Twofold Weapon: “Godless Rulers of the world and Heresy” but now, with Modernism, the enemy is within!

When our Saviour conquered Satan He left him power over those who make themselves slaves to the sensual pleasures, and thus there exists an evil force against the Church, and it will exist to the end of time. This is a fact that we must keep in view in order to fully understand and judge the conditions. The realm darkness, Satan’s realm, stands opposed to the realm of Christ. Satan and his adherents carry on the warfare against the Church of Christ, as they assaulted Christ Himself. “As they have persecuted they will also persecute you,” so did Christ prophecy. The Church of Christ demands the subjection of the flesh; she preaches against luxury, pride and selfishness. She preaches chastity submission to the commandments of God; she preaches penance to those of high and low station in life. This angers all those who would indulge in the evil things of this world. They cry: “Let us break her bonds asunder; and let us cast away her yoke from us.” But as Christ foretold the persecution of His Church, so He also foretold that the gates of hell would not prevail against her. The Church of God will in due time conquer all her enemies, some will be converted, while others who are obstinate will perish in the battle. In all these battles and victories of the Church, Mary, blessed mother of her divine Founder, co-operates with the Church through her intercession. Mary was already spoken of in paradise as the one who would come to tread upon the head of the serpent, the spirit of darkness. This she has done by becoming the mother of God, by bringing forth the Redeemer. And as Jesus through Mary’s co-operation came into this world, so He desires her cooperation in ruling the world. The history of the contests and victories of the Church verify this throughout the centuries.

The evil spirit has a twofold weapon with which he assails and combats God’s Church; namely, the godless rulers of the world and heresy. Through the godless authorities of the world Satan has endeavored since the beginning to crush the Church; through heresy he attempts to destroy the Church by internal dissension. Both weapons are used together, for heresy and calumny cannot prevail without substantial support, and heretics seek worldly power and assistance. On every page of Church history we find recorded, the clashes planned by these evil forces, from which the Church always came out not conquered, but a conqueror.

The history of the veneration of Mary tells us that the Blessed Virgin Mary helped to win these victories. During the early times, when fierce battles against the Church were raging, bishops and priests knew of no more efficacious means to avert these dangers than to exhort the faithful to pray to the Blessed Virgin.

Cardinal Henry Edward Manning

Antonio Socci: "The Catholic Church is not the Bergoglio Party" - "for 2 years, nothing about extermination of Christians, but on Muslim migrants they can't stop talking!"

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS NOT THE BERGOGLIO PARTY

Antonio Socci : ‘Libero’ : August 23, 2015

To the courageous headline in yesterday’s “Libero” (“The Pope’s Party. The Vatican’s Political Shift”) only one idea should be added: the Bergoglio Party is one thing (which is doing harm, but will fade with him), the Catholic Church is another. The other day Matteo Salvini rightly noted this in the polemics he had with Monsignor Galantino. Plus, the very caustic interview with Giovanni Sartori - the king of political analysts - helped clarify it all:

“To me, this Vatican that utters such nonsense is a disaster. They aren’t interested at all in the real facts and focus on very petty things”. [Note: Sartori also declared, "Galantino? To me, he seems... demented."]

Sartori has always torn Italian politics to shreds, but to the Bergoglio Party he says: “Let me do the work of the political analyst – you attend to the things priests attend to”.

What would those “real facts” be that the priests should be attending to? Sartori is merciless:

“For two years” – he says – “those in Bergoglio’s Church haven’t said a word about the extermination of Christians, the slaughter of Catholics in Africa and the rest of the world, along with the continuous persecution of the Kurds. They should focus on these issues and leave alone the things that are not of their competence”.

It’s true that there are some shocking cases of Christians condemned to death for the faith – like Asia Bibi or Meriem – whom Bergoglio has always refused to mention.

But on the overall issue of the slaughter of Christians he has spoken several times. Yet, he has always done so, very late, in a generic way, without naming the causes or condemning the torturers and even – which is worse – delegitimizing the possibility of interventions by “international police” to protect the populations threatened by massacres (interventions that were desperately asked for by the bishops of those places).

When Bergoglio really cares about something he speaks of it in an earnest, vigorous way, continuously - even harshly. For example, on immigration [he says] that we – in his view – ought to welcome everyone en bloc, without saying a word - paying the costs of it.

Nothing of this sort has been seen in defense of the massacred Christians. For that matter, he has never skimped on words of esteem for the Islamic world, even going as far as pronouncing ecumenical concepts of dubious orthodoxy.

The tardy and generic words spent on the persecuted Christian communities are not in the least comparable to the care he has lavished – for example – on ecology. He wrote an encyclical to defend the survival of “algae, worms, small insects and reptiles” but for the persecuted Christians – nothing. He declared ‘the 1st of September a world-day of prayer for the ecosystem’, but for the massacred Christians - nothing (and they are the most persecuted human-group on the planet).

Obviously the ecological encyclical wasn’t only about worms and reptiles, but also thundered against the use of plastic cups and air-conditioners (which, however, is used in Santa Marta). By contrast, he has never hurled any thunder and bolts of lightning at the butchers of Christians.

Why does Bergoglio’s Party intervene in a hard-hitting way against Italian politicians, but not against the Islamic or Communist regimes where Christians are on the cross?

“The truth is that’s it’s easier (more comfortable) to shoot at politicians than defend Christians”, thunders Sartori who says of Bergoglio that “he is a cunning Argentinean and should have other immense questions on which to concentrate”.

Indeed, Sartori poses dramatic questions to the Vatican: “Is it more important to speak about the harem of parties, of the government and Parliament or of the religious wars spreading like wildfire all over planet Earth?”

For the Catholic Church it is more important to attend to Her persecuted [children]. Yet for the Bergoglio Party this seems not to be the case. And this – the political analyst continues - exposes “the Church, which is being made to look bad”.

The Bergoglio Party (which doesn’t care for faith and doctrine) is concentrated on politics - but not only Italian politics. They want to build for Bergoglio a sort of world political leadership of the leftist no-global ecologist type, as the survivors of the Italian Left keep saying (most of all, Bertinotti, a fan of Bergoglio).

This is the reason for the rehabilitation and glorification in Rome of the old, disastrous Liberation Theology which John Paul II and Benedict XVI had rightly condemned.

However, the event that clarified this project the most – anticipated in 2014 by the meeting in the Vatican with the no-global movements (even the Leoncavallo Social Center ***was present) - was Bergoglio’s recent trip to Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay.

Sandro Magister noted that on this trip “Francis didn’t hide his sympathy for the populist presidents of the first two countries, whereas with the third, he showed coldness, by even rebuking him publically for a crime that he had never committed, resoundingly misinterpreted by the Pope”.

For that matter, the emblematic image of that trip was the “Hammer and Sickle” (with a crucifix attached to it) which Bergoglio not only accepted as a gift from Morales (bringing it back to the Vatican with him), but – in its reproduction on the medallion – he even kept it around his neck to be seen by the world-wide media. Further, also round his neck – he kept the traditional Bolivian container for coca-leaves - another gift from Morales. Things never seen before.

In addition, on that trip “Pope Bergoglio’s political manifesto “ was made plain. As Magister reported, it happened with his discourse at Santa Cruz “to ‘the no-global popular movements’ of Latin America and the rest of the world, convoked by him for the second time in less than a year; in both cases with the “coca-cultivator” President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, in the first row”.

The heart of Bergoglio’s “manifesto” was well explained by one of his confreres, the Jesuit Father, James V. Schall, former professor of political philosophy at Georgetown University in Washington: “As far as I can judge, in this peculiar discourse we find hardly any traces of the Christian attention for personal virtue, salvation, sin, sacrifice, suffering, repentance and eternal life - nor for a perennial valley of tears. Sins and evils are transformed into social or ecological questions which require political and structural remedies”.

The message arrived clearly and loudly. On March 13th - the anti-capitalist day - writes Magister – “Leonardo Boff, theologian of Liberation Theology, converted to the religion of Mother Earth, the Italian Gianni Vattimo, philosopher of “Il Pensiero Debole” [‘Weak Thought’ his post-modernist philosophical concept] and the Argentinean Marcelo Sànchez Sorondo, Archbishop Chancellor of the Pontifical Academies of Social Sciences and key advisor to Pope Bergoglio, all had something to say. To great applause and with a satisfied Sànchez Sorondo by his side, Vattimo pleaded the cause of a new international “papist “communism with Pope Francis as its undisputed leader”.

Yet, more than Communist, Bergoglio is a Peronist, with the theological myth of the people, and that “cunning” which lead him to hurl accusations at capitalism and high finance, although – note well – without ever attacking anyone precisely, not the International Monetary Fund, nor the Central Bank of Europe or the United States.

Rather, Obama is Bergoglio’s biggest fan and sponsor and the latter avoids with great care any attack (“Who am I to judge?”) on the fanatic secularist policies of Obama, who, on matters concerning life, the family or gender is openly opposed to the Catholic Church.

Nevertheless – as I said – the Bergoglio Party is one thing, the Catholic Church is another. Are they exact opposites?

In fact, Bergoglio hits hard on the points of the faith where there is rebirth ... . Further, with the Synod, he has placed a time-bomb under the doctrinal cathedral of Catholicism.

He even declared to Scalfari that “there is no Catholic God”. There is Bergoglio. And his Party.

A Man is Known by His Friends

Focus shifts to shared goals with Obama as papal visit nears
By JOSH LEDERMAN : Aug 27, 2015

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sweeping into office in 2009, President Barack Obama captured near rock-star status around the world among millions who saw him as the embodiment of a new sense of social purpose. Now, that baton has largely been passed to Pope Francis, whose visit to the White House next month will put his common cause with Obama on vivid display.

Obama has made no secret of his affection for the outspoken pope, calling him a "transformative leader" whose influence has transcended the Roman Catholic community. The pope has embraced many of the issues Obama has sought to advance, including global warming, poverty and diplomacy with Iran and Cuba.

Vice President Joe Biden, a Catholic, said the pope's Sept. 23 visit will mark an important moment not only for Catholics but for all Americans.

"Pope Francis has breathed new life into what I believe is the central mission of our faith: Catholic social doctrine," Biden said in a statement to The Associated Press. Invoking key elements of Obama's agenda, Biden added that Francis "has become a moral rudder for the world on some of the most important issues of our time, from inequality to climate change."

The pope's brief visit to the White House is part of his highly anticipated trip to the U.S. and Cuba. It's a reunion of sorts for Obama and Francis, who first met when the president visited the Vatican last year.

Despite deep differences on some social issues such as abortion, Obama and the pope are expected to focus on areas of agreement. The White House said economic opportunity, immigration and refugees, and protection of religious minorities were high on the agenda.

"It's going to be a come-to-Jesus moment — no pun intended — for the many politicians who want to claim the mantle of Pope Francis," said Michael Wear, a former White House official who led faith outreach for Obama's 2012 campaign.

For Obama, the visit offers a chance to imbue his remaining goals with a sense of moral authority as he approaches the end of his presidency.

Viewed as largely above politics, Francis is extremely popular in the U.S. Tickets to his speech to Congress are such a hot commodity that an overflow crowd of thousands is expected to watch on Jumbotrons from the National Mall.

"In a way, Pope Francis has become a conscience for this age of the world. When President Obama came to office, he too had that aura for at least the first couple of years," said Stephen Schneck, who runs the Catholic politics institute at Catholic University of America. "But Pope Francis' message is moral and religious. He's not going to be talking about legislation."

The White House has praised Francis for involving himself in issues usually left to politicians. In a rare move, Francis personally intervened to help the U.S. and Cuba restore relations, writing leaders of both countries and hosting their delegations at the Vatican for final talks. And on climate change, a cornerstone of Obama's desired legacy, Francis added the weight of the pulpit by publishing a landmark encyclical calling climate change real and man-made. [……]

The president's relationship with the Catholic Church has a mixed history. He won the Catholic vote in his presidential campaigns, according to exit polls — a feat even then-Sen. John Kerry, a Catholic, couldn't pull off. And when Obama signed his landmark health law in 2010, he gave the nearly two-dozen pens used to advisers and supportive lawmakers — but set aside one for Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, who played a key role in building support for the bill.

But the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops opposed the legislation over provisions on coverage for abortions and birth control. Hundreds of Catholic groups and employers sued the Obama administration over the law, claiming it infringes on religious freedom.

What “Religious Submission” to the Ordinary Authentic Magisterium Means

Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent just because in writing such Letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power [i.e., extra-ordinary magisterium] of their Teaching Authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary Teaching Authority [ordinary and universal magisterium], of which it is true to say: “He that heareth you, heareth Me.” [Luke 10:16].

Pius XII, Humani Generis, par. 20.

COMMENT: This quotation taken from Pope Pius XII is now referenced to support the Novus Ordo Church’s claim that every Catholic must give unconditional submission of his “mind and will to the authentic magisterium” of Pope Francis. Pope Pius XII in his encyclical is referring to the “ordinary and universal magisterium” and this can be clearly seen for two reasons: The examples provided by Pope Pius XII that follow this statement in his encyclical refer specifically to modern theological novelties that reject, for example, the infallible teaching of the Church on the inerrancy of sacred scripture, the identity of the Church and the Mystical Body of Christ, and the nature of Original Sin. These are all examples of the “ordinary and universal” magisterium that Vatican I dogmatically defined as “infallible.”

The other reason is God cannot bind the authority of His Truth to what can and have in the past contained errors. Fr. Joseph Fenton, in an article published in the AER in 1949 entitled, On the Doctrinal Authority of Papal Encyclicals, documents specific historical errors published in those documents. Whenever the pope teaches by virtue of his grace of state from the ‘authentic ordinary magisterium’, his teaching must be accepted by a religious submission which is always and necessarily a prudent and conditional submission to the personal teaching authority of the pope. Such conditional acceptance of the word of God is not possible when the pope teaches infallibly by engaging the “extra-ordinary magisterium” or the “ordinary and universal magisterium” of the Church from which alone it can be said without qualification whatsoever, “He that heareth you, heareth Me.” [Luke 10:16].

The modern encyclical by Pope Francis on global warming/earth worship is wholly conscribed within a very narrow and tenuous ideological framework that has little or nothing to do with Catholic doctrine or morality. This document has nothing to do with the “ordinary and universal” magisterium. It is entirely a product of the personal authentic ordinary magisterium of Pope Francis teaching by his grace of state. Anyone to whom the document is addressed is free to toss the document in the trash along with the junk mail if he, upon mature consideration, finds it to be an ideological screed in its overall tone divorced from natural truth.

What God Do They Worship?

Here we limit ourselves briefly to the obscuring of one of the two core articles of the Catholic Faith, namely the existence of the Most Blessed Trinity. We observe that recent Popes refer but rarely to this dogma, preferring to speak simply of ‘God’ – as though as a gesture towards paganism and heresy.

As we have explained in detail in our short work: ‘The Destruction of the Roman Rite’, the prayers of Adoration of the Triune God have been almost entirely abolished from the Novus Ordo. The Doxology Gloria Patri… which appeared thrice in the Old Rite has been entirely removed; the Trinitarian formula per Dominum Nostrum Jesum Christum… which concluded many of the prayers in the Old Rite has been removed in all cases except one; the prayer at the Offertory Suscipe Sancta Trinitas and the prayer at the end of the Mass Placeat Tibi Sancta Trinitas have been excised; the Preface of the Holy Trinity which was used in the former rite almost every Sunday of the year now appears only once, that is on the respective Feast-day.

Furthermore the invocation of the Most Blessed Trinity (Pater de caelis Deus…) at the beginning of the public litanies was officially eliminated by Pope Paul VI in Lent 1969. Similarly one observes that the Trinitarian doxology has been removed from the hymn Veni Creator Spiritus (at least in the Italian version), thereby incidentally reducing the number of verses from the symbolic 7 to 6.

Fr. Pietro Leone, Apostasy, from Rorate Caeli

Pope Francis and Teilhard de Chardin, New Age Devotion for Earth Worshipers

"The end of the way of the universe is in the fullness of God, which has already been achieved by the risen Christ, fulcrum of the universal maturation…. The final end of other creatures is not in us. Instead, all advance, together with us and through us, toward the common destination, which is God, in a transcendent fullness where the Risen Christ embraces and illuminates everything. The human being, in fact, gifted with intelligence and love, and attracted by the fullness of Christ, is called to lead all creatures back to their Creator." (Pope Francis)
[Note: This is my own translation, as the Vatican’s English translation is not faithful to the original Italian, including the key phrase fulcro della maturazione universale — “fulcrum of the universal maturation.”]
With all due respect, what sort of nonsense is this? Christ has not “achieved the fullness of God” with the Resurrection. Christ is God, and He rose by His own power. Nor is Christ any sort of “fulcrum” of a “universal maturation,” according to which “all creatures” are “advancing” “through us” toward some nebulous “transcendent fullness.” This is nothing other than de Chardin’s bogus notion of Christ as the Omega Point, or end, of the evolution of all things. And, indeed, Francis at this point in the “recyclical” cites none other than de Chardin: “Against this horizon we can set the contribution of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin…”
Contribution? What contribution? In terms of science, Teilhard contributed two frauds: the alleged “missing links” Piltdown Man and Peking Man, the former withdrawn in disgrace by the British Museum and the latter consigned to oblivion when evidence emerged that this so-called evolutionary ancestor of man was simply an ancient man.

Christopher Ferrara, On Laudato Si, the papal encyclical on earth worship

"No less appalled"? - This is the idiot, who cannot make just discriminations, that has been chosen to attend next month's Synod on the Family which is on track to destroy the Sacrament of Marriage.

While commerce in the remains of defenseless children is particularly repulsive, we should be no less appalled by the indifference toward the thousands of people who die daily for lack of decent medical care; who are denied rights by a broken immigration system and by racism; who suffer in hunger, joblessness and want; who pay the price of violence in gun-saturated neighborhoods; or who are executed by the state in the name of justice.

Archbishop Blaise Cupich, Chicago's bishop following in the path of his homosexual pederast predecessor, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin

Once again, the one and only unconditional requirement for SSPX regularization with Rome is the 1989 Profession of Faith which extracts a vow of unconditional submission of the "mind and will," or as Lumen Gentium says, submission of the "soul," to the free and independent human authority of the "authentic magisterium." That is, unconditional submission of the soul to purely human authority of the pope based only upon his grace of state and not upon the infallible magisterium grounded in the Church's attribute of Infallibility! IT is, in the end, the purely human authority that has imposed every single novelty since Vatican II without exception!

Cardinal Müller in an interview with katholisch.de August 3, 2015

Question: It has been strikingly quiet recently regarding the Society of Saint Pius X. Are the attempts to find an agreement suspended or postponed?

Mueller: Regarding this question, there is no substantial new development. The Holy Father wishes that we keep trying: “con tenacia e pazienza” – “with decisiveness and patience.” The precondition for a full reconciliation is the signing of a doctrinal preamble in order to guarantee a full agreement in the essential questions of the Faith. In the past months, there were encounters of different ways which are meant to strengthen the mutual trust.

O My Jesus, it is for love of Thee, for the conversion of sinners and in reparation for sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary and for the Holy Father, I offer this sacrifice to Thee.

Prayer taught to St. Jacinta of Fatima by the Blessed Virgin Mary

Coach Francis - German, Swiss and French Game Plan for Synod on the Family

'Shadow council' speaker pushes Church acceptance of contraception, gay sex

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By Andrea Gagliarducci | Rome, Italy | Jul 29, 2015 | CNA

Yes to contraception, homosexual acts, and Communion for the divorced and remarried – all considering the circumstances. No to understanding any acts as intrinsically evil.

These are the positions advocated by speakers at the May 25 “shadow council” which gathered prelates and theologians, led by the German bishops, at a Jesuit university in Rome.
That day 50 specially chosen representatives of the German, Swiss, and French bishops conferences gathered at the Pontifical Gregorian University for a closed-door meeting, with the aim of reflecting on the biblical and theological bases of the family, and of discussing their goals for the Synod on the Family which will be held at the Vatican this October.
Only a few journalists were invited to participate in the meeting, and under the condition that they would not attribute by name what they heard there. One participant told CNA they were barred from granting interviews, as “confidentiality has been requested about the discussions at stake.”
But on July 17, nearly two months after the fact, the German bishops conference released the text of the meeting's interventions, in French, German, and Italian. Missing, however, was the final speech from Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising.
The document's introduction explained that the convention was divided into three parts: a reflection on Christ's words regarding marriage and divorce; on sexuality as an expression of love and “a theology of love”; and on the gift of life and “a narrative theology” – theology based on personal experience. [....]

In the end, the proposal of the German bishops, and those who stand with them, is one of a human-centered theology: changing with the spirit of the times, and affirming all situations and choices which become widespread.

Kasper the Blasphemer - The Man Pope Francis has entrusted with the demolition of Catholic Marriage

“The God who is enthroned over the world and history as a changeless being is an offense to man. One must deny him for man’s sake, because he claims for himself the dignity and honor that belong to man … We must resist this God, however, not for only man’s sake, but for God’s sake. He is not the true God at all, but rather a wretched idol. For a God who is only alongside of and above history, who is not himself history, is a finite God. If we call such a being God, then for the sake of the Absolute we must become absolute atheists. Such a God springs from a rigid worldview; he is the guarenteer of the status quo and the enemy of the new.”

Cardinal Walter Kasper, who as cardinal in good standing has been an important functionary with the Novus Ordo Church for 14 years

What the Novus Ordo has excluded from its Psalter -

Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, a Profession of False Faith

At the Sacra Liturgia conference in New York City in June 2015, one of the speakers reminded us of a startling fact that, while well known among scholars, has received far too little attention in the public sphere: the flagrant omission of so many psalms and psalm verses from the Divine Office or “Liturgy of the Hours” promulgated by Pope Paul VI in the Apostolic Constitution Laudis Canticum on November 1, 1970. In addition to the unprecedented novelty of praying the Psalter over four weeks rather than in the course of a single week, there was the equally unprecedented novelty of skipping verses that had been deemed “difficult” or problematic for modern Christians.

Three Psalms (57/58, 82/83, and 108/109) were expunged in their entirety from the pages of the Liturgy of the Hours (have a look at them some time), while three others (77/78, 104/105, 105/106) were confined to Advent, Christmastide, Lent, and Eastertide. The following verses were removed from other psalms:

Psalm 5 – 10 Make them bear their guilt, O God; let them fall by their own counsels; because of their many transgressions cast them out, for they have rebelled against you.

Psalm 20/21 – 8 Your hand will find out all your enemies; your right hand will find out those who hate you. 9 You will make them like a fiery furnace when you appear. The LORD will swallow them up in his wrath, and fire will consume them. 10 You will destroy their offspring from the earth, and their children from among humankind. 11 If they plan evil against you, if they devise mischief, they will not succeed. 12 For you will put them to flight; you will aim at their faces with your bows.

Psalm 27/28 – 4 Repay them according to their work, and according to the evil of their deeds; repay them according to the work of their hands; render them their due reward. 5 Because they do not regard the works of the LORD, or the work of his hands, he will break them down and build them up no more.

Psalm 30/31 – 17 Do not let me be put to shame, O LORD, for I call on you; let the wicked be put to shame; let them go dumbfounded to Sheol. 18 Let the lying lips be stilled that speak insolently against the righteous with pride and contempt.

Psalm 34/35 – 3 Draw the spear and javelin against my pursuers. 4 Let them be put to shame and dishonor who seek after my life. Let them be turned back and confounded who devise evil against me. 5 Let them be like chaff before the wind, with the angel of the LORD driving them on. 6 Let their way be dark and slippery, with the angel of the LORD pursuing them. 7 For without cause they hid their net for me; without cause they dug a pit for my life. 8 Let ruin come on them unawares. And let the net that they hid ensnare them; let them fall in it to their ruin. … 20 For they do not speak peace, but they conceive deceitful words against those who are quiet in the land. 21 They open wide their mouths against me; they say, “Aha, Aha, our eyes have seen it.” … 24 Vindicate me, O LORD, my God, according to your righteousness, and do not let them rejoice over me. 25 Do not let them say to themselves, “Aha, we have our heart’s desire.” Do not let them say, “We have swallowed you up.” 26 Let all those who rejoice at my calamity be put to shame and confusion; let those who exalt themselves against me be clothed with shame and dishonor.

Psalm 39/40 – 14 Let all those be put to shame and confusion who seek to snatch away my life; let those be turned back and brought to dishonor who desire my hurt. 15 Let those be appalled because of their shame who say to me, “Aha, Aha!”

Psalm 53/54:5 He will repay my enemies for their evil. In your faithfulness, put an end to them.

Psalm 54/55:15 Let death come upon them; let them go down alive to Sheol; for evil is in their homes and in their hearts.

Psalm 55/56:6b-7 As they hoped to have my life, 7 so repay them for their crime; in wrath cast down the peoples, O God!

Psalm 58/59 – 5 You, LORD God of hosts, are God of Israel. Awake to punish all the nations; spare none of those who treacherously plot evil. Selah 6 Each evening they come back, howling like dogs and prowling about the city. 7 There they are, bellowing with their mouths, with sharp words on their lips—for “Who,” they think, “will hear us?” 8 But you laugh at them, O LORD; you hold all the nations in derision. … 11 Do not kill them, or my people may forget; make them totter by your power, and bring them down, O Lord, our shield. 12 For the sin of their mouths, the words of their lips, let them be trapped in their pride. For the cursing and lies that they utter, 13 consume them in wrath; consume them until they are no more. Then it will be known to the ends of the earth that God rules over Jacob. Selah 14 Each evening they come back, howling like dogs and prowling about the city. 15 They roam about for food, and growl if they do not get their fill.

Psalm 62/63 – 9 But those who seek to destroy my life shall go down into the depths of the earth; 10 they shall be given over to the power of the sword, they shall be prey for jackals. 11 But the king shall rejoice in God; all who swear by him shall exult, for the mouths of liars will be stopped.

Psalm 68/69 – 22 Let their table be a trap for them, a snare for their allies. 23 Let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and make their loins tremble continually. 24 Pour out your indignation upon them, and let your burning anger overtake them. 25 May their camp be a desolation; let no one live in their tents. 26 For they persecute those whom you have struck down, and those whom you have wounded, they attack still more. 27 Add guilt to their guilt; may they have no acquittal from you. 28 Let them be blotted out of the book of the living; let them not be enrolled among the righteous.

Psalm 78/79 – 6 Pour out your anger on the nations that do not know you, and on the kingdoms that do not call on your name. 7 For they have devoured Jacob and laid waste his habitation. … 12 Return sevenfold into the bosom of our neighbors the taunts with which they taunted you, O Lord!

Psalm 109/110:6 He will execute judgment among the nations, filling them with corpses; he will shatter heads over the wide earth.

Psalm 136/137 – 7 Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem’s fall, how they said, “Tear it down! Tear it down! Down to its foundations!” 8 O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! 9 Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!

Psalm 138/139 – 19 O that you would kill the wicked, O God, and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me—20 those who speak of you maliciously, and lift themselves up against you for evil! 21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? 22 I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies.

Psalm 139/140 – 9 Those who surround me lift up their heads; let the mischief of their lips overwhelm them! 10 Let burning coals fall on them! Let them be flung into pits, no more to rise! 11 Do not let the slanderer be established in the land; let evil speedily hunt down the violent!

Psalm 140/141:10 Let the wicked fall into their own nets, while I alone escape.

Psalm 142/143:12 In your steadfast love cut off my enemies, and destroy all my adversaries, for I am your servant.

For 2,000 years, Christians Eastern and Western had been praying the psalter of David in its integrity, and now, Catholics were handed an expurgated or abridged version, with verses removed by “experts” who knew better than the Holy Spirit, knew better than the Israelites, knew better than the Church Fathers and Doctors, knew better than Tradition. But of course they knew better: this was the Age of Enlightenment breaking in at last upon a fortress-like Church, an age in which we should shake ourselves free from the shackles of unenlightened piety, with its gnarled, enigmatic, sharp-edged, implacable expressions, and its archaic, earthy, tribal atmosphere. Razing the bastions, making the world safe for democracy, and all that good stuff.
This observation dovetailed with another talk given at the Sacra Liturgia conference about the reform of the lectionary, in which the speaker looked at how the Novus Ordo lectionary for Mass also suppresses “difficult” verses from both Testaments—verses that had always been present in the traditional Roman lectionary but were excluded from the new lectionary, in spite of its boast of being so much bigger and better. These “difficult” verses include among them this spiritually poignant passage from St. Paul:

Therefore whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord. But let a man prove himself: and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of the chalice. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord. (1Co 11:27-29)

Taken from Rorate Caeli

No One, not even the Pope in Rome, has the authority to impose any act or suspend any immemorial tradition that leads to the diminution of Faith or the committing of sacrilege to the Blessed Sacrament. No One, net even the Pope in Rome, has the authority to command that any Catholic participate in such acts!

Fr. Janis Pawlowski I knew personally, he was my parish priest in Estonia during four years. It was he who heard my first confession and who gave me the First Holy Communion. He celebrated the Holy Mass with such a devotion and reverence that it left in my soul a deep unforgettable impression. All his words and his gestures irradiated holiness. When I for the first time felt in my soul the attraction to the priesthood at the age of twelve, in my memory appeared suddenly the holy face of this priest. He was really a man of God. I received the great grace that I could meet him in Riga (Latvia) after I have not seen him during 27 years. He was already 86 years old, yet he conserved the same fresh and spiritually irradiating face. The three days I spent with him, were for me a kind of spiritual exercises. He helped me to put on the liturgical vestments and served me during my Mass with the simplicity and humility of a little altar boy.[....] When in 1973 my family left Soviet Union and we said goodbye to Fr. Janis Pawlowski, he gave us this admonition: “When you come to Germany, please don’t go in the churches where Holy Communion is given in the hand”. When we heard these words, we all had a deep shock; we could not imagine that the Divine and Most Blessed Sacrament could be received in such a banal manner. It is now a proven fact that a considerable part of those who receive the Holy Communion habitually in hand, especially the younger generation which had not known the manner of receiving Communion kneeling and on the tongue, has not more the full Catholic faith in the Real Presence, because they treat the consecrated host almost in the same exterior manner as they take ordinary food. The exterior minimalistic gesture has a causal connection to the weakening or even loss of the faith in the Real Presence.[.....] It is an honor and a privilege to be faithful to the Divine Truth and to the spiritual and liturgical traditions of our forefathers and of the saints and being therefore marginalized by those who currently occupy administrative power in the Church. This your fidelity and courage constitute the real power in the Church. You are the real ecclesiastical periphery, which with God’s power renews the Church. Living the true tradition of dogma, liturgy and holiness is a manifestation of the democracy of the Saints, because tradition is the democracy of the Saints. With Saint Athanasius I would like to tell you these words: Those in the Church who oppose, humiliate and marginalize you, have occupied the churches, while during this time you are outside; it is a fact that they have the premises – but you have the Apostolic Faith. They claim that they represent the Church, but in reality, they are the ones who are expelling themselves from it and going astray.

Archbishop Athanasius Schneider, excerpt from recent interview published August 10, 2015

COMMENT: Those who accuse Ss. Peter & Paul Roman Catholic Mission of being "schismatic" because we keep the Apostolic Faith and the Immemorial Traditions of the Roman Catholic Church (and are thus united to the "Communion of Saints" existing from Jesus Christ's founding of His Church), have declared themselves in schism from us and everything we believe and do. They have cut themselves off by breaking the bond of Charity from the Communion of Saints. We appreciated Mons. Schneider's comments but he falls short in his understanding of the nature of the problem and its most important cause. Archbishop Athanasius Schneider identifies "five wounds in Christ's liturgical mystical body" that must necessarily be healed without which the Church cannot hand on the True Faith. This is an admission that the Novus Ordo is not the indefectible Church founded by Jesus Christ. The five wounds are: 1) The priest turned towards the congregation and away from God; 2) Holy Communion taken in the hand which has seriously damaged faith in the True Presence; 3) the new (Novus Ordo) Offertory prayers which are the worship offered by Cain, ; 4) the disappearance of Latin in liturgical celebrations; and 5) the performing of some liturgical ministries by women. Mons. Schneider believes that the answer lies in the Reform of the Reform. This is because he has overlooked the greatest "liturgical wound" which is the total disregard of the dogma of Faith from Trent which categorically condemns anyone who holds that the "received and approved rites customarily used in the solemn administration of the sacraments..... may be changed into other new rites by any pastor of the Churches whomsoever." They have thus corrupted the liturgy by treating it as a matter of mere Church discipline subject to the free and independent will of the legislator. They have taken the work of God and made it the work of man. When divinely revealed Truth is overturned the results will always and everywhere end in radical revolutionary corruption of God's Truth.

A “Categorical Silence” in the Preparatory Questionnaire for the 2015 Synod

July 27, 2015 By Fr. Mark A. Pilon

“Make no mistake, my brothers: those who corrupt families will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
—St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter To the Ephesians

[....] How strange it is, then, that a Special Synod (on the Family) called by the Pope (Francis) precisely to counteract the contemporary negative forces undermining marriage and the family, and to strengthen the family as the basic institution of human society and the Church, should say little or nothing about the role that the virtually universal practice of contraception has played in causing this crisis. This virtual ignoring of the tremendous impact of contraception on married life and societal stability was confirmed by the absence of a single question in the 2015 Synod lineamenta which deals directly with the problem that contraception plays in the crisis facing marriage and family life in our day. [....]

Understanding Cardinal Walter Kasper

The eminent Austrian philosopher Thomas Stark contends that the controversial cardinal is one who filters St. Thomas Aquinas through the lens of Hegel and Kant, which is a mistake.

BY EDWARD PENTIN | Posted 7/11/15

National Catholic Register VIENNA — What are some of the philosophical underpinnings behind Cardinal Walter Kasper’s controversial proposal to grant certain divorced-and-civilly-remarried Catholics access to holy Communion in certain cases?

This question was among those addressed at a colloquium held last fall in Vienna, as part of the launch of the German translation of the book Remaining in the Truth of Christ. The colloquium brought together representatives from the Cistercian Abbey of Heiligenkreuz, the German-speaking academic world and the traditional organization Una Voce Austria.

Among the featured presenters at the colloquium was professor Thomas Stark, professor of philosophy at the Benedict XVI Academy of Philosophy and Theology (Heiligenkreuz) and professor of philosophy at the University of St. Pölten in Austria.

Stark delivered a lecture in German entitled: "Historicity and German Idealism in the Thought of Walter Kasper." The lecture examined the philosophical roots of the German cardinal’s theological thought, especially as they pertain to the controversial claims he made in his 2014 address at the extraordinary consistory in preparation for last year’s Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family.

The Register sat down with professor Stark to discuss the contents of his lecture, his belief that Cardinal Kasper’s thought can ultimately be traced back to Hegelian philosophy (“the rational alone is real”) and what this means for the German cardinal’s understanding of the Church’s teaching and practice.

Professor Stark, can you summarize your talk for the benefit of our English-speaking readers?

I asked myself if there are any roots, according to the positions in moral theology, in the philosophical foundation of Kasper’s theology. And then I came across an article that the famous Italian historian Roberto de Mattei had written in Il Foglio; and therein he said that one of the reasons why Kasper is taking his positions is because he is very much influenced by the late [Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph] Schelling. And I tried to find out whether there are any connections to Schelling. …

So I delved more deeply into the whole topic, because I had already agreed to address Kasper’s position and his roots in the philosophy of German Idealism.

My conclusion? I would say that one can clearly see that Kasper’s position is deeply rooted in German Idealistic philosophy, but I would say more so in [Georg Wilhelm Friedrich] Hegel than in Schelling.

The problem with this philosophy is the relationship between history and truth. And the problem with Kasper’s position, as far as I understand him, is that he accepts historicism [where history is seen as a standard of value or as a determinant of events] just as a fact. He says, “Well, we are living in a time after historicism in the 19th century; history is the main framework in which we have to think and to live,’” and he is quoting [Ernst] Troeltsch, who said the encounter between Christian life and Christian theology and history will be even more problematic than the encounter between theology and science that had already taken place a century ago.

In addition, he seems to just accept the status quo and says, as far as I understand him, “Well, we are living in times that are influenced by historicism, and we have to live with it,” and then he historicizes truth and does many other confusing and perplexing things along these lines, I would say.

I have said several times, “As far as I understand him,” because the problem with this sort of theology is that it is difficult to understand, not because one has to be very intelligent to understand it, but because it is not coherent, in my opinion. And one can only figure it out if one understands the language they use. I mean, it’s not only Kasper; it’s very many people of influence in modern theology. If one reads this language carefully, one can easily see an admixture of imitating [Martin] Heidegger and the influence of Existentialism, some pieces from [Emmanuel] Kant and Hegel, which are read into Thomas Aquinas. They read Thomas through the lens of Hegel and Kant, which simply cannot be done, in my opinion. And they mix up various philosophical positions that really can’t be put together in a coherent, logical way.

The way they attempt to intertwine all of their theories forms a sort of pseudo-dialectic that is not really logical and coherent, and they put it in such a way as to provide an opportunity to get away with novel theories without being under the critical view of the magisterium, because they can always shift to the right and then to the left, as need be.

How do we see the principles you’ve just described play out, for example, in Cardinal Kasper’s proposal to allow remarried divorcees to have access to holy Communion?

Well, this is obvious. They say, “We cannot change doctrine, but we must change the pastoral application of doctrine or the practice,” which is contradictory, because you can’t change practice without altering doctrine, because practice follows directly from doctrine. So this is pure fantasy.

For anyone who thinks on this for a moment, it becomes clear that it simply can’t be done. You have to change doctrine in order to change the moral teaching.

Including the Sixth Commandment and the Church’s doctrine on the holy Eucharist?

Of course. Yes. So they are essentially destroying the whole sacramental structure of the Church by pretending to be addressing mere “pastoral” considerations. It is a ruse.

Do you think it is a conscious effort to subvert the Church’s teaching? Do you think they are conscious of what they are doing or that they think it’s all truly acceptable?

Well, I’ve thought about this quite a lot, especially since I’ve studied theology. My main specialty, of course, is philosophy, but I have a master’s degree in theology, because I’m of the opinion that, as a Catholic philosopher, one must have real knowledge of theology. And I was obliged to push back against some of my more progressive teachers when I studied theology.

I have often thought about what is really going on in the minds of these people. Initially, I couldn’t figure it out, but the more I am exposed to their thought, the more I become convinced that we’re dealing with a sort of dementia.

I will give you one of the best examples: If you read, for example, what people like Cardinal Kasper and others have written about the mystery of the Resurrection, you really can’t understand what they are saying. Did Jesus Christ rise from the dead or did he not? Or is the question of any real importance? They don’t come right out and say, “Well, it’s not important whether the tomb of Christ is empty.” Rather, they posit that there could be some kind of Resurrection that does not conflict with not actually knowing whether the tomb is empty or not. It’s all very vague, and the student walks away not understanding what this is all about. I always say, “Well, the tomb is empty. I’ve been to it very often, and I’m a witness. I’ve been in the tomb of Our Lord several times, so I can tell you that it’s empty.” The question isn’t whether it’s empty, but how it got empty.

Do you think it’s a kind of sophism?

It is very much a kind of sophism! And I fear that the real reason for all of this is, tragically, that a lot of theologians today have simply lost not their faith, but let me put it in these words: They have lost their faith in their faith. They are people who don’t believe what they believe, and this is precisely the definition of Modernism. Charles Peguy says that Modernists are people who do not believe what they believe. And I think that it’s exactly correct. These people believe in the resurrection of Christ with no empty tomb. They believe in miracles without miracles having actually taken place. For example, Kasper does not believe in the miracles that have to do with nature — the calming of the Sea of Galilee, for example, or the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, things like that. He just believes in things like, “Well, there were people who were said to be possessed by demons — with the background, we don’t believe that — and Christ takes a sort of therapeutic approach to them; and this, in fact, was interpreted as a miracle, but of course these things don’t need to be taken in the literal sense." So the Modernists believe in miracles without miracles, in the Resurrection without a resurrection, in virginity without virginity, etc. And this is why I use the word “dementia,” since what they are saying violates the law of non-contradiction.

Is it consistent with Pope St. Pius X’s 1907 encyclical on the doctrines of the modernists, Pascendi Dominici Gregis (The Doctrines of the Modernists)? In that encyclical, he talks about agnosticism being the beginning of modernism.

Yes, exactly! What St. Pius X wrote about Modernism is of outstanding value to understanding these men. It is exactly what he says.

So would you go so far as to say that Cardinal Kasper is an agnostic?

I would say Kasper is a Modernist, which includes a sort of agnosticism.

Would you go so far as to call it apostasy?

Well, this is a strong word, but I certainly fail to understand how this line of thinking does not lead to apostasy, at least objectively speaking.

What else can I think of someone who writes that dogmas can essentially become outdated and pointless or that they even can be stupid? And yet this is what I was quoting just today. Or somebody who says, “Well, one of the effects of historicism,” which he openly accepts, “is that ancient holy Scriptures or texts lose their validity”?

I don’t know what people who say things like this really believe, but in my opinion, what they believe is not what a Catholic believes. I mean, I’m really sorry to say that, and I hasten to add that when I started to write my lecture, I was very careful to give every benefit of the doubt. I really tried to approach the work of Kasper in a neutral way, because I have every desire to understand him. But when I got deeper into his thought, I was confronted with a system, if there is one, and with ideas that are so shocking that I really can’t see how somebody who is arguing — who is talking — in that way can still be considered a Catholic.

I’m really very sorry to have to say this, but this is the only conclusion I can draw; and it is based not only on my suppositions, but on Kasper’s own words.

You spoke in your lecture about a dichotomy between finding salvation in Christ and finding salvation in progress. Can you say a few words about that?

We have certain periods of history, and according to the New Testament, the periods are the following: First, God created the world. After a while, original sin happened. And then a different sort of history began, and this is the history in which we find ourselves to this day. And the question is: How will it all end? And there are two metaphysical concepts, as far as I see, regarding the end of history: that which is written down in the last book of the New Testament, where we are informed by God himself, because it is God’s word, that history will culminate in a huge catastrophe when the world falls away from God; and then Christ will come back after the Antichrist has reigned for — I think the Church Fathers say — three and a half years, or something like that. This is one concept.

So the question is: What is the climax of history in this concept? The climax of history is the time between the incarnation of Christ and his ascension into heaven. This is the climax of time, the fullness of time.

And then there is a different way of explaining history and the climax of history, which has it that the climax of history will be reached at the end of history because history is a process of perfection.

This is Hegel, isn’t it?

Yes, this is Hegel. And at the end of history, the climax of history will be reached. And someone who made a modern version of this concept of history in theology was Teilhard de Chardin, who said we are on our way, in process, to the so-called Omega Point, whereby creation and God will be reunited, but because of a process of self-perfection, which takes place in history. And this is the polar opposite of what the New Testament — the inspired written word of God — tells us. And again, Cardinal Kasper tries, as far as I understand him, to join these two concepts under one hat, which are absolutely contradictory. He tries to make one mega story out of all of this, which just doesn’t work. You have to decide what you believe.

Has the fullness of time already taken place, and are we facing the reign of the Antichrist sometime — who knows when, maybe next year, maybe 500 years? You have to decide what you believe. What is the sense of history? One or the other? And all concepts which try to mix these two interpretations of history are just illogical nonsense.

Is this seen in a concrete way in Cardinal Kasper’s proposal concerning the divorced and “remarried” having access to holy Communion?

To get to his practical points: If you have a concept of history like Kasper has, everything and anything is possible. Because what was important yesterday is maybe of no value today, and what will be of any value tomorrow we just don’t know. So it is history itself. I think he thinks it is the objective way of history that tells us what to do and how to adapt to the way of history in which he, to my opinion, has every confidence.

And this has something to do with this whole optimistic atmosphere in the ’60s. People trusted in what I said in my lecture: They trusted in the vision that modernity produced of its own future. So they thought: Things are getting better, people are getting freer, there is a dialectic in history which is an emancipation which makes people freer, and we just have to go along with history, and history will somehow tell us where to go. But, I’m sorry, this is not the concept of history that we find in the New Testament, that we find in the Church Fathers, that we find in the doctors of the Church, that we find in Scholasticism or anywhere else. We find this concept in Hegel and in de Chardin, but there is no legitimate way for a Catholic theologian to accept these novel concepts. Not as far as I see.

And they have great resentment towards everything in and of the past. Our great-grandfathers were stupid idiots, in their opinion. [A friend] says a funny thing when we go to Venice, and we go down by boat through the Canal Grande. And when he is with us, he always says, “Well, look at this city, all these houses in the water. Weren’t the people really stupid at that time? They had no idea how to do things; they had no idea of architecture. It’s all rubbish.”

Everybody loves medieval things. I think all those people who have this resentment against the Middle Ages should not be permitted to go into cities like Venice. This was — of course — a joke. One has to add that clarification in these humorless times of political correctness.

Cardinal Kasper is reported to have said at the 2014 synod that he was of the belief that all of the German bishops were in support of his position. How would you respond?

This is not true. If Cardinal Kasper really said that, then he is either not well-informed or he is telling a falsehood. As I know from an absolutely reliable source, there are at least three German bishops, not auxiliary bishops … who did not agree with the paper of the German bishops’ conference, supporting Cardinal Kasper’s position and presented by Cardinal [Reinhard] Marx at the synod. They explicitly voted against it. These bishops are: Bishop [Gregor] Hanke of Eichstätt, Bishop [Rudolf] Voderholzer of Regensburg and Bishop [Konrad] Zdarsa of Augsburg. And I know two of them personally, one of them quite well.

So it was clear to me from the beginning that they couldn’t have agreed with the paper in question. So to suggest that all the German bishops back the Kasper clique is just a lie. But there is much lying in today’s Church, and it is all about an ideology that is in opposition to constant Church teaching of two millennia, which nobody, absolutely nobody, ever has the right or even the power to change.

The apostasy of the city of Rome from the vicar of Christ and its destruction by Antichrist may be thoughts very new to many Catholics, that I think it well to recite the text of theologians of greatest repute. First Malvenda, who writes expressly on the subject, states as the opinion of Ribera, Gaspar Melus, Biegas, Suarrez, Bellarmine and Bosius that Rome shall apostatize from the Faith, drive away the Vicar of Christ and return to its ancient paganism. Then the Church shall be scattered, driven into the wilderness, and shall be for a time, as it was in the beginning, invisible; hidden in catacombs, in dens, in mountains, in lurking places; for a time it shall be swept, as it were from the face of the earth. Such is the universal testimony of the Fathers of the early Church.

Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, The Present Crisis of the Holy See, 1861

"Excommunication" is only for those who are faithful to Catholic doctrine, morality and our immemorial traditions - But objective state of adultery is no problem as long as you approach the problem with the "eyes of small children"!

Francis: Divorced and remarried ‘are not by any means excommunicated’

Pope Francis on Wednesday strongly called on the church to be welcoming to divorced and remarried persons. “These persons are not by any means excommunicated,” the pontiff said, repeating: “They are not excommunicated.”

JOSHUA J. McELWEE | vatican city | August 5, 2015

Pope Francis has again strongly called on Catholic communities to have a welcoming and merciful attitude to Christians who have remarried outside the church after a divorce, saying that such people “are not by any means excommunicated” and should be made to feel a part of their communities.
In his first weekly general audience Wednesday after a month-long pause for the scorching Italian summer heat, the pontiff focused his remarks entirely on how the church should treat divorced and remarried persons. He said it does no good to try to keep them at a distance from the community.
“If then we look at these new bonds also with the eyes of small children ... with the eyes of children, we see again the urgency to grow in our communities a real welcoming towards people that live in such situations,” Francis told those gathered in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall for the audience.
“How can we recommend to these parents to do all [they can] to educate their children in the Christian life, giving them the example of a sure and practiced faith, if we put them at a distance from the life of the community, as if they might have been excommunicated?” the pope asked.
“These persons are not by any means excommunicated,” the pontiff said, repeating: “They are not excommunicated.”
“It absolutely does not work to treat them as such,” he said. “They are always [to be] made part of the Church.” [.......]

“Vices against nature are….. more grievous than the depravity of sacrilege.”

Wherefore just as in speculative matters the most grievous and shameful error is that which is about things the knowledge of which is naturally bestowed on man, so in matters of action it is most grave and shameful to act against things as determined by nature. [. . .] just as the ordering of right reason proceeds from men, so the order of nature is from God Himself, wherefore in sins contrary to nature, thereby the very order of nature is violated, an injury is done to God, the Author of nature. Vices against nature are also against God, as stated above, and are so much more grievous than the depravity of sacrilege, as the order impressed on human nature is prior to and more firm than any subsequently established order.

St. Thomas, ST, II-II, Q 154, a 12, ad 1& 2

Fact: When the state recognizes the right of an individual person to solve their personal problems by abortion and euthanasia, the individual person must reciprocally recognize the right of the state to solve their social problems by abortion and euthanasia.

Prediction: The MediCare system is financially insolvent. The generation that is responsible for the murder of countless children in the wombs of their mother's by the crime of abortion will be, against their wills, mercilessly euthanized. The American hospital will become a death center that will rival the Nazi camps and the Communist Gulag.

Recommendation: If you are sick, don't tell your doctor.

"Much-Expanded Definition of Catholic Orthodoxy" - Excluding Catholic Truth

Editorial: Pope Francis' exhortation to walk on the margins makes us squirm

By NCR Editorial Staff | Jul. 27, 2015

[.....] Those who wish to define Catholic orthodoxy by a narrow list of sexual sins are inclined to describe themselves as countercultural, fighting the mighty forces of secularism. Come September and Francis' visit, we all are likely to be shaken to our roots by a much-expanded definition of Catholic orthodoxy and a far more demanding idea of what it means to be countercultural in the United States.[.....]

Mounting Evidence of the Stupidity of the American Bishops Argument Grounded in "Religious Liberty" for the Defense of Catholic Truth!

Court Tells Family-Run Pharmacy It Must Provide Contraception Despite Religious Objections

The Stormans family, which owns and operates Ralph’s Thriftway in Washington state, can no longer refuse to fill the prescriptions while referring customers to other pharmacies.

by MATT HADRO/CNA/EWTN NEWS 07/27/2015

WASHINGTON — Owners of a pharmacy in Washington state must provide the morning-after contraceptive pill (which is an abortofacient) against their religious beliefs, after a federal appeals court upheld a state mandate that they do so. The July 23 decision is "unfortunate," stated Luke Goodrich, deputy general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, on Thursday. “The government has no business punishing citizens solely because of their religious beliefs.” At issue is a 2005 state law that mandates pharmacies provide the morning-after and week-after contraceptive pills (which are abortofacients) to customers even if they religiously object to doing so. Individual employees may recuse themselves from filling such prescriptions if they have a religious objection, but another employee must be present to fill the prescription.

Planned Parenthood caught mixing neo-cannibalism as side-dish with the ritual murder of infants in their mother's wombs..... the “crime” becomes publishing the fact!

Obama DOJ Plans To Investigate.... The Group That Busted Planned Parenthood

Instead of investigating whether Planned Parenthood illegally trafficked baby body parts, Obama's DOJ is targeting the group behind the undercover videos

By The Federalist Staff | July 23, 2015

The U.S. Department of Justice announced plans to investigate the group that produced undercover videos showing Planned Parenthood employees admitting that they harvest and sell organs ripped from the bodies aborted babies. Politico reported the news of the coming DOJ investigation earlier today:

JUSTICE TO PROBE CENTER FOR MEDICAL PROGRESS — While congressional committees investigate Planned Parenthood’s practices, the Justice Department agreed to look into whether the group that released the sting videos obtained the footage legally. In response to a request by House Democrats, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Wednesday afternoon that Justice would “review all of the information and determine what the appropriate steps moving forward would be.” Planned Parenthood has staunchly defended its practices and claims that the Center for Medical Progress illegally obtained its footage, then excessively edited it to misrepresent what the organization does.

The DOJ investigation of the Center for Medical Progress, which, unlike Planned Parenthood, is not in the business of killing healthy, viable unborn babies in order to sell their organs for cash, was announced after several Democratic lawmakers called for the organization to be targeted:

Four Democrats in Congress — Reps. Jan Schakowsky, Zoe Lofgren, Jerry Nadler, and Yvette Clarke — have written to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and California Attorney General Kamala Harris, asking them to open investigations into the Center for Medical Progress. The Democrats say the videos were filmed as part of an “elaborate scheme” — using “fake identification” and without the approval of the Planned Parenthood doctor who appears in them.

Global Warming itself, much less “human-caused GW”, is the product of teleological man-made computer programs whose results directly reflect the ideology of the programmers and have no correspondence with reality. Maybe Pope Francis' next encyclical will address health problems and working conditions in the Diamond Mines of the Seven Dwarfs!

Computer Models vs. Climate Reality

by William F. Jasper | 08 April 2015

For more than two decades the world has been subjected to a growing cacophony of doomsayers — politicians, environmental activists, scientists, academics, and media mavens — demanding global action to stop anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming, or AGW. The AGW threat, we have been told incessantly, is “apocalyptic” and “existential” in magnitude, endangering all life on planet Earth: melting icecaps, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, floods, droughts, desertification, “extreme weather,” species extinction, etc.

However, contrary to the dire predictions of the alarmists, the Earth has not been heating up. In fact, for more than the past 18 years global mean temperatures have stayed steady, or have slightly cooled, according to the satellite readings. If you are unaware of this fact, or doubt its authenticity, that is not surprising; the powers that be in the worlds of politics and media have gone to incredible lengths to cover up this important truth with continued policies and headlines proclaiming the alleged impending perils from “climate change.” They are hoping to build public support for global punitive taxes and regulations at the United Nations’ Climate Summit in Paris later this year.[......]

This, of course, is what many renowned scientists and climatologists have been saying for years: The alleged global warming is so minute that, from a historical perspective, it cannot be distinguished from natural variability. But, for her candor, and for contradicting the AGW “party line,” Dr. Curry has also been subjected to the personal attacks and smears that have greeted other courageous and truthful AGW realists.

It is interesting to note, however, that even the CRU’s Phil Jones has also admitted to the defects of the vaunted climate models and the important role of natural variability. “We don’t fully understand how to input things like changes in the oceans, and because we don’t fully understand it you could say that natural variability is now working to suppress the warming,” he told the Daily Mail. “We don’t know what natural variability is doing,” Jones continued.

This is precisely what esteemed scientists such as Richard Lindzen, Timothy Ball, William Happer, Freeman Dyson, John Christy, Roy Spencer, Vincent Gray, Christopher Essex, Fred Singer, and hundreds of others have been saying — and demonstrating — for years.[.....]

This is huge! Phil Jones, a top AGW guru, admits “we don’t know what natural variability is doing,” and Judith Curry says that the climate models are “imperfect and incomplete” and natural causes “dominate” human effects on global temperatures. And IPCC/WMO bigwig Jim Renwick concedes his organization’s climate predictions are wrong more than half the time — and they can’t predict the weather more than two weeks out. Yet, we are supposed to empower national and international politicians and bureaucrats to completely regulate, re-engineer, tax, and regiment human civilization on a planetary scale, based upon the same faulty computer models that have universally, spectacularly failed — over and over again.[.....]

We have here dealt with only a small sample of the many scandalous examples of tampering, trickery, and outright fraud employed by the global warming alarm lobby. Pierre L. Gosselin’s NoTrickZone.com lists 129 climate scandals that should shake the confidence of even the most diehard climate alarmist. After all, if “the science is settled,” why not let “science” speak for itself? Why engage in non-stop, wild exaggeration and blatant — even criminal — deception?

Will the Pope Change the Vatican? Or Will the Vatican Change the Pope?

As Francis makes his first U.S. visit, his emphasis on serving the poor over enforcing doctrine has inspired joy and anxiety in Roman Catholics.

By Robert Draper | National Geographic | August 2015

That Francis agreed in advance to fulfill the rabbi’s wish makes the gesture no less sincere. Instead it suggests an awareness that his every act and syllable will be parsed for symbolic portent. Such prudence is thoroughly in keeping with the Jorge Bergoglio known by his Argentine friends, who scoff at the idea that he is guileless. They describe him as a “chess player,” one whose every day is “perfectly organized,” in which “each and every step has been thought out.” Bergoglio himself told the journalists Francesca Ambrogetti and Sergio Rubin several years ago that he seldom heeded his impulses, since “the first answer that comes to me is usually wrong.” [……] To Wals, his former press aide, Bergoglio’s careful entry into the papacy is completely unsurprising. Indeed, it was foreshadowed by the manner in which he vacated his previous office. Realizing there was a chance the conclave would elect him—after all, he had been the runner-up to Ratzinger after John Paul II’s death in 2005—the archbishop left for Rome in March 2013, says Wals, “with all letters finished, the money in order, everything in perfect shape. And that night before he departed, he called just to go over all the office details with me, and also to give me advice about my future, like someone who knew that maybe he would be leaving for good.” […..] This would appear to be the pope’s mission: to ignite a revolution inside the Vatican and beyond its walls, without overturning a host of long-held precepts. “He won’t change doctrine,” insists de la Serna, his Argentine friend. “What he will do is return the church to its true doctrine—the one it has forgotten, the one that puts man back in the center. For too long, the church put sin in the center. By putting the suffering of man, and his relationship with God, back in the center, these harsh attitudes toward homosexuality, divorce, and other things will start to change.”

Lapide on Luke 23: 32 - An Important Distinction, An Essential Distinction

“But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.” “For thee”, because I destine thee to be the head and chief of the Apostles and of My Church, that thy faith fail not in believing Me to be the Christ and the Saviour of the world. Observe that Christ in this prayer asked and obtained for Peter two especial privileges before the other Apostles : the first was personal, that he should never fall from faith in Christ; for Christ looked back to the sifting in the former verse, that is the temptation of His own apprehension when the other Apostles flew off from Him like chaff and lost their faith, and were dispersed, and fled into all parts. But Peter, although he denied Christ with his lips, at the hour foretold, and lost his love for Him, yet retained his faith. So S. Chrysostom (Horn, xxxviii.) on S. Matthew; S. Augustine (de corrept. et Grat. chap, viii.); Theophylact and others. This is possible but not certain, for F. Lucas and others think that Peter then lost both his faith and his love, from excessive perturbation and fear; but only for a short time, and so that his faith afterwards sprang up anew, and was restored with fresh vitality. Hence it is thought not to have wholly failed, or to have been torn up by the roots, but rather to have been shaken and dead for a time.

Another and a certain privilege was common to Peter with all his successors, that he and all the other bishops of Rome (for Peter, as Christ willed, founded and confirmed the Pontifical Church at Rome), should never openly fall from this faith, so as to teach the Church heresy, or any error contrary to the faith. So S. Leo (semi.xxii.), on Natalis of SS. Peter and Paul; S. Cyprian (Lib. i. ep. 3), to Cornelius; Lucius I., Felix I., Agatho, Nicolas I., Leo IX.,Innocent III., Bernard and others, whom Bellarmine cites and follows (Lib. i. de Poniif. Roman).

For it was necessary that Christ, by His most wise providence, should provide for His Church, which is ever being sifted and tempted by the devil, and that not only in the time of Peter, but at all times henceforth, even to the end of the world, an oracle of the true faith which she might consult in every doubt, and by which she might be taught and confirmed in the faith, otherwise the Church might err in faith, quod absit! For she is, as S. Paul said to Timothy, "the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Tim. lii. 15). This oracle of the Church then is Peter, and all successive bishops of Rome. This promise made to Peter and his successors, most especially applies to the time when Peter, as the successor of Christ, began to be the head of the Church, that is, after the death of Christ.

And when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren. "From the sifting of Satan, that is from his temptation and from the sin by which thou wilt deny Me; for by this thou wilt be turned aside from Me, and My grace and love." So Euthymius, Theophylact, Jansen, F. Lucas, and others.

Cornelius a Lapide, The Great Commentary, Luke 22, 32

For Every Catholic: The Principle of Unity is Faith, the Bond of Unity is Charity!

The Novus Ordo has broken the Principle of Unity with Tradition because they first broke the Bond of Unity with God.

But love must not be wrought in our imagination but must be proved by works... Oh Jesus, what will a soul inflamed with Your love not do? Those who really love You, love all good, seek all good, help forward all good, praise all good, and invariably join forces with good men and help and defend them. They love only truth and things worthy of love. It is not possible that one who really and truly loves You can love the vanities of earth; his only desire is to please You. He is dying with longing for You to love him, and so would give his life to learn how he may please You better. O Lord, be please to grant me this love before You take me from this life. It will be a great comfort at the hour of death to realize that I shall be judged by You whom I have loved above all things. Then I shall be able to go to meet You with confidence, even though burdened with my debts, for I shall not be going into a foreign land but into my own country, into the kingdom of Him whom I have loved so much and who likewise has so much loved me.

St. Teresa of Jesus

Archbishop Charles Chaput – Fleecing the dead and dying of Philadelphia

The Bucks County company running local Catholic cemeteries denies families' allegations of high-pressure sales tactics.

Chris Palmer and Laura McCrystal | Inquirer Staff Writers | April 26, 2015

On her late husband’s birthday in March, Bette Dalton visited his grave at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Cheltenham Township and found a chipped headstone and muddy tire tracks. She trekked to the cemetery office to complain, and was surprised to get a sales pitch: A worker asked Dalton, 76, to consider buying her own casket. After Denise Caramenico inquired about a plot at Conshohocken’s Calvary Cemetery, she got e-mails for months from a man who said he was from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and Catholic Cemeteries. Then a salesman tracked her down at work and called. “I’ve never experienced that,” said Caramenico, of East Norriton. “Not even with purchasing a car.” For decades, area Catholics have buried their dead at one of the 13 cemeteries owned by the archdiocese. But since the church leased them last year to StoneMor, a Bucks County company, some people say they have noticed drastic changes in the handling of a sacred Catholic responsibility. In two dozen interviews with families and funeral directors, similar themes emerged: Complaints that StoneMor had harassed and misled mourners and customers, upsetting or bewildering some when they may be most fragile. [….]

“In the language of modern Gnosticism, ‘men of culture,’ are, after all, both credulous and superstitious.”

And now, before I enter upon this subject, I wish to say a word of a superstition which, strange to say, pervades those who are willing to believe but little else. For in its incredulity the human mind is liable to fall into the greatest of all credulities; and one credulous superstition of these days is this: That faith and reason are at variance; that the human reason, by submitting itself to faith, becomes dwarfed; that faith interferes with the rights of reason; that it is a violation of its prerogatives, and a diminution of its perfection. Now I call this a pure superstition; and those who pride themselves upon being men of illumination and of high intellect, or, as we have heard lately, in the language of modern Gnosticism, “men of culture,” are, after all, both credulous and superstitious. God, who is the perfect and infinite intelligence—that is, the infinite and perfect reason — created man to His own likeness, and gave him a reasonable intelligence, like His own. As the face in the mirror answers to the face of the beholder, so the intelligence of man answers to the intelligence of God. It is His own likeness. What, then, is the revelation of faith, but the illumination of the Divine reason poured out upon the reason of man I? The revelation of faith is no discovery which the reason of man has made for himself by induction, or by deduction, or by analysis, or by synthesis, or by logical process, or by experimental chemistry. The revelation of faith is a discovery of itself by the Divine Reason, the unveiling of the Divine Intelligence, and the illumination flowing from it cast upon the intelligence of man and if so, I would ask, how can there be variance or discord? How can the illumination of the faith diminish the stature of the human reason? How can its rights be interfered with? How can its prerogatives be violated? Is not the truth the very reverse of all this? Is it not the fact that the human reason is perfected and elevated above itself by the illumination of faith?

Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, The Revolt of the Intelligence Against God

The difference between Able, who worshiped God according to the prescriptions of God, and Cain, who offered the “fruit of the earth and the work of human hands,” lies in the authorship of the worship.

If the human mind be so presumptuous as to define the nature and extent of God’s rights and its own duties, reverence for the divine law will be apparent rather than real, and arbitrary judgment will prevail over the authority and providence of God. Man must, therefore, take his standard of a loyal and religious life from the eternal law; and from all and every one of those laws which God, in His infinite wisdom and power, has been pleased to enact, and to make known to us by such clear and unmistakable signs as to leave no room for doubt. And the more so because laws of this kind have the same origin, the same author, as the eternal law, are absolutely in accordance with right reason, and perfect the natural law. These laws it is that embody the government of God, who graciously guides and directs the intellect and the will of man lest these fall into error.

Pope Leo XIII, Libertas Praestantissimum (reference provided by Rorate Caeli)

Homosexual Heresy - Vatican Silence

· “We must clearly, explicitly and reservedly say: yes, there is a strong homosexual underground in the Church ... such circles in the Church strongly oppose the truth, morality and Revelation, cooperate with enemies of the Church [and] incite revolt against Peter of our times.

· “It is for [his] accuracy of opinion that he is so vehemently opposed, or even hated by some in the Church, especially by members of the homolobby which represents the very center of internal opposition against the Pope.”

· “If homolobbyists are allowed to act freely, [in Poland] in a dozen or so years they may destroy entire congregations and dioceses — like in the USA, where priestly vocation is more and more now called a gay profession.”

· “The global network of the homolobbies and homomafias must be counterbalanced by a network of honest people. An excellent tool that can be used here is the Internet, which makes it possible to create a global community of people concerned about the fate of the Church, who have resolved to oppose homoideology and homoheresy. The more we know, the more we can do.”

· “This is about the Church’s to be or not to be. If homolobbyists are allowed to act freely, in a dozen or so years they may destroy entire congregations and dioceses – like in the USA, where the priestly vocation is more and more now called a gay profession (particularly with reference to American Jesuits), or like in Ireland, where men are hesitant about joining the emptying seminaries for fear of being suspected of suffering from some disorders.”

· “The Church does not generate homosexuality, but falls victim to dishonest men with homosexual tendencies, who take advantage of its structures to follow their lowest instincts. Active homosexual priests are masters of camouflage. They are often exposed by accident. ... The real threat to the Church are cynical homosexual priests who take advantage of their functions on their own behalf, sometimes in an extraordinarily devious way. Such situations cause great suffering to the Church, the priestly community, the superiors. The problem is indeed a very difficult one." F. Józef Augustyn

Fr. Dariusz Oko, Ph.D., WITH THE POPE AGAINST THE HOMOHERESIES

Pope Francis and President Morales Discover Common Ground

Interview with Pope Francis

Vatican Insider | ANDREA TORNIELLI | July 13, 2015

Question: What did you feel when President Morales gave you the crucifix with the hammer and anvil? And where did it end up?

Pope Francis: "I was curious, I didn't know Fr. Espinal was a sculptor and also a poet. I learned about it in these past few days, I saw it and for me it was a surprise. It can be categorised as a form protest art. ..... In this particular case, Fr. Espinal was killed in 1980 (by anti-communist forces). This was a time when Liberation Theology had many different branches. One of these branches used the Marxist analysis of reality and Fr. Espinal shared these ideas. I knew this because that year I was rector of the theology faculty and we talked a lot about it. In the same year, the Society’s general, Fr. Arrupe, sent a letter to the Jesuits asking them to stop the Marxist analysis of reality and four years later, in 1984, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published the first document, which is critical, and the second, which opens up to more Christian viewpoints. Espinal was an enthusiast of this Marxist analysis and he produced this work. His poetry also belongs to that genre. It was his life, his way of thinking. He was a special man abounding in human genius, a man of good faith. Let us interpret it this way: I understand this piece and I did not find it offensive. I carry it with me."

Question: In your homily in Guayaquil, you asked people to pray that the next Synod will come up with solutions to the problems the family is facing and that God turns what scandalises us and seems to us impure (i.e.: admitting to Holy Communion Catholics living in adultery) into a miracle. Did you have any specific and concrete cases in mind when you spoke about this?

Pope Francis: “Here, too, I will do some ‘hermeneutics’ on the text. I was referring to the miracle of the fine wine. I said that the jugs of water were full, but they were for purification. Every person who joined the celebration performed his purification and left his spiritual filth behind. It was a rite of purification before entering into a house or the temple. Now we have this in the holy water… Jesus makes the best wine out of dirty water, the worst water. The comment I wished to make was this: The family is facing a crisis, as we are all aware. This is evident in the Instrumentum Laboris (working document). I made reference to all of this. That the Lord would purify us from all that is emerging from these crises, that he makes us better people and that we move forward. The specific cases are all mentioned in the Instrumentum Laboris.”

Pope weighs in on "Communist crucifix" and U.S. critics

CBS/AP | July 13, 2015

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE -- Pope Francis says he wasn't offended by the "Communist crucifix" given to him by Bolivian President Evo Morales during his South American pilgrimage.

Morales surprised the pontiff with the unusual gift, a crucifix attached to a hammer and sickle, when Francis arrived in La Paz on Wednesday.

The crucifix was a replica of one designed by a Jesuit priest, the Rev. Luis Espinal, who was tortured and killed by Bolivian paramilitary squads in 1980. Francis prayed at the site of Espinal's assassination upon his arrival in Bolivia.

The modified crucifix immediately raised eyebrows, with some questioning whether Morales, whose socialist and anti-church rhetoric is well-known, was trying to score a questionable political point with a questionable, and possibly sacrilegious, melding of faith and ideology.

Francis, an Argentine Jesuit, said Espinal was well-known among his fellow Jesuits as a proponent of the Marxist strain of liberation theology. The Vatican opposed it, fearing that Marxists were using liberation theology's "preferential option for the poor" as a call for armed revolution against oppressive right-wing regimes that were in power in much of Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s.

During a news conference en route home to Rome on Sunday, Francis said he interpreted Morales' gift through the prism of Espinal's Marxist bent and viewed it as protest art.

After taking into consideration the time in which he lived, Francis said: "I understand this work. For me it wasn't an offense."

Francis added that he brought the crucifix home with him.

The Family is the Battlefield in a Great Spiritual War

Benjamin Harnwell 07/13/2015

Cardinal Carlo Caffarra was asked about the spiritual warfare over the battleground of the family.

In his day, Cardinal Caffarra was founding President of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, and was closely involved with the preparation of Familiaris Consortio, Pope St. John Paul II’s prophetic apostolic exhortation on the family.

Here’s what the Italian cardinal said in his interview:

Q. There is a prophecy by Sister Lucia dos Santos, of Fatima, which concerns “the final battle between the Lord and the kingdom of Satan”. The battlefield is the family. Life and the family. We know that you were given charge by John Paul II to plan and establish the Pontifical Institute for the Studies on Marriage and the Family.

A. Yes, I was. At the start of this work entrusted to me by the Servant of God John Paul II, I wrote to Sister Lucia of Fatima through her Bishop as I couldn’t do so directly.

Unexplainably however, since I didn’t expect an answer, seeing that I had only asked for prayers, I received a very long letter with her signature – now in the Institute’s archives. In it we find written: the final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and the family. Don’t be afraid, she added, because anyone who works for the sanctity of marriage and the family will always be fought and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue. And then she concluded: however, Our Lady has already crushed its head.

Morales calls Pope Francis' teachings 'socialist'

The Siasat Daily | Santa Cruz | July 11, 2015

Evo Morales says he feels like he's got a good friend and ally in the highest of places in his battle for revolutionary social change and halting global warming: Pope Francis.

Bolivia's president also said today he thinks that what Pope Francis preaches amounts to socialism.

"I feel like the pope is the first and best politician in the world," Bolivia's president said in an interview with The Associated Press a few hours before bidding Latin America's first pope goodbye.

Francis made history on his two-day visit by apologizing before Bolivia's first indigenous president for the Catholic Church's "grave sins" in the subjugation of the Americas' native peoples in the name of God during the European conquests that began in the 15th and 16th centuries.

He also condemned, before a crowd of leftist activists invited by Morales' government for a World Summit of Social Movements, the "injustices" of a capitalist system that puts profits ahead of people and denies people basic rights of "land, lodging and labor."

Asked if the pope is a socialist, Morales said his emphasis on creating a world in which no one is excluded amounts to socialism.

"I don't know whether it's communism, but it is socialism. He's talking about community, about living in harmony."

Francis has said several times that concern for the poor and marginalized is at the center of the Gospel, but has denied he's preaching communism or any other political ideology. He's called Marxism wrong. [......]

State-run and allied Bolivian media have highlighted the similarities in the messages of Francis and Morales.

"I feel like now I have a pope. I didn't feel that before," said Morales, complaining that the church had not backed On Friday, as he awaited the departure of the pope's plane on the Santa Cruz airport tarmac, Morales chatted amiably with bishops with whom he has been at odds in the past.

One Morales-Francis exchange did set Catholic social networks ablaze during the visit: Shortly after the pope arrived on Wednesday, Morales gave him a cross fashioned from a hammer and sickle, a classic communist symbol, patterned after one created by Luis Espinal, a leftist Jesuit priest slain in 1980.

Catholic Popes – On Socialism, for “No one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.”

You are aware indeed, that the goal of this most iniquitous plot is to drive people to overthrow the entire order of human affairs and to draw them over to the wicked theories of this Socialism and Communism, by confusing them with perverted teachings.

Pope Blessed Pius IX, Nostis et Nobiscum

Communism, socialism, nihilism, hideous deformities of the civil society of men and almost its ruin.

Pope Leo XIII, Diuturnum

For, the fear of God and reverence for divine laws being taken away, the authority of rulers despised, sedition permitted and approved, and the popular passions urged on to lawlessness, with no restraint save that of punishment, a change and overthrow of all things will necessarily follow. Yea, this change and overthrow is deliberately planned and put forward by many associations of communists and socialists.

Pope Leo XIII, Humanum Genus

We speak of that sect of men who, under various and almost barbarous names, are called socialists, communists, or nihilists, and who, spread over all the world, and bound together by the closest ties in a wicked confederacy, no longer seek the shelter of secret meetings, but, openly and boldly marching forth in the light of day, strive to bring to a head what they have long been planning - the overthrow of all civil society whatsoever. Surely, these are they who, as the sacred Scriptures testify, "Defile the flesh, despise dominion and blaspheme majesty. (Jud. 8)."

Pope Leo XIII, Quod Apostolici Muneris

They [socialists, communists, or nihilists] debase the natural union of man and woman, which is held sacred even among barbarous peoples; and its bond, by which the family is chiefly held together, they weaken, or even deliver up to lust. Lured, in fine, by the greed of present goods, which is "the root of all evils, which some coveting have erred from the faith" (1 Tim. 6:10.3), they assail the right of property sanctioned by natural law; and by a scheme of horrible wickedness, while they seem desirous of caring for the needs and satisfying the desires of all men, they strive to seize and hold in common whatever has been acquired either by title of lawful inheritance, or by labor of brain and hands, or by thrift in one's mode of life.

Pope Leo XIII, Quod Apostolici Muneris

Socialists and members of other seditious societies, who labor unceasingly to destroy the State even to its foundations.

Pope Leo XIII, Libertas Praestantissimum

The harvest of misery is before our eyes, and the dreadful projects of the most disastrous national upheavals are threatening us from the growing power of the socialistic movement. They have insidiously worked their way into the very heart of the community, and in the darkness of their secret gatherings, and in the open light of day, in their writings and their harangues, they are urging the masses onward to sedition; they fling aside religious discipline; they scorn duties; they clamor only for rights; they are working incessantly on the multitudes of the needy which daily grow greater, and which, because of their poverty are easily deluded and led into error. It is equally the concern of the State and of religion, and all good men should deem it a sacred duty to preserve and guard both in the honor which is their due.

Pope Leo XIII, Graves de Communi Re

But stranger still, alarming and saddening at the same time, are the audacity and frivolity of men who call themselves Catholics and dream of re-shaping society under such conditions, and of establishing on earth, over and beyond the pale of the Catholic Church, ‘the reign of love and justice’ ... What are they going to produce? ... A mere verbal and chimerical construction in which we shall see, glowing in a jumble, and in seductive confusion, the words Liberty, Justice, Fraternity, Love, Equality, and human exultation, all resting upon an ill-understood human dignity. It will be a tumultuous agitation, sterile for the end proposed, but which will benefit the less Utopian exploiters of the people. Yes, we can truly say that the Sillon, its eyes fixed on a chimera, brings Socialism in its train.

Pope St. Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique

It is not our intention here to repeat the arguments which clearly expose the errors of Socialism and of similar doctrines. Our predecessor, Leo XIII, most wisely did so in truly memorable Encyclicals; and you, Venerable Brethren, will take the greatest care that those grave precepts are never forgotten, but that whenever circumstances call for it, they should be clearly expounded and inculcated in Catholic associations and congresses, in sermons and in the Catholic press.

Pope Benedict XV, Ad Beatissimi Apostolorum

But what if Socialism has really been so tempered and modified as to the class struggle and private ownership that there is in it no longer anything to be censured on these points? Has it thereby renounced its contradictory nature to the Christian religion? This is the question that holds many minds in suspense. And numerous are the Catholics who, although they clearly understand that Christian principles can never be abandoned or diminished seem to turn their eyes to the Holy See and earnestly beseech Us to decide whether this form of Socialism has so far recovered from false doctrines that it can be accepted without the sacrifice of any Christian principle and in a certain sense be baptized. That We, in keeping with Our fatherly solicitude, may answer their petitions, We make this pronouncement: Whether considered as a doctrine, or an historical fact, or a movement, Socialism, if it remains truly Socialism, even after it has yielded to truth and justice on the points which we have mentioned, cannot be reconciled with the teachings of the Catholic Church because its concept of society itself is utterly foreign to Christian truth...... [Socialism] is based nevertheless on a theory of human society peculiar to itself and irreconcilable with true Christianity. Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.

Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno

While Pope Francis supports a One World Government ruling a “noble and generous society” based upon a “genuine and profound humanism,” St. Joan, a saint for our own age, was sent to enthrone the dauphine on the throne of France as the lieutenant of Jesus Christ, the true and only King of France.

Wouldn’t she who received virginity as her very name from heaven be thereby destined for a mission of the first order? God was coming to us once again by a virginal path. He came in Joan and through Joan, no longer, of course, to give us the Savior, but to tell us what the divine Savior must be among us: the King of kings and Lord of lords… The Holy Pucelle (Virgin), come to earth to restore the notion of the royalty of the Son of Mary, the Son of God, had to die, had to offer the sacrifice of her life to insure the appearance of this notion in the full splendor of its truth at the hour marked by divine Providence, so it could impress itself on minds and penetrate into the whole of society.

Cardinal Louis-Édouard-François-Desiré Pie, The great apologist for the social reign of the Kingship of Jesus Christ on St. Joan of Arc

Irony – Our prayers for the conversion of Russia may be ultimately for the purpose of Russia converting and saving the West!

Not military conflicts but global decisions like the US unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty lead to a Cold War. This more in fact pushes us to a new round of the arms race, because it changes the global security system. [.....] The problem is that they (the US) constantly trying to impose their standards and decisions on us with no regard to our interests. In essence they say: ‘we are better’ as if the US knows better what is good for us. Well, let us decide for ourselves what our interests and needs are as dictated by our history and culture. […..] This is no dialogue. It’s an ultimatum. Don’t speak the language of ultimatums with us. […..] They should not have supported the anti-constitutionalists’ armed coup (that overthrew the democratically elected government of the Ukraine) that in the end led to a violent confrontation in Ukraine, a civil war in fact. We are not the cause of all those crisis events that Ukraine is experiencing.

Vladimir Putin, Russian President, plenary session at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, June 19, 2015

COMMENT: Any profitable discussion between Jews and Catholics must be grounded upon truth and not tripe. The term "Judeo-Christine" repeatedly used by Pope Francis, even in his ecology encyclical, was coined at the beginning of the 20th century for the purpose of gaining support in predominantly Christian nations for Zionism. It has no historical foundation in Catholic or Jewish thought. Zionism is the relatively recent religious/political theory, that is rejected by many orthodox Jews, which holds as a first principle that the Jewish people together constitute the promised Messiah. It is not the first false Messiah to whom the Jews have turned. Hebrews faithful to the Old Testament religion who accepted Jesus Christ as the promised Messiah became Catholics. Those who followed the traditions of the Pharisees that were eventually codified in the Talmud rejected the claims of Jesus Christ and are known today as Jews. Today’s Jews and Catholics do not share common "roots" nor do Catholics and Jews "believe in the same God" because neither the Jews nor the Catholics are derived from the same Old Testament religion. Never is this sophistry from Pope Francis heard from a Jew because Jews are not stupid. Nostra Aetate does not "mark the irrevocable rejection of anti-Semitism" because the Catholic Church does not have a history of "anti-Semitism." It is nothing but calumny for Pope Francis to suggest otherwise. Anti-Semitism is the hatred of the descendents of Sem, a son of Noe, because of their genetic make-up. It is hatred based upon race. There are at least a dozen or more ethnic peoples in modern Arabia, the Levant and extending into modern Iraq whose languages are Semitic in origin and many members of these ethnic groups now and throughout history have become Catholics. That includes many ethnic Jews. According to PEW research over 95% of Jewish leaders are in favor of abortion and homosexual "marriage." Morality is derived from doctrine. How is it possible that the doctrinal revelation of the same God can produce an entirely different morality? Historical conflicts between Catholics and Jews have been ultimately based upon specific Jewish moral behavior within Catholic communities. It is calumny to suggest that these conflicts are due to a mindless hatred of Jews because of their race and that they occurred without any actual provocation whatsoever. Jewish power today is only ascendant because nominal Catholics are faithless and immoral. When the faith is strongly held by Catholics, Jewish power is weak. Pope Francis is faithless and cannot defend what he does not believe. He is spiritually more a Jew than a Catholic.

Francis: “All Christians have Jewish roots”

The Pope meets participants of a meeting held by the International Council of Christians and Jews on the 50th anniversary of the Council document “Nostra Aetate”, which “marks the irrevocable rejection of anti-Semitism”. “We are no longer strangers but friends, brothers and sisters”

ANDREA TORNIELI | vatican city | 06/30/2015

“Christians, all Christians have Jewish roots”. Pope Francis reminded people of this in his audience with the participants of an international meeting organised by the International Council of Christians and Jews on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Council declaration, “Nostra Aetate”, which laid down new premises for the relationship between Catholics and Jews.

The Pope was glad that Rome was chosen as the city to host the meeting. Rome is the city “where the Apostles Peter and Paul are buried and both of these figures are essential reference points for all Christians: they are like “pillars” of the Church. And Rome is home to the oldest Jewish community in Western Europe, whose origins date back to the Maccabean period.”

“So Christians and Jews have been living together in Rome for almost 2000 years,” Francis pointed out. “Though that is not to say there have been no tensions between them through the course of history.” The Pope explained that a “real fraternal dialogue” was able to develop “from the Second Vatican Council on, after the promulgation of the “Nostra Aetate” declaration. This document marked the definitive acceptance of Christianity’s Jewish roots and the irrevocable rejection of anti-Semitism.”

Francis went on to mention the “rich fruits it produced,” adding that an appraisal of Jewish and Catholic dialogue can be made with gratitude… Our fragmentary human nature, our mistrust and our pride were overcome thanks to the Spirit of God the Almighty, so that trust and fraternity would continue to grow among us. We are no longer strangers, but friends, brothers and sisters,” who “believe in the same God, Creator of the universe and Lord of history, despite our different perspectives”.

“Christians, all Christians,” Francis continued, “have Jewish roots. For this reason, ever since its creation, the International Council of Christians and Jews has welcomed all the various Christian denominations. Each of these, in their own way, is connected to Judaism, which in turn is characterised by different currents and sensitivities.” The phrase about Christianity’s Jewish “roots” echoes in some way the words used by Pius XI during an audience he had with a group of Belgian pilgrims on 6 September 1938: “anti-Semitism is unacceptable. Spiritually, we are Semites.”

This is how Pope Francis summed up the differences between Christians and Jews: “Christian denominations are unified through Christ; Judaism finds its unity in the Torah. Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the Word of God made flesh in the world; for Jews, the Word of God is to be found above all in the Torah. Both religious traditions have as their foundation, the One God, the God of the Alliance, who reveals himself to mankind through His Word.”

Finally, the Pope recalled that in its reflections on Judaism, the Second Vatican Council “took the ten points of Seelisberg into account. These were drawn up in this Swiss location, in 1947. And these points were closely linked to the foundation of the International Council of Christians and Jews. We can say that an initial idea for a co-operation between your organisation and the Catholic Church was already budding.

Tyranny – Cruel, unjust, oppressive, unreasonable and arbitrary forceful imposition of absolute authority

"At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."

Justice Anthony Kennedy, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 1992, defending the crime of abortion and sodomy while rejecting the authority of Natural Law

"[Anthony Kennedy’s] famed sweet-mystery-of-life passage …. the passage that ate the rule of law."

Antonin Scalia, mocking Kennedy’s judicial mindlessness & philosophical musings

The Voters have “become so corrupt” as to “entrust the government to scoundrels and criminals.”

If the people have a sense of moderation and responsibility, and are most careful guardians of the common weal, it is right to enact a law allowing such a people to choose their own magistrates for the government of the commonwealth. But if, as time goes on, the same people become so corrupt as to sell their votes, and entrust the government to scoundrels and criminals; then the right of appointing their public officials is rightly forfeit to such a people, and the choice devolves to a few good men.

St. Augustine, De Lib. Arb. i, 6

The customs of God’s people and the institutions of our ancestors are to be considered as laws. And those who throw contempt on the customs of the Church ought to be punished as those who disobey the law of God.

St. Augustine, Ep. ad Casulan. xxxvi

The Weight of Immemorial Traditions

All law proceeds from the reason and will of the lawgiver; the Divine and natural laws from the reasonable will of God; the human law from the will of man, regulated by reason. Now just as human reason and will, in practical matters, may be made manifest by speech, so may they be made known by deeds: since seemingly a man chooses as good that which he carries into execution. But it is evident that by human speech, law can be both changed and expounded, in so far as it manifests the interior movement and thought of human reason. Wherefore by actions also, especially if they be repeated, so as to make a custom, law can be changed and expounded; and also something can be established which obtains force of law, in so far as by repeated external actions, the inward movement of the will, and concepts of reason are most effectually declared; for when a thing is done again and again, it seems to proceed from a deliberate judgment of reason. Accordingly, custom has the force of a law, abolishes law, and is the interpreter of law.

St. Thomas Aquinas

Not long after becoming Pope, Bergoglio privately got in touch with one of the liberation theologians most reviled by Rome – the former Franciscan priest Leonardo Boff, who was condemned to ‘obsequious silence’ and suspended from his religions duties by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith for his theology (i.e.: liberation theology and neo-pagan Gaia earth worship ecology). Pope Francis asked Boff to send him his writings on eco-theology in preparation for a major encyclical Francis is considering on environmental matters.

Paul Valley, from his book, Pope Francis: Untying the Knot, 2013

Today, however, we have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.

Pope Francis, Laudato Si, quoting, without attribution, the liberation theologian, pantheist, earth-worshiping, neo-pagan, ex-priest, Leonardo Boff’s title to his book, "Cry of the earth, Cry of the Poor"

John Vennari has written an excellent analysis of Laudato Si. The link to the entire article is posted below which should be read by all.

Religion at the Service of Ecology
Francis’ Laudato Si and the Boff Connection
CATHOLIC FAMILY NEWS | By John Vennari
The purpose of Pope Francis’ Laudato Si is to promote “ecological awareness,” “ecological conversion,” and to advance responsible “ecological citizenship”. Everything else in the document – everything else – is meant to serve this final goal.
Even the most “Catholic parts” of the document at the end – where there is mention of the Eucharist, the Blessed Trinity, Our Lady, St. Joseph – are not for the sake of leading people in devotion to these Divine goods as ends in themselves, but to provide a basis to spur us toward ecological awareness and ecological conversion.
Laudato Si is a blatant case of religion at the service of humanity, religion at the service of ecology.
The spirit of the neo-pagan Leonardo Boff also pervades Francis’ text, which we will spell out below.
Those who take excessive comfort in the “Catholic elements” of Laudato Si miss the point of the document, which is clearly laid out by Pope Francis himself.
In the beginning of the Laudato Si, #15, Francis establishes the six-point plan that explains the document’s central goal: to increase ecological awareness, and the ecological conversion of all planetary citizens.
“It is my hope,” writers Francis, “that this Encyclical Letter … can help us to acknowledge the appeal, immensity and urgency of the challenge we face. I will begin by briefly reviewing several aspects of the present ecological crisis, with the aim of drawing on the results of the best scientific research available today, letting them touch as deeply and provide a concrete foundation for the ethical and spiritual itinerary that follows.” It is here that Francis accepts uncritically – in an alleged magisterial document – the questionable science of climate-change alarmism.
In other words, unlike John XXIII, Francis urges us to listen to the “prophets of doom.”
Francis continues explaining the purpose of his eco-text: “I will then consider some principles drawn from the Judaeo-Christian tradition which can render our commitment to the environment more coherent.”
Please observe what I noted, the religious and scriptural citations in this document are for one reason: “to render our commitment to the environment more coherent.”
Francis goes on, “I will then attempt to get to the roots of the present situation, so as to consider not only its symptoms but also its deepest causes. This will help to provide and approach to ecology which respects our unique place as human beings in the world and our relationship to our surroundings. In light of this reflection, I will advance some broader proposals for dialogue and action, which would involve each of us as individuals, and also affect international policy. Finally, convinced as I am that change is impossible without motivation and a process of education, I will offer some inspired guidelines for human development to be found in the treasures of Christian experience.” In other words, all references in Chapter 6 to the Eucharist, the Trinity, Our Lady, are actually motivations for ecological action.. […….]

I cannot help but look at this approach as a process of manipulation. Nothing Francis says in the final “Catholic section” of Chapter Six leads the soul to conversion from sin, toward the life of sanctifying grace, towards acceptance of perennial Catholic doctrine, toward true devotion to these Catholic goods as ends in themselves.
Rather, these holy images: the Eucharist, the Trinity, Our Lady, Saint Joseph, are mentioned by Francis to urge us toward the naturalistic end of ecological awareness and ecological conversion. This manipulation of supernatural treasures is an abuse of the Papal Office, and indicates the man presently holding the office does not know what the Papacy is. [……]

Read Rest of Article

The Scientific Pantheist Who Advises Pope Francis

The scientist who influenced Laudato Si, and who serves at the Vatican's science office, seems to believe in Gaia, but not in God.

THE STREAM | William M Briggs | Published on June 22, 2015

St. Francis of Assisi’s hymn Laudato Si’ spoke of “Brothers” Sun and Fire and “Sisters” Moon and Water, using these colorful phrases figuratively, as a way of praising God’s creation. These sentimental words so touched Pope Francis that he named his encyclical after this canticle.

Neither Pope Francis nor St. Francis took the words literally, of course. Neither believed that fire was alive and could be talked to or reasoned with or, worse, worshiped. Strange, then, that a self-professed atheist and scientific advisor to the Vatican named Hans Schellnhuber appears to believe in a Mother Earth.

Gaia

The Gaia Principle, first advanced by chemist James Lovelock (who has lately had second thoughts) and microbiologist Lynn Margulis in the 1970s, says that all life interacts with the Earth, and the Earth with all life, to form a giant self-regulating, living system.

This goes far beyond the fact that the Earth’s climate system has feedbacks, which are at the very center of the debate over climate change. In the Gaia Principle, Mother Earth is alive, and even, some think, aware in some ill-defined, mystical way. The Earth knows man and his activities and, frankly, isn’t too happy with him.

This is what we might call “scientific pantheism,” a kind that appeals to atheistic scientists. It is an updated version of the pagan belief that the universe itself is God, that the Earth is at least semi-divine — a real Brother Sun and Sister Water! Mother Earth is immanent in creation and not transcendent, like the Christian God (who is both immanent and transcendent).

What’s this have to do with Schellnhuber? In the 1999 Nature paper “‘Earth system’ analysis and the second Copernican revolution,” he said:

Ecosphere science is therefore coming of age, lending respectability to its romantic companion, Gaia theory, as pioneered by Lovelock and Margulis. This hotly debated ‘geophysiological’ approach to Earth-system analysis argues that the biosphere contributes in an almost cognizant way to self-regulating feedback mechanisms that have kept the Earth’s surface environment stable and habitable for life.

Geo-physiological, in case you missed it. Cognizant, in black and white. So dedicated is Schellnhuber to this belief that he says “the Gaia approach may even include the influence of biospheric activities on the Earth’s plate-tectonic processes.” Not the other way around, mind you, where continental drift and earthquakes effects life, but where life effects earthquakes.

