"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

. 

Kennedy Hall's Litany of Truth, with My Comments

Amici,

Mr Kennedy Hall, traditional Catholic apologist and podcaster, has up on his Substack the following "Litany of Truth" and challenges his readers to put it up. I gladly accept the challenge as I agree with a lot of what he writes anyway, though I don't think Bergoglio is an actual Pope, as Mr Hall does, and I refuse to call that, ahem, individual, anything but his actual name. (I.e. "The Old Devil" or "The Ogre" and other such.) But, whatever. I assume Mr Hall takes this position because it is the SSPX's position on Bergoglio. (And Mr Hall is 110 percent SSPX.)

So, here it is in boldcase. My comments – exhibiting my rather morbid, off-the-wall humor – are in parens; ().

Litany of Truth

I have a challenge for you. (Mr Kennedy writes.) Over the next few weeks, I challenge my readers to utter any of these truths in mixed company or online in an open forum.

• Feminism is transgenderism (Ah, and here I've always wondered why some feminists were so darned ugly.)
  
• Judaism is definitionally the religion of Antichrist (First off, any organized group that rejects Christ can be said to be "anti-Christ" to begin with. Islam certainly is. Secondly, this is a way to target Jews and in turn is a great way to get targeted by Jews. One can also ask: Which Judaism? There are so many Judaisms to choose from. Most of them "not-religious". I know, I know, but hey, that's Judaism today. And anyway, if you have four Jews, you have five opinions, goes the old saying. This is, truly, a quagmire.)
  
• The Novus Ordo is an abomination and should be destroyed (I think it died 30 years ago and it has been rattling chains ever since. For myself, I often wonder what my life would have been been like were I to have had unfettered access to the TLM from 1965 to 1985, instead of all those decades of spiritual "junk food". We were all robbed, AND LIED TO, and now Bergoglio is apparently going to change it all again. I hope he does, because that will FINALLY blow it all up. Good riddance.)
  
• Sodomy cries out to heaven (Isn't that called "squeaking from the feeling"? Sorry, couldn't resist. Sodomy is more than carnal depravity: it's the deepest anti-Life heresy.)
• Mohammed is in Hell with Martin Luther and Maimonides (As a cousin of You-Know-Who, I suspect Maimonides now has a luxury car dealership in Upper Purgatory. Seriously, Muhammad [proper spelling] and Luther did true and lasting harm to the Body of Christ resulting in the loss of millions of souls; Maimonides was a physician and philosopher quoted by Aquinas, who called him "The Rabbi".)
• There is no salvation outside the Catholic Church (And Mr Kennedy Hall, there's supposed to be salvation within THIS Bergoglioan Catholic Church?!?)
• Surrogacy is human trafficking (No argument here! And U.S. Catholic Charities is up to its eyebrows in trafficking kids across the U.S. Southern Border. It's wicked, wicked, and evil altogether.)
• Justin Trudeau is Fidel Castro’s son (And both just as stupid AND as ugly as his pa.)
• Freedom of speech is a liberal heresy and is unacceptable to Catholics (And...? And? Then what? Are Catholics supposed to let BERGOGLIO tell them what to think? Or Paul VI? All censorship raises the question of who does the censoring: there's no way to confirm the good being censored as well as the bad. But also, who is going to take it from me? Bergoglio? Tucho? Leftists in general? They'd better not. I, for one, can become suddenly very pagan, indeed.)
  
• Vatican II was a complete disaster and should be done away with (No argument here, either.)
• There is no such thing as religious liberty because there is no such thing as liberty for heresy (Then there's no crown for having Faith, either. Think about it.)
• Porn addiction is rampant amongst most men, even many trad Catholics, and men who watch porn should be slapped silly until they wise up (This is another truth of this Satan-begotten Age, but God has always kept a pretty large Remnant.)
• The bishops who have covered up for perverts or promoted sodomy would be exiled to the desert — or worse — in a saner time (St John Chrysostom, died 407 A.D., wrote that the road to Hell was paved with bishops' skulls. This is a problem that is always with us.)
  
• Israel is a genocidal state, and Hamas is following Islam to the letter (Regarding Islam: That's what you get when you worship the Moon and murder people. Otherwise, nope, sorry. Know that a little over 7 million Israeli citizens are Jews, with around 2,080,000 people who are Israeli citizens being Arabs, whether Muslim or Christian or whatever. If Israel was "genocidal", none of these would exist: hence, it is not genocidal. This I cannot emphasize enough. If one cannot be scrupulous in telling the truth in one thing, who will trust them saying anything else? [Yes, Gaza, Gaza, Gaza; but that's an entire article by itself.])
• Zionism is Satanic (That just gives insane fuel to every radical Muslim who wants to kill all the Jews on Earth. And 100s of millions of Muslims want to do just that. Christians do not want to kill Jews and Jews do not want to kill Christians. Muslims want to liquidate both. The bottom line is simple: Should God not be with Zionism, as many hyper-Orthodox rabbis argue He is not, then it will fail. Gamaliel would state that. On the other hand, if they ever start rebuilding the Temple, we can expect Armageddon, from any number of different angles.)
• Any bishop who works against Tradition is doing the work of Satan (Vatican II bishops have disregarded Tradition; Tradition is defined by St. Paul in First Corinthians, chapters 11 and 15. So, this is painfully obvious.)
• Popesplainers suffer from cult-like psychology and metaphysically view the pope like Muslims view Allah — he can contradict himself and change his will at any time (Yep. Yet YOU accept Bergoglio as pope, too. That's simply crazy.)
• People who want to force you to get vaccinated are perverts who want to stick you with something that you don’t want in your body (Definitely.)
• Evolution is a Gnostic creation myth that has no support from sound natural science and any Catholic “apologist” who promotes it is doing the work of the Devil, whether he knows it or not (Evolution is a lot of things, and all of them are bad.)
• Come on guys, I say these things on a routine basis on my podcast, it shouldn’t be so hard to say at least one of these things.

AnP again:

Well, I've listed them, with my comments. FWIW.

 Pax vobiscum.

  An Préachán

"Their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father Who is in heaven."

 Amici, a chairde,

Today is October 2, the Feast of the Holy Guardian Angels.

Perhaps the most famous Biblical passage about Guardian Angels is St Matthew 18:10

"See that you despise not one of these little ones: for I say to you, that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven."

Guardian Angels are a not a formal doctrine of the Catholic Faith. That Angels exist is a dogma, but Guardian Angels is an ancient belief, formally defined or not. "That every individual soul has a guardian angel has never been defined by the Church, and is, consequently, not an article of faith; but it is the 'mind of the Church', as St. Jerome expressed it: 'how great the dignity of the soul, since each one has from his birth an angel commissioned to guard it.' (Comm. in Matt., xviii, lib. II)." This is from the 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia at the New Advent site. For theological detail on Angels in general, and the Church teaching thereof, see this encyclopedia article. for the historical development of the Feast.

St Peter certainly had a Guardian Angel. See Acts 12:15: "You are out of your mind," they told her. But when she kept insisting it was so (i.e. that the imprisoned St. Peter was miraculously at the gate), they said, "It must be his angel." Clearly, by Our Lord's own words, children have Angels, and but this story from Acts, it is clear adults have Angels. Historically, theologians argued back and forth whether everyone has Guardian Angels.

Does everyone have a Guardian Angel? This from the Encyclopedia:

St. Thomas teaches us (Summa Theologica I:113:4) that only the lowest orders of angels are sent to men, and consequently that they alone are our guardians, though Scotus and Durandus would rather say that any of the members of the angelic host may be sent to execute the Divine commands. Not only the baptized, but every soul that cometh into the world receives a guardian spirit; St. Basil, however (Homily on Psalm 43), and possibly St. Chrysostom (Homily 3 on Colossians) would hold that only Christians were so privileged.

It is one of the greatest meditations on God that he created so many Angels in the first place, and that life on Earth is itself so "plush", so exuberant, so over-the-top abounding in life, that this probably reflects their spirit world (things visible and invisible). It's hardly a stretch to comprehend the Lord God just creating Spirit Life as abundantly as the biological life here below. The Bible of course has a number of quotes about the many hosts of Angels. Just one example, Hebrews 12:22 "But you are come to mount Sion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the company of many thousands of angels...". "Thousands of thousands, thousands of hosts of Angels" is a typical style of putting it. And this from Revelation 5:11 "And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne, and the living creatures, and the ancients; and the number of them was thousands of thousands,...".

There's enough Angels, clearly, for God to appoint one to you.

In fact, Fr. Ripperger, the Exorcist, says that when created, each Angel was given a specific task. If the Angels refused, off to Hell he went. Satan, Lucifer, the Lightbringer, the Star of the Morning, one of the greatest of Angels, was given the task, Fr. Ripperger says, of being the Guardian Angel of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He refused. This, remember, from an exorcist who has forced many a demon to tell him information, information he extracts via inflicting severe pain on the devil. Go here for Fr. Ripperger's one hour long lecture on Guardia Angels. It is, of course, excellent and very well worth the time.

In any event, from this perspective, there's no doubt everyone has a Guardian Angel. And they chose to be your Guardian Angel, so, be right with them. Don't hurt them by sinful acts, and thank them for all they do. Today is their special Feast but you can (and should) thank them every day.

One great way to thank them is to recite this Traditional Catholic Litany for Guardian Angels. It takes a few minutes but it's a beautiful series of prayerful truths about the "Angel of Heaven, who dost love me tenderly."

From the Collect for today, from the TLM:

O God, who in Thine ineffable Providence hast deigned to send Thy holy Angels to keep watch over us: grant to us Thy suppliant people, that we may always be defended by their protection, and may rejoice in their fellowship for ever. Through our Lord Jesus Christ Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Three in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.

         AnP

September 24 Feast of Our Lady of Walsingham

 Amici,

Today is September 24, the feast day of Our Lady of Walsingham. If you don't know the story, here's a nice video from a couple of years ago that explains the history of this amazing Marian Shrine, founded a thousand years ago in Norfolk, England, before the Norman Conquest, and suppressed completely by that wretched Henry VIII, who died saying, "All is lost – Kingdom, soul, life. Monks. Monks. Monks!"

The Story of Walsingham - Full EWTN Documentary 

If you watch this documentary, you learn the story of how one young Anglican vicar, significantly ecclesiastically named "Hope Patten", beginning in 1921, began to revive the pilgrimage – which sort of started up again on it own when Patten had a replica of the original statue of Our Lady and the Christ Child made. (The original had been burned up, along with the original Holy House, but the general appearance remained on Medieval seals.) His Anglican Bishop made Patten take the replica out of the local Anglican parish, itself a medieval survivor the Protestant Church of England "appropriated", as no "Mary Worship" was allowed in an Anglican Church. So, the enterprising vicar, with the name of "Hope", began building a shrine for it nearby, and the rest is, lo and behold, history. 

But prior to that, and again, profoundly Providently, an English lady named Charlotte Boyd, interested in Medieval ruins, bought an old, tumble-down stone barn standing out in the fields. It turned out to be nothing less than the Church of St. Catherine of Alexandria, Patroness of Pilgrims, otherwise known as the Slipper Chapel, part of the colossal Medieval Shrine Complex. (One huge arch of the Medieval Abbey still stands, which gives one a staggering idea of its gargantuan scale.) She began its restoration as a Church for Mass yet the local Catholic bishops wouldn't let it be used until the 1930s. You see, they told her, "But no Catholic families reside today anywhere near Walsingham." (Henry the VIII had been successful, though two hundred years after his demise, the great Protestant revivalist John Wesley preached that if "There had been a grain of virtue...in Henry VIII, these noble buildings need not have run ruin."

And you will learn to some extent the incredible modern-day popularity of the Catholic Shrine to people from around the world, such as the Charismatics, who are indeed mentioned. This being EWTN, though, Traditional Catholicism is played down or not mentioned (caveat: I suppose I could have missed it).

Whatever.

 

Walsingham had been one of the three greatest Medieval pilgrimages, and for about 400 years absolutely nothing went on there except the normal life of a very small English village. I've never been there, myself, or to Knock in Ireland, for that matter (the architecture there – just looking at photos of it – wallops me with something resembling an epileptic attack/tremens; it is so Modernist, it's Lovecraftian, I swear!). However, I did do the pilgrimage to Loch Derg, a.k.a. St. Patrick's Purgatory (though the cave of that is closed), and spent three nights barefoot in the rain. It was, to be sure, the most "Celtic" thing I've ever experienced.

So, may Our Lady of Walsingham succor for England – an abject, pitiful place ruled by Godless bureaucrats and overrun with Muslim hordes, but once known as "Our Lady's Dowry" – a return to its True Faith. Like her Son, she never gives up on us.

Amen.

AnP

 

Christmas 2021...

Everyone,

Christmas greetings and blessings to all. It's been a crazy year, and isn't over yet. So here are a few Christmas musings, for what they're worth.

What Christmas means for Christianity

Christianity is the hardest religion to believe partly because it demands you practice a profound moral code that puts yourself last, and others – even those who hate you and even seek to kill you. Judaism and especially Islam know nothing of this, but this is almost central to the Faith and is non-negotiable. But of course most Christians do what they can to get out of it, including leaving the Church.

Yet the above exists because of what is truly central to the Faith: our own incarnation in Christ.

Basic Points in what that means, exactly:

·      The Incarnation: Absolutely necessary and central to salvation

·      It makes Christianity completely different from Judaism or Islam.

·      Different versions of Christianity understand this a greater or lesser degree, as is obvious not just from their theology, but from their worship.

·      God, in His Second Person, the Logos, becomes a human person: Jesus / Joshua: Yeshu'a (Yehoshu'a: meaning "Yahweh is salvation").

Why the Incarnation? Why did God have to become man? It's a blasphemous idea to both Jews and Muslims, after all. They don't remotely see the need for it. That answer: to make Infusion of Grace possible. Christmas is significant because it is God's public opening act in this Grace infusion program, which the Lord God began to prepare for via His Covenants.

·   God’s Incarnation didn’t lower God so much as elevate human nature, in Christ, enabling…

·   "Theosis" (Divinization) which by grace – not by nature – is 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, which is the teaching about the Seventh Covenant: the Most Holy Eucharist. Examples:

·   John 1:12 “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; 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. St. John's gospel, however, teaches it best, and John uses the Greek philosophical word "Logos" baptizing it into God's service. (St. John knew how to speak to philosophical Greeks better than St. Paul did!)

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

·         Note: In general, The Baby born at Christmas grows up to demand the impossible of “ordinary” humans. In Matthew 5, during the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives the Beatitudes, then says we are “salt of the earth” and “light of the world”, and discusses how He has come not to do away with the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill them. He discusses elevated behavior regarding anger, adultery, divorce, making oaths and not retaliating (“turn the other cheek”) and love our enemies. He ends with "You, therefore, must be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect." (5:48) All that is something manifestly impossible for “normal” human beings to do, but possible if one is incarnated into the Incarnation.

Such talk is only sane – literally – if the talker Himself is the Logos.

Logos: The Word, the Divine Mind expressed, also equally the Decree and Mandate of God, spoken in Himself, the faculty of speech in the Divine Mind referenced in Genesis One: "God said, let there be light." Logos is also the Reason, Cause, and Ground of the Divine Being manifested in act (God is Act: He has no potential), and of course eternally expressing the Reckoning and Score and Judgment of God, all of these is a PERSON, a Person Incarnated in a teenage Jewish girl by the Holy Ghost and laid in a manger, a feed trough for animals, to represent His being our new Manna, i.e. the food of our present desert for our transformation in Christ.

Salvation “works” in us as individuals through the sacraments, formal covenant oaths, by which we partake of the nature of God, in Christ (God’s grace is infused in us).

• Baptism removes Original Sin, thus we’re free to…

·   Receive Christ in the Holy Eucharist…

·   And to keep this “New Creation” and grow in the Divine, we have Confession, a sacrament of vital importance because it restores us to our baptismal purity.

Christmas is significant because the Divine Logos publicly becomes one of us to elevate us into God's nature. Theosis. That's its importance. (He began the Incarnation when the Blessed Mother conceived Him by the power of the Holy Ghost, but, except to family – St. Joseph, St. Elizabeth, the unborn John the Baptist – it was yet a secret.)

It is our spiritual and conscious embrace of this doctrine, this dogma, that enables to to do what I first mentioned: embrace all those living men who would resist it, to the point of killing us. That's the significance of Christmas.

The Novus Ordo

With all this in mind, then, consider that the big religious news this Nativity is Pope Francis' reiterated attack on the ancient liturgy, a far more "vertical" God-focused liturgy in its nature than the usual Protestant style of non-Grace infusing "praise and worship of a community" of the Logos-God. The Novus Ordo is a way-station between Catholic/Orthodox liturgical worship and Protestant worship. Intentionally set up that way by "Grace-of-Ba'al" Bugnini and accepted by Paul VI, it embodies the vertical officially with an over-all horizontal community praise and worship service. The community is the point of the latter worship, and thus after 50 years or so of the NO Mass, 70-some percent of Catholics don't believe in the Real Presence. (Or even heard of it. This should have been foreseen, and many did. But these prophets were ignored.)

So, obviously, the vertical TLM loses a great deal of its meaning through its forced appearance in the horizontal NO, yet Christmas is significant because it slaps diapers in our faces, it forces on us this monumental meaning of the Logos nursing at a young woman's breast, looking into her eyes, seeing humans as a Human for the first time in his Mother face, learning to speak from her: the reality-creating Logos learnig to speak from young Miriam (hence the exhalation of Mary and her title of Co-Remptrix, with Bergoglio denies). Those are the reflections Christmas gives, if we bother to contemplate it.

Bergoglio's actions toward the ancient Liturgy (more than a thousand years older than the Council of Trent, BTW: it should not be called "Tridentine") is shocking, cruel, putrescent, and so incomprehensibly stupid. Traditionis Custodes and the just-released Roche Dubia response commentary on it are stupid to begin with, and full of contradictions, illogic, and illegalities. As pointed out by Roberto de Mattei in https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2021/12/motus-in-fine-velocior-2-with-divisive.html:

Furthermore, as the abbé Claude Barthe has observed, in the very act of presuming to abolish Summorum Pontificum, Traditionis custodes condemns itself to receive the same treatment in the future, exactly as happened for the new principle of religious freedom of Vatican II, which in presuming to invalidate the Magisterium prior to Pius XII relativized itself.

The most attentive jurists have also noted how the need for synodality, proclaimed by Pope Francis, is contradicted by the centralization of decision-making power established by the Responsa, which, without specific pontifical approval, nullify the operation of one of the linchpins of Canon Law: canon 87-§1, according to which “a diocesan bishop, whenever he judges that it contributes to their spiritual good, is able to dispense the faithful from universal and particular disciplinary laws issued for his territory or his subjects by the supreme authority of the Church.” 

Both the motu proprio Traditionis Custodes and the Responsa ad dubia are therefore intrinsically illegal acts, carried out while the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, guardian of the Church’s canon law, idly looks on at a massacre of the rules that seems to have become the only rule of the pontificate.

Excellent points, my friends, are they not? What is sauce for the goose will be sauce for the gander, a simple principle Bergoglio and Roche are ignorant of. They are "hoisted by their own petards" in classic fashioned: the very things they do in hubris against their perceived foes is exactly what Hubris (the avenging angel) will smack them down with.

In my spare time, I've been reading widely and my gut feeling (worth what you paid for it) is Bergoglio, Ol' Bergi, massively overstepped himself and will see widespread opposition and outright defiance, as he'll also see the spineless/faithless kowtow to him. But what is that good for? They'll cravenly kowtow to whoever replaces him, Trad or not. They're worms, not men. 50 years of evidence that the Novus Ordo Mass doesn't work, and they still obstinately insist it does? And naturally enough, even such a disparate, stark range of extreme reactions will overthrow what little mind the Argentine has left. (And using that evil Arthur Roche as his foil was a mistake: that former ice skater is just loathed in the Church outside the hard Left.) I'll provide a few links to articles I think excellently comment insightfully on this, for those interested:

First, this article from some months ago (July 28): https://voiceofthefamily.com/traditionis-custodes-an-act-of-weakness/ by "Cristiana de Magistris"

An excerpt:

Excerpt:

In conclusion, the motu proprio, if one wishes to read it in depth, is the recognition of a defeat. It is an apparent act of strength that covers a basic weakness and incompetence. The reformed missal has been a catastrophe on every level: liturgical, dogmatic, moral. The result, plain for all to see, is that it has emptied churches, convents, and seminaries. Not being able to impose it by virtue of tradition, which it does not convey, one wishes to impose it by dint of law. But this is an underhanded operation, founded on deception, and therefore destined to fail. It is not a fatal stroke dealt against the Roman Rite, but the euthanasia of the modern rite. It is not a death blow, but a life-giving pruning of the missal of St Pius V, which – by the hatred it arouses among the modernist fringes of the hierarchy – confirms that it is “the most beautiful thing this side of Heaven”, handed down to us by our fathers for us to pass on to our children, even if we should have to crimson it with our blood.

