the first letter of saint james to the commentators

 

Coffee with someone.

Someone says: "Do you not think priests should be speaking out against the vaccines?"

I say: "I tend not to tell priests to do this, that or the other. These things call for discernment. They're getting criticism and manipulation from all angles. They're individuals too. Some of them don't have strong insight or convictions about the vaccine. Some of them are a bit left wing. Some of them are doing their best to remain priests in an age that sneers at them for it. It's not necessarily up to the Padres to micro manage us on every issue. Catholics have two thousand years of what Jesus taught, they have lifetimes of priestly witness, and they also have the teaching of the scriptures which God made known through the Jews. We weren't born yesterday. We all of us know enough to know we shouldn't be ingesting substances marketed to us as vaccines and made out of the bodies of unborn children murdered by abortion. Of course the Pro Life rug has been pulled from under the priests' feet by Pope Francis the present occupant of the seat of Saint Peter. It's hard for them to speak out for that reason too. And boy when I say occupant of the seat of Saint Peter, do I mean occupant. His government has just announced contrary to natural law, contrary to the gospel and contrary to tradition that vaccines made out of aborted babies can in fact be used by Catholics. And he's made the vaccines mandatory in the Vatican itself. Remember that old gag about the abomination of desolation standing in a place that was not his. It's him. He's standing there now. Anyhoo. I don't want to go casting no aspoyshuns. Priests are naturally wary as am I about criticising the Pope. Every Communist, Nazi, Freemason, and Satanist in history has sought to diminish the Pope whenever they could. If you think priests should be speaking out about anything maybe you might consider going to church. You might also think about befriending priests before you start telling them what to do. Befriending means not putting them on a pedestal with excessive deference or respect, not giving them a perfunctory greeting and hurrying away, and not expecting them to agree on everything or to know everything about everything. The Catholic church is best understood as a family. Why on earth do we marginalise our brother priests and sister nuns? The worst scandal of the age is that we often abandon priests and nuns to grow old alone. And you know every two bit commentator like myself is telling priests what they should be doing. On the internet it can be like everyone with a website is setting himself up as Pope. The situation is all the more complex if you accept my analysis that the present Pope is a false Pope at the same time as you accept me saying that the Catholic church is ancient, beautiful and true and that the Papacy is a treasure of the human race. It is. But history will refer to this Pope who presumes to use the name Francis, as Jorge the Apostate. Just slipping that one in there so you know where I stand. But think of what we're up against. The forces of darkness have always had it as a main war aim to smash the authority of the Papacy and stampede the people away from their priests and nuns. There has always been factioneering in the church, some of it well intentioned, some of it mischievious. Saint Paul wrote about this in the first chapter of his Letter To The Corinthians. One of his greatest hits. Saint Paul says: "Some of you are saying I am for Paul. I am for Apollos. I am for Cephas. I am for Christ. Has Christ been parcelled out? Was Paul crucified for you?" I would note that today some people are saying: I am for Doctor Taylor Marshall (who talks vexatious nonsense about various types of crucifixes being heretical depending on the position of the arms of the Christ figure): or I am for Michael Voris from the Church Militant website (who regularly engages in equally vexatious nonsense talk of his own with a broad brush calling Bishops monsters in mitres); or I am for John Henry Westen at Lifesite News (who wrongly accuses the Pope of committing an offence by not naming the Blessed Mother as mediatrix of all graces, a title the church has never formally accorded her); or I am for Raymond Arroyo (who you can see on EWTN and is about the best of the bunch but some of his showboating on Fox News with Laura Ingraham is less professional than his usual measured principled fare) or the rumbunctious, occasionally maniacal sounding, Father James Altman  (who at this stage appears to have called half the population of the planet earth panseys, and that's just the half he's going easy on.) All these people are right sometimes, perhaps sincere always, and wrong sometimes. But Christ has not been parcelled out. Remember. Okay. All I can suggest is try befriending a Padre today. Thank him for his celebration of  mass. Ask him to discuss the sermon with you. Give him feedback. Show appreciation. You wanna see the Padres running when I approach em to do this. Like startled fawns bounding up the mountain path. But they might take it from you. Maybe invite him to dinner with your family. Enjoy his conversation. Show him he's valued as a friend. If it comes up in conversation by all means you have my permission to urge him to preach a sermon against the vaccines. Some of them are doing it anyway. Even in the times of the end, our Lord has his servants in every town."