Invincible ignorance is a punishment for sin.

St. Thomas Aquinas (De Infid. q. x., art. 1.)

Evening and morning, and at noon I will speak and declare: and He shall hear my voice.

Psalm 54:18

“A new commandment I give unto you: ‘that you love one another’ as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (Jn. 13). Jesus revealed to us the perfection of fraternal charity on the same evening that He instituted the Eucharist, as if to indicate that such perfection should be both the fruit of the Sacrament of the Eucharist and our response to this great gift.

Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C. D., Divine Intimacy

“If any man thirst, let him come to Me, and drink” (Jn. 7, 37). Consider that the Lord calls everyone. Now, He is Truth itself, we cannot doubt His word. If His invitation were not addressed to all, He would not call all of us… But, as He puts no restriction on it… I am certain that all who do not stop on the way will drink this living water. God does not force anyone but to those who follow Him, He gives them to drink in many ways, so that none may lack comfort or die of thirst.

St. Teresa of Avila

In the garden of delights there is a virgin and an Angel; and a conversation takes place between them. At Nazareth a Virgin is also addressed by an Angel, and she answers him; but the Angel of the earthly paradise is a spirit of darkness, and he of Nazareth is a spirit of light. In both instances it is the Angel that has the first word. “Why,” said the Serpent to Eve, “hath God commanded you, that you should not eat of every tree of paradise?” His question implies impatience and a solicitation to evil; he has contempt for the frail creature to whom he addresses it, but he hates the image of God which is upon her.

See, on the other hand, the Angel of light; see with what composure and peacefulness he approaches the Virgin of Nazareth, the new Eve; and how respectfully he bows himself down before her: “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with thee! Blessed art thou among women!” Such language is evidently of Heaven: none but an Angel could speak thus to Mary.

Eve imprudently listens to the tempter's words; she answers him; she enters into conversation with one that dares to ask her to question the justice of God's commands. Her curiosity urges her on. She has no mistrust in the Serpent; this leads her to mistrust her Creator.

Mary hears what Gabriel has spoken to her; but this most prudent Virgin is silent. She is surprised at the praise given her by the Angel. The purest and humblest of virgins has a dread of flattery; and the Heavenly messenger receives no reply from her, until he has fully explained his mission by these words: “Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace with God. Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and shalt bring forth a Son: and thou shalt call His name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High, and 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.”

St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, On the Annunciation

For Catholics nothing will remove the authority of the Second Council of Nicea, where it condemns those who dare, after the impious fashions of heretics, to deride ecclesiastical traditions, to invent novelties of some kind or to endeavor by malice or craft to overthrow any one of the legitimate traditions of the Catholic Church.

St. Pius X, Pascendi

For the doctrine of the faith which God has revealed is put forward not as some philosophical discovery capable of being perfected by human intelligence, but as a divine deposit committed to the spouse of Christ to be faithfully protected and infallibly promulgated. Hence, too, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained which has once been declared by holy mother church, and there must never be any abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding. For the holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles.

Vatican Council I (1869-1870)

“Whom seekest thou?” It is to each one of us, as to Mary Magdalen, that Jesus addresses this question. Can we reply that we are seeking Him alone? Jesus appeared to Mary who “loved Him much” before appearing to the other holy women. If we wish to find the Lord quickly we must love Him much and seek Him with great love.

Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, Divine Intimacy

By disobedience, the Pope can separate himself from Christ despite the fact that he is head of the Church, for above all, the unity of the Church is dependent on its relationship with Christ. The Pope can separate himself from Christ either by disobeying the law of Christ, or by commanding something that is against the divine or natural law. By doing so, the Pope separates himself from the body of the Church because the body is itself linked to Christ by obedience. In this way the Pope could, without doubt, fall into schism… Especially is this true with regard to the divine liturgy as for example, if he did not wish personally to follow the universal customs and rites of the Church… Thus it is that Pope Innocent III states (De Consuetudine) that, it is necessary to obey the Pope in all things as long as he, himself does not go against the universal customs of the Church, but should he go against the universal customs of the Church, “he need not be followed.”

Cardinal Juan de Torquemada, referring to of Pope Innocent III

You should look at sin as God sees it. In order to dispose yourself to do this, you should henceforth look at sin, not as it is seen by men, with their carnal and blinded vision, but as God sees it, with eyes enlightened by His Divine light; in other words, you should see it with the eyes of faith. By this light you will see that sin, in so far as it is in a certain sense infinitely contrary and opposed to God, and is a privation of an infinite good, which is God, contains in itself a malice, madness, ugliness and horror that are just as great, in their own way, as God's infinite goodness, wisdom, beauty and holiness (St. Thomas, Summa, 3a, Q. l). Therefore sin deserves to be hated and fought to the same degree in which God deserves to be sought and loved. You will see that sin is so horrible, so horrible a thing that it can be obliterated only by the blood of a God; so detestable that it can be destroyed only by the death of a God-Man, so abominable that it can be worthily repaired only by the labors, agonies and death, and infinite merits of a God.

St. John Eudes, The Four Foundations of Sanctity

In my helplessness the Holy Scriptures and the Imitation of Christ are of the greatest assistance… It is from the Gospels, however, that I derive most help in the time of prayer; I find in their pages all that my poor soul needs, and I am always discovering there new lights and hidden, mysterious meanings.

St. Therese of the Child Jesus, on meditative reading

When our Divine Savior told His Apostles, and their successors, “Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them,” He meant those words literally and without reservation. Our faith and our confidence in our Savior should be such that we accept this comforting assurance at its full value. Our Savior did not say that your sins might be forgiven, or that they may be forgiven, or anything else of a conditional character. True God and true Man, the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, Jesus your Savior, meant precisely what He said when He instituted the Sacrament of Penance. If the penitent has sorrow for the sin, there are no strings attached to the forgiveness. Nor is it necessary that you be able to shed tears in your sorrow. It is safe to say that sorrow and forgiveness depend in no way on the lachrymal glands.

Boniface McConville, O.F.M., Peace For Troubled Souls

Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the Church.

St. Paul (Col. 1:24)

Testimony for the “heroic” virtue of John XXIII

I’m amazed at finding myself always the same, simple and sincere, calm and serene, and very humbly present to all, as a prisoner of Christ. Pope John XXIII, from Rev.

Joris Capovilla, secretary to Pope John reported to Fr. George Gallaro

The penitential procession called the “Greater Litanies” was fixed on the 25th of April by Pope St. Gregory the Great with the Basilica of St. Peter being the Station. The word Litany means Supplication. Canon Moretti, a learned liturgiologist of the 18th century proved that by the 5th and more likely in the 4th century, April 25th was celebrated at Rome as a day of great solemnity. The faithful went, on that day, to the Basilica of St. Peter in order to celebrate the anniversary of the first entrance of the Prince of the Apostles into Rome, upon which he thus conferred the inalienable privilege of being the capital of Christendom. It is from that day that we count the twenty-five years, two months and some days that St. Peter reigned as Bishop of Rome… When St. Charles Borromeo first took possession of his see of Milan, he found the faithful negligent in the observation letting the clergy go through the Litanies by themselves. He assisted at them himself, and walked bare-footed in the procession. The people soon followed the sainted pastor’s example.

Dom Gueranger, The Liturgical Year

These pan-Christians who turn their minds to uniting the churches seem, indeed, to pursue the noblest of ideas in promoting charity among all Christians: nevertheless how does it happen that this charity tends to injure faith? Everyone knows that John himself, the Apostle of love, who seems to reveal in his Gospel the secrets of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and who never ceased to impress on the memories of his followers the new commandment "Love one another," altogether forbade any intercourse with those who professed a mutilated and corrupt version 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." For which reason, since charity is based on a complete and sincere faith, the disciples of Christ must be united principally by the bond of one faith. Who then can conceive a Christian Federation, the members of which retain each his own opinions and private judgment, even in matters which concern the object of faith, even though they be repugnant to the opinions of the rest? And in what manner, We ask, can men who follow contrary opinions, belong to one and the same Federation of the faithful? For example,… those who adore Christ really present in the Most Holy Eucharist through that marvelous conversion of the bread and wine, which is called transubstantiation, and those who affirm that Christ is present only by faith or by the signification and virtue of the Sacrament…

Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos

Nothing is greater or holier than the unbloody sacrifice of the Mass, in which the body and blood of Christ are offered to God for the salvation of all. Holy Mother the Church has always been careful and diligent in order that the Mass be celebrated by priests with clean and pure hearts. It should be celebrated with the proper splendor of sacred ceremonies and rites so that the greatness of this mystery will shine forth all the more even from external appearances. This will also arouse the faithful to the contemplation of divine things hidden in such an admirable and venerable sacrifice.

Blessed Pope Pius IX, Amantissimi Redemptoris

The intention of Paul VI with regard to what is commonly called the Mass, was to reform the Catholic liturgy in such a way that it should almost coincide with the Protestant liturgy – but what is curious is that Paul VI did that to get as close as possible to the Protestant Lord’s supper… there was with Paul VI an ecumenical intention to remove or at least to correct, or at least to relax, what was too Catholic, in the traditional sense, in the Mass and, I repeat, to get the Catholic Mass closer to the Calvinist Mass.

Jean Guitton, personal friend and confidant of Pope Paul VI

The ‘Springtime of Vatican II’ drifting “into the Desert of Godlessness”!

Jesus, at whose name every knee in heaven and earth bends (Phil. 2: 10), is made an object of fun. We are shocked to see to what levels of brutality human beings can sink. Jesus is humiliated in new ways even today: when things that are most Holy and Profound in the Faith are being trivialized; the sense of the sacred is allowed to erode; the religious sentiment is classified among unwelcome leftovers of antiquity.

Everything in public life risks being desacralized: persons, places, pledges, prayers, practices, words, sacred writings, religious formulae, symbols, ceremonies. Our life together is being increasingly secularized. Religious life grows diffident. Thus we see the most momentous matters placed among trifles, and trivialities glorified. Values and norms that held societies together and drew people to higher ideals are laughed at and thrown overboard. Jesus continues to be ridiculed! We have faith, Lord, but not enough. Help us to have more (Mk. 9:24). May we never question or mock serious things in life like a cynic. Allow us not to drift into the desert of godlessness.

Pope Benedict XVI, Reflections delivered on Good Friday during the Way of the Cross, 2009

The faith of those who live their faith is a serene faith. What you long for will be given you; what you love will be yours forever. Since it is by giving alms that everything is pure for you, you will also receive that blessing which is promised next by the Lord: the Godhead that no man has been able to see. In the inexpressible joy of this eternal vision, human nature will possess what eye has not seen or ear heard, what man's heart has never conceived.

Pope St. Leo the Great

The faith shall never vary in any age, for one is the faith which justifies the Just of all ages. It is unlawful to differ even by a single word from apostolic doctrine.

Pope St. Leo the Great

Therefore, let the blind and foolish subtlety of heretical impiety be despised. Whosoever continues in heresy is unpardonable, nor can he ever attain forgiveness. They are falling into that blasphemy which shall never be forgiven neither in this world nor in the Judgment to come.

Pope St. Leo the Great

Since they deny the Gospel and contradict the Creed, they cannot celebrate with us. And, although they dare to claim the name of Christ, every creature whose head is Christ scorns them.

Pope St. Leo the Great

Novena Prayer to the Infant of Prague

O Dearest Jesus, tenderly loving us, Thy greatest joy is to dwell among men and to bestow Thy blessings upon us! Though I am not worthy that Thou should behold me with love, I feel myself drawn to Thee, O dear Infant Jesus, because Thou gladly pardon me and exercise Thy almighty power over me.
So many who turned with confidence to Thee have received graces and had their petitions granted. Look upon me as I kneel in spirit before Thy miraculous image on Thine altar in Prague and lay open my heart to Thee, with its prayers, petitions and hopes. Especially the affair of...I enclose in Thy loving Heart. Govern me and do with me and mine according to Thy holy will, for I know that in Thy Divine wisdom and love Thou will ordain everything for the best. Almighty, gracious Infant Jesus, do not withdraw Thy hand from us, but protect and bless us forever. Amen

“Have pity on Me, and I will have pity on you. Give Me My hands (by having the statue repaired), and I will give you peace. The more you honor Me, the more I will bless you.”

Devotion to the divine Infant originated in the heart of St. Teresa of Avila (+1582) and of St. John of the Cross (+1591) who gave it to the Carmelite Order as a spiritual treasure: “Unless you become like one of these little children you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” The miraculous statue of the Infant of Prague was brought from Spain to Prague and enshrined in the Carmelite Church, Our Lady of Victory, in 1628. Following the destructive invasion of the city by the Turks on Pentecost Sunday 1637, Father Cyril of the Mother of God, one of the shrine’s friars, was spoken to by the infant Jesus who encouraged him to repair the broken hands of this statue, promising “The more you honor me, the more I will bless you.”

For those who exercise true Charity for the blighted Hindu

On Good Friday in the traditional Roman rite offered the Church prayed, “for the pagans: that almighty God would remove iniquity from their hearts; that forsaking their idols, they may be converted to the living and true God, and His only Son, Jesus Christ our God and Lord… Almighty and eternal God, who desireth not the death but the life of sinners; mercifully hear our prayer, and deliver them from the worship of idols and for the praise and glory of Thy name, unite them to Thy holy Church. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen”

But it will be said, if the words, the sentiments, the promises of Scripture, are appealed to by the Devil and his disciples, of whom some are false apostles, some false prophets and false teachers, and all without exception heretics, what are Catholics and the sons of Mother Church to do? How are they to distinguish truth from falsehood in the sacred Scriptures? They must be very careful to pursue that course which, in the beginning of this Commonitory, was said that holy and learned men had commended to us, that is to say, they must interpret the sacred Canon according to the traditions of the Universal Church and in keeping with the rules of Catholic doctrine, in which Catholic and Universal Church, moreover, they must follow universality, antiquity, consent.

St. Vincent of Lerins, Commonitory

When the grace of the Holy Ghost enters a soul and is established there, it gushes forth more powerfully than any other spring; it neither ceases, dries up, nor is exhausted. And the Savior, to signify this inexhaustible gift of grace, calls it a spring and a torrent; He also calls it gushing water, to indicate its force and impetus.

St. John Chrysostom

Mortal sin is a deviation from virtue and divine law. The most heinous sin, therefore, is that which separates man from God more than any other. Now, no sin causes a greater separation from God than that of positive infidelity. When the intellect is in error and abandons the knowledge of God, the will follows it and increases in malice in proportion as the intellect turns away from the path of truth, justice, and charity. Each step that such a man takes in the darkness of infidelity, increases the distance that separates him from God. A return from that dangerous course is very difficult, for when the intellect is in error and the will is filled with malice and depravity, all the bonds capable of uniting man to God are torn asunder.

If such men die in this disposition of mind they are infallibly lost, says Saint Thomas. “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” (Heb. 11:6) Those who are not guilty of the sin of infidelity, but commit other grievous sins, are all those unbaptized persons who never had an opportunity of knowing the true religion, or of becoming aware of the obligation of seeking and embracing it, but who do not live up to the dictates of their conscience. This class of infidels will be lost, not on account of their infidelity, which was no sin for them, but on account of other grievous sins which they committed against their conscience. “For whosoever have sinned without the law,” says Saint Paul, “shall perish without the law.” (Romans 2:12)

Fr. Michael Muller, C.SS.R., Questions and Answers on Salvation

THE PASCHAL HARVEST LOW SUNDAY

PRESENCE OF GOD: O, Jesus, I come to You like Thomas; grant that I may not be unbelieving, but faithful.

MEDITATION:

1. Today's liturgy is concerned in a very special way with the newly baptized, who, at the close of Easter week, laid aside the white garments which they had received at the baptismal font. It is actually to them that St. Peter addressed his affectionate recommendation which we read in the Introit of the Mass: “As newborn babes, desire the pure spiritual milk.” These words continue to express the maternal solicitude of the Church for the children whom she has regenerated in Christ, and especially for the newly born. We, too, are the object of this solicitude. Although we were baptized as infants, we can say that every Easter regenerates us in Christ by means of our spiritual resurrection in Him. Therefore, we also must be like “newborn babes” in whom there is no malice, deceit, pride, or presumption, but only candor and simplicity, confidence and love. This is a wonderful invitation to the spiritual childhood which Jesus told us is an indispensable condition for attaining salvation: “Unless you be converted and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 18, 3). Each wave of grace purifies and cleanses our soul from sin and its roots, giving us rebirth to a new life in Christ, a pure, innocent life, which craves only “the pure spiritual milk” of the doctrine of Christ, His love and His grace. Today, however, the Church wishes to turn our desires in a very special way toward faith: that faith which makes us cling to Jesus so as to be taught by Him, and nourished and guided toward eternal life. The Master's words upon which we meditated last week are equally appropriate here: “He that believeth in Me... from within him shall flow rivers of living water... springing up into life everlasting” (Jn 7, 38; 4, 14). Let us draw near to Jesus with the simple, sincere faith of a little child, and He will give us the abundance of His grace as a pledge of eternal life.

2. Today's Gospel (Jn 20, 19‑31) has the particular value of strengthening us in our faith. Thomas' doubt confirms us in the faith, for as St. Gregory says, “His disbelief was more useful to us than the faith of the other Apostles.” If he had not doubted, no man would have “put his finger in the wounds of the nails, nor his hand into the side” of Our Lord. Jesus had pity on the tottering faith of the Apostle, and on ours, too; and He allowed him not only to see Him, as He had allowed the others, but also to touch Him, thereby permitting Thomas, the incredulous, to do what He had not permitted Mary Magdalen, the most faithful one. From this incident we derive a better understanding of God's ways. Whereas He gives sensible consolations and more or less palpable signs of His presence to souls who are still wavering in the faith, He often leads by very obscure paths those who have irrevocably given themselves to Him and on whose faith He can count. God is a Father. He never denies to any soul who seeks Him with sincerity the necessary props to support its faith, but He often refuses to the strong what He grants to the weak. Is this not Jesus' own teaching: “Blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed”? Blessed are they who, in order to believe in God, do not need to see Him or to touch Him and do not require sensible signs, but who can unreservedly affirm: Scio cui credidi, “I know whom I have believed” (2 Tm 1, 12), and I am sure of Him. Faith such as this is more meritorious for us, because, being founded solely on the word of God, it is entirely supernatural. It shows greater honor to God, because it gives Him full credence, without demanding any proof, and because it perseveres even in obscurity and in the midst of the most disconcerting events ‑ even when it seems that heaven is closed and the Lord is deaf to our groanings.

Such a strong faith as this is certainly the fruit of divine grace, but we must prepare ourselves to receive it, both by asking for it in prayer, and by exercising ourselves in this same faith.

COLLOQUY:

My God, give me a simple, pure heart, free of malice and hypocrisy. “O Lord, grant me true purity and simplicity : in my looks, words, heart, intentions, works, and in all my interior and exterior acts. I should like to know, O Lord, what there is in me that impedes these virtues. I shall tell you, O my soul, since I cannot make anyone else understand. Do you know that the obstacle is the smallest glance that is not directed to God, and all the words that are not spoken in praise of Him or for the benefit of your neighbor. Do you know how you drive these virtues out of your heart? You banish them every time you fail to have the pure intention of honoring God or helping your neighbor; you also expel them when you try to cover up and excuse your faults, forgetting that God sees everything, including your heart. O Lord, give me real purity and true simplicity, for You cannot find Your rest in a soul which is without them” (cf. St. Mary Magdalen dei Pazzi).

O Lord, cleanse my heart and lips in the fire of Your charity, so that I may love You and seek You with the purity and simplicity of a child. Give me also the simple faith of a child, faith without a shadow, without uncertainty or useless reasoning; an upright, pure faith which finds its satisfaction in Your word, in your testimony, for in this it is at peace and desires nothing else.

“O Lord, what is it to me whether I feel or do not feel, whether I am in darkness or in light, whether I have joy or suffering, when I can be recollected in the light created in me by Your words? I feel a kind of shame in differentiating between such matters, and while I feel that I am still affected by them, I heartily despise myself for my want of love, but I quickly turn my gaze upon you, my divine Master, to be delivered by You. . .. I will exalt You above Your sweetness and sensible consolations, for I am resolved to pass by all else in order to be united with You” (cf. E.T. 2, 4).

SAINT Pius X is a SAINT because he practiced virtue to an heroic degree in fulfilling the duties of his office. The Novus Ordo “saints,” John XXIII and John Paul II, gave no evidence that they knew what their duties were.

