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Pray ‘like never before’ for this Conclave

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Although it has only been four days since my last post (about Theodore McCarrick, see my “The Essential Priesthood” April 17 article), the news of Pope Francis’ demise a mere 18 days after McCarrick’s death should make us all seriously ponder upon that inescapable day when each one of us will be required to render an account for our lives and actions. Tragically, both of these men called to the priesthood became, in the end, sources of grave scandal for Christ’s Church, and we should prayerfully commend them to God’s just mercy.

Their baneful legacy remains, however ~ a Church in greater disarray than perhaps at any time in its 2,000 year history, not that they are solely responsible but each played a singular role in creating the discord and confusion with which loyal Catholics are now contending. That we now need healing and a renewed leadership to begin to repairing and restoring an authentic Catholic voice in our troubled world is undeniable. The forthcoming conclave will be a crucial step in restoring orthodoxy and clarity after 12 years of ambiguity and dogmatic obfuscation. But such needed reform cannot be taken for granted. We must pray without ceasing that our prelates and cardinals will recognize the gravity of the situation and act according to the dictates of the Holy Spirit; not swayed by personal or political agendas in choosing the next Vicar of Christ (a title mysteriously rejected by the Bergoglian papacy.)

There are still many wolves among our shepherds, so do not assume that the ship will right itself. As such I am including a Litany for the Church under Siege which I hope you will share and pray every day until the successful election of our next Pontiff. If possible, to render our petition more powerful, try and pray it before or at the end of daily Mass.

Litany for the Church Under Siege

Lord have mercy on us. Lord have mercy on us.
Christ have mercy on us. Christ have mercy on us.
Lord have mercy on us. Lord have mercy on us.
Christ, Divine founder of the Church, Hear us.
Christ, who warned of false prophets, Hear us.

God the Father of Heaven, Have mercy on us.
God the Son, Redeemer of the world, Have mercy on us.
God the Holy Spirit, Have mercy on us.
Holy Trinity, One God. Have mercy on us.
Holy Mary, Mother of the Church, Pray for us.
St. Joseph, protector of the universal Church, Pray for us.
St. Michael, our defender in the day of battle, Pray for us.
St. Peter, the rock on which Christ built his Church, Pray for us.
St. Paul, guardian of the faithful remnant, Pray for us.
St. Francis of Assisi, restorer of God’s holy Church, Pray for us.
St. Anthony, gentle hammer of heretics, Pray for us.
St. Pius V, champion of the Mass of the Ages, Pray for us.
St. Pius X, foe of Modernism, Pray for us.
All you holy angels and archangels, Pray that we may resist the snares of the devil.
St. Catherine of Sienna, Pray that Christ will send us a Vicar who will oppose the spirit of the world.
St. John Fisher, Pray that bishops have the courage to combat heresy and irreverence.
St. John Vianney, Pray that zeal for souls will be rekindled in all the clergy.
St. Charles Borromeo, Pray that seminaries will be protected from false teachings.
St. Vincent de Paul, Pray that seminarians may return to a life of prayer and meditation.
St. Therese of Liseux, Pray that religious may rediscover their vocation of love and sacrifice.
St. Thomas More, Pray that the laity may courageously oppose the great apostasy.
St Francis de Sales, Pray that the Catholic press may again become a vehicle of truth.
St. John Bosco, Pray that our children may be protected from immoral and heretical instruction.
St. Pascal Baylon, Pray that profound reverence for the Most Blessed Sacrament may be restored.
St. Dominic, Pray that we may ever treasure the Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Let us Pray:
Jesus, Our Lord and God, in these dark hours when Thy Mystical Body is undergoing its own crucifixion, and when it would almost seem to be abandoned by God the Father, have mercy we beg Thee on they suffering Church. Send down upon us the Divine Consoler to enlighten our minds and strengthen our wills.
Thou, O Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, Who canst neither deceive nor be deceived, Who has promised to be with Thy Church until the end of time, grant us a mighty faith that we may not falter; help us to do Thy Holy Will at all times, especially during these hours of grief and uncertainty. May Thy Most Sacred Heart and the Immaculate and Sorrowful Heart of Thy Holy Mother be our sure refuge in time and eternity. Amen.

