Thanks, James. I suppose what irks me the most is when commentators level accusations of "grifting" against anyone they happen to disagree with, but without any possible way of knowing for sure if there are financial motives for holding their positions. As I said in my post the other day, I have never taken a position in order to get money for it. I say what I think is true, and other people who think it's true appreciate my work and help fund it. I can say before God as my witness that if I had to change my mind and eat humble pie and lose a bunch of my supporters, I would do it, because my conscience would never leave me alone otherwise.
Thank you. I've been personally troubled by how far is too far to push or speak in either direction (towards "popesplaining" or towards the more extreme "rad trad" positions), especially recently.
I hope the rule of charity regarding oneself and what one says is enough, just ensuring that your position is reasonable, but also held and proclaimed for the love of God. And I'm sure you've lost lots of followers over time for things you've said in holding to that type of standard, which is the test, even though I think some level of verbal gerrymandering to attempt to steer the extremists on either side amongst your audience toward prudent moderation.
Yes, you are right to be worried about that, because no one should ever become smug, especially in a time of confusion and trial.
I think it helps to see history as a series of pendulum swings from one extreme to the other and back again.
For about 150 years, the Church has been at "peak ultramontanism," and it was bound to be time, in fact well past time, for the pendulum to swing in the opposite direction.
But how far? And how fast? And in what ways? This is where the challenge arises. We don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Hence, my urging people to take a patient and moderate approach, while still resisting/condemning clearly what ought to be resisted/condemned.
To your other points, yes, I've definitely lost readers who say I'm either too harsh or too lax, too trad or not trad enough. I think this is part of the reason we are constantly urged by wise men not to take our bearings from public opinion.
Ad hominem arguments are usually worseless and beside the point. Calling someone a grifter is a good example. The late Father Hunwicke used the term in what he called its original sense—taking someone’s position to its absurd logical conclusion.
Be that as it may, Peter, I have always found your work very careful. There is very little careful work out there on liturgy, the absence of knowledge about pre Vatican II vernacular Masses is one example.
I think this is a very well balanced piece thank you. Personally I am praying for the Pope constantly and hope that he will be good and true. That’s all we can do. The rest is in God’s hands.
Thank you, and yes, you put forth our duties very clearly there. I got carried away two weeks ago investigating rumors about Pope Leo XIV, and am still in contact with many people who claim to know Pope Leo and what exactly he'll do, but our prayers and our perseverance in the Faith are our first priority. Correcting any manifest errors in accord with our station and ability is a duty, but comes after ensuring that we're doing what we ought to do first and foremost.
Being a complete outsider to this whole discussion, since I am not a Catholic, I have a few questions that I hope you guys can answer.
1 - I believe we're approaching a time where we christians will be seen as radicals no matter what we say or do, so seems to me there is a concern in the catholic church of losing relevance and also losing churchgoers if said 'radical' position is endorsed. But to, me, we're already at that inevitable time where we need to establish a firm separsation
2 - I agree that, from a catholic point of view, the most correct approach would be similar, as you said, of Catherine of Siena, however, is it possible that the church being hijacked by politics, hasn't become the same as every secular political organization? As in ruled by psychopaths? And if we have said structure established, wouldn't it be virtually impossible to change anything?
3 - this development leads you, or anyone you know, to the point of questioning the papacy itself?
1. The Church must always be in the world but not of the world, as Christ called his followers to be salt, light, and leaven to the world. The problem is that after a while,e it worked too well. From the 11th until the 16th Century, in Europe at least, there was a (mostly) united Christendom, a culture truly transfigured by Christ. But with the Protestant reformation in 1517 shattering Christendom into pieces, and the Masons and affiliated groups launching revolutions that destroyed the social and political order throughout the 18th through 20th centuries, there wasn’t much left of Christendom as a unified body except for the Catholic Church which had still unmarred and unchanged through the tempest; even as the revolutionaries tried to bust their way into the Church, Popes like Pius IX and Leo XIII held strong.
As the world changed and fell apart further with the World Wars, a despairing Europe, instead of turning back toward the faith which it had been abandoning for secularism, blamed the faith for their horrors they had just experienced. Prelates within the Church of mixed motives, some likely aiming to destroy and others who were just pridefully overconfident in the secular “values” that had just been discredited, thought that the Church needed to adapt and conform to the world rather than be its salt and light. At the Second Vatican Council, they had their way, achieving a “Cultural Revolution” whereby, they thought, “experts” would rethink and rebuild everything in the faith from the ground up.
They had their way, and the project failed when masses of Catholics, thinking that everything was going to change, joined the revolution and began to reject Catholic moral principles. But rather than back down, the pride of the prelates at the Council and immediately thereafter could not admit defeat, could not admit that technocracy was not working, and they doubled down against bishops who pointed out the obvious, that things weren’t working.
These reactionary bishops, goaded by the pressure and attacks they were facing, fought forcibly back, and some of these anti-revolutionaries left the Church, partially or fully. The revolution slowed down with John Paul II, but it was a formative moment for generations of Catholics, who couldn’t believe that the brief moments of exuberance in their childhood when everything was changing could at all be in error.
With Pope Francis the revolution accelerated within and without the Church as wokeness and questioning and abandoning of all moral groundings continued apace. But over his papacy and with political events in the world centered on 2020, many people have begun to flock back to the Church as a source of stability and grounding, realizing that they actually need God.
The Catholic Revolution of the 60s has been proven to be a failure, but the revolutionaries have been in power for so long that restoration itself often appears to be a revolutionary movement. This is the current problem that we’re in at our point in history as the same is true for conservatism in politics.
