The most sadistic Mass murderers and genocidists in history are, almost totally unanimously, sex perverts. (Cough, high-level Nazis, all trannys, sodomites and pedophiles, cough.) Sodomites of both sexes are some of the most violent, sadistic, bloodthirsty, murderous human demoniacs to prowl the earth. You show me a serial killer, a mass murderer, a torturer, a genocidist, a Luciferian, and dollars-to-doughnuts, you’re looking into the dead-eyed abyss of a sex pervert of some stripe. Every time. Or at least enough to place a damn good wager, with a commensurately low payout.

So Target, which has been woke for YEARS, is now sweating like a tranny in a Transheuser-Busch distribution center for trying to push penis-tucking and “pride” garments on TODDLERS and INFANTS.

The literal satanist whom they hired as their “Pride” designer – and I cannot figure out if it’s a man masquerading as a woman, or a woman masquerading as a man: lets just call it “legion” – has in its oeuvre a jewelry pin of a guillotine with the slogan “Homophobe Headrest”.

Y’all wonder why I walked away from a VERY lucrative and exponentially growing business in then-paradisical Denver at age 35, and went totally off-grid a year later, almost literally shaking the dust from my sandals?

THIS is why. Because I saw, CLEARLY, well over a decade ago, that the entire financial, political and CULTURAL situation was careening toward one thing: me, and people like me, being executed in the public square, and the people doing it and witnessing it congratulating themselves for “doing the world a tremendous service.” Nevermind the MERE total disqualification from operating normally as a business person in the run-up.

This shit ends in the cold lap of Madame le Guillotine. Make absolutely no mistake. A sodomite, because he is a Diabolical Narcissist, would kill you as soon as look at you, and many of them would consider your torture a very, very satisfying bonus.

So, I might as well say and do what is true and just, while I can. Every day is a gift. And then when the day comes when I mount the gibbet, reciting Psalm 42 as I go, and am murdered by sodomites for my hamfisted attempt at Catholicism – and at this point as we see above, the smart money is on my executioners being western sodomites, not musloids – my death might serve some purpose, the most important being fidelity to the Most Holy Trinity and the One True Faith.

They are coming. Like the orcs and ultimately the Balrog coming up out of Moria after Pippin Took dropped the bucket down the well, they are coming.

Hi Ann –

Here’s something to file away under CONSILIENCE:

U.S. constitutional and constitutional criminal law have a doctrine called vagueness. A statute is void for vagueness if it does not clearly communicate its purpose to a person of average intelligence. In other words, a criminal statute must be intelligible to the workaday layman before it can impose criminal liability. Notice is a cornerstone of statutory criminal law. Vague, equivocal statutes that can be understood any number of ways are ripe for abuse by overly zealous prosecutors and political enemies.

There are similar doctrines for other areas of the civil law, such as real property. If a deed fails to sufficiently identify a parcel of land, any conveyance under that deed is void. It is void for vagueness.

Pope Benedict’s resignation purported to affirmatively renounce something, but since the Code of Canon Law goes out of its way to distinguish between munus and ministerium, merely renouncing one while implicitly retaining the other was ambiguous. His post-“resignation” acts further equivocated his intention. The entire post-event explanation was also vague. Novus Ordo Church™ says that the resignation was just like that of any other emeritus bishop (an infelicitous term so generously bequeathed to us by the springtime of Vatican II) who merely “retires” from the active ministry of his diocese. +Ganswein, on the other hand, apparently with Benedict’s blessing, laughably (sacrilegiously?) likens the move to the Immaculate Conception.

Applying the doctrine of vagueness: Ten years later, people of even above-average intelligence cannot understand or agree to the effect of Benedict’s “resignation.” The “resignation” failed to communicate Benedict’s intentions in a clear manner. Therefore, the Church cannot be bound by it. It is void for vagueness.

Were it possible to bifurcate the papacy (it is not, and never will be – HYPOTHETICAL HERE), his declaration and the manifestation of his “resignation” would still likely be void for vagueness given the inexactitude of his words in the declaration and the incongruity between what he said and how he manifested what he said. In any event, what he apparently intended was, in fact, substantially erroneous and invalid by the law itself. Even if Benedict had clearly and unequivocally communicated his intent to bifurcate the papacy, it still would have been void for substantial error. I raise the vagueness doctrine not as the true invalidating factor, but simply as yet another point of attack. Remember, this is for the consilience file wherein we operate on two different planes yet manage to arrive at the same endpoint. The same endpoint here? Invalidity.

Ideally, the Church will formulate an analogous doctrine and assert it against the Second Vatican Council and most everything following. What word could sum up the “teachings” of Novus Ordo Church™ better than “vague”? Legally speaking, what is vagueness other than chaos—Satan’s MO?

