The Pontificate of Abuse

I have in the past had some experience of abusive relationships. They are profoundly painful even when you love the person involved. It can take a long time to realise just how abusive some human relationships are and can become quite easily. Realising that under the disguise of love you are simply being used or abused is an horrific experience. It shatters trust and hope and there come times in many people's lives when everything then just falls apart, perhaps after years of denying that they already were breaking or broken a long time ago.

The dam then breaks and the many waters rush in. In personal relationships, dynamics emerge quite quickly that if left unaddressed create faultlines along which earthquakes are guaranteed at some stage. Everybody else can see it, they even warn them not to live on the faultline, but their warnings are unheeded and then when the big one hits, they act surprised. Then, after the earthquake, they try to rebuild the shattered ruins that surround them, but rebuild on the very faultlines that fractured their lives. As it goes for bad, spiritually destructive or abusive relationships, so it goes for Holy Mother Church, or as Pope St John Paul II said, “As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.”

And it seems to me that Holy Mother Church has reached a crisis built on a particular set of abusive relationships hewn out of the hierarchical structure of the Church, not, I hasten to add, that the structure itself is to blame, anymore than the rites of the Church are responsible for sacrilegious Communions, lengthy lapsation after Baptism, wicked priests or requests for annulments. You'll immediately assume, I think, that I refer primarily to Pope Francis because he is the Abuser-of-the-Faithful-in-Chief, but the problem is much bigger even than he. Much, much bigger.

The Church is formed of relationships in a Communion, Communion with Christ and the Saints, Purgatory and each other in the Church Militant. Part of the problem with abusive relationships is that more often than not they rely on honourable and worthy foundations of loyalty, abusers demand it, the abused give it, but if loyalty is all there is, and there is no foundation of justice underpinning the relationship, it can easily become a simple relationship of master and slave. This form of slavery can take many forms, but it must be remembered that, psychologically, often even the slave is getting something out of it, some kind of emotional reward. Tolerated for too long, this kind of relationship becomes almost, if not completely impossible to reform and incredibly destructive. It can never be healthy and it can never be good, unless there is dramatic and extremely rare healing in the relationship.

Healing requires recognition of the abuse that has taken place, a sober assessment and a painful one at that. Both abuser and victim must confront reality. To do that requires great courage. The opposite vice is cowardice. Self-delusion and cowardice are faults.

It appears to me that this fault, a fault born out of lack of moral character and what we often call "backbone" is endemic among the Bishops of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. Lucky I'm not a Bishop, because I don't have that moral character either. Many Bishops are unable to see that their loyalty to Pope Francis is being completely and utterly abused in a maniacal fashion on a near daily basis, but there are many also who know full well that he who should be a Father is in fact a monster, and these cannot bring themselves to confront themselves, or each other, or their abuser with the truth of his behaviour.

Then, of course, there are the Bishops who don't consider themselves to have been abused at all because they have the same mindset as Francis himself about nearly everything. They encourage it. They are the ones who are 'helping'. When the abuser is defied by, for example, Cardinal Burke or Archbishop Vigano, these people are deemed not to be helping, but of course, they are helping genuinely, because they can see the abuse others fail to recognise and speak of it, while others are secretly terrified or enjoy facilitating the abuse.

You can be psychologically or emotionally abused for years and never realise you are enabling your abuser. You can become an abuser yourself without even realising it. You can swap roles in such relationships quickly and regularly, but in the Church there is a clear power structure that is vulnerable to abuse. Because they are Successors of the Apostles, they too have still been abused, something that should not be overlooked. The abused themselves, of course, also become abusers. Make no mistake, this is in every way the pontificate of abuse, because there is only one language Francis understands and it is the language of power. Many bishops spin on the same axis. The same goes for his companions in the serial violation of the Gospel that Francis is engineering. He loves confusion, so he says, but he seems to love power even more.

As I have indicated in prior blogposts, I believe that the idea that Pope Benedict XVI did not successfully vacate the Chair of Peter is not as outlandish as many people say it is, but while many of the Faithful continue to discuss the matter openly and without reserve, this idea does not seem to have legs among the Cardinals and Bishops of the Church. It probably never will. Nevertheless, even if the election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio were completely uncontroversial and completely undisputed throughout the whole Catholic Church, among all priests, all bishops, all cardinals and all the laity, publicly and privately, I can see no defence for Bishops and Cardinals to accept the passing down of papal directives or desires that contradict, distort or blunt the Gospel or mutate it into a secular credo that forms a kind of papal political manifesto sponsored by the UN and, perhaps soon, Stonewall. There is no excuse for this. At. All. Unfortunately, that's exactly what is starting to happen.

