Who Is Fr John Hunwicke? -- II

There are two former Anglican converts to Catholicism that I frequently rely on to keep my own Catholic bearings. Both of them explain important things that weren't brought up in my Episcopalian confirmation class. One is Fr Dwight Longenecker, a moderate-to-conservative former priest in the Church of England, now a priest in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charleston, SC. (He came in outside either Anglicanorum coetibus or the Pastoral Provision.) At a Lenten mission at our Catholic parish, he gave a quick overview of the kinds of Anglicans, and he made the point that he'd have to listen for a while to what any particular Anglican had to say before he could give a rough estimate of what party he belonged to.

The second is Frederick Kinsman, who was Episcopal Bishop of Delaware from 1908 to 1919 before resigning to convert to Catholicism. He wrote several highly underrecognized books critiquing Anglicanism. Significantly, he was an Oxford-educated member of the Anglo-Catholic faction, which is the same one Fr Hunwicke represents, although as Fr Longenecker points out, there are many subcategories of each faction. Kinsman makes the point that the basic Anglican parties date from the formation of the Church of England in its modern politics under Elizabeth I.

The main parties are High Church, Low Church, and Broad Church, or as Kinsman calls them, Anglo-Catholic, Anglo-Protestant, and Anglo-Liberal. He makes the important point that, through much of Anglican history, the Anglo-Liberals have been the dominant strain with control over doctrine. In The Episcopal Church, its most noted figures have been bishops like James Pike and John Spong. The liberal faction has been generally successful in conflicts over the ordination of women, gays, and transsexuals and, well before then, loosening of policies over birth control and divorce. It's also been able to discipline or force retirements of bishops who opposed such policies.

Kinsman, writing mostly in the 1920s, made the point at the time that such developments weren't anything new. As a matter of policy, Elizabeth I allowed such conflicts to continue unresolved by making no definite determinations but giving each side the impression that she was secretly with them. Thus Kinsman noted in his time that Anglo-Catholics were in a continuing state of bewailing this or that compromise with "true" principles while losing every battle, except that as Elizabeth odrered things from the start, there were no actual principles over which to compromise. As he concluded, Anglicanism was a system in which those who considered themselves Catholic had the latitude to fancy themselves Catholic. This was no matter, as others were actually in charge.

As Anglicanism evolved, Anglo-Catholic style proved extremely popular, although as Fr Longenecker understands, Anglo-Catholic style merges easily with Anglo-Liberal elitism, which is why same-sex "affirming" parishes can mainifest extreme high-church forms in liturgy. Another, minor Anglo-Catholic strain is Anglo-Papalism, of which Fr Hunwicke, both before and after his conversion, is an extreme example. In yesterday's post, I linked to an interview in which Fr Hunwicke made it plain that since his youth, he'd effectively believed he was Catholic. Interestingly, Kinsman seems to have been a member of this faction as well until, as a professor of church history and then a bishop watching at first hand the ecclesial sausages being made, he began to recognize he'd been misled, there were no "truths" to be found in Anglicanism.

For a Protestant to believe he's Catholic reflects a fundamental denial, the same as if someone believed his beat-up Chevy is a Rolls Royce, or a guy who lives in the family basement believes he's married to Jennifer Lawrence. Kinsman believed something like this until he woke up to the fact that he was a patsy in a rigged game. There simply is no equivalence between the Roman Church and Anglicanism. If you want to be Catholic, you have to recalibrate and do what you need to do to become Catholic.

In the interview cited, Fr Hunwicke goes on to say,

Catholics ought to learn from the Anglicans that if a community surrenders to the Zeitgeist instead of following its own faith and fundamental beliefs, this will lead it to disaster and collapse.

I think this misstates the issue. Anglicans, I think the historical record reflects, never had their own faith and fundamental beliefs. What does Fr Hunwicke do with the XXXIX Articles, for instance, which would at least theoretically represent that denomination's fundamental beliefs? How About Article XIX?

As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch, have erred; so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of Ceremonies, but also in matters of Faith.

