Well and truly tired of this.

Edward Feser is an admirable thinker and superb digital pugilist. He makes the Thomist case with considerable energy, and is a welcome read.

That said, Catholicism has a papacy problem, and this article unwittingly proves it in spades.

As I said to a thoughtful Catholic recently, far from being a guaranteed custodian of Tradition, the unlimited powers vested in the papal office just as readily make it an engine of innovation and novelty. And that's what we are seeing. Plus, if you are being honest, you have to admit that the current guy has bad examples from his predecessors to draw upon in his management decisions.

This ride has no brakes, save those which the Almighty may deign to apply. And as with Israel demanding a King, God via Vatican I may be giving Catholicism the same "fine, you can have it--good and hard" that His chosen endured for centuries. 

"Our Patriarch is not just the First of his ancient brethren and presider over ecumenical councils, but he has unlimited immediate control over the church, is infallible and answers to no-buh-dee! W00t!"

How's that working out for you, 125 years on?

So now the Faithful, seeing there is no fine print or "void where prohibited" in Denzinger, are left to noodle hypotheses about invalid resignations, unanswered dubia, the pope as a leader of schismatic faction, or here, the escape hatch of a "suspended magisterium."

Hey, if it helps you get through the week, go for it. I'm not interested in doing it any more.

Joseph Cardinal Zen was arrested by the Chinese Reich.

It won't affect the Vatican's concordat with said state, though.

Why should it?

A man who insists on meeting with fascists before visiting their victims isn't going to be moved by different fascists arresting a colleague he pointedly ignored.

[Update: The Cardinal has been released on bail. 

The Vatican is "following with extreme attention." 

To be fair, "follower" is a apt description of Rome's attitude toward China and its depredations.]

All over but the mopping up.

The Latin Mass will be dead in Detroit by the end of 2023.

The archbishop has left the Institute of Christ the King parish more or less alone. 

But everything else is up to the "lively pastoral charity" (guffaw) of Rome.  

This lively pastoral charity is exactly analogous to that of an oncologist toward a tumor, as you have no doubt noticed.

And you can count on Vigneron's successor giving the Institute a long walk of a short plank.

Ah, well--Eastern Catholicism is alive and well in these parts. And at least two of the Churches do not worship the ground the papal office trods. 

On a related note: for the first time in 70 years, no priest was ordained for the Archdiocese of Detroit. The Francis Effect, baby!

Another day, another pontifical innovation.

In a teleconference with Putin's House Chaplain, the pontiff declared the just war tradition dead.

At one time we also spoke in our churches of holy war or just war. Today we cannot speak like that. The Christian conscience has developed on the importance of peace.

If you can think of a worse argument to pose to an Orthodox Patriarch than the chap in Rome bragging about how effortlessly-superior he is to the Tradition he is supposed to guard, let me know. 

 I've got nothing. 

But it was (genuinely) good of him to mention the poor Russian soldiers who are dying.  The agony of their families is something we should also keep in mind when thinking of Putin's war of aggression. That is a line of argument that might land--at least with others in Russian Orthodoxy.

The Blast-Furnace of Satan.

It is no surprise whatsoever to read that a couple of the pontiff's appointees to the "Pontifical Academy for Life" [sic] are proposing assisted suicide as an alternative to euthanasia in Italy. 

Splitting the difference with the dying West--and then splitting it again and again, ad infinitum--is one of those things that "starting processes" is about.

Launched by the Jesuit Pravda and then followed-up in Le Monde, it could have been nothing other than a trial balloon from the narcissists running the show. 

Fortunately, the secular folks on Italy's highest court said that a euthanasia referendum was not possible at all, making Jesuit casuistry on behalf of death moot. It should also not be a surprise at this point that Italian lawyers have more regard for human life than Jesuit Central.

Except, of course, that it isn't moot: Rome is largely occupied by the heterodox-to-heretical and the clubbable. And, given the blinkered Vatican I notion of papal supremacy, enshrined in dogma and canon law, there's precisely squat you can do about it. 

Paul VI talked about the smoke of Satan getting into the Church. Now it is starting to billow out from the inside. And the men who have spent generations building the furnace are working on proof-of-concept.

