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 largely down to full-time gardening work and domestic duties. With that said, I certainly know how to waste the time God gives me each day on self-indulgent, wordly pursuits. The sorrowful death of Pope Benedict XVI, however, I feel I cannot allow to go unblogged and I expect I will keep writing about him for some time when time and self-discipline allows.
Perhaps like me, you are suffering under this pontificate, the credibility of which and even the validity of which remains widely disputed, with what some might call 'Francis fatigue'. Let's face it, this pontificate, or anti-pontificate, or whatever it is, has been a war of vitriolic attrition against faithful, devout souls as well as the lukewarm and the lost. Perhaps like me, the last few years, so often a wake-up call to holiness of life has been a Vatican and civil government-driven excuse for self-indulgence, sadness, at times despair and simply clinging to the Faith of our Fathers by your finger tips. Benedict XVI himself posited that the future of the Church would be little else but this, until at last all things are restored in Christ, in a victory that can only be claimed by Himself and particularly the Immaculate Heart of His Blessed Mother.
The death of Benedict XVI should be, as it has been, a much needed wake-up call to unity around his central petrine teachings, steeped not only in the Church post-Vatican II but also the Christ of the Gospels and the Fathers of the Church. It should lead us as well to reflect on his Christian virtues and ultimately to his entire outlook on life and man's place in relation to God, man's need for and buried desire for God, buried as it is, under so many earthly pursuits, ambitions and desires, both sordid and worthy. We all know them, we all experience them, we all fall prey to them and we hopefully all know that before the Triune God, they are as nothing. God alone suffices, God alone matters, it is before God, alone, that we will be standing in need of mercy at our Judgement. Benedict XVI knew this. Francis, I fear, does not know it at all.
The men who Benedict praised and esteemed were and remain good men, though he respected most if not all men, such was his gentlemanly approach to all. These were men such as Cardinal Burke, Cardinal Zen, Cardinal Muller, Cardinal Brandmuller, Cardinal Muller, Cardinal Sarah and other men of integrity of life. All such men, of course, have been driven away by Francis from the circles of Vatican influence and power and don't we know it. What unites these men, as well as others, priests, bishops, cardinals and lay faithful with Benedict XVI, is a communion of fidelity to the Truth. Such men are the servants of the Truth. The servants of the Truth have been driven away from the centre of ecclesiastical power and yet their voice still appeals and at times resounds, as does Benedict's, to modern man and woman, even those entangled in worldly matters.
I know that Benedict XVI's legacy will be one that will continue to mystify even his most ardent supporters and friends. His resignation remains shrouded in mystery even while he maintained publicly that there was nothing mysterious about it. I myself took comfort while he was alive in knowing that a Catholic Pope resided somewhere in the Vatican, somehow holding back somewhat the rising tide of evil by his love for the Faithful, by his prayers and sacrifice, by his isolation and crucifixion, as if by his mere presence in Rome, he offered some kind of silent rebuke to what Pope Francis is doing to the Church by way of deception and slight of hand. I never stopped feeling linked to Benedict, in communion with Benedict. The transition from praying for Pope Benedict XVI the man (as I and many of you have done daily for a long time) to Pope Benedict XVI the soul has not been and will not be an easy one. We are allowed to mourn and we are allowed to feel bereaved by the death of a Pope, and especially by the death of a Pope who we know was close to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, whether we understand or even excuse his decision to resign the ministry of the papacy or the governance of the Church of God.
We cannot, however, lose hope, and the transitus of Benedict XVI from Earth to, please God, Eternal Life, should not dismay us so as to be a cause for the diminishment of our hope. Please God, the Church has or will have another powerful intercessor for the Church Militant on Earth. For a day, for a week, perhaps for a month, the scandalous pontificate of Pope Francis is eclipsed by Pope Benedict's death and, we pray, birth to life eternal. The death of Benedict XVI is unlikely to stop Francis from doing what Francis has been employed to do to the detriment of souls and the Church on Earth, but Saints can speak in death and speak from the grave, since the grave is not their true resting place. Their true place of rest is Heaven and from there they can thunder. Let us entrust to the tender and most Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ the soul of our dear Holy Father, Benedict XVI and I pray that his life, his exemplary way of life, his noble soul, his virtuous manner and humility of spirit continue to inspire us to put aside the passing glories of this world and to put on Christ, the only way, the only truth and the only life worthy of the name.
Benedict XVI's achievements were many as reigning and active Pope. Let us implore God that we may have him as an intercessor in Heaven, before the Throne of grace, where greater and more marvellous deeds are accomplished than we can fathom. His papacy was, though successful in many ways, nothing short of a Crucifixion. His retirement, also, can have been nothing short of a Crucifixion. To witness your Successor trample upon your work must have been a spiritual and psychological agony for Benedict. Many priests, though fewer Bishops, have seen and will see their own work destroyed in the months and the years to come because of who is governing the Church on Earth and will see it all destroyed in the Name of the One Who accomplished the good works in them. The Church of God is being and will be further crucified.
