Hell is a Forced Embrace

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Where we live the Catholic churches are all thirty minutes apart.  We had no time to rest this Sunday and were forced to attend what used to be the 5:30 LifeTeen Mass in our local parish.  I guess the teens have grown up.  We avoid the local Sunday Masses as much as possible because they’re offensive to to God and the Faith, but the late Mass is usually the worst of them all.  The last time we tried it, the Pastor stopped during procession and tried to pull off my poor wife’s mantilla.

So I was surprised when the 5:30 Mass was almost Catholic yesterday.  We had a visiting Salesian priest, but he didn’t act like one.  He didn’t say too many ridiculous things about St. John Bosco, and even though the band was stuffed into the sanctuary and in front of the priest and deacon, they weren’t so terrible at all.  They didn’t sing anything holy, but they didn’t sing anything ugly either.  I saw people there I hadn’t seen in a while.  The Church was pretty full.

I was looking forward to riding home knowing I’d survived, then it happened.  No final blessing was in store.  We were trapped.  The smarmy rah-rah professional youth director slipped in the side and started being funny, yelling at people from the pulpit, making wisecracks, and forcing us to keep raising our hands to say how much we liked hugs.  He had a new program we were all supposed to follow and take home.  It was a contest to see who could hug the most people during the week.

Next our notorious pastor appeared to hug the youth director twice and the two loudmouthed compadres teamed up to steal the last bit of Holy peace from our hearts before releasing us.  They let us know they were available for hugs in the back of the Church where you could also sign up for the contest.  The top huggers (I could already guess who they might be) would get a free copy of Rick Warren’s “A Purpose-Driven Life.”  That’s a Protestant book but hey, who cares!  They hug too.  It’s all about Jesus, see.

I looked up from my stint peering deep into the void to hear the final blessing.  Then I waited for the final number to hit some crescendo, gave my wife a haggard smile, and headed for the doors, then guess what?

I had been musing earlier about how when you get ready to leave a dog alone in a house it gets excited because it thinks it’s going with you.  It just doesn’t want to consider the fact that you’re leaving it there alone.  Why even dream of the bad news?  Dogs have hope.  That must be why I was so surprised to find one of our 86-year old deacons blocking the exit like a bride at the end of a wedding.  I waited my turn in line and tried to shake his hand instead.  I was half-joking, but I really didn’t want to hug that old guy.  My wife hugged him first then I cried, “I don’t wanna!” but it didn’t matter because he did wanna.  So I hugged and then I heard, “We’re huggers around here, OK?”

Nice.  Hug or stay out, you bastard.  Mother regularly asks me why I don’t become a deacon to which I respond, “That would mean working for a pastor and a bishop, right?”

It was an ecumenical moment of religious unity.  The NewChurch of Huggers shared a surprising merciful encounter of warmth and closeness with one of those Catholics (for whom hugs are selective).  All that was required was for the Catholic to honor and embrace the Hugger faith for no sin against unity to have occurred.

This is all about attracting the lost sheep, yes?  It’s not about driving away Catholics, no!

In  few years, when our parish church is a mosque and we drive an hour to the new megachurch near the airport, please tell me it won’t be like this.

I made it to 13:10.  “Oh, fer cute!”

 

 

 

 

This Is How We’ll Get Sanctioned Sacrilegious Communion

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What angered the tyrant Francis most about the Synod wasn’t that he couldn’t get the bishops to directly enable his blatant sacrilege against Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.  It’s that he couldn’t muscle them into consent.  Liberals become furious when they can’t force you to do their evil.  But just like Obama and his Congress, Francis is going to prevail.  He’ll have his mortally sinful reception of Communion.  He had just wanted to give the impression that the entire Church agreed with his new religion.

Yesterday it was barely noted that the Lutheran delegation reported the Vatican gave them Holy Communion at Mass. They were told to receive if their consciences had no objections.  Regardless of the fact that if one’s conscience held him back he may as well become Catholic, Francis said the same last Fall to an Italian Lutheran group.  For that single act he should have been asked to step down from the papacy, but there were no bishops to do it.

