p/c Greg Derr, AP and Patriot Ledger.
Politics and law are downstream of theology and philosophy. For better or for worse.
It is currently September 2026 and the Lindsay Clancy trial was just declared a “mistrial.” As you probably know, in 2023, Clancy killed her three children, aged 5 years old, three years old and eight months old. That mother strangled her three children in Massachusetts, and she did it on purpose while her husband was running errands for her. She and her husband were apparently baptized Catholics.
The trial has obviously entered the national spotlight due to the gruesomeness of the crime, the hung jury (one lone male standing against a mostly-female jury trying to exonerate her) and a fierce international debate surrounding claims of insanity by the defense.
Here’s Five things most (not all) Catholics missed in their analysis of the Clancy trial:
1) Juror Intimidation.
I graduated Boston College, so I was surrounded by feminists and pro-aborts for four years. Thus, I am not shocked that acceptance of abortion has become the acceptance of infanticide at this point in New England. In fact, the entire country was doomed to arrive at this termination point of insatiable murder of our fully-born children once Roe Vs. Wade passed in 1973. We will tackle the link between abortion and the Clancy murders in number five below, so I won’t spend much time here on it.
For now, suffice it to say, the most shocking thing to me about the Clancy trial has been the total overturning of due-process as Clancy’s mostly-female jury wants to exonerate her after she killed her children. And one lone-man on the jury apparently stands against this madness.
As if this breakdown of justice in ignoring the children’s lives is not shocking enough, the defense attorney was executing a full-court press of intimidation against that man. Mr. Matt Walsh covers this “jury intimidation” very well in the first half of his recent video. I’ll let Walsh’s video speak for itself because he does an excellent job on the illegal and immoral intimidation coming from the defense attorney against the jury.
2) Subjective claims taking precedent over objective evidence.
Recently, I wrote an article about how the new catechism is wrong to assert that masturbation is only a venial sin if habit can be proved. That line in the catechism obviously goes against 2,000 years of Catholic moral theology (and the Bible) declaring that disgusting “private sin” to be gravely evil.
Just like clockwork, certain Catholic soy-boys (presumably addicted to self-abuse) attacked me online, claiming that “a mortal sin is only mortal if it is done with full knowledge and full consent.” Uh… yeah, I’m pretty sure every traditional Catholic child over the age of ten knows that specific definition of mortal sin. So, I didn’t think the basics had to be included in my original article.
Part of why I didn’t include the basics is because I already wrote an article here back in 2023 about how most Catholics today mis-apply the phrase “full knowledge and full consent of the will” when it comes to mortal sin. Notice in my article that the parameter of “full knowledge” is always subject to the delineation of vincible ignorance and invincible ignorance (the latter of which sophomoric theologians on Substack obviously cannot claim.)
Furthermore, very few of the young self-styled theologians out there today know what every Catholic over the last 19 centuries knew about morality, namely, that a bad deed done with a good intention is still an evil act. Let me write that again: Catholic morality has always held that a bad deed done with a good intention is still an evil act. I wrote an entire article on it here using traditional Catholic morality.
The ancient phrase in Latin from traditional Catholic morality books was: Bonum Ex Integra Causa, malum ex quocumque defectu and it means “goodness comes from a complete cause but evil from any defect whatsoever.” By defect, it means the entire act is wrong if either the intention or the object (the deed done) or the circumstance is evil. Just one of the ingredients being evil (even if the other two are good) makes the entire enchilada rotten. Thus, an evil deed done with a good intention is still an evil act.
What does invincible ignorance and the Catholic notion of bonum ex integra causa have to do with the Clancy trial? The answer is that it has a lot to do with her insanity plea. As Matt Walsh said in the above-linked video, the jury is now being asked to “prove a negative” for a woman who claims insanity simply based on “what was going on inside her head.” This is tied to the fact she claims “she heard a voice telling her to kill her kids.”
Leftists who have lost all connection to reality now believe she should be off the hook unless one noble man on the jury can prove she was not insane. Such an approach to law is obviously lawlessness. It’s clearly impossible for one juror to prove what was moving through her head, even if he can prove exercise equipment was moving through her fingers as she strangled her own children to death.
I put this question into AI: “Can a drunk driver be charged with murder even if he didn’t have all his faculties?” The answer that immediately came back was: “Yes, a drunk driver can be charged with second-degree murder even if they were too intoxicated to have all their faculties or form a specific intent to kill.” (It coincidentally cited a Boston law firm for this first hit.)
