Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin as Dewey, Cheatum, and How, Part II

A Catholic had been arguing with a Protestant on a blog and the former gave in to the latter enough to say that "Justification" comes first, and then "Sanctification", a classic Protestant notion.

I wrote:

If I may interject, an offer an observation. You wrote, "One is justified by faith, that is step one. Step two is sanctification."

No, it's not. 1 Corinthians 6:11 lays out the sequence: "And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." Notice how this is

the opposite of what Protestantism teaches. Protestantism teaches you are justified first by faith, then you are baptized as an outward sign of your inner justification, and then you work toward sanctification. But that's NOT what St. Paul wrote. He said you hare first baptized, then sanctified, and then justified! Almost the exact opposite of Protestant teaching.

Your correspondent reads like an excellent person, indeed, but like most Protestants, she doesn't "get it" about what Christianity is: Transformation in Christ. St. Paul, the Protestant go-to guy, is always saying something like "In Christ you are a new creation!" •2 Cor 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (Again, a new creation.)

2 Peter 1:4 might well put it best, but see also St Paul in Romans, 6:4, 7:6, 12:2; Galatians 3:27; Ephesians 4:22-24; Colossians 3:8-12. And it's not just Peter and Paul! •John 1:12 “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (Obviously, a new creation.)

St. John's "ye must be born again" fits perfectly into this. To be born again is a new, transformed, creation. "You are a teacher in Israel," Our Lord says to Nicodemus, "and you don't know this?" Israel was all about the Covenants, and our participation in the Covenants transform us just as it did the Jews – far more so, of course. God set up a system of salvation from the beginning, one told through the OT via the Covenants, participation in which transformed "God's people" then and MORE SO now, through Seventh, and Last New Covenant, the Holy Eucharist. The great St. Athanasius said it VERY plainly, indeed. "For the Son of God became man so

that we might become God." (De inc. 54, 3: PG 25, 192B) and [CCC 460] And of course St. Thomas: "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods." (Opusc. 57, 1-4) [CCC 460]

The traditional Catholic way of saying this was "infused grace", and opposed that the Protestant "imputed grace". We are truly changed in our nature – when the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity became Man, He elevated human nature so it could receive Him, and then through Baptism removes Original Sin's impediment to this, and then the Holy Eucharist fulfills it (with Confession restoring the infused grace if necessary). The Eastern Churches call it "Theosis". There's no more amazing, profound, uplifting, glorious story – yet alas, Protestants are still out in the weeds coming up with theological excuses about how such transformation is both not necessary and impossible.

Martin Luther said we were NOT transformed and grace was not imputed. Rather, we were manure piles covered with God's grace-snow. C.S. Lewis, a Protestant, in his 10th Letter to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer, has a gentle, polite, but absolute take-down of Luther's doctrine.

("Jack" Lewis obviously partnered with Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe for the most part, but he clearly kept an untrusting eye on 'em!)

An Préachán

Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin as Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe (or Cheatum, Fleecem, and Scramm) Part I

I've been blogging some apologetics lately, and once again it is driven home to me how Luther, Zwingli and Calvin were the infamous law partners "Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe" (Do we cheat 'em, and how!) 

Once again, I've had to discuss why Catholics believe, are supposed to believe, in the Real Presence. The following is some bits of that. 

The idea, the dogma, of Our Lord being truly present in the consecrated bread and wine goes back to the beginning, as in St. Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 11: 23-32. Notice how St. Paul says, "What I have received from the Lord is what I have passed on to you...", an oath of sorts, a "I solemnly swear I'm telling the truth". He says almost the same thing in chapter 15 at verse 3, "For what I received I passed along to you as of first importance," after which he witnesses to Our Lord's Passion, Resurrection, and the the Apostles meeting with the Resurrected Christ. It is a formal testimony to the reality of Christ rising from the dead. 

