Dear
Friends,
During the war it was said that there was one
difference between Germans and Austrians. If one stood on a street in Berlin, people
could be
heard to say that the situation was catastrophic but not a disaster.
Meanwhile,
people in the streets of Vienna
said the situation was disastrous but not a catastrophe.
Today
the situation regarding the Holy Father is both a
disaster, as well as catastrophic. I was aware that the liberal faction
of
cardinals had gathered enough like-minded confrères to ensure the
election of a
pope who would overturn the traditional measures of Benedict XVI. At
least one
cardinal asked me whether the election of Pope Benedict was not a
mistake. Now liberal
German bishops, in collusion with enemies of the Pope in Rome, are using
Bishop Williamson’s
recent statements as another ploy aimed at discouraging the Holy Father
from
reforming the Church by traditional means. Calls are being made in Germany
for the
Holy Father to resign. The (liberal) German bishops have gone as far,
this
time, as to drag the forlorn Chancellor of Germany, the lugubrious
Angela Merckel,
into the fray. She has taken an unprecedented step, for a German
chancellor, of
stating that the Vatican explanation
is
insufficient. Moreover, by a vulgar and offensive lese majesté,
she
dares to
address the Sovereign Pontiff in the public forum, asking him to
apologise.
I
have not heard of
such ignoble insolence since Napoleon kidnapped Pius VI. Whatever else
we do,
we should write to the German Chancellor to tell her,
- Although she
wears trousers,
she is woefully ill-suited to embody the Two Swords Theory (Duo Gladii) of Boniface VIII,
- She would do
better,
therefore, to govern Germany,
and leave the government of the Catholic Church to the Pope,
- Even if one
were to concede,
and it is not a foregone conclusion, that both the Supreme Pontiff and
Bishop
Williamson offended the memory of the Holocaust, that would pale in
comparison
to the lachrymonious state of secularist German society. Which is more
grave,
to besmirch the deceased or to kill the unborn?
- Doth die Dame
protest too much? Are the Germans really so proud of the extermination
of Jews that they will not brook any denial of it?