americanism

In one of the more amusing-yet-informative stories you will read in a while, Steve Skojec decided to make an admission in "Coming Clean About My Latin Problem". It deals with how Latin is used to enhance worship even among those who do not understand it, and how even children appreciate the Mass much more than they do those in their mother tongue. He was as much surprised by it as anyone else, it would seem.

The ramifications of NATO's aggression on Syria continued this week. It is clear already, if it wasn't before, that the whole chemical attack incident which was used as the excuse for this aggression was a complete hoax.

The OPCW finally reached Douma. I have little hope that the OPCW will issue a clear verdict confirming the hoax. It is quite clear that part of the reason for the bombardment was to put pressure on the OPCW to not declare the whole thing as fake. Had the OPCW arrived before the bombardment the onus would have been on them to declare it a hoax so as to avoid military confrontation. Now that military confrontation has taken place, the onus on them is to save face for the aggressors, yet they cannot come out and flatly rebuke the Western rogue agents.

Expect therefore a document which in its title leaves the question unresolved but in its details more or less concludes that there was nothing! The credibility of the OPCW is very much at stake here, but its agents have livelihoods in the countries which carried out these attacks and have much to lose by coming out against these NATO aggressors.

The Christian leaders of Syria came out and denouced the millitary operations, condemning it fully.

A Novus Ordite made an attempt at defending the operation by this-and-that faulty logic, lies and misrepresentations, even bringing out the old Hitler mention, in attempting to argue just war cause and failed miserably; only succeeded in showing just how far the Novus Ordo has taken people away from authentic Catholic thought. What we witnessed in the piece is an attempt at claiming Catholicity which only proves that what counts as Catholic in many American Catholics minds is an americanist neo-con neo-Catholicism, which doesn't even look out for the Christians it purports to care for. Case in point: The Christian leaders are unanimous in their support of Assad, whereas an American neo-Catholic thinks she knows more about the situation than the very Christians who have died under the assault of Western-backed Islamists, and yes, that includes support even under the Trump regime.

It is my sincere intention to write more about this whole Syrian bombing scheme, since there is much that remains untouched and I definitely aim to return to the afore-mentioned piece in the event of that article. I really take no pleasure in critiquing a piece by someone who by all means is well-intentioned, and who I enjoy reading much of the time, but I must use that piece to point out how easy it is to fall into deceptions when one has been lulled into an alternative universe by being drip-fed lies. That the author also seems to despise the SSPX and is an ardent defender of the Novus Ordo, I am sure is not entirely unrelated. As of now I simply wish to urge anyone who does not believe me to look up "just war" in the Catechism - the new one will do since it has a much more elaborate treatment of this topic than the old - and tell me if anything of what she wrote is even remotely in accordance with a proper Catholic understanding of "just wars". It just seems as though many neo-Catholics are neo-cons first (waaay first), and Catholics second, when convenient.

The Skripal poisoning story refuses to go away, with Lavrom telling us that a Swiss lab involved in the investigation had told the Russian government that 'BZ toxin' - which turns out to be some kind of incapacitating, but not lethal, agent - was found in the Skripals.

The journalist Sandro Magister tried to make the case that Paul VI, despite approving the Novus Ordo reforms, actually disliked them. He made use of soem memoirs from one who was involved. Rorate Caeli warned us not to fall into this whitewas of history, reminding us that Paul VI was front and center the creator of the New Mass of Paul VI.It is difficult to argue otherwise given that Paul VI was celebrating versus populum and in the vernacular long before the Novus Ordo Missae was published.

This leaves us with Bergoglio, and his attention-whoring antics once again hit rock-bottom when he employed a child who had recently lost his father to once again undermine the Church's teaching on salvation and The 4 Last Things. In fact, what he did was tantamount to no less than spiritual abuse.

A boy came over to him - if we are to believe the story - and mentioned that his father had died. He spent some time with Bergoglio so I'll give Bergoglio the benefit of the doubt and assume that he asked the boy some follow-up questions - if not, we are left with the rather unlikely scenario of the boy trotting out his father's life story in less than 2 minutes, while having the clarity of mind to ask very theologically-pointed questions. It transpired that the father was an atheist who had nonetheless accepted to have the children baptised.

Bergoglio, true to form in undermining everything Catholic, proceeded to tell us that God smiled upon this atheist because his effort in having his children baptised even while remaining an atheist was greater than that of a believer who has his children baptised. He assured the little boy that he could pray to his father, and that he is almost certainly in Heaven.

In other words, Bergoglio rejected the very words of Christ who tells us that...

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,...