When the Global becomes Local

I doubt very much that we would have had what was visited in my locale without Pope Francis, but his realignment of the Church with the world requires viceroys. In the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton, parishes recently received a flashy brochure informing the Faithful of our eco-sins (we were blind, but now we see) and our call to conversion to an 'integral ecology'. Perhaps I need not have gone to Rome and made a little YouTube video about the pagan Vatican-state based terrorism project that was the Pachamama Synod. Looking back, I ask myself why I asked Pope Francis to do something about the desecration of Rome's churches, but I suppose I put that down to my indomitable belief and hope that pathological abusers (who so often present themselves as victims) can change direction.

It has taken a few years of the Bergoglian pontificate since the florid and turgid 'Laudato Si' to get to this point where climate alarmism and activism filters down to the pews. The fruit of this awful pontificate has finally now reached these pews. I dread to think what kind of literature Bishops will be handing out in the next year or two. I dread to think.

The pastoral letter was an impassioned plea, the urgency of the message emphatically proclaimed in what amounts to a climate 'emergency'. The terms 'urgent', 'crisis' and 'emergency' have seemingly been held back in reserve for a long, long time from Bishops awaiting a time such as now, when they deem the human race capable enough to save the planet while, for example, many of our marriages, familial relationships or domestic lives are burning, while spouses and children are being abandoned, while children are taught about oral and anal sex in schools and while adultery, abortion, sodomy, fornication and all kinds of addictions devour men and women and set souls at emnity with Almighty God. Would it be so remiss to suggest that some Bishops do not have their priorities in order?

The pastoral letter and the rather blasphemous magazine that came with it both packed a punch (to the guts, that is), but I couldn't help feel that no matter what view you take on Greta Thunberg's corporately-sponsored hobby horse, there was something of an imbalance between the lengthy prose and sudden apocalyptic tone of the magazine and the dearth of such material passed to the Faithful on, for example, marriage (and how to have one), the family, life issues such as abortion and IVF, catechetical material on the holy Catholic Faith and the faithful renewal of the Holy Liturgy to reflect more reverently the Sacrifice being renewed upon the Altar at Holy Mass in an unbloody manner. If the religious language and iconography had been removed from the magazine, one could easily be forgiven for thinking that Catholic parishes had received a mailing from Extinction Rebellion.

Was this the Bishop's idea? Was it the Bishop of Salford's idea? Whose idea was this? Are Bishops voluntarily jettisoning Christ for climate change alarmism? Are they following Francis's lead, or are they being encouraged or even told to become climate evangelists by Pope Francis and the Vatican? I don't know, I'd like to know but probably never will. All I know is that now Pope Francis's abuse and mutilation of the Catholic Faith has come right down all the way to parishes, through Bishops. Somehow. Having already gutted the St John Paul II pro-life institute, Francis, by his abuse of power, is bringing sustainable development goals with all their known endorsement of artificial contraception, abortion and sterilisation to Catholic parishes through 'helpful' and pliant Bishops who are either aware or unaware that their loyalty to Francis is being seriously abused. Perhaps they are also unaware that they, in turn, because they are unable to resist the garbage coming from Rome, are abusing the Faithful over whom they are Shepherds. The Bishops, with Francis's encouragement, are now following Francis's lead in abusing their teaching Office to teach what really amounts to another Gospel entirely. It wouldn't be so bad perhaps if Bishops taught and passed on the perennial Faith as well, but the enthusiasm for teaching the Catholic Faith simply isn't there among most Bishops. Most seem to find the Catholic Faith embarrassing, but aren't embarrassed to repeat the mantras of corporations, governments and celebrities on climate change.

The Catholic lay Faithful, as the most numerous but last in line when it comes to any power and certainly any authority, have every right to expect from the Pope and the Bishops of the Catholic Church, sound doctrine and teaching about the Faith into which all of us were baptised, in which we hope to grow in holiness, grow in the love of God and save our immortal souls. Not everyone even agrees with or believes in man-made climate change in the manner in which it is presented by climate activists. Just how many men and women went to Mass to hear a Pastoral Letter and felt unnecessarily completely alientated? How can Bishops force-feed this stuff onto the lay faithful? None of these matters are articles of Faith. None of these matters touch on Catholic spirituality at all, it doesn't really trace for us the path of Salvation.

Bishops are being played by Pope Francis even if they want to be played, or don't mind being played for myriad reasons or don't realise their loyalty is valued only because it furthers a political agenda,  rather than the Kingdom of God. Bishops and priests and lay people need the Light of Christ to be able to distinguish between what is truly Gospel teaching, what is from God, and what is a counterfeit, man-made Gospel that has not come from the Lord. All authority was entrusted to the Successors of the Apostles to teach all nations and baptise them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, instructing souls to keep the commandments of God, to preach repentance for the Salvation of souls. Pray for our Bishops that they do just this. They are not, in the last analysis, required to do much more, save for prayer, than this. Pray for the end of abuse of all kinds in the Catholic Church, lest every Catholic become a victim.

God bless readers and keep fighting the good fight for the Salvation of souls and the conversion of sinners through your prayers and sacrifices. Have a wonderful and blessed Christmas and a blessed 2020.