Diversified out of existence, Bergoglio proves his hypocrisy once again and Kasper is finally right on something, though only partially - Sunday 10th of September to Saturda 16th of September

We had the remarkable news that a large Germain supermaket chain has edited crosses out of its packaging. They claimed they were doing it out of diversity and so as not to cause offence. The chain was Lidl, one I have often used and one whose products I often find well-worth buying.

I have been informed that they repented and decided to stop editing crosses out of their packaging.  The Christian forgives those who repent, so I cannot hold much of a grudge against Lidl anymore but it is still telling that Lidl did this because the messages they have received from Christians is that Christians do not mind being airbrushed out of existence, as they have shown a willingness to go along with just about every assault on their heritage in the name of cordiality. As usual, I blame NOChurch, as it has led the way in dismantling Catholicism  to please everyone else. One can hardly be stricter on supermaket chains which choose not to flaunt Christianity than one can be on a pope who seems to hide his cross when in the company of non-Catholics, or schools which downplay their Catholic heritage, or any other number of actions against the faith.

I had intended to write a letter to Lidl and inform them that I shall not shop at their stores any more, but with their repentance, I feel I can in good conscience continue doing it. My letter to NOChurch informing them of my future non-contributions to 'bread and wine', bad music, ugly surroundings and bad teaching is still being drafted...

Speaking of NOChurch, Cardinal Kasper came out and asserted that “nowadays there are no more significant differences between Protestant and Catholic Christians”. I am forced to agree with him since most Catholics nowadays accept as many heresies as the protestants, and deny as many truths. Had say, Cardinal Burke said the same thing then it would have been a rallying cry to action, to get Catholics to believe and express their faith. With Kasper, it is a  proclamation of victory for the NOChurch revolution.

The differences between Catholicism and the various protestantisms are of course, vast, as Kasper well knows. However, we must sadly admit that he is right because most Catholics today do not know the difference between the divinely-inspired Catholic faith and the various other false faiths out there. As one commenter on Gloria.tv put it:

"No essential difference between Vatican II catholics and protestants." Fixed if for you there Cardinal. And for once this heretic is right.

Continuing with NOChurch, Ireland continues to be its prize jewel, the prime example of the Novus Ordo at work. This year, the main seminary in the country had the fewest candidates admitted to the seminary for 222 years. This is the same seminary which had a sodomy-scandal a while back when seminarians were found to be on a sodomite-hooking app. They were not even dismissed, and were instead sent to Rome by a bishop who we must assume is partial to that particular perversion.

Russia test-fired an inter-continental ballistic missile. The U.S. did the same either a few days after or a few days before. This again proves the hypocrisy of slapping sanctions on North Korea for doing the very same thing which the U.S., Russia, China and various other countries do all the time. The Trump administration is even talking of pulling out of the nuclear deal with Iran because Iran has a missle programme, something out of the scope of the agreement and something which Iran is, of course, entirely entitled to do.

While we are on the topic of hypocrisy, Bergoglio got a fresh chance to virtue signal aganist Donald Trump, insisting that if Trump were truly pro-life, he would allow the non-enforcement of U.S. law that is the DACA programme. The USCCB had predictably led the virtue-signalling charge on this one. Over at LaSaletteJourney, they were not slow to point out Bergoglio's hypocrisy in this, noting that if Bergoglio were truly pro-life, he would condemn the Castro brothers for various anti-life actions. Ont he same blog, they insist that if the USCCB is to be taken seriously regarding its stated opposition to sodomitical unions, it must condemn Bergoglio for giving the impression that they can be tolerated, so long as they are not referred to as marriage. This is in direct opposition to the teaching of the Church, of course.

We also received news that Turkey has paid off the first installment of the anti-missile system it purchased from Russia. As I wrote a while back, thiss is more significant than it might first appear, as it is yet more proof of a shift away from the U.S. and its Western puppets and towards Russia. Only the Western rulers and those who buy the propaganda in their countries think that Russia is isolated.

Finally we had some good news for a change, and these come from Syria where re-construction efforts have now begun. The war seems to be drawing to a close and planning for re-building of infrastructure is well under way, no thanks to the Western Islamists who have caused so much bloodshed in that poor country.  We hope to see an end to all confligt in Syria before long.

To round things off, we had the Belgian order which has voted to allow euthanasia at its hospices defying the Vatican and continuing that policy. It should be noted that Bergoglio is hardly in a position to judge here, because he has actually stated that one ought to ignore the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith if they insist on restricting one's activities.

 

Another dubia cardinal's death leaves us close to full suspicion mode - Sunday 3rd September to Saturday 9th of September

The major news this week was of course the death of Cardinal Caffara.

I must admit that my first reaction at the death of Cardinal Meisner was "Was it suspicious"? I did not even know the circumstances at the time but I found it strange that someone without any apparent illness could simply drop dead.

Fast forward 2 months later and we have the death of yet another cardinal, also in a surprising death and without any apparent illness.

I am already in semi-suspicion mode over this because I am convinced of the absolute malice of Bergoglio and those surrounding him. If any of the other 2 cardinals was to pass away I would go into full suspicion mode. Like they say in the Godfather, this would be the case even if he got struck by lightning!

