Last night I had a dream in which I was with a couple of laymen trying to save someone in the middle of immense and quickly rising flood waters. We were standing on some underwater wreckage in which this soul had been snagged.
It was like someone bid me to look over my shoulder. There was a bishop, alone, near us, but also impossibly too far away, standing in the midst of the strongest currents of the flood. He was in full regalia, head gear, cope (most extraordinarily embroidered), with well used crosier and gloves for this most solemn occasion of witnessing to Christ.
He was, despite the violent currents enveloping him in mere seconds, immovable, standing tall, with a face of determination, zero fear, never wavering, looking straight forward, though we were surely within the peripheral vision of his overseeing, his episcopacy. He was there to protect us in whatever way he could, though he surely knew he was presently laying down his life for his friends, from one second to the next.
As the waters immediately rose presently over his face…
I… was… aghast…
As the waters immediately rose presently over his face he was drowned without a struggle and, collapsing beneath the waters, was swept away, already dead, though alive in Christ Jesus.
I woke up at that point, of course… just… devastated… I saw his face clearly but I didn’t recognize him at all, perhaps because he was not necessarily any particular bishop, but rather a representative of any good shepherd being done in by the powers that be, by the powers that foment heresy, schism, apostasy, the flood vomited by Satan, the ancient serpent, the great dragon.
This bishop’s death was no sign of weakness, no sign of failure. Such stalwart followers of Jesus conquer by not running away, but by remaining to protect, to “oversee” those who also follow Jesus. Yet, it is heart wrenching to see a good bishop taken out, washed away, cancelled.
I recall another stalwart bishop:
He also was swept away in the flood of faithlessness and brought to a most violent death by the powers that be.
Perhaps I shouldn’t pay attention to dreams. But it kinda gutted me…
Do you see that bit of red in the circle-graph up on the screen? Those are the votes against blessings of mortal sin, that is, almost no one voted against mortal sin. All the rest of the votes are in favor of same-sex sex blessings and blessings for the divorced and “remarried” with no declaration of nullity and, effectively, blessings for whatever sin ever. This is to say that there is no sin, and therefore no redemption from sin, and therefore no salvation because there is nothing to be saved from. This is an attack on Jesus. It is to say Jesus is not divine, that Sacred Revelation is a lie, that we’re on our own. It’s to hate God, hate neighbor, hate oneself. What could go wrong? How violent could society become? See Romans chapter 1, all the way to the end, right into hell.
Is the faith democratic, therefore a lie? The method of synodality is itself heresy. We cannot reject the Living Truth of God to create “our own” truth, for “our own” truth apart from the Living Truth of God is UNtruth. A purposed lie is most violent: if sex isn’t for life in marriage it is immediately utilized for death. See Romans chapter 1, all the way to the end, right into hell.
Genesis 19:4-5 — “All the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. They called to Lot, ‘Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.'”
The image of God is male/female/marriage/family, with the two becoming one not because any mere orgasm but one in their child, in whom, before God, they rejoice. That child is the least of the brethren, in the most dangerous place in the world, in the womb, the image of Jesus, who was in the womb for nine months. To vote for same-sex sex, or divorce and “remarriage” with no declaration of nullity is to attack the image of God, to attack God, to attack souls so as to bring them to hell. Is this not most malicious?
So, what will Pope Francis do about this? Most probably he’ll make some ambiguous statement, as always, you know, in great disappointment for not having waited, for having jumped the queue, for taking credit for change when – Hey! – Rome was going to lead the way. As we wait for his response, take a look at his defending those “in the devil’s gang” as he himself says:
And then Pope Francis is going to continue to penalize, persecute, mock and deride those “backwardists” who assist at the Traditional Holy Sacrifice of the Mass because, besides defending mortal sin with the devil, the most important thing ever is to attack Jesus whilst He hangs on the Cross for our Redemption and, please God, our salvation.
These people, seems to me, want to go to hell. Let them go. It’s too sad. But you stay in the Church. Say a prayer for their conversion. Say another prayer in thanksgiving for having been forgiven of sin that would bring you to hell, original sin and whatever personal sin. Say another prayer for final perseverance, that you might make it to heaven. Hail Mary… x3.
You think you’re entitled to leave (so as to sin, no doubt) because some filthy people chose to leave the Church? Compare yourself to Mary, who remained with Jesus in His Church, at the Cross, while Peter, the first Pope, denied Jesus, while Judas betrayed Jesus and committed suicide, while the apostles all fled Calvary. You suffered more than her? Nope. Stay with her. Be with John who came back. Jesus will see you there with His Mother. You’ll be with Jesus in paradise.
