descendit ad infernos

Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem, Creatorem caeli et terrae,
et in Iesum Christum, Filium Eius unicum, Dominum nostrum,
qui conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria Virgine,
passus sub Pontio Pilato, crucifixus, mortuus, et sepultus,
descendit ad infernos, tertia die resurrexit a mortuis,
ascendit ad caelos, sedet ad dexteram Dei Patris omnipotentis,
inde venturus est iudicare vivos et mortuos.
Credo in Spiritum Sanctum,
sanctam Ecclesiam catholicam, sanctorum communionem,
remissionem peccatorum,
carnis resurrectionem,
vitam aeternam.
Amen.
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth;
And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord;
Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried.
He descended into hell; On the third day He rose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
From thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.
Amen
This is the Apostles’ Creed. It’s most commonly recited during the Rosary. Some NO parishes in the U.S. use it during Lent, but it’s uncommon. I believe it’s used during all Sunday Masses in Canada and some other countries. Pious legend has it that each of the apostles contributed one the twelve articles of faith (represented by the twelve lines the creed is broken into).
Today is Holy Saturday, the day Jesus descended into Hell, a real actual place, to rescue the just souls who had been waiting there in limbo for the coming of our Lord. Although they had died free from mortal sin, the gates of Heaven could not be opened to them without the redeeming sacrifice of the cross. So the day after the Crucifixion, Jesus went to free them.
Except, that’s not exactly accurate. To say that the gates of Heaven “could not” be opened prior to Christ’s redeeming sacrifice would be to place limits on God’s omnipotence. Time is a construct; God is not bound by His own creation. If He had so desired, He could have applied the merits of the cross to the righteous souls at the time of their earthly death, but He chose not to. Instead, He reserved the job to Himself to apply it “in person.”
An interesting contrast is the Immaculate Conception, which was the unique result of God preserving Mary from the stain of original sin by applying the redemptive value of the Crucifixion to her at the moment of her conception. Mary, the first tabernacle, could not possibly be impure in any way, because God will not dwell within anything impure (and nothing impure can dwell within God, hence mine will be a long, long Purgatory, God willing). So not being bound by time, and since all events of all eternity occur simultaneously and eternally for God, He chose to preserve Mary from original sin by the retroactive application of grace from an event that had not yet occurred in “real time”.
Back to the descendit ad infernos. Go ahead and picture yourself in the scene. Meditate on how hard it must have been for the righteous of antiquity to die in the state of grace. Think about how much easier we have it, with access to the fullness of Truth, the Barque, the Eucharist, the example of the saints. If they could make it, shouldn’t it be easy for us?
And yet.
The event has been stunningly depicted in iconography through the ages. Much of it is pretty graphic in terms of the furnishings of the place, and demons certainly do come in a variety of shapes and sizes. I’m reproducing a few tame examples here.
Image result for harrowing of hell
Image result for harrowing of hell
Image result for harrowing of hell
Image result for harrowing of hell
Related image
Public Domain / Wikimedia Commons
I leave you with the famous “Ancient Homily” for Holy Saturday:

Something strange is happening – there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.
He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him, Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: “My Lord be with you all.” Christ answered him: “And with your spirit.” He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying:
“Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.
“I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise.
“I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated. For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth.
“For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.
“See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On my back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree.
“I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.
“Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God.
“The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.”

The reality of Hell, and our knowledge of it, is meant to be used as a spiritual weapon

I knew I had written an essay not long ago loosely based on using meditation on the Four Last Things as spiritual weapon. It took me a little while to find it. I hope you find it useful on this Good Friday, the day our Lord offered Himself in our place, that we might have a chance at Heaven.
The piece gets a little dark, but that’s exactly what’s needed to set your bearing.
Excerpt:

God created us to know, love, and serve Him in this life, so that we might be happy with Him forever in the next. He shared with us through the revealed truths what makes him happy and what hurts him. If we love someone, we try to do those things that make them happy, and avoid those things that hurt them. Sometimes we fail, and we need to be sorry for that and seek forgiveness. Striving to live an authentic Christian life is founded on these concepts. Building your “personal relationship” with the Triune Godhead is based on renouncing your sin AS A SIGN OF YOUR LOVE. Once you start thinking about it this way — that your actual sins are in fact personally injurious to God — you’ll start putting a whole lot more “discernment” into those bad decisions.

