Kim Jong-un diplomacy

Beware of NOChurch cardinals, especially when they come saying the Tridentine Mass - Sunday 10th to Saturday 16th of June

In a week which contained a lot of major news from the secular world, it might seem odd that my highlights are to do with an event that didn't even take this week - the Chartres pilgrimage. My primary concern is for the Church, for only the Church can save the world, and with that in mind I shall go on to address some of the events on the Chartes pilgrimage.

It is rather significant that the Chartres pilgrimage has become so famous. I had not even heard of it until som 4 years ago or so, but I shall have to agree with Michael Matt that it is one of the most significant events taking place in the Church today, although in his case he plainly states that it is the most significant, with which I do not quite agree. Along with its increasing profile, the mass has attracted higher profiles of celebrants. Last year it was Cardinal Raymond Burke, who is probably the closest thing we have right now to a champion of the faith. When Cardinal Burke celebrated though, it was without a position in the Curia, having been unceremoniously kicked out of his position as the head of the Apostolic Signatura (the Church's highest court) so that Bergoglio could railroad his full-throttled assault on marriage through easy annulments and sacreligious Communion.

This year's celebrant, therefore, would have to count as the most high-profile yet. In Cardinal Sarah, we had the head of the Congregation of Divine Worship, the man in charge of not only the Mass but the administration of all sacraments. Yes, there are bureaucratically speaking other higher-profiled cardinals - the secreatary of state comes to mind - and even with regards to Catholicity the prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith ranks higher. However, in his capacity as head of worship, he ranks second only to the pope, so one is entitled to say that they don't come much higher than Cardinal Sarah. Also in terms of standing up for the faith, Cardinal Sarah is one of only 2 cardinals under the age of 80 - the other being Cardinal Burke - who have consistently stood up against efforts to water down the faith, or to outright corrupt the faith (however tepidly).

It was therefore with great sadness that I read a piece written by Peter Kwasniewski titled Traditional Clergy: Please Stop Making “Pastoral Adaptations”. It quickly became clear that the piece was about the final High Mass at the Chartres pilgrimage, of which Cardinal Sarah had been the main celebrant. Among the 'pastoral adaptations' on show was reading both the Epistle and the Gospel in French, instead of Latin, and not bothering with having the proper orientations when reading Sacred Scripture, instead turning towards the people, and not even bothering to chant but rather speaking it out instead. These were grave liturgical abuses. It is unclear who was in charge of these abuses - the master of ceremony, the local bishop, or the cardinal are all potential agents. What cannot be denied, however, was that in perhaps the most prominent Tridentine Mass in the world today, we were being confronted with a very well-orchestrated Novusordoisation, and that ought to trouble us all.

If there is anything that the Novus Ordo has taught us, it is that slippery slopes are real, and once embarked upon one will quickly find oneself close to the bottom. It is therefore inexcusable that at the most prominent Tridentine Mass the celebrants would embark upon the same slippery slope which led us to where we are in NOChurch today, i.e., little if any reverence at Mass, with priests who treat the Mass as if it is their plaything, and laity who froth in anger at hearing that there are authentic Catholic alternatives. Another point that Dr. Kwasniewski made which is worth repeating is that Latin is the language of the Church, and the Chartres pilgrimage is the most international pilgrimage that we have today. It therefore makes little sense to have the readings in French when many of the attendees will be non-French. They could, if they so wished, read out in Latin according to the rubrics and then afterwards read in French (which is allowed by Ecclesia Dei, it turns out, although even that is a slippery slope) but that's not what they did. In other words, I am quite certain that whoever made the decision did it knowing full well that it was against the liturgical laws and against the spirit of the Tridentine Mass, yet did it anyway, perhaps to force the point that the Tridentine Mass has to get along with the Novus Ordo mass.

This being NOChurch times, of course, not everyone was upset. As I have previously mentioned, Catholics as a whole have lost the ability to get angry at anything directed against the faith. In "WHEREIN ROBERT CARDINAL SARAH GETS IT RIGHT AND FATHER Z DOESN'T " (I've no idea why he insists on capital letters for his headlines), a response to Fr. John Zuhlsdorf's Why we Say The Black and Do The Red, which was in turn a commentary on what Dr. Kwasniewski had wrriten , Fr. Allan McDonald chimed in that Cardinal Sarah was right to make adaptations in order to get people to feel at home, once again showing that the Novus Ordo has poisoned the minds of even many of those who say the Tridentine Mass occasionally. We don't adapt the Mass to ourselves; rather we adapt ourselves to the Mass, and the arguments he was making were well-adressed in Dr. Kwasniewski's original piece, which it seems blew completely over his head.

