On November 11, news quickly spread that Francis had removed Bishop Joseph Strickland from his office as Ordinary of the Diocese of Tyler, TX.
Even though the move was not unexpected, tradservative Catholic social media, here in the U.S. in particular, swiftly erupted with a level of outrage as great as any I’ve witnessed during the entirety of the Bergoglian Occupation.
Readers may recall how some five months earlier, in June, when it became known that the Diocese of Tyler was being subject to an Apostolic [sic] Visitation, attendees of the Coalition for Cancelled Priests Conference were led in a chant of support by a speaker called Jesse Romero, “Strickland, Strickland… We love you! We love you!”
Romero even fired a warning shot in the direction of Bergoglian Rome: “We’re not going to take this sitting down. There will be a Catholic response.”
[NOTE: As of this writing, all indications are that they’re still sitting down.]
This week, as word got out that Francis intends to boot Cardinal Raymond Burke from his Vatican apartment, while perhaps even taking away his salary, tradservatives on social media collectively responded, “You think we were outraged before? Hold my beer!” One could almost hear chants of “Raymond, Raymond, he’s our man,” welling up in the distance.
Then, right on the heels of news concerning Burke’s pending eviction, came reports that Francis, in a November 30th address to the International Theological Commission, charged the assembly:
“This is the job I ask of you: Please, demasculinize the church.”
Evidently, despite having an official Twitter handle of his own (@Pontifex), Jorge doesn’t actually peruse social media. If he did, he would have concluded long ago that masculinity is already an endangered species in his church as evidenced by the abovementioned outrage. It would have been more reasonable for him to beg for the demasculinization of Dillon Mulvaney.
To wit, one notes the presence of some decidedly unmasculine characteristics in the reactions of so many tradservative male commentators relative to the Strickland and Burke affairs:
Specifically, their rejoinders often largely focused on the targeted prelates, on the unfairness of their treatment and their victimhood. They also tended to be overwhelmingly emotional, rife with complaints about Bergoglio’s pettiness, his mean-spiritedness and vindictiveness.
More generally speaking, tradservative male commentators all-too-often come off more like a clique of bratty little schoolgirls on the lookout for new reasons to be offended than as soldiers for Christ committed to standing guard against those who would dare dishonor the purity of Holy Mother Church.
As such, they are forever clucking indignant about whatever mini-calamity-of-the-conciliar-kind just happens to adorn the headlines du jour, ever prepared on a moment’s notice to move on to the next pseudo-crisis, whatever it may be.
Last month, rumors surrounding the Synod on Synodality flashed front and center on the tradservative radar screen. Two weeks later, it was the fate of Joseph Strickland. Today, it’s the humiliation of Raymond Burke, and God only knows what toy dragons may present themselves for slaying moving forward.
Like a collection of unhappy women feeling stuck in a dead-end relationship with a coldhearted man that they love to hate, the leading male voices in tradservative Catholic media are constantly engaged in a fruitless Bergoglian bitchfest, ever hurling hollow invectives at the man they hail as “Roman Pontiff” and “Holy Father,” while hoping against hope that he’ll somehow be moved to cease his abusive behavior.
These same men are – at least insofar as their followers are concerned – the standard bearers who bravely keep the flame of Catholic tradition burning despite the best efforts of the “God of Surprises” and his cohort.
If these are the “men of the house” – the house that Vatican II built – one shudders to imagine what a demasculinized church might look like. (The set of “The View” comes to mind.)
So, what gives?
It seems to me – and with no offense meant toward intrepid women of faith – these men have unwittingly fallen prey to the estrogenic effect of the conciliar virus, a veritable pandemic that turns wannabe warriors for Christ into dialogue partners with the Devil.
This is inevitably what happens to men who proudly wear, albeit disgruntledly, “communion with Pope Francis” like a badge of honor, whilst demanding that you do likewise lest you cease to be Catholic; men who steadfastly number themselves among the members of the church over which Francis reigns while vowing never to leave it, and who confidently insist that the Second Vatican Council was, just as it claimed to be, an act of the Supreme Magisterium of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, doctrinal errors and all.
In short, the conciliar church is a feminizing force to be reckoned with. The longer a sincere seeker and would-be defender of Catholic truth persists within its confines, the more likely he is, even in the best of circumstances, to morph into a Low-T traditionalist.
Just look at how much wailing and whining these men have done in just the last month alone in reaction to the headlines of the day. A handful of years from now, Joseph Strickland’s unemployment, Raymond Burke’s rent, and rumors about the Synod on Synodality will have long since been forgotten.
Off the top of my head, I can think of a dozen grave offenses against Christ and His Church, many of which are not exclusively Bergoglian, that pose an enduring threat to the salvation of souls, each of which are treated as yesterday’s news – a fait accompli no longer worthy of our attention much less our active opposition – by the leading tradservative mouthpieces.
To name just a few, in no particular order:
- The utterly heretical notion there is no need to evangelize the Jews, i.e., the Old Law remains salvific for them.
- Amoris Laetitia and its blasphemous assertion, among other things, that the Divine Law is too difficult for some to keep, i.e., God the Lawgiver is unjust.
- The heresy that God wills the false religions.
- The conciliar proposition that man has a right to practice whatever religion he happens to believe to be true.
- The heretical assertion that the Catholic Church is but one of the many communities used by Our Lord as a means of salvation.
If left to fester, these are the sorts of evils that will have an impact on souls for generations to come, threatening to lead many to Hell. A Low-T traditionalist, whether consciously or not, dares not to allow his attention to linger on such matters for too long lest he and his followers come to certain unavoidable conclusions:
- The conciliar faith is not the Catholic faith.
- The conciliar church in Rome is not the Catholic Church.
- The heads of the conciliar church, propagating its false faith, are not true popes.
Don’t get me wrong, Catholic media types should comment upon current events. The value of doing so, however, lies not in rallying the troops to anger, amassing more followers and filling an ever-expanding tent, but rather in taking the opportunity to move the audience’s attention past the symptoms of the day toward the underlying disease.
It takes a certain “manful” integrity to relentlessly focus one’s efforts on refuting the kinds of grave, fundamental evils mentioned above, to follow the truth wherever it may lead, and to profess it without compromise despite the cost. Indeed, let it be said that there are many women who possess it in abundance.
Consider these wise words from Fr. Frederick William Faber:
If we hated sin as we ought to hate it, purely, keenly, manfully, we should do more penance, we should inflict more self-punishment, we should sorrow for our sins more abidingly. Then, again, the crowning disloyalty to God is heresy. It is the sin of sins, the very loathsomest of things which God looks down upon in this malignant world. Yet how little do we understand of its excessive hatefulness! It is the polluting of God’s truth, which is the worst of all impurities.
Yet how light we make of it! We look at it, and are calm. We touch it and do not shudder. We mix with it, and have no fear. We see it touch holy things, and we have no sense of sacrilege. We breathe its odor, and show no signs of detestation or disgust. Some of us affect its friendship; and some even extenuate its guilt. We do not love God enough to be angry for His glory. We do not love men enough to be charitably truthful for their souls.
The Low-T traditionalist prefers to focus, not on the loathsome heresies that have defined the false conciliar religion since its inglorious inception, but rather on things fleeting, playing headline hit-and-run over matters insignificant by comparison, while encouraging others to stand firm with himself in faux fidelity to the counterfeit church in Rome.
Thus is the estrogenic effect of the conciliar virus.