Christmas for myself:

I think it curious that I never liked the Novus Ordo. Why would that be? Consciously, it's the only one I really remember from childhood. Consciously, I find, but I discover the older Mass has left roots in my unconscious mind and soul (see below). But it never "worked" for me. Maybe I was too used to Protestant services? I knew them well, or well enough. Thus the NO was just too Protestant for me? Or maybe I subconsciously "mind-melded" with my very Traditionalist mother, who was always careful never to openly denigrate the NO. Or was it something else? Angelic influence? Or just dumb luck? I must say that after my first restored TLM at the old Holy Family downtown in Columbus, Ohio, I had a weird (in every sense, certainly "fated") onset of memory to suddenly recall vivid pre-Vatican II memories I had totally forgotten. Just amazing, and a blessing (albeit an eerie one). It was like waking one morning to remember you had lived in Atlantis.

A few other articles:

See also the following articles from Rorate-Caeli, which is doing a fine job of fighting back: https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2021/12/motus-in-fine-velocior-2-with-divisive.html and https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2021/12/dear-archbishop-roche-attempt-to-cancel.html#more and https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2021/12/an-eastern-catholic-priest-on-recent.html. Each of these are worth the time to read and reread.

This one from the Traditionalist Dominicans, written by Br. Louis-Marie de Blignières, is excellent: https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2021/12/important-declaration-of-superior-of.html (Someone pass it on to the Fr. Hayes and the priests at St. Patrick's.)

And Fr. John Zuhlsdorf has this important info about the Bishop of Phoenix maintaining the TLMs in his diocese: https://wdtprs.com/2021/12/good-news-in-the-diocese-of-phoenix-regarding-tc-and-the-dd/ As Fr. Zuhlsdorf puts it: "In effect, this doesn’t exactly “round file” TC and the DD. It is more like to…

… leaving it out on the steps in the rain."

A "War of Position"

Perhaps. It's obviously a holding action. Clearly many bishops who want to defend the TLM are planning an incremental "war of position" rather than fighting a "war of maneuver." Much depends on how long Bergoglio lives. We need true stand-up, spit-in-your-face fighting, however, like that that unequivocal statement by the Dominican Br. Louis-Marie de Blignières, noted above. We need the "Molon Labe" spirit! Such responses as Bishop Olmsted's are more like "running out the clock" at a ball game. We'll see.

Anyway, this Christmas, what with the continuing Covid fraud and the Bergoglio farce, we should probably ponder at some prayerful depth just what the Incarnation means, and the best way to "Do this in memory of me."

Merry Christmas, friends.

An Préachán

Is Orthodoxy the "True Church"?

A commentator at OnePeterFive asserted that "Orthodoxy was the one true Church." I wrote the following in answer:

I want to be kind, I do. However, I must write the following:

You are not serious, sir, when you write: "The Orthodox Church is the one true Church." That's absurd.

I submit this is manifestly untrue, manifestly so. There are 14 autocephalous Churches, self-governing, "sovereign" in their own rights, and the Patriarch at Istanbul is only a nominal figure -- even the Greek Orthodox Church refuses to allow him any hand in their government. (They're governed by a Holy Synod, as was the Russian Orthies from Peter the Great -- "The First Peter" -- until after the Revolution, when the Soviets revived the office -- what a great foundation for a Patriarchal Office).

So which of the 14 is the "True Church"? The question answers itself. They all fight among each other like cats and dogs, "uniting" only to oppose the Western Church, and were it not for the "Black Death" that swept through the Western Church post Vatican II, leaving, as did the original contagion, devastation behind: empty churches, etc., Orthodoxy would still be what it inherently is: ghetto ethnic Churches. Or one can say were it not for the huge Russian Orthodox Church, the total population of "the Orthodoxies" is negligible. Their membership consists almost entirely of ethnics, and a handful of disgruntled Catholics like Rod Dreher, who joined the Russian (i.e. its American doppelganger) Church and idealistic Protestants, such as Frank Schaeffer, son of the famous Protestant author Francis Schaeffer.

Yet another aspect of this that only the Antiochan Orthodox Church could be said to be "founded" by an Apostle (Peter, who traveled back and forth between Rome and the East a number of times). The Greek Church, as noted above, has no Patriarchal holder now. Istanbul, formerly Constantinople, a.k.a. Byzantium, when it rose to be the imperial capital, CLAIMED St. Andrew founded it, but that claim has no tradition behind it in those first centuries, UTTERLY unlike Peter and Paul being martyred at Rome.

And the Antiochan Church is basically the Syrian Orthodox Church, a ghetto Church in Damascus. Antioch itself, the "Queen of the East" is an empty ruin just inside Turkish Territory.

The Coptic Church's first patriarch was St. Mark, not an Apostle, but rather St. Peter's associate and secretary. Jerusalem itself was a center of the Faith only for a short time, with the Jews killing off or driving out followers of "the Way" before the Romans erased the city 4o years after the Crucifixion, and rebuilt it as Aelia Capitolina, which in its turn was never rose as high as Rome (or eventually Constantinople), before the Arabs conquered it and renamed it Al-Quds.

So, saying Orthodoxy is "the true Church" is conspicuously, strikingly, outstandingly wrong on every level.