To your point I think the Church (with the true Faith but not the weak meaningless platitudes of some of the revolutionary controlled parishes and Bishops) is becoming more relevant. Will we get a second Christendom from mass conversions? I doubt it. My worldview of the next, say, 50 years, is somewhat like the Middle Ages with a feudal, decentralized structure for society but its not necessarily one where everyone has Christian faith. But it also does not mean that people will be secular. There will be many pagan villages and communes in the future aside the Catholic ones.
The Church doesn’t need to do anything to become more “relevant” other than dropping the accumulated barnacles of the last 60 years that have been proven failures. I disagree with most Traditionalists in thinking that this will have to be a slow, more organic process rather than a simple motu proprio (think executive order) from the Pope overturning Vatican II. But people will flock back to the Church because they will know they need it.
2. Yes, the Church has been hijacked on tons of levels by prelates who behave like woke politicians. But part of being a Catholic is trusting that hell will not prevail against the Church. Catholics in the 1400s might have thought it impossible to fight the similar corruption (called the second pornocracy) of the hierarchy in those days. But faithful reforming (not revolutionary) Catholics, highlighted by the Council of Trent, succeeded. Or, more properly, the Holy Spirit succeeded in restoring the Church. Things are bad now, I admit, but I trust in God, do my part where I live with myself and with my friends to learn, practice, and share the Catholic faith as it has always been.
I also can point to demographic trends as a natural point of hope. Liberals don’t reproduce or have much reason to stay in the faith because it's meaningless to them other than as a tool for political power. If the Church loses its political power and as those who do care seriously about their faith become a larger share of the Catholic population, things in the hierarchy will change. They already are amidst younger priests and religious, who are more reverent, conservative, and faithful, or at least it so appears, then the generations which grew up during the peak of the Catholic Revolution.
3. No, I don’t question the Papacy as an institution. I have some thoughts here on how the sedevacantist claims that there is no Pope don’t logically work.
Neither, however, can I agree with the Orthodox claims that there are merely bishops and that the Bishop of Rome has primacy but no supremacy over the others. The divisions between the Orthodox on serious moral matters and administratively are impossible for them to ever be able to resolve within their system. The Orthodox are not very far off from Catholicism, and their separation is mostly political, but it is the Papacy as the Divinely founded institution that has given Catholicism its unique stability in preserving the Faith across the centuries, especially through crises.
The Church will get through this crisis, partially because of the efforts of the laity to preserve the faith, but also, I believe, because, some future Pope (and it still could be something that Leo does) will return fully to the helm after a series of poor (or drunken) captains have done a poor job. The ship will not founder even though the lackluster performance of several captains has brought it to sketchy, turbulent waters.
We are in a moment of deepest darkness and chaos, but it is the act that after such moments the Church has and will continue to survive, has continued and will continue after crises to power back forward in truth and faith, that has been and will continue to be its greatest glory.
Thanks a lot for the thorough answer, appreciate it. I understood most, my ignorance of church history notwithstanding. I believe when christians face more immediate threat in the future (permitted by God, of course), they will likely be forced to reconcile, as a means to survive.
Lol sorry to disappoint. I have a protestant upbringing but am currently not going to any church, just reevaluating a lot of things. I am a christian, for sure, but in a spiritual 'stand by', so to speak
Senor, return to the one true church, she is your home. The fullness of Christ, the church He left for us, protected by the Holy Spirit through all ages and against which the gates of hell will not prevail
I have thought for several years now that there is only one man fit to occupy the Holy See. And, of course, the most recent vile anti-pope had him excommunicated in 2024. Sedevacantism hardly describes my position, these days. The Devil has captured Rome, top to bottom. But his "victories" are hollow and fleeting. Deus vult.
The devil may seem to have captured Rome, his smoke very clearly filling the church, but he's taken the bait and is biting down hard on the hook that will soon destroy him.
No, I have not lost hope at all. I know that my statement puts me on the furthest extreme from your perspective, as "schismatic" as Viganò. But I am more hopeful now than I have ever been, because I think the Enemy is ripping off his masks left and right.
I know I was driven from the Church not because of its sins, but because of my own sinful heart. That knowledge has made me stronger, not weaker. But in being called home at this late, strange stage, what I have seen from Rome strikes me as something more than mere human error. In its collusion with the Climate Change cult, the mass invasions, and the corrupted anti-Eucharistic sacrament of the Covid "vaccine" democide (minted and memorialized by Francis as a silver coin, no less), I have come to the conclusion that Rome is now fully occupied territory.
You may be correct that a trap has been set, and that Satan has taken the bait. But then I think of all those kids, whose faithful parents obeyed the command to poison them as they poisoned themselves. A great hideous crime like this cannot be brushed aside, any more so than the network of child abuse can be swept under the rug. We are the Church, and Christ is the Truth and the Way. I can't come into communion with Satan's puppets in the Vatican any more than I can with those in the USG, or in Hollywood. I wasted too many years of my life doing that.
Do I believe that God could save this new pope? Of course! But I don't believe He will. I believe He wants us to solve this problem. I believe that allowing the Church to be corrupted is one of the greatest tests He has ever devised, so that His children can grow in wisdom and discernment. That said, I don't disparage anyone who prays for a reconciliation instead of a war. Why would I?
I am more and more suspicious of ‘secret intel’ as AI fake news pops up everywhere. We are close to the point of not being able to trust anything not found in a used book store.
I was a paleo-popesplainer for several years before the cognitive impossibility of that position finally dawned on me. I ended up with the opinion that Francis was a real but a bad pope, best prayed for but otherwise ignored.