By the way, whatever “power” these likely-possessed-people think they have, they only speak for themselves. They are merely an auditorium of people, not the tens of millions of Catholics in Germany. The synod on synodality was always merely about bullying an already scripted outcome. If you start with the mortal sin of telling God the truth about the Living Truth He is, you’ll end where you started, in mortal sin. That’s surely very many laity, priests and bishops, but not all. If they declare themselves to be a new protestant church, that doesn’t mean that pious Catholics are protestants, it just means that they’ve been betrayed and now have a great opportunity to stand with Jesus in His trials. And I thank those who do stand with Jesus. They hold up the whole Church.
By the way, those few who voted against this? That’s just subterfuge, covering for the great lie, lending credibility to the system of shaking one’s fist at God: “We can vote about whether truth is truth or lies are truth, because we’re us and God is nothing.” That’s also heresy and, objectively, mortal sin.
Meanwhile, I hope the kids see through all the blah blah and continue to believe in Jesus and follow Him unreservedly. Let’s see, that’s 658 million views, 4.9 million likes and zero dislikes:
So, the vast majority of bishops and laity in Germany have voted to the effect that same-sex sex-acts are not sinful. And so they now offer deadly scandal which, of course, is taken up by those who very well otherwise could have been saved. Bishops and priests risk going to hell with the permanent, eternal character of the sacrament of Holy Orders on their souls, marking them special targets for punishment by the demons and all the rest who are there, but especially by those whom they scandalized.
Look, I’m no canonist, but it seems to me that direct, public, obstinate rejection of revealed doctrine and morality which has been taught not only in Sacred Revelation – with extreme clarity – but also believed and proclaimed by all men everywhere at all times – with extreme clarity – including entirely consistent interventions of the ordinary magisterium of the Church – with extreme clarity – an obstinate rejection about which they have been warned against doing… it seems to me that this places the vast majority of bishops and laity in Germany not only into the category of being heretics, but also makes them apostate, and, because a vast majority of the bishops are involved, also makes them schismatic, or are there canonical distinctions to be made? No matter! Hell fire is hell fire whatever it is that takes you there. One thing for sure, they are no longer Catholic. Taking note of the expressions of the kids at Fatima after they had just seen a vision of hell, I’m concluding that I don’t want to go to hell:
Same-sex sex-acts are a direct attack on the image of God spoken of in Genesis as male-female-marriage-family. This isn’t about brutal sexual activity. That’s just a vehicle, if you will, by which they do what they really want to do, and that’s all about mocking God. When sex isn’t about life in view of eternal life, it’s about death lurching toward eternal death. They mock the God of the living.
When reading through the Scriptures, we see that there were, here and there, shameful temple prostitutes, both female and male. Being naïve, we ask in shock: “How could that possibly have come about? We would never do that!”
It’s all about compromise and rationalizations, one after another, sinking one into the dark quagmire of no wisdom, no purity of heart, no agility of soul, no clarity of vision, no profundity of understanding. All gone. Lost. But with a vengeance, shaking one’s fist at God. And, yes, without the grace of God, anyone could do all of that and more. If we cannot say, “There but for the grace of God go I…” — if we cannot say that with honesty and integrity, looking at the risen but still wounded Christ Jesus in the Face, then we are already lost. Jesus is our Savior, not our aloofness (because, you know, we’re nice and don’t need to be saved by Jesus anyway).
Not getting that? Let’s re-assess: It’s not Germany alone. Look at Ireland. Completely annihilated regarding the faith. For a while, Ireland had a “tiger economy.” You know why? Because they murdered all their kids in the womb. They weren’t spending money on food and clothing, but on useless luxury. Because they stopped saying the Rosary in family on their knees daily. Because they stopped going to Confession. Because the vast majority of the priests and the bishops are homosexualismists, ideologues who in their fairy-ness brow-beat and bully those less compromised into being more the children of hell than they are. They went from about 95% Catholic and 95% Mass attendance to about nothing% and nothing%, in one generation. If it can happen in Ireland, it can happen here. Oh… wait… it’s happening…
Instead of encouragement to say the Rosary, what we get is damnable throwing up of all doctrine and morality into the air so as to “dialogue”. What a crock. Method is doctrine. Teaching and accepting the truth = good. Forbidding belief and rejecting the truth = heresy. One is life, one is death. The Greeks want to dialogue. Jesus’ response is that He must be crucified. That’s His dialogue. As the Master, so the disciple. Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead and the world by fire.
You have heard that it’s been said that on February 14, 2022, Pope Francis let us know about his latest motu proprio, Fidem servare, by which he divided up a bit more incisively the “Holy Office” into a section, effectively, for the old Promoter of Justice crowd and another section for the old Doctrine of the Faith crowd, and that this quite complete break (though under one Prefect) weakens the punch of executive action from the doctrinal section. I’m not so sure about that. Not at all. I think it’s the other way around.
