News
Featured Image
Father James Altman preaches a homily at St. James the Less Church in La Crosse, Wisconsin.LifeSiteNews

LifeSiteNews has been permanently banned on YouTube. Click HERE to sign up to receive emails when we add to our video library.

LA CROSSE, Wisconsin, June 1, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — Fr. James Altman, who rose to fame after saying last year that a Catholic cannot be a Democrat, gave a rousing homily to his parish family on Memorial Day weekend despite his bishop’s request that he resign. 

“So I’m surprised as anybody that I have the privilege to be with you again today,” Altman remarked cheerfully on Sunday at St. James the Less Catholic Church. 

“A privilege it is, indeed. And like a father loves to do, to feed you, the only precious children I’ll ever have.” 

The lively Wisconsin priest continues to refuse Bishop William T. Callahan’s request to resign. He was thus still in the pulpit and in fine form as he honored the memory of soldiers who died in the service of American freedom.

“As a profound saying goes, ‘Our flag does not fly because the wind moves it; it flies with the last breath of each soldier who died protecting it,'” Altman stated.

“We are forever indebted to those who have given their lives that we might be free.”

Altman also quoted President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the forgetfulness of those who enjoy their freedoms “that men have died to win them.”  He enjoined his congregation not to dishonor the “courageous” dead by giving away their freedoms, as too many Americans have done during the madness of the coronavirus crisis. 

“Let us then not dishonor their sacrifice as so many in this country have done over the past 14 months by willingly, readily, happily giving away so much of our freedom to those who would seek to dominate and destroy the glory of the United States of America,” he said. 

Altman then alluded to a more recent president before launching into a spirited denunciation of America’s enemies, using Biblical invective. 

“To those that died that we might be free, we the grateful faithful are dutybound to say that we will work to make America great again and to drive out the many ungrateful, graceless, godless vipers who seek to destroy it,” he said.

Altman’s homily contrasted Gospel narratives of healings performed by Our Lord Jesus Christ with versions he suggested were compatible with the “Gospel of the World.” He noted that St. Peter’s mother-in-law had had a “severe fever” when Jesus had come personally to pray over her. The priest said that this is a reason why St. James wrote that if anyone in the Christian community was sick, they should call for a priest to say prayers over them in Jesus’s name and to anoint them with oil. But in the “Gospel of the World” version of the story, St. Peter’s mother-in-law has a “great fever,” the local health department puts her house under quarantine, the governor sends in a respirator that begins to kill her, and Jesus stands outside wearing a mask trying to look at her through the window. 

“So Jesus and the apostles had to stand outside because they were afraid of offending the staff,” Altman said with heavy irony, “and having the staff call the police and arrest them for violating health department protocols.”

The priest them made a barely-veiled reference to the utility of such ordinary drugs as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine in fighting COVID-19. 

“Sadly, down at the local Walgreens there were some very cheap, tried-and-tested, readily available medicine, medicine that real science had already proven was helpful,” said Altman, continuing the “Gospel of the World” version of the Scriptural story. 

“But the people were swayed by, indeed duped by, the godless media, and even any mention of the real science behind it strictly was forbidden, and anyone who did bring it up was cancelled immediately.”

In this worldly version, St. Peter’s poor mother-in-law dies “alone and lonely without being given Last Rites and the apostolic pardon.” The Lord  goes home to self-quarantine for 14 days. 

Altman also took a jab at the COVID-19 vaccines, saying that from the worldly point of view, the sad part of the story was that St. Peter’s mother-in-law died before she could be injected with “an experimental gene manipulation.” 

“Oh, wait a minute: if they had done that while she had a fever, it would have compromised her immune system and made her doubly sick, so she would have died twice as fast,” he said. 

The priest underscored that this story is “the Gospel of the World as we have seen for 14 months”, the Gospel “according to Fauci, Birx, Cuomo, Biden, and health departments pretty well anywhere.”

Altman then read another passage of Scripture describing the Lord’s healing mission, noting that Jesus went around to “all the towns and villages” and to synagogues that were neither empty, nor locked, preaching the Gospel and curing “every disease and illness.”

Altman noted also that people crowded to the Lord, without wearing masks. He pondered that Jesus had fed crowds of 5,000 men, which implies 5,000 or more women and children as well.

“CNN would have had a cow at the sight of such a super-spreader event,” the homilist said. 

Altman underscored also that Jesus’s example shows us that unrestricted church worship is “essential.”

“Jesus taught in churches that were full, and not subject to some capacity restrictions because he knew and taught us then — and we should know now — that this is essential,” he said. 

In the final part of his homily, Fr. Altman noted that American are approaching “graduation season” and that parents will soon send their children out into the world, where they are in danger from the “contagious and deadly virus of this world.” He asked his congregation if they had immunized their children against “the Gospel of the World by vaccinating them with the Truth, Beauty, and Goodness of the real Gospel, the Catholic faith.” 

After Mass, LifeSiteNews reporter Jim Hale spoke with a young couple who had driven for three hours with their children to hear Fr. Altman, “a priest speaking very prophetically.”