Bergoglio's God of surprises to man: "You complete me" - Sunday 4th to Saturday 10th, June 2017

This week there is no point even pretending that there was a selection of stories from which to pick the most meaningful. Towering head and shoulders above anything else is the absurd notion floated by Bergoglio that God "cannot be without us".

Reading that I was reminded of the scene in the movie Jerry McGuire - one of the more wholesome movies made over the past 2 decades, if we ignore the fornication and slight male nudity. The iconic scene from the movie is in most people's minds where the lead character says to him "You had me at hello. You had me at hello."

That scene though is preceded by a very moving sequence whereby, having returned  home early from his business trip in an attempt to reconcile with his wife, he is forced to embarass  himself in front of a women's study group, where the women spend their time consoling themselves on account of what men have done to them.

He enters the room saying "I am looking for my wife", then after a long expalanation about why the biggest night of his life was nowhere what it would have been because there was an emptiness, he confides that it is because he did not get to share it with her. "You complete me", he says, to a room full of bawling women. It is to that statement that she responds with that he had her at hello.


I'll get back to that scene in a moment, but I would like to divert to another scene in another more expensive but not as memorable movie, actually a series of movies. These movies are a take on the old Roman story of Persius, and they are The Clash of the Titans and its sequel, The Wrath of the Titans.

As I have not studied Greek mythology I cannot vouch for the fidelity of the Hollywood version to the original, but the relevant part of the story goes roughly as follows. Zeus made man and sent Hades to the netherworld, presumably on account of some family feud. They were 3 siblings, along with Poseidon, and together they had imprisoned their father, Kronos, in Tartarus, the prison built purposely to hold him who had to be stoped by his 3 sons after he tried to destroy the world. This is the plot of the second film, in which Zeus has been held captive in Kronos.

If a god being held captive sounds a bit far-fetched a bit more plot-ine will help. The gods in this mythoology need the prayers of men to sustain their power. Sinze Zeus built men out of his goodness, he feeds on their hopes and dreams. Hades, who controls the netherworld, feeds on their fears. The stronger the fears of men, the stronger Hades gets, and conversely the more men pray to Zeus in hope, the stronger he becomes. That's the plot of the first movie.

In the second movie, men have stopped praying to the gods, and the gods have become weak. They have become so weak, in fact, that they have become mortal. Unlike human beings, whose souls live on after death, the gods die into emptiness, making their death all the scarier. This brings us back to Bergoglio.

I picture Bergoglio having a movie night, on one of his sober nights (I assume he must have them) and somebody proposing that they watch a bit of Greek/Roman mythology, what with "While in Rome" and all. So someone pops in one of the Titans movies, presumably the second one since it is the one which shows the gods' need for man, and given that Bergoglio seems to have slept through all of his theology classes, he comes out thinking that he has found "serene theology", only second to Kasper's "theology on the knees". Since the man believes that all religions are equally good, he is not bothered with the fine details and so he hatches up a homily which takes the best of the Titans movies and Jerry McGuire, and comes out with the notion that God needs man.

Now, if Bergoglio were not hamstrung by the fact that the canon of Scripture has been declared cloased and immutable, he would probably have gone ahead and rewritten Genesis, and the first words of God to man would have been not "Go forth and multiply" but "You complete me".

As it is, he has to settle for one of his infamous homilies, and not willing to make it too obvious that he stole the homily from a movie, the words that come out of his mouth are instead:

Dear brothers and sisters, we are never alone. We can be far, hostile; we can even say we are ‘without God.’ But Jesus Christ’s Gospel reveals to us that God cannot be without us: He will never be a God ‘without man’; it is He who cannot be without us, and this is a great mystery! God cannot be God without man: this is a great mystery!

There is a non-heretical way of reading some of what he said, and at least one theologian has made the point that the incarnation means that God cannot be without man since Christ assumed a human nature. That would, however, betray the thrust of Bergoglio's theology, which is that we really do not owe God anything, and God is always chomping at the bit to absolve us of sin since in Kasper's words, mercy is central to God's being. He is essentially nothing but a big mercy machine, so obviously to have any utility he would need man, otherwise he would have nobody to forgive. The theologian in question finds no way to read the statement that God cannot be without us in a Catholic sense. In fact, not even a world champion gymnast would be able to do enough gymnastics to find any...

Denial seems to be the religion of the 'enlightened' - Sunday 28th of May to Saturday 3rd of June

There was another terrorist attack in London, and the chief Jesuit denied yet another tenet of the Catholic faith. It was another regular week in the Novus Ordo world, in other words.

I shall not waste your time or mine on the vehicular jihad and knife attack which took place on London Bridge. It is hardly worth talking about and the media hype is a bigger story than the attack. The most decent analysis has been done by Peter Hitchens, and he takes aim at the media hype regarding terrorism as well.

