Bergoglio stunts

Humanae Vitae, NOChurch's crown jewel, is still problematic, but there is good news to be found, if you know where to look - Sunday 22nd of July to Saturday 28th of July

With so much evil going on in the Church and the world, it is sometimes easy to forget that we do have a few bright spots. The most positive bright spot is the traditionalist movement, but we also have a 'negative bright spot' in the form of the implosion of the NOChurch regime.

The McCarrick scandal (to which we shall return) has certainly helped in this regard, but even before that NOChurch was in steep decline, from attendance, to money, to morals, there is simply nothing to keep NOChurch alive, and that is a good thing because it signlas that the revolution has failed and might be reversed, probably incrementally, before too long. The rod to its complete abandonment will be rough though.

Back to traditionalism, we hade the Institute of Christ the King ordaining 4 men to the priesthood. This happened in early July, but it's worth mentioning. The larger FSSP and SSPX have also had more priests ordained to the priesthood this summer. We  had news from Italy that a second personal parish for the Tridentine Mass has been erected. Then we also had news from Spain which had its first traditional family retreat , also in early July. These are all good things, good seeds, all worthy of celebration.

It is true that our numbers are small, but they are steady and impressive, especially when put into a greater context of an institituional Church which is opposed to authentic Catholicism and a wider society which is opposed to even the watered-down Novusordoism. The Catholic counter-revolution started with practically nothing, but now there are more than 1,000 priests associated exclusively with the Old Rite and traditionalism extends an influence in certain places - France, for instance - far in excess of its size, and this influence will only grow as NOChurch seminaries continue to empty. In theory, this ought to lead to a traditionalist becoming a bishop sometime in the not-too-distant future and then all-bets-are-off really, as I am quite certain that will create a domino effect.

We are far from there and things are far from good, but it is not all dark, and we have to recognise these bright spots, all while avoiding a pollyannic attitude which I often see among many political commentators trying to convince themselves that there is a 'Christian' revival going on in Europe, or that the somewhat anti-lefist currents in Europe are solutions to Europe vast suicidal problems - all stemming from immorality and apostasy.

As if to emphasise the continuing failure of NOChurch, in Colombia, a protestant pastor forced himself into a Church in Colombia and smashed a Marian Statue on the Feast of Our Lady of Carmel . This is in spite of NOChurch assuring us with to its great ecumeniacal drive that there is no difference between protestants and Catholics. Some protestants know better, of course.

I shall, however, agree that  if by Catholicism they mean Novusordoism and not the Catholicism which Novusordoism has sought to eclipse, the differences are very slim. In essence, Novusordoism is a protestant belief system, one of plurality, one which does not seek to worship God in the fullest, and one which plays foot-loose with the truth, including that  of Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture; actually, especially those.

The crowning moment of NOChurch came with the encyclical Humanae Vitae, which celebrated it's 50th birthday this week. It's pretty much the only thing Paul VI didn't get completely wrong, and which he probably got mostly right. Of course, it was only needed because Pope John XXIII had convened a commission to study the issue of the newly-invented contraceptive pill, and thanks to the modernising effect of Vatican II, it had come to be seen as a commission which would look into the actualy morality of contraception. That was Paul VI's fault and his alone. Still, in the end he did the right thing, just about.

In Humanae Vitae’s Challenge to Modernity, Crisis Magazine pointed out why Humanae Vitae is still as relevant as ever, as well as why it is still so despised. While Humanae Vitae was the crowning moment of NOChurch - at least with regard to its Catholicity - the dissent that followed it could be argued to be one of NOChurch's low-points, although here the competition is very strong, and Bergoglio has not helped in this regard, with a series of low-points vying for lowest point in Church history. In any case, the Catholic Church had hitherto been seen as a giant monument to morality, a bullwark against the worst instincts of man, even by her enemies. In Widespread dissent against Humanae Vitae put me off becoming a Catholic, we are given an insight into how damaging the Humanae Vitae fall-out was to the reputation of the Church among non-Catholics. The  piece was written by Malcolm Muggeridge in August of 1968, and appeared in the Catholic Herald. He did though, finally convert to Catholicism, albeit 14 years later, proving that the essential elements of Catholicism still remain and that God does work for conversion towards the Catholic faith,  in spite of NOChurch, not because of it.

The eminent historian Roberto di Mattei gave his take on Humanae Viate with at least 2 pieces. He is not overly positive in his assessment of the encyclical, and it would seem that he echoes the view of Louie Verrechio who sees Humanae Vitae as part of the problem and not the solution. In "The Birth of Humanae Vitae in light of the Vatican Archives ", he reviews a book written by a Vatican official which purports to trail the creation of the document. He sees in the book an attempt to suggest that the issue may be revisited. He also takes aim against the idea of Humanae Vitae being prohetic, and he wrote:

Humanae Vitae was not a “prophetic” encyclical. It would have been, if it had dared to

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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...

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