How many times do conservative US Catholics, convinced that they are the true and only Catholics, have to glom on to a celebrity, anoint them a prophet, excommunicate the rest of us for not buying his spiel, and walk straight over a cliff as they mindlessly follow him before the dawning and dreadful thought finally breaks across their minds: “What if I’m wrong?” A million dead due to COVID anti-vax folly didn’t do it. An insurrection didn’t do it. A sexual assault judgement that the Cult is reduced to screaming is technically-definitely-not-rape didn’t do it. A misbegotten war didn’t do it. Pavone blowing up in their faces didn’t do it. Altman short-circuiting before their very eyes didn’t do it. A gazillion crazy conspiracy theories crashing and burning didn’t do it. And this guy’s removal from his misgoverned diocese didn’t do it.
How often can you be so wrong about so much so many times for so long that only a fool would trust your judgment before you finally stop trusting your judgment?
Pride is a helluva drug.
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Bishop Strickland has used his social media once again to promote an anti-Catholic cause. This time, he promoted a schismatic group in his home state.
In my recent article about a rumored Vatican document about discerning apparitions and supernatural phenomena, I briefly mentioned a situation in the Archdiocese of San Antonio, Texas, where a group called Mission of Divine Mercy (MDM) was suppressed by Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller. In March, Archbishop García-Siller issued a decree removing the diocese’s approval of the MDM and removing the priestly faculties of the group’s leader, Fr. John Mary Foster.
The decree explains that on February 28, Foster posted an alleged “message” from Mary and Jesus received by one of his community members on the MDM website. On March 5, the Archbishop met with Foster, “praying together and discussing the false teachings contained in the post and Reverend Foster’s oath of fidelity to the Church and duty of obedience” to his archbishop. The next day, Foster posted another “message” and then a third on March 13.
It is in the second message that the purported visionary claims, “And you have allowed the usurper to sit on the chair of My Peter – he who is carrying out the Great Treason that will leave My Church desolate.” In other words, according to this message, Pope Francis is “the usurper,” or a false pope, and they are sedevacantists.
This was made even more clear in a document posted on their website on March 12 entitled “We must obey God,” as well as in a video on YouTube, in which Foster says, “Many will find the conclusion that Bergoglio is a usurper and the enemy of the Church shocking. But is it really? For those who have been paying attention, we don’t think so. Even without prophetic messages, there have been plenty of warning signs of the profound problems in the Church in general and the papacy in particular.”
Archbishop García-Siller’s decree concludes:
Conscious of my duty to exercise governance over the ministries of the archdiocese and prudently lead the Christian faithful of the Archdiocese, I cannot allow any further confusion and grave scandal to descend upon the faithful of God and so I have removed Reverend Foster’s faculties for public ministry in the Archdiocese of San Antonio. I pray that Reverend Foster will work with me to repair the damage that has been caused and find a path forward for his ministry.
This week, the Archdiocese posted an additional canonical warning and decree to their website, dated April 24 and addressed to Foster, in which Archbishop García-Siller ordered the suspended priest to remove all references to the Archdiocese and all pictures of bishops and archbishops from the MDM website. He also asked that donors be informed that the MDM is not a Catholic or archdiocesan entity. The archbishop challenges Foster’s claims directly in the letter, writing, “You state you are not leaving the Church or being schismatic, and yet your words and actions speak otherwise.” The archbishop adds, “Remind your supporters, Father Foster, of your statement that I am ‘enthusiastically following Bergoglio, whom we do believe is trying to subvert the Church.’” He continues, “I am being obedient to Christ’s Vicar on earth and faithful to the promises I made on the day of my ordination and to the Oath of Fidelity and the Profession of Faith I made upon my ordination to the priesthood and the episcopacy. The same promises you made on the day of your ordination, Father Foster. How can you do what you are doing and say what you are saying, while also saying that you have not left the Church?”
Archbishop García-Siller is reminding Foster of the promises he made when he became a priest and promised obedience to the pope and his bishop.
It was troubling, but not surprising that Bishop Joseph Strickland, who was removed by Pope Francis from governance of the diocese of Tyler in November 23, posted a video Saturday by Foster on X. This video was the eighth message in the series begun on February 28. This installment is titled “For His Faithful Children in China.”
