Thursday & Friday talks CANCELED
[Please read this post all the way to the end. Thank you!]
Dear Friends:
I’m sorry to inform you that my talks on “Clearing Up the Confusion and Controversy Concerning the Current Catholic Crisis” scheduled to take place Thursday night (May 24) at the Hilton Los Angeles/Universal City and Friday night (May 25) at the Hampton Inn & Suites in Mission Viejo have been forced to be CANCELED, with deep regret, due to inadequate numbers of pre-registrations. (The cancelation of Thursday's talk was already announced here yesterday.)
As I stated on my website (www.gerrymatatics/org), my public figure Facebook page (www.facebook.com/catholicapologist), and the hundreds of emails I sent out to everyone on my mailing list in California for whom I had an email address before leaving on my trip, any location that had received less than 25 pre-registrations by 48 hours before the scheduled time for the talk would unfortunately be canceled, so that the hotel would not charge me for the rental of the meeting space.
By their respective deadlines -- Tuesday night for the talks scheduled for Thursday, and last night (Wednesday) for Friday's talk -- we had not even achieved half the necessary number of pre-registrants, and are therefore forced to cancel.
Although deeply disappointed, I'm not entirely surprised.
Scripture repeatedly reminds us that the last days prior to Christ's return would witness a nearly universal apostasy (2 Thessalonians 2:3: the Greek word "apostasy" means both a "rebellion against" and a "falling away from" the true Catholic Faith) -- a disguised apostasy masquerading as a "modernized" Catholicism.
In this passage St. Paul characterizes this clever counterfeit as a "wicked deception for those who are to perish, because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends upon them a strong delusion, to make them believe what is false, so that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness" (2 Thessalonians 2:10-12).
Even Vatican II "bishops" like (to name but two among many) Cardinal Burke and Bishop René Gracida -- the latter was one of dozens of cardinals, archbishops, and bishops I met and from whom I received glowing endorsements in my pre-sedevacantist days; he, like all the others, had me speak in his cathedral and elsewhere in his diocese of Corpus Christi --have been ever-so-slowly waking up to the fact that what "Pope" Francis is pushing is "unrighteousness." In fact, "Bishop" Gracida has even publicly stated that Francis' election may have been uncanonical, meaning that he is an antipope that should be removed from office. Imagine that!
The uncanonical and unCatholic rot, however, goes much deeper than merely the latest usurper of St. Peter's see -- as if removing Francis from office would thereby remove the cancer of counterfeit Catholicism from the Body of Christ! The rot goes back to Vatican II itself, with its false doctrines previously authoritatively condemned by the magisterium. It goes back to its sacrilegious "New Mass," its radically tampered-with (and probably invalidated, for the most part) sacraments, its immoral New Code of Canon Law, its new interfaith and syncretistic orientation.
People are understandably threatened by a talk which is able to demonstrate that the so-called "Second Vatican Council" is not in fact a valid council; that they ought not to be attending the New Mass, or even the so-called "Tridentine Mass" (nearly always the unauthorized 1962 revision thereof by demonstrable antipope John XXIII) when offered by priests of the diocese or religious orders accepting Vatican II, or the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, or the Society of Saint Pius X, -- or even when offered by "sedevacantist" clergy like those of the Society of Saint Pius V, the CMRI, etc etc.
"For the time is coming," said Saint Paul, "when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth" (2 Timothy 4:3-4).
Christ intimated that, in the days immediately prior to His Second Coming, the number of those saved (i.e., the Church) would be as small as it was in the days of Noah (Matthew 24:37) -- so much so that it would be nearly impossible to find the true Faith left on the earth (Luke 18:8).
When I expound these facts in my talks, people are understandably upset by the prospect that the billion-plus people belonging to the church of which Francis is the head (i.e., the Vatican II counterfeit church) -- or even the many tens of thousands who frequent the traditionalist chapels around the world professing to carry on "traditional Catholicism" -- may not in fact constitute the true Church in our day, as they would prefer to think they do.
But, unlike the modernist Scripture scholars whom the Vatican authorizes to teach previously-condemned views throughout the Vatican II church, I cannot change the teaching of Sacred Scripture, nor the many undeniable evidences of Vatican II's betrayal of Catholic tradition. I cannot change the truth. Nor will I water down or compromise my Catholic convictions in order to increase the popular appeal of my talks so as to be able to draw a greater number of listeners.
It is the truth, and only the truth, that can save and set us free, Our Lord assures us (John 8:32). As St. Paul warned in the passage from 2 Thessalonians cited above, the delusions we need to be set free from (e.g., that Francis is a true pope) will only damn us.
To the ever more forceful proclamation and dissemination of this saving truth, and the exposing of the opposing errors, therefore, let us resolve to rededicate ourselves.
May Almighty God give us all deep discernment in these dark days, and the fortitude (one of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost) to be completely open to the truth, however unpopular or uncomfortable, and to follow it wherever it leads. For it leads to eternal life -- a destiny Our Lord solemnly warns us few of us will achieve (Matthew 7:14) -- and nothing else does.
In Christ our Risen King and Mary Our Queen Mother,
Gerry Matatics