Misericordiae Vultus - With Red Flags Flying

With the release of this document two days ago, Pope Francis opened an Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy.  I now link to the English translation as it appears on the Vatican website.  I will also link to commentaries from Rorate Caeli, One Peter Five and Vox Cantoris.  I read this document and have many of the same questions as do my blogging colleagues.  Please read their analyses of this document; they put forth questions and concerns that we all must ponder.

Peppered throughout this thing is a notion that somehow for the past two thousand years, the Church has been somewhat remiss about proclaiming God's mercy.  In section 4, we read silly talk of "walls which too long had made the Church a kind of fortress".  Now before some chide me for "bashing Pope Francis", what does that "walls" crack say about attitudes towards previous pontiffs, from Pius XII on back?

Pope Francis does seem to favor the setting up of false dichotomies.  Here we have a "justice" vs "mercy" straw man conflict.  In section 20 we see an attempt to smooth over the set-up conflict some, but there's always the setting of "mercy" over "justice".  I put those words in quotes for in truth they go hand in hand as equals, for they both describe essential qualities of God Himself; He is all merciful, but He is also all just.

In section 19 he rebukes those engaged in criminal organizations (such as mafia) and those who've allowed money to seduce them to corruption.  I might wonder why those embroiled in sexual vice were not included: those in de facto adultery (euphemistically called "irregular marriages") or those engaging in same-sex relationships.  Did not Our Lady of Fatima state that more souls are damned due to sins of the flesh?  Where is the Spiritual Work of Mercy known as "rebuking the sinner" extended to them?  Please read section 10 of the document.  I am shocked that the Holy Father can speak so disparagingly of the Church's history of preaching God's word and administering the sacraments as to say that the Church as "long since forgotten how to show and live the way of mercy".

Just before section 18 he admonishes confessors to "not ask useless questions, but like the father in the parable, interrupt the speech prepared ahead of time by the prodigal son, so that confessors will learn to accept the plea for help and mercy gushing from the heart of every penitent. In short, confessors are called to be a sign of the primacy of mercy always, everywhere, and in every situation, no matter what."

"Useless questions"??!!!?  What kind of doctor, when diagnosing an illness, does not ask questions of the patient regarding symptoms, etc?  He/she certainly doesn't interrupt the patient as they give information to the doctor to assist in their own cure.  How else can the doctor diagnose the problem and prescribe the appropriate medicine?  To call the questions of the confessor "useless" is a slap in the face to good priests who are merely exercising their sacred duties to assist the sinner to "go and sin no more".  I'll go further and say that such a disparaging adjective as "useless" can only serve to undermine the sacerdotal authority of the priest in the confessional, an authority given by Christ Himself as we heard on the Second Sunday of Easter.

Right after that we have section 18, where these "missionaries of mercy" are introduced to us.  I share the bemusement of my fellow bloggers .I refer you to the analysis and questions put forth by Rorate Caeli.  What can these "missionaries" do that the parish priest can't?  Maybe a question is, "what might they attempt that a parish priest wouldn't?  An "on-the-spot" decree of marriage annulment?  Permitting those in adultery to receive Holy Communion?

Many questions we ask.  Much needs to be examined under high-intensity light.

Laity! It's Way Past Time To Resist!

Today the Vortex published an interview with His Excellency Bishop Rene Gracida, Bishop Emeritus of Corpus Christi.  The main theme of this interview is the need for the laity (meaning most of us) to rise up to save our Church.  As an historical example, he mentions the ancient Christians shouting down Arius as he uttered heresy from the pulpit (stating Jesus isn't divine).

What caught my ear immediately at the 5:28 mark was the bishop's declaration that it is "out and out heresy" to state that God's essential attribute is mercy, stating that this heresy was on a par with that of Arius.  Bishop Gracida outright condemns the Kasperite's claim, stating that God's main attribute is love.  His explanation was brilliant; while the Three Persons love on another, they don't have mercy on each other for mercy implies sinfulness of the recipient.

With that in mind, we must bear in mind Pope Francis' excessive focus on mercy to the expense of God's other characteristics (such as justice).  In fact, he wrote a book called "The Name of God is Mercy".  Consider all that is entailed in that whopper of a title.  To name someone or something is to exercise an authority over them; that's apparent throughout Scripture.  Adam names the animals.  A parent names a child.  So now Pope Francis names God??  Really???  I've written copiously about how the Pope seems to think that the Church has been deficient with true mercy; please read here for a review for I don't want to rehash all that in this post.

Getting back to the interview, the bishop says we need to stop "suffering in silence" (at 10:20).  We need to object - loudly.  Of course we'll create an uproar.  So what?  The late Mother Angelica stated that "if you're not a thorn in somebody's side, you aren't doing Christianity right".  I'll post the video beneath the jump break but I have more to say below that.

Consecration Prayer Published

Here it is, per the Catholic News Agency.

O Mary, Mother of God and our Mother, in this time of trial we turn to you. As our Mother, you love us and know us: no concern of our hearts is hidden from you. Mother of mercy, how often we have experienced your watchful care and your peaceful presence! You never cease to guide us to Jesus, the Prince of Peace.

Yet we have strayed from that path of peace. We have forgotten the lesson learned from the tragedies of the last century, the sacrifice of the millions who fell in two world wars. We have disregarded the commitments we made as a community of nations. We have betrayed peoples’ dreams of peace and the hopes of the young. We grew sick with greed, we thought only of our own nations and their interests, we grew indifferent and caught up in our selfish needs and concerns. We chose to ignore God, to be satisfied with our illusions, to grow arrogant and aggressive, to suppress innocent lives and to stockpile weapons. We stopped being our neighbour’s keepers and stewards of our common home. We have ravaged the garden of the earth with war and by our sins we have broken the heart of our heavenly Father, who desires us to be brothers and sisters. We grew indifferent to everyone and everything except ourselves. Now with shame we cry out: Forgive us, Lord!

Holy Mother, amid the misery of our sinfulness, amid our struggles and weaknesses, amid the mystery of iniquity that is evil and war, you remind us that God never abandons us, but continues to look upon us with love, ever ready to forgive us and raise us up to new life. He has given you to us and made your Immaculate Heart a refuge for the Church and for all humanity. By God’s gracious will, you are ever with us; even in the most troubled moments of our history, you are there to guide us with tender love.

We now turn to you and knock at the door of your heart. We are your beloved children. In every age you make yourself known to us, calling us to conversion. At this dark hour, help us and grant us your comfort. Say to us once more: “Am I not here, I who am your Mother?” You are able to untie the knots of our hearts and of our times. In you we place our trust. We are confident that, especially in moments of trial, you will not be deaf to our supplication and will come to our aid.

That is what you did at Cana in Galilee, when you interceded with Jesus and he worked the first of his signs. To preserve the joy of the wedding feast, you said to him: “They have no wine” (Jn 2:3). Now, O Mother, repeat those words and that prayer, for in our own day we have run out of the wine of hope, joy has fled, fraternity has faded. We have forgotten our humanity and squandered the gift of peace. We opened our hearts to violence and destructiveness. How greatly we need your maternal help!

Therefore, O Mother, hear our prayer.

Star of the Sea, do not let us be shipwrecked in the tempest of war.

Ark of the New Covenant, inspire projects and paths of reconciliation.

Queen of Heaven, restore God’s peace to the world.

Eliminate hatred and the thirst for revenge, and teach us forgiveness.

Free us from war, protect our world from the menace of nuclear weapons.

Queen of the Rosary, make us realize our need to pray and to love.

Queen of the Human Family, show people the path of fraternity.

Queen of Peace, obtain peace for our world.

O Mother, may your sorrowful plea stir our hardened hearts. May the tears you shed for us make this valley parched by our hatred blossom anew. Amid the thunder of weapons, may your prayer turn our thoughts to peace. May your maternal touch soothe those who suffer and flee from the rain of bombs. May your motherly embrace comfort those forced to leave their homes and their native land. May your Sorrowful Heart move us to compassion and inspire us to open our doors and to care for our brothers and sisters who are injured and cast aside.

Holy Mother of God, as you stood beneath the cross, Jesus, seeing the disciple at your side, said: “Behold your son” (Jn 19:26.) In this way he entrusted each of us to you. To the disciple, and to each of us, he said: “Behold, your Mother” (v. 27). Mother Mary, we now desire to welcome you into our lives and our history. At this hour, a weary and distraught humanity stands with you beneath the cross, needing to entrust itself to you and, through you, to consecrate itself to Christ. The people of Ukraine and Russia, who venerate you with great love, now turn to you, even as your heart beats with compassion for them and for all those peoples decimated by war, hunger, injustice and poverty.

Therefore, Mother of God and our Mother, to your Immaculate Heart we solemnly entrust and consecrate ourselves, the Church and all humanity, especially Russia and Ukraine. Accept this act that we carry out with confidence and love. Grant that war may end and peace spread throughout the world. The “Fiat” that arose from your heart opened the doors of history to the Prince of Peace. We trust that, through your heart, peace will dawn once more. To you we consecrate the future of the whole human family, the needs and expectations of every people, the anxieties and hopes of the world.

Through your intercession, may God’s mercy be poured out on the earth and the gentle rhythm of peace return to mark our days. Our Lady of the “Fiat," on whom the Holy Spirit descended, restore among us the harmony that comes from God. May you, our “living fountain of hope,” water the dryness of our hearts. In your womb Jesus took flesh; help us to foster the growth of communion. You once trod the streets of our world; lead us now on the paths of peace. Amen.

Frankly, I don't know if this suffices to fulfill the specific request put forth by Our Lady of Fatima.  The words "consecrate" and "Russia" do occur in the same sentence, but Russia is not named at the primary object of the act of consecration.  However, it does come closer to the request than have all the other consecrations put forth by previous pontiffs.

Between now and this coming Friday the prayer could change - for better or worse.  As always, keep praying the Rosary.

Some Considerations By Archbishop Vigano

The good archbishop issued a lengthy and worthwhile commentary on the elections of last week.  I'll preface with some of my own thoughts.  While in some respects this election was a victory, it is more importantly a reprieve.  Our Lord has given us some more time, some additional breathing room to pray and work for a spiritual revival in this country.  Repentance is sorely needed, most especially when it comes to mocking God outright, slaughtering the unborn and elderly and normalizing all sorts of vile perversions.

I'd like to reiterate the call of Our Lady of Fatima to pray the Rosary daily, to make First Saturday devotions.  By no means, however, is that a be-all-and-end-all.  That is just a start, but I will elaborate later.  For now, here is Archbishop Vigano's letter, linked here and reproduced in its entirety below.

A few days ago, on the eve of the U.S. Presidential Election, the arrogance of political commentators in the United States and all vassal nations had reached unexplored heights. Singers, actors, philanthropists, public figures, and journalists who supported Kamala Harris went so far as to threaten to leave the United States if Donald J. Trump was elected, and in truth many today expect them to fulfill their promises. Even Jorge Mario Bergoglio made a gesture, with his trademark politeness, traveling in a wheelchair to the penthouse of radical Sorosian activist and abortionist Emma Bonino with white roses and chocolates, as if to issue a final, desperate plea to American Catholics not to be too skeevy and to vote for Harris, who shares with Bergoglio the woke religion. The mainstream media, owned by the usual big investment funds, shamelessly endorsed Kamala and ridiculed, indeed criminalized Donald Trump. And the more rude, the more transgressive, the more obscene, the more profane Harris supporters were, the more space they were given on television and social media.

Trucks with millions of already-voted ballots were ready to reach Pennsylvania and those states where the votes of deceased, relocated Democrats and illegal immigrants were not enough to skew the election result. Insidious algorithms embedded in the State Election Commission’s voter registration databases were uncovered by Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D. These algorithms allowed false voter registrations to be printed and concealed, which could be used in various election fraud schemes, including counting absentee ballots cast by nonexistent voters. By exposing the scheme, Dr. Corsi prevented the creation of millions of fraudulent votes for Kamala Harris. In multiple states in the Union, computer reports revealed that electronic voting registration machines allowed votes to be changed remotely, and in one case access passwords were even leaked online.

 

On the morning of November 5, in short, it seemed that everything was settled. Everyone thought so: some with the arrogance of those who believe themselves to be superior merely because they are progressive, woke, green, resilient, inclusive, sustainable, gender-ideologized; others with that fund of trepidation of those who find themselves like the young David fighting the giant Goliath. Yet in a matter of hours, that whole immense house of cards, that whole mighty electoral machine sagged like a circus tent.

The Globalist Metaverse

The most remarkable element of this presidential campaign, in my opinion, consists in the manifestation of the pride and conceit of the self-proclaimed “good guys”; a pride that has made them deaf and blind to the true, real demands of the people; a conceit that places them above the miserable daily affairs of the vulgar and places them in a virtual world, in a surreal metaverse in which normal people are not allowed. It is the metaverse of the globalist world, with its agenda, its religion, its high priests, its prophets, its rituals, its dogmas, its holy books, and its idols. The only thing Kamala had to do was make this dystopia irreversible by making it the official religion of the United States of America and its ideological colonies.

Bergoglio, the Jesuits (with their U.S. leaders, Thomas Reese and James Martin), the U.S. Cardinals in the line of McCarrick, and the entire Bergoglian episcopate were waiting for nothing else, replicating in the ecclesial sphere that irremediable rupture between Hierarchy and faithful that in the civil sphere has been consummated between the ruling class and citizens. On the other hand, even the exponents of the “synodal church” are under blackmail no more or less than the clients of Jeffrey Epstein and Sean Combs. It is not surprising that the outcome of the elections has outraged the exponents of the deep church, which for decades, with the support of the deep state, infiltrated the Catholic Church and worked for her demolition. The Jesuits together with “their pope,” accomplices of the globalist subversive plan, ought to soon suffer the same cancellation that in recent years they have inflicted – also making use of the political support they enjoy – on those who have denounced their betrayal.

“Yes, we can,” Obama said years ago. And we’ve seen it: the deep state has indeed been able to do everything it promised, from protecting the pedo-satanist elite to covering up the most scandalous cases of corruption; from imposing the insane green policies and climate fraud to administering a poison designed to exterminate the population; from genetic engineering to the systematic destruction of agriculture and animal husbandry; from the energy crisis provoked to destroy the economic fabric of the nation to the war in Ukraine and the Middle East. All of this has been done by transferring billions from the pockets of citizens to the offshore accounts of multinational corporations, pharmaceutical companies, arms manufacturers, and “humanitarian” organizations that are always headed by the well-known families of the world’s usurious high finance.

 

The Disconnection from the Real World

 

Those who marvel at the resounding failure of the globalist metaverse show by their surprise that they are totally disconnected from the real world, where men and women literally fight to get to work, and not just to get a job, because our streets are dumps of derelicts and criminals; where parents have to protect their children from the perversions and obscenities of their teachers, or where a woke judge can take your child away from you because you don’t call him or her by the pronouns he or she has “chosen”. In the real world we worry about the cost of living, rising energy prices, the ever-lower quality of large-scale retail products, and the difficulty of finding healthy food. In the real world, the farmer has to think about how to survive after paying taxes and being crushed by unfair competition from multinational corporations, and the rancher feels helpless when the government requires him to cull his cattle for bird flu or because his cows produce CO2.

