Bishop Strickland: "Just Obeying Orders"?

Archbishop Viganò: Canceled bishops must give their lives for the persecuted Catholic faithful

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'Our task as pastors is to protect the Lord’s flock from mercenaries and rapacious wolves: not to retreat as soon as we are attacked, abandoning it or allowing it to be looked after by others.'

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò

... Our task as pastors is to protect the Lord’s flock from mercenaries and rapacious wolves: not to retreat as soon as we are attacked, abandoning it or allowing it to be looked after by others. Being successors of the apostles implies a personal responsibility, from which no one can ever exempt us, for that would constitute a betrayal of Christ’s example. [https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/archbishop-vigano-canceled-bishops-must-give-their-lives-for-the-persecuted-catholic-faithful/?utm_source=featured_news&utm_campaign=usa]

While the outpouring of sentimental support for the unjustly removed former Bishop of Tyler, Texas, Joseph Strickland, is understandable, the lack of critical analysis attending it is concerning.  The National "Catholic" Reporter, for instance, channels Hillary Clinton in calling Strickland a Protestant; just as the woman who lost to Donald Trump once styled dissent "patriotic" but changed her tune as soon as the Democrats happened to regain power.  In the same way, the Reporter has never minded going against magisterial teachings before.  For them to denounce Bishop Strickland in this particular sense is pretty rich.

The disturbing part is that there was, indeed--though not the way the leftists mean it--something smacking of the Reformation about Bishop Strickland's fireside chat with John-Henry Westen in the immediate aftermath of the outrageous removal.  With images of the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts as a backdrop, His Excellency stressed two things: that Bergoglio has the right to do what he has done, and that he himself--Bishop Strickland--is good with it "in the Lord."  If this isn't evangelical Protestantism dressed up in a vacuously Catholic devotionalism, what is?

Even legitimate authority can be abused.  Amidst all the furor over Bergoglian validity, to which Bishop Strickland manifestly subscribes, there arises the question of whether or not a pope can do what Bergoglio has just done. Can he do it, in the sense of having the power to carry it out?  Yes, just as the father of a family is able to break the bones of his wife and children, being, generally speaking, the physically strongest member of the group.  Can a pope use his power in the Church to do to someone like Bishop Strickland, who is canonically innocent, what has just been done?  By saying yes, Bishop Strickland adopts the spirituality of the victim of domestic violence, justifying his own victimization and even giving it a "Catholic" justification.  To say "Bergoglio has committed an atrocity in the sight of God and man,  which God has not given me the power to amend, and so I place everything in His Almighty hands, entrusting myself to His justice which is the basis of His mercy" would be one thing; then the "I'm good with it, in the Lord" part would make perfect sense.  But this is not what the witness of Joseph Strickland--for all his heroic defenses of other points concerning Catholicism--amounts to.  Bishop Stickland's witness, instead, says:  "The Faith is a nominalist one, just like Lutheranism or worse, because obedience boils down to what the Nazis demanded of other people. 1 If I am commanded to do something, I have to do it, because that is what God wants--'God,' evidently, not being the Logos but an irrational being whose whims must be submitted to regardless of their correspondence to goodness in and of itself. The choices of a Thomas More are meaningless ones;  he should have done what the King wanted and been good with it 'in the Lord.'  Galatians is an epistle of straw; if Peter said so, Paul's place was to go along to get along.  We must obey man rather than God. 2"

Bishop Strickland, you cannot be good "in the Lord" with something the Lord Himself is not good with.  

If Bergoglio has the right to do wrong, why don't divorced and civilly "remarried" people have it, too, or people whose unions are not, by DDF decree, to be confused with Holy Matrimony, or 

you, or me?  It is evangelically Protestantist, not Catholic, to sit in front of religious depictions and pacifically excuse yourself from the obligations of conscience.  The "Synod on Synodality" wants to achieve a radical revision of ecclesiology.  If the only people opposing it--like Bishop Strickland and his well-intentioned supporters--are already in fundamental agreement that the "church" is what Luther says it is, then the Synod's aims are accomplished already.

1. "In many ways the political philosophy of Martin Luther (1483-1546) 

must be regarded as an amazing paradox. Luther started with a plea 
for reform in the concept of the church and ended with a reform in the 
concept of the state. He started with a plea for individual liberty and 
for freedom of conscience; yet his doctrines led directly to a belief in the 
divine right of kings and to the belief that monarchs [the secular states] have a right to 
dictate religious dogmas to the private individual. He started as an 
internationalist with a message to the peoples of all nations: he ended 
by formulating the doctrine of all-powerful national states in perpetual 
antagonism to one another. He started with the doctrine of the basic 
equality of all men, and ended with the doctrine that all men should be  

subject to the iron will of their secular [state] lord." [From Luther to Hitler, William McGovern, Page 31: https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.237119/2015.237119.From-Luther_djvu.txt]

2. "I thought I was pretty jaded on the Pope Francis question. But what I learned this morning actually shook me, sent a cold chill down my spine of the kind I’ve only felt before confronting the demons outside abortion clinics.

Lifesitenews reports:

Pope Francis’ apostolic nuncio to the United States, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, told Bishop Joseph Strickland three years ago that “there is no deposit of faith.” … [A]ccording to Bishop Strickland, Pierre made the “shocking” claim at a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

[Strickland friend and confidante Terry Barber said] “Bishop Strickland communicated to me that … Pierre confronted [him] and said, ‘Look, the Holy Father is watching you. You need to stop talking about the deposit of faith. There is no deposit of faith.’

Just to avoid confusion, Pierre did not say the following:

I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.

That was a quote from Orwell’s 1984.

Cardinal Pierre isn’t a fictional inquisitor from a political dystopia, but the highest Vatican official in the United States, the pope’s personal representative. It’s his job to pick U.S. bishops. He’s like the papal ambassador to the U.S. When he speaks for the Vatican, no one can overrule him short of the pope himself." - John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream [https://stream.org/top-us-vatican-official-claims-pope-may-make-the-faith-up-as-he-goes/]

Note: This important piece is by a Catholic Monitor (CM) contributor with editorial input from the CM publisher.

Pray an Our Father now for reparation for the sins committed because of Francis’s Amoris Laetitia.

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.

Francis Notes:

– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:

“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.”
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)

Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said “the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church.”
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]

– “If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html

– “Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html

– If Francis betrays Benedict XVI & the”Roman Rite Communities” like he betrayed the Chinese Catholics we must respond like St. Athanasius, the Saintly English Bishop Robert Grosseteste & “Eminent Canonists and Theologians” by “Resist[ing]” him: https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/12/if-francis-betrays-benedict-xvi.html 

 –  LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:

The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”

–  On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:

“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”

– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:

“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.

Election Notes: 

– Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: “212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted…Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden” [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]

– Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times “Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html

– Tucker Carlson’s Conservatism Inc. Biden Steal Betrayal is explained by “One of the Greatest Columns ever Written” according to Rush: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/tucker-carlsons-conservatism-inc-biden.html?m=1

– A Hour which will Live in Infamy: 10:01pm November 3, 2020:
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1

What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: “Anitfa ‘Agent Provocateurs‘”:
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1] 

Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God’s Will and to do it.

Pray an Our Father now for America.

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.