But Fr Hunwicke says that since his youth, he's believed in papal infallibility, which is contrary to Anglican fundamental belief. I'm sure he gets around this with some form of tergiversation or verbal sleight of hand, but his problem is that as an Anglican, an Anglo-Papalist is forced to say that Anglicans don't take the Articles, or at least some of them, seriously. And this isn't recent, it's baked in from the start. So Fr Hunwicke's problem is that from youth, he's been groomed to betray stated fundamental Anglican beliefs -- and by celebrating any Anglican mass in a form other than the Book of Common Prayer, he was doing this himself. Where did he change his mind about fundamental beliefs -- or in fact, has he ever?

His problem is that he continues to think Anglicanism is in some way equivalent to Catholicism. It isn't, in a basic way. If nothing intervenes, I'll have more to say tomorrow.

Who Is Fr John Hunwicke? -- I

I never gave Fr Hunwicke much thought. I knew he had a large following for his blog, although I only occasionally glanced at it, in part because active involvement with a real Roman Catholic parish and active study of scripture and Catholic thinkers meant I saw little need to visit. I did, thoiugh, have an impression that he had a certain Blimpish persona with "Rule Britannia" always playing faintly in the background.

Then Pope Francis began to speak of "traditional" and "rigid" internet priests, by which I assumed he meant men like Frs Zuhlsdorf and Hunwicke. As a good Catholic, I wanted to get a better idea of what he meant, especially as Fr Z, as he became more controversial, lost the support of even the conservative bishop in whose diocese he lived. So I decided to look at Fr Hunwicke more closely as well, as just the other day I found him calling the Holy Father a heretic as he underwent surgery and insisting that even the OF Roman Canon had been "messed around with". Colonel Blimp must be in his lineage.

My first question was simply of what parish is he the priest? It turns out that, although he styles himself Fr and converted to Catholicism in 2011, his ordination under the terms of Anglicanorum coetibus was put on hold until June 2012 due to questions related to his blog. While he is listed on the UK ordinariate directory as a priest in the Oxford group, he is just one of four priests who are members there but is not the pastor.

The Oxford group, like many ordinariate groups, meets in an off hour at a diocesan parish and seems tiny in the photo at left and moribund as well, since its on line schedule hasn't been updated since June 2018, and its image of St John Henry Newman, canonized in 2019, is still captioned "Blessed John Henry Newman, pray for us". It appears that Hunwicke takes little interest in this group and would seem not to be a very inspiring figure there -- his efforts must go to his own blog and fostering his own image.

Another incongruity is that, although Fr Hunwicke insists that the Roman Canon, presumably the one in the Divine Worship missal, not the OF breviary, is the only valid form of the mass, this version of course dates only from 20l5. I have no idea what version he prayed prior to 2015, although in this interview he insists he has actually "always" been a Catholic at heart. The only other valid English version of the Roman Canon dates from the 1960s, but according to Fr Hunwicke, it's been "messed around with". So which version did he pray before 2015?

Beyond that, it's generally understood that Anglicans of the "papalist" variety switched to the OF English mass in the 1960s, because that was what Rome did, and they saw themselves as fundamentally Catholic. In the interview linked above, Hunwicke places himself in the "papalist" faction:

For a long time now there has existed within Anglicanism a “Catholic” tradition. As I’ve belonged to this current since my youth, I naturally subscribed to the entirety of the beliefs of the Catholic faith, including the dogma of papal infallibility as defined at the first Vatican council. At the time we all hoped one day to reach complete unity with the Catholic Church.

So, what version of the Roman Canon did he pray in his youth? Was it the Latin one? On his blog, he says he'd served three curacies and been a parish priest in the Church of England. If he used the mass in the Book of Common Prayer at all as an Anglican, this was never a valid Catholic mass. If he used the Latin mass, this was never a valid Anglican mass, and his use of it for an Anglican liturgy would typically occur only because his Anglican bishop feared the consequences of disciplining him. If he used any English version of the Roman Canon other than that in the Book of Common Prayer, this again would be only because such diversion was widely tolerated, not because it was at all valid.

