The Title Of “Monsignor” Goes (Almost) The Way Of The Mozzetta

And it came to pass the Bishop of Rome decided no one can be made “Monsignore” anymore until he is 65 and has, presumably, lost almost all trains to become a bishop.

Apparently, this should help stem careerism.

It might well be, but yours truly cannot avoid posing himself the following questions:

1. Monsignors have been around for several centuries now. Was it an ingenious way to promote careerism, or were there other motives? Like for example giving a particular recognition to priests who would not become bishops, or were not interested in becoming such?

2. How will the abolition of the title of Monsignor help to eradicate careerism? People are careerist, or they aren’t. They aren’t careerist because the title of Monsignor exists. Those who were careerist before will be just as careerist afterwards. They might though, in case, become even more slimy in order to be made bishop. I see a lot of particularly “pastoral” (read: heretical, and forgetful of Christ) ambitious priests in our future. Conversely, those who were good and holy and humble (really humble) men of God will remain so upon being made Monsignore. See, ahem, picture above. Please also notice the measure is not retroactive: not one of those careerist priest who have apparently caused this decision will lose his title.

3.  Is the principle itself of giving recognition to people deemed worthy now suddenly bad? What is this, rank egalitarianism? Is not a bishop considered ipso facto a particularly worthy shepherd? Is the appointment to Cardinal not considered a great personal honour? Does the Church not give recognition, through his own organisations, right and left, even to fag scientists?   Yes, we know: not all of these honours will be wisely given. But this is human nature. The execution might be at times unsound, but the principle is certainly fine. Is not in the end even the beatifications and canonisations made for this reason, that worthy people can be taken as help and example for the others? By the thousands of saints already available there is no need to make new ones, surely? And still, the same V II Pope who now tell us that careerism is bad now proceed to their own serial beatification and canonisation!? Why? *

4. In certain situations, the title of Monsignore is (was) just what the doctor ordered. Say, you have a new Ordinariate and the one you want to put at its head is married, so he can’t be a bishop. Appointment to Monsignor, et voila’, everything is in its right order!  One wonders what will happen in future in such situations. And I do not think of converts necessarily. A military Ordinariate, for example, is another of those situations.

One may understand the reason for the measure. But I doubt this has been thought through accurately.

There will not be one single careerist less, at least because of this measure. But many occasions to extol the work of good and holy priest will be lost.

It is, in fact, as if the Queen would abolish the Honours List because there are people who would do everything to be among those honoured.

A very Argentine measure.

Mundabor 

* note for the distracted readers: canonisations are infallible, but not obligatory. No doctor has ever ordered a canonisation. Even in the presence of several miracles, a Pope is always free to decide whether or not to proceed. One reason for his prudence could be, for example, to avoid giving the impression that the canonisations of Popes are self-serving. 

On The “Novice Trade”

What? No vocations?

A rather strange expression from our humble Lider Maximo is making the round on the Internet: his opposition to the “Novice Trade”.

It is difficult, at least to me, to know what this is supposed to mean. The only logical and useful explanation I have found says that Francis’ words refer to novices asking to be transferred to other orders. If this is the explanation – and I cannot find any other – one naturally wonders: 1) why this happens, and 2) what is wrong with that.

A scenario I think might be rather common seeing the Pope’s words is the one of the young man accepted in a “spirit of V II” seminary and discovering he is surrounded either by faggots, or by total idiots like the Polish Dominicans already mentioned, or by faithless reprobates. As he gets to know the world of religious life he becomes aware of other possibilities, and of Orders who take things seriously instead of trying to be bad social workers with a hang for making clown of themselves, or for people of their own sex (Jesuits know a lot about this, I am sure). Unsurprisingly, these young men will at some point ask for admission in one of the traditionally oriented orders. They will do so, because they are looking for the spiritual life their present order cannot give them. Some people might think you may, as a Friar, dance to a Lady Gaga tune and avoid hell, but the smart ones will be scared stiff only at the idea of being associated with these idiots. This kind of “novice trade”, therefore, is there for a reason: the dismal inadequacy of much of today’s religious formation.

As to the second question: what’s wrong with the “novice trade”? It is rather natural that one should follow his own vocation, and it should be for the greater good of the Church that every novice finds the environment most suited to the flowering of his spiritual life. Should not every Pope be happy with that and, actually, encourage the process?

Still, this is, at least according to Francis, bad. One smells the pungent odour of decay here, with traditional Orders deservedly dying, and the more concerned because even among their few novices many ask to be transferred elsewhere. They ask to be transferred to the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, perhaps; an order grown from zero to 400 ordained friars – and as many sisters – in the short span of two decades; with seminaries full to the brim – google the figures – and obviously, like every other conservative Order, no financial troubles of any kind. How many of the FFI members have started their novitiate elsewhere? I have no idea, but Francis’ opposition to “novice trade” starts to make sense to me.

