Pulling the Plug
As the recent “pedophile summit” in Rome demonstrates, the decadent Novus Ordo establishment cannot and will not reform itself. Catholics should simply allow the thing to die.
By Christopher A. Ferrara
Part Two
Reprinted with the gracious permission of editor Michael J. Matt of The Remnant.
Defending the Regime of Novelty
The "little synod" in Rome is beneath cynicism, beneath contempt. It was an
exercise in cold-blooded public relations by men who preside over a corrupt
institution they have no intention of really reforming. This is not just a
question of homosexual predators whose crimes can no longer be concealed.
It is a question of the Faith itself. These men, these "power-brokers of the
Roman Catholic Church", have demonstrated abundantly that the only thing
they are willing to defend without compromise is their own stake in the
decrepit regime of novelty which, for nearly forty years, they have
unswervingly imposed upon Catholics in place of the faith of our fathers.
In the Diocese of Rapid City, SD we find a prime example of this
fierce commitment to the decadent and dying Novus Ordo: Bishop Blase Cupich.
Cupich is a living refutation of the neo-Catholic bromide that the younger
priests and prelates of the Novus Ordo are going to turn things around, just
you wait and see. Cupich is the youngest bishop in America, if not the
world.
Cupich has grudgingly allowed a single "indult" Latin Mass on Sunday in
Rapid City, at the Immaculate Conception Church on Fifth Street. But there
he draws the line on all this tradition stuff. Cupich refused to permit the
traditional Good Friday and Easter vigil services at Immaculate Conception.
To ensure that his edict would be followed, he locked the parishioners out
of their own church from Holy Thursday morning until Easter morning. The
Iowa Journal reported that "the members of St. Michael's congregation will
gather at 3 p.m. today for Good Friday services on the sidewalk in front of
the church." And so they did.
Cupich, caring and compassionate Novus Ordo shepherd that he is, coldly
insists that the Ecclesia Dei indult is only a temporary provision aimed at
"mainstreaming" diehard traditionalists into the new liturgy, whether they
like it or not, and that Holy Week is as good time as any to begin the
process of assimilation into the Novus Ordo: "Eventually, Catholics have to
understand that the reform of the Second Vatican Council is, in fact, an
improvement and is important to our spiritual life," said Cupich. Yes, like
Winston Smith in George Orwell's fictional Oceania, Catholics of the
postconciliar springtime must learn to understand that two plus two really
is five.
Not long ago Cupich was seen breaking the ground for the new "Sioux
Spiritual Center" in Rapid City. The news photo shows him in his flowing
white Novus Ordo gown, daintily poking a ceremonial shovel into the dirt.
According to the Rapid City Journal of November 9, 2000, the Sioux
Spiritual center has been built to serve the Lakota Indian tribe. "When it's
complete next spring, the 40-foot diameter, octagon-shaped log
building-which will feature a 16-foot high ceiling and windows that face the
four directions - will replace an old chapel that's too small to accommodate
the many groups that use the center for weekend retreats, educational
seminars and lay ministry training programs." The Sioux Spiritual Center
will host weekend retreats, "many of them inculturated programs designed
specifically for Lakota Catholics." According to Father Steve Mitten, the
director of the Sioux Spiritual Center, "Our purpose is to work for the
Lakota people as they develop their own church in their own style - a real
Catholic Church rooted in their culture and traditions." The Sioux
Spiritual Center will offer "recovery retreats for native people recovering
from drug or alcohol addiction that allow them to draw on both Christian and
Lakota religious traditions for spiritual healing."
Bishop Cupich provides a place for the Lakota tribe and "Lakota religious
traditions" in his Novus Ordo diocese, but he casts into the street those
who wish to adhere to Catholic religious traditions on Holy Thursday and
Good Friday. As Michael Matt would say: "Folks, you couldn't make this
stuff up." Cupich is the very model of a Novus Ordo bishop. He is the very
exemplar of the crisis we must still endure.
Yes, some bishops are rather more tolerant than Cupich toward Catholics who
wish to worship in accordance with Catholic tradition. But that is
precisely what is so astonishing and so unprecedented about the current
ecclesial crisis: the traditional Roman Rite of the Holy Catholic Church has
been reduced to a mere object of toleration in the Novus Ordo, a rather
dreadful thing to be sealed off in hermetic locations as if it were strain
of anthrax that might infect the rest of the Church. Under no circumstances
will the executors of the Novus Ordo establishment, be they in the Vatican
or in the local chancery office, ever admit that what they make such a great
show of permitting in a spirit of toleration is actually the birthright of
all Roman Catholics, the untouchable patrimony of the Church which they have
stolen, and which they now propose to return piecemeal to a few of the
victims-provided the victims are sufficiently grateful to the thieves for
their generosity in giving back a little of what was never theirs to take in
the first place. One hears again and again about Catholics who happened
across an "indult" Mass at some mausoleum chapel or other obscure outpost
and were moved to tears by the realization of what has been stolen from them
and their families. Yet the perpetrators of this incalculable crime, with
the devastation of the Roman Rite arrayed before their unblinking eyes, will
not concede that a crime has been committed.
