Catholic Cloning at Its Worst

by Thomas A. Droleskey

A lot of jokes have been made about the cloning of mammals ever since "Dolly," a sheep in the United Kingdom, was cloned nearly nine years ago. Cloning, is, of course, no joking matter at all. Cloning, even of animals, is an effort to alter God's creative work. Without being guided by the sensus Catholicus, a scientist who clones animals successfully is going to consider it his greatest challenge to clone human beings. This is what is happening at present in South Korean, where a researcher, who has written an article in the "prestigious" journal Science, has claimed to to have cloned embryonic human beings in order to kill them by extracting stem cells from them. His claims are under investigation by the editors of Science as it appears that he was not truthful in all of his claims, something that should not shock a single person: those who are willing to kill in the name of "science" are more than willing to lie.

Indeed, this is a point I have made repeatedly against "incrementalists" in the pro-life movement in the past thirty years. To concede even one "exception" to the absolute inviolability of all innocent human life under cover of law is to deny the truth of the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law at all times in all circumstances without any exception whatsoever in the hopes that "some" innocent unborn lives will be saved. Such a law is completely immoral as it is never morally licit to admit that the civil law can permit even one innocent life to be put to death. It is also completely stupid and counter-productive on the purely practical level as such a law ignores the simple reality that those who kill for a living are not going to scrupulously observe the terms of any "exceptions" designed to limit their blood-letting. Those who kill for a living are capable of lying with utter impunity, are they not? This is why it is so important to maintain the integrity of the Catholic Faith at all times without any exceptions whatsoever.

As I have noted in several recent columns, those who can engage in draconian scientific experimentations, such as any form of human cloning and/or embryonic stem cell research, and those who can make a handsome living by defying God's creative powers in the diabolical field of in vitro fertilization are more able to have the leeway that they do at present because we live in a world where the authority of the Catholic Church to exercise the Social Reign of Christ the King has been overthrown by the anti-Incarnational forces of Modernity. Moreover, the eclipsing of the immutable doctrine of the Social Reign of Christ the King by popes and bishop and priests, intent on reconciling themselves with the forces of Modernity, within the true Church in the past forty years has further and further emboldened the forces of evil to go about their wicked ways without hardly a word of protest, no less effective discipline. The failure of the Church in her human elements in the past forty years to proclaim the Social Reign of Christ the King has not only emboldened the forces of evil within the world, it has given risen to a powerful cadre of professional dissenters/heretics, including cardinals and bishops and priests, within the her ranks that have reaffirmed the faithful in their blithe, uncritical acceptance of the errors of the world.

The singularly most important thing for a pope to do in his daily governance of the affairs of the Catholic Church is to personally supervise the appointment of diocesan bishops. Bishops, who are the Successors of the Apostles, are supposed to be Our Lord's vice-regents on the frontlines of combat against the forces of the world, the flesh, and the devil. They are supposed to safeguard with methodical care the Deposit of Tradition that has been handed down to us from their predecessors, the Apostles themselves, and to make sure that not one iota contained in the Deposit of Faith is altered in any way, shape, or form, including the matter of the worship that Our Lord Himself taught the Apostles to offer him.

Bishops are supposed to seek out the lost sheep, understanding that they have the responsibility to shepherd all of the human beings, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, within their diocesan boundaries safely home to Heaven as members of the Catholic Church. They are to seek out the fallen-away Catholics, to correct the misinformed Catholics, to discipline the obstinate Catholics, and to invite everyone outside of the One Sheepfold of Christ into her flock so that he, a shepherd after the Sacred Heart of the Good Shepherd Himself, can pastor them safely home on the rocky road that leads to the narrow Gate of Life Himself. In a particular way, you see, each bishop has the responsibility to foster deep devotion to the Mother of God, especially through her Most Holy Rosary and the promotion of total consecration to her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, and to lead pilgrimages in her honor and to make public acts of reparation against each and every outrage committed within his diocese against her.

