Forgive me Father, for it has been a very sinful year… I’ve flown 113,000 miles so far, and I still have two more trips left. I’ve stayed in hotels over 120 nights, and I ask for freshly laundered towels every time. I rent cars that burn gasoline. Oh and I attended a football game during my travels a few weeks back and there was a flyover with four military jets burning gobs of fuel it was so shameful to be part of it (along with rayciss giant flag unfurled on field Nationalism).
I have no idea if my clothes were fairly traded to me or not, and I feel like such a wretch.
I’m on Atkins, so I consume a lot of “animal products;” red meat and eggs are my faves. I have leather all over my house and in my car. Also, my car is old and only gets 15 mpg. Let’s face it, my carbon footprint is the size of Nebraska.
And yes, I do use my phone constantly, but it’s also great for pulling up my boarding pass so I don’t have to wastefully print one out like those Pharisees.
 
 

3 December, Feast of Saint Francis Xavier.
Introit, Ps. 118:46-47
I spoke of Your testimonies before kings, and I was not ashamed; I meditated on Your commandments, which I loved dearly.
Ps. 116:1-2. Praise the Lord, all you nations; praise Him in unison, all you peoples! For His mercy is steadfast toward us, and the truth of the Lord endures forever.

Today’s Mass propers for the great missionary saint spoke to me as a condemnation of Antipope Bergoglio’s anti-missionary spirit from Hell. This is a man who hates the faith so much, he can’t bear to witness souls being converted and saved. He might well paraphrase, “I spoke NOT of Your testimonies, I WAS ashamed; Your commandments I loved NOT.”
Excerpt from the Epistle, Romans 10:13-15 “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they be sent, as it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, of them that bring glad tidings of good things?”

“Today I felt a certain bitterness after a meeting with young people. A woman approached me with a young man and a young woman. I was told they were part of a slightly fundamentalist movement. She said to me in perfect Spanish: “Your Holiness, I am from South Africa. This boy was a Hindu and converted to Catholicism. This girl was Anglican and converted to Catholicism.” But she told me in a triumphant way, as though she was showing off a hunting trophy. I felt uncomfortable and said to her, “Madam, evangelization yes, proselytism no”.” HERE

Excerpt from the Gospel, Mark 16:15, At that time, Jesus said to them: “Go ye into the whole world and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall he condemned.
 
Saint Francis Xavier, pray for us.
 

“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, by reason of the confusion of the roaring of the sea and of the waves; Men withering away for fear, and expectation of what shall come upon the whole world. For the powers of heaven shall be moved” Luke 21:25-26

Thus begins the Holy Gospel for the First Sunday in Advent.
I paste below what has become my annual Advent prep essay, originally penned on this First Sunday of Advent three years ago, when I still thought Humble the Destroyer was really the pope. The lessons here seem worth repeating.
Needless to say, all the warnings are are applicable even more so today. The Church Visible, y’all. Don’t be confused, and don’t be intimidated.
Blessed Advent, everyone!
———————-

Advent Prepping: You’re doing it wrong

Posted on NOVEMBER 27, 2016

Just look at it. Doesn’t everything about this picture scream, “Wrong”?

 
 

Before the sermon last Sunday, the pastor implored us to come to Mass today. The chapel was filled to overflow. We had a visiting priest (pastor was in the confessional) who gave us the votive Mass of St. Therese. He preached a little.
We owe it to God to be thankful not just today, but every day. We owe him.
Give thanks, most of all, for Christ dying on the cross for your sins. None of us merit Heaven… try bringing that up at the dinner table today. Give thanks that He gave you a chance, by cooperating with His grace, to someday get there.
Give thanks for the Catholic faith, passed down unchanged through the centuries. It’s so beautiful and true.
Give thanks for your sufferings. Oh yes, those sufferings are permitted so that you might use them to draw yourself closer to Christ, by uniting them with his sacrifice. Don’t waste the chance. The easiest way to quickly understand how much Christ values suffering is to look at what His Mother went through.
My Rosary today was the Glorious Mysteries. It’s Thursday, but it seemed appropriate.
I am thankful for the mystery of the Resurrection, and for its fruit, Faith. I am thankful for the mystery of the Ascension, and for its fruit, Hope. I am thankful for the mystery of Pentecost, and for its fruit, Zeal. I am thankful for the mystery of the Assumption, and for its fruit, a well-provided death. I am thankful for the mystery of the Coronation, and for its fruit, Trust in Mary’s intercession.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
 

