The Path of Truth Isn’t a Bowling Lane

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Fr. Z who, like Cardinals Burke and Pell, usually says things which are faithful, helpful, and brilliant, has today, not unlike those two cardinals occasionally, written something discouraging.

While praising the Ancient Mass a few months ago Cardinal Pell added that there was ‘no future in it’, as if the way forward must be with the new Mass.  Here the Cardinal in his thoughtful way was trying to lend faithful Catholics some insight into the mind of the Church leaders, but nevertheless it’s a great leap to assume that there is a hopeful future for the Church the way it’s currently operating.  On the one hand, we have thousands of years of a Church only really checked through fear and violence.  On the other, we have a Church set decisively to auto-destruct in a short fifty years.

There is a proven formula.  It’s called Faith.  Why do our best and brightest lights fall down and fold in the clutch?

In response to a reader question about sedevacantists (those who believe we live in a time of false popes) Fr. Z writes:

Following the path of orthodoxy means avoiding the ditches that yawn on the left as well as on the right.  My old, late, pastor, Msgr. Schuler used to say, you can go into the ditch on either side of the road.

If truth is ‘apolitical’ as our wise, wise middle-of the road sensible friends love to repeat, then why must it be guided by two ‘political’ markers?  What is this path of Christ?  It’s a razor thin line equidistant between Barbara Streisand and Timothy McVeigh.  Only those skillful enough to tread upon the razor can know of it.

That razor-fine blade of truth which we have to tread at times cuts through the jungles of doubt and error.

It is the narrow path which Our Lord spoke of.

Wrong.  Staying on the Michael Voris side of Francis is not Our Lord’s narrow Catholic path.  There are times in history when the Pope steps off the path himself.  That doesn’t mean we need to turn the corner and smash our trombones into the wall like the marching band when Animal House hijacked the parade.

This is a leadership vacuum and it requires faith and action to resolve, the sort of thing so deftly performed at the Synod last month, not the low bleating of peaceful sheep.

In clinging to the Truth, we find great assurance in Our Lord’s promise that He will always remain with His Church. The Holy Spirit continues to (and always will) protect the Church from error.

While this is true, you sure read it a lot in Patheos these days.  It’s no excuse to stand there gazing in some useless ‘we are not worthy’ trance.

“But Father! But Father!”, some of you will say, “That’s all very grand, but what do we do here on the ground?  There are radical divisions in the Church!  Instead of being the beacon of light, truth, and clarity that Christ wants her to be, we are in a morass of confusion and contradictions?”

It has ever been thus in the history of the Church.

No again.  It has never been thus in the Church.  There has never been a time where such an enormous ratio of those calling themselves ‘catholic’ were in fact heretics and apostates.  There has never been this level confusion among that ‘sensus fidei.’  There has never been a time when the Catholic communities around the world were so ruthlessly suffocated and morbid, left dying and scattered in a single generation.  There has never been so much evil in what was called the civilized world, and there has never been a pope so unfaithful as Francis.

The ‘sit there and do nothing putting your ‘faith in the Francis’ because the Holy Spirit’ advice is wearing thin.  By the way, I see Columba Bush has visited Ave Maria University in Florida recently.  How very Republican and ‘catholic.’  Well, we must respect the process.

Imagine the difficulty of a good and faithful Catholic, in the 14th  and 15th centuries, when three men appeared to have legitimate claim to the Papacy.  Whom was one to believe?

Good men and women made different choices. For example, St. Vincent Ferrer, a brilliant man of great faith, a Dominican, followed the antipopes Clement VII (Robert of Geneva – the first antipope of the Western Schism) and Benedict XIII (Pedro Martínez de Luna y Pérez de Gotor).  On the other hand, St. Catherine of Siena, also a Dominican, followed Pope Urban VI.  Both St. Vincent and St. Catherine are great saints.

I’ve never read that any of these anti-popes were heretics.  Have you?  There may have been confusion among the hierarchy, but I think most people knew both when to go to Communion and how to get to Hell.

In time, Our Lord – having allowed us to screw things up – eventually guided things back to where they needed to be.

In regard to the papacy, at least, our times, while difficult, are not as murky as those days. There is no rival to Pope Francis with even the slightest whiff of legitimacy. Those who claim that the See of Peter is vacant are hard pressed to explain just how that happened. Benedict XVI’s abdication was definitive.

Benedict appears, under pressure, to have resigned voluntarily.  What his options were we don’t know.  What does it say about the Francis papacy?   I’d say it’s pretty much what we should have expected under the circumstances.  Is Francis Pope?  Well he’s the only one claiming to be.  Is he someone a Catholic should look to for faithful guidance?  No.

The sedevacantist train of thought goes down deep dark caverns of ever-more bizarre conspiracy theories. None have provided clear claimants or, were the See of Peter to be empty, a rational explanation of how legitimacy could be restored to some future claimant.

There are, of course, good people who follow unreasonable claims and theories.  In the words of the immortal Gracie Allen, people are funnier than anyone.

