Anatomy of a conspiracy: The forced resignation of Pope Benedict XVI

 

Long before Pope Benedict XVI's forced resignation,  I warned - with the help of Catholic Prophecy  - of what was coming.

See here for example 

And here

The Dark Church foretold by Venerable Ann Catherine Emmerich,  the Mystical Body of Antichrist within the Mystical Body of Christ has arrived.

The way is prepared for the Man of Sin and his one-world religion. 

The Apostasy will begin with priests who betray the Gospel for Satanic Marxism

As noted here: "The Virgin revealed that the priests who betray the Gospel for Satanic Marxism would begin the Great Apostasy."

Readers of this Blog know full well that I've been sounding the alarm for some 36 years. See this post for example and here.

We are witnessing the gradual emergence of a new humanitarian religion which proposes man, instead of God, as the object of worship. This "religion for progress," as Teilhard de Chardin referred to it, is anti-supernatural. Robert Hugh Benson describes it in his classic "The Lord of the World" thusly: 

"Humanitarianism...is becoming the an actual religion itself, though anti-supernatural. It is a Pantheism. Pantheism deifies all nature, God is the world, but naturally, man above all is God since he is the highest expression of nature. It is a religion devoid of the 'super' natural, because since God is nature itself, there is no longer a distinction between Creator and creature. The creature is God and hence arbitrator of his own destiny and establishes the moral law for himself. Nature, and man is its highest expression, has all the divine attributes. Humanitarianism is a religion devoid of the supernatural. It is developing a ritual under Freemasonry; it has a creed, 'God is man'; and the rest. It has, therefore, a real food of a sort to offer religious cravings: it idealizes, and yet makes no demands upon the spiritual faculties. Then, they have the use of all the churches except ours, and of all the Cathedrals; and they are beginning at last to encourage sentiment. Then they may display their symbols and we may not..."

Marxism was an expression of the humanitarian religion. It worshipped society and the state symbols of the party: Lenin, Stalin and Mao. National Socialism deified the state and its Fuhrer Adolph Hitler. Today the United States is moving toward Socialism and that "..supreme religious deception..that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 675).

Albert Drexel, in Ein Neuer Prophet? (Stein am Rhein: Christiana, 1971) explains that: "The modernism or neo-modernism within Christianity, and especially within the Roman Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council, is above all characterized by a turning away from the supernatural and an exclusive predilection for this world, the Aggiornamento of Pope John XXIII interpreted one-sidedly and hence misapplied. Teilhard's ideology was was a definitive precondition for this. Inasmuch as he turned his back to the past, fused God and the supernatural with the process of a universal evolutionism, and proclaimed religion to be an active participation in a progressive development ending in Point Omega, the basis was given for a humanist cult of the secular." (p. 115).

In the New World Order, man will no longer believe in a God whom he cannot control. Man will worship himself and his new leader who will, like Hitler, be deified: the man spoken of by Saint Paul as the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition. This world ruler will not tolerate anyone who adores any god other than himself. As Romano Guardini has noted, "The ultimate aim of all aims will be to prove that existence without Christ is possible - nay rather, that Christ is the enemy of existence, which can be fully realized only when all Christian values have been destroyed.." (The Lord, p. 513).

Pray to the Immaculata. The Man of Sin will soon reveal himself.  And his False Prophet will be there to welcome him with open arms.

None of this could have happened without first conspiring to remove Pope Benedict XVI in order to begin the creation of a Modernistic church. The Dark Church foretold by Anne

Catherine Emmerich.  See here.

Gender confusion is often the result of demonic possession

Pope Benedict XVI, in a Christmas Address given in 2008, denounced the contemporary notion that gender is a malleable definition and said, "The Church speaks of the human being as man and woman, and asks that this order is respected."  But our sin-sick culture, in its hatred for God and His Commandments, has another agenda.  God's order is rejected.  And this is most significant.  Because, as Father Vincent Miceli, S.J., has noted, "It has been a special scar on the worst pagan cultures and the worst idolatrous religions that they openly attacked the gender identities of the sexes. They celebrated sexual indulgence, sexual experimentation, sexual symbols, fertility rites, temple prostitution, seasonal sex orgies, sexual abuse and enslavement of young women, girls and boys....But sex is not an accidental characteristic of man and woman. A human person without sex is a monstrous abstraction. Sex entails the very identity of each person; sex plunges to the deepest mystery of each person. Hence the sexes and the vocations pertaining thereto are not interchangeable. Each person is called to serve God and his fellowman, accepting gladly the sex with which one is endowed and the vocation attached to that sex." (The Antichrist, P. 231).

Homosexuals, lesbians and transsexuals are often afflicted by evil spirits. Gender confusion is often a sign of demonic possession. Fr. Malachi Martin recounts the story of a possessed transsexual in his bestselling book 'Hostage to the Devil.' In the chapter titled 'The Virgin and the Girl-Fixer,' he writes, 'At one moment, Father Gerald, the exorcist, was bending over the possessed, Richard/Rita, who had sunk his teeth into his own instep. In the next instant, the glaze in Richard/Rita's eyes broke, melting into a lurid gleam of mockery. Greenish. The teeth loosened their grip on the instep. The mouth opened, baring gums and throat, the tongue protruded, quivering on a stream of gray foam bubbles. The whole face was furrowed in irregular lines, as Richard/Rita broke into peals of laughter. Great buffeting gusts of mocking, jeering, Schadenfreude laughter. Laugter pouring from a belly of amused scorn and contemptuous hate.'"

How quickly we forget this.  Gender confusion represents something more than a cultural revolution.  It is often the result of demonic possession.  The more a culture rejects the Living God and His Commandments, the more it sinks into an abyss of depravity.

Yet another shooting from a gender confused individual.  See here:

https://nypost.com/2025/08/27/us-news/minneapolis-catholic-school-gunman-idd-as-robin-westman-while-possible-manifesto-shows-psychotic-obsession-with-mass-shooters/

Related viewing here

Bishop Michael Martin advances a liturgy which is sick at the core

 As noted here, Charlotte Bishop Michael Martin has asserted that, “To instruct the faithful that kneeling [while receiving Holy Communion] is more reverent than standing is simply absurd." 

I've said this many times before, masonic forces seek to subvert the Church from within and to create a 'new church' created in the image and likeness of man. The new humanitarian religion will result from a quiet revolution within the Church. This new religion will be anti-supernatural. And it will embrace the Socialistic New World Order and the Reign of Antichrist. This is the false church Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich saw in her visions.

In this false church within the True Church, the cancer within the Mystical Body of Christ, there is a loss of the sense of the sacred.  Which is why Fr. Miceli wrote that, "Much of the new liturgy has been drained of the numinous and the sacred.  The new forms are without splendor, flattened, undifferentiated.  Why was kneeling replaced by standing?  Jesus himself fell on his knees and on his face as he prayed to his heavenly Father.  Satan too knows the meaning of worship and man's need for it.  He tried to get Jesus to fall down and worship him.  Why has the liturgical year and the Mass been so unfortunately mutilated against the wishes of the faithful?  In fact, the faithful are now confused about the Mass, the feast of the saints, the holy seasons.  Why was the Gloria, that prayer of total consecration on God's Majesty and Goodness, restricted practically to Sundays alone, and only to those Sundays outside of Lent? Moreover, is the faith really renewed and vivified by by obscuring our sense of community with the Christians of apostolic and ancient times?  The new liturgy no longer draws us into the true experience of reliving the Life of Christ.  We are deprived of this experience through the elimination of the hierarchy of feasts and the at random changing of the dates of famous feasts....

Then too, the new forms are the result of experimentation.  But one experiments with things, with objects that one wants to analyze.  Experimentation is the method of science.  The wretched idolatry and vulgarity of tinkering with sacred realities has, unfortunately, penetrated the Church and produced a mediocrity-ridden liturgy, a show for spectators that distracts from the holy, frustrates intimate communion with God and trivializes, where it does not suppress, sacred actions, symbols, music and words.

In reality, such diminished liturgies have renewed nothing.  Rather these innovations have emptied churches, dried up vocations to the priesthood and sisterhood, driven off converts and opened the doors wide to a flood of renegades.  Even though valid in its essence, such a new liturgy cannot inspire for it is colorless, artificial, banal, without the odor and flavor of sanctity.  A humanized and popularized, man-oriented liturgy will never produce saints.  Only a divinized, God-oriented liturgy can accomplish that miracle.  One suspects that many priests realize the banality of the new liturgy.  That is why they often become, during the Mass and other ceremonies, actors and entertainers.  They put on a show in order to gain the attention of the congregation.  These comedians in chasubles preach a utopian Christianity rather than the true Christianity.  Their treasure is man rather than God; their emphasis this-worldly rather than other-worldly; their goal progress rather than sanctity; their apostolate is immanent rather than transcendent; their means to their goal is the way of revolution rather than the way of the cross; they preach a secular Church instead of the Sacred Church founded by Christ; the essence of their morality is self-assertion rather than self-denial; the Christ they present to the congregation is the Humanist Christ rather than the God-Man crucified Christ...they genuflect before the world and stand before Christ...they are moved by resentment and envy instead of radiating the joy of Christ.."

