Most Catholics know that the Vatican placed in the Roman Church Santa Maria Transpontina (St. Mary’s Across the River) a display of indigenous costumes for the “Amazon Synod” this month (October 2019.) This transformed the beautiful and ancient Church of Our Lady into a kitschy display jungle items and pagan rituals. The first problem with this is a violation of the First Commandment. The second problem with this is that it is racist: A white liberal hierarchy imposed paganism on indigenous peoples of Brazil. I know this to be a political (or diabolical) move because the native people of Brazil do not promote such rituals in their Catholic Churches. (As I have said on podcasts, I speak Portuguese and I have been on mission to Brazil three times, including the Amazon once.)
So, I spent the last week in Rome to make reparation for the Amazon Synod. I am not one of the men who dunked the pagan idols into the Tiber, but I wish I had been one of them. I arrived in the Church of Transpontina about thirty minutes after they had been thrown in the Tiber River on Monday, 21 October 2019. I found only one idol left in the Church and took the following video:
Now, anyone who has read even a little bit of Church history knows that we have never lived through a crisis of such proportions. Not even Arius would have tried to make his followers put fertility goddesses in a Church. It simply would not have worked, even among Arian heretics!
When I was making a Holy Hour of reparation in Santa Maria of Transpontina this week, it hit me that the pagan idols were just the outgrowth of Catholics accepting 100 years of ecumenism. Yes, only a few of the past ten Popes have allowed themselves to be blessed by shamans (including Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI) but the obsession with introducing paganism into Catholicism goes back to the 1930s as we explained in this podcast on the Amazon Synod two months before it came out. As I was making my Holy Hour of reparation in Santa Maria, I had to guard my eyes from immodestly dressed women and guard my ears from a man talking on his phone (yes, talking on his phone a few meters from the sanctuary and Blessed Sacrament.)
Remember that the above spinning wheel of “Ordinary Time” came from a Mass designed by freemasons and Protestants. If we are going to accept a Mass designed by a proven freemason and six Protestants, then we have already compromised with non-true religions. If we are going to allow trash and yoga pants in Churches, it was only ever a matter of time before Satan knew he could get idols of demons into our Catholic Churches (yes, literal demons, for “the gods of the nations are demons” as the Psalms tell us.)
I don’t mean to assert that there is not a new malice in putting fertility goddesses in a Church dedicated to Our Lady, built by the Carmelites. (And remember the Carmelites were founded by St. Elijah in the Old Testament, the prophet who “slaughtered” the false prophets of Ba’al in 1 Kg 18:40. The liberal Catholics on social media who actually claimed the idols going into the Tiber was “theft” should be happy that there are no Elijah-prophets in Rome, as they may have found their throats cut.) But I do assert that every Church in Rome is full of men already talking on their phones and women in yoga pants. Idols have entered the Churches of Rome for half a century, so Satan knew he could make his next move with very little consequences. What should be the wake up call, has become a wake-up call for only half of the Catholics in the world. For that, still, I am thankful, but I am deeply saddened that it came at the price of the sacrilege of a Temple of God. No Protestant Mega-Church pastor in the United States would ever allow this, even for a doubling of his salary. This is all too diabolical to be even based in money.
But Catholics rightly wonder: Why should this be stopped if ecumenism with other religions has been the goal of the hierarchy for 50 years?
When I was in Rome, my webmaster texted me about the synod “fathers.” She said: “They smashed and removed the stone altars to replace them with their stony hearts.” I texted back: “They’ve always been after the heart of the Church. The difference is that we’ve never had such weak *good* men in leadership to let it happen.” Indeed, I look back on my week in Rome and I wonder why there were not Cardinals joining me in praying the Divine Office on our knees in public reparation for the pagan idols in Transpontina. Hundreds of bishops were here the week prior and the week I was there. Why did almost no clerics go in to mourn this paganism?
Why would God let this happen? Let’s re-frame this question: How would you know if the ecumenism of the past 50 years was the positive will of God or the permissive will of God? Liberals do not care about the answer. Traditionalists would quickly answer that it was only the permissive will of God. But the people I want to challenge (as usual) are the neo-conservatives who mindlessly repeat things like, “God is in charge of His Church” or “The gates of hell will not prevail.”
To be sure, both of these phrases are correct. But they are asserted in a spirit of Protestantism that forgets the incarnational aspect of the Church. By “incarnational,” I do not mean exclusively the Eucharist. I mean saints (who had to cooperate with grace) were sent by God in the flesh. I mean that God chooses real saints with real minds and physical hearts and hands to do something about crises in the Church (something that only lay people are now stepping up to do, with a few priestly exceptions. In fact, it was lay people who threw the idols in the river)
Remember: God saved His Church once by St. Francis of Assisi, and shortly after that by St. Catherine of Siena. God can take care of His Church,” as neo-cons mindlessly say, but that care of His Church is not via a magical computer print-out from heaven. God takes care of His Church precisely by giving Cardinals the graces of fortitude to speak out against idolatry in Rome. But these graces are being rejected.
Isn’t it judgmental and disobedient to say that such graces are being rejected. No. And here’s why: Because the opposite assertion would be blasphemy, namely, that God is not giving Cardinals and bishops the graces to stand against idolatry in Rome. Alas, it is always easier to take Jesus without the cross. But this will condemn us clerics as Jesus makes very clear in the Gospel. That is why I don’t care about the earthly consequences of accepting the heavenly fortitude given me by Christ in this time of crisis: I would rather face earthly punishments than lose my soul. I admonish all priests and bishops to do the same, as you so feel called. You don’t have to do what I do, but for the sake of the souls of the faithful who look to you: Do something! God made you for courage in a time of Church insanity like this.
So, back to the question: “How would you know if the ecumenism of the past 50-100 years was the positive will of God or the permissive will of God?” Many Catholic might be tempted to say, “Well, if it happened with our leaders, it must be God’s positive will.” The problem with this answer is that it is not Biblical. At all. In the Old Testament, there were actually times when Israel had become so entrenched in negligence of tradition that God allowed them to divert from what was necessary for salvation. Consider 2 Kings 22 where the king and the priest both realize that Israel had been going along for years in rejecting a tradition that was fully necessary for salvation:
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his clothes. And the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam the son of Shaphan, and Achbor the son of Micaiah, and Shaphan the secretary, and Asaiah the king’s servant, saying, ‘Go, inquire of the Lord for me, and for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that has been found. For great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us.’—2 Kg 22:11-13
Notice that God did not say, “Well, it’s not your fault that you lost that book of how to worship me properly.” Rather, the truth is this: God’s wrath is enkindled. So also now after 50-100 years of ecumenism we see His wrath kindled in our own allowance of the highest echelons of the Catholic hierarchy to promote idol worship in Churches. The only answer (if Christ does not return soon) is to return to a Catholicism that is not caught in a time like of history, but a Catholicism that is One, Holy and especially Apostolic in both dogma and liturgy. That is the wake-up call with the demonic idols. We must rend our garments and return 100% to Catholicism and trash all ecumenism.
I speculated in this blog post a couple years ago that we would be coming to the end of the fifth age of the Church, into the sixth age (the era of peace of Fatima?) before the seventh age of the Church which would bring the final AntiChrist.
But I now believe Jesus is returning soon. The only admonition I give now to my readers is to stay in sanctifying grace, even if it means going to confession every day. Jesus said in Mt 25:13 that “you know neither the day nor the hour.” Yes, this is true. But notice that He did not say we would not know the year! I don’t claim to know the year, either, but I do notice a lot of the checklist of the end times in Matthew 24 getting checked off quickly:
See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains. Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.—Mt 24:4-14
Many of these things are done. But something more serious approaches. If tomorrow, on the feast of Christ the King 2019, the fertility goddesses are put on display at St. Peter’s, I believe that the very next line of the Gospel will be fulfilled:
So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.—Mt 24:15-16