Truth be told, there are going to be more and more of these attacks and it serves the interests of both the Jihadis and the treacherous Western governments to have ISIS or similar organisations taking the blame. Why ISIS should take credit is obvious - it enhances their status. They have no problem breaking the 5th commandment, so surely breaking the 7th will cause them no great consternation? They get to seem bigger than they are to their adherents and admirers which helps in their recruitment and ego-stroking.

As for Western governments...The lie they sell is that there is an all-powerful organisation, which helps to mitigate their incompetence whenever a bomb goes off. Furthermore, powerful enemies demand powerful militaries, which helps them line the pockets of their friends. On top of that, in the face of an all-powerful enemy, people will be willing to give up a lot of their freedoms to be kept safe from the threat - real or imagined - so the political rulers take advantage of these fears to impose draconian and totalitarian laws.

This was all too evident with Theresa May's actions. "Enough is enough", she exclaimed, while it turns out that what she really means is that she wants to control the Internet more. This should surprise nobody, as Britain has had it for Internet freedoms, encryption and privacy for a long time. As David Wood argues, Theresa May's version of extremism includes people who warn against Islamisation and the violence within Islam, so only a madman would give her more power to control the Internet, or almost anything for that matter.

Enough about that. The take-away from this is that the U.K. is on a death-spiral against liberty, largely self-inflicted and we cannot expect the people who have got them into the mess to get them out - assuming they even want to get them out, which is an assumption which seems unwarranted.

That the top Jesuit has gone from denying the Bible to denying Christ should really suprise nobody either, so I shall not waste much time on it.

Let us simply be happy that they are now denying the truths of the faith outright and openly, so that we can easily identify them as the wolves that they are, instead of facing charges of being uncharitable when we point out that we are dealing with sodomitical heretics.

One final note on terrorism in the U.K. is worth making. There seems to be incredulence at how the U.K. government can permit known Jihadis, known ISIS and al-Qaeda affiliates, known head-choppers, to come back to their country having left to fight in Syria and Libya and elsewhere. They simply cannot see how these people can be allowed back in; "sworn trators", they have been called. This position has been pushed by many known so-called conservatives, including not least Mark Steyn adn Nigel Farage, who seem to be quite upset at it. They blame it on political correctness.

Something far more straightforward is at issue here though: The reason is simply that the Islamists fighting in Syria and Libya are seen as allies by the British and Western political classes.

Let us be honest:   the Germans, the Swedes, the British and French, none of these people are particularly concerned about the plight of Christians or other human beings in the Middle East. They are not even concerned about the safety of their citizens for crying out loud! What they seek is chaos in the Middle East, as it furthers their agenda of de-Christianising Europe, as well as hollowing out Christianity from  its ancestral home. Their primary enemy is Christianity, and in Jihadis they have able allies who can do against Christians in the Middle East what they dare not yet do against them in Europe.

On top of that, we have the issue that the largely bankrupt West - both morally and financially - needs to keep its paymasters happy, and the paymasters of its political elites are at this point in time are largely oil-rich Gulf states, opposed to the anti-Islamist power structures of the countries in question. Where Israel comes into this is unclear, but what is not unclear is the fact that the U.S. policies largely mirror the interests of Israel and Saudi Arabia, and Europe's interests parrot American interests. It is no co-incidence that the countries which have fallen in the Middle East over the past 15 or so years have been the least Islamic in these regions.

So when the jihadists are done with their killing sprees in the Middle East, carried out not only with the blessings but also with the support of Western governments, the Western countries are in the main largely happy to allow them, allies as they are, back into their countries. Whether the rulers want these jihadists to come back and wreak similar havoc at home, or whether they let them in under the mistaken belief that they will leave their blood-spilling ideologies at the border, is really anybody's guess.

If you do not understand that, then I agree that the carnage we see in Europe will make little sense. If you recognise that Jihadists in the Middle East have been fighting with Western support, however, then it is much easier to make sense of the general chaos, and tyranny, that has been unleashed upon Europe of late, or at the very least to recognise that it is not the fault...

Keep calm and open the borders - Sunday 21st to Saturday 27th, May 2017

This week I shall concentrate only on 3 events, to highlight the seeds of the West's decline, primarily, although one will touch slightly on Novusordoism, as is par for the course.

There were many significant events no doubt but 3 caught my attention more than anything else. The most significant event, bar none was Donald Trump's trip to Saudi Arabia, on his first foreign trip, then the Manchester bombing. As Donald Trump made his way to the Vatican - a side-issue for his part - I shall touch on that a bit as I noticed something worth commenting.

The trip to Saudi Arabia was indeed very disturbing on many levels, and should not be defended by anybody who supports Trump - as I do. Selling $350 billion dollars worth of weapons to the main supporter of ISIS and Jihadis is surely no way to bring peace, or to help out the Christians of the Middle East, as Donald Trump pledged to do during his campaign.

