The enthroned god of this age is Self, his second person is Pleasure, and his third person is Égalité

Recently, I had occasion to discuss the Church situation at One Peter Five. Below is one of my Comments.

Mr X, thanks for responding. Much appreciated. You write: My "admirable sentiment" isn't equivalent to anything like "I'm ok, you're ok".

How is it not? I’m honestly interested in how you’d explain that. The enthroned god of this age is Self, his "second person" is Pleasure, and his "holy ghost" is Égalité. You continue: My concern here is to clarify that the Novus Ordo is _the ordinary rite of mass_ in the Roman Catholic church, and that it should be treated as such.

Technically, legally, and obviously by imperial papal prescript via Summorum Pontificum, that’s true. Pope Benedict 16 specifically said so. But the article is about how the old Mass (specially the High versions thereof, of which there are three) is superior.

The unspoken conclusion is the bone of contention among the Commentators – that the N.O. Mass should be scrapped and the old one restored. Some go all the way with that, most (I would be one) say let those who want it have it but for Heaven's sake, dump the Cranmer Table and turn the priest around correctly. To be sure, I would not want it called or designated the "ordinary" form, of course; and indeed, the very phrase "ordinary form" is an insult to what the Divine Liturgy is. Anyway, all this in turn conjures the query: Well, how'd we get something defective in the first place? Not trying to be “cute” or “argumentative” but I believe there are 23 different rites in the Universal, or Catholic Church. “Roman Catholic” usually refers to the Latin Western Church, but it is no longer “Latin”. As a matter of dogmatic faith, the Universal Church consists of the bishop of Rome and all the bishops in Communion with him, whatever their liturgy. However, the current pope, Jorge Bergoglio, is acting highly irregularly and many – and I mean MANY – people are losing their faith. Perhaps it is true he's not really pope, because of the manner in which Benedict abdicated. But in the meantime, however that is eventually decided, we have an absolute, stone-cold, first-class crisis.

However, that in turn is yet merely the modern-day example of what’s been going on since Vatican II and especially the post-Conciliar “Spirit of Vatican II”.

It’s a HUGE scandal. About one-half of all Catholics simply walked away from the Faith between 1963 and 1983. (A poll down in ’63 show 2/3s, 3/4s of all U.S. Catholics attended at Mass on a Sunday morning (no Sat “vigil” masses then); a

poll done in ’83 showed exactly the reverse. So, where did they go?) You quote St. Paul to me: 10 "Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters,[d] by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose." NRSV. Admirable, once again. But who's been paying attention to that since Luther? A. B., the Catholic Church has been in de facto schism since so many theologians, clergy, and laity dissented from Humanae Vitae way back in 1968.

There's even a C: St. Paul did not mean that the Corinthian Christians had to submit to error or to be "in agreement" about error -- and the whole point of all this, of 1P5 and the Trad critique of the Vat 2 Church, is that the Vat 2 Church is in error, as we see from these doleful fruits, as noted above. See the problem?

As for the Protestants, I grew up among them, and my own father was a Methodist. I didn't have any Catholic friends till I was in my later 20s, and certainly had no Vatican II schooling in the 60s and 70s. I had to "argue Bible" since (I'd guess it was) 5th grade. There is no, none, zilch question as to the Protestant understanding of the Eucharist. It runs on a huge arc from old-fashioned Lutherans saying God is there because he's everywhere (consubstantiation) and the Calvinist God is there in a form, maybe, but it's spiritual.

In no way, no wise, no shape or form has ANY Protestant Church taught the Catholic/Orthodox Real Presence: that the Consecrated Bread and Wine are the REAL Body and Blood of Our Lord, as Body and as Blood, even though it looks, tastes as though it were still bread. The formal teaching is that NO BREAD or Wine remains, at all. NO Protestants have any teaching like that. So strict were they against it that they insisted miracles per se had come to an end in New Testament times.

So starved were average, everyday Protestant laity for miracles as reported Biblically that that is where the Pentecostal movement cam from in the latter 19th century and why the mainline Protestant Churches, and the Fundamentalist ones (as the Baptists) go out of their way to distance themselves from Pentecostals.

So I've plenty of experience in ecumenical discussion; I've always been polite, respectful, as I was of my father and so on and so forth down to today -- but that doesn't mean I have to accommodate error any more than the Corinthians did.

An Préachán

Why are the Italian bishops set to attack the Traditional Mass?

 Someone wrote recently in a friend's email: "I don’t understand why the Bishops In Italy want to reduce opportunities to hear the traditional Latin Mass. Why are they opposed to it? ... I really don't get it."

The questioner is referring to this article at One Peter Five. I wrote the following in answer.

One could flippantly answer that the reason is they've "gone over to the dark side". Less flippantly, Francis has appointed his special cronies in key positions -- both in Italy and here, too -- to put a stop, once and for all, to the Traditional Mass (among other things). And it is Francis who is doing this, forcing this to happen. Make no mistake about that.

Why?

