Tag Archives: Modernists

Ecclesiology

Tactics of Manipulation used by Modernists against Catholics

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by Br. Alexis Bugnolo

REPRINTED FROM NOV. 4, 2014

I do not claim to be an expert. I am sure that there are many Cardinals, Bishops, Priests, Deacons, Religious and Laymen who have better knowledge of such things than myself. But in my nearly 30 years of personal experience in Ecclesiastical institutions or as a religious/hermit, I have noticed some patterns of deception and manipulation, which I believe in conscience I am obliged to name, explicate, so that Catholic Faithful at Rome and around the world might take guard against them.

“Manipulation”, in the dark sense of the word, is a way of misleading, maneuvering, deforming, altering, etc., the mind, actions or even words or reactions of another, to serve one’s own goals.  When the victim is a faithful Catholic and the perpetrator is a modernist, you have a very evil and wicked malice at work.  Yet, to those who know anything of the history of the Church during the last 100 years or more, the Modernists have honed to perfection many methods of manipulating Catholics to serve their own abominable conspiracy to overthrow the true Church of Christ, from within, using the very institutions and offices of the Church, established by Christ and by ecclesiastical tradition, against Her.

Having studied Cultural Anthropology at the University of Florida, I was trained in the methods of participant observation, which is a way of learning about a subculture’s mores, rules, ethics, behaviors, by sharing or keeping company with them.  I never consciously used this method, but now, after many years of fighting against Modernists, I will take a moment to step back and analyze and categorize some of the methods of manipulation I have seen or learned first hand against faithful clergy, religious and laity.

 The Church, being the perfect society founded by the Incarnate Word of God, enjoys an order of society which enables Her to achieve the end which God have Her, the honor and glory of God through the worship of God and the salvation of Souls.  This being the case, the Modernists, who believe in no God, but only in the god of personal sentiments, thus have an upward battle if they are to use the very things of the Church to overthrow the Church from within.

Alas, however, since many modernists have been members of the clergy, and this throughout the last 180 years or so, they have had the ability to use all the forms of clerical and moral corruption, known beforehand, to their end.  They have also had the assistance of the general moral degradation which has been promoted by the Free Masons in the West (and not only in the West), which has led many a Catholic to be disposed to be easily deceived about what constitutes Christian virtue and ecclesiological justice and honesty.

In former ages, we read of the heroic and saintly Bishops who did not hesitate to threaten unfaithful Catholics, Kings, Dukes, Princes, Mayors, Scholars, even the Pope, with excommunication if they did not stop from their pubic sins or injustices.  There are cases, where immoral bishops, were taken outside of the town walls and hung from a tree by the Catholic faithful, to rid the local church of their vile depravities.  There are cases where laymen shot corrupt priests dead for the crimes they perpetrated against children or families.

In the modern age, with all our institutions of civil and ecclesiastical justice, we are apt to look down upon the Catholics of former ages, who understood that in some cases, waiting for lengthy procedures would only endanger the public good the more. They understood that after some point, the depravity of a man could be such that he merited no longer the customary due process accorded to the merely suspected of a crime. They also understood that obedience to an evil command did not absolve from the sin of collaboration or participation in the evil commanded.  Former ages enjoyed a sense of personal honor and manliness that is rarely admired and even more rarely tolerated in modern times.  Indeed, corrupt and evil men have all kinds of words to lambast such honorable men.

The decline of morals in the West did not begin with the Age of the Enlightenment, yet, Rationalists of that age started a trend which has been greatly exploited by Modernists (even though Modernists are sentimentalists not rationalists): that trend is the use of deprecatory language to subvert the sentiments of Catholics away from admiration of virtue, especially away from admiration of heroic virtue.

You can see that effect palpably in the common and vulgar opinions some men, even clergymen, have of the Saints of old.  The most striking example I know of personally, is the comment made by a priest, now deceased, who remarked to me one day, after he read a very short life of Saint Francis of Assisi, that if anyone did such penances today, he should certainly be locked up in a mental asylum. To which I replied, with not a little shock, “Do you mean that just today, or is Saint Francis any less suspect for having done them long ago”. He replied that he was no less suspect, and added, “I have great difficulty understanding why such a man was ever made a saint”.  (This priest, by the way, died of being too overweight by about 200 pounds.)

 Ah, what has happened to that age of chivalry and honesty, where even a sloucher or glutton admitted that the diligent and abstemious man was virtuous? Is modern man so ignorant, as to not understand, that it is one thing to be virtuous, another to admire virtue; and that if you are not at least the first kind of man, that you can at least save your honor by being the second?

God forbid, however — as the Modernists think and consider the matter — that there even exist in the Church the second kind of man, the man who actually admires the heroic virtue of the Saints of old!

And here we have the first tactic in the tool box of manipulations, used by Modernists:

1. Denigrate what is best, and make it the enemy of all the rest.

You see, if the Modernists are to prevail in the Church, they must put into practice some of the general tactics of the fallen angels, because the Church, being principally a spiritual society, Her strength lies principally in spiritual things.  Now there is nothing more principally spiritual in a believer than his virtue, and the prince of all virtue is the virtue to the heroic degree.  Consequently, to shut out all possibility of this most spiritual enemy of Modernism, the first and prime spiritual goal is to ostracize and exile heroic virtue.  And this is done chiefly by denigration.

Denigration of what is best is the first tactic to employ, because when the best is no longer seen as the best, the soul and the society no longer strives to reach the proper goal by the only methods which can attain that goal. Giving up the only tools to arrive at that goal, one guarantees in the very first instance, that the Catholic side of the battle will not and will never win; and that the battle will continue interminably, without victory for the Catholic party.

