Res ipsa loquitur about Bergoglio, the Novus Ordo, and "The Grooming Church"

Friends,

Res ipsa loquitur (Latin: "the thing speaks for itself") is an old legal adage in common law. And Bergoglio's actions, just as with those of the Biden Administration and the various European governments, all speak for themselves. Oh, in their talk, both Church and State babble all sorts of nonsense. But look at their actions. Both Church and State practice tyranny. They are all together thieves, liars, and braggarts, full of pride and avarice. And for them, indeed, "sin darkens the intellect", i.e., they are stupid. 

• Proof of that? A VIP in the Church told Cardinal Müller that it would be better there were NO MASSES at all instead of the Traditional Latin Mass. Yep, that's proof, all right.

Ergo, this July 4th, we should declare independence from these frauds. More specifically and accurately, we are not Schismatics ourselves, but the Church bosses are in Schism with the Church as it has traditionally existed and according to its ancient teachings. We need to declare independence for the Church herself from these Schismatics.

For another example:

The "Grooming Church"

Joseph D'Hippolito has a scathing article at The Stream: “Queering” the Catholic Church. I've rarely read a post with a theme so disgusting and so disheartening. D'Hippollito sums it up with this:

But as the spectacle of a drag performer dancing in front of children at a Vatican event demonstrates, Francis and his cohorts have no interest in protecting the innocent. By appeasing gender ideologues, by confusing mercy with enabling, Francis and his sycophants are turning the Catholic Church into the world’s largest grooming agency.

For you Catholics reading that quote, is this alright for you? Is it not a sickening abomination before God and Man? How can you tolerate the Catholic Church being turned into "the world's largest grooming agency"?

• I have written about that "drag performer" here before, the funding the drag tranny at the children's gathering was the slap in the face many needed to wake up.

With the Holy Church nearly sinking under the weight of this particular carnal sin, perhaps the worst of carnal sins that "cries out to Heaven" (Genesis 18.20-21) let alone so many others, is it any wonder belief in the Real Presence of Our Lord Christ in the Eucharist has waned? 

But even more to the point, it remains a shocking, inexplicable wonder that so many Trad Catholics insist "Francis is pope" when he clearly isn't. (It is also shocking that so many "conservative" or "magisterium" Catholics still think the Ogre is a pope! What's he got to do, declare Martin Luther a saint? ...Oh, wait.) 

The Demands of Logic, a syllogism

First premise: Bergoglio as "Pope" has clearly taught heresy of various kinds. Eleven years of his antics and bombast and put downs and curses and diktats we've endured. He's even changed the official Catechism.

Second premise: Bergoglio is obstinate about it; i.e. having been provided many dubia and other formal queries and opportunities to clarify his teaching in order to align it with Tradition (the Deposit of Faith), he refuses. 

Conclusion: Bergoglio is an obstinate heretic and manifest heretic, and as such, he cannot be Catholic – let alone pope! (See Louie Verrecchio here for a "deep-dive" into this here, and also here.)

How simple is this? It isn't rocket science and it is barely Theology 101. A Baptist or Methodist who teaches the Real Presence or the profound status of the B.V.M. can hardly be called a Baptist or Methodist. Catholicism has a two-millennia old Magisterium that's been guided by the Holy Ghost to a far higher level of understanding and detail than any other Church. Because of that, we can all see wherein Bergoglio goes against so much of the consistent Church teaching. Thus, Galatians 1:8 applies: "But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema."

Presentation?

Occasionally someone suggests this is all about presentation. That the Vatican IIers should have tried a gradual introduction to the Novus Ordo Mass. This is naive in the extreme. They NEVER tried any such "gradual phasing in" because A, they knew the laity wouldn't accept such guano, and B, they wanted to change Church theology, and change the Church herself, into something different – as we CLEARLY see now with this "Synodal Church" abomination. A gradual introduction; i.e. "Let's have the 10 a.m. Mass as Novus Ordo and 8 a.m. Mass as Vetus Ordo" would have resulted in direct comparison, which the Novus Ordo cannot win. After a few weeks, the N.O. Mass would have had a handful of people attending it and everyone else (in Comrade Lenin's famous phrase) "voting with their feet" by attending the Vetus Ordo, the TLM. In other words, it would have given the True Catholics far too much of an opportunity to "rally round the flag".

So, What To Do?

For myself, I reject Bergoglio and his peeps: his macabre collection of hobgoblins, imps, hobhoulards, tutgots, swaithes and wraiths. They're not Catholics. Not the ones closest to Bergoglio, who, with their Master, must be atheists because no believer, no matter how addled, would mock God and trample His teachings like this infernal crew does. And even if somehow they were "well-intentioned", as Anthony Stine says many may be (at 1:34), where do they get off denying me (and over a billion of others) our Catholic inheritance? 

Denying us our Catholic Inheritance that has built up over two millennia is their fundamental goal. (Remember Müller's revelation above.) And they cannot believe in God, and certainly not the Holy Spirit, because He has been guiding us all since Pentecost Sunday:

• (St John 14:16 & 14:26) 16 And I will ask the Father, and he shall give you another Paraclete, that he may abide with you for ever. 26 "But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you."
  
• Acts 1:4 And eating together with them, he commanded them, that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but should wait for the promise of the Father, which you have heard (saith he) by my mouth.
  
• Romans 8:26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know how we ought to pray, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans too deep for words.

All that is good in our own particular lives comes from God; all the bad we are responsible for, or our fellow humans. All that is good and true and lasting in the Catholic Church likewise comes from the Holy Ghost, as the "test of time" proves. What has the test of time proven about the Vatican II Church? "By their fruits you will know them." (St Matthew 7:16) When John Paul II kept calling for a "new Pentecost", the poor guy was asserting, even if not conscious of it, an insult to the Holy Spirit that His first Descent wasn't good enough, or that it had run out of steam! (He never seemed to cotton on to what he was saying, poor man.)

But the Synodal Church creators think God is not involved at all, in any Form or Person, despite their endless affirmations they are "guided by the spirit". Spirit of what? We are supposed to think these clowns can discern spirits? The current Church leaders certainly ACT like everything is created for them by their intrigues and decided by their all too mundane and "spiritless" committees. That, or the committees, like the ostensibly huge one writing the Novus Ordo (Bugnini did almost all of that, him and a couple cronies) are just Potemkin Villages, boring charades.

No, my friends. They're the "Church of the Groomers" and that is definitely a res ipsa loquitur. As noted, they are thieves, liars, and braggarts, full of pride and avarice. Literally everything they do is about power, asserting it and lording it over us with an iron hand. They're corrupt on every level. (See Anthony Stine's report on the revelations about Cardinal George Pell's death.)

They've abolished every discipline in the Faith except one, the one they demand we give them unreservedly: obedience. 

And irony of irony, the "pope" Bergoglio, ruling with an iron hand, wants to arrange it so after he dies, the papacy will be nothing but a shadow of itself, as the Patriarch of Constantinople is now. And also irony of ironies, the great champion of the Novus Ordo is too bored with it to ever say it himself, not for years. Ironies of ironies, quoth Qoheleth. 

I say NO to their N.O. all their works.

The more of us who say it, the sooner the charade is ended. Ann Barnhardt sees it coming. 

AnP

"The Church has buried every one of her undertakers." The Catholic Reconquista examined

Amici,

Funny, but I've said something like the title quote on the Church outlasting her critics – not so pithily – to a number of Protestant acquaintances over the decades. They've always scoffed; they don't understand the Incarnation, its necessity, and our participation in God's Incarnation as constituting salvation, our being a new creation in Christ (they're kinda Jewish or Muslim, actually), so they remain on the outside of the Traditional Apostolic Christian Faith. Unlike Jews and Muslims, Protestant acknowledge the Incarnation, sure, but they don't get the ramifications of what it means. And hence, they scoff at the necessity of the Church and its sacraments. "All you need is Jesus," they say, meaning talismanic belief divorced from corporal act. 

1. The truth is, however, that God Incarnate set up the incarnate and sacramental Church via His Incarnation and His orders to the Apostles about baptism of course, the Holy Eucharist, Confession (for this sacrament, see: "Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained." St. John 20:21-23); the laying on of hands for Confirmation: Acts 8:14-17, 9:17, 19:6, and Hebrews 6:2; healing the sick via anointing with oil: Mark 6:13, James 5:14, etc.; all physical acts that transfigured via the Incarnation infuse grace, making us new creations in Christ.
2. We Catholics put up with the clergy in order to receive these sacraments, the visible signs of God's infusion of grace into our being – physical and spiritual – what the Greeks call Theosis. Any clergy that deny or restrict the sacraments are anathema. Remember that.
   
3. Vatican II fell upon us as the 16th century Reformation Come Again, a Reformation 2.0, trying to Protestantize, i.e. de-incarnationalize or hyper-spiritualize the Western Church, and while this dolorous 'church" seems to have made many conquests, it is failing, too. God is simply not with it. For always remember what Gamaliel said of Christianity. If it doesn't come from God, he told his fellow Jews, it will die out of its own accord, but if it does come from God, you cannot fight against it and will find yourselves opposing God; Acts 5:34-39. And indeed, the Church has "buried its undertakers" since Gamaliel's day. (Curious how Jews still don't listen to Gamaliel, isn't it?)
   

Now here again in this article linked below is a mainstream news report about the Traditional Church making a comeback. ‘A step back in time': America’s Catholic Church sees an immense shift toward the old ways.

"Who laughs last, laughs best" goes the old saying. May it be true. As readers of this unworthy blog know, your correspondent remains an unreformed Catholic, and Latin Masser, a Pius X Catholic, and something of a Counter-Reformation Catholic (with a good dose of Celtic Church thrown in), so I read an article such as this one above with a cautious joy. (By the way, hat-tip to Frank Walkers at Canon212 for referencing a Fr. Zuhlsdorf article about this article on his blog.)

It's not a bad investigation, as these mainstream news reports go, though one has to be careful since the author sets up various 'straw-men arguments" as Anthony Stine points out here. Yet even so, it is especially valuable, I think, for its continuous expression of bewilderment so many Vatican II Catholics experience about the Reconquista, the Return to Orthodoxy. They just don't get it. Fr. Zuhlsdorf has some comments about it but what struck me was the obdurate stubbornness of Vatican II Catholics simply refusing to participate in the Catholic Reconquista. It's beyond them. In fact, it is obvious that they are become Protestants. One woman quoted excoriates this return to tradition, and says she has left the Church and won't raise her daughter as a Catholic. Well, Mrs Obdurate, you were obviously raising your kid as an Episcopalian anyway, so go literally join that Church, then. They are about dead, that Church, and need new members. (I write this with sarcasm.)

The article reports how younger priests are more orthodox (or "conservative" as modernists would have it), more Traditionalist. The author, who has the very Irish name of Tim Sullivan ("Timothy" was a name the Irish used when they switched to English, changing the old Celtic name Tadhg to "Tim"), writes:

The progressive priests who dominated the U.S. church in the years after Vatican II are now in their 70s and 80s. Many are retired. Some are dead. Younger priests, surveys show, are far more conservative.

I must hasten to write we should pray for those old farts, so full, alas, of a false Catholicism. And all this, of course, against the very strong Vatican II headwinds, exemplified by that blowhard Bergoglio (another one we should pray for, for his conversion before it is too late), who is also quoted:

And the pope clearly worries about America.
The U.S. church has “a very strong reactionary attitude,” he told a group of Jesuits last year. “Being backward-looking is useless.”

Thanks, Bergi, for being a shallow martinet worshiping at the altar of the mindless imp named "Progress". Your anti-American Perónista skirts are showing, BTW. You've canned Bishop Strickland and are making noises about cracking down on the American Church, haha, as if you were really a pope rather than an heretical imposter. Yet note that the above bit about "progress" was a constant and standard Vatican II refrain: "You can't go against progress!" 

• Yeah, and when you finally pass from this world, Bergi, you can join all your fellow Progressives progressing to wherever Progressives progress to. What was it King Caspian said? "Progress! I have seen it in an egg, We call it going bad in Narnia". (IIRC, from memory.)
  

I remember many years ago some enterprising American journalist sent a questionnaire around to Liberal/Leftist/Progressive U.S. Congressmen and Senators, trying to ascertain how much Progress they thought would be enough. They kept harping on change and progress; alright, well, the journalist asked, just when would they say, "OK, we've reached our goals and have enough progress?" 

• Of course, none of the idiots could answer. They hadn't a clue. 

The nebulous idea of Progress in itself had become the goal, like insisting on traveling without a destination except toward some vague Utopia. That's Vatican II in a nutshell. And that's why it is dying: it is going absolutely nowhere, and fast.

The orthodox Catholics reported on in the article, though, they want to go somewhere. They want to embrace the Incarnation, and the Most Holy Spirit is directing them right back onto the correct road to that. If one has to "go back" to find the right road, so be it. Only a fool, or a Vatican IIer, fast becoming a Synod Churcher (or maybe a Jew or Muslim or at least a One World Religioner), would keep on going into the gathering darkness.

The Reconquista cannot be stopped. The Holy Ghost clearly wills it.

An Préachán

. 

The Church Is a Bridge, Buckling and Swaying

Amici,

The Catholic Church is like a bridge.

Imagine a huge chasm, vast, overwhelming, terrifying. It reaches so far down you can't see the bottom, just swirling mist, but you hear thunder and crashing sounds of avalanches, and a roaring of great waters. The Church is like a one-arc bridge leaping across the chasm in a single bound.

The only way across the abyss is this arcing bridge. Yet many people don't want to take the bridge because the chasm is so vast and threatening, and the bridge looks so small in comparison. These folk stay on the near side of the chasm, shivering. Eventually, they wander away. Others cross the bridge easily enough, though they are laden with a lot of baggage. But as they get part way across, and the bridge's arc rises, they start to become unhinged. Some, terrified, run back to the near side, carrying their baggage. Others start shouting and dancing and quivering and shaking. They begin to open their luggage and take out all sort of shocking things; they shout obscenities and engage deviant acts – until, in groups or singly, they literally jump off the bridge, screaming. Still another crowd scoffs and laughs. They stand on the near side, hooting and scowling, and say, "Fools! That's not really a bridge at all. It's a fake bridge. Never was a bridge. Leads nowhere. Everyone, everyone who walks that bridge, the good or the bad or the in-between, end up in the chasm below." This crowd then walks away, noses in the air, though a few remain to mock. 