To hear a fake African-American posing as a former McDonalds server talking about homo-transphobia, white supremacism, abortions up to the ninth month and beyond, the abolition of gasoline cars and green transition in the face of the destruction of the Nation at the hands of the globalist Left is grotesque and mercilessly shows the classism of an élite that exists and thrives only by exploiting the masses and trampling on the basic rights of the people. And this shameless arrogance of the powerful is also common to Canada, Europe, and Australia. A few days ago, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, emphatically evoked the report “The Limits to Growth” published fifty years ago by the Club of Rome, in which it theorized that world population decline and economic degrowth were needed to save the Planet, or rather: to save the criminal monopoly of big investment funds. The herd led to the slaughter realized that the fine words about environmental friendliness and net zero are colossal lies that hide a terrible truth: the emissaries of the World Economic Forum in the Western governments want to exterminate the population through mass sterilization, wars, famines, droughts, pandemics, abortion, euthanasia, and gender ideology; and that this criminal project was started fifty years ago by means of indoctrination and propaganda work worthy of the worst dictatorships.

Silencing dissenting voices with the smear of being “conspiracy theorists” has not helped; on the contrary, it has been the fierce censorship, ever since the pandemic farce, that has awakened that healthy instinct that makes anyone suspicious of a narrative that contrasts obscenely with reality. A reality that is not perception, when merely because you have white skin, wear a cross around your neck or have the Stars and Stripes flag flying in your backyard someone feels entitled to consider you inferior and therefore deserving of being attacked or killed.

The Significance of this Victory

This round of elections shows us not only the unchallenged victory of Donald Trump. It makes evident a plebiscite vote of the majority of Americans in favor of a worldview completely antithetical to and irreconcilable with the globalist, woke dystopia that we now know is supported by a minority of the nation despite the disproportionate deployment of means and resources to support it.

The result of the polls makes clear the disconnect between the political class of the Radical Left and its electorate, but also and especially that lack of empathy that distinguishes psychopaths. On the other hand, only psychopathic criminals devoted to the worship of Satan can adhere to a neo-Malthusian ideology that theorizes the extermination of one part of humanity, the sterilization of another, and the recurrence of chronic cancers and diseases for the survivors. Only psychopathic criminals devoted to the cult of Satan can claim that destroying agriculture and animal husbandry and producing GMO foods will save nature; or that cutting down trees and replacing them with carbon dioxide-absorbing machines will protect the environment. Only psychopathic criminals devoted to Satan worship can send billions to the most corrupt government in the world – Ukraine – deluding themselves that they can win a war that they provoked and fomented. And there are those among self-styled conservative intellectuals who would like to perpetuate U.S. hostilities with the Russian Federation just to avoid being proven wrong in their self-interested warmongering predictions. Only psychopathic criminals dedicated to the cult of Satan can organize ethnic replacement by indiscriminate immigration, knowing full well that impossible integration is the premise for civil war, especially when citizens are treated as enemies in their homeland. Only psychopaths devoted to the worship of Satan can take children from their families and entrust them to people convicted of pedophilia, or corrupt their innocence with the propaganda of perverted teachers.

We could say that there is no Commandment of God that is not being broken: woke ideology creeps into every aspect of daily life to kill the body and soul, to offend Our Lord, to deny two thousand years of Christian civilization. But this is precisely what they do, and what many have let happen without protest.

The People have had Enough of Wokism

But then November 5 came.

What happened, then? What any “normal” person – but we know that to Dems normality is horrifying – could have foretold: the people are tired of being hostages of a subversive Mafia, of perverted criminals for whom there is never conviction or jail time, of corrupt people who flaunt their dealings in the persuasion that they are untouchable, of people devoted to evil. The people are tired of being trampled on daily, of being humiliated for their honesty, of being mocked for their Faith, of being criminalized because they love their homeland.

In its blinding, the globalist élite has underestimated the strength of that flame that burns in every man, that reminds him that he is called to Good, that admonishes him to avoid Evil, that points him to a destiny of eternal happiness in Heaven. Because the globalists do not know how to love, but only how to hate; and because the hatred in which they are consumed against God and against the man He created in His own image and likeness is sterile, destructive, deadly.

The people who have elected Donald Trump – a number that is far greater than the official figures, if we consider the voter fraud that nonetheless took place –  first and foremost have affirmed their right to remain human. That people is not reactionary, does not hate progress, does not fear freedom. Rather, it does not accept the reversal of the world and reality, it rejects the hell on earth in which the deep state would like to lock it up, and it does not desire to call evil good and good evil (Is 5:20).

 

One Nation under God

 

Each of us has been able to see how the most sophisticated plans of the New World Order have been thwarted by seemingly random events. Providence has dismantled a global threat with small moves, showing us that God is truly all-powerful, and that the destinies of the world are in His hands. It is now up to us not to squander the opportunity we have been given, to draw lessons from the recent past, and not let our guard down. The élite now fleeing to their lairs will regroup so that they can launch a new attack more tremendous than the one we have witnessed in recent years. But in this phase of awakening consciences and retaking the Nation under God, we must not forget that the battle between God and Satan, between the children of Light and the children of darkness continues. Nor must we forget that Our Lord comes to our aid only when we recognize our weakness and His power, and that His help is all the more effective the more we cooperate with God’s plan. This is the true “greatest reset”: to recapitulate all things in Christ — Instaurare omnia in Christo (Eph. 1:10) — because it is to Christ alone that universal Lordship belongs. Christ is King. And he is King not only of individuals and families, but of all earthly societies, of all nations.

 

The four-year term that will be inaugurated in a few weeks may mark a turning point in the history of the United States of America and of all humankind, and this will depend on the firm determination with which President Trump will roll the heads of this Leviathan, knowing that with the Enemy of God and humankind there can be neither dialogue nor compromise. It will depend on who the President chooses as his collaborators, among whom traitors and opponents will certainly try to creep in. It will depend on how the President will be able to conform his actions to God’s Law, mindful of the grace that was granted to him by escaping multiple assassination attempts.

Donald J. Trump has recognized that above him is the Lord. Let him not forget this when he uses the international clout America enjoys to promote peace with Russia and an end to genocide in the Middle East, so that the concord of peoples is founded on the Common Good and is no longer threatened by the deep state’s thirst for power. He must not forget that the defense of life, from the first moment of conception to natural death, must be a priority goal. And in this grand and ambitious project of restoring institutions and society, it will be essential to involve those world leaders who, like President Trump, know the threat of the subversive elite and intend to oppose it. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, and other heads of state and government will certainly be his most valuable allies in fighting the globalist agenda. And I believe the time has finally come to promote an Antiglobalist Alliance, through which the healthy forces of the peoples hitherto hostage to the servants of Davos can be united.

The success of the “greatest reset” represented by the election of Donald Trump and the defeat of the radical Left will also depend on how well the people and their rulers can conform to God’s will. Our prayers have reached the Throne of the Divine Majesty and have been heard: let us make ourselves worthy of God’s Mercy by exemplary living and bear witness to Our Lord Jesus Christ by a life consistent with the Gospel. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good (Rom 12:21).

