TrapCast Express
TrapCast Express, it's Wednesday, May 30th, 2018.
The Pope is an Enigma.
That message is part of the lead story in the March 2018 edition of Inside the Vatican magazine.
The Enigma of Pope Francis, five years into his pontificate, is the enigma of a pope who can at times sound very traditional, yet at other times sound quite secular, almost fashionable.
Folks, whenever the Vatican pundits have run out of ideas about what the Pope is really up to, that's when they roll out the The Pope is an Enigma thesis.
It's the ultimate killer argument.
They did it with Paul VI, they did it with John Paul II, they probably did it also with Benedict XVI, although I can't think of a concrete case now.
And now they're doing it with Francis.
It's nothing but a last-ditch effort to keep you in the game of believing that the modernist currently occupying the papal throne is in fact a true and valid pope.
All other defenses, all rhetoric and spin having failed, all they have left is,
to say that, well, he's just an enigma, a riddle, a big mystery that no one can understand.
But he is the pope, you see.
It's just that nobody can figure him out.
He's just so mysterious.
And so how are you going to go against that without appearing arrogant, right?
I mean, surely you won't claim that you can understand him, that you know what he's trying to do and what his real intentions are, right?
Right.
So, what do you know?
Since Vatican II, there's been one enigma after another claiming that chair of St. Peter.
But let's not be silly.
There is no enigma here.
Francis is just not a Catholic.
That's all it is.
He's all over the place because he's trying to damage and destroy souls.
And that is the only reasonable conclusion you can come to when informed by traditional Catholic teaching, you look at all the evidence.
Nowadays, I know people will do anything to keep from drawing such a damning conclusion about anyone, especially about someone claiming to be the pope, because they don't want to judge.
But that is based on a real misunderstanding of Christ's admonition not to judge, lest we be judged in Matthew 7.1.
But that's only half the story, you see, because Christ was very clear, for example, in John 7.24, that we must judge justly.
Judge not according to the appearance, but judge just judgment, our Lord says there.
So, which is it?
Are we supposed to judge justly or not at all?
Well, quite simply, the teaching of Christ is that we must not engage in rash judgment, meaning we are not allowed to draw an unfavorable conclusion about the character of our neighbor based on insufficient evidence.
In other words, if someone tells you that the bus leaves.
At 8 o'clock, but it actually leaves at 7.45, and so you miss the bus, then absent any contrary evidence, you're not allowed to conclude that the person in question lied to you and wanted to deceive you.
But you have to assume that he simply made a mistake, that he remembered wrong or somehow got something else confused, because that's entirely conceivable.
In other words, do not think ill of your neighbor when you do not have sufficient reason.
That's common sense.
But what this does not mean is that you can never arrive at an unfavorable judgment of someone, no matter the evidence.
And that, too, is common sense.
And so, with regard to Francis, it's absurd to think that the man is innocently mistaken about a few things, that he's sincerely trying to be a Catholic and teach Catholicism, and that he would never want anyone to be misled or confused about matters of salvation.
And that's just absurd.
The man has all the characteristics of deliberately deceiving souls, and that is why he will often do and say contradictory things.
And that is also the reason why the other Vatican II antipopes did the same thing.
And so, for example, that's why you have Paul VI promulgating the council and instituting the new mass and then lamenting that the smoke of Satan has entered the church, as he said during a homily given on June 29, 1972.
And that's why you have John Paul II presiding over the Nobles Ordo Church for 26 years and then complaining, in the end, about a silent apostasy.
Ratzinger, too.
Shortly before he stepped down, Benedict XVI, who had been a major mover and shaker not only at the Second Vatican Council, but also afterwards, directing its implementation as prefect of the Congregation for the Destruction of the Faith, Benedict decried what he called the Council of the Media.
And by this he meant Vatican II not as it really was, but as the media portrayed it to be, with a political hermeneutic, a political interpretation, and therefore distortion of the real council.
And so Benedict said in 2013 that it was the council of the media, the virtual council that was, quote, the dominant one, the more effective one, and it created so many disasters, so many problems, so much suffering.
Seminaries closed, convents closed, banal liturgy, and the real council had difficulty establishing itself and taking shape.