Did Fr Hunwicke ever use the Book of Common Prayer as an Anglican priest? If so, if he feels he was always a Catholic, then he was using it with mental reservation and effectifvely against his Anglican vows. If he never used it as an Anglican but always used unauthorized texts, this was also a violation of his Anglican vows and potentially disobedient. But then, why should we credit his Roman Catholic vows any other way? In Fr Hunwicke's case, I've got to wonder if this became a bad habit of mind that he's carried over.

But in any case, nearly all Fr Hunwicke's colleagues in the UK ordinariate use the OF English mass, not the one in the Divine Worship missal, as this had become the Anglican papalist practice there decades before Anglicanorum coetibus. So even in the context of the UK ordinariate, Fr Hunwicke has few or no specific pastoral duties, his ordination was delayed under a cloud, and even his colleagues would apparently view him as a liturgical outlier. His views on valid liturgy in fact seem confusing at best.

But although he affects erudition on his blog, his understsnding of both Anglicanism and Catholicism is superficial. I'll cover this tomorrow if nothing intervenes.

Masks As Class Identifiers

Just so we have our priorities straight, the UK photographer who published this image as part of a lighthearted series was forced to apologize. Masks are very, very serious.

But even the New York Times has begun to take a different perspective -- and since it's of, by, and for the elites, its perspective is through the lens of social class, which for elitists is a very, very serious topic. From this past Saturday, Are Masks A New Signifier of Social Class? (This is normally behind a paywall, but the Times will let you sign on to read it for free.)

On a recent Sunday night at Le Bilboquet, a see-and-be-seen restaurant in the Hamptons, well-heeled diners nibbled on $475 tins of Osetra caviar. A handsome man showed off his gold Audemars Piguet watch to his sparkly female companion. A party of 10 in polo shirts and striped rompers danced to a tropical house remix of Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It.”

They were all unmasked, while the waiters, bartenders and other servers kept their mouths and noses covered.

. . . Those who are still wearing masks tend to be members of the service class — store clerks, waiters, janitors, manicurists, security guards, receptionists, hair stylists and drivers — while those without face coverings are often the well-to-do customers being wined and dined.

. . . “It sends a message — one that’s been internalized on both sides — that the body of the mask wearer is ‘riskier’ than the body of the consumer,” [sociologist] Dr. [Erin] Vearncombe said. “It shows that certain groups have, and even deserve, more civil liberties than others.”

The risky body theme feeds into fear of the unvaccinated, which is also a social class issue: the unvaccinated, after all, are according to even President Biden, blacks, Hipanics, and right-wing anti-vaxxers. The Times piece continues,

“Customers have to be vaccinated to go maskless, but we can’t ask for proof,” said Jose de la Rosa, 26, who works behind the counter at the Juice Generation store in Times Square. “And we have workers who are fully vaccinated, can prove it and still have to wear them. It’s odd.”

Politico quoted Utah Gov Spencer Cox, who seems to be something of a squish, on the Sunday talks:

“Politics is becoming religion in our country,” Cox, a Republican, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “Politics is becoming sport and entertainment in our country. That everything is political. It is a huge mistake, and it’s caused us to make bad decisions during this pandemic and in other phases of our life as well. It is deeply troubling.

. . . Utah is slightly below the national average among states in terms of vaccinating adults (approximately 64 percent), which Cox said understates its achievement given the state’s conservative valence and how much of its population consists of younger people, who are generally less likely to be vaccinated than older Americans.

Still, Cox said he is concerned about unvaccinated residents, given the rise of the highly contagious Delta variant that has taken hold.

So he goes on national media to apologize for the right-wingers in his state, but he's doing his best to bring them to heel. Right.

I don't think many people needed the New York Times to remind them that masks are a symbol of subordination, an American version of the tug at the forelock. The problem is that at this point, with herd immunity rendering them moot and vaccination a much harder thing to prove, the elites are desperate to find a new thing to require as an instant class designator. In the meantime, there's the Delta variant. UCLA, an elitist bastion, is on the case:

UCLA reinstated the mask mandate for many indoor spaces on campus, regardless of an individual’s COVID-19 vaccination status, according to a campuswide email Friday.