In his book The Spirit of the Liturgy, Pope Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Ratzinger) wrote: "..there is a story that comes from the sayings of the Desert Fathers, according to which the devil was compelled by God to show himself to a certain Abba Apollo. He looked black and ugly, with frighteningly thin limbs, but most strikingly, he had no knees. The inability to kneel is seen as the very essence of the diabolical.  

But I do not want to go into more detail. I should like to make just one more remark. The expression used by Saint Luke to describe the kneeling of Christians (theis ta gonata) is unknown in classical Greek. We are dealing here with a specifically Christian word. With that remark, our reflections turn full circle to where they began. It may well be that kneeling is alien to modern culture — insofar as it is a culture, for this culture has turned away from the faith and no longer knows the one before whom kneeling is the right, indeed the intrinsically necessary gesture. The man who learns to believe learns also to kneel, and a faith or a liturgy no longer familiar with kneeling would be sick at the core. Where it has been lost, kneeling must be rediscovered, so that, in our prayer, we remain in fellowship with the apostles and martyrs, in fellowship with the whole cosmos, indeed in union with Jesus Christ Himself."

So then, for Bishop Martin, Pope Benedict XVI, who taught that kneeling is an "intrinsically necessary gesture," was being "ridiculous."

Perhaps now is the time for Bishop Martin to get on his knees and pray for some humility. For he cannot hold a candle to the genius and spiritual greatness of Pope Benedict XVI.

Related reading here.

Bishop Michael Martin considers himself wiser than Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI

The National Catholic Register is reporting that:

"Controversy in a North Carolina diocese has broadened beyond traditional Latin Mass restrictions after it was revealed that the local bishop had also planned to ban the use of Latin, altar rails, and other traditional practices in all diocesan liturgies — a development with implications far beyond the Tar Heel State.

Bishop Michael Martin of Charlotte proposed the restrictions in a leaked draft of new liturgical norms, which was first made public by the blog Rorate Caeli on May 28 and confirmed by the Register. Bishop Martin wrote that the purpose of the new norms, which also included barring ad orientem worship and traditional prayers at the foot of the altar, including the St. Michael Prayer, were made with the intention of “purifying and unifying the celebration of the Mass” in the diocese. 

The bishop also wrote that the proposed norms are called for by Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Second Vatican Council’s pastoral constitution on the liturgy, a perspective that has been widely challenged in reactions to the document."

Bishop Martin is either supremely ignorant on this matter or he is a contemptible liar. Readers of this Blog know full well that I do not sugar coat the facts. This in keeping with the teaching of Saint Francis de Sales that the wolf is always called the wolf.

Now with regard to the Bishop's nonsense:

In his Apostolic Letter Ecclesia Dei, Pope John Paul II said that, "Respect must everywhere be shown for the feelings of all those who are attached to the Latin liturgical tradition...for the use of the Roman Missal according to the 1962 edition."

And, in his book "Salt of the Earth," Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger said, "I am of the opinion, to be sure, that the old rite should be granted much more generously to all those who desire it. It's impossible to see what could be dangerous or unacceptable about that. A community is calling its very being into question when it suddenly declares that what until now was its holiest and highest possession is strictly forbidden and when it makes the longing for it seem downright indecent."

To be sure, Vatican II called for an extended use of the vernacular. But nowhere did Vatican II call for the Latin language to be abolished from the liturgy. And anyone who claims otherwise is either ignorant of the facts or a liar. The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium) No. 36 states clearly that, "Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites."

Number 54 of this same Vatican II document teaches that, "In Masses which are celebrated with the people, a suitable place may be allotted to their mother tongue. This is to apply in the first place to the readings and "the common prayer," but also, as local conditions may warrant, to those parts which pertain to the people, according to the norm laid down in Art. 36 of this Constitution.

Nevertheless steps should be taken so that the faithful may also be able to say or to sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them."

This is the teaching of Vatican II and the mind of the Church on the use of Latin and the attitude Catholics should have toward those who are attached to the Latin liturgical tradition.

Perhaps instead of appealing to some vague bullshit "spirit of Vatican II," Bishop Martin should sit down and actually READ the Conciliar documents.

Is that really too much to ask? If the Bishop cannot do his one job, perhaps it's time for him to step down.

Francis welcomes transvestites

 Gloria TV reports:

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who happens to be Pope Francis, met six transvestites – one Italian and five foreigners.

According to FanPage.it (June 23), A. Nobile, the only Italian of the group, a prostitute, said after the meeting that 'it was emotional, we felt welcomed without prejudice.' Francis reserves his prejudices for Catholics. Most of the transvestites in Rome are prostitutes.

For Nobile, the meeting was of a 'strong symbolic value' since it took place during 'the month of Pride.' It was organised by French Sister Genevier who lives in an amusement park near Rome. She warned Bergoglio that she would show up with more than one man. 'Bring them all,' Francis replied who let Cardinal Zen, 90, wait in vain in the rain.

Nobile, 43, introduced himself to Bergoglio , 'I am an transgender girl.'

'Francis replied that he did not care who I was, that we have only one Father,' Nobile recounted, confirming that Francis confirmed him in mortal sin, 'Go and sin some more.'

______________________________________________

A demon-infested generation, ignorant of God's Holy Word thanks to a lack of sound catechesis and influenced by the poor example of a significant portion of the clergy who have succumbed to darkness and sin, have not been shaped by Our Lord's Teaching: "“Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female" (Matthew 19:4).

No doubt radical homosexual activists are rejoicing over this lost generation and its embrace of the demonic.  For the desire to mix male and female into a new androgynous gender lies at the very heart of homosexual ideology.

Harry Hay, the founder of the homosexual movement, began his manifesto for the Mattachine Society with these words: "We, the androgynes of the world.."

Homosexual writer and activist Paul Varnell explains how Hay gave androgyny vital importance in the homosexual movement: "Hay's 'idealism' had three components: a) gays are qualitatively different from heterosexuals, mentally, psychologically, spiritually, not just in 'what they do in bed;' b) the core difference lies in the natural androgyny of homosexuals, that they embody both male and female elements; and c) in order to help promote their acceptance gays need to explain the contribution this difference makes to society." (Paul Varnell, "Harry Hay: One Big Idea).

Pope Benedict XVI, in a Christmas Address given in 2008, denounced the contemporary notion that gender is a malleable definition and said, "The Church speaks of the human being as man and woman, and asks that this order is respected."  But our sin-sick culture, in its hatred for God and His Commandments, has another agenda.  God's order is rejected.  And this is most significant.  Because, as Father Vincent Miceli, S.J., has noted, "It has been a special scar on the worst pagan cultures and the worst idolatrous religions that they openly attacked the gender identities of the sexes. They celebrated sexual indulgence, sexual experimentation, sexual symbols, fertility rites, temple prostitution, seasonal sex orgies, sexual abuse and enslavement of young women, girls and boys....But sex is not an accidental characteristic of man and woman. A human person without sex is a monstrous abstraction. Sex entails the very identity of each person; sex plunges to the deepest mystery of each person. Hence the sexes and the vocations pertaining thereto are not interchangeable. Each person is called to serve God and his fellowman, accepting gladly the sex with which one is endowed and the vocation attached to that sex." (The Antichrist, P. 231).

In the comments section of a previous post, one reader noted how, "Homosexuals, lesbians and transsexuals are often afflicted by evil spirits. Gender confusion is often a sign of demonic possession. Fr. Malachi Martin recounts the story of a possessed transsexual in his bestselling book 'Hostage to the Devil.' In the chapter titled 'The Virgin and the Girl-Fixer,' he writes, 'At one moment, Father Gerald, the exorcist, was bending over the possessed, Richard/Rita, who had sunk his teeth into his own instep. In the next instant, the glaze in Richard/Rita's eyes broke, melting into a lurid gleam of mockery. Greenish. The teeth loosened their grip on the instep. The mouth opened, baring gums and throat, the tongue protruded, quivering on a stream of gray foam bubbles. The whole face was furrowed in irregular lines, as Richard/Rita broke into peals of laughter. Great buffeting gusts of mocking, jeering, Schadenfreude laughter. Laugter pouring from a belly of amused scorn and contemptuous hate.'"

How quickly we forget this. Gender confusion represents something more than a cultural revolution. It is often the result of demonic possession. The more a culture rejects the Living God and His Commandments, the more it sinks into an abyss of depravity.  Gender is not a human construct.  Sacred Scripture - God's Holy Word - tells us that, "God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them." (Genesis 1:27).

It should be clear, to anyone of good will and especially devout Catholics who are serious about their faith, that Francis is not Christ's Shepherd but rather a pretender to the Chair of Peter, fully accepting of the demonic plan to sow demonic gender confusion. 

