+St. Gertrude the Great+

Many years ago, I made a comment to a (then) fellow Catholic that it did not seem right that we must pay today for the failures of our Catholic ancestors to successfully fight and overcome the evils in the Church when they could do so. I received a withering look from him, and so rethought the statement.

Over the years, I have come to understand why we are left here to wage this final battle against Satan and all his cohorts. As I have pointed out many times, in this protracted and agonizing passion of Christ’s Mystical Body on earth we are to drink down to the bitter dregs the chalice our Lord accepted and endured as the price for our redemption. In His suffering in the Garden of Gesthemane; in begging his Father to be delivered from His Passion and death if this was possible; in the bloody sweat He experienced in the realization that He must obey His Father’s will to procure our redemption and, finally, in His heartrending Passion and death, He suffered without complaint. And so we too must accept our plight on this earth without murmuring or lashing out. We must not blame others for our predicament or seek comfort from the world by engaging in the many available distractions and pharmaceutical potions that assuage our pain.

Christ wished us to suffer as he suffered not to punish us or unnecessarily afflict us, but to purify us and to draw us closer to him. Yes, He begged His Father to relieve Him of this suffering and on the Cross he cried out for His assistance, owing to His human nature; but in the end He meekly bowed his head and was entirely resigned to His sacrifice. It is true that we today are reaping the whirlwind as result of our parents’ and grandparents’ misdeeds. Yet this is only fulfillment of a just sentence long ago pronounced by God when he presented the two tablets to Moses containing the 10 Commandments (Exodus 20:5, 34:7; 1 Deuteronomy 5-9). For in these passages, God proclaims from His own mouth: “I am the Lord Thy God, mighty, jealous, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation…” The Catholic Encyclopedia says this time period corresponds to anywhere from 30-100 years. So on an average this takes us at least to the late 1700s, ancestor wise. And that is precisely when the Church began to decline.

We may be victims in the sense that we had no control, as children in the 1940s-1960s, over what happened to our Church. But we must not behave as victims, a fatal flaw that could apply to all of us and probably does in certain ways. Victims suffer from guilt, and in our case that amounts to the many regrets we have for accepting the lies of the Novus Ordo and Traditionalists. This results in self-blame, which cannot be something unresolved but must be purged by confessing our sins to Christ and making reparation for them. Victims want to be rescued, which is why so many of us wound up seeking out Traditionalists in the first place. But when we realized that what the Novus Ordo and Traditionalists were doing was not Catholic, we ceased being victims and became true to Christ, choosing Him over what we felt we needed and deserved. We accepted our role as victims with Christ in His Passion.

But hard-core Traditionalists in true Modernist fashion continue to choose feelings and wants over faith. They still rely on the unCatholic and illogical explanations provided by their keepers. Having readily played into the pre-planned rescue by the new Old Catholics calling themselves Traditionalists, they refuse to face the fact they were wrong because this shames them. They resent anyone who tries to free them from these hirelings and angrily denounce them. They don’t take responsibility for researching and documenting the situation or saving their own souls. They blame the Jews and government corruption for their plight. They constantly agitate for and ruminate about a return to the Church of the 1950s which they believe would solve their dilemma and feel deprived of their right to live a fully Catholic life. They shun even the mention of praying at home as a way to keep the faith whole and entire, because they fear any prospect of isolation or possible abandonment by family and friends. All these are signs of victimization, often attributed to those abused by their partners and unable to break free. They cannot see that they are enslaved by the sects they are involved in, and truly believe they are doing all they can to lead a Catholic life. And yet the Catholic life they long for and believe they live as Traditionalists is far from being Catholic.

The world long ago lost its true understanding and appreciation of the Catholic faith beginning with the Protestant Reformation and even before that time-period, in pre-Reformation times. The papacy was the primary driving force of the Church, the one voice in the world that truly mattered. Think about it — no other leaders then enjoyed the supremacy of the papacy or were accorded such honor and respect. The Roman Pontiffs alone were then the rulers of this world. Today all rulers are bowed to as worthy of this respect and are hailed as equally prominent in world affairs. The world has overcome Christ and the voice of his Vicars. Traditionalists today think of the papacy only as a thing of the past; to them it is not a living, breathing entity yet demanding their obedience and respect. They believe the Church exists mainly for their benefit as a sort of emotional and spiritual filling station, as one author put it, where they stop by on Sundays and through the week occasionally to “air up,” or as some opine, to get their spiritual fix. I say “air up” because all Traditionalist clergy have to offer is an abundance of hot air, not true fuel for the soul.

