The Church of Cut and Run

OR: We Could Sure Use Some Toxic Masculinity Right About Now

Six and a half years ago, in this space, I complained about the effeminacy of the Spirit-of-Vatican-II liturgy and how it is designed, not to fire us up and fortify us for battle, but to make us docile and complacent and fattened up for the slaughter.  Now, fifty-plus years into this project of mushifying the Mass, the Sacraments and doctrine, we are treated to the entirely predictable spectacle of many of our shepherds turning tail and running from the coronavirus.  The same Church that holds the divine promise to prevail even over the gates of hell itself has been taken over by hirelings and turned into the Church of Cut and Run.

The Church of Cut and Run has been ceding all kinds of territory to the devil for years.  48 years ago, William F. Buckley, Jr. commented on how difficult it was for Catholics to oppose abortion while their bishops palled around with pro-abortion legislators.  Catholic bishops have backed down and even defected to the other side on issues like contraceptives, abortion, divorce, adultery, homosexuality, “gender” ideology,  socialism, subsidiarity and the rights of parents.  The result has been a popular culture that is basically a sewer, and a society that is increasingly hostile to the rights of Catholics.  The Church of Cut and Run has proven itself to be all but useless when it comes to defending its flocks against the forces of secularism.  In an age when even good people are brought up to value creature comforts over the spiritual life, it has gotten away with this.

But now we have a new situation.  Now our creature comforts themselves are threatened.  Now we have a contagious disease going around; and we, who failed to feel the sting of God’s wrath in the many spiritual chastisements He has sent us over the years, are now starting to feel it in the threat to our bodily health.  Worse than the disease itself, from which the vast majority of patients recover, is the panicky response to the disease.  Everyday life in many places is interrupted.  Groceries and toilet paper and other supplies are hard to find amid waves of panic-buying, even though there is no evidence that these items are in short supply.  Many of us have just plain gone off our nut.

And how are the bishops responding? Many are using the pandemic as an occasion to strike down beloved traditions and guaranteed rights of the faithful, like receiving Communion on the tongue.  And many are abandoning their flocks altogether by locking up churches and depriving them of the Mass and the Sacraments.  Italy, whose bishops have effectively imposed a self-interdict, is probably the most striking example of this.  Some of these bishops are actually justifying this by pooh-poohing the idea that the pandemic is a sign of God’s wrath.

How fearless, how manly is the Spirit-of-Vatican-II Church!  Fortified by decades of insipid liturgies, solipsistic hymns and effeminate preaching, the kinder, gentler, nicer, welcoming, accompanying Spirit-of-Vatican-II shepherds head for the hills at the first sign of danger, leaving the flocks to foot it as best they can without the consolations that once were offered by the hide-bound, rigid, doctrinaire clergy and stern, habit-wearing nuns they mercifully replaced.  How fortunate we are to have now a diluted faith that no longer pricks our consciences or stirs us to zeal for God and souls.  What great stead that stands us in in the face of every danger, both spiritual and temporal!

And the coronavirus, though dangerous to certain classes of people, like the elderly or those who are already in poor health, is nevertheless not to be compared with the Black Plague, which wiped out at least a third of Europe’s population.  But what if we did get a new Black Plague?  If a relatively mild disease like coronavirus is enough to blow “pastoral accompaniment” all to hell, what would a new Black Plague do?

But for all the efforts of the Church of Cut and Run to destroy every last vestige of the evil, hate-filled, fear-mongering pre-conciliar Church, who is it that is actually stepping forward manfully to take charge of the pandemic, care for the sheep, and, above all, propitiate the wrath of God and bring about repentance and conversion?  That would seem to be the tradition-minded sector of the Church that we have been taught for so many years to execrate.  New generations of hide-bound, rigid, doctrinaire clergy and stern, habit-wearing nuns are rising up, tired of pablum and impotence in the face of spiritual dangers and itching to take the fight to the enemy.  The tradition-minded priests, many of whom have been busy training themselves up in the old rite, are offering votive Masses for deliverance from death in time of pestilence; breaking out the Rituale Romanum and putting real holy water into the hands of as many people as possible; holding Eucharistic processions; opening churches; and making sure their people have access to the Sacraments.