Thus, the law for nearly every country in Western society has historically put evidence ahead of pharmacology and objective deeds ahead of subjective feelings (or alleged “insanity.”) That’s how law in any country with any sense of order has to function. Evidence is what the US court system was founded on.
But because modernists (Catholic and non-Catholic alike) now put intention ahead of object in morality, it has made it impossible to use cold-cut evidence in court to convict anyone of any crime by this point in history.
That is, unless the accused man’s politics are wrong. In that case, the J6 conservatives can rot in prison for stepping into a liberal plant, and so can Derek Chauvin for doing his job as a police officer. No evidence is needed to throw them in prison and lock away the key. Why? Because in this case, the accused conservatives are simply “emotionally” disgusting to leftists. In all these cases, evidence has come to nothing.
Yet how can we Catholics expect secular jurors to understand why an objective fact—like strangling children—a fact that is not even denied by the defense—must take precedent over alleged “voices in the head” if we Catholics don’t understand the basics of law and morality that the object takes precedence over intention in traditional Catholic morality?
That’s why I insist in this article we Catholics must understand objective philosophy and traditional theology before we expect non-Catholics to adhere to any form of law and order in this once-great country.
3) Feminism guides not just that specific court room in Plymouth, but the entire justice system in the USA.
One of the direct effects of modernism is to put intention ahead of object in morality, as we saw above. But most of this comes directly from feminism. Feminists (both women and men alike in this category) will usually exonerate an evil deed if the person who did the evil deed claims “I thought I had to do it and I was following my conscience.”
Notice above, I used the word “exonerate” not “forgive.” Of course, every one of us (man and woman alike) are called to forgive even the worst crimes. But that doesn’t mean we sideline justice.
So, exoneration is something entirely different from forgiveness. One of the final (and ultimately destructive) outcomes of feminism is a society that places emotions ahead of reality. We have obviously plateaued into this nightmare within the Clancy trial: A mostly-female jury is letting a woman who strangled her children off the hook because none of us can really know for sure “what was going on inside her head.”
This diabolical approach to life has finally reached the point that it’s truly beyond my own ability to grasp our country’s evil.
But back to feminism: Women were beautifully made by God to be immanent and men were made by God to be transcendent. Women are relational. Men are mission driven. Women bond with each other facing each other. Men bond with each other shoulder-to-shoulder facing outward to a job together. Women are made for unity. Men are made for truth. Both are made for both, but there’s an emphasis there.
Pope Pius XI wrote, “Man is the head of the family and woman is the heart of the family.” Pope Pius XI did not mean men should have no compassion. The Pope also did not assert that women are stupid. But he did follow the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas that the will must follow the intellect for an integral life to be lived by the individual. So also, emotions must be subject to the intellect in any good family or society.
Following the Fall of Adam and Eve, Satan gained more access to the emotions than reason. That is why a well-ordered society has to be run mainly by men. It doesn’t mean men are holier than women. (In fact, many of the mystics say there’s more women in heaven than men.) But the will (and emotions) must be subject to the intellect in the person, in the family and in the society. At least, that is the order we want if there is to be justice in society.
And men are better at that. I’m sure that line will make a lot of people freak out. But it doesn’t matter. Men are better at many logical projects. Women are better at many compassionate projects. There’s no shame in holding up some of these stereotypes.
You see, a society founded on feminism will be guided by emotions, which are easily manipulated by demons. Again, I’m not saying women are more guided by demons than men are. But the Church Fathers do hold that reason was less effected in concupiscience than emotions. Thus, law and order must be based on logic, reason and evidence. All these are things which men have historically (and stereotypically) handled better than women. (And no woman would be offended by my above stereotypes if it wasn’t partially true!)
So, now due to feminism, America cannot even discern if a woman who strangled her three children is “really guilty” objectively… all due to subjective claims of “insanity.” Now that is true insanity.
Thankfully, women who reject feminism are much more likely to see the truth of all of this than their liberal male counterparts who openly embrace feminism. So, it’s their bad-philosophy that actually blinds post-moderns, not their sex or gender.
4) Free-Will overturned by the overuse of “insanity.”
This paragraph will read as a bit off-topic, so follow me here before we get back to the Clancy trial. There are two excellent movies by the exact same name of Nefarious. The Nefarious made in 2011 is a documentary against child sex-slavery. The Nefarious made in 2023 is a fictional movie about a possessed man on death row. Again, they’re both very good.
But one of the enormous things that the possession-movie got entirely wrong is its premise that a possessed person can be forced to commit crimes against his own will by a demon living inside him. This is totally wrong.
The actual truth of traditional Catholic theology is as follows: A possessed person always maintains his free-will, at least for the most part. Mortal sin is an impersonal evil possessing the soul. But possession is a personalized evil (a real demon) possessing the body of a human. Thus, free-will in regards to morality still exists even in the soul of a possessed person.
What does this have to do with the Lindsay Clancy trial? Clancy and her defense attorneys claim she was insane at the time of her killing her three children because “she heard a voice telling her to kill her kids.”
But even if this claim were true, that is, even if she were possessed by a real-live demon because of any past sins in her life, even then we do not have a real exoneration of her strangling her little children to death according to Catholic psychology and theology. She still had free will. She still chose to strangle her children.
Even if possessed (and she does look [at least] diabolically obsessed in the above image) then according to Catholic psychology, anthropology and theology, Lindsay still could have ignored the voices in her head and done the right thing. This is true, even according to the most traditional exorcists I know.
In fact, I am good friends with the exorcist whom the makers of Nefarious claimed to have got all their theology for their movie from. So, I am not writing this criticism of their otherwise-excellent movie using my keyboard as an isolated weapon in the basement. I am writing this from the point of view of personally knowing the world’s top traditional exorcists in real life. I’m sure I’ll send this to them post-production and they can edit anything they desire to correct in it. But they admit some of their possessed patients live very holy lives because they still have free will. So, they won’t disagree with me on this.
Again, as you can surmise from the title of my article, Five Things Catholics Missed in the Clancy Trial, even most conservatives do not understand that possessed people have a free-will that still functions in the image and likeness of God.
Also, keep in mind that I wrote above that most states hold that “a drunk driver can be charged with second-degree murder even if they were too intoxicated to have all their faculties or form a specific intent to kill.” Thus, the pharmacology argument over Clancy holds very little water in this claim to insanity. One is still responsible for the deeds one does, regardless of the drugs one puts in his or her body before the alleged crime. That’s also why you should never go on SSRIs.
Traditional Catholic morality here is really basic: You’re responsible before God for the things you chose to do in your body, regardless of how your emotions excused you. I know that doesn’t sound like what most Catholics have come to believe about morality, but that’s because they’re feminists using misplaced compassion, not real Catholics.
5) Not enough outrage from conservatives when it comes to abortion versus infanticide.
This last one is long, but you made it this far, so you might as well keep reading closely. (And thanks for reading so far!)
Conservative Christians across the world are rightly justified to say Clancy’s acts of infanticide are simply the logical outcome of a pro-abortion culture. I completely agree with them. But here, I have to explain why their outrage is not enough. I don’t want to write this section simply to be “more intense than the next guy” so I want to explain this soberly and logically.
In the past, I have done work with Red Rose Rescue (RRR) where we peacefully counsel inside abortion centers. The goal of this so called “illegal” entrance into an abortion center is that we desire to do a last-minute intervention in order to beg the parents not to kill their children. The abortion center staff obviously demands we leave or they will call the police. Clearly, we do not leave.
Then, the killing-staff calls the cops. The cops arrive and tell us we’ll be arrested for trespassing if we don’t depart from the premises. We usually say something like, “We can’t leave until every baby here is safe.” Then, the police [hesitantly] arrest us. We go to jail, but please keep this in mind: We don’t do RRR for the stunt value or even to get arrested. We do it to save real lives of children who are in immediate danger in that specific place, on that specific day.
You can read LifeSite about one of my arrests here with RRR or even see police body cam of one of the times I was arrested here.
Yet even today, some famous pro-lifers stand against our work in RRR. The argument usually goes something like this: “I understand your zeal, but when you get arrested inside abortion centers, you make the entire pro-life movement look like fanatics. You set back any progress we have in lawmaking and you even increase buffer-zone access outside the clinic for normal sidewalk counselors.”
I respect these arguments. But the problem lies herein: Whereas most pro-life Americans have it in their brains that the unborn are real children, I don’t think most of them have let that fact reach their hearts. Here’s why…
Imagine the downtown area of any medium or large city near you. There is a factory with a conveyor belt inside. Outside the factory, any children wandering the streets under the age of five are rounded up and brought to that factory. In that factory, these toddlers are then hog-tied and put on a conveyer belt, sitting up right. Then, as they slowly go along the conveyer belt, they come to a man in a box with a sledge-hammer who kills the toddlers… one-by-one… with a single slam to the head.
Now, real question here: Can you think of one good Catholic man you know who would not go into that downtown toddler-killing factory with a pistol or rifle and quickly dispatch the man with the sledge-hammer? Even if it’s against the law? Even if it meant real consequences of prison time that remove him from his own family?
Of course, 95% of the men that I know (and that you know) would not hesitate to kill such a child-killer regardless of personal consequences.
Ok, but then here’s the problem: We at RRR are not killing anyone. We are not even proposing it’s a good idea to kill abortion “doctors.” We are simply standing between the killer and the targeted-child, begging the parents to leave the mill. And yet that is seen as “too extreme” by even half the famous pro-lifers in this country?
So, again, we have to ask: Why can’t most American Catholic pro-lifers grasp the analogy between the sledgehammer factory and the Planned Parenthood slaughter factory in the ghetto against pre-born children? Because they have literally never seen an unborn baby, so they don’t truly sympathize with it. At least, not to the extent of being as logical as they should be with the sledge-hammer analogy that I proposed above.
Even the advanced ultrasounds of today have not fully humanized the unborn child for the best pro-lifers out there (at least, outside of certain so-called “extremist” circles like us at RRR or “the abolitionists.”) As I wrote earlier, most American Catholic pro-lifers believe in their brains that unborn child is a real child, but they don’t really believe it in their hearts. Otherwise, they would be getting arrested with us. Or doing what the abolitionists do.
“Fine,” you might say, “but what does this have to do with the Lindsay Clancy trial?”
Well, it really is a good thing that most conservative Christians across the globe are living in outrage at a woman getting-off on an insanity plea after strangling her three small children to death. It’s a really good thing that even mild pro-lifers who do not normally speak up online are finally reaching the boiling point in defending children via this Clancy trial. Not kidding. I believe that.
But if conservative Christian pro-lifers in America truly thought of the unborn as real and as sacred as the children of Lindsay Clancy, they would all be in this much of an uproar at every. single. abortion that happens. If you really believed abortion was as bad as infanticide, you would stop posting on social media against Lindsay Clancy and join us in front of the abortion center, at least just one day a week. The other six days, you can keep ripping on Lindsay Clancy online.
You see, if you really believed a murder of any baby (regardless of size) was as bad as the murder of the next one, you would be equally outraged at the Clancy murders as any of your friends or family living on “the Pill.” Yes, the Pill (not just the morning-after Pill) but the daily pill is an abortifacient. This means over 80% of American Catholic couples are currently killing their children as I wrote here.
It’s just those dead kids aren’t as big as Clancy’s kids who are also dead. Thus, it’s easier to get outraged about the latter.
So, yes, stay outraged at Clancy killing her children, but be consistent and join us in the pro-life movement in resisting not just surgical abortions, but even chemical abortions (which are the majority of the murders against children in this country today.)
I suppose the only point of this long-winded article was to show that Lindsay Clancy is responsible for her actions, despite all the moral-theology loopholes that modernists throw in her way. This is not to say Mrs. Clancy cannot be saved. Of course, she can repent and be saved by the blood of Jesus Christ through baptism (or in her case—a sacramental confession—since she was already baptized Catholic) like anyone who has committed serious sins. But she’ll never arrive at a responsibility-based repentance if so-called Catholics transform every sin into an excuse through endless games of “reduced culpability,” using everything from “SSRIs” to “possession.”
In other words, these conscience-loopholes from two-bit canon lawyers ironically prevent adults from taking responsibility. This seemingly-compassionate theology prevents adults who are committing major mortal sins from repentance. Lack of repentance then prevents a good confession. This, in turn, prevents them from heaven. So, nothing could be less compassionate than looking for a “reduced culpability” excuse under every rock of moral theology.
This also means that the best thing you can do for your ex-Catholic friends and family is to skip being a theological-hack in looking for constant moral-theology loopholes. Rather, help them make good confessions as fully responsible adults. Yes, Jesus can forgive everything except an excuse. Why? Because an excuse prevents repentance—the one thing required for God’s forgiveness.
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