We have been informed that Bergoglio had/has the dubia cardinals monitored, and this coming from Cardinal Caffara will have to be counted as the trustworthy given it was essentially the last testament of a dying man. If anything happens to either Cardinal Brandmüller or Cardinal Burke, then the whole Catholic world should rise up and demand an autopsy because we would be derelict in our duty to protect our brethren if we did not.

Not content with not answering the dubia, Bergoglio found time to issue new legislation regarding the translation of the Novus Ordo Missae. The message was loudly received and unambigious: Do what thou wilt! Now it is up to the local episcopal conferences to produce translations and for the Vatican to approve them, instead of the Vatican's liturgy commissions being in charge of the process.

It would seem he has given up on his plan of doctrinal devolution, so the next best thing is liturgical devolution. We need not wonder whether the motives were sinister or benign, as with Bergoglio they are always against the faith. It was nonetheless another demonstration that the only thing this oaf of a man does not have time is putting down 5 little words on a piece of paper in answer to the dubia.

Over at the Fatima Center, we had yet more traditionalist infighting. It is most unbecoming and I sure wish it would stop. It is rather tragic that there is so much infighting among those who agree on the basic premise: Fighting Vatican II and its spirits. At the very least we ought to ask those involved not to air their dirty linen in public.

One thing I shall say though is this: Among traditionalists, truth reigns supreme, and this is what gives this counter-revolution so much vigour. In that sense I can find it more irritating than off-putting, because the search of truth definitely involves troubling revelations, and that involves a certain amount of friction.

We also had news of North Korea testing the hydrogen bomb. My stand on the North Korean situation is  very clear: They have both the legal and moral right to pursue any means to defend their national sovereignty. North Korea is not a signatory to the non-proliferation nuclear treaty (NPT), nor is any country prohibited from testing missiles, and its security concerns are not unfounded given the U.S. world bombing tour seems to have put North Korea on its perfomance list. The leader of a country has a natural right and a natural obligation to protect the civilisation within his jurisdiction. Even awful morally decrepit countries have natural rights, and that applies just as much to the U.S. as it does to North Korea.

The U.N., of course, responded with a set of yet more illegal sanctions. It is unbecoming of Russia and China to allow the imposition of these sanctions, especially since the U.S. keeps imposing sanctions on even them at the same time. It is unfathomable to me just why the go along with this bullying given that they are both individually, and certainly combined, great enough powers to resist it.

On the other hand, of course both Russia and China have an interest in preventing more countries from joining the nuclear club, so maybe they secretly get what they want but end up looking good by not being the driving power behind what is clearly illegal actions on the part of the U.N. Security Council. Either way, it is unsightly to behold.

We also had a chance to witness the priorities of NOChurch when the bishops of the U.S. ligned up almost in unison to condemn Donald Trump on simply removing a provision which prevented, or at least downplayed, the enforcement of law, a law not exactly unjust since a country has a right to decide who gets to enter and under what conditions. Bergoglio, rather predictably, also got in on the grandstanding, and yet again showed his hypocrisy.

It was also interesting to see Bergoglio called an "attention whore", since I have previously expressed similar sentiment, and I even have a tag for it called "Bergoglio attention-whoring" . The article was by Mundabor, which comes as no big surprise but I don't recall him doing it earlier. Christopher Ferrara, in the piece linked to in that particular article, expounds on Bergoglio's fake magisterium and showcases more of his rap sheet in the interview book just recently released.

On a final note, the list of Bergoglio victims grows longer, with Professor Josef Seifert now added to the list. I suppose in these mad times, not being on the Bergolio hit-list is a sign that you are not doing your job in one sense or another and being on the hit-list is more often than not a mark of  honour. It is nonetheless remarkable how distinguished are those who have found themselves as victims of Bergoglio's dreadful pontificate. The non-arguments of those who percecute them are also interesting.

If I were high-profile or distinguished enough I might have ended up on that list, a point Roberto de...

Time for everything but the dubia and more U.S. rogue state madness - Sunday 28th of August to Saturday 2nd of September

So, Bergoglio has a new book out. It comes from a series of interviews he gave to a French sociologist.

In it he reveals a lot of things, and finally puts paid to the idea that psychoananlysis has any value by revealing that he saw one for 6 months in his middle-age. The woman was Jewish and close to death, and true to form, Bergoglio obviously made no attempt to efffect a conversion.

The book itself is classic Bergoglio - scandal interwoven with heresy at every turn. I have not reat it,  but the excerpts are quite revealing. Given how long the interviews must have taken, it is further proof that Bergoglio is willing to take time to do everything apart from answering the dubia which were presented to him.

The week also revealed that not all Argentinian bishops are perverts, with Bishop Pedro Daniel Martínez Perea issuing directives which are completely in contradition to Amoris Laetitia in both letter and spirit. We all wonder what will happen to him. His priorities are very clear for all to see, and first among them is destroying the faith, or so it seems at least.

We also had more proof that the U.S. has become a rogue state, with its closure and raid of a Russian consulate in San Francisco. It is easy to get up in armss about the U.S. not following international laws, but truth be told this is a country that doesn't even follow it's own laws, so we should not surprised when it goes all rogue on other powerful nations.  The Russians, were as usual, composed in their reaction.