Many priests, cardinals, bishops and even lay faithful will cut a public figure like that of a lonely corpse, like Benedict XVI in death, surrounded by both friends and enemies on all sides. Let us be in life, what Benedict XVI was in both life and in death, a living rebuke to those who wish to dismantle the work of God in the Church and in our souls. Let us treat people in the gentle and kindly way he treated people, in imitation of our Lord, for even his fiercest enemies he treated lovingly. Let us entrust ourselves always to Jesus and to Mary and those we love and find hard to love also. The followers of Jesus in His own time on Earth were promised rejection and worldly disappointment, not great prestige and plaudits. Let us entrust his dear soul to God and ours also, that even if we cannot or do not follow his kindly, prayerful way of life, that we will at least strive to do so. Even though we will never experience the burden of Office that he had, let us at least bear in meekness and in charity and in humility the burden of life under Francis, as he did. Let us suffer for the love of God, just as he did. His enemies are secretly glad that they have buried Benedict XVI, and they will try to bury his teachings too, his legacy also, but they cannot bury his spirit, or ours, if our spirit is the spirit of Christ, the Risen One.
"Take courage, my children, call on God: he will deliver you from tyranny, from the clutches of your enemies; for I look to the Eternal for your rescue, and joy has come to me from the Holy One at the mercy soon to reach you from your Saviour, the Eternal."
Baruch, 4:21-22
Thank you to a friend for the following initiative:
Monday 2nd August: Join us in a 54-Day 15-decade Novena for a complete and immediate end to the tyranny oppressing our nation, our spiritual and temporal needs for any struggles ahead and for the liberty and exaltation of our Holy Mother the Church.
The time for prayer has never been more urgent; Our Lady promised that the Holy Rosary has been given special power in our times. Let us take her at her word.
This Novena is traditionally divided into two: First 27 days for the intentions, second 27 days thanksgiving for the graces given.
Intentions:
1. For the immediate end of the current tyranny and for the conversion of the wicked.
2. For the spiritual and temporal necessities for any struggles ahead.
3. For the Triumph of the Church.
Those who cannot say 15 decades due to their state of life are asked to offer at least 5 for these intentions. If you missed the 2nd August, join us anyway.
If you would like to pray along with me, I will offer 15 decades (Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious Mysteries) this evening live on my YouTube channel beginning at 9:00pm (GMT) for the intentions of this 54-Day Novena. If you find it harder to pray alone, as many people do, come pray with me.
Before liberals screech that Benedict XVI was a tyrant for proclaiming the Faith Catholic and telling theologians that debate should not be mistaken for dissent, in our ecclesiastical world in which obedience is a big thing, an expected thing, we need to come to terms with what tyranny in the Church looks like. To all extents and purposes, we did on Friday 16th July 2021, on the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. It looks like Pope Francis's Motu Proprio restricting the Traditional Latin Mass.
If I may be so bold, I really believe that tyranny isn't what a wayward 15-year-old might imagine, or what Fr James Martin S.J might imagine. To an evil man, the moral law itself is a tyrant. To a delinquent adolescent, tyranny can be somebody else telling you what to do or to believe or how to behave, but that is the use of authority in the service of the good delivered by a good parent. Christ gave all authority to His Apostles to teach and to baptise in the name of the Most Holy Trinity. This is authority in the service of good. Tyranny is, rather, the abuse or misuse of authority in the active service of injustice or evil.
If a good Christian King commands the collection of taxes to build a Cathedral and the people have to cough up and find the money somehow, that isn't tyranny. Hopefully, he asks the tax collectors to show compassion to the poor. If a bad Christian King plunders monasteries, evicts clergy and paupers in the care of religious and commands adherence to a new self-originating religion, that is tyranny. If a Pope commands that God's Faithful be permitted the liturgical riches of the Church, or that the clergy who wish to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass be not hindered by errant, lukewarm Bishops, that isn't tyranny. If a Pope wishes to remove from God's people their liturgical inheritance - that which belongs not simply to the Pope or to the Bishops or even to the clergy but to the entire People of God - that is tyranny, since it is the abuse of power at the service of an injustice. What we see under Francis is injustice flourishing everywhere. Why? Because he does not fear God.
All tyranny involves transgression of the law of God, since it is the law of God that restrains the tyrant and protects the lowly. Unless the law of God is respected by the Monarch, tyranny is always waiting in the wings. All tyranny involves theft. Notice how rights we presumed were forever protected by governments for the greater majority of subjects or citizens (though not the unborn) have been dissolved in the Covid-era. Basic rights during lockdown, yes even the right to worship God in a public manner, were stolen, with the acquiescence of Bishops, setting a terrifying precedent for the future in which unjust rulers can announce an emergency at any time of their choosing and Bishops will meekly obey. In the post-vaccination world, even the assumed right to go into a grocery shop are not going to be protected for all. That's how far we have fallen.
The awkward truth is that Catholics who have been following the Bergoglian nightmare already knew Francis to be a tyrant and a dictator straight out of a 'how to Stalin' Communist manual. We all witnessed the robber Synods in which every view but the Catholic view was acceptable. Perhaps we had hoped or even grown to assume that because Francis is liturgically illiterate and most likely unteachable about the heavenly realities of the Mass, that he would leave Catholics attached to the Mass of Ages alone. Tragically, he hasn't and, even more tragically, he isn't going to. In truth it is more tragic for him than it is even for us, since it is he who is digging his eternal grave. It is he who like Cain has slain his brother, Benedict XVI, destroying his holy work while his predecessor still lives, he whose offering was acceptable to God! Francis has lit the blue touchpaper on a hot war, not a war started by himself, but a war he obviously intends to finish or win. This is WWIII and his chief weapon is Vatican II, a Council now held so closely and forcefully by heretics that they will choke that Council to death.