Then there's a group that marches across together, organized. They sing religious songs and recite prayers, and do not carry much in terms of luggage. They've been going over this bridge for a very long time. Yet about 60 years ago some of them added a new lane to the bridge. Those taking this new lane didn't pray very much, and spent a lot of time on the near side drinking coffee and tea and eating donuts, and attending psychology lectures. When they do cross, now and then, they drag along a lot of fancy, trendy, colorful baggage. Lately, their leaders DRIVE across the bridge, in big, weighty electric vehicles. Electric vehicles are very heavy compared to internal-combustion engine cars. They put a LOT of weight on any bridge, road, or car garage. AND these big bosses carry with them a lot of crazies in outlandish costumes, making a lot of noise, and committing all sorts of carnal acts in the process. It as though they were sort of on a parade route, a demented Mardi Gras. The bridge, especially the novo lane they use, is buckling. It's cracking. It emits all sort of squeaks and groans and snapping sounds. Finally the biggest electric vehicle of all starts across, driven by a very fat man in white, who orders the other lane closed to traffic (though many ignore his order). His heavyweight transport is carrying the most outlandish characters yet seen. The bridge begins to seriously wobble.

Will the bridge fall? Will it snap? Or only the novo lane, obviously the weakest? Will it become a single-file bridge? Stay tuned. But as you step back from the bridge you notice a plaque bolted on the near-side entrance. It reads: "Founded by the Holy Ghost on the First Pentecost Sunday. The Gates of Hell will not prevail against it. -Signed Jesus Christ, Sovereign King." It's a bit tarnished, and the mocking crowd papered over it at one point. The perverts then splashed it with gaudy paint. But it is still there, still legible, for those to see who can.

         AnP

Article: Pope Francis’ fight against the Latin Mass is ‘a fight against the Church’

Amici,

LifeSiteNews has a great essay up that a German priest, Fr. Heimerl, wrote, titled "Pope Francis’ fight against the Latin Mass is ‘a fight against the Church’" Read it here. It is extremely insightful, and I highly recommend it.

A huge THANK YOU for this article, LifeSite, and to Fr. Heimerl ! The Old Mass, the TLM, could in no way represent the "NuChurch" that the Modernists at Vatican II wanted to create, so it had to go. Of course it did. THAT'S why Bergoglio so hates the TLM. It stands in his way. And he will stop at nothing to achieve what he wants. Rumor has it he fully intends to officially, full-stop, BAN the Traditional Latin Mass. That'll put the fox among the chickens. His time to create his Synodal Church is short, and every day might be his last. The Argentine Luther had to wait till he could stuff Benedict into the back of a van, but he charges on full steam ahead now.

A Schism is coming. A Schism is coming because it already exists, and has existed de facto since Vatican II; it just took a while for us to "get our bearings". Like someone just waking up in a strange environment, or after an operation, it takes a moment to get one's bearings. It took even Archbishop Lefebvre a few years to fully realize what was happening and the extent of the betrayal. And it WAS a betrayal of the Catholic faithful. A betrayal by the cocky Modernists who knew most Catholics were so conditioned to "pray, pay, and obey" that they would soldier along with it, at least up to the point. (Everyone has a breaking point.) So, no wonder about Ottaviani and Bacci, powerful orthodox Cardinals Fr. Heimerl mentions who confronted Paul VI about all this, but ultimately didn't call for his excommunication. Raised as loyal sons of the old Church, they could not bring themselves to do the needful.

Now, today, however, we have NO EXCUSE. Sixty years of facing lavender firing squads taking potshots at us, we know all too well what's happening. No. More. No more bleating sheep-like, "Baa, baat the bishop says so-and-so!" No more Disney princess bishops at all or histrionic priests flamboyantly auditioning at the Cranmer table "altars". No more "Prayers of the People" that seem to channel Leftist party talking points or the trendy social causes du jour. No more tolerating the destruction of the Holy Catholic Church. Zero tolerance. Start it saying in your own minds. Then tell family and friends, then priests and bishops. Say a prayer for the strength to grasp it and to admit it.

Some bishops, even one, will have to openly declare Bergoglio in Schism. I doubt Burke or Müller would. Maybe they might over women deacons; Viganò would. And sure, Bergoglio would rage, and excommunicate left, right, and center, but it is clear to anyone with two cents of a brain that Bergoglio himself is the innovator, the challenger, the heretic.

And that even as it morphs into the "Synodal Church", the Vatican II Church has finally manifested itself as the infamous, but prophesied, "Ape of the Church".