Nice of AP to publish a papal press release under its corporate byline.

Nicole Winfield covers the Vatican for Associated Press.

Sometimes, she has committed actual journalism. More on that in a second.

Here, she covers for the Vatican in a gooey puff-piece which omits almost every whiff of corruption surrounding the pontiff's inner circle and assorted pals. There is a nod to the disastrous trial of Cardinal Becciu...but even that deletes references to the pontiff's involvement in the land deal gone wrong and the prosecution's Nixonian attempts to cover it up.

And she would know about that...because she wrote the last link immediately above. But that wasn't worth a mention here? Curious.

Of course, it could be multiplied with all sorts of other problematic issues...starting with selling out China's Catholics, or Don Mercedes, or lying about the Chilean abuse scandal, or rewarding a guy who lied to his face about sexually harassing seminarians with a Roman sinecure...et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. 

But no, he's supposedly gone into "no more Mr. Nice Guy" mode.

Those who have been paying attention have known that since the start. He's nice to those in his favor.

Still, I have to admit: La Civiltà Cattolica couldn't have written a better Style! piece.

A "good Catholic"?

So two elderly politicians met in Rome, and the less-compos mentis one reported that he had received the papal seal of approval from the one who has his stuff together.

Yeah, it's true. Despite, you know, big-footing the collegial shepherd(s) that That Council said were supposed to have authority over such matters. The Humble Pastor from The Argentine has a Boniface VIII streak that runs rampant...but you already know that. 

[Thanks to Don for the link immediately above.]

I'll admit that this latest petty political gamesmanship threw me for a loop for a few hours, then I brushed off our Roman pontiff who demands submission's latest headgames and went about my business. It was a clericalist shin-kick to the American bishops who aren't on-board with the spiritual hospice idea and nothing more. 

[I am almost inclined to think that--just perhaps--it was a misguided kindness done to a increasingly-feeble old man. After all, the meeting ran surprisingly long and our President isn't capable of enduring such. But it was at best misguided and undoubtedly mixed with baser motives.]

So I shook it off. For starters, I realized that a tardigrade could leap over this pontiff’s bar for "good" and couldn’t limbo underneath it.

I mean, think about it: this is a guy who boasts of robbing a corpse at a funeral, committed simple battery on an altar boy because the latter was holding his hands folded in prayer, calls gossip "terrorism" while constantly engaging in vicious gossip about people he doesn’t like, expressed schadenfreude about a dangerously-ill colleague and said that anyone who criticizes him does "the work of the devil." And that’s just five examples off the top of my head.

Then there's that whole "handing over millions of the faithful to communists in return for nothing and not uttering a peep in their defense" thing.

He’s an abusive gaslighter who likes to push buttons. Like all such, he revels in throwing you off your stride if you don't fight into his cookie-cutter understanding of what "good" is. If you overdo, he'll blab about it on his next airline flight or at the next Jesuit gabfest.

So don't let him get your goat. And pray very, very hard for this wayward, worldly man. Every single day.

It's the one thing he says that is unassailably correct: he is a sinner in need of prayer. And we need to pray for him for our own benefit as well as his. It helps us avoid drinking some form of spiritual poison (e.g., wrath, pride) in response to his antics. Plus, we have logs in our own eyes that need a robust chainsaw.

I will say that the pontiff's games prompted this thought: is there a definition of "good Catholic" that, say, ten million representative Mass-attenders selected from the nations of the world could agree upon, an irreducible minimum beyond which no one could transgress?

I haven't come to a conclusion yet. For example, the Creed is essential, but not sufficient, according to Our Lord in His Sermon.

But the one thing I can say is that the pontiff's chat on Friday didn't bring us any closer to "good," let alone The Good.

So, look to the Lord, Scripture, His Saints and Tradition. The last especially with an eye to the works of mercy.

And try to tune out the player in Rome, even though that will prove impossible to do short of living off the grid.

Our Terrorist Pope.

As the old proverb goes: What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

One of the many rhetorical flights into low-oxygen realms that the Roman Pontiff has gone on is to condemn gossip.  

Which is welcome and salutary as a general concept.

The problem is he escalates it to a moral plane that undercuts any possible value he may have intended.