And you don’t want to be one of those ‘funny people’ do you, or perhaps one of those ‘unqualified name-callers‘:  impatient, hysterical, and so right-wing you’ve forgotten about that sacred balancing act that is the path to Christ.

In the post-Enlightenment world we see things as Right or Left, but these are not the margins of some path to God.  They are a lie told to a darkened culture.  Truth is a person.  He walks ahead of us and we follow Him.  Along this path conservatives are closer to the truth than liberals who are pointed backward and walking in the wrong direction entirely.  Liberal ‘catholics’ are hypocrites whether their liberalism is religious or political.

Faithful Catholics follow Christ on His path.  People call us ‘conservative,’ but if you listen to Fr. Z you might think there were bomb-throwing nuts out ahead of us!

Don’t let disorienting diagrams bend the truth for you, and don’t blame Francis on the Holy Spirit, expecting Him to clean up all the FrancisMesses while your head spins.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Popes and Cardinals are Heretics, They Have No Part in the Body of Christ

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francis wave shifty

“Love is all you need”

CNA reports:

After years of both direct and indirect remarks on the subject, German Cardinal Reinhard Marx issued his most direct statement yet in favor of offering Communion to the divorced-and-remarried.

In an Oct. 14 address to his fellow bishops from around the world, gathered at the Synod in Rome, he said that “we should seriously consider the possibility – based on each individual case and not in a generalizing way – to admit civilly divorced and remarried believers to the sacrament of Penance and Holy Communion.”

Now, this Cardinal is not really breaking new ground in terms of FrancisChurch.  Many important clerics have suggested this in the past two years.  If you’re lucky and discerning enough to obtain news of the Catholic Church you know that the Pope himself has signaled his agreement dozens of times.

This should be permitted, he continued, “when the shared life in the canonically valid marriage definitively has failed and the marriage cannot be annulled, the liabilities from this marriage have been resolved, the fault for breaking up the marital lifebond was regretted and the sincere will exists to live the second civil marriage in faith and to educate children in the Faith.”

Cardinal Marx’s statement follows years of increased calls from several of the German bishops for a change in the Church’s rules.

In the U.S. Archbishop Blase Cupich of Chicago has been even more bold.

“If people come to a decision in good conscience then our job is to help them move forward and to respect that. The conscience is inviolable and we have to respect that when they make decisions, and I’ve always done that.”

That’s true.  He has always done that.  Cupich has more, and it follows logically:

“I think that gay people are human beings too and they have a conscience. And my role as a pastor is to help them to discern what the will of God is by looking at the objective moral teaching of the Church and yet, at the same time, helping them through a period of discernment to understand what God is calling them to at that point,” he said. “It’s for everybody. I think that we have to make sure that we don’t pigeonhole one group as though they are not part of the human family, as though there’s a different set of rules for them. That would be a big mistake.”

If conscience is all, then adultery can be fine.  So can gay sex as far as Holy Communion goes.  But why do these powerful bishops think that this entirely new Catholic idea is good?  Do they presume that Our Lord would approve of their change after the faithful have believed otherwise for thousands of years?  Why must we hold along with Marx that something is good now when it was bad then?

The Cardinal gives us a hint:

“The reason given for this is that civilly divorced and remarried believers objectively live in continued adultery and thus in contradiction to what is shown symbolically in the Eucharist, the faithfulness of Christ to his Church,” he said.

However, he questioned, “does this response do justice to the situation of those affected? And is this necessary from a theological point of view of the sacrament? Can people who are seen to be in a state of grave sin, really feel that they wholly belong to us?”

Liberals throw words around like blankets to smother the truth.  They say “justice” when they want to do some injustice, they cite theology when they want to violate it, and they claim to be merciful when they want to do some cruel harm.

It’s also quite callous and telling to open with, “The reason given,” as if everything the Church teaches must have some practical justification and this excuse was laid upon us by an overbearing monster eons ago.  “is that remarried believers objectively live in continued adultery and thus in contradiction to what is shown symbolically in the Eucharist”

Is this why adulterous couples are not permitted to Holy Communion, because it screws up the symbol?  Is the Blessed Sacrament about transmitting some positive message?

Can people who are seen to be in a state of grave sin, really feel that they wholly belong to us?”

“Who are seen” to be in a state of grave sin?  Does he believe that they are?

Can they “really feel that they wholly belong to us?”

No.  They can’t really feel that way, and they can’t think it either because it’s not true.  They don’t wholly belong to us.  Sin separates, and the Church Militant, Suffering, and Triumphant are united in grace.  This is the Faith.

But Cardinal Marx, Archbishop Cupich, and Pope Francis, simply by their statements alone regardless of their many actions and omissions, are not so united.  They don’t comprise the true Church because they are removed at least by their heresy if not their other sins.  When these Protestants who reject Church teaching yet rule over it receive Holy Communion, they do so to their condemnation.  That is why they want to whole world to follow suit.

Why do sinners desire approval so desperately from faithful people?  Why must we all be forced condone illicit families and gay sex?  What difference does it make what we think if we aren’t really involved?  It’s something to do with the nature of evil.

