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Posted on 07/16/2026 8:53:52 AM PDT by ebb tide
Catholics of goodwill see it. The machinations have been well-documented. Popes Francis and Leo have each steered the holy Barque of Peter into a war footing; a war in which the Vatican is the aggressor.
It is not a war “against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places” (Ephesians 6). Nor is it a war against the Godless brutality of the Chinese Communist Party or the slaughter of innocent Catholics by radical Muslims in Africa.
No. This ghastly Vatican war is being waged against Traditional Catholics at the altar – and now even those in the pews. It is a war against the faithful.
READ: Cardinal Burke says Latin Mass is ‘intimately linked to the very identity’ of Catholic Church
This war against the faithful has not been just declared orally (or hypothetically). Instead, this call to war is being recorded for all history in official Vatican documents. It really is quite stunning to consider.
The original declaration of war document came in 2021 and it was ironically entitled, Traditionis Custodes (Guardians of Tradition). The timing of this war declaration was significant. It came just one year after Francis and his bishops canceled Sunday Masses nearly everywhere, giving credence to the COVID hysteria. And in doing so, the Vatican sent faithful Catholics to SSPX Masses worldwide.
The 2021 war declaration unleashed modernist bishops worldwide to attack and close diocesan Tradition Latin Masses (TLM), to persecute traditionalist monasteries and convents, and even to throttle their very own good traditionalist priests! The war continues to this day.
From the very beginning, Traditionis Custodes was viewed by many good Catholics as unhelpful and draconian; with an unhealthy tinge of paranoia. Paranoia can serve as a strong motive for issuing declarations of war.
Years before Traditionis Custodes, The Catholic Monitor reported in 2017, “Pope Francis and his inner circle appear to have symptoms of paranoia. Cardinal Gerhard Müller in a recent interview revealed that Francis told him: ‘They tell me you’re my enemy.’”
“Müller in the interview said the ‘magic circle’ around Francis does ‘spying on alleged opponents’ and tells the Pope who are his friends or enemies. It seems that Francis may be overly attached and surrounded by certain persons with unhealthy thought processes and strange conspiracy ideas."
But (Generalissimo) Francis is not alone
The second declaration of war began to take shape in February 2026, when the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), invoked a clear “state of necessity.” They asked the Vatican for permission to consecrate new bishops. The Vatican ardently refused the request; insisting instead on blind obedience.
With only two aging SSPX bishops left, war planners within the Vatican knew the Society could not survive without new bishops being consecrated. At the heart of the matter, it was not really about blind obedience. It was about crushing the TLM and, in the process, crushing faithful Catholics who get in the way. It was evidence that the Pope Leo Vatican was content to prosecute the Traditionis Custodes declaration of war.
Thereafter, the second declaration of war was swiftly promulgated in the form of a decree of excommunication by heavy-handed Vatican war generals; excommunicating not only SSPX bishops, but also their priests and religious. And what’s more, in some cases even the laity; men, women and children in the pews are in danger of excommunication! Children, excommunicated?
With this second declaration of war, lay people find themselves squarely in the Vatican’s cross hairs. Could paranoia be the same driving factor in Leo’s decision? Since there are so many Vatican holdovers from Pope Francis, has Pope Leo isolated himself in the same ruthless “magic circle” of paranoid figures bent on changing Christ’s Catholic Church into man’s Synodal Church?
In practice, children are not likely to be excommunicated. But in reality, it is entirely possible that their parents now can be excommunicated, and by family association, innocent children will be affected. The specter of threatening lay people, and by extension their children, with excommunication is in itself a destructive and vindictive act, is it not?
It is indeed a war on Tradition and in the fog of war, casualties of all sorts occur, especially affecting children.
READ: Swiss bishop revokes permission for SSPX to use diocesan churches
The Vatican excommunication decree clearly states, “Clerics and lay faithful are warned not to adhere to the schism of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X, as they would ipso facto incur the penalty of latae sententiae excommunication.”
Currently, canon lawyers are actively debating legal verbiage in this second declaration of war to determine just how this attack on Tradition is to be implemented. They are busy interpreting what this poorly worded document really means for laypeople. After all, war is a confusing and frightful event.
For perspective, St. Matthew tells us in Chapter 19:
Little children were brought to him then that he might lay his hands on them and pray; but the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said to them, “Let the little children be, and do not hinder them from coming to me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” And when he had laid hands on them, he departed from that place.
By contrast, the 21st century successors of the apostles seem to be saying to devout Traditional Catholic children, “Turn your back on the centuries-old Mass of the Ages and the traditional sacraments and your parish school. Take a vow of obedience to the Second Vatican II Council – or you and your entire family alike are anathema to me!”
In his touching book, The Godmother, Father Charles Theodore Murr recounts his many conversations with Mother Pascalina Lehnert in the late 1970s. Mother Pascalina was a brilliant Bavarian sister who spent 41 years working for (and with) Pope Pius XII. She was likely his closest advisor. Her modernist Vatican enemies referred to her as The Popess or Virgo Potens, (Virgin Most Powerful). Among other challenges, she and the pope fought against the growing modernist cabal within the Vatican.
About the Vatican II disastrous changes to the Holy Mass, she told Fr. Murr:
To my knowledge, Don Carlo, this is the first time the enemy from within, was able to confuse the Church’s prayer (the Holy Mass). The very way She (the Church) addresses God; the manner in which She worships God. (Annibale) Bugnini and his team of protestants removed a God-centered Mass for a man-centered confusion that ends up trivializing the Holy Eucharist and the Real Presence.
Their goal was not to improve the Catholic Mass. The Mass was the means; the destruction of Christ’s mystical body, the Holy Catholic Church, was the goal. Bugnini and his theological wrecking crew decided they would accomplish this by destroying the Church’s prayer, the Holy Catholic Mass.
READ: Disgraced Buffalo priest kept crystal meth in chalice with Blessed Sacrament: prosecutors
Thus, this is the “wreckage” faithful Catholics in the 21st century have inherited. It may take some time for the Vatican to return to Tradition, but one can already observe the Catholic landscape changing before our very eyes. Catholics everywhere have begun to take notice. The refreshing winds of Traditional Catholicism are sweeping through the ranks of Holy Mother Church; for priests, religious and laity alike. TLM parishes are expanding. Novus Ordo parishes are closing in record numbers.
This “wreckage” of Christ’s Holy Church cannot long survive. The action of two popes in a row declaring war on the Faithful is historic. It reeks of paranoid desperation. We may be, at last, at “the beginning of the end” of this long, exasperating, unholy nightmare. Let us pray the Barque of Peter will soon set sail on its traditional path of holiness.
Holy Ghost, who governest the Church, have mercy on us!
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As these false popes begin morphing the Catholic Church into some version of Protestantism or Islam.
Ping
What is a good Catholic these days?
If one follows the Bible and Scriptures they run afoul of Church leadership, if one follows the Pope they risk contradicting Biblical teachings.
Dark times indeed.
Maybe he should bring back the Spanish Inquisition... no one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Oh please, don’t lump the Pope into Protestantism, given his positions that is a bit of a stretch unless you speak of the woke false teachers.
Pope John Paul II was also opposed to schismatic consecrations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_%C3%89c%C3%B4ne_consecrations
Got anything else to add?
“Got anything else to add?” Yea, it’s LieSite, ebby. Doncha know? Schismatic by definition, doncha know?
Quit stirring your excommunication, schismatic cult, ebby. It only brings harm to lost souls.
Both he and Frankie are abominations
You quoted LifeSite yourself, oystir, three times in one day.
How quickly the hypocrite forgets.
I follow the Bible and traditional Catholic teachings!
These heretical pope’s can go pound. My salvation is with Christ!
Francis’s introduction of “synodality” was the camels nose under the tent. It is a secular method of imposing decisions from the top behind a facade of pseudo-collegial group decision making, “conversation in the spirit.” Both he and Leo have been heavily influenced by marxist-oriented liberation theologies, (against which JP II strongly warned the church), guided by ideology rather than faith.
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