Our Apostolic Mandate requires from Us that We watch over the purity of the Faith and the integrity of Catholic discipline. It requires from Us that We protect the faithful from evil and error; especially so when evil and error are presented in dynamic language which, concealing vague notions and ambiguous expressions with emotional and high-sounding words, is likely to set ablaze the hearts of men in pursuit of ideals which, whilst attractive, are nonetheless nefarious. Such were not so long ago the doctrines of the so-called philosophers of the 18th century, the doctrines of the Revolution and Liberalism which have been so often condemned; such are even today the theories of the Sillon which, under the glowing appearance of generosity, are all too often wanting in clarity, logic and truth. These theories do not belong to the Catholic or, for that matter, to the French Spirit.

St. Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique

“Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.” G.K. Chesterton

It is not Our intention to say that perfection consists in remaining changeless as regards those external forms that the Church through many centuries has assumed. Nor does it consist in being stubbornly opposed to those new forms and habits that are commonly regarded as acceptable and suited to the character of our times. The word, aggiornamento (“a bringing up to date”), made famous by Our Predecessor of happy memory, John XXIII, should always be kept in mind as our programme of action.

Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam, 1964

The devil causes many to believe in vain visions and false prophecies; and strives to make them presume that God and the saints are speaking with them; and they often trust their own fancy. And the devil is also accustomed, in this state, to fill them with presumption and pride, so that they become attracted by vanity and arrogance, and allow themselves to be seen engaging in outward acts which appear holy, such as raptures and other manifestations. Thus they become bold with God, and lose holy fear, which is the key and the custodian of all the virtues; and in some of these souls so many are the falsehoods and deceits which tend to multiply, and so inveterate do they grow, that it is very doubtful if such souls will return to the pure road of virtue and true spirituality.

St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul

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

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

St. Vincent of Lerins, Commonitory

Has Anyone Ever Prayed for the Repose of the Soul of Annibale Bugnini?

(The Consilium) got rid of texts that smacked of a negative spirituality inherited from the Middle Ages. Thus they removed such familiar and even beloved texts as the Libera me, Domine, the Dies irae, and others that overemphasized judgment, fear and despair. These they replaced with texts urging Christian hope and giving more effective expression to faith in the resurrection… the abandonment of the colour black for another which, in the judgment of the episcopal conferences, will inspire a calmer approach to sorrow and suggest a hope that is illumined by the paschal mystery.

Rev. Annibale Bugnini, Liturgical Barbarian

“Legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi, i.e. Let the rule of prayer establish the rule of belief” is commonly expressed as the theological aphorism “lex orandi, lex credenda.”

Reflective of the primacy of prayer over understanding is the semantic development of the term ‘orthodoxy’ in the Christian context. The Classical Greek compound noun orthodoxia originally signified ‘right opinion’. However, since the second component doxa had also the secondary meanings of ‘glory’ and ‘praise’, the word came, in the usage of Greek speaking Christians, to mean ‘right worship’. Hence the Old Slavonic loan-translation pravoslavie (‘orthodoxy’, but literally ‘right praise’) adapted the secondary (Christian) rather than the primary (classical) meaning of orthodoxia. The primacy of worship also belongs to the chronological order, since Christians were worshipping God according to the rites taught to them by the Apostles for almost a century before the writing of the New Testament was complete and the first theological treatises appeared.

Dr. Geoffrey Hull, The Banished Heart

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

St. Louis Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to Mary

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

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

WHOSOEVER wishes to be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith. . . Which Faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish eternally. Now the Catholic Faith is this….

Introduction of the Athanasian Creed

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

St. Vincent Lerins, Commonitory

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

Rev. Denis Fahey

Why the Neo-Modernists Really Dislike St. Thomas and Find Him So Unintelligible!

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

St. Thomas Aquinas

You will see that in prayer you will find more knowledge, more light, more strength, more grace and virtue than you could ever achieve by reading any books, or by great studies. Never consider as wasted the time you spend in prayer. You will discover that in prayer God communicates to you the light, strength, and grace you need.

St. Lucia dos Santos of Fatima

Dead Men Talking -

So that faith can exist, it needs the evidence of the empty tomb. It is necessary, like Peter and John, to lose one's own artificial certainties: then you will have the courage to enter into the void. It is necessary that we find the courage to enter into the "grave of God," which we built as the alleged possession of the truth. The faith in the resurrection in and with Christ is the basis for the emptiness of ourselves.

Easter Greetings to the Franciscans of the Immaculate from Fr. Sabino Ardito, S.D.B. (Salesian) commissar over the Franciscans, who replaced the dead Fr. Volpi, together with his vice-commissars, Fr. Carlo Calloni, OFM and Fr. Gianfranco Ghirlanda, S.J.

“Strictly Speaking” - Catholics cannot without sin “celebrate Protestant Revolt”

Cardinal Müller: Catholics Have No Obligation to Celebrate Protestant Revolt

March 29, 2016: Strictly speaking, we Catholics have no reason to celebrate October 31, 1517, the date that is considered the beginning of the Reformation that would lead to the rupture of Western Christianity.
If we are convinced that divine revelation is preserved whole and unchanged through Scripture and Tradition, in the doctrine of the faith, in the sacraments, in the hierarchical constitution of the Church by divine right, founded on the sacrament of holy orders, we cannot accept that there exist sufficient reasons to separate from the Church.

Eponymous Flower Blog taken from Infocatolica and Chiesa

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

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

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

Layfolk’s Mass Book, 14^th century

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

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

St. Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique

Intercommunion, 7 German bishops write to the Holy See

After the German Bishops Conference’s proposal, the former Holy Office was asked to express their views on the admission of non-Catholic spouse to the Eucharist

Vatican Insider | andrea tornielli | vatican city | 05/04/2018

Vatican Insider.jpg Is it possible for a Protestant faithful to participate in the Eucharist of the Catholic spouse? Last February the German Bishops’ Conference approved by a qualified majority of two thirds, a draft open-ended document, which provided for this possibility “in certain cases”. On 22 March seven bishops from Germany, among whom also the Cardinal of Cologne, Rainer Maria Woelki, wrote to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and to the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, asking for a pronouncement of the Holy See and general criteria valid for the whole Church and not only for one of its regions. [.....]

Think carefully before contributing to any 'official' Catholic charity

‘Alarming’: Archbishop withholds Development and Peace donations over pro-abortion funding

LifeSiteNews | EDMONTON, Alberta, Canada | April 6, 2018 – A Canadian archbishop is withholding funding from Canada’s official Catholic development agency after an internal review by the bishops found as many as 40 of its grantees are in violation of Church teaching. Edmonton Archbishop Richard Smith issued the following pastoral letter this week explaining the decision to deny funding to the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace. LifeSiteNews has reported extensively for years on Development and Peace’s funding of pro-abortion, pro-contraception, and pro-LGBT groups in the developing world.

An Uprising of the Cardinals Has Stopped (For Now) The Bergoglian Heresy on Hell. The Staged Denial and the Risk of Impeachment.

Antonio Socci | April 1, 2018

The falling plaster which fell from the ceiling of St. Peter’s Basilica on Good Friday seems like a symbol of the disastrous Easter 2018 of Pope Bergoglio and his declining pontificate. After months of incidents and slip-ups, now we have the eruption of a new thriller — the interview with Scalfari on hell.

It was supposed to be a high-profile attempt to recover the consensus that Francis is a “revolutionary pope” (he loves to define himself this way), but instead it became a serious misstep. He understood this on Thursday morning when he received a certain very difficult phone call (as we shall see below) and ran for cover.

The Ignored Denial

But on Saturday the Vaticanist website “Il Sismografo” lamented that despite the “denial” of the “alleged sentence attributed to the Pope — something like ‘Hell does not exist’— already now for 48 hours it has caused an avalanche on the web, in every language.”

In fact it made a big splash abroad, but not in the Italian press. And above all — two days after the Vatican “denial” — “Repubblica” has not even mentioned it, as if it was non-existent. Why? Was it not unusual behavior? And why did Italian news outlets keep silent? So as not to step on the feet of the Vatican and “Repubblica”? It’s strange. In fact, this story made the specter of impeachment for heresy hover (and perhaps it still is hovering) over Bergoglio, which could cost him the papacy. Just as there is also hovering a sort of public moral-professional delegitimization over the “lay pope” of the Italian press, Bergoglio’s friend and confidant Eugenio Scalfari. Who is really telling the truth?

Either One or the Other

There are only two possibilities: either Bergoglio did make the explosive heretical affirmations which “The Times” carried with the headline “Pope Francis Abolishes Hell”, or else Scalfari made it all up and thus committed an unheard of professional gaffe which undermines the credibility of “Repubblica”, a very “loud” mistake to make at a time when every day they are decrying “fake news.”

If it’s true that Bergoglio said this, we are looking at the most colossal error in the 2000 year history of the papacy. If it’s not true that he said this, the supposed scoop of “Repubblica” would be the fake news of the century.

One or the other is true. Tertium non datur. There was only one possible third explanation that could have patched the hole at best, but in the Vatican they did not choose to make it. In fact — assuming that Scalfari did not render a sound account of their discussion about Hell — the matter could be finished if the press office had admitted that the two spoke about eschatological themes but that Scalfari completely misunderstood what the Pope said.

It would have been enough if the Pope, through his spokesman, restated his firm and convinced refutation of the heretical statements and his clear and explicit adherence to the Creed of the Church, adding that there was a colossal misunderstanding.

That would have made Scalfari very wrong and appear totally incompetent, but it would have closed the case. But that is not what the Vatican “denial” said.

They Are Telling Us The Truth

In fact the Vatican did not deny that the two spoke on this topic, and they did not say that Scalfari misunderstood, but only affirmed that Scalfari’s text was “the fruit of his reconstruction” in which “the actual words [of the Pope] were not recorded.”

But what were the actual words? Why won’t they reveal them?

Every published interview is a reconstruction. The Vatican should tell us if Bergoglio disavows and rejects the statement that was attributed to him or not (that unrepentant souls “are not punished…there is no hell, only the disappearance of sinful souls”). Why hasn’t it done that? Authentic Catholic intellectuals in America have also asked the same thing: Why hasn’t the Vatican denied the substance of what was said?

The little story of the way Scalfari does his interviews informally without notes is old: it was already put in place by the preceding papal spokesman, Fr. Lombardi, after the first two interview-chats between Scalfari and Bergoglio.

All of the Vatican efforts to distance the pope from what Scalfari wrote were dissolved by the decision of the pope to republish those interviews in a book and thus endorse them. Furthermore, on Thursday Scalfari said that he met Bergoglio for the umpteenth time “by his own invitation.”

“The Times” Believes Scalfari

Why did Bergoglio invite him to speak if he knew there was the risk that Scalfari would make one of his “explosive” non-authorized retellings of their conversation, attributing huge ideas to the pope which he doesn’t really think? Do they want to make us believe that once again, for the umpteenth time, Francis fell for it without wanting it to happen?

There is much that is doubtful. Such as, it is doubtful that “Repubblica” prints any of these interviews without some form of approval by the interested party.

“The Times” talked to an expert who said that on these interviews he “tends to believe Scalfari more than the Vatican,” because if you know that someone distorts your words, “you don’t continue to invite him.”

There is thus a game being played by Scalfari and Bergoglio for over five years now, in which the Argentine pope consents to a sort of double Magisterial track. When he speaks to Catholics he expresses himself a certain vague and theologically ambiguous way. He avoids explicit statements and thus little by little demolishes doctrine (the tactic of boiling frogs slowly).

Meanwhile, he speaks through Scalfari to the secular world, making known his true ideas, which are so totally modern, in order to build up his “revolution” and to have popularity among non-Catholics and the media.

It is no accident that “The Times” article, published on Friday on the front page, accredited Bergoglio’s words as substantially authentic and praised the pope, because with this “suggestion” on the non-existence of Hell he would be seeking “to reconcile the eternal truths with the customs and mentality of modern times.”

Already Stated By Cardinal Martini

As a matter of fact this idea about Hell has been a well known part of progressive theology. Cardinal Martini —who is considered one of the great precursors of this pontificate — in his final months wrote something of the sort in his book/testament:

“I nourish the hope that sooner or later everyone will be redeemed. I am a great optimist…. My hope is that God welcomes everyone, that He is merciful, and becomes ever stronger. On the other hand, naturally, I cannot imagine how people like Hitler or an assassin who abused children can be close to God. It seems easier for me to think that these sort of people are simply annihilated…”

With these ideas, progressive theology wants to be more merciful than God and than Jesus Himself, who in the Gospel describes with terrible words the punishments of Hell. This is the meaning of Bergoglian mercy: to improve the mercy of Jesus.

On Hell, he had allowed Scalfari to scout it out before him. Three times in “Repubblica” in the last few years, Scalfari has already attributed this statement to Bergoglio, without giving a direct quote. The Vatican has never denied it. It drew no reaction from the confused and annihilated Church. And so this time somebody thought that the moment had arrived to put these Bergoglian concepts inside quotation marks. When the interview was published on Thursday morning, there was no denial from the Vatican. Until at 3:00 pm, after several hours of delay, a statement was issued. Why? What happened?

The Revolt

It appears that this time – in the face of a direct quotation from Bergoglio stating two explicit heresies, contradicting two fundamental dogmas of the Church – an important cardinal (non-Italian) was outraged, called several of his colleagues and then, also in their name, directly sought to find out from the pope exactly what this interview could mean – because professing explicit heresy is one of the four reasons the Petrine ministry can be lost.

Bergoglio then consulted with the Sostituto [of the Secretariat of State] Msgr. Becciu and decided to quickly run for cover through his spokesman, while Scalfari, who is in on the game to this very moment, was given a heads-up.

This explains why “Repubblica” made no mention of the “denial” and did not respond to it. But where is this whole thing going to end?

Antonio Socci

On the Doctrinal Authority of Vatican II Council

Let's sum up the facts of the case. We're not dealing with interpretations, or opinions but FACTS regarding the Vatican II. It rests purely on human authority since the Council refused to engage the Church's Attribute of Infallibility, it is nothing more than churchmen teaching by their grace of state. It is nothing more the most extra-ordinary engagement of the authorized ordinary magisterium teaching by their grace of state. Every Catholic is free to disregard or actively oppose any heretical novelty produced by the council.

1. CANON LAW SUPPORTS THE VIEW THAT V2 WAS NOT INFALLIBLE, IN ANY WAY.

Canon Law 749 says that if something is not EXPRESSLY SAID to be infallible, then it's not:
*§3 No doctrine is understood to be infallibly defined unless this is manifestly demonstrated. *

2. VATICAN II'S OWN DOCUMENTS ADMIT IT WAS NOT INFALLIBLE.

From V2's footnotes:
In view of the conciliar practice and the pastoral purpose of the present Council, this sacred Synod defines matters of faith or morals as binding on the Church only when the Synod itself openly declares so.

My note: As a matter of fact, nowhere in the council documents does the Synod openly declare that such and such a doctrine is being defined.

3. POPE PAUL VI ADMITTED PUBLICLY THAT VATICAN 2 WAS NOT INFALLIBLE -- THREE TIMES!

“Today we are concluding the Second Vatican Council. [...] But one thing must be noted here, namely, that the teaching authority of the Church, even though not wishing to issue extraordinary dogmatic pronouncements, has made thoroughly known its authoritative teaching on a number of questions which today weigh upon man's conscience and activity, descending, so to speak, into a dialogue with him, but ever preserving its own authority and force; it has spoken with the accommodating friendly voice of pastoral charity; its desire has been to be heard and understood by everyone; it has not merely concentrated on intellectual understanding but has also sought to express itself in simple, up-to-date, conversational style, derived from actual experience and a cordial approach which make it more vital, attractive and persuasive; it has spoken to modern man as he is.”
(Address during the last general meeting of the Second Vatican Council, December 7, 1965; AAS 58; http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Paul06/p6tolast.htm)

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" There are those who ask what authority, what theological qualification , the council intended to give to its teachings, knowing that it avoided issuing solemn dogmatic definitions backed by the Church's infallible teaching authority. The answer is known by those who remember the conciliar declaration of March 6, 1964, repeated on November 16, 1964. In view of the pastoral nature of the Council , it avoided proclaiming in any extraordinary manner and dogmas carrying the mark of infallibility."
(General Audience , December 1, 1966 published in L'Oservatore Romano 1/21/1966)

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"Differing from other councils , this one was not directly dogmatic, but disciplinary and pastoral."
(General audience August 6, 1975.)

4.  MANY, MANY OTHERS IN ROME HAVE SAID IT IS NOT INFALLIBLE.

Cardinal Ratzinger stated:
"Certainly there is a mentality of narrow views that isolates Vatican II and which provoked this opposition. There are many accounts of it , which give the impression that from Vatican II onward, everything has changed , and what preceded it has no value or, at best , has value in the light of Vatican II..... The truth is that this particular council defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain on a modest level , as merely a pastoral council."

( Address to the Chilean Episcopal Conference , II Sabato 30/7 5/8/1988

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Cardinal Felici elaborated on this to Archbishop Lefebvre († 1991), who narrated his experience.

“These events I was involved in. It is I who carried the signatures to Mgr. Felici, the Council Secretary, accompanied by Mgr. de Proenca Sigaud, Archbishop of Diamantina: and I am obliged to say there occurred things that are truly inadmissible. I do not say this in order to condemn the Council; and I am not unaware that there is here a cause of confusion for a great many Catholics. After all, they think the Council was inspired by the Holy Ghost. “Not necessarily. A non-dogmatic, pastoral council is not a recipe for infallibility." When, at the end of the sessions, we asked Cardinal Felici, “Can you not give us what the theologians call the “theological note of the Council?”” he replied, “We have to distinguish according to the schemas and the chapters those which have already been the subject of dogmatic definitions in the past; as for the declarations which have a novel character, we have to make reservations.”

(An Open Letter to Confused Catholics, By His Grace Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Chapter 14, “Vatican II is the French Revolution in the Church.”, p. 107)

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John Cardinal Heenan of England stated as follows.
“It deliberately limited its own objectives. There were to be no specific definitions. Its purpose from the first was pastoral renewal within the Church and a fresh approach to the outside.” (Council and Clergy, 1966)

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Bishop Butler of England publicly spoke to the matter twice.
“Not all teachings emanating from a pope or Ecumenical Council are infallible. There is no single proposition of Vatican II – except where it is citing previous infallible definitions – which is in itself infallible.” (The Tablet 26,11,1967)

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Bishop Rudolf Graber wrote as follows.
“Since the Council was aiming primarily at a pastoral orientation and hence refrained from making dogmatically binding statements or disassociating itself, as previous Church assemblies have done, from errors and false doctrines by means of clear anathemas, many questions took on an opalescent ambivalence which provided a certain amount of justification for those who speak of the spirit of the Council.” (Athanasius and the Church of Our Times, 1974)

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Bishop Thomas Morris expressed his relief on the matter.
“I was relieved when we were told that this Council was not aiming at defining or giving final statements on doctrine, because a statement of doctrine has to be very carefully formulated and I would have regarded the Council documents as tentative and likely to be reformed.” (Catholic World News 1,22,1997)

5. POPE PAUL VI REQUIRED "RELIGIOUS SUBMISSION" TO V2, WHICH IS CONDITIONAL ONLY

Paul VI gave the theological note of the revolutionary Council in his Apostolic Brief for its closing, “In Spiritu Sancto”(December 8, 1965), which was read at the closing ceremonies of that day by Archbishop Felici, the General Secretary. Paul VI had already stated in his address concluding the Council the day before that the Council had not “wish[ed] to issue extraordinary dogmatic pronouncements” and therefore was not infallible; Felici went on to explain that Paul VI was making the Council a matter of religious submission, which is the assent given to non-infallible material, as we shall see.

“And last of all it was the most opportune, because, bearing in mind the necessities of the present day, above all it sought to meet the pastoral needs and, nourishing the flame of charity, it has made a great effort to reach not only the Christians still separated from communion with the Holy See, but also the whole human family. […] We decided moreover that all that has been established synodally is to be religiously observed by all the faithful, for the glory of God and the dignity of the Church and for the tranquillity and peace of all men. […] Given in Rome at St. Peter’s, under the [seal of the] ring of the fisherman, Dec. 8, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the year 1965, the third year of our pontificate.”

(In Spiritu Sancto, Walter M. Abbott, SJ, The Documents of Vatican II, pp. 738-9)

Paul VI established at the Council’s end that “all that has been established synodally is to be religiously observed”. The 1983 Code of Canon Law distinguishes the matter of religious submission from infallible, definitive teaching.

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“Can. 752. While the assent of faith is not required, a religious submission of intellect and will is to be given to any doctrine which either the Supreme Pontiff or the College of Bishops, exercising their authentic magisterium, declare upon a matter of faith or morals, even though they do not intend to proclaim that doctrine by definitive act. Christ’s faithful are therefore to ensure that they avoid whatever does not accord with that doctrine.”

