Some Are Lovin'

I don't understand why Fr James Martin SJ cannot accept being disinvited to speaking engagements with the same graciousness, understanding and humility as His Eminence Cardinal Raymond Burke, who is often considered 'too hot to handle' and finds himself for some reason being told that a venue or Diocese is not prepared to host him, yes him, a Cardinal no less, who has no problem with being called and treated as a Successor of the Apostles. I hear that he is most gracious when his speaking engagements are pulled for no apparent reason and with little in the way of justification.

I do feel sorry in a way for Fr James Martin because clearly there is nobody to shepherd him and reign him in so that he does not set himself up for such public disappointment and the attending histrionics that follow being regarded as somewhat scandalous to the faithful. Does he not have a superior somewhere? Wherever you are, you could really help this Jesuit priest!

If I produced business cards, bought a karaoke machine and started performing songs in parish halls around the country, to a handful of people I have no doubt, I can just imagine a few disinvitations. Incidentally, if I do come to your parish hall as a one-man band, do bring your pets too, as I recall a brief musical career playing in a pub literally to one man and his dog. But I digress. If such a venture were undertaken (hypothetical, you understand!), it would be completely understandable, no, expected, to be told 'Thank you, but no thank you.' Songs detrimental to the carefully cultivated image of the Holy Father might be considered a little too racy for some Diocesan bishops and their clergy.

Nice to know that if I were told a polite, 'No, sorry!' that I could then exclaim to all and sundry that I am 'just like Jesus' because 'I have been rejected'! Do you see what Fr James Martin just did there in the above tweet? He took the Gospel reading of today and made it entirely about what or rather who do you surmise?

That's right...the gay agenda ('Love wins') and most importantly of all, of course - even more important than the gay agenda - none other than himself, thus exemplifying the narcissism rampant among those who support the LGBT ideology, who deny that homosexuality retains any feature that could be defined as in any way a 'disorder', or condition of any kind, but who then parade the common accidents of the condition (a heightened sense of self-regard to the point of contempt for others) publicly, for all to see. Yes, many people understand Fr James Martin because they know in their weakness that without the grace and mercy of the Lord, without fidelity to His teachings, they are Fr James Martin.

I guess that if Fr James Martin SJ were not a priest, he would be as much a self-regarding, assiduous self-publicist as Milo, but he would not have the vital vehicle that has launched him into the spotlight which is the Priesthood. He may even have a book to sell, but he would not be able to garner as much support as he has, nor the credibility or patronage he has among Catholic communities without the Priesthood and the authority that confers upon those who profess at Ordination to be the Lord's sacred ministers. He only has the Priesthood to thank for his immense following. The Priesthood is for Fr James Martin. Fr James Martin is not for the Priesthood!



Clericalism, much? Fr James Martin S.J thinks there is no problem - nor any controversy - in pushing a thinly-veiled heterodox agenda, overtly political in tone, explicitly endorsing the LGBT propaganda, one that often runs contrary to the spirit of the Gospel, upon the faithful. But hey, I guess he is taking his cue there from none other than Pope Francis, whose ambiguity serves to let off the leash a variety of mongrel-gospels to run freely across the playing grounds in the Church, its adherents yapping and nipping at the heels of anyone who happens to be in the field at the time.

May the 'Father of all confessions' bless us all this Sunday. He is, after all, the Father of all our confessions, the Father of all Catholic penitents, of those who confess our faults humbly to the Lord, who in return lavishes grace upon grace upon us. Let us rejoice in the forgiveness and grace bestowed upon the faithful in the Sacrament of Penance that the Holy Father was clearly alluding to! Perhaps Stephen Walford could use this as an example of the divine protection this Pope has from speaking error, because if you just look at it on paper and misconstrue it slightly then...

Don't worry, I'm not buying a karaoke machine...not just yet!

The Frankie Foreign Friction Show

Here is a musical take on the recurring aviation fiascos so regularly embraced by Pope Francis.

Happy Feast of St Francis de Sales, patron of journalists, may he intercede for 

Catholic writers, journalists and bloggers across the world.

May we proclaim our Lord Jesus Christ in season and out of season and oppose any and all attempts to subvert His Teachings inside the Church.

Topping Up the Oxygen Tank at 35,000 Feet

Because it made such a headline, I immediately thought - as I made apparent in my last post - that Pope Francis had gone and done something that was controversial, that would serve to generate a great deal of publicity and would ensure that such publicity would serve to benefit himself but few others, including Christ our Lord.

As more commentary came flooding in through social media, it became clear that the cynical among us would not be disappointed. This is one of the redeeming elements of cynicism, that you can't really be disappointed by bad Church news, especially now bad Pope news, but you can feel affirmed and thoroughly justified in your attitude. Even now, I feel rather self-congratulatory about the prescience of my last post on the aggressive PR campaign that surrounds the Most Humble Pope Ever. Pray that such feelings pass, however, because as well you know, the deep crisis in the Church is not about me, or how right I or you feel, but about God Himself and His Church now under a concerted, calculated and systemic attack, from seemingly all angles within, as well as from without.

