Traditional Catholicism- The Fundamentals

The Barque of Peter in a Category Seven Geopolitical Storm

The Barque of Peter in a Category Seven Geopolitical Storm

To say the long and eventful pontificate of John Paul II was a complete shipwreck is a cosmic understatement.  (And having lived through the whole of that pontificate, this Wolf can certainly give an educated opinion!)  For almost thirty years, JP2 fiddled while the world burned to the ground.  JP2 was like the band on the Titanic.  "Play it again, Sam" while the ship is going down.  No, even that is an understatement.   JP2 was literally dodging pieces of metaphysical wreckage while promoting his Ecumenical Vision.  And he elevated the most liberal bishops to eminent positions in the church while any prelate with just a whiff of the Traditional Faith was put out to the proverbial pasture.  During his tenure, pockets of resistance to the liberalism of Vatican II tenuously maintained the Faith while in seeming compliance with the "Spirit of Vatican II".  For the most part, however, they were merely lipstick on the proverbial pig, pseudo- Catholic enclaves really modern and liberal at the core with just Catholic trappings.  The real resistance, tragically, congealed around the SSPX, founded by Archbishop Lefebvre.  And while the Archbishop was outspoken concerning the Sacrifice of the Mass, and the errors of the Council, he was reluctant to address the more fundamental problems (more on those shortly).  His chapels were refuges from the raging geopolitical storm, but little else.  His organization had no direction, no real leadership, and no true plan to rebuild pockets of Christendom.  For thirty years, the SSPX acted as though Vatican II had just happened, and the solution was to "Maintain the Faith" until "The Church came to her senses".  The Vatican, meanwhile, played its part.  Throughout the reign of JP2 the "conservative" faithful were constantly titillated with rumors that the pope was going to "do something" about "the crisis in the church".  Or they hoped against hope that the Cardinals would elect a successor along the lines of Pius XII, who all agreed was excellent at the art of "poping".
Of course, the more one studies, the more one must quickly come to the conclusion that Christendom was in precipitous decline even before Vatican II.  While superficially all seemed well- seminaries and schools were full, institutions such as hospitals were populated by dedicated individuals, and the churches were places of prayer and reverence, yet, the surrender to modernity had largely occurred.  The "theory of evolution" was openly taught, with minor reservations.  The Galilean Cosmos had been adapted.  The Halls of Freemasonic "Education" had triumphed in the Catholic classroom, with Salvation History relegated to a measly forty five minutes of a seven hour curriculum.  And even within that forty five minutes, the bulk of the time was spent on moral issues such as contraception, and not on the fundamental ethos of Christianity.  The Faith became a series of do's and don'ts to avoid burning in Hell, and all about the letter of the law, rather than the Spirit of the Cross'
Needless to say, a bevy of "Private Devotions" and "Private Revelations" hurried to fill the vacuum for the more "conservative" and "spiritual".  Anne Catherine Emmerich, Mary of Agreda, Bridget of Sweden, and, for the more avante garde, Maria Valtorta and Hildegard of Bingen were but a few.  As for the "progressives", a spectrum ran the gamut from Teilhard de Chardin to Réginald Marie Garrigou-Lagrange, who sounds perfectly Catholic most of the time.  These men, of course, were all concentrated on building and perfecting the "interior life" at the expense of Vocation and Mission.  From their thinking a massive library of "pop-psychology" emerged.  This Wolf remembers one in particular: "The Particular Examen" by John A Hardon SJ; the booklet should have been titled: "How to Become A Neurotic In Three Simple Steps".  While making a careful examination of conscience every evening and at least attempting a Perfect Act of Contrition is a requisite activity especially in these times, it is not the road to perfect sanctity.  Thinking that one is rooting out and overcoming the "big sins" so that he might tackle ever more minute faults and reducing spirituality to a metaphysical laundering project is sure to arouse the pharasicial spirit of the Pride of Life, one of the three fundamental wounds of Original Sin.  Until our dying breath we are going to implore Our Lady to "pray for us sinners"; that is never going to change no matter how lily pure we think our souls to be.

Lost in all of this are the fundamentals of the Spiritual Life, insofar as it is a continual battle against ourselves, the world, and "Powers and Principalities" from on high, as per St Paul.  St Francis of Assisi used to call his fallen, rebellious nature "Brother Ass".  Like a Jackass, it is stubborn, recalcitrant, and persistent in its demands for instant and substantial gratification.  Our lower nature cringes with any thought of suffering, and is adverse to patience, humility, poverty, studiousity, and all the other virtues.  Given to itself, it will lead the soul to every perversion and excess, and will ultimately be the source of even its own misery, as witness the nauseous glutton or the unhealthy sloth or the sodomite injured by his actions.  Even the Pagans understood the downfall of the Hedonist.  Meanwhile, the world allures us to seek complacency in society.  We strive for a position, an income, and some favorable pastimes to the detriment of the Spiritual Life, and abhor thoughts of death, poverty, or suffering.  The very thought of prayer makes the soul listless.  And the notion that this life is a pilgrimage through a valley of tears is lost in the primrose world of suburbia.  (The Monkees song "Pleasant Valley Sunday" is a perfect parody of the nihilistic paradise offered by the Military-Industrial Complex to the Victors of the Late Great War.)  Meanwhile, of course, a host of devils are at the ready to convince people that, so long as they are complying with the minimum demands of Holy Mother Church, and not really committing very many "big sins", they are surely on the Road to Salvation.

