The Day Of Infamy Has Come
The clock is ticking
It is Sunday morning and as far as I know Francis is still alive and kicking. Every man of faith knows the Holy Ghost can take him down in an instant.
The Church has traditionally thought canonisations are infallible, and I remain – until a valid argument to the contrary – of the opinion that where 2000 years of Christian convictions lead, Mundabor should bloody well follow. I have still not found any argument explaining to me why God would have allowed the formation of such a strong and diffused belief concerning things that cannot be verified, unless it be to teach us to trust God’s work in those things that cannot be verified.
This does not mean that these canonisations are not a disgrace. Of course they are.A canonisation often has a political element in it. It was always so. Kings were made saints, and founders of religious orders. The economic and political implications were immense. But we have never thought, because of that, that King Louis IX (canonised very meager 27 years after his death) or St Francis (less than two years) were not in heaven.
Look at it this way: St Dismas and countless other sinners managed to get to paradise not because of, but notwithstanding their shortcomings. We are not required to believe in heroic virtue as infallible corollary of canonisations, though it is very obvious the faithful should have the right to expect that heroic virtue be considered a requirement so that devotion to the saint be made more natural, and the canonisation better understood. In both today’s cases, it is very difficult to say that this was the case if we consider the public work of both Popes. I agree with that. But you see, pontificates are not canonised. People are.
At the end of all discussions, Francis is still breathing as I write this. I am absolutely sure the Holy Ghost is never late. Therefore, if he wants to have Francis taken out of circulation I am sure he will not, so to speak, arrive to the station when the train has already left.
No. The Holy Ghost is in control. If he allows Francis to say to the planet what the Christian has generally believed infallible these two thousand years, then in my humble mind it means he has not waited until 2014 in order to suddenly teach us to properly understand infallibility; on the contrary, he is asking us to continue to believe what has been generally believed in these two thousand years. Oh what a man of little faith, the one who doubts what the Church has encouraged the faithful to believe, has implicitly given for granted for these 2000 years, merely because the seal of formal infallibility has not been given. What sixty of generations of Christians have believed is good enough for me. I trust God would not allow a mistake of such magnitude.
Still, this is a day of infamy, in which not only V II is factually extolled as the way to go, but Francis himself is actively pushing toward his own beatification, because it is clear by now no V II pope should be considered below at least that.
Of course, these canonisations will be used to push all kind of nonsense. Of course, none of the nonsense will make sense, after the canonisations as well as before. Yes, there can be no doubt a tambourine offensive is upon us, and it will be fueled – among many other things – by these canonisations. But in my eyes the most important thing now is that we do not lose faith in the minimum meaning of canonisation, and my greatest fear is not that thinking people may be swayed toward acceptance of V II because of the canonisations (thinking and properly instructed people would find the thought hilarious), but that they may be tempted by Sedevacantism.
As to the attempt to “canonise V II”, I will fight this battle with relish, and I am sure you will do the same. The battle would be upon us anyway, seeing the kind of man we have as Pope.
The day of infamy has come. The Church still stands. The Holy Ghost sees everything.
The right way to react to this is to intensify criticism of V II. And of the two new Saints. because it’s not that saints are ipso facto infallible, and if you make someone who has made huge mistakes a saint you will have to be reminded of the mistakes every time you mention he is a canonised Saint.
A lot of people go to paradise. Only very few are canonised. There was no need to add these two disastrous pontiffs to the list.
Mundabor
Share this:
Posted on April 27, 2014, in Catholicism, Conservative Catholicism, Traditional Catholicism and tagged Canonisation, John XXIII, JP II, Pope Francis. Bookmark the permalink. 24 Comments.
Mundabor's Blog 
Reblogged this on Embakasi Reloaded.
I suppose we might shortly have an official addendum that once reaching the age of Reason, in order to be a considered a Faithful Catholic, the following Oath of Submission must be recited:
“I, N.N. do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will Faithfully and without question execute, defend, accept, promote and otherwise not diss all the promulgation’s of Vatican II and the New Evangelation, despite what my Conscience tells me, so help me, please, Popes Saint John XXIII and
John Paul II.”
I believe…I believe…I believe…
Not so far away, perhaps.
Still, my conscience doesn’t count. Countless Catholics abuse it. What counts is what the Church has always taught.