It was clear to anybody who put some thought behind Donald Trump's actions that the sole purpose of the trip was signing that mega-deal. Having visited the Muslims, he then had to visit the Jews and having visited both the Jews and the Muslims, it would have looked bad had he not also visited the Christians, who believe it or not Bergoglio and his cohorts in the Vatican are supposed to represent.

The absurdity on show in Saudi Arabia was breathtaking. Here we had Donald Trump speaking out against Islamic terrorism in the home of the financiers of much of it, targeting Iran which actually allows Christians in its lands - something Saudi Arabia does not - as some kind of terrorist mastermind even though Iran is possibly the most peaceful nation in that region, and the one  actually helping Assad fight ISIS and other Jihadis, while at the same time also attacking Assad, as though the people Assad is fighting in Syria are not the very same terrorists that Trump claimed needs to be fought. There was not a word of condemnation for Saudi Arabia or Israel, both countries which have been instrumental in terrorism over the past 2 decades, and here I do not only count state terrorism, in which table both those countries make the top 5 list globally.

In other words, Donald Trump has no intention whatsoever of helping the Christians in Syria or anywhere else against Jihadis. That is the conclusion we must draw from these.

The only good thing I can say about Trump with regards to his trip to Saudi Arabia and Israel is that he is at least not ashamed of humiliating himself for the sake of his countrymen as I sincerely doubt that Trump cares much for the Saudies, but he was willing to go through all the shenanigans on account of all the jobs the weapons contract will creat in the U.S., and he was willing to put up with zionists in order to keep his place as president in the U.S., since it seems impossible to be elected in the U.S. while opposing the zionist project.

While in 'the Holy Land', there was a terrorist attack in Manchester, and it would seem as though the media in the U.S. was so focused on demonising Trump that they did not even bother to switch towards covering it until it got embarassing. To be fair, I cannot blame them, since terrorist attacks of various kinds in Europe have become commonplace and are barely worth reporting on anymore.

In fact, the only reason I bring it up is because this attack once more exposed to anyone willing to see why the emotionalised, secularised, contracepted, aborting, irrationalised West is on a path to self-destruction.

First we had the 'shock'. "Oh, think of the children!", as if there is anything shocking about Islamists attacking children at a rock concert. Of course, even before the shock, I am sure we had been treated to cries of "this has nothing to do with Islam", no doubt before anyone had even confirmed that it was an Islamist attack. So we don't know anything about it, or about the one who carried it out, but the only thing we can be sure of whenever a bomb goes off, is that it has  nothing to do with Islam, even when those carrying it out specifically claim to be doing it in the name of Islam.

Then we had the hypocrisy: We are supposed to get all up in arms when British people get killed, when the U.K. is supporting and arming Islamists in Syria to do the very same thing that took place in Manchester. Oh, irony of ironies, it turns out that the father of this particular Jihadi had actually fought against Gaddafi in Libya as part of an Islamist outfit funded by the British. In other words, the mentality is: It's okay when we arm Jihadis to main and kill children in North Africa and the Middle East, and anywhere we damn well please, but if they turn against us, we must pretend to be shocked!

You will forgive me if I have no sympathy for the British, whose government has no problem paying for the killing of untold unborn children in the U.K. or the killing of untold born children abroad - these are the same people who arm and train the Saudis so they can kill poor Yemeni. As if that was not enough, the response by the rulers of that Atlantis-to-be then have the nerve to attack those who point out that the Islamisation of the U.K. is not the way to bring about order. They claim that these terrorists "want to divide us". One would have thought that if you live in a country in which one of your citizens is willing to blow up a concert full of children at a decadent rock concert, the country is pretty much already divided. According to these mindless rulers, one...

A bizarre week even by Novus Ordo standards - Sunday 14th to Saturday 20th, May, 2017

The week started with the bizarre canonisation of 2 of the 3 Fatima seers. Technically speaking this was the week before last as it happened on May 13th, the 100th year anniversary of the first apparition, but I must mention it because it set the tone for what was truly a low watermark for NOChurch.

I call it bizarre bizarre because of the hideous Monstrance that was on display. It's a perfect example of what counts for liturgical itemsin FrancisChurch - both hideous and irreverent. After that we were treated to the usual Bergoglio flight-show in which, to be fair, nothing major was unleashed, except for a condemnation of Medjugorje, in which he repeated hiss statement that the Virgin Mary is not a post master who delivers a message at set times. The interview though comes across as more Bergoglio fluff the more you engage it in full.