In the U.S., we also had Steve Bannon leaving the Donald Trump administration.  Some have taken this as a sign that he will enable to help Trump more from the outside by attacking his enemies than from the inside. We do wonder though, with virtually all the reasonable people in the original Trump administration gone, who is going to advise Trump  properly? He seems to be a hostage of the generals with whom he has surrounded himself, and for that he can blame nobody else but himself. The U.S. has this juvenile fascinattion with army-men, and so it seems with Trump, but this might just prove his undoing.

Then we have Hurricane Harvey hitting Texas. It's actually rather heart-warming seeing that Christian brotherhood has not been completely extinguished, given the lengths to which Americans went to help their countrymen.

Continuing on the theme of Bergoglio having time for everything but the dubia, he and the patriarch of Constantinople issued a joint statement - on the environment, of course.

True to form, Bergoglio also had time to appoint more anti-Catholic and anti-life people to the Pontifical Academy for Life.

Finally, we had news of a 'Catholic' school removing statues from its compound so as not to "intimidate" non-Catholics. Some see it as a logical end of Vatican II, and I do not disagree. The only real question is how come it took so long. In any case, they decided to piggyback on the general iconoclasm and monumental stupidity going on in the U.S., and get in on the act by showing their disdain for the Christian heritage.

All in all, another bad week for NOChurch, and another display of just how far the U.S. decay has come - charity in the face of adversity not withstanding.

The hounds attack converts, and Bergoglio discovers his magisterialism card, but nobody can really figure out what he said or meant - Sunday 20th of August to Saturday 27th of August

Apart from isolated terrorist-related activity in Barcelona in Spain, Turku in Finland and somewhere in Russia, it was a rather slow newsweek in Europe, I would argue. I certainly didn't pick up in anything. The leftists continued destroying statues and the North Korea vs. U.S. ensured that the media didn't have to look very far for stories, but on the secular front there was little different to set the week apart. In fact, terrorist attacks in Europe are not really newsworthy any more, if we are to be honest.

What did make some news on the Catholic front was one of Bergoglio's lay attack hounds attacking prominent converts and reverts to the faith. It turns out that many of the more prominent anti-Bergoglians are Catholics so a Bergoglio fan decided to make that a point of attack. Perhaps it is a surprise to him that people who actually take the trouble of converting to the Catholic faith - often at great social cost - do it because they take Catholicism seriously. Several prominent Catholics were attacked by name, showing that the Bergoglians really are starting to feel the heat.

Getting insulted by the Bergoglians is now a mark of honour, so I don't think any of them will lose sleep over it.

The really big news though was how Bergoglio attempted to shore up the failing Novus Ordo by telling us that he can say with magisterial authority that the liturgical reforms are now "irreversible". Nobody knows what he meant, although we all took it as an attack on the Roman Rite and an attempt to prop up the Novus Ordo innovations.

Fr. Hunwicke and Novus Ordo Watch (sedevacantists) both had pretty good analyses on it, but it was  Fr. Hugh Somerville-Knapman who has probably the best analysis, and he also provided a summary from others who had a go at one of Bergoglio's more delusional statements. His basic contention was that this is not such big news because first of all nobody can really figure out what Bergoglio meant. The good priest did, however, manage to shed light on the fact that Bergoglio had quoted mainly himself (as is par for the course) while also spicing his verbiage with references to other popes, except most tellingly Pope Benedict XVI - his immediate predecessor and one who has probably written more on the liturgy than any of the others - who famously issued Summorum Pontificum.

The contention of Fr. Hugh Somerville-Knapman was that if the liturgical reforms are irreversible (whatever that means) then they would obviously have to include Summorum Pontificum.

A take I saw on one of the comment boards, made an interesting observation, worth quoting in full:

 

Our beloved Holy Father is a Jesuit, and can make good use of mental reservations, and other techniques of communication and diversion. He did *not* say, “I affirm that the post-concilar liturgical reform is irreversible,” rather he said “I can affirm that, etc.”

“Possiamo affermare con sicurezza e con autorità magisteriale che la riforma liturgica è irreversibile”

In a somewhat similar way, I could say: “I can affirm that I am from Mars” but if I did so I would be fibbing.

 

That's good plain old Jesuitism, and I would not be surprised if Bergoglio actually put it that way in order to be able to deny that he actually was trying to impose the Novus Ordo mess on posterity, something he has no authority to do in any case and simply proves his delusion is getting the better of him.

Although we cannot actually pin down what Bergoglio said or meant, we all pretty much know what he intended to convey: Big bad old Church must go, new NOChurch must take its place, but to prop up it's sinking hull we shall pretend that sinking is the new floating.

It is noteworthy that Bergoglio only pulls out his magisterial authority card when he wants to suppress authentic Catholic expression, and not say, when trying to clear up confusion, of which he himself is often the cause.

Then we had another anti-Russian propaganda piece on the Catholic Herald, an action which is becoming sadly predictable. Their trustworthiness has fallen very much, and I shall never forget, God-willing, the amount of propaganda they put into the whole Libya affair, urging the invasion of Libya by the Western forces.

It is difficult to discern who or what exactly the Catholic Herald serves, but truth is definitely not the master over there. Since they took away the commenting ability, they can pretty much print anything without concerning themselves with being corrected by people who either know better or are more honest, so I definitely do not  turn to them unless I have little choice.

 

Streetfighting and the Alt-Right as the decepticons and false oppositions - Sunday 13th of August to Saturday 19th of August

Like most people, I have been left somewhat perplexed at how quickly the divisions in the U.S. have metastasised into the sorts of flares which in many countries are the prelude to violent revolution, in almost all cases as part of orchestrated political revolutions. I have no doubt that the leftist violence we see is pre-planned and directed towards a politcal end. Some have claimed that there are paid actors, but I am more sceptical, believing that there is not exactly a shortage of stupid leftists who are itching for a fight.

This event took place last week, but the fallout took place mainly during this week, so it is worth taking time to address it.

First the facts: I don't have all of them, so we shall have to dispense with a factual reading.

The only facts I do have and the only one that is relevant:

  • The protest was over removing a statue of what I understand to be the greatest general of the Confederate army, Robert E. Lee.
  •  The protest over removing the statue was legal and had a permit.
  • Among those protesting was a contingent of white supremacists of various sorts, and how large they were in proportion to the rest I honestly have no doubt, nor have I bothered to check. They might all have been white supremacists, or they may have been 1%. It really is irrelevant.

Nobody can with any credibility label me a white supremacist, so I can with full confidence state that those protesting over the removal of the statue were not to blame - not one bit. Let's call them statuists, because it seems very offensive to the truth to label them all white supremacists.

The violence was initiated by the left, as is par for the course, and the statuists retaliated. Many of the statuists, and perhaps of these a greater number were white supremacists, came armed, and that proved wise as the police did nothing to police the rally. That is perfectly understandable, and would prove wise, given that they were attacked, and given that the leftists in the U.S. have been using violence for well over 2 years now to shut down any debate regarding any substantive issue. We saw this at the Trump rallies with various leftists groups, and we have seen this violence at universities. One would have expected the leftists to attack the rally violently, so it is no surprise that the statuists were prepared for confrontation.

The leftists had no permit, so their protest was illegal. If they wanted to avoid violence they could easily have applied for a permit and held their rally at a later date, instead of focusing all their attention on a legal rally. The police were clearly given orders not to police the rally so that the violence would be visible for all. There are 2 possible reasons for this, the one being that the politicans are in favour of leftist violence, and the other being that they are in favour of any violence which creates social unrest in the U.S. which will enable them to have some sort of political machination against Donald Trump.

It is a running joke by me, and one I picked up from CrossTalk on Russia Today, that the only reason that Trump is still president is that the U.S. does not have an embassy in Washington. In other words, what we are seeing in the U.S. is an orchestrated campaign to create chaos in order to legitimise regime change, from exactly the same playbook that we have seen used in Ukraine (twice), Egypt, Kenya, Syria, Libya, Iran, Yugoslavia and Greece, to name but a few. It is probably the same book playing out in Venezuela now, although in Venezuela's case, the collapse of the country has absolutely everything to do with the socialist policies of the rules than anything else, so although it would seem the U.S. is formenting chaos, we would probably have seen the chaos regardless.

In any case, Trump had every right in the world to state that the violence was on "many sides", although a more truthful account would have pinned the initiation of the violence firmly on the leftists.

This brings me to the case of the Alt-Right, who are clearly playing the role of false opposition in all of this. While I am not sure that the leftist protesters were paid vandalisers, I am less sceptical about those 'white supremacists' being paid actors.

An article on The Remnant chronicled the meteoric media-driven rise of a prominent member of this group, and one issue which perplexed them was how it has come to be that this 'movement' and its leaders have received so much free publicity when the media completely ignores the Catholic opposition and in fact any principled opposition. In fact, we saw it with Ron Paul: What the media wants silenced it ignores.

It also questioned the credibility of many of its leaders, who seem to have come out of nowhere and who seem to have had leftist leanings. None of them are particularly interested in public or private morality, and for the most part they seem to be leftists who detest non-white people, but who are perfectly okay with leftists policies on the whole, apart from, perhaps, wholesale confiscation of private property, communism-style.

It seems at least plausible to me that the Alt-Right is a false opposition movement designed either to:

  • Discredit the movement on which Donald Trump rode to his presidency
  • De-Christianise the opposition to the political elite by making the oppostion seem abominable, and therely alieaning Christians
  • Absorb all the evil of the general leftist trend of the society into a movement which seems to oppose it at first sight, but which in practice does not
  • Distract media attention from the issues on which Trump vowed to focus
  • Divert political attention towards sideshows and force Donald Trump into neo-con policies abroad in order to focus American attention
  • ...

In Bergoglian times, fake papal news is indistinguishable from real papal news, and a novel idea - Sunday 6th of August to Saturday 12th of August

There was a statement alleged to have come from Vladimir Putin regarding Bergoglio. I cannot for the life of me figure out if the news is fake or whether it is real.

I came to the piece through Fr. Zuhlsdorf's site. In the piece we found the following (emphases from his site):

President Putin has slammed Pope Francis for “pushing a political ideology instead of running a church”, and warned that the leader of the Catholic Church “is not a man of God.”

“Pope Francis is using his platform to push a dangerous far-left political ideology on vulnerable people around the world, people who trust him because of his position,” Putin said. 

