The Turning of the Tide

Posted on 2024-11-25
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Huntsville, Alabama – As Pope Francis slyly accuses Israel of genocide for having the temerity to defend itself against another 40 years of terrorist-fueled rape, torture, and murder emanating from Gaza, serious Catholics around the world ask themselves, “How long, O Lord?”

Planned Parenthood is caught negotiating for viable fetuses, tiny babies,  who can live outside the womb so it can cut their heads off for research. Serious Catholics, Christians, and people around the world who have not euthanized their own consciences ask, “How long, O Lord?”

The Vatican quietly renews its deal with China allowing Chinese Communists to appoint “Catholic” bishops. China is free to keep persecuting orthodox Catholics with Vatican approval, just as the Vatican keeps persecuting Latin Mass Catholics. Serious Catholics around the world ask, “How long, O Lord?”

I think it will not be much longer. You can smell the fear and desperation emanating from the Vatican and heterodox clerics these days. It’s almost over for them. And the collapse will come quicker than the collapse of wokeism and the establishment media in this country. Many wonder why the Bishops of the World do not speak up plainly about the torrent of abuses coming out of the Vatican. Speaking as an old strategist, I am convinced it is because of the age and infirmity of Pope Francis. Why start a major conflict that is almost sure to be interrupted by his passing – and then get a new Pope who already knows what your moves are? Better to bide your time, suffer quietly, and offer only passive resistance until this attempted secular takeover of the Church Christ founded is passed.

But what about all the Cardinals in his own image Pope Francis has stacked the Church with, many will ask. God is NOT mocked, I would reply. We very well may get a Pope in Francis’ own image when he passes but it won’t be for long, I think. And if that Pope continues current insane policies, he will find that the Bishops of the world have found their voice and will make their stand for Christ and His teaching. Let the confrontation begin. And Catholics who have suffered this long international nightmare will begin to shout, “Hallelujah!” and maybe do the Trump Dance in celebration.

I wrote about the beginning of this turning in the CORAC Newsletter, which I reprint in full below:

The endless Synod on Synodality has finally closed shop with the conclusion that what we all need is more synodality – without ever having given much of an explanation of what synodality is or is supposed to be.

The “spirit” of Vatican II was the old tire that kept ecclesiastical abuses rolling ever since the 60’s (even though nothing I ever saw justified by that “spirit” even resembled any of the actual documents from the Council.) But that tire had gone bald and then flat, wasn’t getting any traction anymore, so “progressive” clerics had to have something to keep those abuses inflated and rolling. Voila! We have synodality – a vague, hazy concept that can be formed and shaped to justify just about any abuse a conniving clerisy wants.

We have drifted quite far from the shore of the teaching of Jesus Christ, His Apostles, and the Fathers of the Church. But hey, the corruptocrats in the clerisy are having themselves a grand, old time rebuking the Master.

Pope Francis, the chief of the clerical vandals, claimed that synodality would devolve power away from a centralized Vatican and empower regional communities. Strange thing…Pope Francis always talks about sharing power, listening, and accompanying people where they are, but his actions tell a different story. He has been the most dictatorial Pope of my lifetime, imperiously trampling all canons and safeguards to impose his will on the faithful whether they want it or not.

He has tried to wipe out the traditional Latin Mass, despite the love so many have for it – and over the objections of a great mass of faithful and Bishops. He didn’t touch on THAT in the synods. Wouldn’t get the answer he wanted. At the end of this month Latin Masses in Tyler, Texas – a notable home of doctrinally orthodox faithful – will come to an end in the Cathedral. Coincidentally, just about a week ago the Vatican approved the ersatz Mayan rite in parts of Mexico. The Vatican asserts that that is what the faithful in Mexico want…so synodality says it must be given. As for what the faithful in Tyler want, they can get bent. Synodality does NOT apply to orthodox believers in Christ, Scripture, or the actual Magisterium.

Canon Law says the Pope cannot remove a Bishop without a solid, canonical reason. That is because the Dioceses of the world are NOT branch offices of the Vatican. They are independent sees, united in fidelity to the same Christ, the same Scripture, and the same Magisterium. The Bishop of each is the independent head of his Diocese, who cannot be removed except for cause. Just a year ago, Pope Francis illegally removed Joseph Strickland as Bishop of Tyler, Texas without citing any cause, as is required. At first I thought it an error. But then I came to believe the Pope did it illegally on purpose – to send a message to the rest of the American Bishops that he would not be bound by law, truth, or justice in dealing with Bishops who sparked his ire. Quite frankly, if Canon Law and the Magisterium mean anything, Strickland is still Bishop of Tyler. Synodally, whatever Francis wants, Francis gets. A cynical, Chicago political fixer could learn a few things from this Vatican.

To paraphrase Gandalf the White, a great storm is coming in the Church, but the tide has turned. The people of the world are tired of being abused – and incensed that the worst abusers claim to be committing their offenses in those very peoples’ names. To abuse is one thing: to rub our nose in the abuse and claim that we were the authors of it is an infuriating outrage. Those clerics – in and out of the Vatican – who seek to topple Christ from His throne, have badly misjudged the situation.

Our own Sheryl Collmer, editor of this newsletter, penned a stark cri de coeur in Crisis Magazine on the subject. Then, last week, like St. Boniface chopping down the pagan sacred oak treeBishop Joseph Strickland took an axe to the dictatorial synodality too many of our Bishops have tried to stay clear of rather than push back on.

Just as the woke, American left thought this election would clear the way for them to consolidate their authoritarian power forever, so the clerical vandals thought they could topple Christ from His throne and take over His vineyard permanently with their gambit of synodality. Already the process of turning both into so much wrecked flotsam and jetsam floating on a sea of orthodoxy and truth has begun.

The battle awaits – but the tide has turned.

Joseph Strickland, Bishop Emeritus of Tyler, Texas and (I think) still Bishop because of the Pope’s intentionally illegal procedure in removing him, has given the clarion call and become an organizing principle for Catholics who have had all they are going to take. It is worth reprinting in its entirety here, too, for I think it will loom larger and larger as the next year opens:

DEAR BISHOPS, WHAT WILL IT TAKE?

You gather here today, present-day apostles, as the Church and, therefore, the world stand perched on the edge of a cliff. And yet you who are entrusted with the keeping of souls choose to speak not a word of the spiritual danger which abounds. Today we stand on the cusp of all that has been prophesied about the Church and the abominations which would come forth in these times, a time when all of hell attacks the Church of Jesus Christ, and a time when the fallen angels of hell no longer seek entry into her sacred halls but instead stand inside, peeking out of her windows and unlocking doors to welcome in more diabolical destruction.

I think that St. Jude had men such as many of you in mind when he described men who feast “together without fear, feeding themselves, clouds without water, which are carried about by winds, trees of the autumn, unfruitful, twice dead, plucked up by the roots, raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own confusion; wandering stars …” (Jude 1:12-13).

Many people have asked what it will take for more than a few bishops to finally speak up against the false messages constantly flowing from the Vatican under the leadership of Pope Francis, and I ask myself the same question over and over:

WHAT WILL IT TAKE?

Do you not know that Our Lord will send forth His avenging angels to heap coals of fire upon the heads of those who were called to be His apostles and who have not guarded what He has given unto them?

And yet almost all of you, my brothers, stood by silently watching as the Synod on Synodality took place, an abomination constructed not to guard the Deposit of Faith but to dismantle it, and yet few were the cries heard from you – men who should be willing to die for Christ and His Church.

The Synod’s final document has been released, yet with the sleight of hand which is so characteristic of the Francis-controlled Vatican. By drawing attention to the issues which worried many, they have slipped in what was always their real goal without anyone even noticing. What they were after in the first place was the dismantling of Christ’s Church by replacing the structure of the Church as Our Lord instituted it with a diabolically-inspired new structure of “synodality” which in actuality is a new Church that is in no way Catholic.

We now see the prophetic words of Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen unfolding before our eyes: “Because his religion will be brotherhood of Man without the fatherhood of God, he will set up a counter church which will be the ape of the Church, because he, the Devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content, it will be a mystical body of the Antichrist that will in all externals resemble the mystical body of Christ …” (Radio Broadcast; January 26, 1947).

With the push for “synodality” we see that the enemies of Christ are putting before us, as Sheen says: “a new religion without a Cross, a liturgy without a world to come, a religion to destroy a religion, or a politics which is a religion – one that renders unto Caesar even the things that are God’s.”

WHAT WILL IT TAKE?

A rudimentary understanding of the papacy leaves us with the reality that Pope Francis has abdicated his responsibility to serve as the primary guardian of the Deposit of Faith. Every bishop makes this solemn promise to guard the Deposit of Faith, but the Petrine office exists primarily to be the guardian of the guardians and the servant of the servants. St. Peter received the office which bears his name when, after the resurrection, Christ asked him three times, “Do you love me?” and St. Peter responded, “You know that I love you,” thus healing his betrayal as Christ endured His passion. And who is this Jesus who Peter professes to love? He is of course Truth Incarnate; thus St. Peter is stating that he loves Truth.  This leaves us with this question, “Does Pope Francis love the Truth that Jesus Christ incarnates?” Sadly, his actions and his policies which promote a relativized version of truth that is not truth at all propel us to a devastating conclusion: the man who occupies the Chair of St. Peter does not love the truth and seeks to reshape it in the image of man.

