Give Bergi a little credit, him or his "creatures and hangers on"

Friends,

Regarding this news that indeed, the Traditional Latin Mass will be widely banned, essentially outlawing it for any non-FSSP or ICKSP priest to say it  –

Give Bergoglio and his henchmen (Andrea Grillo, Tucho "Kissy" Fernandez, Vittorio Francesco Viola, & Arthur Roche) a little credit. They know full well they can't have the pre-Vatican II TLM Mass being offered because it shows – wildly, unmistakably – that the Vatican II Mass (more specifically, the Hannibale Bugnini "Spirit of Vatican II Mass") is definitely NOT Catholic, or at the very least "Catholic Lite". They can't allow the TLM to exist because it accuses them manifestly and continually. It shows them up. They want to finally "fulfill" or "complete" what they allege Vatican II started, and the TLM is a roadblock to that.

Also, remember, the Bergoglians are working on a new even more "ecumenical" liturgy that won't have a consecration. Little mentioned in the mainstream Catholic press, it has been written up and they're going to use it for the Synodal Church.

In this context, you can see why Bergoglio is pushing this right now – or his imps Grillo, Fernandez, Viola and Roche might be pushing it, as Tio Jorge himself doesn't celebrate liturgy at all and seemingly couldn't  care less. (How ironic that the champion of the Novus Ordo rite is obviously bored with it!)

Of course, trying so outrageously and stupidly to ban the TLM will ironically even prove all this to all but the most unhinged papal supremacists. Their own acts will reveal them. 

So in the Libyan fable it is told
That once an eagle, stricken with a dart,
Said, when he saw the fashion of the shaft,
"With our own feathers, not by others' hands,
Are we now smitten."

Aeschylus

Only these clowns are not eagles. They're dodos.

Kinda like the Biden administration, actually. 

  An Préachán

Benedict and the TLM; the Pivot has come

Amici,

The "mild" Vatican II Reformer, Joseph Ratzinger, has now passed on to Judgment, and while we can and should pray for him, we cannot be presumptuous one way another or about that Judgment. Certain types of Protestants, and now no few "Catholics", seem to think one's eternal Salvation is "in the bag", not apparently realizing they're wallowing in the Sin of Presumption. The Anti-Pope Bergoglio has plainly said no one can really live up to God's Commandments anyway, so "chill out." Very Protestant, old Bergi is. Luther and Co. should welcome him, if that is how that his own judgment turns out.

Benedict's Greatest Deed

Focusing historically and theologically, however, on one issue, Benedict XVI has forever garnered a pivotal place in ecclesiastical history because of his "freeing" the Traditional Latin Mass. It was the major achievement of his reign and I have no doubt the cause of his downfall. So to note his passing, I would like to bring up what his Summorum Pontificum of July 2007 effected in the Church, or more precisely, what it began to recognize as the Holy Ghost's actions were already bringing about. For now that Ratzinger has died, a major turning point, a true pivot, has been reached.

Hindsight has to reveal to anyone not blinded by Modernist bias that, despite the Official Church doing what it could to suppress the TLM, the Holy Ghost wanted it back. For despite what the spiritually dead, the spiritually deaf, or simply the spiritually stupid insist upon, the record since 1970 shows God wants the Traditional Latin Mass restored. The Church of 2023 bears little resemblance to what it was before 1963. Bringing it back is the strongest – and certainly most Catholic – movement in the Church today. Whatever Pope Benny's true intent, whether he recognized the whole "Vatican II Shtick" was up (something John Paul II could not do), or whether he actually thought that the old Mass could live side-by-side in a happy, symbiotic relationship with the new, both "enriching" the other in a "mutual enrichment" for a goodly length of time – whatever he thought, Benedict certainly did God's will in freeing, or trying to free, the TLM from the clutches of the Modernist hierarchy.

That Modernist hierarchy was enraged, and they got rid of Pope Ratzinger. Fourteen years after Summorum Pontificum, they promulgated its opposite, Traditionis Custodes (best translated literally as "Jailers of Tradition") on 16 July 2021. And they've since worked to undo Summorum Pontificum in more ways with ever more rulings.

For an important article about what damage the Modernist Anti-Catholics have done to the TLM laity and the clergy, review this article at Rorate. The interviewee makes the interesting point that Bergoglio and Traditionis Custodes haven't laid a glove on the growing SSPX and have a spotty record harassing what had been the "Ecclesia Dei" communities (FSSP, ICKSP). What havoc and devastation it has produced are in the regular diocesan priests who have tried to learn and offer the TLM. A very interesting article.