If you truly want to grow in your spiritual life, in your love of God, through a terrifying fear of Hell, think about this: If one-third of the angels willingly chose to reject the will of God, and were cast into Hell because of it, what percentage of the human race do you think ends up there? These angels, with soaring intellects orders of magnitude greater than ours, pure spirit, with no temptations of the flesh, the most beautiful and gifted creatures ever created by God… if 33% of these angels each individually chose to reject God to His face, what chance do we have?  Yeah, I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess a frighteningly large majority of the human race ends up in Hell. God’s justice is perfect…

Here is the whole thing. The meatier parts are toward the end:

I have some troublesome “cherished beliefs” I need to share with Cardinal Archheretic Cupich

“It is our job to take up that discernment. It takes time. It involves discipline. Most importantly it requires that we be prepared to let go of cherished beliefs and long-held biases,” said the Archbishop of Chicago in a talk to the Catholic Theological Union published on YouTube October 27. HERE

Dear Blase, may I share with you a particular cherished belief that I’m most definitely not prepared to let go of?
HELL EXISTS: WHERE THE SOULS OF POOR SINNERS GO. HERE
Oh, does it seem wrong to “cherish” the thought of Hell? Nope, think again.  Hell is real. It’s never wrong to love the eternal truths. It’s never wrong to proclaim the Truth. You are obliged to do this. Knowledge of Hell is a great, great blessing. In fact, desiring Heaven solely out of a fear of Hell is good enough to get you there. It’s called Imperfect Contrition.
Cardinal Cupich is a lying heretic who needs to know he will spend all eternity in Hell for leading countless souls astray, and every one of those souls will rage against him personally face to face forever. He needs to repent and renounce of his heresy. He needs to know that there is no way to trick God by discerning, encountering, or attempting to abrogate God’s laws out of faux mercy.
I’ve been praying quite a bit on the Four Last Things. This topic has come at me from several different vectors of late. That’s usually a pretty good sign to sit up and pay attention. In particular, meditating on Hell and developing a deeply terrifying fear of it can be a most helpful exercise. It is an important step in growing our love for God, and wanting never to offend him. But for most of modernist, humanist, secularist western society, the Four Last Things have tragically become the Two Last Things. There are two versions, both as vacuous as they are ubiquitous:
First version: Death, Nothing. This group is split between the exploding number of atheists, and believers who think there might be a Heaven but no way could there be a Hell because mercy. Those who don’t make it to Heaven are just snuffed out… Soul annihilation. For a solid tracing of where this mindset must lead, using rational, linear thinking, go visit Ann Barnhardt, who nails it as usual HERE. 
Second version: Death, Heaven. For most nominal believers, that’s it. It makes no difference how the person lived their lives nor the circumstances of their death, nor really anything, unless they were literally Hitler. I’ve seen a lot of this even in Catholic circles, because of course nobody knows the faith. Yet suddenly when a “nice” person dies unexpectedly, of course he or she goes to meet God right away.  Julie at Connecticut Catholic Corner has a few words about this HERE.
Both versions reek, in different ways, of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. If you want to understand just how far 95% of “Christianity” has gone astray, get to know MTD. The five core dogmas of MTD are:

  1. God exists and He created the world
  2. God wants people to be nice to each other
  3. God wants everyone to feel happy and good about themselves
  4. God doesn’t need to be involved in our daily lives, unless there is a problem and we need Him
  5. Good people go to heaven when they die

It is not an exaggeration to say that hundreds of millions of people today think MTD is the central message of Christianity, which could not possibly be farther from the truth. I am linking here to a site that unfortunately contains quite a bit of anti-Catholic bigotry, but the page I’m sending you to is the best visual representation of MTD I’ve been able to find. Please go take a look. It’s a page that describes hundreds of people I know, both “Catholic” and not. Please go HERE.
This is what happens when you abandon “cherished beliefs”. Pretty soon, not only is your religion hollowed out, it actually turns into the opposite of what it was meant to be. You must call this out, and warn others about it. God’s laws don’t change, because God never changes, because God was always perfect, and you can’t change perfect into something more perfecter.
Let’s get back to Heaven and Hell. God created us to know, love, and serve Him in this life, so that we might be happy with Him forever in the next. He shared with us through the revealed truths what makes him happy and what hurts him. If we love someone, we try to do those things that make them happy, and avoid those things that hurt them. Sometimes we fail, and we need to be sorry for that and seek forgiveness. Striving to live an authentic Christian life is founded on these concepts. Building your “personal relationship” with the Triune Godhead is based on renouncing your sin AS A SIGN OF YOUR LOVE. Once you start thinking about it this way — that your actual sins are in fact personally injurious to God — you’ll start putting a whole lot more “discernment” into those bad decisions.
Hell was first created as a result of Lucifer’s refusal to serve God, when God revealed the entire plan of salvation to all the angels. Lucifer, likely the most glorious, beautiful, and intellectually superior angel created by God, was so disgusted, so enraged, so filled with sinful pride, that he just couldn’t accept the plan. This beautiful angel refused to accept that almighty God would lower Himself to take on flesh, homo factus est, and immolate Himself to redeem humanity. We might imagine that the icing on the cake was being told that God would not only become man, but be born of a woman, the spotless Virgin, and that this woman would in turn become Queen of the Universe. You can imagine the total throw down hissy fit Lucifer had upon learning that he had a female human monarch over him. So he issued his Non Serviam, and fully one third of the angels followed him in their rebellion, and were cast out. The other two-thirds chose wisely and were granted the Beatific Vision.
If you truly want to grow in your spiritual life, in your love of God, through a terrifying fear of Hell, think about this: If one-third of the angels willingly chose to reject the will of God, and were cast into Hell because of it, what percentage of the human race do you think ends up there? These angels, with soaring intellects orders of magnitude greater than ours, pure spirit, with no temptations of the flesh, the most beautiful and gifted creatures ever created by God… if 33% of these angels each individually chose to reject God to His face, what chance do we have?  Yeah, I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess a frighteningly large majority of the human race ends up in Hell. God’s justice is perfect, and the percentages aren’t good. Hammer this fact into your brain until it starts to pop up every time you are in the near occasion of sin.
We must instruct others on the reality of Hell. We must never desire anyone to go there. We must work and pray for the salvation of all souls. But Hell exists, it’s not empty, and people are falling into it every day.
Discern that, Blase.

