The papacy, the Hierarchy of the Catholic Church and the Mass will last to the end of time. But for all practical purposes — not in principle or the spiritual sense — we do not have them. That faithful priests keep the Mass alive somewhere on earth, we believe, and join our prayers from afar with their altars and the Mass in heaven.
IT ONLY takes a few externals — traditional vestments and a public prayer or two in Latin — for crowds to hail the new leader of the Vatican II church as a break from more than 60 years of apostasy and sacrilege. So weak are would-be Catholics in their knowledge of the Faith.
In a world dominated by material values, they are as blind as the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem and the mob at the foot of the Crucifix. They will have their earthly kingdom no matter what, even if it means denying their Redeemer and His message. It doesn’t matter whether they are “conservative” or liberal, “traditionalist” or open fans of Vatican II and “Synodalism.” They are joined together in an up-swelling of public fantasy and escapism. They look at Catholic-appearing sacramentals as if they are magic objects that make the Faith itself unnecessary. But the unchangeable doctrines and dogmas defined over the course of almost 2,000 years are necessary. The Faith is more than wishful thinking and religious impulses. The Faith is more than individual desires and attachment to business as usual. The supernatural has never ceased to be at odds with our fallen nature and comfortable routines.
Leo XIV, the latest pretender to the papacy, does not profess the Catholic faith, however much he embraces aspects of it. His ordination as a Vatican II cleric was a public profession of a different faith. He likes that belief system. He wants that belief system. He freely embraces that belief system, a system of contradictions which proclaims universal salvation and a dogma-less, humanistic, One World religion that encompasses all faiths, even Traditional Catholicism. It’s a syncretistic, polytheistic, existentialist, pagan religion that denies objective truth and divine attributes that can be known with certainty by the human intellect. The perfect counterpart to secular globalism and the all-encompassing State, it is another stage in the Protestant Revolt, which held that the Church was wrong in the past and Christ’s promises had failed it. Hence its easy irreverence and its blasphemous public apologies for the corporate actions of Christ’s Mystical Body.
What does all this betrayal mean for us, for all the confused lay believers, since Christ has promised to be with his Church until the end of time?
Could it mean, we must love the faith more? Could it mean, we must accommodate our desires, our religious feelings, our personal preferences and frustrated expectations to supernatural reality?
Christ’s promises cannot be fulfilled by adhering to false shepherds, by wanting that earthly kingdom as the Jews wanted theirs. (more…)