I will be doing no popesplaining for pope Leo. He stands or fails on his own. But I will give him plenty of opportunity to be better than bad pope Francis. It is such a relief to not be subject any longer to pope Francis. So I get it how easy it could be to jump on board the Leo bandwagon. It’s tempting. But I’m going to work on being a good Catholic first, and when an encyclical or exhortation comes out I will obtain the print edition and digest it then. I’ll see if I get an upset stomach or have to wretch or not. For now I have made no decision. Except to pray hard for the dude.
Thank you for this mind clearing piece of sane advice! I’m following the path of St. Catherine as well! I already feel a sense of peace washing over me!
For me, the greatest benefit of the Leo pontificate is that the Te Igitur is once again just a part of the mass and not a morally-fraught moment of doubt and mental reservation.
Agreed on the trauma. I know many traditional Catholics who spent the Benedict papacy after Summorum Pontificum hoping that Benedit was bringing back tradition, that perhaps he would even reassess Vatican II and undo some of it. After Benedict's retirement and the election of Francis, some of them clung to a notion that Benedict was still the real pope, giving them a way to continue threading the needle between the sedes and the modernists.
They know something's not right when Catholics have to explain to friends why the latest statement from the pope doesn't actually say what it appears to say, if you look at it in just the right away. It was worse under Francis than under his predecessors, but they've spent decades being treated as second class citizens who need to get with the program, because they've rejected "innovation" and held to Tradition. They just want a break, so they grab at any sign that they might get one, like Leo using some Latin.
Yep, hopium is a pretty powerful drug, especially when people are trying to cope with not getting the Cardinal Sarah or Burke we hoped for.
Trusting more in a particular Pope to fix everything is a failure to trust enough in Christ and live one's life in charity. While I think the statement could be misinterpreted by some in a schismatic way, the meme Chris is sharing that "You Don't Need Permission to Be Catholic," is very apt. Your baptism is your permission and imposes a duty upon you to live the Catholic life in your own life first and foremost before you can even think about fixing the hierarchy.
Faithful Catholics Have Been Psychologically Traumatized
(...)
After the trauma of the last decade, we're LARPing2 the reality we want into existence and trying to play act and manifest the perfect pontificate we want into reality as compensation for subtle guilt over being "an opposition" to the Pope.
"
Yes and yes. This is pretty true. I believe that we have to follow our internal compass rather than this one, as it seems to be a lower-than-normal compass. Somehow, they would make us accept the unacceptable - it would go aginast our principles and let's not do that
This is another traumatism and I attach much worries to this.
Is the solution leaving the priest and the mass? Remaining strong in what we know and keeping this in the first place, during mass? I rarely go to mass but still go to church and the walls still resonate the faith. If the priest is not an intermediary to Christ any more - we still are and can enjoy this link in an empty church. Let's not forget that the resonance still happens outside of mass time.
Part of what they have done is tweaking the sequences, the texts, etc. This is still low-level in regard of what it is all about. I can see a material threshold for their negativity to happen; it could surely make demons and things to operate. But it could be that it initially depends on a material tweaking.
But any way let's not accept the unacceptable and let's overall presevre the "inner calibration" - if we are asked to change the initial calibration, let's refuse, without knowing where to go, because otherwise we are trapped. Our faith does not overall depend 100% on the building.
This is being imposed to ourselves, it is not okay. Until this precise point is adressed and solved we need to do what we feel is right. I believe that accepting the unacceptable is not okay, and that Christ would be telling us that what matters overall is to remain in Christ. Several takes. I would grab the "preserve original Christ in myself" rather than "turn the cheek, martyrdom, we follow because of our commitment". But I respect and understand both.
They put us into a fight, a traumatic position that's not okay that's not our role and not our place. Could be that we would need to re-assess things out if this initial stage rather than look at our inescapable feeling that is bound tot he situation they put us into. Because it's true that's what they do. We end up loosing, with this situation. And that's not our basic environment. We are not to "loose" because we are not in a context of winning/loosing. They put us into this context and it's not okay. Could be it's this the problem.
The solution can't be leaving the Mass, but it must include a lot more than just the Mass. As Chris has said many times, "You Don't Need Permission to Be Catholic." We ought to be making every moment, at the very least in our mind, one of attention towards God, and this baseline praxis is the foundation of perpetuated faith that the Mass, the source and summit, confirms and increases.
The hierarchy exists to preserve the deposit of faith and be the visible sign of the unity of the Church. As bad as many of its members might be, they can never destroy the Faith or our faith. We are the only ones, by giving into pressure, who can destroy our own faith if we give in to despair and stop practicing or fall away for any other reason.
Here’s an example, and how I dealt with it. I am confident all the trads in the pews thought this was just a kick ass sermon:
Canon Norman:
The overall teaching of your homily on Sunday May 18 in San Rafael was that a lay person must mindlessly and without discussion obey everything his confessor says (excluding commands to sin) if he wants to go to heaven, for such is the virtue of obedience. To prove this you used quotes from medieval clergy and monks, that is, those who have taken vows of obedience to their superiors. This teaching is not only obviously false, for it endorses the sin of reckless obedience, but it is a pernicious falsity, as it promotes spiritual abuse. Your homily was cult propaganda masking as Catholicism.
Dr. Kwasniewski wrote a book, "True Obedience in the Church", on obedience and what it means when several demands of obedience come into apparent conflict. It leaves much open and undecided as to its application in particular circumstances, but it was helpful for establishing general principles.
What happened in this sermon in particular? What was it addressing?
The whole trad discourse and sub culture is rotten and ideological. Trads are neurotic and prideful ideological Pharisees who think having 4 or more children and treating their wives like child-slaves makes them superior and is a ticket to heaven, and who despise the Novus Ordo and thereby commit the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. And of course the Bergoglian progressivists are just atheists and Satanists in disguise. It’s all propaganda and propagandists. Peter Kwasniewski is an arch propagandist as much as Michael Lofton, though with a higher IQ and with more erudition. The SSPX is pure rot, of course. A brainwashed cult of inner circle neurotics and group think mentally ill losers who think wearing a suit and tie to Mass is the key to a new Christendom. All of it deserves ridicule and mockery, not serious engagement.