And regarding Benedict and his TLM efforts, it is remarkable how the TLM took off in regular parishes. It would not stay "sidelined" in specialist shops wherein the Modernists clearly hoped to exile it. Average, everyday clergy and laity wanted it, do want it today, and no matter how hard Bergoglio and the Modernist unbelievers try now, all the Mass-closing antics are the detritus of impotent fools and knaves, the shouting of a mob about to be dispersed by God's will. We must prepare. Bergoglio will unleash all Hell on the Church now that Joseph Ratzinger is dead, from many directions, and no one can pretend Bergoglio has the best interests of the Church at heart. Yet when the storm has subsided, the TLM will be welcomed by Catholics as the standard of quiet, holy sanity in worship. It will be welcomed as the most Catholic form of worship. That's the significant pivot that will occur to the multitude of "Survivor Catholics". 

It is an incarnation of the Crucifixion: even as the Devil thought he had defeated Christ by casting down the ancient liturgy, even as he thought he had triumphed, it turned out to be the opposite of what he had thought. If crucifying Christ didn't work, crucifying His liturgy won't, either.

Pray, and hope.

  An Préachán

Psalm 146 of the Douay-Rheims: verse 9:

Who giveth to beasts their food: and to the young ravens that call upon Him.

"The latest example of a sociopathic gaslighter" (Bergoglio, not Biden)

Amici,

As if we do not have enough in this crazy, dying civilization to worry about! Dar Crom! This line in the title is from an excellent article by J. Basil Dannebohm on the nefarious Bergoglio's recent manipulations regarding his overt approval of the FSSP (Priestly Society of Saint Peter) saying the Latin Mass, and all the other sacraments and ordinations, etc., according to the 1962 Missal of Pope John XXIII. We ought, of course, to be celebrating the rites according to the pre-1955 Missals because after that date, the truly evil Freemason Hannibal ('grace of Ba'al') Bugnini wrecked the Easter rites in an infamous decimating precursor maneuver to Bugnini's wrecking the Traditional Latin Mass and Rites after 1965. (BTW, if you had the name "Hannibal" and you wanted to be a priest, would you keep "Grace of Satan" as your name? Just sayin'.)

The article is here at Memorare. It is full of excellent and excoriating quotes, so please give it a read.

Meanwhile, Timothy J. Flanders at One Peter Five takes a more toned down approach. Flanders asks us to pray for the "Holy Father", otherwise, this guy:

Uh, yeah, right. Bergoglio should keep to his ferocious frown. You can ask me to believe a lot of stuff, but that this individual is a legal pope, nope, sorry. I agree with Patrick Coffin here. And besides the details Coffin explains, the Catholic Church is not a mutual intellectual or spiritual suicide cult: we don't have to believe absolutely contradictory things such as a guy is pope when that guy doesn't do what pope's are elected to do: protect and serve Christian Tradition, which includes Divine Revelation and Tradition as the Holy Ghost has developed it from the first (and only) Pentecost. "Bergi" has not done that, so ipso facto, he's just an Argentinian Peronist residing in the Vatican. (And I hasten to add, don't let anyone bog you down with ridiculous sedevacantist palaver; its usually just a club to beat you with "in order to improve your morale".)

Listen to Coffin. Be enlightened.

As for Bergoglio and the FSSP, I'm reminded of the story about the Egyptian god Toth: he gave Pharaoh the gift of writing. Pharaoh was profusely grateful, but Toth said, "Hold up, oh Pharaoh, for know this: what I give with one hand I take with the other. Now that I have given you the gift of writing, know that I have taken the gift of memory. Now that you can read, you won't be able to commit to long memory all that you knew before." (Toth was impossible to play poker with.)

Bergoglio has surely done the same: he's given the FSSP (and others, such as Christ the King Sovereign Priest, etc., the written gift of permission to worship in full Catholicity, but taken from away from them any protection in doing so from the Wolf Bishops (Hyena Bishops? Maybe their deity is Anubis?) such as the truly execrable sodomite bishop of Knoxsville, Richard "Short Sleeves" Stika. (Read Dannenbohm again, this time about Stika here.)