So, “religious submission” is given when the Pope, either alone or with his bishops in a council, does not intend to “proclaim doctrine by a definitive act”: therefore the matter of religious submission is not infallible, which is why it does not require “the assent of faith”. IT IS CONDITIONAL.

6.  CAN A NON-INFALLIBLE ECUMENICAL COUNCIL ERR?

Dr. William H. Marshner, Professor of Theology at Christendom College and Theological Editor of Faith and Reason, considers Vatican II’s authority in the Fall, 1983 issue of that journal. The issue was dedicated to Dignitatis humanae and whether it represents continuity or rupture with previous teaching. Marshner concludes that the Declaration on Religious Liberty is consonant with perennial doctrine, but he goes on to acknowledge certain other possibilities:

“At the same time, however, I join with all other theologians in saying that the new ground is non-infallible teaching. So when I say that the possibility exists that Vatican II is wrong on one or more crucial points of Dignitatis humanae, I do not simply mean that the Council’s policy may prove unfruitful. I mean to signal a possibility that the Council’s teaching is false.

But may a Catholic theologian admit that such a possibility exists? Of course he may. The decree (sic) Dignitatis humanae is a non-infallible document, and the teaching which it presents is admitted to be a “new development,” hence not something which is already acknowledged dogma ex magisterio ordinario. Therefore the kind of religious assent which Catholics owe to that teaching is the kind of assent which does not exclude the logical possibility that the teaching is wrong; rather our assent excludes any probability that the teaching is wrong.[20]

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This synthesis agrees with that of Mr. Michael Davies, a Traditionalist apologist, where he cites a pre-Vatican II Benedictine theologian to this same effect:In a profound study intended to enhance the authority of the Ordinary Magisterium, Dom Paul Nau, O.S.B., cites a number of authors who reckon the duty of Catholics when confronted with a document of the Ordinary Magisterium “to be that of inward assent, not as of faith, but as of prudence, the refusal of which could not escape the mark of temerity, unless the doctrine rejected was an actual novelty or involved a manifest discordance between the pontifical affirmation and the doctrine which had hitherto been taught.”[23]

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The final theologian we will cite regarding the possibility of error in Vatican II is Cardinal Avery Dulles. In discussing the four categories of Church teaching we have employed, he labels Vatican II’s teachings exactly as we have:
The third category has long been familiar to Catholics, especially since the popes began to teach regularly through encyclical letters some two centuries ago. The teaching of Vatican II, which abstained from new doctrinal definitions, falls predominantly into this category. In view of the mission given by Christ to the hierarchical magisterium, it is evident that when the magisterium formally teaches something as Catholic doctrine, it is not uttering a mere opinion that Catholics are free to disregard. The teaching has a real, though not unconditional, claim on the assent of the faithful.[24]

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J. Robert Dionne, who produced “the most exhaustive investigation of the so-called ‘reversals’ of ordinary papal teaching”:
Dionne maintains that reversals occurred in Catholic doctrine regarding non-Christian religions, religious freedom, the ideal of church-state relations, the identity (or non-identity) between the Mystical Body of Christ and the Catholic Church, and the theology of church membership. On these and other issues, he contends, historical scholarship does not support the “maximalist” position that the ordinary magisterium of the pope is equipped with the charism of infallibility. To deny on principle that ordinary papal teaching can be corrected would be, in effect, to assert that all of it is definitive, and that none of it can pertain to the third and fourth categories in the CDF instruction.[29]

7.  CONCLUSION: VATICAN II IS NOT INFALLIBLE, ONLY REQUIRES "CONDITIONAL" RELIGIOUS ASSENT, AND THUS, IN ITS NOVELTIES, IT CAN ERR.

Pax Vobis, CathInfo post

Pope Francis: 'There Is No Hell'

CNSNEWS.COM | Michael W. Chapman | March 29, 2018

In another interview with his longtime atheist friend, Eugenio Scalfari, Pope Francis claims that Hell does not exist and that condemned souls just "disappear." This is a denial of the 2,000-year-old teaching of the Catholic Church about the reality of Hell and the eternal existence of the soul.

The interview between Scalfari and the Pope was published March 28, 2018 in La Repubblica. The relevant section on Hell was translated by the highly respected web log, Rorate Caeli.

The interview is headlined, "The Pope: It is an honor to be called revolutionary." (Il Papa: “È un onore essere chiamato rivoluzionario.")

Scalfari says to the Pope, "Your Holiness, in our previous meeting you told me that our species will disappear in a certain moment and that God, still out of his creative force, will create new species. You have never spoken to me about the souls who died in sin and will go to hell to suffer it for eternity. You have however spoken to me of good souls, admitted to the contemplation of God. But what about bad souls? Where are they punished?"

Pope Francis says, "They are not punished, those who repent obtain the forgiveness of God and enter the rank of souls who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot therefore be forgiven disappear. There is no hell, there is the disappearance of sinful souls."

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: "The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hee and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, 'eternal fire.' The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs." (1035)

The Catechism further states, "The affirmations of Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church on the subject of hell are a call to the responsibility incumbent upon man to make use of his freedom in view of his eternal destiny. They are at the same time an urgent call to conversion: 'Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.'

"Since we know neither the day nor the hour, we should follow the advice of the Lord and watch constantly so that, when the single course of our earthly life is completed, we may merit to enter with him into the marriage feast and be numbered among the blessed, and not, like the wicked and slothful servants, be ordered to depart into the eternal fire, into the outer darkness where 'men will weep and gnash their teeth.'"

Pope Benedict XVI said in a 2007 sermon, “Jesus came to tell us that he wants us all in Heaven and that Hell, of which so little is said in our time, exists and is eternal for those who close their hearts to his love.”

As for the human soul, the Catholic Church teaches that it is eternal, immortal in countless places throughout the Catechism. One instance, "Endowed with 'a spiritual and immortal' soul, the human person is 'the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake.' From his conception, he is destined for eternal beatitude."

COMMENT: The Vatican issued a statement that Scalfari's comments may not necessarily be true because he does not actually quote what Pope Francis said. But this is nothing new. Scalfari, the 93 year-old atheist and Bergoglio intimate, never takes notes during interviews with Francis and his reporting is typically is a paraphrase of what was said. Pope Francis has given several interviews with his good friend and if Scalfari was reporting things that Francis did not say and need to be qualified by Vatican officials, why does he continue to give him interviews? The Vatican qualification does not deny that Francis denied the eternal punishment of Hell, it just says that Scalfari may be a liar. But there is no evidence of this so it is nothing more than calumny by the Vatican against Scalfari.

There is one that humbleth himself wickedly, and his interior is full of deceit.

Ecclus. 19:23

A Historical Indictment by Antonio Socci’s La Profezia Finale

“Yet you, Holy Father, who are always cold and detached regarding the dogma of the Church, have uncritically wed yourself to absurd ecological dogmas … making a granitic profession of faith in that absurd climatist ideology… [I]t is improper and ridiculous that a Pope makes the climate and the environment (to which he dedicated the first encyclical he penned) the heart of his preaching… The Lord did not say: ‘Convert and believe in global warming,’ but rather: “Convert and believe in the Gospel.” And He never commanded: ‘Separate your refuse’ but rather ‘Go and baptize all peoples’“ (p. 134)..... “But above all, Father Bergoglio [a reference to the Pope’s penchant for introducing himself thus], how is it possible that you do not notice and do not indicate other emergencies than those of the climate, or at least with equal insistence? The apostasy of entire peoples from the faith of the true God is not a drama that merits your most ardent appeals? The war against the family and against life? The neglect of Christ and the massacre of Christian communities? It seems that only the environment and other themes of the religion of political correctness merit your passion.
“A great French intellectual, Alain Finkielkraut, has described you as “Supreme Pontiff of the world journalistic ideology.” Is he wrong? Does he exaggerate?
“In effect, in ‘your’ Church it seems that the themes of separating refuse and recycling take precedence over the tragedy of entire peoples who, in the turn of a few years, have abandoned the faith. You sound the alarm over “global warming” while the Church for two millennia has sounded it concerning the fire of Hell” (p. 142).

“Before the spiritual catastrophe of the eternal perdition of multitudes, which induced the mother of God to come earnestly to Earth, I find it frankly incomprehensible that you preoccupy yourself for the most part—as you did in your encyclical Laudato si —with biodiversity, the fate of worms and little reptiles, the lakes, and the abuse of plastic bottles and air-conditioning” (p. 148).

“I invite you, reread attentively these words because they describe dramatically what is occurring during your pontificate. In fact, it is precisely you personally, Holy Father, who accuse of ‘fundamentalism’ those who have a clear and certain faith and bear witness to their fidelity to Catholic doctrine….
“You, curiously, are convinced that the danger for the Church of today is Christians fervent in their faith and those pastors who defend the Catholic creed. In your Evangelii gaudium you attack “some who dream of a monolithic doctrine” and those who “use a language completely orthodox.”
“Should we then prefer those who are carried here and there by every ideology and use heretical language? Evidently yes, seeing that they are never attacked by you.
“If one chooses any day, one will almost always find that you, in your discourse, attack those you call ‘rigorists,’ ‘rigid,’ that is, men with fervent faith, whom you identify with ‘Scribes and Pharisees’“ (p. 153-155).
“(You)should overcome your personal resentment toward those who have studied; you should know that, in the Christian horizon, it is completely absurd to oppose mercy to Truth, because both are incarnated in the same Jesus Christ. Thus it is false to oppose doctrine to the pastoral, because that would be to oppose the Logos (doctrine) to the Good Shepherd (the Truth made flesh): Jesus is the Logos (the Truth made flesh) and, at the same time, the Good Shepherd” (p. 159).

“… closed hearts that often hide even behind the teaching of the Church, or behind good intentions, to sit in the chair of Moses and judge, sometimes with superficiality and superiority, to judge difficult cases and wounded families….
“The true defenders of doctrine are not those who defend the letter but the spirit; not the idea but the man; not the formula, but the gratuitous love of God and of his pardon.”
“So doing, do you not think that you have disqualified your predecessors and all the Magisterium of the Church, in order to affirm your strictly personal concept of mercy different from the doctrine of the Church?...
“Evidently, even Jesus would have been, according to you, doctrinaire, a rigorist, one who defends the idea instead of the man.
“In effect—applying your criterion—we would have to say that Jesus would not have been accepted to a seminary during your pontificate because he was the most fundamentalist of all; in fact, not only was he certain of the truth, but he proclaimed himself the Truth made flesh (‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.’ Jn 14, 6).”

Antonio Socci’s La Profezia Finale

Old news for faithful Catholics but now it is published in popular media outlets!

SundayReview | Op-Ed Columnist

Pope Francis Is Beloved. His Papacy Might Be a Disaster

NewYorkTimes | Ross Douthat | MARCH 16, 2018

The papal plan for a truce is either ingenious or deceptive, depending on your point of view. Instead of formally changing the church’s teaching on divorce and remarriage, same-sex marriage, euthanasia — changes that are officially impossible, beyond the powers of his office — the Vatican under Francis is making a twofold move. First, a distinction is being drawn between doctrine and pastoral practice that claims that merely pastoral change can leave doctrinal truth untouched. So a remarried Catholic might take communion without having his first union declared null, a Catholic planning assisted suicide might still receive last rites beforehand, and perhaps eventually a gay Catholic can have her same-sex union blessed— and yet supposedly none of this changes the church’s teaching that marriage is indissoluble and suicide a mortal sin and same-sex wedlock an impossibility, so long as it’s always treated as an exception rather than a rule. (excerpt)

Vatican Treason Against Faithful Catholics

Police seize Chinese bishop who was asked to stand aside by Vatican

Catholic Herald | by Staff Reporter | March 27, 2018

Bishop Vincent Guo Xijin had reportedly refused to concelebrate Mass with an excommunicated government-backed bishop

One of the Chinese ‘underground’ bishops who was asked by a Vatican delegation to stand aside for a government-backed prelate has been “kidnapped” by police.

Asia News, the outlet of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, reports that Bishop Vincent Guo Xijin of Mindong was taken, along with the diocesan chancellor, after refusing to concelebrate Mass with the government-backed bishop.

Bishop Guo, who is recognised by the Vatican but not by the Chinese government, had recently been asked to make way for excommunicated bishop Vincent Zhan Silu. A Vatican delegation asked Bishop Guo to accept the position of auxiliary bishop under Bishop Zhan as part of a rumoured deal between the Holy See and Beijng.

However, the Office for Religious Affairs reportedly summoned Bishop Guo to a meeting on Monday afternoon, after which he returned to his residence and packed luggage. He was then taken away at 10pm.

The bishop had been held in police custody for 20 days during the Easter season last year.

Chinese Catholics are currently split between those in the ‘underground’ Church who remain loyal to Rome, and those in the Catholic Patriotic Association, which is backed by the government.

The CPA has ordained several bishops without Vatican approval, causing them to be automatically excommunicated. A rumoured deal between Beijing and the Holy See would address the appointment of bishops, a lead to excommunicated bishops being reconciled with the Pope. It is not yet known if Bishop Zhan’s excommunication has been lifted.

Pope Francis opposition to underground Catholic Church places faithful directly under Communist Party control! Become "department" within Party!

Goodbye to the Religious Affairs Bureau: religions are now under the direct control of the Party

AsiaNews.IT | Wang Zhicheng | China-Vatican | Beijing | March 22, 2018

The State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA), also known as the "Religious Affairs Bureau ", so far under the authority of the Council of State, has passed under the direct rule of the Communist Party. The move is among a detailed program of reforms on the Party and the state institutions released yesterday.

The decision to eliminate SARA was passed in the third plenary session of the 19th Communist Party’s Central Committee in late February. Part of the program was reviewed in the recently concluded National People’s Congress, China’s parliament. Detail of the program was made public on March 21, with indication that the reform should be implemented by the end of 2018.

Among the reforms, religious affairs are now managed by the United Front Work Department (UFWD), an organ of the Communist Party’s Central Committee, whose main function is to manage relations with the non-Communist elite, including individuals and organizations, such as religious groups. Also now under the management of the UFWD are the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office and the Ethnic Affairs Commission, both also originally under the State Council.

The structural change received mixed views among Chinese Christians and observers. “There won’t be big change to religious environment, neither loosen nor tighten. It is only a change on management structure and they will do the same thing,” said Father Liu, a priest who serves in a Southern province.

“The reform is to put all authority under the Party, no more sharing power with the State Council,” said a Chinese observer who asked not to be named. However, he agreed that there is nothing to surprise as the UFWD has always been the supervising unit of the SARA, adding that the UFWD will still keep the signboard of the SARA as it needs an executive office to implement the work.

“The move could unify different voices on the management of religions,” the observer said, noting that religious management could involve a number of departments, such as national security, public security, buildings and education, etc.

But Eric Lai, a Catholic commentator, sees the move shows the Chinese Communist Party no more regards religion as a target to liaise but actively using it as a tool to maintain stability.[.....] Ying Fuk-tsang, director of the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Divinity School, also questioned on his Facebook if this is “reform or moving backward?”

“Religion is a citizen’s basic rights endowed by the Constitution. If it is assigned as specialized duty of the Party, this is undoubtedly a major change in the religious work since the founding of the Communist-rule China. It reflects the unlimited expansion of the Party’s power, interfering directly the basic rights of citizens. This kind of retrogression is definitely negative for the development of religious freedom in China,” he said.

Following closely recent China-Vatican developments, the Protestant professor said he “could not help but ask whether Vatican recognized these facts or still believe in wishful thinking that China’s freedom of religion is stepping forward to the bright side and that the Chinese citizens’ religious freedom will be fully safeguard?”

“Or will the Holy See make another interpretation to justify the Party's leadership over religions, and believe that it could bring greater space for freedom of religion in China by its own efforts?”

On the same day of the official announcement, SARA director Wang Zuoan held a meeting for all staff to relate the spirit of the deepened reforms. According to the SARA’s website, he said the decision “fully demonstrates the Party’s central high priority for religious work and is more conducive to strengthening and improving the Party’s leadership in religious work.” [.....]

Remember in your charity the following pray requests:

Please remember our expectant mothers: Andrea Ebert, Vanessa LoStracco, and Carmen Carrol,

Luis Rafael Zelaya, the brother of Claudia Drew, who is seriously ill,

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,

John and Joann DeMarco, for their health and spiritual welfare,

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

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

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

The health and spiritual welfare of Tom Grow, Amanda Gardner, and Alex Estrada,

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 Donahy, who is recovering from a stroke,

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

Mufide Rende, a traditional Catholic from India has asked our prayers for her welfare,

Mary and Bill Glatz, the welfare of their family,

Barbara Harmon, who is gravely ill, and still cares for her ailing parents,

Jason Green, a father of ten children who has been seriously injured,

For the health and welfare of Kolinsky and Sorace families,

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

Janine Mullen, for her health and help for her family,

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

Carlo A. De Porto, who is in failing health,

Welfare of Bishop Richard Williamson, for strength and courage in the greater battles to come,

John Rhoad, for his health and spiritual welfare,

Angelina Montesano family & Helen Snyder, for their health and spiritual welfare,

Kathy Boyle, requests our prayers for her welfare,

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 David Keithley and the welfare of the Nathaniel Miller family, are the petitions of Gene Peters,

The Drews ask your intercession for the welfare of Brendan McGuire, a young father of three, who has been diagnosed with cancer,

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

Fr. Waters requests our prayers for Br. Rene, SSPX who has been ill, and for Fr. Thomas Blute,

Rose Cuono, who is in failing health,

For the health and welfare of Kathryn Lederhos, the aunt of David Drew,

Fr. Peterson asks our prayers for Charles Valenti, and his wife, Julia,

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

The Drew’s ask our prayers for the welfare of Joe & Tracy 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, prayers for his mother, the Mission of St. Philomena in Miami, and the welfare of 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,

For the welfare of Anthony & Joyce Paglia, who are responsible for the beautiful statuary in our chapel,

Philip Thees asks our prayers for his family, for McLaughlin Family, the conversion of Bruce Heller, & Janet Gardner, the welfare of Dan Polly Weand, the conversion of Sophia Herman, Tony Rosky, and Carl Ropeter, the welfare Nancy Erdeck, the wife of the late Deacon Erdeck, and the welfare of Frank D’Agustino who is ill, the health of Charles Kanaskie, and the health of his brother, Thomas Thees, John Calasanctis, Stephen Cagorski, Tony Rosky, John Bogda, and Maryann Reutter.

Pray for the Repose of the Souls:

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 17, 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,

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,

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,

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,and Rev. Hector Bolduc, who died September 10,

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,

Regina Spahalsky, 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,

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 6th,

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. James Francis Wather, 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 Sonya Kolinsky.

Fr. Waters - persecuted by those who hope that “true Liturgy shall become extinct.”

The holy Fathers who have written upon the subject of anti-Christ, and of the prophecies of Daniel, without a single exception, as far as I know - and they are the Fathers both of the East and of the West, the Greek and the Latin Church - all of them unanimously say that in the latter end of the world, during the reign of anti-Christ, the Holy sacrifice of the Altar will cease. In the work of the end of the world ascribed to St. Hippolytus, after a long description of the afflictions of the last days, we read as follows: “The Churches shall lament with a great lamentation, for there shall be offered no more oblation nor worship acceptable to God. The sacred buildings of the churches shall be as hovels; and the precious Body and Blood of Christ shall not be manifest in those days; the true Liturgy shall become extinct.... Such is the universal testimony of the Fathers of the early centuries.”

Cardinal Henry Edward Manning

Our Lady of Good Success (Fortune) to the Catholics of Today

My Beloved Daughter, I am Mary of Good Success, your Mother and your Protectress, I carry my most Holy Son in my left arm and the scepter of the world in my right arm…. The sanctuary lamp which you just saw go out has several meanings.

Firstly, towards the end of the nineteenth century and during a large part if the twentieth century there will arise various errors and the whole universe will become Republican. The precious light of faith will be going out following on the almost complete destruction of morals; in that time there will be many tribulations, moral tribulations also, both public and private. The little group of people who keep the true worship of faith and the virtues will have to suffer cruelly and indescribably. The constant martyrdom will bring many to an early death, they will be counted amongst the martyrs, they have sacrificed themselves for Church and country. In order to deliver oneself from the slavery of these errors one will need great strength of will, perseverance, courage and a great trust in God. These are gifts of the merciful love of my Divine Son, He has provided them for the renewal. In order to test the faith and the trust of the just and good men there will be moments when everything seems to be lost and paralyzed but that is the moment in which the happy beginning of the complete renewal starts.

Secondly, my communities will be abandoned, sunk in an abyss, a deep ocean of bitterness and they will seem to be satiated with sufferings and afflictions. How many good vocations are lost because of lack of good and prudent spiritual direction; the Novice Mistresses should take great care of the prayers of the novices and they should show understanding of souls.