Where you see no downside to offering the Traditional Mass, they see a massive one: people actually in the presence of God and at the fount of Catholic spirituality as it has been since the days of St. Gregory the Great (and before back to the beginning). In comparison, the new Mass, the Novus Ordo of Paul VI, fails miserably. (After 60 years, I can say this most solemnly.) As the old saying has it, a camel is a horse designed by a committee, so the New Mass lacks the innate spiritual grace and power of the old, which, like the horse, evolved over a very long period of time, and under the influence of both saints, the pious, and 2,000 years worth of laity. The Novus Ordo just compares poorly, even when done at its best. After all, the old Mass was the Mass of the great saints, and the "nuclear" pile, the spiritual core at the center of everything Catholic -- as Catholicism existed in the centuries before the Vatican II Reformation.

And Bergoglio & Co. DO NOT want a return to "the Faith of Our Fathers". They all have too much emotionally and self-consciously invested in the Vat 2 Reformation. But rejecting that iconoclastic reformation is exactly what will be demanded by more and more people who discover the Traditional Mass. (My personal experience is that about half the people who experience a Missa cantata, or sung High Mass, reject it as weird, alien, incomprehensible, or a "museum piece" while the other half are dumbfounded with wonder, awe, and spiritual uplift. There seems to be no middle ground.)

Why is the Rite of St. Gregory the Great so powerful?

The Catholic/Orthodox idea is that no more important a thing (in this world) exists than Liturgy, as there's no more important a thing for a Christian than meeting and interacting with God, for Mass is how we come into the Presence of God before Judgment Day. It's how we prepare for eternity, by entering into and lingering in the Timelessness of the Eternal Presence. We partake of the Divine Nature in Mass, in many ways, especially prayer and simple wonder and contemplation, but primarily through reception of the Most Holy Eucharist.

The old Mass -- I refer to the High Mass forms -- organically developed over a millennium to express all that, and it does so most excellently.

The new Mass is a committee-concocted horizontal group therapy session, or a group pep rally, a sort of parade ground drill: a crowded, relentless one-thing-after-another performance led by a relentless conductor with whom we never break eye contact. (That's an amazingly important difference between the two rites.)* And it is all done to affirm our selves. Affirm our self-awareness and self-consciousness. Reinforce our identity. It's about us. Ultimately, it's all about "Belief", rather than "Dwelling With". The Traditional Mass and the Eastern Liturgies are a Dwelling With: a listening, praying, wandering in the antechambers of Heaven's timelessness.

The very first thing I noticed when I started attending the Eastern Liturgies, and then the Traditional Latin Mass, was how "roomy" they were compared to the Novus Ordo, how uncrowded, peaceful, and filled with time for silence and eternal, internal space -- especially prayer space. Prayer comes naturally in the old liturgies, and at our own speed. One's spirit can simply wander in a sacred citadel. But most of all, it is about lingering in the very Presence of the Lord of Hosts. Catholicism (and Orthodoxy) are all about the Presence of God, His presence on Earth and our presence to and in Him.

In comparison, the modern Mass is like a brass band marching in some sort of "pride" parade.

These devotees of Bergoglio, however, want none of the Old Faith. Please understand. This is crucial. To the extent they have any faith in Christ, it is Protestant faith, meaning in worship that the worship service is about one expressing one's belief rather than dwelling in the Presence. The Novus Ordo is about us, and it reaffirms us. This is why so many observers insist that Vatican II and its fallout was a Protestantization of Catholicism. It was that on various levels, especially both on the ecumenical level and the liturgical one, the latter enacted to make the former all the easier. (And Papa Bergoglio has demonstrated, many times in many comments, sermons, observations and off-the-cuff remarks, that he has a Lutheran understanding of how salvation works, not a Catholic one. He's thus the "perfect Progressive" of "Manifest Modernist.")

However. this Vat 2 ecumenical goal was a "chasing after wind." Protestants, as a collective, aren't interested in Catholicism. Individuals do convert, obviously, from both directions, but no Protestant Church has any interest in "Communion" with Catholicism. (And Catholicism has always rejected the core Protestant ideas.) In 500 years, not a single Protestant denomination ever "evolved" back toward Catholicism. Not even a little.

The reason: Catholicism and Orthodoxy are the Churches of the Real Presence and Protestantism is the Church of the Real Absence. And I mean that literally: in their various founding documents, the Protestant Churches insist Our Lord is really NOT present in the Holy Eucharist. And that's why they all insisted miracles came to an end at the conclusion of the New Testament, for the Holy Eucharist is a miracle and they wanted none of it. (Pentecostalism came into existence primarily driven by a thirst to experience some sort of miracle, actually, and thus it runs counter to the foundational ideas of classical Protestantism.)

So, therefore, everything about the Rite of St. Gregory the Great -- by its very nature -- invalidates everything Vatican II types believe -- or perhaps one should say, everything they don't believe.

They can thus hardly be expected to tolerate it!

Pope Francis intentionally, as an act of pure spite, destroyed the thriving Traditionalist order of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate. According to Benedict's Summorum Pontificum, the FFI had every right to embrace the Traditional Mass. Bergoglio showed his colors then as he has now by smacking down the U.S. bishops in their attempt to do something about the sex abuse crisis. Read this article, or one of the many others on this latest Bergoglian outrage. The pope is making himself odious. Something like old-time gangster films, they're holed up in a hideout surrounded by police, and they're in effect shouting, "Come in a get us, Coppers!" Because of the pope's actions, the American Church will be helpless when the prosecutors come to liquidate its assets.

In Francis, the Modernist / Progressive faction has total control of the Church, and they won't let it go. They intend to keep it and drive the rest of us out.