The virtual council was stronger than the real council, unquote.
People don't fall for this nonsense.
The closing of seminaries and convents, the sacrilegious, blasphemous, and ridiculous liturgies, and the complete collapse of Christendom wasn't because of some media coverage of the council.
It was.
The real council.
Who do you think implemented the council?
Was that the media?
How did Vatican II flow into every single parish on the globe?
It was through the local bishops who received their instructions from the Vatican.
And between 1982 and 2005, who oversaw the whole thing as the Vatican's supposed doctrinal watchdog?
You got it.
Joseph Ratzinger.
The Vatican II antipopes have been very...
...very good at complaining on occasion about the very problems that we wouldn't even have without them.
How often do you hear someone like Michael Voris or whoever else that the Pope is surrounded by evil men, by bad advisors and mischievous cardinals?
Well, who do you think appointed these people in the first place?
Who's keeping them in power?
Who could fire any of them, or all of them collectively, at any point?
Oh, and the best part is...
...when then one of those evil, evil cardinals himself gets elected Pope, supposedly, right?
And all of a sudden, the evil cardinal transforms himself into an innocent little lamb, a beautiful butterfly of pristine orthodoxy, who is, however, himself surrounded by evil, evil cardinals once again.
Case in point, Joseph Ratzinger.
One more time.
I will never forget when in February of 2005...
...a few weeks before the death of John Paul II, Christopher Ferrara wrote in The Remnant, quote...
...more and more it becomes apparent that this man, Joseph Ratzinger, is perhaps the most industrious ecclesial termite of the post-conciliar epoch, tearing down even as he makes busy with the appearance of building up.
The longer Ratzinger guards Catholic doctrine, the more porous the barriers that protect it become.
Indeed, as I...
...have pointed out more than once on these pages, it was Ratzinger who wrote in 1987, in the second edition of his Principles of Catholic Theology, that the demolition of bastions in the Church is a long-overdue task.
The Church, he declared, must relinquish many of the things that have hitherto spelled security for her and that she has taken for granted.
She must demolish long-standing bastions and trust solely the shield of faith.
Now it seems that...
...the bastions all but demolished, even the shield of faith is about to clatter to the ground.
Unquote.
Words, ladies and gentlemen, of Christopher Ferrara in February of 2005.
A few weeks later, Ferrara shed tears of joy at the announcement that this industrious ecclesial insect had become the chief termite at the Vatican, under the name now of Benedict XVI.
And from then on, of course, Benedict gradually became...
...a great restorer of tradition for Ferrara, even though he never repudiated any of his theology.
On January 21st, 2009, Benedict XVI lifted the excommunications against the bishops of the Society of St. Pius X.
And on March 10th, he sent out an explanatory letter about this to the world's Novus Ordo bishops, in which he reaffirmed his commitment to Vatican II, saying, quote,
...the effort to promote a common witness by...
...Christians to their faith, ecumenism, is part of the supreme priority.
Added to this is the need for all those who believe in God to join in seeking peace, to attempt to draw closer to one another, and to journey together even with their differing images of God towards the source of light.
This is interreligious dialogue.
Unquote.
On March 16th, then, the Remnant posted an article by Ferrara entitled, Pope Stands with Traditionalists.
In which the author quickly admits, quote,
...I do not want to dwell on the letters de rigueur, meaning required by etiquette, nods to ecumenism and interreligious dialogue, ill-defined pastoral initiatives, which have gone nowhere and produced nothing but confusion and inertia in the Church.
Catholics remain free to express their objections to these novel concepts, whatever they mean, and the novel practices adopted in pursuit of them.
Unquote.
And there you see...
...the spin.
Ratzinger was no longer the modernist termite who endorses ecumenism and interreligious dialogue out of conviction.
No, now wearing white, the former destroyer of the Catholic bastions was now giving them a nod merely for reasons of etiquette.
And besides, what do these novel concepts really mean, anyway?
Decades after Vatican II, we couldn't possibly know the answer, right?
Because...
...like Paul...
...Paul VI, then John Paul II, and Benedict XVI, and now Francis, is all just one heck of a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
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