If Traditionalists hear anything at all from the pulpit in way of papal teaching it is generally something quoted to back up Traditionalist clerics in some particular situation (such as Quo Primum to justify celebration of the Latin Mass) and is not presented in an integral or cohesive fashion. In general, little is said about the popes, and it is no wonder. One cannot pretend to be loyal to the papacy in its absence, while operating in total defiance of papal directives. Following them too closely would require removing their collars. It is this very refusal by followers of these so-called clerics to base their existence and teaching on true authority that perpetuates the victim cycle. This is true because that cycle is dependent not on intellectual union with God and a true understanding of the faith but co-dependency on men claiming to speak for God; men who have not even been vetted (and Canon Law requires this in Can. 200) to assure their listeners they are truly speaking in His name.

In other words, this free-floating rescue existence is precisely what contributes to the dereliction of responsibility in determining the true status of these men and what they are doing and teaching. Agitation and rumination in Traditionalist sects have been legion since they were first established; the drama helps perpetuate the cycle. If victims leave one sect, they blame the “priest” or certain cliques within the sect, righty or wrongly, for their exit, and head into the ether to find yet another more suitable Traditionalist sect. The prospect of figuring things out for themselves in isolation is unbearable. Without realizing it their vulnerability as victims and failure to address and correct this stance sets them up for the very thing they dread the most: being used, abused, discarded and branded as a waste of time. Those who are most likely to become involved in destructive religious sects (cults) are already victims by definition. Various sites list these predispositions as:

• great dependence on others
• lack of assertiveness
• uncritical trust of other people and groups
• wants simple “right” or “wrong” answers to complex questions
• unfulfilled desire for spiritual meaning
• cultural and religious disillusionment.

In other words, these religious organizations are looking for victims to fill their own personal needs and their respective coffers. It is a racket, not a religion. And those seeking Catholic truth are willingly obliging them by being and remaining victims, not to mention cooperating in sin.

Christ was a willing victim; He died a horrendous death for our sins as an act of perfect love. He was Truth itself nailed to a Cross. Those not wishing to discover truth because they fear what it might cost them do not wish to know Christ or suffer with Him in His Passion. In their minds they believe that as victims they have already suffered enough and that Our Lord would never be so cruel as to ask any more of them, and this comprises the majority. But there are some Catholics who are truly incapable of sorting things out and need to be guided by others. Sadly, there are few able to properly recognize their plight and help them make at least some simple sense out of the destruction that has obscured the Church from plain view. Our Lord will enclose these simple souls in His merciful Heart, but He expects far more of those able to rightly use their intellect to sort things out. These Catholics will not be so fortunate if they fail to take the measures needed to correct their course and save their souls.

There are cures for victimhood. They involve spiritual honesty and courage and a willingness to be a true victim by engaging in self-sacrifice. It requires focusing on the love, obedience and gratitude we owe our Creator rather than sentiments of self-entitlement, self-indulgence and wants and needs that contradict God’s will in these times. The first step in this process is to make some attempt to step back from whatever Traditionalist group or groups they may be involved in that offer the Latin Mass and administer the Sacraments. It may interest those who find themselves troubled and depressed that mental health professionals with a Christian background trace anxiety and depression to mistaken beliefs lodged in the subconscious. They encourage their patients to take charge of their lives and become fully aware of their beliefs, thoughts and actions. Because at some level, deep in the core of their being, certain Catholics know that something is not right — that either they are fooling themselves or at least are avoiding facing difficult decisions.

Counselors urge victims to take responsibility and face their thoughts and fears, for not all their thoughts and beliefs are true and many of their fears may be justified. Honesty and a willingness to resolve doubts are key and should be a powerful motivator. For being dishonest with oneself is lying; only by facing things head on can adverse situations be avoided, and self-confidence restored. Self-pity is nothing more than a lack of confidence in God, who is the Comforter, the Great Restorer, our Hope and our Refuge in times of sorrow and trial. He alone can offer the balm our souls need to face any tragedy, misery or general inability to cope with life. Rather than wallowing in self-pity, we have an obligation, especially in times such as these, to do all that we can to know the truth, because He is that truth! Then we must defend it — not our version of it, not what we THINK is the truth, not what others tell us is the truth — but what we ourselves have found and determined to BE that truth.

This website was constructed to help those seeking the truth. It is a lifelong journey that requires constant vigilance and dedication to possess truth at all costs. Those undertaking this journey must refuse to allow others to convince them that they are crazy, a heretic and worse; prideful, disobedient a worthless human being and more. Accepting the challenge of rising from victimization to self-realization and reformation will not only resolve self-pity issues, but it will also firmly place our Lord in His rightful position as the Director of your soul and the only one to whom you owe complete obedience, heartfelt allegiance and undying gratitude.