There already was a division along these lines, more or less. But now, those who are faithful are wide open to being condemned as heretics and excommunicated without much oversight. The doctrinal crowd are supposed to follow the old Agendi ratio in doctrinarum examine, which fully encourages the declaration of excommunications which cannot be appealed. From my point of view, this gives the heretics more power to do damage to the faithful of the Lord’s Little Flock. I ask, from my perspective as a nothing-priest in the smallest parish of North America in the most remote area of Appalachia:
Why is it these days that believing in any and all the Catholic Creeds of old – the Apostles Creed (usually recited before the Holy Rosary), the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (often recited at Holy Mass) and the Athanasian Creed (usually recited, for instance, during exorcisms) – why is it, I ask, that believing in all the articles of Faith (Traditiones as the first dogmatic decree of the Fourth Session of the Trent called them) these days is bound to make one ♬ feel ♬ that one is oneself a heretic? Am I to ♬ feel ♬ guilty for what would, in any other time, be a basic prerequisite for being a priest, nothing special, just believing in the faith? Am I to ♬ feel ♬ guilty for upholding the integrity of the Sacraments? Am I to ♬ feel ♬ guilty for encouraging with joy and charity the following of the Commandments not as mere sometimes-suggestions but as Commandments which you do out of love of Jesus?
For me, as a priest just trying to do the right thing, this ♬ feeling ♬ of guilt comes about because so very many of my fellow priests and bishops are heretic apostates, and I, in my fallen human nature, ♬ feel ♬ left behind. I gotta tell you, that’s momentarily annoying, like for a nano-second, and is a ♬ feeling ♬ replaced instantaneously by the righteous aggression of an Elijah on Mount Carmel: If you think that the demon-idol Pachamama to whom human sacrifice is made is a demon-goddess who rules over all, then follow her; if you think that the Lord God is the one and only God, then follow Him. There is no middle ground: “Thou shalt not have strange gods before thee.”
We can multiply examples of blasphemy and heresy and apostacy and violent aggression. Should we bring up all the example of insulting Christ Jesus and His Immaculate Mother? Should we bring up the solicitation of sin in the encouragement of absolving people from sin that they don’t think is a sin and for which they are not repentant, “accompanying” them? Are we to be forced to be subject to abortion tainted “vaccines”? Are we to reject that the Sacrifice of Jesus has relevancy to the life of the parish? Etc.
Let me just speak to one example which goes to the very foundation of the Church, which to change is to reject the Church. These are just some random thoughts, incomplete, about infallibility, which are ever more necessary to express in these confusing, ambiguous times, not in any particular order:
Infallibility is a negative expression. I’m not talking about ♬ negative vibes ♬ or ♬ negative feelings ♬. Infallibility refers to the inability to fail. That’s it.
Now buckle your seatbelt: Infallibility does not refer to any positive inspiration or ♬ positive feelings ♬, even if much more abstractly, as if to some sort of historical movement of dialogue, in which, although plenty of mistakes are made, generally things go toward an evolutionary advancement, because, yeah, you know, like a perpetual dialogue of right and wrong but somehow right includes wrong and that’s somehow more right than just right or wrong because we’re all together in total contradiction to each other, but all together, you know, in Hegelian Rahnerianism… Right? Let’s continue. ;-)
Infallibility only refers to Peter upon whose flesh and blood person the Church is founded by Christ Jesus.
When Jorge Bergoglio says that everybody is infallible in believing, and says this in Latin (infallibile in credendo) as if he’s citing a maxim of the ancient Fathers of the Church, that’s actually his own heretical statement that was never ever used in the history of the Church until it came out of his own heretical mouth. Again, no one is infallible except Peter and his successors, and only when he is specifically teaching as (1) bishop of Rome, successor of Peter, (2) to the universal Church, (3) on a matter of faith and morals (especially controverted in whatever historical circumstances), and (4) pronounces that what he is saying is already revealed in Sacred Revelation (Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition), which Sacred Revelation has not been somehow more fully provided by God since the death of the last Apostle. Extremely few Popes have made an infallible pronouncement. Jorge Bergoglio has never done this.
Popes can be personally heretical and even publicly manifest their personal heretical opinions. This is really bad and evil on their part, but it does not offend against infallibility. They are just being jerks. They cannot do this and fulfill all the conditions for an infallible pronouncement listed just above. Thus:
A Pope cannot make an incorrect infallible statement. Many even saintly people said/say that a Pope can infallibly fail. Um… any saint who has said such a thing was not canonized for saying such a thing, but rather for their personal holiness. Thank God that also people who just don’t get it on some things can still be great saints that we all respect.
People are simply too soft these days, and think Christ Jesus was a wimp, and couldn’t possibly have meant what He said, namely, in an actual translation of the inspired Greek which NO ONE wants to translate literally: Whatever you bind or loose on earth already perfectly continues to stand and will perfectly continue to stand that way for all eternity in heaven, since before the foundation of the world onward. In other words, mind you, the very person of Peter is expendable before the eternal unmanipulatable unchangeable Truth: before he can fail in an infallible pronouncement he will die, be incapacitated, be martyred, whatever. It simply will not come to pass, ever, that Peter or his successors will be able to fail in an infallible pronouncement.
