OnePeterFive

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• SEDEVACANTISM

I was a Sedevacantist and an Enthusiast

 Jeremiah Bannister

October 23, 2021

If Monsignor Ronald Knox is correct, as I contend he is, then, “there is a recurrent situation in Church history—using the word ‘church’ in the widest sense—where an excess of charity threatens unity.” It’s the classic double-edged sword of otherwise good folks taking an otherwise pious proposition or practice a tad too far. To his great merit, Knox goes to great pains (in his 591-page magnum opus, Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of the Church) to show how this often cuts both ways. “More and more, by a kind of fatality, you see [the enthusiast] draw apart from their co-religionists, a hive ready to swarm.” Sadly, subsequent provocations occur.

On the one part, cheap jokes at the expense of over-godliness, acts of stupid repression by unsympathetic authorities; on the other, contempt of the half-Christian, ominous references to old wine and new bottles, to the kernel and the husk. Then, while you hold your breath and turn away your eyes in fear, the break comes; condemnation or secession, what difference does it make? A fresh name has been added to the list of Christianities.

It’s as if the only thing both sides could agree on was that the stroll toward schism should be super-charged into a full-blown arms race, transforming disagreements into divisions… and divisions into All Out War!

As Knox rightly notes, this pattern is recurrent, playing itself out time and time again, always running its course like a sort of simulation. Such was true of the Montanists, the Quakers, the Jansenists, and the Quietists, even of modern revivalists, as well as the madmen reveling in the creative destruction of the schisms that so plagued the underbelly of medieval history. But it’s not as though there weren’t any warning signs, and we never lacked saints, pleading, “Please, Stop! DANGER ZONE Ahead!” It’s true, cautionary tales may have been few and far between for the folks in First Century Corinth, but antinomianism ain’t nothin’ new. And while Luther may have drawn his detestable line at Worms, discontents & rigoristas have had Worms in the brain and enthusiasm in their veins ever since Eve was beguiled in the Garden. It’s tempting, I suppose, to see oneself as a dime-store prophet, weeping over a world being whisked away in a handbasket on the fast-track to the fires of hell—and all the more (as luck – or convenience – would always seem to have it) when you happen to be safe and sound on holy ground, enjoying the celestial company of the saints and martyrs.

What happens, though, when that “world” includes Holy Mother Church? Such has been the charge of many a naysayer decrying doctrinal and disciplinary development, but I contend that this temperament and tendency holds no less true today than it did in the times of the traditores. Daring to dance where others dread to forge ahead, I claim that, if he were still alive today, Msgr. Knox would feel compelled to add a few new chapters to his tome, not least of which would be the sensational drama of the schismatic system of sedevacantism.

After all, sedevacantism has the mixings, bearing the hallmarks of a moment made into a movement, and movement made into a mood, and a mood gone mad by enthusiasm. Its adherents have said and done the darndest things, advancing propositions and enacting positions that would have incurred the (incontrovertibly traditional) ire of inquisitors. And lest I be accused of misreading or misunderstanding the movement, grant me an indulgence permitting me to both give and take credit where it’s due.

Long ago, in a place far, far away, I was a sedevacantist. It was during the heyday of dinosaurs like Xanga & Myspace, and YouTube was still years away from witnessing the advent of Dr. Taylor Marshall and Steve Skojec. Plus, neither universities nor now-popular lay apostolates had a significant presence on the platform, so the landscape was fertile for folks like me, already cranking out vlogs and blogs, highlight videos from my local TV show, and segments from my AM/FM radio program, PaleoRadio. I didn’t begin as a sedevacantist—no one ever does—but as a Protestant-pastor-turned-Catholic-lay-apologist, I had a story. And by the time I became a contributing editor at Distributist Review, I’d already established a burgeoning brand. So it was startling, even scandalous when I announced (on Ash Wednesday, with a crux smudged across my forehead) that I had embraced sedevacantism. The reaction was intense, and it didn’t take long before the views on my videos (both for and against sedevacantism) were rivaled only by the likes of the incorrigible Dimond Brothers and the now-notorious Most Holy Family Monastery.

It was doubly tragic, too, since certain saintly men and women tried so hard to stop me. They cared for me, followed my work for years, and they had fallen in love with my family, but they weren’t blind, and they saw the writing on the walls, worrying that it wouldn’t be long before we’d turn and walk away, maybe never to be seen again. One of these, my priest at St. Mary’s in Kalamazoo, Michigan, went so far as to pull me aside, inviting me into the sacristy, where he handed me a big yellow book.

“This is my copy,” he said, “and I know some of it might feel obscure…” Then he paused, looked at me, and with love in his heart and worry in his eyes, he said, “… but I think you need to read this, Jeremiah.”

Suffice it to say, I was too far gone to hear him that day, so that big yellow book just sat there, collecting dust in my office library.

The year that followed was one of fervent fanaticism. First, my family started attending The Most Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Middleville, Michigan. It was small, belonged to the CMRI, and it was populated by only a few faithful families, but they were sedevacantist, and it was only about an hour drive from our home in Battle Creek. There was something nostalgic, too, about the experience. It was quaint, which was comforting, especially since the people there could relate to having endured the grind resulting from one’s decision to quit communion with the so-called Conciliar (aka Counterfeit) Church. We lost friends, and family members were turned off by our quirky radicalism – a few of them even wondered whether we’d lost our minds. Honestly, they might have been right, but I lost much more than my mind! My YouTube followers were heading for the hills, TV viewers were turning the channel, and readers were flipping to other pages. I even resigned from my post at Distributist Review, and speaking opportunities were now a thing of the past. All those years… all that work… all that progress… gone. But we made the call, took our stand, and we were determined to stay the course.

Things weren’t as they appeared, though. It wasn’t that the people were bad—they were our friends!—but there was something mysterious, even cryptic, underlying all the antiquarianism. Without wishing to press the parallel too far, there existed a kind of underbelly, and the feeling of its presence reminded me of the opening sequence of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, where, deep beneath its plush green grass, white picket fence, and rows of red roses, lay a world of chaos and creeping things. That’s a director’s trick, though, and people aren’t born with x-ray vision, so this sort of thing doesn’t just appear all at once, especially when you’re bedazzled by the spectacle (and paralyzing passions) of the sede scene. Still, it was there and, bit by bit, we began to see the fallacies – and the reality of schism – that lay beneath the surface of the system.

It wasn’t the weird debates over whether Star Wars was a means for George Lucas to peddle New Age nonsense or whether Catholics should listen to anything other than chant and classical music. And it wasn’t the weirdos contending that Twilight wasn’t just poorly-written fiction, it also crossed an age-old line regarding the “true nature and activities” of actual vampires. Heck, it wasn’t even the fact that our priest worried that the Vatican had possibly sent shills to infiltrate our assemblies. Sure, that stuff got pretty wacky, and there was an air of conspiracy about the joint, but we were living on the fringe, so it’s sorta par for the course. No, it was the fact that sedevacantism had, as many -isms do, metamorphosed. It wasn’t really about an argument over vacant chairs. That was how it started, but time happened, systems emerged, and sectarianism ensued…

In short: “… fresh names had been added to the list of Christianities.”

I wouldn’t read Knox’s book for another 10 years, seven of which were spent as an apostate in the cesspool of secular atheism, but I saw what Knox spoke of, and I understood what he meant. I didn’t just understand it, I believed it. More than that, I lived it… and insofar as I lived it, I killed my faith. And if that wasn’t bad enough, my decision resulted in starving my wife and children of the sacraments.

Believe me, then, when I say that, whatever else one may think of the sedes and their thesis, faithful Catholics in communion with Rome would be remiss not to note Knox’s hallmarks of enthusiasm, all of which are at play for the sedes and their system:

1. Otherwise decent people* taking otherwise good things too far…
2. More and more, they’re drawn apart from co-religionists…
3. Provocations begin to happen on both sides…
4. Condemnation or secession/schism…
5. For the sect, the Church “unchurched” itself…
6. This leads to End Times speculation – they’re the remnant…
7. Leaders arise, divisions begin, resulting in schism after schism…
8. Inter-sectarian efforts to “Unite!” arise…
9. Inevitably fail, paralyzed by presuppositions…
10. The sect continues unabated—failure becomes them…
11. Laypeople leave, cynical, crushed by the Herculean Sede System…

*I avoid including clerics because enthusiastic sects are almost always hyper-laicized, bordering on a fully-leveled order. This is equally true – no pun intended – of sedevacantists, who tend to be low- to moderately-educated lower-middle-class laypeople. Granted, many of them become rabid autodidacts, but they almost always exhibit a tremendous lack of (and even disdain for) balance. This is par for the course of enthusiasm… and it’s predictable as the morning sun.

Together, these form a system, a system of underlying presuppositions, presuppositions that comprise a paradigm, and a paradigm doomed to the life- and death-cycles of creative destruction, both within and without the confines of the cult: as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, schism without end. This is why I’m so pessimistic about traditional methods often employed in apologetic endeavors aimed to dissuade the potential defector, and it’s why I believe so many people struggle to persuade the petulant sede stuck in the rut of trolling trads on Twitter. It’s not an exercise in vanity per se, but the same could be said of running around in circles. But I don’t think it has to be this way, not if we learn from the likes of St. Francis de Sales, who tended to prefer uprooting systems by their roots than to play the game of piecemeal apologetics, scampering around like Edward Scissorhands, trimming trees of heresy, going claim-by-claim, clipping twigs and pruning fruit.

Unsurprisingly, Knox refers to St. Francis de Sales time and time again throughout the book, finding in his temperament and gentle admonitions a kind of salve able to soothe the beast of enthusiasm. I go even further, though, contending that de Sales’ apologetic method in The Catholic Controversy: A Defense of the Faith, provides a blueprint for the most effective means of dealing with discontents like the sedevacantists. I know, it was written for Catholics-turned-Calvinist in 16th Century Geneva, but his efforts to re-evangelize prodigals resulted in nearly 72,000 schismatics returning to Rome sweet home. Something is fitting, too, isn’t there, about this method being found in a book, entitled, The Catholic Controversy: A Defense of the Faith? And, hey, just playing by the numbers, 72,000 might be more than that total number of sedes on the planet.

So, then, how should St. Francis de Sales’ Defense of the Faith influence our New Re-Evangelization efforts toward the sedevacantists? Well, that will be the focus of my follow-up to this article…

Photo by Jean Vella on Unsplash.

Jeremiah Bannister

Jeremiah Bannister is a writer, YouTuber, and public speaker. After serving in the U.S. Navy, he earned a degree in Journalism & Mass Communication, with a minor in Political Science, from Olivet College (Michigan), where he was awarded the school’s top-honor in three specialties: creative writing, political science, and public speaking. Since then, he has hosted a local TV show, served as a contributing editor for the Distributist Review, and hosted a live AM/FM talk radio program (PaleoRadio). Jeremiah has presented before audiences at Michigan State University, Ferris State University, and Campellsville University. He currently hosts Paleocrat Diaries LIVE on Meaning of Catholic, which airs every Wednesday and Friday morning at 10 a.m. EST on MoC’s YouTube channel. To learn more about his work or to schedule an interview/event, contact him at PaleocratDiaries@gmail.com.

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Subject:  ILLEGAL SAFE HOUSE ILLEGAL SAFE HOUSE A disturbing discovery was recently made in Scottsdale, Arizona.

A reporter for The Gateway Pundit (TGP) received an interesting tip-off. Here’s what he found.
On Monday night, TGP’s Jordan Conradson investigated the Homewood Suites in Scottsdale, Arizonaafter receiving a tip that it was an illegal immigrant safe house. The hotel is located at 9880 N Scottsdale Rd.  When Conradson arrived at the hotel, every entrance was barricaded, and he had to park down the street. He walked up to the hotel and greeted some officers.
This is incredible. There’s a safe house for illegal immigrants being secretly maintained without our knowledge – until now.
Conradson did some digging.
Conradson: what’s going on here?
LES Officer: You actually need to leave the property it’s actually a closed hotel.
Conradson: Oh, so what’s going on?
LES Officer: This is a private property man.
Conradson: But what’s going on?
LES Officer:  If you want to get information for that you need to go to endeavors.org.
Conradson: I heard that they were harboring illegal immigrants here. Is that true?
LES Officer: You can go to the endeavors.org website and they’ll give you as much information as they can.
Conradson: Who do you work for?
LES Officer: I’m contracted with LES, it’s a law enforcement contract service company.
Conradson: Why aren’t people allowed on the premises?
LES Officer: You can go to endeavors.org to get information for that other than that this is closed this is private property from the company that’s here.

Guess what the story behind Endeavors is…
ENDEAVORS.ORG is the website for Family Endeavors, a San Antonio nonprofit tied to the Biden administration. They received an $87 million no-bid contract in March to clothe and shelter illegal immigrants. They then received ANOTHER contract for $530 MILLION shortly after.

It’s all been masterminded by the Biden Administration right under the noses of Americans living in Scottsdale.
But there’s more.
A Selrico Services food van pulled out of the parking lot.  Selrico is a food service company that is also based in San Antonio. They must be contracted to provide food for those in this country illegally.

