Easter: Open Letter to Catholics re: Our Perceptions of Schism

Friends,

We know that this Easter week, Pope Francis, whom I call "Bergoglio" (when I'm being polite) is ailing. Whatever the immediate future holds for him, though, the Catholic Church suffers massive ailing as well. Catastrophic ailing. The first step to any cure is to recognize the sickness. Curing ills cannot occur if we don't know what's causing the ailment. And our understanding of anything, from the Church to Black Holes to Reformation History to Jorge Mario Bergoglio, is based on perception.

It is precisely this essential perception of our realities that generates the problem we're having in the Catholic Church. We perceive – most of us – that there's one Catholic Church that has a host of difficulties and numerous factions who seem increasingly divergent. I suspect this view in the clergy at least stands strongest among those bishops consecrated, and priests ordained, when Karol Józef Wojtyła held the papal throne. Their ranks are thinning out now, but many remain. "The Church" for them is as they perceive it to be. But is it? And was it ever? And what of the other ideas of "The Church" that exist, pre- or post-John Paul II?

What if we could willingly change our perception? What if we perceived more closely that three separate "Catholic Churches" exist: i.e. the steadily drying up (and confused, and fading, and straying) Vatican II Church, the aborning Synodal/One-World anti-Church that Bergoglio is midwifing, and of course the Traditional Catholic Church, with its Traditional Latin Mass and Traditional Catholic teaching.

• This is a simple perception, and it doesn't involve endless contortions of cognitive dissonance. Achieve the perception by simply asking about the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist. Polls indicate that around 25 percent of the Vatican II laity believe in that, probably next to none of the Synodal Church believes it, while most likely near 100 percent of Traditional Catholic believe it. Thus, this question serves as a simple way to discern which of the three Church "avatars" one belongs to.
  

How did this situation develop?

Look again at Church history over the past three-quarters of a century. Under pressure from the Modernists, the Vatican II Church clearly broke ranks with the entire Church before it, as exemplified in the multitudinous Vatican II documents and the basically impossible ditching of the Traditional Latin Mass (impossible on a number of levels, not least Pope Pius V's famous 1570 Apostolic constitution Quo Primum). These dense, tedious, and prolix Vatican II decrees – that naturally very few have read or certainly studied – contain a thorough mixture of typical Catholic orthodoxy, Protestant heresy, and 1960s "pop-psych" palaver. They basically offer "something for everyone", depending on who is reading and what their conceits are. Whichever Church faction is strongest can implement them in any way they like. They laid the foundation of the infamous "Spirit of Vatican II" that blew in so many dire phantoms that plague the Church today.

• To use a metaphor, they set the Barque of Peter's voyaging on an initially slightly divergent course from what it had been sailing on for nearly two millennia, and slowly, imperceptibly to millions, it began to head away from its ancient Witness Against the Worldly Powers route, and into dangerous Waters of Surrender to the secular, fallen "pop" culture. The Church went from "The world will always hate me because it hated my Lord" to "The world will love me because I will surrender to it."
• While probably 20 percent of Catholics (and certainly many onlooking Protestants and Jews) were not fooled by this new trajectory, millions of priests and laity were indeed misled. But now, nearly 70 years on, can we not see how far the Church has wandered off the counter-culture course its Founder chartered for it? Grasp our reality. We now have no excuse to tolerate this misdirection any longer.

I can't be sure of John Paul I, poor man, or the vacillating Paul VI who became a recluse after 1968 and Humanae Vitae, but clearly Pope John Paul II was the only pope who actually believed the Vatican II Church would be THE Church from now on. Perhaps the Polish pope's near assassination refocused his understanding a bit, but still, it was his Curia (papal court/administration) that held the line for Modernism. For example, John Paul II's refusing to approve bishops for the SSPX – and the perfidious way his people kept saying "yes" then changing that to "er, wait a bit longer," stringing the SSPX along – forced the necessity of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre's ordaining bishops without papal approval. This was pure "Deep State"-style treachery.

Pope Benedict XVI would eventually rescind the resulting automatic excommunications of the SSPX bishops because of the absurdity of it all, and even the cunning, duplicitous Bergoglio seemed to occasionally favor the excellent Society's work to some extent, though technically it remains somewhat "canonically irregular". (I discount all such qualms entirely, of course. "Partial communion" is nonsense. And it remains a blessing the SSPX is not under full Vatican control.)

Benedict's Fall

Although an early and idealistic Vatican II revolutionary, the hyper-intelligent Joseph Ratzinger was no fool. Eventually, he could see "the handwriting on the wall" for the Vatican II Church. But as pope, Benedict's inability to control the "Junta" of homosexual mafia, Communist sympathizers, and the Freemasonry-Globalist clique that runs the Church – and has done so for decades – proved that the Vatican II version of Holy Church was hopelessly hollowed out and drifting toward the rocks. Yet Benedict knew he was not going to be allowed any true course correction. To buy time, therefore, he tried a subtle, sideways attack via his Summorum Pontificum, creating a Hegelian type synthesis-antithesis via his "Ordinary Form" and "Extraordinary Form" of the Mass. Very clever. 

But of course it only enraged the Junta. They removed Benedict in a less violent way than John Paul I had been, or the attempt to assassinate John Paul II. (Ever notice how the "cancellation"of Jack Kennedy, Nixon, John Paul I & II, and assassination attempt on Reagan and the lawfare against Trump all just seems to coincidentally happen? "Gee, what bad luck we have in our popular leaders getting removed!" Well, it ain't no coincidence, my friends! Wake up and see the very clear pattern going on here.)

1. Bergoglio was brought in to put paid to Benedict's "Reform of the Reform". 
2. But the Vatican II Church was too far gone. 
3. The Covid fraud gut-punched it and left it prostrate. It's a husk of what it was even 20 years ago, though the remnants of Team Pope John Paul II might not see that yet. 
4. So, Bergoglio began his employment of a legion of heresies to pave over it, to bury it alive, in effect, enabling the Synodal Church to drive over its grave. 
5. The Argentinian Peronist "Junta of One" clearly now wants to create a new Church entirely, an Anglican doppelganger called the Synodal Church. It happens to serve as the Jewish, Muslim, and Globalist-approved non-governmental organization for the New World Order that the elites want to establish. (None of those powers want to see a strong, confident – and independent – Christianity in the world.)
   

Schism from all that

So where does that leave the One, Holy Catholic Church? The Church of the traditional theology, worship, and spirituality? The events of a Biblical lifetime have partially submerged it, and scattered it too, though thanks to Benedict's Summorum Pontificum, it began a serious comeback. Now Generalissimo Bergoglio wants to crush it. Therefore, this Traditional Latin Mass Catholic Church simply HAS to break with the other two ecclesiastical avatars, or they will drag it down into the Abyss with their own self-destruction.

In other words, we actual Catholics – Catholic Christians who pray the Tradition, thus believe the Tradition, and thereby live the Tradition: Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi – MUST perceive full schism to be a necessity from what one needs call the Unbelievers. In a metaphor, the S.S.Vatican II is going down, and it has only two lifeboats; one boat is leaky and full of trannies, catamites, and absolute landlubbers, the other staffed by regular old-time sailors; indeed, the veterans of Lepanto. Which lifeboat would you chose?

Perception, Perception, Perception

Again, this is about perception, perception of our reality. And once you see this, grasp it, comprehend what's going on, there's no more trying to square the circle. A great burden is lifted from the soul, and cognitive dissonance is banished.

  An Preáchán

Bergoglio's Pectoral Cross – Photo evidence of his true allegiance

Amici, Friends,

What's happening in the Catholic Church is so tragic, and unnecessary, and more than anything else, so crazily odd, that is is incredible. (And how peculiar it mirrors what's going on in the U.S.A.'s secular government.) But it's been a long time coming, after all. We've seen it developing for years. Or we should have seen it.

• Ditching the TLM was the most glaring sign 50-some years ago, and the current war against it serves as another. 'Tradition is the Deposit of Faith," as Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre wrote. Didn't they see that? Yes, many of them did. The revolutionaries of Modernism knew precisely what they were about.
  
• Indeed, the take over of the Council at the beginning of its first session from the men Pope John XXIII had set to moderate it served as a portent. A "gob-smacking" one, forsooth. The "Young Modernist Turks" who seized control ditched all but one of the proposed documents that John's Curia had worked on for years for the Council to adjudicate. Out went the one against Communism, the one on the Blessed Virgin Mary, etc., and they cast the one they kept in a very different light than it was intended to have.
• John lost control of his eccentric "pastoral" Second Vatican Council and Pope Paul VI could only shut it down. Before he did, he took away from it the teaching on contraception that it was going to consider. He didn't want the Council in that minefield.
  
• In 1968, three years after Pope Paul VI shut the lurching, unstable Council down, he promulgated Humanae Vitae, which taught the Tradition on contraception. It resulted in a very large portion of Catholic clergy, laity, and educators rejecting it, thereby rejecting the Traditional teaching that HV (rather lamely) proffered. That stood as a tremendously significant auspice, too. An "in your face" one. A new Church, essentially, was aborning. Now today the rumor wafts about that Bergoglio intends to "redo" Humanae Vitae in some manner, allowing artificial contraception: (A rumor begun by no less than the Pontifical Academy of Life!)
  
• Bergoglio's insistence that capital punishment can no longer be countenanced is in itself mortally significant, because in 2,000 years the Church has always accepted the right of the secular authority to impose the death penalty. St. Paul preached it. Bergoglio is changing such a Tradition as that.
• And pretty much everything Bergoglio says and does offers yet more signals; e.g. surely his constant support of homosexuality and blasphemers like Fr. James Martin, S.J. (what else but an S.J.?) remains one of the stakes that this upcoming "Synod on Synodality" will drive into the Catholic heart, one of the whips he intends to flay us with.
  
• Now the latest Bergoglian Imbroglio involves his new chief at the Holy Office (Doctrine of the Faith, with some sort of yet newer name or other). This boss, "Tucho" Fernández, about to be elevated to the cardinalate, spouts that "Bergi" has Gnostic powers and his will looms paramount over both the Church in general and Tradition in particular. No, I'm not kidding. See Who are you to judge the Holy Father and its followup here: Quite Obvious to a Catholic.
  

So, in the midst of all that, the redoubtable Ann Barnhardt has a column about yet another, extremely obvious sign: Bergoglio's silver pectoral cross he wears. The corpus on it not only sports an ugly death-mask face, but it also has crossed arms – crossed arms! – and just unbelievably, its right leg is turned around backwards! Heel to front. Go see the photos Ann has. (And follow the link to an earlier article on Joseph Bernardin and Wilton Gregory. Must reads, all.)

It's clear. It's unnerving. And it's the same style "cross" the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin wore, the Satan-worshiping prelate that Malachi Martin wrote about in his novel Windswept House, and that Wilton Gregory – a protege of Bernardin and now archbishop of Washington, D.C., canceling Latin Masses everywhere there – wears now. And guess what? Tucho Fernández wears the same pectoral cross!

Ann B. details how this corpus is a Satanic code sign. She lists various Satanic groups signified and proclaimed by it.

So, the "pope" has been openly sporting Satan's Insignia since he was an archbishop, though then it was a gold one. Look at the photos of the one today and get "gob-smacked". Here's a close-up:

This is an augury, folks, a massive one. A plain omen. A warning. An exclamation mark.

What more does Bergoglio have to do to proclaim his objectives so that we get it?

It's one for all of us to see, if we look. And it appears in literally hundreds of photos. It's no joke (unless the joke is on us).

May God have mercy on us.

AnP 

Hell has another new subject: Rembert Weakland archbishop of Milwaukee from 1977 to 2002

 LifesiteNews has the biography of this evil, putrid man. (He died at 95, a classic 'hardened sinner' all his life, methodically doing evil – great evil – yet a "prince of the Church". Surely, Luke 17:2 applies.)

An excerpt:

After a decade at the helm of the Benedictine Order, Weakland was fatefully appointed archbishop of Milwaukee by Pope Paul VI in 1977. The new prelate began acting on his lifelong homosexual tendencies soon after his consecration, Weakland admitted in his memoir, pursuing sodomitic relationships that would eventually bring down his career and create a national scandal for the Church.

And as archbishop, Weakland would not only be endangering young people’s faith through irreverent liturgy but abetting their abuse by some of the most monstrous serial predators imaginable. As activist Peter Isely, who was victimized as a child by a Wisconsin priest, attested, Weakland was the “architect in the widespread and systematic abuse of children by clergy of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.”

“Thousands of children were harmed under his watch, and he bears the responsibility. During his tenure as Archbishop of Milwaukee, Weakland transferred dozens of known sex offenders into new assignments where they were warmly welcomed by trusting Catholic families,” Isley related. “These offenders then proceeded to abuse their children.”

AnP again:

Thanks, John Paul II. You elevated both Weakland and Bergoglio. You had one job to do, defend the Deposit of Faith. You were given carte blanc powers to do that, but it was too much fun running about the world as a rock star, that, and bringing down Communism. Being a rock star led, I suppose, to many conversions, and bringing down Communism obviously was a great help, though you made no headway with China, and "your boy" Bergoglio has made China pure hell for all Catholics.