But they'll only lose it, and drive everyone else out.

That's a fuller, non-flippant answer to your question.

We are in dire, very dire times.

An Préachán

* Note I write "two rites" when it is a strict rule in the Modernist Church that all the Latin rites are really only one rite. That's nonsense. The Novus Ordo is more different from a High Mass than any two separate Eastern Liturgies are from each other. A High Mass has more in common with any Eastern Liturgy than it does with the Novus Ordo. It is true that the Novus Ordo is a bowdlerized version of the Low Mass, which itself is a "short form" or Reader's Digest Condensed version of the High Mass, developed for specific monastic purposes in the High Middle Ages, but it had ended up being almost the only form of the Mass pre-Vatican II Catholics experienced. A 1950's Catholic parish had two or three Sunday Masses, all Low. But the Eastern Liturgy Churches only have the one Sunday Liturgy. It was the heavy use of the Low Mass that gave fuel to the liturgical iconoclasts' fire when they rampaged "in the spirit of Vatican II".

Christ the King: A Catholic Essay on Catholicism, Judaism, Protestantism, and How Salvation Works, Part II Original Sin

Now, a bit about Original Sin on this Holy Feast Day, a Feast Day Pius XI instituted as a counter to the Protestants' Reformation Sunday. Protestants believed historically in Original Sin, and many still do, but definitely not in the way Catholicism does.

Original Sin: G.K. Chesterton wrote that Original Sin was the only Church doctrine one could prove by merely opening the daily newspaper. This recent horror in Pittsburgh is an example of opening the daily paper (or accessing the Web) and seeing Original Sin.


Jews famously (or infamously, depending on your point of view) don't believe in Original Sin. Classical Protestantism embraced it, but not in the Catholic way. Protestantism insisted that Original Sin meant people were worthless rags, utter failures, or "Totally Depraved" as Jean Calvin taught it in the famous Reformed Church acronym of "T.U.L.I.P". Thus, we're all miserable rats, fiends, selfish and savage. (And all too often, many people seem to want to be precisely so horrible as all that! Hell is their choice, and God always gives you what you want.) But through an act of faith, i.e., personal and then public acceptance of Jesus as Lord, God would then "cover" their sins -- and sinful nature -- with the snow of His Son's Righteousness. We would be made "right with God" even though sinners. Luther called this Justified but a Sinner. "Simul Justus et Peccator." This is defined as "imputed righteousness." Luther said we were thus like manure piles covered with snow. (I grew up on a dairy farm and this is quite a clever metaphor.)


Most traditional Protestants still believe this, though the more Modernist or Progressive ones don't (they don't believe in sin very much at all, unless being non-Politically Correct is a sin to them). In any event, such fallen wretches can not possible make good subjects for Christ as King of the Here and Now, so Protestants teach His kingship comes at the end of the ages. 


Contra this, the Orthodoxies (Catholicism, etc.) teach that Original Sin means we're not "plugged in" to God as we were when first made. We can thus go either way in life, in terms of being good people or bad, although usually we go the downward way. However, we're all far, far, far from worthless, and some can achieve profoundly all on their own (think of Socrates, or Plato, or Aristotle, etc., or the local "good atheist" who does great charity work and so on). However, no matter how good (or of course, bad) an individual may be, he or she cannot be "saved", made right with God; or to put it another way, a less Protestant way: our current, fallen, nature is such that as to prevent us from ever "seeing God" in the Beatific Vision.


Our natures, our very essence, thus must be remade, and this is what the Incarnation is all about. Eastern Orthodoxies -- whether in Communion with Rome, as many of the small ones are -- or not, all stress the Incarnation aspect of Salvation. They dwell on the mystery of the Incarnate God, ruling all history and creation as He is now, today, and as revealed in the Book of Revelation. Catholicism on the other hand, because of St. Augustine, tends to contemplate Christ as Crucified, hanging on the Cross, beaten, bloody, redeeming our sins through His sacrifice. These are two sides of the same Salvation coin, of course.


That is why when you walk into a traditional Catholics church, you're sure to see a large Crucifix. But when you walk into an Eastern liturgy church, you see Christ as Pantokrator, Ruler of All, on high (usually on its central dome).


Now, both Catholicism and the Orthodoxies are "orthodox" in that they teach the full Gospel, i.e., that the Incarnation and the Crucifixion go together. The difference is one of stress. But Catholicism's stress on the Crucifixion resulted in Protestantism, which is all about "Jesus died for my sins!" Protestantism focuses on the Cross to the point they can't really appreciate the Incarnation. The Incarnation is about the change in OUR natures ultimately. Protestants deny, however, as Luther went to great pains to deny, that there is any "change of nature." We're manure piles under beautiful robes. C.S. Lewis, in his 10th Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer, refutes (very politely) this central Protestant teaching.


The question is: why the Incarnation? Why did God have to become Man? What is all that about, anyway? And the answer is that by the Incarnation, God elevated our natures so that we could then participate in the Divine Nature. That is what Salvation ultimately is. "We are new creations in Christ Jesus," as St. Paul says at least once in most of his letters, one way or another, "the old nature is gone; the new is here!" And this is the idea of Jesus' comments on to Nicodemus in St John about being "born again", i.e., literally receiving a new nature, born of the water and the Spirit, which is the Catholic / Orthodox understanding of the Sacrament of Baptism, and we receive the spirit of sonship (as St. Paul put it in Romans).


