What a mess western society is. When we pushed God's protective Hand away - by our total and complete rejection of his word and teachings; in rushed the demons. Our secular leaders are not immune to infiltration. It remains to be seen to what extent our religious leaders have suffered this infiltration. To stick our heads in the sand won't change it. We can but pray for them...
Thanks for the clarification. You may want to check out my response to HH on this subject. But I believe whether that part of the message, which the Vatican suppressed according to Stine and Malachi Martin actually came from Our Lady remains an open question.
According to this aricle I've linked, Pope Leo seems to be very much a centrist who tries to work with everyone. This might not be ideal, but it is understandable that the Conclave chose a non-confrontational Pope, after twelve years of the 'dictator pope'. https://www.osvnews.com/20-days-int...o-xivs-appointment-style-may-lie-in-chiclayo/ He is inclined to spread around the governance of the Church, from the clergy to lay people and to women. The way things are going in Ireland, this might be necessary. We are rapidly running out of priests, here, and those we have are mostly elderly. They are heroic, keeping the show going at their age. But in ten years, at most, I can only foresee priests being so scarce that they will only be able to confect the Sacrifice of the Mass. They simply won't have time to do all the duties we traditionally ascribe to them. This is not new. In Mission Territory, it's typical a parish might not see a priest for years. Lay people will simply have to step in and distribute Communion, for example. This perhaps puts 'Communion in the hand' into another context. There will be no choice but for unpriestly hands to distribute Communion, so perhaps it is inevitable that 'unpriestly hands' may receive It; provided it is done reverently and with full awareness of what It consists. We are heading into new territory, for a while, and God does not expect the impossible. With maybe one or two priests per diocese, what's going to happen with confession, for example? It seems to me that lay people, on the whole, are at least as orthodox as the clergy. Most women have no interest in becoming priests, but certainly without them in our parish the PP would die of exhaustion and everything would grind to a complete halt. Without the women, there'd be few prayers and almost nobody at Mass. It must be remembered that, without women, Christ would have been left almost entirely unsupported on His Cross. Not all women, and this site is proof of it, are rabidly plotting to become priests. The great majority, I'd reckon, well know either consciously or in their hearts, that this is impossible. Maybe, an increasing role for women in the administration of the Church would weaken the arguments of the feminists. Anyway, we can't be governed by the prejudices of these lunatics. It is also notable that Pope Leo, in his time in Peru, was quite conservative liturgically and could also work with Opus Dei priests. He seems also to listen to people. I know he's no Pope Pius X, but I'm not disturbed, yet. Let's not forget that St Pope John Paul II kissed a Koran.
Before the 2025 conclave, Prof. Josef Seifert had called for a church-internal investi I think everybody here appreciates you. Must pray more and speak less, that goes for me as well.
Yes, I agree, sedevacantism is a slippery slope. This has always been the position of the SSPX, in fact they said the same ("slippery slope") in response to Archbishop Vigano's statement that 'Pope Francis' was not a true pope. I think the SSPX's approach of recognise and resist is very wise, although I must admit, I have often felt the temptation to not recognise Pope Francis as Supreme Pontiff. In fact, I have often put his papal name in quotation marks, thereby indicating my doubts. Now, with the college of Cardinals stacked by Pope Francis, I feel similar temptations regarding Pope Leo, in terms of the validity of his election. But you are right, sedevacantism is a slippery slope. I must remind myself to beware of it. To recognise the Pope, whilst resisting any heresy or unorthodox teaching coming from him, seems like a wise approach. At the end of the day, I must say, I am torn between different viewpoints. We live in times of diabolical disorientation.
I respect you very much and I agree with much of what you write. But I would like to politely disagree here. I do not think that "spreading around the governance of the church" is any form of solution to the crisis - instead, it is a form of modernism, and modernism part of the problem. The answer to the crisis, in my opinion, is a return to tradition. Look at the traditional Catholic societies and how they are thriving and growing, for example the SSPX. The Holy Catholic Church is a monarchy, not a democracy, much like the Kingdom of Heaven is a monarchy, reigned by Our Lord, who crowned Our Lady as Queen of Heaven and Earth. Any form of democracy or wrongly understood synodality will lead the Holy Catholic Church down the same path of destruction we have seen in the 'Anglican Church', for example.
We live in the world as it is. If there are, in practice, no clergy available, one must find ways around it. I remember listening to sermons decades ago from priests who had been ordained before VII, and who were utterly orthodox, explaining that in Mission Territory, parishes might only see their priest every few years, because of demographics and geography. Presumably, these parishes maintained some form of liturgical or cathechetical life. We're heading there now, in Ireland. It's not a traditional situation that we're heading into, but I don't know if the solutions proposed are necessarily modernist. I'm unaware of any change in doctrine being proposed. I think to abandon the sheep for lack of shepherds is what should be done. I don't think 'democracy' is necessarily inevitable. Authority is ultimately invested only in the Pope and his Bishops. I don't think they have any intention of surrendering that privilege, even if their motives are only worldly. But they've certainly created a chaotic mess in the last sixty years, with very little input from the laity. It is quite conceivable that more say in the administration and day-to-day running of the Church by lay people might reduce the modernist tendency. It doesn't appear to me that lay Catholics, as a whole, are anything like as modernist or progressive as the Hierarchy. That's the way it was in the Aryan Crisis-the lay people held the line against the majority of Aryanist bishops.