"The powers of Hell fear the name and protection of Mary."

Men do not fear a powerful hostile army as much as the powers of hell fear the name and protection of Mary.

-St. Bonaventure

“God has established not just one enmity but ‘enmities’, and not only between Mary and Satan but between her race and his race. That is, God has put enmities, antipathies and hatreds between the true children and servants of the Blessed Virgin and the children and slaves of the devil. They have no love and no sympathy for each other. The children of Belial, the slaves of Satan, the friends of the world, - for they are all one and the same - have always persecuted and will persecute more than ever in the future those who belong to the Blessed Virgin, just as Cain of old persecuted his brother Abel, and Esau his brother Jacob. These are the types of the wicked and of the just. But the humble Mary will always triumph over Satan, the proud one, and so great will be her victory that she will crush his head, the very seat of his pride. She will unmask his serpent's cunning and expose his wicked plots. She will scatter to the winds his devilish plans and to the end of time will keep her faithful servants safe from his cruel claws.

But Mary's power over the evil spirits will especially shine forth in the latter times, when Satan will lie in wait for her heel, that is, for her humble servants and her poor children whom she will rouse to fight against him. In the eyes of the world they will be little and poor and, like the heel, lowly in the eyes of all, down-trodden and crushed as is the heel by the other parts of the body. But in compensation for this they will be rich in God's graces, which will be abundantly bestowed on them by Mary. They will be great and exalted before God in holiness. They will be superior to all creatures by their great zeal and so strongly will they be supported by divine assistance that, in union with Mary, they will crush the head of Satan with their heel, that is, their humility, and bring victory to Jesus Christ.” (Treatise On True Devotion To The Blessed Virgin, 54).

I have always viewed the sling which David used to slay Goliath as a harbinger, a sort of figure or sign pointing to the Holy Rosary which would be given to the faithful by Our Lady and by which they would “crush the head of Satan” – “the very seat of his pride” as Montfort puts it. We read in 1 Samuel 17:

“With his shield-bearer marching before him, the Philistine also advanced closer and closer to David. When he had sized David up, and seen that he was youthful and ruddy, and handsome in appearance, he held him in contempt. The Philistine said to David, ‘Am I a dog that you come against me with a staff?’ Then the Philistine cursed David by his gods and said to him, ‘Come here to me, and I will leave your flesh for the birds of the air and the beasts of the field.’ David answered him: ‘You come against me with sword and spear and scimitar, but I come against you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel that you have insulted. Today the Lord shall deliver you into my hand; I will strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will leave your corpse and the corpses of the Philistine army for the birds of the air and the beasts of the field; thus the whole land shall learn that Israel has a God. All this multitude, too, shall learn that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves. For the battle is the Lord’s, and he shall deliver you into our hands’…David put his hand into the bag and took out a stone, hurled it with the sling, and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone embedded itself in his brow, and he fell prostrate on the ground. Thus David overcame the Philistine with sling and stone..” (1 Samuel 17: 41-47, 49-50).

The Devil is the adversary of faithful Christians. And, like Goliath, he seems to cast a big shadow. But when we approach him on the battlefield [“For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens,” Eph 6:12] we have our own sling as a weapon – the Holy Rosary. And every bead, every Hail Mary prayerfully recited, is hurled as a weapon against the Devil’s head, the seat of his pride. Therefore, Montfort exhorts us, “So arm yourself with the arms of God, with the holy Rosary, and you will crush the devil’s head and stand firm in the face of all his temptations. That is why even a pair of rosary beads is so terrible to the devil, and why the saints have used them to fetter him and drive him from the bodies of those who were possessed.” (The Secret of the Holy Rosary, 85).

Related reading here.

Pastors of the Church must offer the entire plan of God...

In an essay on the meaning of evangelization, Father Vincent Miceli, S.J. wrote, "Being the work of God and man in cooperation, it must ever be a thrilling and awesome adventure.  We can say, however, that this sanctifying activity proclaims Christ to those who do not know

Him, preaches the Gospel to them through catechesis and missionary sermons, confers Baptism and other sacraments and tirelessly exhorts converts to scale the heights of sanctity.  Jesus Christ, Himself, the Good News of God, was the very first and greatest evangelizer.  He proclaimed an absolute Kingdom of God, making everything else relative.  He proclaimed salvation, namely liberation from sin, Satan, death, a liberation that bestowed upon sinners returned to God grace, resurrection in immortality and glorification in the triune God.  He proclaimed the price man must pay for his salvation, namely that men must gain Heaven by violence, i.e., through a life of penance, toil, and suffering accepted in the spirit of the Suffering Servant of God.  And above all He proclaimed that man must undergo that interior renewal which the Gospel calls metanoia, that is the radical change of heart and mind which destroys 'the old man of sin' and creates 'the new man of grace.'"

Fr. Miceli then explains that there are obstacles to evangelization.  He writes, "St Thomas Aquinas teaches that three things are necessary for a soul to find, follow and embrace Christ.  First, a person must know what he ought to believe.  Second, he must know what he ought to desire.  Third, he must know what he ought to do.  Now ignorance is the first great obstacle to evangelization.  Catholics, therefore, should grow in a profound knowledge of their Faith through a constant reading and reflection on the Gospels and a faithful following of the teachings of the Magisterium.  Only thus will they come to appreciate the Catholic Faith as a gift of God that is true, good and beautiful.  They then will be moved by the Holy Spirit to bring non-Catholics to share this gift from God with them..."

Finally, surveying the Catholic Church in the United States, Fr. Miceli writes, "Unfortunately, the fact is that the Church in the United States, instead of being the crusading, courageous, evangelizing society Christ founded it to be, has become a cream-puff chaplaincy to the converted - and because of this attitude is failing to hold on even to these...How are we to stir up again the spirit of evangelization?  Pope Paul VI in Evangelii Nuntiandi gives us our marching orders:

'On us particularly, the pastors of the Church, rests the responsibility for reshaping with boldness and wisdom, but in complete fidelity to the content of evangelization, the means that are most suitable and effective for communicating the Gospel message to the men and women of our times.'" (Fr. Vincent P. Miceli, citing Pope Paul VI in Evangelii Nuntiandi, No. 40).

Note this passage.  What does Pope Paul VI mean by "complete fidelity to the content of evangelization"?  The Holy Father means that pastors of the Church must offer the men and women of our times what Pope Benedict XVI has said is the entire plan of God. See here.  That is to say, the full content of Catholic teaching - including, and especially, those hard truths which the world does not want to hear but which faithful Catholics must share with hurting souls who wander about without a shepherd.

This is what evangelization is all about!

But it's not what many "pastors" are offering.  Instead, they are abandoning the people they're supposed to be serving.  See here.

In one of his last homilies, Archbishop Oscar Romero, the martyred Archbishop of San Salvador, said: "A preaching that does not point out sin is not the preaching of the gospel. A preaching that makes sinners feel good so that they become entrenched in their sinful state, betrays the gospel's call. A preaching that does not discomfit sinners but lulls them in their sin leaves Zebulun and Naphtali in the shadow of death. A preaching that awakens, a preaching that enlightens -- as when a light turned on awakens and of course annoys a sleeper -- that is the preaching of Christ, calling, "wake up! Be converted!" this is the church's authentic preaching. Naturally, such preaching must meet conflict, must spoil what is miscalled prestige, must disturb, must be persecuted. It cannot get along with the powers of darkness and sin."

Francis knew but chose to rehabilitate Cardinal McCarrick

CNS reports:

A top official from the Vatican Secretariat of State acknowledged allegations made by a New York priest in 2000 concerning Archbishop Theodore E. McCarrick, according to a letter obtained by Catholic News Service.
Father Boniface Ramsey, pastor of St. Joseph's Church Yorkville in New York City, told CNS Sept. 7 that he received the letter dated Oct. 11, 2006, from then-Archbishop Leonardo Sandri, the former Vatican substitute for general affairs, asking for information regarding a priest of the Archdiocese of Newark who studied at Immaculate Conception Seminary and was being vetted for a post at a Vatican office. He made the letter available to CNS.
Then-Archbishop Sandri wrote to Father Ramsey, "I ask with particular reference to the serious matters involving some of the students of the Immaculate Conception Seminary, which in November 2000 you were good enough to bring confidentially to the attention of the then Apostolic Nuncio in the United States, the late Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo."
Father Ramsey had been on the faculty of the seminary from 1986 to 1996 and had sent a letter in 2000 to Archbishop Montalvo informing him of complaints he heard from seminarians studying at the seminary, located in South Orange, New Jersey.
In the letter, Father Ramsey told CNS, "I complained about McCarrick's relationships with seminarians and the whole business with sleeping with seminarians and all of that; the whole business that everyone knows about," Father Ramsey said.
Father Ramsey said he assumed the reason the letter from then-Archbishop Sandri, who is now a cardinal and prefect of the Congregation for Eastern Churches, only mentioned "serious matters involving " seminarians and not Archbishop McCarrick's behavior was because accusations against the former cardinal were "too sensitive."
"My letter November 22, 2000, was about McCarrick and it wasn't accusing seminarians of anything; it was accusing McCarrick."
While Father Ramsey has said he never received a formal response to the letter he sent in 2000, he told CNS he was certain the letter had been received because of the note he got from then-Archbishop Sandri in 2006 acknowledging the allegations he had raised in 2000.
The 2006 letter not only confirms past remarks made by Father Ramsey, but also elements of a document written by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, who served as nuncio to the United States from 2011 to 2016.
In an 11-page statement, published Aug. 26, Archbishop Vigano accused church officials, including Pope Francis, of failing to act on accusations of sexual abuse, as well as abuse of conscience and power by now-Archbishop McCarrick.
Archbishop Vigano stated that the Vatican was informed as early as 2000 -- when he was an official at the Secretariat of State -- of allegations that Archbishop McCarrick "shared his bed with seminarians." Archbishop Vigano said the Vatican heard the allegation from the U.S. nuncios at the time: Archbishop Montalvo, who served from 1998 to 2005 and Archbishop Pietro Sambi, who served from 2005 to 2011.
In late June, then-Cardinal McCarrick, the 88-year-old retired archbishop of Washington, said he would no longer exercise any public ministry "in obedience" to the Vatican after an allegation he abused a teenager 47 years ago in the Archdiocese of New York was found credible. The then-cardinal has said he is innocent.
Since then, several former seminarians have claimed that the then-cardinal would invite groups of them to a beach house and insist individual members of the group share a bed with him.

Now we know with certainty why Francis refused to answer journalist's questions when pressed about Archbishop Vigano's 11 page letter.  See here.

Francis rehabilitated McCarrick after Pope Benedict XVI placed censures on him.

As I noted nine years ago (see here):

In the sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church, those who dealt with the bishops have consistently remarked that the bishops never expressed outrage or righteous anger, even at the most horrendous cases of abuse and sacrilege. Bishops seem to think that anger at sin is un-Christian. Gilbert Kilman, a child psychiatrist, commented, 'What amazes me is the lack of outrage the church feels when its good work is being harmed. So, if there is anything the church needs to know, it needs to know how to be outraged.'

Mark Serrano confronted Bishop Frank Rodimer, asking why he had let his priest-friend Peter Osinski sleep with boys at Rodimer’s beach house while Rodimer was in the next bedroom: 'Where is your moral indignation?' Rodimer’s answer was, 'Then I don’t get it. What do you want?' What Serrano wanted Rodimer to do was to behave like a man with a heart, a heart that is outraged by evil. But Rodimer couldn’t; his inability to feel outrage was a quality that had helped make him a bishop. He would never get into fights, never rock the boat, never 'divide' but only 'unify.' Rodimer could not understand why he should feel deep anger at evil, at the violation of the innocent, at the oppression of the weak.

Emotional Deformation

The emotions that are now suppressed are hatred and anger. Christians think that they ought not to feel these emotions, that it is un-Christian to feel them. They secretly suspect that Jesus was being un-Christian in his attitude to the scribes and Pharisees when he was angry at them, that he was un-Christian when he drove the moneychangers out of the temple or declared that millstones (not vacations in treatment centers) were the way to treat child abusers.

Conrad Baars noticed this emotional deformation in the clergy in the mid-twentieth century. He recognized that there had been distortions in 'traditional' Catholic spirituality. It had become too focused upon individual acts rather than on growth in virtue; it had emphasized sheer naked strength of will. In forgetting that growth in virtue was the goal of the Christian’s moral life, it forgot that the emotions, all emotions, including anger and hate, are part of human nature and must be integrated into a virtuous life.

Baars had been imprisoned by the Nazis. He knew iniquity firsthand and that there was something wrong with those who did not hate it:

A little reflection will make it clear that there is a big difference between the person who knows solely that something is evil and ought to be opposed, and the one who in addition also feels hate for that evil, is angry that it is corrupting or harming his fellow-men, and feels aroused to combat it courageously and vigorously.

Just Wrath

Wrath is a necessary and positive part of human nature: 'Wrath is the strength to attack the repugnant; the power of anger is actually the power of resistance in the soul,' wrote Josef Pieper. The lack of wrath against injustice, he continued, is a deficiency: 'One who does good with passion is more praiseworthy than one who is ‘not entirely’ afire for the good, even to the forces of the sensual realm.'

Aquinas, too, says that 'lack of the passion of anger is also a vice' because a man who truly and forcefully rejects evil will be angry at it. The lack of anger makes the movement of the will against evil 'lacking or weak.' He quotes John Chrysostom: 'He who is not angry, whereas he has cause to be, sins. For unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices, it fosters negligence, and incites not only the wicked but the good to do wrong'..."

The spiritually mature Christian understands that not all anger is unjust. That there is such a thing as just or righteous anger. Such a Christian strives to control anger through prayer and by considering the example of Christ. Let's all pray for those in leadership positions in the Church. That they may come to a mature faith which is able to discern between just and unjust anger.

One shepherd [and he is that in every sense of the word] who possesses such a mature faith is The Most Rev. Fabian Bruskewitz, Bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska. His Excellency has been quoted as having said, "No words that are printable, or even conceivable, are adequate to express my outrage, fury, and depression upon learning that anyone, much less a priest, would sexually molest any children. Such a thing is an unspeakable abomination. Upon hearing such things, I must confess that I am tempted to look for my shotgun and baseball bat, much sooner that I am tempted to give any consideration to a possible 'sickness' in a perpetrator. Molestation victims and their families are certainly entitled to anger. Sometimes their excessive anger and demands, while often becoming unacceptable and unreasonable, are still understandable to me." Read full statement here.

How much more just anger* should a shepherd demonstrate against those who would spiritually molest faithful Catholics.

*  See here

Dismantling the reforms on clerical sexual abuse instituted by Pope Benedict XVI

From Catholic Monitor:

"Pope Francis and Cardinal Seán O’Malley appear to handle the sex abuse crisis in the same way.

It appears that Francis and O’Malley don't receive letters when it's about sex abuse of minors.

Pope Francis's own chief adviser on sexual abuse matters and president of the Commission for the Protection of Minors Cardinal O’Malley personally gave a sex abuse victim letter to Francis that the Pope never acknowledged receiving.

Now, O' Malley received a letter from a priest which revealed that one of the most influential Cardinals in the United States was a sex abuser and he never received it.
[http://m.ncregister.com/blog/joan-desmond/cardinal-omalley-says-more-than-apologies-needed-in-cardinal-mccarrick-scan?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+NCRegisterDailyBlog+National+Catholic+Register#When%3A2018-07-24+22%3A24%3A01]

O' Malley's record as Francis's own chief adviser on sexual abuse matters shows according to
journalist Hilary White that Francis and O' Malley have "all but completely dismantled" the "effective" reforms instituted against clerical sex abuse by Pope Benedict XVI:

"Pope Benedict installed effective procedural reforms on clerical sex abuse; Francis... has all but completely dismantled or reversed those changes... Benedict 'had defrocked or suspended more than 800 priests for past sexual abuse between 2009 and 2012'... His reforms specifically included bishops who refused to act against priest-abusers... 'This Pope has removed two to three bishops per month'... These reforms - and - removals - have ceased entirely under Francis [and O'Malley]." (Remnant, "Pope Francis Accused of Inaction in Notorious Sex Abuse Cases, January 25, 2017)

What is O' Malley's record in his diocese according the Bishop Accountability website (http://www.bishop-accountability.org/OMalley_Fact_Sheet.htm).

__________

We need priests and Bishops who fear God more than they do men.  Cowards will not lead us out of the valley of death.  Neither will homosexual or effeminate clerics who cannot relate to men.

Only shepherds who have the spiritual strength, the Cardinal Gift of Fortitude, to brave the risk of worldly criticism, will be able to lead the Catholic Church out of the valley of the Culture of Death and back on the road to the Civilization of Love which Pope John Paul II spoke of so often.

Why have so many priests succumbed to fear?  Why is it that their preaching no longer points out sin?  Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange provides us with an answer:

"The reason for this is not difficult to find.  A sermon is the result of the combined effort of all the priest's powers; it reveals his entire person; it is his struggle against the vices of the surrounding world."  In other words, if the preaching is unsound, it is because the priest's spiritual life is unsound.  Fr. Lagrange continues, "Everything in the priest cooperates in his preaching - study, reflection, his powers to compose and revise, the activity of his intellect, his imagination, his memory, his feelings, his voice.  Therefore, when he preaches, the priest stands exposed for all to study; some will be attracted, others will not.  Some will accept what he says, others will simply criticize.  So if the priest approaches his task from the human angle, he will say to himself: 'I cannot afford to lose my reputation; people of weight in the parish who take offense easily must be spared their feelings and not provoked; I must proceed warily so as not to incur criticism.'  In that way Christian eloquence is invaded by a profane eloquence in which the preacher looks after his own interests, not the glory of God or the saving of souls." (The Priest In Union With Christ, p. 156).

