One of the lies of Liberalism and Marxism is a prideful faith in man’s power of central planning. The idea that if we just create a system, a huge bureaucracy, we can pull all the strings to make that planned utopia come about. His Holiness, “the Dictator Pope” and his Vatican regime of Iconoclasm have been attempting to make Cardinal Martini’s dream a reality with all their central planning to bring about the reign of the “[Anti-]Church of Synodal Synodality.”
Or whatever.
They think if they just set up everything just right, this wicked dream will come true. We just had the SchismaticWay in Rome, then the “theology paradigm shift” motu proprio, and now the Pope is trying to rig the next papal election. What a circus!
Why have the Gentiles raged, and the people devised vain things?… He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh at them: and the Lord shall deride them (Ps. ii. 1, 4).
What would Sr. Wilhelmina do about this news? She would probably laugh, like the Lord of heaven is laughing right now, and go work on ironing a cassock while humming a tune to herself.
And he answered them: Fear not: can we resist the will of God? You thought evil against me: but God turned it into good (Gen. l. 19). What these enemies of Christ intend for evil, God will turn to His own purpose. He will gloriously triumph by creating good out of evil. This is how God laughs at these machinations.
So what are these machinations that are futile? The news is that there’s a document in formation to alter the next papal election. It hasn’t been approved yet, but the plans are clear. Montagna reports over at The Remnant:
Professing to “return to the early Church”, the idea would be to have cardinal-electors, the majority of whom Pope Francis has chosen, comprise seventy-five percent of the vote, while the remaining twenty-five percent would be made up of laymen and women and religious sisters, papally appointed by Pope Francis in advance of the Apostolic See becoming vacant.
So they think they can thwart God Almighty by stacking the deck beforehand. First, this is complete hubris on their part and every good Catholic should laugh at these vain attempts. Second, let’s offer an Ave Maria in reparation for their attempts to undermine Christ’s Church. May God save all heretics from the fires of hell!
Third, this plan only works – and Francis’s pontificate only works – if hyperüberultramontanism is true Catholicism. But as readers of OnePeterFive should know, we hold this to be in fact that “false spirit of Vatican I” which has done so much damage.
I truly believe that one good out of this evil pontificate will be the true doctrinal development and clarification of the dogmas of Vatican I, which we already seeing from competent theologians. This false spirit – and this faith in a particular system of the Vatican bureaucracy – was a problem developing before Vatican II. So if this false spirit comes crumbling down – as it already is – it will not matter if Pope Francis gets his pick of Pope Francis II – all faithful Catholics will resist him and God will win in the end.
Fourth, no matter what the sedes say, even if this document gets promulgated and enacted at the next election, the next pope would be valid. History shows that the Papacy is not a Sacrament. It literally just means becoming the bishop of Rome. And there’s numerous ways – some just and unjust, some canonically regular and irregular – that a bishop can become the bishop of Rome. Popes have been deposed and appointed by the Roman Emperor (Justinian), or they have been elected by the Roman clergy, or later the college of cardinals, or driven out by the Emperor’s army (Otto I). All sorts of craziness has happened, and there’s still valid popes. Even in a time when the pope himself is doubtful (like in the case of the Great Western Schism), eventually these things get worked out and history shows that there was indeed a valid pope despite the confusion.
Fifth, and most important, our plan of defence of our families and the Faith is simple: the mustard seed of the domestic church. They will never be able to destroy it with all the bureaucracy in the world, even a new world order and conspiracy of the fallen angels. What they fear is “thousands of little platoons of families fighting against them.”[1] Pick up a copy of Credo and teach it to your children. The hubris of this central planning will be clear to history in time. Jesus is King!
T. S. Flanders
Editor
Monday within the Octave of All Saints
[1] Joseph Shaw, The Liturgy, the Family, and the Crisis of Modernity: Essays of a Traditional Catholic (Os Justi Press, 2023), 278.
