What If He Is?

There are people in the Catholic world who have dedicated their lives to the proposition that Pope Francis is an antipope.  This proposition is their opinion, and no one is bound to go along with it.

I myself am capable of having no more than an opinion on the subject, and nobody is required to agree with me, either.  I am on record as saying that I don’t think Francis is an antipope, and that we have had a “Spirit of Vatican II” Pope coming for a long time.  I think Benedict XVI abdicated in 2013, and I don’t buy the argument that he intended to abdicate only part of the Petrine office while retaining part.  At the time of his abdication, he called for a conclave to elect a new Pope, which seems to me a striking proof of his intent to cease being Pope.  That conclave was held, and we got Pope Francis.  Since Christ is not idle in this process, and is not Himself a manipulator, and cannot be fooled or stymied by grammatical errors or semantics games, I believe He stripped Benedict of the Petrine office and conferred the same on Francis.  I think the “antipope Bergoglio” crowd is operating on mistaken beliefs about the scope of papal infallibility.  And, I think they are in great danger of  ultimately falling into schism, and taking others with them.  Why?  In the seven years since the last conclave, Pope Francis has stacked the college of cardinals, which means the next conclave will be populated mostly — if not entirely — by his nominees.  This puts the Benedict-is-the-true-Pope people on the greased skids to sedevacantism, since, if Francis is not the true Pope, then his appointments to the college of cardinals are illegitimate, and no one these putative cardinals elect can be the true Pope.  Thus will they be compelled in the end to hold that the line of true Popes has died out, and that the Chair of Peter is vacant.

Is it possible that I’m wrong?  Of course it is.  I’m not a theologian, I’m not a canon lawyer, and I haven’t been given the gift of infused knowledge.  The same goes for some of the most strident proponents of the “antipope Bergoglio” theorem, who essentially argue it from their own authority.

What I want to know from the people who have made a full-time career out of jumping up and down screaming about this is: let’s say Francis is not in fact the true Pope.  What exactly are we in the pews meant to do about it?  What can we accomplish by dwelling on this as much as you do?  What authority do we, or you, have to remedy this?  How much good are you doing to the Church by attacking your fellow Christians who disagree with you?  Because, quite honestly, that is what you seem to devote most of your time and energy to doing.

In asking these questions, I am not taking a quietist stance.  Quietism involves failing to do what lies to hand.  We do not fall into quietism by acknowledging our limitations.  It is not clear what lies to the lay hand in this crisis, other than repentance, conversion, prayer and fasting.  But this is not nothing.  On the contrary, it is everything.  Scripture makes it pretty clear that if we want God to rescue us from disaster, we have to turn to Him with our whole heart.  It also says that if we love God, we will obey His commandments.  But when do we have time to do that if we have made a career out of sniping at other Catholics who acknowledge — not unreasonably — Francis as the true Pope?

It is possible that I am wrong about who is the true Pope.  If I am, I am in good company, because a lot of people who are holier and smarter and more knowledgeable than I am also think Francis is the true Pope.  I cannot believe that God will condemn us for being wrong about this, if we turn out to be wrong.

If this crisis is resolved on the side of Pope Francis being an antipope, I will be too busy rejoicing that the crisis has been resolved to be embarrassed about being wrong.  But I fear for the people who have so much invested in their antipope theory.  They are liable to not recognize and entirely miss out on the resolution when it comes, if it does not fit in with their expectations.  That would be a tragedy.

On Opinions without Credentials

There is this insidious idea making the rounds to the effect that a lack of credentials is itself a credential.  People opine boldly, vehemently and publicly on matters like theology and canon law with little to no formal training in these fields.  We see this particularly in connection with some of those who give it as their considered opinion that Benedict XVI, not Francis, is the true Pope.  Some advocates of this position acknowledge and even revel in their lack of credentials in the fields relevant to this issue.  Some even go as far as to assert that, since the evidence in support of their conclusions is so blindingly obvious, the rejection of their opinions is tantamount to heresy and blasphemy.

What is the basis for thinking that a lack of credentials is itself a credential?  There seems to be this anti-elitist elitism, a proletarian pride that turns ignorance into a virtue and education into a vice.  It assumes bad faith on the part of the educated, and on the part of educators.  It assumes that the system of acquiring credentials is hidebound, corrupt, and invested in nothing more than furthering its own interests, while the untrained commentator, unspoilt by the taint of any Establishment agenda, is able to see truths that no one inside the Establishment can see.  It allows the anti-elitist elitist to entertain the possibility — indeed, the probability — that, because they are outsiders to the field in which they pronounce judgment, they may well be God’s instruments in bringing about True Reform.  It allows the anti-elitist elitist to dismiss the disagreement of persons with actual credentials as the product of jealousy, self-interest, or a simple unwillingness to face the truth.

I have mentioned previously in this space my frustration with people who will not listen to my legal opinions or take my advice when these don’t chime with what they want to hear.  I will not impute to them the same bad faith and criminal stupidity that they impute to me, to my face and in the most hateful language; but it is clear that they are the ones who suffer from closed minds and blindness to the truth.  They are like the anti-elitist elitists, who, the more wedded they are to their theories, the less likely they are to listen to real experts who disagree with them.

It is true that sometimes God chooses persons who are not expert, educated or even very intelligent to work His purposes; but He doesn’t always.  The Fathers of the early Church were extremely learned men.  Saints Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Alphonsus Liguori, Thomas More — all exceedingly educated, and exceedingly holy.  Alphonsus Liguori and Thomas More were lawyers.  These saints all had their particular genius; but even with all their gifts, they still studied hard and diligently.  In other words, since grace builds on and perfects nature, they still had to gain their expertise the old-fashioned way: by hard work.

What about the persons without credentials that God chooses as His instruments?  There are certainly examples in the history of the Church.  Saints Catherine of Siena and Therese of Lisieux lacked academic credentials, yet today are acclaimed as Doctors of the Church.  The Cure of Ars was a failure as a student, but outstanding in holiness as a priest.  St. Bernadette Soubirous was an ignorant shepherd girl from a dirt-poor family who conveyed heaven’s ratification of the dogmatic definition of the Immaculate Conception, even though she did not understand what it meant.  And there was never anyone less qualified to lead armies in battle than St. Joan of Arc, yet she led the French army to victory and secured the true king of France on his throne.

But notice that when God uses these little ones, He crowns their efforts with authentic signs and wonders, to prove that they really are working for Him.  Catherine of Siena wielded enormous influence for good with the Pope.  Therese of Lisieux secured her religious vocation at a very early age, against the odds.  The Cure of Ars had to spend many hours a day in the confessional because  everyone recognized him as a holy priest.  Bernadette Soubirous uncovered a spring of miraculous healing.  Joan of Arc had gifts of prophecy and discernment, led armies to victory and confounded her persecutors.  When someone without credentials or qualifications pronounces judgment on subjects  such as who is the true Pope, consider how often he has been right about other things.  One particularly outspoken proponent of the theory that Benedict XVI is still the true Pope, for example, declared that Donald Trump was only running for president in order to dress up his resume, that he wasn’t serious about running, and predicted that he would throw the election.  Then when he didn’t throw the election, she admitted that she had erred but opined that Trump was a dim bulb who was in way over his head and was on his way out.  Three years later, Trump has so successfully confounded his enemies, and has so far advanced the cause of Christian civilization in his administration, that the Democrats have launched a bogus impeachment proceeding to try to remove him from office.

There is nothing wrong with not having credentials.  But there is something wrong with making a lack of credentials into a credential of its own.  There is nothing wrong with the fact that not everyone is qualified to render judgments about everything.  But there is something wrong with not sticking to what you know when it comes to holding forth on a subject that has implications for the well-being of souls.  Credentials are not dispositive all by themselves: it is true that there are idiots out there with degrees and licenses.

But when someone declares an opinion on an important subject, credentials are relevant.  If there is some indication that someone has poured blood, toil, tears and sweat into acquiring credentials in some subject, it may be that that person’s opinion on that subject counts for more than that of someone who did not put that kind of work into it.

Painted into a Corner

If you take the position that Pope Francis is an antipope, and that Benedict XVI is still the true Pope: 

(1) What are you going to do if Benedict dies before Francis, thus, in your estimation, vacating the See of Peter?  What if Francis lives on for years afterward, filling the College of Cardinals with his own nominees? When Francis then dies, and a conclave convenes, how will you accept the result, seeing that it was arrived at by “cardinals” appointed by a false Pope?  Will not the line of Popes have been brought to an end?

(2)  What are you going to do if Francis dies before Benedict, and the conclave elects a truly holy, reforming and Catholic man to be the successor of Peter?  Are you not then in the perverse position of opposing that true Catholic as an antipope, and holding as invalid all his purportedly papal reforms, seeing that, in your estimation, he was elected by a conclave invalidly convened while the See of Peter was still occupied?

Haven’t you painted yourself into the corner of sedevacantism?

Who Do YOU Say that Jesus Is? Francis Is the True Pope.

Ann Barnhardt is a very smart woman with a talent for speaking extemporaneously and producing lucid and very nearly grammatical- and spelling-error-free English prose.  She has courageously (whether rightly or wrongly) taken a stand and radically altered her life to be true to her deeply-held beliefs. She pulls no punches and very forthrightly speaks the truth as she understands it, without fear or favor.  I believe she honestly tries hard to be a good disciple of Jesus Christ, zealous for the salvation of souls, and a good daughter of His Holy Catholic Church.

But trying hard, and speaking forcefully, are not the same thing as attaining perfection or possessing authority, or even just being right.  Barnhardt goes too far by trying to lay upon her fellow Catholics, on pain of committing blasphemy, the burden of accepting as irrefutable fact her opinion that Pope Francis is really an antipope, and that Benedict XVI, having failed validly to abdicate, is still the lawful and rightful occupant of the Throne of Peter.

That Jorge Bergoglio, reigning under the name of Francis, is not the true Pope, is Barnhardt’s opinion and nothing more.  Yet she argues that to not hew to her opinion on this subject is to blaspheme Jesus Christ as a liar, a charlatan and a promise-breaker Who failed to fulfill His guarantees concerning the Sovereign Pontiff.  She also argues, circularly -- and also more consistently with Protestant ideas of private judgment than Catholic ones of authority -- that God in His goodness makes it patently obvious that Francis is not the true Pope, such that we can see it for ourselves without having to be told.  She even thinks that priests who speak the name of Francis in the commemoration of the Mass are deserving of temporal punishments that she asks God to visit upon her instead. Thus, the rest of us are not to differ from her views on how much weight to give each piece of evidence that she adduces in favor of her proposition, or what picture these pieces actually make when put together.  In other words, no other views of the evidence that she considers dispositive are admissible, and — even if she doesn’t put it in exactly these terms — it is a sin to disagree with her opinion on this issue.

The stumbling block for Barnhardt is that the current pontificate is nothing short of scandalous.  She is right about that. If there is one thing the Amazon Synod has made clear, it is that, in our time, filth and corruption go all the way up to the top, and they are increasingly brazen.  Desecrations of the holiest places in Catholic Christendom have probably been going on for a long time, after they have been closed to the public and under cover of darkness.  The new development is that, with the Synod, desecrations were carried out openly and blatantly, before the cameras, and with the public approval of the Pope himself. And the involvement of the Pope, the touchstone of Catholic unity, is the most painful aspect of this mess.  

The Church is no stranger to treason: our Lord Himself hand-picked Judas Iscariot, a tare that He permitted to grow up in the midst of the wheat, knowing he would sell Him for 30 pieces of silver.  Nor is the Church a stranger to less-than-stellar popes. The first Pope started out his career by denying Jesus three times. Over the centuries, we have had bungling popes; negligent popes; worldly popes; weak and vacillating popes; fornicating popes.  But not even about Pope Alexander VI Borgia, with all his mistresses and illegitimate children, is it alleged that he ever sowed confusion and chaos about Catholic doctrine, or supported and elevated proponents of heresies, because of their heresies, or publicly participated in idolatrous rites.  He may have shamelessly shattered the Commandments; but he never tried to suggest, even indirectly, that they weren’t in fact Commandments. Pope Francis, by contrast, has done all of these things.

And so Barnhardt, and other like-minded Catholics, seek refuge in the idea that a man capable of all this can only be an antipope.  The survival of Francis’ predecessor, Benedict XVI, allow them nimbly to sidestep the fever swamps of sedevacantism by maintaining that Benedict is still the reigning Pope, due to his having abdicated under coercion, and/or under the mistaken belief that he could abdicate part of the Petrine ministry while retaining part of it.  The proponents of this view hold that the conclave of 2013 was null and void, since it is not lawful to hold a conclave while the See of Peter is occupied. Alternatively, it is argued that the conclave was invalid because of illegal lobbying and electioneering by Bergoglio partisans.

The abdication of a Pope is, thankfully, an exceedingly rare event in the life of the Church.  The question of Pope Benedict’s abdication, the circumstances surrounding it, and its implications, certainly need to be closely examined.  A careful study of this event will be the task of a future pontificate. There does not at this time seem to exist the will to do it, at least among those who are now in power, so glad are they to have seen the back of Benedict, and so little do they seem to have the good of the Church at heart.  As to the effectiveness of Pope Benedict’s abdication, and the validity of the conclave of 2013, others have addressed these issues more eloquently and expertly than I can. Still, I will throw in a few observations of my own, to be taken for whatever they may be worth.  

First of all, it is difficult to imagine Pope Benedict XVI doing anything without careful deliberation.  The existence of fear on his part does not, ipso facto, imply coercion; nor does it rule out deliberation.  Fear is very often a factor in making a decision that is nevertheless taken knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily.  For example, people often enter into plea agreements, even if they are not happy about doing so, because they fear that to go to trial could result in a worse outcome.  The spectacular imprudence of other alternatives than the one they elect does not mean that their decision to take a plea has been coerced. Thus, Pope Benedict’s fears, if any, about remaining in office do not, of themselves, mean he was being coerced into abdicating.  Even if it could be persuasively argued that he was coerced into abdicating, he could still later acquiesce in having been deposed, and Christ could still ratify that acquiescence. Arguably, if there was a need for his acquiescence, Benedict has done so by reaffirming his abdication, and by declining to try to resume office.

Secondly, the idea strains all credibility that a careful, thoughtful, conscientious and experienced scholar like Josef Ratzinger, with his profound knowledge of Church law, could produce an instrument of abdication that, for some elementary failure in grammar or phrasing, would fail to do what it set out to do.  Mistakes like that are the stuff of first-year law students, which Benedict XVI manifestly is not. Unlike the current Pope, Benedict XVI is a man who weighs carefully every word, and understands that, when you draft a document intended to have some legal effect, every word counts. Also, unlike Ann Barnhardt, Pope Benedict is trained in Latin, so his opinions as to the best choice of words in a Latin instrument to effectuate a legal act are probably weightier than hers.

Thirdly, I do not believe that any after-the-fact musings of either Benedict or his private secretary about the nature of the Petrine ministry, entered upon in an effort, perhaps, to rationalize what he had done, deserve any weight as evidence of his intent at the time of his abdication.  Surely, to the extent Benedict’s beliefs about the Petrine Office, or his intent with respect to it, are at issue, the focus of any inquiry would have to center on what he intended at the time he renounced the papacy.  Whatever he said after the fact, even if it is picking up the threads of theological or philosophical speculations from years earlier, is at best minimally relevant to determining his thinking and his intent during the relevant time frame.  Why? Because people are known to change their minds, and sometimes even change them back again at a later time, and for all sorts of reasons. Even if Benedict’s reflections are relevant, they are not sufficient to tip the scales in favor of an invalid abdication.  Not every piece of relevant evidence carries weight, or deserves to.

Fourthly, Benedict’s conduct since his abdication — the continued use of his regnal name, the imparting of apostolic blessings, his continued wearing of the white cassock, his failure completely to disappear from public view — do not constitute smoking-gun evidence that he is still the lawful Pope.  Here again, it pays to remember that not every piece of evidence, even relevant evidence, carries weight. On the other hand, when you have a theory that you are determined to prove at all costs, you are apt to see relevant evidence where none exists, or to misinterpret or exaggerate in your own mind the importance of evidence that does exist.  When Pope Benedict became the first Pope to abdicate in nearly 600 years, it immediately became clear from the ensuing confusion that the Church really does not have a protocol for dealing with a former Pope, or for how a former Pope should conduct himself. It is quite likely that this lack of protocol is the primary reason why Benedict continues to hold on to some papal trappings.  A future Pope may or may not choose to address this issue.

Fifthly, just as she does not have a background in Latin, Barnhardt does not have a background in canon law.  This is not a criticism of her: not everybody can be an expert in everything. But without a background or training in a field in which you propose to exercise what amounts to some professional judgment, you are missing some important facts and principles; worse yet, you cannot know what you don’t know.  Since Barnhardt feels compelled to give us the benefit of her views on the law of the Church, her lack of canonist training is relevant in considering how trustworthy those views are.  

