Thursday 24 January 2019

The Trainwreck Continues, Where it Stops, Nobody Knows


Since I stopped blogging quite some time ago, the unparalleled train wreck that is Pope Francis continues to bring fresh horror to the Catholic Church. The abuse crisis that will undoubtedly mark Francis’s entire pontificate until and beyond its end has all but extinguished the moral credibility of 'Francis the wonderful man' and the reputation of most US Bishops. Nobody’s coming out of this looking good, apart from the honest whistle-blower who reproached himself for his own failures, Archbishop Vigano. The US abuse summit will almost certainly involve quite some PR management opportunities of the ‘this time we really mean it’ variety, but unless sackcloth is actually produced for the Bishops, it is hard to see it limiting, let alone addressing the nature of the crisis. Let's pray for it to bring some healing to the Church, nevertheless, despite the presence and leadership role of Cardinal Cupich.

Archbishop McCarrick’s victims are many, not limited to the actual boys and men he molested or violated, scarring for life. The entire Church is wounded, the entire Church is reeling psychologically and spiritually from McCarrick’s molestation and violation of it. It is, fundamentally, what abuse does. It scars for life, so much so that nothing, nothing will ever be the same again. Bishops, priests, laity are reeling and the Pope was not at all prepared for an unrelenting hurricane season of abuse related headlines that lay charges so close to him that Catholics wonder if any of his associates are untainted by scandal.

There is something rather half-hearted even about the enthusiasm of the most loyal and vocal Francis defenders nowadays. Gone, it seems, is the unfettered adulation of former days. Francis is an embarrassment to the Church. Even they get that. Even the cheerleaders are starting to look like panicking nurses in the field hospital that is the Francis papacy, their noises starting to sound angry and bitter, like men who see they are losing even when power is in their hands.

They might hold power for years, but not comfortably, not now. Francis’s handle on papal power and his health seem remarkably fine and his friends can do a lot for his reputation with Photoshop, but more and more people are realising that at the heart of the Hierarchy of the Church is a huge problem with morality, not just by the Church’s high standards, the Standard that is Christ, but even the standards admired by unbelievers. Most young people are almost certainly fornicating. Most married people are contracepting, but most of these persons are not embroiled in abuse cover up and / or sexual abuse allegations and financial scandal. Really, they are not. Right now, unrepentant mortal sinners who may or may not act out of ignorance have every reason to think the Church is a cesspool. Most of their friends and associates probably aren’t doing things Cardinals do either. Not all gays are having orgies in their flats and many think themselves relatively respectable.

Of course, the great project of the updating of the Catholic Church to 1968 rebooted, only this time with more exotic and spicy drugs, will continue apace, being, as it is, a project too big to fail. You have to take drugs to comprehend it. But there is a gaping hole of credibility in the Church. It is called ‘Pope Francis’ and it shows absolutely no sign of being repaired. Much as Francis and his associates would wish it to be, it most certainly isn’t 1968 anymore. Sexual liberation is nothing new and sexual liberation (or licentiousness) is why Francis is on the rocks. It is also the reason why many people are on the rocks and deep down a lot of people know it. It is 2019 now and a lot of oestrogen-infected water has gone under the bridge since then. A lot of water has passed under the bridge, in fact, since 2013. It is this water that seems to have turned back on its course and is coming towards Francis, the polluted and stagnant water of the sexual revolution and the unmitigated mess it has created, in the Church and the World.

The same worried conversations taking place at EU meetings, Davos meetings and, dare I say it, Bilderberg meetings, about the ‘populism’ that gave rise to Trump in America and Brexit in Britain, Salvini in Italy and Bolsonaro in Brazil, are probably going on in the Vatican. Politically, the world is changing, a polar shift seems to be taking place, jolting the word on its axis, in which all aspects of governance and leadership are being thoroughly scrutinised and roundly rejected by populaces when they are given the chance.

Nowadays, the greatest commodity in politics, as it is in the Church, is trust. Whoever you are, if you can prove you are not like the rest, you are electable. What is more, people will know you’re not like the rest by what you say and whether you have conviction about it. Populism, no wonder the Pope hates it, gives men and women the hope, often a founded hope, that leaders of generally conservative movements are, themselves, thoroughly sick of the globalist, liberal, elite agenda, an uncompromising and totalitarian agenda that it is. Compared to the world inhabited by people such as Teresa May, Hillary Clinton, Angela Merkel and most of the mainstream media, what we call ‘ordinary people’ have had enough of the politically correct rule givers.