Today we learn that, after repeatedly defying the Church law himself and washing women’s feet Maundy Thursdays, Francis has decreed his crime legal.  It was a concession to common practice, see?  ‘Everyone was doing it’.  Isn’t that what every sinner and criminal says?

Everyone cheats on their spouses, sure.  They all lie about how much money they earn, right?

Just try washing exclusively men’s feet now.  Hello convent chaplaincy!

This is how we’re going to get official sacrilegious Communion:  by decree, and in deference to common practice.

Pope Francis regularly says things that are not Catholic just like his precursor did, the evil and vulgar Martin Luther.  Perhaps more frightening is that the world is completely invested in this new FrancisChurch.  Top consultants strategize its moves, presenting slick one-world videos, and prompting the Curia to speak the language of the cult of Francis.

The Vatican was quick to scramble when it was reported that a woman in Francis’ encampment of pet homeless people had given birth near the Bernini columns.  Spokesman Fr. Lombardi said papal almoner, Abp. Konrad Krajewski, kindly offered her shelter in the Vatican’s home for young mothers.  Lombardi wouldn’t give him credit though when asked, for all his works for the homeless are done in the name of Francis.

 

 

 

 

 

Damian Thompson Knows Everything

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Damian Thompson broaches the subject of the two-pope quandry today by first announcing that he’s about to wildly speculate.

Would Benedict have resigned if he knew Francis would succeed him? Purely hypothetical but interesting. Benedict must have known there was a chance that Cardinal Bergoglio would succeed him. My guess is that when the Argentinian emerged on the balcony the Pope Emeritus was dismayed but concluded that God works in mysterious ways. A more interesting, albeit even more hypothetical, question is whether Benedict would have resigned if he’d known Francis would call a synod that threw open the question of whether divorced and remarried Catholics should receive Communion.

My guess is that Benedict wasn’t the least bit surprised to get Bergoglio.  After defending the faith for two pontificates, how could he possibly have blamed God for the election of man like Francis?

Why does Benedict wear white?  Benedict’s decision to dress as pope – minus the little mozzetta cape around his shoulders, and switching from red to brown shoes – sends a signal to the faithful. But what signal? We don’t need reminding that he used to be the Supreme Pontiff. My theory is that, by remaining in papal white, Benedict communicates that although he is an ex-pope he is also a living successor of Peter. It would be fascinating to know whether Benedict feels that he retains some spiritual status or responsibility by virtue of having held his office.

Fascinating indeed!  Perhaps he’s almost papal himself.

Do some Catholics believe there are two popes? The Italian journalist Antonio Socci has proposed that Benedict XVI’s resignation was not canonically valid because he was forced out. He and other conspiracy theorists therefore believe there is only one pope, but he is not called Francis. This is nonsense. As for the “two popes” business, no one thinks there are two reigning pontiffs.

I’ve written before that I think it would be a bit of a stretch to expect God, if it were the case, to give the papal charism to a man installed by the enemies of the Church after a reigning pope was pulled down from the thrown.  I’m not sure we can faithfully presume God will go beyond what He’s always done.  I’ve never read that Socci believes Francis is not pope.  He doesn’t think he’s Catholic though, and I have to agree.

I don’t think Socci’s a ‘conspiracy theorist’ like Robert Dear.

In a time where there are two popes, an original and a second, and when such great evil reigns, I don’t think it’s nonsense to ‘speculate’ that the one who was pope first might still be pope.  His resignation may have been compelled by force, under the gun so to speak, and not willed by him at all.  Would that make Francis not Pope?  I don’t know.  Perhaps.  The Benedict XVI situation is almost entirely unprecedented, really.

As to the assertion, “no one thinks there are two reigning pontiffs,”  it seems Thompson is letting his blue blood show.  That fact is no-one with any establishment ‘credibility’ expresses that, but still people must wonder.

Thompson closes with this unfortunate whopper:

Of one thing we can be certain: he believes that the Keys of Peter were handed to Jorge Bergoglio by the Holy Spirit, in whom the faith of the Pope Emeritus has never wavered.

How could the man know that?