From Rorate today, another bishop, in Grenada, Spain has adopted the Buenos Aires directive:

“…on the implementation of chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia, issued by the bishops of the pastoral region of Buenos Aires. This is especially discouraging as Archbishop Martínez has in the past been known for his courage and orthodoxy.”

I’m afraid I find Rorate’s howling over how “orthodox” he was a little frustrating.

Listen. Get it through your thick little Hobbit-skulls:

No one.

Is coming.

To save us.

There can’t ever be better news than when an enemy of Christ unmasks himself publicly. THE key problem in the Church since 1965 has been confusion, ambiguity, the clouding of issues and the conflating of positions. This bishop is conservative; this one is liberal on some issues… No one has been able to figure out what is going on, so they have been deceived.

This is the end of the deception.

I’ve related many times that about fifteen years ago – in the period in which John Paul II was incapacitated and the ecclesiastical enemies of Catholicism were closing in on the controls – my colleagues and I were discussing how it seemed as though the “sides are lining up.” It was evident then that a great shift was occurring, a kind of ideological troop deployment to key strategic areas.

That was then. This is the time of unmasking. The time of the Great Clarification. If you’re not getting down on your knees every morning and giving thanks to God for putting you in this time – the first time in 50 years when it has been easy to see what is going on and understand it – then you’re doing it wrong. Stop whining and be grateful.

What we have now is the next phase in which the ordinary pew-sitting Catholics, the people like you and me, with no power and no influence, are being forced to choose. The safe and comfortable “conservative” position is gone. Those “conservative” and “liberal” categories have evaporated; there is no more conservative middle ground to stand on. What we have now is a clear choice before us, and we see the various low-level bishops like this chappie here making that choice. I’m always glad when one of them does, and we can thank Pope Francis quite sincerely for providing this demarcation line. Now we know exactly where the line is, and we will see exactly who is on which side of it. Ultimatums are good for everyone, and this pope has provided it.

But the time of peace and ease is gone. The time when we could say that we are “conservative” and by this mean we “accept Vatican II, but…”, that we are good, get-along Catholics who can “find common ground” and rub shoulders with secularists and liberals in a comfy, non-threatening world of happy ecumenical get-togethers over warm milk and cookies.

And we are in a time when keeping the Faith – which includes knowing it – is up to us. We’re it. There isn’t going to be a confrontation between Bergoglioism and Catholicism represented at the highest levels. No bishop is coming to rescue us.

As our buddy Steve said in his latest podcast: this isn’t the movies. There is no cavalry. The African bishops aren’t coming to save us. The Polish bishops aren’t coming to save us. Cardinal Burke isn’t coming to save us. Cardinal Sarah isn’t coming to save us. Bishop Schneider isn’t coming to save us.

The path we’re on leads to Calvary. And it’s the only path we’ve got. Faithfulness to the end.

The other choice is being made manifest to us every day. It’s Christ or Bergoglianism.

Your choice.

 

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