The prophesy of St. Francis of Assisi reads:
“At the time of this tribulation a man, not canonically elected, will be raised to the Pontificate, who, by his cunning, will endeavour to draw many into error and death… Some preachers will keep silent about the truth, and others will trample it under foot and deny it. Sanctity of life will be held in derision even by those who outwardly profess it, for in those days Our Lord Jesus Christ will send them, not a true Pastor, but a destroyer.” —Works of the Seraphic Father St. Francis of Assisi, published in 1882 by the London-based Catholic publishing house R. Washbourne, 1882, pp. 248-250.
Unfortunately, there are more than a few conservative Catholic outlets today who say certain traditional Catholics who vocally criticize the likely “destroyer” above are precisely the ones responsible for the “error and death.” They insist things are getting worse in Rome because of the online criticism coming from North American traditionalists. This confusion and blaming is just a form of Stockholm Syndrome. Why? Because one variation of this phenomenon is when the captured blames the rescuer for their captor becoming more and more cruel, especially before the possibility of a coming liberation.
I recently noticed that Pharaoh in the Old Testament did this same type of gaslighting to Moses and Aaron when he made the Hebrews’ slavery harder because of Moses’ beckoning Pharaoh to free the Hebrews:
But he said, “You are idle, you are idle; that is why you say, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord.’ Go now and work. No straw will be given you, but you must still deliver the same number of bricks.” The foremen of the people of Israel saw that they were in trouble when they said, “You shall by no means reduce your number of bricks, your daily task each day.” They met Moses and Aaron, who were waiting for them, as they came out from Pharaoh; and they said to them, “The Lord look on you and judge, because you have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.”—Exodus 5:17-21.
Notice the Hebrew foremen blame Moses and Aaron for Pharaoh making their lives harder. Why don’t they blame Pharaoh himself? Because Pharaoh himself blames the heavier work load on Moses.
But today, one might think that Catholics who have read the Bible would have learned the lesson of gaslighting. Rather, we see this repeated pattern as certain conservative Catholics blame the likes of Archbishop Viganò and Dr. Taylor Marshall and LifeSite News for the increased slavery of the likely-destroyer and the heavy-handed slavery promoted in such things as Traditiones Custodes and Fiducia Sodomons.
All Catholics need to wake up from their Stockholm Syndrome and realize who is the real captor to the Church. It’s all found in an alleged-prophesy of St. Francis above, also found with sourced footnotes in my original article on this.