The Second Vatican Council is essentially self-negating. It says everything; it says nothing. People of above-average intelligence have collectively made millions of dollars and spilled oceans of ink trying—and failing miserably—to explain what the Council “rEaLly mEaNt!” We can do it a lot cheaper and with a 100% success rate: The Second Vatican Council means whatever the hell anyone from Cardinal Ottaviani, God rest his soul, to James Martin, S.J. wants it to. It has caused chaos because it is vague. It should be declared null and void. It should be VOIDED FOR VAGUENESS.

M

There can be no hope of a sound rebuilding unless and until people understand what money actually is.  As I covered in Parts One and Two of my Economics Presentation on YouTube, MONEY is a FUNGIBLE PROXY for man’s ability to labor, produce and create THROUGH TIME.  

Money isn’t gold.  Money isn’t pieces of paper.  Money isn’t zeroes and ones on a computer server.  Money isn’t a blockchain.

Money is human life and effort manifested in an agreed-upon form which is used as a convenient medium of exchange.  

This is why, for example, when Jon Corzine swept the MFGlobal accounts in ARSH 2011, one trader at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange who kept the majority of his wealth in his MFGlobal account, precisely because it was, according to the Rule of Law, the safest place to store wealth because it was 100% “guaranteed”, not merely FDIC “insured”, walked up to one of my order clerks on the trading floor during the first week of November of ARSH 2011, weeping, and said to him, “It’s all gone.  All those years of work … its all gone.”  Note the units.  YEARS OF WORK.  Not dollars, but “YEARS OF MY LIFE“.  Yep.

Let’s say I have a friend to whom I loan some of my money in the form of cash.  Let’s also say that this friend, after years of study and hard work, has acquired a skill set that I would like to learn – let’s say welding.  There are two ways that my friend can repay his debt to me.  The first is for him to repay me in cash money – which is actually a DERIVATIVE.  The second, and PUREST FORM is to repay me in his TIME and SKILL, which is the true underlying entity.

Okay, so we would now have two choices of the form of repayment if we decide that he will repay me in his time and skill.  First, we set an HOURLY RATE, because humans live their lives passing through time, and thus TIME is the baseline unit.  Let’s say $50 per hour is the rate for tutelage in the skill set of welding.  After every one hour lesson, I can reach into my wallet and hand him a $50 bill, which he would then hand immediately back to me, and I would then reduce the balance on his loan in my ledger by $50.  OR, he could take every $50 bill I hand him over the weeks and months of welding tutelage, put it in an envelope marked “Ann”, and when he had the full balance of the loan saved up, hand me the envelope, and then I would close out the ledger as “paid in full”.  THIS is how most people think they MUST do business.  Since people wrongly think that money is the pure commodity itself, and NOT a mere derivative proxy, they insist that this “You hand me a $50 bill and I hand it back to you” maneuver is necessary.  But it isn’t.  In fact, it is silly.  The SIMPLEST way to repay this debt is for me to simply strike $50 from the loan balance for every hour of tutelage, with no further exchange of cash.  In fact, once the hourly rate for the tutoring has been set, the debt COULD be recorded not in dollars, but in HOURS OF HIS LIFE.

This is why Marxism is so evil, and why the Seventh Commandment (Thou shalt not steal) exists.  Forcibly confiscating the property of one person unjustly and giving it unjustly to another person is an act of violence and human degradation – utterly denying and disregarding the humanity of the one (the “rich”), presumably in favor of the other (the “poor”).  

When this is done in the name of “charity” or “compassion”, it is, in a way, even more evil.  Hey, at least with Jon Corzine we all know where we stand.  Corzine and the other oligarchs, past, present and future, feel free to steal other people’s property because they have no respect whatsoever for other human beings. This is the textbook definition of Diabolical Narcissism.  

When religious leaders falsely paint property confiscation and redistribution as “CHARITY”, and real charity is, remember, a constitutive quality of God, namely the joy at the very existence of another – NOT the indifference to the life and existence of the other to which the denial of property rights is an obvious corollary – this is perhaps even more damaging to society.  It is nothing less than calling good, evil and evil, good.   

Too bad that almost all clergy and prelates seem to have not even the faintest understanding of this.  They seem to believe that money is MERE paper, MERE zeroes and ones, with no connection whatsoever to actual human beings, and seem to have not the slightest understanding that it is the FREE GIVING of one’s money or property, which is simply a derivative proxy for one’s human capacity to labor, produce or create THROUGH TIME, that is fraternal charity, not being gang-raped by oligarchs spewing platitudes about “the poor”.  And don’t even get me started on their seeming failure to comprehend that government debt monetization is the forcible confiscation of wealth from not just the contemporary non-oligarch class, but also from human beings who do not yet exist, and are thus utterly helpless to protest their own enslavement.

If nobody even understands what money is, how can we possibly hope to rebuild the economy, banking system and financial markets into something other than yet another iteration of the satanic maw of iniquity and villainy of which we are now witnessing the implosion?  “Same song, second verse” is NOT a satisfactory goal.  Not even close.  Either do it right, or kiss the dirt, shut up and stay out of the way so that someone better than you can at least have a clean slate from which to start.  Harsh?  Yep.  But true.  

The next installment in this series will cover banking theory and regulation.

Now he said this, not because he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and having the purse, carried the things that were put therein.

Dixit autem hoc, non quia de egenis pertinebat ad eum, sed quia fur erat, et loculos habens, ea quae mittebantur, portabat.

 

(Originally penned and posted on March 19, ARSH 2013. Even I am freaked out by how prescient the final paragraph is. -AB ’23)

If I had a band, I’d name it “Spectral Doughnut”. But I don’t, so anyone who wants the name can have it.

Did you know that the official, fancy-pants mathematical term for a doughnut is “torus”? Well, not for a doughnut as a foodstuff, but for the shape of a doughnut: a tube bent around such that the two endpoints connect.

Conceptually, the torus is everywhere in life. Extremes on either side of a human spectrum have the nasty habit of being the same position. The most obvious example of this is in the political sphere, and while I’m not much of a Glenn Beck fan, Beck did explain this a few years ago. The far left is all about totalitarian control by a cadre of oligarchs. There really isn’t any such thing as a true dictatorship, because one man cannot physically force an entire government or people to do his will. He will always have a cadre of enablers and henchmen around him, and if he loses the support of that cadre of henchmen, they will kill him. Thus even the most seemingly solitary dictator is really just a frontman for an oligarchy. Dictatorial oligarchies use brute force to impose their will and have no respect for the Rule of Law. They consider themselves to be the law. If they want it, they take it, and if you don’t like that, they kill you. In modern politics, the most brutal thug with the worst case of psychopathy wins.

The far right is the same thing. The far right is anarchy, which means no government. This is also referred to as “unrestrained capitalism”.  The idea of “no government” sounds good on the surface, especially when you’re faced with the truly satanic government we have now, until you realize that also means NO RULE OF LAW. Likewise with the idea of “unrestrained capitalism”, also sometimes called “Anarcho-capitalism”.  It sounds good on the surface, right?  Not that “unrestrained capitalism” actually exists anywhere.  The closest any economy ever gets to “unrestrained capitalism” is actually a two-layered paradigm wherein the oligarchs are indeed completely unrestrained and can steal at will with zero recourse by the victims, and everyone not in the oligarch class is literally regulated into the ground.  A true, universally unrestrained capitalism is a nonexistent boogey-man used by Marxists to demonize and vilify capitalism, and a shallow and desperately naive fantasy of a handful of economists – most of whom have clearly never had any meaningful experience with markets or business.  But even in the realm of thought exercises, this universal anarchy clearly leads to hell also.  Every man for himself. In this environment, once again, the most brutal thug with the worst case of psychopathy wins.  Oddly, “unrestrained capitalism” has only manifested when a far-left oligarchy comes to power – as stated above.

Pardon you? Hell, I won’t even indict you! Hell, I won’t even QUESTION you! (Barry Soetoro and Jon Corzine)

While the philosophical paths may differ, the ends are exactly the same. No matter which arm of the doughnut you favor, if you move away from logic, reason and truth, proceeding out of which is charity in the true sense of the word, meaning love of neighbor, not just throwing “free stuff” at the nebulous conceptual mob of “the people” or “the poor”, or as with anarchy a total indifference toward neighbor, you are going to end up with exactly the same end: an elite, minuscule, ruling class with a massive, brutally oppressed underclass, and lots and lots of dead bodies. In both the far left and far right, to quote Obama’s Manufacturing czar Ron Bloom quoting Mao: All political power comes from the barrel of a gun.

That is only partially true. All political power in a godless regime, either far right or far left, comes from the barrel of a gun. In a Godly monarchy, the power comes from God Himself. The same could possibly be said of an early Godly republic, but history proves that republics never last long.