That said, there was something particularly absurd and shocking about the latest stunt - and it was a dramatic stunt  - does he have a body double? - at 35,000 feet, no less! Pope Francis 'suddenly' (we were informed this was not a planned course of action) decided it would be a great idea for a couple in a civil marriage of 8 years to get married sacramentally in his presence on the airplane, 'right here, right now'. More on that in a moment, since it has since been revealed that there was nothing 'sudden' about this event at all just as some suspected upon release of the news. It was perfectly staged to generate whatever reaction Francis had hoped it would generate and Francis, no doubt, was not disappointed either with the result. This man seems to live off chaos and the reaction his chaos generates.

Canon lawyer, Ed Peters, posted a pin-point perfect appraisal of the problems inherent with what we were told was a "shotgun convalidation" on a plane, one which as it turns out was not a sudden event at all. The marriage was reported, according to the words of the publicity-seeking couple to have been suggested by an individual of mega-fame who just happens to be the Pope 'on the spur of the moment' to two "unsuspecting" airline stewards who just happened to be on-board at the time.

As Ed Peters said, I would have questions, let us call them 'dubia', about the possible problems with validity of such a sacramental marriage, one that was reported not even to have been suggested by the couple themselves but which originated from the Pope, because the issue of consent (this wedding is our decision, not the Holy Father's) is so vital to a valid marriage. As well as a lady and a gentleman being the ones entering into the Sacrament, consent is the one other totally necessary ingredient. If there is no consent, there is no marriage, so thankfully, at least this couple had thought about this moment in advance of their shift. We know that, now that we know that the notion that this was spontaneous was totally false.

But the Vatican's PR team didn't let the reality of the situation get in the way of a great story and, once again, all was not as it seemed with Francis, as Ed Peters made plain in a follow-up post. Clearly the couple had much more time than we were at first led to believe to consider sacramental marriage because the laughably staged nature of the PR event became clearer. It was discovered in this article that the intentions of the couple themselves to be married by Francis while at work were stated publicly, yes publicly, at least as far back as December. Oh, what a web we weave, when Greg Burke is on hand to feed us with a narrative! Suddenly the PR spin doesn't look quite so smooth and suddenly all the players in this stunt look rather dishonest, yes, even the Holy Father, but then, if His Holiness, usually so adept at playing the media is going to self-immolate by telling Chileans to shut their faces bout about the allegations against the Chilean bishop he placed in a Diocese, even Greg Burke cannot help him. Cardinal Sean O'Malley should watch out. It's quite a drop from a helicopter passenger seat to the rain forest.

"So what were you saying about the Pope, Your Eminence?"

Here on in, this couple's marriage is between them and God and His Church, and I hope that they receive all the possible graces and blessings from the Lord to assist them in their married life. It was, in my opinion, astonishingly reckless and foolhardy of Pope Francis, who once famously said that he thinks that '50% of Catholic marriages are invalid' to perform this rite - if that's what you call it - with a couple, sealing a sacramental bond when such was not immediately necessary (much as we decry living in sin), without adequate preparation, surely, background checks, notifications of freedom to marry and the rest of the things ordinary Catholic priests (as well as ordinary couples themselves) have to think about before the big day. Who knows? Because this was not a spontaneous event at all, but a staged one, perhaps indeed, the necessary preparation was done.

"50% of Catholic marriages are probably invalid"

Yet with such a 'laid-back' approach to the Sacrament of Marriage, one really does wonder whether when Pope Francis gave his statistic on marriage validity, for which he never cited a source, he was being self-referential again, so that, in fact, '50% of my Catholic marriages are invalid'. For how long has Pope Francis been so slack about marriage preparation, about which he spends a good amount of time praising in his Apostolic (cough) Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia.

Barely anyone turned up to Earth Day either, if I recall...

But the really telling thing about the whole airplane disaster, the first disaster of his trip, but clearly not the last, was how revealing it was of the Pope's craven need for ongoing publicity and just how willing those around him are to indulge him in what is becoming a dangerous pitfall in this pontificate, undermining not only the Church's credibility, which it is clear Francis cares not too much about, but his own, yes, even in the eyes of the media.

The height of Pope Francis's brazen megalomania and profound narcissism finds its fullest expression in the fact that he really, actually believes that what makes a wedding truly 'amazing' and wonderful is not a Church, a Cathedral, an Altar, an ordinary parish priest, the Sacrifice of the Mass, reception of penitents for Confession before entering a sacramental marriage, a happy couple with their family and friends, photos in the beautiful church, confetti and all the supplementary things we take for granted when we go to a wedding, but, instead of all of that, nothing other than the presence of himself. Reports led us to believe that this was precisely what this strange couple were looking for and their own interests dovetailed neatly with the Pope's continuing need for great PR but that doesn't make him look any less a publicity whore than they aspire to be. While I wish this couple every happiness, I am a bit cynical about this whole affair. As I said in my last post, nothing with Pope Francis is as it appears. N-o-t-h-i-n-g.

Yep, I am cynical. The knock on effects of this for clergy are not good. What I see here is a stunning abuse of power and authority, albeit egged on by this couple, for the sake of a day's feel-good publicity for the Pope that leaves your average priest in a hole when he has to explain to people that he cannot just decide on a whim to do what the Supreme Legislator just took it upon himself to do. Your average priest cannot marry spouses, 'right here, right now', not even in the Church, let alone in a hot-air balloon, and he has to explain to the uninformed that there are laws he cannot violate, which are there to safeguard the validity and sanctity of the sacramental bond of marriage itself as well as the couple's overriding concern that what they enter into, they enter into without impediment, coercion, unexpected or undue pressure and all the necessary requirements and checks in place for a marriage sanctioned and blessed by the Church.

