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

The Jonah Reality, Valid Priests and Bishops: and Papal Infallibility

Amici,

In my previous essay, I mentioned The Jonah Reality as a possible solution to an intractable problem. 

As Bergoglio and his peeps ("Tucho" "Kissy" Fernandez and a large coven of other Modernists and deviants) do their best to disintegrate the Church, we need to take a moment and consider our options, although things are happening so fast now that "Fiducia supplicans" has been foisted on us, and as it is apparently going to be seriously defended with Tucho saying bishops can't opt out of it, full rebellion might erupt at any moment, and some bishop or bishops' conference will declare Tucho, at least, excommunicated. Now, that would be interesting! The firing on Fort Sumter and Pearl Harbor rolled into one. It's past due.

Three Options

1. We Traditionalists can pretend that Bergoglio is an actual pope, which many Trads do, for example, the SSPX itself, the FSSP, and various VIPs, such as Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Cardinal Burke (more like Cardinal Punching Bag) or Bishop Strickland.
   
2. We can be "Benesedevacantists", such as Ann Barnhardt and Dr. Edward Massa, and so far as I can tell, Archbishop Viganò himself. I myself basically take this position; i.e. that while John 23rd, Paul 6, JP 2 and Benedict 16 were very flawed and essentially heretical in various ways, they were at least still validly elected pontiffs. JP2 and B16 certainly were, though maybe not the first two. Bergoglio (for a number of reasons) clearly wasn't validly elected. (N.B. Popes are not "the Lord's Anointed" as I saw one blogger insist; they're just elected as already-existing bishops to serve as bishop of the Roman See. E.l.e.c.t.e.d. Just whether they're immune from heresy after that election is pretty much what Trads – and everyone else – are fighting over at the moment. See Papal Infallibility below.)
   
3. Or one can take the "Hard" Sedevacantist" position, such as Novus Ordo Watch or AKA Catholic, who argue cogently that a true pope hasn't existed since Pius XII died in 1958. Don't simply dismiss their efforts; they're trying to make sense of a total mess, after all.
   

1. If we take Position 1, we blow our circuits; i.e. cognitive dissonance will eventually cause us to go cross-eyed and sit in trees and chirp and eat worms. Bergoglio is that much an anti-pope.
   
2. If we take Position 2, we can at least argue that Bergoglio is an usurper and anti-pope, and none of his antics are valid. But we have still many bishops consecrated by JP2 and B16 to work with and who could – if they want – act to preserve the Church. Some seem to be waking up and doing just that.
3. If we take Position 3, we easily solve the disastrous problem of the wayward, clearly heretical (increasingly heretical with Bergoglio in charge) Vatican II Era Church. But then we create a new problem: What or Where, then, is the "true" Catholic Church? Can it be said to still exist at all?

Position 1 is we stay in the frying pan as Bergi burns the whole house down around our ears; Position 2 allows us to dump The Ogre and jump-restart the Church, or you could compare it to removing a kidney stone to save the kidney; Position 3 is a case of "out of the frying pan and into the fire" of the Unknown, a search for Apostolic Succession in the shifting sands of a very grainy desert.

• For if the "Hard" Sedes are right, they would say the Church exists here and there, extant via bishops consecrated NOT by any Vatican II bishop. (The Novus Ordo Watch provides a list of priests not ordained by Vatican II-consecrated bishops.) Yes, these priests would be excommunicated automatically for receiving ordination from an excommunicated bishop, but that excommunication would be from a Church the "Hard Sedes" regard as heretical, and thus void.

The Dilemma

In other words, a dilemma! I mean, this Hard Sede argument would insist Bishop Athanasius Schneider is just a layman in fancy dress (as we used to say of the Anglican clergy). It would mean that Fr. Chad Ripperger is just a layman in fancy dress, too. We KNOW that isn't true because of his long success against demons, those hyper-legalists of all legalists would not let themselves be pushed around by a befuddled layman!

• So, it seems, the "Hard Sedes" can't be right, either. Unless you are a very, very "Hard Sede", what does N.O. Watch offer? A bunch of excommunicated bishops and priests who may or may not have Apostolic Succession, but no standing – except in their own eyes – to confect the sacraments. That is hardly comforting to most of us.
• Or we can stay in the mainstream Church, the "Universal" or "Catholic" Church. So, what if the pope is a lunatic? Or at least a massively obvious heretic like Bergoglio? Sooner or later, Bergi's reign will end and his "Ape of the Church", his Synodal Church, will collapse – because it most definitely is not of God. We see collapse in seminarian numbers in both Poland and Germany, with the latter below 50 now, while in Poland, the number has fallen from 6,789 in 2000 to 1,690 today. That's The Bergoglio Effect and it can't continue. (BTW: Germany harbors a bit under 21 million folks who identify as Catholics, but just 1.2 million of them went to Mass. I bet a lot of those are Trads.)
• A Schism will almost certainly occur as this impossible mess cannot continue, which Bergoglio's "Fiducia supplicans" is demonstrating by the hour. The Church has already fractured de facto, but it is about to become de jure. Yet unless he is officially declared to be an anti-pope and his appointments and rulings invalid and illegal – by a significant group of orthodox prelates – we are still stuck with heretics running the show. For a time.
  

Solution: The Jonah Reality

• Hence my argument about Our Jonah Reality.
  

Jonah was an Old Testament prophet and God assigned him the job of going to the great pagan city of Nineveh and preaching to its inhabitants, sometime in the 700s BC. Jonah, an Israelite nationalist, didn't want them saved: he wanted them in Hell. So he fled God. God caught up with him on the sea and stuffed him into the belly of a whale (or fish, or aquatic creature of some sort) for three days. After that digestive experience, Jonah got himself cleaned up and went to Nineveh and starting walking straight through the metropolis, preaching away. Sure enough, via his preaching, the pagans repented and their city was saved. (Important: God, you see, clearly had a whale-sized tub of grace prepared to pour out on the citizens – as He had at Pentecost; He just wanted to work through human agency like He works through the Church.)