As Dannenbohm writes, we must pray for the tormented souls who must reside in such bishoprics. I forget how bad it is "out there". If you have a bishop like those, pray! All the "signs of the times" indicate massive change is upon us, for good or ill.

An Préachán é fhéin

Time for Some Uplift: Gregorian Chant

 Amici,

With all the bad things occurring (and dar Crom, they're getting worse every day), one needs a little uplift, so here's mine, FWIW: Gregorian Chant.

First, this documentary is about "Chant Camp" at an FSSP parish in San Diego, St. Anne's. The FSSP were invited in by the bishop previous to the current one, the notorious Robert McElroy, known for his flagrant Progressivism – I'm just glad he hasn't shut down the parish, St. Anne's, and surprised, too. Though maybe Governor Gruesome has done that for McElroy.  (They're trying to let Covid do it for them; if you wish, you can go here: to read about the insane conditions under which Holy Mass is said there – insane, that is, for those who bother to find out the truth about the now endemic Covid, etc.)

In the video (made in 2014), the PP discusses chant:

Fr. Gismondi, FSSP:

Pope Pius X said there are three special qualities in sacred music.
First, there has to be a sanctity in the music.
And then there has to be a beauty of form in the music.
He says when both of these are present, then a third quality spontaneously arises, and that is universality.

An P again:

That, of course, is polar opposite to much modern Church thinking about music!

At nine minutes in; Mary Ann Carr Wilson (you can listen to her sing various classical pieces here) the parish choir director and a professional musician and singer of note (see further below), talks about how the idea of Chant Camp came to her a year after they started up the parish.

Excerpt:

It not about one or two showcasing their voice. It's about a whole team. The kids, they're a team. They use their diverse strengths to praise God. There's a real team atmosphere to chant camp. I like to joke around that I'm the coach and I'm the cheerleader, and they're the team. And they're supporting each other and helping each other out. Some of the teens, for example, are really advanced in Gregorian chant, and they help/reinforce the others. One of the things I stress is this is a movement. I want you to be able to carry this forward. This is a an aural art. It doesn't happen unless they're trained how to teach other people. So it has this very evangelical aspect to it, that you're sharing it...You're going to be sharing that with other kids.

(10:22) There are two things in the structure of chant that make it different from other types of music. One very notable thing is the concept of rhythm in Gregorian chant. Gregorian chant will focus on text.... The text, to a large extent, determines the rhythm, or it shapes the rhythm. And in fact what you find is it pulls back and forth between syllable groups of roughly two and three. So you'd have something like (she sings a Kyrie eleison line to demonstrate her point). What this means in shifting rhythm is that A, you're able to capture the text in a way you're not in a fixed rhythm or meter-driven (music). And B, the rhythm itself is not predictable. It's timeless, it's outside of time. And in fact, that's one of aims of Gregorian chant, to take you outside of time. So it's a wonderful way to be expressing what's happening in the Mass.

An Préachán:

That's one of the reasons people are attracted to the TLM (Trad Latin Mass), is Otherworldly, verticality, its outside-of-time spirit. It fits very well with The Ancient One's insight to Dr. Strange: "You cannot beat a river into submission. You have to surrender to its current and use its power as your own." Gregorian is a beautiful river in the power of the Holy Ghost, that's for sure. You cannot beat its gift of grace into submission to melodies and the rhythm of the Metronome.

Mary Ann Carr again:

(13:39) At camp we talk about two-fold purpose to sacred music. Why they're doing what they're doing. Sacred music, the Gregorian chant, is for the glory of God. They're not for (she lists various things), but they're singing for God, and they know that. The second purpose of sacred music is for the sanctification and edification of the faithful. (A cute kid now explains how they're singing for God and Mary and Joseph and all the saints.) Chant camp would never happen without kids and teachers. We really want to make something beautiful for them, who really want to take the time to learn their Catholic heritage, and to give back to their parish.

An Préachán again: I can't recommend this video enough for uplift – hearing these little kids sing it, some of them quite young. And also this Mary Ann Carr Wilson is an amazing singer. Here's her website. 

Then I found this informative video: "Take a Chants!" by Uwe Lieflander.

From the Blurb:

Maestro Uwe Lieflander, Director of the Sacred Music Society and Professor of Church Music at Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Academy in Barry's Bay (Ontario) https://www.seatofwisdom.ca/about/, holds a rehearsal about the Chant: Resurrexi....  This is meant for raw beginners. He takes you through the art of chanting step by step in front of an amateur choir. This is the first of 4 parts about this particular chant, and the sheet music is provided on screen for you to follow.