This is a point worth dwelling on, in a world where people who know less and less are bolder and bolder about ventilating their views, and where few opinions are more entrenched than ones based on ignorance.  I have been a practicing lawyer for over 20 years, and the bane of my existence is people without any legal training who think they know the law better than I do, and who actually fly into a rage because I do not endorse their legal opinions — even though I am qualified to give a legal opinion and they are not.  The reality is that there is a lot more to the practice of law than looking things up in books. In fact, looking things up in books is not even the beginning. You have to first know which books to look in. You have to know which, among myriad authorities, are controlling, and which are merely persuasive, and which ones take priority over others in which circumstances.  You have to know how to check your authorities to make sure they’re still current. You have to know how to read one piece of law in light of the whole body of law of which it is a part. You have to know when you are dealing with terms of art, with specialized meanings, and when you are dealing with terms that have the same meaning as in common parlance. You have to know how to think like a lawyer, which can be the end product only of training and experience.

Even this is not an exhaustive list of all that you need to do law competently.  And all my experience still only covers a small area. I am trained in one branch of the secular law that is based on the English common law, as currently expressed and applied in one small jurisdiction in the United States; and my field of actual experience is even narrower.  Canon law is a field where I fear to tread, even as a trained secular lawyer. It is not true that anybody can do canon law without training, any more than you can do secular law without training. Canon law has different terms of art, different operating premises and different concepts of controlling authorities than that branch of the secular law that I know.  It also requires a background in Latin. How much less confident about interpreting canon law should Ann Barnhardt be, who is not even trained in secular lawyering! Yet she tosses out canons, and what she considers to be her authoritative interpretations of them, like a wealthy aristocrat tossing coins to a crowd.

Barnhardt argues that the question of whether Francis is really the Pope centers on the question Jesus asked His disciples: “Who do you say that I am?”  Well, Ann, who do you say that He is?  You are saying that Christ is not active nor effective in the process of papal succession, and that He can be stymied by mere men, and even by their grammatical errors or semantics games.  You hold, in essence, that He does not ratify an abdication (even an imprudent abdication, entered upon using the free will that He confers upon everyone), strip a man who abdicates of the Office, and then confer it upon a successor. Worse: you are saying that, having designated Peter as the touchstone of Christian unity, Christ would then go on to allow His entire Church to falsely acclaim the wrong man as the true Pope.  How can the whole Church be wrong about something so critical?  Yet she universally acclaimed Francis as Pope upon his election in 2013.  Even you, Ann, acknowledged Francis as Pope, even if you didn’t like it. A lot of us didn’t like it, and still don’t.  But then, we were guaranteed a true Pope, not a likeable one, or even a good one. Regretting the fact that Francis is the legitimate Pope does not invalidate or reverse the guarantee of universal acclaim.

To repeat, this idea that Francis is an antipope serves as a refuge.  The “Antipope Bergoglio” crowd comfort themselves with the idea that Francis is not the true Pope, and that the Church has fallen into the hands of a wicked usurper, because this seems to them preferable to the possibility that a true Pope could permit the proliferation of heresy, idolotry and sexual deviancy within the Church.  That is their opinion.  

Well, here is my opinion.  I believe the situation is much worse than they think.  I think that (1) Benedict XVI legitimately abdicated; (2) that the conclave of 2013 was valid; (3) that Jorge Bergoglio, reigning under the name of Francis, and as awful as he is in light of the evidence of his words and deeds, and the sorry state of everything he touches, is the legitimate Pope.  I think Pope Francis has made it his business to push the envelope, and we are going to see just how far out that envelope goes.  Even now, we are finding out that the lines may not all be where we thought they were.

It is also my opinion that this calamity has been a long time coming.  I have long believed that the Church is under a chastisement. I have also long believed that this chastisement would never play itself out until we got a “spirit of Vatican II” pope.  This we now have in spades in Pope Francis. Now, since the kind and gentle father we had in Pope Benedict could not bring us around, we have been allowed to fall into the hands of an abusive one.  Now the “spirit of Vatican II” is going to carry itself out to its logical conclusion, as far as God will permit for the punishment of our sins.  

Barnhardt and those who agree with her maintain that to regard Francis as the legitimate Pope is to disbelieve in the protections that Jesus promised to His Church for her preservation until the end of time, including the charism of infallibility in faith and morals that the Pope possesses in virtue of his office (which charism applies more narrowly than Barnhardt seems to think).  But this state of affairs is not the result of God failing of His promises, but of us failing in our fidelity to God. Why else would He permit this if not because of our sins? He is allowing the scourge of our own wickedness to fall across our backs. Now the Church must face up to her infidelity. Jesus promised that the gates of hell will never prevail against her; but this does not mean that He will not permit her to go even to the edge of the abyss, for her purification.

The other day, Barnhardt asked: 

“If everything Bergoglio is doing is totally ‘in bounds’ with regard to the Petrine Promise…WHY DIDN’T SATAN, A LEGALIST, DO THIS CENTURIES or MILLENNIA AGO???”

Very simple, Ann.  Because the devil can only do as much as God permits, and no more.  (Who do you say that He is?)  God didn’t permit this centuries or millennia ago.  He permitted other sorts of chastisement. But then, centuries and millennia ago, we had not amassed the sins, and racked up the debt of guilt, that we have racked up in our day.  And so He hits us with a punishment that is fitting to our crimes.  

But He also gives us the grace to repent and convert.

Signs

God gives us signs; our shepherds give us signs.  In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI gave us a sign when, surrounded by earthquake damage in the church of Santa Maria di Collemaggio in L'Aquila, Italy, he laid his pallium on the tomb of Pope St. Celestine V, who abdicated in 1294.  Four years later -- and four years ago today -- on February 11, 2013, he announced his abdication.

