As Dr. Johnson tells us in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775):

“I love anecdotes. I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made. If a man is to wait till he weaves anecdotes into a system, we may be long in getting them, and get but a few, in comparison of what we might get.”

Weary indeed, my friends, and more convinced by the day that the big book is for the young writer. Young reader too, perhaps.

Including that which does not in all points bear close reading.

IN THREE ICONIC ACTIONS – each taken by Conciliar Popes – Peter [sic] set aside the mandate given to him by our Lord Jesus Christ!

In Pope Paul VI, Peter took off the Papal tiara:
will not RULE the Church of Jesus Christ;
In Pope Paul VI, Peter returned the Islamic Standard to the Muslims won by our Lady at the Battle of Lepanto:
will not DEFEND the Bride of Jesus Christ;
In Pope John Paul II, Peter kissed the Koran:
will not HONOR the Gospel of Jesus Christ alone!

In each case “Peter” standing for the Pope in question. Oratorical flourish here, forgiven in the context.

More to the point:

THIRDLY, through Popes Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI, Peter Denied the Church’s obligation to offer Worship to no other God, but the Blessed Trinity
Popes Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI each visited and took part in services of worship at the Synagogue in Rome;
By way of these visits, these three Conciliar Popes gave credence to the false notion that it is possible for a people to have access to God the Father even though they have rejected His Only Begotten Son;
And they said this by and through their actions even though Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself said:
He that believeth in the Son, hath life everlasting; but he that believeth not the Son, shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. [John 3:36]
He who honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father, who hath sent him. [John 5:23]

Pope John Paul II called for and leads and Pope Benedict XVI lead subsequent
Assisi Prayer for World Peace events;
At these events prayers, animal sacrifices, and other offerings were made to false gods – with Peter’s blessing – within the precincts of a Church consecrated to the worship of the Blessed Trinity!

Which leads to questioning the whole ecumenical movement, popes giving away the store in a fraternal effort that got away from what made sense. Food for thought here, something the bishop in Houston wanted no part of, as will be made clear.

In any case, a matter of instant recognition to the preacher’s audience and the thousands who eventually listened to the sermon, people of serious faith who don’t get the finer points of ecclesiastical maneuvering.

— more more more to come —

The preacher has opened the Vatican 2 issue. He announces he cannot “avoid the conclusion that

this “spirit” of the Council, with its opening to the so-called “modern world” in ambiguous texts unlike any that any previous Council had ever adopted, has caused a rupture in the Church.

He backs this up with Pope Emeritus Benedict’s assessment:

Recognizing the problem with the Council’s apparent departure from Catholic tradition, [Benedict] made a valiant effort to propose what he called a Hermeneutic of Continuity or Reform. THAT IS, a way of interpreting the teachings of the Second Vatican Council so that they can be embraced together with the infallible teachings of the councils and Popes which came before.

“The Council’s apparent departure from Catholic tradition.” A rogue council?

The bishop in Houston is glued to his seat, listening to the replay of this sermon by one of his priests, administrator of a small congregation in a Minneapolis suburb, posted via link to word-for-word recording on a major traditionalist web site for thousands also to listen.

“The thoughtful Catholic” the preacher continues, “should ask himself: Why should it be necessary to try to reconcile the teaching of one Council with all other councils that came before it?”

That is to say, as Mehitabel said to Archie many decades ago, “Wotthehell? Wotthehell?”

Can’t do that reconciling, says the preacher.

I have come to the realization that this effort can no longer be made with integrity. And this conclusion ought not surprise . . . anyone [It caught the bishop napping!] . . . Pope John XXIII said at the opening of the Council and Pope Paul VI reminded everyone as the Council came to a close, that it was their express will to unleash a new Spirit into the Church . . . a spirit which each affirmed in his own way would be unlike the Spirit of Catholicism which had preceded it.

Revolutionary talk from Holy Fathers. Unwitting perhaps, failing to recognize a carte blanche of their own devising. Missing the spirit of the time. Going halfway in their direction?

No Pius X among them, he of the memorable fingering of theological “modernists” (his term for doctrine-meddlers) in an erudite 1907 encyclical, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, in which he rejected “profane novelties of words and oppositions of knowledge falsely so called.”

But how many Pius X’s have there ever been?

The preacher delivers a biting description of papal derogation of duty as he sees it, arguing (floridly) that “the Conciliar Popes have – in a way – repeated Peter’s Three-Fold Denial of Jesus Christ!”

He begins with Paul VI, who in 1965 hailed the United Nations as a “lofty Institution . . . the obligatory path of modern civilization and world peace,” contrasting it with Pius XI’s 1922 encyclical Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio declaring “the Church alone [was able] to . . . develop in mankind the true spirit of brotherly love.”

Furthermore, Paul (“Peter,” in that he occupies Peter’s chair) wouldn’t discipline “wayward Bishops, theologians and seminary professors . . . [but] PROMOTED and advanced clerics who openly denied the perennial and immutable truths of the Faith . . .

