In Thy sight are all they that afflict Me; My heart hath expected reproach and misery. And I looked for one that would grieve together with Me, but there was none: and for one that would comfort Me, and I found none.

Psalm 68: 21-22

I find it stunning how many emails I receive from protestants excoriating me for mentioning Our Lord’s Passion, or for any feelings of wanting to make reparation for my sins and the sins of the world, or for wanting to comfort Our Lord in the Garden, in whatever hamfisted way possible, because “it is already done” and “nowhere in the Bible does it say anyone has to suffer for anyone else’s sins.”

I find these emails to be the saddest of all. I can understand how there can still be people emailing me asking if they should get out of their 401k or IRA. I can understand how people can walk around with zero understanding of the financial system, and even of simple arithmetic. It is terrifying, but I can understand it.

What I cannot understand is people who proudly proclaim their deep, intense “personal relationship with Jesus Christ” having absolutely no interest in or compassion for Him personally. I tell you over and over again that the Eucharist, that is the consecrated bread and wine is ACTUALLY PHYSICALLY JESUS CHRIST, and there is ZERO INTEREST. None. Zip. I tell you He is here physically and you can not only go be in His physical presence, but you can also physically take Him into your body if you enter into the Church.

Not interested.

Because, you know, when you are in a deep, intense “personal relationship” with someone, you have NO INTEREST in seeing them, being close to them, or being physically intimate with them.

And beyond that, when you are in a deep, intense “personal relationship” with someone, when they are suffering, the only thing that matters to you is whether or not you caused the suffering, and if so, are you legally dispensed from the liability.

I’m not a sodomite. I didn’t actually kill any of those babies with my own hands. It is His job to bear that guilt. He chose to go into the Garden and take it. He chose to sob until His capillaries burst. This is a purely legal question. If I didn’t do it, or if He legally contracted to suffer for my sins, then it is all on Him, and I’m certainly not going to dive back into any suffering with Him … I mean, that would be missing the point, right? I’m saved. He took it, and so, LET HIM HAVE IT.

It seems to me that the only “deep, personal relationship” in that is with one’s self.

Our Lord is a Person. A Divine Person. He is also the Person Who engineered and created the universe. Time is one of His engineered constructs. For Him, all of time is one, big NOW. Thus, everything that ever has happened or ever will happen is perpetually present and happening to Him. He is perpetually in the Manger in Bethlehem. He is perpetually in the Garden in agony. He is perpetually on the Cross. He is perpetually resurrected. He is perpetually ascended to the Father.

We meet Him upon the Cross at every Mass, in which He folds time so that we can all be physically at the foot of the Cross. Why does He do this? Because He looks for one that would grieve together with Him. He is comforted by the compassion of the very people who put Him on the Cross, and He provides this ability for temporal transcendence so that EVERYONE who loves Him can be with Him at Calvary, not just the few people who were there 1980 years ago. He does this so that Peter and the rest of the Apostles who fled could be there. He does this so that the little peasant woman in 9th century France could be with Him. He does this so that we can be with Him.

On Holy Thursday, He is especially comforted by those who truly, truly love Him, not as a piece of contract law or legalistic device, but as He is, a Person, and He affords us the chance to be with Him in the Garden; to approach Him as He lies prostrate in the dirt, sobbing, shaking, and already bleeding from the inside out, and ask to stay with Him and suffer with Him.

You do realize that is what the word “compassion” means, right? “Com” means “with”. “Passion” means “suffer”. To have compassion is to desire to “suffer with” another person.

It seems to me that if you really have a “personal relationship” with Jesus Christ, then the thought of NOT going to Him in the Garden, not just on Holy Thursday, but every single day of your life, is intolerable, regardless of who caused His agony, or whether or not it is “legally covered”. If you are indifferent to the suffering of another, please stop lying to yourself and the world by claiming that you are engaged in a “deep, personal relationship”.