My heart goes out to the many, many priests, some of whom I personally know, who will see their right to offer the Mass that has nourished so many souls in the distant and recent past, established within the law of the Church removed by the lawless one, for whom law is only useful when it is in the service of destruction, whether that destruction is within families, within souls or within parishes or religious communities. Francis is afraid to meet with those whose lives are blameless, the few notably irreproachable Cardinals and Bishops of the Church whose audience he refuses. To dictators, to celebrity or notorious priests or evil Bishops or bad Cardinals, however, he is an erstwhile confidant and friend. My prayers are with the clergy whose rights to celebrate the ancient Roman rite has been removed with no moral justification whatsoever and with the laity whose rights are oppressed by an unjust steward who constantly belittles the simple Faith and love for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass that our ancestors held and cherished.
Such a flagrant injustice as this, on such a scale as to incorporate not merely one religious order but all, not one parish, but all, not one priest, but potentially all and with the potential to persecute not only traditionally-minded priests, but sensible or moderate Bishops who harbour them in their Dioceses to my mind cannot meet with anything but discreet resistance, if not open defiance. I tremble in saying it, but if psychologists are right, the more you give in to a tyrant such as this, with such megalomaniac ambitions, the more ground you concede to those in the active service of Evil, the more confident they become.
Francis won't be satisfied with stealing the Mass of Ages from under your nose, nor will he be satisfied with removing the Roman Missal of 1962 from your hands. I expect he won't be satisfied until you have done what he has done and committed public idolatry and in some manner apostasised from the perennial Catholic Faith. What begins as the removal of the Traditional Latin Mass most probably ends with the removal of the Sacraments of Life altogether. Why? Because this is a Satanic war against God and His Church. Quite patently Satan hates the Traditional Latin Mass because it most expresses the Beauty and transcendence of Almighty God and the efficacy of the one Supreme Sacrifice of Calvary for our Redemption wrought by our loving Saviour, Jesus Christ. However, Satan also hates the Novus Ordo Missae, for while the Sacrifice of our Saviour is rendered more opaque by human novelty, God Himself is made truly present on the Altar. Make no mistake, the Devil hates the Latin Mass, but the Devil hates every Mass offered for the Salvation of mankind. I could be wrong, but I expect that the 'Missal to end the Mass' is already written. My question then is what at this stage, a crucial stage in the war is the Catholic response to tyranny such as this, knowing that it comes from the Evil one? What does the Lord Jesus want from His soldiers confirmed in His army? One layman has made a contribution to this urgent debate already.
The Church, however, cannot be led by the laity. Let us implore the true King, the merciful King, the just One, to lead us and give us Shepherds who will guide us through this war to victory in Christ Jesus our Lord.
If you are determined not to be vaccinated against the symptoms of Covid-19 by request, friendly advice or belligerent threat of your Government, be sure you will be in for a fight that will be deeply unpleasant. I have spoken to many people, mostly Catholics, who are determined not to be vaccinated by the government come what may, but what we say we will do, or not do, I cannot help but feel, is currently aspirational. This is because I expect the breaking down of resistance to the vaccine to be both relentless and relentlessly cruel. As I have explained to others, I could not give just one reason why I've determined not to be 'jabbed' (so welcoming!) by the State, but I will endeavour to explain my position to the best of my ability. Because I have considered this vaccine and its octopus-like legs, I will be unable to write about it in a single post.
Over a period of time, I have publicly defended the Church's perennial position on the unborn child and the rights to life of the unborn. I don't consider my personal decisions to be separate to my public writing. I consider that taking a vaccine in which cells were harvested from an unborn child, while still alive and breathing desperately for life, to be a deviation from our Faith. That such material was considered necessary to the cocktail I consider to be a horrifying. I also consider it to be an extraordinary counter-witness to what we profess as Catholics to take it. You might find a multitude of Catholics, including Pope Francis, who disagree with me, but I expected there to be something palpably horrific about the range of vaccines on offer, because the Covid-19 pandemic has stunk to high Heaven since the very beginning. I suspected there may be something in the vaccine or in its origins that would amount to an abomination in the sight of God, since we are dealing with a world ran almost exclusively by diabolists of varying degrees in thrall to the Prince of this World, who is Satan. I suppose if nobody had informed me of the origins, by testing or by inclusion of murdered abortion victims cells in the vaccine, I would still consider the vaccine ill-advised, but I will consider those issues in another post.
As to the issue of whether my cooperation in the intrinsically evil act of abortion committed decades ago is remote or not so remote, for me is not the only or even the central issue. Personal cooperation with this historic evil is not simply about me and my personal choice, but about my personal choice set amidst the personal choices of millions of other men and women making a totality of choices that either ratify this barbaric act, which continues daily in this world on an industrial scale, or reject it. In 1930s Germany, Hitler won the popular vote but not everybody voted for him. Once in power, the vast majority of Germans permitted Hitler to commit many shocking evils, even convinced by propaganda that their evils were goods, but not everybody failed to resist him, the White Rose Movement being one group that determined not to let his racist and eugenic mindset prevail upon them or claim them for their own. Such figures were, though not in the long-term as history has judged them, short-term losers for not joining the Hitler train, though certain dissidents did end up on the train to Auschwitz.