In his most ludicrous formulation, he has called it "terrorism," an exercise worse than the murderers of the Shining Path, a thankfully-dead communist organization responsible for more than 31,000 deaths in Peru.

Besides the morally-bankrupt overstatement, here's the problem.

If you glance back over his record, such edicts are a fascinating exercise in self-condemnation: because no one has been a more forthright public gossip than the pontiff.

Especially when he gets chatty with his Jesuit pals or the media.

For example, he recently sat down with a group of Slovak Jesuits and...engaged in gossip.

I can hear the high-pitched outrage from the usual and too-often square-headed cultists from here:

"What?!" 

Why, yes, he engaged in two bits of full-on, chattypants gossip. First, relating an accusation about an unnamed Catholic television organization criticizing him. Naturally, criticism of Number One is "the work of the devil."

That eyeroll aside, here's the thing: we are reliably informed that the pontiff hasn't watched TV since 1990. So he's relaying what he's been told about (Gloria TV? EWTN?) this satanic network...making it simon-pure gossip.

By his own standards, that was worse than the bereaved weeping at the gravesites of those butchered by the Sendero Luminoso. 

And then he followed it up by gossiping about a pair of newly-ordained priests who had (unwisely) asked their cardinal for permission to say the Mass of the Ages. In response, the unnamed cardinal (quite possibly Blase Cupich) told them they had to learn Spanish and then Vietnamese first. 

And no doubt quite-possibly-Blase-Cupich will throw in Esperanto, Romansch, Basque and Quechua if they leap those hurdles. Cardinal QPBC related this pastoral smackdown to the gossiping pontiff who then happily shared it for the whole church to hear.

More terrorism, by the pontiff's own standards.

And let's not forget that he does this sort of point-making gossip as a matter of routine, with Rabbit Mom and slapping about the South African Catholic who introduced him to converts to the Faith.

In this, as with other matters, the giddy bomb thrower from the Vatican should be taken seriously only as a cautionary tale about how not to behave.

Don't forget to include the ridiculed subjects of the pontiff's IEDs in your prayers.

As they say, you can't spell "class" without the vowel and repeating consonants.

 

Like most of the bummers set forth in Alanis Morisette's iconic pop tune, the pontiff's observation about an unvaccinated colleague does not qualify as an example of situational irony. 

A guide for the perplexed:

So here, situational irony would be more along the lines of suffering life-threatening complications from a life-saving vaccine.

Don't you think?

Anyway, while the observation is not irony, it does smack of schadenfreude. 

Which is fine, because you can probably find that in the Beatitudes or something.

The Perils of Digital Pastoring.

Fr. Dwight Longenecker is a good-hearted man.

But he has a tic about verbally positioning himself in the middle between "extremes" in the Church that has worn out its welcome. "Here I stand, right here in the median. Mainstream as all get out, unlike the radicals at either end." 

And it's all right here in this piece about the motu propriu, with jabs at schismatic trads and..."Sister Sandals and Father Fabulous."

Houston, we have huge cringe here.

At least he is starting to admit that he doesn't understand traditionalists. He also has no interest in trying to do so in depth. 

Which--and I mean this with absolute sincerety--is fine. He's a parish pastor with a full plate and has to tend to his flock first. Theological disputations involving people you do not shepherd should not be a priority.

Yet, that hobbles attempts to communicate with them. Indeed, that surface-level understanding stands out in sharp relief in his commentary:

"Oh, well. The TLM's gone now. 

Naught for it. There's some folks 'tootling' off to the Eastern Rites, or others off to schism. Sad.

But did you know can celebrate the Novus Ordo in Latin? With chant and fancy chasubles, too?"

. . .

[Exhausted sigh.]

 To which I reply:

"A Novus Ordo...in Latin? There was one parish on my archdiocese of 1.5 million Catholics that offered such in my 22 years as a Catholic. 

More damning yet: the number of times I have heard the very ancient and very much very optional Roman Canon in the NO in that same time frame in Masses across the United States does not reach the mid-two figures.

And on what planet is a parish in a diocese that just snuffed the TLM because the pontiff said traditionalists are nasty rebellious division-mongers going to cater to said bad people by incorporating "outdated" worship elements congenial to them? 