Catholicism, Racism, and the Sins of Pride and Envy

Catholic philosophy, based on Aristotle and the Biblical tests as it is, sees "race" as incidental to the underlying human qualities of the individual. Humans are the rational animals, bodies formed by immortal, rational souls – souls give shape to the body, and when the body dies, the soul departs and thus the body goes back to the natural elements. Height, weight, age, skin color, intelligence level, skull shape, whatever, are incidental compared to the hybrid soul-body creatures possessed of an eternal destiny that constitutes human beings.

However, the races seem to have different graces. They certainly have different histories and different cultures. And in a huge variety of ways, these cannot be just blended together seamlessly. In the frescoes in Pompeii, we can observe women on the beach wearing what look like modern-day bikinis. But in all of the long and fabled history of China, they never developed such clothes. Such dress never – remotely – occurred to them, along with democracy, one-man one-woman marriages (a Western idea that is, from the beginning separated East from West), and so much else.

We're all related through Adam and Eve and "equal" before God, because of the human nature He has given us. But we are different. Most basically, men and woman are different, yet we reside in a culture insisting "sex", i.e., the sexes, are interchangeable "genders" – literally and figuratively (sex-change operations are supposed to create "women" from men, etc.). All that is absolute nonsense, yet it is the regnant philosophy today.

We deal with our very real differences through true Charity, and indeed, no doubt God allows these differences as an occasion of charity – yet Marxism is an absolute war against that charity. Our problems are inherently moral, and the underlying sins of pride, envy, and greed, must be preached against, fervently by the Church -- and demonstrated in its own actions. But the current Church leadership is embracing all the ills, conceits, and even evils of modern society.

None of this can end well.

A Reflection on Modernism and Protestantism

Modernism is Protestant. One might say that as an ideology, it is Protestantism with the Catholic trappings removed. Catholicism is a revealed religion, descended from on high (like a few others claim to be, but most religions just sort of developed in certain ethnic peoples, over time).

And "revealed religion" is the very thing Modernism rejects. It came from German Protestants about the time Darwin was making waves, and Modernism is all about evolution. Evolution of a certain sort. There was the natural Development of Doctrine, which could be said to be a form of evolution -- but if it were, the Holy Ghost directed it slowly, steadily, over the centuries.
Protestantism wrenched that away and created the basis for "Evolution by Fiat", a intentional redirection of Doctrine based not on lived experience threaded through centuries and many, many individuals, but something directed by revolutionaries with "novel" doctrines. (The very idea of Sola Scriptura cries out for absolute novelty from every single reader of Holy Writ.) Once that began, then a new form of evolution started, actually a devolution, resulting in the basic Modernist beliefs, seen in Mainline Prot Churches and the Mainline Catholic National Language Churches, i.e. everything evolves, we evolve, morality evolves (as in our understanding of the death penalty), the Faith evolves (obviously "the spirit" of Vat 2 operates on that notion), the Church evolves structurally, and ultimately God Himself evolves.

The corporate managers running the Church today were weaned on this core bone marrow of Modernism and I suspect they really don't have a clue as to what a revealed religion really implies; certainly they don't grasp what Catholicism means. If ever I had that rock in my gut, as a friend put it, of wondering about whether the current bishops, etc., were actual Catholics, I guess I passed that (rather large) kidney stone some time ago.

An Préachán

Happy New Year? Some Dismal Thoughts

Amici,

As the year 2019 ends, I'm tempted to try to find good things to reflect upon, but can't. Bad things seem to be multiplying insanely.

Three basic problems in the world exist, and there seems to be no way to effectively deal with them.

First: Communism, et al.

Second: Scientism

Third: Catholicism

First, Communism or the truly "Red Socialism" (as opposed to, say, the very-Capitalist-yet-Welfare-States of Scandinavia) is a religion that many, many "intellectuals" in the Western World adhere to, and also that has many followers among the ignorant classes in a host of countries. It survived the collapse of the Soviet Union, it survives in Communist China, thrives throughout Latin America, while in the West, it has morphed into "Watermelon Communism" – Green on the inside and Red on the inside.

Communism is a lot like the Jehovah's Witnesses. Think about it. JWism is a publishing house that cons many ignorant people around the world into "selling" JW's products (Watchtower Bible and Tract Society publications). The big shots of the "religion" get rich on the backs of its followers. Now, all religions, from Catholicism to Mormonism, want their adherents to contribute money, but JW's laity is its worker ants. In the same manner, Communist higher-ups live "the good life" by manipulating its masses in the same vein. 

With all such, it is that underlying "religious fervor" keeps 'em all going. (Just because Communism doesn't believe in a god, except the god of self, so what? Buddhism has no god, either.) And Communism/Red Socialism will bring down the West and reduce us all to poverty, not to mention serfdom. This is because Communism's "long march" through Western institutions – very much including all-things family related (study up on the Frankfurt School of Communism), they seem to have won. They rule Western Entertainment, Academia, a good portion of the political class and significant elements of the underclasses. And they work hand-in-condom with all the deviants to force sexual deviancy on the rest of us – the goal of that is to bring down the family. Here's a good article on how the Chinese are doing this: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/12/coming_backfire_chinas_family_separations_in_xinjiang_a_recipe_for_islamic_radicalism.html It has some info on how Communism has always wanted to re-order human family life (as in put it out of existence).

