Time to take a stand…
Are You Catholic?
It’s only a few more weeks, nay days, before Jorge Bergoglio (“Pope” Francis) visits the United States. He will arrive on Tuesday, Sept. 22 and stay until Sunday, Sept. 27. Here is the official schedule:
With the arrival of Francis, a great many secular people will turn their attention to “things Catholic”, and this means that for those of us who live in the United States, we may very well be asked whether we are Catholic, what we think of Francis, and whether we are excited about the “papal” visit. Expect these questions to come up.
You may already know how you will answer, what you will say. However, we would like to draw your attention to a different aspect to this, namely, the frightening truth that no matter whether you dislike, disagree with, or “resist” Francis, the secular world will always (and rightly) assume that he who calls himself a Catholic and acknowledges Francis as a true Pope, also shares his religion. This is entirely reasonable, after all. If you’re going to say that so-and-so is the head, the chief leader, of your religion, then it follows that what he believes and teaches, you believe and conform to. That is the common-sense presumption, and it is entirely warranted.
So, whether you like it or not, if you have been sitting on the fence about the validity of the papal claim of the Argentinian apostate, remember that this issue is not merely a theoretical exercise that stays locked inside your own mind, it is also eminently practical, and it affects not only you and your family but also those around you, for by your profession of communion with Bergoglio you are necessarily telling the world that you adhere to his religion. For the recognize-and-resist people who pay lipservice to Francis’ putative papacy but actually refuse his religion — and we think in particular here of John Vennari and people like him — this profession of communion with Francis is tantamount to a lie, because although they verbally acknowledge him as Pope, their “submission” ends there; and in this they are also giving scandal, for every time they express their conviction that Francis is Pope, they are scandalizing others, who understand — again, quite rightly — this to be an endorsement of the Bergoglian religion, even if this is not intended. A clarification, too, along the lines of, “I accept Francis as Pope but…” would still cause scandal, for this would lead people to believe that a Catholic is free to reject the authentic Magisterium of the Pope, which is false.
Therefore, the charity of our Lord Jesus Christ urges us (cf. 2 Cor 5:14) to pose to you this specific question:
Are you Catholic?
Do you consider yourself a real Catholic?
Would any Pope before Vatican II recognize you as one?
These are three questions, technically, but they all ask for essentially the same thing. If your unfeigned answer is, “Yes”, or, “I hope so; I mean to be”, then it is high time you publicly started disassociating yourself from Francis and his Modernist Sect. Why? Because unless you do so, people will begin to identify “Catholicism” and your religion in particular with the inane mix of Modernist-Masonic hippie tripe that Francis has been promoting from the start, and that have been promoted really since Vatican II.
Of course, what we’re saying here comes a little bit “late in the game”, because of course in the minds of most people at least in the Western world, “Catholicism” has long been identified with the Modernist bunk that is peculiar to the Vatican II religion (except when it comes to Hollywood movies, there they remember all the traditional ways of being Catholic, for better or worse). However, never has the break with the past been so visible, so evident as now, under Francis. That the religion of the Vatican II Sect is substantially different from Roman Catholicism (as believed and taught from the beginning until the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958), and therefore the current “Catholic Church” cannot in fact be the Catholic Church last shepherded by Pius XII, is so obvious now that no one can reasonably deny it (and virtually no one does, except a handful of people who do so only because they don’t want to embrace the conclusion that would then follow, namely, Sedevacantism).
So while the question, “What do you think of Francis?” can only have one clear answer, the question, “Are you Catholic?” is a bit more tricky to respond to. We must, of course, answer this question in the affirmative; yet we have to also take into consideration that the word “Catholic” no longer means what it did 60 years ago in the mind of the inquirer. Therefore, what will you say when someone asks, “Are you Catholic?”
At this point, the question essentially means, “Are you an adherent of the religion of Jorge Bergoglio? Are you a Vatican II believer?” Unless you publicly distance yourself from Francis, making clear that your religion is not the religion that he is the head of, then people will naturally believe that you adhere to his religion. Saying, “I accept him as my Pope” or, “I am a Catholic”, without further qualification, will be taken to mean, “I adhere to the religion of Jorge Bergoglio”, with all that entails. But as we already said, you cannot say that you accept him as Pope but refuse his religion without causing scandal — not to mention incurring the guilt of heresy and schism.
This leaves us with only one viable solution: The question, “Are you Catholic?” must be answered thus: “I am indeed — I am a genuine and traditional Catholic, a Catholic the way everyone was a Catholic until the 1960s. I have nothing to do with the modernizing changes and do not believe there has been a true Pope since Pius XII. I reject Francis’ claim to the papacy as absurd, no less absurd than if the Dalai Lama were to claim to be the head of the Catholic Church.” No, of course the answer doesn’t have to be this long, but you get the idea. This is the gist of what your response should look like: making clear that the Vatican institution’s religion today is substantially different from what it was for over 1,900 years, and that you reject the false new religion with all its impostor clergy and adhere to the timeless Catholicism that has come down to us from our Lord Jesus Christ and His blessed Apostles. This is sure to be a conversation starter!
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It is time to get off the fence. You are either with Francis or against him (cf. Mt 12:30). But you cannot be against him while acknowledging him to be Pope without contradicting Catholic teaching on the papacy and the necessity of each Catholic to be subject to the Pope. You will, inevitably, either fall into the sin of schism or heresy, or perhaps both. You cannot say, “I accept him as the head of my religion but I do not share his religion”, because this is absurd. It is, in fact, not any different from a Modernist in 1910 saying, “I acknowledge Pope Pius X as the head of my Church but I do not share his religion.” The copout that Catholics need not believe what the Church teaches unless it has been believed “always, everywhere, and by all” is false, as we have demonstrated in a recent post here.
Whether you like it or not, identifying yourself simply as “Catholic” these days will be taken to mean that you are a child of Francis and a child of Vatican II. But is this your religion? Seek no subterfuge in specious distinctions that have no basis in traditional Catholic teaching — simply answer truthfully and let no guile come from your lips: “But let your speech be yea, yea: no, no: and that which is over and above these, is of evil” (Mt 5:37).
Choose now, now while you still can, and man up! How will you resist the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil — nay, the temptations perhaps of the Antichrist himself —, or how will you resist the Muslim who threatens to behead you if you do not join his religion — if you cannot even take upon you the inconvenience of Sedevacantism? Do not forget, also, that your acceptance or rejection of Francis also affects other people, not just yourself.
We must get our act together. Our salvation, and perhaps even that of others, may very much depend on it. Saying “I am Catholic”, and especially “I recognize Francis as the Pope”, will be tantamount to saying, “I endorse the leftist-ecumenist-divorce-eco-mother-earth-climate-change-homophile-hippie-do-not-judge agenda of Francis, Maradiaga, Cupich, Dolan, Marx, and the rest of the pseudo-Catholic gang.” Surely you do not want that on your soul when the Lord calls you to your particular judgment.
There is only one solution: Reject Francis and the false Vatican II religion, and proclaim it from the housetops!
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