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

The Essential Priesthood

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As I once again viewed Mel Gibson’s powerful “The Passion of the Christ” last evening I was impressed with its various images of the priesthood. Today, Holy Thursday, we celebrate the institution of both the Eucharist and the priesthood of the New Covenant, for it was at the Last Supper that Our Lord bestowed that new priesthood upon His twelve apostles. The thing that struck me was how the very first thing those newly ordained priests did was to flee in fear, deserting their Master, the one and true High Priest, as He was being arrested in the Garden of Olives. Only St. John remained somewhat loyal to his Master and would stand with Jesus’ mother at the foot of the cross. Judas distinguished himself as the very first apostate priest by actually betraying Our Lord to his enemies who, ironically, were also members of another priestly class. Peter denied that he even knew his Master and the other nine disappear until well after the Resurrection.

And how is it that the Jewish priests, who should have been first to recognize and welcome their Messiah, not only blindly failed to do so but became his active persecutors, arousing the crowds to demand the brutal execution of their true High Priest and king? Yet the Scriptures had long predicted that it must be this way – while those who knew the Scriptures the best utterly failed to recognize their fulfillment, accomplished by virtue of their own wicked malice. The Jewish Aaronic priesthood was to be the prototype and progenitor of a new and more complete priesthood established by Christ, yet at the crucial moment both old and new priesthoods stumbled and failed badly. One suspects that God had a purpose in all this, namely to show the hopeless condition in which sin places all of mankind, even those called to priestly dignity. Our human frailty, selfishness, and perverse natures needed to be clearly demonstrated so that man could see himself as he truly is, and not as he might vainly imagine himself to be.

God needed to humble even the best representatives of mankind, His priests, because exaltation invariably leads to pride, the very thing that had subjected man to Satan in the first place. Only God could purify man from the malignancy of pride and thus free man from his subservience to that ancient ‘father of pride,’ the devil. Christ’s terrible passion and death serves as an object lesson, especially for modern man whose inflated sense of self-sufficiency draws him ever further away from a humble attitude and childlike dependence on God, not only for his material needs but more importantly for his eternal good. It seems that in every generation this basic lesson needs to be reintroduced.

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In War or Peace, God Has His Plan

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Every true Christian, but especially Catholics, should understand that in God’s field of view there are no such things as accidents. That is why the often used term “accidental pregnancy” is a laughable concept when considered from the Divine perspective. The same reasoning can be applied to suffering and evil, which God allows all of us to experience, not out of any sadistic motive but rather so that He can elicit some greater good from it ~ assuming that we are willing to cooperate. God sees the “big picture,” we only get to observe a few pixels, and so it is only through faith and trust in His providential plan that we can ultimately share in whatever good He has in mind. The extreme example of this transforming a horrific evil into the greatest possible good is the crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus, an event which destroyed the power of sin and death while reconciling mankind to its Father and Creator. But it was anything but painless.

Each one of us is here for a reason, we didn’t just accidentally materialize. Rather, God foresaw and prepared well for our existence, including the particular circumstances of our lives, from the very beginning of time. And in virtually every case this plan required a great deal of suffering on the part of those who came before us in order for it to be effected. Here I am not simply referring to a mother’s labor pains but to the whole historic gamut of trials, sufferings, and yes, manifest evils endured by others, all orchestrated like clockwork over centuries, yet without which I would not now be sitting here composing this particular post. In my case this means that if the American Civil War, which cost some 600,000 lives, had never been waged there would be no Fran Pierson today relating this story. Neither would my siblings, father, grandfather, uncles, aunts, and countless first and second cousins have ever existed if our great grandfather, Aaron E. Pierson, had not signed up in the 44th Indiana volunteer infantry regiment in that pivotal fall of 1861.

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The Battle Has Only Begun

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Unbelievable! We are now a quarter of a century into the new millennium; on Monday we witnessed the seemingly miraculous return to office of President Donald Trump as our 47th president, after four years of suffering Biden’s banana republic quagmire (as though real adults have finally returned to a very messed up room). Windmills are out and oil drilling is again okay. J6rs and pro-life victims of a deranged and vengeful ‘Justice’ Department have been restored to their families and freedom, while Mr. Trump proudly hoisted a middle finger salute to the globalist elites at the WHO and Paris Climate Accord. He is further insuring that finally, after 60 years of bureaucratic stonewalling and deception, we just may discover who were the real criminals responsible for the deaths of JFK, RFK, and MLK. Yet in the midst of all these earth shattering headlines, yours truly comes down with a case of classic writer’s block! Say it ain’t so Fran.

I believe that every honest, God fearing American has a right to enjoy this moment of euphoria, realizing that we collectively beat back the globalist swamp creatures to carve out a little breathing room for the largely despised citizenry. Americans did so by sending a clear message to the Party of Death and Wokeism that their degenerate ‘utopian’ vision is not so universally appreciated as they had presumed (although in their ‘echo chamber’ world they will undoubtedly spin and garble even that message of disapproval as a clarion call for more ‘re-education’). What we must now realize, however, is that we have only gained a temporary advantage. We have not won the war but only planted our flag. The real fight is just about to begin. This battle is not a political or social contest but truly a spiritual war against the principalities and powers of the underworld. If we loose sight of that reality for only a moment, the enemy will overrun us before we ever realize what happened.