Just because a Pope is personally, manifestly, a total heretic, day and day out, to the scandal of the entire Church and the world, does not mean that he is no longer Pope. It matters not that he does this as Successor of Peter, bishop of Rome, on a matter of faith and morals and to the universal Church. It would be guaranteed that he has not pronounced his heresy as being also already that which is manifest in Sacred Revelation itself. It just cannot happen.
It’s not a matter of “Oooh! The pope has failed in his infallibility and so ipso facto he is no longer Pope.” That is to say, by definition, that the pope is not infallible. That’s heresy. But so many hold that today, you know, just because of their unreasoned ♬ feelings ♬. I get that. Scandal makes us angry. Rightly so. But don’t let anger make you into a heretic. He just said something heretical, but not infallibly because he didn’t fulfill all the conditions for infallibility. Right? Yep. That’s exactly right. It’s really annoying, and scandalous, and odious to the salvation of souls, but non-infallible heretical opinions of whatever pope are not infallible. Get it?
Just because any pope is personally, manifestly a heretic doesn’t mean that there is any legitimate mechanism by which to remove him, not a bunch of good-guy cardinals holding a meeting, not a trial by all the bishops of the world. Nope. That would be to say that everybody is infallible when the Pope is not. And that’s the very heresy for which such as Jorge Bergoglio would be removed by such a fake mechanism. Right? Don’t be so upset that you become cynical and become a heretic, being condemned to hell for that which you condemn. Irony. More on that below. But it’s a fact: people easily fall into the very heresy that they are combatting. Be careful. A lot of people are not careful. They give into their entitlement to ♬ negative feelings ♬, not because they are right – and they are right – because merely because they are entitled wusses and they gotta throw hissy fits. Dang. Be right, but don’t become what you condemn. Just be crucified with our Lord Jesus by Peter who denies you to your face. As the Master so the disciple. And if Paul should reprimand Peter because Peter thinks he is infallible in his non-infallible opinions about the faith (Galatians 2:11), know that Peter, although having stood condemned, converted and because a saint. Desire the conversion of the apostate heretic.
So, any objection?
“But Father George! Father George! You give too much weight to Matthew 16! You should take a look at the verbatim passage in Matthew 18 which is like everyone is infallible! Pope Francis is right! And you’re a fraud, Father George!”
Calm down, calm down. Matthew 18 merely has it that everyone may know the faith as exactly as Peter may know the faith, or even better than Peter knows the faith. But it doesn’t say they are infallible or infallible in their believing. In fact, it speaks of their being fallible, fallen human beings that we are, so that when we’re wrong, we’re to bring that disagreement to Peter, who alone is infallible. Yep.
But what if:
But what if Jorge published some statement of what he himself calls a mere dialogue (Amoris laetitia), isn’t that infallible and can’t we throw an entitled tantrum and say he’s not the Pope anymore? Well, you can, and many have, and will continue to do so, wearing themselves out as they pound sand and kick rocks, but that’s just being butt-hurt. Nothing more. It’s just some stupid dialogue. It’s scandalous. It hurts souls. It’s really bad and evil. But that’s it. It hasn’t offended against infallibility.
Alright, alright, but what if Pope Francis actually makes an upcoming infallible statement with all the conditions above being met that the church is now different, a dialogue church, in which all truth and morality and liturgy are up for grabs according to historical circumstance where might makes right because everyone is infallible and it’s all about the tyranny of relativism by majority rule (or really the rule of the tyrannical dictator? So glad you asked: As said above, he will firstly die, or be incapacitated or martyred. Get it?
Here’s what I suggest to those who think any pope can change the truth: Get over yourselves with all your pope-worship or across-the-mountain-ism, however you want to define those terms, and just be Catholic? The Truth is not the mean between two poles. The Truth is living. God is Truth. Jesus said: “I am the Truth.” The Truth doesn’t have to dance around between two poles of right and left made up of out-of-control-gyroscopes so that the Truth has to move way to the left of what was the center or way to the right of what was center to keep – ooh! – exactly between those poles that are simply in reaction to one another in all historical vicissitudes. No. Instead:
Crux stat dum volvitur orbis. [The Truth of the] Cross remains steadfast while the world spins madly.
And you know I’m going to say this: the only way people are not going to be cynical is by also praying for the conversion of heretics, and that includes the Pope.
By the way. There are heaps of really excellent arguments on both sides that Jorge Bergoglio is the Pope or is not the Pope. I wasn’t there. I don’t know. The Lord knows how to handle our prayers.
I do have some intense experience with the Sankt Gallen mafia, both in Rome (being dragged to the actual politicking session at the Irish College), and almost right to the campus of Sankt Gallen with one of the engineers of same), and being praised and defended by the highest powers that be of…. cough cough… giving a retreat to… gag… gag… but ending the career of… cough cough… I had better stop. What I know is that “Francis”, a close friend of many close friends, might well not be Pope. I don’t know. I wasn’t at particular sessions, certainly I was not present in the conclaves… although… dang… I gotta stop. My point in this post is just to clear up some matters on infallibility.
