A short time ago, an old conservative friend of mine from Canada wailed to me in a Facebook message, “You don’t really think we’re looking at 50 _more years of this?” _I had to tell him that I saw no reason not to think so, and that it was time to start facing up to certain realities. I told him to consider that we have been put into this situation after nearly 40 years of “conservative” popes, as the term is now understood. This is not the doing of one man, or even one group of highly successful conspirators. This is the wasteland of the Real, and it has been in the making for a long, long time.

We have to start thinking seriously about how we are going to move forward in this situation. We cannot change it.  No sentence beginning with the words “I wish” is worth the bother of completing. I was advised recently by a confessor not to try to force the world to be the way it ought to be, but to try to live in it in the here and now as it actually is. Things are the way they are. And we need to start preparing ourselves in a concrete manner for a long period of spiritual and ecclesiastical famine.

For the last five+ years – and indeed for much of the last five decades – faithful Catholics have looked to the hierarchy for a rescue that has failed to arrive. We thought the “conservative” John Paul II would save us from the “liberals” but it turned out that “conservatism” wasn’t what we thought it was. A very brief analysis of John Paul’s reign at the very least leaves a lot of very difficult questions about his reign. All of the cardinals who voted in the last Conclave – including the former archbishop of Buenos Aires – were John Paul or Benedict appointments.

This coup has been so successful mainly _because of conservatism;_ the compromise-dialogue-and-appease mindset that creates a “conservative” prelate is the wide open door the Bergoglians walked through.

After the last Conclave, we were still standing quietly looking at the horizon for rescue:

For a while we thought maybe Benedict was the man he was cracked up to be. Then…

For a while we hoped that the “good bishops” would say something at the Synods. Then…

For a while we sort of thought maybe the Dubia would be a thing to stop the runaway Bergoglian Cube Van of Peter. Then…

We’ve seen petitions galore, hundreds of thousands signing Filial Appeals… Fraternal this’s, Statements of Faith thats and Theological Censures the other things. Can anyone even remember how many there have been? Clearly the petitions thing is as dead a letter as the old Remaining in the Truth of Christ book…

What I fear is that if we are still looking to the “conservative” bishops or cardinals to come galloping over the hill at the last minute we will have failed to prepare sufficiently for the reality we find in the here and now. I think the time has come to finally start taking seriously the possibility that we are looking at a long haul, as well as a catastrophic break-up of the unity of the Church. The Second Vatican Council and its horrific aftermath stretched Catholic doctrinal unity to the breaking point; the Bergoglians have broken it. The schism that many have been predicting for decades is finally here. These are now the current facts we have to deal with.

We’re going to have to face up to the fact that we are not going to be welcome in the Church for very much longer. I have said for a while that the purpose of the Bergoglian pontificate is to purge the vestiges of opposition. For all these years we have been able to find _that one parish, _that _one good religious order, _that _one good seminary, _that _one good school. _These little ghettos of “conservatism” or even Traditionalism are soon to be cleared. Are in fact being cleared as we speak.

The regime are not such naive fools as the “conservatives” and their mindset is alien to them, as it is to all of the modernist “progressivist” school in every area of life in our society. (As in fact, it must be to us, since this nonsense is the product of nothing more than a lukewarm lack of conviction.) Now that they have full power we can be sure that the age of tolerance is over. Whatever else we still wonder about, we can be sure that accommodation of many viewpoints will not continue to be an earmark of the modern Church; there will be no more “big umbrella”. There’s a reason they call it “totalitarianism”.

The things we think are necessities are going to be taken away.

As a certain fellow Gen-X friend said today in a discussion about what’s coming for Summorum Pontificum:

Summorum lives only because Benedict does. It goes within six months of Benedict. Faggioli and company have been prepping the ground for its destruction. Over time, it will be suppressed entirely. But first the general authorization has to be revoked and traditionalism “ghettoized” to the FSSP, ICKs, etc. 

Then the poisonous trads who are gumming up the works of the New Paradigm with their critiques of Mercy™ will be given their own FFI Apostolic Visitation treatments. Sadly, crypto-Lefebvrianism is everywhere and must be rooted out… 

Then, as a sign of Mercy™, Jorge/Tagle will start imposing the hybrid mass that was tried in Buenos Aires. Because Benedict wanted the two forms to inform each other! Even though Magnum Principum will start heading towards congregationalism, making the two forms even more of a meeting of two north pole magnets. Then, when no one is attending the hybrid Mass, it will be closed because the Sheep Did Not Like the Smell. Then it will be FORWARD, FORWARD–ALWAYS FORWARD!

I want to start focusing our attention on what we are going to do for the immediate future, in a practical sense. I want to do a series of short posts based on a set of questions I’m passing around to a number of articulate Trads who understand that we have to start thinking seriously about what we’re going to do in the long run. I’ve sent the following around and will continue to do so to solicit opinions on how we should go forward in a Church and a world that is going to become increasingly hostile to believers – whether we call ourselves “traditionalists” or not.

What plans are we making now to ensure we can receive the valid sacraments, at least according to the minimum required by the Precepts of the Church?

How are parents planning on teaching their children the Faith and protecting them from doctrinal errors coming from their Catholic school, from the parish, from the bishop, from the national bishops’ conference and from the Vatican?

How are we prepared to answer questions about the Faith and the Church – including the about the current situation – from people thinking of becoming Catholics, in a way that will help them be received with full and accurate knowledge?

If we are thinking of pursuing a vocation to religious life, what are our plans for when the monastery or convent or order is either dissolved for its refusal to jure or when there are only you and a few others in the community who will not give up the Faith?

What are your plans if you are a young man – or the parents of a young man – thinking of the priesthood?

What are you intending to do if you are a bishop who refuses to “implement” Amoris Laetitia – and whatever is coming next – when ordered by Rome to do so?

How do you plan, in your current state of life, to continue to practice the Catholic Faith and fulfil your duties within it?

People have been asking me a lot, “What should we do?” I’m going to take that seriously and ask the smart and experienced people, laymen, religious and priests, (I even know a bishop or two I’m thinking of asking) what they think we’re looking at for the immediate future, and how we can start to work on ways to deal with it.

And I want to hear from readers. How are you planning on dealing with the coming Bergoglian Age? The following is the Word doc I’m sending around to various people. As they respond, I’ll post their answers, and we can start thinking about making serious plans. Feel free to chime in with your own ideas via email or on the What’s Up With FrancisChurch facebook page.

A conversation with Tradition

There’s been a lot of reacting to this or that individual piece of Bergoglianism. But pulling the camera back a bit we can see the reality that over the last five years they have been releasing the New Paradigm – the new religion – one piece at a time, systematically and with in fact a good deal of logic.

Let’s talk about the post-Bergoglian future. What are our options, given the current trajectory? We’re going to start with the assumption that Amoris Laetitia is indeed going to act as the wedge driven into the heart of the Church to split it. Do you think there will be a general sundering of the Church over this and if so, what will the various bits and pieces look like?

Do we imagine there will be those – Chaput, for instance – who will make Am L. his line in the sand on sexual morals but who will continue to paper over the vast differences between Catholicism and Bergoglianism in other areas? Will there be a formal, public split between the Bergoglian enthusiasts like Wuerl and those who will continue pretending that this is the only thing wrong?

Do you see this option as being a common one among self-identified “conservatives”? Or is there any growth of the realisation that AmL is just a fatal symptom of a larger disease?

Let’s break it down further and ask what the different possibilities are for laymen, priests and bishops. What should a bishop do, for instance, if he finds his diocese isolated in a sea of Amoris L. bishops and a Bergoglian national conference? Will there be Catholic islands, safe zones surrounded by seas of zombies, orcs and morlocks?

What real powers to resist does an individual bishop have in the face of a Pope Tagle, Cupich or Maradiaga? Is it canonically or doctrinally feasible for a bishop – ordered perhaps to allow same-sex “blessings” or to ordain women deacons – to say, “I’m sorry Holy Father, but I am obliged in conscience to decline your order.”? What happens when he is pressed and thrown out of the episcopate and his diocese given to someone more amenable?

It seems clear that though John Paul II and Benedict refused to use the power of the keys to rid the Church of bad men, the Bergoglian Sect is fully aware of the uses of that power, and does not hesitate to wield it to get rid of good men. I suppose it would be useful then to ask what they don’t have the power to do. How far is it not possible for them to go against a recalcitrant bishop?

What should lay people do? I remember John Muggeridge quoting Hamish Fraser: “Whatever they do in Rome, I’m staying Catholic.” We’ve said for a while now, “Just keep the Faith. Practice the Faith and pass it on to whomever you can.” Do the things in keeping with your state in life. But is there anything more specific you can suggest?

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