March 2023
Recharging Our Resolve!
“Present day Catholicism is prey to a generalised apostasy; there no longer subsist within it any other than scattered groups of healthy supernatural cells, which in their turn, risk undergoing corruption if they are not warned of the peril in time.” |
The subsequent providential growth of scattered traditional cells notwithstanding, little has changed in the half-century since Belgian Professor Manuel de Corte made that pithy diagnosis in 1971. A Thomistic philosopher at the University of Liege, in identifying the cancerous condition of the Body of Christ triggered by the ill-fated Council, he also captured the mission and goal of the Christian Order field hospital already set up way back then: viz., to stem the metastasis by setting the tumours ("perils") of the post-conciliar corruption against the holy medicine of Catholic Tradition and traditions, for the health and salvation of souls left prey to the Modernist contagion.
Though unappealing to the complacent and faint-hearted majority, more robust members of the Church Militant have often testified to the healing and energising effects of our stark medicinal truth-telling.
Face-slapped into reality by one outrageous scandal too many, they suddenly realised that behind the saccharine smiles of two-faced bishops happily managing decay and decline in their dioceses lay another face: and it was not smiling. Rather, it was grimly focused on total destruction by way of grinning facilitators of heresy, vice, sacrilege and blasphemy.
In CO they found an authentic Catholic response to this malign force of diabolic disorientation. And so they swapped their futile false-charity and softly-softly approach for CO's outspoken tough love that eschewed human respect: true Christian charity directed at episcopal pilots of the Modernist juggernaut crushing the Faith out of the faithful.
Since meditation on the Passion of Our Lord and Saviour is guaranteed to evoke a brutally honest self-examination, the austerity of Lent is always a good time to pause and reflect on our past, present and future efforts.
One weighs, for instance, our bare-knuckle "vinegar" approach to hireling shepherds against the "spoonful of honey" preferred by St. Francis de Sales to entice the wayward back to the fold. After all, plain-speech and finger-pointing has signally failed to prevent the relentless re-crucifixion of Christ; the veritable Second Passion of post-conciliar torments that reached its agonising peak in March 2013 with a papacy dedicated to flagellating the last vestige of supernatural life out of Christ's Mystical Body.
As we could not stop the rise of Jorge and his determination to complete the secularisation of Catholic life and practice set in train by the likes of Annibale Bugnini, were our efforts worthwhile? Since things have gone from bad to worse to the unprecedented evil of papally-sanctioned perversions of morals and doctrine, what is the point of a raised voice when it has proved just as futile as the softer approach abandoned by those who found succour in these pages?
Well, the point is the perseverance — a trait exalted and demanded by Our Lord, and hammered home by Saint Paul.
Beyond that recollection of the obvious, on reflection and scrutiny the answer to all these ruminations turns on the correct (Catholic) understanding and practice of charity; the falsification of which theological virtue is perhaps the most damaging of all the fundamental errors which have plagued the modern Church.
Charity is falsified when it downplays or disregards truth. Yet we cannot practice the charity and love of Christ without truth. For, as commanded in Luke 10:27, we do not love our neighbour for our neighbour's sake but, rather, for love of Truth Himself. Jesus could hardly be clearer:
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind." Only then does he add: "and thy neighbour as thyself."
Modernists simply slice and dice this command to suit their secular purpose, omitting love of Truth above all else to push love of neighbour above all else. Thus, inverted and perverted, charity slides into mere human respect; an anti-virtue worthy of their social gospel.
To counter this perverse 'love' tailored to a Modernist papacy and a godless generation steeped in "my truth" anarchy, it is more vital than ever to foster true charity through the proclamation of the absolute truths of our holy Faith, come what may.
Besides, as Mother Teresa insisted, truth has its own power regardless of anything else or any visible reward. She of course was a living testament to that reality, as were all the saints, who personified God's resounding declaration:
"For this was I born, and for this came I into the world; that I should give testimony to the truth. Every one that is of the truth, heareth my voice." [John 18:37]
The more FrancisChurch stifles this Divine voice to parrot secular agendas, the more insistently we must speak for Him. Whether our forceful words sting, unsettle and anger, or simply fall on deaf ears, is not our problem. It is theirs. Lenten meditations ever remind us that, in the end, we all will be called to account for our deafness to inconvenient truths: for our failure to face them, repent, and amend our lives. Jorge Bergoglio is hardly alone in that respect! Indeed, is not his apocalyptic papacy a product of our accumulated sins?
Amid all the fearful strife in Church and State, therefore, let us resolve to press on with Christ: the fullness of Charity and Truth Who "resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem." [Lk 9:51].
And if, on that long road, Jorge's scourging of the Body of Christ weighs heavily upon us, testing our endurance, challenging our faith, let us fast and pray, in all charity, that he will STOP.