http://www.dailycatholic.org/issue/06Nov/nov06ftt.htm


The Journey Continues
Part II on How I became an Authentic Roman Catholic

For those caught in the haunted conciliar house, there is a way out, a definite light at the end of the tunnel and you'll discover it as well when you take the journey including the highs and lows, all necessary to reach the undeniable understanding of where you can find the true Roman Catholic Church. Strap on and hang on. It's the ride of your lifetime for the sake of your eternal life!

"I cannot emphasize enough that I say all this as one who was led to believe the conciliar 'popes' were Catholic, as one who was led to believe that the new Mass was good and certainly valid and as one who sincerely, on the good word of the conservative 'experts', believed that Vatican II just needed to be properly implemented. I believed and defended these positions vehemently as have many of the luminaries of the traditional movement today who may have taken the same path but perhaps different experiences, but all arriving at the same destination in our journey. Like many of them, I had to be thoroughly convinced (not by the “experts” as I was convinced by them before because I was lazy and preferred them to figure it out for me but by the papal docuмents themselves and what the Church truly teaches) that my beliefs regarding Vatican II and the new mass were askew and that my soul would not be in jeopardy before I went to a Mass that I thought 'Rome' did not acknowledge. I had to be thoroughly convinced, with facts, with docuмented quotes beyond any reasonable doubt that the conciliar Church is a completely different animal than the Church Christ founded before I would avail myself to the grace of Christ in the only ordinary way possible - through His Sacraments found in His True Church and administered by his validly ordained Priests – not much to ask or difficult to find before the Council. Satan will not prevail but he is making the most of the time he has."

    A while back I shared my conversion story on this site and here I should like to give the rest of the story with the hope of encouraging others who have taken the first step of taking their blinders off but are just now realizing that what they thought was a ship they were on that was to safely guide them to salvation is a mere veneer though the dangers of the ocean quite real while solidifying my case for becoming a true Catholic loyal to the authentic Magisterium and the Papacy established in perpetuity by Christ with the rest of the background of my conversion.

    I hesitate to share the few mystical experiences I have had in my life because it appears to be self-aggrandizing and can be a turn-off to some readers as stories of mystical experiences tends to appeal more to emotion than to logic but I feel I ought not omit these experiences due to what happened to me spiritually when my conversion to Catholicism became complete.

    As my somewhat inconsistent fish, ocean, ship “analogy” will show I write acknowledging my intellectual inadequacy for the task. My intelligence and capacity for learning is somewhat limited though my hunger for truth is less limited. I share this because being a member of the Holy Name Society I can see that I am quite probably the least intellectually gifted of the twenty or thirty-some odd members of that group. And this is the norm regarding the traditional people I have encountered generally speaking. The traditionalists, whether converts or not, tend to be rather knowledgeable, not just in regards to their faith but in regards to everything, they are smart, they think things through, and they don’t make life-altering changes or play with the state of their soul on a whim. I have never undervalued the benefit of surrounding myself with those more advanced than I so I could better myself. In the Novus Ordo I was a confused, disheartened and unsatisfied whale in a pool 40 feet wide with no depth (apart from that bottomless pit of chaos, contradiction and ambiguity in the center) whereas in the Catholic Church I am a minnow – and a rather happy, satisfied and fulfilled minnow (as opposed to a man without a boat stuck in the middle of the ocean of apostasy that we all find ourselves in) at that in an ocean 2000 miles wide and of infinite depth.

    For as in the beginning of Church history the Church currently is not as strong exteriorly or visibly as she was during the Middle Ages or even just before the council for that matter. The waves are rocking higher and with more frequency than they ever have before and that scourged and battered ship or ark that Christ built to take us to safety is harder to find than it ever was before but whence she is found you will have the capacity to navigate through this ocean of peril amongst the other saintly navigators whether your knowledge of the faith is whale-sized or that of a mere minnow you will be home, where you belong as opposed to a fish out of water as I hope to prove in this article.

