Fr. Karl Rahner with Fr. Joseph Ratzinger during Vatican II
~ Breakin' the law! Breakin' the law! Look, mom, no clerics! ~
A provocative response to those rejecting a favorable comparison of Benedict with Pope Francis. By traditionalist journalist, Michael Matt, "Benedict & Francis: Two Peas in a Papal Pod?" (Remnant, January 26, 2016). Matt offers an educated guess as to why Benedict abdicated, or had to abdicate, suggesting that packs of liberal wolves hounded him out of office. (What pressures they brought to bear, God only knows.) He compares Benedict, whose Summorum Pontificum and lifting of the SSPX excommunications outraged many, with the direction Francis has taken things, asking: "What would life be like right now without the powerful spiritual bulwarks (and human consolation!) provided by hundreds of traditional Mass centers around the world, established as a direct result of [Summorum Pontificum]?" Could anyone in his right mind contend that the escalating crisis in the Church today would not have been exponentially worse, he asks, were it not for those bulwarks thrown up by Benedict? "They got rid of [Benedict] for a reason, which the St. Gallen Group now brazenly admits," writes Matt. "Of all the post-conciliar popes, Benedict was the one who finally blinked. And history may well reveal that the reign of Pope Benedict helped undermine the very Modernist revolution which, ironically enough, Benedict himself had had a hand in a half century earlier," he adds. (Remember, back when Fr. Joseph Ratzinger worked along side Karl Rahner, and was a peritus at Vatican II under Cardinal Frings?) There's much more to it than this bit here, but check it out. Food for thought.
[Hat tip to JM]
We are in the midst of the Church Unity Octave, a thing given scant attention to here, not for want of the desire that all Christians profess the one, true Catholic faith. Putting the matter thus already slants the issue in the decidedly Catholic way the Church has always understood and intended the unity of Christians. Indeed, how could it be otherwise? It is not a matter of vain hubris but of revealed (and thus unalterable) truth that Christ founded but one Church (a fact which all Christians assert in the Creed) and that this one Church cannot be other than the Catholic Church, that is, the one built upon the Rock, Saint Peter and his successors. The reason for slighting these eight days of unity is that church unity has become, by and large, a dead issue with most non-Catholics. Moreover, the intentions for each of its days as the Popes originally published them read today [seem] rather embarrassing to a people whose mind has been formed by the modernist heresy of indifferentism (that obvious falsehood that holds all religions to be equally valid, or equally good). Just for the record, I quote for you here the very unpolitic (“incorrect”), designated prayer intentions for each day of the Church unity Octave, as the Holy See had originally designed them: 1. The return of all the ‘other sheep’ to the one fold of St. Peter, the one shepherd. 2. The return of all Oriental Separatists (i.e. the Orthodox) to communion with the Apostolic See. 3. The submission of Anglicans to the authority of the Vicar of Christ (viz., the Pope). 4. That Christians in America may become one in communion with the Chair of St. Peter. 5. The return to the Sacraments of lapsed Catholics. 6. The conversion of the Jews (i.e. to Christianity). 7. The missionary conquest of the world for Christ. (Day 8 is the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. It would be understood here that he was converted from Judaism to the only Church identically subsisting in the Catholic Church.) So, there you have it, real ecumenism – the embrace of all believers in the one, holy, Catholic Church. We’ve come a long way away from having the mind of the Church on this matter, due to the aforementioned modernist indoctrination by which many Catholics have no grasp of the exigency of truth to exclude error. Asserting what is logical necessity which no rational mind can deny (namely that there can be only one truth), we who hold fast to it are made to seem bigoted and uncharitable. To the contrary, nothing could be more conciliating or more loving towards others that to proclaim truth in all its disarming honesty, even in the face of some glaringly compromised statements to the contrary issuing from our ecclesiastical leaders. It makes one want to cry out in desperation with words from the psalter, “Heu mihi, quia incolatus meus prolongatus est!” (Pardon my French. But the Vulgate is so expressive: “Woe is me, for my sojourning is extended” – meaning that I have to live yet longer in this valley of tears.)
Related: Père Jean-Dominique Fabre, O.P., 
This “roccia” (rock) will never crumble, nor flake, given that its solidity is guaranteed in the text of Matthew until the end of time. The “rock” remains and no one will scratch it, implicated as she is in a divine undertaking. But on occasion some men may take from others the vision of the rock. Other things may be made to seem like the rock, other things that may appear to all as such. The distinction is a profound one, even if the errors of these men are capable of veiling the reality (truth), they cannot destroy it. The question, easy for all, that presents itself is one of the visibility of the rock. If then situations should occur, that took from certain men the visibility of the “roccia” (rock) in the Church, the consequences would be grave. Those that convert to the Church, convert because they are convinced that they have found the “roccia” (rock), not doubt, hesitation, contradiction or doctrinal anarchy. One converts when one knows that ones hope is not futile. Taking away the visibility of the “roccia” (rock): what happens? (emphasis added)
We are under the authority of theologians who deny the laws of contradiction, sufficient reason, and cause/effect. They really believe that the dialectical philosophy of Marx and Engels can be reconciled with Christian revelation. In practical management this means a zig to the right and a zag to the left while steering for the Norvus Ordo Saeculrum. Chop off Lefebvre, and throw a sop to trade... They have refused the face the issue -- which is not nostalgia... but the shipwreck of the Catholic Church. I mean a new Mass, a new catechism, a new morality, a flagrantly mistranslated Bible, an architecture and music which constitute a thoroughly orchestrated and rehearsed attack on Catholic doctrine and practice. Read the papal statement ten times if you can. You don't need arguments. It constitutes itself proof of its own radical insincerity. It cannot be explained away as a misunderstanding of the issue; it is quite simply a misrepresentation... This pseudo-Church, imposed upon the real subsistent one since the Vatican Council, is like [a] glass confessional. Anyone can see -- and everybody does -- that whatever it is, it is not the Church of our Fathers.