ST. PETER WEEPING, a 17th-century painting by the Florentine Agostino Melissi, hangs in a small, darkened gallery of the Philadelphia Art Museum. I coincidentally happened upon it for the first time the other day, just as the world and its vast propaganda machines prepared to eulogize Benedict XVI in Rome.

This computer image is entirely inadequate. It cannot do this beautiful and dramatic painting of the man who would become the first Pope on earth justice. The globular tears dropping toward the nose, the depth of the creases in the brow, the brilliance of the cloth with which he mops his tears are not fully visible. It is truly a stunning image — a portrait of a man in the throes of deep sorrow and self-incrimination. Peter in this famous scene, as we all know, has not just once, but three times lied about knowing Jesus. The faces in the background revel in his tears and his public lies. They laugh so hard with mockery they too are probably crying. “Ha, Ha! Oh, so you think you’re so holy!” they seem to say.

Yes, Peter lied — though he had been warned by Christ himself that he would betray his master.

Why would Jesus choose such an impulsive and unstable man to be his shepherd and his Vicar on earth?

The answer to this question is that no man — not even one many times more reliable than Peter — could truly fulfill this role created by God without divine assistance. Peter wept before he had been strengthened with miraculous graces. The Church is not of human origin nor was the courage of the men who once led it of human origin. No human motives or talents can fully explain their works and immense success. After the descent of the Holy Ghost on Pentecost, Peter — this passionate, impetuous and somewhat unstable man — was ready. It was only then that he could face the world with brutal honesty and unwavering courage. He would die willingly a martyr’s death, as would 25 popes in the first 300 years of the Church.

If saints in heaven weep, these martyred popes must be weeping now.

They would be weeping to see the shameful spectacle of almost the entire world hailing a man who relentlessly undermined the Church as a one of Christ’s Vicars on earth. For if Benedict XVI, who died at the age of 95 this week, was a successor of Peter then Christ has indeed failed in his promises to be with His Church until the consummation. The gates of hell have indeed prevailed.

Let those who have eyes to see, ears to hear and minds to think with look at the true record of Joseph Ratzinger, the “conservative” foil to the bombastic Argentinian who now parades as pope. It’s comical the way the world views the Church as a political theater. You’ve got your conservatives and you’ve got your liberals. They battle it out and it makes for a great show! World wrestling at its finest.

This shows how far removed the world is from knowing the Church  — a divine mother, a guardian of the soul, not a political society.

Benedict prays at the Wailing Wall

As Dr. Thomas Droleskey wrote in 2013:

Contrary to what the secular and even most of the “religious” experts have stated, Joseph Ratzinger is no “conservative.”

He is a man who has made unremitting warfare upon almost every aspect of Catholic Faith, Worship, Morals and pastoral praxis, starting with the very nature of dogmatic truth. He has engaged in the most hideous forms of “inter-religious” prayer services.

He has attempted to make various Apostles, Fathers, Doctors Saints and true popes of the Catholic Church into perjured witnesses in behalf his conciliar apostasies, blasphemies and sacrileges such as the “new ecclesiology,” “religious liberty,” “separation of Church and State,” false ecumenism, etc.

He has publicly praised propositions condemned by our true popes.

He has dared to esteem the symbols of false religions with his own priestly hands.

He has refused to discipline “bishops” who have recruited, promoted and protected clerical predators.

His rejection of Scholasticism has caused him to speak in such ambiguous and contradictory terms at times that clarification after clarification has had to be issued by his spokesflack, “Father” Federico Lombardi, S.J.

He has spoken about the Mother of God rarely and usually in the most perfunctorily terms, almost never exhorting Catholics to pray their Rosary, no less to pray the Rosary daily, something that he has admitted that he does not do.

And quite unlike Pope Leo XIII, who asked “Why put a limit on God’s goodness?” when a cardinal told him on his ninetieth birthday that he hoped the Holy Father lived to be one hundred years old, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, a man who has always hated criticism and sought to run way from it, believes that it is necessary to start yet a new “tradition” of “papal” resignation to pave the way for his “successors” to do the same in the future.

[…]

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has spat on Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ each time he has said and done one hideous thing after another in the past 2,856 days.

Ratzinger/Benedict has, objectively speaking, committed Mortal Sins against the First Commandment every time he has put into question or has denied a dogma of the Faith or has praised a false religion or has entered a temple of false worship. He has done so every time he has staged the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service.

Last time I checked Dr. Droleskey still believes Catholics can run chapels despite the vacancy of the Holy See and therefore I recommend his work with reservations. But he goes on in this article to provide an exhaustive catalogue of Benedict’s crimes, and I highly recommend it.

None of this evidence matters to the cherry-pickers in the so-called Traditional movement, many of whom live in mind-bending cognitive dissonance, believing they can reject everything a pope says, even when he falls into public heresy, while still honoring him as pope or that they can set up a pope-less Church. They generally live with hopeless contradiction. Benedict always held out the promise of a recovery from Vatican II — a romance of re-sanctified cathedrals and the return of sacred rituals.

There is no human recovery possible now though the Church certainly still lives on in those who keep the Faith. What of all those mourning a man they believe was pope? We judge them not. I presume the vast majority as sincere.

Events indicate we are living the Great Apostasy foretold in Scripture — an event richly deserved as a chastisement against Catholics who, among other things, stopped loving God with their minds. Only Jesus himself can end this apostasy.

St. Peter Weeping is a more powerful painting than Agostino Melissi could ever have imagined. He weeps not for himself now, but for us.

— Comments —

Robert Robbins writes:

I enjoyed your article. The invective against the late Benedict/Ratzinger was well-tempered, given that, on the one hand he was probably Antichrist, and so contemptible, and on the other, a fellow human being, and in need of compassion and prayers.

Please follow and like us: