A commenter writes:

As an Irishman, Papism is in my blood. Irish Ultramontanism was pretty legendary and for good reason, but not for the reason most people think…The English had driven out our native aristocracy and over the ages of persecution and disenfranchisement, the priesthood was our only recourse of social leadership, the Pope was the only one who we could find succour and call our king. Was it in error? Perhaps, but you try being a Catholic in Ireland for the past few centuries and not be the same way, maybe you could find your path to Sainthood by resisting the burning need for an anchor amidst the fire and fury.

And so it was up until the abdication by His Holiness Benedict XVI that I had nothing to rely on but the Pope. My only masses were NO (I only first attended a TLM just over a month ago, it simply is not possible for me to make it regular) and were decent enough, no liturgical abuses and the Priest had a healthy respect for Confession and the Eucharist, if not a burning love, neither were spurned even though hardly anyone went to confession regularly if at all. I was lucky, being born in Northern Ireland meant Catholicism was a part of the tribal identity and hence more important in the face of the Orangemen of Ulster. Because the Bishops could not be counted on to stand up against the challenges of the age, silence ruled, politicians could not be trusted, the parties (family loyalty to parties is traditional here) merely used you for votes and didn’t give a toss about you and in many places the priests were all but open heretics and my entire life has been dominated by news of paedophilia scandals that never seemed to end.

My only hope in this mortal coil was the Pope, ‘Don’t worry so long as we have the Pope,’ ‘Its alright, Pope Benedict is slowly changing things around, we’ll see, in twenty years everything may be a little better,’ ‘Its okay, the heretics are dying off, we have Benedict, he will pick good Bishops, when I have children things will be better for them and Ireland will be Catholic again,’ Papism was, in a very real sense, all I had in daily life to keep me going.

With Pope Francis I have nothing.

Sorry buddy, whoever you are, but I’m going to make an example of you for the whole class.

This is everything this website is about. You have learned the painful lesson that all faithful Catholics will have to learn. This, right here,_ is the good that Pope Francis and his demonic crew are doing_.

Yes, we have been lied to. Yes, we have been robbed. Yes, we have had our patrimony reduced to a shell, a sham. Isn’t it time to learn something useful from this?

“My only hope in this mortal coil was the Pope…”

This is not the Catholic Faith. This is the post-Vatican2 reaction-heresy of papal positivism, a caricature of Catholicism that, in a sense, defiantly looked back at our Protestant and secularist detractors and said, “Yes! I do believe that the pope is always right about everything… I do look upon the person of the pope as my saviour on earth, waddya gonna do about it, heathen!?”

Believe me, I get it. I was the same in the early part of my reversion to the Faith, about John Paul II, who was held up as a hero, a saviour even, particularly to those of us who had grown up in the midst of the Cold War. I was a Papal Positivist.

But slowly, slowly as I delved more and more into the Faith, and as I had my liturgical sense more and more gravely offended by the parody that is the Novus Ordo, I started to understand the depths of the trouble we were really in. When John Paul II invited the heathens to place their idols on top of the tabernacle in Assisi, when he bowed and scraped before the world’s princes, when he apologised for the Faith, when he gave pectoral crosses and bishops’ rings to the Anglican laymen dressed up as churchmen…

The cognitive dissonance was enough finally to force me to ask some very awkward questions indeed, and to lead me to some inevitable conclusions based on observation. This thing, this wet dishrag of a pseudo-religion that has been installed in all the institutions of the Catholic Church is. not. Catholicism.

It was painful. I hated it. Who wants to be in the out-group? Not me. But the imperative of the Real was inescapable.

“Papism was, in a very real sense, all I had in daily life to keep me going.”

And fed only with this drug, your strength has withered for lack of real food. You have woken up not only to the falsehood that is the novusorodist/vaticantwoist fraud, but to the ennervating effect it has had on you personally. This is also a good thing. To be cured, a sick man has to understand that he is sick, and find out what is making him sick.

“With Pope Francis I have nothing.”

Indeed, you are right. You have had this poison – that was all you had to eat – taken away and are through the withdrawal and are now faced with the task of rebuilding your strength on wholesome, real food.

Having been forced to abandon your Papal Positivist heresy, you have nothing false, nothing deadly, nothing soul-killing, you are no longer taking a daily dose of poison. With Pope Francis you, we all, have had the glamour stripped away from Novusordoism so that we can all finally see it for what it is. You have had the unworthy caricature of Catholicism taken away from you, as it was shown to be a worthless fraud, a counterfeit. I would suggest that this is a positive step.

To switch analogies for a moment, imagine that the Faith is a life preserver. What if the thing you had been sold – this culturally-constructed, politicised, (in your own words “tribal”) sham Novusordoist pseudo-religion – was in fact a cheap knock-off that not only would fail to keep you afloat in water, but would itself become waterlogged and drag you down to your death had you been unlucky enough to be tossed in while wearing it? Shouldn’t you be glad to know that the thing you had to save your life was a fake before you needed it instead of after? Shouldn’t you be looking at all that and thinking, “Thank God I got rid of that in time!”

If you have nothing, then I strongly recommend moving heaven and earth, or more to the point, selling all you have, and purchasing the Real Thing. I would suggest, moreover, that your life does indeed depend upon it and that there is nothing else, nothing at all, more important. If you are a pauper, living under a bridge and eating out of a dumpster, and have the Faith, you have everything in the world.

 “He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life, shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for me, shall find it. He that receiveth you, receiveth me: and he that receiveth me, receiveth him that sent me.”

With Pope Francis, you have seen what all Traditionalists have seen. With him it is no longer possible to continue to be deceived. With him, you now can no longer cling to this illusory “safe” conservative novusordoist middle ground. I suggest that as you confront this more and more manfully, as your strength returns, you will start to see more and more how vast the damage really has been, how deeply infused with the Death Cult our whole world has become. It will be painful and shocking. Confronting evil is like that.

And for heaven sake, stop whining.

There’s a war on. Suit up.

~