Editorial by Br Alexis Bugnolo

I do not know about you, but I am old enough to say that I have seen 5 decades of nonsense going on in the Catholic Church, from my earliest memories of seeing communion in the hand introduced, to the destruction of altar-railings to calling a priest by his first name, from the de facto abolition of communion kneeling and on the tongue, to masses celebrated with pita bread.

And I have not seen even 1% of the nonsense, because I have always either lived in a parish which was conservative, or made the effort to join such a parish.

I thank God, though, that since I grew up in a devout Catholic Family, I have never lived but in a world of the Catholic Faith. I remember, asking one of my friends in middle school, if she was going to attend the Stations of the Cross — my favorite childhood devotion — and, when she said she was Episcopalian and they did not do those things in her church, asking, “What is an Episcopalian? Isn’t everyone in the whole world Catholic?”

But as the nonsense increased, I could not not try to investigate what was going on in the Church.

But I was mislead for decades with the dominant narrative that it was somehow the cause of Modernism, or a war between Conservatives and Liberals in the Church, or purely a spiritual battle. And since increasingly I met more and more clergy who has no sense of the Sacred, and read in newspapers such as Our Sunday Visitor, the Wanderer or The Remnant, of even worse problems round the world, I never found sound counsel about what to do about it, other than hiding away somewhere or avoiding certain parishes or institutions like they were plague-ridden.

This has been the experience of many Catholic laity since the days of Vatican II. Those of us who were born during or after the Council had an even harder time discerning what was going on, since we had no personal knowledge of what it was like before the Council.

However, for those who pay careful attention, it became obvious that as the years passed the situation in the Church was not getting better, but rather getting worse.

It is only after decades of observing how such an approach to the crisis in the Church was fruitless, do Catholics begin searching for the causes of the problem, if they have the intellectual stamina to do their own research and ask hard questions.

What we have been fed upon, however, is a narrative that if we only complain and resist, the problem will go away, the liberals will die out — it’s just the case of a spiritual disease.

But if you think about that, that narrative does not help at all, because it basically says, “Complain, do nothing and hope!”

And after 6 decades of this, I would hope that faithful Catholics would be able to break free of such a useless paradigm, which in its last analysis, NEVER seeks to win, and only contents itself with complaining.

Now, I am not a psychologist, but even I can recognize that this approach is bad psychology, or rather, a degenerate form of moral behavior. For in every other field of life, if there is a problem, we move to solve it.  If you had sane parents, you know this from how your dad and mom immediately took action to keep your home in good running order, fix broken appliances etc. and make sure the necessities of living in your house were attended to.

The only way you would not have such a childhood experience is if you never lived in your own home, but were from a family who rented or was constantly on the road.

The Definition of a Good Catholic is not the definition of a real Catholic

I know the readers of FromRome.Info are good Catholics, because if you weren’t you would no suffer to read this electronic journal. But we should NOT set as the highest goal in life, to be merely good Catholics, that is, persons who strive to keep God’s commandments, grow in virtue and practice the supernatural habits which God gave us in Baptism, such as Faith, Hope and Charity.

Because, such a definition is a form of Protestantism, a private-me-only pietism where the only goal is an individualistic good. As Catholics we should recognize that we are called to be holy, not as an individual victory in a solo game, but as members of God’s Household, concerned not just for the welfare of those who are visibly wanting in material goods, or spiritual mercies, but also concerned about this, the biggest problem in the Church, since Vatican II, that is, with the loss of faith and morals among the Sacred Hierarchy, Clergy and Religious on account of what is coming out of the Vatican.

If we have such a global vision, then we are real Catholics, because we are acting as if we are members of the Church and have the same sort of zeal to fix problems as our parents had to fix our homes.

Just complaining will never fix a problem. Yes, complaints have their place. But after a number of family members complain about the same problem over a long period of time, the only just and honest response is to fix the things in the home which are causing them, not gaslighting the members of the family about them.

After 70 years of Aggiornamento, the Divine Providence has put the entire solution and the easiest solution on our plates. He has done this by allowing the Cardinals to embrace such darkness, that they did not even bother to follow the most obvious and patent rules on the Election of a Roman Pontiff, that of not allowing more than 120 electors vote in a Conclave and that of electing someone who is not already known to be a heretic.

He has also abandoned them to their own perverse counsels, because, so far, not a single Cardinal, not even among those who did not have the right to vote, has complained about it, as far as we all know, since there is no news of such a thing.

But the solution to these 70 years of internal conflict is by this error of the Cardinals and by their solidarity in this sin, now easy. As I have explained in the Save Rome Project, it is something that a Catholic anywhere in the world can help to accomplish. We can finally stop merely complaining, and we can instead win by helping the Catholics of Rome elect as Roman Pontiff a truly Catholic and militant man.

So I ask every Catholic who reads this article to NOT feel guilty about wanting to win and working toward the finish line. Stop listening to those who want you to accept the condition of a victim and play you with victim-outrage social media posts. Recognize that such persons are sick and out of touch with reality. Read how the Saints of old reacted, and finally, at last, at least this once in your life, begin to imitate the Saints of old by responding to what the Divine Providence has done, this year, to give us the chance to win against all the forces of darkness in the Church.  If we love Jesus Christ and Holy Mother Church, then, we can already see that this is the must-do for 2025.

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The Book on the Trinity, every faithful Catholic priest would love as his next present

This is Br. Bugnolo's English Translation, of Saint Bonaventure's encylopedic book of theology on the Trinity: With this book, your priest will always have something intelligent and awesomely inspiring to preach to you about God the Father, God the Son & God the Holy Spirit!

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