Pope’s on a plane! DOWN! Errybody GET DOWN!!!

Seriously, anyone, particularly any priest, “IN SHOCK!!!” and freaking out today are just going to get a smack upside the head from me and a stern talking-to. What wearies me most is not the pope; it’s the people still being surprised and outraged and horrified and shocked! shocked!

Enough. We’ve told you and told you and told you. If you didn’t listen it’s not our problem that you’re having a bad day now.

As our buddy Steve Skojec said on FB today, “He’s like a diabolical Top 40 radio station; the hits just keep on coming!”

It confounds reason at this stage to expect anything else from this creature. The people flipping out now make me think of people who become astonished when it rains. But we all saw the clouds, heard the thunder rumbling, felt the temperature drop and the wind rise. If you didn’t run outside at these signs to get the laundry off the line, don’t moan to me now that it’s all ruined.

Pay attention. It’s part of the job of life. If you neglect to do it, you deserve whatever misery you experience.

The only people who have an excuse to complain right now are those who struggle with same sex attraction and try to live chaste lives.

As an American priest friend just wrote to me on FB: “I have also received a few emails from men involved in COURAGE…… homosexuals who live chastely. All of them say HOW BETRAYED they now feel.”

And when this is all over, and we’re all standing before the Just Judge, I expect there will be a few Lutherans who will be pointing at Pope Francis and saying, “He said it was all OK.”

Telling, isn’t it, that the priests freaking out aren’t really paying too much attention to that part of his comments. And yet, it is in violation of the first three Commandments.

Guys, there’s a reason they’re in that order.

Anyway, I just posted this to do the pro-forma. I’m afraid it is of so little moment to me, I’m already distracted.

I’ve been reading a wonderful work of spiritual theology by the great Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, the Dominican priest who a friend of mine calls “the last theologian”. The Three Ages of the Interior Life. (full text right there.) It’s on the pursuit of Christian perfection, which is, after all, the actual point of all this.

He writes:

There are those who seem to think that it is sufficient to be saved and that it is not necessary to be a saint. It is clearly not necessary to be a saint who performs miracles and whose sanctity is officially recognized by the Church. To be saved, we must take the way of salvation, which is identical with that of sanctity. There will be only saints in heaven, whether they enter there immediately after death or after purification in purgatory. No one enters heaven unless he has that sanctity which consists in perfect purity of soul. Every sin though it should be venial, must be effaced, and the punishment due to sin must be borne or remitted, in order that a soul may enjoy forever the vision of God, see Him as He sees Himself, and love Him as He loves Himself. Should a soul enter heaven before the total remission of its sins, it could not remain there and it would cast itself into purgatory to be purified.

If you want to know why we’re bothering with any of this, read this book.

Then go outside and do the weeding. The things this pope says about religion, God or politics don’t really matter anymore. We still have people falling over themselves to try to explain him in a “Catholic way”. Why? He has nothing to add to help you, nothing to say that will get you to heaven. It has been evident for some years now that he simply hates the Faith, and hates anyone who follows it. He is irrelevant to your eternal salvation, unless you do what he says (and then, not irrelevant… get me?)

We know what he is. We know that he is the product of the last 50 years of systemic apostasy and heresy. This is the final form of the Church of Vatican II. He has already taught us everything useful that he can. Any new thing he says, any new blasphemies blurted out of his jaw, is irrelevant now. This is what God wanted us to understand with this creature: here is the New Church. Here is the New Religion.

Take the lesson and return to the ancient Faith.

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