“Then he shall say to them also that shall be on his left hand: Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels.” Matt 25:41

When Jesus spoke about that place with the weeping and gnashing of teeth, He wasn’t talking about Walmart

Even as cockle therefore is gathered up, and burnt with fire: so shall it be at the end of the world. The Son of man shall send his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all scandals, and them that work iniquity. And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Matt 13:40-42

It’s pretty basic. Does not require a “sophisticated theologian.”

And if thy hand scandalize thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life, maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into unquenchable fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished. And if thy foot scandalize thee, cut it off. It is better for thee to enter lame into life everlasting, than having two feet, to be cast into the hell of unquenchable fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished. And if thy eye scandalize thee, pluck it out. It is better for thee with one eye to enter into the kingdom of God, than having two eyes to be cast into the hell of fire:  Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished. Mark 9:42-47

Therefore, Hell is: a) Real, b) Eternal, c) Populated.

[Scalfari:] Your Holiness, in our previous meeting you told me that our species will disappear in a certain moment and that God, still out of his creative force, will create new species. You have never spoken to me about the souls who died in sin and will go to hell to suffer it for eternity. You have however spoken to me of good souls, admitted to the contemplation of God. But what about bad souls? Where are they punished?
[Francis:] “They are not punished, those who repent obtain the forgiveness of God and enter the rank of souls who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot therefore be forgiven disappear. There is no hell, there is the disappearance of sinful souls.” HERE

There is a lot of mainstream huffing and puffing over this, but I don’t really understand why. It’s at least the second or third time he has uttered the annihilation heresy. Maybe it’s the first time he claimed that even the place itself doesn’t exist. Of course Bergoglio has also promulgated Universalist heresy, so it can be a bit confusing.
Then we have the ongoing scandal of sinners encouraged to keep sinning, and that in some concrete situations, God even prefers it that way. God wills sin, most dogs go to heaven, and bad dogs just go poof.
Turn away from this man and finish out Holy Week with a good examination of conscience. Repent, and believe in the Gospel. In other news, the plaster inside St. Peters began crumbling today. Fix your bearing. We are at war.
I leave you with a re-post.

When Francis treats us worse than Satan treats us

From Francis’ comments at WYD this past Saturday, via CNA:HERE

“Today, the Lord wants us to feel ever more profoundly His great mercy,” the Pope said… We may think that we are the “worst” on account of our sins and weaknesses, the Pope told the youth. However, this is how God prefers us to be, in order that “His mercy may spread.”