To rephrase it and bring in the help of angelic friends, angels by their inherent nature shared God's nature as pure spirit, and once they chose for or against God, they were locked in -- or locked out -- of God's presence for all eternity. This is simple to understand: if you are in Eternity and you make a choice, that choice is -- surprise, surprise -- eternal. One doesn't celebrate one's millionth year in Heaven or lament one's millionth year in Hell. There are no years in Eternity. Only what Boethius called the "Bound Now". (Thus anyone trying to make the argument that a good God would not consign someone to Hell forever is ridiculous -- there's no "forever" in Heaven or Hell, only the Boundless Present.


Humans are made in the image and likeness of God, as well, not in that the Lord of Hosts looked like Adam or had a physical nature in any way, but that we have minds that can comprehend, sort, catalog, figure out, project, extrapolate, and in general, be rational. These minds are eternal, mirroring God and the angelic minds. We're thus both the highest animals and lowest (sorta) angels, in the mind/soul sense. Original Sin locked us out of full participation in God, but the Incarnation opened the door for us that way, and opened it in a new and higher level entirely, so that now, incredibly, the Lord of Hosts Himself (Christians believe) is not pure spirit any more, but the Second Person is both God and Man, two natures, one Person. And we can share in that through the Sacrament, changed in our own very natures.


So, thus, Original Sin only means that an individual, no matter how good, can not be with God as God intended until that person participates in God's long-running plan of Salvation. We're not totally depraved, though many seem to want to go that way. But we're not sinless either, in the sense we don't have the supernatural help and cleansing all the Sacraments give, especially Baptism, which removes the Original Sin issue.


One final note: The Easterners don't believe unbaptized babies go to Limbo, and certainly not Hell. The Westerners (again because of St. Augustine to some large extent) believe unbaptized children can at best go to Limbo (or the Celtic Otherworld or Native Americans' Happy Hunting Grounds, or the Elysian Fields, however you wish to see it). St. Thomas Aquinas argued for the latter against those who taught the Hell destination idea. St. Robert Bellarmine, 1542 to 1621, was about the last important theologian who taught they went to Hell, if I recall correctly. The question today is generally held in abeyance, or to coin a phrase, Limbo. I've had children who didn't make it to birth and should I be blessed with Heaven, and they're in Limbo, I'm going to go be with them. We are made for the Beatific Vision, but as their father, I'm responsible for them. There are no angel families or clans, but there are with us. And God works through us for the general Salvation, to the extreme and astounding extent He became one of us Himself. 

Certainly the Lord of All Creation, the King of All, and a Father Himself, would understand, and fix it up to fulfill His glory and our destiny.

An Préachám

Christ the King: A Catholic Essay on Christianity, Judaism, and Protestantism, and How Salvation Works, Part I

Here's a take on Original Sin and Christianity/Judaism that many of you are probably not familiar with. But today, on the Traditional and proper Feast of Christ the King, it is good to recall just how He is Lord of History and our True King -- not only of Heaven, but our Earth, our present, miserable, confused, and lost (even in so many persons in the Church itself, even Christ's Vicar!) as it seems to be. 

God, the Lord of Hosts, Creator and Sustainer of all that is, is following a program He's put in place that is still running. It's the same program from Adam and Eve down to today. This is crucially important. The Lord doesn't run about changing things to fit the circumstances of the day. He's Christ the King, the Lord of History and He is in control. That's important to remember -- and believe -- after a horror such as the purely evil, vile, and obscene Pittsburgh Massacre.

So:

The first Covenant the Lord made with all Creation when He "rested" on the Seventh Day. The next Covenant He made with Adam and Eve, that through Eve's seed He would raise up a Savior who would crush the serpent's head, even though the serpent (Satan) would bit the heel of the seed -- Christians of all stripes take that to be a prophecy of the Passion and Crucifixion. The second Covenant He made with Noah, and so on. Seven Covenants in all, the last being the New Covenant (here Christians deviate from Judaism, obviously).

To be "saved" one needs to have this inheritance, to be in the inheritance of blessing, THE blessing God gave to Abraham (the red-haired "Great Father", to whom God granted this via a close series of three special Abrahamic covenants), and as was then passed down through Isaac ("Laughter") to Isaac's second son, Jacob ("Heel") whom the Lord renamed "Israel" ("He who struggles with El", or God). To be "saved", this long-running program has it, one indeed has to be of the People Israel, through whom salvation is solely available.


What Jesus, (Yeshu'a, Joshua, meaning: "Yahweh is salvation") did was to arrange for the adoption into the divine Sonship of non-Jews, into this Abrahamic Covenant. Through His Incarnation, and then Crucifixion and Resurrection, Our Lord Christ made this adoption into the Abrahamic Covenant possible through changing our nature. This is the belief of the Christian Orthodoxies (Western Orthodoxy/Roman Catholicism, the various Eastern Orthodoxies, and then the "Oriental" Orthodox -- Armenian, Coptic), all of whom have the same system of Apostolic Succession and the Seven Sacraments. (Ahem, some of the Churches get along with each other better than with others, but their actual theological differences are minor compared with Protestantism.)


