Extreme Pollyann-Ing

Pollyanna had finally found her favourite blog.

A blogger on a famous multi-faith (and none) blog multinational made my day today, with the wonderful explanation of why the Pope Bishop of Rome always – and particularly on the famous aeroplane – talks as if he had one Litre Fernet (the Argentinians like it a lot, I am told; like the Italians) in his humble stomach.   

It all has to do with Sun-Tzu and his Art of War, you see.

The brilliant war strategy unfolds as follows:

1. Francis just shuts up in the face of huge attacks on Christianity, for months.

2. Then, he surprises the enemy by showing he is on their side.

3. This leaves the enemy utterly without defence or orientation, because of all things they were certainly not expecting the Pope… to be on their side. The shock!

4. At this point the enemy is clearly confused, faintly whispering “he is one of ours, then!”… and

5. They give the Pope huge attention, repeating all over the world how he (erm… cough) sabotages Catholicism… At this point, when Francis has the world’s attention…

7. BLAM….. He attacks them with clear Catholic teaching!

I miss the BLAM phase; but that is meant to be in the future, I am sure…

For today, I notice this is the same as saying Churchill should have started to teach the superiority of the Aryan race during WW II, and perhaps made one or three laws against the Jews, in order to surprise the confused Wehrmacht soldiers….

Hilarious.

It’s not even twisted, or immensely stupid anymore. It’s just plain funny.

Wins the Pollyanna Championship hands down.

Mundabor

R.I.P. “Reading Francis Through Benedict”

One must appreciate the effort made by some to offer what at the beginning appeared a reasonable key of interpretation of the new successor of Peter.

The Church is inherently conservative, and Popes tend to be even more conservative. It was, therefore, absolutely understandable one would consider the novelties of the Bishop of Rome – which, one must admit, the man did not lose a second in showing – as the quirks of an old man, possibly meant to make him popular and possibly meant to make the Church, as a whole, fashionable; quirks that would, it was reasonable to assume, not alter anything substantial in the way the Church understands Herself, with merely the addition of poverty rhetoric, and a generous dollop of Peace 'n Justice.

Soon, though, it became clear this interpretation was more and more difficult to defend: when the refusal to wear the Mozzetta or the red shoes was followed by a serious liturgical abuse on Maundy Thursday, it was clear we are in front of a man who considers himself above Canon Law; a man unable to understand that even if he is the Bishop of Rome and can therefore change some of the rules, he is nevertheless bound by an elementary sense of propriety – and by the necessity to give a good example – to be the first one who abides by them as long as they are there. The oh so humble Bishop was already resembling an Oriental satrap.

With the weeks, it became worse. It was clear to everyone the current Bishop of Rome was insistently and ostentatiously distancing himself from his predecessor. The examples are too many to be all recollected here: from the choice of transport to the refusal to spend the summer in Castel Gandolfo, from the obsessive search for wheelchairs in front of the cameras to the dismal habit of uncontrolled off-the-cuff observations the world absolutely had to be informed about, this man showed more and more clearly he wants to be seen as entirely different from Benedict, totally focused on himself, and completely detached from everything his predecessors have done. Jorge was at this point already madly in love with Francis, and the entire planet had to be informed of the fact. This alone is as Un-Benedictine as can be, and every hope Francis might still be like Benedict – when he did not lose a single occasion to show how different he is – was already appearing the preserve of pathological optimists.

The last weeks have, though, put very thick nails on the coffin of the “reading Francis through Benedict” narrative. The unspeakably arrogant refusal to even suspend such a disgraceful individual as Monsignor Ricca was followed by an even more arrogant, and even more astonishing, downplaying of sodomitical activity as some sin of the youth – as if the man had been chasing skirt in his early Twenties and before his vocation rather than being an inveterate sodomite uncaring for scandal probably until exposed, and certainly well in his Forties and whilst being a Monsignor – and by the mocking dismissal of the existence of the “gay lobby” of whose existence he himself had informed the planet.

At this point, any reading of Francis through I do not say Benedict, but even Paul VI is utterly untenable. On the contrary, this is a man so different from Benedict in absolutely everything – including intellectual and, as is now abundantly evident, moral stature – that every reading of the one through the others is as absurd as the attempt to give a Catholic interpretation of Mein Kampf.

Francis is, sees himself, and wants to be seen as in head on collision with Benedict. He lives in a completely different dimension, in which not even the concept of the most basic decency could be said to be shared with Benedict's worldview. This is the reality on the ground, and has been from the habemus Papam. We have been slow to get the message, because the message is so shocking that it takes a while to even persuade the faithful of it. But this is where we are, and the Bishop of Rome's invitation to “make noise” – when seen in conjunction with his blatant liturgical abuses before and after his accession to the throne – clearly show this man is positively encouraging a revolutionary movement from the grassroots, and countless liturgical and otherwise abuses meant to make the Church more “modern” and “relevant”; that is, meant to sell Her to the world; lock, stock, and barrel.

Of course, Francis will always be, at times, in agreement with Benedict. It's not that he is denying the Trinity, or the necessity of the Sacraments. If Benedict say that two and two is four, Francis will necessarily agree. But this is also where the similarities end, because truly, Bishop Francis could not have troubled himself more to stress how different he is from Pope Benedict; and, I must add, from all the Popes before the latter.

Seriously: if Francis can be read through Benedict, Hitler can be read through St. Thomas Aquinas.

It just doesn't work.

Mundabor

 

“Off-The-Cuff” Comment

I’d love to know how many Catholic women have not voted, or have stated they would never vote, for Newt Gingrich because of his past marital infidelities, but are so ready to believe that Monsignor Ricca must now be “reformed” and “chaste”.

Just sayin’

Mundabor

 

Summorum Pontificum Under Attack?

At least, Pinocchio had the cricket…

And so it came to pass an efficient, prosperous, growing semi-traditionalist Order, the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate (short: FFI), had its Tridentine Mass culled par ordre du mufti, the mufti in this case being none other than the gay-loving Bishop of Rome of ours. 

The event is – or might be; or should be – rather massive, because impinges exactly on those freedoms that Summorum Pontificum freely gives to all religious:  not only the Ecclesia Dei orders, but all of them. 

One can, therefore, wonder whether the FFI isn’t the canary in the coal mine, whose death warns us of immediate danger for the Traditional Mass.

On the matter, I have read two opposed opinions, that you can read here and here.  I add that there can be little doubt the FFI, in itself not a traditionalist order, has been factually overtaken by the Traditionalist; who, whilst obviously not “oppressing” their more progressive brother, have given a certain “tone” to the work of the order; order that, punctually, has started to expand robustly and gather friends everywhere. This is the kind of plague that generally befalls the traditionalists orders; which, in turn, lets the Bergoglios of this world look very, very bad.

In short, according to the two camps either the Bishop of Rome is merely intervening in internal squabbles, and the de facto silencing of the TLM mass is just a medicinal measure to bring harmony within the order again; or he is profiting from a convenient minority of “progressives” within the FFI to cull their Latin Mass activity and make of them a ballon d’essai or a dress rehearsal for the great attack to the Traditional Mass.

I invite you to click both links and read the arguments on both sides, arguments which would take too much time – and wasted time at that, because they are very well put – to rephrase here for you.

——————

I wasn’t there, of course, and if I was there I must have been in the bathroom. Personally, though, I think that the Rorate argument wins hands down. Not only are the positions expressed by Rorate, in my humble opinion, more logical from the point of view of an outsider; but crucially, they match with the subversive character of Bishop Francis we could observe in these short months.

Often in the past I have written that I could not see Bishop Francis going head on against the traditionalists. On one hand I considered him if not smart, at least attentive; then I thought he would have other problems to deal with; finally, it wouldn’t be smart to give the SSPX so great a gift by showing to the entire Catholic world what a joke Bergoglio is.

I must, though, here frankly admit that when I wrote that I also did not imagine a man going to such excesses of egomaniacal  conduct as to keep at his place a sodomite destroyed the world over by horrible revelations of rent boys & Co., just because he is his buddy – or, worse, because he needs Ricca’s many friends, friends as bent as Ricca is; or, worse still, because these are the friends who have allowed him to be chosen to be the Bishop of Rome, so that he now owes them -.

Every month, this man shows us that he can be even more shameless than we thought him capable of; and as a result, every month we must reassess his possible moves concerning this or that in light of the increasing more dangerous character emerging from his action. 

Bishop Bergoglio has surpassed our worst fears with beautiful regularity since the beginning of his … new appointment. How can we say he will stop in front of the Tridentine Mass? Who can say he will even wait for Pope’s Benedict’s death before officially demolishing his heritage? This is a man whose lack of the most common sense of decency extends not only to almost daily insulting his predecessor in a very thinly veiled manner, but even to defying the most elementary sense of propriety in front of the entire Catholic world by keeping a sodomite at his place, and making stupid and arrogant jokes about the non-existence of the “gay lobby” he himself had publicly mentioned.  What is such a man not capable of?

From their fruits you shall know them. Even in Collodi’s book, you never know in which problems Pinocchio can put himself into. But at least Pinocchio had the fee and the Wise Cricket. Bishop Bergoglio has Monsignor Ricca, the man (?) he absolutely clings to…

This being the situation, and with Screwtape clearly making himself very comfortable within the Vatican corridors, what could not happen? Could perhaps Francis decide – which I would think extremely stupid – that every advantage given to the SSPX is worth being suffered, if it allows him to silence all the others? Imagine his objective is simply to stop the Tridentine Mass for being celebrated, without any concern whatsoever of the huge boost in prestige and reputation – and money – this would give the SSPX?

Of course, this would be extremely stupid. Of course, this would continue the Pinocchio-isation of the Church and plunge her in a new crisis of vocation of heterosexual priests – faggots will, I am sure, run to be enrolled in the seminaries -; of course, Francis would lose the image of “great uncle” to acquire the one of “grumpy old sixty-eighter”, the vastly superior traditionalists shaming him at every occasion. But perhaps, he is not so intelligent? Perhaps, he is so full of himself that he thinks he can do nothing wrong, and does not need to follow prudent advice? Hitler and Napoleon, when they lost their head, thought they could conquer Russia. Bishop Humble, once he has seen a couple of million people in Copacabana, might well think he can conquer a small number of Traditionalists?

It is difficult to give an answer to these questions. This is like 1933. There is a new man in power, and this new man shows he is increasingly strange and unpredictable, and gives all signs to be a megalomaniac of “change”. I do not doubt he feels, like Hitler, called to be remembered in one thousand years.

On the other hand, when he was in Argentina he refused every open clash with the SSPX, who have a strong presence there. This is a powerful argument. But history teaches us that more often than not, the Pope is different from what the Cardinal used to be. This “bishop of Rome” must be the most different in a long time.

For example, there is this rumour of a great plan to be announced in Autumn, to make the Church, in a way, simpler. When I heard it I thought it had to do with the exterior appearance of the clergy (say: only Fiat or Ford cars; bishop must live in a three bedroom house; compulsory embracing of people in wheelchair whenever a camera is present; and the like), but in the light of the FFI measure the plans certainly assume a more sinister trait. Perhaps is the man trying to sweep away Summorum Pontificum in one fell swoop, counting on the choir of wannabe conservative who will suddenly discover the Holy Ghost hates Latin? 

I wish I had an aswer, but this man eludes answers. He plunged himself into a grave liturgical abuse weeks into his pontificate; he aids and abets not only homosexual clergy, but sodomites at that – don’t insult your intelligence pretending to believe the likes of Ricca are “chaste” anyway – and even dares to make a mockery of the people’s worries about the very faggots he protects.

This is the kind of man we have at the top. Again, it’s like 1933. There’s no way to know more until the true scale of this man’s delusion emerges.

Mundabor

Involuntary Humour

Involuntary humour at the site of His Hermeneuticalness, where the problem of – I kid you not – people who walk away with communion is dealt with.

What to do, asks the excellent author. People so addressed can easily lose their temper, so the matter of people simply going away with the Body of Christ must be dealt with in an appropriately sensitive manner.

Have some “guardians” near the priest, says one.

Yes, says another, “communion guardians” are becoming more frequent int he US because of the danger of willful desecration.

Ushers should do the job, says a third.

————–

Oh, how stupid our pre-Vatican II ancestor were, who would distribute on the tongue!

We have tons of useless apps, so we must be smarter.

Mundabor   

Never Waver

What would he have thought of the Pope remarks? Yes, exactly that…

My dear reader, the new season of madness that is coming upon us will see our faith attacked from all sides; from the media and from our friends, from the environment (at work, etc.) that will isolate us, to the worst treason of all, the one of the clergy suddenly “embracing” those things for which their grand-grandmothers would have slapped them in the face.

We must now expect many of the “how cool it is to be a conservative” camp to make a volte-face, and decide that yeah, the Church got that with homosexuality wrong these last two thousand years; hey, it happens in the best families; but look at how many people go to see the Pope as if it were the Cannon Man or the Bearded Woman! Hey, he must be doing something right! Can’t you see how much the world luuuv him?!

Be ready. Be steadfast. Never waver. What the Church has taught to your grand-grandmothers, that is the Church you belong to. Novelties must have no effect on you. No amount of drunkenness of the Vatican II clergy must ever let you think that perhaps, perhaps one who says ten thousand times what was right is now wrong might have an argument. He hasn’t. This is Goebbel’s method. Just repeat the lie long enough, and most will end up believing it is the truth.

The sirens of pacification, suggesting that you go with the flow and simply embrace all the shallowness, stupidity, and outright heresy of the times make – even when they are in good faith – the work of the devil. There is no way sloppy theology can be right, exactly as there is no way guitars at Mass can be right. There is no way it would have been right for Pius XII to be a “Renaissance Prince”, and it is right for Pope Francis to mock “Renaissance Princes”. There is no way God or Christianity have “changed” and the Holy Ghost is now, under the stewardship of Francis, changing the course after the first 2000 years of introductory experiment.

The next years are going to see a polarisation in the Catholic camp: as those who love to call themselves (vaguely) Conservative but do not care for the conservation of Catholic values “embrace” Francis’ devastation of Catholic tradition and abetting of perversion, a minority of people who really care will continue to say it as it is, in the serene knowledge that Truth is unchangeable, and those who try to tamper with it will pay a terrible, terrible price.

As to this blog, I invite you to read its headlines: tradidi quod et accepi, and Catholicism without compromise. They will continue to be the guiding lights of this effort; and if one day the Bishop of Rome dances a passionate Tango with his buddy Monsignor Ricca in the middle of St. Peter’s square, or produces himself in a dance dressed in a pink tutu, I will first ask myself what my great-grandmothers (in my case, the grandmothers would be more than sufficient) would have thought of it; and what Pope Pius X, or Pope Pius XII, or Padre Pio would have made of the event; and what they would have thought – you know perfectly well what they would have thought – I will also think, and there you have it.

Stuff “change”, stuff the new times, stuff the fashion and the bollocks of an unbelieving clergy only interested in popularity and short-term quiet. The mere idea the new times could not be lived with the instruments of the old ones is the very core of Modernism.

Thanks, but no, thanks. Give me the old religion, and may the Lord give me and us the force to bear whatever price for our faithfulness we may be called, one day, to pay.

Mundabor

Pope Benedict’s fitting punishment.

Aargh! A Renaissance Prince!

I must think rather often of the Pontiff Emeritus these days; namely, every time the Bishop of Rome decides to impart to us another lesson in heretical thinking, revolutionary Christianity or abetting of sexual perversion.

Pope Benedict appointed almost half of the Cardinals going into the 2013 Conclave. Francis’ election is, to around half, literally the result of his own doing. It must, therefore, be rather bitter for the Pontiff Emeritus to see how his own successor – for whose election he himself, Benedict, is responsible – to mock, dismantle or threaten everything Pope Benedict has worked for.

This is, if you ask me, a fitting punishment; it is, the way I see it, as if the Lord would force him to see the consequences of his own mistakes, whilst still on this world.

Benedict always acted like the one who thinks he does not need to act, and a couple of symbolic gestures and sundry encouragements will be sufficient to steer the Barque in the right direction. Unfortunately it does not work that way, and he who is put in a position of power and responsibility but fails to exercise this power and shoulder this responsibility is an excellent candidate for failure and ridicule.

Pope Benedict liked the Tridentine Mass, but he did not have the guts to forcefully impose it to his bishops; he sincerely wanted sound, and orthodox bishops, but when the big conflict came (with Monsignor Wagner, in Austria) he refused to impose himself on the Austrian clergy and caved in in the most shameful way; he would have certainly wished a successor willing to continue on his path, but he obviously did not have the energy to appoint those sound, conservative, orthodox Cardinals who would have never dreamed of appointing a maverick like Bergoglio.

In this tragedy, I suspect the lack of teeth played only one part. We must reflect that Benedict is still a product of V II and one of the man who – admittedly, from the second row – shaped it. He does not have the “lio” madness of his disgraceful successor, but he was certainly “collegial” enough not to stem the tide of stupidity coming from his dioceses. He must have thought – at least in part – that whatever the instances and the flawed ideology of the local churches, they have a right for these instances and these ideologies to be reflected in the appointment of bishops, and even cardinals.

The result is plain to see: bishops waving their hand like disadvantaged kindergarten children in Rio, and cardinals able to appoint a Bergoglio to the top job.

Pope Benedict will live his last years in the bitter knowledge he is the ultimate responsible not only for his own humiliation and the dismounting, brick by brick – I use this expression on purpose – of his own Pontificate, but for the plunging of the Church in an abyss of populism he must, most certainly, abhor.

A fitting punishment, as I have already pointed out. Let him see what happens to the Church he certainly loves when absence of spine and adherence to conciliar values meet to create such an explosive result as Pope Gay The First.

If Benedict had only paid more attention in his appointments of cardinals, he could now relax and watch with satisfaction his predecessor continuing on his line with more energy and enthusiasm. If he had also refused to cave in to the local hierarchies and had appointed sound and orthodox bishops, he could now look with satisfaction at an increase in vocations – and the right ones – as the fabric of the Church in the Western countries is slowly repaired. But he did neither the first nor the second, and now even Summorum Pontificum, for which his own Pontificate will be most surely remembered, might be swept away the first morning Francis feel like a bit of “lio”.