Populism of the kind that terrifies the Pope brings with it a definite set of boundaries by which many can be divided. Massimo Faggioli, for instance, resents, loathes and detests it, but he would, quite simply because he doesn’t seem to stand for much or even believe in much more than his liberal hobby horses. The very fact that MAGA hats bring liberals out in a rash makes those who wear them want to wear them all the more, the headwear becoming an even more heightened icon of defiance against liberal tyranny, just like Saturnos did for clergy after Pope Francis seemed to mock them as a sign of doctrinal rigidity and vanity. These red hats seeem to stand for something. It would be great if Cardinal's red hats stood for something, wouldn't it?

Pope Francis shows no sign that he is learning from his mistakes. He is like most appalling bishops in this habit. He continues to make himself dependent upon a PR team that has lost the able Greg Burke for reasons that Burke decided not to give, but the Pope has commented before that he doesn’t do change, he feels that it is important to be himself and continue forward without regret, onwards without fear (of the Lord). This has, of course, been his great undoing and his complete resistance to turning around and going in the other direction than his chartered course is the very reason for all his problems, problems which serve to undermine his great project for the ‘full implementation’ of Vatican II as envisaged by liberal professors around the globe. It will bring joy only to the spiritually and actually dead if he manages to do it.

The implementation, will, naturally, create if successful a host of other victims, rejects and pariahs and have Catholics searching desperately for the emergency exits on Francis’s express train to wherever it is the St Gallen Mafia wanted. Did they even know? Does this reform movement even have a final destination other than Hell in a handcart? Francis’s dream for the Church probably involves ensuring bad men have power for a long time. It certainly involves ensuring good men are nowhere near it and that faithful Catholic priests, bishops and laity have to endure great evils before the triumph of the Church (a triumph he doesn’t believe in) takes place. I am sure this was always what Francis envisioned in the end (apart from the bit about him losing bigtime).

The thing that will really get to him, though, is that he wanted to look incredibly good while he was doing it and pass himself off as a noble and kindly Catholic pope while driving the Church off a cliff. It will anger him greatly that the prospect of the Church remembering him as fondly as so many of his predecessors, including Benedict XVI, is fading fast and the prospect of his being remembered as the worst Pope in all of Christian history is coming into view.

Francis is unpredictable but he probably won’t go, he doesn’t care for the Church enough to see that the Church can do better without his amoral leadership. He dislikes the Church enough to stay and drive this train, but alas for him, when the Francis express train crashes, having ignored so many warning signs the Lord sent him through many messengers, he has forgotten that the first victim of the train crash is always the driver and the driver, if he is found to have ignored warnings, always gets the blame. In the end, the company might even say the driver wasn't competent, we're not sure he was really one of ours.

15 comments:

Barbara Jensen said...

Bergoglio is a representation of the problem of complete corruption in the institutional Catholic Church. The forces of evil now own the power wheels of the Church and there will be no end to the trajectory of destruction of Her until the Mass has been invalidated and the Holy Eucharist as the living Christ fully disbelieved. There Is no doubt that the true Church will soon be underground with Mass offered in homes, garages, or other nondescript places. The false church will reside in the Church buildings. The true Church is founded on Faith in Christ and the proclamation of the fullness of Revelation given to us by Him and upheld and taught by His Bride, Mother Church. Numerous mystics and private revelations have predicted this present-cay disarray. Prayer and personal sacrifice are the only fertile avenues open to us. At the expense of not having this comment posted, I again assert that Ann Barnhardt is correct in her thesis that Bergoglio is an antipope. He is preparing the way forth antichrist to sit on the throne of Peter.

Paulusmaximus said...

Well done on a really incisive article, written in a balanced tone. As we all know, the problem goes way beyond Francis, and his view of the church reflects that of so many bishops, priests and lay people. To some extent, the first two groups kept their heads down and remained at least partly silent about their views before the arrival of Francis. His pontificate gave them the green light to express their pent-up ambitions to sweep aside the last vestages of traditional Catholicism, and herald in a new, liberal, Catholic Church which only preaches those values which are shared by the secular world. Francis's picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone magazine in 2014 nicely summarised the coalesence of Catholic and worldly amnbition -- did a well known pop song of the 1970s not speak about the ambition of all rock groups to get their picture "on the cover of the Rolling Stone"?

The Catholic Cybermilitiaman said...