So not only are these illegal aliens being housed at taxpayer expense, they’re being fed at our expense too!
They get all this free and then we’re sent the bill through taxation. 
Conradson wanted to find out who specifically was organizing all this Note the parts in bold.
Conradson called the local police station since he could not get any answers from the representatives at the hotel.
Conradson: I would like to know what is going on at the Homewood Suites on Scottsdale Rd. and Mountainview. Do you have any information about what’s going on there?
Dispatcher: Nothing outside of the fact that it’s being monitored by ICE and that we have police presence there from other agencies 24/7.
Conradson: Who is managing the hotel?
Dispatcher: I don’t have that information exactly
Conradson: But ICE is in there 24/7?
Dispatcher: Yeah, it’s being monitored by them and outside agencies.
Conradson: Do you know what the outside agencies are?
Dispatcher: I think it’s just a mix of all Arizona state agencies.
Conradson: Are they communicating with you on how many people they’re bringing into Scottsdale, into the hotel?
Dispatcher: I don’t have any specifics on it
Conradson: Where do I find more information?
Dispatcher: You could try to look up any of the ICE numbers online and see if they give any further.
Conradson: Do you have any information on exactly what’s going on? I mean obviously, they’re harboring illegal immigrants, but do you know anything else?
Dispatcher: No we don’t have any further.

The Deep State inside Arizona is a part of this, and so is ICE and the police. It’s all one unified effort to keep this a secret from the American people. Here’s exactly what is at stake.
This is atrocious. Over 600 MILLION DOLLARS are funding this operation to flood red counties with illegal residents and brand new Democrat voters, and it’s costing the taxpayers money and it’s putting the American people in DANGER. Instead of protecting American citizens, officers are being paid by our tax dollars to protect non-citizens who are invading our communities.

The globalist elites who govern this country are attempting to change the population so that it votes in the way that they prefer. They don’t care about any of the Americans currently living here, they just want to replace them with people from other countries. And they’re doing their best to keep it under wraps.
So SHARE THIS ARTICLE FAR AND WIDE TO  RAISE AWARENESS ABOUT WHAT THEY’RE DOING AND LET’S HOPE WE CAN PUT A STOP TO THIS!   I hope you read this article completely. These are our tax dollars going to waste…so the Democrats can get more votes

THE CATHOLIC MONITOR

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Flashback: “Cautious” Voris’ Opinion vs. Two Doctors of the Church & an Medieval French King 

October 24, 2021

Church Militant Michael Voris’ opinion is: 

“No member of the laity can sit in judgment over a pope. Only God judges the pope. And then when the man who was pope dies and is no longer pope, a future pope can judge him and declare him an anti-pope. If others want to venture into those waters ahead of a future pope, you go right ahead, but I would greatly caution you spiritually.” [https://www.churchmilitant.com/video/episode/vortex-enemies-of-the-pope]

Is Voris’ opinion true? 

Cardinal Raymond Burke showed in an 2016 interview with the Catholic World Report that he knew the teaching of Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales:

[T]he Pope… when he is explicitly a heretic… falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.”
(The Catholic Controversy by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)

Cardinal Raymond Burke in the interview responded to the Voris opinion. 

In the interview, Burke said: 

“CWR: Can the pope legitimately be declared in schism or heresy?”

“Cardinal Burke: ‘If a Pope would formally profess heresy he would cease, by that act, to be the Pope. It’s automatic. And so, that could happen… ‘”

“… CWR: Who is competent to declare him to be in heresy?”

“Cardinal Burke: ‘It would have to be members of the College of Cardinals.'”
(Catholic World Report, “No, I am not saying that Pope Francis is in heresy,” December 19, 2016)

Is Francis possibly in “explicit”  heresy?It appears to me that Francis explicitly “contradict[ed] traditional Catholic teaching on divorce and remarriage” when he in a “official act as the pope” placed the Argentine letter in the the Acts of the Apostolic See (AAS)  in which he said of the Buenos Aires region episcopal guidelines:

“There is no other interpretations.”
The guidelines explicitly allows according to LifeSiteNews “sexuality active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”(LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers, December 4, 2017)
In a article on OnePeterFive, specialist in Magisterial authority Dr. John Joy said “It means that it is an official act of the pope.” 
Moreover, the article said:
“Dr. Joy pointed out that adding the letter to the AAS could, in fact, damage the credibility of Amoris Laetitia by potentially removing the possibility that it could be intercepted in an orthodox way, via its publication in the official acts of the Apostolic See, that the unorthodox interpretation is the official one.”(OnePeterFive, “Pope’s Letter on Argentinian Communion Guidelines for Remarriage Given Official Status,” December 2, 2017)
The “official act of” Francis is a “unorthodox interpretation.”
It doesn’t just seem to contradict traditional Catholic teaching.
The “official act of the pope” is a “unorthodox interpretation” which means it contradicts traditional Catholic teaching which is just another way of saying by “official act the pope” is teaching heresy.
Now, let us quote, one of the intellectual giants in the Church in the United States, philosopher Edward Feser:
“(1) Adulterous sexual acts are in some special circumstances morally permissible… these propositions flatly contradict irreformable Catholic teaching. Proposition (1) contradicts not only the perennial moral teaching of the Church, but the teaching of scripture itself.”(Edwardfeser.blogspot, “Denial flows into the Tiber,” December 18, 2016) 
 Moreover, the Medieval Pope John XXII when he taught heresy on a relatively minor point on when people received the beatific vision (unlike what appears to be quite a major sacrilegious heresy of Communion for adulterers) was issued a correction and warning by a lay French king.

The French King Philippe de Valois, a “member of the laity,” not being cautious and timid like Voris wasn’t afraid to issue a correction against heresy with a warning:

“Philippe de Valois… threatened  John XXII with burning at the stake, as a heretic.”
(On History: Introduction to the History (1831),  By Jules Michelet, Page 126)

If King de Valois were alive today would he with a correction have “threatened” Francis for his Communion for adulterers heresy “with burning at the stake, as a heretic” unlike the cautious Voris? Next, is Voris right that only a “future pope can judge… him [Francis] an anti-pope”?
Is it possible for someone to be an antipope even though the majority of cardinals claim he is pope according to Doctor of the Church St. Bernard?

The case of Antipope Anacletus II proves that it is possible for a majority of cardinals to claim a man is pope while he, in reality, is a antipope.
In 1130, a majority of cardinals voted for Cardinal Peter Pierleone to be pope. He called himself Anacletus II. He was proclaimed pope and ruled Rome for eight years by vote and consent of a absolute majority of the cardinals despite the fact he was a antipope.

In 1130, just prior to the election of antipope Anacletus, a small minority of cardinals elected the real pope: Pope Innocent II.

How is this possible?

Doctor of the Church St. Bernard of Clairvaux  said “the ‘sanior pars’ (the wiser portion)… declared in favor of Innocent II. By this he probably meant a majority of the cardinal-bishops.”(St. Bernard of Clairvaux by Leon Christiani, Page 72)
Again, how is this possible when the absolute majority of cardinals voted for Anacletus?

Catholic historian Warren Carroll explains:
“[C]anon law does not bind a Pope arranging for his successor… [Papal Chancellor] Haimeric proposed that… a commission of eight cardinals should be selected to choose the next Pope… strong evidence [shows] that the Pope [Honorius] endorsed what Haimeric was doing, including the establishment of the electoral commission [of eight cardinals].”(The Glory of Christendom, Pages 36-37)
The majority or “sanior pars,” five cardinals out of eight of “the electoral commission,” elected Pope Innocent II as St. Bernard said and as evidence shows was the will of the previous pope in what we can call a constitution for the election of his successor.

In the same way, is it possible that Francis was not elected pope even though he received a absolute majority of cardinals votes and is now as in the case of Anacletus proclaimed pope by the same absolute majority?

As with the case of Anacletus, it is possible Francis is a antipope if his election contradicted or violated the constitution promulgated by Pope John Paul II for electing his successor. Renown historian Carroll explicitly says that what matters in a valid papal election is not how many cardinals claim a person is the pope. What is essential for determining if someone is pope or antipope is the “election procedures… [as] governed by the prescription of the last Pope”:

“Papal election procedures are governed by the prescription of the last Pope who provided for them (that is, any Pope can change them, but they remain in effect until they are changed by a duly elected Pope).” 

“During the first thousand years of the history of the Papacy the electors were the clergy of Rome (priests and deacons); during the second thousand years we have had the College of Cardinals.”

“But each Pope, having unlimited sovereign power as head of the Church, can prescribe any method for the election of his successor(s) that he chooses. These methods must then be followed in the next election after the death of the Pope who prescribed it, and thereafter until they are changed. A Papal claimant not following these methods is also an Antipope.”

“Since Antipopes by definition base their claims on defiance of proper Church authority, all have been harmful to the Church, though a few have later reformed after giving up their claims.” 
[http://www.ewtn.com/library/homelibr/antipope.txt]   Finally, is there evidence that a “a campaign beforehand” might have invalidated the “[Francis] conclave”?

Patrick Coffin on his YouTube show asked Cardinal Raymond Burke is it possible that evidence might invalidate the “[Francis] conclave”:

“I was wondering rather if those rules [of the 2013 conclave that elected Francis] were violated and rather or not the whole election of Francis may be invalid. Is there any foundation for that speculation?”

Cardinal Burke answered:

“The only grounds that could be used for calling into question the validity of the election would be were the election organized by a campaign beforehand which is strictly forbidden and that would be difficult to demonstrate…”

“… If these persons [the gay lobby St. Gallen Mafia cardinals] engaged in a active campaign first to undermined Pope Benedict XVI and at the same time to engineer the election of someone [Francis] then that could be a argument. I don’t think I have the facts, and there have to be facts, to prove that. That’s all I have to say about that.”
(Patrick Coffin show, “141: Dubia Cardinal Goes on the Record – Raymond Cardinal Burke (Free Version),” Premiered 13 hours ago, 19:55 to 21:46)

Coffin about a minute later said “Bishop Henry Rene Gracida… has written a Open Letter to the cardinals saying only a imperfect synod could be called and resolve this.”

My question to Cardinal Burke is:

Why would proving that the gay lobby St. Gallen Mafia “undermined Pope Benedict XVI and at the same time engineer[ed] the election of someone [Francis]” be “very difficult to demonstrate”?

The leftist Fittipaldi who considers Francis a man of “courage” says the Vatican gay lobby is “often composed” of “conservatives” who apparently “campaigned” to cause Pope Benedict XVI to resign with the “war of documents” that was Vatileaks:

“The story of the gay lobby has… importance in the Vatileaks and the dismissal of Pope Ratzinger… He destroyed the careers of those who were with them. To stop this group, a group of supporters of Ratzinger began to issue a series of documents, which was called Vatileaks. [Para travar este grupo, um grupo de apoiantes de Ratzinger começou a fazer sair uma série de documentos, a que se chamou Vatileaks 1.] I can say this shock, this war of [Vatileaks] documents led to the end of Ratzinger.”

“… [T]hey [the gay lobby] are often composed of the most conservative men in the Church. It is a paradox, but it is so. Certainly the doctrine [against homosexuality] has not been changed because the conservative homosexual and heterosexual world is in the majority. Francis, from this point of view, is considered a heretic. In this I very much support the courage of Francis, a visionary courage, because if the Church does not change and does not open to the world, it risks entering into an irreversible crisis.” 

“… Ratzinger made… war against pedophilia… [h]e just started and resigned.”
 (Comunidadeculturaearte.com, “Emiliano Fittipaldi: For Francis paedophilia is a secondary issue,” October 20, 2017) [[https://www.comunidadeculturaearte.com/emiliano-fittipaldi-para-francisco-a-pedofilia-e-uma-questao-secundaria/]

[https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/08/timid-rabbit-voris-opinion-vs-two.html: August 18, 2020]

Pray an Our Father now for reparation for the sins committed because of Francis’s Amoris Laetitia. 

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.

Francis Notes:

– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:

“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.”
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)

Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said “the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church.”
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]

– “If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html

– “Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html

 –  LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:

The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”

–  On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:

“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”

– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:

“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.

