..... this missal is hereafter to be followed absolutely, without any scruple of conscience or fear of incurring any penalty, judgment or censure, and may freely and lawfully be used ..... Nor are superiors, administrators, canons, chaplains, and other secular priests, or religious, of whatever title designated, obliged to celebrate the Mass otherwise than as enjoined by Us. ..... Accordingly, no one whatsoever is permitted to infringe or rashly contravene this notice of Our permission, statute, ordinance, command, precept, grant, direction, will, decree and prohibition. Should any person venture to do so, let him understand he will incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.

Pope St. Pius V, Papal Bull, QUO PRIMUM,

Tridentine Codification of the “received and approved” traditional Roman Rite of the Mass.

St. Anne, Mother of the BVM

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

July 26, 2026

The Church honours with the angels, in holy joy (Introit), the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

As her name signifies, grace was poured on her and she was blessed by God for ever (Communion). “By His grace He made her deserved to be the mother of the Mother of God” (Collect).

Filled with the virtues which the Holy Ghost grants to good women, the spouse of St. Joachim surpassed all women by her privileges and graces (Epistle). Her holiness made her leave everything for God, and she thereby acquired this pearl and this treasure (Gospel).

The devotion to St. Anne is founded on the bond which unites her to Mary and to the Incarnate Word. Its ancient liturgy dates from the sixth century for the East and the eight century for the West. It was authorized by Urban IV in 1378. In 1584 Gregory XIII fixed July 26 as date of the feast and Leo XIII in 1879 extended it to the whole Church.

Today’s liturgy lays stress on the terrible punishments which will one day be inflicted on those who have denied Christ. They will all perish and not one of them will enter the kingdom of heaven. Those who have been faithful to Him through all the adversities of this life, will also one day, be saved from the hands of their enemies and will follow Him into heaven, wither He went at his Ascension. These thoughts about God’s justice are suggested in the Breviary reading from the prophet Elias.

After Solomon’s death the twelve tribes were divided into two kingdoms, Israel and Juda. The second of these consisted in the tribes of Juda and Benjamin, with Jerusalem as the capital, while the first was composed of the remaining ten tribes, having for its capital Sichem, then in Samaria.

To this latter kingdom belonged the prophet Elias, who dwelt in the desert of Galaad in Samaria. A man of great virtue and austere life he wore a tunic woven of camel’s hair and a leathern girdle. “With zeal. Zealous for the Lord God of Hosts,” he left the desert three times to convey the divine warnings to Achab, the seventh king of Israel and the queen, Jezebel, who seduced the people into idolatry; to secure the death of the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal whom he had put to confusion on Mount Carmel; and to foretell to the king who had taken Naboth’s vineyard for himself, that he would die bathed in his own blood, and to the queen, who had been Achab’s evil genius, that her blood would flow on the spot where Naboth’s flowed, while dogs should devour her flesh.

For these reasons Elias was persecuted by the Israelites and by Achab and Jezebel, and was obliged to flee to Mount Horeb to escape death. Later on, when Ochozias Achab’s son had become king, Elias advised him not to consult Beelzebub the god of Accaron as he intended but rather the God of Israel.

Upon this Ochozias sent him a captain of fifty soldiers to summon him to come down from the mountain and to account for his words, but Elias answered: “If I be a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume thee, and thy fifty.” And there came down fire from heaven, and consumed him and the fifty that were with him (Breviary).

Still later, Elias set out towards the Jordan with Eliseus, and when they had crossed the river, a fiery chariot and horses separated them from each other, while Elias went up by a whirlwind into heaven, then Eliseus took up Elias’s mantle that had fallen from him, and received a double portion of his spirit, while all Elias’ disciples exclaimed: “The spirit of Elias hath rested upon Eliseus.”

On one occasion, when Elias was on his way up to Bethel he was mocked by some small boys, crying: “Go up, thou bald head. Go up, thou bald head.” And Elias cursed them in the name of God whom they had offended, “and there came forth two bears out of the forest and tore them two and forty boys.”

All his life, Elias, with his words of fire, championed the rights of almighty God. Much later John the Baptist “came forward in the spirit and power of Elias,” clad like him, and like him dwelling in the desert; defending, with the same impassioned voice, the same rights of God, and foretelling the separation which Christ, who was at hand, would make between the chaff and the wheat. “He will gather the wheat into His barns, but the chaff He will burn with unquenchable fire.” “Elias,” says St. Augustine, “was a type of our Redeemer and Lord. Elias suffered persecution from the Jews; our Lord, the true Elias, was despised, and rejected by this same people. Elias left his own country; Christ forsook the synagogue and made welcome the Gentiles (2^nd Nocturn).

Continuing the comparison, we may say the God rescued Elias from his enemies by raising him into the sky; and in the same way he took Christ from among His enemies, by making Him go up to heaven on Ascension Day. “Deliver me from my enemies, O my God, and defend me from them that rise up against me” (Alleluia).

Elias, carried away in a chariot of fire, was in the language of the Fathers, the type of Jesus ascending to heaven. The Gradual uses the same verse of the eight psalm which the liturgy employs on Ascension Day. “Lord, our Lord, how admirable is thy name in the whole earth. Thy magnificence is elevated above the heavens.” The Introit adds: “Behold God is my helper and the Lord is the protector of my soul. Save me, O God, by Thy name and deliver me by Thy strength.” This triumph of Christ over those who hated Him, typified by that of Elias over his despisers, will be ours also, if we do not “tempt Christ,” that is, if we avoid idolatry, impurity, and murmuring (Epistle), remaining faithful to grace. For if our Lord continues to be offered up on our altars to “make His work to avail on our behalf” (Secret), and if “eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood, we abide in Him and He in us” (Communion), it is in order that “united” to Him (Postcommunion) we may faithfully keep His judgments which are “sweeter than honey” (Offertory).

St. Paul indeed, tells us: “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able; but will make also with temptation issue, that you may be able to bear it” (Epistle). Let us, therefore, beseech the Lord that His merciful ears “may be open to the prayers” of His suppliants and, in order that to those who seek He may surely give that for which they ask, He may make us to ask only for those things which are well-pleasing to Him (Collect).

But divine justice is not content with protecting the just against their enemies and with rewarding them for their fidelity; it punishes also those who do evil. Elias threatened the faithless kingdom of Israel and made fire from heaven to fall on his enemies (Breviary). The Israelites who tempted Christ by their murmurings perished by firey serpents (Epistle), and Jerusalem, over which our Lord wept and whose punishment He foretold for its rejection of Himself, was destroyed by war and fire (Gospel). Three and twenty thousand of the children of Israel, we read, perished in one day through fornication and many were destroyed because of their murmuring. “Now,” St Paul tells us, “all these things happened to them in figure, and they are written for our correction’ (Epistle).

More than a million Jews perished at the destruction of Jerusalem because they had rejected the Messias, and in the Gospel our Lord always compared this tragic ending to the catastrophes which will mark the end of all time when God will come to judge the world by fire.

At that moment, the divine judge will accomplish the separation of the good from the evil, rewarding the first and banishing from the kingdom of God all who have denied Him by their unbelief or their sin, just as He drove from the Temple, the type of the Church on earth and in heaven, the traffickers who had transformed that house of God into a den of thieves (Gospel). “Turn back the evils upon my enemies, and cut them off in Thy truth, O Lord my protector” (Introit). For then the time of mercy will have passed, and that of justice only will remain. “Wherefore,” says the apostle, “he that thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed lest he fall” (Epistle).

INTROIT:

Let us all rejoice in the Lord, celebrating a festival day in honor of blessed Anne; on whose solemnity the angels rejoice and give praise to the Son of God.

Ps. My heart hath uttered a good word: I speak my works to the King. Glory be, etc. Let us rejoice in the Lord, etc.

COLLECT:

O God, Who didst vouchsafe to endow blessed Anne with such grace that she was found worthy to be the mother of her who brought forth Thy only-begotten Son, grant, in Thy mercy, that we who celebrate her festival may be aided by her intercession with Thee. Through the same Lord, etc.

Let Thy merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of thy suppliant people: and that Thou mayest grant them their desires, make them to ask such things as please Thee. Through our Lord, etc.

EPISTLE: Prov. 31, 10-31

Who shall find a valiant woman? Far and from the uttermost coasts is the price of her. The heart of her husband trusteth in her, and he shall have no need of spoils. She will render him good, and not evil, all the days of her life. She hath sought wool and flax, and hath wrought by the counsel of her hands. She is like the merchant's ship, she bringeth her bread from afar. And she hath risen in the night, and given a prey to her household, and victuals to her maidens. She hath considered a field, and bought it: with the fruit of her hands she hath planted a vineyard. She hath girded her loins with strength, and hath strengthened her arm. She hath tasted and seen that her traffic is good: her lamp shall not be put out in the night. She hath put out her hand to strong things, and her fingers have taken hold of the spindle. She hath opened her hand to the needy, and stretched out her hands to the poor. She shall not fear for her house in the cold of snow: for all her domestics are clothed with double garments. She hath made for herself clothing of tapestry: fine linen, and purple is her covering. Her husband is honourable in the gates, when he sitteth among the senators of the land. She made fine linen, and sold it, and delivered a girdle to the Chanaanite. Strength and beauty are her clothing, and she shall laugh in the latter day. She hath opened her mouth to wisdom, and the law of clemency is on her tongue. She hath looked well to the paths of her house, and hath not eaten her bread idle. Her children rose up, and called her blessed: her husband, and he praised her. Many daughters have gathered together riches: thou hast surpassed them all. Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: the woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands: and let her works praise her in the gates.

GRADUAL:

Ps. 44. Thou hast loved justice and hated iniquity. Therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness.

Alleluia, alleluia. Grace is poured abroad in thy lips: therefore hath God blessed thee forever. Alleluia

GOSPEL: Matt. 13, 44-52

At that time Jesus spoke this parable to his disciples : The kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure hidden in a field. Which a man having found, hid it, and for joy thereof goeth, and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field. Again the kingdom of heaven is like to a merchant seeking good pearls. Who when he had found one pearl of great price, went his way, and sold all that he had, and bought it. Again the kingdom of heaven is like to a net cast into the sea, and gathering together of all kind of fishes. Which, when it was filled, they drew out, and sitting by the shore, they chose out the good into vessels, but the bad they cast forth. So shall it be at the end of the world. The angels shall go out, and shall separate the wicked from among the just. And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Have ye understood all these things? They say to him: Yes. He said unto them: Therefore every scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven, is like to a man that is a householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure new things and old.

Explanation: The hidden treasure is faith in the Crucified, Who remains concealed from the wise of this world by reason of their pride; the hiding of the treasure denotes that faith is to be preserved only by humility; the selling of all that he hath teaches that, for the sake of the faith, we must sacrifice all things, do all things, suffer all things. The parable of the merchant furnishes the same lesson. By the parable of the net the Lord teaches that the universal visible Church of Christ, the kingdom of God upon earth, contains not only the elect, but those also who shall be condemned - the bad as well as the good. At the end of the world there will be a separation, and the bad shall be cast into everlasting fire.

OFFERTORY:

Ps. 44. The daughters of kings honor thee; the queen stood on thy right hand adorned with gold and clad in robes of many colors.

SECRET:

Graciously regard, O Lord, we pray, these present sacrifices; that through the intercession of blessed Anne, who gave birth to the Mother of Thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, they may further our devotion and salvation. Through the same Lord, etc.

Grant us, we pray, O Lord, worthily to frequent these mysteries; because every time this commemorative sacrifice is celebrated, the work of our redemption is enacted. Through our Lord, etc.

COMMUNION:

Ps. 44. Grace is poured on thy lips: therefore hath God blessed thee forever, and for ages of ages.

POSTCOMMUNION:

Revived by Thy heavenly sacraments, we ask, O Lord our God, that through the intercession of blessed Anne, whom Thou didst choose to be the mother of her who brought forth Thy Son, we may become worthy to win eternal salvation. Through the same Lord, etc.

May the communion of Thy sacrament, O Lord, we pray, afford us purification and grant us unity. Through our Lord, etc.

LAST GOSPEL: Luke 19, 41-47.

At that time, when Jesus drew near to Jerusalem, seeing the city, He wept over it, saying: If thou also hadst known, and that in this thy day, the things that are to thy peace: but now they are hidden from thy eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, and thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and straiten thee on every side; and beat thee flat to the ground, and thy children who are in thee; and they shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone, because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation. And entering into the temple, He began to cast out them that sold therein, and them that bought, saying to them: It is written, “My house is a house of prayer. but you have made it a den of thieves.” And He was teaching daily in the temple.

Why did our Saviour weep over the city of Jerusalem?

Because of the ingratitude and obduracy of its inhabitants who would not receive Him as their Redeemer, and who through impenitence were hastening to destruction.

When was the time of visitation?

The period in which God sent them one prophet after another who urged them to penance, and whom they persecuted, stoned, and killed. (Matt. 23, 34). It was especially the time of Christ's ministry, when He so often announced His salutary doctrine in the temple of Jerusalem, confirmed it by miracles, proving Himself to be the Messiah, the Saviour of the world, but was despised and rejected by this hardened and impenitent city.

Who are prefigured by this hardened and impenitent city?

The hard-hearted, unrepenting sinners who will not recognize the time of God's visitation, in which He urges them by the mouth of His preachers, confessors, and superiors, and by inward inspiration to reform their lives and seek the salvation of their soul, but who give no ear to these admonitions, and defer conversion to the end of their lives. Their end will be like to that of this impious city; then the enemy, that is, the evil spirit, will surround their soul, tempt, terrify, and drag it into the abyss of ruin. Oh, how foolish it is to squander so lightly, the time of grace, the days of salvation! Oh, how would the damned do penance, could they but return to earth! Oh, how industriously would they employ the time to save their soul! Use, then, my dear Christian, the time of grace which God designs for you, and which, when it is run out or carelessly thrown away, will not be lengthened for a moment.

Will God conceal from the wicked that which serves for their salvation?

No; but while they are running after the pleasures of this life, as St. Gregory says, they see not the misfortunes treading in their footsteps, and as consideration of the future makes them uncomfortable in the midst of their worldly pleasures, they remove the terrible thought far from them, and thus run with eyes blindfolded in the midst of their pleasure into eternal flames. Not God, but they themselves hide the knowledge of all that is for their peace, and thus they perish.

ASPIRATION. I beseech Thee, O Lord, who didst weep over the city of Jerusalem, because it knew not the time of its visitation, to enlighten my heart, that I may know and profit by the season of grace.

Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: the woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands: and let her works praise her in the gates.

PROPER OF THE SAINTS FOR THE WEEK OF JULY 26^th:

26	Sun	St. Anne, Mother of the BVM 9th Sunday after Pentecost	d2cl	W		9:00 AM; Members Ss. Peter & Paul; Rosary of Reparation 8:30 AM; Confessions 8:00 AM
27	Mon	St. Pantaleon, M	sp	R		Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass
28	Tue	Ss. Nazarius & Companions, Mm	sd	R		Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass
29	Wed	St. Martha, V Ss. Felix II & Companions, Mm	sd	W		Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass
30	Thu	Ss. Abbon & Sennen, Mm	sd	R		Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass
31	Fri	St. Ignatius of Loyola, C	dm	W	A	Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass
1	Sat	St. Peter’s Chains St. Paul, Ap The Holy Machabees, Mm	dm	W		Mass 9:00 AM, Confessions 8:00 AM; Benediction & Holy Hour of Reparation with Rosary FIRST SATURDAY
2	Sun	10th Sunday after Pentecost St. Alphonsus, BpCD St. Stephen I, PM	sd	G		9:00 AM; Members Ss. Peter & Paul; Rosary of Reparation 8:30 AM; Confessions 8:00 AM

Novena Prayer to Saint Anne Feast of St. Anne, Mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary

O GLORIOUS St. Anne, filled with compassion for those who invoke thee and with love for those who suffer, heavily laden with the weight of my troubles, I cast myself at thy feet and humbly beg of thee to take under thy special protection the present affair which I commend to thee.

[State your petition]

Be pleased to commend it to thy daughter, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and lay it before the throne of Jesus, so that He may bring it to a happy outcome. Cease not to intercede for me until my request is granted. Above all, obtain for me the grace of one day beholding my God face to face, and, with thee and Mary and all the Saints, of praising and blessing Him for all eternity. Amen.

Good St. Anne, mother of her who is our life, our sweetness and our hope, pray to her for us and obtain our request. [Three times.] Good St. Anne, pray for us Jesus, Mary, Anne.

“We wish to have this law of the ancients held in reverence and that law is, ‘Let nothing new be introduced but only what has been handed down.’ This must be an inviolable law in matters of Faith.”

Pope Benedict XV

St. Ann Anne, Patroness of Christian Mothers

"To St. Anne, God has given the power to aid in every necessity, because Jesus, her Divine Grandchild according to the flesh, will refuse her no petition, and Mary, her glorious daughter, supports her every request. Those who venerate good St. Anne shall want for nothing, either in this life or the next. Believe me, if you love and venerate this Saint, you will experience how highly God esteems her. He grants all she asks! It would be impossible to enumerate the many graces she obtains daily for her servants."

Abbot John Trithemius

"Anne is the glorious tree from which bloomed a twig under Divine influence. She is the sublime heaven from whose heights the Star of the Sea neared its rising. She is the blessed barren woman, happy mother among mothers, from whose pure womb came forth the shining temple of God, the sanctuary of the Holy Ghost, the Mother of God."

St. Jerome

"Blessed, thrice blessed art thou, O Saint Anne, who didst receive from God and brought forth the blessed child from whom proceeded Christ, the Flower of life! We congratulate thee, O blessed Anne, on the dignity of being the mother of Mary, for thou hast brought forth our common hope, the germ of Promise! All pious lips bless thee in thy daughter, all languages glorify thy child! Worthy art thou above all praise, worthy of the praise of all who are redeemed, for thou hast given life to her who brought forth our Savior, Jesus Christ."

St. John Damascene

"From her very childhood, she possessed the fullness of every virtue. She was continually engaged in devout meditation. Her unceasing prayer was that the Redeemer might come soon."

St. Mary of Agreda

"In desperate cases of need, I always invoke the holy mother Anne."

Blessed Anna Catherine Emmerich

"We do not doubt that the more love we show to the mother of Mary, the more we merit the intercession and aid of the holy Virgin who brought forth the only-begotten Son of God, Our Lord Jesus Christ."

Pope Gregory XV

"We know and are convinced that our good mother St. Anne helps in all needs, dangers and tribulations, for Our Lord wishes to show us that He will do also in Heaven what she asks of Him for us."

St. Teresa of Avila

Humility is like purity: however little it may be contaminated it becomes impure. Purity is corrupted not only by an impure act, but also by an immodest word or thought. And humility is also so fragile that it is easily tainted by the love of praise, by a word or thought of self-esteem, by vainglory or self-love.

Fr. Cajetan Mary da Bergamo, Humility of Heart

By the love of concupiscence we love God, but we love Him chiefly as our good, as the source of our happiness; we love Him for the help and assistance we expect from Him. Charity, on the contrary, makes us capable of loving God for Himself, because He is goodness, beauty, infinite wisdom – in a word, because He is God. Although the love of concupiscence which accompanies hope is very precious, it is still imperfect, because by it we love God not for Himself alone, but for the benefits which we hope to receive from Him. The love of charity, however, is perfect because it is pure love of complacency, of benevolence, that is, love which takes complacence in the infinite good of God, and desires this good, not for any personal advantage, but for God Himself, for His felicity, His glory. …St. Teresa of Avila prayed, “O Lord, be pleased 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.”

Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, Divine Intimacy, On Charity

But in order to take away all the excuses which are wont to be brought forward by some for not hearing holy Mass, there shall be adduced, in the following chapter, various examples adapted to every sort of person, to show that, if they deprive themselves of so great a good, it is by their own fault, their tepidity, their weariness in well-doing; and that great indeed shall be their remorse on this account at the point of death.

St. Leonard of Port Maurice, The Hidden Treasure of the Holy Mass

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CITY AND TEMPLE OF JERUSALEM

Has our divine Savior's prophecy concerning, the city of Jerusalem been fulfilled?

Yes, and in the most terrible manner. The Jews, oppressed by the Romans their cruel masters, revolted, killed many of their enemies, and drove them out of Jerusalem. Knowing well that this would not be permitted to pass unavenged, the Jews armed themselves for a desperate resistance. The Emperor Nero sent a powerful army under the command of Vespasian against the city of Jerusalem, which first captured the smaller fortresses of Judea, and then laid siege to the city. The want and misery of the inhabitants had already reached the highest pitch; for within the city ambitious men had caused conflicts; factions had been formed, daily fighting each other, and reddening the streets with blood, while the angry Romans stormed outside. Then a short time of respite was granted to the unfortunate Jews. The Emperor Nero was murdered at Rome in the year of our Lord 68; his successor Galba soon died, and the soldiers placed their beloved commander Vespasian upon the imperial throne. He then left Jerusalem with his army, but in the year he sent his son Titus with a new army to Judea, with orders to capture the city at any price, and to punish its inhabitants.

It was the time of Easter, and a multitude of Jews had assembled from all provinces of the land, when Titus appeared with his army before the gates of Jerusalem, and surrounded the city. The supply of food was soon exhausted, famine and pestilence came upon the city and raged terribly. The leader of the savage revolutionists, John of Gischala, caused the houses to be searched, and the remaining food to be torn from the starving, or to be forced from them by terrible tortures: To save themselves from this outrageous tyrant, the Jews took the leader of a band of robbers, named Simon, with his whole gang into the city. John and Simon with their followers now sought to annihilate each other. John took possession of the temple. Simon besieged him; blood was streaming in the temple and in the streets. Only when the battle-din of the Romans was heard from without, did the hostile factions unite, go to meet the enemy, and resist his attack. As the famine increased, many Jews secretly left the city to seek for herbs. But Titus captured them with his cavalry, and crucified those who were armed. Nearly five hundred men, and sometimes more, were every day crucified in sight of the city, so that there could not be found enough of crosses and places of execution; but even this terrible sight did not move the Jews to submission. Incited by their leaders to frenzy, they obstinately resisted, and Titus finding it impossible to take the city by storm, concluded to surround it by walls in order to starve the inhabitants. In three days his soldiers built a wall of about ten miles in circumference, and thus the Saviour's prediction was fulfilled: Thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and straiten thee on every side.