    I say this knowing that I am about to elaborate on some experiences that do not appeal so much to the intellect, and when seeking truth, regarding the Catholic faith, I looked to the facts, logic, sound reason, the Church Fathers and friends and experts that were much more acquainted with Catholicism and reality than I was at the time. I was not concerned about any sort of mystical experience of others that influenced their thinking, such as “I was sitting in this Church and I just knew I needed to convert to the faith of that Church” or “I felt the Spirit there” or “It was Spirit filled” – these types of sentiments just does not do it for me. I do not discount the legitimacy of such things being possible, but I prefer to trudge upon the sure ground of factual docuмentation found in the Sacred Tradition (a Sacred Tradition whose body encompasses and is what gave us the Sacred Scripture we have today) of the Church Christ died to give us during any sort of transition period and maturation process dealing with the fate of my soul.

    In my Journey to Truth article I mentioned in passing my feeling like I was floating after my first Confession – this was in 1972 - so the priest as well as the Sacrament were likely to be valid. I still remember that moment as if it were today. When I came out of the Confessional I felt like I was floating and asked the others when they came out if they felt like they were floating as well. They said yes, but I am not sure if this was true for they did not seem as enthused as I should think one should be should such an occurrence have befallen them.

    Keep in mind that those to whom God does grant spiritual favors often-times are not necessarily holy or deserving but rather they need help because they might not make it were it not for these tangibly extraordinary supernatural experiences; for what might have become of Saint Paul had he not been knocked of his high horse? Hence when considering how the True Mass and Sacraments - the ordinary means of union with God – are no longer available in anywhere close to the degree that they were before the great Apostasy unleashed by Vatican II and predicted by Christ, Saint Paul and our Lady, we conclude that during extraordinary times God tends to act in extraordinary ways in that those who would be His people do not have the ordinary means of the true Mass and Sacraments available to them. I do not claim to have humility though I know humility is the most fertile ground for truth to be planted but I do know that God will work with you (as He worked with the Jєωs who remained faithful during the exile) regardless of the state of His Church so long as you are sincere; and sincerity is one virtue I can safely claim as my own. I want the truth and will go wherever it leads and I refuse to turn a blind eye to it once I see it leading where I did not expect it to lead. I say it now and I will say it again; the truth really sets you free. Free from heresy and apostasy.

    I know for a fact that at the time of my first Confession I was not holy, I was as bad as humanly possible for someone that age and I would only get worse as the years progressed as we will see later. For before that Confession we used to play a game during our Catholic School recess whose main purpose was to throw rocks at one another and there was a particular instance where I was rather successful to the point of knocking a fellow 1st or second grader out. This was one of the sins I confessed at my first Sacrament of Penance and I later considered the possibility that the reason why I felt like I was floating after my first Confession was because I had so many sins that were forgiven over perhaps a period of years. I may not have been so bright but that does not discount the possibility of my having reached the age of reason at an incredibly young age (thus giving my sins time to accuмulate). :o)

    What I now candidly share about my past life I hope emphasizes the supernatural graces bestowed upon the soul of one who attends the true Mass (for as you will see - the “indult” did not transform my soul as did the true Mass) rather than undermine my credibility. Some great sinners have become great saints and while I do not claim to be a saint I do claim to have been given the grace to see AND EMBRACE the truth, whole and entire. So while I do not mind sacrificing my reputation for the cause of truth though I do mind the truth being weakened due to the past life of the one who presents it.

    But I mention this first mystical experience (I do not even like using the term publicly in regards to myself) to set the stage for my final experience (at least to date) and that would be my most significant experience - the elimination of my Achilles heal, though if one is fortunate enough to have this happen in their life-time they must be all the more on guard for a new Achilles heal to appear, most likely under the guise of pride. As my boyhood mischievousness progressed to adolescent degeneracy I began to experiment more and more with drugs. As a very young child my grandparents used to give me wine or beer with dinner and a very strong drink called a “Hot Toddy” when I was sick. I do not say this to pass blame for they loved me very much as I did them but perhaps to warn current and future parents and grandparents not to feel compelled to do such things as “harmless” as they may seem.

    I took up unsupervised drinking at the age of thirteen, as I was taught by the actions of those I looked up to and who were responsible for me that there is nothing wrong with drinking anyway and I also took up smoking as I thought it looked neat when I saw my mother doing it. Personally, drinking did not become a big deal with me as I later proved to myself that I was not an alcoholic though alcoholism ran in the family. It was the cigarettes that I had the hardest time quitting in regards to chemical usage.

