You don't need God; You have me! Sunday 14th to Saturday 20th of January

There is a lot of ground to cover this week so I shall try to be brief on each topic.

We begin with some good news in the form of a series of articles by the always-unpredictable Fr. Allan J. McDonald. I refer to him as unpredictable because one never knows what he is going to write. One day he could be attacking the latest destructive Novus Ordo novelty and the next day he could be attacking not only an analogous novelty, but the very Novus Ordo mentality that brought the novelty into being in the first place.

This time he published 3 posts on Vatican II, the sum total of which was geared towards defending the Catholic Church pre-dating before Vatican II. He linked to a series on interviews from people who lived before Vatican II, and only one of 6 was negative, and that 6th one turned out to be a bitter feminist who was a toddler at the opening of the Second Vatican Council, so her opinion can be dismissed out of hand. What we have is a snapshot into the life of a Church which was caring, loved and vibrant; a Church which was the centre of the lives of many of her sons and daughters. It was a loving Church which inspired those under her care to aspire to be the best they could be.

In a follow-up post, he responded to a comment from the original piece, in which the notion that the pre-Vatican II Church could not have been that good given that it collapsed virtually overnight once NOChurch went into high gear was advanced. He finished off with citing a study which shows that only 24% of Catholic women in the U.S. go to Church nowadays. This number was naturally much higher before the Novus Ordo. In other words, in spite of - or perhaps, due to - the mass effeminisation programme undertaken by NOChurch authorities, even women find NOChurch unappealing.

On Rorate Caeli, Peter Kwasniewski outlined the Church's traditional wisdom in having post-Christmas and pre-Lented periods, to slow us down from the highs of Christmas before we enter the gloom of Lent. It was a piece well-worth reading.

We were also informed that at least 20% of non-religious people pray, often in times of trouble. I would have thought the figure was higher. So perhaps the old adage that there are no atheists in foxholes should be updated, but I would think that even 80% of the rest have some kind of notion of God, only they let their anger get in the way of their humility. You find it commonly expressed in the "God doesn't exist, because if he did then so-and-so would not have died" and so on.

In the U.K., we had Bishop Egan visiting a foreign diocece and to his dismay and horror most Catholic churches were locked. He did not appreciate that, and neither do I since I have also attempted to go to many churches which I found locked. That this diocese seemed to be in England precludes the possibility that he could have paid a visit during siesta hours. Churches being locked is yet another fruit of Vatican II, and a bitter one at that.

We then get to the bad news, and not entirely unpredictably, these are headed by our very own Bergoglio.

The world's favourite attention-whore was up to his old tricks again, although this time he outdid even himself. On another of his scandalous trips - this time to Chile and Peru to do nobody-knows-what-good, he 'wedded' a couple on the plane, after joking that it is witchcraft which gives him all his wrecking-ball energy. The couple both worked as air stewards, and the story they gave was that Bergoglio by chance inquired as to their marriage status, and finding out that they were not sacramentally married - only civilly -, volunteered to wed them on the plane. I must admit that I never bought the story for a second, because more or less everything Bergoglio does is a stunt. Furthermore, we are talking about a man who says that most couples who are married are not married and many couples who are not married are actually married. It is an unlikely candidate for an inquisition into whether the steward serving him is in a sacramental marriage.

It reminded me of a scene from an X-Men movie, in which the grandfather mutant tells Charles that he doesn't need Cerebro (the machine he uses to reach into far-away minds) in order to reach out to all the world, because he can do with his powers instead, saying "You don't need a machine to amplify your powers. You have me!". Bergoglio was simply stating "You don't need to call on God for marital blessings; You have me!". The mutant seems to have been correct, as he had the power; Bergoglio, not quite so, as he doesn't.

Now, at a wedding Mass, we call down God's blessings on the new couple and pray that they will have a fruitful marriage. Bergoglio obviously seem that a wave of his hand can replace the blessings that are brought down from Heaven upon a newly-wed validly and sacramentally married in the House of God.