I can’t find an official transcript of this off the cuff remark, so let’s just go with the CNA version. Such a short and simple statement, yet so many levels of error.
First and most obvious, God does NOT prefer us to remain in our sins and weaknesses. Law of non-contradiction, hello?  Sin is that which goes against God’s will.  Francis’ statement reduces to “God’s will = not God’s will”. So no, that doesn’t work.
Second, if WE prefer our sins and weaknesses over the will of God, it isn’t so that “his mercy may spread.” On the contrary, our refusal to repent and continued disobedience cuts us off from that mercy on our own account. It’s just another example of twisting the truth to the point of a complete inversion of truth.
In order for Francis’ statement to be true, think about what also would have to be true.  It would mean the Non Serviam of Lucifer and his angels was not of their own free will, but that their sinful act was actually willed by God. It would mean the Original Sin of Adam and Eve was not of their own free will, but their sinful act was actually willed by God. And it would mean the transmission of Original Sin down through the ages, its resulting Concupiscence in all of mankind, causing all of us to tend toward sin against God’s will, is actually willed by God.
None of this is Catholic.  But as I have written before, all of it consistent with the constant ramblings of a man so lost in his sins, he doesn’t think it humanly possible to resist any of them. No, what we have here starts out as pure Luther (who was also totally lost in his sins), then dovetails into a Calvinistic Total Depravity, where our free will is completely subjugated to sin. Simply, we are incapable of doing the right thing, so don’t worry, be happy.  This. Is. Heresy.
The total depravity angle has the added benefit of firing up Francis the Insult Machine whenever his comments turn to faithful Catholics.  Because in his mind, there are no faithful Catholics, only hypocrites. The false doctrine of total depravity, taken to its logical end, teaches that ALL of man’s actions, even good actions, are inherently evil because our motivation for doing good cannot be altruistic but rather must be egotistic. So you can take all your beads, counted rosaries, novenas, Masses offered, and get off your high horse.
Lastly, the final diabolical inversion at play here is truly sinister.  In fact, it is an example of Francis treating us worse than Satan treats us.  Oh yes.  When we make some effort to amend our lives, and it goes very badly, as it tends to at the beginning, Satan attacks us by telling us we are miserable pathetic failures and that God will never love us.  His aim is despair, followed by your abandonment of the effort.  Francis attacks us by telling us we are wonderfully blessed by our successful sinning, and that God loves our sins.  Do you see how much worse this is?  By the way, his intent doesn’t matter (except regarding the degree of his culpability).  Whether it is willful or negligent is immaterial to the effects on the ground.  It is still an attack, an attack on souls.
Friends, while we cannot expect to live sinless lives, this is exactly what we must strive for.  At every instance of temptation, God offers sufficient grace to offset the concupiscence, providing us the ability to choose the right action.  Every sin we commit happens because we choose to refuse the grace being offered, and instead choose our will over God’s will. This is what Catholics believe.  Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

“The Conservative Position” is just a plot laid to make you blue

Pretty good piece by Patrick Archbold over at The Remnant HERE. While he fails to acknowledge Benedict is still pope, and thus the formalized heresy now enshrined in the “authentic magisterium” hasn’t really taken place, his overall theme is a good one. It’s an attack on the “Conservative” position and its standard operating procedures. Here is a quick peek, but do click the link and read the whole thing.

I was born in 1967 into a Church that had already surrendered to the enemy, I just didn’t know it. After that surrender, it became the task of successive Pontiffs to cede ground in order to maintain something that still resembled that which they inherited. The Popes that ceded the least territory to the enemy in order to “conserve” that which remained, were hailed as heroes on the global stage. Those who put up little resistance and gave ground easily had to content themselves merely with sainthood. But each in their turn gave precious ground to the enemy.
Those few faithful that refused to flee and abandon the Church altogether were told by those they trusted that all the ground ceded to the enemy was of no value anyway, that is was actually an encumbrance better jettisoned to preserve those things that really mattered. Then those things that really mattered were artfully moved into the encumbrance category and jettisoned with the rest. Better to do this, we were told, then to fight. Fighting only made things worse, made the tiger clench its jaws even tighter. Best not to wiggle and squirm, it just turns people off. This was the “conservative” approach. That we should only be concerned with the 5 year rolling average of truth and not focus on what was already lost.

He doesn’t say it directly, so allow me: The one good thing coming out of the present mess is that the “conservative” position has been totally eliminated. No one with a shred of intellectual honesty can possibly cling to it any longer. There cannot be any more talk of Vatican II as being in continuity with 2000 years of Church teaching, that it was hijacked by a few bad actors, that the documents are orthodox but the implementation had unintended consequences, or that a return to tradition is right around the corner, we just need a few more hippies to die off.
All of this is demonstrably false. The falsity is objective reality, not opinion. That the Church has been totally infiltrated by imposters has been laid bare, and all the worst elements of Vatican II are on fleek: The cult of man, the primacy of conscience, situational ethics, so-called religious freedom, “pastoral” needs, etc. Should we blame Benedict for trying to force the square peg through the round hole via the Hermeneutic of Continuity? Hard to say. He probably looked at all his options and thought it was the best strategy at the time. Either way, that time has passed and we have to move on.
It doesn’t matter that all the “mainstream” nuChurch of Nice outlets continue to look the other way; the fact remains that the Bride of Christ is being raped HERE. The “conservative” approach is now dead. Anyone who continues to operate within that mindset should automatically be counted amongst the enemy, because they give aid and comfort to the enemy whether they know it or not. For anyone just waking up to the smell of napalm in the morning, you have a choice to make. Now that the comfortable conservative lounge has been torched, you need to either declare your Non Serviam and go over to the other side, or else you need to go Trad. Oh, I know you can’t believe it, right? But that’s where we are if you take the red pill.
It’s a bitter pill at first, and anger is a common emotion. To help ease the pain, please enjoy this musical interlude. Every time “love” comes up in the lyrics, kindly substitute the words “the conservative position”. Apologies to The Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison and everyone else who’ve covered this, but this is the best version.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY6tV1QIeKg?start=30&w=560&h=315]