Election Notes: 

– Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: “212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted…Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden” [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]

– Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times “Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html– Tucker Carlson’s Conservatism Inc. Biden Steal Betrayal is explained by “One of the Greatest Columns ever Written” according to Rush: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/tucker-carlsons-conservatism-inc-biden.html?m=1 – A Hour which will Live in Infamy: 10:01pm November 3, 2020: 
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1 What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: “Anitfa ‘Agent Provocateurs‘”: 
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1] 
Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God’s Will and to do it. Pray an Our Father now for America. Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.SHARE

New post on Roma Locuta Est

Benedict’s Resignation: A Theory of the Case (Part 1 of 2)by Steven O’ReillyOctober 25, 2021 (Steven O’Reilly) – Along with many Catholics, Roma Locuta Est has watched this pontificate proceed from one horror to the next.  Amoris Laetitia. Pachamama. The Scalfari interviews. The Abu Dhabi statement. Ted McCarrick. Betrayal of the Church in China to the Chinese Communist Party. The synod on synodality. Etc. Etc. Etc.Some have tried to defend this pontificate from any and all of the criticisms leveled against it. Such are the likes of the sycophantic, ‘papolatrous’ Francis-apologists. On the other side, there are those who maintain that Francis is definitively not the pope. The main theory that claims this is the “Benedict is (still) pope” theory; or BiP theory as I have named it. This theory claims the wording of Benedict XVI’s Declaratio was in some way deficient. Roma Locuta Est has argued against this particular BiP theory in the Summa Contra BiP. Frankly, in our opinion, this Declaratio-based theory is a shiny-object distraction.So, is it our position that Francis is definitely pope? No. Not quite. It is our position, as stated in the past, that from all out outward appearances of form and procedure, etc, that Francis is the putative pope, albeit one who — where and when necessary — must be resisted on certain issues. He must be considered pope, putatively at least, unless and until definitive evidence is found and or a definitive judgment of a future pope declares otherwise.[1]  Personally, I do not exclude that some future pope might very well declare, for example, the election of Francis to be invalid. For example, I have researched one theory brought to me from within the Jesuit order which suggests Cardinal Bergoglio’s acceptance of his election was invalid (see Curiouser and Curiouser: Who Dispensed Jorge Bergoglio SJ from his vows?). Archbishop Viganò seems to have alluded to this question about Bergoglio’s Jesuit vows in a recent interview (see Vigano: A Jesuit on the Throne of Peter “in violation of the rule established by St. Ignatius of Loyola”). I also agree the Open Letter submitted by a number scholars should be considered by cardinals and bishops (see here).As said, I don’t exclude the possibility Francis might be one day declared to not have been pope. Again, this requires evidence. Definitive evidence has yet to be produced, which is not to say it might not one day be produced, e.g., perhaps conspirators might come forward to reveal previously unknown information. While I reject standard BiP theories which are based on the wording of the Declaratio, there is one BiP scenario that, I think, remains a possibility — although more evidence is required.I touched upon such a scenario in a past article (see The “we” in “We did it!” — and what they did) which took a look at a Patrick Coffin interview with Cardinal Burke from August 2019. In that interview, Coffin brought up various concerns surrounding the 2013 conclave involving the activities of the “St. Gallen mafia” and McCarrick’s “influential Italian gentleman” (see here). In that interview, Cardinal Raymond Burke, speaking in the hypothetical, seemed to suggest there “could be” an argument to invalidate the conclave if two things were demonstrated:(1) that the St. Gallen mafia engaged in an active campaign to undermine the pontificate of Benedict XVIand…(2) that the St. Gallen mafia, at the same time, engineered the election of someone to their liking (see Coffin interview here, especially at 20:39-21:33)Roma Locuta Est has put forth evidence and circumstance that addresses the second condition given above, i.e., which suggests the election of Bergoglio was engineered (see The Conclave Chronicles). In this current two-part series, we would now like to examine more closely than we have before whether there are grounds for suspicion that Benedict’s pontificate was potentially undermined in order to clear the way for Bergoglio’s election. We will do this by taking a look at: (1) whether any in the St. Gallen mafia suggested to Francis he should resign, and under what conditions; (2) whether there is any indication the Vatileaks scandal might have been a wider conspiracy intended to bring down Benedict, and if so; (3) who might be a leading suspect with the ability and means to have organized it, and did he have any known links to Bergoglio’s election; and (4) is there anything in Bergoglio’s past or suspicious behavior to suggest there might have been a plot, or had knowledge of it.Martini lays the Predicate:  Ratizinger, if elected pope, should resign if he cannot reform curiaDuring the 2005 conclave, reports indicate that Cardinal Martini, founder of the St. Gallen mafia, threw his own support and votes behind Ratzinger’s election. Apparently hoping to reach a tacit agreement with the future Pope Benedict XVI, Martini suggested to then Cardinal Ratzinger that if Ratzinger failed to reform the curia as pope, then Benedict should resign at some future point. According to reporting based on the account of Fr. Silvano Fausti, a close associate of Cardinal Martini:…Martini apparently handed his votes over to Ratzinger in order to avoid “foul play” which attempted to eliminate both in order to elect “a thoroughly obsequious member of the Curia, who didn’t make it”. According to Fausti, Ratzinger and Martini “had more votes, Martini a few more” than Ratzinger. There had apparently been a scheme to elect a Curia cardinal. “Once the ploy had been unveiled, Martini went to Ratzinger in the evening and said to him: tomorrow, you agree to become Pope with my votes… He said to him: you accept, you have been in the Curia for 30 years and you are intelligent and honest: if you manage to reform the Curia great, if not, you step down.” (Source: Martini: Benedict XVI’s resignation and the 2005 Conclave)Above we see that Cardinal Martini offered a tacit agreement, suggesting in effect that ‘I will throw my support to your election as pope on the condition you reform the corrupt curia…but if you fail, you are to resign.’As events would turn out, seven years later, the Vatileaks scandal erupted. This scandal further exposed the corruption of the Roman Curia, as well as Pope Benedict XVI’s seeming inability to competently govern the Vatican. It was then, at the height of the scandal, that Cardinal Martini — something like a Rumplestilskin — met with Pope Benedict XVI in June 2012. The reform of the curia evidently unaccomplished, Martini solemnly suggested it was now time for Benedict to resign. As the La Stampa article reports on Fr. Fausti’s account (emphasis added):The Jesuit cardinal, who was seriously ill with Parkinson’s (he died three months later), met Ratzinger in the archbishop’s residence in the early afternoon.During that meeting, according to Fausti’s version of events, Martini told Benedict XVI that the time had come for him to resign because the Roman Curia seemed irreformable: “it’s right now, one cannot do anything here.” Fr. Fausti is a primary source given the relationship he had with Martini. It also widely known that Ratzinger and Martini esteem each other, despite their different positions. There is no doubt that during that painful period the Holy See was going through, with the Vatileaks scandal in full swing, the Archbishop of Milan spoke frankly to Benedict XVI suggesting he resign. (Source: Martini: Benedict XVI’s resignation and the 2005 Conclave)It is already known that Benedict appeared to be intent on resigning the papacy at some point having witnessed the prolonged decline of his predecessor, John Paul II. According to the La Stampa article, both Cardinal Bertone and Archbishop Ganswein had learned of Benedict’s decision to resign in mid-2012 (see here), about the time of Benedict’s meeting with Martini, or shortly thereafter. Other accounts place the final decision in December 2012, after Benedict received the dossier which revealed details regarding the homosexual ‘mafia’ in the Vatican. However, given that the Vatileaks court case was not completed until the fall of 2012, it could just be that Benedict waited until the court case and dossier were done so as not to hand an ongoing, unresolved scandal onto his successor.It is remarkable that Cardinal Martini of the St. Gallen mafia had been so prescient in 2005 as to suggest that Ratzinger resign if the curia could not be reformed, and then, voila, lo and behold, the Vatileaks scandal erupts making clear it had not been — thus activating Martini’s if-then condition, and his subsequent call for Benedict’s resignation.So, as we see above, the founder of the St. Gallen mafia asked Benedict to resign because of the Vatileaks scandal. If there was a St. Gallen conspiracy, I believe we need to look much more closely at the Vatileaks scandal to see if there is smoke here. The question then is, what was the Vatileaks scandal, who was it really targeted against, and if a potential conspiracy — who might really been behind it?Did Martini, Bergoglio, and the St. Gallen mafia really care about the reform of the curia?However, before getting in the Vatileaks scandal in greater detail, it is important to first consider whether the interest in the “reform of the curia” professed by Cardinal Martini, Cardinal Bergoglio, and the St. Gallen mafia — can be taken seriously. Was the call for the “reform of the curia” a sincere goal, or simply a cynical ploy.The reform of the curia had been one of the supposed goals of Cardinal Martini and of the St. Gallen mafia.  However, no one can seriously argue that St. Gallen’s pope of choice — Cardinal Bergoglio — has done much on the subject. His record on corruption is worse than spotty. For example, Pope Francis lifted the sanctions on ex-cardinal McCarrick, despite the horrendous nature of the accusations against him; accusations of which he was undoubtedly made aware by Archbishop Vigano….that is if Pope Francis had not already been aware of them.There were the Pope’s dubious appointments of Bishop Zanchetta to the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (see here), and of Archbishop Edgar Pena Parra as an assistant Secretary of State at the Vatican (see here). We also recall that the Pope halted an investigation into sexual abuse accusations against the aforementioned Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor (see here). Third parties were said to have interfered with CDF sexual abuse investigations, and Pope Francis dismissed two priests involved in such investigations at the CDF under Cardinal Mueller, then prefect of the CDF (see here). There have been additional sexual scandals, such as the orgy — by some accounts, presided over by a cardinal close to Francis (see here). Without going into great detail here, it is enough to note that financial reform has fared no better (e.g., here and here).Then there is the interesting case of Cardinal Becciu.  His case is discussed in the recent Forbes article (see The Pope’s Corruption Problems). Francis was seemingly forced by public revelations involving a shady London real estate deal to finally intervene in the question of Cardinal Becciu, and stripping him in 2020 of his privileges as a cardinal. What is curious is that Francis apparently had been given sufficient reason five years ago to have had Becciu investigated on another, unrelated matter, as the Forbes article reports (emphasis added):  And it’s not so simple for Pope Francis to distance himself from Cardinal Becciu despite having removed him from his post and stripped him of his rights as a cardinal a year ago. According to a former Vatican official in a position to know what transpired, Pope Francis directly received a secret dossier some five years ago that supposedly set out “incontrovertible” proof about Cardinal Becciu diverting more than $2 million in church funds. “His Holiness closed the file; that was the end of it,” the ex-official told Forbes. The information, that source says, was never passed to the Vatican’s version of a public prosecutor, the Promoter of Justice. And Becciu then continued overseeing the day-to-day operations of the Vatican.Francis, in spite of having “incontrovertible” proof against Becciu, allowed him to continue in his position. Why would Francis have not acted against Becciu five years before if he had such information? One might well wonder, did Becciu hold some information over the pope’s head? If so, what was it?We will return to this question involving Becciu later on in part two of this series. It suffices for the moment merely to point out the obvious. “Reform of the curia“, at least in terms of moral and financial corruption does not appear to have ever been a real goal of Martini, Bergoglio, or the St. Gallen mafia, as suggested by Martini to Ratzinger in 2005.  Events have demonstrated over the last eight years that this professed interest in the “reform of the curia” appears to have been little more than a cynical, disingenuous ploy.The St. Gallen group wanted “drastic reform” and “modernization” of the Church—not reform of the Vatican Curia—and it opposed Ratzinger. The evidence on its face suggests Cardinal Martini as a member of the Saint Gallen group was duplicitous on both occasions when he spoke of Ratzinger’s resignation. It appears Martini played his Machiavellian best with his losing hand in the 2005 conclave (to appear magnanimous in throwing his votes to Ratzinger!) and thereby setting up a plausible pretext (i.e., “reform of the curia”) to push Benedict XVI to resign in 2012 when he had failed to do so.Vatileaks:  A Weaponized Scandal to Bring Down Benedict?In 2012, Martini was dying of Parkinson’s disease. His heir apparent, Cardinal Bergoglio, the St. Gallen mafia’s best hope to win the papacy, was approaching 75 years of age when he would be required to submit his resignation. Time was running out for St. Gallen’s and Bergoglio’s dream of a Bergoglian papacy. It was now, or never.Certainly in retrospect, the Vatileaks scandal contributed to the timing of Benedict’s resignation. It clearly disheartened the Pope, and could only suggest to Benedict he was indeed unable to effectively govern the affairs in the Vatican. Absent the scandal, Bergoglio may not have ever become Pope Francis. As such, the Vatileaks scandal seemed a made to the order scandal for Bergoglio and St. Gallen. If we ask Cui Bono, or “who benefited” from Vatileaks ultimately — it is clear it was Bergoglio.It was in January of 2012 that the Vatileaks scandal broke when Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi aired on television the contents of certain secret Vatican documents he had obtained. The leaks continued through to May 2012 when Nuzzi then published a book (His Holiness: The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI) that revealed still more secret Vatican documents. By May 2012, the Vatican police had investigated and arrested Pope Benedict XVI’s own butler, Paolo Gabriele, as the culprit who had leaked the documents to Nuzzi. However, given other documents were leaked to other press outlets, it was clear additional leakers were out there beyond Gabriele the butler. One of these turned out to be Claudio Sciarpelletti (see Vatileaks, the case of the butler).The butler confessed his role in the scandal explaining that he intended the leaks to helpPope Benedict. While this appears to be the butler’s actual motive it is clear that the revelations in the secret document had the opposite effect than what was intended by the butler. Rather, as might be more reasonably expected, the scandal hurt both Pope Benedict and Cardinal Bertone (see here).  That the butler could really believe, incredibly, that leaking this information could help Benedict, only reveals his naivete. Consequently, this has led to the reasonable hypothesis that Gabriele was simply a naive pawn used by others for their own more devious ends; one that were quite different from Gabriele’s. It is a fact that Gabriele did not act alone. Aside from Gabriele and Sciarpelletti, as is obvious in Nuzzi’s other book (Ratzinger was Afraid: The Secret Documents, the Money, and the Scandals that overwhelmed the Pope), Vatileaks was a far broader conspiracy involving a great deal of organization, and many people. At the time, there were speculations in the Italian press that one or more Cardinals were ultimately behind the scandal (e.g., here).Thus, the theory the butler was, in the end, no more than a “scapegoat” (see here and here) is a reasonable hypothesis. Unfortunately, Gabriele died at the young age of 54 in November 2020. Unfortunately, he can no longer be interviewed on the topic. Dead men tell no tales, they say. Still, the question lingers: was Benedict’s butler no more than a puppet whose strings were pulled by one or more Cardinals who were the real puppet masters behind the scandal (see here)?In Part 2 of this series we will examine the hypothetical question above, and then offer a speculation as to which Cardinal would seemingly be the likely candidate to have been the potential “puppet master” who organized Vatileaks, having motive, means, and an interest in Cardinal Bergoglio’s election.Steven O’Reilly is a graduate of the University of Dallas and the Georgia Institute of Technology. A former intelligence officer, he and his wife, Margaret, live near Atlanta with their family. He has written apologetic articles and is author of Book I of the Pia Fidelis trilogy, The Two Kingdoms. (Follow on twitter at @fidelispia for updates). He asks for your prayers for his intentions.  He can be contacted at StevenOReilly@AOL.com  or StevenOReilly@ProtonMail.com (or follow on Twitter: @S_OReilly_USA or on GETTR, Parler, or Gab: @StevenOReilly).NotesFrancis has not yet contradicted a strict reading of the Vatican I’s Pastor Aeturnus. His pontificate, should its validity be upheld, will be reckoned in my opinion, as the worst in the history of the Catholic Church, embodying all the worst aspects of the bad popes up to this moment in history (e.g., John XXII, Honorius, Liberius, Vigilius, etc).Steven O’Reilly | October 24, 2021 at 7:53 pm | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: https://wp.me/p7YMML-6Wc

New post on Roma Locuta EstBenedict’s Resignation: A Theory of the Case (Part 2 of 2)by Steven O’ReillyOctober 23, 2021 (Steven O’Reilly) – In Part 1 of this series began to examine in greater detail whether there are grounds for suspicion that Benedict’s pontificate was potentially undermined in order to clear the way for Bergoglio’s election. We set out with the goal to address certain questions: (1) whether any in the St. Gallen mafia suggested to Francis he should resign, and under what conditions; (2) whether there is any indication the Vatileaks scandal might have been a wider conspiracy intended to bring down Benedict, and if so; (3) who might be a leading suspect with the ability and means to have organized it, and did he have any known links to Bergoglio’s election; and (4) is there anything in Bergoglio’s past or suspicious behavior to suggest there might have been a plot, or had knowledge of it.In Part I, we looked at the first two questions. In Part 2, we will look at questions 3 and 4. We left off with the question: was Benedict’s butler no more than a puppet whose strings were pulled by one or more Cardinals who were the real puppet masters behind the scandal (see here)? We will now examine this hypothetical question, offering a speculation as to which Cardinal would seemingly be the likely candidate to have been the potential “puppet master” who organized Vatileaks, having motive, means, and an interest in Cardinal Bergoglio’s election.Puppet master Hypothesis:  Cardinal Sodano?So, if we entertain the hypothesis, once entertained by Italian media, that one or more cardinals were behind Vatileaks, which cardinal is it who would have both the motive, and connections to pull it off? Under this hypothesis, the first and best possibility to come to mind would be none other than Cardinal Sodano, Vatican Secretary of State from 1991 to 2006. Certainly, an unflattering picture of Sodano has been painted by various sources. Jason Berry of National Catholic Reporter described Sodano as “the great protector of Maciel (Legionaries of Christ) and other notorious predators” and a man who “practiced Machiavellian politics on a breathtaking scale” (see here). Furthermore, Robert Micken observed of Sodano (emphasis added):”For some three decades he was the man in the Vatican no one dared to cross. Even the popes he served were careful to gain his consent because of the loyalty he commanded from many key people at all levels of the Roman Curia.”Berry’s article is a must read.  In it, he recalls “Sodano used his authority to protect the guilty, block reformers, and assist schemers trying to cash in on American dioceses selling church property, in part to satisfy legal claims in the abuse cases.” Sodano’s nephew was an unindicted co-conspirator in apparent related scheme involving a $365,000 wire transfer. The nephew’s business partner according to Berry’s article, went to federal prison for money-laundering. Cardinal Sodano, per Berry’s and NCR’s reporting, received “lavish financial gifts” from the Legion of Christ, gifts which one priest, according to Berry, described as “an elegant way of giving a bribe.” Berry’s article also goes on to cite other financial gifts to Sodano, including a Washington Post article which reported Sodano had also received a total of $19,000 from ex-Cardinal McCarrick between 2002 and 2016 (NB:the same Washington Post article, entitled Ousted cardinal McCarrick gave more than $600,000 to fellow clerics, including two popes, records show which details, as this headline states, how McCarrick gave over $600K to Catholic prelates).Further, Archbishop Viganò in this Testimony discusses how Cardinal Sodano helped cover up the case of Fr. Maciel of the Legion of Christ, as well as how McCarrick’s appointment as Archbishop of Washington D.C., as well as a cover-up of his indescretions up to that time, were likely the work of Cardinal Sodano (see here).Having briefly sampled the sort of man various sources describe Cardinal Sodano to be, let us consider whether there are motives that might have led him to organize the Vatileaks scandal under the hypothesis above. As to motive, let us first recall the Vatileaks scandal hurt both Benedict and Bertone. With regard to Pope Benedict XVI, it turns out that Sodano came in second behind Benedict in votes in the 2005 conclave. Further, it was Benedict who soon removed Sodano as Secretary of State in favor of Cardinal Bertone. With regard to Bertone, Sodano had vigorously opposed his appointment.  Benedict ignored Sodano’s advice on his selection.  Robert Mickens wrote (emphasis added):But the Bavarian pope rejected Sodano’s counsel and insisted on naming Bertone. By doing so he lost the vital support of most of the Vatican diplomats in the Roman Curia, yanked on the command of Angelo Sodano who fed the narrative that the pope had marginalized them by choosing the non-diplomat Bertone.Just 14 months after becoming Bishop of Rome, Benedict XVI had made a major tactical blunder. From that point onwards his pontificate lurched from one major crisis to another, both inside the Vatican and on the world stage. After nearly eight agonizing years, he and his tiny circle of trusted aides were largely isolated. In the face of all this, the aging theologian-pope resigned.(Source: Twilight time for the Vatican’s ‘Godfather’)Benedict had, in effect, made an enemy of Sodano who then fed the “narrative” to the Vatican diplomats in the curia that they had been “marginalized” by the Benedict’s appointment of Cardinal Bertone. One can certainly imagine how this might have impacted the views of some these curial officials toward both Benedict and Bertone. Considering Sodano “commanded the loyalty” of many in the Vatican curia at “all levels,” is it conceivable this might provide him the potential manpower inside the Vatican to execute the Vatileaks scandal?A Sodano-Bergoglio Connection? The original hypothesis of this ‘theory of the case’ was to consider the possibility of a plot to bring about Benedict’s resignation in hopes of electing Cardinal Bergoglio as his successor. We have suggested who a plausible ‘puppet master‘ behind the execution of this plot might have been: Cardinal Sodano. While he would certainly have been able to pull strings and had the contacts to execute the Vatileaks scandal, did Sodano have any connection to Cardinal Bergoglio’s candidacy in the 2013 conclave?The answer is “yes.”   Cardinal Sodano, although ineligible to vote in the conclave due to his age, did in fact campaign for Cardinal Bergoglio’s election. For example, according to Robert Mickens (emphasis added):But Sodano (and his forces) survived and at the Conclave of 2013, because of being dean of the College of the Cardinals, his duties included moderating the pre-Conclave discussions and presiding at the pre-Conclave Mass. It is widely conceded that once the voting got underway he had convinced a number of other cardinals to cast their ballots for Jorge Mario Bergoglio SJ, the man who is now Pope Francis.  It is not clear if Sodano delivered the determining votes for the Argentine pope’s election, but those tallies were essential nonetheless. And Francis was and remains well aware of that.(Source: Twilight time for the Vatican’s ‘Godfather’)So, it is certainly appears a plausible hypothesis has been formulated. Cardinal Sodano is someone who is noted as being capable of “Machiavellian plots,” and is one who has apparently been involved in his share of controversies and scandals. On paper at least, he had both the motive and means to execute the Vatileaks scandal. Cardinal Sodano even favored and campaigned for the election of Cardinal Bergoglio just prior to the 2013 conclave.Bergoglio’s actions and behavior worthy of some suspicion?We now arrive at the last question we set out to address: is there anything in Bergoglio’s past or has there been any suspicious behavior to suggest there might have been a plot, or that he had knowledge of it.It is an interesting question. One could well imagine, to carry out such a plot, money would have be required to finance the operation, reward co-conspirators, etc. On the question of financial matters, while more investigation and inquiry is required here, there is clear evidence that money flowed from Argentina to the Vatican, and under questionable circumstances. Henry Sire, in his book The Dictator Pope, writes (emphasis added): “As Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Bergoglio was ex officio chancellor of the Pontifical  Catholic University of Argentina, which had a rich endowment of $200 million. For no clear reason, a large part of this money was transferred to the Vatican Bank. The transaction recalls a scandal years previously when Bergoglio had been auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires and the archdiocese repudiated a debt of ten million dollars, on the grounds that the check issued by the archiepiscopal Curia had not been correctly signed. Austen Ivereigh gives a whitewashing account of this incident, presenting Bergoglio as the reformer who cleaned up the mess, but the truth is that, as Cardinal Quarracino’s right-hand man at the time, he must have had inside knowledge of how the check was issued, and the facts were never satisfactorily explained.”(Source: Henry Sire, The Dictator Pope, p. 41)Henry Sire went on to discuss the transfer of the University of Argentina funds in greater detail in an article printed in OnePeterFive website.  Mr. Sire, writes (emphasis added):Between 2005 and 2011, some 40 million dollars were transferred from the Catholic University of Argentina to the Istituto per le Opere di Religione (the Vatican Bank), in a transaction that was supposed to be a deposit but which the IOR has hitherto treated as a donation. (Just this year, the reports are that this misappropriation has begun to be remedied, but only partially.) Pablo Garrido was responsible for this transfer, against the protests of members of the university who pointed out that the university, as an educational foundation, could not make a donation to a foreign bank. Together with the case of the Sociedad Militar Seguro de Vida, this is one of the obscure financial episodes in Archbishop Bergoglio’s administration that deserve to be studied in depth by a qualified researcher.(Source:  Henry Sire, Cardinal Bergoglio of Buenos Aires: Some More Unanswered Questions, OnePeterFive, September 11, 2018)As Mr. Sire’s research suggests, the transfer of $40 million dollars of funds to IOR (the Vatican bank) and which was converted from a deposit to a donation is quite strange. The suggestion seems to be that the funds were used to gain influence for Bergoglio in Rome. The dates of the transfer begin at a time (2005) when Cardinal Sodano was still Secretary of State, and end when Archbishop Becciu, now embroiled in a Vatican trial involving financial corruption, was Substitute for General Affairs at the Vatican beginning in 2011 (NB: The office of Substitute is third highest ranking post in the Holy See). It would interesting to inquire of Archbishop Becciu if he has any knowledge of these “donations” and the use to which they were put.  Apparently, Becciu was in office at the time the money arrived from Argentina in 2011. Furthermore, Becciu was in the Vatican when the Vatileaks scandal broke. As an interesting side note, Becciu was consecrated a bishop by Cardinal Sodano in 2001(see here). Becciu’s presence in the Vatican during these key dates calls to mind his current trial in the Vatican involving a shady London real estate deal. While his guilt or innocence has yet to be adjudicated,  there is something quite odd about the Becciu affair involving the London deal. It was only when the transaction became public and after international authorities began to act upon it that Pope Francis moved to punish Becciu. The appearance is that the hand of Francis was forced by others. Only then did Francis remove Becciu from any office he held in the Church, taking away most if not all the benefits, privileges and duties of being a Cardinal – leaving Becciu a Cardinal in name only.So, it would seem, Pope Francis at least was quite convinced of Becciu’s guilt in 2020, and had cause to be quite angry with him. One would think. Yet, something odd happened with an impending trial approaching. On Holy Thursday of 2021, a day in which popes traditionally conduct various public religious services, Pope Francis instead chose to spend the evening at Cardinal Becciu’s private apartment (see Pope Francis celebrates Holy Thursday Mass with Cardinal Becciu). Very strange.However, consider this meeting Holy Thursday meeting in light of what we have already outlined in this two part article. According to Forbes, five years before — i.e., circa 2016 — Francis had been given a dossier accusing Becciu of financial corruption, involving “incontrovertible” proof of wrongdoing. Further, by 2021, Francis had been aware of the accusations against Becciu involving the London real estate deal for about a year, and had already taken action against Becciu. Yet, with the impending trial date approaching, Francis met privately with Becciu at Becciu’s apartment, on Holy Thursday of all evenings!If one were to imagine an American president meeting privately with a prominent, criminally accused member of his Administration, it would certainly give the appearance of some sort of collusion, e.g., perhaps the President meeting to convince the accused not to implicate the President in some criminal act the accused might have knowledge of. That Francis did not act on “incontrovertible” proof against Becciu five years ago certainly gives rise to a reasonable inference that Becciu might know something which Francis does not want divulged.Does Francis fear Becciu might reveal something to insure an innocent verdict? If so, what might that something be?  This brings us back to the dossier Francis ignored five years before, the one which apparently contained “incontrovertible” proof against Becciu.  Why would Francis not have acted when he had “incontrovertible” proof of wrong doing?  Might Becciu have something he hold over the pope’s head? Thus, might we infer – in our hypothesis – that what Francis fears is not so much a revelation of a crime committed during his pontificate but — perhaps — one that brought it about?  In other words, evidence linking Francis to the Vatileaks scandal directly? Summary: A theory of the caseIt is established that Cardinal Martini suggested a tacit agreement with Ratzinger during the 2005 conclave. Martini said he would throw his support to Ratzinger provided that if Ratzinger failed to reform the curia, that he would resign the papacy. Seven years later, the Vatileaks scandal erupted. While Benedict’s butler confessed to the crime with seemingly sincere but naive motives, it is clear many others were involved in the conspiracy.There have been suggestions in the Italian press that one or more cardinals were ultimately behind the scandal. Cardinal Sodano would be a natural suspect to consider in this hypothetical scenario. He had both the motives, means, and desire to see Bergoglio elected pope. While still in Buenos Aires, Bergoglio was involved in some financial transactions, involving tens of millions of dollars, that certainly raise questions as Henry Sire’s research makes clear. In one instance, some $40 million was transferred to the Vatican bank, first as deposits, and then, inexplicably, converted into “donations.” Someone who might have knowledge of these transfers is Cardinal Becciu, who is the subject of an unrelated corruption investigation and trial at the Vatican.Per Forbes, Francis had knowledge five years ago of potential corruption involving Becciu, apparently involving “incontrovertible” proof. Yet, oddly, Francis took no action. Furthermore, Francis clearly believed Becciu guilty of certain crimes involving the London real estate deal, because he stripped Becciu of his offices, and his privileges as Cardinal.  Yet, despite all of this, Pope Francis met privately with Becciu at Becciu’s private apartment on Holy Thursday of 2021. Certainly, this strange meeting gives rise to the appearance of some sort of collusion to limit disclosures that might arise in the course of the impending corruption trial. Given Francis was reportedly made aware five years ago of various accusations against Becciu involving “incontrovertible evidence,” it appears the disclosure Francis fears most are those involving the past. Does Becciu know something that prevented Francis from acting on this evidence five years ago?  Might these disclosures relate to the Vatileaks scandal, and the origin of his papacy?Of course, all the above is a hypothesis. Perhaps evidence might yet appear to substantiate it. Yet, there seems smoke enough for a commission of cardinals either now, if possible, or in the future to seek interviews with some of the parties still living. One of the first places to start is to seek the records involving the movement of funds from University of Argentina to IOR, as well as the records as to how these funds were used, and to whom they were dispersed.  For one, I would really like to know what Pope Francis and Cardinal Becciu discussed on Holy Thursday of 2021.Steven O’Reilly is a graduate of the University of Dallas and the Georgia Institute of Technology. A former intelligence officer, he and his wife, Margaret, live near Atlanta with their family. He has written apologetic articles and is author of Book I of the Pia Fidelis trilogy, The Two Kingdoms. (Follow on twitter at @fidelispia for updates). He asks for your prayers for his intentions.  He can be contacted at StevenOReilly@AOL.com  or StevenOReilly@ProtonMail.com (or follow on Twitter: @S_OReilly_USA or on GETTR, Parler, or Gab: @StevenOReilly).) – Steven O’Reilly | October 24, 2021 at 7:57 pm | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: https://wp.me/p7YMML-71p

