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

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

Tridentine Codification of the traditional Roman Rite of the Mass.

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

St. Bonaventure, Bishop, Confessor, and Doctor

July 14, 2019

This Sunday’s liturgy is concerned with the forgiveness of injuries, and like last Sunday, is made up of two elements, the reading of the history of David which is continued in the Breviary and that of a passage of one of the epistles of St. Peter.

When David had gained his victory over Goliath the Israelites went back victorious to their towns singing to the accompaniment of instruments, “Saul slew his thousands and David his ten thousands.”

Angered at this and with jealousy eating into his heart, Saul exclaimed: “They have given David ten thousands, and to me they have given but a thousand, what can he have more than the kingdom?” “And Saul did not look on David with a good eye from that day forward” as if he guessed that David had been chosen by God. And jealousy turned him into a criminal. Twice while David was playing the harp to calm Saul’s fit of madness he threw his javelin at him and twice David nimbly stepped aside. Then Saul sent David into the battle, hoping that he would be killed, but David returned at the head of his armies, victorious, safe and sound, (Introit, Gradual, Alleluia, Postcommunion).

After this Saul became desperate and hunted David up and down the kingdom and one night he went into a cave in which David lied concealed. One of David’s companions told him that it was the king; that the Lord was about to deliver him from his enemy’s hand and that the moment had come to strike him dead with his spear. David, however replied that he would never lay his hand upon the Lord’s anointed, and contented himself with secretly cutting off the hem of Saul’s robe, after which he left the cave.

At sunrise, from a safe distance, he showed Saul the piece he had cut off and Saul wept and cried: “My son David, you are better than I.” Later, David came across Saul fast asleep at night with his spear struck in the earth close to his pillow and did no more than take the spear and Saul’s drinking vessel. Saul blessed him again, however, without slackening in his pursuit.

Later the Philistines recommenced the war and Israel being defeated, Saul killed himself by “throwing himself on his sword.” When David learned of Saul’s decease, far from rejoicing, he rent his garments and had the Amalekite killed who brought the news while carrying Saul’s crown and claiming for himself the fictitious merit of having slain David’s enemy. David sang a dirge for Saul: “Ye mountains of Gelboe, let neither dew not rain come upon you, neither be they fields of first-fruits: for there was cast away the shield of the valiant, the shield of Saul as though he had not been anointed with oil……Saul and Jonathan, lovely and comely in their life, even in death they were not divided.”

St. Gregory asks, “Why did David, who had not even rendered evil for evil, utter this curse upon the mountains of Gelboe, when he learned that Saul and Jonathan had fallen in the fight? In what sense have the mountains of Gelboe been guilty in the death of Saul, that receiving neither dew not rain, all their verdant vegetation should be turned into barrenness?”

Saul whose anointing in no way prevented his death is a type of our Mediator in His death, and the mountains of Gelboe, whose name means watercourses, stand for the Jews with their proud hearts who dissipate themselves in a stream of worldly ambitions. The King, the true anointed one, lost the life of his body among them, wherefore wholly deprived the dew of grace they remain in a state of barrenness. These proud souls bring forth no fruit, for they remain faithless to the Redeemer’s coming. And while the Church, from the beginning, has shown herself prematurely fertile by the multitude of nations she has brought forth, it is with difficulty that in the last days she will garner some Jews, gathered like a late harvest or like fruit out of season (2^nd Nocturn).

From all these consideration there stand out a great lesson of charity, for as David spared his enemy Saul and rendered him good for evil, so God forgives the Jews, since in spite of their unfaithfulness, He is always ready to welcome them into the kingdom of which Christ their Victim is King. Hence we can understand the reason for the choice of today’s Epistle and Gospel, which proclaim the great duty of the forgiveness of injuries, “Be ye all of one mind in prayer, not rendering evil for evil, not railing for railing,” says the Epistle. And the Gospel adds: “If therefore thou offer thy gift an the altar and there thou remember that thy brother hath anything against thee, leave there thy offering before the altar, and go first to be reconciled to thy brother and then coming, thou shalt offer thy gift.”

David, having been anointed king by the elders of Hebron, took the citadel of Sion, which thus became his city, and put the Ark of God in the sanctuary there (Communion). This was the reward for his great charity, a virtue indispensable if the worship offered by men in the holy places is to be acceptable to God (Communion). It is for this reason that the Epistle and Gospel call our attention to the fact that it is especially when we meet in prayer that we must be united in heart.

Certainly, as the history of Saul and today’s Mass show, divine Justice has its rights, but if it utter a final sentence, it is only after almighty God has exhausted in vain, all the means suggested by His love.

The best way to come to the possession of charity is to love God, to desire the good things of eternity (Collect), and the possession of happiness in heavenly places (Communion), where entrance is only to be had through the continual practice of this fair virtue.

INTROIT:

Ps. 26. Hear, O Lord, my voice, with which I have cried to Thee: be Thou my helper, forsake me not, nor do thou despise me, O God, my Savior.

Ps. The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? Glory be, etc. Hear, O Lord, my voice, etc.

COLLECT:

O God, who hast prepared for those who love Thee good things beyond the vision of man, pour into our hearts such love toward Thee that we, loving thee in all things and above all things, may obtain Thy promises, which exceed all that we can desire. Through our Lord, etc.

O God, by whose providence blessed Bonaventure was sent to guide Thy people in the way of everlasting salvation: grant we beseech Thee, that as we have learned of him the doctrine of life on earth, so we may be found worthy to have him for our advocate in heaven. Through our Lord, etc.

From all perils of soul and body defend us, O Lord, we beseech Thee, and by the intercession of the blessed and glorious Virgin Mary, Mother of God, of blessed Joseph, of Thy blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and all the Saints, graciously grant us safety and peace, that all adversities and errors being overcome, Thy Church may serve Thee in security and freedom. Through our Lord, etc.

EPISTLE: 1 Peter 3, 8-15

Dearly Beloved: Be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, being lovers of the brotherhood, merciful, modest, humble: not rendering evil for evil, nor railing for railing, but contrariwise, blessing: for unto this are you called, that you may inherit a blessing. For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile. Let him decline from evil, and do good: let him seek after peace and pursue it: because the eyes of the Lord are upon the just, and His ears unto their prayers: but the countenance of the Lord upon them that do evil things. And who is he that can hurt you, if you be zealous of good? But if also you suffer any thing for justice’ sake, blessed are ye. And be not afraid of their fear, and be not troubled; but sanctify the Lord Christ in your hearts.

How may and ought we to sanctify the Lord Jesus in our hearts?
By faithfully imitating Him; for thereby we become His true and faithful disciples, honor Him, sanctify ourselves and edify others, who by our good example are led to admire Christianity, and Christ its founder, and to become His followers.

GRADUAL:

Ps. 83. Behold, O God our protector, and look on Thy servants. O Lord God of hosts, give ear to the prayers of Thy servants. Alleluia, alleluia.

Ps. 20. In Thy help, O Lord, the king shall joy; and in Thy salvation he shall rejoice exceedingly. Alleluia.

GOSPEL: Matt. 5, 20-24

At that time Jesus said to His disciples: I tell you, unless your justice abound more than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. You have heard that it was said to them of old: Thou shalt not kill: and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment. But I say to you: that whosoever is angry with his brother, shall be in danger of the judgment. And whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council. And whosoever shall say, Thou Fool: shall be in danger of hell fire. If therefore thou offer thy gift at the altar, and there thou remember that thy brother hath any thing against thee: leave there thy offering before the altar, and go first to be reconciled to thy brother, and then coming thou shalt offer thy gift.

In what did the justice of the Pharisees consist?
They were very pious in outward appearance, and avoided those vices which caused temporal disgrace and injury; but, on the other hand, they were full of malice in their hearts, and this Christ often reproached them with, calling them hypocrites.

How are we to understand what Christ says about anger and using abusive words?
The meaning of His words is “You have heard from your teachers and doctors of the law, that whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment of men; but I say to you, who think it no sin to be angry or envious, that whosoever is angry with his brother without cause, shall be in danger of the judgment of God. You have heard that whosoever calls his brother fool, shall be brought before the council and punished; but I say to you, that God punishes with hell fire every grievous offence against your neighbor, as also the hatred and enmity of your heart towards Him.”

Why must one first be reconciled to his brother before he offers his gift at the altar, or undertakes any good work?
Because no offering, or other good work, can be pleasing to God so long as we are living in enmity, hatred, and strife with our neighbor, and thereby going directly against His will and example.

How shall we be reconciled with our enemies?
Not only with the lips but from the heart, and with sincerity and promptness. “Is he absent whom you have wronged,” says St. Augustine, “so that you can not easily reach him? Humble yourself then before God, and ask His pardon before you offer your gift with a firm resolution to be reconciled with your enemy as soon as possible.”

OFFERTORY:

Ps. 15. I will bless the Lord, who hath given me understanding: I set God always in my sight: for He is at my right hand, that I be not moved.

SECRET:

Be appeased, O Lord, by our supplications, and kindly accept these offerings of Thy servants, men and women, that what they have each offered to the honor of Thy name may avail them all unto salvation. Through our Lord, etc.

Grant, O Lord, we pray thee, that our devout observance of this yearly festival of Thy Confessor and Bishop blessed Bonaventure may render us Thy servants acceptable unto Thy loving-kindness: that the oblation of this our bounden duty and service may be profitable unto him in the reward of his godliness, and obtain for us Thy servants the bountiful gifts of thy grace. Through our Lord, etc

Hear us, O God, our salvation, that through the power of this sacrament Thou mayest defend us from all enemies of soul and body and bestow upon us grace here and glory hereafter. Through our Lord, etc.

COMMUNION:

Ps. 26. One thing I have asked of the Lord, this will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.

POSTCOMMUNION:

Grant, we pray, O Lord, what we whom Thou hast fed with Thy heavenly gift may be cleansed from our hidden sins and delivered from the snares of the enemy. Through our Lord, etc.

O God, who rewardest the souls of them that put their trust in Thee: grant, we beseech Thee, that we who keep the solemn feast of blessed Bonaventure Thy Bishop and Confessor, may by his prayers obtain the pardon of Thy mercy. Through our Lord, etc.

May the offering of this divine sacrament cleanse and protect us, O Lord, we beseech Thee; and by the intercession of the blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, of blessed Joseph, of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and all the saints, may it purify us from all sin and free us from all adversity. Through our Lord, etc.

I tell you, unless your justice abound more than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

But whereas every Catholic child knows that a wicked thought or desire is unlawful, it was not so with the mass of Hebrew people… The Jewish casuists were not slow in drawing up their famous formula, that all moral goodness was guaranteed to him that had received circumcision (the old testament type of the sacrament of Baptism). St. Paul, later on, told them how such a principle was a stumbling block to the Gentiles, leading them to blaspheme the name of God (Rom 2, 24). According to the moral theology of those Hebrew doctors, conscience meant only what the tribunal of public justice issued as its decisions; the obligation of the interior tribunal of a man’s conscience were to be restricted to the rules followed by the assize-courts. The result of such teaching soon showed itself: the only thing people need care for was what was seen by men; if the fault were not one that human eyes could judge of, you were not to trouble about it. The Gospel is filled with the woes uttered by our Lord against these blind guides, who taught the souls they professed to direct how best to smother law and justice and love under the outward cover of the letter…. The last days of the ancient Jerusalem are fast drawing to their close. In less than a month, we shall witness the frightful ruin of the city that, knew not the time of her Lord’s visitation.

Dom Gueranger, The Liturgical Year, Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

“In the way of virtue, there is no standing still; anyone who does not daily advance, loses ground. To remain at a standstill is impossible; he that gains not, loses; he that ascends not, descends. If one does not ascend the ladder, one must descend; if one does not conquer, one will be conquered.”

St. Bonaventure, the Seraphic Doctor, on spiritual progress

“Since we have reached the most sweet Heart of Jesus, and it is good for us to abide in It, let us not readily turn away from It. How good, how sweet it is to dwell in Thy Heart, O good Jesus! Who is there who would not desire this pearl? I would rather give all else, all my thoughts and all the affections of my soul in exchange for It, casting my whole mind into the Heart of my good Jesus.” “Who is there who would not love this wounded Heart? Who would not love, in return, Him Who loves so much?”

St. Bonaventure, the Seraphic Doctor, on the Sacred Heart of Jesus

If anyone prefers otherwise, I will not contend with him, provided he say nothing to the detriment of the Venerable Virgin, for we must take the very greatest care, even should it cost us our life, that no one lessen in any way the honour of our Lady.

St. Bonaventure

PROPER OF THE SAINTS FOR THE WEEK OF JULY 14^th:

14	Sun	5th Sunday after Pentecost St. Bonaventure, BpCD	sd	G		9:00 AM; Members Ss. Peter & Paul; Rosary of Reparation 8:30 AM; Confessions 8:00 AM
15	Sat	St. Henry II, Emperor of Germany, C	sd	W		Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass
16	Tue	Our Lady of Mt. Carmel	dm	W		Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass
17	Wed	St. Alexius, C *Humility of the BVM*	sd	W		Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass
18	Thu	St. Camillus de Lellis, C *St. Symphorosa & her Seven Sons, Mm*	d	W		Mass 8:30 AM; Holy Hour, Benediction with Rosary of Reparation after Mass
19	Fri	St. Vincent de Paul, C	d	W	A	Mass 8:30 AM; Rosary of Reparation before Mass
20	Sat	St. Jerome Emilian, C *St. Margaret, VM*	d	W		Mass 9:00 AM, Confessions & Rosary of Reparation 8:30 AM
21	Sun	6th Sunday after Pentecost St. Praxedes, V	sd	G		9:00 AM; Members Ss. Peter & Paul; Rosary of Reparation 8:30 AM; Confessions 8:00 AM

“Faithfully do what God expects of you each moment, and leave the rest up to Him.

I assure you that living in this manner will bring you great peace.”

St. Jane Francis de Chantal

It “covereth” first the sins of others, and then consequently, our own.

But before all things have a constant mutual charity among yourselves: for charity covereth a multitude of sins.

1 Peter 4, 8

That they might know that by what things a man sinneth, by the same also he is tormented.

Wisdom 11:17

“I will send forth famine into the land, not a famine of bread . . . but of hearing the word of the Lord, . . . they shall go about seeking the word of the Lord and shall not find it.”

Amos 8:11

“Invincible ignorance is a punishment for sin.”

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

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

The sixth gift of the Holy Ghost raises the soul to a still higher state. The first five gifts all tend to action, the gift of understanding tends toward contemplation. Contemplation is the state to which, more or less, every Christian is called. It is simply a relation of close intimacy existing between God and a soul that is faithful to Him in action. It consists in a supernatural light granted to the mind of man. With this gift, the holy liturgy, with its magnificent ceremonies and sublime formulas, is to her an anticipation of heaven. Let us address ourselves to the Holy Ghost in these words of the psalmist: ‘Open Thou our eyes, and we will consider the wondrous things of Thy law! Give us understanding and we shall live!’ Let us beseech Him in the words of the Apostle Paul, ‘Give us the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, whereby we may have the knowledge of our God! Enlighten the eyes of our heart, that we may know what is the hope of our calling, and what the riches of the glorious inheritance prepared for the saints!’

Dom Gueranger, The Liturgical Year, Gift of Understanding

I, their Mother, will graciously go down to them on the Saturday after their death, and all whom I find in purgatory I will deliver and will bring to the mountain of life eternal.

The Blessed Virgin Mary to James d’Euse, who she foretold would soon become Pope John XXII ending the Western Schism, regarding those who died wearing the scapular of Mt. Carmel

The Sabbatine Privledge

According to a pious tradition authorized by the liturgy, on the day of Pentecost a number of men who walked in the footsteps of the holy Prophets Elias and Eliseus, and whom John the Baptist had prepared for the advent of Jesus, embraced the Christian faith, and erected the first church to the Blessed Virgin on Mount Carmel, at the very spot where Elias had seen a cloud arise, a figure of the fecundity of the Mother of God. They were called: Brethren of Blessed Mary of Mount Carmel (Collect). These religious came to Europe in the thirteenth century and in 1245 Innocent IV gave his approbation to their rule under the generalship of St. Simon Stock, an English saint.

On July 16, 1251, Mary appeared to this fervent servant and placed in his hands the habit and attached to it many privileges, not only for the members of the Order, but also, for those who entered the Confraternity of our Lady of Mount Carmel. By wearing the scapular, which is in smaller form than that of the Carmelite Fathers, they participate in all their merits and may hope to obtain through the Virgin a prompt delivery from purgatory, if they have faithfully observed abstinence, chastity according to their state, and said the prayers prescribed by Pope John XXII, in the Sabbatine bull, published on March 3, 1322. The feast of our Lady of Mount Carmel, at first celebrated only in the churches of the Order, was extended to all Christendom by Benedict XIII in 1726.

"Commitment is doing what you said you would do, after the feeling when you said it has passed."

St. Camillus de Lellis

Think well. Speak well. Do well. These three things, through the mercy of God, will make a man go to Heaven.

St. Camillus de Lellis

“Whosoever shall die in this habit (the scapular of Carmel) shall not suffer eternal flames.”

The Blessed Virgin Mary to St. Simon Stock

“You know nothing of that which holds us here and keeps us united unto death..... To the poorest daughter of Carmel, honor speaks louder than fear.”

Mother Marie: Sister Blanche...

First Commissary: I forbid you to continue...

Mother Marie: You have the power to force me to silence, but none to command me to it. I represent here the Reverend Mother Prioress and I shall take no orders from you.

A Commissary: Confounded old hag! She cannot be made to hold her tongue, fellow Citizen, but remind her that the Republic has a machine at its disposal that will leave her somewhat short of breath!

First Commissary: Enough! I repeat that you must behave as a true representative of the people! [To Sister Blanche]: Young citizen, you have nothing to fear from us, who are your liberators! Say but one word, and you will find yourself beyond the sway of those who, to better put you in their power, have not feared to offend nature in usurping even the sacred name of "mother". Henceforth, you are under the protection of the Law.

Mother Marie: But she is first under my protection. Do you think I shall permit you to take any further advantage of the terror of a child? I shall take great care to avoid a language that you cannot understand. You know nothing of that which holds us here and keeps us united unto death - or, if once you knew it, it is now certainly forgotten. But there are still perhaps words which are common to us, and which can touch your conscience. Well, sir, you must know that to the poorest daughter of Carmel, honor speaks louder than fear.

The Superior General of the Sisters of Charity of Nevers on the execution of 16 Carmelite nuns by the French Republic on July 17, 1794,

Georges Bernanos, Dialogues des Carmélites

The faith of Camillus was likewise show in the aversion which he always had for infidels. So that when he had occasion to speak of the heresies that were then so widely spread in France, Germany, and England, especially against the obedience due to the Holy See and the Roman Church, he would lift up his eyes to heaven and cry out with tears: "Is it possible that men should be so blind and not see the truth of our faith?...."
His aversion to heretics and infidels was so great that he seemed to know them by their smell. Thus, when he was once traveling from Milan with a large company on horseback, he conversed freely with all but one, who he said smelt like a heretic; and so indeed the man turned out to be. He remembered the counsel of St. John, not even to salute or eat with infidels, and so would have nothing to do with them or with Jews, especially with those who showed no respect at all for our religion.

The Life of St. Camillus of Lellis by Father Sanzio Ciccatelli, trans. by Father Frederick Faber. p. 207

I am most particularly obliged to bless and thank God, for not having suffered the first professors of that doctrine (Jansenism), men of my acquaintance and friendship, to be able to draw me to their opinions. I cannot tell you what pains they took, and what reasons they propounded to me; I objected to them, amongst other things, the authority of the Council of Trent, which is clearly opposed to them; and seeing that they still continued, I, instead of answering them, quietly recited my Credo; and that is how I have remained firm in the Catholic faith.

St. Vincent de Paul in his dealings with the Jansenists

With St. Vincent de Paul (patron saint of charitable societies) and St. Camillus de Lellis (patron saint of hospitals with St. John of God), St. Jerome Aemilian (patron saint of orphans) completes the triumvirate of charity. Thus does the Holy Ghost mark His reign with traces of the Blessed Trinity; moreover, He would show that the love of God which He kindles on earth can never be without the love of our neighbor. At the very time when He gave thee to the world as a demonstration of this truth, the spirit of evil made it evident that true love of our neighbor cannot exist without love of God, and that this latter soon disappears in its turn when faith is extinct. With good reason we repeat the prayer that thou, St. Jerome, didst teach thy little orphans: “Lord Jesus Christ, our loving Father, we beseech Thee, by Thine infinite goodness, raise up Christendom once more, and bring it back to that upright holiness which flourished in the apostolic age.”

Dom Gueranger, The Liturgical Year, on the feast of St. Jerome Aemilian

O faith, you are the great friend of our spirit, and to the human sciences which boast that they are more evident than you are, you can well say what the Spouse said to her companions: ‘I am black but beautiful.’ You are black because you are in the obscurity of the divine revelations, which, having no apparent evidence, make you appear black, and almost unrecognizable; but yet you are beautiful in your self because of your infinite certainty.

St. Francis de Sales

It is an error in a matter of divine truth to imagine the Church as invisible, by which many Christian communities, although they differ from each other in their faith, are united by a bond that is invisible to the senses.

Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis

Be careful to give no credit to yourself for anything; if you do, you are stealing from God, to whom alone every good thing is due.

St. Vincent de Paul

What is done for charity’ sake is done for God. It is not enough for us that we love God ourselves; our neighbor also must love him; neither can we love our neighbor as ourselves unless we procure for him the good we are bound to desire for ourselves, that is, divine love, which unites us to our Sovereign Good. We must love our neighbor as the image of God and the object of His love, and must try to make men love their Creator in return, and love one another also with mutual charity for the love of God, who so loved them as to deliver His own Son to death for them. But let us, I beg of you, look upon this Divine Savior as a perfect pattern of the charity we must bear to our neighbor.

St. Vincent de Paul

IT IS VERY IMPORTANT to know the procedure that must be followed in fighting your passions and vices so that you will not run about blindly, and merely beat the air, as so many do. They lose all the fruits of their labor.

You must begin with recollection in order to know what thoughts and desires usually occupy your mind. You must know your dominant passion which must be singled out as your greatest enemy, the first to be attacked.

But, if your enemy, as a diverting movement, should attack at another point, you must move to the point that is the most threatened and then immediately return to your primary position. Remember, “None shall be crowned who has not fought well” (2 Tim 2:5).

Dom Lornezo Scupoli, The Spiritual Combat

It is the invariable opinion of theologians that there is no more efficacious means than Mass for obtaining a good and holy death. Christ our Lord is said to have revealed to St. Mechtilde that he who in life is in the habit of devoutly hearing holy Mass shall in death be consoled by the presence of the angels and saints, his advocates, who shall bravely defend him from all the snares of infernal spirits. Oh, how beautiful the death which is destined to succeed your life if you shall have striven to hear with devotion as many Masses as you could!

St. Leonard of Port Maurice

“God will not bestow the sacrifice of blood on one who has not made other sacrifices… Martyrdom is the heroic act of love…. To love aught else but God, is not to love…. Pray that I may be a martyr and that no one will know it… Do you think God will grant so great a favor, so great a reward, as martyrdom to those who will not deprive themselves, for His glory, of a few moments of repose; while He refuses to hundreds of missionaries consecrated to Him, who keep nothing back?… I would blush to ask for martyrdom so long as I blushed not to refuse God small sacrifices.”

St. Just De Bretenieres, private reflections, martyred in Korea, March 8, 1865

INSTRUCTION ON SWEARING

To swear is to call upon God, His truth, His justice, or other attributes, or upon His creatures, in the name of God, as witnesses of the truth.

Is swearing lawful, and when?
Yes, when necessity demands it, and when the matter sworn to is true and just: when a man thus swears he imitates God, honors Him as all-holy, all-wise, all-just, and contributes to the triumph of justice and innocence. On the other hand, great sins are committed: 1. By those who swear in a false and unjust cause, which may be, besides, of little moment; for they call upon God as a witness to falsehood and wrong, thus violating His truth and justice. 2. By those who swear in a good cause, but without necessity or a sufficient reason; for it is certainly unseemly to call God as witness on every trivial occasion. 3. In like manner, they sin grievously and constantly who have become so habituated to swearing as to break out into oaths, without so much as knowing or thinking whether the thing is true or false, whether they will keep their word or not; whereby they expose themselves to great danger, both because they frivolously abuse the name of God, of His saints, and of His works.
Every one, says St. Chrysostom, who swears often sometimes swears falsely; just as he who talks a great deal sometimes utters things unseemly and improper. For this reason, according to the opinion of St. Augustine, the Saviour forbade Christians to swear at all (Matt. 5, 34), that they might not fall into a habit of swearing, and, by reason of that, into swearing falsely. Whoever has this habit should take the greatest pains to overcome it. To accomplish which, it will be useful to him to reflect: 1. That if we have to render an account for every idle word we speak, how much more strictly will we be judged for needless, idle, and false oaths! “Remember thy last end, and thou shalt not sin.” 2. To remember that persons who swear so lightly are generally less believed than others. 3. To repent each time that he swears, and to punish himself by a penance.

MEANS OF PREVENTING ANGER

The first and best means to overcome anger is humility; to become thus humble, gentle, and patient, one must often consider the example of Christ, Who endured so many contradictions, persecutions, and insults, without reviling again when reviled Himself, and without threatening vengeance to any one for all He suffered. An excellent preventive to anger is, to think over in the morning what causes will be likely to draw us into anger at any time during the day, and to guard ourselves against them beforehand, by a firm resolution to bear everything patiently for the love of God; and then, when anything vexatious occurs and excites our anger, to say and do nothing so long as the anger lasts.

INSTRUCTION ON SACRIFICE Offer thy gift (Matt. 5, 24).

In its wider and more universal sense sacrifice comprehends all religious actions by which a rational being; presents himself to God, to be united with Him; and in this sense prayer, praising God, a contrite heart, charity to others, every good work, and observance of God’s commandments is a sacrifice. Thus the Holy Scriptures say: Offer up the sacrifice of justice and trust in the Lord. (Ps. 4, 6). Offer to God the sacrifice of praise (Ps. 49). Sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit; a contrite and humble heart, O God, thou wilt not despise (Ps.1, 19). It is a wholesome sacrifice to take heed to the commandments, and to depart from, all iniquity (Ecclus. 35, 2). “Therefore,” says St. Augustine, “every good work which is united in sanctity with God, is a true sacrifice, because it refers to the end of all good, to God, by whom we can be truly happy.” As often, then, as you humble yourself in prayer before the majesty of God, when you give yourself up to God, and when you make your will subject to His divine will, you bring a sacrifice to God; as often as you punish your body by continency, and your senses by mortification, you bring a sacrifice to God, because you offer them as instruments of justice (Rom. 6, 13); as often as you subdue the evil concupiscence of the flesh, the perverted inclinations of your soul, deny yourself any worldly pleasure for the love of God, you bring a sacrifice to God. Such sacrifices you should daily offer to God; without which all others have no value and do not please God, such as these you can make every moment, when you think, speak, and act all for the love, of God.

Strive then, Christian soul, to offer these pleasing sacrifices to God, the supreme Lord, and as you thus glorify Him, so will He one day reward you with unutterable glory.

There is but one universal Church of the Faithful, outside which no one at all can be saved.

Pope Innocent III, Fourth Lateran Council, 1215

FRATERNAL HARMONY FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

PRESENCE OF GOD ‑ O Lord, teach me to live in perfect harmony with my neighbor, so that my prayers and offerings will be pleasing to You.

MEDITATION:

I. This Sunday could well be called the Sunday of Fraternal Charity, a virtue so necessary to preserve proper relations with our neighbor. “Be ye all of one mind,” says St. Peter in his first Epistle (3,8‑I5), “having compassion one of another, being lovers of the brotherhood, merciful, modest, humble.” The Apostle speaks to us in a very practical and realistic way. He realizes that with our weakness and frailty we cannot preserve peace if we have no compassion for the faults of others, if we do not know how to be kind to those who displease us, and if we cannot bear blame with humility. Anyone who pretends that in achieving a life of perfect harmony with others, he need never suffer any annoyance or displeasure, and that he need never be contradicted or upset, has very little experience of the reality of life and forgets that, far from being pure spirits, we are limited by matter; he forgets that “we are mortal, frail, and weak, bearing about our bodies like vessels of clay, a source of friction for one another “ (St. Augustine), even as clay jars carried in the same vehicle strike against and jostle each other. By reason of our limitations we have mentalities, tastes, desires, and interests that differ from those of others, and thus we do not always succeed in understanding one another.

It even happens that sometimes, without wishing it and without even the shadow of a bad intention, we work against one another. The remedy for these inevitable failures, when the limitations of our nature are the cause of mutual distress, is that suggested by St. Augustine : “dilatentur spatia caritatis,” let more room be given to charity. In other words, let us enlarge our hearts by greater love, in order that we may better understand and sympathize with one another. Let us likewise practice greater humility, in order to overcome the resentments of our self‑love. Even if someone does act against us with ill will, we should know how to forgive him, according to the words of the Apostle: “Not rendering evil for evil, nor railing for railing, but contrariwise, blessing .... But if also you suffer anything for justice’ sake, blessed are ye .... Sanctify the Lord Christ in your hearts.”

2. The Gospel (Mt. 5, 20‑24) repeats and intensifies the same instruction. First of all Jesus tells us: “Unless your justice abound more than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” This is a clear allusion to the new law, the law of love, given to us by Jesus Himself and far surpassing the simple law of justice. We cannot content ourselves, as the Pharisees did, with simply not doing harm to our neighbor; we must practice toward him a positive, fraternal charity. It is not enough “not to kill” in order to escape “the judgment,” the Master teaches, but “whosoever is angry with his brother, shall be in danger of the judgment.” Another aspect of the new law proposed by Jesus concerns our interior dispositions. It is useless to make an exterior display of goodness if this does not proceed from a good conscience, a sincere heart. It does not suffice to avoid giving outward offense to our neighbor; we must avoid, or rather, repress our inner resentment. The Pharisees, with their materialistic interpretation of the law, had completely lost its spirit; they had forgotten that the eyes of the Lord are always upon us and that He sees our intentions as well as our acts. Anger and resentment that smolder in our heart do not escape Him. At the same time, Jesus asks great delicacy of us in all our exterior dealings with our neighbor. He demands that we avoid not only offensive acts but even words that might hurt another. Charity and fraternal harmony meant so much to Him that He did not hesitate to tell us: “If therefore thou offer thy gift at the altar, and there thou remember that thy brother hath anything against thee, leave there thy offering before the altar, and go first to be reconciled to thy brother.” How much Our Lord loves us! St. John Chrysostom remarks very aptly: “He does not take account of His own honor, when He requires us to love our neighbor. `Let My worship be interrupted ‘ He says, `but reestablish your charity.’ “ Indeed, how can our prayers and sacrifices be pleasing to God when something interferes with perfect harmony between ourselves and our neighbor?

COLLOQUY:

“O Jesus, as I meditated on Your divine words, I understood how imperfect was my love for my sisters in religion and that I did not love them as You do. Now I know that true charity consists in bearing all my neighbor’s defects, in not being surprised at mistakes, but in being edified at the smallest virtues. Above all else I have learned that charity must not remain shut up in the heart, for `No man lighteth a candle and putteth it. . .under a bushel; but upon a candlestick, that they who come in may see the light.’ This candle, it seems to me, O Lord, represents that charity which enlightens and gladdens not only those who are dearest to me, but likewise all those who are of the household.

“O Lord, how often it is said that the practice of charity is difficult. I should rather say that it seems difficult, for `The yoke of the Lord is sweet and His burden light ‘ And when we submit to that yoke we at once feel its sweetness and can exclaim with the Psalmist: `I have run in the way of Your commandments since You have dilated my heart.’ O Jesus, ever since its sweet flame consumes me, I run with joy in the way of Your new commandment, and I desire so to run until that glorious day when with Your retinue of virgins I shall follow You through Your boundless realm singing Your new canticle – the Canticle of Love” (T.C.J. St. 10).

“O Lord Jesus Christ, if I had no other reason to love my neighbor – not only he who loves me but even he who does not – I should resolve to do so solely because of the commandment You have given us to love one another as You have loved us. Just as You, infinite beauty, goodness and perfection. Love me, full of evil, and do not reject me because of my faults, so do I, for love of You, wish to love all my brethren” (Ven. John of Jesus Mary).

The Church, founded on these principles and mindful of her office, has done nothing with greater zeal and endeavour than she has displayed in guarding the integrity of the faith. Hence she regarded as rebels and expelled from the ranks of her children all who held beliefs on any point of doctrine different from her own. The Arians, the Montanists, the Novatians, the Quartodecimans, the Eutychians, did not certainly reject all Catholic doctrine: they abandoned only a certian portion of it. Still who does not know that they were declared heretics and banished from the bosom of the Church? In like manner were condemned all authors of heretical tenets who followed them in subsequent ages. “There can be nothing more dangerous than those heretics who admit nearly the whole cycle of doctrine, and yet by one word, as with a drop of poison, infect the real and simple faith taught by our Lord and handed down by Apostolic tradition” (Auctor Tract. de Fide Orthodoxa contra Arianos).

The practice of the Church has always been the same, as is shown by the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, who were wont to hold as outside Catholic communion, and alien to the Church, whoever would recede in the least degree from any point of doctrine proposed by her authoritative Magisterium. Epiphanius, Augustine, Theodoret, drew up a long list of the heresies of their times. St. Augustine notes that other heresies may spring up, to a single one of which, should any one give his assent, he is by the very fact cut off from Catholic unity. “No one who merely disbelieves in all (these heresies) can for that reason regard himself as a Catholic or call himself one. For there may be or may arise some other heresies, which are not set out in this work of ours, and, if any one holds to one single one of these he is not a Catholic” (S. Augustinus, De Haeresibus, n. 88).

Pope Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum

A man who knows that the earth is round (or flat) but lives among men who believe it to be flat (or round) ought to hammer in his doctrine of the earth’s roundness (or flatness) up to the point of arrest, imprisonment or even death. Reality will confirm him, and he is not so much testifying to the world as it is – which is worth nothing – as to Him who made the world, and Who is worth more than all things.

Hilaire Belloc

Faith in Christ cannot be maintained pure and unalloyed when it is not protected and supported by Faith in the Church. Faith in Christ and Faith in the Church stand together. If any man does not enter the Church, or if any man departs from her, he is far from the hope of life and salvation.

Pope Pius XI, Mit Brenneder Sorge

Heretics and schismatics are excluded from the Church because they have separated from her and belong to her only as deserters belong to the army from which they have deserted.

Catechism of Trent, Articles IX, Part I

When the perennial philosophy is abandoned,

the mind is muddled and prey to any absurdity of thought!

Hermeneutics of Continuity/Discontinuity or,

The Great Gulf Between “Desire” and Reality

The Vatican II Definition of the Catholic Church in which “all men” are in “communion.”

The Second Vatican Council, desiring to pass on, pure and integral, the doctrine on the Church that had developed in the course of 2,000 years, gave the Church a “more deeply considered definition”, illustrating first of all the enigmatic nature, that is, as a “reality imbued with the divine presence, hence always capable of new and deeper exploration” (Paul VI, Inaugural Address at the Second Session of the Second Vatican Council, 29 September 1963).
Well, the Church, which originates in the Trinitarian God, is a mystery of communion. As communion, the Church is not merely a spiritual reality but lives in history, so to speak, in flesh and blood. The Second Vatican Council describes her “in the nature of sacrament a sign and instrument, that is, of communion with God and of unity among all men” (Lumen Gentium, n. 1). And the very essence of sacrament is that the invisible is tangible in the visible and that the tangibly visible opens the door to God himself. The Church, we said, is a communion, a communion of people who, through the action of the Holy Spirit, form the People of God which is at the same time the Body of Christ.

Pope Benedict XVI, Basilica of Saint John Lateran, Tuesday, 26 May 2009

The Pre-Vatican II Definition of the Catholic Church in which “all men” are not in “communion.”

The [Catholic Church] is the society of Christian believers united in the profession of the one Christian faith and the participation in the one sacramental system under the government of the Roman Pontiff.

St. Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church, Definition of the Catholic Church, 1621

They (the modernists) exercise all their ingenuity in an effort to weaken the force and falsify the character of Tradition, so as to rob it of all its weight and authority. But for Catholics nothing will remove the authority of the second Council of Nicea, where it condemns those “who dare, after the impious fashion of heretics, to deride the ecclesiastical traditions, to invent novelties of some kind.... or endeavor by malice or craft to overthrow any one of the legitimate traditions of the Catholic Church”; nor that of the declaration of the fourth Council of Constantinople: “We therefore profess to preserve and guard the rules bequeathed to the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, by the Holy and most illustrious Apostles, by the orthodox Councils, both general and local, and by every one of those divine interpreters, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church.” Wherefore the Roman Pontiffs, Pius IV and Pius IX, ordered the insertion in the profession of faith of the following declaration: “I most firmly admit and embrace the apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and other observances and constitutions of the Church.”

St. Pius X, Pascendi

“She is a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed up” (Canticles 4:12). These words of Holy Scripture are applied to the Catholic Church; they distinguish her from infidel or heretical sects, so that men will know whom to follow and whom to avoid in their search for eternal life.

Pope Leo XIII, Hortus Conclusus

It is impossible to retain reverence and worship without their traditional forms. Of course there will always be people who are so filled with grace that they can pray even when the means of prayer have been ripped from their hands. Many people, too, concerned about these issues, will ask, “Isn’t it still possible to celebrate the new liturgy of Pope Paul VI worthily and reverently?” Naturally it is possible, but the very fact that it is possible is the weightiest argument against the new liturgy. It has been said that monarchy’s death knell sounds once it becomes necessary for a monarch to be competent: this is because the monarch, in the old sense, is legitimated by his birth, not his talent. This observation is even truer in the case of the liturgy: liturgy’s death knell is sounded once it requires a holy and good priest to perform it.

Martin Mosebach, The Heresy of Formlessness

ONCE our Lord Jesus Christ became man, His Divine manhood must take the lead in human affairs; for a people calling itself Christian, and throwing off all allegiance to the Most High, becomes thoroughly ungovernable, for the simple reason that corruption is greater when it shows itself in what was originally good. I am, first of all, a man, a reasonable being, created to know, love, serve, and glorify God. I come from God. I go to God. I belong to God. My body is His. My mind is His. My heart is His. I shall be judged according to my works and to the way I have corresponded with the grace given me. Well then, God helping me, I will use this body, this mind, and this heart, as much as I possibly can, for His greater glory, honor and love.

St. Theophane Venard, French missionary, martyred in China

Pope Francis has betrayed the faithful Catholics of China!

St. Theophane Venard, Martyred in China, February 2, 1861

They anchored at a place called Cua-Can, where the vessel was inspected by a Chinese mandarin who failed to discover the two missionaries in hiding; and the following day they were safely landed in the Bishop’s house. From this point they were carried in a kind of net, by bearers, through a dangerous locality, to the river, where a Christian was waiting to row them in a junk to the hut of Bishop Diaz at Central Tonquin. Two carriers were awaiting them here, and, after a few days rest, they began the last stage of their journey, passing by night a citadel guarded by two thousand soldiers. Having escaped pursuit several times, they arrived safely at the house of Bishop Retord.

A frightful persecution of Christians had just devastated the Tonquin mission, and a lull had come for the moment. One bloody edict had followed another during the sixteen years of Bishop Retord’s episcopacy, yet fifty thousand converts had been gained in that time, and these native Christians practiced their religion, as the Bishop testified, in a way that would shame many Europeans.

Unfortunately the lull was of short duration, and very soon Theophane Venard made his first flight to the mountains. There he caught a violent cold which attacked his lungs, but he recovered and resumed his labors, being placed over twelve thousand Christians who were divided into four large parishes and ministered to by six or seven native priests.

Father Venard s position was far from comfortable. He and his fellow priests were, as he expressed it, like birds on the branch of a tree, always on the alert, daily receiving messages which announced that missions had been pillaged, that such and such Christians had been put to death because the priests continued to reside among them. To spare the faithful, the young priest and his companions continued to hide in boats, in caverns, or in the mountain fastnesses, venturing out as often as possible to administer the Sacraments, to preach and to catechize.

On the 30^th of November, at nine o’clock in the morning, five or six junks hove in sight a few yards away from the mission house to which Fr. Venard had returned. The young priest, realizing at once that he had been betrayed, concealed himself between two walls. The chief of his pursuers cried out, “Let the European priest come forth.” Fr. Venard’s catechist presented himself boldly, saying, “I occupy this house.” He was immediately seized and garroted, while the chief, giving a powerful kick to the partition behind which the missionary was hidden, attacked Fr. Venard brutally and dragged him to the boats. Arrived at the chief’s house, the priest was secured in a bamboo cage, and a cangue, a kind of yoke, placed on the neck of his catechist; both were then brought before the Mandarin.

This official had not desired the capture, but could do no more to relieve the situation than provide Fr. Venard with a larger cage and a lighter chain. A detachment of soldiers then conveyed the two prisoners to Kecho, the capital, bringing them directly to the judge’s tribunal. Here, during a long interrogatory, the charge was made that the missionaries were in league with French troops who had made war on the Annamites. The complaint proved to be only a pretext, the real cause of the arrest being the propagation of Christianity. Fr. Venard was commanded to deny his faith and to trample on the cross. Refusing to yield, he was condemned to be beheaded.

In the days which elapsed between his trial and the execution of his sentence, Father Venard wrote from his cage several beautiful letters. Three of these, addressed to members of his family, are preserved today at St. Loup.

While in captivity a native priest, Fr. Thinh, came from Bishop Theurel and, with the clever assistance of a Christian guard, managed to hear Fr. Venard’s confession and to give him absolution. Towards evening, the Blessed Sacrament, concealed in some bread, was brought to the prison through the instrumentality of a devout widow, and Fr. Venard enjoyed the companionship of the Real Presence until after midnight, when he communicated.

The execution took place outside of Kecho in presence of the officials and two hundred soldiers. During the procession, which occupied half an hour, Fr. Venard sang Latin psalms and hymns. The executioner asked his prisoner what he would give to be executed promptly and well. The answer was: The longer it lasts the better it will be. Stripped of most of his garments, the young priest s elbows were tightly tied behind his back, so as to force him to hold up his head for the first stroke, which was only a trial blow. The second stroke cut the head partly off, the stake and the victim falling together. Then the executioner, finding his sword blunt, snatched another and hacked at the neck, amid the indignant murmurs of the bystanders. Seizing the detached head by the ear, the wretch offered it to the presiding official, who instantly sounded the retreat.

The troops had hardly withdrawn before the Christians precipitated themselves on the spot to soak their handkerchiefs in the martyr’s blood. The body, wrapped in a cotton sheet and roughly encased, was buried only a foot deep, and later was removed. Today it lies under the chapel of the Mission House in Paris. The head, by official order, was placed in a box and elevated to the top of a pole. After three days, it was thrown into a river, but was regained through the vigilance of the affectionate natives, who carried it to Bishop Theurel.

Today this precious relic is an object of veneration among the Catholics of Tonquin.

James A. Walsh, Thoughts from Modern Martyrs

Do not work together with unbelievers.

St. Paul, II Corinthians 6:14

The Greatest Error of Vatican II

“It was declared at the Second Vatican Council that atheists too are not excluded from this possibility of salvation… The only necessary condition which is recognized here is the necessity of faithfulness and obedience to the individual’s own personal conscience. This optimism concerning salvation appears to me one of the most noteworthy results of the Second Vatican Council. For when we consider the officially received theology concerning these questions, which was more or less traditional right down to the Second Vatican Council, we can only wonder how few controversies arose during the Council with regard to these assertions of optimism concerning salvation, and wonder too at how little opposition the conservative wing of the Council brought to bear on this point, how all this took place without any setting of the stage or any great stir even though this doctrine marked a far more decisive phase in the development of the Church’s conscious awareness of her Faith than, for instance, the doctrine of collegiality in the Church, the relationship between scripture and tradition, the acceptance of the new exegesis, etc.”

Fr. Karl Rahner, The Anonymous Christian

Thus, the Church forbids the Faithful to communicate with those unbelievers who have forsaken the Faith by corrupting it such as heretics, or by renouncing it such as those who become apostates.

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

G.K. Chesterton

“Never will anyone who says his Rosary (with devotion) every day be led astray. This is a statement that I would gladly sign with my blood.” St. Louis de Montfort

Behold how many there are who are called, and how few who are chosen! And, if you have no care for yourself, your perdition is more certain than your amendment, especially since the way which leads to eternal life is so narrow.

St. John of the Cross

Thou art who is not, I am He who am; if thy soul is deeply penetrated with this truth, the enemy cannot deceive thee and thou wilt avoid all his snares; thou wilt never consent to do anything against My commandments, and thou wilt acquire, without difficulty, grace, truth, and peace.

Jesus Christ addressing St. Catherine of Siena, patroness of Third Order Dominicans

Once again, the Novus Order Regime in Rome endorses the United Nations call for One World Government based upon a “Genuine and Profound Humanism”!

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

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

Pope Francis identifies new “heretical” doctrine! Whoever says, “or this or that” instead of “this and that” – Anathema Sit! Such as, we cannot say, ‘Pope Benedict or Pope Francis’ but rather, ‘Pope Benedict and Pope Francis’?

How many times do we in the Church hear these things: how many times! ‘But that priest, that man or that woman from the Catholic Action, that bishop, or that Pope tell us we must do it this way!’ and then they do the opposite. This is the scandal that wounds the people and prevents the people of God from growing and going forward. It doesn’t free them. . . . This (is the) healthy realism of the Catholic Church: The Church never teaches us the ‘or this or that.’ That is not Catholic. The Church says to us, ‘this and that.’ . . . This is not Catholic, this is heretical.

Pope Francis, June 9, 2016, Vatican Radio

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

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

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

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

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

Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, Glories of the Sacred Heart

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

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

St. Francis of Assisi, Prophecy on the "destroyer" pope.

The time is fast approaching in which there will be great trials and afflictions; perplexities and dissensions, both spiritual and temporal, will abound; the charity of many will grow cold, and the malice of the wicked will increase. The devils will have unusual power, the immaculate purity of our Order, and of others, will be so much obscured that there will be very few Christians who will obey the true Sovereign Pontiff and the Roman Church with loyal hearts and perfect charity. At the time of this tribulation a man, not canonically elected, will be raised to the Pontificate, who, by his cunning, will endeavour to draw many into error and death. Then scandals will be multiplied, our Order will be divided, and many others will be entirely destroyed, because they will consent to error instead of opposing it. There will be such diversity of opinions and schisms among the people, the religious and the clergy, that, except those days were shortened, according to the words of the Gospel, even the elect would be led into error, were they not specially guided, amid such great confusion, by the immense mercy of God. Then our Rule and manner of life will be violently opposed by some, and terrible trials will come upon us. Those who are found faithful will receive the crown of life; but woe to those who, trusting solely in their Order, shall fall into tepidity, for they will not be able to support the temptations permitted for the proving of the elect. Those who preserve their fervour and adhere to virtue with love and zeal for the truth, will suffer injuries and persecutions as rebels and schismatics; for their persecutors, urged on by the evil spirits, will say they are rendering a great service to God by destroying such pestilent men from the face of the earth. But the Lord will be the refuge of the afflicted, and will save all who trust in Him. And in order to be like their Head, these, the elect, will act with confidence, and by their death will purchase for themselves eternal life; choosing to obey God rather than man, they will fear nothing, and they will prefer to perish rather than consent to falsehood and perfidy. Some preachers will keep silence about the truth, and others will trample it under foot and deny it. Sanctity of life will be held in derision even by those who outwardly profess it, for in those days Our Lord Jesus Christ will send them not a true Pastor, but a destroyer.