Love hurts, love scars. Love wounds and marks any heart, not tough or strong enough, to take a lot of pain, take a lot of pain. Love is like a cloud, it holds a lot of rain. Love hurts…Ooh love hurts.
I’m young, I know, but even so, I know a thing or two I learned from you. I really learned a lot, really learned a lot. Love is like a flame, it burns you when it’s hot. Love hurts…Ooh love hurts.
Some fools dream of happiness, blissfulness, togetherness. Some who fool themselves, I guess, will tell you that it’s real. But I know it isn’t true. I know it isn’t true. Love is just a plot laid to make you blue.

Antonio Socci: Benedict “confirms” his imaginary Expanded Petrine Ministry via the “inner continuity between the two pontificates” from the Big Letter

The content at his site is protected, so no cut and paste here. You will need to go read it over  HERE.
In a nutshell, Socci says that the “inner continuity” comment, when illuminated by the context of the omitted paragraphs (which show a lack of “external continuity”), could only mean one thing. That the “strangeness of the concept” of having “inner continuity between the two pontificates” must be taken in the present tense, with two pontiffs currently reigning (in Benedict’s mind), each with distinct roles within an expanded petrine ministry.
After his upfront “profound” discourse, Benedict spends the balance of the letter dismissively declining to issue theological commentary on the “little volumes”, and refuses to even read them, due to supposed time constraints and other obligations. Then in the last paragraph now revealed, Benedict goes after certain authors who contributed to the work, due to their heresy and personal attacks in the past. Therefore Socci concludes that with this obvious lack of “external continuity”, which he terms “a colossal problem”, Benedict took care to insert the “inner/interior” modifier.
Socci then grasps onto what I was trying to explain in THIS post. Namely, if words have meaning, then the choice of words matters, and if we know anything about Benedict, it’s that he tends toward precision. From my earlier post:

Inner/interior can be meant in the sense of the spiritual; the interior life. If we put this meaning together with the previous definition of continuity, we get a meaning that could refer to a spiritual/theological continuity existing between two distinct, mutually exclusive pontificates, across linear time. Given the overall context of the letter, that seems plausible, except for the fact that we have a pretty well-defined data set informing us that Benedict doesn’t see it that way.
As luck would have it, the second way continuity can be defined is not across time but rather within the confines of a space. We observe that the surface of a sphere has continuity, in the sense that it is continuous. “A continuous or connected whole” is one definition HERE. We can also observe continuity between individual parts of a greater whole. The honeycombs of a beehive have continuity. The oxygen we breathe is actually composed of two atoms of oxygen, which naturally exist together through a covalent bond as a single entity wherein we can observe continuity. In order to save you from spending the rest of your day down a rabbit hole of molecular chemistry, just think of it as cracking a single egg and discovering a double yolk.
But wait there’s more! Not only can continuity be spatial, so can inner/interior. In fact the primary meaning of inner/interior is not spiritual, but rather physical/spatial, referring to the inside of some confining space.
So what do we get when we combine the spatial definition of “inner” and the spatial definition of “continuity” together in the phrase, “inner continuity”? Can you think of any other “whole” inside of which we might observe continuity between “individual parts”?
How about the inner continuity between two popes exercising their separate and distinct pontifical roles IN REAL TIME, within the faux Expanded Petrine Ministry, as already thoroughly explained by Ganswein.

Socci goes right at the Ganswein speech as well, and he also touches on the root cause of Benedict’s substantial error, which is that any man who accepts the papal crown is indelibly anointed in an irrevocable way, such that anyone who “resigns” the papacy can never do so completely.  As Socci describes Benedict’s erroneous concept, “the pope, if he resigns, he maintains the responsibility he has taken in an interior sense, not in function.” This squares with Benedict assuming the “contemplative” role and Bergoglio assuming the “active” role, each operating within the Expanded Petrine Ministry as defined by Ganswein.
Please do click on the link at the top for the full English translation of Socci’s post. Of course it wasn’t picked up broadly by the Catholic media, but nevertheless this is the most “mainstream” author/outlet yet to pick up on the real. We must be pretty close to the dominos starting to fall.
I will leave off once again with the smoking gun in Benedict’s final general audience of 27 February 2013, the day before his invalid resignation did not become effective, where he exposes his erroneous notion of the indelible nature of the Petrine Ministry (note that Socci makes reference to the “a father is always a father” analogy in his post). In doing so, Benedict directly contradicts all those previous statements where he claimed he was “renouncing”, “leaving”, and would then be Pontiff “no longer, but a simple pilgrim”. HERE

Here, allow me to go back once again to 19 April 2005 (Ratzinger’s elevation to the papacy). The real gravity of the decision was also due to the fact that from that moment on I was engaged always and forever by the Lord. Always – anyone who accepts the Petrine ministry no longer has any privacy. He belongs always and completely to everyone, to the whole Church. In a manner of speaking, the private dimension of his life is completely eliminated. I was able to experience, and I experience it even now, that one receives one’s life precisely when one gives it away. Earlier I said that many people who love the Lord also love the Successor of Saint Peter and feel great affection for him; that the Pope truly has brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, throughout the world, and that he feels secure in the embrace of your communion; because he no longer belongs to himself, he belongs to all and all belong to him.