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Historical Flashback: Could Francis be an Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope? 

October 23, 2021

Is it possible for someone to be an antipope even though the majority of cardinals claim he is pope?  

The historical case of Antipope Anacletus II proves that it is possible for a majority of cardinals to claim a man is pope while he, in reality, is an antipope.

In 1130, a majority of cardinals voted for Cardinal Peter Pierleone to be pope. He called himself Anacletus II. He was proclaimed pope and ruled Rome for eight years by vote and consent of a absolute majority of the cardinals despite the fact he was a antipope.

In 1130, just prior to the election of antipope Anacletus, a small minority of cardinals elected the real pope: Pope Innocent II.

How is this possible?

St. Bernard said “the ‘sanior pars’ (the wiser portion)… declared in favor of Innocent II. By this he probably meant a majority of the cardinal-bishops.”(St. Bernard of Clairvaux by Leon Christiani, Page 72)
Again, how is this possible when the absolute majority of cardinals voted for Anacletus?

Historian Warren Carroll explains:
“[C]anon law does not bind a Pope arranging for his successor… [Papal Chancellor] Haimeric proposed that… a commission of eight cardinals should be selected to choose the next Pope… strong evidence [shows] that the Pope [Honorius] endorsed what Haimeric was doing, including the establishment of the electoral commission [of eight cardinals].”(The Glory of Christendom, Pages 36-37)
The majority or “sanior pars,” five cardinals out of eight of “the electoral commission,” elected Pope Innocent II as St. Bernard said and as evidence shows was the will of the previous pope in what we can call a constitution for the election of his successor.

In the same way, is it possible that Francis was not elected pope even though he received a absolute majority of cardinals votes and is now as in the case of Anacletus proclaimed pope by the same absolute majority?

As with the case of Anacletus, it is possible Francis is a antipope if his election contradicted or violated the constitution promulgated by Pope John Paul II for electing his successor.
The award-winning Mexican journalist and President of Vida para Nacer Jose Munguia who studied theology at the Gregorian University in Rome brings forward evidence that there were “serious irregularities” against John Paul II’s constitution that governed the 2013 conclave that could invalidate the conclave which elected Francis:

“Article 79 of the Constitution Universi Domenici Gregis, which establishes the details of how the conclave must be celebrated, says the following: ‘Confirming the prescriptions of my predecessors, I likewise forbid anyone, even if he is a cardinal, during the Pope’s lifetime and without having consulted him, to make plans concerning the election of his successor, or to promise votes, or to make decisions in this regard in private gatherings’.”

“And in article 81 it is established that these agreements are punished with excommunication latae sententiae (i.e. automatic, without the need of a declaration by anybody, ipso facto and eo ipsa).”

“The information revealed by Cardinal Daneels days before the Synod, coincides with that published by Austin Ivereigh, in his book “The Great Reformer” in which he reveals how, during the 2013 conclave, four cardinals from the Mafioso Saint Galen group (Kasper, Lehman, Danneels and Murphy O’Connor) came together to illicitly orchestrate a campaign in favour of the election of Bergoglio, after the latter had agreed to be the beneficiary of this scheming.”

“… After the election came the two books which revealed the serious irregularities committed within the conclave that elected Bergoglio. The first is the [Spanish language] book by Elisabbeta Piqué (Bergoglio’s authorised biographer from Argentina) entitled ‘Francisco, Vida y Revolución’ (Francisco, Life and Revolution). Piqué knew, through Francis himself, what happened inside the conclave. The other book is by the famous vaticanologist Antonio Socci ‘Non é Francesco’ (Francis is not the Pope).”

“The revelations of [Spanish speaking] Piqué [which are almost unknown to the English speaking world] are so well believed as coming from Francis that the Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, published the chapter that deals with how the conclave developed. Vatican Radio and Television did likewise. What happened is that Bergoglio, on being elected Pope, felt that the threat of excommunication – which falls on any cardinal for revealing what happened in the conclave – no longer affected him and related to the journalist the things that happened within the Sistine Chapel.”

“The narration: In the conclave, in the evening of the 13th of March, in the fourth vote count of the day, there were 116 votes when there were only 115 cardinals in the hall. One cardinal put in one paper too many. This fourth vote was won by Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan (The Italian Episcopal Conference itself released a bulletin congratulating Scola for having been elected Pope). This vote count was improperly annulled. Angelo Scola’s website published that the recently elected Pope had taken the name of John XXIV. Wikipedia also published it. A few minutes later both sites took down this result. What happened is that when the recently elected Pope was on his way to the balcony of Saint Peter’s, a group of cardinals, mostly Germans and Americans, approached him to tell him that he had to return to the Sistine Chapel because the vote count had to be annulled.”

“Now, the Apostolic Constitution Universi Domenici Gregis (Art 69) establishes that if two folded papers came from the same cardinal with the same name or if one was blank, they must be counted as a single vote. If, on the other hand, there were two different names, both papers are annulled and none of the two votes is valid. But it clearly establishes: “In none of the two cases must the election be annulled”. In this case there was an extra white paper. The established procedure was not followed but rather the election was annulled, which was expressly prohibited.”

“Contravening the dispositions of the Constitution, the fourth vote count was declared null, they forced Cardinal Angelo Scola, recently elected and having taken the name of John XXIV, to resign and return to the Sistine Chapel, and they proceeded with a fifth vote in which Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected.”

“This was the second irregularity of the conclave, because the Constitution establishes (Art 63) that there must only be four voting sessions per day, two in the morning and two in the evening.”

“The case for saying that the designation of Bergoglio is effectively invalid is clear, according to canon lawyers, who refer us to article 76 which states: ‘Should the election take place in a way other than that prescribed in the present Constitution, or should the conditions laid down here not be observed, the election is for this very reason null and void, without any need for a declaration on the matter; consequently, it confers no right on the one elected’.”

“This pile of evidence led Cardinal George Pell to declare that Francis could well be the 38th antipope in the history of the church, and not the 266th Pope as the vast majority believe.”

“Finally, it is worth pointing out here, that even if all the aforementioned be cast in doubt or discredited, all opposing arguments collapse with Cardinal Danneels’s admission in his biography, that he and a group of cardinals, the “Mafia Club”, plotted to force Benedict XVI to resign. When you have a confession, proof is not necessary.”[https://www.ultimostiempos.org/en/blog-en/item/81-antipopes-conclave.html]

Bishop Rene Gracida, also, brings forward evidence that the conclave that elected Francis was invalid because there were “serious irregularities” against John Paul II’s constitution that governed the 2013 conclave.

However, the popular and respected traditional Catholic commentator Steve Skojec on May 7, 2018 apparently rejected Bishop Gracida’s call for the cardinals to judge if Francis’s election to the papacy was valid calling the validity question itself a “potentially dangerous rabbit hole.”
(Onepeterfive, “Cardinal Eijk References End Times Prophecy in Intercommunion,” May 7, 2018)

At the time, Skojec referred back to his September 26, 2017 post where he said:

“JPII has removed the election-nullifying consequences of simony… nowhere else in the following paragraphs is nullity of the election even implied.”
(Onepeterfive, “A Brief note on the Question of a Legally Valid Election,” September 26, 2017)

Bishop Gracida shows that Skojec is wrong in his Open Letter quoting Pope John Paul II’s Universi Dominici Gregis’ introductory perambulary and paragraph 76:

– “I further confirm, by my Apostlic authority, the duty of maintaining the strictest secrecy with regard to everything that directly or indirectly concerns the election process” [the above which Gracida clearly shows in his Open Letter was not maintained thus making the conclave and Francis’s papacy invalid according to the Bishop].
(Introductory perambulary)

– “Should the election take place in a way other than laid down here not to be observed, the election is for this very reason null and void.”
(Paragraph 76)

Gracida’s Open Letter, moreover, shows that Skojec is wrong above:

“The clear exception from nullity and invalidity for simony proves the general rule that other violations of the sacred process certainly do and did result in the nullity and invalidity of the entire conclave.”

On top of all that, Skojec ignores paragraph 5 and contrary to what conservative canon lawyer Edward Peters has said about Universi Dominici Gregis when he suggests canon lawyers have a role in interpreting the John Paul II Constitution, the document says:

“Should doubts arise concerning the prescriptions contained in this Constitution, or concerning the manner of putting them into effect. I [Pope John Paul II] Decree that all power of issuing a judgment of this in this regard to the College of Cardinals, to which I grant the faculty of interpreting doubtful or controverted points.”
(Universi Dominici Gregis, paragraph 5)

Later in the paragraph it says “except the act of the election,” which can be interpreted in a number of ways.

The point is, as Bishop Gracida says and Universi Dominici Gregis said, only the cardinals can interpret its meaning, not Skojec, not canon lawyers or anyone else.

The Bishop is saying what the document says: only the cardinals can interpret it.

He, also, says put pressure on the cardinals to act and interpret it which both Skojec and Peters appear to prefer to ignore.

Moreover, Bishop Gracida’s Open Letter and Pope John Paul II’s document make a number of points which neither Skojec, Peters or anyone else to my knowledge have even brought up or offered any counter argument against.

I have great respect for both Skojec and Peters, but unless Gracida’s Open Letter is squarely responded to my respect for them will greatly diminish for they will be neglecting their responsibility to God and His Church.

They are both wrong if they ignore this important Open Letter of Bishop Gracida.

If Peters and Skojec as well as the conservative and traditional Catholic media are ignoring Bishop Gracida because he isn’t a cardinal and retired, remember that St. Athanasius wasn’t a cardinal (that is involved in the selection or election process of the pope of the time) and was retired.

During the Arian heresy crisis, Pope Liberius excommunicated Athanasius. You don’t get any more retired than being excommunicated.

Skojec gave blogger Ann Barnhardt’s analysis of the papal validity a long article and podcast. The only bishop in the world contesting Francis in a meaningful way deserves as much. Why is he apparently so afraid of Bishop Gracida?

Skojec and Peters need to answer Gracida’s theologically clear and precise arguments and either clearly and precisely counter them or put pressure on the cardinals to put into action the needed canonical procedures to remove Francis if he was “never validly elected” the pope or else remove him from the Petrine office for heterodoxy.

Francis is not orthodox so there are only two things he could be:

1. A validly elected pope who is a material heretic until cardinals correct him and then canonically proclaim he is a formal heretic if he doesn’t recant thus deposing him (See: “Unambiguously Pope Francis Materially Professes Death Penalty Heresy: Cd. Burke: ‘If a Pope would Formally Profess Heresy he would Cease, by that Act, to be the Pope'”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2018/08/unambiguously-pope-francis-materially.html?m=1) or

2. a invalidly elected antipope who is a heretic.

The point is whether you think using all the information available 1. is the objective truth or 2. is the objective truth you must act.

You must as the Bishop says put: “pressure on the cardinals to act” whichever you think. 

There are many ways to put pressure such as pray and offer Masses for this intention, send the Gracida link to priests, bishops and cardinals, make signs and pray the rosary in front of their offices as we do in front of abortion clinics. Use your imagination to come up with other ideas.

Gracida is calling the cardinals to “[a]ddress… [the] probable invalidity” before they attempt to depose him from the Petrine office for heterodoxy. But, just as importantly he is calling all faithful Catholics to act and not just bemoan Francis’s heresy. 

Bishop Gracida in a email to me and through the Catholic Monitor to all faithful Catholics said:

“ONE CAN SAY THAT FRANCIS THE MERCIFUL IS A HERETIC UNTIL ONE DIES BUT IT CHANGES NOTHING. WHAT IS NEEDED IS ACTION… WE MUST PRESSURE THE CARDINALS TOACT. SEND THAT LINK TO EVERY PRIEST AND BISHOP YOU KNOW”: 
https://wp.me/px5Zw-95e.