It never seemed likely that Bergoglio would warmly speak to flight attendants anyway, as insider portrayals of Bergoglio paint him out as a rather unfriendly man. It seemed even less fanciful that a man who has launched a fully-fledged assaunt on the institution of marriage would care whether a couple was canonically and sacramentally married.

To nobody's surprise, therefore, the whole stunt turned out to have been pre-planned but that didn't stop Bergoglio continuing to lie about the whole event and sticking to the original story.  What id did, however, was show just how irreverent and narcissistic all involved were. No longer could one justify the charade by claiming that Bergoglio was carrying out a work of mercy, or was attempting to correct a sinful situation without delay. Now that we know they had planned it all along, it simply added sin of lying to the sin of irreverence. Naturally, whether the marriage was indeed valid is a legitimate question, well worth pursuing.

There are some who have tried to claim that Bergoglio as the pope has the authority to dispense himself from all of Church law, or even worse, that he is not bound to follow Church law because he is above it. Fortunately, there are many who find talk of such notions entirely preposterous, and I am happy to be joined by Fr. Hunwicke on this one.

To claim that Bergoglio, or rather, the pope (Bergoglio's dubious status as pope not withstanding) is not bound by Church law is to turn Church authority as instituted by Christ entirely on its head. Christ clearly told his disciples that authority was not given to them so that they could lord it over others like the rest of the world does, but so that they could serve the rest, such that the greatest among them must be the least among them. It is perhaps for this reason that one of the pope's titles is "Servant of the servants of God". Arguing that a pope is above the Church's laws or the Church's traditions completely makes the Church subservient to the pope and not the other way around, and confirms the worst caricatures of non-Catholics regarding papal powers.

For goodness' sake, let us use our common sense!

It is one thing to argue that nobody can officially and canonically judge a pope, and another to say that the pope cannot violate any law because he is above the law. In the first instance, it is like saying that nobody can arrest the chief inspector since the chief inspector can fire any policeman who attempts to arrest him, but we still accept the notion that the police inspector can violate laws. In the second instance, it is to turn a man into a deity. I for one will have none of that.

One more thing about the in-flight wedding bothers me. In the Tridentine Rite, which is to say the authentic Latin Rite, we had as our Gospel reading the Marriage Feast of Cana, at which Jesus Christ turned water into wine, thereby elevating marriage to a sacrament. Obviously, Bergoglio cannot turn water into wine, and if you ask me, one of his few skils is likely to be turning full wine bottles into empty ones. So what can an attention whore who cannot turn water into wine, but wants to upstage the LORD, while demeaning one of his sacraments, do? Well, it's anybody's guess, but attempting to wed a couple several tens of thousands of feet up in the air is certainly one possibility. After all, as the couplee said, no poppe has ever conducted a marriage in the air, and indeed it's possible that no Catholic priest has ever done that either. He wanted to upstage everyone while making a mocker of the sacrament of marriage, and I can't let go of the notion that this was his way of doing it, and slighting traditionalists - some of whom would have been able to analogise these two events - off at the same time.

Getting back to Bergoglio's hypocritical jet-setting, the attendances in Chile told a remarkable story: We have a man who dresses as pope, and who may be pope, but who is not particularly popular among Catholics, even Novus Ordites. I have been informed that there is some animosity between Chileans and Argentinians, and that might indeed account for some of the sparse attendance, but honestly speaking, it was embarassing to witness venues which were 20-25% full, and nothing more than Bergoglio deserves. In fact, I have to wonder just which religion the people who went to see Bergoglio subscribe to, or if they have a propensity towards appreciating insults, since Bergoglio's favourite pastime and only creative outlet seems to be coming up with new ways to insult faithful Catholics.

As Mundabor wrote in text accompanied by a picture of a less-than-half-empty venue:

Who is interested in an old, lewd, bitter ass spouting sugary nonsense or socialist drivel every time he opens that stupid mouth of his?

Who has any respect for someone constantly sabotaging the Sacraments?

When will the Vatican (and the endless choir of sycophants constantly licking his booths) admit that this old, lurid scoundrel not only does not attract, but positively repels the faithful?