Back to the Medgjugorje theme, and a member of the commission tasked with investigating it came out and said that the commission is more or less on Bergoglio's line, and this is where it got weird. He then informs us that the first part of these obviously fake apparitions - the first 10 days to be exact. After that, everything else is fake. Despite this, he informus us that the prohibition of priests arranging trips to Medjugorje should be lifted, because despite the apparitions being fake, some people believe in them and derive spiritual benefit from them, and what should be done instead is that the Vatican take control of the church in question, turn it into a "pontifical shrine with Vatican oversight". In clear terms: The apparitions are fake, but the money is real, so we shall let  you keep your false apparitions if you let us keep your real money.

We are then informed that "the commission did not make a definitive pronouncement". The Novus-what-now, you say? Nothing is ever definitive in NOChurch nowadays, is it? We must never be rigid and clear, not in affirmations or condemnations.

On top of that we have the story of a school teacher in a Catholic school who is suspended for quoting St. John Bosco on Islam. We are told that the Church has a new view on Islam, which is best exemplified by Bergoglio - and there we have the Bergoglio effect striking again against pious Catholics and promoting their persecution.

As if that was not enough we had the Rome Life Forum meeting to promote virtue and life in opposition to Bergoglio's aims. At this forum, Cardinal Burke called for the explicit consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. So much for those who have dismissed the idea that the consecration has not been done properly. This same cardinal was then abused by one of Bergoglio's surrogates.

Finally, regarding the Church, we have news that the number of priests and seminarians has started a downward trend after a general upward trend between the year 2000-2014. This is what I call the Bergoglio effect decline. About 40% of priests are European so we can expect the declinet o continue  over the next decade as those ordained in the 1940s start dying off. Much good they did us! Europe has no vocations of note and neither does South America, and most of the increase in vocations is predictably from Africa and Asia.

On the non-Church stage, we have the Americans once again dropping bombs against the side in Syria which is fighting Islamists, then we have the U.S. and its president siggning a weapons deal worth $350 billion to Saudi Arabia over 10 years, with $110 billion more or less being sold immediately. As if that was not bad enough, this was done in Saudi Arabia where they were holding a conference to speak about terrorism and the threat posed by Iran in particular. This is the same Iran which is helping to fight Christian-killing Islamist forces in Syria, during a conference hosted by a country which is funding the head-choppers!

Even by Novus Ordo standards, this was a very bad week.

Make The Church Great Again!

Having commented on Donald Trump's speech and what modifications might have been done to it to make it suitable for a papal speech, I determined it would be good to present the whole speech. The previous entry becomes the working draft, with this a more coherent full speech.

I tried to keep the modifications to an absolute minimum so as to keep the essence of the speech intact. At first I thought a search-and-replace might do, but I realised that there was far too much which would make little sense if done that way. The modified parts are in red.

 

Fellow faithful, and people of the world: thank you. 

WE,  members of the Church militant , are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild Christ's Kingdom and to restore its promise for all of our people.

Together, we will determine the course of the world for years to come and the eternal destiny of many

We will face challenges. We will confront hardships. But we will get the job done.

Today’s ceremony,  has very special meaning. Because today we are not merely transferring power from one pontificate to another, or from one party to another – but we are transferring power from the halls of the corrupt Vatican schemers and back to the faithful.

For far too long a group of malicious apostates has run wild in the halls of power in Christ's Church while the faithful have borne the cost.

[Indifference flourished, and the people did not enjoy spiritual benefits of the sacramental life.

The unscrupulous clerics - spiritual wolves - prospered, the vocations dried up left the faith and the seminaries, convents and monasteries closed.

Ecumaniacs protected themselves but not the faithful placed under their charge.

Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in Rome, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across the Church".

That all changes – starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you.

It belongs to everyone gathered here today and everyone watching all across the world.

This is your day. This is your celebration.

And this, the Catholic Church, is  Christ's Church.

What truly matters is not who sits at the throne of St. Peter, but whether he serves Christ the Soverign King

January 20th 2017, will be remembered as the day when Christ became the ruler of His Church again.
The forgotten men and women of our Church will be forgotten no longer.

Everyone is listening to you now.

You came by the tens of millions to become part of a historic movement the likes of which the world has never seen before.

At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction:  the Church exists to lead it's members to Heaven.
Christians want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves. 

These are the just and reasonable demands of a righteous public.

But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of nations; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our nations of so much unrealized potential. 

This Catholic carnage stops right here and stops right now.

We are one Church – and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams; and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny.

The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all true Christians

For many decades, we have swelled the ranks of ecclesial communities at the expense of our own;
Subsidized the non-Catholic population while allowing for the very sad depletion of our infrastructure;
We have defended other religions' false teachings while refusing to defend our own true one and spent hours upon hours praising them while our catechesis has fallen into disrepair , decay and disuse.

We have made other faiths and atheists smug while the spritual wealth, strength and confidence of the Church has disappeared over the horizon.

