Madness in the Garden of Reason

Caso-Rosendi writes on being a Catholic, defending the Church in this insane age in which we live.

From Carlos Caso-Rosendi

This article was previously published by The Lepanto Institute

This 2020 is my 20th year in the Catholic Church. The very day I was baptized, August 15, 2001. In a conversation that took place after my First Communion, the priest that baptized me said a few things that I could not quite understand. Perhaps under the influence of a glass of good wine, he carelessly uttered words of apprehension. Who was I? why was I writing defending the Catholic religion? where were those skills coming from? and other questions of that nature. I was saddened by those words. At the time I simply explained that I wanted to be Catholic, that there was no hidden intention in my heart. He changed the subject but I could see that his suspicions remained. That has been a theme of my two decades of Catholic life: “Surely he is up to something!” repeated in different ways one voice after the other. Little did I know that those voices were infiltrates, traitors, agents with personal agendas; some political in nature, others serving strange perversions, yet others subject to the demons of jealousy, envy, avarice and worse.

There is a Spanish proverb that goes more or less like this: “A todos juzga el ladrón como de su condición.” The thief thinks all others are thieves like him.

That priest belonged to an institute of the faith founded by a man who later proved to be a pervert and used his religious authority to control and use seminarians for his nefarious purposes. According to some reliable sources, hundreds have left that religious institute and a good number of them don’t want to be called Catholic any longer. In more than three occasions I was confronted by “important Catlicks” who wanted to know what I was up to. Most of those have disgraced themselves and turned out to be notorious sinners with a secret life. Not that I am not a sinner myself just as any other person but my secret agenda, my real intentions are still to be found. My dastardly machinations are safe from discovery mainly because they don’t exist. Unfortunately it is very hard to prove non-existence as any atheist can surely attest.

In time, God in His mercy allowed me to understand what was going on. That sunny August afternoon in London when I was baptized, I walked into a garden of theological beauty. That garden was a Church not only inhabited by doves but also by cunning serpents that were almost ready to take total control of the garden. The priest that baptized me, the Cardinal that gave me my First Communion, and many other characters that I was about to find, were all members of a sect bent to steal the vineyard of Christ. I did not know I was entering the Last Battle. Totally oblivious, I walked into an apocalyptic fray armed only with my love for Christ and His Sacraments.

When salt goes mad

“You [the disciples of Jesus] are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.” (Matthew 5:13)

In one of his lessons, Fr. Paulo Ricardo makes a very interesting observation on the phrase “if the salt loses its saltiness” [τὸ ἅλας μωρανθῇ, ἐν τίνι ἁλισθήσεται]  to halas mōranthē en tini halisthēsetai. The expression, translated literally reads as follows: “and if the salt goes mad with what will it be salted?”

Mōranthē (to go mad, to let the bucket slide) is there for a reason. These are the words of the Logos for whom it is impossible to communicate anything erroneously. The word comes form the root moros (meaning: mad.) From there we get the English word morose through the Latin term morosus (capricious, without reason.) The word connects the concept of losing flavor or taste with the loss of sense or intelligence, going mad, abandoning reason.

This counsel is directed to the disciples, who are receptacles containing a measure of divine wisdom. What will come in to replace the infused divine reason if the disciples lose it?

St. Thomas Aquinas taught “corruptio optimi pessima”  the corruption of the best is the worst of all corruptions. Divine wisdom becomes demonic when corrupted.

In Latin, the expression “in grano salis” means “with a grain of salt” meaning that one has to apply intelligence to the understanding of a certain matter. That expression survives in English: “take it with a grain of salt.” In our language, to take a statement with ‘a grain of salt’ means to accept it somewhat conditionally while maintaining a degree of skepticism about its truth, applying one’s intelligence to understand its true meaning.

St. Luke renders the words of Jesus as follows:

“Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil nor for manure; [κοπρίαν koprian] it is thrown out.” (Luke 14: 34-35)

The way St. Luke renders these words of Jesus is quite strong. Koprian is excrement. Basically, if a disciple jettisons divine reason after having accepted it, then he is not worth … excrement. “Corruptio optimi pessima” and the disciple goes from being subject to the Lord Almighty all the way down to be a subject of the Beelzebub, the lord of the flies, the devil. Such is the fate of the Christian who lost his faith, his salvation.

That is what the promoters of Liberation Theology, the ones that embrace all the current wisdom of the world have to offer: koprian, excrement. Those who willingly abandon Jesus to follow the fads of this world will become something less than koprian in the eyes of Our Lord.