 

+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America

November 8, 2024

How Francis-Mercy Is Harming The Church

In a talk given to a meeting of Italian Catholics a few days ago, Pope Francis flat out said that the Church must submit itself to all sorts of "change".  All sorts?  Yes.  He opined that "our times require a deeply merciful Church that is unafraid of change".  What are the assumptions implicit in that statement?  They are:

• "Our times" are somehow different than all the other epochs in the thousands of years that human beings have walked the earth, despite the fact that our human natures remain the same.
• Implicit (maybe explicit) in this statement is an assumption that until now, the Church hasn't been "deeply merciful".  In fact, the Church has always been merciful, proclaiming the truths of God and being about the mission of "saving souls" via the Sacraments and teachings.  If the pope is truly concerned about getting back to mercy, perhaps he can recall the primary mission of the Church is to save souls from hell, not to be a front for "social justice", community organizing and environmentalism.
• That the Roman Catholic Church, although it is the Mystical Body of Christ and entrusted with the Teachings of Jesus Christ and His Sacraments has been deficient in "mercy" during its two-thousand years of existence.
• "Change" in the Church is somehow a pressing necessity in this era, although it seems the pope just can't bring himself to be specific about the "change" he thinks the Church needs.  Perhaps he just doesn't want to tip his hand.
• All change is good.  That sentiment is clearly indicated by lack of distinction between "good change" and "bad change" in his talk.  Whether or not the pope intended it, the "change" mantra seems reminiscent of the "hope and change" slogan utilized by Obama.

Here's a very telling and ominous statement from the pope:  "Before the problems of the church it is not useful to search for solutions in conservatism or fundamentalism, in the restoration of obsolete conduct and forms that no longer have the capacity of being significant culturally,  Christian doctrine is not a closed system incapable of generating questions, doubts, interrogatives -- but is alive, knows being unsettled, enlivened. It has a face that is not rigid, it has a body that moves and grows, it has a soft flesh: it is called Jesus Christ."

There's so much mess in here so let's take it from the top.  Notice the jabs at "conservatism and fundamentalism"?  Why didn't he also say that "it isn't useful to search for solutions in novelties that occur to progressive minds out of the blue"?  Sometimes what isn't said is just as indicative as what is said.  Couple this statement with the crack about "obsolete conduct and forms that no longer have the capacity of being significant culturally".  Who or what is the pope allowing to be the determinant of obsolescence and significance?  The truths of God, of Jesus Christ, are timeless as He is eternal.  They do NOT change!  If they appear to be at odds with the culture at large, it's because the culture itself requires change to be in conformity with the Word of God as represented by Catholic doctrine and teaching, not vice versa.  As Pope St John Paul II wrote in his book "Sign of Contradiction", the Church, as she obeys God, will often speak and act in ways not in accordance with the world's dictates.  We cannot try to be "significant" to a culture steeped in sin lest we entangle ourselves in that sin.  We are not to assume the "smell of the sheep" but rather to exude the odor of sanctity.

Unfortunately it seems that this false "Francis-mercy" is infecting too many churches.  I blogged a few days ago about Our Savior Parish in Manhattan hosting a hare krishna idolatry session in front of its altar.  We now have more startling details: one being that a Cardinal was in attendance.  In that link you will find a short video of the sacrilege.  And yes, it is sacrilege; some are of the belief that this Church will need to be reconsecrated to purify it of the effects of the idolatry.

Then in the Diocese of Buffalo, NY, the pastor saw fit to put a sign outside the Church of St Columba Brigid that said "Jesus had two dads and He turned out just fine".  No one can doubt what the pastor intended to convey.  Fortunately the bishop of that diocese intervened and ordered its removal.

The hare krishna thing was not the first act of idolatry permitted to occur in a Catholic Church.  I was just made aware of a video in which a muslim carries on in a Catholic Church.  The video did not identify the Church but the video makes plain that this is a Catholic Church.  I hope that since this incident occurred that the church was reconsecrated.  Below the video I'll have more commentary.



The Bellarmine Forum has a post that addresses these atrocities in light of Our Lady's apparitions in both Fatima and Akita.  There is no doubt that she has given us ample warning.  Sadly, it seems that the Church, as a whole, is still not listening.  I realize that what Our Lady is asking of us seem to no longer have the capacity of being significant culturally (where have we heard that before?), but so what?  Again, the world does not call our shots.  Our Lord does.  Despite the fact that the Vatican seems hell-bent on hindering us, we need to pray and proclaim the truth before it's too late.

Amoris Laetitia - Oozing With Heretical Gobblygoop

Here is a link to Amoris Laetitia as it appears on the Vatican website in English.  Please note that this English translation is on the Vatican's site.  There can be no claims to "poor translation"; the pope owns the mess.  So now let our Friday penance begin.

Paragraph 3 is a thinly disguised attempt to justify situation ethics.  Notice the line "each country or region can seek solutions better suited to its culture and sensitive to its traditions and local needs".  Wrong.  It is the eternal Teaching of Our Lord, manifested through Sacred Tradition, that is to take precedence over "local tradition".  Solutions must be based on Our Lord's words and Teaching - that and that alone, with no tweeking for the sake of "tradition".  When he evangelized Ireland, should St. Patrick have been sensitive to the "tradition" of druidic human sacrifice?  No less should our bishops today give any lenience to the mortal sin of adultery, which is what the divorced and "civilly married Catholics commit to the eternal detriment of their souls.

So that's only page 4.  We've got 260 more pages of this pig-slop through which we must slog.  But we will soldier on!  In paragraph 4 he said that the synod process was both "impressive and illuminating".  I might agree with him there, but I saw it to be "illuminating" for the heretical proclivities and strong-arming of faithful Catholics that it revealed.

In paragraph 7 he said that "everyone should feel challenged by chapter 8".  I think I will pop over there, but notice how he words his statement.  What does he mean by "challenged"?  Is this more of the "god of surprises" flim-flam?  Let's move to chapter 8.

At the end of paragraph 294 and going into 295, we hear talk of this "law of gradualness".  To wit:

"That is how Jesus treated the Samaritan woman (cf. Jn 4:1-26): he addressed her desire for true love, in order to free her from the darkness in her life and to bring her to the full joy of the Gospel.  Along these lines, Saint John Paul II proposed the so-called law of gradualness in the knowledge that the human being “knows, loves and accomplishes moral good by different stages of growth”.

I read the passage of the woman at the well a number of times.  That conversation between Jesus and the woman occurred in a matter of minutes.  I don't consider that to be especially "gradual".  He got right down to the nitty-gritty and did not permit her to remain in her sin without direct confrontation of that sin.  What the pope is proposing in terms of addressing the needs of a cohabiting couple is - not to address their real need of immediate repentance, for as long as they remain in sinful situations they place themselves and each other in danger of hell.  If any of us realized that our loved ones were in a burning building, would we consider the "law of gradualness" or would we rush in to rescue them?

In paragraph 297 there occurs a curious and perhaps heretical statement: "No one can be condemned forever for that is not the logic of the Gospel".  Excuse me, but what does the pope think hell is?  Is he denying the existence of hell?  Among other things, it is the abode of those who are condemned forever by their own doing.  Then he talks about an "unmerited, unconditional and gratuitous mercy".  There is no such thing.  While God's mercy is unmerited, by no means is it "unconditional and gratuitous".  The necessary condition for receipt of God's mercy is repentance.  Repentance entails the forsaking of sinful conduct and near occasions of sin.

Paragraph 298 is not much more than an attempt to justify those divorced who are living in adultery.  With all the litany of sad circumstances, the fact still remains that as long as the couple are living as husband and wife when they aren't they place themselves and one another in mortal sin.  I wonder how they can claim to love one another and still jeopardize the eternal salvation of each other?  Or doesn't eternal reality factor into their considerations?

Paragraphs 299 and 300 are also full of blather seeking to justify adultery.  Paragraph 301 sees the pope being a bit more blatant about it.  Read this: "Hence it is can no longer simply be said that all those in any irregular situation are living in a state of mortal sin and are deprived of sanctifying grace."  Oh yes it can and it must.  What was once true is always true.  Those living in adultery are living in mortal sin.  Sexual sins are always grave matter and obviously consent is present.  Even with the lackluster catechesis in the church today there is often an intrinsic realization that adultery is sinful.

He tries to cite St. Thomas Aquinas as a source for this strange teaching by saying "Saint Thomas Aquinas himself recognized that someone may possess grace and charity, yet not be able to exercise any one of the virtues well"  There's a vast difference between "not exercising any one of the virtues well" versus living in a state of mortal sin.

Paragraph 305 is an outright vilification of clergy who act in fidelity to the Tradition of the Church and who rightly hold that individual conscience must yield to that same Tradition.  He states that such pastors are "throwing stones at people's lives" and that they are of "closed heart of one hiding behind Church teaching".  How can it be wrong for one to "hide" behind God's word?  Would that all engaged in such "hiding", rather than in hiding behind progressive and humanistic justifications for slapping God in the face by regarding His commands with less than obedience.  As you read this paragraph, please take note of footnote 351 for therein you'll find both insult against the sacrament of Confession and a thinly-disguised justification for adulterers receiving Holy Communion.

Voice of the Family has an excellent treatment on this eighth chapter.  Rorate Caeli and AKA Catholic should also be studied.  I hope to put some more time into the reading of this thing but the consumption of 260+ pages of flim-flam is an onerous task.

The Year Of Mercy, Without Obedience To Our Lady Of Fatima, Will Be A Miserable Flop

Today ChurchMilitant.com published an article entitled "Two Out Of Every Three Mass-Attending Catholics Support Homosexuality".  I wish I could say that this is a surprise to me, but it isn't.  I live in Montgomery County Maryland and my parish is also in Montgomery County.  Several years ago we were in the process of petitioning gay marriage to the ballot.  We had gotten permission to collect signatures in the church lobby after Masses.  Two of us were calling attendees over to sign.  We called over one lady.  She adamantly refused.  She said she "might go to hell for this but I see no reason why gays can't get married if they want".  Needless to say, my friend and I were taken aback.  Now this woman recently passed away, so I pray that her declaration of support for mortal sin was not prophetic.

Two days ago the news regarding the Southern Baptists was even more disconcerting.  One of the first Baptist churches of the nation is now conducting "gay #mowwidges" and ordaining gay AND "transexual", that is, self-mutilated/drugged "ministers".  In their condition, they can only be ministers of death, disease and damnation.  That the protestants are further down the rabbit hole of depravity than are Catholics is not surprising.  It is to the Roman Catholic Church that Our Lord has entrusted the fullness of the Faith.  However, we are not that far behind.

At Mass yesterday we heard a sermon on "mercy", in keeping with the "jubilee of mercy", no doubt.  While there was much talk of the joys of mercy, there was very little teaching on the requirements for receiving God's mercy.  Remember that this is the same parish where the woman loudly declared her support for sodomy.  The blogger at Boston Catholic Insider put up a piece recently entitled "The Error Of Preaching Mercy Without Repentance".  He/she articulated well what I was thinking yesterday.  Without understanding the seriousness of sin and the reality of hell, to which a person will go if they have one unrepented mortal sin on their soul at time of death, there will be no appreciation nor seeking of God's mercy through the sacrament of Confession.  Too often priests refuse to preach on the last four things, including hell.  They are too "politically correct" to name fornication, contraception, sodomy, etc as mortal sins that can damn a soul to hell for all eternity.  Thus they ill-serve their congregations, flowery "mercy" happy-talk notwithstanding.

Now let's address Our Lady of Fatima and her message.  We know that she asked that Russia be consecrated to her  Immaculate Heart by the Pope.  Let's be VERY CLEAR!  Our Lady took the trouble to specify RUSSIA!  Not "the world"!  Not "the universe"!  She, Our Lady, Queen of heaven and earth, specified "Russia"!  How dare anybody presume not to follow her lead in specifying Russia by name?  Is this really so complicated?  Our Lady left no "wiggle room" here!  Per her very clear instructions, Russia must be singled out for consecration.  Oh, it's very nice that the world was consecrated several times, but those consecrations were not done in conformity with Our Lady of Fatima's specific directions.

"But Sister Lucia said the consecration was done!", some might protest.  Oh, really??  Did she???  Please consider that we were told this "second-hand".  Now haven't we all seen enough of Vatican sleight-of-hands and machinations to be skeptical of anything we hear from that organization, especially when we know very well the instructions given to the three Fatima children?  Then folks might say "but look at Russia and how it seems to be returning to Christianity!"  That picture is not so rosy.  I direct your attention to the following video and urge us all to redouble our prayer efforts so that Russia will be consecrated to Our Lady's Immaculate Heart, per her specific instructions; else there will be judgment as opposed to mercy.

Prayer Of Reparation For the Idolatrous Acts During The Last Synod For The Amazon

Bishop Athanasius Schneider, who earlier extolled the heroism of Alexander Tschuguell and his friends for purging the Church of the heinous pachamama idols, has suggested that faithful Catholics everywhere pray the following prayer. 

I should note that the bishop believes (and I agree) that the pachamama crap is a tool of the progressives to usher in a new banal "religion" to supplant Catholicism and that they've been attempting that since the Vatican II council.

I reproduce the bishop's prayer below for your own prayerful use.

“Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, receive through the hands of the Immaculate Mother of God and Ever Virgin Mary from our contrite heart a sincere act of reparation for the acts of worship of wooden idols and symbols during the Synod for the Amazon, which occurred in Rome, the Eternal City, the heart of the Catholic world. Pour out in the heart of Our Holy Father Pope Francis, of the Cardinals, of the Bishops, of priests and lay faithful, your Spirit, who will expel the darkness of their minds, so that they might recognize the impiety of such acts, which offended your Divine majesty and offer to you public and private acts of reparation. 

 Pour out in all members of the Church the light of the fullness and beauty of the Catholic Faith. Enkindle in them the burning zeal of bringing the salvation of Jesus Christ, true God and true man, to all men, especially the people in the Amazon region, who still are enslaved in the service of feeble material and perishable things, as the deaf and mute symbols and idols of “mother earth.” Enkindle the light of faith in those persons, especially in the persons of the Amazonian tribes who do not yet possess the liberty of the children of God, and who do not have the unspeakable happiness of knowing Jesus Christ and having in Him a participation in the life of your Divine nature. 

 Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you are the one true God, besides Whom there is no other god and no salvation, have mercy on your Church. Look especially upon the tears and contrite and humble sighs of the little ones in the Church. Look upon the tears and prayers of the little children, of the adolescents, of young men and young women, of the fathers and mothers of families and also of the true Christian heroes, who in their zeal for your glory and in their love for Mother Church threw into the water the symbols of abomination which defiled her. Have mercy on us: spare us, O Lord, parce Domine, parce Domine! Have mercy on us: Kyrie eleison! Amen.”

Witchcraft, Islam And Humanism - De Facto Creeds Of The New Age

This post regarding these three popular manifestations of idolatry appeared a few days ago and it provides much food for thought.  I'd go a bit further than the author does.  He merely says that these idols are merely filling in a vacuum being left by a dying and shriveling church.  I, however, believe that the church isn't merely making way for these, but actively ushering them to places of prominence.  Witness the "poop video" in the post previous to this one.