Meanwhile, the bongos-and-tambourines “accompaniment” crowd is nowhere to be seen on the field of battle.  To salve their spotted consciences, they don’t even acknowledge that there is a battle.  And “accompaniment” has been proven to be nothing but a weak-tea, crybaby substitute for the fearless, “toxically masculine” self-sacrifice of a true shepherd.  Have we ever been presented with a starker contrast between who in the Church packs the gear, and who doesn’t?  Have we ever been faced with clearer proof that the aftermath of the Council has been an utter disaster, and that the Barque of Peter desperately needs to change course?

And have we ever been faced with clearer proof that the liberal prelates that have bullied us for so many decades are nothing but paper tigers?  Who says they can’t be beaten?  It’s time to get our own courage up, pick up our rosaries and our Bibles, and play our part to turn the tide.

This.

Bishop Athanasius Schneider has published an essay today on the question of who has the right to judge a heretical Pope, and whether Benedict XVI is still the true Pope.

A big theme of this essay is something Bishop Schneider has stated before: that there is no human solution to a crisis like the one we have now under Pope Francis.  He thinks the Bellarmine Option, as it is coming to be known — that the cardinals can declare a heretical Pope to be self-deposed, and then go on to elect a new Pope — is a no-go on several grounds.  To what he says, I will add an opinion of my own.  If the Bellarmine Option were valid, it would probably never happen anyway, because by the time we get a heretical Pope, we’ve already got a largely corrupt and compromised set of cardinals.

Just because there is no human solution to this crisis, that doesn’t mean there is nothing for us to do.  Bishop Schneider:

The Church is ultimately not a human but a divine-human reality. She is the Mystical Body of Christ. Attempts to resolve the current crisis of the papacy which favor the opinion of St. Robert Bellarmine with its concrete solution, or take refuge in the unproven theory of Benedict XVI still being the only true pope, are doomed to fail from the start. The Church is in the hands of God, even in this most dark time. 

We must not be lax in proclaiming Catholic truth and warning and admonishing when papal words and actions clearly harm the faith. But what all true sons and daughters of the Church ought to do now is launch a serious world-wide crusade of prayer and penance to implore a divine intervention. Let us trust in the Lord’s words: “Will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them?” (Luke 18:7).

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.

On Opinions With Credentials

If you find yourself disturbed by people who are trying to beat you over the head with their opinion that Pope Francis cannot possibly be the true Pope, listen to what a bishop and professor of patristics has to say on the subject of a heretical Pope.

Bishop Athanasius Schneider: On the Question of a Heretical Pope

To Start Off the New Year: Some Facts We Can’t Deny

- Having vehemence, eloquence, passion and charisma does not mean you are right.  Adolf Hitler possessed all of those characteristics.

- Only legitimate authority can command our obedience.  We are not required to obey authority figures when they exceed the scope of their authority.  Sometimes, we even have a duty to disobey, since no one, not even the Pope, has the authority to command us to sin.

- It is a curious but undeniable fact that, by pursuing our own legitimate interests, within the bounds of the moral law, we make it possible for others to pursue theirs.  When we work to make an honest living, we create goods and services that others want and need yet lack the ability to produce efficiently on their own, and so provide them with the means of making their own honest living.  Some people are talented enough to make extra, which enables them to exercise greater than average generosity to others who cannot provide for themselves.  Everyone engaging in honest pursuits bestows on society as a whole the benefits of order, peace and tranquility — which in turn further enhance our ability to pursue our own legitimate interests.

- Where there is no private property, it is impossible for people to pursue their legitimate interests.

- The common good is greater than the good of an individual; yet it does not rule out the good of individuals.

- The purpose of the Second Amendment is, purely and simply, to prevent tyranny.  It is a mark of tyrants — whether in the government or in the conference of Catholic bishops — that they seek to disarm the populace.

- The reason we are afraid to do the right thing is because we don’t trust in God and His providence.  It’s no more complicated than that.

- Worrying about things we can’t control takes away both our energy and our motivation to deal with things we can control.  Failing to deal with the things we can control may well bring about the very results we fear when we worry about the things we can’t control.

- Jesus truly is present, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, in that tiny Host that is confected on the altar in the Catholic Mass.  If you dismiss the Real Presence as medieval superstition, then consider that some of the most gifted minds mankind has ever produced over the last two thousand years have believed in it.  This side of Jesus and Mary, there has probably never been a greater intellectual than Thomas Aquinas, and he wrote some of the most beautiful paeans to the Blessed Sacrament that ever flowed from the pen of man.