No one wants to be on the bad side of a Merciful® bishop. Least of all his priests.

And that's assuming you don't trigger the spiritual allergies of older Catholics who hated everything before Vatican II and are also strengthened by the pontifical pronunciamentos. 

Said laity are one of the main reasons you do not see Latin NOs.

Or chant.

Or fiddlebacks.

Abstraction smashes into reality with predictable results."

Not all problems can be solved by claiming there's a compromise in the middle. Especially when one party has the whip hand and has just blooded the other's face with it.

Did Catholicism exist before the last council?

For all intents and purposes, the answer is a flat, resounding "NO."

For the man in the white hat, Vatican II was, at its heart, an act of spiritual supercession. And the worship that was offered by the Council Fathers as they met in session for three years cannot in any way be reconciled with what followed. 

From the cover letter of the death warrant he signed on Friday:

For four centuries this Missale Romanum, promulgated by St. Pius V was thus the principal expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite, and functioned to maintain the unity of the Church. Without denying the dignity and grandeur of this Rite, the Bishops gathered in ecumenical council asked that it be reformed; their intention was that “the faithful would not assist as strangers and silent spectators in the mystery of faith, but, with a full understanding of the rites and prayers, would participate in the sacred action consciously, piously, and actively”.^[28] St. Paul VI, recalling that the work of adaptation of the Roman Missal had already been initiated by Pius XII, declared that the revision of the Roman Missal, carried out in the light of ancient liturgical sources, had the goal of permitting the Church to raise up, in the variety of languages, “a single and identical prayer,” that expressed her unity.^[29] This unity I intend to re-establish throughout the Church of the Roman Rite.

Take note: the liturgy that was dropped on the Roman Rite in 1970 is the only possible expression of the Faith of the Church following the staggeringly-verbose 21st council. 

That which was celebrated in 1969 cannot, must not, will not be permitted to exist alongside it. It must be slowly strangled out of existence and seminarians kept away from it.

Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi.

Gotta love the foaming condescension:

Your grandparents were passive drones who watched the Mass and didn't really pray.

We know this, even though we didn't ask them or give a rat's steaming piss for their opinions.

Then or now, just so we're clear. 

Your thoughts are equally irrelevant, you sad, easily-led-astray proto-schismatic. The bishops I deign to listen to told me all I need to know.

Love you and pray for me!

The motu propriu and its cover letter is a flat admission that Vatican II inaugurated a new Church. 

Which is fine if you're a giggly cultist who doesn't blink enough over at Where JimJones Is and many other places which share the belief that they are naught but the reigning pope's spiritual appendages.

For me...not so much.

Not so much.

A lot to consider over the next few weeks.

 

The funniest part is the title.

Imagining the present pontiff as a guardian of any "tradition" save that which began with him getting the white hat is bleakly hilarious, in fact.

You can say trads misbehave and don't always conform well to the Roman church. And such is often accurate--I've seen it myself. 

But then many--gleefully or otherwise--leap from high-profile misbehavior to the conclusion that their demerits deprive them of the right to worship.

And that makes you a functional Jansenist, no matter however you kit yourself up as an open-hearted apostle of Christian mercy.

And an inconsistent one at that. After all, there is no shortage of those attending the "reformed" liturgy who quite publicly and consistently deny the validity and legitimacy of giant swaths of genuine tradition, along with spitting at the power of their bishops to do anything about said denials. 

Yet somehow the same folks never suggest such miscreants have their masses shuttered.

No matter that those deniers of legitimacy and validity include some wearing collars, holding public office or staffing local Catholic-for-tax-purposes-only institutions. But no gimlet-eyed clerical commissars are being dispatched by papal directive to uproot and suppress their spiritual lives.

Such as they are.

He's an abusive, bad father who likes other children more than his own. The faithful have a right to the liturgy of their grandparents and likewise have the right to protect themselves accordingly. One only has to look at the fate of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate to imagine the "lively pastoral charity and sense of ecclesial communion" heading their way.

And note Article 4 in particular: the long-term goal is clear. The powers that be intend to choke out the existence of the worship at the center of the Catholic faith which existed worldwide not quite sixty years ago.