While I cannot stand up and say that those persons who have accepted vaccines that originate or are tainted by the crime of abortion will be condemned at the Judgement Seat of Christ, I do believe that I will be, if I take it, because I am in full possession of the facts of the vaccines and while it is true to say I have something of a delicate conscience, I am actually allowed to have a delicate conscience that abhors the blood sacrifice committed against an innocent child and which wants nothing to do with it. I cannot say 'No' to the crime that took place against this child, it is too late for that, but I can say 'No' to sharing in any way in that crime by not giving my consent to a vaccine derived from it, tainted by it. You, for your part, cannot say I won't be condemned for taking it, since you are not God and because every man must answer to his sacred conscience which is inviolable and where God's voice echos in the soul. Conscience is the voice of God, we can mix God's voice with our own and make errors, certainly, but if you are going to call me 'scrupulous' for wanting nothing to do with a vaccine originating in a murder, to be injected into my body, I will politely ask you to desist from doing so. You must answer for yourself to God. I, too, must answer to Him and render an account for this period of my life, like most periods, a period of my life already mired in grievous infidelities against my Creator and Redeemer. I do not wish to add this to those given that this decision has required much consideration and thought. My decision, or not, to ratify in my person and in my body the sadistic evils of an industry that lives off murdering babies is mine alone. I hope that is clear.
Furthermore, I hold that the ties of an abortion linked inextricably to the vaccines are a massive red flag for Christians everywhere. What 'angel' has convinced you that there will be no reckoning in this life, let alone the next, for accepting such a thing into your body? I struggle to see how those who accept this concoction will not inherit some kind of curse, be it mild or severe, but perhaps I am mad, perhaps my mind is not sophisticated enough to comprehend the intricacies of this moral question. The abortion tells me that Satan's fingerprints are all over the vaccine, perhaps it tells you something different, but I remain something of a simpleton, you may have come to some other conclusion that is more nuanced. I have not. God says, 'Behold I set forth in your sight this day a blessing and a curse: A blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you this day: A curse, if you obey not the commandments of the Lord your God, but revolt from the way which now I shew you, and walk after strange gods which you know not. (Deuteronomy 11:26-28)
The Vatican have helpfully informed you that you can in good conscience take this vaccine because your cooperation in this crime is remote. God, however, is not remote from our decisions. The Vatican have not told you whether the unborn child used, abused and destroyed by wicked persons will rise on the Last Day under the arms of Jesus Christ to pronounce a verdict on us depending on our decision. However, that child will rise again at the General Judgement. I, for my part, am not certain he or she will agree with the Vatican. Why are you so sure he or she will commend you, or be indifferent to your decision, or absolve you and not condemn you?
There may be a veritable host of reasons why a soul's guilt in this matter is lessened, such matters as fear, coercion, the need for security, the duties and responsibilities of life that mean there is little or no guilt at all for the vast majority of persons. I do not, however, consider that what may in the Divine Judgement apply to many people applies to me. Why? Because I have thought about it a lot. I was, in fact, thinking about it shortly after the pandemic broke. I have thought about this for two years. I have considered whether the Holy Family would submit themselves to a vaccine of this kind or flee. I was confirmed as a Soldier of Christ. What soldier of Christ would submit himself to a vaccine the Holy Family would decline, out of love for the commandments of God, including the Commandment not only not to kill, but not to consent to sin in any way, including counsel, flattery or silence. and the esteem and honour in which they hold the unborn, their hatred for evil, their constant affirmation of the Justice of God.
If you hate abortion and its destruction of life, it strikes me as simple common sense that you withstand the culture of abortion in your body, with your body and if the only fortress you have in this world against the abominable crime of abortion is your body, use it, use it for Jesus Christ and His Gospel of Life and be assured that no good can come from your involvement in this cruel industry, not for you, not for the human race whether it is objectively remote or not. Do you want to fight? Perhaps not. Do you want to fight evil? Then do so! No, you didn't kill the child, but do you want to protest the killing of this child? Do you want to stand for Jesus Christ and His Blessed Mother against the vicious onslaughts against nascent life in the womb? Then don't take this vaccine. 'It can't be that simple!' I hear you cry. I admit that the complex circumstances of this life are not simple and a thousand reasons render choice in this area most difficult for us all. You object to this vaccine but consider a small army incapable of defeating such an evil as we are presented with today? Is that what we were confirmed for? Were we not confirmed to fight evil?
These are my thoughts, this is my writing, I own my words and my thoughts and I no longer hide them. You are welcome to think or to comment below this post as you see fit. I do not judge you if you have taken this vaccine, you acted according to the lights of your conscience and the information at hand, having deliberated the issues at hand, and given not only the pressures upon persons young and old during this time, but the anxieties of our age and our personal situation and duties in your state of life, I am in no position to judge you. I am, however, allowed to think for myself about this issue and write my thoughts publicly, yes I have my opinions, informed by the teachings of the Church. I may not be a moral theologian, I am just a Catholic who is deeply uncomfortable with a prevailing orthodoxy within the Church that somehow a variety of health factors in our troubled age mean we can dispense with what seems a most obvious way to fight gratuitous evil, that is, not to consent to it with your body, for your body, as you know, is the Temple of God.