One by one, churches shuttered and left our landscape, with not even a thought about the millions upon millions of faithful-turned-unfaithful left behind.  [One by one, churches shuttered and left our shores, with not even a though about the millions upon millions of faithful-turned-unfaithful left behind]

The wealth of Catholic intellectual life has been ripped from our halls and thrown down the drain.

But that is the past. And now we are looking only to the future.

We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital, and in every hall of power.

From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land.

From this moment on, it’s going to be Christ First.

Every decision  on liturgy, on Church discipline, on the Church's relationship with the world will be made to benefit the faithful and their families.

We must protect our churches from the bulldozers, our liturgy, teachings and the moral law from corruption. Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength. []

I will fight for you with every breath in my body – and I will never, ever let you down.

Church will start

...

Make The Church Great Again! An analysis on how a political speech could be used by a restorationist pope.

By now most of us have heard of Donald J. Trump's inauguration speech. It was relatively short so there is no good reason why anybody wishing to have an opinion on it should not take the time to watch it and for reference it has been linked below.

What I want to do today is try and use Donald Trump's speech with reference to the Church. Imagine we had a Catholic Pope who actually cared about the reign of Christ and His Holy Church!

[...Yada yada yada...] fellow Americans, and people of the world: thank you. [Fellow faithful]

WE, the citizens of America , are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and to restore its promise for all of our people. ["We, members of the Church militant" instead of citizens, and Christ's Kingdom instead of country, all people's instead of "all of our people"]

Together, we will determine the course of America and the world for years to come. [Just the "course of the world for years to come and into eternity"]

We will face challenges. We will confront hardships. But we will get the job done.

Every four years, we gather on these steps to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power, and we are grateful to [...Yada yada yada...] for their gracious aid throughout this transition. They have been magnificent. [(They have not been magnificent but this part is irrelevant to the Pope's speech.)]

Today’s ceremony, however, has very special meaning. Because today we are not merely transferring power from one Administration to another, or from one party to another – but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the American People. ["From the halls of the corrupt Vatican schemers and back to the faithful". Administration would have to be changed into pontificate, but otherwise solid.]

For too long, a small group in our nation’s Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. [For far too long a group of malicious apostates has run wild in the halls of power in Christ's Church while the faithful have borne the cost.]

Washington flourished – but the people did not share in its wealth. [Indifference flourished, and the people did not enjoy spiritual benefits]

Politicians prospered – but the jobs left, and the factories closed. [The unscrupulous spiritual wolves prospered, the vocations dried up left the faith and the seminaries, convents and monasteries closed.]

The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. [Ecumaniacs protected themselves but not the faithful placed under their charge]

Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation’s Capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land. ["Our nation's Capital" changes to Rome, "our land" changes to "the Church"]

That all changes – starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you.

It belongs to everyone gathered here today and everyone watching all across America. [America changes to "the world"]

This is your day. This is your celebration.

And this, the United States of America, is your country. [The Catholic Church, is  Christ's Church]

What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people. [Not who sits at the throne of St. Peter, but whether he serves Christ the Soverign King]

January 20th 2017, will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again. [The day when Christ became the ruler of His Church again]
The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.

Everyone is listening to you now.

You came by the tens of millions to become part of a historic movement the likes of which the world has never seen before.

At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction: that a nation exists to serve its citizens. [That the Church exists to lead it's members to Heaven]
Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves. [From Americans to Christians, otherwise okay.]

These are the just and reasonable demands of a righteous public.

But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. ["Our nation" changes to nations, our country changes to "our Church"]

This American carnage stops right here and stops right now. [Catholic carnage]

We are one nation – and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams; and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny. [One Church]

The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans. [To all true Christians]

For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry; [We have swelled the ranks of ecclesial communities at the expense of our own]
Subsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military; [Subsidized the non-Catholic population while allowing for the very sad depletion of our infrastructure]
We've defended other nation’s borders while refusing to defend our own;  And spent trillions of dollars overseas while America's infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay. [We have defended other religions' false

...

Boast not for to morrow, for thou knowest not what the day to come may bring forth

That is from Proverbs 21:1

Boast not for to morrow, for thou knowest not what the day to come may bring forth

Tomorrow indeed is the inauguration day for Donald J. Trump, the president-elect of the United States of America. He won against all the odds, given how many people were against him. The good thing is that virtually all the people that a just man would want aginst him were actually against Trump, so those who did not trust the man certainly had the witness of his enemiest.

Given that I came out so strongly in favour of Trump, and the fact that I have described him as the best presidential candidate in the U.S. in 60 years, since Dwight Eisenhower that is, one might be surprised at my choice of title verse. There is good reason for that though.