This is what happens when those in whose power it is to act prefer to teach instead, and do not care that their pupils are riotous and only waiting for them to go away.

The single man who bears the most responsibility for Bergoglio’s appointment is the Pontiff Emeritus. No one else can say he played such a big role in his election as Ratzinger did.

He will have to live with the regrets and the humiliations for the rest of his life.

They are both of his own doing. Therefore, he deserves both.

Mundabor

Pope Pius X, Not “Off-The-Cuff”

When Popes didn’t waffle: St. Pius X

The text below comes from a time when Popes were not ashamed to call themselves, and be called, the Pope.

Their authority came not only from their office, but from the way they exercised it. And they felt obliged to transmit intact the deposit of the Faith, and to use it to understand a changing world and face the challenges of turbulent times. They never demanded that the Catholic way of thinking adapt itself to the world. Rather, they demanded that the world adapt to it.

A beautiful example is “Our Apostolic Mandate”, the letter to the French bishops with which St. Pope Pius X moved decisively against the Sillon. 

The soundness of thinking and the clarity of language are very far away from the waffling of our times. There are no circiterisms. There are no appeals to emotions. This is not something written so that people feel good, but that people learn the Truth.

Besides, seen with the usual V II spectacles the writing style is “non-inclusive” and “uncharitable”.

You bet it’s “non inclusive”; as to “charitable”, one must understand the meaning of the word first. 

Below are some excerpts from the letter.

Enjoy a great Pope.

———————-

Catholic doctrine tells us that the primary duty of charity does not lie in the toleration of false ideas, however sincere they may be, nor in the theoretical or practical indifference towards the errors and vices in which we see our brethren plunged, but in the zeal for their intellectual and moral improvement as well as for their material well-being. Catholic doctrine further tells us that love for our neighbor flows from our love for God, Who is Father to all, and goal of the whole human family; and in Jesus Christ whose members we are, to the point that in doing good to others we are doing good to Jesus Christ Himself. Any other kind of love is sheer illusion, sterile and fleeting.

[…]

By separating fraternity from Christian charity thus understood, Democracy, far from being a progress, would mean a disastrous step backwards for civilization. If, as We desire with all Our heart, the highest possible peak of well being for society and its members is to be attained through fraternity or, as it is also called, universal solidarity, all minds must be united in the knowledge of Truth, all wills united in morality, and all hearts in the love of God and His Son Jesus Christ. But this union is attainable only by Catholic charity, and that is why Catholic charity alone can lead the people in the march of progress towards the ideal civilization.

[…]

In the first place, its brand of Catholicism accepts only the democratic form of government which it considers the most favorable to the Church and, so to speak, identifies it with her. The Sillon , therefore, subjects its religion to a political party. We do not have to demonstrate here that the advent of universal Democracy is of no concern to the action of the Church in the world; we have already recalled that the Church has always left to the nations the care of giving themselves the form of government which they think most suited to their needs. What We wish to affirm once again, after Our Predecessor, is that it is an error and a danger to bind down Catholicism by principle to a particular form of government. This error and this danger are all the greater when Religion is associated with a kind of Democracy whose doctrines are false.

[…]

But stranger still, alarming and saddening at the same time, are the audacity and frivolity of men who call themselves Catholics and dream of re-shaping society under such conditions, and of establishing on earth, over and beyond the pale of the Catholic Church, “the reign of love and justice” with workers coming from everywhere, of all religions and of no religion, with or without beliefs, so long as they forego what might divide them – their religious and philosophical convictions, and so long as they share what unites them – a “generous idealism and moral forces drawn from whence they can” When we consider the forces, knowledge, and supernatural virtues which are necessary to establish the Christian City, and the sufferings of millions of martyrs, and the light given by the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and the self-sacrifice of all the heroes of charity, and a powerful hierarchy ordained in heaven, and the streams of Divine Grace – the whole having been built up, bound together, and impregnated by the life and spirit of Jesus Christ, the Wisdom of God, the Word made man – when we think, I say, of all this, it is frightening to behold new apostles eagerly attempting to do better by a common interchange of vague idealism and civic virtues. What are they going to produce? What is to come of this collaboration? A mere verbal and chimerical construction in which we shall see, glowing in a jumble, and in seductive confusion, the words Liberty, Justice, Fraternity, Love, Equality, and human exultation, all resting upon an ill-understood human dignity. It will be a tumultuous agitation, sterile for the end proposed, but which will benefit the less Utopian exploiters of the people. Yes, we can truly say that the Sillon, its eyes fixed on a chimera, brings Socialism in its train.

[…]

As soon as the social question is being approached, it is the fashion in some quarters to first put aside the divinity of Jesus Christ, and then to mention only His unlimited clemency, His compassion for all human miseries, and His pressing exhortations to the love of our neighbor and to the brotherhood of men. True, Jesus has loved us with an immense, infinite love, and He came on earth to suffer and die so that, gathered around Him in justice and love, motivated by the same sentiments of mutual charity, all men might live in peace and happiness. But for the realization of this temporal and eternal happiness, He has laid down with supreme authority the condition that we must belong to His Flock, that we must accept His doctrine, that we must practice virtue, and that we must accept the teaching and guidance of Peter and his successors. Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went astray, He did not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared. He loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save them. Whilst He called to Himself in order to comfort them, those who toiled and suffered, it was not to preach to them the jealousy of a chimerical equality. Whilst He lifted up the lowly, it was not to instill in them the sentiment of a dignity independent from, and rebellious against, the duty of obedience.

[…]

However, let not these priests be misled, in the maze of current opinions, by the miracles of a false Democracy. Let them not borrow from the Rhetoric of the worst enemies of the Church and of the people, the high-flown phrases, full of promises; which are as high-sounding as unattainable. Let them be convinced that the social question and social science did not arise only yesterday; that the Church and the State, at all times and in happy concert, have raised up fruitful organizations to this end; that the Church, which has never betrayed the happiness of the people by consenting to dubious alliances, does not have to free herself from the past; that all that is needed is to take up again, with the help of the true workers for a social restoration, the organisms which the Revolution shattered, and to adapt them, in the same Christian spirit that inspired them, to the new environment arising from the material development of today’s society. Indeed, the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries, nor innovators: they are traditionalists.

Spot The Pope

“I am worried by the Blessed Virgin's messages to Lucy of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith, in her liturgy, her theology and her soul….

“I hear all around me innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject her ornaments and make her feel remorse for her historical past.

“A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God. In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them, like Mary Magdalene weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask, 'Where have they taken Him?'”

Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli, future Pope Pius XII, 1931.

————————

Let me tell you what I hope will be the outcome of World Youth Day: I hope there will be noise. Here there will be noise, I’m quite sure. Here in Rio there will be plenty of noise, no doubt about that. But I want you to make yourselves heard in your dioceses, I want the noise to go out, I want the Church to go out onto the streets, I want us to resist everything worldly, everything static, everything comfortable, everything to do with clericalism, everything that might make us closed in on ourselves. The parishes, the schools, the institutions are made for going out … if they don’t, they become an NGO, and the Church cannot be an NGO. May the bishops and priests forgive me if some of you create a bit of confusion afterwards. That’s my advice. Thanks for whatever you can do.

Francis, Bishop of Rome, 2013.

——–

What the great Pope of the past feared, my dear friends, we are already living with the disgraceful Bishop of Rome of the present.

Mundabor

 

Some Words About Blog Moderation

Go away. You are not welcome.

As the disgraceful Francis throws away the mask and shows the true Jesuit behind it, it is perhaps fitting to say a couple of words about the way the highly emotional, rather short-tempered author of this blog will cope with the challenges of our time.

1. This is no place for Sedevacantists. Whilst we criticise the advanced state of decay in which the Church finds Herself, we are fully loyal to the Church.

One does not apply for a new passport – or, more fittingly put, denies the legitimacy of those issuing the passport – because one despises the bunch currently in charge. Particularly if it is Christ’s passport, and the passport to Purgatory. Every comment even vaguely reeking of Sedevacantism will be culled, because I do not want my blog to be occasion of scandal to the many good Catholics reading this effort every day; or encourage them, upset as they must understandably be, to sinful thoughts. Let us be firm in the intention of loving the Church more and more, as she is more and more trampled by this (generally speaking, and with the obvious exception of the good ones) disgraceful clergy of ours.

When the SSPX declares that the Sea is vacant, I will believe it. Not one day before.

2. This blog takes enough time, energy and adrenaline. My bad, I am sure, but I have none of them left for people posting messages on the lines of “perhaps Francis does all this because he has a rare virus compelling him to act strangely”, or “Francis must be such an innocent man that he is unable to see anything bad in homosexual priests, or sodomite helpers”.

Just for the record: if you think the like of this, you are stupid. No, you really are. Yes, I am talking to you.

Stay away from this blog, because this blog isn’t for the stupid, and the stupid will never get anything out of it. If you really can’t avoid reading it – which I can’t prevent; though I would if I could – at least don’t post.