It's a pity to see the divisions on this thread. Maybe, it's down to expectations. We would all like a clear distancing from the last appalling pontificate. Considering the options that are available in the cardinalate, I'll be happy if we get through this pontificate without any doctrinal changes and with a polite non-committment to Pope Francis' worst excesses. If it's a long pontificate and nothing catastrophic happens, by the end of it, the Cardinalate will hopefully be less progressive and things might begin to improve. I expect we'll get some encouraging things from Pope Leo, but there'll be plenty of occasions for pulling our hair out. Still, I'm confident that there will be nothing like Pachamama, praising atheists and abortionists or directly second-guessing Christ Himself. I'm hopeful that there will be nothing directly heretical. If we get that, and I live to see it, I'll be delighted. We managed to get through a dozen years of Bergoglianism with the words of the Consecration and Humanae vitae intact. It'll take decades, probably longer, to recover from the disasters of the last sixty years. We have it on Good Authority that we will. Let's chill out a wee bit.
“If I mention him (the Pope) in the Mass and it turns out he’s not the Pope, nothing will happen to me at my judgment, since this is the man the Church told me was the Pope. But if I don’t mention him, and it turns out he is the Pope…. uh-oh!” - Cannonist Fr. Hesse
A couple of points. I hope it's not going to count as Popesplaining, as I'm done with that, as you Americans say. During Pope John Paul II's long papacy, we often, nay usually, had bishops whom we would not have chosen. Under JP2, Bernadin was made a bishop, and McCarrick, Mahony and Wuerl granted full bishoprics. In the UK things were also pretty bad. I once asked a dear monastic friend what he would do if he were asked to do something he didn't agree with by his ordinary. his eyes widened, 'I obey the Pope!' he declared in a stern voice. Because even with mediocre/bad bishops, we still knew our Holy Father was with us. And occasionally we got a good bishop. It was similar under B16, the run of people we would never have wanted as bishop, until he decided to consult more widely. Rubbish appointments seem to have been always with us, an ancient saying is "the path to hell is paved with the skulls of bishops". I had a recent chat with a young abbot, one of the generation which is producing more orthodox priests. I warned him that 'personnel is policy' and he declined to agree at this point. He opined that early appointments might dismay us and we would have to wait for better ones. His view is that the new pope will take time to turn the ship around. Personally I'm not so sure. Sending Cdl Sarah to organise a liturgy in France for a festival most of us have never heard of is not much of a sop to traditional Catholics. We want something more substantial like the head of a dicastery who isn't a pervert or a raving liberal. I can popesplain to you about how the new head of the Institute for Life sounded orthodox under Benedict and may have changed his tune to keep Francis' approval... but if so, he's a trimmer. I think Leo will be a mixed bag. We can hope and pray he grows into his papacy quickly and doesn't feel the need to reward people whom he may have been asked to promote during the conclave - if indeed any deals were done. I know some think there was a deal with trads to restore the TLM. Leo may lighten up TC because if nothing else he won't want to preside over a schism. I very much doubt any deal was made with the trads because they were too few to matter. However there's money in traditionalism and we know that funds are drying up. It may be politic to relax the restrictions. Michael Matt believes we should wait and see. A lot of people are disappointed but we were never going to get a Pius XIII with the conclave stacked as it was. In the church that thinks in centuries we need to think at least in half-centuries. On the good news front: Things were much much worse under Paul VI. Back then there was little chance of forming the kind of groups we have now, as they didn't have the internet. These days it's not possible to lie openly without being called out on it quite fast. We have a new generation which is tending towards traditionalism. I think it was Dom Bede Camm who told a good friend of mine that it would take three generations to fix things - that's 90 years and we've only had 60. I won't live to see the re-establishment of Catholic orthodoxy, unless there's a miracle. But I, and everyone else, can prepare. I was thinking about how we could plan ahead but haven't quite got my ideas straight yet. The no-brainer is communication: publishing houses and the Internet. We have TAN books, for example. So these things are already around, which they weren't in 1970. Once the tide starts to turn we must be ready with everything in place, communication, catechetics, mission. When I came back to the UK from the US in 1986, I was dismayed at the lack of orthodox Catholic journalism. In the US we had the National Catholic Register which I subscribed to along with New Covenant magazine. Most devout Catholics in the UK knew each other and it wasn't long before I was being sent a monthly newsletter (unsolicited) produced on a Gestettner machine. You could only go to a TLM if you lived near Downham Market in Norfolk. At some time in the early 1990s I walked into a large bookshop in Oxford expecting to hit paydirt. In vain I looked for good orthodox publications (Servant books in the USA for instance produced some excellent things). New books feel and smell gorgeous, but the ones in the religion and theology department were full of bile and discontent. Bleating about women priests. All the usual suspects - Kung, Sillybeaks, etc etc. It was depressing. But these days we have Gracewing which produces some excellent reading, and many older books are back in print. In the cities, especially London, we have Night Fever, where young people invite passers by the spend time before the Eucharist, and Evangelium, a summer school for youth, and pilgrimages and pro-life initiatives. This is how the church will turn around: the active laity educated in their faith. We can't wait for holy bishops, we will have to make it happen ourselves. Only in rural areas (like mine) do we still have guitars and folk hymns. I've heard it said that in the middle ages, no one knew who the pope was and very few had an idea about the identity of their bishop. We will just have to get on with being authentically Catholic, which does mean supporting the hierarchy when we can, but not expecting them to turn things around in a hurry. Idle question: Malachi Martin claimed to have read the Third Secret of Fatima. How do we know this is true? He was a very junior priest at the time - the whole thing was 'secretive' (pun), so why would anyone tell him what was in it? I know his version is that Cardinal Bea told him in the car, but... how can we know this, when Bea was sworn to secrecy? I have a lot of respect for MM in general, especially for his foresight and discernment, but he often seems to have kissed the blarney stone a bit too passionately. Another idle point: I wouldn't take Melanie Calvat too seriously. She and Maxim are regarded as among the least impressive visionaries as they seem to have made a career out of La Salette. The early messages are true, but later the visionaries went around saying things that sounded more off the wall.