The “always” is also a “for ever” – there can no longer be a return to the private sphere. (<in his mind> the papal coronation indelibly anoints the pontiff in a distinct way, which is different from, and more profound than, the priestly or episcopal ordination/consecration). My decision to resign the active exercise of the ministry does not revoke this. (the indelibility is <in his mind> irrevocable – Benedict is pope forever, but <in his mind> now exercising only part of the Petrine ministry)I do not return to private life, to a life of travel, meetings, receptions, conferences, and so on. I am not abandoning the cross, but remaining in a new way at the side of the crucified Lord. I no longer bear the power of office for the governance of the Church, but in the service of prayer I remain, so to speak, in the enclosure of Saint Peter. Saint Benedict, whose name I bear as Pope, will be a great example for me in this. He showed us the way for a life which, whether active or passive, is completely given over to the work of God. HERE

The archbishop doth protest too much, methinks

During an interview with Sergio Rubin of the Spanish language Religion Digital, published yesterday, Archbishop Víctor Manuel “Tucho” Fernández had this to say in response to a question about The Resistance arising from the Bergoglian new paradigm of allowing the divorced and “remarried” (aka active unrepentant adulterers) to receive Holy Communion:

“…He created an impressive commotion in the most conservative sectors, which treat Francisco as a heretic, affirm that they must dethrone him, or threaten a schism, as if the whole Gospel collapsed because of this matter. The voices of these sectors are amplified a lot because they are using a lot of blogs, publications on the Internet and social networks. But they certainly respond to very minority sectors of the believing population.” HERE

Someone needs some basic lessons in Public Relations / damage control. First rule: Less is more. Even though you are denouncing the position, the fact that you managed to put the words Francisco, heretic, dethrone, and schism all in the same sentence, even when your interviewer didn’t use ANY of those words, really exposes your hypersensitivity and deep concern for the matter. You know there’s a problem, and now we know you know there’s a problem. Secondly, going out of your way to call attention to it necessarily means that your claim that it’s only a small problem of “very minority sectors” has no credibility.
It is truly rich to read about trad blogs accused of being Fake News yet again, the same week that the Vatican has, yet again, proven itself the reigning champion of Fake News.  The truth is, resistance to the Bergoglian usurpation is growing by leaps and bounds. It’s snowballing. I mean, even the mainstream conservatives are coming on board. After all, we’ve had almost another six months worth of filth since we discovered this:

WHICH BEST DESCRIBES YOUR OPINION ABOUT THE CURRENT POPE?

Francis is Pope                      16%
Benedict is Pope                    72%
Some other person is Pope      1%
No one is Pope                        9%

IF YOU CHOSE ANY ANSWER IN POLL ABOVE THAT INDICATES FRANCIS IS NOT POPE, WHY DO YOU THINK SO?

Benedict’s abdication was not effective         38%

Francis’ election was invalid                            5%

Francis has lost his office due to heresy          4%

Some combination of the above                     42%

Neither Francis nor Benedict was ever pope    8%

Out of 674 votes, a staggering 490 said that in their opinion, Benedict XVI is still Pope. That’s 72% of those who voted. But who cares if it were “only” half? It boggles the mind.
Of those, the plurality focused on the ineffectiveness of the putative abdication. Meaning, either he never intended to resign; he wrote his resignation in a legally ineffective way; he made a mistake in fact by not intending to resign the whole office; or that he was coerced such that it was truly involuntary.

Even allowing for the readership’s “style” of Catholicism (for which Francis does not care), even allowing for some multiple votes– the least that can be said is that hundreds of Catholics who found this poll on this blog have the opinion that Benedict XVI is still Pope and that the guy the world and most of the self-identified Catholics of the world hail as pope is in fact NOT THE POPE.     HERE

You see, there is big trouble in little china, and everyone knows it. That poll was way back in September, and we’ve come a long way, baby.
By the way, it’s not hard to imagine that poll was copied, enlarged and reprinted, and now hangs as a motivational poster in the deepest war room at the Vatican. The beatings will continue until the numbers improve! Crank up the humble dial! So many wheelchairs to kiss, so little time!
I think it’s time for another poll. But this time it can’t be one of the trad blogs, nor really any blog, and of course it can’t be any revenue-based Catholic site, because none of them would touch it.
So it really needs to be FRANK WALKER AT CANON212 !!
Frank! Above the fold, please!
 
 

More breadcrumbs from Benedict, demand for the Blue Pill remains high, and Flyers hockey

By now I’m sure you’ve seen the letter attributed to Pope Benedict on the publication of an eleven volume set of writings on the theological prowess of Jorge Bergoglio. While at first the text of the letter did not sound like Benedict, accusing critics of Bergoglio of “foolish prejudice” and praising Bergoglio’s theology as “profound”, now an additional portion of the letter has been released that was not shown until yesterday. The additional text at the end of the letter makes it nearly certain that it was indeed written by Benedict, and it also reveals the real intent of the letter:

However, I don’t feel like writing a short and dense theological passage on them because throughout my life it has always been clear that I would write and express myself only on books I had read really well. Unfortunately, if only for physical reasons, I am unable to read the eleven volumes in the near future, especially as other commitments await me that I have already made.
I am sure you will understand and cordially greet you.

The original Italian HERE. Here is the entire thing in English:

February 7, 2018
Rev. Monsignor;
Thank you for your kind letter of 12 January and the attached gift of the eleven small volumes edited by Roberto Repole.
I applaud this initiative that wants to oppose and react to the foolish prejudice in which Pope Francis is just a practical man without particular theological or philosophical formation, while I have been only a theorist of theology with little understanding of the concrete life of a Christian today.
The small volumes show, rightly, that Pope Francis is a man of profound philosophical and theological formation, and they therefore help to see the inner continuity between the two pontificates, despite all the differences of style and temperament.
However, I don’t feel like writing a short and dense theological passage on them because throughout my life it has always been clear that I would write and express myself only on books I had read really well. Unfortunately, if only for physical reasons, I am unable to read the eleven volumes in the near future, especially as other commitments await me that I have already made.
I am sure you will understand and cordially greet you.
Yours,
Benedict XVI

So what that last paragraph shows is that Benedict is actually rebuffing a request to write a deeper reflection or recommendation on the books, because he hasn’t really read them. The way the Vatican had originally released the partial letter made it look like the letter itself was the (positive) response that had been requested. Also noteworthy is Benedict twice referring to the books as “small volumes”, almost dismissively, and then at the end saying, totally dismissively, that he still doesn’t have time to read them, because he has more important things to do. SO BUSY! It’s almost as if he isn’t really retired??? So yes, the last paragraph indeed says a lot, and it also shows that Benedict meant it as a private response, never intended to be used publicly.
Today, the Vatican was forced to admit that they intentionally obfuscated the last paragraph, which completely changes the meaning of the entire thing. We now live in an age where the Vatican is constantly shown to be lying. Remember transcriptgate, when Bergoglio’s claim that the “great majority” of sacramental marriages are null, but when the transcript was published, they had changed it to “a portion”.  HERE What about the time Bergoglio made the claim, easily verifiable as objectively false, that everything in AL was approved by two-thirds of the synod fathers? HERE Why do they lie even when they don’t have to, and when they know they are going to get caught? It’s explained in that last link.
But I want to focus on the passage that sounds like it has a double meaning, as Benedict continues to operate within his false construct of an Expanded Petrine Ministry:

The small volumes show, rightly, that Pope Francis is a man of profound philosophical and theological formation, and they therefore help to see the inner continuity between the two pontificates, despite all the differences of style and temperament.