He elaborates:

Although effects such as the glaciations may still be interpreted as over-reactions to small disturbances — a kind of cathartic geophysiological fever — the main events, resulting in accelerated maturation by shock treatment, indicate that Gaia faces a powerful antagonist. Rampino has proposed personifying this opposition as Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction.

Mother Earth gets the flu and instead of white blood cells and a rise in temperature to fend off the infection, it sends white ice and a decrease in temperatures. How? Geophysiologically! I remind the reader that our author, writing in one of the world’s most prominent science journals, does not use these propositions metaphorically. He proposes them as actual mechanisms.

Schellnhuber echoes the theme of a cognizant, i.e. self-aware, planet in another (co-authored) 2004 paper in Nature 2004, “Clinbing the co-evolution ladder,” suggesting again that mankind is an infection, saying that mankind “perturbs … the global ‘metabolism'” of the planet.

Tipping Points

Schellnhuber, a one-time quantum physicist who turned his attention to Mother Earth late in his career, was also co-author of a 2009 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper “Imprecise probability assessment of tipping points in the climate system,” which asked select scientists their gut assessment about the arrival of various “tipping points.” Tipping points are a theme of Schellnhuber’s research.

Tipping points are supposed moments when some doom which might have been avoided if some action had been taken, is no longer possible to avoid and will arrive no matter what. Tipping points have come and gone in climate forecasts for decades now. The promised dooms never arrive but the false prophets never quit. Their intent is less to forecast than to induce something short of panic in order to plead for political intervention. When the old tipping point is past, theorists just change the date, issue new warnings and hope no one will notice.

One of the tipping points Schellnhuber asked about was the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, depending on what the temperature did. All of the selected experts (who answered the questions in 2004 and 2005) gave moderate (~15-25%) to quite high probabilities (50-80%) for this event to have occurred by 2015. The ice did not melt.

From a paper for the Pontifical Academy of Sciences by Hans Schellnhuber and Maria Martin, illustrating the idea of a methane tipping point. As a modification of Michelangelo’s iconic image from the Sistine Chapel, Earth replaces God, and Adam puts Earth at risk of descending into a fiery abyss.

Schellnhuber presented more tipping points to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 2014 in the co-authored paper, “Climate-System Tipping Points and Extreme Weather Events.” In that paper, Schellnhuber has a “scientific” graph with Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel Adam “flicking” a planet earth over a methane tipping point, such that the earth would roll down into a fiery pit labeled the “Warming Abyss.” Hell on earth.

The Problem of People

Schellnhuber is most famous for predicting that the “carrying capacity” of the earth is “below” 1 billion people. When confronted with this, he called those who quoted him “liars.” But he then repeated the same claim, saying, “All I said was that if we had unlimited global warming of eight degrees warming, maybe the carrying capacity of the earth would go down to just 1 billion, and then the discussion would be settled.” And he has often said that this temperature tipping point would be reached — unless “actions” were taken.

The man is suspicious of people. In that same interview he said, “If you want to reduce human population, there are wonderful means: Improve the education of girls and young women.” Since young women already know where babies come from, and since this knowledge tends neither to increase nor decrease population, the “education” he has in mind must be facts about how to avoid the consequences of sex. Austin Ruse discovered a 2009 talk in which Schellnhuber said the earth “will explode” due to resource depletion once the population reaches 9 billion, a number that the UN projects in 2050. Presumably he wants earth to avoid that fate, so he must support the population control that Pope Francis so clearly repudiated in his encyclical.

Bad Religion

Confirmation bias happens when a scientist manipulates an experiment so that he gets the outcome he hoped he would get. When Schellnhuber invites only believers in tipping-points-of-doom to characterize their guesses of this doom, his view that the doom is real will be confirmed. And when he publishes a paper that says, “Scientists say world is doomed” the public and politicians believe it. Scientists skeptical of the doom are dismissed because they are skeptics. This isn’t good science. It’s really bad religion, and a pagan one at that.

Global warming research is characterized by an insider’s club. If you believe, you’re in. If you doubt, you’re out. This is also so at the Pontifical Academies of Science where Schellnhuber was appointed by Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo. The bishop locked scientists with contrary views out of the process, scientists he has repeatedly dismissed as “funded by the oil industry.” Given this, how likely is it that the Holy Father was fully aware of the views of the chief scientist who advised him?

Where Did Pope Francis’ Extravagant Rant Come From?

In his new encyclical, Pope Francis has diverted the gospel into a series of ill-supported political pronouncements.

The Federalist | By Maureen Mullarkey |June 24, 2015

Subversion of Christianity by the spirit of the age has been a hazard down the centuries. The significance of “Laudato Si” lies beyond its stated concern for the climate. Discount obfuscating religious language. The encyclical lays ground to legitimize global government and makes the church an instrument of propaganda—a herald for the upcoming United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference in Paris.

Accommodation by church hierarchy to green dogma has been metastasizing since the UN proclaimed Earth Day in 1970. Two decades later, Kevin Costner went dancing with wolves while the Fraser Institute prefaced “Religion, Wealth, and Poverty” (1990) by Jesuit scholar James V. Schall with this:

. . . the relatively sudden appearance of religion not primarily as worship or doctrine, but as social activism, has been not a little perplexing. Numerous sympathetic critics, many of the faithful, and interested observers sense that something is occurring with vast and unsettling implications for the well-being of the public order and for religion itself. They are not at all sure, however, that what is happening is itself in the best interests of religion or of the poor and outcast for whom it is said to be occurring.

Propelled by the cult of feeling and Golden Age nostalgia—enshrined in the myth of indigenous peoples as peaceable ecologists—that elusive something picked up a tincture of Teilhardian gnosticism as it grew. It bursts on us now as “Laudato Si,” a malignant jumble of dubious science, policy prescriptions, doomsday rhetoric, and what students of Wordsworthian poetics call, in Keats’ derisive phrase, “the egotistical sublime.”

Eco-Activists Thrive on Distortions

The document’s catalogue of distortions and factual errors are those of the climate-change establishment swallowed whole. There is no scientific consensus on man-made global warming, no consensus on the role of human activity in any of the environmental phenomena cited.

Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore abandoned the organization in 1986, highlighting its abandonment of scientific objectivity in favor of political agendas:

By around the mid-1980s, when I left Greenpeace, the public had accepted most of the reasonable things we had been fighting for: stop the bomb, save the whales, stop toxic waste dumping into the earth, water, and air. Some, like myself, realized the job of creating mass awareness of the importance of the environment had been accomplished and it was time to move on from confrontation to sustainable development, seeking solutions. But others seemed bent on lifelong confrontation, ‘up against the man’ ‘smash capitalism’. . . .
In order to remain confrontational as society adopted all the reasonable demands, it was necessary for these anti-establishment lifers to adopt ever more extreme positions, eventually abandoning science and logic altogether in zero-tolerance policies.

That was 30 years ago. Since then, “the ‘green’ movement has not only become more hard line, they have also become irrational and fanatical.”

Climate has fluctuated since the planet formed. Sea levels have been rising for thousands of years with no current increase in the rate. Catastrophic extinctions occurred millions of years before industrialization. Not so long ago in geological time, Arctic islands were covered in sub-tropical forests and no ice covered either pole. Climate temperature has been flat for nearly two decades despite rise in CO2. On it goes.

Enter Jorge Bergolio. Informed objection to the pope’s roster of pending disasters is widely available—but also, at this point, moot. Reducing greenhouse gases has just been deemed a religious obligation. What should concern us now is the ecclesial climate that yielded this extravagant rant.

A Short List of What’s Wrong with ‘Laudato Si’

There is nothing to admire in its assault on market economies, technological progress, and—worse—on rationality itself. Bergolio, whom we know now as Pope Francis, is a limited man. His grasp of economics is straitjacketed by the Peronist culture in which he was raised. “Laudato Si” descends to garish, left-wing boilerplate. The pope is neither a public intellectual, theologian, nor a man of science. Yet he impersonates all three.

The encyclical tells us much about the man who delivers it. Straightaway, it certifies the depth and span of this pope’s megalomania. A breathtaking strut into absolutism, it is addressed not simply to Catholics but, like the “Communist Manifesto,” to the whole world. Tout le monde.

The document is steeped in Third Worldism. The imagined plight of the planet is the work of a rapacious West. Ignoring the role of corruption, mismanagement, and counter-productive ideology in failed or deteriorating states, it gives a ruinous pass to Third World oligarchs and despots. The White Man’s Burden now rises to the ozone layer.

Bergolio’s resentment of First World prosperity is of a piece with his simplistic understanding of the “financial interests” and “financial resources” he condemns. He nurses a Luddite yen to roll back the Industrial Revolution for a fantasy of pre-industrial harmony between man and a virginal Mother Earth. He demonizes the very means that have raised millions out of poverty, and that remain crucial in continuing to raise standards of living among the poor.

Authority Given to Population Controllers

Take no comfort from “Laudato Si’s” restatements of the Catholic Church’s traditional positions on the sanctity of life, the primacy of the family, and rejection of abortion. In this context, orthodoxy and pious expression serve a rancid purpose. They are a Trojan horse, a vehicle for insinuating surrender to pseudo-science and the eco-fascism that requires it.

Promiscuous papal embrace of the climate-change narrative includes a chilling call for the creation of global overseers to manage the Progressive dream: abolition of fossil fuels. The twentieth century gave us stark lessons in the applications of compulsory benevolence. The “global regulatory frameworks” the pope hankers for will, without scruple, crush orthodoxy when it suits.

Or might Bergolio welcome that? His appointment of Hans Schellnhuber to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences raises the question. Schellnhuber is a zealous promoter of the theory of man-made climate change and advocate of population control. He has lobbied for an Earth Constitution, a Global Council, and establishment of a Planetary Court, a transnational legal body with enforcement powers on environmental and population issues. In short, Schellnhuber is the Vatican’s advance man for bureaucratic tyranny on a global scale. It is a telling appointment.

Romanticizing Poverty

“Laudato Si” leans heavily on Romantic personification (“our Sister, Mother Earth . . . cries out to us”) and nature poetry. These are arational devices that evade logical argument. They are employed here to justify left-wing ideology and more concentrated power. The document hands a bouquet to all statists, collectivists, crackpot world-improvers, antagonists to free enterprise, and to freedom itself. Every authoritarian jackal and central planner on the planet can pluck a bloom from it.

Papal suspicion of private property and infatuation with a “theology of poverty” lend sanctimony to the class antagonism hibernating in the church’s “preferential option for the poor,” a problematic concept derived from Liberation Theology. (Problematic because the promise of the resurrection, the ineradicable core of Christianity, is not directed to a class, but to individuals.)

It is reasonable to think that Bergolio is a greater friend to poverty than to the poor.

Trivializing the Gospel

A strain of inadvertent comedy runs through “Laudato Si.” Il Papa assumes the posture of governess to the world—Mary Poppins on the Throne of Peter. Who else could align the magisterium of the Catholic Church with exhortation to turn off the air conditioner, shut the lights, and be sure to recycle? For this Christ died: to atone for petroleum products. And for carbon emissions from private cars carrying only one or two people.

While Christians in the birthplaces of Christianity are crucified and beheaded for their faith, young girls are kidnapped and sold for the price of a pack of cigarettes, our encyclical whines: “In many parts of the planet, the elderly lament that once beautiful landscapes are now covered with rubbish.”

There is more in that letter-to-the-editor vein: “Neighbourhoods, even those recently built, are congested, chaotic and lacking in sufficient green space. We were not meant to be inundated by cement, asphalt, glass and metal, and deprived of physical contact with nature.”

Of course not. We were meant to live in a beautiful, walled-in enclave like Vatican City with splendid gardens, a throng of world-class museums, its own armed gendarmerie aligned with Interpol, and an impenetrable immigration policy.

Gospel quotations are bent to serve. In the chapter “The Gaze of Jesus,” we read this: “98. Jesus lived in full harmony with creation, and others were amazed: ‘What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?’ (Mt 8:27).”

That passage from Matthew has not a thing to do with harmony. Rather, it tells of Jesus’ dominion over nature. It is a statement of authority, of lordship over the natural order. The verse complements one from John: “He that cometh from above is above all.” By abolishing the scriptural intuition of power and might, the truncated quotation makes Jesus a screen on which to project a chimera of cosmic equality.

Intellectual and Moral Confusion

Luke is similarly falsified by omission: “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God.” Jesus’ intention lies in the sweetness of the verse that follows—his assurance that man is more than the sparrows. But “Laudato Si” suggests otherwise by leaving out the fulfillment of its own quotation.

Resurgent Islam and the spread of Sharia are the church’s enemies, not oil, coal, and gas.

Replete with cooing reference to Francis of Assisi, “Laudato Si” ignores the single aspect of Assisi’s “Il Poverello” most relevant to our time. It is not the fey proto-hippie of high-fructose legend that speaks best to us now. It is the would-be martyr who sailed to Egypt alongside Crusaders to preach the gospel to a Muslim sultan.

Resurgent Islam and the spread of Sharia are the church’s enemies, not oil, coal, and gas. None are poorer than those who live, despised, in the path of ISIS. Where, then, is the encyclical calling for the conversion of Islam away from its murderous climate of hatred? Instead, the Vicar of Christ calls all the world—intending primarily the West—to “ecological conversion.”

Intellectual and moral confusion of such magnitude is a judgment on the ecclesial culture that produced it and the popular culture that consents to it.

Maureen Mullarkey is an artist who writes on art and culture. Her weblog appears First Things.

Common Cause Among Good Friends

Obama calls for world leaders to heed Pope Francis’s message

The US president hails the Pope's intervention as 'clear and powerful'

CATHOLIC HERALD | By Danny Wiser | Friday, 19 Jun 2015

The President of the United States has said he wants fellow world leaders to reflect on Pope Francis’s encyclical. Laudato Si’, published yesterday, called for humanity to change its approach to the environment and the way it judged progress. Barack Obama spoke of the responsibility that his own job title brings in leading the way towards a change in global environmental policy.“I welcome His Holiness Pope Francis’s encyclical, and deeply admire the Pope’s decision to make the case – clearly, powerfully, and with the full moral authority of his position – for action on global climate change,” he said.

“As we prepare for global climate negotiations in Paris this December, it is my hope that all world leaders and all God’s children will reflect on Pope Francis’s call to come together to care for our common home.“We have a profound responsibility to protect our children, and our children’s children, from the damaging impacts of climate change.”

In September the Pontiff will be travelling to the United States for the first time. His trip will begin in Washington where he will meet Obama and speak at Congress. Also echoing Obama’s sentiment was the United Nations secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon. He said he believed a “new dialogue” had to be opened regarding the future of the planet. He said: “It is an issue of social justice, human rights and fundamental ethics.” Ki-moon will also be addressing the United Nations General Assembly in September to celebrate the body’s 70th anniversary.

A statement by a United Nations spokesman said: “The secretary-general therefore urges governments to place the global common good above national interests and to adopt an ambitious, universal climate agreement in Paris this year.

“The secretary-general welcomes the contributions of all religious leaders and people of influence in responding to the climate challenge and in strengthening sustainable development.”

Joe Sobran predicted in 2003 that the Supreme Court by declaring Sodomy Laws as discriminatory and therefore, unconstitutional would lead certainly to a declaration legalizing "homosexual marriage." Now it has come to pass. Let's make another prediction. Because the U.S. has officially destroyed the legal standing of marriage, God will certainly destroy the U.S.

Sodomy and the Constitution

by Joe Sobran | Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation | September 2003

Suddenly, in midsummer, everyone from USA Today to the Vatican is talking about the same topic: homosexual marriage. This is a little strange, since nobody, give or take an eccentric Roman emperor or two, has ever talked about it before. It threatens to eclipse the war in Iraq.

I feel a certain sympathy, almost a sense of solidarity, with sane homosexuals -- the silent majority, as it were. From time immemorial there have been men who have been chiefly attracted, erotically, to other men or, more commonly, boys. I don't quite get it, I can't regard it as anything but abnormal, I suppose one should disapprove of it, but there it is. I agree with C.S. Lewis, who, when asked about it, declined to discuss it at length because it wasn't among the temptations that assailed him.

Of course this isn't necessarily rational: I'm not especially tempted to commit ax murder either, but I'm quite willing to condemn it, if anyone doubts that I oppose it in principle. I wouldn't want everyone to be an ax murderer, and if pressed I'll admit that I wouldn't want everyone to be homosexual. Our Creator has disposed most of us otherwise, and that's fine with me.
As the woman in a James Thurber cartoon effuses to a startled male, "I just love the idea of there being two sexes, don't you?" Amen, lady. Where the opposite sex is concerned, I've always been inclined to swoon a bit.

But even if I were otherwise inclined, I would still, I trust, see the point of there being two sexes. I'd recognize it as a shortcoming in myself that I was unable to respond to the other sex -- viz., the female -- in the way that nature seems to have ordained. And here, if I may presume to say so, I think that I speak for most sodomites. In the "gay marriage" debate, American public discussion has maintained its usual wretched level. And as usual, the liberals don't realize how silly they sound. There have been the routine complaints about old men in the Vatican trying to control others' sex lives, refusing to adapt to the times, lacking the charity enjoined by Christ, hypocritically ignoring the Church's own problem with pedophile priests, et cetera, et cetera.

All this is miles off the point. Homosexuals already have the right to marry, even if they can't or won't exercise it - that is, the right to marry someone of the opposite sex. This is supposedly a heartless thing to say, but what is being demanded now is not the extension of a right, but the total redefinition of a thing that existed long before the Catholic Church came along.

The basic reason for marriage is neither religious nor romantic; it's practical. It connects a man with his children (and their mother), providing for their support, clarifying property rights, establishing inheritance, and so forth. Every society has some version of it. Every society also has homosexuality, especially pederasty, but even those societies most tolerant of different sexual practices have seen no need for same-sex "marriage," simply because it's an absurdity.
To put it clinically, children are seldom conceived in the lower end of the digestive tract.

So as not to prejudice the case, think only of non-Christian cultures: Chinese, Japanese, African, Arab, Viking, Aztec, Greek, Roman, Inca, Babylonian, Indian, Persian, Apache, Sioux, Eskimo, Hawaiian, as many as you like. Has the notion of same-sex marriage ever occurred to even one of them? Of course not, because it's a contradiction in terms. Which is really all there is to say about the matter.

It isn't even necessary to disapprove of homosexuality in order to see that it can never have anything to do with marriage. This is where conservatives are getting as confused as liberals. Both sides think the issue is basically a moral one; a question of what kind of sexual behavior society is going to bless or condemn.

But the case would be just the same if homosexuality were regarded as the healthy norm and heterosexuality as a shameful deviation. It would still be necessary to make arrangements for the offspring of all those filthy "breeders." It would be a question not of rights, but of responsibilities. In that case marriage might be inflicted as a sort of penalty, but it would be indispensable anyway. "You have to teach these people the consequences of their behavior."

So why, after so many millennia, has this weird subject suddenly come up now? Only in America, one sighs. For one thing, there are many material incentives -- employees' benefits and government entitlements for which spouses are eligible - to get married, and these are also incentives to broaden the definition of marriage; that is, to apply the word marriage to domestic partnerships that aren't really marriages at all.

And in today's liberal culture, any basic social distinction can be stigmatized as "discrimination" - not discrimination in the old and sane sense of keeping unlike things separate, but in the current punitive sense of discriminating "against." If you suffer any disadvantage from the ability of others to tell things apart, you now become a "victim" of discrimination, and the state must do something about it.

Which brings us to the practical nub of the present issue. It can be summed up in two words: Anthony Kennedy.

When Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court wrote the majority opinion striking down a Texas sodomy law at the end of the Court's last term, liberals and conservatives alike saw the handwriting on the wall. Kennedy objected to that law on grounds that it "discriminated" against homosexuals as a class or group.

It didn't take a wizard to foresee the next step: Kennedy and his colleagues will very likely rule, in the fairly near future, that all laws based on the traditional and universal definition of marriage are also unconstitutionally "discriminatory."

Kennedy may not think very clearly, but nobody can deny that he thinks big. Overthrowing marriage itself would be a "historic" judicial act, sure to win liberal applause.

Naive people may wonder just where the Court gets off, redefining marriage. Well, why not? The Court has already redefined human life.

And how do such things come about? We owe it all to the Fourteenth Amendment. And thereby hangs a tale.

Ratified under duress after the Civil War, the Fourteenth forbids any state to "deny to any person ... the equal protection of the laws." These few words have produced more judicial mischief than all the rest of the U.S. Constitution.

Originally their meaning was narrow and specific. After the war, the Republican Congress wanted to pass a civil rights act to protect Southern Negroes, newly freed from slavery, from being denied the normal rights of citizenship. But the Federal Government had no authority to pass the act: under the federal principle as laid down in the Tenth Amendment, this was an area reserved to the separate states. The Fourteenth would provide a Constitutional basis for the act.

There is a huge historical irony here. The Fourteenth was necessary because Congress and the Federal judiciary still took the Tenth seriously. But over time, the judiciary has used the Fourteenth to nullify - and in effect repeal - the Tenth. To adapt a phrase of Justice Antonin Scalia, the Equal Protection clause is the clause that devoured the Constitution.

The first great milestone in the Supreme Court's liberal activism was its 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. There it held that there can be no such thing as "separate but equal": "Separate facilities are inherently unequal." Logically, this was dubious (it would rule out separate restrooms for the sexes, for example). But the Court was feeling its oats, and ever since then it has constantly broadened the meaning of "the equal protection of the laws."

Countless state and local laws have been struck down on this pretext -- so many that we can safely say that all state laws now exist only by sufferance of the Court. Today, no powers are firmly "reserved to the states, or to the people," because there is no effective check on the judiciary. The other two branches have abdicated.

The Tenth Amendment was finally destroyed in 1973 by Roe v. Wade, which announced - again citing the Fourteenth Amendment -- that the states didn't even have the Constitutional authority to protect unborn children from violent death. If the Court could strip the states of even that basic power, federalism in America was truly defunct. But though the ruling spawned a powerful anti-abortion movement, nobody proposed to discipline the Court itself. Everyone saw the moral and practical upshot of Roe, but hardly anyone saw the Constitutional implications.

Thanks to its expansive interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court's most arbitrary word is law. And Americans have passively accepted this. The Court routinely usurps vast powers without resistance or opposition.

Now Justice Kennedy has served notice that the Fourteenth can be invoked to redefine marriage itself, under the Equal Protection Clause. He and perhaps a majority of his colleagues are plainly disposed to find traditional marriage laws unconstitutionally "discriminatory."

Republicans in Congress, apparently supported by President Bush, want to amend the Constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. That is, they want to amend the Constitution to anticipate a grotesque misinterpretation of it and prevent an assault on marriage overwhelmingly opposed by the American people. But this approach is totally wrong-headed and inadequate. It accepts the Court's usurpations as legitimate, without challenging the Court's authority to commit them.

Now, if ever, is the time to hit the Court where it lives. Kennedy and his colleagues must be told that they are flirting with impeachment and removal from office, if they dare to tamper with the institution of marriage. Nothing less will do; the rule of law itself is at stake. It's long past time for the Court to be stripped of its immunity from Constitutional remedies.

COMMENT:

The word marriage and matrimony are derived from the Latin word, mater, meaning, "mother." Obviously, a homosexual union cannot produce a "mother." The very term "homosexual marriage" is an oxymoron. But be that as it may, this is the stupidity that the highest "legal-minds" (another "oxymoron") in the U.S. have embraced as a 'legal right'. We can at least be thankful the supreme court has denied any standing to Natural Law so that the Author of Natural Law cannot be blamed for this outrage. The U.S. government must take full and complete responsibility for the consequences of their stupidity, which unfortunately now requires the Catholic Church to make a distinction that during any other period in history would appear ridiculous.

The Catholic Church must now make a moral and canonical distinction between the definition of "marriage" and the definition of "Sacramental Matrimony." "Sacramental Matrimony" is the holy conjugal union of a baptized man and a baptized woman who are free from impediments, which binds them for life to a life lived in common and together for the purpose of begetting and educating children in the Catholic faith. The union can only be terminated by the death of at least one party to the union.

"Marriage" is now legally the union between one or more things for the purpose of sexual pleasure until one or another of these things no longer derives sexual pleasure from the union which thereby can be dissolved provided all legal and judicial fees are paid in full. What these "things" are as to their nature and/or number remains an entirely open question for future judicial determination, recognizing fully, a priori, that any "discrimination" as to the nature and/or number of these things would be, prima facie, a violation of the 14th amendment.

The Catholic Church can have nothing to do with "marriage," but can and does have everything to do with "Sacramental Matrimony." Furthermore, the Catholic Church should no longer require or accept a "marriage license" issued by any state for the purpose of providing a location, witnesses, and blessings for the man and woman contracting Sacramental Matrimony. The separation of Church and state should now be understood to mean that the state has no substantial or vital interest in Sacramental Matrimony and therefore no jurisdiction over the union, or the children produced by such union, including their number and their education.

COMMENT: Yes, "the conservative critique is exhausted," but what about the true traditional critique? That is altogether a different question. The traditional critique offered by Ss. Peter & Paul Roman Catholic Mission has never been examined because the claim that "clericalism is dead" is true excepting its open opposition and hatred of the Catholic Faith. The "Open Letters" on the Mission web page document years of mindless clericalist tyranny indifferent to serious doctrinal, moral, liturgical and canonical questions. In this article Fr. Peter Daly documents the decline and possible collapse of the Catholic Church and identifies accurately the root cause as the "sins of priests," but he has no real idea what the most important of those "sins" are. Fr. Daly professes his 'dogmatic' allegiance to the Religion of Scientism when he affirms, "the natural sciences trump Scripture today." Fr. Peter Daly is an apostate Catholic and does not even know it.

Could what happened in Delphi happen in Rome?

Fr. Peter Daly | June 15, 2015 | Parish Diary

[.....]Religions rise. Religions fall. Is the Catholic church going out of business?

It's a fair question.

Religion seems to be disappearing from Western culture, the homeland of Roman Catholicism.

The Pew Research Center report "America's Changing Religious Landscape" documented the rise of the religiously unaffiliated among American adults. The so called "nones" rose from 16 percent of American adults in 2007 to 23 percent in 2014. In the United States, all Christian groups lost "market share": Evangelicals were down 0.9 percent, Catholics down 3.1 percent, and mainline Protestants down 3.4 percent.

In only seven years, American Catholics lost about 3 million adult members, easily wiping out every single convert we made through RCIA, the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults.

No matter how hard we paddle in the new evangelization, we are carried downstream by the current of culture. A Religion News Service analysis on the Pew study carried the headline: "Forget the numbers. The big story is that religion has lost social influence."

This is especially true for young adults, who are increasingly unaffiliated with religion. Only about 56 percent of young millennials (people born between 1990 and 1996) have a religion, while 78 percent of baby boomers are church members. As the boomers die off, the church declines.

A look at the statistics about the Catholic church in the U.S. may give us cause to think we are "circling the drain." A few bullet points tell the tale:

New York archdiocese announced the consolidation of 112 parishes in October 2014, effectively closing 31 parishes. In In the last 25 years, we have a net loss of 2,137 parishes nationwide: In 1990, there were 19,620 U.S. Catholic churches. Today, there are 17,464.

· The December, it announced that it is considering closing another 38 parishes .

· The Boston archdiocese has closed more than 125 parishes in the past 25 years. In November 2012, it announced the consolidation of the remaining 288 parishes into 135 "parish collaboratives."

· In the Chicago archdiocese, Catholics declined from 43 percent of the population in 1980 to 35 percent in 2015. Chicago had 1,000 fewer priests in 2014 than it had in 1980. In last 20 years of Cardinal Francis George's administration, everything was down: 2,000 fewer nuns, 21 fewer parishes, 74 fewer elementary schools and 11 fewer high schools. There were also 10,000 fewer baptisms, half as many weddings, and 33 percent fewer funerals annually.

· Nationwide, Catholic priests are an endangered species. Today, there are 3,496 U.S. parishes that have no resident pastor. There are nearly 20,000 fewer priests in the United States than there were 25 years ago, dropping from 52,124 to 38,275.

· Half the diocesan priests in the United States will retire in the next five years. Many dioceses in the U.S. do not have sufficient funds to pay their pensions.

· Religious orders of brothers and sisters are disappearing even faster than diocesan priests. There are only about 50,000 U.S. nuns today, down from almost 180,000 in 1965. The only really bright spot in the vocations picture is the permanent deaconate. We have more than 17,000 permanent deacons, up from about 900 in 1975. Maybe marriage helps.

· Sacramental participation is way down. Today, only 24 percent of U.S. Catholics go to Mass on a typical Sunday. In 1970, it was closer to 50 percent. In 2014, there were less than half as many Catholic weddings as in 1980; more than 200,000 fewer infant baptisms than in 1980; and 50,000 fewer funerals than in 1990.

[.....]Internationally, we have even bigger problems. The passage of the same-sex marriage referendum in Ireland by 62 percent indicates the church has lost authority on sexual issues. In Vienna, the archdiocese announced a plan in 2012 to close more than 500 parishes over the next 10 years, reducing their parishes from 660 to 150 because of a shortage of priests. Every day in Latin America, we lose thousands to evangelicals and Pentecostals.

So it's not a foolish question. Are we going out of business? [.....]

In my little world, things are fine. The pews in my parish are mostly full. The bills are paid. But I can't help but hear the echo of problems in other places. Worst of all, much of our decline comes from self-inflicted wounds, the sins of priests.[.....]

The conservative critique is exhausted. We cannot turn back the clock or ignore the changed cultural landscape. This is not a matter of liturgical style or catechetical instruction. The natural sciences trump Scripture today. Women in our culture are no longer subservient to or dependent on men. Gay people have finally found their voice and their self-respect in Western culture. Clericalism is dead. [.....]

[Fr. Peter Daly is the pastor of St. John Vianney parish in Prince Frederick, Md.]

COMMENT: Yes, the situation is "grim." So much for the superficial tripe of the annual World Youth Day celebration which has been going on since 1986. The Catholic bishops in this country have followed a plan-of-action for thirty years that has produced nothing but ruin. From a purely practical perspective, this is evidence of insanity. Unless of course, ruin is the goal.

The situation with US Catholic youth actually is grim

Christian Smith, Ph.D. | June 13, 2015 | Essay

Many American Catholics are worried about the apparently weak religious faith, practice and commitment of Catholic youth today and what it portends for the church’s future. Some observers are less concerned, however. Four Catholic sociologists -- William D'Antonio, James Davidson, Mary Gautier, and Katherine Meyer -- for example, have suggested that some scholars (including yours truly) overstate the magnitude of the problem. The title of their Dec. 6 NCR essay , for instance, summarizes their view about my recent book, Young Catholic America: “Assumptions in study on young Catholics lead to unnecessarily grim outlook.” I wish they were correct. But they are not. The situation, in fact, is grim.

[......] In their piece, my colleagues did not mention two crucial facts about our differing studies, the understanding of which helps to explain why we come to such different conclusions about Catholic youth.

First, the research of my four colleagues [.....] is blind to “defections” of youth (and adults) from the faith, focusing only on those who are still in the fold. But that is like trying to evaluate college retention or company job satisfaction by only studying students who finish their degrees or studying current employees while ignoring the college drop-outs and disgruntled workers who already left the firm. The view produced is badly distorted.

By contrast, my National Study of Youth and Religion is a longitudinal panel study that tracked a large sample of the same youth respondents over 10 years of their lives. We are thus able to identify at any given time not only current Catholics, but also ex-Catholics. And we find (and will publish in a forthcoming report) that fully one-half of youth who self-identified as Catholic as teenagers no longer identified as Catholics 10 years later in their 20s. That is a 50 percent loss through attrition in one decade. If that number is not grim, I do not know what is.

This helps explain why, according to research by the Pew Research Center on Religion and Public Life, one in 10 adult Americans (13 percent) today is an ex-Catholic. So the reason D'Antonio, Davidson, Gautier and Meyer can disagree with my conclusions is not because they have relevant evidence that says something different; they do not even have the empirical evidence necessary to speak to the question at hand.

A second difference, [.....] their research relied on analyses of survey data alone, my study collected and analyzed not only survey data but also about 1,000 total in-depth personal interviews with teenagers and emerging adults around the country. [.....]

Here, then, is the moral of this story. What may seem to be minor distinctions in research design often make huge differences in the kinds of evidence, comparisons and conclusions that research can produce and support. The survey studies of D'Antonio, Davidson, Gautier and Meyer are good for comparing differences in attitudes among existing adult American Catholic across generations (at least, the minority that is willing to answer surveys). But they are simply incapable of addressing and answering the question of the church’s more recent (lack of) success in forming and retaining its youth. Studies that are designed specifically to answer that question, by contrast, make this fact very clear, like it or not: The situation regarding Catholic youth and the church is indeed very grim.

[Christian Smith is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame.]

"Culturally Insensitive" - Obviously the faculty and students at the Jesuit founded St. Louis University are so culturally uninformed, so culpably ignorant of Catholic and Native-American history, that they have never read anything concerning the Jesuit Missionary work throughout the Americas, particularly regarding the actual living conditions of the Indians and the sacrifices of the Missionaries who brought the Truth of Christ to them with the hope of eternal salvation.

St. Louis University moves sculpture to display in art museum

Compiled by Global Pulse staff | June 2, 2015

A U.S. Catholic university has removed a statue that depicted a Jesuit missionary praying over Native Americans following complaints that the statue was culturally insensitive. The metal statue at St. Louis University features Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, a Belgian Jesuit priest who worked with Native Americans in the Midwestern and Western United States in the mid-19th century. The missionary is seen praying over two Native Americans dressed in traditional clothing. For decades, the statue was prominently located outside the university’s Fusz Hall in the center of the Catholic university. It had generated several complaints from students, faculty and alumni for being a symbol of colonialism. University spokesman Clayton Berry told St. Louis Magazine that the statue will be moved to a display in the university’s art museum....

The Native American Savages were no more “savage” than the native German savages before St. Boniface, the native Celtic savages before St. Patrick, the native Gallic savages before St. Martin, etc., etc., etc. This act by the administration of St. Louis University is not a repudiation of “racism” or “colonialism”, it is an affirmation of savagery.

On the most solemn occasions the Pawnees add a bloody sacrifice to the oblation of the calumet; and according to what they pretend to have learned from the bird and the Star, the sacrifice most agreeable to the Great Spirit is that of an enemy immolated in the most cruel manner. It is impossible to listen without horror to the recital of the circumstances that attended the sacrifice of a young female, of the Scioux tribe, in the course of the year 1837. It was about seed time, and they thus sought to obtain a plentiful harvest. I shall here give the substance of the detailed account, which I have given of it in a former letter. This young girl, was only aged fifteen; after having been well treated and fed for six months, under pretence that a feast would be prepared for her at the opening of the summer season, felt rejoiced when she saw the last days of winter roll by. The day fixed upon for the feast having dawned, she passed through all the preparatory ceremonies, and was then arrayed in her finest attire, after which she was placed in a circle of warriors, who seemed to escort her for the purpose of showing her deference. Besides their wonted arms, each one of these warriors had two pieces of wood, which he had received at the hands of the maiden. The latter had on the preceding day carried three posts, which she had helped to fell in the neighboring forest: but supposing that she was walking to a triumph, and her mind being filled with the most pleasing ideas, the victim advanced towards the place of her sacrifice with those mingled feelings of joy and timidity, which, under similar circumstances, are naturally excited in the bosom of a girl of her age.

During their march, which was rather long, the silence was interrupted only by religious songs and invocations to the Master of life, so that whatever affected the senses, tended to keep up the deceitful delusion under which she had been till that moment. But as soon as she had reached the place of sacrifice, where nothing was seen but fires, torches, and instruments of torture, the delusion began to vanish and her eyes were opened to the fate that awaited her. How great must have been the surprise, and soon after the terror which she felt, when she found it no longer possible to doubt of their intentions? Who could describe her poignant anguish? She burst into tears; she raised loud cries to heaven — she begged, entreated, conjured her executioners to have pity on her youth, her innocence, her parents, but all in vain: neither tears, nor cries, nor the promises of a trader who happened to be present, softened the hearts of these monsters. She was tied with ropes to the trunk and branches of two trees, and the most sensitive parts of her body were burnt with torches made of the wood which she had with her own hands distributed to the warriors.— When her sufferings lasted long enough to weary the fanatical fury of her ferocious tormentors, the great chief shot an arrow into her heart; and in an instant this arrow was followed by a thousand others, which, after having been violently turned and twisted in the wounds, were torn from them in such a manner that her whole body presented but one shapeless mass of mangled flesh, from which the blood streamed on all sides. When the blood had ceased to flow, the greater sacrificator approached the expiring victim, and to crown so many atrocious acts, tore out her heart with his own hands, and after uttering the most frightful imprecations against the Scioux nation, devoured the bleeding flesh, amid the acclamations of his whole tribe. The mangled remains were then left to be preyed upon by wild beasts, and when the blood had been sprinkled on the seed, to render it fertile, all retired to their cabins, cheered with the hope of obtaining a copious harvest.

Such horrid cruelties could not but draw down the wrath of heaven upon their nation. And in fact, as soon as the report of the sacrifice reached the Scioux, they burned with the desire to avenge their honor, and swore to a man that they would not rest satisfied till they should have killed as many Pawnees as the young victim had bones in her fingers and joints in her body. More than a hundred Pawnees have at length fallen beneath their tomahawks, and their fury was afterwards more increased by the massacre of their wives and children, of which I have spoken before.

At the sight of so much cruelty, who could mistake the agency of the enemy of mankind, and who would refuse to exert himself for the purpose of bringing these benighted nations to the knowledge of the true Mediator, and of the only true sacrifice, without which, it is impossible to appease the divine justice.

Rev. and dear Father, yours,

Rev. P. J. De Smet, S.J., Letter to Jesuit Superiors, Banks of the Platte River, June 2, 1841

If what he has to say is, “foolish or perhaps a heresy” then he should try his best to not think out loud!

[…..] And it comes to my mind to say something that may be foolish or perhaps a heresy, I don't know.[…..]

Pope Francis, message to John 17 (Ecumenical) Movement, May 23, 2015

Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior general of the SSPX, publically admitted that he exercises canonical jurisdiction delegated from Rome. This claim was confirmed by Archbishop Guido Pozzo, Secretary of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei! Yes, we agree, “A beautiful contradiction indeed”! This means, as we have said long ago, that Bishop Fellay has privately and secretly before Vatican officials taken the 1989 Profession of Faith and Oath of Fidelity and thus has been working for years to subject the SSPX under Novus Ordo authority!

"We are labeled now as being irregular, at best. “Irregular” means you cannot do anything, and so for example they have prohibited us from saying Mass in the churches in Rome, for the Dominican sisters who had their pilgrimage in Rome in February. They say, “No, you cannot, because you are irregular”. And these people [who] say that, were people of [Pontifical Commission] Ecclesia Dei.

"Now, sometimes, unfortunately, also priests do silly things, and they need to be punished. And when it is very, very serious, we have to make recourse to Rome. So we do. And what does the Congregation of the Faith do? Well, they did appoint me as the judge for this case. So I was appointed by Rome, by the Congregation of the Faith, to make judgments, canonical Church judgments on some of our priests who belong to a non-existent Society for them. And so, once again, a beautiful contradiction indeed."

Bishop Bernard Fellay, SSPX, Conference at Our Lady of the Angels Church, May 10, 2015

Pope Francis’ Appointed Commissar over the Franciscan of the Immaculate Dies

The man who was hand-picked by Pope Francis and directed by the Congregation for Religious to oversee the destruction of the Franciscans Friars of the Immaculate because they harbored secret traditional sentiments, Capuchin Fr. Fidenzio Volpi, has died after suffering a stroke last April. His death was announced by the Lombardy Province of the Capuchins. If his death was mourned by anyone, the press released did not say. Fr. Vopli was preceded in death by the Franciscans of the Immaculate for which he was the proximate cause. Let us hope that the stroke left him with sufficient soundness of mind to be able to make a good and sincere confession before his death. Obedience to an act of injustice that is objectively sinful only mitigates guilt, it can never excuse it.

Feminism Unmasked

It’s called ‘She Guardian,’ by Russian artist Dashi Namdakov who spent the last two years sculpting the towering figure out of four massive tons of bronze. The statue measures 36-feet high. Mr. Namdakov says the attention-grabbing piece is intended to express a sense of "maternal protectiveness." The feminist work is “symbolic of female strength and a desire to care for the young.” But, with a mother like this, it is not surprising that there are no pups being cared for in the sculpture. The demonic statue by an odd coincidence has been erected in a place of precedence at the Marble Arch located opposite the North-East corner of Hyde Park in London with Buckingham Palace opposite the South-East corner of the park. The Marble Arch is where the infamous Tyburn gallows was located for the public execution of common criminals along with faithful Catholics. It is to Tyburn that Catholic recusants, such as St. Edmund Campion, Blessed Ralph Sherwin, Blessed Alexander Briant, St. Oliver Plunkett, etc., etc., etc., were dragged from Newgate Prison to be 'hung, drawn and quartered.' This feminist bitch is overlooking the hallowed ground of Catholic martyrs. It only needs a sign warning not to pet or feed the animal.

Baptism alone unites the individual Faithful to Christ

The death of Christ is the universal cause of man's salvation: but a universal cause has to be applied to particular effects. Thus it was found necessary for certain remedies to be administered to men by way of bringing Christ's death into proximate connexion with them. Such remedies are the Sacraments of the Church. And these remedies had to be administered with certain visible signs: -- first, because God provides for man, as for other beings, according to his condition; and it is the condition of man's nature to be led through sensible things to things spiritual and intelligible: secondly, because instruments must be proportioned to the prime cause; and the prime and universal cause of man's salvation is the Word Incarnate: it was convenient therefore that the remedies, through which that universal cause reaches men, should resemble the cause in this, that divine power works invisibly through visible signs.

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, Book IV, Chap. 56.

Ecclesia Dei Communities – Faithful Geldings

I myself saw, in the years after 1988, how the return of communities which had been separated from Rome changed their interior attitudes; I saw how returning to the bigger and broader (Modernist) Church enabled them to move beyond one-sided positions and broke down rigidity so that positive energies could emerge for the whole.

Pope Benedict XVI, Papal Letter to bishops regarding the lifting of the SSPX excommunications, March 10, 2009

The Problem for Pope Francis - Those who "love" him are not among the Faithful Catholics, and the Church is not his to corrupt but God's to defend. When persecution comes, those who "love" Pope Francis will be long gone and a Catholic restoration will follow! This interview attacks Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller's and the CDF's efforts to defend Catholic Truth of Marriage.

'No turning back' - Trusted theologian says Francis is stronger than adversaries inside the curia

Robert Mickens | Rome | May 11, 2015

The theologian widely acknowledged as the principal ghostwriter of Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, says the Jesuit pontiff has already begun changing the Church in ways that cannot be reversed.

Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernandez, rector of the Catholic University of Argentina, said that, even if the pope’s adversaries tried to turn back the clock in the next pontificate, the People of God would not stand for it.

“The people are with (Francis) and not with his few adversaries,” he said in an exclusive published Sunday in the Italian daily, Corriere della Sera.

The 52-year-old Fernandez is one of the pope's principal theological advisers. Francis, who had to fight Vatican opposition to name his fellow countryman university rector in 2009, appointed the theologian titular archbishop only two months after he became pope.

The archbishop said the 78-year-old Jesuit pope is patiently laying the groundwork for reforms that cannot be undone.

“No, there’s no turning back,” he told the paper’s highly respected political analyst, Massimo Franco.

“If and when Francis is no longer pope, his legacy will remain strong,” the archbishop said.

“For example, the pope is convinced that the things he’s already written or said cannot be condemned as an error. Therefore, in the future anyone can repeat those things without fear of being sanctioned,” he added.

Archbishop Fernandez is one of the leading theological aides to the pope, who last year was appointed to a special commission inside the Synod of Bishops.

Below is our English translation of the bulk of his interview in the May 10 edition of Corriere della Sera.

Archbishop Fernandez, in the two years since the pontificate began has resistance to the pope inside the Vatican increased or diminished?

“I don't live in Rome and I can only talk about what I see when I go there. You have to make distinctions. I saw that some people in Rome were shocked at first, but now they understand the meaning of what Francis is calling for and they're happy to be part of this path (he’s set out) for the Church, and they are helping the pope. Others tend to say: we’ll do what we can, go along with him as long as he’s here, because in the end he’s the pope. This group seems to be in the majority, even though I can’t confirm that. Others — really just a few — are, instead, going their own way. And from what one can see, they tend to ignore Francis’ teachings.”

Could you give us an example?

“I've read that some people say the Roman Curia is an essential part of the Church’s mission, or that a Vatican prefect is the sure compass that prevents the Church from falling into ‘light’ thought; or that this prefect ensures the unity of the faith and guarantees a serious theology for the pope. But Catholics, reading the Gospel, know that Christ assured special guidance and enlightenment for the pope and bishops all together, but not for a prefect or another structure. When you hear such things it almost seems as if the pope were their representative, or was someone who came to cause trouble and needs to be controlled.”

It doesn't seem like that's a line that's being followed, though?

“It’s not, because most of the People of God love Francis. Maybe the council of nine cardinals could help to better clarify how far the jurisdiction of the most important prefects extends. But the thing that worries me most is that theologians are not offering new analyses on the Church, the theological reasons for its structures, the jurisdiction of national and regional episcopal conferences and the proper place of the Roman Curia in relation to the pope and the College of Bishops.

Some say Francis is isolated. Do you think that's true?

“Not at all. The people are with him and not with his few adversaries. This pope first filled St. Peter’s Square with crowds and then began changing the Church. Above all, for this reason he is not isolated. The people sense in him the fragrance of the Gospel, the joy of the Spirit, the closeness of Christ and thus they feel the Church is like their home. But I would also say that he has a wide circle of people from whom he asks advice on various issues. He listens to more people than just those in the dicasteries of the curia, and in this way he is closer to the different voices in the Church and in society. I’m referring to those people he receives at Casa Santa Marta, to the requests that arrive in letters, to the encounters in the squares. It’s exactly for this reason that today the Church is listened to more in the international debates and world leaders look at her with great respect.”