This is a very dry presentation, but it works. Already after part one, you will know, and will be able to sing, most of this introit for the Easter Sunday Mass.
Have a cup of tea, relax, and join us in this adventure. Take a chance!!!

An P:

One of my daughters and I went through the first instruction video in a short time. Excellently done and very informative, this video (and I'm sure the other three) is a great introduction to Gregorian Chant. Once you understand how its musical notation works, as explained here, it is easy to follow.

Maestro Lieflander says in his introduction:

Chant started about 100 A.D. in Rome and grew out of the very Mediterranean climate which had lost of quarter tones in it, was based on quarter tones. And about 100 A.D. the first chants started popping up and they were now based one whole tones and half-tones, which was a brand-new thing at the time. And whole new building blocks of music, before we had zeros, ones, and twos, and now the language, so to say, like programming language, has zeros and ones, all tones and half-tones, and starts creating a whole new language with these two basic building blocks of it. And so it is really like getting a brand-new music for a brand-new Covenant that God was giving us. And so Gregorian chant really connects us with the essence of what it means to be a human being. It's so intricately woven into us, into our very DNA that chanting itself really brings us back to our roots and even further back to the living God. It is God's voice. And so it is very important for other human being than Catholics to start thinking about chant and maybe even try and literally "take a chance" with it – because it connects us with who we are very very truly deep down as human beings.

Meself again:

I think this is an extremely significant comment about Gregorian chant being so old. We know it pre-dates St. Gregory the Great (pope from 590-604), who merely codified it. The Traditional Latin Mass, the TLM, also predates Gregory, hence the reticence to formally call it "The Rite of St. Gregory the Great". We also know that Gregorian chant is intimately tied up to the Latin language, extremely so, and that is why various attempts by Vatican II cheerleaders to create an English language (or French, or German) Gregorian chant has failed utterly. (I've read a couple of essays from such over time, lamenting how wrong-headed their efforts had been.)

Now, since Vatican II, there's been a wide disparaging of the TLM, and one of the angles of attack was to say that Greek had been the main liturgical language of Rome until the time of Constantine (reigned 306-337), so changing from Latin to the vernaculars after Vatican II was just a repeat of that earlier change. When Constantine the Great moved the imperial capital from Italy (it had been a Milan for some time) to his new city of Constantinople, most of the Greek speakers left Rome and thus the Latin language could finally predominate in the old imperial city. However, if Gregorian chant goes back to anywhere around 100 A.D., then obviously Latin was the liturgical language of that city and its environs. (Latin and Greek are related, of course, as Indo-European tongues, and the fact that over half of the Latin vocabulary comes from Greek indicates how closely Latin and Greek speakers interacted for centuries, but they are structured quite differently, and from its unique sound and phoneme structure, it is clear Latin has always been the basis of Gregorian chant.)

The TLM itself definitely originated in Rome itself, and early on. The more commonly used liturgy in the West was the Gallician rite (really, a series of closely related rites), originally from Milan (a very important city, remember) and it came before that, it is believed, from Antioch. But the TLM gestated in the actual city of Rome, on other the other hand, and was unique. Over time, it replaced the various Gallician rite families, except for a couple cases, such as the Ambrosian rite in Milan (where it still survives, although in the Vat2 mutilated form, and the Mozarabic rite in a chapel in the cathedral of Toledo, Spain.

So, in short, the Gregorian rite is indeed basic to one "Catholic heritage" and woven into our Western Christian DNA. I think it significant, as well, to realize that is based on the actual word of Holy Writ, emanating from their form, rather than forcing the words to fit into a tune or melody. How much more "Biblical" can one get than that?

At this site, you can learn about a modern Catholic choir director and musician who composes in Gregorian chant (and classic polyphonic sacred music): Mark Emerson Donnelly.

I had no idea such music was being composed today. (Indeed, I've only recently learned of Morton Lauridsen, the famous choral composer, who "has spent his lifetime in deep silence to the 'inner song' to bring forth choral works of radiant beauty for the world to hear and sing". (N.B. Morton Lauridsen is the only non-Catholic among these composers/singers/teachers.

An Préachán

The Modernist Church in Crisis and the Triumph of the Trads?

