There is much ground to cover here. I shall try to keep this from devolving into a non-linear stream of consciousness.
What if I gave you a map, but the orientation was off by 90 degrees? North was west, east was north, etc. There would be no way you could find your way UNTIL YOU CORRECTED THE ORIENTATION. You cannot find your way on a map, or through life, unless your orientation, your base premises upon which you move through time and space, are TRUE.
I continue to get emails and also to see in comment threads on other websites that people – faithful people – are losing their faith because of Bergoglio. I received one email from a woman who declared that Bergoglio proved that the entire notion of the Magisterium of The Church was a fiction – not just within the past three years, not just since Vatican II, but for the entire 2000 years of The Church. This is what holding the FALSE PREMISE that Bergoglio is the pope yields.
Folks, this Bergoglio stuff and the situation with The Church is very, very easy to understand and is in no way soul-crushing or faith-killing IF one simply acknowledges what is now a moral certainty – Bergoglio is an antipope. Ratzinger’s resignation was made in SUBSTANTIAL ERROR. The question of coercion, while interesting and certainly worthy of exploration, is with regards to the validity of the Ratzingerian resignation, moot. The question of whether or not Ratzinger believes Bergoglio is the pope is moot. Ratzinger’s mind is not the arbiter of reality. Ratzinger believes his substantial error to be true – doesn’t everyone believe their errors to be true in realtime as they are making them? Have you ever sat down and said consciously to yourself, “I know that my position/belief is false, but I consciously disregard my knowledge of said falsehood/error, and now believe that that which I know to be false is, in fact, true.” No. We lie to ourselves, and we believe our lies. We come to erroneous conclusions, but we believe that our conclusions are correct. Ratzinger has convinced himself that he could bifurcate the papacy. This is SUBSTANTIAL ERROR. He is wrong.
Now, to the question that I see tying so many people in knots: Does it matter who the pope is?
The answer is YES. It absolutely matters. You’re not crazy. You’re not dumb. You’re not a bad Catholic or a bad person for not just thinking that it matters, but that it matters tremendously, and wanting to discuss it. People who are saying that it doesn’t matter are, very simply, wrong.
The Truth matters.
Objective reality matters.
For many of us who are converts, the Papacy is commonly the last hurdle to clear before fully acknowledging that The Church, is in fact the One. True. Church. For me it came from the old timer that taught me the cattle business. One evening, while he was holding forth on feedlot management concepts, specifically on the human resource management side of things, he said very simply, “Look, SOMEONE has GOT to be in charge.” Of course. We all know this. In any large organization, there has to be a person with whom the buck stops, and ultimate responsibility resides. There has to be one person who can, if need be, make final, binding decisions. Absent this, there will be chaos and eventual implosion. For Christ to establish His Church Militant, that is, His Church on Earth, with no one in charge, no one to make binding decisions when need be, is simply unthinkable – impossible even. Further, we see from scripture that He not only created such an office, but imbued it with supernatural protection. Of course He did. Anything less would not make sense. We aren’t talking about a feedyard. We are talking about The Body and Bride of Christ, established by Christ, which is God’s gift to mankind through which His Truth and Grace is communicated. The paradigm is of Divine origin, and therefore is perfectly conceived and established.
When I see trad Catholics, utterly desperate to deny that Bergoglio is an antipope, saying that “it doesn’t matter”, I shake my head.
Let me be very, very blunt here. People who up until a matter of months ago would defend the institution of the papacy as an utterly integral component of the Visible Church Militant (which it is), and are now preaching that the papacy is not important, and the identity of the Pope is not important, are, it seems to me, doing this because they are terrified of losing income – be it from a formal, paying job or from donations – or afraid of losing social status, political, or career connections. In short, they are terrified of losing HUMAN RESPECT in some form.
Converts, especially, are looking at this situation and seeing this total about-face, taking the See of Peter from a defining and non-negotiable, deal-breaking component of Catholicism (which it is), to being declared “irrelevant” and the identity of the Pope “unknowable” IN ORDER TO MAINTAIN STATUS, INCOME, AND SOCIAL CONNECTIONS and are being scandalized right back out the door.
This has to stop.
If the papacy itself does not matter, then The Church does not matter.
If The Church does not matter, then Christ does not matter.
If Christ does not matter, then Christ is not God.
If Christ is not God, then life is hopeless and meaningless, and all that matters is maximizing immediate personal sensual gratification – by any means necessary.
Again, I cannot emphasize with enough vehemence the utter criticality of arguing from a true premise. The truth is objective, external and KNOWABLE – most especially with regards to The Church, because The Church is VISIBLE. Where Peter is, there is The Church. Who Peter is, and who Peter is NOT, is therefore not only important, but critically important. Just as Ratzinger’s flippancy in attempting to abandon his RESPONSIBILITY – the excuses about continuing to wear the papal white because “there were no black cassocks available”, and perhaps even worse the blaming of his abandonment of his duties on “jet lag” from traveling to World Youth Day, a neo-pagan festival that should be permanently suspended and forgotten anyway – is not only scandalous, but insulting. So too is the flippant argument that the papacy doesn’t matter – all to avoid taking a position that “the world” will not like.
It is precisely because I love and respect the See of Peter that I refuse to shrug at its usurpation, or to call a man that I am morally certain is an antipope, Peter. It is NOT papolatry to NOT claim indifference to whom the pope is or is not. I believe that the one and only currently reigning Pope, Pope Benedict XVI Ratzinger, is now, because of his catastrophic actions, one of the worst, if not the very worst pope in the history of The Church. But he is still the Pope, and visibly so.
