June-July 2023
Calling "Mighty Shepherds"!
"As one sees the power of the Antichrist spreading, one can only pray that the Lord will give us mighty shepherds to defend his Church against the power of evil in this hour of need." |
- Pope Benedict XVI |
I have related before a telling episode in Father Crane's workaday life that captured the devilish essence of our post-conciliar times. It involved fierce criticism and great praise received in short order.
First came a scathing missive from a fellow Jesuit who railed against the "scurrilous" work of Christian Order, demanding that Father cease and desist publication forthwith.
The following day, a letter from the sister of the very same cranky cleric expressed high admiration and deep appreciation for Father and his work, even adding a generous donation!
At once hilarious and providential, the stark juxtaposition of outlooks certainly captured the lot of steadfast editors amid the post-conciliar ruins. But it spoke far more tragically to the conflict and division sown for sixty years by the Father of Lies: whose 'pastoral' ambiguities first suffused the Council, were then weaponised to devastating effect by diabolically disoriented hirelings, and gradually placed the entire Church, and the Eternal City in particular, under satanic siege.
Herein, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre provides an up-close-and-personal account of how this all came about. Increasingly vindicated by events, no ecclesiastic past or present is better placed to explain Occupied Rome.
Although, perhaps even he did not envision the rise of a Jesuitical papacy to finish off the Conciliar revolution: to upend the Faith, despoil the papal office, and brazenly collude with arch-enemies of the Church. For our papal predicament is now far beyond the Vatican mega-scandals that dominated various papacies in the Archbishop's lifetime.
Not that one would think so judging by the man in the pew.
True, Francis continues to serve his providential but painful purpose: awakening somnolent faithful to the Modernist levelling of the Church that their alert and informed brethren have been pointing out for over 50 years.
Yet very many slumber on. Even the voluminous rap sheet accumulated in these pages throughout the ten years of his papacy fails to convince. Indeed, the CO mailbag is a daily reminder of how little has changed since Father Crane's foregoing experience!
"I regret to have to advise that I will not be subscribing further to Christian Action [sic]," writes a (former) reader. "It is wrong to caricature the Holy Father as done in your recent edition." (As is so often the case, the complainant neither specified the offence, nor the reason why, after a decade of Jorge the Worst — if I may thus "caricature" the most perilous papacy in history — he deemed it "wrong" or inappropriate?)
In the same batch of mail, however, a reader kindly scribbled on her renewal reminder letter: "I very much appreciate your magazine as do all my traditional Catholic friends." While another expressed his thanks "for the unique contribution you and Christian Order give to the Church."
That many are awake to the excruciating Catholic reality and ready, willing and able to face and suffer it with Christ is the work of the Holy Spirit. That much is crystal clear.
The desire of the great majority to rationalise or ignore the reality, on the other hand, is a murkier business; especially where it concerns devout and orthodox souls who seek solace in convenient excuses or 'blissful ignorance' before the manifest rape of our glorious Faith and the trashing of the sacrosanct papal office. Quite simply, "An enemy hath done this." (Matt. 13:28). And in that event, it is "the mystery of iniquity" (2 Thess. 2:7) that blinds the faithful to the clear and present danger of Jorge despite the interventions of cardinals, prelates, priests and lay scholars who repeatedly call out his systematic deconstruction of Catholicism.
Even as I write, Bishop Strickland of Tyler, Texas, tweeted this on 12 May:
I believe Pope Francis is the Pope but it is time for me to say that I reject his program of undermining the Deposit of Faith. Follow Jesus.
A scorching indictment, like all the other damning denunciations since 2013 it cries out for equally damning caricatures — which satirical depictions, far from being "wrong" as our ex-subscriber insists, often explain more at a glance than lengthy critiques.
In any event, His Lordship's gloves-off approach is the righteous episcopal response to the papacy detailed in the equally muscular Letter that follows.
May Divine Providence use this urgent appeal and all expositions of the current diabolic reality to jarring effect: such that Churchmen and laymen alike ditch excuses, shake off lethargy, eschew false respect and false charity, and in the spirit of St. Paul withstand this papal placeman to the face [Gal 2:11] — before he hands over the keys of Peter to his globalist handlers once and for all!