Of Popes and Kings...
...Salvation History Continues...
This Wolf has just waded through the Epic Three Volumes of Church History by Monsignor Phillip Hughes (with 1200 pages devoted to the period from 1250 to 1517). Although Monsignor Hughes mentions the Jews but once after Constantine, the Truth keeps leaching from between the cracks of his Sheeple construct. The volumes are mislabeled. Almost 98% of the book is a blow-by-blow account of the actions of the Popes- as though that is the History of Holy Mother Church. Our Lady's bequeathing of the Rosary to St Dominic and the Scapular to St Simon Stock are not even mentioned. Nor are the exploits of Sts Cyril and Methodius. Nor those of St Boniface, St Vincent Ferrer, St Joan of Arc... rather, this is like a book called "The History of WW2" that merely discusses the day to day actions of Franklin Delano Roosevelt from 1938 to 1944, and those of Harry Truman from 1944 to 1945. Meanwhile, the book is somewhere between Fractured Fairy Tales and Hellywood's version of the Old Testament as encapsulated in "The Ten Commandments".
Pope St Celestine V is mentioned. He is, of course, the Monk elected Pope, but Hughes dismisses him as being just this side of sanity while bequeathing church offices to the most unfit of men- fellow monks from his circle who apparently knew nothing about administration, high finance, and political relations. (Pope Celestine himself had been in charge of 16 Monasteries which he founded, so one would think he knew a thing or two about the aforementioned subjects...) Of course, after being essentially forced to retire (there was a big debate at the time about whether a pope could actually resign, and his successor, Pope Boniface, essentially wrote the "canons" by which a Pope could "legally" retire"...) Pope Celestine was imprisoned by his successor, who not only annulled all his acts and expelled all his appointees from office, but utterly smote all his decrees, bulls, and letters from the archives. Now, many might say this was no big deal- after all, Pope Celestine only ruled for five scant months- but, what immediately followed was a debate about whether Boniface VIII was actually pope. Rome (and Italy) became so hostile to the Papacy that the popes fled to Avignon, and so began the whole saga which ended with St Catherina of Sienna. Scratch that, because when the pope she had persuaded to come to Rome, Pope Gregory XI, died, Rome was so hostile that the Cardinals claimed they had been coerced into electing Pope Urban VI, and, fleeing to Avignon, elected Clement VII, so beginning the "Great Western Schism".
For Monsignor Hughes, this is all just Random History, but for this Wolf, Great Effects have Great Causes, and in this case the Great Cause was that the Papacy had actually been captured by the Jewish Conspiracy- Yes, Virginia, there IS a Jewish Conspiracy- in the early 13th Century. (When Our Lord Jesus Christ asked St Francis of Assisi to rebuild His Church, He was not Whistling Dixie.) The Culmination of that effort was the election of Celstine, who wanted to reform a Curia that obviously did not want to be reformed. And so entered Benedetto Caetani to machinate "Papal Retirements" and make the Institutional Church safe for Clerical Corruption. It's not that the Monks did not give up without a fight, but they were condemned for such nefarious practices as conducting Three Lents during the year. (Celestine actually wanted a calendar with three lents- one extending from past the feast of All Saints until Christmas, from Septuagesima until Easter, and from after the Ascension until Pentecost, of which the Rogation Days are but a remnant.) But the Pagan Relapse- er, Renaissance- was just around the corner...
Of course, all this has a relation to our day. Pope Benedict XVI, when he "resigned", did so after praying at the Tomb of St Celestine V, who he cited as the precedent for his unprecedented action. And so, in 2013, we got Clown Church and Clown Pope. (And, apparently, Pope Frantic has Big Plans for the Immediate Future, but that is a topic for another day.)
Our Lady of Fatima is not optional, nor was Fatima a "Private Revelation", and while a whole Three Ring Circus full of Clueless Clowns continues to ponder Electoral politics and pray for a another Putrid Pius, those of us with both feet on the ground and ou head in the Clouds of Salvation History can clearly see the Grand Convergence, and Armageddon Rising. (Oh, Tel Aviv and the Evangelicals are about to get a Hell of a Lot more Apocalypse than what they ever bargained for... and how!)
Is the sudden execution of Jacques de Molay, 23rd Grand Master of the Knights Templar, in 1313, by order of Pope Clement V, at the behest of Philip the Fair, starting to make just a tad more sense?
(They were- and are- all in on it.) "Why have the Gentiles raged, and the people devised vain things? The kings of the earth stood up, and the princes met together, against the Lord and against his Christ." [Psalm 2, Verses 1 and 2]
The more things change, the more they stay the same.