The Cult of Softness (see here) continues to produce only rot within the Church. 

Oremus.

Dr. Ryan T. Anderson, gender confusion and the demonic...

From Breitbart:

"Talk of 'sex change' is a scientific misnomer, argues philosopher Ryan T. Anderson in a recent article, since it is impossible to change someone’s sex by bombarding them with hormones or performing cosmetic surgery on them.
A person can pretend to be a member of the opposite sex, Dr. Anderson notes, but it will never be more than play-acting since one’s biological sex is a physical reality outside the individual’s control.


'Modern science shows that our sexual organization begins with our DNA and development in the womb, and that sex differences manifest themselves in many bodily systems and organs, all the way down to the molecular level,' Anderson writes.

Because biological sex is a result of genetic makeup, determined by chromosomal configuration, medicine cannot turn a girl into a boy.

'Cosmetic surgery and cross-sex hormones can’t change us into the opposite sex,' Ryan writes. 'They can affect appearances. They can stunt or damage some outward expressions of our reproductive organization. But they can’t transform it. They can’t turn us from one sex into the other.'

According to Dr. Lawrence Mayer of the Department of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, science is not on the side of the transgender movement."

___________________________

Nor is common sense, good judgment or sound theology.

A demon-infested generation, ignorant of God's Holy Word thanks to a lack of sound catechesis and influenced by the poor example of a significant portion of the clergy who have succumbed to darkness and sin, have not been shaped by Our Lord's Teaching: "“Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female" (Matthew 19:4).

No doubt radical homosexual activists are rejoicing over this lost generation and its embrace of the demonic.  For the desire to mix male and female into a new androgynous gender lies at the very heart of homosexual ideology.

Harry Hay, the founder of the homosexual movement, began his manifesto for the Mattachine Society with these words: "We, the androgynes of the world.."

Homosexual writer and activist Paul Varnell explains how Hay gave androgyny vital importance in the homosexual movement: "Hay's 'idealism' had three components: a) gays are qualitatively different from heterosexuals, mentally, psychologically, spiritually, not just in 'what they do in bed;' b) the core difference lies in the natural androgyny of homosexuals, that they embody both male and female elements; and c) in order to help promote their acceptance gays need to explain the contribution this difference makes to society." (Paul Varnell, "Harry Hay: One Big Idea).

Pope Benedict XVI, in a Christmas Address given in 2008, denounced the contemporary notion that gender is a malleable definition and said, "The Church speaks of the human being as man and woman, and asks that this order is respected."  But our sin-sick culture, in its hatred for God and His Commandments, has another agenda.  God's order is rejected.  And this is most significant.  Because, as Father Vincent Miceli, S.J., has noted, "It has been a special scar on the worst pagan cultures and the worst idolatrous religions that they openly attacked the gender identities of the sexes. They celebrated sexual indulgence, sexual experimentation, sexual symbols, fertility rites, temple prostitution, seasonal sex orgies, sexual abuse and enslavement of young women, girls and boys....But sex is not an accidental characteristic of man and woman. A human person without sex is a monstrous abstraction. Sex entails the very identity of each person; sex plunges to the deepest mystery of each person. Hence the sexes and the vocations pertaining thereto are not interchangeable. Each person is called to serve God and his fellowman, accepting gladly the sex with which one is endowed and the vocation attached to that sex." (The Antichrist, P. 231).

In the comments section of a previous post, one reader noted how, "Homosexuals, lesbians and transsexuals are often afflicted by evil spirits. Gender confusion is often a sign of demonic possession. Fr. Malachi Martin recounts the story of a possessed transsexual in his bestselling book 'Hostage to the Devil.' In the chapter titled 'The Virgin and the Girl-Fixer,' he writes, 'At one moment, Father Gerald, the exorcist, was bending over the possessed, Richard/Rita, who had sunk his teeth into his own instep. In the next instant, the glaze in Richard/Rita's eyes broke, melting into a lurid gleam of mockery. Greenish. The teeth loosened their grip on the instep. The mouth opened, baring gums and throat, the tongue protruded, quivering on a stream of gray foam bubbles. The whole face was furrowed in irregular lines, as Richard/Rita broke into peals of laughter. Great buffeting gusts of mocking, jeering, Schadenfreude laughter. Laugter pouring from a belly of amused scorn and contemptuous hate.'"

How quickly we forget this. Gender confusion represents something more than a cultural revolution. It is often the result of demonic possession. The more a culture rejects the Living God and His Commandments, the more it sinks into an abyss of depravity.  Gender is not a human construct.  Sacred Scripture - God's Holy Word - tells us that, "God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them." (Genesis 1:27).

Norbert Schackmann: Saint Paul suffered from "verbal diarrhea" and Saint John from "spiritual arrogance"...

This morning on Facebook, an individual by the name of Norbert Schackmann insulted both Saint Paul and Saint John, accusing the former of "verbal diarrhea" and the latter of "spiritual arrogance."

An unhappy soul with a very strange and unscriptural view of these two great Apostles.

Mr. Schackmann asserted that the Apostle John was spiritually arrogant because He referred to himself as, "The disciple whom Jesus loved."  But, as this EWTN article explains:


"Our divine Redeemer had a particular affection for him above the rest of the apostles; insomuch that when St. John speaks of himself, he saith that he was 'The disciple whom Jesus loved*'; and frequently he mentions himself by this only characteristic; which he did not out of pride to distinguish himself, but out of gratitude and tender love for his blessed Master."

Father Vincent Miceli, S.J., in a wonderful essay on zeal, reminds us that, "Christian zeal is an essential qualification in the very notion of a servant of God.  It is the source of holy action in religious services that manifest love of God and of neighbor.  Christian zeal signifies that a person loves God above all things, above all men, above one's dearest, most intimate beloved ones.  And Christian zeal partakes of a priestly quality, for it signifies the consecration of God's servants to the office of rendering sacrifice and adoration to God....Consumed by zeal Himself, is it any wonder that Christ chose His Apostles, those with whom He would share His divine Priesthood forever, from among the zealous?...Extraordinary is the example of St. Paul.  He is perhaps the most zealous of the Apostles...The new Paul, no longer lived his own life but Christ lived in him..."

Mr. Schackmann doesn't see it this way. Referring to the time Saint Paul preached all night long and into the next day, Mr. Schackmann asserts that Saint Paul suffered from verbal diarrhea, thereby implying that the Good News he was bringing, which comes from Christ Jesus Himself, Who personally chose Paul, is mere excrement.

In a General Audience given by Pope Benedict XVI, His Holiness said, "... in this brief list of Paul's journeys it suffices to note how dedicated he was to proclaiming the Gospel, sparing no energy, confronting a series of grave trials, of which he left us a list in the Second Letter to the Corinthians (cf. 11: 21-28). Moreover, it is he who writes: "I do it all for the sake of the Gospel" (1 Cor 9: 23), exercising with unreserved generosity what he called "anxiety for the Churches" (2 Cor 11: 28). We see a commitment that can only be explained by a soul truly fascinated by the light of the Gospel, in love with Christ, a soul sustained by profound conviction; it is necessary to bring Christ's light to the world, to proclaim the Gospel to all of us. This seems to me to be what remains for us from this brief review of St Paul's journeys: to see his passion for the Gospel and thereby grasp the greatness, the beauty, indeed the deep need of the Gospel for all of us. Let us pray the Lord who caused St Paul to see his light, who made him hear his word and profoundly moved his heart, that we may also see his light, so that our hearts too may be moved by his Word and thus that we too may give the light of the Gospel and the truth of Christ to today's world which thirsts for it."

Amen!

*"According to tradition, John is the 'disciple whom Jesus loved', who in the Fourth Gospel laid his head against the Teacher's breast at the Last Supper (cf. Jn 13: 23), stood at the foot of the Cross together with the Mother of Jesus (cf. Jn 19: 25) and lastly, witnessed both the empty tomb and the presence of the Risen One himself (cf. Jn 20: 2; 21: 7)." (Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience).

Francis, Mueller and the so-called internal forum solution approach...

The AP is reporting that:

"Pope Francis on Saturday reaffirmed the 'primacy' of using one's conscience to navigate tough moral questions in his first comments since he was publicly accused of spreading heresy by emphasizing conscience over hard and fast Catholic rules.

Francis issued a video message to a conference organized by Italian bishops on his controversial 2016 document on family life, 'The Joy of Love.' The document has badly divided the Catholic Church, with some commentators warning that it risked creating a schism given its opening to divorced and civilly remarried Catholics.

Francis told the conference that priests must inform Catholic consciences 'but not replace them.' And he stressed the distinction between one's conscience — where God reveals himself — and one's ego that thinks it can do as it pleases.


