“Let us make no mistake: Satan is right now shaking the Church to her very foundations over this divorce issue…” 

Father Brian Harrison, O.S.

Part II, Continued from Yesterday 
(Read Part I)

A Warning Come True

Immediately after Cardinal Jose Mario Bergoglio was elected Pope, the Rorate Caeli blog site presented a dire report by an Argentinian journalist, who wrote that as Archbishop of Buenos Aires the Cardinal was a “sworn enemy of the traditional Mass,” that he was “[f]amous for his inconsistency (at times, for the unintelligibility of his addresses and homilies),” that he was “accustomed to the use of coarse, demagogical, and ambiguous expressions,” that he was “loose in doctrine and liturgy,” and that “he has not fought against abortion and only very weakly against homosexual ‘marriage’(approved with practically no opposition from the episcopate)…”

Honesty compels one to admit that every element of this grim assessment has been borne out by the brutal dismantling of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate on the Pope’s direct order, and by his astonishing plenitude of disturbing statements and actions during the scant year he has been in office. These include the phrase that will be emblematic of his entire pontificate, which is now appearing on "Who am I to judge?" tee shirts marketed to gay-rights activists and assorted other radical liberals in order to taunt the Church.

Alarming Adulation by a Hostile World

In the case of Pope Francis the fallibility of Popes in matters not involving doctrinal definitions is remarkably evident. It does no good to deny this when the entire world is heaping praise upon him for his unheard-of pastoral novelties (e.g. the jailhouse foot-washing ceremony, including a Muslim woman), his numerous statements suggesting a revolutionary relaxation of Church discipline in the name of a false “mercy,” and his repeated public insults of traditional Catholics and the traditional liturgy, which he has cavalierly belittled as “just a kind of fashion” to which certain members of the faithful are “addicted.” As if to reward his behavior, Francis has been lauded as “Person of the Year” by the world’s most prominent left-liberal news magazine (Time), the world’s leading “gay” magazine (The Advocate), the world’s leading “rock culture” magazine (Rolling Stone) and the world’s leading “rock culture” video outlet (MTV). Even the trashy libertine quarterly GQ Magazine joined the adulation by naming Francis “Best Dressed Man of the Year,” using the occasion to mock the overdressed Pope Benedict. All of these tributes, and innumerable others of like kind, have been bestowed explicitly at the expense of Francis’s predecessor and the Church’s teaching on faith and morals. Any Catholic who still retains the sensus catholicus must view with alarm this unprecedented torrent of praise from the realm of Belial. Something is seriously amiss.

The Complete Series:  All four parts of Christopher Ferrara's weeklong series, "The Francis Effect", appear in the following post. Those who commented on other sections of this aricle are encouraged to respost their comments on this final version of the article. This article will also appear in its entirety in the next print edition of The Remnant.  MJM

The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against bishops. The priests who venerate me will be scorned and opposed by their confreres... churches and altars sacked; the Church will be full of those who accept compromises and the demon will press many priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the Lord. 

Our Lady of Akita, October 13, 1973

Introduction

On March 9, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, America’s foremost Catholic prelate, appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and commented as follows on the “coming out” of a “gay” college football star:

Good for him… I would have no sense of judgment on him…. God bless ya. I don’t think, look, the same Bible that tells us, that teaches us well about the virtues of chastity and the virtue of fidelity and marriage also tells us not to judge people. So I would say, “Bravo.”

“No sense of judgment…. Bravo.” That is how a Prince of Church in the Year of Our Lord 2014 reacts to a celebrity’s announcement that he engages in unspeakable acts—“men with men, working that which is filthy (Romans 1:26)”—acts that cry out to heaven for vengeance, as Churchmen used to teach before the “opening to the world” at Vatican II. Here we see the vast ripple effect of the “who am I to judge?” mantra that Pope Francis launched into the collective consciousness of humanity by going out of his way to speak to reporters about homosexuals in the hierarchy at “a surprise news conference” they had not even requested. The “Francis effect” is disarming prelates and priests alike. It threatens to disarm us as well, unless we take a stand against what is happening.

Video Broadcast Introduces Bishop Olson In His Own Words

On November 19, 2013 Pope Francis appointed Msgr. Michael Olson as Bishop of the Diocese of Fort Worth. As the Dallas Diocesan newspaper reports:

Christ calls us to fast from the things of this world and to feed on the Bread of Life. Our entire religion is based on sacrifice, with the Sacrifice of Christ being the foundation and model for all we do. This same Sacrifice is reenacted during Holy Mass, of which the Eucharist is the fruit, therefore fasting before Communion is an essential part of our religion.

Fasting starves out the demon of impurity, as opposed to over eating, which fuels impurity of heart and mind, especially, our spiritual directors tell us, when this is done before bed. The Church under divine guidance has rightfully maintained the rule of fast through the ages for our preservation and so that we may worthily receive Christ in Communion.

President Provides College’s Perspective

Exclusive to The Remnant

Fort Worth, Texas, March 3, 2014—Today’s blogosphere and Catholic news sites were lit up by the startling news that His Excellency Michael F. Olson, STD, Bishop for the Catholic diocese of Fort Worth, Texas, had forbidden Fisher More College from having Catholic priests offer the Traditional Latin Mass at the college. This, despite the fact that the college had full diocesan approval since 2010, including a chaplain offered as a courtesy by the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter from Feb. 2013 through June 2013.

Fisher More College is the only fully accredited four-year Traditional Catholic College in America. The school is dedicated to the Traditional Latin Mass, which it considers an essential component to its mission of forming the whole person, intellectually, morally and spiritually.   The school’s website explains, the “mission of the College is to ‘cooperate with divine grace in forming the true and perfect Christian, that is, to form Christ Himself.’ (Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri). … We pray the Traditional Latin Mass and the associated rich Sacred Liturgy that has been passed down to us through the ages. We are certain that fidelity to the usus antiquior is essential to achieving our mission.”

While other Catholic Colleges are being overcome by the winds and waves of secularism and the politically correct agenda of the Left, Fisher More is resisting the ways of the world, and the Modernism shaking the Church, by holding fast to Tradition, which, as Vincent of Lerins said, “cannot be led astray by any lying novelty”.

Most people believe we live in a democracy.  They were probably told this myth by a very sweet fourth grade teacher.  A democracy is when the laws are made by all of the citizens.  At certain points in its history, ancient Athens was a democracy.  The Athenian citizens (who were a small portion of the actual population) met together and made laws and voted to fill administrative offices.  At the federal level our law is made by 535 Congressmen and Senators and 1 president or by 9 Supreme Court justices.  At the state level, the laws are made by usually fewer than 100 state legislators and a governor and less than a dozen supreme court justices.  With a population of over 300 million such a number is nowhere close to “all” the citizens.  

With everything else in the Church having been “reformed” or given a new meaning—not officially, of course!—over the past fifty years, it was only a matter of time before the concept of “miracle” would undergo an adaptation to post-conciliar requirements.

The problem was how to canonize Paul VI without a single clear-cut miracle to his credit, like one of the many indubitable miracles seen in the case of Saint Pius X, the last Pope to be canonized. For example, the instantaneous curing of a nun of bone cancer after a relic of Pius X was pinned to her clothing.

But the Vatican was up to the challenge: on February 24 we read the news that the “consulting theologians of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints have approved a miracle attributed to the intercession of Venerable Pope Paul VI, moving him closer to sainthood.”