What they have in common is that they're the Churches of the Real Presence, i.e., that God is truly present in the consecrated bread and wine. Being baptized allows one to partake of the other Sacraments, esp that of the Holy Eucharist. It is the Most Holy Eucharist that is the New Covenant, the New Testament (and not the 27 books of the Christian Bible -- they only contain the story of the New Testament. And when we have taken the Holy Eucharist, we are changed in our nature because we receive the Incarnate God. And we not only have the Body and Blood of God in our arteries, but His Human Nature too. Jesus got His Human Nature from his Mother, as all Jews inherit the blessings Israel received from his father Isaac, through their mothers, from Sarah on down.


Thus, the Blessed Virgin Mary is truly our Mother, literally, because Our Lord is Incarnate through her and via the Holy Eucharist, we take on His Nature. We're "new creations in Christ" as St. Paul says so often, and in so many ways. In other words, all Christians who are "Orthodox" and participate in the Holy Eucharist are adopted into Israel, and all thus receive the Covenant blessing and salvation inherent in that. It's the same program it has always been, in other words.


Now, traditionally, Catholicism has taught that the fourth Covenant, the Mosaic Covenant (fourth from Adam and Eve, fifth from the Seventh Day Covenant with Creation), was cancelled, or abrogated, or made defunct, and that it was replaced by the New Covenant. That would change the number of the Seven Covenants, of course, and also it is not necessary, because each Covenant is transformed by the Covenant made after it. Expanded, uplifted, transfigured. We understand Noah's Covenant in a new light via the Abrahamic Covenant, and we see the Mosaic Covenant transformed and heightened by the Davidic Covenant (that the Kingship of Israel would never pass from David's House). Just as Our Lord was Transfigured on the Mount, and for the first time, Peter, James, and John -- who thought they knew him -- beheld Him as He is, so the Mosaic Covenant was transfigured from eating a lamb without blemish or broken bones into the Lamb of God Himself.


Now, as these transformations and uplifts in Covenants occur, one does have to keep up. Think of all of Noah's descendants who weren't descended from Abraham through Sarah. Or think of all those Israelites who rejected the Davidic kings and started their own "Kingdom of Israel" in Samaria and Galilee -- the famous "Lost Tribes of Israel". All cut off from the Covenants after inheriting them directly. Similarly, those Jews who didn't come to believe in Jesus of Nazareth cut themselves off from the fulfilled Covenants. I personally think "God will sort it" in His own way, because so many Jews have been faithful to Him (as they understood it) throughout the millennia, and I think so because God is always faithful -- always -- and because the Lord God is the Reader of Hearts. He is Judge, too, the Absolute Judge, an essential part of His Divine Kingship. But the true and certain road of Salvation comes through the Church He set up, which is the New Israel, the Synagogue of God.

 N.B. When looked at this way, one can immediately see the cause for conflict between Jews and Christians. Jews resented the idea that non-Jews could suddenly be incorporated into the Jewish people, while not "going all the way" with Temple Worship and Kosher laws, and so on -- not to mention all these non-Jews being, well, not descended from Abraham! Christians resented the Jews saying, "Whoa! You're not part of the ancient Covenant!" So the fight began. In contrast to the Churches of the Real Presence, Protestantism, is the "Churches of the Real Absence" (i.e., all Protestant Churches deny -- in their founding documents -- the ancient Real Presence teaching), have a very different understanding of how Salvation works, and 500 years of that have driven this teaching I've just outlined out of the popular imagination, knowledge, etc,.

An Préachán

Pope opens synod with Wiccan staff, called a 'stang' – what else does he need to do? Don a red suit and carry a trident pitchfork?

I mean, John Paul II kissed the Koran. Smooched the quackeries of the Moon god. So now El Caudillo Bergoglio does the Pole one better.

https://novusordowatch.org/2018/10/stang-francis-synod-sorcerers-staff/

 

Apparently this stang was given to Tío Jorge on August 11 by a group of young Italians. In the Circus Maximus, yet.

Talk about signs and portents!

https://pjmedia.com/faith/did-pope-francis-carry-a-wiccan-stang-to-open-the-synod-of-bishops/

On October 3, Pope Francis opened the Synod of Bishops on the topic of "youth, faith and vocational discernment" in Saint Peters Square in Vatican City, and instead of holding a traditional papal ferula he was clutching what looked a lot like a Wiccan "stang." Conservative Catholics were appalled and viewed the pope's choice of staff as evidence that something diabolical is going on at the Vatican. Others thought it was no big deal.

"In its simplest form, a forked staff, Witches use the Stang in various ways including representing the Horned One, aiding in spirit flight, and directing energy," a pagan blogger wrote at Patheos.

Witches claim that they can draw spirits up from the underworld through their stangs.

And you-all know just what sort of "spirits" those guys are.

An Préachán 

Brett Kavanaugh Abortion, and the Insanity of the Democrats – What a Week!

What a week! What a month, really! And it just keeps coming.

I myself was wrong, flat out. I didn't thing Ford would testify. She did. And it hurt the Democrats. Listen to Joe DiGenova here about that. (It is 19 minutes long but worth every second.)

It also made a hero out of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. His approval rating (outside the Loony Left) is sky-high. (See below.)

AND it made a hero out of Lindsey Graham, of all people! The post-John McCain Graham is pretty amazing. If you have not seen his speech, check it out: Pure genius.

So, were are we?

First, remember the polling.