What would you propose as a way forward? I think there are many important points raised by many of these sides, but the issue is ensuring that one actually means them and holds them for Christ's sake and not for the sake of mere clicks and popularity
The whole trad discourse and sub culture is rotten, because it’s ideological. A “Trad” now means a neurotic and prideful ideological Pharisee who thinks having 4 or more children (which he makes sure to tell everyone every other day) and treating his wife like a a child-slave makes him superior and gives him a ticket to heaven, and who despises the Novus Ordo and thereby commits the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. And of course the Bergoglian progressivists are just atheists and Satanists in disguise. It’s all propaganda and propagandists. Peter Kwasniewski is an arch propagandist as much as Michael Lofton, though with a higher IQ and with more erudition. The SSPX is pure rot, of course. A brainwashed cult of inner circle neurotics and group think mentally ill losers who think wearing a suit and tie to Mass is the key to a new Christendom. All of it deserves ridicule and mockery, not serious engagement.
The problem is propaganda. The discourse has been poisoned by it and it’s getting worse. For example, Kwasniewski uses his superhuman rhetorical skills and very high IQ and level of erudition to manipulate the reader into thinking as he does, not to help the reader to realize the truth for himself. He is not a teacher but a propagandist. He is a sophist. Same for all of the Trad Inc. and Prog Inc. influencer losers, from Tim Gordon and Theo Howard to Paul Fahey and Mike Lewis. They are all propagandists pretending to be truth seekers and teachers. This is all very evil. The first step is to realize this and unmask and then ignore all of them.
Catholicism has become ideology. It’s not ideology, of course, but the Truth, but the sub cultures in both the trad and progressive forms cloak and counterfeit the Truth. Bergoglio has been a main cause of this evil, for his whole antipapacy was from the depths of hell. Everything he touched became evil, even those who fought him.
I don’t know how to fix this. Only God knows. But don’t become one of them, and make sure you mock and ridicule them every chance you get. That can only help the situation. And if you talk and write, do so as a humble Socratic inquirer, not a prideful ideological propagandist. Those who turn Catholicism into an ideology will have hell to pay. And yes, hell exists and is eternal, and anything else is ideology. Are you listening David Bentley Hart, arch sophist?
I disagree with your characterization of Kwasniewski, and I don't know Lofton, but I would very much agree with you on the point that having true intentions of charity beyond propagandizing are crucial.
I've been to TLM parishes where your characterization seems fair for some of the attendees, but I can't judge hearts beyond my own, only pointing out as you do that we need to be very careful with our reasons for taking a side lest we be carried away mimetically by the mob.
Here’s an example, and how I dealt with it. I am confident all the trads in the pews thought this was just a kick ass sermon:
Canon Norman:
The overall teaching of your homily on Sunday May 18 in San Rafael was that a lay person must mindlessly and without discussion obey everything his confessor says (excluding commands to sin) if he wants to go to heaven, for such is the virtue of obedience. To prove this you used quotes from medieval clergy and monks, that is, those who have taken vows of obedience to their superiors. This teaching is not only obviously false, for it endorses the sin of reckless obedience, but it is a pernicious falsity, as it promotes spiritual abuse. Your homily was cult propaganda masking as Catholicism.
I think many trads would disagree with that sermon and would agree with you on the basis of layered levels of obedience on the occasions when the commands of the hierarchy conflict with each other and with the demands of the moral law.
I freely admit I'm unfamiliar with most of the names you mention and their positions. But your last paragraph in particular here rings true: people who turn the Church into an ideology are Pharisees bound for Hell.
I agree with Mark re AB Vigano. His excommunication was not valid and Bergoglio excommunicated himself by his manifest heresy. I am relieved by his vacation of the Chair as it didn’t belong to him. I pray fervently that Leo 14 will be proper, loving and heal the open wound that is the suppression of the TLM. May God grant him the strength that he will need. His love of the BVM gives me hope. Ad Jesum per Mariam⚔️
I am less of a supporter of Archbishop Vigano than I used to be as I feel that he has crossed over certain prudential lines in his actions since his excommunication. However, I can't necessarily blame him personally for even those things for which I disagree with him. He is, of all of us, probably one of the most traumatized, as he was one of the people who, at least at first, in doing his duty, was unjustly ignored, demoted, and abused.
I again don't know the full circumstances of his excommunication. It could be valid while being a horrible sin against justice. I certainly believe that it was rather damning how his revelations were ignored by the hierarchy but I again don't think it was prudent for Vigano to start his own seminary and be conditionally reconsecrated a bishop by Williamson.
I do agree with your hopes, but I am, due to Chris Jackson's revelations, quite a bit less optimistic in the short term than I was two weeks ago.
Thanks, James. I suppose what irks me the most is when commentators level accusations of "grifting" against anyone they happen to disagree with, but without any possible way of knowing for sure if there are financial motives for holding their positions. As I said in my post the other day, I have never taken a position in order to get money for it. I say what I think is true, and other people who think it's true appreciate my work and help fund it. I can say before God as my witness that if I had to change my mind and eat humble pie and lose a bunch of my supporters, I would do it, because my conscience would never leave me alone otherwise.
Thank you. I've been personally troubled by how far is too far to push or speak in either direction (towards "popesplaining" or towards the more extreme "rad trad" positions), especially recently.