Now is the time for greater vigilance than ever before, and our best weapon is prayer, especially daily Mass and the rosary. Our enemy is Satan and his dark legions. Realize that no matter how good or noble the intentions of our new president and his staff may be, without the constant raising of our voices to heaven the best of those intentions will become corrupted and thwarted. That is why Fr. Chad Ripperger, our country’s foremost exorcist is pleading for all faithful Christians to pray this act of consecration for our president and civil leaders and for the sincere conversion of this One Nation Under God. Please join this crucial battle by praying it daily, copying it and sharing it with your families, friends, and prayer groups:

Prayer of Consecration for our Land

Immaculate Mary, patroness of the United States of America, Queen of Heaven and earth, beneath whose sway are subject all things that are lower than God, sorrowful and mindful of our own sinfulness and the sins of our nation, we come to thee our refuge and hope, knowing that our country cannot be saved by our own works, and mindful of how much our nation has departed from the ways of thy Son, we humbly ask that thou woudst turn thine eyes upon our country to bring about its conversion.

We consecrate to thee all of those governing our Republic, so that what is spiritually and morally best for the citizens of our nation may be accomplished, and that they would govern according to the spiritual and moral principles which will bring our nation into conformity with the teachings of thy Son. Bind any forces, spiritual and human, that would seek to inflict harm or evil on our country, or against those who do good for our nation by their governance.

Give grace to the citizens of this land, so that they may merit leaders who will govern according to the Sacred Heart of thy Son, that His glory may be made manifest, lest we be given the leaders we deserve. Trusting in the providential care of God the Father and thy maternal care, we have perfect confidence that thou will take care of us and will not leave us forsaken. O Mary Immaculate, pray for us!

Viva Cristo Rey! Francis J. Pierson +a.m.d.g.

There’s Little Peace in Bethlehem

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Christmas is a time to celebrate the coming of the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ. Sadly, the very ground where Christ once lived and taught and died to redeem mankind knows no peace today. The little town of Bethlehem, which witnessed the birth of the divine Prince of Peace, lies at the heart of the besieged West Bank of Palestine, held hostage to a twisted plot of diabolic sophistication which has enlisted even Christians and Western nations into its confused web of intrigue. The sudden fall of Syria to a Zionist-globalist funded and armed cabal of ‘good’ terrorists should hardly be a cause for celebration but for deep concern among Christians.

If recent history means anything it will be our Christian brothers and sisters, nearly a million strong in Syria, who will be targeted, killed, and driven out just as happened to Iraq’s Chaldean Christians after 20004. Christians in fact are the most vulnerable group in the Middle East, invariably caught in any crossfire between between Muslim and Zionist factions. Unsurprisingly, Israel has wasted no time in opportunistically moving their tanks even as far as the outskirts of Damascus to expand the Zionist influence and power. Nothing new there.

Here at home, for millions of so-called Christian Zionists, the sweeping away of one more Israeli enemy represents a victory, and yet they fail to understand that their pro-Zionism stems from a Christian heresy, wholly based on a literalist and selective interpretation of Sacred Scriptures as found in the Scofield Reference Bible, a mainstay of millions of Evangelical Christians. For example, the Scofield commentary (italicized) on Genesis 12:3: “I will bless them that bless thee. and curse them that curse thee” reads: “Wonderfully fulfilled in the history of the dispersion. It has invariably fared ill with the people who have persecuted the Jew—well with those who have protected him. The future will still more remarkably prove this principle.”

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Unfinished Business

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Has the Catholic Church under Francis fully retreated from her core Divine mandate to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Mt. 28:19) by adopting a cozy kind of doctrinal “I’m Okay, You’re Okay” mindset? This past September 13, the putative leader of the Roman Catholic Church admonished his young listeners in Singapore, “Every religion is a way to arrive at God… There is only one God and each of us has a language to arrive at God. Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Christian: they are different paths.” This stunning revelation followed on the heels of his earlier statement to the Grand Imam of Indonesia, “…each cultivating his or her own spirituality and practicing his or her religion, may walk in search of God.”

If the Church, as we truly believe, was established by Christ to be a light to all the nations; not merely one light among many but the light which illumines the darkness, this means that until there is one fold and one shepherd then Christ’s Church on earth has unfinished business. Allegorically speaking, why would God’s building contractor (the Church) set down its toolbox with the house only half finished? Consider how the missionary zeal that was a defining hallmark of the Catholic Church as late as the 1950s has slowly fizzled out during the intervening decades. In fact, it is now Catholics who are now being recruited in vast numbers into Pentecostal and other sects, particularly in Latin America. But this particular dereliction of missionary zeal has been particularly unfortunate for the Jews, our elder brothers in God’s Covenant, who are thereby being denied access to the promise of its fulfillment, which is Christ. It is a false charity to withhold a vital truth from someone simply because it might offend their ears.

Case in point is the Solemn Intercessions which form an integral part of the Good Friday Liturgy. Among those intercessory prayers is one now designated “For the Jewish People.” Pre-1962 Catholics prayed “For the Conversion of the Jews.” Notice that already the operative word “Conversion” has been deleted, apparently because it denotes some implicit threat or form of hostility. But is conversion not required of each and every one of us on some level? Conversion, regardless of our present state, is designed to bring us closer to God, not to threaten our peace of mind. It is a positive value, not a negative one. So why are we afraid to speak of conversion in regard to the Jews, or anyone else for that matter?

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A Prelude to Armageddon?

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One should only wade into the mine-infested waters of political Zionism with the greatest trepidation, for fear of being instantly tarred as ‘anti-semitic.’ Still, I feel compelled to take note of a savagely brutal war being waged by Israeli Semites on their fellow Semites whether of Christian or Muslim persuasion, namely the Palestinian people. The issue involves much more than a simplistic appraisal of whoever is claiming to be wearing white hats v. black hats if we are to arrive at even a modicum of actual truth.

In the first place a bit of context to a very complicated historical situation is needed. That involves drawing a distinction between the Jewish religion and the Nation of Israel. The confusion lies in the fact that in the Old Testament a theocratic state existed combining the two and which lasted shortly beyond the time of Christ. The Jewish religion was liturgical, revolving around the Aaronic priesthood and Temple sacrifice. But with Jesus, a new high priesthood in the person of Christ himself fulfilled the “promise” and the former rites of sacrifice were enfolded into the new rite which Christ instituted at the Last Supper and consummated on the cross. Thus the old religious liturgy was renewed and restored in the form of the Catholic Mass, Christ himself being the New Temple not made by human hands. He founded a new priesthood based not on a bloodline but on the twelve men chosen by Christ, as eternal high priest, to be his apostles and heirs, all of them Jewish.

But the leaders of the ‘Nation’ of Israel whose responsibility had been to welcome the Messiah when he arrived did the opposite. They rejected Christ because His stated messianic objective was not to elevate the nation to geopolitical supremacy as they had anticipated. They were more interested in being liberated from the Romans than being liberated from the ancient curse of sin. So the tree which should have had one strong trunk branched out into two competing trunks, both coming from the same shoot. But only one thrived even as the other withered. The Jewish ‘nation’ followed its own path, even persecuting Jewish followers of Christ, until the year 70 AD when, in a suicidal rebellion against Rome, it was utterly destroyed. The Temple was smashed and the survivors scattered to the winds. Even today one can read the Jewish historian Josephus’ tragic account of Jerusalem’s destruction in his History of the Jews, it is a truly heart rending account.

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Can this be Real?

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The political landscape in this land of e Pluribus Unum continues to dissolve into a tapestry of absurd images and surreal gestures, as evidenced by the Democratic National Party Convention in Chicago this past week. Nothing was quite so disturbing, however, as the image of a prince of the Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Blase Cupich, leading a pious invocation for “peace” even as a hundred feet or so away a mobile abortion clinic was busy offering blood sacrifices (free of charge) to the demons of death. Is Cardinal Cupich blindly unaware that the Democratic party has enshrined “womb-slaughter” as the defining plank of its campaign, because abortion in their eyes is no longer a “necessary evil” but a “positive good” and basic human right? So how does he ever imagine that “peace” will somehow flower out of the soil of this party’s genocidal campaign of cold blooded killing? If he had any personal doubts as to whether his vaunted “peace” could somehow flourish amidst such industrial scale slaughter he clearly kept those misgivings to himself.