Lights, camera, action? That is not what marriage is about. Francis has trivilalised the Sacrament of Marriage publicly. Was there even a reception for this imprudent couple, or did they have an hour's break before the next shift? What romance! Hey, they weren't able to run off into the sunset in a car that said, 'Just married' to the well-wishes of family and friends and relations who perhaps might have liked to have attended, but at least they got a "shotgun convalidation" from Pope Francis while at work! That's the main thing!

Yes, apparently, 'that's the main thing!' Unbelievable, isn't it? I thought I had seen it all with this Pope, but one day, he managed to make a Chilean couple's abundantly clear 8-year reluctance to have their civil marriage regularised by the Church, as well as the very day upon which they finally decided to honour Christ (I hope that is what they intended) and tie the knot in a sacramental union, all about himself, while cameras were rolling and photographers flashed and journalists fell over themselves trying to get the story. I had thought that such breathtaking hubris was beyond anyone, but then I really need to turn to myself and say, Laurence, know thyself. 99% of priests would say that, if he agrees to this scandalous event, the cameras are not going to be rolling. Most other priests would have said, 'No, sorry, I simply can't do that' because it wouldn't reflect adequately the Sacrament into which the couple claimed they wished to enter into freely.

The use, the exploitation and abuse of a couple's ongoing irregular situation for yet more mass media based Pope adulation is sickening and disgraceful even if they were willing holocausts in this charade. Even if they wrote to the Pope asking him to "bless" or rather to perform the Rite of Marriage for them on a plane on the way to another land while they were at work, by no means was it 'pastoral' to indulge this couple in their 'dream'. There are plenty of priests in Chile and there are still plenty of Churches, earthquake or no earthquake. Pray for this ridiculous and careless Pope. What is he going to do next flight? Dish out the Blessed Sacrament from a plastic bag to everyone on board while saying, "Hungry? I always feel a bit peckish on a flight!" One should not give him ideas...

Pray for the happy marriage of the couple. 
Pray for a deepening of reverence in the Church. 

Pray for the clergy!

There has to be a reason Pope Francis wants to avoid Argentina. 
They got a telegram, so I hear, but during his latest trip, we all got the memo.
Don't let this guy try and sell you anything unless it has directly down from his predecessors:

Not Amoris Laetitia.
Not his 'tears' over clergy sexual abuse and its covering up by prelates.
Not a 'spontaeneous wedding on a plane'.

No, sorry! I wouldn't even buy a used car from Pope Francis!

Anarchy in VC

There are rumours circulating that an embattled, deceitful and thoroughly discredited pontificate - at least discredited among faithful Catholics following events carefully - seeks to draw the clergy of the Holy Catholic Church, by coercive means, into a new vow of obedience in particular to Pope Francis and his own 'unique' Magisterium. I shudder at such rumours.

Are these rumours true? We do not yet know. How do such rumours evolve? Who wishes these things to circulate? Are they credible? Should it be taken seriously? Only the last question can I answer and only with an opinion. I fear so. I believe clergy have reason, based on their own observation of five years of laughably less than transparent conduct within the Vatican, to be on the alert at least. The new rumour suggests that this pontificate - one in which the use of reason as a faculty has already been 'taken down a peg or two' during the intra-ecclesial 'dialogue' concerning Amoris Laetitia - is considering the nuclear option of going for broke and enforcing loyalty to a dictatorship of relativism in the Vatican. Would that really be surprising? Not really.

But would Francis contemplate going down that road? He has already said 'I might be the Pope who splits the Church', a throwaway comment that made it sounds like splitting the Church and causing global schism was a bit like ordering food at a Roman trattoria. 'I might have the cod, or I might have the steak. Oh no, I think I might split the Catholic Church instead.' That this pontificate has sclerotic, schizophrenic but, most pointedly, psychotic tendencies has become quite apparent over the course of time, not that the Church has never seen 'psycho Popes' before. Anarchy rules in Rome. Yet, there is more than simply this to understand about this papacy, since there is simultaneously the most aggressive and to some extent the most effective and consolidated PR campaign in Church history going on, even as I type, and it is in the complete and total service of the Pope and his reputation. Christ our Lord is not a major beneficiary of this extensive publicity campaign, but we have after five years expected very little to come from the Vatican that lauds and honours the Church's Lord and Head.

As 'M.A Colonna's' The Dictator Pope made clear, the most disquieting aspect of this pontificate isn't simply that this Pope is something of a thug, with contempt for his critics, for if he were only a thug, the whole world could see it, but rather that this pontificate seems to involve a mafia boss, one desperate to consolidate his power base while living among his enemies, who manages to twist and discredit the message of Jesus Christ while appearing to the majority of the world as a very kind man who is nice to the poor, who kisses babies and visits the sick, imprisoned and elderly, thus making him appear to be saintly and all the while doing it with a cameraman by his side, you know, like all the Saints did.

