Cowardice, Not Anticlericalism, Engenders Persecution.

The sensitive natures among you had better not to follow this link, containing Messa in Latino's blogpost – and many shocking images; a number of them containing nudity, and nudity in church – about the desecration and vandalising of one of the most famous churches worldwide, the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Montmartre, Paris.

In a shocking (absence of) reaction that has been linked to also in the article, the Cardinal of Paris minimises the events, in substance saying that not Catholicism per se is the target, but rather this is generic “anticlericalism” that has, this time, expressed himself in the vandalism and profanation of a Catholic church; but hey, it could have been a Mosque, right?

In doing this, Cardinal Vingt-Trois follows the most basic instinct of the Western clergy: minimise, stick the head in the sand, and hope the problem goes away by itself.

Things are happening in France and all over the West that would have been unthinkable only a decade ago. The shepherds do perfectly nothing. Instead of giving three interviews a day and declare open war to the open anticlerical spirit of the French government (as abundantly documented in the linked article: I spare you the disgusting details) and demanding that the people rise against this desecration and shame, the Cardinal deflects toward a vague, very effeminate whining about some generic people who, in some generic way, seem not to like the generic notion of religion. Pissing on the altar and writing blasphemous and obscene phrases on the very floor and wall of the Cathedral must then be considered a generic expression of generic anticlerical spirit. They haven't anything against us, you know! Phew!

One does not know who are the worst enemies of the Church, the idiots desecrating it or the prelates surrendering to the mob without any reaction worthy of the name.

The persecution is not coming because of the people who would love to burn churches to the ground. Those have always been around. During the decades of Communism there were probably many more of those around.

The persecution is coming because those who have been entrusted with the defense of Catholic values and places of worship have chosen to be silent.

Mundabor

Sisters, Cardinals, Clericalism.

We need many more like her: Sister Mary Rose Reddy

You can read here a rather impressive reaction to the “Magisterium of nuns” from….a nun.

Sister Mary Rose Reddy’s core message is short, but devastating.

We, the Daughters of Mary, Mother of Healing Love (along with hundreds and probably thousands of other women religious), do not feel at all represented by the LCWR.  We consider that the vocation of women religious is to personify the Church as Bride.  The Bride is submissive to Christ, the Head (as particularly represented by the Pope and the magisterium).  Through this powerful charism of submissive obedience, entrusted particularly to women religious in imitation of the exalted Mother of God, the life of Christ is brought to birth and nurtured in multitudes of hearts.

It is very good that a religious sister loyal to the Magisterium dares to openly speak against the LCWR. It is a great pity it does not happen more often.

Unfortunately, it seems to me among the religious there is too much of a mentality according to which you do not react when a colleague of yours talks nonsense, because it would be perceived to be “uncharitable” or “divisive”.

As I see it, the divisive (and even more so: uncharitable) behaviour is the one of those who reach the general public with their heterodox or outright heretical ideas, not the rightful and obligatory reaction of those who try to set things right.

If every outing of the rabid feminist wannabe “nuns” were met with a massive barrage from their sisters loyal to the Magisterium, sooner or later even the liberal press would have to take account of this fact, and much of the conservative media would grab the opportunity very soon. As it is, I doubt the occasional affirmation of Catholic truth will get a wider audience than the usual circle of Catholic press agencies, magazines and blogs.

It is nothing less than astonishing to me that so many decades after Dr Goebbels, so many people within the Catholic world do not get the power of the media.  I mean by this that whilst they know in a generic, abstract sort of way that media influence people, they do not act according to this belief. This, of course, when they are not doing the work of the devil in the first place.

Cardinal Woelki equates homosexual and heterosexual relationships (I have written about this satanic man; but the link has a full translation in English of what I had read in German). I understand that these days you do not call him to Rome to get a trial and be, in case, publicly barbecued by the civil authorities.  But if a half-dozen colleagues of his would reach out to the public and forcefully repeat the Catholic message about perverted thinking they “love” each other, this message would get through very rapidly.

Unfortunately, this is not happening; no doubt, because no Cardinal wants to be seen – irrespective of what he thinks of Woelki; which in many cases must be not better than I do – as criticising a colleague; in the end, he has been chosen from the Pope, right?

This is just another example of how the modern Church fails the faithful: the Pope does nothing because nowadays it is fashionable for a Pope to tolerate pretty much everything; and the lower – but still very high – echelons do nothing because they do not want to be perceived as uncharitable, divisive, or indirectly critical of the Pontiff.

If you ask me, this is an explosive mixture of heterodoxy, weakness and clericalism, all of them clearly present in the modern Church.

Let us hope the next pontificate (I have lost every trust in Paul VII) will start the clean-up operations.

Mundabor

Making Excuses

The pope and the bishops and many of the priests hate the faithful they exist to serve, and they hate the faith they exist to protect. And according to Catholic theology, God has placed them in authority over both. This is mystifying to me. The same God who, according to long-held belief, allowed the already-vanquished Satan into the garden to tempt his innocent new creatures is also allowing Satan to run amok in his Church, possessing its leadership and weaponizing their God-given power over those compelled by divine command to submit to them. As a father, I cannot fathom this. It would be like allowing rabid dogs into the enclosure of my yard as my children are playing, and just standing back to see how things play out.

I’m honestly surprised how hard the news has hit me. I haven’t been to Mass in over a year, and even so, my blood boiled when I read what they are doing. I hate them right back, these contemptuous, retributive, evil sons of bitches. I spent my life being made to be afraid of “ever speaking ill of a priest.” But these are stone-cold villains who hide their malice behind roman collars and episcopal miters.

Thus spoke Mr Skojec; who, a long time ago, used to be a Catholic and is now an Agnostic. He has, not very surprisingly, the support – or, at least, understanding – of another guy who is, now, not a Catholic anymore, and actually writes the article whence I got the quote.

Being one of the guys who is not stingy with church criticism myself, I think I might be allowed to say a word or two here.

The pope and the bishops and many of the priests hate the faithful they exist to serve, and they hate the faith they exist to protect. And according to Catholic theology, God has placed them in authority over both. This is mystifying to me.

I don’t find it mystifying. I find it strangely beautiful, just in the same way as the soldier hates the war he is in, but also knows he’s living the most brutally exciting time of his life. We are in the trenches. We are being tested. We are being steeled. Our challenge is also our privilege.

This is our Crispin’s Day.

It has happened several times in the history of the Church, that priests and bishops have turned against their own faithful. This has happened in all cases when the heresy has been promoted by Bishops (say: Pelagius, or Arius). I am sure Mr Skojec knows this. Nor can it be said that, in those circumstances, Rome was on the right side. Pope Liberius wasn’t on the right side, Pope Honorius neither (people make excuses for them now, as they will for Francis in future). Who lost his faith because of them? Those of little faith, is the simple answer; or, rather, those who found convenient to lose it, and thought the evil Pope was as good a reason as any other.

The Church isn’t run by angels. We all know that and must be ready to deal with the consequences of it. Plus, several well-known apparitions have dealt with the present crisis, exactly in order to give more strength to the faithful. Why would a believer not turn to them for comfort, instead of condemning Catholicism in rebellion?

I see it in this way: countless generations before me had to deal with famine, plague, or the Saracens, but had a solid Church behind them. We do not have to deal with famine, plague, or Saracens (for now at least), but it has been given to us to be born in times of a weak, stained, sloppy Church. Every age has its own challenges. It’s not for me to decide which challenges I should have, and I frankly still prefer Frankie to the famine, the Plague, or the Saracens. My job is to die in God’s grace, having faced the challenges God sent me. I don’t get to decide whether I consider the challenge appropriate or not.

As a father, I cannot fathom this. It would be like allowing rabid dogs into the enclosure of my yard as my children are playing, and just standing back to see how things play out.

God allowed countless times to have children slaughtered in front of their parents. He allowed entire communities to be simply erased. He allowed sufferings that are difficult to even fathom for us spoiled Westerners with mortgage, designer pet with medical insurance, and Tesla in the driveway. We all know this. We also know that *it is not for us to decide what rabid dogs our children should be confronted with*. Providence adjusts things wonderfully every time. But we will only see the way Providence has worked when we die.

I hate them right back, these contemptuous, retributive, evil sons of bitches.

That’s the excuse reasoning. Not all priests are contemptuous, retributive sons of bitches. I would say a minority are. Most are lukewarm, of little faith, unable to stand up to the PC culture their bishop is also afraid of. Some will be degenerates. Some will be outright bad. Nothing new under the sun. But taking the behaviour of some as the reason to lose the faith is, again, an excuse. We don’t lose faith without our fault. We may be challenged, but if we lose the faith, we have collaborated with Satan every step of the way.

By the way, I was never afraid of speaking ill of a priest. Where I come from, everybody did. Clericalism of the sort mentioned by Skojec must have been, even in Catholic time, the preserve of uber-85 old ladies. I wonder if Skojec was a convert (can’t remember now). They tend to be rigid like that.

I consider being born, baptised and confirmed in the Catholic Faith the greatest grace in my life. In this, the evil of Frankie and others like this have just no relevance. I will think the same no matter how evil any pope, bishop, cardinal or priest you may care to mention. I will think the same the day a degenerate priest persecutes me.

I also know that, by God’s grace, the Church will always continue to produce a number of decent priests, just so we can get some comfort when things get really bad. Yes, they might be scarce. But they will be there, just like faithful Catholics will always be there. It will always be good to think that there still those who keep the flame alive.

And now I will tell you how I might start to lose my faith: I will start losing my faith when my ego gets in the way, and I start to measure everything according to how I want it, and my own preferences, and desires, and even my own idea of what my religion should be (yes, there is Satan in all this) start to be coloured by my own grand, and oh so generous, ego; that, dear readers, will be the day I will start losing my faith.

On that day, perhaps, I will feel very good, and generous, and better than the God I must, at that point, not believe in anymore.

But if that day comes I will not be good, or generous, or better than God.

I will just be in trouble, and will have the Enemy much nearer to me than I even suspect.

Envy: A Story.

Yes. He hates you all.

One of the ways with which the devil tries to take us away from Christ and destroy our charity is envy.

Envy is, I think, at the root of Francis’ whole miserable career.

Born in a Country that did not give him many opportunities, without money and without connections, the man looked forward to a modest existence, nor would his degree in chemistry give him a fraction of the opportunities he would have had in the United States. Lower middle class, and perhaps impoverished lower middle class, was his more likely bet. If you have always lived in the US, you have so many opportunities you likely have no idea how it is elsewhere.

I think the man saw this. He saw a future made of a very simple, constrained life. He saw that he did not have any special virtue extolling him from his peers: no vivid intelligence, no great ambition, no desire to work hard, not even class or distinction.