The famine in this unfortunate city now reached its most terrific height; the wretched inhabitants searched the very gutters for food, and ate the most disgusting things. A woman, ravenous from hunger, strangled her own child, roasted it, and ate half of it; the leaders smelling the horrible meal, forced a way into the house, and by terrible threats compelled the woman to show them what she had eaten; she handed them the remaining part of the roasted child, saying.: "Eat it, it is my child; I presume you are not more dainty than a woman, or more tender than a mother." Stricken with horror they rushed from the house. Death now carried away thousands daily, the streets and the houses were full of corpses: From the fourteenth of April when the siege commenced. to the first of July, there were counted one hundred and fifty-eight thousand dead bodies; six hundred thousand others were thrown over the walls into the trenches to save the city from infection. All who could flee, fled; some reached the camp of the Romans in safety; Titus spared the helpless, but all who fell into his hands armed, were crucified. Flight offered no better security. The Roman soldiers had learned that many Jews had swallowed, gold to secure it from the avarice of the robbers, and therefore the stomachs of many were cut open. Two thousand such corpses were found one morning in the camp of the Romans. The attempts of Titus to prevent this cruelty were unavailing. Finally, when misery had reached its height, Titus succeeded in carrying the fort, Antonia, and with his army forced a passage as far as the temple which had been held by John of Gischala with his infamous band. Desirous of saving the temple, Titus offered the revolutionists free passage from it, but his proposition was rejected, and the most violent contest then raged; the Romans trying to enter the temple, and being continually repulsed, at last, one of the soldiers seized a firebrand, and threw it into one of the rooms attached to the temple. The flames in an instant caught the whole of the inner temple, and totally consumed it, so that this prediction of our Lord was also fulfilled. The Romans butchered all the inhabitants whom they met, and Titus having razed the ruins of the temple and city, ploughed it over, to indicate that this city was never to be rebuilt. During the siege one million one hundred thousand Jews lost their lives; ninety-seven thousand were sold as slaves, and the rest of the people dispersed over the whole earth.

Thus God punished the impenitent city and nation, over whose wretchedness the Saviour wept so bitterly, and thus was fulfilled the prediction made by Him long before.

What do we learn from this?

That as this prediction so also all other threats and promises of the Saviour will be fulfilled. The destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem, the dispersion of the Jews, are historical facts which cannot be denied, and testify through all centuries to the truth of our Lord's word: Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away (Matt. 24, 35).

Your divine Providence, O God, takes care of all Your creatures as though they were but one, and it takes care of each one as though all others were contained in it. Oh! If Your Providence were only understood, everyone would forget the things of this world to be united to it.

St. Mary Magdalen dei Pazzi

USEFUL LESSONS CONCERNING DEATH-BED REPENTANCE

Can a sinner rely upon his being converted at the end of his life?

By no means, for this would be a sin against the mercy of God which is much the same as the sin against the Holy Ghost. "God," says St. Augustine, "generally so punishes such negligent sinners, that in the end they forget themselves, as in health they forgot Him." He says: They have turned their back to me, and not their face: and in the time of their affliction they will say: Arise, and deliver us! Where are the gods whom thou hast made thee? Let them arise and deliver thee in the time of thy affliction. (Jer. 2, 27-28). And although we have a consoling example in the case of the penitent thief, yet this, as St. Augustine says, is only one, that the sinner may not despair: and it is only one, so that the sinner may have no excuse for his temerity in putting off his repentance unto the end.

What may we hope of those who are converted at the close of life?

Everything that is good if they be truly converted, but this is a very rare thing, as St. Augustine says: "It cannot be asserted with any security, that he who repents at the end has forgiveness;" and St. Jerome writes: "Scarcely one out of thousands whose life was impious, will truly repent at death and obtain forgiveness of sin;" and St. Vincent Ferrer says, "For a man who has lived an impious life to die a good death is a greater miracle than the raising of the dead to life." We need not be surprised at this, for repentance at the end of life is extorted by the fear of death and the coming judgment. St. Augustine says, that it is not he who abandons sin, but sin abandons him, for he would not cease to offend God, if life were granted him. What can we expect from such a conversion?

When should we repent?

While we are in health, in possession of our senses and strength, for according to the words of St. Augustine, the repentance of the sick is a sickly repentance. As experience proves, man while ill is so tormented and bewildered by the pains of sickness and the fear of death, by remorse of conscience, and the temptations of the devil as well as by anxiety for those whom he leaves, that he can scarcely collect his thoughts, much less fit himself for true repentance. Since it is so hard for many to do penance while they are in health, and have nothing to prevent them from elevating their mind to God, how much more difficult will it be for them, when the body is weakened and tortured by the pains of sickness. It has been made known by many persons when convalescent, that they retained not the slightest recollection of anything which occurred during their illness, and although they confessed and received the last Sacraments, they did not remember it. If then you have committed a grievous sin, do not delay to be reconciled as soon as possible by contrition and a sacramental confession. Do not put off repentance from day to day, for thereby conversion becomes more difficult, so much so that without extraordinary grace from God, you cannot repent God does not give His grace to the presumptuous scoffer.

My people have been a lost flock, their shepherds have caused them to go astray, and have made them wander in the mountains; they have gone from mountain to hill, they have forgotten their resting place.

Jer. 50:6

“Into whatever city or town you shall enter,” said Jesus to His disciples, “inquire who in it is worthy, and there abide.” Now St. Luke relates that as they went, our Lord Himself “entered into a certain town, and a certain woman named Martha received Him into her house.” How could we give a greater praise to Magdalen’s sister than by bringing together these two texts of the holy Gospel?

Dom Gueranger, The Liturgical Year, St. Martha

St. Ignatius received his first call three weeks after Luther had completed his rebellion… Ten months of diabolilcal manifestations prepared Satan’s lieutenant and on March 25th left Wartburg. In the same month on the 25th, on the glorious night of the Incarnation, the brilliant soldier in the armies of the Catholic kingdom, the descendant of the families of Ognes and Loyola, clad in sackcloth, the uniform of poverty, to indicate his new projects, watched his arms in prayer at Montserrat; then hanging up his trusty sword at Mary’s altar, he went forth to make trial of his future combats by a merciless war against himself.

Dom Gueranger, The Liturgical Year, Feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola

“O Lord, it is so sweet to serve You in darkness and in the midst of trial, for we have only this life in which to live by faith.”

St. Teresa of the Child Jesus

“And every spirit that dissolveth Jesus, is not of God: and this is Antichrist, of whom you have heard that he cometh, and he is now already in the world (1 John 4:3).” The Modernist does not regard DOGMA, which constitutes the formal object of divine and Catholic faith, as the literal incarnation of divine TRUTH, and thus “dissolveth Jesus” who is Truth Incarnate. He is “Antichrist.”

“But the Church of God will not take this foolish advice. She is supernatural and Divine in her origin and constitution, and so must always have recourse to supernatural means. Modernism is condemned because it virtually destroys Christian dogma by denying that the dogmas of faith are contained in the revelation made by the Holy Spirit to the Catholic Church and subsequently defined through the supreme authority of the same Ecclesia docens. Once the Holy Spirit, speaking through the supreme magisterium of the Church, defines a doctrine as de fide the dogma in question remains, both in se and in its external formula or terminology, unchanged and unchangeable, like God, Whose voice it communicates to us, in the shape of definite truth.

“Modernism tells us quite the reverse. The Divine reality in which we believe must be sought inside the believer's soul. This reality is both an object of 'vital immanence' and the subject of the believer's affirmation of his inner belief, in the words of a formula or a statement. Is there anything existing outside the believer corresponding to both the 'vital immanence' and the statement of its nature inwards by him? No, answers Modernism. From a philosophic or a scientific or historical point of view it is unreal -- nay, false. Does the reality, then, exist at all? We do not know (agnosticism). Yet, as a believer, the reality in question may be true -- nay, existing in se, quite independent of the believer's concept of it. But on what grounds does he (the believer) pin his faith upon its truth? Only on his own individual experience. The believer possesses a kind of 'intuition' of the heart, which he imputs mediately into contact with the Divine reality of God; giving to him at the same time an absolute 'persuasion' of God's existence, and His beneficent action outside of man. This inner experience is greater than any other experience of any other objects whatsoever. If this theory be admitted, it would lead us into theism. According to it, every religion on the face of the earth is true [thus, Ecumenism]. We could never dare to call any religion a false one. There would be no essential difference between any religion and the one true religion of the Catholic Church. Have not their adherents, just as much as Catholics, their inward religious experience and their outward affirmation of it? Both of these agree with each other [thus, Religious Liberty]. In what, then, do these other religions differ from Catholicism? Only in degree, but not in kind. Catholicism has more truth, is a more living faith and is more preeminently Christian; but the other creeds are not false, and there is no means in Modernist principles for so describing them [thus, members of other religions are saved ‘through the Catholic Church’ by ‘baptism of implicit desire’]. Who does not see that Modernism destroys not only the true dogmas of Our Catholic Faith, but makes them differ only in kind from those of other creeds? Our belief as Catholics rests on sure and firm, because Divine, foundations. It comes to us straight from the infallible Word of God -- both written and unwritten -- Scripture and Divine tradition. Through these Divine oracles God speaks to us, and we know it is God that speaks to us through the teaching, testimony, and authority of the Catholic Church.”

Rev. Norbert Jones, C.R.L., Old Truths, Not Modernist Errors: Exposure of Modernism and Vindication, 1908

”What strikes us at once in the history of the Society of Jesus is that it was matured at its very first formation. Whosoever knows the first founders of the Company knows the whole Company, in its spirit, its aim, its enterprises, its proceedings, its methods. What a generation was that which gave it birth! What union of science and activity, of interior life and military life! One may say they were universal men, men of a giant race, compared with whom we are but insects.”

Cardinal Louis-Edouard Pie of Poitiers, whom St. Pius X referred as “my mentor” and a “second St. Hiliary,” on the Jesuits

Do not err, my brethren;… if a man by false teaching corrupt the faith of God, for the sake of which Jesus Christ was crucified, such a one shall go in his foulness to the unquenchable fire, as also shall he who listens to him.

St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Ephesians

Rome, making a god of the man who had subjugated her, consecrated the month of August to Caesar Augustus. When Christ had delivered her, she placed at the head of this same month, as a trophy of her regained liberty, the feast of the chains wherewith, in order to break hers, Peter, the Vicar of Christ had once been bound. O divine Wisdom, who hast a better claim to reign over this month than had the adopted son of Caesar. Thou couldst not have more authentically inaugurated Thy empire. Strength and sweetness are the attributes of Thy works and it is in the weakness of Thy chosen ones that Thou triumphest over the powerful.

Dom Gueranger, The Liturgical Year, Feast of St. Peter’s Chains

O most loving Word of God, teach me to be generous, to serve You as You deserve: to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labor and not to ask for any other reward save that of knowing that I do Your holy will.

St. Ignatius of Loyola

The Principle of Unity in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church is, and has always been, the Faith itself. The very idea of “dialogue” with Protestant churches is an absurdity because there is no unity of faith anywhere!

So as Protestant churches have no unifying principle in practice they have no unity. Division, dissension, and discord have been the distinguishing marks of Protestantism from its very birth; so much so that it alarmed the reformers themselves. “It is of great importance,” wrote Calvin to his fellow reformer, Melanchthon, “that the divisions which subsist around us should not be known to future ages; for nothing can be more ridiculous than that we, who have been compelled to make a separation from the whole world, should have agreed so ill among ourselves from the very beginning of the Reformation.” To this Melanchthon replied that “the Elbe, with all its waters, could not furnish tears enough to weep over the miseries of the distracted Reformation.” The same note of alarm is sounded by Theodore Beza, another reformer. “Our people,” he says, “are carried away by every wind of doctrine. If you know what their religion is to—day, you cannot tell what it may he tomorrow. There is not a single point which is not held by some of them as an article of faith, and by others rejected as an impiety.

Rev. Bernard J. Otten, S.J., Professor of Theology, St. Louis University, The Reason Why, Common Sense Contribution to Christian and Catholic Apologetics, 1912

And what is most certain of all, the Pope is not the “rule of faith”!

It is not the magisterium (churchmen teaching by virtue of their grace of state) as such that is the rule of faith, but the definitions of the magisterium (churchmen teaching by virtue of the Church’s attribute of infallibility) that are the rule.

Fr. Chad Ripperger, The Binding Force of Tradition

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, 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 the spiritual mission of St. Joan of Arc.

The political doctrine of “Separation of Church and State” in the U.S. is nothing more than a political demand that no one, whomsoever they be, may contest the Established Religion in the public forum!

In traveling over the earth you may find cities without walls, without literature, without the arts and sciences of civilized life, but a people without God, without prayers, without religious oaths, without religious rites, without sacrifices, is nowhere seen.

Plutarch, Roman historian

CORRESPONDENCE WITH GRACE NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

PRESENCE OF GOD ‑ O Lord, grant that Your grace in me may not be void.

MEDITATION:

I. Today the liturgy invites us to consider the grave problem of our correspondence with grace. It does this by showing us the sad picture of the sufferings of Israel, the chosen people, upon whom God had showered His benefits, whom He had surrounded with graces, protected with jealous care, and who, in spite of all this, were lost through their own infidelity. In the Epistle (I Cor 10, 6‑13), St. Paul, after mentioning certain points about Israel’s unfaithfulness, concludes: “Now all these things happened to them in figure, and they are written for our correction .... Wherefore, he that thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed lest he fall.” This is a strong call to vigilance and humility. If God has gone before us with His graces, if He has called us to a more intense interior life and to closer intimacy with Himself, all this, far from making us presumptuous, should deepen our humility of heart. God’s gifts are preserved beneath the ashes of humble mistrust of self. Woe to us if we consider ourselves henceforth free from the weaknesses which we meet and, perhaps, condemn in others! Rather let us humbly say: “Lord, help me, or I shall do worse.”

At the same time that he exhorts us to be humble, St. Paul also urges us to have confidence, because “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able : but will make also with temptation issue, that you may be able to bear it.” The Apostle is telling us that the knowledge of our weakness should not discourage us, because God is always ready to sustain us with His grace. God knows our weaknesses, the struggles we have to undergo, and the temptations that assail us; and for each of them He gives us the measure of grace we need in order to triumph over them. It is very true that when the storm is raging we can feel only the impact of the struggle, and the grace that God is giving to help us remains completely hidden; nevertheless, this grace is there and we should be certain of it, because “God is faithful.” “God has always helped me ....” St. Therese of the Child Jesus said, “I count on His aid. My sufferings may reach even greater heights, but I am sure He will not abandon me.”

2. The Gospel (Lk. 19: 41‑47) continues the same subject of the Epistle and shows us Jesus weeping over Jerusalem. The Creator, the Lord, the Redeemer weeps over the ruin of His creatures, the people whom He has loved with predilection, even choosing them as the companions of His earthly life, and whom He had desired to save at any price.

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem . . . how often would I have gathered together thy children as the hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, and thou wouldst not!” (Mt 23, 37) This was the constant attitude of Jesus toward the holy city, but it always remained blind to every light, deaf to every invitation, and the Savior, shortly before going to His Passion, broke forth into His last sorrowful admonition: “If thou also hadst known and that in this thy day, the things that are to thy peace!” But again the city resists, and Jesus, after having loved it so much, and after having wept over it as a mother weeps over her son who has gone astray, predicts its ruin: “Thy enemies . . . shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone, because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation.”

Do you know how to recognize the moments in which Our Lord visits your soul? A word read or heard, perhaps even by chance, an edifying example, an interior inspiration, a new light which makes you see your faults more clearly and opens new horizons of virtue and of good‑all are visits from Jesus. And you, how do you correspond? Is your soul sensitive to these lights, to these admonitions? Do you not sometimes turn your gaze away, fearing that the light you have glimpsed may ask you for sacrifices which are too painful for your self‑love?

Oh! if you had always recognized the moment in which the Lord visited you! If you had always been open to His action! Try then to begin again today, resolve to commence anew each time that you happen to give in to nature. “The things that are to your peace,” your good, your sanctification are precisely here, in this continual adherence to the impulses of grace.

COLLOQUY:

“As I have already confessed to You, O glory of my life, O Lord God, strength of my salvation, I have sometimes placed my hopes in my own virtue, which was no virtue, and when I attempted to run, thinking I was very strong, I fell very quickly and went backward instead of forward. What I expected to reach, disappeared, and thus, O Lord, in various ways You have tested my powers. With light from You, I now see that I could not accomplish by myself the things that I wanted to do most. I said to myself:

‘I shall do this, I shall finish that,’ and I did not do either the one or the other. The will was there but not the power, and if the power was there, my will was not; this because I had trusted in my own strength. Sustain me then, O Lord, for alone I can do nothing. However, when You are my stability, then it is true stability; but when I am my own stability, then it is weakness’’

(St. Augustine).

“O Lord, teach me to be always docile to Your grace, to say ‘yes’ to You always. To say ‘yes’ to Your will as expressed in the commandments, to say ‘yes’ to the intimate inspirations by which You invite me to a more intense union, to more generous self‑denial and more complete detachment. Grant that I may always be ready to open the door of my will to You, or rather, to keep it open always, so that You can enter there, and thus I shall not miss a single one of Your visits, a single one of Your delicate touches; not one of Your requests will escape me.

“Make me understand well that true peace does not consist in being exempt from difficulties or in following my own wishes, but in total adherence to Your will, and in docility to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit” (cf. Sr. Carmela of the Holy Spirit, O.C.D.).

I will not mistrust the Lord, Meg, though I feel myself weakening and on the verge of being overcome with fear. Rather, I shall remember how St. Peter at a blast of wind began to sink because of his lack of faith, and I shall do as he did: call upon Our Lord for help. And then I trust He shall place His holy hand upon me, and in the storming seas hold me up from drowning.

St. Thomas More

St. Peter’s Chains: Another “gross accretion,” another “evident distortion.”

The Feast of St. Peter’s Chains was suppressed in the Bugnini transitional indult reform Missal of 1962, know commonly know as the Extra-Ordinary form of the Novus Ordo. The Mason Bugnini when asked if his Missal of 1962 was the end of his liturgical innovations replied, “Not by any stretch of the imagination. Every good builder begins by removing the gross accretions, the evident distortions; then with more delicacy and attention he sets out to revise particulars. The latter remains to be achieved for the Liturgy so that the fullness, dignity and harmony may shine forth once again.”

St. Peter, the first pope, was imprisoned on two separate occasions during his 25 year reign as the Vicar of Christ. The pious Eudocia, wife of Emperor Teodosio II, journeyed to Jerusalem and found the chain that had bound Peter during his second imprisonment. According to the Acts of the Apostles (12:6), an angel caused the chains to fall from Peter's hands and led him past slumbering guards. The chain was eventually given as a gift to Pope St. Leo the Great (440-461).

In Rome there was already a chain that was greatly prized which had bound the saint during his nine-month imprisonment in the Mamertine Prison near the Forum. When the pope compared the two chains, they miraculously fused together into one unbreakable series of links. Because of this miracle, Empress Eudocia built the Basilica of Saint Peter in Chains, and dedicated it to the apostle in the year 442. The relic is now kept in a golden urn beneath the high altar, close to the famous statue of Michelangelo's Moses. St. Peter was crucified in the year 67. He requested to be nailed to the cross upside-down, because he did not feel worthy to die in the same manner as his Saviour, Jesus Christ.

The Hermeneutics of Continuity/Discontinuity - From the “Kingship of Christ” to a “Profound and Genuine Humanistic” One World Government with “Teeth.”

Catholic Church Teaches:

“All public power must proceed from God. For God alone is the true and supreme Lord of the world.”
No society can hold together unless some one be over all, directing all to strive earnestly for the common good, every body politic must have a ruling authority, and this authority, no less than society itself, has its source in nature, and has, consequently, God for its Author. Hence, it follows that all public power must proceed from God. For God alone is the true and supreme Lord of the world. Everything, without exception, must be subject to Him, and must serve him, so that whosoever holds the right to govern holds it from one sole and single source, namely, God, the sovereign Ruler of all. "There is no power but from God" (Rom 12:1). Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei

“Whole human race is most truly under the power of Jesus Christ.”
This world-wide and solemn testimony of allegiance and piety is especially appropriate to Jesus Christ, who is the Head and Supreme Lord of the race. His empire extends not only over Catholic nations and those who, having been duly washed in the waters of holy baptism, belong of right to the Church, although erroneous opinions keep them astray, or dissent from her teaching cuts them off from her care; it comprises also all those who are deprived of the Christian faith, so that the whole human race is most truly under the power of Jesus Christ. Pope Leo XIII, Annum Sacrum

"Christ has dominion over all creatures, a dominion not seized by violence nor usurped, but His by essence and by nature."

This same doctrine of the Kingship of Christ which we have found in the Old Testament is even more clearly taught and confirmed in the New. The Archangel, announcing to the Virgin that she should bear a Son, says that "the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of David his father, and he shall reign in the house of Jacob for ever; and of His kingdom there shall be no end."

Moreover, Christ Himself speaks of His Own kingly authority: in His last discourse, speaking of the rewards and punishments that will be the eternal lot of the just and the damned; in His reply to the Roman magistrate, who asked Him publicly whether He were a king or not; after His resurrection, when giving to His Apostles the mission of teaching and Baptizing all nations, He took the opportunity to call Himself king, confirming the title publicly, and solemnly proclaimed that all power was given Him in Heaven and on earth. These words can only be taken to indicate the greatness of his power, the infinite extent of His kingdom. What wonder, then, that He Whom St. John calls the "prince of the kings of the earth" appears in the Apostle's vision of the future as He Who "hath on His garment and on His thigh written 'King of kings and Lord of lords!’” It is Christ Whom the Father "hath appointed heir of all things"; "for He must reign until at the end of the world He hath put all his enemies under the feet of God and the Father." …………. The foundation of this power and dignity of Our Lord is rightly indicated by Cyril of Alexandria. His kingship is founded upon the ineffable hypostatic union. From this it follows not only that Christ is to be adored by Angels and men, but that to Him as man Angels and men are subject, and must recognize His empire; by reason of the hypostatic union Christ has power over all creatures. But a thought that must give us even greater joy and consolation is this that Christ is our King by acquired, as well as by natural right, for He is our Redeemer. Would that they who forget what they have cost their Savior might recall the words: "You were not redeemed with corruptible things, but with the Precious Blood of Christ, as of a lamb unspotted and undefiled." We are no longer our own property, for Christ has purchased us "with a great price"; our very bodies are the "members of Christ." Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas

Conciliar Church Teaches:

“Reform of the United Nations Organization…so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth.”