“… And I looked for one that would grieve together with Me … I sought for one that would comfort Me …”

So, one weekday morning last year I got up with the chickens and went to the 8:30am Low Tridentine Mass uptown. It started out normally enough. In processed Father with one server. Father looked a bit flat-footed, but then this particular priest is pretty old, so one doesn’t expect a Fred Astaire-like gait from the quasi-elderly. It wasn’t until the consecrations of the Host and Chalice that it became clear that something was terribly, physically wrong with Father. At each genuflection he had to slightly twist his body and almost lay his upper body on the altar in order to genuflect, bearing much of his weight on his elbows both on the way down and on the way back up. It was obvious with each genuflection that Father was in excruciating pain. I sat in my little spot in the back of the church, at once horrified by the obvious physical distress I was witnessing, but also deeply moved by the courageous perseverance and uncompromising love for Our Lord that Father, seen by only the half-dozen or so people in the nave, demonstrated. Father wasn’t putting on a show, because there was essentially no one there to see it. If he had been saying Mass alone in his room, he would have done exactly the same; of that I have no doubt. Why? Because he loved Our Lord, and to not genuflect to Him would be simply unthinkable. Our Lord, whipped until He was skinned and in shock, thrice bent His knee to us, falling three times beneath His Cross, to demonstrate His complete love for creatures that are totally unworthy of His love. How much more, then, should we bend our knees to Him who is our Creator, our King and our Savior?

It turned out that the priest had gone on a hike up in the Colorado mountains the day before and taken a terrible spill on the way down, tearing open his knee. Thankfully he was in a large group of men, and was thus able to be carried down, and transported to the emergency room in Vail where he had his knee sutured back together. The knee eventually healed, and all’s well that ends well, but for the life of me I have no idea why such an old man was frolicking on such a difficult mountain trail.

I have lately also been reminded of the last years of John Paull II’s pontificate. In the last years, suffering from Parkinson’s, JPII became more and more frail, requiring more and more physical assistance. I can remember seeing Masses in which he was being essentially held up by one man on each side. Most especially, his genuflections after the consecration of the host and then the chalice were particularly moving because toward the end, he looked like a rag doll being lowered and raised by the two men at his sides. This, of course, points directly to the Fifth Station of the Cross, wherein Simon of Cyrene helps Our Lord carry His Cross. How beautiful to see the Vicar of Christ so clearly mirroring Our Lord in His perfect humility, and accepting help in order to bring to consummation and completion the Sacrifice of Calvary, made present in time upon the altar. As I have been told on a near-daily basis from every vector for the last several weeks, failing to ask for and accept help when it is needed is a pure function of pride, not humility. Indeed. I am very prideful.

There is a very important concept in the Church, and in life that says: Lex orandi, lex credendi. In Latin this means “the law of prayer is the law of belief”, or “how we pray is how we believe.” The Mass is a prayer – it is THE prayer par excellence. HOW we pray, and most particularly how we pray the Mass, is of unquantifiable importance. In the two examples above, we see that HOW we pray not only matters, but becomes meritorious and a massive conduit for grace, with the potential to turn instances of personal suffering into evangelical witnesses that could not be matched with any 50,000 word book or sermon. The world is collapsing and falling to pieces because of the destruction of the Mass and the lack of reverence toward Our Lord, most especially in the Mass and in the Blessed Sacrament. The two examples above demonstrated intense love for Our Lord in His Passion, and in His Resurrection by reverencing Him in His Real Presence in the Eucharist. The only hope for the world is MORE reverence in the Mass and towards the Eucharist, not less. The world will never believe that Our Lord is physically present upon the altar and in the Eucharist, in other words, the world will never believe the Gospel, if how we pray does not clearly reflect that supreme reality.

One of the greatest men in the history of the Church said it best:

“Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.”

Thus spake St. Francis of Assisi.

St. Francis of Assisi, pray for us.

1. The final collapse of western civilization will be pegged to March 19, 2013 when all notions of personal property rights were officially extinguished.