Old Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz told John Paul to his face he was promoting bad men to the episcopacy; of course, JP2 had appointed Bruskewitz himself as bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1992. It was the same year JP2 had appointed Bergoglio to be a bishop. So, clearly, JP2 had no real way to discern whether an individual would be an orthodox bishop or not. That was the problem he had to concentrate on. Fixing that. It is imperative that only the most orthodox priests be made bishops. But the reptiles who ran "the spirit of Vatican II" wanted more snakes in the episcopacy. JP2 seemed blind to that. 

Then too, Bergoglio – like many, actually, as we've seen since Bergoglio was installed as pope – pretended to be orthodox, but once in power, reverted to being Modernists. A great many American and European bishops have done that. Cardinal Christoph Schönborn is probably the best (worst!) example of that.

Anyway, the Church is in crisis. Absolute crisis. As with the Covid fraud, it is up to us, the average, everyday folks, to use common sense and old-fashioned grit to keep the Faith, to be among the seven thousand who did not bend the knee to Ba'al. (1st Kings 19:18) And the most important battle to fight of contemporary Church problems is to force Bergoglio and the other Modernists to leave the Traditional Latin Mass alone. If we don't win for our Lord Christ on that one, we won't win on anything.

   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.

Clouds of the Tribulation Deepen: one early nebula's tale

Clouds of the Tribulation Deepen (Part I)

And it is appropriate they're turning empurpled-black-crumply on their way to true obsidian now, at Pentecost. 

Today's cloud: one of the first mare's tail of Tribulation that appeared on the horizon post-Vatican II was the "new Pentecost" umbra.

How long have the "Spirit of Vatican II" imps and hobgoblins boasted about "a new Pentecost" for the Church? They openly blasphemed the first (and only) Pentecost in doing so, but that notion never seemed to occur to them. (Logic need not apply to Modernists.) Even John Paul II openly said we needed a new Pentecost, or that a new one was coming. "Just wait! It's almost here! Almost around the corner! I hear it coming!"   

Surely that was in itself a running joke in the Orders of Hell, from the Hyper-Hellions through the nooks and crannies of the diabolical labyrinth to even Hell's bottom feeders, the Scamps and Pucks, howling their cackling crack-ups and cartwheeling in their obscene antics at the august figures in the Holy Church blaspheming the One Guy you do not want to blaspheme: the Holy Ghost Himself.

Pentecost: The Holy Ghost's Big Day

He's actually my favorite Person in the Most Holy Trinity. Closest to us, naturally, as close as our breath.

Recall Deuteronomy 30:14

"14 But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it." (The "do it" refers to keeping God's Law that Moses has just revealed to the Israelites. 

I prefer the older language versions, like this one:

"14 But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou mayst do it."

But what is in our hearts and our mouths? That sounds very much like breath! And of course the Latin for breath is Spiritus. (Spiritus: of respiration, and of the wind: the Latin for the Greek pneuma and Hebrew ruah). Modern synonyms for the noun are psyche and soul. The Orthodox mesh their Jesus Prayer to their breathing. And of course, when "the spirit departs" the last breath has been breathed. The Holy Ghost has taken it. Your lively little self has then become a corpse, a clay-like mannequin of what you were, ready for shoveling under the turf.

Death. Judgement. Heaven. Hell. (Remember those, oh mortal? Ever hear of those, Bergi?)

So we have life itself and both great aid and great intimacy with the Third Person, that Sacred Wind blowing through Jerusalem's Upper Room on the First (and only) Pentecost, though we don't think about Him very often. Indeed, for some time now, we openly trash Him out. "Hey, you, Bird! Your charism ran dry, so get with it and do it again, this time in polyester and "We are the Church"-type hymnody. ("We are the Church" is sung here. If you can listen to more than the first stanza of this putridity, well, words fail. Sooner than listen again to that Novus Ordo horror, I myself would rather be eaten alive by unseen demons in the streets of Damascus as was that legendary infamous Kitab al-Azif author Abdul Alhazred!)

I'm very thankful, then, for this important feast, the "Birthday of the Church" as some call it. It seems, what with Bergoglio's latest antics (like appointing the evil bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego to the level of cardinal, for example, a huge cloud in itself), that the clouds rush together in a mordant maelstrom of mounting malignity, straight from Hell.

More clouds to come!

    An Préachán

 

ad

Latin Mass, Jews, & "Pope Francis is tearing the Catholic Church apart..."

 Amici,

Here's some reflection on the Traditional Latin Mass issues that the Catholic Church seems to be wrestling with.

Extraordinaryform.org

First, a long but detailed article at this extremely helpful site: the extraordinaryform.org, to which I repair often for Sunday and Weekday Propers and much else beside. I highly recommend the site. They say, BTW: A NOTE TO THE FRIENDS AND USERS OF THIS SITE:

While we are saddened by the lack of charity evinced in the motu proprio "Guardians of Tradition," and, while our site's name may have been 'abrogated' - we are not going away.

Be assured, our mission to propagate the Mass of the Ages will continue unabated.

An P again:

There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes of any even small event, let along a major one. I'm sure there's a lot of "worms in the wainscot" regarding the current occupant of the See of Peter and his attempt to squish the TLM. Please be cognizant of the fact that any "Modernist" in the Church believes, deep down, that the Church MUST "modernize" or "evolve" or "reform" radically if it is to survive. So strong is this idea in Modernists that I'm sure if you could somehow infallibly (pun intended) peer into Bergoglio's mind, you would find, even more deeply than any religious dogma, this idea that the Church must evolve and change to suit the times or it will die. Ergo, since TLM is "rigorous" and its priests and congregations are "rigorous", they have to be eliminated. 

• This notion exists because Modernism, which began in the mid-19th century in Protestant Germany, was heavily influenced by Darwin and the theory of evolution. Really, Modernists believe that all life evolves, human life has evolved, humans evolve during their own lifetimes, going to idea to idea, and the Church must evolve. Ultimately, of course, they believe God evolves. God is something we created, ourselves, and the Modernist "higher criticism" has revealed the Bible is the evolutionary history of our evolving religious belief.
• This is why the vast majority of sexual deviance in the Church's ranks occurs among those – regardless of just when they were ordained – who embraced the basic tenets of Modernism. After all, if we're evolving all this, then sexual morality evolves, too, right? And all those old, careful, even draconian strictures of the lives of priests and religious, well, we've evolved far, far beyond those! Alas, these "grandiose ascenders", obnoxious "I'm too spiritual for carnal desire or sin" types are easy prey for Satan. Communists have long known this. Their rule was never try to logically argue atheism with a cleric of any sort. Just get 'em drunk and "shacked up" and you've "won" the argument! (There's actually something weirdly Cathar-like, Albigensian, in all Modernists.)