He even mentions five hundred of the brethren who saw Christ at one time. A Greek speaker with something of a classical education (as well as a Pharisaic one), I think St. Paul is mentioning these 500 (no where else referenced in the NT) because he would have known that in Athens, the greatest intellectual seat of the original Greek-speaking world (surpassed in the larger Mediterranean world by Alexandria, of course), a man on trial for his life faced a jury of 500. I think he's saying he has evidence that would pass an Athenian jury in that city's heyday. So therefore back in chapter 11, when he says he is passing on what he "received from the Lord" is an upping of the witness, a supreme capping of the oath. I think there can be no question that St. Paul means Christ is truly present, and that is what St. John in his chapter 6 is on about, for he would be writing after the Synoptic Gospels and he, John, did not include a Last Supper/Institution scene – instead, we went into a extended narrative about the reality of eating Christ's Body and Drinking His Blood. The Early Church Fathers after St. John clearly taught the Real Presence, but they used Platonic philosophy to explain to the pagans how such a thing could be. "Sign" and "signify" language – but they meant by that that the image contains a real essence of the higher reality (a basic tenant of Platonism).

They did not mean it in the more modern sense of only "symbolizes" the reality. (I've had Catholics, middle-aged, salt-of-the-earth types, tell me the Eucharist is "only symbolic"!)

By Aquinas' day, the up-and-coming theologians (like St. Thomas) used Aristotle, and thus developed the Transubstantiation definition. A wonderful lecture on this, and one very respectful to Protestants, is given here by Msgr. Frank Lane. I highly recommend it.

Assurance of Salvation?

Protestantism teaches – well, most denominations teach (20,000 of them, so it's difficult to say "all" of such a mass – Assurance of Salvation. It may be "stressful" for an individual not to have that, yes. But there it is. The "assurance of salvation" teaching wasn't a doctrine of the Historical Church (Catholic and Orthodox) but a Protestant invention. Luther never felt "a new creation in Christ" so he rewrote the "source code" of the Faith to include this doctrine via a (then) novel interpretation of Holy Scripture, that indeed we not not new creations but manure (sin) covered with snow (God's imputed grace).

Traditional Catholicism taught "infused grace" versus the Protestant "imputed grace". 

In any case, one thing we can be certain of, on Judgment Day, at our own Judgment, we'll each be able to quote Psalm 19, verse nine (its second half), as President Lincoln did during his second inaugural: "The judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether." That you can bank on.

No one given a ticket to Hell will cry that their judgment isn't just, that's its "unfair" or, horrors, "racist!" 

There's that, at least!

An P

Robert Mueller and the Rule of the Unrepresentative, Vacuous, and Narcissistic

It looks like Mueller is seriously embarrassing himself at the Congressional hearing.

 

The Democrats staged a last-minute play in which Robert Mueller has an assistant at the hearings today. President Trump called it accurately.  

See also a "Sundance" article on it at The Conservative Treehouse.:

An excerpt:

Remember, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller didn’t come into this process as an ‘outsider’, and Mueller didn’t select his team. The corrupt Lawfare team inside government (FBI Counsel James Baker, DOJ Deputy Andrew Weissmann, FBI Deputy McCabe etc.) already knew Mueller. The team had established personal and professional connections to Mueller, and they brought him in to lead the team.

When you realize that Robert Mueller didn’t select the team; rather the preexisting team selected their figurehead, Robert Mueller; then results make sense. Robert Mueller can never be allowed to testify alone to congress because if questioned he actually has very little understanding of what took place.

Not enough people understand the role of the Lawfare group in the corruption and political weaponization of the DOJ, FBI and larger intelligence community.

An P again:
So Mueller shows he indeed has very little understanding of what took place. Pretty shocking? Nope, only that the Democrats were stupid enough to ask for this.

Amici, the following is a depressing meditation on U.S. politicians.

The Democratic party is in decomposition. It fully embraced, over a decade or less after 1974, abortion. It took a while but eventually no Democrat could run as a Pro-Lifer. Supporting evil in any form leads to moral blindness – if it isn't already a product of evil. Thereafter, the party's been room temperature since 1994 – the election of 1992 was won by a "New Democrat" outsider, remember, one from the "New South" who was going to turn around an already then unpopular Democrat party. Unfortunately, he turned out to be a rapist ogre who on his best day was a narcissistic imbecile. He let his Lesbian wife govern and she governed from the Left (such as it was in those days) and the result so turned off the nation that the Republicans promptly took Congress in the 1994 "off-year" election. (Then the Republican "GOPe" Bourbons ran a hopeless candidate, Bob Dole, in 1996, and OF COURSE lost.)

