Many thanks to Miss B. for sponsoring a guest post this morning HERE. If you happen to derive any value from it, please consider a small recurring donation directly to Ann HERE.  I will mirror the essay on this site tomorrow, for the benefit of allowing comments.
I was trying to decide the best way to thank her, and I think this might do the trick:
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Published with permission from the author, Paul Muessig:

“If in the difficult times in which Our lot is cast, Catholics will give ear to Us, as it behoves them to do, they will readily see what are the duties of each one in matters of opinion as well as action. As regards opinion, whatever the Roman Pontiffs have hitherto taught, or shall hereafter teach, must be held with a firm grasp of mind, and, so often as occasion requires, must be openly professed.”

Pope Leo XII, Immortale Dei p.41, 1 November 1885

Keep those words in mind as you read the following, while remaining totally convinced that Bergoglio is 100%, obviously, absolutely zero evidence to the contrary, the pope.
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ROME — Christians must embrace the “imbalance” of the gospel rather than trying to put everything in order, Pope Francis said, which leads to a “dictatorship of functionalism.” HERE

It is an error to try to “fix” things and impose order on the world or the Church, the pope told participants in a diocesan assembly in Rome, adding that it is a “temptation” to think we can “reorganize the city, reorganize the diocese, put everything in order.”
Having everything in order converts the Church into a “museum,” Francis said, which would mean “taming things, taming young people, taming people’s hearts, taming families” and making everything “perfect.”
“But this would be the greatest sin of worldliness and of the anti-evangelical worldly spirit,” he said.
“Today we have been called to embrace the imbalance. We cannot do anything good or evangelical if we are afraid of imbalance,” he said. “We must grasp the imbalance in our hands: this is what the Lord tells us, because the Gospel — I believe you understand me — is an ‘unbalanced’ doctrine. Take the Beatitudes: they deserve the Nobel Prize for imbalance!”
The apostles did not get this, Francis suggested, because they had fallen into the clericalism of right thinking and a desire for order and balance.
“This is the illusion of the balance of ‘Church’ people,” he said.
We do not need “a beautiful, functionalized diocese,” he said, where “clericalism and functionalism” reign. The pope says he knows of a diocese that has more employees than the Vatican, and “that diocese is getting further away from Jesus Christ because it worships ‘harmony,’ harmony not of beauty, but of functionalist worldliness.”
“And in these cases we have fallen into the dictatorship of functionalism,” he said. “It is a new ideological colonization that tries to convince us that the Gospel is a wisdom, it is a doctrine, but it is not an announcement, it is not a kerygma.”
“We need the Holy Spirit,” he continued, “and the Holy Spirit gives the table a kick, knocks it over and starts over from scratch,” he said.

That last sentence really drives the point home, doesn’t it? Welcome to the Doctrine of Chaos. As a layman, do you submit to this? Or as a priest? Or as a bishop, or as a Cardinal…DO YOU SUBMIT TO THIS?

When the divine Founder decreed that the Church be one in faith, and in government, and in communion, He chose Peter and his successors in whom should be the principle and as it were the center of unity. . . . But, order of bishops, as Christ commanded, is to be regarded as joined with Peter, if it be subject to Peter and obey him; otherwise it necessarily descends into a confused and disorderly crowd…there is absolute need of true authority and a supreme authority which the entire community should obey. . . . Hence those special expressions of the ancients regarding St. Peter, which brilliantly proclaim him as placed in the highest degree of dignity and authority. They everywhere called him prince of the assembly of disciples, prince of the holy apostles, leader of that choir, mouthpiece of all the apostles, head of that family, superintendent of the whole world, first among the apostles, pillar of the Church. . . . But Roman Pontiffs, mindful of their office, wish most of all that whatever is divinely instituted in the Church be preserved…
Denz. n.1960, 1962

Pope Francis offered HERE what he considers a true example of the “ecumenism of prayer,” telling journalists:

In one European city, there is a good relationship between the Catholic archbishop and the Lutheran archbishop. The Catholic archbishop was scheduled to come to the Vatican on Sunday evening, and he called me to say that he would arrive on Monday morning. When he arrived, he told me: “Excuse me, but yesterday the Lutheran archbishop had to go to one of their meetings, and he asked me: ‘Please, come to my cathedral and lead the worship.’” Eh, there’s fraternity. Coming this far is a lot. And the Catholic bishop preached. He did not do the Eucharist, but he preached. This is fraternity.