Virus normalcy, the so-called 'new normal', is for Christians almost certainly more abhorrent than it is for people of other religions and of no faith. Of course, we have people of other religions (Freemasons) and of no faith (atheists) in the Hierarchy of the Catholic Church and that is probably our biggest problem, as well as the fact that Pope Francis (wildly popular with Freemasons and atheists) leads the way in this feature of modern Catholic life. None were more keen to adapt to the new normal as Francis and none will I suspect be so keen as he to lead us to whatever hellish, inhuman, dystopian landscape the new normal leads us. Nearly all Bishops fell like dominos after Francis and we should never forget that terrifying precedent. Let us pray we are not reminded in Autumn.
The reason that I would argue the new normal is incompatible with Christianity is because ours is a passionately human Faith, our Faith loves our humanity in its imperfection and its vulnerability, because even though it is divine, it is incarnational. It is viscerally human. Our God is the Lord who spits on the earth to form clay and uses it to open the eyes of men born blind. God risks everything to show us His love. The Lord condescends to become human, to experience our frailty, to win us. Our Faith teaches us that we don't readily seek out transmittable illness and suffering for ourselves, but that because God is with us, whether we live or whether we die, we inhabit a vale of tears in which risk is unavoidable. Everything in this world is temporary, including us.
Our Saints, our mystics, our Church fathers taught us that we should live in this world as we in reality are, as if we are passing through, as vulnerable and as short-lived in the sight of God, as a votive candle lit in the evening that burns down and is gone by the morning. St Francis of Assisi, St Clare of Assisi, so many Saints taught us that neither wealth nor health offer any valuable protection in this world, God alone is our Guardian and Protector, our Provider and our Saviour.
St Paul: Shipwrecked in Malta, risk-levels high
If we live, says St Paul, we live for the Lord and if we die, says the Apostle to the Gentiles, we die for the Lord. Our death and judgement is meant to be at the forefront of our minds, not to produce terror within us, but holy and filial fear of offending God. If we sin, we are promised forgiveness if we sincerely repent. When we die, we want to be embraced by the Lord in His mercy and dwell forever in the presence of his holy ones. We live as men already under sentence of death, we hope for merciful reprieve from the Divine Majesty when we die. Our ordinary human state is corruptible and wretched, but we are made holy by God, the God who divinizes us with His very self and we are called to be holy both in body and soul. Our bodies, if faithful, will on the last day be glorified beyond all our understanding. Health in this world is a blessing, but perhaps even more of a blessing is to be chastened even in a small way in this world, so that we yearn for the next.
Godlessness produces societies governed by fear
Inimical to Christianity is the idea of the self-isolation of the human race, of sealing ourselves from dirt, bacteria and the potential proximate physical dangers inherent in the world, of seeing our humanity as diseased to the point of the fearful avoidance of others, of fearing real communion with others or with, God forgive us, our Eucharistic Lord. These things fly in the face of the Gospel we have received. We accept crosses, we understand that health is here today and could be gone tomorrow. Before us, all who lived have died, death approaches us all, and despite fact that we have never experienced it as individuals, the same prospect of death awaits us all. To those with even the greatest faith, death is an experiential unknown, a human mystery so profound we cannot begin to plumb its depths, as we slip away from a temporal realm, out of time itself and into eternity.
As Christians, we refuse to live our lives in any other world but the fallen world, the real world, but our souls and our minds are enlightened by the Holy Spirit, we are animated by the Spirit of Christ, He lives and works in us, we try not to impede His life in us as we strive to live in the power of the Holy Spirit in that world, to extend the Kingdom of God, to bring the light of Christ to others, to bring eternal Salvation to the world, the promise of Heaven to those who repent, who are baptised and who believe in the Lord Jesus and live by His Commandments. Jesus leads us in our Passover to the endless world where there is no sadness, no suffering, no illness, no death, only joy, for these former things have passed away.
In the first instance, our very understanding that God became man in Jesus Christ radically awakens in us a new reality, a new world, a new reality, a supernaturally new normal, as liberated adopted sons and daughters. In Jesus's suffering and death, we see the divine Person suffering in His humanity which is the same as our humanity, though He is sinless, having taken human flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, taking upon himself a human Body and offering it to His Father in His Passion and Death, taking it up to God the Father at His Ascension. Our Baptism has claimed us for God, it has not claimed us for the world and its dictates. We do not live to bring danger or harm to others, but we are a people for whom the whole concept of 'social distancing' is repellent. We are the very ones called to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, shelter the stranger, the homeless poor, visit the sick and imprisoned, embrace risk for Christ.
We see in the prevelance of a secular Government-led 'new normal' all the hallmarks of a Christless, hopeless world in which just about everything and everyone is in a real sense sacrificed upon the Altar of Public Health, the essential needs of our humanity for love and friendship, our humanity itself is sacrificed, ignoring the Sacrificial Victim immolated on the Altar in every Catholic Church. We are now asked even to worship health, by clapping on Thursdays. Almost all Government annoucements during the past eight weeks have been aimed at our most basic, primal fears, our fear of suffering and death and the suffering and death of our loved ones. All of these fears and terrors, Jesus experienced in His Agony in the Garden of Gethesemene. All of these fears we face or will face, with Him and in Him.