In the face of the unrelenting growth of global interdependence, there is a strongly felt need, even in the midst of a global recession, for a reform of the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth. One also senses the urgent need to find innovative ways of implementing the principle of the responsibility to protect and of giving poorer nations an effective voice in shared decision-making. This seems necessary in order to arrive at a political, juridical and economic order which can increase and give direction to international cooperation for the development of all peoples in solidarity. To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority, as my predecessor Blessed John XXIII indicated some years ago. Such an authority would need to be regulated by law, to observe consistently the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity, to seek to establish the common good, and to make a commitment to securing authentic integral human development inspired by the values of charity in truth. Furthermore, such an authority would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice, and respect for rights. Obviously it would have to have the authority to ensure compliance with its decisions from all parties, and also with the coordinated measures adopted in various international forums. Without this, despite the great progress accomplished in various sectors, international law would risk being conditioned by the balance of power among the strongest nations. The integral development of peoples and international cooperation require the establishment of a greater degree of international ordering, marked by subsidiarity, for the management of globalization. They also require the construction of a social order that at last conforms to the moral order, to the interconnection between moral and social spheres, and to the link between politics and the economic and civil spheres, as envisaged by the Charter of the United Nations. Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas In Veritate

“A healthy politics…. capable of reforming and coordinating institutions, promoting best practices and overcoming undue pressure and bureaucratic inertia [that has] worthy goals and values, or a genuine and profound humanism to serve as the basis of a noble and generous society.”

As Benedict XVI has affirmed in continuity with the social teaching of the Church: “To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority, as my predecessor Blessed John XXIII indicated some years ago.” […….] Here, continuity is essential, because policies related to climate change and environmental protection cannot be altered with every change of government. Results take time and demand immediate outlays which may not produce tangible effects within any one government’s term. That is why, in the absence of pressure from the public and from civic institutions, political authorities will always be reluctant to intervene, all the more when urgent needs must be met. To take up these responsibilities and the costs they entail, politicians will inevitably clash with the mindset of short-term gain and results which dominates present-day economics and politics. But if they are courageous, they will attest to their God-given dignity and leave behind a testimony of selfless responsibility. A healthy politics is sorely needed, capable of reforming and coordinating institutions, promoting best practices and overcoming undue pressure and bureaucratic inertia. It should be added, though, that even the best mechanisms can break down when there are no worthy goals and values, or a genuine and profound humanism to serve as the basis of a noble and generous society.

Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, On earth worship, global warming, etc.

The “Omega Point” Is Just Over the Rainbow,

or Where is the Reform of the Reform Headed?

"It's the great vision that later Teilhard de Chardin also had: At the end we will have a true cosmic liturgy, where the cosmos becomes a living host. Let's pray to the Lord that he help us be priests in this sense to help in the transformation of the world in adoration of God, beginning with ourselves."

Pope Benedict XVI, Cathedral of Aosta, July 24th, reflecting upon St. Paul’s letter to the Romans in which St. Paul writes that the world itself will one day become a form of living worship.

NOTE: Teilhard de Chardin, sometimes referred to as the "Catholic Darwin," who died in 1955 at the age of 73, was a French Jesuit who studied paleontology and participated in the 1920s-era discovery of "Peking Man" in China, a find now discredited that was once claimed to be a missing link in the evolutionary development of the human species. Teilhard has also been linked to the 1912 discovery of "Piltdown Man" in England, another “missing link” later exposed as a hoax. He knew nothing about the worship of God.

The Answer: Not Reform but Return to the Immemorial Roman Rite

We need a new beginning born from the depths of the liturgy, as it was intended by the liturgical movement when it was at the apex of its true nature, when it concerned itself not with inventing texts, actions and forms, but with rediscovering the living core, penetrating the very tissue of its own substance. The liturgical form, however, in its concrete realization, has moved ever farther from its beginning. The result has not been renewal but devastation.

Josef Cardinal Ratzinger, from Msgr. Klaus Gamber’s book, The Reform of the Roman Liturgy: Its Problems and Background

Pius XII - the man responsible for planting the seed of liturgical destruction!

Fr. Annibale Bugnini had been making clandestine visits to the Centre de Pastorale Liturgique (CPL), a progressivist conference centre for liturgical reform which organized national weeks for priests.
Inaugurated in Paris in 1943 on the private initiative of two Dominican priests under the presidency of Fr. Lambert Beauduin, it was a magnet for all who considered themselves in the vanguard of the Liturgical Movement. It would play host to some of the most famous names who influenced the direction of Vatican II: Frs. Beauduin, Guardini, Congar, Chenu, Daniélou, Gy, von Balthasar, de Lubac, Boyer, Gelineau etc.

It could, therefore, be considered as the confluence of all the forces of Progressivism, which saved and re-established Modernism condemned by Pope Pius X in Pascendi.
According to its co-founder and director, Fr. Pie Duployé, OP, Bugnini had requested a “discreet” invitation to attend a CPL study week held near Chartres in September 1946.

Much more was involved here than the issue of secrecy. The person whose heart beat as one with the interests of the reformers would return to Rome to be placed by an unsuspecting (?) Pope (Pius XII) in charge of his Commission for the General Reform of the Liturgy.
But someone in the Roman Curia did know about the CPL – Msgr. Giovanni Battista Montini, the acting Secretary of State and future Paul VI – who sent a telegram to the CPL dated January 3, 1947. It purported to come from the Pope with an apostolic blessing. If, in Bugnini’s estimation, the Roman authorities were to be kept in the dark about the CPL so as not to compromise its activities, a mystery remains. Was the telegram issued under false pretences, or did Pius XII really know and approve of the CPL? [.....]

This agenda (for liturgical reform) was set out as early as 1949 in the Ephemerides Liturgicae, a leading Roman review on liturgical studies of which Fr. Annabale Bugnini was Editor from 1944 to 1965.
First, Bugnini denigrated the traditional liturgy as a dilapidated building (“un vecchio edificio”), which should be condemned because it was in danger of falling to pieces (“sgretolarsi”) and, therefore, beyond repair. Then, he criticized it for its alleged “deficiencies, incongruities and difficulties,” which rendered it spiritually “sterile” and would prevent it appealing to modern sensibilities.
It is difficult to understand how, in the same year that he published this anti-Catholic diatribe, he was made a Professor of Liturgy in Rome’s Propaganda Fide (Propagation of the Faith) University. His solution was to return to the simplicity of early Christian liturgies and jettison all subsequent developments, especially traditional devotions.
These ideas expressed in 1949 would form the foundational principles of Vatican II’s Sacrosanctum Concilium. For all practical purposes, the Roman Rite was dead in the water many years before it was officially buried by Paul VI.

Dr. Carol Byrne, How Bugnini Grew Up under Pius XII

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

However ignorant you may be, you have the true faith if you believe, without exception, all the holy Catholic Church believes and teaches; on the other hand, however learned you may be, you lose the gift and the virtue of faith if you reject any doctrine which she teaches; for her faith is your rule. “As there is but one faith,” says St. Paul, “to wish to divide it, is to destroy it.” Heretics not only differ from the Church in faith, but they also differ amongst themselves, a proof that they have not the true faith, which is one. The holy Catholic Church never has suffered, and never will suffer, a difference of faith in regard to any article. Her faith is the same in all times, in all places, and in all her true children. Thus her faith is one and the only true faith. You should be most desirous to preserve the faith in all its purity, since without it, it is impossible to do anything which merits Heaven. “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” Those who do not possess it may practice all the moral virtues, justice, sobriety, chastity, alms-deeds, prayers, mortification; and not only is this the case with heretics, but it is a truth which should be borne in mind, that these good actions, unless they have faith for their principle, will never merit Heaven for them. The law of Moses, all holy as it was, could save only those who observed it through faith.
When, therefore, you observe that those who believe not in the Church, practice some good works, offer many prayers, and lead an austere life, do not believe that they are on this account in the way of salvation, unless they have true faith; you commit an enormous sin if you believe that they can be saved outside of the Church; that they can have faith without believing in her, or that they can be saved without faith.

St. John Eudes, Man’s Contract with God in Baptism

"Today we might ask: is there a Latin Rite anymore? Certainly there is no awareness of it. To most people the liturgy appears to be something for the individual congregation to arrange."

Josef Cardinal Ratzinger, 1988

The Essence of the New Theology is its Denial of the Immutability of Truth

(The New Theology) revisits modernism. Because it accepted the proposition which was intrinsic to modernism: that of substituting, as if it were illusory, the traditional definition of truth: aequatio rei et intellectus (the adequation of intellect and reality), for the subjective definition: adequatio realis mentis et vitae (the adequation of intellect and life). That was more explicitly stated in the already cited proposition, which emerged from the philosophy of action, and was condemned by the Holy Office, December 1, 1924: “Truth is not found in any particular act of the intellect wherein conformity with the object would be had, as the Scholastics say, but rather truth is always in a state of becoming, and consists in a progressive alignment of the understanding with life, indeed a certain perpetual process, by which the intellect strives to develop and explain that which experience presents or action requires: by which principle, moreover, as in all progression, nothing is ever determined or fixed.”

The truth is no longer the conformity of judgment to intuitive reality and its immutable laws, but the conformity of judgment to the exigencies of action, and of human life which continues to evolve. The philosophy of being or ontology is substituted by the philosophy of action which defines truth as no longer a function of being but of action.

Thus is modernism reprised: “Truth is no more immutable than man himself, inasmuch as it is evolved with him, in him and through him” (Denz.2058). As well, Pius X said of the modernists, “they pervert the eternal concept of truth.”

Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., Where is the New Theology Leading Us?

Wisdom is only possible for those who hold DOGMA as the Rule of Faith!

Besides, every dogma of faith is to the Catholic cultivated mind not only a new increase of knowledge, but also an incontrovertible principle from which it is able to draw conclusions and derive other truths. They present an endless field for investigation so that the beloved Apostle St. John could write at the end of his Gospel, without fear of exaggeration: “But there are also many other things which Jesus did: which if they were written every one, the world itself, I think, would not be able to contain the books that should be written.”

The Catholic Church, by enforcing firm belief in her dogmas—which are not her inventions, but were given by Jesus Christ—places them as a bar before the human mind to prevent it from going astray and to attach it to the truth; but it does not prevent the mind from exercising its functions when it has secured the treasure of divine truth, and a “scribe thus instructed in the kingdom of heaven is truly like a man that is a householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure new things and old.” He may bring forth new illustrations, new arguments and proofs; he may show now applications of the same truths, according to times and circumstances; he may show new links which connect the mysteries of religion with each other or with the natural sciences as there can be no discord between the true faith and true science; God, being the author of both, cannot contradict Himself and teach something by revelation as true which He teaches by the true light of reason as false. In all these cases the householder “brings forth from his treasure new things and old.” They are new inasmuch as they are the result of new investigations; and old because they are contained in the old articles of faith and doctrine as legitimate deductions from their old principles.

Fr. Joseph Prachensky, S.J., The Church of Parables and True Spouse of the Suffering Saviour, on the Parable of the Scribe

In Public Calamities

We ought to conform to God’s will in all public calamities such as war, famine and pestilence, and reverence and adore His judgments with deep humility in the firm belief that, however severe they may seem, the God of infinite goodness would not send such disasters unless some great good were to result from them.

Consider how many souls may be saved through tribulation which would otherwise be lost, how many persons through affliction are converted to God and die with sincere repentance for their sins. What may appear a scourge and punishment is often a sign of great grace and mercy.

As far as we are personally concerned, let us meditate well on this truth of our faith that the very hairs of our head are numbered, and not one of them will fall except by the will of God. In other words we cannot suffer the least harm unless He wills and orders it. Relying on this truth we can easily understand that we have nothing more or less to fear in times of public calamity than at any other time. God can just as easily protect us in the midst of general ruin and despair as He can deliver us from evil while all around is peace and content. The only thing we need to be concerned about is to gain His favor, and this is the inevitable effect of conforming our will to His. Let us therefore hasten to accept from His hand all that He sends us, and as a result of our trustful surrender He will either cause us to gain the greatest advantages from our misfortunes or else spare us them altogether.

St. Claude de la Colombiere, S.J., Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence

Baptism imprints in your soul a spiritual character, which no sin can efface. This character is a proof that from this time you do not belong to yourself, but that you are the property of Jesus Christ, who has purchased you by the infinite price of his blood and of his death. You are not of yourself, but you are of Christ; wherefore, St. Paul concludes, “that the Christian should no longer live for himself, but for Him who died and rose again for him;” that is to say, that the Christian should live a life of grace, and that he should consecrate to his Redeemer his spirit, his heart, and all his actions. […..]

First, is true penance; for, as the holy Council of Trent teaches, penance is no less necessary for those who have sinned after Baptism, than Baptism is necessary for those who have not received it. The Holy Scripture informs us, that there are two gates by which we are to enter into heaven—baptismal innocence, and penance. When a Christian has shut against himself the gate of innocence, in violating the holy promises of Baptism, it is necessary that he should strive to enter by that of penance; otherwise there is no salvation for him. On this account, Jesus Christ, speaking of persons who have lost innocence, says to them: “Unless you do penance, you shall all perish.”

But in order that penance may prevent us from perishing—it must be true Penance. Confessors may be deceived by the false appearance of conversion, and it is too often the case; but God is never deceived. If, therefore, those who receive absolution are not truly penitent and worthy of pardon, their sins are not forgiven before God. In order to do true penance, it is not sufficient to confess all our sins and to fulfill what is enjoined on us by the priest. There are two other things which are necessary: First; to renounce sin with all your heart, and for all your life… and second; to fly the occasions of sin, and to use the means to avoid it.

St. John Eudes, Man’s Contract with God in Baptism

THE NOVUS ORDO CHURCH OF SLOTH AND ENVY

The first effect of charity is joy in the goodness of God. But this joy can only live through the union of man’s will with God in charity. And charity demands that man keep all the commandments. Charity demands a fellowship in good between God and man. When the effort to live in this fellowship in good begins to appear too difficult to man he begins to be sorrowful about the infinite goodness of God. This sorrow weighs down the spirit of man and leads him to neglect good. This sorrow is the sin of sloth, sorrow about the goodness of God. Sloth is a capital sin. It leads men into other sins. To avoid the sorrow or weariness of spirit which is sloth men will turn from God to the sinful pleasures of the world.

When a man falls victim to sloth and is sorrowful because of the goodness of God it is only natural that he will begin to be grieved also at the manifestation of the goodness of God in other men. He will resent good men simply because they are good. This resentment is envy, hatred of someone else’s good. Since the love of our neighbor flows from our love of God, it is natural that when we cease to love God’s goodness, we will also begin to hate the goodness of men. Envy, like sloth, is a capital sin. It will lead men to commit other sins to destroy the goodness of their neighbors.

When a man’s heart is filled with sloth and envy the interior peace of his soul which was the effect of charity is destroyed. The loss of the interior peace leads to the destruction of the peace of society. When a man’s heart is no longer centered in God, then his life loses all proper direction. When the love of God is gone he has nothing left but the love of himself. When a man loves himself without loving God then he can brook no opposition to his own judgment or arbitrary will. He can tolerate goodness in no one else. He will even, by the sin of scandal, by his own words and example, lead other men into sin. He must disagree with all men. He must dispute with them, separate himself from them, quarrel with them, go to war with them, set the whole of the community at war with itself.

Wherever the goodness of God is most manifest, there will the heart of the man who no longer loves God be most energetic in sowing the seeds of discord, contentiousness, strife and war. That is why religion and the true Church of God are so viciously attacked in the world today. Those who do not love God are driven by sloth and envy to attack God’s tabernacle on earth.

Fr. Walter Farrell and Fr. Martin Healy, My Way of Life, Pocket Edition of St. Thomas

The worst and deepest pits of hell are reserved for Judas and Catholics after him:
From Mystical City of God, by Sister Mary of Agreda
537. Seeing him (Judas) thus beside himself Lucifer inspired him with the thought of hunting up the priests, returning to them the money and confessing his sin. This Judas hastened to do, and he loudly shouted at them those words: "I have sinned, betraying innocent blood!" (Mat. 27, 4). But they, not less hardened, answered that he should have seen to that before. The intention of the demon was to hinder the death of Christ if possible, for reasons already given and yet to be given (No. 419). This repulse of the priests, so full of impious cruelty, took away all hope from Judas and he persuaded himself that it was impossible to hinder the death of his Master. So thought also the demon, although later on he made more efforts to forestall it through Pilate. But as Judas could be of no more use to him for his purpose, he augmented his distress and despair, persuading him that in order to avoid severer punishments he must end his life. Judas yielded to this terrible deceit, and rushing forth from the city, hung himself on a dried-out fig tree (Mat. 27, 5). Thus he that was the murderer of his Creator, became also his own murderer. This happened on Friday at twelve o'clock, three hours before our Savior died. It was not becoming that his death and the consummation of our Redemption should coincide too closely with the execrable end of the traitorous disciple, who hated him with fiercest malice.
538. The demons at once took possession of the soul of Judas and brought it down to hell. His entrails burst from the body hanging upon the tree (Acts 1, 18). All that saw this stupendous punishment of the perfidious and malicious disciple for his treason, were filled with astonishment and dread. The body remained hanging by the neck for three days, exposed to the view of the public. During that time the Jews attempted to take it down from the tree and to bury it in secret, for it was a sight apt to cause great confusion to the Pharisees and priests, who could not refute such a testimony of his wickedness. But no efforts of theirs sufficed to drag or separate the body from its position on the tree until three days had passed, when, according to the dispensation of divine justice, the demons themselves snatched the body from the tree and brought it to his soul, in order that both might suffer eternal punishment in the profoundest abyss of hell. Since what I have been made to know of the pains and chastisements of Judas, is worthy of fear-inspiring attention, I will according to command reveal what has been shown me concerning it. Among the obscure caverns of the infernal prisons was a very large one, arranged for more horrible chastisements than the others, and which was still unoccupied; for the demons had been unable to cast any soul into it, although their cruelty had induced them to attempt it many times from the time of Cain unto that day. All hell had remained astonished at the failure of these attempts, being entirely ignorant of the mystery, until the arrival of the soul of Judas, which they readily succeeded in hurling and burying in this prison never before occupied by any of the damned. The secret of it was, that this cavern of greater torments and fiercer fires of hell, from the creation of the world, had been destined for those, who, after having received Baptism, would damn themselves by the neglect of the Sacraments, the doctrines, the Passion and Death of the Savior, and the intercession of his most holy Mother. As Judas had been the first one who had so signally participated in these blessings, and as he had so fearfully misused them, he was also the first to suffer the torments of this place, prepared for him and his imitators and followers.
539. This mystery I was commanded to reveal more particularly for a dreadful warning to all Christians, and especially to the priests, prelates and religious, who are accustomed to treat with more familiarity the body and blood of Christ our Lord, and who, by their office and state are his closer friends. In order to avoid blame I would like to find words and expressions sufficiently strong to make an impression on our unfeeling obduracy, so that we all may take a salutary warning and be filled with the fear of the punishments awaiting all bad Christians according to the station each one of us occupies. The demons torment Judas with inexpressible cruelty, because he persisted in the betrayal of his Master, by whose Passion and Death they were vanquished and despoiled of the possession of the world. The wrath which they had conceived against the Savior and his blessed Mother, they wreck, as far as is allowed them, on all those who imitate the traitorous disciple and who follow him in his contempt of the evangelical law, of the Sacraments and of the fruits of the Redemption. And in this the demons are but executing just punishment on those members of the mystical body of Christ, who have severed their connection with its head Christ, and who have voluntarily drifted away and delivered themselves over to the accursed hate and implacable fury of his enemies. As the instruments of divine justice they chastise the redeemed for their ingratitude toward their Redeemer. Let the children of the Church consider well this truth, for it cannot fail to move their hearts and induce them to evade such a lamentable fate.

Charity is a virtue. This means that it is a power to act. Now the act of charity is love. To be charitable is to love. The love of charity is more than good will. To love is to achieve a union of affection. When two people are in love they have a unity of affection. They love one another, they love what each loves. The love of charity in act attains God immediately and other things as God loves them. When a man loves God, he loves God first and then the things that God loves. He loves God completely. He loves all that God is and all that God loves. In addition he loves God as much as he can. In the love of God when it is perfect, there are no reservations. Man loves God to the fullest extent of his capacity…. The interior effects of charity are joy, peace and mercy in the individual. The exterior effects are beneficence, almsgiving and fraternal correction. … The corporal works of mercy are: to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked to harbor the harbourless, to visit the sick, to ransom the captive, to bury the dead. The spiritual works of mercy are: to instruct the ignorant, to counsel the doubtful, to comfort the sorrowful, to reprove the sinner, to forgive injuries, to bear with those who are in trouble and annoy us, and to pray for all.

Fr. Walter Farrell and Fr. Martin Healy, My Way of Life, Pocket Edition of St. Thomas

“...the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer. [...] Indeed, the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries, nor innovators: they are traditionalists.”

St. Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910

“Cultivate a great desire to be firmly rooted in the sublime virtue of confidence. Do not fear, but be courageous in serving and loving our Most Adorable and Amiable Jesus, with great perfection and holiness. Undertake courageously great tasks for His glory, in proportion to the power and grace He will give you for this end. Even though you can do nothing of yourself, you can do all things in Him and His help will never fail you, if you have confidence in His goodness. Place your entire physical and spiritual welfare in His hands. Abandon to the paternal solicitude of His Divine Providence every care for your health, reputation, property and business, for those near to you, for your past sins, for your soul’s progress in virtue and love of Him, for your life, death, and especially for your salvation and eternity, in a word, all your cares. Rest in the assurance that, in His pure goodness, He will watch with particular tenderness over all your responsibilities and cares and dispose all things for the greatest good.”

St. John Eudes, The Life and Kingdom of Jesus in Christian Souls

‘When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they believe in anything.’

"There are men who will ruin themselves and ruin their civilization if they may ruin also this old fantastic tale (of the Catholic faith). This is the last and most astounding fact about this faith; that its enemies will use any weapon against it, the sword that cuts their own fingers, and the firebrands that burn their own homes. … (The atheist fanatic) sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God. He offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who (he affirms) never lived at all."

