Jorge Sure Knows How to Lower the Boom Fast When He Wants to Do So

The first episode of the third season of Ironside, “Alias Mr. Braithwaite,” aired on the National Broadcasting Company television network on Thursday, September 18, 1969, from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. The episode revolved around a swindler named Raymond Otis Baker/aka Robert Otis Braithwaite, played by Joseph Campanella (who was an observant Catholic in the conciliar structures). Along with an accomplice, played by Philip Pine, Baler/Braithwaite swindled future Judge Mark Sanger’s Aunt Ruby out of her life savings of nine thousand dollars.

Determined to help Mark’s Aunt Ruby get her money back, Chief Robert T. Ironside, played by Raymond Burr in his far more multidimensional role than that of the unidimensional Perry Mason, proposed that Commissioner Dennis Randall, played by Gene Lyons (another observant Catholic, who is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), authorize a wire transfer of $30,000 from the City of San Francisco, California’s, treasury to run a sting operation on Baker Braithwaite, who had gone to Coronado Beach, California, for a vacation on Aunt Ruby’s swindled money. Randall was firm in his denial of the request, whereupon Ironside wheeled himself out of the police commissioner’s office.

Upon Ironside leaving the office, however, Commissioner Randall’s secretary handed him a travel voucher for Ironside’s travel that the forcibly retired chief of detectives turned “special consultant” following his paralysis after an assassination attempt on the commissioner’s chicken farm in Sonoma, California, in March of 1967 had authorized in the commissioner’s name.

Irate, Dennis Randall yelled out for his longtime friend but frequent irritate, “Bob! Bob! Ironside! Come back here!”

Turning to his secretary, Randall said resignedly, “He can sure move that wheelchair when he wants to.”

This is a long way of saying that “Jorge Mario Bergoglio sure knows how to lower the boom” when he wants to do so, or “The Argentine Apostate” knows sure knows how to govern when he wants to do so.”

That is, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the false “pope” of false “mercy,” has limitless tolerance for those of his “bishops” who go beyond even his own outlandish, heretical statements and actions as they are playing their roles as perverse prophets to make it possible for him to perversely claim that the “holy spirit” is “clearly” leading his false religious sect in the direction of (fill in the blank) whatever “change” Bergoglio himself believes should be adopted in the name of “mercy” or “updating” or “listening to the people.” Countless are the numbers of these “bishops,” who are scattered all throughout the world. Perhaps the most prominent examples in this country today are Rene Cupich (Chicago), Joseph Tobin (Newark, New Jersey), John Stowe (Lexington, Kentucky), and Wilton Gregory (Washington, District of Columbia), a direct acolyte of the late, corrupt Joseph “Cardinal” Bernardin. These are Jorge’s boys, and they can make whatever outlandish statements they want as they only doing his bidding for him. They are his enforcers and his field agents in making messes of things.

Men such as these are congregated all over the European continent and all throughout Asia. There is Jean-Claude Hollerich in Luxembourg, Reinhard Marx in Munich-Freising, Germany, Rainier Woelki in Cologne, Germany, Peter Kohlgraf in Mainz, Germany, Franz-Josef Overbeck of Essen, Germany, and so many scores upon scores of others, most of whom are full-throated supporters of the entire panoply of the sodomite agenda, women priests to be bound thereby, have been kept "safe" by Jorge, wo is busy promoting a “synodal way” that makes it appear that the process of Divine Revelation is “ongoing” and there must be a constant process of “discernment” concerning how what purports to be Catholic teaching should be “adjusted” in light of what the “people” want.

In other words, the conciliar “bishops” who enjoy Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s favor believe in everything criticized by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907. Here is a concise summary of the principal goals of Modernists concerning ecclesiastical “reform”:

It remains for Us now to say a few words about the Modernist as reformer. From all that has preceded, it is abundantly clear how great and how eager is the passion of such men for innovation. In all Catholicism there is absolutely nothing on which it does not fasten. They wish philosophy to be reformed, especially in the ecclesiastical seminaries. They wish the scholastic philosophy to be relegated to the history of philosophy and to be classed among absolute systems, and the young men to be taught modern philosophy which alone is true and suited to the times in which we live. They desire the reform of theology: rational theology is to have modern philosophy for its foundation, and positive theology is to be founded on the history of dogma. As for history, it must be written and taught only according to their methods and modern principles. Dogmas and their evolution, they affirm, are to be harmonized with science and history. In the Catechism no dogmas are to be inserted except those that have been reformed and are within the capacity of the people. Regarding worship, they say, the number of external devotions is to be reduced, and steps must be taken to prevent their further increase, though, indeed, some of the admirers of symbolism are disposed to be more indulgent on this head. They cry out that ecclesiastical government requires to be reformed in all its branches, but especially in its disciplinary and dogmatic departments They insist that both outwardly and inwardly it must be brought into harmony with the modern conscience which now wholly tends towards democracy; a share in ecclesiastical government should therefore be given to the lower ranks of the clergy and even to the laity and authority which is too much concentrated should be decentralized The Roman Congregations and especially the index and the Holy Office, must be likewise modified The ecclesiastical authority must alter its line of conduct in the social and political world; while keeping outside political organizations it must adapt itself to them in order to penetrate them with its spirit. With regard to morals, they adopt the principle of the Americanists, that the active virtues are more important than the passive, and are to be more encouraged in practice. They ask that the clergy should return to their primitive humility and poverty, and that in their ideas and action they should admit the principles of Modernism; and there are some who, gladly listening to the teaching of their Protestant masters, would desire the suppression of the celibacy of the clergy. What is there left in the Church which is not to be reformed by them and according to their principles?  (Pascendi Dominici Gregis, No. 38)

The list of "reforms" that Pope Saint Pius X knew that the Modernists wanted to implement stands out as a prophetic warning as to the agenda that was formed by Modernist theologians in the years before the "Second" Vatican Council and became the fundamental basis for the whole ethos of conciliarism. Consider the prophetic nature of Pope Saint Pius X's list of "reforms" that the Modernists wanted to implement:

1) The passion for innovation. Innovation, which the Church has always eschewed, has become the very foundation of conciliarism. Indeed, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI praised novelty and innovation repeatedly, doing so during his now infamous December 22, 2005, Christmas address to his conciliar curia. Since when has this been the case in the history of the Catholic Church? It is standard practice in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, and "innovation" is the hallmark of the carciature of conciliarism, Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

2) "They wish the scholastic philosophy to be relegated to the history of philosophy and to be classed among absolute systems, and the young men to be taught modern philosophy which alone is true and suited to the times in which we live." This is a cogent summary of the belief of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI himself, which he outlined in Principles of Catholic Theology and in his own autobiography, Milestones. Bergoglio has no regard for philosophy of any kind as he is moved solely by pure subjectivism without the window dressing of his predecessors "new theology."

3) "Dogmas and their evolution, they affirm, are to harmonized with science and history." Thus it is, of course, that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI told us, both before and during his false "pontificate," that such things as Pope Pius IX's The Syllabus of Errors and even Pope Saint Pius X's Pascendi Dominci Gregis, among other encyclical letters and papal pronouncements (see Witness Against Benedict XVI: The Oath Against Modernism) itself served a useful purpose at one point in history but lose their binding force over time. In other words, we must harmonize Catholicism with the events of history (the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King, the institutionalization of Protestant "churches," the rise of the secular state) and not be "tied down" by a "time-centered" view of the Faith. As repetition is the mother of learning, perhaps it is good to repeat once again that this Modernist view of dogma was specifically condemned by the [First] Vatican Council. No Catholic is free to ignore these binding words and remain a Catholic in good standing:

For the doctrine of the faith which God has revealed is put forward

• not as some philosophical discovery capable of being perfected by human intelligence,
• but as a divine deposit committed to the spouse of Christ to be faithfully protected and infallibly promulgated.
• Hence, too, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by holy mother church, and there must never be any abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding.

God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever be in opposition to truth.

The appearance of this kind of specious contradiction is chiefly due to the fact that either: the dogmas of faith are not understood and explained in accordance with the mind of the church, or unsound views are mistaken for the conclusions of reason.

Therefore we define that every assertion contrary to the truth of enlightened faith is totally false. . . .

3. If anyone says that it is possible that at some time, given the advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmas propounded by the church which is different from that which the church has understood and understands: let him be anathema.

And so in the performance of our supreme pastoral office, we beseech for the love of Jesus Christ and we command, by the authority of him who is also our God and saviour, all faithful Christians, especially those in authority or who have the duty of teaching, that they contribute their zeal and labour to the warding off and elimination of these errors from the church and to the spreading of the light of the pure faith.

But since it is not enough to avoid the contamination of heresy unless those errors are carefully shunned which approach it in greater or less degree, we warn all of their duty to observe the constitutions and decrees in which such wrong opinions, though not expressly mentioned in this document, have been banned and forbidden by this holy see. (Pope Pius IX, Vatican Council, Session III, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, Chapter 4, On Faith and Reason, April 24, 1870. SESSION 3 : 24 April 1.)

4) "Regarding worship, they say, the number of external devotions is to be reduced, and steps must be taken to prevent their further increase, though, indeed, some of the admirers of symbolism are disposed to be more indulgent on this head." This describes the liturgical thrust of conciliarism quite accurately. Indeed, the last sentence in this sentence has particular application to Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, who was somewhat disposed to be "indulgent" to the symbolism of the liturgy but was nevertheless committed to "reforming" the conciliar "reform" Obviously, Jorge Mario Bergoglio comes from a more "liberated" background than his predecessor. The modernized version of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition can have its place, according to the falsehoods he published in Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2007, for those who are "attached" to it. Bergoglio/Francis has made sure, of course, that there is no turning back on the "reform" itself, including the reduction of the saints commemorated on conciliarism's universal calendar. Indeed, then Cardinal Ratzinger wrote the following in Principles of Catholic Theology in 1982:

Among the more obvious phenomena of the last years must be counted the increasing number of integralist groups in which the desire for piety, for the sense of mystery, is finding satisfaction. We must be on our guard against minimizing these movements. Without a doubt, they represent a sectarian zealotry that is the antithesis of Catholicity. We cannot resist them too firmly. (pp. 389-390) 

5) "They cry out that ecclesiastical government requires to be reformed in all its branches, but especially in its disciplinary and dogmatic departments They insist that both outwardly and inwardly it must be brought into harmony with the modern conscience which now wholly tends towards democracy; a share in ecclesiastical government should therefore be given to the lower ranks of the clergy and even to the laity and authority which is too much concentrated should be decentralized The Roman Congregations and especially the index and the Holy Office, must be likewise modified." The conciliarists have summarized Pope Saint Pius X's description of their Modernist view of Church governance very succinctly: Collegiality. It is no accident that Giovanni Montini/Paul VI gave away the Papal Tiara, which is on display in the crypt of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., and that Albino Luciani/John Paul I and Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II,Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, and Jorge Mario Bergoglio each refused to be crowned. Ratzinger/Benedict XVI went so far as to remove the tiara from his coat-of-arms, which is reflective of episcopal collegiality with his own bishops and a gesture in the direction of those steeped in the heresies of Photius, the Orthodox. And Jorge Mario Bergoglio has divested what little remained of "papal dignity" in the conciliar Petrine Ministry in the past sixty-two months. I mean, can anyone say "Plim Plim." What about Señor Wences?

6) "The ecclesiastical authority must alter its line of conduct in the social and political world; while keeping outside political organizations it must adapt itself to them in order to penetrate them with its spirit." This is of the essence of Gaudium et Spes, December 7, 1965. And it is of the essence of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's belief that the the "Second" Vatican Council represented an "official reconciliation" with the principles of 1789. Just as a little reminder so that readers with short memories do not think that I am misrepresenting the thought of the man who does not believe it to be the mission of the Catholic Church to seek with urgency the conversion of Protestants and Jews and the Orthodox and all others who are outside her maternal bosom: 

Let us be content to say here that the text serves as a countersyllabus and, as such, represents on the part of the Church, an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789. Only from this perspective can we understand, on the one hand, the ghetto-mentality, of which we have spoken above; only from this perspective can we understand, on the other hand, the meaning of the remarkable meeting of the Church and the world. Basically, the word "world" means the spirit of the modern era, in contrast to which the Church's group-consciousness saw itself as a separate subject that now, after a war that had been in turn both hot and cold, was intent on dialogue and cooperation. From this perspective, too, we can understand the different emphases with which the individual parts of the Church entered into the discussion of the text. While German theologians were satisfied that their exegetical and ecumenical concepts had been incorporated, representatives of Latin American countries, in particular, felt that their concerns, too, had been addressed, topics proposed by Anglo-Saxon theologians likewise found strong expression, and representatives of Third World countries saw, in the emphasis on social questions, a consideration of their particular problems. (Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, pp. 381-382)

Pope Saint Pius X wrote the following in Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906 about those who would dare to contend that the Church had to "reconcile" herself to the separation of Church and State, which the Catholic Church condemned repeatedly and vigorously throughout her history prior to the "Second" Vatican Council:

That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. Our illustrious predecessor, Leo XIII, especially, has frequently and magnificently expounded Catholic teaching on the relations which should subsist between the two societies. "Between them," he says, "there must necessarily be a suitable union, which may not improperly be compared with that existing between body and soul.-"Quaedam intercedat necesse est ordinata colligatio (inter illas) quae quidem conjunctioni non immerito comparatur, per quam anima et corpus in homine copulantur." He proceeds: "Human societies cannot, without becoming criminal, act as if God did not exist or refuse to concern themselves with religion, as though it were something foreign to them, or of no purpose to them.... As for the Church, which has God Himself for its author, to exclude her from the active life of the nation, from the laws, the education of the young, the family, is to commit a great and pernicious error. -- "Civitates non possunt, citra scellus, gerere se tamquam si Deus omnino non esset, aut curam religionis velut alienam nihilque profuturam abjicere.... Ecclesiam vero, quam Deus ipse constituit, ab actione vitae excludere, a legibus, ab institutione adolescentium, a societate domestica, magnus et perniciousus est error." (Pope Saint Pius X, Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906.)

Pope Saint Pius X condemned as "absolutely false" the thesis that the State must be separated from the Church. Absolutely false. The conciliar "popes," including Jorge Mario Bergoglio, have accepted as true and good that which a canonized pope, repeating the consistent teaching of the Catholic Church, which no one has any authority to contradict, condemned as absolutely false. Are you beginning to see, possibly, that there is a problem with the conciliarism in its entirety? Are you beginning to see, possibly, that there is no reconciling the unprecedented heresies, sacrileges, apostasies, blasphemies of novelties of conciliarism and conciliarists,  with the consistent teaching of the Catholic Church?

In addition to the above-noted paragraph in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, Pope Saint Pius X went on to note the arrogance of the Modernists in their desire for novelty and in their contempt for scholastic theology and their efforts to view the Fathers in light of their own Modernist predilections:

Would that they had but displayed less zeal and energy in propagating it! But such is their activity and such their unwearying labor on behalf of their cause, that one cannot but be pained to see them waste such energy in endeavoring to ruin the Church when they might have been of such service to her had their efforts been better directed. Their artifices to delude men's minds are of two kinds, the first to remove obstacles from their path, the second to devise and apply actively and patiently every resource that can serve their purpose. They recognize that the three chief difficulties which stand in their way are the scholastic method of philosophy, the authority and tradition of the Fathers, and the magisterium of the Church, and on these they wage unrelenting war.Against scholastic philosophy and theology they use the weapons of ridicule and contempt. Whether it is ignorance or fear, or both, that inspires this conduct in them, certain it is that the passion for novelty is always united in them with hatred of scholasticism, and there is no surer sign that a man is tending to Modernism than when he begins to show his dislike for the scholastic method. Let the Modernists and their admirers remember the proposition condemned by Pius IX: "The method and principles which have served the ancient doctors of scholasticism when treating of theology no longer correspond with the exigencies of our time or the progress of science." They exercise all their ingenuity in an effort to weaken the force and falsify the character of tradition, so as to rob it of all its weight and authority. But for Catholics nothing will remove the authority of the second Council of Nicea, where it condemns those "who dare, after the impious fashion of heretics, to deride the ecclesiastical traditions, to invent novelties of some kind...or endeavor by malice or craft to overthrow any one of the legitimate traditions of the Catholic Church"; nor that of the declaration of the fourth Council of Constantinople: "We therefore profess to preserve and guard the rules bequeathed to the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, by the Holy and most illustrious Apostles, by the orthodox Councils, both general and local, and by everyone of those divine interpreters, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church." Wherefore the Roman Pontiffs, Pius IV and Pius IX, ordered the insertion in the profession of faith of the following declaration: "I most firmly admit and embrace the apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and other observances and constitutions of the Church.''  (Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, September 8, 1907, No. 42)

This paragraph is a ringing condemnation of the work of conciliarism and of its progenitors, the so-called "new theologians" (Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Rahner, Joseph Ratzinger, et al.). Look at how Pope Saint Pius X zeroed in on the three things that Joseph Ratzinger spent nearly 400 pages trying to deconstruct and explain away in Principles of Catholic Theology: (1) The Scholastic Method of Philosophy; (2) The Authority and Tradition of the Fathers; and (3) the Magisterium of the Church  The then "Cardinal" Ratzinger had to rely upon his Hegelian view of the world to explain away dogmatic pronouncements and articles contained in the Deposit of Faith that constituted part of the Church's Ordinary Magisterium. 

The Syllabus of Errors? 

Well, right for its time perhaps, Ratzinger and other conciliarists say, but we can see now that it was a "hasty" and "superficial" overreaction to events of the day. Jorge Mario Bergoglio's solution to all of this? Simple. Don't even make a passing reference to the centenary of Pope Saint Pius X's death on August 20, 2014.

As Pope Saint Pius X noted; "They exercise all their ingenuity in an effort to weaken the force and falsify the character of tradition, so as to rob it of all of its weight and authority." 

This is so very important. The conciliar popes have not used the word "tradition" to mean what Holy Mother Church has always taught it to mean. They have sought  to "weaken the force" and to "falsify the character of tradition" precisely so as to "rob it of all its weight and authority," considering the word "tradition" to be an empty vessel into which he can pour whatever meaning these apostates have believed  is appropriate for "modern man."

Pope Pope Pius XII, writing in Humani Generis, August 12, 1950, explained the "new theology's" effort to hold Tradition of no account, preferring that own rationalism to a reliance upon the teaching authority of Holy Mother Church:

22. To return, however, to the new opinions mentioned above, a number of things are proposed or suggested by some even against the divine authorship of Sacred Scripture. For some go so far as to pervert the sense of the Vatican Council's definition that God is the author of Holy Scripture, and they put forward again the opinion, already often condemned, which asserts that immunity from error extends only to those parts of the Bible that treat of God or of moral and religious matters. They even wrongly speak of a human sense of the Scriptures, beneath which a divine sense, which they say is the only infallible meaning, lies hidden. In interpreting Scripture, they will take no account of the analogy of faith and the Tradition of the Church. Thus they judge the doctrine of the Fathers and of the Teaching Church by the norm of Holy Scripture, interpreted by the purely human reason of exegetes, instead of explaining Holy Scripture according to the mind of the Church which Christ Our Lord has appointed guardian and interpreter of the whole deposit of divinely revealed truth.

23. Further, according to their fictitious opinions, the literal sense of Holy Scripture and its explanation, carefully worked out under the Church's vigilance by so many great exegetes, should yield now to a new exegesis, which they are pleased to call symbolic or spiritual. By means of this new exegesis the Old Testament, which today in the Church is a sealed book, would finally be thrown open to all the faithful. By this method, they say, all difficulties vanish, difficulties which hinder only those who adhere to the literal meaning of the Scriptures.

24. Everyone sees how foreign all this is to the principles and norms of interpretation rightly fixed by our predecessors of happy memory, Leo XIII in his Encyclical "Providentissimus," and Benedict XV in the Encyclical "Spiritus Paraclitus," as also by Ourselves in the Encyclical "Divino Affflante Spiritu."

25. It is not surprising that novelties of this kind have already borne their deadly fruit in almost all branches of theology. It is now doubted that human reason, without divine revelation and the help of divine grace, can, by arguments drawn from the created universe, prove the existence of a personal God; it is denied that the world had a beginning; it is argued that the creation of the world is necessary, since it proceeds from the necessary liberality of divine love; it is denied that God has eternal and infallible foreknowedge of the free actions of men -- all this in contradiction to the decrees of the Vatican Council[5] (Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis, August 12, 1950.)

Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born just twenty-two years after the following letter was written by Gaetano Cardinal De Lai in 1914 to Father Angelo Roncalli, in whose heretical cradle Bergoglio was formed in his seminary days:

According to information that has come my way, I knew that you had been a reader of Duchesne [whose book, History of the Early Church, had been placed on the Index of Forbidden Books and used in Roncalli's seminary lectures] and other unbridled authors, and that on certain occasions you had shown yourself inclined to that school of thought which tends to empty out the value of Tradition and the authority of the past, a dangerous current which leads to fatal consequences. (Quoted in Fathers Francisco and Dominic Radecki, Tumultuous Times, p. 297)

Do you see a pattern here?

Modernists are proud men who attract those who are proudly unrepentant in their lives of wickedness to their twisted cause, which is why those who are still “shocked” by the statements of the conciliar revolutionaries are living in an alternative universe of their own making. Indeed, a recent story on Lifesite News contained an expression of “surprise” that the recently concluded “synod” in the conciliar-occupied Vatican contained links to pro-sodomite and pro-women’s ordination groups:

VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) – A high-ranking Vatican cardinal has described the current multi-year Synod on Synodality as a “discernment process” for the Church to “find truth,” hinting at possible changing of doctrine by Pope Francis after the Synod.

The Vatican’s Synod on Synodality is asking “what is the type of Church that the Holy Spirit is enlightening us to have for today?” said Cardinal Mario Grech, the Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops.

Speaking to Catholic News Agency (CNA) in an interview released March 2, 65-year-old Cardinal Grech defended the Synod that his General Secretariat is organizing alongside the pro-LGBT Cardinal Jean Claude Hollerich, who serves as the Relator General of the Synod.

“This synodal process is not sociological analysis of the Church, but it is a discernment process,” Grech said. “And when we say discernment, that means that we are trying to listen to the Holy Spirit.”

“Because after all, this is not an exchange of opinions — I say mine and you say yours — but together as a community, we try to do this personal discernment and this ecclesial discernment that is listening to the Holy Spirit together,” Grech said.

Running from 2021 to 2023, the Synod is currently at the diocesan stage, at which bishops must listen to both Catholics and non-Catholics in order to learn “how God is calling us to be as the Church in the third millennium,” according to the vademecum or handbook for the Synod. The local responses will then be submitted in preparation for drafting a working document or instrumentum laboris.

Listed on the Synod Resource website are submissions from a number of heretical and dissident groups, including the pro-LGBT New Ways Ministry, Women’s Ordination Conference, and the Association of U.S. Catholic Priests.

Pointing to the Synod’s question about the Church’s identity, Grech appeared also to reference these Synod Resources, saying that “by presenting this, these themes, to the people of God, we hope that we can help them to engage in this discernment process in a prayerful attitude.”

Despite the Synod being already underway since October 9, Grech noted that a key challenge still remaining was understanding “what synodality really implies.”

“Though it is a constitutional element of the Church, unfortunately we still have difficulty to figure out now what synodality means,” he said, “how we can really walk together, how we can really create space for all the baptized so that we can be one Church. I think, yes, this is one of the difficulties that we are encountering.”

This attempt to “create space” is seen in the preparatory documents that propose a fundamental shift away from traditional teaching by recommending that the Synod must listen to “people who have left the practice of the faith, people of other faith traditions, people of no religious belief, etc.”

“No one – no matter their religious affiliation – should be excluded from sharing their perspective and experiences, insofar as they want to help the Church on her synodal journey of seeking what is good and true,” reads the vademecum. (Emphasis original)

Putting this concept into practice, Grech appeared to praise Germany’s Synodal Way, where recently an overwhelming majority of participants voted early February to approve documents calling for blessing of same-sex couples and the ordination of women.