"The rot will begin at the top"( Our Lady) The hierarchy introduced the " novelties" as Fr Hardin called it--not the lay people. Most lay people gulped and scratched their heads and went along with it. Some whole heartedly resisted. I was there. I remember. Catholics United for the Faith was a bulwark. The Remnant was a bulwark. The Blue Army to name a few. But the ports in the storm were few and far between. I remember attending Masses that were horrible. Even suspect as to validity. It was a desert. Whatever one might say about the Charismatic Renewal it was a life saver for me. That's where I found true believing Catholic priests who took the faith seriously and Catholics who were alive in their faith. Beautiful. Persevering. Charitable. I expect this time around as in the Aryan heresy the lay people will cling to the true faith along with a few true good priests. The faith will go underground for a season until Our Lady comes. I will most likely be with the Lord by then ( I am old ) by God's grace. " The Catholic Church has gone to the dogs at least three times in history and every time its the dog who died." ( GK Chesterton)
This is a wonderful post. Clarity of a kind rarely seen. I wish I had written it!!! I remember those days so well. You are spot on about Paul VI. We struggled through a desert that nearly drained us dry. And yes Pope John Paul II made sketchy appointments and did very sketchy things. I think your young Abbot is very wise to say wait and see. And if we dont pray for Pope LeoXIV then who should we blame? In many ways the spiritual terrain is much greener with new growth. Much more hopeful. Thank you for your post.
I could have written this. In the US in the early 80s I heard so much depressing heresy from the pulpit. The Charismatic Renewal was a refreshing escape from the madness, because there we were allowed to be orthodox and faithful. And from it we had some tangible fruits: Franciscan Uni of Steubenville (my eldest daughter graduated from there a couple of years back), great preaching, EWTN, Servant Books, and writers and thinkers like James Hitchcock and Peter Kreeft who may not have been mainstream charismatics but were championed by them. We still have Ralph Martin of course. When I returned to the UK there was no similar prayer group for me to attend, and I missed that.
Though to observe and comment is but part of our human nature, so is to turn to God in prayer and trust is our dignity as children of the Holy Almighty One in Whose hands we rest in confidence. Today's Morning prayer began with the sublime hymn of Holy, Holy Holy, Lord God Almighty. It then proceeded to Psalm 80 with its cry of anguish: Lord God of hosts, how long will you frown on your people’s plea? You have fed them with tears for their bread, an abundance of tears for their drink. You have made us the taunt of our neighbors, our enemies laugh us to scorn. God of hosts, bring us back; let your face shine on us and we shall be saved. But ultimately it always includes Zachariah's Canticle of rejoicing: You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way, to give his people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins. In the tender compassion of our God the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace. This is not a whimsical hope, but an unshakable hope. Let us carry on in the certainty of God's promise: Romans 8:28 28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
Great post. Thank you. As for visionaries, one can see why Our Lady resorted to three little children.
John Paul came from Poland, isolated behind the Iron Curtain. It must have been very difficult for him to read nuances in Westerners and he would have known very few. Being 'a son of the Church', I accept Paul VI is a saint, but I won't be praying to him too often.
I think you are astute in your observation of JPII. He was an heroic figure but you are right about his Polish experience getting in the way sometimes--especially with priest abusers. The Communists used to use that accusation to destroy good priests in the bad old days of the Soviet Union. So JPII was skeptical of the accusations coming forth from the US and Europe. Also he was above all else a humanist. I think it led him to embrace things that prudence would have prevented--kissing the Koran for example. I do not pray to Paul VI either.
