Bishop Joseph Strickland
You gather here today, present-day apostles, as the Church and, therefore, the world stand perched on the edge of a cliff. And yet you who are entrusted with the keeping of souls choose to speak not a word of the spiritual danger which abounds.
Today we stand on the
cusp of all that has been prophesied about the Church and the
abominations which would come forth in these times, a time when all
of hell attacks the Church of Jesus Christ, and a time when the
fallen angels of hell no longer seek entry into her sacred halls but
instead stand inside, peeking out of her windows and unlocking doors
to welcome in more diabolical destruction.
I think that St. Jude
had men such as many of you in mind when he described men who feast
"together without fear, feeding themselves, clouds without
water, which are carried about by winds, trees of the autumn,
unfruitful, twice dead, plucked up by the roots, raging waves of the
sea, foaming out their own confusion; wandering stars ..." (Jude
1:12-13).
Many people have asked
what it will take for more than a few bishops to finally speak up
against the false messages constantly flowing from the Vatican under
the leadership of Pope Francis, and I ask myself the same question
over and over:
WHAT WILL IT TAKE?
Do you not know that
Our Lord will send forth His avenging angels to heap coals of fire
upon the heads of those who were called to be His apostles and who
have not guarded what He has given unto them?
And yet almost all of
you, my brothers, stood by silently watching as the Synod on
Synodality took place, an abomination constructed not to guard the
Deposit of Faith but to dismantle it, and yet few were the cries
heard from you - men who should be willing to die for Christ and His
Church.
The Synod's final
document has been released, yet with the sleight of hand which is so
characteristic of the Francis-controlled Vatican. By drawing
attention to the issues which worried many, they have slipped in what
was always their real goal without anyone even noticing. What they
were after in the first place was the dismantling of Christ's Church
by replacing the structure of the Church as Our Lord instituted it
with a diabolically-inspired new structure of "synodality"
which in actuality is a new Church that is in no way Catholic.
We now see the
prophetic words of Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen unfolding before
our eyes: "Because his religion will be brotherhood of Man
without the fatherhood of God, he will set up a counter church which
will be the ape of the Church, because he, the Devil, is the ape of
God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church,
but in reverse and emptied of its divine content, it will be a
mystical body of the Antichrist that will in all externals resemble
the mystical body of Christ ..." (Radio Broadcast; January 26,
1947).
With the push for
"synodality" we see that the enemies of Christ are putting
before us, as Sheen says: "a new religion without a Cross, a
liturgy without a world to come, a religion to destroy a religion, or
a politics which is a religion - one that renders unto Caesar even
the things that are God's."
WHAT WILL IT TAKE?
A rudimentary
understanding of the papacy leaves us with the reality that Pope
Francis has abdicated his responsibility to serve as the primary
guardian of the Deposit of Faith. Every bishop makes this solemn
promise to guard the Deposit of Faith, but the Petrine office exists
primarily to be the guardian of the guardians and the servant of the
servants. St. Peter received the office which bears his name when,
after the resurrection, Christ asked him three times, "Do you
love me?" and St. Peter responded, "You know that I love
you," thus healing his betrayal as Christ endured His passion.
And who is this Jesus who Peter professes to love? He is of course
Truth Incarnate; thus St. Peter is stating that he loves Truth. This
leaves us with this question, "Does Pope Francis love the Truth
that Jesus Christ incarnates?" Sadly, his actions and his
policies which promote a relativized version of truth that is not
truth at all propel us to a devastating conclusion: the man who
occupies the Chair of St. Peter does not love the truth and seeks to
reshape it in the image of man.