The destruction of the Democrats is in part the result of a long Left/Communist take-over attempt of the Democrat Party, dating back to FDR's day: that feline man deep-sixed Al Smith from the 1932 election and from the party inner-circles. Smith, the party's 1928 presidential candidate and a strong Catholic, was the last relatively honest and certainly full-"American" (man-of-the-people) to run for president on a Democrat ticket. Smith's origins were absolutely blue-collar ethnic New Yorker. Aside from the "accidental president, Harry Truman, (and the feckless Jimmuh Carter), Smith was the last such – all the other Dem presidents were "connected" and usually Ivy League; Bill Clinton, the rapist, was a Rhodes Scholar. They're elites, Bourbons, Mandarins.

Today, after 25 years of mucking through the administrations of Ivy-Leaguers Bush 2.0 and Clinton-Toned-Brown, both Globalists without too much to choose between them, the current, similarly educated Democrat candidates are utter morons – or, if one or two isn't absolutely stupid, he/she(it?) is the worse kind of political hack. They're all the political version of sexbots: they all say and do and "think" the same thing – because they follow their programming – which is solely predicated on getting power, no "vision thing" (Bush 1.0) required; as with sexbots, our only choice among them is in which color or "gender" we want them to be. It's insane. They're non-entities. Non-beings, actually. They're C.S. Lewis' "chestless men".

But then, to be scathingly honest, with the exception of Trump and before him Reagan, and before Reagan the failed Barry Goldwater campaign, and before those three Calvin Coolidge and Theodore Roosevelt (the latter two both also "accidental" presidents themselves – in fact, all five of these men ran against the Republican elites of their day: think of that; the best presidents of the Republican Party in the last 100 years were outsiders!), the Republicans on the presidential level have produced NOTHING but empty-shirt pol(itical)bots, too – though mostly not Ivy-Leaguer: Alf Landon, Wendell Willkie, Thomas E. Dewey ("the little man on the wedding cake:), Dick Nixon, Gerry Ford, Bob Dole, McCain, the Bushes (actual Ivy Leaguers): come on! (Eisenhower, of course, was an apolitical general.)

Bottom line: The political system is failing, drowned in it upper echelons by ciphers and hacks, with a massive number of government mandarins, federal and state (the higher level of the government's bureaucrats and the huge number of government contract workers) calling the shots through their union power and political pull; such "mandarins" (the definition of being governed by bureaucrats) naturally vote to keep things the way they are; i.e., unrepresentative, vacuous, and narcissistic.

With the help of such a system, were a Democrat to win in 2020, he/she/it would have to open the borders (they've run on this, after all) and stop the economic growth Trump has generated (they've run on that, too) – and of course besides flooding the country cretinous illegals from Central America, they'd flood it with infanticide, transsexual loons who are shoving women out of sports and bathrooms, and generally imitate Emperor Julian in trying to drive Christianity back into the politically incorrect catacombs. They've run on all of this.

Were such to win, they'd precipitate a true Civil War.

It's that bad, amici.

An Préachán

Mueller Testimny: Would the Democrats Really Impeach Trump?

Robert Mueller is supposed to testify before Cogress this week, but then again at the last moment, he might not. If Mueller does show up, it will be "scripted" to fit the Democrats' "narrative" of "Orangeman Bad". 

But since their narratvie of Russian Collusion and so on has failed, would they actually vote to impeach Trump? Mueller will provide innuendo, yet more smoke singals and a squal of hints, but would they walk that plank (to make a toss salad of metaphors!). Surely that would backfire on them like the impeachment of Clinton cost the Republicans. (That makes one wonder what would have happened had Dick Nixon toughed it out, doesn't it?)