“Dang it Father George! You can’t do that! What about if Jorge is not actually the Pope. That means in theory he could make a fallible infallible pronouncement, as it were, so to speak, right? He could check all the prerequisites you listed above and pronounce, say, on Easter Sunday, 2023, that we have an everyone-is-infallible different church, no longer founded on the person of Peter by the Son of the Living God, but on the notion that everyone is infallible, right, Father George, isn’t that right?!”
Yes, that’s true. But here’s my thought on that. Even though that wouldn’t offend against infallibility because, after all, he’s not actually the Pope in that scenario, I don’t think our Lord will block the angels from taking the imposter out on the spot, seconds before he does that. It’s just too scandalous, too confusing. Our Lord says the time will be shortened, otherwise not even one of the elect would be saved. Let that sink in for a moment. It would be just too much. The time will be shortened to the second before Jorge could do such a thing. I’m quite sure that will be dramatic, like another lightning bolt out of the heavens. :-) But we pray for conversion. Right? Come on… Hail Mary…
P.S. I was once told that I write this blog not to have more clarity in my own thinking (the primary reason of this blog), nor for any apostolate in helping others in the Church and in the world have greater clarity regarding the faith (though I attempt to take this as deadly seriously, however weakly, as Christ Jesus took us deadly seriously, laying down His life for us, Innocent for guilty, on the Cross)… No… I was told that I write this blog for the exclusive motivation of producing admiratio, the vice of drawing attention to oneself simply to draw attention to oneself, that my efforts have nothing to do with a priestly desire to brings souls to the Sacraments, to Jesus, with all the honesty and integrity that demands of all of us.
My answer to is to say that, of course, absolutely, I’m full of pride, and would go to hell for my pride, diabolical as my pride would be if not for the mercy and forgiveness of my dark and wretched soul by Mary Immaculate’s dear Divine Son, Jesus.
But, here’s the deal: I might stand out like a sore thumb because those who are supposed to teach the faith do not teach the faith, and they are terribly offended by my incredibly mediocre efforts. As inept as they are, my own little writings show them up, not because my writings are any good, but they don’t make any effort at all. It’s like on a scale of 1-100, I’ve gone from zero to one, but they’ve remained at zero. My tiny effort looks out of the ordinary because they make no effort at all. In any other time, everyone else would be high up the scale and I would terribly pitied for being so unlearned in the faith. But these are terribly dark times. Amazingly, my little candle flame seems to shine with the force of the sun. Those who should be doing more do not. And they are upset. They are stunned by the mere statement of truth.
Two literary bits to keep in mind:
“To the young, the pure, and the ingenuous, irony must always appear to have a quality of something evil, and so it has, for […] it is a sword to wound. It is so directly the product or reflex of evil that, though it can never be used – nay, can hardly exist – save in the chastisement of evil, yet irony always carries with it some reflections of the bad spirit against which it was directed. […] It suggests most powerfully the evil against which it is directed, and those innocent of evil shun so terrible an instrument. […] The mere truth is vivid with ironical power […] when the mere utterance of a plain truth labouriously concealed by hypocrisy, denied by contemporary falsehood, and forgotten in the moral lethargy of the populace, takes upon itself an ironical quality more powerful than any elaboration of special ironies could have taken in the past. […] No man possessed of irony and using it has lived happily; nor has any man possessing it and using it died without having done great good to his fellows and secured a singular advantage to his own soul.” [Hilaire Belloc, “On Irony” (pages 124-127; Penguin books 1325. Selected Essays (2/6), edited by J.B. Morton; Harmondsworth – Baltimore – Mitcham 1958).]
And “The Donkey” by Gilbert Keith Chesterton:
When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born.
With monstrous head and sickening cry And ears like errant wings, The devil’s walking parody On all four-footed things.
The tattered outlaw of the earth, Of ancient crooked will; Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb, I keep my secret still.
Fools! For I also had my hour; One far fierce hour and sweet: There was a shout about my ears, And palms before my feet.
I don’t ♬ feel ♬ guilty in the least for putting up a post like this. It’s my obligation as a priest. I don’t bring on malicious division because of this. No, this is a sword of holy division – even divisiveness – however much I’ve made it dull, the sword which Christ Jesus came to bring. I’m happy to wield this sword, no matter how awkwardly, no matter how ineptly. Simply put: I’m happy to be a priest, even if there are those who think I’m a heretic for believing the faith with the kindness of Galatians 2:11.
This photoshop by a trad website, making Francis a Lutheran and doubting my ordination with scare-quotes around “Fr.”, comes from years ago. I still laugh at the apoplectic friend of mine who took this picture out at the hermitage. He was cursing his camera for putting a sheen radiating from the Mass vestments and insisted, rightly, mind you, that the picture was giving the wrong impression altogether. I agree. Lol.