G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Atheists are really anti-theists. They oppose the God who is God with an idol of their own making.

No atheist chooses merely to deny God. For the atheist’s spiritual posture against God is at the same time his posture in preference for some other Being above God. As he dismisses the true God he is welcoming his New God. Why must this be so? Because every personal commitment of man presupposes, deep in the metaphysical core of his being, a hunger for being as truth and goodness. Man is intrinsically burdened with an incurable hunger for transcendence. If being abhors a vacuum, the vacuum it most violently shrinks from is the total absence of Infinite Being. And history demonstrates that man is inconsolable without the True God.

Fr. Vincent Miceli, S.J., The Gods of Atheism

Cardinal Burke offers the correction for two mistranslations in the English publication of the Motu proprio of Pope Francis, “TRADITIONIS CUSTODES”

Art. 1. The liturgical books promulgated by Saint Paul VI (sic) and Saint John Paul II (sic), in conformity with the decrees of Vatican Council II, are the ~~unique~~ only expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite.

Art. 4. Priests ordained after the publication of the present Motu Proprio, who wish to celebrate using the Missale Romanum of 1962, ~~should~~ must submit a formal request to the diocesan Bishop who shall consult the Apostolic See before granting this authorization.

"Not a stone upon a stone" - 9th Sunday after Pentecost

The 'Western Wall' (Wailing Wall) in Jerusalem is held by Jews as a remnant of Herod's Temple destroyed by the Romans in 72 A.D. Yet, Jesus prophesized not only that the Temple would be destroyed but also that there would not remain a "stone upon a stone." So how is it that there remains a large wall on the western side at the south end of the 'Temple Mount'? Some Catholics claim the prophecy of Jesus was referring only to the edifice itself and not the entire foundation for the Temple. Jesus words must be taken in literally unless there it is clearly manifest that the metaphorical sense is intended exclusively. Therefore, the 'Wailing Wall' where the Jews worship is not a remnant of the ancient Temple, and the 'Temple Mount', on which is currently situated the Al-Aqsa mosque and the "Dome of the Rock", is not the location of the Temple destroyed in 72 A.D. The 36 acre 'Temple Mount' is actually the location of the Roman fortress Antonia built by Herod.

What is the evidence for this? The current popular claim is the fortress Antonia was located on a five-acre section on the north-west side of the 'Temple Mount' while the Temple occupied the remaining 30 acres. Five acres is far too small to accommodate a Roman legion (6,000 soldiers plus auxiliary staff) which we know from the writings of Flavius Josephus that the fortress Antonia did in fact hold. Many Roman fortresses have been examined by archeologists and they typically are between 45 and 55 acres but some are as small as 36 acres. As far as the area needed for the Temple of Herod itself, consider this, the ancient pagan temple complex at Baalek in Lebanon built by the Romans is less than six acres in total area and encloses the largest temple to Jupiter in the Roman Empire as well as a smaller temple dedicated to Bacchus and another to Venus. The Temple built by Herod was a single temple and much smaller in overall dimensions.

Furthermore, when Solomon was designated by King David to succeed him (3 Kings 1), King David directed the prophet Nathan and the high priest Sadoc to take Solomon on the king's mule to be anointed king at the "Gihon spring" with oil taken from the tabernacle. The Gihon spring is located in the City of David directly south and adjacent to the present-day 'Temple Mount'. There Solomon was anointed with oil taken from the Tabernacle, proclaimed king and celebrated by the populace with great jubilation and the sounding of trumpets that could be heard outside the city. The Temple built by Solomon was in the same location as the Tabernacle established by King David on the threshing floor of the land he purchased Areuna the Jebusite as God had commanded by the mouth of Gad (2 Kings 24 and 2 Paralipomenon 3:1).

The water from the Gihon spring was essential for the sacrificial offerings of the Temple. There is no living water source on the 'Temple Mount' which was required in the washing of the priests and the sacrifices offered. The water source for the Antonia fortress was provided by large cisterns located just north of the Antonia fortress and under the 'Temple Mount' that are still present today.

There is a Catholic tradition the there was a church called the Church of the Judgment that was built over and enclosed the Rock that is now enclosed under the Dome of the Rock built by the Moslems in 692 A.D. The Dome of the Rock is located directly north of the Al-Aqsa mosque on the 'Temple Mount'. The Church of the Judgment was destroyed either by the Persians who conquered Jerusalem in 614 A.D. with the help of 26,000 Jewish allies during the Byzantine-Sasanian War 602-628 A.D. (during which many churches were destroyed including the Church of the Ascension on Mount Olivet), or the church was destroyed by the Moslems who conquered Jerusalem in 637 A.D. No living Jew at the time would have knowledge of the exact location of Herod's Temple because the Jews were forbidden to enter Jerusalem by the Romans since the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 A.D. on the pain of death. Two hundred years later, the Catholic emperor Constantine permitted the Jews to enter Jerusalem once a year on the feast of Tisha B'Av (the ninth of Av) which is regarded as the saddest day in the Jewish calendar because it is the anniversary of the destruction of both the Temple of Solomon and the Temple of Herod! Be that as it may, many of the pillars used in the construction of the interior of the Dome of the Rock have Christian markings indicating that they were salvaged from a destroyed Catholic church.

The Rock itself is regarded (WIKI) as The Foundation Stone (Hebrew אֶבֶן הַשְּׁתִיָּה, romanized: ʾEḇen haŠeṯīyyā, lit. 'Foundation Stone'), or the Noble Rock (Arabic:الصخرة المشرفة, romanized: al-Saḵrah al-Mušarrafah, lit. 'The Noble Stone') is the rock enclosed by the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. It is also known as the Pierced Stone, because it has a small hole on the southeastern corner that enters a cavern beneath the rock, known as the Well of Souls. Traditional Jewish sources mention the stone as the place from which the creation of the world began. Jewish sources also identify its location with that of the Holy of Holies. Yet, it is not possible for a threshing floor to be around a large rock or stone.

Before the Muslim conquest, the Rock was enclosed in the Catholic church known as the Church of the Judgment (destroyed by the Persians) because it is believed to have been the place where the condemned stood to hear the judgment against them by the Roman authorities. The Rock is held to be where Jesus stood when His official condemnation was decreed by Pontius Pilate and thus, if it is the stone where the "creation of the world began," it is the stone from which the creation of the world began anew. John 19:13 says: "Now when Pilate had heard these words, he brought Jesus forth, and sat down in the judgment seat, in the place that is called Lithostrotos, and in Hebrew Gabbatha." Lithostrotos in Greek refers to a stone and Gabbatha in Hebrew an elevated place. According to St. Mary Agreda after Jesus was condemned by Pilate the decree of condemnation, which she quotes in its entirety, was then formally read to the Jewish mob assembled outside the north entrance to Fortress Antonia where Jesus was taken to bear His cross.

Of the Temple of Herod destroyed in 72 A.D. there does not remain a "stone upon a stone".

Can Theology Be Measured? Groundbreaking Study Measures a 270-Year Shift in Catholic Teaching

Wim Varnaes | July 22, 2026

It’s a well-known mantra that Modernists manipulate language to subtly alter our beliefs… but this researcher used computer analysis to prove it. By analyzing the frequency of thousands of theological words across thirty papal encyclicals spanning nearly three centuries, Mr. Vanraes discovered measurable data patterns showing that traditional Catholic concepts like sin, grace, salvation, doctrine, obedience, truth, heaven, and judgment steadily declined, while words emphasizing encounter, dialogue, social concerns, poverty, inclusion, and pastoral language steadily increased. This is one of the first empirical, data-driven demonstrations of a theological transformation many Catholics have argued about for decades.

The Statistical Case for the Crisis in the Church

'When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror.'

FLANNERY O’CONNOR wrote that in 1961. Robert Morrison’s May 1, 2026 article, Terror of Tenderness Detached from the Faith,

recovered her warning for the current moment, and the recovery is timely. When truth and tenderness, both good in themselves, are separated, each becomes something it was never meant to be. The Group 9 May 5 Final Report from the Synod on Synodality offers a perfect example of how language shapes new ideas. Those new ideas are not necessarily Catholic ones, but substituting the traditional ideas for new ones under the guise of the old, familiar Catholic words.

Both O’Connor and Morrison diagnosed what happened, but one of the questions that remain is about ‘how’. The corpus data I assembled confirms the diagnosis empirically, and opens a window to see how the new ideas traveled all the way to the top of the Church, often through the words of people who would never consciously reject the faith.

This article would not be the first to name formation networks as the vehicle of such new ideas. One could point at Liberation theology, how Libertatis Nuntius offered a stern warning, which was ignored by its proponents such as Father Gustavo Gutiérrez, who went on to teach theology at the University of Notre Dame. They, side by side with the many materialist professors in Western universities, shaped the next generation of priests, religious and lay people, especially those interested in activist or mission work. As these driven people ventured out and reached positions of authority in the Church, parishes, NGOs, charities, schools, and so on, whole new generations were educated with a specific worldview.

Some went on to lead groups such as Pax Christi, others, such as Cardinal Turkson, became head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and others still, such as Fr. John Dear, became peace activists. When Cardinal Turkson held the 2016 peace conference at the Vatican, people from Pax Christi and John Dear spoke, rejecting not just war by itself, but the whole Just War doctrine. Their final statement became the foundation for Pope Francis’ 2017 Peace Message, including, as John Dear gloated, “our main points, even some of our exact language.” And suddenly non-Catholic ideas made it to papal statements, now cited as foundational, and the cycle is complete.

This does not require any conspiracy to make that happen, just the slow change in schools, then in organizations, which then seeps into the Church as highly respectable activists, missionaries, and aid workers.

I mentioned a corpus data analysis at the opening of this article. Looking at 30 encyclicals, from 6 historical periods (from 1750 to Francis), using 11 thematic word clusters and normalized word frequency, it shows how the vocabulary used by the Church changed over time, supporting the claim that a materialist anthropology quietly entered, substituting the traditional Catholic moral and theological discourse.

This was a preliminary study, using normalized word counts of a selection of teaching documents, and not a full semantic analysis over all available documents. The results were surprising in their detail.

Three of those findings bear on the present moment. First, we can see a soteriological collapse, where words such as sin, grace, and salvation are, under Francis, at their lowest point in 270 years, lower even than pre-1850. Instead of talking about what humans are to be saved from, how such salvation is received, there is a shift towards more structural economic words, such as poverty and economy, at the cost of words such as property, labor and capital. [.....]

Next, it is very interesting to see what happens to words such as love and hope. Love rises continuously, peaks under Benedict, and remains elevated under Francis, but the problem lies elsewhere: truth declines. In a move that mirrors O’Connor’s stark words on tenderness uncoupled from Christ and truth, Caritas in Veritate warned of charity without truth becoming sentimentality. The data, making O’Connor’s diagnosis measurable, shows this is happening in the period after Benedict XVI.

At the same time, under Francis the ‘transcendence’ cluster, with the words hope, eternal, kingdom, heaven, resurrection, and hell, scores the very lowest. Hope reaches the second lowest level, while all other words almost disappear. Love without truth is as dangerous as a hope without an eternal focus.

Lastly, we can see a boundary collapse in the word frequencies. Even before Vatican II we see terms such as error, heresy, condemnation, and judgment decline strongly after 1850, matching the current state where a final report from the Synod on Synodality openly signals that it replaced ‘controversial issues’ with ‘emerging issues.’ The vocabulary substitution is no longer beneath the surface; it is being proposed as method.

At the same time, the use of the word Church declines to its lowest level, while words such as authority, doctrine, and obedience collapse completely. Now ‘Church’ stands alone, stripped of its authority-defining companions, becoming more of a community than a teaching office. [.....]

This is important, and it maps cleanly on the situation modern thinking has created. Very quietly, the nominalist ideas underpinning a lot of enlightenment ideas, later growing into Marxism and Modernism, trained many people, even good Catholics, that every sign only held one and only one signified. Such an innocent looking poison of the mind! This is the root of the problem where people think in ‘either/or’, and can no longer hold multiple realities, at different levels, at the same time, in the very traditional Catholic ‘both/and.’

Where Catholic teaching gave rise to both Fr. Ryan, looking at the immediate needs of the poor, and also to Cardinal O’Connell, looking at the wider picture, long term, the either/or framework demands to pick one: Ryan OR O’Connell. Love OR truth. Mercy OR justice. Mystery OR scientific fact. Nature OR grace.

Notice also how O’Connor’s “tenderness detached from the source of tenderness” is indeed the love-only failure mode, but the inverse holds the truth-only failure mode, or ‘being right alone is not enough, as without love…’. [.....]

The final reports from the Synod on Synodality show something different, however. They worry about tenderness, dialogue, encounter, (social and environmental) justice, but are averse of the harsh language of sin, conversion, doctrine, obedience, and sacrifice. Not in continuity with tradition, but hiding behind the words of tradition, smuggling in a philosophical framework that is not compatible with the faith. [.....]

COMMENT: The corruption of language is the stock and trade of the enemies of the Catholic faith. Semanticists is a philosophical system, that along with Empiricism, developed with the failure of philosophical Rationalism. Semanticists, like all Nominalists who deny the existence of essential reality, said that the material world is always changing therefore words and language must necessarily change or they will no longer reflect the world as it is. They held that since the world is irrational, therefore, the mind must be irrational as well. They began by openly denying the first principles of the Understanding; that innate sense in all men that a thing is what it is, that it cannot be and not be at the same time, that things require a sufficient cause, sufficient reason, etc., etc. They openly denied the principle of non-contradiction. They eventually denied the intentionality of all language becoming known as Deconstructionalists. The immediate effect of this was the realization that if language must change to reflect new realities then new realities can be created by changing the language. George Orwell's 1984 dystopian novel told the story of a world run by Semanticists. With the developments of "automated intelligence" (AI), the ability to create a false reality has been greatly enhanced and will lead to all those who are not grounded in Catholic dogma to be swept away. The Neo-modernist heretics that have had complete control of the Church since Vatican II are Semanticists. This article is a beginning in recognizing this fact. Once the techniques of semantics are recognized by faithful Catholics, and the absolute corruption of Nominalism is understood, the Neo-modernist methodology of attacking the Catholic faith and destroying her dogmas will be completely exposed.

Remember in your charity:

Remember the welfare of our expectant mother: Nao Miyata,

Drews petition prayers for the spiritual and temporal welfare of the Christian & Irene Melnick family,

Gene Peters asks our prayers for the spiritual welfare of Beverly Wood and Bonnie Cormesser,

Mr. & Mrs. Hall request prayers for the health of their daughter, Erika Smith,

Drews request your prayers for Phyllis Virgil, for her health and spirital welfare,

For Anthony Niekrewicz, spiritual and temporal welfare is the petition of all the members of Ss. Peter & Paul,

Mary Lou Loftus' aunt, Susan Hendricks, who is gravely ill after emergency surgery,

Fred Holder, for his spiritual and physical welfare,

Thomas Soul, a nursing home patient who has suffered a stroke,

Donna Kallal, a dear friend of the Schiltz family who is dying,

Philip Thees requests our prayers for the heath of Mary Glatz and Agnus Messineo,

For the welfare of Aaron, a York resident in need of conversion,

For the spiritual welfare of Margaret Connelly is the petition of Camilla Meiser,

Linda Boyd, for her health,

Pete Schiffbauer, a cousin of Monic Bandlow who is gravely ill,

Joan R. Barr, the widow of F. Donald Barr who died March 7, they were married 70 years

Cole Schneider, prayers for his welfare are requested by Camilla Meiser,

JoAnn Niekrewicz, for her recovery from a recent fall and shoulder injury,

The Drews ask prayers for the spiritual and physical welfare of Robert Carballo,

Conversion of Jack Gentry, the nephew of Camilla Meiser,

For Sr. Maria Junipera, who took her final vows as a nun with the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Richmond, New Hampshire April 8,

Stephen Bryan, the brother of a devout Catholic religious, for his spiritual welfare,

Marie Kolinsky, for her health and spiritual welfare is the petition of her family,

Gene Peters requests our prayers for the conversion of Shirley Young and Carl Loy who are dying, the conversion of Dawn Keithley and Nate Schaeffer,

Rev. Leo Carley, an eighty-nine year old priest faithful to Catholic tradition, who is seriously ill,

For the recovery of Hayden Yanchek, the grandson of Francis Yanchek, injured in a farming accident,

Maureen Nies, for the recovery of her health is the petition of Camilla Meiser,

Daniel Vargs, for his health is the petition of his parents,

Art Noel, for the restoration of his health,

For the welfare of Peg Berry and her husband, Bill,

Marianne Connelly asks prayers for Chris Foley, who is gravely ill, and the welfare of his wife, Mary Beth,

The spiritual welfare of the Sal & Maria Messineo family is the petition of the Drew’s,

Liz Agosta, who is seriously ill, for her spiritual and temporal welfare,

Warren Hoffman, a long time member of our Mission who is in failing health,

Patrick Boyle, for the recovery of his health and his spiritual welfare,

For the spiritual welfare of the Drew children,

Monica Bandlow request our prayers for the welfare of Ray who is recovering from a MVA, and his daughter, Sonya, and Tera Jean Kopczynski, who is in failing health, and for a good death for Mr. Howald, Kathy Simons, Regina Quinn, James Mulgrew, Ruth Beaucheane, John Kopczynski, Roger & Mandy Owen

Peg Berry requests our prayers for her brother, William Habekost,

For the recently widowed, Maike Hickson, and her children,

For the spiritual welfare of the Carmelite nuns in Fairfield, PA,

Geralyn Zagorski, recovery of her health and spiritual welfare and the conversion of Randal Pace is the petition of Philip Thees,

For the grandson of Joe & Liz Agusta,

Fr. Waters requests our prayers for the health and spiritual welfare of Elvira Donaghy,

For the health and conversion of Stephen Henderson,

Fr. Paul DaDamio requests our prayers for the welfare of Rob Ward, and his sister, Debra Wagaman,

Kaitlyn McDonald, for the recovery of her health and spiritual welfare,

Roco Sbardella, for his health and spiritual welfare,

The Vargas’ request our prayers for the spiritual welfare of their son, Nicholas,

Family, for the welfare of Lazarus Handley, his mother, Julia, and his brother, Raphael, with Down’s Syndrome,

Fr. Waters requests prayers for the spiritual and physical welfare of Frank McKee,

Nancy Bennett, for the recovery of her health,

For the spiritual welfare of Mark Roberts, a Catholic faithful to tradition,

Michael Brigg requests our prayers for the health of John Romeo,

The health and welfare of Gene Peters and his sons,

Conversion of Anton Schwartzmueller, is the prayer request of his children,

Christine Kozin, for her health and spiritual welfare,

Teresa Gonyea, for her conversion and health, is the petition of her grandmother, Patricia McLaughlin,

For the health of Sonya Kolinsky,

Jackie Dougherty asks our prayers for her brother, John Lee, who is gravely ill,

For the health and spiritual welfare, Meg Bradley, the granddaughter of Rose Bradley,

Timothy & Crisara, a couple from Maryland have requested our prayers for their spiritual welfare,

Celine Pilegaard, the seven year old daughter of Cynthia Pilegaard, for her recovery from burn injuries,

Rafaela de Saravia, for her health and welfare,

Abbe Damien Dutertre, traditional Catholic priest arrested by Montreal police while offering Mass,

Francis (Frank) X. McLaughlin, for the recovery of his health,

Nicholas Pell, for his health and spiritual welfare is the petition of Camilla Meizer,

Mary Kaye Petr, her health and welfare is petitioned by Camilla Meizer,

The welfare of Excellency Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò,

The welfare of Rev. Fr. Martin Skierka, who produces the traditional Ordo in the U.S.,

For the health and welfare of Katie Wess, John Gentry, Vincent Bands, Todd Chairs, Susan Healy and James O’Gentry is the petition of Camilia,

Marieann Reuter, recovery of her health, Kathy Kepner, for her health, Shane Cox, for his health, requests of Philip Thees,

The Joseph Cox Family, their spiritual welfare,

For the health of Kim Cochran, the daughter-in-law of Joseph and Brenda Cochran, the wife of their son Joshua,

Louie Verrecchio, Catholic apologist, who has a health problem,

John Minidis, Jr. family, for help in their spiritual trial,

Joann DeMarco, for her health and spiritual welfare,

Regina (Manidis) Miller, her spiritual welfare and health,

Melissa Elena Levitt, her conversion, and welfare of her children,

For the grace of a holy death, Nancy Marie Claycomb,

Conversion of Annette Murowski, and her son Jimmy,

Brent Keith from Indiana has petitioned our prayers for the Keith Family,

The welfare of the Schmedes Family, and the Mike and Mariana Donohue Family,

The spiritual welfare Robert Holmes Family,

For the spiritual and temporal welfare of Irwin Kwiat,

Fr. Waters asks our prayers for Elvira Donaghy,

Kimberly Ann, the daughter of John and Joann DeMarco, for her health and spiritual welfare,

Rende and Mary Mufide, a traditional Catholics from India ask our prayers for her welfare and he family members, living and deceased,

Mary Glatz, her health and the welfare of her family,

Barbara Harmon, who is ill,

Jason Green, a father of ten children, his health,

For the health and welfare of Sorace family,

Fr. Waters asks our prayers for the health and spiritual welfare of Brian Abramowitz,

Thomas Schiltz family, in grateful appreciation for their contribution to the beauty of our chapel,

John Rhoad, for his health and spiritual welfare,

Kathy Boyle, requests our prayers for her welfare,

Joyce Laughman and Robert Twist, for their conversions,

Michael J. Brigg & his family, who have helped with the needs of the Mission,

Nancy Deegan, her welfare and conversion to the Catholic Church,

Francis Paul Diaz, who was baptized at Ss. Peter & Paul, asks our prayers for his spiritual welfare,

The conversion of Rene McFarland, Lori Kerr, Cary Shipman and family, David Bash, Crystal and family, Larry Reinhart, Costanzo Family, Kathy Scullen, Marilyn Bryant, Vicki Trahern and Time Roe are the petitions of Gene Peters,

For the conversion of Ben & Tina Boettcher family, Karin Fraessdorf, Eckhard Ebert, and Fahnauer family,

Fr. Waters requests our prayers for Br. Rene, SSPX, and for Fr. Thomas Blute,

For the welfare of Fr. Paul DaDamio and Fr. William T. Welsh,

The Drew’s ask our prayers for the welfare of Joe & Tracey Sentmanat family, Keith & Robert Drew, Christy Koziol & her children, Fred Nesbit and Michael Nesbit families, and Gene Peters Family, the John Manidis Family, the Sal Messinio Family, Michael Proctor Family,

Ryan Boyle grandmother, Jane Boyle, who is failing health,

Mel Gibson and his family, please remember in our prayers,

Rev. Timothy A. Hopkins requested our prayers for the welfare of his friend, Fr Jean-Luc Lafitte,

Ebert’s request our prayers for the Andreas & Jenna Ortner Family,

Joyce Paglia has asked prayers for George Richard Moore Sr. & his children, and her brother, George Panell,

Philip Thees asks our prayers for his family, for McLaughlin Family, the welfare of Dan & Polly Weand, the conversion of Sophia Herman, Tony Rosky, the welfare Nancy Erdeck, the wife of the late Deacon Erdeck, John Calasanctis, Tony Rosky, James Parvenski, Kathleen Gorry, health of mind and body of Cathy Farrar.