Of course, the theft of Tradition by the Novus Ordo establishment involves
much more than the Latin liturgy. From neo-modernist martinets like Mahony,
to Hogarthian "conservatives" like Law, from the highest ranking Vatican
prelates to the most obscure diocesan bishop, they are all of one mind:
every element of the postconciliar regime of novelty must be preserved
without compromise. There must never be a return to the dreaded
"preconciliar Church," with its elitist, male-dominated Latin liturgy, its
abhorrence of liberal thinking, its quaint claim to be the sole ark of
salvation. To recall the infamous phrase of Cardinal Castrillón, who
supervises the traditionalist reservation called Ecclesia Dei,
traditionalists must be prepared to accept "the outcome of their insertion
into the ecclesial reality of today." (30 Days Magazine, No. 11-2000, p. 17)
(Cardinal Castrillón was referring in particular to the priests of the
Priestly Fraternity. And now we read, to our horror, that the French
regional superior of the Fraternity seriously defends the scandal of Assisi
2002 as completely consistent with the teaching of Pope Pius XI! - the very
Pope who directed the Church to pray that Jews, Muslims and idolators be
delivered from their darkness, and who called the Protestant version of the
Gospel "mutilated and corrupt," forbidding all Catholic involvement in
ecumenical (much less pan-religious) congresses.)
On May 3, 2002 the New York Times published yet another poll of Catholic
opinion. It seems that the Pope's approval rating has plummeted 16 points
(to 53 percent) on account of his failure to take any decisive action to
remove sexual predators from the priesthood. The same poll repeats a
finding that is already common knowledge: that while Catholics admire the
Pope, most of them do not follow papal teachings they find disagreeable.
Substantial majorities reject the Pope's teaching on women's ordination and
clerical celibacy, while 54 percent feel the Pope is more conservative than
they are on moral questions. An overwhelming 70 percent of nominal Catholics
reject the papal teaching on contraception. But 65 percent of Catholics
feel that their local parish priest "is in touch with the needs of modern
Catholics." Exactly. The Novus Ordo is intimately in touch with "the needs
of modern Catholics." And that is why the Novus Ordo is a decadent and
dying thing. For just as the great majority of "modern Catholics" have
embraced a life of self-induced sterility, so has the Novus Ordo embraced
the sterile novelties of the postconciliar epoch. An infertile ecclesial
establishment that cannot attract enough normal, healthy males to perpetuate
itself ministers to an infertile Catholic populace that cannot provide
enough priestly vocations. The postconciliar crisis in the Church is a
vicious cycle of barrenness, both physical and spiritual.
Let It Die
The current scandal should finally make it clear to everyone that the time
has come for serious Catholics to cease supporting the corrupt Novus Ordo
establishment. Let the thing die of its own excesses, for as the "little
synod" demonstrates, the men who control this establishment will never
restore it to anything resembling the vibrant Church that a long line of
militant, uncompromising Popes delivered into their hands at Vatican II.
For heaven's sake, the men who govern the Church today require a Vatican
summit meeting to agonize over whether serial child molesters should be
defrocked. From the Vatican on down, through deliberate decisions and
criminal neglect, the servitors of Vatican II have laid waste to the
liturgy, the perennial clarity of Catholic teaching, the Church's militant
opposition to worldly thinking, the traditional formation in seminaries, the
religious orders, the missions, the trust of the faithful in their own
priests-in short, the very life of the Church-and dare to call it a renewal.
We must no longer subsidize the malpractice of the architects of ruin. Nor
must we join the neo-Catholics in their mindless applause when one of these
incompetents attempts to repoint a brick or two in the crumbling façade they
have erected to obscure the Church of old.
Withdrawing all support from the Novus Ordo establishment is not the same as
withdrawing all support from the official structure of the Church. There
are many ways to support the few things that are still working within the
official structure without battening the likes of Mahony, Law and McCarrick.
First of all, if Catholics have access to an indult Latin Mass, they can
earmark donations strictly for the support of the indult parish or slip
generous stipends to the priest who offers the indult Mass. Catholics
should also be finding ways to support, privately and quietly, the many good
priests who, in spite of everything, can still be found in the Novus Ordo;
the normal, healthy men who keep their vows and yearn for the manly,
militant Roman Catholic priesthood that once was, not so long ago. Many of
these priests-and I have met quite a few-live in fear of their bishop, who
can at any moment consign them to an ecclesial gulag on suspicion of
excessive orthodoxy. Unlike Father Shanley and his fellow homosexual
predators, for these good priests there will be no favorable letters of
recommendation or plush new assignments. Traditionalists should befriend the
good priests entrapped in the Novus Ordo, helping them in every way to walk
the road back to Tradition, even if the first step is as small as getting
rid of altar girls or "eucharistic ministers" or reading a copy of Iota
Unum.