This denigration has gone on for many generations now: Rationalists did this by debunking the lives of the Saints, debunking the authenticity and authority and veracity of Scripture; by debunking the normalcy and authority of Tradition; by debunking the sanity of heroic virtue, by recourse to modern false sciences of psychology and psychiatry as the “true” authorities on human behavior.  This could not be done without despising and denigrating Scholastic Theology and Philosophy.

The result of such a campaign of denigration, is a Catechism of Denigration, induction to which is common place in Catholic Seminaries today, throughout the whole world; and especially so in the Pontifical Universities at Rome, where the majority of professors believe education means debunking every historical, theological, moral, ethical, religious, liturgical ideal which a seminarian might bring with him to Rome.

Simultaneous, to this work of denigration, is the work of substitution.  After railing against the ideals which the Church has from Christ, the Apostles or from the Holy Spirit in the Saints, it is necessary but easy to suggest and laud the ideals and criteria which prevail in modern times, and this, in the name of being “acceptable”, “up to date”, “normal”, “middle of the road”, etc.. Thus to virtue, we have sound & healthy psychology; to faith in scripture, the critical historical method of rationalistic interpretation; to Christian charity, social justice work; to preaching, neutralizing rhetorics; to worship of God, worship of self or of man; to Tradition, the modernist reading of Vatican II (holding that it is obligatory and dogmatic just like, nay, better than Vatican I) etc..

2. Identify and root out the “non-compliant”, “intransigent”, “rigorists”, those who take the Faith “too seriously”.

The work of denigration provides the best context for the second method or tool of manipulation: identifying those who have such virtue as to resist or oppose the denigration of the best. Social cohesion and the insistence that one not be divisive, not jeopardize approval of superiors who hold the keys to the formation process, are powerful emotional threats used to cajole acquiescence to the program of denigration.  If this fails, then one moves easily to accusing the resistant of being “rigorists”, “ideologues”, “intransigent”, simply because they resist the process of denigration.  Few, in such an emotionally charged atmosphere as the Seminary or Pontifical University where denigration has replaced formation and information, have the spiritual balance to notice that it is precisely in this personal attack of those who resist, that there becomes manifest the actual ideals of the denigrators; ideals which are contrary or opposite of those which Catholics should hold. Many, beholden to a “follow the group”, “don’t rock the boat” ethic, easily succumb to such an attack; those who don’t, thus, are then easily isolated and separated from the group, when the attacks move from opposing ideals of the Faith, to denigrating those who show loyalty to them.  With all the filters Modernists now have in society and in ecclesiastical institutions today, it will be few vocations who show such fortitude and resistance; it is thus easy then to divide them from the group and from others in the group who would give moral support.

This separation is a necessary part of the re-education program of the Modernists.  Insistence on attending certain Pontifical Universities is a sure sign that re-education is the goal.  It is not that re-education is the necessity, but a seminarian or religious has to be very knowledgeable and virtuous beforehand, to survive without being scathed.  Such a man is a rare breed today, though.

One effective tool in this work of weeding out the virtuous, is the system of falsification of formation and formators.  In seminaries the Modernists most capable of appearing Catholics and most knowledgeable in how to flip a Catholic to a Modernist, or at least to a complaint do-nothing, are placed in the roles of Confessors, Spiritual Directors, and Vocation Directors, Rectors, or other formators.  This is important so that not only the gate-keepers but the counselors of the victims conscience are compromised, so that if he seeks help and guidance, he is guaranteed to get  advice that will do him in; either by advising compliance, silence, or excesses which will guarantee expulsion or exclusion, or serving as pretexts for such.  Indeed, a common tactic, is to propose friendship and sympathy for the victim, with the condition that he compromise in something, which will only prologue his ordeal and wear down his resistance.

These two tactics, Denigration and Identification/Segregation regard individuals. Now, let us consider the cases of groups.

3. Disfavor initiatives aimed at promoting the Faith in a non-compromised manner

In regard to groups, Modernists employ distinct but similar tactics.  In the age following the diffusion of the errors of voluntarism and totalitarianism, many a person has come to accept in principle that obedience to a superior is never wrong, even when a superior commands to be done that which is wrong !  A whole host of excuses is given, but to the group which is poorly formed in the Faith and enmeshed in the errors of the present age, the power of the accusation of disobedience to a superior’s commands or disfavor in regard to superior’s wishes is never to be discounted. How many holy initiatives, works of the Holy Spirit’s suggestions, have come to naught since Vatican II simply because someone whispered, “The Bishop won’t like that”, or “the current Pope does not favor that”, etc..!

Mind you, the Catholic Faith aims to please God alone; when a superior’s wishes diverge from what God has revealed to be pleasing to Himself, either in Scripture, or throughout the course of the ages in the Saints’ and their works, then the faithful should have the common sense to ignore his wishes, no? You’d think so; but, alas, this sense of integrity is rare today.  Only when Catholics by long years of good works come to understand the profound connection between them and the  Faith which comes from Christ, do they have any interior conviction to question such an evil suggestion as, “the Bishop won’t like that” holy proposal.

The errors of voluntarism and totalitarianism have become so widespread, that many Catholics no longer hold their pastors or Bishops’ to be their shepherds, they now consider them to be their “heads” and “hearts” proper! Content with the satisfaction of their daily lives and common pleasures, and rarely prepared by modern culture to have a sense of personal dignity which is founded in loyalty to Christ first and foremost, few initiatives, even holy initiatives, of Catholics, whether laymen or clergy or religious, withstand a concerted or long process of Modernist manipulation tactics.  The fortitude is simply lacking; the clarity of judgement too poor; the heroic virtue, not something they have every prayed the Lord to give them.

4. Accuse of Disobedience, especially after unreasonable or unlawful requests

Accusations of disobedience are a grave matter, since the Code of Canon Law especially identifies these as a grounds for imposing censures or penalties.  Most Catholics, when accused, do not have the clarity of mind or knowledge of the faith to distinguish a just command which should be obeyed, from an unjust or unreasonable one which should not or could be ignored.  The mere stigma of not doing what a superior has commanded, is so strong in modern times (despite the false exaltation of liberty) that nearly no group escapes from such an accusation.  What results is disintegration, internal divisions, which render the group non-effective in its holy proposals, or so divided, as to dissolve; in any event, the mere accusation when leveled is sufficient to guarantee that a group be exterminated from the life of the Church, if the Bishop should so wish, or even, to obtain complete acquiescence to the Modernist agenda in the Church as the penance necessary to remove the stigma.  This is why a reasonable or just request, refused, need not be the basis of the accusation.

Now let me adjoin some commentary on the so-called negotiations which have been required of Catholic groups since the Council, which have “dared” to resist the Modernist reformulation of the Faith.

5. Require negotiations for reconciliation

I have always wondered just why some groups are required “to be reconciled” so as to obtain favor or approval from superiors, where it is rather the superiors who have been known for years, decades, even their entirely priestly lives, for deviations from the Faith or right ecclesiastic practices.

The reason may be, that the opportunities to be had from negotiating the reconciliation of such groups provides a powerful social-psychological force for demanding and obtaining compliance.  Social-psychology is the study of how groups behave and interact in such wise as to influence the behavior of individuals and individuals of groups. The mere announcement of an offer of reconciliation makes the imposition of the requirement of negotiations all the more noteworthy, the object of much emotion and speculations.  The hope that persecution and justice will be granted, is combined with the natural desire of the victim to exit the suffering imposed so unjustly.  It is a powerful magnetic force, therefore, to propose to the abused a negotiation with the abuser to stop the abuse.  It also sets up the context where any discussion of the injustice or abuse appears not to be useful to obtain the needed reconciliation.

For this reason, I ask, just why is it that some groups, and not all groups or all Catholics, are required to accept by written signature the legitimacy, authority, or doctrines of the Second Vatican Council?  If the Fathers of the Council had the liberty to choose to sign or not to sign, and if the  Council did not in any anathema or canon obliged its acceptance or the acceptance of any of its pastoral proposals, why is it then that such written acceptance is required?

I believe the reason is, that such a written document, can serve very ably in coercing and guaranteeing compliance, and in shutting off the ways of escaping from further abuse, when the malice or perfidy of one party might later become evident.  After all, that is the reason for every peace treaty between disputants, is it not, to guarantee compliance of the weaker party?

Thus, if the Modernists simply falsely accuse their opponents of refusing Vatican II, being schismatics, or in danger of schism, as has frequently and recently been done by some Bishops, it becomes very easy to propose reconciliation as a condition for being pardoned of the false charges.

In truth, Catholics need not compromise, reconcile or negotiate with Modernists; they need only to refuse false obedience and false acceptance when and wherever it is offered. Rather, it is Catholics who should preach and demand repentance of the Modernists, their resignations and their removal from office, howsoever high it be.

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Just hours after the publication of this Article, Pope Francis directed AB Parolin, his Secretary of State, to publish a Rescript in which he claims the right, in Art. 5, thereof, to depose any bishop for any reason after a fraternal dialogue.

Cf. http:// press.vatican.va / content / salastampa / it / bollettino / pubblico / 2014 / 11 / 05 / 0821 / 01739.html

To use the link, simply remove the spaces before and after the / symbols.

Editorials, Faith

Pope Francis’ Homily at Ognissanti: An Analysis

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A CALL FOR VIOLENCE TO PROMOTE THE GREATER REVOLUTION

Pope Francis at Ognissanti, March 7, 2015 (click image for original from Catholic Herald article on this event).
Pope Francis at Ognissanti, March 7, 2015 (click image for original from Catholic Herald article on this event).

Rome, March 9, 2015:  Students of theology at Rome, who are catholic, have long experience in “reading” what their professors are saying.  This is because the current climate of Modernism, and the persecution of Catholic seminarians which is attendant upon keeping it in power, makes a woeful variety of the forms of dishonestly flourish under its pallid “sun” of error.

Modernism, as Catholics know and recognize, is the error which says there is nothing religious but what comes from the sentiments of the human heart. It is a species of atheism, of the kind apt to be found in those who pretend to be religious.  It is a very apt and useful error for the ecclesiastical parasite, the priest-careerist or the hierarchical climber, because it absolves from all conscience and morality and thus enables any compromise necessary to ascend to ever greater depths of moral depravity and power.

In classes at the Pontifical faculties at Rome, the Modernist is easily recognized by his inability to speak sincerely and straightforwardly, his use of metaphors, indirect symbols, passing remarks, to key to his audience the “secret” meaning of his lecture, and allow it to be understood correctly.  Few modernists omit this method, because it is so useful and successful; it leaves them in a strong position from where they can with difficulty be accused of being heretics, and one in which those who espouse heresy, can understand what they should be understanding in a certain sort of coded language or discourse.

The talk at Ognissanti is a perfect example of this method, but since this method is rarely recognized for what it is, let us unpack it for those Catholics who have the blessing never to have been “initiated” into it by attending a Pontifical university or seminary class.