So very glad that the blog is up and running! First-time subscriber, but looking very much forward to following this site!

Catholic Cyber-Militia said...

Go get 'em! Just subscribed.

John Haggerty said...

I am very glad to hear you again, Laurence. I have been praying for you.

The Bones said...

Thank you, all prayers most welcome! Mention me to God as often as possible!

Anonymous said...

Very well written! Thank you.

Arwen said...

I am so glad you are blogging again. This moment in the history of God’s Church needs clear voices like yours.

John Haggerty said...

Faithful followers of this blog might want to watch a YouTube talk:

Bergoglian Antipapacy: 10 January 2019.
From Ann Barnhardt

John Haggerty said...

Please watch on YouTube:

The Vortex - Ripping the Church to Pieces (Church Militant) 30 January 2019.

Mr. Voris (author of the above) and Michael Matt of The Remnant are our Belloc and Chesterton.

Two years ago Mr. Matt made a moving plea for a life-saving return to true Catholic Christian teaching.
See on YouTube:

Bishop Barron's Silence (Remnant) 17 September 2017.
The Silence is a reference to the Scorcese film which premiered at the Vatican.

'Europe will return to the Faith, or she will perish. The Faith is Europe. And Europe is the Faith.'

Those are the closing words of Hilaire Belloc's great book, 'Europe And The Faith' which was published in 1920 before a catastrophic world-wide economic depression, the rise of Fascism and Stalinism, a terrible world war that saw the death of millions of innocent people, the planned murder of six million Jews and the dropping of the atomic bomb on the civilian population of Japan.

My own edition of the book is a 1924 third impression published by Constable.
Thanks.

N.D. said...

"It is not possible to have Sacramental Communion without Ecclesial Communion", due to The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque), for it Is Through, With, and In Christ, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, That Holy Mother Church exists.

Prior to his election, Jorge Bergoglio made this statement in regards to same-sex sexual unions, denying that which a Catholic must beliieve with Divine and Catholic Faith, and separating himself from Christ, and His One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.

"If there is a union of a private nature, there is neither a third party, nor is society affected." According to Jorge Bergoglio, this union only becomes problematic if it is called a marriage, and it involves children.

To deny The Sanctity of the marital act within The Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, is to deny that God, The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity, Is The Author Of Love, of Life, and of Marriage, which is apostasy.

John Haggerty said...

May I draw your attention to two other YouTube videos?

'Why Andrew Cuomo Won't Be Excommunicated' (Return to Tradition) 28 January 2019.

'Cardinal Dolan on why he won't excommunicate N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo' (American Jesuit Review) 29 January 2019.

Cardinal Dolan reminds us that this is not just a Catholic issue but one that concerns the whole of humanity.
This explains why President Trump has stepped in and declared his own position as Pro-Life.

In the Republic of Ireland Marie Steen of the Iona Institute also stood for Pro-Life, and came in for much abuse by the secular liberal establishment.

When Rachel Maddow calls Cardinal Burke 'a rabid conservative' it tells us how frightened and desperate the secularists are becoming.
They see the possibility of a renewal of prophetic Christianity and they are terrified!

See 'Did Fulton Sheen Prophesy About These Times?' (National Catholic Register) by Joseph Pronechen January 28 2019.

John Haggerty said...

Do please read online:

'Venerable Fulton Sheen lays out the 12 tricks anti-Christ will use to destroy Christians' by Pete Balinski (Life Site) October 20 2016.

Here are three of the deceptions which Archbishop Sheen discerned in his reading of Holy Scripture.

Anti-Christ will invoke religion to destroy religion.

He will speak of Christ and say that he was the greatest man who ever lived.

He will set up a counter-Church.
It will be the mystical body of the anti-Christ that will in all externals resemble the Church as the mystical body of Christ.

John Haggerty said...

P.S. The Counter Church of the Antichrist is HERE.
It is the 'inclusive' New Age church of Pope Francis.

Watch 'Cardinal Cupich and the Counter Church in Chicago' (VaticanCatholic.com) 17 November 2018 on YouTube.

Christine said...

I want to use this opportunity to say every big thanks to Dr Ekpen for restoring my relationship back to normal by casting a love spell on my partner to love me again. Contact Dr Ekpen today at (ekpentemple@gmail.com) or on whatsapp +2347050270218 if you want to be happy in your relationship again.

The Pope Who Won't Be Buried

It has been a long time since I have put finger to keyboard to write about our holy Catholic Faith, something I regret, but which I put larg...