Tragically, in the years following Vatican II, most would-be authentic reformers thought that all that was necessary was to preserve things as they were in 1960, at the eve of the Council.  The SSPX led the way, adopting the highly problematic 1962 Missal, as though fidelity to God and his church consists in complying with the popes to the greatest extent possible, without "fatally compromising".  This thinking is necessarily progressive, and its underlying principle is the notion that the philosophical and theological trappings of Holy Mother Church are "flowering and blossoming" towards some indeterminate perfection reserved for a later date.  This, of course, mirrors the "Progressivism" of the French Revolution, where humanity, by its ingenuity and reason, will ultimately build heaven on earth.  (Communists call it "The Workers' Paradise".)  Lost in this is one of the fundamental axioms of Catholic Eschatology- that the world is constantly advancing to the Reign of the Antichrist, with that advance being slowed by adherence to virtue and accelerated by the multiplication of sins.  Man cannot change the cosmic plan of God and Salvation History.  (Today a host of "private revelations" speak of "minor chastisements" which will be followed by a period of peace or desolation.  They are ultimately all preternatural as opposed to eschatological.  Ultimately what we should want is the actual reign of Christ in the Kingdom of Heaven, not some sort of restoration of a prosperous world where we can have a "real job" and afford vacations.)

For those paying attention, what we have seen since the French Revolution is a tremendous development of Our Lady in Salvation History, which began with the apparitions to St Catherine Labore which culminated in the Miraculous Medal, continued with St Bernadette Sobrious and the miraculous spring at Lourdes, and were consummated at Fatima, with the Divine request for Devotion to the Immaculate Heart.  Conjoined with the writings especially of St Louis Marie De Montfort and his method of Total Consecration to Our Lady, what we truly have is the foundation for continuing the Christian life even with the absence of the clergy and the liturgy.  For a very fundamental point, to which many are amiss, is that God absolutely forbids us to attend bad liturgy for any reason.  And a priest lacking an Apostolic Mandate, even though he be pious and perfect, is the conductor of Bad Liturgy.  And even worse is a renegade bishop who gets himself consecrated without an Apostolic Mandate, and then starts ordaining priests.  Irregardless of his intentions, he cannot be but schismatic.  (This does not apply to Archbishop Lefebvre when he consecrated his four bishops in 1988.  Archbishop Lefebvre, even though he was acting in defiance of the pope, had an apostolic mandate, and was perfectly even within the code of canon law, which foresaw the type of "emergency" found in the Post-Vatican II Church.)

At any rate, Our Lady of Fatima is so fundamental to the context of our times, that ignoring her can have nothing but catastrophic results.  Our Lady of Fatima told the Three Little Shepherds that in October she would work a miracle so that "All might believe".  "All" means everybody, from popes and bishops on down to priests and the women cleaning the sanctuary.  "All" includes presidents, judges, mayors, doctors, lawyers, teachers, students, farmers, and janitors.  Our Lady of Fatima is not optional, not a "private revelation", nor a "personal devotion".  Our Lady of Fatima had a very fundamental message:  Believe and Act or suffer the Consequences.  And that message applies to individuals, families, churches, cities, and nations.  To the extent that individuals, families, cities and nations have heeded her requests, they have enjoyed relative peace.  And those who have ignored Our Lady have experienced nothing but disaster.

For decades, this Wolf has been advocating that the road to salvation is simple.  The daily rosary should be the foundation.  The next step is withdrawing from the world as much as possible.  For the vast majority, this means acquiring a chunk of land and building a sustainable household "off the grid" so to speak.  Tragically, the movement has suffered from a woeful lack of pioneers and leadership- especially from the priest.  The average Traditional Priest seems quite satisfied to offer Mass to a far-flung congregation whose only substantial difference to their Conciliar peers is they attend the Latin Mass.  What the Plandemic of 2020 proved is that most of these Traditional priests are clueless about the fundamentals of the Spiritual Life, are adverse to put principle before obedience to authority, and are, quite simply, cowards.

Most who read these posts know the Conciliar Church is a complete shipwreck.  But the landscape of the Traditional Church is little better at this point.  Those attending the Latin Mass are little different from "Political conservatives"- witness Fr Ripperbergers recent admonitions about "Voting for the Lesser of Two Evils" as though Donald Trump is even going to keep his campaign promises.  Priests such as this have apparently learned nothing over the last 20 years.  They act as though the Cardinal McCarrick revelations, the onerous documents of Pope Frantic, and the blatant Satanism of the Modern world had never happened.  And they are perfectly clueless concerning eschatology.  They are immersed in a deep spiritual blindness because they apparently never contemplate Our Lady of Fatima.  God help them.

If the Blind lead the Blind, both shall fall into the Pit of Hell.