TrapCast Express
TrapCast Express, it's Monday, August 16th, 2021.
The traditional Latin Mass may be all but forbidden in the Vatican II Church,
but at least Hindu cremation rituals are still permitted.
A news report was published today on Asianews.it that says the following,
quote,
A Catholic Church has allowed the cremation in its cemetery of a Hindu woman.
Family members approached me and expressed their concern that they could not conduct the funeral on their own land.
I didn't think twice, said Fr. Varghese Mathila Kathukuzi,
vicar of St. Joseph's Church in Rathaus.
Ramankari village near Alapuza.
Funeral rites were held inside the building and cremation in the cemetery.
At 3 p.m., the church premises welcomed Omanis family members to pay their last respects,
then volunteers lit the funeral pyre typical of the Hindu ritual in the cemetery.
Unquote.
You just can't make this stuff up, okay?
Now, to make clear what's wrong with this,
number one, cremation is strictly forbidden in the true Roman Catholic religion.
Number two, Hindus practice idolatry.
The Hindu religion is not only a false religion,
it actually worships a great many different gods, idols.
Number three, allowing a false religion to conduct an idolatrous funeral rite
with a cremation at what is supposedly a Catholic church and cemetery,
well, I think...
I think you can figure out for yourself what God and the church would say about that.
But hey, at least they didn't have the traditional Latin mass.
Francis made sure of that.
In other news, you probably already knew this, but the Vatican is really out there.
Well, in more ways than one, really.
On July 29th, Vatican News excitedly published a piece about the Vatican's chief astronomer,
Brother Guy Consolmato,
warning that it is not enough to just care for the planet.
The article states,
In light of the Laudato Si' encyclical, and Pope Francis calls for care of our common home,
Brother Consolmato recalls that the Greek word often used to refer to the world is cosmos.
He explains that everything that is in it,
whether it is the moon, a near-earth asteroid,
or a shuttle above,
or above the orbit of the atmosphere,
or the place where we walk around every day,
is God's creation that has been entrusted to us to care for.
Unquote.
Now, see, I think that is a really good point.
Asteroid care is definitely something that should have gotten a little more attention
in the Baltimore Catechism.
But what surprises me is that Brother Guy and the Vatican aren't condemning space travel.
In fact, the article begins,
Quote,
News headlines in recent times have reported an upswing in the commercial race
to get tourists into space,
creating excitement among astronomy and space enthusiasts.
In July, two space companies made suborbital blast-offs and flights
demonstrating the possibility to those who can afford it of venturing into outer space.
Regular commercial flights are scheduled to begin from 2022
with a growth in the number of people in the space.
A growing waiting list of about 600 tickets so far sold.
Unquote.
Come on, Vatican News, where is the condemnation?
Or are we to believe that these blast-offs don't release tons of carbon into the air?
Not to mention the fact that the money invested in space tourism
could probably be spent a little more wisely in this world.
Responding to the objection that one could feed the poor with that money,
Brother Guy,
has an answer.
He says,
Quote,
We are more than just animals that need to eat.
And we also need to feed our souls.
We do not live by bread alone.
Therefore, it would not be right to deny a human being the chance to explore
and to satisfy that curiosity about
who am I and where did I come from
and how am I in a relationship with this creation?
Unquote.
Yeah.
Because unless we have space tourism,
we can't get people to worry about their souls.
Yes, of course, you can really stretch things
and try to make that into a very remote opportunity for evangelization.
But to do that, you'd have to be really, you know, out there.
The website 1Peter5, you may have heard,
is no longer Steve Skojec's.
He sold the cash cow to Crisis Magazine,
and the editor of 1Peter5 is now Timothy Flanders.
So that means the pseudo-traditionalist editorial line
is pretty much going to remain the same,
except now Steve Skojec isn't constantly going to butt in anymore
to tell you about how crippled religion is driving him to apostasy and despair.
He does that now at his personal blog, The Skojec File,
which is, by the way, quote,
dedicated to the search for meaning,
purpose, self-improvement,
and the many curiosities of our existence.
Unquote.
And we'll just leave it at that.
