A MainStream Press observation on Bergoglio. Interesting, kinda.

An excerpt from a New York Times article.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/world/europe/vatican-us-catholic-conservatives.html

'If Archbishop Chaput’s own thwarted ambitions are any indication, Francis might not agree. The pope has vexed conservatives by repeatedly declining to elevate Archbishop Chaput to the rank of cardinal, a requirement for entrance into the conclave that will choose the pontiff’s successor. 

'“I was a little bit disappointed,” Cardinal Gerhard Müller, a German conservative appointed by Pope Benedict XVI as the church’s chief doctrinal watchdog, said in a recent interview. “The appointment of the cardinals should not be a personal relation with the pope’s to these bishops,” he said, adding that he was puzzled as to why Francis passed them over. “I don’t know,” he said. “Politics.” '

Raghn aríst: That Cardinal Müller quote is amazing. Read it again. He's a man who just doesn't get it. For all his learning, his education, even his being in the eye of the storm, he's just a helpless "babe in the Bergoglian woods" as it were. Bergoglio has the gingerbread house and has just thrown little Gerhard out, but crows have eaten his corn he left to find a way out of the maze – no, wait Gerhard didn't leave any corn or crumbs. He never though he'd need 'em.

Honestly, feel sorry for him. We Trads have to pray for these people. Say a prayer he can somehow "Think outside the box" his Vat 2 upbringing has sealed him tightly in. (And that's probably the Spirit of Vat 2's worse deed, "dumbing down" such people who clearly ought to know better.

How does God "enlighten" one so dense, though? Archbishop Chaput seems to have it figured out. Sure, he is also a Magisterium Catholic but apparently more toward the "Right", at least certainly in moral teaching and he definitely has courage to stand up for the ancient moral teaching. I suppose of the Modern Church, one can say, it takes all kinds. We'll see how far he's willing to go if Bergoglio keeps firing rounds onto the "conservative" American Catholic Church, à La (in)Civiltà Cattolica article the NYT column above references.

I remember my oldest aunt, a Dominican nun at St. Mary's of the Springs in Columbus, Ohio, one of those Dominican houses that fully embraced Vat 2. She was a teacher, biology, for 50 years or the like but "a babe in the woods" when it came to ecclesiastical manipulation. I remember my outraged mother asking her sister how in the world they had dared to destroy the old altars and artwork at the convent, and my aunt saying with a dismissive flair, "Oh, they told us the wood was rotten." My mother just looked on her with a true "ironic pity'. I can see that look now, 30 plus years later.

Cibe ar bith.

By his appointing Progressive cardinals, Bergoglio has guaranteed what's going to happen at the next conclave: a Prog Pope. Some think the Holy Spirit will intervene and we'll get Cardinal Sarah, as a new JPII. I doubt that highly. Progressives will have their man picked out, as they did with Montini, and then Luciani, and finally with Bergoglio. They might well pick Cardinal Taglia. He'd be mild compared to some, I would guess, and a "lightweight" along the lines of the hapless Luciani, and he's angling for the job, as well, saying not long ago that a priest shouldn't start the Holy Mass with a "Good morning!" I.e., Taglia is trying to show he's more "Middle-of-the-Road" for the Magisteriums. And being a Filipino would make such a choice good tactics ("kill 'em with kindness" in "small degrees") while avoiding electing an African, which would be an over-all popular choice world-wide but who would also probably be far too orthodox for the Progs.

But a Prog is going to be elected pope (unless God intervenes in some shocking fashion, as Luciani died 33 days in to his pontificate) and then the new pope either has to try to squash the Trads, revoking Summorum Pontificum (if Bergoglio hasn't already done that, which I doubt he will, as he doesn't see the danger Traditionalism represents to the Prog Church, and also because he's too busy beating up the Mushy Middle Catholics, his "true enemy" – of course, remember the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate? So only God knows for sure) OR ignore them somehow without "making a scene" – putting us in some sort of official "ghetto" (lump us all in with the SSPX?).

The latter type of thing is simple enough to do, for otherwise the new pope would invite "bad publicity", and almost all of us Trads are more than happy with a studied "benign neglect" (something like Jews have gone through for centuries in their ghettos, actually, come to think of it). But the Prog Doom is not for us Trads. We've been diverging from the official Church for 60 years – or to put it more precisely, they've been diverging from us and the Church as it has been for centuries. We just somehow need to make it official. Maybe a rump of the College of Cardinals will elect a new Trad pope? Very unlikely. The cardinals are not known for their heroism. No, whatever happens, Dia linn (God 'is' with us) as Bishop Athanasius Schneider says, the restoration of Tradition is the work of the Holy Spirit and can't be stopped. No, it's the Trad Catholics who will be ever more and more – quietly, surely, the meek inheriting, as it were – a quiet way out of the Progressive train wreck the Church has become.

It's the Magisterium Catholics, the Mushy Middle, who are scheduled for terror and destruction. Their doom is coming upon them. John Paul II created them, saving the on-the-rocks Church then from what's happening to it now, and Wojtyla is long gone (and forgotten by the Progressive Church already, which made him a "saint" solely in order to banish him to oblivion). No, the transformation of the mainline Catholic Church into the Anglican Church will proceed apace. The Magisteriums will have to decide where they're going to go, one by one, as they wade out into the water like the BEF at Dunkirk.

 And of course the official "Church" will nose-dive into the mountain of reality.

That reality? Empty mainstream press praise will NOT translate into money, pewsitters, or God's blessing. (What doth it profit ye to be given the brass ring of Ba'al yet see God's back into the bargain?) Even now, today, the Vatican is a wholly owned subsidiary of the rich, but (largely) soulless, German church. In 50 years there won't be anything but a rump Progressive "Catholic" Church. AND (this is crucial) it will be divided into "national" language groupings (like the Orthodox) and mostly governed by political synods (like the Anglican Church has become). Incoherent, unable to communicate across language boundaries, and governed (as with Bergoglio) by crass Socialist politicians. As they say on the blogs, "What could go wrong?"

(N.B. Once the Vat 2 geniuses went to a vernacular Church, the wheels were set in motion for breaking the Church up into national-language units. That's crushingly obvious from history. Honestly, only the massively ignorant would not "get" that. It's why the Greeks split from the West to begin with (starting the process well before 1054 A.D., BTW) and why the Orthodox are split up so hopelessly today. But even before 1054, the Copts broke away from the main Church, and the Syrians too, for the most part. The vexing theological issues were and are real, but massively, titanically, secondary to the language problem. Thus, whatever else happens, the only "Roman" Catholic Church in 50 years will be the Trads whose whole raison d'être is the ancient rite in Latin. Even today, the Germans and the Latin Americans act almost as independent churches. This "national" development is inevitable.)

Meanwhile, in 50 years, the Trad Church will have grown to the point where a Trad pope can "retake" Rome. It'll be a lot like the Great Schism from 1378 to 1417 – if we only had our own pope. But the one group of current, modern-day Catholics that'll lose pretty much everything, that's the Magisteriums.

Pray for them that they come to discern what's happening and which way they need to jump, if they want to preserve any faith at all in Christ, Who is the point of all this hassle.

An Préachán