Triangulation in Doctrinal Warfare — And Its Potential Tell with Hildebrand
Adding to the legal evidence of the largely unknown claimant to the throne is some curious, consistent, and not-so-circumstantial patterns in narrative warfare
Much of my recent topic bank has been inspired by one John of Rochester. But perhaps more so than any other article, his piece entitled “A Freemasonic Imperfect Council” from two weeks ago connected some of the new dots to some years old dots involving narrative warfare. I present my thoughts here and invite you to read his as well, as it provides much more contextual information.
The Pope Hildebrand story may be the perfect illustration to convince Catholics that the same media tactics used in politics have long been employed inside an infiltrated Catholic crisis—specifically to steer people away from the legal question involving Leo.
Or we can continue to trust Taylor Marshall.
On April 10, 2026, a report began circulating that a group of priests were preparing what they called an “imperfect council” to resolve the present crisis in the Catholic Church.
“We are working in our own small way, with our limited manpower, to bring about an Imperfect General Council that will publicly recognise the present Catholic disaster that has no way out but through,” said Father Michael Mary, head of the Congregation of the Transalpine Redemptorists, in an interview with ThePress.co.nz on 10 April.
The group was expelled from the Christchurch Diocese in New Zealand in July 2024 following allegations, primarily concerning unauthorised exorcism practices. The priests denied any wrongdoing. In October 2025, the community repudiated “false shepherds” and recent papal documents without explicitly declaring the papal office vacant.
Their proposed “council” would consist of bishops acting without papal authority, though no names have been given: “There are Catholics all over the world left in ‘Catholic bunkers’ who know what is going on. It is a matter of reaching out to them.”
[…]
To justify the idea, Father Michael Mary invokes the Western Schism, when there were ultimately three “popes.” That crisis was resolved within Church structures at the Council of Constance (1414-1418). Through resignations and depositions, the council ended the competing claims and elected another pope, Pope Martin V, restoring unity.
“There was no way out except to gather a council that represented the worldwide Catholic Church and take measures. This is where we situate ourselves,” Father Michael Mary claimed, said, adding: “We are already gathering voices worldwide.”
The proposal, at least to a less discerning eye, seemed straightforward, perhaps even a nod to those Catholic rebels out there looking to do something about the crisis instead of just illustrating the problem over and over again. Such is the nature of the managed creation of online tribes, particularly one dubbed an “approved conspiracy theory.” But more on that later.
According to the report, if the Apostolic See were in fact vacant—or even doubtfully occupied—then bishops, acting without papal authority, could assemble, determine the status of the See, and, if necessary, elect a pope. It offers structure in a time of disorder, a sense of action in a moment of paralysis, and, perhaps most importantly, the feeling that something actually can be done so we bloggers can return to simpler business.
But the more discerning the eye grows, the less this appears to be a solution, and the more it begins to resemble a signal.
Not merely a fringe proposal up there with the very best of conspiracy theories.
A signal.
Those who have been watching politics, Church developments, and how the media frames narratives online—watching not just the claims or the headlines but the patterns—have been noticing something that does not belong to theology alone; it certainly does not belong to the realm of saving souls.
They are noticing behavior. They are noticing timing. They are noticing how certain ideas are elevated as acceptable, how others are redirected, and how still others are openly repressed before they ever reach the level of serious consideration—even when they might be the sanest of the bunch.
In short, this call for an imperfect council seems to be eliminating even the concept of a “Pope Hildebrand” before he was even allowed the audacity of being a conspiracy theory in the first place. I mean, who really even knows about “Pope Hildebrand”?
Read that again.
That fact—that move on the chessboard—is usually an absolute tell that something is rotten in Denmark. Like a narcissist making a move to either hide or redirect before a follow-up has even taken place about their most recent indiscretion, it smells of manipulation and mind warfare—a crisis perhaps getting a little too out of hand and in need of curation by those in power.
A little too out of hand, or, getting ahead of the story before it even emerges.
