The End Of The “Pope Menu”
The death of Pope Benedict puts an end to the strange – and, if you ask me, vanity-driven – situation of a real Pope – the one in office – being, er, the Pope, whilst an ex-Pope – the one not in office – clings to the prestige of the position, in no small measure because he was terrified of being called what everybody will call him anyway: a Celestino (a common way, among well-educated Italians, to indicate a person in power who cowers and betrays the duties of his office).
Amazingly, there were people until this morning who, whilst calling themselves Catholic, thought that they could decide who is Pope. They took the Vatican Menu and found there two plates: the Pope and the Emeritus, both coming in white. So they decided that the Emeritus would be Pope, and the Pope would be, I don’t know, the wrong guy.
Then they wrote messages everywhere, saying: “if you watch the 40 hours video marathon I have linked to here, it will show very clearly that two and two is five, pigs fly, Francis is an usurper, and Benedict is the real, as in “the guy in charge”-Pope.
The very guy who was supposed to be in charge always said that Francis, not him, was in charge, and even praised his work (may the Lord forgive him for this). Therefore, this was hard case of wishful thinking or, rather, wishful not thinking. It was a strange situation. It reminds me of the Decembrist revolt, with a bunch of dreamers (the moderate dreamers; there were much worse people among them) who wanted Konstantin as Tsar, when Konstantin himself wanted Nicholas to be the Tsar. I don’t know what the Decembrists were thinking: perhaps that Konstantin was kept prisoner in some obscure cell, and forced to renounce under duress?
Anyway, all this theatre is at an end now.
There is only one Pope around. He is a thoroughly horrible person. We hope that he dies soon and somewhat resembling normality comes back. We also reflect on what horrible punishments the Church and the faithful have called on themselves, by indulging in the subversive or outright revolutionary fantasies of both the V II years and the even worse years that followed it.
I seriously hope that nobody will come out now with some outlandish new theory, like that Benedict has not died, but is hidden in a dark cell somewhere in the Tierra del Fuego together with Jim Morrison, or that he is Pope from heaven, or from purgatory, or from wherever he is now.
Sad as this death is, at least there is one problem less now.
Of course, this is not the end of wishful non thinking, because wishful non thinking seems to be a necessity for some. They will enlarge the ranks of the Sedevacantists, those quite funny people who believe that the Church has been kidding with two billions Catholics for 60 years now.
You know what? Reality can harsh to look at in the face. But it is still preferable to creating an artificial one we have dreamed about because we don’t want to suffer.
Let us suffer instead, and pray more, and do more penance.
We were never told the Earthly Jerusalem would always be immaculate.
Share this:
Posted on December 31, 2022, in Catholicism, Conservative Catholicism, Traditional Catholicism and tagged Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis, Sedevacantism. Bookmark the permalink. 12 Comments.
Mundabor's Blog 
I completely agree with you on this pontifical debacle. May Pope Benedict Emeritus, rest in the peace of Christ, despite all the modernism. I do hope Pope Francis does not resign therefore bringing us back to another papal absurdity. How perverse that would be! Yet, nothing would surprise me coming from this difficult pope.
Agree 100%. Once John XXIII, on behalf of the Church, declined to release the Third Secret of Fatima or consecrate Russia in union with all the bishops, as our Lady asked, and instead chose to launch the disastrous Council, that should have warned Catholics that the hierarchy was doing its own thing instead of obeying our Lady, and much prayer and sacrifice was needed. But alas, too many of us preferred to have our ears tickled by strange teachings, and so the current situation was prepared. Once we opened the Pandora’s box of modernism, we were never NOT going to get a Pope Francis. Once we produced a generation of wicked clerics, it was inevitable that one of them would eventually land his keister on the Throne of Peter.
When you do what we did, you get what we got.
M, I described Francis as a “usurper” on social media not because of his relationship to Benedict but because of his apostacy. If the College of Cardinals had elected Francis after Benedict’s death, instead of after his resignation, Francis still would be a usurper.
The fundamental problem isn’t Francis. He’s a symptom of a far larger problem: the Vatican’s collective embrace of and capitulation to a secular, humanist, globalist vision of material utopia. That started with Vatican II. Paul VI promoted it in “Populorum “Progressio.” Benedict promoted it further with “Caritas in Veritate.” Francis is just the logical, natural extension of their work.
