“The Horror of Surrogate Religions”

"Pope Francis" has diminished the
attractiveness of the papacy

“…transforming the Papacy into a branch of Greenpeace…”

I’m quoting somebody else there, really I am … And following this, is a whole series of really twisted observations from an Italian newspaper.

Popes traditionally have held “Wednesday audiences” in the Vatican – times when the general public can show up and see the pope in person. Generally, you need to make reservations in advance. Tickets are free, but the “Roman Churches Wikia” recommends “You should be at Piazza San Pietro at least 30 minutes before the audience, as there are a lot of people trying to get to their seats”.

At right are two photos from two of these Wednesday audiences. The top photo is undated, but it’s clearly “Pope Francis,” and it is tagged as one of these Wednesday audiences. The bottom photo was from earlier this month (the General Audience of December 2, 2015, which it is said, is “now a recurring sight”, according to the traditionalist blog Rorate Caeli – which nevertheless claims it has loyalty to the papacy).

Along with the photo, they’ve copied an article entitled “The Horror of Surrogate Religions”, by Camillo Langone, published by Il Foglio, “an Italian centre-right daily newspaper, with circulation below 10,000 copies per day”. Still, this is a photograph from a Vatican General Audience, and these comments are from an Italian newspaper. I’m reproducing some of the more graphic comments:

It doesn’t surprise me if St. Peter’s Square is half-empty, or not as full as expected, I would be surprised at the opposite. And I don’t believe that it’s all due to the fear of running into a Muslim with a passion for explosives. It’s true that in recent years, Catholic movements (apart from the Neocatechemunals) capable of bringing youth to the Square have eclipsed, being now reduced to their laughable summer rites … Further, it’s true that Catholicism at the parish level is aged and consequently trembling (the old fear death infinitely more than the young, for them death is a concrete reality, not an idea). Still, it’s not only this. But principally this: as in nature, the heart of man abhors a vacuum.

If the centre of Christianity is perceived as abandoned, this is the reason it ceases to be attractive, this is the reason the fickle head for cults under new guises or old ones, such as environmentalism and animalism which are variations on the pagan theme. Man is a religious being however, and also Pope Francis knows this; in his homily of March 14th 2013, he cited quite surprisingly, the apocalyptic Léon Bloy: “Those who don’t pray to God, are praying to the Devil”.

If the churches aren’t filled with the faithful, sooner or later they will become mosques or at best, museums…

The very contemporary museum run by my friend fills up an ancient abbey emptied by Napoleon and this sounds like something annihilating to me. Jean Clair wrote entire volumes on the museum as a surrogate temple and I have no need of reopening them to know how true this is. That emptiness tends always to filling itself up is a psychological law. Women without children to embrace, easily give themselves to a little dog, they talk to it, they kiss and cuddle it, they buy it little dainties. Father Rosario Struscio, a missionary in India and spiritual father to Madre Theresa, on his return to Italy after many years, was greatly disturbed at “seeing so many women going around with cats in their arms, as if they were children. A Country that has substituted children for cats is a Country with no tomorrow.” It is even a law of city planning: the bell-towers in Milan, which not even archbishops believe in anymore (as the new churches without bell-towers show), have now been replaced with skyscrapers.

“In the desert of their abandonment, the people resign themselves to building the golden calf,” wrote the theologian, Pierangelo Sequeri. Or green idols. If there is no longer belief in Our Lady, the Mother of God, then there is surrender to the fascination of Gaia, the Earth goddess. Clergy yielding to lust, to human senses, need not frighten, but the apostasy of those (as the philosopher of Religion, Marco Vannini retains) “that have lost faith in the Divinity of Christ, and have thus annulled the novelty of the Gospel, by bending themselves in adoration to the world and its Lord” are immensely more dangerous than any Francesca Chaouqui. It is the Dark Society (sic) that projected beasts on the façade of St. Peter’s, specifically on the day of the Immaculate Conception.

It’s a pity that in transforming the Papacy into a branch of Greenpeace, the “mother house” in these affairs is much more credible. Even the other day they were back at it, dictating their agenda by projecting images against tuna-fishing on the monuments of Milan.