There is no Kool-aid here. Click elsewhere. You are not wanted.

I have enough of people posting just to tell me how thick hey are, thinking – being thick – that they look good in the process. These are the people who have contributed most to the present situation, the professional Pollyannas and world champions of brainlessness; the Catholic Chamberlains unable to see an elephant in the room, but feeling so good because they don’t.

Enjoy Francis, then, little Chamberlains. And, at least on this blog, have the decency to shut up.

Life’s too short for your comments.

Mundabor

Pope Gay The First

There is no week now without this disgraceful man reaching for a new deep from the gutter in which he has already put himself.

Once again, the immense scandal he causes is born from his being so much in love with himself, that he cannot resist “humbly” making the world new in the presence of journalists. This time, we had 80 minutes of off-the-cuff “Francis show”, and if you have already photographed the arrogance and ignorance of this man – if you read this blog, it is probably because you have – you know that 80 minutes of Bergoglio Show can’t be good for Catholicism. More alarming still, is that the off-the-cuff remarks show how this man really thinks.

The Neo-conservative press is now desperately trying to spin the immense stupidity (or evil intent, or a mixture of the two) of this man; but you can spin as much as you like, the man is a plague.

Let us see what kind of subversive bollocks a Bergoglio can spit in one single day, when he feels in good form.

1. So-called Gay Lobby.

If there is one, Francis hasn’t seen it in the Vatican ID card. Besides the absurdity of the statement, this is so gay even Elton John – an admirer of his, you must know – must see it that way.

Seriously: what a stupid, stupid, stupid thing to say. What an insult to the intelligence of every sane Catholic. What unspeakable arrogance. The Bishop of Rome is here clearly being the best ally of the “gay mafia” within the Vatican. He has clearly exposed himself as their man, elected by them so that he may not do anything against them, and help them.

Please let us wake up here. First important appointment is the one of a sodomite with levers everywhere within the Vatican; when a huge scandal involves this man, Francis refuses to get rid of him; then he proceeds to downplay the whole issue, so that he can be free to help his sodomitic friends without too much nuisance. Make no mistake, Screwtape would be delighted with Francis.

2. Homosexuality

Innovating on 2000 years of Christianity, this extremely confused (or worse) man wants us to believe being an homosexual is something that doesn’t stay in the way of being a priest. This shows you, better than anything else, how deeply rotten this man’s thinking is. I wonder if he would say the same of people with a tendency to screw their own mother, or dog, or niece. Either the answer is “yes” (and then this man’s mind is profoundly perverted in all matters of sexual abuse) or it is “no” (and then this man’s mind is profoundly perverted concerning the matter of homosexuality).

The moral of the story is that for this man, provided a homosexual is not part of a “gay lobby” (which he would allegedly not spot anyway; see the ID wannabe joke) not only can he be a priest, he can be one of his strictest collaborators, and who is he to judge?

Francis’ Christianity, and requirement for priesthood, ends by “accepting The Lord and having good Will”. Welcome, perverts the world over. The priesthood awaits you.

Satanic. Utterly and completely satanic.

Some people (like Jimmy Akin, who today makes a quadruple salto trying to defend the indefensible; I think we’ll see a lot of this in the years to come) will even try to sell you that, formally, Benedict’s explicitly stated policy of not allowing homos to the priesthood will not be touched. How can this be? If this is the example he gives; if this is the way he talks; if this is, very obviously, the way he thinks, how can this be?

Compared with this man, Pope Paul VI is merely an amateur. This here is Screwtape’s real deal.

You may or may not know that a good Catholic has traditionally had the faculty to pray for the painless death of the Pontiff if he is persuaded the Pontiff in question is a disgrace for the Church – as you can see, nothing new under the sun – .

I have a huge problem with praying for the painless death of Bergoglio, because in my naïveté something within me rebels to the idea of wishing the death of a Pontiff.

Still, the times are such that a Pope may well step aside if he finds himself in the physical impossibility of working as Pope. I have written in the past that I consider Benedict’s decision – seen in isolation – a wise one. If a Pope can’t make it, than he should not make it either, and leave his place to someone with the necessary strength.

You decide for yourself.

I start praying for the end of Bergoglio’s papacy today.

Mundabor

 

Generational Change

The first World Youth Day held under a Pope Bishop of Rome who wasn’t a bishop at the time of the Council shows the V II disease has now reached a new, more virulent form. Whilst former Popes had been formed in pre V II times and at least knew what they were demolishing, an entire generation below them was going out of seminaries with an extremely bad formation. The bad formation did not prevent them from climbing the Vatican career ladder and, in time, some of those confused social worker priests of whom the faithful wondered who on earth thought them fit for the habit became bishops; some of the bishops, cardinals; one of the cardinals, Pope.

True enough, in the meantime traces of sanity manifest themselves at the roots: priestly instruction is probably better now than it has been for decades; vocations are increasing, and are certainly less plagued by homosexuals looking for sodomy partners than it was before; a growing number of young priest is either able or willing to celebrate the Traditional Mass; among the faithful, a small but determined nucleus of duri e puri (“hard and pure”) has been forming, and they are young. It’s not all bad.

Still, if we consider how these generational matters proceed in waves, we haven’t much to rejoice. As the old wave of traitors of proper Catholicism was dying out, a new wave of very badly formed, popularity-seeking, not too infrequently perverted nincompoops was forming. This wave is now reaching maximum height, and it is the one who has swept away the Church with its idiocy. Bar a supernatural intervention, we are going to stay under water for a long time, as it will now take decades before this disgraceful generational wave of bad entertainers dies out, and makes place for the following wave of at least more mixed talents.

Bishop Bergoglio discovered, or thought he discovered, his vocation relatively late, and if memory serves received Holy Orders only in the second part of the Sixties. Theologically speaking, he is probably younger than his age, and at the same time at the beginning of a disgraceful wave of bad priests going out of the seminaries in the following fifteen years at least. He is the top of a very high wave, that will give us Dolans and Nicholses aplenty; at least a couple of them will, of course, become popes, though whether they will even want to be called that way is questionable.

We are now about to be submerged under a huge wave of stupidity, ignorance, and utter faithlessness, and must endure it for as long as the Lord pleases. I suggest we take a very deep breath now, because we are going to be under water for a while.

Mundabor

 

Benito Mussolini, 29 July 1883 – 29 July 2013

Today, 130 years ago, Benito Mussolini was born.

A highly controversial, and highly fascinating man, Il Duce continues to polarise opinions.

Violent, emotional, and very much the ladies’ man; but generous, honest, and deeply patriotic, Mussolini incarnates the passions and the vices, the big heart and the big mouth, the beautiful and the darker side of Italy. Many Italians still like him deeply. Your humble correspondent is proud to be put in their number.

A deeply pragmatic man, the then-atheist Mussolini gave the Italians the greatest gift they had received in 60 years, putting an end to an extremely painful fracture that had lacerated Italy since 1870, dominating not only its spiritual, but its political landscape all the time in between.

Still, the same pragmatism moved the Duce to accept the imposition of racial laws, requested by the Germans against their huge economic help in the time of the Sanctions. Mussolini – and the soft, conciliant, utterly un-fanatical Italian character – took care the already extremely soft measures against the Jews remained lettera morta pretty much everywhere. There were isolated exceptions, though, and if you are interested in those times in the Italian history I warmly suggest you read The Gardens of the Finzi Continis, not only a stunning piece of literature, but a fantastic portrait of a Jewish and Fascist well-to-do environment at the vigil of the Second World War.

It is today well-known that Mussolini “got religion” after the death of his beloved and very Catholic brother, Arnaldo, who besides being the most powerful influence on the Duce until his death was the real engine behind the Patti Lateranensi. Mussolini discovered the faith, but, too concerned with his public image, gave instruction to keep schtum about it, so that only the most trusted friends knew the “secret” of the once aggressively atheist Duce. He wrote beautiful lines about it on his diary, though, and whilst he never became a practising Catholic, we hope his Guardian Angel and the prayers of his mother and brother managed to obtain a happy death for him in the end.

Allow me to ask you to, in your charity, say a prayer for the Duce on this anniversary day. Easier to do if you like the man, far more difficult if you don’t.

If you can, in your charity, remember our Duce.

As Alessandro Manzoni let Lucia say, Dio perdona tante cose per un’opera di misericordia.

God forgives many things for a work of mercy.

Mundabor

P.s. the comment box is closed.

Pope Francis Serves Waffle With Heresy Jam

The Heresy Jam Reblog

Mundabor's Blog

Pope Francis strikes again, and much as one would avoid having to write about this disquieting man all the time, one is forced to say one or three words about it.

Rorate Caeli has the latest piece of waffle coming from the mouth of the Pontiff. Below the excerpt in its entirety.

In the Church therefore, there is a variety, a diversity of tasks and functions; there is not flat uniformity, but the wealth of gifts that the Holy Spirit distributes. However, there is communion and unity: all are in relation with each other and all combine to form a single vital body, deeply attached to Christ. Let us remember well: being part of the Church means being united to Christ and receiving from Him the divine life that makes us live as Christians, it means remaining united to the Pope and the bishops who are instruments of unity and…

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WYD Video Goes MIA: Please Help!