Anyway, one of the rising stars in the semi-traditionalist world
that is now featured also on 1Peter5 is Kennedy Hall.
On July 29th, he published an article entitled,
Can We Love Pope Francis?
In that post, he suggests that the best way
to resist the temptation to resent,
or hate the man is,
to forget about him.
Hall writes, quote,
I am not a psychologist and offer no pretense of expertise in that realm,
but I believe that I can say from a place of pragmatism
that it is time to forget about the Pope.
I do not mean that we should reject Francis as Pope
or that we should not concern ourselves with the papacy as such.
Instead, what I mean is that we should distance ourselves
from Francis.
Instead, what I mean is that we should distance ourselves from Francis.
Francis the man, so that we can come to love Francis the Pope.
Unquote.
Got that?
Hey, look, if you need to go back a few seconds here
and listen to that again, that's fine.
I'm okay with that.
But I'm afraid it won't make any more sense
regardless of how many times you replay it.
So, in essence, Hall is saying that
the farther away you are from Francis,
the closer you are to him,
the closer you can be to the Pope.
That should tell him something about the validity
of Francis' claim to the papacy.
But wait a minute.
Wasn't it Francis as Pope, as supposed Pope,
who just gave them Traditiones Custodes,
the decree that essentially forbids the traditional Latin Mass?
Well, anyway, you would think that perhaps
these supposed traditional Catholics
would be willing to receive guidance
from, oh, I don't know, Pope St. Pius X, for example,
about what it means to love the Pope.
Well, here's what St. Pius X said about that.
And this is not just an off-the-cuff comment
with no further significance.
This is part of the official Acts of the Apostolic See,
Volume 4, from 1912, page 695.
It was November 18, 1925,
and Pope Pius X was addressing a group of priests
when he said this,
quote,
When we love the Pope, we do not dispute
whether he commands or requires a thing
or seek to know where the strict obligation of obedience lies
or in what manner we must obey.
When we love the Pope, we do not say
that he has not yet spoken clearly,
as if he were required to speak his will
in every man's ear.
And to utter it not only by word of mouth,
but in letters and other public documents as well.
Nor do we cast doubt on his orders,
alleging the pretext which comes easily
to the man who does not want to obey,
that it is not the Pope who is commanding,
but someone in his entourage.
We do not limit the field in which he can
and ought to exercise his authority.
We do not oppose to the Pope's authority
that of other persons,
no matter how learned,
who differ from the Pope.
For whatever may be their learning,
they are not holy,
for where there is holiness,
there cannot be disagreement with the Pope.
Unquote.
Not my words.
They are the words of St. Pius X.
You can look them up.
And these words obviously don't jive very well
with what Kennedy Hall is saying,
who ends his write-up by stating,
I contend that we can come to love Pope Francis,
we just need to forget about him.
Unquote.
Now look,
Kennedy Hall is an intelligent man.
What makes an intelligent man say something so foolish?
Well, I think the answer is pretty clear.
He's maneuvered himself into a corner
from which he cannot escape.
From the outset,
he's ruled out two positions,
number one,
the Novus Ordo position.
He's not going to allow Francis
to be his rule of faith.
He's not going to submit loyally
to his Pope's teachings or laws.
Number two,
he's ruled out the Sedevacantus position.
He's not going to say
that Francis isn't the Pope
or that we don't have a Pope.
So with those two alternatives excluded a priori,
he has no choice
but to utter such inanimate,
imagine a husband saying to his wife,
honey, dearest,
the less attention I pay to you,
the more I love you.
And since I promised that I would always love you,
I'm just going to mentally exclude you from my life.
No, don't worry.
I'm not saying you're not my wife.
I'm not looking for a divorce.
I will simply turn you off
because that is true love.
That is the way.
I can love you best.
Seriously?
Like, why are we even talking about this?
Why is garbage like this
even allowed on a website
that purports to be restoring Catholic tradition
and pulls in up to 20 grand a month
for that stated goal?
To add insult to injury,
Hall also states in this post,
quote,
I will defend the ancient faith
with every fiber of mine,
my being, unquote.