Another very recent manifestation seems to come from a most surprising source - the canonization of Mother Teresa.  There is no doubt that she and her sisters spent their lives in heroic service to many destitute people and not too many of us can forget the truth she spoke to power at the 1994 prayer breakfast.  But there were troubling signs of indifferentism throughout her writings, at least in the early days.  There is this quote from A Simple Path: "I’ve always said that we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic."  We know that the only way a Hindu, Muslim or anyone else can become "better" is to embrace the One True Faith, not to become further entrenched in their false religions.  The Bellarmine Forum carries an article about the relationship between Mother Teresa and Father John Hardon.  While it rightly praises Mother's many virtues, we see starting in the second paragraph testament to her unwillingness to teach the creeds of the Faith, saying "her sisters were there to help the poor".  So the imparting of the Faith would not have assisted the poor?  But Father was there, at the behest of Pope John Paul II, to equip the sisters to engage in that aspect of charity and I believe that they did.  But did Mother ever walk back that statement as quoted from A Simple Path?

It does seem that at least in the first stage of the ministry of the Missionaries of Mercy, Mother Teresa was content to focus on the Corporal Works of Mercy to the exclusion of the Spiritual Works of Mercy.  I'll now link to an article by Msgr Charles Pope, written over a year ago, entitled "What Ever Happened To The Spiritual Works Of Mercy?"  It is worth careful study, as are the comments below.  I truly am glad that Pope John Paul II, through Father Hardon, corrected that short-coming in the Missionaries of Mercy.

Let's move onto Islam.  I'll now post an account of an interview granted by Cardinal Burke.  In that interview, His Eminence states that the belief that Christians and muslims worship the same god stems from relativism.  It might be indifferentism, too, such as the one seen Mother Teresa's quote in A Simple Path.  It is quite blasphemous to state that those who behead babies, stone rape victims, engage in terrorist bombings by using their own children, etc, etc, in the name of their god, somehow worship the One, True God.  Yet that is what progressive church leaders thrust down our throats, as our post-Christian culture makes ever-increasing concessions to muslims while treating Christians - particularly faithful Catholics - as de facto "niggers of the new age".

Again we see the Church hierarchy welcoming in this heresy, not only in the misguided indifferentism rightly condemned by Cardinal Burke, but also in troubling actions by Pope Francis.  Recall his allowance of muslim prayers to the false "allah" idol within the Vatican gardens and his washing of the feet of muslims during Holy Thursday services.

These embraces of both humanism and indifferentism by progressives in the Church not only facilitate cultural suicide, but also facilitate the damnation of immortal souls by holding up to them lies as though they were truths.

Four Cardinals Publicly Seek Clarification On Amoris Laetitia

In September, four cardinals wrote to Pope Francis to seek formal clarification regarding problematic statements found in Amoris Laetitia.  The pope did not reply to them so now they have made their concerns and questions public.  I will publish the complete text as found in National Catholic Register below the jump break, since it is rather lengthy.

The four cardinals are Walter Brandmuller, Raymond Burke, Carlo Caffarra, and Joachim Meisner.  They have formatted their writing in the form called "dubia", Latin for "doubts".  The questions are structured in such a way that the answer to be given them must be a "yes" or "no".  Consider also as you read this that the answers will have one of two effects: 1) the reversal of Amoris Laetitia, as well as the proceeds of the two synods or 2) the placement of the pope in formal heresy.  I link now to analysis done by LifeSiteNews, Rorate Caeli, Vox Cantoris, AKACatholic.  Several have asked why there are no more cardinals participating and why these four.  They then answered their own question by pointing out that three of these are retired and the fourth has already had influence stripped from him.  They have nothing to lose from a pope who has shown himself capable of punishing those who contradict him.  Please pray for them, the pope and that the filth may finally be swept from the Vatican.  Now the letter, after the jump break.

Catholic Standard Touts Dissident Order Of Sisters

The current Catholic Standard features some sisters telling their vocation story.  One such story is from Sister Aine O'Connor, one of the five leaders of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas.  That name caught my eye for over ten years ago, I led a picket against them in Silver Spring.  They were hosting a Call to Action meeting to discuss some sort of dissidence.

Here is the website of Sisters of Mercy of the Americas.  Right there you can see that they are "social justice warriors" and there is not one of them in habit.  Here is the list of their social concerns; notice how the E in "earth" is capitalized, like it's a proper noun/name?  It's just a list of all the progressive talking points.  Go to the "resources" menu, then to "social justice advocacy", then click on "earth community and mercy consciousness".  You'll be gobsmacked with talk of "new catholicity", "unmaking and remaking of the western mind", and a smattering of gobblygoop by Teilhard de Chardin.  Then there's "widening our circle of mercy".  In this so-called "prayer service", six page of it, the word "God" is mentioned twice in this entire idolatrous groveling before "mother earth".

Take a look at their version of the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy.  Church tradition recognizes seven of each.  They've appended an extra one to each.  Their additions are at the bottom of their lists.  I think it rather telling that they didn't deuvlge their edition of Sacred Tradition. 

As with most progressive katholyc organizations, these women have forged some troubling alliances as you can see here.  Women's Alliance for Theology Ethics,and Religion can be shortened to "Water".  Scroll on down their main page.  They advertize for an "Advent liturgy for Catholic Lesbian/queer women". Charming.  Going further down we see that they work with Dignity and Women's Ordination Conference.  They are headquartered in Silver Spring MD, just blocks from the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas.  Isn't that convenient?

Then there's Amnesty International.  Here we see that they champion both baby-slaughter and the "gay-lifestyle" perversions.

If the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas has no problems with these positions espoused by their partners, then we can safely say that they embrace those dissident positions themselves.  So why are they touted in the Catholic Standard?

Baltimore's Mercy High School In Serious Need Of Repentance And Mercy

Let's look at Mercy High School in Baltimore.   Because they hosted what appears to be a gay gab-fest on Saturday Feb 25, one might surmise that Mercy as an institution might itself be gay-pandering.  As I look about the internet, I think they might be correct.

Let's look on Mercy's web page, specifically the subpage entitled "Clubs and Organizations".  Way at the very bottom, we see something called "VALID", a club that poses a deadly peril to the souls of confused young girls.  Read it for yourself.  Nowhere is there mention of overcoming same-sex attraction or taking recourse to the Church sacraments to keep from falling into homosexual relationships.  Instead, its aim is to "support" them by "connecting them with allies and other students like themselves".  Is this a thinly-disguised gay-dating service?

The moderator appears to be a woman named Hogg.  I don't see her as a current faculty or staff member, but a quick google shows her history with Mercy.  A Catholic Review article from two years ago states that she was a theology teacher there.  Her facebook page shows her clear alliance with the gay agenda.  Observe for yourselves.

Two years ago, Becky Egan Hogg was teaching theology at Mercy.  One wonders what kind of "theology" was being taught, but I digress.

Now we have a glimpse into her Facebook page

Now let's take a look at the Sisters of Mercy, the order of sisters running that school.  I was none too surprised to see on their website a page dedicated to "bisexual, transgender and intersex resources".   Isn't that just typical?   One book touted there is entitled "The Bible and the Transgender Experience: How Scripture Supports Gender Variance".   One gets to read how "helpful new interpretations can be for creating inclusive communities".  In other words, the reader learns how he/she can twist and distort God's word to justify any sin that they want.  The rest of the reading list is similarly oriented.

There's another gay-pandering page called "links to helpful resources".  Naturally it had all manners of websites devoted to the promotion of vile perversions: New Ways Ministry, Dignity, Human Rights Campaign, Fortunate Families (a favorite of Cardinal Gregory's!)  Anything with that rainbow-heart logo will lead you to all manners of satanic propaganda designed to normalize and even lionize the most base perversions.