RECENT ON MEDIA MANIPULATION
From Triangulation to Binary
Much of this article is general and not specific to the April report, but I beg you to read it in full. I believe at least the bulk of this will make sense once you start connecting it to your own respective experiences.
For years now, the Catholic world has been conditioned to think in binaries. One must either accept the present structure entirely or reject it entirely. One must either recognize and submit, or deny and separate. One must either remain within the visible structure or step outside of it.
This is where a Taylor Marshall and most if not all other Catholic podcasters out there can be so dangerous.
That is why the SSPX is so appealing to many a Catholic—it provides the rebel a cause, a capacity to both submit in obedience and rebel against whatever it pleases. Take note how the SSPX is alternatively pitted against the conciliar Church, the FSSP, and the sedevacantists. The SSPX is the common denominator in many a controlled pairing, many a binary, thus making the appeal even greater.
These binaries feel organic, don’t they? They feel like the only ones out there because your favorite podcaster is aligning with your thoughts and life obligations, but we don’t realize that is the case because they’re the only ones we see. They feel as though they cover the full range of possible responses, but they actually don’t.
They are, in fact, the first layer of the trap.
What is presented as a conflict between two opposing sides is often something else entirely: a controlled dialectic, a Hegelian structure in which thesis and antithesis are allowed to clash in the public space, not in order to arrive at truth, but in order to eventually produce a synthesis—a middle ground—which remains within acceptable boundaries, seems reasonable for both sides, but ultimately is still not the truth. It is still in line with enemy advances. The conflict itself simply becomes the containment mechanism.
It is the false dialectic this space has theorized is the crux of the “errors of Russia” Our Lady warned about at Fatima.
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Think Communism and Zionism, the strings of both being played by the same hand.
Moreover, in the most diabolical of tactics, that Hegelian structure has another layer to it. It doesn’t just start as a binary, the false one, where my work has stopped prior to today.
It is triangular first, and only then paired down to the false dialectic—and this is something new I am introducing to my readers today. Frankly, it is fascinating, if also terrifying.
-The Triangulation Beneath
Fr Mitch Pacqua talks about this Saul Alinskian tactic in the admittedly Modernist film A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing. I believe the three groups he illustrated were Mexicans, Blacks, and Italians in Chicago, but it is the general movement I am concerned about here.
Three positions are introduced. Three camps emerge. And then, almost imperceptibly, two of them begin to align—whether consciously or not—against the third. The field narrows. The lines harden. And what began as a threefold distinction with the potential for nuance and organic behavior collapses into a binary, now reinforced by social pressure and collective instinct. An enemy is created by aligning two factions against a third, thereby forcing the entire field into a simplified and controllable opposition.
In the film, if I’m not mistaken, propagandic forces moved Mexicans and Blacks together against the Italians, but it could have been any arrangement. It is the physics of the trap that matters more than who is on either side.
Judeo-Christianity vs Islam is perhaps the most apocalyptic example.
This is not accidental.
It is propaganda.
It is a tactic of war.
They do this with music categories to destroy a culture too. Maybe that’s a topic for another day.
They do it everywhere.
Triangulation is absolutely a part of the tell of the ancient enemy. Perhaps you can even recognize the pattern in your family dynamics. It has been refined and deployed through psychological conditioning, ideological manipulation, and metaphysical corruption far beyond the boundaries of our little podcast debates on Rumble, the ones where we think they’re giving us the real truth because they’ll say it when YouTube won’t.
It is laughable once you see it.
It’s all a part of the ruse.
Once all of this happens, because God has given us and our secular pursuits over to the operation of error, the real questions—the ones that do not fit neatly into either side—are never asked.
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The Official, State-Sanctioned Conspiracy Theory
Layered inside this Hegelian structure—a part of the triangulation ruse—is something even more subtle.
