by Br. Alexis Bugnolo

Many Catholics today are deeply scandalized. And they are wondering if the Church has fallen or if it even exists any more. So many Catholics are failing in the faith, that others who would otherwise be very strong in the faith, are being tempted to despair.

Many are asking, where is the Church? where is the true Church?

And many are asking if the Church of Rome has lost the faith.

Our Lady at La Salette told us through Melanie that Rome would lose the faith. And many Catholics believe that this refers to the Church.

But as a Catholic, and a Roman Catholic, in both senses, that is of the Latin Rite and as a resident of Rome, Italy, I want to remind Catholics everywhere, that our Lady said “Rome”, not “the Church of Rome”.

The Catholic Church can never fail and she shall stand until the end of time.  She cannot fail because Christ Jesus promised us:  “The Gates of Hell shall not prevail against My Church”.

The Church which Jesus founded is the Church of Rome. This because, after the Lord ascended into Heaven and entrusted His Church to Peter and the Apostles, they went to different parts of the world and founded local Churches: at Antioch, and Alexandria, and Corinth, and Bablyon, and beyond to Spain and India, and Rome.

But at Rome, Peter did not have to found a Church, because he did not have to separate a Diocese from the rest of the Church, for the Church of Rome was always the diocese of St. Peter, Christ’s Vicar on Earth.

For this reason, since the Church of Rome is inseparable from St. Peter and his successors, just as Peter did not fail in faith after Pentecost, so his successors have not failed in teaching the faith for 20 centuries.

For this reason, Catholic Theologians teach that it is the common sentence that the Church of Rome can never fall away from the faith, and that the indefectibility of the entire Church, is founded upon this, Her union with the Church of Rome.

But obviously this does not apply to everyone at Rome. Because it is a fact of history that at Rome there were in ancient times, medieval times and at the present, many who are not Catholics and who are not Christians.

So the Church of Rome is not simply everyone who lives at Rome.

Neither is it everyone who claims to be a Catholic. For many heretics have claimed this, and many heretics claim this today.

The Church of Rome is also not those Catholics, who are without fault in the Faith, but who are in union with an antipope. There have been more than 20 antipopes in history, and Catholics in communion with them were either in error or knowingly in schism from the Church: in schism because you cannot be in communion with Christ, unless you are in communion with his true Vicar on Earth.

I remember reading the History of the Catholic Church by Father Philip Hughes, when I was a young man. It was a very enlightening book, but as he teaches therein, regarding Anacletus II, the antipope, the criterion upon which Catholics have ever discerned a true pope from an antipope is to follow what was the law in place at the time, which governed the election.

As Catholics we must use the same rule of discernment. But because we live in an age of liars and paid liars, there are many who want us to ignore that or who deny that.

Canon 332 §2 as I have repeatedly pointed out, and explained in my documentary series, here:

makes it quite clear who is the pope and who is not.

The true Catholic Church of Rome is only that which holds the entire faith which has come down to us from Jesus Christ, through the Dogmatic and Disciplinary councils of the Church, and which is in union with the true pope.

For this reason, the Church of Rome stands as firm as ever She has stood. While the number of the Faithful who are not deceived or who have not fallen away from Her are fewer today, She still exists.

But to find and discover Her, you must use the intellect and eyes which God gave you, and stop listening to those who tell you to shut them down and follow the drum beats of globalism.

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