The Third reason for the extinguishing of the sanctuary lamp is the spirit of impurity of those times, the air will be filled with this unclean spirit. A flood of filth will overflow the streets, the squares, and all public places so that there will be no virginal souls left in the world.

Fourthly, in all layers of society errors will strive with great cunning to penetrate into the families in order to corrupt the youth too; Satan will congratulate himself that he can feed himself in the fouled way on the hearts of the children. The innocence of children will hardly exist anymore. Priestly vocations will be lost. That will be a true misfortune and priests will turn away from their holy duties and enter upon a false, wrong course, and therefore the Church will go dark. No prelate and father will be watching any longer with love, strength and prudence over this flock, and many of the prelates will lose the spirit of God and bring their own souls into danger. Pray constantly, call upon heaven without tiring, and weep without ceasing inwardly in your heart and pray to the Heavenly Father through the Eucharistic Heart of my Divine Son Who has nobly shed blood.

Out of the bitterness and pains of His sufferings and death, pray that He will have compassion upon His servants, that He will bring an end to this terrible scourge by sending to the Church a prelate to renew the spirit of His priests. My Divine Son and I will surround this beloved son with a special love, we shall pour out a heap of many graces of humility of heart and docility towards God’s inspirations, and the strength to defend the rights of the Church so that he will know how to defend the rights of the Church with a heart which enables him to behave like another Christ towards the mighty people of this world and the little people of this world without despising the unfortunate ones. He will, with a divine gentleness, lead into the convents and monasteries souls consecrated to God for the service of God without making the yoke of the Lord heavy upon them. He holds in his hands the scales of sanctity in order that everything happen according to the weight and measure so that God be glorified.

This prelate and father will form a counter-weight against the lukewarmness of priests and religious who are meant to be dedicated to God. As a result of the guilt of these faithless men, Satan will gain upon earth control of this world like a dark cloud which darkens the sky and darkens all of the people who are consecrated to the Most Holy Heart of my Divine Son. All will have to suffer chastisements because all kinds of crimes have been allowed. They will suffer pestilence, hunger, civil strife, degeneration of morals and the loss of countless souls. In order to blow away the black clouds which block the shining holiness and the freedom of the Church there will be a fearful war in which much blood will flow of priests and religious. This night will be so terrible that people will think that wickedness is conquering. Then strikes my heart and in a most sudden way I shall annihilate the pride of Satan, I shall assist and liberate the Church and country from his cruel tyranny.

The Fifth reason why the sanctuary lamp went out is that influential men will watch with indifference, uncaringly, the oppression of the Church, the persecution of virtue and the triumph of wickedness. Because these influential people will not use their position of influence in order to combat evil or to renew the faith, the people will gradually become indifferent to the demands of God, they will take on an evil spirit and let themselves be swept away in all kinds of passion and vice. My beloved daughter, were you to live that terrible time you would die of pain or grief over the circumstances which I have described to you. The love of my Holy Son and mine which we have for this world which is our property demand from now on sacrifices and good works in order that the duration of this terrible catastrophe will be shortened.

The Blessed and ever Virgin Mary, under the title of Our Lady of Good Success, to Sister Maria Anna of Jesus, in the Convent of the Immaculate Conception in Quito on the 2^nd February, 1634. Sister was praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament when suddenly the sanctuary lamp went out.

And Novus Ordo Neo-Modernism is no different in its ends!

The opening of Vatican II John XXIII declared that there existed a disjunction between dogma and its "external formula or terminology"!

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^{1}. Once the Holy Spirit, speaking through the supreme magisterium^{2} of the Church, defines a doctrine as de fide^{3} the dogma in question remains, both in se^{4} 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.

{1} Ecclesia docens -- i.e., 'the teaching Church.'

{2} Magisterium = 'teaching authority.'

{3} De fide = 'what is of faith.'

{4} In se = 'in itself.'

Rev. Father Norbert Jones, C.R.L., Old Truths, Not Modernist Errors, Exposure of Modernism and Vindication of its Condemnation by the Pope, 1908

Why the Cross?

The thoughtful ones of earth contemplating the scene presented by a human activity that continually changes its purpose and is powerless to assign itself any purpose that human reason cannot instantly question, must feel the pathos of much well-meaning and humanitarian effort. Great generosity is shown and real kindness is spent in praiseworthy attempts to arrest the ravages of mortality, especially amongst the young. “Save the children” is an appeal that finds a ready response in the hearts of the humane and the kindly. Not with cynicism, but with real sympathy, one may ask, “Save them for what?” Is it for the adult life that frets itself away in vain endeavours to assign itself an adequate reason for living? Is it worthwhile to preserve children for what any person would logically confess to be not worth while? [Footnote: There is question only of those who have not the view of the aims and objects of life as furnished by the true faith or even by sound philosophy.] Is this charity of the kind-hearted dictated by the hope that somehow life for these children may prove different to what it has been for those who have tried to save them from death and disease? Are there grounds for hope that the little ones when come to adult age will light on, by chance, a solution of the problem of existence that has evaded their grown-up benefactors? What is the use of bestowing health unless there can be given with it the key to such a use of life as will issue in happiness? Life is a precious gift when it is accompanied by the knowledge of how to live rightly and the means to exercise this right living. […..]

Death is not a break, but a stepping stone by which one passes from one stage to another in the same existence. But man will perversely and blindly strive to effect a cleavage in that line and persuade himself that the good of the human life that precedes death can be different from the good of human life that follows death. The result is that he is necessarily at cross-purposes with God. It is not surprising that the creature, seeking to gain the goal of life — namely happiness — by a use of life’s powers and energies at variance with the design of the Creator, should be continually frustrated in his main object, should enjoy no peace, and should be involved in contradiction and become a prey to perpetual dissatisfaction. What is the way out of this impasse? The way out is through a thorough understanding of the religion of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and a practice based on such understanding.[…..]

The [Gospel] passages that reveal Jesus in the exercise of works of mercy, in healing disease, in consoling grief and in overcoming death, are given an undue emphasis. In this way the central truth is obscured, the truth, namely, that the conflict of the Redeemer was primarily with spiritual evil and only incidentally with physical evil. His purpose was to banish from earth the ills that appear to God as such, not those that appear so to the pain-dreading nature of man… The gospel is not a record of a more less successful philanthropic mission.

…To Christians, who persist in thinking that the function of Christianity is to provide men with good things and banish from their life evil things — understanding by good and evil what appear such to fallen human nature — life will speedily prove unintelligible. To men with such views the mystery of pain becomes insoluble. In the face of the harsh realities of existence their belief stands condemned. They have no answer to give to the ever-recurring question: if God is kind and good and tender towards human suffering, why does suffering continue to be not only for those that deserve it, but also for those who do not?

That Jesus, in His power and goodness, did not put an end to all human suffering shows that, in His eyes, suffering is not the real source of human unhappiness.

Rev. Edward Leen, Why the Cross?

“But it did not last long.”

I saw many pastors cherishing dangerous ideas against the Church. . . . They built a large, singular, extravagant church which was to embrace all creeds with equal rights: Evangelicals, Catholics, and all denominations, a true communion of the unholy with one shepherd and one flock. There was to be a Pope, a salaried Pope, without possessions. All was made ready, many things finished; but, in place of an altar, were only abomination and desolation. Such was the new church to be, and it was for it that he had set fire to the old one; but God designed otherwise.
Blessed Anna Katherine Emmerich

I saw also the relationship between the two popes.... I saw how baleful would be the consequences of this false church. I saw it increase in size; heretics of every kind came into the city of Rome. The local clergy grew lukewarm, and I saw a great darkness... Then, the vision seemed to extend on every side. Whole Catholic communities were being oppressed, harassed, confined, and deprived of their freedom. I saw many churches close down, great miseries everywhere, wars and bloodshed. A wild and ignorant mob took to violent action. But it did not last long.
Blessed Anna Katherine Emmerich, May 13, 1820

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

Blessed Pope Pius IX

PREVIOUS BULLETIN POSTS BELOW THAT REMAIN TIMELY:

The Francis/Bergoglio Effect, Kasper doing more "theology on his knees"!

Cardinal Kasper: Homosexual unions are ‘analogous’ to Christian marriage

LifeSiteNews | March 14, 2018 – Cardinal Walter Kasper, whose theology appears to be the chief inspiration for Pope Francis’ doctrine on giving Holy Communion to people living in states of adultery in second marriages, now appears to be claiming that homosexual unions contain “elements” of Christian marriage and are even “analogous” to it in a way that is similar to the relationship between the Catholic Church and non-Catholic Christian communities.

Moreover, the cardinal is attributing his claims to Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, despite the fact that the document explicitly contradicts him.

“The pope does not leave room for doubt over the fact that civil marriages, de facto unions, new marriages following a divorce (Amoris Laetitia 291) and unions between homosexual persons (Amoris Laetitia 250s.) do not correspond to the Christian conception of marriage,” writes Kasper in a recently-released book on Amoris Laetitia.

“He says, however, that some of these partners can realize in a partial and analogous way some elements in Christian marriage (Amoris Laetitia 292),” continues Kasper.

Kasper compares such relationships with the relationship between the Catholic Church and non-Catholic Christian groups, whom Vatican II says contain “elements of sanctification and truth” of the Church.

“Just as outside the Catholic Church there are elements of the true Church, in the above-mentioned unions there can be elements present of Christian marriage, although they do not completely fulfill, or do not yet completely fulfill, the ideal,” adds Kasper. [.....]

Clinton Foundation Data from 2014 TAX YEAR

Have you wondered why the Clinton Foundation folded so suddenly after Hillary was no longer in a position of influence? Perhaps this summary will provide some insight??

They list 486 employees (line 5)! It took 486 people who are paid $34.8 million and $91.3 million in fees and expenses, to give away $5.1 MILLION

This is real. You can check the return yourself (see below). The real heart of the Clintons can be seen here. Staggering but not surprising. These figures are from an official copy of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation for the tax year 2014. The copy of the tax return is from the National Center for Charitable Statistics web site (http://nccs.urban.org/) . You can obtain the latest tax return on any charitable organization there.

The Clinton Foundation:

Number of Employees (line 5) 486

Total revenue (line 12) $177,804,612.00

Total grants to charity (line 13) $5,160,385.00 (this is less than 3%)

Total expenses of $91,281,145.00

Expenses include:

Salaries (line 15) $34,838,106.00

Fund raising fees (line 16a) $850,803.00

Other expenses (line 17) $50,431,851.00 HUH??????

Travel $8,000,000.00

Meetings $12,000,000.00

Net assets/fund balances (line 22) $332,471,349.00

So it required 486 people, who were paid $34.8 million, plus $91.3 million in fees and expenses, to give away $5.1 MILLION! And they call this a CHARITY?

It is alleged that this is one of the greatest white-collar crimes ever committed. And just think---one of the participants was a former president and one wanted to be elected president of the United States. If justice is ever truly served they will both be in prison.

The IRISH Famine: 1845-1852 – or tricks of political persecution the English taught “Uncle” Joe Stalin

FOOD for APOSTASY: What Our Catholics Ancestors Suffered to bring the Holy Faith to Us.

Throughout the entire period of the Famine, Ireland was exporting enormous quantities of food. In Ireland before and after the famine, Cormac O’Grada points out, “Although the potato crop failed, the country was still producing and exporting more than enough grain crops to feed the population. But that was a ‘money crop’ and not a ‘food crop’ and could not be interfered with.”

In History Ireland magazine, Christine Kinealy, a Great Hunger scholar, lecturer, and Drew University professor, relates her findings: Almost 4,000 vessels carried food from Ireland to the ports of Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool and London during 1847, when 400,000 Irish men, women and children died of starvation and related diseases. She also writes that Irish exports of calves, livestock (except pigs), bacon and ham actually increased during the Famine. This food was shipped under British military guard from the most famine-stricken parts of Ireland; Ballina, Ballyshannon, Bantry, Dingle, Killala, Kilrush, Limerick, Sligo, Tralee and Westport. A wide variety of commodities left Ireland during 1847, including peas, beans, onions, rabbits, salmon, oysters, herring, lard, honey, tongues, animal skins, rags, shoes, soap, glue and seed. The most shocking export figures concern butter. Butter was shipped in firkins, each one holding 9 imperial gallons; 41 litres. In the first nine months of 1847, 56,557 firkins (509,010 imperial gallons; 2,314,000 litres) were exported from Ireland to Bristol, and 34,852 firkins (313,670 imperial gallons; 1,426,000 litres) were shipped to Liverpool, which correlates with 822,681 imperial gallons (3,739,980 litres) of butter exported to England from Ireland during nine months of the worst year of the Famine. The problem in Ireland was not lack of food, which was plentiful, but the price of it, which was beyond the reach of the poor.

Celil Woodham-Smith, an authority on the Irish Famine, wrote in The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845-1849 that no issue has provoked so much anger and embittered relations between England and Ireland “as the indisputable fact that huge quantities of food were exported from Ireland to England throughout the period when the people of Ireland were dying of starvation.” […….]

(Protestant) Landlords were responsible for paying the rates of every tenant whose yearly rent was £4 or less. Landlords whose land was crowded with poorer tenants were now faced with large bills. They began clearing the poor tenants from their small plots, and letting the land in larger plots for over £4 which then reduced their debts. In 1846, there had been some clearances, but the great mass of evictions came in 1847. According to James S. Donnelly Jr, it is impossible to be sure how many people were evicted during the years of the famine and its immediate aftermath. It was only in 1849 that the police began to keep a count, and they recorded a total of almost 250,000 persons as officially evicted between 1849 and 1854.

Donnelly considered this to be an underestimate, and if the figures were to include the number pressured into “voluntary” surrenders during the whole period (1846–1854) the figure would almost certainly exceed half a million persons. While Helen Litton says there were also thousands of “voluntary” surrenders, she notes also that there was “precious little voluntary about them.” In some cases, tenants were persuaded to accept a small sum of money to leave their homes, “cheated into believing the workhouse would take them in.”

West Clare was one of the worst areas for evictions, where landlords turned thousands of families out and demolished their derisory cabins. Captain Kennedy in April 1848 estimated that 1,000 houses, with an average of six people to each, had been leveled since November. The Mahon family of Strokestown House evicted 3,000 people in 1847, and were still able to dine on lobster soup.

After Clare, the worst area for evictions was County Mayo, accounting for 10% of all evictions between 1849 and 1854. The Earl of Lucan, who owned over 60,000 acres (240 km²) was among the worst evicting landlords. He was quoted as saying ‘he would not breed paupers to pay priests’. Having turned out in the parish of Ballinrobe over 2,000 tenants alone, the cleared land he then used as grazing farms. In 1848, the Marquis of Sligo owed £1,650 to Westport Union; he was also an evicting landlord, though he claimed to be selective, saying he was only getting rid of the idle and dishonest. Altogether, he cleared about 25% of his tenants.

[……]Calcutta is credited with making the first (relief) donation of £14,000. The money was raised by Irish soldiers serving there and Irish people employed by the East India Company. Pope Pius IX sent funds and Queen Victoria (head of the Church of England) donated £2,000….. (about one brass farthing for every Irish Catholic who starved to death). Wikipedia

It is true that, after his death, (Pope) Honorius was anathematized by the Orientals; but one must remember that he was accused of heresy, the only crime that makes the resistance of inferiors to superiors, as well as the rejection of their pernicious doctrines, legitimate.

Pope Hadrian II

“Against any and all enemies of the Christian name”

Truly in these tumultuous times, in this revolutionary upheaval, all good men must join the burdensome struggle against any and all enemies of the Christian name.[….] For in fact, when a leader of God’s holy Church, under the name of Priest, turns the very people of Christ away from the path of truth toward the peril of an erroneous belief, and when this occurs in a major city, then clearly the distress is multiplied, and a greater anxiety is in order.

Pope Pius VI, Auctorem Fidei, addressed to all the faithful

Pope Francis – his “most gentle manner”!

They (our most holy predecessors) knew the capacity of innovators in the art of deception. In order not to shock the ears of Catholics, the innovators sought to hide the subtleties of their tortuous maneuvers by the use of seemingly innocuous words such as would allow them to insinuate error into souls in the most gentle manner. Once the truth had been compromised, they could, by means of slight changes or additions in phraseology, distort the confession of the faith that is necessary for our salvation, and lead the faithful by subtle errors to their eternal damnation. This manner of dissimulating and lying is vicious, regardless of the circumstances under which it is used. For very good reasons it can never be tolerated in a synod of which the principal glory consists above all in teaching the truth with clarity and excluding all danger of error. Moreover, if all this is sinful, it cannot be excused in the way that one sees it being done, under the erroneous pretext that the seemingly shocking affirmations in one place are further developed along orthodox lines in other places, and even in yet other places corrected; as if allowing for the possibility of either affirming or denying the statement, or of leaving it up the personal inclinations of the individual – such has always been the fraudulent and daring method used by innovators to establish error. It allows for both the possibility of promoting error and of excusing it. It is a most reprehensible technique for the insinuation of doctrinal errors and one condemned long ago by our predecessor St. Celestine, who found it used in the writings of Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, and which he exposed in order to condemn it with the greatest possible severity. Once these texts were examined carefully, the impostor was exposed and confounded, for he expressed himself in a plethora of words, mixing true things with others that were obscure; mixing at times one with the other in such a way that he was also able to confess those things which were denied while at the same time possessing a basis for denying those very sentences which he confessed.

Pope Pius VI, Auctorem Fidei, 1794 papal bull addressed to all the faithful condemning 85 propositions from the Council of Pistoia, 1786

True, Jesus has loved us with an immense, infinite love, and He came on earth to suffer and die so that, gathered around Him in justice and love, motivated by the same sentiments of mutual charity, all men might live in peace and happiness.

But for the realization of this temporal and eternal happiness, He has laid down with supreme authority the condition that we must belong to His Flock, that we must accept His doctrine, that we must practice virtue, and that we must accept the teaching and guidance of Peter and his successors.

Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went astray, He did not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared. He loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save them. Whilst He called to Himself in order to comfort them, those who toiled and suffered, it was not to preach to them the jealousy of a chimerical equality. Whilst He lifted up the lowly, it was not to instill in them the sentiment of a dignity independent from, and rebellious against, the duty of obedience. Whilst His heart overflowed with gentleness for the souls of good-will, He could also arm Himself with holy indignation against the profaners of the House of God, against the wretched men who scandalized the little ones, against the authorities who crush the people with the weight of heavy burdens without putting out a hand to lift them.

He was as strong as He was gentle. He reproved, threatened, chastised, knowing, and teaching us that fear is the beginning of wisdom, and that it is sometimes proper for a man to cut off an offending limb to save his body.

Finally, He did not announce for future society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be banished; but, by His lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the happiness which is possible on earth and of the perfect happiness in heaven: the royal way of the Cross. These are teachings that it would be wrong to apply only to one’s personal life in order to win eternal salvation; these are eminently social teachings, and they show in Our Lord Jesus Christ something quite different from an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism.

Pope St. Pius X, Apostolic Letter, Our Apostolic Mandate

“Going down the synodal path” to Hell! -

The hard sell of heresy from the Vatican with the soft title, “Rejoice with me,” misery loves company!

Divorced and remarried, indications on how to discern case by case

Bishop Semeraro’s pastoral instruction: an application document of “Amoris laetitia” prepared and shared together with the priests

andrea tornielli | vatican city | 08/03/2018

It is a pastoral instruction entitled “Rejoice with me” dedicated to “Welcoming, discerning, accompanying and integrating into the ecclesial community the faithful who have divorced and civilly remarried”. The Bishop of Albano Marcello Semeraro, secretary of the C9, the council of cardinals who helps the Pope in the reform of the Curia and in the governance of the universal Church, is distributing it these days. The peculiarities of the document are two: it is a well-defined application instruction about the topic - described in the subtitle - and at the same time it is a generous document, which, although it doesn’t get into any case studies, it precisely outlines general main guidelines. And it is a document born from a diocesan synodal experience, which involved all the clergy.

Semeraro recalls that in talks with his priests it emerged the number of cases of civilly remarried divorcees who live “in fidelity and with self-sacrifice their marital relationship ”. And that sometimes these faithful are “on the margins, or in the proximity of the ecclesial communities of the diocese”. For this reason, the bishop of Albano chose not to make “a solo journey, but to go down the synodal path” by asking the presbyteral council to devote all ordinary sessions of the pastoral year 2016-2017 “to reflection, to deepening and discernment on the concrete forms of response to the divorced and civilly remarried faithful present in our communities and to our brothers and sisters who ask for a word of consolation and orientation”. The contents of these reflections were then shared and discussed with all the clergy. [.....]