First, the very occasion of the talk provides the context.  The Modernists who pushed to dump the original schema for Vatican II and who controlled the entire implementation of the texts of the Council into which they wrote nearly all their own errors, find no greater occasion to rejoice but the anniversaries of their revolution.  The 50th anniversary of the first mass in the vernacular, as was celebrated on Saturday March 7th, is just such an occasion.

It would be enough for the Pope to celebrate the occasion, even though he scrupulously avoided using the actual ritual Pope Paul VI used on that day, 50 years ago:  no, no! such a liturgy, that of 1965, is much too much like the Traditional Latin Mass, of the “preconciliar era”.  To have used that liturgy, would have been to confirm what Pope Benedict XVI often spoke about, the necessity to reconcile the 2 liturgies.  But since “reconciliation” presupposes equality, and since Modernists deny the legitimate spiritual equality of the Old Rite — they actually deny the totality of the legitimate spiritual quality of that rite — there could be no question about using the liturgy of 1965. That would send the “wrong” message, in their minds, to their followers.

Thus, the significance of the day of March 7 and the use of the Novus Ordo for the 50th anniversary.

Significant too, is the Cardinal of whom this church is assigned among the Sacred College:  Cardinal Walter Kasper, chief theologian of “Team Bergoglio” and papally authorized proponent of the Kasper thesis, which holds that it is mercy to abandon 2000 years of Christian teaching which bars public and impenitent sinners from reception of the sacraments.

All of these 3 circumstances already say all which the Modernists need to say.  Their con-catenation means that unless their agenda is explicitly denounced in the Homily for the celebration, that agenda is in fact explicitly affirmed by the silence.

Let us now examine the text of the talk to see what else can be gleaned.

As the Modernists would be very inclined to fear that Traditionalists would be apt to criticize this talk — there were even rumors in Rome that the Vatican was obsessed that traditional Catholics would stage a demonstration against the Anniversary — we have to look closely to see what is intended to be seen only by initiated Modernists.

Quotations are from our unofficial English translation of the homily…see previous Blog post for citations.

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Holy Mass at the Roman Parish of Ognissanti, on the Via Appia Nuova

Homily of Pope Francis

3rd Sunday in Lent

Saturday, March 7, 2015

On the occasion of the feast of the Jewish Passover, Jesus went to Jerusalem.  Arriving at the Temple, he does not find people who seek God, but people who are conducting their own business:  merchants of animals for the offering of sacrifice, money-changers, who exchange the “impure” money, bearing the image of the Emperor, with the money approved by the religious authority to pay the annual temple tax.  What do we find when we take ourselves there, when we go to our temples?  I give you this example:  The unworthy commerce, source of ill-gotten gain, provokes the energetic reaction of Jesus.  He overturns their tables and throws their money to the ground, he drives the merchants away, saying to them:  « Don’t make the House of my Father a market! » (John 2:16).

Note, from the start, that the Pope founds his entire homily on the comparison between the Jewish liturgy and the Christian liturgy.  This is the standard Modernist reading of the liturgical aggiornamento:  Just as the Jewish liturgy was ignorant and superficial, the Christian inspired and interior; so the old Mass was obsessed with appearances and rules, the reformed Liturgy is open and free and unvexing.

Note that the Pope uses the current Italian version of the Gospels, which erroneously translates the Greek, οἶκον ἐμπορίου, as “market”, when in fact is means “house of business”, that is, “covered market place”.  (The actual mercantile practices in the Gospel text took place, not in the Temple, but in the Courtyard of the Gentiles, the most exterior part of the outer area, in which even Gentiles who were believers could enter.  No part of the Mosaic Law forbade trade in this area.  Contrariwise, the Mosaic Law, of which Jesus as God is the author, precepted the offering of sacrifices to God: the support of the Temple by the annual tax, too, was a customary obligation of the entire Jewish People, to which Jesus never objected.)

In fact, the use of the Jewish – Christian parallelism to fault the old liturgy and praise the new, is a form of antisemitism which we would expect from a Lutheran faithful to Luther’s bigotry against both the Jewish People and the traditional Mass, the kind of theological bigotry propounded in liberal Germany theological institutes, such as those from which Cardinal Kasper may draw his racially tinged concepts of African Bishops, as Edward Pentin exposed during the recent Extra-Ordinary Synod on the Family.  But let’s not allow our expectations or history to get in the way of the evidence.

Referring to the words of Jesus in John 2:16, the Pope continues:

This expression does not only refer to the traffic which was being practiced in the courtyards of the Temple.  Rather, it regards the type of religiosity.  The gesture of Jesus is a gesture of “cleaning”, of purification, and the mentality which He expresses can be found in the texts of the Prophets, according to which God does not take pleasure in an exterior cult wrought through material sacrifice and based upon personal interest (cf. Isaiah 1:11-17; Jeremiah 7:2-11).  This gesture is a call back to authentic worship, to the correspondence between liturgy and life; a call which is valid for every epoch and even for us today.  That correspondence between liturgy and life.  The liturgy is not something strange, over there, far off, and one during which I think of many things, or pray the Rosary.  No, no.  There is a correspondence, between the liturgical celebration and what I then carry on in my life; and on this (path) one must go further ahead, one must journey onward.

Here the pope abandons the common reading of this passage in the Fathers, which attributes Jesus’ ire not to the mercantile operations per se, but to the corruption which had crept into it, such as not exchanging coins at the fair value, or selling animals for sacrifice at inflated prices; all of which defrauded the honest Jew who came to worship God, especially the poorer ones. (Remember that Jesus’ family was so poor that, at His  birth, Joseph could only afford 2 turtle doves for sacrifice not the customary lamb).

To use this text while avoiding the condemnation of the sin of the exploitation of the poor, is a very notable exception for the man who is Pope Francis: seeing that he has railed against this for his entire Pontificate.  This omission, therefore, should be seen as significant: namely that the true message of his homily is aimed at something else.  We can see what that is, in the text paragraph of his talk:

The conciliar Constitution, Sacrosanctum Concilium, defines the liturgy as « the first and indispensable source from which the faithful can draw the true Christian spirit » (n. 14).  Which means to reaffirm the essential link which unites the life of the disciple of Jesus with liturgical worship.  This is, above all, not a doctrine to comprehend, or a rite to fulfill; it is naturally also this but in another manner, it is essentially diverse:  it is a source of life and of light for our journey of faith.

That is, he is going to speak about the liturgical renewal, not about Jesus cleansing the Temple, per se.  The Pope continues:

Moreover, the Church calls us to have and to promote an authentic liturgical life, so that there may be a harmony between what the liturgy celebrates and what we ourselves life in our own existence.  It treats of how to express in life what we have received by means of the Faith and what which have celebrated (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 10).

The Church does nothing of the kind, actually.  Vatican II did not impose any obligation on anyone in the Church, since it established no canons or anathemas not even promulgated a new liturgy.  The Novus Ordo came into being only in 1969, and its authors were the Consilium established by Pope Paul VI, not by the Council Fathers.  Nor did it even attempt to be faithful to the document, which the Pope just cited.  The Pope could have mentioned this, but he did not: and his silence is significant.  He is affirming that his intentions are to continue in that line of misrepresenting the Council as Pope Paul VI did.

The Pope continues:

The disciple of Jesus does not go to church only to observe a precept, to feel okay with a God who should not “trouble” him much.  “But I, Lord, go every Sunday, I fulfill …, don’t mix yourself up with my life, don’t bother me”.  This is the mentality of so many Catholics, so many.  The disciple of Jesus goes to church to encounter the Lord and to find in his grace, working in the Sacraments, the strength to think and act according to the Gospel.  On which account, we cannot delude ourselves into thinking that we can enter the house of the Lord and “cover ourselves over”, with prayers and devotional practices, comportments contrary to the requirements of justice, of honesty or of charity towards our neighbor.  We cannot substitute with “religious gifts” what is owed to our neighbor, putting off a true conversion.  The cult, the liturgical celebration, are the privileged place to heed the voice of the Lord, which guides us along the road of righteousness and Christian perfection.

Notice the dichotomy between the “disciples of Jesus” and “too many Catholics”.  If you think the Pope is literally saying that “many Catholics” are not “disciples of Jesus”, you are correct!  The truth is, however, that when one speaks properly, “Catholics” are the only disciples of Jesus that there are! for they are the only ones who take Him as seriously as He Himself insisted to be taken.  So what is the Pope getting at?  We must understand, that while it appears that he is using words in their proper sense, he is not; thus we must consider that he is not, if we are to understand him aright.

Secondly, if one considers the many scandalous deeds and actions of Pope Francis, as Pope and before in Argentina, we can rightly say that we find his words astounding: because he is condemning “many Catholics” for doing what he himself is notorious for doing, yet omitting that he is also at fault for that.  What kind of “authentic Christian life” is that?

We must understand, therefore, that in this homily, the Holy Father has no intention of presenting a call to authentic Christian life, rather, his goal is to attack it. For his actions speak louder than his words and give them context, even if that is politically incorrect to say. If his intentions were otherwise, he would publicly repent of his bad example and many scandalous words and deeds during the last 2 years as Pope. He did not. That is significant.

Therefore, the true reading must be, that the authentic Christian life which seeks interior conversion for the sanctification of the exterior life, is to be rejected, and in its place one should implement what the aggiornamento gave us, the appearances of a renewal, which have visibly altered the liturgies of the Church, but have entirely abandoned the interior man, especially the interior of many priests and bishops, to interior corruption, to hypocrisy, superficiality etc., the very same things the Pope appears to be condemning.

The Pope continues:

This regards the fulfillment of a journey of conversion and penitence, to take from our life the scars of sin, as Jesus did, by cleansing the Temple of petty interests.  And Lent is the favorable time for all of this, it is the time for interior renewal, for the forgiveness of sin, the time in which we have been called to rediscover the Sacrament of Penance and of Reconciliation, which causes us to pass from darkness to the light of grace and friendship with Jesus.  There is no need to forget the great strength which this Sacrament has for the Christian life:  it makes us grow in union with God, it makes us reacquire the lost joy and to experience the consolation of feeling ourselves personally welcomed by the merciful embrace of God.

The error of Luther was to seek God in the confirmation of his own personal “will” to be saved, founded in a fiducial faith.  This error gave rise to the sentimentalism of Protestantism, which puts the experience of faith in the place of dogmatic faith; to which error there followed unbridled free thought in matters of religion, since “faith” no longer required intellectual assent to defined propositions or to revealed truths.  What remained from Protestantism was consumed by Modernism, where sentiment alone remains.  Thus Modernists go to church to get a feeling, a consolation, just as the pope is proposing for “disciples of Jesus”.  Thus, we have our true key to read the Papal homily: The “disciples” are Modernists, the Jews are the Traditionalists, the pre-conciliar Catholics, who refuse the Aggiornamento.

The pope continues this line of thought, in his concluding remarks, where he calls for the continued revolution in the Church.