“If you look at what he (the Pope) says it’s clear that he is not a man of God. At least not the Christian God. Not the God of the Bible,” Putin said at the Naval Cathedral of St. Nicholas in Kronstadt.  

“He dreams of a world government and a global communist system of repression.

“As we have seen before in communist states, this system is not compatible with Christianity.”

The charges made against Bergoglio are certainly true, but the tone is certainly not that of Vladimir Putin, who is the most diplomatic statesman around. He is very cautious in his statements and I fail to even see why he would bother taking time from his busy efforts rebuilding Russia to criticise a man who is busy destroying the Catholic Church, of which he is not a member (the 'which' refers to Putin here but since heretics cannot be members of the Church...). I just don't see Putin making these statements, and at a cathedral no less.

Mind you, I would certainly not respect him less if he said it!

The truth is that Bergoglio's attack hounds have  been critical of Putin so it would be only fair of Putin to point out that Bergoglio is not a man of God and that he is deceiving people. I just don't think that Vladimir Putin said it, because I have not seen any confirmation of this piece from trustworthy newspapers or blogs, and even Fr. Zuhlsdorf seems to think it is fake news.

There were many comments on this piece at the website, but one in particular was noteworthy:

Fake news or not (I think it is largely invented), Pope Francis is to blame for having said things that make people wonder if articles like this are true. What this article says would not be remotely plausible if it pertained to either of our previous two popes. Not so with Pope Francis. Even if Putin never said what the article says he says, it is plausible that he did say those things and it is also plausible that there is some element of truth to at least some of them.

The truth is the more absurd a story coming from the Vatican nowadays the more likely that it is true, and the more anti-Catholic it is the less we can dismiss it. Even Bergoglio's defenders cannot pretend that the man is not a disaster for the Catholic Church.

The same priest writes about the 'North Korean' situatoin and suggests some solutions. There was only one contributor who wrote anything worthy of a Catholic response, while the rest showed off their americanism. As it turns out, he is British, and seemed generally to be the most informed. One of his responses captures his general attitude towards the 'problem', and he had many.

Simples. Don’t threaten North Korea. Don’t put THAAD missiles in South Korea. Don’t carry out massive battle manoeuvres in the south. In fact go back home and look after your own people.

I have a novel idea: Just leave North Korea alone!

My idea runs roughly along the same sentiments in other words. The fact is that most other countries have come to terms with the fact that North Korea is a nuclear power, including all of its neighbours, which are well within the range of North Korean weapons. It is only the U.S. which thinks it is so special that it has a right to prevent another country from defending itself.

North Korean concerns are not exactly unjustified, as the U.S. has been on a global campaign to take down anyone who opposes its policies and not strong enough for self-defence. We have seen Iraq, Libya and Syria attacked militarily by the U.S. and on top of that you can add other countries the U.S. has bombed int the recent past on multiple continents. As a sovereign country, North Korea have every right to defend themselves or at the very least to assure the destruction of anybody who attacks them, adn contrary to popular opinion, it is the U.S. which is the aggressor as it keeps holding military drills - some with such ominous names as "Operation Decapitation" - and imposing sanctions on what is already one of the most impoverished countries in the world. Truth is, sanctions are considered an act of war.

It is time for the U.S. to stop acting as if it is special - and being allowed to get away with it - and live with the rest of the international community as part of the community, and not as an overlord. It is the U.S. which is the real rogue state!

There is simply no good reason why anybody should accept the ridiculous notion that the U.S. has a right not to be under threat from other countries, given that it threatens virtually all countries on the planet. Furthermore, there is nothing irrational about the behaviour of North Korea: They simply seek the survival of their nation, as do most right-thinking people (which obviously excludes most of the Western politicians and electorate at this point in time). I would hope that at least Catholics can agree that it is unjust to threaten a country with annihilation simply for seeking the means to preserve itself,...

Sanctions and excommunications for everybody for no reason! - Sunday 30th July to Saturday 5th of August

We had news of a Colombian professor , José Galat, who was excommunicated for criticising Bergoglio and raising questions about the legitimacy of his papacy. If we leave aside the fact that the man didn't actually utter any heresy, and contrast this with the fact that heretics abound against whom nothing is done, we are still left with the issue of the bishops of Colombia effectively making something which ought to be legitimately debatable forbidden to speak about.

The fact is that we have 2 people who wear white in the Vatican. The fact is that one of them resigned under very suspicious conditions. The fact is that the other was elected under very suspicious conditions. There is also the fact that Bergoglio has issued numerous and repeated statements which are impious and heretical. Then we have the multiple prophecies which warn about false shepherds, including false popes.

It is difficult to see why somebody should be excommunicated about this when doubts about Bergoglio are perfectly legitimate, but then again it's difficult to find much of anything which makes sense in NOChurch.

I wrote about this in one of my daily comments.

Not to be left behind on the irrationality race, the U.S. political establishment issued new sanctions against Russia, Iran, Syria and North Korea, sanctions which Donald Trump signed into law this week.