The most worrying tendency with regards to Trump, a trait he exhibited even during the campaign, is his inexplicably harsh rhetoric against Iran. That is simply uncalled for as Iran is more or less the most peaceful state in the Middle East, barring Lebanon. It is a state which is rather predictable, and whose major enemies are also the major enemies of the Christians in the region. I do take Trump at face value when he says that the days of military intervention are over, and I hope that his rhetoric is in major part done to placate the zionists. That, however, brings me to the second part of what is worrying about him.

His support for Israel and the zionist agenda is very troublesome. While I have little doubt that Trump is smart enough to realise that a war against Iran would have very dire consequences, I am not so sure the zionists and the warmongers in his cabinet realise that. A Christian has no business taking the side of Israel over that of any other country in the region, a fact which would become obvious to evangelicals if they only took some time to study authentic Christianity, in particular the works of St. Paul. Whereas his Christianity can be questioned, I do not question the bloodthirst of the zionists and the neo-cons who hitch on to the zionist cause (although frankly it is difficult to know which is the tail and which is the dog on that particular beast) and I am afraid that if nothing else, Trump's excessively harsh rhetoric on Iran might embolden the zionists into a military confrontation with Iran, one which would make the misadventures of the past 20 years seem like child's play.

With those 2 misgivings out of the way, I must admit that for the first time in very long there is an authentic hope for peace. We have become used to the U.S. being on the wrong side of virtually every conflict over the last 20 years or so. In fact, if one knew nothing of the sides in any conflict, one only needed to ask which side the U.S. was supporting and more often than not, one would rightly conclude that they were the bad guys. With Trump there is hope that the U.S. might actually stop killing people abroad. I doubt it will stop entirely, but there is a good chance that it will be scaled back.

I am not particularly worried about Trump's tough rhetoric against China. He will know as well as anybody that China is not a military threat towards the U.S., so any conflict between the two will be in the form of a trade war. He will also know that the U.S. is no match for China in the only area which could see the two countries in conflict -South East Asia - and if he doesn't then surely the sensible cabinet and advisors that he has put together will be only too happy to let him know that. I am sure that his plan for "Make America Great Again" does not involve getting a very bloody nose in an area of the world of little value to his country in terms of nationaly security, so we can count on the U.S. and China to de-escalate any tensions long before any threat of military confrontation.

There is much that can be said about Trump's amicable attitude towards Russia, with the most obvious comment being that it is simple common sense. There is no good reason why the U.S. and Russia should ever have been enemies since the fall of the U.S.S.R., save for keeping the congressional-military-industrial complex well funded. On this point one must believe that Donald Trump is genuine because there were no political points whatsoever to gain from this move, given the anti-Russian rhetoric in his country.

It is probably the case that Trump realised the folly of this attitude, and decided that it is smarter to make Russia an ally instead of an enemy, especially given the fact that the only real threat to the U.S. is China, and the U.S. faces only destruction if it attempts to confront both those countries. Russia and China, of course, are allies, and Russia also has a lot of untapped potential so for a businessman developing trade relations with Russia only makes sense.

As for domestic policies, surely the war against the Catholic Church from the political front is over, for now. That only leaves the war against the Church from the Church's own hierarchy!

Given that the abortionists took such a hard line against Trump, and the fact that Trump is not one to back down from a fight, we can suspect that he will take the fight to them, which is good for all concerned. The media also seems set to continue its assault against him, and we can be happy for that as the media is likely to lose most of any credibility that it has left, especially given that the man has decided to side-step the media where possible and attack the media when necessary.

So...

How to turn the Epiphany of Our LORD into an Epiphany for you

It is exactly 4 years ago today that I attended my first Tridentine Mass. These 4 years have been a time of immense spiritual growth, the credit for which I cannot take.

I shall not describe so much my first Mass as to what led me to it and what I have got out of it. It is possible I have written about this before but it is a story well-worth repeating.

As fate would have it, I was not raised Catholic. My knowledge of the faith grew ever-more deeply during the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI of fond memory. In the end, since I had come to regard myself a Catholic, the only remaining step was actually going to Church every Sunday, which I started doing in 2010. Even here I owe a lot to Pope Benedict XVI, as it was his trip to the U.K. that same year that proved the final draw.

To be fair, all of the Masses that the pope celebrated were Novus Ordo. Nonetheless, they were good Novus Ordo masses, as good as they come really, and from a  pope who took worshipping God seriously.

When I finally attended my first Mass, everything seemed a bit off. I had read so much about Catholic worship, including many complaining that the priest turned his back towards the people, that the Novus Ordo Mass surprised me for containing very little of that. I did enjoy the Mass, and to be honest, almost all Masses  you will find in Sweden will be decent by NOChurch standards. However, I felt a bit short-changed.

As time passed on and as my studies intensified, I felt I longed for more. I longed for authentic Catholic worship.

