“I saw also the relationship between two popes … I saw how baleful would be the consequences of this false church. I saw it increase in size; heretics of every kind came into the city of Rome. The local clergy grew lukewarm, and I saw a great darkness…

“I had another vision of the great tribulation. It seems to me that a concession was demanded from the clergy which could not be granted. I saw many older priests, especially one, who wept bitterly. A few younger ones were also weeping. But others, and the lukewarm among them, readily did what was demanded. It was as if people were splitting into two camps.”

…but it’s not like we haven’t already figured it out…

So, do you think the fact that the Bianconi’s hotel wifi has locked me out of the blog is a sign from God that I shouldn’t be posting anything on the latest kerfuffle? When I try to sign in I get an error page that tells me the “server is not found” and some other stuff… I dunno. Our tech-guy says it’s not me, it’s the innernet’s fault. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. I just have to catch it when it’s in the right mood.

I went to Mass this morning and we were having a Requiem. So, of course, we had the Gregorian Dies Irae, which was awesome. And all the while I was sitting in the pew working out a new painting in my brain-o.

It’s the Santa Scolastica I’ve been thinking for some time about doing. That’s what my brain was doing during Mass. Working out the details, how I was going to get to use my nice new tube of artist-quality ultramarine I bought in Spoleto, even though she is normally depicted in her black Benedictine habit, and how was I going to work in some touches of scarlet, maybe by putting in the background of her hermitage at the base of the hill here and pretending that it’s heaven and, because obviously it’s always May in heaven, there are poppies everywhere. (Yeah, good idea…just thought of that now.)

<— Like this, only more Santa Scolastica-y.

Before Mass someone had called to bring me up to speed on the latest from our good friend Ganswein, but for some reason it was the painting that was in my head instead of All That Stupid Crap. Santa Scolastica, with her hermitage and the little church and the valley in the background, with lots of wildflowers and some frolicking animals maybe, a fox or two and maybe some hedgehogs and bunnies. I thought I would maybe depict her in heavenly glory, so I could put some beautiful colours in her dress. And gold. Lots and lots of gold!

Anyway, you know, this speech by Ganswein is pretty damning, to be sure. “An expanded petrine ministry…” Good grief. Seriously, do they actually expect people to buy this crap?

I dunno, maybe he meant to spill it, tell us what was really going on, while still sounding like he was on their side, like it’s a coded message or something. “Everything’s great! It’s just FINE THAT WE HAVE TWO POPES, isn’t it? Right? Wink-wink, nudge nudge… Oh, did I just say that out loud? Heh… ahem…”

Sigh… You know, I’m kind of at the stage when when I hear stuff like this, I’m more inclined to eye-rolls than anything else. Blah blah blah… world’s ending …blah blah… invalid Conclave… blah, blah…two popes … blabbity-blabbity… Great Chastisement… yadda yadda…

I think if I had been a combatant in the Hunger Games and the evil people threw me into the arena and threw some New Awful Thing at me every ten minutes, I’d more or less just sit down and say, “OK, come and get me when you’re ready, I’ll be right here identifying these wildflowers.”

Yeah, two popes, and a Catholic leadership that really thinks it’s Just Fine that we just get to make shit up now. There is no more pretense at all that we’re in anything like continuity with the previous 2000+ years of Catholic history. Yay!! So THAT’s what this whole “New Springtime” thingy is about.

In response to an email from our friend Ann Barnhardt this morning, I said,

“Personally, I think we still can’t call it definitively. What we can say, however, with I believe perfect accuracy, is that things are more effed up now than they have ever, ever been in the entire history of the Church and when the sweet, sweet grace of God returns to the face of the earth, [with or without the Great Chastisement – I’m starting not to care] and the Immaculate Heart triumphs, as it must, future popes – real ones – are going to have a job of work ahead of them sorting it all out.

“…Furthermore, I hold that the difference between ‘lay’ and ‘lie’ must be restored.”

What. Ever.