As you can see,
1 Peter 5 may be under new management,
but it's still the same quality of posts,
or lack thereof.
Which brings us to our last story for today,
also from 1 Peter 5,
by the omnipresent Dr. Peter Kważniewski.
On August 11th,
he published a brief article
on Father Annibale Bunyemi,
the chief creator of the new mass of Paul VI,
who was already working in the Vatican,
though in a lesser role,
when Pius XII was Pope.
Now, it seems that Bunyemi
was actually a cart-carrying member of the Lodge,
a real Freemason.
At least there is very strong evidence in that regard,
including the testimony of someone
finding his Masonic ID card
in a briefcase he mistakenly had left at a meeting.
But whether or not he was a Mason
is not important now.
The point is,
that he was responsible for creating the new mass
that Paul VI approved and promulgated in 1969,
and that is used, in essence,
at your local Novus Ordo church today.
In his write-up,
Dr. Kważniewski takes issue with the argument
made by conservative Novus Ordos
that if Paul VI approved the new mass,
and of course they believe Paul VI was a true Pope,
if Paul VI approved the new mass,
then it doesn't mean that Paul VI was a true Pope.
It doesn't matter if the man who worked behind the scenes to create it was a Mason or was compromised or had evil intentions or whatever, because then it is guaranteed to be good because it came from the Pope.
Now, that argument, in principle, is correct.
Remember what our Lord said, whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven.
The mistake that the conservative Novosortos make is thinking that Paul VI was a true Pope.
Now, Kwasniewski, of course, has been on a campaign as of late, especially as of late, against the orthodox understanding of the papacy, which he mockingly calls the hyper-papalist position, simply because he can't fit Francis into it.
But instead of dumping Francis...
Francis, he dumps the orthodox position instead.
Here's what he says, quote,
This is where we see most dramatically the un-Catholic irrationality to which the hyper-papalist position reduces itself, making the Pope a magician who can transform something bad into something good simply by adding his signature.
What happens if you take a lot of garbage, give it to the Pope, and he signs off?
Does it cease to be garbage, or does it just become papally approved and enforced garbage?
Unquote.
So, I guess that is supposed to be Catholic theology.
What we see here is simply one thing.
Peter Kwasniewski does not believe in the papacy.
It is Catholic dogma that the Church's approved rites of mass cannot be evil.
They cannot...
They cannot be harmful, heretical, sacrilegious, or impious.
In 1562, the Council of Trent issued the following canon.
Quote,
If anyone says that the ceremonies, vestments, and outward signs which the Catholic Church uses in the celebration of masses are incentives to impiety rather than the services of piety, let him be anathema.
Unquote.
That's Canon 7 of Session.
22.
You can find it in Denzinger, number 954.
In 1832, Pope Gregory XVI taught that, quote,
The discipline sanctioned by the Church must never be rejected or be branded as contrary to certain principles of natural law.
It must never be called crippled or imperfect or subject to civil authority.
In this discipline, the administration of sacred rites, standards...
Standards of morality and the reckoning of the rites of the Church and her ministers are embraced.
Unquote.
That's the encyclical Mirari Vos, paragraph number 9.
And Pope Pius XII confirmed this in his encyclical Mystici Corporis, paragraph 66, where he teaches, quote,
Certainly the loving mother, meaning the Church,
Certainly the loving mother is spotless in the sacraments by which she gives...
gives birth to and nourishes her children.
Unquote.
What this means, Professor Kwasniewski, is that if the Pope signs off on a liturgical decree that pertains to the whole Church,
even if it's just the Roman rite, that is enough,
then there is a divine guarantee that it is safe and holy and pleasing to God and not garbage.
That's why God gave us...
Now, if, on the other hand, it is manifest that it is not holy,
that it is not safe and not pleasing to God,
in other words, if it is garbage,
then the man who signed it obviously cannot have been the Pope of the Catholic Church.
There is one reason, and probably only one reason,
why Kwasniewski will not follow...
that line of reasoning.
It's because he does not want to arrive at that conclusion.
As the saying goes,
there are none so blind as those who refuse to see.
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