The Satanic Endgame: SCHISM
What satan is trying to do here is to drive as many people out of the One True Church as possible. He has set the chessboard masterfully, and has multiple attack angles.
FIRST: Antipope Bergoglio is going to throw the entire Novus Ordo wing of The Church into schism sooner rather than later. Amoris Laetitia is, at its core, all about one thing: DESECRATION OF THE EUCHARIST. We all know by now that Bergoglio told a group of Argentinian clergy IN WRITING that desecration of the Eucharist by admitting to Holy Communion unrepentant adulterers and fornicators was the only correct interpretation of the document. A document which, remember, has zero meaning or force because Bergoglio is an antipope and thus has zero authority. Again, back to the whole true premise/false premise thing. Next, Antipope Bergoglio will open Holy Communion to Lutherans, which will almost immediately become a winking mandate to give Holy Communion to absolutely everyone – including non-Christians. At this point, I think it will be safe to say that Bergoglio, on behalf of satan, will have fully schismed and will have set up a completely new, seperate universalist, “one world religion”, with himself at its head.
Satan wants every single human being now inside the Catholic Church to follow Bergoglio into this schism.
Which brings us to the SSPX
On the other side of the spectrum, we have traditionalism, people who will NOT follow Bergoglio into his NewFrancisOneWorldChurch. Satan has the chessboard set for them, too. The SSPX is currently parlaying and negotiating with Antipope Bergoglio.
Stop there for a moment: SSPXers, do you see the problem here? You are negotiating your status WITH AN ANTIPOPE. How can this possibly yield good fruit for you, The Church or anyone else? Again, we’re back to the essential nature of the TRUE PREMISE. These negotiations are built upon the false premise that you are negotiating in good faith with the Vicar of Christ. Please do not delude yourself into believing that you are negotiating with +Pozzo and Ecclesia Dei separate and apart from Bergoglio. This is Bergoglio’s trap. It is Bergoglio that will double cross you, no matter how precise and air-tight your written agreement with Ecclesia Dei is. These men are evil and without shame or honor. Written agreements mean NOTHING to them. Written agreements are a joke to them, a tool to be used on men that they consider to be “rubes”. IF you enter into an agreement with Antipope Bergoglio, he will renege on it immediately and come down on you just as he did with the FFI’s, and now the contemplative communities. If you don’t enter into an agreement with Antipope Bergoglio, he will unilaterally declare you part of his NewFrancisOneWorldChurch and then come down on you like a ton of bricks.
WHY? Very simply, satan, who is behind all of this, wants all of the traditionalists to SCHISM THEMSELVES.
Bishop Fellay knows that if he capitulates to Antipope Bergoglio that a massive number of his priests and faithful WILL LEAVE THE SSPX AND GO TO SEDEVACANTIST SECTS THAT ARE ALREADY IN SCHISM.
If Bishop Fellay ceases negotiations with Antipope Bergoglio, Bergoglio will unilaterally declare the SSPX to be “in”, and will demand that the SSPX capitulate to his demands. When the SSPX refuses, Antipope Bergoglio will then declare the SSPX to be in schism. And here is the nuance of the satanic chess strategy: it’s a bluff. Don’t you see? Bergoglio IS NOT THE POPE. His declarations have the same force as mine. Bergoglio can’t force you to do anything, nor can he declare you to be in schism for not capitulating to his heresies and blasphemies. Satan is trying to TRICK THE SSPX INTO BELIEVING THAT THEY ARE IN SCHISM, WHEN, IN FACT, THEY ARE NOT.
Once again, all of this depends on operating from a TRUE PREMISE, namely that Bergoglio is an antipope, and that Ratzinger, in spite of his spectacular error and failings, is Peter. And if it is any consolation to both the SSPX and to those of you out there in general reading this, Rome contacts have told me that Bergoglio is now openly discussed as probably being an antipope within the Curia, but they are all so terrified of him due to their careerist mentalities, that they all agree that there is “nothing we can do” and that “we just have to wait for him to die.”
And now for what I think the path forward for the SSPX should be – and I know full well that I am going to lose almost everyone who is still reading this, but it makes no difference.
The SSPX should cease all negotiations with Bergoglio, publicly state that it is a moral certainty that Bergoglio is not the pope, and publicly declare allegiance to the one and only living Vicar of Christ, Pope Benedict XVI Ratzinger.
Ratzinger will never do anything – for good or ill – to the SSPX, because he refuses to exercise his responsibility as Pope. Further, this will make clear that the SSPX will recognize NO actions taken against it by Bergoglio, AND that the SSPX remains exactly as it is, inside The Church, faithful to the Holy See. And then the SSPX will truly become before this is all over, I strongly suspect, a lifeboat.
And referencing what I stated above about the Roman Curia now discussing Bergoglio as a likely antipope, but feeling helpless – perhaps a bold statement by the SSPX that there is now a moral certainty that Bergoglio is an antipope would be enough of an icebreaker to allow others within the Curia, and perhaps even the College of Cardinals to discuss it openly as well.
But they key to this is the private and public insistence upon operating from a true premise – and frankly, shouldn’t it be so in everything we do, both big and small? It is not lost on me that the leap of faith that Our Lord is asking us to take is to declare loyalty to the probable worst pope in the history of The Church – Pope Benedict XVI Ratzinger.
If I were in charge, which thank God I’m not, that’s what I would do. As the person ultimately in charge of myself, and who will answer for my life at my Particular Judgment, that is what I have and will continue to do.
I hope this helps.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us.