Every single novelty introduced since Vatican II has always been introduced with the assurance that nothing of substance has really changed. Yet everything, without exception, has changed!

In New ‘Amoris Laetitia’ Pastoral Plan, Cardinal Wuerl Shares Missionary Mandate

ANALYSIS

Dominican Father Thomas Petri | Catholic News Agency | Mar. 5, 2018

Since the beginning of the debate on whether Chapter 8 of Pope Francis’ Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love) permits the divorced and civilly married to receive Holy Communion, Cardinal Donald Wuerl has lamented that the exhortation has been co-opted by that single issue and that, really, the Holy Father’s concern is much broader than that debate suggests.

Some people, though, have suggested that the synods and Amoris Laetitia were simply a cover to change the practice of not giving Holy Communion to the divorced and civilly married. In a newly released pastoral plan for the Archdiocese of Washington, Cardinal Wuerl has taken a decided step away from such a cynical view and captured the passion of Pope Francis’ insistence that because we are all in need of it, we must also go out and give God’s mercy and truth to those who do not know it, who are not living it, and who are desperate to receive it.

“Sharing in the Joy of Love in Marriage and Family,” the Archdiocese of Washington's pastoral plan, focuses the implementation of the exhortation not on questions of sacramental doctrine and practice, since these truths have been definitively taught and Church teaching has not changed.
Rather, echoing a cornerstone in the thought of Pope Francis, Pope St. John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI, Wuerl’s plan begins with the principle that “the desire to love and to be loved is a deep, enduring part of our human experience.” This desire is part of God’s providential care for us and his plan for marriage. Echoing a reflection on our need for God that Joseph Ratzinger once made in his Introduction to Christianity, Cardinal Wuerl notes that the joy of love in this life “gives us an invitation to experience Christian hope in the love of God that never ends.”

It’s somewhat surprising that it was thought necessary to hold two synods and to issue an apostolic exhortation to encourage priests and parish leaders to reach out to people living in irregular situations. [etc., etc., etc.....]

So just what has the Novus Ordo Church been “dialoguing” about with the Jews?

“Judeo-Christian tradition does not exist!”

That fabled (Judeo-Christian) tradition does not exist, nor does the “Judeo-Christian ethic.” Though sharing a common origin in the Hebrew Scriptures, the two faiths read the scriptural texts differently. They believe in God, but view Him through different lenses. They each have a story, but they are not the same. They each have a concept of man, but they are not the same. They are both ethical religions, but with separate ideas of man's nature, salvation and destiny.

Raymond Apple, emeritus rabbi of the Great Synagogue, Sydney, Australia. Published in Jerusalem Post

PEW POLL: 95% of Jewish Leaders support abortion and “same-sex marriage.”

The Jewish question of our time does not differ greatly from the one which affected the Christian peoples of the Middle Ages. In a foolish way it is said to arise from hatred towards the Jewish tribe. Mosaism in itself could not become an object of hate for Christians, since, until the coming of Christ, it was the only true religion, a prefiguration of and preparation for Christianity, which, according to God’s Will, was to be its successor. But the Judaism of the centuries [after Christ] turned its back on the Mosaic law, replacing it with the Talmud (ii.), the very quintessence of that Pharisaism which in so many ways has been shattered through its rejection by Christ, the Messiah and Redeemer. And although Talmudism is an important element of the Jewish question, it cannot be said, strictly speaking, to give that question a religious character, because what the Christian nations despise in Talmudism is not so much its virtually non-existent theological element, but rather, its morals, which are at variance with the most elementary principles of natural ethics.

On the Jewish Question in Europe; La Civiltà Cattolica, Series XIV, Vol. VII, 23;10; October 1890

Is new Vatican doc on neo-Pelagianism at odds with Pope’s preferred pejorative?

LifeSiteNews | ROME, March 1, 2018 — In Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis refers to the “self-absorbed promethean neo-Pelagianism of those who ultimately trust only in their own powers and feel superior to others because they observe certain rules or remain intransigently faithful to a particular Catholic style from the past.”

He added that “a supposed soundness of doctrine or discipline leads instead to a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism, whereby instead of evangelizing, one analyzes and classifies others, and instead of opening the door to grace, one exhausts his or her energies in inspecting and verifying.”

Such people, he said in the apostolic exhortation, are not really “concerned about Jesus Christ or others.”

Many have taken the Pope’s comments on neo-Pelagianism to refer to those whom he has said “rigidly” adhere to doctrine and tradition, particularly in light of other similar comments he has made in the course of his pontificate.

In an address on Christian Humanism delivered in Florence’s famous cathedral, Pope Francis said that Pelagianism “prompts the Church not to be humble, selfless and blessed. And it does so with the appearance of being a good.”

“In facing ills or the problems of the Church,” the Pope added, “it is useless to look for solutions in conservatism and fundamentalism, in the restoration of practices and outdated forms that even culturally aren’t able to be meaningful.”

But is this what neo-Pelagianism really means, according to the Vatican?

In a letter released today, targeting neo-Pelagianism and neo-Gnosticism as two contemporary errors that can be obstacles to salvation, the Vatican’s doctrinal office made no connection between these erroneous “tendencies” and Catholics who adhere to the Church’s tradition.

It also doesn’t mention rigidity or anything about neo-Pelagianism meaning those who “observe certain rules or remain intransigently faithful to a particular Catholic style from the past.”

Entitled “Placuit Deo” (In His Goodness), the Letter was signed by Archbishop Luis Ladaria, S.J., prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), and approved by Pope Francis. Its aim is to “demonstrate certain aspects of Christian salvation that can be difficult to understand” in today’s culture.

The document focuses on Neo-Pelagianism and Neo-Gnosticism, which it says are two modern schools of thought that “resemble certain aspects of [the] two ancient heresies” of Pelagianism and Gnosticism. It notes that Pope Francis has often referred to these two “tendencies” in his addresses and homilies.

The letter refers to Neo-Pelagians as individuals who believe themselves to be “radically autonomous,” who presume to be able to save themselves and depend on their own strength. They are unable to recognize that they derive “from God and from others.” Such ways of thinking are “incapable of welcoming the newness of the Spirit of God,” it says.

Classical Pelagianism was the heresy of Pelagius, a British priest of the fifth century, who stated that humans are on their own, without need of grace, and could initiate their own salvation. St. Augustine of Hippo was one of the main opponents of Pelagianism, arguing that God’s unmerited grace is necessary for us to perform any good work that will help us get to heaven.

By contrast, Neo-Gnostics accept a model of salvation that is “merely interior, closed off in its own subjectivism.” The document adds that it consists in “improving oneself,” of being “intellectually capable of rising above the flesh of Jesus towards the mysteries of the unknown divinity.”

The Neo-Gnostic way of thinking “presumes to liberate the human person from the body and from the material universe,” and fails to see traces of God’s provident hand in creation. Neo-Gnostics experience a reality “deprived of meaning,” and foreign to the fundamental identity of the human person as a unity of body and soul. This idea of reality is therefore “easily manipulated by the interests of man.”

Classical Gnosticism is ancient pantheistic belief in “secret teachings” of Christ, namely, that he came in order to free us from the evils of matter so that we might live as purely spiritual beings.

Placuit Deo notes that while there is “a great difference” between modern, secularized society and “the social context of early Christianity, in which these two heresies were born,” there are “similarities” between the ancient histories and the modern tendencies to which Pope Francis refers, insofar as they represent “perennial dangers for misunderstanding Biblical faith.”

It adds that as both modern-day versions of these heresies prevent Christ from mediating salvation, it is important to “reaffirm that salvation consists in our union with Christ.” [.....]

Asked which is the more important, he said it is “easier” to point to examples of neo-Pelagianism, but you could “fill books” with ancient Gnosticism which is a “very complicated phenomenon.”

In light of the Pope’s repeated use of the term neo-Pelagianism to describe those who “rigidly” adhere to doctrine or Tradition, the National Catholic Register asked why the word or sentiment does not appear in the Letter. Archbishop Ladaria said he was not aware the word was not included, and added there was “no particular reason” why it was not.

Finally, a journalist from the Associated Press said she “marveled” that the document only used the word ‘Catholic’ once (in the title) and asked whether Placuit Deo marked a departure from the Church’s teaching regarding the “fullness of salvation” being only found in the Catholic Church.

The CDF Prefect said the Church has often repeated what Vatican II taught that “Christ’s Church subsists in the Catholic Church.” He also referred to the Council document Lumen Gentium which teaches that “many elements of salvation are found in Christian religious confessions” and that these elements “tend towards Catholic unity.”

Archbishop Ladaria said that denominations have “elements of sanctification” and “we recognize these gladly.” And he stressed that “the fact that we don’t enter directly into this [in Placuit Deo] doesn’t mean that the teaching has changed. It seems to me to have deepened.”

COMMENT:

Pope Francis is a Neo-Modernist heretic. The heresy of Neo-Modernism, like Modernism, denies all dogma as divinely revealed truths that constitute the formal objects of divine and Catholic faith, and therefore, constitute the proximate rule of faith. The difference between the two is in their methodology. The Modernist denies dogma directly and the Neo-Modernist denies dogma indirectly by various methods. The Neo-Modernist will change established definitions, use words equivocally, qualify categorical propositions and/or change dogmatic propositions from the category of truth-falsehood to the category of authority-obedience and thus, negate all dogmas on the grounds of impossibility, excessive moral or physical burden, and whatever else excuses a person from fulfilling a legal obligation, precept, command, etc., etc.

Now comes Pope Francis. He is not stupid but he is remarkably ignorant, self-willed, arrogant, proud, authoritarian, hypocritical, posturing, dissembling, viscous, revengeful, and uniformly shameless. He employs the term neo-Pelagianism to attack Catholic faithful loyal to our Lord's reveal truths who conform their lives to His moral law, and yet, he does not define his terminology. Obviously Francis is using term the same way that Jews use the term “anti-Semitism.” Accusations that are defined can be refuted and refutation is not what the calumniator is interested in. Joe Sobran defined “anti-Semitic” as a person the Jews don’t like. The same can be said that a neo-Pelagian is someone Pope Francis doesn’t like.

The heresy of Pelagius was the denial of Original Sin, and because he denied Original Sin, he held that man could attain the supernatural end of salvation by natural means. He could obtain salvation by natural works. Francis therefore does not accuse faithful Catholics of denying Original Sin, he is accusing them of employing Pelagian methodology to obtain salvation. It is the ends that constitute the primary determinate of the moral act and thus Francis (Who am I to judge?) is guilty of nothing less than direct calumny by associating faithful Catholic with the heretic Pelagius because he sees a similarity of material acts that are in themselves morally neutral but have entirely different moral ends.

Modernism was called by Pope St. Pius X “the synthesis of all heresies.” Since Modernism denies all dogma as its end, every heresy can be discovered in the Modernist. Francis recently declared that Luther’s condemned heretical doctrine of Justification was “correct.” Luther denied the value of good works (and free will) in his heresy of justification by “faith alone.” So does Pope Francis. He interminably talks about caring for the poor but like all liberals, he gives mouth service to humanity and treats individual humans with contempt excepting photo-ops. What is particularly grating is his assertion that Catholics faithful to dogma and the moral law do not perform the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, that they are ‘enclosed upon themselves’. And this from the mouth of the hypocrite who degrades the spiritual works of mercy by calling proselytism “solemn nonsense.” Every Catholic university, school, hospital, nursing home, orphanage, charitable institute for the care of the poor or the ransom of captives, for the conversion of heretics and pagans, etc. was founded by Catholics faithful to dogma and the divine moral law. The Modernists have done less than nothing. They have so gutted the faith of any substance that they have overseen the greatest collapse of Catholic charitable works of mercy emptying religious institutions of vocations that completely overshadows the decimation caused by the plague in medieval Europe.

Nothing could be more hypocritical than a Modernist, who denies an objective knowable truth, suggesting that anyone could be a heretic. You can be assured that there will never be a “syllabus of errors” condemning neo-Pelagianian propositions because that would require clear definitions and the structuring of sound judgments. The real purpose is to smear. Nothing more. Cardinal Laderia ends his interview by affirming the Vatican II heresies that deny the identity of the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Christ, and then affirms that heretical sects can be “elements of salvation.” In the end for Novus Ordo Modernist, salvation can be found anywhere. Why not in “neo-Pelagianism”?

Maybe that's one of Francis' Gnostic secrets?

What Exactly is Pelagianism?

A far more radical heresy was that of the Pelagians. They admitted that Adam sinned, but denied that his sin is transmitted to his descendants. Pelagius himself and Clestius maintained the following errors: (1) Man, as now constituted, does not differ essentially in endowment from Adam before the Fall. The only difference (an accidental one) is that personal sins are committed in the present order. (2) Newborn infants do not bring original sin with them into the world; they are baptized not “for the forgiveness of sins,” but merely that they may be enabled to attain to the regnum coelorum, which, in the mind of these heretics, is something quite different from eternal life. (3) The sin which Adam committed in Paradise injured him, but not his descendants, except in so far as their willpower is weakened by his bad example. (4) Since Adam’s sin is not transmitted to his descendants, they cannot be punished for it. Death is not a punishment for sin, but a necessity of nature (necessitas naturae), and concupiscence is merely nature’s way of asserting itself (vigor naturae).

Few heresies were so vigorously combated from their very birth, and condemned by so many councils, as Pelagianism. During the short period from A.D. 412 (or 411) to 431 no less than twenty-four councils, in the East and in the West, denounced the new sect. Prominent among them is the Second Council of Mileve (416); its canons were taken over by a plenary council held at Carthage in 418, and approved and promulgated by Pope Zosimus in his Epistola Tractoria. Pelagianism was cut to the quick by the second canon of this council, which reads as follows: Whoever denies that new-born infants should be baptized immediately after birth, or asserts that they are indeed baptized for the remission of sins, but do not contract from Adam original sin, which must be expiated in the waters of regeneration, and that consequently the baptismal form ‘for the remission of sins’ applies to them not truly, but falsely; let him be anathema.” The Council bases this definition on Rom. V, 12 sqq., and on ecclesiastical Tradition, and concludes: According to this rule of faith little children, who are as yet unable to commit actual sin, are therefore truly baptized for the remission of sins, in order that by regeneration they may be cleansed of that which they have contracted by generation.”

The Council of Ephesus (A. D. 431) imposed this teaching on all clerics under pain of deposition, and the Second Council of Orange (A. D. 529) dealt Pelagianism a further blow by defining: — If any one asserts that the prevarication of Adam injured himself only and not his progeny, or alleges that bodily death, which is the penalty of sin, but not sin, which is the death of the soul, was brought by one man upon the entire human race, he attributes an injustice to God and contradicts the Apostle, who says: ‘By one man, etc.’”

Rev. Joseph Pohle, God, the Author of Nature and Supernatural

“Endeavor to acquire the virtues in which you believe your brother to be wanting; then you will no longer be sensible of his defects, because they will have ceased to exist in yourself.”

St. Augustine

Pope Francis never kneels before the Blessed Sacrament! Why?

Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth me, the same also shall live by me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead. He that eateth this bread, shall live for ever. John 6:54-59

For as often as you shall eat this bread, and drink the chalice, you shall shew the death of the Lord, until he come. Therefore whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord. But let a man prove himself: and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of the chalice. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord. 1 Cor 11:26-29

Because for Francis, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” (John 6:60)

Pope Francis for the second time has made the cover of the liberal and salacious Rolling Stone Magazine. It may be because he is the first pope to actually duplicate Stan Laurel’s infallible magic match trick?

As we suffer under the moral and doctrinal Novelties of Pope Francis, it is evident why he wants the Novelty Master, Paul VI, to become another novel Novus Ordo saint. Montini is the man who defined the “Spirit of Vatican II” in one word: “NOVELTY” in order to “please men.”

“But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema. As we said before, so now I say again: If any one preach to you a gospel, besides that which you have received, let him be anathema. For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.”

St. Paul, Galatians 1, 8-10

“Blind that they are, and leaders of the blind, inflated with a boastful science, they have reached that pitch of folly where they pervert the eternal concept of truth and the true nature of the religious sentiment; with that new system of theirs they are seen to be under the sway of a blind and unchecked passion for novelty, thinking not at all of finding some solid foundation of truth, but despising the holy and apostolic traditions, they embrace other vain, futile, uncertain doctrines, condemned by the Church, on which, in the height of their vanity, they think they can rest and maintain truth itself.”

St. Pius X, Pascendi

“A lamentable spectacle is that presented by the aberrations of human reason when it yields to the spirit of novelty, when against the warning of the Apostle it seeks to know beyond what it is meant to know, and when relying too much on itself it thinks it can find the fruit outside the Church wherein truth is found without the slightest shadow of error.”

Pope Gregory XVI, Singulari nos, 1834, quoted by St. Pius X in Pascendi

“It is impossible to approve in Catholic publications of a style inspired by unsound novelty which seems to deride the piety of the faithful and dwells on the introduction of a new order of Christian life, on new directions of the Church, on new aspirations of the modern soul, on a new vocation of the clergy, on a new Christian civilisation.”

Leo XIII, Jan 27, 1902, quoted by St. Pius X in Pascendi

"... We wish to make our own the important words employed by the Council; those words which define its spirit, and, in a dynamical synthesis, form the spirit of all those who refer to it, be they within or without the Church. The word “NOVELTY”, simple, very dear to today’s men, is much utilized; it is theirs... That word... it was given to us as an order, as a program... It comes to us directly from the pages of the Holy Scripture: “For, behold (says the Lord), I create new heavens and a new earth”. St. Paul echoes these words of the prophet Isaiah; then, the Apocalypse: “I am making everything new.” And Jesus, our Master, was not He, himself, an innovator? “You have heard that people were told in the past ... but now I tell you...”– Repeated in the “Sermon on the Mount”.

It is precisely thus that the Council has come to us. Two terms characterize it: “RENOVATION” and “REVISION”. We are particularly keen that this “spirit of renovation”– according to the expression of the Council – be understood and experienced by everyone. It responds to the characteristic of our time, wholly engaged in an enormous and rapid transformation, and generating novelties in every sector of modern life. In fact, one cannot shy away from this spontaneous reflection: if the whole world is changing, will not religion change as well?

Between the reality of life and Christianity, Catholicism especially, is not there reciprocal disagreement, indifference, misunderstanding, and hostility? The former is leaping forward; the latter would not move. How could they go along? How could Christianity claim to have, today, any influence upon life?

And it is for this reason that the Church has undertaken some reforms, especially after the Council. The Episcopate is about to promote the “renovation” that corresponds to our present needs; Religious Orders are reforming their Statutes; Catholic laity is qualified and found its role within the life of the Church; Liturgy is proceeding with a reform in which anyone knows the extension and importance; Christian education reviews the methods of its pedagogy; all the canonical legislations are about to be revised.

And how many other consoling and promising novelties we shall see appearing in the Church! They attest to Her new vitality, which shows that the Holy Spirit animates Her continually, even in these years so crucial to religion. The development of ecumenism, guided by Faith and Charity, itself says what progress, almost unforeseeable, has been achieved during the course and life of the Church. The Church looks at the future with Her heart brimming with hope, brimming with fresh expectation in love... We can say... of the Council: It marks the onset of a new era, of which no one can deny the new aspects that We have indicated to you."

Paul VI, General Audience, July 2, 1969

What needs to be “contextualized” is the idiot Sosa. The context is the heresy of Modernism!

Jesuit Superior General: We Don’t Know ‘What Jesus Really Said’

In a strangely convoluted interview, the new Superior General of the Jesuit order suggested that different interpretations of the Bible can all be valid since no one really knows what Jesus said anyway.

B_logo.tif Breitbart | Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D. | 23 Feb 2017 “It would be necessary to start a nice reflection on what Jesus really said,” Father Arturo Sosa said in his interview with Swiss Vatican journalist Giuseppe Rusconi, since “at that time no one had a tape recorder to record his words.”

“What we do know is that Jesus’ words need to be contextualized. They were expressed with a language, in a specific setting and were directed to someone in particular,” he said.

Asked whether Jesus’ words have an “absolute value,” Father Sosa said that scholars have been struggling “to understand exactly what Jesus meant to say.”

“The word is relative, the Gospel is written by human beings, it is accepted by the Church which is made up of human persons,” he said.

“It is true,” he said, “that no one can change the word of Jesus, but we need to know what it was!”

Curiously, the Second Vatican Council, which Father Sosa appeals to, taught that “everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit,” and that the books of Scripture “must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.”

It also declared that the Church has always firmly held that the four Gospels faithfully hand on “what Jesus Christ, while living among men, really did and taught for their eternal salvation until the day He was taken up into heaven.”

Getting down to specifics, the interviewer asked Father Sosa whether Jesus’ words regarding divorce are “debatable.”