'The contemporary world risks confusing the primacy of conscience, which must always be respected, with the exclusive autonomy of an individual with respect to his or her relations,' Francis said.

Francis reaffirmed the centrality of 'The Joy of Love' as the church's guide to Catholic couples today trying to navigate the ups and downs of complicated family situations.

When it was released in April 2016, 'The Joy of Love' immediately sparked controversy because it cautiously opened the door to letting civilly remarried Catholics receive Communion.

Church teaching holds that unless these Catholics obtain an annulment — a church decree declaring their first marriage invalid — they cannot receive the sacraments since they are seen as committing adultery in the eyes of the church.

Francis didn't give these Catholics an automatic pass, but suggested that bishops and priests could do so on a case-by-case basis, with the couples' 'well-formed' consciences as the guide.

Conservatives accused the pope of sowing confusion and undermining the church's teaching on the indissolubility of marriage. Four prominent cardinals formally asked for a clarification to five "dubia," or doubts, they said had been spawned by the document.

More recently, a group of traditionalist and conservative priests and scholars formally accused Francis of spreading heresy.

Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, whom Francis recently removed as the Vatican's chief doctrinal watchdog, didn't join the four 'dubia' cardinals or the heresy accusers. But he warned in a recent book preface that 'schismatic temptations and dogmatic confusion' had been sown as a result of the debate over the document. He said such confusion was 'dangerous for the unity of the church.'

Mueller sought to offer his own interpretation — that 'The Joy of Love' can only be read as a continuity of the church's traditional teaching on marriage — offering what he said was his own 'contribution to re-establishing peace in the church.'"

Holy Communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics on a case-by-case basis with the couples "well-formed consciences" as the guide represents "a continuity of the Church's traditional teaching on marriage"?

How so Your Eminence?  The Church has already addressed the so-called "internal forum solution" proposed by Francis.  Pope Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect for the Doctrine of the Faith, explained that:

"By the way, as far as the 'internal forum solution' is concerned as a means for resolving the question of the validity of a prior marriage, the magisterium has not sanctioned its use for a number of reasons, among which is the inherent contradiction of resolving something in the internal forum which by nature also pertains to and has such important consequences for the external forum. Marriage , not a private act, has deep implications of course for both of the spouses and resulting children and also for Christian and civil society.  Only the external forum can give real assurance to the petitioner, himself not a disinterested party, that he is not guilty of rationalisation.  Likewise, only the external forum can address the rights or claims of the other partner of the former union, and, in the case of the tribunal's issuance of a judgment of nullity, make possible entering into a canonically valid, sacramental marriage." (Ratzinger, "Church, Pope and Gospel").

The problem with letting couples using their consciences as a guide is that there is often a tendency to rationalize sin. Likewise, couples committing adultery will often be tempted to rationalize their situation when considering whether or not to approach Holy Eucharist which is properly the sacrament of those who are in full communion with the Church (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1395).

As Dr. Germain Grisez explains, "The practice of the so-called internal forum approach lies in trying to reduce a problem about the validity of a marriage (or one's right to receive Holy Eucharist, my note) to a private problem of individual conscience, even though marriage is ineluctably social as a human reality and ineluctably ecclesial as a saving mystery.  The practice of so-called internal forum solutions also is pastorally disastrous. Even though someone whose problem has been dealt with in this way may really believe he or she is not living in sin (such as receiving Holy Eucharist unworthily because one is living in adultery, my note), the practice itself cannot reasonably be expected to being about that state of conscience.  For it invites self-deception and rationalization, and peace of conscience attained by such means is not a reliable sign of freedom from the guilt of grave sin (See CMP, 3.C).

As I explained in a previous post:

"For all too many people today (including sadly, many Catholics) the conscience has become a "mighty fortress" built so as to shelter one from the exacting demands of truth. In the words of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, "In the Psalms we meet from time to time the prayer that God should free man from his hidden sins. The Psalmist sees as his greatest danger the fact that he no longer recognizes them as sins and thus falls into them in apparently good conscience. Not being able to have a guilty conscience is a sickness...And thus one cannot aprove the maxim that everyone may always do what his conscience allows him to do: In that case the person without a conscience would be permitted to do anything. In truth it is his fault that his conscience is so broken that he no longer sees what he as a man should see. In other words, included in the concept of conscience is an obligation, namely, the obligation to care for it, to form it and educate it. Conscience has a right to respect and obedience in the measure in which the person himself respects it and gives it the care which its dignity deserves. The right of conscience is the obligation of the formation of conscience. Just as we try to develop our use of language and we try to rule our use of rules, so must we also seek the true measure of conscience so that finally the inner word of conscience can arrive at its validity.


For us this means that the Church's magisterium bears the responsibility for correct formation. It makes an appeal, one can say, to the inner vibrations its word causes in the process of the maturing of conscience. It is thus an oversimplification to put a statement of the magisterium in opposition to conscience. In such a case I must ask myself much more. What is it in me that contradicts this word of the magisterium? Is it perhaps only my comfort? My obstinacy? Or is it an estrangement through some way of life that allows me something which the magisterium forbids and that appears to me to be better motivated or more suitable simply because society considers it reasonable? It is only in the context of this kind of struggle that the conscience can be trained, and the magisterium has the right to expect that the conscience will be open to it in a manner befitting the seriousness of the matter. If I believe that the Church has its origins in the Lord, then the teaching office in the Church has a right to expect that it, as it authentically develops, will be accepted as a priority factor in the formation of conscience."

Cardinal Mueller apparently has not considered these truths.  Nor has Francis.

What a shame!

A Cupich of nonsense...

Cardinal Blade Cupich is touting heretical priest Father James Martin, S.J., as a shining example of evangelization to youth.  See here.

In an essay on the meaning of evangelization, Father Vincent Miceli, S.J. wrote, "Being the work of God and man in cooperation, it must ever be a thrilling and awesome adventure.  We can say, however, that this sanctifying activity proclaims Christ to those who do not know Him, preaches the Gospel to them through catechesis and missionary sermons, confers Baptism and other sacraments and tirelessly exhorts converts to scale the heights of sanctity.  Jesus Christ, Himself, the Good News of God, was the very first and greatest evangelizer.  He proclaimed an absolute Kingdom of God, making everything else relative.  He proclaimed salvation, namely liberation from sin, Satan, death, a liberation that bestowed upon sinners returned to God grace, resurrection in immortality and glorification in the triune God.  He proclaimed the price man must pay for his salvation, namely that men must gain Heaven by violence, i.e., through a life of penance, toil, and suffering accepted in the spirit of the Suffering Servant of God.  And above all He proclaimed that man must undergo that interior renewal which the Gospel calls metanoia, that is the radical change of heart and mind which destroys 'the old man of sin' and creates 'the new man of grace.'"

Fr. Miceli then explains that there are obstacles to evangelization.  He writes, "St Thomas Aquinas teaches that three things are necessary for a soul to find, follow and embrace Christ.  First, a person must know what he ought to believe.  Second, he must know what he ought to desire.  Third, he must know what he ought to do.  Now ignorance is the first great obstacle to evangelization.  Catholics, therefore, should grow in a profound knowledge of their Faith through a constant reading and reflection on the Gospels and a faithful following of the teachings of the Magisterium.  Only thus will they come to appreciate the Catholic Faith as a gift of God that is true, good and beautiful.  They then will be moved by the Holy Spirit to bring non-Catholics to share this gift from God with them..."

Finally, surveying the Catholic Church in the United States, Fr. Miceli writes, "Unfortunately, the fact is that the Church in the United States, instead of being the crusading, courageous, evangelizing society Christ founded it to be, has become a cream-puff chaplaincy to the converted - and because of this attitude is failing to hold on even to these...How are we to stir up again the spirit of evangelization?  Pope Paul VI in Evangelii Nuntiandi gives us our marching orders:

'On us particularly, the pastors of the Church, rests the responsibility for reshaping with boldness and wisdom, but in complete fidelity to the content of evangelization, the means that are most suitable and effective for communicating the Gospel message to the men and women of our times.'" (Fr. Vincent P. Miceli, citing Pope Paul VI in Evangelii Nuntiandi, No. 40).

Note this passage.  What does Pope Paul VI mean by "complete fidelity to the content of evangelization"?  The Holy Father means that pastors of the Church must offer the men and women of our times what Pope Benedict XVI has said is the entire plan of God. See here.  That is to say, the full content of Catholic teaching - including, and especially, those hard truths which the world does not want to hear but which faithful Catholics must share with hurting souls who wander about without a shepherd.

This is what evangelization is all about!

Perhaps Cardinal Cupich would be so kind as to regale us with his stunning intellect and explain how Father James Martin offers the faithful an evangelization which reflects the entire plan of God?

I won't be holding my breath.  Liberals believe in slogans, not substance.

Is Pope Benedict XVI a prisoner in the Vatican?

My good friend Bishop Rene Henry Gracida on this troubling question here.