The Christless world cannot possibly defend itself against the panic-producing mantras of Government and media. We have all been taught to be afraid, children will be also, but the Lord it is who tells us, 'Be not afraid!' A Christless world cannot defend itself from Government that treats citizens as dumb, unteachable infants who need the Government's constant 'protection' from disease and suffering. The rejection of the Fatherhood of God leads inexorably to whole nations falling into the arms of the State which becomes presented to us as the ultimate protector and guardian of humanity, however tyrannical it becomes. Inherent in Government propaganda is the idea that illness, suffering and death are entirely unnatural, alien to our experience in this world, and that such things can and should be banished, at the cost of many intrinsic freedoms, despite the fact that people have been dying of transmittable or non-transmittable diseases in one form or another for thousands of years.
The Church: Ark of Salvation, Hospital for Sinners
For the Church, the adoption of a kind of pseudo-secular messianism, led by the new 'infallible' high priests of science and medicine, that proclaims humanity itself can save itself from even the threat of pestilence, whether the disease's survival rate is incredibly high or low, constitutes a major threat similar to and even more alarming than the neo-pagan belief adopted globally that humanity can save the seas, the air, the earth from climate change and that this should be a central concern to us all. Both ideas are ripe for exploitation by those who work for Antichrist and, if he's around, the Antichrist himself. For the Church, or at least the Hierarchy, to imitate Government in its web of deceitful doctrines that we can create a 'safe world', a 'disease-free future' in which the air and sea can be as clean as hands freshly washed and sanitised is a gross insult to God as well as a grotesque lie.
It is sin that imperils each and every one of us and threatens every day our eternal happiness. Nothing and nobody is truly safe, but for the man and woman who live in the grace, love and friendship of God and persevere in it to the end. Our Lord Jesus Christ established the Church to be the City of God in which men dwell with angels, not the City of Man in which men live under the constant influence and persuasion of demons and hostile powers. Christians and all men are already being guilt-tripped that by merely breathing they imperil the lives of their countrymen while Government slaughters the unborn and euthanises the infirm. No hospital is truly safe. The only safe hospital is the hospital for sinners: the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is the sole safe space in the world and, alas, for the vast majority of Catholics, that safe space has been locked by fearful Bishops. It is a safe space not because it is as sanitary and bacteria free as a clinical laboratory outside of Wuhan but because it is the place in which man meets his holy Redeemer who loves him, saves him and sanctifies him.
Here in this place, God dwells with men
There a man or woman can find refuge from a hostile world that seeks man's downfall in a thousand ways. Before the Tabernacle, man can be close to the Heart of God, the Heart of Jesus Christ and pour out his soul, he can weep for his sins more readily in this sacred and safe space where God resides. In this safe space, guarded by holy angels, holy water and holy images, man can entrust all his most sordid and guilty secrets to a Confessor who acting in the Person of Christ, will bring healing and heavenly consolation and strength to the penitent sinner. Sinners, lost in a world of confusion, dread, anguish of soul, can obtain forgiveness here as in no other place in the world. Man can ascend the highest mountain peak and be no closer to God than he was at street level, yet he can walk mere yards into a Catholic Church and find Him there and be found.
None of us wants to lose anyone close to us earlier than we think they should die, but we run the greater risk of thinking of ourselves as minature gods who can defeat death by a power or method rejected by God Himself. God's way of defeating death was to defeat it masterfully by the power of the Cross, the acceptance of the Chalice of suffering in order to obtain for us a deathless death, a death which leads to our birth to true, eternal Life. Death will either become for us a supreme sacrament of love that unites us eventually and eternally to God the Most High, or plunge us into eternal death, shame, terror and sorrow. Our judgement will unveil for us our whole life, our exterior life and our inner life, a fearful thing, but our Lord calls us to prepare by a holy life, not by a life lived in fear of microbes, where the fear of transmission surpasses and extirpates the fear of the Lord. Whether we are near or far from God, weak or strong, He wants us to trust Him and live for Him, love Him, die for Him and in die in Him.
We cannot both forget God and be fully alive
Whatever you think of the risks of transmission, this is not edifying at all.
We can take some precautions in this world, but in reality the Christian life acknowledges a world of risk, Jesus Christ established the Church precisely because it is a world of risk and the greatest risk of all time, for all times until His Second Coming, is the risk that we will be eternally lost to God, the risk that in our concern for temporal comfort and temporal protection from all this world can assail us with, that we will forget God. The great crime of Bishops is that they have contributed so much to the idea that we can forget God in times of pandemic, that the only safe space on Earth can be locked, that God and His Church are not as important as health, health which is always transient, that we can be saved by anything but the Precious Blood of Jesus. May God raise up Shepherds who will teach us that this world is passing and that nothing is as important as the love of God, nothing is as important as Salvation and nothing is as important as the Holy Eucharist, the Sacrament of Holy Love. Our Lord did not die bloodied on the Cross to create a hygienic, zealously sanitised world, but to wash away the world's sins in His Precious Blood, to make men zealous for His Salvation. We can all imagine and have already seen an episcopal response to the virus far more zealous for sanitation than for sanctification.
It is sad, though entirely predictable, that a post-Coronavirus world has given us a post-Coronavirus Pope Francis. Though marked by a radical streak of at times painfully staged Peronist populism, Romans presumably once enjoyed the Pope with the 'human touch', but the Francis who taught us to 'touch the flesh of Christ in the flesh of the poor' has died and the Francis who maintains whatever arbitary social distancing regulations the Government has mandated has arrived.