And so much for collegiality and the power of bishops to manage their dioceses without being "franchisees of Rome," to quote a progressive from the dark days of JPII. Quite the micromanager when it suits him, our pontiff.

Unless you're having a national synod which repeatedly states its intention to replace the Faith with the Zeitgeist. Then, well, you know...it's complicated and needs the soft touch.

I don't attend the Latin Mass much these days--the last time was late summer (?) 2020, and the trads infuriated me that day, but that's a story for another time. But I have had family figuratively slapped in the face by NO priests and attendees (e.g., "you need to take your baby out"), too. Yet these functional burial clubs which celebrate the Mass of '70 will be spared "lively pastoral charity" as they continue their long spiritual hospice.

The bottom line is that even given my gritted teeth anger at trads, the moment an Archbishop of Detroit suppresses any of the Latin Masses going in this diocese, that's the last time it sees a dime from me.

And bluntly, this action makes me question what Rome teaches about itself in the catechisms.  

Lex orandi, lex credendi, eh?

Whither the Catholicism of 2021?

Marie Kondo-ing your spiritual life.

 

There was a time not so long ago when if I had seen the Pontifical Academy for Life [sic] eulogizing Hans Kung [may God grant him the mercy I seek for myself] I would have been beside myself. 

Now I see it and say: yep. Just another Tuesday in Gangland. 

Of course the made men are going to toast each other--they're at the top and they're going to enjoy it. At some level, it's like getting angry at a dog taking a leak on a lamppost. It's what they do.

How did I reach this place of relative equanimity?

It's simple. I followed the Marie Kondo method: I am tidying up my spiritual life and discarding things which do not spark joy. 

And there is nothing coming from Rome which is worthy of attention unless I choose to attach importance to it. Stoicism--yeah, more than a bit.

But that's where I am: prayers for the church and pope in the rosary and liturgy and that's it. 

No intensive scanning of apostolic exhortations, CDF declarations, etc. 

Because here's the reality--the last seventy years have taught us that everything is provisional. Today's authoritative encyclical is tomorrow's memory hole ash. The catechism comes with a bottle of white-out. The laity don't have to "receive" anything they don't like. 

Orwell died a decade before Vatican II, but he would certainly have recognized the three generations of double-think which have followed. And likely laughed quite heartily at his bete-noire Minitrue-ing itself. 

You know what applause-hungry nobles who crave attention hate the most? Being ignored. 

Try it.

 

As another commenter has pointed out, this is probably a feature of the secret agreement, not a violation.

The Sinofascist homage to Hitler's "German Christianity" kicks into high gear--with the Party straight up ordaining all the schismatic leadership--without reference to the Chair.

Say what you will about Judas, at least he was compensated for selling out his Brother.

Hat-tip to Don for the unsurprising find.

 

 

Fisher-Price did it better.

This is the Vatican's 2020 nativity scene.

Yes, it was crafted in the 1970s. 

The "Great Reset": Brought to you by the same people who looted the planet back in 2008?

I can agree that technocratic neoliberal capitalism is past time for root and branch reform. It is well on the way to crafting an anti-religious--and thus anti-human--hell, where everyone reads from the same corporate human resources handbook. As explored recently on this page, said handbook stridently argues that women abort their children in the West and for unimpeded access to slave labor in the East. 

Fascism with a globalist face and slogans, in other words. But very much a tyranny, with those who are favored party members--and those who will follow directions.

And I hope you can forgive me if I am skeptical that the same financial titans who brought us the Great Recession and took countless billions from the public fisc without a shred of responsibility for their own conduct are the right leaders for "building back better."

And now the Roman pontiff is aping their language. 

As Steve says, "good to know." 

On the bright side, the thing that wears the skin of the Western world is literally bankrupt seven times over, and that's just financially. The balkanization of that world along identity politics lines will ensure its demise, so we have that going for us.

 

A secular take on the McCarrick Report.

From Nicole Winfield of the Associated Press.