Seven years ago, and several years before Francis stepped onto the world stage, I wrote a post for this Blog in which I said, "...masonic forces seek to subvert the Church from within and to create a "new church" created in the image and likeness of man.  The new humanitarian religion will result from a quiet revolution within the Church.

This new religion will be anti-supernatural.  And it will embrace the Socialistic New World Order and the Reign of Antichrist.  This is the false church Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich saw in her visions.

Father Emmanuel Barbier, a well-known anti-modernist and anti-masonic author, transcribed a document dated April 3, 1844, in which a high-ranking leader of Italian masonic forces called Nubius explains to another highly-placed mason how the quiet revolution will work.  He writes, "Now then, in order to ensure a pope in the required proportions, we must first of all prepare a generation worthy of the kingdom of which we dream...

Cast aside the old men and men of a mature age; go to the youth, and if possible, even to children...It is to the youth that we must go, it is the youth that we must lead, unperceived by them, under the flag of the secret societies.  In order to advance with prudent steps on this dangerous but sure way, two things are absolutely necessary.  You must have the simplicity of doves and the prudence of the serpent...Never pronounce before them a word of impiety or impurity: Maxima debetur puero reverentia...Once your reputation has been established in colleges, high schools, universities, and seminaries, once you have gained the confidence of professors and students, make sure that especially those who enter the ranks of the clergy be pleased with your meetings...

Such reputation will give your doctrine access to the young clergy and to convents.  In a few years, this clergy will naturally have invaded all functions: they will govern, administer, judge, from the Sovereign's council, be called to choose the Pontiff who must reign; and this Pontiff, like most of his contemporaries, will be more or less imbued with Italian and humanitarian principles that we will start placing in circulation...Let the clergy move forward under your standard always believing they are advancing under the banner of the apostolic Keys.  Cast your net like Simon Bar Jonas; spread it to the bottom of sacristies, seminaries, and convents, rather than casting it to the bottom of the sea; if you do not precipitate anything, we promise you a catch even more miraculous than his...

You will have fished a revolution dressed in the Pope's triple crown and cape, carrying the cross and the flag, a revolution that will need only a small stimulus to set fire to the four corners of the earth." (Nubius, Secret Instructions on the Conquest of the Church, excerpted from Les infiltrations maconiques dans l'Eglise, Paris/Brussels: Desclee de Brouwer, 1901, p. 5).


Meditation: John 5:43.

Father Linus Clovis makes the point that,“Obedience is owed to the pope, but the pope owes obedience to the word and the apostolic tradition. We have to obey the pope, but the pope himself must obey the written word. He must obey the tradition. He must respond to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Obedience is owed to the pope, but it is the duty of the pope to give the character of possibility to this obedience. The pope has to facilitate our obeying him, by himself being obedient to the Word of God. Pope Felix III told us, ‘an error that is not resisted is approved. A truth that is not defended is suppressed.’ So we have an obligation to resist error, and we must do everything that we can to promote the truth.”  Father Clovis made this remark in response to the crisis in the Church and the role of Pope Francis in this crisis.  See here.

"The apostasy of the city of Rome from the vicar of Christ and its destruction by Antichrist may be thoughts very new to many Catholics, that I think it well to recite the text of theologians of greatest repute. First Malvenda, who writes expressly on the subject, states as the opinion of Ribera, Gaspar Melus, Biegas, Suarrez, Bellarmine and Bosius that Rome shall apostatize from the Faith, drive away the Vicar of Christ and return to its ancient paganism. ...Then the Church shall be scattered, driven into the wilderness, and shall be for a time, as it was in the beginning, invisible; hidden in catacombs, in dens, in mountains, in lurking places; for a time it shall be swept, as it were from the face of the earth. Such is the universal testimony of the Fathers of the early Church.”- Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, The Present Crisis of the Holy See, 1861, London: Burns and Lambert, pp. 88-90)

Cardinal Manning delivered a series of lectures in 1861 under the title “The Present Crises of the Holy See Tested by Prophecy” in which Manning he foresaw a future crises in the Roman Catholic Church initiated by a false ecumenism and progressivist theology that many orthodox Catholics have loathed following the Second Vatican Council. Manning believed that this progressivist current would undermine the authority of the Church and ultimately result in a departure from the true faith by the nations together with the displacement of the true pope by a false prophet, thus ushering in the Antichrist and global apostasy. Manning also believed secret societies like the Freemasons were part of this conspiracy. “The secret societies have long ago undermined and honeycombed the Christian society of Europe, and are at this moment struggling onward towards Rome, the center of all Christian order in the world,”he wrote. But when he looked at the prophecy in Revelation 18 concerning the end-time destruction of Mystery Babylon, Manning saw it was the hand of God in judgment of worldwide apostasy emanating from Rome:
"We read in the Book Apocalypse, of the city of Rome, that she said in the pride of her heart, “I sit as a queen, and am no widow, and sorrow I shall not see. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day: death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be burned with fire, because God is strong who shall judge her.” Some of the greatest writers of the Church tell us that…the great City of Seven Hills…the city of Rome will probably become apostate…and that Rome will again be punished, for he will depart from it; and the judgment of God will fall…"

Manning explained how many of Catholicism’s greatest theologians agreed with this point of view:

"The apostasy of the city of Rome…and its destruction by Antichrist may be thoughts so new to many Catholics, that I think it well to recite the text of theologians, of greatest repute. First, Malvenda, who writes expressly on the subject, states as the opinion of Ribera, Gaspar Melus, Viegas, Suarez, Bellarmine, and Bosius, that Rome shall apostatize from the faith, drive away the Vicar of Christ, and return to its ancient paganism. Malvenda’s words are:
'But Rome itself in the last times of the world will return to its ancient idolatry, power, and imperial greatness. It will cast out its Pontiff, altogether apostatize from the Christian faith, terribly persecute the Church, shed the blood of martyrs more cruelly than ever, and will recover its former state of abundant wealth, or even greater than it had under its first rulers.'
Lessius says: 'In the time of Antichrist, Rome shall be destroyed, as we see openly from the thirteenth chapter of the Apocalypse;' and again: 'The woman whom thou sawest is the great city, which hath kingdom over the kings of the earth, in which is signified Rome in its impiety, such as it was in the time of St. John, and shall be again at the end of the world.'
 And Bellarmine: 'In the time of Antichrist, Rome shall be desolated and burnt, as we learn from the sixteenth verse of the seventeenth chapter of the Apocalypse.' On which words the Jesuit Erbermann comments as follows: 'We all confess with Bellarmine that the Roman people, a little before the end of the world, will return to paganism, and drive out the Roman Pontiff.'

 Viegas, on the eighteenth chapter of the Apocalypse says: 'Rome, in the last age of the world, after it has apostatized from the faith, will attain great power and splendor of wealth, and its sway will be widely spread throughout the world, and flourish greatly. Living in luxury and the abundance of all things, it will worship idols, and be steeped in all kinds of superstition, and will pay honor to false gods. And because of the vast effusion of the blood of martyrs which was shed under the emperors, God will most severely and justly avenge them, and it shall be utterly destroyed, and burned by a most terrible and afflicting conflagration.'"


 It was Saint John Bosco who prophesied, "And to you, Rome, what will happen! Ungrateful Rome, effeminate Rome, proud Rome! You have reached such a height that you search no further. You admire nothing else in your Sovereign except luxury, forgetting that you and your glory stands upon Golgotha. Now he is old, defenseless, and despoiled; and yet at his word, the word of one who was in bondage, the whole world trembles.

Rome! To you I will come four times.

The first time, I shall strike your lands and the inhabitants thereof.

The second time, I shall bring the massacre and the slaughter even to your very walls. And will you not yet open your eyes?

I shall come a third time and I shall beat down to the ground your defenses and the defenders, and at the command of the Father, the reign of terror, of dreadful fear, and of desolation shall enter into your city.

But My wise men have now fled and My law is even now trampled underfoot. Therefore I will make a fourth visit. Woe to you if My law shall still be considered as empty words. There will be deceit and falsehood among both the learned and the ignorant. Your blood and that of your children will wash away your stains upon God's law. War, pestilence and famine are the rods to scourge men's pride and wickedness. O wealthy men, where is your glory now, your estates, your palaces? They are the rubble on the highways and byways.

And your priests, why have you not run to 'cry between the vestibule and the Altar,' begging God to end these scourges? Why have you not, with the shield of faith, gone upon the housetops, into the homes, along the highways and byways, into every accessible corner to carry the seed of My word? Know you that this is the terrible two-edged sword that cuts down My enemies and breaks the Anger of God and of men?"
In our own time, the germ ideas of a one-world religion are already being sowed. And this false humanitarian religion will burst into poisonous flower when enough hearts have grown cold and have abandoned the true religion. As Jane Le Royer explained in prophecy: "When the time of the Antichrist is near, a false religion will appear which will be opposed to the unity of God and His Church. This will cause the greatest schism the world has ever known."

