Fr. James Altman's Travails Comment the First

Amici,

Fr. James Altman seem to be (I say seems to be as of this writing, and if I find anything else published about it, I will write it here) cancelled from LifeSiteNews. 

I think enough is enough. I support Fr. Altman because he's right. Myself, to put it short and sweet, I find those insisting Bergoglio is pope to be in the wrong for two primary – and concrete – reasons. 

First, because Bergoglio not being pope is self-evident, and I mean as self-evident as the law of non-contradiction or the law of sufficient reason. 

1. It is a self-evident truth, based on ten years of observing the Argentine. Give him his due. One does that by being honest about what Bergoglio is doing.
   
2. He's doing absolutely everything in his power to smash what's left of the pre-Vat II Church, dismiss the Vat II Church itself with the back of his hand, and create an entirely new Church, a construct neither Paul 6, JP2, or Benedict would recognize. 
3. This is, as I insist, self evident.

Second reason involves Cognitive Dissonance. "Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort that results from holding two conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes. People tend to seek consistency in their attitudes and perceptions, so this conflict causes unpleasant feelings of unease or discomfort." 

1. Or the loss of faith, as well. 
2. To try to maintain the conscious idea that someone burning down your house is the actual fire chief, i.e. a nice guy whose job is to preserve your house, is just nuts. You'd go cross-eyed believing that.
   
3. A woman maintaining the guy who beats her daily really loves her, she's going to go mad. (Or is mad.) How could she not? 
4. Insisting that "Pope Francis" is pope resembles someone following Denethor's order's to light the pyre upon which he has laid himself and his son Faramir. The few stalwarts who did that – who followed Denethor because he was their liege-lord, after all, and in office as Stewart of the City – finally fled in dismay and horror as Denethor burned alive.

Final thought: The Church arranged for there to be no legal way to remove a bad pope. A canon law to that effect had existed but Church worthies removed it during the promulgating of the new Canon Law of 1917. Think of that. People often say you or I have no standing to say anything about Bergoglio not being pope, but then, consider this: a Cardinal of the Church has no legal standing to do so, either. The greatest living theologian (whoever that might be) doesn't, as well. We've made our own funeral pyre, and now have to lie on it.

Or do we? We're Catholics, not Protestants. We can't just go across the road and start the Second Catholic Church like some Baptists might go across the road and start a Second Baptist Church. But we're not powerless. According to our station in life, as people not in the Church hierarchy, we can, as much as possible, live like Catholics, keeping the Faith and teaching it much like those Catholics in England did after Elizabeth Tudor, Sataness daughter of Anne Boleyn and some lover or other, made Catholicism illegal in England. Had Elizabeth kept her "sister" Mary's Catholicism after Mary's death, the pressure would have been very high for her to give place to an actual blood heir (that being Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland, a great-granddaughter of King Henry VII of England). And the upstarts who really ruled England, William Cecil and his son Robert, wouldn't have that. They had Mary executed in 1587. (Elizabeth herself claimed what today is called "plausible deniability".)

So, as with all those poor Catholics martyred for the Faith under Elizabeth and the Cecils, events beyond our control might well engulf us, as well. What we're going through now is a form of martyrdom, on its initial level. Sacrifice for the Faith. Christianity is a religion of sacrifice. It's not a religion of power, of bigshots, but the weak and marginal. 18 “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. 19 If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you." (Gospel of John, 15 chapter)

Look up Traditional Catholic Teaching about "earning a crown" and what "merit" can mean. When was the last time you heard any of this preached from a pulpit?

   An Préachán