She sounds skeptical notes:

The findings accused bishops dead and alive of providing the Vatican with incomplete information about McCarrick’s behavior, and of turning a blind eye to his repeated flouting of informal restrictions ordered up in 2006 after Pope Benedict XVI decided not to investigate or sanction him seriously.

Most significantly, the findings largely gave Francis a pass, saying he never lifted or modified those restrictions, never named McCarrick a “diplomatic agent” for the Holy See and never received any documentation about McCarrick before 2017. It didn’t say if Francis had sought such documentation after one of his ambassadors purportedly told him in 2013 that McCarrick was a predator.

 “Pope Francis had heard only that there had been allegations and rumors related to immoral conduct with adults occurring prior to McCarrick’s appointment to Washington,” the summary says. “Believing that the allegations had already been reviewed and rejected by Pope John Paul II, and well aware that McCarrick was active during the papacy of Benedict XVI, Pope Francis did not see the need to alter the approach that had been adopted.”

Francis changed course after a former altar boy came forward in 2017 alleging that McCarrick groped him when he was a teenager during preparations for Christmas Mass in 1971 and 1972 in New York. The allegation was the first solid claim against McCarrick involving a minor and triggered the canonical trial that resulted in his defrocking.

While the summary provided new details about what the Vatican knew and when, it didn’t elaborate on the internal culture that allowed McCarrick’s behavior to continue unchecked. Catholic cardinals and bishops have long been considered beyond reproach and claims of homosexual behavior have used to discredit or blackmail prelates, so often are dismissed as rumors. There has also been a widespread but unspoken tolerance of sexually active men in what is supposed to be a celibate priesthood.

It sounds like Team Ted's circle gets off scot-free. Which, given the soft handling of Bransfield, is par for the course. 

Clericalism is always okay for company men. 

I'll see what I can add with some targeted reading.

Octogenarian who refuses to wear mask in virus-wracked Italy condemns those who protest virus restrictions.

No, it's true: the pontiff is effectively anti-mask.

But if others protest the infallible judgment of Caesar, they are privileged selfish types--possibly even merciless profiteers--but in all events incapable of imagining the suffering of others.

Meanwhile, he receives throngs of people without a mask because reasons.

The notion that people are terrified for their livelihoods or are exhausted by failed governmental policies cannot enter his closed Manichean mind. 

No, not for a moment. The sprawling factory complex where strawmen are assembled and burned by the thousand and labels substitute for engagement with those who think differently runs 24/7/365. Sadly, it is capable of producing only tiny amounts of actual empathy for those not with the program.

More nails for the faithful.

 

The Vatican announced that it is renewing its concordat with the Beijing regime.

There was never any doubt it would happen--this is what Rome is now. If you want a hint as to why the civil unions clip dropped when it did, here you go: no better way to hide a sellout than to stir up another controversy first.

Pray for our Chinese brothers and sisters, who have shepherds who appear to regard them as nothing more than mutton for a valuable foreign market.

You just never know where, when or in what form of media this pontiff is going to say something authoritative.

I direct your attention to Fratelli Tutti, footnote 198, wherein the pontiff quotes himself from a laudatory documentary film about him in order to set forth authoritative teaching.

Something to keep in mind regarding his statement in a more recent laudatory documentary film about him.

And as I have pointed out previously, whenever he repeats himself, it starts becoming magisterial.

The papal office, as set forth in the magisterium, is getting more difficult to square with the words and actions of the current occupant of the See of Peter.

I mean, the following sounds great and all--but what do you when a successor of Peter does not feel so constrained by tradition, custom and precedent?

The power that Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors is, in an absolute sense, a mandate to serve. The power of teaching in the Church involves a commitment to the service of obedience to the faith. The Pope is not an absolute monarch whose thoughts and desires are law. On the contrary: the Pope’s ministry is a guarantee of obedience to Christ and to his Word. He must not proclaim his own ideas, but rather constantly bind himself and the Church to obedience to God’s Word, in the face of every attempt to adapt it or water it down, and every form of opportunism.

So what do you do when you have a man who instead is more interested in what the office theoretically authorizes? Because the powers described under canon law admit of no real limits.

"Deeply troubling" is Carl Olson's formulation. 

Yeah, I'll go for the British understatement, too. While thinking much bleaker thoughts.