless agitations of the moment and the farce contained in all the bread and circuses caused by men who are indifferent to the fact of the Incarnation of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and act as though there is nothing above mere human effort and “ingenuity” to solve this or that problem.

May Our Lady, ever humble, ever docile, ever truly prudent, help us to see all things in light of eternity and according to the fact the World was made Flesh, and dwelt among us on this very day, the day on which the world was created, the day on which Our Lord died for our sins on the world of the Holy Cross, and the day on which the world will end in God’s own good time.

May Our Lady help us now and always to proclaim in the midst of whatever we may be called to suffer: Ecce ancilla Domini, fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum.”

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.