In my defense

St. Thomas compares the quality of saltiness as “Sapientiam quam debent habere viri apostolici” that is the wisdom that men involved in apostolic work must have. That reminds us of:  “Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time.”  (Colossians 4:5) And “Listen, my child, and accept my judgment; do not reject my counsel.” (Sirach 6:23)

The Christian has a mission, a Great Commission to make disciples.  We cannot renounce to that Great Commission because it is a commandment of Jesus Himself, his last commandment before ascending to Heaven. (Matthew 28:16-20) If I ever understood one thing of Scripture is that those who want to be docile to God’s will must evangelize others. For some reason, it is impossible for me to suppress that impulse. That must have been evident to those koprian who dealt with me from the beginning. I could sense their veiled hostility but I could not understand it. I did not understand that I had to be “a dove among serpents” until the arrival of the Lord in glory. Now I know.

The Church is in the world to change the world. The Church is not here to “accompany” the sinners of the world, to imagine that the unfathomable mercy of God is somehow a way to justify the horrible massacre of souls that is taking place in the world. No! God is not a partner of the devil! Talking to those who oppose the Good News of the Kingdom of God, Jesus said:

You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8:44)

Today, someone who honestly wants to work for the advance of the Catholic Faith is opposed by the cadre of Communists, Masons, and militant homosexualists who have gained control of certain parts of the Church. Aggravation is inevitable but there is no need to fear them. They will do nothing that God does not allow them to do. Their very existence and the prominent place they are temporarily occupying in the Church is a sign that Christ is about to come. We must endure them, but we do not have to become koprian along with them.

Personally, I am enduring all kinds of attacks these days but I endure them joyfully. Firstly because I can understand that Christ is near; secondly because such opposition serves me to purge many sins and that is good. It’s been two decades of this treatment and that has made me strong. I have learned a lot and I continue learning. It is obvious by now who has a secret agenda of harming the Church: it is them, not me.

As madness conquers the world

Finally, to have an idea of the mess we are floating in, we can consider these words of Our Lady of Quito prophesied to Mother Mariana de Jesús Torres on January 21st, 1610.

Satan will reign almost completely by means of the Masonic sects, the clergy and prelates will become corrupt, great impurity will reign, heresies will abound, bad Superiors will destroy the spirit of Religion, Rules in convents and monasteries will become abandoned, the Holy Sacraments will be profaned and abused, people will be without care for spiritual matters, and the light of Faith will be almost completely extinguished in souls. Truly religious souls will be reduced to a small number and vocations will perish.

In this supreme moment of need of the Church, those who should speak will fall silent. Dire times will come, when those who should justly defend the rights of the Church will be blinded. Without servile fear or human respect, they will join the enemies of the Church to help them accomplish their designs. Woe to the error of the wise, to him who governs the Church, the pastor of the flock that my Most Holy Son confided into his care! But when they will appear triumphant and when the authority will abuse their power, committing injustices and oppressing the weak, their downfall will be near. Paralyzed, they will fall to the ground.

Woe to the children of these times because it will be difficult to receive the Sacrament of Baptism and also that of Confirmation. Innocence will almost no longer be found in children, or modesty in women. Like a filthy ocean the massive impurity will inundate the streets, squares and public places with astonishing liberty. There will be almost no virgin souls left in the world.

Often during this epoch the enemies of Jesus Christ, instigated by the devil, will steal consecrated hosts from the churches, so that they might profane the Eucharistic Species.

As for the Sacrament of Matrimony, it will be attacked and profaned in the fullest sense of the word. Masonry, which will be then in power, will enact iniquitous laws with the objective of doing away with the Sacrament, making it easy for everyone to live in sin, encouraging the procreation of illegitimate children born without the Blessing of the Church.

The Christian Spirit will rapidly decline, extinguishing the precious light of Faith until it reaches the point when there will be an almost total and general corruption of customs. The effects of secular education will increase, which will be one reason for the lack of priestly and religious vocations…

…the Sacred Sacrament of Holy Orders will be ridiculed, oppressed and despised. The devil will try to persecute the ministers of the Lord in every possible way, and he will labor with cruel and subtle astuteness to deviate them from the spirit of their vocation, corrupting many of them. Those corrupted priests, who will scandalize the Christian people, will incite the hatred of the bad Christians and the enemies of the Roman, Catholic and Apostolic Church to fall upon all priests. This apparent triumph of Satan will bring enormous sufferings to the good pastors of the Church.

In those unhappy times, there will be unbridled lust which, acting thus to snare the rest into sin, will conquer innumerable frivolous souls who will be lost. How the Church will suffer during this dark night! Lacking a prelate and father to guide them with paternal love, gentleness, strength, wisdom and prudence, many priests will lose their spirit, placing their souls in great danger.