    Well my drinking, smoking and brief flirtation with tobacco chewing evolved into occasional marijuana use which also began at lucky thirteen. I had also started a bad personal habit that would prove to be more difficult to quit than anything else I ever did in my life by far.

    To make this long story shorter we’ll just say that I eventually progressed to cocaine, PSP, LCD and whatever pill I could find, not really caring what it did, I would pop first and ask questions later (Oh, I’ll be incapacitated for the next twelve hours? Cool!). It eventually got to the point where my typical day and week included smoking marijuana and drinking every day several times a day, snorting coke every Saturday and dosing on LCD every Friday and Sunday night, but I was sure to go to Church AND Communion on Sunday’s or Saturday evenings. And I would make it to work and school and perform adequately in my obligatory functions in those varying altered states.

    To recap I had started marijuana and alcohol in 1979. Advanced to cocaine by 1983 and graduated to LSD or “Acid” by 1984 the same year I graduated from high school. I mention these years because in my Journey to Truth article I mention the year 1986 as being when I first started wearing the brown scapular, and perhaps you can see now why I did not recall why I started wearing it – at that time in my life I pretty much lacked the capacity to recall anything.

    But by “coincidence” it was not long after I started wearing the scapular in 1986 that I stopped taking acid. I did not try to quit as I did with cigarettes before, I just stopped taking it. There were times when I would “trip” - that is what you do on acid - and I would start the night with my scapular on and the next morning it would have disappeared (this only happened when I took acid). I knew enough about the scapular at that time to know that that was not a good sign. To this day I do not know exactly what motivated me to quit LSD but I stopped and did not crave it after I quit. Not to long after that - by 1988/89 - I had quit cocaine; being ripped off $200 helped lead me to that conclusion. But again, I never craved it after I quit. All the while I would try and fail quitting cigarettes. In my mind - partially from a physical health outlook and partially from a satisfaction point of view - cigarettes were the logical thing to quit if I were to quit anything because they are much more dangerous in regards to cancer than marijuana and a lot less satisfying from a buzz perspective than anything and they don’t taste good, they are pointless from a logical perspective but I still could not quit them.

    So now I am left with marijuana, cigarettes, alcohol, my personal sin, and half a brain (I had started and finished smoking crack cocaine briefly by this point and was not the least bit addicted when I stopped using it – again I just lost the desire for it – though I enjoyed using it – the recollection of my using and quitting (losing the desire for) it came as a mere afterthought when writing this article) but low and behold I start losing the desire for marijuana and I stop buying it and only smoke it when offered and even then I would only take a hit or two until I felt a slight buzz. By this time I was rather aware that our Lady had something to do with this; for from what I have heard, drugs like cocaine and marijuana are addictive, especially cocaine. I gave credit to our Lady and her scapular for giving me the grace to lose the desire for these addictive drugs without needing rehab or anything. To this day I believe that my quitting all these drugs without making a conscious effort or planning to do so and my not being dead and in Hell is a miracle.

    Left with just alcohol and cigarettes I decided on my own (I say ‘my own’ because I am convinced that our Lady was responsible for my quitting LSD, cocaine and marijuana as alcohol and cigarettes were things that I made a conscious effort to quite on my own as opposed to just losing the desire for it – I’m sure our Lady and ultimately God is responsible for giving me the ability to cooperate with the grace He made available to me when it came to quitting cigarettes and alcohol as well) a date to quit and that would be on my birthday, September 8th 1990 or 1991 and so I did - cigarettes for ever and alcohol for one year. And since that time, apart from a few early exceptions I have not gotten drunk again and rarely take a drink at all unless I am out at a good restaurant for dinner – which is rare, and then I only have one or two at the most.

    But I still had that one personal problem, that objectively mortal sin that can damn a man to Hell problem.

    In January of 1993, becoming a good neo-catholic and all I decided to quit that personal problem for good and I was successful for one year until January of 1994 when the Dolphins beat the Chiefs in the playoffs and my mother gave me a bottle of champagne to celebrate, I committed my deed before I went to sleep and the demon having moved out returned with seven more stronger than himself and I was a dead man spiritually speaking yet again.

    By this time I had “got religion” as I rightly attributed my being alive to our Lady and her brown scapular. So due to my lack of luck with women and my comparative “holiness” I figured I must be called to the religious life.