Works of the Seraphic Father St. Francis Of Assisi, (R. Washbourne, Paternoster Row, London, 1882) pg. 248-250

“My brethren, let us be ever on the watch to drive away temptations, throwing them off from our heart as we would throw off a piece of red-hot iron from our flesh. Fly even the slightest occasions of such thoughts, and at the same time strengthen yourselves by thinking on death and on hell; but above all, on the passion of Jesus Christ, and say to Him in the depth of your heart: ‘Pierce Thou my flesh with Thy fear’.”

St. Camillus de Lellis

Health experts: ‘Transgender’ men will bear children within next decade

LifeSiteNews — Health experts in the UK predict that men, and those who are born as males but who identify as females, will be able to receive womb transplants and bear children within a decade.

Doctors in Europe have already successfully transplanted wombs into wombless women who have gone on to bear healthy children.

Now ‘male-to-female transgenders’ are demanding that they be able to receive womb transplants too, at the government health service’s expense.

Dr. Francoise Shelfield, an infertility specialist and lecturer in obstetrics and gynaecology at University College London pointed out that transgenders’ right to such medical services is “enshrined in legislation.” [....]

Just insider confirmation to what is already common knowledge: Pope Francis, the CEO of the HomoLobby

Francis is the first ever pope to use the word "gay." He has LGBTQ friends, and he has appointed many LGBTQ friendly and supportive cardinals, archbishops and bishops.... Catholics who reject LGBTQ are "homophobic."

Fr. James Martin, S.J., Homosexual Jesuit priest sermon at a LGBTQ Novus Ordo celebration

Now to the Homophilic USCCB

US bishops claim $750K grant to pro-LGBT org does not violate Catholic teaching

LifeSiteNews | Lepanto Institute | July 5, 2019— A week and a half ago, the Lepanto Institute published an article illustrating the rampant promotion of homosexuality and transgenderism by an organization called the Ignatian Solidarity Network (ISN). The US Conference of Catholic Bishops' anti-poverty program, Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) is providing a strategic grant of $750,000 to ISN over the next three years.

A supporter of the Lepanto Institute contacted the USCCB to ask why the CCHD is providing three-quarters of a million dollars to an organization so steeped in the promotion of grave sin and depravity. Alexandra Carroll, the USCCB's Communications Manager for Social Mission, responded by claiming that ISN had not violated Catholic teaching, and in fact asserted that ISN's pro-LGBT conferences to high school children and young adults conformed with the Catechism's admonition that "every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided" [Catechism 2358].

Carroll's response, which is provided in full at the end of this article, begins with an attempt to provide credentials that would indicate the merits of the organization itself. For instance, Carroll says:

ISN has been working … in partnership with the Society of Jesus as well as the larger Church — including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops through their core membership with the Justice for Immigrants Campaign, as well as Church leaders like Bishop Gorge Murry, SJ.

At the outset, this would seem like more of an indictment of the organization than an acquittal. But it is interesting to note that in mentioning Bp. Murry, Carroll fails to mention that another prominent Jesuit has worked very closely with ISN, and that is the notorious Fr. James Martin, SJ. The agenda in this grant is already quite evident.

But in the second paragraph of Carroll's response, she explains very clearly how the $750,000 grant will help expand ISN's push for homosexual and transsexual inclusion in the Church. She says:

Through their Strategic National Grant, ISN will be enabled to significantly expand their advocacy capacity — forming leaders, networking and animating Jesuit institutions, and building on the success of existing ISN programs such as the Campaign for Hospitality and the Ignatian Family Teach-In for Justice.

As we explained in our initial article on this grant, ISN's Ignatian Family Teach-In is the program through which ISN has been promoting homosexuality and transgender ideologies to young people. For instance, in 2018, ISN's Teach-In workshop titled, "Transgender Voices in the Church," which was convened by the Vatican-condemned New Ways Ministry, specifically states its intention to send participants away with resources for conducting transgender activism. The description for this workshop says:

Catholics increasingly face questions of transgender inclusion, intersecting with issues like race and sexual orientation that compound marginalization. This interactive session will examine how trans voices are both present and silent in our communities. Participants will leave with resources for building trans justice in their communities.

So, as it stands, CCHD fully acknowledges and admits that the $750k collected from pew-sitting Catholics is going directly to conference workshops just like this one.

And appallingly, the CCHD claims that workshops such as this are NOT contrary to Catholic teaching. [.....]

Joe Sobran predicted in 2003 that the declaring anti-Sodomy Laws unconstitutional would lead to the declaration overthrowing Marriage. Now it has come to pass. Let’s make another prediction. Because the U.S. has officially destroyed marriage, God will certainly destroy the U.S.

Sodomy and the Constitution

by Joe Sobran | Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation | September 2003

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

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

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

But even if I were otherwise inclined, I would still, I trust, see the point of there being two sexes. I’d recognize it as a shortcoming in myself that I was unable to respond to the other sex -- viz., the female -- in the way that nature seems to have ordained. And here, if I may presume to say so, I think that I speak for most sodomites. In the “gay marriage” debate, American public discussion has

maintained its usual wretched level. And as usual, the liberals don’t realize how silly they sound. There have been the routine complaints about old men in the Vatican trying to control others’ sex lives, refusing to adapt to the times, lacking the charity enjoined by Christ, hypocritically ignoring the Church’s own problem with pedophile priests, et cetera, et cetera.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eleison Comments # 626

Further Undermining

Catholics! Cut the electronics out!
All real reality they put to rout.

These “Comments” have more than once recommended the Internet site of the American commentator on worldwide political and economic developments, Dr Paul Craig Roberts, because he may lack the fullness of perspective provided by the one true religion, but he sees a great deal of worldly truth, and he tells it on his site – paulcraigroberts.org – to the point that one asks oneself, when is he going to be assassinated? But murder is always messy, and the murder of a messenger always risks giving credit to his message. Be that as it may, Dr Roberts’ articles are widely read all over the world, and a recent article reinforces on a very practical level the starting of Fr Calderón’s dissection of the “new man” of Vatican II (see these “Comments” of June 22) by modern man’s being cut off from objective truth by subjectivism. Read Dr Roberts’ article, slightly resumed below, for a typical advance today of that cutting off—

Dr Roberts begins by quoting a truth-telling site, Zero Hedge, which reports that “the ability to falsify reality is growing by leaps and bounds. Thoughtless geeks have now developed technology that makes fake reality indistinguishable from real reality. “I don’t think we’re well prepared at all. And I don’t think the public is aware of what’s coming,” said the Chairman of the U.S.A. House Intelligence Committee. He was discussing the rapid advance of synthesis technology. This new artificial intelligence capability allows competent programmers to create audio and video of anyone, saying absolutely anything. The creations are called “deepfakes” and however outrageous they may be, they’re virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. No sooner had we adjusted to a world where our reality seemed fake, than things that are fake became our reality.

“We’re outgunned,” said a UC Berkeley digital-forensics expert, “The number of people now working on video-synthesis outnumber those working on detecting deepfakes by 100–1.” . . . . Already two-thirds of Americans say altered images and videos have become a major problem for understanding the basic facts of current events. Misinformation researchers warn of growing “reality apathy” whereby it takes so much effort to distinguish between what is real and what is fake that we simply give up and rely on our base instincts, tribal biases, impulses. Immersed in our leaders’ deceits, we come to believe in nothing.

For instance, two oil tankers burst into flames, billowing smoke. On cue, a suspicious Iranian Revolutionary Guard boat appeared on grainy video. Viral images flooded earth’s nine billion screens. Each side told a different story. No one quite knew who to trust. Conspiracy theories filled the void, as we each clung to what we most want to believe. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-16/hedge-fund-cio-i-dont-think-public-aware-whats-coming Dr Roberts goes on, Why is it that tech geeks take pride in developing technology that makes truth even harder to find? What is wrong with their character as humans that they create methods of destroying the ability to know truth? How is this different from releasing an undetectable substance into the air that wipes out life? The only use of this technology is to allow the police state complete control. It is now possible to put words and deeds into the mouths and actions of anyone, and to use the faked evidence to convict them of the simulated crime. Without truth, there is no liberty, no freedom, no independent thought, and no awareness. There is only The Matrix. How has America so lost its way that corporations, investors, and scientists are motivated to develop truth-destroying technology? Aren’t these mindless idiots our real enemies? The most difficult thing in the world today is to ascertain the truth. And Dr Roberts’ article ends with a plea for support, which he surely deserves.

Readers, hold on to truth for dear life, because it is being undermined fast, as the world is putting liberty in front of truth, and fantasy in front of reality. The consequences will be humanly disastrous for us all.

Kyrie eleison

Bishop Richard Williamson

Remember in your charity the following pray requests:

Please remember our expectant mothers: Victoria Dimmel, Erika Zepeda, 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:

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

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

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

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

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

Fr. Mecurio Fregapane, died Jan 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,

Paula Haigh, died October 21, a great defender of our Catholic faith in philosophy and natural science,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Catherine Dunn, died September 15,

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Let nothing disturb thee, Nothing affright thee;

All things are passing; God never changeth;

Patient endurance attaineth to all things;

Who God possesseth in nothing is wanting;

Alone God sufficeth.

Bookmark of St. Teresa of Jesus

How beauteous is the courage which we find, with childlike confidence in God combined!

Who fears his God shall know no other fear - He heeds not pitying smile, nor unkind sneer.

The virtue of fortitude protects a person from loving his life so much that he loses it.

Josef Pieper, A Brief Reader on the Virtues of the Human Heart

Prayer draws its merits from charity; but its imperative efficacy comes from faith and confidence.

St. Thomas

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

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

Blessed Pope Pius IX

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Feminism Unmasked

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

A Lesson in Mercy, Purity, Defense of Truth and the Reward of those who trust in God

St. John Gualbert, a Florentine soldier of nobility, forgave the murderer of his brother who had pleaded for mercy in the name of Jesus Christ. John then went to the church of San Miniato which was near at hand, and as he was adoring the image of Christ crucified, the head of Christ turned toward him. He immediately laid aside his military clothing and embraced the monastic life to become a soldier for Christ. St. John would eventually become the great reformer of monastic life when he laid the foundations of his Order under the Rule of St. Benedict at Vallombrosa as directed by St. Romuald of Camaldoli under divine inspiration.

St. John, having denounced the simoniac bishop of Florence, Peter of Pavia, led the people of Florence in refusing to have communion with him. Peter responded by killing all his opponents including every one of the monks at San Salvi during their Night Office. During the next four years the case was appealed to Rome and St. Peter Damien conducted the investigation with full authority of the Sovereign Pontiff, Alexander II. St. Peter Damien, invoking the principle that no inferior has the right to depose their superiors sided with the cause of Peter of Pavia.

Taking the defense of the monks was none other than Hildebrand, later to become Pope St. Gregory VII. Since the majority of bishops sided with Peter of Pavia, Pope Alexander would not depose him, but took the monks under his personal protection. Still the matter was unresolved because the Florentines refused to accept Peter of Pavia.

In Lent 1067 under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, St. John gave his consent to a trial of fire as a means to provide testimony of the truth of the accusation brought by him against the Bishop of Florence. One of St. John’s monks, Peter by name, and since then known as Peter Igneus, walked slowly before the eyes of the multitude through an immense fire without receiving the smallest injury. Heaven having spoken, the bishop was deposed by Rome and ended his days a happy penitent in the very monastery of St. John at Settimo where the trial of fire took place.

Dom Gueranger, The Liturgical Year, Feast of St. John Gualbert

The attack against the Catholic Faith through the corruption of architecture has been going on for a long time!

“There is no higher act in the Christian religion,” says Father Le Brun, “than the Sacrifice of the Mass; the greater portion of the other sacraments, and nearly all the offices and ceremonies of the church, are only the means or the preparation to celebrate or participate in it worthily.” Such being the case, it is but natural that the place where this most holy sacrifice is to he offered up, should be set apart and railed off from less sacred portions of the church, and we find this to have been the case in all ages, in all styles, and in all countries professing the Catholic faith down to a comparatively very recent period, when in many places all feelings of sanctity, tradition, and reverence, seemed to have been superseded by ignorant innovation and love of change.

It will be shown in this work that the idea of room-worship, and the all-seeing principles, is a perfect novelty. Those indeed who would make the mass a sight, are only to be compared to the innovators of the l6th century, who made it essential to be heard; those who compiled the Book of Common Prayer converted the mass into all-hearing service ; this was the great object of the vernacular change, that people might hear the priest; they were to be edified by what he said, more than what he did; the sacrificial act was merged into the audible recitation of prayers and exhortations; for this reason the altars, in the reign of Edward the Sixth, were to be moved down from their eastern position to the entrance of the chancel, to enable the people to hear ; this led to the demolition of stone altars and the substitution of tables. For this reason the whole congregation crowd into the choirs of the cathedrals, leaving the rest of the church deserted. For this reason, in large parochial churches, the chancel has been often entirely cut off, and a portion of the nave glazed in and reduced to such a size that the people could hear the clergyman; these were all natural consequences of the change of principle consequent on the translation of the mass, and the altered nature of its celebration. That churches are now built after the old tradition for the service of the separated portion of the English Church, is purely owing to an internal revival of Catholic feelings and traditions in that body: the cause is a return to Catholic truth and reverence; the effect is the erection of churches in accordance with those feelings, it has been a charge and reproach made by Catholics against their separated countrymen, that the old fabrics were unsuited to their service, and unquestionably, on the principle that it was essential for every one to hear, they were so. But I will ask these new-fashioned men if it is indispensable for every one to see, how much better are they adapted for modern Catholic rites? They become as unfit for one as the other, for it is unquestionable, that comparatively very few persons in these cruciform churches could obtain a view of the altar, and this independent of any screen-work, the disposition of the pillars intersecting and shutting out all those who are stationed in the aisles and transepts.

I have always imagined that one great distinction between the Protestant and Catholic services was this, that the former was essentially a hearing service, at which only a comparatively few persons could assist, while at the latter many thousands, or, indeed, hundreds of thousands could unite in one great act of adoration and praise, concentrating their thoughts and intentions with the priest who is offering at God’s altar, although he is far shut off from their vision. [……]

Christians of the present time have but little idea of the solemnity of the ancient worship of the Catholic church; ordained ministers were alone permitted to fill the humblest offices about the sanctuary, every object connected with the sacred rites were considered deserving of the most loving care; even in the very early ages, the vessels of the altar were usually of precious metals, and studded with jewels. The books of the holy gospels were written in golden text on purple vellum, bound in plates of silver encasing ivory diptychs, and deposited in portable shrines, like relics. Though all this should fill us with admiration, there is nothing to excite surprise, when we reflect on the very sacred nature of the Christian mysteries—no sign typical and prophetic, as under the Mosaic law, but our blessed Lord truly present and abiding in the temple in the holy sacrament of the altar, - it is by no means wonderful that the Christian worship should assume a form of solemnity formerly unknown, and we are only astounded that with the perpetuation of the doctrine the practice of external solemnity should have so lamentably become decayed in the latter times; indeed, so sacred, so awful, so mysterious is the sacrifice of the mass, that if men were seriously to reflect on what it really consists, so far from advocating mere rooms for its celebration, they would hasten to restore the reverential arrangements of Catholic antiquity, and instead of striving for front seats and first places, they would hardly feel worthy to occupy the remotest corner of the temple. The form and arrangement of the ancient churches originated from the deepest feelings of reverence; the altar, or place of sacrifice, was accessible only to those who ministered, it was enclosed by pillars and veils; the sanctuary was veiled, the choir was enclosed, and the faithful adored at a respectful distance. All this, and the custom of every succeeding century, is in utter opposition to the modern all-seeing principle, and which, if it is carried out, ends in an absurd conclusion; for if it be essential for every worshipper to see, even a level room would not answer the purpose, and the floor must be raised like an amphitheatre to elevate the receding spectators, for unless the people be thus raised, they form a far greater barrier than any screen-work; and even at St. Peter’s itself, when the Pope celebrates, there is a living screen of Swiss troops and noble guards that effectually shuts out the sight of what is going on, except to those taking part in the functions, or a favoured few, who by means of gold or interest are seated in raised loggia. If religious ceremonies are to be regarded as spectacles they should be celebrated in regular theatres, which have been expressly invented for the purpose of accommodating great assemblages of persons to hear and see well. It has been most justly said, that there is no legitimate halting-place between Catholic doctrine and positive infidelity, and I am quite certain that there is none between a church built on Christian tradition and symbolism and Covent Garden Theatre with its pit, boxes, and gallery. It is only by putting the question in this forcible contrast that persons can really understand the danger of these new notions, or the lengths to which they may eventually lead; and I trust it may be the means of raising a feeling of the greatest repugnance to them in the hearts of every true Catholic.

Augustus Welby Pugin, famous neo-gothic restoration architect, A Treatise on Chancel Screens and Rood Lofts: Their Antiquity, Use, and Symbolic Signification, 1851

Pope Francis ignored ‘terrifying dossier’ on top Vatican official’s sex abuse: Abp. Viganò

LifeSiteNews | July 4, 2019 – Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a former papal ambassador who has accused Pope Francis of covering up sex abuse, has stated that the Vatican’s third most powerful prelate, Archbishop Peña Parra, was never given an “open and thorough investigation” for troubling accusations of sex abuse that date back decades. Archbishop Viganò said the high-ranking prelate was not investigated despite the existence of what he calls a “terrifying dossier” sent to Pope Francis that gives names and dates regarding his alleged misbehavior.

Archbishop Viganò told the Washington Post in an unpublished section of an interview that was recently obtained and published by LifeSiteNews that Pope Francis "essentially ignored" the dossier on Archbishop Peña Parra while appointing the Venezuelan to a top position in the Vatican.

Parra_Archbishop_Edgar_Peña_Parra_and_Francis.jpg Viganò states that one accusation, involving Peña Parra seducing two candidates for the seminary in 1990, was reported by the alleged victims’ parents to the police, and the veracity of the accusations were confirmed in writing to the Secretariat of State by both the rector of the major seminary and by seminary’s spiritual director. Viganò told the Post that “I have seen these documents with my own eyes,” and the documentation as well as that of other accusations should still be on file in the Holy See, “if it has not been destroyed.”

Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, who was installed in October of last year as the Substitute of the Secretariat of State, the second in charge of the most influential Vatican dicastery, has been under a cloud of suspicion following reports in the Italian media in 2018 of an investigation made by his bishop in the 1980s regarding accusations of homosexuality made against him anonymously. However, the accusations mentioned by Archbishop Viganò are far more serious, including sexual predation against seminarians, adultery, and even a deadly sex game.

“This might even be a scandal surpassing that of McCarrick, and it must not be allowed to be covered by silence,” says Viganò.

LifeSiteNews reached out to Archbishop Peña Parra for comment but did not receive a reply.

'Terrifying dossier' on Archbishop Peña Parra

According to reports in the Italian media, in 1985 a letter was sent from Peña Parra’s then-bishop mentioning anonymous accusations of homosexuality against him as a seminarian, and calling him a “sexually sick person.” The letter was sent by Domingo Roa Pérez, Archbishop of Maracaibo, to Pío León Cárdenas, Rector of the Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Palmira, Venezuela, where Peña Parra had been a student. Roa Pérez expresses concern about the accusations and asks if León Cárdenas can confirm or deny them. No further correspondence has emerged to indicate the outcome of the investigation. LifeSiteNews has obtained copies of the anonymous letter containing the accusations as well the letter of inquiry written by the archbishop in response.

However, according to Archbishop Viganò, the Vatican for decades has been in possession of much more damning accusations against Peña Parra, information which has never been revealed publicly. Viganò mentions a “terrifying dossier” sent to Francis by a group of faithful Catholics from Peña Parra’s home diocese of Maracaibo in Venezuela, led by one “Dr. Enrique W. Lagunillas Machado.” The document was titled: “Who really is Msgr. Edgar Robinson Peña Parra, the New Substitute of the Secretariat of State of the Vatican?”

Viganò says that the accusations made in the letter have been known by the Vatican’s Secretariat of State since 2002, and that Viganò himself learned of them while he served as a Delegate for Pontifical Representations. LifeSiteNews has obtained a copy of the dossier from a trusted source and can verify that its contents match Archbishop Viganò’s descriptions.

In addition, Viganò claims that a journalist from Maracaibo, Gastón Guisandes López, made “serious accusations” implicating Peña Parra and other priests of the diocese in the sex abuse of minors and other “possibly criminal” acts, in 2000. He says that the following year, Guisandes López went to the apostolic nuncio in Venezuela, Archbishop André Dupuy, and although the nuncio refused to receive the journalist, he reported to Rome that he had made hair-raising accusations against Peña Parra, accusations that were partially confirmed by a diocesan official.

The nuncio reported that Peña Parra was accused of seducing two students from the minor seminary (a high school that prepares students to study for the priesthood), in September of 1990. The accusation included the specific location of the sexual abuse, which was a parish church led by a friend of Peña Parra’s, Fr. José Severeyn. Viganò says that the abuse was reported to the police and confirmed by the seminary rector, Enrique Pérez, to the Secretariat of State, adding “I have seen these documents with my own eyes.”

Even more horrifying was a second accusation reported by the apostolic nuncio, who says that Peña Parra and Severeyn were vacationing on an island together in Lake Maracaibo when they were involved in the death of two people, both presumably males, who were killed by electrical shock. The Maracaibo dossier also mentions this accusation, and adds that “the two corpses were found naked, with evidence of macabre homosexual lewd encounters,” in the words of Viganò.

Although the accusations were “grave,” writes Viganò, “not only was Peña Parra not required to face them, he was allowed to continue in the diplomatic service of the Holy See” – an accusation that would apply to the curia of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict. Viganò considers the case of Peña Parra to be so bad that it “might even be a scandal surpassing that of McCarrick,” and notes that the archbishop is a close associate of the scandal-ridden Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, and the cardinal’s now-disgraced former auxiliary bishop, Juan José Pineda Fasquelle, having formed a strong friendship with the latter while serving in the apostolic nunciature in Honduras from 2003 to 2007.

Viganò writes that these accusations were reported to the Secretariat of State in 2002 by the then apostolic nuncio in Venezuela, Archbishop André Dupuy, and they have remained on file both in Venezuela and in the Vatican ever since, accessible to high officials of the Holy See. Viganò names “the Cardinals Secretaries of State Sodano, Bertone, and Parolin and the Substitutes Sandri, Filoni, and Becciu,” among those with access to the information, “if it has not been destroyed.”

Viganò regards Cardinal Parolin as particularly culpable in the matter, given his earlier assignment as Apostolic Nuncio to Venezuela.

“Particularly egregious is the behavior of cardinal Parolin who, as Secretary of State, did not oppose the recent appointment of Peña Parra as Substitute, making him his closest collaborator,” he writes. “Even more: years earlier, in January 2011, as apostolic nuncio in Caracas, Parolin did not oppose the appointment of Peña Parra as archbishop and apostolic nuncio to Pakistan. Before such important appointments, a rigorous informative process is made to verify the suitability of the candidate, so these accusations were surely brought to the attention of cardinal Parolin.”

Viganò adds that “cardinal Parolin knows the names of a number of priests in the Curia who are sexually unchaste, violating the laws of God that they solemnly committed themselves to teach and practice, and he continues to look the other way.” He regards Pope Francis’ as having even more “grave” responsibility, for “having chosen for an extremely important position in the Church a man accused of such serious crimes, without first insisting on an open and thorough investigation.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Four Sins that “Cry to Heaven for Vengeance” are protected acts under U.S. Law

No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree. The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law. These two evils are of equal consequence, and it would be difficult for a person to choose between them.

The nature of law is to maintain justice. This is so much the case that, in the minds of the people, law and justice are the same thing. There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are “just” because the law makes them so. Thus, in order to make plunder appear just and sacred to many consciences, it is only necessary for law to decree and sanction it. Slavery, restrictions, and monopoly find defenders not only among those who profit from them but also among those who suffer from them.

Frederic Bastiat, The Law

Francis attributes evil to God!

The pluralism and the diversity of religions, color, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings..... An insincere stance of openness to the other, as well as a corporatist attitude, which reserves salvation exclusively to one’s own creed, is destructive of the same creed. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus explained this to the inquiring lawyer. Love lived in any religion pleases God. “Through an exchange of gifts, the Spirit can lead us ever more fully into truth and goodness.”

Pope Francis' approved Abu Dhabi document

COMMENT: “For all the gods of the Gentiles are devils” (Ps. 96:5). Pope Francis is affirming that the worship of idols is “willed by God in His wisdom.” This is blasphemy but not a surprising blasphemy from Francis the Blasphemer. What Pope Francis calls a “corporatist attitude, which reserves salvation exclusively to one's own creed” is the denial of a revealed truth of God that has been dogmatically defined by the Catholic Church on three separate occasions. It is a dogma that there is “no salvation outside the Catholic Church.” The denial of this dogma is heresy by definition and anyone holding this heresy cannot be saved. Furthermore, membership in the Catholic Church also dogmatically requires profession of the true faith and reception of the sacrament of Baptism.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus may very well have had in mind a specific Samaritan man who received him as the Messiah through the calling by the Samaritan Woman at the Well. Be that as it may, are good works alone sufficient for salvation? Those that affirm this are Pelagian heretics which is a favorite calumny that Francis mindlessly smears Catholics faithful to tradition. But unlike Francis, who accuses traditional Catholics of Pelagianism without a shred of evidence, our accusations are supported with the bile that flows routinely from Francis' mouth. The recognition of Logos, “which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world” (John 1:9), leads to the regulation of life according to the natural law and is an essential prerequisite to receiving the truth of the Gospel and the sacrament of Baptism, but of itself, it with all the good works in the world, insufficient for salvation. Jesus' conversation with the Samaritan Woman itself destroys this heretical claim of Francis. According to Francis, the Samaritan Woman could have been saved in her idolatrous and adulterous state.

What every faithful Catholic must know is that the faith is the necessary and sufficient cause of and the sign of unity in the Catholic Church. The pope is only secondarily and accidentally the cause and sign of unity in the Catholic Church. When the pope falls from the faith he is to be opposed to his face as St. Paul did to St. Peter (Galatians 2:11). Those who make the pope their proximate rule of faith will follow Francis in his heresy and eventual apostasy. Those who keep dogma as their proximate rule of faith will save their souls.

“And you shall be hated by all men for my name's sake: but he that shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved” (Matt. 10:22).

Pope Francis thinks the miracle of Transubstantiation is a “Magic trick”!

Surprisingly, the account of the multiplication of the loaves does not mention the multiplication itself. On the contrary, the words that stand out are: “break”, “give” and “distribute” (cf. Lk 9:16). In effect, the emphasis is not on the multiplication but the act of sharing. This is important. Jesus does not perform a magic trick; he does not change five loaves into five thousand and then to announce: “There! Distribute them!” No. Jesus first prays, then blesses the five loaves and begins to break them, trusting in the Father. And those five loaves never run out. This is no magic trick; it is an act of trust in God and his providence.

Pope Francis the Destroyer, Homily on Corpus Christi, 6-23-2019

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

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

Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, Glories of the Sacred Heart

The Absolute Necessity of “Prayer And Penance”

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

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

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

Pope Pius XI, Charitate Christi Compulsi, On the Sacred Heart

Prayer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

O Sacred Heart of Jesus, fountain of eternal life, Your Heart is a glowing furnace of Love. You are my refuge and my sanctuary. O my adorable and loving Savior, consume my heart with the burning fire with which Yours is aflamed. Pour down on my soul those graces which flow from Your love. Let my heart be united with Yours. Let my will be conformed to Yours in all things. May Your Will be the rule of all my desires and actions. Amen.

St. Gertrude the Great

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

Jesus Christ, (John 15:20)

Ecclesia Dei Communities – Faithful Geldings

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

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

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

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

Baptism alone unites the individual Faithful to Christ

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

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

Psychologist gives searing critique of Vatican’s new gender doc: a compromise with ‘neo-paganism’

LifeSiteNews | ROME, June 14, 2019 — A Catholic psychologist has denounced the latest Vatican document on gender theory as containing “not one sentence of sound advice for parents who try to educate their children towards the virtues necessary for a Christian life.”

In a searing critique, Dr. Gerard J.M. van den Aarweg, a Dutch psychologist and psychoanalyst specializing in the treatment of persons with homosexual tendencies, condemned the recent Vatican document on gender theory, saying “the aggressive neo-pagan sexual ideology of the world has no wisdom we might share. The task of the Church is not dialoguing but teaching and correcting, there is a relentless spiritual war going on in the field of sexuality, marriage, and the family.”

The (non-magisterial) document, titled “‘Male and Female He Created Them’: Towards a path of dialogue on the question of gender theory in education,” was published by the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education on June 10.

Addressed to Catholic schools and those involved in the formation of children and young people, the document has provoked admiration and consternation and drawn considerable attention in the Catholic and secular media.

Catholic media on the whole have shown a favorable response. The New York Times focused on the document’s rejection of the idea of gender fluidity. And “LGBT” activists criticized the text for its clear affirmation that human persons are either “male” or “female,” saying it keeps the Vatican “in the dark ages, promoting a false teaching that relies on myth, rumor, and falsehoods.”

In the midst of these conflicting opinions, LifeSite spoke with Dr. van den Aarweg — author of “The Battle for Normality” (Ignatius press) and “Science says NO: The gay ‘marriage’ deception” — about his view on the document.

The Dutch psychologist did not mince his words.

Here below is our interview with Dr. Gerard van den Aardweg.

LifeSite: Dr. van den Aardweg, what are your general impressions of the Vatican’s new document on gender theory?

Dr. van den Aardweg: Basically, it is an ideological document. It is not specifically Catholic, in spite of some lip service. It essentially makes a plea for a kind of atheist-humanist/socialist sex education, presented as more or less Catholic. It gushes over the boons of a social model of sexual education monitored by “professional experts” on the basis of naively supposed ever-deepening insights into sexuality in the current human sciences. It represents the kind of illusionary and sentimental talk about education and “affectivity” characteristic of the immature and superficial humanistic psychology of the 1960s, but now proclaimed as ‘higher wisdom’ by a Vatican Congregation whose members run half a century behind the times. It is ‘dialogue’ and ‘listening’ and ‘openness’ all over again. But no listening to the divine teachings of the Catholic Church on sexuality, marriage and the family (for these seem in need of ‘restructuring’). Teaching and preaching them to a pagan world is not, it seems, the way forward. The great dream is an “alliance” with the neo-paganism of the sexual, marriage, and family ideology of the UN and the anti-Christian EU countries.

“Listening.” Well, listening attentively to the document’s vague and ambiguous formulations and suggestions in order to discern what it drives at, one can discern its lead motive: revolutionary change.

LifeSite: What is your view on its analysis of gender theory?

Dr. van den Aardweg: The observations on gender theory are ambiguous and unclear, and that makes them suspect. At face value, some phrases seem correct and “orthodox,” such as the denials that sexual “identity is not a choice of the individual,” and platitudes such as “sexuality [a person’s sex] is a fundamental component of personhood” or “every cell in the body is male or female.” However, they are simultaneously undermined by statements such as (I abbreviate): “The approach to gender theory [is] the path of dialogue.” Why would that be so? No answer, because we are in the domain of ideology. What is there to dialogue about? We know the effects of dialoguing from the experiences with the Communists. The enemies of Christianity will dialogue with you in their way, on their terms. The outcome is none other than dialoguing with the devil. The aggressive neo-pagan sexual ideology of the world has no wisdom we might share. The task of the Church is not dialoguing but teaching and correcting, there is a relentless spiritual war going on in the field of sexuality, marriage, and the family.

Another example: “Human sciences … [present] other work … which tries a deeper understanding.” There follows a vague reference to works about the “sexual difference between men and women in a variety of cultures.” Here as everywhere in this document, only suggestions or insinuations are given, without a shadow of proof. So, which allegedly better “work” is meant here? I surmise the authors refer to the once-popular writings of Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead, the lesbian feminists who attempted to show the relativity of sex roles and functions in non-Western societies. But their contentions have long been refuted as being based on false, partly even fraudulent, evidence.

The relativization of the unpopular Biblical view of man-woman relationships and social “roles,” in apparent support of feminist (and gay?) indignation, also appears in the glib contention about “unjust discrimination,” which is “a sad fact of history” also “within the Church.” The Church would have violated the “equal dignity of men and women” in consequence of a “masculinist [sic] mentality veiled by religious motives.” If this is not a sneer at the Catholic teaching about man as the head and woman as the heart of the family, and the woman’s duty to obey her husband etc., what else is being suggested? Or, looked at from a different angle, who can believe the authors of this text are still capable of transmitting the unchangeable divine teachings of the Apostles, St. Augustine, and the Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI? Probably, these authors, blinded by the spirit of the times (Zeitgeist), do not even understand them anymore, nor do they seem to know and understand the correct anthropological and psychological insight of St. Edith Stein that “woman is by nature mother and the companion of the man.” For any Catholic who knows and understands this truth would have made it the cornerstone of a discourse on the equal value of man and woman.

Equally disquieting is the authors’ dubious appreciation of the natural family: “To qualify it [the family] with ideological concepts which are compelling at only one moment in history, and then decline … is a betrayal of its true significance.” Do the aforementioned apostolic teachings belong to the category of temporary historical “ideologies” about male and female? If not, why didn’t they recommend them at all; and what false ideological concepts have been attached to the family that are not essential? For example, has the traditional concept of the Christian family in the light of the present enlightened insights been narrowed by our cultural prejudices? In sum, give a clear, unambiguous definition of the natural and God-willed family and unambiguously reject the political definition of, among others, the Christian Democrats.

LifeSite: The document frequently cites Pope John Paul II. What do you think of its use of his writings?

Dr. van den Aardweg: Pope John Paul II is quoted but fairly hypocritically. His prestige is abused to create the impression of orthodoxy, a characteristic the writing as a whole has no right to claim. The authors have even the evil courage to recall the name of Don Bosco, whose teachings and efforts were diametrically opposed to theirs and were therefore truly exemplary.

LifeSite: Does the document presume that sex-education should always be made available in schools? Is the position the document takes in this regard consistent with the constant teaching of the Church?

Dr. van den Aardweg: Parental rights in education are professed with words, but the whole, and in essence, socialistic-bureaucratic organization to educate the “sexuality and affectivity” of children and youngsters about which these utopians are dreaming will no doubt soon squeeze the parents’ rights into extinction. The proposed educational “professionals” within and outside the school, with their “permanent education” coming from “universities” etc., with their close association with the secular organizations (“local, national and international”!), with their new “programmes, instruction materials, and reference books,” and paid by who else but the State, will guarantee politically-correct sex ed. It proposes an idealistic “educational alliancebetween family, school, and society”: come to Holland, Germany, or Great Britain and see how smoothly it functions… No one who objects, no school, no collective of Catholic parents, only a rare Catholic teacher, a loner, a few exceptional Catholic parents, who refuse to cooperate with these cheerful “programmes” that violate their pupils’ and children’s innocence. Indeed, as this Vatican document remarks, “the family is not left to face the challenges of educating the young on its own.” And the “authorization” of the parents is a good principle, but “to a certain degree.”

LifeSite: Do you have any other comments?

Dr. van den Aardweg: The conclusion of the document, though still evading honestly straightforward and unambiguous language, helps in grasping its real meaning and purposes. Consider these high-falutin’ declarations: “The (educational formators) have the mission to teach them [young people] sensitivity to different expressions of love, mutual concern and care, loving respect (sic) and a deeply meaningful communication”; “Train young people to be open and interested in the reality that surrounds them, capable of care and tenderness.” This has been precisely the sales pitch of the neo-pagan Sexual Reform Movement for at least a century. All kinds of sexual or “love” relationships fit into this ideal, unmarried as well as gay ones. There is nothing in the Vatican text about sexual sin, the fight for chastity, masturbation, unfaithfulness in marriage, unmarried cohabitation, chastity in marriage; not one sentence of sound advice for parents who try to educate their children towards the virtues necessary for a Christian life and against the pressure of the neo-pagan environment, school, and even church; nothing about contraception, sterilization, and abortion.

Finally, the style of the piece is terrible: it is permeated by pompous and sentimental language, hypocritical unctuousness. The intellectual level is substandard. No concept that is used is defined, no statement proved or even supported by some argumentation; the references and remarks relative to anthropology and psychology (“the human sciences”) are misplaced or outright nonsensical, and yet they are solemnly presented as ‘superior wisdom.’

A Vatican congregation which dares to produce and issue such a document should seriously consider closing up shop.

Pope Francis the Destroyer resurrects the myth of the 'Noble Savage'!

The Amazonian Church of Pope Francis

Roberto de Mattei | Aldo Maria Valli blogspot | June 20, 2019

"Will the bishops, successors of the Apostles be silent? Will the cardinals, the Pope’s advisors in the governing of the Church be silent, in the face of this political-religious manifesto which perverts the doctrine and praxis of the Mystical Body of Christ ? "

The first reactions in response to the Instrumentum Laboris for the Amazon Synod were focused on its opening to married priests and the insertion of women into the sacramental orders of the Church. But the Instrumentum Laboris is something more: it’s a manifesto for liberation eco-theology which proposes a pantheist, egalitarian “cosmo-vision” , unacceptable for a Catholic. The gates of the Magisterim, as José Antonio Ureta, rightly highlighted, are being thrown wide open “to Indian Theology and Ecotheology, two Latin American derivatives of Liberation Theology. After the collapse of the USSR and the failure of “real socialism”, the advocates of Liberation Theology (LT), on the Marxist style, attributed the historic role of revolutionary force to indigenous peoples and to nature”.*

In the document, published by the Holy See on June 17, the Amazon “bursts” into the life of the Church like a “new entity” (n.2). But what is the Amazon? It is not only a physical place and a “complex biosphere” (n.10) but also “a reality full of life and wisdom” (n.5), which ascends to a conceptual paradigm and calls us to a “pastoral, ecological and synodal” conversion (n.5). In order to carry out its prophetic role, the Church must heed “the Amazon peoples” (n.7). These people are able to live in “intercommunication” with the entire cosmos (n.12), but their rights are threatened by the economic interests of the multinationals, which, as the natives of Guaviare (Colombia) say “have slashed the veins of our Mother Earth” (n.17).

The Church listens to the “cry, of both the people and the earth (n.18), because in the Amazon “the land is a theological place by which the faith is lived. It is also a unique source of God’s revelation” (n.19). So then, a third source of Revelation has been added to Holy Scripture and Tradition: the Amazon, the land where “everything is connected” (n.20), everything is “constitutively related, forming a vital whole” (n.21). In the Amazon, the ideal of Communism is fulfilled, given that, in tribal collectivism, “everything is shared and private spaces – typical of modernity – are minimal.”

The native peoples have been liberated from monotheism and have restored animism and polytheism. Indeed, as is written in no. 25: “the life of the Amazonian community has not yet been influenced by Western civilization. This is reflected in the beliefs and rites regarding the action of spirits and the divinity – named in many different ways – with and in the territory, with and in relation to nature. This cosmo-vision is picked up in Francis’s ‘mantra’: “everything is connected” (LS 16, 91, 117, 138, 240)».

The document insists on asserting that the Amazonian “cosmo-vision” encompasses an “ancestral wisdom, a living reservoir of spirituality and native culture (n. 26). So, “the native people of the Amazon have much to teach us(…). The new paths of evangelization must be constructed in dialogue with these ancestral wisdoms in which the seeds of the Word are manifested” (n.29).

The wealth of the Amazon [then] is in not being monoculture, but of being “a multiethnic, multicultural and multi-religious world” (n.36) with which we need to dialogue. The peoples of the Amazon, “remind us of the past and the wounds inflicted during long periods of colonization. For this Pope Francis has asked ‘humbly for forgiveness, not only for the offences of his own Church, but for the crimes against the native populations during the so-called conquest of America’. In the past the Church has at times been an accomplice of the colonizers and this has suffocated the prophetic voice of the Gospel” (n.38).

“Integral ecology” includes “the transmission of the ancestral experience of cosmologies, of spiritualities and theologies of the indigenous peoples, in the care of our Common Home” (n.50). “In their ancestral wisdom – these peoples- have cultivated the conviction that all creation is connected, that it deserves our respect and our responsibility. The Amazonian culture, which integrates human beings with nature, becomes a point of reference for the construction of a new paradigm of integral ecology” (n.56).

The Church must divest itself of its Roman identity and adopt “an Amazonian face”. “The Amazonian face of the Church finds its expression in the plurality of its peoples, cultures and ecosystems. This diversity requires an option for an outward-bound and missionary Church, incarnated in all its activities, expressions and languages” (n.107). “A Church with an Amazonian face in its multiple nuances, seeks to be an “outward-bound” Church (cf. EG 20-23), which leaves behind a colonial mono-cultural, clerical and domineering tradition and knows how to discern and adopt without fear, the diverse cultural expressions of the peoples” (n.110).

The pantheist spirit animating Amazonian nature is a leitmotif of the document. “The Creator Spirit which fills the universe (cf. Wisdom 1,7) is the Spirit that for centuries has nurtured the spirituality of these peoples even before the proclaiming of the Gospel and spurs them onto accepting it, from the base of their [own] cultures and traditions”(n.120). Hence, “we need to grasp what the Spirit of the Lord has taught these peoples over the course of the centuries: faith in God, Father-Mother-Creator; the sense of communion and harmony with the earth; the sense of solidarity with their fellow-man; the project of “living well”; the wisdom of a thousand-year old civilization the elders possess and which has effects on the health, cohabitation, education and cultivation of the land; the relationship with nature and Mother Earth; the capacity of resistance and resilience of the women in particular; the religious rites expressed; the relations with their forbearers; their contemplative stance and sense of gratuity; the celebration and festivity and the sacred sense of the land” (121).

Again, in the light of a “healthy decentralization” of the Church, “the communities ask that the Episcopal Conferences adapt the Eucharistic Rite to their culture”. “The Church needs to be incarnated in the Amazonian cultures which possess a great sense of community, equality and solidarity, thus clericalism is not accepted in its various forms of manifestation. The indigenous peoples possess a rich tradition of social organization, where authority is in rotation and has a profound sense of service. On the basis of this experience in organization, it would be opportune to reconsider the idea that the exercise in jurisdiction (power of government) must be connected in all spheres (sacramental, judiciary, administrative) and in a permanent way to the Sacrament of Holy Orders” (n.127).

On the basis of the premise that “celibacy is a gift for the Church” a request is being made that “for the most remote zones in the region, a study be made about the possibility of priestly ordination for elderly people, preferably natives, respected and accepted in their communities - even if they may have already a constituted and stable family - as a means of guaranteeing the Sacraments which accompany and sustain Christian life” (n.129). Furthermore, we need “to guarantee leadership to the women, along with more extensive and relevant spaces in the field of formation: theology, catechesis, liturgy and schools of faith and politics” and “identify the type of official ministry that can be conferred on women, keeping in mind the central role they play today in the Amazonian Church.”

What more can be added? Will the bishops, successors of the Apostles be silent? Will the cardinals, the Pope’s advisors in the governing of the Church be silent, in the face of this political-religious manifesto which perverts the doctrine and praxis of the Mystical Body of Christ ?

Vatican all but wipes out conservative order of nuns for ‘too much prayer’

LifeSiteNews | June 7, 2019 — All but five of the 39 Little Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Redeemer, a conservative French religious order, have

been relieved of their vows by the Vatican after refusing to submit to a group of Vatican-appointed commissioners led by a habitless liberal nun who wanted to impose “modern orientations” on the group, in the sister’s words.

The 34 nuns, who dress in traditional habits and care for the disabled and elderly in four different nursing homes, have been asked to relinquish their facilities and their religious dress now that they are no longer considered members of their institute. The fate of the nursing homes and their residents is now in question.

The ruling comes from the Holy See’s Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, which oversees religious orders and institutes, led by Cardinal João Braz de Aviz. Previous attempts by the sisters to overturn the congregation’s rulings against them by appealing to the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura have failed, with the court reportedly dismissing their case without allowing them to fully present their arguments.

“Having looked to remaining faithful, as much to the Church as to the charism granted by Our Lord to Mother Marie de la Croix, having tried to find, many many times, a path of dialogue with Rome, having offered peaceful solutions, no agreement having been found, the authorities in Rome in charge of the Consecrated Life have now decided to choose to release us from our religious vows,” the sisters announced on June 3, following the issuance of the decision on May 23.

“Whilst it is true that in the context of the moral pressure and the impasse that we found ourselves in, we were driven, last October, against our profound wishes, to ask to be released from our vows, since no other solution had ever been offered to enable us to remain in communion with the Church: we are profoundly wounded by this and remain sadly surprised that Rome has preferred to accept that request rather than accepting the peaceful solutions which we had put forward and which were possible,” the sisters added.

The lay-led Association in Support of the Little Sisters denounced the decision as a “grievous injustice” and blamed the bishop of the Diocese of Laval, Thierry Scherrer, for a personal vendetta against the group’s conservative mother superior that has now led to the destruction of the order.

“Mgr Scherrer wanted the head of the Superior General on a platter,” wrote the association. “An entire Congregation has been destroyed!”

“This unjust and violent decision gives rise to grave damage both moral and material to the Little Sisters of Mary who have given their lives in the service of the Church, in perfect fidelity to their religious vocation,” they add.

According to their lay supporters, the sisters were accused of a variety of offenses against modern sensibilities, including engaging in “too much prayer,” the use of the traditional habits, “deviant authoritarianism,” being “too classical” in their thinking, and being “unmoving” in their adherence to the charism of their institute. They also say the commissioners tried to turn the sisters against each other, offering prestigious positions in the order if they would conform to the commissioner’s authority, but their tactics failed. When the nuns refused to admit the commissioners, they were threatened with excommunication and requested to be relieved of their vows to avoid that outcome.

The support association says the decision to relieve the sisters of their vows instead of working out a solution with them came at the behest of Sr. Geneviève Médevielle, the principal apostolic commissioner named by the Vatican. Médevielle is a religious sister who dresses in lay clothing and wears a short haircut without a head covering. She is a professor of ethics at the Catholic Institute of Paris and the author of the recently published book Migrants, Francis, and us. Médevielle writes in defense of Amoris Laetitia against “conservatives and traditionalists” who criticize it.

The nuns were also reportedly under attack by the archbishop of Toulouse, Robert Le Gall, who prohibited one of the nuns’ houses from attending their more traditional form of Mass in their community chapel, apparently following their refusal to participate in Le Gall’s mass at the nursing home chapel due to their rejection of his liturgical practices.

Click here to read LifeSite’s November article detailing the conflict.

“Authoritarianism” and “moral harassment” from Church authorites led to destruction

The sisters’ support association is threatening to undertake legal measures against those who have brought about the destruction of the institute as an act of “moral harassment,” which is actionable under French law. The association promised that “as a matter of justice legitimate actions will be undertaken against those responsible, whatever their involvement, to obtain redress and to reveal the entire truth about this affair.”

The French Catholic newspaper La Croix further reported yesterday that the sisters “today are threatening Sister Geneviève Medevielle with a lawsuit for moral harassment.”

“It was with an authoritarianism and in a context of moral harassment, initiated by the Bishop of Laval, Mgr Scherrer, that the ecclesiastical authorities preferred to reduce the Little Sisters of Mary the Redeemer to the lay state, on 23rd May 2019, rather than opting for a peaceful solution, repeatedly proposed by the Little Sisters, but never really considered by the Congregation in Rome!” the support association declares on its website.

Our suffering enables us to live our vocation more fully, say sisters

The sisters, for their part, say they will continue to live their life of prayer and see their suffering as enabling them to live their vocation even more deeply.

“Certainly, we have not lived through these two sorrowful years in order to lose the treasure which is for us the charism received from Mother Marie de la Croix. We want to continue to live together, in a life of prayer and service. Ecce!” the sisters write.

“Paradoxically and mysteriously, we live perhaps more than ever perhaps what is at the heart of our vocation: following in the way of Our Lady, to take our part of suffering in the fulfilment of the plan of our Redemption, in reparation, for the saving of souls, for the sanctification of priests, for the Church so damaged by all sorts of scandals, for the world. If Christ, our souls’ spouse, judges us worthy of carrying such a Cross, we must render thanks to him, in all things.”

Requests for comment from the Holy See were not answered by publication time.

[Catholic] “fundamentalists, have a nostalgia for returning to the ashes.... Tradition is the guarantee of the future and not the container of the ashes,.... Tradition is like roots [of a tree], which give us nutrition to grow,... You will not become like the roots. You will flower, grow, give fruit. And the seeds become roots for other people..... The tradition of the church is always in movement.... The tradition does not safeguard the ashes”

Pope Francis the Destroyer, another high altitude, hypoxic babble on a flight to Rome

COMMENT: Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, the grand-daughter of the French National Front founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, recently applied a quotation of Gustav Mahler in a new context, “Tradition is not the worship of ashes but the preservation of fire.” Tradition is not the “root” of the tree, it is the tree itself, and trees are not “always in movement.” They are in fact ‘rooted’ and stable.

Tradition is firstly as a noun refers to content of divine revelation. This content is incarnate in our immemorial Catholic traditions which are the perfect images of the Catholic faith. These images are the means by which the faith is known and communicated to others. The Neo-iconoclasts destroy these images as the means to destroy the faith itself. For Francis, Tradition is obstacle that must be overcome if he is to overthrow the Catholic faith. He therefore considers how tradition has always been understood by the Church as “ashes.”

The verb form of tradition refers to the actual handing-on of the content of divine revelation to the next generation of Catholics. As St. Paul said, “For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread” (I Cor. 11:23). What St. Paul “delivered” is exactly the same as what he first “received,” and this is Catholic Tradition.

“Have in mind therefore in what manner thou hast received and heard: and observe, and do penance. If then thou shalt not watch, I will come to thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know at what hour I will come to thee” (Apoc. 3:3). This is the warning to the Church in Sardis. What was their sin? They had not kept the traditions they received and therefore St. John continues, “And to the angel of the church of Sardis, write: These things saith he, that hath the seven spirits of God, and the seven stars: I know thy works, that thou hast the name of being alive: and thou art dead. Be watchful and strengthen the things that remain, which are ready to die. For I find not thy works full before my God” (Apoc. 3:1-2). The Catholics of Sardis were not faithful to what they had “received.” When the faith is corrupted by corrupting its images, the corruption of morals necessarily follows, therefore, their “works” were “dead,” that is, they had fallen from the grace of God.

By the light of Francis, tradition received is not what is passed on. What is passed on is different and no longer shares an identity between father and son with every generation. Francis is a Neo-modernist Neo-iconoclast. Those that follow him will lose their souls because “without faith, it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11:6). And without the images of the faith it is impossible to have the faith. Therefore, faithful Catholics today, unlike those of Sardis, must “watch” lest their traditions be trampled into ashes by Francis the Destroyer.

Catholic prelates call upon the Faithful to do what we have been doing at Ss. Peter & Paul Roman Catholic Mission for the last 19 years!

Our time is characterized by an acute spiritual hunger of the Catholic faithful all over the world for a reaffirmation of those truths that are obfuscated, undermined, and denied by some of the most dangerous errors of our time. The faithful who are suffering this spiritual hunger feel themselves abandoned and thus find themselves in a kind of existential periphery. Such a situation urgently demands a concrete remedy. …

We are aware of our grave responsibility as Catholic bishops according to the admonition of Saint Paul, who teaches that God gave to His Church “shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love” (Eph. 4:12–16).

In the spirit of fraternal charity, we publish this Declaration of truths as a concrete spiritual help so that bishops, priests, parishes, religious convents, lay faithful associations, and private persons as well might have the opportunity to confess either privately or publicly those truths that in our days are mostly denied or disfigured. The following exhortation of the Apostle Paul should be understood as addressed also to each bishop and lay faithful of our time, “Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Tim. 6:12– 14).

Before the eyes of the Divine Judge and in his own conscience, each bishop, priest, and lay faithful has the moral duty to give witness unambiguously to those truths that in our days are obfuscated, undermined, and denied. Private and public acts of a declaration of these truths could initiate a movement of a confession of the truth, of its defense, and of reparation for the widespread sins against the Faith, for the sins of hidden and open apostasy from Catholic Faith of a not small number both of the clergy and of the lay people. One has to bear in mind, however, that such a movement will not judge itself according to numbers, but according to the truth, as Saint Gregory of Nazianzus said, amidst the general doctrinal confusion of the Arian crisis, that “God does not delight in numbers” (Or. 42:7).

Excerpt from the introduction to the “Declaration of the Truths relating to some of the most common errors in the life of the Church of our time” published by:

Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, Patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta

Cardinal Janis Pujats, Archbishop Emeritus of Riga

Tomash Peta, Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana

Jan Pawel Lenga, Archbishop-Bishop emeritus of Karaganda

Athanasius Schneider, Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana

Archbishop Viganò speaks up: Washington Post interview – “This archbishop called on the pope to resign. Now he’s in an undisclosed location.”

For the record of events of the current pontificate, we post the main excerpts of the article published this Monday by the Washington Post:Rorate Caeli

TheWashingtonPost | Chico Harlan and Stefano Pitrelli | June 10, 2019

ROME — In the instant he became one of the most controversial figures in modern Catholic Church history, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò went dark.

The retired Vatican ambassador to Washington wrote a bombshell letter last summer calling on Pope Francis to resign on the grounds that he had tolerated a known sexual abuser. As that letter was published, Viganò turned off his phone, told friends he was disappearing, and let the church sort through the fallout.

Nine months later, in his first extended interview since that moment, Viganò refused to disclose his location or say much about his self-imposed exile. But his comments indicate that, even in hiding, he is maintaining his role as the fiercest critic of the Francis era, acting either as an honorable rebel or, as his critics see it, as an ideological warrior attacking a pope he doesn’t like....

The Vatican has had little official response to Viganò. A communications official declined to comment for this story. But Francis last month responded for the first time to Viganò’s summer letter. The pope said he knew “nothing, obviously nothing” about the misconduct of former cardinal Theodore McCarrick and could not remember if he had been personally warned about McCarrick by Viganò in 2013. Viganò claimed to have told Francis that McCarrick had “corrupted generations of seminarians and priests.”

“How could anybody, especially a pope, forget this?” Viganò wrote to The Post....

Viganò wrote that he has become “more careful about whom I meet and what I say.” He said questions about him were “irrelevant to the serious problems facing the Church.”

“My life is quite normal, thank you for asking,” he wrote.

Viganò wrote “n/a” in response to questions about where he was living, whether he believes his safety is under threat, and how his actions last August have otherwise altered his life.

Viganò wrote that he has not been contacted by the Catholic Church since his accusations were initially published by several conservative church news outlets. He described himself as an “old man” who “will be appearing in front of the Good Judge before too long.”...

“My silence would make me complicit with the abusers, and lead to yet more victims,” he said....

Viganò wrote last year that both Benedict XVI and Francis had known about McCarrick’s misconduct. But he portrayed Benedict as attempting to take quiet disciplinary action against the then-cardinal and Francis as patently ignoring those sanctions.

Last month, private letters disclosed by a former McCarrick aide supported Viganò’s claim that McCarrick was told by the Vatican to retreat from public life during Benedict’s papacy. But it is also clear that McCarrick swiftly ignored his orders from Rome, even while Benedict remained pope. No documents have surfaced showing whether Francis knew of the sanctions against McCarrick by the time he became pope in 2013.

Viganò said the “truth will eventually come out” for Francis, as it had for Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the former archbishop of Washington who portrayed himself last summer as being unaware about complaints against McCarrick — a claim that documents subsequently proved false. Viganò suggested to The Post that Francis is covering up other cases, “as he did for McCarrick.”...

Viganò, in his responses to The Post, made it clear he is watching even smaller moments inside the Vatican. He cited an exchange from a Vatican press conference in February in which a journalist asked Archbishop Charles Scicluna, a church abuse czar, about a case in Argentina. Scicluna began to answer, and the Vatican spokesman cut in, saying the press conference — held during a landmark abuse summit — was not a time to “focus on individual cases.” Results of an investigation into the case would later be released, the spokesman assured.

“One may be forgiven for wondering whether the results of an honest and thorough investigation really will be released, and in a timely fashion,” Viganò wrote. “There is a certain irony here: This exchange happened while [the summit organizers] were discussing what they themselves called transparency.”

“The results of an honest investigation would be disastrous for the current papacy,” Viganò wrote to The Post. He also acknowledged that such an investigation may harm the reputations of more traditionalist pontiffs, Benedict and John Paul II, who presided over McCarrick’s rise.

“But that is not a good reason for not seeking the truth,” Viganò said. “Benedict XVI and John Paul II are human beings, and may well have made mistakes. If they did, we want to know about them. Why should they remain hidden? We can all learn from our mistakes.”

Viganò did not respond directly to a question about whether he has documents to back up his claims.

“The time has not yet come for me to release anything,” Viganò said, instead calling on the pope and other Vatican officials to release documentation, “assuming they have not yet destroyed it.”

Viganò also spoke in detail about one of his most contentious beliefs: that the sexual abuse crisis would be “far less severe” if the “problem of homosexuality in the priesthood were honestly acknowledged and properly addressed.”

“Given the overwhelming evidence, it is mind-boggling that the word ‘homosexuality’ has not appeared once, in any of the recent official documents of the Holy See” on events dealing with abuse and youth, Viganò wrote.

He said a “gay mafia” among bishops, intent on protecting themselves, was “sabotaging all efforts at reform.”

Viganò referenced only two regrets about his letter last summer. He said he wished he had spoken out sooner. He also said, “in retrospect,” he would have softened the call for Pope Francis to resign — a demand even Viganò’s supporters said was far-fetched and distracting.

Viganò now leaves open the possibility that Francis could repent, and says the pope should step down “if he refuses to admit his mistakes and ask for forgiveness.”

This is why the key phrase for responding is one which the Church constantly uses, as I do: it is ‘responsible parenthood’. How does this work? With dialogue. Each person with his or her pastor has to try to exercise this responsible parenthood. The example I mentioned just now, about the woman who was expecting her eight child and already had seven caesarean births: this is a form of irresponsibility.
[Some might say:] ‘No, I trust in God’. ‘But, look, God gives you the means, be responsible.’ Some people believe that -- pardon my language – in order to be good Catholics, we should be like rabbits. No. Responsible parenthood.
Pope Francis the Homosexual Lobby CEO

Archbishop Viganò to Washington Post: “Pope Francis is Deliberately Concealing the McCarrick Evidence”

OnePeterFive | Steve Skojec | June 10, 2019

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò is in the news again today after the release of a new, 8,000 word interview with the Washington Post. According to the post, the interview was conducted via email over a period of two months, with the former US papal nuncio providing answers to some 40 questions.

Those who have read previous Viganò testimonies will find much that is familiar in the interview, but in greater depth. Archbishop Viganò declined to answer questions about his own personal status, which, he says, he considers “irrelevant to the serious problems facing the Church.”

He begins with an assessment of the sex abuse summit in Rome in February 2019, which echoes closely the concerns he shared with the National Catholic Register before the summit opened.

“Unfortunately,” Viganò tells the Post about the summit, “that initiative turned out to be pure ostentation, for we saw no sign of a genuine willingness to attend to the real causes of the present crisis.” He highlighted the lack of credibility of Cardinal Cupich, who was picked to be a leader at the summit after referring to Viganò’s accusations about abuse coverup as a “rabbit hole.” He also lamented the lack of transparency with journalists who sought information about specific cases:

To cite just one example, Archbishop [Charles] Scicluna, caught by surprise with a question about the pope covering up in the scandalous case of Argentine Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta — “How can we believe that this is in fact the last time we’re going to hear ‘no more cover-ups’ when at the end of the day, Pope Francis covered up for someone in Argentina who had gay porn involving minors?” — uttered these embarrassing words: “About the case, I’m not, I’m not, you know, I’m not authorized…” Scicluna’s inept response gave the impression that he needed to be authorized — you may wonder by whom — to tell the truth! Vatican interim press office director Alessandro Gisotti quickly intervened to assure the reporters that an investigation had been launched, and that once it was completed they would be informed of the results. One may be forgiven for wondering whether the results of an honest and thorough investigation really will be released, and in a timely fashion.

Viganò observs that one of the key problems of the summit was the way in which it “focused exclusively on the abuse of minors.”

“These crimes are indeed the most horrific,” he adds, “but the recent crises in the United States, in Chile, in Argentina, in Honduras, and elsewhere have to do mostly with abuses committed against young adults, including seminarians, not only, nor mostly, against minors. Indeed, if the problem of homosexuality in the priesthood were honestly acknowledged and properly addressed, the problem of sexual abuse would be far less severe.”

Viganò strikes out at Pope Francis, whom he says is not only “doing close to nothing to punish those who have committed abuse” but also “doing absolutely nothing to expose and bring to justice those who have, for decades, facilitated and covered up the abusers.” He cites the example of Cardinal Wuerl, who despite lies and coverups of the abuses of “McCarrick and others for decades” about which he has offered “repeated and blatant lies” and who was forced to resign in disgrace was nevertheless praised by the pope for his “nobility.”

“What credibility has the pope left after this kind of statement?” Viganò asks.

On the matter of McCarrick’s laicization, Viganò questions why it happened five years after he gave the information to Pope Francis about McCarrick, and why it was done, “after more than seven months of total silence,” through an administrative rather than judicial procedure.

Viganò notes that because of the nature of the procedure, McCarrick was “deprived of any opportunity to appeal the sentence,” and was deprived of due process. “Having made the sentence definitive,” Viganò adds, “the pope has made it impossible to conduct any further investigation, which could have revealed who in the Curia and elsewhere knew of McCarrick’s abuses, when they knew it, and who helped him to be named archbishop of Washington and eventually a cardinal. Note, by the way, that the documents of this case, whose publication had been promised, have never been produced.”

“The bottom line,” Viganò says, “is this: Pope Francis is deliberately concealing the McCarrick evidence.”

On the question of the unusual intervention by the Holy See into the US Catholic Bishops Conference meeting last November, in which the pope ordered the assembled bishops not to vote on two sex abuse measures they had prepared, Viganò says that Holy See was trying to prevent an examination of “the problems of episcopal corruption, episcopal cover-ups and mendacity, episcopal sexual misdeeds, both with minors and adults — any of which would intolerably implicate and embarrass the Holy See.”

Asked about the “notable lack of denials” on the matter of his original testimony — the question was asked before Francis finally came out and denied that he knew anything, which Vigano has said previously was “a lie” — the archbishop argues that the accusations can’t be denied because they are true. “The cardinals and archbishops I named do not want to be caught lying, and they apparently think they are so powerful as to be untouchable if only they stay quiet and lie low,” he said.

In an addendum to the interview after the long-delayed denial made by the pope last month was released, Viganò says that the pope’s statements cannot be reconciled with one another. “He first says that he has already replied many times; second, that he knew nothing, absolutely nothing about McCarrick, and third, that he forgot about my conversation with him. How may these claims be affirmed and sustained together at the same time? All these three are blatant lies,” he says.

Of the most obviously false claim made by the pope — that he had replied to the testimony “many times,” — Viganò asks, “for nine long months he did not say a word about my testimony, and even bragged and continues to do so about his silence, comparing himself to Jesus. So, either he spoke or he kept silent. Which is it?”

“We are in a truly dark moment for the universal Church,” Viganò laments. “The Supreme Pontiff is now blatantly lying to the whole world to cover up his wicked deeds! But the truth will eventually come out, about McCarrick and all the other cover-ups, as it already has in the case of cardinal Wuerl, who also ‘knew nothing’ and had ‘a lapse of memory.'” Here the archbishop refers to the revelation that Wuerl knew about the illicit sexual activities of his predecessor, McCarrick, even after many denials.

Other than his sadness over the dishonesty of the pope, Viganò seems most concerned with the failure of journalists to dig into the story he has laid before them. “I cannot imagine that they [the media] would have been so timid had the pope in question been John Paul II or Benedict XVI,” he says, adding, “It is difficult to avoid concluding that these media are reluctant to do so because they appreciate Pope Francis’ more liberal approach to matters of Church doctrine and discipline, and do not want to jeopardize his agenda.”

On the issue of homosexuality in the priesthood, Viganò signals his disbelief that the connection is being ignored. “Heterosexual men obviously do not choose boys and young men as sexual partners of preference, and approximately 80 percent of the victims are males, the vast majority of which are post-pubescent males.”

“It is not pedophiles but gay priests preying on post-pubertal boys who have bankrupted the U.S. dioceses,” he later adds.

“Given the overwhelming evidence, it is mind-boggling that the word ‘homosexuality’ has not appeared once, in any of the recent official documents of the Holy See, including the two Synods on the Family, the one on Youth, and the recent Summit last February.”

Viganò goes on to claim that the so-called “gay mafia” in the Church are “bound together not by shared sexual intimacy but by a shared interest in protecting and advancing one another professionally and sabotaging all efforts at reform.” He says that though Pope Benedict XVI initiated an investigation of the seminaries, nothing new was discovered, “apparently because various powers had joined forces to conceal the true situation.”

“Is there a single active bishop in the U.S. who admits he is actively homosexual? Of course not. Their work is constitutionally clandestine.”

On the question of whether he could ever reconcile with Pope Francis, Viganò replies:

The premise of your question is incorrect. I am not fighting against Pope Francis, nor have I offended him. I have simply spoken the truth. Pope Francis needs to reconcile himself with God, and the entire Church, since he covered up for McCarrick, refuses to admit it, and is now covering up for several other people. I am grateful to the Lord because He has protected me from having any sentiments of anger or resentment against Pope Francis, or any desire for revenge. I pray for his conversion every day. Nothing would make me happier than for Pope Francis to acknowledge and end the cover-ups, and to confirm his brothers in the faith.

There’s a great deal more to the interview with Archbishop Viganò that I have not touched on here. Read the whole thing at The Washington Post.

“Dimensions of Dialogue”:

The Spirit of Vatican II

A Repudiation of Bergoglianism

What is at stake after the European elections of May 26

Roberto de Mattei | Corrispondenza Romana | May 29, 2019

The elections of May 26th were an important episode in a conflict that goes way beyond the destiny of the European Parliament or any national government. In fact, a lobby exists that has as its aim, the destruction of Christian identity and the construction of cosmopolitan organisms that are assuming sovereign power of life and death over its European citizens. An example of this plan is what has just happened in France, where the Paris Court of Appeals handed over to the United Nations Organization, the ultimate decision on the life of Vincent Lambert, the French paraplegic condemned to death by his wife and the doctors at Rheims Hospital, where he is a patient.

It is clear that power of legislation on the life of Lambert does not pertain to the French judges, nor those of Europe or the United Nations. Positive laws, both national and international, do not have their source in the entities that emanate or apply them, but in a divine law that is preexistent to the laws of men and by the laws of men cannot be changed. Now, the natural and divine law prohibits the killing of the innocent and any human law claiming to establish the contrary must be considered a non-law, invalid and iniquitous. Further, inasmuch as the only guardian of the divine and natural law is the Catholic Church, it is first of all up to the men of the Church to proclaim the inalienable right to life. But today the voice of the men of the Church is gone. The only problem the leaders of the Church seem to be interested in is that of hospitality to migrants from outside of Europe. An absolute, unconditional, total hospitality. We are not dealing here with the ancient virtue, whether Christian or secular, of hospitality, but of an ideological choice, wherein the philosophy of hospitality is presented, in reality, as a theory of renouncing European identity, or rather, its replacement.

The concept of “the great replacement” introduced by Renaud Camus (Le Grand Remplacement, David Reinharc, Neuilly-sur-Seine 2011) was developed by Professor Renato Cristin in his book I padroni del caos [The Lords of Chaos] (Liberlibri, Macerata 2017). By way of a rigorous analysis, the author, who teaches philosophy at the University of Trieste, explains how this theory aims at substituting European populations with other populations (Africans, Arabians, Asians, for the most part Muslim) [thus] producing chaos as a concrete historical prospect. Cristin refers to the existence of a 2001 United Nations project in which “replacement migration” is explicitly addressed, in order to deal with the European demographic decline.

The flows of populations are not only an ethnic transplanting, but a toppling of civilization, a “counter-colonization”, in which migrants are seen as bringers of a hybrid civilization or mixed race, opposed to the Christian one which built Europe. The destruction of the national States passes thereby through a policy of replacement, whether it be ethnic or cultural. The cultural replacement consists in the negation of any identity rooted in European Christian tradition; the ethnic replacement occurs with the entry of a human mass of immigrants that substitute the European population, decimated by abortion and contraception. The anti-birth mentality is the biological expression of the cultural and moral suicide of the West.

The results of the European Elections rewarded the political parties that most openly invoke national identities. Of particular importance is the sweeping victory of Matteo Salvini’s Lega, which attained 34.3% of the votes in Italy. But Italy, however, has been the country where the push for immigration has been the strongest, with not only the Episcopal Conference entering the field, but even Pope Francis who has been presenting himself as the leader of the leftwing political spectrum. The front-cover of the weekly L’Espresso, May 26th, portrays Pope Francis with the mask of Zorro, the vigilante, and defines him as the voice of “the people’s protest” against Salvini. On May 27th,in his Message for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees”, Pope Francis affirmed that “the motto of the true Christian is ‘the last’ first’, reiterating: “ this is not only about migrants: it is about putting the ‘last’ first”. That same morning, the Pope met with the Chief of the Kayapo Indios of the Amazon, Raoni Metukire, to re-launch revolutionary indigenism, in view of the Synod on the Amazon in October.

The Bergoglian theology of the “last” represents open encouragement for the “replacement migration” strategy. It is not clear who ‘the last’ are, but it is clear who those that must be replaced are, in the new “preferential option.” The Gospel exhorts us to love our neighbor as ourselves: “there is no greater commandment than this” (Mark 12, 29-31). St Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica (question 26, part II-II), explains however, that love for our neighbor is not a generic and indiscriminate sentiment, but has a precise gradation, which he calls the ‘order of charity’, whereby love must progressively extend itself from those closest to those farthest away. God must be loved more than our neighbor (a.2) and more than ourselves (a.3). Man must love himself more than his neighbor (a.4) and among our neighbors, some are to be loved more than others (a.6). The closest to us are those who gave us life and those we gave it to: our parents and our children. It is from them that love for our neighbor begins.

It would make no sense, for example, to throw our parents out in the street in order to bring a couple of immigrants into their room. Further, the love that we owe our neighbor is primarily of a spiritual nature. What we must desire more than anything else, is the salvation of those we love. And loving means desiring their salvation. In the case of immigrants this consists in desiring their conversion to the true faith. But today there is no pastoral care of evangelization for immigrants underway, in Italy or in Europe. Multiculturalism is presented as a much higher value than the monocultural Christian identity.