Preacher has much more in this vein, spilling his guts, letting devil take the hindmost, pouring it on for his flock — and now unwittingly for his bishop in far-off Houston.

Who was not pleased.
============================================
— more later on this much ado about a widely publicized passionate sermon, including a near-immediate flight to Houston for a command appearance before a grim, accusatory ecclesiastical trio . . .

. . . and suggesting what the bishop and his men, listening to a recording, found heretical or schismatical.

For instance, early on, he told parishioners:

If you have been tracking the news concerning the current crisis within the Church, the past few months have likely been the occasion of disappointment, disgust and anger and perhaps you have been tempted to resentment; or have experienced an ever- deepening sadness.

Did the bishop and his men see in this an unduly pessimistic assessment? Did or do they also feel sad? Do they see the church in crisis? More to the point, did or do they think it prudent to say so publicly?

A few paragraphs later, the preacher spoke of

these troubling times when, as Pope Benedict XVI said, the Bark of Peter has “taken on so much water as to be on the verge of capsizing.”

Did that resonate well with them? Did they know Benedict had said that? Did they wonder whether it was prudent of him to talk that way?

Continuing, the preacher noted that what he’d said was to urge his people to an increased “personal piety,” but he had more to say in another vein.

IN ORDER TO PROPERLY UNDERSTAND the current crisis in the Church it is necessary that we…
FIRST KNOW and APPRECIATE THE SPIRIT OF CATHOLICISM…
And know and appreciate what some have called the “SPIRIT” of the SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL…
AND THE RELATIONSHIP that exists between these Spirits! [His
upper case throughout]

He followed through with something that surely set the bishop’s teeth on edge, indeed must have cut him to the quick:

FUNDAMENTAL TO THE ETHOS and CULTURE of the Catholic Church is the fact it is set in opposition to the world!
If the world hate you, know ye, that it hath hated me before you. If you had been of the world, the world would love its own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember my word that I said to you: The servant is not greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you…He that hateth me, hateth my Father also. [John
15:18-20,23]

The bishop would have sat up, listening more intently. “FUNDAMENTAL TO THE ETHOS and CULTURE of the Second Vatican Council is an embrace of the world!” the preacher concluded.

Say what? Dissing the council big time, putting it up against John 15?

Then the preacher called up the sainted John XXIII, telling the bishops gathered for Vatican 2:

In these days, which mark the beginning of this Second Vatican Council, it is more obvious than ever before that the Lord’s truth is indeed eternal. [check] Human ideologies change. [check] Successive generations give rise to varying errors, and these often vanish as quickly as they came, like mist before the sun. [check] The Church has always opposed these errors, and often condemned them with the utmost severity. [check]

Today, however, [Pope John continued] Christ’s Bride prefers the balm of mercy to the arm of severity. She believes that, present needs are best served by explaining more fully the purport of her doctrines, rather than by publishing condemnations. [Emphasis added]

Here is a major if not the chief trademark of the spirit of Vatican 2, as embraced by so many Catholics — hold back and withhold the hardball response, persuade, as in case of pro-choice politicians where it’s a matter of refusing communion. Pope Francis is all in for playing nice in this way, as we know, for instance with the vigorously pro-choice Joe Biden, not to mention the omnivorous Chinese rulers, now in essence accorded the respect held long ago by the Holy Roman emperors, Charlemagne and his successors.

We see now the preacher lining up with hardballers. And so, needless to say, did the bishop and his men see it. This was no dog whistle the preacher was sounding. It was a declaration of war.

— To be continued —

It included COVID measurements. In 2011.

Of the many myths that have taken hold during the pandemic, perhaps none is more central than that the Government was caught out by Covid with no idea about how it ought to respond. Thus the extreme and unprecedented response of lockdown appears to many to be justified by this notion that ministers had little choice but to ‘play it safe’, and the subsequent experiments in social restrictions as we awaited and delivered a rushed vaccine and beyond are imagined as a heroic voyage into the unknown of how a government ought to respond to an ‘unprecedented’ disease.

In fact, though, the Government had a plan for what it should do, the U.K. Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy 2011, and COVID-19 was well within the bounds of what the plan anticipated. As Dr. Noah Carl has noted, this was the plan the Government was following until mid-March 2020, with SAGE re-affirming at a meeting on February 4th 2020 that officials “should continue to plan using current influenza pandemic assumptions”.

While the strategy was focused on influenza, it expressly anticipated the possibility of a new SARS virus: . . .

Read all about it, here.

VATICAN REVOLUTION: Diocesan Priest’s Had Enough – YouTube

He is or was pastor of a small Minneapolis-area congregation that was dissolved by its (Houston-based) bishop who also excommunicated the priest.

More to come about this case of swift ecclesiastical justice — unusual if not unprecedented, as to swiftness at least — in the American Church.