No doubt, and in a deep and clear way, especially at the beginning. And yet, more recently, there's a certain anxiety. Things are proceeding more slowly. The reform of the curia seems to be stalled?

“The pope goes slow because he wants to be sure that the changes have a deep impact. The slow pace is necessary to ensure the effectiveness of the changes. He knows there are those hoping that the next pope will be turn everything back around. If you go slowly it’s more difficult to turn things back. He makes this clear when he says ‘time is greater than space.’”

When Francis says he will have a short pontificate doesn’t this help his adversaries?

“The pope must have his reasons, because he knows very well what he’s doing. He must have an objective that we don’t understand yet. You have to realize that he is aiming at a reform that is irreversible. If one day he should intuit that he’s running out of time and he doesn’t have enough time to do what the Spirit is asking him, you can be sure he will speed up.”

Would it be possible to have a pope without Vatican or away from the Vatican?

“The Roman Curia is not an essential structure. The pope could even go and live away from Rome, have a dicastery in Rome and another one in Bogota, and perhaps link-up by teleconference with liturgical experts that live in Germany. Gathered around the pope, in a theological sense, is the College of Bishops in order to serve the people.”

Aren't you worried that his pontificate will quickly be tossed aside after he’s no longer pope?

“No, there’s no turning back. If and when Francis is no longer pope, his legacy will remain strong. For example, the pope is convinced that the things he’s already written or said cannot be condemned as an error. Therefore, in the future anyone can repeat those things without fear of being sanctioned. And then the majority of the People of God with their special sense will not easily accept turning back on certain things.”

Don't you see the risk of “two Churches”?

“No. There’s a schism when a group of important people share the same sensibilities that reflect those of a vast section of society. Luther and Protestantism came about that way. But now the overwhelming majority of the people are with Francis and they love him. His opponents are weaker than what you think. Not pleasing everyone does not mean provoking a schism.”

Isn't this idea of the pope having a direct rapport with the people something risky, while the Church’s ecclesiastical class feels marginalized?

“But the Church is the People of God guided by their pastors. Cardinals could disappear, in the sense that they are not essential. The pope and the bishops are essential. Then again, it is impossible that everything a pope does and says will please everyone. Did everyone like Benedict XVI? Unity does not depend on unanimity.

Remember my word that I said to you: The servant is not greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you: if they have kept my word, they will keep yours also. (John 15:20)

Cardinal Kasper Defends Ireland’s Gay ‘Marriage’ Decision

Kasper defended the vote of the Irish in favor of homosexual 'marriages'

ROME | June 1, 2015 | Maike Hickson | LifeSiteNews.com

The grave effects of Ireland's May 22 referendum in favor of a same-sex "marriages," not only for the secular world, but also especially for the Catholic Church, are showing themselves already.

None other than the leading cardinal who has promoted the liberal agenda for the two-part Synod of Bishops on the Family, Cardinal Walter Kasper, has now come out publicly and with force, telling the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that the Church needs to address more fully the question of same-sex couples. This topic was at the last Synod "only a marginal topic, but now it becomes central," Kasper said on Wednesday.

Kasper also defended the vote of the Irish in favor of homosexual "marriages," saying: "A democratic state has the duty to respect the will of the people; and it seems clear that, if the majority of the people wants such homosexual unions, the state has a duty to recognize such rights." He also said that the Irish referendum is "emblematic for the situation in which we find ourselves, not only in Europe, but in the whole West." Kasper also said: "The postmodern concept — following which everything is equal — stands in contrast to the doctrine of the Church."

Cardinal Kasper made a link between the events in Ireland and the doctrine of the Catholic Church, when he said it now becomes harder for the Church to explain its own moral position to others in the question of homosexuality. "We have to find a new language," he said. "We have to overcome [unjust] discrimination, which has a long tradition in our culture." It is important in his view to honor those long-lasting same-sex relationships, which contain "elements of the good," even though the Church cannot change its fundamental attitude toward them since they are themselves against the teaching of the Gospels.

Many observers have long expected Cardinal Kasper's more explicit public support for the homosexual agenda, saying that the "opening" toward "remarried" couples was only the first step toward the widening of the revolutionary agenda, to include approval of same-sex relationships. [......]

Fruits of Vatican II and the New Evangelization -

Claims that the "Catholic hierarchy has strongly opposed"??? Just when and where did that happen?

Is recognizing same-sex marriage Catholic?

If the Church is the people, approval of gay marriage must be lauded

William Grimm | Tokyo | June 1, 2015

Voters in Ireland have made that country the first to recognize same-sex marriage by a national referendum. Various other countries have granted the same recognition through legislation. A New York Times column by Frank Bruni titled "On same-sex marriage, Catholics are leading the way" pointed out, "In fact, countries with a Catholic majority or plurality make up half of those where two men or two women can now wed or will soon be able to." In other countries like the United States where Catholics are a large part of the population, polls show that Catholics as a group are more open to same-sex marriage than their non-Catholic neighbors. And yet, in all these countries, the Catholic hierarchy has strongly opposed moves to recognize such partnerships, while the laity have declined to follow their bishops. Are we seeing the collapse of the Catholic Church? If the bishops are the Church, then perhaps we are. ...

Death, properly speaking, is not that which separates body and soul, but that which separates the soul from God. God is life, and he who is cut off from Him, perishes.

St. Cyril of Alexandria

The day of doctrinaire Catholicism is over in this country. The people are no longer willing to listen to speeches and sermons on morality from the Church.

Fr. Tony Flannery, Redemptorist Irish Priest, after Homosexual "marriage" vote

The Last Battlefield for Catholic Morality - Where Marx's Communism failed, Wilhelm Reich's Orgonomy is making real slaves.
Jesus answered them: Amen, amen I say unto you: that whosoever committeth sin, is the servant of sin. (John 8:34)

Europe's War on Christian Ethics

Many Eastern European countries are facing increasing pressure from Western nations to abandon their traditional Christian values and religious heritage.

Alessandra Nucci | May 28, 2015 | CWR

There is a place in Slovakia called Bardejovska Nova Ves where pro-lifers have erected a poignant monument to the Unborn Child. It portrays a weeping mother, on her knees before a translucent child figure, depicted extending its hand towards the mother’s head in a gesture of forgiveness.

The heartbreaking scene, placed at the geographical center of the European continent, brings home to observers the common cultural ground the remains at the end of the decades of fanatically enforced separation between West and East.

Reunified top-down a quarter of a century ago, Europe is now gradually coming together at the base, on the ethical battleground presided over by the central planners in Brussels, where people from both East and West have to choose sides and either adhere to the new anthropological paradigm or defend their convictions against growing encroachments on the rights of individual consciences.

The monument in Slovakia attests to the generations lost under totalitarian oppression, but also to the irrepressible will of the people clinging to their humanity. Today the ex-captives, now ostensibly free, are confronted by the soft policies of the secularist establishment entrenched in both supra-national bureaucracies and non-governmental global organizations, all working to expand their influence eastwards.

The issues in the West

The ethical issue that causes the most universal outrage, in both the East and the West, is the rampant financial corruption in political circles, an evil that no one questions. Instead, there are deep disagreements in the areas of “life issues,” the family, and education.

There is no lack of examples of what the assault on traditional principles in these areas can look like in the West. The attacks are repeated and progressive. One of the most recent was the “Estrela Report on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights,” a motion presented to the European Parliament by a Socialist MP from Portugal, Edite Estrela. This was a radical call for all member states to provide access to safe and legal abortion and ensure non-discrimination, health care, and “sexuality training.” After a protracted and strenuous battle, Estrela was defeated in December 2013 by a thin margin of seven votes, thanks to a sprinkling of Catholic Social Democrats, who on this occasion broke ranks with their party. Game over? Hardly. Last March 10, Belgian MP Marc Tarabella tabled a non-legislative report on “progress on equality between women and men in the European Union in 2013,” which again invoked “ready access to contraception and abortion.” But secularist enthusiasm was once again crushed on learning that it had been amended to include the principle of subsidiarity. Enshrined in Catholic social doctrine ever since Rerum Novarum, subsidiarity has become the bottom line of defense, as Catholics and conservatives of other extractions catch on to organized maneuvers in the governing bodies to pass policies increasingly subversive of common sense.

The inclusion of subsidiarity was a victory, but the struggle over the creeping sexualization of children is hardly over; it has merely been pushed back, and onto the battlefields of the single nations, where things are by no means less complicated. One is reminded of the roller-coaster standing of Ireland, which lost favor with Brussels when it proved recalcitrant to orders in a series of crucial referendums, but has recently recovered it as Irish voters, hammered with repeats of the same referendums, at long last started giving the “right” answers. The ground was thus prepared for loosening the constitutional ban on abortion, which the current government legislated to allow, in cases in which the woman is at risk of committing suicide.

The Estrela Report was based at least in part on a sex education document that came from even higher up than the Euro-parliament—a 68-page list of recommendations called “Standards for Sex Education in Europe,” published on the authority of the most exalted body in the realm of health care: the World Health Organization. Available online in 10 languages, the recommendations range from the need for babies and children 0-4 years old to learn masturbation skills, to the need for children ages 12-15 to learn about family planning, prostitution, and pornography while also being alert to “the influence of religion on decisions regarding sexuality.”

Although it has circulated in the name of the world’s maximum authority on health, “Standards” is actually the work of about a dozen sexology specialists and a German governmental organization, the Bundeszentrale fur gesundheitliche Aufklärung, BzgA (Federal Center for Health Information). This may be why it is addressed to Europe alone, although why there should be standards for sex education specifically for the European part of the planet is a bit of a mystery. The BzgA also raised eyebrows worldwide several years ago when it published a booklet extolling the benefits of parents sexually massaging their young children. Perhaps unsurprisingly, BzgA has close ties to International Planned Parenthood.

The issues to the East

The old term “Iron Curtain” indicated the invisible barrier that isolated nations held captive by the Communists as they smashed their cultures and did away with the middle classes. Even today, what we know about our neighboring nations to the East is colored by the broad brush strokes of common repression, with few specifics. This is especially true of each nation’s gradual emergence not just from material bondage, but from mental bondage as well; in many places only the most trusted card-carriers were allowed to learn Western languages, and particularly English, and the former ruling class has been allowed to hold on to positions of non-electoral power and influence in many places.

What we do know is that the people underwent a vicious and determined undermining of tradition, and particularly of the principles which, in recent years among Catholics, have come to be known as “non-negotiable”: life, the family, and education. Under the Soviet Union homosexual acts were illegal, but family roles and stability were also discouraged by forcing women into full-time work and children into daycare from the earliest infancy, while the increasingly redundant male population was encouraged to drink their cares away with reserves of vodka unaffected by the scarcity of other material goods.

Education replete with atheistic, Marxist indoctrination was hammered into youth from infancy through the university years. Abortion was a matter for statist intervention, but droves of women readily underwent the operation, in some cases even without anesthesia, rather than bring children into a world of misery.

On the whole, the bishops have been very outspoken about the need to resist and confront the authorities on matters pertaining to life, the family, and education, with some differences from country to country. The Hungarian Bishops’ Conference, for example, knows that the widely popular and very determined OrbÀn government will protect traditional morality. However, in most other countries the bishops have found themselves once more having to defend Christian ethics against the powers that be. One of these is Poland, today’s poster child for the EU and the biggest net recipient of EU funding. Despite the fact that Poland is not a member of the common currency, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has recently been named president of the European Council. Could it be that with the economy humming and the country gaining in respect, the secularists have a better chance to paint the Catholic Church as a meddling, kill-joy relic of the past? To be sure, the Bishops’ Conference has kept up its guard, delivering all sorts of acts of insubordination, including a letter to the faithful that was read in all the churches at Christmas in 2012, condemning gender ideology and raising awareness about the content of sex education courses. In 2014 the bishops upheld the conscience rights of anti-abortion physicians. Last January they voiced their opposition to the controversial Istanbul Treaty, with its promotion of progressive gender ideology. Only a few weeks ago, for Lent, they promoted a bold campaign against adultery, having billboards put up all over the country admonishing passersby, “Shacking up is a sin.” The media lampooned the campaign, as is to be expected, but in the land of Saint John Paul II, the clergy is hardly likely to stand down.

Sex-Ed hits the East

One of the first countries to bear the brunt of the onslaught on traditional morality that comes with membership in the EU was Croatia, where the purveyors of smut for kids in the guise of sex education found a resilient and determined Catholic Church, ready to lead parents in the struggle to protect their children.

In 2012 the new left-wing government under ex-communist Zoran Milanovic focused on a direct confrontation and a revolution of values which would have given Catholic Croatia one of the most radical legislatures in the world, while putting increasing limitations on the Church itself. The study of religion was abolished in some classes in secondary schools, as was the freedom to minister to the police and to the military, and the bishops had to fend off an attempt to abolish the exemption from obligatory testimony normally granted to priests out of respect for the sacrament of confession.
But what really aroused public furor was the imposition—from third grade to the end of high school—of a more radical sex education program than the one recommended by the specialists at the WHO. The curriculum was based on the principles of sexology of the notorious Kinsey Institute—third-grade pupils learned, hands-on, about “acceptable” and “unacceptable” touching; fourth graders were encouraged to recognize gender stereotypes and the discrimination of “sexual minorities”; the fifth-grade program analyzed masturbation; the sixth grade included the analysis of pornography and of how it “shows the gender roles of men and women.” Sex was constantly presented as just any other physical act without any moral connotation, the word “love” was mentioned only once, and no mention was made whatsoever of sex as a means of transmitting life.

When the adoption of sex education programs was announced in late September 2012, parents’ associations as well as the Church hierarchy quickly rose to the challenge, under the guidance of Zagreb’s archbishop, Cardinal Josip Bozanic. The Bishops’ Conference launched a series of lectures for parents in all dioceses and parishes, and on Christmas Day leaflets were distributed in all the churches, explaining things in detail and providing guidance to parents on what to do, including the last resort of withdrawing their children from these lessons, despite the fact that absences were considered “unauthorized.”

In the ensuing struggle, the bishops were subjected to a smear campaign in the press, and received warnings from the government against “meddling.” Teachers and principals were denied the right to conscientious objection and threatened with dismissal if they did not implement the program in its entirety. The end of 2012 was marked by a wave of dismissals of principals, and the sacking of a journalist from a public television station for showing a program criticizing the founder of the Institute of Sexology, Alfred Kinsey.

In May 2013 Croatia’s Constitutional Court abolished the law that had introduced the so-called “health education” program into the school system and thereby trampled on parental rights.

The Family

The intensity of the struggle can be judged by the fact that almost all the countries now sandwiched between a coercive new West and a coercive old East are dashing to lock the definition of marriage into their laws. More and more countries are taking action to include bans on same-sex marriage into their constitutions, including Belarus, Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, and Ukraine. An amendment of this kind is currently pending before Parliament in Macedonia.

This has not come easily. Take the example of Croatia, where an immense popular effort collected the signatures necessary to summon a referendum and push through an amendment to the Constitution defining marriage as a lifelong relationship between a man and a woman. But the Socialist government did its best to sabotage the poll and intimidate the “yes” advocates, changing the laws around in an attempt to turn the referendum into a non-binding consultation. Ultimately, however, in December 2013, 66 percent of voters were able to pronounce a resounding “yes” to the traditional definition of family.

Slovakia’s Parliament easily passed a constitutional amendment, but when the pro-family groups decided to take advantage of their momentum with a popular referendum, it backfired, not because of a turnaround in public opinion, but because of low turnout at the polls. Despite support from Pope Francis—whose words, “I wish to express my appreciation to the entire Slovak church, encouraging everyone to continue their efforts in defense of the family, the vital cell of society,” were plastered on posters everywhere—more than 90 percent of those who turned out voted “yes” but were not numerous enough to reach the necessary quorum.

That victory is never won once and for all was made plain by the referendum in Slovenia. Arguably the most westernized of the post-communist nations of Eastern Europe, the tiny Mitteleuropean country recently became the first to cave to pressure to ratify same-sex marriage. Although as recently as 2012 it had held a referendum on the same issues (and 55 percent of the voters had voted “no”), last December 51 Members of Parliament out of 84 voted to approve a similar bill of law, while outside there were 2,000 people demonstrating against it.

Life

“Curbs on Abortion Spread Across East Europe” was the alarmist headline of a news report from Macedonia in 2013. Warning that a “virus” of restrictive abortion legislation was “spreading from Eastern Europe,” the article attributed this to “Church pressure and misguided government attempts to stop falling birth rates.”

Behind the Iron Curtain, it was not easy to have an abortion or even contraception. This was not because of moral or religious principles, but because of the statist concept of human beings as an impersonal work force, which led the government to offer incentives for having children. Some even resorted to more ruthless measures, such as in Romania, where the regime would force women to undergo medical examinations to see whether they were pregnant and to prevent them from having abortions.

In Russia, Lenin’s ideas carried the day and resembled the position of feminists all over the world: he considered abortion a matter of preventive medicine, to be counted among basic human rights. In 1920, Russia became the first country in the world to allow abortion in all circumstances, and after the restrictions of the Stalinist era, abortion was once again legalized.

But it was a life of unrelenting hard labor, in a stagnant economy, with poor daycare options and unhealthy lodgings, that very effectively discouraged women from having children under Soviet rule. Today, this mindset has melded with the materialism and agnosticism of the West, and the abortion trends have continued, undermining Russian demographics. As of 2010, according to UN data, Russia had the highest number of abortions per woman of child-bearing age in the world.

This situation may be what triggered increasingly strong statements and actions by Russian President Vladimir Putin on both abortion and gay rights. While Putin’s background as a former KGB agent is well-known, today he is arguably the most prominent world leader to oppose the Western drift toward an all-encompassing nihilism.

While there is understandable and vigorous debate over Putin’s motivations and intentions, his many words and acts in this direction warrant listing. He has banned all pro-abortion ads, forbidden the subjecting of minors to gay propaganda or to statements that condone “nontraditional” relationships, prohibited the adoption of Russian-born children by people living in countries where same-sex marriage is allowed, made it a criminal offense to insult the religious sensibilities of believers, and has even severely criticized other countries for legalizing marijuana. He has made explicit statements about the West’s “moral bankruptcy,” noting that:

"The excesses of political correctness have reached the point where people are seriously talking about registering political parties whose aim is to promote pedophilia. People in many European countries are embarrassed or afraid to talk about their religious affiliations. Holidays are abolished or even called something different; their essence is hidden away, as is their moral foundation. And people are aggressively trying to export this model all over the world. I am convinced that this opens a direct path to degradation and primitivism, resulting in a profound demographic and moral crisis."

Putin’s speaking from a stage that is visible to the entire world has won him the admiration of many outside Russia who would otherwise have remained inimical to his name and worldview.

As ever, Russia’s policies are also echoed in those of its neighboring countries, and particularly Belarus. Having inherited abortion and a 50 percent divorce rate from Soviet times, but remaining relatively insulated from the more aggressive cultural inroads made by the West, Belarus has adopted some strong pro-family policies, such as shouldering 25 percent of the rent due by families with three children and providing free housing for families with four or more children.

Even in the secessionist Donbass area of Eastern Ukraine, the motivating issues go beyond the economy or the patriotism of the ethnic Russian population to include concern at the EU’s relentless drive to impose a secularist ethic on member countries. Significantly, the prospective Constitution drawn up for their hoped-for new Republic of Donetsk contains the following stark provisions: article 31.3 prohibits any and all forms of “perverse” unions between people of the same sex; article 9.2 declares the Orthodox faith professed by the Russian Orthodox Church to be the religion of State; article 6.5 declares that all political authorities are to respect the traditional religious, social, and cultural values of the “Russian world”; and articles 3 and 12.2 ensure the right to life from the moment of conception.

What these provisions are meant to stave off is made clear in the alarmed words of one of the leaders of the rebellion in Eastern Ukraine, Aleksandr Matyushin:

"In Europe they have sodomy, same-sex marriage, a fully degraded society. On the Continent the most widely used name for newborn babies is Mohammed. Europeans are too worried about human rights and are always afraid of offending someone. In France the immigrants are getting more and more arrogant. Europe will be our undoing."

St. Paul says that Antichrist "sitteth in the temple of God" . . . This is not the ancient Temple of Jerusalem, nor a temple like it built by Antichrist, as some have thought, for then it would be his own temple . . . this temple is shown to be a Catholic Church, possibly one of the churches in Jerusalem or St. Peter’s in Rome, which is the largest church in the world and is in the full sense "The Temple of God." [.....] This false prophet possibly at the behest of Antichrist usurps the papal supremacy… His assumed spiritual authority and supremacy over the Church would make him resemble the Bishop of Rome… He would be Pontifex Maximus, a title of pagan emperors, having spiritual and temporal authority. Assuming authority without having it makes him the False Prophet… Though he poses as a lamb, his doctrines betray him.

Fr. Herman B. Kramer, The Book of Destiny, an interpretation of the Apocalypse

After 870 years, the Wisdom of Laudabiliter at last confirmed!

The Irish, known for their cheerful humor as much as for their ignorance and stubbornness, have become the first nation to approve homosexual "marriage" by a popular majority. The nation, which has nearly the lowest average IQ of any European nation, is clearly not fit for self-rule. Pope Adrian was correct when he said, they are a "rude and unlettered people" infected with "weeds of vice" and "weeds of sin" who have set no bounds to their "progress of wickedness" and "evil manners."

To teach the truths of the Christian faith to a rude and unlettered people, and to root out the weeds of vice from the field of the Lord, [.....] You have signified to us, our well-beloved son in Christ, that you propose to enter the island of Ireland in order to subdue the people and make them obedient to laws, and to root out from among them the weeds of sin.[....] setting bounds to the progress of wickedness, reforming evil manners, planting virtue, and increasing the Christian religion. You do enter and take possession of that island, and execute therein whatsoever shall be for God's honour and the welfare of the same.[.....] If, therefore, you bring your purpose to good effect, let it be your study to improve the habits of that people, and take such orders by yourself, or by others whom you shall think fitting, for their lives, manners and conversation, that the Church there may be adorned by them, the Christian faith be planted and increased, and all that concerns the honour of God and the salvation of souls be ordered by you in like manner; so that you may receive at God's hands the blessed reward of everlasting life, and may obtain on earth a glorious name in ages to come.

POPE ADRIAN'S IV, Laudabiliter, 1155, authorizing Henry II of England to conquer and rule Ireland

We, therefore, following in the footsteps of the late venerable Pope Adrian, and in expectation also of seeing the fruits of our own earnest wishes on this head, ratify and confirm the permission of the said Pope granted you in reference to the dominion of the kingdom of Ireland; (reserving to Blessed Peter and the holy Roman Church, as in England, so also in Ireland, the annual payment of one penny for every house;) to the end that the filthy practices of that land may be abolished, and the barbarous nation which is called by the Christian name, may through your clemency attain unto some decency of manners; and that when the Church of that country which has been hitherto in a disordered state, shall have been reduced to better order, that people may by your means possess for the future the reality as well as the name of the Christian profession.

POPE ALEXANDER III, Letter to Henry II in 1172, Confirming the Bull, Laudabiliter

IRELAND: a post-mortem examination - by Roberto de Mattei

In his masterpiece “The Soul of the Apostolate”, Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard (1858-1935), Trappist Abbot of Sept-Fons, expressed this maxim: “A holy priest coincides with a fervent populace; a fervent priest - a pious populace; a pius priest - an honest populace; an honest priest - an impious populace” (Italian version, Rome 1967, p. 64). If it is true that there is always a degree less in the spiritual life between the clergy and the Catholic people, after the vote in Dublin on May 22, we should add: “An impious priest coincides with an apostate populace.”

Ireland in fact, is the first country where the legal recognition of homosexual unions has been introduced not from the top but from the bottom, through a popular referendum; yet Ireland is also one of the oldest Countries with a deep-rooted Catholic Tradition, where the influence of the clergy is still relatively strong in part of the population.

It is no novelty that the “yes” to “homosexual marriage” was supported by all the parties, the right, the left and the center; it is not surprising that all of the media sustained the LGTB campaign, nor that there has been massive financing from abroad on behalf of this campaign; the facts foreseen, were, that, of 60% of the population who voted, only 37% of the citizens expressed their “yes” and that the government had skillfully shuffled their cards introducing a law in January 2015, permitting adoption by homosexual couples, prior to the recognition of pseudo-homosexual-marriage. What provokes the greatest scandal are the silences, the omissions and the complicities by the Irish priests and bishops throughout the electoral campaign.

One example is enough for all the rest. Before the elections, the Archbishop of Dublin, Diamund Martin, declared that he would have voted against homosexual marriage but wouldn’t have told Catholics how to vote (LifeSiteNews.com, May 21). After the vote, he declared on Irish National Television that: “the evidence cannot be denied” and that the Church in Ireland “needs a reality-check” In merit of what happened Monsignor Martin added: “it isn’t only the outcome of a campaign for a “yes” and a “no” but it attests to a much deeper phenomenon” therefore “ we need to review the pastoral care of youth: the referendum was won with the votes of the young and 90% of the young who voted attended Catholic Schools.” (www.corriere.it/esteri/ May 24,2015)

This position reflects, in general (apart from a few exceptions) the Irish clergy who have adopted the line that Monsignor Nunzio Galantino, the Secretary General of the Episcopal Conference in Italy, had hoped for: to avoid polemics and clashes at all costs: “it is not about who makes the loudest outcries, the pasdaran [*Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards] of the two sides exclude themselves” (“Corriere della Sera”, May 24).

Which means, let’s set aside the preaching of the Gospel and the values of the Faith and Catholic Tradition, in order to look for a point of encounter and compromise with the adversaries. And yet on March 18th 2010, Benedict XVI in his “Letter to the Catholics of Ireland” had invited the Irish clergy and people to return “to the ideals of holiness, charity and transcendent wisdom”, “which in the past made Europe great and can still refound her” (no.3) and to “draw inspiration from the riches of a great religious and cultural tradition” (no.12), which has not faded, even if “fast-paced social change has occurred, often adversely affecting people’s traditional adherence to Catholic teaching and values” (no. 4) is opposed to it. In his “Letter to the Catholics of Ireland”, Benedict XVI states that in the 70s, it was “significant” , “the tendency on the part of priests and religious, to adopt ways of thinking and assessing secular realities without sufficient reference to the Gospel.” This tendency is the same one we find today.

It has been the cause of a process of degradation, which, since the years of the Second Vatican Council, like an avalanche, has swept away Catholic customs and institutions. If the Irish today, even by staying Catholic for the most part, abandon the faith, the cause is not only the loss of prestige and consensus of the Church following the scandals of sexual abuse. The true cause is the moral and cultural surrender to the world on the part of their pastors, who accept this degradation as sociological evidence, without posing the problem of their own responsibilities. In this sense their behavior has been impious, lacking in mercy and offensive with regard to religion, even if not formally heretical. Yet every Catholic who voted “yes”, and thus, the majority of Irish Catholics who went to the ballot boxes, have stained themselves with apostasy. The apostasy of a people whose constitution still opens with an invocation to the Most Holy Trinity.

Apostasy is a much graver sin than impiety, as it involves an explicit repudiation of Catholic faith and morals. However, the heaviest responsibility for this public sin lies with the pastors who have encouraged and tolerated it with their behavior. The consequences of this Irish referendum will now be devastating.

Forty-eight hours after the vote, the main exponents of the German, Swiss and French Episcopal Conferences, under the leadership of Cardinal Reinhard Marx, gathered together in Rome to plan their action in view of the upcoming Synod. According to the journalist present at the meetings, “marriage and divorce”, “sexuality as an expression of love” were the themes discussed. (“La Repubblica” May 26, 2015). The line is the one mapped out by Cardinal Kasper: secularization is an irreversible process which pastoral reality has to adapt to. And for Archbishop Bruno Forte, he who asked for “the codification of homosexual rights” at the last Synod, and who has been confirmed by the Pope as special Secretary to the Synod on the Family, “it is a cultural process of forced secularization in which Europe is fully involved.” (“Corriere della Sera”, May 25, 2015).

There is a final question that cannot be evaded: Pope Francis’ sepulchral silence on Ireland. During the Mass for the opening of the Caritas Assembly on May 12, the Pope thundered against “the powerful of the world” reminding them that “God will judge them one day, and will show if they have really tried to provide food for Him in every person and if they have worked so that the environment is not destroyed, so that it may produce this food”. On November 21, 2014, commenting on the excerpt from the Gospel where Jesus throws out the merchants from the Temple, the Pope launched his anathema, against a Church that thinks only about business affairs and commits “the sin of scandal”.

Francis often rails against corruption i.e. the traffic in slaves and arms along with the vanity of power and money. On June 11, 2014, in reference to corrupt politicians i.e. those who exploit “slave-work” and the “merchants of death” the Pope admonishes “may the fear of God make them understand that one day it will all end and they will have to give an account to God.” The “fear of God” opens the hearts of men “to the goodness, mercy and the caress of God”, but “it is also an alarm in the face of obstinate sin.

Yet isn’t the application of laws regarding the vice against nature incomparably graver than the sins that the Pope recalls so frequently? Why didn’t the Pope launch a vigorous and heartfelt appeal to the Irish in the days prior to the vote, reminding them that the violation of the Divine and Natural Law is a social sin which the people and their pastors will one day have to give account to God for? With this silence, has he not also been an accomplice to this scandal?

Roberto de Mattei | Corrispondeza Romana | May 27, 2015

Pope Francis the Babbler has nothing to say about the apostasy of Ireland!

Irish bishop: Catholics can back gay ‘marriage’ in good conscience

DERRY, Northern Ireland, May 20, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- Despite opposition by the Irish Catholic Bishops' Conference to the proposal to change the meaning of marriage in the Constitution of Ireland in the May 22 same-sex "marriage" referendum, an Irish bishop told a radio talk show host that he would "hate" to see people vote against the change "for bigoted, nasty, bullying reasons."

Bishop of Derry Donal McKeown was speaking for the "no" position on the referendum, as supported by the bishops of Ireland, in a debate on the Shaun Doherty Show.

Although he maintained that legalizing same-sex "marriage" would be a "dangerous experiment," especially the ramifications in the lives of children and future generations, he equivocated that people could vote yes or no in the referendum "in good conscience," if they were as informed as possible before voting and were making a "mature decision."

"People have to make their own mature decision, be it yes or be it no. I would hate for people to be voting no for bad reasons, for bigoted reasons, for nasty reasons, for bullying reasons. People have to make up their own minds and I’m quite happy that people can do that in front of God, be it yes or be it no," Bishop McKeown said.

"I don’t doubt that there are many people who are practicing churchgoers of whatever church background who will in conscience vote Yes, and that’s entirely up them. I’m not going to say they’re wrong," he added.

The Catholic Bishops' Conference of Ireland is making a concerted effort to educate voters on the real repercussions of changing the meaning of marriage.

Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh, Primate of All Ireland, warned that redefining marriage would result in the destruction of religious freedom.

"If society adopts and imposes a ‘new orthodoxy’ of ‘gender-neutral’ marriage, being defined simply as a union between any two persons – including a man and a man, or a woman and woman – then it will become increasingly difficult to speak or teach in public about marriage as being between a man and a woman," Archbishop Martin said in a statement on the Irish Catholic Bishops' Conference website.

"Will there be lawsuits against individuals and groups who do not share this vision? What will we be expected to teach children in school about marriage or about homosexual acts? Will those who continue to sincerely believe that marriage is between a man and a woman be forced to act against their faith and conscience?" the archbishop speculated.

"Marriage is about much more than a loving relationship between consenting adults. Marriage has another essential element – the openness to children who are born of the love and sexual relationship of their mother and father,” the archbishop continued. "This is why, as Article 41:3:1 of the Constitution puts it: The State pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of Marriage, on which the Family is founded, and to protect it against attack."

The Archbishop of Tuam, Michael Neary, said that voting to redefine marriage would also redefine the meaning of family, to the detriment of the rights of children.

"We should be aware of what is at stake here," the archbishop said at weekend Masses. "We are in fact redefining the family."

"Throughout history and across all cultures, marriage has been consistently understood to be the union of male and female with procreative potential," the archbishop observed, stressing that "the family is the seedbed of the future, the best way we have yet found of fostering security and trust," and that "one of the most important and fundamental questions that each of us has to consider is the rights of the child."

Archbishop Neary concluded that "a society that identifies the two parties in marriage as spouse 1 and spouse 2 has lost sight of a deep truth of human nature."

Al Gore Advocates an Ecumenical return to the pagan Gaia religion

The richness and diversity of our religious tradition throughout history is a spiritual resource long ignored by people of faith, who are often afraid to open their minds to teachings first offered outside their own systems of belief. But the emergence of a civilization in which knowledge moves freely and almost instantaneously through the world has spurred a renewed investigation of the wisdom distilled by all faiths. This panreligious perspective may prove especially important where our global civilization's responsibility for the earth is concerned. [.....] The spiritual sense of our place in nature predates Native American cultures; increasingly it can be traced to the origins of human civilization. A growing number of anthropologists and archaeomythologists, such as Marija Gimbutas and Riane Esler argue that the prevailing ideology of belief in prehistoric Europe and much of the world was based on the worship of a single earth goddess, who was assumed to be the fount of all life and who radiated harmony among all living things. Much of the evidence for the existence of this primitive religion comes from the many thousands of artifacts uncovered in ceremonial sites. These sites are so widespread that they seem to confirm the notion that a goddess religion was ubiquitous through much of the world until the antecedents of today's religions, most of which still have a distinctly masculine orientation... swept out of India and the Near East, almost obliterating belief in the goddess. The last vestige of organized goddess worship was eliminated by Christianity as late as the fifteenth century in Lithuania.

Al Gore, High Priest and Apostle of Gaia Worship, Earth in the Balance

I think Pope Francis is quite an inspiring figure really. A phenomena. I’ve been startled with the clarity of the moral force that he embodies. He kind of raises in a new context the old question: “Is the Pope Catholic?” Well I’ve said publicly in the last year, I was raised in the Southern Baptist tradition, I could become a Catholic because of this Pope. He is that inspiring to me. And I know the vast majority of my Catholic friends are just thrilled to the marrow of their bones that he is providing this kind of spiritual leadership.

Al Gore, UC Berkley, 4-29-2015

Pope Francis does things very differently, and the environmental community is taking notice -- big time. I'm no Catholic, but with a Pope like this, I would consider converting.

Al Gore, in Iowa, 5-19-2015

I read all the speeches of the Pope (Francis). If the Pope continues to speak like this, sooner or later I will start praying again and I will return to the Catholic Church—and I'm not saying this jokingly.

Raul Castro, Communist leader in Cuba and brother of Fidel Castro, May 10, 2015

Sins that Tend to the Destruction of the Human Race

A striking passage from a manual of theology of the last century, once widely used in seminaries:

The sins that cry to heaven for vengeance are: Wilful murder, sodomy, oppression of the poor, defrauding labourers of their wages. This category of four grievous sins is not a class of the worst possible sins, for none of them are opposed directly to God, but of sins that must provoke God's anger in a way that we do not attribute to His Divine anger against many other sins, and because Holy Scripture speaks of them as a class apart and as crying to God for vengeance.

In the four sins mentioned above, the offence is directly opposed to nature and natural instincts, and therefore to the order in this world which God has taken supreme care to establish. Thus, wilful murder is directly opposed to God's sovereignty, Who alone is master of life; sodomy is a perversion of the true natural sexual instinct, which is designed to perpetuate the race; oppression of the poor extinguishes the ingrained sense of pity in the human heart; defrauding labourers of their wages is opposed to the social instinct that safeguards the property of the members of the body politic. It is obvious that these sins tend to the destruction of the human race.There is good warranty in Holy Scripture for putting these four sins in a class apart and considering them very heinous crimes. Thus : “The voice of thy brother crieth to Me from the earth;” “The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is multiplied, and their sin is become exceedingly grievous;” “I have seen the affliction of my people in Egypt, and I have heard their cry because of the rigour of them that are over the works;” “Behold the hire of the labourers, who have reaped down your fields, which by fraud has been kept back by you, crieth; and the cry of them hath entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabbaoth” (Gen. 4, 10 : 18, 20 : 19, 13; Exod. 3, 7 ; Deut. 24, 14 ; Jas. 5, 4).

Rev. Henry Davis, S.J., Moral and Pastoral Theology, 4th ed., pp. 214-15. Posted from Rorate Caeli

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs –

Because the Holy Ghost ever the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! Bright wings.

Rev. Gerard Manley Hopkins

Climate Change for Novus Ordo? Not really. Same old 'springtime' of Vatican II!

Pew survey: Percentage of US Catholics drops and Catholicism is losing members faster than any denomination

By Michael O'Loughlin | National reporter | May 12, 2015

For years, two truisms dominated coverage of the US Catholic Church: about one quarter of the population is Catholic and each year at Easter, Catholics entering the church offset those leaving it.

But new data suggests a new story.

A report released Tuesday by the Pew Forum finds that the total number of Catholics in the United States dropped by 3 million since 2007, now comprising about 20 percent – or one-fifth – of the total population.

And perhaps more troubling for the church, for every one Catholic convert, more than six Catholics leave the church. Taken a step further, Catholicism loses more members than it gains at a higher rate than any other denomination, with nearly 13 percent of all Americans describing themselves as “former Catholics.”

pew The report, America's Changing Religious Landscape, found that in 2014, the overall share of Christians in the United States dropped to an all-time low of just under 71 percent, down about 7 percentage points from 2007.

The big winner in terms of growing numbers is the unaffiliated, or the so-called “nones,” shooting up to about 23 percent of the total population from just 16 percent seven years ago. The 56 million adults not belonging to any faith tradition outnumber both Catholics and mainline Protestants; only Evangelical Christians comprise a larger share of the population.

Big demographic shifts within Catholicism continue to change the face of the church. Hispanic Catholics now comprise 41 percent of the US church, up 6 points from 2007. And the average Catholic is getting a bit older, with the median age of 49 up four years. Immigration from Latin American countries has kept Catholic number stable in recent years, and 39 percent of American immigrants are Catholic.

More than a third of all millennials – those born between 1981 and 1996 – claim no affiliation, and just 16 percent identify as Catholic.

In the traditional Catholic hub of Massachusetts, for example, Catholics still comprise the largest Christian denomination at 34 percent, but the unaffiliated cohort is right behind at 33 percent. The share of Mass. Catholics dropped 9 percentage points since the last survey in 2007, while the unaffiliated grew a staggering 16 percent.

Rhode Island has the highest per capita Catholic population at 44 percent, and other northeast states all have percentages above 30 percent, including Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York. Mississippi, with just 4 percent, has the lowest per capita Catholic population.

The Catholic Church is 54 percent women and 59 percent white. Income wise, the church is fairly evenly distributed across four brackets, though 36 percent of Catholics have an annual household income of less than $30,000. More than half – 52 percent – of Catholics are married, and another 8 percent live with a partner, while 12 percent are divorced.

Though the Pew report shows a population decline in the Catholic Church, it includes an appendix noting that there is uncertainty among demographers about the size of the church.

Additionally, many Catholic leaders contend that Hispanic Catholics are vastly undercounted due to mistrust regarding immigration issues.

The survey of 35,071 adults was conducted in English and Spanish between June and September 2014.

Let nothing disturb thee, Nothing affright thee;

All things are passing; God never changeth;

Patient endurance attaineth to all things;

Who God possesseth in nothing is wanting;

Alone God sufficeth.

bookmark of St. Teresa of Jesus

Another 'Queer' Appointment by Pope Francis

RadcliffeOPFr. Timothy.jpg Good times for dissident Dominicans: Über-liberal Timothy Radcliffe appointed by Pope Francis as Consultor to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace

The Vatican Bollettino for today reports that Fr. Timothy Radcliffe OP, has been appointed by Pope Francis as Consultor to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. The former Master General of the Dominican Order is a prominent supporter of the Kasperite proposal in favor of communion for the "divorced and remarried". He has also spoken out in favor of the ordination of women, if not to the priesthood, then at least to the diaconate. However he is more famous for his frequent public interventions pushing for greater acceptance of homosexuality, having been a frequent celebrant of the infamous "gay Masses" in Soho, London. Rorate has noted his blatant support for homosexuality a couple of times. [.......]

Rorate Caeli

"Love" who? - Pope Francis, famous for his 'thumbs-up' photo ops, has adopted in the Philippians the forked greeting. How is it that this traditional Satanic salute has become the deaf hand sign for "I love you"?

DEFINITION : "Climate Denier" = Progressive popular term used by ideologues of the Gaia Religion, a pantheistic pagan earth worshiping cult, to identify and stigmatize 'infidels'. The religion employs "infallible" teleological formulated computer climate models designed to demonstrate that global warming is in fact occurring. It is an unstated presupposition taken on faith that this alleged global warming is induced by western culture and is everywhere and always harmful to Mother Earth. The cult has its doctrine of 'sustainability,' its own Inquisition to judge and condemn the ‘infidel.’ The cult demands the ritual murder through forced abortion and euthanasia of 5.5 billion people as a necessary blood offering to placate Mother Earth.

"Perplexing"? A better word might be, 'Abominable', but the point is well made!

It is perplexing that abortion and reproductive rights zealots like, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and Jeffrey Sachs, the Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network are prominently highlighted at this Catholic Conference in anticipation of Pope Francis’ Environmental Encyclical.
Elizabeth Yore | April 27, 2015 | ROME, ITALY

The Heartland Institute sought my consultation, as an attorney, who has worked on international human trafficking cases and in the field of child exploitation for 30 years, most recently with Oprah Winfrey in South Africa. I am deeply troubled by the Statement issued by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences regarding the upcoming Papal environmental conference on Tuesday, April 28, 2015.
The Pontifical Academy posits that the goal of the conference is:

"The desired outcome is a joint statement on the moral and religious imperative of sustainable development, highlighting the intrinsic connection between respect for the environment and respect for people--especially the poor, the excluded, victims of human trafficking and modern slavery, children and future generations."

This declaration of an intrinsic connection, a nexus between climate change and human trafficking is on its face, preposterous, deceptive and infinitely damaging to the plight of victims of human trafficking around the world. This fallacious statement links a real human crisis of modern slavery with a manufactured one of climate change.
Pope John Paul powerfully articulated the intrinsic nature of modern slavery in 2002 at the International Conference entitled 21st Century-The Human Rights Dimension to Trafficking in Human Beings, John Paul urged: “The sexual exploitation of women and children...must be recognized as an intrinsic violation of human dignity and rights, and to reduce the rich mystery of human sexuality to a mere commodity.”
Based on my experience with human trafficking victims, John Paul II uniquely understood that the cause of this crime is the violation of the dignity of the human person. Human trafficking thrives in both developed and undeveloped countries. Its victims and perpetrators span the economic spectrum. This crime is growing for a multitude of reasons, open borders, the ease of jet travel and transportation, the instantaneous Internet connection to conduct this criminal enterprise, and yes, abortion and its heinous and predictable mutation, sex selection abortion. Nature abhors a vacuum with a void of 140 million missing Asian girls, as a result of gendercide. Abortion is fueling the human trafficking trade. But at the core of modern slavery lies a malevolent heart which seeks to exploit and abuse another human being, as a disposable commodity.
And who is the Vatican consulting with on this problem? Jeffrey Sachs, who spends his career sounding the alarm that the world is overpopulated, and fertility rates must be lowered. In fact, at a 2007 international lecture, Sachs claims that “we are bursting at the seams.” The focus of Sachs’ overpopulation mantra is the continent of Africa. He argues that if only poor African countries would just lower their fertility rate, the world and Africa would thrive economically.
This fear mongering is nothing new. Sachs is standing on the shoulders of Paul Ehrlich, architect of the “sky is falling” deception perpetrated in his 1968 book, The Population Bomb. Ehrlich mastered the alarmist overpopulation canard with his infamous thesis, “the battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date, nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”
In furtherance of his imagined crisis, Ehrlich supported all kinds of draconian solutions to address this concocted calamity, including putting birth control in the water supply, forced abortions, coercive sterilizations, forcibly punishing countries who balk at implementing radical population control measures. Ehrlich’s recommendations also included punitive taxes on families who have children, and on childcare products, in order to “fix” the problem of global famine from overpopulation.
Ehrlich’s doomsday prophecy was a fraud.
Nevertheless, as a consequence of Ehrlich’s deceit, the UN began its course of worldwide reproductive edicts to reduce fertility, including contraception, sterilization and abortion. The big lie worked and the UN used fear as an opportunity to introduce abortion into the world order. Panic and fear mongering are the weapons of repressive organizations.
Jeffrey Sachs continues the Paul Ehrlich phony drumbeat of overpopulation, and conveniently adds new fear tactics of climate change and human trafficking to justify and bolster the urgency of abortion and other sterilization tools to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Today, same scare tactics, same players, new alarm bells. The scare strategy of catastrophic global warming, debunked by science, morphs into climate change, debunked by science, morphs into sustainable development. Undeterred, the United Nations asserts its power to impose its elitists’ goals on the world under the rubric of “shared sustainable development goals.” Yet, forever embedded into the bureaucratic culture of the UN is their desired weapon of choice, abortion on demand. That is why it is so very troubling that at a Papal Conference entitled Dignify Humanity, the Vatican is consulting with the Secretary General of the UN and Jeffrey Sachs to recommend ‘sustainable development’ measures, which we all know are abortion, contraception and sterilization to solve alleged climate change.
As the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches:

"From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person – among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life." CCC2270

The Church believes that every human being, rich and poor, has an inviolable right to life. "The inalienable rights of the person must be recognized and respected by civil society and the political authority." CCC 2273
Over the centuries, Catholic moral teaching uniquely understood the power of laws to deprive certain human beings of the right to life.