Not every “alternative” or even “tinfoil hat” view is suppressed. In fact, many are encouraged—that is part of the narrative warfare on our minds. Certain lines of thought are permitted to circulate, to gain traction, and even to feel as though they are revealing something hidden or forbidden. These ideas are just transgressive enough to feel dangerous, but not so disruptive as to threaten the underlying framework of the true Luciferian powers that be.
They form what might be called the official conspiracy theory or theories.
It is a space in which the curious and self-proclaimed truth-tellers can explore, question, and even rebel—without ever leaving the city walls of the empire.
None of this should sound foreign to anyone familiar with the teleology of modern military and intelligence. The United States government itself has spent decades studying what it openly calls information war, psychological operations, perception management, and doctrinal warfare. General Michael Flynn is one embodiment. Consider that Operation Mockingbird and MK Ultra aren’t even conspiracy theories anymore.
The point is not merely to censor information, but to shape the environment in which information is received—to create emotional pathways, controlled oppositions, and curated forms of dissent that guide populations toward predetermined conclusions while preserving the illusion of independent discovery.
Israeli and British intelligence are of course linked to the US in this regard as well. You’ll also see the idea of the Five Eyes.
That is what makes the modern algorithm on social media so powerful. It does not merely suppress knowledge. Suppression alone creates false martyrs—as we’ve learned with Donald Trump. Instead, it floods the bloodstream with substitutes, decoys, limited hangouts, and acceptable forms of rebellion.
One narrative is attacked so that it may appear courageous. Or, one conspiracy theory is mocked so that the one doing the mocking may appear heady enough to embrace while we dare to step out. And all the while, the city walls remain unscathed because people’s emotions and time are exhausted before the most dangerous questions ever emerge.
There is a good chance that is what is happening with this new binary being created by the April 10 report and the claim of Hildebrand.
This is where many truth-seekers find themselves. They begin to question the obvious legacy media narrative and maybe the “Republican” or “Democrat” view. They encounter resistance among friends and family for either position. So they push further. And then, just as they are thinking of tucking tail and going with one of the two approved legacy media sides, they are offered an alternative path—one that feels like discovery. It feels like they’re one of merely a few that have stumbled upon the truth.
Think on the “discovery” (media-navigated) of Republican vs RINO several years back.
Ultimately, all this does is lead them into another one of the eight lanes carved out and controlled on the highway.
They are not silenced.
They are redirected. The notion of “RINOs” is an example.
And because the redirection feels like progress, it is rarely recognized for the hoodwinking it is.
Knowing this feature of the doctrinal warfare program is one reason I am so hesitant with Hildebrand, even though he has been my topic of choice here lately. No offense to my Substack acquaintances who believe.
MORE ON THE US DOCTRINAL WARFARE PROGRAM
Three Distortions
We’re back to the April story hook. The necessary cognitive illustrations thus anchored, we apply them to the matter at hand.
Within the current discussion, three distortions have begun to take shape. Each of them, on its own, can be explained. Together, they form a pattern that is difficult to ignore.
Distortion 1: The Conflation of Hildebrand with the “Imperfect Council”
There are, at present, at least two distinct lines of thought emerging that are completely divergent from your run-of-the-mill squabbles involving the Novus Ordo, various traditional groups in line with Leo XIV, the SSPX (1 and 2), and any of the different faces of sedevacantism. Know just that much, and you can understand why so many Catholics will be duped—within that list is enough potential binaries for anyone to get their head spinning and their emotions exhausted.
Surely one of these camps is for me, one might think.
But two outliers have emerged, with the one (more popular despite only materializing proper in April) bringing the other older one into the light in a most curious way. The latter, the one much less known, concerns the claim—however controversial—that a man has already been elected under the name Hildebrand, and that it occurred in November of 2025. The other, representing the April 10 report, concerns the proposal to convene an imperfect council in order to determine the status of the Apostolic See and potentially elect a pope.