All individuals must now wear face masks in classrooms on campus, teaching labs, libraries and indoor recreation spaces, according to the campuswide email. Passengers must also wear masks while using BruinBus, BruinAccess and UCLA SafeRide services.

The university’s announcement comes after the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health issued a recommendation Monday encouraging the use of face masks in indoor public spaces in response to the rising number of COVID-19 cases caused by the highly transmissible delta variant.

Even Dr Walensky says you're safe if you're vaccinated. The elites can't let go. Vaccine passports? I still think they should have required forehead tattoos.

The Ich Kann Nicht Anders Syndrome

One thing that strikes me about the traditionalist movement is the essentially Protestant subtext of so much that comes out of it -- the ich kann nicht anders insistence on speaking out over some perceived, often liturgical, abuse in the Catholic Church. For an example, I had only to return to Fr Hunwicke's blog and today's post. Oddly, he quotes an Anglo-Catholic priest's bombastic remarks from 1921:

Let us remind ourselves that the grand possession of Western Christendom, this great prayer, the Canon of the Mass, this noble Consecration prayer, for at least 1300 years, intact and immutable, formed the basis of the Western Rite.

and comments on it, almost as bombastically,

A hundred years later, most ordinary Latin Catholic churches have abandoned it. Those that use it in celebrations of the Ordinary Form use a version in which, at its most sacred heart, the text has been messed around with. And from Bergoglian Rome come rumours of new liturgy wars.

Surely, this is the time when all who see themsaelves [sic] as Catholic should be sure that they use the Canon and only the Canon; that they use it without the daft tinkerings of the 1960s.

I'm back to Francis's remarks about ritualism. An Anglo-Catholic priest -- that is, a Protestant priest who fancies himself in some way Catholic -- says good things about the Catholic mass taken out of its Catholic context. This is no different from, say, an atheist professor in a religion department (I'm sure there are many) using the same words to admire the esthetic beauty of the mass's language, all of it removed from any question of belief. Somehow the ritual has an existence independent of its Catholic context. But a sacrament must be valid through form, matter, and intention. You can't just separate the words out of it.

I personally would stay away from any mass celebrated by Fr Hunwicke due to what I think is a valid question of intention. Just how Catholic is he? What reservations and substitutions of private judgment does he bring to the celebration? He'll use the words, but he doesn't recognize the council's or the pope's authority? It seems you can take the man out of Anglo-Catholicism, but you can't take the Anglo-Catholic out of the man. Why did he bother to become an unhyphenated Catholic, especially if Anglo-Catholic attitudes from 1921 remain so attractive to him?

But let's look at the context of Fr Hunwicke's blog. A visitor brought me up to date on the UK ordinariate after yesterday's post:

Bp Lopes has aspirations for a career beyond the ordinariate and I am sure he does not want it to be publicly associated with Vat II-haters and quasi-sedevacantists, so they are not given any sort of official platform. Msgr Newton is the captain of a sinking ship —- UK ordinariate membership down by half from its high point five years ago, clergy deaths outnumbering ordinations, etc. Reining in Fr Hunwicke the least of his concerns.

According to this page on the UK ordinariate's official website, they have eight priests under fifty years of age. Fifty of their priests will retire in the next five years. The UK orfdinariate has only a handful of stipendiary positions. Most of its active clergy work in diocesan ministry. About ten percent of the diocesan Catholic priests in the UK were formerly CofE clergy. Those who have chosen to be ordained through the ordinariate were probably attracted to its quicker formation requirements, which, while considerably more rigorous, even in the beginning, than the distance webinars offered by the US ordinariate, did not require the up front two years of study and discernment required of former Anglican clergy by local dioceses.

According to the Annuario Pontificio the UK ordinariate has a priest for every nineteen members, so from a ministry perspective the lack of vocations probably means little. But it does suggest that the long-term future of the UK ordinariate is in some doubt.

When I think of Fr Hunwicke, surely the most visible priest in the UK ordinariate, I can think only of the deconsecrated church used as El Indio's headquarters in For a Few Dollars More. Yet again, we know them by their fruits.