This article I wrote 4 1/2 years ago for “The Remnant” explains the situation:
https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/fetzen-fliegen/item/3889-new-world-church
So, are you a Sedecavantist now?
“So, are you a Sedecavantist now?”
No. The question of whether Francis was legitimately elected Pope has nothing to do with Sedevacantism. It has to do with whether the “St. Gallen Mafia” violated JPII’s election rules to campaign for Bergoglio. JPII, JPI, Paul VI and John XXIII were legitimately elected by the rules of their day. If anybody has done any “usurping,” it’s the St. Gallen Mafia (McCarrick, Daneels et al), with Bergoglio a willing participant.
Sedevacantism is nothing but an excuse to ignore an obvious fact: The Vatican has been apostate for a lot longer than Catholics will want to admit. Consecrating Russia (or the USSR) to Mary would not have changed that. Popes often work their own agendas for their own purposes because they *choose* to do so. The bishops become nothing but sycophants if they want to ensure career advancement.
I still don’t understand the reasoning.
So, St Gallen mafia plays dirty tricks (happened countless times in the history of the Church already).
In the end, though, either Francis is Pope or he isn’t.
It can’t be that he is not Pope (because illegitimately elected) and Pope at the same time.
“I still don’t understand the reasoning.”
It’s very simple. If the “St. Gallen Mafia” (or any party) broke the rules for election that JPII established, then Bergoglio is illegitimate. He’s nothing but a front man for the McCarricks, Daneeles, et al who want to usurp power for their own ends.
We have the same problem in the United States with Biden and outright fraud during the 2020 Presidential election. Just because somebody holds an office and a title doesn’t mean he’s entitled to either if he broke the rules to get there.
Sedevacatists argue that the “seat” has been “vacant” since Pius XII died. I’m not making that argument. As far as I know, every pope before Francis has been elected under the established rules for their election.
Well, Biden certainly got there by cheating, but he clearly is the President. Francis, even if he got there by cheating, clearly is the Pope. At some point, Ecclesia supplet. It cannot be that all of Catholicism becomes a joke because some people do some bad things.
So many of these theories about Benedict being the “real” pope depended on ridiculously thin arguments, like he used the wrong Latin noun or the verb ending wasn’t correct in his resignation – as if the Holy Ghost is a computer, and you have to input the exact correct string of letters or the command won’t go through. Either that, or that he didn’t know what he was doing at the time, which I find really unlikely, since he was undoubtedly a well-educated man who’d spent his life thinking about the Church.
I think on the contrary, Benedict was a bit TOO educated; it led him into what we down-to-earth English speakers call being “too clever by half”. Maybe we shouldn’t have been so surprised that a man who’d participated in Vatican II would imagine that he could introduce a sort of never seen before novelty into the pretty simple act of resigning his job. I don’t think it matters at all what he *thought* he was doing, and it doesn’t cancel out the resignation. It’s like when Kaiser Wilhelm II was facing the demand that he abdicate, and he thought he could be clever and abdicate as Emperor, but remain King of Prussia. Nobody was interested in his intricate manoeuvers, and it was made very clear that he was gone as the ruler of Germany, one way or another.
“Too clever by half” says it extremely well.
I am dismayed at your contempt for so many faithful who are struggling to find God’s will in what are truly unprecedented circumstances. The choices on your fictional menu offered neither comfort nor resolution to the crisis in Christ’s Church. However, we must try still to do His will and your efforts to mock those who will not embrace a self-declared enemy of Christ and heretic as the head of the Church are, at best, demoralizing to your fellow Catholics. Bergoglio cannot be pope because he is not Catholic. Please understand it is not a slight against you to point that out. I find most of your commentary informative, but this defense of Bergoglio as pope is irrational and destructive. I hope all of us can approach the new year with greater charity towards our fellow Christians as we navigate what may be the greatest assault upon the Church.
“struggling to find God’s will”
You think, and write, like a Protestant, and I smell the convert here (I might be wrong).
Your comfort is in the fact that even a Francis cannot do anything against the Church, which is indefectible. Your comfort is in the fact that the Truths of the church cannot be touched by anyone, ever.
The faithful should start *being more faithful* instead of panicking because they don’t have a totem to worship (another problem of many converts, who think that the Pope is the guarantee of the righteousness of the Church made flesh and therefore panic when they have a bad Pope).
I hope that, with the new year, you will not write, ever again, that I have contempt for the faithful, because I do this for no money at all and I do not accept being addressed in that way.