One of these concerns an alleged act that has already taken place. The other concerns a proposed process that has yet to occur. One seems to stand pretty solidly on legal ground, that necessary legal conditions were met. The other attempts to justify the creation of a new mechanism that is not even legal but acceptable because of extraordinary circumstances.
And yet, these two are being treated as though they belong together, as though they represent variations of the same illegal impulse. Already you see users reading on these topics assuming the two threads are the same. It isn’t a bad guess that this is part of the mind control, particularly if Hildebrand is in fact the real deal and the enemy fears losing control of the plot.
Regardless of my theories, that is the first distortion, and it is happening in real time online as we speak—a false conflation of two diametrically opposite possibilities.
By conflating the two, both are weakened—with the precise intent to weaken and destroy only the true one. The more structured, legal question is absorbed into the more speculative, conspiratorial, seemingly schismatic one. The schismatic one is given a veneer of structure to imply late night prayer vigils as preparation for such a move, while the idea that there is already a legitimate pope—but one who has not been consecrated and won’t reveal himself yet—is absurd and bordering on insane.
Do you see the binary trap potentially being contrived here? If Hildebrand is in fact the rightful claimant to the Chair of St Peter and the powers that be are concerned about itchy, rebellious Catholics discovering the truth, it is absolutely part of the program to inject an alternative story into the bloodstream in order to keep people off the scent.
If you’ve ever known a narcissist, you know the play exactly. The narcissist never allows the victim to circle back around to the actual issue at hand and the crime.
And in this case, the legal question and a potentially rightful claim based on law is never allowed to fully separate itself from the schismatic noise of some “imperfect council.”
Thus both are treated as noise, and both go down in flames.
Distortion 2: The Shell Game with Nicholas II
If there is a single document that should anchor any serious discussion of papal legitimacy under conditions of crisis, it is the bull In Nomine Domini of Pope Nicholas II.
This is not a matter of opinion or personality preference as some will invariably assume. It is a matter of law. And yet, rather than being placed at the center of the discussion as common sense says it should, something else transpired entirely. John of Rochester, take it away:
In a recent video Bishop Sanborn mentioned he had received an invitation to the imperfect council to be held in Argentina on December 25 and 26, 2026. He had also been informed of the election of Hildebrand and been urged to consecrate him on his next trip to Europe. The Bishop responded that an election without the cardinals was “absurd” saying they have no right to vote thus showing the grossest form of ignorance and reckless disregard for Papal Law, since Pope Nicholas II, in his Bull, in Nomine Domini says exactly who has the right to vote for the Roman Pontiff, in the case in which the rightful electors violate papal laws and elect an antipope. All this is found at SedesApostolica.Info, as anyone can easily confirm. To speak thus out of negligence is a extraordinary error.
Furthermore, Brother Bugnolo posted a comment on the video mentioning that Bishop Sanborn had not read Pope Nicholas II’s Bull but the moderators deleted it. So one wonders whether the moderators of the video at the Roman Catholic Institute actually want Bishop Sandborn to know about a papal law that clarifies what is to be done when all cardinals are in union with an antipope.
But the questions that were asked in the interview and how they were responded to also begs us to ask some questions. Why did they not first discuss who Hildebrand is and how he was elected? They speak about him as if they know all about him but never explain who he is. And why does the interviewer lump the imperfect council with the election of Hildebrand? Shouldn’t they have done some research before deciding whether Hildebrand has a legitimate claim to the papacy?
The Sanborn clip occurs at the 12:32-mark of the video, which is placed in the latter half of the article.
Here we see the form of rejection that evades any organic questions that would rightfully arise. It is the form of rejection played cunningly by the narcissist as well. It is the form of rejection that is an absolute tell as one studies the tactics of the manipulator more and more.
One of my own questions concerning Nicholas II and Hildebrand was whether some later law existed that superseded the eleventh-century bull. That uncertainty was one reason I’ve hesitated for so long with the subject itself.
But I never called it “absurd.” It is not at all that, even if it is wrong. There is real papal precedence here.
But as John demonstrates in his article, Sanborn does not present a competing law at all. Instead, he, whether intentionally or not, plays a shell game with Nicholas II’s—certain to pull the wool over most Catholics who won’t read the brief document for themselves and have been trained to trust the screen. In fact, this entire council idea is advocacy for the option of breaking the law in order to save the Church, where Nicholas II provides an easy, clear, legal way out.
Here is the part Sanborn references:
§ 1. Wherefore, if it please thy Brotherhood, We ought, with God assisting, take care prudently for future cases and this by Ecclesiastical statute, provide in the hereafter that (these) evils, revived, not prevail. On which account, having been instructed by Our predecessor and by the authority of the other Holy Fathers, We decree, and establish, that with the passing of the Pontiff of this universal Roman Church, first of all, the Cardinal Bishops, treating (the election) together with the most diligent consideration, summon immediately the Cardinal Clerics to themselves; and in this manner let the rest of the Clergy, and the People, approach to consent to the new election, so that, lest the deadly disease of venality insinuate itself by occasion, the most religious men be the chief leaders in the election of the Pontiff to be promoted, but the rest be their followers.
And here is the part he excludes:
§ 3. Wherefore, if the perversity of depraved and iniquitous men, so prevail, that a pure, sincere and free election cannot be held in the City, let the Cardinal Bishops with the religious Clerics, and the Catholic laity, though few, obtain the right of power (ius potestatis) to elect the Pontiff of the Apostolic See, where they might judge it to be more fitting. Plainly, after the election has been completed, if there be a bellicose conflict, and/or if the struggle of any kind of men resists by the earnestness of wickedness, such that he, who has been elected, cannot prevail to be enthroned in the Apostolic See according to the custom, nevertheless, let the elect obtain as Pope the authority to rule the Roman Church and to dispose of all Her faculties, which Blessed Gregory, We know, did, before his own consecration.
Be especially clear that “Roman Church” here is not the Roman Catholic Church, but the more provincial Church of Rome.
The moment Nicholas II is allowed to speak clearly and in full, then, the entire conversation changes. The concept of narrative warfare on the Catholic mind emerges. The question is no longer what solution seems reasonable to the most people, nor what path appears viable to cause as few tremors as possible.
The question is simply on the law.
Here another pope becomes unavoidable, Paul IV, because he takes Nicholas II’s juridical foundation and applies it directly to the real-world inevitability of a false claimant occupying the papacy. In Cum ex Apostolatus Officio, written in the wake of the Protestant Revolution and the chaos it unleashed inside Christendom, Paul IV explicitly warns that even a universally recognized Roman Pontiff may in fact be “null, invalid, and void” if a prior defect from the Faith existed before his elevation. Most striking of all is that Paul IV specifically denies that such a defect can be healed “through the obedience accorded him by all, or through any lapse of time.” In other words, visibility, consensus, peaceful acceptance, and the mere passage of years do not create legitimacy where legitimacy was absent from the start. That is not the opinion of a blogger or a fringe internet personality. That is the language of a pope piggy-backing on top of another to legislate against exactly the sort of cognitive captivity modern Catholics have been trained to believe impossible.
Nicholas II and Paul IV create a robust legal framework. The question becomes, then, once again, as basic as it gets: What does the Church’s own law require?
And if there is no other law as I’d been wondering about before reading John’s article on Tuesday, and all Sanborn can do is mock a claimant based on an apparent strawman of an official papal bull, then does that indeed suggest that Hildebrand and Church unity are the very thing the enemy is trying to destroy?
What does the Church’s own law require?
Despite the simplicity, and despite millions of Catholics' call to law and order in the political world, it is a question that will not be acceptable even to the most well-meaning of them. It does not yield to the sentiments and comforts of Modernism. It is not as comfortable as the cave. It does not bend to what everybody thinks on Facebook. It is not even on Facebook in the first place.
Truth is truth, though. It demands to be answered on its own terms—on its own legal terms. Those terms are inconvenient, indeed, and the patterns suggest that they could be dangerous to the bad-willed.