I hope the rule of charity regarding oneself and what one says is enough, just ensuring that your position is reasonable, but also held and proclaimed for the love of God. And I'm sure you've lost lots of followers over time for things you've said in holding to that type of standard, which is the test, even though I think some level of verbal gerrymandering to attempt to steer the extremists on either side amongst your audience toward prudent moderation.
Yes, you are right to be worried about that, because no one should ever become smug, especially in a time of confusion and trial.
I think it helps to see history as a series of pendulum swings from one extreme to the other and back again.
For about 150 years, the Church has been at "peak ultramontanism," and it was bound to be time, in fact well past time, for the pendulum to swing in the opposite direction.
But how far? And how fast? And in what ways? This is where the challenge arises. We don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Hence, my urging people to take a patient and moderate approach, while still resisting/condemning clearly what ought to be resisted/condemned.
To your other points, yes, I've definitely lost readers who say I'm either too harsh or too lax, too trad or not trad enough. I think this is part of the reason we are constantly urged by wise men not to take our bearings from public opinion.
Ad hominem arguments are usually worseless and beside the point. Calling someone a grifter is a good example. The late Father Hunwicke used the term in what he called its original sense—taking someone’s position to its absurd logical conclusion.
Be that as it may, Peter, I have always found your work very careful. There is very little careful work out there on liturgy, the absence of knowledge about pre Vatican II vernacular Masses is one example.
I think this is a very well balanced piece thank you. Personally I am praying for the Pope constantly and hope that he will be good and true. That’s all we can do. The rest is in God’s hands.
Thank you, and yes, you put forth our duties very clearly there. I got carried away two weeks ago investigating rumors about Pope Leo XIV, and am still in contact with many people who claim to know Pope Leo and what exactly he'll do, but our prayers and our perseverance in the Faith are our first priority. Correcting any manifest errors in accord with our station and ability is a duty, but comes after ensuring that we're doing what we ought to do first and foremost.
Amen 🙏
That's what I've decided to do, too.
Being a complete outsider to this whole discussion, since I am not a Catholic, I have a few questions that I hope you guys can answer.
1 - I believe we're approaching a time where we christians will be seen as radicals no matter what we say or do, so seems to me there is a concern in the catholic church of losing relevance and also losing churchgoers if said 'radical' position is endorsed. But to, me, we're already at that inevitable time where we need to establish a firm separsation
2 - I agree that, from a catholic point of view, the most correct approach would be similar, as you said, of Catherine of Siena, however, is it possible that the church being hijacked by politics, hasn't become the same as every secular political organization? As in ruled by psychopaths? And if we have said structure established, wouldn't it be virtually impossible to change anything?
3 - this development leads you, or anyone you know, to the point of questioning the papacy itself?
Thanks, O-Navegador. I'll try and respond.
My replies
1. The Church must always be in the world but not of the world, as Christ called his followers to be salt, light, and leaven to the world. The problem is that after a while,e it worked too well. From the 11th until the 16th Century, in Europe at least, there was a (mostly) united Christendom, a culture truly transfigured by Christ. But with the Protestant reformation in 1517 shattering Christendom into pieces, and the Masons and affiliated groups launching revolutions that destroyed the social and political order throughout the 18th through 20th centuries, there wasn’t much left of Christendom as a unified body except for the Catholic Church which had still unmarred and unchanged through the tempest; even as the revolutionaries tried to bust their way into the Church, Popes like Pius IX and Leo XIII held strong.
As the world changed and fell apart further with the World Wars, a despairing Europe, instead of turning back toward the faith which it had been abandoning for secularism, blamed the faith for their horrors they had just experienced. Prelates within the Church of mixed motives, some likely aiming to destroy and others who were just pridefully overconfident in the secular “values” that had just been discredited, thought that the Church needed to adapt and conform to the world rather than be its salt and light. At the Second Vatican Council, they had their way, achieving a “Cultural Revolution” whereby, they thought, “experts” would rethink and rebuild everything in the faith from the ground up.
They had their way, and the project failed when masses of Catholics, thinking that everything was going to change, joined the revolution and began to reject Catholic moral principles. But rather than back down, the pride of the prelates at the Council and immediately thereafter could not admit defeat, could not admit that technocracy was not working, and they doubled down against bishops who pointed out the obvious, that things weren’t working.
These reactionary bishops, goaded by the pressure and attacks they were facing, fought forcibly back, and some of these anti-revolutionaries left the Church, partially or fully. The revolution slowed down with John Paul II, but it was a formative moment for generations of Catholics, who couldn’t believe that the brief moments of exuberance in their childhood when everything was changing could at all be in error.
With Pope Francis the revolution accelerated within and without the Church as wokeness and questioning and abandoning of all moral groundings continued apace. But over his papacy and with political events in the world centered on 2020, many people have begun to flock back to the Church as a source of stability and grounding, realizing that they actually need God.
The Catholic Revolution of the 60s has been proven to be a failure, but the revolutionaries have been in power for so long that restoration itself often appears to be a revolutionary movement. This is the current problem that we’re in at our point in history as the same is true for conservatism in politics.
To your point I think the Church (with the true Faith but not the weak meaningless platitudes of some of the revolutionary controlled parishes and Bishops) is becoming more relevant. Will we get a second Christendom from mass conversions? I doubt it. My worldview of the next, say, 50 years, is somewhat like the Middle Ages with a feudal, decentralized structure for society but its not necessarily one where everyone has Christian faith. But it also does not mean that people will be secular. There will be many pagan villages and communes in the future aside the Catholic ones.
https://grainofwheat.substack.com/p/the-quantum-powered-nomads-of-the?r=1mcpmt
The Church doesn’t need to do anything to become more “relevant” other than dropping the accumulated barnacles of the last 60 years that have been proven failures. I disagree with most Traditionalists in thinking that this will have to be a slow, more organic process rather than a simple motu proprio (think executive order) from the Pope overturning Vatican II. But people will flock back to the Church because they will know they need it.
2. Yes, the Church has been hijacked on tons of levels by prelates who behave like woke politicians. But part of being a Catholic is trusting that hell will not prevail against the Church. Catholics in the 1400s might have thought it impossible to fight the similar corruption (called the second pornocracy) of the hierarchy in those days. But faithful reforming (not revolutionary) Catholics, highlighted by the Council of Trent, succeeded. Or, more properly, the Holy Spirit succeeded in restoring the Church. Things are bad now, I admit, but I trust in God, do my part where I live with myself and with my friends to learn, practice, and share the Catholic faith as it has always been.
I also can point to demographic trends as a natural point of hope. Liberals don’t reproduce or have much reason to stay in the faith because it's meaningless to them other than as a tool for political power. If the Church loses its political power and as those who do care seriously about their faith become a larger share of the Catholic population, things in the hierarchy will change. They already are amidst younger priests and religious, who are more reverent, conservative, and faithful, or at least it so appears, then the generations which grew up during the peak of the Catholic Revolution.
3. No, I don’t question the Papacy as an institution. I have some thoughts here on how the sedevacantist claims that there is no Pope don’t logically work.
https://grainofwheat.substack.com/p/thoughts-on-sedevacantism
Neither, however, can I agree with the Orthodox claims that there are merely bishops and that the Bishop of Rome has primacy but no supremacy over the others. The divisions between the Orthodox on serious moral matters and administratively are impossible for them to ever be able to resolve within their system. The Orthodox are not very far off from Catholicism, and their separation is mostly political, but it is the Papacy as the Divinely founded institution that has given Catholicism its unique stability in preserving the Faith across the centuries, especially through crises.
The Church will get through this crisis, partially because of the efforts of the laity to preserve the faith, but also, I believe, because, some future Pope (and it still could be something that Leo does) will return fully to the helm after a series of poor (or drunken) captains have done a poor job. The ship will not founder even though the lackluster performance of several captains has brought it to sketchy, turbulent waters.
We are in a moment of deepest darkness and chaos, but it is the act that after such moments the Church has and will continue to survive, has continued and will continue after crises to power back forward in truth and faith, that has been and will continue to be its greatest glory.
Thanks a lot for the thorough answer, appreciate it. I understood most, my ignorance of church history notwithstanding. I believe when christians face more immediate threat in the future (permitted by God, of course), they will likely be forced to reconcile, as a means to survive.
Thank you. I agree, and I hope that the external pressure will force a reunion at least between East and West (the Orthodox with the Catholic Church).
God allows threats to the Church to purify the faithful and the Church:
I'd love to talk further if you have any questions. Email me at jamesgreenAV@gmail.com if you're interested.
Nice, thanks a lot. I'm currently mending several gaps I have in the content of my faith, maybe I'll contact you in the future for some help
How can someone with a Portuguese or Spanish nom de plume NOT be Catholic?? Say it ain’t so!
Lol sorry to disappoint. I have a protestant upbringing but am currently not going to any church, just reevaluating a lot of things. I am a christian, for sure, but in a spiritual 'stand by', so to speak
Senor, return to the one true church, she is your home. The fullness of Christ, the church He left for us, protected by the Holy Spirit through all ages and against which the gates of hell will not prevail
As the zen master says: "we'll see"
I have thought for several years now that there is only one man fit to occupy the Holy See. And, of course, the most recent vile anti-pope had him excommunicated in 2024. Sedevacantism hardly describes my position, these days. The Devil has captured Rome, top to bottom. But his "victories" are hollow and fleeting. Deus vult.
I hope you haven't lost hope entirely.
The devil may seem to have captured Rome, his smoke very clearly filling the church, but he's taken the bait and is biting down hard on the hook that will soon destroy him.
I really did like your piece on the Mass and your appreciation of the transcendent reality therein and its effects: https://markbisone.substack.com/p/the-low-mass
Men may be weak, but the Truth never dies.
Thank you, brother.
No, I have not lost hope at all. I know that my statement puts me on the furthest extreme from your perspective, as "schismatic" as Viganò. But I am more hopeful now than I have ever been, because I think the Enemy is ripping off his masks left and right.
I know I was driven from the Church not because of its sins, but because of my own sinful heart. That knowledge has made me stronger, not weaker. But in being called home at this late, strange stage, what I have seen from Rome strikes me as something more than mere human error. In its collusion with the Climate Change cult, the mass invasions, and the corrupted anti-Eucharistic sacrament of the Covid "vaccine" democide (minted and memorialized by Francis as a silver coin, no less), I have come to the conclusion that Rome is now fully occupied territory.
You may be correct that a trap has been set, and that Satan has taken the bait. But then I think of all those kids, whose faithful parents obeyed the command to poison them as they poisoned themselves. A great hideous crime like this cannot be brushed aside, any more so than the network of child abuse can be swept under the rug. We are the Church, and Christ is the Truth and the Way. I can't come into communion with Satan's puppets in the Vatican any more than I can with those in the USG, or in Hollywood. I wasted too many years of my life doing that.
Do I believe that God could save this new pope? Of course! But I don't believe He will. I believe He wants us to solve this problem. I believe that allowing the Church to be corrupted is one of the greatest tests He has ever devised, so that His children can grow in wisdom and discernment. That said, I don't disparage anyone who prays for a reconciliation instead of a war. Why would I?
I am more and more suspicious of ‘secret intel’ as AI fake news pops up everywhere. We are close to the point of not being able to trust anything not found in a used book store.