Possibly a homosexual, he might never have had the desire of finding a good girl with whom to share life, joys, sadness, and sacrifices for their offspring. If a straight young man, he must have looked with horror at a life in poverty, caring for his children.

We know his parents were poor immigrants from Italy, and the man boasted of his father’s “antifascism”. I make an easy call here: little Jorge grew up in a leftist household, resentful of its poverty and of everybody else; resentful of the Church, too, as many of these people are.

Our young man decides that – homo or not – he will not live his parents’ existence. He wants, instead, be part of a respected, well cared-for organisation. He wants to have a comfortable existence without dire existential fears. He knows a Jesuit would not live badly, all things considered.

The – easily evinced – anticlericalism in the family makes the project difficult to pursue. So he lies to his mother for years as he scrounges from her the money for his secret project, whilst Mama Bergoglio makes sacrifices, thinking of a future medical doctor, then suddenly finds a Jesuit in her home.

Francis is now comfortably set up for life, but not less resentful. He merely found a way to keep afloat in a system he keeps hating. He is now set for life, and free to harbour in his heart all the resentment he wants. Liar and envious, he was already; but now he has more time to hate, then there are no children asking for new shoes.

Life goes on, but it slowly takes a, for him, unexpected turn. A man without qualities or virtues, but one of in the meantime fewer and fewer Jesuits, he finds himself slowly pushed up, like a faceless turd in a Jesuit lake. Seminary director (unbelievably), then Bishop, then Cardinal, Bergoglio is the choice when a grey man is desired. But he is clearly V II. Perhaps he has homo connections. Certainly, he is seen as the useful idiot homos would well use.

He almost rises to the top in 2005, then his friends manage to put him in the top spot in 2013.

Still resentful, still envious, still socialist, still atheist, the man finds himself, now, free to indulge in his pettiness, in his boorishness, in his arrogance without fear of consequences. He soon starts taking revenge of those who cross him (FFI) and lies shamelessly about it (“soon, soon!”). His hate for Christ and the Blessed Virgin now becomes very apparent. He enjoys showing it, just as he enjoys berating and belittling those faithful Catholics he always hated; those who can be poor and happy as he never could; those with a hope, a love, a warmth in their heart he never had.

The rest is known to us all. A lewd, old man, and very possibly a pervert, enjoying the way he ruffles the feathers of those Catholics he always hated.

A life determined and dominated by envy and its unavoidable companions, resentment and hatred.

This is Jorge Bergoglio in a nutshell.

Liber Gomorrhianus, XXI Century Edition

“There is a huge problem in the Church. Active homosexual activity by priests and the secrecy of this sin must be revealed, and the holy priesthood must be restored to what Jesus said it ought to be,” Vasek said.

“The dark, secret cover-up of homosexual behavior has been under the radar for many years. Now the darkness is coming to light,” he added.

These are the words of the whistleblower in the sordid story of Bishop Hoeppner, who was just removed from his job.

The long, detailed article is quite interesting.

I do not know whether Bishop Hoeppner was a “conservative”, as V II bishops go. It seems to me that he has all the marks of the leftie. Still, I do not think he is justifiable in any way.

The information we have up to now shows that, whilst Hoeppner does not seem to have that horrible affliction himself, he wasn’t shy in covering those who had; actually, several of them. What also grates me a lot is the admission, from the Bishop, that he knew he was breaking the rules. Quote:

Bishop Hoeppner admitted in the deposition he understood himself to be violating Church norms, but said he did so to maintain confidentiality.

Well, Frankie blathers so much about clericalism, now he has found a real example of it. That the Bishop also pressured the whistleblower to recant his accusation might or might not be true; that he though he could go out of his way to defend several homosexual priests and put him in a position to offend again really shows the arrogance of these people.

You might say that some of the episode had happened many years before. I ask you who, of you, believes that a homosexual priest with a past of abuse (and be that in 1815) can be “reformed” and stay at his place, happily cured after a pretend session with some counsellor.

My humble take: he may or may not be reformed, and I am being extremely generous here. Still, the priestly office will have to go.

The only way to free the Church from the scourge of homosexual priest is to get rids of all priests with deep-seated homosexual tendencies. It does not matter whether the episode was 3 or 300 years ago. “Homo” must mean “you go”.

A priest who is afflicted by such a terrible deviancy should not have been a priest one day in his life. Therefore, to say that the priest has been spotless for 29 years (if you believe that, I have a bridge on sale) is still admitting that the guy has been a priest 29 years too many. Still, we have here a Bishop (possibly, one who calls himself a conservative one; I await more info) not only not incensed that this tainted priesthoods happened, but (with variation) going out of his way to allow this to happen for longer.

This is why we have this tragedy within the Church. Not even Bishops are horrified. Best case, they are incurably naive, unforgivably arrogant and utterly unfit for the job. In the worst case… well, you know what the worst case is.

I am awaiting to see the further developments of this story. But I still wonder: for one who gets caught, how many have behaved exactly in the same way? How many are behaving like this today? How many people, every Sunday, go to mass and receive communion from a priest of whom his very Bishop knows he is homosexual and, as such, simply unfit for the priesthood?

There must be no understanding for Bishops who cover homosexual priests, with or without allegations of abuse.

Homosexuality makes a priest unfit for office. That’s all there is to it.

This swamp needs to be drained, and I don’t care how many (in case) “conservative” bishops need to go down for this.

The Whipping Clown

That guy over there could well be Francis.

Every First of April, when I reflect on what to write for April’s Fool, I am confronted with the increasing difficulty of writing something wittily absurd about Francis.

We have now come to such a level of absurdity in real life, that every joke about the next impossible stunt that Francis could be mocked with is very, very difficult to find. The man is such a factory of absurdities that the reality of his pontificate has long surpassed anything that could have been considered a joke only a few years ago.

In the last weeks only, we had “clericalism is a perversity” and the openly homo man appointed to a Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

Both of them would have made for excellent April Fool’s stunts only one year ago, and both of them would have been impossible to think, and no joke to be seen anywhere, until 2013.

Imagine the April Fool’s line “Pope Francis appoints homosexual man to commission meant to protect children”. Just one year ago, it would have been so hilarious you would have split your coffee over the keyboard! The other one, “Pope says clericalism is perversion”, would have been an excellent mockery of Francis favourite Marxist play, “this is that”. Impossible, of course, and therefore so funny…

Alas, with this guy reality has gone far beyond the joke a long time ago. I discovered that it is, in fact, not easy to make fun of a clown.

The matter is, though, not a very funny one, even if we try to take these things with some sense of humour in order to protect our liver. Each one of Francis’ heretical, perverted, or Marxist stunts is another whip lash against Christ. In fact, it is not easy to picture Francis happily whipping Our Lord, like the Roman soldiers so brutally did in reality, and as realistically rendered in the movie, “The Passion of the Christ”. Only, the Soldiers weren’t Christians, Francis is actually supposed to.

It always incenses me when, after the latest stunt of this monstrous individual, some follower of the religion of niceness writes some inane comment about it not being nice to write these things about a Pope.

Today we remember Christ humiliated, flagellated, and crucified.

Do you care for Christ? Do you care for the Church? If you do, I bet you will be very angry!

If you don’t, I question your love for Christ and His Church.

Meet Pope Very Possibly Pervert

Being a pervert is perversion, Frankie….

I really shouldn’t be doing this at my age. To wake up in the morning and discover that the Evil Clown is now on record with saying that “Clericalism is a perversion” really ruins my breakfast and disrupts my digestive function.

The issues are, indeed, very grave. Homosexuality IS a perversion, whilst Clericalism is simply a matter of bad behaviour in different gradations.

Once again, we see the usual cheap trick of this mentally challenged old, lewd man: the usual variation of “this is that”, made to downplay an issue and direct the attention away from it.

Now, let us look at reality in the face here: who would, and he a Pope, try to downplay and normalise perversion, unless he is not a pervert himself?

With all his stunts and alleged shows of wit, this disgusting old man is showing more and more, every day, what his inclinations are.

Pervert is who pervert does, Frankie.

The only people you are fooling are the ones who are fools, or more than fools, like you.

Plans And Prams, Or: Understanding Francis

Hhhmmm…. Let me think very hard about this….

From Father Hunwicke’s blog, I read this quote of Bobby Mickens:

” … it’s not clear what Francis actually does want. And not just on his birthday, but on many things. … Oh, he’s written and said a lot. An awful lot. But that doesn’t mean he always reveals what he’s really thinking. And, at times, he says things that are hard to square with things he has said and done at oher times. In a word, Jorge Mario Bergoglio is somewhat of an enigma. He rails against clericalism, yet he can also be as clerical as anyone.”

Well I think I can help.

Francis is not an enigma.

He is just plain stupid. And childish. And Arrogant.

Think of Francis from the vantage point of his most evident traits: hate for the Church, childishness, arrogance, stubbornness, and total lack of profundity of thought. Put all of this in the blender, switch on for 30 second, and what you must perforce have is, well, him.

The over-rationalising punditry try to construe a system in Francis’ actions, but this is just the same as wanting to unlock the deep meaning and life philosophy behind the tantrums of a spoiled child. Francis is not interested in coherence. He does not care for the opinions of people he despises. He has no philosophy beyond what pleases him on the day. Therefore, all his contradictions and gaffes and provocations and factual blasphemies do not follow a pre-conceived project.

With Francis there is no plan, only a pram.

Look at him in this way and, suddenly, everything he does and says makes perfect sense. His petty revenges, his hatred for Christ, or his contempt for faithful Catholics do not follow a planned strategic plan. No person with a brain would create a long-term plan and have such a stupid, contradictory, utterly embarrassing, and totally self-defeating one.

Imagine a child of twelve given absolute power over the Church, and you are pretty near to a full understanding of what is happening. Add a life of scrounging and resentment, and you get even nearer. Throw in the mix a long life, also marked by defeats and “exile” in unwanted positions, and you will get nearer still (the twelve years old would canonise chocolate and declare spinach heretical; Francis is smarter than that).

The contradictions, hypocrisies, countless embarrassments of this men are an enigma only to a person who wants to explain them away! Francis lies like you breathe. He clearly does not believe in life after death, and is not intelligent enough to care for the way he will be remembered. Does a very obnoxious twelve year old stop and think how he will be remembered if he dies today? No, he doesn’t. What he cares for is his gripe for the day, and how he can be obnoxious to others now. Tomorrow, he will have a new gripe, and a new way of being obnoxious. He will not care for any coherence today with his actions of yesterday. He will only care of what he can get away with. Francis is that child, with the addition of a peculiar mark of shamelessness, apparently due to Argentinian heritage, according to which being caught lying is a sign of smartness.

Every time that I read about these people trying to figure out Francis, I have this image in front of me of a piece of dog’s excrement, in the middle of the walkway, with influential journalists and pundits all gathered, in a neat circle, around it, pensively smoking their pipes.