If the Democrats impeach President Donald Trump, it would indeed turn out that way, but it might give them some short-term "fix", kinda like trying to get a charcoal fire going by flaming it with igniter fluid -- it doesn't actually get the charcoal glowing but it looks great -- for a moment. So they might "go for it". The Dems are desperate to keep their burnt-out dead-charcoal "narrative" going because they literally have nothing else but race/identity politics now. (Their idiotic presidential candidates ALL say the same things, but we're to choose among them in terms of skin color and "sexual preference." They're not only irrelevant, but boring. 

Excruciatingly so. 

They can't see that because "sin makes you stupid" and decades of supporting abortion, perversion, and theft (their Leftist redistribution of wealth isn't "social justice", it's theft) have left them stupid.

In other words, it all comes down to one's own moral standing, and so many of the Democrats have sold their souls, so they're stupid indeed. And of course, as Hell is the capital of boredom, they reflect their eternal home.

An P

Somali-Canadian Journalist gets herself killed by going to Somalia...

You just cannot make this stuff up. It's tragic, I know, and I know I sound callous. But how else can one respond to such utter stupidity? This now-dead woman was beyond stupid, and her idiotic "virtue signaling" got her room temperature, and her husband, too. She was also pregnant.

Two people, besides herself, dead: all to prove something manifestly insane.

Truly, the "Darwin Award" for this entire family.

An excerpt:

Hodan Nalayeh, a Somali-born Canadian journalist traveled to Somalia last week to prove Somalia is “beautiful” and to challenge ‘stereotypes’ ended up being killed by Islamic terrorists.

Hodan Nalayeh returned to Somalia, the place of her birth, to document the beauty and to tell “uplifting” stories, according to WaPo.

Nalayeh often tweeted about Somalia and just last week posted pictures showing how much fun she was having in Kismayo and the neighboring island of Ilisi.

“It’s so clean & breathtaking. A perfect place for a day swim with the family,” Nalayeh tweeted just two days before she was killed.

One of Nalayeh’s Twitter followers praised her for “countering the doom narrative propagated by many about Somalia.”

On July 12, al-Shabaab terrorists stormed Asasey Hotel in Kismayo. 26 people were killed in the terrorist attack and Hodan Nalayeh, 43, and her husband were among the victims.

According to a Canadian news outlet, Nalayeh was pregnant when she was killed by al-Ahabaab terrorists last week.

An Préachán again: 

The amazing thing is one can't use this story as evidence to Leftists to prove their position is both factually wrong and morally reprehensible. They are incapable of comprehending any "narrative" except the "narrative" they've seemingly sold their souls too. In this regard, this article is interesting.

An excerpt:

I could also mention Brendan Eich, Barronelle Stutzman, Amy Wax, or Bruce Gilley and get the same response. Liberals who are otherwise informed and well-educated are unfamiliar with those names. They followed the Robert Mueller investigation closely, they tally Trump’s misdeeds weekly, and they are anxious about 2020. But the episodes involving the individuals I cite don’t register with them.

These individuals were persecuted by the Left, of course. Well worth a read about how ignorant and closed-minded the Left is.

An P

The "Religion of Peace" at it again...

With all the hullabaloo over Trump calling out Somali Muslim Ilhan Omar -- making Pelosi and the Democrats defend Omar even as this Omar and AOC and Co. get ready to oust Pelosi (not to mention tank the Democrat Party)! -- for her hatred of the U.S., it is good to keep in mind that "The Religion of Peace" keeps living up to its bloody reputation.

For a thorough accounting of the current Martyr Church, see this important article from a few months ago.

And for a reminder of the "Religion of Peace" in a Big Thing they did 336 years ago in a part of the world wherein I currently reside, read this article on the Siege of Vienna in 1683.

Amazon Synod Part II: Damian Thompson calls it "garbage" (he's being polite!)

An update of sorts on my (relatively) "popular" posting about the upcoming Amazon Synod.

Well, Damian Thompson has had enough.

He excoriates Bergoglio and calls the Amazon Synod workup what it is: garbage.