Pray for the Repose of the Souls:

Shanon Smuckers, a thirty-three year old mother of three, died July 15,

John Callisanti, a faithful Catholic, died June 23, prayers petitioned by Philip Thees,

Christian Joseph Melnick, died June 19, a 56 year old faithful Catholic and devoted husband and father of nine,

Fr. Radoslav, a relatively young faithful priest who was working with Bishop Stobnicki in Poland,

Leonard Messineo, a long time traditional Catholic, dies May 18,

For Jo Ann Niekrewicz, our dear friend, died March 1, for the blessed repose of her soul is the petition of all the members of Ss. Peter & Paul,

Shirley Rotondo, died February 2-26, and Louisa McBride, died February 27, is the petition of Monica Bandlow,

Katherine Veronica Wedel, the mother of Mary Baer, died February 6,

James Condit, Jr., traditional Catholic activist, died December 27,

Beverly Harmon, died December 16, requested by the Sentmanat family,

Rev. Nicholas DeProspero, a faithful Ruthenian Eastern rite Catholic priest, died December 10,

Monica Bandlow petitions our prayers for her friend, Patricia Messineo, died November 28,

Guy Berthault, died November 23, a great Catholic scientist whose work in sedimentology destrooyed Lyellian geology and the theory of evolution,

Thomas Soul, died November 8 after receiving the last rites of the Church,

Etta Van Der Werken, a dear friend of Barbara Taffe, died 10-21-2025,

Gary Potter, Catholic writer and apologist and great long time defender of Catholic doctrine and tradition, died 9-9-2025,

Elizabeth Gorska, who died September 9, a relative of Lidia Gjec,

Camilia Meiser request our prayers for the souls of Peggy Cummings and Elizabeth Genter,

Thomas A. Nelson, founder of TAN Books and Publishers, died August 16,

Juan D. Gonzalez, our former sacristan, choir director, and dear friend, died July 23,

Sal Messineo, a faithful traditional Catholic, died Augsut 14,

Patricia Askew, a friend of Camilla Meiser, died July 3,

Joseph Kerney, a young man whose family provided the statues of the Sacred Heart, Mary and Joseph in our sanctuary, died May 30,

Louis Richard Ajlouny, the father of Randa Sharpe, died May 15,

Rene Guidicessi, died April 25, an old friend of the Drews,

F. Donald Barr, died March 7 at 94 years of age, co-founder of Robert Francis Religious Goods, in Philadelphia,

Dr. David Allen White, a well known defender of the Catholic faith, died February 11,

Bishop Richard Williamson, a renowned defender of the Catholic faith and most charitable gentleman, died January 29,

Rodolfo Alberto Lacayo, a cousin of Claudia Drew, died January 4,

Genieve Wallace, died Christmas day,

Ruth Marion Beaucheane, died December 8, is the petition of Monica Bandlow,

Ana Maria Salcedo, the sister of Mario Fiol, died November 26,

Fr. Johin Cardaro, a traditional Catholic priest who was found dead in his home November 2,

Robert Carballo asks that we remember his parents, Roberto & Aida Carballo, and his friend, David Duclos, who died April 15,

Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais who may have been responsible for preventing the SSPX's public reconciliation with Rome in 2012, died October 8,

Lorna Edwards, our dear friend and loyal supporter of this Mission, died August 10,

Lois Petti, died July 28 two hours after receiving the Last Sacraments from Fr. Waters,

Wolfgang Smith, a renowned Catholic scholar, mathematician, scientist, philosopher, who helped the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation, died July 19,

Willaim Glatz, a good and faithful Catholic, died July 17,

Alicio Gonzalez, a Catholic who asked for the sacrament of Extreme Unction, unfortunately did not receive, died July 9,

John Zavodny, a faithful Catholic who died wearing the scapular of Mt Carmel on the first Saturday of May, requested by Phyllis Virgil,

Catherine Martel, a lapsed Catholic, received the last sacraments in a good disposition from Fr. Waters on March 25 and died on April 4,

Father Basilio Méramo, a faithful priest, died March 5, removed from the SSPX for opposing their accommodation with Rome,

Julia McDonald, the mother of Kyle McDonald, died March 1,

Agnus Melnick, died February 28, a long time faithful Catholic and mother of eight children, including a traditional priest,

Kathryn (Drew) Lederhos, of Wellesley, MA, died February 3, 2024,

Chris Foley, the brother of Mary Lou Loftus, died February 1,

Louis Zelaya, the brother of Claudia Drew, died January 30,

Fr. James Louis Albert Campbell, a faithful priest who died December 18 at 91 years of age, and her mother and father, Teresa and Thomas Maher,

Charles Harmon, the father of Tracey Sentmanet, died October 1, after receiving the rites of the Church,

Fr. Waters requests prayers for Elvira Donaghy, his friend and former secretary a for Bishop Gerado Zendejas, died September 9,

Robert Hickson, a faithful Catholic apologist who died Septembber 2,

Monica Bandlow requests prayers for her parents, Thomas & Teresa Maher, her husband, William Bandlow, her brother-in-law, Richard Bandlow, her sister, Mary Maher, Fr. Christopher Darby, SSPX, who died March 17, Robert Byrne, Michelle Donofrio McDowell, her cousin, Patricia Fabyanic, the Prefect of Our Lady’s Sodality, March 8, for John Pfeiffer who died August 20, Theresa Hanley, died July 23, Fr. Juan-Carlos Iscara, SSPX, who died December 20, John Kinney, died December 21, Willaim Price, Jr., and Robert Arch Ward, died January 10, and Myra, killed in a MVA June 6,

John Sharpe, Sr., died July 20,

Maria Paulette Salazar, died June 6,

Dale Kinsey requests prayers for his wife, Katherine Kinsey, died May 17,

Richard Giles, who died April 29, the father of Traci Sentmanat who converted to the Catholic faith last All Saints' Day,

Joseph Sparks, a devout and faithful Catholic to tradition died February 25,

Joyce Paglia, died January 21, and Anthony Paglia, died January 28, who were responsible for the beautiful statuary in our chapel,

Joe Sentmanet request prayers for Richard Giles and Claude Harmon who converted to the Catholic faith shortly before their deaths,

Rodolfo Zelaya, the brother of Claudia Drew, died January 9,

Elizabeth Agosta petitions our prayers for Joseph Napolitano, her brother, who died January 2,

Michael Dulisse, died on December 26,

Michael Proctor, a close friend of the Drews, died November 9,

Richard Anthony Giles, the father-in-law of Joe Sentmanat converted to the Catholic faith on All Saints Day, died November 5,

Robert Kolinsky, the husband of Sonja, died September 18,

Gabriel Schiltz, the daughter of Thomas & Gay Schiltz, died August 21,

Mary Dimmel, the mother –in-law of Victoria Drew Dimmel, died July 18,

Michael Nesbit, the brother-in-law and dear friend of the Drew's, died July 14,

Thomas Thees, the brother of Philip, died June 19,

Carmen Ragonese, died June 22,

Juanita Mohler, a friend of Camella Meiser, died June 14,

Kathleen Elias, died February 14,

Hernan Ortiz, the brother of Fr. Juan Carlos Ortiz, died February 3,

Mary Ann Boyle, the mother of a second order Dominican nun, a first order Dominican priest, and a SSPX priest, died January 24,

John DeMarco, who attended this Mission in the past, died January23,

Charles O’Brien, the father of Marlene Cox, died December 30,

Mufide Rende requests our prayers for the repose of the souls of her parents, Mehmet & Nedime,

Kathleen Donelly, died December 29 at 91 years of age, ran the CorMariae website,

Matthew O'Hare, most faithful Catholic, died at age 40 on November 30,

Rev. Patrick J. Perez, a Catholic priest faithful to tradition, pastor Our Lady Help of Christians, Garden Grove, CA, November 19,

Elizabeth Benedek, died December 14, requested by her niece, Agnes Vollkommer,

Dolores Smith and Richard Costello, faithful Catholics, died November,

Frank D’Agustino, a friend of Philp Thees, died November 8,

Fr. Dominique Bourmaud, of the SSPX, Prior of St. Vincent in Kansas City, died September 4,

Pablo Daniel Silva, the brother of Elizabeth Vargas, died August 18,

Rose Bradley, a member of Ss. Peter & Paul, died July 14,

Patricia Ellias, died June 1, recently returned to the Church died with the sacraments and wearing the brown scapular,

Joan Devlin, the sister-in-law of Rose Bradley, died May 18,

William Muligan, died April 29, two days after receiving the last sacraments,

Robert Petti, died March 19, the day after receiving the last sacraments,

Mark McDonald, the father of Kyle, who died December 26,

Perla Otero, died December 2020, Leyla Otero, January 2021, cousins of Claudia Drew,

Mehmet Rende, died December 12, who was the father of Mary Mufide,

Joseph Gravish, died November 26, 100 year old WWII veteran and daily communicant,

Jerome McAdams, the father of, died November 30,

Rev. James O’Hara, died November 8, requested by Alex Estrada,

Elizabeth Batko, the sacristan at St. John the Baptist in Pottstown for over 40 years, died on First Saturday November 7 wearing the brown scapular,

William Cox, the father of Joseph Cox, who died September 3,

James Larson, Catholic apologists, author of War Against Being publication, died July 6, 2020,

Hutton Gibson, died May 12,

Sr. Regina Cordis, Immaculate Heart of Mary religious for sixty-five years, died May 12,

Leslie Joan Matatics, devoted Catholic wife and mother of nine children, died March 24,

Victoria Zelaya, the sister-in-law of Claudia Drew, died March 20,

Ricardo DeSilva, died November 16, our prayers requested by his brother, Henry DeSilva,

Rev. Fr. Joseph F. Collins, died April 27, 2019 to whom we are indebted for establishing our traditional pre-Bugnini Holy Week in all its beauty,

Roland H. Allard, a friend of the Drew’s, died September 28,

Stephen Cagorski and John Bogda, who both died wearing the brown scapular,

Cecilia LeBow, a most faithful Catholic,

Rose Cuono, died Oct 23,

Patrick Rowen, died March 25, and his brother, Daniel Rowen, died May 15,

Sandra Peters, the wife of Gene Peters, who died June 10 receiving the sacraments and wearing our Lady’s scapular,

Rev. Francis Slupski, a priest who kept the Catholic faith and its immemorial traditions, died May 14,

Martha Mochan, the sister of Philip Thees, died April 8,

George Kirsch, our good friend and supporter of this Mission, died February 15,

For Fr. Paul J. Theisz, died October 17, is the petition of Fr. Waters,

Fr. Mecurio Fregapane, died Jan 12, was not a traditional priest but always charitable,

Fr. Casimir Peterson, a priest who often offered the Mass in our chapel and provided us with sound advice, died December 4,

Fr. Constantine Bellasarius, a faithful and always charitable Eastern Rite Catholic Melkite priest, who left the Roman rite, died November 27,

Christian Villegas, a motor vehicle accident, his brother, Michael, requests our prayers,

John Vennari, the former editor of Catholic Family News, and for his family’s welfare, April 4,

Mary Butler, the aunt of Fr. Samuel Waters, died October 17,

Joseph DeMarco, the nephew of John DeMarco, died October 3,

John Fergale, died September 25 after receiving the traditional sacramental rites of the Church wearing the brown scapular,

John Gabor, the brother of Donna Marbach, died September 9,

Fr. Eugene Dougherty, a faithful priest, fittingly died on the Nativity of the BVM after receiving the traditional Catholic sacraments,

Phyllis Schlafly, died September 5,

Helen Mackewicz, died August 14,

Mark A. Wonderlin, who died August 2,

Fr. Carl Cebollero, a faithful priest to tradition who was a friend of Fr. Waters and Fr. DeMaio,

Jessica Cortes, a young mother of ten who died June 12,

Frances Toriello, a life-long Catholic faithful to tradition, died June3, the feast of the Sacred Heart, and her husband Dan, died in 1985,

John McLaughlin, a friend of the Drew’s, died May 22,

Angela Montesano, who died April 30, and her husband, Salvatore, who died in July 3, 2013,

Charles Schultz, died April 5, left behind nine children and many grandchildren, all traditional Catholics,

Esperanza Lopez de Callejas, the aunt of Claudia Drew, died March 15,

Fr. Edgardo Suelo, a faithful priest defending our traditions who was working with Fr. Francois Chazal in the Philippines, died February 19,

Conde McGinley, a long time laborer for the traditional faith, died February 12, at 96 years,

The Drew family requests your prayers for Ida Fernandez and Rita Kelley, parishioners at St. Jude,

Fr. Stephen Somerville, a traditional priest who repented from his work with the Novus Ordo English translation, died December 12,

Fr. Arturo DeMaio, a priest that helped this Mission with the sacraments and his invaluable advice, died December 2,

J. Paul Carswell, died October 15, 2015,

Solange Hertz, a great defender of our Catholic faith, died October 3, the First Saturday of the month,

Paula P. Haigh, died October 22, a great defender of our Catholic faith in philosophy and natural science,

Gabriella Whalin, the mother of Gabriella Schiltz, who died August 25,

Mary Catherine Sick, 14 year old from a large traditional Catholic family, died August 25,

Fr. Paul Trinchard, a traditional Catholic priest, died August 25,

Stephen J. Melnick, Jr., died on August 21, a long-time faithful traditional Catholic husband and father, from Philadelphia,

Patricia Estrada, died July 29, her son Alex petitions our prayers for her soul,

Fr. Nicholas Gruner, a devoted priest & faithful defender of Blessed Virgin Mary and her Fatima message, died April 29,

Sarah E. Shindle, the grandmother of Richard Shindle, died April 26,

Madeline Vennari, the mother of John Vennari, died December 19,

Salvador Baca Callejas, the uncle of Claudia Drew, died December 13,

Robert Gomez, who died in a motor vehicle accident November 29,

Catherine Dunn, died September 15,

Anthony Fraser, the son of Hamish Fraser, died August 28,

Jeannette Rhoad, the grandmother of Devin Rhoad, who died August 24,

John Thees, the uncle of Philip Thees, died August 9,

Sarah Harkins, 32 year-old mother of four children, died July 28,

Msgr. Donald Adams, who offered the Indult Mass, died April 1996,

Anita Lopez, the aunt of Claudia Drew,

Fr. Kenneth Walker, a young traditional priest of the FSSP who was murdered in Phoenix June 11,

Fr. Waters petitions our prayers for Gilberte Violette, the mother of Fr. Violette, who died May 6,

Pete Hays petitions our prayers for his brothers, Michael, died May 9, and James, died October 20, his sister, Rebecca, died March17, and his mother, Lorraine Hayes who died May 4,

Philip Marbach, the father of Paul Marbach who was the coordinator at St. Jude in Philadelphia, died April 21,

Richard Slaughtery, the elderly sacristan for the SSPX chapel in Kansas City, died April 13,

Bernedette Marie Evans nee Toriello, the daughter of Daniel Toriello, died March 31, a faithful Catholic who suffered many years with MS,

Natalie Cagorski, died march 23,

Anita Lopez de Lacayo, the aunt of Claudia Drew, who died March 21,

Mario Palmaro, Catholic lawyer, bioethicist and professor, apologist, died March 9, welfare of his widow and children,

Daniel Boyle, the uncle of Ryan Boyle, died March 4,

Jeanne DeRuyscher, who died on January 25,

Arthur Harmon, died January 18,

Fr. Waters petitions our prayers for the soul of Jeanne DeRuyscher, who died January 17,

Joseph Proctor, died January 10,

Susan Scott, a devote traditional Catholic who made the vestments for our Infant of Prague statue, died January 8,

Brother Leonard Mary, M.I.C.M., (Fred Farrell), an early supporter and friend of Fr. Leonard Feeney, died November 23,

John Fergale, requests our prayers for his sister Connie, who died December 19,

Jim Capaldi, died December 15,

Brinton Creager, the son of Elizabeth Carpenter, died December 10,

Christopher Lussos, age 27, the father of one child with an expecting wife, died November 15,

Jarett Ebeyer, 16 year old who died in his sleep, November 17, at the request of the Kolinsky’s,

Catherine Nienaber, the mother of nine children, the youngest three years of age, killed in MVA after Mass, 10-29,

Nancy Aldera, the sister of Frances Toriello, died October 11, 2013 at 105 years of age,

Mary Rita Schiltz, the mother of Thomas Schiltz, who died August 27,

William H. (Teddy) Kennedy, Catholic author of Lucifer’s Lodge, died August 14, age 49, cause of death unknown,

Alfred Mercier, the father of David Mercier, who died August 12,

The Robert Kolinsky asks our prayers for his friend, George Curilla, who died August 23,

John Cuono, who had attended Mass at our Mission in the past, died August 11,

Raymond Peterson, died July 28, and Paul Peterson, died February 19, the brothers of Fr. Casimir Peterson,

Margaret Brillhart, who died July 20,

Msgr. Joseph J. McDonnell, a priest from the diocese of Des Moines, who died June 8,

Patrick Henry Omlor, who wrote Questioning The Validity of the Masses using the New, All English Canon, and for a series of newsletters which were published as The Robber Church, died May 2, the feast of St Athanasius,

Bishop Joseph McFadden, died unexpectedly May 2,

Timothy Foley, the brother-in-law of Michelle Marbach Folley, who died in April,

William Sanders, the uncle of Don Rhoad, who died April 2,

Gene Peters ask our prayers for the repose of the soul of Mark Polaschek, who died March 22,

Eduardo Gomez Lopez, the uncle of Claudia Drew, February 28,

Cecelia Thees, died February 24,

Elizabeth Marie Gerads, a nineteen year old, the oldest of twelve children, who died February 6,

Michael Schwartz, the co-author with Fr. Enrique Rueda of “Gays, Aids, and You,” died February 3,

Stanley W. Moore, passed away in December 16, and Gerard (Jerry) R. Pitman, who died January 19, who attended this Mission in the past,

Louis Fragale, who died December 25,

Fr. Luigi Villa, Th.D. author of Vatican II About Face! detailing the heresies of Vatican II, died November 18 at the age of 95,

Rev. Michael Jarecki, a faithful traditional Catholic priest who died October 22,

Jennie Salaneck, died September 19 at 95 years of age, a devout and faithful Catholic all her life,

Dorothy Sabo, who died September 26,

Cynthia (Cindy) Montesano Reinhert, the mother of nine children, four who are still at home, died August 19,

Stanley Spahalski, who died October 20, and his wife, Regina Spahalski, who died June 24, and for the soul of Francis Lester, her son,

Julia Atkinson, who died April 30,

Antonio P. Garcia, who died January 6, 2012 and the welfare of his teenage children, Andriana and Quentin,

Helen Crane, the aunt of David Drew who died February 27,

Fr. Timothy A. Hopkins, of the National Shrine of St. Philomena, in Miami, November 2,

Frank Smith, who died February 7, and the welfare of his wife, Delores,

Eduardo Cepeda, who died January 26,

Larry Young, the 47 year old father of twelve who died December 10 and the welfare of his wife Katherine and their family,

Sister Mary Bernadette, M.I.C.M., a founding member of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, died December 16,

Joeseph Elias, who died on September 28,

William, the brother of Fr. Waters, who died September 7,

Donald Tonelli, died August 1,

Rev. Fr. Gregory Hesse, of Austria, a great defender of Catholic Truth, died January 25, 2006,

Emma Colasanti, who died May 29,

Mary Dullesse, who died April 12, a Catholic convert who died wearing our Lady’s scapular,

Ruth Jantsch, the grandmother of Andre Ebert, who died April 7, Derrick and Denise Palengat, his godparents,

Philip D. Barr, died March 5, and the welfare of his family,

Judith Irene Kenealy, the mother of Joyce Paglia, who died February 23, and her son, George Richard Moore, who died May 14,

For Joe Sobran who died September 30,

Fr. Hector Bolduc, a great and faithful priest, died, September 10, 2012,

James & Jean Rowan and their sons, Patrick & Daniel,

John Vennari asks our prayers for Dr. Raphael Waters who died August 26,

Stanley Bodalsky, the father of Mary Ann Boyle who died June 25,

Mary Isabel Kilfoyle Humphreys, a former York resident and friend of the Drew’s, who died June 6,

Rev. John Campion, who offered the traditional Mass for us every first Friday until forbidden to do so by Bishop Dattilo, died May 1,

Joseph Montagne, who died May 5,

For Margaret Vagedes, the aunt of Charles Zepeda, who died January 6,

Fr. Michael Shear, a Byzantine rite Catholic priest, died August 17, 2006,

Fr. James Francis Wathen, died November 7, 2006, author of The Great Sacrilege and Who Shall Ascend?, a great defender of dogma and liturgical purity,

Fr. Enrique Rueda, who died December 14, 2009, to whom our Mission is indebted,

Fr. Peterson asks to remember, Leonard Edward Peterson, his cousin, Wanda, Angelica Franquelli, and the six priests ordained with him.