M
Worldwide attention yet Francis didn’t make a speech? Why not?
He did an homily, I think.
I have preferred to ignore as much of the day as I could.
M
Mund, I have two questions for you about the canonizations.
1. The office of the devil’s advocate wasn’t used to present the other side of either man. Wouldn’t the withholding of evidence amount to fraud on the part of the proponents amount to fraud on their part and invalidate the canonizations?
2. It’s my understanding that the cult of a saint can be suppressed by the Church. If we finally get a Pope who is orthodox, might the cults for John and John Paul be suppressed too?
1. No. God will not be the victim of a fraud. Canonisations are infallible as far as the canonised person’ being in heaven is concerned. Therefore they could be made by throwing dices, the outcome would be the same. AFAIK, the office of “devil’s advocate” is still there, but it is weakened.
The Pope also can – and always could – bridge himself any missing step, as happened with John XXIII in this matter. See above.
2. This is not my understanding, and I find it frankly inconceivable. The cult of the saints is strictly linked to the Catholic thinking of the communion of saints, and was there from the beginning. There is no reason why this should ever end.
If you mean **individual** saints, I can’t imagine that either if the canonisations did take place. Of course the church has suppressed the cult of some “saints” in the past, but as far as I know these were people never canonised, or never even existed, or “canonised” by bishops, who are not infallible in these matters. In this case, a proper canonisation was proclaimed to the Church by a Pope, commanding that the two be venerated as saints all over the world. That’s the end of the story.
M
It seems to me that I either reject Francis or accept that unrepentant heretic koran kissers like JPII can be saints. There is no middle ground.
Exactly.
M
The infallibility of canonisations is not a dogma of the Faith. It is the private opinion of some theologians, which in ordinary times could be accepted without question.
Wild understatement.
The Pope commands you to believe that such and such is in heaven, and this command is given because the church, in all times, has very largely believed he can do so. We are not talking of some theologians here, but of hos the Church has always felt about these things. We cannot just dismiss it as an hypothesis because it has not been declared a dogma.
M
The church is Christ’s and Christ is faithful. Some Popes are not. I need not repeat what Luther and Calvin said about the popes of their time — let us leave it that the counter-reformation was needed.
Your pendulum analogy applies here. Learn from the other side of the Tiber. We have tried being relevant — and it failed abjectly. When we return to preaching the Gospel and dump fashion down the toilet, we grow.
So I am more relaxed about this, but of course the Catholic Encyclopedia calls all Calvinists heretics.
That’s because all Calvinists are.
M
Maybe not so concise…
I’m a 60-something laywoman who never remembers numbers, so I won’t quote chapter and verse. We heard the parable in a Sunday Gospel recently. The one about how good seed was sown, and an enemy came and planted bad. When both began growing up, the owner of the field was asked, shall we pull out the bad plants? And the sower said to leave them to grow together until harvest, when the bad plants will be pulled and burned.
I’m a little slow sometimes, because until this year I NEVER understood that the bad plants, the “devotees of being and doing evil who are to be damned and thrown into hellfire,” are not to be culled at this time according to our imperfect judgment (lest we cull good people with the bad, throwing all prematurely into the fire). Even the judgment of us “good -[intentioned] folk” can fail to be aligned perfectly with God, who will not be mocked. Leaving the rotten apples to perhaps spoil good apples until the the Divine Supervisor schedules which apples go to market and which go to the garbage heap is not comprehensible to me. The concept of not making the decision now on the fly but waiting until the fullness of time, is not the way humans think. It’s quite evident that God’s ways are NOT our ways!
So about these two canonizations, I’m with Mundabor on aligning himself to believe according to what the Church has done & believed for 2 millenia. I don’t presume to know why God is seemingly allowing himself to be mocked. Maybe we’re being punished with bad saints along with the rest of the badness at in the Church.
We are far less patient than God, and we’d be more inclined to take Randy Newman’s lyrics into action:
They all hate us anyhow
So let’s drop the big one now
Let’s drop the big one now
(Lyrics from song “Political Sciene”)
The apples who are spoiled by the other bad apples have themselves to answer for it, and God knew and ordained from before all time that it be allowed that the graces given to them, perfectly sufficient for their salvation, be not used by them, out of their own free will, to achieve salvation. See my posts on predestination and free will.