This is exactly the reason we cannot wait for some imperfect council or wait two centuries for some future pope to set the record straight: Souls are being lost RIGHT NOW, because faithful Catholics cannot square the circle of how Jorge Bergoglio can possibly be true pope of the One True Faith. There is a mountain of evidence that he is an antipope, and people need to be exposed to it.
This is Stefanie Nicholas, who converted just last year, writing at 1P5:

“We all have to face this fear above all fears: that Catholicism may be wrong, and that you, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, may be the one to prove it. The possibility of accepting a life devoid of objective, knowable truth, of an unchanging moral code, of the beauty of our Holy Mother Church…I lived that life for a long time. I don’t know what would happen to me if I had to face it again. You may find that immature. Perhaps even some people reading this letter would refuse to admit ever fearing such things. I’m not sure I believe them. I think we’ve all felt this way in the dark.” HERE

If you don’t check your base premise, this is where you end up. Because if Bergoglio is pope, then the Church is no longer indefectible nor immutable, which means Catholicism is false. Stefanie has 20K twitter followers, myself included. She is solid as a rock Catholic, and yet, she’s in danger. Because she’s an honest person and not entrenched with Trad Inc, she clearly sees that we have a major problem in front of us, with a bunch of things coming to pass that aren’t supposed to be possible, if Catholicism is true.

“By changing the Church, you would cause suffering that is pointless. You would cause suffering that cannot be offered to God, suffering that would not stand at the foot of the cross — suffering that would only be useful to the devil…Do I believe that you can really do it? No. I don’t think so. But if you could? If you somehow did? If some promise of the Church was fully and completely contradicted, continually, with no amendment, with no intervention from God to put it right?
“I think I would lose my faith in God.”

Stefanie, don’t do it. And stop proposing it as an option for others.
(I messaged her before posting this, sharing my concerns and asking her to retract the article)

Do you see the problem with that headline? If Catholicism is true, then that headline is impossible.

Bishop apologizes to divorced Catholics who have begun “new experiences of union,” invites them back to the sacraments | News | LifeSite https://t.co/cQAA0A6lKe

— Diane Montagna (@dianemontagna) November 26, 2019

Bishop apologizes to unrepentant adulterers, invites them back to the sacraments

For the Holy Father (sic), inequality is the “root of social ills,” though he fails to explain precisely why a society of unequal wealth but a relatively high standard of living would somehow be less reflective of Gospel values than a society that shares equally in poverty.
Going further still, Evangelii Gaudium calls for structural transformation that would “restore to the poor what belongs to them.”
If property is possessed not by its owners, then, truly, “property is theft,” to quote 19th-century French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s famous phrase. HERE

Ah yes, let us create an earthly utopia, with no private property, all goods in commune, no inequality. Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?
Socialism and Communism, raison d’être of Antipope Bergoglio, were condemned by true popes for centuries.
The graphic below is meant to be a tri-fold pamphlet in hardcopy form, with the second page printed on the reverse of the first, and then folded on the axes of the two vertical thirds. So the front of the pamphlet is the right-hand third of the first page. It may be too low resolution to read here, especially on your phone, but you can print the PDF and order actual pamphlets HERE.
This is my favorite quote:

The goal of this most iniquitous plot is to drive people to overthrow the entire order of human affairs and to draw them over to the wicked theories of this Socialism and Communism, by confusing them with perverted teachings…
Pope Pius IX, Nostis et Nobiscum, 8 December 1849 

There came to him a woman having an alabaster box of precious ointment, and poured it on his head as he was at table. And the disciples seeing it, had indignation, saying: To what purpose is this waste? For this might have been sold for much, and given to the poor. And Jesus knowing it, said to them: Why do you trouble this woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon me. For the poor you have always with you: but me you have not always.  Matt 26:7-11
And when he was in Bethania, in the house of Simon the leper, and was at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of precious spikenard: and breaking the alabaster box, she poured it out upon his head. Now there were some that had indignation within themselves, and said: Why was this waste of the ointment made? For this ointment might have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and given to the poor. And they murmured against her. But Jesus said: Let her alone, why do you molest her? She hath wrought a good work upon me. For the poor you have always with you: and whensoever you will, you may do them good: but me you have not always. Mark 14:3-7