The truth is that real mafia bosses do not need to go to such great lengths to reinforce the image of their inherent goodness to all and sundry. Such men display greater sincerity perhaps than Francis, because, in fact, they are feared because they are dangerous, not because they appear dangerously virtuous to the public, while being cruel and scheming in secret. Within the walls of the Vatican, Francis is feared because he is terrible and has grown powerful, not because people are afraid that he might drop round and kiss their sick grandmother. In truth, no good deed of Pope Francis goes undocumented now, and hasn't for five years, because such deeds are clearly needed to reinforce a PR message that the Pope is wonderful and beyond reproach. It all serves as wonderful cover and camouflage for a man seemingly without much faith in the actual words or mission of Our Lord to save souls and bring the Truth to those who need it, whether they wish for it, or not and even better cover for a psychopath to abuse his Office. If I were to suggest one reason why The Dictator Pope has the Francis Team worried, it is that such a document puts something of a break on the canonization attempts that will be a natural consequence and reaction to the day when His Holiness dies. For his changes to be permanent, the mafia need Francis to stay relatively unblemished in the eyes of most of the Church so that his changes can receive 'sanctification' with his reputation for mercy.

Outside of the circus of the Vatican, Francis is inviting the poor to the circus

And yet, even as Francis's canonization day remains a possibility - could it be the date of his annual address to the Curia? - there is another aspect to this pontificate which has become stridently clear. Criticism - even stinging criticism, even criticism that rebukes the thuggery involved in this most unique of pontificates, even criticism that levels charges of corruption against Francis's allies, or against Francis himself, is dealt with by a stunning reaction of near total silence, silence from those who should be in some way embarrassed or ashamed. It is almost as if no amount of truth or scandal can hurt those who now enjoy the benefits of power.

A lesson in psychological warfare

Those who have taken over the house at the Vatican obviously understand that if you really want to annoy your critics, if you really want to anger people who only wish to see a modicum of natural justice flourish in the Church, you ignore them. That's worse than ripping people's hearts out while they are breathing because you are doing it spiritually, not physically. The Francis pontificate is a valuable political and military lesson in both psychological warfare and torture. Whether it is a petition, or a Cardinal in an interview, a dubia, or an article, or allegation, the best strategy is to ignore whatever they are saying - never address what they are saying or asking. Ensure that those who you consider, with contempt, your enemies - and treated with overwhelming indifference so that they feel irrelevant and unheard, while repeating your own message. What is that message? The Pope is changing the Church regardless of what Christ taught but God doesn't mind and by the way, 'Isn't the Pope great?'

Now, in the first instance, it is clear that TeamFrancis are a little, but perhaps only marginally concerned at such things as blogs, or news sites that cover with attention to detail the obvious apostasies and sublime villainy going in the Vatican with a degree of support from the man Francis himself, but the only thing they really fear is a mass awakening within the Church not only to the reality of the conduct and character of the fraud Jorge Mario Bergoglio and his mafia, which should by now have entered into the realms of infamy, but a reawakening of the Church and Her children to the Lord Jesus Himself and His Infallible Doctrines, to Her glorious liturgy and worship and the proclamation of the message of the Salvation of souls.

For Pope Francis, his overwhelming desire (and the desire of those who surround him) seems to be to ensure that his personal reputation is impeccable even while insulting the faithful or castigating priests, or sacking good men, or instigating a global movement within the Church for abandoning Christ's teachings in favour of his own, or selling out the Pontifical Academy for Life to globalist eugenicist monsters. In fact, one could say that the damage Francis does is contingent to his excellent PR team, and is perhaps dependent on it.

But the sheer level of deception that is going on during this pontificate is staggering, mind-blowing in fact, if you take into account that the push for the Kasper proposal which has wreaked such havoc already upon Jesus's Church must surely have been planned well before Francis's ascension to the Throne of Peter, because he talked about how wonderful Cardinal Kasper and his book was the very morning after his election, at his first Angelus. There was no waiting around. On day one of his pontificate, Francis was already stealthily undermining the Lord Jesus Christ and His teaching on divorce and remarriage and was busily prepping us for his earthquake Synod, at which the Bishops of the world were, like the Catholic faithful in general, ignored and the Kasper proposal, voted down by the Bishops, was retained by Francis in his Apostolic Exhortation by virtue of a single footnote.

One sect not averse to controversial oaths...

Smoke and mirrors

This pontificate is all about smoke and mirrors. Nothing is as it is presented to be. The Synod on the Family was the Synod on the Destruction of the Family. The Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia was bereft of much that could be described as Apostolic. An oath to the 'Magisterium' of Pope Francis will, should it come about - not be an oath to Jesus Christ and His teachings, but more likely to the personal interpretation of the Gospel of the man, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who has distanced himself from the Church's tradition and distanced himself even from the Word of God. If Pope Francis doesn't care if the entire faithful wake up and smell the coffee in terms of the fraud being perpetuated against them, he does care whether people realise this while he is Pope. This is probably the only thing Francis fears.

Will people realise? It is, sadly, not likely since far too many Catholics are disengaged and far too many would see no problem with apostasy, many would not even understand the relevance or meaning of the word in terms of their faith. Readers, you who are firm in the Faith of Christ, we need to be mentally equipped for a hard reality. Francis and his team have probably taken the Church's pulse and it is likely he sees that it is so weak he can get away with anything. Take heart, we'll always have Poland! Deo volente!