“Church councils are synods, and the Church councils brought about an evolution in doctrine, but if we say for example, diocesan synod, or a national synod, those are different experiences of a synodal Church,” Grech said. Germany’s Synodal Way he described as simply being a “synodal experience on a national level.”

However, the Synodal Way has been previously condemned by Cardinal Marc Ouellet of the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops, who said the German bishops’ plans were “not ecclesiologically valid.”

The appointment of Cardinal Hollerich as Relator General of the Synod on Synodality – who supports the Synodal Way and its proposals – has led some to raise concerns that Pope Francis might not only support Germany’s Synodal Way but might be attempting to implement Church-wide changes via the Synod on Synodality.

Indeed, Grech alluded to such a possibility by referencing the Synod’s link to changing doctrine. He noted first that his Synod of Bishops “has no power to change any doctrine. The synod obviously can go more in depth, about the truth, our tenets of faith.”

But Grech, appointed Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops in 2020, hinted at possible changes coming from the Pope based on the Synod, employing the phrase of the Church being able “to find truth” via the Synodal process.

But then as Episcopalis communio says, it’s up to the Holy Father to make the final decision. He is Peter for the Church. And we have this trust in him. Through the synod, bishops, Peter, listening to all the people of God, obviously, we’ll get more help, more assistance to help us to find truth.

A number of traditional Catholic commentators have already highlighted potential dangers to the Catholic stemming from the Synod. Matt Gaspers, managing editor of Catholic Family News, warned that the Synod would be “a mishmash of confusion and heresy,” and Donnelly told LifeSiteNews of “fundamental error” in the Synod documents, and the subsequent “danger of proclaiming a false and worldly message instead of the Gospel of Christ.” (Cardinal in charge of Synod on Synodality says gathering will 'find truth' amid 'discernment process'. Jorge has since issued a new constitution for his conciliar curia that will be analyzed on this site at some point before Easter.)

Nothing associated with Holy Mother Church can be a “mishmash of confusion and heresy” as it is of her Divine Constitution to be free from all error, something that many Catholics still attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism in the mistaken belief that they represent the Catholic Church cannot seem to grasp no matter how many times these simple, clear truths are printed for one and all to see:

As for the rest, We greatly deplore the fact that, where the ravings of human reason extend, there is somebody who studies new things and strives to know more than is necessary, against the advice of the apostle. There you will find someone who is overconfident in seeking the truth outside the Catholic Church, in which it can be found without even a light tarnish of error. Therefore, the Church is called, and is indeed, a pillar and foundation of truth. You correctly understand, venerable brothers, that We speak here also of that erroneous philosophical system which was recently brought in and is clearly to be condemned. This system, which comes from the contemptible and unrestrained desire for innovation, does not seek truth where it stands in the received and holy apostolic inheritance. Rather, other empty doctrines, futile and uncertain doctrines not approved by the Church, are adopted. Only the most conceited men wrongly think that these teachings can sustain and support that truth. (Pope Gregory XVI, Singulari Nos, May 25, 1834.)

Just as Christianity cannot penetrate into the soul without making it better, so it cannot enter into public life without establishing order. With the idea of a God Who governs all, Who is infinitely Wise, Good, and Just, the idea of duty seizes upon the consciences of men. It assuages sorrow, it calms hatred, it engenders heroes. If it has transformed pagan society--and that transformation was a veritable resurrection--for barbarism disappeared in proportion as Christianity extended its sway, so, after the terrible shocks which unbelief has given to the world in our days, it will be able to put that world again on the true road, and bring back to order the States and peoples of modern times. But the return of Christianity will not be efficacious and complete if it does not restore the world to a sincere love of the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. In the Catholic Church Christianity is Incarnate. It identifies Itself with that perfect, spiritual, and, in its own order, sovereign society, which is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ and which has for Its visible head the Roman Pontiff, successor of the Prince of the Apostles. It is the continuation of the mission of the Savior, the daughter and the heiress of His Redemption. It has preached the Gospel, and has defended it at the price of Its blood, and strong in the Divine assistance and of that immortality which has been promised it, It makes no terms with error but remains faithful to the commands which  it has received, to carry the doctrine of Jesus Christ to the uttermost limits of the world and to the end of time, and to protect it in its inviolable integrity. Legitimate dispenser of the teachings of the Gospel it does not reveal itself only as the consoler and Redeemer of souls, but It is still more the internal source of justice and charity, and the propagator as well as the guardian of true liberty, and of that equality which alone is possible here below. In applying the doctrine of its Divine Founder, It maintains a wise equilibrium and marks the true limits between the rights and privileges of society. The equality which it proclaims does not destroy the distinction between the different social classes. It keeps them intact, as nature itself demands, in order to oppose the anarchy of reason emancipated from Faith, and abandoned to its own devices. The liberty which it gives in no wise conflicts with the rights of truth, because those rights are superior to the demands of liberty. Not does it infringe upon the rights of justice, because those rights are superior to the claims of mere numbers or power. Nor does it assail the rights of God because they are superior to the rights of humanity. (Pope Leo XIII, A Review of His Pontificate, March 19, 1902.)

For the teaching authority of the Church, which in the divine wisdom was constituted on earth in order that revealed doctrines might remain intact for ever, and that they might be brought with ease and security to the knowledge of men, and which is daily exercised through the Roman Pontiff and the Bishops who are in communion with him, has also the office of defining, when it sees fit, any truth with solemn rites and decrees, whenever this is necessary either to oppose the errors or the attacks of heretics, or more clearly and in greater detail to stamp the minds of the faithful with the articles of sacred doctrine which have been explained. (Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928.) 

Please note that Pope Gregory XVI wrote that the truth can be found in the Catholic Church without "even a slight tarnish of error."

Please note that Pope Leo XIII stressed that the Catholic Church "makes no terms with error but remains faithful to the command which it has received, to carry the doctrine of Jesus Christ to the uttermost limits of the world and to the end of time, and to protect it in its inviolable integrity."

Please note that that Pope Pius XI explained that the Catholic Church brings forth her teaching "with ease and security to the knowledge of men."

Anyone who says that this has been done by the counterfeit church of conciliarism, which has made its "reconciliation" with the false principles of Modernity that leave no room for the confessionally Catholic civil state and the Social Reign of Christ the King, is not thinking too clearly (and that is as about as charitably as I can put the matter) or is being, perhaps more accurately, intellectually dishonest. If the conciliar church has brought forth its teaching "with ease and security to the knowledge of men," why is there such disagreement even between the "progressive" conciliarists and "conservative" conciliarists concerning the proper "interpretation" of the "Second" Vatican Council and its aftermath? Or does this depend upon what one means by "ease and security"?

No, the Catholic Church has never endorsed error in any of her officials documents and we have never seen anything like the apostasies, blasphemies and sacrileges that have characterized the "magisterium" of the conciliar "popes" in the past sixty-four years now.

Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., explained in but one sentence the simple fact those steeped in error cannot have any part in the Catholic Church, meaning that Federico Lombardi's desire to put aside "differences" is of the devil, not of God: 

There is a fatal instinct in error, which leads it to hate the Truth; and the true Church, by its unchangeableness, is a perpetual reproach to them that refuse to be her children. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, commentary on the life of Saint Fidelis of Sigmaringen.)

The true Church, the Catholic Church, cannot countenance falsehood and error.

Yet is that very well-meaning Catholics keep urging others to write “respectful” letters conciliar curial officials to protest this or that latest outrage even though the man who revels in this or that outrage, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, is the man they believe to be the Vicar of Christ on earth is a heretic who takes special delight in promoting one error after another while he denounces those old “fuddy-duddies” who “rigidly” cling a “past” by seeking to “cage” the “holy spirit.” It is never possible to convince the letter writers and originators of petitions to convince them that to oppose a man they believe to be the pope is, to use a phrase found in Dom Prosper Gueranger’s elegy in praise of Pope Saint Clement I, “to oppose God Himself.” A kind of steel curtain that prevents otherwise intelligent people from accepting this truth seems to many to be preferable to admitting the obvious: that the See of Saint Peter has been vacant since the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958, the news of which I remember very well as it occurred during the second month of the 1958-1959 scholastic year at Saint Aloysius School, Great Neck, New York, and prompted special Masses and Rosaries for the repose of the soul of the Holy Father.

As one who was in the “conservative” trenches in the 1970s, 1980s, and the first three years of the 1990s before becoming an indulterer, I know full well of the futility of trying to fight the “bad” “bishops” at a time many of us though (actually, deluded) that we had a “good” “pope” who had a “master plan” of dealing with the bad guys. In other words, I was as pitiable and self-delusional concerning Karol Josef Wojtyla/John Paul II’s governance of what I thought was the Catholic Church as so many people remain about the “master plan” that Donald John Trump was supposed to have about ridding the world of evil cabals.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of Catholics in the United States of America wrote letters to Rome and/or actually visited Vatican dicasteries in the 1980s and 1990s to try to effect the removal of the following no-goodniks:

1. Joseph Bernardin, the late supporter of all things lavender, was transferred from being the conciliar archbishop of Cincinnati, Ohio, to being the conciliar archbishop of Chicago, Illinois by “Saint John Paul II.”

2. Roger Mahony, the disgraced former conciliar "bishop" of Fresno, California, and then the conciliar "archbishop" of Los Angeles, California. (See The Six Hundred Million Dollar Man and His Friends.)

3. Tod Brown, the conciliar "bishop" of Boise, Idaho, and then the conciliar "bishop" of San Diego, California.

4. Sylvester Ryan, the retired conciliar "bishop" of Monterey, California, who had an actual, honest-to-goodness baby-killer serving on his priest-abuse advisory board  (See the news story at Catholic Citizens.)

5. Robert Brom, the former conciliar "bishop" of Duluth, Minnesota, and then the conciliar 'bishop" of San Diego, California, who presided over the San Diego diocese's bankruptcy proceedings caused by the cover-up of clergy abuse cases.

6. Patrick McGrath, the conciliar "bishop" of San Jose, California, who, among his other offenses, denied the historicity of the Gospel accounts of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Passion and Death.

7. George Patrick Ziemann, the late, disgraced former conciliar "bishop" of Santa Rosa, California.

8. Thomas Joseph O'Brien, the late, disgraced former conciliar "bishop" of Phoenix, Arizona.

9. Joseph Keith Symons, the disgraced former conciliar "bishop" of Palm Beach, Florida.

10. Daniel Leo Ryan, the late, disgraced former conciliar "bishop" of Springfield, Illinois, whom Karol Joseph Wojtyla would not remove even after a plethora of witnesses emerged to document his perversity. It took a full six years for the conciliar authorities to admit that the charges were true even though the clerics who investigated him knew all along that he was guilty as charged by Stephen G. Brady, the founder and president of Roman Catholic Faithful, Inc.

Ryan was a product of the homosexual stronghold known as the Diocese of Joliet under “Bishop” Joseph Imesch, himself a product of the epicenter of what Mrs. Randy Engel calls the “Homosexual Collective,” the Archdiocese of Detroit. Ryan consorted with males who trafficked themselves and abused at least two of his presbyters. He engaged in indescribably horrific behavior with them. He told them that they could always go to confession to him if “things went too far,” demonstrating that he had no concept of the horror of sin in general and the particular horror represented by enticing a person into the commission of a Mortal Sin by presuming that God will give them the Actual Grace to have true contrition and firm purpose of amendment for it after the fact of its commission.

Steve Brady was approached by the two presbyters who had been abused by Ryan. These men presented Brady with credible evidence of abuse.

Brady thereupon wrote to Ryan in November of 1996 to demand his resignation lest the charges be made public. Ryan did not respond. The Vatican Nuncio in Washington, D.C., "Archbishop" Agostino Cacciavillan, not only did not respond to an attorney’s letter about the abuse, he betrayed the names of the two abused presbyters to Daniel Leo Ryan himself! (This prompted a courageous layman and ex-Marine, the late Frank Kelly, the head of the no-exceptions Virginia Right to Life, an organization that has no links to the National Not-So-Right-Life Committee, to confront Cacciavillan outside of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Washington, District of Columbia, in November of 1997, as many of us, including Mr. Brady, were praying Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary for the conversion of the conciliar "bishops" who were gathered inside for their semi-annual gathering against the Holy Faith. Mr. Kelly, who takes no prisoners, walked wight up to Cacciavillan and poked his fingers right at his chest, saying, "You belong in jail for what you did to protect Daniel Ryan." Cacciavillan scampered into his car in great fright.