Just as with the second message in the series, this message denies the legitimacy of Pope Francis’s papacy, describing him as a “Betrayer”:
I SEE THE BETRAYAL YOU HAVE SUFFERED and that soon all My children will suffer, for the Betrayer sits on another’s throne, and will cast all who do not follow him aside.
In sharing this video, with this statement in it, Strickland raises questions about just how radical his views have become. This is at least the third time that Strickland has publicly flirted with sedevacantism in the last year. Last year, while giving a speech in Rome, Strickland read aloud a letter from a friend of his, in which Pope Francis was described as “this one who has pushed aside the true Pope and has attempted to sit on a chair that is not his.” This month, Strickland is taking part in a European pilgrimage with sedevacantist Patrick Coffin.
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Strickland, like his patron saint Donald Trump, has become a past master at dishonestly denying what 9is visible-from-space obvious. In his case, his constant approval to sedevacantist weirdos and continual nods to their wack conspiracy theories and lies about the Holy Father are denied by his transparently false protests that he is not saying what he is clearly saying: that Pope has no business being the Pope.
He is, of course, lionized as a hero by the MAGA Catholic cult, as well as treated like a martyr in that cult of self-pitying bullies who cosplay at martyrdom even as they back a tyrant who is readying his plans for the mass persecution of millions of people (most of them Christians) for the grave sin in the MAGA cult: breathing while brown. Strickland and his MAGA Catholic fanbois love to swan around striking the martyr pose to compensate for their guilt and their awareness that they are the persecutors, not the persecuted.
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7 Responses
Curious how American right wing Catholics think that they, and they alone speak for God. They also seem to have a Messianic attitude of Trump. National Catholic Register will not publish anything even mildly critical of Trump, but plenty critical of Pope Francis. How worthless.
«And you have allowed the usurper to sit on the chair of My Peter – he who is carrying out the Great Treason that will leave My Church desolate.»
Um, who is this “you” he’s talking about? Who allowed that “usurper”? I mean, if one believes the Catholic Tradition, the pope is chosen by the Holy Spirit as discerned by the college of cardinals. It’s not possible for there to be an usurper and for that usurper to remain unchallenged.
And even if there was one that somehow weaseled his way to the position by means of some long-running conspiracy to build up the college of cardinals to 2/3 majority of like-minded individuals (which in itself is ridiculously convoluted and rife with a seemingly endless list of pitfalls), one would hope that the Holy Spirit would intervene.
So Jesus and Mary talk to these people? Incredible. I wonder if they are taking their medications?
No idea, but I recently heard of some alleged private revelations of St. Joseph which claim that he was also immaculately conceived. I don’t have other details and I refuse to search for it.
Why? Because I’m fairly confident that if this revelation is deemed supernatural, especially if it develops into a dogma, I’ll just accept it.
And if it’s deemed fake, I won’t have wasted time looking it up and confounding myself, leading to periods of intense doubt and scrupulosity.
As far as I can guess, it’s some kind of neo-Manichaeism that can’t fathom that hands of an ordinary human could have touched Mary and Jesus and could have—gasp!—bathed baby Jesus!
Bad old, long-buried theology made Joseph a very old widower because that way it would solve the conundrum of Jesus’s “brothers and sisters” (until the clear explanation that “adelphoi” also applied to more distant relatives) and it would make it believable that he didn’t father Jesus and after all, if he was young, it would be impossible for him to stay away from Mary.
More recently, I heard of some supposedly apocryphal bits that say Joseph and Mary had planned a “chaste marriage” (that they would not have sex and children) which is the reason why Mary asked Gabriel how she would give birth if she’s planning to remain childless—not because she’s aware of where babies come from, ’cause THAT IS FILTHY! Thing is, the historical record of apocrypha is silent on that topic, so it sounds very much like a modern invention that views all things sexual as unholy.
Hence, neo-Manichaeism.
For newbies, what is MAGA? Acronyme for?
Make America Great Again: the slogan of the Trump Cult
Mulțumesc ! Thanks