"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

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