Can Someone Clarify For Me The Difference Between Vaughn Treco And Fr Hunwicke?

I guess the obvious answer is that Vaughn Treco was removed from active ministry as a priest in the US ordinariate, while Fr Hunwicke continues as a priest in good standing in the UK ordinariate. But my question is why.

In January 2019, Treco was removed from his post at the ordinariate Church of St. Bede the Venerable in Minnesota for remarks in a homily that, by this account, criticized the Second Vaican Council and the post-Conciliar popes:

Father showed us a clear picture of the post-conciliar church and the concessions to modernity and the world that the post-conciliar popes have made. He pointed out how this faithlessness is what allowed this rot in the Church to fester for so long and provided several ways for us simple faithful to move forward.

As I observed on the old blog, it isn't entirely clear precisely what statements or other factors were the proximate cause of his removal; he appears to have rubbed people the wrong way in his duties as a hospital chaplain as well. But a video of his homily was published on the web and seems to have drawn the wrong sort of attention from authorities in the local archdiocese, who spoke to Bp Lopes. It does appear highly likely that publishing remarks critical of the Second Council and later popes was a key factor.

Move to Fr Hunwicke. In today's post at his blog, he says

On June 24, I published a piece explaining that the essence of PF's heresy is his claim that, just as Jesus supplanted Moses as Teacher, so he, PF, Voice of the Holy Spirit, is now supplanting Jesus as Teacher. (I first made this point, with copious supporting evidence, at Gardone in 2017, in a lecture now published in Defending the Faith Against Present Heresies, Arouca Press.)

Thanks to Professor Tighe, I have read a fine piece by John Zmirak in The Stream, advancing precisely the same analysis, and pointing out the relevance of the condemnation of the heretic Marcion to the Bergoglianite errors.

So let's pause a moment. If someone says to me the pope is a heretic (PF is Hunwicke's less than respectful designation for the pope), I would expect a detached, serious, and systematic explication, starting not least with the question of how a pope can be a heretic, since this has a specific definition. But I went to Hunwicke's June 24 post, and all I found was

PF claims that those who disagree with his own new dogmas are in a situation analogous to that of those who disagreed with the Lord ... or (in this recent address) disagreed with S Paul.

But this is not only arrogant almost beyond belief. It is also blasphemous. PF is not Jesus. There is to be no Third Age with new teaching. Moses' version of the Law was "fulfilled" by that of Jesus, but PF is not a Third Lawgiver sent to supersede Jesus.

This is nothing but a paraphrase of what Hunwicke thinks "PF" intended to say. If you're going to call the pope -- or Martin Luther, for that matter -- a heretic, don't you need to quote his words and show how they specifically conflict with specific Catholic doctrine? In addition, Hunwicke refers favorably to a piece by John Zmirak, but without a link. This must be the one that he's referring to. In it, Zmirak quotes variously from himself and Life Site News, which again largely paraphrases statements Francis made in last month's general audience about rigid priests:

Drawing from St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, the Pope seemed to be accusing conservative and traditionalist Catholics of being in league with the Evil One and of being no different from those who sowed discord and mistrust by demanding that the new Christians in Galatia subject themselves to Mosaic Law.

Zmirak concludes,

Marcion claimed that Jesus came to completely negate the Old Testament. Francis pretends that Vatican II negates parts of the New, and key teachings the Church passed on until he came along. Why else would Francis claim that taking literally Jesus’ own teaching on divorce is pharisaical, worthy only of “doctors of the law”? Especially since the position Francis promotes is exactly … that of the Pharisees whom Christ rebuked.

This is Zmirak's paraphrase and interpretation of Francis's remarks. He quotes only individual words and short phrases of what Francis actually said, and Zmirak is veering pretty close to Treco's pre-Conciliarism. But as Bp Barron has been pointing out, you don't find any higher authority in the Catholic Church than an ecumenical council. We can debate the meaning of council documents and how a pope interprets them, but we also have to acknowledge this is serious business that calls for a dispassionate, reasonable tone and specific references to specific statements.