Remember that many who are calling those like Bishop Gracida, journalist Munguia  and others “schismatics” for calling for a cardinal investigation are following in the footsteps of the real schismatics who promoted and followed Antipope Anacletus II. 
Renown Catholic historian Carroll explicitly says that what matters in a valid papal election is not how many cardinals claim a person is the pope. What is essential for determining if someone is pope or antipope is the “election procedures… [as] governed by the prescription of the last Pope”:

“Papal election procedures are governed by the prescription of the last Pope who provided for them (that is, any Pope can change them, but they remain in effect until they are changed by a duly elected Pope).” 

“During the first thousand years of the history of the Papacy the electors were the clergy of Rome (priests and deacons); during the second thousand years we have had the College of Cardinals.”

“But each Pope, having unlimited sovereign power as head of the Church, can prescribe any method for the election of his successor(s) that he chooses. These methods must then be followed in the next election after the death of the Pope who prescribed it, and thereafter until they are changed. A Papal claimant not following these methods is also an Antipope.”

“Since Antipopes by definition base their claims on defiance of proper Church authority, all have been harmful to the Church, though a few have later reformed after giving up their claims.” 
[http://www.ewtn.com/library/homelibr/antipope.txt] 

The schismatic followers of  Antipope Anacletus II didn’t want St. Bernard to investigate who was the real pope. It was the followers of the real pontiff Pope Innocent II who asked Bernard to investigate. 

Why are so many traditional and conservative Catholics afraid of a cardinal investigation of the apparent “serious irregularities” against John Paul II’s constitution that governed the 2013 conclave that could invalidate the conclave which elected Francis?

March 18 & 19, 2019 Note:

I have gotten some push back from Skojec’s blog in a post by Robert Siscoe and from someone about a bishop who attacked Bishop Gracida apparently using Siscoe’s claim that it is a infallible dogma that a man is infallibly a pope if there is “peaceful and universal acceptance” by the Church.

Was there peaceful and universal  acceptance?

In Siscoe’s own book “True or False Pope,”  he mentions the following scholars who questioned the validity of Francis’s election: Vatican expert Antonio Socci and “Stefano Violin, esteemed Professor of Canon Law” (Page 390). And there is a bishop and many other scholars who question the validity not mentioned by him.

Apparently, Siscoe didn’t get his “peaceful and universal” dogma from a dogmatic statement from a pope or council, but from a good, but a not necessarily infallible theologian John of St. Thomas.  Here is his quote from John of St. Thomas:

“[T]his man in particular, lawfully elected and accepted by the Church, is the supreme pontiff.”
(Trueorfalsepope.com, “Peaceful and Universal Acceptance of a Pope,” 2-28-19 and 3-13-19)

This bring us back to the renown historian Carroll statement: “A Papal claimant not following these methods [which is the conclave constitution of a previous pope] is also an Antipope.”

Even John of St. Thomas agrees with Carroll when he said as quoted by Siscoe:

Besides “acceptance” a valid pope needs to be “lawfully elected.”

Again, Bishop Gracida is asking for a cardinal investigation. He is saying what John Paul II’s conclave constitution says about the question of if Francis was “lawfully elected” or not: only the cardinals can investigate it and interpret it, not Siscoe, Skojec, canon lawyers or John of St. Thomas.

I ask Siscoe to specifically answer if Francis was not “lawfully elected” then does a “peaceful and universal acceptance” overturn a unlawful election?

More importantly, why are Siscoe and Skojec apparently so afraid of a investigation by cardinals?

I ask both to please give a specific answer to why they are apparently so afraid of a investigation.
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church and for Catholics to not just bemoan heresy, but put pressure on the cardinals to act as well as for the grace for a cardinal to stand up and investigate and to be the St. Bernard of our time. 

Assaults on the  

Idea of America  

and  

Ignorance of the Fragility of the United States 

By Victor Davis Hanson 

October 21, 2021 

(Emphasis added) 

As the 2020 election season began, the New York Times, promised its readers a recalibration of American history called “The 1619 Project.” The ensuing series of essays and media kits had a twofold agenda. One was to rewrite the origins of American history as the four-century foreign intrusion into a pristine North America. It was co-predicated on stealing Native American lands with the help of the racist exploitation of imported African slaves. Racism then was the key that supposedly defined the birth and trajectory of the later United States. 

A second catalyst to relabel the American founding was political. The 1619 project was aimed at forcing a supposedly flawed contemporary America to admit its mostly foul pre-Constitutional origins. Only that way might it recalibrate the present nation, in reparatory fashion, to embrace a radical equality of result, one necessitating an all-powerful woke federal government. 

Aristotle long ago warned that in a democracy those who are politically equal thereby assume that they also deserve equality in all other aspects of their lives—even beyond the reach of the state—and therefore vote accordingly to empower the state to do just that. Almost all assaults on constitutional citizenship reflect both personal and career agendas. To state without evidence that the DNA of America was, and thus is, always racist is to expect to be granted the current material resources and power to redeem such an original sin.  

Apparently, the implied preferred model for millions of Americans recently has become the more all-encompassing French Revolution that sought to implement egalitarianism and fraternity at any cost, rather than the American Revolution’s emphases on individual freedom and personal liberty and private property. 

For example, arguing for free higher education, universal health care, and wealth redistribution, socialist Bernie Sanders almost won the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2016—in a way no prior socialist presidential candidate had come close. Sanders, for a while, led the primary candidates again in 2020. 

Sanders talked often of “revolution” and his supporters sometimes fancied themselves as French-style Jacobins. In 2011, the journal Jacobin appeared as a self-described “democratic quarterly socialist magazine.” Its motto “reason in revolt” deliberately sought to echo the supposedly rational role of Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794), the catalyst for the so-called “Reign of Terror” during the cycles of French revolutionary violence, and the influence of his Jacobins on later movements such as those in Haiti. 

Statue toppling, name changing, and warring on the custom of the past that followed the death of African American George Floyd while in custody of Minneapolis police were in the tradition of the French, not American, Revolution. The targets in spring 2020 among protesters were not Jacobin-like figures such as Robespierre but the names and statutes of Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson. 

Critics of the American experiment apparently believe that because our Founders idealistically often envisioned or thought about a free society of equality under the law for all its citizens, thereby they should have had the absolute power in 1776 to implement such visions. But they did not. 

They were, after all, men, not gods. At the founding, the Framers did not have the ability to create all-encompassing unified ethical values within individual states under the auspices of the Constitution. Northern colonies certainly were not going to be able to war instantaneously with the pre-Confederacy states, in a forced effort to end slavery, and thus match constitutional aspirations with a successful eighteenth-century civil war of abolition at the very founding of a fragile nation. As Alexander Hamilton pointed out in Federalist Papers 15 and 16, the fatal weakness of the failed Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was the impotency of a central government, and the unwillingness of squabbling states for some eight years to surrender elements of their own authority to a unified federal power. 

So, the U.S. was never, and is not now, perfect. It is an aspirational nation that seeks to live up to the promises of the Declaration and stay true to the Constitution, assuming that the result is better than the alternative, and perfection is not the requisite of a good nation.

And the alternative? Despite the glitter of globalism, contemporary Chinese are not treated equitably under the law—and are routinely electronically surveilled, monitored, and “graded” with social credits and demerits, by their own government. Hundreds of re-education and forced labor camps seek to transform Muslim Chinese into atheists or agnostics—on the premise that no one in China has inalienable rights of habeas corpus or freedom from unwarranted search, seizure, and arrest. 

Currently roughly one-million Chinese Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang Province have been forcibly interned in re-education camps (“vocational training centers”), where Chinese Muslims are forced to renounce Islam, often required to undergo sterilizations, and to pledge fealty to the Chinese Communist Party. So far global outrage has been muted due to Chinese economic clout and commercial reach, along with Beijing’s brilliantly cynical posturing as a victim of historical Western racism. 

Elsewhere, Russians cannot choose their own president. Iranians have no inalienable rights protected by a written constitution. Bolivians cannot say or write what they wish. Those jailed in Mexico discover that their fates do not rest with supposed guarantees of equality under the law. Palestinians do not hold regular free elections. Women in Saudi Arabia could not drive until 2017. Cubans cannot travel where they wish. Pakistanis cannot worship as they please—safely. Elsewhere in much of Africa and often in Latin America, what makes life miserable is not even so much authoritarian government as no government at all. The chaos of contemporary Somalia or Venezuela ensures that necessities and security are all but non-existent. Justice there is meted out in the manner of ancient Norse sagas—by individuals and tribes. 

In sum, people elsewhere in today’s world, whether under a constitutional government or not, usually cannot speak freely, vote, or use or even own arms. National boundaries, especially in the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans, often drawn by outsiders, do not reflect a unique society with a distinct geography, language, customs, and traditions. The history of nationhood until the present day has been mostly one of dependent residents whose futures were—and still are—determined by forces and people well beyond their control. 

What we see in unfree societies past and present outside the West is mostly a landscape of repression—and, to a lesser degree, for many centuries for some inside the West, especially women and slaves. Yet it has always been an odd but characteristic habit in the West that it damns itself as inferior to other civilizations that are wholly unfree. Apparently, its own notions of citizenship are so exalted, that anything short of is perfection is considered not good enough. 

Unfortunately, this escalation of self-reflection to self-loathing is often an unfortunate characteristic of post-citizenship. In a cynical sense, one can identify a true democracy by its vibrant self-criticism that in the postmodern age often devolves into a perpetual attack on its own institutions and past. 

Such are sometimes the wages of Western freedom. They appear often in the current West in the form of warring on the past by statue toppling, name changing, and culture canceling, in a perpetual quest to achieve perceived perfect freedom and equality, and/or more cynically find pathways to power. 

But beware: constitutional citizenship is history’s rarity. It is a fragile thing and the exception both in the past and in the present. There is no guarantee that we remain free citizens next year or a decade from now. The weight of history is against us. So, unless each according to his station reinvests in the republic, there will be none. And remember the years 2020–21—a national quarantine, a hold on many of the first ten amendments, 700,000 dead from COVID-19, a self-induced recession, 120 days of exempt rioting, looting, and arson following the death of George Floyd, a woke revolution, the desertion and hollowing out of our major cities, a bizarre 2020 election, the Capitol riot, and the disastrous first 9 months of 2021—all did more damage to the foundations of the American republic than any event since and including Pearl Harbor. 

One Man’s Anarchy

Is Another’s Road to Justice

Keep that mentality in mind and the absurdities

that are mouthed by Democrats make perfect sense.

By: VICTOR DAVIS HANSON

The Patriot Post

October 21, 2021

ü Sheer chaos and anarchy on the border?

ü Afghanistan — the most humiliating defeat in recent U.S. military history?

ü A labor-starved supply chain in shambles and holiday shelves emptying out?

ü The worst inflation in 30 years that seems soon ready to match Carter-era levels?

ü Gas hitting $5 a gallon with winter heating fuels soaring?

ü Free-for-all looting in the major cities without consequences?

ü Joe Biden’s policies and Biden himself diving in the polls?

Never in recent American history has any administration birthed such disasters in its first nine months.

Yet most Americans are arguing not over the sheer chaos and disasters of the Biden Administration, but rather how could such sheer pre-civilizational calamity occur in modern America?

Were these disasters a result of historic incompetency? Or mean-spirited nihilism? Or a deliberate effort to create the necessary turbulence to birth a new American revolution? Or a bit of all three?

Start instead with the idea that what most Americans see as sheer ruin is not what the left-wing puppeteers, who are pulling the strings of the Biden marionette, see.

Our catastrophes are their minor glitches. For them bad polling is mostly a public relations problem of an occasional uncooperative media. Otherwise, a few broken eggs are always necessary to create the perfect socialist omelet.

The Left now controlling Washington believes that the U.S. border is a mere construct. Every impoverished person has a birthright to cross into America illegally. The 2 million who are scheduled to enter this fiscal year alone is a wonderful, if occasionally sloppy, event.

Our border calamity is their celebration of humanity and a long-overdue recalibration of ossified American demography, one that will properly warp the Electoral College to provide the necessary election result.

If you believe that a culturally imperialistic America needs to be taken down a notch overseas, then the flight from Afghanistan is “impressive” and a “success” — by how quickly and efficiently we skedaddled.

Why worry about a lost $1 billion embassy, a $300 million refit of the Bagram airbase, or $80 billion lost in military hardware and training?

Empty shelves? Boohoo.

Grasping, upper-middle-class consumers are angry that the working classes are not willing to risk COVID infection to supply them with their accustomed holiday trinkets.

So, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg intoned that the shortages mean only that the consumer class must wait a wee bit — until Christmas Eve — to splurge on gifts.

Who worries about a little inflation? Under new monetary theory, printing dollars brings prosperity. Or as White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain put it in a retweet, inflation is a mere “high class problem”of the Peloton elite

Only those with money worry their ill-begotten pile shrinks. But the majority without money will eventually rejoice that it is everywhere now — finally and properly “spread,” as former president and now multimillionaire Barack Obama once promised.

As AOC swore, gas and oil are going to be gone anyway in 10 years. So, if Joe Biden slashes over 2 million barrels a day in U.S. oil production, what’s wrong with that?

Didn’t Steven Chu, Obama’s energy secretary, long ago brag that when we hit $8 to $10 a gallon, we’d approach European levels of proper fuel usage? Why whine about paying over $100 to fill up, when the planet more quickly cools?

Did not Americans learn “critical legal theory” and “critical race theory”?

Or as the architect of the “1619 Project” reminded us, destroying or taking someone’s property is no big deal. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey shrugged off torched downtown buildings; such torched stuff, he said, is mere “bricks and mortar.”

It is only a crime to “steal” over $500 of needed merchandise from a Walgreens in San Francisco, because the rich who make such absurd laws never have to steal goods from a pharmacy shelf.

If racists wish to point out that African American male youths are disproportionately represented in the latest crime wave, then maybe America should be learning not to create the conditions that force them to break the law.

In sum, we are on a left-wing roller coaster headed to a socialist nirvana.

Most Americans believe it is instead an out-of-control “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” nightmare with incompetents at the wheel.

But the architects of such “hope and change” shrug that the occasional disturbing news that the media sometimes accidentally leaks out is merely the cost of an equitable America.

One man’s anarchy is another’s road to justice.

Keep that mentality in mind and the absurdities that are mouthed by Biden, Klain, press secretary Jen Psaki, Homeland “Security” Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Pete Buttigieg, or the ravings of the Squad make perfect sense.

They are merely trying to explain to us dummies that what we think is purgatory is actually the new paradise — a promised land that, once we are properly programmed and educated, we too will welcome and thank them for our deliverance.

By: Judd Garrett

Objectivity is the Objective

October 20, 2021
(Emphasis added)

In the 2000 movie, The Patriot, when Benjamin Martin, played by Mel Gibson, was debating whether the colonies should engage in a revolutionary war against England to free itself from King George’s rule, he asked a simple question, “why should I trade one tyrant three thousand miles away for three thousand tyrants one mile away?” He went on to explain, “An elected legislature can trample a man’s rights as easily as a king can.”

There are approximately 330 million people in the United States of America, and we have 546 people who run our federal government, who basically, have the power to trample our rights; 1 President, 1 Vice President, 100 Senators, 435 Representatives, and 9 Supreme Court Justices. Essentially, we have 546 potential tyrants living in Washington, DC, and if you include all the unelected permanent bureaucrats embedded in our federal government who write the laws, the number of tyrants that control our country, that dictate our lives, is probably much higher than 3,000 of which Benjamin Martin spoke. 

America has arrived at a place that many in our country have feared for centuries. America’s foundation, its strength is based on a delicate balance of power between the three co-equal branches of government, Executive, Legislative and Judicial. This delicate balance of power prevents the dictates of one side, while protecting the voice of the minority, not only racial or religious minorities, but political minorities as well. That balance is so tenuous that if it’s upset, then that which makes our country great, which is the root of our prosperity, will crumble. 

The true American patriot politician understands this, and therefore puts country over party, sacrifices individual power to maintain this delicate balance for the lasting stability of the nation. The selfish power-monger politician, like those currently in power, puts party over country, chooses personal power over national stability, risks destroying the eternal greatness of the country for fleeting adulation of the self. We are witnessing this desecration of the foundation of our country in real time. Those in power think only of themselves, their power, and have neither the understanding nor the concern of the irreparable harm that their actions are having on the country they’ve been entrusted to lead. They are strip mining our country of all that is good for their own enrichment, and leaving the rest of us with a ravaged empty shell of a country, and they are doing all this under the guise of a self-ascribed dubious virtue.

In the last year and a half, we have witnessed this insidious attack on the foundation of our country. Our current leaders are pushing school systems, which are failing to educate our children, to teach the racially divisive Critical Race Theory to purposely inflame racial tension and division throughout the country. They encouraged the 5 months of racial riots in 2020 which destroyed many of our major cities. They have denigrated and defunded our local police forces and sat idly by while violent crime in our cities have risen over 150%. Our current leaders have opened our borders to millions of illegal immigrants bringing with them disease, crime and poverty, yet we can’t get basic goods and necessities into our country to stock our grocery store shelves. Fentanyl is pouring across our borders in unprecedented amounts, leading to an all-time high in the number of drug addiction and overdoses. And not only is no one in Washington doing anything about it, they are encouraging it. A large percentage of the American people did not vote for any of this, yet we will be the ones who will pay the biggest price for our politicians’ decisions or inaction.

All of this is done or allowed to happen in order to disrupt the delicate balance of power on which our country rests, so the politicians can wrest even more power for themselves. The Biden Administration is working with big tech monopolies to censor political speech they don’t like by citizens to help ensure their re-election. Our Legislature is working to pass laws which will dictate which kind of energy we can use, and what type of car we can drive. They are pushing to nationalize our local elections, so every election will be as corrupt as the ones in Georgia and Pennsylvania and Arizona in 2020. They are pushing to nationalize law enforcement, so they can further dictate to each America citizen what they can or cannot do or say. In essence, the 546 people in Washington, DC, are acting like a bunch of little tyrants, and many average citizens who just want to live their lives are at the will and whim of these people they didn’t vote for and didn’t have a chance to vote against.

But really, it only takes 270 people to agree to pass laws, and 268 of those people were elected in elections in which I was not eligible to vote. Instead of understanding the dynamic that many of our leaders are leading people who didn’t vote for them, or didn’t even have a chance to vote against them, and work with all representatives to create legislation that benefits all Americans, we have “leaders” who have come to power with the slimmest majorities, and are imposing their will on the rest of the country, forcing legislation down the throats of people they don’t want, making them deal with consequences of decisions they were against.

All newly elected politicians speak eloquently about being a representative of all the people, not just those who voted for them. Yet, they govern the exact opposite way. They make decisions and pass legislation that solely benefits their voters or more accurately, their donors. They have a blatant disregard for the rest of the population, imposing their will on the rest of us, a tyranny of 270. 

Very few politicians give a damn about the average American citizen. They say they do, but they don’t. So, we should stop giving a damn about them, stop caring about them. They work for us, and collectively they have failed at their jobs. If any of us failed at our jobs as colossally as our “leaders” in Washington have failed at theirs, we would have been given our walking papers long ago. 

Our leaders are not great people.

·        They are not highly moral or ethical people. 

·        They are not people with high integrity. 

·        They are not highly intelligent people. 

·        They are not people to be admired. 

·        They are not special or impressive. 

So, let’s stop acting as if they are. They won a popularity contest financed by millionaires and billionaires in exchange for access to the power that 51% of the voters entrusted them with. They work for us, but they are really the puppets of their donors, and we are at the mercy of the puppet masters.

Our system of government is corrupted to its core, maybe irreparably so. That is why it’s absolutely comical when many of these corrupt politicians clutch their pearls at the accusation of voter fraud in the 2020 election, as if our system is as pure as the driven snow, and even the mere suggestion of fraud is a threat to the integrity of our elections. 

Donald Trump was not an existential threat to our country and political system as it is often charged, he was an existential threat to the embedded corruption in Washington, DC, and the corrupt employed every lever of power at their disposal to get rid of him. Trump’s presidency was the canary in the coal mine for our Constitutional Republic. And the canary died, or more accurately, it was slaughtered.

I voted for none of the elected leaders who are making decisions that control my life, and only had the chance to vote against one of them, and this dynamic is why concentrating so much power in the federal government as we have in recent decades is so very dangerous to our country, and essentially disenfranchising to almost half the citizens. And that is the main reason why we are so divided as a country. Until we get back to the original vision of our founders, a true representative republic, our lives will be ruled by the whims of the 3,000 little tyrants each of us had little say in coming to power.

New post on A Sign of HopeThe Lost Weekby charliej373By Charlie JohnstonI got a nasty bug on Monday that pretty much blew up my week. By Wednesday, I was on the mend but my voice had gone. (I’m always a little amused at certain colds because they allow me to sing bass for a while). On Thursday, it literally hurt to try to talk. I did what I always do when faced with a rough cold – sleep a lot and up my elderberry supplements dramatically. Today I can talk – though I can still sing bass if I want – and so this nasty little cold just stole a week from me. I will get back on track next week.I don’t like to write much when I am sick. Though I am often bold, I am very careful about what I write and how I write it. I always fear that when I am under the weather, writing carries the risk of the boldness venturing into brashness. Ha! I get enough grief for my careful boldness as it is; I don’t need to add to it grief for brash, ill-considered statements. I thought I would repeat today two articles I wrote five days and then six days after the Jan. 6 demonstrations earlier this year. I think they have held up quite nicely – and it recollects us to what kicked off this horrible year.First there is “Quiet Man Rising” from Jan 11.Bill, Me, and Doug at the Ellipse last WednesdayBy Charlie Johnston“I was shocked and disgusted Thursday to see so many so-called “conservative” commentators and officials denounce the Capitol protests and demand that those who rushed the Capitol be caught and jailed – and with a zeal and vigor they did not use in condemning the Antifa-BLM riots that have rocked cities and resulted in actual murder and mayhem throughout the last year. Those supposedly on our team are busy calling all of us who attended Wednesday’s protest a mob.I was on the Ellipse near the Washington Monument for most of the morning, wearing my fleur-de-lis necktie in honor of St. Joan of Arc on this Feast of the Epiphany. I never made it to the Capitol, though some in our group did. I was just hurting too much and needed to wend my way back. I rarely participate in processions or marches because, though I can walk a long way, it is by fits and starts. My gift is in my determination, not my prowess. I have to stop a lot to rest between little bits of progress.What I saw was a very diverse and massive Mayberry on steroids. Everyone was chatting, laughing together and cheering. It was an upbeat, enthusiastic crowd. There were a lot of black folks there – and a huge contingent of Chinese Americans. Best of all, in this crowd, the men looked like men and the women looked like women. The only unsettling thing was that, here and there, someone was dressed all in black with that creepy skeleton Covid mask. Three times someone in front of me yelled, “Let’s storm the capitol!” The crowd ignored him. It was striking to me that this agitator used precisely the same language all the media would later use to describe the rushing of the Capitol.Let’s be clear: most of those who charged the Capitol were Trump supporters. I have no doubt that Antifa types were agitators in the whole business – but it was Trump supporters that they were inciting. The business about it being all or mostly Antifa who did the charging is patent nonsense, even though they almost certainly incited it. It is a panicked defense of Trump supporters. But why? After a year of being told that the rioting, looting, arson, violence and murder throughout the country by Antifa and BLM is “mostly peaceful protests” and that it is just a case of free speech, why would we get so panicked by what was, in fact, a largely peaceful protest in which a few people got notably raucous? I don’t condemn the protestors; I don’t even criticize them.Some conservative commentators have suggested that we can’t use the same tactics Antifa uses. How did we use the same tactics? Antifa and BLM go on an unfocused rage, attacking and destroying everything in their path indiscriminately. The worst of the protestors at the Capitol were focused only on the source of their righteous anger – and did not destroy anything. The only casualty that day was an unarmed Trump supporter. A police officer who got in a scuffle with protestors later died. The left goes on wildly violent riots when they don’t get their way. Christians and conservatives don’t do that. They only get forceful when they get neither a fair shake nor an honest accounting. They got neither here – and knew that their pusilanimous representatives weren’t about to risk their own necks getting it for them.You know what would have prevented the rushing of the Capitol? If a single court would have opened an honest investigation of the mountains of evidence of massive fraud. The left is fond of saying the courts “rejected” the claims – implying that the courts examined the evidence and found it without merit. But that is not what happened. The courts refused to even look at the evidence, rejecting everything on procedural grounds so they didn’t have to incur the ire of the violent left. Judges across the land put their hands over their eyes and their thumbs in their ears. As it was, 200-300 people of a crowd estimated, at the low end, at half a million people got raucous. We all know that if it had been a crowd of a half million Antifa and BLM activists, Washington would be burning right now, while the media would be assuring us it was mostly peaceful and Kamala Harris was busy raising money to bail out the activists. Almost everyone gathered at the Capitol Mall Wednesday knew we would probably not get justice. After a year in which Donald Trump was impeached on a shamelessly partisan pretext, in which ordinary people were forced to lose their businesses and life savings and forego visits with their families on patently unconstitutional orders from a myriad of tinpot tyrants (while watching the tyrants who issued the orders shamelessly flout them while never missing a paycheck), watched prosecutors routinely drop charges against actual violent rioters while filing charges against people who had the temerity to defend themselves and their property, in which people watched a patently obvious and shameless steal of a presidential election – with supposedly responsible officials insisting on confirming the steal with no investigation, normal Americans know getting justice from the gangster government now ruling our nation was not likely. While we knew that our Republican “firewall” was as sturdy as a tower made of playing cards, we did NOT expect the cowardly Republicans to pile on to the smears and slanders piled on us by the left. Protestors were just expected to suck up the Republicans’ refusal to vigorously demand justice. Frankly, I think the actions of even the most raucous protestors was both proportionate to the offenses we have endured and, in fact, rather restrained. But gormless conservative commentators and officials have declared that last Wednesday was a disgrace and a day that will live in infamy. It is the latest of many big lies from the left. Yeah – like the Boston Tea Party was a disgrace and a day that lives in infamy. The left is frantically calling everyone who was there a “traitor” and an “insurrectionist.” Well, to the ruling British, those who mounted the Boston Tea Party were traitors and insurrectionists, too. Free Americans have held them as patriots for over two centuries.The rushing of the Capitol was the pagan left’s Reichstag Fire. But it was not the only maneuver they took from the fascist playbook. It was followed up Friday with Kristallnacht – the night of the long knives in which social media got deadly serious about purging all dissent. All of this comes in the form of a blitzkrieg, in which the left strikes like lightning in multiple areas to shut down dissent before it can get any traction.Though it seems otherwise, the leadership of the pagan left is in raw panic. Yes, they stole the election and have issued a never-ending flow of unconstitutional orders revoking the liberty of ordinary Americans. But the success of all this is dependent on pacifying the population. They had gotten the submission of Republican officials and of most religious leaders, but those irksome “bitter clingers” and “deplorables” were not going along. They had to make a lightning strike, a blitzkrieg, to discredit normal Americans and make them objects of scorn. That is why all sorts of scary rumors about the Capitol shutting down and lack of security were being spread before the protest – in hopes of depressing the numbers who would attend. The monumental crowd of ordinary Americans who showed up anyway scared the bejabbers out of the powers that be, so they had to act with alacrity to make them out to be villains and terrorists instead of the ordinary Americans they are. It got some traction with the timid – and with those who, for the first time, realized this is real, not some political maneuvering or board game. It won’t last.This has given us some real fodder for self-examination, though. Far too many of us have been willing to cheer Donald Trump on as long as he was willing to do all the fighting for us. Now that it seems almost certain that we will have to do our own fighting, many of the most martial voices in our coalition are uncharacteristically subdued. Some are even sounding the retreat. This is no surprise to me. In politics, it was often the case that those organizations which had been most promiscuous in demanding that others show courage and put their careers on the line ran like scalded dogs when they found themselves in the crosshairs. In a couple of cases, I quietly helped such organizations weather the storm in exchange for their agreement never to attack me or my candidates in such a way again. There is a type of man who is always very martial and uncompromising so long as it is someone else who takes all the risks. This is why I value the counsel of those who have come under fire far more than the mouthy armchair heroes – and respect the decisions of those who do take the risks even when I do not agree with them. You have a larger and more charitable perspective when you have actual skin in the game. If you know the stakes and are still willing to make your stand, you are invaluable to me. Last week many people, for the first time, got some idea of what the stakes actually are.I expect Trump to be a critical ally in the battle for faith, family and freedom going forward. Sadly, though he was clearly elected to two terms, he will almost certainly not finish his full term, as the coup is ascendant for a time. Though I did not make it clear at the time, when I gave Trump such likely odds of success in his challenge, what I mainly meant was the odds of him proving the steal. He did the latter – while I had made clear that getting to his second term would require courageous legislators and honest judges. Those were harder to find than open bars in Salt Lake City.Consider the Book of Job. Here was a fully righteous man who God allowed to be put to the test. Did you really think that God was going to let you get through this without you having the most intimate of skin in the game yourself? I believe the Star of Bethlehem this year was the sign of the beginning of the final time of choosing. God is proving us all. Those who think they have all the power and have doubled down do so now to their own destruction. Those who see the likelihood of being arrested and seriously persecuted but keep faith anyway are worthy to be named among God’s 300. Those in the middle, the timid, the sunshine soldiers, those paralyzed by fear at the things they may lose, may be reclaimed or may go on to perdition. I have said all along it is up to us, the ordinary men and women, to renew the faith and face of the world. If I never hear the words Gitmo, insurrection act, or military tribunal again I will be grateful. No one except God is going to rescue you – and only after you have proven yourself to yourself. This process will probably take a few weeks, or even months. But wise brawlers know to avoid rousing the quiet man – for though his patience is long, when it is spent, he almost always prevails. The pagan left is busily rousing a lot of quiet men and women these days.I delayed posting last week because it was obviously fluid and fast-moving…and I wanted to give good, considered counsel rather than add to the cacophony of chaos being ginned up. I will post many times this week, as I have a lot to say now.In my freshman year of college I was fortunate to be admitted to a semester-long seminar on the American Revolution, presided over by Professor Clarence VerSteeg, a noted expert on the subject. It was limited to 15 students and met once a week for four hours. I was startled and gratified when my final paper was the only one to receive an A+. Its premise was that the American Revolution was not a revolution at all, but a counter-revolution. A revolution is the forceful or surreptitious overthrow of the traditional order. A counter-revolution is the aggressive defense of that order. From the time the first English colonists landed on American shores, they were almost entirely self-governing. After about a century, when England realized the vast mercantile potential of these colonies, it began cracking down – enacting huge taxes, major restrictions on who the American colonists could trade with, efforts to disarm the colonists – and even force them to house the very British soldiers sent to oppress them. For a good 15 years before the break, the Americans worked desperately to get redress of their grievances from England, for they considered themselves loyal British citizens. They were rebuffed and insulted at almost every turn. Finally, on July 4, 1776, the Americans declared their independence. It was not an effort to overthrow the existing order – but a determination to preserve and improve the traditional order in America. It was a counter-revolution.Last Wednesday was the first skirmish of the counter-revolution against the fraudulent occupying force which has seized power in America. It won’t be the last.”*********And then there was, The Discipline of a Quiet Man, published a day later on Jan. 12By Charlie JohnstonDo not think that I have cometo bring peace to the earth; I have notcome to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.-Matthew 10:34-36“In the last 24 hours I have been the target of the ire of a small raft of emails accusing me of sedition and such because I will not accept the results of an apparently fraudulent election without a serious and thorough investigation. I can accept a loss – it’s happened more than I like – but not the destruction of the safeguards preserving the integrity of our electoral system. Democrats are very eager to pacify the nation and get all to accept the results of the last presidential election. They can choose among two paths to accomplish this: either open a serious and thorough investigation or just move to repress any who question it. They have chosen the latter. It is not working. If any on that side want to try something that could work, here is a concise and extensive summary of evidence of the fraud (that they say does not exist). I don’t think they will ever submit to that, though, for they know as well as we do that this was a fraud.More unsettling, one of the most courageous and honorable men I have ever known heatedly informed me last night that I was making myself a tool of the devil; that all we have to do is re-organize and work harder and that the system is not broken. I didn’t worry too much about the devil stuff. For decades, knowing my religious nature, many have accused me of the same hoping it will paralyze me. But this is a very good man, a man with whom I have fought side by side in several battles. He thinks I am unhinged; I think he is living in a world gone by. Both of us may be wrong, but both cannot be right.This brings me to a crucial point in how to deal with friends and family who have a diametrically opposed opinion on the purging of conservatives and Christians from the public square, of seeking the arrest and imprisonment not only of those who charged the Capitol, but of all prominent questioners of the legitimacy of this election. I say, argue with them no longer. Just calmly state where you stand and then do not further engage. I have said I believe the time of choosing has commenced. Whether we have looked at it or not, all the information we need has been revealed to facilitate an informed choice. It is events, themselves, that will now confirm or repudiate our judgment.If I am wrong, after this initial orgy of shutting people down, getting them fired, and demanding the destruction of those who dissent from leftist dogma will die down in the coming weeks and months and settle into a more normal track, with room for a diversity of opinions and activists. If that happens, I will gladly counsel people to step back. If I am right, the repression will continue and intensify – and people will slowly begin to see that for themselves. A lot of people who are triumphal about Biden believe they will now be part of a grand ruling class. If they were more knowledgeable about the history of authoritarian movements, they would know that the minor supporting activists are often in more peril than the opposing activists. They think they have become the ruling class when all they have done is helped facilitate an arbitrary class of rulers who will be coming for them, too, soon enough. If I engage in passionate, embittered debate with them now, it makes it that much harder for them to come to me when they see for themselves. Step away from heated dialogue with those you care about now. Little good can come from it and much harm can arise.Do not suppose that all – or even most – who want to treat this as business as usual are guided by malice or ambition. In all of the great upheavals in history, almost all the people involved did not see the terrible peril until it was already too late. In revolutionary France, the King deluded himself that he just had a communication problem and could resolve the controversies by normal means. Only French Finance Minister Jacques Necker knew that this was something very different and far more dangerous than previous controversies. In the run-up to the Holocaust, a multitude of Jews who could have gotten out did not because they thought this was just another pogrom like many they had seen before across Europe. To the shame of the western world, many who would have gotten out could not because the western world strictly suppressed Jewish emigration from Germany. In the first Russian revolution in February of 1917. The Duma (or legislature) assumed command in a sort of social democrat posture – and thought they had things well in hand. Then Lenin came in October and the cat was now among the pigeons of the legislature. And so it goes. I could go on a long time with this, but the point is that when the critical moment has arrived, few understand it until after it has passed. Our job is to conduct ourselves with dignity, composure, and steadiness to make it easy for them to come to us when they see – or easy for us to go back to them if we are wrong.Many people hold fast to the belief that the institutions that were always there for them still are. There is little we can do on this score until either their or our illusions are dispelled. So tread lightly but steadfastly.The power of the pagan left is the power of the street gang – the promiscuous willingness to use force and violence to get their way, without remorse. But never lose sight of the fact that, for all their self-regard, they are monumentally incompetent. Usually within the first six months of a leftist authoritarian takeover, they have so mismanaged everything and are surrounded by such disaster that even many of their early supporters have a, “this is not what we planned for” moment. By the summertime you should want to be in position to welcome some former leftist activists into the fold as they realize this was not about the good of the people, but only about augmenting the power of a few.Lenin’s communist dialectic redefined truth, itself. It posited that anything that supported communism was truth, whether it was factual or not, while anything that opposed communism was a lie, whether it was factual or not. The modern pagan left has adopted a variant of that dialectic: actual violence in support of leftism is just “free speech” while any speech criticizing leftism is “violence.” I consider it a coin toss whether I will be arrested and jailed this year. No, I am not going to commit any crimes in the normal sense of the word. I would be pretty safe if that was my plan, for the left does not often punish actual crimes against property or persons. The only crime they punish ferociously is dissent – and I will not shut up. But I want to give people who disagree with me plenty of room without imputing to them motives they may not have. There will be time enough for recriminations – and reconciliation – later.I am also not overly worried about security. Oh, I want everyone to exercise prudence according to their station in life. I use Signal for some things, but mainly I just openly and cheerily go about my business. The fact is that the American government can hack just about anything, including the secure heavily encrypted systems of other countries. Our strength is in the vast number of people who are not buying the official line anymore. Their job is not to find a needle in a haystack, but a specific needle in a needle stack. The time for the catacombs may come, but that time is not now. I think the best plan is to hide in plain sight. If you become a target of hostile officials, they can hack whatever secure systems you adopt. If you adopt enough secure systems, I think that can prompt your becoming a target – for though they might not initially see what you are up to, they can see that you are taking great pains not to leave a footprint.We also have another, vital level of security. You all know that all of the left considers Christians superstitious ninnies. Surprise! – the majority of the institutional right does, too – only they consider us their superstitious ninnies. They don’t take us seriously. Since we believe that God will carve out the path forward for us, they think there is no real power or threat there. If there is no God, they are right and we will be overwhelmed. But God IS – and has power they know nothing of. I am terrified that if I take some extraordinary means of human protection, I will forfeit the divine protection I rely on. Do not think that I think this means I will never be assaulted or hurt. What I DO think is that if I exercise ordinary prudence (which God commands us to) and rely on Him for the rest, whatever happens to me will serve to advance His plan for the renewal of the faith and face of the world – and I am willing.,The last year has given you some vital material with which to make sound judgments. I have watched the feeds of many people I know – and it often shows the measure of a person. There are some who were busy the last year explaining why the widespread rioting, looting, arson and mayhem of the left was just a mostly peaceful exercise of free speech. When those same people now insist that the raucous demonstration where a few people got out of hand at the Capitol was sedition and treason and unprecedented violence, I know that, at best, they are intellectually dishonest and not to be trusted. They do not object to forceful means of protest at all, only any expression of Christian or conservative morality, no matter how peacefully or forcefully it is expressed. You do not have to confront them with it, but it is best to file it away for future reference.Be vigorous in vetting any information you want to believe. I was dismayed to see so many people send me stuff from the well-known alien and UFO hunter, Simon Parkes, as if he were a credible cultural analyst. People legitimately do not know who or what to believe these days. If you put out unvetted poppycock, all you do is add to the rising tide of confusion and, when discovered, add yourself to many people’s list of unreliable sources. I keep saying you must be deliberate and restrained. I know that is hard to do when chaos surrounds us, but if you don’t, if you give in to your passion rather than mastering it, how can the many who will wake up this year come to you later? Do not squander your credibility.I know many are counting on Donald Trump to pull a last-minute rabbit out of his hat to make this all go away. It could happen – and if it does I will be delighted, for it would make my work a lot easier. Before any major event, I mentally run through at least a dozen different possible scenarios and plan my response to each – focusing on both what I consider most likely and what I consider the worst-case scenario. I worry that if Trump is not inaugurated to the second term he won (which I consider the most likely event) some will quit the field saying that we lost. I know what I will do if Trump prevails and what I will do if the coup is fully enacted. Do you know what you will do? Are you prepared for the unexpected?While I will not stand idly by while liberty is strangled, I am far more interested in secession than insurrection. Over the long haul, I don’t think it will last, but I also think it is the least bloody path forward – and would give us real-time feedback on which philosophy works and which is doomed to degenerate into chaos. I will probably go into exile into Texas for a time if secession rises…and will hopefully await the rise of sanity anew, as people throughout the country and the world rededicate themselves to faith, family and freedom.”*********Yeah, I know this is brutally long – but it is useful to look back and see where we were at when this really kicked off seriously. The actions people take foretell the ends they will meet. How much longer can the malicious incompetence of the radical left, which has seized power and is exercising it arbitrarily in ways that would give a Soviet commissar pause, continue before it all falls apart? What are you doing to ensure you have a network of friends who will help support each other through the worst of this great storm that has come upon the country and the world? The hour of the destructors is almost up – but it is going to take a long time and serious resolve to rebuild from the wreckage they leave. charliej373 | October 23, 2021 at 9:19 am | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: https://wp.me/p9wpk6-12c