The final straw came when I watched an old movie and had to ask whether the service being depicted was a Catholic one or a protestant one. It was protestant, of course. I felt a sense of anger not being able to know the difference. At that time I knew enough to know that the protestant revolters certainly made up their own things, and that if the Masses were identical it was because the Catholics protestanised their liturgy. Also, something about a 2,000-year old Church having a Mass that is newer than a service in some heretical ecclesiastical community rubbed me off the wrong way.

Something had to change! As I am not the Pope, who could order a return to Catholic worship, that something was I. I had to bail the NOChurch Mass and actually attend a proper Catholic Mass.

As soon as the Mass started I felt at home in a way which I had never felt before. I felt as though a veil had finally been lifted over my eyes and intellect and I felt grateful to finally be worshipping in the Mass of all the great saints of the Western Church.

Everything made sense all of a sudden. All these little gestures which seemed out of place in the Novus Ordo were ither missing or in their proper context. It didn't take long for me to finally grasp why Catholics of old made these masterful altars. It is for Our LORD! We offer the best we can to Him, and we can do no better than to have all our gold at the place where the divine meets the terrestrial.

The liturgical calendar was different, but it made sense. I didn't have to scour my missal for liturgy A,B,C, and there were no more "ordinary Sundays" but every Sunday was all of a sudden put into the context of some event in the life of Our Blessed LORD.

No longer did I have to listen to protestant non-catechetical hymns during Mass. No longer would I have to be pretty much the only person singing at Mass. No longer would I have to wait for the change of performers at the NOChurch altar as they pass the baton to all and sundry. There were no prayers of the faithful, almost all of them banal. Rather we prayed the same prayers as the saints, and all of the Catholics in all of the world prayed the exact same prayers on the exact same day with the exact same intention expressed by the exact same words.

It was worship in honour of God, not worship to placate the pewsitters.

That is all a result of me making a vow to attend the Tridentine Mass on the first liturgical service of 2013. I have not looked back since, and I never shall.  It has been a real epiphany, brought to me courtesy of the Epiphany.

This Epiphany can come to you too. If it's too late to start with the epiphany then make a resolution for Lent. If you hate Latin then consider it part of your penance! Just do something!

I promise you that the Mass of the saints will not let you down and you are likely to come to love it as much as I do, and that will bring you all the closer to Almight God, which after all, is the true purpose of the Mass.

 

 

There is none that calleth upon justice, neither is there any one that judgeth truly...

The full verse of Isaiah 59:4 reads:

There is none that calleth upon justice, neither is there any one that judgeth truly - but they trust in a mere nothing, and speak vanities: they have conceived labour, and brought forth iniquity.

I was tempted to go with Psalm 93:16, which reads:

Who shall rise up for me against the evildoers? Or who shall stand with me against the workers of iniquity?

That would have allowed me to lead with "certainly not the bishops of the U.S. or the neo-Catholics"! As it is, I chose to stick with Isaiah.

The topic for today is the U.S. election, which takes place tomorrow. So at least soon we shall be out of our misery with regards to that soap opera. Specifically, I wish to write about the disgraceful silence of the U.S. Catholic hierarchy, their even more disgraceful interventions where those have been present, and the scandalous acts of the neo-Catholic establishment, specifically with regards to Donald Trump's bid to assume the presidency. There will be time for a dishonourable mention of Bergoglio's attempts to interfere.

On the day before the election, I finally took time to glance at the Donald Trump's campaign policies from his own website. They didn't bring much insight as I already knew much of it. The most noteworthy were left out, these being his pledge to fight the abortion industry and his resolve to make peace with Mother Russia instead of inciting conflict.

One might have thougth that Donald Trump's Catholic detractors would at least base their criticism of him on his policies, but no, it has been anything but. From bishops to neo-Catholics, the tone has been that Donald Trump is ungentlemanly, all the while creating a false equivalence between the boorishness of Donald Trump and the sheer evil of Hillary Clinton, whose campain promises read like a what's-what of intrinsic evils. From killing the unborn in their millions in her country and abroad, to forcing the Church and her members to participate in it, to promoting sodomy and wanting to punish those opposed to it, to starting unjust wars abroad, arming Islamists, picking fights with world powers, this woman seems to he some kind of arch-agent of death.

To compare the policies of these two individuals would be akin to comparing the actions of  St. Peter St. Paul with the Emperor Nero - so big is the difference between the positions. Yet one  would never know it from listening to the myriad of bishops who have commented on this, and even worse from the many neo-Catholics who have come out openly against him from the very beginning. On which grounds is Donald Trump so odious? Apart from the myriad of personal attacks on the man's boorish character, we never get a response to that. Some have claimed that he is against immigrants (which is not true given he was married to the daugher of one), while some have cited that he has spoken derogatively on women. I am not the man's etiquette coach so I shall not delve into that debate, but I would expect any half-grown-up human being to realise that Donald Trump is no saint and is not running as one, so any critique we make of the man would have to be based on what he puts forth as his policies, and not who he was as a person say, 10 years ago (when, I should add, he was a member of the party he is now running against, a party which stakes its political claim on demeaning womanhood).