This isn't what Fr Hunwicke is giviing us, and it's disturbing that he refers us to a hysterical figure like Zmirak. I've got to think both his posts of June 24 and today are getting pretty close to the sort of thing that got Vaughn Treco removed from the priesthood.

But leaving even that aside, Hunwicke is a convert, having joined the Catholic Church only a year or two ahead of me. I believe that at the time, there was some type of hesitancy over his ordiniation, which in hindsight strikes me as justified. It is simply not a good look for any Catholic convert to come into the Church and announce that the Church has it all wrong. But why did he come in if the Council and the Holy Father are just a big mistake that he has to fix? Is he maybe the next Jesus after all?

I debated first sending Msgr Newton, the UK Ordinary, a version of this in an e-mail, but ordinaries are likely not to respond to people like me. No doubt this will reach him in due course.

This Isn't Cardinal Bernardin's Catholic Church

Somehow I ran into a piece in the National Review on the Catholic bishops' vote to draft a teaching document on eucharistic coherence, generally assumed to define the eligibility to receive communion for politicians who support policies that go against Church teaching. I had only time to scan it before a popup arrived to tell me I had to subscribe to read more.

Like the Wall Street Journal, NR now wants me to pay for nothing. The last time I spent much time at that site was around 1998, when they still ran Mark Steyn, and Jonah Goldberg had a sense of humor. Anyhow, the point of the piece they wanted me to pay for was that the USCCB did nothing but debate and talk, and we couldn't expect much from the Catholic bishops. I can't quote from it, because they won't let me go back to the piece.

NR is generslly locked in a time warp. Under Buckley, it was a nominally Catholic publication, though as I reflect on things, Buckley himself was a Catholic for the 1960s, which is to say he was as much a Kennedy Catholic, a Bernardin Catholic, as anything else, just as he was a big-government, CIA Republican. But that kind of Catholic is a fading period piece, and NR isn't really even that kind of Catholic any longer. Of Cardinal Bernardin and the UISCCB, George Weigel wrote in 2011,

For the Bernardin Era and the style of governance characteristic of Bernardin Machine bishops were deeply influenced by the Roman-brokered “Truce of 1968,” an ill-fated attempt to settle the disciplinary situation in the Archdiocese of Washington, where dissent from Humanae Vitae was widespread and public. Whatever the Vatican’s intentions vis-a-vis the difficult situation in Washington, what was learned from the truce were two lessons that would shape an entire era of U.S. Catholic history. The first lesson was that the Holy See would retreat from rigorously enforcing doctrinal discipline if it could be persuaded of the danger of schism. The second lesson was that American bishops were ill advised to go out on a public limb in defense of Catholic teaching (as Patrick Cardinal O’Boyle of Washington had done by disciplining priests who had publicly rejected Humanae Vitae), for that could result in the Holy See sawing off the limb and leaving the bishop in question in a bad way.

Bernardin, as Weigel sees him, was an intensely political animal who was focused on making Catholics politically appealing in a post-Kennedy environment. But the US bishops of 2021 are no less political, as indeed is Abp Gómez, who now occupies Bernardin's one time position as head of the USCCB. But times, and politics, have changed. Last week I quoted from Abp Cordileone's preface to his challenge to the Catholic Democrats, with its strong implication that the Democrats have moved away from Catholics. Only days later, Bp Barron, who by the way works for Abp Gómez and is now the most prominent Catholic spokesman in the US, wrote in the New York Post,

I’m the son of a dyed-in-the-wool Chicago Catholic Democrat. My father, whose family was very involved in city politics, would sooner have become a Lutheran than vote Republican. But my trouble with modern Democrats, I explained, has to do with abortion policy, where the party has lately staked out an especially extreme position.

The Church must operate, as it always must, in a political environment, something Cdl Bernardin clearly recognized. But the trouble is that politics have changed, something the US bishops are waking up to. The Catholic Church is on the side of the poor and vulnerable, which is where the US Democrats used to be, at least through the Kennedys and Lyndon Johnson, and even arguably Bill Clinton. But more recently, the Democrats have lost workers and legal immigrants, and their politics now reflect an alliance between wealthy elites and the Lumpenproletariat, which includes the criminal class that preys almost exclusively on the poor.

