Sharpen Your Sickle for the Harvest Is Near
Sharpen Your Sickle for the Harvest Is Near
Contrary to the Pope's cruel plans, the only hope for the Church lies in her past
When you point out the dramatic loss of souls from the Catholic Church following Vatican II and, especially, the deformation of the Holy Mass (which is itself a repudiation of Vatican II), the Catholic left argues over the statistics without addressing anything else, but a Cardinal from Africa has the answer.
By “anything else,” I mean, they won’t touch the obvious problem posed by Fr. Ripperger: you can’t denigrate 1,000 years of Church teaching without claiming you know God better than the saints and martyrs of antiquity knew God. You can’t reject Aquinas without claiming intellectual and devotional superiority to Aquinas.
So the modernists simply ignore anything that smacks of a logical argument and deny the statistics compiled by the Gallup organization.
I write this post (which I did not intend to write) because of the prompting of a friend. This friend was a cradle Catholic who left the Church for Evangelical Protestantism some time ago.
The friend texted me in response to my earlier posts Bergoglio's Incalculable Ego Cedes More Power to the Demonic: Parts I and II (linked below), that she experienced inner-healing grace in very devout, “Spirit-filled” Evangelical churches—something completely lacking in the Novus Ordo Masses.
And this is where the modernist Catholic “me too” argument dies.
The Church, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), when confronted with cliff-diving Mass attendance like to say, “But, but, but, Bill, the Protestants lost even more members in that same period.” It’s a lie.
It is true that the mainline Protestant denominations lost more members than the Catholic Church between 1960 and today. But non-mainline Protestants more than recovered those wandering souls.
As we saw in the Gallup poll, Protestants of all stripes actually increased weekly church attendance, from 42 percent in 1955 to 46 percent in 2018. At the same time, Catholic attendance fell from 75 percent to 39 percent. And all that was before Covid.
Remember, the mainline Protestant churches make Catholic modernists look like the Desert Fathers. They have been pushing the leftist envelope since the 70s, and their members have fled. Some have lost religion altogether, while the rest have gone the non-denomination, mostly Evangelical route.
In the Evangelical churches, Protestants find something lacking from both the modernist Catholic Church and mainline Protestant groups: God. Specifically, the God of the Old and New Testaments, God who expects something of people. God who was with the Apostles and earliest Christians in the Book of Acts and the epistles.
People expect religion to make them better children of God, not to be told their wicked ways are good enough.
That’s also why American and European Catholics have been swelling the pews of Traditional Latin Mass churches. At the TLM, they find reverence for God, trust in God, faith in His Word, and grace in abundance. It’s very hard to return to the handshaking, Host tossing, demented carnival side shows of the Novus Ordo, where we were constantly told, “whatever you’re going, it’s okay.”
The Catholic Church is dying as a player on the world stage. It’s dying as a influencer of culture, politics, and even religion. It’s dying precisely because, for 50 years, the Catholic Church has told the world, “You don’t need us; you need empathy and counseling.”
Think I exaggerate? Consider this recent article by Fr. Dwight Longenecker:
Converts to the faith and those who work with converts like Marcus Grodi at The Coming Home Network will testify to the many stories of potential converts–especially clergy–who knock on the door of their local Catholic rectory or bishop’s residence seeking admission to the Catholic Church only to be discouraged, dismissed or even mocked for their desire.
Fr. Longenecker cites three causes (heresies) for this insane Catholic attitude:
Indifferentism in religion is the attitude that different denominations don’t really matter.
Universalism is a head of Hydra connected to indifferentism. This is the view that everyone will be saved in the end. “No need to convert to the Catholic faith.”
False ecumenism is the sincere belief that any further ecumenical efforts are a waste of time.
And he gives us this horrible anecdote:
Thus we hear of the “missionary” Bishop in South America who brags that he hasn’t baptized anyone for decades. Why not? Because they’re okay as they are. The nature religion, the animism, polytheism–whatever–of the indigenous people is sufficient–or perhaps even superior to Catholicism.
The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property points out the absurdity of the Church’s utter rejection of Christ’s “Great Commission”
Fr. Corrado Dalmonego brags about an astonishing fact that any traditional missionary would consider a most bitter failure. He celebrates the fact that he is the director of “a mission of presence and dialogue,” in which no one has been baptized for 53 years!
How can that “priest” begin to square his hubris over failing to win a single convert from among a cannibal tribe to this:
Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.
Fr. Dalmonego doesn’t bother with teaching the people of the Amazon what Jesus Christ commanded him to teach. Instead, he says, “go ahead and eat your neighbor, sacrifice to your demon-gods; you’re good enough as you are.”
Likewise, Bergoglio loves to equate any attempt at evangelization with “proselytizing.” He admonished and humiliated a woman who introduced him to a young African boy she sponsored for acceptance into the Church, as if the poor woman committed a great sin by obeying the commandments of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!
This is why the Church is bleeding. This is why the seminaries are empty. This is why pederasty (child molestation) and homosexuality became widespread (very widespread) in the Church in the 1970s through 2000s.
All of this because of a loss of faith in the clergy. All of this because “we’re good enough as we are.” All of this because of indifferentism, false ecumenism, and, especially, univeralsim. All heresies, and heresies promoted by the vast majority of Catholic clergy beginning with the Bishop of Rome.
Cardinal Robert Sarah recently explained how the Church has abandoned its mission:
Perhaps the Church sometimes has the temptation to cut herself off from her tradition. The Church proclaims Jesus Christ from the apostles. If we cut ourselves off from this tradition, we invent new things. The Church must regain its heritage, which is very rich: an accumulation of wealth over 2,000 years! We can't pretend that it didn't represent anything.
Regaining one's primary mission is to renew our bond with Jesus, the apostles, the Fathers of the Church, etc. It is an indispensable condition for pursuing one's mission to baptize, proclaim and put it into practice. This is why Jesus' first word in the first chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Mark is: "Convert and believe in the Gospel. »
By abandoning its tradition, the Church hopes to bring people into its midst. This is a mistake, because it is not by attenuating the radicality of the Gospel that they will come to us. On the contrary, they want something strong, again, that engages them.1
Cardinal Sarah is what the lost souls of the world seek: not “I’m okay; you’re okay,” but “God so loves you He will make you perfect if you let Him.”
We tried the “I’m okay; you’re okay” approach for 50 years. It failed miserably and indisputably. Only an idiot or an egomaniac would try to argue otherwise. (I’m looking at you, Bishop Barron.) It’s time to burn the weeds and harvest the wheat, to cast the dead wood into the fire.
The harvest is near.
Cardinal Robert Sarah, At Christmas, you have to be on your knees to worship, France Catholique December 16, 2021