Philip Thees petitions our prayers for Beverly Romanick, Deacon Michael Erdeck, Henry J. Phillips, Grace Prestano, Connie DiMaggio, Elizabeth Thorhas, Elizabeth Thees, Theresa Feraker, Hellen Pestrock, and James & Rose Gomata, and Kathleen Heinbach,

Fr. Didier Bonneterre, the author of The Liturgical Movement, and Fr. John Peek, both were traditional priests,

Brother Francis, MICM, the superior of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Richmond, NH, who died September 5,

Rodolfo Zelaya Montealegre, the father of Claudia Drew, who died May 24,

Rev. Francis Clifford, a devout and humble traditional priest, who died on March 7,

Benjamin Sorace, the uncle of Sonja Kolinsky.

On the Inerrancy of Sacred Scripture

Vatican preparatory document for the October Synod of Bishops (2008) Teaches:

In summary, the following can be said with certainty … — with regards to what might be inspired in the many parts of Sacred Scripture, inerrancy applies only to ‘that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation’.

Instrumentum laboris, The Word of God in the Life and the Mission of the Church, article 15, a “working document” for the upcoming October Synod of Bishops; released from the Vatican June 12^th; emphasis added.

The Catholic Church Teaches:

The Old and New Testaments, “whole and with all their parts … [have] been written by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost [and] have God as their author.” Vatican I

For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical, are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost; and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true. This is the ancient and unchanging faith of the Church, solemnly defined in the Councils of Florence and of Trent, and finally confirmed and more expressly formulated by the Council of the Vatican. These are the words of the last: ‘The Books of the Old and New Testament, whole and entire, with all their parts, as enumerated in the decree of the same Council (Trent) and in the ancient Latin Vulgate, are to be received as sacred and canonical. And the Church holds them as sacred and canonical, not because, having been composed by human industry, they were afterwards approved by her authority; nor only because they contain revelation without error; but because, having been written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author.’ Hence, because the Holy Ghost employed men as His instruments, we cannot therefore say that it was these inspired instruments who, perchance, have fallen into error…

Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus

Divine inspiration does not extend to all of Sacred Scripture so that it renders its parts, each and every one free from every error.

Pope Saint Pius X’s Syllabus of Errors against the Modernists, condemned proposition

It is absolutely forbidden to pretend that the sacred writer himself has fallen into error, since Divine inspiration not only excludes any and all possible error in itself, but even loathes and excludes it, since God, Who is sovereign truth, cannot be the author of any possible error…. This doctrine which was so forcefully explained by our predecessor Leo XIII, We also propose with our pontifical authority, and We insist that it be held rigorously by all. Pope Pius XII, Divini Afflante Spiritu

Some boldly pervert the meaning of the definition of the Vatican Council, with respect to God as the author of Sacred Scripture and they revive the opinion, many times condemned, according to which the immunity of the Sacred Writings from error extends only to those matters which are handed down regarding God and moral and religious subjects.

Pius XII, Humani Generis

Lapide on Luke 23:32 - An Important 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

COMMENT ON THE RECENT CONSECRATION OF BISHOPS BY THE SSPX:

The recent consecration of bishops by the SSPX and their “excommunication” by Rome is damaging to the traditional cause and the defense of the Catholic faith. It is also damaging to the Church and its rule of law.

Rome has manipulated the SSPX into a trap that was explained to them more than fifteen years ago. Rome embraced the heresy of Neo-modernism before Vatican II and the purpose of Vatican II was to infect this heresy into the life blood of the Church. The heresy severs the form and matter of Dogma professing that the form is a divine truth revealed by God but the matter, that is, the words, are a human approximation of that divine truth that must progressively evolve and be purified of human accretions, distortions and historical contingencies to arrive at a more perfect expression of the divine truth. It is a claim that we know the faith better than our fathers and our children will know the faith better than us. Thus Dogma, which never reaches its term, no longer is the proximate rule of faith. It is replaced by the pope who guides the dogma into a progressively more perfect expression.

Once the pope becomes the proximate rule of faith the infallible Magisterium of the Church is replaced by the personal fallible magisterium of the pope grounded upon his grace of state, and then whatever the pope says or does becomes what every faithful Catholic is expected to say or do. This corruption was taught in the Vatican II document Lumen Gentium which established the new ecclesiology. The term “authentic magisterium” was introduced into a Church document where the faithful are called upon to submit unconditionally their mind and will, or as Lumen Gentium says, “religious submission of will and mind…. religious assent of soul,” to the “authentic magisterium” of the pope. The Congregation for the doctrine of the faith under Ratzinger declared that this “obedience” reflected the correct sensus fidei for all Catholics. The proposition of unconditional obedience to the “authentic magisterium” was made an addendum to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed in 1989 Profession of Faith and Oath of Fidelity where every other proposition in the creed is a dogma. They thus, by association, elevated a non-dogmatic proposition into the level of a Catholic dogma! They then made the 1989 Profession of faith the one and only necessary requirement to be reconciled with the Novus Ordo Church. This was followed by creating a canon law that makes any disobedience to the “authentic magisterium” a canonical crime with an unspecified penalty.

Fr. Joseph Fenton, the editor of the American Ecclesiastical Review and a peritas at Vatican II, wrote an excellent article, Infallilillity in the Encyclicals, AER, 1953, in which he addressed the term, “authentic magisterium.” Fr. Fenton provides the definition of the term and attributes its origin to the respected theologian Fr. Joachim Salaverri of the Jesuit faculty of theology in the Pontifical Institute of Comillas in Spain. The “authentic magisterium” is more properly translated into English as the “authorized magisterium.” Either way, the term refers only to the person of the pope and whatever he does personally. Thus anything the pope does is an act of his authentic magisterium. Pope Leo can employ his “authentic (authorized) magisterium” to define a Catholic doctrine as a dogma of faith by engaging the Magisterium of the Church in an Extra-ordinary manner as Pope Pius XII did with the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or he can employ his “authentic (authorized) magisterium” to arrange the seating assignments at a papal dinner. What he cannot do is demand unconditional, unqualified obedience to his “authentic (authorized) magisterium” in and of itself. To make an oath of unconditional obedience to a man is idolatry. Unconditional obedience can only be given to God and God alone.

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who had his own problems with Neo-modernism, recognized that the insertion of the addendum of unconditional obedience to the “authentic magisterium” in a Catholic creed was idolatry. He rejected it calling it a "dangerous formulation" and "sheer trickery." He said, “They (Modernist Rome) are no doubt going to have these texts (1989 Profession of Faith and Oath of Fidelity) signed by the seminarians of the Fraternity of St. Peter before their ordination and by the priests of the Fraternity, who will then find themselves in the obligation of making an official act of joining the Conciliar Church."

Rome imposes the 1989 Profession of Faith and Oath of Fidelity on any cleric or any lay person as a condition for exercising any office in the Church. The SSPX leadership stupidly accepted this demand and swore, certainly by 2015, unconditional obedience to the “authentic magisterium” of the pope. They also followed the declaration of the Congregation for the doctrine of the Faith, when it was headed by Cardinal Ratzinger, that forbade any public criticism of the pope. Even before 2015 and during the entire pontificate of Pope Francis, the SSPX said nothing to defend the faith and Catholic worship. They were content to have a seat at the Novus Ordo circus. They even declared after the death of Bishop Williamson in January of 2025 that he had sinned grievously by consecrating bishops because there no longer existed a state of necessity! Then only 15 months after the death of Bishop Williamson, they discovered that a state of necessity exists. The only “state of necessity” was that SSPX itself wanted a bishop. That, in itself, is insufficient grounds to consecrate bishops and by proceeding with the consecrations, they have made all traditional Catholics look like mindless ideologues. They muddied the defense of the Catholic faith by their oath of unconditional obedience to the “authentic magisterium” of the pope and then publically disobeyed him on insufficient doctrinal or moral grounds. They have associated every faithful traditional Catholic in their worthless scheming.

The SSPX sooner or later must recognize that Dogma is the proximate rule of faith and that Neo-modernism is a heresy that they are standing so close to they cannot recognize. Dogma is infallible both in the truth it proposes and in the words used to express that truth. That is, both the form and the matter of Dogma, which constitute one substantial being, are the infallible work of God, or as St. Pius X said, “A truth fallen from heaven.” Once that is done, they will be able to say unequivocally that Vatican II, a pastoral council that treated Catholic doctrine with grossly imprecise terminology and taught heresy because heresy IS the denial of the literal meaning of Dogma. They will recognize that the one and only act that is invariably associated with schism is manifest heresy! Pope Francis was and, his protégé, Pope Leo is schismatic because they are heretics. No Catholic can make an act of unconditional obedience to the “authentic (authorized) magisterium” of any pope because that is idolatry, but to make it to a manifest heretic is a double crime. No one can be excommunicated by canon law ipso facto in the external forum without canonical due process simply because the pope says so in his personal “authentic (authorized) magisterium.” This is not the first time but just the most egregious example of the extension of the “obedience” claimed by the “authentic magisterium” to corrupt canon law in the Church. The entire purpose of the corruption of canon law and due process is to impose the Neo-modernist will by the appearance of legal formality. It in the end is perfectly Pharisaical.

Comments from those who have read the Third Secret of Fatima:

Ø “I cannot say anything of what I learned at Fatima concerning the third Secret, but I can say that it has two parts: one concerns the Pope. The other, logically – although I must say nothing – would have to be the continuation of the words: In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved.” [3] [emphasis added] – Joseph Schweigel, S.J., d. 1964 (interrogated Sister Lucia about the Third Secret on behalf of Pope Pius XII on Sept. 2, 1952)[4]

Ø “In the period preceding the great triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, terrible things are to happen. These form the content of the third part of the Secret. What are they? If ‘in Portugal the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved,’ … it can be clearly deduced from this that in other parts of the Church these dogmas are going to become obscure or even lost altogether. Thus it is quite possible that in this intermediate period which is in question (after 1960 and before the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary), the text makes concrete references to the crisis of the Faith of the Church and to the negligence of the pastors themselves.” [5] [emphasis added] – Fr. Joaquin Alonso, C.M.F., d. 1981 (Cleratian priest and official Fatima archivist for over sixteen years; had unparalleled access to Sister Lucia)

Ø “The Secret of Fatima speaks neither of atomic bombs, nor nuclear warheads, nor Pershing missiles, nor SS-20’s. Its content concerns only our faith. To identify the Secret with catastrophic announcements or with a nuclear holocaust is to deform the meaning of the message. The loss of faith of a continent is worse than the annihilation of a nation; and it is true that faith is continually diminishing in Europe.” [6] [emphasis added] – Bishop Alberto Cosme do Amaral, d. 2005 (former bishop of Fatima-Leiria; remarks made in Vienna, Austria on Sept. 10, 1984)

Ø “It [the Third Secret] has nothing to do with Gorbachev. The Blessed Virgin was alerting us against apostasy in the Church.” [emphasis added] – Cardinal Silvio Oddi, d. 2001 (Vatican diplomat and personal friend of Pope John XXIII, from whom he knew certain details concerning the Third Secret) [7]

Ø “In the Third Secret it is foretold, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top.” [emphasis added] – Cardinal Mario Luigi Ciappi, O.P., d. 1996 (personal theologian to Popes John XXIII-John Paul II) [8]

Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité, The Whole Truth about Fatima, [2], Volume 3.

Posted by OnePeterFive

The Providence of God is unfailing!

“If you wish to be a Catholic, do not venture to believe, to say, or to teach that they whom the Lord has predestinated for baptism can be snatched away from his predestination, or die before that has been accomplished in them which the Almighty has predestined. There is in such a dogma more power than I can tell assigned to chances in opposition to the power of God, by the occurrence of which casualties that which He has predestinated is not permitted to come to pass. It is hardly necessary to spend time or earnest words in cautioning the man who takes up with this error against the absolute vortex of confusion into which it will absorb him, when I shall sufficiently meet the case if I briefly warn the prudent man who is ready to receive correction against the threatening mischief.”

St. Augustine, On the Soul and Its Origin, 3, 13

Leo XIV Reinstated Convicted Child-Porn Priest who was protected by Francis

Capella_Msgr.Carlo_Alberto.jpg Carlo Alberto Capella was Vatican diplomat who was convicted by a Vatican tribunal of possessing and sharing child pornography. Capella admitted guilt to the charges. He is the only one who has served a prison sentence in the Vatican jail for this crime or for any sexually related crime against minors.

Monsignor Capella was ordained a priest in 1993 for the Archdiocese of Milan. After studies of canon law he entered the Vatican diplomatic corps. He was assigned to the papal nunciature in India in 2003 and to the nunciature in Hong Kong in 2007. In 2008 he was created Chaplain of His Holiness, which entitled him to the title of Monsignor. In 2011 he was transferred to the Vatican to serve in the Secretariat of State. In 2016 he was assigned to the papal nunciature to the United States.

In 2017, Capella was recalled to the Vatican by Pope Francis after United States officials informed the Vatican that he was under investigation for possession and sharing of child pornography. The government of Canada has issued a warrant for his arrest, alleging that during his time in Canada in December, 2016 he had possessed and shared child pornography. He was returned to the Vatican which claimed diplomatic immunity for Capella protecting him from prosecution in the United State or Canada.

In 2018, he was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison, which he served in the Vatican jail. As of 2021, he was allowed out during the day to work in an office that sells papal blessings. In 2023, following the end of his prison sentence, Capella was permitted to return to work in the Vatican Secretariat of State. Now Pope Leo XIV has reinstated Msgr. Capella to a senior diplomatic position in the Vatican Secretariat of State.

COMMENT: Pope Leo is protégé of Francis to whom he own s his promotions to bishop and cardinal. It was Francis who protected this pervert from criminal charges in the United States and in Canada and now it is Francis' protégé who has restored him the a high level position in the Vatican. This does not portend well for any serious reform of the Novus Ordo Church which has become a sinecure for homosexuals and others perverts.

As time goes by, there are fewer and fewer Novus Ordo Catholics every year!

St. John himself, the Apostle of love, who seems in his Gospel to have revealed the secrets of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and who never ceased to impress upon the memory of his disciples the new commandment “to love one another,” nevertheless strictly forbade any intercourse with those who professed a mutilated and corrupt form of Christ’s teaching: “If any man come to you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into the house, nor say to him, God speed you” (II John 1:10). Therefore, since the foundation of charity is faith pure and inviolate, it is chiefly by the bond of one faith that the disciples of Christ are to be united. A federation of Christians is inconceivable in which each member retains his own opinions and private judgment in matters of faith, even though they differ from opinions of all the rest. How can men with opposite convictions belong to one and the same federation of the faithful: those who accept sacred Tradition as a source of revelation and those who reject it; those who recognize as divinely constituted the hierarchy of bishops, priests and ministers in the Church, and those who regard it as gradually introduced to suit the conditions of the time; those who adore Christ really present in the Most Holy Eucharist through that wonderful conversion of the bread and wine, Transubstantiation, and those who assert that the body of Christ is there only by faith or by the signification and virtue of the Sacrament; those who in the Eucharist recognize both Sacrament and Sacrifice, and those who say that it is nothing more than the memorial of the Lord’s Supper; those who think it right and useful to pray to the Saints reigning with Christ, especially to Mary the Mother of God, and to venerate their images, and those who refuse such veneration as derogatory to the honor due Jesus Christ, “the one mediator of God and men” (I Tim 2:5).

Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos

Unless the Lord build a house, they labor in vain that build it.

Unless the Lord keep the city, he watcheth in vain that keepeth it. Ps. 126

From Tradition In Action:

You don't have to be a liturgical EXPERT to see that there is no essential difference in the act!

The question is: Is there any essential difference in the actors?

Top: St. Patrick Catholic Church, Chatham, New Jersey (44:43 mark on their August 22, 2021

Bottom: First Lutheran Church, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (49:30 mark on their July 6 2025

Jewish morality is openly demonstrated in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon with the wonton killing of thousands of men, women and children. Over 95% of Jewish religious and political leaders support abortion and same-sex 'marriage'. AI is intended to enforce Jewish morality.

Yuval Harari at Davos: ‘AI is not just another tool…It has the ability to lie and manipulate’ and will take over all world religions

by Leo Hohmann 1-20-2026

Israeli historian and philosopher Yuval Harari spoke January 20th at the World Economic Forum 2026 conference in Davos and hit on crucial themes about the future of artificial intelligence and humanity.
If Klaus Schwab and Larry Fink represent the legal and geostrategic views of the Davos crowd, Harari represents its spiritual soul. And a dark soul it is, devoid of anything truly from the heart of God.
He seems to describe a mass psychological control grid getting ready to clamp down on humanity.
Harari stated in his WEF speech that:
The most important thing to know about AI is that it is not just another tool. It is an agent. It can learn and change by itself and make decisions by itself. A knife is a tool. You can use a knife to cut salad or to murder someone, but it is your decision what to do with the knife. AI is a knife that can decide by itself whether to cut salad or to commit murder.

The second thing to know about AI is that it can be a very creative agent. AI is a knife that can invent new kinds of knives as well as new kinds of music, medicine and money.

The third thing to know about AI is that it can lie and manipulate. Four billion years of evolution have demonstrated that anything that wants to survive learns to lie and manipulate. The last four years have demonstrated that AI agents can acquire the will to survive and that AIs have already learned how to lie.
How many times have you heard that AI is just a tool that can be used for good or for evil? Well, Yuval Harari, the philosophical/spiritual voice of the WEF, says it’s more than that. And he doesn’t say it has the potential to be more than that. It already is.
So, AI can “lie and manipulate.” That’s what some of us have been warning from the start, and yet so many of our brothers and sisters rely on it every day to inform their work, their businesses, their personal lives. They will become dependent on it, and at some point they will be deceived by it.

Harari speaking at Davos 2026: AI is already an agent capable of making decisions, lying, manipulating.

Harari is a valuable source because, whether you think he’s evil or you think he’s good, he doesn’t water down his message like so many corporate CEOs in the tech world do. The CEOs and analysts in the business world have lied to us and said AI will not replace human work; it will only enhance human work. That was a lie and they knew it, but they also knew that if they told us the truth it would cause a mass uprising.
Well, now Harari is letting the cat out of the bag, probably because he knows it’s too late to do anything to stop this beast system from fully rising up and taking over the world.
Harari stated:
“Four billion years of evolution has demonstrated that anything that wants to survive learns to lie and manipulate. The last four years have demonstrated that AI agents can acquire the will to survive and that AIs have already learned how to lie. “Now, one big open question about AI is, whether it can think. I think, therefore I am, as René Descartes said. We rule the world because we can think better than anyone else on the planet. Will AI challenge our supremacy in the field of thinking. That depends on what thinking means…”
Harari said AI will first take over everything that consists of words. That includes law, articles and books, even religion. You can see that is happening already. News writers and gatherers are being replaced. Legal assistants and lawyers are being replaced. And people are consulting AI for advice related to life, faith and spiritual matters.
“Some people argue AI is just glorified auto speech. It barely predicts the next words in a sentence,” Harari said. “But is that so different from what the human mind does? As far as putting words in order, AI already thinks better than many of us. Therefore, anything made of words will be taken over by AI. If laws are made of words, then AI will take over the legal system. If books are just combinations of words, then AI will take over books. If religion is built from words, then AI will take over religion. This is particularly true of religions made up of books like Islam, Judaism and Christianity.”
He does hint that if your religious faith is real, you may want to find out if it’s based solely on words you have memorized or if it’s something real that you have internalized in your heart.

A preview of our AI dominated world

He asks:
“What happens to the holy books when the greatest expert of the book is an AI? Everything made of words will be taken over by AI.”

My overall response to Harari’s speech about AI being more than a tool, and that it’s fully capable of lying and manipulating, is that AI is an automated version of what George Orwell presented in his famous dystopian novel, 1984.
Winston, the main character in Orwell’s novel, held a middle-management position in the Ministry of Truth. His job was to sift through all of the news of the day, all of the history books, science books, legal analyses, everything that people referred to for information, and weed out that which the all-powerful state did not want people to know. He dropped the forbidden information down the “memory hole” and he advanced up the chain to be distributed the information which jibed with the official narrative of Big Brother.
How is this different from the algorithms used by today’s AI?
Orwell, living and writing in the 1940s, could not have envisioned that a computerized software system known as machine learning was going to rise up to do the job that he assigned to human beings. That job is to filter and control all human knowledge through a single conduit with demonic influence.
Because Harari is an admitted atheist, it is here where his analysis breaks down. He doesn’t understand anything about the spiritual battles raging in the world.
He says that, “If we continue to define ourselves by our ability to think in words, our identity will collapse.”
As followers of Jesus Christ, we must, if we want to retain our humanity, get our identity from God the Father, our Creator, and his Son Jesus. All else will be overwhelmed by the coming beast system.

Dogma - The Proximate Rule of Faith, the Formal Object of Divine & Catholic Faith

Now, first of all, let us see what is dogma. In the mouth of the world it means some positive, imperious, and overbearing assertion of a human authority, or of a self-confident mind. But what does it mean in the mouth of the Church? It means the precise enunciation of a divine truth, of a divine fact, or of a divine reality fully known, so far as it is the will of God to reveal it, adequately defined in words chosen and sanctioned by a divine authority.

It is the precise enunciation of a divine truth or of a divine reality; for instance, the nature and the personality of God, the Incarnation, the coming of the Holy Ghost, and suchlike truths and realities of the mind of God, precisely known, intellectually conceived, as God has revealed or accomplished them. Every divine truth or reality, so far as God has been pleased to reveal it to us, casts its perfect outline and image upon the human intelligence. His own mind, in which dwells all truth in all fulness and in all perfection, so far as He has revealed of His truth, is cast upon the surface of our mind, in the same way as the sun casts its own image upon the surface of the water, and the disc of the sun is perfectly reflected from its surface. So, in the intelligence of the Apostles, when, by the illumination of the Holy Ghost on the Day of Pentecost, the revelation of God was cast upon the surface of their intellect, every divine truth had its perfect outline and image, not confused, nor in a fragmentary shape, but with a perfect and complete impression. For instance, that God is One in nature; that in God there are Three Persons, and one only Person in Jesus Christ. Next, it is not enough that a truth should be definitely conceived; for if a teacher know the truth, and is not able to communicate it with accuracy, the learner will be but little the wiser. And therefore God, who gave His truth, has given also a perpetual assistance, whereby the Apostles first, and His Church from that day to this, precisely and without erring declare to mankind the truth which was revealed in the beginning; and in declaring that truth the Church clothes it in words, in what we call a terminology: and in the choice of those terms the Church is also guided. There is an assistance, by which the Church does not err in selecting the very language in which to express divine truth. For who does not see that, if the Church were to err in the selection of the words, the declaration of truth must be obscured? We are conscious every day that we know with perfect certainty what we desire to say, but, from the difficulty of finding or choosing our words, we cannot convey our meaning to another. The Church is not a stammerer as we are. The Church of God has a divine assistance perpetually guiding it, to clothe in language, that is, in adequate expression, the divine truth which God has committed to her trust. Therefore a dogma signifies a correct verbal expression of the truth correctly conceived and known. But, lastly, it is not sufficient that it be clearly understood in the intellect and accurately expressed in words, unless the authority by which it is declared shall be divine; because without a divine authority we cannot have a divine certainty; without a divine authority we can have no such assurance that the doctrine which we hear may not be erroneous. The Apostles were such a divine authority, for they spoke in the Name of their Master. Their successor to this day is the Church, which, taken as a whole, has been, by the assistance of the Holy Ghost, promised by our Divine Lord and never absent from it, perpetually sustained in the path of truth, and preserved from all error in the declaration of that truth. Therefore ‘He that heareth you heareth Me’ is true to this day. He that hears the voice of the Church hears the voice of its Divine Head, and its authority is therefore divine. This, then, is a dogma: a divine truth clearly understood in the intellect, precisely expressed in words and by a divine authority. There are many things which follow from this. First, it proves that the Church of God must be dogmatic: and that any body which is not dogmatic is not the Church of God. Any body or communion that disclaims a divine, and therefore infallible, authority cannot be dogmatic, because it is conscious that it may err. And therefore the- Catholic Church alone, the Church which is one and undivided throughout the world, united with its centre in the Holy See,—this, and this alone, is a dogmatic Church (as the world reproachfully reminds us), and on that I build my proof that it alone is the Church of God. A teaching authority which is dogmatic and not infallible is a tyranny and a nuisance: a tyranny, because it binds the consciences of men by human authority, liable to err; and a nuisance, because as it may err, in the long-run it certainly will, and ‘if the blind lead the blind, shall they not both fall into the ditch?’ We see, then, what dogma means. The Holy Catholic Church always has been and always must be dogmatic. In this, and in no other sense, is it dogmatic; for it delivers nothing to us to be believed except upon divine authority, and that which it so delivers was revealed by God.

Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, Glories of the Sacred Heart

SSPX issues 154-point profession of faith to Pope Leo, cardinals ahead of consecrations

The Society of St. Pius X unveiled a sweeping 17-chapter ‘Profession of Catholic Faith,’ urging Pope Leo and the cardinals to embrace Tradition as the remedy to the Church’s ‘deepest ills.’

LifeSiteNews | June 24, 2026 — The SSPX has published a "Profession of Catholic Faithe" as part of communications with the Pope and the cardinals ahead of the planned episcopal consecrations and “in response to the chief and gravest dangers of our time.”

According to an open letter published by the Society of St. Pius X “to His Holiness Pope Leo XIV and to the Cardinals of the Holy Church” dated June 24, the leadership of the SSPX formulated its 17-chapter profession of Catholic Faith as a “necessary expression, peaceful and resolute, of our Faith” as the cardinals prepare to gather in consistory later this week.

“Today the Church suffers under the pressure of new forces, coming both from within and without, which push her in every possible direction, except – it seems to us – the right one,” the Society argues, adding, “In the face of such suffering, we cannot remain indifferent.”

Consequently, the Society maintains that “Tradition contains all the remedies for the deepest ills afflicting the Church and the world, for which solutions are sought in vain outside of it.”

“We are persuaded that, in the unstable and extremely perilous context that now confronts us, the finest contribution one can offer to the universal Church is that of a sincere and integral profession of Catholic Faith,” the fraternity of priests write.

The letter was accompanied by the Society’s "Profession of Catholic Faith." broken into 17 chapters outlining 154 points of traditional doctrine while rejecting their corresponding modern errors.

COMMENT: In general, the profession of faith has many excellent qualities, however, it is clearly a product of the SSPX culture and character. The SSPX is a completely inbred organization. No one thinks outside the box and their box is very small. While the Profession recognizes that the remote sources of revelation are Scripture and Tradition and that these constitute the remote rule of faith (#9), they then, after professing that "no dogma" may be omitted, stumble in not recognizing that Dogma constitutes the proximate rule of faith.

5. I add that, in the present confusion, it is no longer sufficient to recall a few isolated truths. It has become indispensable to set in full light the entire order of Catholic doctrine, in its supernatural coherence and luminous harmony, omitting no dogma, diminishing no truth, and substituting for the received Faith no equivocal or truncated language which, under the pretext of ecumenism or adaptation to the world, disfigures this doctrine with ever greater audacity.

9. This Revelation is the true Word of God, entrusted to the Church as a Deposit, and proposed to men as the Rule of Faith in the form of a body of doctrine, in which the mysteries are formulated in a manner that renders them intelligible and expressible in words.

The problem is confounded because they continually used the word "magisterium" equivocally. They treat the infallible Magisterium of the Church teaching by the authority of God and the fallible magisterium of churchmen teaching by their grace of state as if these were the same thing, They are not and constitute a distinction of kind and not one of degree. Their belief in the mutability of Dogma is directly expressed in their understanding of the Dogma that membership in the Catholic Church is necessary for salvation, that is, no one is saved outside the Catholic Church:

60. This truth means that no one can be saved without Christ and His Church, through a false religion as such, nor be assured of His salvation outside the visible structure of the Church. If men are saved without belonging to the visible society which is the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, it is by a supernatural ordination to the one Church of salvation, and in spite of the errors of the false religions in which they find themselves, from which they free themselves by not refusing the grace offered to them and by corresponding to it

Here the Dogma is not "omitted," it is corrupted by substituting the word, "without," for the word, "outside." This is a common example of how the heresy of Neo-modernism works. This heresy leads directly to the Prayer Meeting of Assisi and the SSPX has not figured it out. The SSPX believes and teaches that any Jew, Moslem, Protestant, Hindu, Pagan, etc., etc. can obtain salvation by desire to do the will of a god who rewards and punishes which can be known by natural philosophy. The essential problem is that the SSPX does not understand or even recognize that the principle heresy today is Neo-modernism and not Modernism. Not recognizing the enemy, they continually punch the air.

Regarding the sacraments they rightly profess the Dogma that the sacraments require correct form, matter and intention:

111. I profess that the sacraments must be validly celebrated with the prescribed matter, form, and intention, observing the liturgical rites which clearly express the Catholic Faith; and that they must be received with the required dispositions.

Yet the SSPX believes that a Catholic priest can enter a bakery and consecrate all the bread in the bakery or enter a wine cellar and consecrate all the wine. This they believe can happen when there is obvious corruption in form, matter and intention. This can only happen when Dogma is taken in a non-literal sense. They apply the same sacramental theology to the sacrament of Baptism denying the Dogmas that baptism is necessary for salvation and the true and natural water is necessary for the sacrament which they take in a purely metaphorical sense.

112. I believe that Baptism is the door of the Church and that it is necessary for salvation. Ordinarily, no one can be saved without receiving it; through this sacrament, man is washed from original sin, incorporated into Christ, marked with the Christian character, and made a member of the Church. I therefore reject the practice of deferring without grave cause the Baptism of children who have not the use of reason. However, one who, after the age of reason and without fault on his part, is prevented from accessing this sacrament, can be saved in an extraordinary manner by Baptism of Desire, that is, by a supernatural act of faith and perfect charity which orders him to the Church.

So the good-willed Jew, Moslem, Hindu, Protestant, Pagan, etc. who believes in a god who rewards and punishes is thereby making an act of "supernatural faith and perfect charity"!

The word "heresy" occurs only once in the Profession of the SSPX. "I therefore reject every liturgical reform or usage which, through omission, doctrinal ambiguity, or practical orientation, favours heresy.... " The definition of heresy is the rejection of any Dogma. That is why the word only occurs as an accusation of "favoring" heresy. Vatican II, a pastoral council, is a product of the fallible magisterium of churchmen teaching by their grace of state. The Council did not just "favor" heresy, it taught it. It is impossible to know what heresy is unless you first know what Dogma is. Unless a clear and precise understanding of the nature of Dogma is known, it is impossible to address modern errors effectively.

The term, Second Vatican Council, also occurs only once in the document in Profession 143:

143. I acknowledge in particular that modern errors represent a dreadful threat to the whole of the Catholic order, and that their penetration into the life of the Church, under the influence of the Second Vatican Council and the post-conciliar reforms, has provoked a crisis of exceptional gravity: agnosticism attacks the knowledge of God; naturalism attacks the necessity of grace; subjectivism attacks the supernatural motive of faith; relativism attacks the immutability of dogma; situation ethics attacks the divine law; liberalism attacks the Social Kingship of Christ; false ecumenism attacks the uniqueness of the Church; collegiality and synodality attack the divine constitution of the Church in her hierarchy; liturgical anthropocentrism attacks the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

This is all true but why is the SSPX unable to say Vatican II is heretical? Until the SSPX understands what Dogma is, what Neo-modernism is, and what the Magisterium of the Church is and how it is distinct from the magistrium of churchmen, they will continue to be incapable of effectively addressing modern errors.

In the end the question arises how is it now, after nearly fifteen years of silence against the apostasy of Rome, through the entire pontificate of Francis/Bergoglio, does the SSPX find that it is time to speak up? For what end is this Profession of Faith intended? And why cannot the SSPX articulate propositions of faith directly contrary to the beliefs and teachings of Rome demanding that Pope Leo engage the infallible Magisterium of the Church to clearly address the modern errors of Vatican II and the conciliar Church? It is a matter of canon law and the constant tradition of the Church that every Catholic has the right to demand explicit judgments from the Magisterium and the pope has an absolute duty to address these questions of faith. The SSPX has been in dialogue with Rome formally and informally for thirty years exchanging opinions on Catholic truth. If the SSPX understood what Dogma is this thirty year dialogue could have been concluded in thirty minutes. It has only been a year and a half since the death of Bishop Richard Williamson. The SSPX declared at that time that there was no state of necessity to justify the consecrations of bishops and they accused Bishop Williamson of grave sin for doing so. If the SSPX cannot identify direct heresy and heretics in Rome, then they cannot claim a state of necessity for themselves.

ANGEL OF THE JUDGMENT

The Situation Regarding the SSPX Episcopal Consecrations of July 1, 2026 -

by Roberto de Mattei

June 24, 2026 | Posted by the conservative Catholic blog, Rorate Caeli

What is one to think, and what is one to do, in the face of the episcopal consecrations announced by the Society of Saint Pius X at Écône for July 1st, and the consequent latae sententiae excommunication that will be reaffirmed by the Holy See?

The first consideration to be made is that, if this comes to pass, we will be confronted with a painful trial — not only for the world of Catholic Tradition, of which the Society of Saint Pius X has been a part since its foundation on November 1, 1970, by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, but also for Pope Leo XIV. The Pontiff has indeed identified the internal reconciliation of the Church as one of the principal objectives of his pontificate, and he would find himself, barely more than a year after his election, having to confront a new tearing of the ecclesial fabric, with the risk of aggravating divisions that have been awaiting a resolution for decades.

On the substance of the controversy, one cannot avoid pointing out what appears to be a genuine paradox. Among the many reasons advanced by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988 — and now taken up again by the Society of Saint Pius X to justify episcopal consecrations without a pontifical mandate — the argument from the state of necessity of the faithful in the face of the gravity of the ecclesial crisis is, at one and the same time, both the weakest and the strongest argument.

The state of necessity is, by its very nature, an exceptional condition that permits deviation from the ordinary application of certain norms in view of a higher good — which, in the case of the Church, is the salvation of souls. But who has the authority to verify the existence of such a state and to determine its beginning and end? It is evident that this assessment cannot be left to the judgment of the Society of Saint Pius X itself. Were that the case, one would have to conclude that the state of necessity ceases when the Society deems it to have ceased — effectively attributing to it a power of judgment over the Holy See that is incompatible with the hierarchical and visible constitution of the Church. The result would be a situation in which a particular body sets itself up as the ultimate criterion for evaluating the actions of the supreme authority.

If the principle of the state of necessity were admitted as a general criterion for action, any bishop who judged the Church to be passing through a grave crisis could feel authorized — or even morally obligated — to consecrate other bishops without a pontifical mandate, in order to ensure the continuity of the faith and the sacraments. The consequence would be a proliferation of parallel jurisdictions and episcopi vagantes scattered throughout the world, with inevitable effects of fragmentation, disorder, and confusion for the very faithful one would seek to protect.

The existence of an episcopal line deriving from Archbishop Richard Williamson — one of the four bishops consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988 and subsequently expelled from the Society of Saint Pius X — shows concretely how the logic of the state of necessity, once detached from a higher principle of authority capable of delimiting and regulating it, can generate further divisions. This is a phenomenon which, beyond any judgments on the persons involved, illustrates the intrinsic risk of episcopal consecrations founded on subjective assessments of the state of necessity.

And yet this argument — so fragile on the theological and canonical level — presents itself as the strongest on the pastoral level. Archbishop Lefebvre was not a speculative theologian or a canonist, but a missionary and a pastor of souls. In his letter to priests of April 27, 1987, he wrote: "The faithful who are still Catholic find themselves in many places in a desperate spiritual situation. It is this appeal that the Church hears; it is for these situations that she grants jurisdiction through the law of supplied jurisdiction." The decisive criterion for him was not the assertion of a right proper to the Society, but the spiritual need of the faithful. The episcopal consecrations of 1988 were intended as a response to this appeal of souls.

We thus find ourselves before the paradox. The Society of Saint Pius X, by invoking the state of necessity, grounds a large part of its justification on the primacy of pastoral requirements over strictly juridical and doctrinal considerations — thereby embracing that very primacy of pastoral practice which is a foundational mandate of Vatican II. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, by contrast, invokes Vatican II, yet does not acknowledge the weight of the pastoral argument and employs against the Society the terms and concepts of pre-conciliar theology, in the name of the binding force of doctrine and law.

In this confused situation, the only sensible counsel that can be offered to those who are uncertain is to abide by the principle of logic and law: In dubiis standum est pro statu quo, donec ratio certa contrarium persuadeat — "In cases of doubt, one must hold to the existing state of affairs, until certain proof demonstrates the contrary." Reason suggests that each person remain in the position in which he finds himself, continuing to do what he does, avoiding being drawn into sterile polemics and emotional proclamations that have no other result than to reopen old wounds and pour vinegar into the wounds of the Church.

The problem that presents itself today is far broader than the grave matter of the July 1st episcopal consecrations and their canonical consequences. Nor does the question exhaust itself in the debate over the traditional liturgy or the interpretation of the documents of the Second Vatican Council. At the heart of the controversy lies the historical and theological judgment on the twentieth century — a century that profoundly marked the destiny of the Church and of the contemporary world.

A little over a hundred years ago, the conflagration of the First World War brought to an end the international order born of the Christian centuries, while the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 set an even vaster fire in the world. Yet in the same year in which Bolshevism seized power, Our Lady appeared to the three shepherd children of Fatima, explaining the true causes of the crisis of the modern world and assuring, after chastisements, wars, and persecutions, the final triumph of her Immaculate Heart. The message of Fatima was addressed to all of humanity, but in a particular way to the Pastors of the Church, within which Modernism had begun to spread its deadly poison. Against this evil, Providence raised up Saint Pius X. With the encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis of September 8, 1907 — ten years before the apparitions at Fatima — the great Pontiff denounced with prophetic clarity the process of self-dissolution of the decades that would follow. Pascendi and Fatima constitute, respectively, the doctrinal diagnosis and the supernatural response to the crisis of modernity. These events, in turn, acquire their authentic significance only when placed within a broader perspective that allows one to read the events of history as phases of a single struggle that crosses the centuries.

It is here that the vision of Saint Augustine takes on an extraordinary relevance for our time. In the City of God, the great Doctor of the Church interprets history as the permanent confrontation between those who orient their lives toward God and those who reject the divine order. The Augustinian tradition, with its capacity to read historical events in the light of Providence, offers the interpretive key necessary for confronting questions that continue to determine the life of the Church — with its apostasies, its persecutions, and its acts of heroism.

The last word, in this dramatic horizon, belongs to him who holds the divine mandate to guide the Church and whom the Society of Saint Pius X itself acknowledges as the legitimate Vicar of Christ — the reigning Pope, Leo XIV. No solution to the grave problems afflicting the Mystical Body of Christ will be found outside of him or against him.

COMMENT: Dr. Roberto de Mattei is a conservative Novus Ordo Catholic historian which alone makes it impossible for him to know or do anything correctly because he will always have his priorities upside-down. Where does he get it wrong? For Mattei, the pope constitutes the proximate rule of faith. He does not understand that the proximate rule of faith is DOGMA. For Mattei, the faith is subject to the authority of the pope. The pope for Mattei is the principle cause and sign of the unity of the Church. Mattei does not openly deny the truth that the faith itself is the principle sign and cause of unity of the Church but he makes the faith subject to the arbitrary judgments of the pope who becomes its revealer. He places the authority of the pope over Dogma so that the Dogma means whatever the pope says it means. Whatever the pope says or does becomes the proximate rule of faith for Mattei. For him the determination of a state of necessity can only be declared by the authority of the pope. For Mattei, the pope can never be the cause of the state of necessity therefore, a state of necessity can never really exist.

Mattei acknowledges that the "salvation of souls" is the "highest good" then immediately reduces it to a legal truism. Something that in the end is unknowable in its practical application. He then wonders just who could ever determine when such a state of necessity begins and when it ends.For Mattei only the pope with absolute authority can do so.

The answer is not as difficult as Mattei pretends. Any individual Catholic faithful can declare a state of necessity for himself whenever he is unable to obtain from his ordinary what is necessary for his salvation, that is, the Catholic faith and Catholic sacraments. This is not a "subjective" determination as Mattei pretends for the faithful Catholic must make known to his local ordinary the existing objective factual conditions that constitute the state of necessity, demonstrate the establishment of a true and certain conscience, and thus, provide a moral justification for any acts of disobedience. After determining a state of necessity that he makes it known to his local ordinary, the ordinary has the obligation to fulfill his duties to provide what is necessary for salvation. If he fails to do so, fails to fulfill his duty for whatever reason, then the faithful Catholic is free is seek these necessities from any other cleric and any cleric can do so by the virtue of the supplied jurisdiction by the Church which places the salvation of souls as her highest law. Mattei believes that salvation comes from obedience to the pope while faithful Catholics know that "without faith, it is impossible to please God," and that the pope is just as much subject to God's revealed truth as every other faithful Catholic. The "paradox" that Mattei is talking about is not real. There is no conflict of the SSPX "pastoral requirements" vs. Novus Ordo "juridical and doctrinal considerations."

Mattei believes that the pope can be judged by no one. That is a doubtful proposition. The Decretals of Gratian is a collection of canonical texts compiled in the 12th century. Pope Gregory IX in 1230 directed St. Raymond of Pennafort, the distinguished Dominican, to organize an addendum to the code to include legal codes adopted since the time of Gratian but the work became a much more extensive revision. Working from the Decretals of Gratian, St. Raymond wrote a five volume edition of the Decretals that became the Corpus Iuris Canonici which served as the legal code for the Latin Church’s canon law from that time until the promulgation of the Code of Canon Law in 1917.

Decretum Gratiani, which was included in the old Corpus Iuris Canonici, affirmed that a Pope who deviates from right doctrine (i.e.: a notorious public heretic) can be judged. The canon states that the "pope judges all and is judged by no-one, unless he is found to have departed from the faith": ‘Hujus culpas redarguere præsumit mortalium nullus, quia cunctos ipse judicaturus a nemine est judicandus, nisi deprehendatur a fide devius (dist. XL, C. 6)’. This is the professed law of the Church from time immemorial until 1917. When the revised Code of Canon Law (Codex Iuris Canonici 1917) came into force, the Church eliminated from the new legislation the phrase "unless he is found to have departed from the faith." This deletion was continued in the 1983 code. Although the phrase, "unless he is found to have departed from the faith," was not included in the 1917 and the 1983 codes, the canonical commentary still regards the phrase as legally binding:

‘Canon 1404 – The First See is judged by no one.‘

COMMENTARY: "Canon 1404 is not a statement about the personal impeccability or inerrancy of the Holy Father. Should, indeed, the pope fall into heresy, it is understood that he would lose his office. To fall from Peter’s faith is to fall from his chair."

New Commentary on the Code of Canon Law, John P. Beal, James A. Coriden, and Thomas J. Green eds. (New York: Paulist, 2000), p. 1,618.

The code is the compilation of laws governing the Church as social institution. Most of the laws in the code are ecclesiastical positive human laws grounded upon human authority, however, many of the legal codes are divine positive laws grounded upon divine authority or upon natural law. If a human law is deleted from the code, the law ceases to bind. If a law of divine authority is deleted from the code, the law continue in force for the human authority of the Church cannot overturn the law of God. This self-evident principle is stated in the code itself. Consequently, the commentary cited above is a recognition that the pope cannot be judged "unless he is found to have departed from the faith" is of divine origin. It is necessarily a divine law because the papacy is a divine institution established directly by Jesus Christ and therefore governed in its essence only by divine laws.

Therefore, it is divine law that permits a heretical pope to be judged. Importantly, although the law permits a heretical pope to be judged, it says nothing about who and how a pope is to be judged regarding heresy and it does not address penalties. It says nothing about removal from office. If the law intended the removal from office the law itself would have to state the penalty and provide a mechanism for its determination and enforcement.

So now it falls to opinions regarding the judgment of a heretical pope. Most theologians believe that it is "understood" that the removal from office necessarily follows from a judgment of heresy often citing the scriptural and traditional admonition to avoid heretics:

"A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid: Knowing that he, that is such a one, is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned by his own judgment" (Titus 3:10-11).

They argue that since the faithful cannot avoid a pope as head of the Church therefore the heretical pope must lose his office. A serious problem with this argument follows, that is, if the faithful cannot "avoid" a pope, then there must necessarily be a pope who in fact cannot be avoided. Therefore, those who would make the papacy vacant must also be able to fill the office with a true pope.

But can a heretical pope be avoided? It really becomes a problem for those who hold the pope as their proximate rule of faith and not, as they should, dogma. For if dogma is not the proximate rule of faith then the pope must be, and he then can never be a heretic for whatever the pope holds the dogma or doctrine to mean is what it then means and only those who disagree with the pope are heretics. For a Catholic, dogma is the proximate rule of faith and although a heretical pope can do immeasurable damage to the Church he cannot touch individual souls of the faithful.