Does the cardinal even realize that this same party of death, for which he so heartily carries water, is equally committed to walking all over the conscience rights of those who find abortion to be a reprehensible evil? His own state of Illinois recently passed a law which mandates that all insurance carriers must cover abortion services and likewise prohibits any employer, even religious ones, from firing or disciplining any employee who may have had or is planning to obtain an abortion. Illinois bill #4867 was enthusiastically signed into law by J.B. Pritzker, considered the most pro-abortion governor in the country, who actually proclaimed this past March 10 as “Abortion Provider Appreciation Day,” while incoherently thanking abortion providers for their “life saving work.” Yet such twisted logic has become the norm among the progressive left political establishment, a faction which can no longer even define who is, or is not, a woman. None of this rhetorical lunacy seemed to phase Cardinal Cupich as he blithely invoked the blessings of God for “peace” upon unrepentant and murderous zealots who have publicly proclaimed that they will stop at nothing to impose their perverted ideology on the rest of mankind, by force if necessary.

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Entitlement Christianity

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One of the ideas that seems to be gaining currency these days, even among high ranking clerics, is the delusional expectation that hell may actually be empty. This is implicit Universalism, the belief that God’s mercy is so expansive that every human soul will be saved in the end. This is not only heresy but a direct contradiction of the words of Christ himself. “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to perdition, and those who enter it are many.” (Mt. 7:13)

Such a view further leads one into the grave sin of presumption upon God’s mercy through a denial of His unerring justice. One of the dilemmas of Christianity has ever been its attempt to square the compassionate God of Mercy with the dread God of Justice. Is God just a giant cuddly stuffed Panda or the vengeful Calvinist judge casting souls into eternal hellfire with bland indifference? Of course, both images are gross exaggerations which have see-sawed back and forth throughout the Church’s long history, under the titles of laxism v. rigorism. Today we are in a period of extreme laxism ~ a loss of spiritual discipline and vision which grew as a counter-reaction to the excessive rigors of Calvinism and Jansenism. The pendulum swings to and fro, and seldom does it rest in the middle.

The danger of the current lax spiritual climate is that the ensuing casual forms of Christianity have left the greater number of Catholics and other Christians with the false impression that what they do doesn’t really matter because they are entitled to salvation. God’s mercy is so overwhelming it will disregard the more sordid details of one’s personal life and habits. God, as many like to boast, “accepts me just as I am.” And perhaps this mentality explains why the practice of sacramental confession has fallen off a cliff since Vatican II. Our secular culture has greatly encouraged the idea of entitlement so that a sort of spiritual welfare state which complements the physical welfare state has taken root in the minds and hearts of many Christians. The underlying theme seems to be that we have some inherent “right” to heaven, regardless of our actions or track record.

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Blessed Are the Pure of Heart

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There is little question among more observant Catholics that the current situation in the Church is critical, especially as one watches the train wreck which the Vatican increasingly resembles. History, fortunately, comes to our rescue, however. I mean that, looking over the past centuries, it becomes apparent that as regards the Western Church we can see a recurring cycle of reform and decay every 500 years. Beginning with the great reforms of St. Benedict and Pope St. Gregory the Great in the latter 6th century we witness how their reforms shaped and gave rise to the Carolignian renaissance. Still, corruption gradually crept in and by the 10th and early 11th centuries a very dark period emerged for both the papacy and Church discipline. Just when it seemed things could get no worse under the infamous papacy of Benedict IX, a new Ecclesial reformation sprang up under the guiding hands of St. Peter Damien, Hildebrand who became Pope St. Gregory VII, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

The following few centuries would see the Medieval Church reach its greatest glory in the 13th century guided by St. Francis of Assisi, St. Dominic, and St. Thomas Aquinas to name just a few luminaries. Once again though, faith and moral discipline began to wane as corruption set in at both the papal and local levels so that by the time of another corrupt Pope, Alexander VI, the stage had been ably set for Martin Luther’s revolt. Again, it was not until the latter half of that 16th century that a genuine Church Counter-reformation began to take effect led by new saints of great stature: St. Charles Borromeo, St. Philip Neri, Sts. Ignatius and Francis Xavier, and Pope St. Pius V who finalized the great reforms of Trent as well as securing the expulsion of the Muslim Turks from Christendom at Lepanto.

500 years from Pope St. Gregory the Great to Hildebrand’s (Pope St. Gregory VII) reforms. 500 more years elapsed from the late 11th century reforms to the late 16th century reforms at Trent under Pope St. Pius V. We are currently standing 500 years out from the revolution of Luther and Calvin and the Church again seems to be at her nadir, especially when viewing the current papacy. This suggests that we are again on the eve of another great reform movement in the Church. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we need to survive the current imminent disaster, trusting that God already has the next Hildebrand or Borromeo lined up to reverse the course of a (Masonic) trajectory which appears to lead towards the Church’s planned demolition. It is a situation similar to what Sts. Thomas More and John Fisher were facing in Henry VIII’s England, again just 500 years ago.

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