Let it be clear that sanctions are considered acts of war! Let it also be clear that none of the countries here have done anything illegal, and that includes North Korea - which having pulled out of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty is free to pursue nuclear weapons, and as a sovereign state has an unassailable right to develop missile technology! Let it also be clear that they were all bunched together to create the impression that there is the same sinister thread in all of them!

The sanctions on Russian in particular would seem to be nothing more than protectionist measures, something even the Europeans have realised. They claim they will take measuers against the U.S. if these sanctions harm its economic interests. We should not feel sorry for the EU, of course, given that it is not opposing the immorality of sanctions but rather that they were imposed without their involvement, denying them the chance to make sure that while harming Russia, their companies are not harmed. My understanding is that also within 2 days of these sanctions against Russia, the EU imposed other sanctions of its own against Mother Russia.

The sanctions againsty Iran seem to be even more sinister, as even Donald Trump has admitted that Iran has complied with the nuclear deal they signed some 2 years ago or so, the one good thing that the previous evil regime of the U.S. did.

I sometimes have difficulty deciding whether Trump does these things because he believes the lies he is told or because he feels helpless. Either way, he has made himself seem even more helpless as these sanctions tie his hands if he ever wanted to improve relations with Russia, who themselves have seen fit to finally expel U.S. diplomats from Russia, some 8 months after the U.S. expelled Russian diplomats from the U.S. on the same false premises. He could have refused to sign the bill, in which case it would have gone into law anyway as it was veto-proof, but at least he would have signalled his independence.

By signing them he essentially proves himself either a hostage or a stooge of the political establishment, the very swamp he vowed to drain. If he thinks that making bad compromises will help him then he is greatly deluded.

Finally, some football news and a world record transfer of €222 million. I must admit I didn't think it would happen and probably the selling club never actually thought the clause would be met. I commented on this on the day it broke, and I'll briefly restate my comments here.

Though I do not bother reading much from secular newspapers, no doubt there are those decrying the amount of money in football. The statement "they make milions while hospital nurses make much less" is not unusual, as if there are not easily-understandable explanations as to why this is the case.

All the same, if you have something against the money involved - and I must admit to being repulsed by it - just remember that it is €200 million less for ISIS and other jihadists. It is not as though the Qataris were going to use the money to fund a raft of Catholic orphanages around the globe, after all. Neither were they likely to use the money to help their poor fellow Yemeni Arabs who are being bombed to smitherines by Saudi Arabia and its Western allies. This is probably the least harmful way the were going to spend the money.

 

A poster-boy for the culture of death - Sunday 23rd to Saturday 29th of July

There is really only one place to start in a review of this week, and that is with the most tragic death - in the true meaning of the word tragic - of Charlie Gard. This is one of the saddest and certainly most frightening stories that I have come to know in all of Western history.

If my understanding of the facts is correct, this is what happened:

  • An unwed couple gives birth to a boy with a rare genetic defect, untreatable to date.
  • The doctors decide that the boy's disease is so serious that he will not survive and they want to turn off the life support.
  • The parents then say that he should be able to die at home, in the loving embrace of a loving home instead of a sterile hospital.
  • The hospital refuses to discharge him insisting that he must die there.
  • The parents file a suit to bring him home.
  • The hospital challenges this.
  • In the meantime, this case has brought enough international attention to it that a doctor working in the U.S. proposes to have him flown there for further treatment, insisting that there is a slight chance that he could lead a relatively normal life if the treatment works.
  • The hospital still refuses to dismiss him. The courts still agree.
  • The parents have in the meantime managed to raise the money required to take him to the U.S., almost $2 million at the time of the boy's death.
  • The high court rules that the hospital can keep him.
  • The parents keep fighting.
  • The parents appeal to the EU.
  • The European Court refuses to hear the case.
  • Trump and Bergoglio get involved, with the former saying he is willing to fly the child to the U.S. for help and the latter that he is willing to have him flown to Rome.
  • The court case drags on.
  • The parents give up, having had the U.S. doctor fly in to the U.K. to physically examine the boy and with the doctor concluding that too much time has passed without treatment for there to be any hope. Had the treatment come earlier his chances might have been good.
  • The parents still want to take him to die.
  • The hospital refuses to do that and finally...
  • Little Charlie Gard dies in a sterile and cold hospital, surrounded by his parents.

I'll have to admit that I didn't really follow this story from the start, so some of the details and timeline might be a bit off, but I think I have captured the gist of it.

My readers can rest assured that I shall not insult their intelligence by even entertaining the idea that the state of the U.K. could at any time in these proceedings have been interested in the well-being of Charlie Gard. So we must look at why the state fought so hard to make sure that little Charlie Gard died in a hospital and was prevented from leaving the country to seek treatment elsewhere.

Beneath all the headlines, the principles that the U.K., and EU were fighting for are not that difficult to piece out. They are that the government:

  • Has an absolute right to decide who gets to live or die, depending on what they deem to be a worthy life.
  • Has supreme rights which trump parental rights - primarily the parents' rights to decide what is best for the child. This is in spite of the fact that nobody in the governent will mourn for the child, hold a wake for him, or even attend their funeral - that is, assuming they are generous enough to release the body from the hospital for burial.
  • Decides when you die.
  • Decides where  you die.