I was approached with the matter shortly after Brady wrote his letter to Ryan, informing the editor of The Wanderer, Mr. Alphonse J. Matt, Jr., about it. Mr. Matt wanted to send the information to the Congregation for the Bishops in the Vatican. I had a classmate of mine from Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary, “”Father James Conley of the Diocese of Wichita, who worked in that congregation. Conley, who is now the conciliar "ordinary" of the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, told me that the congregation was going to do nothing despite the evidence that had been amassed.

Having done what we thought was our due diligence, Steve Brady held a press conference at the Springfield Hilton on February 11, 1997, to reveal his findings. The secular media buried the story. The former communications director for the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, Mrs. Kathleen Sass, who held her job for many years thereafter despite all of the spinning she did (or maybe because of it), denounced Brady for "lying" about Ryan. My own story was published in the February 20, 1997, issue of The Wanderer (see Roman Catholic Faithful Accuses Bishop Ryan of Harassment), and it was shortly thereafter that a true priest, the legendary Father John A. Hardon, S.J., took one of the abused conciliar presbyters to Rome to meet with Dario Castrillon "Cardinal" Hoyos, then the Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, to present the matter to him. The Vatican did not remove Ryan at that time. The presbyter, however, was given protection as Hoyos had him transferred to another diocese to work under Father Hardon.

Making a long and involved story short, more witnesses emerged a year later (see (see Witnesses Emerge in Bishop Ryan Case). Even Francis "Cardinal" George, the conciliar "archbishop of Chicago," admitted to Steve Brady over the telephone that the American “bishops” had known all about Ryan for years. George wanted silence from Brady in exchange for a “relationship” with the “hierarchy.” Steve refused. The Vatican did nothing. Nothing, that is, until the threat of a lawsuit by yet other victims in 1999 caused Ryan to go into an “early retirement.” He continued to function publicly until February of 2003, at which time a “special commission” finally concluded what Steve Brady had asserted from the beginning: Ryan was guilty as charged. (For a 2004 synopsis of the case, please see Seven Years Later, which was one of the first articles published after this site went "live" on February 20, 2004.)

Stephen G. Brady suffered rejection by longtime friends. His efforts to pursue the truth in the case of Daniel Leo Ryan were met with accusations of "calumny" and "detraction" from many. Others said that he was "dividing the church" and "causing scandal" even though it was Daniel Leo Ryan, a supporter of women's "ordination" to the priesthood, was the one causing the scandal and was a mortal threat to the eternal and temporal good of souls in the Diocese of Springfield.

Stephen G. Brady did not act rashly. He was advised behind-the-scenes by several priests, including the late Father Peter Mascari of the Diocese of Springfield, the famed Father Charles Fiore, O.P., also since deceased, and Father Alfred Kunz, who was brutally, ritualistically in Dane County, Wisconsin, on March 4, 1998, at the very time he was assisting Mr. Brady with the Daniel Leo Ryan case. As is well-known, Father Kunz's murder has not been solved to this date.

11. Robert Lynch, the former conciliar "bishop" of Saint Petersburg, Florida, who gave encouragement to Michael Schiavo's efforts to starve and dehydrate his wife, Mrs. Theresa Maria Schindler-Schiavo, and was a huge supporter of the lavender agenda.

12. Joseph Fiorenza, the former conciliar "archbishop" of Galveston, Houston, Texas, a protege of Joseph "Cardinal" Bernardin who was a thorough supporter of the conciliar revolution.

13. Robert Joseph Banks, a former conciliar auxiliary "bishop" in the Archdiocese of Boston, Massachusetts, and then the conciliar "bishop" of Green Bay, Wisconsin.

13. Bernard Law, the late, disgraced former conciliar "archbishop" of Boston, Massachusetts, who was appointed to that post by Wojtyla/John Paul II. Law, who presided over the systematic cover-up and protection of predator priests and presbyters in Boston, was appointed by Wojtyla/John Paul II to be the archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in 2004.

14. Thomas Daily, the late conciliar "bishop" of Palm Beach, Florida, and the former conciliar "bishop" of Brooklyn, New York, who was one of Law's chief enablers in protecting the likes of the notorious Father Paul Shanley.

15. William Murphy, the former conciliar "bishop" of Rockville Centre, New York, who was yet another participant in the great Boston-cover-up.

16. Richard Lennon, the late conciliar "bishop" of Cleveland, Ohio, who was a major supporter of Bernard Law's policies while an auxiliary "bishop" there.

17. John McCormack, the late former conciliar "bishop" of Manchester, New Hampshire, who was an enabler of predator priests and presbyters there as he had been as an auxiliary "bishop" in Boston, Massachusetts.

18. Matthew Clark, the former conciliar "bishop" of Rochester, New York, who said in the 1990s that the Catholic Church would have to find a way to "bless" same-gender "unions."

19. Kenneth Untener, the late conciliar "bishop" of Saginaw, Michigan, who was an enemy of the Catholic Faith.

20. Harry Flynn, the retired "archbishop" of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota, who was ever tolerant of the "rainbow" agenda and brought disgrace upon himself by terming the late Father Paul Marx, O.S.B., the founder of Human Life International, as an "anti-Semite." (See: Disconnects.)

21. The late William Levada, created by Wojtyla/John Paul II as conciliar auxiliary "bishop" of Los Angeles in 1983 before being appointed as the conciliar "archbishop" of Portland, Oregon, in 1986, being transferred to San Francisco, California, in 1995, and then there by Ratzinger/Benedict on May 13, 2005, to be the prefect of the conciliar Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. (See Surely He Jests.)

22. George Niederauer, the late former conciliar "bishop" of Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1995, promoted by Ratzinger/Benedict to be the conciliar "archbishop" of San Francisco, California, in 2005. (At the Very Doorstep of Joseph Ratzinger Himself.)

23. Thomas Ludger Dupre, the late, disgraced retired "bishop" of Springfield, Massachusetts.

24. John Magee, the disgraced conciliar "bishop" of Cloyne, Ireland, and the long-time secretary to Giovanni Montini/Paul VI and Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II.

25. Christoph Schonborn, the conciliar "archbishop" of Vienna, Austria, who has committed one offense against God after another (see Almost Always At Odds With Themselves, Negotiating To Become An Apostate, They Continue to Caricature Themselves, and Meltdown.)

26. Robert Zollitsch, the former conciliar "archbishop" of Freiburg in Breisgau, who, of course denied on Holy Saturday, April 11, 2009, that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ did not die on the wood of the Holy Cross in atonement for our sins.

27. Hans Hermann Groer, the late, disgraced "archbishop" of Vienna, Austria, who was removed after "bishops" and members of the laity complained about his predatory behavior, which he denied until the day he died. (See Austria Cardinal Groer Exiled Over Sex Abuse.) Christoph Schonborn is now saying that the then Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger urged Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II to remove Groer, Schonborn's predecessor, but was stymied for a long time by John Paul II. Just another conciliar voice throwing John Paul II under the bus as the Benedict XVI continued to promote the fiction of his late predecessor's "sanctity" even though no one who protected moral derelicts is possessed of any sense of true sanctity.

28. The late Jean-Louis "Cardinal" Tauran, appointed as a "bishop" by John Paul II in 1990 and elevated to the conciliar colleges of cardinals in 2003. Ratzinger/Benedict appointed Tauran as the president of the "Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue." It was in this capacity that he said the following in 2008:

Interviewer: There was a sense that Islam mustn't monopolise the proceedings?

Tauran: Yes, the people are obsessed by Islam. For example I'm going to India next month and I want to give this message that all religions are equal. Sometimes there are priorities because of particular situations, but we mustn't get the impression there are first class religions and second class religions.(Interview with Terrasanta.net, a Website of the Holy Land Review.) 

29. Walter Kasper, appointed as a "bishop" by John Paul II in 1989 and elevated to the conciliar "college of cardinals" in 2001. Need one say anything more?

30. Bruno Forte, who was recommended by Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger for the conciliar "episcopate" in 2004 despite Forte's having denied the actual fact of Our Lord's Bodily Resurrection on Easter Sunday:

Another example of this alarming situation, which threatens to make the Pope’s disciplinary laxity seem strictly conservative by comparison, is the little-noticed story of how Bruno Forte, a priest of the Archdiocese of Naples, was suddenly made a bishop five months ago.

Forte, who last year was brought to the Vatican to preach a Lenten retreat to an already incapacitated Pope, is rumored to be Cardinal Ratzinger’s replacement as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  How this happened is anybody’s guess.  The rumor has caused a great deal of consternation for one simple reason: Forte is a flaming neo-modernist.  As noted in the Winter 2005 issue of The Latin Mass in a report by its Italian correspondent, Alessandro Zangrando, Forte was a pupil of none other than the infamous Cardinal Walter Kasper.  (In yet another sign of things falling apart at the top, immediately after Kasper’s own elevation to the rank of cardinal he publicly declared to the press that the Old Covenant remains in force and is salvific for the Jews, and that Protestants are under no obligation to convert and become Catholics.) 

Worse still, Zangrando, a respected journalist not given to reckless claims, relates that Forte’s 1994 essay Gesu di Nazaret, storia di Dio, Dio della storia (Jesus of Nazareth, history of God, God of history) reveals Forte as nothing less than “the standard-bearer of theories so radical as to the point of putting in doubt even the historicity of the resurrection of Christ.  The empty tomb, he argues, is a legend tied into the Jewish-Christian ritual performed at the place of Jesus’ burial. It is a myth inherited by the Christians from Jesus’ early disciples. Therefore, the empty tomb, along with other details surrounding the resurrection, is nothing but a ‘proof’ made up by the community. In other words, Forte is trying to change the resurrection of Christ into a myth, into a kind of fairy tale that cannot be proven.”

Forte’s elevation to bishop was rather mysterious. Zangrando notes that Forte’s name did not appear in any list of possible candidates submitted to the Italian Nunciature, and even his ordinary, Cardinal Michele Giordano, Archbishop of Naples, “was reportedly against that appointment.” But, “in an apparent attempt at putting to rest a growing controversy” over Forte’s candidacy, he was personally consecrated a bishop by none other than Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the very man Forte will succeed as head of the CDF, according to the rumors.  Yes, “our only friend in the Vatican” has struck again.  More and more it becomes apparent that this man is perhaps the most industrious ecclesial termite of the post-conciliar epoch, tearing down even as he makes busy with the appearance of building up.  The longer Ratzinger “guards” Catholic doctrine, the more porous the barriers that protect it become.

Indeed, as I have pointed out more than once on these pages, it was Ratzinger who wrote in 1987 (in the second edition of his Principles of Catholic Theology) that the “demolition of bastions” in the Church is “a long-overdue task.”  The Church, he declared, “must relinquish many of the things that have hitherto spelled security for her and that she has taken for granted. She must demolish longstanding bastions and trust solely the shield of faith.” Now it seems that with the bastions all but demolished, even the shield of faith is about to clatter to the ground. 

There is no doubt the Holy Ghost will save the Church from extinction and bring about her restoration. In the end, no other result is possible. 

Before this happens, however, the difference between extinction and non-extinction may come to be far smaller than even traditionalists might have supposed. On the other hand, the very next Pope could be another Saint Pius X, who will finally take arms against our enemies and impose immediate restorative measures we could scarcely have imagined.   Who knows which way it will go?   All we can do is continue our loyal opposition, pray for the advent of a kingly, militant pope, and hope that the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary will soon be upon us. (Christopher A. Ferrara, Ratzinger Personally Consecrates Neo-Modernist Bishop.) 

31. The late Theodore McCarrick, the founding conciliar "bishop" of Metuchen, New Jersey, and later the conciliar "archbishop" of Newark, New Jersey, and Washington, District of Columbia, who indemnified pro-abortion politicians and said openly that men suffering from the affliction of being "attracted" to other men should not be prohibited from studying for the conciliar presbyterate. He was later defrocked while denying any wrongdoing. (See "Uncle Teddy" McCarrick and the Conciliar Cesspool of Corruption,  Another Front in the Conciliar Civil War, part two, Another Front in the Conciliar Civil War, part three, Another Front in the Conciliar Civil War, part four, and Another Front in the Conciliar Civil War, part five.)