The priest answered that Jesus’ words should not be doubted but “brought under discernment.” His words continue to oblige, he said, but they oblige us to “follow the results of discernment.”

The Jesuit seemed to suggest that the Holy Spirit is very active in the discernment process but was not quite so active in inspiring the biblical text itself, which was simply “written by human beings” and is therefore “relative.”

What is up for discussion, he continued, is “not the word of Jesus, but the word of Jesus as we have interpreted it.”

“Doctrine is a word that I don’t like very much, it brings with it the image of the hardness of stone,” he said. “Human reality is much more nuanced, it is never black or white, it is in continual development.”

Doctrine is part of discernment, and “true discernment cannot ignore doctrine,” Father Sosa said.

At the same time, however, discernment can reach conclusions at odds with doctrine “because doctrine doesn’t substitute discernment or the Holy Spirit,” he said.

Heretics welcome for Novus Ordo Communion! What has been done sub rosa for years is now open practice.

At their spring conference in Ingolstadt, the German bishops' conference agreed that a Protestant partner of a Catholic can receive the Eucharist after having made a "serious examination" of conscience with a priest or another person with pastoral responsibilities, "affirms the faith of the Catholic Church," wishes to end "serious spiritual distress," and has a "longing to satisfy a hunger for the Eucharist."

Edward Pentin, National Catholic Register

Pope Francis comments on the Resistance to his Heresy

But when I realize that there is real resistance, of course it displeases me. Some people tell me that resistance is normal when someone wants to make changes. The famous ‘we’ve always done it this way’ reigns everywhere, it is a great temptation that we have all faced. … I cannot deny that there is resistance. I see it and I am aware of it. There is doctrinal resistance, which you all know better than I do. For the sake of mental health, I do not read the websites of this so-called “resistance.” I know who they are, I am familiar with the groups, but I do not read them, simply for my mental health. If there is something very serious, they inform me so that I know about it. You all know them … It is a displeasure, but we must move ahead. Historians say that it takes a century before a Council puts down roots. We are halfway there.

When I perceive resistance, I try to dialogue, when dialogue is possible. But some resistance comes from people who believe they possess the true doctrine and accuse you of being a heretic. When I do not find spiritual goodness in these people, because of what they say or write, I simply pray for them. It pains me, but I do not dwell on this feeling for the sake of mental hygiene.

Pope Francis the Destroyer, addressing a private meeting with ninety fellow Jesuits, January 16, 2018, Santiago de Chile. Their conversation was transcribed by Fr. Antonio Spadaro, editor of La Civilta Cattolicà, and was published in Italian with the Pope’s approval.

COMMENT: “True doctrine” is possessed by all faithful Catholics who hold DOGMA as their rule of faith. Pope Francis does not. He believes that he is the rule of faith and revealed Truth must bend to his will. Whatever he says and does is what every Catholic must say and do. Francis rejects DOGMA and that is why he is a heretic. He judges those who hold DOGMA as their rule of faith as an outward sign that “these people” are without “spiritual goodness.” What is evident is that Francis, who babbles that “time is greater than space,” cannot and will not be dissuaded from his commitment to destroy. He will not listen to those who offer filial correction and he does not accept evidence of the rotten fruits from Vatican II because it takes “a century before a Council puts down roots.” We are supposed to believe that in another fifty years we will really see the springtime of Vatican II? Unfortunately, at the current rate of decline there will not be a Catholic Church in another fifty years. God being God, this will not happen. Unfortunately for Francis, since he cannot repent, he will pay awful price for all eternity.

Pope Francis' Idea of Zero Tolerance!

In Italy there has been an uproar over the act of “mercy” with which Francis has graced Fr. Mauro Inzoli, a prominent priest of the movement Communion and Liberation, reduced to the lay state in 2012 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for having abused numerous young boys, but restored to the active priesthood by Francis in 2014, with the admonishment that he lead a life of penance and prayer. In the civil arena, Inzoli was caught again and charged. He has been sentenced to 4 years and 9 months in prison.

Sandro Magister

The Great Recurring Theme of Pope Francis and the Novus Ordo Church: "We will not walk, We will not hearken!"

Thus saith the Lord: Stand ye on the ways, and see and ask for the old paths which is the good way, and walk ye in it: and you shall find refreshment for your souls. And they said: we will not walk. And I appointed watchmen over you, saying: Hearken ye to the sound of the trumpet. And they said: We will not hearken. Therefore hear, ye nations, and know, O congregation, what great things I will do to them. Hear, O earth: Behold I will bring evils upon this people, the fruits of their own thoughts: because they have not heard my words, and they have cast away my law. To what purpose do you bring me frankincense from Saba, and the sweet smelling cane from a far country? Your holocausts are not acceptable, nor are your sacrifices pleasing to me.

Jeremias, 6, 16-20

Leaked docs raise question of Pope’s personal role in new Vatican financial scandal

LifeSiteNews | ROME, February 20, 2018 – Leaked documents obtained by LifeSiteNews connect the Pope himself to a new Vatican financial scandal and raise serious questions about his global reputation as the “pope for the poor.”

LifeSiteNews has obtained internal documents of the U.S.-based Papal Foundation, a charity with a stellar history of assisting the world’s poor, showing that last summer the Pope personally requested, and obtained in part, a $25 million grant to a corruption-plagued, Church-owned dermatological hospital in Rome accused of money laundering. Records from the financial police indicate the hospital has liabilities over one billion USD – an amount larger than the national debt of some 20 nations.

The grant has lay members of the Papal Foundation up in arms, and some tendering resignations. Responding to questions from LifeSiteNews, Papal Foundation staff sent a statement saying that it is not their practice to comment on individual requests.

Speaking of grants in general, the Papal Foundation said their mission has not changed. “The grants to help those in need around the world and of significance to the Holy Father are reviewed and approved through well-accepted philanthropic processes by the Board and its committees,” it said.

Lay membership or becoming a “steward” in the Papal Foundation involves the pledge “to give $1 million over the course of no more than ten years with a minimum donation of $100,000 per year.” Those monies are invested in order to make a perpetual fund to assist the Church.

However, the majority of the board is composed of U.S. bishops, including every U.S. Cardinal living in America. The foundation customarily gives grants of $200,000 or less to organizations in the developing world via the Holy See.

According to the internal documents, the Pope made the request for the massive grant, which is 100 times larger than its normal grants, through Papal Foundation board chairman Cardinal Donald Wuerl in the summer of 2017.

Despite opposition from the lay “stewards,” the bishops on the board voted in December to send an $8 million payment to the Holy See. In January, the documents reveal, lay members raised alarm about what they consider a gross misuse of their funds, but despite their protests another $5 million was sent with Cardinal Wuerl brooking no dissent.

Along with this report, LifeSite is publishing three leaked documents.

‘Negligent… flawed… reckless’

On January 6, the steward who until then served as chairman of the Foundation’s audit committee submitted his resignation along with a report of the committee’s grave objections to the grant.

“As head of the Audit Committee and a Trustee of the Foundation, I found this grant to be negligent in character, flawed in its diligence, and contrary to the spirit of the Foundation,” he wrote in his resignation letter accompanying the report. “Instead of helping the poor in a third-world country, the Board approved an unprecedented huge grant to a hospital that has a history of mismanagement, criminal indictments, and bankruptcy.”

“Had we allowed such recklessness in our personal careers we would never have met the requirements to join The Papal Foundation in the first place.”

The audit committee chairman’s report noted that the Foundation’s “initial $8 million was sent without any supporting documentation.”

He said the board eventually received a “2-1/2 inch thick binder of information (mostly in Italian)” but it lacked essential details. The report notes:

There was no Balance Sheet. There was no clear explanation as to how the $25 million would be used. Normal grant requests are fairly specific about how our money will be used. Buried in the thick binder was only a one-page financial projection labelled “Draft for Discussion” showing:

2017 1.6 million Euro PROFIT

2018 2.4 million Euro PROFIT

2019 4.4 million Euro PROFIT

And on this data, our Board of Directors voted to grant this failing hospital $25 million of our hard-earned dollars. To put this in perspective, rarely have we given above $200,000 to a grant request. I pointed out that there was NO PROFESSIONAL DUE DILIGENCE, just a lot of fluff. If the numbers presented were accurate, then this commercial enterprise should go to a bank. They don’t need our money. If the numbers were not accurate, then a decision could not be made. […..]

Hungarian Prime Minister: ‘Christianity is Europe’s last hope’

LifeSiteNews | BUDAPEST, Hungary | February 19, 2018 – Brushing aside any semblance of political correctness, Hungary’s Prime Minister said in his state of the nation speech on Sunday that, “Christianity is Europe's last hope.”

Addressing his country and the world, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán warned that European nations which have encouraged migration have, “opened the way to the decline of Christian culture and the advance of Islam.”

Orbán painted an image of Western Europe being overwhelmed by the accelerating influx Muslim immigrants in recent years.

“According to estimates, the proportion of immigrants will grow at an accelerated pace in the European countries west of us,” said Orbán. “I won't even say anything about France and Holland, but even the born Germans are being forced back from most large German cities as migrants always occupy big cities first.”

Orbán warned that as Western Europe becomes saturated with Muslim occupants, Islamists would soon seek to stream in to his country from both Western Europe as well as from Islamic nations.

“This means that the Islamic civilization, which always considers its vocation to convert Europe to what it calls the true faith, in the future will be knocking on the door of Central Europe not only from the south, but from the west, as well,” he said.

Prime Minister Orbán said his government will oppose efforts by the United Nations or the European Union to “increase migration” around the world.

In June, LifeSiteNews reported that Orbán had taken a strong stand and not backed down against outside globalist influences seeking to control his nation’s politics.

Billionaire George Soros, who famously backs many progressive initiatives around the world, locked horns with Orbán over the Central European University (CEU) he founded in 1989, which has been criticized as a funnel for anti-nationalist views. [……]

A Knife in the Back of every faithful Catholic, especially the Chinese.

“The Communists want to enslave the Church…. Cardinal (Pietor) Parolin (the Vatican Secretary of State) venerates the Ostpolitik diplomacy of his mater Casaroli [a reference to Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, the Secretary of State from 1979 to 1990, who was noted for his efforts to promote dialogue with the Soviet bloc] and despises the genuine faith of those who firmly defend the Church founded by Jesus on the apostles from any interference by secular power.”

Cardinal Joseph Zen, warning against a proposed Vatican deal with Beijing to formally recognize the Patriotic Catholic Church run by the Communist government as the official Catholic Church in China

Catholic saints and the religious that have followed their examples have done more for the poor, for children, for exploited women than all others throughout all of history. We own no apology to anyone for Catholic charity! Is Francis, the class warrior, begging for an apology because he was mistreated?

“I believe that the church not only should apologize to the person who is gay whom it has offended, but has to apologize to the poor, to exploited women, to children exploited for labor; it has to ask forgiveness for having blessed many weapons.”

Pope Francis

Effigy of Pope Francis the Communist being mocked in a Shrove Tuesday Celebration in 2017 along with cherub images of Mao, Lenin and Castro. The measure of the man by faithful Catholics is being taken more accurately every day but unfortunately, the measure of the man is doing incalculable damage to the dignity of the office with the loss of many souls.

Cardinal says Vatican-China deal would put Catholics in communist cage

Reuters | HONG KONG | February 9, 2018 - A senior Catholic cardinal accused the Vatican on Friday of acting “unfaithfully” in its rapprochement with China, saying it would put the country’s some 12 million faithful in a bird cage controlled by the Communist Party.

Addressing a news conference, Hong Kong’s outspoken Cardinal Joseph Zen also said he was highly skeptical of a deal that reportedly would give Pope Francis the final say in the appointment of bishops, the key part of the agreement.

Nearly 70 years after China and the Vatican severed diplomatic relations, the two sides recently reached a framework accord on the thorny issue of who gets to appoint new Chinese bishops and a historic deal could be signed in a few months.

The 86-year-old former bishop of Hong Kong, recently rebuked by the Vatican after he said it had “sold out” China’s faithful, said sources told him that under the framework agreement the pope would have the final veto power over bishops who are effectively chosen by the Chinese government.

“They (The Chinese government) say the last word belongs to the Holy Father. Sounds wonderful? But it’s fake,” Zen said.

”They are not going to make good choices for the Church ... surely they choose the one they prefer, which means the one who always obeys the government. So how (could) the Holy Father approve such a choice?”

“Okay, he can veto. How many times? It takes courage to veto the second time, the third time, five times,” Zen said.

Catholics in China are split between the state-controlled Catholic Patriotic Association, where bishops are appointed by the government, and the “underground” Church that remains loyal to the pope while being systematically persecuted by Chinese authorities for years.

Zen, who has fiercely criticized the Vatican for attempting to force two “underground” bishops to give way to government-backed “illegitimate” bishops in order to foster the deal, was rebuked by the Vatican last Wednesday for “fostering confusion and controversy”.

Zen said that under the status quo, which he described as “the lesser evil,” the Vatican secretly approves candidates who are acceptable to both sides before the state-controlled Church makes them bishop.

But under the new agreement, where candidates would be selected via a “so-called democratic election” inside the Chinese Catholic community and endorsed by a state-controlled bishops’ conference before being submitted to the pope, the choice lies entirely in the hands of the government, Zen said.

“A church enslaved by the government is no real Catholic Church,” he said.

Zen said he was not criticizing the pope, whom he believed might not be briefed on “reality” because bureaucrats in the Holy See are eager to strike a deal.

“What they (Vatican negotiators) are doing is unfaithful,” Zen said. “I am not judging their conscience but ... it’s a surrender and they have no right to surrender.”

Those who think that the pope is the "rule of faith" will follow Francis into heresy. Those who are faithful to dogma as the "rule of faith" can at least find salvation.

Scholar stumps Cardinal Cupich, asks if Pope’s ‘paradigm shift’ means ‘radical’ doctrinal change

LifeSiteNews | CAMBRIDGE, England | February 15, 2018 – A respected Catholic historian and philosopher challenged Cardinal Blase Cupich during a lecture last week about Pope’ Francis so-called “revolution of mercy” that has caused what many are defending as a “paradigm shift” in Catholic practice.

Professor John Rist, after listening to a February 9 lecture at Cambridge University in which Cardinal Cupich praised Pope Francis’ “paradigm shift” in Catholic practice, asked the Cardinal at the end of the lecture why Pope Francis “mercilessly” insults and eliminates his doctrinal opponents.

Rist asked the Cardinal:

Your Eminence, In view of your account of the sunny, caring and holistic features of Pope Francis’ revolution of mercy – described disturbingly by the leaflet for this meeting and by your Eminence as a ‘paradigm shift’ in the presentation of Catholicism – and of the Pope’s call for free and frank discussion of his challenging proposals and policies, I would like to ask why Pope Francis acts so mercilessly in insulting and eliminating doctrinal opponents:

· Cardinal Burke removed from the leadership of the Roman Rota;

· Three loyal priests from the CDF dismissed without explanation, followed by the abrupt termination of Cardinal Mueller himself;

· The denial of a Cardinal’s hat to the much loved champion of the unborn, Archbishop Chaput;

· The removal of most of the original members of the Academy for Life;

· The apparent selling-down the river of Cardinal Pell, who may have been framed;

· And more recently the banishment from Rome of the Professor of Patristics at the Lateran and editor of the challenging book Remaining in the Truth of Christ;

The list goes on and on, but I stop there to ask again whether harsh actions of this sort — combined with the well-documented rigging of the Synod on the Family — indicate that the Pope’s 'paradigm shift' should be recognized as an attempt — under cover of offering solutions to genuine social problems in Western society — to impose on the Church radical changes of doctrine, developed not by laity but largely in Germany by a group of relativist Hegelian theologians?

Cupich sidestepped away from the question, replying that those who have such concerns should ask themselves: “Do we really believe that the Spirit is no longer guiding the Church?” reported the Catholic Herald.

The professor said after the event that if he had been given the chance to reply, he would have told the Cardinal that “the Church is indeed guided by the Holy Spirit, via good Catholic souls such as Cardinal Burke and many others.”

Rist is a Professor of Classics Emeritus at the University of Toronto and now holds a Chair in Philosophy at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. A native of the United Kingdom, Rist is a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University. He is also a convert to Catholicism from agnosticism, thanks to his study of Plato, the Gospels and other ancient texts.

Rist, whose career as a philosopher and a classicist spans fifty years and three continents, has written 16 scholarly books and over a hundred journal articles on ancient and Christian philosophy or the Gospels. He also contributed to Remaining in the Truth of Christ, the defense of Catholic teaching that was “intercepted” at the Synod on the Family.

Rist told LifeSiteNews that he regards the Francis papacy as a “disaster.”

“I regard this papacy as a disaster and Bergoglio as possibly — because of his tampering with established doctrine — as possibly the worst pope we have ever had,” he said.

“Cupich's attempt to defend him [at Cambridge] was itself dependent on misrepresentations, the evading of legitimate questions, and in at least one case — that of my charge of the Synod on the Family being rigged — of downright lying. I was teaching in Rome at the time, and contributed to Remaining in the Truth of Christ, so I know about what happened firsthand,” he added.

The professor said that one of the principal difficulties in the Church today is when people confuse the Church with the person of the Pope.

"One of the basic problems we have is that too many Catholics (and others) confuse the pope with the Church,” he said. “Cupich tried to play that card by suggesting that Amoris Laetitia — even in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis — is de fide [i.e. doctrine that must be believed], which it manifestly is not.”

Rist suggested that Pope Francis is not doing his job well.

“It is the function of the Pope to provide unity in the Church by scrutinizing new ideas to see if they are compatible with the inherited regula fidei [rule of faith],” the professor continued. “Instead of unity Pope Francis has caused massive confusion and division – and many sad clergy are afraid of being sanctioned if they speak out.”

As have many others before him, Rist compared the challenges posed by Francis’ innovations to the crisis of faith in the fourth century.

“The whole thing amounts to a heresy on the scale of the Arian heresy,” he stated. “That took some 60 years to wort out. I fear that this set of moral heresies may last even longer.”

Friends of Pope Francis - those who oppose sodomy are "corrosive and repugnant."

“We have to face the fact that there is a group of people across all religious views that are particularly antagonistic to LGBT people. That comes from deep within the human soul, and it’s really corrosive and repugnant.”

Quote from the Jesuit trained Pope Francis appointed San Diego Bishop, Robert McElroy, who endorsed the book written by the Sodomophile James Martin. S.J., Building a Bridge, that defends the LGBT agenda claiming that God created homosexuals as they are and that chastity is not required of them, that Catholics should reverence gay marriages and support transgenderism in children. He even endorses the aberrant displays of homosexuals kissing at the sign of peace during Novus Ordo services.

Gee, what do you suppose happened in the 1960s that started this “erosion of the Catholic Faith in Germany”?

One notes in particular in traditionally Catholic regions a very strong decline in participation at Sunday Mass, not to mention the sacramental life. Where in the 1960s everywhere just about all the faithful still participated at Holy Mass every Sunday, today there are often less than 10 percent. Ever fewer people seek the sacraments. The Sacrament of Penance has almost disappeared. Ever fewer Catholics receive Confirmation or contract Catholic Matrimony. The number of vocations to priestly ministry and the consecrated life has sharply diminished. In consideration of these facts, one can speak truly of an erosion of the Catholic Faith in Germany.

Pope Francis, addressing the German bishops, Nov. 2015

Many of the actions of worldlings, which at first sight may appear innocent, have a natural and fatal tendency to pervert the morals of the just; and therefore, we must keep as much as possible at a distance from their society. --- Ismael was a figure of the synagogue, which persecuted the Church of Christ in her birth.

Fr. George Leo Haydock, scriptural commentary, Genesis 21, upon Abraham sending away Ismael with his mother, Agar.

Even the modern media is tiring of Pope Francis the Sham!