I don't mean the Media's polling. I don't mean the garbage you see on the news. I mean the political campaigns' polling, the polling that matters to the various candidates. The polling the candidates are reading! This is important. Brett Kavanaugh's brilliant self-defense at the Ford-Kavanaugh hearing was astounding, a standing ovation performance. No one in a right mind could doubt his absolute sincerity and honesty. On the other hand, Ford looked like she was a bit drugged, or confused, too hyper-feminized a "hot house flower" sort of thing, a teenage girl in a 50-year-old body (something highlighted by those ridiculously huge glasses), and certainly coached, uncannily almost as though under the "Jedi Mind Control" of her handlers.

The One-Week Kavanaugh Extension

So profound, so brilliant was Kavanaugh -- people are now calling for HIM to run for president -- that Conservatives everywhere thought he'd be swept into the Supreme Court by acclamation. Thus, Conservative and MAGA (pro-Trump) blogs and bloggers are up in arms everywhere over this "one-week extension" the Republican leadership approved for the Kavanaugh investigation. I'm seeing anger at Trump in these blogs like I've not seen it before. Everyone is thinking the Democrats have no intention of abiding by a week extension and will use the time to find more Christine Blasey Fords or worse, as here.

They should go to Hell for that, and I'm serious. Alleging that Brett Kavanaugh is a child sex predator is pure evil -- no hold barred, Satan-possessed madness. And sane people know that.They're fighting mad. At the very least, it shows the lengths to which the Democrats and the Mainstream Media (MSM) are willing to prostitute themselves and show the world they're demented, debauched, and morally and spiritually destroyed.

But a number of things must be remembered:

First, the polls. Kavanaugh is hugely popular. Beloved, in fact. Mr. America, the man everyone wants for a son, brother, dad. I myself, as jaded as I am, when I saw Trump introduce him and heard him speak, thought "What's a nice guy like that doing in this snake pit?" Only the Leftist idiots hate him and they do so with a blind hate.

Second, and very importantly, the Democrats are like "the Lady from Niger who rode on the back of a tiger". As one blog commentator put it: 

Dutchman says:

September 29, 2018 at 1:38 am

One of the things that I THINK is going on here, that ALSO went on, in the previous instances you site: the leaders are TERRIFIED of the mob they are supposedly leading.

In effect, it is the mob directing the leaders, NOT the other way around.. because if the mob really cuts lose, the current leaders will be purged, right off the bat.

The current ‘leadership’ of the democrats are old, and scared.

And, so the mob, the inmates, are running the asylum.

And look at the younger generation, aspiring to lead. They, too are,totally catering to the angry mob, trying to top each other, in identity politics, and extreme positions.For they too, are scared, lest the mob, turn on THEM!

Or as the Bible (and General Sherman, and the stage play "Inherit the Wind") put it: "You have sown the wind, you will reap the whirlwind." I think this is true. I think the Democrat Party is destroying itself even as we look at it. It is amazing to see, and horrifying, too. Back with Roe v. Wade, the Dems sold their souls to Satan -- nothing can be worse than murdering babies, sacrificing them to Moloch in his modern form. It's obscene, that with all we know of science and the development of young in the womb, despite all that, the Democrats and their judges can support the idea that the unborn child is NOT a human being. Once they "crossed that bridge" they've been going further and further out into the colder regions of Hell. We're seeing their final defenestration -- they've put the noose on their own necks and are about to jump. (Whatever metaphor you like, but it is something like the wretched Vatican II Church, actually, a dying institution that in America is so closely tied to the Democrats.)

Of course the Democrats oppose Kavanaugh because they're afraid he'll rule against abortion. As they've sold their souls to that demonic Master, they have to fight. They're also afraid he'll rule in favor of the Second Amendment, and in general, overturn all the guano they've used judges to saddle on us over the last half century or so.

Trump the Genius

The thing is, the "kicker", is Trump cleverly picked a candidate for the Supremes who is a "Bushie", a GOPe / Never-Trumper pick, someone that the anti-Trump Republicans can rally around. Trump did that precisely to pull all Republicans together, and it is working. George W. Bush has been "burning up the phone lines" calling senators, for example. Didn't know that? He is. And therefore the Democrats, riding the tiger, have gone after Kavanaugh with "no holds barred" and have thus have further united all Republicans.

The One-Week Investigation

Now this one-week delay was suggested by that wretch appropriately named Jeff Flake, who was apparently blackmailed or brow-beaten into it by the Dems' "screaming women's chorus" (shootings will continue until morale improves).

But why did Trump and Mitch McConnell (a classic GOPe sort of Republican), go along with it? As I say, Conservatives everywhere are saying Trump is being played, and Kavanaugh's appointment will be killed as the Democrats extend that week. And extend it. And extend it. And extend it.

Maybe so. But Trump has been extremely busy with International issues all this week, which he has shown incredible strength in, and also with Rod Rosenstein (he's putting a saddle on Rod and digging in spurs as we speak). But Kavanaugh has shown himself -- to the surprise of most everyone, Left, Right and Center, actually -- to be an impassioned orator, a fantastic representative of everything that is best about American culture -- the non-Left America, of course. As Tucker Carlson says, Kavanaugh is more popular now that all the Republicans in the Senate.