"The moment a positive law deprives a category of human beings of the protection which civil legislation ought to accord them, the state is denying the equality of all before the law." CCC 2273

These are the precious and profound tenets of the Catholic Church regarding the sacredness of life and human dignity. So, it is perplexing that abortion and reproductive rights zealots like, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and Jeffrey Sachs, the Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network are prominently highlighted at this Catholic Conference in anticipation of Pope Francis’ Environmental Encyclical.
As a Catholic, I am deeply troubled by the recommendations and policies promulgated over the last 20 years by Jeffrey Sachs, in his various roles at the United Nations. As Director of the UN Millennium Development Goals, and now, as director of UN Sustainable Development Solutions, his rabid advocacy of abortion, and reproductive health services are in direct contravention of the moral teaching of the Catholic Church.
In fact, the very success of Sustainable Development, the new UN global initiative depends according to Sachs, on reducing the high fertility rate of Third World Countries. In Jeffrey Sach’s newly book published in 2015, “Sustainable Development” Dr. Sachs’ states: "The legality of abortion also plays an evident role as well. Different societies have widely divergent views about abortion, but the data suggests that those countries with legalized abortion tend to have lower observed fertility rates than countries where abortion is illegal."
More abortions fewer people. Sachs continues to underscore the need for low fertility rates as the barometer of successful sustainable development:

Population dynamics are very important for Sustainable Development. The chances for sustainable development will be very different if the population reaches 10.8 billion at the end of the century or instead peaks by 2050 and declines to 6.8 billion by 2100. The later trajectory would be much easier from the point of view of achieving a higher quality of life, greater poverty reduction, higher income per capita and environmental sustainability.

Listen to the scare tactics employed by Sachs: "I am really scared about population explosion in Nigeria. It is not healthy. Nigeria should work towards attaining a maximum of three children per family."
Here is one man, Jeffrey Sachs, with the enormous power and influence of the United Nations lecturing Nigerian families to limit the size of their families to 3 children. The hubris is breathtaking.
In conclusion, I find it incomprehensible that the Vatican would be duped into thinking that the United Nations and its Millennium and Sustainable Development Czar share common solutions for the world’s problems. The Catholic Church welcomes children as a gift from God. The UN Secretary General and Jeffrey Sachs want to limit children.
We seek the truth today and turn to the Child, both unborn and born, rich and poor, whether African, Asian, European, or from the Americas.
For the Child is the Guardian of the Truth.

Elizabeth Yore, Child advocate attorney, took part in the Heartland Institute’s conference in Rome during the preparation for Pope Francis’s controversial encyclical on global warming/climate change.

No Miracles? No Matter! Mother Teresa never sought the conversion of any pagan to faith in Jesus Christ and membership in His Church, but rather a conversion to "winged humanism" - which saves no one.

Mother Teresa to be canonised in September 2016

IANS | May 18, 2015

KOCHI: Mother Teresa will be canonised in September 2016, senior priest and spokesperson of the Syro-Malabar Church Paul Thelekat said on Monday.
Pope John Paul-II beatified Mother Teressa on October 19, 2003.
"As a Christian, I am eagerly waiting for the canonization of Mother Teresa. She has been a mother to millions of Indians especially the poorest of the poor and the underprivileged," Thelekat said.
"Christians and her followers will continue her work among the poor with a winged humanism which the Hindu fundamentalists failed to understand. Where have all the converts that the great missionaries of this age and especially Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, were supposed to have proselytized gone? If Christianity converts it is to that winged humanism which India needs so dearly," added Thelekat. [......]

Did one of the main Vatican II documents distort the Words of Our Lord in the Gospel?

Those who wish to apply a 'hermeneutic of continuity' to Vatican II, or who deny that there can be any opposition or rupture between the documents of that council and Catholic tradition, or who claim that the assertion that the authentic teachings of Vatican II formally contradict the tradition of the Church is false, might consider the following passage from the council's pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes:

Gaudium et Spes 24: 'Quapropter dilectio Dei et proximi primum et maximum mandatum est.'

For non-Latinists, this claim (it is a complete sentence in the conciliar document) can be translated as follows: 'For love of God and of neighbour is the first and greatest commandment'. No Latin is needed to realise that this is a flat contradiction of the teaching of Christ. There is a deliberate allusion in Gaudium et Spes 24 to the wording of the divine teaching it is contradicting, as can be seen from looking at the Vulgate text of that teaching:

Matthew 22:35-39: "Et interrogavit eum unus ex eis legis doctor, temptans eum; 'Magister, quod est mandatum magnum in lege? Ait illi Iesus: 'diliges Dominum Deum tuum ex toto corde tuo, et in tota anima tua, et in tota mente tua. Hoc est maximum et primum mandatum. Secundum autem simile est huic: diliges proximum tuum, sicut teipsum.'"

This text from Gaudium et Spes suffices to prove that the teachings of the Second Vatican Council are not without error, and that fidelity to Christ's teaching requires that parts of it be rejected. It is also a fruitful starting point for reflection and investigation into the ideology and motivations of the progressive leadership of that council, and into the degree to which the Council Fathers as a whole accepted their responsibility for preserving the divine deposit of faith. (This text was pointed out to me by a Catholic professor of theology who must remain anonymous.) Dr. John Lamont, posted by Rorate Caeli

If thou observe any vice in thy brother, correct him secretly; if he will not hear thee, correct him openly. For such reproofs are good, and often better than silent friendships. And though thy friend deem himself aggrieved, do thou yet correct him; for the wounds of friends are easier to bear than the kisses of flatterers.

St. Ambrose

Iconoclasm Revisited: The Great Neo-Modernist Heresy –

The belief that there exists a merely accidental relationship between the “revealed truths” and the dogmatic “manner of stating those truths and theological doctrines.”

Students must learn to distinguish between on the one hand revealed truths, which all require the same assent of faith, and on the other hand the manner of stating those truths and theological doctrines. As far as the formulation of revealed truths is concerned, account will be taken of what is said by, among others, the declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's Mysterium Ecclesiae, n. 5: "The truths which the Church intends actually to teach through its dogmatic formularies are, without doubt, distinct from the changing conceptions proper to a given age and can be expressed without them, but it can nonetheless happen that they will be expressed by the magisterium, in terms that bear traces of those conceptions. Account having been taken of these considerations, it must also be said that from the beginning the dogmatic formularies of the magisterium have always been appropriate for communicating revealed truth and that, remaining unchanged, they will always communicate it to those who interpret them properly". Students should therefore learn to make the distinction between the "deposit of faith itself or the truths which are contained in our venerable doctrine", and the way in which these truths are formulated; between the truths to be proclaimed and the various ways of perceiving them and shedding light upon them; between the apostolic Tradition and strictly ecclesiastical traditions, and at the same time they should learn to recognize and respect the permanent value of dogmatic formulations. From the time of their philosophical formation, students should be prepared to appreciate the legitimate diversity in theology which derives from the different methods and language theologians use in penetrating the divine mysteries. From which it follows that different theological formulations are often more complementary than contradictory.

The Ecumenical Directory

Pope Francis the Humble (who am I to judge?) makes common cause with pro-abortion, pro-homosexual 'marriage', pro-euthanasia, pro-one world government, pagan General Secretary of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, in their common credo professing the dogma of Global Warming with its attended agenda of "sustainable development" which ultimately calls for killing off 5.5 billion people. The pagans rejoice that their pagan Religion of Scientism has recruited a 'Catholic' moral imperative.

SCIENCE - THE STATE OF THE UNIVERSE

Blessed Are the Climate Advocates

The Vatican and United Nations present the beatitudes of a new movement.

By Michael Shank | May 1, 2015

This week, while at Vatican City in Rome to manage press for the first-ever meeting on climate change between Pope Francis and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, my faith in a force more powerful was renewed. I am not religious, despite being descended from a long line of Amish and Mennonite preachers. But at the climate confab, I became a believer again. And I wasn’t alone.

It wasn’t my faith in God that was renewed at the Vatican but rather a faith in our ability to get something done on climate change. And as an American, whose Congress isn’t even close to acting aggressively or quickly enough on climate change, that’s saying something. Even the Pope’s and the U.N.’s top policy officials were clearly inspired by the event, which was hosted by the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Throughout the day I witnessed multiple about-faces of previously cynical staff rapidly turning toward optimism.

This Vatican moment was a game-changer. Science and religion were forcefully and unwaveringly aligning. Tuesday’s high-level session brought together multiple presidents, CEOs, academics, scientists, and all the major religions, and ended with this final, forceful statement. The event was a prelude to the Pope’s summer encyclical on climate change, and it laid a solid foundation.

But more importantly—and this is why it instilled faith in many of us—the meeting featured some of the strongest words yet from the Vatican’s Cardinal Peter Turkson, the Pope’s right-hand policy man and the drafter of the first round of what will eventually be the Pope’s climate encyclical, and from the U.N.’s Ban Ki-moon.

The leaders of the conference were undeterred by the hecklers who crept onto the Vatican campus.

Beyond the expected shout-outs to the upcoming climate talks in Paris later this year and to the need for a strong Green Climate Fund, which will assist developing countries in climate adaptation, the U.N.’s Ban noted in no uncertain terms how “morally indefensible” it would be to allow a temperature rise of 4 to 5 degrees Celsius, calling on everyone to reduce their individual carbon footprint and thoughtless consumption. His pitch was more pointed than I had heard before. One of the leading rabbis, Rabbi David Rosen, took it one step further, calling out meat-intensive diets as completely unsustainable given their massive contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.

The Vatican’s Turkson, meanwhile, pulled out all the stops, saying that “a crime against the natural world is a sin,” and “to cause species to become extinct and to destroy the biological diversity of God’s creation ... are sins.” Turkson warned about how quickly we are degrading the planet’s integrity, stripping its forests, destroying its wetlands, and contaminating its waters, land, and air.

These declarations were not soft, feel-good, and vague speeches by politicos keen to be perceived as leading on the most urgent issue facing humanity. These were unequivocal, unwavering statements: “Decision mitigation is a moral and religious imperative for humanity” and the “summit in Paris may be the last effective opportunity” to keep the planet safe.

The leaders of the conference were undeterred by the hecklers who crept onto the Vatican campus. Marc Morano, for example, who is associated with the climate-skeptical Heartland Institute, snuck into the Vatican and attempted, to no avail, to disrupt the press briefing with the U.N. secretary-general while Ban was reporting on his meeting with the Pope. Morano’s account of what happened, that he was maliciously shut down after offering a benign question, misrepresents reality. Standing beside him, I can attest to what was instead a hijacking of protocol and the microphone. He said a few words about “global warming skeptics coming to talk” but coming to disrupt would be more accurate. He interrupted the secretary-general and the moderator, and was later escorted from the premises by Vatican officials.

What’s troubling about moments like this is that they work. The U.S. media reporting from the Vatican meeting felt compelled to give Morano critical space in their stories. It’s not just that he was an unexpected and therefore newsworthy interruption—giving his “side” is part of American broadcast media’s history of false balance even when there are not two legitimate sides of a story to balance. To be clear, the verdict is not still out on climate change. There’s overwhelming consensus when it comes to the science behind global warming, yet some media outlets (fewer all the time, fortunately) continue to give voice to the small percent that disagrees. Standing beside Morano, surrounded by representatives of the most powerful institutions in the world, it was quite clear to me that the Heartland Institute, though well funded by the Koch brothers, is ineffectually extreme and ultimately a minority player in society’s overall push toward climate progress.

In many ways, the Heartland emissaries proved, through their apoplectic protest, how peripheral they were to the whole process. There was no need for anyone to fight them in that moment; the majority opinion, the moral call to act on climate, was already winning the day. The global response to our conversation at the Vatican has been unequivocally positive, with every major outlet in the Western world covering the talks favorably.

As we left Vatican City this week—which is carbon-neutral thanks to solar power—there was a palpable sense that history was made within the walls of Casina Pio IV where our deliberations took place. This was no typical conference. This was a Sermon on the Mount moment, wherein the beatitudes of a new era were laid down. And we left as disciples, renewed in our faith that we must and will act in time to save humanity from itself—an agenda that would be a worthy legacy of the Pope’s Jesus.

Michael Shank is a professor at George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution and director of media strategy for Climate Nexus.

Rome Defends the New-Dogma Against the New Heretics - "Climate Change Deniers"

Pope’s top adviser blasts US climate skeptics

By Timothy Cama - 05/12/15

Pope Francis’ closest adviser castigated conservative climate change skeptics in the United States Tuesday, blaming capitalism for their views.

Speaking with journalists, Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga criticized certain “movements” in the United States that have preemptively come out in opposition to Francis’s planned encyclical on climate change.

“The ideology surrounding environmental issues is too tied to a capitalism that doesn’t want to stop ruining the environment because they don’t want to give up their profits,” Rodríguez said, according to the Boston Globe's Crux blog.

Rodríguez’s comments came at the beginning of the annual meeting of Caritas Internationalis, an association of Catholic charitable groups.

He said many individuals both inside and outside the Catholic Church are awaiting Francis’s encyclical “with hope,” and especially watching how it might impact the United Nations’s December meeting that seeks to reach an agreement on an international climate change pact.

That is Francis’s top stated goal for the encyclical, to encourage Catholics to fight climate change and influence the U.N.’s process.

But Rodríguez singled out the United States as the source of premature criticism, the Globe reported.

“I have already heard criticism over the encyclical,” Rodríguez said of the United States, adding that it is “absurd” to be so negative about an encyclical that no one in the public has seen.

The Heartland Institute, funded in part by the billionaire conservative brothers Charles and David Koch, has taken the lead on countering Francis’s encyclical.

The right wing group sent climate change deniers to the Vatican last month to try to convince top Catholic officials that human activity is not harming the planet, and there is no need for Francis’s action.

Sweetheart Fellowship in Novus Ordo Orders?

Francis receives his “dear sister”, head of the Lutheran Church of Sweden

IACOPO SCARAMUZZI | VATICAN CITY | 05/4/2015
Antje_Jackelén_Primate_Church_of_Sweden..jpg “Esteemed Mrs. Jackelén, esteemed sister, dear friends!” This was how Pope Francis addressed Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of Uppsala and Primate of the Swedish Lutheran Church, at their meeting this morning in the Vatican. The archbishop was accompanied by a delegation from the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Sweden. It was an opportunity to discuss topics such as the testimony of persecuted Christians around the world which brings the various denominations together, divisions over life and family that need to be avoided, the upcoming celebration of the 5th centenary of the Lutheran Reformation in 2017, as well as more specific questions such as the recognition of the welcome given by the Swedish Lutherans to South Americans fleeing dictatorships.
“The call to unity as followers of Our Lord Jesus Christ includes an urgent call for a common effort on the charity front, for the benefit of all those in the world who suffer because of misery and violence and are especially in need of our mercy; the testimony of our brothers and sisters especially, pushes us to grow in fraternal communion,” the Pope said. “The issue of the dignity of human life which must be respected always, urgently needs to be addressed, as do issues relating to the family, marriage and sexuality, which cannot be played down or ignored for fear of jeopardising the ecumenical consensus already obtained. It would be a shame for new denominational differences to form around such important questions.” [......]

The difference between Pope Benedict and Pope Francis is only one of style and not of substance!

Reprint from 2008: Thoughts on the recent papal visit... by John Vennari

The Kingdom of God vs. the Civilization of Love

Post-conciliar Church leaders have succeeded in creating new categories that eclipse true categories established by 2000 years of Catholic teaching.
One such instance is a new dichotomy that distinguishes between the “Civilization of Love” (the good guys) vs. the “Culture of Death” (the bad guys).
This terminology, and the interreligious ideology that shapes it, is foreign to our Catholic patrimony. It is a rupture with the past, not continuity.
The true Catholic teaching on this matter is found in the perennial Catholic doctrine of the two Kingdoms: the Kingdom of God vs. the kingdom of satan
According to the magisterial teaching of Pope Leo XIII, who reiterates the doctrine of Saint Augustine:

1.The world is divided into two opposing camps: the kingdom of God vs. the kingdom of satan;
2. Every human being belongs to either one or the other of these two camps;
3. Since the fall of Adam, these two kingdoms have been in conflict with one another, and will continue to be in conflict with one another until the end of time.

The eminent theologian Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton explains that the Kingdom of God is the Catholic Church; for this is what the term “church” actually means. It is the Kingdom of God on earth, the people of the Divine Covenant, the one and only social unit outside of which salvation cannot be found. The word ‘church’ has a distinct definition not applicable to any other religious body.
The Kingdom of God, Fenton elaborates, is the Church Triumphant in Heaven; the Church suffering in Purgatory; and the Church Militant on earth. This “supernatural kingdom of God” is the Catholic Church, the Mystical Body of Christ.
Opposed to this Kingdom, Fenton explains, is another kingdom, a kingdom of evil. “We must not lose sight of the fact”, writes Fenton, “that people in the condition of aversion from God, in the state of original or mortal sin, belong in some way to the kingdom or an eccleisa [church] under the leadership of satan, the moving spirit among the enemies of God.”
It is the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church that those who are not part of the true Church of Christ: heretics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and all other pagan religions, are not part of the Kingdom of God. Jews and members of pagan religions, speaking in the objective order, are still in the state of original sin. Heretics (Protestants, etc.), in the objective order, are outside the Church of Jesus Christ, as defined infallibly by the Council of Florence. It must be reiterated that everything said here is stated in the objective order.
All those outside the Kingdom of God stand in need of being saved. The Catholic concept of salvation, explains Msgr. Fenton, “involves necessarily the transfer of an individual from the one social unit to another, from the kingdom of satan to the true and supernatural Kingdom of God.”
But along comes Vatican II and its new policy of ecumenism and interreligious dialogue. The 2000-year-old Catholic categories of “Kingdom of God” vs. the “kingdom of satan” will no longer do, as they stand in the way of the new social order based on religious pluralism.
So new categories are invented: the “Civilization of Love” vs. the “Culture of Death”. The Civilization of Love may contain members of all religions provided that each member of this new civilization strives to incorporate moral virtues in themselves and in society. The “Culture of Death” is the work of the baddies, the anti-life forces of abortion and eugenics, the homosexual collective, the purveyors of pornography, and those who advance social injustice and physical evil. [Note: The “homosexual collective” has been mystically translated from the “Culture of Death” into the “Civilization of Love” by Pope Francis.]
Yet the “Civilization of Love” is a utopian dream born from the modernist revolution of Vatican II. It eclipses the true dichotomy between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of satan. It wants members of the Kingdom of God and kingdom of satan to downplay the primacy of salvation, of baptism, of sanctifying grace, in order to work together to enhance mutual understanding and to serve society at large.
The new pan-religious civilization of love stands condemned by the perennial magisterium of the Church. In 1910, Pope St. Pius X condemned the notion of “an inter-denominational association that is to work for the reform of civilization, an undertaking which is above all religious in character; for there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion [the Catholic Faith]: it is a proven truth, a historical fact.”
By “moral civilization”, Pius does not mean simply the Catholic religion as a dynamic contributor to a secular state, but the establishment of “Christian civilization”, of the “Catholic city”; in other words, the Social Kingship of Christ.
According to all appearances, Pope Benedict XVI came to the United States primarily as an emissary for the Civilization of Love.
Benedict’s April 17 Address to non-Christian religious leaders encouraged interreligious activity. He also called upon Jews, Muslims, Jains, Hindus, Buddhists and others to join with Catholics to “bear witness to those moral truths which they hold in common with all men and women of good will” so that “religious groups will exert a positive influence on the wider culture, and inspire neighbors, co-workers and fellow citizens to join in the task of strengthening the ties of solidarity.”
Pope Benedict then said, “In the words of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt: ‘no greater thing could come to our land than a revival of the spirit of Faith’.”
This is a rallying cry for the pan-religious civilization of love, not the Kingdom of God. Yet the theme of interreligious solidarity was repeated time and time again in his recent US trip, including the Papal Address to interreligious Leaders, the Address to the United Nations, the Address at the Ecumenical Prayer Service, and the visit to the Synagogue.
Nowhere in any of these speeches did Pope Benedict indicate that members of false religious are in danger of damnation by clinging to their false sects. Nowhere in his speech to the collection of non-Christian religious leader did he quote Jesus Christ. Instead, he chose to quote the Freemason Franklin D. Roosevelt whose definition of the “spirit of Faith” comes straight from the Masonic lodge – a generic spirit of religion allegedly common to practitioners of every opposing creed. In all this, as in most other areas, Benedict XVI showed himself to be first and foremost a man of Vatican II.
Granted, it is not easy to preach the Social Kingship of Christ. It is not easy to tell non-Catholics they can only save their souls by abandoning their present position and joining Christ’s one and only true Church. Yet how can a faithful Vicar of Christ do anything else but preach these truths, which flow not from changeable law, but from the very essence of God and of the Faith itself?
The more our Church leaders promote a pan-religious “healthy secularity”, the more difficult it will be for a future Pope to stand up for Our Lord’s Kingly rights in the social order. Thanks to modern Papal trips and statements that constantly endorse ecumenism and interreligious collaboration, present and future generations will regard the true doctrine of the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ as alien to their understanding of Catholicism; as something “un-Catholic”.
Despite the thousands who cheered and wept during the latest Papal visit, there can be no lasting hope except in a return to the perennial magisterium of the centuries. Heaven cannot bless a religious camaraderie between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of satan. The new spirit of ecumenism and interreligious dialogue is foreign to the spirit of Catholicism and to the consistent teaching of the Church. It will only bring about more chaos and ruin.
Let us pray for Pope Benedict XVI. Let us also pray fervently that God will soon grant us a Pope who will resurrect the true teaching of the Kingdom of God vs. the kingdom of satan, and discard the counterfeit “Civilization of Love vs. Culture of Death” dichotomy.

Note:

Pope Leo XIII explains in his magnificent encyclical against Freemasonry, Humanum Genus: “The race of man after its miserable fall from God, the Creator and the Giver of Heavenly gifts, ‘through the envy of the devil,’ separated into two diverse parts, of which the one steadfastly contends for truth and virtue, the other for those things which are contrary to virtue and to truth. The one is the Kingdom of God on earth, the true Church of Jesus Christ; and those who desire from their heart to be united with it so as to gain salvation must of necessity serve God and His only-begotten Son with their whole mind and with an entire will. The other is the kingdom of satan, in whose possession and control are all whosoever follow the fatal example of their leader and of our first parents, those who refuse to obey the divine and eternal law, and who have many aims of their own in contempt of God, and many aims also against God. This twofold kingdom St. Augustine keenly discerned and described after the manner of two cities, contrary in their laws because striving for contrary objects; and with subtle brevity he expressed the efficient cause of each in these words: ‘Two loves formed two cities: the love of self, reaching even to contempt of God, an earthly city; and the love of God, reaching even to contempt of self, a Heavenly one.’ At every period of time each has been in conflict with the other…” [emphasis added]. Even if post-Conciliar Church leaders use the term "Kingdom of God", they never define it as did Pope Leo XIII; and they simultaneously advance the new pan-religious "Civilization of Love". http://www.cfnews.org/cfn.htm

Once in our culture, common knowledge - “None is good but God alone.” (Luke 18-19)

There is no wisdom in sneering at him who truly studies words. Words, even the idlest, are signs, and signs of things, realities, which things, realities, are to be come at only through the signs. The term God and the adjective good, are one and the same word; and from this we learn that our Anglo-Saxon ancestors called by one and the same name, the supreme being, and that which it is proper to be, to desire, to do, or to possess. Therefore, say our wise modern philosophers, our Anglo-Saxon ancestors believed that the supreme being is good; thus proving that Balaam’s ass, or rather that Balaam himself, yet liveth and speaketh. Say, rather, therefore, they believed and incorporated into their every-day speech, the great truth, the foundation and spring of all heroism, that nothing is proper to be sought after, to be done, or possessed, which is not Godlike, or divine. They found not God in good; but good in God. What shall I be? A God-man, God-like. What shall I do? That which is God-like. What shall I prize? A God-ly soul. They did not conceive of Good, independent of God,—make that conception the standard, and bring God to it, as before a tribunal, to ascertain whether he conformed to it, or not; but they regarded God himself as the standard, and whatever conformed to him, they called good, and said, That be, do, possess, live for, die for,—nothing else is worth a wish or a thought.

Orestes Brownson, The Present State of Society

Is There Climate Change in Hell?

Italy Approves Fast Track Divorce while Pope Francis to Meet with UN officials on the crisis of Global Warming.

Pope Francis strongly implies that Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia and the clerics from dioceses of Harrisburg are going to Hell for the sin of Anti-Dialogueism!

Ss. Peter & Paul Roman Catholic Mission has had an open invitation for the last 14 years to any cleric from the Diocese of Harrisburg to "dialogue" with the Mission by entering into a written public debate regarding the doctrinal, liturgical, moral and canonical claims of our Mission. These clerics have wet their pants making public accusations against the Mission of heresy and schism and yet have not been able to name a dogma denied or produce any credible evidence of schism. "Archbishop" Charles Chaput from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia has likewise failed to meet the challenge. Quotation marks are added to the title of "Archbishop" because this little man has called into question the validity of his own ordination. It is hard to imagine Chaput actually diminishing his stature but that is what he has in fact done. So now we have it from the mouth of Pope Francis himself that the “wrath of God” will “remain upon them” because they would not “change their attitude” and “dialogue” and “so save themselves.” Well, such is life! Chaput and his buddies, chums and pals are going to hell and there is apparently nothing anyone can do about it because they are Anti-Dialogueites who have guilty of defending and spreading the 'heresy' Anti-Dialogueism!

"And in this (Novus Ordo) Mass let us pray for the teachers, for the doctors, for those who teach the people of God, that they would not be closed in on themselves, that they would dialogue, and so save themselves from the wrath of God, which, if they do not change their attitude, will remain upon them."

Pope Francis, April 15, 2015

Who then will be guilty of schism - Pope Francis or Cardinal Sarah?

The idea that would consist in placing the Magisterium in a nice box by detaching it from pastoral practice — which could evolve according to the circumstances, fads, and passions — is a form of heresy, a dangerous schizophrenic pathology. I affirm solemnly that the Church of Africa will firmly oppose every rebellion against the teaching of Christ and the Magisterium.

Cardinal Robert Sarah

"First Things" may be the last to know – the “Subversion” began a long, long, long time ago!

The mission of the Church is to keep man mindful that he has another life to live. When the Church maneuvers to be counted a player among the principalities and powers, the subversion of Christian truth and charity has begun.

Maureen Mullarkey, First Things, Notes on an Idol, April 21, 2015

The Lord hath given us our power unto edification, and not for your destruction.

St. Paul, 2 Corinthians 10:8

Commentary: The Pope does not have the power to destroy. Therefore, if there is evidence that he is doing so, it is licit to resist him. The result is that if the Pope destroys the Church by his orders and actions, he can be resisted and the execution of his mandates prevented.

Fr. Francisco de Vitoria, O.P.

"Global Warming" questioned from Duke University study based upon "empirical data, rather than the more commonly used climate models"! So Pope Francis' climate encyclical will give greater reality to man-made computer "climate models" over the cold unfeeling facts of "empirical data."

Global Warming More Moderate Than Worst-Case Models

DURHAM, N.C. | April 21, 2015

A new study based on 1,000 years of temperature records suggests global warming is not progressing as fast as it would under the most severe emissions scenarios outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“Based on our analysis, a middle-of-the-road warming scenario is more likely, at least for now,” said Patrick T. Brown, a doctoral student in climatology at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. “But this could change.”

The Duke-led study shows that natural variability in surface temperatures -- caused by interactions between the ocean and atmosphere, and other natural factors -- can account for observed changes in the recent rates of warming from decade to decade.

The researchers say these “climate wiggles” can slow or speed the rate of warming from decade to decade, and accentuate or offset the effects of increases in greenhouse gas concentrations. If not properly explained and accounted for, they may skew the reliability of climate models and lead to over-interpretation of short-term temperature trends.

The research, published today in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Reports, uses empirical data, rather than the more commonly used climate models, to estimate decade-to-decade variability. [....]

Archbishop Charles Chaput Argues before God His Imagined Canonical Case against the Doctrinal and Moral Claims of Fr. Samuel Waters:

“Note also, Your Holiness,” continued the Pleader (Chaput), wagging his arched forefinger (which was long and pointed) very significantly in the air, “the contumax in advert to subvert . . . and the same regardant.” He added in a sort of sneering tone: “I will not weary the Court with that” (I could see that the Judge nodded), “but even the plaintiff, learned as he is in the law, will admit,” and here he turned and addressed (Fr. Waters) with a very contemptuous expression, “that plevin would not obtain in the case of recognisance, or at any rate in the defection there of would be docketted as an endorsement pursuant. An endorsement pursuant would stand void,” (Chaput) continued, with a renewed interest in his tone (he now excited a feverish attention in his audience), “for that is in the very foundation, I take it, of our law of terce and perinomy and has been upheld by a long succession of your Holiness’s predecessors from the origins of our Sacred Lawyers’ Guild.” Here again I thought I noticed the trace of an uncertain nod from the august figure upon the bench. “It comes, therefore,” concluded the eloquent (Chaput), “in plain words, to this: we rely on the terms general, and the reference particular, each interconnected, and certainly maintain that guaranty lies overt.” Here (Chaput) stopped dead, and then added in simple and lower tones: “That is my case.” Then he sat down. I am told it was one of the most marvelous efforts in all the history of the (Canonical) Lawyers’ Guild. Applause may be permitted even in the Mosque or the most sacred of Shrines, but not in the august presence of the Law.

Hilaire Belloc, The Mercy of Allah, Al-Wukala or “The Lawyers”

“Famed (Anabaptist) Theologian” taught at the University of Notre Dame for 30 years! – The unofficial disclaimer - 'He was paid to corrupt doctrine. The corruption of morals was an unforeseen bonus…!'

Mennonite seminary apologizes to victims of famed theologian John Howard Yoder

Michell Sokol | The Elkhart Truth | Apr. 9, 2015

The Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary community gathered for an emotional service March 22 to acknowledge the pain and trauma inflicted on more than 100 women who were sexually violated by renowned theologian John Howard Yoder.

It was the first time the seminary publicly took responsibility for the abuse and neglect, which happened in the '70s and '80s and was first publicized by The Elkhart Truth in 1992.

It was also the first time leaders in the seminary publicly apologized to the women who were victimized.

"What was done to you, whether sinful acts of commission or omission, was grievously wrong," current seminary president Sara Wenger Shenk said during a lengthy apology. "It should never have been allowed to happen. We failed you. We failed the church. We failed the Gospel of Jesus Christ."

Yoder, who died in 1997, was a professor of theology at the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary from 1960 to 1984 and also briefly served as dean and president of the Goshen Biblical Seminary. Those two seminaries combined in 1994 and changed the name to Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary in 2012.

Yoder also taught theology at the University of Notre Dame for 30 years. [......]

I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.

Cardinal Francis George, who died in his bed, April 17, 2015

Even if the "Bishop" happens to be the Pope?

And why just this dogma and not all dogma??

Cardinal Brandmüller: Advocates for changing Catholic teaching on marriage are ‘heretics’ – even if they are bishops

April 14, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- Cardinal Walter Brandmüller has been among the leading voices critical of proposals stemming from the Vatican’s Synod on the Family that risk subverting Catholic teaching on the sacraments and morality. He was one of five cardinals who contributed to the book Remaining in the Truth of Christ, which focused on criticizing Cardinal Walter Kasper’s proposal to open up Communion to those in irregular sexual unions.

LifeSiteNews contributor Dr. Maike Hickson interviewed Cardinal Brandmüller last month.

LifeSiteNews: Could you present once more for our readers clearly the teaching of the Catholic Church, as it has been consistently taught throughout centuries concerning marriage and its indissolubility?

Cardinal Brandmüller: The answer is to be found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church no. 1638-1642.

LifeSiteNews: Can the Church admit remarried couples to Holy Communion, even though their second marriage is not valid in the eyes of the Church?

Cardinal Brandmüller: That would be possible if the concerned couples would make the decision to live in the future like brother and sister. This solution is especially worth considering when the care for children disallows a separation. The decision for such a path would be a convincing expression of the penance for the previous and protracted act of adultery.

LifeSiteNews: Can the Church deal with the topic of marriage in a pastoral manner that is different from the continual teaching of the Church? Can the Church at all change the teaching itself without falling herself into heresy?

Cardinal Brandmüller: It is evident that the pastoral practice of the Church cannot stand in opposition to the binding doctrine nor simply ignore it. In the same manner, an architect could perhaps build a most beautiful bridge. However, if he does not pay attention to the laws of structural engineering, he risks the collapse of his construction. In the same manner, every pastoral practice has to follow the Word of God if it does not want to fail. A change of the teaching, of the dogma, is unthinkable. Who nevertheless consciously does it, or insistently demands it, is a heretic – even if he wears the Roman Purple.

LifeSiteNews: Is not the whole discussion about the admittance of remarried to the Holy Eucharist also an expression of the fact that many Catholics do not believe any more in the Real Presence and rather think that they receive in Holy Communion anyway only a piece of bread?

Cardinal Brandmüller: Indeed, there is an indissoluble inner contradiction in someone who wants to receive the Body and Blood of Christ and to unite himself with Him, while in the same time he disregards consciously His Commandment. How shall this work? St. Paul says about this matter: 'Who eats and drinks unworthily, is eating and drinking his judgment...' But: You are right. By far not all Catholics believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the consecrated host. One can see this fact already in the way many – even priests – pass the tabernacle without genuflection.

LifeSiteNews: Why is there nowadays such a strong attack on the indissolubility of marriage within the Church? A possible answer could be that the spirit of relativism has entered the Church, but there must be more reasons. Could you name some? And are not all these reasons a sign of the crisis of Faith within the Church herself?

Cardinal Brandmüller: Of course, if certain moral standards that have been valid generally, always, and everywhere are not any more recognized, then everybody makes himself his own moral law. That has as a consequence that one does what one pleases. It can be added the individualistic approach to life which regards life as a single chance for self-actualization – and not as a mission of the Creator. It is evident that such attitudes are the expression of a deeply rooted loss of Faith.

LifeSiteNews: In this context, one can state that there was little talk in the last decades about the teaching about the Fallen Human Nature. The dominant impression was that man, all in all, is good. In my view, this has led to a lax attitude toward sin. Now, that we see the result of such a lax attitude – an explosion of inhuman conduct in all possible areas of human life – should this not be a reason for the Church to see that the teaching on the Fallen Human Nature has been confirmed and to therefore proclaim it again?

Cardinal Brandmüller: That is true, indeed. The topic 'Original Sin' with its consequences, the necessity for Redemption through the suffering, death and Resurrection of Christ has been largely suppressed and forgotten for a long time. However, one cannot understand the course of the world – and one's own life – without these truths. It is unavoidable that this ignoring of essential truths leads to moral misconduct. You are right: one should finally preach again about this topic, and with clarity.

LifeSiteNews: The high numbers of abortion especially in the West have done great harm, not only for those killed babies, but also for the women (and men) who decided to kill their child. Should the prelates of the Church not take a strong stance about this terrible truth and try to shake the consciences of those women and men, also for the sake of their salvation? And does not the Church have a duty to defend with insistence the Little Ones who cannot defend themselves because they are not even allowed to live? “Let the Little Ones come to Me....”

Cardinal Brandmüller: Here one can say that the Church, especially under the last popes as well as under the Holy Father Francis did not leave any room for doubt about the despicable character of the killing of unborn children in the womb. This applies no doubt also to all bishops. However, another question is, whether and in which form the teaching of the Church has been witnessed and presented in the public realm. That is where the hierarchy certainly could do more. One only has to think of the participation of cardinals and bishops at pro-life marches.

LifeSiteNews: Which steps would you recommend for the Church to strengthen the call to holiness and to show the path how to attain it?

Cardinal Brandmüller: One certainly has to witness to the Faith in a way that is fitting for the specific situation. In which form this can happen, depends upon the specific circumstances. There opens up a whole field for creative imagination.

LifeSiteNews: What would you say about the recent statements of Bishop Franz-Josef Bode that the Catholic Church has to adapt increasingly to the “life realities” of the people of today and adjust accordingly her moral teaching? I am sure that you as a Church historian have in front of your eyes other examples from the history of the Church, where she was pressured from outside to change the teaching of Christ. Could you name some, and how did the Church in the past respond to such attacks?

Cardinal Brandmüller: It is completely clear and also not new that the proclamation of the teaching of the Church has to be adapted to the concrete life situations of society and of the individual, if the message shall be heard. But this applies only to the way of the proclamation, and not at all to its inviolable content. An adaptation of the moral teaching is not acceptable. 'Do not conform to the world,' said the Apostle St. Paul. If Bishop Bode teaches something different, he finds himself in contradiction to the teaching of the Church. Is he conscious of that?

LifeSiteNews: Is the German Catholic Church permitted to go her own paths in the question of the admittance of remarried couples to the Holy Eucharist and thereby decide independently of Rome, as Reinhard Cardinal Marx pronounced after the recent meeting of the German Bishops Conference?

Cardinal Brandmüller: The well-known statements of Cardinal Marx are in contradiction with the dogma of the Church. They are irresponsible in a pastoral respect, because they expose the faithful to confusion and doubts. If he thinks that he can take nationally an independent path, he puts the unity of the Church at risk. It remains: the binding standard for all of the teaching and practice of the Church are her clearly defined doctrines.

Radical Feminist Nuns Win Approval with Pope Francis - unlike the nuns of the Franciscans of the Immaculate who were kicked in the teeth - mercy has its limits!

Vatican Ends Battle With U.S. Catholic Nuns’ Group

Laurie Goodstein | April 16, 2015

The Vatican has abruptly ended its takeover of the main leadership group of American nuns two years earlier than expected, allowing Pope Francis to put to rest a confrontation started by his predecessor that created an uproar among American Catholics who had rallied to the sisters’ defense.

Anticipating a visit by Francis to the United States in the fall, the Vatican and the American bishops were eager to resolve an episode that was seen by many Catholics as a vexing and unjust inquisition of the sisters who ran (into the ground) the church’s schools, hospitals and charities.

Under the previous pope, Benedict XVI, the Vatican’s doctrinal office had appointed three bishops in 2012 to overhaul the nuns’ group, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, out of concerns that it had hosted speakers and published materials that strayed from Catholic doctrine on such matters as the all-male priesthood, birth control and sexuality, and the centrality of Jesus to the faith.

But Francis has shown in his two-year papacy that he is less interested in having the church police doctrinal boundaries than in demonstrating mercy and love for the poor and vulnerable — the very work that most of the women’s religious orders under investigation have long been engaged in.

Ending the standoff with the nuns is one of several course corrections that Francis has set in motion. He has also worked on reforming the Vatican Curia, the Vatican’s central administration, instituting tighter oversight of Vatican finances, and has created a commission to deal with sexual abuse by clergy members.

He has made no changes in doctrine — on Wednesday, he reiterated the church’s teaching that marriage can be only between a man and a woman — but Catholics worldwide say he has done much to make the church’s tone more welcoming.

On Thursday, that included calling an unexpected meeting with four of the leaders of the Leadership Conference. The four women were photographed in his office and said afterward in a statement that they were “deeply heartened” by Francis’ “expression of appreciation” for the lives and ministry of Catholic sisters.

“He met with them himself for almost an hour, and that’s an extravagant amount of papal time,” said Eileen Burke-Sullivan, a theologian and consultant for women’s religious orders and vice provost for mission and ministry at Creighton University, a Jesuit school in Omaha. “It’s about as close to an apology, I would think, as the Catholic Church is officially going to render.”

Francis has never talked explicitly in public about the imbroglio with American nuns. But he has spoken about creating “broader opportunities” for women in the church, and the value of nuns and priests in religious orders. He is a member of the Jesuit order.

A clear signal that the Vatican under Francis was taking a more conciliatory approach to American sisters came in December with the announcement of the conclusion of another, separate investigation of American women’s orders, which was known as an apostolic visitation. That process involved sending questionnaires to 350 religious communities and teams of “visitors” to 90 of them, asking about everything from their prayer practices to living arrangements.

Both of these investigations of American women’s religious orders began at the urging of American and some foreign prelates who accused the sisters of disobeying the bishops and departing from Catholic doctrine. It set off protests by Catholic laypeople across the country, who signed petitions and sent letters to the Vatican in defense of the sisters.

It even became a movement with its own anthem, "Love Cannot Be Silenced," composed by a folk-singing sister in Chicago.

The news came in a brief report issued jointly by the Leadership Conference and the three American bishops who had been appointed by the Vatican three years ago to take over and overhaul the organization.

The report cast the process as one of collaboration, saying, “Our extensive conversations were marked by a spirit of prayer, love for the church, mutual respect and cooperation. We found our conversations to be mutually beneficial.”

It was a far cry from three years ago, when the Vatican’s doctrinal office, led by an American cardinal, William Levada, issued a report finding that the Leadership Conference had “serious doctrinal problems.” It said the sisters were promoting “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.” It also accused the nuns of spending more time working against poverty and social injustice than abortion and same-sex marriage. [.....]

There was no way to know how involved Francis was in the resolution, but that “as a member of a religious order who himself felt under the gun many times by his superiors, he would have some natural sympathy toward the sisters.”

“Love Cannot Be Silenced”? - With a decline of 73% since Vatican II and the average age of 74 years (that was 3 ½ years ago), we will soon be entertained by the silence of the grave!

The Vanishing of the Nuns

Michael Winerip | December 2, 2012

In 1965, when the average age of a baby boomer was 10, there were 180,000 nuns in the United States. Today there are about 56,000. But even more dramatic than this decline is the age of the average Roman Catholic sister — 74 years old.

Will there even be nuns in the church by the time the millennials reach middle age? Will the boomers be the last generation to know nuns as a large and powerful force in American Catholicism?

Sister Kathy Sherman of LaGrange Park, Ill., at 60, a young nun by today’s standards, came of age during the Vietnam War, playing antiwar protest songs on her guitar. These days, Sister Sherman — whose voice sounds a lot like Judy Collins — has become known for a protest song she’s written (Love Cannot Be Silenced), aimed at the Vatican’s efforts to rein in American nuns.

'Well, when it is a question of money we must be absolutely firm......'

Whenever a priest is caught embezzling money from the diocese, indifferent to public scandal, the police are immediately called, the culprit arrested, charged with a crime, and if found guilty, sentenced to prison. Why were homosexual predators in the clergy never treated the same way? Why is the crime of the homosexual priests covered-up to avoid "scandal" while the crime of the priest stealing church funds is not? After all, whose money is it?

Fruits of Vatican II - Why is it that their “disease” always makes us sick?

Update on Msgr. Edward Arsenault : Press Release : April 23, 2014

We [Saint Luke Institute] have learned that Msgr. Edward J. Arsenault, former president and CEO of Saint Luke Institute, was sentenced today in New Hampshire after pleading guilty to misappropriating funds from the Diocese of Manchester, the Catholic Medical Center in New Hampshire and the estate of a priest.

This did not involve Saint Luke Institute funds. [....] This has been a very painful situation. We ask everyone to keep all those affected in their prayers.

FYI - The rest of the story: What Saint Luke Institute neglected to report in this press release is that the embezzled money was used by Msgr. Edward Arsenault to obtain sexual services from a young man by the name of Luke Parkin, a homosexual “performer.” The money given to Mr. Parkin was not recovered. He was not charged in the crime because he did not known the money was stolen. Saint Luke Institute is owned by the Diocese of Washington, D.C. and advertises itself as a “healing ministry” that is committed to “providing... quality psychological therapy, spiritual support and physical wellness... in healing from anxiety, addiction, depression, substance abuse, boundary issues, interpersonal problems, sexual issues or other challenges” afflicting Catholic religious. It is the most frequently used resource by U.S. bishops for the treatment of religious with “boundary issues” of sexual perversions. Msgr. Arsenault followed in the same mold as the former CEO and founder of Saint Luke Institute, Fr. Michael Peterson, a priest-psychiatrist, homosexual and drug abuser who died of AIDS in 1987 at 44 years of age. But, don't worry that Fr. Peterson may have died un-mourned. Fr. Peterson was given an all star send-off to the judgment of God with a “Mass of Christian Burial” officiated by Cardinal James Hickey and attended by 188 priests and 7 bishops, including Archbishop Pio Laghi, the Apostolic Pro-Nuncio, as well as a large contingent of nationally recognized homosexual activists. Fr. Peterson is remembered as the one who framed the sex-abuse scandal in the Church as a problem of pedophilia and not, as it in fact is, as a problem of homosexual pederasty in 90% or more of all cases. The Saint Luke Institute, whose cliental are for the most part Catholic religious with sexual perversions, is notorious for two particularly egregious sins: They counsel and promote techniques that directly violate natural law and corrupt Catholic norms of sexual morality; and, they have declared notorious homosexual pederasts “cured” and fit for return to active ministry that have continued to abused other adolescent boys. Since the Institute holds that the etiology of sexual perversions are genetic, they do not explain how they are “cured.” As Msgr. William Lori (the current Archbishop of Baltimore), who was at the time Cardinal Hickeys Chancellor, said in a press release, the “sexual abuse of minors was ... a terrible disease.”

“What other object have Councils….” That is, until Vatican II!

Finally, what other object have Councils ever aimed at in their decrees, than to provide that what was before believed in simplicity should in future be believed intelligently, that what was before preached coldly should in future be preached earnestly, that what was before practised negligently should thenceforward be practised with double solicitude? This, I say, is what the Catholic Church, roused by the novelties of heretics, has accomplished by the decrees of her Councils, — this, and nothing else— she has thenceforward consigned to posterity in writing what she had received from those of olden times only by tradition, comprising a great amount of matter in a few words, and often, for the better understanding, designating an old article of the faith by the characteristic of a new name.

St. Vincent of Lerins, Commonitory

On the "Character of Our Lord Jesus Christ" - The "New Evangelization" is clueless

We wish to draw your attention, Venerable Brethren, to this distortion of the Gospel and to the sacred character of Our Lord Jesus Christ, God and man.... As soon as the social question is being approached, it is the fashion in some quarters to first put aside the divinity of Jesus Christ, and then to mention only His unlimited clemency, His compassion for all human miseries, and His pressing exhortations to the love of our neighbor and to the brotherhood of men. True, Jesus has loved us with an immense, infinite love, and He came on earth to suffer and die so that, gathered around Him in justice and love, motivated by the same sentiments of mutual charity, all men might live in peace and happiness. But for the realization of this temporal and eternal happiness, He has laid down with supreme authority the condition that we must belong to His Flock, that we must accept His doctrine, that we must practice virtue, and that we must accept the teaching and guidance of Peter and his successors. Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went astray, He did not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared. He loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save them. Whilst He called to Himself in order to comfort them, those who toiled and suffered, it was not to preach to them the jealousy of a chimerical equality. Whilst He lifted up the lowly, it was not to instill in them the sentiment of a dignity independent from, and rebellious against, the duty of obedience. Whilst His heart overflowed with gentleness for the souls of good-will, He could also arm Himself with holy indignation against the profaners of the House of God, against the wretched men who scandalized the little ones, against the authorities who crush the people with the weight of heavy burdens without putting out a hand to lift them. He was as strong as he was gentle. He reproved, threatened, chastised, knowing, and teaching us that fear is the beginning of wisdom, and that it is sometimes proper for a man to cut off an offending limb to save his body. Finally, He did not announce for future society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be banished; but, by His lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the happiness which is possible on earth and of the perfect happiness in heaven: the royal way of the Cross. These are teachings that it would be wrong to apply only to one's personal life in order to win eternal salvation; these are eminently social teachings, and they show in Our Lord Jesus Christ something quite different from an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism.

St. Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique

To World of worlds without ending, Thanked be thou, Jesus, my King.

All my heart I give it thee; Great right it is that so it be.

With all my will I worship thee, Jesu, blessed may thou be.

Layfolk’s Mass Book, 14^th century

Like a drunken driver who argues that a few more drinks will straighten out the road!

Pope Francis and the New Rome

The most radical part of Francis’ papacy is his embrace of the liberalizing principles of Vatican II—from poverty and sexual ethics to church governance.

By Francis X. Rocca : April 3, 2015

One Saturday last month, Pope Francis celebrated Mass at Ognissanti (All Saints’) Church in one of Rome’s working-class neighborhoods. Little known to tourists or art historians, Ognissanti was the site of a momentous event in the modern history of the Catholic Church: Exactly 50 years earlier, Pope Paul VI had gone there to celebrate the first papal mass in Italian rather than in the traditional Latin.

In marking that anniversary, Pope Francis made plain his view of the vernacular Mass, one of the most visible changes ushered in by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). The practice still pains Catholic traditionalists who mourn the loss of churchwide unity that came with a common language.

Allowing Catholics to pray in their local languages “was truly a courageous act by the church to draw closer to the people of God,” Pope Francis told a crowd gathered outside. “This is important for us, to follow the Mass this way. And there is no going back…Whoever goes back is mistaken.”

In his two years in office, the pontiff has drawn attention for his unconventional gestures—such as personally welcoming homeless people to the Sistine Chapel last month—but those gestures matter most as signs of the radical new direction in which he seeks to lead the Catholic Church: toward his vision of the promise of Vatican II. Both the acclaim and the alarm that Francis has generated as pope have been responses to his role in the long struggle over the council’s legacy.

For a half century, ordinary Catholics and their leaders have debated, often passionately, whether the changes that followed the council went too far or not far enough. Pope Francis’ immediate predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, devoted much of their pontificates to correcting what they deemed unjustified deviations from tradition in the name of Vatican II I (i.e. Hermeneutic of Rupture).

Now Pope Francis has effectively reversed course. In word and deed, he has argued that the church’s troubles reflect not recklessness but timidity in interpreting and applying the principles of Vatican II, especially the council’s call for the church to open itself to the modern world. “It usually takes half a century for a council to begin to sink in,” says Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York. “Now we have a pope who says, ‘Look, we just had five decades of internal debates and controversy about the meaning of Vatican II, and now it’s time to do it.’ And that’s what he’s doing.”[.......]

The changes were dramatic. Rome absolved the Jewish people of collective guilt for the death of Jesus Christ and declared that God’s covenant with them had never been abrogated. Catholics began to hear Orthodox and Protestants described as “separated brethren,” while church leaders spoke of a “fellowship” with non-Christians.

The years following the council brought cultural change to the church, blurring many aspects of Catholic identity. Women ceased to wear veils in church, and Catholics started eating meat on Fridays. Nuns moved from convents to apartments. Interfaith marriage ceased to be taboo. Priests moved from hearing confessions in darkened booths to more conversational settings.

At the same time, the church in Europe and the U.S. saw a steep decline in attendance at Mass and in adherence to traditional morality, with the sexual revolution and the spread of contraception and legalized abortion. A half-century after the council, the population of nuns in the U.S. has declined by more than 70% and the annual number of priestly ordinations by 50%.

Popes John Paul and Benedict, who had played key roles at Vatican II, concluded that the church had gone too fast and too far in innovations ranging from the abandonment of religious garb to the acceptance of liberal ideas on sexual morality. [.....]

He has said that the church should show “mercy” toward divorced and remarried Catholics (whom church law forbids from receiving Communion), flouted liturgical rules to wash the feet of Muslims and women, and received a transsexual at the Vatican.

“This pope is very much a man of [Vatican II],” says Archbishop Blaise J. Cupich of Chicago. “He has an understanding of how the church ought to be positioned at the service of the world, in which we don’t impose but we propose.” [.....]

The pope’s relative silence on certain widely contested moral teachings has left some worried that these questions are now of secondary importance. The pope roused concerns in summer 2013, for instance, when he told the editor of a Jesuit journal that “we cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods.”

Six months into his papacy, Pope Francis had not yet made a major statement on abortion, not even during his homily at a special Vatican Mass with antiabortion activists. “I’m a little bit disappointed in Pope Francis that he hasn’t…said much about unborn children, about abortion,” said Rhode Island Bishop Thomas J. Tobin in September 2013. “Many people have noticed that.”

Church leaders have privately complained that the pope’s oft-quoted comment about gay priests—“Who am I to judge?”—has made their job more difficult in upholding church teachings. In November 2013, Catholic legislators in Illinois cited those words to explain their support for a same-sex marriage bill. [......]

He [Satan] considers that he has made a notable advance towards his goal when he has succeeded in having other religions placed on the same level as the True Church of Christ. He is well aware of the anti-supernatural influence of that official attitude on the average members of society . He knows well that, when error has become incarnate in legal formulae and in administrative practice, it penetrates so deeply into people’s minds that it is impossible to eradicate it.

Cardinal Louis-Édouard-François-Desiré Pie whose writings were read daily by St. Pius X quoted by Fr. Denis Fahey

Naturalism consists in the negation of the possibility of the elevation of our nature to the Supernatural Life and order, or more radically still, in the negation of the very existence of that Life and order. In our day, owing to the progress of the anti-Christian revolt, the more radical meaning has become common. Naturalism may be defined, therefore, as the attitude of mind which denies the reality of the Divine Life of Grace and of our Fall therefrom by Original Sin. It rejects our consequent liability to revolt against the order of the Divine Life, when this Life has been restored to us by our Membership of [in] Christ, and maintains that all social life should be organized on the basis of that denial….. Naturalism means complete sterility in regard to salvation and eternal life……. There is unorganized opposition to the Supernatural Life in each one of us, owing to the Fall. This unorganized opposition of individuals inevitably leads to the formation of little anti-supernatural groups here and there, even without the concerted action of vast organized forces. But the fact that there exists concerted anti-supernatural action on the part of organized bodies is so far removed from the preoccupations of the average Catholic that it needs to be specially stressed and its aims made clear….. It is the good men, good once, we must hope, good still, who are to do the work of anti-Christ and so sadly to crucify the Lord afresh…. Bear in mind this feature of the last days, that this deceitfulness arises from good men being on the wrong side…. It is a challenge to the Catholic Church of a duel to the death.”

Rev. Denis Fahey

Mary must be manifested more than ever by her mercy, her power, and her grace in these latter times; by her mercy, bringing back and lovingly welcoming the poor strayed sinners who will be converted and will return to the Catholic Church; by her power, against the enemies of God, idolaters, schismatics, Mohammedans, Jews, and men hardened in impiety, who will rise in terrible revolt to seduce all those who oppose them and to make them fall by promises and threats; she must also be made manifest by her grace animating and sustaining the valiant soldiers and faithful servants of Jesus Christ, who shall battle for His interests. And lastly, Mary must be terrible to the devil and his ministers, as an army in battle array, principally in these latter times, because the devil, knowing that he has but little time, and now less than ever, to damn souls, will every day redouble his efforts and his combats. He will before long raise up cruel persecutions and will lay terrible snares for the faithful servants and true children of Mary whom he finds more difficult to conquer than the others.”

St. Louis Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to Mary

Why the Neo-Modernists Really Dislike St. Thomas and Find Him So Unintelligible? Is it because the great Catholic mystics such as St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila followed his theological teaching to achieve the highest spiritual union with God!? Is it because for St. Thomas the purpose of knowledge of God was always practical and directed to a greater love of God?

Grant, O good Jesus, that my soul may always fly toward You, that my entire life may be one continual act of love. Make me understand that any work which is not done in Your honor is a dead work. Grant that my piety many not become just a habit, but a continual elevation of my heart! O my Jesus, supreme Goodness, I ask of You a heart so enraptured with You that nothing can distract it. I wish to become indifferent to everything that goes on in the world, and to want You alone, to love everything that refers to You, but You above everything else, O my God! And my spirit, O Lord, my spirit- grant that it may be zealous in seeking You and may succeed in finding You, O sovereign Wisdom!

St. Thomas Aquinas

A Woman, living in public adulterous relationship, claims Pope Francis ("Fr. Bergoglio") told her that she could receive Holy Communion - Vatican reply, "No Comment"

Pope’s telephone call re-opens debate over communion for remarried divorcees

The news from Argentina spread fast but should be handled with great care because one wrong title could have been disastrous for media around the world

Andrés Beltramo Álvarez | vatican city | 04/23/2014

“There are priests who are more papist than the Pope.” A set phrase like any other. Only this time, the lips that uttered it were those of Francis himself, during a conversation with fellow Argentinean, Jakelina Lisbona. A woman who married a divorced man. Bergoglio advised her to take Communion regardless of her personal situation. This little detail ended up as a news story that made it half way around the world.

“Pope assures there’s no harm in a divorced person taking Communion”. This is the title that has been causing a buzz in the media in the last few hours. But it is a misinterpretation because the person the Pope spoke with was not divorced as was originally believed.

“It’s not me who’s divorced,” one of the female protagonists in this story said in an interview with Buenos Aires radio station La Red AM 910. Lisbona said it was her husband, Julio Zabeta, who had divorced, but she never married in the Church. The two have been united in civil matrimony for the past nineteen years and have two daughters.

“We used to go to mass, not every day. Here at home, we pray every evening, turning to God always; when someone is in a difficult situation God is the first one they turn to. I wrote the letter spontaneously. I wrote to him because he’s Argentinean, he listens to people and I believe in miracles,” she said.

The woman also said she tried taking Communion again last year but not only did the local priest apparently say he could not give her Communion, he even said she could not access the sacrament of Confession either. “[They told me that] when I went home, I resumed a life of sin,” she added.

The woman finally decided to write to Pope Francis to explain her situation to him. The letter was sent last September.

“The phone rang and my husband answered. It was Fr. Bergoglio calling. The father asked to speak to me and my husband asked: ‘who’s calling?’, to which the voice replied ‘Fr. Bergoglio’. I asked him if it was really him, the Pope, and he said it was and that he was calling in response to my letter dated September,” he explained.

Lisbona did not want to give too many details during the radio interview but she revealed the piece of advice Francis apparently gave her and that was that there was no problem in her approaching the sacrament of Communion. “This received too much public attention. He told me to go and take Communion in a different parish, but now I won’t be able to go anywhere.”

She also revealed an interesting fact: the priest who apparently refused to administer Communion to her, no longer exercises his ministry. He asked to be dispensed from his obligations as priest so he could get married.

According to the woman, Pope Francis also said he is “dealing with the issue” of remarried divorcees; a clear reference to the next two assemblies on the pastoral challenges of the family which the Synod of Bishops is due to hold in 2014 and 2015. “He said my letter was useful in helping him address this issue,” she added.

“Then he told me there are some priests who are more papist that the Pope. He was completely normal with me on the phone and I tried to speak to him with the utmost respect. Now I am overwhelmed by the enormous effect this story has had and I feel moved by the fact that I spoke to Francis. I told him I would write to him again when I take Communion again,” she said.

The Holy See did not wish to comment on whether Bergoglio really did make the call to Jakelina Lisbona or not. But it has not denied the news either. As far as the Vatican newsroom is concerned, the Pope’s communication was private and so there is no comment to be made.

Whoever then gainsays these Apostolic and Catholic determinations, first of all necessarily insults the memory of holy Celestine, who decreed that novelty should cease to assail antiquity; and in the next place sets at naught the decision of holy Sixtus, whose sentence was, “Let no license be allowed to novelty, since it is not fit that any addition be made to antiquity.”

St. Vincent Lerins, Commonitory

Archbishop Charles Chaput, by his attack upon Fr. Samuel Waters, Casts Doubt upon the Validity of the Novus Ordo Priesthood

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia has called Ss. Peter & Paul Roman Catholic Mission a "schismatic organization" because we keep the Catholic Faith, practice Catholic morals, and defend Catholic immemorial traditions as necessary attributes of the one true Catholic Faith. He has viciously attacked our priest, Fr. Samuel Waters, declaring him without canonical hearing “excommunicated” because, as documented in his letters, he offers the immemorial Roman rite of Mass. Archbishop Chaput has compounded this sin which is specifically cursed by St. Pius V, by lying to or conspiring with Roman authorities in manufacturing a non-canonical process of laicization.

No true priest can be laicized without canonical due process and any act in so doing is not only unjust but also null. In 2009 Benedict XVI permitted an exception to this rule in cases where priests had abandoned the priestly vocation (often entering into non-sacramental married state) without seeking canonical exemption for a period of greater than five years. Furthermore, the ordinary in pursuing a process of non-canonical laicization must be morally certain that any priest in question has no intention to return to the active ministry, that is, by entering a “married state” constituted moral proof he had no intention of returning to the priesthood. The only way Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia could process the non-canonical laicization of Fr. Waters was by lying.

But what the lying of Archbishop Chaput has in fact done is to publically call into question the validity of the Novus Order rite of Ordination. There has always existed a doubt regarding the Novus Ordo rite of Ordination primarily because the Novus Ordo is a memorial meal and not a sacrifice. That is in fact how the Novus Ordo was officially defined when first published. The Church has dogmatically declared that when Jesus Christ said, “Do this for a commemoration of Me,” He made the Apostles priests.

Canon 2. If anyone says that by those words, “Do this for a commemoration of me,” Christ did not institute the Apostles priests; or did not ordain that they and other priests should offer His own body and blood, let him be anathema (Council of Trent, On the sacrifice of the Mass)

Jesus made the Apostles priests at the very same time He offered the eternal sacrifice of the Mass by transubstantiating the bread and wine into His Body and Blood. The Catholic priesthood is first and foremost sacrificial. The Novus Ordo minister is ordained to offer a memorial meal and not a sacrifice.

Does this constitute sufficient proof of invalidity? We do not know however this act of Archbishop Chaput provides additional evidence that the Novus Ordo church regards the priesthood as a job description from which anyone can be fired without due process. When this is considered in light of the Novus Ordo church addressing, for example, Anglican and other Protestant pastors by clerical titles, which they obviously consider equivalent to their own, it becomes an open declaration that their own power of orders are no different in kind, such as the recent Novus Ordo burial of “Bishop” Tony Palmer directed by Pope Francis. What Archbishop Chaput has done against Fr. Waters is a grave sin that ultimately calls into question the validity of his own priesthood. But should we be surprised by any of this from Archbishop Chaput?

He is the ordinary of a remarkably dysfunctional diocese disproportionately staffed with homosexual clerics many of whom have been guilty of pederasty for which Catholic faithful have paid and are paying millions in criminal reparations. Apparently, the diocese is having problems emerging from what Benedict XVI called the "media hijacking" of the spirit of Vatican II. Archbishop Chaput may someday bring Philadelphia into the promised "springtime" of the Council once the mystical revelation of its true "spirit" is divined, but until he does, he has no room to smear with the calumny of "schism" anyone who does not want to participate in his organized apostasy from the Faith, corruption of worship, and moral degeneracy that characterizes his diocese and his person.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia has been covering its annual deficits for many years by taking a page from the federal government and misappropriating the deposits from pension funds. Now that there is no more money to steal, and, unlike the federal government who has the power create ex nihilo, he is selling or sold off schools and churches, the diocesan (St. Charles Borromeo) seminary, various properties such as the $6.2 million ocean front beach house (that cost about $10,000 per month in property taxes alone), etc., etc. to cut expenses. In what can only be characterized as a particularly mercenary scam offensive to simple justice, Archbishop Chaput has sold the concession rights to Catholic cemeteries and Catholic nursing homes to raise money by fleecing elderly Catholics a second time for these facilities that they paid for in the first place while still begging from these same elderly Catholics that they remember the Archdiocese in their wills.

This coming fall Archbishop Chaput will be hosting the 'Conference on the Family' from which many leading Catholic prelates, including Pope Francis, would like to see a recommendation to permit divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion. Archbishop Chaput was particularly anxious that Pope Francis would make a personal appearance during the conference to see just what a wonderful job he is doing in Philadelphia. Maybe he can offer to sell the Catholic dogma on marriage for a Vatican bailout? But really, if the Novus Ordo is only a memorial meal what difference does it make?

The Former Director of Clergy for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia is "back behind bars." He was, of course, only obeying orders!

Supreme Court Reinstates Monsignor Lynn Conviction

Says prosecutors proved that he thwarted investigations and reassigned abusive priests without regard for children.

By Joel Mathis | April 27, 2015 at 4:38 pm

Monsignor William Lynn headed back behind bars.

Lynn was freed last year after an appeals court overturned his conviction on child endangerment charges relating to Philadelphia Archdiocese’s sex-abuse scandal. On Monday, though, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned that reversal and reinstated the original conviction — saying that the child endangerment statute applied to Lynn even though he did not directly supervise the welfare of the child victims in the scandal.

Justice Max Baer, writing for the court, said prosecutors established that Lynn — who had served as the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s former secretary for clergy — had:

• “Mollified victims of sexual abuse by falsely telling them their allegations were being seriously investigated and that the particular priest would never again be assigned around children, despite knowing that the priests under his supervision would merely be reassigned to another parish with no ministry restrictions on contact with children.”

• “Informed parishioners that the priests he transferred were moved for health reasons, leaving the welfare of children in jeopardy.”

• “Routinely disregarded treatment recommendations for priests."

• “Failed to inform the relocated priest’s new supervisor about abuse allegations.”

• “Took no action to ensure that the abusive priest was kept away from children at his new assignment.”

• “Suppressed complaints and concerns by the colleagues of the priests; all with the knowledge that sexually abusive priests rarely had only one victim and that all of these actions would endanger the welfare of the diocese’s children.”

• “Finally, and even more egregiously, when (Lynn) was contacted by law enforcement, he misrepresented facts to thwart their investigation of these priests, and their crimes.”

Lynn’s lawyers argued — and the appeals court agreed — that the state’s child welfare law at the time could not be used against Lynn, since he did not directly care for the children, but instead supervised those who did.

In the ruling first reported by Ralph Cipriano at BigTrial.net, the Supreme Court didn’t buy the argument.

“The broad protective purpose of the statute, the common sense of the community, and the sense of decency, propriety, and morality which most people entertain, coalesce and are actualized in our conclusion that (Lynn’s) particular conduct is rendered criminal in accord with the (child welfare) statute,” Baer wrote for the court.

Chief Justice Thomas Saylor was the lone dissenter.

Although Lynn “may have been substantially derelict in his obligations, as I read the record there were no facts placed before the jury by which it could reasonably conclude he affirmatively intended that children’s welfare be endangered,” Saylor wrote.

Lynn, a former aide to Philadelphia’s Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, was convicted in 2012 of endangering children, but the verdict was thrown out on appeal in 2013.

46 New Parishes Up for Review for Potential Closure, Merger

By David Chang, Staff Writer : Sept 17, 2013

To deal with a drop of enrollment of more than 30 percent in the last 10 years, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia recently announced the closure of four of its 17 high schools and 45 of its 156 elementary schools last June. About 21,000 elementary-school students are affected by the changes. Another 46 parishes are undergoing "studies" to determine their future status for possible closure.

Archdiocesan fund campaign collection falls short by millions

By Harold Brubaker, Inquirer Staff Writer : April 13, 2014

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia provided a sobering update on the Heritage of Faith - Vision of Hope fund-raising campaign, which ended its pledging period in early 2011[......]The write-offs and doubtful pledges add up to $52.2 million, or about 28 percent of the $185 million. That's a very high percentage, according to experts in the fund-raising sector, who say a healthy campaign would have a comparable percentage of 5 percent to 10 percent.

Archdiocese of Philadelphia in serious financial shape - and so are its parishes

By Harold Brubaker, Inquirer Staff Writer : October 01, 2012

The fortunes of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and its more than 250 parishes are deeply and torturously entwined.

The archdiocese, the central organizing force for 1.46 million Catholics in Southeastern Pennsylvania, depends on money from member parishes to pay for church wide activities and to shift money to weaker parishes.

But that formula is broken: Too many parishes have seen attendance fall and offerings shrivel, rendering them unable to support themselves. Ten have been shuttered in the last year, including Ascension of Our Lord in Kensington, which is closing Sunday.

There is no easy way out.

"More than two-thirds of the parishes have operating deficits," Archbishop Charles J. Chaput said in a June speech. "About 100 are in some form of financial distress."

For years, the archdiocese's central administrative office, the Office of Financial Services, tapped generations of accumulated wealth to pay bills for parishes that could not afford them. That money is gone, Chaput has said.

One result of that spending - and a dramatic sign of the cash shortages - is a $62 million deficit in a savings-and-loan arrangement between parishes and the archdiocese.

Much remains unknown about how dire the money woes are - and if any additional sources of wealth remain - because the information the archdiocese releases to parishioners and the public is not comprehensive. [.....]

Those problems are compounded by huge expenses to defend against child-sexual-abuse charges. [.....]

Five priests removed from ministry; two restored to duty

December 16, 2013 | By Jeremy Roebuck, Inquirer Staff Writer

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput has permanently removed five parish priests from ministry over allegations of sexual abuse or misconduct, including one priest who had previously been investigated and returned to duty last year. An archdiocesan review board had cleared the Rev. Michael A. Chapman in May 2012 of an abuse allegation involving a minor. But within months, a new accuser came forward with allegations dating back 30 years. In a statement expected to be released in parishes across the region Sunday, the archdiocese said the board substantiated new abuse accusations against Chapman and deemed him "unsuitable for ministry.

Archdiocese to lease 13 cemeteries to Levittown firm

September 28, 2013 | By Harold Brubaker, Inquirer Staff Writer

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia has agreed to lease its 13 cemeteries to a Levittown company for a total payment of $89 million over 35 years, officials announced Thursday. The 60-year deal with StoneMor Partners L.P. includes an initial payment of $53 million, plus $36 million spread over years six through 35 of the lease. Officials from the archdiocese and StoneMor, whose chief executive attended elementary school in the former Corpus Christi parish in Philadelphia, assured Catholics that the cemeteries would retain their character and that current practices and policies would continue (only, they will cost a lot more).

Archdiocese to sell senior-living facilities

By Solomon Leach, Daily News Staff Writer : August 22, 2013

IN YET another cost-cutting move, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia is putting seven senior-living facilities up for sale and seeking an outside operator for nearly a dozen cemeteries, officials announced yesterday.

The changes could affect up to 1,400 residents and more than 2,000 employees in the senior-living facilities, along with 190 employees at 11 cemeteries.

"Our difficult financial situation must be addressed and the actions that we need to take may be painful ones," Archbishop Charles Chaput said in a statement. "I understand this fact fully, but it is of critical importance that we rebuild our financial foundation so that we can continue our collective good works."[.....]

The announcement comes as no surprise for the financially strapped Archdiocese. Last month, officials reported a $39.2 million deficit for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2012.

Officials have already taken several steps to address the deficit, including selling the Archbishop's residence, along with a property in Ventnor, N.J. They also laid off 25 percent of the workforce at the Archdiocesan Pastoral Center.

Two more Philadelphia Archdiocese priests deemed 'unsuitable'

By William Bender, Daily News Staff Writer : February 25, 2014

WHEN THE REV. John P. Paul resigned as pastor of Our Lady of Calvary Parish in November, the 67-year-old priest told his congregation that he was considering a serious road trip for "renewal" purposes.

"If possible, I would like to study spirituality at Bellarmine University, in Louisville, KY . . . make a retreat in Assisi, Italy, and work with Fr. Mike in Malawi, Africa," Paul wrote in the church bulletin.

He might have more time on his hands than he'd first anticipated.

Yesterday, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced that Archbishop Charles Chaput has found Paul unsuitable for ministry because of at least one substantiated allegation that he sexually abused a 17-year-old more than 40 years ago.

The Rev. James J. Collins also was deemed unsuitable for ministry based on a similar substantiated allegation. Collins, 75, a faculty member at Holy Family University from 1976 until last year, was placed on administrative leave in May......

Chaput apologizes for church's role in sex abuse scandal

By Bob Warner, Inquirer Staff Writer : March 24, 2014

PHILADELPHIA Archbishop Charles J. Chaput apologized Saturday to victims of sexual abuse by the Catholic clergy and referred to "the negligence of the church's pastors" in allowing it to occur.

"I apologize on behalf of the church," Chaput said in his homily at a late-afternoon "Mass for Healing for Victims of Clergy Sexual Abuse," attended by some 250 people.

Similar Masses have been held elsewhere for victims of clergy sex abuse, but this was the first in Philadelphia, coming at a time when the archdiocese and Chaput have been strongly criticized by some groups of victims.

Chaput's formal public apology on behalf of the church, as opposed to past acknowledgments of wrongdoing and personal responsibility, struck at least one person who attended as something new.

"I thought it was significant that he was talking about it and acknowledging the church had been wrong, talking about the church being in need of repentance," said a woman who said she was a victim and asked not to be identified.

"That's something I think has been missing."

"We need to repent and ask the forgiveness of those who have suffered," Chaput said. "We ask God in His mercy to lift up the victims and also lift up the rest of the church."

Kenneth Gavin, the archdiocese's director of communications, said it was not the first time that Chaput had apologized for the church's responsibility in the sex-abuse scandal.

"The archbishop has publicly apologized before on several occasions, as did his predecessors," Gavin said, referring to Cardinal Justin Rigali.

The archdiocese had invited more than 200 people who had identified themselves as victims of sexual abuse by priests in Philadelphia and the four suburban counties. The Mass was open to the public, and there was no way to tell how many of those in attendance were victims.

Outside the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul, about 20 victims and their families protested the Mass and refused to attend, saying the archdiocese and Chaput had done too little, too late.....

Chaput to hold Mass for clergy abuse victims

March 14, 2014 | By Solomon Leach, Daily News Staff Writer

AS IT TRIES to move past the clergy sex-abuse scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced earlier this week that it will host its first Mass for survivors of abuse. The Mass for Healing, which will take place March 22 at Cathedral Basilica of Ss. Peter and Paul, will be led by Archbishop Charles Chaput and focus on prayers for the victims, the healing of the church and all those affected by the abuse. The Archdiocese said some survivors have been invited and are expected to attend the 5:15 p.m. Mass, which will also be broadcast via a live stream on the Internet.

WHOSOEVER wishes to be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith. . . Which Faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish eternally. Now the Catholic Faith is this….

Introduction of the Athanasian Creed

You will see that in prayer you will find more knowledge, more light, more strength, more grace and virtue than you could ever achieve by reading any books, or by great studies. Never consider as wasted the time you spend in prayer. You will discover that in prayer God communicates to you the light, strength, and grace you need.

St. Lucia dos Santos of Fatima

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity… the Masonic slogan of the French Revolution,

Religious Freedom, Collegiality, and Ecumenism, the novel slogan of Vatican II

(In the twentieth century) the passions will erupt and there will be a total corruption of customs, for Satan will reign almost completely by means of the Masonic sects. They will focus particularly on the children in order to achieve this general corruption. Woe to the children of these times…. depraved priests, who will scandalize the Christian people, will incite the hatred of the bad Christians and the enemies of the Roman, Catholic and Apostolic Church to fall upon all priests. This apparent triumph of Satan will bring enormous sufferings upon the good pastors of the Church.

Our Lady of Good Success, to Mother Marianna, 1582

Church Teaching is reduced to a "Historical Attitude"

Pope Francis Is Good for the Jews

A repair process that began with John Paul II just might be completed by the new pope.

By Francis X. Rocca : Vatican City : June 13, 2013

Nearly half a century ago, the Second Vatican Council corrected the Roman Catholic Church's historical attitude toward Jews with the document "Nostra Aetate," which exonerated the Jewish people of any collective guilt for the killing of Jesus and affirmed that God's covenant with them had never been abrogated. The document remains a source of controversy among Catholics......

· Religious Liberty is the doctrinal validation of "Religious Consciousness."

· Ecumenism is the collectivization and synthesis through dialogue of the individual's "Religious Consciousness."

· Novus Ordo "faith" is the affirmation of the subjective "Religious Consciousness" on the authority of the believer.

· Novus Ordo "dogma" is the historical and transitory expression of "Religious Consciousness" for a particular age.

· Novus Ordo "tradition" is the historical experience from which "Religious Consciousness" has evolved.

[Modernism is the] synthesis of all heresies [whose] system means the destruction not of the Catholic religion alone, but of all religion.... [Modernists] partisans of error are to be sought not only among the Church's open enemies; but what is to be most dreaded and deplored, in her very bosom, and are all the more mischievous the less they keep in the open.... They put themselves forward as reformers of the Church [though they are] thoroughly imbued with the poisonous doctrines taught by the enemies of the Church.... They assail all that is most sacred in the work of Christ.... [They are] the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the Church... They lay the axe not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the Faith and its deepest fibers.... The most absurd tenet of the Modernists, that every religion according to the different aspect under which it is viewed, must be considered as both natural and supernatural. It is thus that they make consciousness and revelation synonymous. From this they derive the law laid down as the universal standard, according to which religious consciousness is to be put on an equal footing with revelation, and that to it all must submit, even the supreme authority of the Church.

St. Pius X, Pascendi

Regardless of what the next Synod decides - The damage is done!

Most certainly, it is. I hear it myself: I hear it from Catholics, I hear it from bishops. People are claiming now, for instance, that the Church has changed her teaching with regard to sexual relations outside of marriage, with regard to the intrinsic evil of homosexual acts. Or people who are within irregular matrimonial unions are demanding to receive Holy Communion, claiming that this is the will of the Holy Father. And we have astounding situations, like the declarations of the bishop of Antwerp with regard to homosexual acts, which go undisciplined, and so we can see that this confusion is spreading, really, in an alarming way.

Cardinal Raymond Burke

Ecumenical Talking Points for Luther’s Upcoming 500^th Anniversary

“And the fifth Angel sounded the trumpet; and I saw a star fall from Heaven upon the earth, and to him was given the key to the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit: and the smoke of the pit ascended as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun was darkened, and the air with the smoke of the pit: And from the smoke of the pit, there came out locusts upon the earth, and power was given to them, as the scorpions of the earth have power.” (Apoc: 9:1-3)

Luther did truly open the pit and let loose against the Church all the fury of hell. Therefore modern interpreters almost universally see in this fallen star, Luther.

The whole description of the locusts fits down to the last detail the kings and princes who established by force the heresy of the 16th Century. When Luther propounded his heretical and immoral doctrine, the sky became as it were obscured by smoke. It spread very rapidly over some regions of the earth, and it brought forth princes and kings who were eager to despoil the Church of her possessions. They compelled the people of their domains and in the territories robbed from the Church to accept the doctrines of Luther. The proponents of Protestantism made false translations of the Bible and misled the people into their errors by apparently proving from the ‘Bible’ (their own translations) the correctness of their doctrines. It was all deceit, lying and hypocrisy. Bad and weak, lax and lukewarm, indifferent and non-practicing Catholics and those who had neglected to get thorough instruction were thus misled; and these, seeing the Catholic Church now through this smoke of error from the abyss and beholding a distorted caricature of the true Church, began both to fear and hate her.

Luther did everything to instill hatred of the [Catholic] Church into the hearts of his followers. The princes of Germany eagerly took up Lutheranism to become the spiritual heads of the churches in their domains and to plunder the Church. Their assumed jurisdiction in spiritual matters was usurpation ... In Denmark, Norway and Sweden the Kings imposed Lutheranism upon the people by the power of the sword and by lying, deceit and hypocrisy. They left the altars in the churches and had apostate priests use vestments and external trappings of the Catholic Church to mislead the people. They crushed out the Catholic faith by terrorism, by making it a felony and treason to remain a Catholic. Each monarch made himself the spiritual head of the church in his kingdom. They had so-called historians falsify history to arouse hatred against the Church in the hearts of the people. They pretended to prove the truth of Lutheranism by false translations of the Bible made by Luther and by others and by still falser interpretations of it. Those princes and kings were the locusts appearing in the vision of St. John. They had the teeth of lions to terrify lukewarm Catholics into submission.

Rev. Fr. Herman Bernard Kramer, The Book of Destiny

Where does the Novus Ordo church stand in this fight?

This battle can be won, but it cannot be won if we do not stand our ground and fight against this moral onslaught from the left. The hill to stand on and fight on is the God-given natural right and the constitutional principle that people of faith may choose not to associate with those whose actions are abhorrent and whose lifestyle is insulting and offensive to that faith. The LGBT militants are not asking to be left alone, they are demanding that we accept the morality of homosexuality and same-sex marriages, and manifest that acceptance, under pain of law and sanctions, in our daily lives... As the Romans demanded of the Christians, the LGBT fanatics want us to burn incense to their gods. The answer is no. If it comes to civil disobedience, so be it.

Pat Buchanan, Comments on compromising the Indiana law permitting Catholics to refuse to cooperate with moral perversion

Another Confirmation for What is Now Common Knowledge

The pope expects the Society of St. Pius X to decide to enter and we are ready at any time with a canonical plan that is already known, namely the creation of a personal prelature. It will take a little time for things to be clarified internally and for Bishop Fellay to be able to obtain a broad enough consensus before making this step.

Archbishop Guido Pozzo, secretary Ecclesia Dei Commission and assistant secretary CDF

Hermeneutics of Continuity/Discontinuity

Doctrina : (Latin) "teaching, body of teachings, learning,"

Catholic Truth Teaches:

It is a common complaint, unfortunately too well founded, that there are large numbers of Christians in our own time who are entirely ignorant of those truths necessary for salvation. … And so Our Predecessor, Benedict XIV, had just cause to write: “We declare that a great number of those who are condemned to eternal punishment suffer that everlasting calamity because of ignorance of those mysteries of faith which must be known and believed in order to be numbered among the elect. [……] There can be no doubt, Venerable Brethren, that this most important duty rests upon all who are pastors of souls. On them, by command of Christ, rest the obligations of knowing and of feeding the flocks committed to their care; and to feed implies, first of all, to teach. "I will give you pastors according to my own heart," God promised through Jeremias, "and they shall feed you with knowledge and doctrine." Hence the Apostle Paul said: "Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel," thereby indicating that the first duty of all those who are entrusted in any way with the government of the Church is to instruct the faithful in the things of God. [……] What We have said so far demonstrates the supreme importance of religious instruction. We ought, therefore, to do all that lies in our power to maintain the teaching of Christian doctrine with full vigor, and where such is neglected, to restore it; for in the words of Our Predecessor, Benedict XIV, “There is nothing more effective than catechetical instruction to spread the glory of God and to secure the salvation of souls.” […….] On every Sunday and holy day, with no exception, throughout the year, all parish priests and in general all those having the care of souls, shall instruct the boys and girls, for the space of an hour from the text of the Catechism on those things they must believe and do in order to attain salvation.[…….] And now, Venerable Brethren, permit Us to close this letter by addressing to you these words of Moses: "If any man be on the Lord's side, let him join with me." We pray and entreat you to reflect on the great loss of souls due solely to ignorance of divine things. You have doubtless accomplished many useful and most praiseworthy works in your respective dioceses for the good of the flock entrusted to your care, but before all else, and with all possible zeal and diligence and care, see to it and urge on others that the knowledge of Christian doctrine pervades and imbues fully and deeply the minds of all. Here, using the words of the Apostle Peter, We say, "According to the gift that each has received, administer it to one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God."

St. Pius X, Acerbo Nimis (On Teaching Christine Doctrine)

Pope Francis Opines:

Joy comes from faith, not doctrine, pope says

Carol Glatz | CatholicNewsService | Mar. 26, 2015 | The Francis Chronicles | Vatican City

"God's law is about love for God and for others, not cold, abstract doctrine," Pope Francis said at a morning Mass.

"It's sad to be a believer without joy and there is no joy when there is no faith, when there is no hope, when there is no law, but only rules and cold doctrine," he said at the Mass Thursday in the Domus Sanctae Marthae.

"The joy of faith, the joy of the Gospel is the touchstone of a person's faith. Without joy, that person is not a true believer," he said, according to Vatican Radio.

In his homily, the pope pointed to Abraham as a model of faith, hope and joy in God's covenant. But such joy was absent in the doctors of the law described in the day's Gospel reading; they threw stones at Jesus after he told them how Abraham "rejoiced to see my day."

"These doctors of the law didn't understand," Pope Francis said. "They didn't understand the joy of the promise; they didn't understand the joy of hope; they didn't understand the joy of the covenant."

The doctors of the law "didn't know how to rejoice because they had lost the sense of joy that only comes from faith," he said. Not only did they lack faith, "they had lost the law. Because at the heart of the law is love -- love for God and for one's neighbor."

"They only had a system of clear-cut doctrines," he said.

As "men without faith, without law and attached to doctrine," they lived in a world that was "abstract, a world without love, a world without faith, a world without hope, a world without trust, a world without God. And this is why they could not rejoice," the pope said. "Their hearts had petrified."

He asked that people pray for "the grace to be jubilant in the hope" of knowing and encountering Jesus and for the "grace of joy."[…….]

Surprise, Surprise! He already has!

If the present Successor of Peter now keeps silent about divorce and remarriage, thereby tacitly telling the Church and the world that the teaching of Jesus Christ will be up for open debate at a forthcoming Synod of Bishops, one fears a terrible price will soon have to be paid.

Fr. Brain Harrison

Fr. Waters - persecuted by those who hope that “true Liturgy shall become extinct.”

The holy Fathers who have written upon the subject of anti-Christ, and of the prophecies of Daniel, without a single exception, as far as I know - and they are the Fathers both of the East and of the West, the Greek and the Latin Church - all of them unanimously say that in the latter end of the world, during the reign of anti-Christ, the Holy sacrifice of the Altar will cease. In the work of the end of the world ascribed to St. Hippolytus, after a long description of the afflictions of the last days, we read as follows: "The Churches shall lament with a great lamentation, for there shall be offered no more oblation nor worship acceptable to God. The sacred buildings of the churches shall be as hovels; and the precious Body and Blood of Christ shall not be manifest in those days; the true Liturgy shall become extinct.... Such is the universal testimony of the Fathers of the early centuries."

Cardinal Henry Edward Manning

Religious Liberty: The belief that the dignity of the creature voids the First Commandment

The great achievement of the Second Vatican Council and those who deny it

Fabrizio Mastrofini, Rome 3-21-13

The Austrian theologian Jan-Heiner Tück, born in 1967 and professor of Dogmatic Theology in Vienna, has cut short the debate on whether the Council has brought continuity to the Church or not.….. What is the Council’s fundamental achievement? The clear, precise and irrefutable affirmation of religious freedom and freedom of conscience as basic human rights. Tück insisted: “Above all the Council explicitly recognized the right to freedom of religion and conscience, that not even 100 years before had been listed as one of ‘the errors of our time’ by Pius IX”. The Austrian theologian explained further: “One of the greatest achievements of the Council is to recognize freedom of religion and conscience as human rights.” This is what is at stake in the negotiations with the Lefebvrians and in the relations with all ultra-conservative Catholic groups. However the achievement of the Second Vatican Council cannot be doubted and this ought to be the starting point for the Church to look to the future and to stop looking backwards to the past.

In the Third Secret it is foretold, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top.

Cardinal Mario Luigi Ciappi, O.P. personal theologian to five popes

Francis: “The death penalty is inadmissible, life imprisonment is unacceptable”

In an audience with the International Commission against the Death Penalty, Francis said capital punishment is a “failure” in nations governed by rule of law because it forces you to kill in the name of justice

Domenico Agasso jr : Rome : 03/20/2015

Pope Francis sent out an appeal this morning in his audience with a delegation representing the International Commission against the Death Penalty. The Pope wrote a letter to President Federico Mayor, stating that capital punishment is “inadmissible, no matter how serious the crime committed by the convict”. Furthermore, it represents a “failure” in nations governed by “rule of law” “because it forces you to kill in the name of justice”. Human justice is “imperfect” and “fallible”.

The Pope quoted Dostoyevsky: “To kill for murder is a punishment incomparably worse than the crime itself. Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands.”

“No matter how serious the crime committed by the convict,” Francis stated, the death penalty “is an affront to the sacrality of life and human dignity. It goes against God’s plan for man, society and his merciful justice and prevents any just end to the punishment from being reached.” According to the Pope, the death penalty “does not bring justice to victims but encourages revenge.”

Francis underlined that “there is no human way to kill”. There are debates the world round about “the way to kill, as if it were about trying to ‘do it well’. Throughout history people have defended mechanisms to kill by reducing the agony and suffering of the convict” but “there is no human way to kill another person”.

The Pope also talked about the punishment of life imprisonment: “As with all sentences that make it impossible for an individual to plan their future because of the length of the sentence, life imprisonment can be considered a hidden form of capital punishment” because it does not deprive the person only from their freedom but also of “hope”. The criminal system can take some of transgressors’ time away but “it must never deprive them of hope”.

The State, Pope Francis denounced, kills when it applies the death penalty but not only: it also kills “when it leads its population to war, when it performs extrajudicial or summary executions” and can also kill by ‘neglect’, when it does not guarantee its population access to the essential things they need to live.”

COMMENT:

Pope Francis is quoting a "fantastical opinion" expressed by the character known as the "Idiot" from Dostoyevsky's eponymous novel, The Idiot.

The Idiot also wonders how, Pavlischeff, a character known to be a "good and sincere Christian," could possible become a Roman Catholic and join the Jesuits. The Idiot says:

"Roman Catholicism is even worse than Atheism itself, in my opinion! Yes, that's my opinion! Atheism only preaches a negation, but Catholicism goes further: it preaches a distorted Christ, a Christ calumniated and defamed by themselves, the opposite of Christ! It preaches the Antichrist, I declare it does, I assure you it does! This is the conviction I have long held, and it has distressed me, myself... Roman Catholicism cannot hold its position without universal political supremacy, and cries: 'Non possumus!' To my thinking Roman Catholicism is not even a religion, but simply the continuation of the Western Roman Empire, and everything in it is subordinated to that idea, faith to begin with. The Pope seized the earth, an earthly throne, and grasped the sword; everything has gone on in the same way since, only they have added to the sword lying, fraud, deceit, fanaticism, superstition, villainy. They have trifled with the most holy, truthful, sincere, fervent feelings of the people; they have bartered it all, all for money, for base earthly power. And isn't that the teaching of Antichrist? How could Atheism fail to come from them? Atheism has sprung from Roman Catholicism itself. It originated with them themselves. Can they have believed themselves? It has been strengthened by revulsion from them; it is begotten by their lying and their spiritual impotence! Atheism! Among us it is only the exceptional classes who don't believe, those who, as Yevgeny Pavlovitch splendidly expressed it the other day, have lost their roots. But over there, in Europe, a terrible mass of the people themselves are beginning to lose their faith — at first from darkness and lying, and now from fanaticism and hatred of the church and Christianity."

(Dostoyevsky, The Idiot)

Dostoyevsky, who lived in the West for several years, had no excuse for his prejudices, but unlike Noe whose Ark was a type of the Church, he thought it better treading water than enduring the odor on the Ark. Why on earth would the Pope reference a character from a novel, who is an enemy of the Catholic faith, to overturn the constant moral teaching of the Church regarding the legitimacy of capital punishment as morally justified?

The Pope clearly identifies with the "Idiot"? If capital punishment were, as Pope Francis says, “inadmissible, no matter how serious the crime committed by the convict,” and an "affront to the sacrality of life and human dignity"(the first principle in Religious Liberty), then it would be against natural law which is the very imprint of the Logos through Whom it was created, and therefore God Himself could not do it. The fact of the matter is that original sin puts every person under a punishment of certain and irrevocable death that is justly imposed by God. It is a sentence which Jesus Christ embraced Himself for love of us as the acceptable will of the Father and because it was “His own will.” It is through baptism and Faith that we are incorporated into the death of Christ and share in His resurrection. If a sinner knows exactly when his life is going to end, he may very well have a better chance of saving his soul. In the merciful providence of God, He has provided the sacrament of Penance, for in the sacrament, God accepts imperfect contrition as sufficient for the forgiveness of sins. And nothing sharpens the appreciation and finality death, judgment, heaven and hell than a hang-man’s noose.

Which brings up the question of hope. Pope Francis speaks of hope in purely natural terms. He is opposed to capital punishment and life incarceration, “no matter how serious the crime committed by the convict, because it removes all hope." There is not any sign whatsoever of the virtue of supernatural Hope which no human calamity can touch. He is also blind to the fact that the loss of natural hope perforce directs the soul to supernatural Hope and on the grounds it rests. "Jesus said to her (Martha after the death of Lazarus): I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, although he be dead, shall live: And every one that liveth, and believeth in me, shall not die for ever. Believest thou this?" There is nothing like the immediate prospect of death to make one reflect deeply upon these words of our Lord. "Believest thou this?" should be asked of Pope Francis. It is disheartening to see him arrogantly opining on the morality of this question as if he has discovered a great moral truth that his predecessors for the last two thousand years have stupidly overlooked, but what is worse is his absolute absence of theological Hope. The absence of Hope is always grounded in the absence of Faith. It can only admit ultimately despair. The impression is that Pope Francis, like Dostoyevsky, is using the Idiot to sound his own "fantastical opinion."

Cardinal Sarah affirms the doctrinal claim of Ss. Peter & Paul Roman Catholic Mission, that is, that our immemorial traditions are necessary attributes of the faith:

Now he needs only to reflect upon its implications.