Thanks again to LifeSiteNews amd Fr. Joachim Heimerl.

        AnP

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

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Changeling Church: A Humanist Council Produced a Humanist Church; It Is Now Collapsing

Friends,

St. Matthew 7:24-27 reports Our Lord telling the parable of the man who built his house on rock as opposed to the man who built his house on sand. The Vatican II Church built itself on sand, i.e. Humanism. Kennedy Hall has reported on this Humanism aspect to Vatican II, and his podcast is well worth listening to. (See below for link.)

But is the Vatican II Church coming to its end because it was ill founded on an almost pure Humanism? A "Man is the measure of all things" humanism that draped itself in a bit of Catholic bunting? It is a great insight. Are not the most important segments of its most important decrees just that? Humanism with Catholic bunting? 

This Vat II Church bears a boat-load of issues, problems and wounds: most self-inflicted. And its agonized spasms often drive one to ask: "Is the Church suicidal, or what?" What are we to make of it trying to kill of the most exciting, laity-driven reform since time-out-of-mind: the TLM revival, and madly sacking orthodox bishops while promoting the heterodox (to be polite) into high office? All this self-flagellation drives millions away from the Church.

How odd a situation we are in that we have to demand of the Church to stop its self-destruction, cease being incoherent, and most of all to stop robbing us of our Catholic inheritance. The Traditional Latin Mass IS our inheritance, our spiritual inheritance going back to the beginning. Give it back to us! Give us back our traditional prayers and liturgy and theology. It isn't something anyone – Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Humanist, Communist, etc. – has any right to take from us, any more than the Confederacy had the right to strip the South's poor whites of their American citizenship (then kill them for four years to keep the theft in place).

The Church's self-demolition exists because the Vatican II Church was founded on Humanism, not the Gospel, not Church Tradition that embodies the Gospel. To conjure Irish folklore, it is a Changeling Church. At first, it was more Catholic than not, but slowly, then more quickly, like a Changeling, since 1964 it has shown itself to be NOT the Church we thought it was. 

"The True Spirit of Vatican II and Apostasy"

Find Kennedy Hall's excellent podcast on this Humanist revelation here. "The True Spirit of Vatican II and Apostasy". As such, I would argue that this is quite true and thus this historical Church version we have to suffer through, a Humanist-grounded ecclesiastical "avatar", quite naturally didn't take three-score and ten to crumple in upon itself. It's a house built on sandy Humanism.

Note that by "Vatican II Church" I mean, in the first instance, merely the Church of our time, but in the second instance, I mean a Church veering off the course set by Tradition (which, as Archbishop Lefebvre said, IS the Deposit of Faith), and which is now morphing into the notorious "Ape of the Church" foretold by Archbishop Fulton Sheen: a.k.a. the Synodal Church.

1. The Vatican II Council began the Vatican II Church. 
2. That Council infamously pretended to be only a "pastoral council" (said ad nauseam) but since it ended, Modernists have treated it as the Dogmatic Council of ALL TIME. 
3. It remains the ONLY Council of any import. The others? What Councils? There's only THE Council. (Paul VI and John Paul II both lauded it in this manner via hyper absurd praise.)
   
4. Holding high its voluminous writings and decrees, its verbose, rambling documents that no one can read (I've thoroughly read short ones like Nostra Aetate and Dignitatis Humanae: effusive efforts at wrapping heresy in twaddle) that sound – give or take – sorta Catholic...
   
5. ...But reading seriously, one realizes that as always, and here literally, the Devil is in the details.

Modernism = Evolution

The basic argument of Modernism is evolution. This remains very well hidden (much of the time) by the Neo-Modernists. But the core idea of it is that people evolve, as taught by Darwin, that hammer-wielding, animal skull-crushing atheist who invented eugenics. 

• Our relationships, duties, family structures, cultures also evolve. 
• No timeless truths exist. "Truth" is an illusion. 
• Our understanding of the world, via the new religion, "science", evolves us. (Just read Yuval Noah Harari, and other such futurist mavens.)
  
• And certainly, in terms of religion, our theology evolves, our sense of the divine develops in all sorts of ways.
  
• That's the attraction of this to so many: they get to "Invent Church". Sound familiar?
  
• Finally: the penultimate revelation is that God Himself evolves. He is not the God of Hebrews 13:8-9 "Jesus Christ, yesterday, and today: and the same for ever. Be not led away with various and strange doctrines." Or of course Exodus 3:14 "God said to Moses: I AM WHO AM. He said: Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: HE WHO IS, hath sent me to you." 
• But the ultimate revelation of all that only gets revealed to the highest Gnostic geniuses is that God Himself doesn't exist; i.e. that we make Him up. (This is so Freemasonic, isn't it?)
  