2. On the same day the Vicar of Jesus Christ declined to reverence the Consecrated Host in any way at his inaugural Mass. No bow, no genuflection. Nothing. Nah. No big deal. Nothing to worry about here. I mean, it is just objective reality. 2:00:35 is the timestamp you’ll want to watch.

3. And, of course, Barack Obama is on the ground in Israel.

If I had a band, I’d name it “Spectral Doughnut”. But I don’t, so anyone who wants the name can have it.

Did you know that the official, fancy-pants mathematical term for a doughnut is “torus”? Well, not for a doughnut as a foodstuff, but for the shape of a doughnut: a tube bent around such that the two endpoints connect.

Conceptually, the torus is everywhere in life. Extremes on either side of a human spectrum have the nasty habit of being the same position. The most obvious example of this is in the political sphere, and while I’m not much of a Glenn Beck fan, Beck did explain this a few years ago. The far left is all about totalitarian control by a cadre of oligarchs. There really isn’t any such thing as a true dictatorship, because one man cannot physically force an entire government or people to do his will. He will always have a cadre of enablers and henchmen around him, and if he loses the support of that cadre of henchmen, they will kill him. Thus even the most seemingly solitary dictator is really just a frontman for an oligarchy. Dictatorial oligarchies use brute force to impose their will and have no respect for the Rule of Law. They consider themselves to be the law. If they want it, they take it, and if you don’t like that, they kill you. On the left, the most brutal thug with the worst case of psychopathy wins.

The far right is the same thing. The far right is anarchy, which means no government. This sounds good on the surface, especially when you’re face with the truly satanic government we have now, until you realize that also means NO RULE OF LAW. Every man for himself. In this environment, the most brutal thug with the worst case of psychopathy wins.

While the philosophical paths may differ, the ends are exactly the same. No matter which arm of the doughnut you favor, if you move away from logic, reason and truth, proceeding out of which is charity in the true sense of the word, meaning love of neighbor, not just throwing “free stuff” at the nebulous conceptual mob of “the people”, or as with anarchy a total indifference toward neighbor, you are going to end up with exactly the same end: an elite, minuscule, ruling class with a massive, brutally oppressed underclass, and lots and lots of dead bodies. In both the far left and far right, to quote Obama’s Manufacturing czar Ron Bloom quoting Mao: All political power comes from the barrel of a gun.

That is only partially true. All political power in a godless regime, either far right or far left, comes from the barrel of a gun. In a Godly monarchy, the power comes from God Himself. The same could possibly be said of an early Godly republic, but history proves that republics never last long.

Economically, exactly the same idea holds true. On the far left is a Marxist command economy, and on the far right is unrestrained capitalism. Pope Benedict made a remark earlier this year about the evils of “unrestrained capitalism” and the press instantly declared that Benedict had rejected capitalism and embraced socialsm. Nonsense. If Benedict rejected capitalism and embraced socialism, then according to that false logic I rejected capitalism and embraced socialism when I shut down my brokerage. Again, nonsense. I rejected exactly what Benedict spoke about: UNRESTRAINED capitalism, which is lawlessness and theft.

Socialism and unrestrained capitalism are basically the same thing: the two arms of the torus touch. Marxist-socialist-communist systems forcibly steal the property of the underclass and deliver it into the insatiably greedy hands of the minuscule oligarch class. Unrestrained capitalism does EXACTLY the same thing. A minuscule cadre of what are today called banksters, but used to be called robber barons, forcibly confiscate, in simple terms STEAL, the property of the underclass and hoard it for themselves. It is the same thing. This is why these banksters, who one would at first blush think of as capitalists, are always found in bed with Marxist politicians. Marxism and unrestrained capitalism are essentially the same thing: theft and looting of the underclasses by a cadre of super-rich oligarchs, with zero rule of law, only the brutal rule of men from the barrel of a gun.