The best commentary on Fr. McDonald's piece came from Henry , who wrote:

A single instance of vernacular abuse, as at Chartres, is not a big deal. No doubt God will survive the desacralization of a couple of moments in this one Mass, and the

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It turns out NOChurch is actually good at something, and Bergoglio's heresies are of his own free choice - Sunday 11th to Saturday 17th of March

We can really only start in one place, and that's with what has become known as 'Lettergate'. I tagged it as "Vigano lettergate" because I can only assume that there will be more scandals involving falsified letters from this dreadful pontificate and I therefore need to prefix 'lettergate'.

The basic story, as I have understood it is as follows. Vigano, who acts as some sort of communications director, asked Pope Benedict XVI to write a letter in promotion of a series of theological papers due to be released in 'honour' of Bergoglio's 5-year anniversary as pope. The Vatican released an image of 2 pages of the letter, only the first of which could be seen, with the signature on the second page.

It soon became known that they had blurred out the last paragraph on the first page. In this section, Pope Benedict wrote that he had not read the books and had no  intention of reading them. What seemed to be a mild endorsement had transformed into a complete non-endorsement of the books, and a less than complimentary take on Bergoglio's pontificate thus far.

In stage 3 of Vigano lettergate, it became known through Sandro Magister that the Vatican communications department had omitted virtually all the text on the second page, barring the signature. This part made it clear that Pope Benedict had refused to touch these papers on account of sections of the bundle being written by 2 theologians who had become known during his pontificate and that of Pope John Paul II for all manner of heresies. In other words, the non-endorsement had turned into a condemnation. If one was to read between the lines, one could see that what Benedict was saying was that people who have had all sorts of problems with the Church's teaching are now being used to endorse Bergoglio's theology, which can only mean that Bergoglio is more or less a heretic himself, and this coming from a 'pope emeritus'.

A lot of people wondered why Bergoglio's handlers had to go to such great lengths to turn a non-endorsement into an endorsement, and in such a bad way in which they were bound to be found out. Perhaps their incompetence simply doesn't allow them to know any better. Perhaps they do actually want Bergoglio exposed as the true fraud that he is. It's anybody's guess at this time. What is claimed to be the full text was then finally released, and Edward Pentin has done a good job covering the timeline of this scandal.

In any case, people realised what we have long suspected: Bergoglio's pontificate is burning itself to the ground to such an extent that they require some sort of endorsement from Pope Benedict XVI, whose reforms have been dismantled by Bergoglio virtually from the top down.

There is one thing which Pope Benedict wrote which is worth drawing attention to and in my opinion this is the take-away. These most important words of Pope Benedict XVI's letter are the following:

I applaud this initiative that wants to oppose and react to the foolish prejudice in which Pope Francis is just a practical man without particular theological or philosophical formation, while I have been only a theorist of theology with little understanding of the concrete life of a Christian today. 

What Pope Benedict XVI is telling us here is that Bergoglio's heresies and idiocies are of his own making and nobody else can be blamed for them.

It has become very common to excuse Bergoglio by saying that he had a bad formation, as a South American Jesuit in the 1960s. In other words, what these people are implying is that everybody is to blame for Bergoglio's stupidity than Bergoglio himself. The list of these people can indeed be made long, and would have to start with his parents, then his school teachers, his seminary directors, his bishop, his Jesuit superiors, and probably a whole big cast, not least of which is the case which surrounds Bergoglio today and is said to offer him bad advice.

Pope Benedict XVI utterly rejects this view and points out that Bergodlio did have a good formation and that his heretical ways are entirely of his own choosing.

This brings us to our next point...

One of the most dreadful individuals on the face of the Earth, Cardinal Kasper, came out with his usual tripe about Bergoglio and  contraception. This time though, Kasper is right on the money. It cannot be denied that Bergoglio has subtly endorsed contraception on multiple occasions, and while not endorsing it he has minimised its moral gravity. Kasper argues that Bergoglio's "silence" on the issue shows that he approves of it, and I could not agree more. As I commented on the day:

It creeps me out to agree with Kasper on anything, but I would have to agree with him that Bergoglio's silence on contraception reveals that Bergoglio is in favour of it.

However, even in that statement Kasper cannot help but be true to himself and lie.

It is far from accurate to tell us that Bergoglio has not spoken about contraception. It would be like saying that Theresa May of U.K.-poodleship fame has not accused Vladimir Putin of acts of aggression simply because she does not mention his name when making all kinds of anti-Russian statements implicating the Russian government.

Bergoglio has indeed spoken out multiple times against the Church's stance on contraception. In at least one instance he insisted that the Church "must not obsess" about "contraception, homosexuality and abortion". In another he said that Pope Paul VI changed his mind on contraception, allowing it for certain cases; a blatant lie and one of many.

Anyone who claims that Bergoglio has not attacked the Church's teaching on contraception ought to be ashamed that on this issue even Kasper the terrible cardinal is more truthful.

As if to accentuate the Novus Ordo's chronic ability...

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