Jonah served as a unwilling prophet, but God worked through him anyway. The Jonah Reality is that God works through us even when we don't want Him to. Saul of Tarsus was literally Hell-bent on destroying Christians, for example, but God zapped him on the road to Damascus, and Saul became Paul, the famous Apostle. God does things like that.

So even though the Vatican II Avatar (version) of the Catholic Church is a mess and a disaster, God can work through it. Even though the Vatican II Church changed the consecration of bishops and the ordination of priests, God can still consecrate and ordain valid priests from that. It is all pure Gift to begin with, pure Grace. All existence is. God rules. And He loves; i.e. He "wills our good". He's already gone to great lengths for us (see Christ, Jesus) and we can have confidence in Him.

Reflections and Addenda

Excommunication and Power Manipulation

Excommunication the Church uses to control people. It is mean to sober sinners up, and tell them they cannot receive the Sacraments until they repent and get their life in order. Instead, the Powers-That-Be in the Church use it to slap down people and control them. An Italian priest named Father Ramon Guidetti called out Bergo

glio recently as an anti-Christ – which his parishioners immediately applauded in the church – and his superiors excommunicated him. This will not sit well with real Catholics.

When Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre consecrated four bishops for the SSPX in 1988, he and they received Canon Law-stipulated automatic excommunication, but that didn't sit well with a great many; those having "the Catholic sense" knew it was wrong, and in 2009 Pope Benedict grudgingly lifted these excommunications. God stood behind all that. Despite the mainstream hierarchy's foot-dragging, God got His priests un-excommunicated. And He had a tub of grace prepared! Pope Francis, old Begoglio himself, anti-pope and Church Smasher, the Terror of Trads and Dragon of Argentina no less, later allowed the SSPX to hear confessions, etc., and basically since then, very few except hard-core wackos would argue that the SSPX is a heretical, excommunicated sect. (One of its bishops was kicked out for preaching against the Jews, and formed his own Church, consecrating four bishops as of now, I think it is.) The SSPX's canonicity might be still a bit "unsettled", but so what? Good for them. The SSPX grows daily by leaps and bounds. Obviously, God supports it. Who can stand against God? (See Gamaliel, Rabban, in Acts 5) Jonah couldn't stand against God, the Sanhedrin couldn't, and Jorge Mario Bergoglio can't, either.

Apostolic Succession note:

• Apostolic Succession is the traditional way ancient Christianity was and is organized. Protestantism opposes it; they dismiss Apostolic Succession, root and branch, as mumbo-jumbo. You're saved by faith alone, Protestantism (usually) teaches, not good works – though most Protestants won't put up with charlatans doing evil deeds yet saying they are "saved" despite the fact that Luther specifically taught you are damned if you DO any good works! (Few, or none, modern Protestants could stand either Luther or Calvin today.) That would impinge on God's sovereignty, see? 
• However about Protestants, all the ancient historical Christian Churches: the Western Orthodoxy, aka Roman Catholicism, Catholicism in general (Latin Rite Catholics plus the 22 Eastern Rite Churches in Communion with it), the Big Fourteen Orthodox Churches that don't recognize the pope (The Russian Orthodox, The Greek Orthodox, the Serbian Orthodox, etc.) and the "Oriental Orthodox", the Copts, the Ethiopians, the Armenians, etc., ALL have Apostolic Succession, the Seven Sacraments, and so on. They are ALL based on that doctrine, and rite, of Apostolic Succession. This was how Christianity was founded, and it is central to it, for priests and bishops exist to confect the Sacraments, and it is by participation in the Sacraments by which we are saved.

The Anglican Exception

Now, many Anglicans squirmed about regarding Apostolic Succession. A lot of them didn't feel very Protestant, to put it simply. Some of them therefore wanted to claim Apostolic Succession, and asked Pope Leo XIII to recognize Anglican Orders as valid re: Apostolic Succession. But Leo sagely pointed out that since the Anglican Church was founded by an Act of Parliament, and because that Act founding this Church did not recognize Holy Orders as a sacrament, then he, Pope Leo, could obviously not recognize them as validly ordained since their founding document disallowed Apostolic Succession. Kapow! So, since then, some Anglican priests have somehow got Orthodox bishops (of one of the autocephalous Orthodox Churches, of which there are 14, as noted above), to ordain them. All so they can truly have Apostolic Succession. If that works for them. Er, well. Whatever. God will sort it out.

Popes and Infallibility

This doctrine is actually the rock upon with so many crash their barques and find themselves in the water, as Jonah did. Is the pope infallible? If so, exactly how? It's been a developing doctrine, from the ancient past down to today, but it certainly seems more headache than anything else. No one ever seemed to have thought – maybe a handful of theologians like Robert Bellarmine, for one – what would happen if a true heretic became pope. The usual idea was that God would preserve the papal office from such. Yet since all the Vatican II popes have one way or another, some more, some less, taught against Tradition and the Deposit of Faith (The Deposit of Faith equals Tradition, as Archbishop Lefebvre said) then are they all false popes? It seems a true Gordian Knot. And round and round the arguments go. 

I just touch on it here since the entire Vatican I Council dealt mainly with this Infallibility issue, and volumes upon volumes have been written about it. 