How is it that that thing stinks, they wonder? How can that object have that peculiar shape? Isn’t it baffling that the object would have that particular consistency, and likely texture, that makes it so difficult to understand what is going on with it?

Gentlemen, open your eyes: it’s brown, it stinks, it has the appropriate consistency and form. It’s a piece of shit, period.

Francis isn’t difficult to understand. He is, actually, extremely easy.

You merely need to apply common sense and basic life experience.

Pope Hypocrite The Indecent

On the aeroplane back from Madagascar, where he managed to make a total fool of himself once again (yours truly reported) , Francis has let journalists know that he is “not afraid of schism”.

Well, someone of us had already noted it.

The argumentation (if there ever be any from this rambling idiot) runs thus: I am the Pope, therefore to disagree with me is to be in schism. A worse example of crass Clericalism of the stupidest sort has the world never seen.

264 Popes are in schism, then.

Francis, you are such a genius.

The measure of the utter stupidity of this man is given by the fact that, after 6.5 years of disastrous pontificate, he dares to state that he does not do anything differently than…. JP II.

The mind boggles.

Why is that, then, that Conservative Catholics regale this man with 100 times the criticism they reserved for JP II, he does not care to elaborate.

And Yes, Pope John The Koran Kisser had his atrocious moments, and every pre V II Pope would have heavily criticised, of called a blasphemy, the Buddha on the altar in Assisi, the attempt to transform the Church in mass entertaining, part of the 1994 Catechism and a lot more. But for all his mistakes, the man was recognisably a Catholic.

Those who believe that this man is on Christ’s side have been blinded by Satan, and are doing his work. Thankfully, his supporters are often on the other side, and are to be found among those who are open enemies of the Church; which should greatly help even the most stupid among the rosewater Catholics to understand what a fraud this man is.

I don’t know whom this old nincompoop wants to fool. Those who pretend to agree with him, or who brown nose him, have agendas of their own, but no-one with a brain believes this shameless liar.

He will die some day, and face his judgment. Nothing of what he has said and done will remain unpunished.

Let this thought comfort you every day.

The Sheep Are Getting Angry

FrancisStooge makes a Twitter appeal for the Peter Pence.

The reaction is brutal.

I have seen angry Twitter reactions to FrancisStooges, but this is something else.

Something is changing. Slowly, the common people start to have enough of the bunch of faithless, often perverted socialists peddling to them an alternative religion.

The tweet with the empty basket at the back of the church is likely just as indicative of the current state of affairs as the deluge of tweets saying no to feeding the wrong causes with the excuse of the Church. When this happens, it is only a matter of time before the wealthy donors (UK: say, 70% of total donation revenue) start doing the same, and then it will be Red Alert all over the Catholic Planet.

Our so-called shepherds are losing face, big time; not only with the activists, the bloggers and their readers; but with the normal people in the pews. Actually, even with the normal people outside of the pews! Millions in Italy, who don’t go to church, clearly understand by now that even Matteo Salvini is far more Catholic than the Pope. In the United States, Trump has the same effect.

Clericalism works only up to a certain point. The natural deference for the shepherds evaporates when the sheep understand that they are wolves. Yes, they get a “bonus” of credibility, and it will be a while before this bonus is spent. But when it’s gone, it’s gone.

We are slowly, but surely, getting there.

I have a dream: thousands of militant Catholics, with banners of their organisations and images of the Blessed Virgin, booeing Francis at the Angelus, or when he goes around in St Peter’s Square looking for wheelchairs to be photographed with.

Alas, for that we will have to wait a tad longer. But the rage of the sheep, tired to be fleeced even as they are abandoned, is mounting.

The sheep are getting angry.

This might change the current state of affairs quite rapidly, because the wolves want the money to keep flowing in.

Six Years Ago

Six years ago, the Evil Clown appeared on the balcony in St Peter and gave us the first example, or at least the first hint, of the superficiality and stupidity which would be – together with the outright heresy and socialist propaganda which were revealed later – the mark of this most disgraceful Pontificate.

The disgrace, however, has also had some positive effect.

Pollyannism has substantially died. At this point, only the enemies of the Church pretend that Francis is a decent pope, or guy.

The horror of V II is revealing itself to a growing number of people, as they realise that the whirlwind of Francis’ Pontificate is the result of the wind sowed with the aggiornamento.

The Creepy Pope has freed many – particularly, I think, in the Anglo-Saxon world – of the creepy Clericalism and embarrassing Papolatry many of them were exhibiting in the years of the oohhh soooo saintly JP II and B XVI, both Popes who have accompanied the Church along a slippery slope of world-pleasing peace rhetoric and creepy religious indifferentism as they presided over loss of power and influence the world over, but looking oh so meek in the process.

We even had some theological advancement, as Francis has clearly shown the opinion of those theologians who maintained that canonisations are not infallible as the only reasonable one.

God always uses evil to cause some good. There is no doubt that we live in the time of the Evil Pope. But then again we have lived in the times of the Sellout Popes for decades with not many people protesting, so this here is the medicine both necessary and deserved.

In time, God, who adjusts everything, will adjust this mess, too. Our duty is simple: let us live and die so that we can be able to say, on our deathbed, tradidi quod et accepi, and let us collaborate with God’s grace so that we can, one day, receive the grace of final repentance. No evil Pope can prevent us from doing this, and be him a socialist, godless scoundrel like the Evil Argentinian.

On this disgraceful anniversary, relax and pray your rosary.

Francis can do nothing that God does not allow him to do, so that the glory of the Church may be, one day, restored and even more resplendent.

M

Pope Francis Causes Theological Advancement

I have often read in the past that it was an open theological matter whether canonisations are infallible or not. The prevalent opinion stated they are, and I followed it at the beginning of Francis’ strange canonisation habits. However, as the canonisations became more and more outlandish, and increasingly more clearly politically motivated, it became more and more difficult to reconcile the prevalent opinion with the reality on the ground. One could have swallowed the canonisation of JP II as an isolated episode, and concluded that the man must be in heaven because the Church has canonised him. But several additional years of savage canonisations and beatifications have, in my eyes, settled the question: the minority position appears the correct one.

Obviously, this extraordinary events must be looked at in the light of this extraordinary period: an age of insanity that could, if God so allows, go on for a long time and bury us all.

At some point – and be it only when we are all six feet under – sanity will come back and the dust will settle. When the dust is settled, I think that the prevalent opinion will be corrected to adjust for the facts. I can easily imagine that, in the Year of the Lord 2933, and hopefully again in an age of sanity, theologians will teach that canonisations are generally considered to be extremely valuable indicators of a person being in paradise, but without no absolute guarantee, particularly in times of high corruption within the Church; as seen in the string of canonisations proclaimed by the horrible Popes of the XXI Century, many of them revoked in stages in the years 2167, 2274 and 2488 by subsequent councils.

We need to see the Church not merely as a worldly organisation, but also as a divinely ordained process. The Church is the sum total of the Catholics of the last two thousand years and of all the years after us until Judgment Day. Francis’ abuses are, whilst enraging, merely Satan’s tantrums against powers he cannot control. We see in the disorder of the present age the consequence of our rebellion as Catholics starting from the Sixties. But we also see all ages of the Church as a process of progressive refinement of all aspects of truths, a real evolution that is never, as Francis is so fond to say, a revolution.

It seems to me that even in the midst of this mess, Providence is helping us to grow in theological and every day matters.

Think of this: when this insanity has ended, we will be cured of clericalism and papolatry for a very, very long time.

Out of the evil, God always makes something good.

M

 

Dumb And Francis

Francis dear went to Palermo and told us that Clericalism is a “perversion”.

Er, no.

The word perversion, in the contest used by Francis, is exclusively reserved to sexual deviancy . Sexual deviancy is exactly what has demolished this disgraceful Pontificate.

The pathetic attempt of this stupid man to persuade us that homosexuality is just a problem like any other, and homosexuality on a par with Clericalism, fails – like so much of what Francis says – the “seven years old” test. It’s just extremely dumb blabber assuming he talks with five years old children.

To my knowledge, no one of the journalists present asked His Asinineness whether he puts Clericalism on par with homosexuality, whether he thinks that Clericalism calls to Heaven for vengeance, or whether he thinks that clerical priests should be defrocked. Perhaps the questions weren’t allowed, but I would not be surprised if they were and no one addressed the new elephant in the room.

Francis has sycophantic journalists listening to him, and thinks that all the planet is just as servile as they are. In this is, I think, one of the keys to understanding the glorious failure of this Pontificate.

Keep making an ass of yourself, Frankie dear. No one will ask you uncomfortable questions on the spot; but the world will most certainly notice what a fraud you are, and what a dumb one at that.

M

The Summer Of 1989 Is Here Again.

I admit that I have forgotten my crystal ball home today; however, what is happening reminds me a lot of the Summer of 1989 in, say, the German Democratic Republic.

Old, discredited member of the Communist hierarchy went on condemning the hysterics of the unwashed peasants, and seeing conspiracies everywhere. Meanwhile, it was clear that the problem was out, and it was not possible to make it disappear.

The Evil Clown and his Evil Minions are behaving in the same way now. Stupid, inordinate attacks against Archbishop Vigano’ have only consolidated his prestige and reputation, and those bishops and Cardinals now rallying around Pope Francis The Heretic are clearly desperately trying to save themselves, as they know that their career – in some cases, their very habit – is now in danger.

This will not go away, and it is somewhere between stupid and retarded (which is: in the region of Francis’ IQ) to think that the end of summer will bring this away with some new event or controversy.

Even if the entire leftist press were to let this fall – and I doubt it very much, as for many of them anticlericalism is not a strategic choice, but a reflex – the conservative press and the almost entire Catholic blogdom would keep pounding on this like there is no tomorrow. Breitbart alone is enough to keep this going forever and believe me, they are not going to give Francis any respite for as long as he is Pope.

Yes, this reminds me of the Summer of 1989 as the dynamic in play is the same; but it is impossible to predict the outcome, and I for myself think it improbable that Francis will be persuaded to abdicate.

What we must work towards is the incineration, the thermonuclear destruction of this disgraceful Pontificate; doing, in this way, all we can to encourage the Cardinals to give us one in the mould of Vigano’ (or as much as one can be found) as our next Pontiff when the time comes. How ironic, by the way, that the Evil Clown was said to have been chosen to fight against corruption in the Vatican!

God works in mysterious ways. Things are happening now that would not have been realistically imagined six months ago.

We are already on the winning side. But the fight must be fought nevertheless.

Let us nuke this Pontificate and have it remembered in infamy in one thousand years.

If Francis does not resign, show him what fun it is for him to stay.

M

Cardinal Pell: Meet The Drunkard & The Junkie Accusing Him.

His legacy is alive and well in Australia

 

One really couldn’t make it up.

The accusers of Cardinal Pell are:

Accuser one: drug addict; knows jail from the inside (clue: not as a guard) for a violent, drug-related crime; appears to accuse people of having molested him as a profession.

Accuser two: alcoholic; criminal record; broke; appears to accuse people of having mistreated him as a profession.

Both accuser say the “crime” happened in the late Seventies, and consisted in “inappropriate touching”.

Say the criminal drug addict and the criminal alcoholic.

From the linked article:

Australian law enforcement is claiming that Pell’s case is being treated like any other historical offense. No, it isn’t. Police do not give a rip about someone coming forward to claim someone touched them over their bathing suit 40 years ago. But this is a Catholic priest, and a high-ranking one at that. This is a big fish in the eyes of law enforcement.

Could not agree more. 

The question now is this: does the obvious anti-clericalism of the Australian public and justice system arrive to the point of doing all they can to obtain the conviction of Pell? I would say “no”, but I wouldn’t be so sure.

A system that allows no statute of limitation for the accusation in questions, and which mounts a trial on the word of two criminal addicts and obviously desperate idiots, can do everything and anything.

M      

On The “Brother And Sister Thingy” Again

The nine Kennedy siblings. Notice the total absence of sexual attraction.

I have already published a blog post about the talk given by Bishop Athanasius Schneider on the 5th of December. 

Bishop Schneider states the following:

 A pastoral accompaniment and discernment that does not communicate to the adulterous person, the so-called divorced and remarried, the divinely-established obligation to live in continence as a sine qua non condition for admission to the sacraments, exposes itself in reality as an arrogant clericalism, as there does not exist any clericalism so pharisaical as that which arrogates to itself rights reserved to God.

We see here a theme mentioned very often: that what is clearly a scandalous adulterous relationship is fine if continence is given (and, I add, necessarily made public). 

I always found such affirmations “off”, and – perhaps because of the times we live in – more than a tad stinking of Vatican II. According to this thinking, it appears that two old people could live together in what appears to be, for all the world, an adulterous relationship, with the addition of the obvious fact that they have no sex and they, duh, admit it. But you see, I though the adultery consists in the way of life, not in the accidental circumstance than one or both the adulterers happen to be impotent, or not interested in sex. This, leaving aside what must be, in very many cases, the obvious provocation of the couple who is in an age where sexual activity is to be assumed but tell you the “brother and sister thingy” because hey, we don’t want to give scandal, do we now?  

I have asked before, and ask again, help from my readers in finding statements supporting this “brother and sister thingy” before the age of Vatican II. I never could find any, hence my detecting the pungent smell of V II.  

Interestingly, in the already linked interview Bishop Schneider also states the following: 

One of the most ancient and unequivocal testimonies of the immutable practice of the Roman Church of rejecting adulterous unions by way of the sacramental discipline–unions of members of the faithful who are still linked to a legitimate spouse in a matrimonial bond—is the author of a penitential catechesis known by the pseudonymous title of the Shepherd of Hermas. The catechesis was written, in all probability, by a Roman priest at the beginning of the second century, as indicated by the literary form of an “apocalypse” or account of a vision.

The second dialogue between Hermas and the angel of penance who appears to him in the form of a shepherd, demonstrates with admirable clarity the immutable doctrine and practice of the Catholic Church in this area: “What, O lord, will the husband do if his wife persists in this lust of adultery?” “Separate from her and the husband remains on his own. If after having left his wife he marries another woman, he also commits adultery.” “If, O lord, the wife, after she has been abandoned, repents and wishes to return to her husband, will she not be restored?” “Yes, he says, and if the husband does not receive her he sins and becomes guilty of a great fault. He should, instead, receive the one who has sinned and has repented. . . . Because of the possibility of such repentance, the husband should not remarry. This directive applies both to the wife and to the husband. Not only is there adultery if one corrupts one’s own flesh, but also the one who acts similarly to the pagans is an adulterer. . . .  For that reason it was ordained that one remain alone, for both the woman and the man. One can repent . . . but he who has sinned must not sin again” (Shepherd of Hermas, Fourth Commandment, 1).

See? Second century, and no brother and sister thingy to be seen absolutely anywhere. “Remain alone” cannot mean anything else than “remain alone”. The point is also forcefully made that every spouse must be ready to readmit the other in the family life. It seems difficult to reconcile this with what we hear today: the children would be oh so horribly traumatised, and the like. Did they not have children in the Second Century?

It seems clear to me that what is required is that no alternative family is created, period. No “brother and sister” thingy, and no “let’s think of the children” thingy. It is not clear to me what part of

 For that reason it was ordained that one remain alone, for both the woman and the man

I have not understood. 

Once again, I am grateful for every authoritative statement in this regard from pre-Vatican II times. As it stands now, it seems to me that the matter is not being appropriately dealt with, and that it was exactly this “brother and sister thingy”, together with the bringing of children into the equation, that created the slippery slope that ends up with…

Kasper and Francis.

M

 

More Catholic Than Francis? Of Course I Am!

“Are You More Catholic Than The Pope?”

A small “c” catholic magazine – the one who on the day of the infamous Synod mid-term declaration, the relatio post disceptationem, came out with an article explaining to us how much the Church still has to do; which really tells you everything you need to know about the sad business of prostitution – now thinks it can publish a smart article by asking us if we are more Catholic than Francis  (no link, of course).

The article is an exercise in Clericalism, and one can only remark here that Clericalism is truly one of the marks of V II; Grima Wormtongue as he thinks and speaks.

 

The answer to the heresy and blasphemy is very easy, so I will keep it short.

Yes, if you are a good Catholic you must be vastly more Catholic than the Pope, because the Pope spreads heresy and confusion whenever he opens that stupid mouth of his. Yes, you know that you are more Catholic than the Pope because you, in striking difference to people who write for that magazine, actually know the first three things about Catholicism. Yes, you know that you are not making your own religion, or of yourself a God, because you compare your thinking with two thousand years of Catholicism and discover that not you, but Francis is at variance with that, and at variance in such a tragic and massive way as to not leave an excuse to anyone. Yes, you can recognise a traitor and a heretic because the Church teaches you how to do so, and many papal encyclicals (search this blog, or shut up) help you to do it effectively. Yes, you do not give any credit to the novelties of an encyclical letter if they go against what the Church has always taught.

The article is, in fact, so stupid that th every simple concept is not realised, that if the Pope had not made such an ass of himself, even with the extraordinary way of an encyclical, so many Catholics would not criticise him; but if he does, well obviously they do. Being Catholic never meant being stupid, whatever this rag wants you to believe.

 

It is utterly pathetic that the utterly clericalist claim be made that we should submit to heresy, because the heresy happens to be Pope. Have the people over there never read the words of St Paul? 

But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.

And we should not believe to angels, yet believe a stupid, ignorant, boorish Argentinian of which we can never even know if he is even sober when he opens his mouth?

This is not a light issue. This has a direct bearing on our salvation. Very plainly, you cannot serve Christ and Francis.  

I know Whom I will choose. Everyone else can make his choice, and pay the price of his stupidity if he so wishes.

 

I have a page called “the quotable Catholic”. You see it above this text. The very first quote is also repeated on the right hand column of this blog. It could well make the difference between salvation and damnation for many of us. It states: 

What Catholics once were, we are. If we are wrong, then Catholics through the ages have been wrong.
We are what you once were. We believe what you once believed.
We worship as you once worshipped. If we are wrong now, you were wrong then. If you were right then, we are right now.
Robert DePiante

I will stake my salvation every day on those words. I hope to die with these words in my mind, and “miserere mei, Domine” on my lips. Those who think they must believe not an angel, but an Argentinian heretics are reckless fools. 

Don’t be among them. No matter what (you know what I mean), never betray the faith of your Fathers under the disguise of a “restyling”, or an “updating”  (ahem, “aggiornamento”).

It’s not an update. It’s heresy, and blasphemy. 

I stake my salvation on the words above. I will never give allegiance to evil heretics and their little, little minions. 

Let these little Grimas talk as much as they want. God will know what to do with them. 

As for me, I will follow the Lord. 

M 

Cardinal Burke: The Lowdown On The “BuzzFeed” Interview

 

The link is here. This is certainly the interview that might have caused Michael Voris to finally see the light. 

There are two main news issues, and two parts. The news issues are:

1. the confirmation of the imminent demotion, and

2. an apparently strong criticism of the Pope.

The parts are

a) a “third person” interview in the main body, and

b) the transcript of only the part concerning the demotion as an appendix.

This as I write. I do hope the full transcript will be available soon.

I am not interested in 1, because if you are a regular reader of this blog you knew all already. As already stated, this non-news is only important in the message it sends: Cardinal Burke is now more free to speak freely.

 

———————–

What interest us is part 2. Let us see the “printed” facts:

If Pope Francis had selected certain cardinals to steer the meeting to advance his personal views on matters like divorce and the treatment of LGBT people, Burke said, he would not be observing his mandate as the leader of the Catholic Church.

This is a report of what the Cardinal would have said. There are no direct quotes concerning this. But it is rather tentative. A warning shot, not cannon fire. If the Pope has manipulated the Synod, then he is ignoring his job description and furthering his own personal views. But the Cardinal seems to have stopped short form saying that this is the case. For now, at least. This might, in fact, be a last warning shot before the real fire begins.

“According to my understanding of the church’s teaching and discipline, no, it wouldn’t be correct,” Burke said, saying the pope had “done a lot of harm” by not stating “openly what his position is.”

We do not have the question whose answer starts with “According”. Bad journalism.

The words “done a lot of harm” are quoted, but we miss the entire phrase. If the harm is merely in keeping silent, this is not an indictment of Francis’ character: rather, merely a reproach of weakness, indecisiveness, perhaps incompetence. But it is not a public accusation of manipulation, much less heresy.

Burke said the Pope had given the impression that he endorses some of the most controversial parts of the Relatio, especially on questions of divorce, because of a German cardinal who gave an important speech suggesting a path to allowing people who had divorced and remarried to receive communion, Cardinal Walter Kasper, to open the synod’s discussion.

This is also in the third person. Pope Francis would have “given the impression”. There is no open accusation of supporting the wrong side, or of seriously misguided (as they say today for “heretical”) thinking. Francis is imprudent, perhaps a tad left-leaning. He has not spoken when he should have done so. Nothing more than that. I can’t say this is unprecedented in modern times.

“The pope, more than anyone else as the pastor of the universal church, is bound to serve the truth,” Burke said. “The pope is not free to change the church’s teachings with regard to the immorality of homosexual acts or the insolubility of marriage or any other doctrine of the faith.”

This here is, I think, the crux. The phrase describes, in itself, something every Catholic should know, but is apparently not mainstream anymore in these times of savage Clericalism and rampant Papolatry. We would need the context to know whether the Cardinal is openly accusing Francis of doing what he cannot do. The words published do not say this. I could say the same words to you concerning the same arguments, speaking of Pius XII.

Now, follow me closely here: if the last sentence was expressed after lamenting an actual attempt of the Pope to change the Church’s teaching (and we would need to read the script for that), then this would obviously be an open indictment not of Francis’  decisiveness, but of his own orthodoxy and worthiness as a Pope. I can’t see what other reading would be possible. “The Pope is not free to change church teaching, and this is what he has just tried to do” would be the message. This would clearly be a charge of material heresy.

But again, the very same words could have been said in a different context, as you can readily see if you insert the words “as the great Pope Saint Pius X already stated…”, or such like, before the actual phrase.

——————

I wish there were less “third party” interviews, and more “regular” interviews.

Questions and answers, everything in direct speech (“I think that”, not “The Cardinal stressed the issue of”), and published in full.

I write this at 3:30 pm Italian time. No word of correction from Burke, who must be well awake by now. No doubt, his phone is ringing like mad.

Perhaps a “Francis’ game” is at work here: first the interview, then silence. No confirmation, and no retractation. Just let it stay in the air that “Francis does harm to the Church”. This is what Francis does. It would be priceless. 

I wait for other Cardinals and Bishops to take their stance and say more to us about the entire matter. It is difficult for me to think Burke has no allies,with whom he could coordinate the interventions. He might have acted alone out of pure love for the Truth, but I can’t imagine we are in such a desperate situation as this.

This is, from what I can read, no open attack to Francis (and it would be high time). But it could be the last of the warning shots. There are, praise be to God, winds of war blowing. There is also, it seems to me, a rich subtext to this. “Just think what we could do, if you don’t act and stop this madness”.

The next days (and then, months) should be interesting.

Mundabor

 

Father Nicholson Is The Perfect Nazi

I generally devote to Father Nicholson the attention I dedicate to the blathering Dumbos: zero. I would love to continue with this, in my eyes, very sensible praxis; but Father Nicholson has left such a pool of stinking piss all over the floor, that the very pungent smell compels me to say a word or two about this disgraceful, intellectually challenged man, a disgrace for the habit he wears.

As many of you will know, Father Nicholson has not only compared the SSPX to satanists; he has maintained that the SSPX-promoted reparation mass for the black mass in Oklahoma is… worse than the black mass itself!

Stop here, and calm yourself. Do you generally get angry at the senseless blathering of a child? Thought not…

Let us first see where Father Dumdum is leading us here.

The Pontiff Emeritus has lifted the excommunication on people who are, in their acts, worse than Satanists; the Vatican has structures devoted to the dealing with people worse than Satanists; the Vatican has declared that these people, worse than Satanists, are in communion, though they embarrassingly (for them) tend to call this communion “imperfect”; a Cardinal has received people worse than Satanists only a few days ago, and released a very gentle communiqué about the matter.

I could go on, but you get the gist: Father Nicholson is just plain thick.

But let us now try to start a journey in the workings of this child's brain, and discover the reason for his extremely stupid affirmation, and childish pooping outside of the WC.

The man is, at his core, a Nazi. Better: he is a Nazi child. In his little mind, obedience to the Pope is all that matters, and there is nothing demanding from us a higher allegiance, on earth or in heaven. This is 100% Führerprinzip, and Father Nicholson has devoted to it all the scarce neurons at his command; with the smelling result I have just described.

These people may be stupid, but they are dangerous. Particularly so, when the clerical garb they wear induces other not-too-bright people to give credence to their absurd blathering. This is the most extreme form of clericalism you can find; a de facto deification of the Pope perfectly identical to the Nazi de facto deification of Adolf Hitler. This is purest heresy.

If I do not say an angel, but a Pope comes to him and tells him things in contrast with truth, not only Father Nicholson believes him like the dumdum he is; but he also accuses everyone who happens to side with 2000 years of Christianity of being… worse than Satanists!

Boy, this is one who has to be sent back I do not say in the seminary, but in the kindergarten.

Father Nicholson is the perfect Nazi. Hitler would be very proud of him.

Satan is, I am sure, rather pleased too.

Pray for Father Dumbo. He is in great need of it.

M

 

Francis Proclaims Himself The Incarnation Of Orthodoxy.

One of the most alarming signs of the decay of Christianity in the West is the inability to put things in the proper context. In particular, this finds expression in the unquestioned acceptance of snippets and quotes used in a completely different way than the one meant by their original authors. The most dramatic example is certainly the “do not judge” quote, but one can see this mentality at work everywhere.

Say, a Pope of the past has criticised the abuse of riches: this is used to advocate a Socialist society that would have horrified that very Pope. Or, Padre Pio has stressed the virtue of obedience: this is used to demand that we be accomplices in every clerical abuse. I could go on.

The reason why this at the same time ignorant and subversive tactic “works” is that in the past the uneducated masses knew they were uneducated, and realised they had to rely on the guidance of people with a better understanding of things; besides, they were in fact guided by people who really had a sound understanding. In dramatic contrast, millions of barely literate people nowadays think themselves “educated”, and are persuaded that they are the ultimate metre of right and wrong; and are helped in this by a cowardly clergy intent in telling them all day what bright minds they are. It is, in such circumstances, certainly no surprise that every word of the past can be raped by contemporaries, amidst the applauses of the crowd.

The last example of this has been given, in the most shocking of ways, by Our Own Very Humble Jesuit-In-Chief. He has, during the crisis meeting with some FFI representatives about which Rorate and others have reported, apparently said two old things in new, and very scandalous ways:

1. The quip of St. Ignatius who said that if the superior says White is black, they must believe it, and

2. The assertion that the Pope is, tout court, the guarantor of orthodoxy, so whatever he says is orthodox.

The first phrase is most certainly a grievous abuse of a sincere call to obedience, made in times in which the spread of heresy within the Church in the measure we see today was unthinkable. The Unholy Father, the Humble Bishop, abuses of this to demand blind obedience no matter what, in the most shameless and most un-Catholic expression of Führerprinzip he has had the insolence of using up to now.

The second phrase is, if possible, even worse: it is an open invitation to shameless clericalism to the point of Papolatry, the arrogant demand that he be obeyed whatever he may say or order, because whatever he may say or order must, in virtue of his being the… Bishop, orthodox.

This isn’t Catholicism anymore. This is the talk of an Oriental Satrap, or of a Roman Emperor demanding to be deified.

Surely, Francis must accept that there is a Truth according to which his every action can be weighted and, if necessary, criticised? If he accepts this, every talk along the lines of 1. and 2. above must be balderdash. If he doesn’t, he thinks he is God, or at least wants you to treat him in the same way.

Francis is quite the Jesuit. The oh so humble Embracer Of Wheelchairs is the first one to abuse of his office with an arrogance that would beggar belief, if we would not know the man very well by now. The prophet of “do not judge” reveals his agenda, that can be summed up in: “do not judge me, whatever I do”. His demand that he be considered the true embodiment of Orthodoxy whatever he may say would be a scandal in any Pope, but it is the most so by one so evidently ignorant, so appallingly inadequate, so tragically incompetent, so shamelessly Jesuitical like this one.

Pope Uriah becomes more and more disquieting. And what disturbs more is his total lack of shame and self-control.

Mundabor

 

 

 

Meet Francis, The Presbyterian Pope

“When the Lord shows us the way, who are we to say, 'No, Lord, it is not prudent! No, lets do it this way'…

“The Holy Spirit is the living presence of God in the Church. He keeps the Church going, keeps the Church moving forward. More and more, beyond the limits, onwards. The Holy Spirit with His gifts guides the Church. You cannot understand the Church of Jesus without this Paraclete, whom the Lord sends us for this very reason. And He makes unthinkable choices, but unimaginable!

Francis, the Bishop of Rome, May 2014.

Every time we think that, surely, Francis cannot sink lower than he just did with his latest statements; and every time we are forced to change our mind; albeit, optimists as we are, still thinking that now, surely, it cannot get worse? Alas, with the Destroyer nothing seems impossible, but his conversion to Catholicism.

Francis' most recent statements are so brazenly heretical, that no follower of Francis can have any excuse anymore, or be in any kind of doubt, that to agree with Francis is to deny Christ.

It has always been an obvious corollary of Christianity that Truth cannot change. Truth cannot change because God cannot change. God cannot change because every concept of change is in the most blatant contradiction with God's perfection.

If Truth changes, the Gospels have gone off and must be discarded like those strange things we single men find, every now and then, at the bottom of the fridge. If Truth changes, not one single words of the Bible, be it Old or New Testament, can be relied to have the meaning and import Catholicism traditionally attributed to it. If Truth changes, dogmatic statements like the Creeds have no authority anymore, because change is evidently not compatible with dogmas. If Truth changes, Jesus is a fraud and a charlatan, because his emphatic statement that He is the Truth flies in the way of this Truth being, given time, obviously untrue. If Truth changes, Christianity does not make any sense, and we can happily go back to adoring trees, natural phenomena, or fantasy creations who spend their existence plotting and fornicating in some distant but rather pleasant place.

All this escapes Francis, the Presbyterian Pope.

His statements become more and more brazen; his defiance of the basic Truths of Christianity is now made in the open. If Satan were Pope, he would speak exactly as Francis does: sowing confusion, sabotaging Christianity and denying Truth every time he can, with a frequency that now knows no interruption, with an insolence that now knows no boundaries.

Read again his words above. He is saying, for everyone who has ears to hear, that there are no limits to the novelties he wants to introduce. He is preparing unthinkable changes. More and more, beyond the limits.

These are interesting times for Michael Voris, for sure.

The new Papal mantra is as clear as the sun: the “Spirit” is speaking, (to him, of course: the Humble Anointed) and both he and, obviously, we must not “close the door” to it. If you accept this, you have ipso facto thrown Christianity away from the window, exactly as Francis does. I suspect this strange “spirit” speaks to Francis through wine or grappa, because sober people who use their brains know all I have explained above, and would never have the blasphemous insolence of thinking Truth is at their disposal with no better excuse than this mysteriously blowing wind of the “spirit”, and or that Truth would have any need to “move forward”', “beyond the limit”, “onward”. He expresses himself with the trite rhetoric of a motivational speaker at the salesmen convention of some smartphone producer.

If Francis does not “hear the spirit” whilst drunk, which is not to be excluded, then he must most certainly be listening to Satan himself, who is whispering in his hear how very popular he will become if he decides that hey: the Spirit has spoken: who are we to judge? And lo and behold: the way is open for any heresy and any blasphemy.