There was a video of either singing bishops, or people singing in front of bishops, from the WYD. This video was published by Rorate Caeli, Father Ray Blake and EF Pastor Emeritus, but they must all have linked to the same Internet location, whence the video was now pulled out probably following the, ahem, less than enthusiastic reception.

Unfortunately, whilst the video might have been pulled out, the stunt did take place.

Following the motto oportet ut scandala eveniant, yours truly asks for a reliable and stable link to the event.

I understand we will have to be strong. But if we are to endure Bishop Francis, we will have to anyway.

Mundabor

Megascreen Mass

The Bishop of Rome was very talkative.

And so I am one of two million people who thought it is absolutely necessary to be at Mass with Bishop Francis. The new humility, and all that.

The Mass is celebrated by a chap in white so distant I can only follow him through megascreens; if I can follow, that is, because during most of the mass the whispering and giggling of those around me will make it not easy anyway.

I will then proceed to take communion – as it is basically obligatory nowadays; if one does not take communion, well, he wasn't really there, was it now? – from one of an army of (hopefully) priests mobilised for the occasion; I will have to trust that the host was consecrated, though by one or two million participants who knows what logistics problems may have occurred.

The entire exercise will in the end remind me of a televised mass, with the exception of the priest – or, more likely, EMHC or how on earth those people are called – materialising out of the human ocean and giving me what I hope is a consecrated host. I mean “hope” here, because I am assuming, for the sake of this blog post, I am one of those who believe in Transubstantiation.

In short, the most unreal Mass I have ever attended. Still, I can say I was there.

Which is, in the end, the only reason I am here in the first place.

On my way home, I will have to remember to buy the condoms. But I really liked Pope Francis ' style. So humble. Look, Elton John is already on board, now we only need Stephen Fry and then we'll have the coolest pope evah!

Mundabor

Legalising Drugs? Part Two

The things were, though, not so easy as they seemed at first. Some problems, I saw fairly fast; others, only as I went deeper into Catholic thinking.

Italy isn’t an island. The freedom of movement within Europe which started in 1993 means junkies from all Southern Europe would have been tempted to move to Italy. To a junkie, drug is the very first necessity, and reason of life. Heroin on prescription, of extremely safe quality and extremely cheap, would have meant the risk of an army of junkies moving to Italy without a job or prospects, as the drugs would have been prospect enough. Being EU citizen would have given them automatic, non-discriminatory access to the national health service. Today this would, of course, apply so much more to a country like England, where smart but lazy people live at the taxpayer’s expense for a lifetime, and there is an extensive system of guaranteed “welfare”. A roof on your head, basic expenses paid, no fear of the future, first-rate medical service and cheap, safe, high-quality drugs. A junk’s definition of paradise.

Not every drug is born equal. Cocaine, for example, doesn’t really have “surrogates”. You can give a heroin addict methadone (and who knows whether he’ll be content with that) but the cocaine addict will accept no substitutes. This alone would be a market big enough to ensure the survival of a drug dealers’ net. The argument that smart legalisation wipes the industry away doesn’t wash.

Drugs (particularly cocaine, which is why it could never be legalised in the first place) can make people dangerous. You can talk a lot about a controlled environment, but in the end a drug addict will tend to have an erratic behaviour. In Italy, drogato is a word commonly used to indicate not only the actual addict, but also seriously unstable people. Ask yourself whether you want a heroin addict neighbour on methadone. In time, there would be a lot of them. Then try to criminalise drugs again, and good luck to you.

Legalisation encourages lack of self-responsibility. It sends the message that if enough idiots put themselves in a big enough problem, Big Nanny will have to intervene and make their lives easy. Not only is this an extremely bad example for an entire nation, but it produces the drug addicts it claims to eradicate. Make no mistake, if your son is a tad stupid and sees drug addicts have all the fun and a halfway normal life, he will soon draw his conclusions. With the present system your car may be at risk of breaking, but your son will be at risk of becoming a drug addict only if he is a serious moron. I know what country I would prefer to live in. With remarkable soundness, the electorate of almost all European countries see this. This is one of the few issues where political correctness flies directly out of the window. A legal junkie next door? Take a hike, Mr MP.

Legalisation is deeply immoral. The Church does not allow to consent to an evil so that another evil may be avoided. Giving drugs to a human being to feed his addiction cannot be right whatever other advantages may be expected from his action. If it is permissible to give drugs to drug addicts in order for them to avoid killing themselves with drugs, it must be permissible to give condoms to sodomites in order for them to avoid killing themselves with AIDS, or to young girls in order that they may avoid suicide following pregnancy. Actually, the latter argument could be used to justify abortion.

Whatever the advantages of a certain situation, I prefer a country that chooses to do what is right and pays the price of its convictions. If it costs more in police and jails, so be it. There is a moral dimension in our lives that cannot be seen merely in terms of material advantages. Similarly, on attentive reflection the idea that a country may fight criminality by distributing to its citizens those very same poisons that it considers so bad as to make the distribution of them a serious criminal offence reveals itself as logically self-defeating, besides being morally untenable.

On the same vein, I prefer a country that calls people to pay for their own idiocy. Small idiocy, small price; big idiocy, big price. Self responsibility is the salt of life. Unless one learns this lesson one cannot call himself an adult, merely a very heavy baby. God believes in self-responsibility to the point of condemning to an eternity in hell, but some people cannot even accept drug addicts are responsible for their own addiction. One wonders.

To throw oneself from the bridge and then to expect Super Nanny to fly to the rescue whilst one is in mid-air because one didn’t know how gravity works – but thought flying is great fun! – isn’t really how it’s going to work. Rather, it is fitting that the one who chooses to throw himself from the bridge reaps what he has sown and smashes into the ground; the fathers will then lead their own sons to the bridge and show to them the trajectory and the destination. Highly educative, I assure you. In the Papal States, fathers led their sons to executions, that they may see what happens to criminals. Smart fathers, they were.

In the case of the drug addict, of course, things aren’t so brutal. The smashing into the ground happens very slowly, and the possibility of saving oneself in mid-air is still given, if one really wants to – operative words here are “if one really wants to” – .  But I am sure you get my drift.

These, my dear and very patient reader, are the reasons why yours truly is on the side of the Bishop of Rome, at least in this matter. Notice, though, that on this occasion it is not yours truly who is being progressive, but rather the above-mentioned Bishop of Rome who is being, semel in anno, conservative.

Mundabor

Legalising Drugs? Part One

On occasion of Bishop Francis reiterating his opposition to liberalisation (making freely available) or legalisation (making available in certain circumstances) of drugs, yours truly has thought well to express his opinion on the matter.

There was a time (before I went back to be a practicing Catholic) when I thought a certain brand of legalisation, then pushed rather hard in Italy, was the way to go.

Broadly, what found my approval was the following proposal: light drugs like Marijuana remain illegal, with attentive enforcement; severe sanctions against not only drug dealers and pushers, but drug users remain in place; but those whom a MD certifies to be addicted can get their drugs at usual ticket price, with the normal – and very efficient – controls already in place for already legalised drugs like, say, morphine (whose medical use is common in Italy).

The thinking behind this is brutally simple: making every kind of ingress in the drug world heavily sanctioned (say: screwing hard the one found in possession of drugs), but avoiding to society the massive social cost of those already addicted (if you lived in Italy in those years, you knew the vast amount of small criminality, generally car breaking, caused by drug addicts; criminality that is “small” for the statistics, but directly affects the daily lives of one whose car is broken, or the old woman whose purse is taken away, or the constant threat of attack of one’s property).

Drugs being dirt cheap in the production, this would have had the following effects:

1) cut away the source of income for drugs dealer, whose clients would have been utterly screwed if found in possession of the dealer’s drugs, but once become addicted could have marched to a doctor and obtain a prescription for, say, $6.00 a day in today’s money. Basically, as a drug dealer you work for nothing. The dealer is here like a salesman whose clients can go away any time paying one twentieth of the price for a better product, after he had the expense and the huge risks to build the client base.

2) free the police force from the huge work involved in fighting against drugs-induced criminality and dedicate the resources to other ends (mafia and the likes come to mind; or illegal immigration; take these two away, and Italy is a very quiet country).

3) drastically improve the quality of life of the non drug addicts, whose lives were, at least in all big cities, daily impacted by the invasive, drug-induced criminality.

4) drastically reduce the further societal costs of drug addiction, from the damage caused by all the breaking – and at times vandalising – to the costs for the justice system (at the end of the Eighties in Italy drug addicted and illegal immigrants made around 90% of the jail population).

This was not a good-ist approach. It wasn’t the brainchild of bleeding hearts thinking the idiot who takes drugs is a “victim” (no he isn’t; he is an irresponsible idiot, period). It was a very practical approach to a problem at that point influencing the lives of millions.

The dividends of such a policy appeared reasonable, immediate, directly changing the lives of millions of hard-working, law-abiding citizens (again, the “poor drug addict” rhetoric was just not there: you throw yourself from a roof, you smash yourself into the ground) and promising not only to give the idiots a half-way normal life, but to the non-idiots who were the victims of the first an entirely normal one. All this not only at no-cost, but at a huge net benefit in economic and broad social terms.