Dear brothers and sisters, this Church was constructed thanks to the apostolic zeal of St. Luigi Orione.  It is precisely here, that, fifty years ago, blessed Paul VI inaugurated, in a certain sense, the liturgical reform with the celebration of the Mass in the language spoken by the people.  I auger that this circumstance may revive in you all the love of the house of God,  In her, may you find great spiritual help.  Here you are able to experience, every time you wish to, the regenerative power of personal prayer and of community prayer.  Listening to the Word of God, proclaimed in the liturgical assembly, it sustains you in the path of our Christian life.  You meet together here between these walls, not as strangers, but as brothers, capable of giving one another a hand freely, because you have been built up in love through Christ, the foundation of hope and the fundament of pledge for every believer.

Him, Jesus Christ, the Corner Stone, do we embrace in this Holy Mass, renewing the resolution to commit ourselves for our own interior purification and for the interior cleansing of the spiritual edifice of the Church, of which each of us is a living part in force of our Baptism.  Amen.

To a simple Catholic it might seem that the Pope is saying something quite different than what we have expounded, but take it from a student of 3 pontifical faculties, that is  just what it is intended and crafted to appear to mean to a simple Catholic.

Thus, in summation, we can say, that the homily as presented is calling for greater violence against the “Jews”, that is the traditionalists — Jesus cleansing the Temple, is after all a prime example for the justification for violence* — and in favor of the Aggiornamento of the Church ever more deeply, and thus in favor of the Kasper Thesis, the heretical thesis of divorcing the Sacraments from the observance of the moral law, the thesis promoted by Cardinal Kasper, who is the Cardinal patron of the very church in which this homily was given.

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* Remember, it is a mortal sin of sacrilege to use scripture for an evil purpose or to interpret it in a sense contrary to the common opinion of the Fathers of the Church.  The true example given by Our Lord in the Temple, is that as God’s Divine Son He has the right to cleanse His own Church from corruption, and this He surely will do, even before the great day of His Final Return. And that it is a grave offense to the Divine Majesty of His Father, that the uses of the places dedicated to the worship of God, as He commanded it, be stained with moral corruption.  In other words, the example of Our Lord in the temple gives us the exact opposite indications as that which the Pope promotes, because it is diametrically opposed to the impiety of Modernism, to the hypocrisy of the pink mafia, and to the objectives of Free Masons and the Progressive Movement, and the adaptation of liturgy to life, such as the Aggiornamento has been applied.

Ecclesiology

Tactics of Manipulation used by Modernists against Catholics

2004-passion-of-the-christ-7I do not claim to be an expert. I am sure that there are many Cardinals, Bishops, Priests, Deacons, Religious and Laymen who have better knowledge of such things than myself. But in my nearly 30 years of personal experience in Ecclesiastical institutions or as a religious/hermit, I have noticed some patterns of deception and manipulation, which I believe in conscience I am obliged to name, explicate, so that Catholic Faithful at Rome and around the world might take guard against them.

“Manipulation”, in the dark sense of the word, is a way of misleading, maneuvering, deforming, altering, etc., the mind, actions or even words or reactions of another, to serve one’s own goals.  When the victim is a faithful Catholic and the perpetrator is a modernist, you have a very evil and wicked malice at work.  Yet, to those who know anything of the history of the Church during the last 100 years or more, the Modernists have honed to perfection many methods of manipulating Catholics to serve their own abominable conspiracy to overthrow the true Church of Christ, from within, using the very institutions and offices of the Church, established by Christ and by ecclesiastical tradition, against Her.

Having studied Cultural Anthropology at the University of Florida, I was trained in the methods of participant observation, which is a way of learning about a subculture’s mores, rules, ethics, behaviors, by sharing or keeping company with them.  I never consciously used this method, but now, after many years of fighting against Modernists, I will take a moment to step back and analyze and categorize some of the methods of manipulation I have seen or learned first hand against faithful clergy, religious and laity.

 The Church, being the perfect society founded by the Incarnate Word of God, enjoys an order of society which enables Her to achieve the end which God have Her, the honor and glory of God through the worship of God and the salvation of Souls.  This being the case, the Modernists, who believe in no God, but only in the god of personal sentiments, thus have an upward battle if they are to use the very things of the Church to overthrow the Church from within.

Alas, however, since many modernists have been members of the clergy, and this throughout the last 180 years or so, they have had the ability to use all the forms of clerical and moral corruption, known beforehand, to their end.  They have also had the assistance of the general moral degradation which has been promoted by the Free Masons in the West (and not only in the West), which has led many a Catholic to be disposed to be easily deceived about what constitutes Christian virtue and ecclesiological justice and honesty.

In former ages, we read of the heroic and saintly Bishops who did not hesitate to threaten unfaithful Catholics, Kings, Dukes, Princes, Mayors, Scholars, even the Pope, with excommunication if they did not stop from their pubic sins or injustices.  There are cases, where immoral bishops, were taken outside of the town walls and hung from a tree by the Catholic faithful, to rid the local church of their vile depravities.  There are cases where laymen shot corrupt priests dead for the crimes they perpetrated against children or families.

In the modern age, with all our institutions of civil and ecclesiastical justice, we are apt to look down upon the Catholics of former ages, who understood that in some cases, waiting for lengthy procedures would only endanger the public good the more. They understood that after some point, the depravity of a man could be such that he merited no longer the customary due process accorded to the merely suspected of a crime. They also understood that obedience to an evil command did not absolve from the sin of collaboration or participation in the evil commanded.  Former ages enjoyed a sense of personal honor and manliness that is rarely admired and even more rarely tolerated in modern times.  Indeed, corrupt and evil men have all kinds of words to lambast such honorable men.

The decline of morals in the West did not begin with the Age of the Enlightenment, yet, Rationalists of that age started a trend which has been greatly exploited by Modernists (even though Modernists are sentimentalists not rationalists): that trend is the use of deprecatory language to subvert the sentiments of Catholics away from admiration of virtue, especially away from admiration of heroic virtue.