The Jews

The Traditional Latin Mass isn't muti-cultural friend, esp to Jews

It is controversial to many to bring Jews up in any context, but it is a necessity regarding the TLM once you consider it. Why? Because they're not fans of the TLM. For those Jews of influence in the world, the Catholic Church is a concern. (Christianity is a concern!) They want it to refrain from anything that might encourage what they consider antisemitism, at worst, or renewed conversions of Jews (even worse). In the world we live in, even criticism of Israeli government policies can easily get one called "antisemitic". And with Muslim attacks on Jews in Europe, one can see why they're so touchy. But Islam is not Christianity.

Jews and the Church

One thing you won't hear much about, unless you are remotely familiar with E. Michael Jones (many consider him anathema), is the strength of Jewish influence the modern Church. There's always been a back and forth between the two since Our Lord's days in Galilee and Judea. Christians are supposed to be the "new Jews", the "Synagogue of the Risen Messiah King", the "grafted in" inheritors of the ancient Covenants. That is insulting to Jews by itself, but St. Paul clearly teaches Jews are lost unless they convert. Now, that is anathema to Jews, and has been since the beginning. (Most early Christians were Jews, of course.)

Yet they've played a significant role in the Church since Vatican II because the Holocaust occurred in nominally Christian (mostly Catholic) countries, at the hands of people who were, nominally in many cases, "Christian", and important figures in the Church have been deeply shamed ever since. Indeed, one of the reasons behind calling Vatican II was to somehow make the Church morally relevant after World War II, and make up for what a lot of critics considered its failure during the Nazi period.

So, Vatican II produced the document NOSTRA AETATE to patch things up with the Jews in particular. But again, the two religions, though Biblically and in Christ Himself "joined at the hip" in Siamese Twins style, just are pretty much mutually exclusive. So, some Jews, certainly, were they to have a mind to, are in a position and have motive to influence the Church. Jones makes the case – and it is easy to make – that Jews put the kibosh on the TLM because of course, bringing it back restores a lot of supposedly "anti-Semitic" New Testament texts that have been studiously left out entirely from the Novus Ordo Mass.

• Jones also thinks Jozef Ratzinger is sort of "bi-polar" considering he came of age in an occupied Germany that nearly starved in the winter of '46/47 because the infamous Morgenthau Plan, something (Jones doesn't mention) didn't happen that winter in part because of the exertions of one Herbert Hoover, former U.S. president. (No one ever seems to remember that Hoover had an important "after-life" after he left the White House.) George Marshall would later put the kibosh on the Morgenthau Plan, and replace it with his (surprise, surprise) "Marshall Plan". 

So much for ancient history. Why would certain Jewish concerns (George Soros, for example, or influential Jews in academia) be concerned with the TLM? And if they they were, what could they do to the Church? Well, it is not antisemitic to observe that influential Jews do make up an important segment of the world's banking and financial services area, and the Church is a "big business", with land holdings galore, investments in all sorts of enterprises, good and bad, and huge funds stored up over the past 100 years or so. In Germany, the Catholic Church is the largest employer outside the governmental system (Bild asserts this). And we all know, or ought to, that financial scandals are an even bigger millstone around the Church's neck than the sex scandals. Bergoglio himself infamously "rehabilitated" the putrid, diabolical Theodore McCarrick to go to China and "make a deal" with the Chicoms that involved betraying the underground Church there, for money. (McCarrick is far, far, light-years far more evil, carnally insane and putrid than ANY Renaissance Pope, or all of them together – or basically anyone since Judas Iscariot – to serve in the Church.) "Reform" of the financial aspects of the Vatican seem far more impossible than reform of anything else!

Therefore it would easy enough for important financial concerns to jerk Bergoglio's chain. (It has been long alleged that Benedict XV had to become "Father Benedict" because the Vatican bank lost its ability to serve its bank teller machine.) Bergoglio is also a Jesuit, and for a number of reasons, those Jews of influence who bother about the Catholic Church naturally have more access to him than they would, say, to Ratzinger or even Karol Wojtyła, who grew up with Jews as neighbors and friends in pre-war Poland.

So all in all, I think it is a good bet that culturally influential people, whether Jewish or cultural/entertainment big shots (often Jews, of course) do NOT want to see a restoration of a strong Catholic identity via the TLM – and all that goes with it; i.e. strong families, traditional morality, etc. Remember that during the '20s and '30s, the Catholic Church backed "National Legion of Decency" played havoc with Hollywood's incessant demoralization (literally) of the popular culture. A Catholic Church buggering boys and mouthing saccharine platitudes fits better for ANYONE seeking to make money off of "sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll."

"Pope Francis is tearing the Catholic Church apart..."

Michael Brendan Dougherty is not someone I quote from often, but he's always been very strong on the Traditional Latin Mass. He had an op ed at the NYTimes, and I refuse to even register with them, but I found it here at this site. I recommend it. (Not a high recommendation, exactly, but a solid one, nonetheless.)

Fr. Zuhlsdorf has an important, and very short post, here. This one IS a must read.

But Bergoglio is not the only one in these insane times ripping up, tearing apart, out-and-out trying to destroy something they're charged with protecting. We see that in the U.S. to an absolutely insane level. Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote powerfully of that, here. 

The bottom line is common-sense clear: neither Bergoglio nor Biden can be legitimate holders of their offices. We may well be imprisoned tomorrow for any number of reasons, but at least we don't have to warp our minds thinking legitimate rulers are doing this to us. To paraphrase Ann Barnhardt, "The Catholic Church is [not] an abuse cult that operates on gaslighting and Stockholm syndrome!" Even if Bergoglio tries to make it that.

Indeed, it is is not.

An Préachán

Bergoglio restricts Mass attendance to the "vaccinated"; this a political move against Trad Catholics

 Amici,

A friend sent this newdailycompass artricle about Pope Francis restricting attendance at his Mass to those who have been vaccinated. This is immoral in the extreme, to prohibit the non-vaccinated to attend the pope's Masses – or any Mass.

This is immoral in the extreme, as is the recent motu proprio, Traditionis custodes. (Ryan Grant makes the cogent argument that it should b translated "Tradtion's Jailers" as "custodes" means "guardians" and can be used for guardians of a gaol, and given the context, it makes perfect sense to translate it as "Gaolers of Tradition".)

The Catholic Faith is not a mutual suicide pact, neither is it incoherent. Neither does it fold up and blow away in the face of infectious diseases. Its doctrines and dogmas are not rewritten and recast by those occupying even the highest offices in Church. A pope may have carte blanc power but it is bestowed on him as Our Lord's Vicar; the pope is given the authority he has to defend the Faith, not slay it. (And as the current occupant of the See of Peter has forced ALL Vatican employees to take the experimental vaccines, on that alone he has lost all moral authority.) Currently, we are being crushed between the hammer of Traditionis custodes and the anvil of the Covid hoax.

We've had 60+ years of being tied into knots by the Modernists, and now this Traditionis custodes is just too much. It damns 1960 years of the Faith and worship, two millennia of theology and the saints; in truth, it actually constitutes an Oath Against Tradition, and completes the arch of events launched when Modernists seized control of Vatican II from the managers John 23 had picked.

It is also very much a political move against the one segment of the Church that refuses to believe in or abide by the Covid lockdowns and mask-wearing, and the horrible and evil forced infections for a disease that over 99 percent of those supposedly afflicted survive: Traditionis custodes is all of piece with the "Scamdemic". Politics permeate the Vatican II Church, especially in the last eight years. Enough.

We need not tolerate this. Alexander cut the Gordian knot. We need to tell the Modernists this we're not going tolerate this, and will cut their knots that they would choke us to death with. 

An P

Our Lady and the Immaculate Conception Is Central to Our Salvation

Our Lady and her Immaculate Conception is central to our salvation, because just as Our Blessed Lord inherited His humanity -- His Jewish humanity -- through her, and thus could in Himself fulfill all the previous Covenants that God had made with the Patriarchs (the first Covenant being with all Creation, of course, and the second with Adam and Eve, and so on), over time creating, fashioning, the Jewish People in the process, preparing the way for His Incarnation -- so we, through our participation in the Incarnartion via the Most Holy Eucharist (itself the New Testament, New Covenant, not the 27 books of the Christian Bible), receive His Divinized Humanity. Being Incarnated ourselves in the Incarnation now, with our natures changed, is the core of the Faith, and it is something all Protestantism denies -- and denied from the very beginning.

And so our Blessed Mother's Immaculate Conception is the first step in the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, and our own incarnation in Him, we ourselves via the Most Holy Eucharist having Jewish blood in our arteries along with His Divinized Nature, with the Blessed Mother truly being OUR Mother now.

ALL OF THIS the Modernists and their tiresome, quasi-Lutheran, (cretinous, actually), teaching denies. Their understanding of what the Faith is is defective, based as they do base it on Evolution, our evolution in "understanding" and even "God's evolution". This is the unholy seed Protestantism bequeated them when it started, and that has since grown hideous, and it is what they want to foist on the Catholic Church, and what we Trad/Orthodox/Conservative Catholics repudiate.

There can be no "middle ground" with the Modernists.

RC

Can the Vatican II Church Be Saved? Returned to being the True Church?

These two questions are serious ones. But how do I mean them?

I'm no Sedevacantist, because were Pius XII the last actual pope, then there are no bishops and priests today, certainly not those coined by Sedevacantists! Who's been around to ordain them, after all, in the sense that if t'is true a bishop has to be in Communion with Rome to be Catholic, and there's in effect "no Rome" since 1958, then no bishop is Catholic – we're not talking about a bishop or a priest being validly ordained before a particular papal interregnum occurs; we're talking about there being no pope over a biblical lifetime, something that is a sin of unbelief against Matthew 16:18 and following – and that's not counting the endlessly impossible mess of a committed Sede trying to figure out which priest (or bishop) today is validly ordained. That's a fun-house hall of mirrors, if ever there were one.

So, the Church is the Church, but it manifests in the different ages slightly differently, such as the Bourbon Church (1648 to 1789) was the same Church but different than the Counter-Reformation Church (1540 to 1648), which was in tern different from the High Middle Ages Church (1054 to 1300). All were in a sense quite different, but all had the Traditional Latin Mass and all that goes with it (theology and practice); however, the Vatican II Church doesn't even have those! Of course, they had never been truly stopped, but wherever they are coming back today, there the Church "feels" different than the mainstream one, and no doubt a new Church avatar is a-borning: let's pray it is a Reconquista Church! Vivo Christo Rey!

The Vatican II Church began in effect even before Pius XII died, but we can take his death in October, 1958, as the birthing of the new Vatican II Church avatar, even if its behind-the-scenes conception was back in Pius X's day.

So, the Vatican II Church? Saved? Collectively? Returned to the Catholic Stable? 

Nope, ain't gonna happen.

The Vatican II Church, the N.O. Vatican Church, is down by the bow to the point the propellers are outta the water and the only thing happening is the captain is shooting the sailors who know how to man the lifeboats.

Trust me. These clowns will "ride 'er down" outta sight, as demonstrated by this recent OnePeterFive article. Whatever else the Vat 2 honchos may or may not believe, the ONE thing they're certain of is THEY ARE RIGHT. They won't back up, reconsider, rethink, give up on or jump off of the wreck they've made. This article linked to above shows how "in your face" they are about it, too.

The only possible solution (speaking in human terms, sans any divine Deus Ex Machina) is for someone -- or some few -- to make this 60-year-long de facto schism de jure, while getting the Modernists seen as the Schismatics, not the Trad-orthodox. How that could be done I don't know, aside from getting a very 'conservative' or Trad pope elected; that'd do it, all right. The Vat2 crowd then couldn't wait to go into formal Schism. Other than that, I dunno.

But Bergoglio is not taking any chances. This coming October, he's creating 13 new cardinals, and they're Bergi Mini-Me's. "Ten of the new Cardinals are younger than 80. Francis has now named 53% of the body that will elect his successor. The ten new cardinals are pro-mass-immigration and pro-gay advocates."

If these past 60-70+ years have taught us anything, they've taught us that Modernism has no "group" cure. Individuals may – purely by the grace of the Holy Ghost – "convert" out of Modernism/Progressivism, but even that is rare. Collectively, Modernism/Progressivism is a self-reinforcing thanatos pact, Faith-draining all who become entwined in its clutches.

An Préachán

Hell, the Happy Home of Absolute Refusniks

Amici,

The following is a series of Comments I made at 1Peter5 about the reality of Hell to someone who seems to support Universal Salvation, a pernicious doctrine that will be getting a lot of press (literally) soon with the publication in November of David Bentley Hart’s That All Shall Be Saved: Hell, Heaven, and Universal Salvation.

It always amazes me how difficult it is for Moderns to "get" Hell. Modernism, the heresy, is utterly opposed to this basic doctrine, and the Vatican II Church has run from Hell with its (collective) hair on fire. 

But no more basic Christian doctrine exists. One can truly say that the Dogma (a doctrine that must be believed) of Hell is THE most importent teaching of Christianity, because, if there's no Hell, there's no need of a Savior. The Universal Salvation crowd, the Anti-Hell Hard Core, see the doctrine of Hell as a perversion of our (necessarily) limited understanding of God; they think we Traditionalists see God as a grumpy old sky god zapping us with thunderbolts now and again. 