Seems fine, doesn’t it?

Well, it isn’t.

To be continued… (Please wait before commenting).

Mundabor

Finding Excuses

At times I am tempted to think there are some Catholics who measure their faith from the amount of self-delusion and utter blindness they display concerning the actions of Popes.

Apparently in the Vatican there are so many wolves you would think it is a forest in Abruzzo, but who put the alleged wolves there is obviously not worth the thinking. Until it turns out one particular wolf actually luncheswith the Bishop of Rome, who partout does not want to get rid of him. The Pope has also routinely been “badly advised”, as if the advisers were the ones with the responsibility of picking good advisers. The last one, I have read this morning in my comment box: the Bishop of Rome is now concentrating on the WYD, so he can't deal with Monsignor Ricca.

Look, the Pope is not a moron. He can choose for himself. Making decisions is, actually, the most important part of his job. Important decisions aren't so terribly frequent, particularly if one has good advisers and is not a compulsive control freak. This is why the most powerful people are in the end the ones who work the least; this is also why one can be a ninety years old leader, and a force of nature like Enrico Dandolo.

The Pope always has the time, because he does not have to do the preparatory work. Also, he always must have the brains, because otherwise he should not have accepted the offer, or should resign if he can't lead the Barque anymore; so the “he is old and weak” meme doesn't work, either. Ask Enrico Dandolo about that.

The Pope is in charge. To be in charge means not only to have the power to make decisions, but to bear the responsibility for the decisions one makes. Those who think the Pope is being inadequate criticise him, but those who think he is an old nincompoop led by the hand by his advisers positively insult him.

Nor is having a bad Pope something that denies Catholicism in any way. Having a good Pope is not part of the deal one gets as a Catholic. In fact, it is revealing that as V II promotes indifferentism and general ignorance of sound Catholicism, it also subtly but forcefully promotes Clericalism. Those who aren't instructed will rely the more on what the priest tells them, and will in time naturally believe that if the priest – more so, the bishop; more so, the cardinal; most of all, the Pope – did something, then it must be right.

In this blog I insist on the readers to make for themselves a sound foundation of Catholic doctrine, using sources after V II only if they are 100% above suspicion (say: the excellent SSPX books). This is very important now, but might become it more and more in the future as the foreseeable Papacies feed us with nothing more than easy, non controversial platitudes.

Part of this solid foundation is to know that a Pope is infallible only in extremely rare cases; that he is not picked by the Holy Ghost, but by the Cardinals; that he does not have to be a living saint and can well be a great sinner; and that he can well go to hell, where several of them very probably are.

Please stop making excuses for a Pope, because if you see the sin and bend over backwards to justify it you aren't being pious, but merely an accessory in this Pope's sin.

And don't worry: the Church eats bad Popes for breakfast, and she will bury the current Bishop of Rome as she has buried many bad, very bad or utterly rotten Popes in the past. The Church who survived every Empire and will stand when the United States are a footnote in the history books does not need for Bishop Francis to be a saintly man to keep existing, or to justify Christ's Truth. You believe what the Church believes because it is the Church of Christ, not because the Pope of the day is a saintly man.

Don't make excuses for the Pope as if he were the dumb child in the family. He is not a child, and he is most certainly not dumb. Look at his actions with the purest heart you can muster, and if you think he gives scandal, with the hand on your heart have the courage to say so; in charity as much as you can, but in truth all the time.

Catholicism always, Papolatry never.

Mundabor

Franciscan Waste

Renaissance Princes would have never been so kitsch.

I do not think one should make Bishop Francis responsible for the mismanagement – and probably, outright corruption; this is Brazil after all – of having two places for oceanic gatherings. Even Hitler thought Nuremberg could do with only one, and Hitler knew a thing or two about oceanic gatherings. When there is one structure that is good enough you don't need an expensive double, is the message. Ask Noah if he had to build a second Ark. This simple logic apparently does not work in Brazil, though.

This is the more absurd because – as the usual Rorate Caeli now informs us – the rain has transformed the horrible, spaceship-cum-rock-star concert arrangement in Guaratiba into a muddy mess. Therefore, it was simply decided to use the other mega-arrangement in Copacabana, thus making the superfluity of the Guaratibe structure evident to the dumbest mind.

Now, to have this kind of horrible “we are so cool” arrangement is bad enough; to have it double is worse; to have it such that some rain (they are in winter over there) destroys the entire effort is atrocious; but to put in place such a stupid, expensive waste in a city known worldwide for the great poverty and the shanty towns is truly the worst.

The Bishop of Rome prefers to be surrounded by his adoring fans in a simple Fiat, but I wonder whether he will find one word of apology with his sheep for this sorry mess, a true slap in the face of those poor people the Bishop of Rome has so much in his heart.

It is ironic that we might hear the usual words of condemnation of mismanagement and corruption in the day – the final, super-duper oceanic gathering for which the Guaratiba structure was built – that is the best example of it.

Once again: I can't imagine this is directly Francis' fault. But I keep noticing how much the Bishop of Rome loves to talk of honesty and courage in abstract, and how blind he is to the problems he encounters – and for which he could do something immediately, and send a message to the world – in concrete.

Monsignor Ricca, Francis' sodomite buddy, is still at his place, and I wonder whether this huge mess in Guaratiba will be answered with a single world of apology to the poor of Rio, from a Bishop of Rome always thinking what wasted money could be given to the poor instead.

Mundabor

 

 

Involuntary Truth

Los Angeles Libtards

The Los Angeles Times must be one of the stupidest publications on the planet. Still, at times even from the mouth of the liberal morons one can hear something worthy of reflection.

“Pope Francis may clash on doctrine with young Brazilian Catholics”, states the rag's headline. This clearly indicates both that young Brazilians have an authoritative voice concerning doctrine, and that the Pope must pay attention if he notices he is out of synch with them.

The article itself is funnier still, as it mentions the usual “study” stating young Brazilian Catholics love everything the US morons push for, from abortion to perverts' “marriage”. The message here is clear: look, Francis, you are losing readership, erm, clients, and your product doesn't work and needs to be updated. The usual interview to Leonardo Boff (it is typical of the moron to ask a former priest to tell him something about the priesthood) is also there, clearly indicating how detached the Church is from her most brilliant minds. In short, the usual rubbish.

Still, this rubbish has a core of very sad truth in it. Whilst the survey is certainly slanted – not a difficult thing to do – there is no denying the majority of the Brazilian laity – and certainly of the very people who take part to the WYD – are not really aware of what proper Catholicism is. They are not aware because they aren't told; or when they are told they are told in such timid whispers they get the message they shouldn't really take it seriously, provided they have their hearts in the right place, are socially “aware”, & Co.

The LA Times, who think the Church either is a democracy or should be it, sends the message the Bishop of Rome is behind the times. I'd rather say the Bishop of Rome is fast asleep, or he is deluding himself, or both.

The people who attend the WYD are largely uninstructed. They visit a modern icon, they do not support the values he is supposed to represent. Their Caholicism is based on platitudes and hearsay, and crumbles at the least challenge from the world. Their allegiance to the Church is an automatic reflex or a matter of laziness, not the result of a conscious choice. They emote together with the Bishop of Rome, but do not know what Catholicism is about.

The Bishop of Rome seems very fine with the situation. He wants saints wearing jeans, but doesn't get Pinocchio Masses and easy platitudes do not produce saints, but apostates. He talks a lot about joy, but never mentions the danger of hell, therefore making of this joy just another example of today's relentless quest for self-satisfaction and cheap excitement (note also his links to Pentecostalism). If joy is one's aim in life and there are no obligations and eternal sanctions about one's behaviour, it is not really clear why this joy should not be sought in consumerism, promiscuity, or even cocaine. Hey, the Bishop has already stated Jesus' arms embrace all anyway, so let one try his own way first…

A shallow Bishop of Rome marketing a Catholicism so superficial and content-free as to be almost unrecognisable meets crowds uninterested in vast part of what they have vaguely heard they should care about. The LA times clearly thinks the latter are right, and the former is wrong.

They are both wrong.

Mundabor

 

Loyalty Misunderstood

We write today the 25 July and as I pen this Monsignor Ricca, Bishop Bergoglio's sodomite lunch buddy, is still at his place. A pontiff who insists on the need for saints wearing jeans seems unable to understand the need for priests not practising sodomy. I do not know about you, but I find it rather rich. It is as if for Bishop Bergoglio saying and doing belonged to two different planets, without any need for the actions to conform to the words.

In the unavoidable reflection caused by this astonishing behaviour, one cannot avoid thinking of the precedent – during Bishop Francis' Buenos Aires time – of the Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires, Monsignor Sucunza. The latter was the obvious cause of a trial for adultery and divorce, and was constantly and stubbornly protected by Bergoglio without any consideration for the scandal he gave.

What I think happens here is that the Bishop of Rome has a rather disquieting understanding of loyalty, according to which when someone has become part of his own circle, he will protect him whatever his failings and the scandal they cause. This will, in turn, ensure him blind loyalty from the people of his entourage.

Now, loyalty is very good if it is founded on virtue and shared values. It becomes a pure power machine if it is based exclusively on personal allegiance, and looks past whatever failings.

Even Don Vito Corleone would have understood that Monsignor Ricca is untenable and must go, and no kind of loyalty from his picciotto can justify sustained and grave harm to the greater cause. Bishop Bergoglio, whose greater cause is vastly bigger than Don Vito's, should have immediately put the interest and reputation of the Church – besides basic decency – before every personal consideration.

Very obviously, Bishop Bergoglio does not think that way. His system of power – and perhaps a very, very twisted notion of what is right – seems to require that whoever is perceived as one of his own men – like Sucunza, or Ricca – is protected for as long as humanly possible, without any consideration for the consequences.

The permanence of Ricca in his post is a scandal that become worse with every day, and throws a sinister light about the basic moral structure – and the not very basic power thinking – of the one who should be, before all things, servus servorum Dei.

A scandal is a scandal is a scandal. A sodomite is a sodomite is a sodomite. No amount of twisted thinking can justify what is happening. If you ask me, what is happening shows the true face of Bishop Bergoglio more than anything else we have seen – and we have seen a couple already – from him. The brazenness of this behaviour will perhaps silence the clericalists, but it will scandalise all those who do not confuse loyalty to Peter with Fuehrerprinzip and outright Papolatry.

Every day the Bishop of Rome allows Ricca to stay, this scandal enlarges and the credibility of the Church is undermined.

You find excuses for this behaviour if you want to. I find the way this man behaves truly beyond the pale. Every priest or bishop or cardinal who would dare to behave in this way would be bombarded with criticism like it's Dresden in February 1945.

Bishop Francis leave a sodomite, appointed by him, in his place undisturbed.

Mundabor

 

Spot The Difference

 

 

 

To Admonish The Sinner

 

Why are conservative Catholics so intent in bashing everything that is Un-Catholic? Why are they unable to just let people be, and embrace “tolerance”? Do they really need to show all the others how good they are? These questions fly around, more or less directly, in this or that blog post.

Perhaps yours truly should say a word or two.

The modern world – who doesn’t learn anything by heart, because it feels too smart for that – has forgotten that to admonish the sinner is not only acceptable, but highly desirable. It is, in fact, one of the spiritual works of mercy. The one who helps the other to understand the consequences of wrong behaviour truly is the one who often helps the wretched creature more than all others around him, and claiming to love him and to want his good, are doing. Lucky is the sinner who has someone with the gut to tell him what is what, and who might perhaps remember the lesson before it’s too late. Of course, a dose of prudence and intelligence will go a long way in lending more effectiveness to one’s merciful work, but the clumsy helper will always be preferable to the sleek accomplice in another’s sin.

What is true in the private sphere is more so in the public one. All those wannabe Catholics, or wannabe Christians, or wannabe nice people who give scandal and sabotage Catholicism in various ways cause a strong reaction from conservative Catholics. Why? Because generally speaking, conservative Catholics truly care. They care that others be not led astray by the false prophets and the fake slogans of our times, and they care that the evil spirits, who roam through the world seeking the ruin of souls, may have as difficult a job as possible. The world will hate these good souls, and the usual suspects – the ones who say they are tolerant and inclusive – will hate them most; but you see, in being so hated, these good souls are doing works of mercy.

As to the being good, my impression is that sound Catholicism works. Good conservative Catholic families tend to be happy and intacts, without drug or drink problems, no or far less divorces, no sluttish girls, and no tattoos. Families with a permissive attitude are, generally, those who have these problems, and their members – particularly the parents – must strain their tolerance and progressive attitude to show the world they haven’t failed after all. At some point, looking tolerant is better than looking plain stupid.

Come on now, call me a bigot. But you know I am right.

Let us pray for a world with more people like the Christians of old, to whom souls were more important than trees, and truth than niceness.

Mundabor

Reverse Evangelisation

Impressing the Contracepting: the Bishop of Rome, Francis.

In his most recent interview to the rag called national catholic reporter (all lower case), Archbishop Chaput makes several interesting points. One of those is that he has noticed – with some embarrassment, I am sure – that those who talk to him most often about the Pope are “non practicing Catholics or people who aren't Catholics or not even Christian”.

It is interesting that an Archbishop notices this, because if we trads do we are labelled as destructive, grumpy old men and women who will never be happy with less than Torquemada (may he rest in peace).

In the phenomenon noticed by the good Archbishop is reflected all the drama of the current papacy. It is evident to everyone with a brain that what attracts the above mentioned groups to Francis is not his Catholic talk, but his frequent departures from sound Catholic thinking.

The Bishop of Rome implying salvation for do-gooding, heart-bleeding Atheists attracts them to him because what he says – or implies – just isn't Catholic. The Bishop of Rome sabotaging ancient rules about Maundy Thursday Mass and even contravening to Canon Law precepts is not praised for his staunch Catholicism, but for his attacks to Catholic rules and traditions. The Pope not wearing the Mozzetta, using everyday cars, or wearing black shoes and calling oneself Bishop of Rome is praised not because he is seen as a great Pope, but because he is seen as downplaying the importance of the Papacy.

In short: the Bishop of Rome tends to be liked by the wrong crowds, for the wrong reasons.

How this can be seen as a positive is beyond me. If Bishop Francis were to extol the pleasure of marijuana smoking, of course all the potheads on the planet would consider him an extremely cool man.

This elementary truth does not touch the Bishop's supporters, of course. The always hilarious comment section of the ncr, a pit of dissent or outright perversion, is overflowing with those who praise the Bishop for his work of demolition, and call it very apposite and just the ticket.

What these people – among them the usual amount of perverts, as you would expect – do is actually prove our point: a Pope eschewing sound Catholicism for the sake of popularity will manage to be popular, but not really among the Catholics; nor will he make decent Catholics of his supporters.

The atheist or pervert supporting Bishop Francis isn't moved in the least away from atheism or perversion; he approves of Francis because he thinks that Francis approves him in his atheism or perversion. He wants the Church to become more atheist and more pervert, rather than wanting to become more Catholic himself.

The end result of this is that Bishop Francis ends up – unwittingly, of course – working against Catholicism, in a sort of “reverse evangelisation” that reinforces people in their error, because they see a pontiff bending over backwards to be as much like them as he can, and as least Pope as he can get away with.

A Pope not wanting to be Pope must surely be the wet dream of every enemy of the Church.

In the… bishop of Rome, they now have their man. Is it a surprise they show him their appreciation?

Mundabor

 

Rio: Archbishop Tempesta Gives Waffle Galore

The crowds found the nourishment absolutely delicious.

Archbishop Tempesta buried his listeners under a huge cargo of marshmallows yesterday in Rio.

The link to the CNA article gives ample testimony of the kind of disastrous motivational speakers our clergy have become.

Peace & joy; joy & peace; feel good with yourselves; be “infectious” even if you couldn’t even recite the ten commandments to save your lives; recruit Copacabana’s beach as a reminder of the apostles (hey, do I really need to go to Mass, then? The saaaand and the seeeea all taaaaalk to me about Jeeeesus…)

To be “harbingers of peace and concord” means, in this context, absolutely nothing. If one lives in an environment dominated by sexual licence or sexual perversion, to be an “harbinger of peace and concord” means, for him and 99.9% of the hearers, to go on as usual and to not ever try to challenge anyone. 

There’s nothing else than that in the article. Marshmallows indigestion.

I am curious to see whether this entire gigantic kermesse will go to the end without one single reference to judgment and hell. And at this point one could rightly ask why all the talk in the first place: without fear of hell one could actually visit all the sauna clubs in Rio, obviously being a “harbinger of peace and concord” to all the masseuses he meets. 

But again, this is the Church of Bergoglio: all waffle, no substance.

Can’t wait for the socialist part.

Mundabor 

Trustworthiness

This source is in French, but credible sources consider it reliable.

What it says in the world's second most beautiful language is as follows:

1. Monsignor Ricca has not offered, but has in fact presented his resignation to Bishop Francis on Saturday.

2. The resignation extends to his activity as, ahem, “homo hotelier” at the Vatican.

3. Further misconduct in recent years has emerged.

Now this may seem little but, if confirmed, would not be good at all.

To 1.

For Pope Francis to prefer to travel to Rio and leave such a scandal crying to heaven for vengeance can mean only one of the two: he wants to leave undistubed the cult for his person as he travels to Brasil, or he wants to protect his homo “buddy” by allowing him to go away gracefully. In both cases, personal interest has come before the reputation and prestige of the Church, and great scandal was given – and as I write, is still given – to faithful Catholics.

The one with Magister's sources being “untrustworthy” – once again, a masterpiece of ineptitude and arrogance – will now unavoidably turn against either Father Lombardi or, far more probably, Bishop Bergoglio. There can be no doubt that here either Magister is untrustworthy, or Bishop Bergoglio*. Tertium non datur. To paraphrase Jane Austen, in this matter there isn't enough trustworthiness for both of them.