This came to mind when, early this morning, feeding the dogs and cleaning up the kitchen, I was listening to another Taylor Marshal video. This one is particularly good. I think I have iterated in hyperbolic multiples the points he makes, one after another, in so many homilies right through the years, through the decades. This also made me laugh out loud, for joy. Well, done, Doctor.
Way back in the day, when writing an extensive commentary on justification, comparing all that which is Luther and the Catholic Church for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, you know, right through the being-refined-“documents”, I mentioned that I was doing this – I think at the coffee-bar at the Gregorian University in Rome, and this to someone in the “In-Crowd” of ecumenical dialogue – it is then that such a power-person took two steps back, totally making a show of squaring-off with me, glaring at me hard, gaining attention of those in that rather large coffee-bar, declaring to me in the loudest stop-the-show stage whispers possible:
“You will never be a member of an ecumenical commission. We will never invite you. You are against everything that we are doing. How dare you!? Get with the Church. Sentire cum ecclesia!”
Sometimes there are events like this that you have to simply let hang in the air without a response, since the very declaration of such a person is that person’s own incrimination, hanging themselves. Yep. It was and is to lol… :-)
Yes, well, I indeed have much more to say about this, and I’m sure Taylor has much more to say about this, but I’ll let his video speak for me, for now. Good job, Taylor. Keep up the good work.
Judas is in hell. There, I said it. According to + Paglia, that makes me an automatically excommunicated heretic. For all of us merely automatically excommunicated heretics, that’s not enough. I want my automatic excommunication declared and publicized for all the world to hear. + Paglia has the ear of Pope Francis. Regardless of any Canon Law, declaring my excommunication from on high can easily be forced through. I insist! I entrench! I’m contentious! I’m obstinate. I’m persistent. Do it!
But will + Paglia slit my throat? Pffft. He’s just full of bluster and is a coward and would never do such a thing. He won’t because he knows that if he does, I’ll be able to appeal, which means I’ll be able to defend myself. I happen to have a bit more expertise in these matters, even on a jesuitical level, having degreed out at the Jesuit’s most academic of all their institutions in the world, the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome and Jerusalem.I would really enjoy this. I would move to Rome and write a study on this as a response and defense, using all the libraries in Rome, particularly that of the Biblicum. The conclusion of all that will be about the abuse of office of + Paglia throwing around cowardly threats. The conclusion of all that will be about how + Paglia needs to have his heresy and therefore his automatic excommunication declared. Pfft.
But there’s more, much more.
Not that there’s necessarily any connection at all, but I find it striking that + Paglia connects his thoughts about Judas Iscariat being a saint with priests who “accompany” people – holding their hands – people who are in the very act of committing suicide (which accompaniment is scandalous to all involved, sending the wrong message].
To the priest writing this blog, such a connection by + Paglia is stunning because of an incident related to Terri Schiavo [Theresa Marie Schiavo (née Schindler)], who was put to death with the full encouragement of her bishop down in Florida. Remember that? At the time, I sent a message to that Bishop stating the case for Terri and saying that he, the bishop, was clearly a Judas for encouraging her murder. He objected, saying that, after all, he had thought about it. I’m sure Judas also thought about his own part in the murder of Jesus.
I was frantic to save Terri. Having secured cooperation, I had a moral analysis of the case I had worked up before her murder delivered to the moral theologian guy in the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. That analysis was accepted and taken up. But it was too late. Dear Terri was murdered.
For myself, that means I’m on record for such things, and that record in my own file is open, of course, to all prefects, particularly to + Paglia, who would have it front and center when studying assisted suicide, as it would have been sent to his “dicastery” at the time, with comment, and filed under that topic and in my name.
I’ve put myself on the radar with + Paglia much more recently by making comments on his destruction of the Saint John Paul II Institute for Marriage and the Family. See, for instance:
With that remote background, take a gander of these bits of a story on LifeSiteNews worked up by Edward Pentin and reported by Diane Montagna. Read the whole thing there. [my comments]
Vatican Archbishop says those who say Judas is in hell are heretics and priests may accompany assisted suicides – by Edward Pentin – reported by Diane Montagna
ROME, December 11, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — In a statement difficult to reconcile with Scripture and Tradition, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, has claimed on behalf of the Catholic Church that anyone who says Judas Iscariot is in hell is a heretic.
In an even more disturbing statement, the Italian archbishop also asserted that a priest may legitimately remain at the beside of someone undergoing assisted suicide in order to “hold their hand” and “accompany” them. […]
Archbishop Paglia, who serves as chancellor of the new John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences in Rome (and presided over the former institute’s demolition), said he […] doesn’t believe that “anyone should ever be abandoned.”