And they replace the Dogma of Hell with that of Purgatory, writing that "Hell" is a kind of Purgatory wherein a "just" punishment is meted out for sins and when everyone has been cleansed, they get to go to Heaven. But as I wrote below in my Comment to a Universalist, NO disciplinary action would "fit their crimes" because their basic "crime" is their free-will rejection of God Himself and what He made them for. 

So what follows is my defense of the Infernal Regions, and their (alas) ever-growing population stats. 

Excuse me, but let me "unpack" your Comment.

1. You seem to be arguing for "Universal Salvation" and that I distort it, is that correct?

2. Who are "Those who have taught this (Universal Salvation, correct?) from the earliest days of the Church"? Please list some names and references. You sound like an avid fan of David Bentley Hart and his yet-to-be-published That All Shall Be Saved: Hell, Heaven, and Universal Salvation, to be published in November of this year. I don't know but I assume he'll dwell at length on this Pauline text.

3. You think I am distorting Universal Salvation by mockery, writing that Hitler (and I didn't mention Hefner by name) could just enter Heaven?

4. You have spoken to people who know about Eternity? That Eternity has time?

5. You quote 1 Timothy 2:4 that it is God's will all will be saved, and thus clearly, by the context of that section of your Comment, think that Hell is just Purgatory. Is that right? Otherwise God would be merely seeking Revenge, getting even (revenge again) or angry at sin? All too-human traits?

Answer to 1 (assuming I have gotten that and the rest of your Comments correctly): I think Universal Salvation a wildly out of context distortion of 1 Timothy 2:4. The context of this comment is that Christians are supposed to pray for their rulers (at that time, all pagans) so that Christians may be left alone to pursue a Godly life. Then comes the "Universal Salvation" statement, as a sub-point to living the Godly life, and then the famous Protestant "Control Quote" that there is one God, and one, sole mediator between men and God, the "man" Jesus Christ. Arians and non-Trinitarians no doubt love that phrase because of "the man, Jesus Christ" ref, but standard Protestants quote it to "disprove" the Catholic practice of praying to saints. (There are a dozen or so "Control Quotes" Prots use to interpret Scripture, to filter it -- all of it -- through them; it is called "Scripture interpreting Scripture.")

Yet the context of the entire second chapter is about the problems of discipline in the Church (a few verses later St. Paul ends up once again writing about women's hair!) and the "God wills all men to be saved" clearly is not a formal, all-important doctrinal statement. To try to make is so is an absurd proof-texting, as is what Prots do with "No mediator but Christ" verse. Nowhere else in Pauline literature does he teach anything like "God wills all people to be saved and will save them after proper chastisement." Nothing like that exists in the entire Bible, for that matter.

So just as you read me out of context, you read St. Paul out of context.

Cont.

Point 2: I will await enlightenment. But I suspect that your sources will be taken out of context, for the simple reason that in the world of "universal" this and that, the "universal" Church has clearly taught most of the Human race will be lost to Hell, and has taught the reality of Hell as Dogma, from the beginning, starting with Our Most Blessed Lord Himself, Who warned us to be afraid not of those who kill the body, but the soul, and that "Satan was a murderer from the beginning" (Matthew 10:28; John 8:44 -- these verses are clear, absolute, and central to why we need a Savior to begin with), meaning that Satan murdered the spark of Divine Grace in souls, angelic and human.

Point 3: My point about Hitler and a pornographer (unnamed) is that they would refuse Heaven because it is NOT WHAT THEY WANT. Why is Hell so difficult to understand? This isn't "rocket science"! People, like the Angels before them, must choose to submit, to serve, to obey God and God's Will for them. About a third of the Angels chose not to do that. We humans can't choose quite the way they did because we exist in time and "make the choice" for or against God in small daily increments, such that on Judgement Day we'll know clearly what we've chosen. (Occasionally, on willfully committing of a mortal sin, we make a BIG choice.)

It's simple. And as any angel, even the dumbest, is smarter than a human being (exceptions can occasionally exist about little bits of info, but that is a very small side point), and yet one-third of them chose Hell, we can logically conclude that the far dumber human race can also chose Hell, and on a massive scale.

For let's get this clear: HELL IS NOT GOD BEING VINDICTIVE, BUT GOD GIVING PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT! And if they don't want Him, He's not going force Himself on them. God wants faithful servants so he can "Theosis-ize" them into sons, to Divinize us with a portion of His Own Nature, not 'bot slaves having no free will. (Sheesh, how hard is this?)

Nor would any temporary Purgatory-like punishment suffice for those who have rejected Him. No disciplinary action would "fit their crimes" because their basic "crime" is their free-will rejection of God Himself! (Again, how hard is this to understand? Reread that previous line again, please.) Purgatory is the place for working out "just" punishment, giving the unconfessed and/or un-penanced sins of those who choose God their due; Hell exists as a Eternal Home for Absolute Refusniks.

Cont.

4. Whatever Eternity is, however we experience it – or how Angels do, and they no doubt (being pure spirit) experience it differently than we possibly could – the things that happen in Eternity are Eternal. A choice made there is eternal. One can't undo one's choices there. That's true in a sense now, for us. I can't undo an important decision or act in my life: I can repent it, I can confess it, I realize I took a wrong turn on a road trip, and can "go back and do it over" a bit differently, but so what? I can't possibly actually undo it. This reality will be much more "present" to us in Boethius' The Boundless Now.

Point 5: I've taken care to answer this at some length in the above comments concerning Points 1 to 4.

Pax.

An Préachán 

"No Hell" Bergoglio and the Fall of the Modernists

Looks like Bergi caught plenty of backlash on his "There's No Hell" comment to old Scalfari. Here's a long article at Onepeterfive that details it all:

An excerpt:

If true, this is a significant moment for the papacy of Francis. If a cardinal was, in fact, able to force the so-called “Dictator Pope” to back down, it indicates that the balance of power in Rome is shifting, and Francis, who is often seen as autocratic and difficult to rein in, may now find himself in a much more precarious position than we’ve previously seen.

And an article from Lifesitenews about an upcoming conference in Rome that's sure to be, shall we say, interesting.

The basic take on all this is that once the St. Gallen Mafia ousted Ratzinger and set up their preferred stooge, their preferred stooge turned out to be such a disaster that he's set back the Modernist/Progressive program massively, and perhaps killed it.

Once an opposition party is in control of a government, after years of "back bench" guerrilla war, they usually make themselves so obnoxious that their ideas end up repudiated once they're in power. It's a reality the Democrats experienced when they took over Congress in 2006 and the the presidency in 2008, and the Republicans in the last couple of years (they showed themselves unable to govern; if it weren't for Trump, they'd be doing nothing at all).