Therefore, either the Bishop of Rome is a liar – and therefore qua definitione untrustworthy – or he is so carelessly arrogant – and still untrustworthy – as to send his own press man to state heavy words without caring for a proper homework first. Before you get all angry at me, reflect on how you would scream if, say, Obama had been – obviously mutatis mutandis – in Bishop Francis' actual situation. We would all say that …. well, you all know what we would say.

To 2. I am surprised that the obvious scandal of a sodomite priest running three hotels for priests has not caused more horror, tragic hilarity and, in time, close scrutiny. The man has probably used his position to arrange every possible kind of “meetings” with and between his buddies, from all over the world; people he wanted to link to himself, link to each other and make part of his network. His position must also have put him in the knowledge of many a secret, and in a position to destroy many a career. He must have been a very powerful man, this dirty little scumbag. Bishop Francis trusted him, though, and actually felt comfortable living under a roof run by him.

From the conclave (charitable version; please spare me from the other one):

“Ah, this Francis is one with a safe instinct for choosing the right people! Let us give him the task to reform the Curia from the homo mafia, and from the other problems!”.

This serves Francis right. Should have stayed in the Papal Apartments. In this particular case, the punishment for his “humble” hubris came particularly swift, and particularly hard. A faggot as host, lunch buddy for three months and even protégé? Hats off: he could not have done worse. Takes some doing. Respect.

To 3. Every attempt to depict a Pope that was impressed with Ricca's “conversion” will die with this particular piece of news; then everyone knows the gossip must have been there, and Bishop Francis would look even more as a managerial Waterloo if the story were to be spread.

———————–

Well then: arrogant, simpleton, or a mixture of the two. I personally vote for the first hypothesis. The man is too smart to be a nincompoop; he is good enough at marketing himself (no shame, though; which helps); but in the end he is clearly not smart enough to run the Church.

More and more, the hubris of this stubborn but not exceedingly prescient Pope emerges. Whilst the world media try to make of him the next Mahatma Gandhi, those who can think for themselves have abundantly photographed this man. Click around and read the one or other priestly blog, and you will read for yourself.

If you have a very robust sense of humour, you will find this papacy at least grotesquely entertaining. I try to take it with as much humour as I can, but I am an emotional man and am easily angered, so it's not all that easy.

I do hope, though, this particular kind or Circus Medrano will come to an end, obviously in the Lord's good time. I do not have any illusion about Francis' successor, but one can at least hope in some shrewdness.

Alexander VI was at least a clever man, an orthodox Pope, and a great peacemaker.

This here is bad even at being a bad Pope.

Mundabor

* the reader's intelligence will not be insulted by implying the “untrustworthy” stunt is an initiative of Father Lombardi.

 

Rio: Meet The Francis Lama

Only one went to Rio. All fine, then....

If you had any doubt the sober demeanour of Pope Benedict has left place to a personality cult in JP II-style, this World Fornication Day should not leave you any doubt.

The Bishop of Rome – now not the Holy Father anymore, but the Cool Uncle – is the superstar of an event in which emotion is sought for the sake of the emotion.

“Frenzied crowds” meet him in Brazil, and I wonder how many of them are simply moved by the desire to say “I was there”. The cars of the Papal motorcade moving in the middle of a crowd not kept in place by fences remind one of the Tour de France, with the ecstatic but hysteric crowds mad for their heroes, but not the faintest aim of spiritual advancement.

This is not, my dear readers, the product of a desire for spirituality. Spirituality does not lend itself well to this kind of exercise. For this reason, great Popes like Pius XII or great saints like Padre Pio have always avoided putting themselves on the front stage. Oceanic crowds are more suited to Mussolini.

In theory, one might have thought that the strategy is a promising one during JP II's pontificate, with a Pope clearly with superstar status attracting enormous crowds. But even then the shallowness of this following had to be evident to everyone with some critical thinking, and the progressive dechristianisation of the West after almost 27 years of “John Paul Superstar” should have persuaded most. It certainly persuaded Pope Benedict, a man far away from such excesses, and too intelligent to even consider them.

The clock has now been set back to the Eighties and Nineties: the new Francis Lama offers an even easier, even shallower, even easier to digest entertainment.

Like the Dalai Lama, Bishop Francis will dish cheap platitudes, rich in sugar and strictly vitamin-free. I wonder if he will mention hell or even purgatory once; I very much doubt he will even deal strongly with at least a couple of unpleasant issues, as John Paul II at least regudid.

Bishop Francis has neither John Paul's saintliness, nor Ratzinger's brain, least of all Pacelli's grit. He does not even dare to be unashamedly Pope, though you can be sure he is nobody's Fool. His marshmallow papacy will please the juvenile crowds and the shallow of spirit, and will deeply sadden all those who see Christianity sink all over the West whilst the Numero Uno cannot even admit a mistake, and accept the resignation of a scandalous sodomite. The New Humbleness is the Kool-aid for the masses thirsting for “celebrities” and easy feel-good kicks.

Bishop Francis will give them both, in spades, happily marching forwards with the cult of the Dalai Francis; perhaps thinking, like Wojtyla, that in this way he will help the work of evangelisation, and perhaps with less humble motives. But the more he goes on with his marshmallow pontificate, the more he will alienate those yearning for real nourishment. He reminds me more and more of Sandro Pertini, former Italian President; the idol of the stupid the country over, but always despised by the minority able to see beyond the smokescreen.

The Magical Humbleness Tour goes on.

Monsignor Ricca, for now, stays.

Mundabor

 

 

Rio: More Poison For The Patient

Short-term effect: Pope Benedict in the UK, 2010.

And so the gay-friendly – at least when they are his own buddies – Bishop of Rome is now in Rio, a place known all over the world for its spiritual atmosphere and culture of contemplation and asceticism. Apparently, the mission objective is supposed to be – besides the usual “youth” rhetoric – to revitalise Brazilian Catholicism.

Sandro Magister informs us not more than around two thirds of Brazilians are Catholics nowadays, with Proddies of a newer sort – those who believe in God, I am told – making massive inroads particularly in the big cities; in fact, the same source tells us in Rio the percentage of Catholics is merely 46%, thus making of them a minority compared to the population as a whole.

I have written in the past, but repeat today, that these short-term media exercises all have a short life. You'll hear a lot of people saying they are so “energised”, “inspired” or the like; but when you look at the long-term collective effect, you'll see it tends towards zero.

Pope Benedict XVI visited the UK in 2010 amongst crowds far, far exceeding the most optimistic expectations. Three years later, we have the so-called same sax marriage, and few of those who call themselves Catholic care a.. fag. Nor have his travels in Germany or the US or elsewhere left a permanent mark; nor did, in fact, his predecessor, with his huge theatrical streak, the earth-kissing and the like.

There is no reason whatever to believe the Bishop of Rome will have more success; actually, seeing the type one would be scared at the new Catholics he were to allegedly covert; but be not afraid: it won't happen.

These are media stunts; mere straw fires; the populace flocks to see the Pontiff largely because it's an “event”, something worth one's time in an age constantly looking for some form of excitement. I have actually even heard people saying a Papal visit is a “cultural” event. One doesn't need any sort of value investment to participate to such an event, nor will he take away anything durable from it.

Of course, here and there someone will be deeply impressed. Someone is always doing something. But it is very reasonable to assume serious work on the ground is far more important, and leads to far more serious conversions, than this kind of media circus.

On the contrary: the media circus tries to cure the disease administering more poison to the patience: more superficiality, more easy slogans, more entitlement mentality, more sneaking socialism: that is, more of what has caused the loss of faithful in the first place.

The real evangelisation is made with serious priests on the ground; reverent masses; proper Catholic instruction; open defence of Catholic values on the public square, and the courage to talk about the whole faith – including the unpleasant parts – rather than always hammering on the easy parts (the obsessive mantra of “joy” is the one that always amuses me most; it's like a motivational course for the kindergarten.

We are going to get an awful lot of this in the next days, including all the talk about how “energised” Brazil is. But it is just another straw fire.

Mundabor

 

World Youth Day: The Waffle Contest

Giant Waffle Contest: will you rise to the challenge?

After the unexpected success of the “Monsignor Ricca caption contest”, a new challenge for my very attentive readership.

Please post here in the next several days the most inane piece of waffle you have read from the “World Unwanted Pregnancy”, “what-have-they-done-to-my-child”, “oh darling, I had told you to take precautions” day, also called “let's hope they forget Ricca” Youth Day.

Admission criteria:

1. Maximum three periods. I know, this is though. I might accept four, if it's really good. But you are at risk.

2. It must sound good (as in: hip, modern, V II, anti-rosary: the “get out of yourself”, “don't be a bachelor” stuff) and

3. Must be nothing to do with your Granmother's Catholicism. In fact, if your grandmother would have recognised it as sound Catholicism, do not bother posting.

Please let us play fair: only direct quotations from Bishop Jorge or clerics directly involved with the proceedings or commenting on them. Laymen's comments accepted if they are stupid in a particularly deserving way.

Foreign languages are accepted if I understand at least what's going on (means: Italian, Spanish, German, or French).

“Ah”, “eh”, “no?” and the like are best left in the text. No editing. Let the “spirit” talk.

Last bit of advice: be shameless.

They are.

Mundabor