All of the above shows how literally "Gnostic" evolution and humanism both are; how Gnostic so much of modernity is. So, Humanism (Christian veneer or not) always remains "Man is the measure of all things", and certainly the measure of God. In other words: God is completed, fulfilled, perfected through the perfection of man. Kennedy Hall mentions this as well.

History

The Vatican I Church was a tough, no-nonsense Church, really; a sort of Katholische Festung that survived Napoleon, Marx, loss of the Papal States, and two World Wars. It had its problems, sure, but basically it was doing great. So, for many: Modernists, yes, and always the Masons, many Protestants, certainly the Communists of all stripes, and even certain Jewish groups (such as got the Easter Good Friday Liturgy changed in 1955), it had to be bagged. Brought down. Stopped.

1. Note: These ecclesiastical "avatars" follow one another through history: the Counter-Reformation Church – one of the Church's high points in its 2,000-year history – existed from about 1540 to the Thirty Years War a century later...
2. ...when the Bourbon dynasts of France, Spain and Italy replaced it with the Bourbon Church until 1789, when in turn, the French Revolution ended the Bourbon Church (and many of the Bourbons). 
3. Each avatar has its essential mood or cast of spirit, its good points and its failures, its great saints and its sinners. The Vatican I Church really began with Pope Pius VII's resistance to Napoleon, and thereafter it continued to resist the modern world.
   

But all had the Traditional Latin Mass. Let me repeat that: ALL Catholic Church versions had the Latin Mass, the core elements of which go back to the "Dreamtime" of the early Faith. (Read 1 Corinthians, starting at 11:17.) All had the traditional theology. All stood fundamentally for orthodoxy. Certainly, none of these Church avatars, even the relatively corrupt earlier one in the 1000s, has ever produced a series of popes failing the basic Deposit of Faith. I don't mean popes exhibiting basic moral failings in themselves: many at certain times were great sinners. I mean failing to hold the traditional and ancient universal (Catholic) teaching such as the Vatican II Church has consistently veered away from – and of course NONE of them produced a Jorge Bergoglio. Not remotely.

Bottom Line

Watch the Kennedy Hall podcast. Take notes. He's working from a book, Prometheus, published by Angelus press. Note Pope Paul VI's speech that ended the council. At 8:05 into the podcast, Mr. Hall reads from Paul VI, "This entire Council may be reduced to its definitive religious significance which is none other other than a powerful and friendly invitation to the humanity of today and to find God once more through the path of Brotherly Love." Kennedy Hall comments that the entire council is reduced to "the spirit of fraternity", and that this sounds like Bergoglio. And Paul does, doesn't he? Remember Bergoglio's disastrous roll out of a "fraternity" event at the Vatican some months ago? No one came? Bergoglio has always hustled fraternal Humanism, as Elizabeth Yore writes here at Lifesite News. Kennedy Hall opines, "People think Pope Francis is really liberal; Pope Francis is not really that much different than Paul VI." Neither, ultimately, were John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Mr. Hall discusses this, and how Benedict's idea that the ancient Vetus Ordo and the modernist Novus Ordo would "enrich" each other. That's pure Hegelism, Kennedy points out: thesis, antithesis, and a resulting synthesis. (From this Humanistic insight I'm discussing, one would think great minds like JP2 and B16 would have seen the Novus Ordo for the pallid, Humanistic, horizontal liturgy it is. Maybe they did, but then they were true papal Humanists, apparently.)

Therefore, comprehending the reality of the Humanist Council and its Humanist tendrils wriggling through the Church's subsoil, we are seeing today the necessary, and I mean NECESSARY denouement of the Vatican II Church and its fully Humanist creed. How else could it have ended? It has produced a great multitude of Apostates. Tens of millions. Although many join other churches, separating themselves from the Holy Sacraments necessary for salvation that way, the majority leave the Church, as Mr Hall says, not to join Protestant churches, but to just stop religious practices. "Self-satisfied prigs" the kids in the Narnia Chronicles would label them. No wonder the murderous Anthony Fauci doesn't feel the need to attend Mass, as he's pontificated recently. That freak thinks he's been perfected. Totally immersed in all his post-Vatican II education (much of it Jesuit), he's a true "self-satisfied prig," a "know it all" snot who has obtained a higher plane of existence. Fauci thought nothing of killing millions. Humanists do that. (Doesn't this sound like Yuval Noah Harari and so many of "our betters" who want to refashion the world? It's hardly a Catholic-only failing.)

Good riddance, Vatican II Church; the Synodal Church, the "Ape of the Church" is next up. Yet it won't have Catholics in it. Many middle-of-the-road Catholics of today, mainly those who insist the Second Vatican Council was great and necessary, and who insist Bergoglio is pope, will under the wheels of the Synodal bus just stop practicing the Faith. That is, after all, the goal of the Modernists. But alas, notice how they're so often closing parishes and taking down good church buildings as they "clear outta town", closing them forever? That's to make sure no TLM can replace them. They want to leave a desert and sow it with salt, because, after all, they've achieved a nigher Gnostic enlightenment than the troglodytes they're leaving behind.

Doesn't that sound Masonic-like? Hmmm. 

           AnP

Pray against Catholic Church Collapse by Contemplating Catholic Truths

Friends,

Catholic Church collapse is happening rapidly now. It is self-evident. On November 30, Bergoglio publicly said in an address to theologians: “This is the job I ask of you: Please, demasculinize the church.” (What? Like him and his creeps?)

OK. That's it for me. The Vatican II Church is comatose. It is about to breathe its last. Meanwhile, the True Church is being crucified. I could thesaurus all the synonyms for "putrid" I can find, but enough. The Church's "rank and file" bishops are already "demasculinized". They're reprehensible eunuchs.

We're on our own. Well, we have Someone on our side. 

Pray for God's will to be done as the Synodal Church/Bergoglio's Mirror Church gains strength and seemingly stomps and wallops the True Church. For some detail on that, see Anthony Stine's report here about how incredibly bad things are getting: such as one archbishop formally excommunicating priests and laity for simply celebrating/attending any Traditional Latin Mass in his archdiocese while allowing some Voodoo thing to occur, or Msgr Charles Pope deleting and recanting his refreshingly and perfectly honest 'X' commentary about how nasty Bergoglio is showing himself to be, and so on. (Anthony Stine does excellent reporting.) 

Now, I know it seems trite, cliché, the constant advice to "pray". But there's prayer and then there's prayer. 

Try contemplative prayer at this time of the liturgical year – Advent. It's the beginning of the liturgical year and the end of the secular year, and as we can be certain 2024 will be a disaster on all levels, it is a good time collect ourselves.

Adventus, the Coming of Christ. It's a Lenten time of fasting and preparation for Christ's Incarnation. Consider praying by reflecting on what the Incarnation itself means.

God rejoices in His creations, and His creations rejoice in Him, and in us. Incarnate Creation reflects His Glory, His Being. Prayerfully reflect on

Psalm 5: ⁴ For I will behold thy heavens, the works of thy fingers: the moon and the stars which thou hast founded. ⁵ What is man that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man that thou visitest him? ⁶ Thou hast made him a little less than the angels, thou hast crowned him with glory and honour: ⁷ And hast set him over the works of thy hands. ⁸ Thou hast subjected all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen: moreover the beasts also of the fields. ⁹ The birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea, that pass through the paths of the sea.

God incarnated us into being as a wonder. Our unique part angelic, part animal ensouled body constituting a being to rejoice in His Creation of us in the marvel of His earthly creation. The good angels certainly glorify Him for material existence and for creating us. Can we do less? And He blessed us, and our world, in the first three verses of Genesis 2. I take this to be a Covenantal blessing. The Lord God made a pact with his physical Creation, and that is why He did not kill Adam and Eve when they fell as Genesis 3 reports; instead, God kept them alive, cursing them, yes, but covenanting with Eve, as well, promising that her seed would rise up to crush the Devil's head (Genesis 3:15). 

That first Covenant with Humanity turned our shame into blessing. No one, no anti-Christ, can undo that. We can follow Satan to Hell, yes, but we cannot undo God's glory, only witness to it, even in the Inferno.

Prayerfully reflecting on this, how can Bergoglio and his lavender monkeys in clerical garb separate us from what God ordained for us? They cannot. Especially in this season. God, the pure spirit, takes on human nature, becomes a true human being yet wholly God as well. The Incarnation. Contemplate it. God has thus elevated our nature by His Incarnation in us, that we may take on God's nature, the Church doctrine called in Greek Theosis. And the good angels, God's first creations, pure spirits formed in the image and likeness of God, they marvel and rejoice in this awesome Divine Incarnation and the superlative transformation this miracle sets in motion.

Not by nature, but by grace (i.e. gift: all creation is gift), "Theosis" (Divinization) enables our incorporation into Christ, raising us up to participate in His Divinity, as St. Peter teaches in 2 Peter 1:4. Usually described in the Western Church as an Infusion of Grace, our natures are changed. Protestantism teaches Imputation of Grace: God assigns grace to us but doesn’t actually divinize or change our nature.

•    St. Athanasius: "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God." (De inc. 54, 3: PG 25, 192B) and [CCC 460]
•    St. Thomas Aquinas: "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods." (Opusc. 57, 1-4) [CCC 460]
•    This teaching is stated in many ways throughout the New Testament. Prayerfully contemplate Romans, chapters 6 and 8 ("Ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry 'Abba, Father'). See also:
•    John 1:12 “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (Obviously, a new creation)

•    2 Cor 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (Again, a new creation) 2 Peter 1:4 might well put it best; see also Romans, 6:4, 7:6, 12:2; Galatians 3:27; Ephesians 4:22-24; Colossians 3:8-12.