For the benefit of those who believe (and those who disbelieve) in signs from heaven, on that day, God commanded, or at least permitted, lightning to strike St. Peter's Basilica.  (Yes, God pays attention to details, down to the subatomic level, and even the most trivial things cannot happen without His permission; otherwise, He wouldn't be God.)  To underscore His point, His providence arranged for Filippo Monteforte of Agence France-Presse to capture the moment on film, thusly:

It is superstitious to believe that our lives and the course of history are governed by the motions of stars and planets, or that we can predict the future based on tea leaves or goat entrails; but it is not superstitious to take heed of signs in nature.  Our capacity and inclination to read these occurrences as signs is God-given.  The God Who created us gave us our taste for symbolism, and He satisfies it without the need for us to make up for any lack of ingenuity on His part.  Chapter 27 of Matthew's Gospel records that when Jesus was crucified, darkness covered the earth for three hours; and upon His death, the earth quaked, the rocks were split, and the veil of the temple was torn in two.  These were signs that indicated that this execution on Calvary was quite out of the ordinary.  Even the changes of season are freighted with spiritual significance, and not because we give them that significance ourselves in order to satisfy some primitive instinct for religion.  They are significant because God, Who is a God of Order and Harmony, interwove nature and salvation history.  There is no reason to believe that God has ceased giving us signs, merely because, in our modern, rationalist age, we choose to chalk them up as mere coincidences.

So what was the nature of the sign given here?  Was it a sign that God was angry with Pope Benedict for having stepped down from an office that is normally held until death?  Or was it a sign that this abdication marked the beginning of a punishment to be visited upon the whole Church for her unfaithfulness?

Four years on, the answer seems clearer.  The shepherd who tried to rule his flock and undo the damage of the last half-century with fatherly gentleness is gone, and a wrecking ball has been appointed to fill his place.  Our present Pope is admired by the world.  He publicly celebrated the 500th anniversary of the Protestant revolt, and heaps contumely on those who try to live as faithful Catholics.  On his watch, the punishments that should be visited on the priests and bishops who openly proclaim errors land instead on faithful clerics and tradition-loving religious orders.  We find ourselves in the midst of a showdown between several cardinals and the Successor of Peter, over the appearance that the latter has publicly countenanced grave errors concerning marriage.  The Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta is feeling the mailed fist of this highly authoritarian Pope.  Meanwhile, the "progressive" elites in the Church, down to the lowest levels, are having their Big Mo, and are more blatant and arrogant than ever.  Sunday Mass is increasingly a narcissistic display featuring the preaching of Marxist interpretations of the Gospel; keeping the obligation becomes more and more burdensome and tedious.  A feeling of unease and confusion seems to pervade the Church, even among those who, on an intellectual level, are not confused about what the Church teaches.

The reading of the lightning strike on St. Peter's as a sign of trials to come seems amply justified by events.  Now we await signs that these trials may soon end.  Perhaps we are seeing it in the political arena, where voters in Europe and America are giving the Order of the Boot to left-wing ideologues of the sort that have infested both Church and State for decades.  This is not the same as a conversion to the True Faith; but it does show that people are at last ready to discard the slick, shiny notions of godless "progress" and "change" that have captivated so many in the West since the "Enlightenment," and that have wrought so much death and destruction.

The devil has his hour; but, as Bishop Sheen used to remind us, he gets only an hour.  God, on the other hand, has His day.

The End of the Church's Prague Spring

A soul that is full shall tread upon the honeycomb: and a soul that is hungry shall take even bitter for sweet.  

-- Proverbs 27:7

Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search.

-- The Merchant of Venice, Act I, Scene 1

The new apostolic exhortation has given rise to so much Sturm und Drang that I feel the need to crawl out from under my rock for a minute.  That commentators find themselves obliged to reach so strenuously for orthodox interpretations of everything in this text -- or indeed in any of the Holy Father's voluminous outpourings -- shows the depth and breadth of the Church's current crisis, and how desperate we are for any crumb of comfort.

But while there is consolation to be had from the continuing institution of the Papacy, which is a sign of the Four Markers of the True Church -- one, holy, Catholic and apostolic -- there is no consolation to be had from the man, Jorge Bergoglio, who now holds the office.  Look: the current occupant of the Throne of Peter is a standard-issue, spirit-of-Vatican-II liberal.  Just look at some of the prelates he has sidelined, and look at those who obviously stand in his favor.  Look at his words -- his many, many, many words -- and his conduct.  Look at his authoritarianism.  Look at the confusion that follows in his wake.  Look at the enthusiasm for him of all the other standard-issue, spirit-of-Vatican-II liberal priests and bishops, and contrast that with their attitude toward his immediate predecessor.  Look at the fact that so many non-Catholics love him precisely because he does seem to represent a break from Catholicity. 

Pope Francis is entirely unlike his immediate predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI -- and that is exactly what too many people in the Church hoped for.  The depth of the hatred for Pope Benedict from day one of his pontificate cannot be overstated.  He was hated in my own backwater diocese.  I don't know how else to explain the failure -- indeed, refusal -- to implement his reforms within a 300-mile radius of the cathedral parish; or the fact that, at the then-bishop's Mass on that awful Ash Wednesday, 2013, not a syllable was uttered about the earthquake that had just stricken the Church.  Pope Benedict restored some of the treasures of our Catholic patrimony that the mailed fist of "liberalism" tried to pound out of existence.  He measured his words and his actions carefully, and submitted to the trappings of the office, which he knew were meant to honor, not him, but the One Who instituted the office.  He generated a great deal of controversy, but never confusion; and that is why he was so loathed by the Church's enemies, both from within and from without.  

Jorge Bergoglio, on the other hand, is, for better or for worse, much more to the liking of worldlings; thus, he has never, in all the three years of his reign, taken the salvos from the sewer that Josef Ratzinger took just during the moment he stepped out on the balcony in papal vestments.  The liberals are bound to be disappointed in Pope Francis to some extent, because many of them still do not get that the Church is not a mere human political institution, and that the Holy Spirit does indeed protect her from utter destruction, and therefore sets limits to the evils and follies of the men who populate her hierarchy.  But who can now doubt that the liberals are right to identify Francis as one of their own?  The Church's current chastisement was never going to play itself out until we got a "spirit-of-Vatican-II" pope; and now, that is just what we have got.  The assault on the wholesome traditions of our fathers, beaten back under Pope Benedict, has now been redoubled under Francis, at the hands of liberal priests and bishops who think this is their Big Mo'.  We are so overwhelmed with evil from the secular culture and confusion within the Church that we devour any crumb of comfort, trying desperately to spin things that come out of Rome as harbingers of reform. We hail the tiniest victories as great successes and a sign that things are getting better. Yet these soon get swallowed up in the status quo ante, and before you know it, we are back to square one.

When Pope Benedict abdicated, I wondered if we had not arrived at the time St. Don Bosco spoke of in recounting his vision of the two pillars, and the enemy assaults on the Barque of Peter.  I wondered if Pope Benedict was not the slain Pope in that vision.  Three years into the reign of Pope Francis, new thoughts emerge.  Perhaps the slaying of the Pope in the vision is not so much the slaying of a man but the apparent destruction of the papacy itself.  To all appearances, the papacy at present seems to be unmooring itself from the Catholic faith, failing to confirm the brethren in the Faith and sowing confusion, to the great joy of the Church's enemies, who think they see victory on the horizon.  But in fact the papacy cannot be destroyed, despite outward appearances: the death of the Pope was not the end of the vision.  Once the Pope was dead, there was no delay in electing the new Pope, who routed the Church's enemies and brought her calm and peace.  

Still, until that moment arrives, we have much to suffer.  All we can do is watch and pray, and ride out the storm until we are finally granted the victory.

The Chastisement

Put not your trust in princes: in the children of men, in whom there is no salvation.  

Psalm 145:2-3

A reminder that today is the one-year anniversary of Benedict XVI's abdication inspired some reflections on the wild ride we have had since that day, both in the Church and in secular society. 

For those with eyes to see, it should be clear that we are under chastisement.   Events are accelerating.  Everything we had taken for granted up to now, from bedrock institutions to moral principles, is disintegrating.  The capital of Christian civilization, built up over two thousand years, is nearly all frittered away.  The enemies of everything we held dear now have the upper hand, and they are busily engaged in destroying.  The unthinkable daily morphs into the commonplace.  One is more and more conscious of being an outsider, even among family and friends, as one is unable to join them in embracing socialism and homosexual unions and abortion and hatred of the Catholic Church, and a host of imaginary "rights", the pursuit of which is costing us our authentic rights.

A chastisement is meant to make us straighten up and start flying right.  But at the moment, too many people like what's going on.  There are a few who recognize the evil for what it is and deliberately choose it; many more, probably most, are deluded by the pursuit of their own comfort coupled with blindness to supernatural realities.  They think this is victory for the good guys.  They think things are finally going the way they should.  They look at wholesale destruction and see creation.  They look at murder and see mercy.  They look at oppression and see liberation.  They look at lies and see the truth -- whatever truth they find most convenient.  

To too many people -- even many Catholics, including priests and bishops and religious -- what is happening does not look like divine punishment.  Since too many of us do not see this as punishment, not enough of us are straightening up.  That is why I fear we are in for something far worse than what we have seen up to now.

Who knows what form it will take?  Very likely, something that will hit us precisely where we are most complacent.  We have grown decadent in our wealth: even the poor in America have color televisions, cars, air conditioning and more than enough to eat.  And, for most of America's existence, she has enjoyed freedom from foreign invasion.  A dozen years after 9/11, we have sunk back into apathy.  Now that the United States is an oligarchy run by persons friendly to her enemies, perhaps it is only a question of time before our economy plunges into the abyss and the scourge of war lashes us in our own streets.

So, do we just give up and crawl back into our caves?  The time will come when that won't be an option.  But there is in any case no neutral ground: we have set before us life and death, and we must stretch out our hand to one of them.  We must choose life.

Should we pursue political remedies?  Of course.  I have advocated previously in this space for Mark Levin's proposed constitutional amendment convention, which the Founding Fathers had the foresight to provide for for times just like these.  But that is not going to be enough.  The chastisement will not be taken away until the reasons for it have ended.  Those reasons are in our own hearts, and our hearts need to be changed.  We need sorrow for our sins and purpose of amendment.  We need to do good and avoid evil.  We must be holy as God is holy.  For that, we need sanctifying grace.  I fear many people -- many Catholics -- are living without sanctifying grace.  I fear -- and it is horrible to consider -- that many are dying without sanctifying grace. 

God is under no obligation to give us what we need to be holy if we don't ask for it, so we must pray, especially the Rosary.  The Rosary was given to us precisely for our times.  We must pray the Rosary not only for ourselves but for others.  It is the best thing we can do.  The time is coming, and may already be here, when it will be the only thing we can do.

Terrible Is This Place

Bernini's baldocchino at St. Peter's Basilica.
Photo by Ricardo Andre Frantz.

Last Sunday, before Mass, I happened to open my 1962 Missal up to the Common of Saints, and my eye fell on these lines: 

Terribilis est locus iste: hic domus Dei est et porta coeli: et vocabitur aula Dei.

Terrible is this place: it is the House of God, and the gate of Heaven; and it shall be called the Court of God.

That is the antiphon from the Introit of the Mass for the Dedication of a Church in the Extraordinary Form.  "Terrible" here is used in its older sense of "awe-inspiring."  I looked around the cathedral and thought of those words ringing inside that space at its dedication 92 Easter Sundays ago.  I must confess that it increased my anger and sorrow at the thought of the mutilation of that beautiful cathedral in 1979, and indeed the similar desecration of many other old churches, brutally inflicted against the will of the laity who built them, and in accordance with notions falsely attributed to the Second Vatican Council.

The Collect of this Mass:

Deus, qui invisibiliter omnia contines, et tamen pro salute generis humani signa tuae potentiae visibiliter ostendis: templum hoc potentia tuae inhabitationis illustra, et concede; ut omnes, qui huc deprecaturi conveniunt, ex quacumque tribulatione ad te clamaverint, consolationis tuae beneficia consequantur.  

O God, Who, though unseen, upholdest all things, and yet for the salvation of mankind dost visibly show signs of Thy power: give glory to this temple by the might of Thy indwelling, and grant that all who in their deep distress shall come and call upon Thee here, may receive Thy goodly comfort.

Imagine a bishop chanting this stirring prayer in a tiny church in a poor, humble town -- a tiny church that is no less the House of God and Gate of Heaven than a cathedral.  Indeed, how much more the Mighty Indwelling must uphold it in its littleness.  The Gradual:

Locus iste a Deo factus est, inaestimabile sacramentum, irreprehensibilis est.  Deus, cui adstat Angelorum chorus, exaudi preces servorum tuorum.

This place was made by God, a priceless mystery, it is without reproof.  O God, before Whom stands the choir of angels, give ear to the prayers of Thy servants.

The Lesson of the Mass for the Dedication of a Church is from Chapter 21 of the Apocalypse, the vision of the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven; and the Gospel is the story of Zacheus from the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus declares that "this day is salvation come to this house."

I don't know how the dedication of a church goes according to the Mass of Paul VI, but I can see here one of the many reasons Pope Benedict XVI took the Traditional Mass out of mothballs.  We have gotten so casual and careless anymore about where we are when we are in church: we talk, we laugh, we dress like slobs, we let kids roughhouse in front of the tabernacle.  Priests and deacons behave in church as though they are merely at work and not inside a sacred space.  Of course, it doesn't help that many new churches are sterile and ugly, and do not appear to be in any way connected with religion.

Every new Latin Rite church should be dedicated according to the Extraordinary Form, and every Catholic should meditate on these propers, so that we can be reminded of just where we really are every Sunday, and how we ought to act there.

The World Does Not Understand Humility

Fr. Zuhlsdorf expresses beautifully and concisely what I have been struggling to put into words on the subject of humility, which the world does not understand:

I Am Thinking about those Red Shoes.

Fr. Blake beautifully addresses false humility, and the special dangers it poses for clergy:

I Used to Wash the Feet of the Poor

Aquinas also sheds some light on humility in the Summa Theologica.  A little taste:

Humility restrains the appetite from aiming at great things against right reason: while magnanimity urges the mind to great things in accord with right reason.

Humility ceases to be humility when it causes us to look with satisfaction upon ourselves, or to seek notice and praise from others.

Pope Francis, whom the liberals appear to misunderstand as grossly as they do Bl. John XXIII, has been jettisoning the trappings of the papacy during the first days of his reign.  The liberals are jumping up and down for joy over it, believing that it heralds a new Age of Aquarius without the medieval Benedictine trappings, and that finally, we have a Pope centered on humility.  I don't know Pope Francis' reasons for doing what he is doing; nor am I out to explore his motivations, or impute any particular motivations to him.  Rather, the point here is that neither the world, nor those who think with the mind of the world, get what humility is all about.

The world is constantly being taken in by hucksters because it equates humility with a no-frills lifestyle.  This, without more, can't be humility.  Gandhi, with his loincloth and his round spectacles, is held up in the world as a model of humility, yet it was said to have cost a fortune to keep him living in poverty.  False asceticism is an old trick to lend credibility to lies, worked to great effect by enemies of the Church from the Albigensians to the Communists.  Then there are the proud poor who lead a no-frills lifestyle only because they lack the resources for screaming opulence.  

On the other hand, there are those who live in opulence who (a) would give it up in a heartbeat, if they were not prevented by the duties of their position or state in life, and (b) are perfectly willing to be misjudged and take all kinds of grief for not giving it up.  Such is Pope Emeritus Benedict.  Consider the absolute nonsense he put up with during his eight years as Pope: the carping about "triumphalism" and "trying to turn the clock back"; the whining about the old vestments and regalia that he took out of mothballs; the incessant braying about his beautification of the liturgy; the idiotic stories about Prada attire.  Here was a man who had wanted nothing more than to retire to a quite life of study and prayer, but who suddenly found himself thrust onto the Throne of Peter.  Being a man of duty, he conformed himself to his new situation and uncomplainingly accepted all that went with it without taking any notice of the criticism.  He was willing to ignore what others thought of him, and to be misunderstood, in order to reconnect us with the sacred things of our past, and to lift our minds and our hearts out of mediocrity.  In the end, Benedict gave up all his purported luxury and wealth, of his own accord, and without looking back.

We should study and reflect true humility, and genuine exemplars of it, lest, like the world, we be taken in by hucksters.

Low-Church Catholicism: Not to Be Confused with Humility

Exhibit A:

That a prince of the Church should engage in this kind of moral preening at the expense of our former Holy Father -- who truly was and is a Holy Father -- is revolting.

The mark of a truly great ascetic is that he humbles himself.  Christ humbled Himself.  However, it is not for us to humble Him.  When St. Alphonsus Liguori was a bishop, he drastically cut his household, got rid of the sumptuous furnishings, and dispensed with fancy modes of transportation; but I have never read that he went in for mediocrity in the liturgy.  Ven. Pius XII only wanted to be a simple parish priest but accepted God's will that he be exalted in the Church, and resigned himself to all that went with that.  He was hard on himself, practicing mortifications and penances, such as sleeping on the floor, on top of working long hours.  But he did not shrink from pomp and ceremony, because those things came with the office, he saw it as his duty to conform to its requirements, and they were for the glory not of him, but of God.  As for Benedict XVI, shy and retiring by nature, it is clear that the public side of his ministry as Pope was an ordeal that he endured out of a sense of duty, and the idea of any vanity in him is preposterous on its face.  Therefore, it is equally clear that he revived many trappings and ceremonies, not to please his own ego, but, firstly, to give God the honor He is due; and secondly, in an effort to lead his flock out of our shameful love affair with banality, and teach us that in fact beauty IS truth, and truth beauty.  