This has become so clear today because the banksters and Marxist politicians now routinely swap jobs. Jon Corzine went from Goldman Sachs to the United States Senate and the New Jersey statehouse back out into MF Global. Hank Paulsen went from Goldman Sachs to heading the U.S. Treasury Department. Almost all politicians after leaving office either by being voted out or retiring (if they ever do), usually go straight onto corporate boards. For the politicians that never retire, they place their family members in corporate positions.

Bottom line: beware of ANYONE who is constantly pushing one of these political or economic extremes, because both move AWAY FROM GOD, and ultimately meet up in the same place: hell. When far leftists are beating the drum of “the poor” and “the people”, that means there is about to be a massive, and utterly dehumanizing confiscation of wealth, which will end up in the hands of the oligarchs, and the poor will get poorer, thus “necessitating” more dehumanizing confiscations † in the name of the poor. And that is when the dead bodies REALLY start to pile up. Run away from that evil at full speed. And when capitalism becomes unrestrained and there is no Rule of Law, and all that matters is who you know and what connections you have, and the only way to “succeed” is to be a thieving thug psychopath, then run away at full speed. That’s what I did.

And now, I am going to go have a doughnut because it will be a purely intellectual exercise, and thus will have no calories.

‘… for the Administration.’

Thus spoken on CNBC this day.

A couple of points. First, there STILL is confusion about these confiscations, dating back to the MF Global theft. People are still trying to say that the money that was/is confiscated, both from the MF Global customers and the Cypriot bank accounts is somehow “investment” capital.

No, no, no, no, no.

If you deposit money in a custodial account, you are NOT investing in the brokerage firm or in the bank. The MF Global customers were not investors in MF Global or sharing in any way in MF Global’s proprietary trading profits. The people of Cyprus are not investors in their banks. The people of Cyprus who deposited money in the bank were not signing on to a share in an uber-leveraged scheme involving repos and credit default swaps on Greek sovereign paper.

THEY WERE PEOPLE WHO SIMPLY DEPOSITED THEIR MONEY, THEIR PROPERTY IN CURRENCY FORM, THE FUNGIBLE PROXY FOR THEIR LABOR AND CREATIVE CAPACITY WHICH THEY HAD ACCUMULATED, INTO A SACROSANCT, INSURED, CUSTODIAL DEMAND DEPOSIT AND/OR TIME DEPOSIT ACCOUNT.

The MF Global accounts were the same – they were fully-backed demand deposit accounts that were used to margin the account holder’s futures and options positions. They were the sole, private property of the account holder and MF Global had ZERO ownership interest in that customer money.

Do you know why people used to keep fairly large balances in brokerage accounts like MF Global? Because before MF Global, brokerage accounts were guaranteed 100% by the exchange. No maximums. If a firm failed, the purpose and role of the exchange was to backstop and guarantee the firm with zero liquidity interruption. And, remembering that on the day MF Global imploded and the customer funds were swept and wired to JP Morgan, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange had an emergency slush fund of over EIGHT BILLION DOLLARS ready to go, the fact that the customers were not made INSTANTLY whole by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange is totally nefarious and criminal regardless of the circumstances.

Now the total integral failure of the brokerage paradigm has occurred in the retail banking paradigm. All deposits in the EU *were* insured up to 100,000 Euro, just like the farcical FDIC insurance. Now everyone knows that it is all total cow poop, just like the guarantees on brokerage accounts has been proved multiple times to be total cow poop.

Oh, and the oligarchs are trying to call this a “tax”. Um, no. Taxes are passed by legislatures. This is Christine Legarde and some German bureaucrats arbitrarily, forcibly confiscating private bank accounts. Any “law” passed ex post facto in Cyprus will merely be a show trying to make it appear that this is not the arbitrary tyranny that it is.