The leper kissing St Francis of Assisi belongs now firmly back in the 12th century, not the 21st. The Francis who kissed babies and men covered in boils has passed away to reveal the Francis for whom all mankind is a now a threat to other men. Who knows? Perhaps he will return to his 'touchy-feely' style, once Mr and Mrs Gates and their friends embedded in Governments have attempted to vaccinate seven billion bodies either with or without their consent. I'm certain Mr Gates will get a fair hearing in Rome and I personally dread the Hierarchy's response in the long-term to all that the powerful elites may wish to visit upon humanity, upon Christians, upon the Church.
We probably all have much to suffer, the Lord has warned us beforehand, but in the end the Immaculate Heart of Mary will triumph. Christ is victorious. Whatever we can do to contribute to that triumph over evil, even if it is only by our sufferings and our prayers joined to hers, may her maternal intercession for us embolden us to do it. Worse than Covid-19 is assuredly the tyranny that follows in its wake but worse than the tyranny that follows in its wake is the possibility of eternal damnation. There may be fearsome choices ahead, may Our Lord Jesus Christ give us grace to persevere in our Faith to the end.
Pray for the heroic fortitude that will save our souls, so that we might endure all that Christ's enemies have in store for us, pray for the restoration of the public Mass and for the reopening of all the churches in the world, that the Church of God may enjoy complete liberty in Her worship.
"I can speak my mind because it's a free world" is a phrase most of us have used at some point in our lives. That world that we considered 'free' is now coming rapidly to an end. We will, I think, regret the great incursions into human life made by the State over the years, incremental incursions that have gathered pace and become deeper and deeper since the creation of the welfare state in the 50s. All of them - without exception - have been presented to us as being 'for our good'.
No matter what you think of Governmental responses to the Coronavirus, responses which the Hierarchy of the Church has parroted like a State-appointed Ministry of Religion, it seems to me that some things can now be universally accepted. Firstly, that for better or worse, the State has accrued extraordinary power over citizens, powers that were always there for the using but now like nuclear warheads on a Soviet parade are brought out into full daylight in shock and awe.
The Spanish Influenza of 1918
It is as if Covid-19 has lifted the lid on a dormant reality we were living under all the time. All that is required is an emergency and everything is swept away. We all thought we lived in a 'free country', albeit one with a corrupt, self-serving Establishment, but it turns out all that is required is a contagion crisis and any semblence of 'normality' or of freedom disappears into thin air. Nearly without question, whole nations accepted what would normally be deemed tyranny, a tyranny made only excusable by disease.
It is staggering. Unfortunately, because we have been so brainwashed since our earliest youths, there are a number of assumptions being made about the role of government that, if accepted without question, make the situation as it stands now inevitable and unavoidable. The first assumption we make is that:
Public health is the responsibility of the Government (aka the Government will save us!)
We have been groomed to believe that the Government does not simply make policies for public health but is in charge of public health and we have accepted incredibly meekly that in a time of public health crisis, the Government automatically becomes in charge of everything. Public health isn't something that falls out of government influence, but I'm not sure that even in times of pandemic we should accept Government's assurance that we should,
'Stand well back, citizens for we, your beloved Government, will handle this!'
Why do we expect a bureaucratic mega-institution like the UK Government to handle this? Why are we suddenly asked to believe that the UK Government is our salvation?
The truth is that Government does very little for us that is good, and that when it does, there is invariably a catch. I was most grateful when a couple of years ago I poured the contents of a steamer, including the vegetables, over my right foot and an NHS nurse treated it and dressed it. I am full of admiration for those who work days and nights in the service of the sick and injured.
However, the idea that the Government and even its new Golden Calf, the NHS, is a shining beacon of virtue is much overdone and I don't believe the hype. Government can become like that abusive husband who says, 'I love you and from this day forward will cherish you', who provides for his wife but then says, 'But now you're in my house you're not allowed to go outside and you're not allowed any friends.' Did I say 'like that abusive husband'? Sorry, the Government IS that abusive husband.
The NHS oversees countless abortions and has a culture of soft-euthanasia, almost an unwritten code, by starvation, dehydration and painkillers which most of us will not witness until a family member dies. Personally, I wouldn't trust the NHS with an elderly patient on a venitlator, fighting for his or her life. I don't know how endemic it is, but the NHS seems to have a huge problem with preserving the lives of the elderly. In certain circumstances, it is actually very effective at bumping people off. And if the NHS is going to separate family from the elderly person concerned, that is even more worrying, because it is often only family that notice when an NHS hospital is doing something objectively evil to a patient, like starving them or dehydrating them to death which has for years become a routine part of 'end of life' care.
The second assumption we have been groomed to believe is that even if it turns out the Government can't save us:
'Your government cares about you!'
Powers given to government can do many things for good or for bad, but we should all at least accept that the Government does not care about us, whether we as individuals live or die, or find ourselves eating out of bins on the streets. It doesn't care, it cannot care, it does not love, it cannot love. Individual leaders may have enormous capacity to care about the fate of people in general, but as for the apparatus of the State, forget it. Individual doctors or nurses have the capacity to love patients and care for them with dignity, but they don't guide policy, they enforce it, they are not the NHS, the NHS is a bureaucratic machine, cold, heartless, brutal, sterile. Care homes are meant to care for people, but almost everyone I know has had friends or family members in a care home where the 'carers' were inhuman beasts who treated patients with shocking disregard, leaving dirty sheets unchanged, treating them with contempt. Care homes also have that special reputation for bumping patients off before their natural end. It's all so professional!