- And speaking of superstition, I doubt if there was ever an epoch in human history that was less superstitious than the Middle Ages, or an epoch more superstitious than the one, still ongoing, that was ushered in by Martin Luther.

- What sign of the Zodiac you were born under has absolutely nothing to do with who you are or what your life will be like.  The Zodiac is nothing more than the stars that lie along the celestial equator, a tool for mapping out the night sky.  Your destiny is not controlled by the motions of celestial bodies.  The destruction of any one of them outside our solar system would have zero practical impact on your life.  In fact, since most of them are so far away that we are only seeing them as they looked centuries ago, it is possible that some of them do not even exist anymore.

- We currently have a bad Pope.  The evidence for this is undeniable, and it is not virtuous to try to deny what is right in front of our faces.  Yet, while the Pope is the touchstone of Christian unity, he is not, and should not be, the center of our everyday lives.  The Catholic Church is much bigger than the Pope, and not even a bad Pope can destroy her.

- Pope Francis embodies the sort of absolutism that the Church’s enemies have always falsely ascribed to the papacy itself.  Interestingly, however, these same enemies like Pope Francis and embrace him as one of their own.  This proves that it is not absolutism that they object to: in their book, in fact, anything less than absolutism in the service of their pet ideologies is treason.  What they really object to is the authentic content of the Catholic faith, so they favor Pope Francis to the extent he seems to represent a rupture from Catholicity.

- If there is a silver lining to the dark cloud of the current pontificate, it is that the enemies of the Church, both within and without, are now showing their true colors.  This is because they think that they are now having their Big Mo.  The same thing is happening, by the way, in the secular world.  President Trump is exposing the enemies of America and all the good things for which she stands by overturning the order which the entrenched political elites have set up for their own enrichment.  God is allowing all the poisons that lurk in the mud to hatch out.

I would like to close with my favorite quote from George Neumayr, a Catholic reporter who has devoted much of his career to exposing corruption within the Church:

Be as wise as serpents and gentle as doves, Jesus Christ told his disciples. In dealing with enemies, in other words, prudence is not a vice and stupidity is not a virtue. 

Francis’ Bad Emanations Do Not Mean He Is an Antipope

In these confusing times, we have to educate ourselves on our Faith.  In these times, we have particularly to educate ourselves on the scope of the Pope’s powers and prerogatives, and the limits of his authority.  It is providential that Ryan Grant, an Idaho (!) Latinist, has been busying himself with the long-overdue task of translating the works of St. Robert Bellarmine into English.  On the Roman Pontiff is a must-read for all faithful Catholics who find themselves suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous pontiffs.  We are bound to suffer even more, and needlessly, if we are laboring under misconceptions about the limits on papal authority, when the Pope can legitimately bind Catholics, and when the Pope is and is not protected by the charism of infallibility.

Taylor Marshall interviews Christopher Ferrara about the meaning of the message of Fatima for our time.  The entire interview is fascinating.  If you struggle to reconcile the errors of Pope Francis with his authenticity as Pope, then pay attention, starting at 37:28.  Here Ferrara explains why the errors of Pope Francis do not trouble him about the Church’s indefectibility, even though the current Pope’s audacity exceeds anything we have ever seen before in the history of the Church.  He explains in particular how to cope with bad teaching from the Pope, and how to distinguish teachings that are truly magisterial from those that aren’t, even if they are labeled as such.

 The key point is that God is not mocked.  He is not fooled by false labels; nor does He require us to accept false labels, even when they are applied by the Pope and his minions.  On the contrary, we are bound to reject that which is false.  Therefore, God does not put us in a Catch-22 even when He allows us to be governed by a bad Pope who purports to change doctrine.

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.

Let All the Poisons

This is a time when cesspits of corruption are being laid bare, both in the secular world and in the Church.  Now we are seeing exactly where that awful smell we have been coping with for so long has been coming from.  For decades, the hirelings among the Church’s appointed shepherds have held the ascendancy.  They have publicly palled around with leftist, pro-abortion celebrities and politicians.  They have preached heresies from the pulpit, or declined to take action against heretical priests under their purview.  They have stood silent in the face of secular encroachments onto the Church’s turf.  They have lived posh lifestyles.  (Question: why does a cardinal archbishop even have a beach house or a penthouse suite?)  They have fattened themselves on their flocks.  And now all of these scandals stand aside in awe at the monumental scandal that underlies them all, the scandal of sexual perversion and complicity in sexual perversion among not only priests but also bishops, and the revelation that the collaborators include even the Bishop of Rome himself.