Finally, I don’t care how much Russian money laundering is going on in Cyprus, and yes, I know it is huge. This is totally beside the point. Just because criminal money laundering is happening through Cypriot banks doesn’t mean that anyone has the right to confiscate the money of innocent Cypriots. The whole Russian money laundering excuse is a total red herring. Look, the nation with the largest absolute quantity of money laundering is the United States of America. Think HSBC. Think Wachovia. Think Washington Mutual. Think Bank of America. Does that mean that every bank account in the entire country can be levied – and not just in the banks with the money laundering but EVERY ACCOUNT IN EVERY BANK IN THE NATION? Of course not.

Bottom line: I shut down my brokerage firm precisely because I knew that there was no longer any rule of law and that customer money was totally indefensible. Now the same thing has happened in the retail banking sector and Obama regime cronies are openly declaring on national television that across-the-board private property confiscations are being regarded as “opening up enormous possibilities.”

DO NOT sit around and wait for your money, be it in retirement accounts, stock accounts, money market accounts or even in simple bank accounts or CDs, to be stolen. There is probably going to be a small reaction lag as the low-information populaces of the Southern European countries (Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal) are slow on the uptake of what has happened, but it won’t last forever. Once Guido in Naples gets his head around this, the Eurozone will be O.V.E.R. And the the US banks carrying HUNDREDS OF TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS in leveraged European sovereign debt over-the-counter derivatives will implode into a black hole-esque singularity at the speed that information can cross the Atlantic Ocean, which AIN’T VERY DARN LONG, kids.

**If you haven’t seen it already, I have an 8-part, 2.5 hour YouTube presentation recorded just recently in November 2012, explaining exactly these topics on YouTube. Click on the link that says “YouTube” on the left to go to my YouTube Channel homepage. Part 1 of the econ presentation should be at the top of the list.

† Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL. †

I’m going back-to-back with King St. Ferdinand III. I post this pic because of the look on his face. The look says it all. I also found this edifying little tidbit:

Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison.

Cyprus is MF Global on a national, retail banking scale. Corzine absolutely blazed this trail. The particulars are almost exactly the same. Both MF Global/Corzine and Cyprus were failing entities, both took massive, uber-leveraged risks on European sovereign debt, both swept sacrosanct customer money when the house of cards finally collapsed under the weight of its own math.

The indefensible zeroes and ones were instantly swept from the computer servers and customers were locked-out of their accounts.

Interestingly, both were goaded on and enabled by the same people. Corzine was a crony of the Obama regime, which is operationally a Chicago-based phenomenon, as are the regulators of the futures industry, along with the CME group itself.

Cyprus was goaded, overseen, and then “harvested” by the International Monetary Fund, which is chaired by Christine Legarde, who is a Chicago player, and who actually was a partner at Baker & McKenzie before being placed at the IMF by the Obama regime and bankster oligarchy. Cyprus was Christine Legarde’s play, and Legarde is in the Chicago oligarch circle.

This will happen here. It already has with MF Global, Cyprus is testing the national, retail banking level, and then it will happen here. They might go straight to bank holidays here, as Warren Pollock has been talking about for over 18 months now, or they may do a levy confiscation like this on retirement accounts.

If you have any money exposed to the financial system, you’re just stupid. That’s it. Bottom line.

From 2011, Pope Francis, then Cardinal Bergoglio, celebrating a “youth Mass” complete with puppets. This is just about as bad as it gets, folks.

The consecrations are at the 5:30 and 6:15 marks. No genuflection. In fact not a single person there on the altar, such as it is, genuflects, much less kneels, except the young server in the front with the incense, who is on his knees. All of the rest of the concelebrating priests remain standing throughout, and of course, the two kid “cantors” just stand there between their performance opportunities.

I GUESS THEY MUST ALL BE CRIPPLED OLD MEN, TOO, HUH?

This is the state of the Church in Buenos Aires, and all of Argentina, as I have been told repeatedly by Argentinians who have emailed me, both laity and clergy. Banality, insipidity, sacrilege. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Calvary made present, is treated as a bad joke.

And now, a quote from Cardinal Hummes of Brazil, who is one of Pope Francis’ closest friends and colleagues, as evidenced by the fact that Hummes was standing beside Pope Francis on the balcony on Wednesday night:

Q: In what sense is reform necessary?