Global scandal: Francis exposed as a liar by own advisers on abuse victim

From the Associated Press, in what is turning out to be the greatest scandal of a sorry Pontificate:

By NICOLE WINFIELD and EVA VERGARA

Associated Press | VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis received a victim’s letter in 2015 that graphically detailed how a priest sexually abused him and how other Chilean clergy ignored it, contradicting the pope’s recent insistence that no victims had come forward to denounce the cover-up, the letter’s author and members of Francis’ own sex- abuse commission have told The Associated Press.
The fact that Francis received the eight-page letter, obtained by the AP, challenges his insistence that he has “zero tolerance” for sex abuse and cover-ups. It also calls into question his stated empathy with abuse survivors, compounding the most serious crisis of his five-year papacy.
The scandal exploded last month when Francis’ trip to South America was marred by protests over his vigorous defense of Bishop Juan Barros, who is accused by victims of covering up the abuse by the Rev. Fernando Karadima. During the trip, Francis callously dismissed accusations against Barros as “slander,” seemingly unaware that victims had placed him at the scene of Karadima’s crimes.
On the plane home, confronted by an AP reporter, the pope said: “You, in all good will, tell me that there are victims, but I haven’t seen any, because they haven’t come forward.”
But members of the pope’s Commission for the Protection of Minors say that in April 2015, they sent a delegation to Rome specifically to hand-deliver a letter to the pope about Barros. The letter from Juan Carlos Cruz detailed the abuse, kissing and fondling he says he suffered at Karadima’s hands, which he said Barros and others witnessed and ignored.
Four members of the commission met with Francis’ top abuse adviser, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, explained their objections to Francis’ recent appointment of Barros as a bishop in southern Chile, and gave him the letter to deliver to Francis.
“When we gave him (O’Malley) the letter for the pope, he assured us he would give it to the pope and speak of the concerns,” then-commission member Marie Collins told the AP. “And at a later date, he assured us that that had been done.”
Cruz, who now lives and works in Philadelphia, heard the same later that year.
“Cardinal O’Malley called me after the pope’s visit here in Philadelphia and he told me, among other things, that he had given the letter to the pope — in his hands,” he said in an interview at his home Sunday.
Neither the Vatican nor O’Malley responded to multiple requests for comment.
While the 2015 summit of Francis’ commission was known and publicized at the time, the contents of Cruz’s letter — and a photograph of Collins handing it to O’Malley — were not disclosed by members. Cruz provided the letter, and Collins provided the photo, after reading an AP story that reported Francis had claimed to have never heard from any Karadima victims about Barros’ behavior.
The Barros affair first caused shockwaves in January 2015 when Francis appointed him bishop of Osorno, Chile, over the objections of the leadership of Chile’s bishops’ conference and many local priests and laity. They accepted as credible the testimony against Karadima, a prominent Chilean cleric who was sanctioned by the Vatican in 2011 for abusing minors. Barros was a Karadima protege, and according to Cruz and other victims, he witnessed the abuse and did nothing.
“Holy Father, I write you this letter because I’m tired of fighting, of crying and suffering,” Cruz wrote in Francis’ native Spanish. “Our story is well known and there’s no need to repeat it, except to tell you of the horror of having lived this abuse and how I wanted to kill myself.”
Cruz and other survivors had for years denounced the cover-up of Karadima’s crimes, but were dismissed as liars by the Chilean church hierarchy and the Vatican’s own ambassador in Santiago, who refused their repeated requests to meet before and after Barros was appointed.
After Francis’ comments backing the Chilean hierarchy caused such an outcry in Chile, he was forced last week to do an about-face: The Vatican announced it was sending in its most respected sex-crimes investigator to take testimony from Cruz and others about Barros.
In the letter to the pope, Cruz begs for Francis to listen to him and make good on his pledge of “zero tolerance.”
“Holy Father, it’s bad enough that we suffered such tremendous pain and anguish from the sexual and psychological abuse, but the terrible mistreatment we received from our pastors is almost worse,” he wrote.
Cruz goes on to detail in explicit terms the homo-eroticized nature of the circle of priests and young boys around Karadima, the charismatic preacher whose El Bosque community in the well-to-do Santiago neighborhood of Providencia produced dozens of priestly vocations and five bishops, including Barros.
He described how Karadima would kiss Barros and fondle his genitals, and do the same with younger priests and teens, and how young priests and seminarians would fight to sit next to Karadima at the table to receive his affections.
“More difficult and tough was when we were in Karadima’s room and Juan Barros — if he wasn’t kissing Karadima — would watch when Karadima would touch us — the minors — and make us kiss him, saying: ‘Put your mouth near mine and stick out your tongue.’ He would stick his out and kiss us with his tongue,” Cruz told the pope. “Juan Barros was a witness to all this innumerable times, not just with me but with others as well.”
“Juan Barros covered up everything that I have told you,” he added.
Barros has repeatedly denied witnessing any abuse or covering it up. “I never knew anything about, nor ever imagined, the serious abuses which that priest committed against the victims,” he told the AP recently. “I have never approved of nor participated in such serious, dishonest acts, and I have never been convicted by any tribunal of such things.”
For the Osorno faithful who have opposed Barros as their bishop, the issue isn’t so much a legal matter requiring proof or evidence, as Barros was a young priest at the time and not in a position of authority over Karadima. It’s more that if Barros didn’t “see” what was happening around him and doesn’t find it problematic for a priest to kiss and fondle young boys, he shouldn’t be in charge of a diocese where he is responsible for detecting inappropriate sexual behavior, reporting it to police and protecting children from pedophiles like his mentor.
Cruz had arrived at Karadima’s community in 1980 as a vulnerable teenager, distraught after the recent death of his father. He has said Karadima told him he would be like a spiritual father to him, but instead sexually abused him.
Based on testimony from Cruz and other former members of the parish, the Vatican in 2011 removed Karadima from ministry and sentenced him to a lifetime of “penance and prayer” for his crimes. Now 87, he lives in a home for elderly priests in Santiago; he hasn’t commented on the scandal and the home has declined to accept calls or visits from the news media.
The victims also testified to Chilean prosecutors, who opened an investigation into Karadima after they went public with their accusations in 2010. Chilean prosecutors had to drop charges because too much time had passed, but the judge running the case stressed that it wasn’t for lack of proof.
While the victims’ testimony was deemed credible by both Vatican and Chilean prosecutors, the local church hierarchy clearly didn’t believe them, which might have influenced Francis’ view. Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz has acknowledged he didn’t believe the victims initially and shelved an investigation. He was forced to reopen it after the victims went public.
He is now one of the Argentine pope’s key cardinal advisers.
By the time he finally got his letter into the pope’s hands in 2015, Cruz had already sent versions to many other people, and had tried for months to get an appointment with the Vatican ambassador. The embassy’s Dec. 15, 2014, email to Cruz — a month before Barros was appointed — was short and to the point:
“The apostolic nunciature has received the message you emailed Dec. 7 to the apostolic nuncio,” it read, “and at the same time communicates that your request has been met with an unfavorable response.”
One could argue that Francis didn’t pay attention to Cruz’s letter, since he receives thousands of letters every day from faithful around the world. He can’t possibly read them all, much less remember the contents years later. He might have been tired and confused after a weeklong trip to South America when he told an airborne press conference that victims never came forward to accuse Barros of cover-up.
But this was not an ordinary letter, nor were the circumstances under which it arrived in the Vatican.
Francis had named O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston, to head his Commission for the Protection of Minors based on his credibility in having helped clean up the mess in Boston after the U.S. sex abuse scandal exploded there in 2002. The commission gathered outside experts to advise the church on protecting children from pedophiles and educating church personnel about preventing abuse and cover-ups.
The four commission members who were on a special subcommittee dedicated to survivors had flown to Rome specifically to speak with O’Malley about the Barros appointment and to deliver Cruz’s letter. A press release issued after the April 12, 2015, meeting read: “Cardinal O’Malley agreed to present the concerns of the subcommittee to the Holy Father.”
Commission member Catherine Bonnet, a French child psychiatrist who took the photo of Collins handing the letter to O’Malley, said the commission members had decided to descend on Rome specifically when O’Malley and other members of the pope’s group of nine cardinal advisers were meeting, so that O’Malley could put it directly into the pope’s hands.
“Cardinal O’Malley promised us when Marie gave to him the letter of Juan Carlos that he will give to Pope Francis,” she said.
O’Malley’s spokesman in Boston referred requests for comment to the Vatican. Neither the Vatican press office, nor officials at the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, responded to calls and emails seeking comment.
But O’Malley’s remarkable response to Francis’ defense of Barros and to his dismissal of the victims while he was in Chile, is perhaps now better understood.
In a rare rebuke of a pope by a cardinal, O’Malley issued a statement Jan. 20 in which he said the pope’s words were “a source of great pain for survivors of sexual abuse,” and that such expressions had the effect of abandoning victims and relegating them to “discredited exile.”
A day later, Francis apologized for having demanded “proof” of wrongdoing by Barros, saying he meant merely that he wanted to see “evidence.” But he continued to describe the accusations against Barros as “calumny” and insisted he had never heard from any victims.
Even when told in his airborne press conference Jan. 21 that Karadima’s victims had indeed placed Barros at the scene of Karadima’s abuse, Francis said: “No one has come forward. They haven’t provided any evidence for a judgment. This is all a bit vague. It’s something that can’t be accepted.”
He stood by Barros, saying: “I’m certain he’s innocent,” even while saying that he considered the testimony of victims to be “evidence” in a cover-up investigation.
“If anyone can give me evidence, I’ll be the first to listen,” he said.
Cruz said he felt like he had been slapped when he heard those words.
“I was upset,” he said, “and at the same time I couldn’t believe that someone so high up like the pope himself could lie about this.”

Francis continues in his fulsome praise of Communists!

Vatican Official Praises China for Witness to Catholic Social Teaching

The U.S. has criticized the country regarding lack of human rights, pointing to ‘still-coercive population-control policies,’ other troubling practices.

CNA/EWTN News | Vatican | February 7, 2018

VATICAN CITY — The chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences has said that China is exercising global moral leadership in the principles of Catholic social teaching and defense of human dignity.

Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, an Argentinian, is chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. In an interview with Vatican Insider, he recently said that, “at this moment, those who best realize the social doctrine of the Church are the Chinese.”

Bishop Sorondo told Vatican Insider that he had recently visited China, where he says he found that “they [the Chinese] seek the common good, subordinate things to the general good.”

“I found an extraordinary China; what people do not know is that the central Chinese principle is ‘work, work, work.’ ... As Paul said: ‘He who does not work does not eat.’ You do not have shantytowns; you do not have drugs; young people do not have drugs. There is a positive national consciousness — they want to show that they have changed; they already accept private property,” he said of his trip.

The bishop said that the People’s Republic of China has “defended the dignity of the human person” and, in the area of climate change, is “assuming a moral leadership that others have abandoned.”

He criticized the United States, where, he said, the economy dominates politics. “How is it possible that oil multinationals manage Trump?” he asked.

“Liberal thought has liquidated the concept of the common good; they do not even want to take it into account — it affirms that it is an empty idea, without any interest.” On the other hand, he said, the Chinese propose work for the common good.

The bishop said that “China is evolving very well,” adding that “you cannot think that the China of today is the China [during the pontificate of] John Paul II or the Russia of the Cold War.”

In October 2017, the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China criticized the country’s human-rights practices.

The commission condemned “the Chinese government and Communist Party’s continued efforts to silence dissent, criminalize activities of human-rights lawyers, control civil society, suppress religious activity, and restrict the operations of foreign media outlets, businesses and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) over the past 12 months.”

“Nothing good happens in the dark,” U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., said in an October statement on China. “That is why the administration should shine a light on the Chinese government’s failures to abide by universal standards, shine a light on the cases of tortured and abused political prisoners, shine a light on China’s unfair trade practices and still-coercive population-control policies.”

Cardinal says Vatican-China deal would put Catholics in communist cage

“They (The Chinese government) say the last word belongs to the Holy Father. Sounds wonderful? But it’s fake,” Zen said.

“Okay, he can veto. How many times? It takes courage to veto the second time, the third time, five times,” Zen said.

“A church enslaved by the government is no real Catholic Church,” he said.

Zen said he was not criticizing the pope, whom he believed might not be briefed on “reality” because bureaucrats in the Holy See are eager to strike a deal.

“What they (Vatican negotiators) are doing is unfaithful,” Zen said. “I am not judging their conscience but ... it’s a surrender and they have no right to surrender.”

Warning from the Francis the “Snake Charmer”

Beware of the illusions of “charlatans”, who trigger “violence against those who do not live up to our expectations”!

Pope’s message for Lent 2018: “snake charmers”, who manipulate human emotions in order to enslave others”. No to false remedies for young people “drugs, disposable relationships, and easy but dishonest gains”. Prayer, fasting and almsgiving, “set us free from greed”

Vatican Insider | salvatore cernuzio | vatican city | February 6, 2018

“Snake charmers”, “charlatans”,”swindlers”. Pope Francis’ message for Lent 2018 is a warning against today’s “false prophets” who offer cheap happiness, easy earnings and illusory liberations - in short, those “who offer easy and immediate solutions to suffering that soon prove utterly useless” – robbing, instead, “people of all that is most precious: dignity, freedom and the ability to love”. […..]

Another Novus Ordo “Miracle” making another Novus Ordo “saint”! But who in their right mind would willingly exchange their hoped for eternal reward with any of them!

Vatican Saints’ Congregation Approves Miracle No. 2 for Blessed Paul VI

Unanimous Vatican vote was held Feb. 6. Next step: papal approval. Speculation is that the canonization may take place this fall.

Vatican Insider | Hannah Brockhaus | CNA/EWTN News | February 6, 2018

VATICAN CITY — On Tuesday the Congregation for the Causes of Saints approved the second miracle needed for the canonization of Pope Blessed Paul VI, allowing his canonization to take place, possibly later this year.

According to Vatican Insider, the saints’ congregation approved the miracle by a unanimous vote Feb. 6. The next step is for Pope Francis to give his approval, with an official decree from the Vatican. Then the date for the canonization can be set.

The miracle attributed to the cause of Paul VI is the healing of an unborn child in the fifth month of pregnancy. The case was brought forward in 2014 for study.

The mother, originally from the province of Verona, Italy, had an illness that risked her own life and the life of her unborn child, and she was advised by doctors to have an abortion.

A few days after the beatification of Paul VI, on Oct. 19, 2014, she went to pray for his intercession at the Shrine of Holy Mary of Grace in the town of Brescia, Italy. The baby girl was later born in good health and remains in good health today.

The healing was first ruled as medically inexplicable by the medical council of the congregation last year, while the congregation’s consulting theologians agreed that the healing occurred through the late Pope’s intercession.

Today’s meeting with cardinals was the final step before Cardinal Angelo Amato, head of the congregation, will take the miracle to Pope Francis, who has the final say in its approval.

After the Pope issues a decree approving it, the date of the canonization will be announced during a consistory. According to Vatican Insider, the canonization may take place in October of this year during the Synod of Bishops on youth. […..]

Why are those responsible for this disaster on the fast-track to canonization?

Certainly the results (of Vatican II) seem cruelly opposed to the expectations of everyone, beginning with those of Pope John XXIII and then of Pope Paul VI: expected was a new Catholic unity and instead we have been exposed to dissension which, to use the words of Pope Paul VI, seems to have gone from self-criticism to self-destruction. Expected was a new enthusiasm and many wound up discouraged and bored. Expected was a great step forward, instead we find ourselves faced with a progressive process of decadence which has developed for the most part under the sign of a calling back to the Council, and has therefore contributed to discrediting it for many. The net result therefore seems negative. I am repeating here what I said ten years after the conclusion of the work: it is incontrovertible that this period has definitely been unfavorable for the Catholic Church.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, 1984

Ecumenism, Love, Hatred, and St. John the Evangelist

In his encyclical Mortalium Animos, Pope Pius XI makes notable appeal to the teaching of the Apostle and Evangelist John to distinguish between true and false charity toward non-Catholic Christians:

“These pan-Christians who turn their minds to uniting the churches seem, indeed, to pursue the noblest of ideas in promoting charity among all Christians: nevertheless how does it happen that this charity tends to injure faith? Everyone knows that John himself, the Apostle of love, who seems to reveal in his Gospel the secrets of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and who never ceased to impress on the memories of his followers the new commandment “Love one another,” altogether forbade any intercourse with those who professed a mutilated and corrupt version 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.” For which reason, since charity is based on a complete and sincere faith, the disciples of Christ must be united principally by the bond of one faith. Who then can conceive a Christian Federation, the members of which retain each his own opinions and private judgment, even in matters which concern the object of faith, even though they be repugnant to the opinions of the rest? And in what manner, We ask, can men who follow contrary opinions, belong to one and the same Federation of the faithful? For example, those who affirm, and those who deny that sacred Tradition is a true fount of divine Revelation; those who hold that an ecclesiastical hierarchy, made up of bishops, priests and ministers, has been divinely constituted, and those who assert that it has been brought in little by little in accordance with the conditions of the time; those who adore Christ really present in the Most Holy Eucharist through that marvelous conversion of the bread and wine, which is called transubstantiation, and those who affirm that Christ is present only by faith or by the signification and virtue of the Sacrament; those who in the Eucharist recognize the nature both of a sacrament and of a sacrifice, and those who say that it is nothing more than the memorial or commemoration of the Lord’s Supper; those who believe it to be good and useful to invoke by prayer the Saints reigning with Christ, especially Mary the Mother of God, and to venerate their images, and those who urge that such a veneration is not to be made use of, for it is contrary to the honor due to Jesus Christ, “the one mediator of God and men.” How so great a variety of opinions can make the way clear to effect the unity of the Church We know not; that unity can only arise from one teaching authority, one law of belief and one faith of Christians. But We do know that from this it is an easy step to the neglect of religion or indifferentism and to modernism, as they call it.”

No one understands charity better than St. John, but he understood that the theological virtue of charity must be founded on the theological virtue of faith, and therefore anything that undermines the faith of necessity undermines charity. And therefore he commands us to avoid contact with those who would undermine the faith.

In general one can see that love necessarily cause the one loving to hate anything which threatens to destroy what is loved. Thus, since we naturally love health, therefore we naturally hate disease; since we naturally love life, we naturally hate anything that destroys our lives, and so on. And charity is no exception the supernatural love of God above all things necessarily implies hatred of sin, which is directly opposed to that charity, and error which is opposed to the faith on which it is founded.

But ecumenists have difficulty seeing this. Even if they would perhaps hesitate to use such strong words, they would probably agree with the non-Catholic New Testament scholar Gerd Lüdemann’s judgement on St. John, in his critique of Benedict’s Deus Caritas Est:

“[The] Johannine communities fell far short of exhibiting the love that [Pope Benedict XVI] recommends to the contemporary church. For not only does the First Letter of John—from which the encyclical takes its theme and exhortation—restrict brotherhood to those of orthodox belief, but the Second Letter of John, which quite predictably is not mentioned in the encyclical, takes the same approach and pushes it even further. In verses 9 through 11 of this very brief letter, its author, who identifies himself only as ‘the Elder,’ commands the community to receive into their homes only those brothers who confess Christ’s coming in the flesh. Any present or former brothers who have a different opinion concerning Christ’s incarnation should be spurned. Indeed, “John” forbids the members of his communities even to greet them. He deems this precautionary measure necessary, lest the community of right belief become infected by the evil doctrines and consequent guilt of its dissident brothers. How strange it is to encounter such harsh and hate-filled expostulations in a letter overflowing with assurances of mutual love and attesting to a community’s unanimous recognition of sacred truth!”

Lüdemann’s reasoning is precisely the sort of thing that one is likely to hear from contemporary ecumenists. And the reason is clear: they are not motivated by the supernatural virtue of charity, founded on the one true faith, but rather by a vague benevolence, founded on modernism and indifferentism. And like every kind of love, this vague benevolence causes a hatred of everything that threatens the object of love; they do not (like St. John) hate heresy, rather they hate “fanaticism” and “fundamentalism.” In other words they hate the perennial claim of the Catholic Church to teach the truth.

COMMENT: This was copied from the conservative Catholic blog, Rorate Caeli. It is interesting for two reasons. Firstly, because what it says concerning the virtues of Faith and Charity is what every traditional Catholic already knows and has defended over the last fifty years but, nevertheless we do not tire of hearing it repeated from time to time. It is also interesting because it politely affirms that Pope Benedict, and a fortiori, Pope Francis and Pope John Paul II, by professing the heresy of ecumenism, “are not motivated by the supernatural virtue of charity, founded on the one true faith” and therefore “hate the perennial claim of the Catholic Church to teach the truth.” It is a hopeful sign that younger conservative Catholics recognize that it is first and foremost the Faith that must be defended by keeping the immemorial ecclesiastical traditions that make that Faith known and communicable to others. At this time, established publications who claim to be traditional are content with the crumbs offered by Benedict XVI and continually heap praise upon him and his Motu Proprio, Summormum Pontificum, they fail to recognize that the battle has always been and will continue to be the Faith itself that Modernists and Neo-modernists aim to destroy. These younger conservative Catholics will hopefully become the radical traditionalists that are so desperately needed at this time for the Church militant. The Novus Ordo Church keeps two fast days during Lent and abstains on Fridays and has gutted liturgical prayer. Let us keep faithfully the traditional penances and practices during Lent as an act of reparation for our own sins and the welfare of the Church. If traditional Catholics do not do it, it will not be done.

Conservative Catholics, (actually, the children of Conservative Catholics), turning on the Golden Calf! Finally recognize that Vatican II is the sartorial equivalent of the Leisure Suit!