Socialism and unrestrained capitalism are basically the same thing: the two arms of the torus touch. Marxist-socialist-communist systems forcibly steal the property of the underclass and deliver it into the insatiably greedy hands of the minuscule oligarch class. Unrestrained capitalism does EXACTLY the same thing. A minuscule cadre of what are today called banksters, but used to be called robber barons, forcibly confiscate, in simple terms STEAL, the property of the underclass and hoard it for themselves. It is the same thing. This is why these banksters, who one would at first blush think of as capitalists, are always found in bed with Marxist politicians. Marxism and unrestrained capitalism are essentially the same thing: theft and looting of the underclasses by a cadre of super-rich oligarchs, with zero rule of law, only the brutal rule of men from the barrel of a gun.

This has become so clear today because the banksters and Marxist politicians now routinely swap jobs. Jon Corzine went from Goldman Sachs to the United States Senate and the New Jersey statehouse back out into MF Global. Hank Paulsen went from Goldman Sachs to heading the U.S. Treasury Department. Almost all politicians after leaving office either by being voted out or retiring (if they ever do), usually go straight onto corporate boards. For the politicians that never retire, they place their family members in corporate positions.

Bottom line: beware of ANYONE who is constantly pushing one of these political or economic extremes, because both move AWAY FROM GOD, and ultimately meet up in the same place: hell. When far leftists are beating the drum of “the poor” and “the people”, that means there is about to be a massive, and utterly dehumanizing confiscation of wealth, which will end up in the hands of the oligarchs, and the poor will get poorer, thus “necessitating” more dehumanizing confiscations in the name of “the poor”. And that is when the dead bodies REALLY start to pile up. Run away from that evil at full speed. And when capitalism becomes unrestrained and there is no Rule of Law, and all that matters is who you know and what connections you have, and the only way to “succeed” is to be a thieving thug psychopath, then run away at full speed. That’s what I did.

(This is the jaw-dropping speech, personally edited by Pope Benedict before its delivery, in which +Gänswein lays out in no uncertain terms the Substantially Erroneous intention by Pope Benedict to fundamentally transform the Papacy into an expanded, collegial, synodal shared-ministry – to “demythologize” the Papacy. This speech, coupled with Canon 188, is what made me beyond morally certain that Pope Benedict never validly resigned, and therefore Bergoglio was and is an Antipope- which is obvious. I reprint the speech here in full. JUST READ IT. And remember, Pope Benedict edited and approved this speech before it was delivered by his Personal Secretary. This speech is entirely consistent with Pope Benedict’s words at his “final audience” on February 27, ARSH 2013, in which he made clear that he was “remaining in a new way… within the enclosure of St. Peter.” Emphases mine. -AB)

---

Eminences, Excellencies, dear Brothers, Ladies and Gentlemen!

During one of the last conversations that the pope’s biographer, Peter Seewald of Munich, was able to have with Benedict XVI, as he was bidding him goodbye, he asked him: “Are you the end of the old or the beginning of the new?” The pope’s answer was brief and sure: “The one and the other,” he replied. The recorder was already turned off; that is why this final exchange is not found in any of the book-interviews with Peter Seewald, not even the famous Light of the World. It only appeared in an interview he granted to Corriere della Sera in the wake of Benedict XVI’s resignation, in which the biographer recalled those key words which are, in a certain way, a maxim of the book by Roberto Regoli, which we are presenting here today at the Gregorian.

Indeed, I must admit that perhaps it is impossible to sum up the pontificate of Benedict XVI in a more concise manner. And the one who says it, over the years, has had the privilege of experiencing this Pope up close as a “homo historicus,” the Western man par excellence who has embodied the wealth of Catholic tradition as no other; and — at the same time — has been daring enough to open the door to a new phase, to that historical turning point which no one five years ago could have ever imagined. Since then, we live in an historic era which in the 2,000-year history of the Church is without precedent.

As in the time of Peter, also today the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church continues to have one legitimate Pope. But today we live with two living successors of Peter among us — who are not in a competitive relationship between themselves, and yet both have an extraordinary presence! We may add that the spirit of Joseph Ratzinger had already marked decisively the long pontificate of St. John Paul II, whom he faithfully served for almost a quarter of a century as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Many people even today continue to see this new situation as a kind of exceptional (not regular) state of the divinely instituted office of Peter (eine Art göttlichen Ausnahmezustandes).

But is it already time to assess the pontificate of Benedict XVI? Generally, in the history of the Church, popes can correctly be judged and classified only ex post. And as proof of this, Regoli himself mentions the case of Gregory VII, the great reforming pope of the Middle Ages, who at the end of his life died in exile in Salerno – a failure in the opinion of many of his contemporaries. And yet Gregory VII was the very one who, amid the controversies of his time, decisively shaped the face of the Church for the generations that followed. Much more daring, therefore, does Professor Regoli seem today in already attempting to take stock of the pontificate of Benedict XVI, while he is still alive.

