BETRAYED, BEWILDERED AND BEDEVILLED BY ARDERN

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Betrayal. 

Betrayal of the electorate by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. 

Betrayal of  the faithful by the NZ Conference of Catholic Bishops. 

Betrayal of his Eucharistic Lord Jesus Christ by his Vicar on earth, Pope Francis.

What a pack of Judases. 

El Greco, Christ on the Cross (1600-1610). Oil on canvas

Nowhere in the press report I read of the raft of announcements from the Beehive this afternoon re Lockdown was there mention of the most essential service of man: the worship of God. All we're told is that the limit of 100 in public gatherings dangled before our gullible clergy  has been literally decimated. To ten.  

"Good news!" the NZ bishops trilled last week. "Church services can resume under the Alert Level 2 rules the Prime Minister has announced. We can now prepare in hope and joy to gather together again. Mass will however be limited to 100 people with social distancing."  How naive. 

"Ever been had?" was a game my horrid brothers and I (being dragooned into it, of course) occasionally played as kids. We'd wrap a block of wood up in brown paper (as all parcels were wrapped then), tie it by a long piece of string, leave it in the middle of the road and hide alongside in the bamboo. When cars stopped to investigate, as in those leisurely, tidy, hard-up days they invariably would, we pulled the parcel smartly back into the bamboo, and hollered, "Ever been HAD?" 

Those drivers-by must have felt something similar to NZ's bishops following today's announcement. There they were, all teed up to go along with Ardern's prescriptions for name-taking and numbering - rather like lining up for mug-shots in a police parade - for congregations of up to 100, and now they have to wait more than two weeks before the diktatorship will allow Mass even for 10.

"But how will we do it?" a Parish Councillor asked me. 

"You get them to sign in like they do for funerals," I said. "You won't have as many signing in for Sunday Mass as for funerals." 

But the Parish Councillors had a better idea. They would have people stationed at the church door to do Ardern's work for her. I wanted to know if they'd be on Ardern's payroll as 'the nation's leading team of journalists' on TvOne 'News' appear to be, but being a very tactful person I thought the better of it.

Relegating the Church to absolutely nowhere in the line-up of outfits (retail, malls, cafes, restaurants, cinemas, playgrounds and gyms) simply busting to be up and doing after Lockdown proves two points. 

First, this evil atheistic government actually realises the power unlatched by the keys of Peter - arguably, more than the Church herself does. And second, unlike retail, malls, cafes, restaurants, cinemas, playgrounds and gyms, the Church is simply not busting to be up and doing. And why is that? Lack of morale. Lack of faith.

For starters: on Easter Sunday, the day Pope Francis, Vicar of Christ (BTW, a title he's rejected) closed churches throughout the world,  he came out of the clerical closet once and for all as a socialist, scrawling a set of slogans straight out of the Jesuitical liberation theology scrapbook. While never ever mentioning - on the day of the Lord's Resurrection - His Sacred Name.

While closing the world's churches which shelter our Eucharistic Lord, he's intervening to open Italy's seaports to immigrants who may well shelter the coronavirus. 

While Catholics worldwide are still reeling from the Pope's objectively heretical statement at Abu Dhabi that God wills "a diversity of religions", it turns out that a Vatican “Higher Committee” is bent on implementing that Statement’s utopian notion of global religious harmony regardless of religion - the essence of the Masonic worldview - in an Abrahamic Family House in Abu Dhabi.

“A church, mosque, and synagogue will share a collective space for the first time, serving as a community for inter-religious dialogue and exchange, and nurturing the values of peaceful co-existence and acceptance among different beliefs, nationalities and cultures."

Awww. Doesn't that sound nice?

In the same vein, Pope Francis views Covid-19 as a kind of passport to a wonderful post-pandemic world where all nations, sans borders, will obey the United Nations, and the United Nations will obey Bill Gates, and everybody will obey the nice nurse and line up for their jab.

"With the acceptance of the argument that the Roman Catholic Church did not provide an essential service, the Pope and the Episcopacy have voluntarily done more to rid the world of religion than the French and Russian Revolutions ever did. A nasty flu and a medical dictatorship have secularized the globe more effectively than the Reign of Terror. How can anyone take the claim that the Church should teach people seriously after its own authorities have proclaimed it superfluous; less important than laundromats to the well-being of the population?” - Dr John Rao, Associate Professor, History,St. John's College of Liberal Arts and Science.
https://catholicfamilynews.com/blog/2020/05/04/pope-bergoglio-and-the-mystical-body-of-covid-19/

A correspondent to this blog, Sharon Crooks of Palmerston North, writes today of betrayal, too.

"Your post yesterday (WHY DID THE VICAR OF CHRIST TELL THE VICAR OF ROME TO CLOSE HIS CHURCHES?) confirms that my fears during Covid were very well-founded.

"I had zero fear of Covid but a fear of the police patrolling the roads, enforcing our loss of freedoms.  I fear the consequences too of the NZ bishops who went on 'retreat' failing to put up any resistance to the government's declaration that our faith life is 'non-essential'.  

"A diabolic consequence of their lack of resistance is that they have consequently brought into a whole new process of subjugating "Cindy's citizens" through surveillance of who worships. By letting the Roman Catholic Church in NZ be treated like an ordinary business, they have now got parish councils and parish secretaries everywhere preparing themselves for the task of taking down our names and phone numbers before we can enter the House of Our Lord when Level 2 comes into force.  

"In doing this, one must ask whether or not the 'Church' are now betraying Our Lord in giving the parish council the 'right' to enforce a loss of freedoms, empowering the parish council to act like guards in a panopticon tower, monitoring every sniffle with a 'mark' and enforcing the proverbial sacrilegious act of Communion in the hand upon the 'prisoner of worship' by monitoring and ensuring no Holy Communion on the tongue.  

"This really puts good priests in a precarious position, because the Congregation for Divine Worship determined  in 1999 that Communion on the tongue could not be restricted in places where it is offered in the hand. The 1969 Memoriale Domini instructions, confirmed by canon lawyers for Covid, were to stand. 

"Would it be fair to suggest that the NZ bishops have not only snuggled up to Cindy but are putting the parish council in to bat for her too, given who will actually be per-mission-ed with the task of policing parish and priest?  And make no mistake, fear will see to it that priest is policed as much as parishioner. Has there been an even more explicit change of guard for the Church during Covid?" 

Speaking of good priests, Fr Michael Johnson talked betrayal to the children of St Anthony's School Whanganui at Mass this morning on the feast of Ss Philip and James, explaining that none of the apostles was there when Christ carried His Cross, and only one  - St John - at His Crucifixion, and that right up until the Day of Ascension they believed Jesus was the one who was to save Israel. 

"Not until Pentecost did they understand His transcendence. And today's bishops and priests imitate the apostles in cowardice." 

Fr Johnson cited Cardinal Robert Sarah's withdrawal of support for the petition for an end to The Lockdown addressed to the Church and to the World (see yesterday's post also) by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, Cardinal Gerhard Mueller and Cardinal Joseph Zen et al. 

"You know, boys and girls," said Fr Johnson (how they must love his sermons) "cardinals' robes are coloured red because they take a vow to shed their blood if necessary, for the Divine Saviour. Maybe the colour should be changed from red to yellow."

On Wednesday we celebrate the anniversary of the first appearance of Our Lady to the shepherd children at Fatima in Portugal. We must ask Our Blessed Mother for a Pope who will obey Heaven's command to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.