MORE ON NICHOLAS II AND PAUL IV
Distortion 3: The Turn to the Crowd
Doctrinal warfare does not always deny the truth outright, but surrounds it with enough noise, novelty, and competing narratives that the average person loses the will to separate one claim from another, thus making the default position held by everyone else feel safer.
That is why I’ve made my work a sort-of “counter-navigation” strategy.
When simple law becomes terrifyingly difficult, even to people who crave law and order, and when clarity and a solution to the Church crisis threaten to send an earthquake through the Catholic world, another distortion emerges.
The crowd.
Read the report. The language of the Church shifts, notice, away from time-honored authority, but to the absolute anathema warned against by many popes. It becomes a matter of universality, of representation, of gathering voices from around the world. The solution is no longer located in the hierarchical conditions established by the Church, but in the collective will of those who recognize the crisis. In essence, it is democracy.
It is a good guess that if this report gets legs, it will work like a charm on the modern Catholic, who has been programmed into thinking life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the ability to have every and any opinion desired on Facebook are the greatest of all virtues. The will of the people replaces juridical legitimacy, turning the truth into a popularity contest. Participation becomes the authority—the mob—just as it did that day they shouted down Jesus Christ for the life of the criminal Barabbas.
But Catholic truth is not arrived at by consensus.
The Church has never operated on that principle. The election of a pope is not a democratic act. It is a juridical one. It is governed by conditions that do not change simply because those conditions become difficult to satisfy or forgotten or never even learned in the first place.
The appeal to the crowd feels natural because it mirrors the political structures people inhabit. It feels empowering because it offers a role to those who feel excluded. And it feels urgent because it promises action in the face of the modern paralytical crisis.
This April 10 report teases to the apprehensive Catholic that action.
But the bottom line is that it does not answer the question of legality, Nicholas and Paul, and the case for Hildebrand. It avoids it altogether, thus serving up the opinion of the crowd as the only viable solution.
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Hildebrand and the Question
At this point, the instinct might be to resolve the matter of Hildebrand one way or another—to either accept him as the answer to the crisis or dismiss him as another fringe development in an already crowded field of competing Catholic claims. But that instinct, while understandable, particularly the latter, risks missing the more important function he serves in this story—because whatever Hildebrand is or is not, this April report has forced a question into the open that hardly any Catholic—even Traditional—even knows exists.
That question is not whether he is persuasive or charismatic—or even universally accepted as the pope as the electronic screens tell us the current Leo is. It doesn't even matter if the letters and agenda he has issued run circles around Leo, Francis, and others. What matters is simple: whether the lawful standards by which such a claim to the papacy is bound to be judged are being applied at all—and at one of those lightning rod moments in Catholic history when they especially must be applied.
If the Church’s legal principles mean anything, and obviously they should even to any Catholic who is simply and admirably fighting the fight against Protestants by using the idea of “Scripture and Tradition,” then law established before us must be operative precisely when they are most inconvenient—when they threaten to unsettle what has been widely accepted and long assumed. That is the whole point of sharpening any set of rules anyway. That was the point of the Nicholas II bull.
Understandably, this is where the cognitive dissonance can be too much. But that’s why some of us are perhaps being asked to help navigate the rough waters while we reluctantly navigate them ourselves.
For once the question is framed juridically and not on assumption or democracy, the conversation can no longer remain within the familiar boundaries of Catholic discourse. It is no longer sufficient to align with a camp our favorite podcaster aligns with, to identify with a position because it checks the most boxes, or to critique the crisis without seeking the authoritative solution to it. This April report perhaps can be viewed through the lens of Romans VIII.28 in that it will, God willing, shift the unveiling to the truth beneath it all.
The reaction surrounding Hildebrand matters as much as the claim itself. That is why I write on him, even though I have not pledged my allegiance to him yet. I am a penitent and am working out my salvation with fear and trembling. It will take a lot for me to be sure, but what I can offer people like me is a way to think through something without the security of that assurance. Call it “stream of dissonance” writing.
