by Br. Alexis Bugnolo

We all value friendship. In good times, friends make the joy greater, as one celebrates together with them the pleasant things of life. In times of doubt and darkness, friends are the source of counsel and the light to guide us through trials. And in times when we are abandoned by all, the friends who remain are the gold and fire that keeps us from despair.

But imagine what it would be like, to have a friend who was a friend in good times and bad, in times of darkness and in abandonment, but who nevertheless without warning stuck a knife into your back, without so much as a thought or regret, but repented of it shortly afterwards.

How would we humans regard such a friend?

I think we would agree to avoid him whenever possible, because we would always be fearing the next knife attack.

But when we consider that God has blessed us with everything under heaven which is good for us, and has forgiven us of all our sins, after having redeemed us on the Cross, and YET is still willing to take us back, after we stab Him in the back, we can begin to understand IN A SMALL DROP OF A WAY, the vast immense ocean of God’s Mercy and forbearance.

And if you recognized that you are a habitual sinner, then this consideration should be made at length, in quite, alone, until tears burst out of both eyes.

And if we are to find this grace, it is this Holy Week, most of all, that we should seek it. For it is in this way that we can truly sanctify this  time.

And this is the time to make reparation for all our treacheries to Jesus Christ, especially by worthily receiving the Most Blessed Sacrament as an act of reparation for our own sins throughout life.

Indeed, only when we make this attitude our perpetual state of mind, can we be reckoned among the elect of God. The rest shall be reckoned with the Iscariot.

by Br. Alexis Bugnolo

I detest persons who pretend to be members of a minority, so that they can push propaganda and troll social media accounts. But even so, there are some objections which even though they are ridiculous and are uttered by such villans, touch upon important points of the Catholic Faith, and thus, need to be confuted.

While there were a few medieval theologians who were such papal maximalists that they held, that a man elected to the papacy, after his acceptance, became a living saint, the common opinion of all Catholic theologians has always rejected this absurdity. Anyone with a little knowledge of papal history knows that there have been lechers who were Pope, while they were the Pope. It would thus be blasphemy to assert such a maximalistic position.

But it would also be a grave error to believe that a man, just because he was validly and juridically elected to the papacy, and accepted explicitly before or after his election, to be the pope, had a moral conversion.

This is a grave misunderstanding. Yes, Christ does pray for Peter so that he never fail in faith and that he be converted, if he be a sinner.  But Christ’s High Priestly prayer only guarantees that every Roman Pontiff not fall into pertinacious heresy or destroy the Church by attacking the deposit of the Faith in an irreparable manner, and guarantees that he is offered the grace to repent of his sins.

This is a subtle distinction, between things necessary and things convenient, or rather, between things which pertain to the person of the pope and the person who is the pope.

Christ Jesus being man’s Creator is not going to destroy or take away the liberty of any man. And for that reason, He will pray for the conversion of Peter, but He cannot force any Pope to convert. The liberty to refuse such an awesome prayer and grace remains. And that is why St. Alphonsus dei Liguori held that those Popes who were not canonized, were damned, because of the terrible magnitude of the duties of a Roman Pontiff.

But Christ did promise that His Church will not be overcome by the gates of the netherworld, and thus to keep that promise He does exercise a regal authority over the person of His vicar on earth, preventing him from transgressing matters which pertain to His will in the governance of the Church.

This regal intervention is merely providential, it is not necessarily executed by grace alone. It can come about through other persons, obstacles, error, or even ignorance or bad weather or death. Thus it is an outcome based governance, and can be discerned only in the juridical acts or lack there of, of the Roman Pontiff as they regard the whole Church, not any part thereof. It is like the reins on a horse, which a rider uses when he rides the horse, with an adventurous desire on his part, but not a suicidal one. The horse will not harm itself or the rider, but it will be allowed to gallop hither and thither, avoiding cliffs, snakes, etc..

Thus, except for exceptional graces which regard particular persons who are not the pope, Christ will not prevent a Pope from persecuting this or that person or group of persons. Hey, some popes started wars which killed thousands of catholics! Popes have been followers of this kingdom or that, of this empire or that. They have even shamefully bowed down to this emperor or that. But they have never attacked the Faith or cancelled the ancient liturgy or traditions of the Church.

For this reason, we should pray for the Holy Father, whomsoever he be at the present moment in our life in which we find ourselves. But we should avoid that tendency to canonize him simply because he is our highest superior on earth. While it is true, that as such, we cannot judge him, we can and should affirm in private and when necessary in public, the moral law which all must keep, even the Pope.