You can see that effect palpably in the common and vulgar opinions some men, even clergymen, have of the Saints of old.  The most striking example I know of personally, is the comment made by a priest, now deceased, who remarked to me one day, after he read a very short life of Saint Francis of Assisi, that if anyone did such penances today, he should certainly be locked up in a mental asylum. To which I replied, with not a little shock, “Do you mean that just today, or is Saint Francis any less suspect for having done them long ago”. He replied that he was no less suspect, and added, “I have great difficulty understanding why such a man was ever made a saint”.  (This priest, by the way, died of being too overweight by about 200 pounds.)

 Ah, what has happened to that age of chivalry and honesty, where even a sloucher or glutton admitted that the diligent and abstemious man was virtuous? Is modern man so ignorant, as to not understand, that it is one thing to be virtuous, another to admire virtue; and that if you are not at least the first kind of man, that you can at least save your honor by being the second?

God forbid, however — as the Modernists think and consider the matter — that there even exist in the Church the second kind of man, the man who actually admires the heroic virtue of the Saints of old!

And here we have the first tactic in the tool box of manipulations, used by Modernists:

1. Denigrate what is best, and make it the enemy of all the rest.

You see, if the Modernists are to prevail in the Church, they must put into practice some of the general tactics of the fallen angels, because the Church, being principally a spiritual society, Her strength lies principally in spiritual things.  Now there is nothing more principally spiritual in a believer than his virtue, and the prince of all virtue is the virtue to the heroic degree.  Consequently, to shut out all possibility of this most spiritual enemy of Modernism, the first and prime spiritual goal is to ostracize and exile heroic virtue.  And this is done chiefly by denigration.

Denigration of what is best is the first tactic to employ, because when the best is no longer seen as the best, the soul and the society no longer strives to reach the proper goal by the only methods which can attain that goal. Giving up the only tools to arrive at that goal, one guarantees in the very first instance, that the Catholic side of the battle will not and will never win; and that the battle will continue interminably, without victory for the Catholic party.

This denigration has gone on for many generations now: Rationalists did this by debunking the lives of the Saints, debunking the authenticity and authority and veracity of Scripture; by debunking the normalcy and authority of Tradition; by debunking the sanity of heroic virtue, by recourse to modern false sciences of psychology and psychiatry as the “true” authorities on human behavior.  This could not be done without despising and denigrating Scholastic Theology and Philosophy.

The result of such a campaign of denigration, is a Catechism of Denigration, induction to which is common place in Catholic Seminaries today, throughout the whole world; and especially so in the Pontifical Universities at Rome, where the majority of professors believe education means debunking every historical, theological, moral, ethical, religious, liturgical ideal which a seminarian might bring with him to Rome.

Simultaneous, to this work of denigration, is the work of substitution.  After railing against the ideals which the Church has from Christ, the Apostles or from the Holy Spirit in the Saints, it is necessary but easy to suggest and laud the ideals and criteria which prevail in modern times, and this, in the name of being “acceptable”, “up to date”, “normal”, “middle of the road”, etc.. Thus to virtue, we have sound & healthy psychology; to faith in scripture, the critical historical method of rationalistic interpretation; to Christian charity, social justice work; to preaching, neutralizing rhetorics; to worship of God, worship of self or of man; to Tradition, the modernist reading of Vatican II (holding that it is obligatory and dogmatic just like, nay, better than Vatican I) etc..

2. Identify and root out the “non-compliant”, “intransigent”, “rigorists”, those who take the Faith “too seriously”.

The work of denigration provides the best context for the second method or tool of manipulation: identifying those who have such virtue as to resist or oppose the denigration of the best. Social cohesion and the insistence that one not be divisive, not jeopardize approval of superiors who hold the keys to the formation process, are powerful emotional threats used to cajole acquiescence to the program of denigration.  If this fails, then one moves easily to accusing the resistant of being “rigorists”, “ideologues”, “intransigent”, simply because they resist the process of denigration.  Few, in such an emotionally charged atmosphere as the Seminary or Pontifical University where denigration has replace formation and information, have the spiritual balance to notice that it is precisely in this personal attack of those who resist, that there becomes manifest the actual ideals of the denigrators; ideals which are contrary or opposite of those which Catholics should hold. Many, beholden to a “follow the group”, “don’t rock the boat”, ethic, easily succumb to such an attack, those who don’t, thus, are then easily isolated and separated from the group, when the attacks move from opposing ideals of the Faith, to denigrating those who show loyalty to them.  With all the filters Modernists now have in society and in ecclesiastical institutions today, it will be few vocations who show such fortitude and resistance, it is thus easy then to divide them from the group and from others in the group who would give moral support.

This separation is a necessary part of the re-education program of the Modernists.  Insistence on attending certain Pontifical Universities is a sure sign that re-education is the goal.  It is not that re-education is the necessity, but a seminarian or religious has to be very knowledgeable and virtuous beforehand, to survive without being scathed.  Such a man is a rare breed today, though.

One effective tool in this work of weeding out the virtuous, is the system of falsification of formation and formators.  In seminaries the Modernists most capable of appearing Catholics and most knowledgeable in how to flip a Catholic to a Modernist, or at least to a complaint do-nothing, are placed in the roles of Confessors, Spiritual Directors, and Vocation Directors, Rectors, or other formators.  This is important so that not only the gate-keepers but the counselors of the victims conscience are compromised, so that if he seeks help and guidance, he is guaranteed to get  advice that will do him in; either by advising compliance, silence, or excesses which will guarantee expulsion or exclusion, or serving as pretexts for such.  Indeed, a common tactic, is to propose friendship and sympathy for the victim, with the condition that he compromise in something, which will only prologue his ordeal and wear down his resistance.

These two tactics, Denigration and Identification/Segregation regard individuals. Now, let us consider the cases of groups.

3. Disfavor initiatives aimed at promoting the Faith in a non-compromised manner

In regard to groups, distinct but similar tactics must be employed.  In the age following the diffusion of the errors of voluntarism and totalitarianism, many a person has come to accept in principle that obedience to a superior is never wrong, even when a superior commands to be done that which is wrong.  A whole host of excuses is given, but to the group which is poorly formed in the Faith and immeshed in the errors of the present age, the power of the accusation of disobedience to a superiors commands or disfavor in regard to superior’s wishes is never to be discounted. How many holy initiatives, works of the Holy Spirit’s suggestions, have come to naught since Vatican II simply because someone whispered, “The Bishop won’t like that”, or “the current Pope does not favor that”, etc..!

Mind you, the Catholic Faith aims to please God alone; when a superior’s wishes diverge from what God has revealed to be pleasing to Himself, either in scripture, or throughout the course of the ages in the Saints’ and their works, then the faithful should have the common sense to ignore his wishes, no? You’d think so; but, alas, this sense of integrity is rare today.  Only when Catholics by long years of good works come to understand the profound connection between them and the  Faith which comes from Christ, do they have any interior conviction to question such an evil suggestion as, “the Bishop won’t like that” holy proposal.

The errors of voluntarism and totalitarianism have become so widespread, that many Catholics no longer hold their pastors or Bishops’ to be their shepherds, they now consider them to be their “heads” and “hearts” proper! Content with the satisfaction of their daily lives and common pleasures, and rarely prepared by modern culture to have a sense of personal dignity which is founded in loyalty to Christ first and foremost, few initiatives, even holy initiatives, of Catholics, whether laymen or clergy or religious, withstand a concerted or long process of Modernist manipulation tactics.  The fortitude is simply lacking; the clarity of judgement too poor; the heroic virtue, not something they have every prayed the Lord to give them.

4. Accuse of Disobedience, especially after unreasonable or unlawful requests

Accusations of disobedience are a grave matter, since the Code of Canon Law especially identifies these as a grounds for imposing censures or penalties.  Most Catholics when accused, do not have the clarity of mind or knowledge of the faith to distinguish a just command which should be obeyed, from an unjust or unreasonable one which should not or could be ignored.  The mere stigma of not doing what a superior has commanded, is so strong in modern times (despite the false exaltation of liberty) that nearly no group escapes from such an accusation.  What results is disintegration, internal divisions, which render the group non-effective in its holy proposals, or so divided, as to dissolve; in any event, the mere accusation when leveled is sufficient to guarantee that a group be exterminated from the life of the Church, if the Bishop should so wish, or even, to obtain complete acquiescence to the Modernist agenda in the Church as the penance necessary to remove the stigma.  This is why a reasonable or just request, refused, need not be the basis of the accusation.

Now let me adjoin some commentary on the so-called negotiations which have been required of Catholic groups since the Council, which have “dared” to resist the Modernist reformulation of the Faith.

5. Require negotiations for reconciliation

I have always wondered just why some groups are required “to be reconciled” so as to obtain favor or approval from superiors, where it is rather the superiors who have been known for years, decades, even their entirely priestly lives, for deviations from the Faith or right ecclesiastic practices.

The reason may be, that the opportunities to be had from negotiating the reconciliation of such groups provides a powerful social-psychological force for demanding and obtaining compliance.  Social-physchology is the study of how groups behave and interact in such wise as to influence the behavior of individuals and individuals of groups. The mere announcement of an offer of reconciliation makes the imposition of the requirement of negotiations all the more noteworthy, the object of much emotion and speculations.  The hope that persecution and justice will be granted, is combined with the natural desire of the victim to exit the suffering imposed so unjustly.  It is a powerful magnetic force, therefore, to propose to the abused a negotiation with the abuser to stop the abuse.  It also sets up the context where any discussion of the injustice or abuse appears not to be useful to obtain the needed reconciliation.

For this reason, I ask, just why is it that some groups, and not all groups or all Catholics, are required to accept by written signature the legitimacy, authority, or doctrines of the Second Vatican Council?  If the Fathers of the Council had the liberty to choose to sign or not to sign, and if the  Council did not in any anathema or canon obliged its acceptance or the acceptance of any of its pastoral proposals, why is it then that such written acceptance is required?

I believe the reason is, that such a written document, can serve very ably in coercing and guaranteeing compliance, and in shutting off the ways of escaping from further abuse, when the malice or perfidy of one party might later become evident.  After all, that is the reason for every peace treaty between disputants, is it not, to guarantee compliance of the weaker party?

Thus, if the Modernists simply falsely accuse their opponents of being schismatics, or in danger of schism, as has frequently and recently been done by some Bishops, it becomes very easy to propose reconciliation as a condition for being pardoned of the false charges.

In truth, Catholics need not compromise, reconcile or negotiate with Modernists; they need only to refuse false obedience and false acceptance when and wherever it is offered. Rather, it is Catholics who should preach and demand repentance of the Modernists, their resignations and their removal from office, howsoever high it be.

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Just hours after the publication of this Article, Pope Francis directed AB Parolin, his Secretary of State, to publish a Rescript in which he claims the right, in Art. 5, thereof, to depose any bishop for any reason after a fraternal dialogue.

Cf. http:// press.vatican.va / content / salastampa / it / bollettino / pubblico / 2014 / 11 / 05 / 0821 / 01739.html

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