Or perhaps Francis has, in an extreme effort of Clericalism, appointed himself the new Sibylla Cumana of Christianity. God speaks to him, and tells him “we must change everything, Buddy. Glad I am able to speak to you, because your predecessors were either completely, or almost completely deaf. Myself, what a cool guy you are!”

The insolence, the shamelessness, the sheer blasphemy of this man is breathtaking. Open your eyes, read his statements again, and realise how serious the situation is. Now it's simply Francis against God.

It is very clear that this Pope – be it because he is stupid, or evil, or both – is a direct threat to the salvation of Catholics, and a further threat to the salvation of other Christians. He is the Public Enemy Number One of Catholicism, a menace compared to which even Obama appears an amateur.

It is as if the Brigate Rosse had, in the Seventies, reached all the top positions of the Italian institutions; but few would have objected to it because hey: you don't criticise the President, the Prime Minister or the Presidents of Camera and Senato.

The Pope himself is working every day towards the destruction of Catholicism. The Enemy is among us and has, if you allow the comparison, reduced King Theoden to his willing idiot – or to his evil idiot – as his minions, like Grima Kasper and Wormtongue Maradiaga, whisper to his ear words of betrayal and surrender.

I have not lived those ages, but it seems to me that the threat represented by this man is slowly rising to the level of Pope Liberius, or Pope John XXII. True, Francis is not thinking – at least for now – of making any heretical wannabe “dogmatic statement”; but It is obvious the unthinkable is not really unthinkable for him, and I wonder what would be worse. In the case of an heretical “dogmatic” statement we would know the Pope is actually not such, and we could happily ignore both the statement and the man; whereas in the case of a subversive Pope you are stuck with the reality that the Pope is evil, but he is still Pope; a reality not many, in these times of poor instruction, can cope with.

Francis is, as the October Synod slowly approaches, throwing away the mask. He will get into it telling to everyone that “the Spirit is speaking” in some mysterious way known to him alone, but we must not keep “the Spirit” (read: Francis' heresies) out. Bar a divine intervention, it is clear to me he will have his way. The choir of the helpers will be deafening. The sheep will willingly baa. Most bloggers will applaud. The secular press will be delighted. The world will embrace him. The Church will receive a wound worse still than during the French Revolution, and perhaps almost as bad as the Arian heresy.

Once again, realise the genesis of Francis' heresies: this man is entirely secular in his thinking, in his talking, in his outlook. He is a Socialist with a white habit. He will trample everything that goes against his agenda of Socialism for the world, and popularity for himself.

To Francis, Christianity is an excuse. He isn't more Christian than Obama. Let us say it again: I doubt he believes in God. He certainly has no fear of Him.

You have no excuses: it's Francis or Christ.

Pick your side well.

M

 

Sound Talk Is Overrated.

 

You said another thing, which I also refer to in the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium. You spoke of clericalism. It is one of the evils; it is one of the evils of the Church. But it is an “accessory” evil, because priests like the temptation of clericalizing the laity, but so many lay people, kneeling, asked to be clericalized, because it is more convenient, more convenient! And this is a two-way sin. We must overcome this temptation. The layman must be a layman, baptized, he has the strength that comes from his Baptism. Servant, but with his lay vocation, and this is not sold, it is not negotiated, it is not an accessory to the other … No. I am like this! Because it goes with the identity. In my homeland, I have heard this so many times: “You know, in my parish I have a great layman: this man knows how to organize … Eminence, why don’t we make him a deacon?” The immediate proposal of the priest is to clericalize. Let’s make this layman … And why? Because the deacon, the priest is more important than the layman? No! This is the mistake! Is he a good layman? Let him continue to be so and grow so, because it goes with the identity of Christian membership. For me, clericalism hinders the growth of the layman. However, keep present what I have said: it is an “accessory” temptation between the two. Because there wouldn’t be clericalism if there weren’t laymen who want to be clericalized. Is this clear? Therefore, I thank you for what you do. Harmony: this, also, is another harmony, because the function of the layman can’t be done by the priest, and the Holy Spirit is free: sometimes He inspires the priest to do something, at other times He inspires the layman. There is talk in the Pastoral Council. The Pastoral Councils are so important: a parish – and here I quote the Code of Canon Law – a parish that does not have a Pastoral Council and a Council of Economic Affairs, is not a good parish: it lacks life. 

Pope Francis, Address to Media Association “Corallo”, 24 March 2014

Spot The Pope

“I am worried by the Blessed Virgin's messages to Lucy of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith, in her liturgy, her theology and her soul….

“I hear all around me innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject her ornaments and make her feel remorse for her historical past.

“A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God. In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them, like Mary Magdalene weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask, 'Where have they taken Him?'”

Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli, future Pope Pius XII, 1931.

————————

Let me tell you what I hope will be the outcome of World Youth Day: I hope there will be noise. Here there will be noise, I’m quite sure. Here in Rio there will be plenty of noise, no doubt about that. But I want you to make yourselves heard in your dioceses, I want the noise to go out, I want the Church to go out onto the streets, I want us to resist everything worldly, everything static, everything comfortable, everything to do with clericalism, everything that might make us closed in on ourselves. The parishes, the schools, the institutions are made for going out … if they don’t, they become an NGO, and the Church cannot be an NGO. May the bishops and priests forgive me if some of you create a bit of confusion afterwards. That’s my advice. Thanks for whatever you can do.

Francis, Bishop of Rome, 2013.

——–

What the great Pope of the past feared, my dear friends, we are already living with the disgraceful Bishop of Rome of the present.

Mundabor

 

Finding Excuses

At times I am tempted to think there are some Catholics who measure their faith from the amount of self-delusion and utter blindness they display concerning the actions of Popes.

Apparently in the Vatican there are so many wolves you would think it is a forest in Abruzzo, but who put the alleged wolves there is obviously not worth the thinking. Until it turns out one particular wolf actually luncheswith the Bishop of Rome, who partout does not want to get rid of him. The Pope has also routinely been “badly advised”, as if the advisers were the ones with the responsibility of picking good advisers. The last one, I have read this morning in my comment box: the Bishop of Rome is now concentrating on the WYD, so he can't deal with Monsignor Ricca.

Look, the Pope is not a moron. He can choose for himself. Making decisions is, actually, the most important part of his job. Important decisions aren't so terribly frequent, particularly if one has good advisers and is not a compulsive control freak. This is why the most powerful people are in the end the ones who work the least; this is also why one can be a ninety years old leader, and a force of nature like Enrico Dandolo.

The Pope always has the time, because he does not have to do the preparatory work. Also, he always must have the brains, because otherwise he should not have accepted the offer, or should resign if he can't lead the Barque anymore; so the “he is old and weak” meme doesn't work, either. Ask Enrico Dandolo about that.

The Pope is in charge. To be in charge means not only to have the power to make decisions, but to bear the responsibility for the decisions one makes. Those who think the Pope is being inadequate criticise him, but those who think he is an old nincompoop led by the hand by his advisers positively insult him.

Nor is having a bad Pope something that denies Catholicism in any way. Having a good Pope is not part of the deal one gets as a Catholic. In fact, it is revealing that as V II promotes indifferentism and general ignorance of sound Catholicism, it also subtly but forcefully promotes Clericalism. Those who aren't instructed will rely the more on what the priest tells them, and will in time naturally believe that if the priest – more so, the bishop; more so, the cardinal; most of all, the Pope – did something, then it must be right.

In this blog I insist on the readers to make for themselves a sound foundation of Catholic doctrine, using sources after V II only if they are 100% above suspicion (say: the excellent SSPX books). This is very important now, but might become it more and more in the future as the foreseeable Papacies feed us with nothing more than easy, non controversial platitudes.

Part of this solid foundation is to know that a Pope is infallible only in extremely rare cases; that he is not picked by the Holy Ghost, but by the Cardinals; that he does not have to be a living saint and can well be a great sinner; and that he can well go to hell, where several of them very probably are.

Please stop making excuses for a Pope, because if you see the sin and bend over backwards to justify it you aren't being pious, but merely an accessory in this Pope's sin.

And don't worry: the Church eats bad Popes for breakfast, and she will bury the current Bishop of Rome as she has buried many bad, very bad or utterly rotten Popes in the past. The Church who survived every Empire and will stand when the United States are a footnote in the history books does not need for Bishop Francis to be a saintly man to keep existing, or to justify Christ's Truth. You believe what the Church believes because it is the Church of Christ, not because the Pope of the day is a saintly man.

Don't make excuses for the Pope as if he were the dumb child in the family. He is not a child, and he is most certainly not dumb. Look at his actions with the purest heart you can muster, and if you think he gives scandal, with the hand on your heart have the courage to say so; in charity as much as you can, but in truth all the time.

Catholicism always, Papolatry never.

Mundabor

One, Two, Three, Four, And Five Million Pageviews

Five Million Pageviews

Four Million Pageviews

Three Million Pageviews

Two Million Pageviews

 

This little effort started publication as “Mundabor’s Blog” on the 18th July 2010, though some previously written posts also got imported in the new place. Amazing, that three years have gone away so fast. A sure sign of advancing age, I am told.

This blog is strictly a one-man-band. I never make “copy and paste” of other people’s content. I also do not allow free comment posting without moderation. The moderation itself is, as many of you have noticed, not entirely moderate. I also purposely use expression the “moderates” would find too strong, persuaded as I am that the day you start saying “gay” instead of “faggot” you start to lose, and the more you go down that road the nearer to persecution you get. Faggot it is, then…

You get from all of these elements that my blog certainly isn’t meant to attract readership, or to boost page views. Add to this that yes, I do “surly” rather well, and you get the picture.

The more surprising it is, then, that less than three years from its inception this little effort has reached one million pageviews; something entirely unthinkable in the summer of 2010, when a day with more than one hundred pageviews was a day of heavy traffic.

Why is it, then, that the blog of a rather touchy, short-tempered, emotional man with more than a streak of Mussolini (may he rest in peace) in him, and a rare penchant for making himself unpopular, has reached this eminently desirable blogging milestone in less than three years?

The answer lies, methinks, in the following factors:

1. This blog is written by one who really cares; who is neither a saint nor a martyr, but still tries to do his best with the limited intellectual and moral means he has at his disposal. I dare say even those who hate the writings must often recognise the good faith and honest intentions of the writer. Yes, possibly even the damn sods…

2. This blog is brutally honest, and allergic to self-delusion.  When I see something bad, I say it as I see it, because what is wrong is wrong even if there’s a lot of purple – or red, or white – around it. It may seem easy, but you will find not many blogs follow this logic, rather preferring the comfortable “how beautiful it is that the Pope has said buonasera” mantra. No clericalism and no papolatry, thanks.

