Friends,
I'm
considering why, today, in 2022, we have such outrageous, Hieronymus Bosch-freak show-level deviants rioting in the streets, demanding, DEMANDING, the right
to murder babies and promoting deviant sexual carnality that always
preceded a civilization's collapse.
One
major social and cultural element that paralleled the moral collapse of
Western society in the last half century was the trashing out of the
Traditional Latin Mass.
- This
deconstruction of the Holy ("set apart") Liturgy began in 1964 with the closing of the Second Vatican Council, the
official documents of which called for some liturgical change but only change
deemed absolutely necessary.
- It could be said to begin earlier when the Communist Frankfurter Schule's plan for social and familial dissolution began to show manifest progress.
- It
appeared over a decade after the U.S. in its attempt to keep Germany
down, began to promote pornography and immorality in Germany (E. Michael
Jones details this).
- It manifested when the children born
post-war, children who did not experience the privations and hardships
of the Great Depression or World War II, came of age and found
themselves awash in money and porn.
- And most of all, it occurred
in a Catholic Church trying to find a reason for its existence, unable
to justify its conduct in either World War I or II, and prodded by
Modernist theologians and their nouvelle théologie, the central tenant of which was everything evolves, even God.
All
this lay behind the full occultation of the Traditional Latin Mass.
(Thank God, like a full occultation of the moon, it did not – and could not – last.)
For
decades after 1970, however, one simply could not find it. This sacred
liturgy lived on in the memories of its forlorn, cast adrift adherents,
of course, and in the Heavenly Liturgy which it represents. But it was
otherwise non-existent except for the work of a handful, such as the
incomparable Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who founded the SSPX in that pivotal year 1970.
But the people, the demos, the Church's hoi polloi, the public of the Church's res publica,
kept the pressure on for its return. Finally, with that miserable
effeminate recluse Paul VI finally dead, Pope John Paul II could let up on
it a bit, although he met resistance and did not move too far. Pope
Benedict XVI, though, opened the Church doors wide for it, and got deposed for it, too (believe it). Now the
anti-pope Bergoglio is doing his damnedest to get rid of it again. He
clearly hates it, and has gathered to his black standard those who
loathe it. Currently, I see one of his American cronies, Wilton Gregory
of D.C., is considering banning it from his archdiocese. Oh Lord God,
save us from these imps and hobgoblins of Satan!
As
far as I am concerned, as far as most traditional morality goes, a law
that is immoral is no law, an order that is reprehensible (like,
"Soldier! Shoot those Jews!") is no lawful order. Bergoglio and his
homosexual lavender mafia have thus abdicated their positions in the
Church by their actions, regardless of whether they were lawfully
installed in the first place. (See this article at Ann Barnhardt's blog
for an excellent essay on why Benedict's abdication is invalid.)
I
think John Paul and Benedict acted the way they did regarding the TLM
because they could easily see that the mainstream Church was collapsing
in numbers: ever fewer active Catholics, ever fewer baptisms and
marriages. Ever more divorces. Fewer and fewer laity believed in the
Real Presence. These statistics were known. In 1963, 3/4s of Catholics
attended Sunday Mass, by 1983, that was almost exactly reversed. So they
pragmatically let the TLM in the back door. But for Bergoglio and his
ilk, they're terrified of the TLM's success. That would invalidate their entire lives. "Latin Massers" may be
still few in numbers compared to mainstream Catholics in raw numbers,
but they still total in the many millions. They also have large
families; the Mass and its adherents attract converts. (Bergoglio
infamous called proselytizing "solemn nonsense".) AND they are much more
likely to believe in the Real Presence and attend Sunday Mass without
fail. They're a crack, elite unit of Catholics, a Catholic Marine Corps
or Guards Army, and are leading the way to the Faith's Restoration. So
of course, they have to be smacked down. Humiliated. Scourged.
It is highly significant that the evil Bergoglio has so far (as of this writing) said nothing about the Dobbs
decision. No thanking God, no praise for this great work. (Haha,
certainly no word of thanks to a certain Donald John Trump!) The U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops has commented, as have bureaucrats
in the Vatican, but all that has so far been relatively muted. You
don't need to be a Richard Feynman to realize they're not overjoyed by Dobbs.
They are thus driving yet another nail in the mainstream/mainline
Church's coffin because a large number of Catholic Christians have
labored long to get ride of Roe, it's been the life's work and thousands, and now that it is gone, these heroes
notice the crickets' muted chirping in the ruined choirs of the
hierarchy.
What's so important about the TLM? Our Religious Hard-Wiring
What
the Traditional Latin Mass did, besides wonderfully celebrate the
Seventh Covenant, the New Covenant, the Most Holy Eucharist by
participation in which we are saved (see St. John's Gospel, Chapter 6; St. Luke 22:19-20), was put people's mental framework in order.
It reminded people – indeed, it actually leads people – into the threshold
of the Divine World, the Other World of the Holy, the Sacred, the Divine
Real Presence.
That
once-a-week hour worked on an individual on many levels. Almost all
humans, of whatever culture, have some sense of the Sacred, the Holy,
these words meaning literally: that which is 'set apart' from normal life.