And notice how all of the above squeezes the Middle Classes, the people who actually work for a living, and who are benefiting from President Trump's Mainstreet-Not-Wall Street Nationalism-focused Conservatism. Here's an interesting and insightful article by Salena Zito, a "shoe-leather" journalist who takes the time to spend time getting to know people in Rust-Belt towns like Ashtabula, Ohio.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/the-great-revolt-enters-a-new-phase-how-the-populist-uprising-of-2016-will-reverberate-in-2020/

She's excellent. Zito, a Catholic, is probably an old-line Democrat herself, and you'll see how many "knee-jerk" pro-Trump people don't trust her if you read the Comments, but then many of them do understand where she's coming from. She's a great read. And she predicted Trump would win in 2016. She was right.

As part of Communism's break up of society, we have all the "racist" talk and Social Justice Warrior crap. These two articles below discuss the outrageous attacks on Jews in New York City, and the reasons for the Leftists who run NYC's response -- well, NON-responses. The articles are valuable "eye openers".

https://thefederalist.com/2019/12/29/we-can-no-longer-ignore-the-attacks-on-jews-in-new-york/

and

https://thefederalist.com/2019/12/29/identity-politics-enables-anti-semitic-violence-enough/

And that is in the "financial capital of the world", New York City. As the author of the second piece writes:

And Jews are dying because of it—namely, because identity politics demand that violence against Jews be ignored in favor of “protecting” other minority groups. This type of selectivity actually worsens racial relations rather than improving them.
The left has spent the last three years marketing itself as having seized the moral high ground on tackling Jew-hatred, which may explain why their recent anger towards Trump’s Executive Order a few weeks ago, designed exclusively to combat antisemitism on college campuses, was particularly virulent. The mask has slipped, and for the left, battling antisemitism has become a means towards eviscerating the right, rather than a noble end in and of itself. I am curious how much more Jewish blood will need to be spilled before ending violence becomes an end inherently worth pursuing.

(Highlights are my own.)

Now Communism has in common with the Vatican II Church the foundational idea that people, humanity, is basically good, so all we need to do for joy and happiness is remove the Oppressor, whether nasty Capitalists or "Pharisee" "Rigorists" in the Church. However, on the larger world scene, war (all sorts of conflict) seems to be an ever-growing threat. (And it just goes to show that "humanity is basically good" is not true, not remotely.) So if the Commies in the West "shut down" the West's ability to defend itself and global commerce, etc., via local takeovers or civil wars, then we're all going to soon be living in a post-holocaust-like "Dystopia", wherein life will truly be, as old Thomas Hobbes wrote, "Solitary and poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

Scientism: But I'm almost more concerned with the blindness of "our betters" when it come to Scientism, defined as "best or only objective means by which society should determine normative and epistemological values." (As Wikipedia puts it.) You can readily see the basic Scientism fallacy in economics, with so many academics apparently being economic determinists, thinking because people have feet, as Chesterton once wrote, they only walk around on them to find shoes for them. All such ideas fuel "Globalism", of course, which has both great good and also great harm, depending. Trade between nations whose first concern and focus is protecting their own citizens is fine; trade wherein national sovereignty is surrendered is not. Another aspect of Scientism in economic issues is the conceit that someone trained in a grad school, earning an MBA, is smarter in business savvy than a guy who worked his way up in a company from the mailroom. That's been the cause of a massive amount of business failure and disasters in the last 40 years.

In another aspect of Scientism, one the reasons the Catholic Church crashed and burned, was post-WWII its bishops went to psychologists and psychiatrists for all their answers, instead of to the Church Fathers and theologians of the past. It is, in fact, a mirror image of Scientism and MBAs. But I suppose today, Scientism is a problem first and foremost via Global Warming, of course. On the one hand, GW is is being successfully used as a tool by the "Watermelons" and their Luddite collaborationists, but also far, far too many average, everyday folks are taken in by it.

For example, it is easy to find article like this: https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions that shows how consistently wrong all such prognostications have been. You'd think people would "step back from the brink" and "chill out". In any event, this article linked to above is interesting because it opens with an excerpted report from 1967 that predicted "Dire Famine by 1975", followed by a hosts of newspaper articles reporting a new Ice Age descending upon us. Of course, these all eventually peter out and are replaced by dire Global Warming predictions of 20-so-years-ago. All these have hyper-dire warnings from that time about what the world would be like today have turned out bogus as well, of course. Reading the invaluable Wattsupwiththat blog https://wattsupwiththat.com/ is endlessly fascinating for anyone remotely interested in science, and how complicated and not clearly understood planetary earth science issues can be manipulated.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/12/11/greenland-ice-losses-rising-faster-than-expected/

For example, read this article above then the Comment section wherein a lot of questions and objections are raised, sensible ones – extremely so. For example, "spangled drongo's" news about the latest Australian Bureau of Met sea levels for a stilling pond adjacent to the broadest piece of ocean in the world. The latest mean sea level at Ft Denison tide gauge is 6 inches LOWER than the first reading taken in 1914. Wattsupwiththat is full of such astute and informative commentary.

In general, the GW alarmism kind of reminds me of all the dire lamentations that the election of Donald Trump would destroy stock markets, such as Paul Krugman used to squeal about: https://thefederalist.com/2019/12/26/paul-krugman-said-markets-would-never-recover-from-trump-the-dow-is-up-10000-points-since-2016/

Krugman was completely wrong. Utterly! (Is he fired yet? Don't hold your breath.) Yet the mainstream media would never remind you of that. (A major part of our problem today is the mainstream media is inhabited by Leftists as strongly as Academia and Entertainment.)

