journalistic idiocy

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...

Given the general somewhat-negative emphasis of this blog, I feel duty-bound to begin with some rare good news - Catholic or secular - coming out of Europe. These news come from Poland, perhaps not entirely surprisingly.

I have my misgivings about the apparent re-Catholicisation of Poland, being generally wary of the nationalistic bend it seems to have. Anyone who knows me will know that I support nationalists in all their stripes, so long as they don't bring with them baggage of ethnic or racial ideologies. I can't claim that I have seen much of that in Poland, but I am still suspicious that the modest but noteworthy increase in Catholic social life in Poland has more to do with the Poles trying to craft out a national identity. In this  context, turning to Catholicism works very well since it unites a large chunk of Poles - presumably even German Poles - given that it is not on purely ethnic lines, and they can be unified in Catholic grandeur, which built all that is good about Europe. It also manages to differentiate Poland from its secularist/atheist enemies to the West and North - primarily Germany and the Nordic countries -  and it's long-time Orthodox adversaries - in the form of Russia - to the East. It also allows them to keep out Muslims on the culture card, without getting into issues of Islam itself.

Credit where credit is due though, and the news that Poland was going to phase out Sunday trade by the year 2020 was some of the best news that I have heard or read in a very long time. It is something which wreaks of a true religious revival - which whatever the intentions from the political class - might actually end up being long-lasting, regardless of who comes to or stays in power in the country. Naturally the leftists, or so I have been informed, were opposed to it, but it would seem as though the cultural marxist's general treachery to the Polish people will not be soon forgotten and it would seem as though the Law and Justice party or some similar nationalistic entity in Poland will be there for a while.

Furthermore, it is politically difficult to get rid of Sunday as a day of rest given that I am pretty sure that the Sunday rest was abolished by the communists, and one does not make many friends in Poland by making oneself a defender of Soviet policies. It's a very shrewd political move, and I applaud it unhesitatingly.

Sticking to Europe, we have more proof of its downfall in a handful of stories. In Germany and other places they have started decorating their 'diversity barriers', wrapping them up as Christmas presents. That's the most appropriate term for the barriers that they have put up on pedestrian walkways and roads leading to Christmas markets. Since we all know why they have to be put up in the first place, it would be much more honest to just paint a picture of Mohammed on them rather than pretend that they are part of the Christmas attire. I should point out that the town centre close to where I live has also put up diversity barriers - presumably to protect its Christmas market -, but alas has not gone to the trouble of wrapping up.

We were also informed that the Muslim population in Europe is set to grow, up to 25% of the population in some places, by the year 2050, and that is with zero immigration.

The Muslims do the right thing in having children, and that is to be applauded. It is the West which is to be chided for deriding the miracle of procreation. That snobbery may well prove to be its downfall, and it will be just reward for its open-armed embrace of the culture of death.

In the U.K. there was a feminist march, and feminists did what they do best which is to display their stupidity and entitlement. One of them even took the trouble to inform people that the Bible is more violent than the Koran. She should know, she told us, being a former Catholic herself. It has featured as one of my day's comments, but I'll reproduce 2 very poignant parts of the analysis from Tantumblogo. The first one clearly lays the blame for the woman's ignorance for the Novus Ordo, and I naturally agree:

“I’ve read passages [of the Koran] and the Bible is a lot more violent.  I should know, I’m a former Catholic.”  Another triumph for the post-conciliar Church!

The second one was his take on feminism itself, and feminists in general:

Which brings me to my final point – I will probably offend some in saying this, or how I say this, but I have long had a sense that many feminists are really little more than out of control teenage daughters who keep acting more and more outrageously in the increasingly forlorn hope that “dad” – society, males at large, whatever – will rein them in.  And the longer they are allowed to continue acting out, the more hurt and upset and, subsequently radicalized, they become.  It’s like they are a toddler constantly trying to find some boundary that daddy will set for them.  In their rage in finding none in the collectively weak Western men of the past 60 years, they will even turn to the cruel, draconian authoritarianism of islam to find some entity that seems to care about them enough to tell them no, to set firm limits, and make them turn over the dang car keys.

It is difficult to disagree with that either. As I wrote in my comment to the bizarreness of the whole spectacle:

I am also at a loss to understand what these women are marching for, given that the laws in most formerly Christian countries can hardly favour women more. The

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