Indeed, our own pastor in yesterday's homily that dwelt in part on the meaning of the Fourth, was careful to avoid conventional political alignment, but behind his remarks was a clear concern that leftist California policies toward the homeless were, whatever their expressed object, not working on behalf of either the homeless or the poor.

I think there's a real shift in alignment taking place in the Catholic Church, just as there's a shift taking place among Republicans. I'm not sure Cdl Bernardin would necessarily object on the Catholic side.

The Lizard People Mark To Market

The period leading up to major holidays, especially the Fourth, doesn't have much actual news. The big subject over the past week has been the condo collapse in Miami. But there are other data points.

NBC News, a stalwart of legacy media, caught a major Wuhan lab figure in an untruth:

In March, Dr. Shi Zhengli, the Wuhan-based virologist who has been accused of conducting risky experiments with bat coronaviruses, flatly denied allegations that the Wuhan Institute of Virology conducted studies with the military, an NBC News report said.

But the network reported that it uncovered evidence linking Shi to military scientists. She collaborated with Ton Yigang, a military scientist, on coronavirus research in 2018 and then with Zhou Yusen, another military scientist in December 2019. Zhou who was listed as deceased in the footnote of an article published in 2020, the report said. The report said it could not confirm the cause of his death.

For those who've been following this story, this is a big yawn. Fauci, Daszak, Baric, and many others connected with the Wuhan lab have been lying and tergiversating for a year and a half. What's important is that NBC has picked up the story, when legacy media has at best been saying there are multiple theories, and we'll never know the truth. The lizard people are recognizing the story has more substance than that, and they'd better start to get ahead of it.

But more important is the apparent new tack legacy media has suddenly taken with Vice President Harris:

Axios reported Friday Harris’s aides are panicked that she is “fucking up” and perhaps “shouldn’t be the heir apparent” for 2024’s presidential race because she “could not defeat whomever the Republican Party puts up.”

On Wednesday, a White House staffer told Politico Harris’s aides “are thrown under the bus from the very top, there are short fuses and it’s an abusive environment.”

“It’s not a healthy environment and people often feel mistreated. It’s not a place where people feel supported but a place where people feel treated like s—,” one aide said.

. . . The establishment media additionally wrote Friday, “2024 is the elephant in the room. … While Biden aides overwhelmingly believe he’ll be the Democratic nominee, they also know he’d be 81 when seeking re-election.”

But “many Democrats, including some current senior administration officials, are concerned she [Harris] could not defeat whomever the Republican Party puts up — even if it were Donald Trump.”

One writer, observing the sudden shift, sees a culprit:

That leads me to this conflict between Biden’s office (which will be greatly weakened if Harris doesn’t shape up) and Harris’ office (which wants Biden’s torch handed over to her). This is where the pure speculation comes in, and I won’t even begin to declare that this is absolutely the case whatsoever, but I don’t think it’s Biden himself who is in conflict with Harris. I think it’s someone from the inner-inner circle.

It could very well be Dr. Jill Biden.

. . . Again, pure speculation here, but the POLITICO story does not happen by accident. Someone is leaking this. If it’s not Jill, it’s someone who is close to Biden and who wants to protect him while also using it as a springboard for their own agenda. Whoever it is, this is probably just the opening salvo.

Is it just 2024, or a problem that could come up sooner? Certainly since last year's election it isn't completely outside the Overton window to ask whether Biden can complete a four-year term. The lizard people conceivably have exactly the same problem they had in 1973: they wanted a Nixon resignation, but that woukld give them Spiro Agnew as president, so they had to get Agnew out of the way first. The result was the quintessential lizard people line of succession, Gerald Ford, who once he rose to the presidency was replaced by Nelson Rockefeller. Think about it. Nelson Rockefeller.

I think the lizard people are starting to realize Biden isn't going to make four years. "I want to talk about happy things, man" was Politico's headline yesterday. I don't think it's Dr Jill. I think it's the lizard people.