The rest of the pabulum there is just a litany of the usual "social-justice-warrior" tripe: earth day, racism, border-crashing enabling,   If you want to get a glimpse into new-age pantheism, this page won't disappoint.  It may bore you to tears, but it will open your eyes to what is being force-fed to young Catholic girls.  Now here is a piece of irony in that clip.  They quote St. Thomas Aquinas as he said "a sin against nature is a sin against God".  Well, given their advocacy of sexual perversions, they themselves are sinning against nature big time, and most definitely sin against God.

I don't have time to pick this whole website apart.  I leave that to my readers, particularly those who have relatives involved in Mercy High School, to do some "due diligence" research on your own.  By the way, as you do so, please advise if you see them denouncing abortion.  I couldn't find any such mention.

I regret that there are many schools like it.  Our Lord spoke of those who scandalize others, that it would be better if a millstone were tied around their neck to drown them.  Now we know how they could have allowed that "social ministry convocation" to be held on their premises.  I hope to have more on that debacle in the next few days.

Father Thomas Weinandy Continues To Articulate The Truth - His Full Article Here

A few days ago, a piece by Father Thomas Weinandy was published by Sandro Magister on his blog.  Father Weinandy, who was sacked by the increasingly inimical USCCB for speaking truth, demonstrates how the so-called "pastoral" approach is in fact deadly to souls.   This piece is the keynote address that Father gave at Notre Dame University in Sydney Australia where I believe he currently teaches.

Many Catholic sites linked to the address as it appeared on Sandro Magister's blog.  However, when I went to look for it there, I found that it had been pulled.   After some searching, I found it at the Catholic World Report.  To guard against another (ahem!) "mysterious disappearance", I'll copy and paste it in its entirety.

This piece is lengthy, so I'll put the jump break here.

Deconstruction Of Church Tradition Under Pope Francis

After the grotesque display of satanic idolatry at St Peter's Basilica on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, we continue to see increasingly blatant attempts to deconstruct Church teaching.  Many of these attempts are from high Church officials, including Pope Francis.

Thanks to Toronto Catholic Witness, I was directed to the homily that Pope Francis gave on December 8th to inaugurate the "jubilee of mercy".  This is on the Vatican's website.  Here is the troubling passage: "Before all else, the Council was an encounter. A genuine encounter between the Church and the men and women of our time. An encounter marked by the power of the Spirit, who impelled the Church to emerge from the shoals which for years had kept her self-enclosed so as to set out once again..." (emphasis mine)

I agree with TCW that in that phrase, Pope Francis spit in the eye all his predecessors, some of them saints, blesseds and doctors of the Church, precisely because they acted as shepherds who guarded their flocks.  While this pope might prefer that we take the "smell of the sheep", his predecessors (by and large) sought to preserve the Church in the odor of sanctity.

In a recent interview, Cardinal Turkson, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace said that "some form of birth control" might help with "overpopulation" and resultant "food shortage".  He also stated it could help with "climate change".  He then reminded us all of the shameful way in which Pope Francis treated the woman who was expecting her eighth child.  It would be an interesting thing if that eighth child were to confront the pope and tell him a thing or two, but I digress!

He must have realized his Freudian slip for he tried to backpedal, saying only "natural forms of birth control" were acceptable.  I don't buy it; else, why would he have used the general, nebulous "some form" descriptor for birth control?  More importantly, periodic abstinence from marital relations cannot be equated with what is commonly referred to as "birth control".  Voice of the Family is correct in opining that Turkson's remarks do lend credibility to the attempts to divorce marital relations from the procreation of children.  They certainly do make plain the linkage between "climate change" junk science with population control.

According to the Guardian, a Vatican document (name unknown) exhorts Catholics not to attempt to convert Jews to Christianity.  This document is from the Vatican commission for relationships with Jews.  Boys and girls, can you say "ecumenicide"?  You probably noticed during Triduum services that the traditional prayer for Jews to come to Christianity has been scuttled in recent years, so this manifestation of ecumenicide predates the current pontiff.  Now what was that again that we read in the Bible, at the end of several Gospels, where Jesus commands (not "suggest", not "request", but "command") the Apostles to baptize all "in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit"?  Or did the "god of surprises" change his mind?

As I read of this, I think of what St Paul wrote in several of his letters, how he wished that all his brother Jews would be converted.  I also think of St. Vincent Ferrar, who once marched into a synagogue, started preaching and converted thousands of Jews on the spot.  Paul!  Vincent!  Naughty-naughty!  Stop that now!  Leave the Jews (and others) to wallow in darkness!  Don't you know that we must be ecumenical?  Seriously though, how can one talk with a straight face about a "year of mercy" and yet not seek to bring others to the font of mercy, that is, Jesus Christ, who acts through His Church?

My blogging colleague Julie at Connecticut Catholic Corner put up a piece today entitled "The New Age Of Pope Francis' Church".  Read it for I concur with her.  I too pray for a holy pope who will save souls.  At this time, it appears that this pope will not be Pope Francis, but only God knows.  Let us pray.

The Pope Continues To Make The Church Into A Cutesy Trite Caricature

This anime thing to the right is what the Vatican has chosen to be the logo for the Jubilee Year of 2025.  It has evoked much consternation, and it should.  At best, it's silly and childish.  The ostensible purpose is to appeal to youth.  I've said this before, but such "purpose" betrays a horrendously condescending opinion about young people on the part of Church hierarchy.  If they really want to appeal to young people, they can stop quashing the Traditional Latin Mass - but I digress.

The witch's stang is troubling.  Some say that is not supposed to be a stang.  Given the pope's history of using those things, I take no comfort in that false reassurance. 

The creator of this thing (named Luce) is Simone Legno, creator of Tokidoki.  Besides insipid animes such as "Luce", he has also put his artistic talents to use by creating LGBTQ items.  Take a look.  Should the Vatican be lending Legno credibility?  Why would the Vatican want this kind of cutesy schlock?

Michael Hichborn, president of Lepanto Institute, posted some of his thoughts on the matter in Facebook.  I think they are worth a read.  One commentor opined that this Luce thing communicates a message that "we are not a serious Church."  He's right.  If ever the world needed a serious Church, it's now, and the pope is working overtime to degrade the Church into a bunch of silly, superficial clowns.

And now, Michael's thoughts.

The Vatican’s decision to adopt cartoonish, trivialized symbols, such as the blue-haired ‘Luce’ mascot, is a symptom of a disturbing shift within the Church. The current trend moving the Church away from Her treasury of glorious art to commercialized trinkets is a mere triviality to many, but the history of this move is darker than most realize.

The age-old question whether life imitates art, or art imitates life essentially asks whether it is the art which impacts society and shapes the culture – and therefore the artist is an agent of change – or whether the artist is merely an agent of expression, reflecting what is already present within the culture. The partial answer is that it’s a little of both, but what is missing from the equation is that the underlying philosophy of the artist is what drives it all.

The earliest traces of what is today referred to as Modern Art are firmly rooted in the French Revolution and the so-called enlightenment, but it didn’t really take off until the late 1800s. The Romanticism of Goya led to the Impressionism of Manet. The Post-Impressionism of Van Gogh led to the avant-garde experimentation of Les Nabis – French painters who transformed the medium and laid the foundation for the abstract symbolism of modern art.

Most of art history is focused on the development of technique or style, but what is often ignored is the actual philosophy of the artists, themselves. One of the early progenitors of modern art, a Romantic artist named Eugene Delacroix, said: "Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything." As a philosophy of art, it excuses imperfection and imprecision, but as a philosophy of life it suggests something worse: that one need not seek to express truth and beauty with precision because the impression is good enough, and error is not to be avoided. While this may seem like a stretch, this notion bears out with each succeeding generation of artists.

