(LifeSiteNews) — When the teaching of Christ the King is contradicted by His vicar on earth, we are faced with a dilemma.
The dilemma is not who is right, and who is wrong, but what should be done with Christ’s vicar on earth when he refuses to do the decent thing and resign.
Everyone should know that everything that he says and does that contradicts the teaching of Christ should be—must be—ignored. And that includes the novelties of the last Synod presented as part of the magisterium of the Church, along with a new “do as you please” morality where anything goes—apart from returning to the teaching of Christ.
The diabolical dilemma that we are faced with today began with another Vicar of Christ who chose his own will over the will of Christ. Christ sent his mother to Fatima in 1917 to call the whole Church back to repentance, prayer and sacrifice. She asked that a third secret be revealed in 1960, but the Pope simply said “No” to Our Lady’s unambiguous request to call the whole Church to renew itself by radically returning to the teaching of her beloved Son Jesus. Instead, he decided to call a Council in order to perform an impossible task.
The impossible task Pope John XXIII had set himself by calling the Second Vatican Council was uniting all Christian denominations to fulfill the prayer that Christ made at the Last Supper that “they all may be one.” To achieve this objective, the documents would have to be so all-embracing that they would be acceptable to all Protestants, while simultaneously being so ambiguous that they would be acceptable to all Catholics, too. When the Father was asked to send His Holy Spirit to guarantee the success of the Council, it was like asking God to make a square circle.
The only document that was generally accepted by the Council Fathers was that on the liturgy, and naturally it was the one document that no Protestant would accept. Even if all other documents were so all-embracing and ambiguous that they would have been acceptable to Catholics and Protestants alike, the document on the liturgy contained the Sacrifice of the Mass and thus would have made the desired unity impossible. The ambiguity meant to foster the union of all Christians only served to divide Catholics; they used it to endorse heresies across the spectrum, from right-wing conservatism to left-wing Marxism, in subsequent years. Those from both extremes and middle of the road moderates have, during the last sixty years, all claimed that they are following in the footsteps of the Second Vatican Council.
When the Bible says that “Obedience is better than sacrifice,” God means that obedience to His will is far better than the sacrifices that you make to do what you want to do. The Second Vatican Council then, was not just a failure because it set out to achieve the impossible, but because to do this it rejected the wishes of Christ the Head of the Church, delivered to Pope John XXIII through His mother, Our Lady of Fatima. Our Lady called the Church back to the practice of the spirituality first lived and practised by her Beloved Son before it was introduced to the early Church. Her instructions included calling the whole Church to repentance, prayer, and sacrifice.
If a Council had been called to implement what was clearly God’s will, then the terrible consequences that were originally only conditional would not have—as they have in fact—already begun, and thus the diabolical dilemma that we are now faced with would have been avoided. The need for radical reform in the Church from top to bottom was evident before the Vatican Council despite those who believe that returning to tradition means returning to the supposedly halcyon days that preceded it.
I was born before the Second World War and became a Rosary Crusader in 1949 because we knew that, without prayer, the Church and the world that it was called to transform would both suffer a terminal moral decline. We knew that without the radical return to the Repentance, Prayer and Sacrifice that Our Lady had asked for at Fatima, devastating consequences would be inevitable. And we knew that long before it was spelled out in the Third Fatima Secret that Pope John XXIII refused to make known to the world. He might have become a saint, but all saints, like us, begin as sinners. Although his momentous mistake might have been forgiven before he died “in the odor of sanctity” the consequences of what he failed to do are clear to all with eyes to see. It is no longer possible for fence sitters to keep a foot on either side until they feel which way the wind will finally blow. If you follow the present pope and his sinister oligarchy, you are being swept along by a wind that blows from hell, and you are clearly rejecting the divine wind, the ruach, the breath of God’s own Holy Spirit, Who fills all who would receive It with the Truth.
We cannot, we must not, stand by to see the destruction of our Church. For decades now we have been told that we are the Church. It is time we began to act together for the Church. However, before we rise from the trenches to fight for Christ the King and the Church over which He reigns, we must make a tactical retreat. The retreat is to prepare ourselves as He Himself prepared himself, by radically opening ourselves to the Holy Spirit—without Whose dynamic presence within us we will be lost.