Time to Let Go of Vatican II

OnePeterFive | Brian Willaims | February 5, 2018

Several months back Father Hugh Somerville-Knapman, OSB wrote a must read article over at his blog, Dominus mihi adjutor. For those not familiar with Fr. Hugh, a Benedictine monk and priest of Douai Abbey in Berkshire, U.K., he is no liturgical bomb thrower. His arguments are always well reasoned and thoughtful, which is why it’s worth revisiting.

“Vale Vatifan II: Moving On” verbalizes what a growing number of the faithful are finally coming to grips with. In the words of Fr. Hugh: “it is time now to let go of the Council.” While I encourage everyone to read the full article, there are several points worth highlighting here.

Fr. Hugh begins by making the (obvious) acknowledgement that the world has changed greatly since the 1960’s. This would hardly matter if the Council had sought to clarify doctrine and timeless truths, but it is relevant for a Council claiming to be pastoral in its scope and very purpose. As Father writes:

It described itself as a pastoral council, and it sought to repackage the teaching, life and worship of the Church to suit a world in flux. For this very reason the Council was necessarily going to have a best-before date. That date has been passed. The sad thing is that its milk turned sour very soon after packaging.

Fr. Hugh rightly notes that “Catholic vitality has plummeted” in the post-conciliar years, at least when measured by weekly Mass attendance and vocations. There is no need to restate the dire data here. If one still disputes this they cannot be taken seriously and should step away from the grown up table; these discussions aren’t for you.

Father continues with an assessment of the ecclesial landscape of the last five decades:

By any reasonable standard of judgment the application of the Council failed, miserably, to achieve the Council’s aims. This statistical revelation of decline is quite apart from the decline experienced by Catholics as they have seen dogmas, doctrines, morals and many other elements of Catholic life thrown into chaos in the wake of the Council.

Acknowledging that the Church is indeed growing in much of the developing world (think Africa and Asia), Fr. Hugh notes that its growth in the west is only occurring in certain places:

But here’s the rub: it is growing precisely where much of what was discarded by the post-conciliaristas is slowly and sensibly being reclaimed and integrated into the world of 2017 rather than the mid-1960s. What they are reclaiming is essential, timeless Catholicism rather than the tired mantras and shibboleths of the “Vatican II Church”. The young have discovered, and many of the older re-discovered, that there was a Church before Vatican II, and it was healthy, vital and beautiful.

Fr. Hugh then states his simple, clear, and polemic free conclusion: it’s time to move on from the Council and (instead) to reclaim what the Church always was:

Thus it makes no sense to be constantly referencing every contemporary initiative to Vatican II, for justification or acceptance-value. It is time to move from a post-conciliar Church to a post-post-conciliar Church; which is to say, it is time to reclaim the Church as She has always been in her essence and her stable form, which has been able to function viably and vitally in every age and circumstance since the time of Christ.

A growing number of the faithful have indeed moved on from post-conciliarism. Among many Catholics, particularly the young, the sentiment and conclusions of Fr. Hugh are being realized. Our point of reference and foundation is the Church’s history and tradition, not simply the most recent Council in the history of the Church.

Sadly, it would seem few bishops have connected the dots yet. May thoughtful articles by thoughtful men, such as Fr. Hugh Somerville-Knapman, help them to finally move on (and move forward) as the Church reclaims “essential, timeless Catholicism.” For the sake of the salvation of souls, pray that it happens soon.

Cardinal Henry Edward Manning –

The true Revelation of God is both a Definite and Certain participation in God’s own knowledge. IT is this fundamental truth of revelation that our Neo-Modernist hierarchy reject!

What, then, is the knowledge which God has restored to man through revelation but a definite knowledge, a participation of His own? The truth which has been revealed, what is it in the mind of God who reveals it, but one, harmonious and distinct? What was that know ledge as revealed by the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, but one, harmonious and distinct? What was the conception of that knowledge in inspired men, but one, harmonious and distinct also? And what was that knowledge when communicated by those who were inspired to those who believed, but one, harmonious and distinct as before? And what is this unity and harmony and distinctness of knowledge, which God revealed of Himself through Jesus Christ, but the faith we confess in our creed? Our baptismal faith, its substance and its letter, the explicit and the implicit meaning, article by article, is as definite, severe, and precise, as any problem in science. It is of the nature of truth to be so; and where definiteness ends, knowledge ceases. Observe, then, the distinction between finite knowledge and definite knowledge. Is not science definite? And yet it is also finite. The theory of gravitation, definite as it is, it is finite too. [……] Go through the whole range of physical sciences, what is it but an example of the same condition of knowledge, definiteness in conception with finiteness of reach? [….] If we have not a definite knowledge of what we believe, we may be sure we have no true knowledge of it.

But, further, it is evident that knowledge must also be certain. When we speak of certainty, we mean one of two things. Sometimes we say, that a thing is certain; at other times, that we are certain. When we say a truth is certain, we mean, that the proofs of that truth are either self-evident, or so clear as to exclude all doubt. This is certainty on the part of the object proposed to our intelligence. But when we say we are certain, we mean that we are inwardly convinced, by the application of our reason to the matter before us, of the sufficiency of the evidence to prove the truth of it. In us, certainty is rather a moral feeling, a complex state of mind. As light manifests itself by its own nature, but sight is the illumination of the eye; so certainty means truth with its evidences illuminating the intelligence, or, in other words, the intelligence possessed by truth with its evidences.

This we call certainty. I ask, then, is there not this twofold certainty in the revelation which God has given? Was not the revelation which God gave of Himself through Jesus Christ made certain on His part by direct evidence of the divine act which revealed it? Is it not also certain on our part by the apprehension and faith of the Church? Was not God manifest in the flesh that He might reveal Himself? Did not God dwell on earth that He might teach His truth? Has not God spoken to man that man might know Him? Did not God work miracles that man might believe that He was present? What evidence on the part of God was wanting that men might know that Jesus Christ was indeed the Son of God? And if there was certainty on the part of God who revealed, was there not certainty also on the part of those that heard? Look back into the sacred history. Had not Prophets and Seers certainty of that which they beheld and heard? […..] What, then, is the first condition of faith but certainty? He that has not certain faith has no faith. We are told that to crave for certainty implies a morbid disposition. Did not Abraham, and Moses, and Daniel, the Apostles and Evangelists desire certainty in faith, and crave to know beyond doubt that God spake to them, and know with definite clearness what God said? Was this a morbid craving? Surely this is not to reproved. But rather the contrary disposition worthy of rebuke. How can we venture to content ourselves with uncertainty in matters where the truth and honour of God and the salvation of our own souls are at stake? This truly is not without sin. […..] And yet, what is the very idea of Revelation but a Divine assurance of Truth? Where faith begins uncertainty ends. Because faith terminates upon the veracity of God; and what God has spoken and authenticated to us by Divine authority cannot be uncertain.

Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, Grounds of Faith

For unless there come a revolt first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition…. 2 Thes 2:3

“The divorced and remarried, de facto couples, those cohabitating, are certainly not models of unions in sync with Catholic Doctrine, but the Church cannot look the other way. Therefore, the sacraments of Reconciliation and Communion should be given even to those so-called wounded families and to however many who, despite living in situations not in line with traditional matrimonial canons, express the sincere desire to approach the sacraments after an appropriate period of discernment.”

Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, his new book entitled, The Eighth Chapter of the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia

“Discernment” between “true doctrine of the Gospels” and the “rigidity of abstract doctrine” means never letting Revealed Truth stand in the way of our love of sin.

Pope Francis denounces ‘restorationist’ orders bursting with young people

LifeSiteNews | ROME | February 9, 2017 -- Pope Francis has stated that the rise of new religious institutes that attract numerous religious vocations “worries” him because they often promote “rigidity.” Francis denounced new traditional religious orders as “Pelagians,” who want a return to asceticism and penance.

In an obvious reference to the Legionaries of Christ, he called young people in traditional orders “soldiers who seem ready to do anything for the defense of faith and morality, and then some scandal emerges involving the founder [male or female].”

“So, do not put hope in the sudden, mass blooming of these Institutes,” he added.

“When they tell me that there is a congregation that draws so many vocations, I must confess that I worry,” he said during the closed-door meeting with 140 Superiors General of male religious orders and congregations that took place November 25. The transcript of the unscheduled Q&A was published this week by the leading Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

Asked about how to fire the hearts of young people for the cause of the Gospel, the pope turned his focus to the training of “seminarians and future priests.”

Francis said that in priests’ training the “logic of black and white” that “can lead to abstract casuistry” must be avoided.

“Discernment, meanwhile, means moving forward through the gray of life according to the will of God. And the will of God is to be sought according to the true doctrine of the Gospel and not in the rigidity of an abstract doctrine,” he said.

Asked what should be done about the plummeting number of vocations to the priesthood, the pope said that while the decline “worries me” he is also worried about the rise of new traditional religious orders.

“Some are, I might say, ‘restorationist’: they seem to offer security but instead give only rigidity,” he said.

“When they tell me that there is a Congregation that draws so many vocations, I must confess that I worry. The Spirit does not follow the logic of human success: it works in another way. But they tell me that there are so many young people prepared to do anything, who pray a great deal, who are truly faithful. And I say to myself: ‘Wonderful: we will see if it is the Lord!”

Traditional orders do not simply worry Pope Francis. Within months of becoming pope in March 2013, Francis moved quickly to utterly dismantle the flourishing Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate. The order, which encouraged the Latin Mass, was one of the most faithful of all of the new Catholic religious orders, especially in regard to their pro-life commitment. The move stunned faithful Catholics.

In 2015 the pope warned bishops against ordaining “traditionalist” seminarians, stating that doing so was like placing a “mortgage on the Church.”

In 2012 under Benedict XVI, the Vatican was in the process of reforming the umbrella group of American nuns and sisters for their “secularist mentality [and] 'feminist' spirit.” After Francis took over the reigns of the Church, that process concluded by offering the nuns’ group a “positive message.”

During the November Q&A Francis also admitted that there is “corruption in the Vatican” but he is nevertheless “at peace” by the “grace of God.”

Catholics who actually believe the revealed truths of God are called the “far-right,” which the Washington Post identifies as the “rot” of the Catholic Church! There is no such thing as “separation of Church and State.” That is the liberal shibboleth used to keep any other religion from competing with their own religion in the public forum. Nothing the “far-left” fears more than a national populist uprising in the West that will return to the Faith of our Fathers. Maybe they have read the prophecies of the “Great Monarch”?

How Pope Francis can cleanse the far-right rot from the Catholic Church

Washington Post | Emma-Kate Symons | February 9

Pope Francis needs to take tougher action against the United States’ most influential Catholic in Rome, Cardinal Raymond “Breitbart” Burke. The renegade cleric is not only undermining Francis’s reformist, compassionate papacy, and gospel teaching as it applies to refugees and Muslims, but the rebel prince of the church is also using his position within the walls of the Vatican to legitimize extremist forces that want to bring down Western liberal democracy, Stephen K. Bannon-style. Simply put, the Vatican is facing a political war between the modernizing Pope Francis and a conservative wing that wants to reassert white Christian dominance.

Burke was reduced to a ceremonial patron role at the Knights of Malta after a power struggle at the ancient chivalric order, won by the pope last month, following a spat over its humanitarian wing’s alleged distribution of condoms. Losing the leadership battle and prestige at the secretive society headquartered in Rome — Francis is appointing his own special delegate above Burke — was seen as a papal rap on the knuckles for the cardinal leading the charge against Francis’s writings on communion for divorcees. But the virulently anti-Islam (“capitulating to Islam would be the death of Christianity”), migrant-phobic, Donald Trump-defending, Vladimir Putin-excusing Burke is unrepentant and even defiant, continuing to preside over a far-right, neo-fascist-normalizing cheer squad out of the Holy See.

This Vatican operation, called Dignitatis Humanae, or the Institute for Human Dignity, whose advisory board includes two of the four cardinals openly challenging Francis on marriage and sexuality, is slavishly promoting Burke’s favorite American white Catholic nationalist, Bannon, with star billing on its home page. The institute’s top office-bearers, Burke and his henchman, the media-savvy Breitbart contributor Benjamin Harnwell, are also encouraging Benito Mussolini fan Matteo Salvini, of Italy’s Northern League, and Muslim-baiting far-right Catholic poster girl Marion Le Pen, the National Front “rising star” niece of party leader Marine Le Pen in France.

As the Italian press first revealed, Burke held a long meeting last week at his Vatican home with Salvini, a fierce critic of the pope who wants to push refugees back into the sea and close all mosques in Italy. It was a flagrant political intervention on the side of the extreme-right racist grouping ahead of the Italian elections. Mysterious posters also appeared around the Vatican decrying a sinister-looking pope’s “decapitation” of the Malta Knights order.

The situation facing the Catholic Church raises alarming parallels with the ideological warfare that split the Vatican in the 1930s when ethnic nationalism was sweeping Europe under Mussolini and Hitler and when fascist forces infiltrated the highest echelons of the church. In 1937, Pope Pius XI published an encyclical in German denouncing the Nazi regime and its racism. The diatribe infuriated Hitler, but the focus was more on Nazi persecution of Catholics than laws targeting Jews.

In Italy, the Vatican had long made accommodations with Mussolini for its own geopolitical gains, and Pius XI failed to quell widespread institutional anti-Semitism in the church before it was too late. When Mussolini decreed in 1938 that Italian Jews were to suffer a legal fate similar to those in Germany, Pius XI tried to prepare a fresh encyclical deploring anti-Semitism and racism, as revealed in historian David Kertzer’s book “The Pope and Mussolini,” he was double-crossed by pro-fascist forces in the Vatican working in tandem with Il Duce. Senior figures in the French Catholic Church also collaborated with fascism in France, where the Vichy regime aided the Nazis in deporting about 80,000 Jews to the death camps.

The lesson of history has not been lost on Francis. After President Trump’s inauguration, he warned that rising populism could produce a new Hitler. But now, as Europe faces historic elections that could bring extreme-right nationalists back into power across the continent for the first time since World War II, he must act. The bellicose anti-Islam invective being marshaled by figures such as Burke shares much in common with the vicious anti-Semitism many Catholic clerics adhered to in the 1930s, when they saw Jews as a danger to the Christian West whose rights must be restricted.

Burke, like Bannon, who says Islam is “the most radical” religion in the world, makes no distinction in his clash-of-civilizations frenzy between the Muslim faith’s diverse currents and interpretations, and violent jihadist movements derived mostly from Saudi-style Salafism. Unsurprisingly, Burke says he is “very satisfied” with Russian autocrat Putin’s “defense of life and family” and believes he may have “converted” since his KGB days. Yet, just as godless Communism posed an existential threat in the past, the Catholic Church has nothing to gain and everything to lose from cozying up to far-right extremists from the United States to Europe. They distort Christianity into an exclusionary ideology in defense of nation and race, and unite a new support base of Muslim-haters with historically anti-Semitic movements such as the National Front that are anything but Christian, and often neo-pagan.

The options open to the pope in dealing with Burke are limited. Excommunication isn’t in the cards; Burke is not a heretic denying the Catholic faith. Nor is Burke refusing to submit to the pontiff like French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who was cast out by John Paul II after his ultra-conservative Society of Saint Pius X ordained its own bishops rather than take directions from the Vatican.

However, Francis, who has full authority over his cardinals, could fully remove Burke from his remaining sinecure with Knights of Malta, call him in for a pastoral correction on the issue of his unacceptable political interventions, investigate Dignitatis Humanae with a view to shutting it down for its subversive politicking, and send the rebel cardinal back home to the United States. As Burke tries to run an insurgency and rebukes the pope for his doctrinal “ambiguities,” with the backing of thousands of priests, Francis could seize the agenda. In time-honored papal tradition, he could write an encyclical on the burning questions of populism and nationalism, with specific reference to migrants, Muslims and Jews, so priests including Burke know they are in breach of church teaching when they try to act as power brokers for the international extreme right.

The stakes could hardly be higher, especially as the pope seems on a collision course with a Trump-Bannon White House that has imposed a form of a Muslim ban and disparaged him during the election campaign for daring to suggest that building a wall on the United States’ southern border was un-Christian. If the pope doesn’t put the reactionary elements such as Burke and his cronies back in their place, they could force a real schism during his papacy and leave the church open to justifiable accusations it failed to stand up to enablers of extremism and neo-fascism within its ranks.

Hermeneutics of Continuity/Discontinuity

Pope Francis Believes

In the call to be evangelisers, all the Churches and Ecclesial Communities discover a privileged setting for closer cooperation. For this to be effective, we need to stop being self-enclosed, exclusive, and bent on imposing a uniformity based on merely human calculations. Our shared commitment to proclaiming the Gospel enables us to overcome proselytism and competition in all their forms. All of us are at the service of the one Gospel.

In this moment of prayer for unity, I would also like to remember our martyrs, the martyrs of today. They are witnesses to Jesus Christ, and they are persecuted and killed because they are Christians. Those who persecute them make no distinction between the religious communities to which they belong. They are Christians and for that they are persecuted. This, brothers and sisters, is the ecumenism of blood.

Mindful of this testimony given by our martyrs today, and with this joyful certainty, I offer a cordial and fraternal greeting to His Eminence Metropolitan Gennadios, the representative of the Ecumenical Patriarch, His Grace David Moxon, the personal representative in Rome of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and all the representatives of the various Churches and Ecclesial Communions gathered here to celebrate the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul.

Pope Francis to ecumenical gathering

The Catholic Infallibly Teaches

The most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal; but that they will go into the "eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matthew 25:41), unless before death they are joined with Her; and that so important is the unity of this ecclesiastical body that only those remaining within this unity can profit by the sacraments of the Church unto salvation, and they alone can receive an eternal recompense for their fasts, their almsgivings, their other works of Christian piety and the duties of a Christian soldier. No one, let his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for the Name of Christ, can be saved, unless he remain within the bosom and the unity of the Catholic Church.

Pope Eugene IV, Cantate Domino (1441)

Since Proselytism is Out of the Question, for Pope Francis the “Common Good” and the “Best Solution for Everyone” does not include their salvation!

Dialogue is not negotiating in order to try and get one’s piece of the cake. Dialogue is to seek the common good, for everyone; it is to discuss together and think of the best solutions for everyone.

Pope Francis, defining "dialogue" to the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI)

Irate with Pope Francis? Worry about it if you are not!

Only the person who becomes irate without reason, sins. Whoever becomes irate for a just reason is not guilty. Because, if ire were lacking, the science of God would not progress, judgments would not be sound, and crimes would not be repressed. Further, the person who does not become irate when he has cause to be, sins. For an unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices: it fosters negligence, and stimulates not only the wicked, but above all the good, to do wrong.

St. John Chrysostom, Homily

Ire may be understood in two ways. In one way, as a simple movement of the will that inflicts punishment not through passion, but by virtue of a judgment of the reason: and in this case, without a doubt, lack of ire is a sin. This is how Chrysostom understands ire when he says: “Ire, when it has a cause, is not ire but judgment. For properly speaking, ire is a movement of passion. And when a man is irate with just cause, his ire does not derive from passion. Rather, it is an act of judgment, not of ire.”

In another way, ire can be understood as a movement of the sensitive appetite agitated by passion with bodily excitation. This movement is a necessary sequel in man to the previous movement of his will, since the lower appetite naturally follows the movement of the higher appetite unless some obstacle prevents it. Hence the movement of ire in the sensitive appetite cannot be lacking altogether, unless the movement of the will is altogether lacking or weak. Consequently, the lack of the passion of ire is also a vice, as it is the lack of movement in the will to punish according to the judgment of reason.

St. Thomas, Summa Theologiae

Super Bowl metaphysics: This is about as good as it gets for a modern Jesuit formation!

Great sporting events like today’s Super Bowl are highly symbolic, showing that it is possible to build a culture of encounter and a world of peace. May this year’s Super Bowl be a sign of peace, friendship and solidarity to the world.

Pope Francis, address to the Super Bowl audience

8	Sun	Low Sunday	dm	W		9:00 AM; Mission Members; Rosary of Reparation 8:30 AM; Confessions 8:00 AM
9	Mon	Annunciation of the BVM (from 3-25)	d1cl	W		Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass
10	Tue	Ferial Day		W		Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass
11	Wed	St. Leo I, PCD	d	W		Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass
12	Thu	Ferial Day		W		Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass
13	Fri	St. Hermenegild, M	sd	R	A	Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass
14	Sat	St. Justin, M *St. Tibutius & Comp., Mm*	d	R		Mass 9:00 AM; Confession & Rosary of Reparation 8:30 AM
15	Sun	2nd Sunday after Easter	sd	W		9:00 AM; Mission Members; Rosary of Reparation 8:30 AM; Confessions 8:00 AM

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