And yet, there is more to the Church's most unfathomable Pope even than this, because even when it becomes increasingly apparent that Pope Francis is psychologically unstable, given to massive temper tantrums when his personal will is thwarted or contradicted, deals contemptuously and spitefully with those who work in his service and stands accused of allegedly using money from Peter's Pence to support the campaign fund of his favoured political candidate during the US election, the abortion supporting Hillary Clinton, in the mainstream media Pope Francis finds very few critics.

This is because - or if I may posit a theory - wherever Christ is persecuted and sidelined, marginalised or dismissed from public life, even life within the Church, wherever He is treated with contempt, scorned and derided, all of his enemies will gather together and work together to achieve the outcome so wished for by His enemies, enemies spiritual in nature, enemies who once were angels and now are devils but who inspire those who have, through their willful rebellion against Almighty God, made themselves his servants.

The mass media - even some Catholic media organs - are deeply complicit in the covering up of the obvious personal defects and subtle doctrinal deviations of this Pope and  his overarchingly political agenda, not because they are blind to them wholly, but rather because he is serving their shared purpose, or rather the Devil's purpose, in which they are only too happy to co-operate, namely the destruction of the Church from within and especially the destruction of Christian morals. Be honest, if you hated the Church and Her teachings, would you protest a bad or mad Pope who set out to undermine the very religion you hate? They do not want Christ, they do not want Christianity, they want it expunged from public life and if a faithless and rebellious Bishop or Rome does the groundwork for them within the Church they will be happy to stay silent, especially if he places himself and his personal virtue in opposition to the traditional Church and its traditional evils in the eyes of the world. We don't, sadly, live in an age in which the Press are interested in upholding and serving the public with the truth, but an age in which the truth is manifestly resented and hated within public and private institutions, most notably in Government and in the Media, as well as within the Church herself.

Francis promised a 'Conversion of the Papacy', but Christ calls us to Conversion to Himself

From what I can see, Pope Francis, in terms of fulfilling the Office of the Papacy and doing what Popes are intended by the Lord Jesus to do, or even as what a faithful Catholic is called to do, is a complete and utter fraud, a fraud made all the more scandalous by the determined effort to appear to be such a wonderful Christian on camera, making his pontificate all the more destructive. By all accounts, by now his reputation should now be covered in ignominy, since there are so many accounts of his behaviour and his intentions to persecute those faithful to Christ are so obvious, but I suppose that is what makes the fraudulent and counterfeit look so real and yet be so fake; the effort in public to go in extreme in the opposite direction in which you are manifestly going in private, behind closed doors, as you scheme for the downfall of your enemies and plot your egocentric outmaneuvering of your enemies, yes even our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, whom you claim to serve in public, but whose doctrines you make it apparent you despise in private.

'Pick-a-Scandal Papacy': Now honouring an abortion activist 

Pope Francis has brought total anarchy to Vatican City and the institutions of the Church in Rome, his strange teaching wreaking havoc on everything he touches and he is visiting his anarchy upon the Church across the world. I pray very much that the rumour of an oath to attempt to put an end to the resistance to his desired interpretation of Amoris Laetitia is false, but it has got to that stage where it has become clear that those who do resist it are already being called by his favoured so-called  'theologians', 'dissenters'. How long will Francis tolerate dissent to his 'new paradigm'? Will he go for broke and press the nuclear button?  What would a dictator Pope do, knowing that through a prestige marketing and PR campaign he could keep the majority of the media onside and rule by fear and by fiat an episcopate and clergy who can, he believes, be easily bullied into submission?

Pray for an end to the crisis in the Church, but whatever rank you occupy within the Church, to which the Lord has called you, pray for the endurance and courage to stand firm and publicly for Jesus Christ come what may. We may be approaching the Church's darkest hour, but dawn will come and the Lord Jesus will eventually shed upon the current darkness his radiant light. Look towards Him and be radiant. Those who persevere until the end will receive the crown of life, but for now His servants must endure this bitter crown of thorns. Stay faithful, stay true, stay close to Him, for He will never fail you. Prepare for the worst that Francis can do, and prepare for the best, the very best, that which is beyond our comprehension, which the Lord has promised for He is with until the End of Time. Come, Lord Jesus! Victorious King!

Finally, I thoroughly concur with Fr John Hunwicke's post on the Papal Oath of Fidelity, not for the clergy to 'sign-up' to whatever novelties the incumbent is preparing to unleash on Christ's Church, but for the Pope himself to swear allegiance to Christ and to the Deposit of Faith entrusted to His servant and Vicar. It is claimed - though it is not claimed with certainty, that there was such an oath, worded as follows:

That would make a great start. But then again, I guess that even oaths, solemn oaths made in public, mean little if, in our hearts, we seek the destruction of the sacred tradition for some mysterious purpose, in which is advocated some alteration of the saving faith, the saving truth from God that is our glorious inheritance for the salvation of souls.

Pray for our Holy Mother the Church.

'I'm Colonna!'

#IamMarcantonioColonna

'I'm Colonna'

  It is frankly unforgiveable that I forgot to place a slide of 
Fr Thomas Weinandy into this song.

But you have to understand that one day nearly the whole Church woke up to find itself Colonna...

We're All Traditionalists Now...