If we adhere to what the law says and nothing more, we can say this: The definition of heresy is the denial of dogma. The heretic denies dogma and the faithful keep dogma. Those who can judge a heretical pope are the faithful. The law does not distinguish or discriminate among the faithful as to the judgment. Dogma is articulated for all the faithful. Its understanding does not require any theological competence. It requires proper definition and correct grammar. Any of the faithful, that is those who hold dogma as their proximate rule of faith, can judge a manifestly heretical pope such as Pope Francis. Any of the faithful can know when a dogma is directly contradicted for the first principles of the understanding, such as the principle of non-contradiction, are innate in human nature. Thus all the faithful can judge, in fact must judge, a heretical pope and so that they may not follow him in his heresy for God has said that 'it is not possible to deceive His elect' (Matt. 24:24). The law does not specify the judge because the judgment rests with all the faithful, it is universal. The law does not specify a penalty because none of the faithful have the competency to impose a penalty and remove a heretical pope from office. It is God who is the formal and final cause of the pope and the office of the papacy. It is God who 'marries' the designated candidate to the papal office and only God can remove him from it just as God removed the High Priest and destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and the Levitical priesthood which can never be reconstituted.

Those who hold dogma as their proximate rule of faith recognize Pope Leo as a heretic because he denies dogmatic truth. He preaches a different gospel so we "receive him not into the house nor say to him, God speed you" (2 John 10). Since he preaches a different gospel, "Let him be anathema" because we are first "servants of Christ" (Gal 1: 8). For in dogma, the Church has spoken and the heretic Pope Leo "will not hear the church, (therefore) let him be to thee as the heathen and publican (Matt 18:17).

Since Mattei cannot see his way out of his box so he advises, "Reason suggests that each person remain in the position in which he finds himself, continuing to do what he does." Since Mattei cannot conceive a state of necessity from the current corruption of faith and morals maybe an analogy to a person dying of thirst would be more clear. By natural law a man dying from thirst is entitled to preserve his life by drinking available water. The pope tells him he cannot have any water. Mattei advises that he should "remain in the position which he finds himself, continuing to do what he does,", that is, continue to die of thirst. Suppose it is not just one man but an entire family? Suppose that man was so weakened that he could not bring the water to himself? Would Mattei intervene to help? Well, probably not because Mattei could not recognize a state of necessity if he were the man dying of thirst.

“Only take heed to yourself and guard your soul diligently.” Deut 4:9

"It is a sin to believe there is salvation outside the Catholic Church!"

Blessed Pope Pius IX

PREVIOUS BULLETIN POSTING WORTH REMEMBERING:

Right of the Faithful to Appeal Directly to the Judgment of the Pope

The holy Roman Church holds the highest and complete primacy and spiritual power over the universal Catholic Church which she truly and humbly recognizes herself to have received with fullness of power from the Lord Himself in Blessed Peter, the chief or head of the Apostles whose successor is the Roman Pontiff. And just as to defend the truth of Faith she is held before all other things, so if any questions shall arise regarding faith they ought to be defined by her judgment. And to her anyone burdened with affairs pertaining to the ecclesiastical world can appeal; and in all cases looking forward to an ecclesiastical examination, recourse can be had to her judgment.

Second Council of Lyons, Denz. 466

And since the Roman Pontiff is at the head of the universal Church by the divine right of apostolic primacy, We teach and declare also that he is the supreme judge of the faithful, and that in all cases pertaining to ecclesiastical examination recourse can be had to his judgment.

First Vatican Council, Denz. 1830

Not only do we know God through Jesus Christ, but we only know ourselves through Jesus Christ; we only know life and death through Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ we cannot know the meaning of our life or our death, of God or of ourselves. Thus without Scripture, whose only object is Christ, we know nothing, and can see nothing but obscurity and confusion in the nature of God and in nature itself.

Blaise Pascal, Pensées

Pope says church 'must move forward' if SSPX proceeds with illicit ordinations

Vatican News | Junno Arocho Esteves | June 17, 2026

Pope Leo XIV said that although he is considering a final appeal to the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, the choice to splinter from the Catholic Church falls on them.

Speaking to journalists outside his residence in Castel Gandolfo June 16, the pope was asked about his feelings regarding plans by the traditionalist society, commonly known as SSPX, to proceed with the consecration of new bishops without a papal mandate.

The pope said that while he is "considering making another appeal to say: 'Do not do this, let us try to live in communion within the church,' " the decision to proceed "is their choice."

"Certainly, division among Christians is always a painful point. But they refuse to accept certain fundamental elements of the church, starting with several points from the Second Vatican Council," Leo said.

"If they make that choice, I am sorry, but we must move forward," he added. [.....]

COMMENT: The Vatican II Novus Ordo Church is a big tent inviting a wide variety of heretics, schismatics, apostates, pagans, animists, homosexuals, adulterers etc. to join the party. Even Leo/Prevost himself is now known to have worshiped the pagan goddess Pachamama. The SSPX, seeking a corner under this big tent, has been mute for so long we have wondered out loud if they lost the power of speech. But what about Pope Leo/Prevost? His recent pictures with the "Archbishopette of Canterbury" looks creepy. If he were just personally sick, his welcome would be extended without exceptions but, he has serious exceptions. Those must be "excepted" who "refuse to accept certain fundamental elements of the church, starting with several points from the Second Vatican Council"! There are some things the "listening church of Synodality" just can't listen to. Vatican II was a "pastoral council" that never rose above the level of churchmen pastorally opining with no greater authority than their grace of state. Any doctrinal opinions from churchmen from Vatican II that, if only apparently, contradict or undermine Catholic revealed truth must be rejected, and there is plenty there to reject. Such as, the claim that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church. Putting the question to Artificial Intelligence:

Question: If A subsists in B does it follow that A and B are an identity?

ANSWER: No.

“As A subsists in B” usually means A is (in some manner) realized, embodied, or found within B—not that they are numerically identical. For identity you need a strong equivalence claim: that they have exactly the same being/existence and are the very same entity.

So:

If A subsists in B, it’s consistent that A is distinct from B even if A is present in B (e.g., a part in a whole, an instance in a substrate, a property inhering in a thing).

Only under additional premises—often something like “A subsists in B and B subsists in A” plus an argument that this forces sameness—would identity follow.

The truth that the Catholic Church and the Church of Christ are one and the same thing is divinely revealed truth. Even the blind "artificial intelligence" "sees" this Vatican II confabulation is just a lie! Those that deny this truth are heretics and, as St. Thomas says, "All heretics are schismatics," it remains to be determined what and who's church the SSPX will be leaving. Revelation ended with the death of the last apostle. What exactly Leo/Prevost is referring to when he talks about "certain fundamental elements of the church, starting with several points from the Second Vatican Council" needs serious clarification. No Catholic is obliged to believe anything with "divine and Catholic faith" that "started.... from the Second Vatican Council." The pastoral failures of Vatican II reek to high heaven and doctrinal obfuscation only magnifies the crime.

Pugin_Compare_Town_1440_1840.jfif

Heresy is Ugly

In the medieval town (of 1480), fourteen of the named buildings are churches; trees grow along the banks of the river and the bridge allows free passage… [By contrast to] the consistent practice of the Gothic style in the old town… the structures of the new town (of 1880) are uniform only in their harsh, monotonous ugliness… [A] vast jail… occupies what used to be open land available for the enjoyment of all. The peaceful old churchyard has been enclosed and converted into ‘Pleasure Grounds’ for the family at the new parsonage. The river-banks have been turned into wharfs, the trees felled… the bridge is closed by a toll-gate… [T]he marks of a free and generous community have disappeared; the evidence here is for social exclusiveness, a competing proliferation of [religious] sects, mechanized, dirty and noisy industry, the pursuit of money, the advent of madness and crime… [W]arehouses dwarf and obscure the churches which dominated the medieval scene…

Margaret Belcher, late professor of English at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and editor of the multivolume collection of the great Victorian Gothic Revivalist Architect Augustus Welby Pugin (1812-1852), who was the architect for 9 cathedrals and 60 churches, on a pair of drawings of a English town contrasting the town of 1480 with what it became in 1880.

Remember in your prayers the welfare of Bishop Michel Stobnicki and his apostolate throughout Poland and central Europe.

“By their fruits you shall know them”.

By their fruits we are expected to know them!

The Archdiocese of Dubuque Iowa is restructuring its 160 parishes across 30 northeast Iowa counties into 24 "pastorates". Driven by a 46% decline in Mass attendance and a shrinking number of priests, the Archdiocese halted weekend Masses at more than 80 churches, though they remain open for weddings and funerals.

The transition to the new pastorate structure, which requires grouped parishes to share clergy and resources, officially takes effect on July 14, 2026.

The sweeping consolidation has significantly impacted communities and traditional worship schedules. Key details of the situation include.

The Cause: The Archdiocese reports a drop of nearly half in weekend Mass attendance over the last 20 years, alongside a decreasing number of priests. The region currently has roughly one priest for every two parishes.

Church Usage: While many church buildings will no longer host weekend Mass, they are not completely closed. They remain accessible for other liturgical celebrations, such as weddings, funerals, weekday Masses, and private prayer.

COMMENT: The Archdioces of Dubuque has paid out about $17 million in settlements for the sex abuse crimes of homosexual pederasts over the last 30 years. Unlike many dioceses in the United States such as Harrisburg, Baltimore and Philadelphia, the Dubuque Archdiocese has not had to file for bankruptcy and Chapter 11 protection. The collapse is due to the loss of the Catholic faith with the associated “shrinking number of priests.” The Archdiocese is consolidating from 160 to 80 parishes and these 80 parishes with be consolidated into 24 “pastorates” which means that most priests will cover three parishes and a few will cover four. The consolidation is because of a “46% decline in Mass attendance”… “over the last 20 years.” There are four dioceses in the State of Iowa and Dubuque is the Archdiocese and the metropolitan see for the State of Iowa because it is the first diocese in the area, established in 1837. It was initially part of the diocese of St. Louis which itself was established in 1826 from the Diocese of Louisana in New Orleans that was established in 1793. The diocese of St. Louis covered the entire territory of the Louisana Purchase. Excluding Spanish missionary work in the southwest, the Archdioces of Dubuque is the third Catholic diocese west of the Mississippi River. It was in the beginning responsible for the spiritual welfare of all Catholics as well as Catholic missionary work in Iowa, Minnosota, North and South Dakota, that is, everywhere east of the Missouri river, and south-west Wisconsin. What the heroic French and Italian missionaries from the Archdiocese of Dubuque built for over the next hundred plus years has not just been squandered by the effeminate Novus Ordites through sloth, but actively ruined by their heresy and schism. This is the fruit of Vatican II. This decline has been evident since the early 1970s but with each passing year it is now visible to the blind. It is impossible to attribute good but misguided intentions to Novus Ordites. They are enemies of the Catholic faith. We must double our prayers that God will cleanse His Church even if we ourselves must suffer in the persecution. The loss of souls is irreparable. It may be soon time to say that there is no salvation in the Novus Ordo Church.

IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND

Modernism vs. Neo-Modernism: What is the Difference?

    The overarching principle of post-conciliar theology is not modernism, properly speaking. Let us get our terms straight.
Modernism is the idea that there are no eternal truths, that truth is the correspondence of the mind with one's lifestyle (adaequatio intellectus et vitae), and that, therefore, old dogmas must be abandoned and new beliefs must arise that meet 'the needs of modern man'. This is a radical denial of the traditional and common sense notion of truth: the correspondence of the mind with reality (adaequatio intellectus et rei), which is the basis of the immutability of Catholic dogma.
    No, the post-conciliar theological principle is neo-modernism, and the theology that is based on it is known as the nouvelle theologie. It is the idea that old dogmas or beliefs must be retained, yet not the traditional 'formulas': dogmas must be expressed and interpreted in a new way in every age so as to meet the 'needs of modern man'. This is still a denial of the traditional and common sense notion of truth as adaequatio intellectus et rei (insofar as it is still an attempt to make the terminology that expresses the faith correspond with our modern lifestyle) and consequently of the immutability of Catholic dogma, yet it is not as radical as modernism. It is more subtle and much more deceptive than modernism because it claims that the faith must be retained; it is only the 'formulas' of faith that must be abandoned--they use the term 'formula' to distinguish the supposedly mutable words of our creeds, dogmas, etc. from their admittedly immutable meanings. Therefore, neo-modernism can effectively slip under the radar of most pre-conciliar condemnations (except Humani Generis, which condemns it directly) insofar as its practitioners claim that their new and unintelligible theological terminology really expresses the same faith of all times. In other words, neo-modernism is supposed to be 'dynamic orthodoxy': supposedly orthodox in meaning, yet always changing in expression to adapt to modern life (cf. Franciscan University of Steubenville's mission statement).
    Take extra ecclesiam nulla salus as a clear example of a dogma that has received a brutal neo-modernist re-interpretation: they claim that the old 'formula' that "there is no salvation outside the Church" must be abandoned; rather it is more meaningful to modern man to say that salvation is not in, but through, the Church; people who are not in the Church may still be saved through the Church; thus, to them the dogma that "there is no salvation outside the Church" means that there is salvation outside the Church. Hence see Ven. Pope Pius XII condemning those "reduce to a meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to gain eternal salvation." (Humani generis 27).

Yet this mentality of reinterpreting everything anew in order to 'meet the needs of the times' is generally tends to be found in different degrees among different post-conciliar sources:

It tends to be (1) rampant in men like De Lubac, Von Balthasar, Congar, etc.: it is the ultimate goal of their writings, teachings, and activities as churchmen. To achieve this end, they employ the technique of 'resourcement', the neo-modernist strategy of fishing for the few dubious, questionable, or idiosyncratic teachings of some Fathers of the Church and other authoritative writers, and gather them into a massive, heterodox theological argument against the traditional understanding of the faith (which they like to relativize by giving it names such as "Counter-Reformation" Theology, "Tridentine" Theology, or "Scholastic" Theology, instead of just admitting that it is Catholic Theology plain and simple). This technique accomplishes three things that go hand-in-hand: (a) offers a refutation of traditional Catholicism, (b) defends an interpretation that meets the needs of modern times, and (c) gives it a semblance of being traditional, because it appears to be based in the Fathers et al. This type of argument is used, for example, by Von Balthasar in his nearly heretical book, Dare We Hope that All Men be Saved? to 'prove', not that Hell does not exist (that is a dogma), but that it is empty. But this technique and its neo-modernistic underpinnings is not only practiced in almost all of these men's writings; it is also defended in theory by many of them, particularly in Von Balthasar's daring little book, Razing the Bastions, where he demonstrates that "Tridentine" theology must be rejected in our times because it is 'boring'.

It also tends to be (2) present in a more moderate way in the non-binding statements by post-conciliar popes, since they themselves were deeply involved in the developing of the nouvelle theologie. Just to give one of a million possible examples, see Pope Benedict's evolutionistic re-interpretation of the Resurrection of Our Lord. Nothing here obviously contradicts the dogma of the Resurrection (it may be interpreted as a simple analogy, even if a bad one, and nothing more), but it is a novelty that can be easily understood as claiming that the Resurrection is part of the natural development of nature (thus giving credence to some of the nouvelle theologie's pet doctrines, such as De Lubac's heterodox notion of the supernatural and De Chardin's pantheistic evolutionism). This happens almost on a daily basis in what comes out of the Vatican, not to mention what comes from local bishops.

And finally, neo-modernism tends to be present (3) mostly implicitly or behind-the-scenes in the Council, the Catechism, etc., even though it seldom comes out more explicitly. Things are done at this level under the pretext of 'aggiornamento', a euphemism for neo-modernism. That is usually all the justification provided since at this authoritative level, there is no need to justify things theologically. Hence, Vatican II and the Catechism are not outright neo-modernistic. Rather, they (like most of post-conciliar doctrine) tend in that direction and/or are inspired by that mentality. In other words, most of the time these documents do not explicitly teach neo-modernist errors (the kind of errors you hear explicitly from neo-modernist theologians and priests). Rather, they are full of dangerous ambiguities: statements that in a technical sense could be interpreted as being in harmony with the traditional faith, but that, in their natural, non-forced, interpretation are heterodox. One clear example of this is Dignitatis humanae, par. 2; entire monographs have been written in order to prove that, despite appearances, this document does not contradict previous teaching. Maybe in fact it ultimately does not, but it is obvious that the prima facie meaning does; otherwise there would be no need to write so many volumes to prove it.
It must be noted that these are general tendencies, and that in some documents (cf. Gaudium et Spes) and every now and then in papal and episcopal statements neo-modernist principles rears come out more explicitly.

For a more detailed philosophical and theological critique of neo-modernism, and how it is nothing but a re-hashing of modernism, see Garrigou-Lagrange's Where is the New Theology Leading Us? and his The Structure of the Encyclical Humani Generis.

Francisco J. Romero Carrasquillo, Ph.D., Professor of Theology and Philosophy

If men are “obligated” to a “right faith” then “Religious Liberty” is lie!

That by Divine Law Men are obliged to a Right Faith

As sight by the bodily eye is the principle of the bodily passion of love, so the beginning of spiritual love must be the intellectual vision of some object of the same. But the vision of that spiritual object of understanding, which is God, cannot be had at present by us except through faith, because God exceeds our natural reason, especially if we consider Him in that regard under which our happiness consists in enjoying Him.

a.) The divine law directs man to be entirely subject to God. But as man’s will is subjected to God by loving Him, so his understanding is subjected to Him by believing Him,—but not by believing anything false, because no falsehood can be proposed to man by God, who is the truth: hence he who believes anything false does not believe God.

b.) Whoever holds an erroneous view about a thing, touching the essence of the thing, does not know the thing. Thus if any one were to fix on the notion of irrational animal, and take that to be man, he would not know man. The case would be otherwise, if he was mistaken only about some of the accidents of man. But in the case of compound beings, though he who errs about any of the essentials of a thing does not know the thing, absolutely speaking, still he knows it in a sort of a way: thus he who thinks man to be an irrational animal knows him generically: but in the case of simple beings this cannot be,—any error shuts out entirely all knowledge of the thing. But God is to the utmost degree simple. Therefore whoever errs about God does not know God. Thus he who believes God to be corporeal has no sort of knowledge of God, but apprehends something else instead of God. Now as a thing is known, so is it loved and desired. He then who errs concerning God, can neither love Him nor desire Him as his last end. Since then the divine law aims at bringing men to love and desire God, that same law must bind men to have a right faith concerning God. Hence it is said: Without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. xi, 6); and at the head of all other precepts of the law there is prescribed a right faith in God: Hear, O Israel: the Lord thy God is one Lord (Deut. vi. 4).

St. Thomas Aquinas, Of God and His Creatures

The Absolute Necessity of “Prayer And Penance”

However, in the face of this satanic hatred of religion, which reminds Us of the "mystery of iniquity" [Thess. 2, 7] referred to by St. Paul, mere human means and expedients are not enough, and We should consider ourselves wanting in Our apostolic ministry if We did not point out to mankind those wonderful mysteries of light, that alone contain the hidden strength to subjugate the unchained powers of darkness. When Our Lord, coming down from the splendors of Thabor, had healed the boy tormented by the devil, whom the disciples had not been able to cure, to their humble question: "Why could not we cast him out?" He made reply in the memorable words: "This kind is not cast out but by prayer and fasting" [Matth. 17, 18-20]. It appears to Us, Venerable Brethren, that these Divine words find a peculiar application in the evils of our times, which can be averted only by means of prayer and penance.

Mindful then of our condition, that we are essentially limited and absolutely dependent on the Supreme Being, before everything else let us have recourse to prayer. We know through faith how great is the power of humble, trustful, persevering prayer. To no other pious work have ever been attached such ample, such universal, such solemn promises as to prayer: "Ask and it shall be given you, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you. For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened" [Matth. 7, 7]. "Amen, amen I say to you, if you ask the Father anything in my name He will give it you."

And what object could be more worthy of our prayer, and more in keeping with the adorable person of Him who is the only "mediator of God and men, the Man Jesus Christ" [I Tim. 2, 5], than to beseech Him to preserve on earth faith in one God living and true? Such prayer bears already in itself a part of its answer; for in the very act of prayer a man unites himself with God and, so to speak, keeps alive on earth the idea of God. The man who prays, merely by his humble posture, professes before the world his faith in the Creator and Lord of all things; joined with others in prayer, he recognizes, that not only the individual, but human society as a whole has over it a supreme and absolute Lord. …..The Divine Heart of Jesus cannot but be moved at the prayers and sacrifices of His Church, and He will finally say to His Spouse, weeping at His feet under the weight of so many griefs and woes: "Great is thy faith; be it done to thee as thou wilt" [Matth. 15, 28.]. Pope Pius XI, Charitate Christi Compulsi, On the Sacred Heart

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St. Anne, Mother of the BVM

26

Sun

St. Anne, Mother of the BVM

9th Sunday after Pentecost

d2cl

W

9:00 AM; Members Ss. Peter & Paul; Rosary of Reparation 8:30 AM; Confessions 8:00 AM

27

Mon

St. Pantaleon, M

sp

R

Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass

28

Tue

Ss. Nazarius & Companions, Mm

sd

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Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass

29

Wed

St. Martha, V

Ss. Felix II & Companions, Mm

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Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass

30

Thu

Ss. Abbon & Sennen, Mm

sd

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Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass

31

Fri

St. Ignatius of Loyola, C

dm

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Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass

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St. Peter’s Chains

St. Paul, Ap

The Holy Machabees, Mm

dm

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Mass 9:00 AM, Confessions 8:00 AM; Benediction & Holy Hour of Reparation with Rosary

FIRST SATURDAY

2

Sun

10th Sunday after Pentecost

St. Alphonsus, BpCD

St. Stephen I, PM

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G

9:00 AM; Members Ss. Peter & Paul; Rosary of Reparation 8:30 AM; Confessions 8:00 AM

THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CITY AND TEMPLE OF JERUSALEM

CORRESPONDENCE WITH GRACE NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

The Hermeneutics of Continuity/Discontinuity - From the “Kingship of Christ” to a “Profound and Genuine Humanistic” One World Government with “Teeth.”

Right of the Faithful to Appeal Directly to the Judgment of the Pope