Fraternity is placed above love. Fraternity replaces the Gospel. Lying to people you call your friends, risking their eternal damnation for the sake of fraternity, is about the most uncharitable thing I can think of.

He then explained that, as cardinal archbishop of Buenos Aires, he too was in the habit of preaching in Protestant churches.
“I was invited to the Scottish church to preach a number of times,” he said. “I went there, I preached. You can do it. You can walk together. Unity, fraternity, extending a hand, looking after each other, not speaking ill of others.”
“We all have defects,” he added, “but if we walk together let’s leave our defects to the side. Let the spinsters criticize us.”

He’s not talking about PEOPLE having defects, he’s talking about all “churches” having defects, including the Catholic Church (lower case “churches” in scare quotes because they aren’t “churches” at all.
Do you submit to this man as the true Roman Pontiff?
Spinsters for Christ… UNITE!

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“For every human creature it is absolutely necessary for salvation to be subject to the Roman Pontiff” – Pope Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam, 18 November 1302 HERE

As in, he is your Monarch, you are his Subject. His loyal subject. You must be faithful to him, because as Christ’s Vicar, he is most deserving of your fidelity.
Your salvation depends on it.
If he tells you that “The tradition of the church is always in motion”, meaning there is no rock, there is nothing that’s unchangeable, we must always move forward, then you are bound to be faithful. If he tells you that “The nostalgia of the ‘integralists’ is to return to the ashes, but that is not Catholic,” then you are bound to be faithful. If he tells you that you need to pray for the future of the EU, if he tells you that walls are sinful, if he tells you that questioning climate change is sinful, if he tells you that the death penalty is sinful, if he tells you that inviting unrepentant fornicating adulterers to sacrilegiously receive Holy Communion is “WHAT GOD HIMSELF IS ASKING,” HERE HERE HERE HERE   …just remember that the fate of your eternal soul is bound up in your fidelity to this man.
Please remember this the next time you go on social media and declare with all sincerity that Bergoglio is totally obviously universally peacefully the pope and there is zero evidence to the contrary shut up.

Modernists and their admirers should remember the proposition condemned by Pius IX: The method and principles which have served the doctors of scholasticism when treating of theology no longer correspond with the exigencies of our time or the progress of science (Syll. Prop. 13). They exercise all their ingenuity in diminishing the force and falsifying the character of tradition, so as to rob it of all its weight. But for Catholics the second Council of Nicea will always have the force of law, where it condemns those who dare, after the impious fashion of heretics, to deride the ecclesiastical traditions, to invent novelties of some kind . . . or endeavour by malice or craft to overthrow any one of the legitimate traditions of the Catholic Church; and Catholics will hold for law, also, the profession of the fourth Council of Constantinople: We therefore profess to conserve and guard the rules bequeathed to the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church by the Holy and most illustrious Apostles, by the orthodox Councils, both general and local, and by every one of those divine interpreters the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. Wherefore the Roman Pontiffs, Pius IV. and Pius IX., ordered the insertion in the profession of faith of the following declaration: I most firmly admit and embrace the apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and other observances and constitutions of the Church.  – Pope St. Pius X, Pascendi p.42, 8 September 1907 HERE

UPDATE! 1 June 2016 8:16pm Arizona time: It has been confirmed that Antonio Socci himself was against the change in the book title, along with the translator. This answers questions one and two in the post that follows. Question three remains unanswered.
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You can’t make this stuff up.
About an hour ago, I received my paperback copy of the English version of the Socci book, “The Secret of Benedict, Why He is Still Pope.” What I noticed right away, which had escaped my attention in the past few days of nonsense, was that they
LITERALLY CHANGED THE TITLE OF THE BOOK.
The English version title reads, “The Secret of Benedict, Is He Still Pope?” Ann B. has since put up a post about it HERE, with pictures of both versions.
I mean, when you don’t like the evidence presented therein, I guess it’s totes legit to deliberately mistranslate a demonstrative statement into an open question in the title of the book. After all, words mean whatever we say they mean. You have no right to claim you know what those words meant. That’s not your realm. It was a question, see? Shut up.
I have some questions of my own:

• Did Socci know about this? Did he approve it?
• Was this change the work of “Giuseppe Pellegrino,” who translated the book, or did his bosses at Angelico Press do it without his knowledge?
• Was anyone at Angelico Press influenced by Dr. de Mattei’s detailed “refutation” (sic) of Socci’s book back in January (for which, wait for it, “Giuseppe” himself was the English translator)? SEE HERE
• Are there any other shenanigans in the other 170 pages, or is it just the front cover?
• Did Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, who himself is employed as an editor by Angelico Press, exert any influence in this matter? SEE HERE
• Did Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, who himself has had several books published by Angelico Press, have an obligation to disclose those entanglements when he left a Five Star review for Socci’s Giuseppe’s work on Amazon?

Before you come in the combox and start bashing me for instigating a Trad circular firing squad, ask yourself if these would be fair questions if it were Fr. James Martin on the hot seat.

From Dr. K’s fourth and final (maybe) review of the Socci book (emphasis mine):

ADDENDUM 5/30/19: Some are claiming that in my revisions to this review, I am “backtracking” and “sanitizing” my original position. This is not so.

REALLY?
Well, I have all the screencaps. The point of this post is not to discredit the overall reputation of the good doctor. If you read to the end, I think you will agree that I give him a pretty wide berth. But bad behavior needs to be called out, even when it’s someone on “your side” who is engaged in it.
Original review, emphasis mine:

I read this book expecting to be a little skeptical of an author who would argue that Benedict XVI did not validly resign the papacy. After all, it sure looked as if he intended to do that in his famous speech of abdication, and the world seems to have accepted it as such. Socci, however, persuaded me otherwise with his careful analysis of Benedict’s XVI’s various utterances on the subject (and there are a surprising number of them!), Archbishop Gaenswein’s speeches, and, above all, the interpretations of canon lawyers — none of them traditionalists, by the way — who have proved in detail that the resignation lacks several conditions for validity.

Revised review, emphasis mine:

I read this book expecting to be skeptical of an author who would argue that Benedict XVI did not validly or fully resign the papacy. After all, it sure looked as if he intended to do that in his famous speech of abdication, and the world seems to have accepted it as such. Socci, however, gave me much to think about with his careful analysis of Benedict’s XVI’s utterances on the subject (and there are a surprising number of them!), Archbishop Gaenswein’s speeches, and, above all, the interpretations of canon lawyers — none of them traditionalists, by the way — who argue that the resignation lacks several conditions for validity.

No backtracking in sight, am I right? Later in the revised review, he made everything perfectly muddy clear:

I still consider and acknowledge Pope Francis to be the Roman Pontiff

Note well that the wrongdoing is not primarily in changing the review, provided that he really messed up and didn’t mean what he wrote the first time. I’m not sure how that can be, given the clear words he used, but it’s possible. I suspect he was probably struck at some point with the logical inconsistency of signing the Open Letter addressed to a man who isn’t pope. But I digress. The real wrongdoing in the revisions is claiming that it was merely a clarification, and that both reviews are of the same essence.
Either words have meaning, or you’re a Modernist; you can’t have it both ways. There is no harm in saying, “I used to think X, but now I think Y, I changed my mind.”  But there is enormous harm in saying, ‘I used to think X, now I think Y, but it’s the same thing; X=Y.” Honest people don’t do that. Also note, the fact that my own position on the matter is aligned with his original review and I’m mad that he changed it has zero bearing on the rational argument I just laid out.
Let me tell you what I think is really going on here. I didn’t figure this out my own, rather it was suggested to me by two contributors in the combox, and then developed into a bit of a theory. It may come off as sounding condescending, but my intent is to give the good doctor the benefit of the doubt, because everything I read and am told about him is that he’s an honorable man, to a fault. So what immediately follows here is the most charitable explanation for what has transpired in the past two days.
The theory goes like this: The situation in the Church today, where we have two living bishops in white, is itself such a dramatic tear in the fabric of reality that it’s very hard for any serious Catholic to accept as “the new normal.” When presented with fresh information that further disrupts the already chaotic backdrop, the unguarded mind tends naturally toward something between confusion and panic. There are powerful psychological forces at play in situations like this, which I will explain in a moment.
We have to remember that the vast majority of people do not have the kind of situational awareness and tactical information processing skills that many readers of this blog might take for granted. This bearing, let’s call it “Frosty,” comes about through a combination of nature and nurture. However, this trait is lacking in probably 90% of the population, and it has little or no correlation to IQ. For those who lack Frosty, the discovery of a truth that is shocking puts their brain into a short circuit. Instead of switching over to frosty mode and ice cold if-then protocol, they just can’t handle it. It’s a tidal wave of cognitive dissonance (which you can read about HERE) that gets processed into confirmation bias (which you can read about HERE) and eventually ends up as Belief Perseverance, where the person maintains or reverts to a position that has been firmly shown to be false (HERE).
The most spectacular examples can be found in cases of pilot error, battlespace miscalculations, and most recently, 2016 election night video montages (you could say that the entire Resist/NotMyPresident movement is an example of it in the broader culture). But it also sounds to me like a perfect description of what’s going on here with the good doctor, if we are going with the charitable explanation. If it’s true, he bears little or no culpability for his actions, because his actions were the result of subconscious psychology.
Or else he just got scared or threatened, and changed his review out of self-preservation.
Look, it’s easy for me to sit here and criticize someone who has way more skin in the game than I do. I’m certainly thankful that I don’t have any kind of dependence on the institutional Church that would be threatened by what I write here (which I’m now attaching my real name to, if you check the byline). I do have sympathy for those who are caught up in all this with job, friends, family on the line. However, it always comes back to the fact that the salvation of souls is the supreme law of the Church. Souls are being lost. Act, and God will act.
I’m afraid I must end this post by calling out the final paragraph added to his final revision, because it contains a really dangerous message:

I think too many people in this debate are expecting (and in some cases, believe they have attained) clear answers where there are none and may never be until we quit this life or until the inexorable progress of events shows, beyond gainsaying, where the truth lies.

“Expecting clear answers where there are none and may never be…” ???
Well yeah, we do expect clear answers, because God is not a jerk. He doesn’t leave us in the dark wondering where to find the Church. This line of thinking veers dangerously close to denying the Visibility of the Church, one of the principle errors of the Protestant Revolt. You can read about it HERE. I’m sure that’s not what the doctor meant to say, yet that is the plain meaning of the words he wrote. Words matter!
The Lord our God is about order, clarity, and truth. Seek these, and you seek Him.
When you find chaos, ambiguity, and deceit, flee. Especially when these are the primary character traits of an antipope.
 

We take a short break from the madness, as it’s a special day! It’s a day where an unapologetic mixed-rite Catholic such as myself gets to both enjoy two feasts for the price of one (and yes, going to two Masses in one day is an honor, not a burden), as well as… birthday cake!
Two quick reminders. First, the Ascension is also the Second Glorious Mystery, the Fruit of which is the Theological Virtue of HOPE. Take good care not to sin against hope in these trying times, my brethren.
Second, never forget what our Lord and Savior did right before He Ascended… literally the very last thing he did while He stood on this earth. Do you remember? Mark 16:14
HE UPBRAIDED THEM.

“At length he appeared to the eleven as they were at table: and he upbraided them with their incredulity and hardness of heart”

These men all died saints, and our Lord thought it best to take their leave by tearing them a new one as a parting gift. How would you say your own lukewarmness compares to that of the Apostles? What message do you think the Lord might have for you today?
Before you go complete that reflection, we need to re-post some highlights from you know who: