The Nest Detectives

Why Sedevacantism and Trad Inc. are just different forms of willful blindness.

James R. Green

is one of many Catholic writers whose work I’ve been following with interest lately, a group which includes

Chris Jackson

,

Stephen Kokx

and

Gene Thomas Gomulka

. The common thread is a willingness to speak out against the latest anti-pope, and more generally against the post-conciliar, collegial, synodal Church of Vatican II that grounds his apostasy.

Mr. Green’s work has interested me most of all, because I sense the most movement there. He clearly struggles with the current state of Rome, and much of his writing about the Church reflects the desire to heal a festering wound rather than rake open new ones. He wants to be a good doctor. “First, do no harm.” I generally agree. But any good E.R. doc will offer the caveat that desperate times call for desperate measures. Sometimes radical surgery is required to save the patient. Sometimes a good doctor needs to cut.

In his latest essay, “Clear as Ice”, Dr. Green still refuses to cut. But in my opinion, he has moved further towards the inevitable diagnosis.

Like many of you, I felt the mask drop and a far more concerning reality unfold with Fr. James Martin’s meeting with the Pope. And things only got worse a few days later with the “LGBT pilgrimage” in the Vatican.

But the last few days have grown even wilder, with the recent pop concert in the Vatican, Leo making, well, sketchy statements on abortion and the death penalty, defending Cardinal Cupich’s scandalous award to Senator Durbin, and then engaging in a wild ecumenical anti-climate change prayer gathering that is very reminiscent of the Pachamama prayer service of Francis’s pontificate even as bishops around the world continue to crack down on tradition and prioritize liberal and mangerial banalities.

In case you’re unfamiliar with Green’s list of the demon-captured Vatican's latest, greatest hits, you can read Mr. Jackson’s roundups here, here, here, here, and here.

Or if that’s too much homework, here’s a few zillion-word pics to catch you up to speed:

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.

But if pictures are worth a thousand words, then what about pictures that move and speak?

Listen to the cheer rise up, when the face of the dearly departed demoniac Bergoglio appears. For all I know, he got an even bigger pop than Pharrell, John Legend, or Jelly Roll, all of whom were in attendance for the preceding hip hop jam.

To his credit, Mr. Green doesn’t deny any of this is happening. He is neither corrupt nor comatose, like many of the so-called “popesplainers” he names. But he still seems to misunderstand certain positions.

On the practical side, you’re even more confused. You’ve now reached the level of debate where it’s no longer an intellectual exercise, but a very practical one. Can you stay in the Church? Do you need to join one of the, err, independent movements? Must you become a sedevacantist? Must you become Orthodox? Should you, on the other hand, throw up your hands in confusion and despair in the other direction and join the popesplainers you left behind weeks ago?

…

And what comes after this?

Of course, for some, the step is becoming Orthodox, becoming a sedevacantist, etc., or—for some—leaving the faith entirely. The temptation to take those steps, I know, for many of you, is real. Too much has gone wrong. The position of tradition, of the Faith within the Faith, seems too dark. The prelates seem too lost, too weak, too compromised, to fix the situation.

I disagree with this notion that someone “becomes” a sedevacantist, the way you might convert to some religion or another. It’s a position one is reduced to, in accordance with the evidence of their eyes. For example, if I were to look at a nest and notice there’s no bird or eggs in it, the observation wasn’t a choice I made. It’s just the current state of affairs from my perspective.

But if I were to look closer at that same nest and see a snake inside it, with a body full of many egg-shaped lumps, then there is a choice to make. For instance, I might squint and tilt my head until I see something that looks vaguely birdike then quickly turn away, comforted by the knowledge that I saw a mother lovingly incubating her offspring. Or I could tilt my head the other way and say, “That poor bird must have cancer. Look at all those tumors!” And then breathe a sigh of relief. “At least it’s getting radiation treatments. That must be why it lost all its feathers.”

Or I could open both eyes wide, approach the nest with my dagger in hand, slit open the invader’s belly, and rescue what I can. The only question for such an observer is: Does God command it? As the years and decades pass and the atrocities pile up, it might be that our Father is calling us to task, testing our resolve.

What will it take to see the snake? A Pride Parade beyond Peter’s gate? A drone swarm painting idols above the basilica? A pope blessing a block of ice while ranting against borders and laws? Do Jelly Roll and Lil’ Nas need to get gay-married in the Sistine Chapel? Don’t laugh, kids. The year’s still young, and anything can happen.

Mr. Green offers the possibility of a Hamlet moment in the Church body:

Scrupulosity from facing a double Pascal’s Wager of feeling like their actions will be condemned either way, however, makes a lot of Catholics fearful of taking one side (the sedevacantist route) or the other (staying in the so called “Novus Ordo Church:) and instead leads many of us to “fence sit” at the halfway house of a certain sort of ambiguous relationship to the Church and Church authority—with, worst of all, often a negative, hopeless outlook on the future of the Church. Fear, as I feel is hitting many of us really hard right now, makes us paranoid, confused, and causes us to be gripped over time even further and further into despair.

What is this supposed “fear” of action, and where does it come from? If it’s a fear of God’s judgment, then it’s clearly not one that the serpents of Rome share. Neither do their inhuman masters.

Maybe my experiences with the latter have rendered me immune to this form of paranoia. Mr. Green has referred to some of my past writings about the demonic, and I agree with some of his observations. But I don’t think we understand the situation the same way. Maybe he’s just smarter than I am. Or maybe he’s outsmarting himself, when it comes to the Enemy’s goals and tactics. As he noted in another recent essay, those have become hilariously obvious of late.

These are grown adults wandering around wearing animal costumes, doing unspeakable things to each other while marching under multicolored banners, while believing themselves to be heroes. Oh, and also plotting terrorism, assassinations, and revolutions at the same time while they’re at it.

The threat may be abominable, but at its heart, the most wretched part is the “queers” themselves. Darkness can’t see or understand itself.

“They know not what they do.”

As dark and as evil as the omni-crisis afflicting society is, if we really stop to take a serious look at our society today, we can’t call it anything but a parody or an infernal, dark, tragicomedy.

And here I can comment as an “expert” of sorts: These critters hate being mocked, yet they’re doomed to look and act ridiculous. In that sense, they’re not all that different than the humans they hunt. Nobody likes being laughed at, after all, and pride doesn’t require demonic possession. But now take the human form of pride and supercharge it. Take all the typical vices of the flesh, hook them up to a nuclear reactor, then redline that sonofabitch until it melts. What slithers out of that waste is the substance of Legion, Pazuzu, Ishtar and a host of other laughable morons, vying for your undivided attention and applause.

And remember: There’s absolutely nothing funny about them! They are gorgeously terrifying, resplendent in their horrible awesomeness! And they definitely don’t dance like this mop-headed soyboy, or sound like the air being squeezed out of a balloon. So don’t laugh, nerds!

Should Catholics have a hearty laugh at the latest pope-on-a-rope? Can the laity meme the Vatican back into good order? Maybe.

But the problem as I see it is the same that drove me from the Church in my youth. I see it from a different angle now, but the effects are the same. The Catholic faithful are trained to look at all questioning of clerical authority as schism and rebellion. That’s how these heretics bait the trap for all those kids they rape, and then emotionally blackmail their parents in the aftermath. Don’t divide the Church! Unity! That’s also how they disguise cartel sex-trafficking and other progressive vanity projects as “charity.”

How did you think the Devil would look when he showed up to the party? What costume did you think he’d wear? Red horns and a tail? Or would he get all gussied up for Drag Queen Story Hour?

Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who is seated upon many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and with the wine of whose fornication the dwellers on earth have become drunk.”

And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and bedecked with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her fornication; and on her forehead was written a name of mystery:

Babylon the great,

mother of harlots

and of earth’s abominations.

And I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.

— Revelation 5:1-6 (RSV)

This creature is always riding forth, always struggling to manifest in some form or another. Perhaps it’s rap concerts and drone swarms and rainbow legions, in our current day and age. Only the katechon restrains. Some believe that to be Rome. But the brick-and-mortar Rome is only a place to sit. A nest.

Sedevacantists look at the nest with one eye shut, “popesplainers” with the other. Maybe both camps fear reptiles more then they fear judgment, and self-righteously scorn the sword in favor of the phony “peace” hawked by the Church’s used car salesmen.

But some of us recall that a lasting peace is only found in Heaven, and that Christ brought one and not the other down to Earth.

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s foes will be those of his own household.”

— Matthew 10:34-36 (RSV)

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