"From my point of view, I

would ban religion completely."
...Elton John

Vittorio Messori Has Had Enough!

(POSTED April 11, 2007, www.RemnantNewspaper.com) Where’s the protest?! Where’s the outrage?!  We’ve all asked the question a thousand times but with precious little by way of satisfaction, until now. Amidst the chillingly rapid de-Christianization of Europe, an alarum sounded last month in the Italian daily “La Stampa” that rocked the EU. Veteran journalist Vittorio Messori denounced the World Health Organization, Masonic groups, gay rights organizations, and pharmaceutical companies as anti-Catholic “lobbies” which “hate Christianity out of nostalgia for paganism.”  Everybody got that? Let’s not be confused as to who the haters are!

Messori’s bombshell concluded with the following observation:

Sometimes I have the impression that the Pope is a general without troops. Today we are witnessing a kind of hidden schism among believers who, without publicly showing it, in private do not obey the moral norms of the Church.  They are people who, if you ask them, say they are Catholic, they even go to Mass, but they do not follow the directives on sexual and family ethics.  This includes everything from the use of contraceptives to the acceptance of divorce, living together outside marriage, homosexuality and even abortion.

Nothing new here, of course, but for a powerful European pundit to go on the record with it, and in a major newspaper – well, it’s about time.  God bless Vittorio Messori!

There is one aspect of the statement, however, that could stand further scrutiny:  It may be true that the Pope is a now general without troops, but this was not always so. Pioneer traditionalists can attest to the fact that just the opposite was true, even as late as 1965.  The Church had plenty of troops; it was the generals who’d surrendered.

For the past half century, the Church’s high command engaged in what amounted to massive troops withdrawal, as they in effect rescinded the only marching orders that matter. Talk of Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell was systematically replaced by that of Dignity, Tolerance, Universal Salvation and the claim that if Hell exists, probably nobody’s in it.   For almost forty years, the generals stood on a battlefield they themselves had surrendered, reassuring growing stacks of corpses that a new springtime had come.  No wonder the few remaining troops finally went over the wall!  It was sheer madness!

To this day, some generals might vigorously oppose abortion, for example, but no longer is it publicly contended that abortion is a mortal sin which, if left unrepented, carries with it the penalty of automatic excommunication and everlasting damnation. Instead, the rhetoric dissolved into PC platitudes about abortion’s threat to the dignity of the human person.  Not exactly the stuff on which crusades are launched. Such surrenders put the crusaders—the troops—out of a job!

Extra! Extra! Read All About It! Hell Exists

Whether it’s a case of too little too late remains to be seen, but Pope Benedict’s recent proclamation that Hell not only exists but is eternal, along with his Ash Wednesday sermon on man’s need to “detoxify himself from sin and evil”, is being hailed by many as a sign of an ecclesiastical about-face.  In a homily delivered on Sunday, March 25th, Benedict noted that “Jesus came to tell us that He wants us all in heaven and that hell – of which so little is said in our time – exists and is eternal for those who close their hearts to His love.”

Has a general stepped back onto the battlefield?  Could something as routine as a pope acknowledging the existence of hell actually signal that Rome is, as John Rao put it recently, reemerging from dogmatic slumbers and preparing to “locute”?  As much as this “front page news” about Hell is a frightening indicator of how close to the bottom we’ve fallen, it could also indicate that the deafening explosions of Vatican II’s time bombs, literally crippling Christianity throughout the world, may be waking the generals to the fact that a spiritual world war has broken out and that it’s time to stop the silliness!

By the way, word recently reached this office that Pope Benedict informed Alice Von Hildebrand in a private audience in March that his motu proprio on the universal indult for the return of the traditional Mass will be released on the Feast of St. Pius V, May 5, 2007. We’ll see…

Benedict’s Old Europe

Again, too little too late?  Perhaps.  Benedict rightly laments horrific realities such as Europe’s loss of faith and the global abandonment of Christian moral principles, but can he change those realities without issuing a clarion call for universal return to the old devotions, sacraments and liturgies of the Church? Where is the papal admission of the obvious— that the promulgation of the New Mass ranks with the greatest blunders in the history of Christianity?  Where’s the consecration of Russia?

On these things so integral to the longed for restoration, there is still a great deal more that remains to be seen. But we must remember that Evil incarnate opposes Peter with all the fury of Hell itself. The little boy from Bavaria, who was raised so diligently by his traditional Catholic mother and father that both he and his brother went on to become priests, is also subject to the diabolical disorientation that is the scourge of our day and age.  But the Mass he is now trying to restore—against incredible opposition from within—is also the Mass of his own ordination, let us not forget.  The Faith his modernist friends helped drive out of Europe was beloved, not just by traditional Catholics clamoring for its return, but by his own mother.

Perhaps it’s not so surprising, then, that our pontiff has begun to abandon the delusional talk of “springtime” and the “civilization of love” that so distressed sober Catholics during the ecclesiastical bacchanalia of the post-conciliar era. At least Benedict is cognizant of the cataclysmic state of the liturgy, something to which his predecessor seemed utterly oblivious. At least he speaks of sin, hell, and the need to restore the old Mass. 

Benedict reminds us of one struggling to come out of a coma. Some of what he says and does (e.g., his recent tinkering with the Stations of the Cross) seems heavily influenced by lingering conciliarist hallucinations, while other actions suggest a regaining of Catholic consciousness at the highest level of the Church on earth.  Perhaps the sound of his own troops raising their voices in prayer on his behalf is all that is required to rouse the general from this Modernist comatose. 

Let us pray this is the case, for else the abomination of desolation has no substantial opposition…anywhere in the world.

The Abomination of Desolation

 “When, therefore, you shall see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place; he that readeth let him understand.” (Matthew 24;15)

I recently witnessed such abomination at a “Catholic” funeral “Mass” here in Minnesota.  Midway through the service a would-be priestess in a dated pantsuit, crossed the sanctuary on her way to the pulpit, stopped in the middle, her back to the tabernacle, and bowed dramatically toward the people, showing her backside to Our Lord (assuming He was present).

No one in the pews seemed concerned in the slightest by the diabolical symbolism of the gesture. It was liturgy as usual. The altar was gone, the priest had been emasculated beyond recognition, bored-looking altar girls slouched about the sanctuary, and an apparent priestess was “mooning” the Blessed Sacrament. Why?  God alone knows! Such is the perplexing legacy of Vatican II.

Had my father come back from the grave just then he would not have recognized any part of the service – not the rock ditties, the moo-moo vestments, the Protestantized sanctuary, the less-than-masculine priest, the would-be priestess at the table-altar. Nothing! If externals mean anything, it’s an entirely different religion from the one he knew.

Stunned, I took my young son by the hand and walked out of the church, wondering as I did so what it will take to wake people up – Satanists in the sanctuaries?

Speaking of Which...

On March 25, 2007, one of rock ‘n’ roll’s “greatest living legends,” Sir Elton John, turned 60 years old. To mark the occasion he and his husband – that’s right, husband – threw a party in the sanctuary of the largest Gothic cathedral in the world.

More on that in a moment.

I know some of our neo-Catholic friends like to poke fun of the fact that The Remnant has been waging all out war on rock music for the past forty years.  They call us extremist, Jansenists, over the top, whatever. But I will go to my grave defending The Remnant’s 4-decade-long contention that, more than anything else—including the New Mass—the powers of darkness used mind-numbing, soul-crushing, conscience-killing rock ‘n’ roll to wipe out any serious resistance to the rise of the anti-Christians throughout the world.  I don’t care how “Church Lady” this sounds, rock was (and is!) the soundtrack for universal rebellion against the Mystical Body of Christ, and without it the New Mass never would have flown. Thus the birthday celebration of Elton John – rock’s high priest – in a Gothic cathedral in New York is relevant to this discussion. 

Sir Elton Hercules John (yes, the former drug addicted, homosexual rocker was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II some years ago) “married” his partner David Furnish in 2005, called for the banning of organized religion in 2006, and, along with rocker David Bowie, heads up the 2007 International Committee for IDAHO’s (the International Day Against Homophobia) campaign for a proposed United Nations resolution in favor of the universal decriminalization of homosexuality.  (David Bowie, by the way, was quoted in the Feb. 12, 1976, edition of Rolling Stone magazine as saying: “Rock music has always been the Devil’s music”. But what would the crowned prince of glam rock know about that?  Probably just another paranoid Remnant reader!)

Like most legendary rockers, Elton John is a powerful far-Left activist. And 2007’s cause celebre is this international initiative to force the entire world to abandon Christian, Jewish and Moslem teachings against sexual deviancy. Sir Elton tops the list of signatories such as Salman Rushdie, Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky, Russel Banks, Princeton University President Shirley Tilghman, 10 Pulitzer Prize winners, 5 Nobel Peace prize winners, and countless gay and lesbian organizations in petitioning the UN to force the whole world into pro-homosexual compliance:

We ask the United Nations to request a universal abolition of the so-called “crime of homosexuality”, of all “sodomy laws”, and laws against so-called “unnatural acts” in all the countries where they still exist.

Which brings us to Elton’s recent birthday bash in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, mother church of the Episcopal Diocese of New York and seat of its Bishop.

St. John the Divine Cathedral

On March 24th worshippers at the Cathedral had their prayers interrupted by the arrival of 300 so-called A-list celebrities invited by Elton John’s “husband” to join the “couple” for a little good-natured desecration of the nominally Christian cathedral. Worshippers leaving the Evensong service told the New York Post they were “appalled by the spectacle”, but who cares! They’re just Christians! This was a bash for real people.

Everyone from Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters to Bette Midler, and Ozzy Osbourne, Donatella Versace, Tony Bennett, Robin Williams, John Bon Jovi, Michael Caine, Richard Gere, Pierce Brosnan, Kid Rock, Liv Tyler, Whoopi Goldberg and Rod Stewart had gathered together in the Christian cathedral to celebrate an icon of the homosexual subculture.  Messori is quite right:  these people do hate Christianity, and will take any opportunity to grind their heels into what’s left of it.  They’re now partying in Christian holy places!

Imagine those folks having to run from their own house of prayer as a motley crew descended en masse. Imagine it! I wouldn’t wish such a thing on anyone…even Episcopalians! Their altar had been transformed into a rock stage for performances by the Christian-bashing megastar, Sting, as well as Beatles legend, Paul McCartney.  The steps of their Cathedral had been lit with glass-screened votive candles, pews were adorned in pear blossoms, and the two guests of honor paraded about their sanctuary, hand in hand, and, of course, dressed up in black.  The New York Post reported that “in keeping with the religious atmosphere, tables were adorned with silver drinking chalices,” which is appropriate, I suppose, for the birthday of a man who once said of the Bible:  “I get these Bibles sent to me saying ‘Repent now’ and I shred them.”

Welcome to the Hotel California! 

And this was only the first of the two-night birthday gala. Guess who kicked off Part II the following evening in Madison Square Garden?  President Bill Clinton!, of course, who introduced the guest of honor to the 20,000 faithful on hand:

Thank you for coming to night to help celebrate Elton joining my favorite club, the 60-year-olds’ club.  I love it every time he plays.  He reminds me we’ve all got a little bit of juice left.  Elton has given us enough just from his music – there’s nothing quite like it.

Ten years ago, who could have imagined that a day would come in America when a President of the United Stated would join powerful news makers and reporters, Nobel Peace prize winners, entertainers, university presidents, Pulitzer prize winners, A-list actors, the rich, the elite and the famous – to celebrate the birthday of a “married” homosexual in front of 20,000 people at Madison Square Garden!

We’ve come a long way, baby!  All we have to do now is imagine there’s no heaven; it’s easy if you try; no hell below us, above us only sky…

As my friend Doc White is wont to say:  “It’s all over, folks.  There’s nothing left to do but pray our beads and wait for God’s justice.” The abomination of desolation is literally setting itself up in sanctuaries – Catholic and otherwise – across the globe.

And we wonder when the Chastisement is to come?  Call me crazy, but I think it’s already here.

Pray for the Pope, every day! Have your children say at least a Hail Mary for him three times a day, one at every meal.  Of all men on earth Peter is the only one who, thanks to his august office, has the power to curtail this freefall into hell…something, ironically, Elton John mockingly alludes to in one of his songs, appropriately titled “Where To Now, St. Peter?”, which, by the way, the birthday boy crooned from the sanctuary of St. John’s Cathedral last month:

So where to now St. Peter

If it’s true I’m in your hands

I may not be a Christian

But I’ve done all one man can

I understand I’m on the road

Where all that was is gone

So where to now St. Peter?

Indeed, where to now?  Quo vadis, Petre?  Your faithful troops are here and awaiting your orders – please, for God’s sake and ours, lead on, Holiness!

Our Lady of Fatima, Pray for us.