Remember the polls

That's amazing! And what a week delay does -- if the Republicans hold to it, and they should -- they can always say, "a deal is a deal" and we made the deal for a week, and that's it -- this week will give Kavanaugh's huge support to show in the polls. That huge support with lift up Republican candidates everywhere, and they'll know they can't possibly dump Kavanaugh. Betray him now and it's "good night nurse" for Republicans.

The Actual Investigation

As for the FBI investigating for a week, of course it is absurd. The FBI has no jurisdiction in this case and they cannot compel testimony. Also, everyone about to be interviewed will have lawyers with them saying, "You don't have to answer that, my client declines to answer that question." Second, cops I've read say the investigation should basically consist of the FBI saying, "Do you have anything to add to your previously sworn statements?" Big deal.

Secondly, the Democrats will try to make Ford "unavailable" this week Again, the Repubs are surely expecting that and can say, "A deal is a deal. Make the loony available or shut the hell up." Simple.

Thirdly, the whole point of the week is to give "cover" to the three squish Republicans (actually Democrats) Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and the feckless Jeff Flake. They've got their week. As the Dems do their Black Mass dance, grabbing their own diseased body parts and screaming obscenities at the "choir boy" (make no mistake, they hate Kavanaugh because he's a practicing Catholic, too) the three squish Republican senators can say, "Well, we asked for a week and we go it." Again, remember the polling. It'll show Kavanaugh's popularity. Most politicians live and die by polls.

Also of importance, Ford and her Masters have not asked the Maryland police to open in investigation. Maybe they will, but while Maryland today has no time limit, no statue of limitation on sex crimes, they did when this supposed act took place! ALSO this would have been a juvenile crime, as the people involved would have been 15 and 17. There is simply not only no longer any evidence for the actual police to investigate, but the story is so old and literally "juvenile" as to be beyond investigation. (Also remember, this was a drunken grope, if it occurred at all, and no clothes were removed, and Ford left the house -- why was she going upstairs to begin with? -- and left her girl friend there to be "attacked" by "raving sex maniacs". C'mon.)

Politics

Fourth, a number of Democrat senators from "Red States" are facing a very rough re-election, and THEY will see the poll numbers. Kavanaugh is wildly popular in West Virginia, for example. Joe Manchin, if he doesn't vote for Kavanaugh, will be out on his ear. Probably chased through the streets.

Conclusion

So, yes, the Democrats, who trying to keep their seat on the Leftist-base tiger they're riding, will do and say just about everything. I wouldn't be surprised if they do a walk out of the U.S. Senate (like they used to do in the Wisconsin legislature). I wouldn't be surprised if Leftist violence erupts. Kavanaugh could be assassinated, there have been death threats. I fully expect them to try to assassinate Trump, too, over the next couple of years. (Either assassination will result in all-out Civil War.) But the Left will lose, because of the polling, because Trump and Mitch McConnell have everything to gain by supporting Kavanaugh, and because they have everything to lose by betraying him. The Republican and Independent base is riled up, on fire, "woke".

That is if, (and if is a huge, dangerous, unsafe word, indeed) Trump and the Repubs, Maga and Never-Trump, hold together and force a vote in a week's time.

We live in interesting times. 

An Préachán

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

Things will be happening fast now. 

There's no going back. 

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

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

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

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

So, Bergoglio and Company. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Préachán

"There will be Civil War in the Catholic Church"

Indeed. A "Civil War" has been silently waged, what we call a "War of Position" as opposed to a "War of Maneuver" since the rejection of Humanae Vitae in 1968. (Similar to the Communist "Long March" through the Western institutions, of which, of course, this is a part; see the story of Bella Dodd.) In a sense, the Gays and Bergoglio have done us a favor, in effect, as it were, by finally coming out of their dugouts and trenches into the open field. We can all see now what they're up to, and it "stinks to high Heaven", to "coin a phrase".

We don't know the details of how this will turn out, and so much depends on how Bergoglio resists the growing pressure, and how long he holds on to the papacy, and whether the homosexual "Lavender Mafia" can be expunged. If that doesn't happen, it is clear that a Schism (which de facto exists now) must occur. The "official" Church, sort of like the "Official IRA", will wither on the vine, and end up joining the Anglican Communion or the mainstream German Lutherans. How long it will take to get the Vatican itself back, we'll have to see. But surely, God is letting this occur so we can clean the Augean Stables, though admittedly without Heracles. (With God on our side, we don't actually need ol' Herc, of course. :) But one thing is certain sure, once the majority of the laity understand that the "Lavender Mafia" in effect call all the shots, they won't tolerate it. The Church is made up of families, and few fathers and mothers want to be in a Church of the Gays, run by the Gays, and all for the Gays. (If I may conjure up that old atheist, Abe Lincoln.:)

Excellent essay below, one full of history that I didn't know.

(Paul A. Rahe holds The Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee Chair in the Western Heritage at Hillsdale College, where he is professor of history. )

An excerpt:

This past weekend, the chickens finally came home to roost. We had already learned of the predatory conduct of Theodore McCarrick, Wuerl’s predecessor as cardinal-archbishop of Washington. The evidence showed that he had buggered altar boys and seminarians while auxiliary bishop in New York, bishop of Metuchen in New Jersey, and Archbishop of Newark. Formal complaints had been lodged against him as the 1990s and continued to be lodged in later years, but they were ignored, and he was nonetheless promoted.