We seem to be hardwired to want that, although in theory this can be the only world we know. Maybe in small doses for most, but we want
it. That's because we are hardwired to want God, to spend eternity with
God, whether as adults we might reject God or not. Satan and his Fallen
Angels were also made that way, and one of the worst pains of Hell is
to still want that intimacy with the Divine yet be eternally denied it,
eternally suffering Tantalus-like.
Now,
I understand that not everyone has a strong sense of this desire for
the Set Apart. Like curiosity or math ability, it is stronger in some
than in others; but to be completely without it is somehow not to be
human. And different Christian groups manifest different levels of desire
for it. While never having been a Protestant, I grew up with them and
believe I understand Protestantism inside and out. I work with them now,
from time to time on editing projects. And in terms of the more
"popular" versions, church-in-the-wildwood types I'm most familiar with, I can understand the desire to worship
God out in the open air, as it were, so to speak, building an altar of
unhewn stones and sacrificing the sheep and goats and oxen on it,
setting the fire, and watching the smoke of the oblation ascend into the
sky, "God-ward", my hands raised.
But
then I also understand the innate desire to "Let us go up to the
mountain of the Lord, lets us ascend unto Jerusalem, for I rejoiced when
I heard them say, let us go unto the House of the Lord", to enter the
outer courts, then the inner courts, getting ever closer to the Real
Presence. (I can only imagine the music they had in the great Temple! Harps,
lyres, lutes, the 12-string psaltery, the shofar horn, trumpets of
various sorts, flutes/pipes, double oboes, timbrels-tambourines,
sistrums, cymbals, bells.) I certainly understand what God inspired Solomon to create. King
David represents the former, simpler open-air inclination, Solomon the high
liturgical one. And I too desire to ascend, as it were. (There's a
reason why, despite a few certain exceptions, usually Anglican in some
way, that Protestantism never developed a monastic tradition.)
What this means "in the world"
Many
mainstream Catholics react negatively to Trad Catholics, sneering, "You
think you're better than us, don't you? That the sacraments are more
valid in a TLM." I actually rarely hear that, but I can say that for us the
entire Traditional liturgy is more "set apart", heightened, elevated
God-ward for those of us bearing this appreciation. That is just a truism.
And
of course, a man or woman or child who frequents such heights remains
for life a bit more removed, a bit less attached, to the things of this world. The Divine World makes itself felt. It
takes a much greater act of rejection of God to shrug it off. A Novus Ordo
Mass with its talky vernacular, its marching-band everyone-in-lockstep
praying, its overall more casual, more mundane spirit, its no
damnation/painless salvation is just easier to leave, to put it simply. It's rejection lies more lightly on a soul.
Ergo...
Therefore,
the evils of the world, all the "sex, lies, and videotape", or more
traditionally the world, the flesh, and the Devil, present less of a
counterpoint to the Novus Ordo than the TLM does. Only rarely does the
Devil go in for a High Luciferian Satanism. His demons usually offer a
much more mundane, casual, relaxed way in their temptation to evil. "No
drama damnation", as it were, to match the modern "No drama salvation".
The
one thing in which the TLM is definitely superior to the Novus Ordo,
and it stands profoundly superior, is that it presents to this mundane
world we reside temporarily in the Holy, the Sacred, The Other in its every fiber. The
Holy Ghost worked through Churchmen for centuries to perfect that sense.
Bugnini and the designers of the Novus Ordo consciously rejected all
that because they thought it "medieval", and that modern man would not
tolerate it. So, "the Bug" turned his back on it as fully as Luther did.
(Luther did so for different reasons, but still.) And "modern man" was
represented for the Bug and his would-be Reformers by the then archbishop of
Milan, one mousey Giovanni Battista Montini, who carried a business man's brief case about with him. To them, Montini was the way, and the wave, of the future. Honestly, the future Paul VI carrying a briefcase excited a LOT of comment in the press.
It
was just silly. And vacuous, as was so much of Vatican II and the
infamous "spirit of Vatican II" that followed. And the new, practical,
nonsensical, spiritually business man Church, the Vatican II Church and
its "just business" liturgy sat uncomfortably without any continuity in the timeline of
the Church's 2000-year past. No wonder if failed, and is about to pass
with the death of Bergoglio. Either a more Bergoglio-than-Bergoglio will
be elected, and if so I expect the College of Cardinals to fracture as
that would be intolerable, or some more "conservative" prelate with be
elevated, which whatever they might say about it, will represent the
high-water mark of Vatican II. It begin a drain away, an ejection that will
inevitably accelerate as the world crashes through war, starvation,
energy blackouts, and the final putting down and execution of the latest
eugenics idiots who run the World Economic Forum, 2030, the Great Reset, etc.
Sounds a bit fanciful?
After
all, in the face of the absurd Covid fraud, the entire Vatican II
Church basically dried up like a desert tumble weed, and blew away. How
could it possibly deal with a real world crisis? War? Famine? The lights
of this technological civilization going out?
An Préachán