For the record, I do not see any information which convinces me that any pope after Pius X lived heroic virtues. I do not hold that canonizations are ipso facto infallible acts of the magisterium. I leave it to God to canonize a man by working a miracle in response to his prayers. And being pope is not a miracle.

As regards the recent events surrounding Cardinal Roche, I have explained the interventions of Christ already, but that does not mean that I believe that bad will towards the ancient mass has been extinguished in certain souls or even that certain souls disagree with what they held several months ago.

by Br. Alexis Bugnolo

French Translation

I have been on the internet since 1991, so I have seen a lot of characters, games, tricks and modus operandi. And since all the fraudsters out there are mostly johnny-come-latelies, they lash out at anyone who recognizes them for that they are.

But the longest scam I have seen so far, is that of those who claim to be Traditional Catholics but who are nothing of the kind.

I make this stark declaration, because I know what the Church has always taught and how the Saints have comported themselves, because from my youth I have read the documents of the Magisterium and the lives and writings of the Saints.

And the first rule, by which they all say, a Catholic can rightfully and accurately detect falsehood or fraud in our Holy Religion is this: novelty.

That is, if anyone is promoting a new way of living or doing or observing the Catholic Faith, it is nearly always of the Devil or of crass ignorance, and not of God.

The Traditional Movement is for the most part, of this kind. (Here I use “most part” as regards numbers)

Fake Traditionalism

This Movement is lead by false pretenders to the name, because they are all involved in grave novelties, even though they proclaim and advertise themselves as traditional.

Nearly all of these bad apples are modernists, for this reason, because they justify their novelty as the current correct interpretation of past Catholic beliefs and practices. But if you point out that Catholics of the past actually did not act as they are acting, they will insist that the past way of acting is not possible.

To understand this better it would be best to list the errors of modernism which they hold:

1. That private judgement is a sufficient basis to claim that anything is true or right.
2. That Catholics have the moral obligation to take as their leaders those who are most consistent in adhering to private judgement.
3. That Catholics have no real obligation to act within the canonical order of the Church’s laws, when this conflicts with private judgement.
4. That prayers and rituals are acceptable to God only when they are offered by those who adhere to private judgement.

These are the 4 principles that Modernists and nearly all Traditionalists live by. And that Traditionalists live by the same principles as Modernists shows that they are not really Traditional Catholics, but Modernists of a different flavor.

Traditionalism is also a heresy condemned at the First Vatican Council. Thus, anyone who would even want to take that word to name themselves, has a problem.  Traditionalism is the heresy which says all truth comes from tradition. Such a definitive error wants that no truth comes from Divine Revelation or Ecclesiastical Authority, nor from human investigation through a right use of the intellect.

Traditionalism leads to private judgement and the errors I have listed above, because since all those who are dead cannot tell us what they did or held, it is the field of private judgement to say what they would say and make it a rule for the present.

Authentic Catholicism is Traditional in another way

Authentic Catholicism is traditional by its very origin, since our Holy Faith was revealed by Jesus Christ Our God to the Apostles, and handed down by them to the whole Church. Part of this Apostolic Tradition established the Sacred Hierarchy with the authority to interpret and protect the Deposit of the Faith.

The Catholic Faith does not change, that is, does not undergo alteration. Those whose faith, which was once Catholic, but which undergoes alteration, believe things different than that which was handed down from of old.

This is why Pope Benedict XVI in Summorum Pontificum declares that what the Church once did, can never be outlawed.

But Catholics of old did not just go to Mass or receive the Sacraments. They also obeyed their superiors and reproved them privately and publicly.

The Church has canonical procedures for condemning heresy and putting back into canonical order the Church: Synods, Provincial Councils and Ecumenical Councils.

Larping on Social Media is not one of them. Claiming to be persecuted is not one of them. Auto-justifying your own private schism is not one of them.

Thus Sedevacantism and large parts of the so-called Traditional Catholic Movement, by the very fact that they jettison every intention to observe Canon Law or remain in ecclesiastical communion, by this declare themselves to be NOT traditional.

Catholics who are truly concerned with the salvation of souls do not act this way. They organize and collaborate among themselves to correct problems in the Church. And you won’t find them among the Catholic Grifter Collective, which only wants to lament and collect money for themselves, and who are incensed most of all that anyone would dare correct the problems, without which they could not continue to grift on Social Media.

True Catholics are always traditional. They do not seek to break from ecclesiastical communion, and they actually do speak with and lobby their superiors, with charity, to get problems corrected. They are persistent and work with others. And they do not do it for the sake of fame or personal enrichment, but only for the salvation of souls.

In modern times, this authentic catholic spirit is much lacking, because we live in an age with excessive centralization, such that nearly no one knows how to defend their rights or those of the entire community, in  Catholic way.

We need to relearn these things. But the Clergy need to do so especially.

by Br. Alexis Bugnolo

Saint Pius X in his Encyclical on True Devotion to Our Lady, taught an important truth which is lost on all those who pride themselves on being devoted to the Mother of God, but fail to examine their consciences in faith: namely, if you do not keep the commandments of God, it is in vain you say your rosaries, and kiss your statues, and wear bracelets of consecration.**

Some are even go godless, that they set themselves up, in their own human prudence, to judge the works of God, and decide who is and who is not in the Church, who is and who is not faithful, etc..

This is the very spirit of Satan, not of the Blessed Ever-Virgin.

We should note well that Our Lady, to all who would want to truly be devoted to Her, left the entire Gospel condensed into a single word: Do whatsoever He tells you!

Notice that She did NOT address Herself to unbelievers. She did not say, “Repent and Believe!”, and did Her Son from the first moment of His public ministry.

And this is important, because it means that Our Lady does not address the godless and those without faith. She does not recognize them as Her children or servants.

Our Lady, after she was rebuked by the Child Jesus in the Temple, asking, “How did you search for Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” never said another word, than the word, I just quoted, when She uttered at Cana. That was the very summary of Her life of meditation on God.

To Our Lady, therefore, there can be no question that we must accept and believe with all our mind and hear, that Her Son, said and taught, “Simon, Simon, Satan has sought to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith might not fail; and when you are converted, confirm your brethren”.

Thus, if you want to be Our Lady’s child, but doubt that the prayer of Her Son is efficacious, what can you hope for, from Her? But silence and consternation.

Why?

Because you are godless and faithless.

Again, when Her Son said and taught, saying to Peter, “Whatsoever you bind upon earth, shall be bound in Heaven; and whatsoever you loose upon earth, shall be loosed in Heaven,” She gave full faith and submission to the judgement of Her Son, and never doubted a moment that after Peter would deny Him three times, that he would repent and convert.

Indeed, according to the Fathers and Saints, after Peter’s sin, Saint John brought him to the house of Our Lady in Jerusalem (the Church of the Dormition, today), and She accepted him.

So the godless who do not accept that Saint Peter gave to the Faithful of Rome the authority to choose their bishop, upon which choice Her Son would confer the Petrine Munus, have and shall have no part in the Kingdom of Heaven with Our Lady, and Our Lady hears nothing of their prayers, because they are godless and faithless, because judging by carnal wisdom, and being entirely ignorant of canon law and ecclesiastical right, and apostolic tradition — or worse rejecting it so that they can persist in a sect, whereby they exalt themselves as better than all others — they are calling Her Son impotent in prayer or faithless to His promises.

This is a horrible sacrilege of blasphemy, since the very Name of God is Hesed, that is, FAITHFUL LOVE.

So to all the atheists who say 15 decades of the Rosary and have statues of Our Lady in their homes, and marian braclets on their wrists, know that when you deny the words of God, in your pride you will be forced to deny the works of God. And then God will wipe you from the Book of Life. And Our Lady will not intercede for you, because you have by your words and deeds entirely denied Her too.

It has been 2 weeks since Pope Francis was elected in the juridically valid manner of apostolic right, and no one in the world has found anything to convict him for heresy, or blasphemy. And since we all know the man Bergoglio after 10 years of observation, we know that for the man, that is impossible, but for God, all things are possible.

** “17. For to be right and good, worship of the Mother of God ought to spring from the heart; acts of the body have here neither utility nor value if the acts of the soul have no part in them. Now these latter can only have one object, which is that we should fully carry out what the divine Son of Mary commands. For if true love alone has the power to unite the wills of men, it is of the first necessity that we should have one will with Mary to serve Jesus our Lord. What this most prudent Virgin said to the servants at the marriage feast of Cana she addresses also to us: “Whatsoever he shall say to you, do ye” (John ii., 5). Now here is the word of Jesus Christ: “If you would enter into life, keep the commandments” (Matt. xix., 17). Let them each one fully convince himself of this, that if his piety towards the Blessed Virgin does not hinder him from sinning, or does not move his will to amend an evil life, it is a piety deceptive and Iying, wanting as it is in proper effect and its natural fruit.” (Ad Diem illum laetissimum, Feb. 2, 1904 A. D.)