So it has been with the Modernists/Progs: once they had complete control of the Church, they immediately ran it into the ground. Confusion reigns, homosexuality is rampant, and the Progs look incompetent. Most average, everyday Catholics are sick of this mess, to the extent they know of it at all, and Trad Catholics go their own way. Meanwhile, there's no question now that Modernist/Progressives want to Church to go the "Full Anglican" route, with women priests, bishops, and the whole litany of progressive causes.

On the other hand:

As the Trad movement grows, it is obviously the successor "government" to the Progs. The Trads aren't large in numbers but they're like an elite military service, ready and able to take control, not least because they know what they want and what the Church ought to be like. They have a coherent program. The Progs have had that too, in the past, but they couldn't talk too openly about it because a majority of the Church was opposed to it. EVERYONE knows what Traditional Catholics want.

And it is also true that having been in control now, more or less, since Paul 6 was elected, we've all seen how bad the Progs are. Want more of the same? Elect another Prog pope, but then, the Church can't stand much more of this, either. Like a ship on a sandbar on grounded upon rocks, if it doesn't get off soon, it'll break apart.

Time has just run out for the Modernists/Progressives.

I note that Cardinal Sarah has been quietly surviving in the Vatican now under Bergoglio for some time, and he's clearly angling to be elected the next pope. We'll see. How things will actually develop depends on so much: will Bergoglio somehow NOT be deposed? And if he is, how ugly will it be? Will a "serious conservative" like Sarah be elected pope, and then ally with the Trads against the sure-to-be-had Prog counter-attack, or will Cardinal Tagle be elected pope, and try to do a JP2 balancing act for a decade? There's probably no chance a full Progressive can be elected pope now, not after Bergi. Schism hovers over the whole mess, with the Germans ready to go into Schism if a Trad or Conservative is elected pope, and large parts of the non-Prog Church ready to go into Schism if another Bergoglio is elected.

We'll just have to see. But it won't be long now, and ironically, the long discarded, unmentioned doctrine and dogma of Hell might well be the catalyst to bring it all tumbling down.

Some examples of where the Progs are trying to take the Church:

This article from a couple of years ago is very succinct in explaining the move toward women priests

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/13/female-deacons-priests-vatican-pope-francis-traditionalists-new-testament

And Francis is already pro-contraception, and there's been a lot of discussion on whether he'll try to overturn Humanae Vitae:

https://onepeterfive.com/argentinian-nun-says-pope-advocates-contraception-again/

Of course, movement in these areas would necessitate civil war within the Church, on a much larger scale than what happened within the Anglican Church.

Fun times.

An Préachán

A Conundrum To Be Addressed: My letter to OnePeterFive

N.B. The excellent OnePeterFive website has a strict policy of banning anyone suggesting that the current pontiff is not really pope; i.e., OnePeterFive doesn't tolerate sedevantism, the teaching that the Chair of Peter is not presently occupied. One of the Moderators wrote that that is "potentially damaging to souls".

I myself am not a sedevacantist. It's one of the "Church things" high-level Churchman have to decide. Ultimately, only a pope can declare another pope "anti-pope" and that's after the fact, obviously. That is, unless we recreate the Great Schism, as it is called, which existed 1378 to 1417, ending with the Council of Constance; during that "Great Schism" we had THREE popes concurrently!

No, my concern is that we're fighting a bunch of political revolutionaries, a "party", the "Modernists", and while they use political weapons (organization, a "war of position" and a "long-march" through the Church's institutions, dis-information, and God only knows what else, we're fighting over Canon Law and the fine points of theology. To address the situation directly on, we'd have to stop pretending Francis is confused, or proud, or whatever other spiritual failings he may or may not have, and address it not spiritually (although, naturally enough, it is spiritual in the sense everything is, one way or the other).

Here's an email I composed for them, FWIW.

May I make an observation here about this and not be banned? I'm in all seriousness: In the old Vatican I Church, certainly, this site would be condemned and put on the Index (of course it would hardly need to exist in the old days to begin with, or be something quite different) because it speaks of a reigning Pontiff in – shall we say – unflattering terms. Indeed, Fr RP wrote that the errors of AL are "Legion", the allusion to the devils would not be missed by the censors of yesteryear, but even to assert that a papal document had errors would have resulted in his banishment (were we in Ireland about 1880) to the Gaeltacht in the West, doomed to preach in English to monoglot Irish speakers!

I mean this: Vat I Catholics had it drilled into them that one NEVER, EVER questioned a priest, let alone a bishop, let alone a pope. That idea was simply inconceivable (yes, Indigo, in the original sense of the word!). And that is precisely why the radicals, the Progressives, the Modernists, were able to bring about the Vat2 Revolution in the first place! They counted on that iron law of Church "Omerta". And like some who've been banned here, vanished to lonely oblivion, the post Vat2 result was half of the Catholics in the U.S. (and probably more so in the other countries) just left the Church. I say being "banned" because they couldn't accept the obvious falling away from Right Doctrine, so they "voted with their feet" as Comrade Lenin said. What else could they do. They couldn't protest. "Act out" or do anything but simply take it or leave.

Ok, so today we have a pope who teaches heresy. Fine. Sure, it is the first time in Church history (other popes with questionable teachings or acts never questioned the basic moral dogmas). And this article above says he's planning to extend his heresy into other areas! In the old Vat 1 system, there was no Canon 212, and we would be bound to keep our mouths shut and our fingers off the keyboard. But here is this excellent site (it IS excellent and I don't want to be banned from it) but just about every day its excellent contributors contribute more and more excellent evidence that PF is a heretic, and leading the Church toward disaster (well, he's not the only one: I think the sex scandal was the worst thing to happen to the Church since the combo of the Thirty Years War and then the "Bourbon Church", which choked the spiritual life out of the people the Bourbons called "les dévots" (if I have that right in the plural). And remember, the Bourbons – by their awful policies – brought on the French Revolution and all that followed.

This pope too, can say, "Après moi, le déluge".

So how do you-all "square that circle"? By that I mean, anyone reading this site regularly would quickly become convinced – were he a dévot, of course – that the conclusion you refuse to to tolerate is yet preached here daily? You write you don't want to be "potentially damaging to souls", but the old Church, the Vat I Church, would say you are – and so, ironically, would Pope Francis. ("You rigorists, you!" :)

Again, I don't want to be banned. From my personal perspective, we're on the wrong tract. We're using Holy Water against King Tiger tanks! The Church is dominated by a political party, a "faction" as James Madison would say. This faction is using politics to wreck the institutional Church and the defenders of the Institutional Church are "quoting Star Fleet regulation and Vulcan philosophy", as Spock's mother told him in Journey to Babel. Les
dévots are not using the tools to counteract that sort of attack.