More power to him. And he clearly flays the wretched Bergoglio.

Really, "Bergi" is the gift that just keeps on giving. He (and his "homosexualist" Modernist peeps) will bring down the tottering edifice of the whole Vat2 pastiche. I suppose it should have been foreseen: Leftists always go too far, and provoke a furious reaction. It's only when they control a state, and the state's police and military power that they can't be dislodged. But even then, as with the Soviet Union and now the PRC, they go too far and it all collapses anyway. 

Excellent article, though, this, and a link to the Arroyo interview.

An P

Dishonest, corrupt Academia: Abortion researcher details harassment

Amazing story -- or not so amazing if you know how Academia works.

(Beware pop-up adds).

Just another example of today's corrupt, hypocritical reality.

An P

Belgian Cardinal says the Church must conform to modern society and not try to "conquer lost ground"

Amici,
I recommend a great article on Vatican II's teaching on human dignity and freedom at 1P5. It's an excellent critique of the awful Vat2 pastiche Dignitatis Humanae. 

Here is an example of what Vatican II and Dignitatis Humanae have wrought, and if one is to know a tree by its fruit, this is a wormy fruit Vat2 produced, indeed.

An excerpt (this is a cardinal, mind ye):

I believe that being a Catholic in Europe today means being part of
this scenario. It is the desire to live together while respecting
others. The Church is not here to “reconquer lost ground”. This is not its mission. To be Catholic is to be faithful to one’s convictions in an environment that has changed to a pluralistic society. This implies respect for human being and his or her beliefs.
We must always be respectful of each other, to accept the person as
he or she is, without wanting to impose ourselves on an individual
person or on society. However, we have a mission inside this society. We have convictions and values that we want to defend. It must also be noted that there is interfaith solidarity and this is the mission of the Catholic Church. We stand in solidarity with all those who strive for a more just and more fraternal society.
If we fight for the respect of freedom of religion, it is because we
agree with secularised society, but within this society, we have values to defend. The Catholic Church does not oppose a secularised society.
Citizens have the right to believe or not to believe and I stand for
that.

An Préachán again: as an old, cantankerous Irishman from the West might say, "Don't that drive the spike through the back of the donkey that carried Christ into Jerusalem, now!"
Don't it now, mhuise.

They used to put signs in windows in America: "NINA", No Irish Need Apply". So it is here, with Christ Himself. No place for Our Lord as the purpose and point of life, and transforming the world to Him, baptizing it in His Name. We Catholic Christians just have "values that are important to us" and "interfaith solidarity" to defend. Indeed, or in other words, "We surrender, utterly.

And doesn't line sound so Freemasonry? "We stand in solidarity with all those who strive for a more just and more fraternal society." It just reminds me of "Liberté, égalité, fraternité", itself a Masonic slogan.

An P

Amazon bans books by Dr. Joseph Nicolosi

Gay Inc. (aka Gay Mafia, Gaystapo, St. Gallen Mafia, etc.) can't have its "narrative" challenged, so one gay activist worked tirelessly to get an author (Nicolosi) banned from Amazon, until he succeeded, as the article linked to below details.

"The Left" is always doing this, of course -- shutting down speech (especially noticeable in Academia and Entertainment) and limiting, prohibiting, restricting, and of course damning, any "counter-narrative" that runs against their party line. This article has an interesting take on The Left's emotional state: 

An excerpt:

Because, in the progressive version of reality, there can be no final victory. Identity politics, like its cousin self-pity, consumes all except itself. They don’t want to win. To finally cauterize their obsession would stanch the supply that courses their veins.

I think there are plenty of them who want to win, I mean the demagogues pushing all this, and they follow their beliefs with a Jihadist fervor. They've gone far in taking over Academia and the Arts. How far can they really get, though?

However it works out, it's a constant battle, really, and the Gays are just modelling their efforts on the general Left, how the Socialists do business. Although Thomas Jefferson never said or wrote that "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance," it is a Truism.