We currently have radio and TV announcements, even moving images on advertisement boards at bus stops telling us to 'Protect the NHS'. So, we now have the State telling us to protect the State and that protecting the State is the single most important thing we can do with out lives. Nevermind if you, for example, don't have the Coronavirus, but some other deadly or painful condition. You're meant to 'protect the NHS' which you thought was there to protect you and wait it out until Covid-19 patients exist no more, which could be never. And if you're awaiting a hip replacement, or you're a cancer patient, or you can't walk because you've poured the contents of a steamer on your right foot or something, you should still do the decent thing and clap the all-glorious State every Thursday at 8pm. Everyone must clap. Clapping helps the nurses, you see. They live on your applause. It is their oxygen. Thank you, NHS! Alas, because so few people from outside the NHS can get into hospitals to see what is going on, for all we know the State could be executing the elderly left, right and centre and we'd still be clapping the NHS. I trust in the goodness of God that this is not the case, but in all honesty, who knows what is going on in there, other than incredibly creepy hospital staff dancing routines while Death maraudes through hospital corridors and body bags are removed to go to the local crematorium with no autopsy necessary, thank you very much.
As for me, I don't want to live in a country where the State is supreme completely and above the individual and society itself (even in times of emergency). I have no reason to believe that just because we live in a time of pestilence, the British State is benign and 'cares'. Why should I believe that the British State is benign? The British State sends young men to die in futile and pointless wars based on a tissue of lies in the middle East and it never apologises for doing so. The British State approves the killing of 200,000 abortions a year. What's benign, precisely, about that industrial scale of mass murder? It uses aborted children in medical research! How benign! Why should I believe that a Governmental ideology that only a while ago was trumpeting 'gay marriage' as a boon for individual freedom, equality and love, suddenly professes that each and every individual must do his bit to sacrifice their natural freedoms for the sake of the greater good, in a manipulative twist of utilitarian logic that borders on philosophical and legislative schizophrenia?
Don't get me wrong, we, the British people probably thoroughly deserve evil and tyrannical overlords, we have grievously sinned, we have departed from the law of God, we treat our true Saviour with indifference and contempt, we have stained our land with the blood of the unborn, embraced every form of paganism, we live our lives as if God does not exist, but let us not pretend to ourselves that what is being erected in a time of crisis is the fruits of a loving, benevolent Government that always puts its citizens first. There is no reason to think this is the case, no reason at all and the relentless propaganda machine that accompanies this disease only makes me feel more dis-eased with the entire situation.
After 4 weeks of lockdown must we really be told again and again to 'stay 2 metres' apart. You told us, we get it, are we dumb cattle who need telling 50 times a day?! Are you, Government ministers, really concerned that we do this for public health or are you preparing us for a future of dystopic perpetual isolation from each other just to see whether you can exercise that kind of dictatorial power, where natural loving bonds between kith and kin are eradicated? Certain forces at work seem to love 'the new normal', so forgive me if I believe there are some ulterior motives going on here. This leads me to underline another assumption that is dangerous and which is going to be less accepted by the British people:
The measures we, the Government, enforce in response to this pandemic will be for your good! Trust us!
It seems glaringly obvious to me theat, no matter where you stand on the conspiracy theories circulating about this disease, that the long arm of the State is going to ask, then demand, further sacrifices of individuals in our country - most likely, all individuals - that will erode or eliminate forever freedoms we have long since taken for granted. It will doubtless all be done with that cheery British 'wartime spirit' and Boris Johnson, our little Churchill, will lead the charge.
Government, advised by a relatively small group of 'experts', who almost always seem to be working nowadays under some elusive ideological lines, in the pay of certain long-established foundations and elite individuals, will endeavour to eradicate the disease (with our co-operation, of course). In order to return to 'normal life', I dare say we will be mandated to accept some form of vaccination 'for the greater good'. We will be told that clinical trials have guaranteed its safety (but there are always side effects, no medicine is perfect etc, etc.) and we will all be asked to trust that the Government is being totally 100% honest with us that the vaccine will provide us with 'digital immunity' of some kind. Once under the loving embrace of a Government certificate of cleanliness, those who have not accepted the immunisation will be 'unclean', potential disease carriers. Will people who don't entrust their bodies to a Government under the influence of billionaire population controllers such as Bill Gates and the Rockefeller Foundation be entitled to any semblence of 'normal life'? I, for one, doubt it.
And in the name of public health and for 'the greater good', would not greater surveillance and monitoring of society be necessary, to ensure that cities and towns remain as sanitary as they can be? To ensure that all the cattle are behaving as they should behave in times of danger, threat of disease and the snares of pestilence? Shouldn't we all accept the loss of privacy, the loss of freedom, to preserve and care for the vulnerable, you know, for the sake of the greater good?
The technology is there, we have it, so it would be irresponsible not to use it, eh?
Wherever it came from, however it got here, the Great Lie at the heart of this pandemic will be the lie that removes all operation of life as we had hitherto known it.
The Great Lie is that you and I belong to the State when in fact you and I belong to God.
The Great Lie is that the State can be, or is, or ever will be Almighty God, your Protector.
God alone is God.
God alone can be trusted without question with your whole life, your secrets, your fears, your future, your relationships, your life, your death.
I would love to be able trust our Government with these things, but I'm sorry, I don't!
Let us turn to God, the true Lord, that He may deliver our land and our people!