The amount of critical material which he reviewed and analyzed to this end is massive and impressive. Indeed, Benedict XVI is and remains extraordinarily present also through his writings: both those produced as pope — the three volumes on Jesus of Nazareth and 16 (!) volumes of Teachings he gave us during his papacy — and as Professor Ratzinger or Cardinal Ratzinger, whose works could fill a small library.

And so, Regoli’s work is not lacking in footnotes, which are as numerous as the memories they awaken in me. For I was present when Benedict XVI, at the end of his mandate, removed the Fisherman’s ring, as is customary after the death of a pope, even though in this case he was still alive! I was present when, on the other hand, he decided not to give up the name he had chosen, as Pope Celestine V had done when, on December 13, 1294, a few months after the start of his ministry, be again became Pietro dal Morrone.

Since February 2013 the papal ministry is therefore no longer what it was before. It is and remains the foundation of the Catholic Church; and yet it is a foundation which Benedict XVI has profoundly and permanently transformed during his exceptional pontificate (Ausnahmepontifikat), regarding which the sober Cardinal Sodano, reacting simply and directly immediately after the surprising resignation, deeply moved and almost stunned, exclaimed that the news hit the cardinals who were gathered “like a bolt from out of the blue.”

It was the morning of that very day when, in the evening, a bolt of lightning with an incredible roar struck the tip of St. Peter’s dome positioned just over the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles. Rarely has the cosmos more dramatically accompanied a historic turning point. But on the morning of that February 11, the dean of the College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano, concluded his reply to Benedict XVI’s statement with an initial and similarly cosmic assessment of the pontificate, when he concluded, saying: “Certainly, the stars in the sky will always continue to shine, and so too will the star of his pontificate always shine in our midst.”

Equally brilliant and illuminating is the thorough and well documented exposition by Don Regoli of the different phases of the pontificate. Especially its beginning in the April 2005 conclave, from which Joseph Ratzinger, after one of the shortest elections in the history of the Church, emerged elected after only four ballots following a dramatic struggle between the so-called “Salt of the Earth Party,” around Cardinals López Trujíllo, Ruini, Herranz, Rouco Varela or Medina and the so-called “St. Gallen Group” around Cardinals Danneels, Martini, Silvestrini or Murphy-O’Connor; a group that recently the same Cardinal Danneels of Brussels so amusedly called “a kind of Mafia-Club.” The election was certainly also the result of a clash, whose key Ratzinger himself, as dean of the College of Cardinals, had furnished in the historic homily of April 18, 2005 in St. Peter’s; precisely, where to a “dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires” he contrasted another measure: “the Son of God, the true man” as “the measure of true humanism.” Today we read this part of Regoli’s intelligent analysis almost like a breathtaking detective novel of not so long ago; whereas the “dictatorship of relativism” has for a long time sweepingly expressed itself through the many channels of the new means of communication which, in 2005, barely could be imagined.

The name that the new pope took immediately after his election therefore already represented a plan. Joseph Ratzinger did not become Pope John Paul III, as perhaps many would have wished. Instead, he went back to Benedict XV — the unheeded and unlucky great pope of peace of the terrible years of the First World War — and to St. Benedict of Norcia, patriarch of monasticism and patron of Europe. I could appear as a star witness to testify that, over the previous years, Cardinal Ratzinger never pushed to rise to the highest office of the Catholic Church.

Instead, he was already dreaming of a condition that would have allowed him to write several last books in peace and tranquility. Everyone knows that things went differently. During the election, then, in the Sistine Chapel, I was a witness that he saw the election as a “true shock” and was “upset,” and that he felt “dizzy” as soon as he realized that “the axe” of the election would fall on him. I am not revealing any secrets here, because it was Benedict XVI himself who confessed all of this publicly on the occasion of the first audience granted to pilgrims who had come from Germany. And so it isn’t surprising that it was Benedict XVI who immediately after his election invited the faithful to pray for him, as this book again reminds us.

Regoli maps out the various years of ministry in a fascinating and moving way, recalling the skill and confidence with which Benedict XVI exercised his mandate. And what emerged from the time when, just a few months after his election, he invited for a private conversation both his old, fierce antagonist Hans Küng as well as Oriana Fallaci, the agnostic and combative grande dame of Jewish origin, from the Italian secular mass media; or when he appointed Werner Arber, the Swiss Evangelical and Nobel Prize winner, as the first non-Catholic President of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Regoli does not cover up the accusation of an insufficient knowledge of men that was often leveled against the brilliant theologian in the shoes of the Fisherman; a man capable of truly brilliantly evaluating texts and difficult books, and who nevertheless, in 2010, frankly confided to Peter Seewald how difficult he found decisions about people because “no one can read another man’s heart.” How true it is!