I'm not a fan of Jefferson's, but I looked this up and had he said it, I was going to credit him with it. I found out that an Irishman came up with it, in 1790. “The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.” This was by John Philpot Curran, not actually a Curran but a descendant of Cromwellian soldiers in Ireland. However, this Curran was a Henry Grattan-type Irish politician, defended many of the 1798 rebels in court, and opposed the Union with Great Britain in 1800. Of course, the "Deep State" of his day won out in the end. Same thing happened in 1707: the Scottish people didn't want to lose their Parliament, and there were riots in Edinburgh. The "Deep State" won out there, too. "Consent of the governed" has never been a Deep State concern. Europe seems to be the Galactic Center of the Deep State, except for China, which is its universe center.

Perhaps the most famous U.S. use of the Eternal Vigilance line was by the American Abolitionist and liberal (classical liberal) activist Wendell Phillips on January 28, 1852. Speaking to members of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Phillips said:

    “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few. The manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day or it is rotten. The living sap of today outgrows the dead rind of yesterday. The hand entrusted with power becomes, either from human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continued oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot; only by unintermitted agitation can a people be sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.”

Wow, isn't that apropos of today? Truly, there is nothing new under the sun. And just as then the Democrat Party fought to keep their slaves and got their 3/5s clause in the Constitution (Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3)  to give them a larger representation in Congress (and more Electoral votes!) than they deserved, so today the Democrat Party fights to keep their Blacks down on the Asphalt Plantation, and now bring in a huge "Lumpenproletariat" underclass of illegals to do their bidding. 

So of course they have to fight to get these illegals in the Census! It's the exact same ploy as with the 3/5s clause.

Nothing ever changes. Much.

Here's the article about the Amazon book banning, and an excerpt:

In a very disturbing move, Amazon has removed the books of Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, the psychologist whom critics have dubbed “the father of conversion therapy.” In other words, for claiming that sexual orientation is not innate and immutable, and for claiming that change is possible, Dr. Nicolosi’s books must be banned.
This leads to the logical question: Will Amazon ban the Bible next? There is no hyperbole here.
After all, it is the Bible that condemns same-sex relationships and the Bible that speaks of those who once practiced homosexuality but do so no more (see 1 Corinthians 6:9-11). These people, today, would be known as “ex-gays.” And it was Dr. Nicolosi’s life work to help people with unwanted same-sex attractions.
Why, then, should Amazon ban his books but continue to sell the Bible, which provides the theological underpinnings for Dr. Nicolosi’s scientific work?

Answer to Mike about "Wacky goings-on within the Church"

Hi Mike,

You write:

As I read about all this wacky goings-on within the Church, I cannot help but recall the words from Matthew 16 where Jesus says to Peter, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."  Seems to be quite a promise.  Gotta believe that Jesus knew what he was talking about. 

MIKE

I've been thinking how to answer this one, Michael. Three options come to mind.

I suppose Option 1 is to get on the Vat2 Church Bandwagon, i.e., become a Progressive Modernist oneself. They're in power now, and so many in the hierarchy, whatever their personals beliefs, are now "out and proud" pro-Gay Progressives. They're weather vanes, they blow which way the wind blows.

Option 1 stinks, of course. Anyone who really believes the religion, accepts it as Divine Revelation, can't join The Church of What's Happening Now. That's an act of non-belief in itself.

Option 2 is to cry up, "To your tents, O Israel!" as Jeroboam did in King Rehoboam's day. It has lots of drama, but it didn't work out so well for the Northern Kingdom, soon conquered by sin, unbelief, and scattered to the four winds by the Assyrians. That's the Protestant option -- and there are now 20,000 Protestant denominations. They scattered. A cacophony. There's also cacophony on the Orthodox side of things (big "O" crowd, not those in Communion with Rome); they are hopelessly divided along linguistic and national lines, and that's the looming fate of the mainstream Western Church that doesn't return to the Latin Mass. (This "nationalization" is something that can't be reversed, really, except by a "conversion" to the TLM!)

So, what's behind Door Number 3?