James Whistler, the American painter who is best known for painting his own mother in a rocking chair, once said that “Art Happens – no hovel is safe from it, no prince may depend upon it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about." What he is saying is that art is some kind of spontaneous energy that supersedes intelligence which – in a manner of speaking – possesses the artist and simply creates. This notion of art not only discourages the intelligibility of an artistic rendering, but eliminates the objectivity of the art itself, which should be directed toward Truth.

Paul Cezanne – an avant-garde, post-impressionist painter – was called, “the father of us all” by the communist Cubist, Pablo Picasso. Henri Matisse called him “a kind of dear god of painting.” In speaking of the origin of an artistic piece, Cezanne said, “A work of art which did not begin in emotion, is not art." This was a revolutionary idea and a radical shift in the nature of art itself. No longer an expression of the good, the true, and the beautiful, an artistic rendering must now be found in the expression of an emotion.

This radical shift in art from beauty and truth to emotive experience did not happen in a vacuum. The heresy of Modernism rose to prominence at the same time. Pope Pius IX warned about some of its errors, and Pope St. Pius X condemned them. And after a close and careful examination of these two movements, one discovers that the medium of modern art is nothing more than a carefully crafted expression of the Modernist heresy. The underlying ideology of Modernism is the notion that religion is something that wells up from within as an experience or a feeling, while the reformed nature of art – as defined by the Modern Artists – is that art is the expression of an emotion or an experience that wells up from within the artist.

In his encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, P. Pius X pointed out that the Modernists recoil from the establishment of an absolute truth, preferring the development or evolution of dogmatic ideas as they are expressed in different ways, keeping them open to interpretation. The modernist philosopher and theologian will say that one cannot explain an objective truth but can only suggest emotional and experiential impressions that convey some notion of religion, or a truth already present within. These artists are no different! The movement from objective beauty to sketchy impressions and undefined forms, merely hinting at an object or a feeling, is an exact reflection of the philosophy of the Modernists.

Throughout the 20th century, the quiet infiltration of the Modernists in the Church took firm root within the arts so that by the time the new Mass was published in 1969, the radical artistic transformation of the Church could begin. The music was fundamentally changed from chant and polyphony to guitars and folk songs. Gorgeous paintings were removed to make way for felt banners. Magnificent, lifelike statues were discarded, and in their place came rough-hewn, dead-faced wooden carvings. Stained glass windows depicting the saints were scrapped in favor of disjointed mosaics of color. Even the architecture was radically changed. In essence, where we once saw saints and sacred figures, we now see vague shapes and symbols rooted in emotional expression for the stimulation of an emotional response.

This was not a mere movement of the culture, but a dramatic shift orchestrated by Modernist artists and their spiritual superiors. In short, the intention was to impose upon life an imitation of the art being set into place: The medium became the agent of change.

Ever since that revolutionary paradigm shift, the war between Tradition and Modernism raged throughout all of Christendom as the Modernists fought with relentless ferocity to eradicate all vestiges of the eternal glory of Christendom! But slowly and tenaciously, the small remnant of Traditional Catholicism grew and on the verge of flourishing, Pope Francis received the Keys.

For the last eleven years, the Church has been forced to endure the embarrassing infantilization of the Church. Glorious Vatican creche scenes were replaced by bizarre and brutalist renditions that are barely even recognizable as human. Official Vatican projects are represented by clip-art style icons, Vatican documents are written in crayon-style fonts, and now, an androgynous, yellow-raincoated figure with blue hair called “Luce” is the official “mascot” for the Holy Year of Mercy 2025. Faithful Catholics rightly wondered if the blue-haired ‘Luce’ was a joke. Unfortunately, it’s not.

The old saying, “The medium is the message” is well applied here, and it should have added to it the mission of the devils: “anything but prayer.” Religious art should lift the soul toward God, not evoke sentimentality. For the Modernist, however, the purpose of religious art is to shift focus from timeless truths to transient feelings.

And so, for the last 55 years, the message of Modernist religious art has been to de-emphasize the sacrificial nature of the Mass by singing about bread, wheat and grapes; to encourage involvement in social justice by depicting the Holy Family as refugees; to discourage horror and sorrow at sin by placing the Risen Christ on the cross; and to inspire a “communal” understanding of the Church by redesigning parishes as round structures.

After decades of exposure to modernist religious art, many Catholics have lost sight of what true sacred art represents, and there is a reason for this. The Modernists have long known that the only way to fully implement their revolution is to sever all ties with Tradition. To accomplish this, the Modernists created a massive generational gap by severing the living memory of Tradition while raising the next generation with Modernist sensibilities.

The Vatican’s recent turn to juvenile music, artwork, and fonts is not an accident. These are very deliberate decisions, and the message of the medium is “We are trying to attract the youth.” It’s the same method employed by fast-food executives and cereal companies. The fast-food industry, looking to attract children and parents, uses colorful fonts and the lure of toys. Cereal companies put colorful mascots on the boxes and use catchy jingles in their commercials. In other words – these executives are trying to spark an emotion or experience in the observer.

Emotionalism is simultaneously the source and the end-result of both Modern Art and the heresy of Modernism – ideas and doctrines are reduced to emotionally-stimulating imagery, like mascots and jingles. With the idea that emotion is what fuels modern art and the Modernist understanding of religion, it is necessary to use emotion-inducing images and sounds to sell their ideas. And this is how Luce came to be.

The backlash to the Vatican’s introduction of “Luce” was immediate. Amazingly, the response to that backlash was almost as swift. Many conservative-minded Catholic accounts on social media have taken to calling those reacting negatively to Luce as “boomers.” Why? Because they grew up on a steady diet of cheap art and have lost the sense of proper comportment regarding religious matters. Fifty-five years of trying to make the Faith “fun” and “relevant” to the culture has dumbed and cheapened the Faith so much that a cute, non-threatening figure like Luce is seen as an appropriate symbol of the Faithful. Worse still is the fact that so many Catholics fail to recognize that an institution like the Church holds such a high place of dignity that it is entirely undignified for it to produce trinkets such as this.

As the rallying cry of Hell is “anything but prayer,” the new artistic Modernism in the Church instills a sentimental emotion within the viewer while avoiding any kind of inspiration to pray. Modernist artwork like this is designed to actualize the Modernist philosophy that religion is a sense that wells up from within, and as long as an icon like Luce causes the observer to develop a sentimental sense within themselves regarding the Faith, that’s all that matters. This is why World Youth Day is essentially a big party with some religion sprinkled in. Provided the revolutionists in the Church can keep the faithful rooted in the idea that art is an emotional expression, they can continue to push the narrative regarding LGBT ideologies, divorce, false religions, and diverse liturgical expressions. Why? Because if life is an imitation of art, then the philosophy of art is what will inform the observer and the agents of change can continue to manipulate the members of the Body of Christ into believing what they want them to believe. And if art is an imitation of life, then the revolutionists can point to the artistic forms and say that this is the will of the Holy Spirit, and those who refuse to embrace and accept that are the heretics.

A new paradigm is coming, but Our Lord gave us an anchor. Our Lady is the one who holds the other end of the Rosary, and she has promised that those who pray the Rosary faithfully will not be lost. Our time is growing increasingly more perilous by the day, making it even more imperative that we pray the Rosary with faith and fervor. Pray often, pray well, and please God – when the storm passes, we will all be found at Our Lady’s feet with the chains of the Rosary in hand.