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Prayer is the word used by the Christian tradition to describe what Christ the King did before us to be filled with the Holy Spirit, Who alone makes all things possible, even the impossible. I do not just mean the prayer of petition, with which we must begin and to which we must continually return, but the deep prayer in which we are purified to receive the only One who can prepare us for the revolution that is needed in the Church: the Holy Spirit.
For all too long we have been committing the sin against the Holy Spirit, and we have been reaping the consequences. But now it is time for us, the Church, to take up the offensive. However, we can do this only after we have taken time to retreat, to radically open ourselves to the Holy Spirit to prepare us, as he prepared Christ our King, for the war to end all wars that is ahead of us.
That is why, in the Jubilee Year, I want to invite all Catholics to make a retreat. Ideally this retreat would be led by parish priests for their parishioners. But if all else fails, Catholics can make a retreat themselves in their own homes. Of course, the ideal would be to find somewhere more conducive to develop and deepen prayer taught at retreats. But, thanks to LifeSiteNews, I will be returning to this matter later.
If you want to know the historical reasons why the prayer, that is the making of the saints, has sadly been taken out of mainline Catholic Spirituality in the aftermath of the pernicious heresy of Quietism, I refer you to an interview I gave to John-Henry Westen in November 2023. And, further, if you want to know how we can turn back the clock to rediscover how to pray again, like the first Christians, and all the great saints in subsequent centuries, then stay tuned, because the Retreat to which I want to introduce you in this Jubilee year will give all the knowledge and inspiration that you need.
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This Retreat movement has, as our Patron, His Excellency Bishop Athanasius Schneider. It is called Metanoia, because it calls on us all to turn back to God, asking everyone to make a sacrifice, the sacrifice of their time to make a Retreat, as Christ Himself did in the desert before He began His public ministry. It is called a Catechetical Retreat for it is aimed at both the head and the heart simultaneously, to unite us all as one, to fulfill the prayer that Christ made for us at the Last Supper, and so unite us all together for the revolution that must turn us all back to God through the deep prayer that leads to contemplation.
These Catechetical Retreats show us how to live and practice the Spirituality that Jesus Christ Our Lord first practiced himself before introducing it into the early Church. It has four foremost features. It is Royal, Contemplative, Redemptive, and Sacrificial.
As Christ is King, God has given Him all power. However, that power is Love, so it cannot be forced on anyone; we must choose to receive it. Prayer is the word used by the Catholic Tradition to describe how to receive it. It is Contemplative because, as we persevere in prayer, the Holy Spirit draws us up into the Contemplative prayer of our Risen Lord that lovingly gazes upon God the Father. It is here, in doing this, that St. Thomas Aquinas says that we receive the fruits of contemplation. But if we refuse to do this, we are in effect committing the sin against the Holy Spirit, as we have been doing for all too long, and we therefore become porous to evil.
The first fruit in which all the others are contained is the infused love of God the Father. This love contains within it all the infused virtues, gifts, and fruits of the Holy Spirit, with which Christ was replete and resplendent during His life on earth. This infused love enables us to participate with Christ in our own redemption, and in the redemption of the world that He now chooses to bring about through us. Hence it is a Redemptive Spirituality for ourselves and for others. Finally, this Spirituality is Sacrificial, because it means making all the sacrifices that are necessary to follow this profound Spirituality in our daily lives that are then offered in, with, and through the Sacrifice of Christ every time we take part in the Sacrifice of the Mass. The ever-increasing love that we receive in doing this gives us the supernatural help and strength that we need to continue deepening the same Spirituality that Christ himself practiced before introducing it to the early Church.
To this end all the material that you need will be provided for you. Then all that is needed is your will, your decision, your choice to open yourself to God’s transforming and transfiguring love during the rest of your life by developing the prayer that leads to contemplative loving that you learn on this retreat.
This is the love that was born into our world on the first Christmas Day, and on every day, thanks to the first Pentecost day, when that same love was, is, made available to all of us every day, and every moment of every day. God has done his part, and all that remains is for us to do our part, for our lives to be changed irrevocably and permanently for the better. Make only one resolution this New Year, and that is to do a retreat that will be provided for you, if you keep tuned to LifeSite News, or access how to find the material to follow this retreat on https://metanoia.org.uk .
God’s love will do the rest, as you learn how to receive it like never before. Happy Christmastide and a Happy and Holy New Year.