Recently, to the extent I pay attention to religious sites, I look a good bit at OnePeterFive and a handful of others. Not much chance recently to blog anything. But it is clear from what I read that "Conservative" Catholics, those Middle-of-the-Roaders (aka Magisterium Catholics) who tend toward orthodoxy -- probably the actual majority of Catholics in the world -- are pretty much at the end of their rope. Hence my comments about Robert Royal and Fr. Murray. Another season or two of The Bergoglio Show and they'll become Hindu Kanwariyas, making their pilgrimage to the Ganges, singing to Shiva.

As a "Trad" Catholic, I don't really care too much about the Progressive (Left-Wing) Catholics; they're not Catholic any more, except in their own minds, sort of like Mormons consider themselves "Christian". One can, after all, only walk so far out on the plank before one falls into the sea. Deny you've fallen into water, deny you're drowning: fine; but one's denials don't change reality.

Of course I feel very sorry for the Magisteriums. Their bishops are either aiders and abetters in the Gay / Modernist / Secularist takeover of the Church, or they are somnolent zombies. (The left-tending Magisteriums are very similar to the Progressives, and seem unable to "read the signs of the times." Or perhaps they've given up reading; theirs is a "feel good" faith!)

Zombie bishops: take the U.S. bishop's recent vote on June 12th to (what, exactly? Endorse? Accept? Ratify? -- classic Vat2 "creative ambiguity!) Bergoglio's condemnation of the Death Penalty, for example: they voted 194 to 8 to favor Bergi's heresy, with three abstaining. The Catechism will be "reformulated".

Now, take note that the bishops use a secret ballot, so we cannot know their names! We don't know who the eight orthodox ones are, though perhaps we can guess. But aside the heresy the 194 are embracing, consider that we have, in effect, a "faceless bureaucracy" voting to do X, Y, and Z, and no actual individual is responsible. A bishop is God-on-earth to his diocese, God's vicar, His stand-in, God's direct representative, accountable on Earth (as it is currently sent up) only to the pope, who as top bishop (he's not consecrated pope, but elected; it is a juridical-executive position as God's vicar general on Earth, as it were) and court of final appeal. In that capacity, a pope can remove or discipline a bishop. Over the past century or so, the Vatican has come to be the sole appointer of bishops, too. The episcopal bench used to be locally elected (by Cathedral chapters) and only affirmed by Rome when the news eventually got to Rome. Occasionally a pope would appoint a bishop directly, but that was usually an archbishop. By the time the first trans-Atlantic cables were laid (mid-19th century), the pope at that time began to assume "up close and personal" control of bishops (he of Vatican I fame, Pio Nono).

Speaking of archbishops, the archbishops currently have some small role to play today in lower bishops' Church discipline, too, but the archbishops should be the ones directly answerable to the pope, and responsible for managing their suffragan bishops -- there are over 5000 bishops in the world, and that's far too many for the Vatican to directly manage. It used to be that the pope of the time would send a pallium to a local bishop (or include the man with the pallium!) to manage a nation's bishops, to be the pope's man-on-the-scene, the archbishop. The buck always stopped at the archbishop -- though on very rare occasions it might be passed to Rome. But as it is now, there's just no actual responsibility for overseeing the overseers (the definition of episkopoi) except these faceless national bishop conferences and ultimately the faceless Vatican bureau responsible for bishops. All these insulate the pope from direct responsibility.

So, while these national bishops' conferences are not the actual Church rulers in each country in terms of God-ordained responsibility, yet, for all intents and purposes, they actually govern the national Churches of each nation! AND they're essentially anonymous! Say you are one of the eight against the 194 (sort of like the Seven Against Thebes) -- you oppose the heretical pope (for heretic Bergoglio is, as he himself evinces about every time he opens his mouth, as with this Amazon synod ) -- but now you're stuck with going against your conscience because of some anonymous vote!

Needless to say, were I a bishop, I would resign from the bishop conference and explain why, and in effect dare the bureaucrats (in the national bishop conference or Rome) to remove me! All that garbage is yet another rotten fruit of the Animus of Vatican II. But it is running the Church -- into the grave.

Of course, none of them have that kind of chutzpah, if I may use that word.

So were does that leave us? What's behind Door Number Three. The Gates of Hell will not prevail, as Matthew says, but then Scripture is written on many levels, like a Shakespeare play. And it raises the question: What is the Church? The old answer is the faithful laity of the bishops who are in Communion with the pope in Rome. But what happens when the pope is a heretic? It is a Scylla and Charybdis situation: you can't be Catholic and not be in Communion with the pope and yet you can't be in Communion with a heretic.

What to do with a heretic pope? Can anything be done? The question has been asked in the past and various saints and theologians have put forward various answers, but the bottom-line is we have to wait it out, to let God Himself take care of it. We just need to be prayerful and suffering. Suffering is at the core of the Faith, so suffer, offer it up. No actual mechanism exists to judge a sitting pope, after all. Some writers I like say Bergoglio is a "severe mercy" God has afflicted us with, in order to trash out and drive a stake through the unquiet corpse that is the Vatican II Church. That's probably true. Even Satan himself, the top (lowest?) guy, does God's will, much against Satan's will and much to his eternal chagrin. And it is a trope of Greek tragedy that the king who acts to prevent a prophecy from coming true, well, in that very act he brings about the circumstances that eventuate the prophecy!

The Door Three option isn't purely passive, either. We can certainly stop funding the dying Vatican II Church, taking care only of our local orthodox priests and monastic communities. (This is what mostly happens today -- the mainstream Church lives off of U.S. government money given out for "refugees".) That's hard to do in any event because Pope Plutarco Elías Calles will unleash his gay Federalis against them at any time. True, we've yet to rise up in a La Cristiada revolución against Pope Callous Calles Bergoglio, but it's coming, in God's good time. (What we really need is a General Enrique Gorostieta, of course.) "Viva Christo Rey!" we should all be saying, as the Cristeros shouted when they shot up the Federalis down in Old Mexico. Of course, the mainstream Church betrayed them, then. But now it has betrayed itself. 

The Bottom Line

All we can do is try to live like Catholics ought to live -- as any good Christian ought to live, whatever their perception of what "Church" is: i.e., if you live by the Gospels, you should know that The Figure therein -- Yehoshu'a, Joshua of Nazareth, is interested in primarily two things: how we treat one another, A, and B, whether we recognize Him. "Be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect", said Joshua of Nazareth (Matthew 5:18). In the Historical Church (Catholicism and the Orthodoxies) that means baptism and then Holy Communion, by which we "take on Christ", "put on Christ" become "new creations in Christ" (St. Paul used various ways to say this). Protestantism rejects the Holy Eucharist being God Himself and thus deletes the possibility of this Transformation/Divinization in Christ, what the Greeks call Theosis. For Protestants, as Luther taught, we can't be perfect and are manure piles covered with God's grace, entering Heaven shining outside but reeking of filth within. But that is clearly NOT what the New Testament teaches, and the New Testament is not the 27 books of the Bible Christians use, but the Holy Eucharist itself, the Seventh Covenant, the one God made with Himself, Father and Son, through Himself, the Holy Spirit.

The Most Holy Lord God of Hosts would not pour Himself into walking manure piles.

This "be perfect as your Heavenly Father is" is also NOT what Jorge Bergoglio teaches -- to the extent he's revealed his mind on this, it is Lutheran, and how can that be surprising since Modernism developed in Lutheran 19th century Germany? Modernism is essentially Lutheran: we're incapable of fulfilling Matthew 5:18, so "sin boldly, Philip," as Luther wrote Melanchthon. Isn't that exactly what Pope Francis teachers? Anyone who teaches otherwise, he says, is a Pharisee.

Whatever. It's a crazy world. Always was. Hold on, Mike. The krill of the Modernists have been swallowed by the humpbacked whale and we orthodox minority are like Marlin and Dori, the fish in Finding Nemo, about to be blown out through the whale's blow spout as the krill remain behind to be digested.

Well, something intestinal like that! :D

An Préachán