I hope that our new Holy Father, Francis, grows into his role as pastor of the Universal Church, accepts its incidentals, and continues Pope Benedict's work of restoring beauty to its rightful place in Catholic life -- right after putting an end to vulgar moral exhibitionism at the expense of his holy predecessor.

A Good Prayer for the Selection of a New Pope

The Coronation of St. Joseph by Juan de Valdés Leal (1622-1690).

The Church is at a crossroads.  The cardinal electors obviously sense this, and that may be the reason they have yet to set a date to begin the conclave, despite Pope Benedict's motu proprio authorizing them to start sooner than otherwise dictated by law.  Since we know from history that the Holy Spirit has, from time to time, allowed the Church to be afflicted by a bad or incompetent Pope; and since many -- perhaps most -- Catholics have gone off the rails in recent decades, it is imperative that we pray for the selection of a man after God's own Heart.

It seems advisable at this time to beg the intercession of St. Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church.  Herewith a particularly good prayer that I have uncovered, and one that seems highly appropriate to this moment in history.  This is my prayer during the interregnum, and I recommend it to all:

Prayer to St. Joseph to Obtain a Special Favor

O Blessed St. Joseph, tenderhearted father, faithful guardian of Jesus, chaste spouse of the Mother of God: we pray and beseech thee to offer to God the Father His Divine Son, bathed in blood on the Cross for sinners, and through the thrice-holy Name of Jesus, obtain for us from the Eternal Father the favor we implore.  Namely, the election of a holy and heroic new Pope.

Appease the Divine anger so justly inflamed by our crimes; beg of Jesus mercy for thy children.  Amid the splendors of eternity, forget not the sorrows of those who suffer, those who pray, those who weep.  Stay the Almighty Arm which smites us, that by thy prayers and those of thy most holy Spouse, the Heart of Jesus may be moved to pity and to pardon.  Amen.

St. Joseph, pray for us.

Sede Vacante

The See of Peter is now vacant.  Pray for the selection of a holy, heroic new Pope.

The Curtain Falls

Pope Benedict is the fourth Pope of my lifetime, but the first to ascend the Throne of Peter during my adulthood; yet when I think of him, I feel as though I am one of the kids in this picture.  I always felt a more personal attachment to this Pope than to his predecessor, even though the latter's reign began when I was eight, and ended when I was 34.  Pope John Paul II traveled extensively and visited his flock all over the world; yet in a way, his rock-star charisma made him seem more remote and inaccessible, at least to me.  Benedict has always seemed closer, more fatherly and down-to-earth, even with his staggering intellect and long list of books and scholarly achievements.  I have often thought that if I were to meet Pope Benedict face-to-face, I would cry like a baby.  The sun has now set on the last full day of his reign, and -- barring a miracle -- I will not meet him in this life; I will cry like a baby anyway.

Some people think that by abdicating, the Holy Father is running out on his family.  If he had decided to quit being a Catholic, then I think the case for abandonment could be made.  But he is going to stay in the Vatican and devote himself to a life of prayer in the bosom of the Church.  He is no more running out on us than a grandfather does who hands over the active headship of his family to his son, and lives out his days at home amid his loved ones.  Prayer is no less service to the Church than the active life of a reigning Pope, and no less important.  In fact, one of the reasons the Church has suffered so greatly in recent decades is precisely because not enough of her children -- even in religious houses -- have been living lives grounded in prayer.

Prayer will be Pope Benedict's last labor of love for the Church, in whose service he has worn himself out.  The hard work, long hours, grueling schedule and -- above all -- the rebellion and intransigence of people even within the Church have sapped the Pope's vitality.  I am still thinking about St. John Bosco's 1862 prophecy of the fallen Pope.  This prophecy seems even more relevant now that the Holy Father has dispensed with the customary waiting period for the beginning of the next conclave.  "But hardly is the Pontiff dead," said Don Bosco, "than another Pope takes his place.  The pilots, having met together, have elected the Pope so promptly that the news of the death of the Pope coincides with the news of the election of the successor."  Who can say yet whether this is the moment referred to?  But if it is, we can find consolation in what comes next: the enemies lose courage, and are ultimately routed.

Within hours, Benedict XVI will cease to be Pope, and the sede vacante will begin.  God bless Pope Benedict, and the new Pope, whoever he is, upon whom will be laid burdens and responsibilities the like of which we will never be asked to assume.

These Are Indeed Stern Times

The Holy Father abdicates, citing his incapacity in the face of a rapidly changing world shaken by questions of deep relevance for the faith.  Then, all kinds of things start happening in the lead-up to the next conclave that threaten to affect the selection of a new Pope.  Rumors fly regarding Pope Benedict's motives, and whether he wasn't really forced out, and whether his abdication had to do with a network of gay prelates in the Vatican.  We have some rather distressing statements coming from the bishops of Germany on the subject of the "morning after" pill in cases of rape.  We have Scotland's Cardinal O'Brien, previously outspoken in defense of traditional marriage, coming out in favor of priests getting married.  Now we have the news that this same cardinal is facing accusations of past misconduct.

Can anyone seriously doubt that the devil is putting in a lot of overtime at this particular moment in history?  And if the devil is putting in a lot of overtime, can anyone doubt that this particular moment is a critical one?

And if this particular moment is a critical one, we'd better ratchet up the prayers and penances.