32. The late Emerson Moore, an auxiliary "bishop" of the Archdiocese of New York who engaged in rank immorality and died of auto immune deficiency disease.

33. The late Eugene Marino, appointed by John Paul II to be the conciliar "archbishop" of Atlanta in 1988 but had to resign two years later after it was revealed that he had gotten married in a civil ceremony in 1988 to a lay-ministerette with whom he had been keeping company.

34. Emil Wcela, appointed by John Paul II to be a conciliar "bishop" of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, New York, despite officials in the Vatican knowing that Wcela was an open supporter of the impossibility known as "woman's ordination to the priesthood.

35. The Jacques Gaillot, the conciliar "bishop" of Evreux, France, from 1982 to 1995. Gaillot, was removed by Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II after years upon years of protests by Catholics about his words and actions, including his open and unapologetic support for the human pesticide, the French abortion pill, RU-486? (See Farley Clinton's February 2, 1995, article in The Wanderer, Gaillot Stripped of His Bishopric. I had my own commentary on the matter at the time that ran in the same newspaper.) That it took something approaching a revolution from Catholics attached to the conciliar structures in France to effect Gaillot's removal after years of complaints--and even admonitions from Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II himself--speaks volumes about the paralysis caused by the conciliar novelty of episcopal collegiality, one of the triumphs of the Modernist spirit in favor of democracy that had been described so clearly by Pope Saint Pius X in Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907.

36. Sean Brady, the former conciliar "archbishop" of Armagh, Northern Ireland, who presided over the systematic protection of clerical abusers.

37. Michael Sheehan, the former conciliar "archbishop" of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in whose diocese is located one of the institutions most responsible for the phony "rehabilitation" of clerical abusers and who has keep in perfectly good standing the notorious "Father" Richard Rohr and has praised Barack Hussein Obama (see Unfortunate Enough to Be A Baby.)

38. The late Joseph Adamec, the former conciliar "bishop" of Altoona-Johnston, Pennsylvania, who went so far in 2003 as to silence all of his priests and presbyters from criticizing his handling of predators among their ranks.

39. Paul Loverde, the former conciliar "bishop" of Arlington, Virginia, who persecuted whistle blower priest Father James Haley (Bishop Loverde, Where is Fr. James Haley?: Letters to Bishop Loverde.)

40. James T. McHugh, the late conciliar "bishop" of Camden, New Jersey, and--for a brief time--Rockville Centre, New York, who was one of the chief agents of promoting the corruption of the innocence and purity of the young by means of explicit classroom instruction in matters pertaining to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments. (See Mrs. Randy Engel's The McHugh Chronicles.)

41. The late Edward Egan, the former conciliar "archbishop" of New York who, as the conciliar "bishop" of Bridgeport, Connecticut, went so far as to assert that his diocese could be held legally liable for the actions of priests as the latter were "independent contractors" paid by their parishes, not by their dioceses. (See Paragon of Conciliar Orthodoxy.)

42. Rembert G. Weakland, the disgraced former conciliar "archbishop" of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, whose warfare against the Faith that was of international scope should have been stopped long before he was forced to resign in disgrace in 2002. He remains in "good standing" in the conciliar structures. (See Weak In Mind, Weakest Yet In Faith and Memo To Howard Hubbard: Public Scandal Is Never A Private Matter.)

43. Thomas Gumbleton, a retired conciliar auxiliary "bishop" of Detroit, Michigan, an appointee of the late Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI whose work in behalf of moral perversion should have resulted in his suspension decades ago. He remains in "good standing" in the conciliar structures.

44. Sean O'Malley, O.F.M. Cap., the conciliar "archbishop" of Boston, Massachusetts, who has distinguished himself as an ardent defender of the "legacy" of the late United States Senator Edward Moore Kennedy and a sycophantic tool of the ancient enemies of the Catholic Faith by serving the role in early-2009 of a demagogue against Bishop Richard Williamson of the Society of Saint Pius X.

45. William Keeler, the former conciliar "archbishop" of Baltimore, Maryland, who specialized in overseeing relations between the conciliar church and adherents of the Talmud, producing a document in 2002, "Reflections on Covenant and Mission", that had to be revised in 2009 because of its lack of clarity on several doctrinal points.

46. Howard Hubbard, the former conciliar "bishop" of Albany, an appointee of the late Giovanni Montini/Paul VI who has spent the past thirty-three years as a thorough champion of the conciliar religion. Not even an adoption arranged by Catholic Charities in Albany for a "couple" engaged in perversity could prompt Wojtyla/John Paul II to remove him.

47. The late John Raymond McGann, the conciliar "bishop" of Rockville Centre, New York, from June 24, 1976, to January 4, 2000, who presided over a full-bore implementation of the conciliar revolution in my home diocese, going so far as to persecute traditional-leaning pastors and priests and presbyters. Report after report was sent to Rome, some delivered personally to those close to the late Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II. McGann, who protected his own share of clerical abusers (see Swinging Clubs To Protect The Club).

48. The late Daniel Pilarczyk, Bernardin's worthy "successor" as the conciliar "archbishop" of Cincinnati, Ohio, who protected clerical abuses and even had an actual Freemason serving as the archdiocesan psychologist who screened the mental and emotional fitness of candidates who were applying to study for the conciliar presbyterate.

49. Donald Wuerl, the former conciliar "bishop" of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (and how disgraced former "archbishop" of Washington, District of Columbia), who has been one of the chief proponents of explicit classroom instruction in matters pertaining to the Sixth and Ninth Commandments.

50. John Joseph O'Connor, the conciliar "archbishop" of New York, from March 19, 1984, to May 3, 2000, who protected his own share of pederasts in the conciliar clergy and who told the ABC News program Nightline that "God was smiling" on the conversion of a Catholic man to Judaism. (See The Endless Battle Between the False Opposites of Conciliar Revolutionaries.)

Mind you, this is just a partial listing and one that does even mention a non-bishop, Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, the late founder of the Legionaries of Christ whom Wojtyla/John Paul II protected despite having incontrovertible proof of his moral depravity. (See Unimaginable Deceit and Duplicity, Legionaries of Cash and Cover-Up, Remove and Replace: You are Still Left with the Same False Church, and Jorge Mario Bergoglio Makes a Mess of Things, All to Utter and Perverse Delight.)

Like examples could go on interminably if I was not tired enough already of having to think of the theological, moral, and liturgical disaster that the man for whom I once served as a willing cheerleader, Karol Joseph Wojtyla/John Paul II wrought upon the souls of Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

Many of these official "representatives" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have denied the Perpetual Virginity of Our Lady and have denied that she was Assumed body and soul into Heaven.

Many of these official "representatives" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, aping the example set by this sect's false "pontiffs," have participated quite openly in syncretist liturgies and have blasphemed God by participating in inter-religious "prayer" services, some of which involve the outright incorporation of pagan practices into what has purported to be "Catholic" liturgies.

Many of these official "representatives" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have endorsed contraception and abortion and perverse acts in violation of the binding precepts of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments.

Many of these official "representatives" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have worked closely with openly pro-abortion organizations (in the name of "social justice," of course), using a variety of "shell games" to funnel money from "Catholic" Charities and the "Catholic" Campaign for Human Development to fund these organizations that are committed to the pursuit of one abject evil after another.

Many of these official "representatives" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have endorsed the theological and ontological impossibility of "women's ordination."

Many of these official "representatives" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have opposed quite openly the Catholic Church's teaching concerning the admissibility of the imposition of the death penalty for capital crimes following the fulfillment of all of the requirements of due process of law.

Many of these official "representatives" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have encouraged citizens of foreign nations to enter the United States of American illegally.

Many of these official "representatives" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have supervised the integration of formerly Catholic hospitals with secular "health-care systems," looking the other way as babies have been killed by means of surgical abortions and as women have undergone elective sterilizations.

Many of these official "representatives" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have convinced young Catholics attached to their false structures that it does not make any difference what they believe as each "religion" represents a "path" to God.

Many of these official "representatives" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have promoted the false, naturalistic ideologies of socialism, communism, feminism, environmentalism and, among so many others, evolutionism.

Many of these official "representatives" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have promoted indecency of dress and speech. Some have promoted motion pictures that promote various sins, oblivious to the simple fact that sin is what caused Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to suffer unspeakable horrors in His Sacred Humanity and caused His Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart to be pierced through and through with Seven Swords of Sorrow.

Many of these official "representatives" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have denied the existence of Purgatory and Hell, endorsing quite openly the heresy of "universal salvation."

Many of these official "representatives" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have denied--openly and shamelessly--the doctrine of Transubstantiation and the sacerdotal nature of the Mass and the unique nature of the Catholic priesthood, which is different both in degree and in kind from the common priesthood of the faithful that each Catholic has by virtue of his Baptism.

Many of these official "representatives" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have disparaged devotion to the Mother of God, being especially contemptuous of her Most Holy Rosary, and to the saints, relishing with delight in the destruction of their statues and images in formerly Catholic churches now under their insidious control.

Many of these official "representatives" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have, aping this sect's false "pontiffs," reaffirmed Talmudic Judaism, a completely false religion that is loathsome in the sight of God, as a perfectly "valid" means of salvation, discouraging Catholics from seeking the conversion of Jews to the true Faith:

According to Roman Catholic teaching, both the Church and the Jewish people abide in covenant with God. We both therefore have missions before God to undertake in the world. The Church believes that the mission of the Jewish people is not restricted to their historical role as the people of whom Jesus was born "according to the flesh" (Rom 9:5) and from whom the Church’s apostles came. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger recently wrote, "God’s providence … has obviously given Israel a particular mission in this ‘time of the Gentiles.’" However, only the Jewish people themselves can articulate their mission "in the light of their own religious experience."

Nonetheless, the Church does perceive that the Jewish people’s mission ad gentes (to the nations) continues. This is a mission that the Church also pursues in her own way according to her understanding of covenant. The command of the Resurrected Jesus in Matthew 28:19 to make disciples "of all nations" (Greek = ethnē, the cognate of the Hebrew = goyim; i.e., the nations other than Israel) means that the Church must bear witness in the world to the Good News of Christ so as to prepare the world for the fullness of the kingdom of God. However, this evangelizing task no longer includes the wish to absorb the Jewish faith into Christianity and so end the distinctive witness of Jews to God in human history.

Thus, while the Catholic Church regards the saving act of Christ as central to the process of human salvation for all, it also acknowledges that Jews already dwell in a saving covenant with God. The Catholic Church must always evangelize and will always witness to its faith in the presence of God’s kingdom in Jesus Christ to Jews and to all other people. In so doing, the Catholic Church respects fully the principles of religious freedom and freedom of conscience, so that sincere individual converts from any tradition or people, including the Jewish people, will be welcomed and accepted.

However, it now recognizes that Jews are also called by God to prepare the world for God’s kingdom. Their witness to the kingdom, which did not originate with the Church’s experience of Christ crucified and raised, must not be curtailed by seeking the conversion of the Jewish people to Christianity. The distinctive Jewish witness must be sustained if Catholics and Jews are truly to be, as Pope John Paul II has envisioned, "a blessing to one another." This is in accord with the divine promise expressed in the New Testament that Jews are called to "serve God without fear, in holiness and righteousness before God all [their] days" (Luke 1:74-75). (Joint Reflections on Covenant and Mission.)

(This is rank apostasy.)

Some of the conciliar "bishops" have nominated pro-abortion Talmudic "rabbis" for "papal" knighthoods and medals.

Some of the conciliar "bishops" have been feted by Masonic organizations such as B'Nai Brith.

No, it is the "popes" and the "bishops" and the "priests" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism who are not in communion with the Catholic Church as they subscribe to each of the apostasies and blasphemies and errors and outrages wrought by the "Second" Vatican Council and its aftermath.

