The Vatican Regime Goes to the Peripheries to Persecute Minorities

Hyperbole? I think not. Tyler is on the peripheries and the Latin Massgoers at what had been multiple locations are reduced to one option. Sounds like persecution to me.

From One PeterFive

By Timothy Flanders, MA

I returned from the Martinmas festivities today to face the news that has hit American traditionalists since last Saturday. As many American Trads were still celebrating the victory of Trump, the Vatican Regime of New Iconoclasm struck the little diocese of Tyler, Texas.

As you may recall, the Vatican regime previously cut off the head of the diocese, Bishop Strickland, for the unpardonable crime of preaching Catholicism, all while giving “Rapenik” a parish.

Thus in line with the consistency of the pontificate of our Holy Father, the Dictator Pope, while this was happening last weekend for Tyler, a potentially worse scandal even than Rupnik is brewing, according to CatholicSat:

A day before the Vatican crackdown on Tyler happened on Saturday, Ed Condon commented on the Príncipi case last Friday saying, “Frankly, I am running out of innocent explanations here.”

But let’s return to the peripheries and go back to that rural diocese of Tyler, Texas. The city of Tyler is quite small indeed, with only 105,995 souls according to the 2020 census. I myself had the great joy of hearing the then Bishop of Tyler speak last year at the CIC, shortly before he was sacked. I was amazed at the childlike courage of this man of God. I became quite convinced he was a worthy succesor of the Apostles.

Since his sacking, it seems he is trying to follow the path of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen in his later years: committing to preaching the Gospel.

In season. Or out of season.

Thank God for this good bishop! He has not been excommunicated, like Archbishop Viganò.

But what readers may not know, is that many faithful, traditional Catholics have moved to Tyler, Texas over the years to help build up Catholic culture as a part of the “great Catholic migration.” This included what The Pillar falsely maligns as “a controversial residential project”: the Veritatis Splendor Community.

(The community itself is Catholicism 101, build a Catholic City, like they did in St. Marys, Kansas, and literally what all our forefathers did for 2000+ years until the age of the automobile created the suburbs. So no, it’s not a “controversial residential project.” What is controversial, Pillar, is that some of the Catholic leadership has been justly criticised – some individual Catholics are controversial, not their project. Two of the leaders of this community committed a public sin and were accused of financial misconduct, but the whole thing was from an anonymous tip, causing Simcha Fisher to ask “Who funded Kari Beckman’s fall from grace?”)

Nevertheless the community has endured, trying to do Catholicism 101, just as Bishop Strickland was trying to do Bishop 101, while the world’s bishops (with notable and happy exceptions) were struggling to be the best Vicar of the Roman Pontiff, contrary to Lumen Gentium 27.

After Strickland’s sacking, the community’s (and the diocese’s) interest in the Latin Mass has no doubt been noticed, and now the latest news.     

The man appointed to head the diocese (the nearby bishop Vásquez) did not want to act like Bishop 101, but rather a “Vicar of the Roman Pontiff – again that thing that Lumen Gentium 27 condemns – so he asked the Vatican Regime what they wanted to do with the five Latin Mass centers. This allows him to appear like an obedient Catholic, and allows him to condemn anyone who disobeys him. But it also reveals him as a hireling, who does not care for the sheep but runs and hides when he sees the wolf.

“What shall I do,” asked the Hireling, “with this tiny minority of faithful families on the peripheries?”

“GIVE THEM THE AXE!” thundered the Wolf Regime in Rome, who loves the margins and the peripheries, where the sheep can be scattered.

And so, like a good Vicar of the Roman Pontiff, the Most Reverend Joe. S. Vásquez mercilessly persecuted this tiny minority, by stripping them of all five Latin Masses in his diocese, contrary to what his own letter said:

Vásquez has the gumption to openly mock his persecuted flock by saying that

While this transition may be difficult for some, my hope is that you will open your hearts and move forward on this path with faith and trust. I pray you will experience a deepened unity with the holy Church and greater awareness of the liturgical richness of the ordinary form of the Roman liturgy.

Ahem, you’re still using the Ratzinger newspeak, Your Excellency. The new newspeak is “Only form of the Roman Rite.” The Latin Mass is no longer Roman, even though it uses the Roman tongue. Summorum Pontificum is down the memory hole. If this is not open mockery from His Excellency, then it is unpastoral ignorance. Would he welcome a dialogue with his own flock to help inform him about what the Roman Rite is? Seriously, why not say this to his face, with the proper Catholic reverence for a bishop?

But let’s compare this false and forced “deepened unity” with what Vatican II actually says about liturgical unity:

The Holy Catholic Church, which is the Mystical Body of Christ, is made up of the faithful who are organically united in the Holy Spirit by the same faith, the same sacraments and the same government and who, combining together into various groups which are held together by a hierarchy, form separate Churches or Rites. Between these there exists an admirable bond of union, such that the variety within the Church in no way harms its unity; rather it manifests it, for it is the mind of the Catholic Church that each individual Church or Rite should retain its traditions whole and entire and likewise that it should adapt its way of life to the different needs of time and place (emphasis added: Orientalium Ecclesiarum, 2).

But this truly Catholic statement has not been followed by Rome since the reform of the Roman Rite (excepting in all the work of Joseph Ratzinger, who alone seemed to take these words to heart).

The Tyler Traditionalists Must Stand Firm, and Invite more SSPX Priests!

We should thank God for the FSSP, who are suffering for playing the long game here. By God’s

Providence, their priests will now shoulder the care of all these souls who will flock to their parish in Tyler – but how long now will these souls have to drive to be Roman Catholics who have access to the ancient Roman Rite?

There is one SSPX chapel in the Tyler diocese, in Clayton, one hour drive southeast of the city of Tyler. With so many Latin Mass faithful now stripped of their rights to the Rite, more SSPX priests should be invited to care for souls.

But I cannot imagine the heartbreak that some of these families are enduring – having moved across this vast American Empire to find some solace for their children in Catholic culture in the Tyler diocese, and then the Vatican cuts off the head, and mercilessly persecutes the Latin Mass minority.

But brethren, consider one thing: our Chinese Catholic brethren. They have suffered under perhaps the most murderously anti-Catholic regime in history, and now they have seemingly been betrayed by the Vatican, and they have kept the Faith. Some risk imprisonment or worse to have the Sacraments. Let us face every new suffering with the joy of faith: Jesus, having joy set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and now sitteth on the right hand of the throne of God (Heb. xii. 2).

This is only way to pass down the Faith to our children in this time of desolation. This holy patience will endure all things. And most importantly, let us not harden our hearts against the Holy Father, nor those Hirelings who seek to be his Vicar, contrary to their consecration as bishop. Let us be good Christians and love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Otherwise we are unworthy of the name of Christ.