Gary Potter - Where Do We Go From Here?

 

"As It Is In Heaven: Christian Living and Social Order" By Gary Potter.

Loreto Publications:

Gary Potter has been a Catholic journalist and writer of the first rank for over fifty years. As a convert to the Faith during the 1960s, (that time of revolutionary turmoil in the Church and the world), he developed a unique perspective on the Church in the 20th century that has matured over the years into a deep and penetrating vision of our times and the place of the Church and the Faith in the politics of our age.

    As it is in Heaven is all about Christian politics. It contains Mr. Potter’s summation of that common worldview that was held by the men who built that civilization known as Christendom during the ages of Faith in the Christian West. He observes its disappearance and describes the effects of its absence on the life of men in our day. He proposes that it will one day be revived in a fashion suitable to modern times.

    This extended essay encourages Catholics to face reality in the murky spiritual darkness of our present century. That means that it is also a message of light and hope. Do not be mistaken, Mr. Potter is no silly optimist or clueless observer. He knows the darkness and the dangers as clearly as any living writer, but he is a Catholic through and through, and his judgments are sound and realistic. Catholic realism! A realistic outlook can only come to a Catholic who believes and who tries to live according to that belief. The strength to face reality and to deal with it courageously is what is most necessary to men who wish to truly live—not just pass through this world—and to fight manfully for truth and goodness and beauty during this short pilgrimage that is life on earth.

An excerpt from, "In Memoriam: Gary Potter" By Charles A. Coulombe, Catholicism.org, October 3, 2025:

GARY POTTER has died; these lines are among the hardest I have ever written. Amongst Traditional Catholics — certainly of that small number who are also interested in the Church’s social teachings — he was a Patriarch. He was a mentor to me in many ways, and I hardly know where to begin in describing him. The bare facts of his obituary are impressive in themselves. Coming to consciousness during World War II as the son of Missourian parents relocated to California’s Bay Area, his whole life might be characterised as a search for Truth.

As a teenager in San Francisco, he fell in with the Beats — Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginzberg, and the rest. In fact, Kerouac immortalised him as a nameless teenager in The Dharma Bums. Now, Wikipedia, the endless source of truth, tells us that the Beat Generation was motivated thusly: “The central elements of Beat culture are the rejection of standard narrative values, making a spiritual quest, the exploration of American and Eastern religions, the rejection of economic materialism, explicit portrayals of the human condition, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration.” While the last two had little attraction for young Potter, the others did — and in a sense were with him the rest of his life. Certainly, he would always retain a sympathy for the unconventional, the non-conformist, and the underdog. As the son of two 1940s Greenwich Village actor-Bohemians, this was a side of him I found most congenial.

Video Title: Where Do We Go From Here? Source: Saint Benedict Center / Catholicism.org. Date Published: November 5, 2013.

Joseph II: The Tragic Emperor Who Tried to Change Everything

Wikipedia:

Joseph II (13 March 1741 – 20 February 1790) was Holy Roman Emperor from 18 August 1765 and sole ruler of the Habsburg monarchy from 29 November 1780 until his death. He was the eldest son of Empress Maria Theresa and her husband, Emperor Francis I, and the brother of Marie Antoinette, Leopold II, Maria Carolina of Austria, and Maria Amalia, Duchess of Parma. He was thus the first ruler in the Austrian dominions of the union of the Houses of Habsburg and Lorraine, styled Habsburg-Lorraine.

. . .Joseph was a proponent of enlightened absolutism like his brother Leopold II; however, his commitment to secularizing, liberalizing and modernizing reforms resulted in significant opposition, which resulted in failure to fully implement his programs. Meanwhile, despite making some territorial gains, his reckless foreign policy badly isolated Austria. He has been ranked with Catherine the Great of Russia and Frederick the Great of Prussia as one of the three great Enlightenment monarchs. False but influential letters depict him as a somewhat more radical philosophe than he probably was. His policies are now known as Josephinism. He was a supporter of the arts, particularly of composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri. He died with no known surviving legitimate offspring and was succeeded by his younger brother Leopold II.

. . .In 1888, Hungarian historian Henrik Marczali published a three-volume study of Joseph, the first important modern scholarly work on his reign, and the first to make systematic use of archival research. Marczali was Jewish and a product of the bourgeois-liberal school of historiography in Hungary, and he portrayed Joseph as a Liberal hero. The Russian scholar Pavel Pavlovich Mitrofanov published a thorough biography in 1907 that set the standard for a century after it was translated into German in 1910. The Mitrofanov interpretation was highly damaging to Joseph: he was not a populist emperor and his liberalism was a myth; Joseph was not inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenment but by pure power politics. He was more of a despot than his mother. Dogmatism and impatience were the reasons for his failures.

. . .The Austrian-born American scholar Saul K. Padover reached a wide American public with his colorful The Revolutionary Emperor: Joseph II of Austria (1934). Padover celebrated Joseph's radicalism, saying his "war against feudal privileges" made him one of the great "liberators of humanity". Joseph's failures were attributed to his impatience and lack of tact, and his unnecessary military adventures; but despite all this, Padover claimed the emperor was the greatest of all Enlightenment monarchs. While Padover depicted a sort of New Deal Democrat, Nazi historians in the 1930s made Joseph a precursor of Adolf Hitler.