A few of the bishops have acquitted themselves satisfactorily, but they are few and far between. Some have been disgraceful, and there are no guesses that Cardinal Dolan is a shoe-in for that list, as is par-for-the-course by now. The actions and inactions of these bishops just serve to emphasise how much damage the Novus Ordo has done to the Church and how complicit the Church has been in much of the evil we see in the Western world today. The choices could not be clearer - one promises to attack the Church, another to defend it - yet the bishops are satisfied with "no candidate is perfect", as though there has ever been such a thing as a perfect candidate! One wonders whether these people are stupid or evil, or both, or whether they simply like to play the role of useful idiot when they have time left over for non-evangelisation!

The Remnant has done a good job of pointing out why Catholics at the very least have a duty to vote against the wicked woman - a woman who appears more satanical by the day - and made a convicing case why one would more or less have an obligation to vote for Trump. It is not a case of lesser evils (which Trump definitely is not), but one of double-effect. ChurchMilitant.tv has also done a good job, as have many traditionalist sites. The neo-Catholic sites though, on the whole, have not been as clear in their opposition and have often muddied the waters.

There are only 2 things (of which I know) for which I can fault Trump - and I write this as someone who has been following his campaign almost from the start. One of them is his position on torture, an intrinsic evil. No Catholic can support that. On this point, it is difficult to imagine Hillary Clinton thinking otherwise since she has expressed a will to bomb pretty much anybody anywhere, and is in favour of killing the unborn till the point of birth, and almost certainly afterwards; in other words, torture and death for the most innocent. The second position of Trump which worries me is that on Iran, where he has been outrageously aggresive in his rhetoric. Again, this can be compared to that wicked woman, who in 2008 said that if elected president she would attack...

Basilica of St. Benedict: Thank you for the memories!

It is with great sadness I learnt that the Basilica of St. Benedict had been destroyed by an earthquake. It happened earlier today, on the feast of Christ the King.

The basilica itself was majestic. Upon entering one felt that it was a home away from home. One felt the closeness of hundeds of thousands, perhaps millions, of worshippers who had gathered there to celebrate the Holy Catholic faith throughout the centuries.

The Monks of Norcia had managed to revive the town and revive more importantly, the Christian spirit of the town. I have no doubt that they will continue with their good work, and will manage to rebuild the basilica over time, with the aid of the glorius St. Benedict and St. Scholastica.

The people of Norcia are warm and pleasant and very proud of their history, and with good reason. They will come back from this; of this I have no doubt. With the help of the monks, it would nor surprise me of Norcia once again becomes a bastion of orthodoxy in a decaying world.

I would now like to turn attention to the timing of the events.

As we all know by now, a ravenous wolf of a pope is coming to Sweden to celebrate one of the most successful heretics in the Church's history. I have little doubt that the man would rather be dragged half-alive to the site of the heresies' celebration than to cancel them.

If I was a ravenous wolf of a pope though, I would heed the warning of this earthquake. It was only a few days ago that I was watching a segment on Our Lady of La Salette, and the dire warnings she gave. In it she mentioned errant priests and earthquakes and other disasters befalling Italy. I am not normally one to seach for divine significance in natural calamities but this one I could not ignore.

Put it simply: This earthquake could not have been more pointed towards Bergoglio if it had produced in the earth an outline spelling out Bergoglio. Let us remember that the earthquake struck on the Feast of Christ the king, who was so viciously attacked and calumniated by the man Bergoglio is going to celebrate. It brought down the basilica dedicated to the man who is considered the father of Europe, a day before Bergoglio goes to celebrate a man who divided Europe line none before.

If this ravenous wolf in shepherd's clothing goes ahead with the celebration, history will remember that a pope decided to honour a great divider only a day after the basilica in honour of one of the greatest saints in the history of the Church had been destroyed. It will surely be one more nail in the coffin for our good future pope  who will no doubt condemn Bergoglio in the starkest terms.

May we keep the people of Norcia in mind, and with the intercession of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica, pray that out of the town of Nursia may once again arise a great Christian awakening!

Buildings do not talk and have no emotions. We are the ones to feel the emotions when what we have grown to love and appreciate gets destroyed and I was indeed very sad at the news.

Still, in honour of the basilica I cannot help but offer a heartfelt "Thank you for the memories!"

I feel privileged to have been inside the Baslicia of St. Benedict and look forward to setting foot to the one which will be built to replace it.

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