'So, if you could just discard 99% your cherished beliefs that would be great.'

A stranger pontificate in history shall likely never be found. More bloody pontificates? More violent pontificates? More corrupt pontificates? More edifying and glorious pontificates? Yes to all these, but the award for strangest pontificate shall surely go to Francis.

Everything about this papacy has been strange, confusing and unsettling, disturbing and worrying. I liked that description from the bishops of Kazakhstan - 'alien'.Yes, much of this pontificate has been foreign and 'alien' to Catholic sensibility, to Catholic feeling and to Catholic tradition. Jorge Mario Bergoglio sidled into the Seat of Peter with astonishing confidence and he lost no time in laying out the scope of his radical agenda still unfolding in real time. Clearly nothing in the same room as him is to be marked safe.

All along, however, tradition - at least some Catholic tradition - has been an uneasy ally of the man from the ends of the earth. He needs it. He lives off it. Without it, he dies! Tradition is the only thing that gives Francis the oxygen he has to say the things he says and be heard and taken seriously. It is an unspoken yet mysterious agreement that a Press which is nearly entirely secular in outlook continues to print and pay attention to the things that the Pope says, acknowledging insodoing that in some way the Pope is set apart from the rest of the Catholic Church in authority and enjoys within the Church greater power than does your average parish priest or bishop. In this area, the world reports the Church strictly on the Church's own terms. This is helpful for the Church when 'the man at the top' is a true believer and your average parish is ran by a heretical loon, but less helpful for the Church when these roles are reversed.

Indeed for Pope Francis, those papal traditions which actively engage the confidence of the Faithful are retained and they must be, despite being a 'radical' or even a 'revolutionary' in his own reported words. For example, for Francis the wearing of a white cassock and pectoral Cross are valuable items retained, while those that are deemed superfluous and unnecessary are dispensed with, such as wearing red shoes and enjoying living quarters in the Apostolic Palace. The white cassock is worn at all times to tell you he is Pope and enjoys great authority. Now here is a conveniently helpful tradition, no? The symbolism and message is clear. No other colour of cassock would do, even for a 'radical'. If anyone needs a white cassock, it is, in fact, a radical. Every Pope needs respectability. The red shoes are never worn to remind you that he does not tread the path of his predecessors, or honour the blood of Christ and His martyrs, but is striking out on his own path, one that looks upon Catholic tradition generally with something of a sneer. Such things are just silly traditions!

Yet it is, in reality, only Catholic tradition that keeps Pope Francis where he is, firmly in the limelight and its only Catholic tradition that makes him a problem. If we dispense with tradition, he's just another priest wearing a different garb.

If the Pope were just another Catholic bishop or priest there is no reason why his opinions should be treated with any greater import than that of a bishop of a diocese in Kazakstan. It is only Catholic tradition that allows Francis and his co-workers the opportunity to persuade people that Amoris Laetitia is very, very important and should be taken very, very seriously by the whole Church. It is only Catholic tradition that maintains that 'Peter has spoken, so you best consider his words and take them to heart'.

After five years, it is clear that Francis and the St Gallen 'mafia' who thrusted him into global prominence need the papacy far more than the papacy needs him and them and the papacy serves Francis in a far greater capacity than he serves the papacy. Did you know that his actual job specification calls upon him to safeguard and defend the Deposit of Faith he has received and teach it to others? He doesn't do this, but is happy to utilise the great privileges that the papacy accords him to spread his personal opinions on everything and often to contradict the Magisterium of his predecessors. And just to illustrate how tiresomely painful this trend has become, we have pianist-theologians such as Stephen Walford to make apparent to us just what kind of knots we can tie ourselves up in if we decide that only an utterly schizophrenic attitude towards Catholic tradition will serve the Church of the 21st century.

Such men advance the position that a Pope is exonerated from all charges that he has made a treasonous departure from the clear and consistent teaching and practice of the Church by virtue of simply being Pope. In fact, not only is a Pope automatically exonerated from such charges, but these charges must in turn be applied to all those malefactors and 'dissenters' who would dare to challenge him or oppose his blatant attempt to undermine the perennial teaching of the Church on Holy Communion for the divorced and remarried. As Ed Condon writes today, we need to acknowledge too that changing discipline on Holy Communion is only the start of the revolution. In this reasoning, even if the Pope, to quote Francis, himself quoting St Ignatius of Loyala at the time, declared that 'black is white' and 'white is black', the Faithful would be bound to believe and accept it, putting aside all and any reason in their possession. Do you see just how wonderfully Catholic tradition, painted by him as untrustworthy and unreliable, serves Pope Francis? It goes something like this:

'Before I was Pope, I was a heterodox Cardinal. I sneered at much of what the Church confessed as Her teaching and secretly worked to undermine it. Before I was a heterdox Cardinal, I was a heterodox Archbishop. I sneered at much of what the Church confessed as Her teaching and secretly worked to undermine it. Before I was a heterodox Archbishop, I was a heterodox priest. I sneered at much of what the Church confessed as her teaching and secretly worked to undermine it. There might have been a time in my ecclesiastical career when I was what you could call 'orthodox' in my Catholic belief, but if there was such a time, I do not remember it. I have not dispensed with any of my erroneous interpretations of the Church's teachings, nor my wilful unbelief in Her doctrines, but see, now that I am Pope, that which was once true is no longer true and my own beliefs, divorced from the timeless teachings of the Church, separated from the tradition, which depart even from the Church's Lord, are, in my person as Pope, made credible, in fact more than credible, they are to be believed by the whole Faithful.'

Yes, the Office of the Papacy can apparently turn a heretic into a sage, but it is the Office that is transformed, not the heretic. Is this what the Church believes? Or is this rather what Protestants have traditionally believed about the power and duties of the Pope? Becoming Pope, it would seem, does not so much confer upon the one who sits on the Chair of Peter a teaching charism and the solemn obligation to confirm the brethren and the Church's children in the infallible Christian doctrine handed down from Christ to His Apostles to the present day, it confers something far more awesome than this, it confers the sanctification, perhaps even the deification of an individual's private beliefs, even if these beliefs contradict Jesus Christ the Divine Founder and Lord of the Catholic Church, to whom it has hitherto been expected that each Pope serves, some well, some poorly. If a heretic becomes the Pope, the heretic can apparently rejoice not only that his own persistence in error has been changed into glorious integrity in the truth, but because he has the right and even the obligation to confirm the whole Church in his errors, which are now made holy and laudable, thus sweeping aside the entire tradition as well as the doctrines of Jesus Christ Himself.

'I've got some second-hand doctrine to sell you at a very, very good price.'

In this ridiculous proposition, never, never, no never, could any Pope be a confidence trickster who uses and abuses his sublime and august Office to deceive the Faithful into believing the absurdity that the words of Jesus Himself are 'too rigid', that the words of St Paul are not to be trusted, that it is beyond a great number of the Church's children to uphold in their daily lives the moral law, that the divine law written itself on the hearts of the Faithful is ambiguous, transient and changeable and not to be trusted as it is given. Never. That could never happen. Well guess what, one day the Church may be forced to acknowledge that precisely that happened!

The tradition of the church, since the rise of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, apparently upholds that we must pay attention to someone who makes the statements of a rebellious and apostate bishop, especially when he becomes a Pope and especially because he is Pope. He cannot be challenged, he cannot be questioned, and he certainly can never lose the special charism that comes with being Successor of St Peter. He can never be a Judas who betrays his Lord for nobody knows what. He is, as Pope, always great, glorious, above reproach and you must obey or else. Without the tradition and the generous honour and respect which tradition and traditionalists give to each and every Pope, Francis would be a nobody, nothing in the Church. Nobody need listen to him without tradition. In the light of tradition, Francis is made into somebody to be believed, even when tradition itself condemns his statements outright because tradition says, 'Listen to the Pope, he speaks with God's mandate and authority.'

However, if we are to ask what is more important in the Church, tradition or the Pope, we might ask what or who confers crediblity on who or what. Is it the Pope who breathes life into Tradition, is tradition his personal plaything or is it tradition that actually gives oxygen, airtime and legitimacy itself to a Pope? Interesting, isn't it? When we have discovered the answer to this question, we shall know better who to believe in this current crisis because Francis has made this question very relevant to today's debates.

For we are told now that we must listen and adhere to Pope Francis's maxims in Amoris Laetita because he is the Pope. We are told we must listen to the Pope because of what Jesus said about the Pope and, wait for it, because of Catholic tradition. It is Catholic tradition that tells us that we must give great weight to what a Pope teaches. Yet we are told that something is blinding us to the wonderful light that is the Pope's vision for the Church which contradicts what Catholics have always believed. What is it that is blinding us? Yes! The tradition of the Church is blinding us! Of course! How foolish we have all been!

Here is, in all its paradoxical glory, the current position of the men who would have Catholics renounce what Catholics have always believed since the time of Christ and the Apostles concerning Holy Communion, adultery, sin, sacrilege and even apostasy.

You must listen to Pope Francis because that is the Catholic tradition.

Catholics have always accepted papal teaching!

Catholic tradition is standing in the way of Pope Francis's radical overhaul of the entire nature of the Catholic Church.

Or, put another way...

You must cast aside Catholic tradition and listen to Pope Francis.

You must listen to Pope Francis because the Catholic tradition tells you you simply must!

Does anyone, Stephen Walford, find the above to be something of a contradiction?

Ah, they can't call people who oppose Francis's anti-Catholic agenda 'Protestants'. Oh, how much they must wish they could. They must call them 'dissenters' because to use the word 'Protestants' as a derisive term would be offensive to the Protestants with whom TeamFrancis are trying to smooth over differences. How hilarious it all is! But in fact, the current position of men such as Stephen Walford is inherently Protestant because it propagates the Protestant myth that somehow the Pope is so powerful that not only is he is master and commander of the Church as its visible Head, but that on assuming the Office of the Papacy, we apparently believe he becomes superhuman, more God than man, more to be worshipped and venerated than Christ Himself, that he is given not just the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, but is himself Heaven's high King enfleshed on Earth, since only a man who has been conferred the dignity of not merely sonship but Lordship, of divinity, who ranks equal to God Himself could be granted the privilege of altering divinely revealed Truth. Funny, isn't it? Why haven't any Popes tried what Francis is trying on the Faithful before? It's almost like they believed in God or something, that they themselves had to render account to someone other than themselves. After all, it cannot be convincingly argued that Amoris Laetitia is merely be a response to the times because there is nothing inherently new about divorce and remarriage, is there?