But in terms of science, right now the Global Warming (renamed "Climate Change") "narrative" seems to be still in control. Here's an article lamenting how the European "Green Plans" would bankrupt Europe. First, Holly Sheer on the staggering costs of Europe's Green Deal:

https://thefederalist.com/2019/12/27/why-the-eus-pricey-green-deal-will-hurt-workers-and-the-elderly-while-helping-nobody/

An excerpt:

Additionally, current green or renewable energy sources still come with environmental costs. They’re expensive — often exorbitantly so, with each of the 28 member countries needing some €575 billion every year to cover these costs of implementing green energy — and still have negative impacts on wildlife, habitats, and workers involved in sourcing the parts. Even implementing these energy sources doesn’t guarantee ridding emissions problems.

If the EU has all this money to throw around, perhaps it’s time to examine North Atlantic Treaty Organization spending and funding, and why the USA is responsible for “69% of overall defense spending by NATO member states.” If the EU has money to spend, it’s time to make its expenditures on its own defense more proportionate, instead of continuing to allow U.S. taxpayers to fund their security while they use their own tax revenue for unproven fantasies like the Green Deal.

Trump, roundly loathed and hated in certain circles in "Europe", has pulled the U.S. out of this GW nonsense and if re-elected (and if you read the article at Lifesite below, you'll see Obama himself intentionally hamstrung the agreements years ago, in 2009) – and what with China, the world's biggest polluter and most polluted country – only talking big about even beginning to clean up its act 'round about 2030, maybe the tide will swing against the Global Warming hoax. But I'm not betting on it. As this article

https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/elephant-in-the-room-latest-un-climate-conference-was-a-joke

says, in its final paragraph, perhaps the most cogent and succinct explanation of "it all" I've ever read:

The Left has gone Green because it solves what has always been the fatal flaw in socialism; the inability to produce growth and improve people's lives. Now that the Greens have proclaimed growth to be bad and affluence to be evil, socialism is the perfect model for managing mass poverty in an "equitable" manner. Environmentalism will be pushed regardless of the state of scientific knowledge because socialism requires it. Capitalism will be condemned because it corrupts people with a destructive desire for more. And China and other rising nations will be ready to pick up the pieces if any "big country" in the West falls for this suicidal ideology. With its strong domestic growth program, its globe-spanning Belt and Road Initiative, and its daring space exploration agenda, "socialism with Chinese characteristics" is a very different beast. Its attitude is full speed ahead. Can we afford to do any less?

(Highlights are, of course, my own.)

The whole article is good; I recommend it. The author is William R. Hawkins, "...a consultant specializing in international economic and national security issues. He is a former economics professor who has served on the staff of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee."

So, it is all about about being on the road to a real-time version of Orwell's 1984. Now I've come around to thinking that only a major, civilizational-level war will finally kill off Global Warming. A war would both give people something else to think about and end the ability of our "Betters" to control us on an International level, because a war would trash out the whole shebang. We'll see.

Catholicism:

We certainly cannot expect guidance from the Mainstream Church, as this article shows: https://wdtprs.com/2019/12/amazonian-and-pachamama-skubala-in-annual-vatican-christmas-concert-video/

An excerpt:

Marco Tosatti caught it and it is on Twitter (below). An indigenous woman from the Amazon region got up in front of the camera, had them all cross their arms over their chests (they did it) and explained about Mother Earth and vibrating.  More Pachamama crap.  On Youtube, 1:44:25 in original language. How ridiculous is this becoming? If she had told them all to strip naked and hug each other, the prelates in the front row would probably have been the first to comply.

I guess there's three categories of stupid, in ascending stupidity: Stupid, Staggeringly Stupid, and then Catholic Church Hierarchy Stupid.

There's so much going on in terms of the wretched Bergoglio that I can't remotely keep track. “Combat hatred, small-mindedness and prejudice. Do not be content with making superficial proposals or abstract synthesis: accept instead the challenge of the overflowing restlessness...” is a sample of his latest drivel.

Check out the Canon212 website for more such news: https://canon212.com/ Or OnePeterFive is a good site, too. https://onepeterfive.com/

Suffice it for me to write here that the Church, acting like a focus-group tested NGO and currying favors with all the latest breathless idiocy and deviancy, is not the way Christianity is either lived or preached, and that as an old Lutheran professor of history at OSU once told Msgr Frank Lane, "We need you guys to be Catholics!" So it is that if Catholicism goes the way of the Presbyterian Church USA (to give just one of a plethora of examples; indeed, the mainline Catholic Church is becoming more Episcopalian USA than the Episcopalian USA Church is!): Protestantism has no grounding, and there's IS no Christianity except the "Ghetto Churches" of the fissiparous and separatist xenophobic Orthodoxies, or the (truly) mindless emotional chaos of the Pentecostals, many of whom "speak in tongues" praising Satan. (A well-known and researched phenomenon, actually.)

All of these three maladies are tied together, of course. Just one example: Communism infiltrated its strongest critic, the Catholic Church, back in the 1930s, as detailed by the famous Bella Dodd, who was converted by the Holy Ghost working through Archbishop Fulton Sheen, who's cause for Beatification, you may have heard, has been "sidelined" (translated: trashed).

And so it goes. 2020. What will it bring? I've come to believe we're in Third Secret of Fatima territory right now, and nothing that happens will surprise me. It may well kill me, but surprise me -- nope, not a whit.

Happy New Year

An Préachan