Using the analogy of a body for the Church as St. Paul often did, we naturally refer to Christ as the head. We might just as rightly refer to the saints in heaven, starting with the Blessed Virgin Mary, as the heart of that mystical body. We of course, the Church Militant, represent the various other members ~ hands, feet, etc. So what connects all these various members to the head, Christ, is the spinal chord or backbone. That metaphorical backbone of the Church would be the clergy: priests bishops, cardinals, and the Pope himself. For without the priesthood there simply can be no sacramental life, no true governance, and no Church. These men represent the indispensable neuro-pathway linking the Church’s many members to Christ her head. Sever the spine and the Church will die, cut off from its one true head. But what if that same spine is only damaged? Then, like our bodies, a full or partial paralysis will occur so that the Church, although it may continue to limp along, it will no longer function in a healthy or robust manner. It will become a weakened invalid.

That point at the very top of the spinal column where the spine merges into the actual brain matter would be the Petrine office of the Pope. Christ after all founded his Church on all twelve apostles but he gave a special authority to Peter, calling him the “Rock” who would support, encourage, and at times even correct his brother bishops. Peter was to be the visible sign and cause of unity in the Church. Nevertheless it would take all of the apostles, not just Peter to manage and extend the Church to the ends of the earth. And yes, there were times when even Peter himself needed correction as we know from the Acts of the Apostles.

With Advent we are entering a new liturgical year, so it might be a good time to take the current pulse of Christ’s Church. And yet, what we observe coming out of the Petrine office these days is very disturbing. I am referring of course to the current Bergoglian papacy euphemistically called the “Francis Church.” (What used to be known as the Roman Catholic Church increasingly resembles a strange new body, the Jesuit Catholic Church.) Beginning March 13, 2013 the world’s Catholic faithful have been living in a surreal dream-like state of two popes which, in the past year since the death of Benedict XVI, has increasingly morphed into a frightful nightmare. We have observed the so-called Church of Mercy descend into the Church of petty retributions, vindictiveness, and patent injustice. Saintly bishops are deposed unjustly and without cause, most recently Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas who it seems has now been forbidden to even celebrate Mass in his former diocese among friends he has known for years. It is a demonstration of just how petulant the henchmen of Bergoglio’s brutal authoritarianism have become.

The litany of this regime of terror continues unabated: Priest for Life founder Fr. Frank Pavone laicized without explanation, Bishops Finn of Kansas City, Holley of Memphis, and Torres in Puerto Rico all railroaded out of their dioceses on flimsy pretexts. Most recently we watched an eminent cardinal of the Church, Raymond Burke, unceremoniously tagged as a persona non grata, evicted from his apartment in Rome, and denied his pension by the “Pope of Mercy.” And the shameful treatment of loyal Chinese Cardinal Zen by Jorge Bergoglio has been a source of worldwide embarrassment to the entire Church.

Meanwhile sexual predators like Fr. Marko Rupnik or the twisted “Art of Kissing” Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez of Argentina are rehabilitated or promoted to the highest ranks of the Curia (Dicastry for the Doctrine of the Faith), free to do more damage to the same Deposit of Faith which U.S. Apostolic Nuncio Christophe Pierre seems to believe is of little to no importance. Bergoglio’s oxymoronic Synod on ‘Synodality’ meanwhile is preparing to obliterate inconvenient moral doctrines in order to please radical feminists and the James Martin, S.J. homo-crazed cheering squads. In other words, the backbone of the Church is being broken or bent to a wicked agenda even as those priests and bishops who represent the bulk of the Ecclesial backbone are subjected to a Bergoglian reign of terror, demoralized and fearful of becoming the next potential victim of papal wrath.

If that is not enough we watch in disbelief as busloads of transvestites, abortion tainted eugenicists, and globalist power seekers are warmly embraced in the Vatican chambers. Inclusivity is generously extended to all comers except for those Luddites “stuck in the past” who insist on believing that 2,000 years of tradition is a better guide to heaven than modern-day Jesuit “accompaniment” theories. Thus Bergoglio’s war against Tradition in the Church is also aimed at faithful religious communities and monasteries (via the heavy handed Cor Orans document).

Seminary formation is also in his modernist crosshairs (Ratio Fundamentalis Institutiones Sacerdotalis 2016) which imposes a whole new terminology on the priestly formation process. For instance, what was formerly known as philosophy or pre-theology now becomes “Discipleship Stage” while the study of Theology is now redefined as a “Configuration Stage.” One can always be assured that when modernists start tinkering with terminology their real intent is the gutting of whatever it is they just rebranded. And nothing irritates Bergoglio more than those passionate young clerics who yearn for the Catholic traditions they were denied growing up in the post Vatican II era. The plot here is undoubtedly to indoctrinate future priests his own Argentinian socialist modernist mindset before they can be infected by (gasp!) tradition.

By his own admission and actions, Bergoglio is waging an Ecclesial revolution against 2,000 years of Church tradition, discipline, and teaching while using a bull whip to achieve his ends. As a lowly layman I can safely make such a claim, whereas any priest, bishop, or even a cardinal prince of the Church foolish enough to point out such an inconvenient truth will be viciously and summarily smacked down, as was the saintly former Bishop of Tyler, Texas.

As the star protege of the St. Gallen Mafia, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, seems quite intent on assuming the title of “worst pope in history,” if indeed he has not already lain claim to such an odious spot in history. But just as our divine Savior needed one of his chosen apostles to betray him to his enemies, there is the possibility that Bergoglio was chosen by Providence to be a fitting chastisement on the Church which itself has, for half a century, flirted with manifest infidelity if not outright material apostasy. In that vein I leave it to you to consider the following. It may be mere coincidence or perhaps it was meant as a sign from heaven.

The man who now calls himself Pope Francis was born in Argentina on December 17, 1936. Yet on that very same day of 1936 in far away Poland St. Faustina Kowalska was entering these chilling words in her diary as though some dark, spiritual premonition had overwhelmed her soul. “I have offered this day for priests. I have suffered more today than ever before, both interiorly and exteriorly. I did not know it was possible to suffer so much in one day. I tried to make a Holy Hour, in the course of which my spirit had a taste of the bitterness of the Garden of Gethsemane. I am fighting alone, supported by His arm, against all the difficulties that face me like unassailable walls. But I trust in the power of His name and I fear nothing.” Could it be that the birth of this future Pontiff destined to divide the Church and persecute so many good priests and prelates was the cause of her terrible agony?

Today we celebrate the glorious feast of the Immaculate Conception, and in five days Jorge Bergoglio will turn 87. As the inevitable day of his reckoning before Christ, the just judge, approaches we should be praying that he will turn his gaze from the worldly affairs that seem so much to preoccupy him and that he may experience a radical change of heart. We do not know if St. Faustina’s mystical agony in the garden on the day of Bergoglio’s birth was her sharing in the suffering which the Church has endured on his watch, or whether it was meant as expiation for the final redemption of his soul. Perhaps it was both. Every soul is precious to God as is His beloved bride, the Church. And if the backbone of His Church is weak or infected, meaning the higher and lower clergy, then the whole body will suffer terribly.

The lynch-pin of that Ecclesial spine is the Pope himself whose job it is to strengthen, not to weaken or assail his brethren and the flock as we sadly see today. The present situation is certainly unprecedented in the Church’s long history. We must work and pray that it may be resolved, undoubtedly in God’s way and time, but above all we must maintain our own fidelity to the Church as Christ founded it ~ immutable and enduring in its teachings even to the end of time. And no one man, even sitting in a papal chair, can ever change that reality.

Francis J. Pierson +a.m.d.g.

Feast of the Immaculate Conception