Therefore, whilst from our little perspective it may seem that Francis is rotting Catholicism – and whilst it is our duty to react to this – ultimately not one apple with rot without God allowing this apple to rot itself.
We have a duty to defend Catholicism because Jesus tell us to do so, but God does not save more or less people according to how much we do it. The number of saved and damned has been fixed from the beginning of time, and we all already have our name on the one side, or the other.
Terrifying, one might say. Only if you don’t pray, I answer.
M
Having read so many comments on so many blogs, I stay myself for : “Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat!”
Rhizotomos
(Exaudi, Christe.)
My SSPX pastor gave a talk this morning and said basically what you have said here. He said that the burden of proof now rests with those who deny the canonizations, and the default position must be that they are valid. This gave rise to questions, and one from an educated man, asking if the problem doesn’t lead to sedevacantism. Of course the answer was ‘no’, that we don’t have all of the answers, and can’t expect to have them; that we must continue praying and living as Catholics and that God in His good time will correct the current situation either in a glaring way, or in a round about way, but He will correct it. And of course, we must be educated about Vll and explain the errors at any opportunity.
Thank you for your thoughtful response. It is so easy for people of good will to panic when disaster follows disaster.
I love to read those massive tomes on Catholic Church history. One of the most important things they help cultivate in the mind is just how vast the history of the Church is – from the beginning of human history really, with the Protoevangelium. We see today the problems of the Church close up; we’re in the middle of the whirlwind and feel the full force of it. In Church time however, this is blip. I can even picture the tiny paragraph these past two generations of Church history will get 200 years or so from now. The chronicler will write something like the following:
“The last gasp of the failures of Vatican II occurred when Pope St. John XXIII and Pope St. John Paul II were both raised to the altars in the same mass on April 27th, 2014. The Modernism that had begun some 50 years earlier had reached its zenith, unable to sustain itself as war, hard economic times, and a culture of death turned in on itself, fueling a massive rebirth in traditional teaching and strong families across the globe. Pope Francis’ attempt to ‘canonize’ the ‘spirit of Vatican II’ quickly lost steam after his death, and continued its long historical slide into disrepute, as evidenced by the constitutions of Third Vatican Ecumenical Council.”
That’s one optimistic reader! 😉
But yes, to know Church history is to put the present tragedy in its proper place. A disgrace, for sure, but nothing so radically new, unless in the fact that nowadays every blunder travels the world over in a matter of hours.
M
Jack’s half right on this one. The other explanation is that the age of the church is coming to a close, and Christ will return, holding all of us to account.
The tide of modernism has already turned. On the reformed side of the tiber, the liberal churches are basically dead. The reformed churches are even getting the courage back to enforce discipline on each other, as I alluded to today when a Presbyterian Church (and most Prezzies are woofly wusses) removed a 72 year old woman living in a de facto relationship from membership.
She complained bitterly, as you would expect. But we are called to obey the laws of God, not just the ones we like.
It would be good news indeed if heretics would at leats recover some sense of Christianity. But my impression is that general episodes do not a trend make. The way I see it, the broad “evangelical” factions will keep promoting Christianity, and the more traditional heretical outfits, so they still exist, will die, slowly and deservedly.
I see “Methodist” churches in this country, but never anyone coming in or out of them. I don’t even want to think what their “services” are.
M
I stand with you, Mundabor. It was a Sunday like any other Sunday and I thank God for the little things, such as the relief I felt that I was not subject to a “heroic virtue of JPII” sermon yesterday at Mass. Simply amazing!
You and Jack have made me think about recent church history, and today’s daily reading has much to say, because it was around Christ as the vine, and abiding in him.
ALthough your use of “Keep calm and Carry on” posters is witty, I do not see this as a time to panic. I see this as a time to pray. For the bride of Christ is the church, and our God is a jealous God. The Liberals, they need to recant, realizing that they are functioning as antichrists, for they deny the resurrection of Christ, and the gospel: they are blind.
But they can do a great amount of damage. I have gone on about this at some length elsewhere.
In a way, there is never reason to panic, because Christ has already won. We are, in a sense, like soldiers of the US Army in WWII: in the middle of a conflict, but knowing that there can be only one outcome.
But this depends rather on one’s faith. If it is strong, these thoughts will come natural. For many others, disorientation and perhaps loss of faith will follow.
M