What also starts to make even more sense – in the wicked logic of the wolves currently in power – is the ruthless, brutal suppression of the FFI now under way.

How can Francis stop the “novice trade”? He could forbid transfers during novitiate. But if he does, the only result will be an ever bigger dearth of admissions among the stupid “spirit of V II” Orders, and an increase in demands of admission to the right shops – like the FFI – from day one. At this point, in Francis’ mind the only way to stop the “novice trade” would be to drive with the steamroller over those conservative Orders “depriving” the V II idiots of those novices they think, in their idiocy, they would otherwise have. A total nonsense, this one, as the most frequent alternative in this case will be not a life as a stupid Jesuit and probably leading to hell, but a life as an intelligent layman and hopefully leading to salvation.

Francis appears to think he can order vocations par ordre du Mufti, and in this he shows the same arrogant, senile obtuseness he shows in pretty much everything else. He will not get the vocations he desires, and the ruthless law of inverse selection will take care that only the worst – the secular, the fake, and the perverts – demand to be admitted in one of his demented Lady Gaga orders. Therefore, Francis will not get the quality, much less the numbers. Those who would have ended up as FFI friars will, after the Order’s destruction, end up by the SSPX, by other traditionalist Orders as long as they exist, or outside of religious life altogether.

Francis may think he has a solution for the “novice trade”, but he is unable to see he himself, and those like him, are the problem. The problem is, ultimately, insoluble from his perspective; because God has made the world so, that a bad Church is punished with lack of vocations, and with many good souls who would have been excellent priests and friars choosing, or being forced to choose, other paths instead.

Francis is an abject failure. His entire life is an abysmal disaster. His order and many others are dying, and he has given a massive contribution to it as seminary rector, bishop, and archbishop. He thinks he can hide his own bankruptcy by suppressing those who prosper, and by forbidding success by way of papal decree.

This was a leader among the Jesuits. It is no surprise they are in such a bad shape.

Mundabor

Fuehrerprinzip, The Catholic Way.

“To the Fuehrer Our Faithfulness”. Really?

One day, in God’s good time, the present phase of stupidity and drunkenness within the Church will be overcome. We might have to wait centuries for this, but we know that the Indefectible Church always recovers. If you believe in the Blessed Virgin of Quito, though, you know that things have to first come to the point where everything seems lost. One can’t say Francis isn’t working with great alacrity so that this moment approaches as soon as possible.

Still: one day this madness and drunkenness will be gone, and those distant generations of Catholics will learn in the history books of that dark past, when Popes declared in public that atheists can be saved, dared to put “perhaps” hateful words in the mouth of Blessed Virgin; had forgotten the Fear of the Lord to the point of stating more than a slap on the wrist is not to be feared; thought Jews did not need to be converted because the Covenant still applies to them; and the other interminable list of stupid or irreverent or blasphemous things we have been reading in these disgraceful times.

When that blessed time of sanity comes back, many will ask: “how could it happen?”.

How could it happen that Pope and Cardinals spit heresies out of their mouth as if they were just the ticket, and indispensable truths? How could things come to the point that giving communion to public adulterers is openly discussed, and publicly supported by Cardinals? How could it be that salvation became a given for pretty much everyone, of whatever faith and none? How could Christ be betrayed in such manifold way; so aggressively, so publicly, so shamelessly?

The answer is very simple. The entire drunken – or evil – mess happened in part because it was concocted by evil people, but in almost equal part because too many saw the evil and preferred to stay silent.

The present demolition is not exclusively the work of the most evil or cowardly generation of clergymen to disgrace the Church since the time of the Arian heresy, but it is in almost equal measure the work of the countless silent enablers; the lazy, the cowardly, and those who think it smart to demolish what the Church has always believed and sacrifice Catholic Truth on the altar of a blind loyalty of decidedly Nazi character; a blind loyalty in which – as already seen in the case of the notorious Führerprinzip – any and every attack to Truth brought by Francis and his pack of reforming wolves is accepted on the basis that the Pope has said it, and a Catholic must therefore obey; without any reference to the Truth the Pope is called, first of all Catholics, to promote, defend and transmit intact.

The Nazis did not have a Sacred Tradition. They had not received any Depositum Fidei. They were in front of something utterly new, for which past rules of behaviour were said not to apply. What the Führer says, was followed. It was followed, because he said so. If he changed his mind, it meant that it was fitting that he now thinks differently.

Exactly this is the thinking of those advocating obedience to the Pope exclusively in virtue of his being the Pope. Francis is their Hitler. The Führerprinzip finds, by them, almost daily application. This blind following can be disguised under the usual fluffy words, like: “If the holy Father says so, it means that the, oh, Holy Spirit is, oh, guiding him in that, oh, direction!”, but in the end the meaning is clear: whatever Francis says is fine, because he said so. Fuhrerprinzip; that is, in the end, Papolatry.

This Papolatry is an even bigger mistake than the blindness of the Nazis of old; because if a Nazi could, in his blindness, at least delude himself that Christianity had to be thrown in the rubbish bin of history and a new Humanity created out of the new ideology, no one who calls himself a Christian can for one moment imagine that God has now changed His rules, and the Christianity of the past does not find application merely because the Pope says so.

The Pope is the protector of the rules, not the maker. To think that a Pope can change God’s rule is a madness bigger still than believing in the Führerprinzip.

I do hope more and more people will come to understand this in the years to come, but I am under no illusion that countless souls will be lost. The blind will follow the blind, and many of the cowardly or lazy will be led by this Pope and his cohort of willing wolves to deny Christ one piece at a time, as Francis himself denies Christ when he states that Jews don’t need to convert, nor do atheists, nor does anyone who “follows his conscience” and will get, if he denies Christ, a “slap on the wrist” at most.

Francis careless lio is a danger for countless Catholic souls. It is the product of a boundless pride (yes: pride) that lets him think he can reinvent Christianity. Many will follow him, because it is convenient to remain on the comfortable side, to refuse to see, to refuse to hear, to make Truth disposable so that our comfortable life may not be affected.

Mind my words: this Pope would be able to even participate to a “gay pride” parade. Countless would applaud him.

Many, in the centuries to come, will wonder how it could happen. This is how it could happen. Through the silence, the cowardice, or the complicity of most.

Mundabor

How To Become A Popular Bishop In Our Days

Short, stellar video from Father Reto Nay, courtesy of reader “Lepanto”.

This was made just a few days after Benedict’s announcement, and obviously before the new Age of Humility broke in.

Enjoy.

Mundabor

http://gloria.tv/?media=401893

What Socci Does Not Say

Not so easy after all…

If you have not done so already, you may do much worse than visit Rorate Caeli and read there the excellent translation of the article from Antonio Socci appeared on Libero some days ago.

Socci says many very useful things, and he says them very well. He quotes figures, and the figures alone tell you everything you need to know about the real causes of the shameless persecution of the FFI. 

V II is bankrupt. The persecution of the FFI is the necessary step to avoid the bankruptcy becoming too public. Others will follow. If I were a FSSP priest, I wouldn’t sleep very well right now. Only the SSPX, with his presence and courageous witness for sound Catholicism, prevents the total annihilation of every conservative stream within the Church.

Still, this blog post is not about what Socci says. It is about what Socci does not say. But what he does not say, he screams. I quote:

No-one can believe that the Pontiff of tenderness wanted or authorized such a thing. The contradiction between his teaching (“love and kindness, not beatings”) and the concrete practice, which brings to mind the ghosts of the Inquisition, would be too great.

This, my friends, is a very heavy blow, the Italian way.

No one can believe that the Pope wanted or authorised this Stalinian purge, Socci says. If it were to be true, it would be hypocrisy beyond belief, the epitome of double-tongued falseness. Still, Socci knows – like the rest of the planet that follows such events – that Pope Francis has already invited the friars to just shut up and do what they are told. Socci writes about these matters professionally. Make no mistake: he is very informed.

Of course Francis wanted. Of course Francis authorised. To think seriously that Francis is not the man who wanted and authorised this Golpe is tantamount to say that Caesar did not want to invade Gallia, or Hitler Poland.

Socci knows it. He knows that his readers know it, too. His words must resound to the ears of very many of his Italian readers as a massive indictment of this Papacy. An indictment not openly told, and yet screamed.

One thing is clear: Francis will not have an undisturbed media parade. The voices who speak against madness are rapidly reaching the well-educated mainstream. God willing, in two or three years’ time it will be common knowledge Catholics who care don’t like or esteem Francis. 

Francis will always be popular, because populism always makes one popular among the stupid, the lazy and the cowards, whose numbers are frightful. But there will be no triumphal march. There will be a divisive Papacy instead, with open dissent from the many voices speaking for orthodoxy; and these voices will become more and more vocal – whilst still, alas, remaining a clear minority – as Francis appoints his Bergoglini as Bishops and Cardinals, and continues to ravage the Church.

Perhaps Francis thought an iron cross, black shoes, a smaller car and Wheelchair Galore would give him an unassailable position as a modern Robin Hood; a sort of modern Garibaldi whom it would be suicide to criticise. 

It may well work in Argentina, where populism seems to be a second religion. In Europe, it’s another pair of… shoes.

Mundabor