The dogma of hospitality is being proclaimed furthermore, by a society that takes the life of innocent human beings, unborn babies and old people; the former condemned to death by abortion, the latter, by euthanasia, without any real opposition to these crimes by the men of the Church. In reality, those who are scandalized by the display of a crucifix in schools or by a rosary kissed by a political leader, not only want to extirpate every public expression of Christianity, but also expect to snuff out the light of the divine and natural law still existent in our consciences, compelling us to defend innocent human life. And those who still have a Christian conscience, cannot but reclaim the vivid presence of the Crucifix, not only in private life, but also in public life and in the collective identity of European nations.

Hence, we call upon the political parties in Italy, Hungary, France and many other countries that won the elections, thereby defeating “immigrationism”, not to limit themselves to a generic or superficial call to Christian roots, but to express this identity concretely in the institutions and laws of Europe, starting with the uncompromising defense of life and the family. The “Lambert case”, after that of Eluana Englaro and Alfie Evans, is the example of a battle that must be conducted in the upcoming months. This will perhaps raise the level of the conflict, but today we are battling for the life or death of our civilization. This battle, prior to being in parliament, is to be conducted in [our] culture and mentality. Yet, the electoral results have the function of revealing the deep tendencies of public opinion and in the case of May 26th, the electoral test demonstrates a European population that is not about to capitulate.

Originally posted on Rorate Caeli

“Every one therefore that shall confess me before men, I will also confess him before my Father who is in heaven. But he that shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven.”

Jesus Christ, Matt. 10:32-33

“The Jews, who both killed the Lord Jesus, and the prophets, and have persecuted us, and please not God, and are adversaries to all men.”

St. Paul, I Thessalonians 2:15

“The Jews are enemies of God and foes of our holy religion.”

St. Pio of Pietrelicina

[American Jewish Committee’s interfaith affairs director Rabbi David] Rosen said. “Those who said Benedict was the last pope who would be a pope that lived through the Shoah, or that said there would not be another pope who had a personal connection to the Jewish people, they were wrong,” Rosen said.... Israel Singer, the former head of the World Jewish Congress, said he spent time working with Bergoglio when the two were distributing aid to the poor in Buenos Aires in the early 2000s, part of a joint Jewish-Catholic program called Tzedaka.... Bergoglio also wrote the foreward of a book by Rabbi Sergio Bergman, a Buenos Aires legislator, and referred to him as “one of my teachers.”.... Bergoglio attended Rosh Hashanah services at the Benei Tikva Slijot synagogue in September 2007.... Last November, Bergoglio hosted a Kristallnacht memorial event at the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral with Rabbi Alejandro Avruj from the NCI-Emanuel World Masorti congregation. He also has worked with the Latin American Jewish Congress and held meetings with Jewish youth who participate in its New Generations program.... In his visit to the Buenos Aires synagogue, according to the Catholic Zenit news agency, Bergoglio told the congregation that he was there to examine his heart “like a pilgrim, together with you, my elder brothers.”....

Jewish Telegraphic Agency, March 13, 2015

From Adam to this day, divine worship that is acceptable to God has always been, without exception, the creation of God.

Christ chose the Cenacle In which to celebrate the Passover, because there lived, died, and were buried Melchisedech, David, Solomon and all the kings of David’s family till the Babylonian Captivity.

Melchisedech comes into history under this name in the account of the four Mesopotamian kings, who went into Palestine, captured Lot, Abraham’s nephew, and started for home. Abraham roused his servants, fell on them at night, rescued Lot, took their spoils, and returning passed by Salem, as Jerusalem then was named.

“But Melchisedech, the king of Salem, bringing forth bread and wine, for he was a priest of the most high God, blessed him and said: ‘Blessed be the most high God by whose protection thy enemies are in thy band.’ And be gave him tithes of all.”

Here for the first time in Holy Writ we find a priest “of the most high God” offering the “bread and wine” of the Passover and Mass. Eight centuries of silence pass, and 1,100 years before Christ, David wrote of Christ’s priesthood: “Thou are a priest forever according to the order of Melchisedech.” Then this great pontiff-king appears no more, in Holy Writ, till St. Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrews mentions him eight times as a type of Christ. [.....]

But here for the first time in history, comes forth another order of priests, this mysterious Melchisedech offering bread and wine of the Last Supper and Mass. To him Abraham offered tithes—the tenth part of the fruits of his victory. Therefore Melchisedech’s priesthood was higher than that of Abraham; it was to be eternal; it pointed to Christ’s priesthood of the Last Supper and of the Catholic Church. The whole prophetic scene in that vale beside the sacred city was emblematic of the future.

[.....] Who was Melchisedech? St. Paul says: “Without father, without mother without genealogy, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life, but likened unto the Son of God, continueth a priest forever.” [.....] Melchisedech was the patriarch Sem, sole survivor of the flood, eldest son and heir of Noe, king and high priest of the world. Noe established the right of primogeniture, that the eldest son should succeed the father in his property, kingship and priesthood, a custom coming down to our day.

Fr. James L. Meagher, D.D., How Christ Said the First Mass

Iconoclasm Revisited: The Great Neo-Modernist Heresy – The belief that there exists a merely accidental relationship between the “revealed truths” and the dogmatic “manner of stating those truths and theological doctrines.”

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

The Ecumenical Directory

“It is beyond question that the Pope can err even in matters touching the faith.... Many pontiffs were heretics... The last of them was Pope John XXII (1522-1523).”

Pope Adrian VI, quoted by Fr. Paul Trinchard, One, Holy Catholic, Apostolic

To live together as brother and sister? Of course I have high respect for those who are doing this. But it’s a heroic act, and heroism is not for the average Christian. I would say that people must do what is possible in their situation. We cannot as human beings always do the ideal, the best. We must do the best possible in a given situation.

Cardinal Kasper, interview with Commonweal, May 7, 2016

If a divorced and remarried person is truly sorry that he or she failed in the first marriage, if the commitments from the first marriage are clarified and a return is definitively out of the question, if he or she cannot undo the commitments that were assumed in the second civil marriage without new guilt, if he or she strives to the best of his or her abilities to live out the second civil marriage on the basis of faith and to raise their children in the faith, if he or she longs for the sacraments as a source of strength in his or her situation, do we then have to refuse or can we refuse him or her the sacrament of penance and communion, after a period of reorientation? [.....]

Cardinal Walter Kasper, The Gospel of the Family

Pope Francis makes the error of Kasper his own!

49. In such difficult situations of need, the Church must be particularly concerned to offer understanding, comfort and acceptance, rather than imposing straightaway a set of rules that only lead people to feel judged and abandoned by the very Mother called to show them God’s mercy. Rather than offering the healing power of grace and the light of the Gospel message, some would “indoctrinate” that message, turning it into “dead stones to be hurled at others.”

122. We should not however confuse different levels: there is no need to lay upon two limited persons the tremendous burden of having to reproduce perfectly the union existing between Christ and his Church, for marriage as a sign entails “a dynamic process…, one which advances gradually with the progressive integration of the gifts of God.”

Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia

As already said: Francis will end Conservative Catholicism; they are forced to choose sides!

Priest: Pope’s ambiguity a ‘true blessing’ because it draws false Church out of shadows

LifeSiteNews | ROME, May 24, 2017 -- Pope Francis’ influence in the Catholic Church has been a “great and true blessing” since his ambiguous teachings have drawn the “anti-Church” out of the shadows into clear view for all the faithful to see, a priest told a gathering of pro-life and pro-family leaders in Rome last week.

“The advent of Pope Francis has, in the divine order of things, proved a great and true blessing,” Fr. Linus Clovis of Family Life International said in his talk at the Rome Life Forum on May 18.

“A hidden conflict has been raging in the Church for over one hundred years…Under Francis, the first Jesuit pope, the first pope from the Americas and the first pope whose priestly ordination was in the New Rite, it is now full blown, with the potential of rendering the Church smaller but more faithful,” he added. [……]

Council of Trent, Session VI, decrees on Justification

· CANON XVIII -If any one saith, that the commandments of God are, even for one that is justified and constituted in grace, impossible to keep; let him be anathema.

· CANON XIX -If any one saith, that nothing besides faith is commanded in the Gospel; that other things are indifferent, neither commanded nor prohibited, but free; or, that the ten commandments nowise appertain to Christians; let him be anathema.

· CANON XX -If any one saith, that the man who is justified and how perfect soever, is not bound to observe the commandments of God and of the Church, but only to believe; as if indeed the Gospel were a bare and absolute promise of eternal life, without the condition of observing the commandments ; let him be anathema.

· CANON XXI -If any one saith, that Christ Jesus was given of God to men, as a redeemer in whom to trust, and not also as a legislator whom to obey; let him be anathema.

· CANON XXII -If any one saith, that the justified, either is able to persevere, without the special help of God, in the justice received; or that, with that help, he is not able; let him be anathema.

COMMENT: Conservative Catholics recognize the heresy of Pope Francis/Bergoglio and his lapdog, Cardinal Walter Kasper, only in the practical moral application of their doctrinal errors. They apparently never recognized that Kasper was just as much a heretic during his curial days with John Paul II and Benedict XVI. He has been promoting situation ethics in an effort to overturn Catholic doctrinal and moral truths for a long, long time. How is it that they now find the moral relativism of Francis/Bergoglio so offensive while never complaining about the doctrinal relativism of the Assisi Prayer Meetings and the interfaith events in Jewish synagogues invoking their “common god”? Now they muse about the good-old-days under less radical conciliar popes as if that offers a safe-harbor. To invoke the concilarist popes, John Paul II’s Familiaris Consortio and Benedict XVI’s Sacramentum Caritatis against Francis/Bergoglio’s corrupting the sacrament of Marriage is not just futile, but stupid, for all of them, without exception, embraced the heresy as a first principle of their Modernist faith that Catholic dogma does and must necessarily evolve. Francis/Bergoglio has done nothing that could possible offend John Paul/Wojtyla or Benedict/Ratzinger. Are we expected to employ the same Novus Ordo salami techniques that were used by concilarists to corrupt the Catholic faith in order to help conservative Catholics recover it? It does not work that way. Either conservative Catholics will repent and conform themselves to the “rule of faith” which is Catholic dogma or they will continue to do what they have done over the last fifty years – that is, nothing beyond attacking those whose acts condemn their effeminacy. They, along with Francis/Bergoglio and Kasper need to understand that when God abandons anyone to their “reprobate sense” they will no longer be able to recognize Truth.

Pope lashes back against faithful Catholics who defend DOGMA

So we are faced with two groups of people. The group of the apostles who want to discuss the problem, and the others who go and create problems. They divide, they divide the Church, they say that what the Apostles preached is not what Jesus said, that it is not the truth.

There were many [councils], up until Vatican II, which clarified doctrine: for example, when we recite the Creed, it is the result of councils that have defined doctrine… It is a duty of the Church to clarify doctrine so that what Jesus said in the Gospels is better understood, what is the Spirit of the Gospels….

But there were always those people who, without any commission, go about disturbing the Christian community with speeches that upset souls: ‘Eh, no, someone who says that is a heretic, you can’t say this, or that; this is the doctrine of the Church.’ And they are fanatics about things that are not clear, such as these fanatics who go about there, sowing discord in order to divide the Christian community. And this is the problem: when the doctrine of the Church, that which comes from the Gospel, that which the Holy Spirit inspires – because Jesus said, ‘He will teach us and remind you of all that I have taught’ – that doctrine becomes an ideology. And this is the great error of these people.

Pope Francis the Fanatic, open confession of his ideological driven obfuscation of doctrine, May 19, 2017

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

The Kingdom of God vs. the Civilization of Love

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

1. The world is divided into two opposing camps: the kingdom of God vs. the kingdom of Satan;

2. Every human being belongs to either one or the other of these two camps;

3. Since the fall of Adam, these two kingdoms have been in conflict with one another, and will continue to be in conflict with one another until the end of time.

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

Note:

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

Rene Descartes, the Catholic, and Immanuel Kant, the Protestant, are the twin pillars of modern philosophical atheism!

I cannot forgive Descartes; in all his philosophy he did his best to dispense with God. But he could not avoid making Him set the world in motion with a flip of His thumb; after that he had no more use for God.

Blaise Pascal, Pensees

Since the Year of Mercy is long gone.... No more Mr. Nice Guy!

The Cardinal who sustains this, is a disillusioned man, inasmuch as he wanted power and lost it. He thought he was the highest authority in the United States.... He is not the Magisterium: the Holy Father is the Magisterium, and it is he who teaches the entire Church. The other just states his own ideas, and they deserve no further comment. These are the words of a poor man..... The Catholic right-wing wants power and not truth. If they say they find some “heresy” in Francis’ words, they are greatly mistaken, since they think like men and not as the Lord wills.

Cardinal Rodriguez Maradiaga’s petty insults against Cardinal Raymond Burke, Only the Gospel is Revolutionary

“Not to resist an error is to approve of it – not to defend a truth is to reject it.”

St. Augustine’s dictum, codified in the Decretum Gratiani

Prophecy and our times!

An unhappy time is coming of revolt and dissension in the Church. Oh my children, do not let yourselves be led astray by innovations. Rally and hold fast. Stay on the same road, the same footpaths as your pious fathers trod. Preserve and maintain what they have taught you. It will be enough if you resist the attacks, the tempests, the hurricanes that will arise with such violence.

The Church will be punished because the majority of her members, high and low, will become so perverted. The Church will sink deeper and deeper until she will at last seem to be extinguished, and the succession of Peter and the Apostles to have expired. But, after this, she will be victoriously exalted in the sight of all doubters.

St. Nicholas of Flu, 15th Century

During the fifth period, we saw only calamities and devastation; oppression of Catholics by tyrants and heretics; execution of Kings, and conspiracies to set up republics . . . Are we not to fear, during this period, that the Mohammedans will come again, working out their sinister schemes against the Latin Church? . . . During this period men will abuse the freedom of conscience conceded to them . . . there will be laxity in divine and human precepts. Discipline will suffer. The holy canons will be completely disregarded, and the clergy will not respect the laws of the Church. Everyone will be carried away and led to believe and to do what he fancies, according to the manner of the flesh. . . But, by the hand of God Almighty, there occurs so wondrous a change during the sixth period that no one can humanly visualize it.

The sixth period of the Church will begin with the powerful Monarch and the holy Pontiff . . . and it will last until the revelation of Antichrist. In this period, God will console His Holy Church for the affliction and great tribulation she has endured during the fifth period. All nations will become Catholic. Vocations will be abundant as never before, and all men will seek only the Kingdom of God and His justice. Men will live in peace, and this will be granted because people will make their peace with God. They will live under the protection of the Great Monarch and his successors.

All nations will come to worship God in the true Catholic and Roman faith. There will be many Saints and Doctors on earth. Peace will reign over the whole earth because God will bind Satan for a number of years until the days of the Son of Perdition. No one will be able to pervert the Word of God since, during the sixth period, there will be an Ecumenical Council which will be the greatest of all councils. By the grace of God, by the power of the Great Monarch, by the authority of the Holy Pontiff, and by the union of all the most devout princes, atheism and every heresy will be banished from the earth. The Council will define the true sense of Holy Scripture, and this will be believed and accepted by everyone.

Venerable Bartholomew Holzhauser, holy priest of the seventeenth century

In the twentieth century there will be a time of great corruption of customs, and this devotion will be the safeguard of this land during the times to come when it will no longer be a colony, but a free and libertine republic. Let us weep, pray, and do penance so that this time will not be of long duration.

The secular clergy will leave much to be desired because priests will become careless in their sacred duties. Lacking the divine compass, they will stray from the road traced by God for the priestly ministry, and they will become attached to wealth and riches, which they will unduly strive to obtain. How the Church will suffer during this dark night! Lacking a Prelate and Father to guide them with paternal love, gentleness, strength, wisdom and prudence, many priests will lose their spirit, placing their souls in great danger. This will mark the arrival of My hour.

Therefore, clamor insistently without tiring and weep with bitter tears in the privacy of your heart, imploring the Celestial Father that, for love of the Eucharistic Heart of my Most Holy Son and His Precious Blood shed with such generosity and the profound bitterness and sufferings of His cruel Passion and Death, He might take pity on His ministers and bring to an end those Ominous times, sending to this Church the Prelate who will restore the spirit of its priests. . . [When all seems lost, it will be] the happy beginning of the complete restoration. This will mark the arrival of my hour, when I, in a marvelous way, will dethrone the proud and cursed Satan, trampling him under my feet and fettering him in the infernal abyss.

Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Good Success, to Venerable Marianne de Jesus Torres (1563-1635)

It was revealed to me that through the intercession of the Mother of God all heresies will disappear. The victory over heresies has been reserved by Christ for his Blessed Mother… The power of Mary in the latter days will be very conspicuous. Mary will extend the reign of Christ over the heathens and the Mohammedans, and it will be a time of great joy when Mary is enthroned as Mistress and Queen of hearts.

Venerable Maria of Agreda, seventeenth century

Hermeneutics of Continuity/Discontinuity

Catholic Church Teaches:

“That the mystical body of Christ and the Catholic Church in communion with Rome are one and the same thing, is a doctrine based on revealed truth.”

Pius XII, Humani Generis

(Modernism teaches that) “the formulas which we call dogma must be subject to these vicissitudes, and are, therefore, liable to change. Thus the way is open to the intrinsic evolution of dogma. Here we have an immense structure of sophisms which ruin and wreck all religion.”

Pope St. Pius X, Pascendi, 1907

With truly lamentable results, our age, casting aside all restraint in its search for the ultimate causes of things, frequently pursues novelties so ardently that it rejects the legacy of the human race. Thus it falls into very serious errors, which are even more serious when they concern sacred authority, the interpretation of Sacred Scripture, and the principal mysteries of Faith. The fact that many Catholic writers also go beyond the limits determined by the Fathers and the Church herself is extremely regrettable. In the name of higher knowledge and historical research (they say), they are looking for that progress of dogmas which is, in reality, nothing but the corruption of dogmas.

Pope St. Pius X, Lamentabili Sane, 1907

The Vatiacan II Church Teaches:

“Church of Christ… subsits in the Catholic Church.”

Lumen Gentium, Vatican II

NOTE: The author of this term, “subsist in,” was Pastor Wilhelm Schmidt, a Protestant minister who made the suggestion to Cardinal Augustin Bea, the ecumenist, modernist biblical scholar, patron of Fr. Annibale Bugnini, and confessor to Pope Pius XII, who in turn recruited the support of Fr. Joseph Ratzinger who then convinced Cardinal Josef Frings of Cologne to bring the matter to the Council. This story was personally verified by Fr. Franz Schmidberger, First Assistant to the Superior General of the SSPX, by directly contacting Pastor Schmidt.

The problem remains if Lumen Gentium strictly and exclusively identifies the Mystical Body of Christ with the Catholic Church, as did Pius XII in Mystici Corporis. Can we not call it into doubt when we observe that not only is the attribute "Roman" missing, but also that one avoids saying that only Catholics are members of the Mystical Body. Thus they are telling us that the Church of Christ and of the Apostles subsistit in, is found in the Catholic Church. There is consequently no strict identification, that is exclusive, between the Church of Christ and the "Roman" Church. Vatican II admits, fundamentally, that non-Catholic Christians are members of the Mystical Body and not merely ordered to it.

Yves Cardinal Congar

Church of Christ is not exclusively identical to the Roman Catholic Church. It does indeed subsist in Roman Catholicism but it is also present in varying modes and degrees in other Christian communities. (Bold face in original).

Avery Cardinal Dulles, a member of the International Theological Commission

It is difficult to say that the Catholic Church is still one, Catholic, apostolic, when one says that the others (other Christian communities) are equally one, Catholic and apostolic, albeit to a lesser degree. ---- at Vatican Council II, the Roman Catholic Church officially abandoned its monopoly over the Christian religion.

Fr. Edward Schillebeeckx

Concretely and actually the Church of Christ may be realized less, equally, or even more in a Church separated from Rome than in a Church in communion with Rome. This conclusion is inescapable on the basis of the understanding of Church that emerges from the teaching of Vatican Council II.

Fr. Gregory Baum

And we now ask: What does it mean to restore the unity of all Christians?... This unity, we are convinced, indeed subsists in the Catholic Church, without the possibility of ever being lost (Unitatis Redintegratio) the Church in fact has not totally disappeared from the world. On the other hand, this unity does not mean what could be called ecumenism of the return: that is, to deny and to reject one’s own faith history. Absolutely not!

Pope Benedict XVI, addressing Protestants at World Youth Day, August 19, 2005

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Offers Clarification (?):
QUESTION: What is the meaning of the affirmation that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church?
RESPONSE:
Christ “established here on earth” only one Church and instituted it as a “visible and spiritual community”, that from its beginning and throughout the centuries has always existed and will always exist, and in which alone are found all the elements that Christ himself instituted. “This one Church of Christ, which we confess in the Creed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic […]. This Church, constituted and organized in this world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, governed by the successor of Peter and the Bishops in communion with him”.
In number 8 of the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium ‘subsistence’ means this perduring, historical continuity and the permanence of all the elements instituted by Christ in the Catholic Church, in which the Church of Christ is concretely found on this earth.

REPLY:

Lutherans, Methodists, Anglicans, and many other Protestant groups recite the Nicene Creed professing a belief in the “one, holy, catholic, apostolic Church.” They clearly do not define the word “catholic” in the same sense as Roman Catholics do. Is the CDF giving a Catholic or Protestant meaning to the word “catholic” when it explains the word “subsist”? Is the comment of Cardinal Congar explaining the significance of the failure to use the word “Roman” important to our understanding of the CDF’s response? Is this a cleaver corruption of dogmatic truth through corruption of language? Should we be grateful to Cardinal Congar for his open and honest comments? Since the “ecumenism of return” is rejected then, do Protestants that do not have to “return” to the Roman Catholic Church already belong to the “Church of Christ”? Is there salvation in the “Church of Christ” separated from the Roman Catholic Church?

Every best gift, and every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration.

James 1:17
For amen I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot, or one tittle shall not pass of the law, till all be fulfilled.

Matt 5:18

Paradoxically precisely because one remains [in the Church], precisely if one is faithful, one changes. One does not remain faithful, like the traditionalists or the fundamentalists, to the letter. Fidelity is always a change, a blossoming, a growth. The Lord brings about a change in those who are faithful to Him.

Cardinal Bergoglio, interview with Stefani Falasca, 2007

More distantly, this view comes from the German transcendental philosophies that value becoming more than being and therefore value perennial doubt more than certainty and seeking more than finding..... The mistake in this position lies in regarding as humble an attitude that is really an intense form of pride. What is someone really preferring when he prefers searching for the truth to truth itself? He is preferring his own subjective movement and the activity of the Ego more than the good that his powers of acting are given him to attain. In short the Object is being valued less than the subject and an anthropocentric view is being adopted that is irreconcilable with religion, which seeks the creature's subjection to the Creator and teaches that in being thus subjected the creature finds its own satisfaction and perfection. The false view that values searching more than the truth is really a form of indifferentism.
Romano Amerio, Iota Unum, The Virtue of Faith

“The Devil is fighting a decisive battle”
Sr. Lucy also told me:

“Father, the Devil is fighting a decisive battle against the Virgin and, as you know, what most offends God and what will gain him the greatest number of souls in the shortest time is to gain the souls consecrated to God. For this also leaves unprotected the field of the laity and the Devil can more easily seize them.
“Also, Father, tell them that my cousins Francisco and Jacinta made sacrifices because they always saw the Blessed Virgin was very sad in all her apparitions. She never smiled at us. This anguish that we saw in her, caused by offenses to God and the chastisements that threaten sinners, penetrated our souls. And being children, we did not know what measures to devise except to pray and make sacrifices. …”
Referring to the vision of Hell that Our Lady showed her and Jacinta and Francisco, she said:
“For this reason, Father, it is my mission not just to tell about the material punishments that will certainly come over the earth if the world does not pray and do penance. No, my mission is to tell everyone the imminent danger we are in of losing our souls for all eternity if we remain fixed in sin.
“Father, we should not wait for a call to the world from Rome on the part of the Holy Father to do penance. Nor should we wait for a call for penance to come from the Bishops in our Dioceses, nor from our Religious Congregations. No, Our Lord has often used these means, and the world has not paid heed. So, now each one of us must begin to reform himself spiritually. Each one has to save not only his own soul, but also all the souls that God has placed on his pathway.
“Father, the Blessed Virgin did not tell me that we are in the last times of the world, but I understood this for three reasons:
“The first is because she told me that the Devil is engaging in a battle with the Virgin, a decisive battle. It is a final battle where one party will be victorious and the other will suffer defeat. So, from now on, we are either with God or we are with the Devil; there is no middle ground.
“The second reason is because she told me, as well as my cousins, that God is giving two last remedies to the world: the Holy Rosary and devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. And, being the last remedies, that is to say, they are the final ones, means that there will be no others.

“And the third, because in the plans of the Divine Providence, when God is going to chastise the world He always first exhausts all other remedies. When He sees that the world pays no attention whatsoever, then, as we say in our imperfect way of talking, with a certain fear He presents us the last means of salvation, His Blessed Mother.
If we despise and reject this last means, Heaven will no longer pardon us, because we will have committed a sin that the Gospel calls a sin against the Holy Spirit. This sin consists in openly rejecting – with full knowledge and will – the salvation that is put in our hands.
“Also, since Our Lord is a very good Son, He will not permit that we offend and despise His Blessed Mother. We have as obvious testimony the history of different centuries where Our Lord has shown us with terrible examples how He has always defended the honor of His Blessed Mother.
“Prayer and sacrifice are the two means to save the world. As for the Holy Rosary, Father, in these last times in which we are living, the Blessed Virgin has given a new efficacy to the praying of the Holy Rosary. This in such a way that there is no problem that cannot be resolved by praying the Rosary, no matter how difficult it is - be it temporal or above all spiritual - in the spiritual life of each of us or the lives of our families, be they our families in the world or Religious Communities, or even in the lives of peoples and nations.
“I repeat, there is no problem, as difficult as it may be, that we cannot resolve at this time by praying the Holy Rosary. With the Holy Rosary we will save ourselves, sanctify ourselves, console Our Lord and obtain the salvation of many souls.
“Then, there is devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, our Most Holy Mother, holding her as the seat of mercy, goodness and pardon and the sure door to enter Heaven. This is the first part of the Message referring to Our Lady of Fatima, and the second part, which is briefer but no less important, refers to the Holy Father.”

Sister Lucy of Fatima to Fr. Augustin Fuentes in 1957

"He does not send answers from heaven. 'He sends the Holy Spirit.'" Pope Francis the Destroyer

COMMENT: As if the Holy Ghost does not provide "answers from heaven." It is true that Jesus did not give his apostles answers regarding the "Jewish law," but he did promise to send the Holy Ghost and said, "But when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will teach you all truth." At the Council of Jerusalem, Pope St. Peter under the direction of this same Spirit said, "It seems good to us and the Holy Ghost" that the Jewish law should be definitively set aside. And so it was. God had revealed His truth giving a "clear rule" that one might describe as being a very "efficient" addressing of the question. Is this what Francis means by the "temptation of efficientism." As to Francis' claim that "Jesus does not want the church to be a perfect model" does not reconcile well with Jesus command that we to "Be ... therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect." Or again, that we are to "let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven." Francis, the CEO of the HomoLobby, is a stranger to grace, and thus a stranger to the possibility of true sanctity. Every dogma of our faith is a "answer from heaven." Unfortunately, Francis will not hear them.

Pope Francis: Church Must Learn to Abandon Old ‘Traditions’

It is a mistake for the Church to try to hold onto old traditions or to have clear answers for everything, Pope Francis said Thursday.

Breitbard | Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D. | May 23, 2019

Jesus intentionally omitted telling his disciples many things so that the Church would learn to renounce the desire for clarity and order, the pope told participants in the 21st general assembly of Caritas Internationalis, the Church’s global charitable outreach.

When pagans first embraced the Christian faith, the question arose as to if they would have to abide by all the precepts of the Jewish law, something Jesus never spoke of, the pope noted.

By not always giving “clear rules” that would quickly resolve issues, Jesus was protecting the Church from the temptation of “efficientism,” Francis said, which is the desire for the Church to have everything under control, avoiding surprises, with its agenda always in order.

This is not the way the Lord acts, he continued. He does not send answers from heaven. “He sends the Holy Spirit.”

“Jesus does not want the church to be a perfect model, satisfied with its own organization and able to defend its good name,” he said. “Jesus did not live like this, but on a journey, without fearing the upheavals of life.”

Living like Jesus demands the “courage of renunciation,” the pontiff said, a willingness to abandon traditions that are dear to us.

Changing and adapting is not about imposing something new, he said, “but leaving aside something old.”

Those early Christians had to learn to leave behind “important religious traditions and precepts, dear to the chosen people,” he said, by which their very “religious identity” was at stake.

In the end, they did not need a bunch of doctrines and traditions. but the simple announcement that “God is love,” Francis said, and in the face of this great truth, “even convictions and human traditions can and must be abandoned, since they are more of an obstacle than a help.”

“God often purifies, simplifies, and makes us grow by taking away, not by adding, as we might do,” he said.

“True faith cleanses from attachments,” he said. “As a church, we are not called to corporate compromises, but to evangelical enterprise.”

Critics of the pope have often complained that he intentionally sows “ambiguity,” and the pontiff’s words Thursday would seem to suggest that he owns this criticism as a badge of honor because he sees a desire for doctrinal clarity as anti-evangelical.

Francis famously refused to answer four cardinals who presented him with five questions or “dubia” to clarify certain purportedly unclear teachings in his 2016 teaching letter, Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love).

In 2017, the former doctrinal chief of the U.S. Bishops Conference (USCCB) wrote a powerful letter to the pope, criticizing his “intentionally ambiguous” teaching, derision of conservatives, and resistance to constructive criticism.

The Capuchin priest, Father Thomas Weinandy, whom Pope Francis himself named to the Vatican’s International Theological Commission in 2014, listed five points that illustrate the “chronic confusion” that seems to characterize the Francis pontificate, namely, intentional ambiguity, disdain for doctrine, the naming of heterodox bishops, sowing division in the Church, and vindictiveness in the face of criticism.

The Pope’s guidance “at times seems intentionally ambiguous,” the theologian stated, leaving the faithful confused and spiritually adrift. “To teach with such a seemingly intentional lack of clarity inevitably risks sinning against the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth,” the priest said.

While the pope accuses his critics of making doctrine into an ideology, “it is precisely Christian doctrine that frees people from worldly ideologies and assures that they are actually preaching and teaching the authentic, life-giving Gospel,” Weinandy said.

Other observers have attributed the Pope’s habitual vagueness to his training in the Jesuit order.

“For those unfamiliar with Jesuits,” wrote Dominic Lynch in The Federalist, “vague and porous doctrine is almost their raison d’être. Indeed, it is so baked into the order that finding a conservative Jesuit is more difficult than finding a liberal in West Texas.”

Hermeneutics of Continuity/Discontinuity

A Illustrative Example of the Heresy of Neo-Modernism

It is not enough to find a new language in which to articulate our perennial faith; it is also urgent, in the light of the new challenges and prospects facing humanity, that the Church be able to express the ‘new things’ of Christ’s Gospel, that, albeit present in the word of God, have not yet come to light.

Pope Francis the Destroyer, Address, October 11, 2018

A Illustrative Example of the Catholic Faith

If there are any present-day teachers making every effort to produce and develop new ideas, but not to repeat “that which has been handed down,” and if this is their whole aim, they should reflect calmly on those words which Benedict XV proposes for their consideration: “We wish this maxim of our elders held in reverence: Nihil innovetur nisi quod traditum — let nothing new be introduced, but only what has been handed down; it must be held as an inviolable law in matters of faith, and should also control those points which allow of change, though in these latter for the most part the rule holds: non nova sed noviter—not new things but in a new way.”

Pope Pius XII, Si Diligis, Allocution to Cardinals, Archbishops, and Bishops on the Canonization of St Pius X, May 31, 1954.

Canonical Problems with the election of Pope Francis may render election invalid!

The LGBT Political Campaign Behind Pope Francis' Election, By David Martin

With theologians and bishops aghast over what some are calling ‘the most terrible schism the world has ever seen,’ it behooves the Catholic hierarchy to take a closer look at the 2013 papal election since it appears to have raised to the Chair of Peter “a man, not canonically elected.”

To recap, on the eve of the 2013 conclave, Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga who was one of the key kingmakers for the papal election was busily on the phone with cardinal electors from the Honduran embassy in Rome. His frenzied phone effort was the tail end of an intense lobbying campaign to secure votes for the election of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio as pope.

That same day, Maradiaga attended a private meeting of Bergoglio supporters, which included key players in the “St. Gallen Mafia,” and together they garnered pledges for up to twenty-five votes for Bergoglio. Not surprisingly, Bergoglio opened with twenty-six votes on the first day of the conclave, though that number would rise to 77 on the second day indicating that this campaign effort was gaining ground. Three days later the newly elected Pope Francis asked Maradiaga to head his powerful new Council of Cardinals, known as the “Council of Nine.”

Six years later, the pope and his “vice pope” are accused of perpetuating “one of the worst crises in the history of the Catholic Church.” A recent open letter addressed to the bishops of the Church accuses Pope Francis of being “guilty of the crime of heresy” and alleges that “Pope Francis has protected and promoted homosexually active clerics and clerical apologists for homosexual activity” indicating “he believes that homosexual activity is not gravely sinful.”

The letter cites the papal favor enjoyed by Maradiaga, a revolutionary accused of covering up for homosexual bishop Juan José Pineda Fasquelle. Pineda was forced to resign amidst allegations that he sexually abused seminarians and embezzled over $1.3 million to “pay for sexual favors” and “maintain a network” of gay-lovers. Reports have it that Maradiaga has brutally ruined the careers of at least six priests who spoke out against Pineda.
Fruits of Vote Canvassing

Hence Francis - who has abetted anti-life forces, betrayed the underground Church in China, sacked loyal priests, empowered homosexuals, rewarded abortionists, praised Luther, blessed adultery, denied the miracle of the loaves, and professed manifold heresy—occupies the Papal Chair today because of this LGBT canvassing campaign that made the difference in determining the outcome of the 2013 papal election. On August 27, 2018, Vatican correspondent Edward Pentin tweeted concerning this political campaign:

“Cdls Danneels & Ex-Cdl McCarrick campaigned for Bergoglio to be Pope, as did ++Maradiaga on eve of Conclave, phoning up various cardinals from the Honduran embassy in Rome. Despite their pasts, all 3 prelates have since been special advisors of Francis or rehabilitated by him.”

As we know, the late Cardinal Danneels was a public advocate of “gay marriage” and McCarrick was defrocked of his bishopric last February after being indicted for homosexual predation of seminarians and for covering up the sexual-abuse of numerous seminarians perpetrated by some 300 priests under his jurisdiction.

San Gallen’s Mafia

Danneels confessed on video in September 2015 that he and several cardinals were part of the notorious St. Gallen’s Mafia that had conspired for the ouster of Benedict XVI and the election of Cardinal Bergoglio, and it was this very group that culminated its campaign effort just before 2013 conclave, showing clearly that conspiracy played a key role in the outcome of the election. Danneel’s confession alone stands as irrefutable evidence.

Austen Ivereigh's book, The Great Reformer, brings to light how Cardinal Murphy O'Connor (a homosexual) along with several key cardinals had spearheaded this intense lobbying campaign, through which they secured pledges from nearly 30 cardinals to get Cardinal Bergoglio elected as pope. https://fromrome.wordpress.com/2014/12/09/the-great-reformer-francis-and-the-making-of-a-radical-pope/

According to Ivereigh, "they first secured Bergoglio’s assent" and then "they got to work, touring the cardinals’ dinners to promote their man." This was confirmed, in the case of Cardinals Murphy-O’Connor and Cardinal O'Malley, in the Wall Street Journal report from August 6, 2013. As the conclave neared, they held a series of closed meetings, known as congregations, one of which featured Cardinal Bergoglio as the keynote speaker, thereby proving that Bergoglio was colluding in this plan.

Ecclesiastical Law Violated

The foregoing warrants episcopal inquisition into Pope Francis’ election since it contained multi-violations against Pope John Paul II’s Apostolic Constitution Unversi Dominici Gregis, which governs papal elections. The Constitution makes it clear that political vote canvassing on the part of cardinal electors is forbidden and incurs automatic excommunication upon those involved. Consider the following:

“The Cardinal electors shall further abstain from any form of pact, agreement, promise or other commitment of any kind which could oblige them to give or deny their vote to a person or persons. If this were in fact done, even under oath, I decree that such a commitment shall be null and void and that no one shall be bound to observe it; and I hereby impose the penalty of excommunication latae sententae upon those who violate this prohibition. (81)

Unwritten Rule

While the pope here speaks of the election itself, we should not rule out that this prohibition also applies to that time before the election when preparations are underway, since it is during this time that illicit political activity would exert its greatest influence on the vote. "Any form of pact" obliging electors "to give or deny their vote to a person" would be secured before the election.

We should also consider that violations not mentioned in the Constitution could also criminalize the election. Crimes like extortion or LGBT bribery committed before the election would certainly render the election illicit if their influence carried into the election.

The pope also says in his Constitution:

“Confirming the prescriptions of my Predecessors, I likewise forbid anyone, even if he is a Cardinal, during the Pope's lifetime and without having consulted him, to make plans concerning the election of his successor, or to promise votes, or to make decisions in this regard in private gatherings.” (79)

A clique of cardinals did “make plans” to force Benedict XVI’s resignation and to campaign for “the election of his successor,” with up to 25 cardinals “promising votes” the day before the election, this having come about through “private gatherings,” thus revealing the illicit conduct of those cardinal electors to be.

Under the pain of excommunication latae sententiae, the pope forbids “each and every Cardinal elector, present and future, as also the Secretary of the College of Cardinals and all other persons taking part in the preparation and carrying out of everything necessary for the election” to allow “all possible forms of interference, opposition and suggestion whereby secular authorities of whatever order and degree, or any individual or group, might attempt to exercise influence on the election of the Pope.” (80)

It was through Judas cardinals that are allied with the infamous LGBT network and who were "taking part in the preparation" of the election that the secular powers were enabled to "exercise influence on the election of the pope."
Section 76 of John Paul II's Constitution states:

“Should the election take place in a way other than that prescribed in the present Constitution, or should the conditions laid down here not be observed, the election is for this very reason null and void, without any need for a declaration on the matter; consequently, it confers no right on the one elected." (76)

There is much being said at this time concerning Francis’ errors and heterodoxy but little is said concerning the election that launched his revolution. Has it not occurred to Catholics that his election could have been null?

It indeed behooves the Church’s episcopal body to take a closer look at the 2013 papal election, since we may very well be witnessing the fulfillment of the prophecy of St. Francis of Assisi concerning a false shepherd:

"At the time of this tribulation, a man, not canonically elected, will be raised to the Pontificate, who, by his cunning, will endeavor to draw many into error…. Some preachers will keep silence about the truth, and others will trample it under foot and deny it. Sanctity of life will be held in derision even by those who outwardly profess it, for in those days Jesus Christ will send them not a true pastor, but a destroyer." (1226)

(Taken from Works of the Seraphic Father St. Francis of Assisi, R. Washbourne Publishing House, 1882, pp. 248-250, with imprimatur by His Excellency William Bernard, Bishop of Birmingham)

“Humility restrains the appetite from aiming at great things against right reason, while magnanimity urges the mind to great things in accord with right reason. Hence it is clear that magnanimity is not opposed to humility, indeed, they concur in this, that each is according to right reason.”

St. Thomas Aquinas

Humility in human relations:

“In man, two things have to be considered: that which is of God, and that which is of man. . . But humility in the strict sense means the awe in virtue of which man subjects himself to God. Consequently man, with regard to that which is of himself, must subject himself to his neighbor with regard to that which is of God in him. But humility does not require that one subject that which is of God in himself to that which seems to be of God in the other. . . Humility likewise does not require that one subject that which is of himself to that which is of man in the other.”

St. Thomas Aquinas

“No one can be condemned forever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel!”

Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia

While St. Francis Jerome, S.J. (1642-1716, feast day May 11) was preaching to abandoned women in the streets of Naples, one of their number insulted him from her window and ridiculed his discourse. The Saint warned her that within eight days God would punish her, and on the eighth day he invited his audience, who had assembled at the same place, to visit the woman that had interrupted him. She was found by them lying dead upon the floor of her room. 'Catherine,' said the Saint, addressing the dead body, 'for the greater glory of God and the edification of those standing by, answer me, Where are you?' The departed soul returned for an instant, and gave an answer distinctly heard by all present - 'In hell, for eternity.'

Rev. Henry S. Bowden, Miniature Lives of the Saints

Novus Ordo “Saint” John Paul II taught the novel doctrine that by the Incarnation, when the “Word was made flesh,” all men became “Son(s) of the living God” regardless of faith or reception of the sacraments. The Catholic Church teaches that only by incorporation with Jesus Christ by faith and baptism does a person become an adopted child of God.

It all began from his belief that all men were defied by the Incarnation and not by the grace of Baptism!

All of you who are still seeking God, all of you who already have the inestimable good fortune to believe, and also you who are tormented by doubt: please listen once again, today in this sacred place, to the words uttered by Simon Peter. In those words is the faith of the Church. In those same words is the new truth, indeed, the ultimate and definitive truth about man: the son of the living God— “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

John Paul II, first homily, October 27, 1978

“Erroneous judgment… unjust accusation…rebellion”

For you, the former rite of Mass is a sign of your false ecclesiology and a matter on which to assail the Council and its work of reform. You take as pretext or as your alleged justification that only in the former rite are the authentic sacrifice of the Mass and the authentic ministerial priesthood preserved, their meaning unobscured. We reject out-of- hand this erroneous judgment and unjust accusation; we cannot permit the divine Eucharist, sacrament of unity, to he made the source of division (1 Cor 11:18); we cannot permit you to make use of it as an instrument and symbol of your rebellion.

Pope Paul VI, addressing Archbishop Marcel Lefèbvre, October 2, 1976. Six months before this remark, in April 1976, Paul VI removed Archbishop Bugnini, the primary author of his Novus Ordo (now called the “Ordinary Form”) as Secretary of the Consilium for the Implementation of the Constitution on the Liturgy, he then dissolved the Consilium, and exiled Bugnini to the post of papal nuncio to Iran because the Pope had seen convincing evidence that Bugnini was a Freemason.

A “miracle” was attributed to the intercession of Paul VI by the Congregation for the Cause of the Saints. The miracle? Premature rupture of amniotic fluid in a five month fetus did not result in health problems as doctors had predicted. The “miracle” then is that a doctor's diagnosis and/or prognosis was incorrect.

“Thank you very much, thank you very much, that’s the nicest thing that anyone’s ever done for me…”

The noble simplicity of Paul Vl’s funeral at Piazza S. Pietro, emceed by my former mentor Archbishop Virgilio Noè, was the epitome of the conciliar liturgical reform’s sobrietas romana and noble simplicity that his papacy championed with clear vision and firm determination. The coffin was slightly raised above the ground. It was draped in plain white cloth with the Book of the Gospels on top and the paschal candle nearby. The rite was carried out with dignity, gravity, and noble simplicity. The spontaneous applause of the people as the coffin was carried inside the basilica for interment was a moving tribute to the pope who successfully steered the Church through the calm and tempest of Vatican II’s aggiornamento.

Fr. Anscar Chupungco, OSB, Modernist Liturgical Expert and admirer of Paul VI, What, Then is Liturgy?, Commenting on the funeral of Paul V

Old Evangelization vs. New Evangelization

The old evangelization holds that any man, like all men born with original sin and an enemies of God, if he believes what God by His Son, Jesus Christ, has revealed and repents from his sins, can be raised by the sacrament of Baptism to the dignity by being a “child of God” and heir to eternal life with God in heaven because the sacrament of Baptism with the desire to receive it marks his soul with an indelible character and removes all guilt of sin and punishment due to original sin and actual sins.

The Novus Ordo Church holds the novel doctrine of Religious Liberty which is the belief that the natural dignity of man is so great that he possesses the right NOT to believe what God has revealed and NOT to do what God commands. Oddly, the Novus Ordo Church holds that Baptism actually lowers the dignity of man because it takes away his right of Religious Liberty, makes him a slave to the arbitrary whims of the pope, and if he should, for some reason, become a Traditional Catholic, well then, he would be so undignified as to become a “heretic” and “schismatic.”

Satan’s Primary Target: The Family

“The final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and the family.”

Sr. Lucia, letter to Cardinal Carlo Caffara

It is no accident that this Heresy which denies the Catholic doctrine concerning Supernatural Charity is to be found in a document which purports to encapsulate the teaching of the Synod on the Family.

Continuing the metaphor employed at the beginning of this article, we may rightly say that, if the Catholic truth concerning Charity is the “Hub” of the wheel of all true Catholic life, then the family is the lynch-pin which holds this wheel in place as the foundational institution incarnating this Charity in the life of both the Church and the world. The family is the place where Charity is received through baptism. It is the place where it is nourished through love. It is where it receives its foundations and bulwarks through the educational process, and the place of support and protection where it endures through the sufferings of this life. It is the Family, and the question as to whether it is constituted as either a place of Charity or its denial, which determines whether we live in a Christian civilization, or a civilization turned away from God to the worship of Evil.

It is also therefore no accident that the chapter of Amoris Laetitia (Chapter VIII) which attempts to enshrine this heresy within its teaching on the family is called “Accompanying, discerning and integrating weakness.” The “weaknesses” specifically addressed in this chapter are Catholics couples living in objective mortal sin through cohabitation, those in a civil marriage without the sacrament, and those who have gone through the process of civil divorce and remarriage. Each of these are designated as “weaknesses” in this document, but are in reality situations of objective mortal sins which are primary attacks upon the family and the institution of marriage upon which it is founded. To therefore speak of integrating such sins into the Church is to speak of integrating evil into the very lifeblood of the Church, thereby violating the entire Christian idea of what constitutes Charity within the family.

The key to this satanic strategy is the word “integration”. It is a word which is absolutely central, not only to the agenda of a totally anti-Christian occult worldview which now worships the evolutionary progress and “salvation” of the entire world through an “integral ecology”, but also the theology now dominant within the Church through the theology of Teilhard de Chardin and Pope Benedict, and which is now being implemented through the words and pastoral policies of Pope Francis and his supporters in the hierarchy. It views Christian Revelation not as immutable and finished upon the death of the last Apostle, but rather as an ongoing historical progression (containing no fixed absolutes,) toward the Omega point of Teilhardian evolution in which the truth will be fully revealed and incarnated.

James Larson, Excerpt from, A Love That Maketh a Lie: Amoris Laetitia and the Teilhardian Agenda

Hermeneutics of Continuity/Discontinuity

As Pope Pius XII explained in Humani Generis, it is impossible to affirm the Catholic dogma of that “Lord Jesus Christ... is consubstantial with the Father” or the Catholic dogma of Transubstantiation if the concept of “substance” is rejected in the same sense used by scholastic theologians found in the perennial realist philosophical tradition and fixed forever by its usage in dogma.

Benedict/Ratzinger denies the meaning of “substance” and then, necessarily, denies the dogma of the True Presence. Benedict/Ratzinger’s entire “hermeneutic of reform” vs. the “hermeneutic of rupture” is predicated upon accepting his Neo-Modernist philosophy. There is no philosophical difference between Benedict/Ratzinger and his chosen replacement Francis who marks, as Benedict/Ratzinger predicted in December before his abdication, the “beginning of the new Church and the end of the old.” The only difference between the two, apart from superficial style, is that Francis is wholly formed by the Novus Ordo Church and suffers no misgivings of conscience about the direction he is dragging the Church because he knows no other way. Those conservative Catholic who are nostalgic for a return of Benedict/Ratzinger or John Paul II in the face of Francis’ infidelities are even more superficial than Francis!

Some even say that the doctrine of transubstantiation, based on an antiquated philosophic notion of substance, should be so modified that the real presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist be reduced to a kind of symbolism, whereby the consecrated species would be merely efficacious signs of the spiritual presence of Christ and of His intimate union with the faithful members of His Mystical Body.

Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis

“…the medieval concept of substance has long since become inaccessible to us. In so far as we use the concept of substance at all today we understand thereby the ultimate particles of matter, and the chemically complex mixture that is bread certainly does not fall into that category.”

Joseph Ratzinger, Faith and the Future, p. 14

“Eucharistic devotion such as is noted in the silent visit by the devout in church must not be thought of as a conversation with God. This would assume that God was present there locally and in a confined way. To justify such an assertion shows a lack of understanding of the Christological mysteries of the very concept of God. This is repugnant to the serious thinking of the man who knows about the omnipresence of God. To go to church on the ground that one can visit God who is present there is a senseless act which modern man rightfully rejects.”

Joseph Ratzinger, Die Sacramentale Begrundung Christliche Existenz

Book read and approved by Pope Francis

“(Most of the homosexual clergy interviewed) have a sexuality that is sublimated and repressed... All the stories of cover-up are intrinsically linked to homosexuality. In 90 percent of the cases the bishop who covers up is himself homosexual. When something happens, he is afraid of the scandal, he is afraid of the ‘mediatization’, he’s afraid of the trial because he fears that his own homosexuality may be revealed.... There is a lot of blackmail.”

Frédéric Martel, Inside the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy

Note: This author of this book is no friend of the Church. He believes that if all the homosexual clergy openly admitted their perverse appetites that then alone would insure that they would no longer sexually prey upon Catholic adolescent boys and thus could function as priests. That is hardly possible. Homosexuality is a state incompatible with the grace of God. It constitutes the abandonment by God of the person to the slavery of his perverse passions. As a slave of perverse passions, the hypothesis that the homosexual can rationally control and direct his perversity because is common knowledge among Catholics is an oxymoron.

Joseph St. Staircase loretto2.jpg

At the end of the Old Santa Fe Trail stands the Loretto Chapel. Inside the Gothic structure is the staircase referred to as miraculous, inexplicable, marvelous and is sometimes called St. Joseph’s Staircase. The stairway confounds architects, engineers and master craftsmen. It makes over two complete 360-degree turns, stands 20’ tall and has no center support. It rests solely on its base and against the choir loft. The risers of the 33 steps are all of the same height. Made of an apparently extinct wood species, it was constructed with only square wooden pegs without glue or nails. It was built by an unknown carpenter in 1852 after a novena by the nuns to St. Joseph. The church and its staircase were sold and is now a non-denominational chapel used for secualr weddings.

Modernism and Neo-Modernism, built upon linguistic Deconstructionism which denies the intentionality of language, “fabricates a fictitious reality.” The Novus Ordo Church can only offer just another “pseudo-reality” to modern man and not the Absolute Truth of God's revelation. The worst thing of all is that most Novus Ordo Catholics are “satisfied with a fictitious reality created by design through the abuse of language.” No wonder Pope Francis hates the “Absolute Truth” and declared it to be “idolatrous” and “godless”!

Plato's literary activity extended over fifty years, and time and again he asked himself anew: What is it that makes the sophists so dangerous? Toward the end he wrote one more dialogue, the Sophist, in which he added a new element to his answer: “The sophists,” he says, “fabricate a fictitious reality.” That the existential realm of man could be taken over by pseudo-realities whose fictitious nature threatens to become indiscernible is truly a depressing thought. And yet this Platonic nightmare, I hold, possesses an alarming contemporary relevance. For the general public is being reduced to a state where people not only are unable to find out about the truth but also become unable even to search for the truth because they are satisfied with deception and trickery that have determined their convictions, satisfied with a fictitious reality created by design through the abuse of language. This, says Plato, is the worst thing that the sophists are capable of wreaking upon mankind by their corruption of the word.

Josef Pieper, Abuse of Language - Abuse of Power

Christ the King

As long as the dark foundation of our nature, grim in its all-encompassing egoism, mad in its drive to make that egoism into reality, to devour everything and to define everything by itself, as long as that foundation is visible, as long as this truly original sin exists within us, we have no business here and there is no logical answer to our existence. Imagine a group of people who are all blind, deaf and slightly demented and suddenly someone in the crowd asks, “What are we to do?”... The only possible answer is “Look for a cure”. Until you are cured, there is nothing you can do. And since you don't believe you are sick, there can be no cure. But if the faith communicated by the Church to Christian humanity is a living faith, and if the grace of the sacraments is an effectual grace, the resultant union of the divine and the human cannot be limited to the special domain of religion, but must extend to all Man's common relationships and must regenerate and transform his social and political life.

Vladimir Solovyov, Minding the Monarchical Church, Russian Philosopher and Orthodox convert to the Catholic Church, friend of Dostoyevsky, died 1900, pauper and homeless.

Pope Francis equates illegal immigrant crisis with the Sin of Abortion!

Our defense of the innocent unborn, for example, needs to be clear, firm and passionate. Equally sacred, however, are the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute, the abandoned..... Some Catholics consider it [migrants] a secondary issue compared to the 'grave' bioethical questions. That a politician looking for votes might say such a thing is understandable, but not a Christian, for whom the only proper attitude is to stand in the shoes of those brothers and sisters of ours who risk their lives to offer a future to their children.

Pope Francis, Gaudette et Exsultate, On a Call to Holiness in Modern World

DOGMA is the Proximate Rule of Faith!

St. Thomas (II-II:11:1) defines heresy: "a species of infidelity in men who, having professed the faith of Christ, corrupt its dogmas". The right Christian faith consists in giving one's voluntary assent to Christ in all that truly belongs to His teaching. There are, therefore, two ways of deviating from Christianity: the one by refusing to believe in Christ Himself, which is the way of infidelity, common to Pagans and Jews; the other by restricting belief to certain points of Christ's doctrine selected and fashioned at pleasure, which is the way of heretics. The subject-matter of both faith and heresy is, therefore, the deposit of the faith, that is, the sum total of truths revealed in Scripture and Tradition as proposed to our belief by the Church.

Catholic Encyclopedia, 1907

The very best (or worst) of “Brave New World” and “1984” rolled into one utopian nightmare!

The Novus Ordo Church always plays ‘catch-up’ with modern trends but this should force even them to do a little sober reflection before getting on board with the new political correctness. They don’t want to be accused of “systemic violence” in peddling the insensitive “biblical worldview” of “transphobic misinformation” but still, changing “gender identity… daily” might even make them sick. The up-side to this, Feminism is dead. Feminist theory is based upon “fixed binaries” and “biological essentialism” that intentionally “misgender” half the population. The whole thing will just have to go!

Harvard: Students can change gender daily, saying otherwise is ‘violence’

LifeSiteNews | CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts | April 24, 2017 -- One of the world’s premier academic institutions has published a student guide that states one’s gender can “change from day to day” and merely saying that’s not true “is a form of … violence.”

Homosexual activists in the Harvard University office of “LGBTQ Student Life” passed out a school-sponsored guide that urges students to “fight transphobia.” Among other claims presented as facts, the guide decrees that “there are more than two sexes.” “Gender is fluid and changing,” the guide instructs. Using carefully worded transgender phraseology, the guide refers to biological gender as one’s “sex assigned at birth.” “How are you supposed to write a law that protects against gender or sex discrimination if a person’s ‘gender identity’ can change daily?” Chris Pandolfo at the Conservative Review asks. “James Madison might’ve said something important about ‘mutable’ or constantly changing government and ‘incoherent’ laws once.”

Furthermore, the Harvard guide admonishes students that “fixed binaries” (in other words, referring to the two sexes of male and female) and “biological essentialism” (in other words, considering a boy to be a boy and a girl to be a girl) “threaten(s) the lives of trans people.”

Calling a male by a male pronoun is considered gender assault. “Misgendering someone” is considered life-threatening. The biblical worldview is characterized as “transphobic misinformation.”

“Transphobic misinformation is a form of systemic violence,” the guide claims. Critics say the most dangerous claim of the Harvard encyclical is that opposing views are “a form of systemic violence.” In other words, “traditional understandings of the roles of men and women and the distinctions between male and female are ‘violence.’”

“If you follow this line of thinking, then when, for example, Jesus says in Matthew 19, ‘Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female’… — that’s violence,” Pandolfo pointed out.

Campus Reform reports that several Harvard students expressed outrage about the misuse of tuition money for the politically correct student guide, but “all declined to comment on the record due to concerns about potential repercussions from the school.”

Pandolfo opined, “One wonders if Harvard’s administration has paused to consider whether they are providing a ‘Safe Space’ for students who think that men are men and women are women.”

“This is the sad state of affairs at colleges and universities, “Pandolfo concludes. ”Traditional values are called violent. Mob violence to silence free speech is called justice.”

Love therefore alone distinguishes between the sons of God and the sons of the devil. Let them all sign themselves with the sign of the cross; let them all answer, Amen; let them all sing, Alleluia; let them all be baptized, let them enter churches; let them build the walls of the basilicas: the sons of God are not distinguished from the sons of Satan - except by charity. Those who have charity are born of God: those who have not, are not born of God.

St. Augustine

“If there is but a dozen of you that are not cowards, it is enough — follow me!”

St. Joan of Arc, rallying French troops to capture the bridgeworks before the city of Orleans which was captured the following day. St. Joan had captured in four days what a seven-month siege could not.

Jewish owned international news service defends Pope Francis against the charge of heresy!

Reuters dismisses ‘extremists’ who accused Pope Francis of heresy

LifeSiteNews | ROME, Italy | May 2, 2019 – International news service Reuters has dismissed the “Open Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church” in which prominent clergymen and scholars accuse Pope Francis of committing heresy as the work of “extremists.”

On May 1, Reuters produced a news article about the “Open Letter” about the appeared, among other places, in The New York Times. Reuters and its clients titled the piece “Conservatives Want Catholic Bishops to Denounce Pope as Heretic.” Labeling the signers of the open letter as "conservatives" instead of faithful Catholics was the first in a number of labels used to undermine the signers' initiative, thus suggesting Reuters' bias.

In their article, author Philip Pullella and his editor William Maclean mischaracterize the original signers of the “Open Letter” accusing Pope Francis of heresy as “ultra-conservatives.” They called the document “the latest ultra-conservative broadside against the pontiff over a range of topics from communion for the divorced to religious diversity.”

The Reuters article does not address the central issue – whether or not Pope Francis has broken with at least seven teachings of the Church – instead painting the letter as an “attack” on the pontiff for “allegedly softening the Church’s stance on a range of subjects.”

Speaking of the Open Letter’s authors, the article erroneously claimed that “they say he has not been outspoken enough against abortion and has been too welcoming to homosexuals and too accommodating to Protestants and Muslims.”

In fact, the Open Letter accused Pope Francis of having, through his words and actions, advanced the following seven heretical positions:

1. A justified person has not the strength with God’s grace to carry out the objective demands of the divine law, as though any of the commandments of God are impossible for the justified; or as meaning that God’s grace, when it produces justification in an individual, does not invariably and of its nature produce conversion from all serious sin, or is not sufficient for conversion from all serious sin.

2. A Christian believer can have full knowledge of a divine law and voluntarily choose to break it in a serious matter, but not be in a state of mortal sin as a result of this action.

3. A person is able, while he obeys a divine prohibition, to sin against God by that very act of obedience.

4. Conscience can truly and rightly judge that sexual acts between persons who have contracted a civil marriage with each other, although one or both of them is sacramentally married to another person, can sometimes be morally right, or requested or even commanded by God.

5. It is false that the only sexual acts that are good of their kind and morally licit are acts between husband and wife.

6. Moral principles and moral truths contained in divine revelation and in the natural law do not include negative prohibitions that absolutely forbid particular kinds of action, inasmuch as these are always gravely unlawful on account of their object.

7. God not only permits, but positively wills, the pluralism and diversity of religions, both Christian and non-Christian.

Reuters also did a little armchair theology by describing Amoris Laetitia, perhaps Pope Francis’ most divisive work, as “a cornerstone of Francis' attempt to make the 1.3 billion-member Church more inclusive and less condemning.”

In reality, Amoris Laetitia plunged the Church into a doctrinal crisis of which the “Open Letter” is only the most recent attempt at a resolution.

The news bureau also gave an exclusive platform to Villanova University’s Massimo Faggioli. Faggioli, one of Pope Francis’ staunchest defenders, suggested that the “Open Letter” was the work of “extremists.”

"There is overwhelming support for Francis in the global Church on one side, and a tiny fringe of extremists trying to paint Francis as a pope who is heretic. The problem is that there is very little legitimate, constructive critique of Francis' pontificate and his theology," he told Reuters in an email.

Faggioli’s claim was in stark contrast to the opinions of Ignatius Press founder Fr. Joseph Fessio and CEO Mark Brumley that the “Open Letter” was clearly not the work of “extremists.” They agreed that the document should be taken seriously, both because of its reputable authors and because of its carefully laid out arguments.

“... As a matter of fact, these authors ― some of them, anyway ― are quite reputable,” Fessio said. “And even if they were, perhaps, extremists, even extremists can sometimes make good points.”

The founder of the USA’s most important Catholic publishing house said that each of the heresies attributed to Francis was “clearly stated” and “backed up by previous Church teaching, either councils or popes.” Fessio also noted that the authors had illustrated where the pontiff has made statements “that seem to contradict these Church teaching” and how his actions had underscored what look like his novel doctrines.

Responding to the “Open Letter” and Massimo Faggioli’s statement to Reuters, Robert Moynihan published an editorial saying that there seems to be a communications problem in the Catholic Church.

“It does seem clear that there has been certain breakdown in communication,” he wrote.

Like Fessio and Brumley, he credited those who have questioned Francis’ novelties as deserving of a serious response.

“Serious, well-meaning Catholics — including cardinals — have expressed perplexity about some of Francis’s words and actions, yet Francis has not sought to address these ‘perplexities’ in a wide-ranging, serious, effective way,” he continued.

“Consequently, ‘perplexities’ which might have been dispelled have instead festered. And now a certain spiritual disease has not only incubated, but has begun to metastasize. That is worrisome.”

Moynihan, the editor of Inside the Vatican, believes that there would be less “polarization” in the Church if Pope Francis “and his inner circle” taught more clearly but also if the pontiff’s “critics” discerned “still more profoundly their understanding of Francis, and of his mind and teaching, and of the needs of the Church at the present moment.”

A platform for attacks on the pope?

The Reuters article also referred to LifeSiteNews as “a conservative Catholic website that often is a platform for attacks on the pope.”

Steve Jalsevac, the co-founder of LifeSiteNews, rejected Reuters’ description of LifeSiteNews, saying it “appears to be one made to fit a desired narrative.”

“To mainstream media people we seem to be 'extreme' or 'far right' simply because they are hardly ever exposed to objective, well-informed reporting on the issues we cover,” he said.

“Rather than being a 'conservative Catholic website', LifeSite is an international news service focusing on issues of life, family and related cultural issues. It came out of the pro-life movement and now reports on a wide variety of interconnected issues that have generally been poorly covered, if covered at all, by the mainstream media,” he said.

He added that most of the LifeSiteNews staff are “exceptionally well-informed and faithful, rather than ‘conservative,’ Catholics. Several have Catholicism-related Masters degrees and at least one has a PhD and another is working on his PhD.”

“We have never seen ourselves as ‘attacking’ Pope Francis,” Jalsevac continued.

“Professionally reporting uncomfortable truths is not an ‘attack’. LifeSite simply and very accurately reports what the Pope says and does that is newsworthy and provides the necessary historical, theological or other context for each of those reports. We constantly ask critics to point out any inaccuracies in our allegedly ‘fake’ news reports on Francis, but very rarely ever receive a credible response to that request.”

In a recent podcast, LifeSiteNews’ editor-in-chief John-Henry Westen explained why reporting on Rome has become so difficult in the Francis pontificate.

“For the past six years LifeSite has been experiencing many difficulties in our reporting on what's going on in Rome. For 22 years now we've reported on the Vatican and especially the statements of the Popes focusing most on life and family,” he said.

“With John Paul II and Pope Benedict it was relatively easy. Since they would say so many pro-life and pro-family things, it was a joy to report. It was a real encouragement to pro-life and pro-family leaders all around the world - to hear the words of Popes who it seemed really had your back even when sometimes your local Bishops did not,” Westen continued.

“But things changed with the election of Pope Francis. After a year of trying to explain away his confusing statements, and sometimes statements that went directly against his two predecessors, we knew at LifeSite we had to just report straight what was happening and let people know what was going on.”

Reuters ended its hit piece on the Open Letter signers with another statement revealing its bias: "Conservatives say the Roman Catholic Church is the only true one and that members are called to convert others to it." It is not "conservative" Catholics who hold that the Roman Catholic Church is the one true Church founded by Jesus, but the Catholic Church herself holds this along with all those who are faithful to her teachings.

Pope Francis, as all the conciliar popes before him, calls for one world government while paying meaningless lip service to Catholic social teaching. Francis supports Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) which impose mandatory birth control and abortion on all nations.

Pope Francis calls for new ‘supranational’ authorities to enforce UN goals

LifeSiteNews | ROME | May 2, 2019 — Pope Francis made a strong push for globalism on Thursday, calling for a “supranational, legally constituted body” to enforce United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals and implement "climate change" policies.

Speaking to members of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, the Pope said: “When a supranational common good is clearly identified, there is need for a special legally constituted authority capable of facilitating its implementation.”

“Think of the great contemporary challenges of climate change, new slavery and peace,” he told members of the Pontifical Academy, who are meeting this week at the Vatican for a May 1-3 plenary session themed: “Nation, State, Nation-State.”

Featured speakers included German Cardinal Walter Kasper, who spoke on: “Peace Stemming from Justice. Theological Reflections Between Men, Communities and Nations”; Archbishop Roland Minnerath of Dijon, France, who delivered the opening talk on day two, themed: “Nation, State, Nation-State and the Doctrine of the Catholic Church”; and German climatologist and founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, who addressed the Pontifical Academy on “The State of the World.”

In his address, the Pope said that while “the principle of subsidiarity” requires that “individual nations must be given the power to operate as far as they can,” still “groups of neighboring nations — as is already the case — can strengthen their cooperation by attributing the exercise of certain functions and services to intergovernmental institutions that manage their common interests.”

The thrust of the Pope’s remarks focused on growing trends toward nationalism, which he said threaten migrants, the “universal common good” and the power of the United Nations and other transnational bodies to implement the Sustainable Development Goal agenda.

The Church “has always exhorted men to love their own people and homeland,” he said. “At the same time,” he added, “the Church has warned persons, peoples and governments about deviations from this attachment when it is about excluding and hating others, when it becomes conflictual nationalism that builds walls, indeed even racism or anti-Semitism.”

“The Church observes with concern the re-emergence, almost everywhere in the world, of aggressive currents towards foreigners, especially immigrants, as well as that growing nationalism which neglects the common good,” Pope Francis continued.

“There is a risk of compromising already established forms of international cooperation, undermining the aims of international organizations as a space for dialogue and meeting for all countries on a level of mutual respect, and hindering the achievement of the sustainable development goals unanimously approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 25 September 2015,” he told members of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.

SDGs: eliminating poverty or children?

Many are concerned the some of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), while billed as aimed at eliminating poverty, are really about eliminating children. “Reproductive health services” for example, which are referred to in the SDGs, are often a euphemism frequently employed to mean abortion in UN debates.

As Steven Mosher, Population Research Institute, explains:

Developing nations who adopt the SDGs will be pressured to legalize abortion, even though the word abortion never appears in the document. They will be told, falsely, that there is an “international consensus” that reproductive rights includes a right to abortion. They will be instructed that laws protecting the unborn violate this consensus and must be replaced with new laws permitting abortion on demand. And they will be threatened with the withholding of international aid unless they comply.

Pope Francis did give some recognition to concerns about “ideological colonization” of socially and morally conservative countries in the developing world in his remarks:

Multilateral bodies were created in the hope of being able to replace the logic of revenge, domination, oppression and conflict with that of dialogue, mediation, compromise, harmony and the awareness of belonging to the same humanity in the common home. Of course, these bodies must ensure that States are effectively represented, with equal rights and duties, in order to avoid the growing hegemony of powers and interest groups that impose their own visions and ideas, as well as new forms of ideological colonization, often disregarding the identity, customs and traditions, dignity and sensitivity of the peoples concerned. The emergence of such tendencies is weakening the multilateral system, with the result of a lack of credibility in international politics and a progressive marginalization of the most vulnerable members of the family of nations.

[.....]

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

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“If there is but a dozen of you that are not cowards, it is enough — follow me!”

St. Joan of Arc, rallying French troops to capture the bridgeworks before the city. Orleans was captured the following day. St. Joan had captured in four days what a seven month siege could not.

COMMENT: Faith is believing the truths God has revealed on the authority of God the Revealer. We know God by faith and the greater our knowledge, the greater our charity because you cannot love what is not known. The purpose of evangelization is to make proselytites. A proselytite is a person who has heard the Gospel message, has believed, and then, through the sacramental grace of baptism, becomes a child of God, a temple of the Holy Ghost, and a heir to heaven. God who is Truth cannot dwell in the soul of anyone who rejects His reveal truth because in rejecting the revealed truth, they necessarily reject God.

Now comes the New Evangelization of Pope Francis who says that “proselytism is solemn non-sense.” He forbids the teaching of revealed doctrine as the basis of evangelization replacing it with God knows what. Whatever it is, it cannot lead to the grace and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the soul because only in the act of knowing the revealed truth do we share in the knowledge that God has of Himself. Only in knowing the revealed truth is it possible to enter into the life of grace in the blessed Trinity. Only in knowing the revealed truth and life of grace can the soul be “dead” and its “life buried with Christ in God.”

Without faith, it is impossible to please God. Without preaching the revealed truth, there is no knowledge of God and therefore, no faith. To place the “New Evangelization” above the doctrine of the faith is to invert the hierarchy of truth which is the Devil’s principle method of deception and destruction. Since the “New Evangelization” is not directed by God’s revealed truth, it must necessarily be directed by some worldly ideology. Francis believes that doctrine divides and if we can only get rid of doctrine then a new syncretistic religion will emerge. With Pope Francis, who aspires to be head of the New World Order religion, that ideology will be easily recognized by all the faithful.

Pope proposes radical shakeup of the Roman Curia

New constitution means all work of the curia comes under a mission to evangelise, clipping wings of the powerful CDF

SS. Peter and Paul Roman Catholic Mission

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Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

But before all things have a constant mutual charity among yourselves: for charity covereth a multitude of sins.

1 Peter 4, 8

St. Theophane Venard, Martyred in China, February 2, 1861

Thus, the Church forbids the Faithful to communicate with those unbelievers who have forsaken the Faith by corrupting it such as heretics, or by renouncing it such as those who become apostates.

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica

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

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