Every day in the secular realm, we find new indications that the world is almost completely insane, and the insanity increasingly has a distinctly demonic aspect to it. As demonically insane as the secular world looks now, though, it is the picture of holy sanity compared to Francis’s Synodal Church. Since Easter alone, we have the following manifestations of insane wickedness from Rome:

Almost sixty years after the completion of the Second Vatican Council, it may seem, at first glance, like a pointless exercise to examine John XXIII’s October 11, 1962 speech to open the Council. After all, we would expect that any useful insights from the speech would have been fully revealed by now. And yet, if we carefully deconstruct his speech in light of all that has transpired since the Council opened, we can see the foundation and framework for so much of the crisis in the Church and world. It is almost as though Satan and the Church’s enemies had to forecast their plans from the outset.

“Since Jesus Christ has proclaimed that the special sign of discipleship with Him is that we ‘have love one for another’ (John xiii, 35; xv, 12), can we give a mark of greater love for our neighbors than to assist them in putting behind themselves the darkness of error by instructing them in the true faith of Christ?” (Pope Pius XI, Rerum Ecclesia, 1926)

In his 1951 encyclical on the promotion of Catholic missions, Evangelii Praecones, Pope Pius XII wrote of the great spiritual battle that was raging over seventy years ago:

“Venerable Brethren, you are well aware that almost the whole human race is today allowing itself to be driven into two opposing camps, for Christ or against Christ. The human race is involved today in a supreme crisis, which will issue in its salvation by Christ, or in its dire destruction. The preachers of the Gospel are using their talents and energy to extend the Kingdom of Christ; but there are other preachers who, since they profess materialism and reject all hope of eternal happiness, are trying to drag men down to an abject condition.”

“Archbishop Lefebvre stands for a rigid conservatism which seems to have no place for the necessary development which the Council had to undertake to meet the problems of the world in ferment.” (George Patrick Dwyer, Archbishop of Birmingham, 1976)

“A word that frequently surfaced during the team’s discernment at the retreat was ‘messiness.’ Synodality is not always easy to comprehend; it can also be seen to be a complicated process.” (Final North American Synodal Document)

“And if Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.” (1 Corinthians 15:14)

“Wait for the Lord, do manfully; and let thy heart take courage, and wait thou for the Lord. The Lord is my light and my salvation: whom shall I fear?” (Introit, Tuesday in Passion Week)

After ten years of destructive attacks on the Faith, it has now become clear to all with eyes to see that Francis’s vision for the Church is an unholy nightmare. Traditional Catholics knew this from the beginning, but today many people who respected John Paul II and Paul VI also wonder how we can see Francis as Catholic, let alone pope. Significantly, though, Francis follows his predecessors in claiming to adhere to Vatican II — is he mistaken in this regard or does his failed vision actually flow naturally from Vatican II?

“Something has changed within the Church, and replies given by the Pope to the most urgent questions, such as priestly celibacy and birth control, are hotly debated within the Church itself; the word of the Supreme Pontiff is questioned by bishops, by priests, by the faithful. For a Freemason, a man who questions dogma is already a Freemason without an apron.” (French Freemason Jaques Mitterand, as quoted in Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s Open Letter to Confused Catholics)