Regoli rightly calls 2010 a “black year” for the pope, precisely in relation to the tragic and fatal accident that befell Manuela Camagni, one of the four Memores Domini belonging to the small “papal family.” I can certainly confirm it. In comparison with this misfortune the media sensationalism of those years — from the case of traditionalist bishop, Williamson, to a series of increasingly malicious attacks against the pope — while having a certain effect, did not strike the pope’s heart as much as the death of Manuela, who was torn so suddenly from our midst. Benedict was not an “actor pope,” and even less an insensitive “automaton pope”; even on the throne of Peter he was and he remained a man; or, as Conrad Ferdinand Meyer would say, he was not a “clever book,” he was “a man with his contradictions.” That is how I myself have daily been able to come to know and appreciate him. And so he has remained until today.

Regoli observes, however, that after the last encyclical, Caritas in veritate of December 4, 2009, a dynamic, innovative papacy with a strong drive from a liturgical, ecumenical and canonical perspective, suddenly appeared to have “slowed down,” been blocked, and bogged down. Although it is true that the headwinds increased in the years that followed, I cannot confirm this judgment. Benedict’s travels to the UK (2010), to Germany and to Erfurt, the city of Luther (2011), or to the heated Middle East — to concerned Christians in Lebanon (2012) — have all been ecumenical milestones in recent years. His decisive handling to solve the issue of abuse was and remains a decisive indication on how to proceed. And when, before him, has there ever been a pope who — along with his onerous task — has also written books on Jesus of Nazareth, which perhaps will also be regarded as his most important legacy?

It isn’t necessary here that I dwell on how he, who was so struck by the sudden death of Manuela Camagni, later also suffered the betrayal of Paolo Gabriele, who was also a member of the same “papal family.” And yet it is good for me to say at long last, with all clarity, that Benedict, in the end, did not step down because of a poor and misguided chamber assistant, or because of the “tidbits” coming from his apartment which, in the so-called “Vatileaks affair,” circulated like fool’s gold in Rome but were traded in the rest of the world like authentic gold bullion. No traitor or “raven” [the Italian press’s nickname for the Vatileaks source] or any journalist would have been able to push him to that decision. That scandal was too small for such a thing, and so much greater was the well-considered step of millennial historical significance that Benedict XVI made.

The exposition of these events by Regoli also merits consideration because he does not advance the claim that he sounds and fully explains this last, mysterious step; not further enriching the swarm of legends with more assumptions that have little or nothing to do with reality. And I, too, a firsthand witness of the spectacular and unexpected step of Benedict XVI, I must admit that what always comes to mind is the well-known and brilliant axiom with which, in the Middle Ages, John Duns Scotus justified the divine decree for the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God:

“Decuit, potuit, fecit.”

That is to say: it was fitting, because it was reasonable. God could do it, therefore he did it. I apply the axiom to the decision to resign in the following way: it was fitting, because Benedict XVI was aware that he lacked the necessary strength for the extremely onerous office. He could do it, because he had already thoroughly thought through, from a theological point of view, the possibility of popes emeritus for the future. So he did it.

The momentous resignation of the theologian pope represented a step forward primarily by the fact that, on February 11, 2013, speaking in Latin in front of the surprised cardinals, he introduced into the Catholic Church the new institution of “pope emeritus,” stating that his strength was no longer sufficient “to properly exercise the Petrine ministry.” The key word in that statement is munus petrinum, translated — as happens most of the time — with “Petrine ministry.” And yet, munus, in Latin, has a multiplicity of meanings: it can mean service, duty, guide or gift, even prodigy. Before and after his resignation, Benedict understood and understands his task as participation in such a “Petrine ministry.” He has left the papal throne and yet, with the step made on February 11, 2013, he has not at all abandoned this ministry. Instead, he has complemented the personal office with a collegial and synodal dimension, as a quasi shared ministry (als einen quasi gemeinsamen Dienst); as though, by this, he wanted to reiterate once again the invitation contained in the motto that the then Joseph Ratzinger took as archbishop of Munich and Freising and which he then naturally maintained as bishop of Rome: “cooperatores veritatis,” which means “fellow workers in the truth.” In fact, it is not in the singular but the plural; it is taken from the Third Letter of John, in which in verse 8 it is written: “We ought to support such men, that we may be fellow workers in the truth.”

Since the election of his successor Francis, on March 13, 2013, there are not therefore two popes, but de facto an expanded ministry — with an active member and a contemplative member. This is why Benedict XVI has not given up either his name, or the white cassock. This is why the correct name by which to address him even today is “Your Holiness”; and this is also why he has not retired to a secluded monastery, but within the Vatican — as if he had only taken a step to the side to make room for his successor and a new stage in the history of the papacy which he, by that step, enriched with the “power station” of his prayer and his compassion located in the Vatican Gardens.

It was “the least expected step in contemporary Catholicism,” Regoli writes, and yet a possibility which Cardinal Ratzinger had already pondered publicly on August 10, 1978 in Munich, in a homily on the occasion of the death of Paul VI. Thirty-five years later, he has not abandoned the Office of Peter — something which would have been entirely impossible for him after his irrevocable acceptance of the office in April 2005. By an act of extraordinary courage, he has instead renewed this office (even against the opinion of well-meaning and undoubtedly competent advisers), and with a final effort he has strengthened it (as I hope). Of course only history will prove this. But in the history of the Church it shall remain true that, in the year 2013, the famous theologian on the throne of Peter became history’s first “pope emeritus.” Since then, his role — allow me to repeat it once again — is entirely different from that, for example, of the holy Pope Celestine V, who after his resignation in 1294 would have liked to return to being a hermit, becoming instead a prisoner of his successor, Boniface VIII (to whom today in the Church we owe the establishment of jubilee years). To date, in fact, there has never been a step like that taken by Benedict XVI. So it is not surprising that it has been seen by some as revolutionary, or to the contrary as entirely consistent with the Gospel; while still others see the papacy in this way secularized as never before, and thus more collegial and functional or even simply more human and less sacred. And still others are of the opinion that Benedict XVI, with this step, has almost — speaking in theological and historical-critical terms — demythologized the papacy.

In his overview of the pontificate, Regoli clearly lays this all out as never before. Perhaps the most moving part of the reading for me was the place where, in a long quote, he recalls the last general audience of Pope Benedict XVI on February 27, 2013 when, under an unforgettable clear and brisk sky, the pope, who shortly thereafter would resign, summarized his pontificate as follows:

“It has been a portion of the Church’s journey which has had its moments of joy and light, but also moments which were not easy; I have felt like Saint Peter with the Apostles in the boat on the Sea of Galilee: The Lord has given us so many days of sun and of light winds, days when the catch was abundant; there were also moments when the waters were rough and the winds against us, as throughout the Church’s history, and the Lord seemed to be sleeping. But I have always known that the Lord is in that boat, and I have always known that the barque of the Church is not mine, it is not ours, but His. Nor does the Lord let it sink; it is He who guides it, surely also through the men whom He has chosen, because He so wished. This has been, and is, a certainty which nothing can obscure.”

I must admit that, rereading these words can still bring tears to my eyes, all the more so because I saw in person and up close how unconditional, for himself and for his ministry, was Pope Benedict’s adherence to St Benedict’s words, for whom “nothing is to be placed before the love of Christ,” nihil amori Christi praeponere, as stated in rule handed down to us by Pope Gregory the Great. I was a witness to this, but I still remain fascinated by the accuracy of that final analysis in St. Peter’s Square which sounded so poetic but was nothing less than prophetic. In fact, they are words to which today, too, Pope Francis would immediately and certainly subscribe. Not to the popes but to Christ, to the Lord Himself and to no one else belongs the barque of Peter, whipped by the waves of the stormy sea, when time and again we fear that the Lord is asleep and that our needs are not important to Him, while just one word is enough for him to stop every storm; when instead, more than the high waves and the howling wind, it is our disbelief, our little faith and our impatience that make us continually fall into panic.

Thus, this book once again throws a consoling gaze on the peaceful imperturbability and serenity of Benedict XVI, at the helm of the barque of Peter in the dramatic years 2005-2013. At the same time, however, through this illuminating account, Regoli himself now also takes part in the munus Petri of which I spoke. Like Peter Seewald and others before him, Roberto Regoli — as a priest, professor and scholar — also thus enters into that enlarged Petrine ministry around the successors of the Apostle Peter; and for this today we offer him heartfelt thanks.

Archbishop Georg Gänswein, Prefect of the Papal Household

20 May 2016

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO and TO ENROLL

Join us starting Pentecost Sunday May 28th for a 7 class Mini-Course on Ancient Rome! Experience the world of legions, martyrs, and slaves in “Romans, Christians, Barbarians!” Enter the world of the Caesars and learn how the Stone rejected by the builders became the Cornerstone. Learn what lessons the rise and fall of Rome  has for our own time!

(Originally penned and posted on May 17, ARSH 2012. The conclusion and warning about the “brutality of totalitarian oligarchy being proportional to the effeminacy and cowardice of the men in a conquered culture” was taken at the time by many people as the ravings of an unhinged spinster, detached from reality and warning of things that could never, ever happen in the U.S.A.