•    Two Old Testament examples: Isaiah 65:17; Ezekiel 36:25-26

So, Friends,

Despite the Church's woes and the disgrace she suffers with that mountebank anti-pope currently installed and her gutless emasculated sons who won't remove him, we should rejoice with our angelic brethren, and they’ll show us how, joining our voices – and our awe – to theirs, together contemplating the Divine Glory of Our Blessed Lord’s Incarnation into human nature, and what it portends for our salvation. The True Church is bursting with this most incredible grace, this all-conquering gift. May it triumph, by God's will.

The Peace of Our Lord be with you all and all priests who "believe in His name" and may Bergoglio, the Scourge of the Vatican II Church and would-be murderer of the True Church, repent and believe before it is to late – and Bergoglio and his creatures and hangers-on experience the eternal payment for their evil. 

And shame, great shame, on Msgr Charles Pope and all the bishops who won't stand up for Christ in this time of trial. After a decade of Bergoglio, they have absolutely, ontologically, no excuse.

An Préachán

Bishop Strickland's new letter: God does not and cannot bless sin

Amici,

Bishop Strickland has a new pastoral letter out; this one issued on the eve of the infamous and utterly anti-Catholic "Synod on Synodality" that is expected to change Church teaching on a host of carnal-related issues. So Strickland tackles the "same-sex blessing" insanity in his letter. Read it here at LifeSiteNews. "God does not and cannot bless sin." 

Oh, really? Someone please inform the "Pope". 

Making Himself a Target

Bishop Strickland knows this new letter will enrage the "homosexualist" (what's that even mean? Supporter? Advocate?) Bergoglio and the infamous Fr James Martin, (a.k.a. Pope Francis' pinkie finger, Francis' rent boy, and other monikers too disgusting to pass on). It will stir up a lavender hornets' nest. No other American bishop, and apparently few in the world but the African bishops, stand tall for traditional Church teaching against Sodomy.

Bishop Strickland knows the hammer will fall soon, I am afraid; thus, he "goes for broke." For as surely as the insane Argentine (and I mean nutso: he clearly believes à la "Tucho Fernández that he has oracle-prophetical semi-divine powers and can redefine "Catholic" to suit his will, and that we must all obey his every whim: see this article for details.) is especially in favor of homosexuals and sexual predators in general (like that rapist and incompetent, cartoonish "artist" Jesuit Marko Rupnik).

Bishop Strickland wrote: "The truth is, at the core of our existence is Love, and there is no power in Heaven or on Earth that can keep the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit from loving us fully and completely." Right, but what does 'love' here mean? "The core of our existence is Love" – as in I guess, from the capital L, God. I don't know why Christian preachers of the Faith can't clearly say, as Fr Ripperger does, that "love" means "will the good." To say "God loves you" sounds maudlin, or squishy, or feel good: but to say "God wills your good" – which is what the phrase means – bears a clear, no nonsense understanding of what is meant. To say "God is love" is to say God is ontologically The Good. Goodness in itself, Good as such. Omnibenevolence (supremely good) is the formal term. It's one of the divine attributes, like Omniscience and Omnipotence. 

God thus wills our good because He is Good Itself, and any so-called "good" we humans pursue – like carnal satisfaction, money, fame, etc. – leads us away from The Good, and therefore into Hell. Thus, Heaven or Hell, no in-between. What's wrong with putting it this way?

Because of course the squishy Vatican II Church would get the vapors. It would pass out and need revived with smelling salts. The Vatican II three-year cycle of Mass readings took out most references to Hell, eternal damnation, all that. No doubt secular Jewish psychologists (very big in the '50s and '60s) told them that such language and imagery would turn off "modern man". Any Vatican II priest who preached "hellfire and damnation" sermons would be assigned to the local lunatic asylum or defrocked. But now a new Pharaoh has arisen, one who did not know John Paul II, etc., and this new Pharaoh is iron-handedly slapping down and defacing the squishy Vatican II Church with a sado-masochistic relish, making its conservatives squeal as he imparts homosexual blessings and the Seven Sacraments on egregious, unrepentant mortal sinners. Bergoglio says priests in the confessional must always forgive even when the "penitents" are not sorry for their sins, as most homosexual and adulterous people are not. 

• Because these "conservatives" (and even many Trads) insist Bergoglio is pope, they just must bend over in awe as he violates everything they thought they believed about Catholicism. I am sure he relishes their pain he is inflicting.

So, we go down our merry way, traipsing along to a general ecclesiastical and secular Armageddon. Be prepared for what's coming, and pray for Bishop Strickland.

    An Préachán