The idea that would consist in placing the Magisterium in a nice box by detaching it from pastoral practice -- which could evolve according to the circumstances, fads, and passions -- is a form of heresy, a dangerous schizophrenic pathology. I affirm solemnly that the Church of Africa will firmly oppose every rebellion against the teaching of Christ and the Magisterium.

Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect for Divine Worship, Either God or Nothing, Conversation of Faith

Nothing seems to me more grave, contrary to the holiness of God, than the presumption of clerics who believe, with a pride that is purely diabolical, that they can manipulate the truth, who presume to renew the Church and to save the world without renewing themselves. In all the history of the Church nothing is comparable to the latest Council, at which the Catholic episcopate believed that it could renew all things by obeying nothing other than its own pride, without the effort of holiness, in such open opposition to the law of the gospel that it requires us to believe how the humanity of Christ was the instrument of the omnipotence of the love that saves, in his death.

Fr. Divo Barsotti (1914-2006)

German Bishops Declare Independence from Catholic Church and Rome – Maybe he meant to say ‘our own Gospel.’

We are no subsidiaries of Rome. Each conference of bishops is responsible for pastoral care in its culture, and must, as its most proper task, preach the Gospel on our own. We cannot wait for a synod to tell us how we have to shape pastoral care for marriage and family here.

Reinhard Cardinal Marx, Archbishop of Munich and Chairman of the German Bishops Conference

Homosexuals are not “gay”

Depression and Sexual Orientation

Written by Michael Kerr | Medically Reviewed by George Kruick, M.D.

LGBT students are more likely than heterosexual students to report high levels of drug use, feelings of depression, and suicide attempts. [.....]Depression is the leading cause of disability and the second leading cause of years of life lost due to premature death in the world. Major depressive disorders are the number one predictor of suicide and account for between 20 and 35 percent of all suicide deaths each year. Five-hundred thousand Americans attempt suicide each year and the number of those who succeed—30,000—is more than the number that die in motor vehicle accidents annually.

As glum as those numbers are, research shows that things are even worse for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. Depression affects LGBT people at much higher rates than the general population [......] three times as likely to use illegal drugs as their heterosexual peers, three times as likely to engage in unprotected and "risky" sex, six times as likely to experience high levels of depression, and eight times as likely to attempt suicide.

[.....] A 2001 study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology found 12-month prevalence rates for major depressive disorder (MDD) were 10.3 percent for gay men, compared to 7.2 percent for heterosexual men. Another 21-year study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry in 1999 found lifetime prevalence rates of MDD among gay, lesbian and bisexual people were 71.4 percent, compared to 38.2 percent among heterosexuals.

Gay Catholic group gets VIP treatment at Vatican for first time

By Philip Pullella | Reuters – Wed, 18 Feb, 2015

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - A prominent American Catholic gay rights group was given VIP treatment for the first time at an audience with Pope Francis on Wednesday, a move members saw as a sign of change in the Roman Catholic Church.

"This is a sign of movement that's due to the Francis effect," said Sister Jeannine Gramick, co-founder of New Ways Ministry, which ministers to homosexual Catholics and promotes gay rights in the 1.2 billion-member Church.

Gramick and executive director Francis DeBernardo led a pilgrimage of 50 homosexual Catholics to the audience in St. Peter's Square.

They told Reuters in an interview afterwards that when the group came to Rome on Catholic pilgrimages during the papacies of Francis's predecessors John Paul and Benedict, "they just ignored us".

This time, a U.S. bishop and a top Vatican official backed their request and they sat in a front section with dignitaries and special Catholic groups. As the pope passed, they sang "All Are Welcome," a hymn symbolizing their desire for a more inclusive Church.

"What this says is that there is movement in our Church, movement to welcome people from the outside closer to the inside," Gramick said in St. Peter's Square.

Several months after his election, Francis made his now-famous remark about how he could not judge gay people who are have good will and are seeking God.

But he so far shown no sign the Church will change its teaching that while homosexuality is not sinful, homosexual acts are.

Last October, bishops from around the world meeting in Rome to debate questions concerning family issued an interim report calling for greater acceptance of gays in the Church.

That passage was watered down in the final version of the report after conservative bishops complained. A second and final meeting on family issues is scheduled for October.

DeBernardo said Catholic gay and lesbian couples and other non-traditional families should be invited to the meeting, known as a synod, to speak to the bishops about their faith and their sexuality.

Cardinal Walter Kasper Promotes a Pastoral Solution for Practical Catholic “Divorce”

[.....] It is easy to imagine how the annulment of marriages would spread, introducing de facto Catholic divorce, if not by law, incurring devastating damage to the human good. Cardinal Kasper seems to be aware of this, since he adds: “It would be wrong to look for a solution to the problem only in a generous widening of the procedures in the annulment of marriages.” It is necessary “to take into consideration also the most difficult question in the matrimonial situation ratified and consummated between two baptized, where communion in matrimonial life has been irremediably broken and one or both of the spouses have contracted a second, civil marriage.” At this point Kasper cites a declaration from the [Congregation for the] Doctrine of the Faith in 1994, according to which divorced and remarried people cannot receive Sacramental communion, but can receive the spiritual one. This is a declaration in line with the Tradition of the Church. But the Cardinal leaps ahead, by asking this question: “Whoever receives spiritual communion is one with Jesus Christ, how then can he be in contradiction with the commandment of Christ? So, why can he not then receive Sacramental communion? If we exclude divorced and remarried Christians from the sacraments (…) do we not perhaps put up for discussion the fundamental sacramental structure of the Church?"[.....]

Prof. Roberto de Mattei, What God hat joined together... and The Cultural Revolution of Cardinal Kasper, 3-1-2014

NOTE:

Below is a post from Rorate Caeli that should be read by all. Pope Francis said that the attraction to the traditional Latin Mass by a seminarian or a priest is "often" a sign of "moral and psychological... imbalances," and that bringing him into active ministry is like placing a "mortgage on the Church." He apparently is referring to cases such as that of Fr. Carlos Urrutigoity, the infamous Argentinean alleged homosexual pederast priest from the diocese of Scranton who was accepted into a Paraguayan diocese by a conservative bishop upon the personal recommendation of none other than Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who assured the bishop of Urrutigoity's sound character. Homosexuals are constantly protecting and promoting their own kind when they are not devouring them. Even Bergoglio has made a notorious homosexual pederast the concierge of his private residence, St. Martha, and head of the Vatican Bank.

But is there any truth to this slander that attraction to our immemorial traditions by a religious is a sign that "often" indicates the person is a homosexual pederast with "moral and psychological... imbalances"? There are homosexual priest among traditional Catholics but they do not begin to approach the percentages of those in the Novus Ordo. The archdiocese of Los Angeles alone has paid out $660 million in civil judgments to the victims of homosexual pederasts and not one dollar of this money is for the crimes of a priest attracted to the traditional Latin Mass. This comment of Pope Francis is nothing more than cheap cowardly insult on his part against the immemorial traditions of the Catholic Church and the faith that these traditions unmistakably signify. Bergoglio may be the greatest hypocrite to ever sit in the Chair of Peter. He may not be stupid but he is frightfully ignorant and blinded to this ignorance by his own arrogance.

As for the problem of homosexuals protecting and promoting their own we at Ss. Peter & Paul have had our own education in that common practice. WE strongly recommend to all traditional Catholics that they examine the background of any priest as well as the background of those who recommend him. Was Urrutigoity recommended by the man who has given us Bergoglio for the purpose of disgracing a conservative bishop who has since been removed from his office? Several homosexual priests were sent to this Mission for this very purpose with glowing recommendations from prelates whose names would surprise everyone.

Lastly, it is important to recognize that the Novus Ordo Church considers the 1962 Bugnini Transitional Missal as early form of the 1969 Bugnini Missal published by Paul VI. They are two forms of one rite because they are both Bugnini products corrupted under the same artificial man-made rules of liturgical development adopted in 1948. Neither Missal can claim to be the "received and approved" rite of Mass codified by the Council of Trent. Pope Francis, like his predecessor, is publically admitting that the 1962 Missal is NOT the immemorial Roman rite by affirming its common provenance with the Paul VI Missal of 1969. All Catholics should immediately return to a immemorial Roman rite found in a Roman Missal published before 1955 which has none of the Bugnini innovations. This Missal requires no permission, grant of legal privilege, or Indult from anyone whomsoever to be offered by any priest or attended by any of the Catholic Faithful.

IMPORTANT! Francis says "Reform of the Reform" is "mistaken".
"Traditionalist" seminarians criticized, Pope says their "imbalances" are manifested in their celebration of the liturgy

Most media attention on Pope Francis' annual meeting with the clergy of Rome (held yesterday, February 19) has been focused on his remarks on married clergy. Of equal and possibly more immediate importance were his remarks on the liturgy, which have now been published by the ZENIT news agency.
The Pope could not have been any clearer in his view of the "Reform of the Reform". He speaks of the need for a more respectful ars celebrandi but anyone who has actually followed the liturgical debates of the last 20 years will know that this is not the same as the "Reform of the Reform". We sincerely hope that the "usual suspects" in the blogging world and in the social networks will neither ignore this talk completely, nor try to explain this away by constructing elaborate explanations as to why the Pope "really meant" something else, or that this whole thing is really a hoax, a fabrication, or whatever. Anything that will allow them to keep their heads in the sand!

Remarkably the Pope criticizes the "Reform of the Reform" outright but he did not say anything negative about Summorum Pontificum itself, quite the opposite. Nevertheless, his apparently condemning and contemptuous words about "traditionalist" diocesan seminarians cannot and should not be explained away as simply referring to the immoral behavior of some such seminarians -- behavior that can also be found, empirically much more frequently, among non-traditionalist seminarians. By specifically naming the ( "Reform of the Reform"?) "liturgies" celebrated by "traditionalist" seminarians, once ordained, as the manifestation of their "moral and psychological" "imbalances", it is clear that the Pope's target is the traditional-friendly views on the sacred liturgy of many young priests and seminarians. By mentioning that the Congregation of Bishops is conducting interventions in this regard, the message is sent out loud and clear: bishops accept "traditionalist"-leaning seminarians at their peril. By declaring outright that moral and pyschological problems "happen often" in traditionalist "environments" a broad bush, apparently lacking in mercy, may now henceforth be used to tar these young men.

The relevent passage from the Zenit report is reproduced below, with our emphases.

However, some excerpts of the Pope's discourse were released thanks in part to several priests who spoke to the press following the meeting. Some even managed to record the Pope's words. In addition to several phrases reported by a few Italian news agencies this morning, the 78 year old Pontiff touched upon the theme, for example, on the "traditional rite" with which Benedict XVI granted to celebrate Mass. Through the Motu Propio Summorum Pontificum, published in 2007, the now Pope Emeritus allowed the possibility of celebrating the Mass according the liturgical books edited by John XXIII in 1962, notwithstanding that the "ordinary" form of celebration in the Catholic Church would always remain that established by Paul VI in 1970.

Pope Francis explained that this gesture by his predecessor, "a man of communion", was meant to offer "a courageous hand to Lefebvrians and traditionalists", as well as to those who wished to celebrate the Mass according to the ancient rites. The so-called "Tridentine" Mass – the Pope said – is an "extraordinary form of the Roman Rite", one that was approved following the Second Vatican Council. Thus, it is not deemed a distinct rite, but rather a "different form of the same right".(sic)

However, the Pope noted that there are priests and bishops who speak of a "reform of the reform." Some of them are "saints" and speak "in good faith." But this "is mistaken", the Holy Father said. He then referred to the case of some bishops who accepted "traditionalist" seminarians who were kicked out of other dioceses, without finding out information on them, because "they presented themselves very well, very devout." They were then ordained, but these were later revealed to have "psychological and moral problems."

It is not a practice, but it "happens often" in these environments, the Pope stressed, and to ordain these types of seminarians is like placing a "mortgage on the Church." The underlying problem is that some bishops are sometimes overwhelmed by "the need for new priests in the diocese." Therefore, an adequate discernment among candidates is not made, among whom some can hide certain "imbalances" that are then manifested in liturgies. In fact, the Congregation of Bishops – the Pontiff went on to say – had to intervene with three bishops on three of these cases, although they didn't occur in Italy.

During the beginning of his address, Francis, spoke on homiletics and the Ars celebrandi, calling on the priests to not fall into the temptation of wanting to be a "showman" on the pulpit, perhaps even by speaking in a "sophisticated manner" or "overt gestures."

However, priests shouldn't also be "boring" to the point that people "will go outside to smoke a cigarette" during the homily.

We are known by our friends.

This article and comment was published a year ago and it is more evident now that it accurately reflects the attitude and ideological mission of Pope Francis. It is worth reflecting upon again as he moves closer to destroying the Catholic doctrine on the sacrament of Matrimony. The only “non-negotiable principle” of this pontificate is a blind unconditional obedience to Pope Francis, that is, from the 1989 Profession of Faith, which calls for unconditional submission of the “mind and will,” or as Lumen Gentium says, submission of the “soul” to man as man. It calls for giving to man what can only be given to God.

Note: Below is an article from an interview with "Pope Francis' theologian" that appeared. It offers a remarkable insight into the character and spiritual make-up of Pope Francis. Unnamed Catholics who defend unnamed immutable moral truths are smeared as "fanatics" by the "pope's theologian" for taking "non-negotiable principles too far." He says, "The problem is that fanatics end up turning certain principles into a never-ending battle and deliberately only ever focus on these issues.” And what is more, "Some have even claimed that all Church teachings depend and are based on non-negotiable principles (sic)." He continues, "For example, it is no good opposing same-sex marriage because people tend to see us as a group of resentful, cruel, insensitive, over-the-top even, individuals." The "fanatics" fail to understand that, "The moral issues in question need to be contextualised in order to be understood fully." To this idiot, St. John the Baptist is a "fanatic." And the Blessed Virgin Mary's message at Fatima who preached the message to stop offending God is "resentful, cruel, insensitive, over-the-top." The truth is that Catholic morality is "based on non-negotiable principles" for which countless saints have given their lives. It is at least good to know that the Novus Odro moral and doctrinal "truths" are not.

Pope’s theologian discusses the distortion of non-negotiable principles

Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández, Rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina, speaks about the “Francis project” in a book-length interview with Vatican correspondent Paolo Rodari :

Andrea Tornielli : vatican city : 03/3/2014

“The problem is that fanatics end up turning certain principles into a never-ending battle and deliberately only ever focus on these issues,” Mgr. Víctor Manuel Fernández, Rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina said, referring to “non negotiable” values as they are called. Fernández, who was nominated archbishop by Pope Francis, was interviewed by Vatican correspondent Paolo Rodari (who writes for Italian daily La Repubblica) and their discussion became a book entitled “Il progetto di Francesco. Dove vuole portare la Chiesa” (“The Francis project. Where he wants to take the Church”, EMI publications, pp.142, €10,90)

Some questions dealt with Francis’ approach to ethical issues, an area that is currently being hotly debated. This is evident from how people have embraced certain appeals the Pope has made, especially ecclesial movements, people who cannot express their Christian identity fully without making enemies and having to put up a fight. “The moral issues in question need to be contextualised in order to be understood fully. This means having a context that is closer to home as well as a broader one,” Fernández said.

This broader context which Francis talks about in the Evangelii Gaudium “is the kerygma, it is an invitation to an encounter with God who loves and saves people and for this reason presents us with the possibility of a better life. This is what it means to “make hearts burn” and this is the most important thing. Presumably, when the Church goes on about philosophical or natural law-related questions, it does so in order to create a dialogue with non believers on moral issues. And yet by using dated philosophical arguments, the Church is not at all convincing and it misses the chance to proclaim the beauty of Jesus Christ’s ability to set people’s hearts on fire. Said philosophical arguments do nothing to change people’s lives. But if we manage to set others’ hearts on fire or at least show them what’s so attractive about the Gospel, then people will be more willing to discuss and reflect on answers regarding morality.”

According to the Argentinean theologian “there also needs to be reference to a context close to home, that is always positive in light of what is being considered or proposed. For example, it is no good opposing same-sex marriage because people tend to see us as a group of resentful, cruel, insensitive, over-the-top even, individuals. It is an entirely different thing to talk about the beauty of marriage and the harmony of differences that form part of an alliance between a man and woman. This positive context speaks for itself when it comes to showing that the use of the same term “marriage” to describe same-sex unions, in unsuitable.”

Fernández believes some have taken non negotiable principles too far, “distorting Benedict XVI’s teaching.” “Some have even claimed that all Church teachings depend and are based on non negotiable principles. This certainly is heresy! To claim that Jesus Christ, his resurrection, fraternal love and all that the Gospel teaches us depends on ethical principles is a distortion of Christianity.”

“For example,” Fernández goes on to say, “the Pope stands firm in his opposition to abortion because if he does not defend the innocence of human life, we aren’t left with many other arguments with which to defend human rights. Of course this is not negotiable, but it doesn’t mean that certain moral principles are the source of all other truths of the Christian faith. The crux of our faith, which sheds light on everything, is not this, but the kerygma. This is the only way to understand the key role played by the “truth hierarchy” which this Pope wants to restore. The problem is that fanatics end up turning certain principles into a never-ending battle and deliberately only ever focus on these issues.”

Francis, the Argentinean theologian said in his interview with Rodari, “is asking us to embrace a certain style, to give things the right balance and focus. The Pope asks us not to “always” focus “exclusively” on certain moral principles for two reasons: so that we don’t put people off by being too over-insistent and above all so that we don’t destroy the harmony of our message. Radical circles within the Church ridicule the Pope when they say: “now the Pope forbids us to talk about these issues.” This is a lie and defaming the Pope is immoral. They are all moral when they discuss issues that interest them but not when it comes to other issues.”

“Up until two years ago some people would never have accepted the Pope’s words being questioned but now all sorts of critical comments are being spread and written about Pope Francis. This is no reflection of faith, it is an ideological battle: I’ll defend the Pope if he defends my own opinions.” The theologian concludes by saying that “if we look at each case individually, there are other aspects that are not negotiable: loving one’s neighbour, seeking justice for the oppressed, being honest in business dealings…”

Heretics & Schimatics Always Attack the Sacrament of Matrimony - Because It is the Metaphor used by God to Describe His Union with His Church and with each of His Faithful.

Cardinal Burke: I cannot accept that Communion can be given to a person in an irregular union because it is adultery. On the question of people of the same sex, this has nothing to do with marriage. This is an affliction suffered by some people whereby they are attracted against nature sexually to people of the same sex.

Question: If perchance the pope will persist in this direction, what will you do?

Cardinal Burke: I shall resist, I can do nothing else. There is no doubt that it is a difficult time; this is clear, this is clear.

The ‘Bergoglio Business Plan’! Now that “apologetics” is nothing more than "subtle theoretical discussions" over "opinions" and “proselytism is solemn nonsense,” how do they measure “strong Christian witness,” “effective evangelization,” “fruitful ecumenical spirit,” and “constructive dialogue”? If the “Mission of the Church in the World” is the supreme law… the salus animarum, how does any of this contribute towards fulfilling this “Mission”? It is never “easy to achieve such a goal” under the best of conditions because to obtain salvation is to enter by the “narrow gate.” Now that every material sign to measure success toward this goal has been destroyed by the modern Church how can they possibly have any idea what they are doing?

Today we will present a summary of the work done in recent months to develop the new Apostolic Constitution for the reform of the Curia. The goal to be reached is always that of promoting greater harmony in the work of the various Dicasteries and Offices, in order to achieve a more effective collaboration in that absolute transparency which builds authentic synodality and collegiality.

The reform is not an end in itself, but a means to give a strong Christian witness; to promote a more effective evangelization; to promote a more fruitful ecumenical spirit; to encourage a more constructive dialogue with all.

The reform, strongly advocated by the majority of the Cardinals in the context of the general congregations before the conclave, will further perfect the identity of the same Roman Curia, which is to assist the Successor of Peter in the exercise of his supreme pastoral office for the good of and in the service of the universal Church and the particular Churches. This exercise serves to strengthen the unity of faith and communion of the people of God and promote the mission of the Church in the world.

Certainly, it is not easy to achieve such a goal. It requires time, determination and above all everyone’s cooperation. But to achieve this we must first entrust ourselves to the Holy Spirit, the true guide of the Church, imploring the gift of authentic discernment in prayer.

It is in this spirit of collaboration that our meeting begins, which will be fruitful thanks to the contribution which each of us can express with parrhesía, fidelity to the Magisterium and the knowledge that all of this contributes to the supreme law, that being the salus animarum. Thank You.

Pope Francis, Opening address to the Consistory for the Reform of the Roman Curia 2-12-15

The First Day’s Work of the Consistory: The Vatican EPA

“(A) new sector that is to be developed: the environment and protection of creation, seen from the angle of human and environmental ecology, not only from a social angle,” Fr. Lombardi added.” “We see that there is an increasing awareness and growing importance of the study of these subjects and we will be given more pointers in the encyclical the Pope is working on,” the Vatican spokesman told journalists. This congregation would be the reference point for the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and Caritas Internationalis.

Vatican Insider, 2-12-15

Holy Face of Jesus

Jesus covered with blood and with much sadness said to Mother Pierina: “See how much I suffer. I am understood by so few: what ingratitude on the part of those who say they love Me! I have given My Heart as a sensible object of My great love for man and I have given My Face as a sensible object of My sorrow for the sins of man. I desire that It be honored by a special feast on Shrove Tuesday. The feast will be preceded by a novena during which the faithful will make reparation to Me, uniting themselves with My sorrow.”

"I firmly wish that My face reflecting the intimate pains of my soul, the suffering and love of My heart, be more honored! Whoever gazes upon Me already consoles Me."

Our Lord to Sister Pierina

"All those who, attracted by My love, and venerating My countenance, shall receive, by virtue of My humanity, a brilliant and vivid impression of My divinity. This splendor shall enlighten the depths of their souls, so that in eternal glory the celestial court shall marvel at the marked likeness of their features with My Divine countenance."

Our Lord to St. Gertrude

OFFERING OF THE HOLY FACE TO APPEASE GOD'S JUSTICE AND DRAW DOWN MERCY UPON US

ETERNAL Father, turn away Thine angry gaze from all guilty people whose faces have become unsightly in Thine eyes. Look instead upon the face of Thy Beloved Son, for this is the Face of Him in Whom Thou art well pleased. We now offer Thee this Holy face of Jesus Christ, covered with shame and disfigured by bloody bruises, in reparation for the crimes of our age, in order to appease Thine anger, justly provoked against us. Because Thy Divine Son, our Redeemer, has taken upon His head all the sins of His people that they might be spared, we now beg of Thee, Eternal Father, to grant us mercy. Amen.

Archconfraternity of the Holy Face

Promises Of Our Lord Jesus Christ To Those Devoted To His Holy Face

· I will give them contrition so perfect, that their very sins shall be changed in My sight into jewels of precious gold .

· None of these persons shall ever be separated from Me.

· In offering My Face to My Father, they will appease His anger, and they will purchase as with celestial coin, pardon for poor sinners.

· I will open My Mouth to plead with My Father to grant all the petitions that they will present to Me.

· I will illuminate them with My light. I will consume them with My love. I will render them fruitful of good works.

· They will, as the pious Veronica, wipe My adorable Face outraged by sin, and I will imprint My divine Features in their souls.

· At their death, I will renew in them the image of God effaced by sin.

· By resemblance to My Face, they will shine more than many others in eternal life, and the brilliancy of My Face will fill them with joy.

· These inestimable promises are drawn from the works of St. Gertrude, St. Mechtilde and from the writings of Sister Marie de Saint Pierre, a Carmelite who died at Tours, in the odor of sanctity.

Prayer of St Therese of the Infant Jesus and the Holy Face

O Jesus, Who in Thy cruel Passion didst become the "Reproach of men and the Man of Sorrows," I worship Thy Divine Face. Once It shone with the beauty and sweetness of the Divinity: now for my sake It is become as the face of a "leper." Yet in that disfigured Countenance I recognize Thine Infinite Love, and I am consumed with the desire of loving Thee and of making Thee loved by all mankind. The Tears that streamed in such abundance from Thine Eyes are to me as precious pearls which I delight to gather, that with their infinite worth I may ransom the souls of poor sinners.

O Jesus, Whose Face is the sole beauty that ravishes my heart, I may not behold here upon earth the sweetness of Thy Glance, nor feel the ineffable tenderness of Thy Kiss. Thereto I consent, but I pray Thee to imprint in my Thy Divine Likeness, and I implore Thee to so inflame me with Thy Love, that in may quickly consume me, and that I may soon reach the Vision of Thy glorious Face in Heaven!

Amen

Manifest Heretics are “the most injurious kind of tares.”

But the tares, & etc., the sons of that wicked, namely the devil: thus the Syriac and Arabic. Therefore they themselves are evil, for the offspring follow their father. As the sons of God are good and divine, so are the sons of the devil wicked and diabolical. Observe: by tares and children of the wicked one, some understand heretics, because they are the most injurious kind of tares, inasmuch as they choke and destroy the faithful and faith from their foundation. So St. Chrysostom, Euthymius, and St. Augustine who, however, retracts and teaches from St. Cyprian, that tares denote all the wicked in the Church. Ss. Gregory, Ambrose, and Theophylact teach the same. For all wicked persons, by their evil life, hurt the faithful and the Church, as tares injure wheat, and choke it. Falsely then from this passage, (Christ forbids these tares to be plucked up, and subjoins, Let both grow together), the Innovators infer that heretics are not to be punished and extirpated. For by parity of reasoning they might conclude that murderers and thieves must not be punished; for they too are tares. And I say that Christ does not here absolutely forbid these tares to be plucked up, but says that no one must attempt to root them all up together; nor at a time when they cannot be distinguished from the wheat; or when there is danger of pulling up the wheat at the same time with them. But all this does not apply when anyone is a manifest heretic, especially if he teaches and infects others with his heresy. For such a one does more harm to the Church than a murderer, for the one only kills the body, but the other the soul. See I Cor. v. 13, Gal. v. 12, where the Apostle commands impious persons, especially false teachers, to be taken away and extirpated. Thus Origen and St. Augustine—the latter indeed was at first of opinion that heretics ought not to be put to death, yea, that they ought not, even to be compelled to resume the faith which they have professed in baptism. But afterwards, when he had been taught by experience how perverse and obstinate heretics are, he changed his opinion and taught the contrary. He says, "I had not yet learnt either what great wickedness they would venture upon, if they could do it with impunity; or how much careful discipline could effect to make a change in them for the better."

Rev. Cornelius a Lapide, The Great Commentary, Matthew 13

As we prepare for the 500 anniversary of the Luther's Revolt

One day she was carried in spirit to Germany, where she saw that grand country devastated by Luther's heresy, under the appearance of vast tracts of land filled with enormous serpents, and with imaginary terrible beasts, all engaged in tearing the land into bits, which they separated from the mother-country, as limbs might be torn piecemeal from a body. Another time the Spirit of God caused her to go successively to all the spots in Europe that the great heresy had attacked secretly. When she reached the towns of Italy, and beheld the wide spread of contagion amongst them, she sent forth a cry of horror and surprise: "O my God, if all those who are heretics at heart were to profess their errors publicly, the number of faithful would indeed be small!" The convent archives tell us that holy Church often appeared to her, covered symbolically with horrible, disfiguring wounds; and that she would then cry out, with sobs and tears: "Ah, my divine Spouse, I recommend Thy whole Church and Thy mercy! Oh, how many Judases are profaning and betraying her! Why, why should we keep silence any longer? Why not tell the truth aloud? O Lord, Lord, renew this poor Church, which belongs to Thee, but in which Thou canst now behold no form of a Church!"

Fr. F. M. Capes, O.P., St. Catherine de Ricci, Her Life, Her Letters, Her Community

St. Catherine de Ricci, 1522 to 1590; Dominican stigmatist

The “fruits of Vatican II” - It all depends in how you look at it

What some refer to as a “vocations crisis” is, rather, one of the many fruits of the Second Vatican Council, a sign of God's deep love for the Church, and an invitation to a more creative and effective ordering of gifts and energy in the Body of Christ.

Cardinal Roger Mahony of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Holy Thursday, April 20, 2000

The First Expulsion from the Temple

I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.

Genesis 3:15

Pope Receives Transexual With "Girlfriend" -- Papal Approach to the Mainstream?

Radio Vatican: Rome : Giuseppe Nardi : January 26, 2015

Francisco y el transexual Diego Neria.jpg This past weekend, Pope Francis received the Spanish Transgender, Diego Neria Lajarraga. This was reported by the Spanish newspaper Hoy in its Monday edition. Diego is actually a woman and has gained the masculine given name after a sex change. Pope Francis received Diego with his girlfriend.

According to the transsexuals they received a phone call from Pope Francis on Christmas Eve 2014. At the weekend she was now the guest of the head of the Catholic Church in Santa Marta Guest House, received in audience at the Vatican. Neria Lajarraga describes themselves as "practicing Catholics".

Letter to the Pope, the Pope Phone Call and Audience

Last fall, she had written the Pope a letter complaining that she will be "excluded" as a "practicing Catholic" in her home parish in the Spanish city of Plasencia, since she had undergone a sex change. A priest, said Diego Neria Lajarraga, even insulted her as a "daughter of the devil".

Pope Francis read the letter, picked up the phone and invited the Spaniard and her "girlfriend" in the Vatican. There was no official audience, but one of the many non-protocol-related meetings at which the pontificate of the Argentine Pope is so rich. As the newspaper "Hoy" writes, Diego turned to the Pope because she felt that he would listen to her. Whether Diego also listened to the Pope, is not known. Is not known, nor what the Pope said to the woman. All information has been submitted by Diego Neria Lajarraga. The Holy See did not share even that the encounter took place.

Catholic Media Goes Silent - Except the German

While the Vatican media are silent, the German section of Vatican Radio the only one who reported on the out-of protocol audience: "Transgender Man received by Pope" after previously the official Catholic media agencies had adopted in German-speaking countries on the topic.

"The meeting took place against the background of a perceived change of course by some observers to the Vatican Catholic lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT). LGBT lobbying groups have repeatedly emphasized that since taking office two years ago, Francis' moderate tone would be expressed from the Vatican in the view of the relevant issues," says ORF online report.

Chronology of a "Rapprochement"

With the promotion of a homosexual [pederast?] priest for personal confidant of the Pope, according to the statement on homosexuality, "Who am I to judge?" And after trying to insert into the synod paper on the family an "opening" toward homosexuality, the approach between Pope Francis and mainstream has gone further. This is, in any event, the signal as it has been received and distributed by the media. Even the Catholic. The Catholic teaching on homosexuality remains by the way. It is not mentioned. Pope Francis knows how much to select his interlocutors who are media-friendly and worthy of applause.

Reported on Eponymous Flower blog

Pope Francis warns against the “Globalisation of Indifference”

The phrase is a neologism employed by Pope Francis to characterize a wide-spread Catholic indifference to the dictates of Marxism and the formation of one world government. This is not to be confused with “Religious Indifference,” a heresy, which is the modern ecumenical belief that Dogma is not divine revelation but only the opinions of men and has no importance for personal salvation.

Hermeneutics of Continuity/Discontinuity

Pope Francis declares his common "faith" with heretics and schismatics professing that doctrinal differences between them and Catholics, such as the dogma of the True Presence in the Blessed Sacrament, are "merely human calculations." This generous and accommodating spirit applies to every shade of error but excepts the Faithful who keep the immemorial traditions of our Church which are completely consonant with the revealed Truth of God.

Pope Francis Believes:

In the call to be evangelisers, all the Churches and Ecclesial Communities discover a privileged setting for closer cooperation. For this to be effective, we need to stop being self-enclosed, exclusive, and bent on imposing a uniformity based on merely human calculations. Our shared commitment to proclaiming the Gospel enables us to overcome proselytism and competition in all their forms. All of us are at the service of the one Gospel.

In this moment of prayer for unity, I would also like to remember our martyrs, the martyrs of today. They are witnesses to Jesus Christ, and they are persecuted and killed because they are Christians. Those who persecute them make no distinction between the religious communities to which they belong. They are Christians and for that they are persecuted. This, brothers and sisters, is the ecumenism of blood.

Mindful of this testimony given by our martyrs today, and with this joyful certainty, I offer a cordial and fraternal greeting to His Eminence Metropolitan Gennadios, the representative of the Ecumenical Patriarch, His Grace David Moxon, the personal representative in Rome of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and all the representatives of the various Churches and Ecclesial Communions gathered here to celebrate the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul.

Pope Francis to an ecumenical gathering of assorted heretics and schismatics at St. Paul Outside the Wall, January 25, 2015

The Catholic Church Infallibly Teaches:

The most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal; but that they will go into the "eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matthew 25:41), unless before death they are joined with Her; and that so important is the unity of this ecclesiastical body that only those remaining within this unity can profit by the sacraments of the Church unto salvation, and they alone can receive an eternal recompense for their fasts, their almsgivings, their other works of Christian piety and the duties of a Christian soldier. No one, let his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for the Name of Christ, can be saved, unless he remain within the bosom and the unity of the Catholic Church.

Pope Eugene IV, Cantate Domino (1441)

In an Ecumenical Gesture to the Novus Ordo Church:

Britain: Church of England consecrates first woman bishop

The ceremony took place at York Minster. 48-year-old Libby Lane from Derbyshire is married to a pastor and has two children -

vatican insider staff : rome : 01/26/2015

Today was a historic day for the Church of England which consecrated its first female bishop at a ceremony in York Minster. The woman in question is 48-year-old Libby Lane whose nomination was announced last month. She has been ordained as the new Bishop of Stockport, a town in Greater Manchester, England.

The BBC informs that the ceremony was celebrated by the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, who tweeted: “about consecration of Libby … I say Allelluia!” and “thrilled to be joining in the service”. Leaders of the Church of England and around 1,000 people were present at the ceremony.

In a statement to BBC Radio Manchester the Rev Lane said her consecration would be a very “emotional” moment, adding: “It is a remarkable thing that this happens to me, and people have been very supportive of me personally, but actually this is about a moment in the Church's history."

In a symbolic gesture Pope Francis has elected to release colored balloons rather than sacrificing any more “peace doves.”

What was soon to be called, "The Spirit of Vatican II" - the corruption of faith and worship

Religion must be renovated. That is the persuasion of all those who, today, are still dealing with religion, whether they be outside of its concrete expression: a faith, and observance, a community, or be within a religious profession or discussion. It all depends on what one intends for renovation.

Pope Paul VI, August 12, 1964

Another First for Pope Francis:

Never in the history of the Church has such a vulgar and insulting comment been publicly made by a Pope against a faithful Catholic.

“This does not mean that the Christian must make children in series. I rebuked a woman some months ago in a parish who was pregnant eight times, with seven C-sections (cesareans). “But do you want to leave seven orphans? This is to tempt God! He [Paul VI] speaks of responsible parenthood. [….] That example I mentioned shortly before about that woman who was expecting her eighth (child) and already had seven who were born with caesareans. That is an irresponsibility [said with emphasis]. “No but I trust in God! [mocking the woman’s presumed conviction].” But God gives you methods to be responsible. Some think that, excuse me if I use that word, that in order to be good Catholics we have to be like rabbits. No. Responsible parenthood! This is clear and that is why in the church there are marriage groups, there are experts in this matter, there are pastors, one can seek and I know so many, many ways out that are licit and that have helped this. You did well to ask me this. [….] Another curious thing in relation to this is that for the most poor people [i.e., the poorest—le gente più povere], a child is a treasure. It is true that you have to be prudent here too, but for them a child is a treasure. Some would say “God knows how to help me” and perhaps some of them are not prudent, this is true. Responsible paternity... three is enough. But let us also look at the generosity of that father and mother who see a treasure in every child.”

Pope Francis, interview on his return to Rome from the Philippines

(note: The phrase, “three is enough,” was deleted from the official Vatican publication of Pope Francis’ comment but is included here because it is what he said.)

Roman Weather Report – Eco-Spiritual Ice Age with Wind Chills Below Absolute Zero

Papal Text Says Man Betrays God by Destroying the Environment

By REUTERS : JAN. 18, 2015

MANILA — Pope Francis waded into the global debate on climate change and the environment on Sunday, saying in the text of a speech that man was destroying nature and betraying God's calling to be stewards of creation.

Francis offered his thoughts about the environment and climate change for the second time in four days at a rally with young people at a Manila university on the last full day of a week-long Asian tour that has taken him to Sri Lanka and the Philippines.

He did not read all of a speech prepared for delivery at the university, improvising after he was moved by the story of an abandoned girl. When he does this, the Vatican says the prepared text is official.

"As stewards of God’s creation, we are called to make the earth a beautiful garden for the human family. When we destroy our forests, ravage our soil and pollute our seas, we betray that noble calling," he said in the text.

Another line he read to the crowd noted that "this country, more than many others, is likely to be seriously affected by climate change".

His comments came a day after he made a dramatic visit to the central city of Tacloban, ground zero of Typhoon Haiyan, which killed at least 6,300 people, left a million homeless and displaced 4 million more when it struck in November 2013.

In Tacloban, Francis wore a transparent poncho to protect him from strong wind and driving rain and had to cut short his visit by four hours to get out of the way of a tropical storm.

"Respect for the environment means more than simply using cleaner products or recycling what we use. These are important aspects, but not enough," he said in the written speech.

"We need to see, with the eyes of faith, the beauty of God’s saving plan, the link between the natural environment and the dignity of the human person," it said.

MAN MOSTLY RESPONSIBLE

Sri Lanka is among the Asian countries experts say will see sea level rises likely to displace people and adversely affect tourism and fisheries.

Speaking to reporters aboard the plane taking him to Manila on Thursday, Francis said he believed that man was primarily responsible for climate change and that he hoped the U.N. climate meeting in Paris in November would take a courageous stand to protect the environment.

"I don't know if it is all (man's fault) but the majority is, for the most part, it is man who continuously slaps nature in the face," he said.

Those words were his clearest to date on climate change, which has sparked worldwide debate and even divided conservative and liberal Catholics, particularly in the United States, on whether it is man-made.

The Pope told reporters that his long-awaited encyclical on the environment was almost finished and that he hoped it would be published in June, ahead of the U.N. meeting in Paris.

Last month in Peru, about 190 nations agreed on the building blocks of a global deal to combat climate change amid warnings that far tougher action would be needed to limit increases in global temperatures.

Under the deal reached in Lima, governments will submit national plans for reining in greenhouse gas emissions by an informal deadline of March 31 to form the basis of a global agreement due at the Paris summit. Francis faulted the Peru conference for not doing enough about climate change.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Paul Tait)

"Assueta vilescunt"

Familiarity breeds contempt. By being repeated the same experience loses its novelty, which is one of the elements of pleasure and interest. But the rapidity of the decrease depends, not only on the frequency of the repetitions, but also on the wealth and variety contained in the experiences.

Catholic Encyclopedia, On Habits

It is "Unthinkable" to Question Vatican II only for those who do not Think!

Those who deny Jesus Christ are not the “elder brothers” of those who worship Jesus Christ.

JEWS-CATHOLICS: CARD. KOCH (HOLY SEE), “UNTHINKABLE” TO QUESTION THE COUNCIL

“Absolutely not”: the Catholic Church cannot change her position on the Second Vatican Council and the Nostra Aetate Declaration “because she cannot question the Council. That is unthinkable. And the Holy Father cannot deny his Magisterium.” Card. Kurt Koch, President of the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, commented in an interview with SIR on the “concerns” raised by the process of dialogue between the Holy See and the Priestly Society of St. Pius X (Lefebvrians). “The Jews - the cardinal said - are our elder brothers: particularly in Benedict XVI’s vision of the unity of the two Testaments, we are inextricably linked with the Jews. This point is clear even in the light of the Council Declaration ‘Nostra Aetate’. There is no doubt in the Catholic Church that this Declaration is still valid today. It is rejected only by a small group, the Lefebvrians, who are opposed to ecumenical dialogue, relations with the Jews and religious freedom. The latter are actually key points in the Magisterium of the Holy Father, and if a group does not accept the Council or the Magisterium, it should ask itself whether it is Catholic. This is the fundamental question”. The cardinal then recalled what Fr. Lombardi said about bishop Fellay’s statements: “anti-Semitism in all its forms is a non-Christian act and the Catholic Church must fight this phenomenon with all her strength.”

N.B.: The "Magisterium," that is, the attribute of the Church founded by Jesus Christ to teach without the possibility of error, was not engaged during Vatican II. The "magisterium of the Holy Father," to which Cardinal Koch refers, is the teaching authority of the Pope grounded upon his grace of state. This teaching authority is most worthy of respect but by no means is it infallible and when it in any way contradicts the infallible dogmas of the Catholic faith, we must obey God rather than any man.

I consider it as being, without possible comparison, the best book ever written on St. Thomas… Everybody will no doubt admit that it is a “clever ” book, but the few readers who have spent twenty or thirty years in studying St. Thomas Aquinas, and how, perhaps, have themselves published two or three volumes on the subject, cannot fail to perceive that the so-called “wit” of Chesterton has put their scholarship to shame… He has said all that which they were more or less clumsily attempting to express in academic formulas.

Etienne Gilson, comment on G. K Chesterton’s book, St. Thomas Aquinas

Mother Teresa, A Saint?

Yet documents obtained by SF Weekly suggest that Mother Teresa knew one of her favorite priests was removed from ministry for sexually abusing a Bay Area boy in 1993, and that she nevertheless urged his bosses to return him to work as soon as possible. The priest resumed active ministry, as well as his predatory habits. Eight additional complaints were lodged against him in the coming years by various families, leading to his eventual arrest on sex-abuse charges in 2005.

The priest was Donald McGuire, a former Jesuit who has been convicted of molesting boys in federal and state courts and is serving a 25-year federal prison sentence. McGuire, now 81 years old, taught at the University of San Francisco in the late 1970s, and held frequent spiritual retreats for families in San Francisco and Walnut Creek throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He also ministered extensively to the Missionaries of Charity during that time.

Peter Jamison, Tainted Saint: Mother Teresa Defended Pedophile Priest, 1-11-12

The Most Holy Virgin in these last times in which we live has given a new efficacy to the recitation of the Rosary, to such an extent that there is no problem, no matter how difficult it is, whether temporal, or above all, spiritual, in the personal life of each one of us, of our families, of the families of the world or of religious communities, or even of the life of peoples and nations that cannot be solved by the Rosary. There is no problem, I tell you, no matter how difficult it is, that we cannot resolve by the prayer of the Rosary! With the Holy Rosary we will save ourselves. We will sanctify ourselves. We will console our Lord and obtain the salvation of many souls.

Sr. Lucy of Fatima to Fr. Fuentes

The decadence which exists in the world is without any doubt the consequence of the lack of the spirit of prayer. Foreseeing this disorientation, the Blessed Virgin recommended recitation of the Rosary with such insistence, and since the Rosary is, after the Eucharistic liturgy, the prayer most apt for preserving faith in souls, the devil has unchained his struggle against it . . . The Rosary is the most powerful weapon for defending ourselves on the field of battle.

Sr. Lucy of Fatima to Dom Umberto Pasqual

It was 10 years ago that the Dover, PA electorate removed the School Board members that permitted Intelligent Design to be considered in science classes. Is this proof that there is no evidence of intelligence designed in the Dover, PA electorate?

Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God

The odds of life existing on another planet grow ever longer. Intelligent design, anyone?

Eric Metaxas : Dec. 25, 2014

In 1966 Time magazine ran a cover story asking: Is God Dead? Many have accepted the cultural narrative that he’s obsolete—that as science progresses, there is less need for a “God” to explain the universe. Yet it turns out that the rumors of God’s death were premature. More amazing is that the relatively recent case for his existence comes from a surprising place—science itself.

Here’s the story: The same year Time featured the now-famous headline, the astronomer Carl Sagan announced that there were two important criteria for a planet to support life: The right kind of star, and a planet the right distance from that star. Given the roughly octillion—1 followed by 27 zeros—planets in the universe, there should have been about septillion—1 followed by 24 zeros—planets capable of supporting life.

With such spectacular odds, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, a large, expensive collection of private and publicly funded projects launched in the 1960s, was sure to turn up something soon. Scientists listened with a vast radio telescopic network for signals that resembled coded intelligence and were not merely random. But as years passed, the silence from the rest of the universe was deafening. Congress defunded SETI in 1993, but the search continues with private funds. As of 2014, researches have discovered precisely bubkis—0 followed by nothing.

What happened? As our knowledge of the universe increased, it became clear that there were far more factors necessary for life than Sagan supposed. His two parameters grew to 10 and then 20 and then 50, and so the number of potentially life-supporting planets decreased accordingly. The number dropped to a few thousand planets and kept on plummeting.

Even SETI proponents acknowledged the problem. Peter Schenkel wrote in a 2006 piece for Skeptical Inquirer magazine: “In light of new findings and insights, it seems appropriate to put excessive euphoria to rest . . . . We should quietly admit that the early estimates . . . may no longer be tenable.”

As factors continued to be discovered, the number of possible planets hit zero, and kept going. In other words, the odds turned against any planet in the universe supporting life, including this one. Probability said that even we shouldn’t be here.

Today there are more than 200 known parameters necessary for a planet to support life—every single one of which must be perfectly met, or the whole thing falls apart. Without a massive planet like Jupiter nearby, whose gravity will draw away asteroids, a thousand times as many would hit Earth’s surface. The odds against life in the universe are simply astonishing.

Yet here we are, not only existing, but talking about existing. What can account for it? Can every one of those many parameters have been perfect by accident? At what point is it fair to admit that science suggests that we cannot be the result of random forces? Doesn’t assuming that an intelligence created these perfect conditions require far less faith than believing that a life-sustaining Earth just happened to beat the inconceivable odds to come into being?

There’s more. The fine-tuning necessary for life to exist on a planet is nothing compared with the fine-tuning required for the universe to exist at all. For example, astrophysicists now know that the values of the four fundamental forces—gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the “strong” and “weak” nuclear forces—were determined less than one millionth of a second after the big bang. Alter any one value and the universe could not exist. For instance, if the ratio between the nuclear strong force and the electromagnetic force had been off by the tiniest fraction of the tiniest fraction—by even one part in 100,000,000,000,000,000—then no stars could have ever formed at all. Feel free to gulp.

Multiply that single parameter by all the other necessary conditions, and the odds against the universe existing are so heart-stoppingly astronomical that the notion that it all “just happened” defies common sense. It would be like tossing a coin and having it come up heads 10 quintillion times in a row. Really?