Things will be happening fast now. 

There's no going back. 

Fr. Alexander Lucie-Smith says much the same at the U.K. Catholic Herald.

John O'Sullivan has some good comments in this National Review column. But it seems a bit uneven. Here's an interesting excerpt about that utter, complete, total, unspeakable idiot whom Bergoglio appointed to the Archbishopric of Chicago, Blaise Cupich:

Even after all that’s happened, some bishops don’t seem to grasp such simple points. Archbishop Blaise Cupich of Chicago sounded like a SNL parody of a secular humanitarian politician when he said: “The pope has a bigger agenda. He’s got to get on with other things, of talking about the environment and protecting migrants and carrying on the work of the church. We’re not going to go down a rabbit hole on this.” This is an unbelievably trivial response to the Church’s moral crisis. Suppose that Viganò’s charges are false, where is the righteous anger of those unjustly accused that should animate Cupich’s words?

Words fail. But it is classic Cupich, (for those who know of the fool, this is standard fare). Cupich is an example of the intellects Bergoglio appoints to the Cardinalate. It's obscene.

So, Bergoglio and Company. 

Yep, they'll dig in, Bergoglio and Company, but it won't work, not this time. The top guy is being accused and his days are numbered. And the longer he tries to stay, the worse Bergi makes the whole mess, and the less power his cronies he's inserted into the Cardinal College will have at the inevitable next papal election.

But what I think is a "turning-the-corner" moment in all this involves some of the following points:

• These idiots, McCarrick, Wuerl, etc.,) are prosecutable for crimes (maybe Francis, too): McCarrick for "doing it" and Wuerl & Co. for hiding it. While the statue of limitations probably comes into play for most of their actions, some may still be prosecutable, and most certainly, DAs across the U.S, can do what the Pennsylvanians did. We can only pray they do.
• As a part of this, I wrote a while ago, and so many others have said, the Church looks like a criminal syndicate. RICO charges can be brought into play. AND on top of that, pressure will mount to remove the Church from the Federal gov. handouts (handouts to help the "undocumented aliens" /sarc). If that happens, the Church is automatically bankrupt. Hell's bells, the gays and their "behavior" have essentially bankrupted the Church NOW! Much more of this and, well. We all know the denouement.
• Secondly, the MainStream Press loathes the Catholic Church (the real one, much maligned even by "Catholic" bishops! Look how Bishop Campbell in Columbus, Ohio, treats the Trads!) and can't wait to "reveal all" in their newscasts about all this abominable behavior. That's just going to devastate the Vat2 queer hierarchy. What parent, what normal people in general, are going to want to be a part of something so vile? As Andrew Klavan wrote in a column not too long ago, this is a Homosexual scandal as much as a Church scandal. Homosexuals, given the chance, do today what they did in Ancient Greece and the modern Arab Muslim world. (Once I quoted that bit about Malaka from my book Eros, Sexuality in Ancient Greece, I read around in it a bit and wow, Greek homosexuals did the same sort garbage modern ones do. And were just as detested as they are today, too -- once the PC "emperor's new clothes" bit is removed. Should one think about it a moment, if priests, for God's sake, who take vows of chastity and are supposed to help people and most of all SERVE GOD, can't keep their paws off of boys, who possibly expects everyday homosexuals to do so? It is (dare I put it this way?) "baked in the cake" of what Homosexuality is. (The male version, of course; Lesbians operate in a different sort of psychological matrix.)
• Yet another aspect to this: for decades, throughout the time of the Vat2 Church, in fact, the gays have essentially run the Church. Paul 6 was widely thought to be a homosexual and even if he weren't, he was very effeminate (emotionally unstable, cried a lot, would suddenly get stubborn and "close up" and all sorts of stuff, a parody, really, of the feminine, actually). Even if some of the Modernists running the Church for the past 60 yeas were not homosexual, they were in a world increasingly dominated by queers, and if one wanted to stay in power, or rise in power, one at least kept the Omerta, the Mafia-style silence. They were all compromised, in other words. That was the case of old Franny Spellman, cardinal archbishop of New York from 1939 to 1967. He must have been queer back in the '20s and '30s. He opposed the Vat2 changes but went along with them because he was so blackmailable. (And, as is the case with homosexuals, he probably saw to it that queers were ordained as priests. For example, it was Franny who ordained the loathsome McCarrick to the priesthood in 1958. Cardinal Terence Cooke kept McCarrick as his secretary from 1971 to 1977; a straight man can tell if a guy is queer under such long association -- and they worked closely together for six years, note. Assuming Cooke wasn't gay, why did he keep a boy buggerer so close to him? Where was Cooke's "spiritual discernment? Hmmm? McCarrick was accused at that time, in fact, of boy buggering -- Cooke had to know. But he kept the butt grabber on. And that is the sort of thing now becoming simply untenable.
• When I say the Lavender Mafia ran the Church, I don't mean JP2, who, more or less -- and in terms of actually being in charge of things -- was a dupe, a saintly dupe, but still a dupe, or especially B16, who was smarter than JP2 and a relatively moderate Modernist, and who was actually making things better in many ways, and removing some of these parasites, hence his deposition from power. But aside from these top guys, homosexuals were in the driver seat (one might say, they went uncharacteristically from "bottoms" to being on "top", ahem), yet now they are victims of "victory disease" as the Japs called it in WWII. They've won too easily, duping the laity, living off the high octane fuel of the "glory days" of the U.S. Immigrant Church, the one that built all the beautiful churches and the many schools and hospitals, and all along mistreating the laity with all the Vat2 changes. (As the Trad saying has it, "Christ said, "Feed my sheep, not experiment on my rats",) They're so in control they got careless and elected that disaster, Bergoglio, who seems to have surrounded himself gladly with these perverts. And now with Bergoglio caught red-handed in trying to cover up crimes and criminals, all Hell is going to break loose.

