November 2022
A Sorry Continuum
Our Lord never said the End Times would be a walk in the park!
Even so, living with the daily scandals of a pope who makes the "bad popes" look good and holy is hard to bear. Papal sights and sounds endlessly affront our Catholic faith and sensibilities, threatening to overwhelm faithful hearts, minds and souls.
If "the wages of sin" — including and especially our own — "is death" [Rom. 6:23], then we are duly afflicted by our painful share in the re-crucifixion of Christ by His putative Vicar on earth: by papal betrayals and provocations taking His ever glorious but sin-ravaged Body to the depths long prophesied by saints; when the Church in its human aspect will seem to be extinguished.
We hoped and prayed that the Bergoglian "mess"-agenda, announced to Catholic youth in July 2015, would not metastasize within the Body of Christ before he was called to his early reward. Tragically, as our urgent pleas rose to heaven the sins on earth multiplied exponentially, not least among the little band of perverts ensconced rent-free in Casa Santa Marta. And so it seemed good to the Just Judge that we should endure Jorge a little longer: that mess-making should morph into meltdown-by-synod.
Of course, our merciful God always provides. If we cannot avoid the pain and anguish we do have the divine tools to maintain our equanimity amid the humiliations, degradation and chaos. A prayerful, sacramental life centred around the Holy Eucharist and the Rosary will suffice to see us through — supplemented with a regular diet of truthful information about the state of play in general, and this apocalyptic papacy in particular.
Apropos the plain truth of the dire state in which we now find ourselves most perfectly placed by Divine Providence, we easily forget the continuum it represents. For, Jorge is not a post-conciliar anomaly.
As we regularly point out, his feted predecessors merely held at bay the Noah-like ultra-Modernist flood he unleashed. In the process, however, they facilitated the deluge. Rather than recant the heterodox and heretical principles they imbibed in their youth, they sought instead to square the Catholic circle: to jam the square peg of neo-Modernism into the sacred whole of Tradition.
So, although exemplars of orthodoxy in comparison (who isn't!), John Paul II and Benedict XVI shared corrosive Bergoglian traits, thereby adding to the sum total of all our personal sins that comprise those "structures of sin" (per John Paul) which finally spewed forth Francis: a diabolic emissary of the "man of sin" [2 Thess. 2:3].
Especially where John Paul II is concerned we find a shared commitment to false ecumenism and its corollary: debasement of the Church and Her salvific mission through excruciating mea culpas.
The papal "pilgrimage of repentance" made last July to apologise to native Canadians over the latest trumped up charges of imperialistic "genocide" by Catholic missionaries, recalled this Modernist commonality.
Setting forth the truth of the matter ignored by Francis in his usual rush to kneel before woke agendas, the ensuing commentaries demonstrate his latest gift to the enemies of Christ, His Holy Church and His evangelical mandate [Matt. 28:19].
As for the self-destructive ecclesial continuum, my following editorial 'blast from the past', penned on the eve of 2000 AD, serves to underline the enduring collective mindset:
Ignoring Cardinal Pacelli's common sense view (expounded as Vatican Secretary of State before his election as Pius XII), that a Church indulging in historical self-criticism would be a Church "digging its own grave," John Paul II opened Pandora's Box with his Apostolic Letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente in which he encouraged that very thing — calling on the children of the Church "to purify themselves, through repentance, of past errors and instances of infidelity, inconsistency and slowness to act."
Though the Holy Father was careful not to speak of an examination of conscience by the Church per se, an impossibility since the Church is Holy and cannot sin (Catechism No. 829; Lumen Gentium 39), liberal prelates the world over were off and running, unencumbered by such 'theological hair-splitting.' They have barely paused for breath since. Modernist heavyweight Cardinal Martini of Milan has delighted in speaking of "our burden of complicity," of the "thousands of years of persecution," of our need to "ask pardon for the sins of anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism." In a Mass of Apology celebrated last December by Bishop Thomas J. O'Brien of Phoenix, Arizona, His Lordship apologised to a crowd of thousands, first in English, then in Spanish, "for racism, for discrimination, for sexual abuse, for insensitivity, for failure to respect human dignity, to women kept out of leadership, to those hurt by closed schools and consolidated parishes, to those not allowed to receive the sacraments, to those not shown hospitality…."
In Britain, one is suddenly confronted with newspaper headlines like this from The Sunday Times of 29/11/98: "Catholics to say sorry for Bloody Mary's terror reign" — followed by a report that "the Roman Catholic Church is drafting an apology for the religiously inspired excesses of one of England's most brutal monarchs…There is believed to be a consensus among the bishops that Bloody Mary is a stain on their forebears." To reinforce such grovelling, Britain's Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop Pablo Puente, delivered a March 1999 Glasgow address awash with Mainstream Modernist verbiage about "dialogue," "collaboration" and "tolerance" — as opposed to the "real fanaticism and extremism" he detects among those Catholics who dare to accuse heretics of heresy! He then castigated "the people of the Inquisition" — people "too sure of their truth" - and insisted: "we must ask pardon for them."
Of course, the agenda underlying all of this is the democratisation of the Church to avoid repeating these 'errors' in future. Meanwhile, the enemies of Christ look on gleefully as every myth and half-truth they have ever dredged up about the dark historical shadow of Catholicism is now reinforced by the very guardians of the Faith they despise.
["Catholic Apologetics or Apologetical Catholics?", May 1999]
Fuelled by John Paul the Not-so Great and turbo-charged by Jorge the Worst, the Sorry Business is perfectly tailored to demented denizens of a woke pseudo-culture awash in identity politics and extreme victimhood. Prelates and priests vie to outdo each other in pandering to the insatiable demands of these creatures that the Faith be inverted to protect their "feelings."
Recently, Irish Bishop Ray Browne issued a statement to appease parishioners and those on social media outraged by a terrific Sunday sermon by Father Seán Sheehy, in which he simply reminded one and all that sin is real, and saints are saints for good reason.
To place His Lordship's response in diabolic context, here are some of the salvific words proclaimed by this true pastor of souls, deemed 'hateful' by the usual suspects (Father's emphases):
What is so sad today is you rarely hear about sin but it’s rampant. It’s rampant. We see it, for example, in the legislation of our governments. We see it in the promotion of abortion. We see it in the example of this lunatic approach of transgenderism. We see it, for example, in the promotion of sex between two men and two women. That is sinful That is mortal sin. And people don’t seem to realise it. But it’s a fact, it’s a reality.
We need to listen to God about it, because if we don’t, there’s no hope for those people. And so God is also telling you and me today, look, you have a responsibility to seek out those who are lost. You have a respsonibility to call people to an awareness of the fact that sin is destructive, sin is detrimental. And sin will lead us to Hell.
When we honour the saints on the first of this coming month, we honour people who are saints. Why are they saints? Because they repented, and because they sought forgiveness. As somebody said onetime, ‘Heaven is full of converted sinners.’
And so today, God says to us: ‘I have come to call sinners. But if you don’t admit you’re a sinner, then, you’re not listening to my call, and I can’t do anything for you, because it’s a two-way street.’
Now, there are people who won’t like to hear what I’m saying. But the day you die, you will find out what I’m saying is not what I invented, it’s not what I came up with, it's what God is saying. And the day you die you will find out that is the truth.
Our prayer for people is, that it won’t be too late for people. But how will people know that God wants to forgive them, if we don’t tell them? How will people who are lost be found if we, as God’s people, don’t call them and say, ‘look, God loves you, he has come to call sinners, but he wants you to have life, and have it to the full.’ Because that’s what he wants. He wants you to live life to the fullest. But since he’s the author of life, we can only live it through, with, and in his grace, to the power of His Spirit.
Rather than politely ignore those who walked out during the sermon, Fr. Sheehy issued a merciful warning: "Those of you who happen to be leaving today, God help you is all I have to say."
In stark contrast to the robust fidelity of Fr. Sheehy, the emasculated Bishop apologised to "all who were offended" by this dutiful reminder from a priest of Jesus Christ. Diabolically disoriented to a fault, he announced that "the views expressed do not represent the Christian position"!?
Furthermore, he huffed, the message was not appropriate for a "regular weekend parish Mass."
So much for "proclaim on the housetops"! [Matt. 10:27]
Struck off the local Mass roster, Fr. Sheehy stood his ground, accusing the Bishop of "muzzling the truth in order to appease people," while truly stating:
"I know myself that what I said cannot be disproven by any honest-to-God Catholic, Christian or Catholic teaching, and that’s the bottom line."
Amen! May God bless and protect His righteous clergy from the injustice of hireling shepherds!
The personification of FrancisChurch, one imagines that Bishop Browne was inspired just as much by Jorge's recent apologetical "pilgrimage" as he was by John Paul's pioneering apology tours. Even as the connecting Modernist thread tightens, however, the elementary truth of my conclusion a quarter of a century ago remains:
When it comes to Catholic contrition, what is simply and desperately required is the ardent promotion of Confession among the faithful (not to mention the bishops) as well as persistent preaching on the Blessed Mother's critical Fatima message.
And as for bygone days, what is needed is not the sort of breast-beating that breeds apologetical Catholics who duck for cover every time hardy perennials like the Crusades are mentioned, but a return to teaching Catholics the art of apologetics — the reasoned defence of Catholicism through dispassionate, factual study of our faith and history.
If the work of the various historical commissions instigated by the Pope were to provide the impetus for restoring this lost art to our schools, colleges and parishes, how rich would be the yield in commitment, vocations and converts through renewed confidence, pride and missionary zeal among the Catholic populace!
It is worth reflecting upon the bracing sea change in attitude such a pass would usher in — even if the apostates and apologetical appeasers won't let it happen. For, a well-instructed, self-confident Church Militant seeking converts to the One True Faith is their worst nightmare.