[Speaking out of both sides of his mouth, he said:] “We are against assisted suicide because we do not want to do the dirty work of death [only emotion, then, that we have to heroically overcome? Just. Wow.] and because we are all well aware that, for believers, life goes on,” he continued. [So: “What difference does it make?” That’s frightening. That’s the rationalization of a murderer.] “To accompany and hold the hand of those who are dying” is therefore the “great task“ of every believer [Encouraging murder, participating in murder is the great task of every believer?] he said, along with fighting the culture of assisted suicide, which represents “a great defeat for society.” [But go ahead and encourage and assist suicides? This is like Satan talking.
“We cannot turn [assisted suicide] into a wise choice,” he said. [But it’s a choice that must be respected and accompanied and encouraged and assisted according to + Paglia.]
Archbishop Paglia then clarified: “I always celebrate funerals for those who commit suicide, because suicide is always a question of unfulfilled love. We must also remember that, for the Catholic Church, if someone says that Judas is in hell, he is a heretic.” […] [Copyright 1997-2019 LifeSiteNews.com. All Rights Reserved.]
There’s much more extremely worthwhile commentary on real Catholic doctrine and tradition and the teaching of Sacred Scripture and the Fathers of the Church and the great sainted theologians in that magnificent article of LifeSiteNews. Again, go there and read the whole thing.
You have heard that it was said that the authors of the most recent diatribe against the papacy as such “clarify” that (1) they are not saying that the Supreme Pontiff has “denied truths of the faith in pronouncements that satisfy the conditions for an infallible papal teaching” [and that is correct] and that (2) “We assert that this would be impossible, since it would be incompatible with the guidance given to the Church by the Holy Spirit” [and that is also correct].
But then the most exalted and enlightened group of “they” have it that a “heretical papacy may not be tolerated or dissimulated to avoid a worse evil.”
Wait a minute there… “Heretical papacy”? Did they just contradict themselves? Do they mean “personally heretical pope”? If they did they would say it. These are clever guys (et alii) after all. “Heretical papacy” is as ambiguous as the ambiguity they are attacking. To say “heretical papacy” jacks up the stakes, lighting the wood around any stake on fire.
Of course, any individual Bishop of Rome can personally be a heretic. Too bad, that. And if that were the case and if it were to be known it would surely adversely affect the salvation of souls. I do grieve should that ever be the case in the history of the Church (and it has been the case more than once).
But I should like to know by what act of self-appointment above the Supreme Pontiff is it which grants powers of judgment over the personal beliefs of the Successor of Peter such as to put him on trial so as to forcibly depose him, remove him, get rid of him. How is it that they can seriously think that they themselves will not be held accountable to the Divine Son of the Living God as they spit not only on the anointed of the Lord, but on the Face of Jesus, Mary’s dear Son? Are they going to storm the Vatican, kill the Swiss Guards with bombs, arrest the Holy Father and drag him out next to the Obelisk so as to put him on trial, and then hanging him on the Obelisk itself?
Peter, you denied me. Do you love me more than these? Feed my lambs…
And then:
Are any of us without sin? By our sin, original sin and whatever of our own rubbish, we have all crucified the Son of the Living God.
They speak of carrying out this coup with the cynicism said to be in accord “with the hallowed adage, Salus animarum prima lex — “the salvation of souls is the highest [first] law”. Pffft. I’m not judging them, but what they present outside of themselves, objectively, is nothing more than what amounts to glorifying themselves.
Cowards that they are, they hide behind the skirts of bishops who they call to be their henchmen, (1) by “admonishing Pope Francis to reject these heresies [forget the show trial], and (2) if he should persistently refuse [to listen to tantrums], by declaring that he has freely deprived himself of the papacy.”
Wow. I thought I heard a lot of stupid, stupid, stupid things about the papacy, but this takes the prize. You’ll remember the stupidity of some, saying that if Pope Francis infallibly spoke fallibly – or is that fallibly spoke infallibly? – then, after the fact, he should be deposed, meaning that he would be able to do that in the first place, you know, infallibly speak fallibly – or is that fallibly speak infallibly? – The lack of logic should be clear. But pretty much all of the Tradition-al-ism-ists grabbed on to this. And if anyone went against their illogic and, indeed, heresy, these outsiders were simply dismissed as “Team Francis.” But this present statement of these cowards on the deprivation of the papacy is worse for its insanity.
They say that it can be declared against the will of the Holy Father that the Holy Father is doing something freely. How stupid is that? Look, people. These guys may not realize it, but they are mocking you all as being incredibly stupid and unable to think for yourselves. They think you are their puppets. They want ever more puppets. Doesn’t that mean that it’s about power, Power, POWER! It’s mine! My Precious! Get it? Let me take nine seconds of your time that you’ll never get back:
They say that the Holy Father would have “freely deprived himself of the papacy” by not receiving such a declaration made by others, even just a small group of others.
Then, when they drag him away into exile and set up a puppet pope, an anti-pope, there will be no confusion among the faithful as to whether the “hallowed adage” of the salvation of souls being the first law has been served, you know, while smashing down all other laws in the church, right?
I mean, imagine the outcome of an anti-pope who cannot legitimately be elected as the Successor of Peter and therefore does NOT have the Power of Keys, and cannot delegate the Power of Keys.
One could go on with devastating consequences for the Church a thousand times more damaging that whatever these guys think is the damage going on under Pope Francis.
So, I ask, if these guys are saying that “Team Francis” is destroying the Church, and what want to be done would provide deep, deep wounds for the Church, whose “Team” are they actually on? Oh. I get it. Irony. Yep.
More than that, the last thing Pope Francis wants is that anyone be on “Team Francis.” This is about Jesus.
Anyway, if it’s not bad enough of me to cite John Ronald Reuel Tolkien by way of Gollum, then I may as well go on to cite Hilaire Beloc:
To the young, the pure, and the ingenuous, irony must always appear to have a quality of something evil, and so it has, for […] it is a sword to wound. It is so directly the product or reflex of evil that, though it can never be used – nay, can hardly exist – save in the chastisement of evil, yet irony always carries with it some reflections of the bad spirit against which it was directed. […] It suggests most powerfully the evil against which it is directed, and those innocent of evil shun so terrible an instrument. […] The mere truth is vivid with ironical power. […] The mere utterance of a plain truth labouriously concealed by hypocrisy, denied by contemporary falsehood, and forgotten in the moral lethargy of the populace, takes upon itself an ironical quality more powerful than any elaboration of special ironies could have taken in the past. […] No man possessed of irony and using it has lived happily; nor has any man possessing it and using it died without having done great good to his fellows and secured a singular advantage to his own soul. [Hilaire Belloc, Selected Essays (2/6), ed. J.B. Morton; Penguin Books (1325): Harmondsworth – Baltimore – Mitcham 1958. See the essay “On Irony” on pages 124-127.]
So, what’s the upshot of all that?
Pray for Pope Francis. Hail Mary…
Pray for these others working as hard as they can for an anti-Pope. Hail Mary…
Maybe I’m really just a meany, you know, citing such as Belloc and Tolkien, both Oxford-ites. And maybe I should give some slack to some of the “top” names of “The Letter.” After all, their country has a long history of fake pope stuff going on. Not a big deal then, I guess. Nevertheless, the reality of the matter is that it does matter, regardless of Oxford-ites know it or not.
You have heard that it was said, the papacy is basically somehow just like you know kind of like an “office”, a “function”, stuff to do or not more or less than any other bishop, but just a bishop with another mandate that he can ignore or put into action, but it’s no big deal unless he’s wrong, we think, because we’re all more infallible than him, and then we just say that his “office” has been taken away, you know, like Judas, so that he continues to be a bishop, but just removed to say, some island, like, I don’t know, Corsica or something.
But Peter is not Judas. The papacy is not a mere office. Infallibility resides not in an “office”, but in the very person of the successor of Peter. In all of this, he is expendable according to the decision of the one who has already established in the heavens what Peter had better agree to on earth. It’s not our decision. It’s all quite glorious, or quite violent. Witness the death of Sixtus V. Yikes!
Infallibility only comes into play in restricted conditions, that is, when the Bishop of Rome precisely as the Successor of Peter teaches on faith or morals to the universal Church especially deciding a controversy. It does NOT come into play with throw-away baitings of what is expressly defined by the Holy Father as being mere DIALOGUE. Why is that so difficult, except for hatred? Has Pope Francis ever said anything in infallible mode up to the time of this writing? No, he has not. So, as I’ve always said and now repeat:
We are to stand in solidarity with the Holy Father. We are to pray for him. We are to defend the papacy in the very person of the Pope, for this is where the papacy resides, in the person of Peter, not just some loosely defined “office” of Peter. Get it?
To the young, the pure, and the ingenuous, irony must always appear to have a quality of something evil, and so it has, for […] it is a sword to wound. It is so directly the product or reflex of evil that, though it can never be used – nay, can hardly exist – save in the chastisement of evil, yet irony always carries with it some reflections of the bad spirit against which it was directed. […] It suggests most powerfully the evil against which it is directed, and those innocent of evil shun so terrible an instrument. […] The mere truth is vivid with ironical power. […] The mere utterance of a plain truth labouriously concealed by hypocrisy, denied by contemporary falsehood, and forgotten in the moral lethargy of the populace, takes upon itself an ironical quality more powerful than any elaboration of special ironies could have taken in the past. […] No man possessed of irony and using it has lived happily; nor has any man possessing it and using it died without having done great good to his fellows and secured a singular advantage to his own soul. [Hilaire Belloc, Selected Essays (2/6), ed. J.B. Morton; Penguin Books (1325): Harmondsworth – Baltimore – Mitcham 1958. See the essay “On Irony” on pages 124-127.]
ARISE! LET US BE GOING! 