Lee Greenwood, to this day, now a decade later, remains unavailable for comment. -AB)

Today is the Feast of the Ascension of Our Lord. Forty days after the Resurrection, Jesus ascended into heaven in the sight of a rather large crowd of His disciples. It was very dramatic, as the sight of a Man levitating straight up into the sky and passing into the clouds and out of sight would tend to be. Imagine a Saturn V rocket or Space Shuttle launch, except a Man, who was just in front of you, speaking and eating with you, suddenly zoomed straight up into the clouds like a Saturn V. This isn’t a fairy tale. This really happened. Can you imagine how simultaneously terrifying and wonderful such a sight would be? The word for it is the overused-to-the-point-of-being-meaningless word “awesome”. The Ascension was AWESOME.

Anyway, the gospel for today’s Mass in the 1962 Missal is the Markan account of the ascension, and it ties perfectly into what the recent topic has been around here, namely the feminizing and attempted reduction of Our Lord into a brainless, castrated, impotent equivalent of a pet dog who is too stupid to relate to us in any way more sophisticated than “slobbering us with kisses.” In the modernist, post-conciliar milieu WE are the master. WE call the shots. WE are the arbiters of truth. WE are the standards of goodness. Jesus? He’s the the dog. Pat him on the head, put some food in the dish, and let Him out to pee once a week. And if He isn’t all slobbery kisses and if He gets underfoot, or barks, or becomes in any way inconvenient, well, we’ll just put Him down and go find some other dog, and then we’ll name THAT dog “jesus”.

The entire reading is Mark 16:14-20, but let’s just luxuriate in the first verse, verse 14:

 At length He appeared to the eleven as they were at table: and He upbraided them with their incredulity and hardness of heart, because they did not believe them who had seen Him after He was risen again.

He UPBRAIDED them. He didn’t “slobber them with kisses.” The Risen Christ, Resurrected and Transfigured in Glory UPBRAIDED them for not believing.

UPBRAIDED.

Here is the Merriam-Webster definition of “upbraid”:

1. To criticize severely : to find fault with
2. To reproach severely : to scold vehemently

He chewed their asses. Up one side and then back down the other.

Think about this. He is minutes away from ascending and instead of “slobbering them with kisses” Jesus Christ, in perfect charity and complete love, in order to make absolutely certain that they got His message and understood exactly what was going on and what they were expected to do so that they and the rest of the world could hear the Gospel, criticized them, found fault with them, reproached them, and scolded them. Vehemently.

And then, after getting their butts chewed by God Almightly, they watched Him ascend to heaven in a terrifying and awesome display, the purpose of which was to put an exclamation point of masculine command on the Great Commission to go forth and spread the Gospel to every corner of the earth. He could have just disappeared. He could have walked off into some trees and vanished without any drama. But He didn’t do that. He went all Saturn V on them.

And you know what? That’s exactly what those people did. They went forth and spread the Gospel, and most of them were executed for doing it. Why? Because masculine strength is inspiring and beautiful and attractive and good – these are Godly qualities. Masculine strength says, “I care enough about you to chew your ass, and I want you to follow me into battle and fight beside me because I think you’re worth it and I believe in you. But you need an ass-chewing, and I’m going to give it to you.” Think Patton. Think Aragorn (fictional). Think Charles Martel. These leaders are mere types that point to the ultimate Man and Leader of Men, Jesus Christ.

YOU GET SQUARED AWAY, AND SQUARED AWAY RIGHT NOW, AND FOLLOW ME!

But, as I said, the Marxist-homosexualist infiltrators have purged all of this from the Liturgy, the priesthood and the Church so that you are primed to be rolled by the State and will refuse to fight for Truth, Goodness, Beauty or Justice. Who are you going to follow? Are you going to follow “superfun girly pacifist jesus”, who is really the non-existent imaginary friend of countless homosexual priests and bishops, and a mere fictional propaganda mascot of the Marxist infiltrators, who could not give any less of a crap about you, or whether you end up in heaven or hell? Imaginary “girly jesus” wants to slobber you with kisses so you’ll LIKE HIM, and who, conveniently enough, ratifies and encourages the sin of COWARDICE.

The brutality of a totalitarian oligarchy is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to the cowardice of the men of the non-oligarch “underclass.”

I am hard-pressed to think of a more cowardly population of men than the men of contemporary Western Christendom.

You do the math.

Now, for your joy and allegorical edification, please enjoy a Saturn V launch with the Cavalry Charge from the Finale of the William Tell Overture, a particularly special piece of music around here.

Lord Jesus Christ, Ascended to the Right Hand of The Father, have mercy on us and on Your Holy Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation.