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