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.
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.
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.
And come, Lord Jesus!
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.
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. |
| St Paul: Shipwrecked in Malta, risk-levels high |
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. |
| Here in this place, God dwells with men |
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| Whatever you think of the risks of transmission, this is not edifying at all. |
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.