It is quite telling that only one man who has served as the ordinary of American diocese, John Neumann, who was the Bishop of Philadelphia in the Nineteenth Century, has been canonized. Compare that with the scores of bishops from the first 1800 years of the Church's history who are enrolled on the roster of the Roman Martyrology. Each of twelve Apostles, including the first Pope, Saint Peter. Each of Saint Peter's thirty-two direct successors as the Bishop of Rome, were canonized. Additionally, not including the list of other canonized popes, there are, among others, Saint Timothy, St. Polycarp, St. John Chrysostom, St. Francis de Sales, St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Blaise, St. Andrew Corsini, St. Titus, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Peter Damien, the militant foe of the promotion of perversion within the Church, St. Patrick, St Isidore, St. Anselm, St. Athanasius, St. Stanislaus, St. Gregory of Nazianzen, St. Antonius, St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Augustine of Canterbury, St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Boniface, St. Norbert, St. Basil, St. Paul, St. Irenaeus, Sts. Cyril and Methodius, St. Bonaventure, St. Apollinaris, St. Alphonsus Liguori, St. Donatus, St. Hilary, St. Lawrence Justinian, Saints Cornelius and Cyprian, St. Thomas of Villanova, St. Remigius, St. Charles Borromeo, St. Martin, St. Josaphat, St. Albert the Great, St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, St. Peter Chrysologus, St. Nicholas of Myra, St. Ambrose, St. Eusebius of Vercelli, and St. Thomas a Becket. These are the models that should govern a pope's appointment of bishops to diocesan sees. A pope has to understand that God's judgment on his soul will be severe if he appoints--and then does not remove men who turn out to be--bad bishops. Saint Bernard himself warned a pope in his own Pope Eugenius III, one of his own disciples, that he risked the fires of Hell for all eternity if he did not remove bad bishops.

Sadly, bad bishops have been the norm in the past forty to fifty years. I have written on this site about the state of the American hierarchy, In a World of Their Own: The American Bishops, noting that numerous articles of mine had appeared in The Wanderer between 1992 and 2000 about the state of the American hierarchy. Such frank criticism of bishops won me no friends in "conservative Catholic circles," making me absolutely persona non grata in their colleges and broadcasting venues. What else could I do? Remain silent in the face of episcopal malfeasance, episcopal countenancing and sanctioning of the grossest forms of liturgical irreverence and sacrilege and doctrinal heresy, episcopal recruiting and promotion of perverts to join them in the ranks of the Success of the Apostles, episcopally-sponsored abortion of souls in our Catholic schools and universities and colleges and seminaries and religious education programs, episcopal protection of Catholics in public life who support the prevailing evils of our day, including abortion and perverse acts against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments? Although I was late to recognize that we must have nothing to do at all with such episcopal abuse of power and deformation of souls, I did come to recognize the correctness of the stance taken by the Society of Saint Pius X and others to resist the errors of the bishops by having nothing to do with them so as to safeguard our immortal souls from shepherds in wolves' clothing,. I also came to publicly admit without equivocation the simple truth that Pope John Paul II, who had appointed all but a handful of the ordinaries of American dioceses by the time he died over eight and one-half months ago now, was himself responsible for the rot of the bishops and the warfare against the Faith that they had waged so successfully and so relentlessly without fear of contradiction from Rome.

Here is what part of  what I wrote to "Time for Plain Talk," which appeared in the printed pages of Christ or Chaos, in March of 2002:

However, there needs to be some plain talk spoken in love about the Holy Father's own responsibility in this matter. Pope John Paul II has abdicated his responsibility to personally supervise the appointment of bishops and he has failed quite utterly to discipline bishops, who have let scandals fester and doctrinal impurity to go unchecked in their dioceses. The Holy Father's abdication of his role as governor of the Church has done incalculable damage to the Holy Faith. Thousands of souls have been lost to the Church as a result of scandals which need never have occurred, and by the failure of the Holy Father to use his disciplinary power to remove bishops responsible for knowingly ordaining homosexuals, and for believing that such behavior after ordination is a disqualification for further pastoral assignments. And this is to say nothing of the Holy Father's refusal to admit that his bishops are responsible for the promotion of doctrinal impurity, creating, instead, a climate of a siege-mentality in which some Catholics have come to believe that all bishops everywhere are beyond criticism for anything. Indeed, His Holiness has done much to help create such an environment by his praise of bishops-and his abject refusal to do anything to remove men who are harmful to the Faith (Roger Cardinal Mahony, Matthew Clark, Howard Hubbard, Rembert Weakland, Tod Brown, Robert Brom, Joseph Imesch, Patrick McGrath - and to recently permit others to continue to preside over the destruction of the Faith until the point of their retirement, most notably the late John Raymond McGann, the long-time Bishop of the Diocese of Rockville Centre.) Sadly, the Holy Father refused to take action against a French bishop who supported RU-486, the French abortion pill, until the laity in France kept pestering Rome for the man's removal, which took place in January of 1995.

The Holy Father's lack of governance of the Church undoes the claim of some of his great apologists, such as George Weigel, that history will record him as John Paul the Great. Pope John Paul II will go down in history as a man who traveled widely and wrote much. However, he will also go down in history as a man who let ecclesiastical bureaucrats beneath him determine the human fate of the Church at this point in salvation history. There is no escaping this conclusion. One can love the Holy Father while recognizing in all candor the weaknesses of his pontificate. No great holder of the Chair of Saint Peter would stand by idly as bishops, such as Reginald Cawcutt in South Africa, justify homosexual behavior and mock the pursuit of holiness which is supposed to be the universal vocation of every baptized Catholic. And no "great" pope would attempt to positivistically reaffirm bishops in their fidelity to the Deposit of Faith when the truth of the matter is that most of the world's bishops help to undermine the Faith.

It is not difficult for any pope to know who his episcopal appointees are. There are only three thousand dioceses in the world. More important than any pilgrimage or World Youth Day is the duty a Pope has to know the men he appoints as ordinaries of dioceses. He should not rely upon the word of ecclesiastical functionaries in the Vatican, nor should he rely upon the foxes around the world in episcopal attire who want to replicate themselves by nominating men who will continue the theological and liturgical revolution begun in earnest in the 1960s at Vatican II. It is important for a pope to personally interview all possible candidates for episcopal appointments (even as auxiliary bishops) and to elicit information from well placed sources in the laity in a particular diocese. A pope's most lasting legacy is the quality (or lack thereof) of his episcopal appointments. Far from being an impossible task, the job of supervising the selection of bishops is eminently possible and morally mandated for the good of the salvation and sanctification of souls.

For example, the Holy Father created then Monsignor Emil Wcela of the Diocese of Rockville Centre as an auxiliary bishop in 1988 even though it was known to Vatican officials that Wcela was a supporter of women's ordination. Wcela has been a prominent player in the now-named United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, pushing hard for "inclusive language" in the Mass and participating in scandalous New Age/feminist "paraliturgies" on Long Island. True, His Holiness refused the late Bishop John R. McGann's request to have Wcela named as his Co-Adjutor in the 1990s. However, the damage was done when Wcela was named by the Holy Father as an auxiliary bishop.

Similarly, the Holy Father waited for two long years before forcing Springfield, Illinois, Bishop Daniel Ryan into an early retirement even though Vatican officials knew that Ryan is a homosexual who had abused his own priests and consorted with male prostitutes. Ryan still functions as a retired bishop in good standing, laying his dirty, unrepentant hands on a man at his ordination to the priesthood in the Diocese of Joliet on Saturday, March 16, 2002. It is more than a little interesting that Ryan was promoted to the episcopacy by that notorious supporter of the homosexual agenda, Joliet Bishop Joseph R. Imesch. It is scandalous that Ryan is continued to function as a bishop in good standing.

Please, please, do not give me the shopworn line that the Holy Father wants to avoid a de jure schism. Far more dangerous to the Faith than an actual break from Rome on the part of modernist bishops is the de facto schism which permits such bishops to use all of their disciplinary powers against those who promote our living liturgical tradition and against those who want to protect their children from the rot of sex instruction and from doctrinal heresy. Catholics who love God are thus forced in many instances to seek refuge in the catacombs, so to speak, in order to protect their children and to save their own souls, being branded as "disobedient" to their local bishops by going to independent chapels to preserve the Faith whole and undiluted. Indeed, the failure of the Holy Father to supervise the appointment of bishops and his failure to discipline and remove those he has appointed has rendered the institutional Church in most dioceses utterly corrupt and untrustworthy. Men who have juridical power as bishops considered to be in full communion with Rome act as power drunk despots who have a contempt for the Holy Father, knowing full well that they will never be disciplined for their revolutionary activities against the Faith.

And, please, do not tell me how much the Holy Father has done to promote the sanctity of innocent human life. All of the Holy Father's passionate pleas for the defense of the innocent unborn and the elderly and the infirm have been undermined by the fact that many of the men he has appointed as bishops look the other way as contraception and the horrible rot of sex-instruction, which undermines the innocence and purity of the young, are promoted in Catholic schools and colleges and universities and so-called theological workshops. Indeed, the horror of sex instruction is now foisted on Kindergarten students in the name of "AIDS Awareness." The "Gospel of Life" is contradicted when bishops take no action to prevent alleged theatrical productions with unspeakable titles from being performed at Catholic colleges and universities. The sanctity of innocent human life is vitiated when Catholic bishops sign agreements with secular health-care facilities to permit physicians who prescribe contraception and kill babies to have privileges at Catholic hospitals (and to have such "services" made available to patients in Catholic hospitals by means of references provided to them in "separate wings" of those hospitals by the secularists).

Undaunted by this decidedly un-saintly legacy, Pope Benedict XVI is continuing to clone the bad bishops who have already done so much to harm souls. The newly-designated Archbishop of San Francisco, the Most Revered George Hugh Niederauer, who has been the Bishop of Salt Lake City since January 25, 1995, is a classmate of one of the worst bishops in the world, Roger Cardinal Mahony, the Archbishop of Los Angeles. With the exception of the Most Reverend Patrick McGrath, the Bishop of San Jose who is a protege of the long-time Archbishop of San Francisco, the Most Reverend John R. Quinn, Californians from Orange County San Francisco are governed by bishops whose appointments were engineered by Mahony. Bishop Tod David Brown of Orange graduated from the nest of perverts known as Saint John's Seminary in Camarillo, California, in 1963, a year after Mahony. Bishop Sylvester Ryan, the Bishop of Monterey who had an actual abortionist serve on his "priests' abuse advisory panel" a few years ago (see: Omissions of Fact Lead Meant to Mislead the Faithful and Stonewalling from Yet Another Bishop Ryan ), was created an Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles under Mahony in February of 1990. The Bishop of Stockton, the Most Reverend Stephen Blaire, was consecrated an Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles under Mahony on the same day as Sylvester Ryan, February 17, 1990, now serving in the same diocese where Mahony served for five years prior to his elevation to the See of Los Angeles in 1985. The disgraced former bishop of Santa Rosa, the Most Reverend George Patrick Ziemann, was created an Auxiliary Bishop by Mahony on December 23, 1986. The Bishop of Fresno, the Most Reverend John Thomas Steinbock, was classmate of Bishop Tod Brown's, that is, graduating a year after Mahony, in 1963. Do you see a pattern here? No wonder the State of California is a Catholic nightmare.

Roger Cardinal Mahony is a true revolutionary. I wrote about his desire to "Americanize" the "liturgy" in The Remnant in January of 2003. His protection of priests caught up in unrepentant lives of perversion in violation of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments is now completely documented and will cost the Catholics of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles countless millions of dollars. The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels is a horrific testament to the evils of Modernism, taking its inspiration somewhat from Archbishop Quinn's monstrosity in San Francisco and serving as the inspiration for the multi-million dollar temple of doom being built under the direction of Bishop Tod Brown, whose diocese has had to pay out over $100 million in settlements to victims of the priest-perverts serving therein, in Santa Ana, California. Mahony's annual "catechetical conference," which is actually held at the Anaheim Convention Center in the Diocese of Orange, features a wide variety of dissenting priests and nuns and "religious educators," one of whom talked in terms that grossly violated the virtue of modesty of speech. That a man such as Roger Cardinal Mahony, who saw fit to attend the inauguration of the newly-elected pro-abortion Mayor of the City of Los Angeles earlier this year, is able to have his way in securing his own friends and proteges as diocesan ordinaries speaks volumes about the unwillingness of the current Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, to "clean up the mess" in the Church that he himself spoke about as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger at a memorial Mass for the late Pope John Paul II on April 15, 2005.

The newly-designated Archbishop of San Francisco, the Cardinal Mahony-clone named George Hugh Niederauer, is very friendly to the community of those who believe the perverse acts against the Sixth and Ninth Commandments constitutes the basis of human identity and a cause for creating pastoral "outreach" programs by dioceses and parishes. Consider the following from a December 16, 2005, article in The San Francisco Chronicle:

San Francisco's incoming Catholic archbishop, George Niederauer, has spoken boldly in support of gay priests and has praised gay parishioners, leaders of gay Catholic organizations said Thursday. Many in the church hierarchy have blamed the international clergy sex abuse scandal on gay priests, and the Vatican's recent instruction on gays in the priesthood stated new rules on gay clergy were "made more urgent by the current situation." Niederauer disputed those ideas in an interview with his diocesan newspaper in Utah.

"Some who are seriously mistaken have named sexual orientation as the cause of the recent scandal regarding the sexual abuse of minors by priests," Niederauer said in the interview with the Intermountain Catholic News, which was published Monday.

His reference to "sexual orientation" stands in contrast to the Vatican instruction's description of "persons with deep-seated homosexual tendencies." Niederauer said gay men committed to Christ and the church can effectively minister as priests, and he said sexual orientation was "a structure of human personality." In contrast, the Vatican instruction states that men "who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called 'gay culture' " are unfit for priesthood.

"I don't think there are any ifs, ands or buts that the Vatican is trying to blame the sex abuse crisis on gay priests, and this man says that is 'seriously mistaken,' " said Sam Sinnett, national president of DignityUSA, an organization in Washington, D.C., of gay and lesbian Catholics.

"Very few bishops have come out and said clearly that this is not about sexual orientation," Sinnett said. He added that, if the statements reflected the bishop's thinking, his appointment in San Francisco would be "more than a small step forward for gay and lesbian Catholics."

As archbishop, Niederauer will have a central role in determining who is ordained in San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo, the counties included in the San Francisco diocese.

In 10 years as bishop of the Diocese of Salt Lake City, Niederauer rarely had to address gay and lesbian issues in the church. DignityUSA, which has chapters in 24 states, isn't active in Utah.

In 2004, however, Niederauer publicly opposed a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage that appeared on the Utah state ballot, even though he opposed same-sex marriage. Many Protestant leaders and the powerful Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints supported the ban. But Niederauer said he was troubled that the amendment banned any union beside marriage. He also saw the ban as unnecessary because same-sex marriages already were prohibited by Utah law.

Niederauer also helped form the "Coalition of Concerned Religious Leaders," a group of Utah clergy who urged tolerance for gays and lesbians after the state legislature in 1996 banned gay student clubs when students at one school expressed interest in starting such a club. Before he was assigned to Utah, Niederauer spent his career in Southern California, including a stint at a parish in West Hollywood, which has a large gay population. In a 2003 interview with the (Salt Lake City) Deseret News about his work in West Hollywood, he was enthusiastic.

"I don't have to take a back seat to anyone in the church in my admiration for the people I met," Niederauer said. He added, "They were as wonderful and gifted and generous and compassionate as any you meet."

Francis DeBernardo, who leads New Ways Ministry, a national advocacy group for gay and lesbian Catholics, and met with Niederauer in Salt Lake City, said the bishop was genuinely interested in reaching out to the gay and lesbian community.

"With his pastoral experience in an overwhelmingly gay Catholic parish in West Hollywood, and his political experience dealing with extremism from anti-gay forces in Utah, I think that Bishop Niederauer is one of the best candidates to lead the heavily gay-populated Catholic community of San Francisco," DeBernardo said.

Niederauer's predecessor, Archbishop William Levada, received mixed reviews from gay and lesbian Catholics. Levada spoke several times at the Most Holy Redeemer Church, a largely gay parish in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood, and appointed gays and lesbians to important positions in the diocese.

But on Levada's watch, the diocese stopped its ministry specifically for gay and lesbian Catholics and left that work to local parishes, said the Rev. Jim Schexnayder, who founded the Berkeley-based National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries. Schexnayder said he hoped Niederauer would revive that ministry.

"There's a great need obviously in San Francisco, with so many gay and lesbian Catholics who would greatly benefit from a public pastoral outreach," Schexnayder said.

This article tells the entire story about Archbishop-designate Niederauer: he is a man who does not believe that the tendency to commit perverse acts is itself seriously disordered and reflective of the need on his part to urge those so afflicted to get the remedial assistance they need to reform their lives and to repentance for their promotion of one of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance. The article indicates that Archbishop-designate Niederauer does not understand the horrors that each one of our sins caused Our Lord in His Sacred Humanity on the wood of the Holy Cross and that he does not consider it his solemn obligation to call those steeped in sins to reform their lives in cooperation with the graces won them on that same Holy Cross. Has he ever publicly or privately urged any practicing sodomite to seek remedial assistance and to be reconciled to God in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance? The fact that Archbishop-designate Niederauer would even meet with anyone from New Ways Ministry, whose work in behalf of the homosexualist agenda was barred by the Holy See from being presented in Catholic venues, reveals that Archbishop Niederauer is a sympathizer with lifestyles that lead people to Hell and that it is simply perfect normal and natural to be "gay."

Mr. James Bendell, the legendary attorney who defends Catholic truth by battling the dark and sinister forces of the American bishops and their paid legal bulldogs in cases involving the abuse of young Catholics by perverted priests, sent me an e-mail that included the following quote, included in a story in which Archbishop-designate Niederauer said he "supported" the Vatican's recent ban on the admission of sodomites to study for the priesthood, from the Cardinal Mahony clone:

"In every generation, there have been many celibate priests whose principal attraction might be to their same sex," he recently told the Salt Lake diocese's publication.”

This prompted Mr. Bendell to ask the following very pertinent questions:

How does he know that? Could he please name all the holy homosexual priests of the year 1055? How about the year 1837? If all these homosexual priests through the centuries were faithful to their vows, how do we know they were gay?

Well put, Jim. Well put. Which one of the bishops included on the list of those included on the Roman Martyrology does Archbishop-designate Niederauer want to contend was a homosexual? Name one of those saints, Your Excellency. Just one. And then provide your proof. Archbishop-designate Niederauer's statement is gratuitous and unfounded, based on his sympathies in this regard and reflective of the fact that there must be in the highest quarters of the Roman dicasteries a very favorable view of perverse acts against the Sixth and Ninth Commandment, a veritable "lavender mafia," if you will, who see to it that their own are cloned over and over and over again. What other conclusion can be drawn? Leaving aside as yet unproved accusations made in a lawsuit brought by a New Jersey priest recently against his own ordinary and other bishops, there is plenty of evidence, some of which I provided in Leading the Little Ones Astray, that many bishops in the United States and their chancery factotums are involved deeply in total support for, if not actual involvement in, sodomy as a legitimate human right.

A bishop such as George Niederauer will not promote and protect the Mass of all ages. He won't even correct liturgical abuses in the liturgical abuse par excellence, the Novus Ordo Missae. He will not remove dissenting bishops and priests and nuns and lay teachers. He will not discipline pro-abortion Catholic politicians. He will not seek the conversion of non-Catholics into the Church. He will serve as an apologist for the syncretism that is the conciliar and postconciliar revolutionary novelty of ecumenism. In other words, George Niederauer will serve as a most proud clone of his classmate, Roger Cardinal Mahony.

An open letter on this matter will be written to Pope Benedict XVI and published in an upcoming issue of The Remnant. Suffice it to say for now, however, that all believing Catholics ought to be on their knees to pray that Our Lady bends the heart of Pope Benedict XVI to stop this cloning of bad bishops before his legacy is as tragically sullied as that of his late predecessor's. The responsibility will be on his soul for all of offenses given to God in the context of the reign of such men who are contemptuous, if not totally bereft, of the sensus Catholicus that comes from the depositem fidei. May God help us all if the Holy Father really is taking a "hands-on" approach to the appointment of bishops. In the words of my friend, the late Father Vincent P. Miceli, this is a disssasssssta!

What can we do? Pray. Pray hard. Pray harder. Pray without ceasing. Pray for the pope and cardinals and bishops and priests and nuns, having nothing to do, however, with their structures that offend God and undermine the Faith and thus put into jeopardy the sanctification and salvation of human souls. Keep close to the fullest expression of the Immemorial Mass of Tradition. Spend time before the Blessed Sacrament in prayer. Do penance for our own sins. Do penance for the sins of others. Enfold ourselves more perfectly than ever before under Our Lady's protective mantle, giving her all of our prayers and sacrifices as the consecrated slaves of her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, beseeching her to help this pope consecrate Russia with all of the world's bishops in perfect fulfillment of her Fatima Message. This is what we can do. This is not nothing. This is indeed quite a lot. Trusting our loving Blessed Mother unto the point of our dying breaths will, if nothing else, earn us a crown of eternal glory if we persevere in these troubling times to the very end in a state of sanctifying grace.

Christmas Day is but one week away. The joy of the angels heralded peace on earth to men of good will. May Our Lady, who brought forth her Divine Son in utter poverty when her time was due, help us to be of good will, that is to be always in a state of sanctifying grace, to detest our sins, and to seek to do God's Holy Will and to obey everything He has left us in the Deposit of Faith that has been entrusted to Holy Mother Church. May we, in some small way, help to plant the seeds for a day when our popes and bishops and priests will reflect the glory of their sainted predecessors, not serve as clones for their perverted colleagues of the recent past.

Our Lady, Help of Christians, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint Jude, pray for us.

Saint Basil, pray for us.

Saint Athanasius, pray for us.

Saint Peter Damien, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Saint Alphonus Liguori, pray for us.

Saint Anthony of Padua, pray for us.

Saint Francis de Sales, pray for us.

Saint Nicholas of Myra, pray for us.

Saint Boniface, pray for us.

Saint Anselm, pray for us.

Saint Ambrose, pray for us.

Saint John Neumann, pray for us.

Saint Maximilian Kolbe, pray for us.

Saint Padre Pio, pray for us.

Blessed Jacinta, pray for us.

Blessed Francisco, pray for us.

Sister Lucia, pray for us.