Christopher A. Ferrara (born January 6, 1952) is an American Roman Catholic lawyer, anti-abortion activist, political pundit, and writer.
[1] On October 23, 2012, Ferrara, along with Nicholas Gruner, appeared at the headquarters of the European Union in Strasbourg, France, to speak at a press conference in support of a motion for a declaration by the EU Parliament calling upon Pope Benedict XVI to carry out the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
He has been interviewed by NBC regarding Pope Francis;[5] participated as an expert in a panel discussion hosted by the BBC;[6] and has made a number of appearances on Mike Church's conservative talk show on Sirius Satellite Radio.
[9] In responding to criticism from Remnant editor Michael Matt and Ferrara of a Catholic Answers Live presentation that distinguished between "traditional Catholicism" and "radical Traditionalism", Catholic Answers founder Karl Keating wrote that "Matt and Ferrara shoehorn their opponents into taking positions that they don't in fact take and into saying things they don't in fact say.
"[10] Heidi Bierich, writing in the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report, called Ferrara's book The Great Facade, co-authored with Thomas Woods, one of the "Two Treatises" of the "radical Traditionalist movement" and opined that The Great Façade "attacks 'Judaized, semi-gnostic' sects [referring to the controversial Neocatechumenal Way[citation needed]] said to be deforming the church through their ecumenical events," cites an antisemitic tract, The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita, and criticizes changes made in 1964 to the Mass to excise the words, "We pray for the perfidious Jews.
"[11] However, The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita makes no reference to either Jews or Judaism in general, but only to Freemasonic initiatives within the Catholic Church; for which reason, popes Pius IX and Leo XIII requested that it be published and widely distributed.
[citation needed] In response to Bierich's suggestion of antisemitism, Rabbi Mayer Schiller, author of two books on Judaism and a Talmudic studies instructor at Yeshiva University, stated: "Unfounded charges of anti-Jewish sentiments not only malign the innocent.
[13] Bierich reported that by 2005 co-author Thomas Woods had cut his ties to Ferrara and said he had "spent the past 18 months trying to mend fences with people we attacked in The Great Façade."
Woods said he had "no interest in being involved in a 'traditionalist movement' that permits no disagreement even on matters not strictly of faith," adding that he would not "work toward the establishment of a Catholic monarchy in the U.S."[11]
[18] Thomas Storck wrote in the New Oxford Review: "His book is a timely contribution to the understanding of both Catholic teaching and its Austrian counterfeit.
Any honest look at American history will show that negative liberty, "freedom from," has consistently triumphed in its battle against positive conceptions of human flourishing and the common good.
[20]Stephen Masty, senior contributor at The Imaginative Conservative and speechwriter for three US presidents, wrote that Liberty, the God That Failed "exposes the studiously-ignored, anti-religious fervour of Hobbes and Locke, showing how both predicted the excesses of modern left-liberalism, and how such ideological decadence is the logical conclusion to the virtue-free, Godless experiment stretching from the Restoration to the Enlightenment, from Masonic lodges to the French Revolution to America’s Founders, its Civil War, imperialism, materialism and modern government-led oppression at home.