For many, many years, the “progressive” wing of the Catholic Church has been slamming and making fun of Catholic teaching on sexual morality.  Why, then, should we be surprised to find members of this wing not behaving in accordance with the teachings that they publicly despise?  Now we are seeing that these teachings, so far from raining on our parade, are really our first line of defense against the predations of the powerful.  And since the powerful have for decades been assiduously knocking down and discrediting the last line of defense — canonical penalties — we see that now, humanly speaking, we have no defenses.  The wolves have free run of the sheepfold.

So is the solution to leave the Church?  I guess one could argue that that depends on whether we can expect to find greater purity, greater morality, and greater uprightness in the world outside the Church than we find inside the Church.  But it is the world outside the Church that has been telling us for so long that chastity is stupid, and that we should be free to decide for ourselves what is “normal” and what is “moral,” instead of trying to live up to objective standards.  At least within the Catholic Church there subsist the principles — unshakable even when ignored — that lust is a sin, using other human beings as objects is wrong, and lewd conduct is a damnable offense.  Will we find a safer refuge in the world, where those principles do not subsist?

Are we now ready, at long last, to accept the thorough discrediting of the colossally stupid idea that the Church needs to “modernize” and “get with the times”?  Modernity is thoroughly bankrupt.  “The times” that too many in the Church have been so anxious to get into line with over the last hundred-plus years have been filled with fratricidal wars, genocide, lawlessness, deceit, sexual deviancy, murder, and the powerful preying on the defenseless.  It is not the Church that needs to get with the times, but the times that need to get with the Church.

Random Thoughts

- I haven't had much to say lately on any subject, because there is so much that is so depressing going on, both in the world at large and in my own little corner of it, that I have felt like silence is the only response I can muster. Maybe it's time for the choleric side of my personality to reassert itself over the melancholic, which has had the upper hand for the last few years.

- There is indeed a sea change in the world, and the signs include the Brexit vote in June of last year, and the election of Donald Trump in the United States last November.  People are finally beginning to reject and push back against the "Enlightenment" ideology that has so fascinated the West's elites, and held Christendom in thrall, for the last two and a half centuries.  But the corrupt elites are themselves pushing back -- hard.  It remains to be seen whether we have started to regain our senses in enough time to save Christian civilization, and whether enough people are willing to defend it.

- It is easy enough to expose the hypocrisy of the "open borders" crowd by asking them why they don't tear down their own fences and gates and throw open their own real estate holdings to all and sundry, no questions asked.  It is because they know they will be cleaned out and maybe even not escape the experience physically unscathed.  A nation -- which is an extension of the family, which springs from our human nature and has rights in the natural law -- is no different in this respect.  A family has the right to let some people into its home and keep others out, according as its interests dictate; to expect guests and visitors to obey the rules of the house; and to expel those who will not comply.  A nation possesses these same rights.  A national government also has the same duty to look first to the well-being of its own citizens, that parents have to look first to the well-being of their own children.

- It's depressing to think how far we have slid down the sewer of violence in the 21st century, and still more depressing to realize that that is the way our Elders and Betters, including those who run the mass media, want it.  Seven gangsters and gang associates died in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago in 1929, and the nation was aghast.  Eighty-eight years, a world war, multiple regional wars and countless murders, abortions and terror attacks later, the deaths of innocent civilians in European cities at the hands of Muslim extremists are barely making the news anymore.  The leaders of Europe declare their resolve to "carry on" and not be intimidated by terrorists, but they are utterly unwilling to do what it takes to put an end to the predations of terrorists.  Instead, they spend their time coming up with hash tags, and putting up barriers, and telling their people they are just going to have to put up with terrorism as a part of life, and chewing their nails about insoluble and even non-existent problems, like "climate change" and "carbon footprints."  Why is it they think it impossible to keep out of their countries people who want to destroy them, but consider it totally feasible to adjust the earth's temperature by means of legislative enactments?

- Let us not kid ourselves that mass murders like the one in Vegas last week are unrelated to the scourge of abortion.  Mother Teresa warned us of this at the National Prayer Breakfast in 1994:

But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself.  And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?

- It is worth remembering that in that same speech, Mother Teresa -- who is loved by both conservatives and liberals -- did not fail to draw the line between abortion and contraception:

In destroying the power of giving life, through contraception, a husband or wife is doing something to self.  This turns the attention to self and so it destroys the gifts of love in him or her. In loving, the husband and wife must turn the attention to each other as happens in natural family planning, and not to self, as happens in contraception.  Once that living love is destroyed by contraception, abortion follows very easily.

- I'm really getting sick of these NFL demonstrations. I don't watch football, but if I did, it would be for entertainment -- just like going to a movie or watching a TV show. For years, we have been putting up with having leftist propaganda shoved down our throats every time we go to some entertainment venue, and I, for one, am fed up. That's not why I pay to get in.

- Leftists reduce everything to politics. The last time I argued about this taking-a-knee business with a leftist, I was accused of hypocrisy on the grounds that patriotic displays, which I don't object to, are nothing more than a political argument for the side I agree with. This is how the left operates: redefine the terms so nobody else can possibly win.  We have to stop buying into their planted axioms.  In fact, everything is not politics, and displays of patriotism are not political. Patriotism is a virtue, and standing for the anthem with your hand over your heart is a civic ceremony wherein we give expression to that virtue and reaffirm our identity as Americans. These idiotic protests strike at our unity as Americans.  I say, throw the bums out. The First Amendment doesn't apply to players on the field. They are there to work and earn their keep, just like I am whenever I go to court.  Hold them to the same standards as any other employee in any other workplace.  I don't get to do or say anything other than what I get paid for in the course of my employment, and neither should they.

- It would be interesting to know just what Harvey Weinstein -- who looks every inch a disgusting pig -- did to lose him the protection of The Establishment.  Whatever it was, it cannot have been sexually predatory behavior.  Hollywood has been glamorizing sexually predatory behavior for years, and has show itself quick to circle the wagons around sexual predators in its midst.  When, for example, the authorities nabbed Roman Polanski on his way to a film festival in Zurich in 2009 -- more than 30 years after skipping out on his sentencing in Los Angeles for plying a 13-year-old girl with booze and quaaludes, then raping and sodomizing her -- the film community rose in outrage at the authorities.  Harvey Weinstein, incidentally, and not surprisingly, was very vocal in defending Polanski.  So what heresy did Weinstein commit that made his own company throw him out on his ear?  One is tempted to speculate that he might have said something that could, in a certain light, be construed as mildly favorable to Donald Trump.  That would correspond more exactly to the Hollywood Left's idea of high crimes and misdemeanors.

- I suppose the sea change I mentioned above might be taking place in the Church as well as in Western society at large, as witness the filial correctio published recently, several weeks after it had been presented to the Holy Father and gotten no response.  It is refreshing to hear heresies straighforwardly designated as heresies, but I cannot say that I am surprised that the Pope continues not to respond.  If a Pope really does subscribe to heresies, and he cannot bring himself to declare definitively against them, declaring definitively in their favor is not an option: the charism of infallibility that he possesses in virtue of his office prevents this.  The only thing a Pope could do in these circumstances would be to remain silent.  Whatever the case may be, the Church is in a real crisis.  We should be prepared for the possibility that we will not see this crisis resolved during the current pontificate.

- On the other hand, we are just a week way from the 100th anniversary of the culmination of Our Lady's appearances at Fatima, Portugal, when tens of thousands of believers and non-believers within about a 30-mile radius witnessed the miracle she promised to perform to prove that she really had appeared to the three children and called for penance, repentance and conversion.  We are also in the centenary of Red October, when the Soviet Union was born -- the instrument by which Russia has spread her errors throughout the world, as Our Lady warned she would.  One also thinks of the hundred years satan asked God to give him in which to destroy the Church in the vision Pope Leo XIII is said to have had that inspired him to compose the Prayer to St. Michael.  We have certainly seen the fury of hell intensify all over the world over the last several years, and the storm roils every level of Church and state, from the palaces and mansions of the great down to the most humble individual.  Are we now near the end of those hundred years?

I hope we may live to see the promised triumph of her Immaculate Heart, and that soon.

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.