I'll simply point out that the reason for keeping him a prisoner instead of releasing him abroad for treatment was because the hospital decided that his life, even if the treatment had worked, would not have been worth living. In other words, if the government determines that your quality of life is low enough, it can keep you locked up in a hospital, preventing  you from seeking treatment from a doctor of your choice anywhere else, and depriving you of any life support.

How is this any different than the most despotic and evil regimes frequently brought up in these conversations? Is it not always the case that the principal at stake for these regimes, and what made their evil snowball, was the very idea that the government assumed the power to decide which lives were worthy of not killing and which ones could be disposed of?

If this doesn't sum up the culture of death, it's hard to think what does. The most startling thing is that the very premise that the government decides what is a life worth living based on its subjective quality measure was not even challenged, as far as I could tell. It has become so ingrained in us that the governnment has absolute power of all within its borders that nobody even notices when a fundamental right is at stake.

I mean, it's so obvious that the government was morally wrong that even Bergoglio intervened on the side of Charlie Gard! In other words, he must have seen it as a very safe space for grandstanding, this being the man who tells us not to obsess with the killing of the unborn, after all.

This is what 3 generations of legal killing of the unborn has led to. We have a society in which children can be killed in plain sight with nobody batting an eyelid. Yes, I know he died naturally, but in preventing him from seeking medical aid which could have saved his life, the government in effect murdered him.

The only other issue of any note is Donald Trump re-introducing the ban on transexuals in the military. What is common sense in every non-Western countries, and what would have been common sense in any...

When our presumed allies are just as dangerous as our enemies - Sunday 16th to Saturday 22nd of June

The real big news this week were liturgical, with the translation of an article posted by Cardinal Sarah on the 10th anniversary of Summorum Publication. The article itself was published on the anniversary, but its translation was only published this week.

In that article Cardinal Sarah argues that Pope Benedict XVI's mutual enrichment has been perceived in too one-sided a manner and that we should also see how the Novus Ordo can enrich the Tridentine Mass. Supporters of this mentioned the lectionary of the Novus Ordo as one such area, where there is somethign to be learned from the 1960s Mass. One priest writign for the Catholic Herald was quite emphatic in this assertion and when confronted with opposition he doubled down and insisted that there is near unanimity that the new lectionary is better than the age-old one, and that it is only traditionalists who disagree with this. It never occurred to him, perhaps, that it is only traditionalists who matter in this debate, because the "conservative Catholics", as he calls them, have proved themselves to have strentgh which can only be compared with that of boiled spaghetti.

Those pointing out the absurdity of unifying the lectionaries included Joseph Shaw, Gregory DiPippo, Fr. Zuhlsdorf and Fr. Tim Finigan, to name a few whose articles I read. Fr. Tim Finigan, in particular, summed it up well by pointing out that perhaps the problem is that those who make comments on the Tridentine Mass simply lack familiarity with it, and he pointed towards Fr. de Souza as an example of one such person. That may well be the case, but the same can certainly not be said of Cardinal Sarah, the Prefect for the Congregation of Divine Worship, and a man who, I am quite certain, has celebrated the Roman Rite on quite a few occasions. It is worth pointing out that he is generally considered to be a friend of tradition, and one of the more sane cardinals that we have.

The owner of the DeusExMachina blog saw it rather differently and saw it rather as an attempt by Cardinal Sarah to position himself in the fight for who takes over from Bergoglio. He pointed out that there are now 3 fronts, of which the dubia cardinals are one, then we have Cardinal Müller, who finally seems to have grown a reality-based perspective, and then we have Cardinal Sarah, who is reaching out to the middle ground which is opposed to Bergoglio's perversions, but is not quite willing to accept authentic Catholicism.

With regards to Cardinal Mũller, we had yet more interviews from him and Bergoglio is not painted in a good light, and neither is the Church in Europe generally. Nor should it be. Nonetheless, it is a bit rich coming from him now given he had a whole year to speak out about Amoris Laetitia in clear terms yet failed to do so, when he could have done much good. Now that he has been dismissed, anything coming out from him smells of sour grapes, no matter how truthful it is.

On the political side we had news of a report which came out from the OPCW, which monitors chemical weapons, in effect coming as close as it could to completely absolving the Assad government. It does not come out and say that in a direct manner, but let it be known that any report released by an international body of that sort which falls as far away as it did from the American and Western European positions is basically a confirmation that the EU and the U.S. are lying. Peter Hitchens has, as usual, done good work on this and his articles on this are well worth reading.

Then we had the MAKs airshow in Moscow, in which the MiG-35 made its public debut. One cannot say that the Russians have not done a good job of rebuilding their military infrastructure, and any time the Russians come up with a high-tech weapon it is good for peace. One should also take the time to not that there were very many countries involved in that airshow, and I hope that those who parrot the line that Russia is isolated can take the time to see that it is the EU and the U.S. which are isolating themselves on these issues.

This is no more evident than with the news that Turkey is on the verge of signing a deal with Russia to procure the highly advanced S400 anti-missile system, the best that Russia has to offer. Bear in mind that Turkey is a key NATO member, in fact, the flagship member of NATO apart from the U.S., given its strategic position both geographically and culturally! That Turkey would turn to Russia, the very country against whom NATO  propagates for its very existence, shows that around the world people have come to the realisation that it is better to turn away from the West. This comes not long after The Phillipines under Duterte made similar overtures to Russia, while essentially sabotaging its military alliance with the U.S. and it is also my understanding that even Croatia has purchased military weapons.