Almost no one within the conciliar structures is sanctioned by the conciliar authorities unless he actually believes holds to more of the Catholic Faith than they do, especially by opposing sodomy, opposing false ecumenism, opposing administering what is thought to be Holy Communion to those who are divorced and civilly remarried without the fig leaf of a conciliar degree of nullity, and, within the past two years, if they oppose the plandemic’s lockdowns, “social distancing” and the global conspiracy against innocent human beings by the pharmaceutical/deep state/technology/disinformation dictatorship in behalf of the poisons being market in the name “vaccines,” endless mutations of which are being “required” to be counted among the “fully vaccinated” as many untold numbers of human beings continue to be injured seriously or killed.

A Catholic conciliar “bishop” in Puerto Rico is the latest victim of the ever “merciful” and “tolerant” Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s wrath:

A Catholic bishop in Puerto Rico described his removal from office by Pope Francis on Wednesday as “totally unjust.”

Bishop Daniel Fernández Torres, who has led the Diocese of Arecibo since 2010, said he had been asked to resign because he “had not been obedient to the pope nor had I been in sufficient communion with my brother bishops of Puerto Rico.”

The Holy See press office announced on March 9 that the pope had relieved the 57-year-old bishop of the pastoral care of his diocese. The Vatican did not give a reason for the pope’s decision.

Pope Francis appointed Bishop Álvaro Corrada del Río, S.J., bishop emeritus of Mayagüez, as apostolic administrator of the diocese in the north of the island of Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States.

In a March 9 declaration, published on the diocesan website, Fernández Torres strongly objected to his removal.

He said: “I deeply regret that in the Church where mercy is so much preached, in practice some lack a minimum sense of justice.”

“No process has been made against me, nor have I been formally accused of anything and simply one day the apostolic delegate [the pope’s representative in Puerto Rico] verbally communicated to me that Rome was asking me to resign.” (Catholic bishop in Puerto Rico says his removal by Pope Francis is ‘totally unjust’.)

Interjection Number One:

What “Bishop” Daniel Fernandez Torres, refuses to accept is that, while there are canonical processes for the removal of bishops and pastors in the Catholic Church, a true pope. Which he believes Jorge Mario Bergoglio be, is not bound by those procedures as he is Holy Mother’s supreme governor and legislator. He can exercise his plenipotentiary powers at any time even if appears unjust and unfair in the human order of things.

Bergoglio’s quick action to remove Daniel Fernandez Torres over the matter of vaccine mandates should serve as a correlative proof of the fact that he does not possess the Catholic as no true pope would demand that the consciences of Catholics are bound by the diktats of anti-life statists who open support the depopulation programs of the “global reset of humanity” to promote “sustainable development goals” while accustoming the masses to being but mere vassals of the civil state whose movements, thoughts, words, or actions are restricted/and/or monitored.

Back to the Catholic News Agency report about “Bishop” Daniel Fernandez Torres:

“A successor of the apostles is now being replaced without even undertaking what would be a due canonical process to remove a parish priest.”

He went on: “I was informed that I had committed no crime but that I supposedly ‘had not been obedient to the pope nor had I been in sufficient communion with my brother bishops of Puerto Rico.’”

“It was suggested to me that if I resigned from the diocese I would remain at the service of the Church in case at some time I was needed in some other position; an offer that in fact proves my innocence.”

“However, I did not resign because I did not want to become an accomplice of a totally unjust action and that even now I am reluctant to think that it could happen in our Church.”

The imminent removal of Fernández Torres was reported on March 8 by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. (Catholic bishop in Puerto Rico says his removal by Pope Francis is ‘totally unjust’.)

Interjection Number Two:

“Bishop” Daniel Fernandez Torres’s “reluctance” to think that something like what happened to him could actually happen demonstrates that he absolutely clueless, perhaps even willfully so, about the fact that things far more offensive to the Invisible Head of the Catholic Church, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, have become commonplace in what he, Fernandez Torres, refuses to see as Holy Mother Church’s counterfeit ape, the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

As noted many times before on this site, the "popes" and the "bishops" and the "priests" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism believe in the new ecclesiology that has been condemned repeatedly by the authority of the Catholic Church (see The New Ecclesiology: Documentation).

They have made consistent and unrepentant warfare against the nature of dogmatic truth, which is nothing other than warfare against the very immutable nature of God Himself and has been and continues to be nothing other than the recrudescence of the philosophically absurd and dogmatically condemned Modernist precept of dogmatic evolutionism.

The "popes" and the "bishops" and the "priests" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism believe in the false ecumenism of conciliarism that includes Joseph Ratzinger's rejection of the "ecumenism of the return" that is in direct contradiction to the constant teaching of the Catholic Church, reiterated so clearly and forcefully by Pope Pius IX, Iam Vos Omnes, September 13, 1868, Pope Leo XIII, Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae, June 20, 1894, and Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928, and Jorge Margo Bergoglio’s flat-out denial, stated on numerous occasions, that the Catholic Church seeks the conversion of non-Catholics or that Holy Mother Church has any “monopoly” on truth.

The "popes" and many of the "bishops" and the "priests" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have either given "blessings" with or been "blessed" by the "ministers" of non-Catholic religions (for just one such example, see Argentine Cardinal kneels to receive Protestant 'blessing'; other photographs indicative of a revolution against the Catholic Faith may be viewed at Church Revolution in Pictures, which contains some photographs that should not be seen by the young, a telling commentary on the shameless nature of the false religion of conciliarism).

The "popes" and the "bishops" and the "priests" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism believe in a concept of religious liberty that was condemned by Pope Pius VI, Brief Quod aliquantum, March 10, 1791, and by Pope Pius VII in Post Tam Diuturnas, April 29, 1814, Pope Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos, August 15, 1832, Pope Pius IX in Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864, and, among others, Pope Leo XIII in Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885, and Libertas, June 20, 1888.

The "popes" and the "bishops" and the "priests" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism participate in "liturgies" that are abominable in the sight of God and that have done grave damage to souls by accustoming them to profanation in the context of what purports to be the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and by denying them Sanctifying Grace, and they have stated repeatedly the Mosaic Covenant was not superseded by the New and Eternal Covenant that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ instituted on Maundy Thursday at the Last Sunday and ratified by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday.

In the current circumstance, of course, it should be clear to "Bishop" Daniel Fernandez Torres that "collegiallity" and "synodality" are the most important qualifications for being in "good standing" under Jorge Mario Bergoglio as those who smack of "triumphalism" in their supposed episcopal roles will smacked down and booted out in short order.

There is utterly no foundation for “Bishop” Daniel Fernandez Torres to be surprised at what happened to him. I mean, look at what happened to the Franciscan Friars and Sisters of the Immaculta within a year  of Jorge's accession to the presidential chair of apostasy, and he dealt a death to Summorum Pontificum eight months ago on the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, although the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter was given a "papal" reprieve with various conditions. "Pope Francis" has got himself a "to do" list with which he is proceeding very methodically to overthrow the few remaining bastions of Catholicism that remain in his false religious sect and to establish new bastions that have been condemned by our true popes as their inspirations and fortifications are of preternatual origins. 

We return now to the news report the now former “bishop” of Arecibo, Puerto Rico:

The news agency said that the bishop had clashed with other bishops in Puerto Rico, a Caribbean island with six dioceses.

ACI Prensa explained that Fernández Torres had initially resisted sending his seminarians to the new Interdiocesan Seminary of Puerto Rico, approved by the Vatican in March 2020.

The bishop of Arecibo had also supported conscientious objection to compulsory vaccination against COVID-19 in a statement published on Aug. 17, 2021.

He made the intervention after Pedro Pierluisi, the governor of Puerto Rico, issued an executive order that all government and healthcare workers, both in public and private institutions, must be vaccinated, as well as workers in the hotel industry.

In his letter, the bishop said that “it is legitimate for a faithful Catholic to have doubts about the safety and efficacy of a vaccine given that what the pharmaceutical companies or drug regulatory agencies say is in no way a dogma of faith.”

“And that safety and efficacy are relevant and necessary data for moral judgment,” he explained.

ACI Prensa reported that Fernández Torres refused to sign a joint statement issued on Aug. 24 by the Puerto Rican bishops which said that “there is a duty to be vaccinated and that we do not see how a conscientious objection can be invoked from Catholic morality.”

The news agency said that Archbishop Ghaleb Moussa Abdalla Bader, the apostolic delegate to Puerto Rico, reportedly requested the resignation of Fernández Torres, who refused, citing reasons of conscience.

It said that the bishop was summoned to the Vatican but did not make the trip due to the pandemic.

Fernández Torres was born in Chicago, Illinois, on April 27, 1964. He was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Arecibo in 1995, at the age of 30.

In 2007, Benedict XVI named him an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of San Juan de Puerto Rico. Three years later, he was appointed bishop of Arecibo.

ACI Prensa said that Fernández Torres was an outspoken critic of gender ideology, describing new legislation in February 2021 as “religious persecution” and a violation of parental rights.

The news agency said that the case of Fernández Torres recalled that of the Paraguayan Bishop Rogelio Livieres Plano, who was removed from office by Pope Francis on Sept. 25, 2014.

Livieres Plano had overseen a thriving seminary in his Diocese Ciudad del Este. He was dismissed after an apostolic visit amid accusations of a lack of collegiality.

The bishop was also criticized for his handling of the case of a priest who had served as vicar general until shortly before the visitation. The priest had faced allegations of sexual impropriety, which he denied.

Livieres Plano said that he had refused to sign a resignation letter “on his own initiative, thus wanting to testify to the end of the truth and the spiritual freedom that a Pastor should have.”

He decried what he said was an attempt to impose “ideological uniformity” on Paraguay’s bishops using “the euphemism of ‘collegiality.’”

The bishop, who was ordained a priest of Opus Dei, died on Aug. 14, 2015, due to a liver condition. (Catholic bishop in Puerto Rico says his removal by Pope Francis is ‘totally unjust’.)

Vaccine mandates in the name of “collegiality” are now part of the “irreducible minima” of being considered as “Catholic” in “good standing” withing the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, and while Rogelio Livieres Plano may have had a “thriving diocese,” to compare his situation with that of Daniel Fernandez Torres as Livieres Plano was permitted the notorious clerical abuser and cult leader Father Carlos Urrutigoity to serve as his diocesan vocations director while he, Livieres Plano persisted in an arrogant denial of all the documented facts about what Urrutigoity had become part of the public record because of various lawsuits and investigation:

I am hereby providing you with links to the legal files that provide complete documentation concerning the indisputably predatory homosexual behavior of Father Carlos Urrutigoity, who as of yet is still being defended by the Opus Dei "bishop" of the Diocese of Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, Rogelio Livieres, who says that the predator priest came recommended to him by none other than Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger just days before the latter's big promotion to become the so-called "pope" of Tradition, the great Hegelian "restorer" of Modernism's "evolution of doctrine" that he re-labeled as the "hermeneutic of continuity," "Pope Benedict XVI." (See Still No Excuses For Those Who Defend the Society of Saint John. See also A Special Report on the Society of Saint John (2000) and No Excuses For Those Who Indemnify the Society of Saint John.

The legal files were provided to me by Mr. James Bendell, the courageous attorney who worked so long and so valiantly with the heroic founder of The Roman Catholic Faithful, Inc., Mr. Stephen G. Brady, in the effort to expose and shame the predatory priest named "Bishop" Daniel Leo Ryan of Springfield, Illinois (see Sick From Head to Toe and Seven Years Later, which was written fully two years before I came to recognize the true state of the Church Militant in this time of apostasy and betrayal), and who represented one client who had been the victim of the predatory homosexual behavior of Fathers Carlos Urrutigoity and Eric Ensey and another client.

Here, therefore, are the legal filings, the first and second of which contain graphic material that should not be read by those who seek to avoid such horrific details:

1. The largest file contains Mr. Bendell's interrogation of one of the chief enablers and protectors of the Society of Saint John, "Bishop" James Clifford Timlin of the Diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and other documents to support Mr. Bendell's opposition to motion made by the attorney for the Diocese of Scranton to dismiss the lawsuit. Other supporting documents are contained in this large file: SJ Motion.

2. The second document is the letter that the Superior-General of the Society of Saint John, Bishop Bernard Fellay, sent to the aforementioned conciliar "bishop" of Scranton, James Clifford Timlin, to warn him abou Father Carlos Urrutigoity's predatory ways: Bishop Fellay Letter to James Timlin.

3. The third document is the letter that the Vatican's nuncio to Paraguary, "Archbishop" Orlando Antonini, sent to Mr. James Bendell in 2006 to assure im that no trace of the Society of Saint John remained in the Diocese of Ciudad del Este: Nuncio Letter.

No one who is intellectually honest can review these documents without coming to realize that the case against Father Carlos Urritigoity is open and shut. Those who seek to defend this man have no excuse before God. None.

"Bishop" Rogelio Livieres is in abject denial about the guilt of Father Carlos Urrutigoity. The evidence is plain and it is overwhelming. Father Carlos Urrutigoity is a known homosexual predator who was diagnosed with various disorders when the Diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania, was forced to send him for a psychological evaluation at the Southdown Institute in Toronto, Ontario, Canada:

At some point Bishop Timlin had been informed that SSJ priests were sleeping in the same beds with boys. Instead of immediately removing these priests, he simply told them to stop the practice. Of course, once the sexual molestation claim was made against Fr. Ensey and Fr. Urrutigoity, the two priests who molested the St. Gregory Academy student, Bishop Timlin really had no choice but to send the priests for a psychological evaluation. He sent them to the Southdown Institute in Toronto, known for treating priests with mental illness, addiction and other problems. Concerning the reports from Southdown, it states in the Minutes of the diocesan Independent Review Board dated March 21, 2002, that Rev. Urrutigoity’s problems were classified under an “umbrella of personality disorders, principally antisocial and narcissistic.” As for Rev. Ensey, the Minutes state that his “sexual attraction is toward adolescent boys, a stage that he appears to be locked into.” The Minutes recommended that both priests be removed from active ministry. (From Mr. James Bendell's Pray for the Children.)

Second, "Bishop" Rogelio Livieres thus belongs to a long and distinguished cast of officials in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, including the supposed "watchdog" of abusive clergymen when he was the prefect of the conciliar Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger, and Father Urrutigoity's chief enabler, retired Scanton "Bishop" James Clifford Timlin, in seeking to deny or to minimize the gravity of conduct that had been exposed by the then Father Andres Morello of the Society of Saint Pius X in the late-1980s in Argentina despite the support given to the predator by the then Father Alfonso de Galaretta, who has never admitted publicly that he was wrong and that Bishop Morello was correct. This is all covered in The Early Years of Father Carlos Urrutigoity’s homosexual career.

Third, presuming that "Bishop" Livieres is indeed correct about his claim that Ratzinger recommended Urrutigoity to him, Ratzinger is shown to be as obvious to the danger of even the show of homosexual predilections and/or effeminate behavior on the part of a priest or presbyter as is Jorge Mario Bergolio himself. The documentation about Urrutigoity was voluminous and very public by 2005. Mrs. Randy Engel wrote Exploiting Traditionalist Orders: The Society of St. John in 2002 before incorporating its graphic text, ableit revised and updated, into The Rite of Sodomy, which was published in 2006 by New Engel Publishing. Carlos Urrutigoity roamed about in Rome after the Diocese of Scranton removed him from priestly ministry there, seeking out sympathetic ears to plead his case so that he could find a new home for his morally corrupt band of profligate spendthrifts, the Society of Saint John.

Fourth, Urrutigoity found a sympathetic patron in "Cardinal" Ratzinger because the latter had been working with the Ecclesia Dei Commission, whose offices are located in the same building, Uffizio 11 outside of the Bernini columns in Rome, as those of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, although the commission's offices are in a different wing of the building on the north side of the archway that serves as the entrance to the Uffizio 11 complex. It had long been a goal of "Monsignor" Arthur Calkins, who was a senior official in the Ecclesia Dei Commission at the time (he had taken over duties that were once excercised by "Father" John Zuhlsdorf during the early 1990s, which is where I met him in May of 1993), to use the Society of Saint John as a laboratory for Ratzinger's "reform of the reform. “Monsignor” Arthur Calkins has laid out his own view on the liturgy very clearly, and they are certainly sympathetic to the goals outlined to me by Father Urrutigoity in November of 1999:

One of the problems thus far, at least in this writer’s humble opinion, is that too often traditionalists have stated their case in “black and white,” “life or death” terms, and have not seen themselves as part of a greater movement in favour of “a return to mystery, to adoration, to the sacred,” and to the common patrimony of the Roman Catholic Church.

Now, what do I mean by that?  I wouldn’t want you to have to read some of the things I am obliged to read.  For instance, someone petitions his bishop for the traditional Latin Mass and in support of his argument says “we want the ‘true’ Mass, not the ‘new’ Mass.”  This is very unfortunate language that really undermines the faith because we must recognise that the sacrifice of Jesus is the sacrifice of Jesus in every rite that the Church has officially authorised.  We may have our preferences, which is all well and good, but let us not assault and attack.  What has happened in extremist hard-line literature is that the new Mass, almost always described with all the abuses imaginable, is demonised, so that the only way to preserve the faith is with the old Mass.  This is not a healthy Catholic attitude and unfortunately it is present in all too many traditionalist circles. (See Msgr. Calkins on the Mass, the Council and Traditionalists.)

Father Urrutigoity was thus proceeding in the late-1990s with full support of the Ecclesia Dei Commission in Rome, something that was clear from that Easter Vigil Mass in 1999. The views held by Father Urruitgoity and “Monsignor” Calkins are almost identical to those expressed by the supposed “pope of tradition,” Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, and is for this reason that Ratzinger was predisposed to lend his weighty assistance to Urrutigoity, whose charisma gained him entry in the highest echelons in the Vatican, where he was surely crying "perseuction" and "fabrication" by his "enemies." There's a lot of that even in some fully traditional circles, sad to say. When caught bad or inappropriate behavior, so many simply blame their "enemies" and claim  that the fault rests with those who exposed and/or sought to correct their abusive behavior.

Fifth, apart from being in the thrall of the multilingual Carlos Urrutigoity, Joseph "Cardinal" Ratzinger, who protected Urrutigoity and indemnfied him as "Pope" Benedict XVI even though numerous people sent documentation to his office concerning facts that he ben sent when he was the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is shown, as noted above, to be as cavalier about predatory homosexual behavior as "Pope" Francis, who will receive a bit of attention in a few moments, himself.

To claim as Ratzinger did that Urrutigoity was, in effect, "good to go" to Opus Dei's Rogelio Livieres because he was not accused of perverse immoral conduct with a minor child is to ignore the entire contex of Urrutigoity's perverse behavior, which included his habit of sleeping with minor children. Anyone who can make light of such completely aberrant and morally repugnant behavior might as well claim that the late, bizarre drug addict named Michael Jackson would have made a fit candidate for Holy Orders. There can be no true of homosexual tendencies or behavior in any man in the priesthood or in any man aspiring thereto. Moreover, Ratzinger conviently ignored the fact that Urrutigoity's trusted aide, "Father" Eric Ensey, did engage in immoral conduct, with a minor that was nonconsensual at the time when he was attending Saint Gregory's Academy in Elmhurst, Pennsylvania, and repeated that nonconsensual behavior when the man turned eighteen years of age soon thereafter. Urrutigoity enabled Ensey, supported him, claimed that he was innocent and being victimized by "enemies." Ensey was defocked from the conciliar presbyterate in 2013.

Attorney James Bendell, who represented the young man in question in a civil lawsuit, wrote to me to remind me that his client had at no time, whether as a minor or as an adult, gave any kind of consent whatsoever to the actions committed upon him by Urrutigoity and Ensey, and that there were three or four other such young men who had been coercively molested by Urrutigoity in the same way. Thus it is that the shared belief of Joseph Ratzinger and Rogelio Livieres that Urrutigoity's behavior had been with a "consenting" adult, not that it would have made this predator any less fit to exercise his priestly ministry, no less to be put back in contact with others he could subject to his manipulative grooming and subsequent perverse abuse, is without any foundation. These two may not believe this now in spite all of the evidence that exists. They will certainly discover it for sure at the moment of their Particular Judgment. (From Still No Excuses For Those Who Defend The Society of Saint John.)

The cases of Daniel Fernandez Torres and Rogelio Livieres Plano are totally unlike except to note Jorge Mario Bergoglio took action at Livieres Plano not because he had Carlos Urruitogity in his employ as his diocesan vicar general but because of his commitment to the spread of the since abrogated Summorum Pontificum that angered many of his presbyters in the Diocese of Ciudad del Este, Paraguay. In both cases, however, Bergoglio acted decisively to promote his Jacobin/Bolshevik conciliar agenda.

Moreover, it should be noted that Jorge Mario Bergoglio went  out of his way to reinstate Father Miguel d’Escoto, who was the foreign minister of the murderous Sandinista government of President Daniel Ortega, and, among other things, open supported pro-aborts when he was the head of the United Nations General Assembly (see UN Gives Awards to Promoters of Abortion and Homosexual Agenda and my own Jorge and Miguel: As Red As They Get.)

There is simply no basis for Daniel Fernandez Torres to be the least be surprised at what happened to him. Rather, he should see his removal as the opportunity being sent to him by Our Lady to recognize a false church for what it is and to flee from it and its abomination of desolation with alacrity. There are certainly others (“Bishops” Joseph Strickland, Thomas Tobin, Raymond Paprocki) who might feel Jorge’s wrath in the near future. However, what happened to “Bishop” Daniel Fernandez Torres shows that a man whom one accepts as a true pope has the authority to act as he wants in the governance of what is thought to be the Catholic Church. What Mr. Fernandez Torres has to accept is that Mr. Bergoglio is neither a priest nor a bishop and that the religious sect he heads has not been, is not now nor can ever be the Catholic Church.

One of the intentions I pray for every day is for the conversion of all those within the conciliar structures who so that they may somehow be brought be of service in the sanctification of the salvation of souls after they seek out courses of instruction about the Catholic Faith that they no hold (each is corrupted by one or more of the conciliar defections from the Holy Faith, perhaps none more so that a serene acceptance of the conciliar revolution’s inversion of the ends proper to marriage and of “natural family planning”) and then are deemed worthy to be of true priestly ordination by a true bishop in the Catholic underground during this time of apostasy and betrayal.

For any of our prayers to bear fruit, however, we must beg Our Lady that we follow the path of purity as outlined for us by Saint Paul the Apostle in the lesson read at Holy Mass yesterday, the Third Sunday of Lent, and that we cooperate the graces her Divine Son won for us during His Passion and Death of the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday and that come down into our hearts souls through her loving hands as the Mediatrix of All Graces so that the houses of our own souls may be swept clean of any devils, who, by our frequent reception of the Sacrament of Penance (if at all available in these times) will keep them out as we pray her Most Holy Rosary with fervor and love every day of our lives.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saint Benedict, pray for us.

Saint Scholastica, pray for us.

Saint Maurus, pray for us.

Saint Placidus, pray for us.

Saint Augustine of Cantebury, pray for us.

Pope Saint Gregory the Great, pray for us.

Pope Saint Gregory VII, pray for us.

Saint Hildegard, pray for us.

Saint Gertrude the Great, pray for us.

Saint Bede the Venerable, pray for us.

Saint Mechtilde, pray for us.

Saint Frances of Rome, pray for us.

Saint Romuald, pray for us.

Saint Henry the Emperor, pray for us.

Saint Boniface, pray for us.

Saint Anselm, pray for us.

Appendix

Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., On the Third Sunday of Lent

Yesterday, Sunday, March 20, 2022, was the Third Sunday of Lent. Dom Prosper Gueranger’s reflection on it can be found below:

The holy Church gave us, as the subject of our meditation for the First Sunday of Lent, the Temptation which our Lord Jesus Christ deigned to suffer in the Desert. Her object was to enlighten us how to conquer them. Today, she wishes to complete her instruction on the power and stratagems of our invisible enemies; and for this, she reads to us a passage from the Gospel of St. Luke. During Lent, the Christian ought to repair the past, and provide for the future; but he can neither understand how it was he fell, nor defend himself against a relapse, unless he have correct ideas as to the nature of the dangers which have hitherto proved fatal, and are again threatening him. Hence, the ancient Liturgists would have us consider it as a proof of the maternal watchfulness of the Church that she should have again proposed such a subject to us. As we shall find, it is the basis of all today’s instructions.

Assuredly, we should be the blindest and most unhappy of men if—surrounded as we are by enemies who unceasingly seek to destroy us, and are so superior to us both in power and knowledge—we were seldom or never to think of the existence of these wicked spirits. And yet, such is really the case with innumerable Christians nowadays; for truths are diminished from among the children of men. So common, indeed, is this heedlessness and forgetfulness of a truth which the Holy Scriptures put before us in almost every page, that it is no rare thing to meet with persons who ridicule the idea of Devils being permitted to be on this earth of ours! They call it a prejudice, a popular superstition, of the Middle Ages! Of course they deny that it is a dogma of Faith. When they read the History of the Church or the Lives of the Saints, they have their own way of explaining whatever is there related on this subject. To hear them talk, one would suppose that they look on Satan as a mere abstract idea, to be taken as the personification of evil.

When they would account for the origin of their own or others’ sins, they explain all by the evil inclination of man’s heart, and by the bad use we make of our free will. They never think of what we are taught by Christian doctrine; namely, that we are also instigated to sin by a wicked being whose power is as great as is the hatred he bears us. And yet, they know, they believe, with a firm faith, that Satan conversed with our First Parents, and persuaded them to commit sin, and showed himself to them under the form of a serpent. They believe that this same Satan dared to tempt the Incarnate Son of God, and that he carried him through the air and set him first upon a pinnacle of the Temple, and then upon a very high mountain. Again: they read in the Gospel, and they believe, that one of the Possessed, who were delivered by our Savior, was tormented by a whole legion of devils who, upon being driven out of the man, went by Jesus’ permission, into a herd of swine, and the whole herd ran violently into the see of Genesareth, and perished in the waters. These and many other such like facts are believed by the persons of whom we speak, with all the earnestness of faith; yet, notwithstanding, they treat as a figure of speech, or a fiction, all they hear or read about the existence, the actions or the craft of these wicked spirits. Are such people Christians, or have they lost their senses? One would scarcely have expected that this species of incredulity could have found its way into an age like this, when sacrilegious consultations of the devil have been, we might almost say, unfashionable. Means which were used in the days of paganism have been resorted to for such consultations; and they who employed them seemed to forget or ignore that they were committing what God, in the Old Law, punished with death, and which for many centuries was considered by all Christian nations as a capital crime.

But if there be one Season of the Year more than another in which the Faithful ought to reflect upon what is taught us by both Faith and experience, as to the existence and workings of the wicked spirits—it is undoubtedly this of Lent, when it is our duty to consider what have been the causes of our past sins, what are the spiritual dangers we have to fear for the future, and what means we should have recourse to for preventing a relapse. Let us, then, hearken to the holy Gospel. Firstly, we are told that the devil had possessed a man, and that the effect produced by this possession was dumbness. Our Savior cast out the devil, and immediately the dumb man spoke. So that, the being possessed by the devil is not only a fact which testifies to God’s impenetrable justice; it is one which may produce physical effects upon them that are thus tried or punished. The casting out the devil restores the use of speech to him that had been possessed. We say nothing about the obstinate malice of Jesus’ enemies, who would have it that his power over the devils came from his being in league with the prince of devils;—all we would now do is to show that the wicked spirits are sometimes permitted to have power over the body, and to refute, by this passage from the Gospel, the rationalism of certain Christians. Let these learn, then, that the power of our spiritual enemies is an awful reality; and let them take heed not to lay themselves open to their worst attacks by persisting in the disdainful haughtiness of their Reason.

Ever since the promulgation of the Gospel, the power of Satan over the human body has been restricted by the virtue of the Cross, at least in Christian countries: but this power resumes its sway as often as the faith and the practice of Christian piety lose their influence. And here we have the origin of all those diabolical practices which, under certain scientific names, are attempted first in secret, and then are countenanced by being assisted at by well-meaning Christians. Were it not that God and his Church intervene, such practices as these would subvert society. Christians! remember your Baptismal vow; you have renounced Satan: take care, then, that by a culpable ignorance you are not dragged into apostasy. It is not a phantom that you renounced at the Font; he is a real and formidable being who, as our Lord tells us, was a Murderer from the beginning.

But if we ought to dread the power he may be permitted to have over our bodies; if we ought to shun all intercourse with him and take no share in practices over which he presides, and which are the worship he would have men give him—we ought, also, to fear the influence he is ever striving to exercise over our souls. See what God’s grace has to do in order to drive him from your soul! During this holy Season, the Church is putting within your reach those grand means of victory—Fasting, Prayer, and Almsdeeds. The sweets of peace will soon be yours, and once more you will become God’s temple, for both soul and body will have regained their purity. But be not deceived; your enemy is not slain. He is irritated; penance has driven him from you, but he has sworn to return. Therefore, fear a relapse into mortal sin; and in order to nourish within you this wholesome fear, meditate upon the concluding part of our Gospel.

Our Savior tells us that when the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through places without water. There he writhes under his humiliation; it has added to the tortures of the hell he carries everywhere with him, and to which he fain would give some alleviation, by destroying souls that have been redeemed by Christ. We read in the Old Testament that sometimes, when the devils have been conquered, they have been forced to flee into some far-off wilderness: for example, the holy Archangel Raphael took the devil that had killed Sara’s husbands, and bound him in the desert of Upper Egypt. But the enemy of mankind never despairs of regaining his prey. His hatred is as active now as it was at the very beginning of the world, and he says: I will return into my house, whence I came out. Nor will he come alone. He is determined to conquer; and therefore, he will, if he think it needed, take with him seven other spirits, even more wicked than himself. What a terrible assault is this that is being prepared for the pour soul unless she be on the watch, and unless the peace which God has granted her be one that is well armed for war! Alas! with many souls, the very contrary is the case; and our Savior describes the situation in which the devil finds them on his return: they are swept and garnished, and that is all! No precautions, no defense, no arms. One would suppose that they were waiting to give the enemy admission. Then Satan, to make his repossession sure, comes with a seven-fold force. The attack is made;—but there is no resistance, and straightways the wicked spirits entering in, dwell there; so that, the last state becometh worse than the first; for before, there was but one enemy, and now there are many.

In order that we may understand the full force of the warning conveyed to us by the Church in this Gospel, we must keep before us the great reality that this is the acceptable Time. In every part of the world, there are conversions being wrought; millions are being reconciled with God; divine Mercy is lavish of pardon to all that seek it. But will all persevere? They that are now being delivered from the power of Satan—will they all be free from his yoke when next year’s Lent comes around? A sad experience tells the Church that she may not hope so grand a result. Many will return to their sins, and that too before many weeks are over. And if the Justice of God overtake them in that state—what an awful thing it is to say it, yet it is true;—some, perhaps many, of these sinners will be eternally lost! Let us, then, be on our guard against a relapse; and in order that we may ensure our Perseverance, without which it would have been to little purpose to have been for a few days in God’s grace—let us watch, and pray; let us keep ourselves under arms; let us ever remember that our whole life is to be a warfare. Our soldier-like attitude will disconcert the enemy, and he will try to gain victory elsewhere.

The Third Sunday of Lent is called Oculi from the first word of the Introit. In the primitive Church, it was called Scrutiny Sunday, because it was on this day that they began to examine the Catechumens, who were to be admitted to Baptism on Easter night. All the Faithful were invited to assemble in the Church, in order that they might bear testimony to the good life and morals of the candidates. At Rome, these examinations, which were called the Scrutinies, were made on seven different occasions, on account of the great number of aspirants to Baptism; but the principal Scrutiny was that held on the Wednesday of the Fourth Week. We will speak of it later on.

The Roman Sacramentary of St. Galasius gives us the form in which the Faithful were convoked to these assemblies. It is as follows. “Dearly beloved Brethren: you know that the day of Scrutiny, when our elect are to receive the holy instruction, is at hand. We invite you, therefore, to be zealous and to assemble on N., (here, the day was mentioned), at the hour of Sext; that so we may be able, by the divine aid, to achieve, without error, the heavenly mystery, whereby is opened the gate of the kingdom of heaven, and the devil is excluded with all his pomps.” The invitation was repeated, if needed, on each of the following Sundays. The Scrutiny of this Sunday ended in the admission of a certain number of candidates: their names were written down and put on the Diptychs of the Altar, that they might be mentioned in the Canon of the Mass. The same also was done with the names of their Sponsors.

[Dom Prosper Gueranger then discoursed on the meaning of yesterday’s Lesson, Gradual, and Gospel passage]:

The Apostle, speaking to the Faithful of Ephesus, reminds them how they once were darkness; but now, he says, ye are Light in the Lord. What joy for our Catechumens to think that the same change is to be their happy lot! Up to this time, they have spent their lives in all the abominations of paganism; and now they have the pledge of a holy life, for they have been received as candidates for Baptism. Hitherto, they have been serving those false gods, whose worship was the encouragement to vice; and now, they hear the Church exhorting her children to be followers of God, that is to say, to imitate Infinite Holiness. Grace—that divine element which is to enable even them to be perfect as their Heavenly Father is perfect—is about to be bestowed upon them. But they will have to fight hard in order to maintain so elevated a position; and of their old enemies two, in particular, will strive to re-enslave them: impurity and avarice. The Apostle would not have these vices so much as named among them from this time forward; for they, he says, that commit such sins are Idolaters, and by your vocation to Baptism you have abandoned all your idols.

Such are the instructions given by the Church to her future children. Let us apply them to ourselves, for they are also intended for us. We were sanctified almost as soon as we came into the world; have we been faithful to our Baptism? We, heretofore, were Light; how comes it that we are now darkness? The beautiful likeness to our Heavenly Father, which was once upon us, is perhaps quite gone! But thanks to Divine Mercy, we may recover it. Let us do so, by again renouncing Satan and his idols. Let our repentance and penance restore within us that Light whose fruit consists in all goodness, justice and truth.

The Tract is taken from the 122nd Psalm, which is a canticle of confidence and humility. The sincere avowal of our misery always draws down the mercy of God upon us.

As soon as Jesus had cast out the devil, the man recovered his speech, for the possession had made him dumb. It is an image of what happens to a sinner who will not, or dare not, confess his sin. If he confessed it, and asked pardon, he would be delivered from the tyranny which now oppresses him. Alas! how many there are who are kept back by a dumb devil from making the Confession that would save them! The holy Season of Lent is advancing; these days of grace are passing away; let us profit by them; and if we ourselves be in the state of grace, let us offer up our earnest prayers for sinners, that they may speak, that is, may accuse themselves in Confession, and obtain pardon.

Let us also listen, with holy fear, to what our Savior tells us with regard to our invisible enemies. They are so powerful and crafty that our resistance would be useless, unless we had God on our side, and his holy Angels, who watch over us and join us in the great combat. It was to these unclean and hateful spirits of hell that we delivered ourselves when we sinned: we preferred their tyrannical sway to the sweet and light yoke of our compassionate Redeemer. Now we are set free, or are hoping to be so; let us thank our Divine Liberator; but let us take care not to re-admit our enemies. Our Savior warns us of our danger. They will return to the attack; they will endeavor to force their entrance into our soul, after it has been sanctified by the Lamb of the Passover. If we be watchful and faithful, they will be confounded, and leave us: but if we be tepid and careless, if we lose our appreciation of the grace we have received, and forget our obligations to Him who has saved us, our defeat is inevitable; and as our Lord says, our last state is to be worse than the first.

Would we avoid such a misfortune? Let us meditate upon those other words of our Lord, in today’s Gospel: He that is not with me is against me. What makes us fall back into the power of Satan, and forget our duty to our God, is that we do not frankly declare ourselves for Jesus, when occasions require us to do so. We try to be on both sides, we have recourse to subterfuge, we temporize: this takes away our energy; God no longer gives us the abundant graces we received when we were loyal and and generous; our relapse is all but certain. Therefore, let us be boldly and unmistakeably with Christ. He that is a soldier of Jesus should be proud of his title! (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year.)