This man is an embarrassment not only for the Church as a whole, but even to those who support his destructive agenda. Too vulgar, too lewd, too grumpy, too short-tempered to keep the lie of the “humble Pope” going.

At this point one must ask whether the Vatican media apparatus is blind to reality because they have certainly seen the numbers which Bergoglio is pulling at his general audiences, they have seem more than half-empty stadiums on Bergoglio's tours, yet insist on booking giant venues for him. They could simply be incompetent. However, I do try to have at least one non-cuckhoo theory, and with regards to Bergoglio's planners, here is one: They actually want Bergoglio to seem like a failure.

It's a far-fetched theory, but it's is possible that among those who are forced into planning Bergoglio's trips there are those who are onto the man and who realise just what an enemy of the Church he is. They can't come out in the open and say it, else they will be sent packing as Bergoglio does all non-psychophants. So what do do then? Well, we flatter the old fool into thinking he is as popular as the media claims he is, then use the almost-inevitable mostly-empty venues to dispel the myth that he is popular in such a way that the media will not easily be able to ignore it. After all, it's one thing ignoring figures which state that few peopåle go to Bergoglio's general audiences, and quite another to ignore images which show venues filled far below their capacity, far below expectations.

There was much else which happened, but I really don't have time to cover it all in detail. The best news was that Donald Trump addressed in a live broadcast the March For Life in Washinton DC, the first U.S. president to do so. Now, I am certainly not a pollyanna for Donald Trump, but I do happen to believe that his stance against abortion is genuine, simply because he has doen so much against tha anti-abortion forces since he got into power, and simply because the anti-abortion forces were so vehemently against him. Whether sincere or not, it cannot be argued that he is doing much good on this front. The less said about his foreign policy, the better. On that topic, North Korea finally responded to Donald Trump's my-button-is-bigger-than-yours jibe by stating that it was the  "spasm of a lunatic". Well played by them, although 3 weeks late, and it is difficult to disagree with them. Even I found it unusually childish and slightly maniacal, even by Trump's  very low standards.

There was more bad news from one of many homosexualist bishops in Germany, on the topic of sodomy, naturally. In Denmark, we had a story on how the general moral decay of the West has affected children, in particular sexually, with a report of how more than 1,000 children have been charged with distributing child pornography through social media. The decadence puts even grown-ups in legal peril too, so a Dutch company has created an app which uses blockchain in order to sign off on harlotous sexual consent, at every stage of the act, if I am not mistaken. It is meant for fornication and hook-ups, but I suppose that even married men who want to have safe sex with their wives might want to consider it. It's what men have been reduced to doing as a result of the sexual revolution and rabid feminism, but really, there is plenty of blame to go around on that one.

Through Russia Today we were informed, for those who didn't know, that " Middle Eastern Christians in dire straits – but the West doesn’t want to know". It's no surprise that the same West which arms Islamists abroad and shuts down Christian businesses and adoption centres at home couldn't care less about Christians in far-off lands, even under Donald Trump, who ran on the promise of helping Christians in the Middle East.

I round off the piece by including a rather humorous though thoughful reflection on "On Those Weirdo Trad Parishes". It is said that many traditional parishes are hostile, nor not welcoming. The article links to a piece which discusses why that is, and the analogy of zombie films was particuarly apt. In the analogy of a zombie movie, zombies are modernists who are out to devour the few living people left, and these people are naturally suspicious of everything that moves since even human-seeming people often have a way of turning out to be zombies, or turning into zombies having been human.

The point is that traditionalists have learned to be wary and have a shoot-first-ask-later policy whenever they are confronted with anything that might even wreak of novelty/modernism.

This week's Bergoglio victim of the week is hard to call, since Bergoglio's in-flight marriage attempt attacked so many things at once. If I have to choose one though, it will have to be church weddings, since there will now be many asking why they have to be wed in a church when the pope has shown that any place will do. Marriage preparation was also another option, but it seems a safe bet to assume that it will win the award some other time, given Bergoglio's incessant attacks on the sacrament of marriage.