Imagine there is a group of people who really love golden calves. Their passion for golden calves plays such a dominant role in their lives that they have special golden calf flags, hold public parades honoring golden calves, and even try to educate society on the great virtue of worshiping golden calves. Over time, the golden-calf-worshipping lobby groups grow so powerful that even those who are not especially fond of golden calves feel compelled to periodically honor golden calves lest they lose business or be accused of anti-golden-calf-lover hate.

Imagine further that one of the organizations most resistant to changing to accommodate golden-calf-worship pride is the Catholic Church because it believes that God’s explicit prohibition on worshipping false gods stands in the way. To overcome this “spurious” excuse for not fundamentally reshaping a two-thousand year old religion established by God, the golden-calf-worship lobby surreptitiously infiltrates the Catholic Church and eventually occupies most of the highest positions of authority with golden-calf worshippers and their sympathizers. Firmly entrenched in these positions of power, the golden-calf-worship lobby then reshapes the Catholic Church to accommodate their love for golden calves.

If we were to go through this exercise to consider how we would think about various special interest groups infiltrating the Catholic Church to fundamentally alter its non-negotiable teachings, we would eventually consider groups that oppose the Sixth and Ninth Commandments and the Church’s associated teachings.

Of course nothing like this could ever happen; but assuming for the sake of argument that it could happen, some moral questions arise:

• Should it be lawful to infiltrate the Catholic Church, or any other church, for the purpose of changing its teachings and policies into something unambiguously opposed to the unchangeable teachings of such church?
• Further, should it be lawful in connection with such infiltration to direct the Church’s assets toward projects or initiatives that support the special interest in opposition to the Church’s stated and immutable objectives?
• And, is there any logical way to avoid the conclusion that those who would infiltrate the Catholic Church with the aim of distorting the religion to serve a non-Catholic interest group would be committing a hate crime against Catholics?

We could ask these same questions with respect to any special interest group that would infiltrate the Catholic Church, or any church, for the purpose of changing the Church’s fundamental teachings to accommodate the special interest group. So, for instance, if there was a special interest group dedicated to using Our Lord’s name in vain — in violation of the Second Commandment — it seems legitimate to ask whether they could lawfully infiltrate the Catholic Church and begin misappropriating the Church’s assets to teach that good Catholics should use the Lord’s name in vain.

If we were to go through this exercise to consider how we would think about various special interest groups infiltrating the Catholic Church to fundamentally alter its non-negotiable teachings, we would eventually consider groups that oppose the Sixth and Ninth Commandments and the Church’s associated teachings that any sexual activity outside of the marriage between a man and woman is gravely sinful. For example, what would we think of a pro-adultery lobby group that infiltrated the Catholic Church and gained enough power to persuade Catholics that the Church (and God) had always been wrong about adultery? What if a pro-adultery lobby group somehow managed to persuade the Church’s highest authorities to bless adulterous unions?

These scenarios would seem impossibly preposterous were it not for the undeniable fact that we have witnessed something far worse taking place for many decades with the homosexual infiltration of the Catholic Church for the purpose of reshaping its teachings. Although it seems unlikely that any informed Catholic remains unaware of this infiltration, we can look to excerpts from Cardinal Gerhard Müller’s November 21, 2018 interview with LifeSite to attain a baseline understanding of the criminal aspect of this infiltration:

• “The LGBT ideology is based upon a false anthropology which denies God as the Creator. Since it is in principle atheistic or perhaps has only to do with a Christian concept of God at the margins, it has no place in Church documents. This is an example of the creeping influence of atheism in the Church, which has been responsible for the crisis of the Church for half a century.”
• “That McCarrick, together with his clan and a homosexual network, was able to wreak havoc in a mafia-like manner in the Church is connected with the underestimation of the moral depravity of homosexual acts among adults.”
• “It is part of the crisis that one does not wish to see the true causes and covers them up with the help of propaganda phrases of the homosexual lobby. Fornication with teenagers and adults is a mortal sin which no power on earth can declare to be morally neutral.”
• “The priests have the authority to proclaim the Gospels and to administer the Sacraments of Grace. If someone abuses his jurisdiction in order to reach selfish goals, he himself is not clerical in an exaggerated form, but, rather, he himself is anti-clerical, because he denies Christ Who wishes to work through him.”

Today the matter is far worse than it was when Cardinal Müller was interviewed in 2018, as evidenced by the recent declaration from the “Dicastery for (against?) the Doctrine of the Faith,” Fiducia Supplicans, which purported to authorize something the Church can never authorize: the blessing of same-sex unions.

We are all sinners, but we present ourselves to the Church for the purpose of amending our sinful lives rather than to have the Church bless the sin.

In Fiducia Supplicans, Cardinal Víctor Manuel “Tucho” Fernández displayed an under-appreciated aspect of moral depravity through his discussion of actual grace. This discussion might be unobjectionable in a legitimate context — such as blessing those who actually seek to amend their lives to serve God — but it displays diabolical wickedness when specifically applied to the blessing of same-sex unions:

“These forms of blessing express a supplication that God may grant those aids that come from the impulses of his Spirit — what classical theology calls ‘actual grace’ —so that human relationships may mature and grow in fidelity to the Gospel, that they may be freed from their imperfections and frailties, and that they may express themselves in the ever-increasing dimension of the divine love. Indeed, the grace of God works in the lives of those who do not claim to be righteous but who acknowledge themselves humbly as sinners, like everyone else.”