Forgive the algorithmic translation from German, but it’s all I’ve got. This is from the group of priests calling themselves Communio Veritatis, issued 23 Nov 2019:

The Scriptures speak clearly of the appearance of the adversary and his entrance into the temple, of the great apostasy, the deceptive signs and the seduction (2 Thess 2: 2-3-12). The Catechism states: “Before the coming of Christ, the Church must undergo a final trial that will shake the faith of many. The persecution that accompanies their pilgrimage on earth will reveal the ‘mystery of wickedness’: A religious delusions of delusion will give people a sham solution to their problems at the price of their apostasy from the truth “(CCC 675).
The coming of the Antichrist is prepared by his forerunner the False Prophet (see Rev 19:20). The apocalypse states: “Another animal came up from the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon”(Rev 13:11). This is a reference to the hierarchy of the church in which the miter – with two horns – indicates the fullness of the priesthood. The beast that rises from the earth looks like a servant of Christ the Lamb, but is a stooge of Satan, the dragon. The False Prophet is the pseudo-religious leader of the antichurch. Through grave heresies and abominable sacrilege he drives the great apostasy from the top forth. He deceives and deceives the inhabitants of the earth (compare Rev. 13:14) and wants to lead people to the worship of the Antichrist (compare Rev. 13:12).
…this agenda is related to the coming of the Antichrist, who seeks to destroy true religion in order to put himself on the throne. “He will build a counter-church, which apes the church; because the devil is the ape of God. It will have all the characteristics and customs of the Church, but it will be emptied with the opposite sign of its divine content. There will be a mystical body of the Antichrist, who in all outward appearances will be like the Mystical Body of Christ.”

Read the rest HERE. The post is actually titled, “The Abyss of the Antichurch,” but google translate isn’t quite up to the task.

Address of Cardinal Biffi on the occasion of the centenary of the death of Vladimir Soloviev, 13 August 2000: HERE

Vladimir Sergeievich Soloviev: an unheeded prophet
H.E. Giacomo Cardinal Biffi, Archbishop of Bologna
Vladimir Sergeievich Soloviev passed away 100 years ago, on July 31 (August 13 according to our Gregorian calendar) of the year 1900. He passed away on the threshold of the 20th century — a century whose vicissitudes and troubles he had foreseen with striking clarity, but also a century, which, tragically, in its historical course and dominant ideologies, would reject his most profound and important teachings. His, therefore, was a teaching at once prophetic and largely unheeded.
A Prophetic Teaching
At the time of the great Russian philosopher, the general view — in keeping with the limitless optimism of the “belle epoque“‘ — foresaw a bright future for humanity in the new century: under the direction and inspiration of the new religion of progress and solidarity stripped of transcendent elements, humanity would enjoy an era of prosperity, peace, justice, security. In the “Excelsior” — a form of dance, which enjoyed an extraordinary success in the last years of the 19th century (and which later lent its name to countless theaters and hotels) — this new religion found its own liturgy, as it were. Victor Hugo proclaimed: “This century was great, the one coming will be happy.”
But Soloviev refused to allow himself to be swept up in this de-sacralized vision. On the contrary, he predicted with prophetic clarity all of the disasters which in fact occurred.
As early as 1882, in his “Second Discourse on Dostoevsky,” Soloviev foresaw — and condemned — the sterility and cruelty of the collectivist tyranny which a few years later would oppress Russia and mankind. “The world must not be saved by recourse to force.” Soloviev said. “One could imagine men toiling together toward some great end to which they would submit all of their own individual activity; but if this end is imposed on them, if it represents for them something fated and oppressive… then, even if this unity were to embrace all of mankind, universal brotherhood would not be the result, but only a giant anthill.” This “anthill” was later constructed through the obtuse and cruel ideology of Lenin and Stalin.
In his final work, The Three Dialogues and the Story of the Antichrist (finished on Easter Sunday 1900), one is struck by how clearly Soloviev foresaw that the 20th century would be “the epoch of great wars, civil strife and revolutions” All this, he said, would prepare the way for the disappearance of “the old structure of separate nations” and “almost everywhere the remains of the ancient monarchical institutions would disappear.” This would pave the way for a “United States of Europe.”
The accuracy of Soloviev’s vision of the great crisis that would strike Christianity at the end of the 20th century is astonishing.
He represents this crisis using the figure of the Antichrist. This fascinating personage will succeed in influencing and persuading almost everyone. It is not difficult to see in this figure of Soloviev the reflection, almost the incarnation, of the confused and ambiguous religiosity of our time.
The Antichrist will be a “convinced spiritualist” Soloviev says, an admirable philanthropist, a committed, active pacifist, a practicing vegetarian, a determined defender of animal rights.
He will also be, among other things, an expert exegete. His knowledge of the bible will even lead the theology faculty of Tubingen to award him an honorary doctorate. Above all, he will be a superb ecumenist, able to engage in dialogue “with words full of sweetness, wisdom and eloquence.”
He will not be hostile “in principle” to Christ. Indeed, he will appreciate Christ’s teaching. But he will reject the teaching that Christ is unique, and will deny that Christ is risen and alive today.
One sees here described — and condemned — a Christianity of “values,” of “openings,” of “dialogue,” a Christianity where it seems there is little room left for the person of the Son of God crucified for us and risen, little room for the actual event of salvation.
A scenario, I think, that should cause us to reflect…
A scenario in which the faith militant is reduced to humanitarian and generically cultural action, the Gospel message is located in an irenic encounter with all philosophies and all religions and the Church of God is transformed into an organization for social work.
Are we sure Soloviev did not foresee what has actually come to pass? Are we sure it is not precisely this that is the most perilous threat today facing the “holy nation” redeemed by the blood of Christ — the Church?
It is a disturbing question and one we must not avoid.
A Teaching Unheeded
Soloviev understood the 20th century like no one else, but the 20th century did not understand Soloviev.
It isn’t that he has not been not recognized and honored. He is often called the greatest Russian philosopher, and few contest this appellation.
Von Balthasar regarded his work “the most universal speculative creation of the modern period” (Gloria III, p. 263) and even goes so far as to set him on the level of Thomas Aquinas.
But there is no doubt that the 20th century, as a whole, gave him no heed. Indeed, the 20th century, at every turn, has gone in the direction opposed to the one he indicated.
The mental attitudes prevalent today, even among many ecclesially active and knowledgeable Christians, are very far indeed from Soloviev’s vision of reality.
Among many, here are a few examples:

• Egoistic individualism, which is ever more profoundly leaving its mark on our behaviors and laws;
• Moral subjectivism, which leads people to hold that it is licit and even praiseworthy to assume positions in the legislative and political spheres different from the behavioral norms one personally adheres to;
• Pacifism and non-violence of the Tolstoyan type confused with the Gospel ideals of peace and fraternity to the point of surrendering to tyranny and abandoning the weak and the good to the powerful;
• A theological view which, out of fear of being labeled reactionary, forgets the unity of God’s plan, renounces spreading divine truth in all spheres, and abdicates the attempt to live out a coherent Christian life.

In one special way, the 20th century, in its movements and in its social, political and cultural results, strikingly rejected Soloviev’s great moral construction. Soloviev held that fundamental ethical principles were rooted in three primordial experiences, naturally present in all men: that is to say, modesty, piety toward others and the religious sentiment.
Yet the 20th century, following an egoistic and unwise sexual revolution, reached levels of permissivism, openly displayed vulgarity and public shamelessness, which seem to have few parallels in history.
Moreover, the 20th century was the most oppressive and bloody of all history, a century without respect for human life and without mercy.
We cannot, certainly, forget the horror of the extermination of the Jews, which can never be execrated sufficiently. But it was not the only extermination. No one remembers the genocide of the Armenians during the First World War.
No one commemorates the tens of millions killed under the Soviet regime.
No one ventures to calculate the number of victims sacrificed uselessly in the various parts of the earth to the communist Utopia.
As for the religious sentiment during the 20th century, in the East for the first time state atheism was both proposed and imposed on a vast portion of humanity, while in the secularized West a hedonistic and libertarian atheism spread until it arrived at the grotesque idea of the “death of God.”
In conclusion: Soloviev was undoubtedly a prophet and a teacher, but a teacher who was, in a way, irrelevant. And this, paradoxically, is why he was great and why he is precious for our time.
A passionate defender of the human person and allergic to every philanthropy; a tireless apostle of peace and adversary of pacifism; a promoter of Christian unity and critic of every irenicism: a lover of nature and yet very far from today’s ecological infatuations — in a word, a friend of truth and an enemy of ideology.
Of leaders like him we have today great need.