. . .A new era of historiography began in the 1960s. American Paul Bernard rejected the German national, radical, and anticlerical images of Joseph and instead emphasized long-running continuities. He argued that Joseph's reforms were well suited to the needs of the day. Many failed because of economic backwardness and Joseph's unfortunate foreign policy. British historian Tim Blanning stressed profound contradictions inherent in his policies that made them a failure. For example, Joseph encouraged small-scale peasant holdings, thus retarding economic modernization that only the large estates could handle. French historian Jean Bérenger concludes that despite his many setbacks, Joseph's reign "represented a decisive phase in the process of the modernization of the Austrian Monarchy". The failures came because he "simply wanted to do too much, too fast". Szabo concludes that by far the most important scholarship on Joseph is by Derek Beales, appearing over three decades and based on exhaustive searches in many archives. Beales looks at the emperor's personality, with its arbitrary behavior and mixture of affability and irascibility. Beales shows that Joseph genuinely appreciated Mozart's music and greatly admired his operas. Like most other scholars, Beales has a negative view of Joseph's foreign policies. Beales finds that Joseph was despotic in the sense of transgressing established constitutions and rejecting sound advice, but not despotic in the sense of any gross abuse of power.

Video Title: Joseph II: The Tragic Emperor Who Tried to Change Everything. Source: Czech The History. Date Published: March 18, 2025. Description: 

Joseph II, ruler of the Habsburg Monarchy (1765–1790), was an enlightened reformer who sought to modernize his empire. Inspired by the Enlightenment, he introduced radical reforms—abolishing serfdom, promoting religious tolerance, and centralizing power. But despite his bold vision, he faced relentless opposition from the nobility, the church, and even the very people he tried to help.

Professor Hamamoto - Epstein’s New Mexico Bio-Golem Experimental Complex

 

Video Title: Epstein’s New Mexico Bio-Golem Experimental Complex. Source: Professor Hamamoto. Date Published: February 22, 2026.

It Is War

The facade of the two-state solution has long been dead. Gaza is in ruins. But to go beyond Palestine and conquer all of the Middle East? Madness. 

This Huckabee character let the cat out of the bag. Ideologues and cult members can't contain themselves. They live in their own worlds. They can say the craziest stuff and think they're being rational.

I don't see Arab and Muslim regimes resisting this conspiracy. They are worthless. But it's one thing to conquer and another to rule. The Israelis are destroyers, they're not empire builders. And the Americans aren't interested either. So I don't see this grand plan coming to fruition. There will just be a lot of destruction, death, and millions of refugees pouring out into Europe. 

Rogue militias and terrorists will be left to pick up the pieces. We've seen that in Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The same scenarios will play out in Jordan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

BREAKING: US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee tells Tucker Carlson that Israel has the Biblical right to take over all of the Middle East.

“It would be fine if they took it all.” pic.twitter.com/BN4fXh03ga

— Tucker Carlson Network (@TCNetwork) February 20, 2026

Going For Gold: Predicting The USA Vs Canada Olympics Final

I've been watching every hockey game during this Olympics, waking up at 6 am to assess each country. This is sacred time for me as a hockey fan. I would've watched the games if they were on at 3 am. 

After 12 long years of no Olympics hockey with NHL players we've been spoiled with some classic games in the past week. And the best is saved for last.

I'm happy the two best teams are meeting in the final. I'll give my prediction below. But I just have to say, watching an Olympics without Russia just doesn't feel the same. It's like a World Cup without a Germany or a Brazil. It just doesn't feel right. It's unfair.

This was Ovechkin's last chance at Olympic gold. He was robbed of that opportunity. And the hockey world was robbed, too. It's a shame they dragged politics into it. I don't think Russia would've won, but with the best goaltending in the competition and elite game breakers up front they had as good a chance as any of the traditional hockey powers. Russia would have at least competed for third place. 

That it's going to be Canada vs the United States for gold was not inevitable. The Finns and Swedes put up a great fight. It could have easily been them in the gold medal game. But they played too conservatively. 

Finland had Canada down 2-0 in the semi-final and stopped playing from that point on. Russia would have taken it to Canada, and focus on scoring goals instead of defending a lead. If you want to win gold, you need to play with aggression. 

I expect the U.S. to not play conservative tomorrow. I think it's going to be a shootout, a back and forth classic. And I have the Americans winning 5-3. I think it'll be a close game, a one goal game until the final minutes, and I could see the U.S. scoring an empty netter at the end as Canada tries to take it to overtime.

I hope I'm wrong. But the Canadian team is running on fumes. They had to claw their way to even make this final. With their captain Sidney Crosby sidelined with an injury and Nathan MacKinnon not a hundred percent healthy, they don't have the firepower to withstand the U.S. depth. I think they have the four best players, with the aforementioned MacKinnon, Connor McDavid, Cale Makar, and teenager Macklin Celebrini, but the U.S. has the better overall team. Their defense is much deeper. They play faster. And speed kills in a tournament like this one.

Last night I re-watched the gold medal game from the 2010 Olympics. I know Crosby emerged as the final hero of that clash, but without Luongo that game wouldn't have even gone to overtime. For the last ten minutes the Americans pushed relentlessly, and Luongo stood tall, only giving up the tying goal. 

Can Canada's goalie Jordan Binnington replicate that performance? He's my X factor for tomorrow's game. He has to be the 2019 St. Louis Blues Binnington. He has to be on the top of his game for Canada to have a chance. Anything less and it's silver.