1. Part of the problem is that the Church has always had the pope, and the pope has always been the last court of appeal. Any organization needs such. It is inherently necessary. The Protestant idea that Sts. Peter and Paul and James and so on were just guys who knew Jesus and got together once in a while is not Biblically or Traditionally sustainable. There've always been bishops and there's always been Christ's vicar on Earth serving as bishop at Rome. Truly, "the buck stops with him". That's simply in the nature of the job. But obviously, the man has to be orthodox Catholic.
2. The Corinthians had an issue with their bishop about the year 100 AD, and to solve it, they didn't write to Antioch, site of a very strong Church and the first place Christians were called Christians, and where St Peter had once served as bishop. They didn't write to Alexandria, the second largest city of the empire, and center of a strong Church. Jerusalem had been destroyed 40 years previously and Constantinople didn't yet exist (and wouldn't for 230-some years). 
3. The Corinthians wrote to Rome, and they accepted Pope Clement's ruling.

So it has always been. A problem arises – Martin Luther is an example – and slowly it works its way up through the hierarchy and eventually (I say eventually) lands in the pope's lap, and he has to deal with it. Henry VIII is another example of this. But since Pope Pius IX's reign, we have had transatlantic cables. Technology altered the situation. So, since the 1870s a pope has been able to deal directly with issues on the other side of the planet. 

• Over time, this caused centralization and increased power in the Vatican. 
• The Vatican bureaucracy grew and grew, costing ever more, and the figure of the pope himself grew and grew, average Catholics began reading papal encyclicals which appeared more and more often, all this while the papacy itself became economically poorer, losing the Papal States in 1870 and thus relying on handouts, with the pope a "prisoner" in the Vatican. 
• Today, apparently, Bergoglio has sold the Vatican to the Chinese Communists for huge sums of money, which explains a lot of his behavior and his betrayal of Chinese Catholics. "Follow the money" is just as crucial in Church issues as in anywhere else. But because of our technology, should the "pope" slap some woman away from him, as Bergoglio once infamously did a Chinese woman, it is instant news worldwide. 

My point is a lot of the problems we have with the Pope are structural, as in organizational and financial. One man now is literally universal bishop, universal dictator, really. He needs a huge bureaucracy. If he's a good man like Leo XIII or St. Pius X, great. If he's an actor and a flashy Public Relations genius, like John Paul II (who was also a true hero against the Nazis and the Communists, let us never forget), well, that's nice. But if he's an out-and-out coward, as was the effeminate Paul VI, or a dunce, as was John XXIII, or a bully – as is Bergoglio; unfortunately for us, an anti-Catholic bully! – then we're in trouble.

And this is simply structural: as the Church became more and more centralized, it became more and more open to infiltration and take-over by hostile forces. Modernism the Mother of All Heresies arose with Darwinism and the idea of Evolution (we evolve, truth evolves, God evolves, we make up God and evolve Him ourselves; i.e. basic Freemason or Communist conceits). It attracted theologians to it, and they began to try to alter Church teaching. The Church resisted till Vatican II when modernism won out. Now we suffer from an over-centralized Church flinging heaps of heresy on us like monkeys in a zoo throwing poo at visitors.

We need to decentralize, but not in this false "Synodal Church" fashion, which is a fraud, but back to bishops and archbishops running their dioceses. And we see today that the African prelates may be the key to that. How far will Bergoglio push them to establish his pervert agenda? We need a pope who will free himself from the over-centralized bureaucracy so he can do his job. The job Clement I did. The job most all the popes have done. And his primary job is to defend Catholic (i.e. Universal) Church's Tradition, also known as the Deposit of Faith (Bergoglio dismisses the whole idea of that, by the way) while strengthening his brother bishops (not treating them as hogs he can slaughter, as Bergoglio does). Like the Emperor Augustus, a pope is the first among equals in the Church's Universal Republic, for all the bishops are direct descendants, via Apostolic Succession, of the Apostles. Apostolic Succession, then, remains central.

We need to get back to that model, that paradigm. It is a necessity.

 An Préachán

Looking at Sedevacantism Issues Again What with All Our Troubles Breaking Full Upon Us

A Chairde, Amici,

Opening Note: Regarding Bergoglio's official approval of blessing the carnally deviant, this is, of course a "deal breaker". It cannot stand. Already we're seeing battle lines drawn up across the globe, for and against. We, the laity, must not tolerate it. If you have a local priest or bishop who approves of such an "abomination set up in the House of the Lord", break it off with them. Vote with your feet. They've excommunicated themselves from the Lord Jesus Christ. Full stop. Bergoglio has taught a lot of heresy before (death penalty, reality of Hell, etc.) but this is too much. Of course, "Bergi" is just pushing the envelope, seeing how far he can humiliate God, God's Church, you, and me. That in itself is the story of his war against the TLM. It's all of a piece.

Things are dire. People are on edge. Millions are leaving the Church, "voting with their feet". Things seem to be getting ever worse, more insane, more frightening. Now, as noted, "Pope Francis", aka Bergoglio, via his creepy henchman "Tucho" "Kissy" Fernandez, has allowed same-sex blessings in the Church. Taylor Marshall opines here that this is to destory marriage as a sacrament. And exiled Bishop Strickland calls on "his brother bishops" to unite against this Vatican ruling (fat chance). 

What with all this literal filth – spiritual septic tank filth spewing all over us from Bergoglio's volcano – I have been studying the Sedevacantists again. Personally, I think it quite reasonable to deduce that the papal office stands vacant with the so-called "Pope Francis". As with the reports above, every day his "Magisterium" goes from bad to worse. Reading Liz Yore's recent work at Lifesite News reinforces this deduction. However, going beyond that idea, I was perusing the Novus Ordo Watch site, going through their blog posts and Most Frequently Asked questions. They are considered "hard" Sedevacantists; i.e., that there's been no valid pope since Pius XII's death back in October of 1958. As such, they do not consider the Vatican II Church a Catholic avatar of historical Catholicism at all. That has some far-stretching complications, indeed. It certainly explains a lot of the past 60 years' history, but it is the answer to our problems? I will discuss this below.

Now, in August of this year I had written an article about Sedevacantism. My question then embodied the following, in which I wrote back in August regarding the "hard" Sedevacantist thesis that:

Anyway, were these men NOT actual popes, then we don't have a Catholic Church, because the last priest ordained by the last bishop Pope Pius XII assigned a diocese to has probably passed away by now. Invalid, false popes cannot ordain or assign bishops, and invalid bishops cannot ordain valid priests. Therefore, Catholicism is dead.

Remember the priests exist to validly ordain the Sacraments, especially the Most Holy Eucharist. (It's by Baptism and the Holy Eucharist that we participate in all the ancient Covenants. The Covenant system God set up with the First Covenant, when He blessed Creation and established the seventh day for the remembrance of it. The Holy Eucharist, capstone of the system, is required for salvation, as St. John makes clear in the sixth chapter of his Gospel. So it can't come to an end, until The End.) And the bishops exist to ordain valid priests and keep an eye on them. And in their turn, popes exist either to ordain and assign bishops or approve the election of bishops elevated by local cathedral canons, etc., as it was in the Middle Ages and before....   

So, if valid popes have not existed since Pius died on the 9th of October, 1958, (or I suppose since June 3rd,1963, if one assumes Roncalli was a valid pope), then the Church is an illusion, a "maya" as Buddhists say. That cannot be true, either. Not if God actually exists and if Jesus Christ is indeed God. So, how to square this circle? Maybe it is just me, but I've never seen a sedevacantist explanation of this: a clear one, concise, instantly recognizable to one's reason, as are the First Principles of Logic and the Truths of the Faith.

This was it. I wanted a clear, concise, instantly recognizable explanation to how this could work: how could a Catholic Church still exist assuming the "long-march" 60-plus-year sedevacantism? And how could we know/find it?

Remember: No valid popes for so long means no valid bishops. No valid bishops means no valid priests. No valid priests means invalid sacraments and thus no salvation whatsoever. That is, of course unless we want to go Protestant and ditch God's entire Salvic Plan from the First Covenant (Genesis 2:1-3) down to the Seventh Covenant Our Lord Himself made with His Father two thousand years ago, as told in the New Covenant/Testament. 

But would the Lord God abandon thousands of years of Covenant, since Creation itself, in this way? Would he create a "Hidden Church" of true believers? And is that very idea very Protestant, in itself?

Trying to Understand This Thinking, What I Learned Is...

On their page Now What?, NOW helpfully provide a series of Mass directories where one can search for a Mass not hooked up in any way with the infamous "Vatican II sect", as they call it. I.e.

Look for a Mass location that is close to you, and keep in mind that you may have to go across state or country lines for your nearest Mass. The editors of these directories try hard to ensure that all of the Masses listed are sedevacantist, that is, as far as they know, the clergy who offer them profess the true Catholic Faith, are validly ordained, and do not profess communion with any false papal claimant or the Vatican II Sect.  

Notice they mean, of course, by "true Catholic Faith" the one defined for millennia, not its more recent iterations. And that they thereby totally discount ALL of the Vatican II Church, entirely. One has to find a Mass location (not a parish because those cannot be set up, things being as dire as the are) where the priest was ordained by a bishop who himself was NOT ordained by any Vatican II bishop – but would have been ordained by someone who "passes", someone somehow ordained in a line not connected with Vatican II.

So, that would be either some sort of SSPX bishop or priest who left the SSPX because the SSPX prays for Pope Francis, and the Society has not been cast off by the official Church. (Horrors!) Who fits such a description, though? Aye, there's the rub. Well, there were "The Nine" who left the Society at some point, and some of those (or maybe just one guy?) founded the SSPV, and was consecrated to the episcopacy by Archbishop Pierre Martin Ngô Đình Thục (I guess it was) at some point. (Thuc died in 1984.) One of these ordinands just died, a "founder of Congregation of St. Pius V... Sedevacantist Bishop Clarence Kelly (1941-2023)". But then in the Novus Ordo Watch comments on an obituary regarding the late Bishop Kelly, debate arises whether the entire SSPV (not the SSPX, mind you) is Sedevacantist at all. Some say yes, some no, chaos reigns. Fascinating, but a bit like getting into the details of ancient Gnosticism, that or Japanese mythology. Bewildering, in a word.

Another of The Nine, was, I believe, one Father Anthony Cekada. Though dead (in 2020), he has a large Youtube presence. Look him up. You shall thereby find links to articles about some of the issues the guys commenting on Kelly's death brought up.

Another fly in the ointment is that, if nothing else, Pacelli (Pius XII) made it plain that a pope would have to approve new bishop consecrations. Things have changed since then; i.e. the mode and words of bishop consecrations have changed, the words of ordaining priests and deacons have changed, too, for that matter. Changes galore. But not only that. If I recall correctly, from at least Pius' day, the pope has to approve a bishop's consecration, and if there's no pope...er...well, you see the problem. 

Bishops are now not just consecrated as bishop of a certain town, region, or ruin, either; regardless whether they are a titular bishop of an actual place, ancient or modern, or not; they're ascended to a higher rank of clergy and are in direct Apostolic succession of the Apostles! Bishop Strickland is still a bishop fully gunned, victualed and manned, as the old Navy would say. He just doesn't have a ship, a diocese,  not even a titular one, but he still has all the power that being a bishop entails. Therefore, even "dry-docked", he has episcopal power to fire on Bergoglio, as Lifesite reports above. This, thanks to Vatican II. But not in the pre-Vatican II Church. 

Practical Considerations

• As regards changes in the consecration/ordination rites, I personally think that too much scrutiny on that makes it into more magic than grace. A spell won't work unless the words are quite right. Just ask Gandalf.
  
• But in Church sacraments, it is not magic, but grace ("grace" means Divine gift, freely given: i.e. God does this); thus, some verbal variation might be tolerable. It depends on the sacrament, and so on. Catholic Churches of the Eastern Rites, i.e. non "Roman"-Catholic Churches, have different words for ordination and consecration than the Western Church had. They've always been valid. It's the intent that mattered. (I'm just making this notation to save folk from losing their marbles about their local clergy's ability to confect the sacraments.)
  

Bottom Line

Assuming – and I think it is a valid assumption – that Novus Ordo Watch in their research, their articles, their links, are solid for "sedes", that they're well-intentioned but that their zeal puts them on a very tall cliff, basically; i.e. they solve some problems but create new ones. Perhaps even bigger ones. What can we deduce?

I'm Not Joking

That you'd rather be Orthodox. Not a joke. (Well, sarcasm.) And I do mean one of the autocephalous Orthodox Churches, "the 14". Consider, my friends: 

1. These Churches A: have existed for centuries, 
2. B: you know that since they're not "fly-by-night" you don't have to dig around to verify whether they've Apostolic Succession, and...
   
3. C: your problem is how to adapt to a foreign national culture in your religious life: i.e.: We're Western Christians. The Orthos are Russian, Greek, Syrian, whatever. Can you deal with that? Myself, I could not. (But I love icons in general and Russian Church architecture in particular!)
   

As for the search recommendations the Novus Ordo Watch suggests, I've only one word: headache.

1. A; whatever Sede "Mass community" or "church" you found would NOT have existed for very long, and thus been proven by that cruel, exacting "Test of Time"; 
2. B: therefore you would have to spend a lot of time, energy and patience trying to ferret out whether they have Apostolic Succession.
3. And C: With the Orthodox, of course, they're national Churches. So, if you are not Russian, or Serbian, or Romanian, or Greek, or Bulgarian, or Syrian, or...well, you really think some generic Orthodox Western Church is a real thing? But with these tiny Sede break-aways that are insisting they're really Roman Catholic, does that sit well with you in your craw? Maybe your gut says yes. Maybe not. And we have to live with our gut.
   

To Finish Up

The Hard Sedevacantist situation, my friends, is nearly impossible. Honestly. On the one hand, sure, they describe well and thoroughly the very falleness of the mainstream Church. (NO doubt as to the N.O. Church.) And Bergoglio is so obviously a wild boar of an enemy of Christ that he has usurped the throne (a lot like Biden and his swamping the USA with military-aged men from China, etc.). But on the other hand, their long march attempt at a solution just doesn't work for long. 

• Spiritually, who are we to ascertain that Bishop Strickland – to take an example – is not only not a bishop, but not even a priest? That he, and Bishop Schneider and so many others are what we used to say of Anglican/Episcopalian clergy: just laymen in fancy dress.
• Morally and legally, oddly but truly, we have no right to judge these others in that way. We can judge moral action, definitely; for example, Bergoglio's sell-out of the Chinese Catholics and other Christians is a horrific evil no pope could allow. Yes. See Liz Yore here. So also his "Kissy" up to the Gays.
  
• But regarding your local bishop or priest? Unless they excommunicate themselves, as in the Opening Note, can we excommunicate them?
• And what do demons judge? They are THE hyper-legalists of all hyber-legalists. If a local bishop isn't valid, he cant appoint a valid exorcist. However, I believe Fr. Ripperger has said he can cause a demon great pain by just showing him the photograph of a local bishop. And for that matter, Fr Ripperger himself, how's he casting out demons if he's just a confused layman in fancy dress?
• And finally: Practicality. Practicality hangs over Hard Sedevacantism like Damocles' Sword. What in Heaven's name is the practicality of a layman having to do tons of research, not to mention serious travel, prayer, and simple reflecting, on whether some local off-shoot outfit is really Catholic at all? Does that sound like something we can practically engage in, time and again? 
• Yes, sometimes "the less must lead" as with confronting Bergoglio, who affects us all. We can all see his immorality and judge that. We can judge those who openly embrace his apostasy. But locally, in judging whether Fr. So-and-So is a Catholic in the first place? God set up the spiritual hierarchy of human beings for a reason, and we all agree Luther went too far with his priesthood of all believers (he himself clearly thought so after seeing its consequences). 
  

Summation

Who among the laity – except for the "hard core", whoever they might be – could stand the trouble? All this searching NOW recommends, and for what? So much would depend on our money and time as well as our will, and then our mental state rather than our rational state, and wouldn't so much depend on the charisma – or lack thereof – of the priests involved? Father Anthony Cekada exhibited a great and winning personality. It is said Father Leonard Feeney (died 1978) could be mesmerizing, too. Doesn't make them wrong – or right.

1. It's obvious the Vatican II Church has troubles, and that it has been moving further and further away from the Deposit of Faith. 
2. But that's been a process, my friends. A PROCESS. It is an arc. 
3. This latest fiasco about blessing homosexuals shows it is reaching its apogee, its culmination, its denouement. Maybe the majority of bishops in the world will submit to Bergoglo and "Kissy", thus separating themselves from the Lord Jesus. We'll all be scrambling, then. But there will remain 7,000 who have not bent the knee to Ba'al. (First Kings 19:18)
   
4. I recently watched that enemy of Tradition (and hence the Deposit of Faith and hence a Ba'al knee-bender) Cardinal Wilton Gregory, say his piece about Tradition dying a bloody death. It's stomach-churning to watch. The man parodied an actor back in a '60s "Rat-Pack" movie playing a homosexual man. Gregory is very "faggoty". He's just a parody entirely. So many of Bernadine and McCarrick's highly placed "sons" are. 
5. And besides that, it's equally obvious to EVER more people that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is not a valid pope. Whether invalidly elected or fraudulently elected (or post a valid election he abandoned his post argument) we can set aside for this discussion we're on. 

My argument is long-march Sedevacantism like this – that the entire Catholic Church except for a few eccentrics (apologies to everyone at N.O. Watch), is very valuable in a great many ways, but ultimately, I'm sorry: arguing over whether the SSPV is really and truly a Sedevacantist or just a seemingly merely Sedevacatist church, is nuts. I can't reduce Catholicism to that. I really don't think they want to, either.

Right now, we have to weather the storm that's on us as best we can. Pray. As I wrote above, the battle lines are being drawn. Fundamentally: Schism, True Schism, is now upon us all.

• Pray to St. Patrick. He went to Ireland without the approval of his bishops back in Britannia. They didn't consecrate him a bishop. They might not even have ordained him a priest. But he went regardless, and the Lord God rewarded his sacrifice pretty handsomely in the test of time. 
• There's a delightful Russian story about three monks on an island in a lake who spent their days and nights chanting, "We three below adore You Three above." So the local bishop got a boat and went out to enlighten them about the Faith. As he was boating homeward, he saw one of the monks running across the water. He ran to the boat and stood on the lake to ask the bishop a child-like question. I'd rather be one of those monks than the bishop, wouldn't you?
  

   An Préachán

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Bergoglio about to remove Bishop Strickland? Ramifications

Friends, a chairde, 

A widely reported rumor now circulating hints strongly that Bergoglio will "ask" Bishop Joesph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, to resign. See LifesiteNews for details. 

Should this prove true, you-all can know for certain that no matter how holy and faith-filled Bishop Strickland is, and no matter how carefully he's run his diocese (which is flourishing, and with a full seminary, etc.), they can find something or other, even (as with Roe v. Wade) a "shadow of a shadow", i.e., a penumbra, of something that could be critiqued and "cried up". I won't be surprised at how shrilly they decry him. The truth is, of course, that he's "America's bishop" because he really believes the Catholic version of Christianity, lives it and promotes it, and in short simply does what every other bishop in the U.S. ought to be doing, and is increasingly (slowly but steadily, too slowly for some, to quickly for Bergoglio's Clown Posse) growing in opposition to the Beast Bergoglio. And therefore he makes the other bishops out to be time servers and bench sitters.

Should Bergoglio make this damnable move – and it is damnable: just look at how badly the American bishops govern their dioceses, closing churches, dioceses empty of aspirants to the priesthood, swamped with homosexual and other deviants in their clergies – then the moment has come. If Bishop Strickland refuses to resign, then the revolution against the tyrant Anti-Pope has begun. Bishop Strickland will have raised Our Lord's Royal Standard for us all to support. If the Bishop knuckles under to the Ogre, however, well, that's about it for the official American Catholic Church, a.k.a. the Vatican II Church. Out with a whimper, as began to collapse earlier under the Covid fraud.

Fundamental Point: Bergoglio is moving forward with this ridiculous and heretical "Synod on Synodality" and the ordination of women and the formal recognition of the German bishops blessing "gay unions", etc. That Bergoglio is taking a wrecking ball the the Catholic Church is manifest, as mainline "Conservative Catholic" commentator Fr. Murray wrote about back in February! Well, Fr. Murray, guess what? Bergoglio hasn't "stopped it" as you demanded (yes, demanded) in that article; he's sped it all up!

Observation: Why is it so hard for Fr. Murray and Dr. Taylor Marshall and so, so many others not to simply say, as Ann Barnhardt says, Bergoglio is not the pope. Ann has great reasons. Fr. Altman gives 20 examples of reasons why Bergoglio can't be pope in his wonderful sermon here: Bergoglio is not the Pope; Fr. Altman Talks. As I keep saying, what does "Bergi" have to do? Add Martin Luther to the calendar of Catholic saints, or maybe Muhammad? Does Bergoglio have to declare a "Holy Duality" and nix the "Holy Trinity"? What? What does the man have to do to get it into their heads that he is destroying their Church, full stop? 

Review this article on a little commented on or observed move Bergoglio has done. It's about

the Apostolic Letter Spiritus Domini of January 2021, in which Bergoglio universally changed canon law for the whole Church regarding the so-called “lay institutes” of Acolyte and Lector. 

• It's about women doing SSPX,those jobs, of course, setting them on the way to priestly ordination. That ordination of women gutted what was left of the Anglican Church; you would think the Catholic Church's Modernists would know that; however, my friends, I suspect they know it all too well. They want to create a New World Order Church.

"The Church", the True Church, will survive, because of Our Lord's solemn promise. It'll be underground, found here and there, and in the SSPX. It will use the Trad Latin Mass, teach the Deposit of Faith (i.e. Tradition) and will survive the coming horrors long foretold by the Blessed Mother, and others. Assuming there's a post-Apocalyptic future, it will be here, doing what's it's done for 2,000 years (sans the Vatican II Interlude).

Dáil trócaire orainn, a Dhia.

         AnP

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 "Vatican Rite" or "Pauline Rite" is the Novus Ordo, but NOT the Roman Rite...'

Amici,

For all of us repudiating and discarding – to the extent we can avoid it, something Bergoglio is making difficult at the moment – the hapless, never sufficiently disparaged Novus Ordo Mass, there's an essay from Dr. Peter Kwasniewski at OnePeterFive, here online that I encourage everyone to read.

Dr. K is a great defender of the Vetus Ordo, the Ancient Rite, the TLM, and I always read him with profit. Usually, my only quarrel with him revolves around whether Bergoglio (for whose pitiful soul we must all pray while he's still among the living, before it is too late for him to repent – though it is a pretty big mountain to repent: i.e. a lifetime of trashing out the Church and supporting the sexually deviant in myriad ways) is actually pope.

But leaving that issue aside, this article at OnePeterFive focuses on the infamous Sant’Anselmo professor of liturgy Andrea Grillo. Grillo has been outed as the creator of Traditiones Custodes and the subsequent liturgical garbage Bergoglio has tightened around our necks, like successive slave collars. Indeed, except for one or two individuals, Grillo is perhaps the biggest influence on Bergoglio.

The article is lengthy, but should you have interest in how the official Catholic Church (à la the "Officials" for you who know IRA history) is now so determinedly anti-TLM, well, Grillo is yer man. He's just evil. And stupid. These two estimable qualities vie in his cockroachian soul. But don't take my word for it. Read the article.

I will say that the comhrá os íseal, the scuttlebutt, that the TLM will be formally cancelled sometime next year, must come from Grillo's fevered imagination. "Grillo proposes, God disposes" ought to be a saying. Actually, Grillo is insisting it is banned already! (Read the article.) By this time next year, however, there'll be mass starvation around the world, national power outages in the "developed world", esp Europe, and social unrest on a horrendous scale. Covid vaccine mortality alone will bankrupt public and private insurance on a planetary scale. So somehow I think it will be easier than ever to dismiss Bergoglio's rantings (as indeed, Prof Kwasniewski would have us do, though not as I would, as the words of an anti-pope whom we must pray for lest he be damned).

Here is an extract from the article, a fascinating and a very revealing exchange of email Grillo had with a student; here's the student:

More and more voices, of different sensibilities, testify that the 1969 operation was truly radical, in the face of a limited conciliar mandate: from the right, as in Card. Stickler’s lengthy memoirs; and from the left, as in Fr. Gelineau’s lapidary comment: “This must be said without ambiguity: the Roman Rite as we knew it no longer exists. It has been destroyed.”

And it is precisely on account of Gelineau’s admission that I personally feel like making a concession: it is indeed true that the theorem of the two forms of the Roman Rite is fragile (to be generous) and sophistic (to be more ruthless). For the Council had called for a reform of the Roman Rite. The Consilium produced instead a “Vatican Rite” or a “Pauline Rite,” with some vestigial resemblance to the historic Roman Rite, and some superficial resemblance to some of the Council Fathers’ indications, although most were ignored de plano. Hence with a little intellectual honesty—but that is still a long way off—it will sooner or later be necessary to acknowledge that the Vatican Rite or Pauline Rite is not the Roman Rite, as indeed a forthcoming book argues.

AnP again:

• An excellent way of saying it. The Vatican II Council called for one thing and got another, something with "some vestigial resemblance to the historic Roman Rite, and some superficial resemblance to some of the Council Fathers’ indications." Touché. It's ridiculous, but there it is. We should have demanded they toss it back then, reject it on the spot, yet the "Vatican I Church" (from 1870 to 1962) had drilled Catholics to pray, pay, and obey. No longer. That sort of submission no longer exists much of anywhere in the Church.
  
• FWIW, I never bought into Ratzinger's spiel that two forms of the western Roman Rite existed, the "Ordinary" form and the "Extraordinary" form. Many others did not, either; anyone, in fact – me thinks – will come away with that realization who bothers to even remotely interact with the TLM Vetus Ordo. Hence the idea of a "Vatican Rite" or "Pauline Rite" seems so fitting. The N.O. is an alien thing altogether. A Changeling. As I say, it's a Methodist service with one of the N.O.'s Eucharistic prayers squeezed in.
  
• If you take time to read Grillo's responses to this student above, and another exchange Prof K provided, you realize Grillo is a parrot to Modernist notions purely ideological in nature. A high apparatchik in a dying cult. Such ideas cannot be sustained except by brute force (via KGB, Stasi, or FBI), which is precisely why Bergoglio acts the way he does.
• The near-term future is not conducive to the Novus Ordo: world-wide social stresses and economic upheavals will destroy, at long last, the "Vatican II Church", for as we saw with the ridiculous Covid lockdowns, that Church has no stuffing, no guts; it bent over showed its  butt to the dominant Grillo gorilla-brute culture of power, the fascist "boot on the human face forever" (Orwell) when what the world needed was the actual Catholic Faith, represented during the lockdowns best by the SSPX, which kept chapels open and priestly services ongoing, as much as possible. If you want to see that actual Catholic Faith in action, watch this video of an SSPX priest making the rounds in Alaska. 
  
  

So, we'll see. Time will tell. But remember: Motus in finem velocior. Time speeds up before the end. Or as Aristotle said: Time is the measure of motion. And things are running ever faster toward Global Dystopia.

    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.

We need to replace Bergoglio with Viganò this Christmas...

 Amici,

Jorge Mario Bergoglio's birthday, December 17, (born 1936) is almost upon us, so, here's a reflection. 

As Satan gets himself enthroned at the UN Visitor's Plaza (at the UN, he's more of a resident that a visitor!) and the Democrats try to get us in a war with Russia over the Ukraine...

• N.B. In February 2014, the Obama administration fomented a coup d'état in the Ukraine and re-started the Cold War. At the moment, it looks like the Deep State is fomenting more trouble in the same area, namely, a war with Russia. Just peachy.
  

... and as Big Pharma and its bootlickers in North America, Australasia, and Europe refuse Ivermectin to treat Covid (see this great article by Jack Cashill on Robert F. Kennedy Jr's new book The Real Anthony Fauci, and thus needlessly perpetuate this now nearly incoherent Covid drivel, as all this Deep State sludge flows slowly on like molten lava, consuming everything in its path, the only real power in the world that could thwart this dismal Western Civilization death denouement is the Catholic Church. 

Unfortunately for Western Civilization, the Church remains under the heel of that Modernist anti-pope puppet, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, and his merry gay cadre of perverts who join in or encourage the moral and cultural rot, and seem only to show energy in doing their very best to destroy the Traditional Latin Mass. As has been manifestly evident since The Ogre's installment into his current usurped office, the only people the Argentine Destructor doesn't like are faithful conservative Catholics – and especially all the Traditional Catholics. Traditionis Custodes (correctly translated as "Jailers of Tradition") is all the evidence you need of that; but as it is, it's merely icing on the cake of Bergoglian loathing.

Yet we have Archbishop Viganò speaking out clearly, like the Church should, on all this madness, generally called "The Great Reset'. We have Bishop Athanasius Schneider, as well. Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, is an American – one of the few – who is worthy of the ecclesiastical office he holds. And when I say, "one of the few", I mean that most of the bishops would correctly toe the orthodox Catholic line were we to have an orthodox pope; when we don't, as now, they hedge. They're the exact kind of men who sat of the English bench of bishops when Fat 'Arry the Eighth broke with with Rome in 1534.

We didn't need bishops like those then, and we don't need them now. Gutless bishops, wind-sniffers, C.S. Lewis' "Men Without Chests" are the curse of the Church, nearly its bane. As the End closes in, some of them might find their courage. Big deal. That happened with what they called Recusant Bishops back in the 16th century when Queen Mary came to power after the death of her father and her half-brother. But being "recusant" seems historically to translate, basically, "Too damned late to prevent disaster."

The Catholic Church's is bereft of bishops. The Vatican seems to loathe the orthodox ones; consider how it (under JPII, supposedly a conservative) treated the SSPX for ordaining bishops, a necessary step for the Society's survival. Then the pressure was brought to bear on the Society when one of those bishops, Richard Williamson, called into question the standard party line about the Holocaust. Doing that in Germany can get you thrown in jail, and Williamson was convicted in a German court of being a Holocaust denier. (Many Germans seem to relish "Holocaust Guilt" and the Jews will never let them off the hook, but the problem is the Germans run the EU and they make everyone else in that Deep State fraternity feel guilt about the Holocaust, too.) But all this means is the Jews have power to sack a bishop, and few indeed are the bishops who will mention the Jews today at all. The Jews – citing the Church's Holocaust Guilt – has the Church in effect teaching a new gospel; i.e., unlike in the pre-Vat2 days, when the Vatican had a office for this, the Catholic Church today has no evangelical outreach to Jews at all, and if one cannot be saved without Christ, which is the basic Church teaching, all these souls are lost. Or on the other hand, if one can be saved without Christ – something I know many rabbis believe the Church has changed its teaching on – rabbis, imams, Buddhists, you name it – then that's definitely not Christianity has it has been taught for 2,000 years.

And if this is the case, why hold back? Why not ask the learned professors at Cairo's Al-Azhar University to write up Christian doctrine? (Al-Azar is Islam's chief theological authority and the second oldest degree-granting higher education institution in the world – were I to have PhDs in any discipline from both Harvard and Al-Azhar, I could teach anything in the world to anyone anywhere!) Or why not appoint the Dalai Llama, by all accounts a great guy, to be the next pope? I mean, if you're  going to be ecumenical, don't be half-hearted about it! Ecumania!

So, our Catholic reality is, we of the laity and lower clergy, we have to attach ourselves to Viganò and the few like him, before it is too late. Anyone have any personal contact with their bishop? No? I thought not. Dioceses in the U.S. and much of the world are too large for bishops to have ANY contact with their flocks. A necessary Church reform would to treble or quadruple the bishoprics in every nation, and treble or quadruple the archbishops, then make the latter responsible for their suffragan bishops, and move the pope up from Wojtyłan rock-star or Bergoglian fathead heresiarch to be what a pope is supposed to be, Christ's Vicar, His ultimate servant in the Earthly Church, the supreme court and supreme theologian and supreme pontiff, the guy who deals with a profound issue only after it works its way through the Church's hierarchy of authority and thus narrowed down for one man to make his decisions on based upon Holy Writ and Holy Tradition.

Bergoglio has done none of that. Flashing his classic grimace (watching him perform a Novus Ordo Mass has to be depressing!), the man casts opinions off of his cuff whenever he has an itch: on planes, in asides to gay activists, in tête-à-tête comments with Communist reporters, you name it. He inserts himself into whatever he has a notion to: international boundaries and petty politics, the glories of socialism and the evils of capitalism, Global Warming, Covid. "Bergi" even had pagan Pachamama worship in churches in Rome! (And I read where he's encouraging a Pachamama shrine in Argentina now.) And the world bench of prelates "grin and bear it".

Blame John Paul II. Karol Wojtyła made the Bishop of Rome every Catholic's personal bishop, indeed, his personal clergyman. Now we have Bergoglio, everyone's personal heresiarch and headache.

Anyway, on and on the sorry spectacle goes, like Caligula or Nero debasing the job of emperor. On and on. But one is saved through participation the Sacraments, the chief of which is the Most Holy Eucharist, the New Covenant, the New Testament, the Transfigured Paschal Sacrifice, and for that, we need validly ordained priests and bishops who aren't just CEOs or feudal lords or bench warmers, but bishops. Viganò is such a one.

This Christmas season, we need to pray and sacrifice, and be prepared for whatever comes.

An Préachán