Pope John XII

WHEN confronted with the thesis that the men elected to the papacy since 1958, including Mr. Bumble, or Jorge Bergoglio, are not true popes, objectors to this thesis, which is known by the scary word, “sedevacantism,” often point to the fact that there have been immoral, bad popes before who are not considered anti-popes. No one is going around saying that Pope John XII, “whose life was such that the Lateran was spoken of as a brothel, and the moral corruption in Rome became the subject of general odium,” was not a true pope.

But the difference between an immoral pope and a “pope” who rejects part of Catholic dogma is key.

No believing Catholic likes the idea of an immoral pope, but such a thing is logically possible, just as it is possible to be both Catholic and a serious sinner. There can be bad popes, but there cannot, positively cannot, be non-Catholic popes. The idea is an absurdity.

A recent episode of “Tradcast,” a podcast program at Novus Ordo Watch, examines the “Bad Popes Argument” at length. I strongly recommend it.

AT POLITICAL ISLAM, Bill Warner describes the “jihad that led to the Crusades” in response to Obama’s recent remarks about the evil of the Christian Crusaders.

He lists the Muslim invasions and conquests that occurred between 355 and 1095 A.D.

JOE A. writes:

Having your feminism and eating it too is now a reality in England, home of the dead letter once called the “Magna Carta.”

AT The Orthosphere, Thomas F. Bertonneau continues a series on higher education. He recounts an episode that illustrates university doublethink:

The philosophy faculty of the college that employs me annually hosts an endowed lecture the purpose of which is to bring to campus someone currently feted by the philosophical community for his or her outstanding, or at any rate notable, work. Read More »

ACCORDING to the Washington Free Beacon, Hillary Clinton, during her years in the Senate, paid her female employees 72 cents for every dollar she paid her male employees.

IN his sermon for the First Sunday of Lent, St. Alphonsus Liguori spoke “On the Number of Sins Beyond Which God Pardons No More:”

 O folly of sinners! If you purchase a house, you spare no pains to get all the securities necessary to guard against the loss of your money; if you take medicine, you are careful to assure yourself that it cannot injure you; if you pass over a river, you cautiously avoid all danger of falling into it; and for a transitory enjoyment, for the gratification of revenge, for a beastly pleasure, which lasts but a moment, you risk your eternal salvation, saying: “I will go to confession after I commit this sin.” Read More »

Temptation on the Temple, Duccio di Buoninsegna, 1308-11

“THEN the devil took him up into the holy city and set him upon the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him: If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down. For it is written: That he hath given his angels charge over Thee, and in their hands shall they bear Thee up, lest perhaps Thou dash Thy foot against a stone. Jesus said to him: It is written again: Thou shalt not tempt the Lord Thy God.” [Matthew 4, 6-7]

THE BIG BANG

Read More »

FROM the unpublished writings of Lawrence Auster:

The radical individualism that has undermined our collective sense of nationhood expresses itself not only through ideologies such as feminism, but, perhaps even more harmfully, through a leveling, “pop-culture” ethos that has insensibly replaced the old bourgeois-Christian ethos of the West. This popular culture is so much a part of the fabric of our lives that even conservatives hardly seem to notice it. In their complaints about cultural disorder, conservative moralists tend to focus on easy-to-identify, hot-button moral issues such as abortion and homosexual liberation, while taking for granted–and often happily participating in–the loosening of standards in every area of life, the systematic downgrading of speech, dress, and manners, that has made sexual immorality and its attendant ills inevitable. Read More »

A GRATEFUL READER writes:

I was struck by a paragraph that appeared to me with force on the eve of Ash Wednesday. The book, A Landscape with Dragons, The Battle for Your Child’s Mind by Michael D. O’Brian, discusses the dangers of Gnosticism and the Occult in literature for children. Below, I have placed in bold the phrase which struck me. Addressing the parent of a child who has been severely bent in the wrong direction by reading bad books, O’Brian writes:

Read More »

From a woman’s 14th-century Book of Hours

IMAGINE what it was like to live in a society in which a season of penitence was observed by all. In the Middle Ages, meat, eggs and even dairy products were banned during Lent in much of Europe, making abstinence unavoidable for most. There were many people who were not holy, of course, but there must have been a “supernatural energy,” as Dom Prosper Gueranger refers to it, in the air. The French abbot wrote in his Liturgical Year:

There are but few social questions which have not been ably and spiritedly treated of by the public writers of the age, who have devoted their talents to the study of political economy; and it has often been a matter of surprise to us that they should have overlooked a subject of such deep interest as this: the results produced on society by the abolition of Lent; that is to say, of an institution which, more than any other, keeps up in the public mind a keen sentiment of moral right and wrong, inasmuch as it imposes on a nation an annual expiation for sin. Read More »

CAREY writes:

The interesting thing to me about TV awards ceremonies, the fashion industry’s lust for all things Dark and Occult, and even Jay-Z adopting the single commandment of Thelema (‘Do what thou wilt is the whole of the law’ of Thelema) as a motto is that the people in these industries read blogs too. They’ve seen over this past year that there are quite a few people out here who have read up on the occult. And while there have always been what culturally are known as conspiracy theorists, the entertainment industry has taken notice that the people who have noticed that something is horribly wrong and have thus tried to learn more about the occult are not the typical cultural idea of that: many even-handed, calm people are now speaking up about this. So the people in the entertainment industry have seen this and have adjusted their tactical position.

They don’t deny it, they simply laugh at it all and dare anyone to call it what it is: blatant homage to very old, very evil gods and demons. Continuing with the age old idea that the best tactic Evil ever managed to come up with was convincing humanity that It doesn’t exist in any singular mind or entity—that there is no such thing as what we might call ‘Primary Evil’ (Satan) and that only the hearts of men do evil—the entertainment industry is now openly worshiping and laughing it off with the support of Western Culture. And tacit support is still support. So long as people continue to chuckle at the notion that this is even happening, the entertainment industry will simply get bolder.

Read More »

READ about it at Tradition in Action.

Read More »

KARL D. writes:

One thing I have long come to realize about blacks in this country is that they have been weaned from day one to believe that whites are responsible for every bad thing that has or will ever happen to them. They have been taught this from their parents, the media and in school everyday. This blame and hatred is so ingrained that even an act of kindness or consideration can be taken as a slight and reason for a full on nuclear assault. Let me give you one small example that happened about two weeks ago. It’s a little long, but bear with me.

Read More »

The ancient Ninevites, Jews and, later, Christians wore sackcloth as an expression of self-mortification and repentance. The Pope in former times blessed the sackcloth of penitents guilty of grave sins at the beginning of Lent (today is Ash Wednesday).

Cool people today wear athletic gear when they engage in great feats of self-denial. They eat protein bars and drink vitamin water. Fasts last all year long. Sackcloth is expensive.

The desire to repent cannot be eradicated from human nature. Sin is universal.

“Remember, man, thou art dust.”

ADAM writes from Arizona:

Inquiring minds want to know: what happened to Renner after his house burned down? Did Renner die in the fire? Or did he live to face an arson charge? What a cliffhanger of an ending to the story!

Read More »

ALAN writes:

It is a challenge to keep up with the pace of progress in St. Louis:

Less than 24 hours before you posted my essay on St. Louis last Saturday, another black male was shot multiple times and killed by a black male on the same street and two blocks away from where a black male spent his last moments eleven days earlier.

Read More »

 ROBERT Tracinski at The Federalist perceptively argues that college rape hysteria (as distinguished from the real, but uncommon phenomenon of college rape) is caused by “an attempt to create a scapegoat for the emotional dark side of promiscuity.”

It’s a system which systematically preys on and exploits the emotional vulnerability of young women in order to use them as publicity fodder for an ideological agenda.