I have yet to pick a side.
I was a paleo-popesplainer for several years before the cognitive impossibility of that position finally dawned on me. I ended up with the opinion that Francis was a real but a bad pope, best prayed for but otherwise ignored.
I will be doing no popesplaining for pope Leo. He stands or fails on his own. But I will give him plenty of opportunity to be better than bad pope Francis. It is such a relief to not be subject any longer to pope Francis. So I get it how easy it could be to jump on board the Leo bandwagon. It’s tempting. But I’m going to work on being a good Catholic first, and when an encyclical or exhortation comes out I will obtain the print edition and digest it then. I’ll see if I get an upset stomach or have to wretch or not. For now I have made no decision. Except to pray hard for the dude.
Very prudent.
Thank you for this mind clearing piece of sane advice! I’m following the path of St. Catherine as well! I already feel a sense of peace washing over me!
Amen!!!
For me, the greatest benefit of the Leo pontificate is that the Te Igitur is once again just a part of the mass and not a morally-fraught moment of doubt and mental reservation.
Agreed on the trauma. I know many traditional Catholics who spent the Benedict papacy after Summorum Pontificum hoping that Benedit was bringing back tradition, that perhaps he would even reassess Vatican II and undo some of it. After Benedict's retirement and the election of Francis, some of them clung to a notion that Benedict was still the real pope, giving them a way to continue threading the needle between the sedes and the modernists.
They know something's not right when Catholics have to explain to friends why the latest statement from the pope doesn't actually say what it appears to say, if you look at it in just the right away. It was worse under Francis than under his predecessors, but they've spent decades being treated as second class citizens who need to get with the program, because they've rejected "innovation" and held to Tradition. They just want a break, so they grab at any sign that they might get one, like Leo using some Latin.
Yep, hopium is a pretty powerful drug, especially when people are trying to cope with not getting the Cardinal Sarah or Burke we hoped for.
Trusting more in a particular Pope to fix everything is a failure to trust enough in Christ and live one's life in charity. While I think the statement could be misinterpreted by some in a schismatic way, the meme Chris is sharing that "You Don't Need Permission to Be Catholic," is very apt. Your baptism is your permission and imposes a duty upon you to live the Catholic life in your own life first and foremost before you can even think about fixing the hierarchy.
"
Faithful Catholics Have Been Psychologically Traumatized
(...)
After the trauma of the last decade, we're LARPing2 the reality we want into existence and trying to play act and manifest the perfect pontificate we want into reality as compensation for subtle guilt over being "an opposition" to the Pope.
"
Yes and yes. This is pretty true. I believe that we have to follow our internal compass rather than this one, as it seems to be a lower-than-normal compass. Somehow, they would make us accept the unacceptable - it would go aginast our principles and let's not do that
This is another traumatism and I attach much worries to this.
Is the solution leaving the priest and the mass? Remaining strong in what we know and keeping this in the first place, during mass? I rarely go to mass but still go to church and the walls still resonate the faith. If the priest is not an intermediary to Christ any more - we still are and can enjoy this link in an empty church. Let's not forget that the resonance still happens outside of mass time.
Part of what they have done is tweaking the sequences, the texts, etc. This is still low-level in regard of what it is all about. I can see a material threshold for their negativity to happen; it could surely make demons and things to operate. But it could be that it initially depends on a material tweaking.
But any way let's not accept the unacceptable and let's overall presevre the "inner calibration" - if we are asked to change the initial calibration, let's refuse, without knowing where to go, because otherwise we are trapped. Our faith does not overall depend 100% on the building.
This is being imposed to ourselves, it is not okay. Until this precise point is adressed and solved we need to do what we feel is right. I believe that accepting the unacceptable is not okay, and that Christ would be telling us that what matters overall is to remain in Christ. Several takes. I would grab the "preserve original Christ in myself" rather than "turn the cheek, martyrdom, we follow because of our commitment". But I respect and understand both.
They put us into a fight, a traumatic position that's not okay that's not our role and not our place. Could be that we would need to re-assess things out if this initial stage rather than look at our inescapable feeling that is bound tot he situation they put us into. Because it's true that's what they do. We end up loosing, with this situation. And that's not our basic environment. We are not to "loose" because we are not in a context of winning/loosing. They put us into this context and it's not okay. Could be it's this the problem.
The solution can't be leaving the Mass, but it must include a lot more than just the Mass. As Chris has said many times, "You Don't Need Permission to Be Catholic." We ought to be making every moment, at the very least in our mind, one of attention towards God, and this baseline praxis is the foundation of perpetuated faith that the Mass, the source and summit, confirms and increases.
The hierarchy exists to preserve the deposit of faith and be the visible sign of the unity of the Church. As bad as many of its members might be, they can never destroy the Faith or our faith. We are the only ones, by giving into pressure, who can destroy our own faith if we give in to despair and stop practicing or fall away for any other reason.
Here’s an example, and how I dealt with it. I am confident all the trads in the pews thought this was just a kick ass sermon:
Canon Norman:
The overall teaching of your homily on Sunday May 18 in San Rafael was that a lay person must mindlessly and without discussion obey everything his confessor says (excluding commands to sin) if he wants to go to heaven, for such is the virtue of obedience. To prove this you used quotes from medieval clergy and monks, that is, those who have taken vows of obedience to their superiors. This teaching is not only obviously false, for it endorses the sin of reckless obedience, but it is a pernicious falsity, as it promotes spiritual abuse. Your homily was cult propaganda masking as Catholicism.
Dr. Kwasniewski wrote a book, "True Obedience in the Church", on obedience and what it means when several demands of obedience come into apparent conflict. It leaves much open and undecided as to its application in particular circumstances, but it was helpful for establishing general principles.