As John shows, Hildebrand was not introduced into the conversation and then evaluated with respect. He was mentioned, redirected, and framed almost immediately within categories that made serious consideration difficult—because the entire idea of him being the pope was mocked. Seemingly, the effect was to ensure that anyone attempting to examine the question would immediately feel as though he were stepping into something unserious and “absurd.” That kind of preemptive framing is never neutral. It conditions perception before a mature conversation can even occur—and it is being shaped by a “side,” most Catholics would argue, is just as crazy and conspiratorial as any other.
In other words, if you know your stance is on the fringe and will be considered ridiculous as well, why would you think you have the high ground to mock any other fringe stance, especially when the stance’s claim in some important ways aligns with yours?
Did Sanborn do all of this consciously and with wicked motive? I really don’t know. But that’s not the point. Whether Hildebrand ultimately proves to be legitimate or not, that behavior and that pattern put forth by the media demands our attention—if for nothing else but to call into question this particular sedevacantist sect.
YET TWO MORE ON HILDEBRAND
Final Words
We conclude with something the modern Catholic often forgets or never learned.
Discernment is not primarily an intellectual exercise.
It is a habit of the soul, and it will be only through this habit that true Church unity, a true Catholic pope, and the salvation of souls will be attained.
The tools of prayer the Church provides will give us the answer. They discipline the imagination and steady the mind, placing it within a rhythm that resists the constant pull of reaction. The Rosary is a most magnificent start. Consecration to Our Lady’s Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart situates the soul within a posture of fidelity that does not depend on external clarity. The Divine Office then anchors the day in the prayer of the Church herself, a continuity that exists independently of any particular crisis or claim—and the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary can be a segway into that.
These are not retreats from the problem.
They are the conditions under which the problem can be seen rightly, and yes, even legally.
For without that interior stability, the mind will move from theory to theory, from feeling to feeling, never quite certain whether it is discovering truth or simply following the next permitted path. With it, something quieter and more durable begins to take shape—a capacity to remain steady long enough to let the question unfold without forcing it into a premature conclusion.
Order thus reigns by the discipline and repetition of the prayers. And order is the very foundation and reason behind the law.
The goal, then, is not to arrive quickly. Not necessarily. God may very well be permitting this prolonged confusion precisely because souls require time to navigate such treacherous cognitive dissonance without despair, pride, or rashness.
The goal is to arrive rightly.
The goal is eternal salvation.
And that requires a willingness to sit with questions that initially feel impossible. It requires that priests and bishops really look into this without dismissing it prematurely. It requires enough courage to stop repeating that “only God can save us now” and to consider the possibility—however uncomfortable—that God may already have provided His answer.
FURTHER READING
Doctrinal warfare….is not my specialty if I am honest, spiritual warfare is (though yes I understand the two are connected) because of my past and how I came to Christ. I think the SSPX are about to become much more appealing after Rome wields its big excommunicating stick.
I don’t dismiss Hilderbrand, God made a shepherd boy King and incarnated Himself in a manger. People who dismiss things like Hilderbrand are missing the point of much of our heritage as recorded in Scripture - God often does His best work through the outsiders, the unknown, not the courtiers but those far away from the courts corruption and therefore untainted. To be with God is to be on the outside of this rotten world and it is emnity with its rottenness. What the world thinks insane is God working things out His way, His ways make the wisdom of the world foolish.
Although I agree with a lot that both the SSPX and Sedes say and I do think we need a united front against Modernism but have yet to feel comfortable with either to be honest. Also I know the importance of Law, being on the spiritual frontlines, well you live or die by it, it’s the only protection one has against the flaming arrows of the Adversary.
John, your article is highly impactful. https://www.fromrome.info/2026/05/21/the-doctrinal-warfare-being-waged-against-hildebrand/