In any case, not one farthing should be contributed to any of the grand
projects of the Mahonys, the Laws, the Egans, the McCarricks. No money from
the faithful should ever again find its way into the general coffers of
dioceses that ordain homosexuals and otherwise perpetuate the Novus Ordo
debacle. Catholics should inform their local Novus Ordo prelate that they
will be happy to donate to the diocese once again, as soon as His Eminence
has expelled all the homosexuals and feminist nuns from the seminary, the
parishes and the chancery, granted liberal access to the traditional Mass at
convenient times and places for all who request it, abolished sex education
in the diocesan schools, mandated and rigorously enforced orthodox preaching
and catechesis, and restored every one of the Catholic traditions-by all
means provide a comprehensive list! - which His Eminence has suppressed in the
name of the "renewal" of Vatican II. Likewise as to the Vatican: not a penny
for Peter's Pence until the Vatican apparatus drops its fraudulent pretense
that the traditional Mass is de jure forbidden without an "indult", ceases
its insane hounding of traditionalists, and begins meting out serious
discipline to the Church's real enemies, including the summary removal of
frauds like Mahony.
And in the Meantime?
Obviously, it will take a miracle or another Saint Pius X to bring about the
inevitable restoration of the Church. Besides withholding our support from
the rapidly collapsing Novus Ordo, what else can we do as we await the
return of Tradition? We can, and must, support the existing traditionalist
orders. That means supporting the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter,
assuming it manages to resist the increasing pressure to be "inserted" into
the ruinous "ecclesial reality of today." It also means supporting the
Society of Saint Pius X by praying and petitioning for its unconditional
regularization by the Pope. The current negotiations between SSPX and the
Vatican are completely unnecessary. The clergy and laity of SSPX are
faithful Catholics, and the Pope should simply declare this. It is not
Bishop Fellay, but Cardinal Mahony who needs to achieve "full communion"
with Rome. It is not the lay adherents of SSPX, but the contracepting
Catholics who fill the pews of the Novus Ordo who are lacking in adherence
to the Vicar of Christ.
Archbishop Lefebvre's radical critique of the conciliar revolution has been
vindicated. The Novus Ordo arose in a rebellion against Tradition, was
sustained by the love of vain novelties, and is ending with the fall of
consecrated souls. Lefebvre knew with an insider's knowledge the decadence
of the establishment that sought to crush his traditional Catholic seminary,
while ignoring the neo-modernist and homosexual invasion of the Church. With
even 30 Days magazine suggesting recently that Lefebvre and Savonarola may
both someday be canonized as saintly critics of reigning ecclesial
corruption, it is time for sensible people to abandon the ridiculous claim
that Archbishop Lefebvre was a schismatic, while Roger Mahony is in union
with Rome. Schism is a state of mind, not a mere departure from diocesan
real estate. As Saint Athanasius wrote to his flock: "You remain outside the
places of worship, but the Faith dwells within you. Let us consider: what is
more important, the place or the Faith? The true Faith, obviously. Who has
lost and who has won in the struggle-the one who keeps the premises or the
one who keeps the Faith?" Mahony keeps the premises, but Lefebvre kept the
faith. And so do the traditionalist Catholics now condemned as "Lefebvrists"
by the Novus Ordo establishment and its neo-Catholic flunkeys.
"Healing and Forgiveness"
When the current scandal could no longer be pried from the jaws of the
slathering media jackals, the Novus Ordo's episcopal CEOs suddenly began
talking a great deal about "healing" and "forgiveness"-corporate buzzwords
for a corporation in deep trouble with the public. But where is the healing
for Roman Catholic traditionalists, who for forty years have rightly
resisted the regime of novelty whose collapse into scandal the world now
delights in mocking? And where is the forgiveness for Archbishop Lefebvre in
his one act of conscientious disobedience, an act that looks more and more
like the heroic stand of Saint Athanasius? In a Church beset by prelates
like Mahony, Law and McCarrick, a Church infested by heresiarchs and sexual
deviants who call themselves Father, a Church in which most of the people in
the pews blithely ignore any teaching they do not like, there is healing and
forgiveness for everyone, it seems, except those who wish to be Catholics as
their fathers were Catholics. For Catholics who cling to the faith of our
fathers, exactly as it was before Vatican II, there is no healing or
forgiveness, but only declarations of excommunication and schism, or a
tenuous toleration, or the cold, hard sidewalk outside a locked parish
church on Good Friday.
The Pope is probably already too far gone to reverse the enormous disaster
that threatens to become the real legacy of his pontificate. But the Pope
could change the course of history and demolish the Adversary's best-laid
plans with a single papal act: a decree annulling the so-called
excommunication and schism of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and the bishops he
consecrated, and erecting a worldwide traditionalist patriarchate, blessedly
independent of the Novus Ordo establishment. By this act alone the Pope
would launch all the forces necessary to begin the restoration of the
Church. God, the faithful and history would bless him for it.
Let the healing and forgiveness begin.
For the first part of this article, see Part One of Pulling the Plug
For past articles in the archives of Traditional Thoughts, see ARCHIVED ARTICLES
|