Either Saved Or Damned

I have written very recently about the two priests who have, in a relatively short period of time, left the priesthood for a woman *in the same parish*.

It says something about the present state of the Church that it appears that several of my readers have checked very accurately that the priests in questions have not left the priesthood because of falling in lurv with.. each other.

I do not think that this is an exaggerate reaction. I think that it reflects, in the end, a drive to the progressive perversion of the priesthood that we all see happening, albeit in different ways and perhaps – if we are lucky – only through blogs and headlines.

In other words, it seems that many of us have, how should I put it.. that feeling…

Realistically, there is no way that, as I write these lines, the number of perverted priests is not at the maximum of the last several centuries and, very possibly, at a level only seen before in the times of St Peter Damian. Tragic as this is, it also reminds us that, whatever we see happening to our beloved Church, it has likely already happened before. What is different now is that the disease appears in an extremely violent form, a form which in some way has never appeared before; but the disease itself, the Church already knows.

Yes, we have had heretical Popes in the past. Yes, we have had homosexual priests in the past. Yes, whenever you have to deal with homosexual priests, you will have to deal with paedophiles, then most of the latter come from the cohorts of the former. All this has, alas, been experienced before.

How do we react to these times? In the same way our ancestors reacted to the evils of their times.

Prayer and penance. Penance and prayer. A militancy that is as outspoken as prudence allows. The strong desire to never give up our truth. The firm, ferocious intention to die in the religion our forefathers followed, no matter how mad the people (and the priests, the bishops and the popes) around us become.

Look, at this point I have no illusions anymore. I am preparing myself for Francis II “Che”, Francis III “Elton” and, if I am very, very unlucky, Francis IV “Caitlyn”.

“This is madness, Mundabor!”, you will say. “This will never happen!”.

Let’s hope so.

But if the Cardinals are of the same strong fibre and manly disposition as Cardinal “Kitten” Burke, when Francis IV announces that he wants to undergo a hormone treatment, will there be a real reaction? I think that, as per today, we would only have some kitten-like meowing and posturing, followed by… nothing. There is no saying, at this point, what kind of evil the Cardinals would not leave unpunished. It’s good that Francis is too cowardly to test it.

Past periods of Church crisis have gone on, at times, for many decades, or for centuries. We have no right to expect that this time be any different. In fact, as in the past there was, broadly speaking, no betrayal of God that reached the scale of what we have witnessed with the Second Vatican Council, it is not unrealistic to fear that the level of madness that we will see in the next decades will, also, reach an unprecedented scale; then a bigger offence must perforce cause a bigger punishment.

Still, my situation is as binary today as it ever was for everybody else in the past: I will either be saved, or damned. There is, in this, no difference at all with all ages past. Whatever the challenges we are faced, we are given the graces to overcome them.

Pope Francis IV, as he undergoes hormone treatment, still has no power over my salvation.