3. In this blog you won’t find (as far as I can see) doctrinal bollocks. What stays here has hands and foots to the best of my ability, and I do not indulge in doctrinal experimentations whatsoever. What my grandmothers would have considered questionable doctrine, I do not write. What I think I can’t express or explain well, I don’t. My view of the world is stuck in the year 1958, and proudly so. I hope it stays that way. Whilst I am certainly rigid in my interpretation of Catholic tradition, I do not think there is any other way that really works.

4. This blog tries to be mildly entertaining, and to look at the tragedy of our times with some humour whenever its author manages to inject a bit of lightness in the drama we are living. Castigat ridendo mores is, I am sure, the phrase you are now expecting to read. I cannot avoid imagining that this trait is the one that moves the one or other of you to click your way to this URL every now and then. The times are certainly lamentable, but if I didn’t try to make the best of them I would be unworthy of being – proudly – Italian.

5. I do not allow “dissent” in my blog. As a rule, the “tambourine Catholic” posting here has his/her/its comment deleted without you ever knowing he wasted his time. When you click here you find only unadulterated Catholicism, without the endless debates between atheists/liberals who won’t get it, and orthodox Catholics who won’t get the former won’t. This is not a place for debate. This is the Internet charger for your Catholic batteries, the place where you take refuge and find peace in the Truth of Christ. Do you want dialogue? Pick a forum. My suggestion to the atheists, the liberals and the others is: shut up, listen, and learn. Not particular modest, I know, but I ain’t either. Call it rather ecumenical effort, Mundabor’s way.

6. The last but, of course, absolutely decisive element is, my dear readers, you. You who have had richly enough of the empty, shallow, outright childish, tasteless, senseless rhetoric of V II; you who are justly angered not only at the ways of the world, but at the betrayal of such a large part of the clergy; you who long for the Church’s return to sanity after 50 years of drunken quest for acceptance, popularity, and hipness. You are the ones who clicked the million pageviews, and you are the ones to whom my thanks for your affectionate support and encouragement goes from the bottom of my heart. At times I think that in the next decades our lives will be like an endless retreat from Russia, as our Western Catholic army is decimated by the cold wind of Neo-Modernism and the ruthless snow of the advancing Stalin Atheists. Even if it were to be so, let us stay together and encourage each other; let us march side by side until the day when this earthly struggle ends and we are able to look back at our sleepless nights, our faithful prayers and our impotent anger and know that nothing of it was useless, lost, or out of place.

These are, my dear readers, the reason why I think this blog seeks unpopularity, and grows like the US National Debt. I ask you, in your charity, to shortly remember me in your prayers as I do – collectively, of course – with you. The ultimate driver of this blog is the heavenly deposit account, where I hope you will want to deposit your generous prayers. One day, I hope the savings thus accumulated will help me to gain admission to what, I repeat it once again, is the only real aim in life: salvation.

Salvation that I wish to you all, again, with all my heart. 

Mundabor

Is Cardinal Schoenborn Homosexual?

Is it fair to say this is a Duck? Read on…

PLEASE ALSO FOLLOW THE EDITS HERE AND AT THE END.

First an appeal to the SSPX, if they were ever to read this: can you please stop referring to homosexuals, lesbians, & Co. as “gay”? If even the SSPX starts using this sloppy language, where will it end?

Quit saying “gay”.

——————————————————–

On the matter: once again, Cardinal Schoenborn (a man recently considered as papabile, which tells you something about the present state of things within the Church) shows himself a rather extreme aider and abettor of homosexual perversion.

The SSPX goes in detail on this, also giving a rather comprehensive account of a small part of the antics of this satanic Cardinal in the last years. 

In this specific instance, the Cardinal is on record with the following:

There can be same-sex partnerships and they need respect, and even civil law protection. Yes, but please keep it away from the notion of marriage. Because the definition of marriage is the stable union between a man and a woman open to life.

(EDIT: The Cardinal’s Secretary denies these were the words or the intention of the Cardinal: see below).

The Cardinal thinks that sexual perversion: 1) needs respect, and 2) needs civil law protection. Spoken like a true sodomite.

If a Cardinal would publicly declare that bestiality needs respect and civil law protection, but just please don’t call it marriage, wouldn’t you think he has that very perversion? Well, then.. 

Therefore, the suspicion is more than justified that the Cardinal is a homosexual himself, because such a level of defiance of God’s laws – in every priest, but particularly in a Cardinal – is probably rooted in an inner disobedience born of one’s own perversion.  In these cases, some might still have the gut to do their job even if they themselves do not comply with the required standard – Cardinal O’Brien comes to mind – but it is fair to say it is far more likely that perverted clergymen will rather try to subvert the standard instead. In doing so, they will use the usual code words employed by homosexual priests during the past decades: the need to be pastoral, the “charitee”, and such like; proving that most perverts have no idea of what being pastoral, or being charitable, means in the first place.

You can put it in another way: it is difficult to think a normal person can arrive to such level of complicity with perverts, unless he is a pervert himself. Life is a very simple thing, and what would have caused alarm bells to toll in every sensible person only two generations ago is now more difficult to detect, because the aggressive (actually: passive-aggressive) clericalism engendered by Vatican II makes it far more difficult for sound thinking people to pose the obvious question, “is the Cardinal a poof?”, without being accusing of being “uncharitable”.

Also please think this: there has been a widespread talk about the homosexual infiltration within the Church, up to the highest echelons. The effeminacy of the V II Church is more than evident to anyone who can compare the pre-V II and post-V II attitude. The takeover of entire seminaries through perverted priests, in turn co-opting perverted seminarians, is well documented (Maynooth was rather extreme; St. Poelten was even worse), and it is simply not possible that this is turn did not create a net of homosexual bishops, helping each other to positions of power.

This is universally known, and the problem of homosexual infiltration is widely acknowledged. Still, it would seem these homosexual prelates exist only in an abstract sphere, or are acknowledged only a posteriori,  when they get officially exposed (“Miami Vice” is a prime example; see also here for more information on what happened over there). In daily life, it seems most people think these homosexual prelates are just non-existent.

It’s just like Fascists in Italy in May 1945: everyone knew they were there, only no one was supposed to be a Fascist…

You know what? It just can’t be. The net of homosexual bishops is working for Satan as we speak. They further the infiltration of the church through both homosexual clergy and homosexual ideas; they pollute Catholicism every day with their sugary talk about “pastoral care”; they want their sheep to forget the very bases of Christianity; they are creating a new religion in which their own perversion is fully accepted through the simple trick of not calling it “marriage”; they pervert the mind of their sheep by inoculating in them concepts of “love” and “commitment” that can only exist in the mind of perverts. They exploit their position of authority to smuggle ideas that would never be accepted by simple – and gullible – Catholics if they did not come from bishops or Cardinals. They are a cancer that is going into metastasis, working hand in hand with the civil authorities of many Western Countries. 

Do you think these people exist only in theory? No, they exist in practice. We see them at work. Look at Cardinal Schoenborn, and you’ll see a prime example.

Aristotle famously said that if an animal looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck.

Cardinal Schoenborn thinks like a poof, acts like a poof and quacks like a poof.

These people must be stopped, and I do not think giving First Holy Communion to children in Roman parishes is what is going to stop them.

Mundabor

EDIT: Cardinal Schoenborn’s secretary has written to the Tablet stating the Tablet has “grossly misinterpreted” the Cardinal’s words. Strangely, though, what he does is simply rephrase the words, which in the original text were clearly attributable to him.

My comment: the Cardinal wanted his words to be “non attributable” ( a common trick when one wants to throw the stone and hide the hand). The Tablet was too weak with their expression “leading Cardinal”, which clearly referred to Schoenborn, instead of using the usual expressions like “highly placed officials have expressed to the Tablet the opinion that…”. As it was, everyone, starting from the SSPX and the Vatican, understood who is the culprit. At this point Schoenborn had to backpedal with another common excuse (“gross misunderstanding”), which to me is code for “I said “non attributable”, morons”.

I gladly link to the letter from Mr Prueller, but I do think the excuse does not wash. In my eyes, Schoenborn still quacks like the duck above. As to Schoenborn’s record in matters of homosexuality, it is clear enough without any need for unwanted attributions, and doesn’t change anything substantial in the matter, apart from showing one of these days Schoenborn will, if he does not pay attention, put himself in huge trouble. Please also note the SSPX article, which reports several scandalous episodes concerning the Cardinal’s attitude towards homos, is still online as I write, if without the Tablet quote.

I suspect Schoenborn got some unexpected flak from the Vatican, and decided to discover orthodoxy – for the time being – through his secretary.

As far as I am concerned the post, the duck, and the suspicions stay.

M

Wishful Thinking

The amount of wishful thinking Catholics are capable of can at times only be called staggering.

The last one I have read about is that the Blessed Virgin might have appeared to the Holy Father requesting that he steps down. Allow me to share with you a couple of thoughts about this theory.

1. The thinking here seems to be “I do not agree with the Pope’s decision. The Pope can never do something wrong. Therefore, it must have been told by the Blessed Virgin”. If you ask me (which you do, because you are still reading…) there is a good deal of Clericalism here, and – hoping not to be offensive for anyone – more than a hint of Papolatry. When Protestants mock us for such outlandish ideas, I can’t say they are wrong.

2. It appears more than a couple of people were not paying attention when the Holy Father issued his historic statement on the 11 February. In it, the Holy Father speaks clearly of his lack of spiritual energy.
Such a heavily loaded statement cannot be simply ignored. It is inconceivable that the Pope would not know that to have to cope with age is rather common for a Pope. Therefore, he is humble and honest enough to tell the real reason of his abdication. Again, it is staggering even after the Holy Father says in the plainest words imaginable what the reason for his abdication is, there are those simply unable to deal with brutally straight facts.

3. Let us now assume (which we should not do, unless we want to take the Blessed Virgin as hostage for everything we cannot explain or approve) for a moment that the Blessed Virgin really appeared to the Holy Father requesting that he steps down: would this not be an extremely offensive statement towards the Holy Father? In this constellation, it is clear Pope Benedict is both completely useless and dangerously stubborn, to the extent that no less than an apparition of the Blessed Virgin becomes necessary to move him to do the right thing. It is also – always if you ask me – doubly insulting, because it also presupposes the Pope is utterly unable to see the reality around him and make important decisions for himself.

4. The Pope is almost 86; had a number of bypass surgical operations; is obviously becoming more and more frail, and has been for a while. It is not clear to me why Heaven should feel the need of anything so extreme as a Marian apparition to, erm, well, terminate his employment contract in the usual manner.

Summa summarum, it seems to me at times Catholics are more than a bit carried away, to the point of ever theorising Marian apparitions no interested party has mentioned or even hinted at.

Personally, I would suggest a more robustly realistic approach, based on the simple reality that an indecisive Pope has recognised he is not fit to lead the Church in these turbulent and utterly disturbing times. Once again, we should admire his honesty and courage rather than recur to supernatural events to explain what we do not approve.