    So I tried my hand with the Carmelites in DC. I learned a lot from them. I learned that the Rosary is a crutch, that our lady was “dethroned” by Vatican II as mediatrix of all grace, that contraception is not necessarily a sin if you do not think it is and it is not necessarily a mortal sin to miss Mass on Sunday’s even if your missing Mass is not due to sickness or travel. These “teachings” were not a course in technical theology regarding subjective culpability but a downplaying and a reducing of unchangeable authentic Church teaching.

    Despite all that I was still considering joining them as I sat in front of the “Blessed Sacrament?” and a statue of our Lady praying for five hours when I heard a soft, gentle, lady’s voice repeat one word twice; “wait”.

    I must admit going into that five-hour prayerathon I was hoping to get an answer to the question “should I join the Carmelite’s or not?”, “yes” or “no”. My answer was “wait”. And so I did thanks be to God and His most holy mother Mary. It was this same year of 1994 that I had another experience even more memorable than that soft gentle voice that kept me from permanently ruining my life and that was in October when I had an overwhelming sense of peace that started while I was at work and lasted for days which eventually and imperceptively disappeared having permanently assured me beyond any doubt that there is a God and this spiritual favor or foretaste of Heaven would ever strengthen my faith, preparing me for future trials and giving me the foundation to endure them. This was an indescribable favor from God that you have to experience to understand.

    I “waited”, as the voice requested, for two years when I became interested in the Oblates of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Boston because of their “loyalty to the ‘magisterium’”, “devotion to our Lady” and their “Eucharistic centeredness”. You can’t go wrong with those three guiding the way so long as they are authentic. Well I came to find out that I was not fit for the religious life because I had been for my whole life and was currently being mentally abused and I “needed to get in a healthy long-term romantic relationship” before I could be considered by them.

    This was interesting, I was always attracted to women but they seemed not to be attracted to me, this was the case both as a bad boy and as a good boy, as a bad boy and good boy I was always a good friend but hardly ever a lover, at least not for an extended period of time. I was a druggy sure enough but that did not qualify, you see, you had to be the type of druggy that showed his “love” by yelling and slapping you around in order to be long-term boyfriend material and this was not the stuff of which I was made. In fact it was because of a broken heart that I turned to LSD, for I was mad at God, because I tried to do it “His way” (I really thought this in my mind at the time - 1984) by being a “nice guy” and He would not give me what I wanted so I did it my way – the heck with it all, I’m gonna have my fun, if it not be with women it will be with drugs. And fun I had; a superficial fun at the cost of my brain, health and almost my immortal soul but fun nonetheless.

    By 1997 I had tried the diocesan Priesthood (having been clean for 7 years but still with that personal problem) but by that point I was disturbed with the idea of having to distribute Communion in the hand and having to allow lay people to distribute it and do the readings. At this point I was still a blind fool but I had enough common sense to know that these abuses in the liturgy were not right.

    By 1998 I had become a more “traditional” Catholic and I ventured up to Scranton PA to try my hand with the Society of Saint John. I was told that they offered the Tridentine Mass and were obligated to pray the Rosary every day which was rather refreshing when compared to the Carmelites who claimed praying the Rosary was a crutch. They ultimately did not accept me because of my lack of education – High school graduate – though they said they would consider me if I went to Thomas Aquinas College in California. But I would not accept them because I came to find out that they tinkered with the Mass and that they played sex games with adolescent boys.

    By 1999 I decided it was time for another ultimatum for God; this time it was not the “give me a woman or give me LSD” ultimatum but a “If I do not get accepted by an order this year that is it – no more religious order search.” So I went on retreat with the Fraternity of Saint Peter and applied with EWTN “that bastion of orthodoxy” I talked about in the other article on my conversion.

    At this time in my life I was a conservative “Catholic” with traditional like tendencies so I decided I would join which ever order accepted me first and that order would be EWTN who gave me their yes one week before the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter accepted me. In retrospect I came to see that this was in God’s plan as well, for if I had joined the Fraternity I may have never left them though I would have immediately become INCREDIBLY disappointed when they would soon be forced by Rome to say the new “mass” because I would have gone in “knowing” that we would only be saying the Tridentine “indult” Mass.

    By this time I had read the Book, “The Reform of the Liturgical Reform” by Monsignor Klaus Gamber and had some idea about what was going on with the liturgy.

    I was pleased that EWTN’s “Mass” was “ad orientum” or “verses Deum” i.e. facing liturgical East or towards God and said in Latin - the language of the Church.

    It was but two months after I joined (my personal problem problematically persisting) that their “bishop” a 70-year-old man said the “innovation” of having your back to the people would not be tolerated in his diocese if that mass was being televised.

    “Innovation”?!!! What!??? The man was 70-years-old in 1999, born in 1929 and he claims that the priest facing the same direction as the people face during mass is an “innovation”?!

    Well I ultimately left that order after a four month stay for the above mentioned as well as other reasons being fully convinced, after praying many hours a day, every day, so as to be sure I made the right decision that I was not to be a religious.

    This was kind of a relief, for I could tell any potential wife that yes, definitely I am not considering the religious life. This had gotten in the way of at least one person before. The truth really does set you free. In this case it set me free from possibly marrying a spoiled Novus Ordo woman and quite possibly from being stuck in the Novus Ordo for the rest of my life. Plus I had proven to God (Actually He already knew) but I proved to myself as Abraham proved to himself that he was willing to give everything up for God. And that I did. I gave up a great job with great benefits that was within walking distance from my home and Church, most of my material possessions and my financial security.

    So I entered the new millennium, a conservative “Catholic” with Traditional leanings, in love with the “pope” and convinced that the problems within the Church had nothing at all to do with him.

    The rest of my story is in the other article on my conversion except for what is for me a key affirmation of the legitimacy of my conversion and one of the more significant points I make in this article.

    You see during the time elaborated upon in that article but after I started attending the true Mass at and “independent” Church I had learned that the “indult” is a part of that heretical new order Church, said by new order “Priests”, “the Mass of John XXIII” which is significantly different than the one Christ – Saint Pius V through Pope Pius XII left us. For the John XXIII “indult” Mass is the beginning of the “Great Compromise” that led to the desolation of the faith in the true Church Temple turned into SINagogues. Indeed apart from cutting beautiful parts of the Mass out he also added Saint Joseph’s name to the heretofore unchangeable canon (4th century on) of the Mass adding to the canon of saints who died (were martyrs) for the true Mass and the Eucharist a saint who died well before the Mass was even established – you see, the Church did not forget about Saint Joseph by not putting him in the canon, they merely handed on what they were given - the cuмulative additions of saints who died for the Mass - for such is fitting and more importantly - Divinely inspired – had these martyrs listed in the canon of the Mass not died for the faith and the Mass, the Mass would have been abolished but this was not a part of God’s plan. Adding a name to the perpetually codified canon some 1600 years later is not divinely inspired. After the persecution of the first 300 years of the Church we had our canon of saints who were martyred during that persecution and they were officially and perpetually codified (not changed nor subtracted from or added to) by St. Pius V in the 1500’s. This should be sufficient reason enough to avoid the indult if you can.

    But if that not be the case consider the fact that the “indult” is run by heretic “bishops” invalidly consecrated and offered by new order priests invalidly ordained. But supposing that is too much for you to swallow (because you would have to admit to yourself that you had been blind all these years and besides what would everyone think), consider how the indult priest will distribute hosts “consecrated” at the new “mass” to the people at the “indult”. And a further undeniable fact for those not completely willfully blind and is another benefit of converting to authentic Catholicism and going to a true Catholic Church not linked to modern heretical new Rome through an invalid heretic bishop is that the money, which we are obligated to give to the True Church would go to cover up their sex crimes and be used to bully orthodox “priests” and used to wreckovate Churches and used to protestantize the children in their RCIA classes were it given to a diocesan “indult” Church. Do you really think the new order bishops take the money from the “indult” and use it only for good things while only using the money from the new order service to cover up their crimes? The indult is the “high Church” (more “catholic” looking) within the heretical Novus Ordo Church and should be avoided at all costs.

    The fact that I looked FOR YEARS before I leapt from the new order façade into the Catholic Church cannot be denied as I hope my two articles on the subject prove. For you see, I believe, as all true Catholics do, that there is no salvation outside the Church and speaking as on who is of the Sedevacantist opinion I believe that if you separate yourself from Peter you separate yourself from Christ. (And if you unite yourself to a heretic that claims to be Peter? Someone else can answer that.) But I kept coming across these “teachings” from conciliar “popes” that contradicted their predecessors. This happened over and over again. But, in my blindness and naiveté, I would continually accept all the excuses made by conservative “Catholics” for these “blunders”. These excuses would go something like this:

1. He said that? Well it was only intended to be pastoral, not doctrinal.

2. He wrote that in an encyclical? Well it must have been misstranslated.

3. He must have been taken out of context.

4. You probably misunderstand him.

5. Well he taught that only men can be priests so he must have the powers of infallibility that only a Pope can have. (I teach the same thing, does that make me Pope?)

    I was finally starting to “get it” and would regurgitate the same excuses to protestants who did not believe in the papacy and would ask why does your pope think that evolution is more than just a theory or why would he worship with heretics and encourage others to worship false gods and why would he apologize on behalf of dead Christians who could not defend themselves or their actions I mean I can apologize to the Jєωs for the things Hitler did but I cannot apologize for Hitler and speaking of Jєωs if your pope is infallible why does he say that the old covenant is not revoked?

    I would have to say and I would really mean that – “Well he wasn’t speaking in his official capacity” or one of those excuses I mentioned earlier or he didn’t stand on his head and click his heels three times so it did not count as being infallible and so we can’t accuse him of being a heretic or of not being infallible. And if we could prove he was a heretic based on his repeated teaching of heresy and engaging in heretical acts well that would not mean anything either unless the Church said so, I never made this last claim or even thought to say it but that was what I was eventually told (not the clicking of the heels part) shortly after my transition to Catholicism (when I speak of my transition or conversion to Catholicism I am speaking of the year 2004) when I brought up some of these questions regarding all these errors by the “pope”. I would make most of these excuses in all sincerity thinking perhaps there was a better (legitimate) excuse for all this craziness because the other excuses just were not doing it for me anymore. This is what I believed.

    But it was the Mass that made me look realistically at the Papal issue (at the Papacy itself). For by this time I had researched all I could on Vatican II and the Mass and with my penchant for getting to the bottom of things the (pretended?) Papacy was the only thing that was left as being the root cause of the Great Apostasy (apart from Satan himself) within the Church (I mean WHO was responsible for Vatican II and approving the new mass?). This is when I decided that I needed to find better excuses for the “popes” consistently continuous innocuous inadequacy and unpapal-like acts and words than those mentioned above. I knew there had to be an answer and I knew I had not found it yet. I did not even consider sedevacantism as an alternative. But there were no better excuses for the “popes” “indiscretions” than the ones I have listed. Something was wrong, very wrong and no one seemed to notice or care. It just so happened I was visiting my parents in Florida that I went to a True Mass, approved by God and all Catholic Popes (the true Papacy can only be composed of Catholic Popes) that I found a copy of the “The Catholic Voice” periodical edited by Father Kevin Vaillancourt. They did not claim to be Sedevacantist, but boy did that periodical open my eyes and I highly recommend it for anyone looking to brush up on their Catholicism and would like to avoid having the fleeced wool pulled over their eyes once again as some leaders of the SSPX may plan on doing to their loyal faithful.

    At this time in addition to being given the excuse regarding any particular heretical statement or official writing by the “pope” in an encyclical that “this heretical teaching was not an ex cathedra infallible statement” I was told regarding a certain heretical act, “well a pope can sin” (true enough, but this engaging in heretical acts and teaching heresy (under the guise of non-infallible teaching) is the rule with ALL the conciliar pontiffs and not the exception, and so we have no other choice but to conclude that something happened in regards to these papal claimants and that something is not good and this cannot be realistically denied. I mean you can have a bad legitimate Pope here and there scattered throughout history but to have an unbroken line of five “popes” that are consistently ambiguous, novel, “bad” “erroneous” heretical in MANY of their official speeches, writings and actions? I mean we are not just talking about sinful personal lives here, or mere weakness and cowardliness but something far worse that has the potential for leading millions of souls into the pit of eternal damnation (this is the Rock Christ built His Church on whose teachings all Catholics must accept and whose disciplines all Catholics must submit and whose laws all Catholics must obey?) due to the one consistent thing about the conciliar pontiffs and that is their outward and blatantly heretical acts and teachings. So the bottom line of the heretical pope excuse making enterprise is pretty much “well it is not official public heresy unless the pope proclaimed it while standing in his head with his eyes shut, his nose plugged and he spins around three times while saying it.” “And even if he does teach heresy under these circuмstances we still can’t claim him to be a heretic until he is officially deposed.”

    Let me translate these excuses and “explanations” for you:

1. As a good practicing Catholic that knows your faith and is familiar with the teachings of all the Popes from Peter through Pius XII and knows your catechism you must not take to heart what the conciliar popes do and say and you do not have to obey them if their command contradicts previous Church teaching. Nor should you follow their example when they worship with heretics or distribute Communion to them or kiss the Koran. Anything the pope teaches against the Dogmas and Doctrines of the Church is not heresy but error and we can never call the pope a heretic (because that would mean he was not pope) no matter how heretical he is but we must wait for the (heretical) Church to depose him.

2. As a good practicing Catholic that knows the Faith of the Ages you must accept the fact that a legitimate pope can approve a mass that is 83% different than the Catholic Mass and mess with the consecration formula in his official capacity as “pope” and that a pope can say this new creation exclusively and foist this invention on the Catholic world and change the unchangeable Catholic teachings in their official capacity as “pope” regarding ecuмenism, religious liberty and no salvation outside the Church officially approving the Vatican 2 docuмents in his official capacity as pope complete with their redefinition of the heretofore Catholic Church along with completely new “teachings” that are the complete opposite of what the pre-conciliar popes had clearly taught just a few years before and can say Woodstock masses with hundreds of Eucharistic ministers where numerous hosts are dropped on the muddy ground and trampled upon, over and over again and reign over a Church whose state continues to get worse and worse and do nothing about it while each successor of theirs is proven to be even less Catholic than the previous one and we cannot even have a doubt about the validity of his papacy because that would mean that the “gates of Hell” had “prevailed” against the Church and that can never happen.

3. That is the vast majority don't believe he is a heretic, then we have to accept majority human opinion over divine truth.

4. God would not let be without a pope for so long - it has never happened before. (Neither has the end times as we know it happened before. Neither has the times of apostasy and eclipse predicted since the time of Christ happened).

    By now you get the picture of the feeble defense of conciliarism. In fact, from what I heard of the recent Debate on Sedevacantism a few weeks ago in Spokane, those were the premises of the main arguments Robert Sungenis fell back on which were easy pickings for John Lane. For anyone arguing against sedevacantism to use such flimsy excuses in ignoring the obvious will fall on their own petard everytime.

    Okay. So why have a pope in the first place? What is his function? Well enough is enough. I mean how blind do you want me to be? If one looks at the facts one must conclude that when Jesus said, "Thou art Peter and upon this Rock I build My Church and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it". "It", of course meaning Christ's Own and Only Church But even if Christ meant the gates of Hell would not prevail against the “Rock” (the Papacy) He was speaking of the office of the Papacy and not of all individuals who claimed it. He continued: "I will give thee the keys of Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth will be bound in Heaven and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth will be loosed in Heaven" (St. Matthew 16: 18-19). He either meant what He said as God or didn’t mean what He said as God (impossible...or was not God but a madman (even more improbable and impossible). Does God bind error, heresy, de-sanctifying disciplines and heretical canon law in Heaven? Of course not. Can a true Petros bind error, heresy, de-sanctifying disciplines and heretical canon law on earth? You know the answer to that. Well if Christ was not God or if He was a liar which would be the case if Christ built His Church on the “firm” “Rock” of instability where non Catholic Heretics are the head of His Catholic Church then I need not have quit everything I quit because the whole thing is a farce and I should live for today because what guarantee do I have of a resurrection? Either He set up a unifying head that is infallibly protected from contradicting itself on faith and morals to the end of time or He set up a unifying head that could contradict itself on essential universal truths where all the contradictions would all have to be 100% correct as taught by Him (Christ Himself through His Church) and all true Catholics must believe all the nonsensical contradictions without reservation.

    That would make Christ to be either an idiot or schizophrenic and the same would have to be said of the Holy Ghost Who is supposedly preventing these “popes” from erring in their official capacity. (Yes, the Holy Ghost is guaranteed to protect the pope from merely erring, let alone engaging in and teaching blatant heresy repeatedly in their official capacity as “pope”.) So for now, until I am proven wrong, I will doubt the legitimacy of the conciliar papal claimants rather than think Christ to be an idiot and the Holy Ghost to be a farce. I take seriously my Act of Faith in which every Catholic says, "I believe these and all the truths which the holy Catholic Church teaches because Thou hast revealed them Who canst neither deceive nor be deceived." Think about it, my friends. Seriously think about those words.

    I cannot emphasize enough that I say all this as one who was led to believe the conciliar “popes” were Catholic, as one who was led to believe that the new Mass was good and certainly valid and as one who sincerely, on the good word of the conservative “experts”, believed that Vatican II just needed to be properly implemented. I believed and defended these positions vehemently as have many of the luminaries of the traditional movement today who may have taken the same path but perhaps different experiences, but all arriving at the same destination in our journey. Like many of them, I had to be thoroughly convinced (not by the “experts” as I was convinced by them before because I was lazy and preferred them to figure it out for me but by the papal docuмents themselves and what the Church truly teaches) that my beliefs regarding Vatican II and the new mass were askew and that my soul would not be in jeopardy before I went to a Mass that I thought “Rome” did not acknowledge. I had to be thoroughly convinced, with facts, with docuмented quotes beyond any reasonable doubt that the conciliar Church is a completely different animal than the Church Christ founded before I would avail myself to the grace of Christ in the only ordinary way possible - through His Sacraments found in His True Church and administered by his validly ordained Priests – not much to ask or difficult to find before the Council. Satan will not prevail but he is making the most of the time he has.

    Well to get to the point of the article which I have alluded to throughout - recall how I have repeatedly mentioned the personal problem of self-abuse which I had throughout this 25-year conversion process and how this problem continued right until my first Catholic Mass (in 2004) where I irrevocably renounced the novus-ordo and the indult (a happy minnow freely and securely swimming around with whales in the faith who hunger only after the readily available sanctifying grace found in the Church). From that day onward I have not had the slightest inclination to self-abuse. The overwhelming amount of facts, logic, sound reasoning, Church history, Church doctrine and a pair of eyes that I decided to open got me to that Church and the happy miraculous results which I have the fortune to be benefiting from in a most tangible and life-altering way through the true Mass and Sacraments I had been deprived of in the Novus Ordo façade with their new mass and “indult” merely affirmed the rightness of my decision, which was agonizing until I finally let go of the excuses and grasped on to reality; the reality that “bishops” and “popes” (Satan’s little helpers) slipped one by the goalie (actually the Holy Ghost was not there for there was no pope to preserve from error heading that council) in Vatican II and reinvented the Church which is another way of saying deCatholicized it chasing the true Catholics out and creating a den of thieves where those rejected true Catholics "outside the 'church'" would cry out to anyone who cared to hear of their total commitment to preserve the faith even though they may be a faithful remnant of the Church founded by Christ that will endure until the end of time. And I happily announce, FINALLY being fit for marriage thanks to the True Mass and Sacraments, that the journey I have been on over the last quarter of a century has arrived at an oasis of love where I will no longer be going it alone, but with the one whom God has chosen to accompany me further on this on-going journey. You see, on Saturday, September 9th this year I entered into Holy Wedlock with the former Lorraine Acosta, the love of my life.

    And that my friends . . . is the story of my journey thus far, until, gifted by more of the grace of God, I can lead my own family further on this journey on this narrow, but sure path - for now I clearly know where the journey is taking me/us: Heaven. We got married in a true Church (Saint Athanasius in Vienna, Virginia) with a true Nuptial Mass and this was the greatest experience and moment of my life as I was most pleased to see my mother in skirt and veil for the first time in my life. We kept it small with only my mother, father, sister and mother-in-law attending along with the friend who gave the bride away. We had a lovely dinner afterwards. It is the ONLY way to get married. Had I gotten married before my conversion I would have regretted it for the rest of my life unless my wife converted with me. Pray my new bride Lorraine and I will have the grace to persevere and fulfill His holy will in all things as we continue this journey together for His honor and glory.

John Gregory

"Catholics who remain faithful to Tradition, even if they are reduced to but a handful, they are THE TRUE CHURCH"
Saint Athanasius, "Apostle of Tradition" AD 373