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Lightning strikes the Vatican, Feb. 11, 2013, hours after Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation.

February 6, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – People are uncomfortable talking about Satanism, but there are so many whispers about its inroads these days that the subject is at last coming out into the open. Since Satan-worshiping tends, of its very nature, to be done in darkness, it is hard to get hold of solid evidence about who may be involved, and how pervasive it may be. In his lengthy interviews with Taylor Marshall on YouTube, abuse victim James Grein hints at possible Satanic elements in connection with McCarrick, the St. Galen group, and others involved in the wave of scandals that has overtaken the hierarchy, including the papacy.

Should we be surprised about this? In a way, yes, and in a way, no.

The most powerful churchmen will suffer the greatest temptation to ally themselves with the “angel of light” who attempts to rival God and overthrow His order—an order most apparent in the differentiation of the human race into male and female, and the ordering of sexual activity to procreation. Any powerful man in the Church, if he does not bend all his effort to sanctifying his soul and body in accord with supernatural virtue, will be drawn to defile his soul and body with unnatural vice. Those who are not totally committed to Christ will find themselves sliding down into the party of His archenemy.

That a choice must be made between the way of life and the way of death holds true for all Christians, but it holds true especially for priests and bishops, the shepherds of the flock. The hired shepherd, of all men, requires the most humility, for he is working around the clock to watch over and preserve sheep—sheep that do not even belong to him! How humiliating; how grating; how unworthy of the shepherd’s own life goals. This is why a good shepherd shines with self-sacrifice, while an evil shepherd stinks of egoism. We should worry more about the “smell of the shepherd” than we do about the “smell of the sheep.”

The recent news regarding the promotion by Pope Francis of Argentine bishop Gustavo Oscar Zanchetta to a senior position at the Vatican despite, it appears, already-known serious accusations against him is yet another example, among so many, of how this pope surrounds himself with unsavory characters. So far from being committed to moral reform, he empowers those who are morally compromised, while distancing or disgracing those who are morally strong.

In Revelation 22:15, when Jesus lists those who will be excluded from the heavenly Jerusalem, the list includes various sinners, such as sorcerers, whoremongers, murderers, idolaters, and liars. However, first on the list is “dogs.” Does Jesus have a problem with “man’s best friend”? Hardly. The term “dog” is also used in Deuteronomy 23:17 in a list of unclean things that cannot be brought into the temple in the earthly Jerusalem: “Thou shalt not offer the hire of a strumpet, nor the price of a dog, in the house of the Lord thy God, whatsoever it be that thou hast vowed: because both these are an abomination to the Lord thy God.” God makes it clear that the Israelites must not bring filthy things to the temple as offerings. The earnings of prostitutes (“strumpets”) and male cult prostitutes (“dogs”) are strictly prohibited and are to be excluded. 

Therefore, the first people in the Book of Revelation’s list who are to be definitively excluded from the heavenly Jerusalem are male sodomites. These, then, are the dogs who must be excluded from the kingdom, both on earth and in heaven.

“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” That which can never be received into the heavenly kingdom is likewise forbidden on earth; that which God will always punish in eternity must also be punished in time, to the extent possible. For the Church on earth is called to be holy as the Lord is holy, and to overturn all idols in order to follow Him alone. We see nothing else than this in the Acts of the Apostles; in the Desert Fathers; in the early monks and nuns; in the long line of saints, whether contemplatives removed from the world or ministers actively involved in its governance, who defend the harmonious order of God’s creation and the still more marvelous beauty of the redemption Christ obtained for us against the dissonance of its demonic enemies.

Pretending that we, in our time, are not witnesses to and participants in an unprecedented battle between supernal armies of good and evil would be delusional. The enemy has breached the walls and is inside, comfortably seated on episcopal thrones, running curial offices, and long since committed, with the help of Satan and his angels, to the destruction of any recognizable form of confessional Christianity.

It is better to know what is really happening: this is both somber and liberating. It frees us from the wearisome exercise of pretending we’re in a new age of the Spirit unleashed by the last Council, and enlists us in the company of the holy angels whose help we urgently need.

Actually, we are in a new age of the spirit. The problem is, it’s the wrong spirit, and his name is legion, for they are innumerable. If you are not already praying the St. Michael Prayer every day, it’s time to start; if you are praying it, persevere. The season of pretended niceness is over. The guns are loaded; it’s all-out warfare.

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Peter Kwasniewski, Thomistic theologian, liturgical scholar, and choral composer, is a graduate of Thomas Aquinas College in California (B.A. Liberal Arts) and The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC (M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy). He taught at the International Theological Institute in Austria and the Franciscan University of Steubenville’s Austria Program, then helped establish Wyoming Catholic College in 2006. There he taught theology, philosophy, music, and art history and directed the choirs until leaving in 2018 to devote himself full-time to writing and lecturing.

Today he contributes regularly to many websites and publications, including New Liturgical Movement, OnePeterFive, LifeSiteNews, Rorate Caeli, The Remnant, and Catholic Family News, and has published thirteen books, including four on traditional Catholicism: Resurgent in the Midst of Crisis (Angelico, 2014, also available in Czech, Polish, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and Belarusian), Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness (Angelico, 2017), Tradition and Sanity (Angelico, 2018), and Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright: The Genius and Timeliness of the Traditional Latin Mass (Angelico, 2020). His work has been translated into at least eighteen languages.

Kwasniewski is a scholar of The Aquinas Institute in Green Bay, which is publishing the Opera Omnia of the Angelic Doctor, a Fellow of the Albertus Magnus Center for Scholastic Studies, and a Senior Fellow of the St. Paul Center. He has published over a thousand articles on Thomistic thought, sacramental and liturgical theology, the history and aesthetics of music, and the social doctrine of the Church.

For news, information, article links, sacred music, and the home of Os Justi Press, visit his personal website, www.peterkwasniewski.com.