So bad are things now that the vast majority of "sheeple" are going to not only notice it, but get their faces rubbed in it. And I mean legally, too. The U.S. isn't Chile, after all, and though our criminal justice system isn't perfect (See this amazing story about terrorists in New Mexico) it is still a force to be reckoned with, and as I noted to begin with, the MSM is simply salivating with glee over the Vat2 Church's wormy carcass.

And of course all this slams the Progressive Catholics. Full body slam. Full body slam on concrete pavement and then jumping up and down on its stomach. Yet the Trad Catholics will be mostly unscathed.

That's not because there aren't bad Trad priests and so on but they're much rarer than what's found in the Progressive and the Mainstream Churches, on many orders of magnitude, and also Traditional Catholicism now looks so alien to both Catholic and non-Catholics alike, that it is sort of like a branch of Orthodoxy. Something from Mars. Something not akin.

And that's the irony and the blessing: this is a tremendous benefit to us Trads! We're "not Catholics" in a sense. Why? "Catholicism" is the Vat2 Gay Church. Traditional Catholics? We're just too odd, alien, antique, weird. So we won't be "lumped together" with the Progressives and the Mainstreamers in the coming conflagration. For years, I've been trying  to drag people I know to a Trad Mass (most of which are one of the High Mass forms) and some of them like these Masses, and some don't. One said to me recently, after such a visit, "I don't want to worship in a Museum!" But one and all of them will say, at some point: "That is pretty different." Or "That would take a lot of getting used to."

And that's a good thing! A blessing! Lo and behold, as the mainstream Church collapses under the weight of its own sins and the bombardment of outrage from both offended mainsteam Catholics (Magisterium Catholics, they're called) and the secular world, we're simply not involved. (Relatively speaking.)

When the smoke of the battle clears, there'll be a ruined mainstream/Progressive Church, which will probably go into "full Communion" with the Anglicans  and the Lutherans, as all three die off, unmourned and even unnoticed, and a ruined Magisterium/mainstream Church with nowhere to go, leaderless (except for the occasional exception like Archbishop Chaput) and then us, the Traditionalists, untouched (relatively untouched) in our safe enclaves of the SSPX, or the FSSP, or the ICKSP, and in nooks and corners here and there, such as independent sections of some of the religious orders, for example Silverstream in Ireland and Clear Creek in the U.S.

That's a good thing. And it is a God-thing. It has a "God-thing" feel to it. The Vat2 Church essentially exiled us to Babylon, where we sat by the waters of the Euphrates and waited while the Assyrians and the Babylonians (MSM and DAs) wiped out the main Church. Soon, one prays, the long sieges will finally be over and the Persian Empire of Cyrus the Great (to keep the metaphor going), can restore us to the Temple. And wow, looks like we'll have to rebuild it, all over again.

Such, at least, is my hope for a "silver lining".

