Memento Mori, Dubia Cardinals!

First things first: in your charity, say an “eternal rest” for the soul of Cardinal Meisner, one of the “Dubia” ones, who just died suddenly at the age of 83. Every soul has infinite value. His Guardian Angel must have suffered a lot.

After that, allow me to be, as always, brutally frank.

Either the confusion engendered by Amoris Laetitia is not a matter of great importance – and in that case the entire sanely Catholic world is obsessing in vain and Francis is right: these are just squabbles for theologians – or it is pretty much the gravest crisis in the history of the Church.

In the first case we are all idiots. In the second case, I wouldn't want to be in the shoes of the late Cardinal Meisner. Because his day of reckoning has just arrived, and if he wasn't prepared I shudder to think where he is, very probably, now.

If you think that faint meowing is enough to save a Cardinal from the accusation of dereliction of duty and betrayal of the sheep entitled to him, Christ and Catholicism must be kindergarten trifles to you; matters of little importance, warranting some remarks perhaps, but never to the point of becoming loud or, quod Deus avertat, unkind.

If, however, you think that there is nothing more important than Truth; that this Truth has been trampled, insulted and disfigured for now seventeen months; and that no one, not even one of the very Princes of the Church had the nerve to denounce the document, then you understand in what danger of damnation the Cardinal has put himself, and what has very probably happened to him if he was not prepared. Which, for the avoidance of doubt, I wish him with all my heart no matter what a coward and traitor he was.

The fact that this little, afraid little kitten, who at 83 was more concerned with his earthly comfort for the short rest of his life than with his eternal salvation and the horrible judgment of posterity, might even be considered anything approaching a brave man or a defender of Catholicism really says it all about the state of extreme decay in which we have descended – and in which prelates like Meisner have plunged us with decades of cowardice and accommodation -. I do not say the first generation of Christians, but every generation of Catholics before ours would have considered such a man a great shame, a counterfeit of a Cardinal and utterly unworthy of the priestly habit.

Spare me your sanctimonious mercy. Have mercy, instead, for one billion Catholics abandoned by pampered hirelings like this one; living a life of privilege, comfort and prestige every day they betrayed our Lord in the most shameful way. And the greatest shame should be the one of those who wanted to be the heroes when they thought there was no danger in it, and caved in the most embarrassingly spectacular way when this turned out not to be the case.

There was only one Apostle at the foot of the cross. But all others died as martyrs in the end. Cardinal Meisner died on his holiday.

Say another “eternal rest” for the poor useful idiot of the Evil Clown.

And shiver.

M