This I wrote because I give a hoot about you-all here. I'm not saying Steve should close the site down. Aquinas would tell him to do so, most certainly and instead pray earnestly for God's help. But then St. Catherine of Sienna and certainly St. Columbanus (I'm a fan of his) would not do so: but then, they weren't Vat 1 Catholics, you know.

An Préachán

corvinescatholiccorner.blogspot.com

Must Read: Great Roberto de Mattei Article on Vat 2 and other current articles of importance

Professor Roberto de Mattei has a great article here about Vatican II. (See also OnePeterFive here.)

An excerpt:
On the historical level, however, Vatican II constitutes a non-decomposable block: It has its own unity, its essence, its nature. Considered in its origins, its implementation and consequences, it can be described as a Revolution in mentality and language, which has profoundly changed the life of the Church, initiating a moral and religious crisis without precedent. If the theological judgment may be vague and comprehensive, the judgment of history is merciless and without appeal. The Second Vatican Council was not only unsuccessful or a failure: it was a catastrophe for the Church.

End of excerpt.
 
An Préachán – Indeed, that first quoted paragraph is a concentrated knock-out punch, a "right cross" to the jaw of anyone who wants to argue that Vatican II, and its still churning, decomposing aftermath, was anything but a true "crash and burn." Three recent essays are important to mention in this regard:

✔First, Martin Mosebach: Pope Benedict’s Red Thread

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2017/08/pope-benedicts-red-thread

N.B This is now the Foreward in Peter Kwasniewsk's Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness: Why the Modern Age Needs the Mass of Ages, where it is titled For Pope Benedict XVI, On His Ninetieth Birthday.

✔Second, Eric Sammons' challenge: Evangelization, Vatican II, and Censorship

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2017/evangelization-vatican-ii-censorship

 

✔And thirdly, Phil Lawler takes up Eric Sammons’ challenge:

https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otn.cfm?id=1236

 
I highly recommend all three, in order.

Back to Professor De Mattei; he writes, "...The judgment of history is merciless and without appeal." It is, for those who are willing to see it. As Anthony Esolen writes here:

"When people praise me for perspicacity, I shake my head and reply that almost all of what I do is to notice what is in front of my nose, and write about it. Almost all of what I do is to refrain from shutting my eyes toward what is right there, plain as day. It’s not that I notice it and others don’t. It’s that I won’t un-notice it. I won’t pretend not to see what I do see, and what everybody else sees too."

                   

For some reason, no doubt involving spiritual forces primarily, but also simple human stubbornness and a overwhelming embarrassment to admit they were wrong, many, many people are "shutting their eyes toward what is right there, plain as day".  Well, that's not honest, wise, or maintainable: we must NOT pretend not to see it. 

For example, basically, from what one can glean from the various reports and studies, half the Catholics of the U.S. (to give a pretty well-known example) just left. I myself have talked to "old folks" who tell me they were just getting out of school in the early 1960s, and they just left. Twelve years of Catholic Ed and poof, they're outta there. Never looked back. "Good riddance to nonsense" kind of attitude.

And think a moment about why: Image the mind's shock at what happened in the '60s: you, your parents, your grand-parents and so on were probably immigrants within the 150 years previous to Vatican II. Most Catholics were ethnics, such as Esolen, an Italian, or my people from Ireland. That and their papist religion set them back in Protestant America. For every cocky soulless "Catholic" character who became a Protestant and then a Mason, there were millions of "salt-of-the-earth" types who kept the Faith, whatever it cost them. And it cost 'em a lot, from a worldly point of view.

As with millions of others, Esolen's parents and grand-parents worked like Trojans to provide for their families AND the Church. Catholic churches had to be built, furnished, decorated, oftentimes by bringing the necessary experts from the Old Country. Schools had to be built and maintained. Religious orders had to be supported to do the teaching. The whole Catholic American infrastructure took serious coin. And along with the financial cost, chronological and spiritual sacrifices were made: ALL to maintain a Mass in Latin, a specialized, set-apart clergy and religious who spoke and taught the same Latin, all to support that whole "Catholic thing". 

And then one day they were told: "Hey, turns out that wasn't necessary after all! Toss it!" 

Remember what old Hannibal Bugnini is quoted as saying:

“We must strip from our Catholic prayers and our Catholic liturgies everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren, that is, Protestants.

L’Osseratore Romano, 19 March 1965, quoted in Michael Davies.

Nine years later the Bug expressed satisfaction that the ensuing reform was “…a major conquest of the Roman Catholic Church.”

 The psychological shock must have been devastating. I've heard stories of kids who watched as their parents took out their Latin-English missals and burned them in the backyard because the local priest told them to. Could a kid ever forget that? Try to imagine the shock of seeing what you were told was immemorial and eternal and see it replaced with the worst sort of chintzy banality that the wretched '60s and 70s could produce. (And that's saying something, because those decades were as shallow and empty-souled as any time in history! Incredibly, they even make the Bourbons look classy.)

It was the Vatican I Church, (that avatar of the Church from the election of Pope Pius IX in 1846 and culminating in Vatican I, and which lasted to Vatican II), hadn't drilled into lay Catholics the idea that priests and the hierarchy were NEVER to be questioned, and that bishops were just secretaries to the pope, get-the-coffee types even though the Vatican I council reaffirmed bishops were direct successors of the Apostles. The Vat2 Revolution could not have happened without that conditioning. The "Reformers" cynically used 100 years of "Do not question us" to further their ends.

“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

(The Greeks knew everything.) 

Being of the Irish-speaking persuasion, I have the attitude: "These (insert unprintable description here) don't have the right now, and they didn't then, to deprive me of my religious heritage." I've just sort of been waiting for some hierarch to tell me X, or Y, or Z, as in the old Modernist party line about the TLM and the old Church: I've just been waiting. And of course that's not charitable, and according to Canon 212 we have to be polite with the clergy. But Grrr, grrrr, grrr. Somehow, someway, the spirit of St. Columbanus runs in me. (And see also here.)

Indeed, when I'm in the exquisite TLM I attend here in Budapest, once in while the thought occurs to me (not as much now as early on in my TLM attendance) and it's a shocking thought: "Those people, the "reformers" wanted to take this away from meself AND me kids, all this spiritual, soul-filling beauty; they wanted to make it extinct." Of course, that's not going to happen now.  But the restoration, the reconquista, is going to be long. From God's point of view, that's fine. A lot of time for charity, from his perspective, especially from Trad Catholics to the other sorts. And that's not going to be easy.

It's just our penance. Bergoglio is our penance. It could be worse.

An Préachán