Church in Italy

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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On day 3 of what was supposed to be an almost 2-week vacation, I managed to injure myself in what must be the shortest sporting comeback in history, after a very long sports 'retirement'. It meant that my holiday wasn't what it was supposed to be, but it also meant that I managed to do a lot more reading than I had intended

This entry covers the week prior to my vacation as well as the week afterwards, since I did try to stay as much away from the computer as I could. As usual, I shall try to keep it short. I shall probably fail in that aim, as usual.

As June 30th marked the 30th anniversary of the episcopal consecrations conducted by Archbishop Marce Lefebvre in 1988, Rorate Caeli saw it fit to commemmorate this with a 3-part series 3-part series documenting the events which led up to it. It becomes clear that Lefebvre was not looking for a fight and that Cardinal Ratzinger did his best to try and stop the consecrations proceeding without Vatican approval. Take place they did, however, and one is left with an incomplete picture of exactly why it was that the Vatican held off its approval. Given how much else the Vatican had allowed to get out of control, it is striking that the one thing they managed to crack down on in the harshest of ways in the 1980s was the consecration of bishops whose purpose it was to continue doing what the Church had always done.

One cannot help but feel that there were agents in the Vatican who either wanted Marcel Lefebvre to die, and with him any organised clerical resistance to the Novus Ordo, or wanted to provoke a consecration without  Vatican's approval, so that they could ostracise those who held tradition dear and who opposed all the disastrous changes that were introduced following Vatican II. Scheming against tradition is one of few things NOChurch has managed to do efficiently, after all.

As if to highlight the scheming against Catholic tradition, we had news that Fr. Frank Phillips of the Order of St. John Cantius in Chicago had his his faculties for public ministry withdrawn despite beingexonerated of the charges of sexual misconduct brought against him. That the man in charge of the archdiocese of Chicago is arch-homosexualist and arch-modernist Cupich, one of Bergoglio's favourites, should surprise nobody.

A few weeks previously, I had written that we should expect Bergoglio to come up with a major heresy after he had attacked eugenics and abortion (and according to some gmarriage) in a speech to a pro-family organisation in Italy. Bergoglio did not take long to prove me right and on a flight back from Geneva to celebrate and promote ecumenism (nothing more than NOChurch speak for religious indifferentism), he informed us that  local bishops should decide on intercommunion. This, of course, came just several weeks after the Vatican had stopped the Germans from issuing intercommunion guidelines.

Not content with promoting heresy, Bergoglio once again proved himself to be a liar when he claimed that he only found out about the Amoris Laetitia dubia through the media  neo-Catholics took realised was an outright lie , an assertion which even neo-Catholics took realised was an outright lie and traditionalists found it as  more proof (if any were needed)  that Bergoglio is a petty idiot. Even if we somehow manage to convince ourselves that he was telling the truth, we are left with the fact that he is a heretic and a disgrace because it has been almost 2 years now since the dubia was issued, so he has no excuse for defending Church teaching. Instead, the has clarified time and time again that he wanted to teach heresy.

With Bergoglio, one can almost always expect bad to dovetail into sheer absurdity, and so it was when he declared not too long afterwards that consecrated virgins no longer have to be virgins, among other craziness, in yet more Bergoglio legislation designed to destroy religious life. He is relentless on attacking consecrated religious life.

It should therefore not surprise us that over in Germany, NOChurch central, Bergoglio's fellow ingrates are doing the same thiung. We were informed that Cdl. Marx is making himself the enemy of monasteries and Nuns. In the most recent example, he closed a convent and appropriated to himself all of its property. You see, it's not enough for NOChurch officials to destroy religious life, they must also destroy materially all religious institutions. That might actually be why they continue to allow the largely homosexual abuse of minors to continue in the Church, while turning many seminaries into little more than sodomital orgies conventions. The resulting lawsuits ensure that the Church loses her material wealth, on top of the moral capital that is flushed down the drain when these revelations come to light.

Speaking of which, the McCarrick scandal continues, and wouldn't you know, that particular pervert had received a well-deserved “Spirit Of Francis Award” from his fellow sodomy-pusher Bergoglian Cardinal Cupich of Chicago, previously of destroying St. John Cantius' founder fame, mentioned above.

NOChurch has been nothing short of a disaster, if we assume that it was brought about to safeguard Catholicism - a dubious assertion at best. Formerly fertile Catholic lands have turned to wastelands, and nowhere is this better illustrated than in Ireland, which has hopped from one public apostasy to another. The Catholic World Report ran a piece titled May 25th was the burial, not the death, of “Catholic Ireland” and it is difficult to argue. For the more argumentative types, however, we had news which can only be categorised in the "just when you thought things can't get any worse" category. You see, at a  Mass in Ireland, with the priest not showing up - a priest shortage is another of NOChurch's most...