As for the anti-pope thing, I’m just going to stick with my original theory: it’s possible Bergugsie is an antipope. It’s possible that Benedict was coerced and this whole resignation thing has been bullshit from the start and the Conclave was a lie that everyone went along with. In fact, I’m going to go so far as to say that I think that’s getting to look more and more likely all the time. But it still isn’t my call to make. I’m officially agnostic on the antipope question.

The doo-doo hit the fan three years ago, and we are in no position, whilst swimming in the midst of it all, to make such determinations. In the history of the Church, these have always been the things that future popes and ecumenical councils have had to work out. Previous ages of chaos have required a lot more work than a blog post to sort out. I’m just glad it’s not going to be my job.

[But just a note to Ganswein and all the little papal NOChurch minions: you know no one is fooled by any of this, right? You know that, right?

You know that thing when a little kid tells a really obvious lie, and even if he thinks he’s got away with it he’ll keep talking about it? He does this because even if he thinks he’s gotten away with it – he knows it’s a lie and it’s just plain dangerous to leave it alone, just in case someone figures it out so he keeps on jabbering about his lie and making it bigger. You’re doing that.

But just so you know, no one believes it. No one believes anything any of you says. We know you’re liars – every motherloving one of y’all. If you said it was raining, we’d stick our heads out the window to see.

Just to clarify in case that was too ambiguous:

No one.

Believes.

Anything.

Any of you.

Says.

No one.

How do we know you’re bullshitting us? Your lips are moving.

OK? Are we clear on that? Good.]

Yeah, it’s looking worse and worse. But I find it hard to get all worked up about it. We’ve known that we’ve had it coming since we started murdering babies by the tens of millions per year. How is this a bigger surprise?

And the whole two-popes thing that has been bothering us and weirding us all out for three years is obviously something so wrong that they can’t just leave it alone with their original cover story. The self-evident insanity that has descended on everyone since March 2013 is now getting to be so obvious they feel the need to keep coming back and saying, “Yeah, it’s normal! Totally! Utterly! Nothing to see here! Like we said. It’s fine! Just fine…! Everybody shut up!”

As a Traditionalist Catholic, it’s a great deal easier not to get into a tizzy over it all. I Tradded 13 years ago because the logic attached to the observable facts led to precisely this conclusion. The abandonment of the Principle of Authority and adoption of “make-reality-up-as-we-go-along” Modernism. When you’ve got people who refuse to pay attention to the Logical Principle of Non-Contradiction, who deny ontology, who can’t define “is”… it was going to lead to this exact moment; utter chaos, bad prelates just doing whatever the hell they want, saying whatever the hell they want, despoiling the Church for every nickel they can get, using their Modernist excuses to bugger the choir boys with impunity…

The things I observed 13 years ago were like looking down and seeing that I was standing on a road. It was the work of a moment to look down the length of the road and see where it led, and to say, Erm… no thanks.

So I changed roads. I had to wade through some tall weeds and hike around a bit to find the Old Road, and it was pretty difficult to see, all hidden and ignored as it was and sometimes grown over. But it was there, and seeing it made it possible to look along its length and see that this was where I was supposed to be going; somewhere much nicer than where NOChurch was going.

…If ya get my drift…

The things that really interest me now are working out the Chant and learning to sing along to the little squares.

And the garden … And the fact that the elder is in flower right now and it’s bloody well raining again and it’s going to be just like last year when I had to go collect the flowers for the wine in the pouring bloody rain, which was kind of sucky.

And that I have finally collected enough bits of broken marble and terracotta tile to put the little pavement together I’ve been planning (a nice little sort of mosaic thing with little spaces in between the pieces so I can plant some thyme, like Grandma did in hers) …and it’s freaking raining again, so I’ll either have to do it in the pouring bloody rain, or wait until … I dunno, August maybe? Gah!

You know what I want to know? What I think I’d really like some clarity on? The one thing that really is bugging me right now?

Anyone got any idea when it’s going to fricking STOP RAINING….!!!?

~

Steve’s covering all that other stuff with more thinky-talky stuff here.

I just can’t be arsed.

I’m working on a big project for the Remnant about the difference between NOChurch and RealChurch. And obviously none too soon.

 

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