What happened in this sermon in particular? What was it addressing?
The whole trad discourse and sub culture is rotten and ideological. Trads are neurotic and prideful ideological Pharisees who think having 4 or more children and treating their wives like child-slaves makes them superior and is a ticket to heaven, and who despise the Novus Ordo and thereby commit the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. And of course the Bergoglian progressivists are just atheists and Satanists in disguise. It’s all propaganda and propagandists. Peter Kwasniewski is an arch propagandist as much as Michael Lofton, though with a higher IQ and with more erudition. The SSPX is pure rot, of course. A brainwashed cult of inner circle neurotics and group think mentally ill losers who think wearing a suit and tie to Mass is the key to a new Christendom. All of it deserves ridicule and mockery, not serious engagement.
What would you propose as a way forward? I think there are many important points raised by many of these sides, but the issue is ensuring that one actually means them and holds them for Christ's sake and not for the sake of mere clicks and popularity
https://childrenbewareofidols.substack.com/p/catholicism-as-propaganda
The whole trad discourse and sub culture is rotten, because it’s ideological. A “Trad” now means a neurotic and prideful ideological Pharisee who thinks having 4 or more children (which he makes sure to tell everyone every other day) and treating his wife like a a child-slave makes him superior and gives him a ticket to heaven, and who despises the Novus Ordo and thereby commits the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. And of course the Bergoglian progressivists are just atheists and Satanists in disguise. It’s all propaganda and propagandists. Peter Kwasniewski is an arch propagandist as much as Michael Lofton, though with a higher IQ and with more erudition. The SSPX is pure rot, of course. A brainwashed cult of inner circle neurotics and group think mentally ill losers who think wearing a suit and tie to Mass is the key to a new Christendom. All of it deserves ridicule and mockery, not serious engagement.
The problem is propaganda. The discourse has been poisoned by it and it’s getting worse. For example, Kwasniewski uses his superhuman rhetorical skills and very high IQ and level of erudition to manipulate the reader into thinking as he does, not to help the reader to realize the truth for himself. He is not a teacher but a propagandist. He is a sophist. Same for all of the Trad Inc. and Prog Inc. influencer losers, from Tim Gordon and Theo Howard to Paul Fahey and Mike Lewis. They are all propagandists pretending to be truth seekers and teachers. This is all very evil. The first step is to realize this and unmask and then ignore all of them.
Catholicism has become ideology. It’s not ideology, of course, but the Truth, but the sub cultures in both the trad and progressive forms cloak and counterfeit the Truth. Bergoglio has been a main cause of this evil, for his whole antipapacy was from the depths of hell. Everything he touched became evil, even those who fought him.
I don’t know how to fix this. Only God knows. But don’t become one of them, and make sure you mock and ridicule them every chance you get. That can only help the situation. And if you talk and write, do so as a humble Socratic inquirer, not a prideful ideological propagandist. Those who turn Catholicism into an ideology will have hell to pay. And yes, hell exists and is eternal, and anything else is ideology. Are you listening David Bentley Hart, arch sophist?
I disagree with your characterization of Kwasniewski, and I don't know Lofton, but I would very much agree with you on the point that having true intentions of charity beyond propagandizing are crucial.
I've been to TLM parishes where your characterization seems fair for some of the attendees, but I can't judge hearts beyond my own, only pointing out as you do that we need to be very careful with our reasons for taking a side lest we be carried away mimetically by the mob.
Here’s an example, and how I dealt with it. I am confident all the trads in the pews thought this was just a kick ass sermon:
Canon Norman:
The overall teaching of your homily on Sunday May 18 in San Rafael was that a lay person must mindlessly and without discussion obey everything his confessor says (excluding commands to sin) if he wants to go to heaven, for such is the virtue of obedience. To prove this you used quotes from medieval clergy and monks, that is, those who have taken vows of obedience to their superiors. This teaching is not only obviously false, for it endorses the sin of reckless obedience, but it is a pernicious falsity, as it promotes spiritual abuse. Your homily was cult propaganda masking as Catholicism.
I think many trads would disagree with that sermon and would agree with you on the basis of layered levels of obedience on the occasions when the commands of the hierarchy conflict with each other and with the demands of the moral law.
I freely admit I'm unfamiliar with most of the names you mention and their positions. But your last paragraph in particular here rings true: people who turn the Church into an ideology are Pharisees bound for Hell.
I agree with Mark re AB Vigano. His excommunication was not valid and Bergoglio excommunicated himself by his manifest heresy. I am relieved by his vacation of the Chair as it didn’t belong to him. I pray fervently that Leo 14 will be proper, loving and heal the open wound that is the suppression of the TLM. May God grant him the strength that he will need. His love of the BVM gives me hope. Ad Jesum per Mariam⚔️
I am less of a supporter of Archbishop Vigano than I used to be as I feel that he has crossed over certain prudential lines in his actions since his excommunication. However, I can't necessarily blame him personally for even those things for which I disagree with him. He is, of all of us, probably one of the most traumatized, as he was one of the people who, at least at first, in doing his duty, was unjustly ignored, demoted, and abused.
I again don't know the full circumstances of his excommunication. It could be valid while being a horrible sin against justice. I certainly believe that it was rather damning how his revelations were ignored by the hierarchy but I again don't think it was prudent for Vigano to start his own seminary and be conditionally reconsecrated a bishop by Williamson.
I do agree with your hopes, but I am, due to Chris Jackson's revelations, quite a bit less optimistic in the short term than I was two weeks ago.
https://open.substack.com/pub/childrenbewareofidols/p/catholicism-as-propaganda?r=24l7o&utm_medium=ios