Cardinal Hummes: Not just of the Curia, but many other things: our way of celebrating (“fazer”, lit. “making”, “doing”) Mass, of doing evangelization, this new evangelization needs new methods. The pope spoke in the meeting with the cardinals of new methods, we need to find new methods.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on March 17, ARSH 2013 by Ann Barnhardt.

Yes, it is every bit as bad as it sounds, and worse. Word is that the initial plan was for a 40% (!!!!) levy confiscation of Cypriot bank accounts. They settled for a MERE 6.75% and 9.9% dual-layered compromise.

Yeah, you all need to do what I have been doing for the last several months and live within spitting distance of being overdrawn in your bank accounts. In other words, keep the BARE MINIMUM in the bank and feed your account just enough to cover the bills. As soon as money comes in, get it the heck out of there.

Looks like the IRS may prove to be the least of my worries with regards to levying bank accounts!

This has the potential to spark bank runs in other Southern European nations MERELY BECAUSE OF THE FACT THAT IT ACTUALLY HAS HAPPENED. Pray the Greeks, Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese are all watching talent shows or soccer and don’t notice. But if it does, if you have watched my eight-part economic presentation on YouTube, then you understand that we will blow sky-high as the big banks and their tens of trillions of dollars in repos and reverse repos and credit default swaps, many-to-most of which are written on European sovereign debt, blow.

In case you have been either under a rock or passed out drunk since yesterday:

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on March 16, ARSH 2013 by Ann Barnhardt.

Here is the full video of Pope Francis’ first Mass in the Sistine Chapel.

The consecration of the Host happens at 51:47. The consecration of the Chalice happens at 52:32.

I cannot believe I am about to type these words.

The Pope DID NOT GENUFLECT after either consecration. He did a weird bow thing, but didn’t feel the need to bend his knee to God Almighty, physically present in his hands upon the altar.

HE. DID. NOT. GENUFLECT.

This is absolutely stunning. And unprecedented.

Oh yeah, we’re in deep, deep trouble.

But hey, all of you guys who are sending me emails whining about how I’m not nice, or something, go ahead and explain this one. He is perfectly physically sound. He FREELY CHOOSES to not reverence Our Lord in the Eucharist upon the altar.

Oh, and he also didn’t genuflect to Our Lord in the Tabernacle when he went to Santa Maria Maggiore on Thursday morning, either. Um, how can a man truly love Our Lady if he doesn’t first show even the slightest respect to her Son? Someone please explain that one to me.

Hey! I have an idea! Let’s do a Pope watch. First one to see the Pope genuflect to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, and not to a Superfun Rockband church pastor, wins! In the mean time, everyone should pray for Pope Francis and that he learns to show Our Lord the tiniest bit of respect and GENUFLECT to Him after He comes down onto the altar, and whenever he approaches or crosses the plane of a Tabernacle in which Our Lord is physically present. I think that would be a great prayer intention for one and all.

I never occurred to me that my desire to do penance in reparation to Our Lord for the sacrileges of the world would include the consecration rubrics of THE POPE.

Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison.

UPDATE:

Thanks to the reader who suggested this. This is Pope Benedict’s last public Mass on Ash Wednesday, February 13, 2013. Note that Pope Benedict, frail to the point of citing his frailty as a reason for his abdication, fully genuflects to the knee, as every priest MUST do as a non-negotiable rubric of celebrating the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

And for anyone arguing that it is simply too difficult for anyone over the age of twenty-four to genuflect, may I remind you that the rubrics call for both hands to be flat on the altar, which lends a great deal of physical support to the priest, and for there to be servers on each side who can assist with the genuflections by holding the elbows of the priest. That is one of the reasons the servers are there – to physically assist the priest if needed.

The genuflection after the consecration of the Host is at 1:19:33. The genuflection after the consecration of the Chalice is at 1:20:21.