Where there is no governor, the people shall fall: but there is safety where there is much counsel.

Synod 2015 approaches: All hands on deck!

Where there is no governor, the people shall fall: but there is safety where there is much counsel.

Thus says Proverbs 11:14, as rendered in the Douay-Rheims version. The Revised Standard Version renders it:

Where there is no guidance, a people falls; but in an abundance of counselors there is safety.

This article begins my attempt to headline every article I write with a quotation from Sacred Scripture. There is much good in the Good Book and I hope this decision will force me to study it a bit more.

As I do not comprehend either ancient Greek or ancient Hebrew, I am at the mercy of translators. I felt compelled to include both English translations because although the RSV renders it in the sense I would have wanted for my piece - for it is the notion of "guidance" and not "governor" I wanted conveyed - , I have decided to use the Douay-Rheims because I deem it more trustworthy from a fidelity-to-the-deposit-of-faith point of view.

Speaking of "trustworthy"; "trustworthiness", indeed, is a good word for what is lacking in the Church hierarchy today, and it is precisely that which compels me to write a piece before the upcoming synod of 2015, ostensibly on the family. Anybody who has been paying a close eye on what is happening will know that there is much to be concerned about. The reasons for the concern are very obvious.

For quite a while, although not anywhere near as long as the neo-Catholics or professional Catholics, I was compelled to hold my tongue a bit and not name the enemies directly, instead hinting at them. The time for such subtlety has long since passed, and I am even ashamed that I have been forceful enough in fighting back against the assault that we see on the Catholic faith from high ranking prelates, including the very highest.

There is little trustworthiness for the hierarchy among the faithful, for the simple reason that the barque of St. Peter is headed at this moment in time not by a faithful captain seeking to steer us into calmer waters where "there is safety", as the Proverbs tell us, but rather by a pirate, seemingly intent on crashing the Church onto the rocks and that is, when he is not content with sinking her by blowing holes in her hull. We thus have a twin-danger; on the one hand destroying the ship up - sometimes covertly, other times quite overtly - from inside, but lest the crew manage to repair the damage quickly enough, the pirate insists on launching the barque of St. Peter full steam ahead towards the rocks, all the while choosing the most troubled waters as his preferred course.

I would give much to never have to mention Pope Francis on this website, but the situation forces me to join forces with other faithful Christians who have made no secret of their resistance to him, often at great personal cost. A man does not sit idly by while others fight his battles. For this reason I feel compelled to write a few words about Pope Francis and his Bergoglian mutiny before the synod. After that it is my sincere intention never to write about Pope Francis or his gang of co-conspirators ever again, or at least  until his pontificate ends - which I obviously hope will be very soon. Of course, my end could come before that of Pope Francis, in which case the words I shall have written regarding Pope Francis before the synod will have been my last on him and his gang.

What will hopefully follow is a 3-piece series of  articles detailing precisely why it is very obvious that we are in the days of papal piracy. In these I shall attempt to show that Pope Francis is following the blueprint perfectly of one who commandeers the barque of St. Peter with the intent of sinking her. That he will not succeed we can be sure of: Indeed, we have divine assurance. However, it is very likely that the waves he causes will throw many overboard, and the explosions he keeps hurling - growing in size with remarkable consistency - in trying destroy the Church from within will dishearten many onboard. As the Book  of Proverbs tells us,  "the people shall fall".

Now, one might ask: Given that so many high-profile Catholics have had their say on Pope Francis, what exactly do I bring to the table that is so important that I had to write about it? Well, as I have written previously, this blog is mainy for personal reasons, and I have hardly any visitors, so swaying public opinion is certainly not my intention. Still, what else can I do? I cannot exactly denounce Pope Francis from the high altar at St. Peter's Basilica, any more than I can lead a large protest to warn Pope Francis and his gang that many of us are onto him. What I can do, however, is try and give a proper analysis of the situation, such that when someone comes along and says that "Pope Francis has not said anything heretical", I can point out that he has. When someone comes out and says "Pope Francis is trying his best" I can point out clearly that he is not, or rather that perhaps he is,  but not his best in proclaiming the Gospel, rather in undermining it.

I can do this because I have a reading of Pope Francis like few others it seems, and truth be told he never fooled me for long. There is a remarkable consistensy to Pope Francis that only becomes clear once one stops deluding oneself that he is trying his best for the Church. One only needs intellectually honesty, some historical knowledge and a grasp a healthy dose of scepticism.

Let us, however, be honest, and perfectly clear: Pope Francis did not grow out of a vacuum, nor is he the first prelate who cares little for the Gospel. He is only the most obvious symbol of a rot, which I simply designate, the "Novus ordo", which has been allowed to spread in the Church unchallenged since just before the Second Vatican Council, and which obviously has been fed much more since that council. My aim is not to blame everything on Pope Francis. In continuing our naval track, let us put it this way: Other people were responsible for leading the Church into pirate-infested rocky waters, for inviting pirates onboard and allowing pirate mentality to go unchallenged . After all, Pope Francis was validly elected, and before that he was appointed as bishop and cardinal. Nonetheless, we cannot blame those who made those fateful decisions for what is going on now, especially when the pirate in charge seems hellbent on accelerating the danger in which the barque found itself, even in direct contradition to those who appointed him to the various roles which made his election as pope possible.

A point of clarification: When I write "faithful", I do not mean anybody and everybody who calles himself or herself Catholic. I mean rather in the stricture sense of somebody who accepts the entire deposit of faith as handed onto us from Jesus Christ Himself, thorugh the apostles, the the Church fathers, and then through many patriarchs and saints down the ages. Let this clarification spare me from comments such as "there are many faithful who trust Pope Francis", for those who would trust what Pope Francis offers would be unrecognisable as Catholics in almost any other age! In fact, the fact that there are legions who support Pope Francis in his attempts to subvert the faith is what makes Pope Francis and his gang of pirates so dangerous, such as those who use the term "lived faith" or come such coinage to mean something totally different to what has been understood previously - the German clerics seem especially fond of this and I have met enough Germans to know that this tactic works. These folks cannot be labelled Catholics in any meaningful sense.

I further submit that the only people who can justifiably and rationally be called Catholic are those who would unflinchingly recite both "The Athanasian Creed" and St. Pope Pius X's "The Oath against Modernism" and mean each and every single word of it. It is clear from the words and deeds of Pope Francis that he believes in neither of these, and it ought to be clear from spending any considerable amout of time with a fan of Pope Francis that the would be either agnostic regarding them, or downright hostile. 

When I meet my maker and I am asked what I did to defend the faith in times of attack, I do not want to answer "Well, I was very vocal during the church coffee after Mass" . This trilogy, if you will, on Pope Francis and Bergoglioism, I hope, will be a small contribution that I can hold up allowing me to say "I defended Holy Mother Church from all her enemies, both internal and external!"

The people have no guidance, the Church's leadership has abandoned them to the wolves - oftentimes thrown them to the wolves even - and many have fallen. There is hope for those who have fallen to get up, and for those not yet fallen to stay upright, but they have to be willing to fight the pirates, and for that the pirates have to be identified and resisted in every way possible. I aim to assist the faithful towards that end.