There can be no bishop
who is unaware of statements that Pope Francis has made that are
unambiguous denials of the Catholic faith. For example, Francis has
stated publicly that God wills the existence of all religions, and
that all religions are a path to God. In this statement, Pope Francis
has denied an integral part of the Catholic faith. How many souls
will be lost who will accept his erroneous statement that all
religions will lead to salvation? What I find so difficult to
understand is that modern-day apostles, men who are ordained to be
guardians of the faith, refuse to acknowledge this, and instead
ignore or even promote this deadly falsehood. Every bishop and
cardinal should publicly and unequivocally state that Francis no
longer teaches the Catholic faith. Souls are at stake!
Therefore, I ask
again:
WHAT WILL IT TAKE?
As successors of the apostles, this situation must force the bishops of Christ's Church to answer the pivotal question ourselves: "Do we truly love Jesus Christ, Truth Incarnate?" With a Pope who is actively opposing the divine truths of our Catholic faith, the responsibility falls to the bishops of the world to profess their own love of Our Lord, to guard the Sacred Deposit of Faith, and to oppose any attempt to dismantle the Truth.
Let us return to the
fateful conversation between our risen Lord and St. Peter. When Peter
responds, "Lord you know I love you," Jesus responds: "Feed
my lambs," and again "Feed my sheep." How is Peter to
feed Christ's lambs? With the Truth of course - with Jesus Christ
Himself who IS Truth.
And yet, where are
those men whom the Lord has called to feed His sheep? Where are the
successors of the apostles who have promised to defend the sheep with
their lives? They sit a few feet away, patting one another on the
back, listening to words that they know beyond a doubt are not the
Truth, frolicking with the darkness, and blaspheming the very Truth
that the original apostles died to preserve.
WHAT WILL IT TAKE?
You have words from
those who spoke in Sacred Scripture, wisdom from the Sacred Tradition
of the Church, and guidance from former Popes and a great multitude
of saints that false teachers would come and that the holy faith
would be attacked, and yet most of you have gone out into the battle
wearing no armor, and have then reacted as one bewildered that his
skin has been pierced by poison arrows. You have been given all that
was needed to ensure that your heads were not turned by the lies of
Satan. Why then have you gone out without the armor of God? It is
YOUR responsibility, when you see poison arrows of falsehood falling
upon men, to call out to them and say, "Put on the armor of Our
Lord which is Truth, and you shall not be wounded."
And to the faithful, I
put forth the same question -
WHAT WILL IT TAKE?
What if your shepherds
do not rally? What if they have all accepted thirty pieces of silver,
and they remain silent in the face of falsehood which further pierces
the hands and feet of Our Lord? Then what will it take for you to
speak up?
Many might say that it
is not your responsibility; you can live Truth quietly in your heart.
However, to speak Truth can never simply be the responsibility of
someone else because God has etched Truth onto the heart of every
person. Therefore, Truth is each man's property as a sacred gift from
God. And never can anyone say that they had no Truth in them - and
never can a man claim rightly that to find Truth he had to gather it
from the wind, or he could only gather it from the words of another.
The soul recognizes Truth and is nourished by it, and those who
wither away from lack of Truth do not wither because they were given
no portion of Truth in their own soul. Indeed, Truth has instead been
so suppressed again and again by such a person - and has been told so
often to "stand down" - until it dares not raise its head.
And this is why a man finds himself in such a sad state - and why
when he cries out - "It is not the fault of my own that I had no
Truth or that I knew it not when I encountered it" - he speaks
in error.
Our Lord Jesus Christ,
granting free will to those He loves, which is each and every person
without exception, has given the gift of Truth to each and every one
of us, so that if there is any predisposition in a man's heart then
it is the propensity of the soul to vibrate to His Truth. Therefore,
the soul when deprived of Truth lies dormant until it withers into
something cold and hard. Have you not seen how even the angels of
darkness recognize Truth and cannot do other than what Our Lord
commands them - and yet they strive to hide Truth from every man unto
each man's eternal damnation?
So I ask again - WHAT
WILL IT TAKE? WILL YOU DIE FOR HIM?
Bishop Joseph E.
Strickland
Bishop Emeritus of Tyler, Texas