A Pope can abdicate.

Get over it.

Mundabor

Athanasius And… Marcellus

Athanasius…

Most of you may already know that the Church has already gone through very troublesome periods. Many of you will be aware that the Arians were probably the biggest challenge the Church had to confront, at least before the challenge of V I I.

What,though, many of you might not know is that even Athanasius, the great champion of Trinitarian orthodoxy, was excommunicated by Pope Liberius, and that the same Pope Liberius actually demanded that his diocese (or perhaps the entire Church, not sure on that but it isn’t so relevant) does not use the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed in public worship. In a word, whilst not proclaiming a heretic dogma or denying the Trinity as traditionally intended, Pope Liberius did try – and certainly intended – to silence orthodox Catholic understanding at least in some regions. He did it, we are told, to avoid “fractures” within the Church and to not upset those “good Catholics” who had a, erm, modern understanding of the Trinity and should not feel, erm, antagonised.

Mind, those progressive Catholics thought they had their heart in the right place and were, no doubt, the nicest and most tolerant chaps around. I do not doubt they thought they would, by getting rid of an embarrassing concept like a God-Man who is fully God and fully Man, make Christianity more, erm, relevant. They must have seen our Athanasius as an extremely inflexible, obviously “uncharitable” bloke, bent on slavish adherence to “the past” with no consideration at all for the “new times” and the necessity of being “pastoral”.  No doubt, after the papal excommunication (let us say this again: papal excommunication) most devout Christians thought the good man had now nothing else to do than to bow to the superior rank and wisdom of the Pope and retract his strange fixation with the Trinity properly intended.

Ubi Petrus, and all that…

If you think Athanasius bowed faced with group pressure, think again. If Pope Liberius did, he didn’t.   If you think he was afraid of the excommunication, or fearful for his own soul, I will have to disappoint you again. This saintly man simply knew he was on the side of the Truth the Church had taught from the start, and if an angel had come down asking him to believe different things than those transmitted to us by God through the constant teaching of the Church he would have simply refused.

Fast forward to the XX century. The Church at large adopts strange ideas which, whilst not (mostly) openly heretics, are certainly at variance with what the Church has always taught. The Creed is not abolished, but the sacredness of the Liturgy as such is under a great attack. A very strange (but very convenient) theology concerning religious liberty and the role of the Church is being introduced; mainstays of Catholic theology are “revisited” according to modern sensitivities, with Capital Punishment now largely perceived as intrinsically bad, and war as always wrong. The primacy of the Pope itself is under attack, now practically – if not formally – substituted by a thinking according to which the Pope is there to give some good counsel and wise admonition every now and then, but leaving the real business of governing the Church to his bishops as a body. Concepts like the Kingship of Christ are not officially abolished but willingly forgotten; the same happens with countless traditional devotions like the Rosary, the Litanies or the Vespers; even the Sacraments suffer unprecedented attack, with Confession now seen as an embarrassment by many priests and even the sancta sanctorum of Catholic dogma, Transubstantiation, being factually ignored by a growing number of priests and faithful who, like their Arian ancestors, simply feel too modern and enlightened to believe in such “old” things.

.. and Marcellus

A bishop reacts, like Athanasius, to all this. Like Athanasius, he does not care what the clear majority thinks, preferring to side with the minority which includes Christ instead. Like Athanasius, he is not impressed at having the Papacy against him, and like Athanasius he gladly suffers excommunication at the hands of a Pope to allow true Catholic teaching to continue.

We all know who this brave Archbishop was. Please remember him with affection in your prayers, and ask him to help you in your daily tasks and toils if you think – which would not be surprising at all – that he is in Heaven and can intercede for us wretched sinners fighting not only against the lures of the world, but against a clergy apparently joyously intent in a ceaseless work of self-destruction, and of possible destruction of legal Catholic practice in many Western countries.

To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant, Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman famously said. To be even shallow in Church history is, if you ask me, to cease to be deceived by clericalism or, worse still, papolatry.

The Truth is the Truth is the Truth. We do not adapt the Truth to the thinking of the Clergy, but we measure the work of the Clergy according to its adherence to Truth. Pope Liberius’ mortal spoils have finished decomposing a long time ago, whilst the immortal Truth defended by Athanasius could never die. This our hero never forgot. Several times during the course of his very turbulent life he had to endure exile, humiliation, and physical danger. Never he wavered, knowing he had Truth on his side.

I suggest you remember Athanasius every time you are told the one or other bishop (or Society) must recant or repent or adopt a strange theology because… the Pope says so, perhaps under pain of excommunication.

Athanasius didn’t retract, because he defended the Truth and the Truth is defended against angels, let alone Popes. It is not clear to me why the thinking of the XX Century’s Archbishop or of his followers should be any different than the one of the great saints of the past.

Mundabor

Some Words To A Disappointed Future Convert.

Annibale Carracci, Allegory of Truth and Time.

 

Let us imagine (it is theoretical; but not so much) that someone came to me saying that he is thinking of converting to Catholicism, but in light of the most recent developments he is now in doubt whether to continue on this road.

What I would say to him? Would I be able to give to him some words of encouragement? Would I suggest to him that he goes on along the chosen path and toward conversion to a Church led by the likes of Archbishop Mueller?

Yes of course I would. I would in the most decided of ways. Let me explain why, so that the one or other friendly Proddie thinking of taking the best decision of his (eternal) life may not be tempted into falling back into heresy and, perhaps, perdition.

Out of my sleeve, the arguments I would use are described below. I invite the readers to add other arguments in order to help our imaginary (but not so much) friend.

As the need to help this imaginary (but not so much) friend might be rather pressing and I have no time to revisit my books on the matter, si sbalio mi corigerete…  I would, therefore, argument as follows:

1. The Church is the Truth.   The Church (as the eternal institution, the Bride of the Lord) can simply not be separated from the Truth. You cannot think the Church as separated from being the Truth more than you could think of water as  separated from being wet. 

2. “Church” is a very complex word. The building where the mass takes place is called “church”, but the members of that parish are also called “church”. A family (even a nuclear family) is called “church” (ecclesia domestica). A diocese is also called “church”. The faithful in that diocese are called church, too. The different rites of Catholicism are all called “churches”. Then there is the Church who is, on earth, the visible manifestation of the Bride of Christ. But it does not stop there, as Church is intended, in its ultimate meaning, as a heavenly organisation. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus refers to this last one. To belong to the Church means to belong to the heavenly Bride of Christ, not to agree to the more or less heretical blabbering of bad priests, bad bishops and bad popes. 

3. The Church representatives are (here on earth) not always right, and at times plain wrong. I have given my take about infallibility, and reading the blog post might help the one or the other. But the fact that we must always, always keep in mind is that the Truth that the Church is is not less true because God allows her representatives (as he did Judas) to wound her. This is not the protestant church down the street, whose raison d’être for the faithful ceases the moment  they stop agreeing with the pastor. 

4. The Church has the right to our obedience even when we are forced to disobey to her representatives. If the bishop asks me to participate to some Friday service of some Muslims, I say “no” and don’t care two straws if he says to me that I must do it to promote ecumenism, or to give testimony of my Catholicism, or for “peace and understanding”, or because he orders it. The “first rule of the Italian army” applies: wrong orders are not executed. I do this, because I owe obedience to the Bride of Christ before I do to the bishop. As always, Archbishop Lefebvre explains this much better than I ever could.

5. The Church is not questioned, she is simply obeyed. As to her representative, the way they will be obeyed (or esteemed) will depend from the way they do their job. This is the reason why even among popes – as among bishops, etc. – some are considered wonderful, some very good, some so-so, some positively mediocre, and some unmitigated disasters.  Still, Padre Pio’s saying still stands, that we must love the Church even if she kills us.

In my eyes, a person of prompt intellect and ripe understanding will draw from these arguments enough energy to not only weather the present storm, but be sufficiently prepared for a life of storms, as other one or two or three generations of this madness might be the lot the Lord has allotted to us, probably to punish us for our sins, and perhaps also so that we may train our virtues.

The fundamental step is, in my eyes, the abandonment of the purely Protestant thinking based on which an institution loses credibility if we happen to think their leaders are behaving badly.

Petrus did behave badly, though he recovered in the end. He had to be publicly rebuked by Paul, even, then Paul was no retiring wallflower, and did not suffer under clericalism.

The Church will be with me forever, and I will be with her forever. I will be faithful to her until my last breath, and if the Pope begins to dance in his tutu on St. Peter Square to promote understanding among the people this will not change my allegiance to the Church. Not-one-bit. It would be better for me to die of a horrible death before reaching that point, than to live 120 years of purest unalloyed happiness after deciding that I do not need the Bride. 

I hope this helps.

Mundabor

Papolatry.

Curiously, the Abbe’ de Nantes never accused him of heresy: Pope St. Pius V.

From a sedevacantist site (I do not go there first; google leads me there) a rather funny (if, in the end, serious) list of excuses for the Pontiff’s appointment of Archbishop Mueller, which I give below to you with few modifications:

• Benedict is surrounded by wolves – he’s an innocent lamb fearing for his life
• Benedict is a victim of “The Vatican” – he can only appoint whom the Vatican bureaucrats tell him to appoint – he has no real authority
• Benedict is going senile or off his meds
• Benedict is weak and can’t resist the peer pressure
• Benedict is in a liberal dream – we need to pray for him to wake up
• Benedict doesn’t know Mueller is a heretic – how could he possibly be expected to ensure the man he appoints as watchdog of orthodoxy is orthodox himself?!
• It’s all a big mystery – no one knows what any of this means
• Who are you to accuse someone of heresy?
• Just because Mueller is a heretic doesn’t mean we can know he’s a heretic
• Just because Mueller makes heretical statements doesn’t mean he actually believes what he says
• Mueller isn’t a heretic until Benedict says he is one — and since Benedict will never do that, Mueller can never become a heretic
• Mueller isn’t a heretic – he’s just way smarter than all you simpletons put together.

I am no sedevacantist, and can therefore not accept the Pope be no Pope just because he makes mistakes, and at times serious ones. Many Popes before him have done, many will do. My duty as a Catholic is to bear all this with patience, do what I can to react against it, and hope that the day I die this will be counted in my favour.

But there is no denying the shocking amount of denial going on particularly among the laity. Religious know a Pope can even have heretic opinions (and reputed theologians think some did), he will merely not proclaim them in a dogmatic way. Many among the laity, on the other hand, seem to think that if the Pope were wrong then Catholicism would be wrong, and must therefore try to find any kind of excuse  to explain how what is wrong is, in the end, right.

If you ask me this is not even clericalism anymore, but simple papolatry.

Mundabor