p/c Daniel Ibanez, CNA.
Most Catholics today do not know this, but the greatest center of Christianity (second only to Rome) during the first five centuries was Constantinople. This city is sadly now called Istanbul, Turkey. Today, there are only a few Catholic Churches in that city, including St. Anthony of Padua seen above. Notice the streamer on the right column has the Vatican flag. But the streamer running down the left column is the Muslim crescent moon and star. I am sure the modernist Franciscans who run the Church today would say that’s the Turkish flag, not an ode to Mohammed. But let’s be honest: It’s both. That type of plausible deniability for promoting false-religions doesn’t work on me anymore.
I had an interesting experience with the Franciscans in Turkey about ten years ago. Even though I didn’t snap the above pic, one of the last times I concelebrated the new Mass was in 2015 in Istanbul in that Church of St. Anthony.
Here’s what happened: The priest celebrating the Mass asked me to do the spontaneous petitions (after the sermon but before the Canon.) So, I prayed: “We pray that all Muslims in this city would come to know and worship Jesus Christ as the one true God… we pray to the Lord…” The Franciscan then quickly did damage control to my little petition, adding his own mealy-mouthed petition about freedom of religion seconds after my praying for conversions. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but it was clear he had to cancel out my prayer for conversion for the sake of a continued false-peace with Muslims in the city.
A Muslim gunman later shot and killed a Catholic at Sunday Mass at a different Catholic Church in Istanbul. So much for the peaceful Muslims he asked for.
This was one of the last straws for me ever doing the Novus Ordo Mass. I couldn’t handle selling our crucified Lord down the river in every city I visited anymore. For this, and many other reasons, I have only celebrated the TLM the last ten years, from 2015 to now in 2025.
Modernists today think this is how ecumenical relations have to be in Turkey because it’s now a majority of secular Muslims. So, we have to ask the obvious question: Was Turkey always destined to lose the faith?
No.
The Churches found in modern day Turkey (often called Asia Minor in the Bible or Cappadocia by the Church Fathers) are literally named in the New Testament. Jesus Christ warned the Churches of Turkey not to get lukewarm, or else they would lose the faith:
To the angel of the Church in Ephesus write: ‘The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands. “‘I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.—Apocalypse 2:1-5.
Notice that is the Church of Ephesus is where St. John and St. Mary later lived. Despite the Mother of God living there, the warning of her Son to keep the faith in Ephesus was not enough to keep the people of Western Turkey living Christian lives for more than a millennium. Today, less than 0.2% of those living in Ephesus are Christian. Similarly, less than 1% of those living in Istanbul are Christian, despite the fact the Apostle St. Andrew brought the True Faith to Turkey in the First Century.
Christ’s warnings in the book of the Apocalypse to the people of Ephesus to keep the faith were not in vain. But neither were they obeyed. For the rest of this article, we will see that what Islam did to destroy the Church in the East during the First Millennium, secularism is now doing to the Church of the West in the Third Millennium.
AMNY just released this shocking report: “Three days after announcing it would set up a $300 million fund to pay for a settlement it’s currently negotiating with 1,300 people who accused its priests and staff of sexual assault, the Archdiocese of New York submitted paperwork to finalize the sale of one of its most significant real estate assets for $490 million, Thursday court filings show. A spokesperson for the archdiocese told amNewYork Law that the sale of its 455 Madison Ave. property to Lotte New York Palace, its long-term tenant, would ‘generate funds’ to compensate victims, the majority of whom filed claims in 2020 when the state’s Child Victims Act opened up a temporary window extending the statute of limitations on sexual assault.”
You read that correctly. The Archdiocese of NYC is selling a half-billion dollar property on Madison Ave. to again cover for pervert priests harming children.
Recently, the USCCB released the above John-Jay report revealing that most priests who molest children target boys over 10 years old. (See above graph.) We Catholics who have studied clergy-abuse have obviously known this for decades. But it’s surprising the US bishops have again admitted priests target older boys more than young girls when they want to abuse them. Why? Because over 85% of predatory priests have admitted they have same-sex attraction.
So, how do we reduce pervert-priests filling the parishes? The first step is to again fill the Church with straight Popes and straight bishops. Some people would reply to my last sentence: “Well, that’s kind of difficult. You must know that homosexuals sneak past even good seminary formation teams all the way to ordination?”
I’m not so sure there’s a lot of “sneaking” going on anymore. Most good Catholics (especially women) can immediately tell if a priest is light in the loafers. Why then does seminary staff not prevent them from going on to ordination? Sometimes it’s because seminary-based priests actually want more men around who might putt from the rough with them.
My friend Msgr. Gene Gomulka just wrote here that while he (and other straight priests) were frequent guests to Pope John Paul II in the Vatican in the 1990s, Francis and Leo always surround themselves with openly gay clergy.
Before I entered seminary, in the early 2000s, I believed that ignoring odd men was the best way to make converts. Not that I believed priests who harmed children should go free. I just thought they were very few in number and the liberal media wanted to take down the Catholic Church by inflating the numbers. Now I now that’s not true. In fact, the liberal media has shifted their approach since the early 2000s: Because the child-molesters (and their abettors) are now the very leftists they want in control, the media ignore and even run interference for their religious colleagues with similarly perverse leanings.
The way forward is to keep the traditional faith and the traditional liturgy. But we also must claim our own dirty laundry. Putting the dirt under the rug is no longer a wise strategy for making converts from evangelical or Eastern Orthodox into the Catholic Church. In fact, denying our own losses and scandals since Vatican II is not even going to keep real Catholics in the Church.
Like every person pleasing to Our Lord Jesus Christ in the New Testament, we must confess our sins, return to the traditional faith, and beg Christ to forgive us. This repentance and return to God is what St. Mary Magdalene did. It’s what St. Peter did after denying Christ. It’s what that Christian-persecutor named Saul did before he became the Apostle Paul.
In the New Testament, only Pharisees and Sadducees deny their sins, put the dirt under the rug and ask others to run cover for their misdeeds.
Like Turkey, your diocese is not guaranteed a future. I don’t mean the TLM might get phased-out in your diocese. I mean it’s much worse: Your diocese itself might get phased-out due to unfaithfulness. Of course, I’m not hoping for this. I’m just reminding my readers here that God doesn’t “owe us a living,” so to speak. When parishes close, it was never God’s will. When dioceses go bankrupt, it’s because we clergy didn’t respond in faithfulness to His grace. Just look at the chart above on clergy-abuse of children. None of this was God’s will.
Even the most important diocese in the world is not guaranteed a future: “Rome will lose the faith and become the seat of the antichrist.”—Our Lady of La Salette, 1846.
We in the West have no reason for pride over the East, so we must return to the one true faith and the fact that Jesus Christ is the only way to the Father. Only real men living the ascetical life (not those swinging contra naturam) can lead us in the right direction. Only then will the glory of the Roman Catholic Church return. Until then, you can get your family to heaven as I instructed in my weekend sermon here.
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