Let’s touch briefly on the first part, the “profound” section, and the whole debate currently raging over the degree to which Benedict and Bergoglio are more alike or more different. By endorsing the theological formation of Bergoglio as “profound”, Benedict is refuting from the previous paragraph the “foolish prejudice” of those who suggest there is a juxtaposition between the theologies of the two men (while also defending himself against those who deem him a mere “theorist”). That’s really no surprise at this point, is it? Readers of this space know that I regard Benedict as always a Modernist, to a greater or lesser degree. He was part of the problem, not part of the solution, and he has been sitting in the background and done nothing while Bergoglio has now committed five years worth of wretched heresy. Whose side did you really think he was on? To this day, he is the one man who can call a press conference, admit he made a mistake in attempting to bifurcate the papacy, and POOF… the entire Bergoglian antipapacy is annulled and expunged.  However, his retention of the papacy via Substantial Error does nothing to solve the bigger problem of nuChurch. There is a whole lot more red pilling necessary to fix that. Understand the Matrix HERE and HERE.
Now I just wanted to point out something on this part:
“the inner continuity between the two pontificates”
“la continuità interiore tra i due pontificati”
The words “inner/interior” and “continuity” each have two meanings. Depending on the mix of the meanings, we arrive at different overall meanings of the two-word phrase. The first thing to know is that continuity is a noun, not an adjective. It doesn’t describe something else, but rather, continuity is a thing itself.  Got it?
One usage of continuity is within a linear notion of time, where we can look at two or more data sets over time and observe whether or not this thing called continuity exists between the data sets. Let me think of an example. Ooh okay how about the violent rupture of Vatican II and the setting up of nuChurch as juxtaposed to the nearly two thousand years of indefectibility that came before it. That’s NOT continuity. Contrast this with the Philadelphia Flyers hockey teams of 1973-74, and 1974-75. After winning the Stanley Cup in May 1974, the only roster move the Flyers made during the off-season was to replace defenseman Barry Ashbee, who had suffered a career-ending eye injury during the cup run. He was replaced with veteran Ted Harris, and the Flyers won their second straight cup the next season. That’s continuity.
Inner/interior can be meant in the sense of the spiritual; the interior life. If we put this meaning together with the previous definition of continuity, we get a meaning that could refer to a spiritual/theological continuity existing between two distinct, mutually exclusive pontificates, across linear time. Given the overall context of the letter, that seems plausible, except for the fact that we have a pretty well-defined data set informing us that Benedict doesn’t see it that way.
As luck would have it, the second way continuity can be defined is not across time but rather within the confines of a space. We observe that the surface of a sphere has continuity, in the sense that it is continuous. “A continuous or connected whole” is one definition HERE. We can also observe continuity between individual parts of a greater whole. The honeycombs of a beehive have continuity. The oxygen we breathe is actually composed of two atoms of oxygen, which naturally exist together through a covalent bond as a single entity wherein we can observe continuity. In order to save you from spending the rest of your day down a rabbit hole of molecular chemistry, just think of it as cracking a single egg and discovering a double yolk.
But wait there’s more! Not only can continuity be spatial, so can inner/interior. In fact the primary meaning of inner/interior is not spiritual, but rather physical/spatial, referring to the inside of some confining space.
So what do we get when we combine the spatial definition of “inner” and the spatial definition of “continuity” together in the phrase, “inner continuity”? Can you think of any other “whole” inside of which we might observe continuity between “individual parts”?
How about the inner continuity between two popes exercising their separate and distinct pontifical roles IN REAL TIME, within the faux Expanded Petrine Ministry, as already thoroughly explained by Ganswein.
You should have known I couldn’t help myself.
 
 
 

Daylight Savings Time, a modernist construct

One of my favorite things I like to ask a self-professed “Progressive” is, “Just what is it exactly that we’re progressing towards, and how will we know when we get there?” The answer is always a fuzzy “better tomorrow” or “it’s for the children, you know” or “well if not progress, what else is there?” At the heart of every Progressive, whether he knows it or not, is abandonment of God in pursuit of a man-made earth-bound utopia.
Now I know many of you are thinking, isn’t Daylight Saving Time a rather trivial matter? Don’t we have bigger fish to fry? Like the apocalypse? Yes, yes, of course. But the attitude and worldview behind the concept of DST is noteworthy and informative. It’s a mindset that tries constantly to bend or destroy reality, which also happens to be the core tenant of Modernism.
You can do all the research into the origins of DST, but I would be willing to bet that at least one of its early proponents had no other motivation than devious mischief. As in, “Let’s force everyone to change their clocks. Let’s make it appear the sun is setting an hour later. As if we were really ‘changing’ the time. Let’s see if they go for it.”
Everything you need to know about DST can be summed up in two words: Woodrow Wilson. This disgusting darling of the progressive movement was one of DST’s earliest and most vocal proponents. Go do your research on Woody, will you? An extreme racist even by the standards of his day, he re-segregated entire governmental agencies decades after their successful integration during Reconstruction. At workplaces where physical segregation was logistically impractical, blacks were put in cages. I’m not making this up. He was a huge supporter of Eugenics, including forced sterilization. He used DOJ to prosecute political enemies. He instituted the income tax.
But I digress. After congress expressed the will of the people by voting twice to repeal DST, he vetoed the bills both times. There were enough votes to override the second veto, and we were rid of DST until… the hippie generation.
Think about it. God is now and always has been perfect, including when he brought the universe into being out of nothing and instituted the construct of time (wherein the physical movements of the former inform the measure of the latter). In order to advocate in favor of DST, what you’re basically saying is that the Creator of the universe didn’t quite get it right when he set it all in motion. It needs fixing. Thank goodness that modern man came along in the twentieth century and fixed it, see? Do you see how this mindset plays into every other area where modern culture thinks it needs to “improve” on reality? God didn’t quite get it right on marriage or gender either, right? The natural law doesn’t exist, right?
I live in Arizona, where DST is blessedly outlawed.