Fred Hoyle, the astronomer who coined the term “big bang,” said that his atheism was “greatly shaken” at these developments. He later wrote that “a common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology . . .. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”

Theoretical physicist Paul Davies has said that “the appearance of design is overwhelming” and Oxford professor Dr. John Lennox has said “the more we get to know about our universe, the more the hypothesis that there is a Creator . . . gains in credibility as the best explanation of why we are here.”

The greatest miracle of all time, without any close seconds, is the universe. It is the miracle of all miracles, one that ineluctably points with the combined brightness of every star to something—or Someone—beyond itself.

Mr. Metaxas is the author, most recently, of “Miracles: What They Are, Why They Happen, and How They Can Change Your Life” (Dutton Adult, 2014).

Pope Francis, the Climate and Leftism

Dennis Prager | Jan 06, 2015

This year, the pope will use an immense amount papal moral influence to address global warming, or as it is now called, in light of the small amount of warming actually taking place, climate change. In a few weeks, he will visit the Philippine city of Tacloban, which was devastated by the super typhoon Haiyan in 2012. Then he will present his encyclical, and in September he will address the United Nations General Assembly on the subject. This will all be done in order to influence the December 2015 international Climate Change Conference in Paris.

The world's left is ecstatic with this pope. As the Guardian reported:

"In recent months, the pope has argued for a radical new financial and economic system to avoid human inequality and ecological devastation. In October he told a meeting ... 'An economic system centered on the god of money needs to plunder nature to sustain the frenetic rhythm of consumption that is inherent to it.

"'The system continues unchanged, since what dominates are the dynamics of an economy and a finance that are lacking in ethics. It is no longer man who commands, but money. Cash commands.

"'The monopolising of lands, deforestation, the appropriation of water, inadequate agro-toxics are some of the evils that tear man from the land of his birth. Climate change, the loss of biodiversity and deforestation are already showing their devastating effects in the great cataclysms we witness," he said.

"The god of money needs to plunder nature."

"Cash commands."

"[Ecological] evils that tear man from the land of his birth."

That is left-wing, even radical left-wing, language.

How are we to explain this?

Even the Neo-Conservative Ideologue Catholics Are Mocking Pope Francis

It was a portentous image. Press toads hopped to their keyboards to correct the evidence of our lying eyes. Francis was neither for nor against fracking, you see. Nothing of the sort. He was simply using a photo-op to assert blameless solidarity with the victims of ecological injustice. (Both a decisive definition of such injustice and its particular victims went unspecified.)

If that restyling were true, then the more fool Francis. But Francis is not a fool. He is an ideologue and a meddlesome egoist. His clumsy intrusion into the Middle East and covert collusion with Obama over Cuba makes that clear. Megalomania sends him galloping into geopolitical—and now meteorological—thickets, sacralizing politics and bending theology to premature, intemperate policy endorsements.

Maureen Malarkey, First Things

There are differences in style between Francis and Benedict but not in matters of faith – Archbishop Georg Gänswein By Deacon Nick Donnelly, on October 11th, 2013

Archbishop Georg Gänswein, prefect of the Pontifical Household and the personal secretary of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, has said in an interview in the German magazine Bunte that there are differences in style between Pope Francis and Pope Emeritus Benedict but not in matters of faith. The Tablet reports: ‘Asked how close the relationship between Pope Francis and his predecessor was, Archbishop Gänswein differences lay in certain matters of style and taste but not in matters of faith. The biggest difference between them was the way they approached people, Archbishop Gänswein said. Pope Francis walked straight up to people and loved to embrace everyone while Pope Benedict was more reticent, loved peace and quiet and tended to withdraw from crowds, he said.’ [.....] Bunte reports: ‘Pope Francis often visits his predecessor and phones him.” This relationship between the two is warm and trusting,” Archbishop Gänswein also talks about his relationship with Pope Francis, ‘We have a very cordial relationship. Francis Pope says clearly what he wants and what he does not. He is decisive and appreciates the direct word. He listens to advice and takes reasonable suggestions like.’ Protect the Pope comment: After the series of interviews that Pope Francis has given to the press which have unsettled at best, or deeply upset and alienated at worse, faithful and loyal Catholics, it is time that the Holy Father and his inner circle reach out to to real Catholics. Archbishop Georg Gänswein’s interview with Bunte may be the first step in such overtures. There is a long way to go and a lot of bridges have to be re-built.

Pope Francis: The Natural Child of Pope Benedict XVI

For this was I born, and for this came I into the world; that I should give testimony to the truth. Every one that is of the truth, heareth my voice. (John 18:37)

There has come into existence a very erroneous opinion which, ironically, is shared by both liberal Catholics and most Traditionalists. They believe that there is a radical bifurcation separating the Pontificates of Benedict XVI and Francis I. It will be my purpose here to prove this is a profoundly superficial view, and that the Papacy of Pope Francis is simply the logical and fully “natural” development of the philosophical and theological positions of Pope Benedict. [.......]

There is, however, one piece of his (Bergoglio's) pre-Papacy writing available in English, and it basically “says it all.” Jorge Mario Bergoglio has long been an admirer of the founder of Communion and Liberation, Luigi Giussani (as had been all the Popes since Vatican II – John Paul II sent Cardinal Ratzinger to give his funeral oration, and Paul VI repeatedly and enthusiastically embraced Giussani’s movement as being the way out of the present crisis). The book titled A Generative Thought: An Introduction to the Works of Luigi Giussan (edited by Elisa Buzzi) contains a chapter written by Cardinal Bergoglio titled For Man, based on a lecture given for the appearance of the Spanish edition of Giussani’s book The Religious Sense.

Pope Francis’ epistemology, as to where we are to meet God, is profoundly encapsulated in one sentence of his chapter in Buzzi’s work:

(Bergoglio said), “I dare say that today the primary question we must face is not so much the problem of God – the existence, the knowledge of God – but the problem of the human, of human knowledge and finding in humans themselves the mark that God has made, so as to be able to meet with Him.”

No man who believes that the Word (the Life and Truth of Christ) is the light of man – who believes in a “vertical”, as opposed to evolutionary (from the bottom-up), view of Revelation – could propose such a thing as this. The “primacy” which Pope Francis establishes of meeting God in man, rather than through the Revelation of God which is received through the Deposit of Faith, is therefore in profound accord with the evolutionary view of Revelation as proposed by Joseph Ratzinger.

James Larson, "I Know Not the Man": Pope Francis, The Natural Child of Pope Benedict XVI

Jesus Christ: “Preach the Gospel to every nation. He who believeth and is baptized will be saved but he who believeth not shall be condemned.” Mark 16:16

The Church does not engage in proselytism. Instead, she grows by "attraction"- just as Christ "draws all to himself" by the power of his love, culminating in the sacrifice of the Cross, so the Church fulfills her mission to the extent that, in union with Christ, she accomplishes every one of her works in spiritual and practical imitation of the love of her Lord.

Benedict XVI, Aparecida in 2007, a gathering of the Council of Bishops’ Conferences of Latin America and the Caribbean (CELAM) which had a great impact on Cardinal Bergoglio. (Note: the Aparecida document from the South American Bishop's Conference is the structural outline for the "new evangelization."

"Nicolas, the PROSELYTE of Antioch"

And the saying was liked by all the multitude. And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith, and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas, a proselyte of Antioch.

Acts of Apostles 6:5

Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us. Sometimes after a meeting I want to arrange another one because new ideas are born and I discover new needs. This is important: to get to know people, listen, expand the circle of ideas.

Pope Francis

Do you need to convince the other to become Catholic? No, no, no! Go out and meet him, he is your brother. This is enough. Go out and help him and Jesus will do the rest.

Pope Francis, August 7, 2013

"Faith then cometh by hearing."

For if thou confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thy heart that God hath raised him up from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For, with the heart, we believe unto justice; but, with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith: Whosoever believeth in him, shall not be confounded. For there is no distinction of the Jew and the Greek: for the same is Lord over all, rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved. How then shall they call on him, in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe him, of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear, without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they be sent, as it is written: How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, of them that bring glad tidings of good things! But all do not obey the gospel. For Isaias saith: Lord, who hath believed our report? Faith then cometh by hearing; and hearing by the word of Christ. St. Paul, Romans 10:9-17

[Footnote: Thou shalt be saved; To "confess the Lord Jesus," and to "call upon the name of the Lord" is not barely the professing a belief in the person of Christ; but moreover, implies a belief of his whole doctrine, and an obedience to his law; without which, the calling him Lord will save no man. St. Matt. 7. 21.]

On the Infallible Word of God - Perhaps "august body" should be in quotation marks

The premise on which my paper is based is that over the last thirty-five years orthodox Catholic Scripture scholarship has not simply lost a major battle; it has lost an entire war. It has been devastated, and almost completely wiped off the map. Dissident, rationalistic, neo-modernist biblical scholarship has been firmly in control ever since the 1960s in nearly all the major Catholic institutions of higher learning, and is clearly insinuated (although not openly spelt out) even in recent documents of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, that august body of twenty or so top-ranking exegetes [Scripture scholars] from round the world which advises the Church's magisterium on biblical matters.

Fr. Brian Harrison, O.S., On Rewriting the Bible, 2002

We have not heard this kind of naïve prognosticating since the halcyon days of Vatican II

Christ is preparing a new spring time all over the earth. I have seen its first fruits and I know that others will joyfully reap the full harvest.

Pope Francis, CELAM, 7-28-13

If anyone wishes to write against this, I will welcome it. For true and false will in no better way be revealed and uncovered than in resistance to a contradiction, according to the saying: "Iron is sharpened by iron." (Prov. 27: I 7). And between us and them may God judge, who is blessed in eternity. Amen.

St. Thomas, On the Perfection of the Spiritual Life

Pope Francis Campaigns to Become Religious Leader of New World Order Gaia Cult.

Pope Francis’s edict on climate change will anger deniers and US churches

Pontiff hopes to inspire action at next year’s UN meeting in Paris in December after visits to Philippines and New York

John Vidal : Saturday 27 December 2014

He has been called the “superman pope”, and it would be hard to deny that Pope Francis has had a good December. Cited by President Barack Obama as a key player in the thawing relations between the US and Cuba, the Argentinian pontiff followed that by lecturing his cardinals on the need to clean up Vatican politics. But can Francis achieve a feat that has so far eluded secular powers and inspire decisive action on climate change?

It looks as if he will give it a go. In 2015, the pope will issue a lengthy message on the subject to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, give an address to the UN general assembly and call a summit of the world’s main religions.

The reason for such frenetic activity, says Bishop Marcelo Sorondo, chancellor of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, is the pope’s wish to directly influence next year’s crucial UN climate meeting in Paris, when countries will try to conclude 20 years of fraught negotiations with a universal commitment to reduce emissions.

“Our academics supported the pope’s initiative to influence next year’s crucial decisions,” Sorondo told Cafod, the Catholic development agency, at a meeting in London. “The idea is to convene a meeting with leaders of the main religions to make all people aware of the state of our climate and the tragedy of social exclusion.”

Following a visit in March to Tacloban, the Philippine city devastated in 2012 by typhoon Haiyan, the pope will publish a rare encyclical on climate change and human ecology. Urging all Catholics to take action on moral and scientific grounds, the document will be sent to the world’s 5,000 Catholic bishops and 400,000 priests, who will distribute it to parishioners.

According to Vatican insiders, Francis will meet other faith leaders and lobby politicians at the general assembly in New York in September, when countries will sign up to new anti-poverty and environmental goals.

In recent months, the pope has argued for a radical new financial and economic system to avoid human inequality and ecological devastation. In October he told a meeting of Latin American and Asian landless peasants and other social movements: “An economic system centred on the god of money needs to plunder nature to sustain the frenetic rhythm of consumption that is inherent to it.

“The system continues unchanged, since what dominates are the dynamics of an economy and a finance that are lacking in ethics. It is no longer man who commands, but money. Cash commands.

“The monopolising of lands, deforestation, the appropriation of water, inadequate agro-toxics are some of the evils that tear man from the land of his birth. Climate change, the loss of biodiversity and deforestation are already showing their devastating effects in the great cataclysms we witness,” he said.

In Lima last month, bishops from every continent expressed their frustration with the stalled climate talks and, for the first time, urged rich countries to act.

Sorondo, a fellow Argentinian who is known to be close to Pope Francis, said: “Just as humanity confronted revolutionary change in the 19th century at the time of industrialisation, today we have changed the natural environment so much. If current trends continue, the century will witness unprecedented climate change and destruction of the ecosystem with tragic consequences.”

According to Neil Thorns, head of advocacy at Cafod, said: “The anticipation around Pope Francis’s forthcoming encyclical is unprecedented. We have seen thousands of our supporters commit to making sure their MPs know climate change is affecting the poorest communities.”

However, Francis’s environmental radicalism is likely to attract resistance from Vatican conservatives and in rightwing church circles, particularly in the US – where Catholic climate sceptics also include John Boehner, Republican leader of the House of Representatives and Rick Santorum, the former Republican presidential candidate.

Cardinal George Pell, a former archbishop of Sydney who has been placed in charge of the Vatican’s budget, is a climate change sceptic who has been criticised for claiming that global warming has ceased and that if carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were doubled, then “plants would love it”.

Dan Misleh, director of the Catholic climate covenant, said: “There will always be 5-10% of people who will take offence. They are very vocal and have political clout. This encyclical will threaten some people and bring joy to others. The arguments are around economics and science rather than morality.

“A papal encyclical is rare. It is among the highest levels of a pope’s authority. It will be 50 to 60 pages long; it’s a big deal. But there is a contingent of Catholics here who say he should not be getting involved in political issues, that he is outside his expertise.”

Published by an Argentine Authority on Pope Francis directly after his election - Proven, Unfortunately Most Accurate, excepting that this is what "Benedict wanted for the Church."

The Horror!

Of all the unthinkable candidates, Jorge Mario Bergoglio is perhaps the worst. Not because he openly professes doctrines against the faith and morals, but because, judging from his work as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, faith and morals seem to have been irrelevant to him.

A sworn enemy of the Traditional Mass, he has only allowed imitations of it in the hands of declared enemies of the ancient liturgy. He has persecuted every single priest who made an effort to wear a cassock, preach with firmness, or that was simply interested in Summorum Pontificum.

Famous for his inconsistency (at times, for the unintelligibility of his addresses and homilies), accustomed to the use of coarse, demagogical, and ambiguous expressions, it cannot be said that his magisterium is heterodox, but rather non-existent for how confusing it is.

His entourage in the Buenos Aires Curia, with the exception of a few clerics, has not been characterized by the virtue of their actions. Several are under grave suspicion of moral misbehavior.

He has not missed any occasion for holding acts in which he lent his Cathedral to Protestants, Muslims, Jews, and even to partisan groups in the name of an impossible and unnecessary interreligious dialogue. He is famous for his meetings with protestants in the Luna Park arena where, together with preacher of the Pontifical House, Raniero Cantalamessa, he was "blessed" by Protestant ministers, in a common act of worship in which he, in practice, accepted the validity of the "powers" of the TV-pastors.

This election is incomprehensible: he is not a polyglot, he has no Curial experience, he does not shine for his sanctity, he is loose in doctrine and liturgy, he has not fought against abortion and only very weakly against homosexual "marriage" [approved with practically no opposition from the episcopate], he has no manners to honor the Pontifical Throne. He has never fought for anything else than to remain in positions of power.

It really cannot be what Benedict wanted for the Church. And he does not seem to have any of the conditions required to continue his work.

May God help His Church. One can never dismiss, as humanly hard as it may seem, the possibility of a conversion... and, nonetheless, the future terrifies us.

Marcelo González, Panorama Católico Internacional

It is impossible to approve in Catholic publications of a style inspired by unsound novelty which seems to deride the piety of the faithful and dwells on the introduction of a new order of Christian life, on new directions of the Church, on new aspirations of the modern soul, on a new vocation of the clergy, on a new Christian civilization.

Leo XIII, Instruction, January 27, 1902

Spanish exorcist addresses claims of Satanic influence in Vatican

Rome, Italy, Mar 3, 2010 / 04:20 pm (CNA)

A renowned exorcist in Rome recently released a book of memoirs in which he declares to know of the existence of Satanic sects in the Vatican where participation reaches all the way to the College of Cardinals. A second demonologist, also residing in Rome, entered the debate this week, clarifying the origins of the information and defending the Vatican's clergy as an "edifying and virtuous" collection of prelates.

In a book of memoirs released in February, the noted Italian exorcist Fr. Gabriele Amorth affirmed that "Yes, also in the Vatican there are members of Satanic sects." When asked if members of the clergy are involved or if this is within the lay community, he responded, "There are priests, monsignors and also cardinals!"

The book, "Father Amorth. Memoirs of an Exorcist. My life fighting against Satan." was written by Marco Tosatti, who compiled it from interviews with the priest.

Fr. Amorth was asked by Tosatti how he knows Vatican clergy are involved. He answered, "I know from those who have been able to relate it to me because they had a way of knowing directly. And it's something 'confessed' most times by the very demon under obedience during the exorcisms."

The famous Italian exorcist was also asked if the Pope was aware of Satanic sects in the Vatican, to which Fr. Amorth replied, "Of course, he was informed. But he does what he can. It's a horrifying thing."

Benedict XVI, being German, comes from a place "decidedly averse to these things," argued Fr. Amorth, saying that in Germany "there practically aren't any exorcists." However, he clarified, "the Pope believes (in them)."

The Italian priest also warned of the existence of bishops and priests who do not believe in Satan in the interview. "And yet, in the Gospel, Jesus speaks extensively about it, so it should be said, either they've never read the Gospel or they just don't believe it!"

“Living Tradition,” synonym for Immanentism of the modernist – the belief that we know the truth of revelation better than our fathers and less than our children.

The term, “living tradition,” a novelty of modern construction employed from Vatican II which conflates the subjective understanding with objective truth, is part of the theological justification to replace our received traditions with novelties grounded in fantasy.

The root of this schismatic act can be discerned in an incomplete and contradictory notion of Tradition. Incomplete, because it does not take sufficiently into account the living character of Tradition, which, as the Second Vatican Council clearly taught, "comes from the apostles and progresses in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. There is a growth in insight into the realities and words that are being passed on. This comes about in various ways. It comes through the contemplation and study of believers who ponder these things in their hearts. It comes from the intimate sense of spiritual realities which they experience. And it comes from the preaching of those who have received, along with their right of succession in the episcopate, the sure charism of truth".

John Paul II, explaining the problems with Archbishop Lefebvre’s consecration of four bishops from his failure to understand the novel Vatican II definition of tradition

On the "LIVING MAGISTERIUM" - A neologism for the new theology

The "unvarying truths" of our faith are just that. They are the dogmatic formulations that constitute the formal objects of divine and Catholic faith. They are expressed in the form of universal categorical propositions that can only be always and everywhere true or always and everywhere false. They are revealed truths from God Himself and it is because He reveals them that we believe them. No human authority whatsoever has the right to "vary all the time" these "unvarying truths." The function of the Church authority, as Bishop Williamson said, is "to guard and expound faithfully.... the Deposit of Faith" and the faithful "exposition" of doctrine is what dogma is. And this faithful exposition is infallibly true because it is the work of the Holy Ghost which Jesus Christ promised to His Church, "the Spirit of truth... (that) will teach you all truth..... he shall shew you. He shall glorify me; because he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it to you. All things whatsoever the Father hath, are mine. Therefore I said, that he shall receive of mine, and shew it to you." (John 16:13-15) Dogma is the Holy Ghost "shewing" the "truth." To claim that the infallible "exposition" requires further non-infallible "exposition" by a "living magisterium" is to destroy the very idea of infallibility. This is why the Church has taught that dogma is suitable for all the faithful. Its tools for understanding are correct grammar and proper definition of terms, not a necessary theological competency.
The term "living magisterium" is not a legitimate theological term but rather a neologism employed to further an ideology. I am not aware of it having any historical usage before 1900. Fr. Jean Vincent Bainvel, S.J. may have actually coined the term. He was the theological expert who wrote "Tradition and the Living Magisterium" for the 1912 edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia. He is also the author of the book, Is There Salvation Outside the Catholic Church?, in which he distinguishes between the soul of the Church and the Body of the Church and places schismatics, heretics, infidels, pagans, etc., on the road of salvation because they are members of the soul of the Church. This theology was officially articulated in the 1949 Holy Office Letter that censored Fr. Feeney's defense of the dogma EENS.

Rev. Jean Bainvel, S.J. said:

We see that a soul may belong to the Church in desire, without suspecting at all that there is such a thing as a Church… Is it not this desire that we spontaneously recognise in the case of our separated brethren, for example, in the case of Anglicans and the orthodox Russians, when we see them adhering to Christ by faith and by works of faith, yet all the while in invincible ignorance of the exclusive rights of the Roman Church? They are faithful sheep, yet they wander, unconsciously it is true, in the midst of a strange flock; but we regard them as members of the true flock of Christ because at heart, despite their errors, they are in the sheepfold of Christ. The same is the case, other things being equal, with those who live outside all visible relation with Christ of any of the Christian sects.”

Is There Salvation Outside the Catholic Church? by Rev. Jean Bainvel, S. J. (Chap. 6, pp. 57-58)

Rev. Jean Bainvel, S.J. said:

Hence it will be understood that the living magisterium searches in the past, now for authorities in favour of its present thought in order to defend it against attacks or dangers of mutilation, now for light to walk the right road without straying. The thought of the Church is essentially a traditional thought and the living magisterium by taking cognizance of ancient formulas of this thought thereby recruits its strength and prepares to give to immutable truth a new expression which shall be in harmony with the circumstances of the day and within reach of contemporary minds. [.....] There is, therefore in the Church progress of dogma, progress of theology, progress to a certain extent of faith itself, but this progress does not consist in the addition of fresh information nor the change of ideas. What is believed has always been believed, but in time it is more commonly and thoroughly understood and explicitly expressed.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, "Tradition and the Living Magisterium," entry written by Fr. Jean Bainvel

Fr. Bainvel employs the "living magisterium" in the "progress of dogma" so that the "immutable truths" that the Church has once dogmatically defined as necessary for salvation including Church membership, explicit faith, reception of the sacraments, and submission to the Roman Pontiff, are now understood with"a new expression which is in harmony with the circumstances of the day and within the reach of contemporary minds." If the term, "living magisterium" actually conveyed a legitimate concept rather than just a propaganda tool in the service of an ideology there would be common theological terms that formulate contrary concepts, like "dead magisterium" and "sick magisterium" etc. The term has come into common usage as a tool to justify 'varying all the time the unvarying truths' and deserves to be discarded.
The modernists theologically now argue that dogma is analogous to a living plant, like an oak tree, which changes over time yet remains the same tree. They say that the form of dogma is the perennial doctrinal truth and the matter is the historical language. The language is regarded as accidental to the dogma and thus any change of formulation is only an accidental change. This is what Pope John XXIII said at the opening of Vatican II which was approvingly referenced by Benedict XVI in his "hermeneutic of continuity" theology. If this characterization is accepted, it is the end of faith. As St. Pius X said, "they are looking for that progress of dogmas which is, in reality, nothing but the corruption of dogmas." (Lamentabili). For example:

Fr. Giovanni Cavolcol, O.P. said:

Citing Newman to support the fact that Catholic doctrine is developed according to the principle of analogy, I made the comparison with the way in which a plant or any living being grows: we have here that continuity in progress of which the Pope speaks. But this conjunction of continuity (permanence) and progress (change) is understood only if we consider the fact that a living being develops and evolves according to the principle of analogy; indeed, the merit of thinking by analogy is that it unites the identical (one) and the different (many).
If, instead, we stop at only a univocal type of thought, that conjunction seems to us absurd and contradictory. In fact, for univocity development does not make the new rise from the old, but adds the new to the old without it becoming new. The growth of a living being—and thought is a vital phenonemon—is not like the construction of a building with some bricks, by which one floor is added to another, but is as if a building, already complete in itself from the beginning, were augmented in volume with the passage of time.
Fr. Giovanni Cavolcol, O.P., The Infallibility of Vatican II

The deposit of faith is no longer a deposit to be faithfully guarded and handed on but is now a "living being" that "evolves according to the principle of analogy." "To be” is replaced with “becoming;” the objective truth with changing subjective perceptions of that truth. The faith, according to these lights, will be better known by our children just as we know it better than our parents. This is nothing but a formula to destroy the faith.

St. Pius X, Lamentabili said:

22. The dogmas the Church holds out as revealed are not truths which have fallen from heaven. They are an interpretation of religious facts which the human mind has acquired by laborious effort. CONDEMNED

The Magisterium is the office of the Church that corresponds to the attribute of infallibility. Living men occupy this office and can engage this power to teach infallibly. The living men change but the office and the power remains. When the truth is revealed it has a universal character. The understanding of that truth may be enriched but ultimately the objects of faith are not self-evident to the intellect. They are truths that the will by supernatural faith submits to. Our faith is incarnational and the formal objects of our faith are "truths fallen from heaven." It is God Himself who has formulated these truths.

The application of "unvarying truths to contemporary situations" is the field of moral theology and the Church has always done this from the beginning without employing the term "living magisterium." It is what every Catholic does to insure that he acts with conscience that is both true and certain. The correct application of unvarying principles to changing "situations" is what we are "to do" to save our souls. But, the universal truths of faith are not contextualized by any historical "situation." They are objective truths revealed by God that are the formal objects of supernatural faith. They are what we are "to know" and must know to save our souls.

Pope St. Pius X said:

We are forced to agree with those who hold that the chief cause of the present indifference and, as it were, infirmity of soul, and the serious evils that result from it, is to be found above all in ignorance of things divine.[......] It is a common complaint, unfortunately too well founded, that there are large numbers of Christians in our own time who are entirely ignorant of those truths necessary for salvation. [.....] Our Predecessor, Benedict XIV, had just cause to write: "We declare that a great number of those who are condemned to eternal punishment suffer that everlasting calamity because of ignorance of those mysteries of faith which must be known and believed in order to be numbered among the elect." [......] We pray and entreat you to reflect on the great loss of souls due solely to ignorance of divine things.

St. Pius X, Acerbo Nimis

The only thing still needed for salvation after faith and keeping the commandments is "to be" a child of God and that grace is given to us in the sacrament of Baptism.

Is Pope Francis (Mr. Humility) referring to the Jack-Booted "rigid, tough and arrogant" and most "hard-hearted" treatment meted out by himself to the Franciscans of the Immaculate which he "murdered in cold blood"? Or maybe this is just another example of their "'hypocritical' double lives"?

Pope makes scathing attack on Vatican 'ills'

Al Jazeera 22 December 2014

Pope Francis has harshly criticised Vatican bureaucracy in a Christmas speech, saying that some in the Church suffered from "spiritual Alzheimer's" and a lust for power.

Vatican watchers said they had never heard such a powerful, violent speech from a pope and suggested that it was informed by the results of a secret investigation ordered up by Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI in the aftermath of the 2012 leaks of his papers.

Francis told cardinals, bishops and priests on Monday the Vatican was riven with "existential schizophrenia", "social exhibitionism", "spiritual Alzheimer's" and a lust for power, all of which made for an "orchestra that plays out of tune".

"The Curia is called on to always improve itself and grow in communion, holiness and knowledge to fulfill its mission,'' Francis said.

"But even it, as any human body, can suffer from ailments, dysfunctions, illnesses."

In a speech that was met with tepid applause when it ended, the pope listed one by one the 15 "Ailments of the Curia" that he had drawn up, complete with footnotes and Biblical references.

The Catholic pope started off his list with the "ailment of feeling immortal, immune or even indispensable.''

A pope with enemies

Then one by one he went on: Being rivals and boasting. Wanting to accumulate things. Having a "hardened heart.'' Wooing superiors for personal gain. Having a "funereal face'' and being too "rigid, tough and arrogant,'' especially toward underlings.

Francis spoke of the "terrorism of gossip" saying backstabbing by "cowards who don't have the courage to say things openly" is tantamount to "murder in cold blood."

He bemoaned the "scandal" caused by infighting and those who use their Vatican careers to grab power and wealth, of living "hypocritical" double lives and forgetting that they're supposed to be joyful men of God.

The leader of the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics also warned against greed, egoism and people who think they are "immortal".

Francis turned the traditional, genteel exchange of Christmas greetings into a public dressing down of the Curia, the central administration of the Holy See, which governs the 1.2-billion strong Catholic Church.

He made clear that his plans for a radical reform of the structures of church power must be accompanied by an even more radical spiritual reform of the men involved.

Despite winning the hearts of many religious and non-religious people alike, the pope has also made enemies, particularly within the conservative arm of the Church.

The Argentine pope's attempts to kick-start dialogue within the Church earlier this year over a possible new approach to remarried, divorced people and homosexuals sparked an outcry in some quarters.

Pope Francis is determined to corrupt Catholic doctrine by corrupting Catholic morals.

The synod on the family: "The divorced and remarried seem excommunicated"

During the interview, Pope Francis questioned divorced being excluded from the life of the Church

ROME - Elisabetta Piqué | LA NACION | December 7, 2014

Question - The recent extraordinary synod of bishops on the family allowed two different visions of the Church to surface, one sector open to debate and the other one refusing to hear anything about it. Is this the case, what do you think?

Pope Francis - I wouldn´t say that´s quite so... True enough, if you wish to simplify in order to explain things, we might say that there were a few more on this side, or on the other side. What we benefitted from was the synodal process, which is no parliamentarian process but rather a protected space where the Holy Spirit may endeavour. Two clear qualities are needed: courage to speak and humbleness to listen. And that worked very well. There are, indeed, positions more inclined this way or that way, but in the pursuit of truth. You could ask me "are there any that are completely stubborn and won´t move from their positions?". Yes, there surely are. But that is not my concern. It´s a question of praying for the Holy Spirit to convert them, if any. […..]

Question - Conservative sectors, specially in the United States, fear that the traditional doctrine will collapse, they say the synod caused confusion because though it did mention the "positive nuances" of living together, and gay couples were mentioned in the draft, although the bishops then backed off.

Pope Francis - […..]The synod addressed the family and the homosexual persons in relation to their families, because we come across this reality all the time in the confessional: a father and a mother whose son or daughter is in that situation. This happened to me several times in Buenos Aires. We have to find a way to help that father or that mother to stand by their son or daughter. That´s what the synod addressed. That´s why someone mentioned positive factors in the first draft. But this was just a draft.

Question - Some people fear that the traditional doctrine shall collapse...

Pope Francis - You know, some people are always afraid because they don´t read things properly, or they read some news in a newspaper [….] I think some fathers made a mistake when they talked to the media. […..] We had to protect our work so that the Holy Spirit might move forward. I am not afraid.

Question - Afraid of what?

Pope Francis - Afraid of following this trail, the road of the synod. I am not afraid because it is the road that God has asked us to follow. More so, the Pope is the ultimate guarantor, the Pope is there to care for the process. We must move forward. In my last address I said something interesting, I pointed out that we had not addressed any part of the doctrine of the Church concerning marriage. In the case of divorcees who have remarried, we posed the question, what do we do with them? What door can we allow them to open? This was a pastoral concern: will we allow them to go to Communion? Communion alone is no solution. The solution is integration. They have not been excommunicated, true. But they cannot be godfathers to any child being baptized, mass readings are not for divorcees, they cannot give communion, they cannot teach Sunday school, there are about seven things that they cannot do, I have the list over there. Come on! If I disclose any of this it will seem that they have been excommunicated in fact! Thus, let us open the doors a bit more. Why can’t they be godfathers and godmothers? "No, no, no, what testimony will they be giving their godson?". The testimony of a man and a woman saying "my dear, I made a mistake, I was wrong here, but I believe our Lord loves me, I want to follow God, I was not defeated by sin, I want to move on". Anything more Christian than that? And what if one of the political crooks among us, corrupt people, are chosen to be somebody´s godfather. If they are properly wedded by the Church, would we accept them? What kind of testimony will they give to their godson? A testimony of corruption? Things need to change, our standards need to change.

Question - What do you think about the solution put forward by the German cardinal Walter Kasper?

Pope Francis - Kasper´s address to the cardinals last February included five chapters, four of them are a jewel, about the purpose of marriage, open, in depth. The fifth is the question of what do we do with divorcees who have remarried; they are part of our congregation after all. Kasper´s hypothesis is not his own. Let´s look into that. What happened? Some theologians feared such assumptions and that is keeping our heads down. Kasper urged us to seek hypothesis, i.e., he made the first move. And some panicked. And went as far as to say: Communion, never. Only spiritual Communion. And tell me, don´t we need the grace of God to receive spiritual communion? That´s why spiritual communion obtained the fewest votes in the relatio synodi, because nobody was in agreement. Those for it, because there´s not much to it, voted against it; and those who are not for it and would rather go for the other one, because it´s not worth it.

Homosexual Friendly Prelates Make Up U.S. Membership on Congregation for Bishops

Cardinal Donald Wuerl of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. replaced Cardinal Burke and joined homosexual-friendly Cardinal William Levada, (the former archbishop of Portland and later, San Francisco), as the only U.S. members on the Congregation for Bishops

Then Bishop (John) Wright (later, Cardinal and a notorious homosexual pederast) was made Bishop of Pittsburgh, and this is where Wuerl became his private secretary, protégé, and remained at Wright's side (as he was made a cardinal) until Wright's death in 1979. Is this guilt by association? Who knows? Randy Engel writes (in her book, Rite of Sodomy): "From 1980 to 1985, Fr. Wuerl served as Vice Rector and Rector of St. Paul Seminary. The seminary had a reputation for rampant homosexuality going back to the days of Bishop Wright." Then Wuerl became Bishop of Pittsburgh in February 1988, fulfilling his protégé role.... After Donald Wuerl was posted to the Diocese of Pittsburgh, he permitted Dignity/Pittsburgh Masses to continue for eight more years.... Dignity/Pittsburgh was one of the last chapters to be evicted from Catholic facilities in the United States [on orders from the Vatican]. According to Pittsburgh Post-Gazette staff writer Ann Rodgers-Melnick, 'Banning Dignity was a sad moment for Wuerl.'... Under Wuerl, the Pittsburgh Diocese has become a stomping ground for nationally-known doctrinal and moral miscreants including Father (now ex-priest) Matthew Fox, Sister Fran Ferder, Father Robert Nugent, Sister Jeannine Gramick, Father Raymond Brown and howling feminists Rosemary Radford Ruether and Monica Hellwig." (N.B.: Cardinal Wuerl recently made the news by suspending a priest who refused Communion to a woman in a public known lesbian relationship.)

New Oxford Review, Nov. 2006

Pope Francis' Council of Advisors ("G-8") to reform the Curia includes four members (*) who have been publically accused by victims of covering-up the crimes of homosexual clerical pederasts

1. Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello of Italy, President of the Government of the Vatican City State

2. *Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa of Chile, the retired archbishop of Santiago

3. Cardinal Oswald Gracias of India, archbishop of Bombay and President of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences

4. Reinhard Marx, the Archbishop of Munich and Freising (Germany)

5. Laurent Monswengo Pasinya, Archbishop of Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo)

6. *Sean Patrick O’Malley, Archbishop of Boston (U.S.)

7. *George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney (Australia)

8. *Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga of Honduras, the archbishop of Tegucigalpa and coordinator of Fransis’ advisory council.

It behooves us unanimously and inviolably to observe the ecclesiastical traditions, whether codified or simply retained by the customary practice of the Church.

St. Peter Canisius

It is unlawful to alter the established customs of the Church… Remove not the ancient landmarks which thy fathers have set.

St. Peter Damien

The Quotable Pope Francis - The world wants to know if he can even talk with his mouth shut?

"I'm very careful about abiding by official protocols."

"God has bestowed on me a healthy dose of unawareness."

"Evangelii Gaudium is very clear."

"In my last address, I said something interesting."

"I think some Synod fathers made a mistake when they talked to the media."

"I'm permanently making statements."

Salvation a Difficult Work - Man's Unwillingness

IT is manifest that there is in man’s nature a deep and settled unwillingness, which is the first and greatest barrier to his salvation an unwillingness not simply to be saved, that is, to be made everlastingly blessed—this, as a mere end of their desires, all men long after—but an unwillingness to be saved in the way of salvation which God has ordained. They would fain enter into the strait gate, if they could do it without repenting, or denying self, or crossing their own will, or changing their way of life. If they might live on the very threshold of His kingdom with an unchastened heart, and then, without struggle, shed off the unmortified body of sin and death, and enter new-born into His joy; if, after a life of self-indulgence, they could inherit eternal bliss, and so draw out the indolent, self-pleasing luxury of earth into the perfect blessedness of heaven,—then, indeed, there would be no unwillingness; then the way of life should be broad enough, and many should go in thereat; and the way of destruction narrow, and few should there be that find it. But because the carnal mind is enmity against God, it is the severe holiness of salvation from which they shrink. They know that salvation is, the being saved from sin, from its guilt and from its soil, from the power with which it rules over us, from the love with which we cling to it;—in a word, it is the healing of the soul; the cleansing of its deadly sickness; the making of the sinful creature a holy being. From this men shrink by the recoil of their natural will. They too clearly see that it is from themselves that they must be saved; from what they love and pamper with perpetual license; that they must renounce what they are, and become what they are not; that they must absolutely submit their will to be changed and subdued to His will;—and they are not prepared to put so great a yoke upon themselves. And, besides this, the thought of God’s awful and searching presence, all pure, all holy, is insufferable. They feel the awful contrast of their own sullied spirits with His spotless sanctity; and they can neither endure to forsake the sins they doat on, nor dare to draw nigh Him without repentance.

Cardinal Henry Manning, sermon

Our refuge in temptation

LET us take two very simple practical rules.

One is: when we are tempted by any approach of evil, to fix our eyes inwardly upon Him hanging upon the Cross. Let us then call to mind His five wounds, and His crown of thorns. This will abate our pride, break our will, and cast out our evil thoughts. If the temptation be strong and abiding, keep your eyes upon him until you are delivered. Look upon Him, as upon the true Serpent of brass, till the fever and the poison of your sin be healed. Go, if you can, into some secret place, and kneel down in His sight; and, there, stay upon your knees till the sting of sin is allayed, and the temptation passed away.

The other rule is: to pray, day by day, that our will may be crucified with Him. This prayer, if we persevere, will, by His grace, slay the enmity that is in us, and make us, not enemies, but lovers of His Cross. St. Paul says, “They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts;” (Gal. v. 24.) and again, he says still more, “I am crucified with Christ;” (Gal. ii. 20.) This shall be even our state at last. Happy and blessed are they who are dead to themselves, alive to Him alone. Let us, therefore, pray Him so to unite us to the spirit of His crucifixion, that we may die to sin, to the world, to our own will; to all that flatters, fosters, strengthens the love of ourselves. As in Baptism we were signed with His life-giving sign, and charged to fight manfully under His banner, so let us pray, that in life and in death we may be under the shadow of His Cross. Howsoever He may fulfil this prayer, be not afraid. It may be He will send you sickness, or sorrow, or contradiction of sinners, or suffering of some kind. For your prayer is an appeal to His Passion. He may suffer you to receive the stigmas which the world printed on Him. Be it so. Let come what may, if only we have upon us the mark of our crucified Master at that day when the sign of the Son of Man shall appear, and the angels “shall gather His elect from the four winds of heaven.”

Cardinal Henry Manning, sermon

The Sacrifices our Fathers in the Faith endured to whom we are much indebted for keeping the Faith.

Sunday, 23 - About eleven o’clock, the Peace Officers going their rounds to the public-houses, to prevent disorderly smoking and tippling in time of Divine Service, discovered a private Mass-house at a little alehouse at the back of Shoreditch, where nearly a hundred people had got together in a garret, most of them miserably poor and ragged, and upon examination appeared to be Irish. Some few were well dressed and several Mass-books were found with them. The priest made his escape out of a back door, leaving the rest to shift for themselves, whereupon some got out of a trap-door, and others, after giving an account of their names and places of abode, were let quietly depart. Notwithstanding, a great many met in the evening at the same place, declaring that Mass should be said there.

Gentleman’s Magazine, London, England, February 23, 1735

Hospital of Saint Cross and Alms House of Noble Poverty_2.jpg

"Hospital of Saint Cross and Alms House of Noble Poverty" -

A sketch of the institution before the Reformation. It was a diocesan institution that served for care of the poor and as a hospital. These were commonly seen in England before the Reformation but were nearly all destroyed with their assets distributed to the criminal abettors within the nobility. The destruction of charitable institutions would eventually give England debtors prisons like the infamous Marshalsea, Fleet, and many others. On this alms house and hospital, Bishop John Milner (1752-1826), Winchester, England, said, “The present establishment is but the wreck of the two ancient institutions, having been severely fleeced, though not quite destroyed, like so many other hospitals, at the Reformation.”

NOTE: This is an important observation and public statement that directly applies to the claims of Ss. Peter & Paul Roman Catholic Mission - "Every separation of theory and practice of the faith would be the manifestation of ....heresy."

Cardinal Müller: Separation of Theory and Praxis Would be a Heresy

Catholic News Agency, Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Prefect of the Congregation of the Faith in the "Osservatore Romano"said that any separation of theory and practice of the faith would be the manifestation of a subtle Christological heresy in principle ".
Vatican City (kath.net/KAP) The Prefect of the Vatican Congregation of Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, reiterating that there should be no gap between teaching and pastoral care in the Catholic Church. "Every separation of theory and practice of the faith would be the manifestation of a subtle Christological heresy in principle," Mueller said in a speech, which was published by the Vatican newspaper "L'Osservatore Romano" on Tuesday. This would "obscure" the dynamics of the Incarnation, which is part of any "healthy theology", said Mueller. Christ had said, "I am the way, the truth and the life. Therefore, there can be no truth without life and no life without truth.
The occasion was the opening of the General Assembly of the International Theological Commission of the Vatican on Monday. Müller is the President of the Advisory Board of the CDF. Cardinal Müller had said several times in the the Synod of Bishops on the family, that there can be no change in the Church's practice in relation to the divorced and remarried, because thereby the indissolubility of marriage will be questioned.

The Barbarian hopes — and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is ever marvelling that civilization, should have offended him with priests and soldiers.... In a word, the Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this, that he cannot make: that he can befog and destroy but that he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilization exactly that has been true. We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.

Hilaire Belloc

Proselytizism: O.K. as long as it’s conversion to the Dogma preached by the Global Warming/Climate Change Ideologues - OR – Does Pope Francis know any more about Climatology than he does about the Catholic Faith?

Time to tackle global warming running out, Pope tells climate summit

By Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service : December 11, 2014

VATICAN CITY - Tackling the problem of climate change is a serious ethical and moral responsibility, Pope Francis told negotiators from around the world meeting for a climate summit in Lima, Peru.

"The time to find global solutions is running out. We can find adequate solutions only if we act together and unanimously," he said in a written message to Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, Peru's minister of the environment and host president of the 20th UN Climate Change Conference.

Thousands of negotiators from 195 countries gathered for the meeting in Lima Dec. 1-12 to hammer out details of a new international agreement to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

The Vatican released a copy of the Pope's message Dec. 11.

The Pope encouraged the leaders in their discussions because their decisions will "affect all of humanity, especially the poorest and future generations. What's more, it represents a serious ethical and moral responsibility."

The impact climate change already has been having on coastal regions and other areas "reminds us of the seriousness of negligence and inaction," he said. It is morally imperative that people act.

"An effective fight against global warming will be possible only with a collective and responsible answer" that overcomes one-sided or special interests and is "free from political and economic influence," he said.

The Pope said the leaders' response will have to "overcome distrust; promote a culture of solidarity, encounter and dialogue; and be capable of showing responsibility for protecting the planet and the human family."

Antonio Socci: "The Catholic Church is not the Bergoglio Party" - "for 2 years, nothing about extermination of Christians, but on Muslim migrants they can't stop talking!"

"Excommunication" is only for those who are faithful to Catholic doctrine, morality and our immemorial traditions - But objective state of adultery is no problem as long as you approach the problem with the "eyes of small children"!

Francis: Divorced and remarried ‘are not by any means excommunicated’

COMMENT:

Pope Benedict XVI, Papal Letter to bishops regarding the lifting of the SSPX excommunications, March 10, 2009

Cardinal Kasper Defends Ireland’s Gay ‘Marriage’ Decision

Kasper defended the vote of the Irish in favor of homosexual 'marriages'

Fruits of Vatican II and the New Evangelization -

Claims that the "Catholic hierarchy has strongly opposed"??? Just when and where did that happen?

Is recognizing same-sex marriage Catholic?

If the Church is the people, approval of gay marriage must be lauded

IRELAND: a post-mortem examination - by Roberto de Mattei

Francis receives his “dear sister”, head of the Lutheran Church of Sweden

Note:

Pope Francis strongly implies that Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia and the clerics from dioceses of Harrisburg are going to Hell for the sin of Anti-Dialogueism!

“Famed (Anabaptist) Theologian” taught at the University of Notre Dame for 30 years! – The unofficial disclaimer - 'He was paid to corrupt doctrine. The corruption of morals was an unforeseen bonus…!'

Mennonite seminary apologizes to victims of famed theologian John Howard Yoder

Archbishop Charles Chaput, by his attack upon Fr. Samuel Waters, Casts Doubt upon the Validity of the Novus Ordo Priesthood

Chaput to hold Mass for clergy abuse victims

Religious Freedom, Collegiality, and Ecumenism, the novel slogan of Vatican II

COMMENT:

NOTE:

In an Ecumenical Gesture to the Novus Ordo Church:

Britain: Church of England consecrates first woman bishop

The ceremony took place at York Minster. 48-year-old Libby Lane from Derbyshire is married to a pastor and has two children -

vatican insider staff : rome : 01/26/2015

It is "Unthinkable" to Question Vatican II only for those who do not Think!

Those who deny Jesus Christ are not the “elder brothers” of those who worship Jesus Christ.

JEWS-CATHOLICS: CARD. KOCH (HOLY SEE), “UNTHINKABLE” TO QUESTION THE COUNCIL

Pope Francis, the Climate and Leftism

Hilaire Belloc

Never before seen! - Francis bows his head and asks Separated Patriarch: "Bless me and the Church of Rome"