We have been cursed with a heretic ensconced above the Church, while a good pope sits forced-out and imprisoned nearby.  We tolerated men like this as they suppressed the Holy Mass of the Apostles, and used Council documents to teach lies as if they were doctrine.  They emptied the Churches and the souls of men and filled the ranks with fiends and heretics.  What did we expect, that God would transform men who hate him into a conclave full of Christians?

For one reason or another we now have a ‘pope’ who is not one of us.  Neither are most of the bishops.  Anyone who preaches societal suicide and thievery as public policy and calls it ‘Catholic social justice teaching’ is an evil crook not a Christian.

There are questions about whether Francis is pope.  They are legitimate under the circumstances.  Marx, Cupich, and others were made bishops by popes in our time.  I can’t judge their canonical status.  What I do know is that they’re not actually Catholic because they don’t hold the Faith, nor do they teach it.  They don’t belong to the true Church of Christ.  Rather, they are outside it just like the sinners for who they claim to care so mercifully.

If we are ever going to have a Church that grows, not one that decomposes, we have to stop thinking of men like these as Catholic. We must have nothing to do with them because they are on their way to Hell, and we can’t get caught in their wake.  It’s not “accompaniment.”  It’s being an accomplice.  But you may say, “It’s the Church, it’s the Church.  That’s St. Peter’s Basilica!”

You will see The Awful Horror standing in the place where he should not be.

Francis and his false bishops should refrain from Communion and repent themselves.  Then maybe they’ll be in position to decide ‘pastoral’ policy.  Until then they require our contempt, not our allegiance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To a Friend on the Synod, the Press, and The Remnant

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Free man of God and a grass-roots effort

Free man of God and a grass-roots effort

I got a note today from someone who is frustrated about the ugly Synod in Rome and the hapless press and is concerned over The Remnant’s call for donations.

Here’s my response:

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I guess this year people are expecting the heresy and tricks. Last year some of them were still surprised. This year people know the Catholic press is corrupt. Last year they were still getting used to it.

Why Voris, Weigel, and the media?  It’s the same thing that’s ruined everything: money.  It seems the powers-that-be have much more oppressive leverage since the TARP bailout and Obama.  Money must also be behind the Muslim colonization.  Someone holds the purse strings behind all these unwanted changes.

They even tie the banks to Benedict’s abdication.  You probably saw.  Regulators put the freeze on Vatican banking until the day he stepped down.

Today with Francis, a top Washington firm, Promontory, supposedly has access to the Vatican books, and the latest Vatican Bank capitulations have turned all their transactions ‘transparent’.  If the Church had not complied with these new rules, they’d continue to be charged with laundering.  Now, if someone gives the Vatican money, they know about it in Brussels and Washington; I’m sure D.C. takes note of big donations to the Church these days.

It’s rumored that healthcare money was behind John Roberts and Obamacare.

How are they making the whole world gay and genderless?  The same way they made adultery, abortion, hypersexuality, and divorce widespread; the same way they’ve divided men and women: Money.

What we call banking used to be called usury. Doctrine against it hasn’t changed; it’s just been suppressed.  No-one can even cite or explain it today.  The Church understood that banking was unjust.  It grew like a tumor out of the Enlightenment. It’s just a shell game anyway.  What are stocks?  What do you get for a ‘share?’  It only keeps ahead of the inflation when others want it more than you did.

Before the Federal Reserve, you could stuff money in your mattress and not lose it. Today they steal 4-10% every year if you don’t invest and take a risk.  Your gamble is what keeps them rich, just like in Vegas.  Banks were on both sides of the Napoleonic Wars and the Civil War.

Now we have insurance for everything, interest, high taxes, and inflation.  We have to pay the emperors for electricity, water, fuel, and communication.  We have to go to them for food and send kids to their schools.  We have to sit in expensive cars to reach their work facilities.  They say it’s progress, and that may be true in some ways, but you can’t deny it’s a kind of slavery.

All the while, the Church just keeps getting smaller, less orthodox, and less different.  What is a Catholic school anyway?  Even the few faithful colleges are all pope-worshipping ‘conservatives’ now.

Pro-Life politics doesn’t stop the genocide.  It seems almost to enable it.  We talk while they die.  Abortion is the absolute lowest sin, but for us it’s everything.  It’s almost the Faith itself.  But just like gay sex, it was beneath Our Lord to even speak of it in scripture.   What about the rest of what it takes to create a true Christian society, one that can guide us to Heaven?  Where is all that?

I don’t think God is impressed.  How much longer could we expect Christ to watch our weakness?

Pepin and the Papal States were essential to the Church.  It was only ninety years after they stole them from us that we got John XXIII.  Today the Church is what our rulers permit it to be; is it not?  They permit it to die.

So now The Remnant is in a spot, just when people are realizing they’ve been right. Nobody has any money for the Truth.

Maybe it’s time to do like St. Francis and the Apostles:  take a buddy, one pair of sandals, and make a lean-to.  At least until Peter comes around, maybe that’s all we’ve got.