Michael Matt of the Remnant, John-Henry Westen of LifeSiteNews, and Eric Franckovitch of the CIC, resist the Vatican/Globalist agenda and admonis Francis -- a Pope who is contemplating approving contraception, who has already approved public adulterers (divorced and remarried Catholics) receiving the Sacraments, who gave his papal blessing to worldwide lockdown, and who may well approve Catholic "gay" unions in 2023.
Introduction to Press Conference
My name is Michael Matt. I am a cradle Catholic, educated in Catholic schools from first grade through university. I am also father of seven children, all practicing Catholics.
I have attended diocesan-approved Traditional Latin Masses for the past 30 years.
I am a Catholic newspaper publisher, and I come from a long line of Catholic newspaper publishers.
For 150 years, my family has been in the Catholic press apostolate, defending the Church against aggressors on all sides.
Our family’s newspaper, The Wanderer, is the oldest Catholic weekly in the country.
And The Remnant is oldest traditional Catholic newspaper in the world.
For his work in the American Catholic Press, my grandfather was made a Knight of St. Gregory by Pope Pius XI.
When I say I am a faithful Catholic, then, I am speaking for myself, my father, my grandfather, and my great-grandfather—Catholic men of the press who devoted their lives to the defense of the Church.
And I would like to introduce this press conference with full disclosure: the language in the press release that has caused some consternation in the press is mine and mine alone. And I do not retract any of it.
If the members of the press who attacked this conference based solely on our press release, and attacked Bishop Zubik and attacked the Church of the Most Precious Blood, which have nothing to do with this conference; if they are sincerely concerned for our souls, if we are guilty of the mortal sin of schism—might I suggest that these so-called reporters and journalists ask the more pertinent question: Why have the faithful Catholics at the Catholic Identity Conference found themselves in this ridiculous position of having to resist our own Church?
Do they think we enjoy this? As members of the press, why are they not asking the more pressing question of how did it come to be that lay Catholics, catechized and raised in Catholic schools, are nevertheless scandalized by their own shepherds?
We do not enjoy being in this position. We have not created the scandal, and members of the Catholic press know it full well—and yet they pretend to be baffled by our resistance.
The question that should be asked is: why have the Catholic shepherds not felt an obligation before God to address the cause of scandal among the sheep?
We are not theologians. We are moms and dads, simple Catholics, who have never missed Mass on Sunday, who were educated in Catholic schools, and who today do not recognize our own Church.
Why are we being blamed for being scandalized by our shepherds?
Over the course of the next hour, the three of us will be speaking for our own respective organizations, and I would like to thank the Catholic Identity Conference for having the courage to allow this press conference to take place despite the controversy in the press during the run up to this conference.
The Catholic Identity Conference has not backed down, and neither will we.
We speak for ourselves, and not for any other speakers at this conference. But each of us believes the Catholic Church has reached a crisis unprecedented in history, and we present our articles of resistance as lay Catholics who have no intention of leaving the Church but who feel obligated in conscience and before God to raise these objections for the good of our Church in crisis.
In this moment of synodality, when the Vatican is engaging in a listening campaign across the world, we wish to make it clear that nobody in the Vatican seems interested in listening to us.
No one asked our priests for their input, for example, before the decision was made to severely restrict the Latin Mass to which we are all attached and which has provided spiritual sustenance for our children all their lives.
If the Bishops truly wish to listen to us, as faithful Catholics who have not departed one iota from the apostolic tradition, then we have no other recourse than to acknowledge their callous disregard for us and to resist their campaign to cancel our rightful liturgical aspirations in accordance with Pope Benedict XVI’s moto proprio Summorum Pontificum.
The use of the term “resist” is taken directly from Holy Scripture, Galatians 2:11, wherein St. Paul resisted Peter to his face because he was blameworthy.
But St. Paul did not hate Peter, nor did he deny Peter’s petrine office. St. Paul was not committing a schismatic act, and neither are we.
We resist Francis honorably to his face and in charity, as loyal sons of the Church resist an abusive father.
We neither judge nor condemn him, and we place our filial resistance in the context of the teaching of St. Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church, who in his On the Sovereign Pontiff writes the following:
“Therefore, just as it would be lawful to resist a Pontiff invading a body, so is it lawful to resist him invading souls or disturbing a state, and much more if he should endeavor to destroy the Church. I say, it is lawful to resist him, by not doing what he commands, and by blocking him, lest he should carry out his will.”
You have heard this first half of the famous Bellarmine quote, but the rest of it reads as follows: “Still, it is not lawful to judge or punish or even depose him, because he is nothing other than a superior.…”
Ladies and gentlemen, we do not judge the pope. We would not seek to depose him even if we had it within our power to do so.
But, yes, before God and history we resist his agenda on the grounds that it harms the Church of Jesus Christ, a fact we believe to be demonstrably obvious as the following interventions will make clear.
Eric Frankovitch presents our first article of resistance.
The second is by John-Henry Westen of LifeSite News
And I will close it out on behalf of The Remnant Newspaper.
For transcripts of each intervention, please see RemnantNewspaper.com