On Saturday night, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who was the papal nuncio in Washington from 2011 to 2016, released an 11-page testament, revealing that Pope Benedict had learned of McCarrick’s conduct, had acted against the man in 2009 or 2010 by silencing him, prohibiting him from travel, and forbidding him to say mass in public; that in 2013 he had himself personally warned Pope Francis against McCarrick, spelling out in detail the man’s misdeeds; that Francis had reversed the restrictions imposed on McCarrick by Benedict, taken him as his chief American advisor, and ignored the advice of the Papal Nuncio and accepted that of McCarrick in choosing archbishops and bishops for the United States. This includes Blaise Cupich, the cardinal-archbishop of Chicago, and Joseph Tobin, the cardinal-archbishop of Newark.

Viganò also did something on Saturday night that, as far as I know, no high-ranking prelate has done in more than six hundred years. He called on the pope to resign.

In the meantime, Monsignor Jean-Francois Lantheaume, former first counsellor at the apostolic nunciature in Washington D.C. has emerged to confirm that Viganò‘s predecessor had been instructed to confine McCarrick by Pope Benedict, that he had witnessed the confrontation with McCarrick, and that everything else that Viganò had said was true. To this, we must add that Viganò named names in the Vatican, specifying which high officials had obstructed the investigation into McCarrick’s conduct.

As all of this suggests, we are now at a turning point. The Lavender Mafia controls the papacy and the Vatican overall, and Pope Francis is packing the College of Cardinals, who will elect the next pope, with sympathizers. Pope Francis and his minions have now been exposed, named, and shamed; and there will be a civil war within the Roman Catholic Church.

Either Francis leaves and his supporters and clients are purged, or the church is conceded to those who for decades have sheltered and promoted the pederasts and those who regard their abuse of minors as an indifferent matter. It is time that those bishops, archbishops, and cardinals who are innocent of such conduct stand up and force a house-cleaning. In the meantime, the laity should speak up loud and clear.

How bad are things in the U.S. Church? Check this out:

Cardinal Wuerl on the run? Using the Vatican to escape justice?

And this from Archbishop Charles Chaput:

An excerpt:

 Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia told a conference that had met to discuss the “young people” of the Church that in light of the abuse crisis in the Catholic Church he had written to Pope Francis asking him to cancel the upcoming Youth Synod set to take place in Rome.

“The bishops would have absolutely no credibility” in the upcoming Youth Synod, Chaput told the Cardinal’s Forum, an annual gathering to provide academic formation of seminarians and continuing education for lay people, yesterday. The synod's planned dates are set for October 3-28, 2018.

And then there's this by Rod Dreher, which overviews and links to this: 

Francis and the Journalists, by John Waters

(Clearly, the entire Irish episcopate should resign; what few good men are left haven't "stood up and been counted", so they should go, too.)

An excerpt:

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/08/francis-and-the-journalists

Three questions to begin:

1. Why did the World Meeting of Families, which took place in Ireland last week, all but exclude from its panels and speakers people who had been active in recent Irish referenda relating to family and children?

 2. Why did virtually every panel of commentators covering the World Meeting of Families and papal visit on Ireland’s national radio and television station comprise at least 50 percent LGBT activists?

 3. Why did the Irish media play down the explosive intervention of the former Vatican diplomat Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò until Pope Francis was preparing to leave Ireland on Sunday afternoon?

The answer to the first question has two parts. One is that the Irish Church hierarchy, having more or less avoided involvement in three referenda—on (so-called) children’s rights (2012), same-sex marriage (2015), and abortion (2018)—seek to ensure that those who tried to do the job they abandoned become non-persons within the Irish Catholic world. More and more, the Irish bishops appear to wish to curry favor with those who despise the Church, and to dismiss and disparage those who defend Christ’s proposals for humanity.

I was one of just three people who fought prominently in all three referenda on the side that the Catholic Church might have been expected to lead. Though I had gained a reputation as an arch-apologist for the Catholic Church, I was not invited to speak at the World Meeting of Families or even to attend it, and so I watched and listened from a distance.

To the second question: Media panels are stuffed with LGBT activists in order to protect the dominant narrative concerning clerical sex abuse in the Church. That narrative insists that sex abuse was perpetrated by pedophiles; that the main cause was clerical celibacy; and that the coverups were conducted by Church leaders to protect the Church from bad publicity. 

We have known since the John Jay Report published by the US bishops in 2004 that the overwhelming majority of abuse in the Church was carried out against teenage boys. The levels of pedophilia in the Church are shown by this report to be below those of the general population—whereas the levels of homosexual abuse were many multiples of the general situation. 

In Ireland, anyone who tries to state this case is immediately attacked by both journalists and LGBT activists. For this reason, the truth has never been fully reported, nor has its significance been absorbed even by the Church at the official level. Most Irish people have no sense of the true meaning of the child abuse scandals, and both the media and much of the Church’s priests and leadership seem anxious to retain the narrative that implies the victims were all “little ones.” 

See also: Thousands of Catholic Women Sign a Letter Pleasing with the Pope.

This is a "pathetic" piece in the sense that these people "don't get it" about Bergoglio, but at least they'll "get it" soon when he brings on a full-scale "civil war". In essence, it is a sort of last gasp of the Vat2 laity, the leftovers from JP2's days, the "conservatives" who are bewildered by the people running the Church off a cliff. 

An Préachán