Islam

As we all should be aware, but most are not, the Holy Week reforms of the 1950s were quite sweeping. Berfore Holy Week, Rorate Caeli once again re-posted an article on " The Reform of Holy Week in the Years 1951-1956". It is well-worth reading, especially in connection with the news recently that some traditional orders had been allowed to celebrate the pre-1950s Holy Week on a 3-year experimental basis starting this year.

Traditionalists are nothing if not resourceful and it didn't take long before there was a resource for the pre-1950 Holy Week with English translations, aptly called Pre-1955 Holy Week (although I grant that it may well have been present before the announcement). Rorate Caeli also provided us with a clarification on who exactly may chant the Passion. These two interventions by Rorate Caeli were quite helpful to me personally, as I finally came to realise taht the Passion is not actually the Gospel reading for Good Friday, but that we actually have a Passion reading followed by a Gospel reading, at least in the traditinal liturgy, pre-1950s edition in any case. Rorate Caeli was also kind enough to provide us with pictures of Palm Sunday from the pre-1955 Holy Week celebration.

Anybody who knows anything about Christianity knows that Easter is the biggest event of the Church year (yet it seems that professional journalists writing for major state-sponsored publications don't have a clue about what Easter is all about, to nobody's surprise, and they are probably even proud about it). We shall also know that Holy Week is the most august week of the year. It is for this reason that the secular anti-Catholic world generally steps up its attacks on the Catholic faith and the Catholic Church. It is also the week that the world's most popular attention-whore gets up to his usual attention-seeking antics in order to seemingly steal attention away from the Church's commemorations and celebrations.

This year was no exception, but having noticed that his Maundy Thursday foot fetish doesn't get the attention it used to , Bergoglio decided to get a little help from his now 93-year old atheist friend Euginio Scalfari. Every time he speaks to that an he can be guaranteed a few scandalous headlines and this time was no different. Just in time for the Holy Week Celebrations, in which Christ instituted the Holy Eucharist and died to save us from the fires of hell and allow us too spend eternity with God, Bergoglio told his friend that there is no hell, and that those who die in sin simply vanish, while those who repent before end up spending eternity in the presence of God. This interview was timed to coincide with Maundy Thursday, and naturally overshadowed his feet-washing ceremony, which was once more carried out in prison and against the rubrics of the Novus Ordo, rubrics which he himself amended, it has to be mentioned.

The reactions were not long in coming, and predictably, much of the Catholic press tied itself up in knots, blaming the poor atheist fool Scalfari, instead of pointing to Bergoglio as the culprit. The Vatican issued a non-denial denial, informing us, as we all know, that Scalfari does not record his interviews so it cannot be ascertained whether what was reported was the exact phrasing that Bergoglio used. In other words, they were saying loudly and clearly that Bergoglio is a heretic, as we all know, but we can use the he-doesn't-record-interviews card to get us out of a very serious doctrinal situation. They could really have done little else, for had they said that Bergoglio had actually admitted that he doesn't believe in hell, then they would efffectively have been confirming what we all know, that the man is not Catholic. Had they come out and denied that Bergoglio said that, then they would have had to explain how it is that a man who, as far as I know, hasn't faced many accusations of total misrepresenation in his work before - save for when he speaks to Bergoglio - could get such a fundamental thing so wrong.

Bergoglio himself did not come out and deny it, so we can rest safely in the knowledge that Bergoglio told his atheist friend that. It must be noted that this is not the first time that Bergoglio has denied that souls end up in hell, as Scalfari has reported on this before, and even in Church documents Bergoglio has written something to the tune of everything been on its way to Heaven. His defenders have pointed out that Bergoglio mentions the devil quite a lot, and so he must be misquoted if he has said that the devil does not exist. That is a logical fallacy if ever there was one, as it is entirely possible to believe that the devil exists and yet believe that nobody ends up in hell; that the devil would spend eternity in hell with his demons. In any case it was dishonest of them as they could easily have found multiple instances of Bergoglio telling us that those who die in mortal sin never end up in hell, assuming that anybody can even die in mortal sin, which Bergoglio does not seem to believe - save for traditional Catholics who use doctrine as stones to throw at people while sitting in the judgment seat of Moses. That's his phrasing, not mine, of course.

On the topic of attacking the Church's doctrines, Bergoglio could not resist taking a barb at the notion of truth, insisting that priests ought not to make "idols of certain abstract truths". This was in a separate speech, mind you, proving beyond doubt, if anyone is still not convinced, that the man is in constant heresy mode, and not just when speaking to his atheist anti-Catholic friends who, if you are to believe his enablers, have nothing better to do than...

It was a relatively slow news week so I hope my summation of the week's events shall be quite brief.

In Syria, American bungling is reaching titanic levels - in the modern conception of the word "titanic".

The U.S. said that it would back a Kurdish border force, upon which Turkey promptly initiated a military campaign against Kurdish regions in northern Syria. Now the U.S. is telling Turkey that it should be careful about what it is doing there, and Turkey is responding by asking the Americans what gives them the right to be in Syria in the first place. A major political confrontation between NATO allies is at hand, and if we are lucky it could escalate to a military confrontation and help bring about the end of this out-dated organisation.

I am at times left wondering whether the American leadership - and this is no different under Trump - is simply incompetent or malicious, and I always fall back on malicious because I have a hard time believing that anybody could be as ignorant as the Americans would have to be to think that they would be able to arm a 30,000-strong Kurdish militia while expecting Turkey to sit on the sidelines watching by. My take on this is that the Americans want Turkey in Syria and in order to do this they had to provoke them into a military confrontation. The resentment from the Turks over this certainly seems genuine, so I dismiss the notion that both sides are acting.

That theory at least leaves the Americans in control of their senses, and is about as charitable as I can be towards American imperialist aggression. We cannot dismiss the notion that they are totally intellectually inept, however, and the number of flip-flops that TIllerson makes would be able to give an ordinary man whiplash.

The Syrians threatened to shoot down Turkish jets if they cross into Syria, but I doubt they will follow through on that threat, given the NATO-menace. This is why we must all hope for the quick disintegration of NATO.

The Bergoglio Vatican continues to lie to us, this time telling us that the award it gave to a pro-abortion, pro-homosexuality, pro-euthanasia Dutch politician was not done in order to honour her, but in order to insult her. No comments needed on that one.

Sticking to the most perverse pseudo-pontificate in history, we were told that Bergoglio's Vatican is asking faithful bishops in China to resign so that the Vatican can reach a deal with China to have communist-appointed bishops. The strange thing about this whole scenario is that Cardinal Zen seems to have been under the impression that Bergoglio was unaware of the Chinese Catholics being sold out. Alas, the Vatican has been quick to issue a correction to his narrative and assured us that the shenanigans of the Vatican diplomatic corps are in lock-step with the thoughts of the most openly communist pope in history.

I have pointed out before that if you do not feel betrayed by Bergoglio, then you have to question your Catholic credentials. Alas, we now know that the Chinese underground Catholics are true Catholics, because they have joined the large group of faithful Catholics which Bergoglio has sold out at one time or another.

The actor Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus Christ in the movie "The Passion of the Christ" by Mel Gibson, recently gave a speech to Catholic university students. It is well-worth watching and listening to if you can stand the annoying introduction which lasts less than 80 seconds, or simply skip the firssty 80 seconds - it's somewhat NovusOrdoist ending not withstanding. In brief, it is more Catholic than what virtually any Novus Ordo bishop in the Church has said since Vatican II. It really put our effeminate episcopacy to shame.

VoxCantoris is angry that Catholics in Canada put the most anti-Catholic ruler they have ever had in that country in power. He referenced an earlier post in which Canada's supreme court came down softly on a bestiality case. I sympathise with him, but must point out that under Anglo-Saxon custom, one can only be charged under crimes which are in the statutes. If the wording of the statutes produces undesirable or immoral outcomes, then the statute has to be changed. This is partially why we have had such broad statutes of late that virtually anybody can be found guilty of some kind of law in the Anglo-Saxon countries. That is not a suitable alternative.

A more suitable alternative would be an Old Testament kind of system in which the judges are presumed to be wise and therefore have much greater leeway in issuing their judgements. That however, reminds me of the old Soviet joke, that "if we had ham, we could make eggs and ham, if we had the eggs". One would need wise judges - who are in short supply in the West nowadays - and a moral code which is virtually universal in society, another thing which doesn't exist in 'modern' Western societies.

Finally, we were treated to a very good quote from Joseph Sobran by Laura Wood, regarding Western aggression in the Middle East:

 “Let’s face it: Christianity and Islam are eternal enemies. Each makes uncompromising claims of exclusive truth. But this doesn’t mean that the secularist-Zionist war on the Islamic world serves any Christian interest or deserves Christian support.”

I naturally agree with that completely, and it more or less sums up my view on zionist and Western secular aggression directed against non-Jews in the Middle East - many of these victims being Christians even. It would seem the zionists have co-opted the secularists and the Christian zionists (ignorant as they are of both history and theology) in a battle-of-civilisation which rests on completely false grounds - namely, that Christians and Jews stand on the same side religiously, or even morally.

We were also informed that a traditionalism-leaning monastic community in Germany was closed, and that it didn't...

Just when one thought that the brazen public apostasy in the Novus Ordo cannot get any clearer one gets surprised. This time it is an 'art' exhibition in Belgium which feature sa 'crucified' cow sitting atop 5,000 litres of milk. It was, allegedly, supposed to highlight the wastefulness of consumerism, in its own morbid way, of course, it did.

This is not one of those things which are one by some obscure apostate priest in a far-off parish. No, this particular blasphemous act had the express permission of the bishop in question. He even defended it on the grounds that the shock value might bring back people into what are otherwise empty churches.

The good news about this is that the display took place in a church which appears deserted - i.e., not an active church in which we have Mass. The bad news is that the Church is unused the rest of the time, of course. It's no wonder why because with a bishop like that, one cannot help but wonder what other kind of madness takes place in the many unholy parish churches of Belgium.

"Double excommunication": A new term for this week. It turns out that Fr. Allesandro Maria Minutella in Italy has been threatened with a double excommunication for speaking out against Amoris Laetitia - presumably in tones which were too direct for his bishop's liking. He received a 9-month gag order - with which he complied - but upon return resumed his criticism of Amoris Laetitia. 

The particular terms of his excommunication ( which I suppose has now been promulgated) I did not quite understand, but it was 2 execommunications all the same, both - it would seem - intended to persecute sanity and truth.

Given the madness at Svenska Kyrkan - the Swedish Lutheran church - it is difficult to know what is a fake news story and a real one. They seem to have been victims of a misinformation campaign in which it was alleged that there had been a proposal to get rid of masculine pronouns in reference to God. This story made the rounds internationally.

I have little doubt that somebody had indeed proposed that but nonetheless the falsity of the news story was that they would stop doing it. The  story as it was put out was denied, and with fair grounds.

The truth though, it turns out is not much farther from the false story. What they will start doing is allow an option to refer to The Holy Spirit in the feminine form, something which they say is generally allowed in spirit - where one can say "anda" or "ande" for spirit. So one will be able to say "Den heliga andan" instead of "Den Helige Anden". This should cause much outrage as well. The Holy Spirit is masculine, and it matters not whether one can use the feminine form for spirit in Swedish when Christ clearly refered to the Holy Spirit in the Masculine form. It is extremely disingenous of them to pretend that this is not a stark deviation from the Christian faith. What was clearly understood to be masculine may now be understood as feminine, by those not in the know - the vast majority, that is.

There is little doubt that as the Swedish language is debased by gender mainstreaming there will one day come a serious proposal to allow non-masculine pronouns for God, and at the rate of madness with which Svenska Kyrkan conducts itself, there is little doubt that this proposal accepted if not outright mandated. A tranny god is what they want to make themselves, instead of the true God. It is blasphemy, at the very least.

Over at Novus Motus Liturgicus, the eminent Dr. Peter Kwasniewski compares the collects of the Novus Ordo Missae with those of the authentic Roman Rite and finds the Novus Ordo gravely wanting. The theological differences are so great as to almost prove the charge that the Novus Ordo is a new religion altogether.

Bergoglian scandals at the Vatican continue, this time with a representative of the world's largest for-profit child-killing company invited to speak at another of Bergoglio's environmental/population control conferences.

Then we have William Kilpatrick wondering why it is that the Church's hierarchy is so friendly with Islam and glosses over the vast differences with regards to the dignity of man, and morality. His point is well-taken, but he is too tinged with a neo-con ideology in order to be taken as a fully-reliable analyst on this. A mark of neo-cons is that they speak of Iran all the time,  and so he does, so I assume that he is one of them.

Whilst I agree with him that NOChurch's stance on Islam is bizarre to say the least, the point he misses is that NOChurch is indifferent to all religions, not just Islam. Furthermore, NOChurch seems to have no stake in reviving what was once Christendom, and one might argue it seems to have a stake in destroying Christendom so as to create something anew.

Since Kilpatrick is a neo-Catholic and not a traditionalist, he seems oblivious to these aspects of the Novus Ordo, and that's why in the end his goal seems to be more to stop Islam (not a bad goal in and of itself) as opposed to reviving Christendom, or at the very least, Christianity.

This week's Bergoglio-victim-of-the-week is without a doubt  Fr. Allesandro Maria Minutella of double excommunication infamy.