Men such as Mr Walford believe that they have a 'winning line' in telling Catholics, while insulting us and our intelligence, that the Pope is head of the Church and anyone who objects to the alteration of the Catholic Faith ('which isn't being altered really, so just believe and shut up') is rigidly adhering to tradition but dissenting from the dissident Pope who was a dissident Cardinal and a dissident Archbishop and probably dissident priest. For those who wish to suspend their rational faculties, that's really the end of the debate. For those who don't, in reality, it is only the beginning of the debate which should sound a little like this...

Why should Catholics believe and give assent to a papal document and its papal interpretation that appears to support the overthrowing of Catholic morality, tradition and belief for 2,000 years? 

The answer comes, 'because the Pope says so'. 

Why should we listen to this Pope? 

The answer comes, 'Because Catholic tradition tells you to'.

What is more important for Catholics to believe, Catholic tradition or the Pope who distances himself from it? 

The answer comes, 'The Pope!' 

Why? 

The answer comes, 'Because Catholic tradition tells you to! Catholics have always listened to the Pope!' 

But Catholics have always believed that the Body and Blood of Christ is Holy and should not be received by those in grievous mortal sin, for to do so confirms the guilty in their own condemnation. Is this not true?

The answer comes at long last...'It was true then but it is not true now, it is 2018 and you must let go of those cherished beliefs that tradition has led you to believe! Jesus wants this!'

Why? How can I be sure?

'Because the Pope says so! He is in charge 'round here. Never, ever let go of this cherished belief that tradition has led you to believe!'

But I thought you told me to dispense with Catholic tradition? So I should dispense with listening to the Pope oon this?

At last, the answer comes...'No! Oh, just shut it!'

Ah yes, we are all traditionalists now and don't you deny it Mr Walford. It is just that some of us believe the Catholic tradition safeguards us from an errant Pope and that Popes are themselves subject to the Sacred Tradition, and yes even Popes are subject to the Word of God. Not just some, or one, but all. This Pope - and you yourself - would have us abandon the entire tradition of the Church but one - a very convenient one it is for him and those he employs in his work of deception - that the Pope has authority over all Christian doctrine and practice so you'd better obey. Now we see how useful is tradition, so sneered upon and scorned by Pope Francis and those who he is getting to do the dirty work of discrediting those who stand up for Jesus Christ, who suffer slanderous attacks for doing so. Very useful! Sometimes! For some causes! Like the destruction of Christian morals!

There's only one reason Stephen Walford is getting published in La Stampa and that's because he is 'on-message' in the Vatican's war on Christians - those who believe and uphold the all the doctrines of Christ. Mr Walford, the day you go 'off-message' and question the legitimacy of Amoris Laetitia and the interpretation given to it by its signatory, is the day they drop you. That's the day you lose what influence you have. Your goodwill and loyalty are being used. Your integrity is not welcome, nor is your intellect valued, only your subservience to the chief and your reinforcement of the Pope's misleading message. Like many, you have been taken in by the deceitful charms of those who desperately need 'theologians' willing to publicly defend the indefensible and attack the innocent and just, while thinking that they are doing God a favour. It is not too late for you to turn and to fight for Christ's doctrines, for the safeguarding of the dignity and honour of the Blessed Sacrament and for the salvation of souls. Pope Francis will reward you in this life. Jesus Christ will reward you in Eternity.

I pray you and Pope Francis do exactly that, turnaround, and after that the Pope in particular does whatever is necessary to strengthen the brethen in the Faith taught for 2,000 years as soon as he can. In Pope Francis's case, that might mean doing the decent thing and resigning, confessing that he has misled the Faithful, and that it would really serve the Church better to have a Pope who could credibly convince others that he believed the Catholic Faith, rather than what we currently have - a Pope intent on transplanting his own 'alien' beliefs into the papacy and from the papacy into the whole Catholic Church and then calling those weird beliefs 'Catholicism'.

Willing 'theologians' have tried very hard to convince the sceptics, the doubters and the waverers on Amoris Laetitia and its official papal interpretation, but I'm afraid there is neither excuse nor precedent, loophole nor any possible justification for what the Pope is trying to do. Why? Because the same tradition that tells us to take what Popes say very seriously and to give what he says special credence, honour and deference, also tells us that the what he is currently saying in Amoris Laetitia is anathema to the Faith and encourages the destruction of the Church, the profanation of the Eucharist and the perdition of souls. To Catholics, nothing is actually meant to be more important than Jesus Christ and if His most famous rival in 2018 must be a Pope, then there is no difficulty or scandal in choosing Christ and following Him despite what the Pope tells us to believe instead. If I must choose, I will choose the entire tradition of the Church on this, and you can keep the only part of tradition that Francis wishes you to maintain, that is - loyalty to him - yes, even unto the betrayal of Christ Himself. Yes, you can have that, if that's what you want. It is your choice. It is the choice that any Catholic on the face of the Earth with a dog in this fight, that is, an immortal soul to save, may eventually have to make.

Pray for an end to this crisis and for the liberty and exaltation of Christ's Bride, that She may be freed from the tyranny of error and the dictatorship of relativism.