There can be no bishop who is unaware of statements that Pope Francis has made that are unambiguous denials of the Catholic faith. For example, Francis has stated publicly that God wills the existence of all religions, and that all religions are a path to God. In this statement, Pope Francis has denied an integral part of the Catholic faith. How many souls will be lost who will accept his erroneous statement that all religions will lead to salvation? What I find so difficult to understand is that modern-day apostles, men who are ordained to be guardians of the faith, refuse to acknowledge this, and instead ignore or even promote this deadly falsehood. Every bishop and cardinal should publicly and unequivocally state that Francis no longer teaches the Catholic faith. Souls are at stake!

Therefore, I ask again:

WHAT WILL IT TAKE?

As successors of the apostles, this situation must force the bishops of Christ’s Church to answer the pivotal question ourselves: “Do we truly love Jesus Christ, Truth Incarnate?” With a Pope who is actively opposing the divine truths of our Catholic faith, the responsibility falls to the bishops of the world to profess their own love of Our Lord, to guard the Sacred Deposit of Faith, and to oppose any attempt to dismantle the Truth.

Let us return to the fateful conversation between our risen Lord and St. Peter. When Peter responds, “Lord you know I love you,” Jesus responds: “Feed my lambs,” and again “Feed my sheep.” How is Peter to feed Christ’s lambs? With the Truth of course – with Jesus Christ Himself who IS Truth.

And yet, where are those men whom the Lord has called to feed His sheep? Where are the successors of the apostles who have promised to defend the sheep with their lives? They sit a few feet away, patting one another on the back, listening to words that they know beyond a doubt are not the Truth, frolicking with the darkness, and blaspheming the very Truth that the original apostles died to preserve.

WHAT WILL IT TAKE?

You have words from those who spoke in Sacred Scripture, wisdom from the Sacred Tradition of the Church, and guidance from former Popes and a great multitude of saints that false teachers would come and that the holy faith would be attacked, and yet most of you have gone out into the battle wearing no armor, and have then reacted as one bewildered that his skin has been pierced by poison arrows.  You have been given all that was needed to ensure that your heads were not turned by the lies of Satan. Why then have you gone out without the armor of God? It is YOUR responsibility, when you see poison arrows of falsehood falling upon men, to call out to them and say, “Put on the armor of Our Lord which is Truth, and you shall not be wounded.”

And to the faithful, I put forth the same question –

WHAT WILL IT TAKE?

What if your shepherds do not rally? What if they have all accepted thirty pieces of silver, and they remain silent in the face of falsehood which further pierces the hands and feet of Our Lord?  Then what will it take for you to speak up?

Many might say that it is not your responsibility; you can live Truth quietly in your heart. However, to speak Truth can never simply be the responsibility of someone else because God has etched Truth onto the heart of every person. Therefore, Truth is each man’s property as a sacred gift from God. And never can anyone say that they had no Truth in them – and never can a man claim rightly that to find Truth he had to gather it from the wind, or he could only gather it from the words of another. The soul recognizes Truth and is nourished by it, and those who wither away from lack of Truth do not wither because they were given no portion of Truth in their own soul. Indeed, Truth has instead been so suppressed again and again by such a person – and has been told so often to “stand down” – until it dares not raise its head. And this is why a man finds himself in such a sad state – and why when he cries out – “It is not the fault of my own that I had no Truth or that I knew it not when I encountered it” – he speaks in error.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, granting free will to those He loves, which is each and every person without exception, has given the gift of Truth to each and every one of us, so that if there is any predisposition in a man’s heart then it is the propensity of the soul to vibrate to His Truth. Therefore, the soul when deprived of Truth lies dormant until it withers into something cold and hard. Have you not seen how even the angels of darkness recognize Truth and cannot do other than what Our Lord commands them – and yet they strive to hide Truth from every man unto each man’s eternal damnation?

So I ask again –

WHAT WILL IT TAKE? WILL YOU DIE FOR HIM?

Bishop Joseph E. Strickland
Bishop Emeritus

The opening shots in the battle between good and evil in the heart of the Church hierarchy have been fired. Be not afraid. It is good for us that these offenses have been revealed that we know the wages of complacency. God is not mocked. The gates of hell will not prevail against the Church of God. The battle lies yet before us, but the outcome is assured. So Joan up and put on the full armor of God. Hosannah! The King is still on His throne and calls us all to take up His standard.

If communication goes out for any length of time, meet outside your local Church at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Tell friends at Church now in case you can’t then. CORAC teams will be out looking for people to gather in and work with.

Find me on Twitter at @JohnstonPilgrim

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