Can you not see the emerging signs? How do we find the Church today? The Mystical Body of the Crucified One - the Holy Catholic Church - is climbing Calvary, carrying a heavy cross. She is experiencing the hour of abandonment and betrayal. Her body is being tormented by the scourges of sin which strike at it and by numerous sacrileges which open up deep wounds in it. A Catholic priest in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts openly calls her "evil" just as the Pharisees suggested Our Lord was evil and demon possessed (Matthew 11:18; 12: 24). And his parishioners applaud.

Indeed, Our Lady told Father Gobbi,"The hour of Calvary has arrived for the Church, called to offer herself in holocaust and to be immolated on the cross of her bloody martyrdom. The hour of Calvary has arrived for this poor humanity, which is already beginning to live the painful hours of its chastisement..' (Rome, May 1, 1994).

But too many are proud. Their eyes blinded by sin and egoism. Like the Pharisees before them, they are incapable of reading the signs of the times because their spiritual eyes are closed. They cannot hear the Spirit because their ears are closed. They cannot feel the promptings of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus because their hearts are closed. Such people cannot endure sound teaching but have itching ears and will continue to accumulate teachers who suit their own likings, teachers who will cater to their lusts by providing them with myths (2 Timothy 4: 3, 4).

And still so many of our shepherds remain silent like mute dogs. They have not begged God to end these scourges. They have not wept between the vestibule and the altar. They have not taken up the shield of faith to protect their flocks. Their judgment will be all the more severe, for God expects more from His ministers (Luke 12: 48).

Pray for Pope Benedict XVI and Holy Mother Church.

A resignation made out of grave fear.. is invalid by the law itself

An interesting question is posed at non veni pacem today.  See here.

Canon 332.2 of the Code of Canon Law States clearly that:

§2. If it happens that the Roman Pontiff resigns his office, it is required for validity that the resignation is made freely and properly manifested but not that it is accepted by anyone.

Canon 188 States that:

"A resignation made out of grave fear that is inflicted unjustly or out of malice, substantial error, or simony is invalid by the law itself."

At his inauguration, Pope Benedict XVI said, "Pray for me, that I may not flee for fear of the wolves."

Obviously the Holy Father said this for a reason.  If he was motivated by such fear to resign, the resignation would be invalid by the law itself.

Faithful Catholics: Stand with Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Caffarra and other legitimate shepherds against the forces of Ecclesiastical Masonry

Cardinal Carlo Caffarra has reminded us that we have entered the time of the final battle between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan, between the Culture of Truth and the Culture of the Lie.

Caffarra said that legalized abortion comes from the “culture of the lie” where the “crime” of murdering a human being is seen as a “good.”

Abortion is a “sacrilegious act,” he said, adding that it is the “profoundest negation of the truth of man.”

“The reason why man should not shed the blood of man is that man is the image of God. Through man, God dwells in His creation. This creation is the temple of the Lord, because man inhabits it. To violate the intangibility of the human person is a sacrilegious act against the Sanctity of God. It is the Satanic attempt to generate an ‘anti-creation.’ By ennobling the killing of humans, Satan has laid the foundations for his ‘creation’: to remove from creation the image of God, to obscure his presence therein,” he said.

The Cardinal said Homosexual “marriage” also comes from the “culture of the lie” since it “denies entirely the truth of marriage” as it comes from the “mind of God the Creator.”

“The Divine Revelation has told us how God thinks of marriage: the lawful union of a man and woman, the source of life. In the mind of God, marriage has a permanent structure, based on the duality of the human mode of being: femininity and masculinity. Not two opposite poles, but the one with and for the other,” he said.

“The union between a man and woman, who become one flesh, is human cooperation in the creative act of God,” he added.

Satan, in pushing the lies of abortion and homosexuality, is attempting to destroy the two most important pillars of creation, the “human person” created in the image of God and the “conjugal union” between a man and woman.

This is solid Catholic teaching in preparation for this final battle between the Children of Mary and the Children of Lucifer.

By contrast, Masonic forces, led by Francis, would have us believe that Faithful Catholics have been obsessed with abortion and homosexuality.

But how can the defense of "the two most important pillars of creation" be justly labelled "obsessive"?  Why then would Francis assert such a thing? Because the Devil is pursuing a divide and conquer strategy even within the Church.

At Fatima, Pope Benedict XVI called abortion and same-sex "marriage" some of the most "insidious and dangerous" threats facing the world today.

And so they are.  Which is why faithful Catholics need to stand with Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Caffarra and other legitimate shepherds and against the forces of Freemasonry within the Church.

The hidden hand of masonry here.

Francis insults the dignity of the laity...

Mundabor writes:

"Francis has spoken in front of the usual, convenient audience of opportunists and assorted sycophants, and was applauded when he issued the following admonitions to his abused sheep: “do not clericalise the laity” and “don't be more Papist than the Pope”.

I must say I had to smile.

The laity is being “clericalised” (that is: seen as the authentic carriers of the Catholic message) because the clergy shamelessly, insistently, blatantly refuse to do their job. If the local priest talks rubbish all the time and the bloggers online talk sense, it is fairly obvious that everyone with even a faint interest in his salvation will look to the latter for his instruction, and will look at the former as an embarrassment at best and a disgrace at worst. Actually, woe to the one who swallows all the excrement the bad priest dishes to him and thinks he is being a good Catholic. He is dancing on the brink of hell as he smiles “peace beeeee with youuuuuuu” to his pew neighbour..."

Popes Benedict XVI and Saint John Paul II, like their predecessors, were not threatened by an informed laity as Francis is.  But then, they weren't spewing nonsense either.

Pope Benedict XVI emphasized that the laity are co-responsible for the Church
In other words, the laity are not "second-class" citizens within the Church.

The Catechism stresses that, "Since, like all the faithful, lay Christians are entrusted by God with the apostolate by virtue of their Baptism and Confirmation, they have the right and duty, individually or grouped in associations, to work so that the divine message of salvation may be known and accepted by all men throughout the earth. This duty is the more pressing when it is only through them that men can hear the Gospel and know Christ. Their activity in ecclesial communities is so necessary that, for the most part, the apostolate of the pastors cannot be fully effective without it." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 900).

In his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles Laici (The Lay Members of Christ's Faithful People), Pope John Paul II reminded us that, "The voice of the Lord clearly resounds in the depths of each of Christ's followers who, through faith and the sacraments of Christian initiation is made like to Jesus Christ, is incorporated as a living member in the Church and has an active part in her mission of salvation." (No. 3).

Sadly, there are all too many clerics Like Francis who haven't really embraced this authentic teaching of the Magisterium. For such clerics, the laity are second-class citizens who are tolerated but not really embraced fully as collaborators in the life and mission of the Church.

This is most unfortunate. It was Pope Pius XII who said that, "The Faithful, more precisely the lay faithful, find themselves on the front lines of the Church's life; for them the Church is the animating principle for human society. Therefore, they in particular, ought to have an ever-clearer consciousness not only of belonging the Church, but of being the Church, that is to say, the community of the faithful on earth under the leadership of the Pope, the head of all, and of the Bishops in communion with him. These are the Church..." (Pius XII, Discourse to the New Cardinals, February 20, 1946: AAS 38 (1946), 149).

The truth of lay participation in the priesthood of Christ follows logically from the doctrine of the Mystical Body. Everyone who is incorporated into the Mystical Body participates in the dignities, honors, and offices of the Mystical Head (Jesus). "Because Christ is our head," says St. Thomas Aquinas, "that which was conferred upon him, was also in him conferred upon us" (Summa Theologica, III, q. 58, a.4, ad 1). Or, as Pope John Paul II put it: "Referring to the baptized as 'new born babes', the apostle Peter writes: 'Come to him, to that living stone, rejected by men but in God's sight chosen and precious; and like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ ... you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light' (1 Pt 2:4-5, 9).

A new aspect to the grace and dignity coming from Baptism is here introduced: the lay faithful participate, for their part, in the threefold mission of Christ as Priest, Prophet and King. This aspect has never been forgotten in the living tradition of the Church, as exemplified in the explanation which St. Augustine offers for Psalm 26: 'David was anointed king. In those days only a king and a priest were anointed. These two persons prefigured the one and only priest and king who was to come, Christ (the name "Christ" means "anointed"). Not only has our head been anointed but we, his body, have also been anointed ... therefore anointing comes to all Christians, even though in Old Testament times it belonged only to two persons. Clearly we are the Body of Christ because we are all "anointed" and in him are "christs", that is, "anointed ones", as well as Christ himself, "The Anointed One". In a certain way, then, it thus happens that with head and body the whole Christ is formed..'

In the wake of the Second Vatican Council, at the beginning of my pastoral ministry, my aim was to emphasize forcefully the priestly, prophetic and kingly dignity of the entire People of God..." (Christifideles Laici, No. 14).

This emphasis has been abandoned by the Masonic Francis as he seeks to destroy the Church from within.