Tucho is indeed correct in asserting that God gives us actual graces to ever more faithfully serve Him, but that service obviously does not consist of premeditated obstinacy in sin. We are all sinners, but we present ourselves to the Church for the purpose of amending our sinful lives rather than to have the Church bless the sin.

The blasphemous context and application of Tucho’s statement on actual grace obscures a vital reality. God gives us the graces we need to repent and turn to Him but, as Dr. Ludwig Ott described in his Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, we can reject that grace:

“Tradition clearly teaches the reality of sufficient grace, which through man’s fault remains inefficacious. St. Augustine also knows substantially the difference between merely sufficient grace and efficacious grace: ‘His mercy comes before us in everything. But to assent to or dissent from the call of God is a matter for one’s own will.’” (p. 247)

The Church helps us make proper use of our free will when it exhorts us to turn away from sin and pursue virtue. Conversely, Francis’s Synodal Church attempts to oppose God’s grace by trying to convince souls that they please God when they reject His graces to repent.

Similarly, some pernicious heretics argue that telling souls that they must avoid sin if they want to avoid hell is uncharitable. But, as any rational Christian knows, such admonitions echo the words we hear from Our Lord throughout the Gospels, such as this passage from the Sermon on the Mount:

“You have heard that it was said to them of old: Thou shalt not commit adultery. But I say to you, that whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart. And if thy right eye scandalize thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee. For it is expedient for thee that one of thy members should perish, rather than that thy whole body be cast into hell.” (Matthew 5:27-29)

It is not uncharitable for Jesus or His Church to apprise sinners of the dire risk involved with persisting in sin; but it is diabolically uncharitable for Francis and his collaborators to persuade souls that God will judge them favorably even if they fail to repent. It is not uncharitable to remind sinners that we must deny ourselves, pick up our cross, and follow Jesus (Matthew 16:24); but it is diabolically uncharitable when Francis and his collaborators promote prominent homosexual clerics while they persecute Catholics who merely want to believe and practice what the Church has always taught.

So we have a church promoting Satan’s agenda — the Synodal Church —attacking the Catholic Church. It is a dark sign, but one that tells us which side we must choose. Click to Tweet

The juxtaposition of Francis honoring proponents of the LGBTQ agenda while condemning those who practice Traditional Catholicism is surely among the most disturbing signs in the world today. The overarching significance of the sign would not be substantively different if Francis was instead promoting golden calf worship while condemning Traditional Catholics — we would know that Satan had established control over the religion promoted by Francis.

As disconcerting as this is, the fullest realization of this sign to date (through Fiducia Supplicans) corresponds with the rise of the Synodal Church, which has effectively separated itself from the Catholic Church. So we have a church promoting Satan’s agenda — the Synodal Church —attacking the Catholic Church. It is a dark sign, but one that tells us which side we must choose.

Catholics of good will might disagree about how to respond to this sign, but it seems that some fundamentals of the proper response are fairly evident:

• We should adhere to the unadulterated Catholic Faith as it existed prior to Vatican II (even though we know the infiltration and corruption began well before the Council).
• We need to reject all of the anti-Catholic errors about which the pre-Vatican II popes warned, many of which have found a home in the Synodal Church.
• We should petition God’s grace and mercy as best we can, using the means all Christians have always employed to do so: prayer, penance, and avoidance of sin.
• Whatever we think of Francis — anti-pope, worst pope in history, or false prophet — we can no longer have even the appearance of following him when he does anything other than promote unadulterated Catholicism (which he does not do).

God offers us the graces necessary to carry out these responses today. And if we dedicate ourselves to cooperating with God’s grace to do what we can, perhaps He will give us the graces we need to more tangibly address the crisis with the papacy and Vatican. We know God is a loving Father and it is entirely reasonable that He would, like other loving fathers, want us to first do what He wants us to do before He intervenes to fix what only He can fix. We need childlike trust of God rather than childish resistance of the graces He readily offers.

Francis and his Synod have brought the most prominent errors of Vatican II to their logical conclusion, and those who argue otherwise are either anti-Catholic infiltrators or ignorant.

We face dark times today, but the situation is actually clearer than it has been for several decades. Compromise with error has brought us to this moment because God’s truth is incompatible with error. Francis and his Synod have brought the most prominent errors of Vatican II to their logical conclusion, and those who argue otherwise are either anti-Catholic infiltrators or ignorant. God is not trying to trick us: when the worst villains in the world are promoting the anti-Catholic LGTBQ agenda and persecuting Traditional Catholics, it is time to attend the Traditional Latin Mass with great frequency and devotion, and revisit the long abandoned holy wisdom of the pre-Vatican II popes.

To this end, we can heed the words of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s September 3, 1975 Letter to Friends and Benefactors:

“We accept innovations in close conformity with Tradition and the Faith. We do not feel bound by any obedience to accept innovations not in accordance with Tradition which threaten our faith. In that case, we take our stand on the [pre-Vatican II papal documents]. We do not see how, in conscience, a Catholic layman, priest, or bishop can adopt any other attitude towards the grievous crisis the Church is going through. ‘Nihil innovetur nisi quod traditum est — innovate nothing, but hand down Tradition’. . . ‘Call not true what is false, call not good what is evil.’” (A Bishop Speaks, p. 233)

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

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