An Préachán

Guest Post: Are These People in Communion with the Teachings and Traditions of the Catholic Faith?

Are people who seek to destroy the Catholic Church in communion with the teachings and the traditions of the Catholic Church?

Guest Contributor: Susan Shelko
(Susan first wrote this powerful essay as a comment to OnePeterFive's Steve Skojec, who was responding in his turn to a comment there that I had left.)


Yes, indeed, why are we in communion with such people? That is one question to ask. Another question is whether the people who seek to destroy the Catholic Church are in communion with the teachings and the traditions of the Catholic faith/ Church? And if they are not, are faithful and devout Catholics required to be submissive and obedient and under their authority? And what is to be done about these things (if anything)?

On an institutional basis (i.e., the Cardinals and Bishops), very little has been done. They are mostly silent. On an individual basis (the laity), people are doing a variety of things: praying, making a consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, speaking out on the internet, leaving the NO churches and joining SSPX, FSSP, Institute of Christ the King, independent chapels and trying to awaken family and friends and fellow parishioners.

A few other questions might be asked, including: Is the modern Catholic Church still Catholic? Can an individual lay person discern what is Catholic teaching? As compared to what is not Catholic teaching? Can the Catholic Church, which is the pillar and foundation of truth, teach falsehood and heresy? Can the Catholic Church contradict prior teaching and tradition and the deposit of faith? And if it does these things, then what?

So this is my approach: Francis is the official elected pope of the modern Catholic Church; he holds an office and a title. Given Francis' ever growing list of statements and teachings that contradict prior Catholic Church doctrine and dogma, I do not trust what he says and I do not trust my soul to him as I would trust my soul to St. Peter and to our Lord himself. Every now and then Francis says something that is actually Catholic. What to do ...

For me, it is best to treat all of Francis' words as that one poisoned M&M in the bag of M&Ms. I will stay safe and spiritually healthy by tossing the entire bag of M&Ms (i.e., 9,999 are pure and untainted but 1 is poison) in the trash. Why would I play Russian roulette with my soul? Francis speaks, I don't listen. I am not in communion with: "lies, I was deceived", "sin boldly", "in praise of Martin Luther and his 95 theses", "Jesus became the devil," "Jesus likes it when you sin" and a whole laundry list of assorted heresies. Maybe others would take a different approach; this I believe is the most secure route.
 
Based upon articles and postings on 1P5, I now understand that the 1994 Catechism contains a number of serious errors. I do not have the time, effort or energy to compare Father Hardon's commentary and recommendations with the CCC itself. Nor do I have the seminary/ theological background to know what to toss and what to keep in the CCC. My solution so as not to fall into serious error: the 1994 CCC will sit untouched/ unopened on my shelf and I will rely entirely upon the Baltimore Catechism and the Catechism of Trent.
 
Also, thanks to the generous commentators, authors, professors/ theologians and articles here (i.e., OnePeterFive, where Susan first placed these reflections), I have come to question/ doubt the efficacy of the NO liturgy, the validity of the 1969 rite of ordination at the episcopal level -- and hence the validity of the bishops, the priests and the consecration of the bread and wine -- and the validity/ efficacy of the sacraments in general. I would never have known about nor begun to question any of these things but for this website. I am now awake, and despite the pain involved, I am grateful.
 
My solution: I will not attend a doubtful mass; I have begun to attend a small independent chapel that offers the traditional Latin mass. I have ordered a copy of a Latin to English Missal so I can follow along with the mass. As for sacraments: I am planning a general confession (because I am not certain previous ones were heard by a validly ordained priest) and I will have my confirmation re-done on a conditional basis (because I am not certain the bishop who confirmed me was ordained under a valid rite of ordination).
 
As for reading materials, I am going back in time to pre-Vatican II materials and spiritual writings. Currently I am delighting myself with Life of Christ by Archbishop Fulton Sheen and I have discovered Msgr. Knox's translation of the Holy Bible. (I highly recommend both items.) I figure that if it was right and good and solidly Catholic before, then it is right and good and solidly Catholic now. So what does all of this make me? A faithful and devout Catholic? A practical sedevacantist? A traditionalist? A schematic? A modern-day Martin Luther?
 

Whatever it makes me, I am at peace with myself and with the Lord.



Corvine Note: Many, many thanks, Susan, for letting me publish this essay here at Corvine's Corner. Very much appreciated, indeed.