China

The major news this week was of course the death of Cardinal Caffara.

I must admit that my first reaction at the death of Cardinal Meisner was "Was it suspicious"? I did not even know the circumstances at the time but I found it strange that someone without any apparent illness could simply drop dead.

Fast forward 2 months later and we have the death of yet another cardinal, also in a surprising death and without any apparent illness.

I am already in semi-suspicion mode over this because I am convinced of the absolute malice of Bergoglio and those surrounding him. If any of the other 2 cardinals was to pass away I would go into full suspicion mode. Like they say in the Godfather, this would be the case even if he got struck by lightning!

We have been informed that Bergoglio had/has the dubia cardinals monitored, and this coming from Cardinal Caffara will have to be counted as the trustworthy given it was essentially the last testament of a dying man. If anything happens to either Cardinal Brandmüller or Cardinal Burke, then the whole Catholic world should rise up and demand an autopsy because we would be derelict in our duty to protect our brethren if we did not.

Not content with not answering the dubia, Bergoglio found time to issue new legislation regarding the translation of the Novus Ordo Missae. The message was loudly received and unambigious: Do what thou wilt! Now it is up to the local episcopal conferences to produce translations and for the Vatican to approve them, instead of the Vatican's liturgy commissions being in charge of the process.

It would seem he has given up on his plan of doctrinal devolution, so the next best thing is liturgical devolution. We need not wonder whether the motives were sinister or benign, as with Bergoglio they are always against the faith. It was nonetheless another demonstration that the only thing this oaf of a man does not have time is putting down 5 little words on a piece of paper in answer to the dubia.

Over at the Fatima Center, we had yet more traditionalist infighting. It is most unbecoming and I sure wish it would stop. It is rather tragic that there is so much infighting among those who agree on the basic premise: Fighting Vatican II and its spirits. At the very least we ought to ask those involved not to air their dirty linen in public.

One thing I shall say though is this: Among traditionalists, truth reigns supreme, and this is what gives this counter-revolution so much vigour. In that sense I can find it more irritating than off-putting, because the search of truth definitely involves troubling revelations, and that involves a certain amount of friction.

We also had news of North Korea testing the hydrogen bomb. My stand on the North Korean situation is  very clear: They have both the legal and moral right to pursue any means to defend their national sovereignty. North Korea is not a signatory to the non-proliferation nuclear treaty (NPT), nor is any country prohibited from testing missiles, and its security concerns are not unfounded given the U.S. world bombing tour seems to have put North Korea on its perfomance list. The leader of a country has a natural right and a natural obligation to protect the civilisation within his jurisdiction. Even awful morally decrepit countries have natural rights, and that applies just as much to the U.S. as it does to North Korea.

The U.N., of course, responded with a set of yet more illegal sanctions. It is unbecoming of Russia and China to allow the imposition of these sanctions, especially since the U.S. keeps imposing sanctions on even them at the same time. It is unfathomable to me just why the go along with this bullying given that they are both individually, and certainly combined, great enough powers to resist it.

On the other hand, of course both Russia and China have an interest in preventing more countries from joining the nuclear club, so maybe they secretly get what they want but end up looking good by not being the driving power behind what is clearly illegal actions on the part of the U.N. Security Council. Either way, it is unsightly to behold.

We also had a chance to witness the priorities of NOChurch when the bishops of the U.S. ligned up almost in unison to condemn Donald Trump on simply removing a provision which prevented, or at least downplayed, the enforcement of law, a law not exactly unjust since a country has a right to decide who gets to enter and under what conditions. Bergoglio, rather predictably, also got in on the grandstanding, and yet again showed his hypocrisy.

It was also interesting to see Bergoglio called an "attention whore", since I have previously expressed similar sentiment, and I even have a tag for it called "Bergoglio attention-whoring" . The article was by Mundabor, which comes as no big surprise but I don't recall him doing it earlier. Christopher Ferrara, in the piece linked to in that particular article, expounds on Bergoglio's fake magisterium and showcases more of his rap sheet in the interview book just recently released.

On a final note, the list of Bergoglio victims grows longer, with Professor Josef Seifert now added to the list. I suppose in these mad times, not being on the Bergolio hit-list is a sign that you are not doing your job in one sense or another and being on the hit-list is more often than not a mark of  honour. It is nonetheless remarkable how distinguished are those who have found themselves as victims of Bergoglio's dreadful pontificate. The non-arguments of those who percecute them are also interesting.

If I were high-profile or distinguished enough I might have ended up on that list, a point Roberto de...

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,...