Fatima Perspectives #1390
For the first time in Church history, not excluding the Roman persecutions, the celebration of Easter by the faithful in their parishes (and even in the catacombs) has been “cancelled” as Catholic dioceses the world over shutter churches and forbid public Masses. The shutdown of the Catholic Church in fear of a virus is being led by the Diocese of Rome, whose bishop is Pope Francis, who conducted the Palm Sunday service in an empty Saint Peter’s Basilica.
Today in America, as in virtually every Western country —
This is permitted:
And this is forbidden:
The faithful are forbidden, under threat of criminal prosecution, to receive Holy Communion from the consecrated hand of a priest but are quite free to receive a Big Mac and fries from the unclean hand of a teenager. They may not sit in the pews, but they may throng the supermarkets and liquor stores. And the bishops of the world, led by Francis in Rome, quite agree with this diabolically absurd pretense of a quarantine whose only effect is to stifle divine worship and leave millions jobless because their places of employment are not on the winners’ list of “essential businesses.”
The Catholic hierarchy and the civil authorities now stand united in fear of COVID-19. Fear of the virus has become the uniting principle of social action throughout the post-Christian West, as drones hover over the people in New York City, barking the command to “maintain social distancing of at least six feet” because “we are all in this together.”
Indulging in truly shameless demagoguery fully in line with the rhetoric of the globalist Left, Francis has declared, in a letter to something called the Pan-American Committee of Men and Women Judges for Social Rights, that “some governments have taken exemplary measures, with priorities that are well targeted at defending the population” — meaning the draconian lockdowns he lauds as “always for the common good” because “governments that face the crisis in this way show the priority of their decisions: the people first.”
Putting “the people first,” he continued, “supposes an economic setback.” According to Francis, to consider disastrous economic consequences that leave millions jobless and the borderline poor in misery would “lead to the death of very many people, something like a viral genocide (genocidio virosico).”
This is the classic false alternative of liberal cant: either suppress legitimate freedoms and ruin the economy or be guilty of murder. Not to be considered are any reasonable alternatives to the police states that have popped out of nowhere on the pretext of “containing” a virus that can no more be contained than the various strains of influenza which cause “290 000 to 650 000 deaths from respiratory causes alone” each year, according to the World Health Organization with which the Vatican under Francis is closely allied.
Francis has not hurled any accusations about evil neglect of hundreds of thousands of flu victims each year. There have been no calls from him or the bishops of the world to shut down entire countries in order to put “the people first” when the flu strikes. Death from the flu, particularly in the elderly, is quietly accepted as a fact of life like heart attacks and strokes, which it is.
The worldwide death toll attributed to COVID-19 thus far (April 7) is around 81,000 — if we can believe death reports that ignore co-morbidities, as in Italy, and assign the virus as a “presumed” or “assumed” cause of death without even confirmatory testing. By comparison, the swine flu pandemic of 2009 killed an estimated 151,000 to 575,000 people worldwide, according to the CDC. Yet back in 2009 it was inconceivable that Catholic worship around the world be suppressed in fear of the swine flu.
So, what is it about COVID-19 that is literally eclipsing the Church and changing the whole world before our eyes in a matter of days?
I believe that what we are witnessing is the emergence of a matrix for world unity based, not upon the Mystical Body of Christ, but upon the exercise of state power upon the hapless masses, with even the Pope cheering on the effort as “always for the common good.” There is something preternatural about the rapidity of this development, and something terrible to behold in a Basilica of Saint Peter that, for the first time ever, will exclude the faithful from the celebration of the Resurrection of Christ.
“But have confidence. I have overcome the world,” said the Risen Lord to Saint John. “But have confidence,” says Francis, “for government will overcome the virus.” And so, we will witness the unity of a “mystical” body of COVID-19, manifested in an empty Saint Peter’s on Easter Sunday — in a post-Christian Rome where the grocery stores will be open for business.
Excita, Dómine, potentiam tuam, et veni, ut salvos fácias nos. Stir up Your power, O Lord, and come that You may save us. Save us from the shepherds who have abandoned their sheep in fear of a virus.
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