What If an Apostle Had Denied the Crucifixion?

Many traditional priests tell lay people to mind their own sins, not the Church crisis. Similarly, many anonymous traditional accounts online who stood against the last Vatican regime now promote the current one. The overlap between the two groups of trads is this: Don’t pay attention to the new Church crisis.

Yet both groups still (thankfully!) espouse the analogy that as Christ the Bridegroom had to go to Calvary, so also must the Catholic Church (as Christ’s bride) go through her final Passion.

However, that puts us in a very awkward situation, because the same people who tell us the crisis ended following the 2025 Conclave can point to no Resurrection of the Church.  Do we not believe the Passion of the Church must be followed by the Resurrection?  Has Russia converted yet?  Where’s the Resurrection to the Passion of the Church?

I just spent a month in Jerusalem and I went to bed every night and woke up every morning to the loud drone of the prayers from the Muslim minarets as they lit up their green-goblin towers with crackly moans from the Quran. I lived in the Old City this last month, so I learned a lot about Jews and Muslims.

Most Muslims believe Jesus was never crucified. By analogy, the semi-trad prelates and influencers who now say the crucifixion of the Church has finished reminds me of Muslims who deny the crucifixion.  While Muslims deny the crucifixion of the Bridegroom, many so-called traditional Catholics tell us (in so many words) that the Church was crucified under Francis but raised under Leo.  This is exactly why I wrote my open-letter to Cardinal Burke this summer, respectfully asking him to finish his job.

If the Church is resurrecting in 2025, then why is the Vatican now welcoming its first LGBT pilgrimage ever?  This is just one of a dozen examples I could cite at this point of only a few months under his shadow.

Or, imagine another analogy. Imagine an Apostle left the crucifixion just before Christ’s death and went back inside the city limits of Jerusalem and declared, “No crucifixion happened here.” How would that make Christ feel? Such a one would be arguably worse than Judas.

So also, denying the current crucifixion of the Catholic Church in 2025 is tantamount to a decision to deprive God of the supernatural charity due to Him. Why? Because walking away from the crucifixion just because you don’t like messy things is the same as to abandon Christ when He most needs you.  Also, denying the infiltration of the Church denies your neighbor a right to supernatural hope because such an approach would be offering him hope based in delusion, not the reality of the Gospel.

Just last week, a Jewish group of 12 grad students studying comparative religions in Jerusalem asked to meet with me to hear about the history of the Traditional Latin Mass. Inevitably, questions on the liturgy turned into questions on the authority of Vatican II. But surprisingly, they were very respectful of me as a traditional Catholic.  They knew a surprising amount about how Vatican II changed the entire trajectory of the Catholic Church. We spoke for three hours, and some even took miraculous medals on chains at the end.

The Offertory Prayer for the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the TLM reads as follows: My heart expected reproach and misery.  I looked for sympathy, but there was none, and for comforters, and I found none.—Ps 68:21.  So also today, Christ looks for real Catholics to comfort Him in this Church crisis, not deny it. Yet He mostly only finds Catholics who put unity ahead of truth, those who deny that Christ is being re-crucified in His Church by the infiltration of modernists.

The fact is that unity with heretics instead of Christ (Truth Itself) is nothing but the definition of a giant Satanic cult. I don’t suggest most Catholics desire to deny Christ and follow Satan.  I just mean unity without truth suggests the very entity that Sheen, Pio and Viganó predicted, namely, the “ape of the church,” the “counterfeit church.” This is true, even if it maintain a million or a billion adherents.

But I do know there is no such thing as a godly unity without the truth of Christ.  So, where then do we go from here?

First, don’t let anyone gaslight you just because you are in the extreme minority. Think about it. Christ worked miracles for thousands of people in Palestine 2000 years ago and less than 0.1% of those who believed in him went atop of Golgotha with Him. So also, most Catholics today will happily debate all day on X with Protestants about the sacraments, but will not comfort a mourning Christ over what’s happening in the infiltration of the Church today. To them, He says:  Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.—St. Luke 6:25b.

Like the Mother of God, St. John and St. Mary Magdalene, we stay at the foot of the cross of the crucifixion of the Church without denying reality. Yes, it’s extremely difficult and lonely. But keep in mind those are exactly the people who first got to see the Risen Christ: the Mother of God, St. John and St. Mary Magdalene.

I also believe the Immaculate Virgin Mary avoided any temptation to question God why God could allow such evil against her Son and His Son (Who is God.) Mary never doubted that God’s power at the Resurrection of the Bridegroom would be greater than man’s power at the Passion.  Somehow she even praised and thanked God during the crucifixion.

So, if Mary refrained from both rebellion against the crucifixion and denial of the crucifixion of the Bridegroom, why are we so tempted to both of those against the Bride?  Clearly, the only thing worse than the crucifixion of the Bride was the crucifixion of the Bridegroom.  Yet we carry something similar in these final days.

When we finally see Fatima’s promise of Triumph (be it the end of the world or be it the total restoration of the Catholic Church) it will redeem and outdo this current Church crisis, just as the Resurrection overcame and completed the Passion. Remember the first apostles to experience the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary will be the very Apostles who refrained from denying the current crucifixion of the Catholic Church.

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