A dip into the ol’ mailbag:

1.  From a Spanish translator.  “The Secret of Lío”

Dear Ann,

Ever since Pope Bergoglio made his famous exhortation to the Catholic youth to “Vaya lío” I’ve been dissatisfied with the way we’ve tried to translate this expression into English. Almost every time the expression is quoted, people offer an attempt to convey what was meant, while obviously not really being sure. Often they’ll give a number of options, like Fr. John Zulhsdorf: “Original Spanish: lío, which is really “mess, chaos, havoc”; Italian trans.: chiasso; French: bruit … “noise”? “bruit”? No. Perhaps in an extended sense, “noise”. Italian “chiasso” is closer.”

I was trained as a translator, and I know what it feels like to have to “settle” for a translation that isn’t really good. A proper translation doesn’t just plug in an English word for a foreign word; it succeeds when it also conveys the sentiment, the background, so to speak – when an English-speaker feels the same reaction that the native speaker felt when hearing the text.

You yourself used the term “chaos” in a recent post referring to this term, which I think comes closer than “mess”. (“Mess” to me creates a mental image of dirty diapers, or tumbled baby blocks.)

But yesterday I found the perfect translation, so perfect that I think that God must have written it. We’ve all been trying much too hard to cling to the literal meaning, and studying the words so closely we’ve ignored the actual meaning. What Bergoglio told those young people to do was “Raise hell”.

A colloquial expression requires a colloquial expression. And I think it’s providential that we have this expression in English, because it goes to the heart of this papacy. Hell is its method and its goal, yet always with a thick shellac of smirking deniability.

Signed,
W

2.  Emphases mine.

Dear Ann,

Thank you for speaking the truth on your blog. I am a middle aged woman, a relapsed Catholic. I’ve been reading your blog for about a year, and this last updated post answered so many questions.  (“The Cool Kids Don’t Actually Believe Any of that Bullshit…”)

I will share some of my tale with you, in the hope that it will help others. Jumping to the point, I have come to believe that (1) this NewChurch that is being forced upon is is designed to drive people away from God, not to draw them closer, and (2) misleading people about the teachings of the Church is NOT a mercy.

My religious education ended shortly after my First Communion. My father had never been a regular church-goer, and my mother stopped attending also, coincidentally in the very early seventies after the Church threw open the windows to allow the fresh air to enter. Ha.

I was a deeply religious child, so I followed my mother’s lead, and satisfied my spiritual hunger in a number of new age quackeries. I will spare you the boring details, but I did marry at one point, to another misguided soul, in a new age ceremony, presided over by a minister (methodist, I think, but we only used him because we needed someone to marry us). I have no idea if my husband was ever baptized. We were formal followers of another religion, though I must honestly say I never actually renounced Catholicism. It simply did not register, period.

I divorced and later remarried.

In 2005, I experienced a spiritual reversion, triggered by the courage and grace exhibited by Pope John Paul II, in contrast the state-sponsored murder of Terri Schiavo that was going on at the same time. I cannot describe what came over me with words, only that it felt like the mortar that holds my cells together was quaking. I was at a “Catholic” college at the time, so I went to the religious center, sought out a nun, and expressed my desire to come back to the Church. She asked what had prompted this, and when I told her, she informed me that John Paul was an awful man who hated women, and she gave me a list of the “right” type of churches for me to attend. When I look at my sinful, wretched life, I can say that I was wholly undeserving of the Grace that I was given in that moment, because I clearly and calmly saw who she was, where she was coming from, and I followed my inner prompting to find the most conservative church that I could.

I started assisting at Mass, but did not receive Communion until I put my life in order. In one of the most shameful moments of my life, I forced myself to do a face to face confession as a lesson in humility. I explained my divorce and remarriage, and was assured that confessing the divorce and remarriage cleared everything up. Yes, you read that right.

During all this time, I was trying to educate myself via the internet, which continues to this day. I received no guidance, no mentoring, no counseling, and RCIA was embarrassing in its cookie-cutter uselessness. Shortly after my confession, I read somewhere that my marriage was not valid and I could not receive communion unless it was convalidated by a priest. I approached a priest at my parish, explained the situation to him, and he married my second husband and me.

Only after many months of sorting things out, trying to do things the right way, did I start receiving Communion. Oh, Joy!

My faith, however, was probably more the size of an atomic particle than a grain of mustard seed. The corruption and outright perversion of many American bishops were an excuse that I used to keep me away from Mass and confession. Last year, in desperation, I simply started reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Next thing I knew, I was getting Confirmed and attending Mass and Confession regularly.

In the summer of 2013, when the bishops pulled another stunt, I seriously considered leaving the Church, and found myself going to confession, instead (thank you, Father Z, for those blog posts). As I sat there, an inner voice said, “are you here for them, or are you here for Me?” Well, that was that. I sat there, weeping, and the Church hierarchy and its corruption will not drive me from the foot of the Cross. Another moment of grace for which I am profoundly thankful.

Fast forward to this year. Believe it or not, it was only because all of the furor over the Synod, that I have come to realize (remember, no formal instruction, poorly catechized, misinformed by priests) that I may still be in an adulterous state. My second husband and I both learned that he had never been baptized (he is not Catholic). I thought I was in a sacramental marriage, and I am not. I have been receiving communion, and perhaps I should not have been. In other words, a mess.

Bottom line: when I returned to the faith, I wanted to follow the rules, and to do everything by the book. I sought out help, and followed the little guidance I received. I respected the rules and the procedures, and was led astray, deliberately so, I have come to believe. My family is going through some very trying times, both health wise and financially, and I must now seek out a canon lawyer and figure all of this out, when it would have been a mercy to tell me the full and accurate truth 9 years ago. And I will do it, BECAUSE I WANT TO PLEASE AND HONOR OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST BY FOLLOWING HIS RULES. This situation and its timing are causing me needless suffering.

Priests: you are functioning as proxies for Jesus Christ. You do not have the right to make up rules, and lie to us, just to be popular or because you think, in your limited state, that it is more merciful. That comment was for the well-intentioned but misguided. For those who are not misguided, but who are actively undermining doctrine to lead astray and attempting to destroy the Church: read Matthew 18:6.

God bless you, Ann.

Signed,
T

3.  This came from someone who saw it posted on Facebook and sent it to me:

Just posted by someone on Facebook:

“I’ve been told that being an “internet trad” doesn’t help people, you have to go out into the peripheries and promise them donuts after Mass, etc. etc.
And while an anecdote is not a statistical trend, I thought you might like to hear that the Traditional Latin Mass community I attend is going to start giving instruction in the faith to a woman who read her way into the Church on the internet.
And the reason she sought a TLM out?
Ann Barnhardt.
This pretty much made my weekend.”

Kinda shoots down the whole “don’t talk about these Bergoglian unpleasantries because it might damage people’s “simple” faith” line, eh?

Scream it.  Scream it from the rooftops.  With dilated pupils and blinking with insufficient frequency.  Why?  Because if ONE PERSON stays because they heard the Truth, because if ONE PERSON enters because they heard the Truth, because if ONE PERSON makes it because they heard the Turth, it is all worth it.

Our Lord has said that He would go through His entire Passion, repeatedly, for ONE PERSON.
Every single person IS THAT ONE PERSON.

Every single person IS THAT ONE PERSON.