We also had the first joint Russian-Chinese naval drill in the Baltics. All the tough anti-Russian propaganda has done, it seems, is to drive Russia and China closer together. Make no mistake about it, this was a message to the West boldy stating "this world is yours to ruin as you please no longer!"

Finally we have more information of just how heinously anti-Catholic Bergoglio really is. Indeed, it wouldn't be a normal week nowadays without more details about how the pope is anti-Catholic. The man is not happy with even Novus Ordo vocations. We can therefore dismiss, as I already had before, any claim from him that he is concerned about a lack of vocations.

Returning to Cardinal Sarah, it is quite obvious to see that as long as a Catholic holds Vatican II as a good thing,...

Chronicling a whole month's travels worth of bad news - Sunday 11th of June to Saturday 15th of July

I have been travelling quite a lot over the past month, which is why I was not able to provide a weekly update. In truth, my travel began on the week starting on the Sunday of the 18th of June, but as I don't recall much of what happened that week, I'll lump that week together with the rest.

On my travels I hope to write more of in at least 2 separate posts, but the long road trip was very much enjoyable and indeed did me much spiritual good.

One of the benefits of being away was that I was in relative seclusion from the news cycle,  both the secular one and even more depressingly, the ecclesiastical one. I did manage to catch notice of a few news items, which I shall present below.

It was another bad month for what's left of Christendom as another 2 countries fell to sodomy. In Germany they passed a law recognising sodomitical unions and putting the final nail into any notion of marriage as a public good. That was sad, but not altogether surprising, given the state of the Church in Germany, as well as the general moral decline and political winds.

What was somewhat surprising to me was that Malta also fell to sodomy. This is, after all, a country which only allowed divorce some 4 years ago or something, and not with an exactly overwhelming majority, if memory serves me right. This is also a country which at the time has a more than 50% attendance at Mass. This is, however, a country which has such perverse bishops as Scicluna, of we-only-ever-need-to-listen-to-the-present-pope infamy, as well as the free-bread-for-adulterers-on-Sundays infamy. I take the chance to call it 'free bread' instead of Holy Communion because there is no reasonable chance that a bishop such as that believes in the Real Presence. I do, very much, though recognise that the sacrilege is very real because I do accept the notion that transubstantiation can occur in the Novus Ordo, given the official formula is used.

In Ireland, I was also infomed that their new sodomitical prime minister has taken charge. That was not a surprise as I had read that he was likely to be the new prime minister, but it is also striking that Ireland also only allowed divorce in the 1990s. Abortion looks very likely to follow.

In Poland, Donald Trump held a speech which was seen as much-ado-about-nothing by the Ron Paul Institute and as a ground-breaking speech by others. His optimisim for the survival of the West was not echoed by Mark Steyn though, and I do tend to agree with him that the will to survive has pretty much died out in the West. I would need more than flag-waving Poles fawning at a president who lauds them to conclude that there is enough fight to save Europe. Unfortunately, the tenacity of the Poles and some of the other mainly Catholic Eastern Europeans is more than compensated for by the suicidal tendencies of most of the other nations in the bloc.

The speech also gave me a good opportunity to note just how sad it is to see someone one thought was not a complete idiot turn out to be probably one, a person who only has a job on account of her looks, not altogether stellar either, I would hasten to add. This happened when a female commentator in response to Donald Trump's boast that he would like to see U.S. energy exports extended to such countries as Poland stated that it is nice of the president to do that, since it prevents Poland from getting it's "energy from communist countries such as Russia". This, mind you, is from a woman who seems to have been born probably not long before the fall of the Soviet Union. If one does not know that Russia is no longer a communist country, then absolutely nothing the person has to say on any issue is worth my attention, or yours either.

This was a woman on Fox News, which kind of validates the theory that the former president used to flip channels looking for new TV personalities with the sound off, just to see how good they looked on the box, without ever hearing what they had to say. It made me almost wish I had the same approach.

Vladimir Putin finally met Donald Trump, and this led to a ceasefire in parts of Syria. It's a step in the right direction, but nothing close to what the U.S. needs to do, which is at the very least to stay completely out of that war, which means in simple words to stop arming jihadists. I am not sure what else to make of the meeting as I have seen very few details of it.

Then there is the sad story of Charlie Gard, a poster boy for today's Western totalitarian state which sees no limit to its powers.

We also had Le Creep weighing in on why Africa is stuck in poverty. It is because people have 7-8 children, he says. Leaving aside that only one country in Africa has a birth rate higher than 7 - Niger - the perfect response would have been something like the following: "Well, unfortunately there is a shortage in Africa of barren women who are 25 years older than the men, so we are forced to engage in reproductive sex." That would have really put him in his place.

Now onto the Church.

I could begin no other place that with Cardinal Mũller having been relieved of his post. Evidently, there is a new policy at the Vatican of terminating posts after 5 years, and it is starting with him. According to Müller, he was called within a minute of ending his last day of his 5-year term, and was offered no explanation as to why his term was not being renewed. Well, Bergoglio is nothing if not consistent in how he handles personnel...

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